Biopolitics meets Terrapolitics: Political Ontologies and Governance in Settler-Colonial Australia

Crises persist in Australian Indigenous affairs because current policy approaches do not address the intersection of Indigenous and European political worlds. This paper responds to this challenge by providing a heuristic device for delineating Settler and Indigenous Australian political ontologies and considering their interaction. It first evokes Settler and Aboriginal ontologies as respectively biopolitical (focused through life) and terrapolitical (focused through land). These ideal types help to identify important differences that inform current governance challenges. The paper discusses the entwinement of these traditions as a story of biopolitical dominance wherein Aboriginal people are governed as an “included-exclusion” within the Australian political community. Despite the overall pattern of dominance, this same entwinement offers possibilities for exchange between biopolitics and terrapolitics, and hence for breaking the recurrent crises of Indigenous affairs.

Design, Science and Conceptual Analysis

Philosophers expend considerable effort on the analysis of concepts, but the value of such work is not widely appreciated. This paper principally analyses some arguments, beliefs, and presuppositions about the nature of design and the relations between design and science common in the literature to illustrate this point, and to contribute to the foundations of design theory.

School Science Lessons

This website is linked to UNESCO.org and is free to download for educational purposes. It contains a database of school science experiments and investigations in physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, geology, weather studies, agriculture projects for primary and secondary schools; and sexuality education and drugs education. It is based on a revision, updating and expansion of the "New UNESCO source book for science teaching", 1979 edition, UNESCO, Paris. It contains experiments from the "low cost" science teaching movement, simplified versions of classical experiments, experiments using locally available substances and kitchen chemicals, and environmental science. Some experiments anticipate experiments usually done in senior high school or college classes. The experiments should be "student-friendly" and "teacher-friendly" because there is no overwhelming technology. Enough theoretical background is included to remind teachers of the theoretical context of the experiment. Every experiment is based on materials listed in a modern commercial catalogue of chemicals and equipment for use by educational institutions. The procedures and safety standards are consistent with instructions issued by Education Queensland (Ministry of Education), State of Queensland, Australia.

Psychological science in Australia

This paper is a brief account of the Australian Strategic Review of the Psychology Discipline and its Research. Issues discussed include Australia's contribution to world research in psychological science, research funding, the age and qualifications of researchers, the social and economic benefits arising from the applications of research outcomes, multidisciplinary issues, the role of psychology in industry, links between the discipline and the profession of psychology, professional training, cross-cultural issues, and educational issues. Priorities for development of research and postgraduate training are identified, and include human factors and other areas related to technological change, clinical psychology with particular attention to health psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, and neuroscience and physiological psychology.

Type 1 and Type 2 cytokines: from basic science to fungal infections

At the present time, it is clear that Th1 responses afford protection against the fungi; however, the development, maintenance and function of the protective immune responses are complex mechanisms and are influenced by multiple factors. The route of infection has been shown to affect initial cytokine production and, consequently, the induction of protective Th1 responses. The ability of different isolates of the same fungal agent to induce and sustain a protective response has also been emphasized. Protective immune responses have been shown to vary in genetically different mouse strains after infection. In addition, these protective responses, such as cellular influx and cytokine production, also vary within the same animal depending on the tissue infected. The functional dominance of certain cytokines over others in influencing development and maintenance of protective responses has been discussed. Certain cytokines may act differently in hosts lacking important components of their innate or immune repertoire. It is evident from these presentations that a more comprehensive understanding of the protective mechanisms against different fungal agents is emerging. However, there is still much to learn before cytokine modulatory therapy can be used effectively without risk in the human host.

Larval activity levels and delayed metamorphosis affect post-larval performance in the colonial, ascidian Diplosoma listerianum

It is becoming widely recognized that extending the larval period of marine invertebrates, especially of species with non-feeding larvae, can affect post-larval performance. As these carry-over effects are presumed to be caused by the depletion of larval energy reserves, we predicted that the level of larval activity would also affect post-larval performance. This prediction was tested with the cosmopolitan colonial ascidian Diplosoma listerianum in field experiments in southern Australia. Diplosoma larvae, brooded in the parent colony, are competent to settle immediately after spawning, and they remain competent to metamorphose for > 15 h. Some larvae were induced to metamorphose 0 to 6 h after release, whilst others were induced to swim actively by alternating light and dark periods for up to 3 h prior to metamorphosis. Juvenile colonies were then transplanted to a subtidal field site in Port Phillip Bay and left to grow for up to 3 wk. Extending the larval period and increasing the amount of swimming both produced carry-over effects on post-larval performance. Colonies survived at different rates among experiments, but larval experience did not affect survival rates. Delays in metamorphosis and increased swimming activity did, however, reduce colony growth rates dramatically, resulting in 50% fewer zooids per colony. Moreover, such colonies produced initial zooids with smaller feeding structures, with the width of branchial baskets reduced by 10 to 15%. These differences in branchial basket size persisted and were still apparent in newly budded zooids 3 wk after metamorphosis. Our results suggest that, for D. listerianum, larval maintenance, swimming, and metamorphosis all use energy from a common pool, and increases in the allocation to maintenance or swimming come at the expense of post-larval performance.

Offspring size affects the post-metamorphic performance of a colonial marine invertebrate

The positive relationship between offspring size and offspring fitness is a fundamental assumption of life-history theory, but it has received relatively little attention in the marine environment. This is surprising given that substantial intraspecific variation in offspring size is common in marine organisms and there are clear links between larval experience and adult performance. The metamorphosis of most marine invertebrates does not represent a newbeginning, and larval experiences can have effects that carry over to juvenile survival and growth. We show that larval size can have equally important carryover effects in a colonial marine invertebrate. In the bryozoan Bugula neritina, the size of the non-feeding larvae has a prolonged effect on colony performance after metamorphosis. Colonies that came from larger larvae survived better, grew faster, and reproduced sooner or produced more embryos than colonies that came from smaller larvae. These effects crossed generations, with colonies from larger larvae themselves producing larger larvae. These effects were found in two populations (in Australia and in the United States) in contrasting habitats.