The effect of the work environment on accounting students' moral reasoning and development

Puxty et al. (1994) claim that professional accountants are induced to act ethically through two aspects of their socialisation, the education process, and the influence of work experience and role models who show what it means to be ethical. The education of accountants is not simply a matter of becoming technically competent, it is also a process of internalising accepted norms of professional conduct. Student accountants learn acceptable behaviour by learning the principles of good conduct in their education, and receiving advice and observing what significant others do in the workplace. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of the work environment on accounting students moral reasoning and development by comparing the DIT P-scores of accounting students pre and post cooperative education. Cooperative eduction is an industry placement program where students are required to work in commerce and industry for one year. Findings indicate that DIT P-scores decrease during cooperative education suggesting that accounting students, whilst in the work environment, do not reason according to their capability as measured by their pre-test scores.

Intellectual property, creativity and innovation : IP models and the political economy of developing Asia

In advanced capitalist societies, intellectual property laws protecting such subject matter as copyright and patents are justified by a combination of theories, which include the provision of economic incentives to foster creativity and innovation and the prevention of unfair competition. IP academics and policy makers have differing views about the appropriate balance between these objectives and public interest considerations such as health, education and the protection of the environment. These different views entered the policy debate in Asian developing countries in connection with an unprecedented introduction and expansion of IP laws over the last 25 years. This paper will use case studies of law reform from Asia, in particular Southeast Asia, to show that the policy considerations of governments in reforming their laws were often quite different from the standard rationale mentioned above. As much of the IP was, at least initially, held by foreigners and introduced to attract foreign investment, national development considerations were joined with the more commonly quoted objectives to promote the rights, creativity and innovation of individuals. Such national development objectives at times coincided and at other times collided with official explanations and received wisdom about the effects of stronger IP rights.

Especially in the early postcolonial period, copyright laws and other IP laws were frequently restricted or simply not implemented, if they conflicted with development policies in areas such as education or public health. Such policies were slowly changing in the wake of WTO-TRIPS and other international agreements. Nevertheless, the implementation and enforcement of the IP laws has been uneven. Specialised institutions such as courts and IP administering agencies compete with other branches of government and administration for limited funding and a rich repertoire of informal dispute settlement procedures has kept the number of court cases relatively low. In some countries, censorship laws have influenced freedom of expression and led to quite idiosyncratic interpretations of intellectual property laws. Governments often also retain a role in the assessment of licensing and technology transfer contracts. And while there are many programs to foster individual creativity, in most cases R & D activities are still largely taking place in government institutions and this has influenced the thinking about intellectual property rights and creativity in the context of employment.

The paper uses a few case studies to examine the implementation of IP laws in selected Asian developing countries to point to the quite different institutional setting for IP law reform in comparison to European or American models. It reaches some tentative conclusions as to the likely effects on creativity and innovation under these different circumstances.

Software reliability growth models based on local polynomial modeling with kernel smoothing

Software reliability growth models (SRGMs) are extensively employed in software engineering to assess the reliability of software before their release for operational use. These models are usually parametric functions obtained by statistically fitting parametric curves, using Maximum Likelihood estimation or Least–squared method, to the plots of the cumulative number of failures observed N(t) against a period of systematic testing time t. Since the 1970s, a very large number of SRGMs have been proposed in the reliability and software engineering literature and these are often very complex, reflecting the involved testing regime that often took place during the software development process. In this paper we extend some of our previous work by adopting a nonparametric approach to SRGM modeling based on local polynomial modeling with kernel smoothing. These models require very few assumptions, thereby facilitating the estimation process and also rendering them more relevant under a wide variety of situations. Finally, we provide numerical examples where these models will be evaluated and compared.

Latent variable models of need for uniqueness

The theory of uniqueness has been invoked to explain attitudinal and behavioral nonconformity with respect to peer-group, social-cultural, and statistical norms, as well as the development of a distinctive view of self via seeking novelty goods, adopting new products, acquiring scarce commodities, and amassing material possessions. Present research endeavors in psychology and consumer behavior are inhibited by uncertainty regarding the psychometric properties of the Need for Uniqueness Scale, the primary instrument for measuring individual differences in uniqueness motivation. In an important step toward facilitating research on uniqueness motivation, we used confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate three a priori latent variable models of responses to the Need for Uniqueness Scale. Among the a priori models, an oblique three-factor model best accounted for commonality among items. Exploratory factor analysis followed by estimation of unrestricted three- and four-factor models revealed that a model with a complex pattern of loadings on four modestly correlated factors may best explain the latent structure of the Need for Uniqueness Scale. Additional analyses evaluated the associations among the three a priori factors and an array of individual differences. Results of those analyses indicated the need to distinguish among facets of the uniqueness motive in behavioral research.

Linking water-resource models to ecosystem-response models to guide water-resource planning -- an example from the Murray--Darling Basin, Australia

Objectively assessing ecological benefits of competing watering strategies is difficult. We present a framework of coupled models to compare scenarios, using the Coorong, the estuary for the MurrayDarling River system in South Australia, as a case study. The framework links outputs from recent modelling of the effects of climate change on water availability across the MurrayDarling Basin to a hydrodynamic model for the Coorong, and then an ecosystem-response model. The approach has significant advantages, including the following: (1) evaluating management actions is straightforward because of relatively tight coupling between impacts on hydrology and ecology; (2) scenarios of 111 years reveal the impacts of realistic climatic and flow variability on Coorong ecology; and (3) ecological impact is represented in the model by a series of ecosystem states, integrating across many organisms, not just iconic species. We applied the approach to four flow scenarios, comparing conditions without development, current water-use levels, and two predicted future climate scenarios. Simulation produced a range of hydrodynamic conditions and consequent distributions of ecosystem states, allowing managers to compare scenarios. This approach could be used with many climates and/or management actions for optimisation of flow delivery to environmental assets.

Exploring new models of elite sport delivery : the case of triathlon in the USA and Australia

There is a growing body of knowledge that examines the tasks and processes for successful sport and recognizes that sport development activities undertaken within the framework of recruitment, retention, and transition should vary between sports and contexts. There has been little research that has examined newer models of sport development in emerging sports. This research examines elite sport development structure and delivery in the sport of triathlon in the USA and Australia. The research team conducted interviews with representatives responsible for the delivery and development of triathlon. The results show three overarching elements in elite sport development: (1) the sport development process, (2) the sport development setting, and (3) outsourcing delivery of sport development. Triathlon has different processes and settings for sport development between the USA and Australia. However, both countries share a core similarity in how they deliver elite sport through a third party organization. A discussion of the implications for the development of new models of elite sport development ensues.

Models of screening

This article describes models for disease screening and how they have developed in recent years. The discussion focuses on screening for cancer, because most of the methodological advances in screening design and evaluation have concerned cancer screening. The first part of the article describes the characteristics of these models and illustrates them with a discussion of a simple screening model. The second part describes the development, strengths, and weaknesses of the two main types of screening model—analytic and simulation models—with a particular focus on microsimulation models. The third part discusses model fitting and validation, and the final part briefly describes models for diseases other than cancer—in particular, models for screening for infectious diseases—and discusses the current state and possible future directions for models of disease screening.

Statistical models for cancer screening

This paper reviews the application of statistical models to planning and evaluating cancer screening programmes. Models used to analyse screening strategies can be classified as either surface models, which consider only those events which can be directly observed such as disease incidence, prevalence or mortality, or deep models, which incorporate hypotheses about the disease process that generates the observed events. This paper focuses on the latter type. These can be further classified as analytic models, which use a model of the disease to derive direct estimates of characteristics of the screening procedure and its consequent benefits, and simulation models, which use the disease model to simulate the course of the disease in a hypothetical population with and without screening and derive measures of the benefit of screening from the simulation outcomes. The main approaches to each type of model are described and an overview given of their historical development and strengths and weaknesses. A brief review of fitting and validating such models is given and finally a discussion of the current state of, and likely future trends in, cancer screening models is presented.

Development of a tool for evaluation of academic library spaces (TEALS) (0242)

The paper provides a brief description of the tool for evaluating the quality and utilisation of academic library spaces (TEALS). Supported by Deakin University Library, TEALS has been developed out of a research project in the School of Architecture and Building, Deakin University, Geelong Waterfront Campus. The tool is intended to establish the setting for evaluation of physical spaces at different phases of development of new academic library spaces and refurbishment of existing ones as well as throughout the life of buildings. The methodological framework of the tool consists of four key elements; establishing Criteria of Quality (CoQ), determining Quality Indicators, evaluating library spaces against QIs and interpreting results for future improvements. The characteristics that distinguish TEALS from existing evaluation models include adopting an approach that focus on people (students, faculty and library staff), acting as a “reflective” and “empowering” tool and being user-friendly, quick and easy to use.

Establishment and development of a seabird colony : long-term trends in phenology, breeding success, recruitment, breeding density and demography

Few studies document long-term colony-level metrics from colony establishment to maturity (equilibrium) and few test predictions of general models of colony development. We describe long-term trends in a colony of Australasian Gannets (Morus serrator) which has been monitored from an early stage in its development. The colony at Pope’s Eye, within Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, Australia was established in 1984 on an artificial structure and the first nest count (25 nests) was conducted in the same year. The colony was then studied for 15 of 19 years between 1988 and 2006–2007. During the study, 2,516 eggs were recorded, resulting in 1,694 chicks hatching (67 % of eggs), of which 1,310 (77 % of those hatched) fledged. At least 184 (14 %) of fledged offspring returned to Pope’s Eye as breeding adults. Since establishment, the number and density of nests increased (number of nests increased 8.8 % annually), with density increasing at varying rates in different areas of the colony. Early recruitment involved birds from a nearby colony, but within 5 years post establishment the first natal recruits were breeding at Pope’s Eye and thereafter natal recruitment was the main source of new breeding adults (totalling 81.4 % of all recruits). Age of recruitment varied throughout the study, though not systematically, and there was no difference between the sexes. The pattern of rapid initial growth is typical of patterns reported for other seabird colonies. However, as the colony (and birds within it) aged, there was no increase in breeding success and egg laying did not become earlier, as was expected from general models of colony development.

Development of a speaker recognition system using wavelets and artificial neural networks

This paper addresses the problem of speaker recognition from speech signals. The study focuses on the development of a speaker recognition system comprising two modules: a wavelet-based feature extractor, and a neural-network-based classifier. We have conducted a number of experiments to investigate the applicability of Discrete Wavelet Transform (D WT) in extracting discriminative features from the speech signals, and have examined various models from the Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) family of neural networks in classijjing the extracted features. The results indicate that DWT could be a potential feature extraction tool for speaker recognition. In addition, the ART-based classijiers have yielded very promising recognition accuracy at more than 81%.

A cultural models approach to osteoporosis prevention and treatment

This article identifies cultural models of osteoporosis, as shared by community-dwelling older women in southeastern Australia, and compares these with cultural knowledge conveyed through social marketing. Cultural models are mental constructs about specific domains in everyday life, such as health and illness, which are shared within a community. We applied domain analyses to data obtained from in-depth interviews and stakeholder-identified print materials. The response domains identified from our case studies made up the shared cultural model “Osteoporosis has low salience,” particularly when ranked against other threats to health. The cultural knowledge reflected in the print materials supported a cultural model of low salience. Cultural cues embedded in social marketing messages on osteoporosis may be internalized and motivating in unintended ways. Identifying and understanding cultural models of osteoporosis within a community may provide valuable insights to inform the development of targeted health messages.

Cultural heritage and development in South East Asia

This chapter discusses research undertaken into the developmental role of museums and heritage sites in Thailand and the Greater Mekong Subregion, a geographical area that also includes Cambodia, Laos PDR and Myanmar. It contextualizes an international project, the Lampang Temples Project, to explore the potential role that museums and heritage sites can play in place-based development work, particularly in an Asian context where sacred places are simultaneously valued by local members of the community and as desinations for religious pilgrims and international tourists. The discussion of the Lampang Temples Project is located within an understanding of the international discourse concerning the roles of museums in development, including those contributions to the discourse that have originated in the Asia-Pacific region. It is also situated within an understanding of the roles of international agencies and local governments in the promotion of programmes and infrastructure for the preservation of Buddhist heritage and the relationship of this development strategy with tourism. Furthermore, due to the participatory and observational experience of the authors in the Lampang Temples Project, the chapter also considers the issues involved in applying cross-cultural pedagogies to the management of cultural tourism sites, including UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The results of the Lampang Temples Project support the contention that colaborative training models and pedagogies can be adapted, provided that differing cultural contexts and suppositions are appropriately articulated and integrated. Further, it suggests that this type of collaborative approach to the management of cultural tourism sites has the potential to play an important role in Buddhist heritage development processes.

Using models in teaching and learning science

Models can be excellent tools to help explain abstract scientific concepts and for students to better understand these abstract concepts. A model could be a copy or replica, but it can also be a representation that is not like the real thing but can provide insight about a scientific concept. Models come in a variety of forms, such as three dimensional and concrete, two dimensional and pictorial, and digital forms. The features of models often depend on their purpose: for example, they can be visual, to show what something might look like, dynamic to show how something might work, and or interactive to show how something might respond to changes. One model is often not an accurate representation of a concept, so multiple models may be used.
Students’ modelling ability has been shown to improve through instruction and with practice of mapping the model to the real thing, highlighting the similarities and differences. The characteristics of a model that can be used in this assessment include accuracy and purpose. Models are commonly used by science teachers to describe, and explain scientific concepts, however, pedagogical approaches that include students using models to make predictions and test ideas about scientific concepts encourages students to use models for higher order thinking processes. This approach relates the use of models to the way scientists work, reflecting the nature of science and the development of scientific ideas. This chapter will focus on the way models are used in teaching: identifying pedagogical processes to raise students’ awareness of characteristics of models. In this way, the strengths and limitations of any model are assessed in relation to the real thing so that the accuracy and merit of the model and its explanatory power can be determined.