Energy productivity and decarbonization of the global economy: Factor five resource productivity

In the 21st Century much of the world will experience untold wealth and prosperity that could not even be conceived only some three centuries before. However as with most, if not all, of the human civilisations, increases in prosperity have accumulated significant environmental impacts that threaten to result in environmentally induced economic decline. A key part of the world’s response to this challenge is to rapidly decarbonise economies around the world, with options to achieve 60-80 per cent improvements (i.e. in the order of Factor 5) in energy and water productivity now available and proven in every sector. Drawing upon the 2009 publication “Factor 5”, in this paper we discuss how to realise such large-scale improvements, involving complexity beyond technical and process innovation. We begin by considering the concept of greenhouse gas stabilisation trajectories that include reducing current greenhouse gas emissions to achieve a ‘peaking’ of global emissions, and subsequent ‘tailing’ of emissions to the desired endpoint in ‘decarbonising’ the economy. Temporal priorities given to peaking and tailing have significant implications for the mix of decarbonising solutions and the need for government and market assistance in causing them to be implemented, requiring careful consideration upfront. Within this context we refer to a number of examples of Factor 5 style opportunities for energy productivity and decarbonisation, and then discuss the need for critical economic contributions to take such success from examples to central mechanisms in decarbonizing the global economy.

Numerical optimization of soft-mold aided co-curing process of advanced grid-stiffened composite structures

The co-curing process for advanced grid-stiffened (AGS) composite structure is a promising manufacturing process, which could reduce the manufacturing cost, augment the advantages and improve the performance of AGS composite structure. An improved method named soft-mold aided co-curing process which replaces the expansion molds by a whole rubber mold is adopted in this paper. This co-curing process is capable to co-cure a typical AGS composite structure with the manufacturer’s recommended cure cycle (MRCC). Numerical models are developed to evaluate the variation of temperature and the degree of cure in AGS composite structure during the soft-mold aided co-curing process. The simulation results were validated by experimental results obtained from embedded temperature sensors. Based on the validated modeling framework, the cycle of cure can be optimized by reducing more than half the time of MRCC while obtaining a reliable degree of cure. The shape and size effects of AGS composite structure on the distribution of temperature and degree of cure are also investigated to provide insights for the optimization of soft-mold aided co-curing process.

Incentives for global public health: Patent law and access to essential medicines

This portrait of the global debate over patent law and access to essential medicines focuses on public health concerns about HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, the SARS virus, influenza, and diseases of poverty. The essays explore the diplomatic negotiations and disputes in key international fora, such as the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Drawing upon international trade law, innovation policy, intellectual property law, health law, human rights and philosophy, the authors seek to canvass policy solutions which encourage and reward worthwhile pharmaceutical innovation while ensuring affordable access to advanced medicines. A number of creative policy options are critically assessed, including the development of a Health Impact Fund, prizes for medical innovation, the use of patent pools, open-source drug development and forms of 'creative capitalism'.

Priority threat management of invasive animals to protect biodiversity under climate change

Climate change is a major threat to global biodiversity, and its impacts can act synergistically to heighten the severity of other threats. Most research on projecting species range shifts under climate change has not been translated to informing priority management strategies on the ground. We develop a prioritization framework to assess strategies for managing threats to biodiversity under climate change and apply it to the management of invasive animal species across one-sixth of the Australian continent, the Lake Eyre Basin. We collected information from key stakeholders and experts on the impacts of invasive animals on 148 of the region's most threatened species and 11 potential strategies. Assisted by models of current distributions of threatened species and their projected distributions, experts estimated the cost, feasibility, and potential benefits of each strategy for improving the persistence of threatened species with and without climate change. We discover that the relative cost-effectiveness of invasive animal control strategies is robust to climate change, with the management of feral pigs being the highest priority for conserving threatened species overall. Complementary sets of strategies to protect as many threatened species as possible under limited budgets change when climate change is considered, with additional strategies required to avoid impending extinctions from the region. Overall, we find that the ranking of strategies by cost-effectiveness was relatively unaffected by including climate change into decision-making, even though the benefits of the strategies were lower. Future climate conditions and impacts on range shifts become most important to consider when designing comprehensive management plans for the control of invasive animals under limited budgets to maximize the number of threatened species that can be protected.

Optimization of organic solar cells with thin film Au as anode

Optical transmittance and conductivity for thin metallic films, such as Au, are two inversely related and extremely important parameters for its application in organic photovoltaics as the front electrode. We report our findings on how these parameters have been optimized to attain maximum possible efficiencies by fabricating organic solar cells with thin Au film anodes of differing optical transmittances and consequently due to scaling at the nanolevel, varying electrical conductivities. There was an extraordinary improvement in the overall solar cell efficiency (to the order of 49%) when the Au thin film transmittance was increased from 38% to 54%. Surface morphologies of these thin films also have an effect on the critical parameters including, Voc, Jsc and FF.

Global rules on conflict-of-laws matters in international insolvency law cases: An Australian perspective

The 2012 Report “Transnational Insolvency: Global Principles for Co-operation in International Insolvency Cases” – commissioned by The American Law Institute in conjunction with The International Insolvency Institute – annexed 23 “Global Rules on Conflict-of-Laws Matters in International Insolvency Cases”. These proposed “Global Rules” are intended to “serve as legislative recommendations” to (inter alia) promote uniformity and greater certainty in the unpredictable area of conflict of laws. This article provides a brief commentary upon the 23 proposed Global Rules from an Australian perspective (comparing the effect and intent of each rule with the current Australian conflict-of-laws position) and offers some conclusions as to the merits of the “Global Rules” initiative.

Think global, act local: The role for councils in climate change

State and local governments are going it alone on climate change. Australian councils are starting to follow, write ANU researcher Dr Matthew Rimmer and climate campaigner Charlotte Wood.

Goodbye Brigadoon: Place, Production, and Identity in Global Glasgow

Goodbye Brigadoon examines the shifting role media production plays in the economic and cultural strategies of global cities in small market nations, specifically Glasgow, Scotland. In particular, this project focuses on the formation of a digital media village along the banks of the River Clyde to argue the site constitutes a logical component to Glasgow’s ongoing transformation into a cosmopolitan center. Yet, as the regional government’s economic strategies and policy directives work to transform the abandoned waterfront into a center of cultural activity, this project also underscores the contradictory cultural dynamics to emerge from media production’s new role in the post-industrial city. At its core, the media hub reveals a regional government more interested in the technology used to deliver “national” stories than the manner of the stories themselves or the cultural practices responsible for creating them. Indeed, Goodbye Brigadoon is most interested in how media professionals based at the emergent cluster negotiate a sense of cultural identity and creative license against the institutional constraints, policy matters, and commercial logic they also must navigate in their workaday rituals. Ultimately, the conclusions offered in this project argue for a more complicated conception of the global-local location where these professionals work. Glasgow’s digital media village, in other words, is much more than an innocuous site of competitive advantage, urban regeneration, and job growth. It is best understood as a site of intense social struggle and unequal power relations where local mediamakers often find the site’s impetus for multiplatform media production an institutionally enforced false promise at odds with the realities of creative labor in the city.

Volatility transmission in global financial markets

As financial markets have become increasingly integrated internationally, the topic of volatility transmission across these markets has become more important. This thesis investigates how the volatility patterns of the world's main financial centres differ across foreign exchange, equity, and bond markets.

Finding the leverage point in the sustainability crisis: Global, national and regional Australian responses

From an economic perspective, the sustainability crisis is ultimately characterized by a worsening relationship between the resources required to support the global population and the ability of the earth to supply them. Despite the ever-increasing threat of a calamity, modern society appears unable to alter its course. The very systems which underpin global human endeavor seem to actively prevent meaningful change and the one irrepressible goal to which all societies seem to strive is the very thing that makes such endeavor ultimately life threatening: that of global growth. Using the Australian experience as an exemplar, this paper explores how the concept of growth infiltrates societal reactions to the crisis at various scales – global, national and regional. Analysis includes historic studies, a critique of current misconceptions around population demographics, comparative evaluation of various interventions in the Australian context and considerations around potential ways to address the crisis.

Investigating sea level rise due to global warming in the teaching laboratory using Archimedes’ principle

A teaching laboratory experiment is described that uses Archimedes’ principle to precisely investigate the effect of global warming on the oceans. A large component of sea level rise is due to the increase in the volume of water due to the decrease in water density with increasing temperature. Water close to 0 °C is placed in a beaker and a glass marble hung from an electronic balance immersed in the water. As the water warms, the weight of the marble increases as the water is less buoyant due to the decrease in density. In the experiment performed in this paper a balance with a precision of 0.1 mg was used with a marble 40.0 cm3 and mass of 99.3 g, yielding water density measurements with an average error of -0.008 ± 0.011%.

Global variation in the effects of ambient temperature on mortality: A systematic evaluation

Background: Studies have examined the effects of temperature on mortality in a single city, country, or region. However, less evidence is available on the variation in the associations between temperature and mortality in multiple countries, analyzed simultaneously. Methods: We obtained daily data on temperature and mortality in 306 communities from 12 countries/regions (Australia, Brazil, Thailand, China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, United States, and Canada). Two-stage analyses were used to assess the nonlinear and delayed relation between temperature and mortality. In the first stage, a Poisson regression allowing overdispersion with distributed lag nonlinear model was used to estimate the community-specific temperature-mortality relation. In the second stage, a multivariate meta-analysis was used to pool the nonlinear and delayed effects of ambient temperature at the national level, in each country. Results: The temperatures associated with the lowest mortality were around the 75th percentile of temperature in all the countries/regions, ranging from 66th (Taiwan) to 80th (UK) percentiles. The estimated effects of cold and hot temperatures on mortality varied by community and country. Meta-analysis results show that both cold and hot temperatures increased the risk of mortality in all the countries/regions. Cold effects were delayed and lasted for many days, whereas heat effects appeared quickly and did not last long. Conclusions: People have some ability to adapt to their local climate type, but both cold and hot temperatures are still associated with increased risk of mortality. Public health strategies to alleviate the impact of ambient temperatures are important, in particular in the context of climate change.

Palissya: A global review and reassessment of Eastern Gondwanan material

The conifer genus Palissya is reviewed giving special attention to assessing the reliability of Gondwanan material referred to this genus. The collection localities of Australasian specimens are mapped on palaeogeographic reconstructions of Eastern Gondwana at relevant times between 179 Ma and 119 Ma. Australasian and other Gondwanan material previously referred to Palissya is considered to differ substantially from the generic diagnosis. Specimens from the Toarcian of Australasia are shown to be allied to Knezourocarpon; this genus is only known from the Toarcian of eastern Australia. Middle Jurassic–Lower Cretaceous Australasian specimens previously referred to Palissya are likely allied to the Knezourocarponaceae fam. nov. The higher taxonomic affinity of this family is unknown but broadly, its structure is suggestive of ginkgoalean or pteridospermous affiliation. Southern hemisphere specimens were probably catkin-like and megascopically very different from the northern hemisphere Palissya and the two groups are unlikely to be closely related. Consequently, genuine Palissya cones and foliage appear to be restricted to the Rhaetian–Lower Jurassic of the northern hemisphere.

Collaborative learning from distributed places and spaces: Exploring the use of virtual collaborative tools for local and global student teamwork projects

Educating responsive graduates. Graduate competencies include reliability, communication skills and ability to work in teams. Students using Collaborative technologies adapt to a new working environment, working in teams and using collaborative technologies for learning. Collaborative Technologies were used not simply for delivery of learning but innovatively to supplement and enrich research-based learning, providing a space for active engagement and interaction with resources and team. This promotes the development of responsive ‘intellectual producers’, able to effectively communicate, collaborate and negotiate in complex work environments. Exploiting technologies. Students use ‘new’ technologies to work collaboratively, allowing them to experience the reality of distributed workplaces incorporating both flexibility and ‘real’ time responsiveness. Students are responsible and accountable for individual and group work contributions in a highly transparent and readily accessible workspace. This experience provides a model of an effective learning tool. Navigating uncertainty and complexity. Collaborative technologies allows students to develop critical thinking and reflective skills as they develop a group product. In this forum students build resilience by taking ownership and managing group work, and navigating the uncertainties and complexities of group dynamics as they constructively and professionally engage in team dialogue and learn to focus on the goal of the team task.