R.A. Cowan

Biodiversity of Australian Marine Macroalgae - A Progress Report

The biodiversity of Australian macroalgae is assessed by reference to species numbers recorded for the various biogeographical and political regions. The figures show a marked disparity between northern and southern Australia, with the former apparently depauperate as compared to the rich flora recorded from Southern Australia. Whilst a reduction in numbers is expected when comparing tropical to temperate regions, the situation in Australia is greatly exaggerated by relative levels of collecting and research. The completion of an Australia-wide macroalgal flora will be severely hampered until additional effort is directed towards these unexplored regions.

Bibliographic control of Australian higher degree theses: the future role of the Australian digital theses program

Australia makes a substantial investment in the production of higher degrees by thesis. Completed theses form an important body of original research data, and underpin the career of many of the nations leading researchers. There is evidence, however, that there is inadequate bibliographic control of this material, and that as a consequence important research data may be difficult to locate. This article traces attempts to provide access to bibliographic records of Australian theses, highlights the problems with regard to both accessibility and quality of those records, and suggests that these problems might be addressed by an expanded role for the Australian Digital Theses program

Three fold system (3FS) for mental health domain

Along with an increase in the number of mentally ill people, research into all aspects of mental health has increased in recent years. In all disciplines information is the key to success but major problems adversely affect the efficiency and effectiveness that available mental health information is used. These relate to the lack of existing infrastructure to support effective access and information retrieval, and lack of tools to analyze the available information and derive useful knowledge from it. In this paper we explain how the ontology, multi-agent system and data mining technologies can be implemented within the mental health domain to effectively address these issues. The synergy of these frontier technologies may result in an intelligent information infrastructure that provides effective and efficient use of all available information.