Transparency in environment impact assessment decision-making: Recent developments in Western Australia

Transparency in decision-making, involving the establishment of explicit goals and objectives combined with open, facilitative procedures, has recently been advocated as an important principle for effective environmental impact assessment (EIA). This paper examines recent changes to EIA practice in Western Australia that emphasise clear procedures for decision-making. Current practices focus on objectives established for relevant environmental factors identified during the screening and scoping stages of EIA. These objectives are then used as decision criteria for project decision-making following public review. An example from a recent assessment is provided. Some strengths and weaknesses of this approach to transparent EIA decision-making are also examined

Being subject-centred: A philosophy of teaching and implications for higher education

Being subject-centred as a higher education teacher offers a rich and illuminating philosophical and practical understanding of learning. Building upon previous research on subject-centred learning, we draw on reflection, literature review and a phenomenological approach to show how our ways of being infuse the teaching and learning environment. Philosophically, it is our way of being with our subject as teachers that influences the learning within our students. We show how posing the question: 'What is the best way to teach this subject?' helps a teacher find the best way to enhance the learning experience. It entails moving away from reliance solely on approaches that simply 're-present' content, such as lectures and online learning management systems, to interactive classrooms where space is created for the students to enter into their own engagement with the subject in a shared pursuit with the teacher, resulting in more effective teaching and learning. We illustrate this with personal accounts of our own journeys as teachers. We acknowledge that it takes courage to teach and to fully be subject-centred in the face of prevailing trends and pressures for other ways of teaching currently prominent in the higher education sector. But, ultimately, it is who we are as teachers that matters most, and being subject-centred provides the most effective way for us to most meaningfully reach our students

Future directions in aeropropulsion technology

Future directions in aeropropulsion technology that have been identified in a series of studies recently sponsored by the U.S. Government are discussed. Advanced vehicle concepts that could become possible by the turn of the century are presented along with some of their projected capabilities. Key building-block propulsion technologies that will contribute to making these vehicle concepts a reality are discussed along with projections of their status by the year 2000. Some pertinent highlights of the NASA aeropropulsion program are included in the discussion

Election Flops on YouTube

In an election campaign as drawn out as this, you'd have to have excellent memory to remember the hype around John Howard's use of YouTube to make policy announcements. Some months ago, the media were all over the story - but unfortunately for the Prime Minister, much like the widely-predicted poll 'narrowing', the YouTube effect has been missing in action

Beyond Gotcha: Blogs as a Space for Debate

The mainstream media and critics of Web 2.0’s "cult of the amateur" often suggest that blogs and citizen journalism will never replace their mainstream counterparts because they "don’t break stories". Notwithstanding the fundamental furphy – who ever said anything about "replacing" the MSM anyway? – there is some truth in this. It goes without saying that most bloggers don’t have the resources, pulling power or proximity to the pollies to do much original political reporting: this is something that most sensible public affairs bloggers concede. (Though how often the mainstream media really break stories – as against exploiting deliberate, calculated ‘leaks’ from party spinsters – is a separate question.

Blogging outside the Echo Chamber

In the current political climate, it's no surprise that a number of sessions at the recent Australian Blogging Conference at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane focussed on the potential for blogs and other citizen journalism sites to impact on political news and punditry. In a previous article, we've already noted the continuing skirmishes between psephologist bloggers and the political commentators, whose rather unscientific interpretation of opinion poll results that some bloggers have challenged fervently

Achieving Corresponding Effects on Multiple Robotic Platforms: Imitating in Context Using Different Effect Metrics

Original paper can be found at: www.aisb.org.uk/publications/proceedings/aisb05/3_Imitation_Final.pdfOne of the fundamental problems in imitation is the correspondence problem, how to map between the actions, states and effects of the model and imitator agents, when the embodiment of the agents is dissimilar. In our approach, the matching is according to different metrics and granularity. This paper presents JABBERWOCKY, a system that uses captured data from a human demonstrator to generate appropriate action commands, addressing the correspondence problem in imitation. Towards a characterization of the space of effect metrics, we are exploring absolute/relative angle and displacement aspects and focus on the overall arrangement and trajectory of manipulated objects. Using as an example a captured demonstration from a human, the system produces a correspondence solution given a selection of effect metrics and starting from dissimilar initial object positions, producing action commands that are then executed by two imitator target platforms (in simulation) to successfully imitate

Integrated control system for a gas turbine engine

A control system for a turbofan engine receives signals from a number of engine sensors and from the engine operator, and generates control signals. One control signal regulates the fan exhaust nozzle area in order to control inlet throat Mach number to maintain a low level of engine noise. Additional control signals regulate fuel flow to control engine thrust and fan pitch to control fan speed. A number of schedules are utilized to maintain a predetermined relationship between the controlled parameters and a number of fixed and calculated limits can override the control signals to prevent unsatisfactory engine performance

Immune cells and preterm labour:do invariant NKT cells hold the key?

We have developed our original made-to-measure (M2M) algorithm, PRIMAL, with the aim of modelling the Galactic disc from upcoming Gaia data. From a Milky Way like N-body disc galaxy simulation, we have created mock Gaia data using M0III stars as tracers, taking into account extinction and the expected Gaia errors. In PRIMAL, observables calculated from the N-body model are compared with the target stars, at the position of the target stars. Using PRIMAL, the masses of the N-body model particles are changed to reproduce the target mock data, and the gravitational potential is automatically adjusted by the changing mass of the model particles. We have also adopted a new resampling scheme for the model particles to keep the mass resolution of the N-body model relatively constant. We have applied PRIMAL to this mock Gaia data and we show that PRIMAL can recover the structure and kinematics of a Milky Way like barred spiral disc, along with the apparent bar structure and pattern speed of the bar despite the galactic extinction and the observational errors