Digital Commons Network^™

Virtual Reality May Be The Next Frontier In Remote Mental Health Care, Shiva Pedram

SMART Infrastructure Facility - Papers

In recent years, experts have focused on finding better ways to improve remotely delivered mental health care. Now, virtual reality (VR) may pave the way for myriad new opportunities.

Delivering Sustainable Building Projects - Challenges, Reality And Success, Haleh Rasekh, Timothy J. Mccarthy

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This research concerns the delivery of sustainable building projects. These projects are defined as those which either attempt to achieve green ratings or are claimed to address certain sustainability issues. A key focus is to examine how the client's vision for sustainability is achieved or compromised by the practicality of construction. Two sustainability rating systems, the Australian Green Star and the Living Building Challenge from the U.S. are discussed. This research examines two projects; one university multipurpose building (SMART Infrastructure Facility); and an advanced research facility, the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre (SBRC). The methodology used is semi-structured interviews of key …

From Science Fiction To Reality: The Dawn Of The Biofabricator, Gordon G. Wallace

Australian Institute for Innovative Materials - Papers

[extract] Science is catching up to science fiction. Last year a paralysed man walked again after cell treatment bridged a gap in his spinal cord. Dozens of people have had bionic eyes implanted, and it may also be possible to augment them to see into the infra-red or ultra-violet. Amputees can control bionic limb implant with thoughts alone.

Computerized And Virtual Reality Cognitive Training For Individuals At High Risk Of Cognitive Decline: Systematic Review Of The Literature, Hannah Coyle, Victoria Traynor, Nadia Solowij

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of cognitive training, specifically computerized cognitive training (CCT) and virtual reality cognitive training (VRCT), programs for individuals living with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia and therefore at high risk of cognitive decline. After searching a range of academic databases (CINHAL, PSYCinfo, and Web of Science), the studies evaluated (N = 16) were categorized as CCT (N = 10), VRCT (N = 3), and multimodal interventions (N = 3). Effect sizes were calculated, but a meta-analysis was not possible because of the large variability of study design and outcome measures …

A Uniform Land Tax In Australia: What Is The Potential For This To Be A Reality Post The "Henry Tax Review"?, John A. Mclaren

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Land tax was one of the main issues examined by Dr Ken Henry in his review on "Australia's Future Tax System" and the review recommended its increased importance in raising revenue in Australia. The classical economists such as Smith, Ricardo and Mill recommended the imposition of a tax on land. Henry George also strongly advocated a tax on land instead of a tax on labour or capital. They also contended that such a tax was both efficient and equitable. This paper will examine the current position with land tax in Australia and the views of the early economists advocating the …

Ethnic Diversity Within Australian Homes: Has Television Caught Up To Social Reality?, Natascha Klocker

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Inter-ethnic intimacy is on the rise in Australia, bringing an unprecedented level of ethnic diversity into our homes. Yet analyses of media representations of ethnic diversity have concentrated on the community level, neglecting the intimate sphere of family life. This paper explores the possibilities and limits of love within and across ethnic boundaries on fictional Australian television programmes. The results of a nine-week content analysis reveal a mixed picture. Inter-ethnic intimacy was regularly portrayed; but committed, long-term relationships across ethnic boundaries (marriage and co-habitation) were scarce. And although Australian television producers did not shy away from portraying physical intimacy across …

Quality Of Experience-Based Image Feature Selection For Mobile Augmented Reality Applications, Yi Cao, Christian H. Ritz, Raad Raad

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Mobile augmented reality applications rely on automatically recognising a visual scene through matching of derived image features. To ensure the Quality of Experience (QoE) perceived by users, such applications should achieve high matching accuracy meanwhile minimizing the waiting time to meet real-time requirement. An efficient solution is to develop an effective feature selection method to select the most robust features against distortions caused by camera capture to achieve high matching accuracy whilst transmission and matching process of the features are significant reduced. Feature selection is also beneficial to reducing the computational complexities of the matching system so that waiting time …

Adaptive And Robust Feature Selection For Low Bitrate Mobile Augmented Reality Applications, Yi Cao, Christian H. Ritz, Raad Raad

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Mobile augmented reality applications rely on automatically matching a captured visual scene to an image in a database. This is typically achieved by deriving a set of features for the captured image, transmitting them through a network and then matching with features derived for a database of reference images. A fundamental problem is to select as few and robust features as possible such that the matching accuracy is invariant to distortions caused by camera capture whilst minimising the bit rate required for their transmission. In this paper, novel feature selection methods are proposed, based on the entropy of the image …

Competency Based Psychiatry Training: Is It A Reality Or Fantasy In India?, Vikas Garg, Nagesh Pai

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

Abstract of a paper presented at the 65th Annual National Conference of Indian Psychiatric Society, Bangalor, 10-13 Jan, 2013.

Critical Current Density: Measurements Vs. Reality, Alexey V. Pan, Igor Golovchanskiy, Sergey Fedoseev

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Different experimental techniques are employed to evaluate the critical current density (Jc), namely transport current measurements and two different magnetisation measurements forming quasi-equilibrium and dynamic critical states. Our technique-dependent results for superconducting YBa 2Cu3O7 (YBCO) film and MgB2 bulk samples show an extremely high sensitivity of Jc and associated interpretations, such as irreversibility fields and Kramer plots, which lose meaning without a universal approach. We propose such approach for YBCO films based on their unique pinning features. This approach allows us to accurately recalculate the magnetic-field-dependent Jc obtained by any technique into the Jc behaviour, which would have been measured …

The Portrayal Of Aboriginal Spiritual Identity In Tourism Advertising: Creating An Image Of Extraordinary Reality Or Mere Confusion?, Alan A. Pomering

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper considers how Aboriginal identity and spirituality are appropriated to construct national identity for an Australian tourism advertising campaign, and proposes a research agenda to investigate whether incongruity, based on consumers’ prior knowledge of Indigenous Australians’ real everyday identity, might reduce advertising effectiveness.

'That's Not Reality For Me': Australian Audiences Respond To The Biggest Loser, Kate Holland, Richard Warwick Blood, Samantha Thomas, Asuntha Karunaratne, Sophie Lewis

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

This paper focuses on how Australian audiences who meet the BMI criteria of being obese or morbidly obese read the television program The Biggest Loser. The study consisted of 152 semi-structured interviews in which people were asked about media representations of obesity in general and The Biggest Loser in particular. Four central themes emerged from our analysis of the interview data: Showing the struggle; Watching the transformation; Creating unrealistic expectations; Reinforcing misconceptions and exploiting people. Many people were reflexive about their complicity as viewers in a process in which obese people, like themselves, are ridiculed and humiliated and, while many …

Hierarchies And Levels Of Reality, Patrick Mcgivern, Alexander Rueger

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

We examine some assumptions about the nature of 'levels of reality' in the light of examples drawn from physics. Three central assumptions of the standard view of such levels (for instance, Oppenheim and Putnam 1958) are (i) that levels are populated by entities of varying complexity, (ii) that there is a unique hierarchy of levels, ranging from the very small to the very large, and (iii) that the inhabitants of adjacent levels are related bu the parthood relation. Using examples from physics, we argue that it is more natural to view the inhabitants of levels as the behaviors of entities, …

Is The Consideration Of Better And Worse Alternatives To Reality Advantageous To Mood After A Positive Outcome?, Rebecca Zuchetti, Amy Y.C. Chan

Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Counterfactual thinking involves reflecting on how a given outcome may have been different. Such thoughts are centred on how the outcome could have been better (upward counterfactuals) or worse (downward counterfactuals), with most previous research focusing on a specified direction of these thoughts in response to a negative outcome. The current research explored how considering either one or both directions of counterfactuals after a positive outcome in an anagram task may be related to changes in affect and subsequent task performance. Undergraduate psychology students (N = 86) either imagined only better or worse counterfactual alternatives in response to their anagram …

How Serious Are Duty Of Care Risks In Virtual Reality?, Sarah Katherine Howard

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

Concerned by the debate surrounding multi-user virtual environments, Sarah Howard sets out to determine how serious are the risks versus the rewards.

The Wii Remote As An Input Device For 3d Interaction In Immersive Head-Mounted Display Virtual Reality, Yang-Wai Chow

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

There has been a lot of interest regarding the possibilities that the motion sensing technology in the Wii Remote can offer. This study investigates the feasibility of using the Wii Remote for 3D interaction in immersive Head-Mounted Display (HMD) virtual reality. Normal usage of the Wii Remote requires that the controller to be pointed in a certain direction, typically towards the display. The requirements of an input device for interaction in immersive HMD virtual reality differ from that of normal display systems, in that the user should ideally be able to turn around in the virtual environment. A number of …

Customer Relationship Management: Are Companies Getting Divorced From Reality? , Melodena Balakrishnan, Lien Els

University of Wollongong in Dubai - Papers

No abstract provided.

Classsim: Preparing Tomorrows Teachers For Classroom Reality, Lisa K. Kervin, Brian Ferry, Lisa A. Carrington

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

This paper reports on an on-line simulation that we have developed to support our pre-service teacher education program. The purpose of this paper is three fold: first it reports on the need identified within the literature for pre-service teacher education to make stronger connections between the theory of their university experience with classroom reality; second it reports on the creation of a prototype version of simulation software (ClassSim) developed to engage pre-service teachers in decision-making processes within a virtual classroom environment; third it reports on our research where the software was used with a cohort of 186 pre-service teachers.

Japanese Government Policy And The Reality Of The Lives Of The Zanryu Fujin, Rowena G. Ward

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The zanryu fujin, (or stranded war wives) are former Japanese female emigrants to Manchuria who, for various reasons, remained in China at the end of World War Two. They were for a long time the forgotten members of Japan's imperialist past. The reasons why the women did not undergo repatriation during the years up to 1958, when large numbers of the former colonial emigrants returned to Japan, are varied, but in many cases, their 'Chinese' families played some part. The stories of survival by these women during the period immediately after the entry of Russia into the Pacific War …

From Classroom Reality To Virtual Classroom: The Role Of Teacher-Created Scripts In The Development Of Classroom Simulation Technology, Lisa K. Kervin, Brian L. Cambourne, Janice B. Turbill, Brian Ferry, John Hedberg, David H. Jonassen, Sarah Puglisi

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

This paper describes a specific kind of teacher narrative (the teacher created script) to support the design of a classroom simulation to be used in pre-service teacher education. We intend to share our experiences in exploring and developing the kind of narrative text which can be developed from a large reservoir of ethnographically generated data collected from the teachers and classrooms we have closely observed and documented over the last two decades. In particular, we explore the role which these narratives play within the development of the kind of classroom simulation we have produced.

Reflection has long been acknowledged as …

Online Classroom Simulation: Using A Virtual Environment To Prepare For Classroom Reality, Brian Ferry, Lisa K. Kervin, Sarah Puglisi, Janice Turbill, Brian Cambourne, David Jonassen, John Hedberg

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

Research over past decades consistently shows that traditional pre-service teacher preparation programs are not adequately preparing beginning teachers for the reality of classrooms. The purpose of this paper is threefold. We describe the development of an online classroom simulation, the specific design features in our initial prototype version of the software and our research into our first trial of this with pre-service teachers. The classroom simulation allows the user to take on the role of the teacher of a virtual Kindergarten classroom, working with students aged 5 to 6 years of age. During the simulation the user is required to …

Renovating Reality Tv, Ian Buchanan

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

The Block was Australia's hit TV show of 2003. Its viewing audience regularly topped the 2 million mark, easily surpassing all the other 'lifestyle' shows - DIY Rescue, Burke's Backyard, Backyard Blitz, Changing Rooms, Better Homes and Gardens , Location Location, Auction Squad, Hot Auctions , the list is practically endless. Australian made TV drama has meanwhile delivered its worst ratings performance in years, virtually guaranteeing The Block will not only be repeated but cloned as well. David Castran, the managing director of Audience Development Australia, explains it this way: "recent world turmoil has brought people closer to home to …

An Archaeology Of Historical Reality?: A Case Study Of The Recent Past, Alistair Paterson, Nicholas Gill, M.J. Kennedy

Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health - Papers: part A

An Aboriginal elder, an archaeologist and a geographer report on an interdisciplinary project about colonial-era settlement in the Murchison and Davenport ranges in the Northern Territory. Oral history, physical evidence and historical records reveal a distinct central Australian cultural landscape and show that archaeology can do more than merely exhume material to support historical 'realities'. This project provides new or improved understandings of (1) colonial technology in pastoral ventures, (2) continuity and change in Aboriginal life following European arrival, (3) social behaviour in colonial settings, and (4) alternatives to Eurocentric Australian histories.

Enjoying 'Reality Tv', Ian Buchanan

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

Big Brother, Boot Camp, Castaway, Shipwrecked, and the oh-so-glamorous Survivor, how much 'Reality TV' can we stand? More to the point, why do we want any of it? In other words, why do any of these shows even exist, what fantasy need do they fulfil? The temptation to invoke 'voyeurism' at this point is almost irresistible and is to be resisted for precisely that reason; the ease with which it seems to answer the questions begged by 'Reality TV' should be sufficient to alert us that it is what de Certeau calls a 'black sun', that is, something which however …

Habermasian Ideal Speech: Dreaming The (Im)Possible Dream, M. M. Day

Faculty of Business - Accounting & Finance Working Papers

In this paper I amplify Habermas's eclecticism, and draw on a variety of pedagogic, psychologic, philosophic, and feminist literature to explore and critique the Habermasian Ideal Speech Situation (ISS). I believe that ISS, as the intersection of various ontological positions, has implications for our daily practices, and I illustrate how these might be transformed. Thus, I am proclaiming ISS as an catalyst for reflexive considerations of our ontological positions, and for instigating transformative processes.