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If any engineering courses are unlikely to be transferable between Australasian and overseas universities, one could argue that civil engineering capstone design courses with a strong practical engineering focus would be the least likely. This analysis considers two capstone design courses in the US and New Zealand. The analysis examines the approaches each university has taken to improve design education through simulating professional practice. The two approaches are superficially very different with different course structure and course requirements. In addition the emphasis on site and project, and the consequent dependence on country-specific matters related to regulation and codes, would lead one to expect low transferability. Closer analysis shows that the learning objectives of the courses are relatively similar and that the relationship between site and design are key for both. The challenges faced by the two approaches have much in common, reflecting similar student experiences, and so high transferability. The paper provides details on learning objectives and challenges faced at the two programs to aid others who wish to analyse capstone design experiences across multiple universities. The conclusion is that transferability between these two design experiences is high. The implication is that, through similar forces for educational change in both countries, internationalisation of engineering education is high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology and change are so closely related that the use of the word innovation seems synonymous with technology in many contexts, including that of higher education. This paper contends that university culture and existing capability constrain such innovation and to a large extent determine the nature and extent of organisational change. In the absence of strong leadership, technologies are simply used as vehicles to enable changes that are already intended or which reinforce the current identity. These contentions are supported by evidence from e-learning benchmarking activities carried out over the past five years in universities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents guidelines for establishing a QuestionPoint collaborative virtual reference partnership between academic libraries in Australia/New Zealand and the US. These guidelines reflect the practices of the state-of-the-art collaborative QuestionPoint partnership, 'AskASERI' as well as the unofficial standards and guidelines for virtual reference services established by IFLA and NISO. Throughout the paper, the projected benefits of international virtual reference collaboration are weighed against the costs. In conclusion, international collaborative virtual reference partnerships are presented to be net beneficial and worthy of further study and consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to identify common features in the fertility patterns of the English-speaking world and provide a model basis for comparison of fertility between countries and over time. Attention is focused on the heterogeneity within the fertility patterns of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, similar to that reported earlier for the UK and the Irish Republic. The recent age-specific fertility patterns of these countries display a marked 'bulge' in fertility of women under age 25. A mixture model with two-component: Hadwiger functions provides a suitable fit. The heterogeneity thus suggested is shown to be related to differences in the timing of births by marital status, and its magnitude is related to the proportion of births outside marriage. Additionally, there is some evidence that, in the United States, and to a lesser extent in New Zealand, this heterogeneity in fertility patterns may be explained by ethnic differences in the timing and number of births. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internet usage and commerce are expected to grow significantly across the world. However, as each part of the world is unique in its social norms, culture, and infrastructure, these differences may cause the profiles of Internet shoppers and nonshoppers to be different worldwide. Hence, the importance of understanding the similarities and dissimilarities among consumers in different regions is crucial for both marketing theory and practice. In this paper, the authors report the characteristics relating to attitudes, motivations, and demographics of Internet shoppers in six countries (United States, England, New Zealand, China, Brazil, and Bulgaria), thereby contributing to understanding differences between Internet users and online shoppers in different regions of the world. Findings show that online shoppers share many similar traits around the world. Internet shoppers in all countries examined are similar in regard to their desire for convenience, are more impulsive, have more favorable attitudes toward direct marketing and advertising, and wealthier, and are heavier users of both e-mail and the Internet. Implications of the findings for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most countries, girls perform better than boys in reading but worse in mathematics. However, there is much variation between countries. Explanations for the gender gaps include the organisation of the school system, students' expectations and macro-societal factors. The purpose of this paper is to account for gender differences in both reading and mathematics among 15-year-old students using data from the OECD's 2000 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) project. In most countries, school system factors are associated with the gender gap in reading but not in mathematics. Generally, gender differences in students' occupational expectations do not account for the gender gaps, although expectations contribute to the gender gaps in reading in New Zealand and the United States. Although several macro-societal factors - the proportion of women in the workforce, societal inequality and public sector spending - are associated with the gender gap in reading, the correlations are only moderate, unstable and, importantly, are not associated with the gender gaps in mathematics. The much stronger association between the gender gaps in reading and mathematics across countries implies that they are both influenced by policy: the extent that countries have successfully implemented policies to promote the educational outcomes of girls and young women. In such countries the gender gap in mathematics is small or non-existent but the gender gap in reading is relatively large. Policies shift both gender gaps in tandem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Annual variations are often more brutal for nuptiality than they are for other demographic phenomena. Short-term economic movements, in particular, seem to have a more direct impact. In the long run, however, nuptiality is generally considered as a much more stable factor than, say, fertility which has undergone profound changes in all industrialized countries over the past hundred years. In this article the social scientists will attempt to study these recent trends in the light of longer-term ones, by comparing nuptiality movements in four countries: Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. In this paper, they study the nuptiality of birth cohorts by calculating the proportion ever-married at age 50, and mean age at first marriage. Data are not always strictly comparable between one census and another, especially in Canada and the United States where geographical coverage has varied through time. However, the numbers involved were small. Moreover, the definition of marital status has not been changed, at least not the basic distinction between single and ever-married. Through a study of nuptiality trends for the single for about a hundred different birth cohorts, they will attempt to determine whether attitudes towards marriage have changed. But first, they must eliminate the structural effects which affect the phenomenon studied. For instance, marriage becomes more difficult for women and female nuptiality decreases when there is a scarcity of potential male partners.

Previous literature has applied system-focused structures to understand the success of First Nations Peoples' nutrition and exercise group programmes. Existing system-focused measures have included biomedical outcomes, access and service utilization. By broadening the focus of programme success beyond the system, we can evaluate programmes from a First Nations Peoples' lifeworld perspective. Critical hermeneutics and yarning using a lens of Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action to the literature has the potential to transform understandings of "success" in First Nations Peoples' nutrition and exercise group programmes. In this literature interpretation, we explored the critical success factors from a lifeworld perspective, giving scope to go beyond a system perspective to include a cultural, social or personal perspective. Our yarning led us to understand that there is a communicative relationship between explicit system structures and implicit lifeworld concepts that are critical success factors for First Nations nutrition and exercise group programmes. We have developed a set of reflective questions to guide others in considering a lifeworld perspective. Our findings represent a shift away from success measured by the dominant power structure to respect the lifeworld culture, knowledges and values of First Nations Peoples towards shared understanding and mutual decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defenders of the WTO argue that it provides an independent arena for hearing and adjudicating trade disputes. Member countries are bound by the decisions of the WTO Dispute Settlement Body (WTO-DSB), and the perception of neutrality – that cases are ruled according to the strict and true meaning and spirit of the agreements that countries signed – is pivotal to its broader legitimacy. Using a fine-grained assessment of one trade dispute brought to the WTO, involving a complaint by Australia and New Zealand that US lamb tariffs contravened the WTO's safeguard provisions, this article questions these assumptions. It argues that the praxis of dispute settlement is over-determined by the institutionalized market preferences of the Organization. The procedural materiality of dispute settlement hinges on the narrow legalisms of wording within trade agreements, heard within an environment that is sympathetic to market liberal interpretations. With regard to safeguard provisions, and as evidenced in the case US – Lamb Meat , these institutional contexts create daunting obstacles for defendant countries to demonstrate they have not contravened WTO rules. These insights bring into relief debates on WTO dispute settlement as a system of global governance, providing support for the contention that this system should be understood as a political mechanism working systematically to advance trade liberalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historic trend of rural and urban fertility in the South Island of New Zealand conforms closely to the experience over time of other world areas of similar socio-economic evolution, in particular Australia, the United States, and Western Europe. In the period from 1881 to 1936 a widespread decline occurred in both rural and urban fertility. There was a subsequent resurgence lasting to 1951 but thereafter, especially in the 1960's, a new phase of decline emerged. Meanwhile, an appreciable narrowing of rural-urban, inter-rural, and inter-urban fertility differences has taken place. Within the larger metropolitan centers, however, pronounced suburban variations are evident, a major contrast existing between the downtown pattern of low fertility and the outlying residential districts of high fertility. Both long term and recent shifts have been causatively linked with changing cultural attitudes deriving from the emergence of an overwhelmingly urban-dwelling society in place of the rural agricultural, pioneer society still predominant in 1881. Fertility differences at the regional and local level are explained by reference to a wide range of cultural variables, chiefly socio-economie status, religion, marital status, and other sociological circumstances peculiar to urban as distinct from rural ways of living.