Public regulatory reform and management earnings forecasts in a low private litigation environment

We examine the impact of continuous disclosure regulatory reform on the likelihood, frequency and qualitative characteristics of management earnings forecasts issued in New Zealand’s low private litigation environment. Using a sample of 720 earnings forecasts issued by 94 firms listed on the New Zealand Exchange before and after the reform (1999–2005), we provide strong evidence of significant changes in forecasting behaviour in the post-reform period. Specifically, firms were more likely to issue earnings forecasts to pre-empt earnings announcements and, in contrast to findings in other legal settings, those earnings forecasts exhibited higher frequency and improved qualitative characteristics (better precision and accuracy). An important implication of our findings is that public regulatory reforms may have a greater benefit in a low private litigation environment and thus add to the global debate about the effectiveness of alternative public regulatory reforms of corporate requirements.

Virtual communities as tools to support teaching practicum

The impact of Web 2.0 and social networking tools such as virtual communities, on education has been much commented on. The challenge for teachers is to embrace these new social networking tools and apply them to new educational contexts. The increasingly digitally-abled student cohorts and the need for educational applications of Web 2.0 are challenges that overwhelm many educators. This chapter will make three important contributions. Firstly it will explore the characteristics and behaviours of digitally-abled students enrolled in higher education. An innovation of this chapter will be the appli- cation of Bourdieu’s notions of capital, particularly social, cultural and digital capital to understand these characteristics. Secondly, it will present a possible use of a commonly used virtual community, Facebook©. Finally it will offer some advice for educators who are interested in using popular social networking communities, similar to Facebook©, in their teaching and learning.

A virtual test assessment tool for second year signal processing students

The development and use of a virtual assessment tool for a signal processing unit is described. It allows students to take a test from anywhere using a web browser to connect to the university server that hosts the test. While student responses are of the multiple choice type, they have to work out problems to arrive at the answer to be entered. CGI programming is used to verify student identification information and record their scores as well as provide immediate feedback after the test is complete. The tool has been used at QUT for the past 3 years and student feedback is discussed. The virtual assessment tool is an efficient alternative to marking written assignment reports that can often take more hours than actual lecture hall contact from a lecturer or tutor. It is especially attractive for very large classes that are now the norm at many universities in the first two years.

Implementation of an embedded sensor network for the coordination of Slocum gliders for coastal monitoring and observation

Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are revolutionizing oceanography through their versatility, autonomy and endurance. However, they are still an underutilized technology. For coastal operations, the ability to track a certain feature is of interest to ocean scientists. Adaptive and predictive path planning requires frequent communication with significant data transfer. Currently, most AUVs rely on satellite phones as their primary communication. This communication protocol is expensive and slow. To reduce communication costs and provide adequate data transfer rates, we present a hardware modification along with a software system that provides an alternative robust disruption- tolerant communications framework enabling cost-effective glider operation in coastal regions. The framework is specifically designed to address multi-sensor deployments. We provide a system overview and present testing and coverage data for the network. Additionally, we include an application of ocean-model driven trajectory design, which can benefit from the use of this network and communication system. Simulation and implementation results are presented for single and multiple vehicle deployments. The presented combination of infrastructure, software development and deployment experience brings us closer to the goal of providing a reliable and cost-effective data transfer framework to enable real-time, optimal trajectory design, based on ocean model predictions, to gather in situ measurements of interesting and evolving ocean features and phenomena.

Improving matching process in social network

Online dating networks, a type of social network, are gaining popularity. With many people joining and being available in the network, users are overwhelmed with choices when choosing their ideal partners. This problem can be overcome by utilizing recommendation methods. However, traditional recommendation methods are ineffective and inefficient for online dating networks where the dataset is sparse and/or large and two-way matching is required. We propose a methodology by using clustering, SimRank to recommend matching candidates to users in an online dating network. Data from a live online dating network is used in evaluation. The success rate of recommendation obtained using the proposed method is compared with baseline success rate of the network and the performance is improved by double.

A social matching system for an online dating network : a preliminary study

Due to the change in attitudes and lifestyles, people expect to find new partners and friends via various ways now-a-days. Online dating networks create a network for people to meet each other and allow making contact with different objectives of developing a personal, romantic or sexual relationship. Due to the higher expectation of users, online matching companies are trying to adopt recommender systems. However, the existing recommendation techniques such as content-based, collaborative filtering or hybrid techniques focus on users explicit contact behaviors but ignore the implicit relationship among users in the network. This paper proposes a social matching system that uses past relations and user similarities in finding potential matches. The proposed system is evaluated on the dataset collected from an online dating network. Empirical analysis shows that the recommendation success rate has increased to 31% as compared to the baseline success rate of 19%.

Reproduction, mediation, and experience : virtual reality, motion capture and early modern theatre

This article investigates virtual reality representations of performance in London’s late sixteenth-century Rose Theatre, a venue that, by means of current technology, can once again challenge perceptions of space, performance, and memory. The VR model of The Rose represents a virtual recreation of this venue in as much detail as possible and attempts to recover graphic demonstrations of the trace memories of the performance modes of the day. The VR model is based on accurate archeological and theatre historical records and is easy to navigate. The introduction of human figures onto The Rose’s stage via motion capture allows us to explore the relationships between space, actor and environment. The combination of venue and actors facilitates a new way of thinking about how the work of early modern playwrights can be stored and recalled. This virtual theatre is thus activated to intersect productively with contemporary studies in performance; as such, our paper provides a perspective on and embodiment of the relation between technology, memory and experience. It is, at its simplest, a useful archiving project for theatrical history, but it is directly relevant to contemporary performance practice as well. Further, it reflects upon how technology and ‘re-enactments’ of sorts mediate the way in which knowledge and experience are transferred, and even what may be considered ‘knowledge.’ Our work provides opportunities to begin addressing what such intermedial confrontations might produce for ‘remembering, experiencing, thinking and imagining.’ We contend that these confrontations will enhance live theatre performance rather than impeding or disrupting contemporary performance practice. Our ‘paper’ is in the form of a video which covers the intellectual contribution while also permitting a demonstration of the interventions we are discussing.

Assessment of commercial network RTK user positioning performance over long inter-station distances

The paper provides an assessment of the performance of commercial Real Time Kinematic (RTK) systems over longer than recommended inter-station distances. The experiments were set up to test and analyse solutions from the i-MAX, MAX and VRS systems being operated with three triangle shaped network cells, each having an average inter-station distance of 69km, 118km and 166km. The performance characteristics appraised included initialization success rate, initialization time, RTK position accuracy and availability, ambiguity resolution risk and RTK integrity risk in order to provide a wider perspective of the performance of the testing systems. ----- ----- The results showed that the performances of all network RTK solutions assessed were affected by the increase in the inter-station distances to similar degrees. The MAX solution achieved the highest initialization success rate of 96.6% on average, albeit with a longer initialisation time. Two VRS approaches achieved lower initialization success rate of 80% over the large triangle. In terms of RTK positioning accuracy after successful initialisation, the results indicated a good agreement between the actual error growth in both horizontal and vertical components and the accuracy specified in the RMS and part per million (ppm) values by the manufacturers. ----- ----- Additionally, the VRS approaches performed better than the MAX and i-MAX when being tested under the standard triangle network with a mean inter-station distance of 69km. However as the inter-station distance increases, the network RTK software may fail to generate VRS correction and then may turn to operate in the nearest single-base RTK (or RAW) mode. The position uncertainty reached beyond 2 meters occasionally, showing that the RTK rover software was using an incorrect ambiguity fixed solution to estimate the rover position rather than automatically dropping back to using an ambiguity float solution. Results identified that the risk of incorrectly resolving ambiguities reached 18%, 20%, 13% and 25% for i-MAX, MAX, Leica VRS and Trimble VRS respectively when operating over the large triangle network. Additionally, the Coordinate Quality indicator values given by the Leica GX1230 GG rover receiver tended to be over-optimistic and not functioning well with the identification of incorrectly fixed integer ambiguity solutions. In summary, this independent assessment has identified some problems and failures that can occur in all of the systems tested, especially when being pushed beyond the recommended limits. While such failures are expected, they can offer useful insights into where users should be wary and how manufacturers might improve their products. The results also demonstrate that integrity monitoring of RTK solutions is indeed necessary for precision applications, thus deserving serious attention from researchers and system providers.

Flight testing of an augmented separation management system providing separation protection during failure of the central communication network

Future air traffic management concepts often involve the proposal of automated separation management algorithms that replaces human air traffic controllers. This paper proposes a new type of automated separation management algorithm (based on the satisficing approach) that utilizes inter-aircraft communication and a track file manager (or bank of Kalman filters) that is capable of resolving conflicts during periods of communication failure. The proposed separation management algorithm is tested in a range of flight scenarios involving during periods of communication failure, in both simulation and flight test (flight tests were conducted as part of the Smart Skies project). The intention of the conducted flight tests was to investigate the benefits of using inter-aircraft communication to provide an extra layer of safety protection in support air traffic management during periods of failure of the communication network. These benefits were confirmed.

Bayesian network for risk of diarrhea associated with the use of recycled water

Estimating potential health risks associated with recycled (reused) water is highly complex given the multiple factors affecting water quality. We take a conceptual model, which represents the factors and pathways by which recycled water may pose a risk of contracting gastroenteritis, convert the conceptual model to a Bayesian net, and quantify the model using one expert’s opinion. This allows us to make various predictions as to the risks posed under various scenarios. Bayesian nets provide an additional way of modeling the determinants of recycled water quality and elucidating their relative influence on a given disease outcome. The important contribution to Bayesian net methodology is that all model predictions, whether risk or relative risk estimates, are expressed as credible intervals.

Improving matching process in social network using implicit and explicit user information

Personalised social matching systems can be seen as recommender systems that recommend people to others in the social networks. However, with the rapid growth of users in social networks and the information that a social matching system requires about the users, recommender system techniques have become insufficiently adept at matching users in social networks. This paper presents a hybrid social matching system that takes advantage of both collaborative and content-based concepts of recommendation. The clustering technique is used to reduce the number of users that the matching system needs to consider and to overcome other problems from which social matching systems suffer, such as cold start problem due to the absence of implicit information about a new user. The proposed system has been evaluated on a dataset obtained from an online dating website. Empirical analysis shows that accuracy of the matching process is increased, using both user information (explicit data) and user behavior (implicit data).

On location : the imagined private interior in public life

This paper reveals the interior landscapes of selected contemporary Australian films, such as The Caterpillar Wish and Bad Boy Bubby, to develop a number of thematic influences on the manner in which domestic and private lives are constructed through filmic imagination. The research uncovers the conditions that contribute to particular scenographic representations of the humble interiors that act as both backdrop and performer to subtle and often troubled narratives. Such readings are informed by the theoretical works of writer Gertrude Stein, among others, who explore the relationships between the scenographic third dimension and the fourth dimensional performance in the representation of narrative space. A further theoretical thread lies in Giuliana Bruno’s work on the tension between private and public filmic space, which is explored through the public outing of intensely private spaces generated through narratives framed by the specificities of found interiors. Beyond the interrogation of qualities of imagined filmic space is the condition whereby locations, once transformed by the event of movie making are consequently forever revised. These altered conditions subsequently reinvest the lives of those who return to the location with layered narratives of occupation. Situationally, the now reconverted interior performs as contributor to subsequent private inhabitation, even if only as imagined space. The possibility here is that the qualities of the original may be superimposed and recontextualised to invest post-produced interiors with the qualities of the other space as imagined. This reading of film space explores new theoretical design scenarios for imagined and everyday interior landscapes.

Expression and connection : the integration of the reflective learning process and the writing process into social network sites

A number of instructors have recently adopted social network sites (SNSs) for learning. However, the learning design of SNSs often remains at a preliminary level similar to a personal log book because it does not properly include reflective learning elements such as individual reflection and collaboration. This article looks at the reflective learning process and the public writing process as a way of improving the quality of reflective learning on SNSs. It proposes a reflective learning model on SNSs based on two key pedagogical concepts for social networking: individual expression and collaborative connection. It is expected that the model would be helpful for instructors in designing a reflective learning process on SNSs in an effective and flexible way.

Test and evaluation of non conventional instrument transformers and sampled value process bus on Powerlink's transmission network

IEC 61850 Process Bus technology has the potential to improve cost, performance and reliability of substation design. Substantial costs associated with copper wiring (designing, documentation, construction, commissioning and troubleshooting) can be reduced with the application of digital Process Bus technology, especially those based upon international standards. An IEC 61850-9-2 based sampled value Process Bus is an enabling technology for the application of Non-Conventional Instrument Transformers (NCIT). Retaining the output of the NCIT in its native digital form, rather than conversion to an analogue output, allows for improved transient performance, dynamic range, safety, reliability and reduced cost. In this paper we report on a pilot installation using NCITs communicating across a switched Ethernet network using the UCAIug Implementation Guideline for IEC 61850-9-2 (9-2 Light Edition or 9-2LE). This system was commissioned in a 275 kV Line Reactor bay at Powerlink Queensland’s Braemar substation in 2009, with sampled value protection IEDs 'shadowing' the existing protection system. The results of commissioning tests and twelve months of service experience using a Fibre Optic Current Transformer (FOCT) from Smart Digital Optics (SDO) are presented, including the response of the system to fault conditions. A number of remaining issues to be resolved to enable wide-scale deployment of NCITs and IEC 61850-9-2 Process Bus technology are also discussed.

A sense of control : virtual communities for people with mobility impairments

The purpose of this book is to show why we should be concerned about virtual communities for people with physical, or more particularly mobility, impairments. The well-being model through a virtual community introduced here goes towards advancing the work begun by others, by adding for example a socio-political component. The model presented here provides practical insights into how strategic community investment can support people with disabilities and their families. Virtual communities are about engagement, quality of life and support, not just about information. The role of information technology in building and raising community capacity and social capital in socially and economically disadvantaged communities is also examined. Practical insights are offered into community support for people with chronic illness.