Who's afraid of the dark? Transpower New Zealand Ltd

On 12 June 2006, the lights went out in New Zealand’s largest city and major commercial centre, Auckland. Business was disrupted and many thousands of people inconvenienced. The unscheduled power cut was the latest in a series of electric power problems in New Zealand over the past decade. Attention turned to state-owned enterprise [SOE] Transpower, which was in charge of maintaining and developing New Zealand’s national electricity grid. The problem of 12 June was traced to two shackles in poor condition, small but essential parts of the electricity grid infrastructure. Closer examination of New Zealand’s electricity sector indicated these shackles were merely the tip of a power supply iceberg. Transpower’s Chief Executive, Ralph Craven, was now answerable to the Prime Minister for the issues creating the problems, and a workable solution to fix them. Transpower Chief Executive Ralph Craven needed to produce answers that went well beyond the problem of the two faulty shackles. The power crisis had brought to the fore wider issues of roles, responsibilities, and expectations in relation to the supply of electric power in New Zealand. Transpower was contending with these issues on a daily basis; however, the incident on 12 June publicly highlighted the urgent need for solutions that served the stakeholders in this critical industry.

Charity law reforms : overview of progress since 2001

In the UK, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, as in many other jurisdictions, charity law is rooted in the common law and anchored on the Statute of Charitable Uses 1601. The Pemsel classification of charitable purposes was uniformly accepted, and together with a shared and growing pool of judicial precedents, aided by the ‘spirit and intendment’ rule, has subsequently allowed the law to develop along much the same lines. In recent years, all the above jurisdictions have embarked on law reform processes designed to strengthen regulatory processes and to statutorily define and encode common law concepts. The reform outcomes are now to be found in a batch of national charity statutes which reflect interesting differences in the extent to which their respective governments have been prepared to balance the modernising of charitable purposes and other common law concepts alongside the customary concern to tighten the regulatory framework.

Government : charity boundaries

The Preamble1 was the initial legislative statement of matters construed by government to constitute charitable purposes in a common law context. It provided an outline of what was to become the core agenda for government’s relationship with charity. The resulting implied partnership, as viewed by government, endured for four centuries and in many different cultural contexts across the common law world. During that period, judicial mediation on the balance to be struck between government interest in acquiring value for granting tax exempt privileges and the right of individuals to freely dispose of property in accordance with their particular altruistic wishes steadily broadened the range of purposes deemed to be charitable, the vagaries of donor choice often prevailing over government interest in acquiring value for tax exemption.

Modernising charity : steps to an alternative architecture for common law charity jurisprudence

This chapter addresses the question, how can the common law concept of charity law be modernised? There are difficulties with the present jurisprudential conception. The focus of the chapter is not on those difficulties, however, but rather on the development of an alternative architecture for common law jurisprudence. The conclusion to which the chapter comes is that charity law can be modernised by a series of steps to include all civil society organisations. It is possible if the ‘technical’ definition of charitable purpose is abandoned in favour of a contemporary, not technical concept of charitiable purpose. This conclusion is reached by proposing a framework, developed from the common law concept of charities, that reconciles into a cohesive jurisprudential architecture all of the laws applying to civil society organisations, not just charities. In this section, first the argument is contextualised in an idea of society and located in a gap in legal theory. An analogy is then offered to introduce the problems in the legal theory applying, not just to charities, but more broadly to civil society organisations. The substantive challenge of mapping an alternative jurisprudence is then taken in steps. The final substantive section conceptualises the changes inherent in a move beyond charities to a jurisprudence centred on civil society organisations and how this would bring legal theory into line with sectoral analysis in other disciplines.

Curriculum change in testing times

In these new, testing times, we need a new controlled rapid approach to curriculum change. Judy Smeed and TerrI Bourke explain.

Business Process Quality Management

Process modeling is a central element in any approach to Business Process Management (BPM). However, what hinders both practitioners and academics is the lack of support for assessing the quality of process models – let alone realizing high quality process models. Existing frameworks are highly conceptual or too general. At the same time, various techniques, tools, and research results are available that cover fragments of the issue at hand. This chapter presents the SIQ framework that on the one hand integrates concepts and guidelines from existing ones and on the other links these concepts to current research in the BPM domain. Three different types of quality are distinguished and for each of these levels concrete metrics, available tools, and guidelines will be provided. While the basis of the SIQ framework is thought to be rather robust, its external pointers can be updated with newer insights as they emerge.

Building a methodology for context-aware business processes: insights from an exploratory case study

This paper describes the findings derived from an exploratory case study into the business processes at a leading Australian insurance provider. The business processes are frequently subjected to changes and deviations due to contextual events such as weather, financial conditions and others. In this study, we examine how context impacts business processes and how resulting business process changes are enacted. From our analysis, we suggest a methodological framework to guide organisations in the complex challenge of linking changing contextual factors with internal process design.

How HCI design influences web security decisions

Even though security protocols are designed to make computer communication secure, it is widely known that there is potential for security breakdowns at the human machine interface. This paper reports on a diary study conducted in order to investigate what people identify as security decisions that they make while using the web. The study aimed to uncover how security is perceived in the individual's context of use. From this data, themes were drawn, with a focus on addressing security goals such as confidentiality and authentication. This study is the first study investigating users' web usage focusing on their self-documented perceptions of security and the security choices they made in their own environment.

Responses to 2008 Apology : Digital story collection

On 13 February 2008 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made an apology to Australia’s Indigenous People on behalf of the Parliament of Australia. The State Library of Queensland, with assistance from Queensland University of Technology and Queensland’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, captured responses to this historic event in a collection of digital stories. Stories were created with: Tiga Bayles; Jeremy Robertson; Natalie Alberts; Sam Wagan Watson Jr; Nadine McDonald-Dowd; Anna Bligh; and Quentin Bryce.

Enhancing the transition of commencing students into university : an institution-wide approach

The importance of the first year experience (FYE) to success at university is well documented and supported with the transition into university regarded as crucial. While there is also support for the notion that a successful FYE should have a whole-of-institution focus and models have been proposed, many institutions still face challenges in achieving institution-wide FYE program implementation. This paper discusses the origins, theoretical and empirical bases and structure of an institution-wide approach to the FYE. It uses a case study of the Transitions In Project (TIP) at the Queensland University of Technology to illustrate how institution-wide FYE program implementation can be achieved and sustained. TIP had four inter-related projects focussing on at-risk students, first year curriculum, learning resources and staff development. The key aim of TIP was to identify good practice and institutionalise it in a sustainable way. The degree of success in achieving this is evaluated.

Ryanodine receptor phosphorylation in human heart failure

Heart failure is a complex disorder, characterized by activation of the sympathetic nervous system, leading to dysregulated Ca2+ homeostasis in cardiac myocytes and tissue remodeling. In a variety of diseases, cardiac malfunction is associated with aberrant fluxes of Ca2+ across both the surface membrane and the internal Ca2+ store, the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR). One prominent hypothesis residues is that in heart failure, the activity of the ryanodine receptor (RyR2) Ca2+ release channel in the SR is increased due to excess phosphorylation and that this contributes to excess SR Ca2+ leak in diastole, reduced SR Ca2+ load and decreased contractility (Huke & Bers, 2008). There is controversy over which serine residues in RyR2 are hyperphosphorylated in animal models of heart failure and whether this is via the CaMKII or the PKA-linked signaling pathway. S2808, S2814 and S2030 in RyR2 have been variously claimed to be hyperphosphorylated. Our aim was to examine the degree of phosphorylation of these residues in RyR2 from failing human hearts. The use of human tissue was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee, The Prince Charles Hospital, EC28114. Left ventricular tissue samples were obtained from an explanted heart of a patient with endstage heart failure (Emery Dreifuss Muscular Dystrophy with cardiomyopathy) and non-failing tissue was from a patient with cystic fibrosis undergoing heart-lung transplantation with no history of heart disease. SR vesicles were prepared as described by Laver et al. (1995) and examined with SDS-Page and Western Blot. Transferred proteins were probed with antibodies to detect total protein phosphorylation, phosphorylation of RyR2 serine residues S2808, S2814, S2030 and for the key proteins calsequestrin, triadin, junctin and FKBP12.6. To avoid membrane stripping artifact, each membrane was exposed to one phosphorylation-specific antibody and signal densities quantified using Bio-Rad Quantity One software. We found no distinguishable difference between failing and healthy hearts in the protein expression levels of RyR2, triadin, junctin or calsequestrin. We found an expected upregulation of total RyR2 phosphorylation in the failing heart sample, compared to a matched amount of RyR2 (quantified using densiometry) in healthy heart. Probing with antibodies detecting only the phosphorylated form of the specific RyR2 residues showed that the increase in total RyR2 phosphorylation in the failing heart was due to hyperphosphorylation of S2808 and S2814. We found that S2030 phosphorylation levels were unchanged in human heart failure. Interestingly, we found that S2030 has a basal level of phosphorylation in the healthy human heart, different from the absence of basal phosphorylation recently reported in rodent heart (Huke & Bers, 2008). Finally, preliminary results indicate that less FKBP 12.6 is associated with RyR2 in the failing heart, possibly as a consequence of PKA activation. In conclusion, residues S2808 and S2814 are hyperphosphorylated in human heart failure, presumably due to upregulation of the CaMKII and/or PKA signaling pathway as a result of chronic activation of the sympathetic nervous system. Such changes in RyR2 phosphorylation are believed to contribute to the leaky RyR2 phenotype associated with heart failure, which increases the incidence of arrhythmia and contributes to the severely impaired contractile performance of the failing heart. Huke S & Bers DM. (2008). Ryanodine receptor phosphorylation at serine 2030, 2808 and 2814 in rat cardiomyocytes. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 376, 80-85. Laver DR, Roden LD, Ahern GP, Eager KR, Junankar PR & Dulhunty AF. (1995). Cytoplasmic Ca2+ inhibits the ryanodine receptor from cardiac muscle. Journal of Membrane Biology 147, 7-22. Proceedings

Finding the remote: Immersive learning in an outback community

Real-world design education projects present particular challenges when in a place remote from and distinctively different to students’ familiar territory. The teaching challenge is to assist students to translate the skills they learn at university into an entirely new context, facilitating a project they will learn from, and the community will value. In 2008 QUT design and engineering students undertook a project called Linking Karumba for this remote Queensland town. They engaged with a landscape, climate and community dramatically different from their base in urban Brisbane, and in a fortnight produced locally responsive strategic planning options. The theoretical approach to this was twofold: they needed to make a rapid shift along a continuum from being “outsiders” towards becoming “insiders” (Relph 1976), and to create designs responsive to local distinctiveness (Cumberlidge and Musgrave 2007). This paper outlines Linking Karumba’s teaching strategy via an analogy with the “immersion” method in bilingual education. Three teaching methods were adopted. Firstly, the overall framework drew on Brockbank and McGill (1998), and Thomas’ (2006a) approaches to student reflective practice. Within this, Girot’s “Four Trace Concepts” (1999) inspired exercises for finding Karumba and moving toward insideness; and a program of community engagement sought immersion in local distinctiveness, and “conversation” between the differing forms of knowledge and capacities embedded within the community and students (Armstrong 1999, Thomas 2006). The responsiveness of the student work to the character of Karumba’s culture and environment indicated remarkable levels of immersion, and the community highly valued the project outcomes: four strategic planning options which attracted $830 000 in state government funding for implementation.

Contribution to the Pamela Croft Sandhills Studio Consultancy for the Yeppoon Public Art Project in 2000

A small collection of creative works developed to acompany some of the artistic images developed by visual artist Dr Pamela Croft for the Yeppoon Public Art Project in 2000.

Comparing cost uplift in infrastructure delivery methods : a case based approach

The alliance project delivery method is used for approximately one third of all Australian government infrastructure projects representing $8-$10 billion per annum. Despite its widespread use, little is known about the differences between estimated project cost and actual cost over the project lifecycle. This paper presents the findings of research into 14 Australian government alliance case studies investigating the observed cost uplift over each project’s lifecycle. I find that significant cost uplift is likely and that this uplift is greater than that afflicting traditional delivery methods. Furthermore, most of the cost uplift occurs at a different place in the project lifecycle, namely between Business Case and Contractual Commitment.