Testing for a random walk in Italy's inflation in the post-war period, 1947-1996

This paper investigates the unit root properties of Italy’s inflation rate in the post-war period (1947-1996). To achieve the aim of this study, the Zivot and Andrews (1992) one break test and the Lumsdaine and Papell (1997) two breaks test for unit roots are applied. It is found that inflation for Italy was a non-stationary breakpoint for the period 1947-1996. This result has important implications for econometric modeling and in understanding the behavior of shocks to Italy’s inflation.

Testing for the random walk hypothesis in the case of visitor arrivals : evidence from Indian tourism

Testing for the random walk hypothesis, which asserts that a series is a non-stationary process or a unit root process, in the case of visitor arrivals has important implications for policy. If, for instance, visitor arrivals are characterized by a unit root, then it implies that shocks to visitor arrivals are permanent. However, if visitor arrivals are without a unit root, this implies that shocks to visitor arrivals are temporary. This study provides evidence on the random walk hypothesis for visitor arrivals to India using the recently developed Im et al. (2003) and Maddala and Wu (1999) panel unit root tests. Both tests allow one to reject the random walk hypothesis, implying that shocks to visitor arrivals to India from the 10 major source markets have a temporary effect on visitor arrivals.

A performance testing framework for digital forensic tools

This thesis surveys the latest development of digital forensic tools designed for anti-cybercrime purposes. It discusses the necessity of testing the digital forensics tools, and presents a novel testing framework. This new testing framework takes the viewpoint of software vendors rather than traditional software engineering approaches.

Kernel performance in meeting hard real-time system characteristics (the ARTOS real-time kernel)

Describes the design and implementation of an operating system kernel specifically designed to support real-time applications. It emphasises portability and aims to support state-of-the-art concepts in real-time programming. Discusses architectural aspects of the ARTOS kernel, and introduces new concepts on the areas of interrupt processing, scheduling, mutual exclusion and inter-task communication. Also explains the programming environment of ARTOS kernal and its task model, defines the real-time task states and system data structures and discusses exception handling mechanisms which are used to detect missed deadlines and take corrective action.

Teaching music in New South Wales primary schools : 1920-1956

This thesis concerns the place of music in New South Wales schools from 1920 to 1956. The initial chapters explore issues related to the investigation and the methodology that has guided the research. To provide a foundation for the thesis as a whole, the investigation’s British antecedents are considered and the relevant literature is reviewed. Six broad themes are used as the organisational framework for this thesis: the major events that shaped schooling, the syllabus and recommended music resources, the rationales for the inclusion of music in schools, the place of school music broadcasts, music teaching practice in schools, and the provision of teacher training. Each theme forms the basis of one chapter, with the exception of one extensive theme which is discussed in two adjoining chapters.

This investigation concluded that from 1920 to 1956, the Department of Education’s fundamental aim for schooling was to develop the state’s children into good citizens. Music was valued for its ability to contribute to this aim.

During this period, the Department engaged in a policy of music transmissionism. Specifically, the Department sought to transmit the music values, knowledge and skills that it held in high regard to teachers who in turn were expected to transmit them to their students. The dominant culture and values that were transmitted were those of Britain and the British Empire—that is, music was used to transmit Britishness to children.

The investigation also concluded that during this period there was an expansion of music curriculum and pedagogy in New South Wales. However, in a oneway traffic of ideas between Britain and Australia, it was British music education practices that continued to influence the methods used in New South Wales schools.

In addition, this investigation concluded that there were past periods when New South Wales schools were very musical places—specifically, at the turn of the twentieth century, during the Second World War and during the immediate post-war years. The successes achieved in music during these times required the interplay of six factors: a Department of Education that valued music for the contribution it made to the development of children as good citizens; a Department of Education that provided strong leadership for music by employing a conscientious, inspirational music educator or educators whose sole responsibility was to champion and supervise music across the state; a Departmental expectation that music would be taught by generalist teachers who themselves had developed music expertise during their pre-service preparation or through professional development opportunities offered to them; the existence of a reward system to encourage teachers to increase their music discipline knowledge and skills; a music syllabus that was developmental and hence built on prior music knowledge and skills; and teachers who were able to deliver quality music programs to their students because they themselves were one element in a cycle of respect for music.

The effect of skin passing on the material behavior of metal strip in pure bending and tension

The metal strip used in roll forming has often been preprocessed by (tension or roller) leveling or by skin-pass rolling, and as a consequence, may contain residual stresses. These stresses are not well observed by the tensile test, but could have a significant effect on the bending and springback behavior. With the advent of improved process design techniques for roll forming, including advanced finite element techniques, the need for precise material property data has become important. The major deformation mode of roll forming is that of bending combined with unloading and reverse bending, and hence property data derived from bend tests could be more relevant than that from tensile testing.

This work presents a numerical study on the effect of skin passing on the material behavior of stainless steel strip in pure bending and tension. A two dimensional (2-D) numerical model was developed using Abaqus Explicit to analyze the affect of skin passing on the residual stress profile across a section for various working conditions. The deformed meshes and their final stress fields were then imported as pre-defined fields into Abaqus Standard, and the post-skin passing material behavior in pure bending was determined. The results show that a residual stress profile is introduced into the steel strip during skin passing, and that its shape and stress level depend on the overall thickness reduction as well as the number of rolling passes used in the skin passing process. The material behavior in bending and the amount of springback changed significantly depending on the skin pass condition.

Association between sexual behavior and cervical cancer screening

Background: Not much is known about whether women who follow Pap testing recommendations report the same pattern of sexual behavior as women who do not.
Methods: Data come from part of a larger population-based computer-assisted telephone survey of 8656 Australians aged 16–64 years resident in Australian households with a fixed telephone line (Australian Longitudinal Study of Health and Relationships [ALSHR]). The main outcome measure in the current study was having had a Pap test in the past 2 years.
Results: Data on a weighted sample of 4052 women who reported sexual experience (ever had vaginal intercourse) were analyzed. Overall, 73% of women in the sample reported having a Pap test in the past 2 years. Variables individually associated with Pap testing behavior included age, education, occupation, cohabitation status, residential location, tobacco and alcohol use, body mass index (BMI), lifetime and recent number of opposite sex partners, sexually transmitted infection (STI) history, and condom reliance for contraception. In adjusted analyses, women in their 30s, those who lived with their partner, and nonsmokers were more likely to have had a recent Pap test. Those who drank alcohol at least weekly were more likely to have had a recent test than irregular drinkers or nondrinkers. Women with no sexual partners in the last year were less likely to have had a Pap test, and women who reported a previous STI diagnosis were more likely to have had a Pap test in the past 2 years.
Conclusions: There are differences in Pap testing behavior among Australian women related to factors that may affect their risk of developing cervical abnormalities. Younger women and regular smokers were less likely to report a recent test. Screening programs should consider the need to focus recruitment strategies for these women.

Accountability structures and management relationships of internal audit : an Australian study

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the accountability structures and the management relationships of internal audit. In particular, related issues such as the predominant internal audit objectives and the related functions, the extent to which internal audit addresses any financial reporting risks and the manner in which internal auditors in Australia perform their tasks, are identified. The study also looks at the extent of compliance with the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) Standards.
Design/methodology/approach – Based on a survey of the chief audit executives in Australia, the study identifies the reporting mechanisms, functions and relationships of internal audit, including the contributions made towards good corporate governance. There is, however, some misalignment between the aspirations of internal auditors and their relationships with management.
Findings – While internal audit objectives have been established with a focus on controls, risks and governance, the study has highlighted the fact that there is a lack of correlation between the tasks performed by internal auditors and the important internal audit objectives, with the exception of internal control and risks. The results also suggest that internal auditors have been providing an internal consulting and advisory role in matters concerning IT systems, strategic risks and financial issues. If internal auditors are to proactively contribute to good corporate governance, they need to define how, and in what way, this can be done. In regard to corporate governance processes, the results of the research indicate that issues surrounding internal control, risk assessment and management processes are regarded as the key factors for internal audit to contribute to good corporate governance.
Originality/value – This study complements and contributes to the existing literature in providing insights into the evolving role of the internal audit function in terms of accountabilities and relationships with management. It also provides a valuable insight into how the internal audit profession can build upon its inherent strengths and address any apparent areas of concern. This will assist both the profession and policy makers alike, in better understanding and improving the role of the internal audit process.

Virtual world security inspection : a software inspection process carried out on popular virtual world environments

 Virtual property theft is a serious problem that exists in virtual worlds. Legitimate users of these worlds invest considerable amounts of time, effort and real-world money into obtaining virtual property, but unfortunately, are becoming victims of theft in high numbers. It is reported that there are over 1 billion registered users of virtual worlds containing virtual property items worth an estimated US$50 billion dollars. The problem of virtual property theft is complex, involving many legal, social and technological issues. The software used to access virtual worlds is of great importance as they form the primary interface to these worlds and as such the primary interface to conduct virtual property theft. The security vulnerabilities of virtual world applications have not, to date, been examined. This study aims to use the process of software inspection to discover security vulnerabilities that may exist within virtual world software – vulnerabilities that enable virtual property theft to occur. Analyzing three well know virtual world applications World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and Entropia Universe, this research utilized security analysis tools and scenario testing with focus on authentication, trading, intruder detection and virtual property recovery. It was discovered that all three examples were susceptible to keylogging, mail and direct trade methods were the most likely method for transferring stolen items, intrusion detection is of critical concern to all VWEs tested, stolen items were unable to be recovered in all cases and lastly occurrences of theft were undetectable in all cases. The results gained in this study present the key problem areas which need to be addressed to improve security and reduce the occurrence of virtual property theft.

The normalisation of 'excessive' workforce drug testing?

In 'The normalization of 'sensible' recreational drug use' Parker, Williams and Aldridge (2002) present data on illegal drug use by adolescents and young adults in the UK. They argue that it is both widespread and largely socially benign - ie, normal. We contrast this 'normalisation' thesis with evidence of an increase in the introduction of drug policies - and drug testing - in British organisations. Such policies construct employee drug use as excessive enough to necessitate heightened management vigilance over workers, in order to preserve corporate interests. These contrasting representations of drug use inspire our discussion. We deploy the normal/ excessive couplet to unpick drug taking, to examine organisational drug policies and to comment upon emerging and potential resistance to these policies. Our contribution is to suggest that each of these activities can be understood as simultaneously normal and excessive, in an area where orthodox and critical analyses alike tend to be far more dualistic.

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.

Mutual obligation? Regulating by supervision and surveillance in Australian income support policy

Through an analysis of speeches by government ministers, documents and regulations, this article examines the Australian national government’s surveillance of unemployed people through what is known as Activity Testing, and more specifically as Mutual Obligation. It seeks to merge the social policy analysis of Mutual Obligation with a surveillance perspective in order to delve deeper into the underlying nature of the policy and its implications for people who are unemployed. It does this by 1. Outlining the neo-liberal political theory underlying these policies; 2. Illustrating the nature and extent of surveillance of people in receipt of income support, and 3. Employing Foucault’s concepts of the technologies of domination and the self to highlight the controlling and coercive aspects of Mutual Obligation in achieving certain of the Government’s political and policy objectives. In doing so, the analysis will make visible something of the power exerted over the disadvantaged while subject to such surveillance.

Evidence-informed health policy - the crucial role of advocacy

Health policy makers and clinicians often face similar decision-making challenges. The issues are turbulent, characterised by high risk and complexity, often involve value conflicts and occur in settings of rapid change. Policy makers' decisions are under increasing scrutiny for their use of evidence, with many health policies reflecting political influence rather than rigorous analysis. The evidence-based policy movement offers a range of accounts for this. We argue that advocacy in three critical areas helps explain when evidence is used in the policy making process and then contrast the impacts of advocacy for evidence use in two nutrition policy cases.

Utility of short-term evaluation of presbyopic contact lens performance

Objectives: To establish if evaluations of multifocal contact lens performance conducted at dispensing are representative of behavior after a moderate adaptation period.

Methods: Eighty-eight presbyopic subjects, across four clinical sites, wore each of four multifocal soft contact lenses (ACUVUE BIFOCAL, Focus Progressives, Proclear Multifocal, and SofLens Multifocal) for 4 days of daily wear. Comprehensive performance assessments were conducted at dispensing and after 4 days wear and included the following objective metrics: LogMAR acuity (contrast, 90% and 10%; illumination, 250 and 10 cd/m2; distance, 6 m, 100 cm, and 40 cm), stereopsis (RANDOT), reading critical print size and maximum speed and range of clear vision at near. Subjective assessments were made, with 100-point numerical rating scales, of comfort, ghosting (distance, near), visual quality (distance, intermediate, and near), and the appearance of haloes. At two sites, subjects (n = 39) also rated visual fluctuation (distance, intermediate, and near), facial recognition, and overall satisfaction.

Results: Among the objective variables, significant differences (paired t test, P<0.05) between dispensing and 4 days were found only for range of clear vision at near (2.9 ± 2.0 cm; mean difference ± standard deviation) and high contrast near acuity in low illumination (-0.013 ± 0.011 LogMAR). With the exception of insertion comfort, all subjective variables showed significant decrements over the same period. Overall satisfaction declined by an average of 10.9 ± 5.1 points.

Conclusions: Early assessment is relatively unrepresentative of performance later on during multifocal contact lens wear. Acuity based measures of vision remain substantially unchanged over the medium term, apparently because these metrics are insensitive indicators of performance compared with subjective alternatives.

Patent management and social software

The worldwide increase of patent applications and the important role patents play in economic development make the management of intellectual property (IP) an important area for many companies. At the same time, the complexity in decision-making and IP process management necessitates a high degree of collaboration between various enterprise divisions such as strategy and policy making and market research. In this paper we present an ongoing case study at a large international automotive manufacturer that is exploring the potential of social software to support patent management. We conducted 31 semi-structured interviews to identify relevant patent processes at the company as well as typical operational problems within these processes. This leads us to derive four propositions on how social software can support patent processes. We conclude by providing an overview of the next steps in our research project. Our results present a first step in understanding the role of emerging social software services in enabling collaborative patent management.