New Zealand Local Government at the Crossroads? Reflections on the Recent Local Government Reforms

The first new local government statute to be brought before the New Zealand parliament in almost 30 years has brought significant changes which are informed by a participatory democracy paradigm. Notwithstanding the significance of these innovations, we question the extent to which these changes can be construed as a reinvention of local government in New Zealand. It is argued that the Act expresses a model of collaboration between central and local government and communities embodied in the ideology of the 'Third Way', a political programme which aims to renew social democracy by including civil society as a partner in managing the economy. However, as strong as these new attributes are, the drive behind the Act must be considered an example of the centre-left being pragmatic, not of fundamental reform.     

Chinese-Based Spearcons: Improving Pedestrian Navigation Performance in Eyes-Free Environment

This article presents nonspeech audio (i.e., English-based spearcons and Chinese-based spearcons) to represent distance, and forward-direction for pedestrian navigation in an eyes-free environment. Experiment in the field is carried out with the involvement of 10 participants (i.e., native Chinese) using within-subject design to evaluate English-based spearcons, Chinese-based spearcons, and Chinese text-to-speech (TTS). Results from the experiment suggest that Chinese-based spearcons are efficient in task completion compared to Chinese TTS. Moreover, Chinese-based spearcons are more effective in conveying distance and forward-direction compared to English-based spearcons in pedestrian navigation. Overall, participants have shown their satisfaction with Chinese-based spearcons as an auditory feedback in pedestrian navigation.     

Robust Optimal PID type ILC for Linear Batch Process

International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems - The proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller is standard technique for controlling the industrial batch process. However, the...     

Calix[4]arene Resin,An Efficient Adsorbent for Azo Dyes

Dyes are a potential menace and are considered major contributors to environmental pollution. However, the cleanliness of the environment from colored toxicants is a challenging task of the contemporary era. In this regard, this approach is based on the confiscation of hazardous dyes. The main features of this work are the synthesis and the application of newly synthesized calix[4]arene grafted Amberlite XAD-4 (resin 5) for the selected methyl orange (MO) and methyl red (MR) azo dyes removal from aqueous environment. The adsorption ability of resin 5 for the selected azo dyes was evaluated through optimizing various parameters. Moreover, treatment with real water samples reveal that newly synthesized resin is an extremely effective adsorbent for the removal of the selected azo dyes from aqueous media.     

Removal of ciprofloxacin from aqueous solution using wheat bran as adsorbent

Current study describes sorption of antibiotic drug (ciprofloxacin) by using nontoxic and biocompatible carrier, i.e., wheat bran (WB). For sorption study, various parameters were optimized and Freundlich, Dubinin–Radushkevich, Langmuir, and Temkin isotherm models were applied to demonstrate the mechanism of sorption, while kinetics study for sorption was evaluated using diffusion models, pseudo-first-order kinetic (Langergren) and pseudo-second-order (Ho and McKay) kinetic models. In addition, thermodynamics study was also carried out. However, sorption of ciprofloxacin was pH depended and it showed 75% drug release in alkaline medium (at pH = 1.5) indicating the good release ability of WB for ciprofloxacin.     

Flame synthesis of graphene films in open environments

Few-layer graphene is grown on copper and nickel substrates at high rates using a novel flame synthesis method in open-atmosphere environments. Transmittance and resistance properties of the transferred films are similar to those grown by other methods, but the concentration of oxygen, as assessed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, is actually less than that for graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition under near vacuum conditions. The method involves utilizing a multi-element inverse-diffusion-flame burner, where post-flame species and temperatures are radially-uniform upon deposition at a substrate. Advantages of the specific flame synthesis method are scalability for large-area surface coverage, increased growth rates, high purity and yield, continuous processing, and reduced costs due to efficient use of fuel as both heat source and reagent. Additionally, by adjusting local growth conditions, other carbon nanostructures (i.e. nanotubes) are readily synthesized.     

Digital Forensics

This issue is one of a pair of coordinated special issues on digital forensics by IEEE Security & Privacy and IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. S&P's special issue has articles debating the effectiveness of forensics, on capturing live forensics analysis of computers, on the new Microsoft Office file formats and their implications on forensics, on licensing issues for digital forensics investigators, and finally a review article on the use of hashing in forensics.     

Hierarchical GUI test case generation using automated planning

The widespread use of GUIs for interacting with software is leading to the construction of more and more complex GUIs. With the growing complexity come challenges in testing the correctness of a GUI and its underlying software. We present a new technique to automatically generate test cases for GUIs that exploits planning, a well-developed and used technique in artificial intelligence. Given a set of operators, an initial state, and a goal state, a planner produces a sequence of the operators that will transform the initial state to the goal state. Our test case generation technique enables efficient application of planning by first creating a hierarchical model of a GUI based on its structure. The GUI model consists of hierarchical planning operators representing the possible events in the GUI. The test designer defines the preconditions and effects of the hierarchical operators, which are input into a plan-generation system. The test designer also creates scenarios that represent typical initial and goal states for a GUI user. The planner then generates plans representing sequences of GUI interactions that a user might employ to reach the goal state from the initial state. We implemented our test case generation system, called Planning Assisted Tester for Graphical User Interface Systems (PATHS) and experimentally evaluated its practicality and effectiveness. We describe a prototype implementation of PATHS and report on the results of controlled experiments to generate test cases for Microsoft's WordPad     

Preserving distributed systems critical properties: a model-driven approach

The need for creating predictability in distributed systems is most often specified in terms of quality-of-service (QoS) requirements, which help define the acceptable levels of dependability with which capabilities such as processing capacity, data throughput, or service availability reach users. For longer-term properties such as scalability, maintainability, adaptability, and system security, we can similarly use persistent software attributes (PSAs) to specify how and to what degree such properties must remain intact as a network expands and evolves over time. The Skoll distributed continuous software quality assurance process helps to identify viable system and software configurations for meeting stringent QOS and PSA requirements by coordinating the use of distributed computing resources. The authors tested their process using the large, rapidly evolving ACE+TAO middleware suite.     

Assessing and Modelling the Influence of Household Characteristics on Per Capita Water Consumption

Sustainable urban water supply management requires, ideally, accurate evidence based estimations on per capita consumption and a good understanding of the factors influencing the consumption. The information can then be used to achieve improved water demand forecasts. Water consumption patterns in the developed countries have been extensively investigated. However, very little is known for the developing world. This paper investigates per capita water consumption resulting from water use activities in different types of households typically found in urban areas of the developing world. A data collection programme was executed for 407 households to extract information on household characteristics, water user behaviour and intensity and the nature of indoor and outdoor water use activities. The rigorous statistical analysis of the data shows that per capita water consumption increases with income: 241, 272 and 290 l/capita/day for low, medium and high income households, respectively. Additionally, the results suggest that per capita consumption increases with the number of adult female members in the household and almost one-third of consumption is via taps. The collected data has been used to develop statistical models using two different regression techniques: multiple linear (STEPWISE) and evolutionary polynomial regression (EPR). The inclusion of demographic parameters in the developed models considerably improved the prediction accuracy. Two of the best performing models are used to forecast the water demand for the city, using four future scenarios: market forces, fortress world, policy reform and great transition. The results suggest that the domestic water demand would be highest in the fortress world scenario due to the increase in population and size of built-up area.