Australian Communications and Media Authority

ABSTRACT By bringing together metadata from multiple collecting institutions, digital heritage aggregators offer the potential for diverse and dispersed audiences to engage with the collective cultural collections of a nation, state, or region. For institutions and policymakers, such endeavours promise greater value for public money, increased audiences, and democratised access to cultural heritage. This article explores how these idealised promises of digital heritage aggregators run up against the actual politics and practices of their implementation. This is grounded in a history of attempts to aggregate heterogeneous and geographically distant museum collections across Australia into a single ‘distributed national collection’. Australia’s landscape of museums has long been characterised by several major public institutions, which often play a coordinating role, and thousands of small (often volunteer-run) museums. We argue that aggregating cultural collections is not just a matter of standardising metadata but coordinating different needs, capacities, and priorities, particularly the divides between major museums and community collecting organisations. In response, we suggest a shift in the study of such collaborative endeavours, from the aggregation of cultural data to the coordination of data cultures. In practice, this approach eschews a top-down approach to bringing together heterogeneous organisations in favour of resolving tensions and disparities in divergent values, resources, and priorities.

Abstract In this paper, an eight‐way substrate integrated waveguide unequal power divider with an enhanced co‐phase bandwidth is presented, and demonstrated a potential application for the Ku‐band radiometer antennas. The proposed divider design is based on the −35 dB Chebyshev beam‐shaping algorithm to achieve at minimum −25 dB of antenna side‐lobe level (SLL) and high beam efficiency (>90%). Investigations on different unequal power splitting techniques are discussed, and an efficient method for the unequal power division is proposed, exhibiting improved co‐phase bandwidth and wideband matching. The proposed unequal eight‐way power divider demonstrates a wider co‐phase bandwidth of 10% within 10° phase error and the −15 dB return loss bandwidth of 36.8%. Furthermore, the proposed unequal divider is integrated with eight longitudinal slot radiators, designed at 18.7 GHz and exhibits low radiation loss (better than −1.3 dB). The antenna measurement results exhibit a symmetrical fan beam radiation pattern and satisfied the goal of −25 dB SLL, resulting high beam efficiency of 97% and gain of 13.45 dBi. Therefore, the proposed unequal power divider technique shows the potential to be utilised in the low SLL antenna array designs for an accurate brightness temperature measurement of radiometer systems. The application of this technique can be further extended to radar and satellite/wireless communications.

The history of children's popular culture in Australia is still to be written. This article examines Australian print publication for children from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, together with radio and children's television programming from the 1950s to the 1970s. It presents new scholarship on the history of children's magazines and newspapers, sourced from digital archives such as Trove, and documents new sources for early works by Australian children's writers. The discussion covers early television production for children, mobilising digital resources that have hitherto not informed scholarship in the field.

The demand for spectrum is at an all time high due to the increasing popularity of wireless devices. As such it is imperative that technological and regulatory mechanisms are developed to maximise spectral efficiency. This paper documents a method for increasing spectral efficiency through the prediction of spectrum “holes” for use with cognitive radio technologies. An algorithm is developed based upon a Hidden Markov Model of the spectral environment. The Baum-Welch algorithm is employed to dynamically calculate the transition parameters of the model. The algorithm is tested upon data collected from the 450–470 MHz band in Australia with a reward function implemented to analyse the performance of the algorithm.

With the emergence of dynamic spectrum allocation systems, old paradigms upon which the pricing of spectrum were based no longer hold. Provided vital systems can be protected the value of spectrum is expected to become more related to the value of data it can carry and the reliability it offers. The bands which have both good available bandwidth and good propagation properties are expected to become equally valuable regardless of which technology they are currently allocated to by the national regulator. This paper explores the pricing of spectrum using only its physical attributes, taking into account ability to carry data and the cost of infrastructure needed to provide a near equivalent service. The method presented in this paper may be used as a tool when international, regional and domestic regulators make decisions on what may be the highest value use for a particular band or perhaps where prices should be set to assist a band to move to its highest value use.

Government portals are not dissimilar to business enterprise portals, although many of these are the entry point to the organisation’s intranet and thus internally facing. The purpose of a portal is to increase the volume of available information, and government portals are becoming gateways or central access points for many e-government initiatives around the globe. They perform this task well as they provide a consistent and easy-to-use interface that allows citizens access to a range of government services. This chapter presents the findings of a review of two Victorian government portals, each of which has implemented different operational models.

Is there a market in Australia for content – and how will it unfold? The latest generation of mobile phones has introduced a new market – the opportunity to sell content for mobile phones. People now look at creating products to use on your mobile rather just finding ways to use the phone. In Australia, this has evolved in such way that carriers are keeping a tight grip on content – Telstra, Hutchison, Vodafone and Optus all attempt to lure customers with the promise of a large range of content and services provided exclusively on their own network. Australia is yet to see a boom in the numbers of independent mobile content providers The uptake and prevalence of M-commerce in Australia has so far concentrated on the delivery of services, entry to competitions or explicit marketing exercises. There is one view that content will drive a greater uptake and utilization of M-Commerce and that the content provision will almost certainly be closely related to the business of the network operator. Another view is that content could diversify and be provided by independent content providers. When the boom comes – and there are signs that it is imminent – it will almost certainly will be focused on the youth market. The 2003 W2F mobile youth report detailed that youth in the Asia Pacific region spent almost 14 percent of their total leisure spending on mobile products including content – in a year and this is expected to increase to over 16 per cent by 2006. The provision of downloadable ringtones, games and wallpaper are probably the best examples of mobile

The role of quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in evaluation of childhood epilepsy remains poorly defined, with minimal published data. Previous work from our center questioned the specificity of hippocampal asymmetry (HA) in an outpatient group whose epilepsy was defined by using clinical and interictal data only. By using childhood volunteer controls and defining epilepsy syndromes using video-EEG monitoring, we readdressed the utility of HA in differentiating mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) from other partial and generalized epileptic syndromes in children. Seventy children were enrolled; entry criteria were age younger than 18 years with predominant seizure type recorded on video-EEG telemetry with volumetric MRI in all cases. Thirty healthy child volunteers had volumetric MRI. Epilepsy syndrome classification was according to ILAE. Control data revealed symmetric hippocampi, mean smaller/larger ratio of 0.96 (0.95-0.97, 95% CI) with no gender or right/left predominance. Overall 23% of patients had significant HA. Mean hippocampal ratio for MTLE was 0.78 (95% CI, 0.70-0.86), significantly lower than controls and from all other epilepsy syndromes. HA was highly specific (85%) to the syndrome of MTLE. Other potential epileptogenic lesions were found in 27 (39%) patients, lowest yield in frontal and mesial temporal syndromes. Dual pathology was present in 10% of patients. There was no significant association between HA and risk factors. In this study, we found that HA in children with a well-defined epilepsy syndrome is highly sensitive and specific for MTLE. Whether this will correlate with surgical outcome, as in adults, is the subject of ongoing study.