A governance of denial: hate crime in New Zealand and Australia

In Australia and New Zealand, the strategies employed by governments to remedy prejudice, intolerance and hatred occur on a continuum; ranging from global mission statements about multiculturalism/ biculturalism, through to the enactment of civil anti-discrimination and anti-vilification legislation. In some jurisdictions, these civil remedies have been extended to criminal codes and sentencing legislation, and enshrined in human rights charters. In the place of a comprehensive outline of each of the nine jurisdictions, case studies from throughout the region are presented as exemplars of the strategies employed and barriers faced in reducing prejudice-related violence.

The differences between the Australian and New Zealand jurisdictions belies a common theme that frames the delay in developing legislative responses to hate crime and the paucity of cases to reach the point at which they begin to establish an agreed set of norms and values about the abhorrence of prejudice and hatred. At most turns—whether political or public rhetoric, or legislative and policy development - there is a frontier denial, minimisation and negation of prejudice and hatred.

Finding a place for personal growth in an Australian community singing group for older people

As in many countries, Australia is faced with an aging population. This creates challenges for the maintenance of well-being which can be enhanced by active engagement in society. Music engagement encompasses a range of social participation and has the potential to recognise the contribution of older people to their local communities. Engagement in music by older people (50+) is positively related to individual and community well-being.  Music participation can contribute to a better quality of life, particularly in relation to health and happiness. The possible forms of music engagement are myriad.

This paper focuses on two members of a mixed voluntary singing group formed by older residents of an outer suburban community in Melbourne, Australia.  This study frames music as a positive way for older people to find a place for personal growth and fulfilment in a singing group. This phenomenological qualitative single case study focuses on two members of a small singing ensemble, the Skylarkers, formed to perform at retirement villages, nursing homes and facilities for senior citizens. In this study, data were gathered by interviews and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Two significant themes emerged. The first concerned the nature of the choir and its fluid membership and notions of self-identity. The second theme concerns the validation offered to individual members by active music participation through which they gained a sense of purpose, fulfilment and personal growth. This emphasis is unusual in discussions of community music engagement that ordinarily identify the importance of social connections. Groups such as the Skylarkers provide a place for members to continue their active engagement with music performance and music learning.

Teaching critical reflection: a tool for transformative learning in social work?

In an Australian Bachelor of Social Work degree, critical reflection is a process explicitly taught in a fourth year subject to students who have returned from their first field placement experience in agencies delivering social work programmes. The purpose of teaching critical reflection is to enable social work students to become autonomous and critical thinkers who can reflect on society, the role of social work and social work practices. The way critical reflection is taught in this fourth year social work unit relates closely to the aims of transformative learning. Transformative learning aims to assist students to become autonomous thinkers. Specifically, the critical reflection process taught in this subject aims to assist students to recognise their own and other people's frames of reference, to identify the dominant discourses circulating in making sense of their experience, to problematise their taken-for -granted ‘lived experience’, to reconceptualise identity categories, disrupt assumed causal relations and to reflect on how power relations are operating. Critical reflection often draws on many theoretical frameworks to enable the recognition of current modes of thinking and doing. In this paper, we will draw primarily on how post-structural theories, specifically Foucault's theorising, disrupt several taken-for-granted concepts in social work.

De/composing Gran's photo album

This is the story of my maternal grandmother's photo album as it is seen through the feminist psychoanalytic eyes of her granddaughter. The photos take on particular meanings as my mother and I ponder over them. The photo album, set against the backdrop of the early twentieth century, tells tales of frivolity and young romance, friendship and daughterhood, extended families and holidays. What is most significant, however, is the way in which the photos are framed within the patriarchal Catholic discourse, which enveloped my grandmother's life. Yet, it is argued that there were, and continue to be, momentary fissures and ruptures in this patriarchal discourse as feminist psychoanalytic frames come into view.

Freehand 3D Scanning in a Mobile Environment using Video

This work is motivated by two important trends in consumer computing: (i) the growing pervasiveness of mobile computing devices, and (ii) the users’ desire for increasingly complex but readily acquired and manipulated information content. Specifically, we develop and describe a system for 3D model creation of an object, using only a standard mobile device such as a smart phone. Our approach applies the structured light projection methodology and exploits multiple image input such as frames from a video sequence. In comparison with previous work, a significant further challenge addressed here is that of lower quality input data and limited hardware (processing power and memory, camera and projector quality). Novelties include: (i) a comparison of projection pattern detection approaches in the context of a mobile environment – a robust method combining colour detection and a phase congruency descriptor is evaluated, (ii) a model for single view reconstruction which exploits epipolar, coplanarity and topological constraints, (iii) the use of mobile device sensor data in the iterative closest point algorithm used to register multiple partial 3D reconstructions, and (iv) two heuristics for determining the order in which buffered single view based reconstructions are merged. Our experiments demonstrate that visually appealing results are obtained in a speedy manner which does not require specialist knowledge or expertise from the user.

Vibration based damage identification of a scale-model steel frame structure subjected to bolt connection failures

Large-span steel frame structures prove to be an ideal choice for their speed of construction, relatively low cost, strength, durability and structural design flexibility. For this type of structure, the beam-column connections are critical for its structural integrity and overall stability. This is because a steel frame generally fails first at its connectors, due to the change in stress redistribution with adjacent members and material related failures, caused by various factors such as fire, seismic activity or material deterioration. Since particular attention is required at a steel frame’s connection points, this study explores the applicability of a comprehensive structural health monitoring (SHM) method to identify early damage and prolong the lifespan of connection points of steel frames. An impact hammer test was performed on a scale-model steel frame structure, recording its dynamic response to the hammer strike via an accelerometer. The testing procedure included an intact scenario and two damage scenarios by unfastening four bolt connections in an accumulating order. Based entirely on time-domain experimental data for its calibration, an Auto Regressive Average Exogenous (ARMAX) model is used to create a simple and accurate model for vibration simulation. The calibrated ARMAX model is then used to identify various bolt-connection related damage scenarios via R² value. The findings in this study suggest that the proposed time-domain approach is capable of identifying structural damage in a parsimonious manner and can be used as a quick or initial solution.

Building an effective school-university partnership : a cluster approach

Deakin University has introduced a new Master of Teaching course incorporating a new form school-university partnership that we refer to as the ‘cluster approach’. In addition to responding to recent state and National reports on teacher education (e.g. House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Vocational Training, 2007; Kruger et al., 2009; Parliament of Victoria Education and Training Committee, 2005), this cluster approach aims to respond directly to recommendations from the Australian Teaching and Learning Council funded project into practicum partnerships (Ure, 2009), and focuses specifically on one of the reform agendas of the National Partnership Agreement on Improving Teacher Quality, that of ‘improving the quality and consistency of teacher training in partnership with universities’ (see http://smarterschools.gov.au/nationalpartnerships/Pages/ImprovingTeacherQuality.aspx)
Learning to teach is a continuum whereby teachers create new understandings and build professional knowledge and practice in collaboration with colleagues during their pre-service teacher education and then during their careers as teachers (Fieman-Nemser 2001). Learning to teach is not a sole learning activity; rather teachers learn in communities and in collaboration with colleagues. Moreover, teachers are always balancing ‘being the teacher’ while at the same time ‘becoming a teacher’ (e.g. Britzman, 2003). Thus, they balance the notion of ‘doing teaching’ while at the same time ‘learning teaching’, and this is nowhere more evident than during the professional experience component of teacher education. This cluster approach is based on these premises.
The work of Le Cornu (2004), Le Cornu and Ewing (2008) and Little (2001) also informed aspects of the approach, which is predicated on ‘reciprocal relationships’ amongst pre-service teachers, and between pre-service teachers and experienced teachers both in schools and in universities. It frames teachers as cultural producers of knowledge, pre-service teachers as new resources bringing different ideas and practices into schools and schools as knowledge building communities (Little 2001, Nias 1998, Retallick et al 1999, Veugelers & O’Hair 2005).

Australia’s strategic culture: constraints and opportunities in security policymaking

 This article draws on fourth generation strategic culture debates to show the gap between the rhetoric of Australian defence and the more modest reality. Our analysis shows that these limits derive from tensions between national strategic culture and organizational strategic subcultures. There are serious debates in the nation regarding the preferred course of the Australian military and security policy. This article frames these debates by examining the ‘keepers’ of Australia's national strategic culture, the existence of several competing strategic subcultures, and the importance of norm entrepreneurs in changing defence and national security thinking. Strategic subcultures foster compartmentalization, constraints, and bureaucratic silos that narrow national conceptions of security threats and opportunities, and impinge on the formation of coherent foreign and defence policy in relation to the Asia-Pacific region. This analysis shows that a distinct national strategic culture and organizational strategic subcultures endure beyond individual governments, placing potential limits on Australia's interface with other Asia-Pacific strategic cultures in the future.

The organ of repetition

This paper considers the practice of learning-by-heart and argues for its relevance to learning, to thought (as defined by Gilles Deleuze) and as a way of turning towards the ‘new’ or ‘the future’, via the operation of repetition. It considers two modes in which rote learning can be productive and provocative—firstly, when the content itself is something worth retaining, and secondly, when the actual process of the learning itself and then the repeating align themselves with the criteria of ‘practice’, as framed by the author here. In the face of rote learning’s reputation as an out-moded pedagogical tool, the paper argues that it inhabits a paradoxical and productive site, whereby what begins as a repetition of the same, can open towards pure repetition (as Deleuze frames this notion), and facilitate inventiveness and a courting of the new. In this way, poetry, and the learning of it by rote, constitute a unique constellation, disputing the platitude that learning is ‘only discovering what one already knew’ and instead proposing that learning is closer to an awesome ordeal, one that leads to concepts and collisions that did not exist before and cannot be predicted in advance.

The politics of Australia's withdrawal from Iraq

This article examines the complex matrix of public, political and policy debates that were brought to bear on Australia's decision to withdraw from Iraq. In analysing the ‘politics of withdrawal’ in Australia, this article identifies four dominant frames that served to polarise the issue along party-political lines and reduce the complexities of Australia's withdrawal to a set of simple polarities (such as ‘stay the course’ versus ‘responsible withdrawal’). Specifically, these frames obfuscated an assessment of the myriad challenges facing post-Saddam Iraq and the prospects for peace, security and development beyond Australia's withdrawal. Understanding the ways in which Australia framed its decision to disengage from Iraq is critical to further analysis of Australia's approach to current (or future) military draw-downs (such as in Afghanistan), as well as those conducted by other liberal democracies, such as the US and the UK.

Quantification of spatial and thematic uncertainty in the application of underwater video for benthic habitat mapping

This study presents an analysis of the application of underwater video data collected for training and validating benthic habitat distribution models. Specifically, we quantify the two major sources of error pertaining to collection of this type of reference data. A theoretical spatial error budget is developed for a positioning system used to co-register video frames to their corresponding locations at the seafloor. Second, we compare interpretation variability among trained operators assessing the same video frames between times over three hierarchical levels of a benthic classification scheme. Propagated error in the positioning system described was found to be highly correlated with depth of operation and varies from 1.5m near the surface to 5.7m in 100m of water. In order of decreasing classification hierarchy, mean overall observer agreement was found to be 98% (range 6%), 82% (range 12%) and 75% (range 17%) for the 2, 4, and 6 class levels of the scheme, respectively. Patterns in between-observer variation are related to the level of detail imposed by each hierarchical level of the classification scheme, the feature of interest, and to the amount of observer experience. © 2014 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Fast road detection and tracking in aerial videos

 We propose a fast approach for detecting and tracking a specific road in aerial videos. It combines adaptive Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs) to describe road colour distributions, and homography based tracking to track road geometries, where an efficient technique is developed to estimate homography transformations between two frames. Experiments are conducted on videos captured by our unmanned aerial vehicles. All the results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method. We test 1755 frames from 5 videos. Our approach can achieve 0.032 seconds per frame and 2.64% segmentation error for images with 908 × 513 resolutions, on average.

Identification of a gene for an ancient cytokine, interleukin 15-like, in mammals; interleukins 2 and 15 co-evolved with this third family member, all sharing binding motifs for IL-15Rα

Interleukins 2 and 15 (IL-2 and IL-15) are highly differentiated but related cytokines with overlapping, yet also distinct functions, and established benefits for medical drug use. The present study identified a gene for an ancient third IL-2/15 family member in reptiles and mammals, interleukin 15-like (IL-15L), which hitherto was only reported in fish. IL-15L genes with intact open reading frames (ORFs) and evidence of transcription, and a recent past of purifying selection, were found for cattle, horse, sheep, pig and rabbit. In human and mouse the IL-15L ORF is incapacitated. Although deduced IL-15L proteins share only ~21 % overall amino acid identity with IL-15, they share many of the IL-15 residues important for binding to receptor chain IL-15Rα, and recombinant bovine IL-15L was shown to interact with IL-15Rα indeed. Comparison of sequence motifs indicates that capacity for binding IL-15Rα is an ancestral characteristic of the IL-2/15/15L family, in accordance with a recent study which showed that in fish both IL-2 and IL-15 can bind IL-15Rα. Evidence reveals that the species lineage leading to mammals started out with three similar cytokines IL-2, IL-15 and IL-15L, and that later in evolution (1) IL-2 and IL-2Rα receptor chain acquired a new and specific binding mode and (2) IL-15L was lost in several but not all groups of mammals. The present study forms an important step forward in understanding this potent family of cytokines, and may help to improve future strategies for their application in veterinarian and human medicine.

Giving solidity to pure wind: temporising as transformation

Jared Diamond asked the acclaimed evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr (1904-2005) why Aristotle didn’t come up with the theory of evolution. Mayr’s answer was ‘Frage stellen’ which Diamond translates as ‘a way of asking questions [sic]’ (Byrne 2013). The idea that a particular way-of-asking might generate a particular way-of-knowing and, indeed, a particular branch-of-knowledge, is utterly intriguing, especially when we frame the practice of creative writing in those terms: as a way of asking questions.Drusilla Modjeska unpacks the concept of ‘temporising’ in her article ‘Writing Poppy’ (Modjeska 2002: 75). This discussion invites us to consider the generative capabilities of the temporising space – as an imaginative space for writers, as an alternate way of asking questions … of seeing, being, knowing. In narrative, the questions that underpin the work do not necessarily appear in the surface-content of the text. In this way, the story is a metaphorical representation of the questions that lie beneath. As Aristotle suggests, metaphor relies on ‘an intuitive perception of the similarity [to homoion theorein] in dissimilars’ (Ricoeur 1977: 23). In narrative we contemplate a question, or an idea, within the context of a metaphorical other. This is a form of temporising: of ‘slip[ping] into other time frames’ as a means of ‘retreat[ing] and consider[ing]’ (Modjeska 2002: 75, 76). In narrative time, we consider one thing through an alternate temporal lens. We prevaricate in otherness.Fiction-making represents a very particular way of asking questions. With reference to the process of writing the short story – ‘Everything that matters is silvery white’ – it is clear that ‘making’ narrative is a way of asking questions that is assisted by the transformative temporising space.

Foreign correspondents and international newsgathering: the role of fixers

This book reveals that ‘fixers’—local experts on whom foreign correspondents rely—play a much more significant role in international television newsgathering than has been documented or understood. Murrell explores the frames though which international reporting has traditionally been analysed and then shows that fixers, who have largely been dismissed by scholars as "logistical aides", are in fact central to the day-to-day decision-making that takes place on-the-road. Murrell looks at why and how fixers are selected and what their significance is to foreign correspondence. She asks if fixers help introduce a local perspective into the international news agenda, or if fixers are simply ‘People Like Us’ (PLU). Also included are excerpts from interviews with TV correspondents and fixers and in-depth case studies of correspondents in Iraq and Indonesia.