Air Gondwana : Using ICT to create an authentic learning environment to teach basic negotiation skills

In recent years greater emphasis has been placed by many Law Schools on teaching not only the substantive content of the law but also the skills needed for the practice of the law. Negotiation is one such skill. However, effective teaching of negotiation may be problematic in the context of large numbers of students studying in a variety of modes and often juggling other time commitments. This paper examines the Air Gondwana program, a blended learning environment designed to address these challenges. The program demonstrates that ICT can be used to create an authentic learning experience which engages and stimulates students.

Identifiable, queer and risky : the role of the body in policing experiences for LGBT young people

This paper explores how visibly non-heteronormative bodies mediate policing experiences of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) young people, an area that has been mostly ignored in research about policing young people. Informed by interviews with 35 LGBT young people in Brisbane, Queensland, this paper addresses this gap by exploring how the non-heteronormative body mediates policing experiences of LGBT young people. Drawing on Foucault (1984), Butler (1990a), and other queer theory, the paper argues young non-heteronormative bodies visibly perform ‘queerness’, are read by police, and shape police-LGBT youth interactions. While this is complicated by looking at-risk (in terms of risk factors like homelessness, substance abuse), and looking risky (in terms of risk-taking or criminalised activities), the paper concludes noting how youthful LGBT bodies are regulated by police as non-heteronormative and deviant.

A psychosocial approach to understanding young Australians' mobile phone behaviour

This thesis by publication contributes to our knowledge of psychological factors underlying a modern day phenomenon, young people’s mobile phone behaviour. Specifically, the thesis reports a PhD program of research which adopted a social psychological approach to explore mobile phone behaviour among young Australians aged between 15 and 24 years. A particular focus of the research program was to explore both the cognitive and behavioural aspects of young people’s mobile phone behaviour which for the purposes of this thesis is defined as mobile phone involvement. The research program comprised three separate stages which were developmental in nature, in that, the findings of each stage of the research program informed the next. The overarching goal of the program of research was to improve our understanding of the psychosocial factors influencing young people’s mobile phone behaviour. To achieve this overall goal, there were a number of aims to the research program which reflect the developmental nature of this thesis. Given the limited research into the mobile phone behaviour in Australia, the first two aims of the research program were to explore patterns of mobile phone behaviour among Australian youth and explore the social psychological factors relating to their mobile phone behaviour. Following this exploration, the research program sought to develop a measure which captures the cognitive and behavioural aspects of mobile phone behaviour. Finally, the research program aimed to examine and differentiate the psychosocial predictors of young people’s frequency of mobile phone use and their level of involvement with their mobile phone. Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies were used throughout the program of research. Five papers prepared during the three stages of the research program form the bulk of this thesis. The first stage of the research program was a qualitative investigation of young people’s mobile phone behaviour. Thirty-two young Australians participated in a series of focus groups in which they discussed their mobile phone behaviour. Thematic data analysis explored patterns of mobile phone behaviour among young people, developed an understanding of psychological factors influencing their use of mobile phones, and identified that symptoms of addiction were emerging in young people’s mobile phone behaviour. Two papers (Papers 1 and 2) emanated from this first stage of the research program. Paper 1 explored patterns of mobile phone behaviour and revealed that mobile phones were perceived as being highly beneficial to young people’s lives, with the ability to remain in constant contact with others being particularly valued. The paper also identified that symptoms of behavioural addiction including withdrawal, cognitive and behavioural salience, and loss of control, emerged in participants’ descriptions of their mobile phone behaviour. Paper 2 explored how young people’s need to belong and their social identity (two constructs previously unexplored in the context of mobile phone behaviour) related to their mobile phone behaviour. It was revealed that young people use their mobile phones to facilitate social attachments. Additionally, friends and peers influenced young people’s mobile phone behaviour; for example, their choice of mobile phone carrier and their most frequent type of mobile phone use. These papers laid the foundation for the further investigation of addictive patterns of behaviour and the role of social psychological factors on young people’s mobile behaviour throughout the research program. Stage 2 of the research program focussed on developing a new parsimonious measure of mobile phone behaviour, the Mobile Phone Involvement Questionnaire (MPIQ), which captured the cognitive and behavioural aspects of mobile phone use. Additionally, the stage included a preliminary exploration of factors influencing young people’s mobile phone behaviour. Participants (N = 946) completed a questionnaire which included a pool of items assessing symptoms of behavioural addiction, the uses and gratifications relating to mobile phone use, and self-identity and validation from others in the context of mobile phone behaviour. Two papers (Papers 3 & 4) emanated from the second stage of the research program. Paper 3 provided an important link between the qualitative and quantitative components of the research program. Qualitative data from Stage 1 indicated the reasons young people use their mobile phones and identified addictive characteristics present in young people’s mobile phone behaviour. Results of the quantitative study conducted in Stage 2 of the research program revealed the uses and gratifications relating to young people’s mobile phone behaviour and the effect of these gratifications on young people’s frequency of mobile phone use and three indicators of addiction, withdrawal, salience, and loss of control. Three major uses and gratifications: self (such as feeling good or as a fashion item), social (such as contacting friends), and security (such as use in an emergency) were found to underlie much of young people’s mobile phone behaviour. Self and social gratifications predicted young people’s frequency of mobile phone use and the three indicators of addiction but security gratifications did not. These results provided an important foundation for the inclusion of more specific psychosocial predictors in the later stages of the research program. Paper 4 reported the development of the mobile phone involvement questionnaire and a preliminary exploration of the effect of self-identity and validation from others on young people’s mobile phone behaviour. The MPIQ assessed a unitary construct and was a reliable measure amongst this cohort. Results found that self-identity influenced the frequency of young people’s use whereas self-identity and validation from others influenced their level of mobile phone involvement. These findings provided an important indication that, in addition to self factors, other people have a strong influence on young people’s involvement with their mobile phone and that mobile phone involvement is conceptually different to frequency of mobile phone use. Stage 3 of the research program empirically examined the psychosocial predictors of young people’s mobile behaviour and one paper, Paper 5, emanated from this stage. Young people (N = 292) from throughout Australia completed an online survey assessing the role of self-identity, ingroup norm, the need to belong, and self-esteem on their frequency of mobile phone use and their mobile phone involvement. Self-identity was the only psychosocial predictor of young people’s frequency of mobile phone use. In contrast, self-identity, ingroup norm, and need to belong all influenced young people’s level of involvement with their mobile phone. Additionally, the effect of self-esteem on young people’s mobile phone involvement was mediated by their need to belong. These results indicate that young people who perceive their mobile phone to be an integral part of their self-identity, who perceive that mobile phone is common amongst friends and peers, and who have a strong need for attachment to others, in some cases driven by a desire to enhance their self-esteem, are most likely to become highly involved with their mobile phones. Overall, this PhD program of research has provided an important contribution to our understanding of young Australians’ mobile phone behaviour. Results of the program have broadened our knowledge of factors influencing mobile phone behaviour beyond the approaches used in previous research. The use of various social psychological theories combined with a behavioural addiction framework provided a novel examination of young people’s mobile behaviour. In particular, the development of a new measure of mobile phone behaviour in the research program facilitated the differentiation of the psychosocial factors influencing frequency of young people’s mobile phone behaviour and their level of involvement with their mobile phone. Results of the research program indicate the important role that mobile phone behaviour plays in young people’s social development and also signals the characteristics of those people who may become highly involved with their mobile phone. Future research could build on this thesis by exploring whether mobile phones are affecting traditional social psychological processes and whether the results in this research program are generalisable to other cohorts and other communication technologies.

Taxonomy and diagnostics of fruit fly infesting Opiine Braconids in Australia and the South Pacific

Opiine wasps (Hymenoptera: Braconidae: Opiinae) are parasitoids of dacine fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae: Dacinae), the primary horticultural pests of Australia and the South Pacific. Effective use of opiines for biological control of fruit flies is limited by poor taxonomy and identification difficulties. To overcome these problems, this thesis had two aims: (i) to carry out traditional taxonomic research on the fruit fly infesting opine braconids of Australia and the South Pacific; and (ii) to transfer the results of the taxonomic research into user friendly diagnostic tools. Curated wasp material was borrowed from all major Australian museum collections holding specimens. This was supplemented by a large body of material gathered as part of a major fruit fly project in Papua New Guinea: nearly 4000 specimens were examined and identified. Each wasp species was illustrated using traditional scientific drawings, full colour photomicroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. An electronic identification key was developed using Lucid software and diagnostic images were loaded on the web-based Pest and Diseases Image Library (PaDIL). A taxonomic synopsis and distribution and host records for each of the 15 species of dacine-parasitising opiine braconids found in the South Pacific is presented. Biosteres illusorius Fischer (1971) was formally transferred to the genus Fopius and a new species, Fopius ferrari Carmichael and Wharton (2005), was described. Other species dealt with were Diachasmimorpha hageni (Fullaway, 1952), D. kraussii (Fullaway, 1951), D. longicaudata (Ashmead, 1905), D. tryoni (Cameron, 1911), Fopius arisanus (Sonan, 1932), F. deeralensis (Fullaway, 1950), F. schlingeri Wharton (1999), Opius froggatti Fullaway (195), Psyttalia fijiensis (Fullaway, 1936), P. muesebecki (Fischer, 1963), P. novaguineensis (Szépliget, 1900i) and Utetes perkinsi (Fullaway, 1950). This taxonomic component of the thesis has been formally published in the scientific literature. An interactive diagnostics package (“OpiineID”) was developed, the centre of which is a Lucid based multi-access key. Because the diagnostics package is computer based, without the space limitations of the journal publication, there is no pictorial limit in OpiineID and so it is comprehensively illustrated with SEM photographs, full colour photographs, line drawings and fully rendered illustrations. The identification key is only one small component of OpiineID and the key is supported by fact sheets with morphological descriptions, host associations, geographical information and images. Each species contained within the OpiineID package has also been uploaded onto the PaDIL website (www.padil.gov.au). Because the identification of fruit fly parasitoids is largely of concern to fruit fly workers, rather than braconid specialists, this thesis deals directly with an area of growing importance to many areas of pure and applied biology; the nexus between taxonomy and diagnostics. The Discussion chapter focuses on this area, particularly the opportunities offered by new communication and information tools as new ways delivering the outputs of taxonomic science.

Exploring young children's web searching and technoliteracy

Purpose – This paper aims to report findings from an exploratory study investigating the web interactions and technoliteracy of children in the early childhood years. Previous research has studied aspects of older children’s technoliteracy and web searching; however, few studies have analyzed web search data from children younger than six years of age. Design/methodology/approach – The study explored the Google web searching and technoliteracy of young children who are enrolled in a “preparatory classroom” or kindergarten (the year before young children begin compulsory schooling in Queensland, Australia). Young children were video- and audio-taped while conducting Google web searches in the classroom. The data were qualitatively analysed to understand the young children’s web search behaviour. Findings – The findings show that young children engage in complex web searches, including keyword searching and browsing, query formulation and reformulation, relevance judgments, successive searches, information multitasking and collaborative behaviours. The study results provide significant initial insights into young children’s web searching and technoliteracy. Practical implications – The use of web search engines by young children is an important research area with implications for educators and web technologies developers. Originality/value – This is the first study of young children’s interaction with a web search engine.

Cyber bullying in schools and the law : is there an effective means of addressing the power imbalance?

Cyber bullying – or bullying through the use of technology – is a growing phenomenon which is currently most commonly experienced by young people and the consequences manifested in schools. Cyber bullying shares many of the same attributes as face-to-face bullying such as a power imbalance and a sense of helplessness on the part of the target. Not surprisingly, targets of face-to-face bullying are increasingly turning to the law, and it is likely that targets of cyber bullying may also do so in an appropriate case. This article examines the various criminal, civil and vilification laws that may apply to cases of cyber bullying and assesses the likely effectiveness of these laws as a means of redressing that power imbalance between perpetrator and target.

Mining patterns and factors contributing to crash severity on road curves

Road curves are an important feature of road infrastructure and many serious crashes occur on road curves. In Queensland, the number of fatalities is twice as many on curves as that on straight roads. Therefore, there is a need to reduce drivers’ exposure to crash risk on road curves. Road crashes in Australia and in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) have plateaued in the last five years (2004 to 2008) and the road safety community is desperately seeking innovative interventions to reduce the number of crashes. However, designing an innovative and effective intervention may prove to be difficult as it relies on providing theoretical foundation, coherence, understanding, and structure to both the design and validation of the efficiency of the new intervention. Researchers from multiple disciplines have developed various models to determine the contributing factors for crashes on road curves with a view towards reducing the crash rate. However, most of the existing methods are based on statistical analysis of contributing factors described in government crash reports. In order to further explore the contributing factors related to crashes on road curves, this thesis designs a novel method to analyse and validate these contributing factors. The use of crash claim reports from an insurance company is proposed for analysis using data mining techniques. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to use data mining techniques to analyse crashes on road curves. Text mining technique is employed as the reports consist of thousands of textual descriptions and hence, text mining is able to identify the contributing factors. Besides identifying the contributing factors, limited studies to date have investigated the relationships between these factors, especially for crashes on road curves. Thus, this study proposed the use of the rough set analysis technique to determine these relationships. The results from this analysis are used to assess the effect of these contributing factors on crash severity. The findings obtained through the use of data mining techniques presented in this thesis, have been found to be consistent with existing identified contributing factors. Furthermore, this thesis has identified new contributing factors towards crashes and the relationships between them. A significant pattern related with crash severity is the time of the day where severe road crashes occur more frequently in the evening or night time. Tree collision is another common pattern where crashes that occur in the morning and involves hitting a tree are likely to have a higher crash severity. Another factor that influences crash severity is the age of the driver. Most age groups face a high crash severity except for drivers between 60 and 100 years old, who have the lowest crash severity. The significant relationship identified between contributing factors consists of the time of the crash, the manufactured year of the vehicle, the age of the driver and hitting a tree. Having identified new contributing factors and relationships, a validation process is carried out using a traffic simulator in order to determine their accuracy. The validation process indicates that the results are accurate. This demonstrates that data mining techniques are a powerful tool in road safety research, and can be usefully applied within the Intelligent Transport System (ITS) domain. The research presented in this thesis provides an insight into the complexity of crashes on road curves. The findings of this research have important implications for both practitioners and academics. For road safety practitioners, the results from this research illustrate practical benefits for the design of interventions for road curves that will potentially help in decreasing related injuries and fatalities. For academics, this research opens up a new research methodology to assess crash severity, related to road crashes on curves.

Listening to late discovery adoption and donor offspring stories : adoption, ethics and implications for contemporary donor insemination practices

For most of the 20th Century a ‘closed’ system of adoption was practised throughout Australia and other modern Western societies. This ‘closed’ system was characterised by sealed records; amended birth certificates to conceal the adoption, and prohibited contact with all biological family. Despite claims that these measures protected these children from the taint of illegitimacy the central motivations were far more complex, involving a desire to protect couples from the stigma of infertility and to provide a socially acceptable family structure (Triseliotis, Feast, & Kyle, 2005; Marshall & McDonald, 2001). From the 1960s significant evidence began to emerge that many adopted children and adults were experiencing higher incidences of psychological difficulties, characterised by problems with psychological adjustment, building self-esteem and forming a secure personal identity. These difficulties became grouped under the term ‘genealogical bewilderment’. As a result, new policies and practices were introduced to try to place the best interests of the child at the forefront. These changes reflected new understandings of adoption; as not only an individual process but also as a social and relational process that continues throughout life. Secrecy and the withholding of birth information are now prohibited in the overwhelming majority of all domestic adoptions processed in Australia (Marshall & McDonald, 2001). One little known consequence of this ‘closed’ system of adoption was the significant number of children who were never told of their adoptive status. As a consequence, some have discovered or had this information disclosed to them, as adults. The first study that looked at the late discovery of genetic origins experiences was conducted by the Post Adoption Resource Centre in New South Wales in 1999. This report found that the participants in their study expressed feelings of disbelief, confusion, anger, sorrow and loss. Further, the majority of participants continued to struggle with issues arising from this intentional concealment of their genetic origins (Perl & Markham, 1999). A second and more recent study (Passmore, Feeney & Foulstone, 2007) looked at the issue of secrecy in adoptive families as part of a broader study of 144 adult adoptees. This study found that secrecy and/or lies or misinformation on the part of adoptive parents had negative effects on both personal identity and relationships with others. The authors noted that those adoptees who found out about their adoption as adults were ‘especially likely to feel a sense of betrayal’ (p.4). Over recent years, stories of secrecy and late discovery have also started to emerge from sperm donor conceived adults (Spencer, 2007; Turner & Coyle, 2000). Current research evidence shows that although a majority of couples during the donor assisted conception process indicate that they intend to tell the offspring about their origins, as many as two-thirds or more of couples continue to withhold this information from their children (Akker, 2006; Gottlieb, A. McWhinnie, 2001; Salter-Ling, Hunter, & Glover, 2001). Why do they keep this secret? Infertility involves a range of complex factors that are often left unresolved or poorly understood by those choosing insemination by donor as a form of family building (Schaffer, J. A., & Diamond, R., 1993). These factors may only impact after the child is born, when resemblance talk becomes most pronounced. Resemblance talk is an accepted form of public discourse and a social convention that legitimises the child as part of the family and is part of the process of constructing the child’s identity within the family. Couples tend to become focused on resemblance as this is where they feel most vulnerable, and the lack of resemblance to the parenting father may trigger his sense of loss (Becker, Butler, & Nachtigall, 2005).

Resistance : re-imagining innovation in higher education teaching and learning

The call to innovate is ubiquitous across the Australian educational policy context. The claims of innovative practices and environments that occur frequently in university mission statements, strategic plans and marketing literature suggest that this exhortation to innovate appears to have been taken up enthusiastically by the university sector. Throughout the history of universities, a range of reported deficiencies of higher education have worked to produce a notion of crisis. At present, it would seem that innovation is positioned as the solution to the notion of crisis. This thesis is an inquiry into how the insistence on innovation works to both enable and constrain teaching and learning practices in Australian universities. Alongside the interplay between innovation and crisis is the link between resistance and innovation, a link which remains largely unproblematized in the scholarly literature. This thesis works to locate and unsettle understandings of a relationship between innovation and Australian higher education. The aim of this inquiry is to generate new understandings of what counts as innovation within this context and how innovation is enacted. The thesis draws on a number of postmodernist theorists, whose works have informed firstly the research method, and then the analysis and findings. Firstly, there is an assumption that power is capillary and works through discourse to enact power relations which shape certain truths (Foucault, 1990). Secondly, this research scrutinised language practices which frame the capacity for individuals to act, alongside the language practices which encourage an individual to adopt certain attitudes and actions as one’s own (Foucault, 1988). Thirdly, innovation talk is read in this thesis as an example of needs talk, that is, as a medium through which what is considered domestic, political or economic is made and contested (Fraser, 1989). Fourthly, relationships between and within discourses were identified and analysed beyond cause and effect descriptions, and more productively considered to be in a constant state of becoming (Deleuze, 1987). Finally, the use of ironic research methods assisted in producing alternate configurations of innovation talk which are useful and new (Rorty, 1989). The theoretical assumptions which underpin this thesis inform a document analysis methodology, used to examine how certain texts work to shape the ways in which innovation is constructed. The data consisted of three Federal higher education funding policies selected on the rationale that these documents, as opposed to state or locally based policy and legislation, represent the only shared policy context for all Australian universities. The analysis first provided a modernist reading of the three documents, and this was followed by postmodernist readings of these same policy documents. The modernist reading worked to locate and describe the current truths about innovation. The historical context in which the policy was produced as well as the textual features of the document itself were important to this reading. In the first modernist reading, the binaries involved in producing proper and improper notions of innovation were described and analysed. In the process of the modernist analysis and the subsequent location of binary organisation, a number of conceptual collisions were identified, and these sites of struggle were revisited, through the application of a postmodernist reading. By applying the theories of Rorty (1989) and Fraser (1989) it became possible to not treat these sites as contradictory and requiring resolution, but rather as spaces in which binary tensions are necessary and productive. This postmodernist reading constructed new spaces for refusing and resisting dominant discourses of innovation which value only certain kinds of teaching and learning practices. By exploring a number of ironic language practices found within the policies, this thesis proposes an alternative way of thinking about what counts as innovation and how it happens. The new readings of innovation made possible through the work of this thesis were in response to a suite of enduring, inter-related questions – what counts as innovation?, who or what supports innovation?, how does innovation occur?, and who are the innovators?. The truths presented in response to these questions were treated as the language practices which constitute a dominant discourse of innovation talk. The collisions that occur within these truths were the contested sites which were of most interest for the analysis. The thesis concludes by presenting a theoretical blueprint which works to shift the boundaries of what counts as innovation and how it happens in a manner which is productive, inclusive and powerful. This blueprint forms the foundation upon which a number of recommendations are made for both my own professional practice and broader contexts. In keeping with the conceptual tone of this study, these recommendations are a suite of new questions which focus attention on the boundaries of innovation talk as an attempt to re-configure what is valued about teaching and learning at university.

Emergency department nurses' understanding and experiences of implementing discharge planning

Aim: This paper is a report of a study conducted to describe emergency department nurses' understanding and experiences of implementing discharge planning. ---------- Background: Discharge planning in the emergency department is an important issue because of increased healthcare costs and greater emphasis on continuity of care. When executed as a collaborative process involving a multi-disciplinary team with the patient and family, discharge planning provides continuity of care for patients, less demand on hospitals, improvement in community services and in the services of other healthcare organizations. ---------- Method: The qualitative approach of phenomenography was used in this study. Thirty-two emergency department nurses were recruited between July and September 2005. Semi-structured interviews were conducted. ---------- Findings: From interviewees' descriptions of implementing discharge planning, six categories were established: implementing discharge planning as 'getting rid of my patients', completing routines, being involved in patient education, professionally accountable practice, autonomous practice and demonstrating professional emergency department nursing care. The referential meaning of implementing discharge planning 'in the outcome space' was the professional commitment to emergency department provision of effective discharge services. ---------- Conclusion: The results of this research contribute to knowledge of emergency department nurses' experience in the implementation of the discharge planning process. Key requirements for the provision of manageable discharge services both in Taiwan and worldwide highlighted by this study include adequate workloads, sufficient time, clear policies and standards of discharge planning and enhancement of professional commitment.

Characteristics of sustainable entrepreneurship : some early explorations from the CAUSEE study

Principal Topic: For forward thinking companies, the environment may represent the ''biggest opportunity for enterprise and invention the industrial world has ever seen'' (Cairncross 1990). Increasing awareness of environmental and sustainability issues through media including the promotion of Al Gore's ''An Inconvenient Truth'' has seen increased awareness of environmental and sustainability issues and increased demand for business processes that reduce detrimental environmental impacts of global development (Dean & McMullen 2007). The increased demand for more environmentally sensitive products and services represents an opportunity for the development of ventures that seek to satisfy this demand through entrepreneurial action. As a consequence, increasing recent market developments in renewable energy, carbon emissions, fuel cells, green building, and other sectors suggest an increasing importance of opportunities for environmental entrepreneurship (Dean and McMullen 2007) and increasingly important area of business activity (Schaper 2005). In the last decade in particular, big business has sought to develop a more ''sustainability/ green friendly'' orientation as a response to public pressure and increased government legislation and policy to improve environmental performance (Cohen and Winn 2007). Whilst much of the literature and media is littered with examples of sustainability practices of large firms, nascent and young sustainability firms have only recently begun generating strong research and policy interest (Shepherd, Kuskova and Patzelt 2009): not only for their potential to generate above average financial performance and returns owing to a greater popularity and demand towards sustainability products and services offerings, but also for their intent to lessen environmental impacts, and to provide a more accurate reflection of the ''true cost'' of market offerings taking into account carbon and environmental impacts. More specifically, researchers have suggested that although the previous focus has been on large firms and their impact on the environment, the estimated collective impact of entries and exits of nascent and young firms in development is substantial and could outweigh the combined environmental impact of large companies (Hillary, 2000). Therefore, it may be argued that greater attention should be paid to nascent and young firms and researching sustainability practices, for both their impact in reducing environmental impacts and potential higher financial performance. Whilst acknowledging this research only uses the first wave of a four year longitudinal study of nascent and young firms, it can still begin to provide initial analysis on which to continue further research. The aim of this paper therefore is to provide an overview of the emerging literature in sustainable entrepreneurship and to present some selected preliminary results from the first wave of the data collection, with comparison, where appropriate, of sustainable and firms that do not fulfil this criteria. ''One of the key challenges in evaluating sustainability entrepreneurship is the lack of agreement in how it is defined'' (Schaper, 2005: 10). Some evaluate sustainable entrepreneurs simply as one category of entrepreneurs with little difference between them and traditional entrepreneurs (Dees, 1998). Other research recognises values-based sustainable enterprises requiring a unique perspective (Parrish, 2005). Some see the environmental or sustainable entrepreneurship is a subset of social entrepreneurship (Cohen & Winn, 2007; Dean & McMullen, 2007) whilst others see it as a separate, distinct theory (Archer 2009). Following one of the first definitions of sustainability developed by the Brundtland Commission (1987) we define sustainable entrepreneurship as firms which ''seek to meet the needs and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability to meet those of the future''. ---------- Methodology/Key Propositions: In this exploratory paper we investigate sustainable entrepreneurship using Cohen et al.'s (2008) framework to identify strategies of nascent and young entrepreneurial firms. We use data from The Comprehensive Australian Study of Entrepreneurial Emergence (CAUSEE). This study shares the general empirical approach with PSED studies in the US (Reynolds et al 1994; Reynolds & Curtin 2008). The overall study uses samples of 727 nascent (not yet operational) firms and another 674 young firms, the latter being in an operational stage but less than four years old. To generate the sub sample of sustainability firms, we used content analysis techniques on firm titles, descriptions and product descriptions provided by respondents. Two independent coders used a predefined codebook developed from our review of the sustainability entrepreneurship literature (Cohen et al. 2009) to evaluate the content based on terms such as ''sustainable'' ''eco-friendly'' ''renewable energy'' ''environment'' amongst others. The inter-rater reliability was checked and the Kappa's co-efficient was found to be within the acceptable range (0.746). 85 firms fulfilled the criteria given for inclusion in the sustainability cohort. ---------- Results and Implications: The results for this paper are based on Wave one of the CAUSEE survey which has been completed and the data is available for analysis. It is expected that the findings will assist in beginning to develop an understanding of nascent and young firms that are driven to contribute to a society which is sustainable, not just from an economic perspective (Cohen et al 2008), but from an environmental and social perspective as well. The CAUSEE study provides an opportunity to compare the characteristics of sustainability entrepreneurs with entrepreneurial firms without a stated environmental purpose, which constitutes the majority of the new firms created each year, using a large scale novel longitudinal dataset. The results have implications for Government in the design of better conditions for the creation of new business, firms who assist sustainability in developing better advice programs in line with a better understanding of their needs and requirements, individuals who may be considering becoming entrepreneurs in high potential arenas and existing entrepreneurs make better decisions.

The mechanical response of the ovine lumbar anulus fibrosus to uniaxial, biaxial and shear loads

Analytical and computational models of the intervertebral disc (IVD) are commonly employed to enhance understanding of the biomechanics of the human spine and spinal motion segments. The accuracy of these models in predicting physiological behaviour of the spine is intrinsically reliant on the accuracy of the material constitutive representations employed to represent the spinal tissues. There is a paucity of detailed mechanical data describing the material response of the reinforced­ground matrix in the anulus fibrosus of the IVD. In the present study, the ‘reinforced­ground matrix’ was defined as the matrix with the collagen fibres embedded but not actively bearing axial load, thus incorporating the contribution of the fibre-fibre and fibre-matrix interactions. To determine mechanical parameters for the anulus ground matrix, mechanical tests were carried out on specimens of ovine anulus, under unconfined uniaxial compression, simple shear and biaxial compression. Test specimens of ovine anulus fibrosus were obtained with an adjacent layer of vertebral bone/cartilage on the superior and inferior specimen surface. Specimen geometry was such that there were no continuous collagen fibres coupling the two endplates. Samples were subdivided according to disc region - anterior, lateral and posterior - to determine the regional inhomogeneity in the anulus mechanical response. Specimens were loaded at a strain rate sufficient to avoid fluid outflow from the tissue and typical stress-strain responses under the initial load application and under repeated loading were determined for each of the three loading types. The response of the anulus tissue to the initial and repeated load cycles was significantly different for all load types, except biaxial compression in the anterior anulus. Since the maximum applied strain exceeded the damage strain for the tissue, experimental results for repeated loading reflected the mechanical ability of the tissue to carry load, subsequent to the initiation of damage. To our knowledge, this is the first study to provide experimental data describing the response of the ‘reinforced­ground matrix’ to biaxial compression. Additionally, it is novel in defining a study objective to determine the regionally inhomogeneous response of the ‘reinforced­ground matrix’ under an extensive range of loading conditions suitable for mechanical characterisation of the tissue. The results presented facilitate the development of more detailed and comprehensive constitutive descriptions for the large strain nonlinear elastic or hyperelastic response of the anulus ground matrix.

The contribution of different androgen receptor domains to receptor dimerization and signaling

The androgen receptor (AR) is a ligand-activated transcription factor of the nuclear receptor superfamily that plays a critical role in male physiology and pathology. Activated by binding of the native androgens testosterone and 5-dihydrotestosterone, the AR regulates transcription of genes involved in the development and maintenance of male phenotype and male reproductive function as well as other tissues such as bone and muscle. Deregulation of AR signaling can cause a diverse range of clinical conditions, including the X-linked androgen insensitivity syndrome, a form of motor neuron disease known as Kennedy’s disease, and male infertility. In addition, there is now compelling evidence that the AR is involved in all stages of prostate tumorigenesis including initiation, progression, and treatment resistance. To better understand the role of AR signaling in the pathogenesis of these conditions, it is important to have a comprehensive understanding of the key determinants of AR structure and function. Binding of androgens to the AR induces receptor dimerization, facilitating DNA binding and the recruitment of cofactors and transcriptional machinery to regulate expression of target genes. Various models of dimerization have been described for the AR, the most well characterized interaction being DNA-binding domain- mediated dimerization, which is essential for the AR to bind DNA and regulate transcription. Additional AR interactions with potential to contribute to receptor dimerization include the intermolecular interaction between the AR amino terminal domain and ligand-binding domain known as the N-terminal/C-terminal interaction, and ligand-binding domain dimerization. In this review, we discuss each form of dimerization utilized by the AR to achieve transcriptional competence and highlight that dimerization through multiple domains is necessary for optimal AR signaling.

Virtual fences for controlling cows

We describe a moving virtual fence algorithm for herding cows. Each animal in the herd is given a smart collar consisting of a GPS, PDA, wireless networking and a sound amplifier. Using the GPS, the animal's location can be verified relative to the fence boundary. When approaching the perimeter, the animal is presented with a sound stimulus whose effect is to move away. We have developed the virtual fence control algorithm for moving a herd. We present simulation results and data from experiments with 8 cows equipped with smart collars.

Teachers reporting child sexual abuse : towards evidence-based reform of law, policy and practice

This report presents the results of the largest study ever conducted into the law, policy and practice of primary school teachers’ reporting of child sexual abuse in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia. The study included the largest Australian survey of teachers about reporting sexual abuse, in both government and non-government schools (n=470). Our research has produced evidence-based findings to enhance law, policy and practice about teachers’ reporting of child sexual abuse. The major benefits of our findings and recommendations are to: • Show how the legislation in each State can be improved; • Show how the policies in government and non-government school sectors can be improved; and • Show how teacher training can be improved. These improvements can enhance the already valuable contribution that teachers are making to identify cases of child sexual abuse. Based on the findings of our research, this report proposes solutions to issues in seven key areas of law, policy and practice. These solutions are relevant for State Parliaments, government and non-government educational authorities, and child protection departments. The solutions in each State are practicable, low-cost, and align with current government policy approaches. Implementing these solutions will: • protect more children from sexual abuse; • save cost to governments and society; • develop a professional teacher workforce better equipped for their child protection role; and • protect government and school authorities from legal liability.