Fast finite-time consensus of a class of high-order uncertain nonlinear systems

This paper poses and solves a new problem of consensus control where the task is to make the fixed-topology multi-agent network, with each agent described by an uncertain nonlinear system in chained form, to reach consensus in a fast finite time. Our development starts with a set of new sliding mode surfaces. It is proven that, on these sliding mode surfaces, consensus can be achieved if the communication graph has the proposed directed spanning tree. Next, we introduce the multi-surface sliding mode control to drive the sliding variables to the sliding mode surfaces in a fast finite time. The control Lyapunov function for fast finite time stability, motivated by the fast terminal sliding mode control, is used to prove the reachability of the sliding mode surface. A recursive design procedure is provided, which guarantees the boundedness of the control input.

Leader-follower consensus control of a class of nonholonomic systems

In this paper, we propose a systematic solution to the leader-follower consensus of a class of nonholonomic chained form systems. The control design, which is reminiscent of terminal sliding mode and multi-surface sliding mode control methods, is presented to guarantee the convergence of multiple sliding surfaces, which also implies the convergence of the proposed consensus error function. On these sliding surfaces, the desired leader-follower consensus can be reached for multi-agent network formed by the nonholonomic chained form systems.

Learning to read journal articles : an exploratory study of an Australian marketing class

Reading and comprehension form an integral part of educational practice. This study explores students’ learning experience in reading journal articles for a Marketing class. Two broad aims are considered: 1) to reflect on students’ reading capacity of journal articles, and 2) to investigate students’ reflection on their use of a learning framework developed to assist them in reading. Data were collected as part of an explorative pilot study from 31 students in Marketing tutorial classes at a university in Australia during a summer semester. The participants were asked about their learning experience in reading a Marketing journal article and their experience of using the learning framework as they read the given article. Findings indicate that students were positive about the value of the learning framework in assisting them to read, to understand the Marketing journal articles and to extract relevant learning themes from them.

Governing individualized risk biographies : new class intellectuals and the problem of youth at-risk

An apparent crisis of youth at-risk is a key marker in contemporary debates about young people among a range of intellectuals, social commentators and experts in various domains and centres of expertise. Drawing on aspects of the reflexive modernization, governmentality and feminist literatures, this paper explores how risk discourses emerge as a means for rendering reality knowable—a technique that facilitates the management of individual biographies in institutionally structured risk environments. In this context there is intellectual work to be done in the social sciences that takes as its object the possibilities and limits of institutionalized intellectual abstraction for problematizing youth via rationalities of risk—and the limits of these rationalities for providing resources for governing our thoughts, actions and dispositions—our freedom.

The waterhole : using educational drama as a pedagogical tool in a foreign language class at a public primary school in Japan

This study investigates Japanese primary school students’ and teachers’ responses to educational drama as a pedagogical tool in their English language classes. Along with the participants’ responses, the applicability of educational drama as a teaching method for the Japanese teachers is also discussed. The study was conducted in Japan as ateacher-researcher using participatory action research methods. The participants of the study are three Year Six classes and their teachers in a public primary school in Japan. Educational drama is introduced as an alternative teaching and learning method to these participants who have had no experience of drama in education.

Cosmo girls : new configurations of class and femininity in elite educational settings

In this paper we offer a unique contribution to understandings of schooling as a site for the production of social class difference, by bringing together recent work on middle-class educational identities in neoliberal times (O’Flynn and Petersen 2007, Reay et al 2007, 2008) with explorations of classed femininity from the field of critical girlhood studies (Harris 2004, Ringrose and Walkerdine 2008). Drawing on data generated in two recent research projects in Australia and the UK our aim will be to explore how class mediates the construction of young femininities in the private girls’ school. Our particular focus will be on exploring how articulations of identity within such schools are configured through discourses of mobility and global social responsibility. In line with the broader ‘cultural turn’ in the social sciences (Devine 2005) we discuss class and femininity in this paper in cultural and symbolic terms. We draw on Butler’s (1993) notions of performativity to understand the multiple and processual nature of identity constitution and Bourdieu’s (1987) understandings of class (based on symbolic struggles for capital in social space) to enable us to explore the ‘subjective micro distinctions’ through which class is expressed, embodied and lived; viewing class as a set of fictional discourses that inscribe and produce identities (Walkerdine et al 2001). This understanding of class, as something that is ‘done’ rather than something that ‘we are’, was deemed particularly important in these studies of elite education, for the research was undertaken in schools where class was apparently ‘everywhere and nowhere’, never named or ‘directly known as class’ (Lawler 2005, Skeggs 2004). This underplaying of class identity is often linked to neo-liberalism, and in this paper we would like to link these constructions of ‘the private school girl’ with neoliberal subjectivity by focusing on two main characteristics. First we will consider the notion of mobility, where we will discuss the ways in which these girls constructed themselves as ‘cosmo’ girls (global citizens at ease with traversing national borders) and the ways in which the schools supported this through educational practices which enabled the students and their families ‘to exploit and strategically pursue economic and cultural capital’ (Doherty et al 2009). We will also focus on the struggles that the schools and students encountered as they attempted to juggle these discourses of global mobility with more traditional discourses of privilege (often associated with national boundaries and based within a predominantly British model of schooling steeped in colonial history). Second, we will look at discourses of responsibility, to explore how these girls were incited to take responsibility for themselves and their futures but also to embrace diversity and to commit themselves to social service. We will also examine the competing discourses of instrumentalism and social justice that were at play in these schools.

Medical image retrieval with query-dependent feature fusion based on one-class SVM

Due to the huge growth of the World Wide Web, medical images are now available in large numbers in online repositories, and there exists the need to retrieval the images through automatically extracting visual information of the medical images, which is commonly known as content-based image retrieval (CBIR). Since each feature extracted from images just characterizes certain aspect of image content, multiple features are necessarily employed to improve the retrieval performance. Meanwhile, experiments demonstrate that a special feature is not equally important for different image queries. Most of existed feature fusion methods for image retrieval only utilize query independent feature fusion or rely on explicit user weighting. In this paper, we present a novel query dependent feature fusion method for medical image retrieval based on one class support vector machine. Having considered that a special feature is not equally important for different image queries, the proposed query dependent feature fusion method can learn different feature fusion models for different image queries only based on multiply image samples provided by the user, and the learned feature fusion models can reflect the different importances of a special feature for different image queries. The experimental results on the IRMA medical image collection demonstrate that the proposed method can improve the retrieval performance effectively and can outperform existed feature fusion methods for image retrieval.

A new query dependent feature fusion approach for medical image retrieval based on one-class SVM

With the development of the internet, medical images are now available in large numbers in online repositories, and there exists the need to retrieval the medical images in the content-based ways through automatically extracting visual information of the medical images. Since a single feature extracted from images just characterizes certain aspect of image content, multiple features are necessarily employed to improve the retrieval performance. Furthermore, a special feature is not equally important for different image queries since a special feature has different importance in reflecting the content of different images. However, most existed feature fusion methods for image retrieval only utilize query independent feature fusion or rely on explicit user weighting. In this paper, based on multiply query samples provided by the user, we present a novel query dependent feature fusion method for medical image retrieval based on one class support vector machine. The proposed query dependent feature fusion method for medical image retrieval can learn different feature fusion models for different image queries, and the learned feature fusion models can reflect the different importance of a special feature for different image queries. The experimental results on the IRMA medical image collection demonstrate that the proposed method can improve the retrieval performance effectively and can outperform existed feature fusion methods for image retrieval.

Is there a need to reform the corporate class action procedure in Australia?

This article argues for a need to reform the corporate class action procedure in Australia. The reason is that the statutory procedure for an “opt out” class action is beginning to appear more like an “opt in” class action. The confusion relates to the poor drafting of Part IVA of the Federal Court of Australia Act 1976, which contains the class action procedure. The involvement of a commercial litigation funder has also contributed to the complexity in the interpretation of the law. The article provides a review of why s 33J and s 33E are conceptually difficult to apply. It highlights the key areas that require legislative amendments in order for the class action procedure to operate more effectively.