Taming transitive permission attack via bytecode rewriting on Android application

Google Android is popular for mobile devices in recent years. The openness and popularity of Android make it a primary target for malware. Even though Android's security mechanisms could defend most malware, its permission model is vulnerable to transitive permission attack, a type of privilege escalation attacks. Many approaches have been proposed to detect this attack by modifying the Android OS. However, the Android's fragmentation problem and requiring rooting Android device hinder those approaches large-scale adoption. In this paper, we present an instrumentation framework, called SEAPP, for Android applications (or “apps”) to detect the transitive permission attack on unmodified Android. SEAPP automatically rewrites an app without requiring its source codes and produces a security-harden app. At runtime, call-chains are built among these apps and detection process is executed before a privileged API is invoked. Our experimental results show that SEAPP could work on a large number of benign apps from the official Android market and malicious apps, with a repackaged success rate of over 99.8%. We also show that our framework effectively tracks call-chains among apps and detects known transitive permission attack with low overhead. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Vascular attack by 5,6-dimethylxanthenone-4-acetic acid combined with B7.1 (CD80)-mediated immunotherapy overcomes immune resistance and leads to the eradication of large tumors and multiple tumor foci

The promise of cancer immunotherapy is that it will not only eradicate primary tumors but will generate systemic antitumor immunity capable of destroying distant metastases. A major problem that must first be surmounted relates to the immune resistance of large tumors. Here we reveal that immune resistance can be overcome by combining immunotherapy with a concerted attack on the tumor vasculature. The functionally related antitumor drugs 5,6-dimethylxanthenone-4-acetic acid (DMXAA) and flavone acetic acid (FAA), which cause tumor vasculature collapse and tumor necrosis, were used to attack the tumor vasculature, whereas the T-cell costimulator B7.1 (CD80), which costimulates T-cell proliferation via the CD28 pathway, was used to stimulate antitumor immunity. The injection of cDNA (60–180 µg) encoding B7.1 into large EL-4 tumors (0.8 cm in diameter) established in C57BL/6 mice, followed 24 h later by i.p. administration of either DMXAA (25 mg/kg) or FAA (300 mg/kg), resulted in complete tumor eradication within 2–6 weeks. In contrast, monotherapies were ineffective. Both vascular attack and B7.1 immunotherapy led to up-regulation of heat shock protein 70 on stressed and dying tumor cells, potentially augmenting immunotherapy. Remarkably, large tumors took on the appearance of a wound that rapidly ameliorated, leaving perfectly healed skin. Combined therapy was mediated by CD8+ T cells and natural killer cells, accompanied by heightened and prolonged antitumor cytolytic activity (P < 0.001), and by a marked increase in tumor cell apoptosis. Cured animals completely rejected a challenge of 1 x 107 parental EL-4 tumor cells but not a challenge of 1 x 104 Lewis lung carcinoma cells, demonstrating that antitumor immunity was tumor specific. Adoptive transfer of 2 x 108 splenocytes from treated mice into recipients bearing established (0.8 cm in diameter) tumors resulted in rapid and complete tumor rejection within 3 weeks. Although DMXAA and B7.1 monotherapies are complicated by a narrow range of effective doses, combined therapy was less dosage dependent. Thus, a broad range of amounts of B7.1 cDNA were effective in combination with 25 mg/kg DMXAA. In contrast, DMXAA, which has a very narrow range of high active doses, was effective at a low dose (18 mg/kg) when administered with a large amount (180 µg) of B7.1 cDNA. Importantly, combinational therapy generated heightened antitumor immunity, such that gene transfer of B7.1 into one tumor, followed by systemic DMXAA treatment, led to the complete rejection of multiple untreated tumor nodules established in the opposing flank. These findings have important implications for the future direction and utility of cancer immunotherapies aimed at harnessing patients’ immune responses to their own tumors.

Algebraic attacks on clock-controlled cascade ciphers

In this paper, we mount the first algebraic attacks against clock controlled cascade stream ciphers. We first show how to obtain relations between the internal state bits and the output bits of the Gollmann clock controlled cascade stream ciphers. We demonstrate that the initial states of the last two shift registers can be determined by the initial states of the others. An alternative attack on the Gollmann cascade is also described, which requires solving quadratic equations. We then present an algebraic analysis of Pomaranch, one of the phase two proposals to eSTREAM. A system of equations of maximum degree four that describes the full cipher is derived. We also present weaknesses in the filter functions of Pomaranch by successfully computing annihilators and low degree multiples of the functions.

Information warfare : corporate attack and defence in a digital world

This text introduces the concepts of information warfare from a non-military, organizational perspective. It is designed to stimulate managers to develop policies, strategies, and tactics for the aggressive use and defence of their data and knowledge base. The book covers the full gambit of information warfare subjects from the direct attack on computer systems to the more subtle psychological technique of perception management. It provides the framework needed to build management strategies in this area. The topics covered include the basics of information warfare, corporate intelligence systems, the use of deception, security of systems, modes of attack, a methodology to develop defensive measures, plus specific issues associated with information warfare.

The continued importance of a feminist analysis: gendered inequalities visible through a critique of Howard government policy on domestic violence

This paper argues that feminist analyses remain crucial to any critical analysis of social policy. From the outset, it needs to be said that we are not suggesting that other critical analyses are less important, such as anti-racist analysis, for example (Dominelli 2002a, 2002b). We also acknowledge the significance of intersectionality theory which identifies the ways in which race and racism may compound gender inequality to shape experiences of oppression or privilege (Mullings & Schultz 2006; Weber 2006). Having said this, in this paper we argue that feminist analyses remain as important as ever, in challenging dominant patriarchal/capitalist discourse currently informing social policy in Australia.

As a counter discourse, feminism puts women’s experiences and the unequal relationships of patriarchy at the forefront of analysis, highlights gender inequalities entrenched in social institutions and policy, and draws attention to the organisation of society along gender specific lines and the inequalities resulting from the relegation of women to the private sphere (Dominelli 2002a).

Specifically, we will demonstrate that the Howard government’s policy responses to the issue of family violence have reflected a renewed attack on previous gains made by women, and exemplify a neo-liberal, neo-conservative approach to social policy that demands a critical feminist analysis. Given the recent federal election, it seems particularly timely to reassert the importance of a feminist analysis of social policy and to direct the attention of the new federal government towards reversing recent trends to de-politicise violence towards women.

Gathering for God : George Brown in Oceania

Combining 'the gathering of artefacts with the gathering of souls', George Brown was a key figure in the Christian, and especially the Wesleyan Methodist, history of nineteenth-century Oceania. Using his life as a case study, Helen Bethea Gardner examines the role of Christian missionaries in the Pacific Islands. Brown's career (1860-1908) spanned one of the most tumultuous political periods in the South Pacific, as one by one islands were colonised by imperial nations. He was one of the most politically engaged of all missionaries, encouraging colonial rule in the Pacific by America, Britain, Germany and, eventually, Australia and New Zealand. Originally from the north of England, he worked as a missionary in Samoa from 1860, moving to the Bismarck Archipelago (now Papua New Guinea) in 1875. From the 1880s until his retirement in 1907, he worked in Sydney as the general secretary of the Australasian Methodist Overseas Mission. Gathering for God examines Brown's missionary letters, journals and journalism, exploring how he attracted Pacific Islanders to Christian teachings, analysing his leadership during an armed attack on New Britain villages accused of cannibalism, and looking at his work in the new discipline of anthropology. He was a major collector of artefacts (his collection is now in the Osaka Museum) and photographer of Pacific peoples (his collection is in the Australian Museum).

The unhallowed art : literature and literary fakes in Australia

The fiction of Peter Carey is peopled by the unhallowed; by ghosts and the ghostly. In Bliss (1981), Carey presents us with the Dantesque trials of an advertising executive after he has a heart attack on his front lawn. In The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (1994), phantom nations are inhabited by simulacra. In True History of the Kelly Gang (2001), a dead bushranger talks. Carey's My Life as a Fake (2003), the subject of this essay, gives us an apotheosis of this literary habit of bringing the unliving to life. It presents us with the flesh-and-blood, machete-wielding, gladiatorial figure of Bob McCorkle, a poet created as a literary hoax.

Agency theory and culture : implications for research in management control systems

The objective of this paper is to encourage further research into the applicability of agency theory for the study of management control issues of organisations in Asian societies.

Self-determination in Aboriginal political thought

Part 1 - Political Ideas -- Liberalism and the Liberal Party of Australia -- The Australian Labor Party and the Third Way -- Australian feminism: the end of 'the universal woman'? -- Self-determination in Aboriginal political thought -- From the 'social laboratory' to the 'Australian Settlement' -- Australian nationalism and internationalism -- Part 2 - Institutions of Democracy -- Parliament and the Executive -- Political integration and the outlook for the Australian party system: party adaptation or regime change? -- Administrative agencies and accountability -- The institutional mediation of human rights in Australia -- The news media and Australian politics -- The role of the state: welfare state or competition state? -- Part 3 - Political Issues and Public Policies -- National policy in a global era -- The economic policy debate -- The decentralisation of industrial relations -- The labour market and the future of employment -- The welfare reform agenda -- The social consequences of the rural reform agenda -- Politics and the environmental policy debate -- Immigration policy and the attack on multiculturalism.

Developing intercultural teachers : the Mumbai Global Experience Project

Interculturalism is a major theme that needs to inform the teaching and learning of all subjects in teacher education courses. Moreover, the practicum is an area where there needs to be more attention given to developing the attributes of an intercultural teacher.
In 2008 I took a group of thirteen teacher education students on a three-week practicum to Mumbai, India. This paper reports on that project with a research focus on the impact the international teaching experience had on developing understandings of and practice in the teaching attributes of an intercultural teacher. The research question for the project was: In what ways has the Mumbai Global Experience enabled the development of attributes of an intercultural teacher?
Students were interviewed by a research assistant before, during and after the practicum.
About halfway through the practicum the terrorist attack on Mumbai occurred. This had a significant impact on the practicum and is reported in the paper.

Mutually clock-controlled feedback shift registers provide resistance to algebraic attacks

Algebraic attacks have been applied to several types of clock-controlled stream ciphers. However, to date there are no such attacks in the literature on mutually clock-controlled ciphers. In this paper, we present a preliminary step in this direction by giving the first algebraic analysis of mutually clock-controlled feedback shift register stream ciphers: the bilateral stop-and-go generator, A5/1, Alpha 1 and the MICKEY cipher. We show that, if there are no regularly clocked shift registers included in the system, mutually clock-controlled feedback shift register ciphers appear to be highly resistant to algebraic attacks. As a demonstration of the weakness inherent in the presence of a regularly clocked shift register, we present a simple algebraic attack on Alpha 1 based on only 29 keystream bits.

Crossing Bowen Street : mapping interventions in the classed subject

Synopsis: Crossing Bowen Street Crossing Bowen Street is an extended novel set in Melbourne, Australia. The protagonist, Meg Flanagan, is accepted to teachers' college. Meg is 24 years old and has worked, and lived out of home, since 17. Having completed her year 12 studies part time while working, she has applied to the Melbourne State College for a Bachelor of Education. Melbourne State College is subsequently 'amalgamated'A into Philip University, the original 19th century sandstone institution which borders MSC. Meg has worked as a medical secretary prior to commencing her studies. An only child, she is the first member of her family to go to university, indeed to finish high school. Tertiary study is exciting for Meg and the novel explores the psychic journey as well as the intellectual one, as Meg experiences challenges to the possibilities for her life and the trajectory along which she once assumed it would flow. The narrative is told through episodic and epistolary forms, with particular periods in Meg's cultural and academic life forming the focus, picking up the integral elements of her journey and examining the psychic context and action. Characters in the undergraduate chapters of the novel are somewhat transient, although very important to Meg's rapidly developing, changing sense of herself. The constant 'trying out' of ways of being and even lifestyles sees Meg losing old 'friendships' and making new, even temporary, ones all the time. This allows the opportunity for Meg to explore her feelings about connecting to others and the nature of her relationships. The Meg reflected back to her by others is of constant interest to her, particularly as she is frequently reminded that others see a very different Meg than she does. The novel commences at the outset of Meg's tertiary career, as she initially articulates the extent of her aspiration, of her sense of the possibility of her own life. Each vignette deals, chronologically, with an aspect of Meg's expanding sense of possibility, socially, emotionally, intellectually. Certain vignettes explore her relations with friends and acquaintances in the course, which in turn provide A In 1988, Federal Labor Minister for Education John Dawkins, devised a plan to end the streaming of Australian tertiary institutions and created what is called the Unified National System. This meant that colleges of advanced education and institutes of technology were either created universities in their own right, or more commonly, merged with an appropriate existing university. This process allows a fascinating insight into the class dimensions of hierarchies and stratifications. The need of universities and their members for status has been profoundly underscored. the background and context for her sexual relationships. That aspect of her developing subjectivity provides a marked contrast, which Meg uses as leverage, when set against her sense of herself as a scholar and her growing notion of entitlement, which allows her to 'choose', where previously she believed she had no choice; the choice is a scholarly career. Within all this, Meg discovers and is deeply empowered by certain political left, and feminist, discourses within the university community. She is equally dismayed and alienated by other feminist practices; her growing engagement with her own agency sees her quickly abandoning feminist subject positions previously dear to her, which served a particular purpose and are now superseded. This notion of feeling betrayed by the promise of a value system (or rather, its practitioners) will recur throughout the action of the novel, as Meg moves into an academic role, first as doctoral student and then as academic, seeking to live her values as practice and to remain true to what her trajectory has taught her. This is crystallised in the novel as the role played by the place she came from, and how that informs, and complicates, who she becomes. The novel seeks to explore the fundamental contradictions in doing so, through Meg's increasing awareness that the academy is not the harmonious, class aware institution she has idealised, but a world driven by status and hierarchies. This realisation must be reconciled in the light of Meg's anxieties about her working-class background. Meg's doctoral training at an elite university underscores her developing sense of what constitutes excellence and the role played by highly influential conservative institutions in maintaining social arrangements. As her academic career unfolds, the holding of a Cambridge PhD allows Meg opportunities to make change as certain privileges are afforded her by virtue of her Cambridge status. Yet it is this very notion that she seeks to challenge. Her growing passion for the State University of Victoria, an institution developed for the education of working-class people, informs her activism within the academy. Why are excellence and equity polarised? Why does the institution matter more than the scholarship? Why is so much practice within universities contrary to the values scholars often claim? These questions are explored through the dynamics of academic working life as student and later as a teacher at a university with an explicit equity agenda. The Start of the End (2003): The action commences on a late Friday after at SUV, when the Department of Communication & Cultural Studies has just been advised of Meg's promotion to Associate Professor. This vignette sees the initial soiree and celebrations and allows Meg to reflect on her experience. As her colleagues and friends are congratulating her, a particular student comes looking for Meg. It is clear that Angela Watson needs course advice particularly from Meg. Their discussion seems a straightforward one on the face of it, but it underscores many things; that Meg has come the full circle in her academic life, and what it is that her journey has really been about. The route to professorial appointment is considered, as is the source of Meg's greatest professional joy and fulfillment; is it scholarship, followed by leadership, in her discipline? It is knowing she has continued to speak and act to change the life chances of all students, wherever possible? Or is it the subtle distilling of both of these, along with the knowledge which emerges from the nexus of teaching and research. That scholarship, new knowledge, surely must be taking us somewhere specific in relation to others? The more we know, the more we can do...to what end? From this reflection, we see the action of the novel unfold. We return to this scene at the end of the novel, as Meg considers the trajectory of her life and its themes in her work. The novel ends as she is faced with the next challenge. Arrival (1989): Acceptance sees Meg as she is attempting to transform her life and create a new one. She has just been advised of her admission to an undergraduate Bachelor of Education program, at the major Melbourne teachers' college. Meg shares her rented home with her high school best friend, Anna, and her fiance, Jason, who appears to be superfluous in her life. Meg is aware he is a partner for who she used to be. We see Meg in her job as a medical secretary and this allows the mapping of Meg's sense of her own world, as she travels between home and work. This first stage of seeking her aspiration- to be an English teacher-evolves. As Meg considers the meaning of what she is about to do and how she knows it is right. This involves a consideration of what work means in our lives and how this is different for jobs according to how they are classed. Her relationship with the life she has known, the person she has been, is changing and this change is represented through her relationship with Jason. Meg's first day at teachers' college demonstrates that she is in a constant, often painful, dialogue with herself. The difficulties she encounters in making sense of the relation between her two 'lives' are thrown into sharp relief. The preparation for college sees Meg interrogating herself about how she can be different. Her initial experiences at the College resonate with her highest expectations of the life that awaits her, of the multiple possibilities currently being authored for her. Her first attendance at classes offers the opportunity to try out some of those possibilities, to test them against those she meets and to map the ways she could discover to 'be'. There is much tension and fear, but also endless excitement and these conflicting emotional states parallel and marble each other. It is on this day that she meets Jennifer Wren, her first real friend at university, who offers so many challenges to Meg. Their friendship involves a constant exhausting shift of subject positions, which Meg is able to look back on with affection in years to come. Going Bowling (1989): within a few weeks of commencing at university, Meg is socializing with some of her new friends, having neatly segmented her home and college lives. Meg has already realised that her friendships fall into separate groups; her friendship with Jennifer and the people Jennifer knows does not find its way into this group. They meet in the city to go bowling and have a meal. While Meg really enjoys these new people, already tensions are developing in relations between the group. Their unofficial leader, Rosemary Marshall, has a tendency to seek control and already resistance is showing. Rosemary particularly does not like Jennifer. Meg is enjoying her flirtation with Pete Danville, whom she has assumed to be gay. His very flattering attention has already developed Meg's confidence and stoked her ego, which has eroded in her stagnating relationship with Jason. Rosie has developed a crush on Pete and seems to take the flirtation with Meg personally. Dynamics in the group become slightly uncomfortable but Meg has grown quickly fond of her new friends, especially flamboyant Marina, another whom Rosemary seems to dislike. The discussions which occur during their evening deepen both the relationships and the tensions between them and draw lines which will determine the outcome of their various friendships. The Ball (1990): In the third year of her degree, much has happened to Meg. She is married to Jason, although she omits him from much of her psychic (and practical) life. Meg and her friends attend the Faculty's annual formal dinner dance. Meg has so far managed to balance the competitiveness which occurs between all of them, both academically and personally. The negotiation of her respective friendships with Jennifer and Marina requires a great deal of diplomacy; the subtext in this is very disturbing to Meg. What exactly is the conflict about? She can't be sure why they don't like each other; it could be Marina's smoking, or Jennifer's confidence to spare, but these things also annoy her, yet she does not fight with either girl as they do with each other. Rose has always insisted that the problem is Jennifer's private school background, but Marina went to a catholic girls' school, so what could the difference be? The ball is initially a happy occasion; the girls dress up and they dance and drink champagne together with the boys. But dynamics operating beneath the surface force their way up. Rosie is ready to force Pete to confront her continuing crush on him; Pete confronts Meg about their ongoing flirtation. Meg gives in and admits to herself for the first time that she does want to be with Pete. He is grown up and exciting and strong. He offers her something she has never had with Jason. Married less than a year, she pushes her husband out of her thoughts. The events of the ball force Meg to confront the differences between all her friends and the discomfort this affords everyone. Rosie's continued need for control over the group is acknowledged. Future Present (1991): Meg lives in Carlton with Pete. This is the busiest year thus far in her academic career and the financial, academic and emotional pressure is showing. This vignette gives us the range of Meg's academic activities and the way her life has fallen since the events at the ball eight months earlier. We see Meg grappling with her own evaluation of the changes in her 'way of being'; trying on different ways of living that she has idealised and finding them just as wanting as the last. Meg faces some key existential questions in this vignette and seeks answers which she finally discovers only she can give. Her relationship with Pete, the values and goals they share (and don't share) are thrown into sharp relief and provide a touchstone for the clearer determination of Meg's aspiration and future. Her relationship with various female friends is also revisited and this offers insight into Meg's constant checking of herself against idealised female templates. There is a crisis of identity and strength which constitutes an important fork in Meg's road. Beyond (1992): Beyond sees Meg determinedly seeking ways she can progress towards her goal, while still constantly checking against herself that postgraduate study (let alone a scholarly life) is available to her. We accompany Meg as she seeks and locates the academic path she wants; this is the backdrop for her further psychic exploration of the women who intimidate yet fascinate her, particularly Heloise Waul, who is a significant influence through Meg's postgraduate career. The sites in which Meg's personal struggles manifest are highlighted in this vignette, particularly in terms of dress and cultural pursuit. The conversations between Meg and Heloise also allow an exploration of the feminist politics of that milieu and the class tensions which operate tacitly within those politics. Bound to the Caucus (1992); Meg has now nearly completed her undergraduate degree and has been active for some time in university life and student politics. Her feminist and socialist education is well advanced. Bound to the Caucus shows us Meg in her student politics world for the first time, where the segue of her activism and academic life have taken her. Meg has found female friends who understand that part of her which struggles with inadequacy, although at this point in the novel this common struggle is not well understood or articulated. It is in this vignette that Meg admits her growing attraction for a Liberal student activist, Stuart Noble; this proscribed liaison raises many questions about values and aspiration, as well as the dominant sexual politics of the time and place. Bound to the Caucus also offers insight into the student activism occurring at universities like Philip in the early 1990s. Divergence (1993): Set in 1993, Meg is now in the early weeks of her honours program, although she has been at work on her thesis on the poet William Blake for some months. Living unhappily in a share household near the University, her relationship with Stuart Noble continues to develop, reaching a crisis point in this period. These events occur in the context of Meg's activist career in the Student Left, particularly as she encounters issues of identity around her class, feminism and difference amongst Left women. While Meg fights these battles passionately in an intense milieu, she considers them emotionally in terms of her changing sense of herself. Meg is increasingly aware that the personal impact of her class is changing for her. Additionally, she explores her relation with a 'boyfriend' of right wing political affiliation; Meg comes to recognise that this relationship is undermining her sense of herself in a way that her relationships with women in the left previously did. Honour Roll (1993): Meg is now undertaking honours and this vignette opens with Meg seeing the honours coordinator, Professor Michaela Moore, who approximates all those apparently middle-class traits to which Meg has such a push-pull relation. We see the return of a chapter of the honours thesis, discussion of the content and the constantly shifting subject positions these experiences offer Meg. This vignette also directly introduces Agnes. Mia and Agnes meet Meg after her supervision and this conversation allows very distinct if tacit class themes to develop. Meg has warmed quickly to Agnes, who is unlike anyone she has known; they have much in common in relation to their work and this binds them. Mia continually presents a viewpoint which irritates Meg, in relation to entitlement: to academic life, to funding, even to questioning how these things are enabled. Honour Roll allows us to see Meg's flourishing theoretical and intellectual life and its role in assisting her emotionally as she re-frames the same conundrums that previously constituted obstacles. The Cusp (1993): Meg's developing friendship with Agnes offers her enormous insights into difference and her developing sense of self and aspiration. While the girls come from diametrical backgrounds, they are united by their passion for their research and scholarly work. Meg is increasingly self-conscious through their discussions in terms of how she has seen herself and allowed herself to dream and seek. Cusp is set at the end of the honours year, prior to the release of results. Meg and Agnes explore their feelings about academia and this leads to discussions of purpose and the role of class within that. This vignette also documents Meg's growing social confidence and those aspects of herself which have become so sure to her, that she no longer considers them at all. Whom (1996): [Not included in this abridged edition]. Set at Cambridge, two thirds into Meg's doctorate, Whom shows Meg in the mental space which will take her back to Melbourne and the State University of Victoria. Having risen to the challenge of doctoral study, she is confronted now by deeper demons, and the need to explore and challenge them in the ambivalent context of Cambridge, which so excites her still, but which has proved empty of the profoundly held higher ideals she expected to see reflected. Set in the midst of Meg's doctoral study, this vignette is dramatically abridged in the submission novel. The importance of Whom lies in its concern with Meg's rapidly shifting sense of herself and her own scholarly subjectivity and the changes to these that the culture of Cambridge has wrought. By the second year of her PhD Meg is crystal clear about her goals and decides to spend the long break at home, rather than travelling, because she wishes to 'touch base' with her future. The action described segues into that in Courting the Enemy. Whom describes Meg's ambivalent and contradictory but passionate feelings about Cambridge. Whom demonstrates Meg's increasing anger at the status and privilege to which her education now automatically admits her, and her need to find some sort of stasis and safety in her emotional life. In this vignette, Meg meets her life partner, Jeremy McCallum (I have intentionally reduced the attention in the novel to Meg's romantic life as she matures into her career). Courting the Enemy (late 1990s): By this time, Meg is a senior lecturer in English at the State University of Victoria, which was established in the nineteenth century as the Worker's College. This vignette starts with Meg's attendance at a University Committee which is considering a transformation in relation to equity in admissions policy. Meg was drawn to SUV because of its transparent and determined commitment to educate the children of working-class people. An attack on the equity admission policy of her university galvanizes Meg and some of her colleagues. The action of the vignette considers the role of the scholar, and of such an institution as SUV, in the light of daily academic life. This vignette is primary in its demonstration of the themes of the novel. In the unabridged version, I took the opportunity to illustrate some of the vast range of administrative, intellectual and even physical demands on a senior scholar in the routine of academic life. In placing Meg in this context, I sought to highlight how a scholar of her values and commitment makes sense of the constantly shifting terrain of her working world and how this continually informs her practice. This vignette is also significant for its retrospective description of Meg's employment at SUV some years earlier. Locus: (1995). This piece of writing stands apart from the rest of the novel. I wished to write in a reflective voice, which might be from Meg's journal, were it not in the (omniscient) third person, in order to consider the headspace and meaning-making which occurs as Meg settles into Cambridge, and the lifestyle her situation allows her. Locus is a deeper engagement with Meg's sense of her identity. It considers the impact on her of the physical journeys she must make to match those of her psyche. These are thoughts too personal for a letter, even to Anna. Meg is exploring her ever shifting self and the growth in her self-belief allows her to explore what is rage; that she was bounded by illusions about her worth. Locus seeks to allow some context for Meg's anger at the role Cambridge plays. I seek to create the space in which Meg's dawning self understanding will lead her to her next, driven, purpose. Letters: throughout the novel letters are used to reveal and inform Meg's relationship with her family. This is an intentional device to distance the birth family in an attempt to blur and muddy an assessment of Meg's class through traditional measures. The letters between Meg and Aunty Jean particularly reveal much of the classed emotional antecedents of Meg's life. There are also letters exchanged with Meg's high school best friend, Anna, who has moved to the country and a very different lifestyle. Meg writes to Anna often, using the acceptance she feels in the friendship and her sense that Anna understands her, to touchstone her own emotional growth. Formal letters from institutions ring changes in settings and mark significant points in the geographical and academic trajectory of the character. All the letters serve to introduce time and event changes consistent with the episodic style of the narrative.