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Multi-perspective evaluation of waste-derived cellulose fiber concrete: engineering performance, microstructure and sustainability
No full textThis study evaluates the mechanical, durability, microstructural, and environmental performance of concrete incorporating cellulose fibers derived from waste paper. Two types of waste cellulose fibers are used: magazine paper and liquid plasterboard, with tensile strengths of 14.98 MPa and 5.74 MPa and water absorption rates of 1199.6% and 1157.9%, respectively. The inclusion of 1% waste cellulose fiber reduces drying shrinkage (14.4–22.4%) by gradually releasing absorbed water, thereby maintaining internal moisture within the concrete. However, compressive, splitting tensile, flexural strength and elastic modulus decrease. A performance-based life cycle assessment (cradle-to-end-of-construction), indicates global warming potentials of 1.81E + 01 kg CO₂ eq/m3 · MPa for liquid plasterboard and 1.50E + 01 kg CO₂ eq/m3 · MPa for magazine paper. This study links fiber characteristics and mix design to environmental and engineering trade-offs, emphasizing the need to optimize fiber treatment and interface properties to balance sustainability and mechanical integrity in waste-integrated concrete.</p
Science Wellbeing (ScWB) Survey and Psychometrics
No full textThe Science Wellbeing (ScWB) measure assesses students' positive feelings and functioning in science education through the fulfilment of seven ultimate values: Accomplishment, Cognitions, Engagement, Meaning, Perseverance, Positive Emotions, and Relationships. Autonomy is part of the broader framework but was not measured in this survey.</p
Tracking Scholarship Outcomes to Measure Impact: A White Paper
No full textThe white paper addresses a significant gap in Australia’s higher education system about the lack of a national scholarship longitudinal tracking system or a scholarship impact measurement framework. Drawing upon the need to undertake extensive research in this area, the white paper outlines a set of recommendations to support a coordinated approach to creating and maintaining a national scholarship tracking system, helping to assess the impact of scholarships on educational success, workforce integration, and social mobility.The white paper targets educators, policymakers, and scholarship providers seeking to enhance measurement practice for scholarship program impact and influence. Key recommendations focus on data coordination, cross-sector collaboration, and the development of a national tracking scholarship framework.</p
Strong piezoelectric-like electromechanical response from single granular PMMA interface
No full textEnergy harvesting devices, namely triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) and piezoelectric nanogenerators (PENGs), are rapidly garnering interest. As such, a great deal of research is devoted to developing electromechanically responsive materials, particularly flexible polymers. State-of-the-art materials are typically from toxic fluoropolymers, which need to be avoided due to environmental contamination risks. In this work, we investigate the electromechanical response of a granular-based electromechanical device. Close-packed monolayers comprising polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) beads with diameters of 0.5 or 3 μ m are assembled using a solvent-free rubbing method. Subsequently, the ordered monolayers are brought into contact, while a force is cyclically applied in a quasi-static mode and during buzzer testing. The beads enable the production of ultra-thin polymer layers (with a combined thickness of only 3.5 μ m) with controlled morphology (Set by the bead size), which is highly challenging for other polymers. Our findings show that we achieve a d 33 value of 19 (in quasi-static mode) and 117 pC/N (buzzer test) for the granular-based PMMA electromechanical device, elucidating the great potential of such beads in mechanical energy harvesting devices, as it matches and outperforms most state-of-the-art polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) piezoelectric materials.</p
Local Visual News Presentation and Sourcing Practices: Insights and Implications
No full textJournalists and editors have myriad options to create or source photographs and videos for local news. These include drawing on generic stock photos, syndicated news wire content, and visual content made in-house or sourced from the public, including community organisations, businesses and government entities. Who makes the news visuals local audiences consume matters, as does the degree to which journalists and editors are transparent about this labour and the potentially differing motivations of various stakeholders who might actively or passively contribute their content for journalists to republish. This paper systematically demonstrates how four print and digital news outlets in regional or rural parts of Australia approach the presentation and sourcing of visual news (photographs and non-television video) in their print products, outlet websites, and (if applicable) on social media. The study finds that the news outlets in this study placed much greater emphasis on photographic visuals than video visuals, that the outlets didn’t uniformly publish all their visual content across digital, print or social media platforms, and that the outlets frequently left visuals unsourced, especially on social media where 90 percent of visuals were unattributed, raising issues about information transparency.</p
Realising the Ideal Test Collection
No full textThe `ideal' test collections called for diversity in both documents and queries. Although the creation of test collections -- such as those developed in TREC -- was largely inspired by this vision, it has not been fully realised. Constructing test collections that capture this variability and therefore enable a user-centred evaluation is an expensive and labour-intensive process.This thesis investigates using LLMs to assist in the construction of test collections to reflect query variation by: (1) generating query variants to create diversified document pools to enable system evaluation across user queries; (2) producing relevance judgements for the generated large document pools; and (3) simulating queries from different user profiles and demonstrating their impact on system evaluation.Results show that LLMs can be used to generate query variants to retrieve a set of documents similar to those retrieved using human-generated variants. They can also be used to create variants to represent different user profiles. The utility of these variants is demonstrated to challenge the traditional view of test collections as mere system ranking tools, instead used to understand how different users experience search. Our evaluation of LLMs for relevance labelling suggests that they agree with human judgements at levels comparable to human-to-human agreement and produce similar system rankings. However, they are more positive than humans, likely to be fooled by the presence of query words, and can struggle to effectively distinguish across systems, mainly in recognising meaningful performance improvements.This thesis contributes to the realisation of the ideal test collections that reflect the diversity in the queries of search users. Such collections provide a means to investigate how systems perform for different users -- and thereby have the potential to enhance the experience of, or mitigate biases against, particular user groups.</p
An Aesthetic of Matters of Concern A phenomenological video exploring the aesthetic of the urban traffic in Ho Chi Minh City: Vietnam DesignX exhibition
No full textMost traffic research focuses on the technological and physical infrastructure of urban traffic systems, which is only a partial picture of the dimensions that make up a traffic system. Other important dimensions, such as human feelings, human values and emotions, belief systems, future goals, past events and more are important fundamental elements in traffic. Traffic users often subconsciously react to such felt atmospheric and affective dimensions, making these aspects at least as important as the physical components, and perhaps even more so. Atmosphere and affect – present in all traffic systems, but especially in Vietnam’s traffic systems – are fundamental to how we navigate our way through these landscapes, but because these dimensions are ‘fuzzy,’ and difficult to measure or quantify using traditional quantitative research methods, they are often overlooked in place of the myth of accuracy that comes with quantifiable numbers. This video aims to create a sensory and affective experience reflective of the aesthetic nature of the HCMC traffic system, bringing to the forefront the rhythmic interplay, the relationalities, and the atmospheric conditions that are uniquely characteristic of the HCMC urban traffic experience. This phenomenological approach to the study of traffic attempts to approach the phenomenon on its own terms and using its own unique language.</p
Improving complementary medicine literacy: a systematic review of educational interventions for consumers and caregivers.
No full textBACKGROUND: Complementary medicines (CMs), including herbal products, nutritional supplements, vitamins, minerals, probiotics and prebiotics, are increasingly integrated into standard medical treatments. Despite their growing popularity, concerns about safety, efficacy, and potential interactions with conventional medications persist. This systematic review evaluates the effectiveness of various educational interventions (EIs) designed to enhance the knowledge, informed decision-making capabilities, awareness of side effects, and consumer perceptions of safety and efficacy of CMs. This study aims to identify the most effective strategies for improving the awareness of potential risks and benefits, and overall health literacy among CMs users. METHODS: A comprehensive literature search was conducted across multiple databases including PubMed/ MEDLINE, Embase, ISI Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library to identify relevant studies published from inception to May 2024. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and non-MeSH terms, along with various logic operators, were used to identify studies evaluating EIs aimed at improving CMs knowledge and decision-making. We included the studies if they evaluated EIs about CMs for consumers, patients, and caregivers, with eligible designs including randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and other types of interventional studies. RESULTS: Fifteen eligible studies were included. Interventions ranged from interactive multimedia programs and online platforms to personalized face-to-face counselling. The interventions demonstrated significant improvements in CMs knowledge, self-efficacy, and informed decision-making among participants. High levels of participant satisfaction were consistently reported, particularly with interactive and engaging tools. CONCLUSION: This systematic review underscores the critical role of education in promoting the safe and informed use of CMs. Effective educational interventions enhance knowledge, informed decision-making abilities, and awareness of side effects. However, challenges such as high attrition rates and variability in study designs indicate the need for further research to optimize these interventions. Future efforts should focus on standardizing educational strategies to improve CMs related health literacy and ensure the safe use of CMs. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12906-025-04931-w.</p
Notes from the Hẻm
No full textResearch Background This research is situated within the field of urban cultural geography and creative practice research. It asks: How can a practice-led, sensory observation process, grounded in walking, mapping and visual translation reveal and interpret shifting cultural identities within the urban space of the Hẻm in Saigon, as a basis for developing future visual observation frameworks? Emerging from practice and shaped through reflective engagement with the creative process, the research aligns with key ideas from Sarah Pink (sensory ethnography), Tim Ingold (making as inquiry), and Doreen Massey (space as relational and always in motion), as well as Jane Rendell’s site-writing and Lucy Lippard’s sense of place. Research Significance Notes from the Hẻm addresses the challenge of observing and interpreting subtle cultural shifts in rapidly changing urban environments. Through walking, mapping, photography and reflective writing, it produces a visual book that functions both as method and outcome, where insights are generated, interpreted and translated through making. The book embodies “design-led observation” and “material reflection,” offering strategies for reading urban identity. It proposes an early creative inquiry model that is iterative, embodied and spatially responsive, generating knowledge from within the process itself. Research Contribution This work supports creative practitioners, urban observers, and design researchers seeking tactile, site-sensitive methods of understanding. By translating sensory observation into reflective visual form, it expands how we understand identity in flux. Exhibited at the VNX Exhibition 2025: Cross (X), as part of the VNxSymposium, Vietnam, July 2025, the project offers a foundation for developing future visual frameworks to observe cultural transformation in lived urban spaces.</p
My Formative Queers: Stories of the Music Videos that Made Us Queer
No full textBACKGROUND This work of exhibition is a collaborative storytelling project that combines autoethnographic creative writing, performance, and curatorial practice to illuminate notions of queer identity formation in relation to the music video artform. It is inspired by Darryl W. Bullock’s book David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music (2017). Using autoethnographic storytelling to understand cultural and creative experiences can “provoke new ways of knowing, seeing, and experiencing the world”, “transform practice” (Hjorth et. al. 2020), challenge “imposed forms of identity” (Russell 1999); and, for queer people, it means “assembling a community invested in disrupting and changing narratives and cultures of apology, shame and fear” (Holman-Jones & Harris 2018). We ask: How can queer collaborative storytelling highlight the impact of the music video form on queer identity? CONTRIBUTION The research team explored this question through live collaborative storytelling performance events, video screenings, essays, social media content, and radio interviews that contextualise the impact of music videos made between 1976-2011 through 17 stories across 5 national contexts. The stories weave personal and political sensibilities to illuminate the significance of music videos for developing identity, belonging, and creative practices for queer youth. The research team further illuminated the project findings and significance of storytelling about music videos through video screenings, social media content, and radio interviews. An essay by the research team for Senses of Cinema explicates the project’s contribution. SIGNIFICANCE The project was exhibited at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Howler Melbourne, in partnership with Melbourne Queer Film Festival, and supported by RMIT Culture and the Design & Creative Practice EIP; on radio shows Primal Screen (3RRR), Queer View Mirror (3RRR) and OutTakes (Joy 94.9); and a special dossier in Senses of Cinema journal, whose editors called it “intellectually (and affectively) exciting” (Senses of Cinema 2025).</p