Self-regulation support through music

A critical dimension of early learning competence in the year prior to school is self-regulation. Self-regulation enables children to manage their emotions and direct their attention, thinking, and actions to meet adaptive goals. These skills enhance young children's readiness to learn.

Cosmopatriatism in Indonesian pop music imagings

In this article, cosmopatriotism is seen to describe an effect of transnational capitalism’s need to “settle down” in particular localities. The self-imaging of female singer Krisdayanti and punk band Superman is Dead serve as agentive forces in the working out of novel, post-New Order modernities. The body, in particular, is an important site to inscribe a sense of authenticity and social mobility, as well as to work out a sense of post-Suharto Indonesian-ness.

Book Review: "Below the Line: Producers and Production Studies in the New Television Economy by Vicki Mayer", Duke University Press, 2012

Vicki Mayer’s book is unusual in that, despite its title, it is not about television producers at all, or at least not in the sense that scholars and the television industry itself have traditionally understood the role. Rather than referring to those in creative, managerial or financial control, or those with substantial intellectual input into a program, Mayer uses the term in a deliberately broad sense to mean, essentially, anyone ‘whose labor, however small, contributes to [television] production’ (179).

Experimental and statistical investigation of Australian native plants for second-generation biodiesel production

This work explores the potential of Australian native plants as a source of second-generation biodiesel for internal combustion engines application. Biodiesels were evaluated from a number of non-edible oil seeds which are grow naturally in Queensland, Australia. The quality of the produced biodiesels has been investigated by several experimental and numerical methods. The research methodology and numerical model developed in this study can be used for a broad range of biodiesel feedstocks and for the future development of renewable native biodiesel in Australia.

Applying digital product memories in industrial production

Industrial production and supply chains face increased demands for mass customization and tightening regulations on the traceability of goods, leading to higher requirements concerning flexibility, adaptability, and transparency of processes. Technologies for the ’Internet of Things' such as smart products and semantic representations pave the way for future factories and supply chains to fulfill these challenging market demands. In this chapter a backend-independent approach for information exchange in open-loop production processes based on Digital Product Memories DPMs is presented. By storing order-related data directly on the item, relevant lifecycle information is attached to the product itself. In this way, information handover between several stages of the value chain with focus on the manufacturing phase of a product has been realized. In order to report best practices regarding the application of DPM in the domain of industrial production, system prototype implementations focusing on the use case of producing and handling a smart drug case are illustrated.

Young people's uses of music for well-being

The period between 15 and 25 years is characterised by much personal change and is the peak age of onset of mental health problems. This prompts an interest in everyday strategies that young people might use to support their well-being. Music use is the preferred leisure activity among young people yet little is known about how music is linked to well-being in this population. This study aimed to develop and test a model of the relationships between young people’s use of music and their well-being, drawing on theories from the music psychology and clinical psychology fields. A qualitative analysis of transcripts from focus groups with 11 participants aged 15–25 years revealed four ways in which music listening links with well-being: relationship building, modifying emotions, modifying cognitions and emotional immersion. These linking variables were operationalised using questionnaire scores and tested on a new sample of 107 young people. Results of a multiple mediation analysis revealed that music listening was significantly related to all four linking variables, but not directly related to well-being as measured by the Mental Health Continuum. Nevertheless, the four linking variables indirectly mediated the effect of music listening on social wellbeing. The findings are consistent with earlier research on the role of music in emotion regulation and social connection although there are clearly other factors involved in determining young peoples’ well-being. These findings will help inform music-based interventions for young people.

Music in the prevention and treatment of substance misuse

Issues Research shows that young people at risk of developing a substance use disorder often use substances to deal with problems, particularly relationship problems and emotional problems. Music listening is a widely available and engaging activity that may help young people address these problem areas. This study was part of a larger project to develop a phone app for young people in which they use music for emotional wellbeing. Approach Three focus groups with young people aged 15–25 years were conducted and the transcripts were analysed by three of the authors using a thematic analysis procedure (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Key Findings: Young people used music in four main ways to achieve wellbeing: relationship building through sharing music; cre- ating an ambience using music; using music to experience an emotion more fully; and using music to modify an emotion. Several mecha- nisms by which music achieved these functions were identified. Par- ticipants also articulated specific times when they would not use music and why. Discussion and Conclusions The information from these focus groups provides many avenues for the development of the app and for understanding how music listening helps young people to achieve wellbeing. These ideas can readily be used with young people at risk of developing substance use problems as it gives them an engaging and low cost alternative for managing their emotions and building relationships.

International regulatory framework for food production and diversity

Stakeholders commonly agree that food systems need to be urgently reformed. Yet, how food systems should be reformed is extremely contested. Public international law and regulations are uniquely placed to influence and guide law, policy, programmes and action at regional, national and local levels. Although plenty of international legal instruments intersect with food-related issues, the international regulation of food systems is fragmented, understudied and contested. In order to address these issues, this paper maps and analyses the public international regulatory aspects of food production with a view to providing recommendations for reform. Accordingly, this paper brings together a variety of binding and non-binding international regulatory instruments that to varying degrees and from a range of angles deals with the first activity in the food system: food production. The following paper traces the regulatory tools from natural resources, to the farmers and farm workers that apply skill and experience, and finally to the different dimension of world trade in food. The various regulatory instruments identified, and their collective whole, will be analysed against a rights-based approach to food security.

Community engagement or community conversation?: Boomtown, a large-scale regional, outdoor community theatrical event

On the 18th of July 2013, three hundred local members of Gladstone, Queensland erupted into song and dance performing the fraught history of their community harbourside through tug boat ballets, taiko drumming, German bell ringing and BMX bike riding. Over 17,500 people attended the four performances of Boomtown, a Queensland Music Festival event. This was the largest regional, outdoor community-engaged musical performance staged in Australia. The narrative moved beyond the dominant, pejorative view of Gladstone as an industrial town to include the community members’ sense of purpose and aspirations. It was a celebratory, contentious and ambitious project that sought to disrupt the traditional conventions of performance-making through working in artistically democratic ways. This article explores the potential for Australian Community Engaged Arts (CEA) projects such as Boomtown to democratically engage community members and co-create culturally meaningful work within a community. Research into CEA projects rarely consider how the often delicate conversations between practitioners and the community work. The complex processes of finding and co-writing the narrative, casting, and rehearsing Boomtown are discussed with reference to artistic director/dramaturge Sean Mee’s innovative approaches. Boomtown began with and concluded with community conversations. Skilful negotiation ensured congruence between the townspeople’s stories and the “community story” presented on stage, abrogating potential problems of narrative ownership. To supplement the research, twenty-one personal interviews were undertaken with Gladstone community members invested in the production before, during and after the project: performers, audience members and local professionals. The stories shared and emphasised in the theatricalised story were based on propitious, meaningful, local stories from lived experiences rather than preconceived, trivial or tokenistic matters, and were underpinned by a consensus formed on what was in the best interests of the majority of community members. Boomtown exposed hidden issues in the community and gave voice to thoughts, feelings and concerns which triggered not just engagement, but honest conversation within the community.

Socially critical pedagogy and the 'production of skilled performers': Further considerations of teaching and learning in physical education

The growing call for physical educators to move beyond the bounds of performance has been a powerful discourse. However, it is a discourse that has tended to be heavy on theory but light on practical application. This paper discusses recent work in the area of skill acquisition and what this might mean for pedagogical practices in physical education. The acquisition of motor skill has traditionally been a core objective for physical educators, and there has been a perception that child-centred pedagogies have failed in the achievement of this traditional yardstick. However, drawing from the work of Rovegno and Kirk (1995) and Langley (1995; 1997), and making links with current work in the motor learning area, it is possible to show that skill acquisition is not necessarily compromised by child-centred pedagogy. Indeed, working beyond Mosston's discovery threshold and using models such as Games for Understanding, can provide deeper skill-learning experiences as well as being socially just.

A network DEA quantity and quality-orientated production model: An application to Australian university research services

The motivation for this analysis is the recently developed Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) program developed to assess the quality of research in Australia. The objective is to develop an appropriate empirical model that better represents the underlying production of higher education research. In general, past studies on university research performance have used standard DEA models with some quantifiable research outputs. However, these suffer from the twin maladies of an inappropriate production specification and a lack of consideration of the quality of output. By including the qualitative attributes of peer-reviewed journals, we develop a procedure that captures both quality and quantity, and apply it using a network DEA model. Our main finding is that standard DEA models tend to overstate the research efficiency of most Australian universities.

A Deweyan experience economy for higher education : The case of the Australian Indie 100 Music Event

In this essay we argue that a Deweyan experience economy will best support the higher education (HE) sector in the future, and we draw a contrast between that economy and the sector’s current focus on informational concerns, as expressed by the recent rush to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and other mass online informational offerings. We base our argument on current developments in music education and music technology that we see as being preemptive of wider trends. We use examples from a three-year study of online and offline music pedagogies and outline a four-year experiment in developing a pedagogical experience economy to illustrate a theoretical position informed by John Dewey’s theory of experience,Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and capital, and recent work in economic geography on epistemic communities. We argue further that the future of the HE sector is local rather than global, experiential rather than informational, and that therefore a continued informational approach to the future of HE risks undermining the sector.

A perfusion fMRI investigation of thematic and categorical context effects in the spoken production of object names

The context in which objects are presented influences the speed at which they are named. We employed the blocked cyclic naming paradigm and perfusion functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the mechanisms responsible for interference effects reported for thematicallyand categorically related compared to unrelated contexts. Naming objects in categorically homogeneous contexts induced a significant interference effect that accumulated from the second cycle onwards. This interference effect was associated with significant perfusion signal decreases in left middle and posterior lateral temporal cortex and the hippocampus. By contrast, thematically homogeneous contexts facilitated naming latencies significantly in the first cycle and did not differ from heterogeneous contexts thereafter, nor were they associated with any perfusion signal changes compared to heterogeneous contexts. These results are interpreted as being consistent with an account in which the interference effect both originates and has its locus at the lexical level, with an incremental learning mechanism adapting the activation levels of target lexical representations following access. We discuss the implications of these findings for accounts that assume thematic relations can be active lexical competitors or assume mandatory involvement of top-down control mechanisms in interference effects during naming.

Top-down influences on lexical selection during spoken word production: A 4T fMRI investigation of refractory effects in picture naming

Spoken word production is assumed to involve stages of processing in which activation spreads through layers of units comprising lexical-conceptual knowledge and their corresponding phonological word forms. Using high-field (4T) functional magnetic resonance imagine (fMRI), we assessed whether the relationship between these stages is strictly serial or involves cascaded-interactive processing, and whether central (decision/control) processing mechanisms are involved in lexical selection. Participants performed the competitor priming paradigm in which distractor words, named from a definition and semantically related to a subsequently presented target picture, slow picture-naming latency compared to that with unrelated words. The paradigm intersperses two trials between the definition and the picture to be named, temporally separating activation in the word perception and production networks. Priming semantic competitors of target picture names significantly increased activation in the left posterior temporal cortex, and to a lesser extent the left middle temporal cortex, consistent with the predictions of cascaded-interactive models of lexical access. In addition, extensive activation was detected in the anterior cingulate and pars orbitalis of the inferior frontal gyrus. The findings indicate that lexical selection during competitor priming is biased by top-down mechanisms to reverse associations between primed distractor words and target pictures to select words that meet the current goal of speech.