Improving remote collaborative process modelling using embodiment in 3D virtual environments

Identifying, modelling and documenting business processes usually require the collaboration of many stakeholders that may be spread across companies in inter-organizational settings. While modern process modelling technologies are beginning to provide a number of features to support remote, they lack support for visual cues used in co-located collaboration. In this paper, we examine the importance of visual cues for collaboration tasks in collaborative process modelling. Based on this analysis, we present a prototype 3D virtual world process modelling tool that supports a number of visual cues to facilitate remote collaborative process model creation and validation. We then report on a preliminary analysis of the technology. In conclusion, we proceed to describe the future direction of our research with regards to the theoretical contributions expected from the evaluation of the tool.

Confronting the shortage of skilled and professional workers : A large scale industry-school partnership initiative

In most of the advanced economies, students are losing interest in careers especially in engineering and related industries. Hence, western economies are confronting a critical skilled labour shortage in areas of technology, science and engineering. The aim of this paper is to document how the organisational and institutional elements of one industry-school partnerships initiative – The Gateway Schools Program - contribute to productive knowledge sharing and networking. In particular this paper focuses on an initiative of an Australian State government in response to a perceived crisis around the skills shortage in an economy transitioning from a localised to a global knowledge production economy. The Gateway Schools initiative signals the first sustained attempt in Australia to incorporate schools into production networks through strategic partnerships linking them to partner organisations at the industry level. We provide case examples of how four schools operationalise the partnerships with the mining and energy industries and how these partnerships as knowledge assets impact the delivery of curriculum and capacity building among teachers. A program theory approach to analysis, informed by theoretical perspectives of Bailey (1994), Bagnall (2007) and Walsh (2004) was adopted. Each of these theorists provides a related but different perspective on the establishment, purpose, and effectiveness respectively of partnerships. Our ultimate goal is to define those characteristics of successful partnerships that do contribute to enhanced interest and engagement by students in those careers that are currently experiencing critical shortages.

Efficient route update and maintenance processes for multipath routing in large-scale industrial wireless sensor networks

Reliable communications is one of the major concerns in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Multipath routing is an effective way to improve communication reliability in WSNs. However, most of existing multipath routing protocols for sensor networks are reactive and require dynamic route discovery. If there are many sensor nodes from a source to a destination, the route discovery process will create a long end-to-end transmission delay, which causes difficulties in some time-critical applications. To overcome this difficulty, the efficient route update and maintenance processes are proposed in this paper. It aims to limit the amount of routing overhead with two-tier routing architecture and introduce the combination of piggyback and trigger update to replace the periodic update process, which is the main source of unnecessary routing overhead. Simulations are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed processes in improvement of total amount of routing overhead over existing popular routing protocols.

On the statistical determination of optimal camera configurations in large scale surveillance networks

The selection of optimal camera configurations (camera locations, orientations etc.) for multi-camera networks remains an unsolved problem. Previous approaches largely focus on proposing various objective functions to achieve different tasks. Most of them, however, do not generalize well to large scale networks. To tackle this, we introduce a statistical formulation of the optimal selection of camera configurations as well as propose a Trans-Dimensional Simulated Annealing (TDSA) algorithm to effectively solve the problem. We compare our approach with a state-of-the-art method based on Binary Integer Programming (BIP) and show that our approach offers similar performance on small scale problems. However, we also demonstrate the capability of our approach in dealing with large scale problems and show that our approach produces better results than 2 alternative heuristics designed to deal with the scalability issue of BIP.

Large-scale community projects in regional Queensland : unlocking creative potential and community identity : Artspoken Queensland Regional Arts and Culture Conference 2011

In this presentation, renowned arts practitioner, Sean Mee, and Nigel Lavender, Executive Director of the Queensland Music Festival, talk about how community arts practice can be used to build cultural captial in communities, using examples such large-scale musicals such as The Road We're ON (Charleville) and Behind the Cand (Bowen), Mee and Lavender highlight the importance of community-driven narrative and particiaption.

The nature of intra-familial conflict in large-scale privately-held family businesses in Indonesia

This thesis is a qualitative study aimed at better capturing the complexity of conflict in family businesses. An inductive content analysis revealed two important issues: the dynamics of intergenerational conflicts and the escalation process of conflicts. The results demonstrated that conflicts are more likely to be intergenerational than intra-generational due to the role of senior members in daily business operations, generational differences, and a perception gap that exist between generations concerning each other’s competencies in doing the business. Furthermore, the set of factors contributing to conflict escalation is related to how family members handle the conflict, how they manage their emotions, and how they are able to avoid non-family employee involvement. These findings provide a foundation for taking preventative actions, implementing strategies for managing conflicts or devising effective solutions for resolving conflicts before they become more destructive.

The Cube : a very large-scale interactive engagement space

“The Cube” is a unique facility that combines 48 large multi-touch screens and very large-scale projection surfaces to form one of the world’s largest interactive learning and engagement spaces. The Cube facility is part of the Queensland University of Technology’s (QUT) newly established Science and Engineering Centre, designed to showcase QUT’s teaching and research capabilities in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) disciplines. In this application paper we describe, the Cube, its technical capabilities, design rationale and practical day-to-day operations, supporting up to 70,000 visitors per week. Essential to the Cube’s operation are five interactive applications designed and developed in tandem with the Cube’s technical infrastructure. Each of the Cube’s launch applications was designed and delivered by an independent team, while the overall vision of the Cube was shepherded by a small executive team. The diversity of design, implementation and integration approaches pursued by these five teams provides some insight into the challenges, and opportunities, presented when working with large distributed interaction technologies. We describe each of these applications in order to discuss the different challenges and user needs they address, which types of interactions they support and how they utilise the capabilities of the Cube facility.

CubIT : Large-scale multi-user presentation and collaboration

CubIT is a multi-user, large-scale presentation and collaboration framework installed at the Queensland University of Technology’s (QUT) Cube facility, an interactive facility made up 48 multi-touch screens and very large projected display screens. CubIT was built to make the Cube facility accessible to QUT’s academic and student population. The system allows users to upload, interact with and share media content on the Cube’s very large display surfaces. CubIT implements a unique combination of features including RFID authentication, content management through multiple interfaces, multi-user shared workspace support, drag and drop upload and sharing, dynamic state control between different parts of the system and execution and synchronisation of the system across multiple computing nodes.

Using natural user interfaces for collaborative process modelling in virtual environments

Modelling business processes for analysis or redesign usually requires the collaboration of many stakeholders. These stakeholders may be spread across locations or even companies, making co-located collaboration costly and difficult to organize. Modern process modelling technologies support remote collaboration but lack support for visual cues used in co-located collaboration. Previously we presented a prototype 3D virtual world process modelling tool that supports a number of visual cues to facilitate remote collaborative process model creation and validation. However, the added complexity of having to navigate a virtual environment and using an avatar for communication made the tool difficult to use for novice users. We now present an evolved version of the technology that addresses these issues by providing natural user interfaces for non-verbal communication, navigation and model manipulation.

Development of a large scale flexible LED display matrix for the screen industry

This project addresses the viability of lightweight, low power consumption, flexible, large format LED screens. The investigation encompasses all aspects of the electrical and mechanical design, individually and as a system, and achieves a successful full scale prototype. The prototype implements novel techniques to achieve large displacement colour aliasing, a purely passive thermal management solution, a rapid deployment system, individual seven bit LED current control with two way display communication, auto-configuration and complete signal redundancy, all of which are in direct response to industry needs.

Using natural user interfaces for collaborative process modelling in virtual environments

A demo video showing the BPMVM prototype using several natural user interfaces, such as multi-touch input, full-body tracking and virtual reality.

Large-scale association study identifies ICAM gene region as breast and prostate cancer susceptibility locus

We conducted a large-scale association study to identify genes that influence nonfamilial breast cancer risk using a collection of German cases and matched controls and >25,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms located within 16,000 genes. One of the candidate loci identified was located on chromosome 19p13.2 [odds ratio (OR) = 1.5, P = 0.001]. The effect was substantially stronger in the subset of cases with reported family history of breast cancer (OR = 3.4, P = 0.001). The finding was subsequently replicated in two independent collections (combined OR = 1.4, P < 0.001) and was also associated with predisposition to prostate cancer in an independent sample set of prostate cancer cases and matched controls (OR = 1.4, P = 0.002). High-density single nucleotide polymorphism mapping showed that the extent of association spans 20 kb and includes the intercellular adhesion molecule genes ICAM1, ICAM4, and ICAM5. Although genetic variants in ICAM5 showed the strongest association with disease status, ICAM1 is expressed at highest levels in normal and tumor breast tissue. A variant in ICAM5 was also associated with disease progression and prognosis. Because ICAMs are suitable targets for antibodies and small molecules, these findings may not only provide diagnostic and prognostic markers but also new therapeutic opportunities in breast and prostate cancer.

Saliva-derived DNA performs well in large-scale, high-density single-nucleotide polymorphism microarray studies

As of June 2009, 361 genome-wide association studies (GWAS) had been referenced by the HuGE database. GWAS require DNA from many thousands of individuals, relying on suitable DNA collections. We recently performed a multiple sclerosis (MS) GWAS where a substantial component of the cases (24%) had DNA derived from saliva. Genotyping was done on the Illumina genotyping platform using the Infinium Hap370CNV DUO microarray. Additionally, we genotyped 10 individuals in duplicate using both saliva- and blood-derived DNA. The performance of blood- versus saliva-derived DNA was compared using genotyping call rate, which reflects both the quantity and quality of genotyping per sample and the “GCScore,” an Illumina genotyping quality score, which is a measure of DNA quality. We also compared genotype calls and GCScores for the 10 sample pairs. Call rates were assessed for each sample individually. For the GWAS samples, we compared data according to source of DNA and center of origin. We observed high concordance in genotyping quality and quantity between the paired samples and minimal loss of quality and quantity of DNA in the saliva samples in the large GWAS sample, with the blood samples showing greater variation between centers of origin. This large data set highlights the usefulness of saliva DNA for genotyping, especially in high-density single-nucleotide polymorphism microarray studies such as GWAS.

A large scale quantitative study of pedestrian railway level crossing behaviour : deliberate violations, errors and deterrence

Every year a number of pedestrians are struck by trains resulting in death and serious injury. While much research has been conducted on train-vehicle collisions, very little is currently known about the aetiology of train-pedestrian collisions. To date, scant research has been undertaken to investigate the demographics of rule breakers, the frequency of deliberate violation versus error making and the influence of the classic deterrence approach on subsequent behaviours. Aim This study aimed to to identify pedestrians’ self-reported reasons for engaging in violations at crossing, the frequency and nature of rule breaking and whether the threat of sanctions influence such events. Method A questionnaire was administered to 511 participants of all ages. Results Analysis revealed that pedestrians (particularly younger groups) were more likely to commit deliberate violations rather than make crossing errors e.g., mistakes. The most frequent reasons given for deliberate violations were participants were running late and did not want to miss their train or participants believed that the gate was taking too long to open so may be malfunctioning. In regards to classical deterrence, an examination of the perceived threat of being apprehended and fined for a crossing violation revealed participants reported the highest mean scores for swiftness of punishment, which suggests they were generally aware that they would receive an “on the spot” fine. However, the overall mean scores for certainty and severity of sanctions (for violating the rules) indicate that the participants did not perceive the certainty and severity of sanctions as very high. This paper will further discuss the research findings in regards to the development of interventions designed to improve pedestrian crossing safety.