搜索结果：Australian

Speculation about Martian canals was a recurring feature of late nineteenth-century popular astronomy. This paper examines how colonial newspapers used humour to negotiate the epistemic uncertainty and interpretive excess associated with canal theory. Drawing on over one thousand metropolitan and regional Australian newspapers published between 1877 and 1899, we identify five overlapping modes of humour: imported metropolitan wit; satire of modern engineering culture; humour grounded in observational uncertainty; scale-based exaggeration and colonial self-comparison; and overt sceptical parody. These modes tracked shifting relationships between observation, interpretation and authority, allowing newspapers to entertain speculative ideas while marking the limits of scientific credibility. At the same time, humorous treatments positioned Australian readers within a global culture of science and modernity. Comparisons with projects such as the Suez and Panama Canals, and with European and American astronomers, aligned colonial audiences with metropolitan discourse, even as local experience with land, water and scale shaped the tone of satire. We demonstrate that Australian newspapers

Between 1875 and 1899, Mars occupied a prominent and recurring position in newspaper reporting across Europe, North America and beyond. Although the scientific and cultural dimensions of this "Mars excitement" have been well studied in metropolitan contexts, far less attention has been paid to how planetary astronomy circulated through colonial press systems. This paper examines the Australian press as a case study in the global mediation of nineteenth-century astronomical knowledge. Drawing on a structured compilation of 1040 digitised newspaper articles accessed via the National Library of Australia, the study analyses patterns of first appearance, reprinting, attribution and temporal persistence in Australian Mars reporting. Mars-related news entered Australia primarily through international telegraphic networks and overseas syndication before circulating widely through metropolitan, regional and provincial newspapers. Distinguishing between novel reports and subsequent reprints reveals that apparent abundance often masked a small number of originating items that achieved extensive colonial reach. Attribution practices evolved over time, shifting from anonymous or institutional

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) offer a promising mechanism to protect Australian and Indigenous artists' copyright. They represent and transfer the value of artwork in digital form. Before adopting NFTs to protect Australian artwork, we in this paper investigate them empericially. We focus on examining the details of NFT structure. We start from the underlying structure of NFTs to show how they represent copyright for both artists and production owners, as well as how they aim to safeguard or secure the value of digital artworks. We then involve data collection from various types of sources with different storage methods, including on-chain, centralized, and decentralized systems. Based on both metadata and artwork content, we present our analysis and discussion on the following key issues: copyright, security and artist identification. The final results of the evaluation, unfortnately, show that the NFT is NOT ready to protect Australian and Indigenous artists' copyright.

In Australia, post-contact language varieties, including creoles and local varieties of international languages, emerged as a result of forced contact between Indigenous communities and English speakers. These contact varieties are widely used, yet are poorly supported by language technologies. This gap presents barriers to participation in civil and economic society for Indigenous communities using these varieties, and reproduces minoritisation of contemporary Indigenous sociolinguistic identities. This paper concerns three questions regarding this context. First, can speech technologies support speakers of Australian Aboriginal English, a local indigenised variety of English? Second, what risks are inherent in such a project? Third, what technology development practices are appropriate for this context, and how can researchers integrate meaningful community participation in order to mitigate risks? We argue that opportunities do exist -- as well as risks -- and demonstrate this through a case study exploring design practices in a real-world project aiming to improve speech technologies for Australian Aboriginal English. We discuss how we integrated culturally appropriate and part

We introduce SynGP500, a clinician-curated collection of 500 synthetic Australian general practice medical notes. The dataset integrates curriculum-based clinical breadth (RACGP 2022 Curriculum), epidemiologically-calibrated prevalence (BEACH study), and diverse consultation contexts. This approach systematically includes both common presentations and less-common curriculum-specified conditions that GPs must recognize but appear infrequently in single practice populations, potentially supporting more generalizable model training than datasets constrained by naturally occurring case distributions. SynGP500 is messy by design, reflecting the authentic complexity of healthcare delivery: telegraphic documentation, typos, patient non-adherence, socioeconomic barriers, and clinician-patient disagreements, unlike sanitized synthetic datasets that obscure clinical realities. Multi-faceted validation demonstrates dataset quality through epidemiological alignment with real Australian GP consultation patterns (BEACH study), stylometric analysis confirming high linguistic variation, semantic diversity analysis demonstrating broad coverage, and exploratory downstream evaluation using self-super

This paper introduces the Australian Supermarket Object Set (ASOS), a comprehensive dataset comprising 50 readily available supermarket items with high-quality 3D textured meshes designed for benchmarking in robotics and computer vision applications. Unlike existing datasets that rely on synthetic models or specialized objects with limited accessibility, ASOS provides a cost-effective collection of common household items that can be sourced from a major Australian supermarket chain. The dataset spans 10 distinct categories with diverse shapes, sizes, and weights. 3D meshes are acquired by a structure-from-motion techniques with high-resolution imaging to generate watertight meshes. The dataset's emphasis on accessibility and real-world applicability makes it valuable for benchmarking object detection, pose estimation, and robotics applications.

The rapid advancement of Generative AI (GenAI) technologies offers transformative opportunities within Australia's critical technologies of national interest while introducing unique security challenges. This paper presents SecGenAI, a comprehensive security framework for cloud-based GenAI applications, with a focus on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems. SecGenAI addresses functional, infrastructure, and governance requirements, integrating end-to-end security analysis to generate specifications emphasizing data privacy, secure deployment, and shared responsibility models. Aligned with Australian Privacy Principles, AI Ethics Principles, and guidelines from the Australian Cyber Security Centre and Digital Transformation Agency, SecGenAI mitigates threats such as data leakage, adversarial attacks, and model inversion. The framework's novel approach combines advanced machine learning techniques with robust security measures, ensuring compliance with Australian regulations while enhancing the reliability and trustworthiness of GenAI systems. This research contributes to the field of intelligent systems by providing actionable strategies for secure GenAI implementation in ind

Australian agriculture supplies many horticultural commodities to domestic and international markets; however, food composition data for many commodities are outdated or unavailable. We produced an up-to-date, nationally representative dataset of up to 148 nutrients and related components in 92 Australian-grown fruit (fresh n=39, dried n=6), vegetables (n=43) and nuts (n=4) by replacing outdated data (pre-2000), confirming concentrations of important nutrients and retaining relevant existing data. Primary samples (n = 902) were purchased during peak growing season in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth between June 2021 and May 2022. While new data reflect current growing practices, varieties, climate and analytical methods, few notable differences were found between old and new data where methods of analysis are comparable. The new data will be incorporated into the Australian Food Composition Database, allowing free online access to stakeholders. The approach used could serve as a model for cost-effective updates of national food composition databases worldwide.

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) are being partially deployed and tested across various global locations, including China, the USA, Germany, France, Japan, Korea, and the UK, but with limited demonstrations in Australia. The integration of machine learning (ML) into AV perception systems highlights the need for locally labelled datasets to develop and test algorithms in specific environments. To address this, we introduce SydneyScapes - a dataset tailored for computer vision tasks of image semantic, instance, and panoptic segmentation. This dataset, collected from Sydney and surrounding cities in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, consists of 756 images with high-quality pixel-level annotations. It is designed to assist AV industry and researchers by providing annotated data and tools for algorithm development, testing, and deployment in the Australian context. Additionally, we offer benchmarking results using state-of-the-art algorithms to establish reference points for future research and development. The dataset is publicly available at https://hdl.handle.net/2123/33051.

The digital footprints of today's internet-active individuals are a testament to their lives, and have the potential to become digital legacies once they pass on. Future descendants of those alive today will greatly appreciate the unprecedented insight into the lives of their long since deceased ancestors, but this can only occur if today we have a process for data preservation and handover after death. Many prominent online platforms offer nebulous or altogether absent policies regarding posthumous data handling, and despite recent advances it is currently unclear who the average Australian would like their data to be managed after their death (i.e., social media platforms, a trusted individual, or another digital executor). While at present the management of deceased accounts is largely performed by the platform (e.g., Facebook), it is conceivable that many Australians may not trust such platforms to do so with integrity. This study aims to further the academic conversation around posthumous data by delving deeper into the preferences of the Australian Public regarding the management of their data after death, ultimately to inform future development of research programs and indus

Information and knowledge leakage has become a significant security risk to Australian organizations. Each security incident in Australian business cost an average US$\$$2.8 million. Furthermore, Australian organisations spend the second most worldwide (US$\$$1.2 million each on average) on investigating and assessing information breaches. The leakage of sensitive organizational information occurs through different avenues, such as social media, cloud computing and mobile devices. In this study, we (1) analyze the knowledge leakage risk (KLR) caused by the use of mobile devices in knowledge-intensive Australian organizations, (2) present a conceptual research model to explain the determinants that influence KLR through the use of mobile devices grounded in the literature, (3) conduct interviews with security and knowledge managers to understand what strategies they use to mitigate KLR caused by the use of mobile devices and (4) use content analysis and the conceptual model to frame the preliminary findings from the interviews. Keywords: Knowledge leakage, mobile devices, mobile contexts, knowledge leakage risk

We propose a suit of methods to analyse the professional networks of MPs, showing how to analyse weak-tie connections between legislators and the connections between background charactersitic attributes. Applied to a novel dataset on the backgrounds of Australian MPs in the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal Party of Australia (1947-2019), we show that our approach can help to describe and explain the decline in working-class and trade unionist MPs from the Labor Party, the homogeneous elitism of the mid-20 century Liberal Party, and the increasing similarity of both parties' professional networks, occuring in the period of party cartellisation from the 1980s onward. Our paper's finding show that our method has clear potential for broader applications in the study of political representation, diversity, and elite political networks.

In this paper we use for the first time a systematic approach in the study of harmonic centrality at a Web domain level, and gather a number of significant new findings about the Australian web. In particular, we explore the relationship between economic diversity at the firm level and the structure of the Web within the Australian domain space, using harmonic centrality as the main structural feature. The distribution of harmonic centrality values is analyzed over time, and we find that the distributions exhibit a consistent pattern across the different years. The observed distribution is well captured by a partition of the domain space into six clusters; the temporal movement of domain names across these six positions yields insights into the Australian Domain Space and exhibits correlations with other non-structural characteristics. From a more global perspective, we find a significant correlation between the median harmonic centrality of all domains in each OECD country and one measure of global trust, the WJP Rule of Law Index. Further investigation demonstrates that 35 countries in OECD share similar harmonic centrality distributions. The observed homogeneity in distribution

This paper introduces a new instrument enabling a novel combination of Earth measuring techniques: direct observations with the radio astronomical instruments to satellites of the global navigation satellite systems. Inter-technique biases are a major error source in the terrestrial reference frame. Combining two major space-geodetic techniques, GNSS and VLBI, through observations to identical sensors has been considered infeasible due to their seemingly incompatible operating frequencies. The newly accessible L-band capability of the Australian VGOS telescopes is shown here, invalidating this prevailing opinion. A series of test observations demonstrates geodetic VLBI observations to GPS satellites for a continental-wide IVS telescope array, with the potential for observations at a critical scale. We anticipate immediate impact for the geodetic community, through first-ever inter-technique ties between VLBI and GNSS in the Australian region and via the opportunity for critical test observations towards the Genesis mission, geodesy's flagship project in the area of space ties set for launch in 2028.

Single Transferable Vote (STV) is used to elect candidates to the 76 seat Australian Senate across six states and two territories. These eight STV contests are counted using a combination of ballot scanners, manual data entry and tabulation software. On election night, some properties of the set of cast ballots are determined by hand. This includes the first preference tallies of each party. This technical report considers whether there are some properties, such as individual candidates' first preference tallies, that, if assumed to be accurate, imply a portion of the election outcome. The paper also presents an interesting example showing that the rules of STV tabulation used for the Australian Senate can allow bizarre behaviour, such as votes increasing in value over time.

We surveyed Australian finance professionals and tested whether there are statistically significant differences in promotional propensity according to gender identity. The findings indicate men and women are equally likely to ask for promotion, however, 'gifted advancements' account for the higher statistical frequency of promotions among men. These gender-based differences in behaviors have been overlooked in existing research on promotion. We call for a standardized framework for the development of promotion policies to address this industry-wide problem.

Fertility differentials by urban-rural residence and nativity of women in Australia significantly impact population composition at sub-national levels. We aim to provide consistent fertility forecasts for Australian women characterized by age, region, and birthplace. Age-specific fertility rates at the national and sub-national levels obtained from census data between 1981-2011 are jointly modeled and forecast by the grouped functional time series method. Forecasts for women of each region and birthplace are reconciled following the chosen hierarchies to ensure that results at various disaggregation levels consistently sum up to the respective national total. Coupling the region of residence disaggregation structure with the trace minimization reconciliation method produces the most accurate point and interval forecasts. In addition, age-specific fertility rates disaggregated by the birthplace of women show significant heterogeneity that supports the application of the grouped forecasting method.

The South Australia region of the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM) displays some of the highest levels of price volatility observed in modern electricity markets. This paper outlines an approach to probabilistic forecasting under these extreme conditions, including spike filtration and several post-processing steps. We propose using quantile regression as an ensemble tool for probabilistic forecasting, with our combined forecasts achieving superior results compared to all constituent models. Within our ensemble framework, we demonstrate that averaging models with varying training length periods leads to a more adaptive model and increased prediction accuracy. The applicability of the final model is evaluated by comparing our median forecasts with the point forecasts available from the Australian NEM operator, with our model outperforming these NEM forecasts by a significant margin.

This paper explains the main principles and some of the technical details for auditing the scanning and digitisation of the Australian Senate ballot papers. We give a short summary of the motivation for auditing paper ballots, explain the necessary supporting steps for a rigorous and transparent audit, and suggest some statistical methods that would be appropriate for the Australian Senate. 22 June 2022 Update: The update includes analysis of Senate preference data from the 2022 Australian election.