Marcel Cousins : every little thing

This review considers the artwork of Melbourne artist Marcel Cousins showed at Ryan Renshaw Gallery, Brisbane in April 2012. The review traces Cousins' doctoral study in Tokyo. It then assesses his paintings and installations that explore the transformation of generic objects in exhibition contexts, as well as the aesthetic dimensions of such processes.

Abstimmen oder Schwimmen? Plebiszitarer Sport und synchronisierte Wahlen. [Sink or swim: Plebiscitary sport and synchronised voting.][In German]

This chapter starts from the observation that new sporting attributes are growing up unnoticed in popular entertainment and ‘reality’ TV. They celebrate not individual heroics but spectator-oriented teamwork which must look effortless and stylish. Instead of objective measurements – ‘faster, higher, stronger’ – winners are picked by voting and consumer choice. Sport and media are converging and integrating. As they do so, what counts as sport, why it is valued, and what it symbolises for contemporary culture, are all changing. I take these changes to be emblematic of something emergent in the culture at large as the modernist paradigm shifts towards a new consumerist paradigm. This is symbolised in new sports, of which the paradigm example is synchronised swimming. The chapter traces these changes via the career and legacy of the Australian swimming and fashion pioneer Annette Kellerman.

Investigation of inclusions trapped inside Libyan Desert glass by Raman microscopy

Several specimens of Libyan Desert Glass (LDG), an enigmatic natural glass from Egypt, were subjected to investigation by micro-Raman spectroscopy. The spectra of inclusions inside the LDG samples were successfully measured through the layers of glass and the mineral species were identified on this basis. The presence of cristobalite as typical for high-temperature melt products was confirmed, together with co-existing quartz. TiO2 was determined in two polymorphic species, rutile and anatase. Micro-Raman spectroscopy proved also the presence of minerals unusual for high-temperature glasses such as anhydrite and aragonite.

Digital scenography for "Markus the Sadist" : UK National Tour

How does a digitally mediated environment work towards the ongoing support of the Hip Hop landscape present in the work of Jonzi D productions UK National Tour of "Markus the Sadist"

Independent Brisbane: Four Plays [BOOK REVIEW]

Independent Brisbane: Four Plays is, as the title suggests, a collection of plays by independent theatre-makers and theatre-making collectives in Brisbane in the 2002– 07 period, including Marcel Dorney’s Harriers (6–51), the nest’s The Knowing of Mary Poppins (52–102), Linda Hassall’s Post Office Rose (103–71) and Maxine Mellor’s Magda’s Fascination with Wax Cats (172–216). According to the contextualising information on the book’s back cover, these plays are ‘distinctive’ in content, story and style, ‘[y]et carry with them what is characteristic of the city they come from – a preoccupation with landscape, creation in tightly knit collaborative teams and brave, often unexpected, theatrical choices’.

A variant of the KLK4 gene is expressed as a cis sense-antisense chimeric transcript in prostate cancer cells

In humans, more than 30,000 chimeric transcripts originating from 23,686 genes have been identified. The mechanisms and association of chimeric transcripts arising from chromosomal rearrangements with cancer are well established, but much remains unknown regarding the biogenesis and importance of other chimeric transcripts that arise from nongenomic alterations. Recently, a SLC45A3–ELK4 chimera has been shown to be androgen-regulated, and is overexpressed in metastatic or high-grade prostate tumors relative to local prostate cancers. Here, we characterize the expression of a KLK4 cis sense–antisense chimeric transcript, and show other examples in prostate cancer. Using non-protein-coding microarray analyses, we initially identified an androgen-regulated antisense transcript within the 3′ untranslated region of the KLK4 gene in LNCaP cells. The KLK4 cis-NAT was validated by strand-specific linker-mediated RT-PCR and Northern blotting. Characterization of the KLK4 cis-NAT by 5′ and 3′ rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) revealed that this transcript forms multiple fusions with the KLK4 sense transcript. Lack of KLK4 antisense promoter activity using reporter assays suggests that these transcripts are unlikely to arise from a trans-splicing mechanism. 5′ RACE and analyses of deep sequencing data from LNCaP cells treated ±androgens revealed six high-confidence sense–antisense chimeras of which three were supported by the cDNA databases. In this study, we have shown complex gene expression at the KLK4 locus that might be a hallmark of cis sense–antisense chimeric transcription.

A method for evaluating lean assembly process at design stage

Lean product design has the potential to reduce the overall product development time and cost and can improve the quality of a product. However, it has been found that no or little work has been carried out to provide an integrated framework of "lean design" and to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of lean practices/principles in product development process. This research proposed an integrated framework for lean design process and developed a dynamic decision making tool based on Methods Time Measurement (MTM) approach for assessing the impact of lean design on the assembly process. The proposed integrated lean framework demonstrates the lean processes to be followed in the product design and assembly process in order to achieve overall leanness. The decision tool consists of a central database, the lean design guidelines, and MTM analysis. Microsoft Access and C# are utilized to develop the user interface to use the MTM analysis as decision making tool. MTM based dynamic tool is capable of estimating the assembly time, costs of parts and labour of various alternatives of a design and hence is able to achieve optimum design. A case study is conducted to test and validate the functionality of the MTM Analysis as well as to verify the lean guidelines proposed for product development.

Face authentication test on the BANCA database

This work details the results of a face authentication test (FAT2004) (http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/banca/icpr2004) held in conjunction with the 17th International Conference on Pattern Recognition. The contest was held on the publicly available BANCA database (http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/banca) according to a defined protocol (E. Bailly-Bailliere et al., June 2003). The competition also had a sequestered part in which institutions had to submit their algorithms for independent testing. 13 different verification algorithms from 10 institutions submitted results. Also, a standard set of face recognition software packages from the Internet (http://www.cs.colostate.edu/evalfacerec) were used to provide a baseline performance measure.

Grotesque gestures or sensuous signs? Rethinking notions of apprenticeship in early childhood education

Education might be conceptualized as a swarm of signs. Deleuze, in Proust and Signs (1964/2000) suggests that “Everything that teaches us something emits signs” (p. 4). Such conceptualizations regard education as fluid, multiple and temporal; a young child can display great skill in decoding some signs but not others. Regarding education as temporal and complex operates at some distance to the sociocultural concepts suggested by Vygotsky (1978) which focus on linear sequences of gaining managed, culturally-loaded knowledge from more experienced others. Despite differing theorizations around apprenticeship, during early years education a child becomes sensitive to signs that collectively prioritize conventionalized knowledge acquisition and communication practices. Drawing for learning and communicating exemplifies apprenticeship as a creative process rather than as sequential or culturally driven, and serves to exemplify Deleuzian concepts around the relationships between time and learning, rather than age or development stage and learning.

Synthesizing and databasing fossil calibrations: divergence dating and beyond

Divergence dating studies, which combine temporal data from the fossil record with branch length data from molecular phylogenetic trees, represent a rapidly expanding approach to understanding the history of life. National Evolutionary Synthesis Center hosted the first Fossil Calibrations Working Group (3–6 March, 2011, Durham, NC, USA), bringing together palaeontologists, molecular evolutionists and bioinformatics experts to present perspectives from disciplines that generate, model and use fossil calibration data. Presentations and discussions focused on channels for interdisciplinary collaboration, best practices for justifying, reporting and using fossil calibrations and roadblocks to synthesis of palaeontological and molecular data. Bioinformatics solutions were proposed, with the primary objective being a new database for vetted fossil calibrations with linkages to existing resources, targeted for a 2012 launch.