The new frontier: Singaporean and Malaysian public relations practitioners’ perceptions of new media

Recent research into social media use identified mid-2006 to early 2007 as the period when Singaporean public relations agencies first recognised the need to embrace new media (Fitch, 2009a). This research draws on interviews conducted with ten senior Singaporean and Malaysian public relations practitioners in mid-2006 and offers an historical review of their attitudes to new media at that time. The results reveal that experienced public relations practitioners were fearful of the changing communication environment, even as some embraced the opportunities created by new media. These findings are significant in terms of understanding the implications of new media and changing communication patterns for public relations

Photometry of GSC 762-110, a new triple-mode radially pulsating star

Stars pulsating in three radial modes are very rare; only three examples are known in the Galaxy. These stars are very useful since their periods may be measured very precisely, and this will constrain the global stellar parameters and the models of the star's interior. The purpose of this paper is to present a new example of the class of triple-mode radial pulsators. A search for candidate multi-mode pulsators was carried out in public survey data. Time-series photometry of one of the candidates, GSC 762-110, was performed. GSC 762-110 was found to be a triple-mode radial pulsator, with a fundamental period of 0.1945d and period ratios of 0.7641 and 0.8012. In addition two non-radial modes were found, for which the amplitude has diminished considerably over the last few years.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Evidence of a structural anomaly at 14 K in polymerised CsC60

We report the results of a high-resolution synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction study of polymerised CsC$_{60}$ in the temperature range 4 to 40 K. Its crystal structure is monoclinic (space group I2/m), isostructural with RbC$_{60}$. Below 14 K, a spontaneous thermal contraction is observed along both the polymer chain axis, $a$ and the interchain separation along [111], $d_1$. This structural anomaly could trigger the occurrence of the spin-singlet ground state, observed by NMR at the same temperature.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, submitte

Capacity Distribution for Interference Alignment With CSI Errors and Its Applications

Interference alignment (IA) is known to achieve the degree-of-freedom (DoF) capacity of the interference channel, if full channel state information (CSI) is available at the transmitters perfectly. Challenges, however, arise when CSI is not perfect, and the achievable capacity of IA is not well understood. In this paper, we study the achievable performance of the interference channel using perfect IA techniques based on imperfect CSI. In particular, we obtain the statistical distribution of the maximum achievable rate per stream of the channel. Utilizing our analytical results, we derive new nonasymptotic performance metrics that are then used to 1) optimize the number of streams per user for maximizing the network sum-rate and 2) assess the performance of IA in the time-varying block fading channel. Numerical results are provided to reveal the accuracy of our analytical results

Political public relations in Indonesia: A history of propaganda and democracy

As an independent state once under Dutch and Japanese occupation, the forms of government communication in Indonesia range from using conventional and colonial propaganda to the professionalisation of political public relations. This paper offers a brief history of how Indonesian leaders used propaganda and public relations strategies in order to understand the social and political contexts underpinning the development of political public relations in Indonesia. It argues that the expansion of political public relations in Indonesia coincided with the country’s political reform, including liberalisation of the press, freedom of speech and expression, as well as advances in information and communication technologies. The findings reported in this paper confirm that the emergence of modern political public relations in Indonesia is closely linked to the broader democratisation of the country, including significant shifts in the electoral process. In its analysis, the paper offers new insights into the development of political public relations in Indonesia

Complete genome sequences of three novel Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 bacteriophages, Noxifer, Phabio, and Skulduggery

Three novel bacteriophages, two of which are jumbophages, were isolated from compost in Auckland, New Zealand. Noxifer, Phabio, and Skulduggery are double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) phages with genome sizes of 278,136 bp (Noxifer), 309,157 bp (Phabio), and 62,978 bp (Skulduggery)

Cross modal perception of body size in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris)

While the perception of size-related acoustic variation in animal vocalisations is well documented, little attention has been given to how this information might be integrated with corresponding visual information. Using a cross-modal design, we tested the ability of domestic dogs to match growls resynthesised to be typical of either a large or a small dog to size- matched models. Subjects looked at the size-matched model significantly more often and for a significantly longer duration than at the incorrect model, showing that they have the ability to relate information about body size from the acoustic domain to the appropriate visual category. Our study suggests that the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms at the basis of size assessment in mammals have a multisensory nature, and calls for further investigations of the multimodal processing of size information across animal species

Fast path planning for precision weeding

Agricultural robots have the potential to reduce herbicide use in agriculture and horticulture through autonomous precision weeding. One of the main challenges is how to efficiently plan paths for a robot arm such that many individual weeds can be processed quickly. This paper considers an abstract weeding task among obstacles and proposes an efficient online path planning algorithm for an industrial manipulator mounted to a mobile robot chassis. The algorithm is based on a multi-query approach, inspired by industrial bin-picking, where a database of high-quality paths is computed offline and paths are then selected and adapted online. We present a preliminary implementation using a 6-DOF arm and report results from simulation experiments designed to evaluate system performance with varying database and obstacle sizes. We also validate the approach using a Universal Robots UR5 manipulator and ROS interface

Elephants can determine ethnicity, gender, and age from acoustic cues in human voices

Animals can accrue direct fitness benefits by accurately classifying predatory threat according to the species of predator and the magnitude of risk associated with an encounter. Human predators present a particularly interesting cognitive challenge, as it is typically the case that different human subgroups pose radically different levels of danger to animals living around them. Although a number of prey species have proved able to discriminate between certain human categories on the basis of visual and olfactory cues, vocalizations potentially provide a much richer source of information. We now use controlled playback experiments to investigate whether family groups of free-ranging African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in Amboseli National Park, Kenya can use acoustic characteristics of speech to make functionally relevant distinctions between human subcategories differing not only in ethnicity but also in sex and age. Our results demonstrate that elephants can reliably discriminate between two different ethnic groups that differ in the level of threat they represent, significantly increasing their probability of defensive bunching and investigative smelling following playbacks of Maasai voices. Moreover, these responses were specific to the sex and age of Maasai presented, with the voices of Maasai women and boys, subcategories that would generally pose little threat, significantly less likely to produce these behavioral responses. Considering the long history and often pervasive predatory threat associated with humans across the globe, it is likely that abilities to precisely identify dangerous subcategories of humans on the basis of subtle voice characteristics could have been selected for in other cognitively advanced animal species

Professionalising public relations: A history of Australian public relations education, 1985 - 1999

This thesis is concerned with public relations education in Australia. It focuses on 1985–1999, as in these years there was significant growth in education and the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) sought greater regulation and jurisdiction over public relations activity. Existing historical scholarship focuses on the evolution of the Australian public relations industry towards professional status, and tertiary education is perceived to confirm the field’s professional standing. In contrast, I consider the development of public relations education in a broader social context and the involvement of the PRIA in tertiary education. This thesis aims to investigate the role of public relations education in the professionalisation of public relations in Australia. It uses a qualitative approach, combining archival research, focusing on the previously unstudied archives of the PRIA’s National Education Committee, and interviews with practitioners and educators. This thesis provides an analysis of how, and why, the PRIA sought to regulate public relations education. The use of historical sociology allows the findings to be interpreted in relation to broader societal structures and institutional processes, such as the expansion of the Australian higher education sector, the PRIA’s preoccupation with professional status, and the increase in female practitioners. In developing a critical account of Australian public relations education, this thesis argues that higher education was pivotal to the PRIA’s professional project. The findings confirm the constitution of public relations knowledge and its institutionalisation in the Australian academy were dynamic and contested, and that the PRIA’s professional drive informed its attempts to regulate the transmission of that knowledge. A significant finding is the ambivalent attitudes towards gender and education, given the increasing number of female graduates. These findings contribute a unique Australian perspective to the global public relations scholarship on history and professionalisation and allow a reconceptualisation of the development of public relations in Australia