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Building phase field simulations to investigate cryoprotectant properties
No full textThe purpose of this research was to develop a method for simulating the effectiveness of cryoprotectants. To do this we built upon an existing phase field simulation from the literature.
We first performed an analysis of the equilibrium thermodynamics described by the model’s free energy function. This was done by constructing state diagrams for both sucrose and trehalose in water solutions. We then showed how this free energy function can be introduced into the phase field model to preserve the correct equilibrium state. We then connect the model’s non-equilibrium dynamics to irreversible thermodynamics. To do this we use the definition of the entropy functional that only includes gradient terms in the phase field variable and concentration not in the temperature. This ensures the model is consistent with the second law of thermodynamics.
The results of the phase field simulation are presented in two parts. The first verifies the model by showing that the non-equilibrium dynamics drives the system to the correct equilibrium state. The geometry of the ice crystals and the effects of varying the number of grid points used to resolve the system are also discussed.
We also performed a sensitivity analysis on parameters important to the rate of ice crystal growth, to better understand what combination of parameters we would expect from a good cryoprotectant. We then compared the effectiveness of sucrose and trehalose at inhibiting ice crystal growth. This was done by measuring the amount of ice crystal grown with each solute under the same conditions and by comparing the velocities of the ice crystallization front. The velocities were calculated by fitting a power law to the ice fraction of the system over time. We observed that in the trehalose solution the ice grew more slowly than in the sucrose solution. This has been observed experimentally in the literature
Data-Driven innovation development: an empirical analysis of the antecedents using PLS-SEM and fsQCA
No full textData-driven innovation (DDI) is a primary source of competitive advantage for firms and is a contemporary research priority. However, what facilitates the development of DDI has largely been understudied in literature. Through a systematic literature review, this study finds technological, organizational, and environmental variables under the TOE framework, which would drive effective DDI development. We thus develop a research model, which is tested using survey data from 264 Australian firms engaged in DDI development. The data have been analysed using both symmetric (partial least squares based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM)) and asymmetric (fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA)) methods. The mixed method enhances the confidence in our empirical analyses of the antecedent variables of DDI development. PLS-SEM has revealed that technological readiness (i.e., data quality and metadata quality), and organizational absorptive capacity and readiness (i.e., technology-oriented leadership and availability of IT skilled professionals) affect DDI development. Our fsQCA results complement and extend the findings of PSL-SEM analysis. It reveals that quality of data and metadata, technology-oriented leadership, and exploitation capacity individually are necessary—but are not sufficient—conditions for high DDI development. Further, it identifies three different solutions each for small, medium, and large firms by combining the TOE factors. Additionally, this study suggests that the TOE framework is more applicable to small firms, on DDI context. Findings of our study have been related with theoretical and practical implications
Playing with persona: Highlighting older adults’ lived experience with the digital media
No full textDuring the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns (2020-2021), almost all facets of life were rendered digital – health, work, schooling, and logistics. In this phenomenon, not only did digital access become synonymous with social inclusion but inequalities were also amplified – particularly in the case of older adults (65 years and over). Contemporary older adults represent one of the most diverse spectrums of digital media users – spanning from technologically savvy to non-users. As the first generation of older adults to age in and through data in a data-saturated world, their understandings and experiences can teach us much about the possibilities and limitations of new media. Understanding these practices through cultural probes – like drawing, photos and writing prompts – can enable playful behaviours that not only elicit new thoughts and actions but also allow insight into some of the tacit lived experience that can support opportunities for technological use. In this paper, we ask: How can we playfully co-design through personas to enhance understandings of older adults’ lived experience of digital media? In this paper, we focus on the six co-design workshops in which we deployed personas as representations of digital experience to challenge, explore, provoke and help build nuanced tools for implementation. Through personas, speculative fiction and lived experience collide, offering some fascinating ways to rethink the digital-social dimension for older adults now and into the future.</p
Integrating vocational and higher education to train mental health professionals: a qualitative investigation
No full textObjectiveThis study investigates an integrated approach to training higher education students for mental health work by exploring the experiences of undergraduate psychology students completing a Certificate IV in Mental Health during their degree.MethodSemi-structured interviews were conducted with 8 undergraduate psychology students, in which participants were asked about their experiences, knowledge and skills gained through their course, and career aspirations on course completion. Data were analysed using a reflexive thematic analysis.ResultsSeven themes were identified ‘Rewarding challenge’, ‘Working with people’, ‘Understanding mental health’, ‘Value of skills’, ‘Psychologist-as-calling’, ‘Testing/Affirming/Broadening’, and ‘Theory-Practice’. Participants reported increased knowledge and skills concerning working within a mental health context. They also reported that completing the Certificate IV in Mental Health affirmed their career aspirations to work in the mental health sector as a general mental health professional or as a psychologist.DiscussionAlthough the benefits to students are clear, exploring this approach as a means to train mental health workers to meet existing service gaps merits further discussion. These findings have implications for using integrated qualifications as a training model for the mental health workforce.</p
Disturbed Terrains; of the public park, the Picturesque and future practice
No full textThroughout the 1990s and 2000s the public park overwhelmingly shaped landscape architectural discourse. With the excesses of deindustrialisation, slag heaps, quarries, and factories, a new typology had emerged with the post-industrial park and a new role of landscape architecture was to remediate the toxic disturbances of production and extraction. In 2002, George Hargreaves organised a seminar at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, followed by a 2003 conference, which critically examined public parks’ historical and contemporary roles. These discussions culminated in the publication “Large Parks” (2007), edited by Hargreaves and Julia Czerniak, which compared canonical and contemporary parks. A critical issue emerging from these comparative studies was the formation of cultural meaning within post-industrial parks and their underlying design frameworks. Contributions by Elizabeth Meyer, Julia Czerniak, and Susan Herrington specifically critiqued the role of public parks in concealing the disturbed histories of sites, advocating for the relevance of eighteenth century Picturesque aesthetics in comprehending and making meaning of these new spaces. This research project addresses three significant problems raised during these debates: the concept of park as camouflage, the necessity of employing more-than-visual methods for interpreting parks, and the latent framework of the Picturesque within these environments. The methodology employs a comparative analysis, as utilised by Hargreaves, Czerniak, and Meyer, examining both the material history of Quor-nong (Royal Park) in Naarm (Melbourne) and the historical traditions of public park making. This approach aims to clarify the dual narratives of parks as physical sites (situated) and the park’s aesthetic traditions (often imported), employing more-than-visual and situated methods to expose the tensions between the park’s divergent histories. The study interrogates the design implications of an active dialogue between canonical works and contemporary parks, seeking to integrate historical and contemporary perspectives to advance the practice of park design.</p
A Cuppa and a Yarn: Reclaiming Known Materialism and Collaboration as Sites of Resistance and Connection in Photo-Media
No full textWhat is resistance? Is it the act or power of resisting, opposing or withstanding? Resistance is both an action and an opposition. In resistance, I can stand with you; in resistance, I can stand against you. In the context of this (re)search, resistance is an active process against a dominant power and a necessary tool for the marginalised facing ongoing and imposed oppressive structures. More importantly, following bell hooks’s writings, I argue resistance is a site of radical possibility. This (re)search examines collaborative art methods, including my methodology of 'A Cuppa and a Yarn,' as they can create personal sites of resistance and connection through image-making and art presentation in public, community, and colonial spaces. Utilising a practice-led approach through photography, the research involves image-making with others — with humans, the more-than-human, Country and myself — and developing site-specific exhibitions and public interventions. My methodology is informed by an Indigenous Ontology of relationality and theorises ‘known materialism’ to critique and extend new materialism as a way to collaborate with Country. This (re)search asks how collaborative methods in my photo-media practice create sites of resistance and connection, and how an ethic of reciprocity and care can be embedded into the practice to include the more-than-human world. The (re)search has resulted in a series of site-specific exhibitions and public art installations promoting deeper connections with collaborators and creating sites of resistance in the making, while challenging western knowledge systems. The outcomes of these projects demonstrate an ethic of reciprocity and care within collaborative photo-media practices. This research contributes to photo-media practice through the articulation of frameworks that emphasise relationality and material agency while positioning Indigenous ways of knowing at the centre of practice.</p
Digital competence of Vietnamese citizens: An application of digcomp framework and the role of individual factors
No full textAssessment of digital competence for citizens could support the Education Action plan at a national level, a regional level, or even at a global level to enhance the digital skills and competence gap for work and life for digital transformation. This study applies the DigComp framework through a self-administered online survey to 723 citizens in Vietnam, using a sequential exploratory mixed methods research design. Data were analysed using factor analysis, standard descriptive statistics, and simple regression methods, followed by qualitative content analysis from interviews with ten respondents and a focus group discussion with eight stakeholders on digital competence. The results confirmed the validity of the DigComp framework for measuring the digital competence of Vietnamese citizens. Overall, the proficiency level of the 723 surveyed Vietnamese citizens falls between basic and intermediate levels, being more advanced in areas in information and data literacy and communication and collaboration, compared to digital content creation, safety, and problem solving. The results further showed that male citizens with a higher education level, working in the public sector, or living in province with high provincial digital transformation index rankings perceived themselves to be more digital competent than females with a lower educational level, working in the private sector, or living in the province with low provincial digital transformation index rankings. To improve citizens’ digital competence, training should be designed that considers not only citizens’ digital competence profiles but also their individual characteristics.</p
Development Perspective of Electrostatic Machines
No full textElectromagnetic machines have been dominating the industrial and household markets so far. The main cost of these machines stems from metallic materials, iron cores and permanent magnets. The current problems associated with this type of machines are the increasing cost of metals and the lower availability of rare earth for producing permanent magnet. In addition, the production of the metals such as aluminium, copper has had a significant environmental impact due to the emission of industrial wastes. In contrast, electrostatic machines are constructed mainly by non-metallic materials, such as plastic and dielectric. On-ly a fractional amount of metal is used to make the electrodes and the case of the electrostatic machines. In addition, the electrostatic machine has light weight, low cost and is simple to design and manufacture. As a result, electrostatic ma-chines have high potential development in sustainable and green development of the manufacturing industry as well as renewable power generation. This paper presents the development perspective of the electrostatic machine in terms of topologies, design methods and performance.</p
Understanding the Relationship between Cultural Participation, Cultural Capital and Behaviour: A Survey-based Approach to Account for the Role of Individual Differences
No full textAbstract
Understanding what determines cultural participation is important given that active engagement in cultural life is associated with a wide range of benefits for individual and society at large. This thesis presents two manuscripts stemming from a survey designed to provide insight into cultural participation in Australia. The first manuscript analyses the role of individual differences linked to personality, curiosity and values, to explore how these are related to cultural participation across a range of different cultural activities. The second manuscript then turns attention to the impact of behavioural barriers and enabling factors on the cultural participation of individuals across a range of different cultural activities. Both manuscripts rely on data collected using a bespoke survey that provided a representative sample (n=558) of participants drawn from the Australian population. The survey captures different types of cultural participation that are distinguished within the analysis, and which are based on categories contained in the Australia’s National Arts Participation Survey (NAPS) as commissioned by Creative Australia.
Aside from the usual variables (such as income and education) that are positively associated with cultural participation, attention is focused on cultural capital and individual difference characteristics. The research tests whether individual differences explain different types of cultural participation and whether behavioural attributes have a place within the conceptualisation of cultural capital. More specifically, the first manuscript examines the role of behavioural determinants on the level of cultural participation in a range of different cultural activities. The results reveal that individual differences play a role in cultural participation, although the specific behavioural traits that matter differ across different types of cultural participation associated with different cultural activities). Thus, we find evidence that psychological factors play an important role in determining cultural participation and that, just as engagement in cultural life may be socially stratified, cultural participation is also behaviourally stratified.
The research responds to the problem of addressing how cultural participation might also be lifted which is of interest and relevance to policy makers. In the second manuscript focus turns to identifying barriers and enablers to cultural participation, as well as taking a step back to examine what actually determines cultural participation across different cohorts of the population, not only on the basis of socio-economic characteristics, but also in terms of behavioural characteristics such as personality and curiosity.
Using a survey approach that incorporates questions about participants cultural consumption and participation habits over the past 12 months, as well as sections related to demographics, personal characteristics and psychometric scales to measure personality, curiosity, values, wellbeing and perceptions of barriers and enablers to arts participation, the research present new evidence on that incorporates behavioural characteristics to aid understanding of factors that determine cultural participation.</p
Navigating institutional ethics processes: Insights from higher degree by research students and supervisors doing research in fragile contexts
No full textAlthough gaining ethical approval is a conventional and established requirement for academic scholarship, institutional approaches remain subject to sustained critique. While not questioning the legitimacy of institutional ethical procedures, the dominance of legal frameworks and a focus on entry to ‘the field’ is inflexible and irresponsive to ethical complexities in practice. This is particularly evident in situations where participants experience ongoing trauma, marginalisation, and social and political precarity, or settings that we refer to in this paper as ‘ fragile contexts’. Responding to such ethical dilemmas, this article draws on Guillemin and Gillam’s (2004) notions of ‘ ethics-in-practice’ and ‘ethically important moments’ to examine how doctoral candidates and their supervisors navigate the compliance requirements of institutional ethics vis-à-vis the requirements of ethics-in-practice. Our findings foreground the need to attend to the linguistic and discursive challenges associated with research in fragile contexts, the temporalities of vulnerability, the management of community expectations, and a humbling of researchers and their institutional research ethics committees to avoid compounding injustices and power imbalances.</p