Key attributes underpinning different markup decision between public and private projects : a China study

In the construction industry, contractors have to improve the efficiency of markup decision-making to survive from fierce business competition. The effect of client type on markup decision has been aware in previous studies and contractors are advocated to take account of decision factors properly when they are confronted with different types of projects. Nevertheless, the rationales behind the inclusion of different factors in markup decision-making for different projects sustain unknown. In this study, fifty-three factors were identified after extensive literature review and interviews with professionals. The identified factors were afterwards grouped under the headings of nine attributes and compiled in a questionnaire for survey in China. Using the Hotelling’s T-square test, it is found that three attributes (i.e., project characteristic, client characteristic, and macro condition) can explain the effect of client type on contractors’ markup decision. The research findings provide useful insights into the cognition of bid pricing as well as the improvement of bidding efficiency. While the research works were situated in China, contractors in other countries could benefit from the research findings in a similar vein.

Addressing Public and Private Issues in a Virtual Ethnography Study of an Open Online Community: a Reflective Paper

This paper discusses the ethical consequences of employing virtual ethnography to observe human behaviour in open online communities. In this paper, we discuss the nature of the online community being studied as well as the lessons learned from both literature and also the ethical clearance application process undertaken by the research team. A key finding was that despite the community being open to the public, generally community members expected the research team to employ strategies similar to those required when dealing with a private community.

Young people and the social exclusion of their public and private space

This paper explores the concept of social exclusion as it impacts on young people within their local communities and the wider British, European and Australian context in terms of surveillance and other control measures.

It's just an old apron : aprons, artefacts and art - representations of personal and private 'her-stories', as public histories

This paper examines art and artefact in the representation and recollection of deeply personal WWII women’s experiences as POW’s under the Japanese. This kind of treatment of internees in the Tjideng Women and Children’s internment camp (and others) in Batavia under the Japanese in WWII, stands in stark and brutal contrast to the idyllic life lived by many families up to that time in what was then known as the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). The deprivation and brutality of the Japanese incarceration of these women and children evoked responses - not military, but certainly militant, if muted. Representations of those responses – as both art and artefact - may be found in the most unlikely places and unexpected forms - and are still being unearthed to this day. However close we might personally be to these artists and artisans, can we, as observers from a distance, ever truly comprehend through spoken or written words alone, the day-today realities of those extraordinary times?

When should private property rights give way to the public interest?

Since Queensland Wire Industries Pty Ltd v Broken Hill Pty Co Ltd (1989) 167 CLR 177 it has been recognised that corporations with substantial market power are subject to special responsibilities and restraints that corporations without market power are not. In NT Power Generation Pty Ltd v Power and Water Authority (2004) 219 CLR 90 McHugh A-CJ, Gummow, Callinan and Heydon JJ in their joint reasons stated (at [76]), that s 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) (CCA) can operate not only to prevent firms with substantial market power from doing prohibited things, but also compel them positively to do things they do not want to do. Their Honours also stated (at [126]) that the proposition that a private property owner who declines to permit competitors to use the property is immune from s 46 is “intrinsically unsound”. However, the circumstances in which a firm with substantial power must accommodate competitors, and private property rights give way to the public interest are uncertain. The purpose of this Note is to consider recent developments in two areas of the CCA where the law requires private property rights to give way to the public interest. The first part of the Note considers two recent cases which clarify the circumstances in which s 46 of the CCA can be used to compel a firm with substantial market power to accommodate a competitor and allow the competitor to make use of private property rights in the public interest. Secondly, on 12 February 2014 the Minister for Small Business, the Hon Bruce Billson,released the Productivity Commission’s Final Report, on the National Access Regime in Pt IIIA of the CCA (National Access Regime, Inquiry Report No 66, Canberra). Pt IIIA provides for the processes by which third parties may obtain access to infrastructure owned by others in the public interest. The Report recommends that Pt IIIA be retained but makes a number of suggestions for its reform, some of which will be briefly considered.

Beyond the hospital door : a retrospective, cohort study of associations between birthing in the public or private sector and women’s postpartum care

Background In Australia, maternity care is available through universal coverage and a parallel, competitive private health insurance system. Differences between sectors in antenatal and intrapartum care and associated outcomes are well documented but few studies have investigated differences in postpartum care following hospital discharge and their impact on maternal satisfaction and confidence. Methods Women who birthed in Queensland, Australia from February to May 2010 were mailed a self-report survey 4 months postpartum. Regression analysis was used to determine associations between sector of birth and postpartum care, and whether postpartum care experiences explained sector differences in postpartum well-being (satisfaction, parenting confidence and feeling depressed). Results Women who birthed in the public sector had higher odds of health professional contact in the first 10 days post-discharge and satisfaction with the amount of postpartum care. After adjusting for demographic and postpartum contact variables, sector of birth no longer had an impact on satisfaction (AOR 0.95, 99% CI 0.78-1.31), but any form of health professional contact did. Women who had a care provider’s 24 hour contact details had higher odds of being satisfied (AOR 3.64, 95% CI 3.00-4.42) and confident (AOR 1.34, 95% CI 1.08- 1.65). Conclusion Women who birthed in the public sector appeared more satisfied because they had higher odds of receiving contact from a health professional within 10 days post-discharge. All women should have an opportunity to speak to and/or see a doctor, midwife or nurse in the first 10 days at home, and the details of a person they can contact 24 hours a day.

The private problem with public service: Rural teachers in educational markets

Staffing rural and remote schools is an important policy issue for the public good. This paper examines the private issues it also poses for teachers with families working in these communities, as they seek to reconcile careers with educational choices for children. The paper first considers historical responses to staffing rural and remote schools in Australia, and the emergence of neoliberal policy encouraging marketisation of the education sector. We report on interviews about considerations motivating household mobility with 11 teachers across regional, rural and remote communities in Queensland. Like other middle-class parents, these teachers prioritised their children’s educational opportunities over career opportunities. The analysis demonstrates how teachers in rural and remote communities constitute a special group of educational consumers with insider knowledge and unique dilemmas around school choice. Their heightened anxieties around school choice under neoliberal policy are shown to contribute to the public issue of staffing rural and remote schools.

Rethinking Disney: Private Control, Public Dimensions

Mike Budd and Max H. Kirsch, eds. Rethinking Disney: Private Control, Public Dimensions. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005. ix + 341pp. $27.95

Public and private mitigation for natural disasters in Japan

An increasing number of studies analyze the relationship between natural disaster damage and income levels, but they do not consider the distinction between public and private disaster mitigation. This paper empirically distinguishes these two types of mitigation using Japanese prefectural panel data from 1975 to 2007. Our results show that public mitigation rather than private mitigation has contributed to mitigating the total damage resulting from natural disasters. Our estimation of cost-benefit ratios for each prefecture confirms that the mitigation efforts of urban prefectures are less effective than those of rural prefectures in focusing on both large and frequent/small disasters. Hence, urban prefectures need to reassess their public mitigation measures. Furthermore, to lessen the damage resulting from extreme catastrophes, policy makers are required to invest in improved mitigation infrastructures when faced with a high probability of disasters.

Private governance of public rights in Japan: Revisiting the Japanese governance debate

Dramatic growth in the Japanese economy in the postwar period – and its meltdown in the 1990s – has attracted sustained interest in the power dynamics underlying the management of Japan’s administrative state. For a long time, scholars and commentators have debated about who wields power in Japan. The question has been asked in different ways. In the 1970s and 1980s, the question was usually posed as: who orchestrated Japan’s economic miracle in the 1960s and 1970s? Today, the question is usually reframed to: who is accountable for the policy failures that plunged Japan into financial crisis and recession during the 1990s? Yet the core issue remains the same – who governs Japan? (Johnson 1995)...

Qualitative study of patients' choice between public and private hospital emergency departments

Objective The aim of this study was to gather patients' perceptions regarding their choice between public and private hospital EDs for those who hold private health insurance. The findings of this study will contribute to knowledge regarding patients' decision-making processes and therefore may contribute to the development of evidence based public policies. Methods An in-depth semi-structured guide was used to interview participants at public and private hospital EDs. Questions sought to identify the issues that were considered by the participants to decide to attend that hospital ED, previous ED experience, expectations of ED services and perceived benefits and barriers to accessing services. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using content and thematic approaches. Results Four core themes emerged: prior good experience with the hospital, perceived quality of care, perceived waiting times and perceived costs that may explain patients' choice. Patients' choice between public and private EDs can be explained by the interaction of these core themes. The principal issues appear to be concern for gap payments at private hospital ED and waiting times at public hospital ED. Conclusions Patients who choose to attend public EDs appear to value financial concern over waiting time; those who choose to attend private EDs appear to value waiting time ahead of financial concerns.

Public history, private memories: Historical imagination in the new Italian cinema 1988-1999

The concern with the following arguments started during a study of national and international cinemas, from the desire to account for a cinema that internationally was doing well, but was undervalued domestically. The aims were to account for the renewal of Italian filmmaking from 1988, the New Italian cinema, and understand the conditions behind this renewal. The thesis identifies in the historical theme and in the recurrence of features from Italian cinema history elements of coherence with previous cinema production. The first consideration that emerges is that a triangulation between a new generation of filmmakers, their audience and recent history shaped the recovery of Italian cinema from 1988. A second consideration is that no discussion of Italian cinema can be separated from a discussion of that which it represents: Italian society and politics. This representation has not only addressed questions of identity for a cohort of spectators, but on occasions has captured the attention of the international audience. Thus the thesis follows a methodologic approach that positions texts in relation to certain traditions in Italian filmmaking and to the context by taking into consideration also industrial factors and social and historical changes. By drawing upon a range of disciplines, from political history to socio-psychological studies, the thesis has focussed on representation of history and memory in two periods of Italian film history: the first and the last decade of twentieth century. The concern has been not so much to interpret the films, but to understand the processes that made the films and how spectarors have applied their knowledge structures to make meaning of the films. Thus the thesis abstains from ascribing implicit meanings to films, but acknowledges how films project cultural contingencies. This is beacause film is shaped by production conditions and cultural and historical circumstances that make the film intelligible. As Bordwell stated in Making Meaning, "One can do other things with films besides 'reading' them" (1989, p. xiii). Within this framework, the thesis proposes a project that understands history films with the norms that govern Italian filmic output, those norms that regulate conditions of production and consumption and the relation between films from various traditions.

Private mobile phones and public communication drums in rural Papua New Guinea

The voice of a traditional communication drum can be heard over great distances. Yet now in Papua New Guinea (PNG) it is hearing, by phone, the voice of a loved one who has moved far away from home for work, marriage or studies that brings the greatest delight. As recently as 2007, most areas of this Pacific island nation had no form of telephony available. Apart from radio, modern communication forms have been restricted predominantly to the urban areas where only a small percentage of the people reside. Landline telephones, television, Internet, facsimile machines and so on have never reached the majority of the inhabited areas...

Now the real international fight begins for the Trans-Pacific Partnership

In Atlanta, the trade ministers of a dozen countries across the Pacific Rim announced that they had successfully reached a concluded agreement upon the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The debate over the TPP will now play out in legislatures across the Pacific Rim, where sentiment towards the deal is much more mixed. The ministers insisted: “After more than five years of intensive negotiations, we have come to an agreement that will support jobs, drive sustainable growth, foster inclusive development, and promote innovation across the Asia-Pacific region … The agreement achieves the goal we set forth of an ambitious, comprehensive, high standard and balanced agreement that will benefit our nation’s citizens … We expect this historic agreement to promote economic growth, support higher-paying jobs; enhance innovation, productivity and competitiveness; raise living standards; reduce poverty in our countries; and to promote transparency, good governance, and strong labor and environmental protections.” But there has been fierce criticism of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, because of both its secrecy and its substance. Nobel Laureate Professor Joseph Stiglitz has warned that the agreement is not about free trade, but about the protection of corporate monopolies. The intellectual property chapter provides for longer and stronger protection of intellectual property rights. The investment chapter provides foreign investors with the power to challenge governments under an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) regime. The environment chapter is weak and toothless, and seems to be little more than an exercise in greenwashing. The health annex — and many other parts of the agreement — strengthen the power of pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology developers. The text on state-owned enterprises raises concerns about public ownership of postal services, broadcasters and national broadband services.

Edge of Danger: electric light and the negotiation of public and private domestic space in Philip Johnson's Glass and Guest House

In the first half of the twentieth century the dematerializing of boundaries between enclosure and exposure problematized traditional expectations of the domestic environment. At the same time, as a space of escalating technological control, the modern domestic interior also offered new potential to redefine the meaning and means of habitation. The inherent tension between these opposing forces is particularly evident in the introduction of new electric lighting technology and applications into the modern domestic interior in the mid-twentieth century. Addressing this nexus of technology and domestic psychology, this article examines the critical role of electric lighting in regulating and framing both the public and private occupation of Philip Johnson's New Canaan estate. Exploring the dialectically paired transparent Glass House and opaque Guest House, this study illustrates how Johnson employed electric light to negotiate the visual environment of the estate as well as to help sustain a highly aestheticized domestic lifestyle. Contextualized within the existing literature, this analysis provides a more nuanced understanding of the New Canaan estate as an expression of Johnson's interests as a designer as well as a subversion of traditional suburban conventions.