Productivity growth and biased technological change : Credit banks in Japan

This paper investigates the productivity change of Japanese credit banks with a Malmquist index and the input technological bias during 2000-2006. Our results indicate that the traditional growth accounting method, which assumes Hicks neutral technological change, is not appropriate for analyzing changes in productivity. Our analysis unambiguously shows that management of Shinkin banks has to be improved. These must be based on the improvement of technical efficiency and/or technological change, emulating the procedures of the best-practice banks, i.e., those banks with Malmquist productivity scores higher than one and simultaneously with technical efficiency and technological change higher than one.

Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Bill 2013

This submission relates to the proposed amendment of the Crown Use provisions in the Patents Act 1990 (Cth) (“the Patents Act”),which are contained in Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Bill 2013 (“The Bill”). Specifically, the submission relates to the method of calculation of the remuneration payable to the patent applicant/owner in circumstances where the Crown exercises its rights under Chapter 17 of the Patents Act.

New sale and leasing requirements for owners of swimming pools and their application to strata schemes

This article considers the changes to the Swimming Pools Act 1992 (NSW)(Act) which established a State-wide online register of all private swimming pools in NSW requiring pool owners to register their pools by 19 November 2013. Amendments to the Act introduced changes to the conveyancing and residential tenancy regulations to require vendors and landlords to have a valid Compliance Certificate issued for their swimming pool before offering the property for sale or lease. This article provides a brief overview of the new sale and leasing requirements effective from 29 April 2014, focusing on its application to lot owners within strata and community title schemes and other owners of water front properties with pools on Crown Land Reserves.

Wilds of the Canadian Rockies

A travel article about touring in the Rockies, Alberta. MORAINE Lake, held up by a crown of mountains near the small town of Lake Louise, is opal blue. You'd need a precious stone to cut the surface. And even on a hot morning in August, there are plenty around: diamonds of snow decorate the mountain tops and, in their reflections, slice the lake with white triangles. We are at the start of a track that climbs from the lake to Mt Temple, the tallest mountain in the area and two or three hours' walk away. When the track zigzags back, we glimpse the lake through gaps in the conifer forest...

Becoming a pharmacist : students' perceptions of their curricular experience and professional identity formation

Introduction Student professional identity formation is important for enabling the successful transition between academic education and professional practice. Recognition of this has resulted in significant changes in professional education (e.g., the inclusion of experiential placements and authentic learning experiences). There is limited research that examines how the curricular experience influences pharmacy studentsʼ professional identity formation. Methods Using focus groups, comprising 82 students from all levels of a four-year Australian undergraduate pharmacy course, this study examined studentsʼ perceptions of their overall curricular experience and examined how these experiences influenced the construction of their professional identities. Results Our analysis found that the pharmacy students struggled with their professional identity formation. Many were entering the degree with little understanding of what being a pharmacist entailed. Once in the educational context, the nature of the role became both apparent and idealistic but not enacted. Students experienced dissonance between the idealistic notion of pharmacy practice and the realities of placements, and this may have been enhanced by a lack of patient-centered care role models. This struggle left them concluding that the role of the pharmacist was constrained and limited. Conclusions We argue that professional identity formation needs to be in the foreground from commencement of the degree and throughout the curriculum.

Did Brisbane grow smartly? Drivers of city growth 1991-2001 and lessons for current policies

Urban areas are growing unsustainably around the world; however, the growth patterns and their associated drivers vary between contexts. As a result, research has highlighted the need to adopt case study based approaches to stimulate the development of new theoretic understandings. Using land-cover data sets derived from Landsat images (30 m × 30 m), this research identifies both patterns and drivers of urban growth in a period (1991-2001) when a number of policy acts were enacted aimed at fostering smart growth in Brisbane, Australia. A linear multiple regression model was estimated using the proportion of lands that were converted from non-built-up (1991) to built-up usage (2001) within a suburb as a dependent variable to identify significant drivers of land-cover changes. In addition, the hot spot analysis was conducted to identify spatial biases of land-cover changes, if any. Results show that the built-up areas increased by 1.34% every year. About 19.56% of the non-built-up lands in 1991 were converted into built-up lands in 2001. This conversion pattern was significantly biased in the northernmost and southernmost suburbs in the city. This is due to the fact that, as evident from the regression analysis, these suburbs experienced a higher rate of population growth, and had the availability of habitable green field sites in relatively flat lands. The above findings suggest that the policy interventions undertaken between the periods were not as effective in promoting sustainable changes in the environment as they were aimed for.

Improving treatment for obese women with early stage cancer of the uterus : rationale and design of the levonorgestrel intrauterine device ±Metformin ±weight loss in endometrial cancer (feMME) trial

Purpose Endometrial adenocarcinoma (EC) is the most common gynaecologic cancer. Up to 90% of EC patients are obese which poses a health threat to patients post-treatment. Standard treatment for EC includes hysterectomy, although this has significant side effects for obese women at high risk of surgical complications and for women of childbearing age. This trial investigates the effectiveness of non-surgical or conservative treatment options for obese women with early stage EC. The primary aim is to determine the efficacy of: levonorgestrel intrauterine device (LNG-IUD); with or without metformin (an antidiabetic drug); and with or without a weight loss intervention to achieve a pathological complete response (pCR) in EC at six months from study treatment initiation. The secondary aim is to enhance understanding of the molecular processes and to predict a treatment response by investigating EC biomarkers. Methods An open label, three-armed, randomised, phase-II, multi-centre trial of LNG-IUD ± metformin ± weight loss intervention. 165 participants from 28 centres are randomly assigned in a 3:3:5 ratio to the treatment arms. Clinical, quality of life and health behavioural data will be collected at baseline, six weeks, three and six months. EC biomarkers will be assessed at baseline, three and six months. Conclusions There is limited prospective evidence for conservative treatment for EC. Trial results could benefit patients and reduce health system costs through a reduction in hospitalisations and through lower incidence of adverse events currently observed with standard treatment.

Novel solutions for a model of wound healing angiogenesis

We prove the existence of novel, shock-fronted travelling wave solutions to a model of wound healing angiogenesis studied in Pettet et al (2000 IMA J. Math. App. Med. 17 395–413) assuming two conjectures hold. In the previous work, the authors showed that for certain parameter values, a heteroclinic orbit in the phase plane representing a smooth travelling wave solution exists. However, upon varying one of the parameters, the heteroclinic orbit was destroyed, or rather cut-off, by a wall of singularities in the phase plane. As a result, they concluded that under this parameter regime no travelling wave solutions existed. Using techniques from geometric singular perturbation theory and canard theory, we show that a travelling wave solution actually still exists for this parameter regime. We construct a heteroclinic orbit passing through the wall of singularities via a folded saddle canard point onto a repelling slow manifold. The orbit leaves this manifold via the fast dynamics and lands on the attracting slow manifold, finally connecting to its end state. This new travelling wave is no longer smooth but exhibits a sharp front or shock. Finally, we identify regions in parameter space where we expect that similar solutions exist. Moreover, we discuss the possibility of more exotic solutions.

Strange and stranger ruralities: Social constructions of rural crime in Australia

Rural crime has largely been understood through social disorganization theory. The dominance of this perspective has meant that most research into rural crime has tried to resolve perceived strains in communities, rather than analyze how social problems are constituted in rural places. Using Elias and Scotson's (1994) account of established-outsider relations, the paper examines how the organizational capacity of specific social groups is significant in determining the quality of crime-talk and responses to crime in isolated and rural settings. In particular social 'oldness' and notions of what constitutes 'community' are significant in determining what activities and individuals or groups are marked as features of crime-talk in these settings.

Toward making inroads in reducing the disparity of lung health in Australian Indigenous and New Zealand Maori children

Globally, Indigenous populations, which include Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders in Australia and Māori people in New Zealand (NZ), have poorer health than their non-Indigenous counterparts. Indigenous peoples worldwide face substantial challenges in poverty, education, employment, housing and disconnection from ancestral lands. While addressing social determinants of health is a priority, solving clinical issues is equally important. Indeed, ignoring the latter until social issues improve risks further disparity as this may take generations. A systematic overview of interventions addressing social determinants of health found a striking lack of reliable evaluations.Where evidence was available, health improvement associated with interventions was modest or uncertain. 10 Thus advances in healthcare remain essential and these require the best evidence available in 11 preventing and managing common illnesses, including respiratory illnesses.

Dragline modelling and control

Electric walking draglines are physically large and powerful machines used in the mining industry. However with the addition of suitable sensors and a controller a dragline can be considered as a numerically controlled machine or robot which can then perform parts of the operating cycle automatically. This paper presents an analysis of the electromechanical system necessary precursor to automatic control

Dragline swing automation

Draglines are very large machines that are used to remove overburden in open-cut coal mines. This paper outlines the design of a computer control system to implement an automated swing cycle on a production dragline. Subsystems and sensors have been developed to satisfy the constraints imposed by the task, the harsh operating environment and the mine's production requirements.

Shortest path and vehicle trajectory aided map-matching for low frequency GPS data

Map-matching algorithms that utilise road segment connectivity along with other data (i.e.position, speed and heading) in the process of map-matching are normally suitable for high frequency (1 Hz or higher) positioning data from GPS. While applying such map-matching algorithms to low frequency data (such as data from a fleet of private cars, buses or light duty vehicles or smartphones), the performance of these algorithms reduces to in the region of 70% in terms of correct link identification, especially in urban and sub-urban road networks. This level of performance may be insufficient for some real-time Intelligent Transport System (ITS) applications and services such as estimating link travel time and speed from low frequency GPS data. Therefore, this paper develops a new weight-based shortest path and vehicle trajectory aided map-matching (stMM) algorithm that enhances the map-matching of low frequency positioning data on a road map. The well-known A* search algorithm is employed to derive the shortest path between two points while taking into account both link connectivity and turn restrictions at junctions. In the developed stMM algorithm, two additional weights related to the shortest path and vehicle trajectory are considered: one shortest path-based weight is related to the distance along the shortest path and the distance along the vehicle trajectory, while the other is associated with the heading difference of the vehicle trajectory. The developed stMM algorithm is tested using a series of real-world datasets of varying frequencies (i.e. 1 s, 5 s, 30 s, 60 s sampling intervals). A high-accuracy integrated navigation system (a high-grade inertial navigation system and a carrier-phase GPS receiver) is used to measure the accuracy of the developed algorithm. The results suggest that the algorithm identifies 98.9% of the links correctly for every 30 s GPS data. Omitting the information from the shortest path and vehicle trajectory, the accuracy of the algorithm reduces to about 73% in terms of correct link identification. The algorithm can process on average 50 positioning fixes per second making it suitable for real-time ITS applications and services.

Toward making inroads in reducing the disparity of lung health in Australian Indigenous and New Zealand Maori children

Globally, Indigenous populations, which include Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders in Australia and Māori people in New Zealand (NZ), have poorer health than their non-Indigenous counterparts (1). Indigenous peoples worldwide face substantial challenges in poverty, education, employment, housing, and disconnection from ancestral lands (1). While addressing social determinants of health is a priority, solving clinical issues is equally important. Indeed, ignoring the latter until social issues improve risks further disparity as this may take generations. A systematic overview of interventions addressing social determinants of health found a striking lack of reliable evaluations (2). Where evidence was available, health improvement associated with interventions was modest or uncertain (2). Thus, advances in healthcare remain essential and these require the best evidence available in preventing and managing common illnesses, including respiratory illnesses

Who are our repeating students? Profiling students persisting after failure

Research on attrition has focused on the economic significance of low graduation rates in terms of costs to students (fees that do not culminate in a credential) and impact on future income. For a student who fails a unit and repeats the unit multiple times, the financial impact is significant and lasting (Bexley, Daroesman, Arkoudis & James 2013). There are obvious advantages for the timely completion of a degree, both for the student and the institution. Advantages to students include fee minimisation, enhanced engagement opportunities, effectual pathway to employment and a sense of worth, morale and cohort-identity benefits. Work undertaken by the QUT Analytics Project in 2013 and 2014 explored student engagement patterns capturing a variety of data sources and specifically, the use of LMS amongst students in 804 undergraduate units in one semester. Units with high failure rates were given further attention and it was found that students who were repeating a unit were less likely to pass the unit than students attempting it for the first time. In this repeating cohort, academic and behavioural variables were consistently more significant in the modelling than were any demographic variables, indicating that a student’s performance at university is far more impacted by what they do once they arrive than it is by where they come from. The aim of this poster session is to examine the findings and commonalities of a number of case studies that articulated the engagement activities of repeating students (which included collating data from Individual Unit Reports, academic and peer advising programs and engagement with virtual learning resources). Understanding the profile of the repeating student cohort is therefore as important as considering the characteristics of successful students so that the institution might be better placed to target the repeating students and make proactive interventions as early as possible.