Conceptualising, evaluating and reporting social resilience in vulnerable regional and remote communities facing climate change in tropical Queensland : marine and tropical sciences research facility transition project final report

Regional and remote communities in tropical Queensland are among Australia’s most vulnerable in the face of climate change. At the same time, these socially and economically vulnerable regions house some of Australia’s most significant biodiversity values. Past approaches to terrestrial biodiversity management have focused on tackling biophysical interventions through the use of biophysical knowledge. An equally important focus should be placed on building regional-scale community resilience if some of the worst biodiversity impacts of climate change are to be avoided or mitigated. Despite its critical need, more systemic or holistic approaches to natural resource management have been rarely trialed and tested in a structured way. Currently, most strategic interventions in improving regional community resilience are ad hoc, not theory-based and short term. Past planning approaches have not been durable, nor have they been well informed by clear indicators. Research into indicators for community resilience has been poorly integrated within adaptive planning and management cycles. This project has aimed to resolve this problem by: * Reviewing the community and social resilience and adaptive planning literature to reconceptualise an improved framework for applying community resilience concepts; * Harvesting and extending work undertaken in MTSRF Phase 1 to identifying the learnings emerging from past MTSRF research; * Distilling these findings to identify new theoretical and practical approaches to the application of community resilience in natural resource use and management; * Reconsidering the potential interplay between a region’s biophysical and social planning processes, with a focus on exploring spatial tools to communicate climate change risk and its consequent environmental, economic and social impacts, and; * Trialling new approaches to indicator development and adaptive planning to improve community resilience, using a sub-regional pilot in the Wet Tropics. In doing so, we also looked at ways to improve the use and application of relevant spatial information. Our theoretical review drew upon the community development, psychology and emergency management literature to better frame the concept of community resilience relative to aligned concepts of social resilience, vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Firstly, we consider community resilience as a concept that can be considered at a range of scales (e.g. regional, locality, communities of interest, etc.). We also consider that overall resilience at higher scales will be influenced by resilience levels at lesser scales (inclusive of the resilience of constituent institutions, families and individuals). We illustrate that, at any scale, resilience and vulnerability are not necessarily polar opposites, and that some understanding of vulnerability is important in determining resilience. We position social resilience (a concept focused on the social characteristics of communities and individuals) as an important attribute of community resilience, but one that needs to be considered alongside economic, natural resource, capacity-based and governance attributes. The findings from the review of theory and MTSRF Phase 1 projects were synthesized and refined by the wider project team. Five predominant themes were distilled from this literature, research review and an expert analysis. They include the findings that: 1. Indicators have most value within an integrated and adaptive planning context, requiring an active co-research relationship between community resilience planners, managers and researchers if real change is to be secured; 2. Indicators of community resilience form the basis for planning for social assets and the resilience of social assets is directly related the longer term resilience of natural assets. This encourages and indeed requires the explicit development and integration of social planning within a broader natural resource planning and management framework; 3. Past indicator research and application has not provided a broad picture of the key attributes of community resilience and there have been many attempts to elicit lists of “perfect” indicators that may never be useful within the time and resource limitations of real world regional planning and management. We consider that modeling resilience for proactive planning and prediction purposes requires the consideration of simple but integrated clusters of attributes; 4. Depending on time and resources available for planning and management, the combined use of well suited indicators and/or other lesser “lines of evidence” is more flexible than the pursuit of perfect indicators, and that; 5. Index-based, collaborative and participatory approaches need to be applied to the development, refinement and reporting of indicators over longer time frames. We trialed the practical application of these concepts via the establishment of a collaborative regional alliance of planners and managers involved in the development of climate change adaptation strategies across tropical Queensland (the Gulf, Wet Tropics, Cape York and Torres Strait sub-regions). A focus on the Wet Tropics as a pilot sub-region enabled other Far North Queensland sub-region’s to participate and explore the potential extension of this approach. The pilot activities included: * Further exploring ways to innovatively communicate the region’s likely climate change scenarios and possible environmental, economic and social impacts. We particularly looked at using spatial tools to overlay climate change risks to geographic communities and social vulnerabilities within those communities; * Developing a cohesive first pass of a State of the Region-style approach to reporting community resilience, inclusive of regional economic viability, community vitality, capacitybased and governance attributes. This framework integrated a literature review, expert (academic and community) and alliance-based contributions; and * Early consideration of critical strategies that need to be included in unfolding regional planning activities with Far North Queensland. The pilot assessment finds that rural, indigenous and some urban populations in the Wet Tropics are highly vulnerable and sensitive to climate change and may require substantial support to adapt and become more resilient. This assessment finds that under current conditions (i.e. if significant adaptation actions are not taken) the Wet Tropics as a whole may be seriously impacted by the most significant features of climate change and extreme climatic events. Without early and substantive action, this could result in declining social and economic wellbeing and natural resource health. Of the four attributes we consider important to understanding community resilience, the Wet Tropics region is particularly vulnerable in two areas; specifically its economic vitality and knowledge, aspirations and capacity. The third and fourth attributes, community vitality and institutional governance are relatively resilient but are vulnerable in some key respects. In regard to all four of these attributes, however, there is some emerging capacity to manage the possible shocks that may be associated with the impacts of climate change and extreme climatic events. This capacity needs to be carefully fostered and further developed to achieve broader community resilience outcomes. There is an immediate need to build individual, household, community and sectoral resilience across all four attribute groups to enable populations and communities in the Wet Tropics region to adapt in the face of climate change. Preliminary strategies of importance to improve regional community resilience have been identified. These emerging strategies also have been integrated into the emerging Regional Development Australia Roadmap, and this will ensure that effective implementation will be progressed and coordinated. They will also inform emerging strategy development to secure implementation of the FNQ 2031 Regional Plan. Of most significance in our view, this project has taken a co-research approach from the outset with explicit and direct importance and influence within the region’s formal planning and management arrangements. As such, the research: * Now forms the foundations of the first attempt at “Social Asset” planning within the Wet Tropics Regional NRM Plan review; * Is assisting Local government at regional scale to consider aspects of climate change adaptation in emerging planning scheme/community planning processes; * Has partnered the State government (via the Department of Infrastructure and Planning and Regional Managers Coordination Network Chair) in progressing the Climate Change adaptation agenda set down within the FNQ 2031 Regional Plan; * Is informing new approaches to report on community resilience within the GBRMPA Outlook reporting framework; and * Now forms the foundation for the region’s wider climate change adaptation priorities in the Regional Roadmap developed by Regional Development Australia. Through the auspices of Regional Development Australia, the outcomes of the research will now inform emerging negotiations concerning a wider package of climate change adaptation priorities with State and Federal governments. Next stage research priorities are also being developed to enable an ongoing alliance between researchers and the region’s climate change response.

Acute resistance exercise increases the expression of chemotactic factors within skeletal muscle

Intense resistance exercise causes mechanical loading of skeletal muscle, followed by muscle adaptation. Chemotactic factors likely play an important role in these processes. Purpose We investigated the time course of changes in the expression and tissue localization of several key chemotactic factors in skeletal muscle during the early phase of recovery following resistance exercise. Methods Muscle biopsy samples were obtained from vastus lateralis of eight untrained men (22+-0.5 yrs) before and 2, 4 and 24 h after three sets of leg press, squat and leg extension at 80% 1 RM. Results Monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (95×), interleukin-8 (2,300×), IL-6 (317×), urokinase-type plasminogen activator (15×), vascular endothelial growth factor (2×) and fractalkine (2.5×) mRNA was significantly elevated 2 h post-exercise. Interleukin-8 (38×) and interleukin-6 (58×) protein was also significantly elevated 2 h post-exercise, while monocyte chemotactic protein-1 protein was significantly elevated at 2 h (22×) and 4 h (21×) post-exercise. Monocyte chemotactic protein-1 and interleukin-8 were expressed by cells residing in the interstitial space between muscle fibers and, in some cases, were co-localized with CD68+ macrophages, PAX7+ satellite cells and blood vessels. However, the patterns of staining were inconclusive and not consistent. Conclusion In conclusion, resistance exercise stimulated a marked increase in the mRNA and protein expression of various chemotactic factors in skeletal muscle. Myofibers were not the dominant source of these factors. These findings suggest that chemotactic factors regulate remodeling/adaptation of skeletal muscle during the early phase of recovery following resistance exercise.

Effect of pupil dilation and constriction on the distribution of bit errors within the iris

Texture information in the iris image is not uniform in discriminatory information content for biometric identity verification. The bits in an iris code obtained from the image differ in their consistency from one sample to another for the same identity. In this work, errors in bit strings are systematically analysed in order to investigate the effect of light-induced and drug-induced pupil dilation and constriction on the consistency of iris texture information. The statistics of bit errors are computed for client and impostor distributions as functions of radius and angle. Under normal conditions, a V-shaped radial trend of decreasing bit errors towards the central region of the iris is obtained for client matching, and it is observed that the distribution of errors as a function of angle is uniform. When iris images are affected by pupil dilation or constriction the radial distribution of bit errors is altered. A decreasing trend from the pupil outwards is observed for constriction, whereas a more uniform trend is observed for dilation. The main increase in bit errors occurs closer to the pupil in both cases.

Understanding the value of social media in organisations : a taxonomic approach

While organizations strive to leverage the vast information generated daily from social media platforms and both decision makers and consultants are keen to identify and exploit this information’s value, there has been little research into social media in the business context. Social media are diverse, varying in scope and functionality, this diversity entailing a complex of attributes and characteristics, resulting in confusion for both researchers and organizations. Taxonomies are important precursors in emerging fields and are foundational for rigorous theory building. Though aspects of social media have been studied from various discipline perspectives, this work has been largely descriptive. Thus, while the need for a rigorous taxonomy of social media is strong, previous efforts to classify social media suffer limitations – e.g. lack of a systematic taxonomic method, overreliance on intuition, disregard for the users’ perspective, and inadequate consideration of purpose. Thus, this study was mainly initiated by the overarching question “How can social media in the business context be usefully classified?” In order to address this gap, the current paper proposes a systematic method for developing a taxonomy appropriate to study social media in organizations context, combining Nickerson et al,’s (2012) IS taxonomy building guidelines and a Repertory grid (RepGrid) approach.

Department of Social Services Options Paper : Options for Replacement Arrangements Following the Abolition of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission : Response

Submission in response to government options paper regarding arrangements for regulation of charities following abolition of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission.

Social justice in early years education : practices and understandings

The current political context necessitates discussions of social justice within education, and here we bring together early childhood professionals from a variety of perspectives to become part of the important debates that must be had. This special issue of Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood was first conceived at a meeting of academics interested in social justice in early childhood education in Albury, NSW, Australia. All of the editors are members of the Social Justice strand of the ARC Funded Excellence in Research in Early Years Education Collaborative Research Network (CRN), which is led by Charles Sturt University in partnership with Queensland University of Technology and Monash University. Some of the authors in this issue are also members of this research network, but their work is presented here with that of others from a variety of contexts. We believe that the combination of perspectives taken challenges old thinking about social justice in early years education in innovative ways.

Designing fashion : an exploration of practitioner research within the university environment

This thesis positions practitioner research within the emerging discipline of fashion and disputes that practitioner knowledge of fashion is predominantly tacit. This research contributes to the understanding of practitioner knowledge and proposes an object based model of practitioner research as an alternative to existing practice-led methodologies. The thesis theorises fashion objects as a site of significant knowledge and argues their potential to record and communicate fashion knowledge and disseminate practice-led research.

Emotional experiences of preservice science teachers in online learning : the formation, disruption and maintenance of social bonds

The enactment of learning to become a science teacher in online mode is an emotionally charged experience. We attend to the formation, maintenance and disruption of social bonds experienced by online preservice science teachers as they shared their emotional online learning experiences through blogs, or e-motion diaries, in reaction to videos of face-to-face lessons. A multi-theoretic framework drawing on microsociological perspectives of emotion informed our hermeneutic interpretations of students’ first-person accounts reported through an e-motion diary. These accounts were analyzed through our own database of emotion labels constructed from the synthesis of existing literature on emotion across a range of fields of inquiry. Preservice science teachers felt included in the face-to-face group as they watched videos of classroom transactions. The strength of these feelings of social solidarity were dependent on the quality of the video recording. E-motion diaries provided a resource for interactions focused on shared emotional experiences leading to formation of social bonds and the alleviation of feelings of fear, trepidation and anxiety about becoming science teachers. We offer implications to inform practitioners who wish to improve feelings of inclusion amongst their online learners in science education.

The influence of social media on international students' choice of university and course

This thesis is a qualitative study of the influence of social media on the university and course decision making process of international students. It examines the role of social media in influencing international students' decisions on course and university selection and the role of social media in meeting their information needs. It also gathered inputs on how universities could engage, collaborate and communicate using social media communities and channels for more effective recruitment strategies.

A comparison of classification algorithms within the Classifynder pollen imaging system

We describe an investigation into how Massey University's Pollen Classifynder can accelerate the understanding of pollen and its role in nature. The Classifynder is an imaging microscopy system that can locate, image and classify slide based pollen samples. Given the laboriousness of purely manual image acquisition and identification it is vital to exploit assistive technologies like the Classifynder to enable acquisition and analysis of pollen samples. It is also vital that we understand the strengths and limitations of automated systems so that they can be used (and improved) to compliment the strengths and weaknesses of human analysts to the greatest extent possible. This article reviews some of our experiences with the Classifynder system and our exploration of alternative classifier models to enhance both accuracy and interpretability. Our experiments in the pollen analysis problem domain have been based on samples from the Australian National University's pollen reference collection (2890 grains, 15 species) and images bundled with the Classifynder system (400 grains, 4 species). These samples have been represented using the Classifynder image feature set. In addition to the Classifynder's native neural network classifier, we have evaluated linear discriminant, support vector machine, decision tree and random forest classifiers on these data with encouraging results. Our hope is that our findings will help enhance the performance of future releases of the Classifynder and other systems for accelerating the acquisition and analysis of pollen samples. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

Rural dispositions of floating children within the field of Beijing schools: can disadvantaged rural habitus turn into recognised cultural capital?

The rapid pace of urbanisation in China has seen a massive increase in the movement of the rural population to work and live in urban regions. In this large-scale migration context, the educational, health, and psychological problems of floating children are becoming increasingly visible. Different from extant studies, we focus our investigation on the rural dispositions of floating children through interviews with leaders, teachers, and students in four schools in Beijing. Drawing on Bourdieu’s key notions of habitus, capital, and field, our study indicates that the rural habitus of floating children can differentiate these children from their urban peers. This habitus can be marginalised and stigmatised in certain fields but can be recognised and valued as capital in other fields. Our paper offers some implications for research and practice in relation to the schooling of floating children.

Dynamics of industry architecture and firm’s capability development : role of knowledge integration within product innovation

Aligned with the decline of Marshalian view of industry as constituting homogeneous set of firms, the new perspective is emerging by concentrating more on dynamics of sectors as the building block of industrial changes. Based on new assumptions, much of the action in terms of strategy, technology, and knowledge development does not happen either among firms within a stable industry, or through the growth or decline of certain sectors compared to others. Instead, the action happens in terms of the definition, redefinition, drawing, and redrawing of the very nature of these sectors. Technology does not progress and develop within a sector; rather it shapes (and is shaped by) the encompassing architecture of multiple sectors.

The ethical intricacies of injury rehabilitation within a dance training context

Exploring the ethical issues present in professional practice within the field of sport, exercise and performance psychology, this case study outlines challenges that may be encountered, ways to address issues should they arise, and the overall ethical considerations of supporting injury rehabilitation within a dance training context.

An internet of social things

The Internet of Things is a vision for a world of interconnected smart devices. We present an alternative vision based on a review of literature that emphasizes the importance and role of objects in social relations. We situate this work in relation to a conceptual understanding of objects and sociality, and note some methodological implications of a more object-centred sociality that may suggest design opportunities alongside the emerging Internet of Things.