Digital Commons Network^™

Thumbs Up To Parametric Measures Of Relative Var And Cvar In Indonesian Sectors, David Allen, Ray Boffey, Akhmad Kramadibrata, Robert Powell, Abhay Singh

Research outputs 2012

We examine relative share market risk between Indonesian sectors and how this changes during extreme market fluctuations. Ten sectors comprising the IDX Composite Index are examined over an eight-year period spanning the pre-GFC, GFC and post-GFC. Risk is measured using parametric and nonparametric Value at Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR), which measures risk beyond VaR. In contrast to studies on most global markets, and due to relative stability in the Indonesian market, no significant differences are found in relative portfolio risk between the conditional and non-conditional measures, or between parametric and nonparametric measures. The insights are important …

Remembering Rhetoric: Recalling A Tradition Of Explicit Instruction In Writing, Brian Moon

Research outputs 2012

Modern secondary courses in English differ from classical tradition in their tendency to avoid direct instruction in the content and style of writing. Such avoidance is partly a function of anxieties about the role of English in students' personal development and a fear of limiting their self expression. Neither of the dominant writing pedagogies from the last 50 years wholly escapes this problem. A historical consideration of the issue suggests that fears surrounding explicit instruction arise from a range of misperceptions about writing and English. Modern writing pedagogy may therefore be improved by an acquaintance with traditions of explicit instruction, …

Conditional Value At Risk Applications To The Global Mining Industry, David Allen, Akhmad Kramadibrata, Robert Powell, Abhay Singh

Research outputs 2012

It is generally accepted that asset returns are not normally distributed, especially during volatile economic circumstances such as those seen during the global financial crisis. Yet portfolio optimisation is often based on lower order moments of mean and standard deviation, which do not take into account the tail of a distribution. The mining industry can be extremely volatile during times of economic downturn. We compare extreme risk in mining share portfolios from each of the world’s seven leading mining areas using Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) which measures those risks beyond traditional Value at Risk (VaR) metrics. We also show …

Direct Instruction And Music Literacy: One Approach To Augmenting The Diminishing?, Geoffrey Lowe, Steven Belcher

Research outputs 2012

One of the many challenges facing music educators is diminishing class time in lower secondary school in the face of the increasingly crowded curriculum and the advent of arts 'taster' courses. However, music educators are still expected to be able to produce musically literate students capable of completing high level music courses in upper secondary school. This article reports on an intervention study which set out to accelerate music literacy acquisition among Year 7 students through use of a Direct Instruction (DI) teaching approach. Although controversial, Direct Instruction was chosen because its advocates claim its effectiveness and time efficiency in …

An Australian Perspective On The Challenges For Computer And Network Security For Novice End-Users, Patryk Szewczyk

Research outputs 2012

A good portion of today's investigations include, at least in part, an examination of the user's web history. Although it has lost ground over the past several years, Microsoft's Internet Explorer still accounts for a large portion of the web browser market share. Most users are now aware that Internet Explorer will save browsing history, user names, passwords and form history. Consequently some users seek to eliminate these artifacts, leaving behind less evidence for examiners to discover during investigations. However, most users, and probably a good portion of examiners are unaware Automatic Crash Recovery can leave a gold mine of …

Fuzzy Interference System In Energy Demand Prediction, Thair Mahmoud, Daryoush Habibi, Octavian Bass, Stefan Lachowicz

Research outputs 2012

No abstract available.

Pit Lakes As Evaporative 'Terminal' Sinks: An Approach To Best Available Practice Mine Closure, C. D. Mccullough, Genevieve Marchant, Jorg Unseld, Michael Robinson, Benjamin O'Grady

Research outputs 2012

Pit lakes may form when open cut mining operations extend below groundwater level and then fill at cessation of mining and associated dewatering operations by ground and surface water influx. Pit lake hydrogeology may function as an evaporative “sink” when pit lake water evaporation rates exceed influx rates. Although not ideal closure, management of local surface and groundwaters contaminated by Acid and Metalliferous Drainage (AMD) through entrainment toward an evaporative terminal pit lake may provide a best-case scenario for protection of regional water resources required by typical mine closure time scales of hundreds to thousands of years. We present two …

Assessing The Accessibility Of E-Learning, Morten Goodwin, Iain Sutherland, Frode Roarson, Tom Drange

Research outputs 2012

Equal participation for people with special needs is an important objective in education politics. Governments have a strong emphasis on enabling education for all citizens. The trend of using e-learning both for on campus and remote delivery of students has the potential of enabling new opportunities for people who previously faced challenges following education. On the other hand, providing online education bears the risk of creating new barriers. This paper examines different stages of providing educational content and delivering teaching material online. This is based on practical experiences from Noroff University College providing a bachelor degree in a security related …

The 2011 Idn Homograph Attack Mitigation Survey, Peter Hannay, Gregory Baatard

Research outputs 2012

The advent of internationalized domain names (IDNs) has introduced a new threat, with the non-English character sets allowing for visual mimicry of domain names. Whilst this potential for this form of attack has been well recognized, many applications such as Internet browsers and e-mail clients have been slow to adopt successful mitigation strategies and countermeasures. This research examines those strategies and countermeasures, identifying areas of weakness that allow for homograph attacks. As well as examining the presentation of IDNs in e-mail clients and Internet browser URL bars, this year’s study examines the presentation of IDNs in browser-based security certificates and …

Exploration Games Played On A Ddr Pad Can Constitute Beneficial Physical Exercise, Kimthy Nguyen, Bohan Li, Martin Masek, Yuwanuch Gulatee

Research outputs 2012

The addition of an exercise component to computer games is a method that attempts to increase exercise compliance among the population. Various attempts at such games have been made, both commercially and as research projects, but the set of studied game mechanics that are both entertaining and provide beneficial exercise are relatively small. In our work, a game mechanic was designed for a floor-based input controller (DDR Pad). Rather than the standard mechanic usually employed for this device, our approach allows the player to explore a virtual world, requiring exertive movements on the input device in order to progress. The …

Improving Mobile Color 2d-Barcode Jpeg Image Readability Using Dct Coefficient Distributions, Keng Tiong (Alf) Tan, Douglas Chai

Research outputs 2012

Two dimensional (2D) barcodes are becoming a pervasive interface for mobile devices, such as camera smartphones. Often, only monochrome 2D-barcodes are used due to their robustness in an uncontrolled operating environment of smartphones. Nonetheless, we are seeing an emerging use of color 2D-barcodes for camera smartphones. Most smartphones 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 captured 2D-barcode images. In this paper, we analyzed the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficient distributions of generalized 2D-barcodes using colored data cells, each comprising of 4, …

Noise Tolerance For Real-Time Evolutionary Learning Of Cooperative Predator-Prey Strategies, Mark Wittkamp, Luigi Barone, Philip Hingston, Lyndon While

Research outputs 2012

Learning team-based strategies in real-time is a difficult task, much more so in the presence of noise. In our previous work in the Prey and Predators domain we introduced an algorithm capable of evolving cooperative team strategies in real-time using fitness evaluations against a perfect opponent model. This paper continues our work within the same domain, training a team of predators to capture a prey. We investigate the effect of varying degrees of opponent model noise in our learning system. In the presence of and in the effort to mitigate the effects of such noise we present modifications to our …

Using Monte Carlo Tree Search For Replanning In A Multistage Simultaneous Game, Daniel Beard, Philip Hingston, Martin Masek

Research outputs 2012

In this study, we introduce MC-TSAR, a Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm for strategy selection in simultaneous multistage games. We evaluate the algorithm using a battle planning scenario in which replanning is possible. We show that the algorithm can be used to select a strategy that approximates a Nash equilibrium strategy, taking into account the possibility of switching strategies part way through the execution of the scenario in the light of new information on the progress of the battle.

A Multimodal Problem For Competitive Coevolution, Philip Hingston, Tirtha Ranjeet, Chiou Peng Lam, Martin Masek

Research outputs 2012

Coevolutionary algorithms are a special kind of evolutionary algorithm with advantages in solving certain specific kinds of problems. In particular, competitive coevolutionary algorithms can be used to study problems in which two sides compete against each other and must choose a suitable strategy. Often these problems are multimodal - there is more than one strong strategy for each side. In this paper, we introduce a scalable multimodal test problem for competitive coevolution, and use it to investigate the effectiveness of some common coevolutionary algorithm enhancement techniques.

A Technical Guide To Effective And Accessible Web Surveys, Gregory Baatard

Research outputs 2012

The Internet is becoming an increasingly prominent medium for the administration of surveys. Although individual findings vary, the majority of the literature agrees that the appropriateness and response rates of web surveys is expected to rise in the future as we enter a generation of "digital natives" and mail-based communication becomes increasingly antiquated. Just about every aspect and tenet of traditional survey methodology has received attention in academic literature, positioning it as one of the most mature data collection techniques and a mainstay in all areas of research. While much of this accumulated knowledge is applicable and relevant to web …

Systematic Review Of Predictive Performance Of Injury Severity Scoring Tools, Hideo Tohira, Ian Jacobs, David Mountain, Nicholas Gibson, Allen Yeo

Research outputs 2012

Many injury severity scoring tools have been developed over the past few decades. These tools include the Injury Severity Score (ISS), New ISS (NISS), Trauma and Injury Severity Score (TRISS) and International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-based Injury Severity Score (ICISS). Although many studies have endeavored to determine the ability of these tools to predict the mortality of injured patients, their results have been inconsistent. We conducted a systematic review to summarize the predictive performances of these tools and explore the heterogeneity among studies. We defined a relevant article as any research article that reported the area under the Receiver Operating …

Measurement And Simulation Of Dissolved Oxygen In Zayandehrood River, Ahmad Reza Rahsepar, Mehdi Khiadani, Mohammad Mehdi Amin

Research outputs 2012

Aims: This study aims to simulate dissolved oxygen of Zayandehrood river from regulating dam to Polle-Kalleh bridge using MIKE11 software that is a hydrodynamics and water quality model. Materials and Methods: During 5 months the samples were taken from four hydrometric stations and water quality parameters such as dissolved oxygen, pH, BOD (1 day, 3 days, 5 days, and 7 days), NH 4 , NO 3 - phosphate (PO4 3- ), and temperature were measured. Morphological and hydrological data were provided and introduced into the model. The model was calibrated and its accuracy was investigated. Results: The results indicated that …

Recreational Use Of Acidic Pit Lakes—Human Health Considerations For Post Closure Planning, Andrea Hinwood, Jane Heyworth, Helen Tanner, C. D. Mccullough

Research outputs 2012

Pit lakes may form in mining voids that extend below groundwater level after mining ceases and many have been found to have elevated metals concentrations and low pH through acidic and metalliferous drainage (AMD). Pit lakes are often used for recreational activities including swimming, fishing and boating and poor water quality may present health risks to recreational users. Pit lakes also provide the opportunity for additional water resource uses. The Collie Coal Basin in south-western Australia currently has a number of pit lakes with moderate AMD effects which are also used for recreational pursuits. Twelve hundred questionnaires were mailed to …

Modular Dynamic Rbf Neural Network For Face Recognition, Sue Inn Ch'ng, Kah Phooi Seng, Li-Minn Ang

Research outputs 2012

Over the years, we have seen an increase in the use of RBF neural networks for the task of face recognition. However, the use of second order algorithms as the learning algorithm for all the adjustable parameters in such networks are rare due to the high computational complexity of the calculation of the Jacobian and Hessian matrix. Hence, in this paper, we propose a modular structural training architecture to adapt the Levenberg-Marquardt based RBF neural network for the application of face recognition. In addition to the proposal of the modular structural training architecture, we have also investigated the use of …

Induction Of Alternatively Activated Macrophages Enhances Pathogenesis During Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Infection, Carly Page, Lindsay Golcohea, Krystal Matthews, Yong Zhang, Peter Klover, Michael J. Holtzman, Lothar Hennighausen, Matthew Frieman

Open Access Publications

No abstract provided.

High Tech High Touch: Lessons Learned From Project Haiti 2011, Yan Tang, Marc Compere, Yung Lun Wong, Jared Anthony Coleman, Matthew Charles Selkirk

Publications

In this paper, we will share our experiences and lessons learned from a design project for providing clean water to a Haitian orphanage (Project Haiti 2011). Supported by funds from a renewable energy company and the university president’s office, five engineering students and two faculty members from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University successfully designed and installed a solar powered water purification system for an orphanage located in Chambellan, Haiti. This paper discusses the unique educational experiences gained from unusual design constraints, such as ambiguity of existing facilities due to limited communication, logistics of international construction at a remote village location, and cross-cultural …

Book Review: New Eyes On The Universe: Twelve Cosmic Mysteries And The Tools We Need To Solve Them, T. D. Oswalt

Publications

This document is Dr. Oswalt’s review of New Eyes on the Universe : Twelve Cosmic Mysteries and the Tools We Need to Solve Them by Stephen Webb. Springer/Praxis, 2012 371p, 9781461421931 $44.95, 9781461421948

Book Review: The International Atlas Of Mars Exploration: The First Five Decades: V.1: 1953 To 2003, T. D. Oswalt

Publications

This document is Dr. Oswalt’s review of The International Atlas of Mars Exploration: the First Five Decades : V.1: 1953 to 2003 by Philip J. Stooke. Cambridge, 2012 359p, 0521765536 $140.00, 9780521765534 $140.00.

Ace - A Model Centered Reu Program Standing On The Three Legs Of Cse: Analysis, Computation And Experiment, Hong P. Liu, Andrei Ludu

Publications

Enhancing REU (research experience for undergraduates) has become a popular strategy for many selective universities to enhance quality of undergraduate education and recruit gifted new students. The university that the authors are affiliated has set REU as one of the major outcomes for our QEP (quality enhancement program) for next 5 years. This paper presents a model centered REU program entitled as ACE standing for Analysis, Computation and Experiment. As a work in progress, the program is planned to run for the next 5 years and to serve for 20-30 undergraduate students who are gifted in mathematics and computing annually. …

Illinois Local Food Systems: A Geospatial Analysis, Abu S. Khan

Research Papers

Recently, more attention has been paid to studies of local food systems that are specific to a particular place as a potential solution for providing healthy food, reducing carbon emissions, and promotion of local agriculture sustainability. In the United States, the demands of locally produced foods have increased substantially in recent years. There are several reasons for this increase, including long-distance food transportation’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, the community food-security movement, and the increase of negative environmental problems related to large scale agriculture, etc., have contributed to the shift of attention from global food systems to local ones. Moreover, …

The Elusive "Marketplace" In Post-Bilski Jurisprudence, Andrew Chin

Campbell Law Review

The Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Bilski v. Kappos appears to have provided inadequate guidance to the courts and the Patent Office regarding the scope of the abstract-ideas exclusion from patentable subject matter. Federal Circuit Chief Judge Randall R. Rader, however, appears to have found in that decision a clear vindication of his own view that the machine-or-transformation test is incorrectly grounded in “the age of iron and steel at a time of subatomic particles and terabytes,” and thus fails, for example, to accommodate advances in “software [that] transform[] our lives without physical anchors.” Chief Judge Rader has subsequently authored …

Chinese Patents As Copyrights, Benjamin Piwei Liu

Campbell Law Review

Although harmonization efforts such as the Agreement on Trade- Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the Patent Corporation Treaty regime have brought national patent systems closer, differences among them remain a continuing challenge to innovators in an interconnected global marketplace. The recent development of the Chinese patent system is of particular interest because China is the factory of the world, the most populous market, the home of the patent office that handles the most patent application filings, and the number one source of imports that violate intellectual property rights (IPR). Its patent system affects every company whose supply …

Modeling Intermittent And Perennial Headwater Stream Origins In North Carolina., Kevin Macleod

Theses and Dissertations

Low-order headwater streams, a link between the upland landscape and larger streams within a watershed, affect watershed hydrology. Yet current widely available maps inadequately depict headwater streams, underestimating channel length or omitting channels entirely. Intermittent and perennial headwater streams each provide unique habitat. Until recently, it has not been possible to accurately delineate these streams or predict channel flow durations without fieldwork. Recent advances in remote sensing may allow more accurate headwater stream mapping.

Methods for mapping intermittent and perennial headwater streams with a GIS-based modeling approach coupled with field verification were adapted, tested, and evaluated. Four models were developed …

A Memory Access Model For Highly-Threaded Many-Core Architectures, Lin Ma, Kunal Agrawal, Roger D. Chamberlain

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Many-core architectures are excellent in hiding memory-access latency by low-overhead context switching among a large number of threads. The speedup of algorithms carried out on these machines depends on how well the latency is hidden. If the number of threads were infinite, then theoretically these machines should provide the performance predicted by the PRAM analysis of the programs. However, the number of allowable threads per processor is not infinite. In this paper, we introduce the Threaded Many-core Memory (TMM) model which is meant to capture the important characteristics of these highly-threaded, many-core machines. Since we model some important machine parameters …

Foveon F13 Camera, David Shelley

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Most high-fidelity digital cameras currently available obtain their images using technology where individual pixels can only acquire a single color. Since the acquisition of multiple colors is necessary to capture a full colored image, picture resolution is lost due to difficulties in interpolation between non-adjacent, same color pixels. The resulting unsharp images create the need to find a new way to obtain these images without requiring interpolation between adjacent pixels. An innovative method to capture images with individual pixel cells consisting of three layers of photodetectors stacked vertically upon one another has been created to rectify this problem, but no …