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Governments occupy a significant proportion of building stock and their associated annual water and energy costs can be substantive. Research has shown that significant reductions in energy and water consumption as well as carbon emissions can be achieved through retrofitting public buildings. However, in most countries the current retrofitting rate is very low due to a number of barriers, including a lack of supportive legislation, regulations, guidelines, industry capacity and financial mechanisms. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the barriers as well as the best international practices covering numerous aspects of public building retrofits. Among others, the most important barriers identified were a lack of consideration of the water-energy nexus, and the limited availability of effective financing mechanisms. With a particular focus on the Australian context, a strategic roadmap, as well as a number of recommendations, such as the use of revolving loan fund financing and energy performance procurement, have been developed that aim to foster a greater rate of implementation of energy and water retrofit projects for public buildings. Achievement of such an aim will not only reduce ongoing operational costs of public buildings, but also lower their environmental impact and generate new employment opportunities.

The paper is to assess contribution of maintenance toward reducing building vulnerability to extreme weather events such as high wind, wild fire and flood. The aims are to gather technical knowledge to develop policy recommendations and guidelines for practice in Australia. Reducing building vulnerability to extreme events is one way of improving building resilience that is partly under the control of the building owners/occupiers. The performance of buildings will decease overtime without effective maintenance and their vulnerabilities to extreme events will increase. What are the opportunities to reduce building vulnerability via maintenance is the key question. Lack of consideration for maintenance during the design phase and lack of proper as-built documentation at completion of construction are the two main deficiencies of the Australian building system. The paper reviews the impacts of weather events in Australia. Losses due to storms, cyclones, wildfires and floods accounted for 96% to total losses due to disasters. Emerging risks for Australia are due to climate change, changes to construction practice and the introduction of new construction products without appropriate control. Maintenance activities currently carried out in Australia include (i) maintenance of essential safety measures, (ii) maintenance for habitability and(iii) preventive maintenance for extreme events. Maintenance is considered as a post-construction activity and a responsibility for States and Territories governments. Opportunities for reducing building vulnerability vary with the types of events. For storms and cyclones, water penetration remains a recurring and costly issue. For floods, the opportunities for the owners/occupiers are mainly in preparation of the buildings before the floods and subsequent clean up and repairs. For wildfires, the main opportunity is in reducing the risk of ignition due to embers action with appropriate maintenance measures for the buildings and surrounding areas. The main recommendation of the research is to establish a building maintenance manual for each building with prescribed information including (i) as-built construction details relevant to maintenance, (ii) required preventive maintenance checklist.

The construction industry is one of the largest and most diverse of the sectors with continuous development. The momentum and impact of the industry’s development is highly influenced by a complex system of different elements including innovation. However, the sector is relatively weak at all stages of the innovation process and the strength of collaboration among government, industry and academia is insufficient. It is generally accepted that construction companies invest less in new knowledge and process development as well as engage significantly less in innovation related activities than firms in other sectors. Hence, it is very important to control and manage the significant factors that affect success in innovation taking into account the complexity and the inherent dynamics of the construction innovation diffusion. By doing so, this study addresses the decision making process within the complex innovation process in the construction industry by employing a step-by-step modelling process consisting of a multi-stages analysis, stakeholder-based and modelling approaches. Construction is closely connected to the national social structure and is highly influenced by various institutional actors and interactions among components and, consequently, can be presented as a sectoral system. Hence, the overarching objective of the paper is to introduce a systems approach aiming to conceptualise and formulate an initial simulation model of a complex construction innovation system representing correct and continuous interactions between government, the construction industry and academia. Moreover, the research underpins future development of scenariogenerating modelling in order to reveal potential pathways to rational decision-making along with potential policy recommendations and various innovation planning strategies that improve construction innovation performance in the Russian Federation. Innovation in the construction industry can take various forms and, as a result, is not well represented by official statistics. Therefore, active stakeholder engagement is required to develop appropriate metrics and build the foundations for such a dynamic model, given the level of complexity. As a part of participatory modelling, stakeholder engagement involves: (i) stakeholder identification and stakeholder analysis; (ii) questionnaire-based survey and face-to-face interviews; (iii) consultations with academic and industry professionals; (iv) opinion survey; and (v) facilitated expert workshops. In other words, involvement of stakeholders is an essential requirement given the multi-actor nature of the system under study and lack of data involved. The first research stage aims to identify the most significant barriers, enablers and strategies that most significantly affect construction innovation diffusion in Russia. The results suggest that the construction industry requires assistance and support from the government in order to endure existing impediments and to improve the current lacklustre rate of construction innovation. The next stage determines the degree of influence that the different system’s components have on each other. Then, the structural analysis is performed using MICMAC (Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification) technique in order to generate the required information about interconnections between the key variables. This stage is effective in building a comprehensive conceptual model, followed by an ongoing dynamic model development, integrating both qualitative and quantitative variables. The model structure highlights that construction companies and academia representatives, along with decision-makers need to acknowledge innovation as a process of development and accumulate innovation capabilities in the whole construction innovation system in order to achieve the benefits of high-level innovation performance. One of the dynamic hypotheses describing the problem under study, centres on how the industry, academia and the government can collaborate to most effectively diffuse innovations throughout the industry

The construction industry has often been criticised for its lack of innovation and commitment to RD and (2) demand for innovation related to market expectations, largely dictated by traditional versus progressive procurement processes. One key finding was that the Russian construction industry preferences imitation-oriented innovation development.

Housing affordability subsidies to low and middle income households consistently represent an approximate annual expenditure in excess of $1.9 billion AUD to the Australian taxpayer. The National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) is being phased out, presenting an opportunity to innovate for polices which are targeted to the amelioration of ‘housing stress’ for low-middle income households. Escalating energy and water expenses are increasing net housing costs for average Australian households at a rate in excess of the consumer price index. By metrics of ‘housing stress’- low and middle income households are most affected. Whilst escalating utility rates apply increasing pressure on households bottom line, conversely, investments made in operational efficiency improvements early in a buildings lifecycle improve the overall net present value proposition when looking at ongoing government housing affordability subsidies as a system. Developers and landlords have been reluctant to invest in ‘Green building’ principles for low-middle income rental developments due to a lack of incentive. In an era of globally compressing bond yields, the emergence alternate ‘low-carbon’ funding sources (ie. Green Bonds) present an opportunity to channel a burgeoning ‘Socially Responsible Investment’ (SRI) portfolio from institutional investors towards the affordable housing problem, whilst promoting a national effort towards a ‘green economy’ and carbon-reduction commitments made under the UN Framework Convention(s) on Climate Change. This opportunity is particularly relevant when backed by government. The success of the adoption of NRAS by the private (and later) institutional sector has demonstrated that there is a strong appetite for long term (10 year fixed income) government backed policies offering a reliable (and arguably generous) return on investment for those dwellings accepted into the NRAS pool. Data has been analysed for an average Brisbane apartment building, suitable to low-middle income households. At current utility escalation rates (not inclusive of connection fees), utility consumption costs borne by the tenant comprise approximately 8-15% (1 to 3-bedroom units respectively) of total housing costs over a 10 year period (2016-2026). An initial investment into green building principles (such as operationally efficient lighting, appliances) from the beginning of the period can reduce these costs by 1.7-3.8% respectively. The study found that these ‘green’ ‘low carbon’ improvements could be offset through the effective use of low interest debt- particularly via the issuance of a government backed ‘Green Bond’. This paper shall expand upon this analysis, testing a variety of scenarios with systems dynamics. The complex interconnection between the variety of stakeholders involved in the delivery and management of social/affordable housing developments in Australia will be explored. These main stakeholders include Government (Federal, Local and State), Developers, Investors (private and institutional) and Tenants.

Objectives: Previous research has shown Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to be effective in reducing presentation anxiety in student populations. Generalizability is a critical issue in research, and this study compared whether EFT is as effective in a cohort of younger, predominantly male students undertaking a sports science degree as in a cohort of all female, predominantly older complementary therapy students undertaking a foundation degree in complementary therapy.\ud Method: Two convenience samples of students were used. A cohort of students undertaking a foundation degree in complementary therapy (also known as CAM or Complementary and Alternative Medicine) and a cohort of students undertaking a sports science degree were informed of the research and invited to give their informed consent. Those who agreed were given a 15-min assignment workshop outlining the requirements for their assessed presentation by their module leads (authors Carryer and Boath).

This paper introduces the first available tool flow for Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration on the Spartan-6 family. In addition, the paper proposes a new configuration method called Fast Start-up targeting modern FPGA architectures, where the FPGA is configured in two-steps, instead of using a single (monolithic) full device configuration. In this novel approach, only the timing-critical modules are loaded at power-up using the first high-priority bitstream, while the non-timing critical modules are loaded afterwards. This two-step or prioritized FPGA start-up is used in order to meet the extremely tight startup timing specifications found in many modern applications, like PCI-express or automotive applications. Finally, the developed tool flow and methods for Fast Start-up have been used and tested to implement a CAN-based automotive ECU on a Spartan-6 evaluation board (i.e., SP605). By using this novel approach, it was possible to decrease the initial bitstream size and hence, achieve a configuration time speed-up of up to 4.5×, when compared to a standard configuration solution.

Falta palabras clave Una de las novedades centrales e importantes que acompañan a la aparición de los diccionarios y glosas electrónicos ha sido la incorporación del elemento audio a sus componentes. Anteriormente los diccionarios tradicionales en papel ofrecían transcripciones como apoyo a la articulación para lo que, sin duda, se necesitaba una instrucción previa que hiciera posible la interpretación de los símbolos. En cambio, estos nuevos diccionarios, como hemos dicho antes, ofrecen una reproducción en audio de las entradas escritas. Esta información adicional, el audio, aunque novedoso, no ayuda directamente a la comprensión del texto y podría considerarse superfluo a no ser que los usuarios, de forma instintiva, subvocalizarán las palabras en el proceso de búsqueda. Esta falta de utilidad para el proceso de lectura en la L2 solo está relacionada con la comprensión del texto, pero este recurso puede contribuir a la producción oral inmediata de la forma escrita y, por qué no, al futuro aprendizaje de la pronunciación de nuevos elementos. Podríamos argumentar lo mismo con respecto a las transcripciones que los diccionarios tradicionales nos ofrecen, pero, para el uso de éstas transcripciones es necesario haber tenido una previa instrucción. Dado que el grupo de investigación en el que he participado estudia los efectos de las glosas, me parece un paso lógico y consecuente, teniendo en cuenta el elemento nuevo incorporado al diccionario, pensar en el efecto que puede tener en un área tan importante como es la pronunciación de palabras nuevas, un factor de adquisición más que completa el conocimiento léxico de la L2. Por lo tanto, la pregunta central de este estudio gira en torno a la siguiente cuestión: ¿cuáles son los efectos reales y potenciales que el componente audio de los diccionarios electrónicos aportan a la pronunciación de los usuarios de aquellas palabras que han consultado? Este es un área que parece particularmente pertinente por muchas razones, entre otras por la escasez de estudios de investigación adecuados sobre los efectos de los dos componentes en el diccionario dedicados a la articulación de los elementos escritos: la transcripción fonética y, como novedad, el audio, durante la consulta de los mismos. Debemos añadir a lo anterior, el especial interés por cómo se comportan los estudiantes españoles aprendices de la lengua inglesa, con las particularidades que les caracterizan y con su propio punto de partida, como hemos establecido en la primera parte de este estudio, en el recorrido que se hace con los problemas que el hablante español se encuentra para adquirir la pronunciación.

La presente tesis doctoral ha sido desarrollada en el Departamento de Lengua Inglesa de la Facultad de Filología de la Universidad de Sevilla, dentro de la línea de investigación de Lingüística Aplicada al Aprendizaje del Inglés. Esta investigación surge como respuesta empírica a las sugerencias pedagógicas que fueron propuestas a raíz de las conclusiones obtenidas en el trabajo de investigación previo a esta tesis. Dicho trabajo, que se llevó a cabo con estudiantes de enseñanza secundaria de inglés como lengua extranjera en un contexto real de clase, investigaba los efectos en el aprendizaje de vocabulario de cuatro tareas de lectura bajo dos condiciones distintas, como son el trabajo con el profesor y el trabajo en grupo. Los resultados alcanzados en la prueba de vocabulario realizada recomendaban fomentar el uso de actividades comunicativas en el medio escrito, en lugar del medio oral, para potenciar el aprendizaje de vocabulario, y planteaban la necesidad de ir más allá de actividades exclusivamente orientadas a la comprensión, dada la insuficiencia de éstas para lograr un aprendizaje sustancial de vocabulario. Por ello, basándonos en los limitados y desalentadores resultados obtenidos en dicho trabajo de investigación, así como en muchos otros estudios que incorporan distintos tipos de apoyo pedagógico durante y/o después de la lectura para investigar sus beneficios frente a la lectura sola, el presente trabajo pretende explorar otras opciones posibles que tal vez puedan producir un aprendizaje más efectivo de vocabulario de la lengua extranjera. Para ello, estudiaremos los efectos de la realización de una serie de tareas de lectura mediante tres condiciones experimentales que desarrollan focos distintos de atención en el procesamiento del discurso escrito para inducir el posible aprendizaje de vocabulario en un contexto real de enseñanza-aprendizaje del inglés como lengua extranjera en el aula. Además, analizaremos la influencia de otra variable, ausente en estudios previos, como es la personalización de las actividades realizadas por los aprendices, para comprobar si la implicación personal de los sujetos en las tareas pudiera tener efectos beneficiosos en la adquisición de vocabulario de una lengua extranjera. En la primera parte del trabajo, que engloba tres capítulos, realizaremos una revisión de la literatura centrada en los principales desarrollos teóricos y estudios de adquisición de vocabulario, tanto en una lengua nativa como en una lengua extranjera, que nos permita justificar las premisas que sustentan nuestra investigación. La segunda parte del trabajo, constituida por cuatro capítulos, consistirá en la descripción del estudio empírico llevado a cabo y de las conclusiones alcanzadas.