Assessing Cadastre 2034 to Develop a Federated Cadastral System in New South Wales Australia: Mixed Methods Research Approach

Cadastre 2034 is a National Strategy developed by the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM) for cadastral reform and innovation for Australia and one of the goals is to develop a federated cadastral system. It states to define governance and administration on a federal level by unifying the existing systems with uniform standards, policies, guidelines and legislation and to allow further work towards a global cadastre. The aim of this research paper is to explore the behaviours and attitudes of New South Wales (NSW) cadastre towards a federated cadastral system assessing the best practice of federated cadastre global cases that may be applied locally in Australia. Mixed Methods Research (MMR) methodology was used, involving both quantitative and qualitative research to understand, identify and frame the cadastral data to determine and analyse the key issues and factors in implementing a federated cadastral system in New South Wales (NSW). A literature review, a questionnaire survey and interviews were used to collect the quantitative and qualitative data. A sequential MMR design framework was used a questionnaire survey followed by interviews. The questionnaire was sent out to 215 industry and government participants and resulted 71 completed surveys. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 9 participants. The linking of quantitative and qualitative data occurred at the design-level, where results from the first phase were used to build the second phase of research design. It was explored that strong historical foundations, regressive reaction of governments and institutions, and a lack of understanding of the significance of cadastral reform were the key hindering factors to develop a federated cadastral system in NSW. The resulting analysis could be contributed to a better implementation of a federated cadastral system in NSW benefitting private, and public institutions

Mitigating Gender Bias in Machine Learning Data Sets

Artificial Intelligence has the capacity to amplify and perpetuate societal biases and presents profound ethical implications for society. Gender bias has been identified in the context of employment advertising and recruitment tools, due to their reliance on underlying language processing and recommendation algorithms. Attempts to address such issues have involved testing learned associations, integrating concepts of fairness to machine learning and performing more rigorous analysis of training data. Mitigating bias when algorithms are trained on textual data is particularly challenging given the complex way gender ideology is embedded in language. This paper proposes a framework for the identification of gender bias in training data for machine learning.The work draws upon gender theory and sociolinguistics to systematically indicate levels of bias in textual training data and associated neural word embedding models, thus highlighting pathways for both removing bias from training data and critically assessing its impact.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 5 Tables, Presented as Bias2020 workshop (as part of the ECIR Conference) - http://bias.disim.univaq.i

Recycled additive manufacturing feedstocks with carboxylated multi-walled carbon nanotubes toward the detection of yellow fever virus cDNA

Recycled additive manufacturing sensing platforms are fabricated with carboxylated multi-walled carbon nanotubes (COOH-MWCNT) with exhibit enhanced electrochemical biosensor performance allowing for the enhanced direct coupling of the biorecognition element to the COOH-MWCNT for the preparation of an electrochemical genosensor for the detection of yellow fever virus cDNA. Bespoke additive manufacturing filaments was produced using recycled poly(lactic acid) (rPLA, 65 wt%), polyethylene succinate (PES, 10 wt%), carbon black (CB, 15 wt%), and COOH-MWCNT (10 wt%) which exhibits enhanced electrochemical performance over that of commercial filament. A bespoke all-in-one additive manufactured electroanalytical cell is proposed, with the working, reference and counter electrodes in addition to a modification rim that allows for the facile production of biosensors through the application of droplets. The genosensor was applied to the detection of yellow fever Virus cDNA using anodic square wave voltammetry; a linear dynamic range (LDR) of 0.5–15 µM with an R2 of 0.9995, sensitivity of 177 ± 2 µA µM−1, limit of detection (LOD) of 0.138 µM, and limit of quantification (LOQ) of 0.859 µM were obtained. This work highlights how bespoke additive manufacturing filament production can enhance biosensing platforms, whilst using recycled feedstock to improve end-product sustainability

Effects of multiple fires on tree invasion in montane grasslands

There is circumstantial evidence that grasslands on the Bunya Mountains were once maintained by Aboriginal burning, and with lack of fire under European management are being colonised by trees. To assess the efficacy of burning for maintaining grasslands, 119 fires were lit between 1996 and 2006. The total area of unburnt grasslands decreased by 27%, while grasslands burnt at least once decreased by 1%. The density of invading trees was recorded from fixed plots on 23 grasslands burnt between one and six times. Cassinia was virtually eliminated and the density of the Rainforest species guild slowly but continually declined. Acacia irrorata exhibited a humped response, with initial increases resulting from vegetative resprouting and gradual decline with persistent burning. Phyllodinous Acacia and Woodland trees were the least fire sensitive guilds, having stable or increased density with repeated burning. Multi-factor regression modelling detected no significant relationships between changes in woody plant density and the interval between fires, fire intensity, the initial density of large trees, an index of soil moisture, or the cumulative number of fires for any species guild. The survivorship of both Cassinia and Rainforest guilds was significantly lower with summer burning than winter burning, but a seasonal effect of burning was not evident for other guilds. The findings suggest that regardless of fire conditions, frequent burning will reduce the number of adult trees, maintain resprouts in an immature state, facilitate further fire and reduce the rate of grassland loss. Woodland species are especially resilient to fire, and burning to maintain grassy ecosystems will be most successful where the main colonisers are rainforest species and burning is conducted in summer. The findings suggest that the montane grasslands of the Bunya Mountains were maintained by anthropogenic burning and active fire management will prolong their existence

Nonuniform Internal Structure of Fibrin Fibers: Protein Density and Bond Density Strongly Decrease with Increasing Diameter

The major structural component of a blood clot is a meshwork of fibrin fibers. It has long been thought that the internal structure of fibrin fibers is homogeneous; that is, the protein density and the bond density between protofibrils are uniform and do not depend on fiber diameter. We performed experiments to investigate the internal structure of fibrin fibers. We formed fibrin fibers with fluorescently labeled fibrinogen and determined the light intensity of a fiber, I, as a function of fiber diameter, D. The intensity and, thus, the total number of fibrin molecules in a cross-section scaled as D¹·⁴. This means that the protein density (fibrin per cross-sectional area), Pp, is not homogeneous but instead strongly decreases with fiber diameter as D⁻⁰·⁶. Thinner fibers are denser than thicker fibers. We also determined Young’s modulus, Y, as a function of fiber diameter. Y decreased strongly with increasing D; Y scaled as D⁻¹·⁵. This implies that the bond density, Pb, also scales as D⁻¹·⁵. Thinner fibers are stiffer than thicker fibers. Our data suggest that fibrin fibers have a dense, well-connected core and a sparse, loosely connected periphery. In contrast, electrospun fibrinogen fibers, used as a control, have a homogeneous cross-section

Advances in transparent planar optics. Enabling large aperture, ultrathin lenses

Unlike electronics, optics do not follow Moore's law. This statement, expressed by Microsoft's Bernard Kress, refers to the hard challenges to solve in augmented reality hardware. While light sources have undergone numerous revolutions from candles to light emitting diodes, the evolution in transparent optics has been much slower. For transparent materials, variation of the shape, bulk refractive index, and/or its distribution leads to control of the transmitted beam in an optical system. An alternative, the control of the optical axis orientation in an anisotropic material in transparent micrometer-thin films on a variety of substrates, is explored here. In contrast to metamaterials, these diffractive waveplates have a continuous structure allowing multilayer/multifunctional planar optical systems with close to 100% efficiency across broad bands of wavelengths (ultraviolet to infrared) with customizable spectra. The low-cost and fast fabrication technology of this fourth generation of optics is scalable to very large aperture sizes. In addition to wearable adaptive optics, the technology enables thin and compact non-mechanical fast beam steering systems for light detection and ultralight space telescopes. This review will first serve as an introduction to these unique transparent, planar optical films, and then recent advances enabled by specific optical designs will be presented