Quality and efficacy of the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme (ITAS) for university students

Designed as a 'supplementary' tuition scheme, the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme (hereafter referred to as ITAS) is a strategic initiative of the National Indigenous Education Policy (DEET, 1989). This paper seeks to contribute to the literature of the analysis of the quality and efficacy of ITAS. Currently, the delivery of ITAS to Indigenous students requires enormous administration and commitment by the staff of Indigenous education support centres. In exploring the essential but problematic provision of ITAS to Indigenous university students, this paper provides insights into significant aspects of our program that move beyond assumptions of student deficit, by researching the quality of teaching and learning through ITAS, analysing administrative workload, and sharing innovations to our program as a result of participatory research with important ITAS stakeholders.

The rules of autogeddon : sex death and law in J G Ballard’s Crash

It was reported that the manuscript of Crash was returned to the publisher with a note reading ‘The author is beyond psychiatric help’. Ballard took the lay diagnosis as proof of complete artistic success. Crash conflates the Freudian tropes of libido and thanatos, overlaying these onto the twentieth century erotic icon, the car. Beyond mere incompetent adolescent copulatory fumblings in the back seat of the parental sedan or the clichéd phallic locomotor of the mid-life Ferrari, Ballard engages the full potentialities of the automobile as the locus and sine qua non of a perverse, though functional erotic. ‘Autoeroticism’ is transformed into automotive, traumatic or surgical paraphilia, driving Helmut Newton’s insipid photo-essays of BDSM and orthopædics into an entirely new dimension, dancing precisely where (but more crucially, because) the ‘body is bruised to pleasure soul’. The serendipity of quotidian accidental collisions is supplanted, in pursuit of the fetishised object, by contrived (though not simulated) recreations of iconographic celebrity deaths. Penetration remains as a guiding trope of sexuality, but it is confounded by a perversity of focus. Such an obsessive pursuit of this autoerotic-as-reality necessitates the rejection of the law of human sexual regulation, requiring the re-interpretation of what constitutes sex itself by looking beyond or through conventional sexuality into Ballard’s paraphiliac and nightmarish consensual Other. This Other allows for (if not demands) the tangled wreckage of a sportscar to function as a transformative sexual agent, creating, of woman, a being of ‘free and perverse sexuality, releasing within its dying chromium and leaking engine-parts, all the deviant possibilities of her sex’.

Rethinking regulatory design : The Australian National Classification Scheme review

This paper considers issues of methodological innovation in communication, media and cultural studies, that arise out of the extent to which we now live in a media environment characterised by an digital media abundance, the convergence of media platforms, content and services, and the globalisation of media content through ubiquitous computing and high-speed broadband networks. These developments have also entailed a shift in the producer-consumer relationships that characterised the 20th century mass communications paradigm, with the rapid proliferation of user-created content, accelerated innovation, the growing empowerment of media users themselves, and the blurring of distinctions between public and private, as well as age-based distinctions in terms of what media can be accessed by whom and for what purpose. It considers these issues through a case study of the Australian Law Reform Commission's National Classification Scheme Review.

The Metapopulation Dynamics of an Infectious Disease: Tuberculosis in Possums

An SEI metapopulation model is developed for the spread of an infectious agent by migration. The model portrays two age classes on a number of patches connected by migration routes which are used as host animals mature. A feature of this model is that the basic reproduction ratio may be computed directly, using a scheme that separates topography, demography, and epidemiology. We also provide formulas for individual patch basic reproduction numbers and discuss their connection with the basic reproduction ratio for the system. The model is applied to the problem of spatial spread of bovine tuberculosis in a possum population. The temporal dynamics of infection are investigated for some generic networks of migration links, and the basic reproduction ratio is computed—its value is not greatly different from that for a homogeneous model. Three scenarios are considered for the control of bovine tuberculosis in possums where the spatial aspect is shown to be crucial for the design of disease management operations

Cracking the code : a checklist to complement CRAs for first year Justice students

It is well recognised in the literature on first year higher education that there is a need for Universities to provide further support and development in student learning skills and engagement. Assessment and feedback is an area with differing expectations and understandings among academics and students (e.g. AUSSE, CEQ). Consistency and explicitness in academic feedback is fundamental in assisting students in their transition to university education and learning. This poster captures the progress of an 18 month funded by the Faculty of Law Teaching and Learning Grant scheme (QUT). The project sought to develop and trial an assessment checklist/diagnostic tool to accompany Criteria Referenced Assessment sheets for students within the School of Justice, Law Faculty, Queensland University of Technology (QUT).The checklist was trialled across four units in the School of Justice (Law faculty) amongst an estimated cohort of over 600 students undertaking single and dual degrees.

A descriptive approach for power system stability and security assessment

Power system dynamic analysis and security assessment are becoming more significant today due to increases in size and complexity from restructuring, emerging new uncertainties, integration of renewable energy sources, distributed generation, and micro grids. Precise modelling of all contributed elements/devices, understanding interactions in detail, and observing hidden dynamics using existing analysis tools/theorems are difficult, and even impossible. In this chapter, the power system is considered as a continuum and the propagated electomechanical waves initiated by faults and other random events are studied to provide a new scheme for stability investigation of a large dimensional system. For this purpose, the measured electrical indices (such as rotor angle and bus voltage) following a fault in different points among the network are used, and the behaviour of the propagated waves through the lines, nodes, and buses is analyzed. The impact of weak transmission links on a progressive electromechanical wave using energy function concept is addressed. It is also emphasized that determining severity of a disturbance/contingency accurately, without considering the related electromechanical waves, hidden dynamics, and their properties is not secure enough. Considering these phenomena takes heavy and time consuming calculation, which is not suitable for online stability assessment problems. However, using a continuum model for a power system reduces the burden of complex calculations

Real estate issues associated with the implementation of a carbon trading framework : a rural landholders perspective

The issue of carbon sequestration rights has become topical following the United Nations Convention on Climate Change and the subsequent Kyoto Protocol which identified emissions trading as one of the mechanisms to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Australian Government has responded by initiating the Garnaut Climate Change Review which in its final report, proposed that an emissions trading scheme be introduced and set out some of the desirable features of such a trading scheme. This proposal has been the subject of much debate and at this stage there still seems to be little clarity surrounding the topic of emissions trading in Australia. The treatment of rights to carbon sequestered in vegetation is also an issue when reconciled with the system of land tenure and ownership in many jurisdictions. These carbon property rights are treated differently in different Australian and international jurisdictions ranging from recognition of their new and unique nature to fitting them within a more established common law framework, e.g.a profit a prendre. This paper identifies the treatment of these sequestered carbon rights within the wider property rights framework in Australia and considers issues that this treatment may inflict on land holders when there is a fracturing of ownership between the rights of the carbon in vegetation and the ownership of the land.

Integrating electrical vehicles to demand side response scheme in Queensland Australia

Depleting fossil fuel resources and increased accumulation of greenhouse gas emissions are increasingly making electrical vehicles (EV) attractive option for the transportation sector. However uncontrolled random charging and discharging of EVs may aggravate the problems of an already stressed system during the peak demand and cause voltage problems during low demand. This paper develops a demand side response scheme for properly integrating EVs in the Electrical Network. The scheme enacted upon information on electricity market conditions regularly released by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) on the internet. The scheme adopts Internet relays and solid state switches to cycle charging and discharging of EVs. Due to the pending time-of-use and real-price programs, financial benefits will represent driving incentives to consumers to implement the scheme. A wide-scale dissemination of the scheme is expected to mitigate excessive peaks on the electrical network with all associated technical, economic and social benefits.

Book review of Donald, S.H., & Gammack, J.G. 2007. Tourism and the Branded City : Film and Identity in the Pacific Rim. Aldershot : Ashgate.

In the decade since the destination branding literature emerged (see for example Pritchard & Morgan 1998, Dosen & Vransevic 1998), only a few books have been published. These are Morgan et al.’s (2002, 2004) edited volumes of international case studies and conceptual papers, and Baker’s (2007) practitioner perspective on branding small cities in the USA. This work by Stephanie Donald and John Gammack is the first research-based text related to destination branding, and is a welcome and timely addition to the field. In the foreword to the first issue of Place Branding and Public Policy, editor Simon Anholt (2004, p. 4) suggested “almost nobody agrees on what, exactly, branding means”, when he described place branding practice as akin to the Wild West. Indeed, this lack of theory was one of the motivators for the authors of this text. Tourism and the Branded City is part of Ashgate’s New Directions in Tourism Analysis series, edited by Dimitri Ioannides. The aim of the series is to address the gap in published theory underpinning the study of tourism, with a particular interest in non-business disciplines such as Sociology, Social Anthropology, Human and Social Geography, and Cultural Studies...

A continuum model of the growth of engineered epidermal skin substitutes

We present a porous medium model of the growth and deterioration of the viable sublayers of an epidermal skin substitute. It consists of five species: cells, intracellular and extracellular calcium, tight junctions, and a hypothesised signal chemical emanating from the stratum corneum. The model is solved numerically in Matlab using a finite difference scheme. Steady state calcium distributions are predicted that agree well with the experimental data. Our model also demonstrates epidermal skin substitute deterioration if the calcium diffusion coefficient is reduced compared to reported values in the literature.

Restart : reflections on the British scheme of the 80s for the long term unemployed

The chapter reflects on the first two years of the Restart Scheme introduced by the Manpower Services Commission for Long term unemployed people in the UK from a facilitator's perspective ten years later. It examines the actual weekly program for participants with some case examples from one of the pilot centres, Crawley College, West Sussex, an area of low unemployment. The observations suggested that even in a place where there are many job vacancies, there will be a 3-4% of the population who are unable to compete for jobs and participate in the work force unless sheltered workshops and specialized training initiatives are established.

Globalization, media policy and regulatory design : rethinking the Australian media classification scheme

This paper considers the debate about the relationship between globalization and media policy from the perspective provided by a current review of the Australian media classification scheme. Drawing upon the author’s recent experience in being ‘inside’ the policy process, as Lead Commissioner on the Australian National Classification Scheme Review, it is argued that theories of globalization – including theories of neoliberal globalization – fail to adequately capture the complexities of the reform process, particularly around the relationship between regulation and markets. The paper considers the pressure points for media content policies arising from media globalization, and the wider questions surrounding media content policies in an age of media convergence.

Revising the scope of the copyright "Safe Harbour Scheme"

Submission to the Australian Government Attorney General’s Department consultation paper on Revising the Scope of the Copyright ‘Safe Harbour Scheme’