Toward the standardization of venture capital investment evaluation : decision criteria for rating investee business plans

This study examined the criteria used by venture capitalists to evaluate business plans in order to make investment decisions. A literature survey revealed two competing theories: “espoused criteria” where evaluation decisions are based on what venture capitalists say are the decisive factors; versus the use of “known attributes” that successful ventures actually possess. Brunswik’s Lens Model from Social Judgment Theory guided an empirical investigation of several different evaluation methods based on information contained in 129 business plans submitted for venture capital over a 3 year period. Data evaluation culminated in the comparison of the percentage of correct decisions (“hit-rate”) for each method. We found that decisions based on the known attributes of successful ventures have significantly better hit-rates than decisions made using espoused criteria. Discussion centred on the goal of achieving consistency in the conduct of venture analysis. Process standardization can aid in the achievement of consistency. Future research will both deepen and broaden insights.

General practitioners’ decision to refer patients to dietitians : insight into the clinical reasoning process

The aim of this project was to describe general practitioners’ (GPs’) decision-making process for reducing nutrition risk in cardiac patients through referring a patient to a dietitian. The setting was primary care practices in Victoria. The method we employed was mixed methods research: in Study 1, 30 GPs were interviewed. Recorded interviews were transcribed and narratives analysed thematically. Study 2 involved a survey of statewide random sample of GPs. Frequencies and analyses of variance were used to explore the impact of demographic variables on decisions to refer. We found that the referral decision involved four elements: (i) synthesising management information; (ii) forecasting outcomes; (iii) planning management; and (iv) actioning referrals. GPs applied cognitive and collaborative strategies to develop a treatment plan. In Study 2, doctors (248 GPs, 30%) concurred with identified barriers/enabling factors for patients’ referral. There was no association between GPs’ sex, age or hours worked per week and referral factors. We conclude that a GP’s judgment to offer a dietetic referral to an adult patient is a four element reasoning process. Attention to how these elements interact may assist clinical decision making. Apart from the sole use of prescribed medications/surgical procedures for cardiac care, patients offered a dietetic referral were those who were considered able to commit to dietary change and who were willing to attend a dietetic consultation. Improvements in provision of patients’ nutrition intervention information to GPs are needed. Further investigation is justified to determine how to resolve this practice gap.

Teacher change in exploring representational approaches to learning science

The researcher worked closely with two biology-trained teachers to plan three teaching sequences in the topics of forces, substances and astronomy that were subsequently taught to Year 7 students. The sequences sought to develop a model of classroom practice that foregrounds students’ negotiation of conceptual representations.

The difficulties encountered by individuals in learning science point to the need for a very strong emphasis of the role of representations in learning. There is a need for learners to use their own representational, cultural and cognitive resources to engage with the subject-specific representational practices of science. Researchers who have undertaken classroom studies whereby students have constructed and used their own representations have pointed to several principles in the planning, execution and assessment of student learning (diSessa, 2004; Greeno & Hall, 1997). A key principle is that teachers need to identify big ideas, key concepts, of the topic at the planning stage in order to guide refinement of representational work. These researchers also point out the need for students to engage with multiple representations in different modes that are both teacher and student generated. A representation can only partially explain a particular phenomenon or process and has both positive and negative attributes to the target that it represents. The issue of the partial nature of representations needs to be a component of classroom practice (Greeno & Hall, 1997) in terms of students critiquing representations for their limitations and affordances and explicitly linking multiple representations to construct a fuller understanding of the phenomenon or process under study. The classroom practice should also provide opportunities for students to manipulate representations as reasoning tools (Cox, 1999) in constructing the scientifically acceptable ideas and communicating them.

Research question: What impact was there on the participating teacher’s practice through the adoption of a representational focus to teaching science?

Data collection included video sequences of classroom practice and student responses, student work, field notes, tape records of meetings and discussions, and student and teacher interviews based in some cases on video stimulated recall. Video analysis software was used to capture the variety of representations used, and sequences of representational negotiation.

The teachers in this study reported substantial shifts in their classroom practices, and in the quality of classroom discussions, arising from adopting a representational focus. The shifts were reported by them as a three-fold challenge. First, there was an epistemological challenge as they came to terms with the culturally produced nature of representations in the topics of force, substance and astronomy and their flexibility and power as tools for analysis and communication, as opposed to their previous assumption that this was given knowledge to be learnt as an end point. The second challenge was pedagogical, in that this approach was acknowledged to place much greater agency in the hands of students, and this brought a need to learn to run longer and more structured discussions around conceptual problems. The third challenge related to content coverage. The teachers sacrificed coverage for the greater depth offered by this approach, and were unanimous in their judgment that this had been a change that had paid dividends in terms of student learning.

Haptic mobility control for teleoperated rovers

Future missions involving human and robotic systems co-resident on the lunar surface may call for rovers to be teleoperated from the safety of pressurized habitats or vehicles. An approach is presented that emphasizes human-level judgment and intuition in the total control of a rover’s mobility actions. This is facilitated through human-robotic haptics interaction. The concept of a haptics cone control surface is presented, which provides a teleoperator with a means to intuitively determine the velocities he/she is commanding to control rover motion. The teleoperator is also provided with real-time, tasks-relevant haptic augmentation indicating suggestive control actions concerning the desired mobility objective. Utility of the approach for teleoperated control of steep terrain traversal is demonstrated in simulation.

The right to an impartial hearing trumps the social imperative of bringing accused to trial even 'down under'

Accused persons who are subjected to a saturation level of negative media coverage may be denied an impartial hearing, which is perhaps the most important aspect of the right to a fair hearing. Despite this, the courts have generally held that the social imperative of prosecuting accused trumps the interests of the accused. The justification for an impartial hearing stems from the repugnance of convicting the innocent. Viewed dispassionately, this imperative is not absolute, given that every legal system condones procedures which result in the conviction of some innocent people. While the importance of guarding against wrongful convictions has been overstated, the imperative to bring to trial all accused has been even more exaggerated. The legal system has displayed a capacity to deal with cases where the guilty walk free. The institutional integrity of the criminal justice system would be significantly compromised by convictions that are tarnished by pre-judgment. Confidence in the criminal justice system is more important than individual criminal accountability. The inability to receive an impartial hearing should result in a permanent stay. The only exception is where the alleged crime has the capacity to cause widespread fear or social unrest. This only applies in relation to serious acts of terrorism. This article focuses on recent legal fair trial developments in Australia, however, the analysis, reasoning and conclusion applies in relation to all jurisdictions where juries determine guilt and innocence.

Evaluation methodology for work integrated learning - placements : a discussion paper

Background: This paper will address the evaluation of WIL (placements) in order to provide a strategy to improve performance in universities' WIL as benchmarked in the AUSSE, GDS and placement unit feedback.
Overview of issue: Although WIL placements are important and valuable for student engagement, learning, graduate employability and industry partnerships, there are few empirical studies or reviews that inform evaluation methodology for them. The assessment of placement outcomes and the student experience is typically more complex than evaluation of a standard university unit because of the wide variation that occurs with placements. Students are likely to be working in different organisations, and working on different projects within their various disciplines. Adding to this complexity, the organisation supervisor is an additional stakeholder critical to the placement experience, and who ultimately makes the judgment of student performance. Although an organisation supervisor may complete an individual feedback form for their students, generally this information is not strategically aligned within a broader university evaluation process. Initial examination of available literature revealed that the multi-dimensional perspective (organisational supervisor, placement co-ordinator and student) is not usually incorporated into evaluation of placements to inform continuous improvement for example. There are gaps in the evaluation process which could be addressed through more  comprehensive evaluation that could be utilised across Faculties and Institutions. In 2010, we will conduct an inter-faculty project to develop and trial an evaluation methodology for WIL placements. It will incorporate a triangulated approach including student, organisation and university supervisor feedback. Preliminary results gained from this project will be discussed.
Argument: An evaluation methodology that is inclusive of a triangulated approach, would provide university stakeholders with comprehensive feedback that could be used to strategically inform continuous improvement efforts in Institutions in the areas of WIL placements.
Implications: The importance of triangulated data gathering leading to a comprehensive evaluation and subsequent improvement strategies will be concluded. Suggested evaluation process and potential tools will be presented.

Height and construction costs of residential high-rise buildings in Shanghai

A widely recognized theme of construction economics suggests that the cost of construction per square meter increases as building height rises. However, over a number of years, research conducted regarding the height and cost issue has established a classic relationship between the two factors which can be represented by a U-shaped curve. This paper describes the study of the height-cost relationship of high-rise residential buildings in Shanghai in terms of the total construction cost and elemental costs while considering the context and commonality of buildings. This research was developed as an extension of the previous work, which examined data for buildings in Hong Kong. Initial findings indicate that the curves illustrating the relationships between height and cost of residential buildings in Shanghai and Hong Kong exhibit different profiles. The dissimilarities indicate that different sets of criteria should be applied in the judgment of height that affects cost in different locations. In terms of elemental costs, the findings suggest that there are differences in the way these costs react to changes in the building height.

Issues in Australian foreign policy : July to December 2010

Two unforseen developments impeded the Labor government’s capacity to pursue its foreign policy objectives in the period under review. Firstly, Labor’s precarious standing in the parliament tilted the government’s policy agenda in favour of issues that the Greens prioritised. Gillard addressed some of these issues, for instance by holding the parliamentary debate on Afghanistan and by pursuing Japan over whaling in the Southern Ocean, but not to the degree that the Greens demanded. Immigration was emblematic of the government’s travails. The Greens advocated an increase in the refugee intake, but the Coalition favoured the resumption of offshore processing. Just when Labor’s proposed Timorese solution was becoming a realistic possibility, the High Court’s decision devalued the entire notion of offshore processing. The only consolation for the government was that the court had reduced the options available to all political parties.

Secondly, the Wikileaks saga revealed that Rudd may no longer be — and perhaps never was — Labor’s trump card in the realm of foreign policy. American assessments of the foreign minister’s character and judgment were in parts scathing. The Obama administration, nonetheless, appeared to readily and usefully absorb his analysis of Chinese politics. Quite how revelations of Rudd’s conversations with Clinton will affect his relations with the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party is another matter. It may well be that Rudd’s influence on Chinese leaders was always wildly overestimated, but in any case it seemed likely that the foreign minister would spend some time rebuilding ties with Beijing in 2011.

A third development — which hitherto had applied more in the realm of perception than reality — similarly threatened to limit the options open to future Australian governments of all stripes: the intensifying debate over alliance management that Hugh White’s essay instigated. Judgments about what sort of region — and what sort of China — Australia will face were imprinted in issues such as the rare earths find and the AUSMIN meeting. By the end of 2010, few issues could be discussed without reference to the China factor.

Towards the improved treatment of generalization of knowledge claims in IS research : drawing general conclusions from samples

This paper presents a framework for justifying generalization in information systems (IS) research. First, using evidence from an analysis of two leading IS journals, we show that the treatment of generalization in many empirical papers in leading IS research journals is unsatisfactory. Many quantitative studies need clearer definition of populations and more discussion of the extent to which ‘significant’ statistics and use of non-probability sampling affect support for their knowledge claims. Many qualitative studies need more discussion of boundary conditions for their sample-based general knowledge claims. Second, the proposed new framework is presented. It defines eight alternative logical pathways for justifying generalizations in IS research. Three key concepts underpinning the framework are the need for researcher judgment when making any claim about the likely truth of sample-based knowledge claims in other settings; the importance of sample representativeness and its assessment in terms of the knowledge claim of interest; and the desirability of integrating a study’s general knowledge claims with those from prior research. Finally, we show how the framework may be applied by researchers and reviewers. Observing the pathways in the framework has potential to improve both research rigour and practical relevance for IS research.

Schooling and the production of social inequalities : what can and should we be doing?

To speak of an ideal is to lay claim to what ought or should be and to explain 'reality' as deviation. That is, ideals serve to provide direction towards some desired goal as well as judgment about how well a perceived reality approximates that desire. In more recent times, the postmodernist critique has provided its own 'reality check' on modernist ideals, challenging the notion that there is one best way to reach Utopian ends. The emergence of postmodern theories has signalled a general shift in 'the structure of feeling'1 from acquiescence to censure of the universal. But it is not as if there are no postmodern ideals. In these accounts, utopianism is more cogently understood as 'heterotopianisms'. While we are convinced by such critique, that there are diverse goals of value and pathways to reach them, we admit to some uneasiness about a 'postmodern pluralism' in which ideals have die potential to wash away into relativism, where one ideal is as good as the next and ways of achieving them are also equally regarded.

The science of our own fiction : affective experiments enacted through creative research

This paper will explore the ways in which art may be understood as an ongoing experiment that interacts with the plasticity of the body to prompt change and affect the body-environment relationship. The arts offer an approach to research that recognizes the importance of the affect in studies of perception and action, self-organization and selection. An affective approach to experimentation would connect cognitive activity to the material processes of the environment in a science of our own fiction. This connection becomes the basis of affective experiments, which aim to yield new insights by merging the creative researcher with self-affecting-experimenter. To this end, I will discuss the scientific objectives of the “rubber hand”, and the ‘mirror-box” experiments are contrasted with work by artists-turned-architects Arakawa and Gins and three of my creative projects to suggest how creative research might enact embodied change. Throughout the paper I will argue that cognitive processes such as attention, selection, decision and judgment are ripe for re-entry and experimentation through an embodied approach to acquiring knowledge that is particular to the arts.

Gatekeeping parenthood : should the state play a role in determining eligibility criteria for assisted reproductive treatment?

The use of assisted reproductive treatment to conceive a child provides the opportunity for the state and/or medical practitioners to play a role in deciding who should or should not become a parent. This article explores the primary criteria used to "screen" people wishing to use assisted reproductive treatment and to exclude them from treatment in some circumstances. It argues that idiosyncratic judgment or general legal presumptions against treatment are not satisfactory, as they are unlikely to predict whether the best interests of a child born as a result of assisted reproductive treatment will be compromised. Rather, such judgments may serve to be discriminatory, and are often misinformed. The author suggests that the law and society should rather serve to support children and parents in need, and to protect existing children from actual suffering or risks of harm.

Sharing the moment : on the Olympic Games as spectacle

Article examining the 'sale' of Olympics drawing on Kant's aesthetics of beauty in the Critique of Judgment.

Monumental vision : a confrontation with the image of the Eternal Return

"Monumental Vision” is a nuanced summary of Nietzschean nihilism and the Eternal Return as rite of passage for free subjects and as condensed image of speculative intelligence proper. Utilizing Gerhard Richter’s “Sheet 692” from Atlas, a series of photographs of the mountains and lake at Sils Maria, Switzerland, as summary judgment of the limit imposed by this condition on all systems of representation, this form of vision discloses the chiasmus embedded in consciousness itself. In constantly revisiting Sils, the very location where Nietzsche “suffered” the vision of the Eternal Return, Richter has engaged repeatedly this origin for what has come into his work via Nietzsche – that is, an elective veil that refuses all compromises with transcendence until such is merged with immanence.

As situated amidst modernist “ideology as intellection”, and subsequent nascent forms of anti-modernism, the Eternal Return as image also signals the return of the Kantian “aesthetic-teleological” synthesis in non-discursive or purely visual agency. As an elective form of aesthetic vision, and as image of time insofar as it registers an overwhelming externality (Other) that nominally swallows and empowers the subject at once, this excoriating sense of universal praxis underwrites artistic and architectural production of the highest order, renegotiating concepts of the paradigmatic.

Utilizing Georg Simmel’s late work on Rembrandt (1916) and his encounter with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (1907), the essay suggests that by the 1920s the avant-garde premises of modernism had already come under attack by an ahistorical and synoptic vision here denoted “monumental vision,” which also contains the imprint of eschatological time (invoking a schism present in rationality as such). The two readings of this image perpetrated by Karl Löwith in Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same (Nietzsches Philosophie der ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen, 1935), or the cosmological and the ethical, while considered irreconcilable by Löwith, have since the 1960s been recalibrated through the figure of the event to pose possible scenarios out of the stalemate of the confrontation between Self and Other (ipseity and alterity) buried within this image as limit. In this manner, the image of the Eternal Return stands at the boundary between two forms of time (or two worlds) and signals the irreducible confrontation present in speculative thought and the necessity of closure through an aesthetic vision that produces a unitary field for all creative acts.

Notably, Nietzsche’s startling vision from Zarathustra suggests that the limit imposed by the Eternal Return is also a mask for an austere condition within subjectivity closely resembling the conundrum of Fichte’s I facing I, or thought turned toward thought itself (absolute subjectivity as cipher for Being). In Alenka Zupančič’s reading, in The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Two (2003), the Eternal Return effectively contains a secret formal function that grinds all “error” to dust – a highly suggestive interpretation that also neutralizes the schism introduced by Löwith between the cosmological and the ethical.

Construction of the descriptive system for the assessment of quality of life AQoL-6D utility instrument

Background
Multi attribute utility (MAU) instruments are used to include the health related quality of life (HRQoL) in economic evaluations of health programs. Comparative studies suggest different MAU instruments measure related but different constructs. The objective of this paper is to describe the methods employed to achieve content validity in the descriptive system of the Assessment of Quality of Life (AQoL)-6D, MAU instrument.

Methods
The AQoL program introduced the use of psychometric methods in the construction of health related MAU instruments. To develop the AQoL-6D we selected 112 items from previous research, focus groups and expert judgment and administered them to 316 members of the public and 302 hospital patients. The search for content validity across a broad spectrum of health states required both formative and reflective modelling. We employed Exploratory Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to meet these dual requirements.

Results and Discussion
The resulting instrument employs 20 items in a multi-tier descriptive system. Latent dimension variables achieve sensitive descriptions of 6 dimensions which, in turn, combine to form a single latent QoL variable. Diagnostic statistics from the SEM analysis are exceptionally good and confirm the hypothesised structure of the model.

Conclusions
The AQoL-6D descriptive system has good psychometric properties. They imply that the instrument has achieved construct validity and provides a sensitive description of HRQoL. This means that it may be used with confidence for measuring health related quality of life and that it is a suitable basis for modelling utilities for inclusion in the economic evaluation of health programs.