Integrated genomic characterization of endometrial carcinoma

We performed an integrated genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic characterization of 373 endometrial carcinomas using array- and sequencing-based technologies. Uterine serous tumours and ∼25% of high-grade endometrioid tumours had extensive copy number alterations, few DNA methylation changes, low oestrogen receptor/progesterone receptor levels, and frequent TP53 mutations. Most endometrioid tumours had few copy number alterations or TP53 mutations, but frequent mutations in PTEN, CTNNB1, PIK3CA, ARID1A and KRAS and novel mutations in the SWI/SNF chromatin remodelling complex gene ARID5B. A subset of endometrioid tumours that we identified had a markedly increased transversion mutation frequency and newly identified hotspot mutations in POLE. Our results classified endometrial cancers into four categories: POLE ultramutated, microsatellite instability hypermutated, copy-number low, and copy-number high. Uterine serous carcinomas share genomic features with ovarian serous and basal-like breast carcinomas. We demonstrated that the genomic features of endometrial carcinomas permit a reclassification that may affect post-surgical adjuvant treatment for women with aggressive tumours.

Towards the retrieval of accurate OD matrices from Bluetooth data : lessons learned from 2 years of data

The Bluetooth technology is being increasingly used to track vehicles throughout their trips, within urban networks and across freeway stretches. One important opportunity offered by this type of data is the measurement of Origin-Destination patterns, emerging from the aggregation and clustering of individual trips. In order to obtain accurate estimations, however, a number of issues need to be addressed, through data filtering and correction techniques. These issues mainly stem from the use of the Bluetooth technology amongst drivers, and the physical properties of the Bluetooth sensors themselves. First, not all cars are equipped with discoverable Bluetooth devices and the Bluetooth-enabled vehicles may belong to some small socio-economic groups of users. Second, the Bluetooth datasets include data from various transport modes; such as pedestrian, bicycles, cars, taxi driver, buses and trains. Third, the Bluetooth sensors may fail to detect all of the nearby Bluetooth-enabled vehicles. As a consequence, the exact journey for some vehicles may become a latent pattern that will need to be extracted from the data. Finally, sensors that are in close proximity to each other may have overlapping detection areas, thus making the task of retrieving the correct travelled path even more challenging. The aim of this paper is twofold. We first give a comprehensive overview of the aforementioned issues. Further, we propose a methodology that can be followed, in order to cleanse, correct and aggregate Bluetooth data. We postulate that the methods introduced by this paper are the first crucial steps that need to be followed in order to compute accurate Origin-Destination matrices in urban road networks.

Dislocations of desire : the transnational movement of gifts within the Vietnamese diaspora

Gifts have intrigued and challenged scholars ever since interest in the subject was piqued by Marcel Mauss who, in 1925, wrote the book The gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies. Although ethnographic studies of giftgiving have been mostly confined to small-scale communities, scholars have more recently turned their attention to industrial societies, with studies of Christmas giving, Japanese gift-giving, etc. Now, as studies of consumption are entering a phase of efflorescence, it is time to re-evaluate gift-giving. The recent rapid expansion in the transnational flow of people, objects and ideas has had an impact on the social conditions associated with new global patterns of consumption. In this atmosphere of overlapping cultural, economic and political worlds, there is a need to look again at the objects that pass between us as gifts...

Design LED innovation to rejuvenate local food systems and healthy communities : an emerging research agenda

Food Sovereignty (food freedom) is about empowering people to develop their own local food system. Food Sovereignty challenges designers to enable people to innovate the local food system, rather than having a food system which is dictated by corporate interests and failed business ethics. Communities are realising the potential for design to assist in the innovation process, and add strategic value to potentially localise the food system. Design Led Innovation (DLI) offers a strategic framework to address large-scale cultural, systemic and economic changes. The DLI approach empowers communities to take organised action to achieve a healthy, prosperous and happy way of life. DLI can assist with business models in the business world and it is evident this approach can assist with creating social change too. This paper presents on an emerging research agenda aimed to assist designer’s focus from individuals and systems to communities and urban problems. This paper also presents the research proposition that DLI and service design coupled with social entrepreneurial ventures such as local food projects and creative community inventions, have the potential to enable social innovation for healthy and happy communities.

Teaching design thinking and design led innovation to non-designers : a tertiary facilitator multidisciplinary study

This paper aims to address the knowledge gap in regards to the potential intermediary role tertiary institutions can play in developing generic design thinking/design led innovation capabilities in non-designers. Specifically, it investigates the value derived from the contribution of postgraduate design students as facilitators/educators for undergraduate non-design student cohorts. It examines a design immersion workshop designed to encourage the use of design thinking capabilities for project brief development for undergraduate multi-disciplinary student teams involved in a community service learning project for a social enterprise. The workshop was facilitated by design led innovation masters students embedded in industry organisations to research the integration of design led innovation capabilities in business. Data was collected from participating non-design students and postgraduate facilitators’ in the form of reflective journals and semi-structured interviews. The thematic analysis provided insight into the value of design thinking/design led innovation immersion programs for both the postgraduate facilitators and the undergraduate non-design students. The research results will inform a tentative foundation prototype framework to allow for ongoing program developments and research in design thinking/design led innovation integration in higher education, facilitating the development of generic capabilities required to empower future generations for business innovation and active citizenship in the 21st century knowledge economy.

Designing innovative business models: Five emerging meta-models

Business models to date have remained the creation of management, however, it is the belief of the authors that designers should be critically approaching, challenging and creating new business models as part of their practice. This belief portrays a new era where business model constructs become the new design brief of the future and fuel design and innovation to work together at the strategic level of an organisation. Innovation can no longer rely on technology and R&D alone but must incorporate business models. Business model innovation has become a strong type of competitive advantage. As firms choose not to compete only on price, but through the delivery of a unique value proposition in order to engage with customers and to differentiate a company within a competitive market. The purpose of this paper is to explore and investigate business model design through various product and/or service deliveries, and identify common drivers that are catalysts for business model innovation. Fifty companies spanning a diverse range of criteria were chosen, to evaluate and compare commonalities and differences in the design of their business models. The analysis of these business cases uncovered commonalities of the key strategic drivers behind these innovative business models. Five Meta Models were derived from this content analysis: Customer Led, Cost Driven, Resource Led, Partnership Led and Price Led. These five key foci provide a designer with a focus from which quick prototypes of new business models are created. Implications from this research suggest there is no ‘one right’ model, but rather through experimentation, the generation of many unique and diverse concepts can result in greater possibilities for future innovation and sustained competitive advantage.

Early challenges of shifting an Australian manufacturer’s utilisation of design

This paper presents the findings from the initial exploration phase of an 11 month project, identifying the early challenges that a design innovation catalyst faces while initiating a shift in the way a medium sized manufacturing firm utilises design. Ultimately, the overarching aims of the project are to transform the utilisation of design within the participating company from a styling tool to a strategic process through the implementation of a design led approach to innovation. Insights were found through qualitative interviews with company staff and reflective journal entries as part of an Action Research methodology. Challenges identified include managing expectations, conveying the potential of a design innovation catalyst and a design led approach to innovation, and a siloed and risk averse culture. Findings presented in this paper will assist in identifying and understanding the preliminary challenges encountered by a design innovation catalyst when embarking on a design led transformation. Future innovation catalysts can prepare for possible barriers by highlighting considerations, opportunities and challenges when embarking on a design led transformation. Implications of this research are provided as possible approaches to overcoming these challenges.

Can emotion provide a new approach to business model innovation?

Companies require new strategies to drive growth and survival, as the fast pace of change has created the need for greater business flexibility. Therefore, industry leaders are looking to business innovation as a principle source of differentiation and competitive advantage. However, most companies rely heavily on either technology or products to provide business innovation, yet competitors can easily and rapidly surpass these forms of innovation. Business model innovation expands beyond innovation in isolated areas, such as product innovation, to create strategies that incorporate many business avenues to work together to create and deliver value to its customers. Existing literature highlights that a business model’s central role is ‘customer value’. However, the emotional underpinnings of customer value within a business model are not well understood. The integration of customer emotion into business model design and value chain can be viewed as a way to innovate beyond just products, services and processes. This paper investigates the emotional avenues within business strategy and operations, business model innovation and customer engagement. Three propositions are outlined and explored as future research. The significance of this research is to provide companies with a new approach to innovation through a deeper understanding and integration of their customers’ emotions.

From production to purpose : using design led innovation to Build Strategic Potential in a Family-Owned SME

There is an evident need to develop the strategic capabilities of companies from within, to ensure competitive competence in a time where strategy is a necessity. This paper is based on the first 4 months of a longitudinal embedded case study of a family-owned Australian small to medium enterprise, in their journey towards design integration. The first author was embedded as a ‘Design Innovation Catalyst’ to collaborate on overcoming early barriers of strategic development, using design led innovation. Action research methodology, semi-structured interviews with seven out of eight employees and a reflective journal revealed the absence of a shared vision, conflicting drivers and a focus on operational efficiency rather than strategy. Through the Catalyst’s facilitation, a company vision, general awareness, practice and knowledge in strategic development have emerged as the first steps to generating strategic design competence within the firm.

Design led innovation : shifting from smart follower to digital strategy leader in the Australian airport sector

This paper presents and discusses organisational barriers and opportunities arising from the dissemination of design led innovation within a leading Australian airport corporation. This research is part of a greater action research program which aims to integrate design as a strategic capability through design led innovation within Australian businesses. Findings reveal that there is an opportunity to employ the theoretical framework and tools of design led innovation in practice to build collaborative idea generation by involving customers and stakeholders within the proposal of new to world propositions. The iterative gathering of deep customer insights also provided an opportunity to leverage a greater understanding of stakeholders and customers in strengthening continuing business partnerships through co-design. Challenges to the design led approach include resistance to the exploratory nature of gathering deep customer insights, the testing of long held assumptions and market data, and the disruption of an organisational mindset geared toward risk aversion instilled within the aviation industry. The implication from these findings is that design led innovation can provide the critical platform to allow for a business to grow and sustain internal design capabilities necessary to challenge prevailing assumptions about how its business model operates to deliver value to customers and stakeholders alike. The platform of design led innovation also provides an avenue to support a cultural transformation towards anticipating future needs necessary for establishing a position of leadership within the broader economic environment.

Making sense of purpose, direction and innovation : an embedded design led innovation case study in the Australian mining industry

The mining equipment technology services sector is driven by a reactive and user-centered design approach, with a technological focus on incremental new product development. As Australia moves out of its sustained mining boom, companies need to rethink their strategic position, to become agile to stay relevant in an enigmatic market. This paper reports on the first five months on an embedded case study within an Australian, family-owned mining manufacturer. The first author is currently engaged in a longitudinal design led innovation project, as a catalyst to guide the company’s journey to design integration. The results find that design led innovation could act as a channel for highlighting and exploring company disconnections with the marketplace and offer a customer-centric catalyst for internal change. Data collected for this study is from 12 analysed semistructured interviews, a focus group and a reflective journal, over a five-month period. This paper explores limitations to design integration, and highlights opportunities to explore and leverage entrepreneurial characteristics to stay agile, broaden innovation and future-proof through the next commodity cycle in the mining industry.

Out of position : the ball park of humour in contemporary art

This practice-led research project explores how humour can be employed to develop a methodology for examining the socio-political dimensions of contemporary art practice. This research aims to identify and elaborate on how using the evasive strategies and elliptical frameworks associated with ideas of the absurd and nonsense can lead to new ways of understanding the nexus between social, political and cultural practices. This is achieved primarily through an examination of the art practices of Marcel Duchamp, Bruce Nauman, and Martin Kippenberger. These artists contextualise this research because in different ways they all engage with humour as a device to critique conventional notions of how art can be read or understood. Using these strategies the project aims to demonstrate new ways for considering how visual art can use humour to creatively and critically investigate the relationships between art and the social.

Respiratory illness during winter : a cohort study of urban children from temperate Australia

Objective: To examine the epidemiology and burden of respiratory illness during winter in urban children from temperate Australia. Methods: We conducted a cohort study of healthy Melbourne children, aged from 12 to 71 months. Parents kept a daily respiratory symptom diary and recorded resource use when an influenza-like illness (ILI) occurred. Results: One-hundred and eighteen children had 137 ILI episodes over 12 weeks for a rate of 0.53 ILI episodes per child-month (95% CI 0.44-0.61). Risk factors for ILI included younger age, fewer people residing in the household, structured exposure to other children outside the home, and a higher household income. Episodes had a mean duration of 10.4 days with 64 visits to a general practitioner (46.7 GP visits per 100 episodes), 27 antibiotic courses prescribed (19.7 antibiotic courses per 100 episodes), and three overnight hospitalizations (2.2 admissions per 100 episodes). Parents reported an average of 11.7 h excess time spent caring for a child per episode. Conclusions: Respiratory illnesses are a common and largely neglected cause of illness in Australian children. Pathogen-specific data are required to better assess the likely impact of available and developing vaccines and other treatment options.

Retrieving dynamic origin-destination matrices from Bluetooth data

The Bluetooth technology is being increasingly used, among the Automated Vehicle Identification Systems, to retrieve important information about urban networks. Because the movement of Bluetooth-equipped vehicles can be monitored, throughout the network of Bluetooth sensors, this technology represents an effective means to acquire accurate time dependant Origin Destination information. In order to obtain reliable estimations, however, a number of issues need to be addressed, through data filtering and correction techniques. Some of the main challenges inherent to Bluetooth data are, first, that Bluetooth sensors may fail to detect all of the nearby Bluetooth-enabled vehicles. As a consequence, the exact journey for some vehicles may become a latent pattern that will need to be estimated. Second, sensors that are in close proximity to each other may have overlapping detection areas, thus making the task of retrieving the correct travelled path even more challenging. The aim of this paper is twofold: to give an overview of the issues inherent to the Bluetooth technology, through the analysis of the data available from the Bluetooth sensors in Brisbane; and to propose a method for retrieving the itineraries of the individual Bluetooth vehicles. We argue that estimating these latent itineraries, accurately, is a crucial step toward the retrieval of accurate dynamic Origin Destination Matrices.