Search results

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.

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 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.

To empirically test for an impact on profit performance when activity-based costing (ABC) is used in companies with customer service and low-price strategies. We also investigate whether the profit impact of ABC usage is affected by higher-quality information systems.

Survey.

We find a positive impact on profit performance when ABC is used by companies with customer service as a strategic priority but not when ABC is used by companies with lower emphasis on customer service. For companies emphasizing low-price strategies, we find a positive impact on profit performance, especially when ABC is used together with high-quality information systems.

This study develops a method of measuring strategic priorities of a firm. It divides firms into strategy groups based on their degree of emphasis on three strategic priorities: low price, flexibility, and customer service.

Identifies certain contexts when ABC is especially beneficial.

If the use of ABC information leads to better strategic and operational decisions, firm performance should improve. However, prior research on the impact of ABC on firm performance has found little to no connection and usually only when it is used with other practices. This is the first study to find an impact on profit performance for firms with customer service and low-price strategies and high-quality information systems.

The structural holes to which a person is connected are embedded in a broader organization or market. High status in the broader context signals a reputation that can make a would-be broker more attractive, more likely to engage opportunities to broker, and allay audience concerns about proposed brokerage. The implications are correlation and contingency. We offer illustrative evidence of both implications and conclude that status and structural holes are so closely related in concept and fact that advantage is more clearly revealed when the two network forms are analyzed together as complements defining the hubs in a network.

In order to address the complex problems of society, the innovation research process should incorporate technical, social, economic and ethical factors, but also actively involve a diverse group of non-scientific actors. One way to prepare students for this type of research is to create “Citizen Scholars,” students who want to work for the betterment of society. Arvanitakis and Hornsby (2016) argue that we need to change how we teach and train students in specific proficiencies. The purpose of this paper is to assess how the pedagogical approach applied within the program contributes to building the proficiencies and attributes as described by Arvanitakis and Hornsby (2016).

The authors conducted a total of 12 interviews with alumni who started their program in 2014, one focus group discussion with lecturers and 132 questionnaires with alumni to discuss to what extend the proficiencies are trained in the program and whether these are used in their current jobs. The authors also included data of an earlier study conducted in 2014. These data contain 26 interviews with students during the first year of the program. These students graduated in 2017 and are thus from the same cohort as the alumni.

The results show that the pedagogical approach in the management policy analysis program trains all the attributes. Important elements in the program are: the inquiry-based approach intertwined with community service learning (CSL) throughout the program; gradually increased complexity of the real-world problems addressed; students working in teams; and gradually reducing support of the lecturer.

The authors conclude that our pedagogical approach applied in the program contributes to learning the proficiencies. The authors argue that for the training of inter- and transdisciplinary, the proficiency knowledge integration should be added.

The result show that more inquiry-based approaches and CSL programs can stimulate the four clusters of proficiencies, which should hold a central place in universities if we want to create citizen scholars.

With the approach, students contribute to research issues of local communities.

Despite the increasing interest of higher education to involve civic activities in the curricula, few pedagogical approaches are described. The research shows that theoretical insights in the adaption of a model to realize a citizen scholar.