Posts Tagged ‘Australian’
Add Meaning to Data with Graphs
Visualization of data and information can take many forms. Data in the form of text and numbers often don’t convey the obvious conclusions that may be reached from the data. Visual representations of data however may make data far more simple to understand and, particularly with large and complex data-sets, quicker from which to draw conclusions. Data are usually represented as graphs when a visual representation is required.
Data analysis, and the subsequent conclusions reached, may have wide ranging implications; take for example data about education, training and skills attainment in a country or region. This data are often used for government policy relating to future education and skills needs. The conclusions reached from the data-set therefore have far reaching implications and it is hence of importance that the data are understood by the various stakeholders. To make the data more meaningful for the audience graphs and other images may be very beneficial.
In order to demonstrate a few different means of displaying the same data, I have created the images as below from a data-set; The data are from the Australian National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) and represents Read the rest of this entry »
Related postsA Brush Turkey in Sydney
I was interested to see the article this morning in the Sydney Morning Herald titled: ‘First it was the march of the cane 
toad … now the brush turkey is eating Sydney’. We have a few brush turkeys (also called scrub turkeys and bush turkeys) around our house; we live in the bush – officially a ‘rain forest’ which these large-ish birds love. They certainly aren’t the prettiest of birds however they have a lot of character. The only problem we have had with them is that they chase our two year old daughter and sometimes wander into the house.
Apparently a large amount of damage may be done to gardens when the brush turkeys gather vegetation to build large mounds in which to bury their eggs (which the male attends). So, they may not be the prettiest and they may not be garden friendly but they are great to have around.
P.S. They belong to the family ‘Megapode’ (also known as Incubator Birds and Mound-builders)
Most popular incoming search terms for this page: Related postsAustralia Patents Wireless Technology
Well done to CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization which patented a solution commonly used in wireless networking (specifically WLAN 802.11a, 802.11g and 802.11n). This Australian Government organization has agreed with various corporate users of its technology to a $200 million payout in licensing revenue. These users include Toshiba, Netgear, Buffalo, D-Link, Belkin, SMC, Accton, 3Com, Intel, Microsoft, Asus, Fujitsu and HP. CSIRO shows that Australia has the ability to be leaders in new technologies. Here is the media release from CSIRO:
Australian inventiveness lies at the heart of how millions of people now use wireless networks to access information on a myriad of portable devices.
In homes, offices and cafés, most of the wireless devices we use every day to access the Internet and other networks rely on CSIRO’s solution to a complex radio problem.
“CSIRO’s solution to the ‘multipath problem’ and its subsequent commercialisation ranks as one of the most significant achievements in CSIRO’s 82 year history,” CSIRO chairman Dr John Stocker says.
“The technology is used in over 800 million devices right now and its use is rapidly expanding.”
Today at a ceremony in Melbourne, the scientific, commercial and legal teams responsible for the achievement will receive CSIRO’s highest honour: the Chairman’s Medal for Research Achievement.
One of the main problems the team managed to solve was ’multipathing’.
“You might imagine that the little box with the flashing lights that powers your home wireless network is simply beaming information straight to your laptop,” CSIRO’s Dr John O’Sullivan, leader of the scientific team says.
“In reality the radio waves travel in all directions, bouncing off walls, furniture and people – making it very hard to deliver a clear signal to the receiver.”
The team solved this problem by adapting ideas that had their roots in radioastronomy and the Dell search for exploding black holes.
“I was inspired to think about ways of cleaning up smeared radio signals to make searching for short pulses like those from exploding black holes easier,” Dr O’Sullivan says.
“We ended up building a ‘fast Fourier transform’ chip to do these sorts of processing tasks efficiently and fast. That proved to be the key to untangling the web of wireless signals so we could build a workable high speed wireless local area network (WLAN).”
A US patent was granted in 1996 and, in 1999, one of the first modern international standards for WLAN (IEEE 802.11a) relied on the technology covered by CSIRO’s patent for its implementation. In 2001 the first products entered the market.
“CSIRO set out to encourage the industry to take licenses for the use of its patented technology,” Mr Nigel Poole, CSIRO Executive Director, Commercial says.
“When that did not prove successful, we initiated legal proceedings which then led to proceedings being initiated against CSIRO.
“The result earlier this year was that 14 companies settled with CSIRO under confidential terms. The revenue arising from these settlements to date is approximately $A200 million.
“Soon an announcement will be made about how Australian research will benefit from this success.”
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