List of Titles

International trade financing : A comparative study on the performance of state-owned and private commercial banks of Bangladesh

- Akter, Hazera, Barua, Suborna

Authors: Akter, Hazera , Barua, Suborna
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Conference paper
Relation: International Conference on Interdisciplinary Business and Economics Research p. 164-186
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Description: We investigate the comparative performance of state-owned commercial banks (SOCBs) and private commercial banks (PCBs) of Bangladesh with respect to efficiency and profitability in financing international trade. Taking a ten-year panel data over 2003-2012 of all four SOCBs and four categorised PCBs, we apply the non-parametric approach data envelopment analysis (DEA) to measure and compare efficiency of the banks using output-oriented Malmquist Productivity Indices (MPI). Furthermore, we develop some specialised profitability ratios on trade financing business of the banks to measure profitability. Our results suggest that PCBs are more efficient and profitable compared to SOCBs' although PCBs provide less trade financing than SOCBs'. The study recommends SOCBs to progress technologically for sustaining themselves in the competitive banking sector of Bangladesh. Moreover, we identify the sources of profitability that would explain the banks' strategic position in trade financing business which would motivate more banks to support international traders through trade financing.

Investigating financial contagion as a prelude to its mitigation : Australia and its key trading partners

- Mukulu, Sandra, Hettihewa, Samanthala, Wright, Christopher

Authors: Mukulu, Sandra , Hettihewa, Samanthala , Wright, Christopher
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Conference paper
Relation: Proceedings of Global Business and Finance Research Conference p. 1-16
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Description: The incidence and virulence of global and regional financial crises has encouraged analysts to re-examine extant economic policies and tools. An issue of concern is how beneficial financial links can turn malignant and transmit a financial crisis across borders. This study explores financial contagion processes in financial markets with an emphasis on Australia. Monthly data from Jul/97-Jun/14 was obtained from Yahoo Finance for the composite-stock-market indices of Australia and its key trading partners. Eviews7 software was used to explore the relationship between stock indices of those countries via co-integration and pair-wise Granger Causality (GC) tests. This study found that stock returns in Australia are co-integrated with returns of the other countries. However, when appropriate lagged variables were used, only past values of returns in the Chinese, Singapore and US stock-indices have predictive value in terms of future Australian-stock-index values. This study should be of interest to policy makers, especially in terms of its suggestion of the flow-on effects of sharp discontinuities in the Chinese, Singapore and US stock markets on the Australian stock market. Bilateral trade links appear to be a key linkage in the transmission of financial contagion. However, more research is needed to identify and understand other factors that contribute to the spread of financial crises.

Investigation of full-scale fibre composite girders for replacement of hardwood timber girders in Australia

- Aravinthan, Thiru, Kahandawa, Gayan

Authors: Aravinthan, Thiru , Kahandawa, Gayan
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Conference paper
Relation: 7th International Conference on FRP Composites in Civil Engineering, CICE 2014
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Description: Timber bridges are significant asset in bridge inventory. However, managing aging timber bridges stock is a major challenge. Most of the timber bridges has already reached its design service life, and needs to be replaced. The limited financial resources to maintain these bridges and the depleting supply of quality hardwood timber have created a need for a cost effective alternative for the replacement of these timber bridges. Fibre composite girders are a viable solution, but manufacturing cost needs to be reduced to make it commercially viable. A major research and development project on fibre composite alternative girders to replace existing hard-wood timber girders was carried out by the Centre of Excellence in Engineered Fibre Composites (CEEFC). This project was in collaboration with the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads (DTMR) and two industry partners. This project aims to develop commercially viable fibre composite bridge girders for the Australian market through the use of advanced manufacturing processes. These full-scale girders have undergone rigours testing including proof load testing, fatigue testing and ultimate strength testing to prove its viability as a suitable replacement girder. This paper presents the performance of these girders and discusses important issues encountered in the production of these fibre composite replacement girders. It is concluded that both fibre composite bridge girder concepts developed by the industry partners meet the set design criteria.

Literacy and language policies in Australia

- Golding, Barry, Thompson, Sally

Authors: Golding, Barry , Thompson, Sally
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Conference paper
Relation: International Conference on the Methods and Applications of Research on Literacy p. 1-18
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Description: Australia faces a complex, intertwined set of language and literacy issues. Combined with emerging contextual issues, these issues affect access to education and employment for many Australian adults. In this paper, we identify and examine six such intertwined issues. Two of these issues are mainly related to language, specifically for Indigenous Australians and non-‐English-‐speaking migrants and refugees. One of the issues relates to the impact of very low literacy rates for rural and regional Australians, particularly as they age and withdraw from the paid workforce. The other three issues are contextual, including the deliberate swing away from public education towards ‘the market’, the surprisingly low average literacy levels of some Australian adults, and the elevated and increasing levels of youth unemployment. Our paper provides evidence and arguments for much more recognition of and attention to the issues of language and literacy in Australian public policy, research, programs and funding, not only in education but also in many other fields in which language and literacy acquisition and proficiency determine people’s life choices, chances and outcomes. This includes opportunities for more positively embracing and building Australia’s existing multiculturalism.

Looking after yourself: Understandings of chronic-care self-management models in rural and urban contexts of UK and Australia

- Paliadelis, Penny, Carr, Susan, Lhussier, Monique, Forster, Natalie, Eaton, Simon, Parmenter, Glenda, Death, Catharine

Authors: Paliadelis, Penny , Carr, Susan , Lhussier, Monique , Forster, Natalie , Eaton, Simon , Parmenter, Glenda , Death, Catharine
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Conference paper
Relation: NET 2014
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Description: This paper reports on the outcomes of a two related projects undertaken during 2011-2012 in Australia (Rural Northern NSW) and the UK (Urban Northern UK) that sought to identify the strategies that clinicians employ to actively involve patients with chronic conditions in the planning and delivery of their care1,2,8. This study was informed by the global shift to partnership approaches in health policy and the growing imperative to deliver patient or client-centred care3,4,9,10. Support for self-management refers to the role that clinicians play in building client knowledge, skill and confidence to effectively manage their own healthcare concerns and treatments6. A qualitative methodology was used, with focus groups and interviews conducted to explore the strategies used by a range of primary healthcare providers, such as general practitioners, nurses, social workers, diabetes educators, dieticians and occupational therapists, to support clients to effectively manage their own chronic conditions. In particular this study aimed to understand the models and contexts of care that impacted on the participants’ practices and identify barriers and enablers to supporting client self-management from the participants’ perspective5,7. This paper presents the results of these studies and identifies the similarities and differences between the two contexts that have either facilitated or blocked clinicians’ efforts to support their clients to adopt self-care strategies7. We are not claiming national commentaries but are drawing on two studies that we consider provide insight into ‘typical’ practices in both countries. The finding of both studies identified that supporting patients/clients to engage in actively managing their health care needs requires changes to client and clinicians traditional perspectives on their role, practice and education, as well as developing more integrated health policies to better support clients with complex health care needs, who want to adopt self-management practices.

Measurement of pore water pressure properties of unsaturated brown coal using triaxial test

- Couling, Catherine Elizaebth, Tolooiyan, Ali, Mackay, Rae, Xue, Jianfeng

Authors: Couling, Catherine Elizaebth , Tolooiyan, Ali , Mackay, Rae , Xue, Jianfeng
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Conference paper
Relation: 6th International Conference on Unsaturated Soils, UNSAT 2014 p. 1531-1535
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Description: Skempton's B parameter characterises the effect of fluid compressibility on the time dependent deformation of materials during isotropic loading. The Skempton B-parameter has been determined for a sample of Victorian brown coal for a range of confining pressures, corresponding to the range of conditions which the coal experiences below the ground water table. The relationship between the change in the B-parameter with respect to time and pressure has also been examined. It has been found that a high back pressure (more than 400 kPa) is required in the material to achieve a degree of saturation close to 100+ACU-. The set of data from these tests is able to provide important evidence of the depth and stress dependent behaviour of the coal.

Measurement of water pressure properties of unsaturated brown coal using triaxial test

- Couling, Catherine Elizabeth, Xue, Jianfeng, Tolooiyan, Ali, Mackay, Rae

Authors: Couling, Catherine Elizabeth , Xue, Jianfeng , Tolooiyan, Ali , Mackay, Rae
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Conference paper
Relation: Unsaturated Soils: Research & Applications Vol. 1
Relation: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Unsaturated Soils, UNSAT 2014
Relation: Sydney, Australia, 2-4 July, 2014
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Description: Skempton used the B-parameter (see Equation 1) to represent the degree of saturation of a material, such that, B → 0, when the degree of saturation = 0 and, B → 1, when the degree of saturation = 1 Δ Δ Δu B[ (Δ A+ )]σ3 1σ 3 (1) where, Δu is change in pore water pressure, A and B are pore-pressure coefficients, and σ3 and σ1 are minor and major principal stresses.

Measurement studies on superhydrophobic materials C3 - Advanced Materials Research

- Devasahayam, Sheila, Yarlagadda, Prasad

Authors: Devasahayam, Sheila , Yarlagadda, Prasad
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Conference paper
Relation: 2nd International Conference on Material, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, IC3ME 2014 Vol. 988, p. 134-142
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Description: Superhydrophobicity is directly related to the wettability of the surfaces. Cassie-Baxter state relating to geometrical configuration of solid surfaces is vital to achieving the Superhydrophobicity and to achieve Cassie-Baxter state the following two criteria need to be met: 1) Contact line forces overcome body forces of unsupported droplet weight and 2) The microstructures are tall enough to prevent the liquid that bridges microstructures from touching the base of the microstructures [1] In this paper we discuss different measurements used to characterise/determine the superhydrophobic surfaces.
Description: E1

Mediating legal reform : Animal law, livestock welfare and public pressure

- Mummery, Jane, Rodan, Debbie, Ironside, Katrina, Nolton, Marnie

Authors: Mummery, Jane , Rodan, Debbie , Ironside, Katrina , Nolton, Marnie
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Conference paper
Relation: Australian and New Zealand Communication Association Annual Conference
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Description: Legal protection of animal welfare in Australia is problematic with livestock (defined here as all animals farmed for use and profit, including poultry and aquatic animals) being effectively excluded from the majority of animal protection statutes. Such legal exclusions, joined with the inherent challenges of legal reform in this field – significant issues to do with standing, costs bearing and jurisdiction – have increased the difficulties of successful litigation. Despite explicit recognition of the necessity for reform in Australian animal law – in 2008 the Australian Law Reform Commission journal, Reform, took as its subject the ‘next great social justice movement’ of animal welfare and animal rights – a number of legal strategies for reform have been summed up by the Principal Solicitor for the Pro Bono Animal Law Service (PALS), the national legal referral service for animal law operating between 2009 and 2013, as having been exhausted. Specifically, the challenges of standing and costs bearing have meant that many meritorious animal welfare matters have not been able to be pursued within the legal domain. Alternative strategies for the achievement of legal reform in this field are thus required, and at this point in the history of the Australian animal welfare movement, one significant strategy is arguably emerging: that of strategically using social media to develop public interest in these issues and to focus this interest into effective pressure in the political, social and industry domains. This paper thus carries out an analysis of this development and focusing of pressure by animal welfare organisations through their use of social media, specifically considering a) the social media strategies utilised by such peak animal welfare bodies as Animals Australia and Voiceless, and b) the recently released Animal Effect smartphone app. More generally, this is a paper outlining and analysing the architecture of social media and public pressure being conjoined in the service of the livestock law reform movement. This paper is part of a larger project in which we record and analyse how animal welfare issues are conceived, articulated and argued within the public domain.

Men learning later in life : Floating the idea of shedagogy

- Golding, Barry

Authors: Golding, Barry
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Conference paper
Relation: ELOA 2014 Conference, 'Innovations in older adult learning: Theory, research, policy'
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Description: Men learning later in life is a theme that has begun to receive research attention in recent years in several world nations, leading to the recent publication of Men learning through life (Golding, Mark & Foley, 2014) with contributed chapters from researchers in seven different countries. The research focused particularly on older men’s informal learning through community contexts. It is men not in paid work, including the increasing proportion of older men in most nations who are retired from paid work, who are of particular interest here. The paper will summarise what is known about the field, and also include a synopsis of what is know about older men, learning and later life from the men’s shed movement, currently spreading rapidly in several European nations beyond its original development site in Australia. For the first time it introduces the term shedagogy, to playfully but purposefully summarise a new way of thinking about learning for many older men. Shedagogy is seen as a cheeky but useful rhetorical device to make a claim about the distinctive nature of men’s shed-based learning. Its most important element of is that learning for many older men should be neither fore-grounded not named, but created collaboratively and ‘hands-on’ in communities of informal men’s practice. Other essential elements are that participants bring and share what they know and can do, rather than being problematised and patronised from ageist and deficit models and learners, customers, patients, clients or students.

Moderating surface hardness and rotational traction of natural turf community-level football fields in drought

- Ford, Phillip, Twomey, Dara

Authors: Ford, Phillip , Twomey, Dara
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Conference proceedings , Conference paper
Relation: XXIX International Horticultural Congress on Horticulture : Sustaining Lives, Livelihoods and Landscapes (IHC2014): III International Conference on Turfgrass Management and Science for Sports Fields; Brisbane, Australia; 17th-22nd August 2014; published in Acta Horticulturae Vol. 1122, p. 111-119
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Description: Excessive surface hardness and high rotational traction are two factors linked to non-contact injury risk in football. Soil moisture has the greatest influence on surface hardness. However, irrigation was prohibited on the majority of sports grounds during the recent drought in Australia, leading to the closure of many grounds for safety reasons. In the absence of irrigation, this study investigated alternative agronomic strategies to moderate hardness. Turfgrass coverage prevented excessive hardness even on a drought-affected, compacted native soil profile, and the conclusion was that turf managers should select turfgrass species that best sustain full grass coverage. Without irrigation in southern mainland Australia, only a C4 grass such as bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon and hybrids) could do that. However, epidemiological research in Australian football had concluded there was a higher risk of knee injury on bermudagrass compared with perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne), which was attributed to bermudagrass having a higher rotational traction. In replicated plots in this study, bermudagrass actually had significantly lower rotational stiffness than perennial ryegrass on four out of eight assessment dates, and the mean rotational stiffness of bermudagrass was never higher than that of perennial ryegrass at any assessment. There appeared no reason to recommend against the use of bermudagrass on the basis of rotational traction. In fact, there were greater differences in rotational traction due to other agronomic factors, especially variation in grass cover. Once again, the study concluded that turf managers should select the turfgrass species that best sustains full grass cover over the whole ground and through the whole season.

Movement safety control method of a haptic device for Minimally Invasive Surgery

- Saafi, Houssem, Laribi, Med Amine, Zeghloul, Saïd, Ibrahim, Yousef

Authors: Saafi, Houssem , Laribi, Med Amine , Zeghloul, Saïd , Ibrahim, Yousef
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Conference paper
Relation: 2014 IEEE 23rd International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE) p. 1233-1238
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Description: Abstract: The overall objective of this work is to develop a system composed of master, slave and a control system for special medical applications. A PROMIS (Pprime RObot for Minimally Invasive Surgery) system is designed to be cost-effective with a less complication of use and an application-specific for collaborative operations between the surgeon and the robot. This paper focuses on the introduction of a motion safety control methodology for a haptic device. The haptic device is used as a master with a parallel spherical architecture (SPM). The introduced control methodology is based on the workspace of the medical application. Three areas of the workspace are defined with a consideration of the degree of security. An algorithm that constantly keeps the mobile platform in a safe region, when the surgeon moves it, is presented and explained. The developed algorithm runs in real-time using a programmable logic controller (PLC). The control strategy of the haptic device was successfully tested and validated experimentally.

- Aryal, Sunil, Ting, Kaiming, Haffari, Gholamreza, Washio, Takashi

Authors: Aryal, Sunil , Ting, Kaiming , Haffari, Gholamreza , Washio, Takashi
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Conference paper
Relation: 14th IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (2014 ICDM); Shenzhen, China; 14th-17th December 2014 p. 707-712
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Description: Nearest neighbour search is a core process in many data mining algorithms. Finding reliable closest matches of a query in a high dimensional space is still a challenging task. This is because the effectiveness of many dissimilarity measures, that are based on a geometric model, such as lp-norm, decreases as the number of dimensions increases. In this paper, we examine how the data distribution can be exploited to measure dissimilarity between two instances and propose a new data dependent dissimilarity measure called 'mp-dissimilarity'. Rather than relying on geometric distance, it measures the dissimilarity between two instances in each dimension as a probability mass in a region that encloses the two instances. It deems the two instances in a sparse region to be more similar than two instances in a dense region, though these two pairs of instances have the same geometric distance. Our empirical results show that the proposed dissimilarity measure indeed provides a reliable nearest neighbour search in high dimensional spaces, particularly in sparse data. Mp-dissimilarity produced better task specific performance than lp-norm and cosine distance in classification and information retrieval tasks.

Multi-source data integration and identification of uncertainties affecting production of a digital soil map

- Robinson, Nathan, Benke, Kurt, Hopley, J., MacEwan, Richard, Clark, R., Rees, David, Kitching, Matt, Imhof, Mark, Bardos, David

Authors: Robinson, Nathan , Benke, Kurt , Hopley, J. , MacEwan, Richard , Clark, R. , Rees, David , Kitching, Matt , Imhof, Mark , Bardos, David
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Conference paper
Relation: GlobalSoilMap: Basis of the Global Spatial Soil Information System - Proceedings of the 1st GlobalSoilMap Conference p. 353-358
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Description: Production of a digital soil map for the state of Victoria in Australia is subject to various errors arising from the use of legacy data (as is often the case around the globe). Potential sources of uncertainty for inputs and methods undertaken in the creation of a Victorian DSM version 1.0 (VicDSMv1) are identified. These sources of uncertainty are recognised and issues discussed including their potential contribution to error propagation. Examples include possible errors associated with legacy soil maps, soil sites, laboratory analysis and predictive modelling by regression or spline approaches. Experiences in processing of legacy data in Victoria are described and some aspects of incorporating uncertainty in data discussed. As part of this initial DSM exercise these uncertainties and contextual information will be captured as associated metadata. A framework, as a five component process model for integrated assessment of uncertainty, is suggested based on uncertainty in the mapping process. © 2014 Taylor & Francis Group, London, UK.

Optimising business processes through ERP post implementation modifications : An exploratory case study

- Oseni, Taiwo, Foster, Susan, Rahim, Mahbubur, Smith, Stephen

Authors: Oseni, Taiwo , Foster, Susan , Rahim, Mahbubur , Smith, Stephen
Date: 2014
Type: Text , Conference paper
Relation: 18th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems, PACIS 2014
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Description: While ERP systems can improve the efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility of business processes, there exists a relationship between post-implementation modifications and the optimisation of business processes. This relationship has not been adequately researched. By drawing on the post implementation experience of an Australian oil company, we report a series of modifications that were conducted on their ERP system, and empirically classify them via propositions according to our proposed theory-driven model: ERP PIM. The model and empirical evidence together provide a theoretical foundation for research into the impact of ERP post-implementation modifications and their influence on business process optimisation. This is considered important for achieving competitive advantage. The applicability of our model as a useful managerial tool for analysing various modifications and understanding their impact on business process optimisation is offered.

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