A study of the emotional climate of a science education class for pre-service teachers in Bhutan

This thesis studied the emotional climate (EC) of a pre-service science teachers' class in Bhutan. It examined the types of activities students engaged in and the relationship between the tutor and students whose interactions produced both positive and negative EC in the class. The major finding was that the activities involving students' presentations using video clips and models, group activity, and coteaching valenced the class EC positively. Negative EC was identified when the tutor ignored students' responses, during formal lectures, and when the tutor was uncertain of the subject knowledge. The replication of activities that produce positive EC by other Bhutanese tutors may improve the standard of science education in the country.

Party to litigation insolvent company - costs order against non-party liquidator

In Kimtran Pty Ltd v Downie [2003] QDC 043 the court allowed in part an appeal from the refusal by the Queensland Building Tribunal to order the respondent liquidators pay the appellants' costs of proceedings in the Tribunal. The decision involved an examination of authorities which have considered the circumstances in which it is in the interests of justice to make an order for costs against a non-party.

Costs order against company in liquidation unlikely to be effective indemnity

In Kimtran v Downie [2003] QCA 424, the Queensland Court of Appeal allowed an appeal from the decision of a District Court judge who had ordered costs against a non-party liquidator. It held that the court's decision in relation to the awarding of costs against a liquidator was not constrained by the decision of the of the Court of Appeal in Mahaffey v Belar Pty Ltd [1999] QCA 2 in the manner stated in the District Court.

Corporate governance and securities class actions

This study investigates the governance attributes of firms that have been subject to securities class actions (SCAs). There has been a recent sizable increase in the number of firms subject to SCAs in Australia. We examine a sample of firms that have been subject to SCAs due to disclosure breaches and match the firms by industry and size to a control sample. First, we examine the compliance culture of the SCA firms via the frequency of Australian Securities Exchange (ASX)queries of the firm and find that the frequency of ASX queries is positively associated with the occurrence of a SCA. Secondly, we provide evidence that SCA firms exhibit weaker levels of corporate governance than the matched control sample. In addition, we contribute to the understanding of firms subject to SCAs and their corporate governance attributes. Our results suggest the presence of a nomination committee may be associated with higher agency costs and that the influence of CEO duality may reduce the effectiveness of a nomination committee.

A review of Deeds of Company Arrangement

Deeds of company arrangement ('DOCAs') under Part 5.3A of the Corporations Act appear be something of a limited success. However, the use and outcomes of DOCAs raise legitimate questions as to whether the level of returns currently being achieved for creditors might be improved by legislative reform. The 2013 ARITA Terry Taylor Scholarship project entailed a review of a random sample of executed DOCAs effectuated between 1 August 2012 and 31 July 2013. This review was undertaken with the intention of producing a ‘snapshot’ of current trends and outcomes of the use of DOCAs in practice – ie, average (or typical) rates of dividends paid, what DOCAs customarily achieve, the profile of the companies executing DOCAs and the average duration of DOCAs. The purpose of this review was to empirically assess the use and effectiveness of DOCAs in order to inform the ongoing debate about the success or otherwise of Australia’s Part 5.3A voluntary administration regime (which recently marked its 20 year anniversary).

A sample review of Deeds of Company Arrangement under Part 5.3A of the Corporations Act

An empirical review of the operation of Part 5.3A of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) is timely given that Australia’s corporate rescue regime marked its 20 year anniversary in 2013. The research project culminating in this report was funded by the 2013 ARITA Terry Taylor Scholarship and entailed a review of a random sample of 72 executed DOCAs (and associated reports and returns) which were effectuated between 1 August 2012 and 31 July 2013. This sample review of DOCAs was undertaken with the intention of producing a ‘snapshot’ of current practices and trends pertaining to DOCAs – ie, average (or typical) rate of dividends paid, the outcomes or goals which DOCAs customarily achieve (eg, genuine company rescues, workouts, enhanced asset realisations or ‘quasi-liquidations’), the profile of the companies executing DOCAs and the average term/duration of DOCAs. The purpose and value of this sample review was to empirically assess the use and effectiveness of one important aspect of Part 5.3A and to further inform consideration and debate as to whether changes are warranted to Australia’s voluntary administration regime.

Determinants of second row passenger comfort

China is becoming an increasingly important automotive market. Customer’s vehicle usage, preferences and requirements differ from traditional western markets in a number of aspects – rear seat usage rates are higher, vehicles are used for business purposes as well as for private transport and rear seat usage is generally more important to Chinese customers compared to their western counterparts. The purpose of this project is to dimension and investigate these differences from an ergonomics perspective and use these results to guide the design of future products. The focus for this project will be specific to vehicles in the CD segment. More specifically, this project focuses on the second row ‘ambience’. Ambience refers to the global feeling perceived by second row passengers, and the main factors contributing to ambience are: ingress and egress comfort, seat comfort, roominess, and ease of use of the controls. In order to investigate the aforementioned parameters, an experimental study has been conducted in Shanghai, China. This experiment involved 80 healthy Chinese CD- and D-car customers. These subjects were asked to evaluate different features present in the second row environment of three different cars: A Ford Mondeo, Toyota Camry and Mercedes S-class. Various data has been collected during this experiment: First, the anthropometric dimensions of the subjects have been measured. The subjects were also asked to fill a questionnaire about demographics, their own car usage, and their perception of a various number of features present in the three tested cars. A great amount of technical data was also collected. The first part of this report presents the results given by the questionnaires. It includes Chinese demographics, vehicle usage habits, and the subjective perception of the features present in the tested cars. It also presents the results of the anthropometric measurements. This gives a first insight into Chinese customers’ habits and preferences. The second part deals with the technical data recorded during the experiment: second row seat adjustment ranges, roominess, optimal location of controls, and pressure mapping analysis. Analysis of technical data allows a deeper understanding of the factors contributing to comfort and ambience perception. Using the technical data together with the comfort ratings given by the subjects in the questionnaire, recommendations on several design parameters were provided. Finally, an experimental study of car ingress-egress has been conducted in a University laboratory controlled environment. During this study, the ingress and egress motion of 20 customers from Chinese origin was recorded using a motion capture system. The last part of this report presents the protocol and data processing that led to building an ingress-egress motion database that was provided to Ford.

An intentional class design model to engage first year students with threshold concepts using the academic discourse theories of Vygotsky and Laurillard

In the context of the first-year university classroom, this paper develops Vygotsky’s claim that ‘the relations between the higher mental functions were at one time real relations between people’. By taking the main horizontal and hierarchical levels of classroom discourse and dialogue (student-student, student-teacher, teacher-teacher) and marrying these with the possibilities opened up by Laurillard’s conversational framework, we argue that the learning challenge of a ‘troublesome’ threshold concept might be met by a carefully designed sequence of teaching events and experiences for first year students, and we provide a number of strategies that exploit each level of these ‘hierarchies of discourse’. We suggest that an analytical approach to classroom design that embodies these levels of discourse in sequenced dialogic methods could be used by teachers as a strategy to interrogate and adjust teaching-in-practice especially in the first year of university study.

Pharmaceutical company influences on medication prescribing and their potential impact on quality use of medicines

Background Pharmaceuticals are big business, reporting strong market growth year after year. The ‘gatekeepers’ of this market are prescribers of medicines, who are the major target of pharmaceutical companies, utilizing direct and indirect influences. Methods This paper draws on previous research investigating pharmaceutical company prescribing influences to develop a qualitative model demonstrating the synergism between commercial influences on prescribing. The generic model was used to explore a realistic but hypothetical scenario to ascertain the applicability of the model. Results and Discussion A generic influence model was developed. The model was readily able to be adapted to reflect a realistic practice scenario. Conclusion Prescriber awareness of the linkages between various seemingly separate marketing techniques could potentially improve medicines usage in an evidence-based practice paradigm.

Class notes : 10 principles of good BPM

The question concerning what makes for good BPM is often raised. A recent call from Paul Harmon on the BPTrends Discussion LinkedIN Group for key issues in BPM received 189 answers within two months, with additional answers still appearing. I have teamed up with a number of BPM researchers and practitioners to bring together our joint experience in a BPM workshop at the University in Liechtenstein in 2013, where we developed ten principles of good BPM, later published in Business Process Management Journal (vom Brocke et al., 2014). The paper, which has received considerable attention in academia, was ranked the journal’s most downloaded paper the month it was published. Slides on Slideshare that provide a brief summary of the paper have been accessed more than 3,000 times since they were first put online in March 2014. Given the importance of the topic–what makes for good BPM–and the positive response to the ten principles, I wrote this note with the co-authors of the original BPMJ paper to outline the ten principles and illustrate how to use them in practice. We invite all readers to engage in this discussion via any channel they find appropriate.

Conjugation of carcinogens by 6 class glutathione S-transferases : mechanisms and relevance to variations in human risk

Conjugation of chemicals with glutathione (GSH) can lead to decreased or increased toxicity. A genetic deficiency in the GSH S-transferase μ class gene M1 has been hypothesized to lead to greater risk of lung cancer in smokers. Recently a gene deletion polymorphism involving the human θ enzyme T1 has been described; the enzyme is present in erythrocytes and can be readily assayed. A rat θ class enzyme, 5-5, has structural and catalytic similarity and the protein was expressed in the Salmonella typhimurium tester strain TA1535. Expression of the cDNA vector increased the mutagenicity of ethylene dibromide and several methylene dihalides. Mutations resulting from the known GSH S-transferase substrate 1,2-epoxy-3-(4′nitrophenoxy)propane were decreased in the presence of the transferase. Expression of transferase 5-5 increased mutations when 1,2,3,4-diepoxybutane (butadiene diepoxide), 4-bromo-1,2-epoxybutane, or 1,3-dichloracetone were added. The latter compound is a model for the putative 1,2-dibromo-3-chloropropane oxidation product 1-bromo-3-chloroacetone. These genotoxicity and genotyping assays may be of use in further studies of the roles of GSH S-transferase θ enzymes in bioactivation and detoxication and any changes in risk due to polymorphism.

Identification of theta-class glutathione S-transferase in liver cytosol of the marmoset monkey

The presence of theta-class glutathione S-transferase (GST) in marmoset monkey liver cytosol was investigated. An anti-peptide antibody targeted against the C-terminus of rGSTT1 reacted with a single band in marmoset liver cytosol that corresponded to a molecular weight of 28 kDa. The intensity of the immunoreactive band was not affected by treatment of marmoset monkeys with 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, phenobarbitone, rifampicin or clofibric acid. Similarly, activity towards methyl chloride (MC) was unaffected by these treatments. However, GST activity towards 1,2-epoxy3-(p- nitrophenoxy)-propane (EPNP) was increased in marmosets treated with phenobarbitone (2.6-fold) and rifampicin (2.6-fold), activity towards dichloromethane (DCM) was increased by 50% after treatment of marmosets with clofibric acid, and activity towards 1-chloro-2,4-dinitrobenzene (CDNB) was raised slightly (30-42% increases) after treatment with phenobarbitone, rifampicin or clofibric acid. Compared with humans, marmoset liver cytosol GST activity towards DCM was 18-fold higher, activity towards MC was 7 times higher and activity towards CDNB was 4 times higher. Further, EPNP activity was clearly detectable in marmoset liver cytosol samples, but was undetectable in human samples. Immunoreactive marmoset GST was partially purified by affinity chromatography using hexylglutathione-Sepharose and Orange A resin. The interaction of immunoreactive marmoset GST was similar to that found previously for rat and human GSTT1, suggesting that this protein is also a theta class GST. However, unlike rat GSTT1, the marmoset enzyme was not the major catalyst of EPNP conjugation. Instead, immunoreactivity was closely associated with activity towards MC. In conclusion, these results provide evidence for the presence of theta-class GST in the marmoset monkey orthologous to rGSTT1 and hGSTT1.

Music for the Pria Dewasa : changes and continuities in class and pop music genres

This paper presents Rolling Stone Indonesia (RSI) and places it in an historical context to tease out some changes and continuities in Indonesian middle-class politics since the beginning of the New Order. Some political scientists have claimed that class interests were at the core of the transition from Guided Democracy to the New Order, and popular music scholars generally assert that class underlies pop genre distinctions. But few have paid attention to how class and genre were written into Indonesian pop in the New Order period; Indonesian pop has a fascinating political history that has so far been overlooked. Placing RSI in historical perspective can reveal much about the print media’s classing of pop under New Order era political constraints, and about the ways these modes of classing may or may not have endured in the post-authoritarian, globalised and liberalised media environment.

Managing climate change ‘by the numbers’ in a UK energy company

This paper examines how ideas and practices of accounting come together in turning the abstract concept of climate change into a new non-financial performance measure in a large energy company in the UK. It develops the notion of ‘governmental management’ to explain how the firm’s carbon dioxide emissions were transformed into a new organisational object that could be made quantifiable, measureable and ultimately manageable because of the modern power of accounting in tying disciplinary subjectivities and objectivities together whilst operating simultaneously at the level of individual and the organisation. Examining these interrelations highlights the constitutive nature of accounting in creating not just new categories for accounting’s attention, but in turn new organisational knowledge and knowledge experts in the making up accounting for climate change. Significantly, it appears these new knowledge experts are no longer accountants: which may help explain accounting’s evolution into evermore spheres of influence as we increasingly choose to manage our world ‘by the numbers’.