The role of informal networks in providing effective work opportunities for people with an intellectual disability

Being in paid employment is socially valued, and is linked to health, financial security and time use. Issues arising from a lack of occupational choice and control, and from diminished role partnerships are particularly problematic in the lives of people with an intellectual disability. Informal support networks are shown to influence work opportunities for people without disabilities, but their impact on the work experiences of people with disability has not been thoroughly explored. The experience of 'work' and preparation for work was explored with a group of four people with an intellectual disability (the participants) and the key members of their informal support networks (network members) in New South Wales, Australia. Network members and participants were interviewed and participant observations of work and other activities were undertaken. Data analysis included open, conceptual and thematic coding. Data analysis software assisted in managing the large datasets across multiple team members. The insight and actions of network members created and sustained the employment and support opportunities that effectively matched the needs and interests of the participants. Recommendations for future research are outlined.

Restructuring instructional material in vocational education to enhance learning

This paper reviews research findings regarding the design of instructional material and its effectiveness in facilitating learning. Firstly, a discussion of memory processes engaged in when learning from different types of instructional material is presented. Secondly, referring to empirical research, the implications of the above discussion for vocational education instruction, and in particular, for engineering graphics, CNC programming and learning to use equipment from manuals are presented.

A material model for flexural crack simulation in reinforced concrete elements using ABAQUS

This paper presents a material model to simulate load induced cracking in Reinforced Concrete (RC) elements in ABAQUS finite element package. Two numerical material models are used and combined to simulate complete stress-strain behaviour of concrete under compression and tension including damage properties. Both numerical techniques used in the present material model are capable of developing the stress-strain curves including strain softening regimes only using ultimate compressive strength of concrete, which is easily and practically obtainable for many of the existing RC structures or those to be built. Therefore, the method proposed in this paper is valuable in assessing existing RC structures in the absence of more detailed test results. The numerical models are slightly modified from the original versions to be comparable with the damaged plasticity model used in ABAQUS. The model is validated using different experiment results for RC beam elements presented in the literature. The results indicate a good agreement with load vs. displacement curve and observed crack patterns.

Parallel user profiling based on folksonomy for Large Scaled Recommender Systems : an implimentation of Cascading MapReduce

The Large scaled emerging user created information in web 2.0 such as tags, reviews, comments and blogs can be used to profile users’ interests and preferences to make personalized recommendations. To solve the scalability problem of the current user profiling and recommender systems, this paper proposes a parallel user profiling approach and a scalable recommender system. The current advanced cloud computing techniques including Hadoop, MapReduce and Cascading are employed to implement the proposed approaches. The experiments were conducted on Amazon EC2 Elastic MapReduce and S3 with a real world large scaled dataset from Del.icio.us website.

Analysis of micro-structural changes and measurement of their parameters of a food material

Food microstructure represents the way their elements arrangement and their interaction. Researchers in this field benefit from identifying new methods of examination of the microstructure and analysing the images. Experiments were undertaken to study micro-structural changes of food material during drying. Micro-structural images were obtained for potato samples of cubical shape at different moisture contents during drying using scanning electron microscopy. Physical parameters such as cell wall perimeter, and area were calculated using an image identification algorithm, based on edge detection and morphological operators. The algorithm was developed using Matlab.

The meaning of 'material prejudice'

As dictated by s 213 of the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 (Qld), the seller of a proposed lot is required to provide the buyer with a disclosure statement before the contract is entered into. Where the seller subsequently becomes aware that information contained in the disclosure statement was inaccurate when the contract was entered into or the disclosure statement would not be accurate if now given as a disclosure statement, the seller must, within 14 days, give the buyer a further statement rectifying the inaccuracies in the disclosure statement. Provided the contract has not been settled, where a further statement varies the disclosure statement to such a degree that the buyer would be materially prejudiced if compelled to complete the contract, the buyer may cancel the contract by written notice given to the seller within 14 days, or a longer period as agreed between the parties, after the seller gives the buyer the further statement. The term ‘material prejudice’ was considered by Wilson J in Wilson v Mirvac Queensland Pty Ltd.

Queensland Court of Appeal opines on the meaning of 'material prejudice'

The decision of Wilson J in Wilson v Mirvac Queensland Pty Ltd was the subject of an article in an earlier edition of this journal. At that time, it was foreshadowed that the decision was to be taken on appeal. The decision of the Court of Appeal in Mirvac Queensland Pty Ltd v Wilson is considered in this article.

The differential recognition of children’s cultural practices in middle primary literacy classrooms

This paper argues that teachers’ recognition of children’s cultural practices is an important positive step in helping socio-economically disadvantaged children engage with school literacies. Based on twenty-one longitudinal case studies of children’s literacy development over a three-year period, the authors demonstrate that when children’s knowledges and practices assembled in home and community spheres are treated as valuable material for school learning, children are more likely to invest in the work of acquiring school literacies. However they show also that whilst some children benefit greatly from being allowed to draw on their knowledge of popular culture, sports and the outdoors, other children’s interests may be ignored or excluded. Some differences in teachers’ valuing of home and community cultures appeared to relate to gender dimensions.

Surrogacy and IVF

While in the past surrogacy was illegal in Queensland, since June 2010 the Surrogacy Act 2010 (Qld) (“the Act”) has made altruistic surrogacy arrangements lawful in Queensland. In addition, it provides a mechanism for transfer of legal parentage from the surrogate to the person(s) wishing to have a child (the intended parent(s)). Commercial surrogacy – where a payment, reward or other material benefit of advantage (other than the reimbursement of the “birth mother’s surrogacy costs” (s11 of the Act) is made for entering into a surrogacy arrangement – remains unlawful. The paramount guiding principle underpinning the Act is that of the wellbeing and best interests of a child born as a result of surrogacy. The Surrogacy Act 2010 (Qld) allows a single person or a couple (heterosexual or same sex couples) to enter into an agreement with a woman, and her partner (if she has one), to become pregnant with the intention that the child will be relinquished to the intended parent(s). The Act also provides a mechanism for the intended parent(s) to be legally recognised as the parent(s) of the child. In order for the intended parent(s) to be legally recognised (via a parentage order, discussed below) it must be shown that the surrogacy arrangement was entered into when all the parties were over 25 years of age and the intended parent(s) are male or, in a heterosexual or lesbian couple the female(s) are not likely to conceive or give birth to a healthy child due to medical reasons. The arrangement must be entered into before the surrogate becomes pregnant and all parties must have obtained independent legal advice and counselling about the proposed arrangement, and evidence of this is required at the time a parentage order is applied for. For the purposes of the Act it does not matter how the surrogate conceives the child or if the child is genetically related to the parties. During the period of the pregnancy, the surrogate has the right to manage her pregnancy in the way she wishes. Although she cannot profit from acting as a surrogate, section 11 states that she is entitled to surrogacy costs. These include, for example, reasonable medical costs related to pregnancy and the birth of the child; counselling and legal costs associated with the surrogacy arrangement; actual lost earnings because of leave taken during pregnancy or following birth and any reasonable travel expenses incurred. The surrogacy arrangement itself is not legally enforceable; however, obligations to pay a surrogate’s surrogacy costs are enforceable unless she chooses not to relinquish the child to the intending parents. While the Act does not specifically deal with the situation where the surrogate decides she is unprepared to relinquish the child to the intended parents, there have been examples where parties have entered into these kinds of arrangements, and the arrangements have become difficult. For example, the Family Court case of Re Evelyn (1998) FLC 92–807 involved a child born to a surrogate mother who decided not to surrender her. The child was the genetic child of the surrogate mother and the husband of the couple who had contracted with the surrogate mother. Both sets of parents brought proceedings in the court, seeking that the child live with them. In hearing the application, the court applied the paramount principle of the ‘best interests of the child’. The court made clear that there is no presumption in favour of the birth mother, although in this case the court found that the child may be better placed with the surrogate mother’s family.

Identifying interests of web users for effective recommendations

Search log data is multi dimensional data consisting of number of searches of multiple users with many searched parameters. This data can be used to identify a user’s interest in an item or object being searched. Identifying highest interests of a Web user from his search log data is a complex process. Based on a user’s previous searches, most recommendation methods employ two-dimensional models to find relevant items. Such items are then recommended to a user. Two-dimensional data models, when used to mine knowledge from such multi dimensional data may not be able to give good mappings of user and his searches. The major problem with such models is that they are unable to find the latent relationships that exist between different searched dimensions. In this research work, we utilize tensors to model the various searches made by a user. Such high dimensional data model is then used to extract the relationship between various dimensions, and find the prominent searched components. To achieve this, we have used popular tensor decomposition methods like PARAFAC, Tucker and HOSVD. All experiments and evaluation is done on real datasets, which clearly show the effectiveness of tensor models in finding prominent searched components in comparison to other widely used two-dimensional data models. Such top rated searched components are then given as recommendation to users.

Controlling cell-material interactions with polymer nanocomposites by use of surface modifying additives

Polymer nanocomposites (NC) are fabricated by incorporating well dispersed nanoscale particles within a polymer matrix. This study focuses on elastomeric polyurethane (PU) based nanocomposites, containing organically modified silicates (OMS), as bioactive materials. Nanocomposites incorporating chlorhexidine diacetate as an organic modifier (OM) were demonstrated to be antibacterial with a dose dependence related to both the silicate loading and the loading of OM. When the non-antibacterial OM dodecylamine was used, both cell and platelet adhesion were decreased on the nanocomposite surface. These results suggest that OM is released from the polymer and can impact on cell behaviour at the interface. Nanocomposites have potential use as bioactive materials in a range of biomedical applications.