Structuring and restructuring nonprofit associations

In the mid seventies there was a spate of legal claims involving unincorporated not-for-profit associations. These claims highlighted the liability exposure of management committee members and prompted a dramatic increase in the number of associations seeking shelter behind the corporate veil. Corporate structure decisions during this period were primarily motivated by the incentive of limited liability. Twenty years later, the not-for-profit sector is subject to new challenges. The Industry Commission Report into Charitable Organisations in Australia heralds an increasing intrusion of legislative responsibilities and reform in the sector. The traditional sources of funds for not-for-profit organisations are about to radically change with the advent of “competitive tendering” for government funding and the declining benevolence of society. The legal scuffle between Australian Rugby Football League Limited (the “ARL”) and News Limited has also exposed the vulnerability of not-for-profit groups and the many legal and commercial minefields in structural decision-making. The sector is beginning to respond to these pressures by rationalisation and restructure. Corporate structure decisions are now motivated by the need to promote efficiency and resilience. Survival of the fittest. Restructuring is by no means a task for the faint-hearted. A delicate balance between legality and practicality needs to be maintained. The focus of this paper is on the restructuring choices for not-for-profit organisations and groups in Queensland. It answers “how-to” questions and identifies some important restructuring issues

Genetic Analysis of the Endangered Gray Bat Species (Myotis grisescens)

This study attempts to analyze the genetics using specific haplotype sequences of the endangered gray bat to determine genetic events that have happened in the past as well as determining how the species population has changed over time. We were able to conduct a Tajima’s D test to investigate whether a potential bottleneck has occurred. A linear regression of the genetic vs. geographical distance was produced to investigate the patterns of haplotype distribution. The species past distribution was compared to the current distribution using known collected specimens. A map of future predictions was constructed using present and future climate layers to understand how the species distribution might fluctuate in the future. We found that a genetic bottleneck likely occurred in the past and that although there has been a decline in population in the past, the population is predicted to expand in the future

Misrepresentations of ADHD & Benefits of Inclusive Classroom Training

The question of whether attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is over-diagnosed in adolescents has been a recent topic of research. Through research studies, a trend for potential over-diagnosis has been found. Misdiagnosis and over-diagnosis mainly occur due to societal norms clouding perceptions of the disorder. (Bruchmüller et al., 2012) Classroom inclusivity is an area that could potentially improve misdiagnosis and over-diagnosis of ADHD. Inclusive classroom training can spread both awareness and understanding about the disorder, ultimately reducing misconceptions about ADHD. The present study explored several hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: Students’ perception of their ADHD knowledge is not correlated with their actual knowledge of ADHD. Hypothesis 2: Pre-service teachers will more accurately refer students who display ADHD than the general population of student participants. Hypothesis 3: Students with more inclusive classroom training will more accurately refer students who display ADHD.https://scholar.dominican.edu/ug-student-posters/1096/thumbnail.jp

Achieving dynamic road traffic management by distributed risk estimation in vehicular networks

In this thesis I develop a model for a dynamic and fine-grained approach to traffic management based around the concept of a risk limit: an acceptable or allowable level of accident risk which vehicles must not exceed. Using a vehicular network to exchange risk data, vehicles calculate their current level of accident risk and determine their behaviour in a distributed fashion in order to meet this limit. I conduct experimental investigations to determine the effectiveness of this model, showing that it is possible to achieve gains in road system utility in terms of average vehicle speed and overall throughput whilst maintaining the accident rate. I also extend this model to include risk-aware link choice and social link choice, in which vehicles make routing decisions based on both their own utility and the utility of following vehicles. I develop a coupled risk estimation algorithm in which vehicles use not only their own risk calculations but also estimates received from neighbouring vehicles in order to arrive at a final risk value. I then analyse the performance of this algorithm in terms of its convergence rate and bandwidth usage and examine how to manage the particular characteristics of a vehicular ad-hoc network, such as its dynamic topology and high node mobility. I then implement a variable-rate beaconing scheme to provide a trade-off between risk estimate error and network resource usage

Allocation of Heterogeneous Resources of an IoT Device to Flexible Services

Internet of Things (IoT) devices can be equipped with multiple heterogeneous network interfaces. An overwhelmingly large amount of services may demand some or all of these interfaces' available resources. Herein, we present a precise mathematical formulation of assigning services to interfaces with heterogeneous resources in one or more rounds. For reasonable instance sizes, the presented formulation produces optimal solutions for this computationally hard problem. We prove the NP-Completeness of the problem and develop two algorithms to approximate the optimal solution for big instance sizes. The first algorithm allocates the most demanding service requirements first, considering the average cost of interfaces resources. The second one calculates the demanding resource shares and allocates the most demanding of them first by choosing randomly among equally demanding shares. Finally, we provide simulation results giving insight into services splitting over different interfaces for both cases.Comment: IEEE Internet of Things Journa

Introducing Sydney Journal

This is the first issue of a new journal, the Sydney Journal, which is part of the Dictionary of Sydney Project. The purpose of the journal is to provide an opportunity for a more academic presentation of some of the scholarship being generated by the project, complete with the rigours of academic peer reviewing. In preparing the first issue, it became clear that we wanted also to include a range of the less academic, but no less interesting, work being done on Sydney’s people and suburbs for the project. This first issue contains examples of each of these three types of contribution

Trading Accuracy and Resource Usage in Highly Dynamic Vehicular Networks

Vehicular networks bring new ways of viewing road traffic management and safety applications. For the first time, it will be possible for vehicles to exchange information and build fine-grained knowledge about the current situation, estimating risks and adapting their driving. Central to these applications is the need to exchange information in a highly dynamic environment, building a view of the current situa- tion before the conditions change. This is turn requires the distributed algorithms used to converge on low error margins quickly. In this paper, we investigate the performance of such a distributed algorithm which aims to build a common assessment of the risk level among vehicles to trade off accident risks with road throughput. In particular, we examine how the convergence rate is affected by network size and node density, and also how the error in the algorithm’s output is affected by the rate at which nodes send out update beacons. We develop a variable-rate beaconing scheme in order to find a trade-off between accuracy of outputs and network resource usage. We then formulate this as a more general optimisation problem applicable to other applications or distributed algorithmic prob- lems in highly dynamic distributed systems such as VANETs

Intrusion Detection in Digital Twins for Industrial Control Systems

Nowadays, the growth of advanced technologies is paving the way for Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and making them more efficient and smarter. However, this makes ICS more connected to communication networks that provide a potential platform for attackers to intrude into the systems and cause damage and catastrophic consequences. In this paper, we propose implementing digital twins that have been equipped with an intrusion detection algorithm. Our novel algorithm is able to detect attacks in a timely manner and also diagnose the type of attack by classification of different types of attacks. With digital twins, which are a new concept in ICS, we have virtual replicas of physical systems so that they precisely mirror the internal behavior of the physical systems. So by placing the intrusion detection algorithm in digital twins, security tests can be done remotely without risking negative impacts on live systems

Synchronization in Digital Twins for Industrial Control Systems

Digital twins, which are a new concept in industrial control systems (ICS), play a key role in realizing the vision of a smart factory, and they can have different effective use cases. With digital twins, we have virtual replicas of physical systems so that they precisely mirror the internal behavior of the physical systems. Hence, synchronization is necessary to keep the states of digital twins in sync with those of their physical counterparts. Otherwise, their behavior may be different from each other, and it can lead to wrong decisions about the system that can have catastrophic consequences. In this paper, we propose three different architectures for digital twins, and then by investigating their ability to follow the physical system's behavior, we will determine the best architecture, whose output has the lowest error compared with the physical system's output.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure