Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

Characteristics Of Power Quality Disturbance Levels In Australia, Sean Elphick, Vic Smith, Vic Gosbell, Robert Barr

Robert Barr

The Australian Long Term Power Quality Survey (LTNPQS) now covers 2,000 sites with a range of different characteristics including strength (related to fault level), line construction and dominant load type. This paper details the latest outcomes of the LTNPQS project in terms of both disturbance levels and reporting methods. A comparison of the differences between voltage, unbalance and harmonic THD levels at strong (close to transformer) and weak (towards the end of LV feeders) sites has been performed and significant differences have been found. A multivariable linear regression study has been undertaken in order to investigate the correlation between site …

Exploring Bridge-Engine Control Room Collaborative Team Communication, Aditi Kataria, Eric Holder, Gesa Praetorius, Michael Baldauf, Jens-Uwe Schröder-Hinrichs

Gesa Praetorius

The EC funded CyClaDes research project is designed to promote the increased impact of the human element in shipping across the design and operational lifecycle of ships. It addresses the design and operation of ships and ship systems. One of the CyClaDes’ tasks is to create a crew‐centered design case‐study examination of the information that is shared between the Bridge and Engine Control Room (ECR) that helps the crew coordinate to ensure understanding and complete interconnected tasks. This information can be provided in various ways, including communication devices or obtained from a common database, display, or even the ship environment …

Index Theory For Locally Compact Noncommutative Geometries, Alan Carey, V Gayral, Adam Rennie, F Sukochev

Associate Professor Adam Rennie

Spectral triples for nonunital algebras model locally compact spaces in noncommutative geometry. In the present text, we prove the local index formula for spectral triples over nonunital algebras, without the assumption of local units in our algebra.

A Residue Formula For The Fundamental Hochschild 3-Cocycle For Suq(2), Ulrich Krahmer, Adam Rennie, Roger Senior

Associate Professor Adam Rennie

An analogue of a spectral triple over SUq(2) is constructed for which the usual assumption of bounded commutators with the Dirac operator fails. An analytic expression analogous to that for the Hochschild class of the Chern character for spectral triples yields a non-trivial twisted Hochschild 3-cocycle. The problems arising from the unbounded commutators are overcome by defining a residue functional using projections to cut down the Hilbert space.

Dense Domains, Symmetric Operators And Spectral Triples, Iain Forsyth, B Mesland, Adam Rennie

Associate Professor Adam Rennie

This article is about erroneous attempts to weaken the standard definition of unbounded Kasparov module (or spectral triple). This issue has been addressed previously, but here we present concrete counterexamples to claims in the literature that Fredholm modules can be obtained from these weaker variations of spectral triple. Our counterexamples are constructed using self-adjoint extensions of symmetric operators.

Removal Of Trace Organic Contaminants By An Mbr Comprising A Mixed Culture Of Bacteria And White-Rot Fungi, Luong Nguyen, Faisal Hai, Shufan Yang, Jinguo Kang, Frederic Leusch, Felicity Roddick, William Price, Long Nghiem

Faisal I Hai

The degradation of 30 trace organic contaminants (TrOC) by a white-rot fungus-augmented membrane bioreactor (MBR) was investigated. The results show that white-rot fungal enzyme (laccase), coupled with a redox mediator (1-hydroxy benzotriazole, HBT), could degrade TrOC that are resistant to bacterial degradation (e.g. diclofenac, triclosan, naproxen and atrazine) but achieved low removal of compounds (e.g. ibuprofen, gemfibrozil and amitriptyline) that are well removed by conventional activated sludge treatment. Overall, the fungus-augmented MBR showed better TrOC removal compared to a system containing conventional activated sludge. The major role of biodegradation in removal by the MBR was noted. Continuous mediator dosing to …

Removal Of Pathogens By Membrane Bioreactors: A Review Of The Mechanisms, Influencing Factors And Reduction In Chemical Disinfectant Dosing, Faisal Hai, Thomas Riley, Samia Shawkat, Saleh Faraj Magram, Kazuo Yamamoto

Faisal I Hai

The continued depletion of fresh drinking water resources throughout the world has increased the need for a variety of water treatment and recycling strategies. Conventional wastewater treatment processes rely on extensive chemical post-disinfection to comply with the stringent microbiological safety for water reuse. When well designed and operated, membrane bioreactors (MBRs) can consistently achieve efficient removals of suspended solids, protozoa and coliform bacteria. Under optimal conditions, MBR systems can also significantly remove various viruses and phages. This paper provides an in-depth overview of the mechanisms and influencing factors of pathogen removal by MBR and highlights practical issues, such as reduced …

A Novel Membrane Distillation-Thermophilic Bioreactor System: Biological Stability And Trace Organic Compound Removal, Kaushalya Wijekoon, Faisal Hai, Jinguo Kang, William Price, Wenshan Guo, Hao Ngo, Tzahi Cath, Long Nghiem

Faisal I Hai

The removal of trace organic compounds (TrOCs) by a novel membrane distillation-thermophilic bioreactor (MDBR) system was examined. Salinity build-up and the thermophilic conditions to some extent adversely impacted the performance of the bioreactor, particularly the removal of total nitrogen and recalcitrant TrOCs. While most TrOCs were well removed by the thermophilic bioreactor, compounds containing electron withdrawing functional groups in their molecular structure were recalcitrant to biological treatment and their removal efficiency by the thermophilic bioreactor was low (0-53%). However, the overall performance of the novel MDBR system with respect to the removal of total organic carbon, total nitrogen, and TrOCs …

Streamlined Request Services: The Integration Of Ils, Ill And Consortia Borrowing Systems, Gan Ye, Sally Bryant

Gan Ye

Ieee Istas13- People As Sensors: The Social Implications Of Living In A Smart World, Alexander Hayes, Katina Michael, Nick Rheinberger

Alexander Hayes Mr.

What is the technological trajectory of people wearing sensors? What are the benefits, risks and costs? What is the vibe going to be like at ISTAS13 with people like Marvin Minsky and Ray Kurzweil attending? What do you hope to gain from the meeting? Can we foresee a time that all glasses will be embedded with sensors? What are the implications? E.g. in the higher education sector? What about the gathering of evidence by law enforcement? What is point of eye?

Workshop | Body Worn Video Recorders: The Socio-Technical Implications Of Gathering Direct Evidence, Katina Michael, Alexander Hayes

Alexander Hayes Mr.

- From in-car video recording to body-worn video recording

- Exploring available technologies: how do they work, pros and cons

- Storing direct evidence in secure storage: factors to consider

- Citizens “shooting” back with POV tech – what are their rights?

- Crowdsourced sousveillance- harnessing public data for forensic profiling

- Police force policies and practices on the application of new media

Modelling Variations In Hospital Service Delivery Based On Real Time Locating Information, Nagesh Shukla, John Keast, Darek Ceglarek

Nagesh Shukla

Variations in service delivery have been identified as a major challenge to the success of process improvement studies in service departments of hospital such as radiology. Largely, these variations are due to inherent system level factors, i.e., system variations such as unavailability of resources (nurse, bed, doctors, and equipment). These system variations are largely unnecessary/unwarranted and mostly lead to longer waiting times, delays, and lowered productivity of the service units. There is limited research on identifying system variations and modelling them for service improvements within hospital. Therefore, this paper proposes a modelling methodology to model system variations in radiology based …

Klein Tunneling And Cone Transport In Aa-Stacked Bilayer Graphene, Matthew Sanderson, Yee Sin Ang, C Zhang

Yee Sin Ang

We investigate the quantum tunneling of electrons in an AA-stacked bilayer graphene (BLG) n-p junction and n-p-n junction. We show that Klein tunneling of an electron can occur in this system. The quasiparticles are not only chiral but are additionally described by a "cone index." Due to the orthogonality of states with different cone indexes, electron transport across a potential barrier must strictly conserve the cone index, and this leads to the protected cone transport which is unique in AA-stacked BLG. Together with the negative refraction of electrons, electrons residing in different cones can be spatially separated according to their …

Review Of Four Novel Dosimeters Developed For Use In Radiotherapy, P Metcalfe, A Quinn, K Loo, M Lerch, M Petasecca, J Wong, N Hardcastle, M Carolan, J Mcnamara, D Cutajar, I Fuduli, A Espinoza, C Porumb, Anatoly Rosenfeld

Anthony A Espinoza Mr

Centre for Medical Radiation Physics (CMRP) is a research strength at the University of Wollongong, the main research theme of this centre is to develop prototype novel radiation dosimeters. Multiple detector systems have been developed by Prof Rosenfelds’ group for various radiation detector applications. This paper focuses on four current detector systems being developed and studied at CMRP. Two silicon array detectors include the magic plate and dose magnifying glass (DMG), the primary focus of these two detectors is high spatial and temporal resolution dosimetry in intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) beams. The third detector discussed is the MOSkin which …

How Games Work: Exploring The Instructional Design Of Diablo Iii, Carly Finseth

Carly Finseth

This paper describes a portion of a three-part case study designed to research the instructional patterns that occur within role-playing games (RPGs). It presents a set of nine heuristics for learning in RPGs and analyzes how and where those heuristics occur within the game Diablo III. The findings from the study include an overview of a cyclical learning pattern that occurs with RPGs, as well as theoretical and practical implication for both industry and academic contexts.

Siting ‘Scientific Spaces’ In The Us: The Push And Pull Of Regional Development Strategies And National Innovation Policies, Jennifer Clark

Jennifer Clark

Faster Out Of The Station: Asia Surges Ahead On Rail, Philip Laird

Dr Philip Laird

It is interesting to see the progressmade by Asian countries since 2001 in developing high-speed rail (HSR),while Australia is missing out.

Managing The Public To Manage Data: Citizen Science And Astronomy, Peter Darch

Peter Darch

Citizen Cyberscience Projects (CCPs) that recruit members of the public as volunteers to process and produce large datasets promise a great deal of benefits to scientists and science. However, if this promise is to be realised, and citizen science-produced datasets are to be widely-used by scientists, it is essential that these datasets win the trust of the scientific community. This task of securing credibility involves, in part, applying standard scientific procedures to clean-up datasets formed by volunteer contributions. However, the management of volunteers’ behaviour in terms of how they contribute also plays a significant role in improving both the quality …

Opening Up A Dark Habitat And Opening Up Data: The Co-Emergence Of Scientific Collaboration, Infrastructure For Data-Sharing, And Data-Sharing Practices, Peter Darch

Peter Darch

Allied to the movement promoting Open Access publishing is the Open Data movement, which aims to facilitate and encourage the open sharing of research data amongst scientists across multiple disciplines and institutions. Studies of scientists’ data practices link barriers to data-sharing with lack of appropriate infrastructure, cultural issues regarding norms and reward structures, and lack of trust amongst researchers. However, there have been fewer studies of actual instances of successful data-sharing. Furthermore, little attention has been paid to the implications of successful data-sharing for the structures of collaborative scientific work.

This paper will present findings from a longitudinal ethnographic case …

A Probabilistic Predictive Model For Residential Mobility In Australia, Mohammad-Reza Namazi-Rad, Nagesh Shukla, Albert Munoz, Payam Mokhtarian, Jun Ma

Payam Mokhtarian

Household relocation modelling is an integral part of the planning process as residential movements influence the demand for community facilities and services. Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) created the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) program to collect reliable longitudinal data on family and household dynamics. Socio-demographic information (such as general health situation and well-being, lifestyle changes, residential mobility, income and welfare dynamics, and labour market dynamics) is collected from the sampled individuals and households. The data shows that approximately 17% of Australian households and 13% of couple families in the HILDA sample …

Managing The Public To Manage Data: Citizen Science And Astronomy, Peter Darch

Peter Darch

Citizen Cyberscience Projects (CCPs) that recruit members of the public as volunteers to process and produce large datasets promise a great deal of benefits to scientists and science. However, if this promise is to be realised, and citizen science-produced datasets are to be widely-used by scientists, it is essential that these datasets win the trust of the scientific community. This task of securing credibility involves, in part, applying standard scientific procedures to clean-up datasets formed by volunteer contributions. However, the management of volunteers’ behaviour in terms of how they contribute also plays a significant role in improving both the quality …

Cognitive Processes In Object-Oriented Requirements Engineering Practice: Analogical Reasoning And Mental Modelling, Linda Dawson

Associate Professor Linda Dawson

This chapter presents a background in cognitive processes such as problem-solving and analogical reasoning for considering modelling from an object-oriented perspective within the domain of requirements engineering. This chapter then describes a research project and the findings from a set of four cases which examine professional practice from perspective of cognitive modelling for object-oriented requirements engineering. In these studies, it was found that the analysts routinely built models in their minds and refined them before committing them to paper or communicating these models to others. The studies also showed that object-oriented analysts depend on analogical reasoning where they use past …

Doing It Tough: Factors Impacting On Local E-Government Mmaturity, Peter Shackleton, Linda Dawson

Associate Professor Linda Dawson

As growing numbers of citizens seek to use the Internet to do business, governments across the world have moved into the area of electronic service delivery. For the last decade significant advancements have been made in the area of e-Government. Today, e-Government is often assumed to be wellestablished. However, ongoing support is often missing, particularly at the local government level. The multi-level nature of government often means that citizens are frustrated when accessing services that span many levels of bureaucracy. This paper describes an empirical study which explores the factors influencing local egovernment maturity and identifies the barriers, enablers, priorities …

Action Research In Emerging Technologies In Health Information Systems: Creating A Mobile Information Environment In A Hospital Ward, Linda Dawson, Julie Fisher, Stephen Weeding, Liza Heslop, Andrew Howard

Associate Professor Linda Dawson

Wireless networks, mobile devices and associated applications are key emerging technologies ideal for nomadic workers such as clinicians in hospital ward settings. These mobile information environments can potentially enhance clinicians' use of patient management and clinical systems by providing decision support and clinical information at the bedside or point of care. Such technologies need to be critically assessed in a hospital environment for their wider potential and application for delivery of information at the point of care. This paper describes the use of action research methods in a project which analysed an existing clinical Information Communication Technology (ICT) environment in …

Rqf Publication Quality Measures: Methodological Issues, John Lamp, Simon Milton, Linda Dawson, Julie Fisher

Associate Professor Linda Dawson

The Research Quality Framework uses Thomson-ISI citation benchmarks as its main set of objective measures of research quality. The Thomson-ISI measures rely on identifying a core set of journals in which the major publications for a discipline are to be found. The core for a discipline is determined by applying a nontransparent process that is partly based on Bradford's Law (1934). Yet Bradford was not seeking measures about quality of publications or journals. How valid then is it to base measures of publication quality on Bradford's Law? We explore this by returning to Bradford's Law and subsequent related research asking …

Worlds Without End: The Many Lives Of The Multiverse, Mary-Jane Rubenstein

Mary-Jane Rubenstein

Worlds without End explores the recent proliferation of "multiverse" cosmologies, which imagine our universe as just one of a vast, even infinite, number of others. While this idea has been the stuff of philosophy, religion, and literature for millennia, it is now under consideration as a scientific hypothesis, with wildly different models emerging from the fields of cosmology, quantum mechanics, and string theory. Beginning with the Atomistic and Stoic philosophies of ancient Greece, this book assembles a genealogy of the multiverse, seeking to map contemporary models in relation to their forerunners, and to ask why the proposition has become such …

A Real-Time In Vivo Dosimetric Verification Method For High-Dose Rate Intracavitary Brachytherapy Of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma, Zhen-Yu Qi, Xiao-Wu Deng, X Cao, Shao-Min Huang, Michael Lerch, Anatoly Rosenfeld

Michael L.F. Lerch

Purpose: A real-time in vivo dosimetric verification method using metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) dosimeters has been developed for patient dosimetry in high-dose rate (HDR) intracavitary brachytherapy of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Methods: The necessary calibration and correction factors for MOSFET measurements in 192Iridium source were determined in a water phantom. With the detector placed inside a custom-made nasopharyngeal applicator, the actual dose delivered to the tumor was measured in vivo and compared to the calculated values using a commercial brachytherapy planning system. Results: Five MOSFETs were independently calibrated with the HDR source, yielding calibration factors of 0.48 ± 0.007 cGymV. …

The Local Index Formula In Noncommutative Geometry Revisited, Alan Carey, John Phillips, Adam Rennie, Fyodor Sukochev

Associate Professor Adam Rennie

In this review we discuss the local index formula in noncommutative geomety from the viewpoint of two new proofs are partly inspired by the approach of Higson especially that in but they differ in several fundamental aspedcts, in particular they apply to semifinite spectral triples for a *s-subalgebra A of a general semifinite von Neumann algebra. Our proofs are novel even in the setting of the original theorem and reduce the hypotheses of the theorem to those necessary for its statement. These proofs rely on the introduction of a function valued cocycle which is 'almost' a (b, B)-cocycle in the …

An Analytic Approach To Spectral Flow In Von Neumann Algebras, M-T Benameur, Alan Carey, John Phillips, Adam Rennie, Fyodor Sukochev, K Wojciechowski

Associate Professor Adam Rennie

The analytic approach to spectral flow is about ten years old. In that time it has evolved to cover an ever wider range of examples. The most critical extension was to replace Fredholm operators in the classical sense by Breuer-Fredholm operators in a semifinite von Neumann algebra. The latter have continuous spectrum so that the notion of spectral flow turns out to be rather more difficult to deal with. However quite remarkably there is a uniform approach in which the proofs do not depend on discreteness of the spectrum of the operators in question. The first part of this paper …

Australian Online Supermarket Usability, Mark Freeman, Peter Hyland, Jeffrey Soar

Dr Mark Freeman

The issue of usability plays a vital role in the success of an online store. However, to date there has been limited published research into this issue and there has been no research conducted into multiple item purchasing. There is much competition in the grocery shopping industry between the two major physical supermarket chains in Australia, Woolworths and Coles, both in traditional stores and online. Online, the major competitor is ShopFast, which does not have a traditional supermarket storefront to complement its online operations. The purpose of this study was to conduct a comparative analysis into the usability of ordering …