Influence of topography and moisture and nutrient availability on green alder function on the low arctic tundra, NT

The Arctic has warmed by at least 3°C over the past 50 years and this rapid warming is expected to continue. Climate warming is driving the proliferation of shrubs across the tundra biome with implications for energy balance, climate, hydrology, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity. Changes in tundra plant water use attributable to shrub expansion are predicted to increase evapotranspirative water loss which may amplify local warming and reduce run-off. However, little is known about the extent to which shrubs will enhance evapotranspirative water loss in these systems. Direct measures of shrub water use are needed to accurately predict evapotranspiration rates and the associated hydrological and energetic impacts. In addition, it is crucial that we understand the abiotic factors that drive shrub distribution and physiological function to forecast further changes in tundra ecosystem function. Shrubs are expanding in areas that have a higher potential of accumulating moisture, such as drainage channels and hill slopes. Shrub expansion may be limited by variation in water and nutrient availability across topographic gradients. Nevertheless, the associations between shrub function and abiotic limitations remain understudied. To address these knowledge gaps, we measured sap flow, stem water potential, and a range of functional traits of green alder (Alnus viridis) shrubs and quantified water and nutrient availability in shrub patches on the low arctic tundra of the Northwest Territories. Frost table depth was a significant negative driver of sap flow and underlies decreased surface water availability with thaw. This was further supported through significantly lower stem water potential values as the growing season progressed. Shrubs in upslope locations had significantly lower water potentials relative to shrubs in downslope locations, demonstrating topographic variation in shrub water status. Shrubs in channels and at the tops of patch slopes significantly differed in leaf functional traits representing leaf investment, productivity, and water use efficiency. Channel shrubs reflected traits associated with higher resource availability and productivity whereas shrubs at the tops of patches reflected the opposite. This work provides insight into the abiotic drivers of tall shrub water use and productivity, both of which will be essential for predicting ecosystem function

Behavioural Finance & Corporate Investment: M&A Success, Pre-Merger Issuance and the Media

Classical economics proposed that individuals are rational beings that undertake essential due diligence when making a financial decision so as to reduce avoidable risk when investing. Despite the intuition behind such a conclusion, it has become widely recognised that investors are driven by animal spirits. These emotions can influence an investment decision and lead to a less than optimal outcome. This thesis includes three empirical chapters, which provide compelling evidence on the importance of behavioural finance in Mergers and Acquisitions. The results herein have practical relevance for academics, practitioners and regulators alike. The prevailing literature has focussed on corporate finance decisions under the assumption of universal rationality. Moreover most empirical research to-date has focussed on the US market, and yet the UK offers attractive characteristics worthy of future research. Firstly, most M&As (circa 80.2%) within the UK are financed using cash. Secondly, a large majority (circa 91%) of UK targets are unlisted companies. Finally, the UK remains the second-most active M&A market outside of the US. This chapter offers research in pursuit of understanding the UK market deeper, while simultaneously assessing the value of established findings in different settings. In this pursuit, the first empirical chapter of this thesis relaxes universal rationality, modelling inefficiency at a firm and market level. Temporary deviations away from fundamental values can lead managers to attempt to time capital markets both in the decision to merge and in the choice over the payment method to be used. Using an intuitive methodological approach, the empirical results in Chapter Three indicate that market-timing using overvalued equity is not supported in the UK with evidence contrasting established US findings. The results suggest that undervaluation however is a stronger motive for merger activity as shareholders benefit twofold from the revaluation of the firm as well as the addition of the target’s assets. An additional weakness of previous literature lies in the failure to interact various corporate decisions together. Chapter Four combines capital structure changes with the effects on an acquirer’s abnormal return. The choice between debt and equity can give the market an indication over the beliefs of the managerial team regarding the firm’s future cash flows. The decision to issue equity can signal overvaluation while issuing debt can exert an external monitoring mechanism on managerial teams leading to better corporate investments. Chapter Four supports the view of debt as a disciplinary mechanism with significantly lower losses experienced by acquirers that issue debt in the three years before announcing a M&A. The final empirical chapter of this thesis takes note of the power of mass media to influence an investor’s decision-making process. In an attempt to undertake in-depth due diligence, individuals can utilise prestigious mass media to help decide which firms to invest within, while the mass media can also reflect public opinion of the firm. Chapter Five indicates that acquirers that are covered in the media, and thus are placed in investor’s minds, earn significantly better returns long-term than those that are not in the media. The results indicate that it is the coverage rather than the attitude of the media that influences an acquirer’s stock price. This finding supports the view that any publicity is good publicity. Overall, this thesis provides valuable evidence that challenges the assumption of universal rationality. It is recommended that if we wish to understand financial markets better, then we must seek to understand the people that make decisions within them

Factors influencing pre-hospital decisions not to convey: a mixed methods study

This study has used a mixed methodology to explore the impact of geographic, temporal and ambulance crew skill factors on ambulance clinicians’ decisions to leave a patient on scene after attending a 999 call. Four phases of work were undertaken using both qualitative and quantitative methods to build an understanding of the complex nature of pre-hospital clinical reasoning. A novel scale, the DMASC survey was developed, which indicated four factors influence decision-making in this context. More experienced staff scored significantly differently to other staff groups on the ‘Experience’ and ‘Patient characteristic’ subscales of the tool. Qualitative work explored these findings in more detail and five inter-related themes were identified, namely, ‘Communication’, ‘The three ‘E’s’, education, experience and exposure’, ‘System influences’, ‘Professionalism’ and ‘Patient characteristics’. The final phase of the study undertook to analyse retrospective call data from one large ambulance service over a one-year period. All of the five predictor variables, rurality, time of day, day of the week, patient condition and crew skill level, influenced the likelihood of conveyance. Of these the level of clinical skill of the first crew at scene was independently significant. The results of this work are discussed in relation to the strategic and operational context of NHS ambulance services. The thesis is structured as a series of papers yet to be submitted for publication. Although this confers a degree of repetition, it provides a logical analysis of the methods used to explore factors that may influence paramedic’s clinical decision making when deciding to leave patients at home following a 999-call attendance

Exploring Teachers’ Phenomenological Experiences of a Principal’s Change Initiative

Educational change has traditionally been viewed as an objective and rational process. From this perspective, school leaders have been dependent on solving the infuriatingly elusive effective change process puzzle by trying to “finetune the plan to ensure it incorporated every essential piece of the jigsaw” (Branson, 2010, p. 18). Despite educators seeking to explain events and control processes for change for many decades, effective educational change remains an elusive outcome. By striving to objectify the process, people can overlook the subjective influence that a change initiative may have on the behaviour and attitudes of those involved in enacting change. For this research, the term ‘phenomenology’ is used to refer to a person’s subjective emotional dimension and this is distinct from its use in a research methodology sense. In recent times, there is an emerging realisation that leaders of change within schools need to be more relational and to consider how a change initiative influences the subjectivity of those involved. To do this, school leaders need to move beyond conceptualising change as a series of processes and/or practices that are often imposed onto teachers, who are then expected to enact these in a ‘one-size-fits-all’ manner (Wheatley, 2006). A relational school leader acknowledges that enacting change involves teachers experiencing some sense of loss for the practices and processes that they consider define their identity as a professional. A teacher’s sense of professionalism and professional identity are couched in the way they individually ‘craft’ their practice (Crow, Day & Moller, 2016; Kelchtermans, 2005). Thus, a relational school leader should be reflective and monitor the effect that a change initiative has on teachers’ sense of subjectivity as they need to realise that this can influence the extent to which teachers engage in processes for teaching and learning. This is particularly pertinent in light of the teacher quality agenda that underscores the current political context. Within the current Australian educational context, teacher quality is being viewed as a key factor in shaping the economic fabric of this nation now and into the future. As a consequence of this perspective, the Australian government has introduced a suite of reforms into education that seek to address the perceived paucity in teacher quality (Australian Council for Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2012; Council of Australian Governments, 2008a; Education Services Australia, 2011a, 2012a, 2012b, 2013). The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership [AITSL], a government-endorsed body, has played an instrumental role in the development and promulgation of educational reforms in this nation. These reforms have been premised on the view that teaching is an objective and rational process, and they have sought to embed a culture of control, consistency, and accountability with regard to the way that teaching and learning occur in Australian schools. It is unlikely that viewing education from this perspective and embedding a culture of compliance, and its associated control and accountability measures, will result in an elevation in teacher quality (Hursh, 2011, 2013; Hursh & Henderson, 2011). The research problem emanates from the perspective that subjectivity, arguably, has a critical role to play in shaping the way that teachers embrace opportunities for learning and the way that teachers implement pedagogical practice at the classroom level. However, this continues to be overlooked in the current educational context. In light of this problem, this research will explore the phenomenological responses that teachers in a single-school context have regarding the implementation of a principal’s change initiative. Consistent with a broader body of scholarship concerned with educational change, this research is guided by an interpretivist paradigm through which educators’ constructions of the principal’s change initiative are elucidated. Within a school, teachers constantly interpret their experiences and construct multiple views of reality. The way that each teacher enacts their professional role is shaped by their individual perception of reality and the meaningful social interactions that they have with the people they interact with. Case-study methodology enables a detailed exploration of an experience, and for this research it is the implementation of the principal’s change initiative. Perceptions of this particular change initiative are gathered from the principal, the change facilitator, and the teachers from a Catholic primary school in the State of Queensland, Australia. All teachers at the research school completed an electronic survey to share their perceptions of the change initiative implemented at this school. Individual semi-structured interviews were also conducted with the principal, the change facilitator, and 16 of the teachers at the research school. It is argued in this thesis that imposing a change initiative on teachers can result in them expressing negative phenomenological responses towards the focus area of change which reinforces their reluctance, if not resistance, towards continuing to enact the change. Furthermore, it supports the understanding that a planned educational change strategy is significantly deficient if it does not incorporate a means for ascertaining, and positively responding to, the ongoing phenomenological responses to the change processes from those involved in bringing about the change. This implies that those who are overseeing the change need to not only be effective managers of the change process, but they also need to have the dispositional characteristics to be effective leaders of people

Women Challenging the Constitution: New Evidence

AbstractThis article is more political than legal. Using the ap­proaches identified by feminist institutionalism, it fo­cuses on the interactions between the Canadian Advi­sory Council on the Status of Women (CACSW) and the Canadian government during the constitutional cri­sis of 1980-1981. How did the gendered institutions of the federal government facilitate a narrative that, finally, was harmful to the women’s movement in Canada? RésuméCet article est plus politique que juridique. En utilisant les approches identifiées par les institutions féministes, il se penche sur les interactions entre le Conseil consul­tatif canadien sur la situation de la femme (CCCSF) et le gouvernement du Canada durant la crise constitution­nelle de 1980-1981. Comment les institutions marquées par la différenciation des sexes du gouvernement fédé­ral ont-elles facilité un récit qui était, en fin de compte, nuisible au mouvement féministe au Canada

Developmental Juvenile Osteology

Developmental Juvenile Osteology was created as a core reference text to document the development of the entire human skeleton from early embryonic life to adulthood. In the period since its first publication there has been a resurgence of interest in the developing skeleton, and the second edition of Developmental Juvenile Osteology incorporates much of the key literature that has been published in the intervening time. The main core of the text persists by describing each individual component of the human skeleton from its embryological origin through to its final adult form. This systematic approach has been shown to assist the processes of both identification and age estimation and acts as a core source for the basic understanding of normal human skeletal development. In addition to this core, new sections have been added where there have been significant advances in the field. Identifies every component of the juvenile skeleton, by providing a detailed analysis of development and ageing and a detailed description of each bone in four ways: adult bone, early development, ossification and practical notes. New chapters and updated sections covering the dentition, age estimation in the living and bone histology. An updated bibliography documenting the research literature that has contributed to the field over the past 15 years since the publication of the first edition. Heavily illustrated, including new additions. © 2016, 2000 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved