On the perspectives of the implementation of 'corporate social responsibility'

In the face of changes in corporate regulation scholarship, the percepts of corporate governance and legal policies have minimized the controversies over the potentials and limitations of corporate accountability mechanisms. In the contemporary scholarly works on the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR), there are evidences that support CSR principles to be implemented through legal regulation. Scholars and current practices, however, emphasize that this implementation should not be based on any single strategy. From this perspective, this article argues that the regulatory strategies for this implementation should be based on a fusion of legal sanction, market incentives and the demand of private ordering.

Predicate encryption with various properties

Predicate encryption (PE) is a new primitive which supports exible control over access to encrypted data. In PE schemes, users' decryption keys are associated with predicates f and ciphertexts encode attributes a that are specified during the encryption procedure. A user can successfully decrypt if and only if f(a) = 1. In this thesis, we will investigate several properties that are crucial to PE. We focus on expressiveness of PE, Revocable PE and Hierarchical PE (HPE) with forward security. For all proposed systems, we provide a security model and analysis using the widely accepted computational complexity approach. Our first contribution is to explore the expressiveness of PE. Existing PE supports a wide class of predicates such as conjunctions of equality, comparison and subset queries, disjunctions of equality queries, and more generally, arbitrary combinations of conjunctive and disjunctive equality queries. We advance PE to evaluate more expressive predicates, e.g., disjunctive comparison or disjunctive subset queries. Such expressiveness is achieved at the cost of computational and space overhead. To improve the performance, we appropriately revise the PE to reduce the computational and space cost. Furthermore, we propose a heuristic method to reduce disjunctions in the predicates. Our schemes are proved in the standard model. We then introduce the concept of Revocable Predicate Encryption (RPE), which extends the previous PE setting with revocation support: private keys can be used to decrypt an RPE ciphertext only if they match the decryption policy (defined via attributes encoded into the ciphertext and predicates associated with private keys) and were not revoked by the time the ciphertext was created. We propose two RPE schemes. Our first scheme, termed Attribute- Hiding RPE (AH-RPE), offers attribute-hiding, which is the standard PE property. Our second scheme, termed Full-Hiding RPE (FH-RPE), offers even stronger privacy guarantees, i.e., apart from possessing the Attribute-Hiding property, the scheme also ensures that no information about revoked users is leaked from a given ciphertext. The proposed schemes are also proved to be secure under well established assumptions in the standard model. Secrecy of decryption keys is an important pre-requisite for security of (H)PE and compromised private keys must be immediately replaced. The notion of Forward Security (FS) reduces damage from compromised keys by guaranteeing confidentiality of messages that were encrypted prior to the compromise event. We present the first Forward-Secure Hierarchical Predicate Encryption (FS-HPE) that is proved secure in the standard model. Our FS-HPE scheme offers some desirable properties: time-independent delegation of predicates (to support dynamic behavior for delegation of decrypting rights to new users), local update for users' private keys (i.e., no master authority needs to be contacted), forward security, and the scheme's encryption process does not require knowledge of predicates at any level including when those predicates join the hierarchy.

Multi-criteria ranking and source apportionment of airborne particulate matter

Particulate matter research is essential because of the well known significant adverse effects of aerosol particles on human health and the environment. In particular, identification of the origin or sources of particulate matter emissions is of paramount importance in assisting efforts to control and reduce air pollution in the atmosphere. This thesis aims to: identify the sources of particulate matter; compare pollution conditions at urban, rural and roadside receptor sites; combine information about the sources with meteorological conditions at the sites to locate the emission sources; compare sources based on particle size or mass; and ultimately, provide the basis for control and reduction in particulate matter concentrations in the atmosphere. To achieve these objectives, data was obtained from assorted local and international receptor sites over long sampling periods. The samples were analysed using Ion Beam Analysis and Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer methods to measure the particle mass with chemical composition and the particle size distribution, respectively. Advanced data analysis techniques were employed to derive information from large, complex data sets. Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), a ranking method, drew on data variability to examine the overall trends, and provided the rank ordering of the sites and years that sampling was conducted. Coupled with the receptor model Positive Matrix Factorisation (PMF), the pollution emission sources were identified and meaningful information pertinent to the prioritisation of control and reduction strategies was obtained. This thesis is presented in the thesis by publication format. It includes four refereed papers which together demonstrate a novel combination of data analysis techniques that enabled particulate matter sources to be identified and sampling site/year ranked. The strength of this source identification process was corroborated when the analysis procedure was expanded to encompass multiple receptor sites. Initially applied to identify the contributing sources at roadside and suburban sites in Brisbane, the technique was subsequently applied to three receptor sites (roadside, urban and rural) located in Hong Kong. The comparable results from these international and national sites over several sampling periods indicated similarities in source contributions between receptor site-types, irrespective of global location and suggested the need to apply these methods to air pollution investigations worldwide. Furthermore, an investigation into particle size distribution data was conducted to deduce the sources of aerosol emissions based on particle size and elemental composition. Considering the adverse effects on human health caused by small-sized particles, knowledge of particle size distribution and their elemental composition provides a different perspective on the pollution problem. This thesis clearly illustrates that the application of an innovative combination of advanced data interpretation methods to identify particulate matter sources and rank sampling sites/years provides the basis for the prioritisation of future air pollution control measures. Moreover, this study contributes significantly to knowledge based on chemical composition of airborne particulate matter in Brisbane, Australia and on the identity and plausible locations of the contributing sources. Such novel source apportionment and ranking procedures are ultimately applicable to environmental investigations worldwide.

Slotted cooperative communication in half duplex relay networks

In cooperative communication systems, several wireless communication terminals collaborate to form a virtual-multiple antenna array system and exploit the spatial diversity to achieve a better performance. This thesis proposes a practical slotted protocol for cooperative communication systems with half-duplex single antennas. The performance of the proposed slotted cooperative communication protocol is evaluated in terms of the pairwise error probability and the bit error rate. The proposed protocol achieves the multiple-input single-output performance bound with a novel relay ordering and scheduling strategy.

Unnatural selection : curricular conversations in TIP 1962–2012

Our task is to consider the evolving perspectives around curriculum documented in the Theory Into Practice (TIP) corpus to date. The 50 years in question, 1962–2012, account for approximately half the history of mass institutionalized schooling. Over this time, the upper age of compulsory schooling has crept up, stretching the school curriculum's reach, purpose, and clientele. These years also span remarkable changes in the social fabric, challenging deep senses of the nature and shelf-life of knowledge, whose knowledge counts, what science can and cannot deliver, and the very purpose of education. The school curriculum is a key social site where these challenges have to be addressed in a very practical sense, through a design on the future implemented within the resources and politics of the present. The task's metaphor of ‘evolution’ may invoke a sense of gradual cumulative improvement, but equally connotes mutation, hybridization, extinction, survival of the fittest, and environmental pressures. Viewed in this way, curriculum theory and practice cannot be isolated and studied in laboratory conditions—there is nothing natural, neutral, or self-evident about what knowledge gets selected into the curriculum. Rather, the process of selection unfolds as a series of messy, politically contaminated, lived experiments; thus curriculum studies require field work in dynamic open systems. We subscribe to Raymond Williams' approach to social change, which he argues is not absolute and abrupt, one set of ideas neatly replacing the other. For Williams, newly emergent ideas have to compete against the dominant mindset and residual ideas “still active in the cultural process'” (Williams, 1977, p. 122). This means ongoing debates. For these reasons, we join Schubert (1992) in advocating “continuous reconceptualising of the flow of experience” (p. 238) by both researchers and practitioners.

Spin-polarization and ferromagnetism of graphitic carbon nitride materials

Polymeric graphitic carbon nitride materials have attracted increasing attention in recent years owning to their potential applications in energy conversion, environment protection, and so on. Here, from first-principles calculations, we report the electronic structure modification of graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) in response to carbon doping. We showed that each dopant atom can induce a local magnetic moment of 1.0 μB in non-magnetic g-C3N4. At the doping concentration of 1/14, the local magnetic moments of the most stable doping configuration which has the dopant atom at the center of heptazine unit prefer to align in a parallel way leading to long-range ferromagnetic (FM) ordering. When the joint N atom is replaced by C atom, the system favors an antiferromagnetic (AFM) ordering at unstrained state, but can be tuned to ferromagnetism (FM) by applying biaxial tensile strain. More interestingly, the FM state of the strained system is half-metallic with abundant states at the Fermi level in one spin channel and a band gap of 1.82 eV in another spin channel. The Curie temperature (Tc) was also evaluated using a mean-field theory and Monte Carlo simulations within the Ising model. Such tunable electron spin-polarization and ferromagnetism are quite promising for the applications of graphitic carbon nitride in spintronics.

Legal Regulation of Corporate Social Responsibility : A Meta-Regulation Approach of Law for Raising CSR in a Weak Economy

"Even though Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a widely accepted concept promoted by different stakeholders, business corporations' internal strategies, known as corporate self-regulation in most of the weak economies, respond poorly to this responsibility. Major laws relating to corporate regulation and responsibilities of these economies do not possess adequate ongoing influence to insist on corporate self-regulation to create a socially responsible corporate culture. This book describes how the laws relating to CSR could contribute to the inclusion of CSR principles at the core of the corporate self-regulation of these economies in general, without being intrusive in normal business practice. It formulates a meta-regulation approach to law, particularly by converging patterns of private ordering and state control in contemporary corporate law from the perspective of a weak economy. It proposes that this approach is suitable for alleviating regulators' limited access to information and expertise, inherent limitations of prescriptive rules, ensuring corporate commitment, and enhance the self-regulatory capacity of companies. This book describes various meta-regulation strategies for laws to link social values to economic incentives and disincentives, and to indirectly influence companies to incorporate CSR principles at the core of their self-regulation strategies. It investigates this phenomenon using Bangladesh as a case study."--publisher website

A test of three interventions to promote people's communication of their consent for organ donation

People's decision to join an organ donor registry and have a discussion with family about their organ donation preference increases the likelihood that their family will consent to donation of their organs. This study explores the effectiveness of three interventions compared to a control condition to increase individual consent (registering and discussing donation wishes) for organ donation. Australian residents who had not previously communicated their consent (N = 177) were randomly allocated to complete an online survey representing either an extended theory of planned behaviour motivational intervention (strengthening intention via attitudes, subjective norms, control, moral norms and identity), a volitional intervention using constructs from the health action process approach (strengthening the translation of intentions into action using action plans and coping plans), a combined motivational and volitional intervention, or a control condition. Registering, but not discussing, intentions increased in the motivational compared to non-motivational conditions. For joining the organ donor registry, the combination of strengthening intentions (motivational) as well as forming specific action (when, where, how, and with whom for discussing) and coping (listing potential obstacles and how these may be overcome) plans (volitional) resulted in significantly higher rates of self-reported behaviour. There was no evidence for this effect on discussion.

Thermal stability and hot-stage Raman spectroscopic study of Ca-montmorillonite modified with different surfactants : a comparative study

Three long chain cationic surfactants were intercalated into Ca-montmorillonite through ion exchangeand the obtained organoclays were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), high resolution thermo-gravimetric analysis (TG) and Raman spectroscopy. The intercalation of surfactants not only changes thesurface properties of clay from hydrophilic to hydrophobic but also greatly increases the basal spacing ofthe interlayers based on XRD analysis. The thermal stability of organoclays intercalated with three sur-factants (TTAB, DTAB and CTAB) and the different arrangements of the surfactant molecules intercalatedinto Ca-montmorillonite were determined by TG-DTG analysis. A Raman spectroscopic study on the Ca-montmorillonite modified by three surfactants prepared at different concentrations provided the detailedconformational ordering of different intercalated long-chain surfactants under different conditions. Thewavenumber of the antisymmetric stretching mode is more sensitive than that of the symmetric stretch-ing mode to the mobility of the tail of the amine chain. At room temperature, the conformational orderingis more easily affected by the packing density in the lateral model. With the increase of the temperature,the positions of both the antisymmetric and symmetric stretching bands shift to higher wavenumbers,which indicates a decrease of conformational ordering. This study offers new insights into the struc-ture and properties of Ca-montmorillonite modified with different long chain surfactants. Moreover, theexperimental results confirm the potential applications of organic Ca-montmorillonites for the removalof organic impurities from aqueous media.

Development of modified inorganic adsorbents for radioactive iodine removal and biomolecule adsorption

Development and application of inorganic adsorbent materials have been continuously investigated due to their variability and versatility. This Master thesis has expanded the knowledge in the field of adsorption targeting radioactive iodine waste and proteins using modified inorganic materials. Industrial treatment of radioactive waste and safety disposal of nuclear waste is a constant concern around the world with the development of radioactive materials applications. To address the current problems, laminar titanate with large surface area (143 m2 g−1) was synthesized from inorganic titanium compounds by hydrothermal reactions at 433 K. Ag2O nanocrystals of particle size ranging from 5–30 nm were anchored on the titanate lamina surface which has crystallographic similarity to that of Ag2O nanocrystals. Therefore, the deposited Ag2O nanocrystals and titanate substrate could join together at these surfaces between which there forms a coherent interface. Such coherence between the two phases reduces the overall energy by minimizing surface energy and maintains the Ag2O nanocrystals firmly on the outer surface of the titanate structure. The combined adsorbent was then applied as efficient adsorbent to remove radioactive iodine from water (one gram adsorbent can capture up to 3.4 mmol of I- anions) and the composite adsorbent can be recovered easily for safe disposal. The structure changes of the titanate lamina and the composite adsorbent were characterized via various techniques. The isotherm and kinetics of iodine adsorption, competitive adsorption and column adsorption using the adsorbent were studied to determine the iodine removal abilities of the adsorbent. It is shown that the adsorbent exhibited excellent trapping ability towards iodine in the fix-bed column despite the presence of competitive ions. Hence, Ag2O deposited titanate lamina could serve as an effective adsorbent for removing iodine from radioactive waste. Surface hydroxyl group of the inorganic materials is widely applied for modification purposes and modification of inorganic materials for biomolecule adsorption can also be achieved. Specifically, γ-Al2O3 nanofibre material is converted via calcinations from boehmite precursor which is synthesised by hydrothermal chemical reactions under directing of surfactant. These γ-Al2O3 nanofibres possess large surface area (243 m2 g-1), good stability under extreme chemical conditions, good mechanical strength and rich surface hydroxyl groups making it an ideal candidate in industrialized separation column. The fibrous morphology of the adsorbent also guarantees facile recovery from aqueous solution under both centrifuge and sedimentation approaches. By chemically bonding the dyes molecules, the charge property of γ-Al2O3 is changed in the aim of selectively capturing of lysozyme from chicken egg white solution. The highest Lysozyme adsorption amount was obtained at around 600 mg/g and its proportion is elevated from around 5% to 69% in chicken egg white solution. It was found from the adsorption test under different solution pH that electrostatic force played the key role in the good selectivity and high adsorption rate of surface modified γ-Al2O3 nanofibre adsorbents. Overall, surface modified fibrous γ-Al2O3 could be applied potentially as an efficient adsorbent for capturing of various biomolecules.

A people-to-people matching system using graph mining techniques

A people-to-people matching system (or a match-making system) refers to a system in which users join with the objective of meeting other users with the common need. Some real-world examples of these systems are employer-employee (in job search networks), mentor-student (in university social networks), consume-to-consumer (in marketplaces) and male-female (in an online dating network). The network underlying in these systems consists of two groups of users, and the relationships between users need to be captured for developing an efficient match-making system. Most of the existing studies utilize information either about each of the users in isolation or their interaction separately, and develop recommender systems using the one form of information only. It is imperative to understand the linkages among the users in the network and use them in developing a match-making system. This study utilizes several social network analysis methods such as graph theory, small world phenomenon, centrality analysis, density analysis to gain insight into the entities and their relationships present in this network. This paper also proposes a new type of graph called “attributed bipartite graph”. By using these analyses and the proposed type of graph, an efficient hybrid recommender system is developed which generates recommendation for new users as well as shows improvement in accuracy over the baseline methods.

Identifying belief targets to increase bone marrow registry participation among students who have never donated blood

New members on bone marrow registries worldwide are needed to allow sufficient diversity in the donor pool to meet patient needs. We used the theory of planned behaviour belief-basis and surveyed students who had not donated blood previously (i.e. non-donors) (N = 150) about the behavioural, normative, and control beliefs informing their intentions to join the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry. Key beliefs predicting non-donors’ intentions included: viewing bone marrow donation as an invasion of the body (β = −.35), normative support from parents (β = .40), anticipating pain/side effects from giving blood (β = −.27), and lack of knowledge about how to register (β  = −.30). Few non-donors endorsed these beliefs, suggesting they are ideal targets for change in strategies encouraging bone marrow donor registration.

A Century of American Economic Review : Insights on Critical Factors in Journal Publishing

By using information collected from numerous American Economic Review publications from the last 100 years, Torgler and Piatti examine the top publishing institutions to determine their most renowned AER papers based on citation success. Areas of interest include how often an individual can publish in the AER, how equally successful citations are distributed and who the top AER publishing authors are. The book explores what the level of cooperation is among authors and what drives systems such as the alphabetical name ordering. Torgler and Piatti critically examine the individual characteristics of AER authors, editors, editorial board members and referees and even tackle more intricate details such as the frequency of female publications in the AER. The authors observe and analyse the relationship between academic age and publication performance to see if there is any pattern on these factors and citation success. The book then goes on to analyse data concerning awards, and whether awards can increase the probability of publishing in the AER at a later stage

Vibrational spectroscopy of the multianion mineral gartrellite from the Anticline Deposit, Ashburton Downs, Western Australia

The multianion mineral gartrellite PbCu(Fe3+,Cu)(AsO4)2(OH,H2O)2 has been studied by a combination of Raman and infrared spectroscopy. The molecular structure of gartrellite is assessed. Gartrellite is one of the tsumcorite mineral group based upon arsenate and/or sulphate anions. Crystal symmetry is either triclinic in the case of an ordered occupation of two cationic sites, triclinic due to ordering of the H bonds in the case of species with two water molecules per formula unit, or monoclinic in the other cases. Characteristic Raman spectra of the mineral gartrellite enable the assignment of the bands to specific vibrational modes. These spectra are related to the structure of gartrellite. The position of the hydroxyl and water stretching vibrations are related to the strength of the hydrogen bond formed between the OH unit and the AsO3/4 anion.

Creating efficiencies in teaching : where are the right resources when you need them?

Early career engineering academics are encouraged to join and contribute to established research groups at the leading edge of their discipline. This is often facilitated by various staff development and support programs. Given that academics are often appointed primarily on the basis of their research skills and outputs, such an approach is justified and is likely to result in advancing the individual academic’s career. It also enhances their capacity to attract competitive research funding, while contributing to the overall research performance of their institution, with further potential for an increased share of government funding. In contrast, there is much less clarity of direction or availability of support mechanisms for those academics in their role as teachers. Following a general induction to teaching and learning at their institution, they would commonly think about preparing some lecture materials, whether for delivery in a face-to-face or on-line modality. Typically they would look for new references and textbooks to act as a guide for preparing the content. They would probably find out how the course has been taught before, and what laboratory facilities and experiments have been used. In all of these and other related tasks, the majority of newly appointed academics are guided strongly by their own experiences as students, rather than any firm knowledge of pedagogical principles. At a time of increased demands on academics’ time, and high expectations of performance and productivity in both research and teaching, it is essential to examine possible actions to support academics in enhancing their teaching performance in effective and efficient ways. Many resources have been produced over the years in engineering schools around the world, with very high intellectual and monetary costs. In Australia, the last few years have seen a surge in the number of ALTC/OLT projects and fellowships addressing a range of engineering education issues and providing many resources. There are concerns however regarding the extent to which these resources are being effectively utilised. Why are academics still re-inventing the wheel and creating their own version of teaching resources and pedagogical practice? Why do they spend so much of their precious time in such an inefficient way? A symposium examining the above issues was conducted at the AAEE2012 conference, and some pointers to possible responses to the above questions were obtained. These are explored in this paper and supplemented by the responses to a survey of a group of engineering education leaders on some of the aspects of these research questions. The outcomes of the workshop and survey results have been analysed in view of the literature and the ALTC/OLT sponsored learning and teaching projects and resources. Other factors are discussed, including how such resources can be found, how their quality might be evaluated, and how assessment may be appropriately incorporated, again using readily available resources. This study found a strong resonance between resources reuse with work on technology acceptance (Davis, 1989), suggesting that technology adoption models could be used to encourage resource sharing. Efficient use of outstanding learning materials is an enabling approach. The paper provides some insights on the factors affecting the re-use of available resources, and makes some recommendations and suggestions on how the issue of resources re-use might be incorporated in the process of applying and completing engineering education projects.