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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Economics Of Implementing Population Health Strategies: Progress In Public Health Services & Systems Research, Glen P. Mays Dec 2014

The Economics Of Implementing Population Health Strategies: Progress In Public Health Services & Systems Research, Glen P. Mays

Health Management and Policy Presentations

Successful strategies to scale up and spread complex community-level interventions require an understanding of the resources required for implementation, how best to distribute them among supporting institutions, and how resource consumption and distribution varies across settings. This session reviews methods and early findings from the RWJF’s Public Health Delivery and Cost Studies (DACS) Initiative, which includes 12 inter-related studies examining the causes and consequences of variation in the costs of delivering complex community-level prevention strategies across more than 300 community settings in 12 states. Findings from these studies highlight the value of studying the economics of implementation, the measurement and …


Unit Roots In Life: A Graduate Student Story, Peter C. B. Phillips Aug 2014

Unit Roots In Life: A Graduate Student Story, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

What follows is a graduate student story. It draws on the first part of the speech I gave that evening at the NZESG conference dinner. It mixes personal reflections with recollections of the extraordinary New Zealanders who shaped my thinking as a graduate student and beginning researcher-people who have had an enduring impact on my work and career as an econometrician. The story traces out these human initial conditions and unit roots that figure in my early life of teaching and research.


Public Health Services & Systems Research And The Reforming U.S. Health System, Glen P. Mays May 2014

Public Health Services & Systems Research And The Reforming U.S. Health System, Glen P. Mays

Health Management and Policy Presentations

This session reviews progress in the field of public health services & systems research (PHSSR), with a specific focus on findings that can inform the implementation and impact of health reform strategies on the U.S. public health system.


Unifying Systems For Population Health: Infrastructure, Incentives & Evidence For Collective Action, Glen P. Mays Apr 2014

Unifying Systems For Population Health: Infrastructure, Incentives & Evidence For Collective Action, Glen P. Mays

Health Management and Policy Presentations

This presentation, part of the SBM Presidential Symposium on Aligning Family, Clinical, and Community Systems, reviews the collective action problems that are commonly encountered in implementing multi-sector population health improvement strategies, and examines research on ways of using public health strategies and infrastructure to overcome these problems.


School And Community-Based Childhood Obesity: Implications For Policy And Practice, Suzette Fromm Reed, Judah J. Viola, Karen Lynch Apr 2014

School And Community-Based Childhood Obesity: Implications For Policy And Practice, Suzette Fromm Reed, Judah J. Viola, Karen Lynch

Faculty Publications

This introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community on the topic of childhood obesity prevention lays some of the basis for the state of affairs of the childhood obesity epidemic in the United States as of 2012 and the need for and types of existing prevention and intervention efforts underway. At the intersection of public health and community psychology, each of the five articles presents some insights into how prevention and intervention efforts currently underway are fairing and offers some implications for program developers and policy makers to start to turn around …


Informing Destination Recommender Systems Design And Evaluation Through Quantitative Research, Ulrike Gretzel, Yeong-Hyeon Hwang, Daniel Fesenmaier Feb 2014

Informing Destination Recommender Systems Design And Evaluation Through Quantitative Research, Ulrike Gretzel, Yeong-Hyeon Hwang, Daniel Fesenmaier

Ulrike Gretzel

Purpose - Destination recommender systems need to become truly human-centric in their design and functionality. This requires a profound understanding of human interactions with technology as well as human behavior related to information search and decision-making in the context of travel and tourism. This paper seeks to review relevant theories that can support the development and evaluation of destination recommender systems and to discuss how quantitative research can inform such theory building and testing. Design/methodology/approach - Based on a review of information search and decision-making literatures, a framework for the development of destination recommender systems is proposed and the implications …


Tuning Houses Through Building Management Systems, Jose Ripper Kos, Massimo Fiorentini, Paul Cooper, Felipe Miranda Jan 2014

Tuning Houses Through Building Management Systems, Jose Ripper Kos, Massimo Fiorentini, Paul Cooper, Felipe Miranda

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper departs from an analogy of sailing race instruments to demonstrate the potential of automation systems on the house performance and, more important, on impacting households for a more sustainable behavior. Sailing instruments have positively influenced the results on experienced sailors' speed and ultimately have confirmed their observations on nature cycles. We have presented two research projects for the development of Building Management Systems for a house that relies mostly on natural ventilation and thermal mass and another one, based on a complex conditioning system with a solar assited HVAC system, connected to a Phase Change Material thermal storage. …


Suboptimal Mppt Control For Power Management In Pv-Diesel Remote Area Power Supply Systems, Yingjie Tan, Lasantha G. Meegahapola, Kashem M. Muttaqi Jan 2014

Suboptimal Mppt Control For Power Management In Pv-Diesel Remote Area Power Supply Systems, Yingjie Tan, Lasantha G. Meegahapola, Kashem M. Muttaqi

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) is commonly being used in solar-photovoltaic (PV) power generation systems to maximise solar energy extraction. In this paper it is proposed to operate the solar-PV system at the suboptimal MPPT to manage power balance in a remote area power supply (RAPS) system. This is performed based on three different operating modes: 1) Frequency control mode; 2) Active power control mode; 3) MPPT control mode. The operating modes are decided based on the load level and the operating mode of the diesel generator (i.e. synchronous condenser mode or generator mode). This power management strategy balances the …


Characterizing Artificial Socio-Cognitive Technical Systems, Rob Christiaanse, Aditya K. Ghose, Pablo Noriega, Munindar P. Singh Jan 2014

Characterizing Artificial Socio-Cognitive Technical Systems, Rob Christiaanse, Aditya K. Ghose, Pablo Noriega, Munindar P. Singh

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper is an invitation to examine a class of socio-technical systems - artificial socio-cognitive (ASCS) - whose distinctive nature is that they may involve humans as well as artificial agents who interact in a regulated milieu. We propose a characterization of these ASCS and build on that characterization to describe how these systems evolve.


Towards A Cryptographic Treatment Of Publish/Subscribe Systems, Tsz Hon Yuen, Willy Susilo, Yi Mu Jan 2014

Towards A Cryptographic Treatment Of Publish/Subscribe Systems, Tsz Hon Yuen, Willy Susilo, Yi Mu

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Publish/subscribe mechanism is a typical many-to-many messaging paradigm when multiple applications want to receive the same message or when a group of applications would like to notify each other. Nonetheless, there exist only a few works that address the security issues for content-based publish/subscribe systems formally. Although the security requirements have been partially addressed by Wang et al., there is no formal definition for all of these security requirements in the literature. As a result, most of the existing schemes do not have any security proof and it is difficult to justify whether those schemes are really secure in practice. …


Adaptive Antenna Selection For Energy-Efficient Mimo-Ofdm Wireless Systems, Ngoc Phuc Le, Le Chung Tran, Farzad Safaei Jan 2014

Adaptive Antenna Selection For Energy-Efficient Mimo-Ofdm Wireless Systems, Ngoc Phuc Le, Le Chung Tran, Farzad Safaei

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

In this paper, we investigate energy-efficiency in antenna selection OFDM-based systems. We show that an OFDM system with conventional antenna selection approaches, including per-subcarrier selection (i.e., selecting antennas independently for each subcarrier) and bulk-selection (i.e., choosing the same antennas for all subcarriers), suffers from a significant loss in energy-efficiency. To achieve a better energy-efficiency performance, we propose an adaptive antenna selection scheme where both the number of active RF (radio frequency) chains and the antenna indices are selected depending on the channel condition. This selection scheme could be implemented by exhaustive search. Moreover, we develop an algorithm that achieves a …


A Comparative Analysis Of Multichannel Data Acquisition Systems For Quality Assurance In External Beam Radiation Therapy, Iolanda Fuduli, Claudiu Porumb, Anthony Espinoza, Abdullah Aldosari, Martin Carolan, Michael Lf Lerch, Peter E. Metcalfe, Anatoly Rosenfeld, Marco Petasecca Jan 2014

A Comparative Analysis Of Multichannel Data Acquisition Systems For Quality Assurance In External Beam Radiation Therapy, Iolanda Fuduli, Claudiu Porumb, Anthony Espinoza, Abdullah Aldosari, Martin Carolan, Michael Lf Lerch, Peter E. Metcalfe, Anatoly Rosenfeld, Marco Petasecca

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

The paper presents a comparative study performed by the Centre of Medical Radiation Physics (CMRP) on three multichannel Data Acquisition Systems (DAQ) based on different analogue front-ends to suit a wide range of radiotherapy applications. The three front-ends are: a charge-to-frequency converter developed by INFN Torino, an electrometer and a charge-to-digital converter (both commercial devices from Texas Instruments). For the first two (named DAQ A and B), the CMRP has designed the read-out systems whilst the third one (DAQ C) comes with its own evaluation board. For the purpose of the characterization DAQ A and DAQ B have been equipped …


Energy-Efficiency Analysis Of Per-Subcarrier Antenna Selection With Peak-Power Reduction In Mimo-Ofdm Wireless Systems, Ngoc Phuc Le, Le Chung Tran, Farzad Safaei Jan 2014

Energy-Efficiency Analysis Of Per-Subcarrier Antenna Selection With Peak-Power Reduction In Mimo-Ofdm Wireless Systems, Ngoc Phuc Le, Le Chung Tran, Farzad Safaei

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

The use of per-subcarrier antenna subset selection in OFDM wireless systems offers higher system capacity and/or improved link reliability.However, the implementation of the conventional per-subcarrier selection schememay result in significant fluctuations of the average power and peak power across antennas, which affects the potential benefits of the system. In this paper, power efficiency of high-power amplifiers and energy efficiency in per-subcarrier antenna selection MIMO-OFDM systems are investigated. To deliver the maximum overall power efficiency, we propose a two-step strategy for data-subcarrier allocation.This strategy consists of an equal allocation of data subcarriers based on linear optimization and peak-power reduction via cross-antenna …


Online Voltage Control In Distribution Systems With Multiple Voltage Regulating Devices, Dothinka Ranamuka Rallage, Ashish Agalgaonkar, Kashem Muttaqi Jan 2014

Online Voltage Control In Distribution Systems With Multiple Voltage Regulating Devices, Dothinka Ranamuka Rallage, Ashish Agalgaonkar, Kashem Muttaqi

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Voltage regulation in distribution systems is typically performed with the aid of multiple voltage regulating devices, such as on-load tap changer and step voltage regulators. These devices are conventionally tuned and locally coordinated using Volt/VAR optimization strategies in accordance with the time-graded operation. However, in case of distribution systems with distributed generation (DG), there could be a possibility of simultaneous responses of DG and multiple voltage regulators for correcting the target bus voltage, thereby resulting in operational conflicts. This paper proposes an online voltage control strategy for a realistic distribution system containing a synchronous machine-based renewable DG unit and other …


Aligning Ontology-Based Development With Service Oriented Systems, Jun Shen, Ghassan Beydoun, Graham Low, Lijuan Wang Jan 2014

Aligning Ontology-Based Development With Service Oriented Systems, Jun Shen, Ghassan Beydoun, Graham Low, Lijuan Wang

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper argues for placing ontologies at the centre of the software development life cycle for distributed component-based systems and, in particular, for service-oriented systems. It presents an ontology-based development process which relies on three levels of abstraction using ontologies: architecture layer, application layer and domain layer. The paper discusses the key roles of ontologies with respect to the various abstraction layers and their corresponding impact on the concomitant workproducts. In addition, a peer-to-peer-based service selecting and composing tool is suggested as a way of supporting the process. The paper presents the architecture of the proposed tool and illustrates the …


A Comparison Of Coordinate Systems For Use In Determining A Radiotherapy Delineation Margin For Whole Breast, Elise Pogson, Lauren Bell, Vikneswary Batumalai, Eng-Siew Koh, Geoff Delaney, Peter E. Metcalfe, Lois Holloway Jan 2014

A Comparison Of Coordinate Systems For Use In Determining A Radiotherapy Delineation Margin For Whole Breast, Elise Pogson, Lauren Bell, Vikneswary Batumalai, Eng-Siew Koh, Geoff Delaney, Peter E. Metcalfe, Lois Holloway

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Cartesian co-ordinates, traditionally used for radiotherapy margins, calculated at 6 points, may not adequately represent changes in inter-observer contour variation as necessary to define a delineation margin. As a first step, this study compared the standard deviation (SD) in contour delineation using Polar and Cartesian co-ordinates for whole breast. Whole breast Clinical Target Volumes (CTV) were delineated by eight observers for 9 patients. The SD of contour position was determined for Polar co-ordinates at 1 degree increments for 5 slices and averaged across all patients. The mean centre of mass (COM) was used as the origin for the right breast, …


A Review Of Data Quality Assessment Methods For Public Health Information Systems, Hong Chen, David Hailey, Ning Wang, Ping Yu Jan 2014

A Review Of Data Quality Assessment Methods For Public Health Information Systems, Hong Chen, David Hailey, Ning Wang, Ping Yu

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

High quality data and effective data quality assessment are required for accurately evaluating the impact of public health interventions and measuring public health outcomes. Data, data use, and data collection process, as the three dimensions of data quality, all need to be assessed for overall data quality assessment. We reviewed current data quality assessment methods. The relevant study was identified in major databases and well-known institutional websites. We found the dimension of data was most frequently assessed. Completeness, accuracy, and timeliness were the three most-used attributes among a total of 49 attributes of data quality. The major quantitative assessment methods …


Power Allocation Algorithm In Ofdm-Based Cognitive Radio Systems, Van Vinh Nguyen, Yang Shouyi, Le Chung Tran Jan 2014

Power Allocation Algorithm In Ofdm-Based Cognitive Radio Systems, Van Vinh Nguyen, Yang Shouyi, Le Chung Tran

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

In orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based cognitive radio (CR) systems, the optimized algorithms for sub-carrier power allocation face the problems of complex iterative calculation and difficult realization. In this paper, we propose an exponential power distribution function and derive a sub-optimal power allocation algorithm. This algorithm aims to allocate power of in-band subcarriers of cognitive users according to the numerical characteristics of the power distribution function by using a convex optimization numerical method under linear constraints. This algorithm has the advantages of fast calculation speed and easy realization, and reduces the interference to the authorized users, which is caused by …


Transmit Antenna Subset Selection For High-Rate Mimo-Ofdm Systems In The Presence Of Nonlinear Power Amplifiers, Phuc Ngoc Le, Farzad Safaei, Le Chung Tran Jan 2014

Transmit Antenna Subset Selection For High-Rate Mimo-Ofdm Systems In The Presence Of Nonlinear Power Amplifiers, Phuc Ngoc Le, Farzad Safaei, Le Chung Tran

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

The deployment of antenna subset selection on a per-subcarrier basis in MIMO-OFDM systems could improve the system performance and/or increase data rates. This paper investigates this technique for the MIMO-OFDM systems suffering nonlinear distortions due to high-power amplifiers. At first, some problems pertaining to the implementation of this antenna selection approach, including power imbalance across transmit antennas and non-causality of per-subcarrier antenna selection criteria, are identified. Next, an optimal selection scheme is devised by means of linear optimization to overcome those disadvantages. This scheme optimally allocates data subcarriers under a constraint that all antennas have the same number of data …


A Review Of Technical Challenges In Planning And Operation Of Remote Area Power Supply Systems, Yingjie Tan, Lasantha Meegahapola, Kashem M. Muttaqi Jan 2014

A Review Of Technical Challenges In Planning And Operation Of Remote Area Power Supply Systems, Yingjie Tan, Lasantha Meegahapola, Kashem M. Muttaqi

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Remote area power supply (RAPS) systems are being used for many years to supply power to rural or remote communities where the utility grid is not accessible. In order to avoid the high operating cost and environmental impact caused by conventional generators, renewable energy resources are currently being utilised in RAPS systems. However, the intermittency of such renewable energy resources greatly impacts on planning and operation of RAPS systems. This paper aims to present a comprehensive review with regard to the RAPS system planning and operation techniques published in the literature. This paper summarises different modelling approaches associated with the …


Applications Of Controllable Smart Fluids To Mechanical Systems, Seung-Bok Choi, Norman Wereley, Weihua Li, Miao Yu, Jeong-Hoi Koo Jan 2014

Applications Of Controllable Smart Fluids To Mechanical Systems, Seung-Bok Choi, Norman Wereley, Weihua Li, Miao Yu, Jeong-Hoi Koo

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

For this special issue, 20 papers have been received, and three of which have been withdrawn. After strict review processes by the world-wide experts on the smart fluids technology, 10 papers have been accepted and are published here.The published papers cover various application devices and systems, which can be controllable to achieve desired performances by applying the external fields to the smart fluid domains. A brief summary of each application item proposed in the published papers is given as follows.


Family-Focused Autism Spectrum Disorder Research: A Review Of The Utility Of Family Systems Approaches, Elizabeth Kate Cridland, Sandra C. Jones, Christopher A. Magee, Peter Caputi Jan 2014

Family-Focused Autism Spectrum Disorder Research: A Review Of The Utility Of Family Systems Approaches, Elizabeth Kate Cridland, Sandra C. Jones, Christopher A. Magee, Peter Caputi

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

A family member with an autism spectrum disorder presents pervasive and bidirectional influences on the entire family system, suggesting a need for family-focused autism spectrum disorder research. While there has been increasing interest in this research area, family-focused autism spectrum disorder research can still be considered relatively recent, and there are limitations to the existing literature. The purpose of this article is to provide theoretical and methodological directions for future family-focused autism spectrum disorder research. In particular, this article proposes Family Systems approaches as a common theoretical framework for future family-focused autism spectrum disorder research by considering theoretical concepts such …


Free Vibrations Of Interspersed Railway Track Systems In Three-Dimensional Space, Sakdirat Kaewunruen, Alexander Remennikov, Akira Aikawa, Hirotaka Sakai Jan 2014

Free Vibrations Of Interspersed Railway Track Systems In Three-Dimensional Space, Sakdirat Kaewunruen, Alexander Remennikov, Akira Aikawa, Hirotaka Sakai

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Statistically, the actual loading conditions for railway tracks are rather dynamic and transient. The dynamic loadings due to train and track interactions redistribute from the rails to the rail pad, from the rail pad to the railway sleeper, and from the railway sleeper to the underlying ground. Commonly, railway sleeper in track systems is modeled as a beam on elastic foundation. This study makes use of a calibrated finite element model of railway sleepers in a track system, in order to investigate the resonant frequencies and associated mode shapes of railway components in interspersed track systems. The numerical model takes …


Variation Of Poincare Recurrence Times In Discrete Dynamical Systems, Mimoon Ismael, Rodney Nillsen, Graham H. Williams Jan 2014

Variation Of Poincare Recurrence Times In Discrete Dynamical Systems, Mimoon Ismael, Rodney Nillsen, Graham H. Williams

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

This paper is concerned with the variation and standard deviation of recurrence times in discrete dynamical systems.


Learning Diagnostic Diagrams In Transport-Based Data-Collection Systems, Vu Tran, Peter W. Eklund, Christopher David Cook Jan 2014

Learning Diagnostic Diagrams In Transport-Based Data-Collection Systems, Vu Tran, Peter W. Eklund, Christopher David Cook

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

Insights about service improvement in a transit network can be gained by studying transit service reliability. In this paper, a general procedure for constructing a transit service reliability diagnostic (Tsrd) diagram based on a Bayesian network is proposed to automatically build a behavioural model from Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and Automatic Passenger Counters (APC) data. Our purpose is to discover the variability of transit service attributes and their effects on traveller behaviour. A Tsrd diagram describes and helps to analyse factors affecting public transport by combining domain knowledge with statistical data.


Trans* And Gender Non-Conforming (Tgnc) Young Adults : Self-Report Of Access And Comfort In Health Care Systems, Victoria L. Reiszner Jan 2014

Trans* And Gender Non-Conforming (Tgnc) Young Adults : Self-Report Of Access And Comfort In Health Care Systems, Victoria L. Reiszner

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

This study examined diverse trans* and gender non-conforming (TGNC) young adults' perceptions of medical and mental health providers and health care settings; and how TGNC perceptions influence or inhibit their level of comfort and willingness to access preventative and emergency services. The study aimed to extend knowledge and understanding of challenges faced by TGNC individuals and to inform health care providers on how they can become more effective in both their outreach and service provision to TGNC communities. Much of the current literature examining individuals with gender nonconforming identities focus on discrimination, limited access to health care, major health challenges, …