Ceremony and cybrary : Digital libraries and the dialectic of place and space

This article examines social, cultural and technological change in the systems and economies of educational information management. Since the Sumerians first collected, organized and supervised administrative and religious records some six millennia ago, libraries have been key physical depositories and cultural signifiers in the production and mediation of social capital and power through education. To date, the textual, archival and discursive practices perpetuating libraries have remained exempt from inquiry. My aim here is to remedy this hiatus by making the library itself the terrain and object of critical analysis and investigation. The paper argues that in the three dominant communications eras—namely, oral, print and digital cultures—society’s centres of knowledge and learning have resided in the ceremony, the library and the cybrary respectively. In a broad-brush historical grid, each of these key educational institutions—the ceremony in oral culture, the library in print culture and the cybrary in digital culture—are mapped against social, cultural and technological orders pertaining to their era. Following a description of these shifts in society’s collective cultural memory, the paper then examines the question of what the development of global information systems and economies mean for schools and libraries of today, and for teachers and learners as knowledge consumers and producers?

Gonadotropin-induced ovarian cancer cell migration and proliferation require extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 activation regulated by calcium and protein kinase Cδ

The gonadotropin hypothesis proposes that elevated serum gonadotropin levels may increase the risk of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). We have studied the effect of treating EOC cell lines (OV207 and OVCAR-3) with FSH or LH. Both gonadotropins activated the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)/extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) pathway and increased cell migration that was inhibited by the MAPK 1 inhibitor PD98059. Both extra- and intracellular calcium ion signalling were implicated in gonadotropin-induced ERK1/2 activation as treatment with either the calcium chelator EGTA or an inhibitor of intracellular calcium release, dantrolene, inhibited gonadotropin-induced ERK1/2 activation. Verapamil was also inhibitory, indicating that gonadotropins activate calcium influx via L-type voltage-dependent calcium channels. The cAMP/protein kinase A (PKA) pathway was not involved in the mediation of gonadotropin action in these cells as gonadotropins did not increase intracellular cAMP formation and inhibition of PKA did not affect gonadotropin-induced phosphorylation of ERK1/2. Activation of ERK1/2 was inhibited by the protein kinase C (PKC) inhibitor GF 109203X as well as by the PKCδ inhibitor rottlerin, and downregulation of PKCδ was inhibited by small interfering RNA (siRNA), highlighting the importance of PKCδ in the gonadotropin signalling cascade. Furthermore, in addition to inhibition by PD98059, gonadotropin-induced ovarian cancer cell migration was also inhibited by verapamil, GF 109203X and rottlerin. Similarly, gonadotropin-induced proliferation was inhibited by PD98059, verapamil, GF 109203X and PKCδ siRNA. Taken together, these results demonstrate that gonadotropins induce both ovarian cancer cell migration and proliferation by activation of ERK1/2 signalling in a calcium- and PKCδ-dependent manner.

A new approach to teaching signal processing at undergraduate level

This paper describes the design and implementation of a unique undergraduate program in signal processing at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). The criteria that influenced the choice of the subjects and the laboratories developed to support them are presented. A recently established Signal Processing Research Centre (SPRC) has played an important role in the development of the signal processing teaching program. The SPRC also provides training opportunities for postgraduate studies and research.

The development of a new signal processing program at the Queensland University of Technology

The School of Electrical and Electronic Systems Engineering at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia (QUT), offers three bachelor degree courses in electrical and computer engineering. In all its courses there is a strong emphasis on signal processing. A newly established Signal Processing Research Centre (SPRC) has played an important role in the development of the signal processing units in these courses. This paper describes the unique design of the undergraduate program in signal processing at QUT, the laboratories developed to support it, and the criteria that influenced the design.

The design and development of an undergraduate signal processing laboratory

The School of Electrical and Electronic Systems Engineering of Queensland University of Technology (like many other universities around the world) has recognised the importance of complementing the teaching of signal processing with computer based experiments. A laboratory has been developed to provide a "hands-on" approach to the teaching of signal processing techniques. The motivation for the development of this laboratory was the cliche "What I hear I remember but what I do I understand." The laboratory has been named as the "Signal Computing and Real-time DSP Laboratory" and provides practical training to approximately 150 final year undergraduate students each year. The paper describes the novel features of the laboratory, techniques used in the laboratory based teaching, interesting aspects of the experiments that have been developed and student evaluation of the teaching techniques

Characterizing the signal pattern of a four-cylinder diesel engine using acoustic emission and vibration analysis

Condition monitoring of diesel engines can prevent unpredicted engine failures and the associated consequence. This paper presents an experimental study of the signal characteristics of a 4-cylinder diesel engine under various loading conditions. Acoustic emission, vibration and in-cylinder pressure signals were employed to study the effectiveness of these techniques for condition monitoring and identifying symptoms of incipient failures. An event driven synchronous averaging technique was employed to average the quasi-periodic diesel engine signal in the time domain to eliminate or minimize the effect of engine speed and amplitude variations on the analysis of condition monitoring signal. It was shown that acoustic emission (AE) is a better technique than vibration method for condition monitor of diesel engines due to its ability to produce high quality signals (i.e., excellent signal to noise ratio) in a noisy diesel engine environment. It was found that the peak amplitude of AE RMS signals correlating to the impact-like combustion related events decreases in general due to a more stable mechanical process of the engine as the loading increases. A small shift in the exhaust valve closing time was observed as the engine load increases which indicates a prolong combustion process in the cylinder (to produce more power). On the contrary, peak amplitudes of the AE RMS attributing to fuel injection increase as the loading increases. This can be explained by the increase fuel friction caused by the increase volume flow rate during the injection. Multiple AE pulses during the combustion process were identified in the study, which were generated by the piston rocking motion and the interaction between the piston and the cylinder wall. The piston rocking motion is caused by the non-uniform pressure distribution acting on the piston head as a result of the non-linear combustion process of the engine. The rocking motion ceased when the pressure in the cylinder chamber stabilized.

Media as creative industries : conglomeration and globalization as accumulation strategies in an age of digital media

This chapter will begin by considering some of the distinctive features of media as creative industries, including their assessment of risk and return on investment, team-based production, the management of creativity, the value chain of production, distribution and circulation, and the significance of intellectual property in their revenue strategies. It will then critically appraise three strategies to capture new markets and revenue streams in the context of the rise of the Internet, digital media and globally networked distribution. The three strategies to be considered are conglomeration, networking and globalization, and the focus will be on the media giants such as News Corporation, Disney and Time-Warner. It will be argued that all three present considerable challenges in their application, and digital media technologies are weakening rather than strengthening their capacity to control the global media environment. The chapter will conclude with consideration of some implications of this analysis for questions of media power.

Teachers’ and parents’ perspectives of digital technology in the lives of young children

The pervasiveness of technology in the 21st Century has meant that adults and children live in a society where digital devices are integral to their everyday lives and participation in society. How we communicate, learn, work, entertain ourselves, and even shop is influenced by technology. Therefore, before children begin school they are potentially exposed to a range of learning opportunities mediated by digital devices. These devices include microwaves, mobile phones, computers, and console games such as Playstations® and iPods®. In Queensland preparatory classrooms and in the homes of these children, teachers and parents support and scaffold young children’s experiences, providing them with access to a range of tools that promote learning and provide entertainment. This paper examines teachers’ and parents’ perspectives and considers whether they are techno-optimists who advocate for and promote the inclusion of digital technology, or whether they are they techno-pessimists, who prefer to exclude digital devices from young children’s everyday experiences. An exploratory, single case study design was utilised to gather data from three teachers and ten parents of children in the preparatory year. Teacher data was collected through interviews and email correspondence. Parent data was collected from questionnaires and focus groups. All parents who responded to the research invitation were mothers. The results of data analysis identified a misalignment among adults’ perspectives. Teachers were identified as techno-optimists and parents were identified as techno-pessimists with further emergent themes particular to each category being established. This is concerning because both teachers and mothers influence young children’s experiences and numeracy knowledge, thus, a shared understanding and a common commitment to supporting young children’s use of technology would be beneficial. Further research must investigate fathers’ perspectives of digital devices and the beneficial and detrimental roles that a range of digital devices, tools, and entertainment gadgets play in 21st Century children’s lives.

Dynamic texture reconstruction from sparse codes for unusual event detection in crowded scenes

Unusual event detection in crowded scenes remains challenging because of the diversity of events and noise. In this paper, we present a novel approach for unusual event detection via sparse reconstruction of dynamic textures over an overcomplete basis set, with the dynamic texture described by local binary patterns from three orthogonal planes (LBPTOP). The overcomplete basis set is learnt from the training data where only the normal items observed. In the detection process, given a new observation, we compute the sparse coefficients using the Dantzig Selector algorithm which was proposed in the literature of compressed sensing. Then the reconstruction errors are computed, based on which we detect the abnormal items. Our application can be used to detect both local and global abnormal events. We evaluate our algorithm on UCSD Abnormality Datasets for local anomaly detection, which is shown to outperform current state-of-the-art approaches, and we also get promising results for rapid escape detection using the PETS2009 dataset.