Defining sustainability requirements for design-build (DB) contractor selection in public sector projects

The design-build (DB) delivery system is an effective means of delivering a green construction project and selecting an appropriate contractor is critical to project success. Moreover, the delivery of green buildings requires specific design, construction and operation and maintenance considerations not generally encountered in the procurement of conventional buildings. Specifying clear sustainability requirements to potential contractors is particularly important in achieving sustainable project goals. However, many client/owners either do not explicitly specify sustainability requirements or do so in a prescriptive manner during the project procurement process. This paper investigates the current state-of-the-art procurement process used in specifying the sustainability requirements of the public sector in the USA construction market by means of a robust content analysis of 40 design-build requests for proposals (RFPs). The results of the content analysis indicate that the sustainability requirement is one of the most important dimensions in the best-value evaluation of DB contractors. Client/owners predominantly specify the LEED certification levels (e.g. LEED Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum) for a particular facility, and include the sustainability requirements as selection criteria (with specific importance weightings) for contractor evolution. Additionally, larger size projects tend to allocate higher importance weightings to sustainability requirements.This study provides public DB client/owners with a number of practical implications for selecting appropriate design-builders for sustainable DB projects.

Learning in host selection in Helicoverpa armigera (Hubner) (Lepidoptera : Noctuidae)

The effect of experience on pre- and post-alighting host selection in adult female Helicoverpa armigera was tested in an indoor flight cage, and in a large greenhouse. The moths had experienced either tobacco or tomato plants (both are hosts of H. armigera) for 3 days, or were given no experience. Individuals were then released and their host selection assessed. All individuals caught in the greenhouse were identified and tested for post-alighting acceptance on each host. Experience significantly influenced both pre- and post-alighting host selection in ovipositing moths. This modification in behaviour is attributed to 'learning', and presents the first detailed evidence for learning in moths. Possible behavioural mechanisms involved are discussed, and a hypothesis is presented regarding learning in post-alighting host acceptance. The existence of learning in H. armigera, a highly polyphagous agricultural pest, is discussed in the light of current theories on environmental predictability and the advantages of learning. Copyright 1998 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.

Host selection in phytophagous insects: a new explanation for learning in adults

Insect learning can change the preferences an egg laying female displays towards different host plant species. Current hypotheses propose that learning may be advantageous in adult host selection behaviour through improved recognition, accuracy or selectivity in foraging. In this paper, we present a hypothesis for when learning can be advantageous without such improvements in adult host foraging. Specifically, that learning can be an advantageous strategy for egg laying females when larvae must feed on more than one plant in order to complete development, if the fitness of larvae is reduced when they switch to a different host species. Here, larvae benefit from developing on the most abundant host species, which is the most likely choice of host for an adult insect which increases its preference for a host species through learning. The hypothesis is formalised with a mathematical model and we provide evidence from studies on the behavioural ecology of a number of insect species which demonstrate that the assumptions of this hypothesis may frequently be fulfilled in nature. We discuss how multiple mechanisms may convey advantages in insect learning and that benefits to larval development, which have so far been overlooked, should be considered in explanations for the widespread occurrence of learning.

A general model for host plant selection in phytophagous insects

We develop a general theoretical framework for exploring the host plant selection behaviour of herbivorous insects. This model can be used to address a number of questions, including the evolution of specialists, generalists, preference hierarchies, and learning. We use our model to: (i) demonstrate the consequences of the extent to which the reproductive success of a foraging female is limited by the rate at which they find host plants (host limitation) or the number of eggs they carry (egg limitation); (ii) emphasize the different consequences of variation in behaviour before and after landing on (locating) a host (termed pre- and post-alighting, respectively); (iii) show that, in contrast to previous predictions, learning can be favoured in post-alighting behaviour--in particular, individuals can be selected to concentrate oviposition on an abundant low-quality host, whilst ignoring a rare higher-quality host; (iv) emphasize the importance of interactions between mechanisms in favouring specialization or learning.

Development of optimal designs of insulated rail joints

Proper functioning of Insulated Rail Joints (IRJs) is essential for the safe operation of the railway signalling systems and broken rail identification circuitries. The Conventional IRJ (CIRJ) resembles structural butt joints consisting of two pieces of rails connected together through two joint bars on either side of their web and the assembly is held together through pre-tensioned bolts. As the IRJs should maintain electrical insulation between the two rails, a gap between the rail ends must be retained at all times and all metal contacting surfaces should be electrically isolated from each other using non-conductive material. At the gap, the rail ends lose longitudinal continuity and hence the vertical sections of the rail ends are often severely damaged, especially at the railhead, due to the passage of wheels compared to other continuously welded rail sections. Fundamentally, the reason for the severe damage can be related to the singularities of the wheel-rail contact pressure and the railhead stress. No new generation designs that have emerged in the market to date have focussed on this fundamental; they only have provided attention to either the higher strength materials or the thickness of the sections of various components of the IRJs. In this thesis a novel method of shape optimisation of the railhead is developed to eliminate the pressure and stress singularities through changes to the original sharp corner shaped railhead into an arc profile in the longitudinal direction. The optimal shape of the longitudinal railhead profile has been determined using three nongradient methods in search of accuracy and efficiency: (1) Grid Search Method; (2) Genetic Algorithm Method and (3) Hybrid Genetic Algorithm Method. All these methods have been coupled with a parametric finite element formulation for the evaluation of the objective function for each iteration or generation depending on the search algorithm employed. The optimal shape derived from these optimisation methods is termed as Stress Minimised Railhead (SMRH) in this thesis. This optimal SMRH design has exhibited significantly reduced stress concentration that remains well below the yield strength of the head hardened rail steels and has shifted the stress concentration location away from the critical zone of the railhead end. The reduction in the magnitude and the relocation of the stress concentration in the SMRH design has been validated through a full scale wheel – railhead interaction test rig; Railhead strains under the loaded wheels have been recorded using a non-contact digital image correlation method. Experimental study has confirmed the accuracy of the numerical predications. Although the SMRH shaped IRJs eliminate stress singularities, they can still fail due to joint bar or bolt hole cracking; therefore, another conceptual design, termed as Embedded IRJ (EIRJ) in this thesis, with no joint bars and pre-tensioned bolts has been developed using a multi-objective optimisation formulation based on the coupled genetic algorithm – parametric finite element method. To achieve the required structural stiffness for the safe passage of the loaded wheels, the rails were embedded into the concrete of the post tensioned sleepers; the optimal solutions for the design of the EIRJ is shown to simplify the design through the elimination of the complex interactions and failure modes of the various structural components of the CIRJ. The practical applicability of the optimal shapes SMRH and EIRJ is demonstrated through two illustrative examples, termed as improved designs (IMD1 & IMD2) in this thesis; IMD1 is a combination of the CIRJ and the SMRH designs, whilst IMD2 is a combination of the EIRJ and SMRH designs. These two improved designs have been simulated for two key operating (speed and wagon load) and design (wheel diameter) parameters that affect the wheel-rail contact; the effect of these parameters has been found to be negligible to the performance of the two improved designs and the improved designs are in turn found far superior to the current designs of the CIRJs in terms of stress singularities and deformation under the passage of the loaded wheels. Therefore, these improved designs are expected to provide longer service life in relation to the CIRJs.

Career-path analysis using optimal matching and self-organizing maps

This paper is devoted to the analysis of career paths and employability. The state-of-the-art on this topic is rather poor in methodologies. Some authors propose distances well adapted to the data, but are limiting their analysis to hierarchical clustering. Other authors apply sophisticated methods, but only after paying the price of transforming the categorical data into continuous, via a factorial analysis. The latter approach has an important drawback since it makes a linear assumption on the data. We propose a new methodology, inspired from biology and adapted to career paths, combining optimal matching and self-organizing maps. A complete study on real-life data will illustrate our proposal.

Unnatural selection : curricular conversations in TIP 1962–2012

Our task is to consider the evolving perspectives around curriculum documented in the Theory Into Practice (TIP) corpus to date. The 50 years in question, 1962–2012, account for approximately half the history of mass institutionalized schooling. Over this time, the upper age of compulsory schooling has crept up, stretching the school curriculum's reach, purpose, and clientele. These years also span remarkable changes in the social fabric, challenging deep senses of the nature and shelf-life of knowledge, whose knowledge counts, what science can and cannot deliver, and the very purpose of education. The school curriculum is a key social site where these challenges have to be addressed in a very practical sense, through a design on the future implemented within the resources and politics of the present. The task's metaphor of ‘evolution’ may invoke a sense of gradual cumulative improvement, but equally connotes mutation, hybridization, extinction, survival of the fittest, and environmental pressures. Viewed in this way, curriculum theory and practice cannot be isolated and studied in laboratory conditions—there is nothing natural, neutral, or self-evident about what knowledge gets selected into the curriculum. Rather, the process of selection unfolds as a series of messy, politically contaminated, lived experiments; thus curriculum studies require field work in dynamic open systems. We subscribe to Raymond Williams' approach to social change, which he argues is not absolute and abrupt, one set of ideas neatly replacing the other. For Williams, newly emergent ideas have to compete against the dominant mindset and residual ideas “still active in the cultural process'” (Williams, 1977, p. 122). This means ongoing debates. For these reasons, we join Schubert (1992) in advocating “continuous reconceptualising of the flow of experience” (p. 238) by both researchers and practitioners.

Unravelling (e-)government channel selection: A quantitative analysis of individual customer preferences in Germany and Australia

The purpose of this study is to identify the impact of individual differences on service channel selection for e-government services. In a comparative survey of citizens in Germany and Australia (n=1205), we investigate the impact of age, gender, and mobility issues on the selection of personal or mobile communication as channels for service consumption. The results suggest that Australians are more likely to want to use new technology-oriented channels as internet or mobile applications while Germans tend to use classical channels as telephone or in person. Moreover, differences with respect to age, gender, and mobility exist. Implications for practice and issues for future research are discussed.

The impact of organisational culture in project selection process : case of public infrastructure project in Indonesia

The thesis develops an Organisational Culture (OC) based framework for potentially improving the current practice of the infrastructure project selection process (PSP) in Indonesia, particularly for regional road projects. This framework is developed to address the suggestion emanating from the research that there is a need for strengthening the relevant organisational culture dimensions and making changes to current organisational culture profiles to support the effectiveness of the decision-making process of the current PSP. The findings not only benefit existing knowledge but also provide practical contributions for those decision-makers within the Indonesian regional government that are involved in PSP, i.e. by raising the awareness of the influence and the role of organisational culture.

Does board gender diversity have a financial impact? Evidence using stock portfolio performance.

There is growing regulatory pressure on firms worldwide to address the under-representation of women in senior positions. Regulators have taken a variety of approaches to the issue. We investigate a jurisdiction that has issued recommendations and disclosure requirements, rather than implementing quotas. Much of the rhetoric surrounding gender diversity centres on whether diversity has a financial impact. In this paper we take an aggregate (market-level) approach and compare the performance of portfolios of firms with gender diverse boards to those without. We also investigate whether having multiple women on the board is linked to performance, and if there is a within-industry effect. Overall, we do not find evidence of an association between diversity and performance. We find some weak evidence of a negative correlation between having multiple women on the board and performance, but that in some industries diversity is positively correlated with performance.

Dynamic robot path planning using an enhanced simulated annealing approach

Evolutionary computation is an effective tool for solving optimization problems. However, its significant computational demand has limited its real-time and on-line applications, especially in embedded systems with limited computing resources, e.g., mobile robots. Heuristic methods such as the genetic algorithm (GA) based approaches have been investigated for robot path planning in dynamic environments. However, research on the simulated annealing (SA) algorithm, another popular evolutionary computation algorithm, for dynamic path planning is still limited mainly due to its high computational demand. An enhanced SA approach, which integrates two additional mathematical operators and initial path selection heuristics into the standard SA, is developed in this work for robot path planning in dynamic environments with both static and dynamic obstacles. It improves the computing performance of the standard SA significantly while giving an optimal or near-optimal robot path solution, making its real-time and on-line applications possible. Using the classic and deterministic Dijkstra algorithm as a benchmark, comprehensive case studies are carried out to demonstrate the performance of the enhanced SA and other SA algorithms in various dynamic path planning scenarios.

Embedding reflective practice in professional practice with portfolios

Completing a professional portfolio as part of coursework gives beginning library and information professionals a tool which helps them bridge the gap between being a student and a practitioner. Portfolios require them to reflect on their learning outcomes, so that they can communicate these to employers, and encourage them to design strategies for professional development. Portfolios promote reflective practice and may continue to be used in the workplace. They are also a useful mechanism for established librarians who wish to record their professional growth, plans and contributions. The idea may even be applied to monitoring the achievements and performance of whole libraries or smaller units within libraries. The first part of this paper reviews portfolios as a tool for reflecting on, showcasing and developing the practice of entry level library and information professionals. Examples of portfolio contents, and reactions to the process, in this part of the paper come from students, (now colleagues), who have recently completed the Graduate Diploma of Information Studies [GDLIS] at the Queensland University of Technology [QUT]. The potential of portfolios as a reflective professional development tool raises interesting possibilities for organisations, educational programs and professional associations. For example, LIS educators could consider strengthening the role of portfolios in courses; organisations could use them as part of the employee selection process; and professional associations such as ALIA could use them as one mechanism for recognising professional status, or establish them as a recommended professional development tool. These roles for the portfolio form the focus of the second half of this paper.

Towards a model for student selection in clinical psychology

Background Selection of candidates for clinical psychology programmes is arguably the most important decision made in determining the clinical psychology workforce. However, there are few models to inform the development of selection tools to support selection procedures. The study, using a factor analytic structure, has operationalised the model predicting applicants' capabilities. Method Eighty-eight clinical applicants for entry into a postgraduate clinical psychology programme were assessed on a series of tasks measuring eight capabilities: guided reflection, communication skills, ethical decision making, writing, conceptual reasoning, empathy, and awareness of mind and self-observation. Results Factor analysis revealed three capabilities: labelled “awareness” accounting for 35.71% of variance; “reflection” accounting for 20.56%; and “reasoning” accounting for 18.24% of variance. Fourth year grade point average (GPA) did not correlate with performance on any of the selection capabilities other than a weak correlation with performance on the ethics capability. Conclusions Eight selection capabilities are identified for the selection of candidates independent of GPA. While the model is tentative, it is hoped that the findings will stimulate the development and validation of assessment procedures with good predictive validity which will benefit the training of clinical psychologists and, ultimately, effective service delivery.

Evolution of lure response in tephritid fruit flies : phytochemicals as drivers of sexual selection

The males of many Bactrocera species (Diptera: Tephritidae) respond strongly and positively to a small number of plant-derived chemicals (=male lures). Males that have imbibed the lures commonly have a mating advantage over unfed males, but no female benefits have been demonstrated for females mating with lure-fed males. It has been hypothesized that the strong lure response is a case of runaway selection, where males receive direct benefits and females receive indirect benefits via 'sexy sons', or a case of sensory bias where females have a lower threshold response to lures. To test these hypotheses we studied the effects of lure feeding on male mating, remating and longevity; while for females that had mated with lure-fed males we recorded mating refractoriness, fecundity, egg viability and longevity. We used Bactrocera tryoni as our test animal and as lures the naturally occurring zingerone and chemically related, but synthetic chemical cuelure. Feeding on lures provided direct male benefits in greater mating success and increased multiple mating. For the first time, we recorded direct female effects: increased fecundity and reduced remating receptivity. Egg viability did not differ in females mated with lure-fed or unfed males. The life span of males and females exposed to lures was reduced. These results reveal direct, current-generation fitness benefits for both males and females, although the male benefits appear greater. We discuss that while lure response is indeed likely to be a sexual selection trait, there is no need to invoke runaway selection to explain its evolution.

Genetic response to combined family selection for improved mean harvest weight in giant freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) in Vietnam

We estimated genetic changes in body and carcass weight traits in a giant freshwater prawn (GFP) (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) population selected for increased body weight at harvest in Vietnam. The data set consisted of 18,387 individual body and 1730 carcass weight records, as well as full pedigree information collected over four generations. Average selection response (per generation) in body weight at harvest (transformed to square root) estimated as the difference between the Selection line and the Control group was 7.4% calculated from least squares mean (LSMs), 7.0% from estimated breeding values (EBVs) and 4.4% calculated from EBVs between two consecutive generations. Favorable correlated selection responses (estimated from LSMs) were found for other body traits including: total length, cephalothorax length, abdominal length, cephalothorax width, and abdominal width (12.1%, 14.5%, 10.4%, 15.5% and 13.3% over three selection generations, respectively). Data in the second generation of selection showed positive correlated responses for carcass weight traits including: abdominal weight, exoskeleton-off weight, and telson-off weight of 8.8%, 8.6% and 8.8%, respectively. We conclude that body weight at harvest responded well to the application of combined (between and within) family selection and correlated responses in carcass weight traits were favorable.