Practical applications for clay-derived zeolite N : an ammonium-selective ion exchanger for industry use

Over the past ten years, scaled-up utilisation of a previously under-exploited zeolite, Zeolite N1, has been demonstrated for selective ion exchange of ammonium and other ions in aqueous environments. As with many zeolite syntheses, the required source material should contain predictable levels of aluminium and silicon and, for full-scale industrial applications, kaolin and/or montmorillonite serve such a purpose. Field, pilot and commercial scale trials of kaolin-derived Zeolite N have focused on applications in agriculture and water treatment as these sectors are primary producers or users of ammonium. The format for the material – as fine powders, granules or extrudates – depends on the specific application albeit each has been evaluated.

Equal employment opportunity and its links to the participation of women in the construction industry : the case of Australia

Australia is currently experiencing a resources boom and jobs in the male dominated fields of construction and engineering are at a premium. Employment in the construction industry, historically and today, is overwhelmingly male and, with an ageing population this predominately older male workforce will be retiring in greater numbers in the coming decade. Despite more that 25 years of anti- discrimination legislation and equal opportunity legislation these industries still employ few women in operational roles. This paper investigates the issue of the low representation of women in the construction industry. Our investigation involves the analysis of 95 organisation progress reports on the equal opportunity strategic programs in the construction industry. Findings indicate that this industry is not engaging with equal employment opportunity programs and further that equity outcomes for women in the industry are not evident.

High-risk, high-stake relationships: building effective industry-university partnerships for Work Integrated Learning (WIL)

Many industry peak and professional bodies advocate students undertake professional work placements as a key work integrated learning (WIL) experience in accredited university degree courses. However, mismatched expectations and gaps in the way industry partners (IPs) are supported during these work placements can place these high-stake alliances at risk. A review of models and strategies supporting industry partners indicates many are contingent on the continued efforts of well-networked individuals in both universities and IP organisations to make these connections work. It is argued that whilst these individuals are highly valued they often end up representing a whole course or industry perspective, not just their area of expertise. Sustainable partnership principles and practices with shared responsibility across stakeholder groups are needed instead. This paper provides an overview of work placement approaches in the disciplines of business, engineering and urban development at an Australian, metropolitan university. Employing action research and participatory focus group methodologies, it gathers and articulates recommendations from associated IPs on practical suggestions and strategies to improve relationships and the resultant quality of placements.

User-centred study on quality of mobile video services

Mobile video, as an emerging market and a promising research field, has attracted much attention from both industry and researchers. Considering the quality of user-experience as the crux of mobile video services, this chapter aims to provide a guide to user-centered studies of mobile video quality. This will benefit future research in better understanding user needs and experiences, designing effective research, and providing solid solutions to improve the quality of mobile video. This chapter is organized in three main parts: (1) a review of recent user studies from the perspectives of research focuses, user study methods, and data analysis methods; (2) an example of conducting a user study of mobile video research, together with the discussion on a series of relative issues, such as participants, materials and devices, study procedure, and analysis results, and; (3) a conclusion with an open discussion about challenges and opportunities in mobile video related research, and associated potential future improvements.

Making sense of purpose, direction and innovation : an embedded design led innovation case study in the Australian mining industry

The mining equipment technology services sector is driven by a reactive and user-centered design approach, with a technological focus on incremental new product development. As Australia moves out of its sustained mining boom, companies need to rethink their strategic position, to become agile to stay relevant in an enigmatic market. This paper reports on the first five months on an embedded case study within an Australian, family-owned mining manufacturer. The first author is currently engaged in a longitudinal design led innovation project, as a catalyst to guide the company’s journey to design integration. The results find that design led innovation could act as a channel for highlighting and exploring company disconnections with the marketplace and offer a customer-centric catalyst for internal change. Data collected for this study is from 12 analysed semistructured interviews, a focus group and a reflective journal, over a five-month period. This paper explores limitations to design integration, and highlights opportunities to explore and leverage entrepreneurial characteristics to stay agile, broaden innovation and future-proof through the next commodity cycle in the mining industry.

Industry-school partnerships : an ecological approach

Internationally, Industry-School Partnerships (ISPs) are a ubiquitous government approach for enabling school to work transitions. Significant benefits of ISPs for centralised bureaucracies that are seeking to address common educational problems include: i) cost reduction; ii) supply to geographically dispersed locations, and; iii) industry access to innovative education solutions. In Queensland, there exists a government led ISP, the Gateway to Industry Schools Program. Under this initiative is the Queensland Minerals and Energy Academy, a lead industry organisation for 34 schools and 17 multinational sponsor companies. Acquiring an understanding of this strategic ISP is critical, given the current Resources Industry boom, and the workforce skills shortage experienced in Australia. This review paper adopts Ecological Systems Theory as a lens to understand the inner workings of ISPs. Acknowledging that ISPs will remain a key feature of government policy, this paper seeks to further illuminate the role of ISPs in transitioning young people from school to the working world.

School industry partnerships : An innovative strategy for vocational education

One of the challenges confronting contemporary education internationally is to ensure that students are provided with opportunities to make informed choices about future careers and to acquire the capacity to transition into these careers. Schools need to manage their curricula, teacher capacity, timetables, and diversity of student populations by offering pathways that are seen as engaging and meaningful to life beyond schooling. Traditionally, education in the senior years has privileged those students who intend to progress to advanced studies at university or in other professional careers. In more recent times, in response the need for more sophisticated technical knowledge in the trades and a growing skills shortages in these fields, schools have paid more attention to vocational education. It has been argued that the vocational aspect of the school curriculum is less well understood and poorly implemented in comparison with the traditional academic curricula. One attempt to address this issue is through the establishment of school-industry partnerships. This paper explores the process of knowledge transfer between industry and schools in these partnerships. The paper theorises how knowledge that is valued and foundational in workplace employment can inform school curricula and pedagogical practices. The paper draws on theories of organisational knowledge, workplace learning and experiential learning to explore strategies that enhance school-to-employment transition outcomes.

Industry school partnerships: Boundary crossing to enable school to work transitions

Industry-school partnerships (ISPs) are increasingly being recognised as a new way of providing vocational education opportunities. However, there is limited research investigating their impact on school to work transitions. This paper reports on a government-led ISP, the Gateway to Industry Schools Program, established in Queensland, Australia. Central to this initiative is the Queensland Minerals and Energy Academy (QMEA), a lead organisation for 28 schools and 17 multi-national sponsor companies. This research adopted a qualitative case study methodology and draws upon boundary crossing theory as means to understand a Minerals and Energy ISP. We distinguish four types of boundary crossing mechanisms, which align with principles for effectiveness in ISPs. The main findings were that boundary crossing mechanisms assist ISPs to develop industry-based contextualised curriculum and to prepare school students for employment.

Industry policy, finance and the AIDC : Australia from the 1950s to the 1970s

This thesis, conceived within a Marxist framework, addresses key conceptual issues in the writing and theorising on industry policy in post second world- war Australia. Broadly, the thesis challenges the way that industry policy on the left of politics (reflected in the social democratic and Keynesian positions) has been constructed as a practical, progressive policy agenda. Specifically, the thesis poses a direct challenge to the primacy of the ‘national’ in interpreting the history of industry policy. The challenge is to the proposition that conflicts between national industry and international finance arose only from the mid 1980s. On the contrary, as will be seen, this is a 1960s issue and any interpretation of the debates and the agendas surrounding industry policy in the 1980s must be predicated on an understanding of how the issue was played out two decades earlier. As was the case in the 1960s, industry policy in the 1980s has been isolated from two key areas of interrogation: the role of the nation state in regulating accumulation and the role of finance in industry policy. In the 1950s and more so in the 1960s and early 1970s there was a reconfiguration of financing internationally but it is one that did not enter into industry policy analysis. The central concern therefore is to simultaneously sketch the historical political economy on industry policy from the 1950s through to the early 1970s in Australia and to analytically and empirically insert the role of finance into that history. In so doing the thesis addresses the economic and social factors that shaped the approach to industry finance in Australia during this critical period. The analysis is supported by a detailed examination of political and industry debates surrounding the proposal for, and institution of, a key national intervention in the form of the Australian Industry Development Corporation (AIDC).

Integrating Poverty and Gender into Health Programmes : a Source Book for Health Professionals : Module on Curricular Integration

Over the past two to three decades, our understanding of poverty has broadened from a narrow focus on income and consumption to a multidimensional notion of education, health, social and political 1 participation, personal security and freedom and environmental quality. Thus, it encompasses not just low income, but lack of access to services, resources and skills; vulnerability; insecurity; and voicelessness and powerlessness. Multidimensional poverty is a determinant of health risks, health seeking behaviour, health care access and health outcomes. As analysis of health outcomes becomes more refined, it is increasingly apparent that the impressive gains in health experienced over recent decades are unevenly distributed. Aggregate indicators, whether at the global, regional or national level, often tend to mask striking variations in health outcomes between men and women, rich and poor, both across and within countries...

Principles of investments

"Emphasises asset allocation while presenting the practical applications of investment theory. The authors concentrate on the intuition and insights that will be useful to students throughout their careers as new ideas and challenges emerge from the financial marketplace. It provides a good foundation to understand the basic types of securities and financial markets as well as how trading in those markets is conducted. The Portfolio Management section is discussed towards the end of the course and supported by a web-based portfolio simulation with a hypothetical $100,000 brokerage account to buy and sell stocks and mutual funds. Students get a chance to use real data found in the Wall Street Survivor simulation in conjunction with the chapters on investments. This site is powered by StockTrak, the leading provider of investment simulation services to the academic community. Principles of Investments includes increased attention to changes in market structure and trading technology. The theory is supported by a wide range of exercises, worksheets and problems."--publisher website Contents: Investments: background and issues -- Asset classes and financial markets -- Securities markets -- Managed funds and investment management -- Risk and return: past and prologue -- Efficient diversification -- Capital asset pricing and arbitrage pricing theory -- The efficient market hypothesis -- Bond prices and yields -- Managing bond portfolios -- Equity valuation -- Macroeconomic and industry analysis -- Financial statement analysis -- Investors and the investment process -- Hedge funds -- Portfolio performance evaluation.

Innovation in the road and bridge industry

This paper reviews innovation activity in a key service industry – road and bridge construction. Based on a large-scale Australian survey and descriptive statistics, the paper finds that there is little difference in innovation levels between different types of industry participants and that innovation is difficult to implement. The survey gathered responses from suppliers, consultants, contracts and clients and compared results across these four industry sectors. The absorptive capacity and relationship capacities of respondents were also investigated. One in five respondents had poor absorptive capacity. Suppliers were found to the most effective learners and were the best adopters of ideas from outside their organisations and consultants were the least effective. Australian construction organisations have relatively good relationship skills because relationship-based contracts are common compared to other countries. Indeed, the survey found that nearly 60% of respondents had experience with such contracts, with clients having more experience than the other three sectors. The results have implications for the measurement of innovation in project-based industries, and the relative roles of clients and suppliers in driving innovation in the construction industry. Further research will examine the extent to which particular governance mechanisms within relationship contracts lead to improved innovation and project performance.

Review: "Breast cancer : can you prevent it?" by A. Lawson, J. Lawson. McGraw-Hill Book (1998)

While reviewing this book, I was not of the target audience. For example, there is a first chapter (presented as a case study, and integrated in an unconvincing manner into the remainder of the book) that obviously meant to soften the book for the lay person. In the third chapter, the authors provide their philosophical interpretation on the meaning of breasts for reasons that entirely escape me, and that have no relation to the book as a whole. Finally, there are potted histories of the heroics of ‘tireless’, ‘dedicated’ and ‘earnest’ epidemiologists, some of whom have nothing to do with breast cancer or the book at all. Despite this lack of focus, the authors give an honest and coherent account of the current state of breast cancer research from an epidemiological viewpoint...

Green skills for the construction industry

The skill shortage issues have long existed in the construction industry in countries like Australia. Couple this with the lead and lag time between market demand and resultant supply has traditionally seen cyclical fluctuation of skills demand within the construction industry. Skills demand and shortages are generally well documented and can even have a level of predictability in Australia given the tendency to have a delayed reaction to global economic downturns. Sustainability issues in the construction industry have attracted growing public awareness. Traditionally driven by ever increasing, if only gradual, mandated minimum requirements, drive towards sustainable developments is now increasingly being created by the client. As this demand increases, accordingly a demand for people with the skills to provide these services should be felt. This research examines the green skill shortage issues within the context of construction industry. Stakeholders from across relevant sectors of the built environment were engaged to ascertain the industry’s utilisation and demand for ‘green skilled’ personnel. These findings will assist stakeholders within the construction industry in negating the effects of a skills shortage in the event of accelerated demand for sustainable construction.