China anxieties in the geopolitical cartographies of the Indo-Pacific

Concepts about space and time, such as the Asia-Pacific and the Asian Century, are not articulated lightly in international relations discourses. When a spatial or temporal term comes into vogue, it often comes with political connotations and policy implications. This is the context in which we ought to consider the making of the spatial term Indo-Pacific, which has recently made it into the lexicon of official speeches, think-tank reports, government white papers and scholarly works. While many pundits and practitioners are embracing this new formulation, others cast doubt on its usefulness or even question its actual existence. Yet, despite its sudden stardom in foreign policy circles and some debate around its policy implications, how the Indo-Pacific as a political spatial concept came about has not been well understood.To address this gap, this chapter will first briefly survey the Indo-Pacific debate and examine how the debate has not paid adequate attention to the issue of the Indo-Pacific as a discursive construct. It then turns to how the United States, Australia, Japan, India and China together contribute to the formation of this concept amid ongoing geopolitical anxieties about the shape and trajectory of future Asian regional order. While acknowledging China's role in this constitutive process, I argue that as a discursive construct the Indo-Pacific has been motivated primarily by geopolitical anxieties about a perceived emerging regional order dominated by China. Driven by such anxieties, the concept is not an innocent description of a natural region out there; it has the potential of fuelling regional rivalries and exacerbating security dilemmas. Given its possible destabilising consequences, the chapter concludes with a call for a critical reimagination of this now increasingly accepted term.

Do you really want to ask an underwriter how much money you should leave on the table?

This paper analyses whether the owners of companies seeking to list will leave less money on the table if underwriters are employed to price and market the issue. Our findings indicate that limited liability and Industrial company initial public offerings (IPOs) that have used underwriters have left
more money on the table than those not employing underwriters. Not only is there a direct cost in employing an underwriter but this study suggests there might also be an indirect cost. We also find that a positive forecast earnings per share yield may be useful in reducing the amount of money left on the table.

On the adoption of family-to-business governance mechanisms in Australian family businesses

This study seeks to identify the adoption of certain family-to-business governance mechanisms and whether the presence of these mechanisms assists family businesses with governance matters.

The end of economic growth? A contracting threshold hypothesis

This paper argues that GDP growth in both developed and developing countries has associated costs that can outweigh the benefits and thus reduce sustainable well-being. This conclusion is based upon the findings of empirical applications of the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) to a range of countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The studies conducted on seven Asia-Pacific countries indicate that, in the case of five of the seven nations, more recent GDP growth has reduced the sustainable well-being experienced by the average citizen residing within them. Moreover, the threshold point at which the costs of GDP growth outweigh the benefits appears to be contracting (i.e., occurring at a much lower per capita level of GDP). This paper therefore introduces a new contracting threshold hypothesis: as the economies of the Asia-Pacific region and the world collectively expand in a globalised economic environment, there is a contraction over time in the threshold level of per capita GDP. As a consequence, the threshold point confronting growth late-comers (i.e., developing countries) occurs at a much lower level of sustainable welfare than what wealthy nations currently enjoy. The consequences of this for developing countries are clearly significant and require a new approach to economic development.

The pricing of infrastructure initial public offerings : evidence from Australia

This paper explores first-day returns on infrastructure entity initial public offerings (IPOs) in Australia from 1996 to 2007. While a good deal has been written on the first-day returns of industrial and mining company IPOs and Real Estate Investment Trust IPOs, first-day returns of infrastructure entity IPOs have yet to be reported in the literature. The study uses ordinary least squares regression analysis to identify factors that might influence the percentage first-day returns theoretically available to investing subscribers and factors that might influence the aggregate amount of money left to subscribers by issuers. The study finds that first-day returns, on average, are not significantly different from zero. There is evidence, however, that suggests higher dividend yields and higher percentage direct costs of capital raising influence these first-day returns. The study also finds that infrastructure entity IPOs that seek to raise more equity capital leave less money on the table for subscribing investors.

Epidemiology of acute rheumatic fever in New Zealand 1996-2005

Aim: Acute rheumatic fever (ARF) and its sequela chronic rheumatic heart disease remain significant causes of morbidity and mortality in New Zealand, particularly among Māori and Pacific peoples. Despite its importance, ARF epidemiology has not been reviewed recently. The aims of this study were to assess trends in ARF incidence rates between 1996 and 2005 and the extent to which ARF is concentrated in certain populations based on age, sex, ethnicity and geographical location.

Methods: This descriptive epidemiological study examined ARF incidence rates using hospitalisation data (1996–2005) and population data from the 1996 and 2001 censuses. Rates were compared by using rate ratios and 95% confidence intervals.

Results: New Zealand's annual ARF rate was 3.4 per 100 000. ARF was concentrated in certain populations: 5- to 14-year-olds, Māori and Pacific peoples and upper North Island areas. From 1996 to 2005, the New Zealand European and Others ARF rate decreased significantly while Māori and Pacific peoples’ rates increased. Compared with New Zealand European and Others, rate ratios were 10.0 for Māori and 20.7 for Pacific peoples. Of all cases, 59.5% were Māori or Pacific children aged 5–14 years, yet this group comprised only 4.7% of the New Zealand population.

Conclusion: ARF rates in New Zealand have failed to decrease since the 1980s and remain some of the highest reported in a developed country. There are large, and now widening, ethnic disparities in ARF incidence. ARF is so concentrated by age group, ethnicity and geographical area that highly targeted interventions could be considered, based on these characteristics.

Satellite telemetry suggests high levels of fishing-induced mortality in marine turtles

Long-term records of nesting numbers, or proxies to nesting numbers, show a precipitous decline in the size of many sea turtle populations. Population declines are most frequently attributed to fisheries bycatch, although direct quantification of this level of mortality is rare. We used satellite-tracking records for turtles in the Mediterranean Sea and Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans to identify when turtles had been captured. Evidence for capture came from a combination of an increase in good quality locations from transmitters, transmitters moving inland to coastal towns and villages, and on-board submergence data, showing that transmitters had come out of the water. A high level of mortality was calculated, confirming current concerns regarding the outlook for sea turtles.

PPFSCADA: Privacy preserving framework for SCADA data publishing

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems control and monitor industrial and critical infrastructure functions, such as electricity, gas, water, waste, railway, and traffic. Recent attacks on SCADA systems highlight the need for stronger SCADA security. Thus, sharing SCADA traffic data has become a vital requirement in SCADA systems to analyze security risks and develop appropriate security solutions. However, inappropriate sharing and usage of SCADA data could threaten the privacy of companies and prevent sharing of data. In this paper, we present a privacy preserving strategy-based permutation technique called PPFSCADA framework, in which data privacy, statistical properties and data mining utilities can be controlled at the same time. In particular, our proposed approach involves: (i) vertically partitioning the original data set to improve the performance of perturbation; (ii) developing a framework to deal with various types of network traffic data including numerical, categorical and hierarchical attributes; (iii) grouping the portioned sets into a number of clusters based on the proposed framework; and (iv) the perturbation process is accomplished by the alteration of the original attribute value by a new value (clusters centroid). The effectiveness of the proposed PPFSCADA framework is shown through several experiments on simulated SCADA, intrusion detection and network traffic data sets. Through experimental analysis, we show that PPFSCADA effectively deals with multivariate traffic attributes, producing compatible results as the original data, and also substantially improving the performance of the five supervised approaches and provides high level of privacy protection. © 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Time series analysis of the impact of tobacco control policies on smoking prevalence among Australian adults, 2001–2011

Objective: To determine the impact of tobacco control policies and mass media campaigns on smoking prevalence in Australian adults.
Methods: Data for calculating the average monthly prevalence of smoking between January 2001 and June 2011 were obtained via structured interviews of randomly sampled adults aged 18 years or older from Australia’s five largest capital cities (monthly mean number of adults interviewed: 2375). The influence on smoking prevalence was estimated for increased tobacco taxes; strengthened smoke-free laws; increased monthly population exposure to televised tobacco control mass media campaigns and pharmaceutical company advertising for nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), using gross ratings points; monthly sales of NRT, bupropion and varenicline; and introduction of graphic health warnings on cigarette packs. Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models were used to examine the influence of these interventions on smoking prevalence.
Findings: The mean smoking prevalence for the study period was 19.9% (standard deviation: 2.0%), with a drop from 23.6% (in January 2001) to 17.3% (in June 2011). The best-fitting model showed that stronger smoke-free laws, tobacco price increases and greater exposure to mass media campaigns independently explained 76% of the decrease in smoking prevalence from February 2002 to June 2011.
Conclusion: Increased tobacco taxation, more comprehensive smoke-free laws and increased investment in mass media campaigns played a substantial role in reducing smoking prevalence among Australian adults between 2001 and 2011.

A colostrum trypsin inhibitor gene expressed in the Cape fur seal mammary gland during lactation

The colostrum trypsin inhibitor (CTI) gene and transcript were cloned from the Cape fur seal mammary gland and CTI identified by in silico analysis of the Pacific walrus and polar bear genomes (Order Carnivora), and in marine and terrestrial mammals of the Orders Cetartiodactyla (yak, whales, camel) and Perissodactyla (white rhinoceros). Unexpectedly, Weddell seal CTI was predicted to be a pseudogene. Cape fur seal CTI was expressed in the mammary gland of a pregnant multiparous seal, but not in a seal in its first pregnancy. While bovine CTI is expressed for 24-48h postpartum (pp) and secreted in colostrum only, Cape fur seal CTI was detected for at least 2-3months pp while the mother was suckling its young on-shore. Furthermore, CTI was expressed in the mammary gland of only one of the lactating seals that was foraging at-sea. The expression of β-casein (CSN2) and β-lactoglobulin II (LGB2), but not CTI in the second lactating seal foraging at-sea suggested that CTI may be intermittently expressed during lactation. Cape fur seal and walrus CTI encode putative small, secreted, N-glycosylated proteins with a single Kunitz/bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (BPTI) domain indicative of serine protease inhibition. Mature Cape fur seal CTI shares 92% sequence identity with Pacific walrus CTI, but only 35% identity with BPTI. Structural homology modelling of Cape fur seal CTI and Pacific walrus trypsin based on the model of the second Kunitz domain of human tissue factor pathway inhibitor (TFPI) and porcine trypsin (Protein Data Bank: 1TFX) confirmed that CTI inhibits trypsin in a canonical fashion. Therefore, pinniped CTI may be critical for preventing the proteolytic degradation of immunoglobulins that are passively transferred from mother to young via colostrum and milk.

Human threats to sandy beaches: a meta-analysis of ghost crabs illustrates global anthropogenic impacts

Beach and coastal dune systems are increasingly subjected to a broad range of anthropogenic pressures that on many shorelines require significant conservation and mitigation interventions. But these interventions require reliable data on the severity and frequency of adverse ecological impacts. Such evidence is often obtained by measuring the response of 'indicator species'.Ghost crabs are the largest invertebrates inhabiting tropical and subtropical sandy shores and are frequently used to assess human impacts on ocean beaches. Here we present the first global meta-analysis of these impacts, and analyse the design properties and metrics of studies using ghost-crabs in their assessment. This was complemented by a gap analysis to identify thematic areas of anthropogenic pressures on sandy beach ecosystems that are under-represented in the published literature.Our meta-analysis demonstrates a broad geographic reach, encompassing studies on shores of the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans, as well as the South China Sea. It also reveals what are, arguably, two major limitations: i) the near-universal use of proxies (i.e. burrow counts to estimate abundance) at the cost of directly measuring biological traits and bio-markers in the organism itself; and ii) descriptive or correlative study designs that rarely extend beyond a simple 'compare and contrast approach', and hence fail to identify the mechanistic cause(s) of observed contrasts.Evidence for a historically narrow range of assessed pressures (i.e., chiefly urbanisation, vehicles, beach nourishment, and recreation) is juxtaposed with rich opportunities for the broader integration of ghost crabs as a model taxon in studies of disturbance and impact assessments on ocean beaches. Tangible advances will most likely occur where ghost crabs provide foci for experiments that test specific hypotheses associated with effects of chemical, light and acoustic pollution, as well as the consequences of climate change (e.g. species range shifts).