Spatial Cognition—Expressive Representation Formalisms and Effective Reasoning Mechanisms. The project will contribute significantly to the advancement of knowledge in breakthrough science in qualitative spatial reasoning and smart information use in geographic information systems. Expressive spatial languages are important in organising spatial knowledge, defining spatial query languages and guiding spatial data mining. Effective spatial reasoning mechanisms bring theory closer to applications ....Spatial Cognition—Expressive Representation Formalisms and Effective Reasoning Mechanisms. The project will contribute significantly to the advancement of knowledge in breakthrough science in qualitative spatial reasoning and smart information use in geographic information systems. Expressive spatial languages are important in organising spatial knowledge, defining spatial query languages and guiding spatial data mining. Effective spatial reasoning mechanisms bring theory closer to applications including consistency checking and spatial query pre-processing. The project will help in extracting knowledge from massive spatial databases, meeting the growing needs of naive users for spatial information and establishing Australia as a major player in spatial cognition research and in the development of geo-location services.Read moreRead less
Integrating holistic processing and face-space approaches to the perception of facial identity. Recognising faces is a socially crucial task, and humans are remarkably good at it. Scientists investigating the 'software' our brains use to recognise faces have referred to two different theories -- one when explaining why we distinguish faces better than objects, and the other in explaining why we distinguish some people's faces more easily than others. The project aims to integrate these two theor ....Integrating holistic processing and face-space approaches to the perception of facial identity. Recognising faces is a socially crucial task, and humans are remarkably good at it. Scientists investigating the 'software' our brains use to recognise faces have referred to two different theories -- one when explaining why we distinguish faces better than objects, and the other in explaining why we distinguish some people's faces more easily than others. The project aims to integrate these two theories. This has two potential long-term benefits: it will give a stronger basis for understanding what goes wrong in people where face recognition does not develop normally; and, the improved knowledge from a biological system may also lead to improved computer face recognition algorithms (eg. for airport security).Read moreRead less