Time-Varying Market, Interest Rate and Exchange Rate Risk in Australian Bank Portfolio Stock Returns: A Garch-M Approach

This study employs an extended version of the Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity in Mean (GARCH-M) model to consider the time-series sensitivity of Australian bank stock returns to market, interest rate and foreign exchange rate risks. Daily Australian bank portfolio returns, a market wide accumulation index, short, medium and long-term interest rates, and a trade-weighted foreign exchange index are used to model these risks over the period 1996 to 2001. The results suggest that market risk is an important determinant of bank stock returns, along with short and medium term interest rate levels and their volatility. However, long-term interest rates and the foreign exchange rate do not appear to be significant to the Australian bank return generating process over the period considered.Bank stock returns; GARCH; market risk; interest rate risk; foreign exchange risk

Is Professionalism Important in Physician Assistant Education?

Purpose: This study was designed to demonstrate the importance of a formal professionalism curriculum in physician assistant (PA) education. The PA concept arose from the medical profession, and PA education was designed to follow the medical model of education. Courses have been mandated by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) to include professionalism. Just as in the curriculum in medical schools, PA educators have been allowed to create their own professionalism curricula. The American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA) and the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA) have mandated that professionalism and ethics must be included in PA education. To address this need, a professionalism curriculum for first year PA students was created that combined standards of professionalism that are taught in medical school with those from the PA profession. Method: Sixty-four students enrolled in their first year of a master’s degree PA program were asked to voluntarily participate in a two-part survey to assess their knowledge of professionalism. The initial survey was administered prior to any formal education in professionalism. The same survey was repeated following the completion of the professionalism curriculum. The design of the survey was cross sectional and consisted of close ended questions. A Likert scale was utilized for responses, allowing for statistical analysis and comparison. Results: Sixty-three of 64 students completed both surveys. Results did not demonstrate a statistically significant improvement in knowledge of professionalism. Student evaluations were overwhelmingly positive, as was their participation in group discussions. Conclusions: Professionalism did not significantly improve. The lack of statistical significance may have referred to the lack of reliability in the findings but did not indicate the curriculum was effective or ineffective. It may have been wiser to continue professionalism education throughout the didactic year, incorporating case studies and simulation exercises

Records management capacity and compliance toolkits : a critical assessment.

This article seeks to present the results of a project that critically evaluated a series of toolkits for assessing records management capacity and/or compliance. These toolkits have been developed in different countries and sectors within the context of the e-environment and provide evidence of good corporate and information governance. Design/methodology/approach - A desk-based investigation of the tools was followed by an electronic Delphi with toolkit developers and performance measurement experts to develop a set of evaluation criteria. Different stakeholders then evaluated the toolkits against the criteria using cognitive walkthroughs and expert heuristic reviews. The results and the research process were reviewed via electronic discussion. Findings - Developed by recognised and highly respected organisations, three of the toolkits are software tools, whilst the fourth is a methodology. They are all underpinned by relevant national/international records management legislation, standards and good practice including, either implicitly or explicitly, ISO 15489. They all have strengths, complementing rather than competing with one another. They enable the involvement of other staff, thereby providing an opportunity for raising awareness of the importance of effective records management. Practical implications - These toolkits are potentially very powerful, flexible and of real value to organisations in managing their records. They can be used for a "quick and dirty" assessment of records management capacity or compliance as well as in-depth analysis. The most important criterion for selecting the appropriate one is to match the toolkit with the scenario. Originality/value - This paper aims to raise awareness of the range and nature of records management toolkits and their potential for varied use in practice to support more effective management of records

Odyssey: a semi-automated pipeline for phasing, imputation, and analysis of genome-wide genetic data

BACKGROUND: Genome imputation, admixture resolution and genome-wide association analyses are timely and computationally intensive processes with many composite and requisite steps. Analysis time increases further when building and installing the run programs required for these analyses. For scientists that may not be as versed in programing language, but want to perform these operations hands on, there is a lengthy learning curve to utilize the vast number of programs available for these analyses. RESULTS: In an effort to streamline the entire process with easy-to-use steps for scientists working with big data, the Odyssey pipeline was developed. Odyssey is a simplified, efficient, semi-automated genome-wide imputation and analysis pipeline, which prepares raw genetic data, performs pre-imputation quality control, phasing, imputation, post-imputation quality control, population stratification analysis, and genome-wide association with statistical data analysis, including result visualization. Odyssey is a pipeline that integrates programs such as PLINK, SHAPEIT, Eagle, IMPUTE, Minimac, and several R packages, to create a seamless, easy-to-use, and modular workflow controlled via a single user-friendly configuration file. Odyssey was built with compatibility in mind, and thus utilizes the Singularity container solution, which can be run on Linux, MacOS, and Windows platforms. It is also easily scalable from a simple desktop to a High-Performance System (HPS). CONCLUSION: Odyssey facilitates efficient and fast genome-wide association analysis automation and can go from raw genetic data to genome: phenome association visualization and analyses results in 3-8 h on average, depending on the input data, choice of programs within the pipeline and available computer resources. Odyssey was built to be flexible, portable, compatible, scalable, and easy to setup. Biologists less familiar with programing can now work hands on with their own big data using this easy-to-use pipeline

Domain general learning: Infants use social and non-social cues when learning object statistics.

Previous research has shown that infants can learn from social cues. But is a social cue more effective at directing learning than a non-social cue? This study investigated whether 9-month-old infants (N = 55) could learn a visual statistical regularity in the presence of a distracting visual sequence when attention was directed by either a social cue (a person) or a non-social cue (a rectangle). The results show that both social and non-social cues can guide infants' attention to a visual shape sequence (and away from a distracting sequence). The social cue more effectively directed attention than the non-social cue during the familiarization phase, but the social cue did not result in significantly stronger learning than the non-social cue. The findings suggest that domain general attention mechanisms allow for the comparable learning seen in both conditions

Revisiting the Revolution: Whitlam and Women

On 11 November 1975 the Whitlam Government was thrown out of office, not by the people who had elected it, but by an unelected official, in what many maintain to this day was an unconstitutional act. Much of the background to this unprecedented action has been clothed in secrecy because of the refusal of the Palace to release to Australians the relevant correspondence between the Monarch and the Governor-General at the time. That refusal was set aside by the High Court decision of 29 May 2020, so more is becoming known. The traumatic and premature conclusion of the Whitlam Government was a shock and a huge disappointment to many Australians. For Australian women, it was particularly damaging and a major setback. The Whitlam Government (1972-1975) was the first national government to implement a big reform agenda for women, the first to involve women at the highest levels of government, and the first to move with purpose and effect toward the objective of a society in which men and women of Australia would be equals in every way. The Whitlam Government made significant progress towards the gender equality objective. It would have made more if not cut off midway through its second term by the traumatic Dismissal of that government and its subsequent overwhelming electoral defeat. In 2019, close to this historic date, the Whitlam Institute hosted a forum at Old Parliament House in the ACT, “Revisiting the Revolution: Whitlam and Women” (the Forum). This gathering of activists, old and new, considered the broad scope of Whitlam’s policy agenda for women. The contributors were drawn from the cohort of exceptional women who at the time under discussion were key activists, advocates, policy experts, public servants, diplomats and lawyers. They made the revolution happen. It also included perspectives from the new generation of Australian women leaders. This paper is informed by their contributions. The papers contributed by these exceptional women are available on the Whitlam Institute website, whitlam.org. I refer to some of this valuable material in this paper but commend readers to the complete contributions for their highly relevant and important detail. Together they create an authentic sense of those times when so much progress was delivered. The aim of this paper is threefold: first to explore where Whitlam’s women’s agenda came from, and how it became a significant, even central part of the broader agenda of his government. Secondly, it will revisit the major policy and law reform initiatives of the agenda. Innovations such as childcare; women’s refuges; universal health cover; equal pay; the minimum wage; access to senior levels in the Commonwealth Public Service; maternity leave for public servants; the appointment of talented women to top positions; and significantly, improved access to all levels of education. These changes amounted to a social and economic revolution for women

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis study examines the efficiency of resource reallocation within multisegment firms. A defining feature of multisegment firms is management's ability to transfer resources across divisions. Although the option to use the proceeds or cash flows from one division of the firm to finance operations in another division is valuable to a firm, a large stream of literature documents potentially value-destroying consequences when agency conflicts interfere with investment decisions. Research to date provides mixed results as to whether multisegment firms reallocate resources efficiently. The extent that managers' resource reallocation decisions reflect improvements in efficiency is relevant to firms' existing and potential stakeholders. The reallocation of resources within firms provides new information about factors that underlie firm value, such as growth opportunities and risk exposure. To assess the efficiency of firms' resource allocation decisions, I create two unique, composite measures of efficiency that combine the performance of each segment relative to a firm's other segments and the segment's industry lifecycle stage. I examine the association between these measures and changes in the assets allocated to each of the firm's segments. I also investigate the influence of corporate governance factors. When financing occurs in-house, the firm has greater incentives to monitor the use of funds. Therefore, the ability of a firm's corporate governance structure to alleviate agency problems should be related to the efficiency of management's resource allocation decisions. Additionally, the greater complexity inherent in operating in multiple segments increases demands on firms' governance systems, making the efficiency of resource reallocation and the influence of related governance mechanisms important empirical questions. Using segment data provided under SFAS No. 131, I find that firms reallocate resources to segments with the best comparative advantages within the firm, suggesting that multisegment firms, on average, reallocate resources efficiently. Additionally, I find that firms with more independent boards more quickly reallocate resources away from segments with lower within-firm comparative advantages than do firms with more affiliated or dependent boards

Non-line-of-sight tracking of people at long range

A remote-sensing system that can determine the position of hidden objects has applications in many critical real-life scenarios, such as search and rescue missions and safe autonomous driving. Previous work has shown the ability to range and image objects hidden from the direct line of sight, employing advanced optical imaging technologies aimed at small objects at short range. In this work we demonstrate a long-range tracking system based on single laser illumination and single-pixel single-photon detection. This enables us to track one or more people hidden from view at a stand-off distance of over 50~m. These results pave the way towards next generation LiDAR systems that will reconstruct not only the direct-view scene but also the main elements hidden behind walls or corners