Domestic energy monitoring in Victorian households with PV solar installations : feasibility report for GV Community Energy

Australia requires decisive action on climate change and issues of sustainability. The Urban Informatics Research Lab has been funded by the Queensland State Government to conduct a three year study (2009 – 2011) exploring ways to support Queensland residents in making more sustainable consumer and lifestyle choices. We conduct user-centred design research that inform the development of real-time, mobile, locational, networked information interfaces, feedback mechanisms and persuasive and motivational approaches that in turn assist in-situ decision making and environmental awareness in everyday settings. The study aims to deliver usable and useful prototypes offering individual and collective visualisations of ecological impact and opportunities for engagement and collaboration in order to foster a participatory and sustainable culture of life in Australia. Raising people’s awareness with environmental data and educational information does not necessarily trigger sufficient motivation to change their habits towards a more environmentally friendly and sustainable lifestyle. Our research seeks to develop a better understanding how to go beyond just informing and into motivating and encouraging action and change. Drawing on participatory culture, ubiquitous computing, and real-time information, the study delivers research that leads to viable new design approaches and information interfaces which will strengthen Australia’s position to meet the targets of the Clean Energy Future strategy, and contribute to the sustainability of a low-carbon future in Australia. As part of this program of research, the Urban Informatics Research Lab has been invited to partner with GV Community Energy Pty Ltd on a project funded by the Victorian Government Sustainability Fund. This feasibility report specifically looks at the challenges and opportunities of energy monitoring in households in Victoria that include a PV solar installation. The report is structured into two parts: In Part 1, we first review a range of energy monitoring solutions, both stand-alone and internet-enabled. This section primarily focusses on the technical capacilities. However, in order to understand this information and make an informed decision, it is crucial to understand the basic principles and limitations of energy monitoring as well as the opportunities and challenges of a networked approach towards energy monitoring which are discussed in Section 2.

Charitable organisations : the options for government in the years ahead

I stand before you with some diffidence because my knowledge and involvement in this field is far less than yours. I can only claim to have had a long interest in the field of philanthropy. Until recently that interest had been in a general and not in an analytical way. Due to a conjunction of circumstances about a year ago I have taken a much more disciplined approach to the subject. This culminated in a large submission I made, as a private Senator, to the Prime Minister before Christmas on the subject of philanthropy.

Review of guidelines for children’s vision screenings

The aim of children's vision screenings is to detect visual problems that are common in this age category through valid and reliable tests. Nevertheless, the cost effectiveness of paediatric vision screenings, the nature of the tests included in the screening batteries and the ideal screening age has been the cause of much debate in Australia and worldwide. Therefore, the purpose of this review is to report on the current practice of children's vision screenings in Australia and other countries, as well as to evaluate the evidence for and against the provision of such screenings. This was undertaken through a detailed investigation of peer-reviewed publications on this topic. The current review demonstrates that there is no agreed vision screening protocol for children in Australia. This appears to be a result of the lack of strong evidence supporting the benefit of such screenings. While amblyopia, strabismus and, to a lesser extent refractive error, are targeted by many screening programs during pre-school and at school entry, there is less agreement regarding the value of screening for other visual conditions, such as binocular vision disorders, ocular health problems and refractive errors that are less likely to reduce distance visual acuity. In addition, in Australia, little agreement exists in the frequency and coverage of screening programs between states and territories and the screening programs that are offered are ad hoc and poorly documented. Australian children stand to benefit from improved cohesion and communication between jurisdictions and health professionals to enable an equitable provision of validated vision screening services that have the best chance of early detection and intervention for a range of paediatric visual problems.

park(ing) day

Walking through the city, passersby are occasionally jolted out of the mundane by surprises that seem out of place or incongruous with the expected urban function––a hidden cafe, or an unknown public art project. If you happen to be wandering through a major city on the third Friday of September each year, you might encounter a parking space that has been temporarily transformed into a "park" with green grass, a bench and an umbrella, perhaps a lemonade stand, a nursery, or an interactive space with a survey about local issues.

The process and patterns of combining the use of traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine in Taiwanese people with cancer

Objective: The nature of contemporary cancer therapy means that patients are faced with difficult treatment decisions about surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. For some, this process may also involve consideration of therapies that sit outside the biomedical approach to cancer treatment, in our research, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Thus, it is important to explore how cancer patients in Taiwan incorporate TCM into their cancer treatment journey. This paper aims to explore of the patterns of combining the use of TCM and Western medicine into cancer treatment journey in Taiwanese people with cancer. Methods: The sampling was purposive and the data collected through in-depth interviews. Data collection occurred over an eleven month. The research was grounded in the premises of symbolic interactionism and adopted the methods of grounded theory. Twenty four participants who were patients receiving cancer treatment were recruited from two health care settings in Taiwan. Results: The study findings suggest that perceptions of health and illness are mediated through ongoing interactions with different forms of therapy. The participants in this study had a clear focus on “process and patterns of using TCM and Western medicine”. Further, ‘different importance in Western medicine and TCM’, ‘taken for granted to use TCM’, ‘each has specialized skills in Western medicine and TCM’ and ‘different symptoms use different approaches (Western medicine or TCM)’ may explicit how the participants in this study see CAM and Western medicine. Conclusions/Implications for practice: The descriptive frame of the study suggests that TCM and Western medicine occupy quite distinct domains in terms of decision making over their use. People used TCM based on interpretations of the present and against a background of an enduring cultural legacy grounded in Chinese philosophical beliefs about health and healthcare. The increasingly popular term of 'integrative medicine' obscures the complex contexts of the patterns of use of both therapeutic modalities. It is this latter point that is worthy of further exploration.

Affecting interference

This collaborative project by Daniel Mafe and Andrew Brown, one of a number in they have been involved in together, conjoins painting and digital sound into a single, large scale, immersive exhibition/installation. The work as a whole acts as an interstitial point between contrasting approaches to abstraction: the visual and aural, the digital and analogue are pushed into an alliance and each works to alter perceptions of the other. For example, the paintings no longer mutely sit on the wall to be stared into. The sound seemingly emanating from each work shifts the viewer’s typical visual perception and engages their aural sensibilities. This seems to make one more aware of the objects as objects – the surface of each piece is brought into scrutiny – and immerses the viewer more viscerally within the exhibition. Similarly, the sonic experience is focused and concentrated spatially by each painted piece even as the exhibition is dispersed throughout the space. The sounds and images are similar in each local but not identical, even though they may seem to be the same from casual interaction, closer attention will quickly show this is not the case. In preparing this exhibition each artist has had to shift their mode of making to accommodate the other’s contribution. This was mainly done by a process of emptying whereby each was called upon to do less to the works they were making and to iterate the works toward a shared conception, blurring notions of individual imagination while maintaining material authorship. Empting was necessary to enable sufficient porosity where each medium allowed the other entry to its previously gated domain. The paintings are simple and subtle to allow the odd sonic textures a chance to work on the viewer’s engagement with them. The sound remains both abstract, using noise-like textures, and at a low volume to allow the audience’s attention to wander back and forth between aspects of the works.

Is providing elective ventilation in the best interests of potential donors?

In this paper, we examine the lawfulness of a proposal to provide elective ventilation to incompetent patients who are potential organ donors. Under the current legal framework, this depends on whether the best interests test could be satisfied. It might be argued that, because the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (UK) (and the common law) makes it clear that the best interests test is not confined to the patient's clinical interests, but extends to include the individual's own values, wishes and beliefs, the proposal will be in the patient's best interests. We reject this claim. We argue that, as things currently stand, the proposal could not lawfully be justified as a blanket proposition by reference to the best interests test. Accordingly, a modification of the law would be necessary to render the proposal lawful. We conclude with a suggestion about how that could be achieved.

Children, young people and their social and spatial citizenship rights

The use of public space by children and young people is a contentious issue in a number of developed and developing countries and a range of measures are frequently deployed to control the public space which usually deny the rights of children and young people to claim the space for their use. Child and youth curfews, oppressive camera surveillance and the unwarranted attentions of police and private security personnel as control measures in public space undermine attempts to secure greater participation by children and young people in constructing positive strategies to address concerns that impact on them and others in a local area. Evidence from research in Scotland undertaken by Article 12 (2000) suggests that young people felt strongly that they did not count in local community matters and decision making and the imposition on them of a curfew by the adult world of the local area created resentment both at the harshness of the measure and disappointment at an opportunity lost to be consulted and involved in dealing with perceived problems of the locality. This is an important cluster of linked issues as Brown (1998:116) argues that young people are ‘selectively constructed as “problem” and “other” with their concerns marginalised, their lifestyles problematised and their voices subdued’, and this flows into their use of public space as their claims to its use as an aspect of social citizenship are usually cast as inferior or rejected as they ‘stand outside the formal polity’ as ‘non persons’. This has major implications for the ways in which young people view their position in a community as many report a feeling of not being wanted, valued or tolerated. The ‘youth question’ according to Davis (1990) acts as a form of ‘screen’ on which observers and analysts project hopes and fears about the state of society, while in the view of Loader (1996:89) the ‘question of young people’ sits within a discourse comprising two elements, the one being youth, particularly young males, as the ‘harbinger of often unwelcome social change and threat’ and the other element ‘constructs young people as vulnerable’. This discourse of threat is further exemplified in the separation of children from teenagers as Valentine (1996) suggests, the treatment of younger children using public space is often dramatically different to that of older children and the most feared stage of all, 'youth'

Establishing virtual production as a research and teaching activity at QUT

Located within the Creative Industries Faculty, the Animation team at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) recently acquired a full-body inertial motion capture system. Our research to date has been predominantly concerned with interdisciplinary practice and the benefits this could bring to undergraduate teaching. From early experimental tests it was identified that there was a need to develop a framework for best practice and an efficient production workflow to ensure the system was being used to its full potential. Through our ongoing investigation we have identified at least three areas that stand to have long-term benefits from universities engaging in motion capture related research activity. This includes interdisciplinary collaborative research, undergraduate teaching and improved production processes. The following paper reports the early stages of our research, which explores the use of a full-body inertial motion capture (MoCap) solution in collaboration with performing artists.

Were intercalated komatiites and dacites at the Black Swan nickel sulphide mine, Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia, emplaced as extrusive lavas or intrusive bodies? The significance of breccia textures and contact relationships

Intercalated Archean komatiites and dacites sit above a thick footwall dacite unit in the host rock succession at the Black Swan Nickel Mine, north of Kalgoorlie in the Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia. Both lithofacies occur in units that vary in scale from laterally extensive at the scale of the mine lease to localized, thin, irregular bodies, from > 100 m thick to only centimetres thick. Some dacites are only slightly altered and deformed, and are interpreted to post-date major deformation and alteration (late porphyries). However, the majority of the dacites display evidence of deformation, especially at contacts, and metamorphism, varying from silicification and chlorite alteration at contacts to pervasive low grade regional metamorphic alteration represented by common assemblages of chlorite, sericite and albite. Texturally, the dacites vary from entirely massive and coherent to partially brecciated to totally brecciated. Strangely, some dacites are coherent at the margins and brecciated internally. Breccia textures vary from cryptically defined, to blocky, closely packed, in situ jig-saw fit textures with secondary minerals in fractures between clasts, to more apparent matrix rich textures with round clast forms, giving apparent conglomerate textures. Some clast zones have multi-coloured clasts, giving the impression of varied provenance. Strangely however, all these textural variants have gradational relationships with each other, and no bedding or depositional structures are present. This indicates that all textures have an in situ origin. The komatiites are generally altered and pervasively carbonate veined. Preservation of original textures is patchy and local, but includes coarse adcumulate, mesocumulate, orthocumulate, crescumulate-harrisite and occasionally spinifex textures. Where original contacts between komatiites and dacites are preserved intact (i.e. not sheared or overprinted by alteration), the komatiites have chilled margins, whereas the dacites do not. The margins of the dacites are commonly silicified, and inclusions of dacite occur in komatiite, even at the top contacts of komatiite units, but komatiite clasts do not occur in the dacites. The komatiites therefore were emplaced as sills into the dacites, and the intercalated relationships are interpreted as intrusive. The brecciation and alteration in the dacites are interpreted as being largely due to hydraulic fracturing and alteration induced by contact metamorphic effects and hydrothermal alteration deriving from the intrusion of komatiites into the felsic pile. The absence of autobreccia and hyaloclastite textures in the dacites suggest that they were emplaced as an earlier intrusive (sill?) complex at a high level in the crust.

The International regulation of persons displaced by climate change

It is certain that there will be changes in environmental conditions across the globe as a result of climate change. Such changes will require the building of biological, human and infrastructure resilience. In some instances the building of such resilience will be insufficient to deal with extreme changes in environmental conditions and legal frameworks will be required to provide recognition and support for people dislocated because of environmental change. Such dislocation may occur internally within the country of original origin or externally into another State’s territory. International and national legal frameworks do not currently recognise or assist people displaced as a result of environmental factors including displacement occurring as a result of climate change. Legal frameworks developed to deal with this issue will need to consider the legal rights of those people displaced and the legal responsibilities of those countries required to respond to such displacement. The objective of this article is to identify the most suitable international institution to host a program addressing climate displacement. There are a number of areas of international law that are relevant to climate displacement, including refugee law, human rights law and international environmental law. These regimes, however, were not designed to protect people relocating as a result of environmental change. As such, while they indirectly may be of relevance to climate displacement, they currently do nothing to directly address this complex issue. In order to determine the most appropriate institution to address and regulate climate displacement, it is imperative to consider issues of governance. This paper seeks to examine this issue and determine whether it is preferable to place climate displacement programs into existing international legal frameworks or whether it is necessary to regulate this area in an entirely new institution specifically designed to deal with the complex and cross-cutting issues surrounding the topic. Commentators in this area have proposed three different regulatory models for addressing climate displacement. These models include: (a) Expand the definition of refugee under the Refugee Convention to encompass persons displaced by climate change; (b) Implement a new stand alone Climate Displacement Convention; and (c) Implement a Climate Displacement Protocol to the UNFCCC. This article will examine each of these proposed models against a number of criteria to determine the model that is most likely to address the needs and requirements of people displaced by climate change. It will also identify the model that is likely to be most politically acceptable and realistic for those countries likely to attract responsibilities by its implementation. In order to assess whether the rights and needs of the people to be displaced are to be met, theories of procedural, distributive and remedial justice will be used to consider the equity of the proposed schemes. In order to consider the most politically palatable and realistic scheme, reference will be made to previous state practice and compliance with existing obligations in the area. It is suggested that the criteria identified by this article should underpin any future climate displacement instrument.

Framework for evaluating collaborative intrusion detection systems

Securing IT infrastructures of our modern lives is a challenging task because of their increasing complexity, scale and agile nature. Monolithic approaches such as using stand-alone firewalls and IDS devices for protecting the perimeter cannot cope with complex malwares and multistep attacks. Collaborative security emerges as a promising approach. But, research results in collaborative security are not mature, yet, and they require continuous evaluation and testing. In this work, we present CIDE, a Collaborative Intrusion Detection Extension for the network security simulation platform ( NeSSi 2 ). Built-in functionalities include dynamic group formation based on node preferences, group-internal communication, group management and an approach for handling the infection process for malware-based attacks. The CIDE simulation environment provides functionalities for easy implementation of collaborating nodes in large-scale setups. We evaluate the group communication mechanism on the one hand and provide a case study and evaluate our collaborative security evaluation platform in a signature exchange scenario on the other.

Regulating for corporate human rights abuses : the emergence of corporate reporting on the ILO’s human rights standards within the global garment manufacturing and retail industry

Despite the ubiquitous nature of the discourse on human rights there is currently little research on the emergence of disclosure by multinational corporations on their human rights obligations or the regulatory dynamic that may lie behind this trend. In an attempt to begin to explore the extent to which, if any, the language of human rights has entered the discourse of corporate accountability, this paper investigates the adoption of the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) human rights standards by major multinational garment retail companies that source products from developing countries, as disclosed through their reporting media. The paper has three objectives. Firstly, to empirically explore the extent to which a group of multinational garment retailers invoke the language of human rights when disclosing their corporate responsibilities. The paper reviews corporate reporting media including social responsibility codes of conduct, annual reports and stand-alone social responsibility reports released by 18 major global clothing and retail companies during a period from 1990 to 2007. We find that the number of companies adopting and disclosing on the ILO's workplace human rights standards has significantly increased since 1998 – the year in which the ILO's standards were endorsed and accepted by the global community (ILO, 1998). Secondly, drawing on a combination of Responsive Regulation theory and neo-institutional theory, we tentatively seek to understand the regulatory space that may have influenced these large corporations to adopt the language of human rights obligations. In particular, we study the role that International Governmental Organisation's (IGO) such as ILO may have played in these disclosures. Finally, we provide some critical reflections on the power and potential within the corporate adoption of the language of human rights.

Environmental incidents in a developing country and corporate environmental disclosures : a study of a multinational gas company

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the environmental disclosure initiatives of Niko Resources Ltd – a Canada-based multinational oil and gas company – following the two major environmental blowouts at a gas field in Bangladesh in 2005. As part of the examination, the authors particularly focus on whether Niko's disclosure strategy was associated with public concern pertaining to the blowouts. Design/methodology/approach – The authors reviewed news articles about Niko's environmental incidents in Bangladesh and Niko's communication media, including annual reports, press releases and stand-alone social responsibility report over the period 2004-2007, to understand whether news media attention as proxy for public concern has an impact on Niko's disclosure practices in relation to the affected local community in Bangladesh. Findings – The findings show that Niko did not provide any non-financial environmental information within its annual reports and press releases as a part of its responsibility to the local community which was affected by the blowouts, but it did produce a stand-alone report to address the issue. However, financial environmental disclosures, such as the environmental contingent liability disclosure, were adequately provided through annual reports to meet the regulatory requirements concerning environmental persecutions. The findings also suggest that Niko's non-financial disclosure within a stand-alone report was associated with the public pressures as measured by negative media coverage towards the Niko blowouts. Research limitations/implications – This paper concludes that the motive for Niko's non-financial environmental disclosure, via a stand-alone report, reflected survival considerations: the company's reaction did not suggest any real attempt to hold broader accountability for its activities in a developing country.

Hybrid graphene and graphitic carbon nitride nanocomposite : gap opening, electron–hole puddle, interfacial charge transfer, and enhanced visible light response

Opening up a band gap and finding a suitable substrate material are two big challenges for building graphene-based nanodevices. Using state-of-the-art hybrid density functional theory incorporating long range dispersion corrections, we investigate the interface between optically active graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) and electronically active graphene. We find an inhomogeneous planar substrate (g-C3N4) promotes electronrich and hole-rich regions, i.e., forming a well-defined electron−hole puddle, on the supported graphene layer. The composite displays significant charge transfer from graphene to the g-C3N4 substrate, which alters the electronic properties of both components. In particular, the strong electronic coupling at the graphene/g-C3N4 interface opens a 70 meV gap in g-C3N4-supported graphene, a feature that can potentially allow overcoming the graphene’s band gap hurdle in constructing field effect transistors. Additionally, the 2-D planar structure of g-C3N4 is free of dangling bonds, providing an ideal substrate for graphene to sit on. Furthermore, when compared to a pure g-C3N4 monolayer, the hybrid graphene/g-C3N4 complex displays an enhanced optical absorption in the visible region, a promising feature for novel photovoltaic and photocatalytic applications.