Quantification of spatial and thematic uncertainty in the application of underwater video for benthic habitat mapping

This study presents an analysis of the application of underwater video data collected for training and validating benthic habitat distribution models. Specifically, we quantify the two major sources of error pertaining to collection of this type of reference data. A theoretical spatial error budget is developed for a positioning system used to co-register video frames to their corresponding locations at the seafloor. Second, we compare interpretation variability among trained operators assessing the same video frames between times over three hierarchical levels of a benthic classification scheme. Propagated error in the positioning system described was found to be highly correlated with depth of operation and varies from 1.5m near the surface to 5.7m in 100m of water. In order of decreasing classification hierarchy, mean overall observer agreement was found to be 98% (range 6%), 82% (range 12%) and 75% (range 17%) for the 2, 4, and 6 class levels of the scheme, respectively. Patterns in between-observer variation are related to the level of detail imposed by each hierarchical level of the classification scheme, the feature of interest, and to the amount of observer experience. © 2014 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

An alternative (partial) justification for the holding in Kirk

In Kirk v Industrial Court (NSW), the High Court determined that, based on“accepted doctrine at the time of Federation”, s 73 of the Constitutionentrenched the jurisdiction of the State Supreme Courts to review thedecisions of State decision-makers on the grounds of jurisdictional error. In anearlier article, the author argued that this reasoning was seriously flawed. Thisarticle propounds an alternative, partial justification for the holding in Kirk,based on features inherent in the text and structure of Ch III of the Constitutionat Federation and the preservation of those features in the face of thepost-Federation dismantling of the imperial legal system. It argues that animplication can be inserted into s 73 which entrenches the jurisdiction of theState Supreme Courts to review the decisions of “Lower State Courts”, but not“State Administrators”.

Acceptance and leadership-hegemonies of e-commerce policy perspectives

This paper presents an analysis of the e-Commerce policies developed and implemented in the USA, Canada, Australia, Victoria, Finland, Norway, the UK, Ireland, the EU (by the OECD), Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region). The paper shows that e-Commerce policy adopted is generally trying to achieve two fundamental aims:

1. to minimize regulatory environments for e-Commerce; and
2. to ease logistical problems in doing e-Commerce—i.e. in paying electronically, in deliver y of goods and in customs, tariffs and duties.

These strategies are designed to create an environment where e-Commerce is adopted by business and government in these countries to achieve ‘best practice’, to become ‘modern’, to gain ‘efficiencies’, because ‘it is the way to go’, because ‘we must have it, because everybody has it’, and because they ‘perceive the benefits of it’. In essence it is being used to gain hegemony in the economic competitiveness of the geopolitical environment created by the Internet. This paper argues that differentiating types of policy is related to ideology and hegemony in the various countries.

The effect of events context on children's recall of non-experienced events across mutiple interviews

Purpose: The current study examined whether young children's willingness to assent to, and provide details about, a false (non-experienced) activity differs depending on whether the activity was allegedly embedded within (a) a specific event or (b) a broad (non-specified) time frame.
Method:  Ninety-nine children aged 4--5 years (from both low and high socioeconomic backgrounds) either (a) participated in a staged event that consisted of two activities or (b) did not participate in the staged event. One or two days later, all children were given false suggestions about a non-experienced (false) activity that had either high or low plausibility. Approximately 8, 15, and 22 days after the event, children were asked to recall the activities, and to answer a series of specific cued-recall questions.
Results: There was no effect of event context on assent rates, and the rate at which children reported interviewer suggestions. However, children who participated in the staged event provided fewer details about the false activity. Further, among those children who assented to the false activity, fewer subjects, objects, actions, temporal markers, locations, fantastic/improbable details, and confabulation errors were reported when the activity was embedded within the specific staged event.
Conclusion: The degree of error in children's accounts of a completely false activity is reduced when the activity is suggested to have occurred within a specified event as opposed to a broad (non-specified) time frame.

Aging effects on the metabolic and cognitive energy cost of interlimb coordination

Many everyday motor tasks have high metabolic energy demands, and some require extended practice to learn the required coordination between limbs. Eight older (73.1 6 4.4 years) and 8 younger (23.3 6 5.9) men practiced a  high-energy two-hand coordination task with both 1808 and 908 target  relative phase. The older group showed greater performance error in both conditions, and performance at 908 was strongly attracted to antiphase coordination (1808). In a retention test one week following the acquisition trials, the older group had learned the 1808 condition but did not learn the 908 condition. Metabolic energy cost was not different between groups, but the older men showed higher heart rate and both conditions imposed  greater cognitive demands as revealed in auditory probe reaction time. Older adults’ motor learning may be inhibited by elevated heart rate at the same  oxygen cost, increased cognitive cost, and an attraction toward more  established low-energy in-phase or antiphase coordination.

Validation of a food-frequency questionnaire assessment of carotenoid and vitamin E intake using weighed food records and plasma biomarkers: the method of triads model.

Background: Reliability or validity studies are important for the evaluation of measurement error in dietary assessment methods. An approach to validation known as the method of triads uses triangulation techniques to calculate the validity coefficient of a food-frequency questionnaire (FFQ).

Objective: To assess the validity of an FFQ estimates of carotenoid and vitamin E intake against serum biomarker measurements and weighed food records (WFRs), by applying the method of triads. Design: The study population was a sub-sample of adult participants in a randomised controlled trial of b-carotene and sunscreen in the prevention of skin cancer. Dietary intake was assessed by a self-administered FFQ and a WFR. Nonfasting blood samples were collected and plasma analysed for five carotenoids (a-carotene, b-carotene, b-cryptoxanthin, lutein, lycopene) and vitamin E. Correlation coefficients were calculated between each of the dietary methods and the validity coefficient was calculated using
the method of triads. The 95% confidence intervals for the validity coefficients were estimated using bootstrap sampling.

Results: The validity coefficients of the FFQ were highest for a-carotene (0.85) and lycopene (0.62), followed by b-carotene (0.55) and total carotenoids (0.55), while the lowest validity coefficient was for lutein (0.19). The method of triads could not be used for b-cryptoxanthin and vitamin E, as one of the three underlying correlations was negative.

Conclusions: Results were similar to other studies of validity using biomarkers and the method of triads. For many dietary factors, the upper limit of the validity coefficients was less than 0.5 and therefore only strong relationships between dietary exposure and disease will be detected.

The Chinese state enterprise sector: labour market reform and the impact on male-female wage structure

The paper examines the wage structure in the Chinese state enterprise sector between 1981 and 1987. This period is of particular interest given the introduction of major labour market reforms in China during the early 1980s. In essence the reforms represented a movement away from administratively determined prices towards a market–oriented system combined with a relatively flexible system of labour allocation. The Juhn, Murphy and Pierce (1991) decomposition is employed to shed light on the role of changing labour market institutions over the period.

The future of Victoria's greatest asset : the coast. An independent review of the Coastal Management Act 1995 after ten years of operation

This report is in essence a critique of the Victorian Coastal Management Act 1995 (VCMA), followed by recommendations for improving the Act and its implementation. The author recognises that of course the Coastal Management Act 1995 is far from the sole piece of legislation or element of governance for Victorian coastal planning and management (see Wescott, 1988.1990,1993,1995, Birrell,1994). But the Act is the leading element of Victorian coastal governance and hence an analysis and critique of its operation after ten years, and recommendations for improvements to the Act, should enhance future coastal planning and management.

Optimal trajectory characterization for a pursuer navigation scheme

In this paper we examine the geometry of a number of bearing-only navigation schemes for guiding a pursuer from a fixed initial position to a final target position. We explicitly characterize the optimal trajectories for the given problems in terms of analyzing those trajectories which attempt to minimize the error in an estimate of the target position using successive bearing measurements made along the trajectory.

Hyphenated Australia : putting intercultural identity on the conceptual map

Interculturality and intercultural identity is a local effect of the global movement and mixing of people, and those of intercultural identities constitute the fastest growing sector of the Australian population. In an age of globalisation and diversification, what does identity mean for those situated in-between governing notions of racial/ethnic formations, and how is intercultural identity experienced? For those informed by (at least) two cultures, what does multiculturalism, ethnicity and 'Australianness' mean, and where are these individuals positioned in relation to these structures? These questions have critical implications for the Australian nation. Within Australian discourses, interculturality and intercultural identity, in particular, has historically been excluded, rendered invisible. This dissertation is, therefore, one of facilitating visibility. Using the hyphens as a conceptual tool, I argue that in this age of accelerating globalisation the hyphens both makes visible and is made visible by interculturality. The hyphens is that grey and fluid site of intersection between structures of identity and is characterised by liminality - contestation, uncertainty, fundamentally ambivalence. Experiences of liminality, however, dissolve in any given time, opening up new terrain for creativity. Some of these emerging and creative forms of identity, as instigated by interculturality, are explored. Based on interviews with 20 daughters (and their mothers) from intercultural unions, this dissertation places intercultural identity on the Australian conceptual map and analyses the unique position occupied by those with an intercultural identity in their relationship with governing discursive formations of race/ethnicity, embodiment, nation and culture. In essence, the dissertation is concerned with examining the ways in which discursive identity structures intersect with subjective experience, and with the ways in which those with an intercultural identity negotiate those structures and their social relations. This examination raises the fundamental question: is the modernist notion of the material realities of individual lives reconcilable with the poststructural notion of identity as always located in discourse. This modernist/postmodernist tension permeates the dissertation.

Macroeconomic impact of foreign aid to developing countries

The thesis looks at the macroeconomic impact of foreign aid. It is specially concerned with aid's impact on the public sector of less developed countries < LDCs> . Since the overwhelming majority of aid is directed to the public sector of LDCs, one can only understand the broader macroeconomic impact of aid if one first understands its impact on this sector. To this end, the thesis econometrically estimates " fiscal response" models of aid. These models, in essence, attempt to shed light on public sector fiscal behaviour in the presence of aid inflows, being specially concerned with the way aid is used to finance various categories of expenditures. The underlaying concern is to extent to which aid is " fungible" -that is, whether it finances consumption expenditure and reductions in taxation revenue in LDCs. A number of alternative models are derived from a utility maximisation framework. These alternatives reflect different assumptions regarding the behaviour of LDC public sectors and relate to the endogeniety of aid, whether or not recurrent expenditure is financed from domestic borrowing and the determination of domestic borrowing. The original frameworks of earlier studies are extended in a number of ways, including the use of a public sector utility function which is fully consistent with expected maximising behaviour. Estimates of these models' parameters are obtained using both time-series and cross-section data, dating from the 1960s, for Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and the Philippines. Both structural and reduced-form equations are estimated. Results suggest that foreign aid ined as all foreign inflows to the official sector> is indeed fungible, albeit at different levels. Moreover, the overall impact of aid on public sector investment, consumption, domestic borrowing and taxation varies between countries. Generally speaking, aid leads to increases in investment and consumption expenditure, but reduces taxation and domestic borrowing. Comparative analysis does, however, show that these results are highly sensitive to alternative behavioural assumptions and, therefore, model specification.

The risky business of doctoral management

Universities are under no less pressure to adopt risk management strategies than other public and private organisations. The risk management of doctoral education is a particularly important issue given that a doctorate is the highest academic qualification a university offers and stakes are high in terms of assuring its quality. However, intense risk management can interfere with the intellectual and pedagogical work which are essentially part of doctoral education. This paper seeks to understand how the culture of risk meets the culture of doctoral education and with what effect. The authors draw on sociological understandings of risk in the work of Anthony Giddens (2002) and Ulrich Beck (1992), the anthropological focus on liminality in the work of Mary Douglas (1990), and the psychological theorising of human error in the work of James Reason (1990). The paper concludes that risk consciousness brings its own risks—in particular, the potential transformation of a culture based on intellect into a culture based on compliance.

A principal components analysis of New Zealand Board compostion : factors that influence an export strategy

Principal Topic Internationalisation strategies are important for company expansion because New Zealand, with its four million people, has such a small market. There may or may not exist ”agency costs” in the use of Outside Directors. Ownership patterns may also influence Internationalisation.

Methodology/Key Propositions This study uses Principal Component Analysis both in a grounded theory approach and in a confirmatory approach.

Results and Implications We find evidence that in New Zealand, contrary to some previous research elsewhere, outside Directors actually have less influence on Internationalisation than Inside Directors. Private ownership also seems to have a greater association with Internationalisation than other ownership types. A highly reliable sample of 1989 New Zealand company directors showed that such factors as gender, age and location and even industry sector were irrelevant. Two factors were important in explaining whether a company goes off-shore. These are the size and magnitude of the company as well as the ownership type and role of the CEO. In essence, this study validates New Zealand’s present strategy of ”picking winners”, that is, selecting firms based upon factor components. This study adds strength to that strategy because it identifies the concrete components that should be taken into account when picking companies for special treatment, e.g. export promotion.

Against settlement? Owen Fiss, ADR and Australian discrimination law

In his celebrated article, Against Settlement, Owen Fiss objected to settlement for, among other things, securing the peace while not necessarily delivering justice and denying the court the opportunity to interpret the law. Fiss sees settlement as a technique for streamlining court dockets, the civil equivalent of plea bargaining. This paper explores Fiss’s criticisms through the lens of resolving discrimination complaints in Australia. It argues that although it is valuable to offer complainants a system for resolving complaints quickly and informally, especially in a jurisdiction in which complainants are often from marginalised groups, it is also necessary to recognise that this system is limited in how effectively it can develop the law and, by extension, eradicate discrimination. In essence, the system’s operation epitomises Fiss’ opposition to settlement. Modifying the complaint resolution system would improve this situation. The paper concludes by proposing three reforms based on mechanisms used in comparable countries: introducing direct access to the court or tribunal; strengthening ADR by making it voluntary and incorporating a ‘rights-based’ approach; and encouraging the regular publication of specific information about settlements and significant cases.

Comparing methods for prescribing exercise for individuals with chronic heart failure

This study examined the accuracy of current recommended guidelines for prescribing exercise intensity using the methods of percentage of heart rate reserve (%HRR), percentage of VO₂ peak (%VO₂peak) and percentage of VO₂ reserve (%VO₂R) in a clinical population of chronic heart failure (CHF) patients. The precision of prescription of exercise intensity for 45 patients with stable CHF (39:6 M:F, 65±9 yrs (mean±SD)) was investigated. VO₂peak testing is relatively common among patients with cardiac disease, but the assessment of VO₂rest is not common practice and the accepted standard value of 3.5 mL/kg/min is assumed in the application of %VO2R (%VO₂R_3.5). In this study, VO₂rest was recorded for 3 min prior to the start of a symptom-limited exercise test on a cycle ergometer. Target exercise intensities were calculated using the VO₂ corresponding to 50 or 80 %HRR, VO₂peak and VO₂R. The VO₂ values were then converted into prescribed speeds on a treadmill in km/hr at 1 %grade using ACSM’s metabolic equation for walking. Target intensities and prescribed treadmill speeds were also calculated with the %VO₂R method using the mean VO₂rest value of participants (3.9 mL/kg/min) (%VO₂R_3.9). This was then compared to the exercise intensities and prescribed treadmill speeds using patient’s measured VO₂rest. Error in prescription correlates the difference between %VO₂R_3.5 and %VO₂R_3.9 compared to %VO₂R with measured VO₂rest. Prescription of exercise intensity through the %HRR method is imprecise for patients on medications that blunt the HR response to exercise. %VO₂R method offers a significant improvement in exercise prescription compared to %VO₂peak. However, a disparity of 10 % still exists in the %VO₂R method using the standard 3.5 mL/kg/min for VO₂rest in the %VO₂R equation. The mean measured VO₂rest in the 45 CHF patients was 11 % higher (3.9±0.8 mL/kg/min) than the standard value provided by ACSM. Applying the mean measured VO₂rest value of 3.9 mL/kg/min rather than the standard assumed value of 3.5 mL/kg/min proved to be closer to the prescribed intensity determined by the actual measured resting VO₂. These results suggest that the %HRR method should not be used to prescribe exercise intensity for CHF patients. Instead, VO₂ should be used to prescribe exercise intensity and be expressed as %VO₂R with measured variables (VO₂rest and VO₂peak).