Understanding educational process in leadership development

This thesis is a case study of educational process in the leadership development program of the Australian Defence Force Academy. The intention is to determine the relative emphasis in educational process on the conventional command and managerial compliance (Type A) style and the emergent contingent and creative (Type B) style of leadership. The Type A style is theorised as emphasizing hierarchy and control, whereas the emphasis in a Type B style is on adaptive and entrepreneurial behaviour. This study looks at the learning process in a cultural and structural context rather than focus on curriculum and instructional design. Research in this wider context is intended to enable development processes to successfully bridge a gap between theory and practice, implicit in studies that identify theories 'in-operation' as different from the theories 'espoused' (Argyris 1992, Savage 1996). In terms of espoused and in-use theory, the study seeks to produce a valid and reliable result to the question: what is the relative emphasis on the two leadership styles in the operation of the three educational mechanisms of curriculum, pedagogy (teaching practice) and assessment? The quantitative analysis of results (n = 114) draws attention to both leadership styles in terms of two and three-way relationships of style, cadet or work group and service type. The data shows that both Type A and Type B leadership styles are evident in the general conversation of the organisation. This trend is present as espoused theory in the curriculum of the Defence Academy. However, the data also confirm a clear and strong emphasis towards command and managerial compliance as theory-in-use, particularly by cadets. This emphasis is noticeably evident in the teaching and assessment practice of the Defence Academy. Other research outcomes include the observation that: Contextually, while studies show it is difficult to isolate skills from their cultural and biographical context (Watkins, 1991:15), this study suggests that it is equally difficult to isolate skills development from this context. There is a strong task or instrumental link identified by cadet responses in terms of content and development process at the Defence Academy, in contrast to the wider developmental emphasis in general literature and senior officer interviews. There is a lack of awareness of teaching strategies and development activity consistent with espoused Type B leadership theory and curriculum content. This gap is compounded by the use in the Defence Academy of personnel without teaching expertise or suitable developmental experience. The socialisation of cadets into the military workplace is the primary purpose of training. This purpose appears taken for granted by all concerned - staff, cadets and senior officers. Defence Academy development processes appear to be faced with a dilemma. Arguably, training and learning from experience are limited approaches to development. Training, which involves learning by replication, and learning from experience, which is largely imitative, are both of little use when people are faced with novel and ambiguous situations. This study suggests that in order to support the development of capabilities that go beyond training based competence a learning and development approach is needed. This more expansive approach requires educational planners to consider the cultural and social context that can inadvertently promote the status quo in practice over espoused outcomes.

Comparison of 3S multi-thresolding with fuzzy c-means method

The 3S (Shrinking-Search-Space) multi-thresholding method which have been used for segmentation of medical images according to their intensities, now have been implemented and compared with FCM method in terms of segmentation quality and segmentation time as a benchmark in thresholding. The results show that 3S method produced almost the same segmentation quality or in some occasions better quality than FCM, and the computation time of 3S method is much lower than FCM. This is another superiority of this method with respect to others. Also, the performance of C-means has been compared with two other methods. This comparison shows that, C-means is not a reliable clustering algorithm and it needs several run to give us a reliable result.

The VISA-A questionnaire: a valid and reliable index of the clinical severity of Achilles tendinoplasty

Background: There is no disease specific, reliable, and valid clinical measure of Achilles tendinopathy. Objective: To develop and test a questionnaire based instrument that would serve as an index of severity of Achilles tendinopathy. Methods: Item generation, item reduction, item scaling, and pretesting were used to develop a questionnaire to assess the severity of Achilles tendinopathy. The final version consisted of eight  questions that measured the domains of pain, function in daily living, and sporting activity. Results range from 0 to 100, where 100 represents the perfect score. Its validity and reliability were then tested in a population of non-surgical patients with Achilles tendinopathy (n = 45), presurgical patients with Achilles tendinopathy (n = 14), and two normal control populations (total n = 87). Results: The VISA-A questionnaire had good test-retest (r = 0.93), intrarater (three tests, r = 0.90), and interrater (r = 0.90) reliability as well as good stability when compared one week apart (r = 0.81). The mean (95% confidence interval) VISA-A score in the non-surgical patients was 64 (59–69), in presurgical patients 44 (28–60), and in control subjects it exceeded 96 (94–99). Thus the VISA-A score was higher in non-surgical than presurgical patients (p = 0.02) and higher in control subjects than in both patient populations (p<0.001). Conclusions: The VISA-A questionnaire is reliable and displayed construct validity when means were compared in patients with a range of severity of Achilles tendinopathy and control subjects. The continuous numerical result of the VISA-A questionnaire has the potential to provide utility in both the clinical setting and research. The test is not designed to be diagnostic. Further studies are needed to determine whether the VISA-A score predicts prognosis.

Robust-diagnostic regression : a prelude for inducing reliable knowledge from regression

Regression lies heart in statistics, it is the one of the most important branch of multivariate techniques available for extracting knowledge in almost every field of study and research. Nowadays, it has drawn a huge interest to perform the tasks with different fields like machine learning, pattern recognition and data mining. Investigating outlier (exceptional) is a century long problem to the data analyst and researchers. Blind application of data could have dangerous consequences and leading to discovery of meaningless patterns and carrying to the imperfect knowledge. As a result of digital revolution and the growth of the Internet and Intranet data continues to be accumulated at an exponential rate and thereby importance of detecting outliers and study their costs and benefits as a tool for reliable knowledge discovery claims perfect attention. Investigating outliers in regression has been paid great value for the last few decades within two frames of thoughts in the name of robust regression and regression diagnostics. Robust regression first wants to fit a regression to the majority of the data and then to discover outliers as those points that possess large residuals from the robust output whereas in regression diagnostics one first finds the outliers, delete/correct them and then fit the regular data by classical (usual) methods. At the beginning there seems to be much confusion but now the researchers reach to the consensus, robustness and diagnostics are two complementary approaches to the analysis of data and any one is not good enough. In this chapter, we discuss both of them under the unique spectrum of regression diagnostics. Chapter expresses the necessity and views of regression diagnostics as well as presents several contemporary methods through numerical examples in linear regression within each aforesaid category together with current challenges and possible future research directions. Our aim is to make the chapter self-explained maintaining its general accessibility.

Reliable aggregation on network traffic for web based knowledge discovery

The web is a rich resource for information discovery, as a result web mining is a hot topic. However, a reliable mining result depends on the reliability of the data set. For every single second, the web generate huge amount of data, such as web page requests, file transportation. The data reflect human behavior in the cyber space and therefore valuable for our analysis in various disciplines, e.g. social science, network security. How to deposit the data is a challenge. An usual strategy is to save the abstract of the data, such as using aggregation functions to preserve the features of the original data with much smaller space. A key problem, however is that such information can be distorted by the presence of illegitimate traffic, e.g. botnet recruitment scanning, DDoS attack traffic, etc. An important consideration in web related knowledge discovery then is the robustness of the aggregation method , which in turn may be affected by the reliability of network traffic data. In this chapter, we first present the methods of aggregation functions, and then we employe information distances to filter out anomaly data as a preparation for web data mining.

Reliable knowledge discovery with a minimal causal model inducer

This paper presents a Minimal Causal Model Inducer that can be used for the reliable knowledge discovery. The minimal-model semantics of causal discovery is an essential concept for the identification of a best fitting model in the sense of satisfactory consistent with the given data and be the simpler, less expressive model. Consistency is one of major measures of reliability in knowledge discovery. Therefore to develop an algorithm being able to derive a minimal model is an interesting topic in the are of reliable knowledge discovery. various causal induction algorithms and tools developed so far can not guarantee that the derived model is minimal and consistent. It was proved the MML induction approach introduced by Wallace, Keven and Honghua Dai is a minimal causal model learner. In this paper, we further prove that the developed minimal causal model learner is reliable in the sense of satisfactory consistency. The experimental results obtained from the tests on a number of both artificial and real models provided in this paper confirm this theoretical result.

Development of hyaline spheres in late auriculariae of sandfish, Holothuria scabra : is it a reliable indicator of subsequent performance?

This study assessed the influence of diet composition on hyaline sphere (HS) development in auricularia larvae of the sandfish, Holothuria scabra, and the subsequent relationships between the presence and size of hyaline spheres and competency through settlement and early juvenile performance. Two-day old larvae were fed one of three commercially available micro-algae diets that varied in their nutrient compositions: (1) Isochrysis sp. (Haptophyceae); (2) Pavlova sp. (Haptophyceae); and (3) Thalassiosira weissflogii (Bacillariophyceae) or a ternary combination of the three. There were positive significant correlations between HS development in late auriculariae on days 10, 11, 12 and 13 post-fertilisation, and the proportion of competent doliolariae on day 15, post-settlement size (day 21) and post-settlement survival (day 25). The dietary components that most strongly influenced these relationships were carbohydrates and the n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids arachidonic acid (ARA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Our result confirm the strong relationship between HS formation in late auriculariae of sandfish and subsequent larval competency through settlement. As such, the presence and size of HS is a reliable indicator of subsequent performance for sandfish. Given that HS development was influenced by the nutrients available to sandfish auriculariae, there is clear opportunity for development of more appropriate diets for hatchery culture of this species that will improve HS formation and larval performance supporting improved hatchery production. Statement of relevance Our results have confirmed that for sandfish larvae, the presence and size of HS at the end of the auricularia stage, is indeed a reliable indicator of subsequent performance. Our results have also confirmed that HS formation and size is significantly influenced by the nutrient composition of the auricularia diet, and that there are significant positive correlations between HS formation and dietary levels of carbohydrate, EPA:DHA and EPA:ARA ratios. This information provides a strong basis for development of more appropriate diets for sandfish larvae that will improve HS formation and larval performance during hatchery culture and in turn improve hatchery production of this species.

Tip top result goes stale: ACCC-v- Australian Safeway Stores Pty Ltd(No 2)

Bread, its constituents, its methods of manufacture and its price and availability to consumers can claim to be the leitmotiv of competition law, both ancient and modern. The inelasticity of demand for such a staple food explains laws against monopolies being included in the eighteenth century BC Code of Hammurabi, why corn laws exercised the minds of the Gracchi brothers in second century B.C. Rome, and why ineffective regulation of the price of bread was seen as an important precipitator of revolutions in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the common law the early restraint of trade case, Mitchell v Reynolds saw a parish wide five year non-competition clause in a contract for the sale of a bakery upheld as reasonable. In the post-Shennan Anti-Trust Act (1890) United States, attempts by manufacturers of macaroni to change its constituents because of the prevailing high price of durm wheat were held in National Macaroni Manufacturers Association v FCT) to constitute price-fixing, an offence illegal per se under American anti-trust law.

Developing a national index of subjective wellbeing: the Australian unity wellbeing index

The Australian Unity Wellbeing Index has been designed as a new barometer of Australians' satisfaction with their lives, and life in Australia. It is based on, and develops, the theoretical model of subjective wellbeing homeostasis. The Index comprises two sub-scales of Personal and National Wellbeing. Data were collected through a nationally representative sample of 2,000 people in April/May 2001.Factor analysis confirmed the integrity of the two sub-scales and, confirming empirical expectation, the average level of life satisfaction was 75.5 percent of the scale maximum score. Group comparisons revealed that all age groups maintained their Personal Index score within the normal range. In addition,people in country areas were more satisfied with their personal lives than city-dwellers,but less satisfied about the national situation, and people who had recently experienced a strong positive event evidenced arise in wellbeing, whereas those who had experienced a strong negative event evidenced wellbeing in the low-normal range. It is argued that these data generally support homeostatic theory. However, an unusual result was that females were more satisfied with their own lives than males. A tentative argument is advanced that this may represent a constitutional difference. It is concluded that the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index has potential as a valid, reliable and sensitive instrument to monitor national wellbeing.

Achieving 'sustainability education' in primary schools as a result of the Victorian Science in Schools Research Project

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the experiences of primary schools involved in the Victorian Science in Schools Research Project which was concerned with improving science teaching and learning strategies but which also unexpectedly led to more environmental (sustainability) education occurring. The paper also suggests a curriculum strategy for achieving more widespread acceptance and implementation of 'sustainability education' through primary school science curricula.

An efficient reliable architecture for application layer anycast service

Anycast is a new service in IPv6, and there are some open issues about the anycast service. In this paper, we focus on efficient and reliable aspects of application layer anycast. We apply the requirement based probing routing algorithm to replace the previous period based probing routingalgorithm for anycast resolvers. We employ the twin server model among the anycast servers, therefore, try to present a reliable service in the Internet environment. Our theoretical analysis shows that the proposed architecture works well, and it offers a more efficient routing performance and fault tolerance capability.

Perceptions of the host destination as a result of attendance at a special event: a post-consumption analysis

Many destinations are now using special events as integral components of their marketing strategies. The aim of this study was to explore how  attendance at a special event might impact perceptions of the host destination. Using a case study approach, this research explored the nexus between special events, their attendees and special event destinations. This research specifically focused on exploring whether attendance at a special event influences resulting perceptions of the host destination. The results of a survey-based study indicate that for almost a quarter of respondents who resided outside the host destination, their perceptions of the host destination had changed. Over 90% of these respondents indicated that these post-consumption perceptions of the host destination were more favourable than they were before attendance at the event. Key reasons provided by respondents for their changes in perceptions included Access, the Special Event itself and Attractions at the destination. The paper concludes that the synergies between the special event and the host destination can be likened to those of the celebrity and the products that they endorse and promote, and this notion should be further explored. Recommendations were made to assist marketers of host destinations to more effectively capitalise on the synergies between special events and destinations.

A similarity search algorithm to predict protein structures

Accurate prediction of protein structures is very important for many applications such as drug discovery and biotechnology. Building side chains is an essential to get any reliable prediction of the protein structure for any given a protein main chain conformation. Most of the methods that predict side chain conformations use statistically generated data from known protein structures. It is a computationally intractable problem to search suitable side chains from all possible rotamers simultaneously using information of known protein structures. Reducing the number of possibility is a main issue to predict side chain conformation. This paper proposes an enumeration based similarity search algorithm to predict side chain conformations. By introducing “beam search” technique, a significant number of unrelated side chain rotamers can easily be eliminated. As a result, we can search for suitable residue side chains from all possible side chain conformations.

High reproducibility of patellar tendon vascularity assessed by colour doppler ultrasonography : a reliable measurement tool for quantifying tendon pathology

Background: This study examined whether patellar tendon vascularity could be quantified accurately in the clinical setting using colour Doppler ultrasonography.

Methods: A sonographer and two radiologists visually estimated tendon vascularity in millimetres in 74 tendons during ultrasound (US) examination and from hard copy films. These estimates were then compared to the length of vessels measured from the digital image in millimetres and the correlation between them was determined. A subset of 16 tendons was used to compare the estimates of vascularity by two examiners at US examination.

Results: The estimation of vascular length at US examination correlated highly with the measured vascular length (r = 0.92; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.87 to 0.94), as did the length estimated from the films (r = 0.94; 95% CI 0.9 to 0.96). The correlation between examiners was 0.84 (95% CI 0.51 to 0.94) for the estimates made during US examination and 0.85 (95% CI 0.59 to 0.95) for the vessel lengths measured from the digital images.

Conclusions: These excellent correlations indicate that tendon vascularity can be reliably estimated using colour Doppler ultrasonography and tendon vascularity could therefore be used by clinicians to rate clinical change. This method of quantifying tendon vascularity could also be used in research to investigate the effects of tendon treatments on vascularity.

The makings of a reliable interview with a child witness

This paper briefly describes four essential elements of interviews involving children, where the primary goal is to obtain detailed and accurate information about an event (e.g., an alleged incident of sexual abuse). These elements include (a) the establishment of a good rapport with the child, (b) a clear description of the purpose and ground-rules of the interview, (c) objectivity and open-mindness, and (d) effective questioning skills. A rationale for the importance of each of these elements and practical recommendations are offered.