Department of Mathematics and Computing Seminars

The role of mathematics in sport is helping our sports’ scientists, coaches and competitors to improve in many ways their potential to achieve success. The talk will focus on many sports and their mathematical application at the primary, secondary and tertiary level of education, as well as the research being carried out in various areas. There will be ideas put forward that are accessible to all persons interested in sport, no matter their particular level of mathematical ability.

Sports covered will include tennis, darts, football, cricket, baseball, athletics, rowing, golf, horse-racing and triathlon.

Brain Informatics (BI) is a new interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary field that focuses on studying the mechanisms underlying the human information processing system. It brings together researchers and practitioners from diverse fields to explore the main research problems that lie in the interplay between the studies of human brain and the research of informatics, by using powerful equipments, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalogram (EEG), positron emission tomography (PET), and eye-tracking. The systematic BI methodology has resulted in the big BI data, including various raw brain data, data-related information, extracted data features, found domain knowledge related to human intelligence, and so forth. In this talk, I demonstrate a systematic approach to an integrated understanding of macroscopic and microscopic level working principles of the brain by means of experimental, computational, and cognitive neuroscience studies, as well as utilizing advanced Web intelligence centric information technologies. I discuss research issues and challenges from three aspects of Brain Informatics studies that deserve closer attention: systematic investigations for complex brain science problems, new information technologies for supporting systematic brain science studies, and Brain Informatics studies based on Web intelligence research needs. These three aspects offer different ways to study traditional cognitive science, neuroscience, mental health, and artificial intelligence.

This seminar will report on the findings of a study which investigated the impact of synchronous technology on distance teaching and learning through a case study of an introductory statistics course offered at the University of Southern Queensland over the Summer of 2010-11. The researcher, as participant-observer, conducted weekly online tutorials with twelve volunteers who interacted using audio, text chat and a virtual whiteboard. Analysis of interactions using the Community of Inquiry model revealed teaching, social and cognitive presences. Surveys and interviews ascertained student perceptions of the value of the tutorials. Recommendations for practice and new insights into the experience of synchronous online teaching and learning will be presented.

In order to rapidly and cost effectively respond to ever increasing data traffic demands, Mobile Network Operators must consider new and innovative ways to dimension, expand and evolve their Transport Networks. One approach is via the use of layers in a Transport Network to split and route the various types of traffic flows and traffic loads (based upon cost efficiency). It is envisaged that if such a proposed Multi-Layered network routing approach is adopted and deployed into Mobile Transport Networks, it has the potential to provide significant cost benefits to a Mobile Network Operator by reducing or removing the need for capital expenditure (for example: deployment of additional transmission hardware can be postponed). This proposal is also supported by a proposed Multi-Layered Network routing approach that attempts to traffic flows in the most cost efficiently manner via the use of shortest path, lowest cost based routing algorithms (such as those used in the NETML software).

This talk will give the brief introduction of modelling methodologies used in Water Resource Group of MDBA, as well as discuss the intelligent data analysis methods with the possibilities of implementation in water modeling at Murray-Darling Basin. A case study of NN-based prediction modeling for river water quality of the East River of China will be provided.

SmartForms are efficient and powerful electronic forms that could be used for the interactions between end users and web applications systems. This research has two aims. The first is representing a comprehensive study of the existing electronic forms technologies. The second is building a declarative system that automates translating of XML schema/document to an electronic form and generating data storage. The proposed system would be built using XML technologies and one of the existing electronic forms technologies such as XForms, HTML5forms and XSLTForms. It is expected from this research to produce deep understanding of the existing electronic forms features and a system that automatically generates electronic form and data storage from an input XML schema/document.

We show that many nonlinear wave processes in dispersive and dissipative media can be numerically studied by means of chain models describable by sets of ODEs. This allows us to obtain higher accuracy results for relatively cheap price using standard ODE-solvers. The advantages of this approach in comparison with the direct numerical modeling of PDEs are: the chain model has a vivid physical meaning and can be created in laboratory conditions in various embodiments playing a role of an analogous computer; there is no need to develop a complex numerical scheme and study its stability and convergence. We demonstrate the idea in application to the modeling of solitary wave propagation in a rotating ocean described by Gardner–Ostrovsky PDE using a modified Toda chain model. We show that our results are in a good agreement with early published data obtained from the direct numerical solution of the Gardner–Ostrovsky equation.

This research is concerned with the steady and unsteady two-dimensional free surface flows past semi-infinite surface-piercing bodies in a fluid of finite depth. The problems studied can be used to model the flow of water behind the bow or stern of a wide, blunt ship. The aim of this research is to find a shape of the free surface profile created behind bodies and find conditions which allow one to minimise or completely eliminate the downstream waves. Different families of stern shapes are considered, and it is shown that the amplitude of the waves can be minimised indeed. It is found that for sterns of some specific shapes the downstream waves can be entirely eliminated. The results are generalised for two-layer semi-infinite fluid of different densities when the depth of the lower layer is finite, whereas the depth of the upper layer is infinite.
The steady two-dimensional free surface flow past bodies in a fluid of finite depth is investigated analytically using the Wiener–Hopf technique and numerically using the boundary integral technique. Furthermore, the weakly nonlinear solution is investigated using the forced Korteweg–de Vries equation to describe the flow in the shallow water approximation.
The unsteady two-dimensional free surface in a fluid of finite depth is investigated analytically using Laplace transform and the Wiener–Hopf technique for Froude numbers less than one. It is demonstrated that the unsteady solution asymptotically approaches the steady state solution at large time. The results obtained can be used in the engineering practice of ship building to optimise the shape of ship hull which provides a minimal wave drag.

Inferences about population parameters could be improved using non-sample prior information (NSPI). The NSPI can be classified as: (i) unspecified, (ii) specified, and (iii) uncertain (or unsure). For the three different scenarios, three different statistical tests: (i) unrestricted test (UT), (ii) restricted test (RT) and (iii) preliminary test test (PTT) defined. This study tests: (1) the intercept of the simple regression model (SRM) when there is NSPI on the slope, (2) the intercept vector of the multivariate simple regression model (MSRM) when there is NSPI on the slope vector, (3) a subset of regression parameters of the multiple regression model (MRM) when NSPI on another subset is available, and (4) the equality of the two intercepts of the parallel regression model (PRM) when the NSPI on the equality of the two slopes is available. The test statistics, their sampling distributions, and power functions are derived. Comparison of power functions are used to recommend a best test. For the computation of the power of the PTT the probability integral of the bivariate normal, Student’s t and noncentral F distributions are used. The R package is used for all computations and graphical analyses. The study shows that the PTT attains a reasonable dominance over the UT and RT for all four models

We explore ways to clarify, mathematically, the perennial debate in economics over whether government deficit funded spending will cause inflation or growth -- while accepting the proposition that the economy of a nation as large as Australia is too complex to be accurately modelled mathematically.