High-frequency global navigation satellite system’s receivers for airborne gravimetry

The development of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) provides a solution of many applied problems with increasingly higher quality and accuracy nowadays. Researches that are carried out by the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Munich (BAW) in the field of airborne gravimetry are based on sophisticated data processing from high frequency GNSS receiver for kinematic aircraft positioning. Applied algorithms for inertial acceleration determination are based on the high sampling rate (50Hz) and on reducing of such factors as ionosphere scintillation and multipath at aircraft /antenna near field effects. The quality of the GNSS derived kinematic height are studied also by intercomparison with lift height variations collected by a precise high sampling rate vertical scale [1]. This work is aimed at the ways of more accurate determination of mini-aircraft altitude by means of high frequency GNSS receivers, in particular by considering their dynamic behaviour.

Designing schools as effective 21st C learning spaces : a review

The Queensland Centre for Social Science Innovation was formed in 2012 to develop collaborations among the Queensland Government and five Queensland universities—The University of Queensland, Griffith University, Queensland University of Technology, James Cook University and Central Queensland University. Three priorities for initial projects were established by the Queensland Government with response by the participating universities. This project addressed the identified priority area: factors affecting educational achievement and investigation of the link between school design, refurbishment and educational outcomes. The proposal for this project indicated that a Review of research literature would be undertaken that linked school and classroom design with educational outcomes for learners in the 21st century. Further, research would be examined for impact of technology on staff and students, as well as learning spaces that addressed the diversity of student learners. Specific investigation of research on effective design to enhance learning outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students was to be undertaken. The project therefore consists of a Review of research literature to provide an evidence base on the impact of school and classroom on educational outcomes. The original proposal indicated that indicators of successful school and classroom design would be student learning outcomes on a range of variables, with input, the specific architectural design elements. The review was undertaken during the period July 2012 to June 2013. A search was undertaken of journals, databases, and websources to identify relevant material. These were examined for evidence-based statements and design of learning spaces to enhance learning. The Review is comprehensive, and representative of issues raised in research, and conceptualisations and debates informing modern educational design. Initial findings indicated two key findings central to reading this Review. The first key finding is that the predominant focus of modern design of learning space is on process and the engagement of stakeholders. Schools are social institutions and development of a school as a learning space to suit 21st century learning needs necessarily involves the staff, students and other members of the community as key participants. The concept of social aspects of design is threaded throughout the Review. The second key finding is that little research explicitly examined the relationship between the design of learning spaces and educational outcomes. While some research does exist, the most explicitly-focused research uses narrow test-based achievement as the learning outcomes. These are not sympathetic to the overall framings of the research on 21st century learning, future schooling and the needs of the new generation of learners and society.

Architecture in the South Pacific : the Ocean of Islands

Architecture in the South Pacific: The Ocean of Islands recounts the recent developments of the South Pacific and its fascinating architecture. This volume traces the European architectural overlay onto this scattered group of islands as well as the transition of these same islands towards a regional identity that has been fashioned by the remoteness of each location, the incomparable setting, and the distinctive ethnic mix of its inhabitants. A series of themed essays present the story of architectural development in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Wallis and Futuna, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Samoa and American Samoa, and French Polynesia. Recent architecture typifies the evolution of the islands as they have been subjected to the transformative waves of alien trade, religion, colonization, war and tourism, followed by post-colonialism and revived nationalism. As with the Pacific region itself, the most prominent characteristic of the architecture is its diversity. The blending of the universal and the local sets the stage for a fresh vision of the South Pacific across a wide range of building types, from spectacular mission churches to sensational resorts in paradise. This book, in full colour, will appeal to architects, armchair-tourists, students and all those for whom the South Pacific is the idyll of their dreams.

Person-Centred Approaches to Private Housing for People with Disability : Impediments, Difficulties and Opportunities

Objective The main objective of the project was to explore the barriers and obstacles impeding a person-centred approach to planning and private housing for people with disability. Method Methodologically, the project involved explanation building using a multiple case study approach supported by a contextual study. It focussed initially on three organisations and their attempts to integrate innovative and what they regarded as person-centred models of housing into the private housing market for people with disability. It also included a fourth case highlighting the experiences of individuals with disability in accessing suitable and affordable housing. Results Using an ecological framework, the project found that: • Challenges exist within systems (such as the macro cultural, economic, regulatory systems through to local community, family and intra personal systems) as well as with interaction between systems • Reaching across systems is a key role for organisations and individuals but is very challenging with distance from the individual as well as from the policy/funding/service systems being a key aspect of the nature and extent by which they are challenged • In the case of housing for people with disability a ‘disability space’ is assumed and maintained disparately within each system and is separate from the ‘mainstream space’ with the established policy, legal, funding structures making it difficult to move between the two spaces. Conclusions Based on these findings, the project makes recommendations for government, community organisations, the housing industry, people with disability and their families and support networks, as well as for future research. An overarching recommendation is the need to address housing stock availability and suitability by adopting a mainstream approach rather than a disability-first/disability-specific approach.

Lindquist and Pytel

The foremost event in the international architecture calendar is the Venice International Architecture Biennale. In 2012, Creative Directors Gerard Reinmuth and Anthony Burke with TOKO Concept Design, led the Australian Pavilion exhibition, entitled FORMATIONS: New Practices in Australian Architecture. The exhibition focus was to explore and celebrate “the nature of innovative configurations of architectural practice in Australia today and the desire for a renewed form of architectural agency which drives them”. The Australian Pavilion exhibition purposely chose to highlight the actions and processes behind contemporary architectural practice, focusing not on ‘starchitecture’ projects but those far reaching and socially-engaged “practitioners who are making a substantial and consequential impact in the field and well beyond it”. FORMATIONS had two overarching themes: (1) to stimulate critical disciplinary commentary on a range of new types of Australian practices and their potentialities and (2) exciting a public audience with a spatially dynamic and thought provoking exhibition of new forms of architectural practice, their spatial consequences and transformative potentials. Six projects were displayed in the Australian Pavilion in Venice, with the printed catalogue showcasing 33 ground-breaking examples of Australian practitioners addressing internationally relevant issues in their practice. Lindquist and Pytels collaborative practice is programmed between the demands of academia and commercial fashion practice. Their interests lie in exploring the relationship between the body, new materiality and its application within different facts of design production. The creative practice is underpinned by scholarly theory such as Heidegger’s "nearness and revealing" (1927-1954), Simondon’s "transduction theory" (1989) and the Burke's "sublime" (1757). Outcomes feedback into academic studio programs, scholarly research and material development for commercial, installation and speculative design production.

Cidade é uma palavra plural [City is a manifold word]

This text elaborates on the city as cultural construct and representation and Lisbocópio, the installation by Pancho Guedes and Ricardo Jacinto in the context of the Official Representation of Portugal at the 10. Mostra Internazionale di Architettura-La Biennale di Venezia.

A space for spirituality : Dutton Park Community House. Kuril dhagun, State Library of Queensland

A Space for Spirituality: Dutton Park Community House Exhibition of QUT Student Design Work for Murri Watch Men’s Shed, Dutton Park. As designers it is important to work with communities to develop inclusive spaces and be mindful of the diversity of cultures, histories and indeed spirituality. This exhibition includes a selection of proposals from QUT Interior Design students for the adaptation of the Murri Watch Men’s Shed, Dutton Park. The designs respond to local community narratives and environmental qualities, such as site texture, landscape and light to propose a dwelling space for spirituality and gathering.

Jugglers Arts Space Containers

The design and installation for the Jugglers Arts Space Containers was an invited commission by Jugglers Arts Space for the Containveral Festival at Northshore Hamilton (EDQ). The community festival involved a suite of custom designed and fitted shipping containers for the use by retailers and arts groups alike, focusing upon re-use and low cost design fabrication approaches. Containerval, inspired from shipping container projects such as Sean Goodsell's 'Future Shack' (1985-2001)and Buchan Group's Re:Start Mall, Christchurch (2011), celebrated design testing and exploration of found and recyclable materials to plan and enrich an otherwise severe hardstand area formally attached to Portside docks. The design proposed use of 4 containers, planned to focus on both the interior displays and external in-between spaces, for live performance of Jugglers Arts Space artists. Experimentation of recyclable materials such as onion bags and plastic milk bottles, informed the development of innovative low-cost canopies which sutured the containers together. The Containerval Festival contributed to the now highly successful 'Eat Street Markets' at Hamilton Northshore.

Silêncio Parlante [Silence Parlant]

The text elaborates on the idea of the void in cultural and urban context as openness

Diverse urban plantings managed with sufficient resource availability can increase plant productivity and arthropod diversity

Buildings structures and surfaces are explicitly being used to grow plants, and these “urban plantings” are generally designed for aesthetic value. Urban plantings also have the potential to contribute significant “ecological values” by increasing urban habitat for animals such as arthropods and by increasing plant productivity. In this study, we evaluated how the provision of these additional ecological values is affected by plant species richness; the availability of essential resources for plants, such as water, light, space; and soil characteristics. We sampled 33 plantings located on the exterior of three buildings in the urban center of Brisbane, Australia (subtropical climatic region) over 2, 6 week sampling periods characterized by different temperature and rainfall conditions. Plant cover was estimated as a surrogate for productivity as destructive sampling of biomass was not possible. We measured weekly light levels (photosynthetically active radiation), plant CO2 assimilation, soil CO2 efflux, and arthropod diversity. Differences in plant cover were best explained by a three-way interaction of plant species richness, management water regime and sampling period. As the richness of plant species increased in a planter, productivity and total arthropod richness also increased significantly—likely due to greater habitat heterogeneity and quality. Overall we found urban plantings can provide additional ecological values if essential resources are maintained within a planter such as water, light and soil temperature. Diverse urban plantings that are managed with these principles in mind can contribute to the attraction of diverse arthropod communities, and lead to increased plant productivity within a dense urban context.

A new ambiguity acceptance test threshold determination method with controllable failure rate

The ambiguity acceptance test is an important quality control procedure in high precision GNSS data processing. Although the ambiguity acceptance test methods have been extensively investigated, its threshold determine method is still not well understood. Currently, the threshold is determined with the empirical approach or the fixed failure rate (FF-) approach. The empirical approach is simple but lacking in theoretical basis, while the FF-approach is theoretical rigorous but computationally demanding. Hence, the key of the threshold determination problem is how to efficiently determine the threshold in a reasonable way. In this study, a new threshold determination method named threshold function method is proposed to reduce the complexity of the FF-approach. The threshold function method simplifies the FF-approach by a modeling procedure and an approximation procedure. The modeling procedure uses a rational function model to describe the relationship between the FF-difference test threshold and the integer least-squares (ILS) success rate. The approximation procedure replaces the ILS success rate with the easy-to-calculate integer bootstrapping (IB) success rate. Corresponding modeling error and approximation error are analysed with simulation data to avoid nuisance biases and unrealistic stochastic model impact. The results indicate the proposed method can greatly simplify the FF-approach without introducing significant modeling error. The threshold function method makes the fixed failure rate threshold determination method feasible for real-time applications.

Subtropical futures : Victoria Park re-imagined

Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, in South-East Queensland is situated on the Brisbane River, one of the largest rivers (and floodplains) on the east coast of Australia. The river defines the city and gives it its name. The river has been a natural place to accommodate some population growth for the city with high-density development that capitalises on the natural amenity, cycleways and a string of parks and the flatter land. The major floods of 2011 and the scare of 2013, has seen a more malevolent quality of the river and shift of thinking on its role within the city. The floods have made council, for the first time, acquire prime development sites near the river, with proposals for high density development and made them parks, at great cost. The pressure for population growth in Brisbane remains. 140,000 new dwellings are required by 2031. Brownfield sites are less plentiful and there is interest to rethink of some of the other strategic locations in the city away from the river on higher ground and steeper slopes. Some of these places are currently open spaces. Victoria Park Golf Course sits on a high ridge line and a very strategic part of the city just north of the city centre is one of the few remaining golf courses close to the centre of an Australian capital city. While it is a public course and a valuable community asset, it has been compromised by the recently completed northern busway with two bus stations constructed on its edges. It is bounded on the west and north-east by two major community facilities, the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) to the west and RBW Hospital at its northern end. In a city in need of urban consolidation, perhaps it is time to review the future of the golf course. This question has been investigated as a conjecture in the Master of Architecture program at the QUT. The project has been to re-imagine Victoria Park as a new city parkland and a place that makes an urban connection from the QUT to the hospital. This new urban precinct is be a medium to high-density transit oriented development that capitalises on the bus way stations and the proximity of the university and hospital. The precinct will frame/define/interact with the new major urban park for the city. A key question being addressed is how the design can embody and define principles of a subtropical urbanism. Students are identifying the appropriate street and block structure, density and built form to be accommodated on blocks that define and activate a rich sequence of streets and public spaces. The paper will present a critical overview of the project work that provides a lens to how future professionals may respond to these issue that will be the focus of their professional lives.

Development of a climate assessment tool for hybrid air conditioner

Australian climate is highly suitable for using outdoor air for free building cooling. In order to evaluate the suitability of hybrid cooler for specific applications, a pre-design climate assessment tool is developed and presented in this paper. In addition to the consideration of the local climate, comfort zone proposed by ASHRAE handbook and specific design of building and operation of hybrid cooler, possible influence from environmental factors (e.g. air humidity and air velocity), as well as personal factors (e.g. activity level and clothing insulation) on occupant’s thermal comfort are also considered in this tool. It is demonstrated that with the input of climatic data for a particular location and the associated design data for a specific application, the developed climate assessment tool is able to not only sort outdoor air conditions into the different process regions but also project them onto the psychrometric chart. It can also be used to estimate the hours for an individual operational mode under various climate conditions and summarize them in a table “Results”.

ICEPOLE: High-speed, hardware-oriented authenticated encryption

This paper introduces our dedicated authenticated encryption scheme ICEPOLE. ICEPOLE is a high-speed hardware-oriented scheme, suitable for high-throughput network nodes or generally any environment where specialized hardware (such as FPGAs or ASICs) can be used to provide high data processing rates. ICEPOLE-128 (the primary ICEPOLE variant) is very fast. On the modern FPGA device Virtex 6, a basic iterative architecture of ICEPOLE reaches 41 Gbits/s, which is over 10 times faster than the equivalent implementation of AES-128-GCM. The throughput-to-area ratio is also substantially better when compared to AES-128-GCM. We have carefully examined the security of the algorithm through a range of cryptanalytic techniques and our findings indicate that ICEPOLE offers high security level.