Speaker: Ganesh Venkateshwara, Research Staff, School of Computer Science (SoCS, ANU)

Date: Thursday, 05 November 2009

Time: 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Venue: CSIT Seminar Room, N101, CSIT Building, Building (108), North Road, ANU (campus map)

Website: Seminars @ CECS

Enquiries: Dr Malcolm Newey

“A sizable number of computational chemists (physicists, biologists and material scientists alike) use a wide variety of tools to perform computation, visualization and presentation. Many a times these are incompatible with each other, necessitating reliance on, often cumbersome, external tools    to perform appropriate conversions. A few of the computational chemists also use myriad programming environments to develop new computational codes or visualization tools. However, there is no environment that succinctly amalgamates programming environments and various tools available to a computational chemist, which many a times hinders easy integration and rapid application development.

“In this talk, I present MeTA Studio, a programmable cross-platform environment for computational chemists that aims to address this issue.”

This seminar is part of the CECS Seminar Series.

Ganesh Venkateshwara is a Post-doctoral fellow at the School of Computer Science, Australian National University, and is an active member of the school’s Computer Systems group.

Original Seminar Notice at: Fast Food for Computational Chemists, CECS Seminar List, The Australian National University

Author: Kate Sullivan, Phd Candidate, India specialist, Department of International Relations, The Australian National University

Published: Sunday, 01 November 2009

Full story at: http://inside.org.au/indias-toughest-contest/

Hope and perseverance drive the enormous number of young Indians with ambitions to work in government, reports Kate Sullivan

India's toughest contest

Kate Sullivan is a PhD candidate and India specialist in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University.

Speaker: Shayne Flint, Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science (SoCS, ANU)

Date: Thursday, 01 October 2009

Time: 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Venue: CSIT Seminar Room, N101, CSIT Building, Building (108), North Road, ANU (campus map)

Website: Seminars @ CECS

Enquiries: Dr Malcolm Newey

“Demand for software developers is increasing while the number of software engineering and IT students remains stable or in decline. At the same time, there is an increasing need to quickly build software systems in response to rapid social, economic and environmental change. The CECS Software-Intensive Systems Engineering (SiSE) group is addressing these issues by developing novel technology which aims to increase software development productivity by an order of magnitude.

“To achieve this objective we are exploring the use of Model- Driven Engineering (MDE) and ways to improve its effectiveness. Specifically, we are addressing problems in areas such as requirements and stakeholder management; integrating multiple viewpoints, cross-cutting concerns, modelling languages and paradigms; variations in architecture and implementation; model semantics, translation, synchronisation, evolution and reuse; the presence of uncertainty, imperfection and ambiguity; verification, scalability and visualisation. This is a long list, but our research indicates the possibility that many of these problems may be the result of entrenched assumptions that underpin existing approaches to MDE.”

In this seminar Dr Flint will demonstrate a new approach to MDE which is developed from a very different set of assumptions. The approach is proving effective and addresses or eliminates many of the problems with existing approaches. If commercialised, it could have direct and demonstrable economic impact by increasing ICT industry productivity and our ability to rapidly react to emerging opportunities and threats.

This seminar is part of the CECS Seminar Series.

Shayne Flint is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Computer Science, Australian National University, and is an active member of the department’s Software-Intensive Systems Engineering group. He started his career as a RAAF engineering officer and has worked in industry in various software/systems engineering, consulting, marketing, management and commercialization roles. Dr Flint has broad industry experience and is the originator of Aspect-Oriented Thinking, a systematic approach to developing, managing and integrating the multi-disciplinary knowledge and expertise required to understand and improve complex systems. Nowadays, he is driven by a desire to radically improve the productivity of software development, particularly within multi-disciplinary contexts such as environmental science and engineering.

Original Seminar Notice at: Can we Increase Software Development Productivity by an Order of Magnitude, CECS Seminar List, The Australian National University, 2009

A simple workflow for a fairly standard LaTeX setup for the Mac.

1. Download the MacTex disk image. Instructions for downloading and installing the disk image are available at the MacTex site. This will install the Texlive distribution, the TeXShop editor, and the BibDesk bibliography manager.
2. To add version control support for your documents, install Bazaar for Mac OS X.
3. Nicola Talbot’s “LaTeX for complete novices” is a no-frills tutorial which gets you started immediately.  For writing a PhD thesis, follow this up with “Using LaTeX to write a PhD thesis”.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Author: Kate Sullivan, Phd Candidate, Lecturer, Department of International Relations, The Australian National University

Published: Tuesday, 14 July 209

Full story at: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/blogs/southasiamasala/2009/07/14/pragmatic-ideals-after-g8-g5-indian-pm-heads-for-nam-summit/

By highlighting the necessity of multilateral approaches to global challenges, Manmohan Singh’s rhetoric at the G8-G5 honed in on the utility rather than the morality of broad collaboration.

Kate Sullivan is a PhD candidate and India specialist in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University. She lectures  Hindi-Urdu Filmi Hindi (a course on Bollywood film studies) at the Faculty’s South Asia Center. She is also the co-editor of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies’ new blog: South Asia Masala.

Greetings from the Coombs Seminar Room A at The Australian National University where India specialist Kate Sullivan is presenting Seeing the World through Indian Foreign Service Eyes — A Blueprint for ‘Diplomatic Fieldwork’ in the study of International Relations (IR).

The talk and topic is particularly interesting to me in that the study readily lends itself to the application of Aspect-Oriented Thinking (a multidisciplinary methodology developed by Dr Shayne Flint) in tackling the integration of the necessary domain knowledge and structure.

In the first part of her talk, Ms Sullivan makes the following interesting points about IR study.

IR is not culturally-neutral: This affects the study of IR theories due to the following factors:

• Complexity
• Epistemology
• Universalist assumptions
• IR’s ‘debt to the West’

Reforming the discipline of IR study: These issues have been recognized by intellectuals and efforts are underway to reform the discipline, in particular the handling of culture in the context of

• Foreign Policy Analysis
• Strategic Studies

IR studies are obviously multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary in nature, encountering issues which can to a large extent be ameliorated by exploiting interpretive contexts. This work presents interesting cross-cutting concerns with current research across The Australian National University by Ziyad Alshaikh in management of context, suggesting effective use of a Context Dynamics Matrix.

In the second part of her talk, Ms Sullivan visits the debate surrounding the narrative exploration in her research studies, successfully arguing a case for contextualizing the implicit nature of theories and methodologies in asking questions about India’s aspirations to be an institutionally recognized ‘global power’.

Finally, Ms Sullivan outlined the effects various drivers and forces governing Indian foreign policy decisions and their resulting outcomes. She argued that we should look at the context of the narrative concerns at a sufficient level of abstraction and detail and map it to an ethnographic effect. This entails a view of the Indian Foreign Service from a perspective of:

• Data collection/study/interpretation
• ‘Emic’ (insider) verus ‘etic’ (outsider) approach
• Attempt to grasp the making of meaningful social behavior
• Encourage reflexivity on part of the researcher

These research questions are not too different from the questions I seek to answer in the field of contextual concept workflow management (answering the four canonical questions of who, what, when, why), and the need to explicitize the context-tie-in.

Ms Sullivan also suggested that there is a progressive change in the sensitivity with which India has projected its image abroad and in the international arena. She discussed what makes the study of historical and current ethnographies challenging and how academic research could manage ‘in-the-field’ analysis of individuals who seek to inform public policy in international relations.

Finally, there was some time spent in general discussion and questions on issues affecting studies in International Relations. Points raised recognized the need to resolve cultural forces, challenges in marrying inconsistencies between theoretical and practical approaches and the academic material in the context of this research.

This blog entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Speaker: Kate Sullivan, International Relations, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies

Date: Wednesday, 25 June 2009

Time: 3:30PM – 5:00 PM

Venue: Seminar Room A, Coombs Building, ANU (campus map)

Website: South Asia Seminar Series

Kate Sullivan is a PhD candidate and India specialist in the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University. She lectures  Hindi-Urdu Filmi Hindi (a course on Bollywood film studies) at the Faculty’s South Asia Center.

Original Seminar Notice at: South Asia Seminar Series

Speaker: Hugh Fisher, School of Computer Science, ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science

Date: Thursday, 25 June 2009

Time: 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Venue: CSIT Seminar Room, N101, CSIT Building (Bldg 108), North Road, ANU (campus map)

Website: Seminars @ CECS

Enquiries: Hugh Fisher

This seminar will give an introduction to the Apple iPhone (and iPod Touch) as a programming platform. Topics covered will include the hardware and OS capabilities, programming environment, the new styles of user interaction, and the restrictions on development and distribution. Don’t expect any impressive demos or in-depth benchmarking: the target audience is people who’ve never programmed an iPhone but are curious about what is involved.

This seminar is part of the CECS Seminar Series.

Hugh Fisher is a long time owner and programmer of Apple computers, and also interested in human-computer interaction. He is also a long time member of the School of Computer Science.

Original Seminar Notice at: Programming the iPhone, CECS Seminar List, The Australian National University, 2009

American comic-book publisher Moonstone’s “reboot” of their flagship title The Phantom continues in this tale of sea-pirates and modern-day terrorist violence.

Illustration from "End War: Pt 2 of 3"

Mike Bullock’s penmanship is accompanied by rather striking artwork from Silvestre Szilagyi and ably colored by Bob Pedroza.

Illustration from "End War: Pt 2 of 3"

The “A” version cover by Joe Corroney is simply eye-catching and captivates you with its effectiveness in simplicity.

The Phantom (c) King  Features Syndicate Inc. The Phantom: Ghost Who Walks #2, published by Moonstone, 582 Torrence Avenue, Calumet City, IL 60409.

The artwork featured in this post  is merely presented for informational and review purposes.

This blog entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Zoe Brain pens her thoughts about the current state of the US Manned Space Program.

Either way, the funding, and therefore the very existence of the US manned space program, won’t depend on the technical issues: it will depend on the US deficit, and the hard decisions Obama’s successor will have to make to remedy the catastrophically growing deficit that is planned to occur after he leaves office. That’s if nothing untoward happens that makes it even worse.

Full post at: http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/05/us-manned-space-program-under-review.html