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Combatting infectious diarrhea: innovations in treatment and vaccination strategies
No full textINTRODUCTION: The escalating prevalence of infectious diseases is an important cause of concern in society. Particularly in several developing countries, infectious diarrhea poses a major problem, with a high fatality rate, especially among young children. The condition is divided into four classes, namely, acute diarrhea, invasive diarrhea, acute bloody diarrhea, and chronic diarrhea. Various pathogenic agents, such as bacteria, viruses, protozoans, and helminths, contribute to the onset of this condition.
AREAS COVERED: The review discusses the scenario of infectious diarrhea, the prevalent types, as well as approaches to management including preventive, therapeutic, and vaccination strategies. The vaccination techniques are extensively discussed including the available vaccines, their advantages as well as limitations.
EXPERT OPINION: There are several approaches available to develop new-improved vaccines. In addition, route of immunization is important and aerosols/nasal sprays, oral route, skin patches, powders, and liquid jets to minimize needles can be used. Plant-based vaccines, such as rice, might save packing and refrigeration costs by being long-lasting, non-refrigerable, and immunogenic. Future research should utilize predetermined PCR testing intervals and symptom monitoring to identify persistent pathogens after therapy and symptom remission.</p
Bioactive compounds and digestible starch variability of rice, maize, green gram, and soy grains with different levels of germination
No full textGermination is a sustainable and economical process that can enhance the bioactivities of commonly consumed cereal and pulses, contributing to healthier diets. Its effectiveness in increasing bioactives depends on the germination conditions. This study examined the impact of varying germination periods (2, 4, 6, and 8 days) following 12 h of steeping on rice, maize, green gram, and soy, focusing on key bioactive compounds, including total polyphenols, flavonoids, and total digestible starch. Cereal and pulses germinated for eight days demonstrated a significantly higher (P < 0.05) total polyphenol and flavonoid content along with elevated antioxidant activity. Antioxidant activity strongly correlated to increased total polyphenol and flavonoid levels throughout the extended germination period. Moreover, the total digestible starch content (TDS) in rice, maize, and soy increased significantly (P < 0.05) because of the hydrolysis of starch molecules, while green gram showed twofold decrease in TDS, indicating the impact of germination on TDS content may differ across the type of cereal and pules. Using locally grown Sri Lankan grain varieties, such as rice, maize,green gram,and soy, this study fills the gap in existing database on the investigation of bioactive compounds and total digestible starch content, exploring the potential of germination of cereal and pulses to use in nutritionally rich products in the food and agriculture industry with a focus on sustainable food systems and healthier eating habits.</p
Prompted Aspect Key Point Analysis for Quantitative Review Summarization
No full textKey Point Analysis (KPA) aims for quantitative summarization that provides key points (KPs) as succinct textual summaries and quantities measuring their prevalence. KPA studies for arguments and reviews have been reported in the literature. A majority of KPA studies for reviews adopt supervised learning to extract short sentences as KPs before matching KPs to review comments for quantification of KP prevalence. Recent abstractive approaches still generate KPs based on sentences, often leading to KPs with overlapping and hallucinated opinions, and inaccurate quantification. In this paper, we propose Prompted Aspect Key Point Analysis (PAKPA) for quantitative review summarization. PAKPA employs aspect sentiment analysis and prompted in-context learning with Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate and quantify KPs grounded in aspects for business entities, which achieves faithful KPs with accurate quantification, and removes the need for large amounts of annotated data for supervised training. Experiments on the popular review dataset Yelp and the aspect-oriented review summarization dataset SPACE show that our framework achieves state-of-the-art performance. Source code and data are available at: https://github.com/antangrocket1312/PAKPA.</p
Background concentrations and spatial distribution of PFAS in surface waters and sediments of the greater Melbourne area, Australia
No full textA survey of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) was conducted in Melbourne, Australia to determine background concentrations in residential, industrial, municipal wastewater treatment plants, and rural land uses. Surface water and sediment samples collected from 65 sites with different catchment land uses were analysed for thirty-three PFAS. Twenty-two out of thirty-three targeted PFAS were detected, with at least one PFAS species was detected in 98% water samples and 8% sediment samples. One site was determined to have point-source pollution from an airport (surface water Σ33PFAS = 4261 ng/L) and was excluded from statistical analyses. The median Σ33PFAS concentration in surface water was 63.5 ng/L and the average was 78.6 ng/L (range < DL-526 ng/L). PFAS species with the highest median concentrations were PFBA (11.3 ng/L), PFHxA (9.2 ng/L), PFOA (8.3 ng/L), PFOS (8.0 ng/L), PFPeA (7.5 ng/L), PFHpA (3.2 ng/L), and PFHxS (2.9 ng/L). The average Σ4PFAS in sediments was 0.35 ng/g d.w. (range = [removed
An IFC-Based BIPV Digital Product Model to Facilitate Information Exchange in the BIM Environment
No full textBuilding-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) play a critical role in the development of nearly Zero-Energy Buildings (nZEB) by enabling energy generation through photovoltaic systems integrated into building components. However, the widespread adoption of BIPV is hindered by the lack of comprehensive digital models that facilitate the seamless exchange of information within Building Information Modelling (BIM) environments. This research aims to address this gap by developing a BIPV digital product model based on the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema, focusing on the Australian context.
The study begins by identifying key BIPV product attributes and use cases across the project lifecycle, including conceptual design, detailed design, construction, operation, and decommissioning phases. Through expert interviews and case study validation, this research compiles a comprehensive list of product attributes required to support BIPV design, implementation, and lifecycle management. An Information Delivery Manual (IDM) is developed to map BIPV digital product requirements against process maps and exchange requirements, ensuring effective information exchange across BIM platforms.
To integrate BIPV products into the IFC schema, this research evaluates multiple extension options for representing BIPV elements within the existing IFC framework. The study proposes the most suitable BIPV extension method, ensuring compatibility with IFC standards. A validation process, involving industry professionals and real-world case studies, confirms the effectiveness of the proposed IFC extensions in supporting BIPV applications. The findings indicate that the enhanced IFC schema can accurately represent BIPV product information, improving accessibility and data exchange in BIM environments.
This research contributes to advancing the digitalization of BIPV products in BIM, facilitating their adoption in Australia’s building sector, and providing a foundation for future research on sustainable building technologies.</p
Filipino Professional Accountants’ Experiences with and Actions Towards Organisational–Professional Conflict
No full textOrganisational–professional conflict (OPC) has undesirable consequences for professional accountants and their employing organisations. Prior survey-based OPC studies contribute to understanding the antecedents and outcomes of OPC but do not provide insights into individual accountants' experiences and actions in OPC situations. This research sought to advance existing OPC knowledge by using an interpretative qualitative approach to investigate OPC in a novel context. Drawing on identity theory as the theoretical lens, this study examined Filipino professional accountants’ subjective experiences with OPC to gain insights into the nature and sources of OPC, accountants’ responses to it, and their rationales for their responses.
Thirty-one in-depth interviews yielded detailed accounts of experiences with OPC. Interview transcripts were analysed following these key analytical steps: transcription, coding, exploring data relationships, and data integration. The findings suggest that OPC is a real phenomenon in the accounting workplace. Most participants experienced OPC; however, their experiences varied with their circumstances. Most incidents that led to OPC involved requests from senior management to manipulate revenue and profit to achieve budgeted targets or minimise tax obligations. The findings show that participants felt the conflict in varying levels, which appeared to be influenced by several factors, including religiosity, self-efficacy, availability of social support, and the extent to which participants rationalise their actions successfully.
Regarding professional accountants’ response to OPC, this study found that Filipino accountants typically employ two or three of the following steps: 1) discussion with relevant superior or manager, 2) escalation to higher management, 3) implementation of their preferred action according to their professional judgment, and/or 4) implementation of superior’s or management’s preferred action. These steps were mapped into four path responses, facilitating understanding of the relative salience of the participants’ professional and organisational identities in OPC situations. Responses that follow paths 1 and 2 suggest a greater salience of professional identity, while paths 3 and 4 suggest a greater salience of organisational identity.
Regarding the participants’ definition and relative salience of professional and organisational identities, this study found that ethicality and possession of expert knowledge and accounting skills dominated their concepts of professional identity. In contrast, the sense of being privileged to receive intrinsic and extrinsic rewards that come with employment and the perception of being a value-adding member of their organisation predominantly defined their organisational identity. For most participants, professional identity was more salient than organisational identity in OPC situations, indicating that professional accountants can act according to their ethical judgment during conflicts. Moreover, this study identified several personal and organisational influences on the accountants’ exposure and responses to OPC: organisational rank, tenure, job security, self-efficacy, organisational culture, and management styles. Filipino cultural values also appeared to influence the participants’ definition of organisational identity and responses to OPC.
This research makes several contributions to theory and practice. First, its qualitative approach allowed for a deep exploration of the incidents that led to OPC and the factors that influenced their experience of the phenomenon. It also facilitated identifying and mapping the participants' four-path responses to OPC. The four response paths permitted examination of the relative salience of the participants’ professional and organisational identities and revealed the shortcomings of their responses. The quantitative nature of prior OPC studies did not permit the exploration of these issues. Second, the study drew out the professional accountants’ subjective conception of their professional and organisational identities, which facilitated the interpretation of their behavioural choices in OPC situations. Third, it extends OPC scholarship to professional accountants from a cultural and economic context that vastly differs from the West, where most prior OPC studies were conducted. The Philippines is a developing economy with relatively few professional jobs and a cultural environment that prioritises in-groups such as family and employing organisations and in which respect for authority is expected. Finally, this research shows the relevance of identity theory to OPC in the accounting discipline. Identity theory facilitated the explication of accountants’ behavioural choices in OPC situations by gleaning insights into their subjective conception and relative salience of their professional and organisational identities.
This research has important practical implications for PICPA, individual professional accountants, and employing organisations. The findings suggest that Filipino professional accountants need more support for managing OPC in the workplace. PICPA could support its members in several ways. First, it could establish accessible support systems for members, such as an ethics helpline for anonymous consultation and mentoring support for early career accountants, who were found to be more vulnerable to OPC than established and experienced accountants. Second, it could provide members with robust ethics education support, such as ethics training modules that emphasise the ethical conflict resolution process and ethics education resources that members can access anytime on the organisation’s website. In the absence of such resources, individual professional accountants should seek guidance from PICPA and other professional accounting bodies on ethical conduct. Professional accountants should also actively engage with professional accounting bodies by participating in professional development activities and events to enhance professional socialisation and strengthen their professional identity.
This research has implications for employing organisations’ culture, management style, and support mechanisms for employees who may experience OPC. Employers could minimise the occurrence of OPC by creating a work environment that supports professional values and provides greater autonomy and reduced work pressure for employees. Employers should aim for a democratic management style and a clan culture, which this study found to be associated with an increased salience of professional identity. In addition, employing organisations could establish an anonymous and independent internal whistleblowing system to allow secure and anonymous reporting of incidents that might lead to OPC. In this way, organisations can act on potential unethical practices before severe damage occurs.</p
Philosophy of Practice (PoP) for Team-Teaching Toolkit
No full textThe following toolkit was developed from the results of an extensive educational research project that spanned over six years. The research project utilised auto-ethnography to recount and reflect upon professional learning over time, and when working with others. The overall account centred on a critical re-analysis of findings from four published journal articles, which I co-authored with others. The account offered a new insight into what the term blended learning might mean for team-teaching. The toolkit (as a result of the extensive research account) presented here draws attention to the educative potential of collaborating with others to develop scholarly understandings of practice, highlighting key elements of team-teaching when using blended learning. Reflective learning is a powerful way to investigate process and in this toolkit it is a key element for understanding blended learning for team-teaching in a new way.The utilisation of the PoP framework can encourage team-teaching members to continually massage a group-based inquiry mindset. This is especially so when establishing an agreed-to shared understanding to provide role clarity and instigate multiple communication strategies for good practice. Educational change agents are required to engage with deep understandings of practice through a process of reflective learning, collaboration, as well as the displaying of better ways to understand what effective team-teaching might mean. One can re-position team-teaching and blended learning as not just about the integration of technology into teaching and learning. Rather, blended learning is also about the importance of collaboratively unpacking teacher and student roles, responding to unique contexts/cultures of operation, and collectively instigating a purposefully designed team-teaching process to improve practice.The PoP toolkit (as a resource for users) can be used as a conversation starter or as a model to support others to design and implement an approach for effective team-teaching. The model has not been tested extensively. Therefore, I present the PoP toolkit as a work-in-progress that requires testing. The PoP was developed through a collaborative, reflective and observational process during several higher education research and practice initiatives over six years. This included the use of evidence gathered from several and diverse team-teaching situations in blended learning environments. I encourage users of the PoP toolkit to reach out to me and provide feedback. Practice should always be improved upon and never remain the same.</p
Design Process for a Distributed Networked Practice: A Distinctive Approach to Leadership
No full textThis research has involved a critical reflection on and explication of my practice and design process through projects I have been central to and as a part of leading the design Practice I am situated in. In my leadership role at Hassell over the past 20 years my interest has been to foreground design process that supports a way of practising across a distributed networked Practice that enables the pursuit of Conceptual Clarity and diversity in the work with the view to elevate the quality of the design output.
Hassell is a distributed multidisciplinary design Practice with studios across nine cities and currently around 800 staff including architects, interior designers, landscape architects and urban designers. Underpinning Hassell is a shared philosophy that brilliant design is informed by the investigation of and concern for four Design Values: CONTEXT, FUNCTION, ASPIRATION and BEAUTY. These Design Values are engaged with through a shared Design Process and the development of ideas with the aim to establish an articulated Conceptual Clarity. The aim of this process is to support the communication of a design narrative to engage, induct and lead design teams, collaborators, consultants, stakeholders and clients alike.
For many years, my overarching concern has been that a distributed Practice – one that shares a design process and can articulate its shared Design Values as the mechanism to discuss and critique design – can collectively improve the quality and distinctiveness of its design work. This can be distinguished from other models of design practice where a single founder or small number of design leaders determine and direct all, or most, of the design and their collaborators essentially align their own practice according to given design principles or a particular style. Alternatively, at the opposite end, a Practice that distributes its design authorship – operating like a federation of separate practices around a set of individual design leaders – is at risk of producing disparate, unrelated or inconsistent work.
Mapping my own career output as an interior designer has involved the curation of a body of work I have been central to, chronologically over approximately 25 years of practice. This reflection included connecting projects with the people I practised with, the groupings of design process in those projects through different eras of my practice, and the varying leadership roles I played within the design of projects and within Hassell more broadly.
My approach in this research is one of reflecting on the design process within a set of projects I designed, comparing them with a body of work by others I was trained by and who I, through this reflection, see as precedents in the evolution of my own design process and leadership. This approach then involved a forensic mapping and explication of the design process and the resultant material through a series of key projects where my role in the design of these projects can be described as ‘hands-on’ and then later as ‘hands-off.’ The research also involved interviewing 14 key mentors and collaborators whom I have practised for, and with, closely over these 25 years to further investigate my concern for design process in a distributed networked Practice and ways of approaching leadership in Hassell. The PhD, as a body of critical reflection, has also contributed to the ongoing focus on design process in my leadership of Hassell, and the development of a shared Design Process across Hassell in the ongoing concern for networking the design knowledge and practices of the group.
Investigating the key initiatives in my leadership of Hassell has also been a key part of this research. The criticality of design practice and design process at the core of my leadership became evident through doing the research as part of this PhD. Reflecting on a set of these initiatives related to Design Values and Process that were most critical in networking the distributed designers and studios of Hassell – to elevate and develop the consistency in the quality of the design output in a large commercial design firm such as Hassell – manifests a distinctive approach to leadership that encompasses a significant era of my practice. This reflection – to which I have referred in the dissertation as ‘Hassell as Project’ – also offers up a contribution to large and distributed Practice, especially if the aspiration is to network them with a focus on design philosophy.
A shared articulated process is critical to building a thread of expectations, to elevate the quality of the discourse through critique, then around the design output in the network. This thread also informs the shared Design Values of a group, further networking it. The sharing of knowledge and precedent resulting from the Design Process also becomes critical to the networked culture by sharing talent and collaborating with each other across the distributed studios. Demonstrating how this discourse around Design Process, as a way of leading a distributed Practice, impacts the networking of the practitioners in it, and how this enables them to approach design more consistently, is offered up in this research. This way of leading a Practice – by articulating a shared Design Process – enables a large Practice such as Hassell to seek a distinctive but diverse design output by multiple and distributed designers.
This PhD has been an opportunity to reflect on and further understand my practice as both designer and leader. Positioning my practice within a community of practice has enabled me to appreciate how this is a distinctive approach to the leadership of a design Practice and how it enables, supports and fosters a large distributed networked Practice. As design Practices become increasingly globalised, complex, disrupted and concerned with major issues from urbanisation, climate change and digitisation, this research also offers insights and a contribution to other design Practices and the leaders of those Practices.</p
A Methodology for Optimised Energy Retrofitting of Higher Educational Buildings
No full textIn Australia, a staggering 70% increase in electricity consumption over the past three decades has been documented, correlating to a 47% rise in total CO2 emissions. The building sector accounts for 40% of the global energy demand and 19% of Australia's energy consumption. Higher educational buildings are observed to account for up to 18% of energy use in the total building stock. Operational stages account for up to 90% of a building's total energy use across its lifecycle (Alam & Devjani, 2021a).
Energy retrofitting of buildings is a viable solution to the ever-growing climatic problem. However, current retrofitting processes can have the following problems. Retrofits can be ad hoc and carried out with minimal structure and understanding. Moreover, targeting one retrofit may impact another, as many of the end goals have conflicting outcomes. For example, retrofits with high energy reduction capacity can result in higher capital costs which cannot be recovered during the life cycle. Stakeholders are interested in achieving multiple objectives at the same time. Further complications arise when multiple retrofits are completed in parallel as the combined effect can have adverse unexpected outcomes towards energy-saving goals. Finally, retrofit decision-making can be complex and challenging as many quantitative and qualitative criteria need to be considered when initiating a retrofit project.
The research explores a method for optimised retrofitting to address the above issues in higher educational buildings.
Parameters that contribute to the energy use of educational institutions were explored from a case study in Melbourne, Australia. The most common types of functional areas available in educational buildings were identified with the said data and contribution to energy use was calculated based on the floor areas of these three types of functional areas. The correlations were found via two methods: Multiple Regression and Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS). Following this, a simulation block model was constructed for the identified three space types, and the base model was simulated in EnergyPlus and validated against data from the case study. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to find the most influential factors affecting the model outputs and, in extension, the three types of functions when considering retrofits independently. In order to identify the combinations of retrofit options that can have the highest positive impact on energy and cost-saving goals, a Multi-Objective Optimisation (MOO) was completed using jEPlus+EA. This process provides the opportunity to observe the impact a combination of retrofits can have on one or more objectives. In order to streamline the selection of the most practical retrofit option, Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) was implemented so that the MOO can be incorporated with other defining factors that are important to the organisation's overarching goals.
A method of incorporating the optimised retrofits into the building lifecycle asset management program and the ideal time for carrying out these retrofits so maximum impact can be achieved, both environmentally and economically was also explored.
The outcomes of the regression models showed that energy prediction based on the floor area of the three types of spaces, Office, Teaching and Common Space, have better energy estimation capacity for buildings compared to estimating the energy based on gross floor area alone for the data set analysed. It was also noted that the ANFIS model used for the energy prediction has a better regression coefficient than the multiple regression model.
The outcome from the MOO provided a Pareto front of solutions for the two objective scenarios analysed (heating vs cooling load reduction and total energy vs capital cost minimisation). The mean optimisation values were found to be in the order of office, teaching, and common (47,35, 28 kWh/m2) for cooling from highest to lowest and teaching, common, and office (1.4, 1.0, 0.9 kWh/m2) for heating. When comparing north and south zones, the results showed means of 28%, 26% and 19% difference in cooling and 75%, 14% and 40% difference in heating load for the office, teaching and common spaces, respectively. A ranked set of MOO solutions is provided. These solutions can be funnelled based on a variety of functional criteria that are useful for an educational organisation based on MCDM. Look-up tables for retrofit solutions were provided for the three functional spaces that were analysed.
Once the ranked optimisation solution is identified, the expected energy requirement change can be calculated based on the original space that is under analysis. The annual reduction of energy can be converted to emissions based on the fuel types used for heating and cooling. The optimised option can be incorporated into the existing CapEx program for a smoother transition of energy retrofits. The CapEx program can be calculated based on the lifecycle software CAMS developed by RMIT University and the proposed solution for energy retrofits can be incorporated in the software platform.
The results of the study focussed on educational facilities in Melbourne. The process can be replicated in other locations by adjusting the weather file used for the calculation.</p
Responding to Industry Needs and a Rapidly Evolving Industry: A Design Thinking Approach to Undergraduate Course Development in Communication Design
No full textThe teaching of communication design balances creative and technical instruction, aiming to develop skilled graduates with the capabilities and knowledge to complete client projects effectively. It is a balance often scrutinized by design businesses who claim graduates lack the skills, knowledge, or preparation necessary to meet commercial realities.
The design industry expects universities to align graduate competencies with professional requirements, producing students who not only excel in today’s cutting-edge technologies but also possess the skills to quickly adapt to the unknowns needed for tomorrow. In attempting to comply, universities must continuously advance curriculum design. Yet, the design profession constantly evolves, influenced by technological advancement, globalism, and shifting cultural trends. Could a university ever prepare graduates for such rapid change and uncertainty?
The work shared within this thesis attempted to answer such a question by examining undergraduate design course material, its current preparation, and its ongoing relationship to an evolving design industry. While other studies exist, none applied research methods based on the same processes used in design practice, specifically the design thinking process. This process, used by designers to solve complex problems, also served as an underlying procedural framework for this thesis.
The research involved a thematic triangulation of three case studies and an analysis of congruence and new opportunities between case study insights and prior pedagogy studies. The outcome is a propositional course outline and framework, leveraging industry partnership, interdisciplinary skills, and the encouragement of student meta-cognitive knowledge or, more simply, self-reflection.</p