The Department of Education and Skills asked the National Centre for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching and Learning (NCE-MSTL) to review the current mathematics textbooks available for schools for Project Maths, and evaluate them using a version of the TIMSS framework already in use,...

This paper presents a critical review of two case study applications of alternative land use modelling approaches in the context of Australian local government areas, assessed against an evaluation framework developed from a set of best practice modelling criteria, sourced from the international literature.

This paper reports on an intersectoral project undertaken by the Health In All Policies Unit and Country Health SA Local Health Network in collaboration with Flinders University’s SA Community Health Research Unit and Southgate Institute for Health Society and Equity

This Topic Guide provides an overview of the development of social impact bonds, a mechanism for using private investment funds to finance social programs, together with links to reports and articles in the Policy Online archive.

Purpose / Context - New detached houses have been getting larger in New Zealand for several decades. Large houses require more materials to build, and have greater ongoing energy costs than smaller houses built to the same standard. The purpose of this work was to examine whether larger houses are...

Purpose / Context – The purpose of our work is to investigate: a) the sensor responses of the two different low-cost PM sensors to concrete dust and indoor environment and activities; b) the evalua-tion of the measuring performance of two low-cost PM sensors and their potential application in in-...

Purpose / Context – To quantify the relationship between indoor temperature and blood pressure in Japanese nursing home residents. Methodology / Approach – A field study of 27 nursing homes in Japan was conducted. We meas-ured the indoor temperature of nursing homes and collected data on resident’s...

Purpose / Context - The purposes of this study are to clarify the trend of unit energy consumption (UEC) and its related CO2 emissions in urban residential buildings, and to develop models to predict the UEC in the future. Methodology / Approach - Statistical method is adopted to clarify the UEC...

Purpose / Context - The characterisation of the residential building stock existing in Australia in terms of attributes relevant to energy performance is increasingly an important task for planning and policy purposes. There is a lack of information and documentation on the energy performance...

Purpose / Context - Rural heating design temperature is closely related to building thermal perfor-mance design, indoor plain layout and energy consumption. Methodology / Approach - Focus on residential behavior pattern, this paper studied the rural heat-ing design temperature based on the site...

Purpose - It is rather easy to control thermal air conditions in narrow-air tight living spaces. However, it is not so easy to keep good air quality in the spaces. Indoor air condition is especially important to keep the health condition of the people. We researched the environmental condition of...

Heat intolerance is a major medical problem affecting people with multiple sclerosis (MS). When their core body temperatures increase people with MS experience significantly increased symptoms which greatly reduces their capacity to participate in social, household and work activities, as well as...

Purpose / Context - Cool coating is a passive technique for reducing the solar heat gain and cooling energy consumption of buildings. However the radiation properties (i.e., solar reflectance and thermal emittance) of cool coating would be changed, usually adversely, during its ageing process, and...

Purpose / Context - Sustainability has become an important issue in building construction sector. The tools of sustainable building assessment have been developed to evaluate the environmental impacts of buildings around the world. Chinese green building assessment tool (GB) was established later...

Purpose / Context - As the emerging digital technology, Building Information Modelling has been applied in the multidisciplinary design work for sustainable houses. This study aims to input the real-world design context into the BIM pedagogy and to demonstrate the capacity of BIM in enhancing...

Purpose / Context - The purpose of this study was to develop a prevention strategy against fungal attack in any residential building, which had been previously proposed and applied to conserve cultural assets using a fungal index. The strategy consisted of four stages: current status assessment,...

In Australia, residential buildings accounted for about 20-30% of the total electricity consumption and 30-50% of the total peak demand. The residential sector is considered as one of the fastest growing GHG emission sources and considered as the ‘lowest hanging fruit’ for carbon mitigation. It...

This paper describes the policies and issues involved in the long history of a proposed rail link to Melbourne Airport.

Purpose / Context – To clarify the association between the indoor environment of residential build-ings and cerebrovascular disease, an epidemiological survey of elderly persons living in three areas of Japan that have different rates of death due to cerebrovascular disease was conducted...

Purpose / Context - Many developed countries experience late afternoon or evening electricity peaks. In summer peak demand regions, these peaks are most likely the results of residential air conditioning demand. Methodology / Approach - This research is to investigate the air conditioning peak...

The preliminary findings presented in this paper indicate that criminal enforcement was more prevalent than civil enforcement and there was a significant emphasis on incapacitative sanctions such as prison sentences and management disqualification orders. Monetary sanctions were less frequently imposed and tended to be of a low magnitude relative to the statutory maximum sanctions. Criminal and civil enforcement had similarly high success rates and the civil enforcement process was only slightly faster than the criminal...

Depositary institutions over the last 15 years have increased the share of non-traditional revenue in total income.While the change in business models is a global phenomenon, it is more pronounced in countries such as the U.S., France and the U.K. In this study, we examine whether market structure can help explain the cross-country variation in the diversification activities that bank choose to pursue. The UK Independent Commission of Banking raised issues related to “ring fencing...

Professor Yermack said that the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) is presently studying whether to convert the exchange to blockchain technology. The aim is to reach a decision in 2017, with the hope of implementation by 2018. If the ASX adopts a blockchain mechanism for the clearing and settlement of trades, it will become a leader among international stock exchanges in terms of market innovation. The ASX, and other incumbent operators of financial markets, need to...

Following previous research which established that liquidity commonality exists within one stock market over a short period of time, this paper finds that liquidity commonality also exists globally. Utilising a large number of stock exchanges and a twelve year research timeframe, this paper observes that liquidity commonality exists in both developed and emerging markets. In particular, liquidity commonality is higher in emerging markets compared to developed markets and is weaker in areas where there is...