Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

Myth Or Fact: Is Open Source Software More Secure Than Closed Source Software?, Daniel Saffioti, Gene Awyzio, Robert B. K. Brown

Associate Professor Daniel F. Saffioti

This paper examines one aspect of quality that organizations look for when selecting software, namely security. Studies over time have indicated that security; scalability, interoperability and flexibility are important however the major issue has always been support. This has led to the sometimes inflexible concept of Standard Operating Environments (SOEs) within organisations. Whilst SOEs provide many benefits to an organisation they can leave them vulnerable to several large security risks. CERT statistics show that security incidents have increased six fold since 2000 [1]. This paper will examine trends in both open and closed software development for a number of platforms …

Engineering Standards In Highway Design Litigation, Michael Lewyn

Michael E Lewyn

Effect Of Suction History On The Small Strain Response Of A Dynamically Compacted Soil, Ana Heitor, Buddhima Indraratna, Cholachat Rujikiatkamjorn

Ana Heitor

The small strain behaviour is a key indicator for assessing the performance of compacted fills. Compaction conditions i.e. initial moisture content and applied energy, govern compaction effectiveness and, thus, the structure and matric suction of compacted soil. During their service life, most earth structures experience changes in hydraulic behaviour owing to climatic changes. While the results of previous research studies indicate that the effect of changes in suction on the dynamic response is significant, only limited research has been engaged in the assessment of the effect of post-compacted changes in suction induced by periods of intensive precipitation (i.e. wetting) and …

Greenland Ice Sheet Mass Balance Reconstruction. Part I: Net Snow Accumulation (1600-2009), Jason E. Box, Noel Cressie, David H. Bromwich, Ji-Hoon Jung, Michiel Van Den Broeke, J H. Van Angelen, Richard R. Forster, Clement Miege, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, Bo Vinther, Joseph R. Mcconnell

Professor Noel Cressie

Ice core data are combined with RACMO2 regional climate model (RCM) output (1958-2010) to develop a reconstruction of the Greenland ice sheet net snow accumulation rate (Ât(G)) spanning years 1600-2009. Regression parameters from RCM output regressed on 86 ice cores are used with available cores in a given year resulting in the reconstructed values. Each core site’s residual variance is used to inversely weight the cores’ respective contributions. The interannual amplitude of the reconstructed accumulation rate is damped by the regressions and is thus calibrated to match that of the RCM data. Uncertainty and significance of changes is measured using …

Figures Of Merit For Simultaneous Inference And Comparisons In Simulation Experiments, Noel A. Cressie, Sandy Burden

Professor Noel Cressie

2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This article considers the traditional figures of merit, namely, bias and mean squared (prediction) error, which are typically used to evaluate simulation experiments. We propose functions of them that account for different variables' units; these alternative figures of merit are closely tied to simultaneous multivariate inference on an unknown parameter vector or unknown state vector. Their usefulness is illustrated in a simulation experiment, where the goal is to determine the statistical properties associated with prediction of a multivariate state.

Bayesian Learning And Predictability In A Stochastic Nonlinear Dynamical Model, John Parslow, Noel Cressie, Edward P. Campbell, Emlyn Jones, Lawrence Murray

Professor Noel Cressie

Bayesian inference methods are applied within a Bayesian hierarchical modelling framework to the problems of joint state and parameter estimation, and of state forecasting. We explore and demonstrate the ideas in the context of a simple nonlinear marine biogeochemical model. A novel approach is proposed to the formulation of the stochastic process model, in which ecophysiological properties of plankton communities are represented by autoregressive stochastic processes. This approach captures the effects of changes in plankton communities over time, and it allows the incorporation of literature metadata on individual species into prior distributions for process model parameters. The approach is applied …

Comment On Article By Ferreira And Gamerman, Noel A. Cressie, Raymond L. Chambers

Professor Noel Cressie

A utility-function approach to optimal spatial sampling design is a powerful way to quantify what "optimality" means. The emphasis then should be to capture all possible contributions to utility, including scientific impact and the cost of sampling. The resulting sampling plan should contain a component of designed randomness that would allow for a non-parametric design-based analysis if model-based assumptions were in doubt.

The Digital Dionysus: Nietzsche & The Network-Centric Condition

Dan Mellamphy

No abstract provided.

Investigation On Welding Arc Interruptions In The Presence Of Magnetic Fields: Arc Length, Torch Angle And Current Pulsing Frequency Influence, Ruham Reis, Americo Scotti, John Norrish, Dominic Cuiuri

Dominic Cuiuri

Arc interruptions have been observed in tandem pulsed gas metal arc welding (GMAW). This fact, which is likely related to magnetic interaction between the arcs, motivated previous study concerning the influence of the welding current on this phenomenon. In order to promote further understanding, this paper investigates the effects of arc length, torch angle, and high-frequency current pulsing on the arc resistance to extinction. To mimic the situation found in tandem GMAW (magnetic field induced by one arc acting on the other arc), external magnetic fields were applied to gas tungsten arc welding arcs. It was verified that short arc …

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 …

Aeronautics Education, Research, And Industry Alliance (Aerial) Progress Report And Proposal, Brent D. Bowen

Brent Bowen

UNOAI Report 04-2

The Aeronautics Education, Research, and Industry Alliance (AERIAL), which began as a comprehensive, mufti-faceted NASA EPSCoR 2000 initiative, has contributed substantially to the strategic research and technology priorities of NASA, while intensifying Nebraska's rapidly growing aeronautics research and development endeavors. AERIAL has enabled Nebraska researchers to: (a) continue strengthening their collaborative relationships with NASA Field Centers, Codes, and Enterprises; Co) increase the capacity of higher education throughout Nebraska to invigorate and expand aeronautics research; and (c) expedite the development of aeronautics-related research infrastructure and industry in the state. Nebraska has placed emphasis on successfully securing additional funds …

Aeronautics Education, Research, And Industry Alliance (Aerial) Progress Report And Proposal, Brent D. Bowen

Brent Bowen

UNOAI Report 04-2 The Aeronautics Education, Research, and Industry Alliance (AERIAL), which began as a comprehensive, mufti-faceted NASA EPSCoR 2000 initiative, has contributed substantially to the strategic research and technology priorities of NASA, while intensifying Nebraska's rapidly growing aeronautics research and development endeavors. AERIAL has enabled Nebraska researchers to: (a) continue strengthening their collaborative relationships with NASA Field Centers, Codes, and Enterprises; Co) increase the capacity of higher education throughout Nebraska to invigorate and expand aeronautics research; and (c) expedite the development of aeronautics-related research infrastructure and industry in the state. Nebraska has placed emphasis on successfully securing additional funds …

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

Michael Baldauf

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 …

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 …

A Lifetime Individual Sampling Model (Ism) For Heroin Use And Treatment Evaluation In Australia, Nagesh Shukla, Van Hoang, Marian Shahanan, Alison Ritter, Vu Lam Cao, Pascal Perez

Nagesh Shukla

Illicit drug use has created an enormous burden at societal, family and personal levels. Every year a significant amount of resources is allocated for treatment and the consequences of illicit drug use in Australia and around the world. Heroin is one of the major forms of illicit drugs that are used illegally. Several independent heroin treatment strategies or interventions exist and state-of-the-art research demonstrates their efficacy and relative cost-effectiveness. However, assessing total potential gains and burden from providing all treatment interventions or varying the mix of heroin treatments has never been attempted. Furthermore, the need to include multiple treatments, multiple …

Stochastic Modeling And Optimization Of Multi-Plant Capacity Planning Problem, Anoop Verma, Nagesh Shukla, S.K Tyagi, Nishikant Mishra

Nagesh Shukla

n this paper the problem of capacity planning under risk from demand and price/cost uncertainty of the finished products is addressed. The deterministic model is extended into a two-stage stochastic model with fixed recourse by means of various expected levels of demand as random. A recourse penalty is also included in the objective for both shortage and surplus in the finished products. The model is analyzed to quantify the risk using Markowitz mean-variance model.

Tour-Based Travel Mode Choice Estimation Based On Data Mining And Fuzzy Techniques, Nagesh Shukla, Jun Ma, Rohan Wickramasuriya, Nam N. Huynh, Pascal Perez

Nagesh Shukla

No abstract provided.

Summability For Nonunital Spectral Triples, Adam C. Rennie

Associate Professor Adam Rennie

This paper examines the issue of summability for spectral triples for the class of nonunital algebras. For the case of (p, -) summability, we prove that the Dixmier trace can be used to define a (semifinite) trace on the algebra of the spectral triple. We show this trace is well-behaved, and provide a criteria for measurability of an operator in terms of zeta functions. We also show that all our hypotheses are satisfied by spectral triples arising from eodesically complete Riemannian manifolds. In addition, we indicate how the Local Index Theorem of Connes-Moscovici extends to our nonunital setting.

Smoothness And Locality For Nonunital Spectral Triples, Adam C. Rennie

Associate Professor Adam Rennie

To deal with technical issues in noncommuntative geometry for nonunital algebras, we introduce a useful class of algebras and their modules. Thes algebras and modules allo us to extend all of the smoothness results for spectral triples to the nonunital case. In addition, we show that smooth spectral tiples are closed under the C- functional calculus of self-adjoint elements. In the final section we show that our algebras allow the formulation of Poincare Duality and that the algebras of smooth spectral triples are H-unital.

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.

The Resolvent Cocycle In Twisted Cyclic Cohomology And A Local Index Formula For The Podle's Sphere, Adam Rennie, Roger Senior

Associate Professor Adam Rennie

We continue the investigation of twisted homology theories in the context of dimension drop phenomena. This work unifies previous equivariant index calculations in twisted cyclic cohomology. We do this by proving the existence of the resolvent cocycle, a finitely summable analogue of the JLO cocycle, under weaker smoothness hypotheses and in the more general setting of 'modular' spectral triples. As an application we show that using our twisted resolvent cocycle, we can obtain a local index formula for the Podles sphere. The resulting twisted cyclic cocycle has non-vanishing Hochschild class which is in dimension 2.

The K-Theory Of Heegaard Quantum Lens Spaces, Piotr M. Hajac, Adam Rennie, Bartosz Zielinski

Associate Professor Adam Rennie

Representing Z/NZ as roots of unity, we restrict a natural U(1)-action on the Heegaard quantum sphere to Z/NZ, and call the quotient spaces Heegaard quantum lens spaces. Then we use this representation of Z/NZ to construct an associated complex loine bundle. This paper proves the stable non-triviality of these line bundles over any of the quantum lens spaces we consider. We use the pullback structure of the C*-algebra of the lens space to compute its K-theory via the Mayer-Vietoris sequence, and an explicit form of the Bass connecting homomorphism to prove the stable non-triviality of the bundles. On the algebraic …

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.

Competitive Adsorption Of Metals On Cabbage Waste From Multi-Metal Solutions, M Hossain, H Ngo, W Guo, L Nghiem, F Hai, S Vigneswaran, Thanh Vinh Nguyen

Faisal I Hai

This study assessed the adsorption capacity of the agro-waste ‘cabbage’ as a biosorbent in single, binary, ternary and quaternary sorption systems with Cu(II), Pb(II), Zn(II) and Cd(II) ions. Dried and ground powder of cabbage waste (CW) was used for the sorption of metals ions. Carboxylic, hydroxyl, and amine groups in cabbage waste were found to be the key functional groups for metal sorption. The adsorption isotherms obtained could be well fitted to both the mono- and multi-metal models. In the competitive adsorption systems, cabbage waste adsorbed larger amount of Pb(II) than the other three metals. However, the presence of the …

The Fate Of Pharmaceuticals, Steroid Hormones, Phytoestrogens, Uv-Filters And Pesticides During Mbr Treatment, Kaushalya C. Wijekoon, Faisal I. Hai, Jinguo Kang, William E. Price, Wenshan Guo, Hao H. Ngo, Long D. Nghiem

Faisal I Hai

This study examined the relationship between molecular properties and the fate of trace organic contaminants (TrOCs) in the aqueous and solid phases during wastewater treatment by MBR. A set of 29 TrOCs was selected to represent pharmaceuticals, steroid hormones, phytoestrogens, UV-filters and pesticides that occur ubiquitously in municipal wastewater. Both adsorption and biodegradation/transformation were found responsible for the removal of TrOCs by MBR treatment. A connection between biodegradation and molecular structure could be observed while adsorption was the dominant removal mechanism for the hydrophobic (logD > 3.2) compounds. Highly hydrophobic (logD > 3.2) but readily biodegradable compounds did not accumulate in sludge. …

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 …

Effects Of Salinity Build-Up On Biomass Characteristics And Trace Organic Chemical Removal: Implications On The Development Of High Retention Membrane Bioreactors, Wenhai Luo, Faisal I. Hai, Jinguo Kang, William E. Price, Wenshan Guo, Hao H. Ngo, Kazuo Yamamoto, Long D. Nghiem

Faisal I Hai

This study investigated the impact of salinity build-up on the performance of membrane bioreactor (MBR), specifically in terms of the removal and fate of trace organic chemicals (TrOCs), nutrient removal, and biomass characteristics. Stepwise increase of the influent salinity, simulating salinity build-up in high retention MBRs, adversely affected the metabolic activity in the bioreactor, thereby reducing organic and nutrient removal. The removal of hydrophilic TrOCs by MBR decreased due to salinity build-up. By contrast, with the exception of 17α-ethynylestradiol, the removal of all hydrophobic TrOCs was not affected at high salinity. Moreover, salinity build-up had negligible impact on the residual …

Continuous Biotransformation Of Bisphenol A And Diclofenac By Laccase In An Enzymatic Membrane Reactor, Ngoc Luong Nguyen, Faisal I. Hai, William Price, Frederic Leusch, Felicity Roddick, Ewan J. Mcadam, Saleh Faraj Magram, Long D. Nghiem

Faisal I Hai

A novel enzymatic membrane reactor (EMR) was explored for continuous removal of two trace organic contaminatnts (TrOCs) ubiquitously detected in wastewater - namely bisphenol A (BPA and diclofnac (DCF) - by a commercially available laccase from aspergillus oryzae.

Development Of A Predictive Framework To Assess The Removal Of Trace Organic Chemicals By Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor, Kaushalya C. Wijekoon, James Mcdonald, Stuart J. Khan, Faisal I. Hai, William E. Price, Long D. Nghiem

Faisal I Hai

This study aims to develop a predictive framework to assess the removal and fate of trace organic chemicals (TrOCs) during wastewater treatment by anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR). The fate of 27 TrOCs in both the liquid and sludge phases during AnMBR treatment was systematically investigated. The results demonstrate a relationship between hydrophobicity and specific molecular features of TrOCs and their removal efficiency. These molecular features include the presence of electron withdrawing groups (EWGs) or donating groups (EDGs), especially those containing nitrogen and sulphur. All seven hydrophobic contaminants were well removed (>70%) by AnMBR treatment. Most hydrophilic TrOCs containing EDGs …