Description:
The apparent longevity of war memory in small islands is the phenomenen explored in this volume and chapter alike. Those of us work in ir with small island communities will know that they can often be inward -looking and independent in character with little inclination to be receptive to outside influence and interference, especially from their larger neighbours or even from other Islands within their own archipelago. Because of this, small islands are not easily influence or affected by outside events unless they intrude directly upon them uninvited. Some moementous events, especially if traumatic and/or war-related can have a big impact on island life and the reverberations can often be felt for generations. "From Introduction"
Description:
Research reveals background music played during learning can variously enhance or impair memory, although the conditions which determine its effect are not yet understood. Possible explanations for the differing effects of music on memory include characteristics of the music itself, such as tempo and lyrics, induced mood of the listener and personality differences. In this chapter, consideration of the type of music used to manipulate learning and memory will be reviewed, indicating that arousal may play an important moderating role, either as a means of reducing anxiety or increasing arousal to an optimum performance levels. As music is often reported to increase arousal via emotion induction or enjoyment, a well established theory of arousal-modulated memory will be argued to underly the facilitatory effects of music on memory. The methodology used within this research paradigm will be described, and adaptations will be proposed that make it amenable to investigating the effect of music induced arousal on memory. This approach provides a novel method for combining the knowledge gained from music and memory research with arousal and memory literature to further investigate the potential memory enhancing role of music.
Description:
The active ageing appoach has become a leading global response to population ageing, having been widely adopted as a policy direction across the European Union (EU) and various national and local governments. This trend has been greatly influenced by the World Health Organization pulication of Active Ageing: A Policy Framework (WHO 2002), which has provided the basis for many national policies. The framework defined active ageing as 'the process of optimizing opportunities for health, participation and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age' (WHO 2002: 12). The WHO model conceptualises active ageing broadly as 'continuing participation in social, economic, cultural, spriitual and civic affairs, not just the ability to be physically active or to participate in the labour force', and highlights the importance of maintaining autonomy and independence (WHO 2002: 12). Both culture and gender are recognised in the WHO model as cross-cutting factors that have a major influence on active ageing. Given that it is over a decade since the release of the WHO Active Ageing Framework, it is timely to consider the impact of this initiative, particularly on how older people from different cultures and groups experience active ageing.
Description:
This paper examines the Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL) from the aspect of the MTL in action. It is written by university lecturers who are responsible for its delivery and examines the idea of teacher development through a work-based master’s course. We provide three case studies of the views of MTL participants and their coaches, presented as vignettes. These explore the themes of teacher agency and risk-taking, developments in practice and the role of the coach. We found that the MTL provides a framework in which teachers may feel more confident in enacting agency, trialling new ideas and taking risks, and that they have developed the way in which they reflect on their practice. This has involved a deeper critique of their teaching and learning strategies. Lastly, examination of the coaching model around which the MTL was developed has identified contrasting, yet effective, situations in practice. All three scenarios highlight that the teachers perceive engagement with theoretical perspectives to be greatly beneficial.
Description:
This paper focuses on the relationship between information systems (IS) and organizational processes from the perspective of the rationality of actors and their actions. The terms rational and rationality that are used in theoretical writings and in everyday life denote a multiplicity of meanings. The idea of reason has been connected with the disposition of actors to give rational grounds for or logical explanations of their beliefs and actions. Similarly, the actions by which actors achieve desired ends are regarded as rational. Furthermore, organizational processes that embody and are governed by rational actions are considered rational. More generally, an increase in the rationality that characterizes modern organizations and society is called rationalization. This paper explores the relationship between IS and organizations within the light of the progressive rationalization of organizational processes.
Description:
The purpose of this chapter is to provide an insight on the status of quality management practices in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of South India. A survey-based approach was adopted to understand the established quality management practices in the SMEs. A short survey instrument was designed by reviewing the literature on quality management initiatives in SMEs. Sample of 270 manufacturing SMEs across Southern India was selected through stratified random sampling technique. Projects with small teams, management commitment and involvement, communication, and culture change have high influence as success factors in implementing quality initiatives. Overall equipment effectiveness, root cause analysis, bottleneck analysis, and PDCA are often used tools and techniques by the organizations. High cost of training and limited knowledge were the reasons cited for not implementing quality initiatives. The study is an attempt to understand the quality management practices application in SMEs from a specific geographic location. The strength lies in bringing a different perspective from the present studies, whereas specific context of the study limits its generalizability. The findings of this chapter will help the industry to identify current quality management practices in SMEs to focus on improving their performance.
Description:
The purpose of this chapter is to provide an insight on the status of quality management practices in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of South India. A survey-based approach was adopted to understand the established quality management practices in the SMEs. A short survey instrument was designed by reviewing the literature on quality management initiatives in SMEs. Sample of 270 manufacturing SMEs across Southern India was selected through stratified random sampling technique. Projects with small teams, management commitment and involvement, communication, and culture change have high influence as success factors in implementing quality initiatives. Overall equipment effectiveness, root cause analysis, bottleneck analysis, and PDCA are often used tools and techniques by the organizations. High cost of training and limited knowledge were the reasons cited for not implementing quality initiatives. The study is an attempt to understand the quality management practices application in SMEs from a specific geographic location. The strength lies in bringing a different perspective from the present studies, whereas specific context of the study limits its generalizability. The findings of this chapter will help the industry to identify current quality management practices in SMEs to focus on improving their performance.
Description:
Trauma has a huge impact on the society and the economy. Large distances between the various human settlements in Queensland are a major challenge for the delivery of desired trauma care. In addition, health care budget has been struggling due to staggering costs. An integrated trauma management system (ITMS) is expected to maximise the appropriate and judicious use of available resources and deliver best possible services within budget constraints. A limited number of researches have been conducted to identify resource constraints and effective diversions for trauma cases in remote parts of Queensland. ITMS proposed in this paper covers activities, events and persons involved in trauma management. It analyses the impact of resource constraints and diversion rules for effective trauma care. Pre-hospital data are used for developing a process map. Simulation using Queensland scenarios assumed patients arrivals following the referral from regional/remote hospitals to regional trauma centres and to major trauma centres. Time stamps are used for the development and analysis of a simulation model using probabilistic approach for time to definitive care and patient outcomes. ITMS is able to further enhance quality of strategic planning. It can be extended to real time decision-making for better healthcare and reducing delays for arriving at definitive care. It is expected to further improve clinical outcome and transform the existing healthcare system into a more efficient, cost-effective and high quality healthcare service to the people living in remote areas.
Description:
Derailment is a business risk for rail operators. However, most of the derailments are due to a combination of several causes. This paper presents a derailment study, focusing on Australia, that categorizes a comprehensive set of factors causing derailment and current mitigation techniques. Finally, a risk gap is analysed and integrated model is proposed. Further, the opportunities to incorporate remote monitoring and data analysis technologies to ensure an eMaintenance management of derailment are discussed. A case study on eMaintenance of rail lubrication, which is highly related to derailment, is also demonstrated in this paper.
Description:
The view of Pacific island countries (PICs) as paradise has persisted since the arrival of Europeans over two centuries ago (Daws, 1980; Connell, 2003). Juxtaposed against utopian ideals is the reality that island countries in the region labour under a multiplicity of serious threats including climate change, economic vulnerability, political upheaval and persistent underdevelopment. Yet the paradise narrative endures in the imaginings of people and place, most notably through tourism destination marketing that constructs and manipulates place image. Associated with this has been the attendant fetishising of islanders as stereotypical noble or ignoble savages (Campbell, 1980; Fry, 1996), or their infantilisation as congenial, subaltern hosts, reinforcing notions of Pacific island communities as a latter-day Shangri-La in the Pacific (Douglas, 1997). In stark contrast, PIC prehistory suggests that islanders had enormous resilience, ingenuity, fierce warrior cultures and a reputation as seafarers of enormous competence and sophistication - attributes far removed from the docile and indigent exemplifications of recent times.
Description:
In this paper a novel feature selection technique based on mutual dependency modelling between genes is proposed for multiclass microarray gene expression classification. Several studies on analysis of gene expression data has shown that the genes (whether or not they belong to the same gene group) get co-expressed via a variety of pathways. Further, a gene may participate in multiple pathways that may or may not be co-active for all samples. It is therefore biologically meaningful to simultaneously divide genes into functional groups and samples into co-active categories. This can be done by modeling gene profiles for multiclass microarray gene data sets based on mutual dependency models, which model complex gene interactions. Most of the current works in multiclass microarray gene expression studies are based on statistical models with little or no consideration of gene interactions. This has led to lack of robustness and overly optimistic estimates of accuracy and noise reduction. In this paper, we propose multivariate analysis techniques which model the mutual dependency between the features and take into account complex interactions for extracting a subset of genes. The two techniques, the cross modal factor analysis (CFA) and canonical correlation analysis(CCA) show a significant reduction in dimensionality and class-prediction error, and improvement in classification accuracy for multiclass microarray gene expression datasets.