Digital Commons Network^™

Application Of A Data Mining Framework For The Identification Of Agricultural Production Areas In Wa, Yunous Vagh, Leisa Armstrong, Dean Diepeveen

Research outputs pre 2011

This paper will propose a data mining framework for the identification of agricultural production areas ill WA. The data mining (DM) framework was developed with the aim of enhancing the analysis of agricultural datasets compared to currently used statistical methods. The DM framework is a synthesis of different technologies brought together for the purpose of enhancing the interrogation of these datasets. The DM framework is based on the data, information, knowledge and wisdom continuum as a horizontal axis, with DM and online analytical processing (OLAP) forming the vertical axis. In addition the DM framework incorporates aspects of data warehousing phases, …

Digital Forensics And The Issues Of Identity, Andrew Jones, Thomas Martin

Research outputs pre 2011

The issue of what we consider to be the identity of a person has become increasingly complex as we have made ever greater use of the facilities and services that have been made available by developing technologies and the Internet. In the past people normally had one identity, while in the current environment it is acceptable to maintain separate ‘identities’ for different aspects of our on-line interactions. Proving beyond a reasonable doubt that an individual that is suspected of a crime that is based on the technologies that we increasingly rely on was the actual perpetrator has always been problematic. …

Examining The Existence Of Long-Run Relationships Between East Asian Economic Integration And Asean Tourism Exports, Ghialy Choy Lee Yap

Research outputs pre 2011

This paper examines the existence of long-run relationships between East Asian economic integration and tourism exports for nine selected ASEAN States for the period 1996-2007. I employ tourist arrivals data as a proxy for tourism exports and trade ratios as a proxy for the economic integration. Using Johansen’s Fisher panel cointegration test, the findings show that tourist arrivals and trade ratios are cointegrated in seven out of nine Southeast Asia countries. This suggests that East Asia economic integration can be one of the important factors that influence international tourism demand to ASEAN States in the long-run. However, for Laos and …

Analysis Of Hu's Moment Invariants On Image Scaling And Rotation, Zhihu Huang, Jinsong Leng

Research outputs pre 2011

Moment invariants have been widely applied to image pattern recognition in a variety of applications due to its invariant features on image translation, scaling and rotation. The moments are strictly invariant for the continuous function. However, in practical applications images are discrete. Consequently, the moment invariants may change over image geometric transformation. To address this research problem, an analysis with respect to the variation of moment invariants on image geometric transformation is presented, so as to analyze the effect of image's scaling and rotation. Finally, the guidance is also provided for minimizing the fluctuation of moment invariants.

Proximity To Rocky Reefs Alters The Balance Between Positive And Negative Effects On Seagrass Fauna, Fernando Tuya, Mathew Vanderklift, Glenn Hyndes, Thomas Wernberg, Mads Thomsen, Christine Hanson

Research outputs pre 2011

Proximity to habitat margins can alter the balance between positive and negative forces on species abundance. Based on this idea we examined abundance patterns of herbivorous gastropods in seagrasses adjacent to rocky reefs. We tested whether the balance between the intensity of predation (negative effect) and recruitment of new individuals (positive effect) changes with increasing distance from reefs. Abundances of gastropods varied with distance to reefs, but the direction of changes in abundance was taxon-specific: some taxa decreased in abundance with increasing distance from reefs (e.g. Pyrene bidentata), while others showed the opposite pattern (e.g. Cantharidus lepidus). Predators were more …

Call Admission Control Scheme For The Ieee 802.16e At Vehicular Speeds, Iftekhar Ahmad, Daryoush Habibi

Research outputs pre 2011

The IEEE 802.16e standard has emerged as an exciting mobile wireless broadband technology that promises to deliver both high throughput and guaranteed quality of service (QoS). Call admission control (CAC) scheme serves as a great utility for WiMAX, which ensures that resources are not over committed and thereby, all existing connections enjoy guaranteed quality of service. Existing CAC schemes largely depend on computation of available resources while making an acceptance or rejection decision once a new request arrives. Since wireless channels are not as reliable as wired communication, CAC scheme in WiMAX communication faces a serious challenge of making a …

Credit Risk And Real Capital : An Examination Of Swiss Banking Sector Default Risk Using Cvar, Robert J. Powell, David E. Allen

Research outputs pre 2011

The global financial crisis (GFC) has placed the creditworthiness of banks under intense scrutiny. In particular, capital adequacy has been called into question. Current capital requirements make no allowance for capital erosion caused by movements in the market value of assets. This paper examines default probabilities of Swiss banks under extreme conditions using structural modeling techniques. Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) and conditional probability of default (CPD) techniques are used to measure capital erosion. Significant increase in probability of default (PD) is found during the GFC period. The market asset value based approach indicates a much higher PD than external …

A New Design For A Turing Test For Bots, Philip Hingston

Research outputs pre 2011

Interesting, human-like opponents add to the entertainment value of a video game, and creating such opponents is a difficult challenge for programmers. Can artificial intelligence and computational intelligence provide the means to convincingly simulate a human opponent? Or are simple programming tricks and deceptions more effective? To answer these questions, the author designed and organised a game bot programming competition, the BotPrize, in which competitors submit bots that try to pass a “Turing Test for Bots”. In this paper, we describe a new design for the competition, which will make it simpler to run, and, we hope, open up new …

Call Admission Control Scheme For Improved Quality Of Service In Wimax Communication At Vehicular Speeds, Iftekhar Ahmad, Daryoush Habibi

Research outputs pre 2011

The IEEE 802.16e standard, also known as mobile WiMAX, has emerged as an exciting mobile wireless communication technology that promises to offer both high throughput and guaranteed quality of service (QoS). Call admission control (CAC) scheme serves as a useful tool for WiMAX, which ensures that resources are not overcommitted and thereby, all existing connections enjoy guaranteed QoS. Existing CAC schemes largely depend on readily available information like currently available resources and bandwidth demand of the new call while making an acceptance or rejection decision once a new request arrives. Since wireless channels are not as reliable as wired communication, …

An Analysis Of Information Security Awareness Within Home And Work Environments, Shuhaili Talib, Nathan Clarke, Steven Furnell

Research outputs pre 2011

As technology such as the Internet, computers and mobile devices become ubiquitous throughout society, the need to ensure our information remains secure is imperative. Unfortunately, it has long been understood that good security cannot be achieved through technical means alone and a solid understanding of the issues and how to protect yourself is required from users. Whilst many initiatives, programs and strategies have been proposed to improve the level of information security awareness, most have been directed at organizations, with a few national programs focused upon home users. Given people's use of technology is primarily focused upon those two areas: …

A Wrapper-Based Feature Selection For Analysis Of Large Data Sets, Jinsong Leng, Craig Valli, Leisa Armstrong

Research outputs pre 2011

Knowledge discovery from large data sets using classic data mining techniques has been proved to be difficult due to large size in both dimension and samples. In real applications, data sets often consist of many noisy, redundant, and irrelevant features, resulting in degrading the classification accuracy and increasing the complexity exponentially. Due to the inherent nature, the analysis of the quality of data sets is difficult and very limited approaches about this issue can be found in the literature. This paper presents a novel method to investigate the quality and structure of data sets, i.e., how to analyze whether there …

Behaviour Profiling On Mobile Devices, Fudong Li, Nathan Clarke, Maria Papadaki, Paul Dowland

Research outputs pre 2011

Over the last decade, the mobile device has become a ubiquitous tool within everyday life. Unfortunately, whilst the popularity of mobile devices has increased, a corresponding increase can also be identified in the threats being targeted towards these devices. Security countermeasures such as AV and firewalls are being deployed, however, the increasing sophistication of the attacks requires additional measures to be taken. This paper proposes a novel behaviour-based profiling technique that is able to build upon the weaknesses of current systems by developing a comprehensive multilevel approach to profiling. In support of this model, a series of experiments have been …

Adult Outcomes Of Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury, Miriam Beauchamp, Julian Dooley, Vicki Anderson

Research outputs pre 2011

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the most common causes of acquired disability during childhood. While the majority of such injuries are mild, and result in few, if any, functional sequelae, children sustaining more significant insults may experience permanent cognitive and behavioral deficits. Clinical reports indicate residual impairments in a range of skills, particularly information-processing, attention, memory, learning, social function and behavior. These deficits impact on a child's capacity to interact with the environment effectively, resulting in lags in skill acquisition, and increasing gaps between injured children and their age peers, as they move through childhood and into adulthood. …

Employee Engagement With A Corporate Physical Activity Program: The Global Corporate Challenge, Pascal Scherrer, Lynnaire Sheridan, Ruth Sibson, Maria Ryan, Nadine Henley

Research outputs pre 2011

Employers engage with corporate physical activity programs to foster employee wellbeing with a view to reducing the costs of absence and recruitment. This study reports on employee engagement with a commercial program, the Global Corporate Challenge, in terms of motivation, barriers, team dynamics, social aspects and self-reported physical activity levels. It uses guided introspection to explore how participation affected employee's motivation to sustain regular physical activity within the workplace setting. The program raised awareness of employees' individual physical activity levels and fostered social interaction in the workplace. Findings highlight the importance of employers providing a supportive context, fostering staff-led team …

Financial Market Integration In The Greater China Region: A Multivariate Asymmetric Approach, K.Y. Ho, Zhaoyong Zhang

Research outputs pre 2011

This paper examines the volatility dynamics of the greater China stock markets (Shanghai A- and B-shares, Shenzhen A- and B-shares, Taiwan, and Hong Kong) by employing a multivariate (tetravariate) framework that incorporates the features of asymmetries, persistence, and time-varying correlations, which are typically observed in stock markets of developed economies. Our results indicate that, unlike the Shenzhen and Shanghai Ashares, Hong Kong and Taiwan markets, the B-share markets do not exhibit significant asymmetric volatility (“leverage effect”), and return volatility in the A-share market is substantially higher than the B-share market before April 1997, but this result is reversed after that. …

The Relationship Between A Teacher Check List And Standardised Tests For Visual Perception Skills: A South African Remedial Primary School Perspective, Janet Richmond, K Holland

Research outputs pre 2011

Occupational therapy in remedial education settings has been questioned by the South African Government as they see occupational therapy as a costly service and thus has challenged occupational therapy clinicians’ approach to assessment. This study was undertaken to establish whether the results of standardised tests of visual perception skills, relate to teachers’ observations in respect of primary remedial school age children (six to eleven years) attending a short term remedial school because of low scholastic achievement despite having average or above intellectual ability. The Test of Visual Perceptual Skills – Revised, the Developmental Test of Visual Perception-2, the Jordan Left-Right …

The Mds Mortality Risk Index: The Evolution Of A Method For Predicting 6-Month Mortality In Nursing Home Residents, Davina Porock, Debra Parker-Oliver, Gregory F. Petroski, Marilyn Rantz

Research outputs pre 2011

Accurate prognosis is vital to the initiation of advance care planning particularly in a vulnerable, at risk population such as care home residents. The aim of this paper is to report on the revision and simplification of the MDS Mortality Rating Index (MMRI) for use in clinical practice to predict the probability of death in six months for care home residents.

Jpeg Compression Of Monochrome 2d-Barcode Images Using Dct Coefficient Distributions, Keng Teong Tan, Douglas Chai

Research outputs pre 2011

Two dimensional (2D) barcodes are becoming a pervasive interface for mobile devices, such as camera phones. Often, only monochrome 2D-barcodes are used due to their robustness in an uncontrolled operating environment of camera phones. Most camera phones capture and store such 2D-barcode images in the baseline JPEG format. As a lossy compression technique, JPEG does introduce a fair amount of error in the decoding of captured 2D-barcode images. In this paper, we introduce an improved JPEG compression scheme for such barcode images. By altering the JPEG compression parameters based on the DCT coefficient distribution of such barcode images, the improved …

Pspice Simulation Of An Electro-Acoustic Communications Channel, Graham Wild, Steven Hinckley

Research outputs pre 2011

In this paper, we present results from a circuit simulation of a proposed electro-acoustic communications channel. The communications channel was modeled in PSpice using Redwood's version of Mason's equivalent circuit. The simulations used binary phase shift keyed communications signals with a carrier frequency of 1.12 MHz. Results obtained from the model are comparable with the results obtained experimentally. The frequency response of the model matched the measured frequency response, predicting lower frequency resonances obtained in the experimental data. The transient response of the model compares almost identically with the transient response observed experimentally. This is a significant characteristic as the …

Fabrication And Characterizations Of Ysz Electrolyte Films For Sofc, M-F Han, Z Yang, Z Liu, H-R Le

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) has been widely used as electrolyte in solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). The effect of fabrication process on the properties of YSZ electrolyte thick film is discussed in the paper. With YSZ nano-powders of about 20-60nm as raw material, YSZ green adobe was fabricated by tape calendering process. Three-step sintering process was performed firstly holding at 1000 degrees C for 2h, then raising to 1300 similar to 1400 degrees C, then decreasing to 1200 similar to 1300 degrees C within 30 minutes, and finally calcining at 1200 similar to 1300 degrees C for 5 similar to …

Fluid Flow Related Phenomena And Inclusion Motion In Continuous Casting Strands, Yufeng Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

"To improve the efficiency of the continuous casting process and the quality of its products, this dissertation mainly investigated fluid flow related phenomena and inclusion motion in continuous casting. Mathematical simulation was performed for this purpose. Both a slab caster and a billet caster were investigated. In the study of the slab caster, the application of electromagnetic brake field on the slab mold was evaluated. The results indicated that the magnetic force decelerated the high speed steel jet, stabilized the top fluctuation, and prevented the bias flow inside the mold. The other study of this slab caster involved the fluid …

Quantum 1/F Noise In Infrared Detectors And Scanning Tunneling Microscopes, Amanda Marie Truong

Doctoral Dissertations

"Noise is, by definition, any random and persistent disturbance, which interferes with the clarity of a signal. Modern electronic devices are designed to limit noise, and in most cases the classical forms of noise have been eliminated or greatly reduced through careful design. However, there is a fundamental, quite unavoidable type of noise, called quantum 1/f noise, which occurs at low frequencies and is a fundamental consequence of the discrete nature of the charge carriers themselves. This quantum 1/f noise is present in any physical cross section or process rate, such as carrier mobility, diffusion rates and scattering processes. Although …

Nmr Investigations Of Biomass-To-Fuel Conversions By Hydrothermal Processes, Wenjia Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

"Biofuels have gained significant attention as the most promising alternative energy and fuel supply for the near future because of two dominant reasons: first, biofuels are environmentally friendly; and second, they afford a sustainable technology. Biofuels can be synthesized from biomass by several different processes, among which, hydrothermal conversion is considered to be more energy efficient. However, scientific efforts to improve hydrothermal biomass-to-fuel (HT-BTF) conversion efficiencies are severely limited because little is known about the salient reaction mechanisms and intermediates. This study is aimed at a better understanding of the hydrothermal biomass degradation kinetics by advanced NMR spectroscopy and, accordingly, …

A Study Of Synchronization Of Nonlinear Oscillators: Application To Epileptic Seizures, Daisuke Takeshita

Doctoral Dissertations

"This dissertation focuses on several problems in neuroscience from the perspective of nonlinear dynamics and stochastic processes. The first part concerns a method to visualize the idea of the power spectrum of spike trains, which has an educational value to introductory students in biophysics. The next part consists of experimental and computational work on drug-induced epileptic seizures in the rat neocortex. In the experimental part, spatiotemporal patterns of electrical activities in the rat neocortex are measured using voltage-sensitive dye imaging. Epileptic regions show well-synchronized, in-phase activity during epileptic seizures. In the computational part, a network of a Hodgkin-Huxley type neocortical …

Deadlock Detection And Dihomotopic Reduction Via Progress Shell Decomposition, David Andrew Cape

Doctoral Dissertations

"Deadlock detection for concurrent programs has traditionally been accomplished by symbolic methods or by search of a state transition system. This work examines an approach that uses geometric semantics involving the topological notion of dihomotopy to partition the state space into components, followed by an exhaustive search of the reduced state space. Prior work partitioned the state-space inductively; however, this work shows that a technique motivated by recursion further reduces the size of the state transition system. The reduced state space results in asymptotic improvements in overall runtime for verification. Thus, with efficient partitioning, more efficient deadlock detection and eventually …

Theoretical Study Of Electron Impact-Ionization Of Molecules, Ola Al-Hagan

Doctoral Dissertations

"There has been impressive progress in the area of theoretical treatments of electron impact ionization (e,2e) of atoms and molecules in the last decade. Most recently, low to intermediate incident electron energies have been reported for molecular systems. In this dissertation, different theoretical models will be used to calculate the fully differential cross section (FDCS) for (e,2e) processes for low to intermediate incident electron energies for a variety of final state electron angles and energies for the diatomic molecules H₂ and N₂, the triatomic molecule H₂O, and the biomolecule HCOOH.

In addition, there has been a large amount of interest …

Effect Of Structure And Plasticizer On The Glass Transition Of Adsorbed Polymer, Boonta Hetayothin

Doctoral Dissertations

"The effect of molecular mass on adsorbed poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) on silica was determined using temperature-modulated differential scanning calorimetry (TMDSC). A two-component model, based on loosely-bound polymer (glass transition temperature, T_g, similar to that of bulk) and tightly-bound polymer (T_g higher than that of bulk) was used to interpret the thermograms. Similar amounts of tightly-bound polymer were found for 450 and 85 kDa PMMA (0.78 mg/m²), while the 32 kDa sample had a smaller amount (0.48mg/m²). A comparison of adsorbed PMMA, poly(vinyl acetate) (PVAc), and poly(methyl acrylate) (PMA) on silica was made using the same technique. The …

Computational Methods For The Discovery And Analysis Of Genes And Other Functional Dna Sequences, Cyriac Kandoth

Doctoral Dissertations

"The need for automating genome analysis is a result of the tremendous amount of genomic data. As of today, a high-throughput DNA sequencing machine can run millions of sequencing reactions in parallel, and it is becoming faster and cheaper to sequence the entire genome of an organism. Public databases containing genomic data are growing exponentially, and hence the rise in demand for intuitive automated methods of DNA analysis and subsequent gene identification. However, the complexity of gene organization makes automation a challenging task, and smart algorithm design and parallelization are necessary to perform accurate analyses in reasonable amounts of time. …

Protein Secondary Structure Prediction Using Blast And Relaxed Threshold Rule Induction From Coverings, Leong Lee

Doctoral Dissertations

"Protein structure prediction has always been an important research area in bioinformatics and biochemistry. Despite the recent breakthrough of combining multiple sequence alignment information and artificial intelligence algorithms to predict protein secondary structure, the Q₃ accuracy of various computational prediction methods rarely has exceeded 75%; this status has changed little since 2003 when Rost stated that "the currently best methods reach a level around 77% three-state per-residue accuracy." The application of artificial neural network methods to this problem is revolutionary in the sense that those techniques employ the homologues of proteins for training and prediction. In this dissertation, a different …

Synthesis And Characterization Of Conducting Polymer Nanostructures And Their Application In Sensors, Zhe-Fei Li

Doctoral Dissertations

"A one-step synthesis technique has been used to fabricate sensors by growing polyaniline nanofibers and polyaniline/metal nanocomposites in the active area of an interdigitated electrode array. Polyaniline nanofiber sensors can be fabricated by irradiating an aqueous precursor solution containing aniline, HCl, a metal salt, and ammonium persulfate (APS) with a high pressure Hg lamp. The sensors are ready for operation after polymerization is complete, and no additional processing steps are necessary. These sensors showed faster and more intensity response to various organic vapors than conventional bulk polyaniline sensors due to their larger surface area. A chemisorption model and a diffusion …