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There’s no place like home: remembering and experiencing the changing Singaporean cityscape
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 58-64.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Remembering place : the disconnection of past from present in Singapore’s urban heritage -- Chapter 3. Non-places in Singapore’s built environment : spaces of alienation -- Chapter 4. Conclusion -- Reference list.Widespread urban redevelopment has profoundly impacted how the Singaporean people understand the built environment. Analysis of Singaporean collective memory and hidden transcripts will demonstrate a growing detachment from national heritage and disengagement from the international image promoted by the government. This disengagement is exacerbated by the Singapore Tourism Board’s reduction of cultural heritage to themed attractions. This will be demonstrated by examining the development and local understanding of key sites in the city, including the Merlion, museums, Bugis Street, and former ethnic enclaves at Chinatown, Kampong Glam and Little India.The destruction of peoples’ connection to the past and places has resulted in a tabula rasa for redevelopment of the built environment. The contemporary Singaporean cityscape will be considered using the theoretical framework of Marc Augé and Rem Koolhaas to determine whether a new sense of place can be established or if the city is becoming a non-place. Modern urban design is increasingly promoting a transitory relationship between Singaporeans and the city, producing spaces that are passed through rather than places to engage with. This is reducing peoples’ identity to a contractual relationship with their function of the environment (a customer, a traveller) rather than an independent, self-directed individual.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (64 pages) colour illustration
The impact of cultural and natural capital on Chinese outbound tourism demand
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 53-60.Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Theoretical foundations -- Chapter 3. Methodology, data and results -- Chapter 4. Major issues and policy implications -- Chapter 5. Conclusion -- References.The tourism industry contributes greatly to economic growth according to research. The impact of different aspects of tourism on tourism demand, particularly the impact of cultural and natural capital, has however, received less attention. Most of the literature has focused on tourism modelling with determinants such as income level, distance, population and some local characteristics. In order to promote sustainable tourism and understand the importance of cultural and natural capital in tourists’ decision making process, this research examines whether tangible cultural and natural characteristics of the destination country affect Chinese tourists’ decisions when choosing their international travel destination. The main motivation of this research is to provide effective policy recommendations to the Australian tourism industry to ensure a healthy tourism demand and supply relationship that is sustainable between China and Australia.This study uses a panel data regression model to test whether natural and cultural capital influence Chinese outbound tourism. The main finding shows that natural capital, referred to as natural heritage sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List, may have little positive impact on Chinese outbound tourism demand, while cultural capital, referred to as cultural heritage sites listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, may have a more significant impact on Chinese outbound tourism than natural capital.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (iv, 60 pages) graphs, table
High-speed low-power modular arithmetic for elliptic curve cryptosystems based on the residue number system
No full textEmpirical thesis.Bibliography: pages 261-284.1. Introduction -- 2. Background -- 3. Counter-based Wallace multipliers -- 4. Modular multiplier using sum of residues in RNS -- 5. Chip fabrication for RNS-based modular multiplier -- 6. Elliptic curve point multiplication -- 7. Conclusions and future work.This thesis presents designs and hardware implementations of modular arithmetic for elliptic curve point multiplication (ECPM). The aim is to speed up elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) architectures and optimise their power consumption. Improvements are made in existing algorithms, and conventional number systems are replaced by residue number systems (RNS) to achieve a high speed for basic arithmetic operations. The proposed ECPM architectures are generic and can be scaled for different key sizes; the hardware implementations in this work are for 256-bit ECPM over prime field Fp.ECPM architectures are optimised in two ways. Firstly, three different hardware architectures are developed for the implementation of an efficient modular multiplier (MM). These architectures, named parallel, serial, and serial-parallel, offer a trade-off between area and delay. The performance of the proposed MM architectures is compared, based on their ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) and FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) implementation results. Moreover, the feasibility of serial MM architecture for practical implementation is proved by its ASIC fabrication using 65 nm CMOS technology. The measurement results for the fabricated chip show that the proposed MM is better than other state-of-the-art MM architectures.Secondly, two ECPM architectures, named multi-key ECPM and single-key ECPM, are proposed; they differ in terms of throughput and hardware complexity. Multi-key ECPM provides a high throughput by processing twenty one keys simultaneously within deep pipeline stages. Single-key ECPM attempts to optimise the hardware cost by resource sharing. Power optimisation techniques are employed to reduce the power consumption of the single-key ECPM. The proposed architectures are implemented on FPGA and ASIC platforms and the results are analysed to discuss the suitability of the proposed ECPM architectures for different applications.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (xxviii, 284 pages) colour illustration
Global agricultural trade liberalization: its impacts on Bangladesh
No full textTheoretical thesis.Bibliography: pages 359-391.1. Introduction and background of the study -- 2. Overview of agricultural trade liberalization and the economic system of Bangladesh -- 3. Theoretical aspects of agricultural trade liberalization and the position of Bangladesh : Bangladesh in context -- 4. Overview of the agricultural sector of Bangladesh and its trade developmental aspects -- 5. Agricultural trade issues in the WTO and the Doha round : Bangladesh in context -- 6. Implications of agricultural trade liberalization on food security in Bangladesh -- 7. Agricultural trade liberalization : environmental issues and their significance in Bangladesh -- 8. Conclusion, recommendations and policy implications -- Appendices.Handful of policy concerns evokes as contentious a controversy in developing economies as trade liberalization, openness and globalization. Critics comprising of politicians, labor unions, enterprise and intellectuals see the community economic system as inherently unequal, produced a whole lot worse by advocates of openness to trade and finance. Trade liberalization and economic integration in Bangladesh has led to substandard advancement with commercial development and even resulting in de-industrialization. Consequently growth and employment prospects have suffered. Cheap agricultural imports have overloaded Bangladeshi marketplaces, which make it out of the question for domestic enterprises and farmers to increase and survive. This view prevails because business efficiency under trade protection is quite dismal.This dissertation aims to gauge the impacts of trade liberalization and connects contrasting policies on agricultural trade and expansion, poverty and food security in Bangladesh. Agricultural trade accelerates agricultural improvement a lot more than domestic marketplaces by bringing income earnings and creating job opportunities. On the other hand, the contribution of agriculture in trade and GDP is regressing as time passes despite the fact that Bangladesh has a comparative advantage in producing agricultural products. For this reason, one of the greatest obstacles that Bangladesh encounters would be to boost living standards of rural poor while keeping up with the trade reform procedures at the international level. Therefore, the principal objective of this research is to examine the effect of agricultural trade liberalization and its ability to play a role in economic expansion and poverty reduction in Bangladesh.The study has found that the impact of agricultural trade liberalization on developing countries is very uneven. It has been established that the effects of agricultural trade liberalization are small overall and likely to be negative for a significant number of developing countries including Bangladesh. For net food importing countries, including most of the LDCs and the small island developing states and for cotton importing countries (Bangladesh), agricultural trade liberalization may have overall negative consequences because of terms of trade effects.It is important to note that, at the WTO, Bangladesh as an LDC is not bound to undertake any liberalization in its domestic agricultural sector in terms of tariff cut or subsidy withdrawal. This study establishes that the growth in the domestic agricultural sector does not only rely on the domestic policies and programs, rather global and regional trade policies have important implications for this sector.Lastly, the study identifies that; agricultural trade liberalization has adversely impacted the environment as reduction in soil infertility, exploitation of biodiversity, and environmental contamination. The study argues that agricultural trade reform guidelines/policies are not enough to confer positive aspects based on agricultural trade liberalization towards the poor. Suggestions have been offered for Bangladesh to formulate and implement complementary policies to reduce inequality and translate the growth into poverty reduction, food security, and environmental protection.Mode of access: World wide web1 online resource (xvii, 391 pages) 1 colour ma
Spam and criminal activity
No full textThe rapid growth of the internet is transforming how we engage and communicate. It also creates new opportunities for fraud and data theft. One way cybercriminals exploit the vulnerabilities of new technologies and potential victims is the use of deceptive emails on a massive scale. In a sample of more than 13 million emails identified as spam, more than 10000 contained malicious attachments; nearly 1.4 million contained malicious web links. If opened, these attachments and links could infect the recipients' devices with software that allows cybercriminals to remotely access them. This paper describes how crime groups increasingly adopt novel approaches to cybercrime. Increased law enforcement capacity, the cultivation of high-level coordination between industry, government and police, and the further development of machine learning techniques should be at the forefront of government initiatives in this area.20 page(s
Learning language with Web 2.0 is so difficult!!! Hearing voices of Japanese language learners at a Korean university
No full textThe emergence of Web 2.0 technologies has empowered language learners. Web 2.0 allows learners to practice their target language with native speakers anytime and anywhere they wish, free of charge. Given the significant impact of Web 2.0 on language learning, it is imperative to examine learners’ uses of Web 2.0 inside and outside the classroom. Such an inquiry provides insights into the pedagogical actions required to promote the adoption of Web 2.0 to enhance language learning. Therefore, this study examined the extent to which Korean learners of Japanese adopted Web 2.0 to learn Japanese in formal and informal learning contexts. It also examined the factors inhibiting their use of Web 2.0 for language learning. The results identified the following factors inhibiting the adoption of technology in class: lecturers’ overestimated learners’ computer skills, there was an overreliance by lecturers on learners’ voluntary use of Web 2.0 outside the classroom, and there was a general lack of access to computer labs during class. The findings also suggested that learners’ insufficient knowledge of websites and applications, the absence of Japanese acquaintances offline, and low confidence to interact with Japanese native speakers inhibited the Korean language learners’ interactions with Japanese speakers online beyond the classroom.19 page(s
A Late Holocene onset of Aboriginal burning in southeastern Australia
No full textThe extent to which Aboriginal Australians used fire to modify their environment has been debated for decades and is generally based on charcoal and pollen records rather than landscape responses to land-use change. Here we investigate the sensitivity of in-situ–produced ¹⁰Be, an isotope commonly used in geomorphological contexts, to anthropogenic perturbations in the southeastern Australian Tablelands. Comparing ¹⁰Be-derived erosion rates from fluvial sediment (8.7 ± 0.9 mm k.y.⁻¹; 1 standard error, SE; n = 11) and rock outcrops (5.3 ± 1.4 mm k.y.⁻¹; 1 SE; n = 6) confirms that landscape lowering rates integrating over 10⁴–10⁵ yr are consistent with rates previously derived from studies integrating over 10⁴ to >10⁷ yr. We then model an expected ¹⁰Be inventory in fluvial sediment if background erosion rates were perturbed by a low-intensity, high-frequency Aboriginal burning regime. When we run the model using the average erosion rate derived from ¹⁰Be in fluvial sediment (8.7 mm k.y.⁻¹), measured and modeled ¹⁰Be concentrations overlap between ca. 3 ka and 1 ka. Our modeling is consistent with intensified Aboriginal use of fire in the late Holocene, a time when Aboriginal population growth is widely recognized.4 page(s
Management controls for minimising risk in public-private partnerships in a developing country : evidence from Sri Lanka
No full textPurpose - The purpose of the study is to examine the use of management controls by a public partner to minimise risks associated with a public-private partnership (PPP) in a developing country. Design/methodology/approach - Using case study method, management controls used in a power project formed as a PPP are examined based on data gathered from semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis. Findings - The study reveals that the public partner of the PPP used multiple controls depending on the nature of risks in different phases of the project. While bureaucratic control was the predominantly used control pattern throughout the three phases (namely, selecting, building and operating) of the PPP, trust-based controls also played an important role. Market controls on the other hand played, somewhat, a nominal role, particularly in the selecting phase of the project. The study also highlights the problematic nature of forming PPPs in developing countries despite the various benefits associated with such organisational arrangements. Additionally, the study provides insights into how certain contextual features of developing countries affect the way in which controls are applied. Practical implications - The insights provided in this paper would be beneficial to policy makers, in developing countries in particular, when making decisions in relation to implementation, management and risk control of PPPs. Originality/value - This study makes an original contribution to the existing literature on PPPs by examining the way in which management controls are used to minimise risk in a PPP in a developing country.24 page(s
Transcatheter aortic valve implantation versus surgical aortic valve replacement : meta-analysis of clinical outcomes and cost-effectiveness
No full textObjective: Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) has emerged as a feasible alternative treatment to conventional surgical aortic valve replacement (AVR) for high-risk patients with aortic stenosis. The present systematic review aimed to assess the comparative clinical and cost-effectiveness outcomes of TAVI versus AVR, and meta-analyse standardized clinical endpoints. Methods: An electronic search was conducted on 9 online databases to identify all relevant studies. Eligible studies had to report on either periprocedural mortality or incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) to be included for analysis. Results: The systematic review identified 24 studies that reported on comparative clinical outcomes, including three randomized controlled trials and ten matched observational studies involving 7906 patients. Meta-analysis demonstrated no significant differences in regards to mortality, stroke, myocardial infarction or acute renal failure. Patients who underwent TAVI were more likely to experience major vascular complications or arrhythmias requiring permanent pacemaker insertion. Patients who underwent AVR were more likely to experience major bleeding. Eleven analyses from 7 economic studies reported on ICER. Six analyses defined TAVI to be low value, 2 analyses defined TAVI to be intermediate value, and three analyses defined TAVI to be high value. Conclusion: The present study demonstrated no significant differences in regards to mortality or stroke between the two therapeutic procedures. However, the cost-effectiveness and long-term efficacy of TAVI may require further investigation. Technological improvement and increased experience may broaden the clinical indication for TAVI for low-intermediate risk patients in the future.13 page(s
Australians with osteoarthritis : satisfaction with health care providers and the perceived helpfulness of treatments and information sources
No full textObjective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the satisfaction of Australian patients who suffer from osteoarthritis (OA) with their health care providers and the perceived helpfulness of treatments and information sources. Methods: A self-administered questionnaire was conducted with a sample of 560 Australian patients who suffer from OA with questions about satisfaction with health care providers and the helpfulness of different treatment options and information sources. Logistic regression models were used to assess potential predictors of satisfaction. Thematic analysis was undertaken for attitudinal factors associated with satisfaction. Results: A total of 435 participants returned questionnaires (response rate 78%). Most respondents were highly satisfied with the care provided by their general practitioner (GP) (84%), communication with their GP (88%), time spent with their GP (84%), and their ability to talk freely with their GP about their medical problem (93%), but less satisfied with their ability to talk freely about associated emotional problems (77%). Satisfaction with pharmacists (80%), rheumatologists (76%), and orthopedic surgeons (72%) was high. Joint replacement surgery (91%), prescription anti-inflammatory medications (66%), aids and assistive devices (65%), intra-articular injections (63%), and prescription painkiller medications (62%) were perceived as effective treatments. Less highly rated treatments were exercise (48%), physiotherapy (43%), and complementary medicines (29%). A majority of patients were satisfied with the information to manage their OA (65%). From the multivariable logistic regression analysis, four GP satisfaction factors were found to be predictors of overall satisfaction with GP care: the amount of time that the GP spends with the patient (P=0.005), the information the GP provides about what to expect (P<0.001), the communication between patient and GP (P=0.001), and the information that the GP provides about medications (P=0.042). Conclusion: The study showed that although patients with OA were generally satisfied with their health care providers, there was notable variation in the perceived helpfulness of therapeutic options. The importance to patients of having access to good quality information about their condition was emphasized.8 page(s