The requirement to 'Start a Proceeding' to prevent the lapse of a caveat

Section 126 of the Land Title Act 1994 (Qld) regulates whether, and if so, when a caveat will lapse. While certain caveats will not lapse due to the operation of s 126(1), if a caveator does not wish a caveat to which the section applies to lapse, the caveator must start a proceeding in a court of competent jurisdiction to establish the interest claimed under the caveat within the time limits specified in, and otherwise comply with the obligations imposed by, s 126(4). The requirement, in s 126(4), to “start a proceeding” was the subject of judicial examination by the Court of Appeal (McMurdo P, Holmes JA and MacKenzie J) in Cousins Securities Pty Ltd v CEC Group Ltd [2007] QCA 192.

Pollutant concentrations within households in Lao PDR and association with housing characteristics and occupants' activities

The paper presents the results of a study conducted to investigate indoor air quality within residential dwellings in Lao PDR. Results from PM 10, CO, and NO2 measurements inside 167 dwellings in Lao PDR over a five month period (December 2005-April 2006) are discussed as a function of household characteristics and occupant activities. Extremely high PM10 and NO2 concentrations (12 h mean PM10 concentrations 1275 ± 98 μg m-3 and 1183 ± 99 μg m-3 in Vientiane and Bolikhamxay provinces, respectively; 12 h mean NO2 concentrations 1210 ± 94 μg m-3 and 561 ± 45 μg m-3 in Vientiane and Bolikhamxay, respectively) were measured within the dwellings. Correlations, ANOVA analysis (univariate and multivariate), and linear regression results suggest a substantial contribution from cookingandsmoking.The PM10 concentrations were significantly higher in houses without a chimney compared to houses in which cooking occurred on a stove with a chimney. However, no significant differences in pollutantconcentrations were observed as a function of cooking location. Furthermore, PM10 and NO2 concentrations were higher in houses in which smoking occurred, suggestive of a relationship between increased indoor concentrations and smoking (0.05 < p < 0.10). Resuspension of dust from soil floors was another significant source of PM10 inside the house (634 μg m-3, p < 0.05).

The effect of housing characteristics and occupant activities on the respiratory health of women and children in Lao PDR

The paper presents the results of a study conducted into the relationship between dwelling characteristics and occupant activities with the respiratory health of resident women and children in Lao People’s Democratic Republic (PDR). Lao is one of the least developed countries in south-east Asia with poor life expectancies and mortality rates. The study, commissioned by the World Health Organisation, included questionnaires delivered to residents of 356 dwellings in nine districts in Lao PDR over a five month period (December 2005-April 2006), with the aim of identifying the association between respiratory health and indoor air pollution, in particular exposures related to indoor biomass burning. Adjusted odds ratios were calculated for each health outcome separately using binary logistic regression. After adjusting for age, a wide range of symptoms of respiratory illness in women and children aged 1-4 years were positively associated with a range of indoor exposures related to indoor cooking, including exposure to a fire and location of the cooking place. Among women, “dust always inside the house” and smoking were also identified as strong risk factors for respiratory illness. Other strong risk factors for children, after adjusting for age and gender, included dust and drying clothes inside. This analysis confirms the role of indoor air pollution in the burden of disease among women and children in Lao PDR.

Sherlockian adolescence for the twenty-first century : Conan Doyle’s ‘six dirty little scoundrels’ and contemporary children’s literature

Young adult literature is a socialising genre that encourages young readers to take up very particular ways of relating to historical or cultural materials. Recent years have seen a boom in Sherlockian YA fiction inviting reader identification either with the Baker Street Irregulars or an adolescent Holmes. In works by Anthony Read, Andrew Lane, Tracy Mack & Michael Citrin, and Tony Lee, the Sherlock canon provides a vocabulary for neo-Victorian young adult fiction to simultaneously invoke and defer a range of competing visions of working childhood as both at-risk and autonomous; of education as both oppression and emancipation; and of literary-cultural history as both populist and elitist. Such tensions can be traced in Conan Doyle’s own constructions of working children, and in the circulation of the Sherlock stories as popular or literary fictions. Drawing both on the Sherlock canon and its revisions, this paper reads current YA fiction’s deployment of Conan Doyle’s fictional universe as a tool for negotiating contemporary anxieties of adolescence.

An examination Of tax–deductible donations made by individual taxpayers in Australia for 1999/2000

Each year QUT’s Centre of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies collects and analyses statistics on the extent of tax-deductible donations claimed by Australians in their individual income tax returns to deductible gift recipients (DGRs). The information presented below is based on the amount and type of tax-deductible donations claimed by Australian taxpayers to deductible gift recipients (DGRs) for the period 1 July 1999 to 30 June 2000. This information has been extracted from the Australian Taxation Office's publication Taxation Statistics 1999-2000 which provides an overview and profile of the income and taxation status of Australian taxpayers using information extracted from their income tax returns for the period 1 July 1999 to 30 June 2000. The 1999/2000 report is the latest report that has been made publicly available...

The impact of the GST on the community services sector in Queensland

The impact of the GST has on nonprofit organisations has been largely ignored in the compliance cost literature. Most studies to date, both in Australia and overseas, have focused exclusively on measuring the nature and extent of GST compliance costs of businesses in the for-profit sector (particularly the impact on small businesses). This paper examines the impact of The New Tax System, and in particular, the GST on Queensland community sector organisations. The results are extracted from a QCOSS report entitled “Taxing Goodwill: The Impact of GST on Community Services” released in October 2001.

Evidence for time dependency of molecular rate estimates

Long-term changes in the genetic composition of a population occur by the fixation of new mutations, a process known as substitution. The rate at which mutations arise in a population and the rate at which they are fixed are expected to be equal under neutral conditions (Kimura, 1968). Between the appearance of a new mutation and its eventual fate of fixation or loss, there will be a period in which it exists as a transient polymorphism in the population (Kimura and Ohta, 1971). If the majority of mutations are deleterious (and nonlethal), the fixation probabilities of these transient polymorphisms are reduced and the mutation rate will exceed the substitution rate (Kimura, 1983). Consequently, different apparent rates may be observed on different time scales of the molecular evolutionary process (Penny, 2005; Penny and Holmes, 2001). The substitution rate of the mitochondrial protein-coding genes of birds and mammals has been traditionally recognized to be about 0.01 substitutions/site/million years (Myr) (Brown et al., 1979; Ho, 2007; Irwin et al., 1991; Shields and Wilson, 1987), with the noncoding D-loop evolving several times more quickly (e.g., Pesole et al., 1992; Quinn, 1992). Over the past decade, there has been mounting evidence that instantaneous mutation rates substantially exceed substitution rates, in a range of organisms (e.g., Denver et al., 2000; Howell et al., 2003; Lambert et al., 2002; Mao et al., 2006; Mumm et al., 1997; Parsons et al., 1997; Santos et al., 2005). The immediate reaction to the first of these findings was that the polymorphisms generated by the elevated mutation rate are short-lived, perhaps extending back only a few hundred years (Gibbons, 1998; Macaulay et al., 1997). That is, purifying selection was thought to remove these polymorphisms very rapidly.

An examination of tax-deductible donations made by individual taxpayers in Australia for 1997/98

This paper analyses the amount and type of tax-deductible donations made by Australian taxpayers to charities for the period 1 July 1997 to 30 June 1998. The information has been extracted from the Australian Taxation Office's publication Taxation Statistics 1997-98 which provides an overview and profile of the income and taxation status of Australian taxpayers using information extracted from their income tax returns for the period 1 July 1997 to 30 June 1998. This report is the latest publicly available summary. At the time of writing.

Persistence of multiple genetic lineages within intra-host populations of Ross River virus

We examined the structure and extent of genetic diversity in intrahost populations of Ross River virus (RRV) in samples from six human patients, focusing on the nonstructural (nsP3) and structural (E2) protein genes. Strikingly, although the samples were collected from contrasting ecological settings 3,000 kilometers apart in Australia, we observed multiple viral lineages in four of the six individuals, which is indicative of widespread mixed infections. In addition, a comparison with previously published RRV sequences revealed that these distinct lineages have been in circulation for at least 5 years, and we were able to document their long-term persistence over extensive geographical distances

Small business entity tax concessions : through the eyes of the practitioner

The often competing imperatives of equity, simplicity and efficiency in the income tax regime, particularly the notion of simplicity, has been most evident within Australia’s small business sector over the last decade. In an attempt to provide tax simplification and reduce the tax compliance burden faced by Australian small businesses, provisions collectively referred to as the ‘simplified tax system’ or STS were introduced. The STS was designed to provide eligible small businesses with the option of adopting a range of ‘simplified’ tax measures designed to simplify their tax affairs whilst at the same time, reducing their tax compliance costs. Ultimately, a low take-up rate and accompanying criticisms led to a remodelled and rebadged concessionary regime known as the ‘Small Business Entity’ (SBE) regime which came into effect from 1 July 2007. This paper, through a pilot study, investigates the SBE regime though the eyes of the practitioner. In line the Australian Federal Government’s objective of simplification and reduced compliance costs, the purpose of the study was to (1) determine the extent to which the SBE concessions are being adopted by tax practitioners on behalf of their clients, (2) gain an understanding as to which individual SBE tax concessions are most favoured by practitioners, (3) determine the primary motivation as to why tax practitioners recommend particular SBE concessions to their clients, and (4) canvass the opinions of practitioners as to whether they believed that the introduction of the SBE concessions had met their stated objective of reducing tax compliance costs for small businesses. The findings of this research indicate that, while there is a perception that the SBE concessions are worth embracing, contrary to the policy intent, the reasons behind adopting the concessions was the opportunity to minimise a clients’ tax liability. It was revealed that adopting particular concessions had nothing to do with compliance costs savings and, in fact, the SBE concessions merely added another layer of complexity to an already cumbersome and complex tax code, which resulted in increased compliance costs for their small businesses clients. Further, the SBE concessions allowed tax practitioners the opportunity to engage in effective tax minimisation, thereby fulfilling the client advocacy role of the tax practitioner in maximising their clients’ tax preferences.

Accounting Research Journal Editorial : "ARJ – The First 25 Years"

In this 25th year of publication of the Accounting Research Journal we pay tribute to the efforts of the dedicated Editors who have successfully guided and developed the journal since its inception in 1988. After the rapid growth in accounting and finance research in the 1970s and 1980s the absence of outlets in Asia-Pacific region to publish novel, timely and applied research became increasingly apparent. In response to this gap, ARJ’s first volume was published in 1988 by the School of Accountancy at the Queensland Institute of Technology (QIT), which became the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in the following year. The founding Editor was Myles McGregor-Lowndes and his editorship continued for three years until Scott Holmes took over as Editor in 1991. In 1992, Robert Faff joined Scott Holmes as Joint Editor, and their joint editorship continued for six years until Robert Faff took the reins as Editor in 1998. At that time Scott remained as Associate Editor and the editorial team was joined by Roger Willett as Consulting Editor and Chris Lambert as Associate Editor. This arrangement continued until 2002 when Tim Brailsford was newly appointed as Managing Editor. The editorship returned to QUT in 2008 and was taken on by Chris Ryan with our support as Co-editors. Since 2011 we have been the Joint Editors. Table 1 lists the individuals who have been involved in editing ARJ over the 25-year period and their roles...

Proteomics science & society : the role of knowledge translation in moving towards clinical applications

Background: Outside the mass-spectrometer, proteomics research does not take place in a vacuum. It is affected by policies on funding and research infrastructure. Proteomics research both impacts and is impacted by potential clinical applications. It provides new techniques & clinically relevant findings, but the possibilities for such innovations (and thus the perception of the potential for the field by funders) are also impacted by regulatory practices and the readiness of the health sector to incorporate proteomics-related tools & findings. Key to this process is how knowledge is translated. Methods: We present preliminary results from a multi-year social science project, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, on the processes and motivations for knowledge translation in the health sciences. The proteomics case within this wider study uses qualitative methods to examine the interplay between proteomics science and regulatory and policy makers regarding clinical applications of proteomics. Results: Adopting an interactive format to encourage conference attendees’ feedback, our poster focuses on deficits in effective knowledge translation strategies from the laboratory to policy, clinical, & regulatory arenas. An analysis of the interviews conducted to date suggests five significant choke points: the changing priorities of funding agencies; the complexity of proteomics research; the organisation of proteomics research; the relationship of proteomics to genomics and other omics sciences; and conflict over the appropriate role of standardisation. Conclusion: We suggest that engagement with aspects of knowledge translation, such as those mentioned above, is crucially important for the eventual clinical application ofproteomics science on any meaningful scale.

Problem-based learning : does accounting education need it?

Problem-based learning (PBL) has been used successfully in disciplines such as medicine, nursing, law and engineering. However a review of the literature shows that there has been little use of this approach to learning in accounting. This paper extends the research in accounting education by reporting the findings of a case study of the development and implementation of PBL at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in a new Accountancy Capstone unit that began in 2006. The fundamentals of the PBL approach were adhered to. However, one of the essential elements of the approach adopted was to highlight the importance of questioning as a means of gathering the necessary information upon which decisions are made. This approach can be contrasted with the typical ‘give all the facts’ case studies that are commonly used. Another feature was that students worked together in the same group for an entire semester (similar to how teams in the workplace operate) so there was an intended focus on teamwork in solving unstructured, real-world accounting problems presented to students. Based on quantitative and qualitative data collected from student questionnaires over seven semesters, it was found that students perceived PBL to be effective, especially in terms of developing the skills of questioning, teamwork, and problem solving. The effectiveness of questioning is very important as this is a skill that is rarely the focus of development in accounting education. The successful implementation of PBL in accounting through ‘learning by doing’ could be the catalyst for change to bring about better learning outcomes for accounting graduates.