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Visitor loyalty with respect to national parks has been under-researched, especially for iconic or 'once in a lifetime' tourism destinations. This study reports on results from a survey of 529 visitors to the remote and iconic Purnululu National Park, Australia. An investigation of the relationships between loyalty, satisfaction and service quality indicates loyalty has multiple dimensions, including word of mouth recommendations and intention to revisit, with each having a different relationship with satisfaction and service quality. These findings, plus the weak correlation between revisiting and positive word of mouth intentions, suggests a need to reconceptualise loyalty in relation to 'once in a lifetime' destinations. For these tourism destinations, there may be other ways for visitors to demonstrate loyalty and the associated means for measuring it, rather than intention to revisit. Loyalty may be a transferred concept, with loyalty to one iconic destination resulting in visitation to other, similar destinations. Management implications: Traditional measures of visitor loyalty may not be applicable to iconic or 'once in a lifetime' tourism destinations. Managers of these types of tourism destinations may be best served measuring word of mouth recommendations or intentions of visitors to engage in positive communications about the destination as a means of determining visitor loyalty. Although potentially difficult to influence, a focus on visitor satisfaction rather than service quality would be beneficial.

Purpose-The main objective of this study is to provide a judgment on the comparability of financial statements prepared under IFRS and US-GAAP. We developed two research questions for evaluating comparability within Europe (IFRS) and within the US (US GAAP) and for testing whether comparability is higher or lower when the US companies are included with the European countries. Design/Methodology/Approach-The T index framework was used to summarize the level of comparability for 13 accounting items using data from 250 companies. Findings-Empirical results are mixed. Of 13 accounting items considered, international comparability is significantly lower for 7 items and significantly higher for 4 items when the US companies are included. Furthermore, comparability amongst companies using IFRS is not consistently higher or lower than comparability amongst companies using US GAAP. Practical implications-Answers to the research questions may provide useful suggestions for IASB’s current policy direction towards global accounting standards convergence, and in particular for the IASB-FASB convergence project. The results also have implications for companies or countries considering shifting to IFRS or US GAAP. Research limitations/implications-Lack of comparability within countries, rather than between countries, suggests a need to focus on reducing options within standards rather than on differences between standards or countries. Originality value-Our empirical results show that in most cases lack of comparability may be driven by options within a standard rather than by explicit differences between standards

Nature-based tourism is increasing worldwide and with it the opportunity to engage these visitors to support and advocate for the protection of natural areas. Loyalty research over the last decade provides a platform for action. Analysing loyalty as an important focus for nature-based tourism research and then proposing a research agenda are the aims of this paper. These aims are achieved by (1) reviewing the place of satisfaction and its relationship to loyalty in nature-based tourism research; (2) analysing recent loyalty and related behavioural intentions research; and (3) proposing a research agenda to further progress loyalty research. Conducting field-based experiments to determine the influence of improving service quality on loyalty and further investigating a suite of items of varying commitment for measuring loyalty (from recommending a destination to others to volunteering to work there) are pivotal to the proposed agenda. Also central are further elaborating and testing the measurement model for loyalty, with place attachment and pursuit of benefits, such as escaping from everyday life and appreciating nature, suggested as promising antecedents to loyalty. The importance of natural areas to society warrants urgent attention to the loyalty-centred research agenda detailed in this paper.

Performance evaluation has only recently entered the lexicon of national park visitor management, in response to accountability concerns, commercialization of services, and fiscal constraints. Benchmarking, as part of such evaluations, is widespread practice in the hospitality sector but has been slow making its way into park visitor management. As such, the aim of this article is to develop and apply benchmark importance-performance analysis (BIPA), as a refinement of importance-performance analysis, to a system of national parks. BIPA, as developed in this article, provides a methodology for the meaningful system-wide comparison of attributes, such as the provision of information and the quality and standard of specified facilities, and of relative park performance. The parks managed by the Department of Parks and Wildlife in Western Australia and their visitors are used as a case study. The case study analysis shows that BIPA is a simple, accurate technique for benchmarking the performance of a suite of attributes across a park system and the relative performance of the parks themselves, thereby providing much-needed data for system-wide planning and management decisions.

There is an increasing demand to develop cost-effective and accurate approaches to analyzing biological tissue samples. This is especially relevant in the fishing industry where closely related fish samples can be mislabeled, and the high market value of certain fish leads to the use of alternative species as substitutes, for example, Barramundi and Nile Perch (belonging to the same genus, Lates). There is a need to combine selective proteomic datasets with sophisticated computational analysis to devise a robust classification approach. This paper describes an integrated MS-based proteomics and bioinformatics approach to classifying a range of fish samples. A classifier is developed using training data that successfully discriminates between Barramundi and Nile Perch samples using a selected protein subset of the proteome. Additionally, the classifier is shown to successfully discriminate between test samples not used to develop the classifier, including samples that have been cooked, and to classify other fish species as neither Barramundi nor Nile Perch. This approach has applications to truth in labeling for fishmongers and restaurants, monitoring fish catches, and for scientific research into distances between species.

Water use is a complex function of socioeconomic conditions and climatic factors. This paper considers the socio-economic and physical factors that need to be considered during the design of water supply systems to ensure appropriate supply systems are developed and local needs are met. Data was obtained for remote Indigenous communities located in the Northern Territory, Australia. Information from a census of community health and infrastructure needs and climatic data were correlated with water demand through multivariate linear regression analysis. This showed that average household size, climate, geographical location, essential service maintenance responsibility and remoteness of the community were correlated with water demand. It was particularly interesting to find that self-determination indicated by local or Indigenous management of water services was correlated with a reduction in water demand.

This report outlines the results of a visitor survey distributed at Dales Gorge in Karijini National Park in Western Australia. The survey aimed to assess the effect of two interventions on visitors’ experiences while also collecting valuable information about the visitor and their visit. The two interventions pertained to staff (rangers) and information for visitors and involved: • The presence of a friendly, helpful ranger in Dales Gorge; and • A4 double-sided information sheet on the natural features of Dales Gorge available from boxes attached to visitor information boards at Dales Gorge. These two interventions were analysed for their effects on visitors’ level of importance assigned to and satisfaction with attributes of Dales Gorge, overall view of visit and loyalty behaviours. Four treatments were conducted over 16 days in July 2012, with each assigned four days each. These were: 1) No intervention; 2) ranger present; 3) information available; 4) both ranger present and information available. Questions in the survey also covered age, place of residence, number of adults and children per group, visitation frequency, length of stay, how they heard about the Park, and whether they had encountered a ranger.

The future of parks is as much a political and social outcome as it is an ecological one. Political success, particularly where the resources are in public ownership, as is the case with many of the world’s parks, depends on public support. Such support is increasingly based on being able to show value for money and the accrual of benefits to the public. Being able to report on the successes (and failures) of visitor management is part of this accountability.

Visitor satisfaction has been an important area for leisure research since the 1960s and more recently for park management. A number of approaches have been adapted from consumer research including importance-performance analyses, gap analyses, threshold performance targets and overall satisfaction. This paper reviews these approaches with respect to park management. It then draws on focus group research with protected area agency staff to obtain their views on the usefulness and robustness of the analyses associated with these approaches. Yanchep National Park (Western Australia) was used as a case study, with the results from a recent visitor survey providing the data for satisfaction analyses. To provide a more accurate summary of the range in results, confidence intervals accompanied the results to illustrate the variation in responses. The analyses emphasize the importance for park managers of accessible, usable data on visitor satisfaction.

Climate change is a phenomenon of the Earth system, which is characterized by thresholds and non-linear change. This analysis considers the adequacy of insurance (in its broadest sense) responses to climate risk. This paper provides novel critiques of insurance system responses to climate change and of the attendant political economy perspective on the relationship between insurance and climate change. A complex adaptive systems (CAS) analysis suggests that ecologically effective (i.e. strong) mitigation is the only viable approach to manage medium- and long-term climate risk - for the insurance system itself and for human societies more widely. In contrast, we find that even the most substantial insurance system responses to date are generally adaptive and weakly mitigative. This analysis extends an earlier political economy perspective that explains the limitations of insurance system responses to climate change, but provides little guidance to the ecological implications of such responses. As such, this paper raises questions about the ongoing viability of the insurance system, and hence about the many aspects of human societies globally reliant on the insurance system as their primary risk governance tool. We conclude that the CAS approach provides new insights, which could prompt insurance system evolution in support of effective climate risk governance.

The recent process of accounting harmonisation made possible by the adoption in 2005 of IAS/IFRS methods represent the beginning of a practice tending to overcome the accounting differences not just at European level but more generally on a worldwide scale for the progressive adoption of a common global accounting language (Mc Gregor 1999; Pozzoli, 2003; Erikson et al., 2009). It emerges a super partes need for a project of convergence between the European discipline IAS/IFRS with the American accounting principles US GAAP, which justifies the progressive harmonisation of these two accounting systems (Tarca, 2005; Callagan, Treacy, 2007). This process of harmonisation would also represent a significant input for the globalisation of financial markets: accounting information could reach a great level of homogenisation to allow the comparison between financial, economic and capital data and the consequent improvement of economic and financial communication. The coexistence of two sets of accounting standards in the U.S. market and the need highlighted by the two standard setters to promote the convergence process are the main reasons behind the empirical research that is the object of this paper. We investigate these questions using the 2009 IFRS annual reports of companies based in four European countries: France, Germany, Italy and the UK and the 2009 US-GAAP annual reports of companies based in the US. The main purpose of our research is to evaluate the differences (Bloomer, 1996; Ampofo & Sellani, 2005; PwC, 2010; Nobes & Parker, 2010) between the two accounting standards, respectively IFRS and U.S. GAAP, in two specific areas. The first area of analysis relates to the general principles for drafting financial reports, while the second will consider the evaluation of specific accounting items. The second step of the analysis consists in taking into consideration the issues highlighted by the possibility of alternatives emerged within both IFRS and US-GAAP accounti

The qualitative label 'international journal' is used widely, including in national research quality assessments. We determined the practicability of analysing internationality quantitatively using 39 conservation biology journals, providing a single numeric index (IIJ) based on 10 variables covering the countries represented in the journals' editorial boards, authors and authors citing the journals' papers. A numerical taxonomic analysis refined the interpretation, revealing six categories of journals reflecting distinct international emphases not apparent from simple inspection of the IIJs alone. Categories correlated significantly with journals' citation impact (measured by the Hirsch index), with their rankings under the Australian Commonwealth's 'Excellence in Research for Australia' and with some countries of publication, but not with listing by ISI Web of Science. The assessments do not reflect on quality, but may aid editors planning distinctive journal profiles, or authors seeking appropriate outlets.

This research project was part of a broader national project entitled ‘Systematic and Strategic collection and use of visitor information in protected area management’. The aim of this project was to provide a systematic approach to using a set of core va

Soil core samples were collected at Ashfield to determine the extent of Acid Sulfate Soils (ASS), and pin-point hot spots. ASS are major problems to environmental health, to people and infrastructures, from acidity and the movement of toxic heavy metals. Field and laboratory testing were used; (Field pH), Chloride to Sulfate ratios (Cl:SO4), as well as the Suspension Peroxide Oxidation Combined Acidity and Sulfate (SPOCAS) suite. Statistics show that Field pH measurements are sufficient in the detection of ASS; SPOCAS tends to confirm the results of the conservative Field pH measurements. Cl:SO4 ratios do not detect ASS in the same way as SPOCAS and cannot be considered as surrogates for Field pH or SPOCAS techniques. A decision tree presents a basis for analysing ASS, which might be used by an Environmental Health Officer.

The homeoprotein TLX1, which is essential to spleen organogenesis and oncogenic when aberrantly expressed in immature T cells, functions as a bifunctional transcriptional regulator, being capable of activation or repression depending on cell type and/or promoter context. However, the detailed mechanisms by which it regulates the transcription of target genes such as ALDH1A1 remains to be elucidated. We therefore functionally assessed the ability of TLX1 to regulate ALDH1A1 expression in two hematopoietic cell lines, PER-117 T-leukemic cells and human erythroleukemic (HEL) cells, by use of luciferase reporter and mobility shift assays. We showed that TLX1 physically interacts with the general transcription factor TFIIB via its homeodomain, and identified two activities in respect to TLX1-mediated regulation of the CCAAT box-containing ALDH1A1 promoter. The first involved CCAAT-dependent transcriptional repression via perturbation of GATA factor-containing protein complexes assembled at a non-canonical TATA (GATA) box. A structurally intact homeodomain was essential for repression by TLX1 although direct DNA binding was not required. The second activity, which involved CCAAT-independent transcriptional activation did not require an intact homeodomain, indicating that the activation and repression functions of TLX1 are distinct. These findings confirm ALDH1A1 gene regulation by TLX1 and support an indirect model for TLX1 function, in which protein-protein interactions, rather than DNA binding at specific sites, are crucial for its transcriptional activity.

Protected areas in Australia and across the world are considered special places that have come to be regarded as natural and cultural assets attracting many local, national and international visitors (Worboys, Lockwood & de Lacy 2005). For management of these assets to be effective and successful, it is necessary to obtain information about who the visitors are and why they visit. This knowledge then allows managers to manage protected areas accordingly (Newsome, Moore & Dowling 2002).

Role-plays in which students act as clients and statistical consultants to each other in pairs have proved to be an effective class exercise. As well as helping to teach statistical methodology, they are effective at encouraging statistical thinking, problem solving, the use of context in applied statistical problems and improving attitudes towards statistics and the statistics profession. Furthermore, they are fun. This paper explores the advantages of using role-plays and provides some empirical evidence supporting their success. The paper argues that there is a place for teaching statistical consulting skills well before the traditional post-graduate qualification in statistics, including to school students with no knowledge of techniques in statistical inference.

Experimental design and statistical analysis of data for predator preferences towards different types of prey have been problematic for several reasons. In addition to fundamental issues concerning the definition of preference, traditional statistical issues such as the appropriateness of statistical distributions such as the Binomial distribution, pseudo-replication, and the appropriate conditioning of probabilities have hindered progress on this important topic in ecology. This paper discusses these issues in the context of the methodology proposed by Underwood and Clarke [Underwood, A.J., Clarke, K.R., 2005. Solving some statistical problems in analyses of experiments on choices of food and on associations with habitat. J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol. 318, 227-237.] in order to provide further clarity concerning the assumptions of this approach and therefore its applicability. In light of the difficulty justifying the validity of these assumptions in practice, an alternative approach is presented which has simpler statistical assumptions.

Eighty Bos taurus crossbred steers sourced from southern Western Australia were monitored to assess the efficacy of electrolyte supplementation on board a livestock vessel travelling to the Middle East during the northern hemisphere summer. Electrolytes (1.8 g/L NaHCO3 and 3.5 g/L KCl) were added to the drinking water of treatment steers (n=39) allocated to three pens on the starboard side of the ship. Control steers (n=40) were allocated to three pens on the port side of the ship. The combined area of the three treatment and three control pens was 61.1 and 63.6 m2 respectively, giving a stocking density of 1.57 and 1.55 m2 per steer, respectively. Steerswere loaded in Fremantle,Western Australia and given 3 days to acclimatise to on-board conditions before being weighed (day 1), after which electrolyte supplementation beganwhile the vessel docked at Port Headland,Western Australia. Feed andwaterwere available ad libitum throughout the experiment. Steerswereweighed again on day 18, before discharge in the Middle East. During electrolyte supplementation, wet bulb temperature ranged from 21.3 (day 2) to 31.8°C (day 18). Over the last 3 days of the experiment, wet bulb temperature ranged from 29.0 to 31.8°C with no diurnal variation or night-time cooling. No open-mouth panting was recorded in either group and although animals encountered periods of high heat and humidity (as indicated by increased respiratory rates), the steers were not considered clinically heat stressed during the experiment. After 18 days of electrolyte supplementation, treatment steers had a 2.9 ± 1.7% liveweight advantage compared with control steers (P < 0.001). Urine was collected on days 8 and 16 of the experiment and treatment steers maintained a higher urine pH compared with control steers on both days (day 8; 8.6 v. 8.2 and day 16; 8.2 v. 7.9; P < 0.01). Liveweight advantages and improved regulation of acid-base balance may provide welfare and economic benefits to the live export industry.

No abstract available

Gene expression profiling was performed on biopsies of affected and unaffected psoriatic skin and normal skin from seven Japanese patients to obtain insights into the pathways that control this disease. HUG95A Affymetrix DNA chips that contained oligonucleotide arrays of approximately 12,000 well-characterized human genes were used in the study. The statistical analysis of the Affymetrix data, based on the ranking of the Student t-test statistic, revealed a complex regulation of molecular stress and immune gene responses. The majority of the 266 induced genes in affected and unaffected psoriatic skin were involved with interferon mediation, immunity, cell adhesion, cytoskeleton restructuring, protein trafficking and degradation, RNA regulation and degradation, signalling transduction, apoptosis and atypical epidermal cellular proliferation and differentiation. The disturbances in the normal protein degradation equilibrium of skin were reflected by the significant increase in the gene expression of various protease inhibitors and proteinases, including the induced components of the ATP/ubiquitin-dependent non-lysosomal proteolytic pathway that is involved with peptide processing and presentation to T cells. Some of the up-regulated genes, such as TGM1, IVL, FABP5, CSTA and SPRR, are well-known psoriatic markers involved in atypical epidermal cellular organization and differentiation. In the comparison between the affected and unaffected psoriatic skin, the transcription factor JUNB was found at the top of the statistical rankings for the up-regulated genes in affected skin, suggesting that it has an important but as yet undefined role in psoriasis. Our gene expression data and analysis suggest that psoriasis is a chronic interferon- and T-cell-mediated immune disease of the skin where the imbalance in epidermal cellular structure, growth and differentiation arises from the molecular antiviral stress signals initiating inappropriate immune responses.

This paper explores the provision of human resources disclosure (HRD) in the annual reports of the Pacific Island countries (PIC), and compares and contrasts PIC user and preparer needs of HRD through the medium of mailed survey. Multiple regression testing for significance between the level of HRD and ethnic background, industry, entity and size attributes is not significant for the overall model. However, the results indicate that there are low disclosure levels for the eight components of HRD, suggesting that HRD is not central to preparers’ presentation of PIC annual reports. Surprisingly, results show no significant difference between users’ and preparers’ rating of the importance of eight components of HRD issues. A partially significant result was found for the HRD component Employment minorities or women, but both users and preparers ranked this lowest.

The impact of governmental regulatory action on the economic performance of mining companies has been the focus of a great deal of attention by industry commentators and academic scholarship alike. The influence of environmental regulation on the strategic objectives of mining firms is less well understood, however. This article investigates what influences the way mining companies react to environmental approvals regulation. It presents the results of a recent cross-national survey of Australian and Canadian mining companies into the effect of a range of possible determinants on company response to environmental approvals regulation. Possible influences included both external pressures (stakeholder pressure, jurisdictional culture and market characteristics) and internal pressures (organizational culture, organizational learning, the influence of individuals within firms and company size). While cross-national comparison revealed some differences with respect to the influence of particular pressures, on balance the results suggest that for mining companies in both countries, internal pressures exert the greatest influence on company response. These results contradict a prevailing view in the literature, which suggests that external factors, particularly stakeholder groups, exert the most influence on the environmental responses of firms. The article concludes that the existing emphasis on external pressures to explain corporate environmental behaviour should be supplemented by a focus on the internal dynamics of firms.

HOX11 is a homeobox gene originally identified at a chromosomal breakpoint in T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL). It is one of the most frequently deregulated genes in T-ALL, although the precise role of HOX11 in leukemogenesis as well as in normal development remains obscure. To gain more insight into the functional role of HOX11, we utilized a microarray model system to characterize the gene expression network that it directs. Using one of our T-ALL cell lines that had been stably transfected to express HOX11 and high-density oligonucleotide HG-U95A arrays, we identified a large number of differentially expressed genes in response to the enforced expression of HOX11. We focused on examining genes found to be up-regulated according to the microarray analysis and selected three putative target genes, NFKB2, SMARCD3, and NR4A3, for further investigation. We could not only confirm the up-regulation of NR4A3 by an independent method in all clones expressing HOX11, but luciferase reporter assays demonstrated that the effect that HOX11 exerted on the proximal promoter of NR4A3 was dependent on the presence of an intact homeodomain, providing support for the idea that HOX11 manifests its regulatory function via its action as a transcription factor.

Non-response bias is rarely explored in business research utilising annual reports. Such studies may reach incorrect conclusions in instances where there are systematic differences between companies who respond and those who do not. A global study into airline accounting practices by Tan, Tower, Hancock and Taplin (2002) enabled examination of this important research issue because a database provided an independent source of annual reports. The results indicate minimal response bias in a sample of annual reports obtained from a mail request. Publically listed airline companies that did not respond to a request for their annual report tended to use accounting methods that are considered least favourable by the industry. Therefore, caution needs to be exercised and the assumption that non-respondents' accounting policy choices are aligned with those of respondents should be tested. Increased availability of annual reports on the internet also raises questions of possible database bias.

Pairwise sequence alignment is one of the most essential tools in comparative genomic sequence analysis. It is used to compare the sequences of genes and proteins with the aim of inferring structural, functional and evolutionary relationships. However, current 'mainstream' alignment algorithms have optimisation criteria based primarily on computational efficiency using parameters such as gap penalties, which are not biologically motivated. In addition, current alignment algorithms such as the Smith and Waterman technique provide a single alignment that could be sensitive to rather arbitrary choices in parameters such as gap penalties. This paper explores the range of properties resulting from posing the alignment problem more as a 'mapping gaps in sequences' exercise. We argue that this approach is intuitive and provides greater control over the number of gaps placed within an alignment. This type of approach was proposed by Sankoff (1972), but unfortunately has not received much attention. We report and discuss our findings by comparing this approach to other techniques using structurally confirmed aligned sequences from a benchmark alignment database. Interestingly, this approach consistently provides optimal and near optimal alignments and is thus a viable approach to sequence alignment.

Companies react in different ways to environmental regulation. A prevailing view in the literature suggests that external factors, particularly stakeholder groups, exert the most influence on the environmental responses of firms. This paper reports on research that examines the influence of a range of possible determinants, both internal and external, on the way Australian mining companies respond to environmental approvals regulation. External pressures included stakeholder pressure, jurisdictional culture and market characteristics, and internal pressures included organizational culture, organizational learning, the influence of individuals within firms and company size. The study found that the internal pressures of organizational culture, organiza tional learning and the influence of individuals exert the greatest influence on mining company response to environmental approvals regulation. These results suggest that existing explanations of corporate environmental behaviour, which emphasize external factors, should be complemented by a focus on the internal dynamics of firms.