Real constitutional reform after Fitzgerald: Still waiting for Godot

The Fitzgerald Inquiry, although initially focused upon matters such as maladministration and corruption, placed significant emphasis on the reform of Queensland’s political and public administration system as a whole. It is therefore in relation to its practical impact within the context of that system that the Fitzgerald Report ought to be assesses. However, despite widespread support for the report’s recommendations, recent events in Queensland concerning such matters as corruption, maladministration, lobbying, cronyism and secrecy suggest that the report has failed to deliver on its most basic objectives. This article argues that although the Fitzgerald Report drew attention to and sought to address systemic problems of various kinds, it has largely failed in its intentions because the changes that it proposed could not be sustained in the context of Queensland’s existing constitutional framework and particular system of Westminster democracy, especially its high level of executive domination operating in the context of a unicameral parliament. The fact that so many of the Fitzgerald reforms were left to be sorted out by post-commission agencies working in such an environment means real reform has failed to flourish. Consequently, the Fitzgerald Report has met the same fate as so many other public inquiries into corruption in Australia, resulting in only minimal change to the way government is actually conducted. While as a result of the Fitzgerald Inquiry there has been widespread institutional restructuring in Queensland, the way of doing business in that state has hardly changed at all

Open University Learning Analytics dataset

Learning Analytics focuses on the collection and analysis of learners’ data to improve their learning experience by providing informed guidance and to optimise learning materials. To support the research in this area we have developed a dataset, containing data from courses presented at the Open University (OU). What makes the dataset unique is the fact that it contains demographic data together with aggregated clickstream data of students’ interactions in the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). This enables the analysis of student behaviour, represented by their actions. The dataset contains the information about 22 courses, 32,593 students, their assessment results, and logs of their interactions with the VLE represented by daily summaries of student clicks (10,655,280 entries). The dataset is freely available at https://analyse.kmi.open.ac.uk/open_dataset under a CC-BY 4.0 license

Theoretical Support to the NOKO Experiments

Several approaches have been undertaken in a number of European countries to study and demonstrate the feasibility of innovative passive safety systems. The European BWR R&D Cluster combines experimental and analytical efforts that are mainly directed to the introduction of passive safety systems into boiling water reactor technology. The main objectives are to use the large scale European test facilities NOKO (Jülich, Germany), PANDA, LINX (Villingen, Switzerland), PANTHERS (Piacenza, Italy) as well as the demonstration power plant Dodewaard (Netherlands) for a synergistic experimental R&D program. The project should additionally contribute to validating and improving thermalhydraulic computer codes. In 1997 a BWR Physics and Thermohydraulic Complementary Action (BWRCA) was established to further assist and broaden the objectives of the EU BWR R&D Cluster. The work presented in this report is performed in the Workpackage Theoretical support to the NOKO experiments and divided into three tasks: Implementation of two phase flow instrumentation, ATHLET calculations of NOKO experiments and approach for the optimization of passive components. FZR is developing two phase flow measurement instrumentation (e.g. conductivity probes), which is installed in parallel to the emergency condenser test bundle. The experimental data are used for the validation of the improved ATHLET condensation model. The evaluation of these experiments shows an undesired accumulation of noncondensable gases in front of the water level and give valuable insights to the phenomena caused by noncondensables. An improved twophase flow instrumentation is suggested based on the collected experience and taking into account the detected problems. Within the BWRCA FZR had performed 10 post test calculations and an additional blind test calculation of NOKO experiments. The results of these calculations are presented and discussed in detail. These calculations show that ATHLET is able to perform proper calculations. At least goals for an optimization of the emergency condenser are discussed. This is desirable because it allows the decrease of the pressurized BWR surface and the possibility of leakages

A vision based target detection system for docking of an autonomous underwater vehicle

This paper describes the development and preliminary experimental evaluation of a visionbased docking system to allow an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) to identify and attach itself to a set of uniquely identifiable targets. These targets, docking poles, are detected using Haar rectangular features and rotation of integral images. A non-holonomic controller allows the Starbug AUV to orient itself with respect to the target whilst maintaining visual contact during the manoeuvre. Experimental results show the proposed vision system is capable of robustly identifying a pair of docking poles simultaneously in a variety of orientations and lighting conditions. Experiments in an outdoor pool show that this vision system enables the AUV to dock autonomously from a distance of up to 4m with relatively low visibility

Validation of the multiple velocity multiple size group (CFX10.0 N x M MUSIG) model for polydispersed multiphase flows

To simulate dispersed two-phase flows CFD tools for predicting the local particle number density and the size distribution are required. These quantities do not only have a significant effect on rates of mixing, heterogeneous chemical reaction rates or interfacial heat and mass transfers, but also a direct relevance to the hydrodynamics of the total system, such as the flow pattern and flow regime. The Multiple Size Group (MUSIG) model available in the commercial codes CFX-4 and CFX-5 was developed for this purpose. Mathematically, this model is based on the population balance method and the two-fluid modeling approach. The dispersed phase is divided into N size classes. In order to reduce the computational cost, all size groups are assumed to share the same velocity field. This model allows to use a sufficient number of particle size groups required for the coalescence and breakup calculation. Nevertheless, the assumption also restricts its applicability to homogeneous dispersed flows. We refer to the CFX MUSIG model mentioned above as the homogeneous model, which fails to predict the correct phase distribution when heterogeneous particle motion becomes important. In many flows the non-drag forces play an essential role with respect to the bubble motion. Especially, the lift force acting on large deformed bubbles, which is dominated by the asymmetrical wake, has a direction opposite to the shear induced lift force on a small bubble. This bubble separation cannot be predicted by the homogeneous MUSIG model. In order to overcome this shortcoming we developed an efficient inhomogeneous MUSIG model in cooperation with ANSYS CFX. A novel multiple velocity multiple size group model, which incorporates the population balance equation into the multi-fluid modeling framework, was proposed. The validation of this new model is discussed in this report

Dynamic film thickness between bubbles and wall in a narrow channel

The present paper describes a novel technique to characterize the behavior of the liquid film between gas bubbles and the wall in a narrow channel. The method is based on the electrical conductance. Two liquid film sensors are installed on both opposite walls in a narrow rectangular channel. The liquid film thickness underneath the gas bubbles is recorded by the first sensor, while the void fraction information is obtained by measuring the conductance between the pair of opposite sensors. Both measurements are taken on a large two-dimensional domain and with a high speed. This makes it possible to obtain the two-dimensional distribution of the dynamic liquid film between the bubbles and the wall. In this study, this method was applied to an air-water flow ranging from bubbly to churn regimes in the narrow channel with a gap width of 1.5m