Contact lens prescribing : USA vs the world

Along with other facets of commericialization, the contact lens market has become globalized during the past 30 years. The major international companies have worldwide distribution networks and supply lenses of the same product names and replacement frequencies to all nations, with a few minor adjustments for marketing and regulatory reasons. Small and medium-sized companies, often producing more specialized lenses, are also active in markets across the world.

Arm’s length pricing and multinational banks : an old fashioned approach in a modern world

In “Arm’s Length Pricing and Multinational Banks: An Old Fashioned Approach in a Modern World”, Kerrie Sadiq, describes the high level of integration of multinational financial institutions and argues that treating each element within a given operation as a separate entity for transfer pricing purposes is not economically or legally realistic. She proposes instead formulary apportionment as a device for managing this complexity.

Mediating orientation and self-expression in the world of consumption : Australian and German lifestyle journalists' professional views

Despite having experienced rapid popularity over the past two decades, lifestyle journalism is still somewhat neglected by academic researchers. So far mostly explored as either part of wider lifestyle programming, particularly on television, or in terms of individual sub-fields, such as travel, fashion or food journalism, lifestyle journalism is in need of scholarly analysis particularly in the area of production, based on the increasing importance which the field has in influencing audiences’ ways of life. This study explores the professional views of 89 Australian and German lifestyle journalists through in-depth interviews in order to explore the ways in which they engage in processes of influencing audiences’ self-expression, identities and consumption behaviors. The article argues that through its work, lifestyle journalism is a significant shaper of identities in today’s consumer societies.

Global story-telling in a socially-networked world

Journalists work in an intensively time-pressured environment, researching and writing to daily, often 24 hour, deadlines and always aware of the competition with other news outlets to be first with the news. This results, as Karen Sanders has observed, in journalists having very little time for reflection. “If they do reflect, it’s usually after a decision has been made” (Sanders 2003, 168). Yet time for reflection upon professional practice is important, especially in an era of extremely rapid and seismic technological change in the global media. This paper will reflect upon how freelance journalists can use advances in social media and web-based connectedness to tell global stories via mainstream media outlets. In exploring this question, I will examine the techniques and communications technologies used by three reporters working in the UK and Australia to find, investigate and break a series of articles, published simultaneously on the front pages of The Australian and The Times (London) newspapers, was a result of a six month investigation. The series exposed a 50-year cover-up of the serial abuse of children by one of the Church of England's most senior clergy, Robert Waddington, in Australia and the UK. It unearthed the existence of a culture of physical and sexual abuse at St Barnabas boarding school in Queensland, the sudden closure of the school and disappearance of student files - as well as Waddington's subsequent offences against children while Dean of Manchester Cathedral. We produced more than 20 articles. The coverage sparked church-ordered investigations in both countries, and also prompted the Archbishop of Canterbury to order a commission of inquiry – headed by a sitting UK judge - as well as a nationwide child safety audit of dioceses in Britain. In Australia, the church referred the case and handed its files to the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse. The coverage marked the first publishing collaboration between The Australian and The Times to break an exclusive story in Australia and Britain simultaneously, on May 10, 2013.

Investigative journalism in a socially networked world

This article explores how investigative journalists can join the network society by moving online, collaborating with other reporters and media outlets across regions and across national borders, yet publishing in newspapers which arguably remain the central stage of the public sphere (Carson, 2013). A better understanding of the potential of social media and web-based communications for undertaking journalistic investigations can lead to the adoption of a global perspective, enriching local, regional and national stories (Berglez, 2013). The research and collaboration for a transnational story published simultaneously in The Australian and collaboration in London in 2013 may provide insights into the potential for the use of social media platforms and web-based communications for finding stories, collaborating and following stories into the social media to find leads to follow-up stories. This article questions whether the synergies between mainstream media and social media platforms may yield potentially high impact stories for major masthead newspapers and thus contribute to their sustainability. Connectivity with news sources has always been an important resource for journalists. Online networks may have the potential to expand the range of voices that can be heard and the issues that can be covered.

Why not the best schools? What we have learned from outstanding schools around the world

Why not the Best Schools? offers a ten-point, ten-year plan for an education revolution that will result in the transformation of Australia’s schools. Expectations have been raised in Australia and comparable countries for an ‘education revolution’ that will secure success for all students in all settings. Such a revolution must ensure the alignment of educational outcomes, the skills required for a strong economy, and the needs of a harmonious society. Why not the Best Schools? goes beyond system characteristics to provide an in-depth account of how transformation occurs in schools. Fifty indicators are provided to help shape strategies for policy makers and practitioners in schools and school systems. Guidelines for leadership and governance ensure a future-focus for those who are determined to ensure that all students will succeed in the twentieth-first century. This book draws on a five-year study culminating in the International Project to Frame the Transformation of Schools conducted in Australia, China, England, Finland, the United States and Wales. The findings are consistent with the McKinsey & Company report on the world’s best performing school systems and those arising from OECD’s PISA.

Mid-Holocene sea-level and coral reef demise : U-Th dating of subfossil corals in Moreton Bay, Australia

It is increasingly apparent that sea-level data (e.g. microfossil transfer functions, dated coral microatolls and direct observations from satellite and tidal gauges) vary temporally and spatially at regional to local scales, thus limiting our ability to model future sea-level rise for many regions. Understanding sealevel response at ‘far-field’ locations at regional scales is fundamental for formulating more relevant sea-level rise susceptibility models within these regions under future global change projections. Fossil corals and reefs in particular are valuable tools for reconstructing past sea levels and possible environmental phase shifts beyond the temporal constraints of instrumental records. This study used abundant surface geochronological data based on in situ subfossil corals and precise elevation surveys to determine previous sea level in Moreton Bay, eastern Australia, a far-field site. A total of 64 U-Th dates show that relative sea level was at least 1.1 m above modern lowest astronomical tide (LAT) from at least ˜6600 cal. yr BP. Furthermore, a rapid synchronous demise in coral reef growth occurred in Moreton Bay ˜5800 cal. yr BP, coinciding with reported reef hiatus periods in other areas around the Indo-Pacific region. Evaluating past reef growth patterns and phases allows for a better interpretation of anthropogenic forcing versus natural environmental/climatic cycles that effect reef formation and demise at all scales and may allow better prediction of reef response to future global change.

Status of the world's remaining closed forests : an assessment using satellite data and policy options

Historically, it appears that some of the WRCF have survived because i) they lack sufficient quantity of commercially valuable species; ii) they are located in remote or inaccessible areas; or iii) they have been protected as national parks and sanctuaries. Forests will be protected when people who are deciding the fate of forests conclude than the conservation of forests is more beneficial, e.g. generates higher incomes or has cultural or social values, than their clearance. If this is not the case, forests will continue to be cleared and converted. In the future, the WRCF may be protected only by focused attention. The future policy options may include strategies for strong protection measures, the raising of public awareness about the value of forests, and concerted actions for reducing pressure on forest lands by providing alternatives to forest exploitation to meet the growing demands of forest products. Many areas with low population densities offer an opportunity for conservation if appropriate steps are taken now by the national governments and international community. This opportunity must be founded upon the increased public and government awareness that forests have vast importance to the welfare of humans and ecosystems' services such as biodiversity, watershed protection, and carbon balance. Also paramount to this opportunity is the increased scientific understanding of forest dynamics and technical capability to install global observation and assessment systems. High-resolution satellite data such as Landsat 7 and other technologically advanced satellite programs will provide unprecedented monitoring options for governing authorities. Technological innovation can contribute to the way forests are protected. The use of satellite imagery for regular monitoring and Internet for information dissemination provide effective tools for raising worldwide awareness about the significance of forests and intrinsic value of nature.

Occupy Oakland and #oo : uses of Twitter within the Occupy movement

Social media have become crucial tools for political activists and protest movements, providing another channel for promoting messages and garnering support. Twitter, in particular, has been identified as a noteworthy medium for protests in countries including Iran and Egypt to receive global attention. The Occupy movement, originating with protests in, and the physical occupation of, Wall Street, and inspiring similar demonstrations in other U.S. cities and around the world, has been intrinsically linked with social media through location-specific hashtags: #ows for Occupy Wall Street, #occupysf for San Francisco, and so on. While the individual protests have a specific geographical focus-highlighted by the physical occupation of parks, buildings, and other urban areas-Twitter provides a means for these different movements to be linked and promoted through tweets containing multiple hashtags. It also serves as a channel for tactical communications during actions and as a space in which movement debates take place. This paper examines Twitter's use within the Occupy Oakland movement. We use a mixture of ethnographic research through interviews with activists and participant observation of the movements' activities, and a dataset of public tweets containing the #oo hashtag from early 2012. This research methodology allows us to develop a more accurate and nuanced understanding of how movement activists use Twitter by cross-checking trends in the online data with observations and activists' own reported use of Twitter. We also study the connections between a geographically focused movement such as Occupy Oakland and related, but physically distant, protests taking place concurrently in other cities. This study forms part of a wider research project, Mapping Movements, exploring the politics of place, investigating how social movements are composed and sustained, and the uses of online communication within these movements.

Security analysis of Australian and E.U. e-passport implementation

This paper makes a formal security analysis of the current Australian e-passport implementation using model checking tools CASPER/CSP/FDR. We highlight security issues in the current implementation and identify new threats when an e-passport system is integrated with an automated processing system like SmartGate. The paper also provides a security analysis of the European Union (EU) proposal for Extended Access Control (EAC) that is intended to provide improved security in protecting biometric information of the e-passport bearer. The current e-passport specification fails to provide a list of adequate security goals that could be used for security evaluation. We fill this gap; we present a collection of security goals for evaluation of e-passport protocols. Our analysis confirms existing security weaknesses that were previously identified and shows that both the Australian e-passport implementation and the EU proposal fail to address many security and privacy aspects that are paramount in implementing a secure border control mechanism. ACM Classification C.2.2 (Communication/Networking and Information Technology – Network Protocols – Model Checking), D.2.4 (Software Engineering – Software/Program Verification – Formal Methods), D.4.6 (Operating Systems – Security and Privacy Protection – Authentication)

A flexible optimisation model for the railway crew scheduling problem

Addressing the Crew Scheduling Problem (CSP) in transportation systems can be too complex to capture all details. The designed models usually ignore or simplify features which are difficult to formulate. This paper proposes an alternative formulation using a Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) approach to the problem. The optimisation model integrates the two phases of pairing generation and pairing optimisation by simultaneously sequencing trips into feasible duties and minimising total elapsed time of any duty. Crew scheduling constraints in which the crew have to return to their home depot at the end of the shift are included in the model. The flexibility of this model comes in the inclusion of the time interval of relief opportunities, allowing the crew to be relieved during a finite time interval. This will enhance the robustness of the schedule and provide a better representation of real-world conditions.