IT based approaches for integrating construction safety regulations with construction planning

The concept of a construction accident is extending from the traditional construction operation accident to contain all non-construction operation accidents in personnel's safety and health, global and local environment, and the insufficient facility planning for security and emergency. Construction accidents may cause human, social and sustainable tragedies directly, and indirectly delay construction progresses and adversely affect the reputation of construction industry. In order to reduce all possible construction accidents, lots of non-construction operation regulations are constituted according to the authoritative regulations and previous construction experiences. However, these non-construction operation regulations are not integrated with the construction production or process planning. This may cause that some of these non-construction operation regulations ,are disregarded in the practical construction progress. The aim of this research is to explore the possibility, methodology and techniques in practice in order to identify and specify the non-construction operation regulations for every individual construction production and process. Therefore, the construction planning does not only represent the time and resources of each construction product or process, but also its non-construction operation regulations. The main outcomes of this research are a systematic identification of non-construction operation regulations, and the potential techniques for integrating them with the construction planning.

Comparison of MLP and Bayesian approaches on mineral prospectivity mapping tasks

Mineral Prospectivity Mapping is the process of combining maps containing different geoscientific data sets to produce a single map depicting areas ranked according to their potential to host mineral deposits of a particular type. This paper outlines two approaches for deriving a function which can be used to assign to each cell in the study area a value representing the posterior probability that the cell contains a deposit of the sought-after mineral. One approach is based on estimating probability density functions (pdfs); the second uses multilayer perceptrons (MLPs). Results are provided from applying these approaches to geoscientific datasets covering a region in North Western Victoria, Australia. The results demonstrate that while both the Bayesian approach and the MLP approach yield similar results when the number of input dimensions is small, the Bayesian approach rapidly becomes unstable as the number of input dimensions increases, with the resulting maps displaying high sensitivity to the number of mixtures used to model the distributions. However, despite the fact that Bayesian assigned values cannot be interpreted as posterior probabilities in high dimensional input spaces, the pixel favorability rankings produced by the two methods is similar.

Public relations and ontology: rhetorical approaches in post-modern times

Rhetorical theory's contemporary involvement with semiotics is overlooked in much current public relations scholarship. This paper aims to 'make a difference' in this respect. There is a need for this change of perspective in view of a call for a new direction in public relations theory. This call came in the final Public Relations Division session at the July, 2003 International Communication Association Convention in San Diego. That panel discussion was titled: 'What Should be the Focus of Public Relations?' The session concluded that a turn towards 'rhetorical theory' was needed. This paper argues that such a turn would pose interesting theoretical and political challenges for a field which has not fully caught up with post-modern ideas. It points out how involvement with the contemporary 'rhetorical turn' paradigm and this paradigm's link to semiotics, would take public relations studies into interesting conceptual and political regions.

Transforming frameworks: new approaches to CCTs and the pursuit of educational equity

Teacher educators throughout the world are increasingly under pressure to develop educational programs and school-based relationships which respond simultaneously to the multiple consequences of changed and changing technologies, new understandings of identity (what it means to be a teacher and a student) and persistently uneven pattems of educational (and social) success. Responses to these challenges regularly draw upon computer and communication technologies (CCTs) in the sometimes optimistic belief that this will improve the chance of any educational reform having a positive impact on students at risk of educational alienation and failure. Unfortunately, the gap between the hopeful embrace of technology and the actual outcomes delivered by technologically mediated educational innovations is often quite considerable. This paper investigates the kinds of educational conversations that are necessary to allow us to move beyond these optimistic adoptions of technology to address long standing patterns of educational success and failure and outlines a framework for transformative work in this area.

Rhetorical theory of public relations: opening the door to semiotic and pragmatism approaches

The 2001 Handbook of Public Relations edited by Robert Heath contains a prominent article advocating the use of rhetorical theory or ‘rhetorical enactment rational’ as a fruitful way of advancing theoretical understandings of public relations. In 2004 Heath and Dan Millar edited: Responding to Crisis: A Rhetorical Approach to Crisis Communication. These are the latest excursions into a perspective on public relations reflecting the extensive study of rhetoric in North America. Other examples are Public Relations Inquiry as Rhetorical Criticism (Elwood, 1995); Rhetorical and Critical Approaches to Public Relations (Toth and Heath, 1992); and a chapter Public Relations? No, Relations with Publics: A Rhetorical-Organisational Approach to Contemporary Corporate Communication (Cheney and Dionisopoulos, in Botan and Hazleton (Eds.) 1989).

The conventional notion of rhetoric is argumentation and persuasion stemming from the ancient Greek sophists, such as Aristotle, and from the Romans, particularly Cicero and Quintillion. Rhetoric became a fundamental plank of the trivium of ancient and medieval education: grammar, logic and rhetoric. Then in the 20th century Kenneth Burke, Stephen Toulmin and Chaim Perelman with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca extended Aristotle’s suggestion that: “Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic” Aristotle (trans. 1991). To use the rhetorical approach to argue that rational discourse cannot describe the world on its own. Instead living, enculturated human beings have to perceive ‘their’ truths. They take a perceptual ‘position’ on reason.

Public relations, is an industry for influencing perceptual ‘positions’. But the study of perception and attempts to influence perception cannot be claimed by rhetorical scholars alone. Semioticians and linguists who take the perspective of linguistic pragmatics also claim this field. This paper takes the example of ‘public relations’ as a focus for the confluence of rhetorical, semiotic and pragmatism approaches to the ‘problematic’ of understanding and truth.

Strategic approaches of corporate codes of ethics in Australia: a framework for classification and empirical illustration

Purpose - Research has so far not approached the contents of corporate code of ethics from a strategic classification point of view. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to introduce and describe a framework of classification and empirical illustration to provide insights into the strategic approaches of corporate code of ethics content within and across contextual business environments.

Design/methodology/approach - The paper summarizes the content analysis of code prescription and the intensity of codification in the contents of 78 corporate codes of ethics in Australia.

Findings - The paper finds that, generally, the studied corporate codes of ethics in Australia are of standardized and replicated strategic approaches. In particular, customized and individualized strategic approaches are far from penetrating the ethos of corporate codes of ethics content.

Research limitations/implications - The research is limited to Australian codes of ethics. Suggestions for further research are provided in terms of the search for best practice of customized and individualized corporate codes of ethics content across countries.

Practical implications - The framework contributes to an identification of four strategic approaches of corporate codes of ethics content, namely standardized, replicated, individualized and customized.

Originality/value - The principal contribution of this paper is a generic framework to identify strategic approaches of corporate codes of ethics content. The framework is derived from two generic dimensions: the context of application and the application of content. The timing of application is also a crucial generic dimension to the success or failure of codes of ethics content. Empirical illustrations based upon corporate codes of ethics in Australia's top companies underpin the topic explored.

Approaches to learning accounting : a cross-cultural study

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the cultural background of students and their learning approaches in a first year undergraduate accounting program.

Design/methodology/approach – While prior research in this area has more generally focused on the investigation of the approaches to learning by accounting students, there appears to have been little investigation into the learning approaches of students from different cultures who are studying accounting together at the same institution. The paper presents the results of a study of 550 students enrolled in an undergraduate accounting program at a multi-campus university in Victoria, Australia, which used Biggs' study process questionnaire (SPQ) to assess the approaches to learning utilised by local and Chinese students.

Findings – The results showed that, while there were no significant differences in the use of surface and deep learning strategies by the Chinese and Australian students, there were significant differences in the learning motives of the two groups. Furthermore, the results contradict prior claims that Asian students rely principally on the memorisation and reproduction of factual information as a means of achieving academic success.

Originality/value – The study provides support for the notion that Chinese students may in fact have a culturally induced bias towards seeking understanding through deeper approaches to study.

Comparison of the strain distribution obtained from multi scale and conventional approaches to modelling extrusion

An investigation of the application of a multi scale CAFE model to prediction of the strain localization phenomena in industrial processes, such as extrusion, is presented in this work. Extrusion involves the formation of a strong strain localization zone, which influences the final product microstructure and may lead to a coarse grain layer close to the surface. Modelling of the shape of this zone and prediction of the strain magnitude will allow computer aided design of the extrusion process and optimisation of the technological parameters with respect to the microstructure and properties of the products. Thus, the particular objective of this work is comparison of the FE and CAFE predictions of strain localization in the shear zone area in extrusion. Advantages and disadvantages of the developed CAFE model are also discussed on the basis of the simulation results.

Student characteristics and approaches to learning: a cross-cultural study

The principal aim of this study is to examine the relationship between the cultural background of students and their learning approaches in a tertiary accounting program. While prior research in this area has more generally focused on the investigation of the learning approaches of accounting students, there appears to have been little investigation into the learning approaches of students from different cultures who are studying together at the same institution. The paper presents the results of a study of 550 students enrolled in an undergraduate accounting program at a multi-campus Victorian university where learning approaches and cultural background variables were investigated together with other background variables such as gender and age.

The findings extend prior research on the impact cultural factors may have on the learning approaches of accounting students and also assists in clarifying the relationship between memorisation in the process of learning given the diverse ways that students from different cultures study accounting.

Agile approaches to software maintenance : an exploratory study of practitioner views

Whilst there has been some research into the application of agile approaches to the world of software maintenance, in this paper it is argued that there has not been a coherent investiga-tion that focuses on the collection and analysis of the views and perceptions of agile software maintenance approaches held by experienced software maintenance professionals. In this paper, we report such an exploratory investigation, which has seeded the development of a simple framework for classifying collected views and perceptions. Specifically, a matrix framework has been introduced, to facilitate comparison of the levels of understanding of the issues affecting an agile adoption decision, and the extent to which an agile approach has been implemented. Examples of organizations operating in all four cells of this matrix have been presented.

Differences in study approaches and the implications for student learning

Using the revised 42 item Study Process questionnaire SPQ-R (Zeegers 2002) and its underlying methodology developed by Biggs (1987), this study investigates student learning approaches and academic outcomes across units in their First Year of study. The study confirmed that there are differences in the study approaches of students and that it was possible to group students according to their learning orientations (profiles). Whilst there was not a large variation between profiles and academic results, low achieving approaches were clearly related to low achieving results.