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Mathematics education is seen as a right for all children, and important to ensure a prosperous future. However, in Australia and other nations, rural students and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds both perform less well in mathematics and are less likely to pursue advanced mathematics. This paper presents a case study of a low socioeconomic status, rural government school that has high engagement and achievement in senior mathematics, despite its setting. The study uses a conceptual framework informed by Appreciative Inquiry and the theory of Practice Architectures to explore the activities and facilitatory elements that have likely contributed to the school's mathematics success. Rather than being attributed to one or two key programmes, the school's mathematics success seemed associated with a collection of whole-school factors. Setting high expectations while providing proactive learning support, differentiating instruction, emphasising the value of mathematics, linking mathematics to careers, and building mathematics teacher capacity were all associated with the school's higher than expected mathematics performance. Rather than hindering the school's mathematics programme, its small size and rural context were used to enable practices that contributed to mathematics success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Informatics Competition (AIC) is the entry-level Informatics competition in Australia. It is a pen-and-paper competition, requiring no programming experience. Most of the questions focus on testing algorithmic ability, with others testing students' ability to analyse algorithms, apply rules and use logic to solve problems. The algorithmic questions include standard algorithms such as breadth first search, dynamic programming and two person games, as well as ad-hoc algorithms specific to a particular scenario. Currently about 7,000 students enter the competition, but there are plans to expand it with on-line entries. The AIC is becoming more relevant with the introduction of algorithmic thinking as a component of the Digital Technologies strand of the Australian Curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about upcoming conferences and seminars related to management science and operations research. Second International Working Seminar on Production Economics would be held at Kur-Hotel Lanserhof, A-6072 Lans (Innsbruck), Austria, from February 16-20, 1981. Subjects to be covered include: Production and Inventory Control, Investment and Financial Planning, Strategic Planning for Production Systems, and Production Innovation Management. The World Confederation of Productivity Science, organized in 1969, has held international congresses in 1973 in India and in 1977 in Australia. The theme will be "Productivity --the Industrial Renaissance" and both public and private sectors will be addressed. Requirements for submission of a paper include three copies of either a completed paper or an abstract of at least two pages, plus a 25-word summary for the brochure.

We present a new mathematical programming framework that is adaptable to a variety of spatially explicit landscape problems in environmental investment, conservation, and land-use planning, transport planning, and agriculture. As part of capturing spatial interdependencies, the framework considers decision variables at two levels, finely spaced grid cells and landholdings. We applied the framework to an environmental investment problem using objective functions representing biodiversity and carbon sequestration. We also tested the model to optimize the path of a road through part of the landscape. Using the Nambucca case study in eastern Australia, we applied a hybrid greedy randomised adaptive search procedure (GRASP) to find solutions to the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Green Triangle (GT) region of southern Australia is one of only two jurisdictions globally to licence plantation forestry's groundwater use. In response to declines in groundwater resources caused by historical plantation expansion, reductions in forest water allocations (~50%) are likely for some parts of the region, presenting novel challenges for forest managers in maintaining revenues and timber flows. This article presents a mathematical programming model evaluation of water trade opportunities for plantation forest owners to adapt to reduced water entitlements and explores how tightening groundwater policy could affect forestry returns and land use mix for the region. Results suggest that even absent opportunity to sell water, relatively limited 11% reduction in return could be expected for a large (−50%) water entitlement and (−48%) land‐use change out of forestry. Results suggest that opportunities for forestry companies to sell water entitlements may allow them to maintain or even increase combined returns from forestry and water sales. Whilst the results highlight the adaptive capacity of the plantation forestry sector to operate within reduced water entitlement, a significant sectoral and regional economy adjustment would be likely. The discussion focusses on the potential to realise optimisation model‐identified adaptation opportunities accounting for real‐world thin markets, transaction costs and market friction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The south-west of Australia is being affected by a warming, drying trend in its climate. In response to these changing climatic conditions, as well as changes in farm commodity price relativities, farmers have adjusted their mix of enterprises to favour cereal production. As a result, an increasing potential source of cereal straw for bioenergy production has emerged. This paper examines how temporal and spatial costs of cereal straw accumulation may affect the establishment of a bioenergy plant in the region, with climate change impacts being highlighted. Logistics models based on mathematical programming are constructed for a range of plant sizes. Modelling results identify the cost structures of cereal straw accumulation for these plant sizes. Plant sizes are characterised by different cost structures and levels of volatility in their costs of grain accumulation. The profitability of bioenergy production based on cereal straw in this region of Australia is particularly exposed to climate variability, especially for larger plant sizes. The projected change in climate supports a relatively small reduction in the costs of cereal straw accumulation. These findings will affect decision-making over investment in a long-lived specific asset such as a bioenergy processing plant. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The provision of new housing for a growing population is a challenge that many cities and regions all over the world are confronted with. The design and management of new housing development is a complex task given it needs to be socially, environmentally and economically sustainable. This paper describes a new method that helps spatially direct new housing development to minimise impact on water quality. Currently, the model accommodates for the pollutants total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP) and suspended sediments (TSS), but can be extended. The method is based on mathematical programming linked with multi-criteria analysis, and kinematic wave equations. It utilises GIS to underpin multiple spatial constraints on where housing development can take place, and to provide an effective means of visually analysing the impacts of land development scenarios produced by the model. We demonstrate the method using a case study for Hornsby Shire Council, New South Wales, Australia. With water quality and waterway health being a major issue in any urban development the proposed methodology has wide applications beyond the current study area. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Ethanol production is increasingly commonplace in many grain-producing regions. This paper uses the grain-producing region of south-western Australia to illustrate spatial and temporal aspects of grain accumulation costs for ethanol production. Specifically, this study examines how price variability of various wheat grades, combined with spatial and temporal variability in production of those grades, affects the costs of grain accumulation. These costs are the main components of an ethanol plant''s operating costs so lessening these costs can offer a comparative advantage for a plant owner. Logistics models based on mathematical programming are constructed for a range of plant sizes and locations for ethanol production. Modelling results identify low-cost sites that generate cost savings, in present value terms, of between 5 and 7.5 per cent, depending on plant size, over the 9-year study period. At all locations, small to medium-sized plants offer advantages of lower and less variable costs of grain accumulation. Yet, all locations and all plant sizes are characterised by marked volatility in the cost of grain accumulation. The profitability of ethanol production based on wheat in this region of Australia is particularly exposed to any prolonged period of high grain prices relative to petroleum prices, given current biofuel-policy settings in Australia. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• A mathematical programming approach for the multi-action problem is proposed (MAMP). • A new MIP model that includes fragmentation penalty in actions (MAMP-E) is presented. • The models are applied to the Mitchell River basin in Queensland, Australia. • MIP models get shorter execution times and higher quality solutions. • The MAMP-E model obtains higher ecological benefits than the MAMP model. Planning for management actions that address threats to biodiversity is important for securing its long term persistence. However, systematic conservation planning (SCP) has traditionally overlooked this aspect and just focused on identifying priority areas without any recommendation on actions needed. This paper develops a mixed integer mathematical programming (MIP) approach for the multi-action management planning problem (MAMP), where the goal is to find an optimal combination of management actions that abate threats, in an efficient way while accounting for connectivity. An extended version of the MAMP model (MAMP-E) is also proposed that adds an expression for minimizing fragmentation between different actions. To evaluate the efficiency of the two models, they were applied to a case study corresponding to a large area of the Mitchell River in Northern Australia, where 45 species of freshwater fish are exposed to the presence of four threats. The evaluation compares our exact MIP approach with the conservation planning software Marxan and the heuristic approach developed in Cattarino et al. (2015). The results obtained show that our MIP models have three advantages over their heuristic counterparts: shorter execution times, higher solutions quality, and a solution quality guarantee. Hence, the proposed MIP methodology provides a more effective framework for addressing the multi-action conservation problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]