Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts

Wednesday 21 September 2016

DYI biohacking rears its ugly head in Australia?


Gene Ethics, 8 September 2016:

DIY biohack threat

US biohacker Ellen Jorgensen, of Genspace New York, toured Australia in Science Week to promote DIY gene hacking, in informal labs, and to encourage untrained nerds to do genetic manipulation. The OGTR promised to tell her audiences that Australian GM laws require training, contained labs and expert supervision, but did not. The OGTR has also failed to define new 'gene editing' techniques and their products as GM, so they remain unregulated. We advocate tough laws banning any DIY genetic manipulation of living things. Humans invented computer programs but they fail, are hacked and virus infected for fun. Untrained, risk-takers, aspiring to be the next bio-Gates or Jobs, must be stopped.


University of Sydney, Faculty of Science:

Biohacking events at Sydney Science Festival
Get down with DNA
10 am, Thursday 18 August, Royal Botanic Garden Sydney
Stage 6 biology students and their teachers will meet Dr Ellen Jorgensen and spend the day exploring exciting DIY bio techniques and the amazing things biohackers do. The DIY bio movement gives bio-entrepreneurs low-cost access to facilities for proof-of-concept experiments. Hands-on science workshops will be delivered by Sydney’s leading science organisations including the Royal Botanic Garden, Taronga Conservation Society, UTS Centre for Forensic Science and the Australian Centre for Wildlife Genomics. Students will also experience a behind the scenes tour of the Royal Botanic Garden’s Plant Pathology laboratory to look at gel electrophoresis, a DNA transilluminator and participate in an interactive demonstration of plant DNA extraction.
The Global Biohack Revolution
6pm, Thursday 18 August, ATP innovations
Meet the biohackers from Australia and around the world who are leading the global biotechnology revolution! This all-star panel of biohackers will discuss the challenges and opportunities in democratisation of science through biohacking with a focus on education and the commercialisation of research. Dr Ellen Jorgensen will be joined by JJ Hastings (BioQuisitive, London Biohackspace), Meow-Meow Ludo (Biohack Sydney, BioFoundry), Andrew Gray (Biohack Melbourne, BioQuisitive) and Oron Catts (SymbioticA Perth).
DNA groundswell
10 am, Friday 19 August, Royal Botanic Garden Sydney
This session is an opportunity for science communicators and scientists across Sydney to think about how they can incorporate exciting open access programs into their work. Learn how Genspace uses biohacking to engage the community through courses, cultural events, educational outreach and experiences for students and the public. Meet the people behind BioFoundry, Australia’s first open access lab that also runs courses for enthusiasts and curious amateurs. Discover how biohacking is democratising science around the world by lowering the financial and technological entry barriers to science education and research training. International guests Dr Ellen Jorgensen will be joined by local biohacker Meow-Ludo Meow-Meow, Co-founder of Sydney's BioFoundry.
Biohacking: why should we care?
6 pm, Friday 19 August, University of Technology Sydney
How is biohacking changing the world? Should we be concerned about safety? Can DIY labs ferment a revolution? What are the opportunities? Can they create a culture of start-ups and entrepreneurs? In this public lecture, Dr Ellen Jorgensen will provide insights into biohacking, novel applications it has produced and how it can serve as a useful education tool. This will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Dr Sheila Donnelly, Prof Peter Ralph and Prof Michael Wallach from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).

Jackie Randles is Manager Inspiring Australia (NSW). Dr Ellen Jorgensen’s Sydney visit is part of a national tour supported by Inspiring Australia for National Science Week 2016.

Inverse, 8 September 2015:

Biological research and experimentation is no longer the sole realm of Ph.D-having, grant-backed, hypothesis-wielding scientists. As science moves into more and more complex territory, it is also — somewhat paradoxically — becoming more and more accessible to those who lack the bonafide to wear a white coat. In Australia, Biofoundry is at the heart of the movement to democratize experimentation. Biohacker Meow-Ludo Meow-Meow (his real name; an homage to the 2001 cult classic Super Troopers) founded the lab, the first of its kind on the continent, last November. And he says he’s thinking about building a chain
Inverse caught up with Biofoundry’s Meow-Ludo Meow-Meow (his real name; an homage to the 2001 cult classic Super Troopers) and picked his brain about what the lab is up to and what it hopes to achieve.
How did you get interested in biohacking and creating a place like Biofoundry?
I was halfway through my molecular biology degree. My job prospects weren’t very good. In Australia, we pretty much have no innovation and technology work. Basically, molecular biology graduates are fucked in this country. In New South Wales, which has about 6 million people, we only have about 12 jobs for biotech.
So I started to get concerned, because I wasn’t a grade-A student or anything. I looked around, and I found BioCurious [in California] and Genspace [in New York City]. But in Australia, nothing like this was happening. So I figured it was on the burden of me to get things happening.
I had a meeting with a group of people about 4.5 years ago. We had a huge group that shrunk down to about 12, and we continued to meet for four years. That culminated in a few of us just saying, “Fuck, let’s set up a lab. It’s been too long, let’s make this happen.”

Sunday 15 May 2016

Australian Federal Election 2016: spot Amanda Vanstone's attempts at political deception in The Age newspaper


This was former Liberal Senator for South Australia and former minister in the Howard Government, Amanda Vanstone writing in The Age on 9 May 2016 in an article titled Turnbull or Shorten? The choice seems clear:


Let’s break that down a little.

Schooling

Yes, Malcolm Turnbull went to a public primary school at Vaucluse in Sydney’s affluent Eastern Suburbs for about three years and, yes he went to Sydney Grammar School from the age of eight with the assistance of a scholarship for at least part of that period. He graduated from university during the years when undergraduate and post-graduate tertiary education was free of course fees in Australia. He was the child of divorced parents. All this is on the public record.

Bill Shorten went to a local Catholic primary school before attending Xavier College’s junior & senior schools in the Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne – his mother taught at Xavier and presumably there was some degree of discount on his school fees. So yes, he also had a private education in affluent suburbs. He graduated from university during the years when tertiary education was free of course fees and undertook a post-graduate degree during a period when course fees were re-instituted. His parents divorced when he was about 20 years of age. All of which is also on the public record.

Wealth

Malcolm Turnbull inherited assets worth an est. $2 million from his hotel-broker father before he turned 29 years of age according to one of his biographers Paddy Manning and, he and his wife independently and jointly went on to garner considerably greater wealth which was last estimated to be in the vicinity of $200 million. His last Statement of Registrable Interests lists a veritable slew of financial investments and an expensive property portfolio shared between he and his wife. It is not known if he inherited any money from his mother.

It is not known to the writer if Bill Shorten inherited any money to speak of from his dry-dock manager father or his mother, however his last Statement of Registrable Interests lists very little in assets held by either he or his wife beyond their mortgaged family home.

What essentially separates these two men are the differences in their personal and political philosophies and the wide gap between their different levels of personal wealth.

Although this is something Amanda Vanstone is trying hard to distort in this federal election campaign and something The Age appears to be so indifferent to that its editor is not reigning in her excesses.  

Thursday 12 May 2016

Federal Election 2016: looking at the ICIJ Panama Papers searchable database


Some observations after an initial look at the ICIJ Panama Papers searchable database* (which includes Offshore Leaks data), with regard to listings of companies and individuals associated with Australia……

For some who are listed it appears to be a bit of a family affair, for others a lone foray into off-shore company registration.

Some associated with registered companies are investors, while others are active players in the mining, smelting, construction, manufacturing, banking, finance, risk management, insurance and marketing sectors.

There’s the odd investment manager or two, at least one specialist in fine art, some professional property directors and company secretaries, self-employed consultants and a media type.

One of Australia’s rich listers and a National Party politician (appointed not elected) also make appearances on this database.

As does a company which had as directors one multimillionaire former Labor premier of NSW and another multimillionaire who who went on to be a Liberal prime minister – for reasons unknown full details of this company have not been included in the searchable section of the ICIJ database to date.

What there doesn’t appear to be any indication of is that ordinary workers on the average wage went to Mossack Fonceca or other financial advisors to set up a companies in a low taxing jurisdiction such as Panama, the British Virgin Islands, Singapore or Hong Kong.

Off-shore registration appears to be something indulged in primarily by business and industry in this country as well as those with above average to high levels of personal wealth.

The very groups that Turnbull & Co have given company and income tax cuts in the 2016-17 Budget.

Inevitably there are 2014-15 political donors among those listed on the databases and, just as inevitably, there are some who give more to the Liberals and their Coalition partner than they do to Labor.

Before voting on 2 July 2016 readers might consider clicking on the search link at the beginning of this post and typing in a few individual and company names, to see how these might compare with the known interests of election candidates and those political donors included in documents held at the Australian Electoral Commission Annual Returns Locator Service.  

Where people spend, invest or gift their money says something about their personal and professional ethics.  

* It is not asserted by the creators of these databases that every individual or corporation identified has been involved in unlawful tax evasion or any other form of wrongdoing.

Tuesday 22 July 2014

MH17: Sky News offends the standards of any decent society


In a case of birds of a feather flock together; Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott insensitively inserted himself into a national and international tragedy for political advantage during the same period Sky News (part-owned by Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox through its 39% shareholding in BSkyB) was forced to apologise for an appalling breach of community standards:

London: British broadcaster Sky News has apologised after one of its presenters searched through luggage at the crash site of downed flight MH17 live on air.
In a news broadcast on Sunday, presenter Colin Brazier was shown rooting through personal belongings in an opened suitcase at the site, picking up a set of keys before saying: "We shouldn't really be doing this."

Wednesday 2 July 2014

All my concerns about Facebook's lack of ethics coalesced on 30 June 2014.....


…when I came across this ethically challenged study by Adam D. I. KramerJamie E. Guillory and Jeffrey T. Hancock:

On Facebook, people frequently express emotions, which are later seen by their friends via Facebook's "News Feed" product (8). Because people's friends frequently produce much more content than one person can view, the News Feed filters posts, stories, and activities undertaken by friends. News Feed is the primary manner by which people see content that friends share. Which content is shown or omitted in the News Feed is determined via a ranking algorithm that Facebook continually develops and tests in the interest of showing viewers the content they will find most relevant and engaging. One such test is reported in this study: A test of whether posts with emotional content are more engaging.

The experiment manipulated the extent to which people (N = 689,003) were exposed to emotional expressions in their News Feed. This tested whether exposure to emotions led people to change their own posting behaviors, in particular whether exposure to emotional content led people to post content that was consistent with the exposure—thereby testing whether exposure to verbal affective expressions leads to similar verbal expressions, a form of emotional contagion. People who viewed Facebook in English were qualified for selection into the experiment. Two parallel experiments were conducted for positive and negative emotion: One in which exposure to friends' positive emotional content in their News Feed was reduced, and one in which exposure to negative emotional content in their News Feed was reduced. In these conditions, when a person loaded their News Feed, posts that contained emotional content of the relevant emotional valence, each emotional post had between a 10% and 90% chance (based on their User ID) of being omitted from their News Feed for that specific viewing. It is important to note that this content was always available by viewing a friend's content directly by going to that friend's "wall" or "timeline," rather than via the News Feed. Further, the omitted content may have appeared on prior or subsequent views of the News Feed. Finally, the experiment did not affect any direct messages sent from one user to another.

Posts were determined to be positive or negative if they contained at least one positive or negative word, as defined by Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software (LIWC2007) (9) word counting system, which correlates with self-reported and physiological measures of well-being, and has been used in prior research on emotional expression (7, 8, 10). LIWC was adapted to run on the Hadoop Map/Reduce system (11) and in the News Feed filtering system, such that no text was seen by the researchers. As such, it was consistent with Facebook's Data Use Policy, to which all users agree prior to creating an account on Facebook, constituting informed consent for this research. Both experiments had a control condition, in which a similar proportion of posts in their News Feed were omitted entirely at random (i.e., without respect to emotional content). Separate control conditions were necessary as 22.4% of posts contained negative words, whereas 46.8% of posts contained positive words. So for a person for whom 10% of posts containing positive content were omitted, an appropriate control would withhold 10% of 46.8% (i.e., 4.68%) of posts at random, compared with omitting only 2.24% of the News Feed in the negativity-reduced control.
The experiments took place for 1 wk (January 11–18, 2012). Participants were randomly selected based on their User ID, resulting in a total of 155,000 participants per condition who posted at least one status update during the experimental period….
The results show emotional contagion. As Fig. 1 illustrates, for people who had positive content reduced in their News Feed, a larger percentage of words in people's status updates were negative and a smaller percentage were positive. When negativity was reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results suggest that the emotions expressed by friends, via online social networks, influence our own moods, constituting, to our knowledge, the first experimental evidence for massive-scale emotional contagion via social networks (3, 7, 8), and providing support for previously contested claims that emotions spread via contagion through a network......



Unfortunately Facebook Inc does not appear to understand that involving 689,003 English-speaking people in an online psychological experiment without their knowledge, one which sought to manipulate their emotional states (and therefore their sense of wellbeing) and, then calmly and erroneously telling the world that the Data Use Policy terms and conditions imposed by the company when anyone creates a personal Facebook account was in fact "informed consent" for this experiment, is an appalling abuse of power.

That Cornell University and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) facilitated this experiment is equally appalling.

 On 29 June 2014 The Wall Street Journal reported these responses:

What many of us feared is already a reality: Facebook is using us as lab rats, and not just to figure out which ads we'll respond to but actually change our emotions," wrote Animalnewyork.com, a blog post that drew attention to the study Friday morning.


"It's completely unacceptable for the terms of service to force everybody on Facebook to participate in experiments," said Kate Crawford, visiting professor at MIT's Center for Civic Media and principal researcher at Microsoft Research.

Ms. Crawford said it points to broader problem in the data science industry. Ethics are not "a major part of the education of data scientists and it clearly needs to be," she said.

Asked a Forbes.com blogger: "Is it okay for Facebook to play mind games with us for science? It's a cool finding, but manipulating unknowing users' emotional states to get there puts Facebook's big toe on that creepy line."

Slate.com called the experiment "unethical" and said "Facebook intentionally made thousands upon thousands of people sad."

Mr. Kramer defended the ethics of the project. He apologized for wording in the published study that he said might have made the experiment seem sinister. "And at the end of the day, the actual impact on people in the experiment was the minimal amount to statistically detect it," he wrote on Facebook.

Facebook also said the study was conducted anonymously, so researchers could not learn the names of the research subjects.

Mr. Kramer said that the content—both positive and negative—that was removed from some users' news feeds might have reappeared later.

The emotional changes in the research subjects was small. For instance, people who saw fewer positive posts only reduced the number of their own positive posts by a tenth of a percent.

Comments from Facebook users poured in Sunday evening on Mr. Kramer's Facebook page. The comments were wide-ranging, from people who had no problem with the content, to those who thought Facebook should respond by donating money to help people who struggle with mental health issues.

"I appreciate the statement," one user wrote. "But emotional manipulation is emotional manipulation, no matter how small of a sample it affected."

Perhaps Facebook users need to step back and consider what this experiment says about both the people running this giant social media platform and the staff they employ.


Do you really want Danger Muffin (left) aka Adam D. I. Kramer messing with your head just because he can?










UPDATE

The Financial Express 3 July 2014:

British regulators are investigating revelations that Facebook treated hordes of its users like laboratory rats in an experiment probing into their emotions.
The Information Commissioner's Office said Wednesday that it wants to learn more about the circumstances underlying a 2-year-old study carried out by two U.S. universities and the world's largest social network.
The inquiry is being coordinated with authorities in Ireland, where Facebook has headquarters for its European operations, as well as with French regulators.
This is just the latest in a string of incidents that have raised questions about whether the privacy rights of Facebook's nearly 1.3 billion users are being trampled by the company's drive to dissect data and promote behavior that could help sell more online advertising.

Monday 8 July 2013

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott caught out charging Australian taxpayers for his own book promotion expenses


On 28 July 2010 ABC The Drum raised the matter of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s alleged misuse of parliamentary entitlements in 2009 to promote his book, Battlelines.

The initial Abbott response contained in that article was:


However, documents obtained under Freedom of Information found at Tony Yegles’ Scribd account tell another story.





Less than two months after receiving the first letter from the Dept. of Finance and Deregulation and, in the same month he began to repay monies received to which he was not entitled, this was Opposition Leader Tony Abbott on his feet in The House of Representatives on 9 October 2012:



Apparently when another member of parliament claims money from the taxpayer that he should not have received it is a matter so grave that it should bring down a government, but when Tony Abbott himself does the same thing it is a matter of small importance to be easily shrugged off and lied about to the media.

UPDATE:

Despite the previous written admissions of 29 October 2010 made by his chief of staff on behalf of Tony Abbott, the Opposition Leader continues to lie to the media and the Australian electorate.

The Guardian UK 8 July 2013:

When asked at a press conference on Monday morning if he had wrongly claimed travel expenses while promoting Battlelines, Abbott replied: "No, I did not."
He did not elaborate on the answer before taking the next question and ended the press conference after answering questions from two other journalists on the press club debate and the potential timing of the election....

We now learn from Michelle Grattan that his publisher, Melbourne University Press, actually repaid the debt.

Saturday 13 April 2013

Saffin welcomes tax support for providers of ethics classes


Media Release 9 April 2013

Saffin welcomes tax support for providers of ethics classes

Page MP Janelle Saffin has welcomed the Australian Government’s announcement that organisations running ethics classes in government schools will be eligible to receive tax deductible donations.
Ms Saffin said people had lobbied her about the issue and she took it up with Assistant Treasurer, David Bradbury.
“Currently the tax laws contain general deductible gift recipient (DGR) categories for organisations which provide religious lessons in government schools to receive tax deductible donations, but there is no category for providers of ethics classes.
“The Australian Government wants to support ethics classes in government schools through the provision of the DGR tax concession.
“Minister Bradbury contacted me directly this week to tell me of the Government’s announcement.
“Under the changes, the Government will amend the DGR categories in the tax laws to include organisations approved by state or territory governments to provide ethics classes in public schools.
“This means organisations running ethics classes, such as Primary Ethics, will get the same benefits as organisations running special religious education classes in government schools.
“This is great news for these organisations, who will find it easier to collect donations because of these changes.
“It’s also great news for many parents as these classes give them more choices about the education opportunities for their children.”

Tuesday 19 March 2013

What will the Australian Press Council do about this?

The Daily Telegraph's blatantly false Page One headline of 18 March 2013

Mr Denmore @MrDenmore
Oh, the author of The Tele's carbon collapse fiction is our friend Steve Lewis, he of Ozcar and Ashby fame.
Mr Denmore @MrDenmore
The Tele's source for the 'carbon collapse' are unnamed 'experts'. Odd as the share market is at a 4-year high and business confidence is up
Yesterday morning I happened on these two tweets and this snapshot on Twitter. Given New Limited's involvement in the current hysteria surrounding the Federal Government's response to the 2011 and 2012 independent media reviews, I went to that day's issue of The Daily Telegraph and this is what I found. The Daily Telegraph's Steve Lewis and Phil Jacob are asserting that: New data from the corporate regulator reveals insolvencies have hit a record high over the past 12 months, led by widespread failures in manufacturing and construction, which accounted for almost one-fifth of collapses. The Australian Securities & Investments Commission reports there were 10,632 company collapses for the 12 months to March 1 - averaging 886 a month - with the number of firms being placed in administration more than 12 per cent higher than during the global financial crisis. While the high Australian dollar is seen as the main factor behind manufacturing closures, experts say the carbon tax is adding to increasing cost burdens for many firms struggling to stay afloat. The first problem with this statement is that it is plain wrong. The "10,632" figure does not come from a twelve month period ending on 1 March this year - this total is for the 2012 calendar year. A clue for these two journalists might have been found in the fact that the data set was released on 18 February 2013. What The Daily Telegraph journalists also do not say is that in the total figure quoted almost half of these external administration/insolvencies occurred before the introduction of the 'cabon tax' and, that prior to the tax, in February-March 2012 there were 2,137 insolvencies which made this the highest combined figure for two consecutive months in a data set which begins in 1996. As for the more than one business is going the wall every hour in Australia found in text in the snapshot above - I suggest that The Daily Telegraph invest in new batteries for the office calculator as that Page One assertion is wrong on so many levels. So what else in that Lewis-Jacob article is open to question? Well, let me start with Grain Products Australia the country’s only manufacturer of caramel and dextrin and one of only two wheat starch and gluten manufacturers. A company in liquidation since 11 March this year and one the journalists try hard to mold into a carbon tax victim. Over six months before the introduction of the carbon price, this company went into voluntary administration citing the high cost of wheat and what were then solely state electricity charges. That leaves Penrice Soda Holdings the only Australian soda ash manufacturer. It was quoted by the Lewis-Jacob team as saying that the reason it was ceasing local raw material quarrying and importing its soda ash was that the carbon tax was effectively the straw that broke the camel's back. However, a little basic fact checking would have shown that last February it told its shareholders and the Australian Stock Exchange that the factory closure was reflecting deteriorating demand conditions in soda ash and quarry material markets as well as impacts from a high Australian dollar. There was not one word about the carbon tax. Finally, the biggest whopper these two journalists told about the business sector in 2012 which is this line; with the number of firms being placed in administration more than 12 per cent higher than during the global financial crisis. The Global Financial Crisis began in 2007-08 and did not lose momentum until 2009-10. Even the most mathematically challenged News Limited employee would realise that the business external administration/insolvency totals for those years far exceed the 2012 total which The Daily Telegraph is currently treating as an end of days event. So what will the Australian Press Council do about a newspaper which so distorts the facts and journalists whom I'm told now know that they have based their 10,632 company collapses on a dodgy premise? Why its twenty-three members will pretend that they never saw or heard of this article - unless a member of the public makes a formal complaint. UPDATE: The Leader of the Opposition makes the mistake of relying on the Lewis-Jacob article during the House of Representatives Question Time on 18 March 2013. A reliance the Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Greg Combet, notes during that same Question Time: ...over the last couple of days the Leader of the Opposition, the New South Wales government and the Daily Telegraph have been misleading the public yet again about the impact of carbon pricing. Yesterday it was a false claim about electricity prices in New South Wales. Today the Daily Telegraph is back with ridiculous claims about economic catastrophe, repeated here today in the very first question by the Leader of the Opposition—there seems to be some commonality of approach that we are witnessing. The Telegraph story today takes the misuse of statistics, hysterical headlines and distortion of facts to levels that would have done Pravda proud during the height of the Cold War.

Thursday 7 March 2013

Is Opposition Leader Tony Abbott being a little too cute on his Statement of Registerable Interests?


I did not mishear, in an ABC News interview aired on 3 March 2013, Margie Abbott quite clearly stated that she was the owner of a small business.

Elsewhere she has said:


Margie also styles herself as Director, SIOC (St. Ives Occasional Care Incorporated which may have been previously trading as Ku-ring-gai Community Childrens Centre Inc). She is apparently the sole director.

Yet her husband coyly declares to the Australian Parliament in his last Statement of Registrable Interests that she is employed, rather than more accurately stating that she is self-employed or the director of an incorporated business.



As anyone who works for a wage (with no equity in the business which employs them) can tell you - there is a wealth of difference between those three terms. Ranging from income, autonomy and security of tenure through to flexibility in work conditions.

As a sole trader, using her maiden name, Margie Abbott was also active in business between June 2001 and March 2003.

Given Mr. Abbott has a propensity to misrepresent his wife's interests, I have to wonder how he as both MP and Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business described her time as a sole trader to the Australian Parliament then.

Monday 25 February 2013

Question for 2013: So exactly when is the Australian National University going to become an ethical investor?


In January 2013 local and national media reported that the Australian National University (ANU) was still a significant shareholder in Metgasco Limited, a coal seam gas exploration and production company operating without a social license on the NSW North Coast.

When caught out ANU pleaded that there were few buyers for Metgasco shares.

To date there has been no announcement that ANU has divested itself of the 2,500,000 Metgasco shares it held as of September 2012.

So how genuine is the University when it comes to ethical investment?

After a Student Union campaign, on Tuesday 11th October 2011 ANU's vice-chancellor Professor Ian Young announced the university investment fund would sell-off $1 million worth of Metgasco shares.


However, share movement indicates normal investment trading from 2004-2012, rather than any desire on the university’s part to divest itself of all Metgasco shares from October 2011 onwards.

For interested readers – here is a brief history of ANU shareholdings according to Metgasco company documents:

Between 2004-2006 the Australian National University is not on Metgasco’s 20 Largest Shareholders list.


“Metgasco completed two private placements and a Share Purchase Plan during the year.
The Share Purchase Plan was strongly subscribed with over 70% of shareholders taking up their rights to participate.”

The Australian National University Investment Section - 1,250,000 shares representing 1.03% of all issued Metgasco shares as of 31 August 2007.

Making it the 14th largest shareholder.

ANU holdings increased by an unquantified number of shares.


The Australian National University - 2,712,000 shares representing 2.05% of issued Metgasco shares as of 17 September 2008.

Making it the 11th largest shareholder.

ANU holding increased by 1,462,000 shares.


The Australian National University - 2,500,000 shares held representing 1.34% of issued Metgasco shares as of 15 September 2009.

Making it the 11th largest shareholder.

ANU apparently divested itself of 212,000 shares


The Australian National University - 2,283,333 shares representing 0.91% of issued Metgasco shares as of 22 September 2010.

Making it the 12th largest shareholder.

Apparently ANU divested itself of 216,667 shares.


On 17 June 2011 “the Company launched a Share Purchase Plan (“SPP”)….
In mid-2011 we raised new capital of $21 million via a targeted placement and a Share Placement Plan for existing shareholders….”

The Australian National University - 4,206,409 shares representing 1.25% of issued Metgasco shares as of 16 September 2011.

Making it the 10th largest shareholder.

ANU holding increased by 1,923,076 shares.

NOTE: On Tuesday 11 October 2011 ANU informed the Students Association that it was intending to sell an estimated $1million worth of Metgasco shares, after a campaign by students which one would presume occurred over a number of weeks or months.


The Australian National University - 2,500,000 shares representing 0.64% of issued Metgasco shares as of 21 September 2012.

Making it the 17th largest shareholder.

ANU apparently divested itself of 1,706,409 shares.

ANU’s current total number of Metgasco shares held is now the same as its September 2009 total.
 
UPDATE:

ANU Environment Collective

 

Further Update

The Daily Examiner 26 February 2013:

A GROUP of students is claiming victory today after learning the Australian National University sold its remaining shares in gas mining company Metgasco.

Vice-Chancellor Ian Young sent an email to ANU Environment Collective spokesman Tom Swann this morning revealing the shares had been sold.

"I am informed by the ANU Investment Office that the university has now divested itself of all shares in Metgasco," Mr Young's email read.

APN Newsdesk has contacted ANU seeking confirmation about the sale and answers to other questions.

Mr Swann said the EC campaign to have ANU sell its shares in Metgasco began two years ago after the group was contacted by activists in areas where Metgasco was mining…..

Thursday 12 July 2012

GlaxoSmithKine pleads guilty to criminal charges of fraudulent promotion of its drugs - pays US Government US$3 billion settlement



The Lancet 7 July 2012:

On July 2, UK-based GlaxoSmithKine (GSK) agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges of fraudulent promotion of its drugs and pay the US Government a settlement of US$3 billion. If accepted, this will be the largest fine imposed on a drug company, surpassing the $2·3 billion paid by Pfizer for inappropriate marketing in 2009. The amount adds to GSK's $750 million settlement in 2010 over manufacturing quality.

What is particularly egregious about GSK's fraud is the calculated deceit and potential human cost of its aggressive and misleading marketing. For instance, while evidence was emerging that showed an increased suicide risk in adolescents prescribed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors for depression, GSK was actively encouraging off-label prescription of paroxetine to individuals younger than 18 years. This was not an isolated incident; off-label use was also encouraged for bupropion. For rosiglitazone, safety data were withheld from the US Food and Drug Administration and altered, potentially delaying restrictions on the drug's use and putting people to whom it was prescribed at increased risk of cardiovascular complications. The company is also accused of cheating Medicare. Such behaviour is not only illegal, it is immoral.

As Machiavelli observed, “he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived”. Sadly, in the case of GSK, this has involved doctors who were all too ready to be beguiled by illegal kickbacks and lavish hospitality…