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There is much anecdotal evidence that birds and their droppings are a major problem for the heritage profession. The purpose of this paper is to examine how serious heritage practitioners consider the bird impact to be.

An online survey was conducted of 59 Australian heritage professionals of between one and >20 year’s experience in the field.

Bird impacts were not considered of major concern to buildings. The longer experience a practitioner had, the less likely the impacts were considered an issue. Feral pigeons were deemed the most problematic, followed by cockatoos, starlings, swallows, seagulls, mynas, sparrows, cormorants, ibis, ducks and birds of prey. The professionals ranked common deterrent methods. The highest-ranking deterrents were bird netting and bird spikes, but they were only considered moderately effective. The costs of installation and maintenance, as well the ease of installation, were all deemed significantly less important than the physical impact, the aesthetic sympathy and the effectiveness of a deterrent method.

This study indicates that the impact of birds on buildings in Australia may be of less concern than previously thought, and may be driven by other factors (i.e. aesthetics, commercial companies) rather than actual effects.

This is first study of its kind that surveyed the experiences of a wide range of heritage practitioners.

Natural disasters exert a continual toll not only on property and public infrastructure, but also on places and items of cultural heritage value. Whereas infrastructure and modern buildings can be rebuilt, archaeological and heritage sites cannot be restored without loss of integrity and authenticity. Often, the impact of management decisions during and following a disaster is greater than the physical impact of the disaster itself. Aims to assess attitudinal barriers that may exist among disaster management professionals, a study of local controllers of the state emergency service of New South Wales (Australia).

All local controllers of the state emergency service of New South Wales were surveyed by a mail‐out questionnaire as to their knowledge of cultural heritage and their attitudes to the protection of cultural heritage assets during bushfires.

Key areas identified are a general lack of awareness of the special needs of heritage places, a lack of communication between emergency and heritage managers; an acknowledged need for but decided absence of disaster planning for cultural heritage assets; and a need for training and education.

The study considered the local controllers of the state emergency service of New South Wales. Given the observed attitudinal barriers, there is a need for future research looking at the attitudes held by the various levels in the vertical decision making and authority tree.

The awareness of SES controllers regarding cultural heritage in disaster situations needs to be improved as are the communication channels both in the disaster preparedness and the disaster response phase.

This is the first time research has been carried out into assessing the attitudes and awareness of local controllers of the state emergency service of New South Wales with respect to cultural heritage asset management.

The use of generative artificial intelligence (genAi) language models such as ChatGPT to write assignment text is well established. This paper aims to assess to what extent genAi can be used to obtain guidance on how to avoid detection when commissioning and submitting contract-written assignments and how workable the offered solutions are.

Although ChatGPT is programmed not to provide answers that are unethical or that may cause harm to people, ChatGPT’s can be prompted to answer with inverted moral valence, thereby supplying unethical answers. The authors tasked ChatGPT to generate 30 essays that discussed the benefits of submitting contract-written undergraduate assignments and outline the best ways of avoiding detection. The authors scored the likelihood that ChatGPT’s suggestions would be successful in avoiding detection by markers when submitting contract-written work.

While the majority of suggested strategies had a low chance of escaping detection, recommendations related to obscuring plagiarism and content blending as well as techniques related to distraction have a higher probability of remaining undetected. The authors conclude that ChatGPT can be used with success as a brainstorming tool to provide cheating advice, but that its success depends on the vigilance of the assignment markers and the cheating student’s ability to distinguish between genuinely viable options and those that appear to be workable but are not.

This paper is a novel application of making ChatGPT answer with inverted moral valence, simulating queries by students who may be intent on escaping detection when committing academic misconduct.

This paper seeks to look at the usage of the internet by students, academics and university administrators as part of their normal working day. It investigates whether access to computer facilities and the mode of study have any influence, or whether other factors need to be considered when providing services.

To assess this, the paper considers the diurnal nature of general internet usage in Australia, addresses the daily average internet use at various Australian universities, and considers how much the usage profile says about the student profile and student study habits.

Web usage is high at the start of the work day and then peaks at the end of the work period, with another slight peak by 7 p.m., presumably after the dinner period, representing those who come on‐line in the evening.

The analysis of the proxy usage of nine Australian universities has shown that the vast majority of usage in the Victorian and South Australian universities in the sample is limited to office hours with 81 per cent of all usage occurring during the standard working hours and flexi‐time period between 08:00 and 18:00 (72 per cent between 09:00 and 17:00).

This paper details a longitudinal study into the e‐mail habits of first year students at Charles Sturt University. This study is part of ongoing research investigating the factors and barriers that can influence the successfully adoption of technology into the learning environment. The findings from this study illustrate that e‐mail applications are very popular in terms of both useage as well as the high level of confidence that students exhibit. The survey identified two main areas that need to be addressed, namely the disadvantage of rural students in accessing e‐mail and second that male students tend not to be as frequent users of e‐mail compared to their female counterparts.

Invented in late 1890s, asbestos cement sheeting rose to prominence during the post-Second World War period as a building material for low-cost housing by state housing commissions and low-income families (“fibro homes”). The adverse health effects of asbestos fibres in the building industry and home renovation activities are well documented. Fibro homes of the 1950s and 1960s are increasingly coming under the gaze of heritage studies, which brings to the fore the question of how to deal with the asbestos cement sheeting most are clad with.

This paper provides the first systematic review to assess the literature (126 papers were identified in Google Scholar and scanned for content) on the conservation management of asbestos cement sheeting in heritage properties.

Overall, engagement with the conservation management of asbestos cement sheeting in heritage properties was low, with only two sources dealing with asbestos cement sheeting in any level of detail. The studies note that if asbestos cement sheeting is in good condition, it should be left alone. Numerous conservation and repair options do exist, in particular the application of (coloured) sealants that extend the life of asbestos cement sheets and asbestos cement roofing.

This paper represents the first systematic review to assess conservation management options for asbestos cement sheeting in heritage properties.

Birds are implicated in spoiling and decay of buildings, especially through their droppings. Pigeons are considered the main culprits, and several studies have examined the effects and chemistry of accumulations of droppings without evidence to the exact origins of the source of the excreta. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study reviews and summarises the state of knowledge with regard to the impact of bird excreta on buildings. It experimentally assesses the acidity of fresh pigeon excreta with different diets and examines the development of the acidity of the excreta after voiding.

Feral pigeons in urban settings are known to be fed by a range of foods. Urban food scraps-derived diets produce more acidic excreta than more natural diets such as seeds. This is a first study of its kind to examine the impact of a bird’s diet on the pH and thus the resulting (potential) decay of masonry.

This study showed that from a management’s perspective, pigeons that subsist entirely on human provided foods will be depositing more initially acidic faeces. If faecal accumulation occurs; then, mould and other bacteria quickly alter the chemistry from acidic towards basic, but the damage may already be done.

This paper is the first study of its kind to examine the effects of fresh pigeon droppings of known origin and age once voided from the intestine. This allows the authors to assess the impact during the first few days.

Attempts to understand, via a questionnaire, students’ attitudes towards electronic mail and to evaluate its effectiveness in student learning. Analyses the data and gives an interpretation of the results, discussing some of the issues raised.

This paper details a longitudinal study into the data management practices of first year students at Charles Sturt University. This study is part of ongoing research investigating the factors and barriers that can influence the successful adoption of technology into the learning environment. The findings suggest that students are exhibiting poor data management skills and lack the understanding to recover from data loss situations.

Many researchers require access to computer facilities beyond those offered by desktop workstations. Traditionally, these are offered either through partnerships, to share the cost of supercomputing facilities, or through purpose‐built cluster facilities. However, funds are not always available to satisfy either of these options, and university departments are under increasing pressure to obtain the maximum return on investment. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a low‐cost cluster computing facility using existing workstations in undergraduate computing laboratories.

Drawing on a previous feasibility study, experiments were conducted with cluster configurations of increasing size to determine the benefits and drawbacks. This was followed by identification and resolution of problems, and assessment of effects upon existing users of the computers.

A working cluster was built to supply the needs of researchers, with almost no impact upon existing users and at very little cost.

At present, the workstations can only be used as a “processor farm” and it is unclear how MPI type processing may be achieved, because there is no guarantee of the number of workstations available at any specific time.

Any institution requiring access to high performance computing can build a useful resource from existing computers at minimal cost. The usefulness of the resource depends on existing computers being under utilised.

The novel aspect of this work is that the facility was built using existing student computing laboratories.