Humanoid traffic control robot

A traffic control device in the form of a humanoid character robot, doll or dummy is used to warn driver of danger ahead on the road. The device can be used on roads, streets and in other sites where there are moving vehicles. The robotic device informs drivers of impending danger by moving its arms and sounding an acoustic alarm. In this way the robot can simulate a policeman or road flagging operator. The device may also include speed detection and preferably speed indication means. The robot may make decisions based on the detected speed of a vehicle and the limit for the area in operating the arms and sound warning means. The robot may also be equipped with a camera or video. The robot may also be controlled wirelessly.

Dutch Indonesians in Australia : second-generation identity in the diaspora

Exploring "local" and "transnational" relationships, this research shows that second-generation relationships with the homeland and with other members in the diaspora are less important regarding (diasporic) identity formation than realities of sedentary diasporic life (in Australia) and that "locality" and diaspora are not opposing concepts but theoretically and practically interconnected.

Responses to Australian society and culture by Greek-Australian writers

Focuses on the themes and preoccupations in Greek-Australian literature that reflect the influence of Australia on the traditional sense of identity of Greek migrants. Predominant concerns connected with identity are those of nostalgic references to the homeland, feelings of alienation and discrimination. These themes are related to what is recognised in life and in literature as "xenitia". Second generation writers reveal an acceptance of belonging to two cultures and having dual identities.

Australian national critical infrastructure protection : a case study

Australia has developed sophisticated national security policies and physical security agencies to protect against current and future security threats associated with critical infrastructure protection and cyber warfare protection. This paper will discuss some of the common security risks that face Australia and how their government policies and strategies have been developed and changed over time, for example, the proposed Australian Homeland Security department. This paper will discuss the different steps that Australia has undertaken in relation to developing national policies to deal with critical infrastructure protection.

Protection of Australia in the cyber age

Australia has developed sophisticated national security policies and physical security agencies to protect against current and future security threats associated with critical infrastructure protection and cyber warfare protection. In this paper, the authors examine some common security risks that face Australia and how government policies and strategies have been developed and changed over time, for example, the proposed Australian Homeland Security department. This paper discusses the different steps that Australia has undertaken in relation to developing national policies to deal with critical infrastructure protection.

Wind in the billows

Wind in the Billows is metaphoric of how time and place intersects with life. I wanted to capture how our journey through life can be sometimes as surprising as the way the wind might blow a dress. Being snared on the branch of a tree in Geelong, is how I feel having ended up living in Geelong myself after growing up in New-Zealand and living in many parts of the world. The colonial style dress was made with layers of steel wire mesh and painted with enamel paint to replicate linen. Colonial style encompasses my own identity with Australian and New-Zealand female ancestors, and the heritage aspects of Geelong. These are strong factors in me being able to have a connection to Place away from my homeland.

Race to the White House

Welcome to part four of our Race to the White House podcast series.

Each week we’ll be talking to Australia’s top US experts on the ins and outs of the 2012 US presidential campaign.

This week, Binoy Kampmark and Geoff Robinson discuss Syria, drones, and Mitt Romney’s flagging campaign.

A journey through places: politics of spatial location in the stories of South Asian diaspora in Australia

In this paper, I analyse the post-colonial and post-modern experiences in the light of questions and issues concerning the spatial identities or locations that the diasporans carry. By politics of spatial location, I mean a migrant's positions within power hierarchies created through geographic, historical, political, economic and other socially stratifying factors in the new homeland. This paper is mainly concerned with the theoretical ways in which a shift is accelerated in Australia's literary landscape by the South Asian diasporic writers who produce and cover the dynamics of politics of location in different contexts. It also focuses on South Asian diaspora's widely agreed ‘ability to recreate their cultures in diverse locations’. I conclude that these stories are not just of spaces but also of a promising future for the South Asian diaspora in Australia.

From estrangement to a sense of place …

Maggie MacKellar in her book Core of my Heart, my Country writes 'What is sense of place? Why is relationship with place so fundamental to our identity as individuals and as communities?' MacKellar rightly acknowledges that 'A sense of place is a complex connection between land and self. Place is both inside and outside; it takes us beyond ourselves, yet allows us to make sense of ourselves. Attachments to place are born into us, but they are also formed through movement, through labour, through words.' My mother Maria Radzimirski-Herzog considered herself truly Swiss and thoroughly Australian. Through one migrant's story this paper explores something of the complex intertwining of place, memory and identity. It grapples with the notion of belonging to one's country of birth and one's adopted country via a rich understanding of place. In Maria's case, place becomes inextricably bound with who she became as a person. In the early 1940s, Maria explored Switzerland on bike and on foot during war-time restrictions on cars and she came to know it intimately. She photographed the land and the mountains; she documented her journeys. Spirn writes perceptively that 'Significance does not depend on human perception or imagination alone.' For Maria significance was, to use Spirn's words, 'there to be discovered, inherent and ascribed, shaped by what senses perceive, what instinct and experience read as significant, what minds know'. For Maria, Landscape was not 'mere scenery'. The ability to see, to listen, to be present in place, stood her in good stead in her adopted country, Australia. Maria called place into being for her children: through her lived experiences, her memories, her story telling, through language, traditions and history, Maria shared her Swiss identity with her children. But imperceptibly she also taught them how to understand her new homeland Australia, their birth country. How did Maria become Australian? Was that her creative response to exile from Switzerland? How did she come to feel at home in both countries, to understand both places? How did they seep into her and she into them? Through my own research on place I have discovered that assessing 'sense of place' is not an exact science but a creative analysis of the attributes of a place. The methodology I have adopted to explore the complex interrelationships between place, memory and identity allows recovery and reclamation, rediscovery, juxtaposing the subjective and the objective, the co-presence of different evidence. This paper draws on place research, on personal papers, letters and photographs, and the author's own experiences and memories. Through story and narrative it interweaves autobiography and biography with theoretical scholarship, to illuminate one migrant's journey from estrangement to a sense of place in her adopted country, Australia.

Exploring the conceptual boundaries of diaspora and battlefield tourism: Australians' travel to the Gallipoli battlefield, Turkey, as a case study

Historical tourism resources associated with diasporic communities and battlefields would at face value appear to have little in common. On closer inspection, however, diaspora and battlefield tourism share several elements in common. These commonalities are explored in greater detail, with an eye to investigating battlefield tourism sites indelibly linked to the birth of modern nations, where it is argued that there is a particularly blurred boundary between these two forms of tourism that must be recognized. 

The Gallipoli battlefield, Turkey, provides the contextual anchor for this discussion in suggesting that a key reason Australians travel to this foreign place to is to find out what it means to be an Australian. The prominence of this battlefield in the psyche of Australians is borne out of the involvement of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) in the First World War campaign that commenced at what is now known as Anzac Cove at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915. This campaign was the first united action of the fledging Australian nation bought together through federation in 1901.

Qualitative data collected from Australians visiting the Gallipoli battlefields in Turkey during 2010 is used to explore whether the experiences of those traveling to battlefields strongly associated with nation building legends and stories resemble those of diasporic tourists in seeking to return to their homeland. Emerging from the analysis, the confines of the blurred boundary between diaspora tourism and battlefield tourism is discussed in detail and an associated research agenda is proposed that aims to further clarify the scope of these concepts in relation to the broad spectrum of heritage tourism resources.

Jewish diaspora engagement with Israel

From the outset of Zionism, the Diaspora has had a distinct role to play with developing the homeland, raising funds, mobilizing political activity, and providing immigrants. Today, particularly since 1948, Israel continues to play an unequivocally essential role in Diaspora Jewish identity. This centrality is expressed through many areas of Jewish life, such as education, community, philanthropy, and political activism. These deepseated attachments to Israel are also evident through growing rates of aliyah, participation in Israel programs, and visits to the Jewish state. 

From colonialist to infidel : framing the enemy in Southern Thailand's 'cosmic war'

In the 1970s secessionists in Southern Thailand described the Thai state as "colonialist" constituted by "Siamese fascist officials"1 who had "illegally colonised Patani". The flavour of this discourse shows the importance of historical context in shaping the way resistance movements interpret their own struggles. In the case of the resistances groups in Southern Thailand, it reflects the influence of the wider international anti-colonial movement and its embrace of nationalism and socialism. Translating these concepts into a political agenda was complicated by the centrality of Islam in defining the grievances of the Patani Muslims. Islam was the reason they were considered marginal by wider Buddhist society and hence it was Islam that become a core identity marker and the fulcrum upon which the resistance movement grew. Merging the predominately secular themes of anti-colonialism with Islam was complex, and as a result for much of its existence the insurgency failed to define clearly an ideology beyond the general maxim of 'liberating the homeland' to create the Republic of Patani. By the onset of the twenty first century situation had changed and although the goal remained the same for many Thai Muslims it was based on firmer ontological ground. By defining itself in Islamist terms, the separatist movement managed to distance itself from the secular concepts that defined the Thai state ('nationalism') and which precluded support for its struggle from other states ('sovereignty'). The objective now is the creation of Al Fatoni Darussalam (Islamic Land of Patani) by "purging all Siamese infidels out of our territory to purify our religion and culture"2 (HRW, 2007: 45). In short, the shift in terminology indicates an ideological shift in the way the insurgents frame the conflict but also, more importantly, in their identification of the 'enemy'. 3 The 'liberation of the Republic' has now evolved into a 'struggle to liberate an Islamic Land'. From being a 'colonialist' and 'fascist' state, the Thai state has assumed the status of 'infidel'. The insurgents' embrace of Islamism as the organising principle of their resistance is progressively transforming the conflict into what Juergensmeyer has called a 'Cosmic War' (Juergensmeyer, 2003). This paper will further explore this ideological shift by analysing for the first time primary sources such as propaganda leaflets, interviews and insurgent interrogation reports that were collected during recent fieldwork in Southern Thailand between 2006 and 2008.

Southern Thailand : a cosmic war?

In the 1970s secessionists in Southern Thailand described the Thai state as "colonialist" constituted by "Siamese fascist officials"1 who had "illegally colonised Patani". The flavour of this discourse shows the importance of historical context in shaping the way resistance movements interpret their own struggles. In the case of the resistances groups in Southern Thailand, it reflects the influence of the wider international anti-colonial movement and its embrace of nationalism and socialism. Translating these concepts into a political agenda was complicated by the centrality of Islam in defining the grievances of the Patani Muslims. Islam was the reason they were considered marginal by wider Buddhist society and hence it was Islam that become a core identity marker and the fulcrum upon which the resistance movement grew. Merging the predominately secular themes of anti-colonialism with Islam was complex, and as a result for much of its existence the insurgency failed to define clearly an ideology beyond the general maxim of 'liberating the homeland' to create the Republic of Patani. By the onset of the twenty first century situation had changed and although the goal remained the same for many Thai Muslims it was based on firmer ontological ground. By defining itself in Islamist terms, the separatist movement managed to distance itself from the secular concepts that defined the Thai state ('nationalism') and which precluded support for its struggle from other states ('sovereignty'). The objective now is the creation of Al Fatoni Darussalam (Islamic Land of Patani) by "purging all Siamese infidels out of our territory to purify our religion and culture"2 (HRW, 2007: 45). In short, the shift in terminology indicates an ideological shift in the way the insurgents frame the conflict but also, more importantly, in their identification of the 'enemy'. 3 The 'liberation of the Republic' has now evolved into a 'struggle to liberate an Islamic Land'. From being a 'colonialist' and 'fascist' state, the Thai state has assumed the status of 'infidel'. The insurgents' embrace of Islamism as the organising principle of their resistance is progressively transforming the conflict into what Juergensmeyer has called a 'Cosmic War' (Juergensmeyer, 2003). This paper will further explore this ideological shift by analysing for the first time primary sources such as propaganda leaflets, interviews and insurgent interrogation reports that were collected during recent fieldwork in Southern Thailand between 2006 and 2008.

Monitoring protected areas using remote sensing technology

Due to irrational use of natural resources, human society is facing unprecedented threats. Remote sensing is one of the essential tools to determine changes in various forms of biological diversity over time. There are many methods to determine changes in protected areas, using satellite images. In this paper after introducing different change detection methods and their advantages and disadvantages, a hybrid method is used to analyse changes in forests and protected areas in a national park. Two Landsat images of Golestan National Park in Iran (taken in 1998 and 2010) were used. This hybrid approach combines Change Vector Analysis (CVA) for flagging the occurrence of changes, followed by signature extension to assign labels to changedpixels. The main objective of this paper is to propose a method for discovering and assessing environmental threats to natural treasures.