Environmental quality and health in the elderly; The Australian situation and international comparison. The elderly are a vulnerable population group that should receive particular attention in health policy. They are a group of considerable and growing size that contributes disproportionately to total health burden. Although residential environment is likely to influence health and well-being among the elderly, the evidence-base for appropriate policy and practice is lacking. Improved understa ....Environmental quality and health in the elderly; The Australian situation and international comparison. The elderly are a vulnerable population group that should receive particular attention in health policy. They are a group of considerable and growing size that contributes disproportionately to total health burden. Although residential environment is likely to influence health and well-being among the elderly, the evidence-base for appropriate policy and practice is lacking. Improved understanding of the role of relevant environmental factors could lead to substantially reduced morbidity and mortality (and associated costs) for the key outcomes: falls, and cardiovascular and respiratory disease. Results will contribute to the international evidence-base in this increasingly critical area of research, policy, and practice. Read moreRead less
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
Development of Knowledge Discovery for High Dimensional Biomedical Data. The recent progress in experimental techniques of molecular genetics has made available a wealth of genome data and raised the interest for analysis of DNA sequences. As the human and mouse genome projects are in a phase of systematic sequencing, computational tools based on concepts used in science fields have recently played a prominent role. Significant contributions to this project will increasingly depend upon original ....Development of Knowledge Discovery for High Dimensional Biomedical Data. The recent progress in experimental techniques of molecular genetics has made available a wealth of genome data and raised the interest for analysis of DNA sequences. As the human and mouse genome projects are in a phase of systematic sequencing, computational tools based on concepts used in science fields have recently played a prominent role. Significant contributions to this project will increasingly depend upon original application and development of algorithms for the analysis of genomic data, and of the computational systems that support them. These challenges have fostered major progress in computer science, leading to collaborative research of global significance.Read moreRead less
A comparison of housing wealth and the welfare behaviour of Australians and Britons. This comparison of housing wealth as a cushion against adverse life course events in Australia and the UK will improve understanding of how government interventions impede or promote homeowner ability to unlock housing equity to meet welfare needs and uncover types of events precipitating housing equity withdrawal, and the ways this helps or hinders wellbeing in subsequent years of a household's life course. Giv ....A comparison of housing wealth and the welfare behaviour of Australians and Britons. This comparison of housing wealth as a cushion against adverse life course events in Australia and the UK will improve understanding of how government interventions impede or promote homeowner ability to unlock housing equity to meet welfare needs and uncover types of events precipitating housing equity withdrawal, and the ways this helps or hinders wellbeing in subsequent years of a household's life course. Given the paucity of knowledge about consequences of housing equity withdrawal, anticipated national benefits of this research include greater appreciation of sensible and sustainable use of housing equity withdrawal and sound management of the accompanying debt. Outcomes will impact positively on the priority area, Ageing Well, Ageing Productively.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
Trauma and Unwanted Memories. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a potentially debilitating condition that affects survivors of trauma. Intrusive memories of the trauma is the key problem in people with PTSD. This project will attempt to understand intrusive memories and will clarify why these memories persist. Outcomes from this project will directly assist people with PTSD because it will enhance understanding of a key symptom that maintains the disorder.
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
User-Driven Composition of Web Services. Web service composition technology promises to revolutionise the way in which organisations interact over the Web. However existing environments for the composition of Web services are too complex to use and are usually intended for experienced application developers as they rely either on scripting languages, or on a process-modelling notations intended to be used by IT experts. However, the need for customised composition of Web services is likely to em ....User-Driven Composition of Web Services. Web service composition technology promises to revolutionise the way in which organisations interact over the Web. However existing environments for the composition of Web services are too complex to use and are usually intended for experienced application developers as they rely either on scripting languages, or on a process-modelling notations intended to be used by IT experts. However, the need for customised composition of Web services is likely to emanate from non IT-experts.
The project aims at designing, implementing, and evaluating an environment for the specification and execution of composite Web services by non-expert.Read moreRead less
Privacy-preserving Web Services Composition. Web services composition is emerging as a promising technology for the
effective automation of business-to-business collaborations. It allows
organizations to form alliances by connecting their applications and systems, in order to offer ``one-stops shops'' for their customers. However, several important issues (e.g., security and privacy) need to be properly addressed before Web services technology meets the requirements of critical applications s ....Privacy-preserving Web Services Composition. Web services composition is emerging as a promising technology for the
effective automation of business-to-business collaborations. It allows
organizations to form alliances by connecting their applications and systems, in order to offer ``one-stops shops'' for their customers. However, several important issues (e.g., security and privacy) need to be properly addressed before Web services technology meets the requirements of critical applications such as e-goverment. This project aims at providing privacy preserving Web services composition techniques. The anticipated outcome of this project is a service composition framework that provides seamless interoperability between different Web services without violiating citizens and organisations privacy.Read moreRead less
Redefining bullying and adjustment to school: Japanese and Australian. School violence is an all too prevalent physically, socially, and psychologically damaging aspect of the everyday life of a significant portion of school students around the world. The aim of this collaborative Linkage Award is to compare Australian and Japanese school students's understanding of bullying, its stability over time and its association with school adjustment. This comparative research breaks new ground in inve ....Redefining bullying and adjustment to school: Japanese and Australian. School violence is an all too prevalent physically, socially, and psychologically damaging aspect of the everyday life of a significant portion of school students around the world. The aim of this collaborative Linkage Award is to compare Australian and Japanese school students's understanding of bullying, its stability over time and its association with school adjustment. This comparative research breaks new ground in investigating the particularly damaging form of bullying known as indirect/relational bullying. The research is part of a larger international consortium including China, Canada and Korea. The outcomes from this research will be reported back to the consortium, presented at international conferences , published and used to inform school intervention programsRead moreRead less