The implications of educational and methodological background for the career success of Nobel Laureates : an investigation of major awards

Nobel laureates have achieved the highest recognition in academia, reaching the boundaries of human knowledge and understanding. Owing to past research, we have a good understanding of the career patterns behind their performance. Yet, we have only limited understanding of the factors driving their recognition with respect to major institutionalized scientific honours. We therefore look at the award life cycle achievements of the 1901–2000 Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine. The results show that Nobelists with a theoretical orientation achieved more awards than laureates with an empirical orientation. Moreover, it seems their educational background shapes their future recognition. Researchers educated in Great Britain and the US tend to attract more awards than other Nobelists, although there are career pattern differences. Among those, laureates educated at Cambridge or Harvard are more successful in Chemistry, those from Columbia and Cambridge excel in Physics, while Columbia educated laureates dominate in Physiology or Medicine.

Academic honors and performance

Despite the social importance of awards, they have been largely disregarded by academic research in economics. This paper investigates whether receiving prestigious academic awards—the John Bates Clark Medal and the Fellowship of the Econometric Society—is associated with higher subsequent research productivity and status compared to a synthetic control group of non-recipient scholars with similar previous research performance. Our results suggest statistically significant positive publication and citation differences after award receipt.

God Bless come back : new experiments with nostalgia in Indonesian rock

This article discusses the production of an Indonesian rock past through a case study of the 1970s rock band God Bless, which has been gradually ‘coming back’ since the middle of the 2000s. In doing so, the article documents this comeback, analyses shifts in the band’s position vis-à-vis nationality, and places these shifts in the context of the industrial and aesthetic transformation of Indonesian popular music over the past decade or so. Furthermore, it considers how the range of nostalgic productions associated with the comeback might be understood not only in light of the scholarship on nostalgia, but also the political environment it inhabits.

Critical factors for waste management in office building retrofit projects in Australia

Office building retrofit is a sector being highlighted in Australia because of the mature office building market characterised by a large proportion of ageing properties. The increasing number of office building retrofit projects strengthens the need for waste management. Retrofit projects possess unique characteristics in comparison to traditional demolition and new builds such as partial operation of buildings, constrained site spaces and limited access to as-build information. Waste management activities in retrofit projects can be influenced by issues that are different from traditional construction and demolition projects. However, previous research on building retrofit projects has not provided an understanding of the critical issues affecting waste management. This research identifies the critical factors which influence the management of waste in office building retrofit projects through a literature study and a questionnaire survey to industry practitioners. Statistical analysis on a range of potential waste issues reveals the critical factors, as agreed upon by survey respondents in consideration of their different professional responsibilities and work natures. The factors are grouped into five dimensions, comprising industry culture, organisational support and incentive, existing building information, design, and project delivery process. The discussions of the dimensions indicate that the waste management factors of office building retrofit projects are further intensified compared to those for general demolition and construction because retrofit projects involve existing buildings which are partially operating with constrained work space and limited building information. Recommendations for improving waste management in office building retrofit projects are generalised such as waste planning, auditing and assessment in the planning and designing stage, collaboration and coordination of various stakeholders and different specialists, optimised building surveying and BIM technologies for waste analysis, and new design strategies for waste prevention.

LeaD-In : a cultural change model for peer review of teaching in higher education

Peer review of teaching is recognized increasingly as one strategy for academic development even though historically peer review of teaching is often unsupported by policy, action and culture in many Australian universities. Higher education leaders report that academics generally do not engage with peer review of teaching in a systematic or constructive manner, and this paper advances and analyses a conceptual model to highlight conditions and strategies necessary for the implementation of sustainable peer review in higher education institutions. The model highlights leadership, development and implementation, which are critical to the success and formation of a culture of peer review of teaching. The work arises from collaborative research funded by the Office for Learning and Teaching to foster and advance a culture of peer review of teaching across several universities in Australia.

Why are we still fitting reusable soft contact lenses?

Whether the first daily disposable soft contact lens to enter the market in 1994 was the Premier lens (Award Technology, Scotland, UK; subsequently purchased by Bausch & Lomb, Rochester New York, USA) or the 1-Day Acuvue lens (Johnson and Johnson Vision Care, Jacksonville, Florida, USA) has long been a matter of bitter dispute1 but whatever the answer, this year marks the 20th anniversary of the launch of this modality of lens wear...

Easy data, hard data : the politics and pragmatics of Twitter research after the computational turn

In this chapter, we draw out the relevant themes from a range of critical scholarship from the small body of digital media and software studies work that has focused on the politics of Twitter data and the sociotechnical means by which access is regulated. We highlight in particular the contested relationships between social media research (in both academic and non-academic contexts) and the data wholesale, retail, and analytics industries that feed on them. In the second major section of the chapter we discuss in detail the pragmatic edge of these politics in terms of what kinds of scientific research is and is not possible in the current political economy of Twitter data access. Finally, at the end of the chapter we return to the much broader implications of these issues for the politics of knowledge, demonstrating how the apparently microscopic level of how the Twitter API mediates access to Twitter data actually inscribes and influences the macro level of the global political economy of science itself, through re-inscribing institutional and traditional disciplinary privilege We conclude with some speculations about future developments in data rights and data philanthropy that may at least mitigate some of these negative impacts.

Sustainability Non-Price Incentives and Rewards: A Collaborative Procurement Perspective

Construction scholars suggest that procurement processes can be used as mechanisms to change construction industry practices. This paper discusses industry changes as a response to the calls for integration of sustainability ideals into construction practices. Because major infrastructure construction has been identified as a key producer of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), this study explores collaborative procurement models that have been used to facilitate mitigation of GHGE. The study focuses on the application of non-price incentives and rewards that work together as a binary mechanism. Data were collected using mixed-methods: government document content analysis was complemented with data collected through focus groups and individual interviews with both clients and contractors. This report includes examples of greening procurement agendas for three Australian road authorities relating to collaborative procurement project delivery models. Three collaborative procurement models, Alliance Consortium, Early Contractor Involvement and Public Private Partnerships provide evidence of construction projects that were completed early. It can also be argued that both clients and contractors are rewarded through collaborative project delivery. The incentive of early completion is rewarded with reduction of GHGE. This positive environmental outcome, based on a dual benefit and non-price sustainability criteria, suggests a step towards changed industry practices though the use of green procurement models.

Government grants - an abrogation or management of risks?

New public management (NPFM), with its hands-on, private sector-style performance measurement, output control, parsimonious use of resources, disaggreation of public sector units and greater competition in the public sector, has significantly affected charitable and nonprofit organisations delivering community services (Hood, 1991; Dunleavy, 1994; George & Wilding, 2002). The literature indicates that nonprofit organisations under NPM believe they are doing more for less: while administration is increasing, core costs are not being met; their dependence on government funding comes at the expense of other funding strategies; and there are concerns about proportionality and power asymmetries in the relationship (Kerr & Savelsberg, 2001; Powell & Dalton, 2011; Smith, 2002, p. 175; Morris, 1999, 2000a). Government agencies are under increased pressure to do more with less, demonstrate value for money, measure social outcomes, not merely outputs and minimise political risk (Grant, 2008; McGreogor-Lowndes, 2008). Government-community service organisation relationships are often viewed as 'uneasy alliances' characterised by the pressures that come with the parties' differing roles and expectations and the pressures that come with the parties' differing roles and expectations and the pressurs of funding and security (Productivity Commission, 2010, p. 308; McGregor-Lowndes, 2008, p. 45; Morris, 200a). Significant community services are now delivered to citizens through such relationships, often to the most disadvantaged in the community, and it is important for this to be achieved with equity, efficiently and effectively. On one level, the welfare state was seen as a 'risk management system' for the poor, with the state mitigating the risks of sickness, job loss and old age (Giddens, 1999) with the subsequent neoliberalist outlook shifting this risk back to households (Hacker, 2006). At the core of this risk shift are written contracts. Vincent-Jones (1999,2006) has mapped how NPM is characterised by the use of written contracts for all manner of relations; e.g., relgulation of dealings between government agencies, between individual citizens and the state, and the creation of quais-markets of service providers and infrastructure partners. We take this lens of contracts to examine where risk falls in relation to the outsourcing of community services. First we examine the concept of risk. We consider how risk might be managed and apportioned between governments and community serivce organisations (CSOs) in grant agreements, which are quasiy-market transactions at best. This is informed by insights from the law and economics literature. Then, standard grant agreements covering several years in two jurisdictions - Australia and the United Kingdom - are analysed, to establish the risk allocation between government and CSOs. This is placed in the context of the reform agenda in both jurisdictions. In Australia this context is th enonprofit reforms built around the creation of a national charities regulator, and red tape reduction. In the United Kingdom, the backdrop is the THird Way agenda with its compacts, succeed by Big Society in a climate of austerity. These 'case studies' inform a discussion about who is best placed to bear and manage the risks of community service provision on behalf of government. We conclude by identifying the lessons to be learned from our analysis and possible pathways for further scholarship.

Navigating pathways for academic staff development : implications for institutions and academic ranks

BACKGROUND As engineering schools adopt outcomes - focused learning approaches in response to government expectations and industry requirements of graduates capable of learning and applying knowledge in different contexts, university academics must be capable of developing and delivering programs that meet these requirements. Those academics are increasingly facing challenges in progressing their research and also acquiring different skill sets to meet the learning and teaching requirements. PURPOSE The goal of this study was to identify the types of development and support structures in place for academic staff, especially early career ones, and examine how the type of institution and the rank or role of the staff member affects these structures. DESIGN/METHOD We conducted semi - structured interviews with 21 individuals in a range of positions pertaining to teaching and learning in engineering education. Open coding was used to identify main themes from the guiding questions raised in the interviews and refined to address themes relevant to the development of institutional staff . The interview data was then analysed based on the type of institution and the rank/ role of the participant. RESULTS While development programs that focus on improving teaching and learning are available, the approach on using these types of programs differed based on staff perspective. Fewer academics, regardless of rank/role, had knowledge of support structures related to other areas of scholarship, e.g. disciplinary research, educational research, learning the institutional culture. The type of institution also impacted how they weighted and encouraged multiple forms of scholarship. We found that academic staff holding higher ranking positions, e.g. dean or associate dean, were not only concerned with the success of their respective programs, but also in how to promote other academic staff participation throughout the process. CONCLUSIONS The findings from this stud y extend the premise that developing effective academic staff ultimately leads to more effective institutions and successful graduates and accomplishing this requires staff buy - in at multiple stages of instructional and program development. Staff and administration developing approaches for educational innovation together (Besterfield - Sacre et al., 2014) and getting buy - in from all academic staff to invest in engineering education development will ultimately lead to more successful engineering graduates.

Book review - Richard Goldberg, Medicinal Product Liability and Regulation (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2013) 214pp

In December 2013, settlement was reached between approximately 100 Australian and New Zealand Thalidomide victims and the company which had acted as the Australian distributor of the infamous drug, thus putting to rest the possibility of litigation. Around the same time, Thalidomide victims in the United Kingdom (UK) launched a similar bid for compensation against the manufacturer and distributor. It is clear that despite a lengthy amount of time having passed ever since the thalidomide disaster commenced in 1962, the controversy over compensation continues. Indeed, the author of Medicinal Product Liability and Regulation (published before the announcement of the British legal claim), Professor Goldberg, notes that claims for resulting birth defects continue to emerge right into the present day. His prescient insight into the contemporary relevance of compensation for pharmaceutical injuries thus makes Medicinal Product Liability and Regulation a very relevant addition to the small body of scholarship that is available on this rather specific and complex issue.

News items

These news items describe: (1) a book award won by Peter Mayo and Leona English (2) the theme of the next issue of 'Postcolonial Directions in Education', and (3) two conference visits made by the author: 'Quality in the classroom', in Kathmandu, Nepal, 2013, and the AERA conference in San Francisco, 2013.

Schooling elsewhere: Rurality, inclusion and education

Over its history, the International Journal of Inclusive Education has had a strong record of naming, critiquing and redressing the ways in which particular social locations shape experiences of inclusion and exclusion in education. In this special issue, we continue this tradition taking as our focus those who live outside the metropolitan mainstream. To date, rural schools and the communities of which they are part have often been overlooked by researchers of inclusive education. This is not to suggest that the rural has been ignored entirely in research on inclusivity and schooling. For example, a number of studies have included rural case studies as part of broader research on subjects such as educational disadvantage and experiences of poverty (Horgan 2009), inclusivity and early childhood services (Penn 1997), constraints to inclusive educational practice (Shevlin, Winter, and Flynn 2013) and the efficacy of inclusivity training programmes for teachers (Strieker, Logan, and Kuhel 2012). Such work provides a critical reference point for this special issue as it has demon- strated that the educational landscape may be very differently experienced in the rural compared to the urban. Illustrative is Wikeley et al.’s (2009, 381) assertion that working class Irish youth living outside the urban sphere are ‘doubly disadvantaged’ in terms of accessing out-of-school activities and Milovanovic et al.’s (2014, 47) claim that for young children in the Western Balkans, there is a ‘dearth of pre-school provision in rural areas’. As well as highlighting cleavages of disadvantage as they exist between urban and rural schools, work in this journal has also revealed disadvantage that exists within rural schools. This scholarship has explored how particular social locations, such as disability, ethnicity, sexuality, gender and class intersect with rurality to produce very different educational biographies. For example, it may be class, as Holt (2012) found in her study of young rural women’s transition to a city university, or it may be gender, as Tuwor and Sossou (2008) posited in their work on the schooling of girls in West Africa.

‘Pop Melayu vs. Pop Indonesia: Marketeers, producers and new interpretations of a genre into the 2000s’ in Sonic Modernities in Southeast Asia Leiden: Brill pp. 187- 215

Kangen Band, as an example of reclaiming of the derisive term kampungan. In it, I argue that this reclaiming represents an interesting case of genre manipulation, and consider what this can reveal about how Indonesian pop genres are constituted, what they ‘are’ and what they ‘do’. In so doing, I seek to rework existing scholarship relating to Indonesian pop genres and modernity, as well as interrogate some broader theories of genre. In this essay, I extend the argument that Indonesian pop genres are not purely technical categories, they touch on myths of class and nation (Wallach 2008; Weintraub 2010; Yampolsky 1989. As we shall see, in the New Order period, pop music genres reached out to these myths by positioning themselves variously vis-à-vis the capital city, Jakarta. Such positioning, achieved through use of the terms gedongan (a term that strives to infer refinement by stressing the non-masses’ central position in the urban environment) and kampungan (a term that strives to enforce subalterns’ marginal position in relation to the metropolis, see also the previous contribution by Weintraub), continues to haunt the constitution of genre in the post-New Order period, but in novel ways. These novel ways, I argue, may be seen to result from industrial transformation and new systems of knowledge production.

A stakeholder analysis of one institution’s assuring learning experience – is the promise and the practice worth the price?

Universities around the world are rushing to implement assurance of learning policies and practices with varying degrees of success. One School investigated its own policy and practice development through the eyes of its key stakeholders to identify whether the practice was worth the price. Findings indicate that although the key stakeholders considered different needs and viewed their experiences differently, value did abound and was in the eye of the beholder.