Econometric fellows and Nobel Laureates in economics

An academic award is method by which peers offer recognition of intellectual efforts. In this paper we take a purely descriptive look at the relationship between becoming a Fellow of the Econometric Society and receiving the Nobel Prize in economics. We discover some interesting aspects: of all 69 Nobel Prize Laureates between 1969 and 2011, only 9 of them were not also Fellows. Moreover, the proportion of future novel winners among the Fellows has been quite high throughout time and a large share of researchers who became Fellows between the 1930s and 1950s became Nobel Laureates at a later stage. On average, researchers became Fellows relatively early in their career (14.9 years after their PhD) and those who were subsequently made Nobel Laureates became Fellows earlier than other researchers. Interestingly, Harvard and MIT have been the dominant PhD granting institutions to generate Fellows and Nobel Laureates in the past.

Integrating ICT into the planning process : impacts, opportunities and challenges

Mobile telecommunications have become a key lifestyle and technological trend of the twenty first century. In the context of increased urbanism and pressure on cites for citizen engagement for the purpose of creating good public places the potential of these technologies raises critical questions for planning professionals. Even though technology has become integral to all functions within our urban environment, little is known about perceptions and relationship between urban planners and the ubiquitous, ever-present digital layer of urban data and information. This paper explores this issue, via three focus groups and an additional follow-up interview with planners from local and state government, education and private sector. This paper explores the issues of integrating information and communication technologies into planning practice and the affordances that these technologies offer for community consultation and placemaking.

Playing with Picturebooks : Postmodernism and the Postmodernesque

Postmodernism has played a significant part in the development of playful and experimental picturebooks for children over the past 50 years. Playing with Picturebooks offers fresh insights into the continuing influence of postmodernism on picturebooks for children, covering a wide range of international picturebooks predominantly from the 1980s to the present. It represents a significant contribution to current debates centred on the decline of the effects of postmodernism on fiction and detects a shift from the postmodern to the postmodernesque. Playing with Picturebooks draws on a wide range of critical perspectives in examining postmodern approaches to narrative and illustration. Chapters discuss how metafictive devices enable different modes of representation, offer different perspectives to authorised version of history, and promote difference and ex-centricity over unity. Playing with Picturebooks is essential reading, not only for academics in the field of children's literature, but also for researchers, teachers and students

Preparing the next generation of HRM professionals : an international comparison of tertiary HRM programs

The future of the HRM profession depends to at least some extent on the quality of preparation of the next generation of HR professionals. This paper examines bachelor degree programs in HRM and the role of professional associations as influencers of curricula. Some 39% of the 599 AACSB and EQUIS-accredited institutions sampled offer undergraduate degrees in HRM. The programs vary in emphasis on HRM competencies. Unsurprisingly, all include foundation work (perhaps a third of the content) in business management. Grouping degree content by regions globally allows benchmarking of degrees against international trends, along with consideration of the increasingly significant influence on curricula by professional bodies, in preparing the next generation of HRM practitioners to manage in organisations that will require strategic thinking, specialist technical skills, and interpersonal competence.

Lignocellulosics as a renewable feedstock for chemical industry : chemical hydrolysis and pretreatment processes

Lignocellulosic materials including agricultural, municipal and forestry residues, and dedicated bioenergy crops offer significant potential as a renewable feedstock for the production of fuels and chemicals. These products can be chemically or functionally equivalent to existing products that are produced from fossil-based feedstocks. To unlock the potential of lignocellulosic materials, it is necessary to pretreat or fractionate the biomass to make it amenable to downstream processing. This chapter explores current and developing technologies for the pretreatment and fractionation of lignocellulosic biomass for the production of chemicals and fuels.

Spatio temporal feature evaluation for action recognition

Spatio-Temporal interest points are the most popular feature representation in the field of action recognition. A variety of methods have been proposed to detect and describe local patches in video with several techniques reporting state of the art performance for action recognition. However, the reported results are obtained under different experimental settings with different datasets, making it difficult to compare the various approaches. As a result of this, we seek to comprehensively evaluate state of the art spatio- temporal features under a common evaluation framework with popular benchmark datasets (KTH, Weizmann) and more challenging datasets such as Hollywood2. The purpose of this work is to provide guidance for researchers, when selecting features for different applications with different environmental conditions. In this work we evaluate four popular descriptors (HOG, HOF, HOG/HOF, HOG3D) using a popular bag of visual features representation, and Support Vector Machines (SVM)for classification. Moreover, we provide an in-depth analysis of local feature descriptors and optimize the codebook sizes for different datasets with different descriptors. In this paper, we demonstrate that motion based features offer better performance than those that rely solely on spatial information, while features that combine both types of data are more consistent across a variety of conditions, but typically require a larger codebook for optimal performance.

Commercial developments in airport precincts : lease and valuation issues : preliminary study

Over the past 30 years the nature of airport precincts has changed significantly from purely aviation services to a full range of retail, commercial, industrial and other non aviation uses. Most major airports in Australia are owned and operated by the private sector but are subject to long term head leases to the Federal Government, with subsequent sub leases in place to users of the land. The lease term available for both aviation and non aviation tenants is subject to the head lease term and in a number of Australian airport locations, these head leases are now two-thirds through their initial 50 year lease term and this is raising a number of issues from a valuation and ongoing development perspective. . For our airport precincts to continue to offer levels of infrastructure and services that are comparable or better than many commercial centres in the same location, policy makers need to understand the impact the uncertainty that exists when the current lease term is nearing expiration, especially in relation to the renewed lease term and rental payments. This paper reviews the changes in airport precinct ownership, management and development in Australia and highlights the valuation and rental assessment issues that are currently facing this property sector.

Commercial and retail leases in Australia Online [6th ed.]

"Authored by well-established leasing experts including Professor WD Duncan, author of the book Commercial Leases in Australia (6th ed), this loose leaf and online service offers a variety of resources to save solicitors and barristers time when negotiating or disputing commercial leasing matters at home and across the country. This is the only work to offer annotated retail leasing legislation for the three main States, including discussion of tribunal decisions and links directly to equivalent provisions in all other jurisdictions. A comparative table highlights key differences and similarities in retail leasing legislation between all States at a glance. Solicitors are then able to draw upon deeper treatment of commercial leasing in all States in principles-based commentary, and access precedents that are readily adaptable for other jurisdictions." -- publisher website

Toddlers’ food preferences : the impact of novel food exposure, maternal preferences and food neophobia

Food preferences have been identified as a key determinant of children’s food acceptance and consumption. The aim of this study was to identify factors that influence children’s liking for fruits, vegetables and non-core foods. Participants were Australian mothers (median age at delivery=31 years, 18-46 years) and their two-year-old children (M=25 months, SD=1 month; 52% female) allocated to the control group (N=230) of the NOURISH RCT. The effects of repeated exposure to new foods, maternal food preferences and child food neophobia on toddlers’ liking of vegetables, fruits and non-core foods and the proportion never tried were examined via hierarchical regression models; adjusting for key maternal (age, BMI, education) and child covariates (birth weight Z-score, gender), duration of breastfeeding and age of introduction to solids. Maternal preferences corresponded with child preferences. Food neophobia among toddlers was associated with liking fewer vegetables and fruits, and trying fewer vegetables. Number of repeated exposures to new food was not significantly associated with food liking at this age. Results highlight the need to: (i) encourage parents to offer a wide range of foods, regardless of their own food preferences, and (ii) provide parents with guidance on managing food neophobia.

Framing Movements for Gesture Interface Design

Gesture interfaces are an attractive avenue for human-computer interaction, given the range of expression that people are able to engage when gesturing. Consequently, there is a long running stream of research into gesture as a means of interaction in the field of human-computer interaction. However, most of this research has focussed on the technical challenges of detecting and responding to people’s movements, or on exploring the interaction possibilities opened up by technical developments. There has been relatively little research on how to actually design gesture interfaces, or on the kinds of understandings of gesture that might be most useful to gesture interface designers. Running parallel to research in gesture interfaces, there is a body of research into human gesture, which would seem a useful source to draw knowledge that could inform gesture interface design. However, there is a gap between the ways that ‘gesture’ is conceived of in gesture interface research compared to gesture research. In this dissertation, I explore this gap and reflect on the appropriateness of existing research into human gesturing for the needs of gesture interface design. Through a participatory design process, I designed, prototyped and evaluated a gesture interface for the work of the dental examination. Against this grounding experience, I undertook an analysis of the work of the dental examination with particular focus on the roles that gestures play in the work to compare and discuss existing gesture research. I take the work of the gesture researcher McNeill as a point of focus, because he is widely cited within gesture interface research literature. I show that although McNeill’s research into human gesture can be applied to some important aspects of the gestures of dentistry, there remain range of gestures that McNeill’s work does not deal with directly, yet which play an important role in the work and could usefully be responded to with gesture interface technologies. I discuss some other strands of gesture research, which are less widely cited within gesture interface research, but offer a broader conception of gesture that would be useful for gesture interface design. Ultimately, I argue that the gap in conceptions of gesture between gesture interface research and gesture research is an outcome of the different interests that each community brings to bear on the research. What gesture interface research requires is attention to the problems of designing gesture interfaces for authentic context of use and assessment of existing theory in light of this.

Heteronormativity, homonormativity, and violence

The existence of intimate partner violence within non heterosexual and/or noncisgendered relationships is gaining greater recognition. There are a handful of community organisations that offer services and assistance to victims and perpetrators of this violence (particularly gay men and lesbians), and the body of research literature in this area is slowly growing. While some critiques warn of the dangers of applying the theoretical and conceptual tools developed to understand relationship violence among heterosexuals directly to queer relationships, the inclusion of queer relationships in these discourses has for the most part been celebrated as a positive step forward, addressing the historical invisibility of sexual minorities in these areas. Nevertheless, the debate about how best to understand and represent the experience of violence in these communities continues, with the focus being to determine whether it is better to expand the tools used to understand heterosexual intimate partner violence to include queer communities, or whether new tools are necessary in order to understand their experiences...

Incident investigation training needs for the Australasian rail industry

A core component for the prevention of re-occurring incidents within the rail industry is rail safety investigations. Within the current Australasian rail industry, the nature of incident investigations varies considerably between organisations. As it stands, most of the investigations are conducted by the various State Rail Operators and Regulators, with the more major investigations in Australia being conducted or overseen by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB). Because of the varying nature of these investigations, the current training methods for rail incident investigators also vary widely. While there are several commonly accepted training courses available to investigators in Australasia, none appear to offer the breadth of development needed for a comprehensive pathway. Furthermore, it appears that no single training course covers the entire breadth of competencies required by the industry. These courses range in duration between a few days to several years, and some were run in-house while others are run by external consultants or registered training organisations. Through consultations with rail operators and regulators in Australasia, this paper will identify capabilities required for rail incident investigation and explore the current training options available for rail incident investigators.

Current speculation in costing approach for Malaysian residential construction

The construction industry has been under pressure for many years to produce economical buildings which offer value for money, not only during the construction phase, but more importantly, during the full life of the building. Whole Life Cycle Costing (WLCC) is a relatively new concept for the construction industry especially on residential development and particularly for Malaysia. Discussing the speculation in using WLCC for the Malaysian residential constructions is the aim for this paper and it is one of the research questions on my research. This paper also wants to gather more speculation that may involve through others experienced. Basically, this paper is written to facilitate the current or future individual which will involve in residential property development sector with a new sensible approach to what at times seems impressively confusing especially in simplifying the operations and maintenance services and rehabilitation as well.

Mediating identity narratives : a case study in queer digital storytelling as everyday activism

Digital Stories are short autobiographical documentaries, often illustrated with personal photographs and narrated in the first person, and typically produced in group workshops. As a media form they offer ‘ordinary people’ the opportunity to represent themselves to audiences of their choosing; and this amplification of hitherto unheard voices has significant repercussions for their social participation. Many of the storytellers involved in the ‘Rainbow Family Tree’ case study that is the subject of this paper can be characterised as ‘everyday’ activists for their common desire to use their personal stories to increase social acceptance of marginalised identity categories. However, in conflict with their willingness to share their personal stories, many fear the risks and ramifications of distributing them in public spaces (especially online) to audiences both intimate and unknown. Additionally, while technologies for production and distribution of rich media products have become more accessible and user-friendly, many obstacles remain. For many people there are difficulties with technological access and aptitude, personal agency, cultural capital, and social isolation, not to mention availability of the time and energy requisite to Digital Storytelling. Additionally, workshop context, facilitation and distribution processes all influence the content of stories. This paper explores the many factors that make ‘authentic’ self-representation far from straight forward. I use qualitative data drawn from interviews, Digital Story texts and ethnographic observation of GLBTQIS participants in a Digital Storytelling initiative that combined face-to-face and online modes of participation. I consider mediating influences in practice and theory and draw on strategies put forth in cultural anthropology and narrative therapy to propose some practical tools for nuanced and sensitive facilitation of Digital Storytelling workshops and webspaces. Finally, I consider the implications of these facilitation strategies for voice, identity and social participation.

Life writing

Two hundred years ago life writing was already highly popular in the form of autobiography, memoir, biography, journals, essays and diaries. It now commands a huge share of the publishing market, as there is an enormous demand from readers for narratives based directly on 'real lives'. There is a lot of common ground between the two main forms - autobiography/memoir and biography: both require skilled storytelling [rather than listing facts and events], research and imagination. The quality of the writing itself is crucial to the impact on the reader. A person can have an existing, worthy life but unfortunately write about it (or be written about) in a dull way. And how a person is remembered and valued can be a factor of life writing about or by them. This chapter will define and contextualise life writing, look at specific detailed examples, and offer guidance on how to write effectively.