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Australia's new government is committed to delivering the next defence white paper in 2015. The two previous white papers took a predominantly risk-management approach to Southeast Asia, generally ignored the strategic opportunities in the region, treated it as a stand-alone region largely unrelated to developments in East Asia and failed to link Australia's policies in Southeast Asia with the broader goal of helping to ensure greater strategic stability in Asia by putting constraints on Chinese assertiveness and encouraging its peaceful rise. After offering a summary of recent Australian defence thinking on Southeast Asia, this paper outlines why managing China is the key variable when it comes to strategic stability in the region. It then examines how China's strategy and behaviour can be shaped and influenced by events and relationships in Southeast Asia, and offers some suggestions as to the role Australia can seek to play in Southeast Asia that relates to Canberra's China-focused objectives and strategic stability in Asia more broadly If that can be achieved in the 2015 defence white paper, Australia - which is often criticized for being preoccupied primarily with managing the relationship with its superpower ally the United States - will demonstrate to itself and Asia that its heavy reliance on the ANZUS treaty is no barrier to strategic creativity in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Friction foot blisters are a common injury occurring in up to 39% of marathoners, the most common injury in adventure racing, and represent more than 70% of medical visits in multi-stage ultramarathons. The goal of the study was to determine whether paper tape could prevent foot blisters in ultramarathon runners., Methods: This prospective randomized trial was undertaken during RacingThePlanet 155-mile (250-km), 7-day self-supported ultramarathons in China, Australia, Egypt, Chile, and Nepal in 2010 and 2011. Paper tape was applied prerace to one randomly selected foot, with the untreated foot acting as the own control. The study end point was development of a hot spot or blister on any location of either foot., Results: One hundred thirty-six participants were enrolled with 90 (66%) having completed data for analysis. There were 36% women, with a mean age of 40 ± 9.4 years (range, 25-40 years) and pack weight of 11 ± 1.8 kg (range, 8-16 kg). All participants developed blisters, with 89% occurring by day 2 and 59% located on the toes. No protective effect was observed by the intervention (47 versus 35; 52% versus 39%; P = .22), with fewer blisters occurring around the tape on the experimental foot than under the tape (23 vs 31; 25.6% versus 34.4%), yet 84% of study participants when queried would choose paper tape for blister prevention in the future., Conclusions: Although paper tape was not found to be significantly protective against blisters, the intervention was well tolerated with high user satisfaction., (Copyright © 2014 Wilderness Medical Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Drylands are vast and face threats from climate change and human activities. Traditional reviews cannot capture interdisciplinary knowledge, but bibliometric analysis provides valuable insights. Our study conducted bibliometric research of scientific production on climate change and land degradation in drylands using remote sensing. We examined 1527 Scopus-indexed publications to identify geographic and thematic hotspots, extracting leading authors, journals, and institutions. China leads in publications, followed by the US, Germany, and Australia. The US has the highest citation count. Collaboration networks involve the US, China, and European countries. There has been an exponential increase in remote sensing of land degradation in drylands (RSLDD) publications since 2011. Key journals include "International Journal of Remote Sensing" and "Remote Sensing of Environment". The analysis highlights the growing interest in the field, driven by Australia, the US, and China. Key areas of study are vegetation dynamics and land use change. Future perspectives for this scientific field involve promoting collaboration and exploring emerging technologies for comprehensive land degradation and desertification research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the impact of COVID-19 policies on the mobility of elderly individuals in Australia and China. It highlights the digital exclusion faced by older people as smartphone use became mandatory for accessing public spaces and services. The article discusses how this digital exclusion deepened social isolation and exacerbated feelings of loneliness among older individuals. It also examines the gender inequalities and the increased burden on women as unpaid caregivers during the pandemic. The paper emphasizes the need for age-inclusive policies that address intersecting factors and promote equitable access to technology and public spaces. [Extracted from the article]

For many taxa, new records of non-native introductions globally occur at a near exponential rate. We undertook a systematic review of peer-reviewed publications on non-native herpetofauna, to assess the information base available for assessing risks of future invasions, resulting in 836 relevant papers. The taxonomic and geographic scope of the literature was also compared to a published database of all known invasions globally. We found 1,116 species of herpetofauna, 95% of which were present in fewer than 12 studies. Nearly all literature on the invasion ecology of herpetofauna has appeared since 2000, with a strong focus on frogs (58%), particularly cane toads (Rhinella marina) and their impacts in Australia. While fewer papers have been published on turtles and snakes, proportionately more species from both these groups have been studied than for frogs. Within each herpetofaunal group, there are a handful of well-studied species: R. marina, Lithobates catesbeianus, Xenopus laevis, Trachemys scripta, Boiga irregularis and Anolis sagrei. Most research (416 papers; 50%) has addressed impacts, with far fewer studies on aspects like trade (2%). Besides Australia (213 studies), most countries have little location-specific peer-reviewed literature on non-native herpetofauna (on average 1.1 papers per established species). Other exceptions were Guam, the UK, China, California and France, but even their publication coverage across established species was not even. New methods for assessing and prioritizing invasive species such as the Environmental Impact Classification for Alien Taxa provide useful frameworks for risk assessment, but require robust species-level studies. Global initiatives, similar to the Global Amphibian Assessment, using the species and taxonomic groups identified here, are needed to derive the level of information across broad geographic ranges required to apply these frameworks. Expansive studies on model species can be used to indicate productive research foci for understudied taxa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to analyse the work done in the field of Night Vision Robots using IR and Object Detection from 2011 to 2021, using the bibliometric methods. This paper presents a Scopus database review on "Night Vision Bot using Dynamic IR and Object Detection". The necessity for doing this bibliometric survey is that to know how the technology in the field of mobile robotics and night vision, as well as to object detection, has evolved over the years. This paper shows the importance of Night Vision Robot from the year 2011 and continued up to 2021 April. The database analysis for the robot is done through Scopus and VOSviewer Version 1.6.16. Through this database survey, it is revealed that the maximum number of publications are Conference Paper and most of them are from the field of Engineering and Computer Science, India has the greatest number of publications followed by China. Methods: The Scopus database was used to obtain the articles for the above topic. The research papers were considered from the year 2011 to 2021. The Scopus analyzer can be used for the analysis of the database with different categories like Source, Subject Area, Country, etc. The analysis such as co-authorship, co-occurrences, citation analysis etc. is done by using VOSviewer Version 1.6.16. Results: In the study, a total of 69 articles on Night Vision Robot were obtained between the years 2011 and 2021. The statistical analysis and network analysis shows that the maximum number of papers were published in the year 2020. India is the highest contributor followed by China and Australia. Conclusion: The outcome of the Scopus database is 69 articles with the English Language having the largest number of articles. The Statistic Analysis helps to understand the potential of topic. It is done for Authors, Documents, Country, affiliations, funding sponsors. The Network Analysis indicates the interconnections between different parameters such as Coauthor, sources. It indicates that this is a new concept, and the research has been done mostly in the last year, so there is lot of future potential and scope for development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is commonly defined as a transitional subclinical state between normal aging and dementia. A growing body of research indicates that health behaviors may play a protective role against cognitive decline and could potentially slow down the progression from MCI to dementia. The aim of this study is to conduct a bibliometric analysis of literature focusing on health behaviors and MCI to summarize the factors and evidence regarding the influence of health behaviors on MCI. Methods: The study performed a bibliometric analysis by retrieving publications from the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index subdatabases within the Web of Science Core Collection. Utilizing VOSviewer and CiteSpace software, a total of 2,843 eligible articles underwent co-citation, cokeywords, and clustering analyses. This methodology aimed to investigate the current status, trends, major research questions, and potential future directions within the research domain. Results: The bibliometric analysis indicates that research on healthy behaviors in individuals with MCI originated in 2002 and experienced rapid growth in 2014, reflecting the increasing global interest in this area. The United States emerged as the primary contributor, accounting for more than one-third of the total scientific output with 982 articles. Journals that published the most articles on MCI-related health behaviors included "Journal of Alzheimer's Disease," "Neurobiology of Aging," "Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience," and other geriatricsrelated journals. High-impact papers identified by VOSviewer predominantly cover concepts related to MCI, such as diagnostic criteria, assessment, and multifactorial interventions. Co-occurrence keyword analysis highlights five research hotspots in health behavior associated with MCI: exercise, diet, risk factors and preventive measures for dementia, cognitive decline-related biomarkers, and clinical trials. Conclusion: This study provides a comprehensive review of literature on health behavior in individuals with MCI, emphasizing influential documents and journals. It outlines research trends and key focal points, offering valuable insights for researchers to comprehend significant contributions and steer future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As humanity reaches the 5.0 industrial revolution, education plays a critical role in boosting the quality of human resources. This paper reports bibliometric research on emerging TiP during 1993-2022 in the educational field to analyse its development on any level of education during the last three decades. This study employed a Scopus database. The findings are that the trend of TiP publication in educational fields has tended to increase every year during the past three decades and conference paper became the most published document type, the USA is the country which produces the most publications; "Students" being the most occurrences keyword and total link strength. The publication of the TiP is ranked to the Quartile 1, which implies that a publication with the cited performance is a publication with credibility because the publisher has a good reputation. Researchers can find the topics most relevant to other metadata sources such as Web of Science, Publish, and Perish.

The present study aims to identify the most productive countries, journals, authors, institutions and the most used keywords in the field of special education during 2011-2020, based on the WoS database. The widespread effects of the papers and how they are related were analyzed with the bibliometric analysis method. The findings of the study showed that the USA is inarguably the most productive country, followed by England and Australia. On the other hand, there was a very strong positive correlation (r = 0.929) between the number of papers published by countries and their h-index, a similar finding was also found to be present between the countries' h-index and GDP per capita (r = 0.790). Moreover, it was found that the journals with the highest quartile (Q1 and Q2) in the field of special education published significantly more papers than the journals with the lowest quartile (Q3 and Q4). Matson, JL (USA), Sigafoos, J (New Zealand) and Lancioni, GE (Italy) were determined as the most prolific authors, respectively. Autism, intellectual disability, and Down syndrome were the phrases most frequently used as keywords. Our findings provide key information regarding the developments that the research direction of special education field has recently taken. This study also serves a potential roadmap for future studies.

Using recently declassified archival material pertaining to the Chartered Bank of India Australia and China, this article foregrounds quantitative evidence that sheds new light on the history of British banks in Asia. It shows that Hong Kong came to play a critical role in the bank's note issue strategy after the Straits Settlements had moved off the silver standard in 1906. Locally denominated notes issued on mainland China complemented the Hong Kong issue. However, their circulation volume dropped dramatically during the anti-British boycott that followed the May Thirtieth Incident (1925). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their relatively small numbers, large old trees play disproportionately important roles in global biodiversity and ecosystem functions. There is a lack of systematic reviews and quantitative analyses of the accumulated literature. Understanding the research context and evolution could pump prime research and conservation endeavors. Using the comprehensive Web of Science, we applied VOSviewer (1.6.19) and CiteSpace (6.1R2) bibliometric software to examine the large old tree research field in 2000–2022. The queries of the bibliographic database generated quantitative–visual depictions in the form of knowledge maps. The nodes denote research intensity, and inter-node linkages denote the pathways and frequencies of collaborative activities. The research outputs differed significantly in terms of regions, countries, institutions, high-citation articles, productive researchers, hot topics, and research frontiers. Conspicuous spatial disparities were displayed, with the U.S.A., China, and Australia leading in publication counts and a cluster of European countries making considerable collective contributions. The research collaboration demonstrated a dichotomy: European countries networked more by geographical propinquity, and the top three countries connected by long-distance leap-frog jumps. The entrenched discrepancies between the endowed developed domains vis-à-vis the deprived developing domains were clearly expressed. The research productivity progressed through three stages: initial, growth, and flourishing. The leading institutions, researchers, and highly cited papers were recognized. The keyword analysis pinpointed diverse research hotspots: growth dynamics, conservation and management, ecological functions, and environmental response. This study informs recommendations for future research directions and cooperation on longevity mechanisms, evolutionary adaptation, dynamic monitoring, and temporal–spatial patterns. The integrated application of GIS, machine learning, and big data technologies could strengthen research capability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high volatility and energy usage of rare earths have raised sustainable and financial concerns for environmentalists and sustainable investors. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate time-varying volatility transmission among rare earths elements, energy commodities, and sustainable financial markets. The sample covers global and major financial markets, i.e., US, China, and Australia. Using daily log returns from 2018 to 2022, the paper considers the dynamic Time Varying Parameter-Vector Autoregression (TVP-VAR) connectedness approach to gauge the time-varying features of volatility spillovers. The findings of total spillovers index reveal weak connectedness among markets during the sampled period. US and China rare earth markets were net volatility transmitters, whereas the Dow Jones Australia Sustainability Index (ASI), China Sustainability Index (CSI), Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (SWI), and MVIS Global Rare Earth Index (MVISGREI) were net recipients. Moreover, energy commodities i.e., WTI Crude Oil, Gasoline, and Natural Gas were net volatility transmitters, while ASI, CSI, and SWI were major volatility recipients. The weak financial contagion effect and connectedness across financial markets uncovers possible diversification opportunities. However, the US sustainable financial market is persistently not affected by these volatility spillovers. Policymakers need to establish strict regulations to protect sustainable financial markets in China and Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of cybercrime has emerged as a critical issue in contemporary society because of its far-reaching financial, social, and psychological implications. The negative effects of cyber-attacks extend beyond financial losses and disrupt people's lives on social and psychological levels. Conventional practice involves cyber experts sourcing data from various outlets and applying personal discernment and rational inference to manually formulate cyber intelligence specific to a country. This traditional approach introduces personal bias towards the country-level cyber reports. However, this paper reports a novel approach where country-level cyber intelligence is automatically generated with artificial intelligence (AI), employing cyber-related social media posts and open-source cyber-attack statistics. Our innovative cyber threat intelligence solution examined 37,386 tweets from 30,706 users in 54 languages using sentiment analysis, translation, term frequency–inverse document frequency (TF-IDF), latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), N-gram, and Porter stemming. Moreover, the presented study utilized 238,220 open-intelligence cyber-attack statistics from eight different web links, to create a historical cyber-attack dataset. Subsequently, AI-based algorithms, like convolutional neural network (CNN), and exponential smoothing were used for AI-driven insights. With the confluence of the voluminous Twitter-derived data and the array of open-intelligence cyber-attack statistics, orchestrated by the AI-driven algorithms, the presented approach generated seven-dimensional cyber intelligence for Australia and China in complete automation. Finally, the topic analysis on the cyber-related social media messages revealed seven main themes for both Australia and China. This methodology possesses the inherent capability to effortlessly engender cyber intelligence for any country, employing an autonomous modality within the realm of pervasive computational platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education informatization (HEI) is an interdisciplinary field that examines the use and integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in higher education. This paper provides a bibliometric and visual analysis of the research trends, patterns, and topics in this field. Using the Web of Science database, the authors selected and analyzed 199 SCI and SSCI papers on HEI published from 2000 to 2023 by VOSviewer and CiteSpace software. The results indicate that the publication volume of HEI research has grown significantly in recent years. The author network shows the collaboration and contribution of different researchers and institutions, while the journal network reveals the multidisciplinary nature and scope of the field. The keyword network and the burst keyword analysis identify the main research themes and the emerging hot topics in HEI. The co-citation network of sources illustrates the theoretical and methodological foundations and influences of the field. The paper concludes with some implications and suggestions for future HEI research.

Monitoring of river discharge is a key process for water resources management, soil and water conservation, climate change, water cycling, flood or drought warning, agriculture and transportation, especially for the sustainable development of rivers and their surrounding ecological environment. Continuous and comprehensive discharge monitoring was usually impossible before, due to sparse gauges and gauge deactivation. Satellite remote sensing provides an advanced approach for estimating and monitoring river discharge at regional or even global scales. River morphology is generally considered to be a direct factor that affects the accuracy of remote sensing estimation, but the specific indicators and the extent to which it affects the estimation accuracy have not yet been explored, especially for medium to small rivers (width < 100 m). In this paper, six sites with hydrological gauges in the upper Heihe River Basin (HRB) of northwestern China and the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) of southeastern Australia were selected as the study cases. River discharge was estimated from Landsat imagery using the C/M method accordingly. River gradient, sinuosity, and width were obtained from Digital Elevation Model data for each site. Global Surface Water Dataset (GSWD) was also employed for indicating the dynamic status of river morphology. A series of methods were applied to analyze the influence of river morphology on estimation accuracy qualitatively and quantitatively, based on which we established inference about the theory of selecting satellite virtual gauges (SVGs). The results confirm the feasibility of the C/M method for discharge estimation, with the accuracy affected by multiple river morphological indicators. Among them, river width was found to be the most significant one. Moreover, water occurrence and water extent extracted from GSWD also have impact on the discharge estimation accuracy. Another independent river section in MDB was set as an example to demonstrate the reasonability of the established theory. It is anticipated that this study would promote the application of remote sensing for discharge estimation by providing practical guidance for establishing appropriate SVGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although its scale and social implications depend on the specific country or local situations, squatting is a global urban and rural phenomenon associated with such humanitarian issues as social justice, poverty and environmental impact, as well as economic issues, such as rent seeking by certain groups. It can be sporadic or massive. The state appears to deal with the former by implementing legal rules and the latter with social policies. With regard to the economic gains and costs of allowing squatting, it can be argued that squatter policies, which confer some entitlements on squatters, are akin to the doctrine of adverse possession in equity through recognising the benefits of long-term possession of land. Surveying and mapping as a key tool in the regulation of squatters in this context may or may not be carried out, contrary to common belief. This paper demonstrates, with documented real-world examples from Australia and China, that the state surveying of massive urban or rural squatting on government land is contingent on the benefits and costs of tolerating squatting. The discussion is related to the transfer of development rights (TDR) as a practicable inclusive policy in the context of a global drive towards land assembly for real estate development, which squatters often obstruct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate and reliable low-voltage load forecasting is critical to optimal operation and control of distribution network and smart grid. However, compared to traditional regional load forecasting at high-voltage level, it faces tough challenges due to the inherent high uncertainty of the low-capacity load and distributed renewable energy integrated in the demand side. This paper proposes a novel hybrid ensemble deep learning (HEDL) approach for deterministic and probabilistic low-voltage load forecasting. The deep belief network (DBN) is applied to low-voltage load point prediction with the strong ability of approximating nonlinear mapping. A series of ensemble learning methods including bagging and boosting variants are introduced to improve the regression ability of DBN. In addition, the differencing transformation technique is utilized to ensure the stationarity of load time series for the application bagging and boosting methods. On the basis of the integrated thought of ensemble learning, a new hybrid ensemble algorithm is developed via integrating multiple separate ensemble methods. Considering the diversity in various ensemble algorithms, an effective K nearest neighbor classification method is utilized to adaptively determine the weights of sub-models. Furthermore, HEDL based probabilistic forecasting is proposed by taking advantage of the inherent resample idea in bagging and boosting. The effectiveness of the HEDL method for both deterministic and probabilistic forecasting has been systematically verified based on realistic load data from East China and Australia, indicating its promising prospective for practical applications in distribution networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION The World Health Organization recommends banning all forms of e-cigarette advertising, promotion, and sponsorship. The aims of the present study were to: 1) examine young people's exposure to e-cigarette advertising across a wide range of media in four diverse countries; and 2) identify any association between the number of different types of media exposures and e-cigarette use. METHODS A cross-sectional online survey was administered to approximately 1000 people aged 15-30 years in Australia, China, India, and the United Kingdom (n=4107). The survey assessed demographic characteristics, e-cigarette and tobacco use, numbers of friends and family members who vape, and exposure to multiple forms of e-cigarette advertising (e.g. television, radio, print, and various types of social media). Descriptive analyses were conducted on those who had heard of e-cigarettes (n=3095, significance threshold p<0.001) and a logistic regression analysis was used to identify factors associated with e-cigarette ever use (significance threshold p<0.05). RESULTS The majority (85%) of respondents who had heard of e-cigarettes reported being exposed to e-cigarette advertising on at least one type of media, and the average number of types of media to which respondents were exposed was 5 (range: 0-17). The number of media types was significantly associated with ever use of e-cigarettes (OR=1.05; 95% CI: 1.02-1.08, p=0.001). CONCLUSIONS Despite advertising restrictions in place in all four countries, large majorities of young people reported being exposed to e-cigarette advertising. Social media and advertising on/around vape shops and other retailers appear to be key exposure locations. Urgent attention is needed to address these forms of exposure given their apparent association with e-cigarette use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major hurdle in pediatric formulation development is the lack of safety and toxicity data on some of the commonly used excipients. While the maximum oral safe dose for several kinds of excipients is known in the adult population, the doses in pediatric patients, including preterm neonates, are not established yet due to the lack of evidence-based data. This paper consists of four parts: (1) country-specific perspectives in different parts of the world (current state, challenges in excipients, and ongoing efforts) for ensuring the use of safe excipients, (2) comparing and contrasting the country-specific perspectives, (3) past and ongoing collaborative efforts, and (4) future perspectives on excipients for pediatric formulation. The regulatory process for pharmaceutical excipients has been developed. However, there are gaps between each region where a lack of information and an insufficient regulation process was found. Ongoing efforts include raising issues on excipient exposure, building a region-specific database, and improving excipient regulation; however, there is a lack of evidence-based information on safety for the pediatric population. More progress on clear safety limits, quantitative information on excipients of concern in the pediatric population, and international harmonization of excipients' regulatory processes for the pediatric population are required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to identify the most prolific countries in the field of special education and to discuss the widespread impact of their papers by taking into account the country's h-index. Through a bibliometric analysis, the data were collected in the Web of Science Core Collection category "Education, Special" in the Social Science Citation Index during 2011-2020. The 25 most prolific countries in the field of special education were determined in terms of paper productivity, and it was seen that the leading country was undisputedly the USA (54.42%). Meanwhile, a strong positive correlation was found between the h-index and the number of papers published by the countries (r=0.864). On the other hand, when the ranking in terms of the number of papers was reconfigured by the h-index, it was relatively changed. The possible reasons for this change for the countries with the most changing rankings were discussed by considering some definitive criteria such as the journal quartiles, the percentage of international and domestic, and the percentage of open access papers. This study reports a positive correlation between the quality and quantity in the field of special education for the publications of countries. It has been shown that where the positive correlation deviates, then especially, the journal quartiles, the percentage of international collaboration and the percentage of open access papers have a significant effect. The bibliometric findings may be useful to enrich the discussion about the widespread impact of papers and debate whether the use of h-index is acceptable for cross-national comparisons.

The higher education efficiency evaluation model using the data envelopment analysis method has interested many researchers. This paper uses bibliometric analysis on publications extracted from the Scopus database to provide a comprehensive overview of research publications on the measurement of higher education efficiency based on data envelopment analysis: its growth rate, major collaboration networks, the most important and popular research topic. A total of 169 related publications were collected and analyzed from 1988 to 2021. The analysis results show that: Publications published every year have increased sharply in the last six years; The quality of publications is relatively high as publications tend to be published in journals with high-ranking indexes; Countries with the most influence in studies on this topic are: Italy, China, Spain, the USA, and the United Kingdom; Authors with the most influence in this research direction are Agasisti T., Abbott M., Doucouliagos C., Avkiran N.K., and Johnes J.; The research cooperation among countries and among affiliations is not strong. Finally, the paper has provided recommendations for future studies based on the findings.

Purpose: Supply chain risks (SCRs) do not work in isolation and have impact both on each member of a chain and the performance of the entire supply chain. The purpose of this paper is to quantitatively assess the impact of dynamic risk propagation within and between integrated firms in global fresh produce supply chains. Design/methodology/approach: A risk propagation ontology-based Bayesian network (BN) model was developed to measure dynamic SCR propagation. The proposed model was applied to a two-tier Australia-China table grape supply chain (ACTGSC) featured with an upstream Australian integrated grower and exporter and a downstream Chinese integrated importer and online retailer. Findings: An ontology-based BN can be generated to accurately represent the risk domain of interest using the knowledge and inference capabilities inherent in a risk propagation ontology. In addition, the analyses revealed that supply discontinuity, product inconsistency and/or delivery delay originating in the upstream firm can propagate to increase the downstream firm's customer value risk and business performance risk. Research limitations/implications: The work was conducted in an Australian-China table grape supply chain, so results are only product chain-specific in nature. Additionally, only two state values were considered for all nodes in the model, and finally, while the proposed methodology does provide a large-scale risk network map, it may not be appropriate for a large supply chain network as it only follows the process flow of a single supply chain. Practical implications: This study supports the backward-looking traceability of risk root causes through the ACTGSC and the forward-looking prediction of risk propagation to key risk performance measures. Social implications: The methodology used in this paper provides an evidence-based decision-making capability as part of a system-wide risk management approach and fosters collaborative SCR management, which can yield numerous societal benefits. Originality/value: The proposed methodology addresses the challenges in using a knowledge-based approach to develop a BN model, particularly with a large-scale model and integrates risk and performance for a holistic risk propagation assessment. The combination of modelling approaches to address the issue is unique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has transformed higher education learning and teaching practices globally. Tertiary students, internationally face both opportunities and challenges in learning and adapting to this paradigm shift in the delivery of education. It remains unclear how students in international contexts are responding to these changes in digital learning during and post-COVID-19. This paper aims to compare student perceptions of digital competence, confidence, and resilience in present times using data from surveys of tertiary students from Australia, Cambodia, China, India, and Malaysia. There are disparities not only in the teaching and learning pedagogies amongst these countries but also in the levels of technological advancement, infrastructure support, and pace of digital innovation in the delivery of courses. These differences have put in focus students' both digital competencies and resilience as they pursue higher education on various digital learning platforms. Resilience includes the ability to bounce back or adapt from stress (Smith et al., 2008). Digital resilience is students' tech-savviness and preparedness to adapt to different digital environments as they pursue higher education. This paper examines the perceptions of tertiary undergraduate students from these countries in this emerging new digital learning norm. A total of 687 tertiary students from the aforementioned countries participated in a survey to questions related to digital competence, confidence in using and/or adapting to digital innovation, and resilience. Statistically significant attributes are identified to help better understand the challenges these culturally diverse students perceive in digital learning environments. This study will reveal barriers that impact the digital transformation of undergraduate students which can be used to recommend necessary teaching and learning support frameworks to enhance their digital competence and resilience. This will help tertiary institutions better equip all stakeholders in adapting to the new normal of higher education in the future.

This rapid systematic review aims to examine emerging evidence on the effects of COVID-19 on educational institutions and assess the prevalence of e-learning changes in the sector. This paper reviews literature on learning, teaching, and assessment approaches adopted since the COVID-19 outbreak, and assesses the impact on the sector, staff, and students, summarizing findings from peer-reviewed articles. It categorizes these into five key themes: (1) digital learning; (2) e-learning challenges; (3) digital transition to emergency virtual assessment (EVA); (4) psychological impact of COVID-19; and (5) creating collaborative cultures. This represents the first systematic review of COVID-19's impact on education, clarifying current themes being investigated. The author suggests that the term 'emergency virtual assessment' (EVA) is now added for future research discussion. Finally, the paper identifies research gaps, including researching the impact on lesser developed countries, the psychological impact of transition, and the important role of leadership and leadership styles during the transition and handling of the pandemic.

Poor safety is a perennial problem for the construction industry worldwide. The concept of safety climate has been strongly linked to safety performance, yet inconsistent methodologies make international comparisons problematic. In addressing this gap in research, a comparative safety climate survey of 515 construction operatives and managers in Australia, Indonesia, and China is presented using a standardized tool. The results highlight interesting similarities and differences between safety climate in each country and question taken–for–granted assumptions that safety climate in countries with relatively mature regulatory structures like Australia are more positive than in less developed countries like Indonesia and China. Results also highlight the intermediating effects of factors such as management commitment and cultural differences in shaping safety climate. Highlighting the potential value of theories of new institutionalism and cultural and ethical relativism, the paper concludes by raising important new practical, theoretical, and methodological questions about the merits and challenges of making international comparisons of safety climate, even when using standardized measurement tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]