Reflections on talk about natural disasters by early childhood educators and directors

Facilitated discussion with early childhood staff working with children and families affected by natural disasters in Queensland, Australia, raises issues regarding educational communication in emergencies. This paper reports on these discussions as ‘reflections on talk’. It examines discrepancies between the literature and staff talk, gaps in the literature, and the inaccessible style of some literature-demanded collaborative debate and information re-interpretation. Reframing of the discourse style was used to support staff de-briefing, mutual encouragement, and sharing of insights on promoting resilience in children and families. Formal investigation is required regarding effective emergency-situation talk between staff, as well as with children and families.

Subjectivizations : Deleuze and Architecture

My thesis is an exploration of the architectural production surrounding the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, specifically, through the overarching theme of Deleuze’s theory of subjectivity, which I will call subjectivization. I interpret this to mean the strange coalescence of matter, architectural subject, and event, in architectural experience and culture. I speculate that subjectivization presents a yet under-explored dimension of deleuzianism in architecture. In order to develop this I pursue two independent trajectories: firstly the narrative of architectural production surrounding Deleuze, from the 1970s until today, as it is an emergence of changing groupings, alliances, formations and disbandment in the pursuit of creative-intellectual tasks—what might be called the subjectivization of architecture—and, secondly, through a speculation about the architecture of subjectivization—that is, an attempt to explore, concretely, what might be the space and time of subjectivization. Chapter One traces an oral history of deleuzianism in architecture, through conversations with Sanford Kwinter and John Rajchman, describing how the Deleuze milieu makes its way into architectural practice and discussion—subjectivization as a social and cultural emergence—whereas Chapter Two theorizes the emergence of an architectural subjectivity where architecture constitutes its own affective event—what I call subjectivization or material becoming-subject.

Pockets of Change : Adaptation and Cultural Transition

Pockets of Change collects fourteen essays that address issues of cultural adaptation and transition in the Arts. Based on insights into a range of primary texts and cultural practices—from visual art to film, from literature to theatre—these essays investigate the ways in which traditions, art-forms, cultures and ethics adapt to challenge established boundaries.

The politics of open-access publishing : M/C Journal, Public Intellectualism, and Academic Discourses of Legitimacy

This article investigates the discourses of academic legitimacy that surround the production, consumption, and accreditation of online scholarship. Using the web-based media and cultural studies journal (http://journal.media-culture.org.au) as a case study, it examines how online scholarly journals often position themselves as occupying a space between the academic and the popular and as having a functional advantage over print-based media in promoting a spirit of public intellectualism. The current research agenda of both government and academe prioritises academic research that is efficient, self-promoting, and relevant to the public. Yet, although the cost-effectiveness and public-intellectual focus of online scholarship speak to these research priorities, online journals such as M/C Journal have occupied, and continue to occupy, an unstable position in relation to the perceived academic legitimacy of their content. Although some online scholarly journals have achieved a limited form of recognition within a system of accreditation that still privileges print-based scholarship, I argue that this, nevertheless, points to the fact that traditional textual notions of legitimate academic work continue to pervade the research agenda of an academe that increasingly promotes flexible delivery of teaching and online research initiatives.

'A small space of chaos’ : Elizabeth Grosz’s chaos, territory, art : Deleuze and the framing of the earth

Review of Elizabeth Grosz’s Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth

Free-riding, cooperation, and 'peaceful revolutions' in copyright

Modern copyright law is based on the inescapable assumption that users, given the choice, will free-ride rather than pay for access. In fact, many consumers of cultural works – music, books, films, games, and other works – fundamentally want to support their production. It turns out that humans are motivated to support cultural production not only by extrinsic incentives, but also by social norms of fairness and reciprocity. This article explains how producers across the creative industries have used this insight to develop increasingly sophisticated business models that rely on voluntary payments (including pay-what-you-want schemes) to fund their costs of production. The recognition that users are not always free-riders suggests that current policy approaches to copyright are fundamentally flawed. Because social norms are so important in consumer motivations, the perceived unfairness of the current copyright system undermines the willingness of people to pay for access to cultural goods. While recent copyright reform debate has focused on creating stronger deterrence through enforcement, increasing the perceived fairness and legitimacy of copyright law is likely to be much more effective. The fact that users will sometimes willingly support cultural production also challenges the economic raison d'être of copyright law. This article demonstrates how 'peaceful revolutions' are flipping conventional copyright models and encouraging free-riding through combining incentives and prosocial norms. Because they provide a means to support production without limiting the dissemination of knowledge and culture, there is good reason to believe that these commons-based systems of cultural production can be more efficient, more fair, and more conducive to human flourishing than conventional copyright systems. This article explains what we know about free-riding so far and what work remains to be done to understand the viability and importance of cooperative systems in funding cultural production.

Integrated design and delivery solutions

Integrated design and delivery solutions (IDDS) is a priority theme of the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB), which will be used to drive the global research agenda forward. IDDS will use collaborative work processes and enhanced skills together with integrated data, information and knowledge management to minimize structural and process inefficiencies and to enhance the value delivered during design, build, operation, and across projects. IDDS build on building information modelling (BIM), incorporating advances in the training and employment of people, together with supporting new technologies. The successful use of IDDS involves changes in each of the project phases from conceptual planning and business case formulation to all stages of the supply chain: design, construction, commissioning, operation, retrofit and decommissioning. For each of these phases, key changes in the structure and culture of the project team across the different collaborating firms create a favourable context for IDDS. Special for IDDS thinking is the idea of adding project and whole-life value in all phases, for all stakeholders...

‘I now know I can do this now’: Indigenous women and writing in the Australian higher education sector

This paper explores the challenges of writing and publishing faced by Indigenous women who work in the Australian higher education sector. It demonstrates that Indigenous women are under-represented in the academy and argues that Indigenous styles of writing are typically not valued for broader publication. The authors describe a writing mentoring and support program specifically developed for Indigenous academic women in Australia. The Tiddas Writin’ Up Workshop provided a safe and culturally-appropriate space for women to learn about academic writing and develop their writing skills. The workshop led to the publication of a special issue of the Journal of Australian Indigenous Issues – known as the Tiddas Collection. The authors highlight the power and strength of well-developed support programs to address skills development, confidence, inequities and under-representation of Indigenous women within the higher education workforce.

National and state-level politics on social media : Twitter, Australian political discussions, and the online commentariat

This paper examines the use of Twitter for long-term discussions around Australian politics, at national and state levels, tracking two hashtags during 2012: #auspol, denoting national political topics, and #wapol, which provides a case study of state politics (representing Western Australia). The long-term data collection provides the opportunity to analyse how the Twitter audience responds to Australian politics: which themes attract the most attention and which accounts act as focal points for these discussions. The paper highlights differences in the coverage of state and national politics. For #auspol, a small number of accounts are responsible for the majority of tweets, with politicians invoked but not directly contributing to the discussion. In contrast, #wapol stimulates a much lower level of tweeting. This example also demonstrates that, in addition to citizen accounts, traditional participants within political debate, such as politicians and journalists, are among the active contributors to state-oriented discussions on Twitter.

Human breast cancer cell metastasis to long bone and soft organs of nude mice : a quantitative assay

Bone is a common metastatic site in human breast cancer (HBC). Since bone metastasis occurs very rarely from current spontaneous or experimental metastasis models of HBC cells in nude mice, an arterial seeding model involving the direct injection of the cells into the left ventricle has been developed to better understand the mechanisms involved in this process. We present here a sensitive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method to detect and quantitate bone and soft organ metastasis in nude mice which have been intracardially inoculated with Lac Z transduced HBC cells. Amplification of genomically incorporated Lac Z sequences in MDA-MB-231-BAG HBC cells enables us to specifically detect these cells in mouse organs and bones. We have also created a competitive template to use as an internal standard in the PCR reactions, allowing us to better quantitate levels of HBC metastasis. The results of this PCR detection method correlate well with cell culture detection from alternate long bones from the same mice, and are more sensitive than gross Lac Z staining with X-gal or routine histology. Comparable qualitative results were obtained with PCR and culture in a titration experiment in which mice were inoculated with increasing numbers of cells, but PCR is more quantifiable, less time consuming, and less expensive. This assay can be employed to study the molecular and cellular aspects of bone metastasis, and could easily be used in conjunction with RT-PCR-based analyses of gene products which may be involved with HBC metastasis.

Diversity or perversity?: Award-winning children's literature and the Australian curriculum

Two of the three cross-curriculum priorities for the national Australian Curriculum prescribed by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) are focussed on what might be called diversity education: “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and culture���, and "Asia and Australia's Engagement with Asia” (ACARA, “Cross”). One need not be versed in complex rhetorical theory to understand that, laudable and legitimate as such priorities are, their existence implies that mainstream education in Australia has been or is characterised by the marginalisation or erasure of Australia's history—the original Indigenous cultures are not only living and vibrant today, but also have tens of thousands of years’ “head start” on Australia’s settler cultures—and of its geography—Australia is, after all, located in some physical proximity to Asia. Some might even suggest that Australia is in Asia. These temporal and spatial “forgettings” constitute a kind of cultural perversity which the cross-curricular priorities both seek to address and serve to reinscribe. Even as ACARA requires Australian school students to engage with Aboriginal and Asian histories, cultures, societies, they imply that such histories, cultures, and societies are “diverse”, that they are not those of the students in Australian classrooms; producing them as objects of study rather than as lived experience. This should not necessarily be surprising. Michael W. Apple has provocatively argued that: “one of the perverse effects of a national curriculum actually will be to ‘legitimise inequality.’ It may in fact help create the illusion that whatever the massive differences in schools, they all have something in common” (18). In the Australian context, attempts to mitigate such perversity are articulated via the selection of literary texts. As educators move to resource ACARA’s cross-curricular priorities, ACARA notes that “Teachers and schools are best placed to make decisions about the selection of texts in their teaching and learning programs that address the content in the Australian Curriculum while also meeting the needs of the students in their classes” (ACARA, “Advice”). This assertion appears on a webpage called “Advice on selection of literary texts” which is notable first and foremost for its total lack of any literary texts being named, and its list of weblinks pointing to lists of texts compiled elsewhere, by other organisations, and in the main, compiled to serve agendas other than the Australian curriculum. One of the major resources referred to by ACARA for literary text selection is the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA). Of course, the CBCA’s annual book awards do not share ACARA’s educational priorities, but do have a history of being drawn upon by schools as a curriculum resource. In this paper, I consider the literary texts which have been prized by the CBCA in recent years attending to their engagements with Aboriginal cultures.

Urban Informatics and Public Transport

The holistic urban experience we perceive when immersed in an urban context is at the heart of urban informatics. This experience encompasses all urban elements such as architecture, people, and culture. Urban informatics explores the possibilities and opportunities created by new technologies and information for enhancing the urban experience. Public transport is an essential urban experience. Everyday, urban dwellers takes public transport to commute and move between different parts of the city. Public transport serves people from all over the city and moves them through different places in the city, using different means of transportation. The nature of public transport—involving people, places, and technologies, makes it a fitting context for urban informatics interventions. There are three main aspects of the public transport experience that can readily benefit from urban informatics interventions the: pragmatic aspect, hedonistic aspect, and social aspect. From the pragmatic perspective, these interventions can help people to be more efficient and effective in taking public transport. Hedonistic-related interventions aim to bring enjoyment and fun to our mundane commute. Finally, urban informatics can strengthen the sense of community in a socially-passive context like public transport environments through adopting socially focused interventions.

Contrast and Emphasis: An Essay on the Modal Adverb Ke in Declarative Sentences [对比与强调 --- 谈陈述句中的语气副词“可”]

The data-oriented empirical research on the Chinese adverb “ke” has led to the conclusion that the semantics of the word as a modal adverb is always two-fold: it marks both “contrast” and “emphasis”. “Adversativity” as used in literature on “ke” is but one type of contrast marked by “ke”. Other types of contrast marked by “ke” in declarative sentences include: a) what is assumed by the hearer and what the truth of a matter is; b) what the sentence literally talks about and what it also implicitly conveys; and c) the original wishful nature of the stated action and its final realization. In all declarative sentences, what the adverb emphasizes is the “factuality” of what is stated. Chinese Abstract [提要] 对外汉语教学的实践表明，汉语副词“可”是教学中的难点，这跟我们对其语义内涵缺乏全面准确的认识有关。为了全面揭示副词“可”的核心语义，本作者以电视连续剧《渴望》前二十集为主要语料，并结合其他一些电视剧、电视节目以及文献里已有的语料，对出现在各种语境中的“可”进行了大量的考察和归纳性研究。研究结果表明，作为语气副词的“可”其核心语义不是单一的，它总是在标示“对比”（即“不同”）的同时表示强调。它所强调的是所述内容的“事实性”或“终然性”。由于篇幅所限，本文仅对陈述句中的语气副词“可”加以讨论

Joy fear and poetry

Joy Fear and Poetry is an original performance work written, designed and directed by Natasha Budd in collaboration with 15 performers aged 7-12 years. It was performed in Brisbane as part of La Boite Theatre’s 2013 Indie Season. The production employs contemporary performance, postdramatic and constructivist methodologies to make an intervention into habituated patterns of positioning children in society. It embodies a model of practice that moves beyond participant empowerment toward a more nuanced process of co-artists creating intersubjective ‘composite texts’ (McCall 2011) for mainstream audiences. Joy Fear and Poetry experiments with techniques for performance making that create conditions conducive to authentic theatre making with children. These focus on dramaturgical, directorial and design strategies harnessed to maintain the performers’ focus, motivation and cognitive engagement within a reflexive, collaborative process.