The stewardship paradigm : an enquiry into the ethical obligation associated with being in control of resorces

The resource allocation and utilization discourse is dominated by debates about rights particularly individual property rights and ownership. This is due largely to the philosophic foundations provided by Hobbes and Locke and adopted by Bentham. In our community, though, resources come not merely with rights embedded but also obligations. The relevant laws and equitable principles which give shape to our shared rights and obligations with respect to resources take cognizance not merely of the title to the resource (the proprietary right) but the particular context in which the right is exercised. Moral philosophy regarding resource utilisation has from ancient times taken cognizance of obligations but with ascendance of modernity, the agenda of moral philosophy regarding resources, has been dominated, at least since John Locke, by a preoccupation with property rights; the ethical obligations associated with resource management have been largely ignored. The particular social context has also been ignored. Exploring this applied ethical terrain regarding resource utilisation, this thesis: (1) Revisits the justifications for modem property rights (and in that the exclusion of obligations); (2) Identifies major deficiencies in these justifications and reasons for this; (3) Traces the concept of stewardship as understood in classical Greek writing and in the New Testament, and considers its application in the Patristic period and by Medieval and reformist writers, before turning to investigate its influence on legal and equitable concepts through to the current day; 4) Discusses the nature of the stewardship obligation,maps it and offers a schematic for applying the Stewardship Paradigm to problems arising in daily life; and, (5) Discusses the way in which the Stewardship Paradigm may be applied by, and assists in resolving issues arising from within four dominant philosophic world views: (a) Rawls' social contract theory; (b) Utilitarianism as discussed by Peter Singer; (c) Christianity with particular focus on the theology of Douglas Hall; (d) Feminism particularly as expressed in the ethics of care of Carol Gilligan; and, offers some more general comments about stewardship in the context of an ethically plural community.

Corporate credit risk prediction under stochastic volatility and jumps

This paper examines the impact of allowing for stochastic volatility and jumps (SVJ) in a structural model on corporate credit risk prediction. The results from a simulation study verify the better performance of the SVJ model compared with the commonly used Merton model, and three sources are provided to explain the superiority. The empirical analysis on two real samples further ascertains the importance of recognizing the stochastic volatility and jumps by showing that the SVJ model decreases bias in spread prediction from the Merton model, and better explains the time variation in actual CDS spreads. The improvements are found particularly apparent in small firms or when the market is turbulent such as the recent financial crisis.

Cluster randomised-control trial for an Australian child protection education program: Study protocol for the Learn to be safe with Emmy and friends™

Background Child maltreatment has severe short-and long-term consequences for children’s health, development, and wellbeing. Despite the provision of child protection education programs in many countries, few have been rigorously evaluated to determine their effectiveness. We describe the design of a multi-site gold standard evaluation of an Australian school-based child protection education program. The intervention has been developed by a not-for-profit agency and comprises 5 1-h sessions delivered to first grade students (aged 5–6 years) in their regular classrooms. It incorporates common attributes of effective programs identified in the literature, and aligns with the Australian education curriculum. Methods/Design A three-site cluster randomised controlled trial (RCT) of Learn to be safe with Emmy and friends™ will be conducted with children in approximately 72 first grade classrooms in 24 Queensland primary (elementary) schools from three state regions, over a period of 2 years. Entire schools will be randomised, using a computer generated list of random numbers, to intervention and wait-list control conditions, to prevent contamination effects across students and classes. Data will be collected at baseline (pre-assessment), immediately after the intervention (post-assessment), and at 6-, 12-, and 18-months (follow-up assessments). Outcome assessors will be blinded to group membership. Primary outcomes assessed are children’s knowledge of program concepts; intentions to use program knowledge, skills, and help-seeking strategies; actual use of program material in a simulated situation; and anxiety arising from program participation. Secondary outcomes include a parent discussion monitor, parent observations of their children’s use of program materials, satisfaction with the program, and parental stress. A process evaluation will be conducted concurrently to assess program performance. Discussion This RCT addresses shortcomings in previous studies and methodologically extends research in this area by randomising at school-level to prevent cross-learning between conditions; providing longer-term outcome assessment than any previous study; examining the degree to which parents/guardians discuss intervention content with children at home; assessing potential moderating/mediating effects of family and child demographic variables; testing an in-vivo measure to assess children’s ability to discriminate safe/unsafe situations and disclose to trusted adults; and testing enhancements to existing measures to establish greater internal consistency.

A second order control-volume finite-element least-squares strategy for simulating diffusion in strongly anisotropic media

An unstructured mesh �nite volume discretisation method for simulating di�usion in anisotropic media in two-dimensional space is discussed. This technique is considered as an extension of the fully implicit hybrid control-volume �nite-element method and it retains the local continuity of the ux at the control volume faces. A least squares function recon- struction technique together with a new ux decomposition strategy is used to obtain an accurate ux approximation at the control volume face, ensuring that the overall accuracy of the spatial discretisation maintains second order. This paper highlights that the new technique coincides with the traditional shape function technique when the correction term is neglected and that it signi�cantly increases the accuracy of the previous linear scheme on coarse meshes when applied to media that exhibit very strong to extreme anisotropy ratios. It is concluded that the method can be used on both regular and irregular meshes, and appears independent of the mesh quality.