Surviving (thriving) in academia : feminist support networks and women ECRs

In this paper, we reflect upon our experiences and those of our peers as doctoral students and early career researchers in an Australian political science department. We seek to explain and understand the diverse ways that participating in an unofficial Feminist Reading Group in our department affected our experiences. We contend that informal peer support networks like reading groups do more than is conventionally assumed, and may provide important avenues for sustaining feminist research in times of austerity, as well as supporting and enabling women and emerging feminist scholars in academia. Participating in the group created a community of belonging and resistance, providing women with personal validation, information and material support, as well as intellectual and political resources to understand and resist our position within the often hostile spaces of the University. While these experiences are specific to our context, time and location, they signal that peer networks may offer critical political resources for responding to the ways that women’s bodies and concerns are marginalised in increasingly competitive and corporatised university environments.

Engaging children and young people in creating resilient and healthy urban spaces

Urban public space in Australia and internationally, can be critically examined from a number of multidisciplinary standpoints, including human geography, urban design, planning, sociology, and public health. Viewing urban public space from a range of perspectives encourages different vantage points to emerge and questions around health, wellbeing and public space are increasingly topical and important in the broadest of terms, with public space being a key arena for physical activity, mental health, commercial, cultural and community life and the possibility of social inclusion. However, in the name of urban regeneration, programs of securitisation, ‘gentrification’ ‘creative’ and ‘smart’ city initiatives refashion public space as sites of selective inclusion and exclusion (Watson 2005; Gabrys 2014). In this context of monitoring and control procedures, in particular, children and young people’s use of space in parks, neighbourhoods, shopping malls and streets, is often viewed as a threat to social order, requiring various forms of remedial action, such as being ‘designed out’ of public space (Johnson 2014). Rarely are children and young people actively and respectfully brought into planning and governance processes and consequently many urban public spaces are essentially adult places, where control and ongoing surveillance are the key concerns (Freeman 2011, Dee 2013). There is also a political economy of public space discernable in cities like Brisbane, where ‘flagship’ infrastructure such as road tunnels take pride of place, while more humbly appointed pedestrian footpaths are often narrow, in a poor state of repair and a potential barrier to good health (Atkinson and Easthope 2009). The recent development of bikeways in Brisbane is a case in point, presenting both challenges and opportunities in being a valuable new form of public space heavily used by ‘commuter cyclists’ by day, but poorly lit and conceived, for a range of users at other times (Wyeth 2014). This paper concentrates on questions of social citizenship rights and discourses of health and wellbeing and suggests that cities, places and spaces and those who seek to use them, can be resilient in maintaining and extending democratic freedoms, calling surveillance, planning and governance systems to account (Smith 2014). The active inclusion of children and young people better informs the implementation of public policy around the design, build and governance of public space and also understandings of urban citizenship, leading to healthier, more inclusive, public space for all (Jacobs 1965).

The Journey of Becoming Involved in Urban Spaces by Children with Diverse Mobility

Participation is a word frequently espoused in the literature of childhood and urban studies. It has also been made sacrosanct through the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other rights-based policy and programming. Despite this importance, what it means and how it is experienced in the everyday lives of children with diverse abilities is not well understood. This chapter provides insight into the everyday experiences of participation by ten children 9-12 years of age, who have diverse personal mobility from various physical conditions that affect muscle and movement differently, including: Muscular Dystrophy, Cerebral Palsy, and Autoimmune Rheumatic Diseases. The children participants live in the outer suburbs and inner regions of south-east Queensland, Australia. The chapter discusses a new way of understanding and theorising participation as a journey of becoming involved. This knowledge emerged through the children’s body-space-time routines (body ballets) and their descriptions of inhabiting urban space. This chapter also establishes how body-space-context interplays shape the experiences of becoming and being involved in everyday life, as well as the preconceptions of body embed in space which divide and constrain children and families actualisation of full and genuine participation.

On the effect of topology on cellular automata rule spaces

This thesis presents an empirical study of the effects of topology on cellular automata rule spaces. The classical definition of a cellular automaton is restricted to that of a regular lattice, often with periodic boundary conditions. This definition is extended to allow for arbitrary topologies. The dynamics of cellular automata within the triangular tessellation were analysed when transformed to 2-manifolds of topological genus 0, genus 1 and genus 2. Cellular automata dynamics were analysed from a statistical mechanics perspective. The sample sizes required to obtain accurate entropy calculations were determined by an entropy error analysis which observed the error in the computed entropy against increasing sample sizes. Each cellular automata rule space was sampled repeatedly and the selected cellular automata were simulated over many thousands of trials for each topology. This resulted in an entropy distribution for each rule space. The computed entropy distributions are indicative of the cellular automata dynamical class distribution. Through the comparison of these dynamical class distributions using the E-statistic, it was identified that such topological changes cause these distributions to alter. This is a significant result which implies that both global structure and local dynamics play a important role in defining long term behaviour of cellular automata.

Finding country

The Finding Country Exhibition seeks a pluralist contest between the traditions of aboriginal space (Country), and European space (property) in Australia. Aboriginal Country is excluded from the Australian city. The city of Brisbane, located on the aboriginal Country of the Turrbal people, is the common ground of this confrontation. It is the show Australia rejected. Despite the 1992 landmark Mabo case High Court decision, a decision that struck down the doctrine of terra nullius (an empty land belonging to no-one), architecture in Australia continues its 18th century European tradition of drawing on empty paper. The aboriginal position is that this paper is not empty, but is full of what can’t be seen. The aboriginal map of Australia reveals a continent with many Countries and many spaces. The prevailing spectrum of architectural positions, bookended by decorated sheds and metaphysical decks, continues to bring aboriginal Country into decline. If the opposite position is considered it is possible to find something lost. Cities historically enter states of decline, frequently associated with some form of catastrophe. Others end in a whimper. It is not unreasonable to imagine an opportunity for the recovery of Country through decline. The central exhibit is an 8×3m drawing of the city of Brisbane consisting of approximately 50 individual grid submissions emptied by half to find something special. Each grid is an explicit architectural negotiation with decline, whilst carrying an implicit personal challenge to non-aboriginal architects to engage Country. Since 2006, the Finding Country project has endeavoured to assert an aboriginal origin for architecture in Australia. It is led and directed by Kevin O’Brien a descendent of the Kaurareg and Meriam people of north-eastern Australia, and an architect working in Brisbane.

A motor controller using field oriented control and Hall effect rotor position sensors : simulation and implementation

A field oriented control (FOC) algorithm is simulated and implemented for use with a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). Rotor position is sensed using Hall effect switches on the stator because other hardware position sensors attached to the rotor may not be desirable or cost effective for certain applications. This places a limit on the resolution of position sensing – only a few Hall effect switches can be placed. In this simulation, three sensors are used and the position information is obtained at higher resolution by estimating it from the rotor dynamics, as shown in literature previously. This study compares the performance of the method with an incremental encoder using simulations. The FOC algorithm is implemented using Digital Motor Control (DMC) and IQ Texas Instruments libraries from a Simulink toolbox called Embedded Coder, and downloaded into a TI microcontroller (TMS320F28335) known as the Piccolo via Code Composer Studio (CCS).

Straminipilan protists : a study of their taxonomic position, morphology and abiotic stress-mediated gene expression

Thraustochytrids have become of considerable industrial and scientific interest in the past decade due to their health benefits. They have been proven to be the principle source in marine and estuarine fish diets with high percentage of long chain (LC) or polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). Therefore, the oil extracted from fish for human document.forms[0].elements[13].select();consumption is rich in PUFA with high omega-3 fatty acid content. Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) of all of the omega-3 fatty acids, are considered beneficial essential oils for humans with a wide range of health benefits. These include brain and neural development in infants, general wellbeing of adults and drug delivery through precursor molecules. They have become one of the most extensively studied organisms for industrial oil preparations as PUFA extraction from fish becomes less profitable. Many forms of these Thraustochytrid oils are being trialled for human consumption all over the world. In Australia, there has been little research performed on these organisms in the past ten years. A few Australian studies have been conducted in the form of comparative studies related to PUFA production within the related genera, but not focussed on their identification or cellular and genomic characterisation. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to investigate the morphological and genetic characteristics of Australian Thraustochytrids in order to aid in their identification and characterisation, as well as to better understand the effect of environmental conditions in the regulation of PUFA production. It was also noted that there was a knowledge gap in the preservation and total genomic DNA extraction of these organisms for the purposes of scientific research. The cryopreservation of these organisms for studies around the world follows existing generic methods. However, it is well understood that many of these generic methods attract not only high costs for chemicals, but also uses considerable storage space and other resources, all of which can be improved with new or modified approaches. In this context, a simple and inexpensive bead preservation method is described, without compromising the storage shelf life. We also describe, for the first time, the effects of culture age on the successful cryopreservation of Thraustochytrids. It was evident in the literature that DNA and RNA extractions for molecular and genetic studies of Thraustochytrids follow the classical phenol-chloroform extraction methods. It was also observed that modern protocols failed to avoid the use of phenol-chloroform rather than improving preparation and cell disruption. In order to provide a high quantity and quality DNA extraction, a modified protocol has been introduced that employs the use of modern commercial extraction kits and standard laboratory equipment. Thraustochytrids have been shown to be highly conserved in their 18S rDNA gene sequences, which is used as the current standard for identification. It was demonstrated that the 18S rDNA gene sequence limits the recognition of closely related genera or within the genera from each member. Therefore, it was proposed that another profile, such as a randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) based profiling system, be tested for use in the characterisation of Thraustochytrids. The RAPD profiles were shown to provide a unique DNA fingerprint for each isolate and small variations in their genome were able to be detected. This method involved the use of a minimum number of standard arbitrary primers and with an increase in the number of different primers used, a very high discrimination between organisms could be achieved. However, the method was not suitable for taxonomic purposes because the results did not correlate with other taxonomic features such as morphology. Another knowledge gap was found with respect to Australian Thraustochytrid growth characteristics, in that these had not been recorded and published. In order to rectify this, a record of colony and microscopic features of 12 selected isolates was performed. The results of preliminary studies indicated that further microbiological and biochemical studies are needed for full characterisation of these organisms. This information is of great importance to bio-prospecting of new Thraustochytrids from Australian ecosystems and would allow for their accurate identification, and so permit the prediction of their PUFA capability by comparison with related genera/species. It was well recognized that environmental stress plays a role in the PUFA production and is mainly due to the reactive oxygen species as abiotic stress (Chiou et al., 2001; Okuyama et al., 2008; Shabala et al., 2009; Shabala et al., 2001). In this aspect, this study makes the first attempt towards better understanding of this phenomenon by way of the use of real-time PCR for the detection of environmental effects on the regulation of PUFA production. Three main environmental conditions including temperature, pH and oxygen availability were monitored as stress inducers. In summary, this study provides novel approaches for the preservation and handling of Thraustochytrids, their molecular biological features, taxonomy, characterisation and responses to environmental factors with respect to their oil production enzymes. The information produced from this study will prove to be vital for both industrial and scientific investigations in the future.

Characterization of 67 mitochondrial tRNA gene rearrangements in the Hymenoptera suggests that mitochondrial tRNA gene position is selectively neutral

We present entire sequences of two hymenopteran mitochondrial genomes and the major portion of three others. We combined these data with nine previously sequenced hymenopteran mitochondrial genomes. This allowed us to infer and analyze the evolution of the 67 mitochondrial gene rearrangements so far found in this order. All of these involve tRNA genes, whereas four also involve larger (protein-coding or ribosomal RNA) genes. We find that the vast majority of mitochondrial gene rearrangements are independently derived. A maximum of four of these rearrangements represent shared, derived organizations, whereas three are convergently derived. The remaining mitochondrial gene rearrangements represent new mitochondrial genome organizations. These data are consistent with the proposal that there are an enormous number of alternative mitochondrial genome organizations possible and that mitochondrial genome organization is, for the most part, selectively neutral. Nevertheless, some mitochondrial genes appear less mobile than others. Genes close to the noncoding region are generally more mobile but only marginally so. Some mitochondrial genes rearrange in a pattern consistent with the duplication/random loss model, but more mitochondrial genes move in a pattern inconsistent with this model. An increased rate of mitochondrial gene rearrangement is not tightly associated with the evolution of parasitism. Although parasitic lineages tend to have more mitochondrial gene rearrangements than nonparasitic lineages, there are exceptions (e.g., Orussus and Schlettererius). It is likely that only a small proportion of the total number of mitochondrial gene rearrangements that have occurred during the evolution of the Hymenoptera have been sampled in the present study.

Australian boarding school supervisors : a voluntary position?

This paper aims to examine how Australian boarding supervisors (particularly non-teachers) are defined in regards to employment. The practices of Queensland’s School X (real name withheld) are used as an example of the difficult issues involved – although whether this case study is repeated elsewhere in the industry would take further research. The paper illustrates that the employment of boarding supervisors is dealt with at a basic level by a modern award, however its provisions do not represent what occurs in practice. If there is no enterprise bargain which improves upon the award, two possible explanations are put forward to explain the difference between award conditions and practice. The first is that the contract between boarding supervisors may not be one of employment. Relevant case law regarding whether a person is an employee or independent contractor is examined, and when applied to a typical boarding situation, it is concluded that any contract should be one of employment. The second explanation is that there is no legal contract at all between boarding supervisors and a school. Drawing on School X’s example where supervisors were classed as ‘volunteers’, the paper examines what the legal effect of that term might be. It could be seen to be a denial of an intention to create legal relations, a critical element in contract formation. Again, important cases are analysed on the topic of intention, and applied to a boarding context. It is argued that given the objective circumstances of a typical agreement, there is an intention to create legal relations. In particular, a little known Queensland case involving the non-employment status of boarding supervisors, which may be the cause of the confusion, is critically examined to determine its usefulness in answering the issue. Finally, the implications of not classifying boarding supervisors as employees are briefly discussed.

Amino group position dependent orientation of self-assembled monomolecular films of tetraaminophthalocyanatocobalt(II) on Au surfaces

Self-assembled monomolecular films of 1,8,15,22-tetraaminophthalocyanatocobalt(II) (4α-CoIITAPc) and 2,9,16,23-tetraaminophthalocyanatocobalt(II) (4β-CoIITAPc) on Au surfaces were prepared by spontaneous adsorption from solution. These films were characterized by cyclic voltammetry and Raman spectroscopy. Both the surface coverage (Γ) and intensity of the in-plane stretching bands obtained from Raman studies vary for these monomolecular films, indicating different orientations adopted by them on Au surfaces. The 4α-CoIITAPc-modified electrode exhibits an E1/2 of 0.35 V, while the 4β-CoIITAPc-modified electrode exhibits an E1/2 of 0.19 V, corresponding to the CoII/CoIII redox couple in 0.1 M H2SO4. The Γ estimated from the charge associated with the oxidation of Co(II) gives (2.62 ± 0.10) × 10-11 mol cm-2 for 4α-CoIITAPc and (3.43 ± 0.14) × 10-10 mol cm-2 for 4β-CoIITAPc. In Raman spectral studies, the intensity ratio between in-plane phthalocyanine (Pc) stretching and the Au−N stretching was found to be 6.6 for 4β-CoIITAPc, while it was 1.6 for 4α-CoIITAPc. The obtained lower Γ and intensity ratio values suggest that 4α-CoIITAPc adopts nearly a parallel orientation on the Au surface, while the higher Γ and intensity ratio values suggest that 4β-CoIITAPc adopts a perpendicular orientation. The electrochemical reduction of dioxygen was carried out using these differently oriented Pc's in phosphate buffer solution (pH 7.2). Both the Pc's catalyze the reduction of dioxygen; however, the 4α-CoIITAPc-modified electrode greatly reduces the dioxygen reduction overpotential compared to 4β-CoIITAPc-modified and bare Au electrodes.

Dynamic digital posters : making the most of collaborative learning spaces

Academic and professional staff at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have been faced with the challenge of how to create engaging student experiences in collaborative learning spaces. In 2013 a new Bachelor of Science course was implemented focusing on inquiry-based, collaborative and active learning. Student groups in two of the first year units carried out a poster assessment task. This paper provides a preliminary evaluation of the assessment approach used, whereby students created dynamic digital posters to capitalise on the affordances of the learning space.

Designing for collaborative learning spaces : an academic staff development pilot program

To prepare for the delivery of new Bachelor of Science units in collaborative learning spaces, academic and professional staff at Queensland University of Technology piloted an academic development program over the period of a semester. The program was informed by Rogers’ theory of innovation and diffusion (2003) and structured according to Wilson’s framework for faculty development (2007). Through a series of workshops and group mentoring activities, the program modelled inquiry-based learning in a collaborative learning space, and the participants designed and practiced the delivery of teaching activities. This paper provides a preliminary evaluation of the effectiveness of the pilot based on survey responses from participants, notes from the development team who coordinated the program and audience feedback from the final showcase session. The design and structure of the program is discussed as well as possible future directions.

Assembly and disassembly of temporary public spaces : establishing the theoretical needs

Contemporary cities no longer offer the same types of permanent environments that we planned for in the latter part of the twentieth century. Our public spaces are increasingly temporary, transient, and ephemeral. The theories, principles and tactics with which we designed these spaces in the past are no longer appropriate. We need a new theory for understanding the creation, use, and reuse of temporary public space. Moe than a theory, we need new architectural tactics or strategies that can be reliably employed to create successful temporary public spaces. This paper will present ongoing research that starts that process through critical review and technical analysis of existing and historic temporary public spaces. Through the analysis of a number of public spaces, that were either designed for temporary use or became temporary through changing social conditions, this research identifies the tactics and heuristics used in such projects. These tactics and heuristics are then analysed to extract some broader principles for the design of temporary public space. The theories of time related building layers, a model of environmental sustainability, and the recycling of social meaning, are all explored. The paper will go on to identify a number of key questions that need to be explored and addressed by a theory for such developments: How can we retain social meaning in the fabric of the city and its public spaces while we disassemble it and recycle it into new purposes? What role will preservation have in the rapidly changing future; will exemplary temporary spaces be preserved and thereby become no longer temporary? Does the environmental advantage of recycling materials, components and spaces outweigh the removal or social loss of temporary public space? This research starts to identify the knowledge gaps and proposes a number of strategies for making public space in the age of temporary, recyclable, and repurposing of our urban infrastructure; a way of creating lighter, cheaper, quicker, and temporary interventions.

Characterization of acyl chain position in unsaturated phosphatidylcholines using differential mobility-mass spectrometry

Glycerophospholipids (GPs) that differ in the relative position of the two fatty acyl chains on the glycerol backbone (i.e., sn-positional isomers) can have distinct physicochemical properties. The unambiguous assignment of acyl chain position to an individual GP represents a significant analytical challenge. Here we describe a workflow where phosphatidylcholines (PCs) are subjected to ESI for characterization by a combination of differential mobility spectrometry and MS (DMS-MS). When infused as a mixture, ions formed from silver adduction of each phospholipid isomer {e.g., [PC (16:0/18:1) + Ag]+ and [PC (18:1/16:0) + Ag]+} are transmitted through the DMS device at discrete compensation voltages. Varying their relative amounts allows facile and unambiguous assignment of the sn-positions of the fatty acyl chains for each isomer. Integration of the well-resolved ion populations provides a rapid method (< 3 min) for relative quantification of these lipid isomers. The DMS-MS results show excellent agreement with established, but time-consuming, enzymatic approaches and also provide superior accuracy to methods that rely on MS alone. The advantages of this DMS-MS method in identification and quantification of GP isomer populations is demonstrated by direct analysis of complex biological extracts without any prior fractionation.