Development of a software model of a heavy vehicle suspension for research

A Simulink Matlab control system of a heavy vehicle suspension has been developed. The aim of the exercise presented in this paper was to develop a Simulink Matlab control system of a heavy vehicle suspension. The objective facilitated by this outcome was the use of a working model of a heavy vehicle (HV) suspension that could be used for future research. A working computer model is easier and cheaper to re-configure than a HV axle group installed on a truck; it presents less risk should something go wrong and allows more scope for variation and sensitivity analysis before embarking on further "real-world" testing. Empirical data recorded as the input and output signals of a heavy vehicle (HV) suspension were used to develop the parameters for computer simulation of a linear time invariant system described by a second-order differential equation of the form: (i.e. a "2nd-order" system). Using the empirical data as an input to the computer model allowed validation of its output compared with the empirical data. The errors ranged from less than 1% to approximately 3% for any parameter, when comparing like-for-like inputs and outputs. The model is presented along with the results of the validation. This model will be used in future research in the QUT/Main Roads project Heavy vehicle suspensions – testing and analysis, particularly so for a theoretical model of a multi-axle HV suspension with varying values of dynamic load sharing. Allowance will need to be made for the errors noted when using the computer models in this future work.

Of ivory towers and boundary spanners

We all live in a yellow submarine… When I go to work in the morning, in the office building that hosts our BPM research group, on the way up to our level I come by this big breakout room that hosts a number of computer scientists, working away at the next generation software algorithms and iPad applications (I assume). I have never actually been in that room, but every now and then the door is left ajar for a while and I can spot couches, lots (I mean, lots!) of monitors, the odd scientist, a number of Lara Croft posters, and the usual room equipment you’d probably expect from computer scientists (and, no, it’s not like that evil Dennis guy from the Jurassic Park movie, buried in chips, coke, and flickering code screens… It’s also not like the command room from the Nebuchadnezzar, Neo’s hovercraft in the Matrix movies, although I still strongly believe these green lines of code make a good screensaver).

Development of a workplace wellness promotion pilot framework : a case study of the Blue Care Staff Wellness Program

Workplace wellness initiatives are currently unreflective of the multidimensional and holistic nature of the wellness construct. There exists an opportunity for promoters of health to move toward models of workplace wellness promotion that more fully appreciate the interconnected nature of health dimensions and promote them even-handedly. The Blue Care Staff Wellness Program framework was developed in response to a recognised need for consistent and wellness-focused constructs for workplace wellness promotion and dissemination. The framework promotes and supports the individual and organisational wellness of the Blue Care employee population by providing a comprehensive and sustainable employee wellness program. This has been achieved by the adoption of consistent wellness principles to guide the framework conception and theory based development. The use of the framework in a pilot program will provide insight into the frameworks effectiveness in promoting a comprehensive workplace wellness program, and go further to establish the relationship between wellness and productivity in the workplace.

Teachers' work and pedagogy in an era of accountability

A great deal of educational policy proceeds as though teachers are malleable and ever-responsive to change. Some argue they are positioned as technicians who simply implement policy. However, how teachers go about their work and respond to reform agendas may be contingent upon many factors that are both biographical in nature and workplace related. In this paper we discuss the work of middle school teachers in low-socioeconomic communities from their perspectives. Referring to reflective interviews, meeting transcripts and an electronic reporting template, we examine how teacher participants in a school reform project describe their work - what they emphasise and what they down-play or omit. Using Foucaultian approaches to critical discourse analysis and insights from Dorothy Smith's (2005) Institutional Ethnography, we consider the 'discursive economy' (Carlson, 2005) in teachers' reported experiences of their everyday practices in northern suburbs schools in South Australia in which a democratic progressive discourse exists alongside corporate and disciplinary discourses.

The empty city

Picture Book, Children's Book Council of Australia Notable Book 2008 What would you do if you were the only one in a deserted city? Where would you go, and what would you do? The Empty City taps into a fantasy that many of us have had as children to be allowed to explore, unhindered, the ordinarily crowded environment of a shopping centre.

Unpacking Japan's 21st century "National Conversation" : images of the future beyond the iron cage of the "Catch Up" model

How does the image of the future operate upon history, and upon national and individual identities? To what extent are possible futures colonized by the image? What are the un-said futurecratic discourses that underlie the image of the future? Such questions inspired the examination of Japan’s futures images in this thesis. The theoretical point of departure for this examination is Polak’s (1973) seminal research into the theory of the ‘image of the future’ and seven contemporary Japanese texts which offer various alternative images for Japan’s futures, selected as representative of a ‘national conversation’ about the futures of that nation. These seven images of the future are: 1. Report of the Prime Minister’s Commission on Japan’s Goals in the 21st Century—The Frontier Within: Individual Empowerment and Better Governance in the New Millennium, compiled by a committee headed by Japan’s preeminent Jungian psychologist Kawai Hayao (1928-2007); 2. Slow Is Beautiful—a publication by Tsuji Shinichi, in which he re-images Japan as a culture represented by the metaphor of the sloth, concerned with slow and quality-oriented livingry as a preferred image of the future to Japan’s current post-bubble cult of speed and economic efficiency; 3. MuRatopia is an image of the future in the form of a microcosmic prototype community and on-going project based on the historically significant island of Awaji, and established by Japanese economist and futures thinker Yamaguchi Kaoru; 4. F.U.C.K, I Love Japan, by author Tanja Yujiro provides this seven text image of the future line-up with a youth oriented sub-culture perspective on that nation’s futures; 5. IMAGINATION / CREATION—a compilation of round table discussions about Japan’s futures seen from the point of view of Japan’s creative vanguard; 6. Visionary People in a Visionless Country: 21 Earth Connecting Human Stories is a collection of twenty one essays compiled by Denmark born Tokyo resident Peter David Pedersen; and, 7. EXODUS to the Land of Hope, authored by Murakami Ryu, one of Japan’s most prolific and influential writers, this novel suggests a future scenario portraying a massive exodus of Japan’s youth, who, literate with state-of-the-art information and communication technologies (ICTs) move en masse to Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido to launch a cyber-revolution from the peripheries. The thesis employs a Futures Triangle Analysis (FTA) as the macro organizing framework and as such examines both pushes of the present and weights from the past before moving to focus on the pulls to the future represented by the seven texts mentioned above. Inayatullah’s (1999) Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) is the analytical framework used in examining the texts. Poststructuralist concepts derived primarily from the work of Michel Foucault are a particular (but not exclusive) reference point for the analytical approach it encompasses. The research questions which reflect the triangulated analytic matrix are: 1. What are the pushes—in terms of current trends—that are affecting Japan’s futures? 2. What are the historical and cultural weights that influence Japan’s futures? 3. What are the emerging transformative Japanese images of the future discourses, as embodied in actual texts, and what potential do they offer for transformative change in Japan? Research questions one and two are discussed in Chapter five and research question three is discussed in Chapter six. The first two research questions should be considered preliminary. The weights outlined in Chapter five indicate that the forces working against change in Japan are formidable, structurally deep-rooted, wide-spread, and under-recognized as change-adverse. Findings and analyses of the push dimension reveal strong forces towards a potentially very different type of Japan. However it is the seven contemporary Japanese images of the future, from which there is hope for transformative potential, which form the analytical heart of the thesis. In analyzing these texts the thesis establishes the richness of Japan’s images of the future and, as such, demonstrates the robustness of Japan’s stance vis-à-vis the problem of a perceived map-less and model-less future for Japan. Frontier is a useful image of the future, whose hybrid textuality, consisting of government, business, academia, and creative minority perspectives, demonstrates the earnestness of Japan’s leaders in favour of the creation of innovative futures for that nation. Slow is powerful in its aim to reconceptualize Japan’s philosophies of temporality, and build a new kind of nation founded on the principles of a human-oriented and expanded vision of economy based around the core metaphor of slowness culture. However its viability in Japan, with its post-Meiji historical pushes to an increasingly speed-obsessed social construction of reality, could render it impotent. MuRatopia is compelling in its creative hybridity indicative of an advanced IT society, set in a modern day utopian space based upon principles of a high communicative social paradigm, and sustainability. IMAGINATION / CREATION is less the plan than the platform for a new discussion on Japan’s transformation from an econo-centric social framework to a new Creative Age. It accords with emerging discourses from the Creative Industries, which would re-conceive of Japan as a leading maker of meaning, rather than as the so-called guzu, a term referred to in the book meaning ‘laggard’. In total, Love Japan is still the most idiosyncratic of all the images of the future discussed. Its communication style, which appeals to Japan’s youth cohort, establishes it as a potentially formidable change agent in a competitive market of futures images. Visionary People is a compelling image for its revolutionary and subversive stance against Japan’s vision-less political leadership, showing that it is the people, not the futures-making elite or aristocracy who must take the lead and create a new vanguard for the nation. Finally, Murakami’s Exodus cannot be ruled out as a compelling image of the future. Sharing the appeal of Tanja’s Love Japan to an increasingly disenfranchised youth, Exodus portrays a near-term future that is achievable in the here and now, by Japan’s teenagers, using information and communications technologies (ICTs) to subvert leadership, and create utopianist communities based on alternative social principles. The principal contribution from this investigation in terms of theory belongs to that of developing the Japanese image of the future. In this respect, the literature reviews represent a significant compilation, specifically about Japanese futures thinking, the Japanese image of the future, and the Japanese utopia. Though not exhaustive, this compilation will hopefully serve as a useful starting point for future research, not only for the Japanese image of the future, but also for all image of the future research. Many of the sources are in Japanese and their English summations are an added reason to respect this achievement. Secondly, the seven images of the future analysed in Chapter six represent the first time that Japanese image of the future texts have been systematically organized and analysed. Their translation from Japanese to English can be claimed as a significant secondary contribution. What is more, they have been analysed according to current futures methodologies that reveal a layeredness, depth, and overall richness existing in Japanese futures images. Revealing this image-richness has been one of the most significant findings of this investigation, suggesting that there is fertile research to be found from this still under-explored field, whose implications go beyond domestic Japanese concerns, and may offer fertile material for futures thinkers and researchers, Japanologists, social planners, and policy makers.

Order supported by law : the enforcement of norms in virtual communities

As online social spaces continue to grow in importance, the complex relationship between users and the private providers of the platforms continues to raise increasingly difficult questions about legitimacy in online governance. This article examines two issues that go to the core of egitimate governance in online communities: how are rules enforced and punishments imposed, and how should the law support legitimate governance and protect participants from the illegitimate exercise of power? Because the rules of online communities are generally ultimately backed by contractual terms of service, the imposition of punishment for the breach of internal rules exists in a difficult conceptual gap between criminal law and the predominantly compensatory remedies of contractual doctrine. When theorists have addressed the need for the rules of virtual communities to be enforced, a dichotomy has generally emerged between the appropriate role of criminal law for 'real' crimes, and the private, internal resolution of 'virtual' or 'fantasy' crimes. In this structure, the punitive effect of internal measures is downplayed and the harm that can be caused to participants by internal sanctions is systemically undervalued.

Impact of traffic oscillations on freeway crash occurrences

Traffic oscillations are typical features of congested traffic flow that are characterized by recurring decelerations followed by accelerations (stop-and-go driving). The negative environmental impacts of these oscillations are widely accepted, but their impact on traffic safety has been debated. This paper describes the impact of freeway traffic oscillations on traffic safety. This study employs a matched case-control design using high-resolution traffic and crash data from a freeway segment. Traffic conditions prior to each crash were taken as cases, while traffic conditions during the same periods on days without crashes were taken as controls. These were also matched by presence of congestion, geometry and weather. A total of 82 cases and about 80,000 candidate controls were extracted from more than three years of data from 2004 to 2007. Conditional logistic regression models were developed based on the case-control samples. To verify consistency in the results, 20 different sets of controls were randomly extracted from the candidate pool for varying control-case ratios. The results reveal that the standard deviation of speed (thus, oscillations) is a significant variable, with an average odds ratio of about 1.08. This implies that the likelihood of a (rear-end) crash increases by about 8% with an additional unit increase in the standard deviation of speed. The average traffic states prior to crashes were less significant than the speed variations in congestion.

Freeway traffic oscillations : microscopic analysis of formations and propagations using Wavelet Transform

In this paper we identify the origins of stop-and-go (or slow-and-go) driving and measure microscopic features of their propagations by analyzing vehicle trajectories via Wavelet Transform. Based on 53 oscillation cases analyzed, we find that oscillations can be originated by either lane-changing maneuvers (LCMs) or car-following behavior (CF). LCMs were predominantly responsible for oscillation formations in the absence of considerable horizontal or vertical curves, whereas oscillations formed spontaneously near roadside work on an uphill segment. Regardless of the trigger, the features of oscillation propagations were similar in terms of propagation speed, oscillation duration, and amplitude. All observed cases initially exhibited a precursor phase, in which slow-and-go motions were localized. Some of them eventually transitioned into a well developed phase, in which oscillations propagated upstream in queue. LCMs were primarily responsible for the transition, although some transitions occurred without LCMs. Our findings also suggest that an oscillation has a regressive effect on car following behavior: a deceleration wave of an oscillation affects a timid driver (with larger response time and minimum spacing) to become less timid and an aggressive driver less aggressive, although this change may be short-lived. An extended framework of Newell’s CF is able to describe the regressive effects with two additional parameters with reasonable accuracy, as verified using vehicle trajectory data.

A socially responsible model of micro-credit delivery to support sustainable community development in emerging economies

Micro-finance, which includes micro-credit as one of its core services, has become an important component of a range of business models – from those that operate on a strictly economic basis to those that come from a philanthropic base, through Non Government Organisations (NGOs). Its success is often measured by the number of loans issued, their size, and the repayment rates. This paper has a dual purpose: to identify whether the models currently used to deliver micro-credit services to the poor are socially responsible and to suggest a new model of delivery that addresses some of the social responsibility issues, while supporting community development. The proposed model is currently being implemented in Beira, the second largest city in Mozambique. Mozambique exhibits many of the characteristics found in other African countries so the model, if successful, may have implications for other poor African nations as well as other developing economies.

Researching the 'reception' of indigenous affairs in Australia

The Reporting and Reception of Indigenous Issues in the Australian Media was a three year project financed by the Australian government through its Australian Research Council Large Grants Scheme and run by Professor John Hartley (of Murdoch and then Edith Cowan University, Western Australia). The purpose of the research was to map the ways in which indigeneity was constructed and circulated in Australia's mediasphere. The analysis of the 'reporting' element of the project was almost straightforward: a mixture of content analysis of a large number of items in the media, and detailed textual analysis of a smaller number of key texts. The discoveries were interesting - that when analysis approaches the media as a whole, rather than focussing exclusively on news or serious drama genres, then representation of indigeneity is not nearly as homogenous as has previously been assumed. And if researchers do not explicitly set out to uncover racism in every text, it is by no means guaranteed they will find it1. The question of how to approach the 'reception' of these issues - and particularly reception by indigenous Australians - proved to be a far more challenging one. In attempting to research this area, Hartley and I (working as a research assistant on the project) often found ourselves hampered by the axioms that underlie much media research. Traditionally, the 'reception' of media by indigenous people in Australia has been researched in ethnographic ways. This research repeatedly discovers that indigenous people in Australia are powerless in the face of new forms of media. Indigenous populations are represented as victims of aggressive and powerful intrusions: ‘What happens when a remote community is suddenly inundated by broadcast TV?’; ‘Overnight they will go from having no radio and television to being bombarded by three TV channels’; ‘The influence of film in an isolated, traditionally oriented Aboriginal community’2. This language of ‘influence’, ‘bombarded’, and ‘inundated’, presents metaphors not just of war but of a war being lost. It tells of an unequal struggle, of a more powerful force impinging upon a weaker one. What else could be the relationship of an Aboriginal audience to something which is ‘bombarding’ them? Or by which they are ‘inundated’? This attitude might best be summed up by the title of an article by Elihu Katz: ‘Can authentic cultures survive new media?’3. In such writing, there is little sense that what is being addressed might be seen as a series of discursive encounters, negotiations and acts of meaning-making in which indigenous people — communities and audiences —might be productive. Certainly, the points of concern in this type of writing are important. The question of what happens when a new communication medium is summarily introduced to a culture is certainly an important one. But the language used to describe this interaction is a misleading one. And it is noticeable that such writing is fascinated with the relationship of only traditionally-oriented Aboriginal communities to the media of mass communication.

Digital broadcasting : a double edge sword in protecting children from disturbing news content

New technologies have the potential to both expose children to and protect them from television news footage likely to disturb or frighten. The advent of cheap, portable and widely available digital technology has vastly increased the possibility of violent news events being captured and potentially broadcast. This material has the potential to be particularly disturbing and harmful to young children. But on the flipside, available digital technology could be used to build in protection for young viewers especially when it comes to preserving scheduled television programming and guarding against violent content being broadcast during live crosses from known trouble spots. Based on interviews with news directors, parents and a review of published material two recommendations are put forward: 1. Digital television technology should be employed to prevent news events "overtaking" scheduled children's programming and to protect safe harbours placed in the classifications zones to protect children. 2. Broadcasters should regain control of the images that go to air during "live" feeds from obviously volatile situations by building in short delays in G classification zones.

The treatment of employee priority in a deed of company arrangement

This article examines one of the changes implemented in the Corporations Amendment (Insolvency) Act 2007 (Cth) . It is argued that the insertion of s 444DA raises some matters that go to the nature of the insolvency process generally and the operation of Pt 5.3A in a particular. The position of employees in insolvency is a matter that is the subject of much comment from a policy perspective. This article does not cover that debate but provides some initial explanation of the need to protect employees. The second part of the article covers the particular background to the voluntary administration system as far as employee rights are concerned as well as the arguments put forward by the government to justify the change in the legislation which inserted s 444DA . It suggests that there was little evidence provided for the need to protect employee priority rights in this particular way. An alternative explanation is given for the change adopted by the government. The third part of the article suggests that the manner in which the legislation seeks to better protect employee creditors is somewhat clumsy in its operation. It raises a number of questions about how the legislation may operate and argues that given the stated aims, some alteration to it would improve its effectiveness.

Indigenous Australians, vulnerability and the news media

This short article explores the ways in which the news media's reporting about Indigenous Australians can be improved. The article looks at how journalists predominantly portray Indigenous people in vulnerable circumstances. Journalists also often misrepresent Indigenous Australians in ways that can potentially harm individuals and communities. In forums about the media, it is common to hear Indigenous people say that they ignore non-Indigenous news services due to such problems, and they rely on community media instead. Even so, the non-Indigenous media has a huge impact on public understanding and government policies, which directly influence the living conditions of Indigenous people. Thus it remains important to consider how the performance of non-Indigenous media can be improved, and the article discusses the steps that are needed if this is to happen.

Adam Smith's dinner

In 1961, the East German government erected what they claimed was an anti-capitalist barricade. In 1989, this barricade was dismantled by those whom it was supposed to keep apart: the forces it was intended to contain had overwhelmed it. In the aftermath, the victims of Stalinist oppression and the planned economy opted for radical change. Some might have hoped that they would intellectually march resolutely westwards towards the forms of social democracy that had proven so successful in their nearest neighbours – Scandinavia, Germany and Austria – and stop when they had reached a point on the political spectrum with which they felt comfortable, and which worked for them. Unfortunately, they went to the opposite end of political economy. That choice was celebrated by those theorists who wanted our own countries to move in the same direction. Eastern Europe suffered a decline of 50% in its GDP. Much earlier in 1653, Peter Stuyvesant had erected an earth and wooden wall to protect the westernmost settlement of a great commercial nation from those they imagined to be barbarians. In 1699 Stuyvesant’s barrier was dismantled by the British, who replaced it with a street named after the wall. So it came to be that one of the most inconsequential walls in history became one of history’s most famous streets. I am not sure if the Dutch had left some tulip bulbs on either side of the wall, perhaps as a reminder of capitalism’s first bubble, and an inspiration to later bubbles. However, many of the victims of the latest burst bubble are pretty keen to tear down that Wall.1 As in 1989, they want to take action against the guardians of the system that failed them. And the more they suffer, the more likely it is that they will demand radical change, and the more likely that the resulting change will go too far – as seems to have been the case in Eastern Europe after the terminal crisis of communism, and in the majority of democracies that fell in the dozen years following the Great Crash. The current reaction is so strong that some are even wondering what role there will be for markets. I was invited to address a conference in the EU Parliament last November on the topic ‘Capitalism: Quo Vadis?’, where I apologized to the international audience that the topic was posed in a dead European language because the answer to this question is not going to be determined by the west alone. The problems we have been addressing emerged in the west and have affected the rest. However, the answers will not come, solely from the west, and may even come primarily from the south and the east.