Urban structures and commuting in Australian cities (journal article)
by Peter Rickwood and Garry Glazebrook
from Urban Policy and Research, March 2009
"Studies looking at the relationship between urban form and travel behaviour have generally considered spatial information at coarse metropolitan or local government area scales. We analyse ABS census data at the Collection District level for the metropolitan areas of the mainland Australian state capital cities, and at various spatial scales for an in-depth analysis of commuting in Sydney. The analyses suggest that the relationship between travel behaviour and urban form is complex, and that simple analyses of density alone are likely to overstate the effect of both metropolitan and neighbourhood scale population density on mode choice, but that these variables serve as useful proxies for more complex measures of urban structure. "

Recharging Detroit (journal article)
by Paul Keegan
from Fortune, 27 April 2009 pp. 54-60
"The article discusses competition to develop battery technology for use in electric vehicles. Several Asian firms including Sanyo, NEC, and LG are seen to have a substantial technological advantage over U.S. companies. An economic stimulus package signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama included $2 billion for advanced battery manufacturing."

Suburban sprawl a poor option, says planning expert (journal article)
by Rachel Borchardt
from Government News, April 2009
"Professor Rob Adams, director of design and urban environment at Melbourne City Council, said governments must get the message that high-density housing solutions were a better option than inefficient suburban communities.
“A thousand houses built on the periphery of your city will cost $300 million more than 1000 houses built within the footprint of your city,” Adam told attendees at the Local Government Association of Queensland’s 2009 Infrastructure Symposium."

Finding Nemo (journal article)
by Peter Pockley
from Australasian Science, Vol 30, No. 4, May 2009
"James Cook discovered the East Australia Current ore than two centuries ago, but its profound influence on eastern Australia is only now coming to be understood."

David Bellamy on Noosa Biosphere (article)
by Wendy O'Hanlon
from Acres Australia, the national newspaper of sustainable agriculture, Vol 17 No 1 2009
"One of Prof. Bellamy's main concerns is that while the focus is on global warming we are taking our eye off the ball in relation to the critical biodiversity issues and the loss of our forests to urban exposure. That is why he considers Noosa's Biosphere Reserve as a shining example of man living in harmony with nature."

Managing projects with wikis (journal article)
by Ephraim Schwartz
from Information Age, December 2008/January 2009
"Wikis are deceptively easy to use and install, so are nowadays found in all sorts of ICT departments, especially as quick and simple project management organisers.
Although wikis are used mainly as project management tool, says Stewart Mader, principal at the GrowYourWiki consultancy, they can provide other advantages as well, such as in customer/client collaboration, documentation and developing an online community."

Evaluating web site quality: the value of a multi paradigm approach (journal article)
by Dieter Fink and Casty Nyaga
from Benchmarking: and International Journal, Vol 16 No 2 2009, pp. 259-273
"The aim of this paper is to benchmark the quality of web sites of major public accounting (PA) firms by seeking the opinions of potential clients and analysing the data to establish best quality practice for PA web sites. "

Project management approaches for dynamic environments (journal abstract)
by Simon Collyer and Clive Warren
from International Journal of Project Management, Vol 27 No 4, May 2009, pp.355-364
"This paper investigates the properties of projects conducted in rapidly changing environments. These projects are challenged by the rapid introduction of new unknowns as they progress. One might say they are more akin to stacking worms than stacking bricks. The difficulties posed by these projects are identified and the literature is reviewed for suitable approaches."
Contact us for a copy of this article

Justifications, Strategies, and Critical Success Factors in Successful ITIL Implementations in U.S. and Australian Companies: An Exploratory Study (journal article)
by Carol Pollard and Aileen Cater-Steel
from Information Systems Management, Vol 26 No 2, Spring 2009, pp. 164-175
"A growing number of organizations are implementing the ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) “best practice” framework in an attempt to improve their IT service management processes. However, not all ITIL implementations are successful and some companies have been disappointed with the outcomes. This exploratory research reports on four case studies of “successful” implementations of IT service management using the process-based ITIL V2 framework."

Your Solar-Power Future (journal article)
By James M. Higgins
from Futurist Vol 43 Iss 3 May/June 2009, pp. 25-29
"Solar energy may soon power our homes, office buildings, automobiles,and iPods. It's closer than you thought"

Last-Resort Solutions to Global Warming (journal article)
By Jamais Cascio
from Futurist Vol43 Iss 3 May/June 2009, pp. 8-9
"Geoengineering the planet to stave off disaster."

A Reverse Brain Drain (journal article)
By Vivek Wadhwa
from Issues in Science & Technology Vol 25 Issue 3 Spring 2009, pp. 45-52
"The United States, long the beneficiary of talented immigrants, needs to act quickly to keep these valuable workers from leaving to pursue expanding opportunities in their home countries."

In Defense of Biofuels, Done Right (journal article)
By Keith Kline et al.
from Issues in Science and Technology Vol 25 Issue 3 Spring 2009, pp. 75-84
"Despite recent claims to the contrary, plant-based fuels developed in economically and environmentally sensible ways can contribute significantly to the nation’s— indeed, the world’s—energy security while providing a host of benefits for many people worldwide."

Government strategies to attract R&D-intensive FDI (journal article)
By José Guimón
from Journal of Technology Transfer Vol 34 No 4 Aug 2009, pp. 364-379
"Competition among countries to attract the research and development (R&D) activities of multinational enterprises has increased substantially during the last years, but the strategies used by governments in this competition still remain largely unexplored. This paper addresses that gap by proposing a taxonomy of the policy instruments available to stimulate inward R&D-intensive foreign direct investment (FDI) and presenting the results of a comparative case study of two EU countries: Spain and Ireland. The main conclusion is that an efficient promotion of R&D-intensive FDI calls for a closer connection between innovation policy and inward investment promotion, which are two policy areas that have traditionally operated rather separately. In addition, investment promotion agencies targeting R&D-intensive FDI are advised to reconfigure the scope of services they provide by placing more emphasis on after-care, since R&D-intensive FDI tends to be evolutionary rather than purely greenfield."

Project management for network geeks (journal article)
by Greg Schaffer
from Information Age, April-May 2009, pp. 66-68
"Network professionals are typically well versed in the technical aspects of networking: router and switch configuration, server deployment and management and so on. They are rarely trained, however, on how to manage projects. This is unfortunate, as many of the problems that networking pros face in projects can be mitigated with just a few project management skills and techniques. "

Tweet to compete (journal article)
by Jason Meserve
from Information Age, April-May 2009, pp. 24-26
"If you still think Facebook is for twentysomethings clinging to their uni years and Twitter is for people with too much time on their hands announcing what they had for breakfast, think again. Social networks like Facebook (150 million users), Twitter (4.4 million users) and LinkedIn (34 million users) are some of the fastest growing sites on the Internet and they're not being used for aimless chitchat or sharing the latest gossip. We're talking busy ICT professionals using social networks for serious ICT business – everything from customer service to marketing a product to marketing themselves to keeping up with industry news to getting fast answers to a technical question."

Market rebels : how activists make or break radical innovations [book]
Author: Hayagreeva Rao
"Great individuals are assumed to cause the success of radical innovations - thus Henry Ford is depicted as the one who established the automobile industry in America. Hayagreeva Rao tells a different story, one that willchange the way you think about markets forever. He explains how "market rebels" - activists who defy authority and convention - are the real force behind the success or failure of radical innovations." - cover.
Grab a copy of this book to read. Click here to email a request through to your library.

Managing water for all : an OECD perspective on pricing and financing [online]

Author: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

"This report, which emphasises the economic and financial aspects of water resources management and water service provision, the need for an integrated approach (including governance considerations) to address these complex policy challenges, and the importance of establishing a firm evidence base to support policy development and implementation, summarises the results of OECD work in this area." - abstract.

Click here to access.

The power of synergies in research (journal article)
by Dr Mark Matthews
from Australian R&D Review, April 2009, p. 11
"In the current global financial crisis, governments are likely to consider re-prioritising funding for public science. One area they should avoid cutting is funding for international research collaboration."

A Trail Across Time: American Environmental Planning From City Beautiful to Sustainability (journal article)
by Thomas L. Daniels
from Journal of the American Planning Association Spring 2009, Vol. 75 No. 2, pp. 178-192
"It would be useful to identify and connect the major ideas of American environmental planning from the late 19th century up to today, to show its evolution over time and anticipate its potential future direction. I aim to tie together the major ideas of American environmental planning, showing how they have evolved, and suggest what additional changes will be required to progress further toward sustainability."

Knowledge and information sharing in a closed information environment (journal article)
by Choo Hong Telvin Goh and Val Hooper
from Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 13 No. 2 2009, pp. 21-34
"The objectives of this research are to ascertain the current status of, and barriers to, knowledge and information sharing; to elicit suggestions for improvement; and to determine whether the situation is different from that experienced by organizations operating in an average business environment."

IT project managers' construction of successful project management practice: a repertory grid investigation.
by Nannette P. Napier, Mark Keil and Felix B. Tan
from Information Systems Journal, May 2009, Vol. 19 No. 3, pp. 255-282
"Although effective project management is critical to the success of information technology (IT) projects, little empirical research has investigated skill requirements for IT project managers (PMs). This study addressed this gap by asking 19 practicing IT PMs to describe the skills that successful IT PMs exhibit. Nine skill categories emerged: client management, communication, general management, leadership, personal integrity, planning and control, problem solving, systems development and team development. Our study complements existing research by providing a richer understanding of several skills that were narrowly defined (client management, planning and control, and problem solving) and by introducing two new skill categories that had not been previously discussed (personal integrity and team development). We describe the four IT PM archetypes – General Manager, Problem Solver, Client Representative and Balanced Manager – and discuss how this knowledge can be useful for practitioners, researchers and educators. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research."

Two Decades of Murray-Darling Water Management: A River of Funding, a Trickle of Achievement (journal article)
by Lisa Yu-Ting Lee and Tihomir Ancev
" The paper appraises the myriad of Murray-Darling Basin-related policies since the early 1990s. It contends that significant environmental improvements could have been achieved at substantially lower cost had decisive action been taken earlier. If the total expenditures in the last two decades had been put solely towards water entitlement buy-backs, an amount of water several times that necessary to significantly improve the health of the Basin would have been acquired."

Infrastructure Australia, a Report to the Council of Australian Governments (journal article)
a review by Henry Ergas
from Agenda: A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform, Vol 16 No 1
"...[the report] suffers greatly from being neither fish nor fowl: it lacks the frankness, clarity and rigour one would expect from an expert report. At the same time, it lacks the care in drafting, the appreciation of the subtleties, and the honest acknowledgement of political constraints that one hopes for in a departmental statement. The impression is of a document drafted by a committee of mixed quality, with the attempt to do ‘the right thing’ (through references to efficiency and cost-benefit analysis) frequently overridden by a ragbag of currently fashionable concerns."
Read the original report from Infrastructure Australia here.

Green initiatives begin to make business sense (article)
by David Hubler
from Washington Technology, 25 March 2009
"Spurred by the Obama administration’s call to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil by adopting alternative energy sources and increasing energy efficiency, green is rapidly becoming the color of choice across all facets of the federal contracting community. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 includes $4.5 billion for the General Services Administration to make federal buildings more energy efficient and $4.5 billion for the Energy Department to develop smart-grid technologies for the energy infrastructure. "

Fostering a state of innovation (article)
by Peter Doherty
from The Age, April 6 2009
"Our best hopes for the future rest in strengthening our most successful institutions and in fostering an entrepreneurial, energetic, appropriately educated, imaginative and committed citizenry."

Protecting Critical Information Infrastructures: Frequently Asked Questions (article)
by European Commission
from eGov Monitor, 30 March 2009
"The European Commission has launched an unprecedented initiative to protect Europe's information infrastructure and has joined hands with the private sector. This feature highlights the key aspects of the initiative."

5 secrets of leading-edge technology adoptors (article)
by John Moore
from Federal Computer Week, 3 April 2009
"Striking gold with a new technology doesn’t happen by accident, and it certainly doesn’t happen every time. The agencies that have a better success rate than others use a disciplined and judicious approach, particularly during tough economic times. Here’s how they do it."