Description:
Introduction The Regent Honeyeater Project commenced ecological restoration in the Lurg district in 1994, with an aim to restore habitats for the critically endangered Regent Honeyeater Anthochaera phrygia and a range of other threatened and declining species. Within this context, our study aimed to explore whether plant reproduction can be an effective measure of ecological restoration success. Methods Evaluation involved comparing attributes at unrestored, restored and remnant sites to establish whether sites displayed evidence of a clear restoration trajectory. Five age classes (unrestored, 4–6 years old, 8–10 years old, 12–14 years old and remnant areas) and two landforms (upper hills and lower hills) were considered. The diversity of woody plant species—which have easily recognisable reproductive material and which all recruit seedlings—provides easily measured parameters that have the potential to allow the determination of early establishment success and long-term ecological development of restored ecosystems. Results Restoration plantings developed in a hybrid state towards a benchmark in the lower hills; seedling species composition differed significantly among age classes, increasing in similarity with time since restoration, with some divergence from the target pathway. Composition of functional groups with reproductive outputs was also significantly different among age classes; however, a restoration trajectory was only evident in the upper hills where sites converged towards the target goal. Conclusions Divergence or deviation from the restoration trajectory was not deemed to be a restoration failure, as the variety of functional groups with fruits and diversity of seedlings recruiting indicated a potential increase in resilience in the future due to greater variability across the landscape. Plant recruitment was effective in detecting development trends towards a restoration target in this study and therefore may be a useful measure that contributes to determining ecological restoration success
Description:
Introduction The Regent Honeyeater Project commenced ecological restoration in the Lurg district in 1994, with an aim to restore habitats for the critically endangered Regent Honeyeater Anthochaera phrygia and a range of other threatened and declining species. Within this context, our study aimed to explore whether plant reproduction can be an effective measure of ecological restoration success. Methods Evaluation involved comparing attributes at unrestored, restored and remnant sites to establish whether sites displayed evidence of a clear restoration trajectory. Five age classes (unrestored, 4–6 years old, 8–10 years old, 12–14 years old and remnant areas) and two landforms (upper hills and lower hills) were considered. The diversity of woody plant species—which have easily recognisable reproductive material and which all recruit seedlings—provides easily measured parameters that have the potential to allow the determination of early establishment success and long-term ecological development of restored ecosystems. Results Restoration plantings developed in a hybrid state towards a benchmark in the lower hills; seedling species composition differed significantly among age classes, increasing in similarity with time since restoration, with some divergence from the target pathway. Composition of functional groups with reproductive outputs was also significantly different among age classes; however, a restoration trajectory was only evident in the upper hills where sites converged towards the target goal. Conclusions Divergence or deviation from the restoration trajectory was not deemed to be a restoration failure, as the variety of functional groups with fruits and diversity of seedlings recruiting indicated a potential increase in resilience in the future due to greater variability across the landscape. Plant recruitment was effective in detecting development trends towards a restoration target in this study and therefore may be a useful measure that contributes to determining ecological restoration success
Description:
Nowadays, body area wireless sensor networks (BAWSNs) applications are increasingly being used in in-house health monitoring systems. These applications have stringent timing requirements and often run continuously without interruptions. Hence, it becomes imperative to determine the operational continuity of the BAWSN applications by measuring their availability. The BAWSN applications rely on the collection of data within a critical time from all of the source sensor nodes rather than the data from an individual source. Subsequently, the measure of availability for a BAWSN application should be based on the time and the data delivery from all the sensor nodes. Taking into account these specific characteristics and the constraints of the BAWSN, we develop a model to measure the availability of a BAWSN application based on the unavailable time. The proposed model is evaluated through a series of experiments conducted in our existing Assistive Care Loop Framework (ACLF). Furthermore, we also develop an analogous theoretical model to evaluate the availability of a BAWSN application
Description:
In a distributed, dynamic and volatile operating environment, runtime anomalies occurring in service-oriented systems (SOSs) must be located and fixed in a timely manner in order to guarantee successful delivery of outcomes in response to user requests. Monitoring all component services constantly and inspecting the entire SOS upon a runtime anomaly are impractical due to excessive resource and time consumption required, especially in large-scale scenarios. We present a spectrum-based approach that goes through a five-phase process to quickly localize runtime anomalies occurring in SOSs based on end-to-end system delays. Upon runtime anomalies, our approach calculates the similarity coefficient for each basic component (BC) of the SOS to evaluate their suspiciousness of being faulty. Our approach also calculates the delay coefficients to evaluate each BC's contribution to the severity of the end-to-end system delays. Finally, the BCs are ranked by their similarity coefficient scores and delay coefficient scores to determine the order of them being inspected. Extensive experiments are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach. The results indicate that our approach significantly outperforms random inspection and the popular Ochiai-based inspection in localizing single and multiple runtime anomalies effectively. Thus, our approach can help save time and effort for localizing runtime anomalies occuring in SOSs.
Description:
Objective To develop and determine the psychometrics properties of an instrument (V-scale) and to explore nurses' attitudes towards vital signs monitoring in the detection of clinical deterioration in general wards. Design Scale development with psychometric testing and a descriptive quantitative survey. Setting Tertiary acute care hospital. Participants A total of 614 general ward nurses. Findings Principal component analysis revealed a 16-item instrument in a five-factor solution (key indicators, knowledge, communication, workload and technology) that explained 56.27% of the variance. The internal consistency was sufficient with Cronbach's alpha of 0.71 and strong item subscale correlations (0.56–0.89). The test–retest reliability was adequate with an Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) of 0.85. Many nurses (56.9%) erroneously perceived blood pressure changes as the first indicator of deterioration, and 46% agreed that an altered respiratory rate was the least important indicator. Most nurses (59.8%) also reported relying on oxygen saturation to evaluate respiratory dysfunction, and 27.4% indicated that they make quick estimates of the respiratory rate. Current practices for vital signs monitoring were considered to be time consuming (21.0%) and overwhelming (35.3%). Nurses' attitudes were most significantly influenced by whether they had a degree qualification followed by whether they worked in a general ward with a specialty and had >5 years of experience. Conclusions This exploratory study provides evidence for the psychometric properties of the V-scale. It reveals a need for continuous professional development to improve ward nurses' attitudes towards vital signs monitoring. Vital signs monitoring needs to be prioritized in workload planning.
Description:
The purpose of this paper is to investigate predictors of workers’ job satisfaction from the labour process and equity theoretical perspectives. The study employed a qualitative approach and draws on data from in depth focus groups of customer service representatives (CSR). The sample for this study was drawn from three Australian call centres operating in a variety of business sectors. The study highlights that three dimensions: monitoring, flexibility and work environment are significantly correlated to CSR job satisfaction. Developing an understanding of these dimensions is critical to understanding CSR job satisfaction perceptions in an industry which exhibits high labour turnover and absenteeism. This study provides new insights on how to manage effectively job satisfaction within call centre environments through the incorporation of more multi-dimensional aspects that are considered to be strong determinants of CSR job satisfaction. The study contributes to the literature by investigating a more multi-dimensional approach to studying job satisfaction in call centre environments. The intensive case study approach highlights the implications for HRM.
Description:
The purpose of this paper is to investigate predictors of workers’ job satisfaction from the labour process and equity theoretical perspectives. The study employed a qualitative approach and draws on data from in depth focus groups of customer service representatives (CSR). The sample for this study was drawn from three Australian call centres operating in a variety of business sectors. The study highlights that three dimensions: monitoring, flexibility and work environment are significantly correlated to CSR job satisfaction. Developing an understanding of these dimensions is critical to understanding CSR job satisfaction perceptions in an industry which exhibits high labour turnover and absenteeism. This study provides new insights on how to manage effectively job satisfaction within call centre environments through the incorporation of more multi-dimensional aspects that are considered to be strong determinants of CSR job satisfaction. The study contributes to the literature by investigating a more multi-dimensional approach to studying job satisfaction in call centre environments. The intensive case study approach highlights the implications for HRM.
Description:
Continuous, remote monitoring of patients using wearable sensors can facilitate early detection of many conditions and can help to manage the growing healthcare crisis worldwide. A remote patient monitoring application consists of many emerging services such as wireless wearable sensor configuration, patient registration and authentication, collaborative consultation of doctors, storage and maintenance of electronic health record. The provision of these services requires the development and maintenance of a remote healthcare monitoring application (HMA) that includes a body area wireless sensor network (BASWN) and Health Applications (HA) to detect specific health issues. In addition, the deployment of HMAs for different hospitals is not easily scalable owing to the heterogeneous nature of hardware and software involved. Cloud computing overcomes this aspect by allowing simple and easy maintenance of ICT infrastructure. In this work, we report a realtime- like cloud based architecture known as Assistive Patient monitoring cloud Platform for Active healthcare applications (AppA) using a delegate pattern. The built AppA is highly scalable and capable of spawning new instances based on the monitoring requirements from the health care providers, and is aligned with scalable economic models.
Description:
Continuous, remote monitoring of patients using wearable sensors can facilitate early detection of many conditions and can help to manage the growing healthcare crisis worldwide. A remote patient monitoring application consists of many emerging services such as wireless wearable sensor configuration, patient registration and authentication, collaborative consultation of doctors, storage and maintenance of electronic health record. The provision of these services requires the development and maintenance of a remote healthcare monitoring application (HMA) that includes a body area wireless sensor network (BASWN) and Health Applications (HA) to detect specific health issues. In addition, the deployment of HMAs for different hospitals is not easily scalable owing to the heterogeneous nature of hardware and software involved. Cloud computing overcomes this aspect by allowing simple and easy maintenance of ICT infrastructure. In this work, we report a realtime- like cloud based architecture known as Assistive Patient monitoring cloud Platform for Active healthcare applications (AppA) using a delegate pattern. The built AppA is highly scalable and capable of spawning new instances based on the monitoring requirements from the health care providers, and is aligned with scalable economic models.
Description:
Recent alarming losses of insects from agricultural landscapes in multiple countries around the world have brought into sharp focus the urgent need to identify ways to manage these landscapes to avoid further biodiversity decline. Identifying the drivers of insect declines, such as land use change, is critical to this effort. We examined ant communities at the interface between remnant vegetation patches and three adjoining farmland types (wheat crop, rested from cropping and restoration plantings) in a fragmented landscape in temperate Australia. We asked: do ant communities and occurrence of individual species differ between remnant patches and farmlands with more intensive farmland use (restoration plantings < rested farmlands < wheat crop)? We recorded 13,283 ants belonging to 102 species from 30 genera. Excluding 21 singletons, 27 species only occurred in remnant patches compared to ten species found only in farmlands. Ant community composition in wheat crop and rested farmlands significantly differed from their adjacent remnant patches and were more homogeneous. In contrast, ant communities from restoration plantings in farmland were not significantly different in composition from those in the adjacent remnant patch. The large, aggressive Australian meat ant (Iridomyrmex purpureus) showed significantly higher occurrence in the remnant patch than all farmland types, and we suggest that the absence of this strongly interacting species from farmlands may have contributed to biotic homogenisation. Our findings show that native vegetation provides crucial habitat resources for many ant species that are not provided by farmlands, and native plantings can, in some cases, ameliorate negative effects of farmland clearing over relatively short time scales (<7 years). Agricultural intensification that involves loss of remnant native vegetation or reduced revegetation will contribute to ongoing losses and changes to ant biodiversity in farming landscapes. However, replanting native vegetation can lead to rapid restoration, signifying a possible simple remedy to insect declines.
Description:
Accurate and efficient identification of bat (Microchiroptera) echolocation calls has been hampered by poor knowledge of the intraspecific variability in calls (including regional variation), a lack of call parameters for use in separating species and the amount of time required to manually identify individual calls or call sequences We constructed and tested automated bat call identification keys for three regions in New South Wales, Australia, using over 4,000 reference calls in approximate to 300 call sequences per region. We used the program AnaScheme to extract time, frequency and shape parameters from calls recorded with the Anabat system Classification trees were built to separate species using these parameters and provided the decision rules for construction of the keys An 'Unknown' category was included in the keys for sequences that could not be confidently identified to species The reliability of the keys was tested automatically with AnaScheme, using independent ! sets of reference call sequences, and keys were refined before further testing on additional test sequences Regional keys contained 18-19 species or included species groups We report rates of sequence misidentification (accuracy) and correct identification (detection) relative to all sequences (including 'unknowns') used to test each version of a key. Refined versions of the keys were accurate, with total misidentification rates of 0 5-5 3% for the three regions Additionally, total correct identifications for regions were 56-75% (>= 50% for most species), an overall high rate of detection. When 'unknowns' were ignored, as is common in many published studies, correct identification for regions increased to 91-99%, rates which compare favourably to the most successful classifiers tested to date The future use of AnaScheme for automated bat call identification is promising, especially for the large-scale temporal and spatial acoustic sampling to which Anabat is particularly suited.
Description:
This paper offers the design and prototype technology of a tactile sensor, based on the principle of surface texture recognition, capable of monitoring slip in robotic grasping. The sensor has been mounted onto a parallel gripper jaw of a robot. The integrated system of tactile sensor, gripper, robot and the system control, in real life experiments, has proven itself capable of slip detection and adjusting adequate grasping force preventing objects from falling down. Several experiments have been carried out with the newly developed system for grasping a number of various object-samples. Success rate of the system for testing in slip detection and adjusting adequate grasping force in experiments was about 85% in average.
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**Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Philip Barton” is provided in this record**
Description:
**Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Philip Barton” is provided in this record**