The role of timber plantations in U.K. investment portfolios

Although timber plantations and forests are classified as forms of agricultural production, the ownership of this land classification is not limited to rural producers. Timber plantations and forests are now regarded as a long-term investment with both institutional and absentee owners. While the NCREIF property indices have been the benchmarks for the measurement of the performance of the commercial property market in the UK, for many years the IPD timberland index has recently emerged as the U.K. forest and timberland performance indicator. The IPD Forest index incorporates 126 properties over five regions in the U.K. This paper will utilise the IPD Forestry Index to examine the performance of U.K. timber plantations and forests over the period 1981-2004. In particular, issues to be critically assessed include plantation and forest performance analysis, comparative investment analysis, and the role of plantations and forests in investment portfolios, the risk reduction and portfolio benefits of plantations and forests in mixed-asset portfolios and the strategic investment significance of U.K. timberlands.

Dislodgement of commercial property public debt markets : the case of U.S. and Australia

The paper investigates if there are any discernible trends in the U.S. and Australian commercial property public debt markets with the onset of the global financial crisis (GFC). Commercial mortgage-backed securities and unsecured bonds issued by real estate investment trusts for the period 2000 to Q3:2009 are reviewed. It is shown that events in the equity markets have an impact on the pricing of these two instruments. Furthermore, the impact of subdued activity in these financing instruments on the commercial property market is discussed.

Australian student reactions to U.S. tourism advertising : a test of advertising as public diplomacy

A study among Australian college students gauged their reactions to a television commercial produced for the U.S. Commerce Department to bolster sagging tourism numbers among international visitors. In addition to using traditional measures applied to tourism advertisements, the student also concluded items to measure attitudes toward the U.S. government and its people Pre- and post-viewing results indicated that while the Hollywood-movie-themed commercial was not well received by the Australian students as a tourism message, it did result in more favorable attitudes toward the U.S. government, though not the U.S. people. The findings lend partial support for the potential of tourism advertising efforts to exert a "bleed-over effect" in terms of their contributions to overall attitudes toward a country, regardless of whether viewers plan to visit the country whose travel advertisements they see.

On importer trust and commitment : a comparative study of two developing countries

Purpose: Relationship trust and commitment are two key dimensions of international exchanges. Both have been extensively investigated from an exporter (as opposed to importer) perspective in developed country (as opposed to developing country) contexts. To address these gaps, this study aims to develop a model of antecedents and outcomes of importer trust and commitment in two developing countries.---------- Design/methodology: The authors test the proposed model using data from Chile and Bangladesh. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).---------- Findings: SEM analysis revealed that most of the hypotheses were supported in both the Bangladeshi and Chilean context. The findings of this study also suggest that the effects of importer transaction-specific investments on importer commitment are distinct in the Bangladeshi context. Practical implications: Practically, these results show that trust and commitment are essential for enhancing importer relationship performance in developing countries. Importer trust in a foreign supplier is effective when suppliers are competent and provide relatively superior facilities, as opposed to opportunistic proclivity. Importer commitment to a foreign supplier is stronger when importers perceive that the foreign supplier is not opportunistic, but is knowledgeable and experienced with the importer market, and they perceive that it is an advantage importing from that supplier. Cultural similarity between importers and foreign suppliers improves importer trust in both countries. However, importer commitment in Chile increases with importer transaction-specific investment, but this is not found to be the case in Bangladesh.---------- Originality/value: This study contributes to the importer-exporter exchange relationship literature by testing a model of antecedents and outcomes of importer trust and commitment. The tested model is one of few that considers developing country contexts and incorporates two novel antecedents of trust and commitment: importer knowledge and experience, and supplier resource competency.

The role of U.S. timberland in real estate portfolios

Timberland is seen as a long-term investment which has recently received increased institutional investor attention in many countries and potentially provides added value in a mixed-asset portfolio. Using the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) timberland series, this paper analyses the risk-adjusted performance and portfolio diversification benefits of timberland in the United States over the period of 1987-2007. U.S. timberland is seen to have been a strongly performed asset class with significant portfolio diversification benefits over this period; with a significant portfolio role separate to that of real estate. However, recent years have seen reduced risk-adjusted returns, with some loss of portfolio diversification benefits of timberland with stocks and real estate. Global drivers are likely to see increased future demand for timberland investment.

The role of trust in inter-project knowledge transfer

Knowledge is a powerful organisational asset yet intangible and hard to manage, particularly in a project environment where there is a tendency to repeat the same mistakes rather than learn from previous project lessons. A lack of effective knowledge sharing across projects causes reinventions that are costly, and time consuming. Research on knowledge transfer has focused mainly on functional organisations and only recent attention has been directed towards knowledge transfer in projects. Furthermore, there is little evidence in the literature which examines trust in the knowledge transfer processes. This paper studies how the three types of trust - ability, benevolence, and integrity impact on knowledge transfer from the inter-project perspective. Three case studies investigated the matter. A detailed description of the work undertaken and an analysis of interviews with project professionals from large project-based organisations are presented in this paper. The key finding identifies the positive impact of ability trust on knowledge transfer. However, it was also found that perception on both integrity and benevolence varied across organisations suggesting that there can be a possible impact of organisational factors on the way trust is perceived in inter-project knowledge transfer. The paper concludes with a discussion and recommendations regarding the development of trust for inter-project environment.

Comparison of U.S., Canadian, and Australian participants' performance on the Algase Wandering Scale-Version 2 (AWS-V2)

Background Wandering represents a major problem in the management of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In this study we examined the utility of the Algase Wandering Scale (AWS), a newly developed psychometric instrument that asks caregivers to assess the likelihood of wandering behavior. Methods The AWS was administered to the caregivers of 40 AD patients and total and subscale scores were examined in relation to measures of mental and functional status, depressive symptoms and medication usage. Results AWS scores were comparable, though slightly lower, than those normative values previously published. Higher scores were associated with more severe dementia. The Negative Outcome subscale showed a significant increase in reported falls or injuries in association with anti-depressant use. Conclusions These data provide some construct validation for the AWS as a potentially useful scale to assess wandering behaviors in AD.

Privacy and trust management for electronic health records

Establishing a nationwide Electronic Health Record system has become a primary objective for many countries around the world, including Australia, in order to improve the quality of healthcare while at the same time decreasing its cost. Doing so will require federating the large number of patient data repositories currently in use throughout the country. However, implementation of EHR systems is being hindered by several obstacles, among them concerns about data privacy and trustworthiness. Current IT solutions fail to satisfy patients’ privacy desires and do not provide a trustworthiness measure for medical data. This thesis starts with the observation that existing EHR system proposals suer from six serious shortcomings that aect patients’ privacy and safety, and medical practitioners’ trust in EHR data: accuracy and privacy concerns over linking patients’ existing medical records; the inability of patients to have control over who accesses their private data; the inability to protect against inferences about patients’ sensitive data; the lack of a mechanism for evaluating the trustworthiness of medical data; and the failure of current healthcare workflow processes to capture and enforce patient’s privacy desires. Following an action research method, this thesis addresses the above shortcomings by firstly proposing an architecture for linking electronic medical records in an accurate and private way where patients are given control over what information can be revealed about them. This is accomplished by extending the structure and protocols introduced in federated identity management to link a patient’s EHR to his existing medical records by using pseudonym identifiers. Secondly, a privacy-aware access control model is developed to satisfy patients’ privacy requirements. The model is developed by integrating three standard access control models in a way that gives patients access control over their private data and ensures that legitimate uses of EHRs are not hindered. Thirdly, a probabilistic approach for detecting and restricting inference channels resulting from publicly-available medical data is developed to guard against indirect accesses to a patient’s private data. This approach is based upon a Bayesian network and the causal probabilistic relations that exist between medical data fields. The resulting definitions and algorithms show how an inference channel can be detected and restricted to satisfy patients’ expressed privacy goals. Fourthly, a medical data trustworthiness assessment model is developed to evaluate the quality of medical data by assessing the trustworthiness of its sources (e.g. a healthcare provider or medical practitioner). In this model, Beta and Dirichlet reputation systems are used to collect reputation scores about medical data sources and these are used to compute the trustworthiness of medical data via subjective logic. Finally, an extension is made to healthcare workflow management processes to capture and enforce patients’ privacy policies. This is accomplished by developing a conceptual model that introduces new workflow notions to make the workflow management system aware of a patient’s privacy requirements. These extensions are then implemented in the YAWL workflow management system.

Raman spectroscopic study of the uranyl titanate mineral betafite (Ca,U)2(Ti,Nb)2O6(OH) –Effect of Metamictization

Raman spectra of the uranyl titanate mineral betafite were obtained and related to the mineral structure. A comparison is made with the spectra of uranyl oxyhydroxide hydrates. Observed bands are attributed to the (UO2)2+ stretching and bending vibrations, U-OH bending vibrations, H2O and (OH)- stretching, bending and libration modes. U-O bond lengths in uranyls and O-H…O bond lengths are calculated from the wavenumbers assigned to the stretching vibrations. Raman bands of betafite are comparable with those of the uranyl oxyhydroxides. The mineral betafite is metamict as is evidenced by the intensity of the UO stretching and bending modes being of lower intensity than expected and with bands that are significantly broader.

Requirements for enhancing trust, security and integrity of GNSS location services

The paper describes a number of requirements for enhancing the trust of location acquisition from Satellite Navigation Systems, particularly for those applications where the location is monitored through a remote GNSS receiver. We discuss how the trust of a location acquisition could be propagated to an application through the use of a proposed tamper-­resistant GNSS receiver which quantifies the trust of a location solution from the signaling used (ie. P(Y) code, Galileo SOL, PRS, CS) and provides a cryptographic proof of this to a remote application. The tamper­-resistance state of the receiver is also included in this cryptographic proof.

Developing spatial infrastructures for the Q.U.T. Samford Ecological Research Facility.

Staff and students of the Surveying and Spatial Sciences discipline at QUT have worked collaboratively with the Institute of Sustainable Resources in the creation and development of spatial information layers and infrastructure to support multi-disciplinary research efforts at the Samford Ecological Research Facility (SERF). The SERF property is unique in that it provides staff and students with a semi-rural controlled research base for multiple users. This paper aims to describe the development of a number of spatial information layers and network of survey monuments that assist and support research infrastructure at SERF. A brief historical background about the facility is presented along with descriptions of the surveying and mapping activities undertaken. These broad ranging activities include introducing monument infrastructure and a geodetic control network; surveying activities for aerial photography ground-control targets including precise levelling with barcode instruments; development of an ortho-rectified image spatial information layer; Real-Time-Kinematic Global Positioning Systems (RTK-GPS) surveying for constructing 100metre confluence points/monuments to support science-based disciplines to undertake environmental research transects and long-term ecological sampling; and real-world learning initiative to assist with water engineering projects and student experiential learning. The spatial information layers and physical infrastructure have been adopted by two specific yet diverse user groups with an interest in the long-term research focus of SERF.

Project-based organisations : overcoming lack of trust and social networks within small and medium project teams

In sustainable development projects, as well as other types of projects, knowledge transfer is important for the organisations managing the project. Nevertheless, knowledge transfer among employees does not happen automatically and it has been found that the lack of social networks and the lack of trust among employees are the major barriers to effective knowledge transfer. Social network analysis has been recognised as a very important tool for improving knowledge transfer in the project environment. Transfer of knowledge is more effective where it depends heavily on social networks and informal dialogue. Based on the theory of social capital, social capital consists of two parts: conduits network and resource exchange network. This research studies the relationships among performance, the resource exchange network (such as the knowledge network) and the relationship network (such as strong ties network, energy network, and trust network) at the individual and project levels. The aim of this chapter is to present an approach to overcoming the lack of social networks and lack of trust to improve knowledge transfer within project-based organisations. This is to be done by identifying the optimum structure of relationship networks and knowledge networks within small and medium projects. The optimal structure of the relationship networks and knowledge networks is measured using two dimensions: intra-project and inter-project. This chapter also outlines an extensive literature review in the areas of social capital, knowledge management and project management, and presents the conceptual model of the research approach.

The effect of metamictization on the Raman spectroscopy of the uranyl titanate mineral davidite (La,Ce)(Y,U,Fe2+)(Ti,Fe3+)20(O,OH)38

Raman spectra of the uranyl titanate mineral davidite-(La) (La,Ce)(Y,U,Fe2+)(Ti,Fe3+)20(O,OH)38 were analysed and related to the mineral structure. Observed bands are attributed to the TiO and (UO2)2+ stretching and bending vibrations, U-OH bending vibrations, H2O and (OH)- stretching, bending and libration modes. U-O bond lengths in uranyls and O-H…O bond lengths are calculated from the wavenumbers assigned to the stretching vibrations. Raman bands of davidite-(La) are in harmony with those of the uranyl oxyhydroxides. The mineral davidite-(La) is metamict as is evidenced by the intensity of the UO stretching and bending modes being of lower intensity than expected and with bands that are significantly broader.