Womens access to welfare after prison - an international comparison. The aim of the proposed research is to undertake an comparative analysis of the services accessed by female prisoners following their return to the community and the potential of these services to reduce re-offending. This analysis will build upon the current ARC project in Victoria and a similar project in Scotland. Scotland and Victoria provide an interesting focus for comparative research, having similar populations, similar ....Womens access to welfare after prison - an international comparison. The aim of the proposed research is to undertake an comparative analysis of the services accessed by female prisoners following their return to the community and the potential of these services to reduce re-offending. This analysis will build upon the current ARC project in Victoria and a similar project in Scotland. Scotland and Victoria provide an interesting focus for comparative research, having similar populations, similar numbers of women imprisoned and similar increases during the last decade in the daily female prison population. Moreover in both jurisdictions initiatives are being introduced to enhance women's access to services when they leave prison.
The purpose of the proposed research will be to develop and implement a framework for the comparative analysis of data on women's experiences after prison that will be generated by two funded studies in Scotland and Victoria.Read moreRead less
Automated Interaction Technologies for Mobile Hand-held Devices. This project is concerned with developing intelligent technologies that support human interaction through handheld devices, connected to wireless digital networks. Intelligent software assistants running on these devices will interact with one another in order to coordinate the activities of multiple users. Such automated coordination may facilitate scheduling of meetings, collaboration among different members of a team, and negoti ....Automated Interaction Technologies for Mobile Hand-held Devices. This project is concerned with developing intelligent technologies that support human interaction through handheld devices, connected to wireless digital networks. Intelligent software assistants running on these devices will interact with one another in order to coordinate the activities of multiple users. Such automated coordination may facilitate scheduling of meetings, collaboration among different members of a team, and negotiating conflicts that may arise between the activities of different connected users. This will enable context-dependent task support and coordination of workers involved in industrial applications involving mobility and dynamism.Read moreRead less
Opportunities of Media and Communication Technology to Support Social Networks of Urban Residents in Mexico, South Africa, UK and Australia. This project will build advanced knowledge of how urban neighbourhood communities can be assisted to grow in healthy ways by the use of new media and Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). By careful attention to cultural and social assets in the community, innovations will be engendered which enhance economic and social development. This will ....Opportunities of Media and Communication Technology to Support Social Networks of Urban Residents in Mexico, South Africa, UK and Australia. This project will build advanced knowledge of how urban neighbourhood communities can be assisted to grow in healthy ways by the use of new media and Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). By careful attention to cultural and social assets in the community, innovations will be engendered which enhance economic and social development. This will lead to greater social inclusion, fair access to and smart use of information and services, urban sustainability and healthier local economies. Understanding the opportunities afforded by digital augmentation of social networks will help Australians negotiate the complex web of daily choices, access a greater social safety net and participate in the socio-cultural and socio-economic life of their neighbourhood and city.Read moreRead less
Expressive power and complexity of temporal logics for model-checking. Hardware verification based upon mathematical logic is now routinely
used in industry to verify the correctness of large digital circuits
using a technique called model-checking. Such discrete systems move
from one state to another according to the regular ticks of a clock.
The challenge now is to find tractable methods for reasoning about
real-time systems and hybrid systems that move in a continuous manner
with respec ....Expressive power and complexity of temporal logics for model-checking. Hardware verification based upon mathematical logic is now routinely
used in industry to verify the correctness of large digital circuits
using a technique called model-checking. Such discrete systems move
from one state to another according to the regular ticks of a clock.
The challenge now is to find tractable methods for reasoning about
real-time systems and hybrid systems that move in a continuous manner
with respect to time: examples include aeroplanes flying according to
the laws of physics and a moving robot arm. We shall invent new logics
which are specifically tailored for tractable reasoning about
real-time and hybrid systems.Read moreRead less
Social Capital and Sustainable Development: An International Study. A collaborative international study of social capital and sustainability in local communities will address the following objectives: 1. to characterize the properties of networks that generate social capital and of network formation; and 2. to analyze the mechanisms by which social capital contributes to sustainable development. The project will involve intensive comparative case studies of five communities, three in Canada and ....Social Capital and Sustainable Development: An International Study. A collaborative international study of social capital and sustainability in local communities will address the following objectives: 1. to characterize the properties of networks that generate social capital and of network formation; and 2. to analyze the mechanisms by which social capital contributes to sustainable development. The project will involve intensive comparative case studies of five communities, three in Canada and two in Australia. Within each case community, an intensive qualitative and quantitative analysis will be conducted of the theorized mechanisms for the development of social capital and its mobilization for reconciliation of the ecological, economic and social imperatives required for sustainable development.
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Response style heterogeneity in empirical marketing research. This study aims to improve the validity of empirical studies by accounting for different ways in which respondents answer questionnaires (response styles) while analysing the data. Response styles have been shown to depend on the cultural background of respondents. This work therefore is of particular importance in Australia given the large number of cultural backgrounds residents come from. The proposed method will be empirically tes ....Response style heterogeneity in empirical marketing research. This study aims to improve the validity of empirical studies by accounting for different ways in which respondents answer questionnaires (response styles) while analysing the data. Response styles have been shown to depend on the cultural background of respondents. This work therefore is of particular importance in Australia given the large number of cultural backgrounds residents come from. The proposed method will be empirically tested in the context of surveys investigating sustainable tourism, public acceptance of alternative water sources and volunteering, three areas which are central to maintaining Australia's environmental sustainability and providing social and environmental services which are not covered by the commercial sector.Read moreRead less
Negotiating the minefield: Social conventions surrounding group criticism and their role in explaining defensiveness. People often describe the delivery of group criticism as a 'minefield', because of the potential for mistrust, hostility and defensiveness. When it comes to group criticism, being right is not enough; one must also obey certain conventions that are designed to minimize hurt and denial. In this project we explore for the first time what these 'rules of engagement' are, and what t ....Negotiating the minefield: Social conventions surrounding group criticism and their role in explaining defensiveness. People often describe the delivery of group criticism as a 'minefield', because of the potential for mistrust, hostility and defensiveness. When it comes to group criticism, being right is not enough; one must also obey certain conventions that are designed to minimize hurt and denial. In this project we explore for the first time what these 'rules of engagement' are, and what this means for those who wish to promote positive change in groups. This will have applied implications in that it will help provide specific recommendations regarding how to negotiate sensitive issues within a range of cultural, national, and corporate groups.Read moreRead less
Race and gender stereotypes on the brain: The case of emotion expression. Australia is a multicultural, multiethnic society in which people from different backgrounds interact every day. Successful interaction among persons from different backgrounds requires a mutual understanding of the manner in which emotions are expressed and perceived as emotions are a central part of any interaction. The current project will investigate whether there are systematic biases in the manner in which emotions ....Race and gender stereotypes on the brain: The case of emotion expression. Australia is a multicultural, multiethnic society in which people from different backgrounds interact every day. Successful interaction among persons from different backgrounds requires a mutual understanding of the manner in which emotions are expressed and perceived as emotions are a central part of any interaction. The current project will investigate whether there are systematic biases in the manner in which emotions are expressed and perceived within and across ethnic groups. It will rely on objective indices to achieve this aim, measures of the electrical activity of the brain. Read moreRead less
University of Queensland/Arizona State University partnership to design industrially suitable zeolite membranes for desalination. For desalination, the highest costs are organic-based membrane replacement (lasting ~1 year) and energy requirement. Functionalised zeolitic membranes are low-cost, high performing, chemically tolerant and thermally stable. New zeolite membranes in principle could perform the separation outlasting their organic counterparts, while at the same time offering major energ ....University of Queensland/Arizona State University partnership to design industrially suitable zeolite membranes for desalination. For desalination, the highest costs are organic-based membrane replacement (lasting ~1 year) and energy requirement. Functionalised zeolitic membranes are low-cost, high performing, chemically tolerant and thermally stable. New zeolite membranes in principle could perform the separation outlasting their organic counterparts, while at the same time offering major energy reductions from higher fluxes. Current zeolite membrane research for desalination however is lacking. The proposed team offers experience in bringing highly significant lab scale technologies to industrial scales. The outcomes will address mutual priorities between Australia and USA for reliable low cost supply of fresh water.Read moreRead less
Efficient data manipulation in document classification. Document Classification has an enormous relevance in an era where large amounts of textual information is available. Document Classification is based on statistical and machine learning techniques that model documents represented as points in a multidimensional space. The Computer Engineering Laboratory (CEL) has ongoing projects using neural networks and other techniques for document classification. We are developing a development environm ....Efficient data manipulation in document classification. Document Classification has an enormous relevance in an era where large amounts of textual information is available. Document Classification is based on statistical and machine learning techniques that model documents represented as points in a multidimensional space. The Computer Engineering Laboratory (CEL) has ongoing projects using neural networks and other techniques for document classification. We are developing a development environment for large classification tasks, and Prof. Lee¡¯s work will focus in managing large amounts of data for them. Using his experience in data compression, databases and web applications, he will produce a set of tools for handling Gigabytes of textual data in our classification environment.Read moreRead less