Code Red: Mobile, a live/synthetic test bed for firefighter training

The State of Victoria, Australia is prone to disastrous bushfires. The Country Fire Authority of Victoria is the principal bushfire response organisation. Local brigades of mainly volunteers learn how to fight fires through classroom learning and field exercises. The CODE RED: MOBILE test bed features Live/Synthetic elements, where ‘Live’ firefighters participate in an exercise where a virtual or ‘synthetic’ bushfire is delivered to them in the field on an iPad3 in the 7scenes game framework (7scenes.com). A model of the Hanging Rock Reserve, with a bushfire undergoing a wind change, was made in the Sandbox2 game editor (crytek.com). This was a model of the real world location of the exercise. Firefighters were divided into two groups: one group received the information about the bushfire’s progress as dynamic-static movies, and the other group saw static screenshots from the same movies. Both were annotated with further information. This media supported with maps and textual information, was delivered at the real world location of three stages of the bushfire undergoing a wind change at the Hanging Rock Reserve. This experiment showed that either form of media was suitable for training firefighters in a mobile learning and decision making exercise using a mobile device. The participants carried GPS and their movements were tracked. Spatio-temporal analysis was used to detect problems with the design of the exercise, and to find participants with aberrant behaviour or difficulties with the exercise. Fractal analysis of the tracks uncovered five Domains of Spatial Scale. Three of the domains at different spatial scales revealed where participants were walking through open areas in relatively straight paths, in another domain they had to find ways through gateways and over bridges, and at another they were meeting the boundaries of the exercise and turning sharply back, or recrossing their tracks. This data is valuable for the analysis and design Live/Synthetic exercises: at various spatial scales particular exercises can be made more difficult or easier to complete depending on the fitness or expertise of the participants. The research proposes that emergency organisations would benefit from Live/Synthetic exercises using mobile devices, for joint or individual training of firefighters and Incident Management Teams

Aeronautical engineering: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 204)

This bibliography lists 419 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in August 1986

An analysis of South Africa's relationship with the Commonwealth of Nations between 1945 and 1961

This thesis provides a survey and an analysis of South Africa's relations with the British Commonwealth (Commonwealth of Nations) between the years 1945 and 1961. It outlines and explains the deterioration of this relationship in the context of the crisis in South Africa's foreign relations after World War II. Documentary evidence is produced to throw more light on the relationship with Britain and, to a lesser extent, other Commonwealth countries. This relationship is analysed in the context of political, economic and strategic imperatives which made it necessary for Britain to continue to seek South Africa's co-operation within the Commonwealth. This thesis also describes how the African and Asian influence began to be felt within the Commonwealth on racial issues. This influence was to become particularly important during the crucial period after the Sharpeville incident. The attitudes of Britain and other Commonwealth countries at the two crucial conferences of 1960 and 1961 are re-examined. The attitude of extra-parliamentary organisations in South Africa towards the Commonwealth connection is an important theme of this thesis in addition to the other themes mentioned above. It is demonstrated how Indian and African opinions became increasingly hostile towards what was seen as British and "white" Commonwealth "appeasement" of South Africa. These attitudes are surveyed in the context of an increasing radicalisation of black politics in South Africa. The movement by English and Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans toward a consensus on racial and foreign policy is also examined. Finally, the epilogue to this thesis discusses the return of South Africa to the Commonwealth in 1994. It includes a brief survey of developments in the Commonwealth attitude to South Africa since 1961.HistoryD. Litt. et Phil. (History

Literary criticism as feminist argument in Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication ofthe Rights of Woman makes its feminist argument primarily through literary criticism. Recent scholarship has generally considered the literary critical dimension of Rights of Woman as a minor component of Wollstonecraft's explicit political argument and cultural critique. This thesis locates and analyzes three literary critiques in Rights of Woman in order to illustrate the specificity of Wollstonecraft's methods. Wollstonecraft's critique of Milton utilises a practice of quotation and commentary, and interrogates his prominent role in literary and political canons. Her critique of Rousseau's Emile is highly instructive because she both attacks its content and attempts to undercut the modes by which this paradigmatic statement of the submissive domestic female had become 'a prevailing opinion of a sexual character'. Wollstonecraft's critique of John Gregory, the author of the influential conduct book A Legacy to His Daughters, claims that this work perpetuates Rousseau's repressive norms, even without the conscious knowledge of its apparently capable author. In doing so, Wollstonecraft theorizes the existence of a self-reproducing 'male' literary tradition, one which comprises a broad range of texts, whether by 'great' writers or less gifted men, a notion which challenges benevolent images of a purist canon of aesthetic value. In the development of her criticism, Wollstonecraft draws from two contemporary critical traditions. The first is that of the bluestocking women, whose public mastery of literary knowledge gives them the status to promulgate social agendas. The second is the literary periodical, which stands at the very centre of print culture in the eighteenth century. A specific analysis of the literary critical dimension of Rights of Woman illuminates new aspects of the organization and rhetoric of this key work

Steering Taste: Ernest Marsh, a study of private collecting in England in the early 20th Century

The primary aim of this thesis is to focus attention on the bourgeois, 'un-named' collector. The driving force behind most museum and art gallery collections of the Victorian and Edwardian period. British museum and art gallery records of gifted collections, bequests and loans usually note their donors. However, with a few notable exceptions, little is known about the collectors, their activities and motivation in making such presentations. Using the interests and activities of the Quaker miller and collector Ernest Marsh (1843-1945) as a case study, this thesis explores how in the period 1890-1945 a collector came to be a key agent in the construction and manifestation of taste in British Applied Arts and to a lesser degree in the Fine Arts. Through primary visual and documentary evidence of the Marsh home, and reference to contemporary and later commentaries it considers the relative influences of husband and wife on decorating and furnishing the domestic interior, the evolution of taste, and, for Ernest Marsh, its impact upon his artistic interests within the public arena. By examination of private papers, metropolitan and provincial art gallery and museum archives it also considers evidence of the inter-relationships between donors and curators, and the mutual advantages and disadvantages accruing to both, particularly focussing on the processes in bringing about changes in individual and institutional collecting policy. Further, by review of records of, in particular, the Contemporary Art Society and the Greenslade archive, it examines the degree to which private benefactors and those in public or semi-public office, acting as fund-raisers and spenders exercise influence through patronage of particular practitioners, choice of works and initiating new designs