Developing and evaluating authentic integration between research and coursework in professional doctorate programs

Integration has always been a prominent issue debated in the burgeoning literature on professional doctorate programs. This focus on integration, however, has largely involved the integration between theoretical and practical understandings of various professions. Exploring the integration between research and coursework components of professional doctorate programs has received less attention. This article explores the character of the integration between coursework and research in several professional doctorate programs at a number of Australian research-intensive universities and universities of technology. Using a content analysis methodology, this research charted the various models for sequencing research and coursework and established whether integration was an explicit or implicit goal of the espoused curriculum. It also sought to explore whether there were differences in the levels of integration in professional doctorate programs across different types of universities or patterns of variation across disciplines.

Choosing to have children or choosing to be childfree: Australian students' attitudes towards the decisions of heterosexual and lesbian women

Research has demonstrated that voluntarily childless heterosexual women, and lesbian women choosing to become mothers, are negatively stereotyped. However, there is little recent Australian research, and attitudes may have changed in line with changing family formation patterns. This study assessed young Australians' attitudes towards either a lesbian or a heterosexual woman who was planning, or not planning, to have children. One hundred and nineteen first year psychology students, and members of the general public, participated. The majority of participants were under 20, female, European Australian and single. Participants read a brief description of a woman who was variously described as having a male or a female partner, and as planning or not planning to have children. As expected, participants rated the heterosexual woman more favourably than the lesbian, and the woman wanting children more positively than the woman not wanting children. However, there was a trend for the lesbian woman planning to have children to be rated as happier, more mature and more individualistic than others. The legal and social implications associated with wanting to be a lesbian mother in Australia make motherhood a more difficult process for lesbian women than it does for heterosexual women, and may explain why lesbian women who have decided to take this difficult path are seen as happier and more mature, than women making more conventional life choices. While the predominantly young, female student sample limits the generality of the findings, they suggest that social attitudes towards female sexual orientation and women's childbirth decisions are changing.

Psychiatric genetics in Australia

Australian research in psychiatric genetics covers molecular genetic studies of depression, anxiety, alcohol dependence, Alzheimer's disease, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. For each disorder, a variety of clinical cohorts have been recruited including affected sib pair families, trios, case/controls, and twins from a large population-based twin registry. These studies are taking place both independently and in collaboration with international groups. Microarray studies now complement DNA investigations, while animal models are in development An Australian government genome facility provides a high throughput genotyping and mutation detection service to the Australian scientific community, enhancing the contribution of Australian psychiatric genetics groups to gene discovery. (C) 2003 Lippincott Williams Wilkins.

Benevolence and gift giving in backyard blitz

The prevalence of gift-giving in Australian home makeover programs, and the way that it functions in their narrative, driving the makeover and grounding it in a meaningful social and national context is discussed. Australian Nine Network's Backyard Blitz is taken as a case study to explore its narrative and symbolic function of gift-giving and the mythologizing of benevolence as a desirable nation trait.

Marriage breakdown in Australia - The social correlates of separation and divorce

Marriage breakdown through separation and divorce is a pervasive feature of Australian society. But little research investigates the social factors associated with marital breakdown in Australia. This study builds on and extends Australian research by using survival analysis models to examine patterns of association among temporal, life-course, attitudinal and economic factors associated with marital breakdown. Using data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, we find marital breakdown in Australia is socially patterned in similar ways to other Western countries. But our findings point to several directions for future research into marriage breakdown in Australia, and we identify certain unique features of Australian marriage breakdown that warrant a more detailed investigation, such as the relationship between ethnic origin and the risk of marital breakdown.

Galaxy groups : Proceedings from a Swinburne University workshop

We present the proceedings from a two-day workshop held at Swinburne University on 2005 May 24-25. The workshop participants highlighted current Australian research on both theoretical and observational aspects of galaxy groups. These proceedings include short one-page summaries of a number of the talks presented at the workshop. The talks presented ranged from reconciling N-body simulations with observations, to the Hi content of galaxies in groups and the existence of 'dark galaxies'. The formation and existence of ultra-compact dwarfs in groups, and a new supergroup in Eridanus were also discussed.

Being fit and looking healthy: Young women's and men's constructions of health and fitness

We drew on Foucault's notion of 'practices of the self' to examine how young people take up, negotiate, and resist the imperatives of a public health discourse concerned with the relationships between health, fitness, and the body. We did this through a discussion of the ways young women and men talk about their own and others' bodies, in the context of a number of in-depth interviews conducted for the Life Activity Project, a study of the place and meaning of physical activity in young people's lives, funded by an Australian Research Council Grant. We found that the young women and men in the study engaged the health/fitness discourse very differently: for the young men, health conflated with fitness as an embodied capacity to do physical work; and for the young women, health was a much more difficult and complex project associated with managing and monitoring practices associated with eating and exercise to maintain an 'appropriate' body shape.

The next generation messaging technology: Makes web services effective

The vision presented in this paper and its technical content are a result of close collaboration between several researchers from the University of Queensland, Australia and the SAP Corporate Research Center, Brisbane, Australia. In particular; Dr Wasim Sadiq (SAP), Dr Shazia Sadiq (UQ), and Dr Karsten Schultz (SAP) are the prime contributors to the ideas presented. Also, PhD students Mr Dat Ma Cao and Ms Belinda Carter are involved in the research program. Additionally, the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Scheme and Australian Research Council Linkage Project Scheme support some aspects of research work towards the HMT solution.

Silica membrane reactors for hydrogen production from water gas shift

This paper presents an analysis of membrane reactor (MR) operation and design for enhanced hydrogen production from the water gas shift (WGS) reaction. It has been established that membrane reactors can enhance an equilibrium limited reaction through product separation. However, the detailed effects of reactor setup, membrane configuration and catalyst volume have yet to be properly analysed for this reaction. This paper investigates new ideas for membrane reactors such as the development of new catalytic films, for improved interaction between the reaction and separation zones. Current membrane reactors utilise a packed bed of catalyst within the membrane tube, utilising a large volume of catalyst to drive reaction. This is still inefficient and provides only limited benefits over conventional WGS reactors. New reactor configurations look to optimise the interactive effects between reaction and separation to provide improved operation. In this paper, thin film catalysts were produced using dip coating and spray coating techniques. This technique produced catalyst coatings with good thickness, though the abrasion strength of the dip coated catalyst was quite low. The catalyst was tested in a packed bed reactor for temperature activity at low temperatures and catalyst activity at varying levels of excess water