Trade in 'Dirty Air' : carbon crime and the politics of pollution

‘Carbon trading fraudsters may have accounted for up to 90% of all market activity in some European countries, with criminals pocketing billions, mainly in Britain, France, Spain, Denmark and Holland, according to Europol and the European law enforcement agency.’ (Mason, 2009). ‘Carbon offset projects often result in land grabs, local environmental and social conflicts, as well as the repression of local communities and movements. The CDM approval process for projects allows little space for the voices of Indigenous Peoples and local communities – in fact, no project has ever been rejected on the grounds of rights violations, despite these being widespread’. (Carbon Trade Watch, 2013)

Never-Never Land : affective landscapes, the touristic gaze and heterotopic space in Australia

This article explores how the imaginative use of the landscape in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (2008) intersects with the fantasy of Australianness that the film constructs. We argue the fictional Never-Never Land through which the film’s characters travel is an, albeit problematic, ‘indigenizing’ space that can be entered imaginatively through cultural texts including poetry, literature and film, or through cultural practices including touristic pilgrimages to landmarks such as Uluru and Kakadu National Park. These actual and virtual journeys to the Never-Never have broader implications in terms of fostering a sense of belonging and legitimating white presence in the land through affect, nostalgia and the invocation of an imagined sense of solidarity and community. The heterotopic concept of the Never-Never functions to create an ahistorical, inclusive space that grounds diverse conceptions of Australianness in a shared sense of belonging and home that is as mythical, contradictory and wondrous as the idea of the Never-Never itself. The representations of this landscape and the story of the characters that traverse it self-consciously construct a relationship to past events and to film history, as well as constructing a comfortable subject position for contemporary Australians to occupy in relation to the land, the colonial past, and the present.

Experimenting with the future of journalism : social capital as a desideratum for networked journalism research

The aim of this article is to position social capital as a theoretical framework for investigating online communities, specifically pro-am operations. It will review pertinent literature on social capital and the future of journalism in this context, and detail how the broader field of Sociology and this dynamic field of Journalism converge to produce a unique opportunity for pro-am research. Currently, much concern has been expressed regarding the future of journalism institutions in society, and while journalism itself is seen as a cornerstone of democracy, the form of structures that facilitate such practice has been questioned. Compounding this problem is a lack of research that produces data suitable for meta-analysis. For example, case-study data of start-up operations in this volatile field do not provide sufficient grounds for conclusions that could result in evidence-based policy. In response to these dynamics, this article will propose experimentation as a method of research for pro-am start-ups.

The body in grief : death investigations, objections to autopsy, and the religious and cultural 'other'

Sudden, violent and otherwise unexplained deaths are investigated in most western jurisdictions through a Coronial or medico-legal process. A crucial element of such an investigation is the legislative requirement to remove the body for autopsy and other medical interventions, processes which can disrupt traditional religious and cultural grieving practices. While recent legislative changes in an increasing number of jurisdictions allow families to raise objections based on religious and cultural grounds, such concerns can be over-ruled, often exacerbating the trauma and grief of families. Based on funded research which interviews a range of Coronial staff in one Australian jurisdiction, this paper explores the disjuncture between medico-legal discourses, which position the body as corpse, and the rise of more ‘therapeutic’ discourses which recognise the family’s wishes to reposition the body as beloved and lamented.

Exploring a biomimicry based approach and key barriers to evolving water infrastructure systems

Access to clean water is essential for human life and a critical issue facing much of modern society, especially as a result of the 21st Century triad of challenges – population growth, resource scarcity and pollution – which contribute to the rising complexity of providing adequate access to this essential resource for large parts of society. As such, there is now an increasing need for innovative solutions to source, treat and distribute water to cities across the globe. This position paper explores biomimicry – emulating natural form, function, process and systems – as an alternative and sustainable design approach to traditional water infrastructure systems. The key barriers to innovations such as biomimicry are summarised, indicating that regulatory and economic grounds are some of the major hindrances to integrating alternative design approaches in the water sector in developed countries. This paper examines some of the benefits of moving past these barriers to develop sustainable, efficient and resilient solutions that provide adequate access to water in the face of contemporary challenges.

Prenatal diagnosis, genetics and reproductive decision-making

Recent developments in genetic science will potentially have a significant impact on reproductive decision-making by adding to the list of conditions which can be diagnosed through prenatal diagnosis. This article analyses the jurisdictional variations that exist in Australian abortion laws and examines the extent to which Australian abortion laws specifically provide for termination of pregnancy on the grounds of fetal disability. The article also examines the potential impact of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis on reproductive decision-making and considers the meaning of reproductive autonomy in the context of the new genetics.

Why we should not cut P.E.

Thinking of cutting physical education? Think again. Even as we bemoan children's sedentary lifestyles, we often sacrifice school-based physical education in the name of providing more time for academics. In 2006, only 3.8 percent of elementary schools, 7.9 percent of middle schools, and 2.1 percent of high schools offered students daily physical education or its equivalent for the entire school year (Lee, Burgeson, Fulton, & Spain, 2007). We believe this marked reduction in school-based physical activity risks students' health and can't be justified on educational or ethical grounds. We'll get to the educational grounds in a moment. As to ethical reasons for keeping physical activity part of our young people's school days, consider the fact that childhood obesity is now one of the most serious health issues facing U.S. children (Ogden et al., 2006). School-based physical education programs engage students in regular physical activity and help them acquire skills and habits necessary to pursue an active lifestyle. Such programs are directly relevant to preventing obesity. Yet they are increasingly on the chopping block.

Bioeconomic modelling and risk assessment of tiger prawn (Penaeus esculentus) stock enhancement in Exmouth Gulf, Australia

A bioeconomic model was developed to evaluate the potential performance of brown tiger prawn stock enhancement in Exmouth Gulf, Australia. This paper presents the framework for the bioeconomic model and risk assessment for all components of a stock enhancement operation, i.e. hatchery, grow-out, releasing, population dynamics, fishery, and monitoring, for a commercial scale enhancement of about 100 metric tonnes, a 25% increase in average annual catch in Exmouth Gulf. The model incorporates uncertainty in estimates of parameters by using a distribution for the parameter over a certain range, based on experiments, published data, or similar studies. Monte Carlo simulation was then used to quantify the effects of these uncertainties on the model-output and on the economic potential of a particular production target. The model incorporates density-dependent effects in the nursery grounds of brown tiger prawns. The results predict that a release of 21 million 1 g prawns would produce an estimated enhanced prawn catch of about 100 t. This scale of enhancement has a 66.5% chance of making a profit. The largest contributor to the overall uncertainty of the enhanced prawn catch was the post-release mortality, followed by the density-dependent mortality caused by released prawns. These two mortality rates are most difficult to estimate in practice and are much under-researched in stock enhancement.

Social engineering in social networking sites : how good becomes evil

Social Engineering (ES) is now considered the great security threat to people and organizations. Ever since the existence of human beings, fraudulent and deceptive people have used social engineering tricks and tactics to trick victims into obeying them. There are a number of social engineering techniques that are used in information technology to compromise security defences and attack people or organizations such as phishing, identity theft, spamming, impersonation, and spaying. Recently, researchers have suggested that social networking sites (SNSs) are the most common source and best breeding grounds for exploiting the vulnerabilities of people and launching a variety of social engineering based attacks. However, the literature shows a lack of information about what types of social engineering threats exist on SNSs. This study is part of a project that attempts to predict a persons’ vulnerability to SE based on demographic factors. In this paper, we demonstrate the different types of social engineering based attacks that exist on SNSs, the purposes of these attacks, reasons why people fell (or did not fall) for these attacks, based on users’ opinions. A qualitative questionnaire-based survey was conducted to collect and analyse people’s experiences with social engineering tricks, deceptions, or attacks on SNSs.

In pursuit of an architecture realism

The noble idea of studying seminal works to ‘see what we can learn’ has turned in the 1990s into ‘let’s see what we can take’ and in the last decade a more toxic derivative ‘what else can’t we take’. That is my observation as a student of architecture in the 1990s, and as a practitioner in the 2000s. In 2010, the sense that something is ending is clear. The next generation is rising and their gaze has shifted. The idea of classification (as a means of separation) was previously rejected by a generation of Postmodernists; the usefulness of difference declined. It’s there in the presence of plurality in the resulting architecture, a decision to mine history and seize in a willful manner. This is a process of looking back but never forward. It has been a mono-culture of absorption. The mono-culture rejected the pursuit of the realistic. It is a blanket suffocating all practice of architecture in this country from the mercantile to the intellectual. Independent reviews of Australia’s recent contributions to the Venice Architecture Biennales confirm the malaise. The next generation is beginning to reconsider classification as a means of unification. By acknowledging the characteristics of competing forces it is possible to bring them into a state of tension. Seeking a beautiful contrast is a means to a new end. In the political setting, this is described by Noel Pearson as the radical centre[1]. The concept transcends the political and in its most essential form is a cultural phenomenon. It resists the compromised position and suggests that we can look back while looking forward. The radical centre is the only demonstrated opportunity where it is possible to pursue a realistic architecture. A realistic architecture in Australia may be partially resolved by addressing our anxiety of permanence. Farrelly’s built desires[2] and Markham’s ritual demonstrations[3] are two ways into understanding the broader spectrum of permanence. But I think they are downstream of our core problem. Our problem, as architects, is that we are yet to come to terms with this place. Some call it landscape others call it country. Australian cities were laid out on what was mistaken for a blank canvas. On some occasions there was the consideration of the landscape when it presented insurmountable physical obstacles. The architecture since has continued to work on its piece of a constantly blank canvas. Even more ironic is the commercial awards programs that represent a claim within this framework but at best can only establish a dialogue within itself. This is a closed system unable to look forward. It is said that Melbourne is the most European city in the southern hemisphere but what is really being described there is the limitation of a senseless grid. After all, if Dutch landscape informs Dutch architecture why can’t the Australian landscape inform Australian architecture? To do that, we would have to acknowledge our moribund grasp of the meaning of the Australian landscape. Or more precisely what Indigenes call Country[4]. This is a complex notion and there are different ways into it. Country is experienced and understood through the senses and seared into memory. If one begins design at that starting point it is not unreasonable to think we can arrive at an end point that is a counter trajectory to where we have taken ourselves. A recent studio with Masters students confirmed this. Start by finding Country and it would be impossible to end up with a building looking like an Aboriginal man’s face. To date architecture in Australia has overwhelmingly ignored Country on the back of terra nullius. It can’t seem to get past the picturesque. Why is it so hard? The art world came to terms with this challenge, so too did the legal establishment, even the political scene headed into new waters. It would be easy to blame the budgets of commerce or the constraints of program or even the pressure of success. But that is too easy. Those factors are in fact the kind of limitations that opportunities grow out of. The past decade of economic plenty has, for the most part, smothered the idea that our capitals might enable civic settings or an architecture that is able to looks past lot line boundaries in a dignified manner. The denied opportunities of these settings to be prompted by the Country they occupy is criminal. The public realm is arrested in its development because we refuse to accept Country as a spatial condition. What we seem to be able to embrace is literal and symbolic gestures usually taking the form of a trumped up art installations. All talk – no action. To continue to leave the public realm to the stewardship of mercantile interests is like embracing derivative lending after the global financial crisis.Herein rests an argument for why we need a resourced Government Architect’s office operating not as an isolated lobbyist for business but as a steward of the public realm for both the past and the future. New South Wales is the leading model with Queensland close behind. That is not to say both do not have flaws but current calls for their cessation on the grounds of design parity poorly mask commercial self interest. In Queensland, lobbyists are heavily regulated now with an aim to ensure integrity and accountability. In essence, what I am speaking of will not be found in Reconciliation Action Plans that double as business plans, or the mining of Aboriginal culture for the next marketing gimmick, or even discussions around how to make buildings more ‘Aboriginal’. It will come from the next generation who reject the noxious mono-culture of absorption and embrace a counter trajectory to pursue an architecture of realism.

Construction of volcanic records from marine sediment cores : a review and case study (Montserrat, West Indies)

Detailed knowledge of the past history of an active volcano is crucial for the prediction of the timing, frequency and style of future eruptions, and for the identification of potentially at-risk areas. Subaerial volcanic stratigraphies are often incomplete, due to a lack of exposure, or burial and erosion from subsequent eruptions. However, many volcanic eruptions produce widely-dispersed explosive products that are frequently deposited as tephra layers in the sea. Cores of marine sediment therefore have the potential to provide more complete volcanic stratigraphies, at least for explosive eruptions. Nevertheless, problems such as bioturbation and dispersal by currents affect the preservation and subsequent detection of marine tephra deposits. Consequently, cryptotephras, in which tephra grains are not sufficiently concentrated to form layers that are visible to the naked eye, may be the only record of many explosive eruptions. Additionally, thin, reworked deposits of volcanic clasts transported by floods and landslides, or during pyroclastic density currents may be incorrectly interpreted as tephra fallout layers, leading to the construction of inaccurate records of volcanism. This work uses samples from the volcanic island of Montserrat as a case study to test different techniques for generating volcanic eruption records from marine sediment cores, with a particular relevance to cores sampled in relatively proximal settings (i.e. tens of kilometres from the volcanic source) where volcaniclastic material may form a pervasive component of the sedimentary sequence. Visible volcaniclastic deposits identified by sedimentological logging were used to test the effectiveness of potential alternative volcaniclastic-deposit detection techniques, including point counting of grain types (component analysis), glass or mineral chemistry, colour spectrophotometry, grain size measurements, XRF core scanning, magnetic susceptibility and X-radiography. This study demonstrates that a set of time-efficient, non-destructive and high-spatial-resolution analyses (e.g. XRF core-scanning and magnetic susceptibility) can be used effectively to detect potential cryptotephra horizons in marine sediment cores. Once these horizons have been sampled, microscope image analysis of volcaniclastic grains can be used successfully to discriminate between tephra fallout deposits and other volcaniclastic deposits, by using specific criteria related to clast morphology and sorting. Standard practice should be employed when analysing marine sediment cores to accurately identify both visible tephra and cryptotephra deposits, and to distinguish fallout deposits from other volcaniclastic deposits.

Performance of R-N(R′)-R″ functionalised poly(glycidyl methacrylate-co-ethylene glycol dimethacrylate) monolithic sorbent for plasmid DNA adsorption

High-throughput plasmid DNA (pDNA) manufacture is obstructed predominantly by the performance of conventional stationary phases. For this reason, the search for new materials for fast chromatographic separation of pDNA is ongoing. A poly(glycidyl methacrylate-co-ethylene glycol dimethacrylate) (GMA-EGDMA) monolithic material was synthesised via a thermal-free radical reaction, functionalised with different amino groups from urea, 2-chloro-N,N-diethylethylamine hydrochloride (DEAE-Cl) and ammonia in order to investigate their plasmid adsorption capacities. Physical characterisation of the monolithic polymer showed a macroporous polymer having a unimodal pore size distribution pivoted at 600 nm. Chromatographic characterisation of the functionalised polymers using pUC19 plasmid isolated from E. coli DH5α-pUC19 showed a maximum plasmid adsorption capacity of 18.73 mg pDNA/mL with a dissociation constant (KD) of 0.11 mg/mL for GMA-EGDMA/DEAE-Cl polymer. Studies on ligand leaching and degradation demonstrated the stability of GMA-EGDMA/DEAE-Cl after the functionalised polymers were contacted with 1.0 M NaOH, which is a model reagent for most 'cleaning in place' (CIP) systems. However, it is the economic advantage of an adsorbent material that makes it so attractive for commercial purification purposes. Economic evaluation of the performance of the functionalised polymers on the grounds of polymer cost (PC)/mg pDNA retained endorsed the suitability of GMA-EGDMA/DEAE-Cl polymer.

A new period of volcanogenic massive sulfide formation in the Yilgarn: A volcanological study of the ca 2.76 Ga Hollandaire VMS deposit, Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia

The Archean Hollandaire volcanogenic massive sulfide deposit is a felsic–siliciclastic VMS deposit located in the Murchison Domain of the Youanmi Terrane, Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia. It is hosted in a succession of turbidites, mudstones and coherent rhyodacite sills and has been metamorphosed to upper greenschist/lower amphibolite facies and includes a pervasive S1 deformational fabric. The coherent rhyodacitic sills are interpreted as syndepositional based on geochemical similarities with well-known VMS-associated felsic rocks and similar foliations to the metasediments. We offer several explanations for the absence of textural evidence (e.g. breccias) for syn-depositional origins: 1) the subaqueous sediments were dehydrated by long-lived magmatism such that no pore-water remained to drive quench fragmentation; 2) pore-space occlusion by burial and/or, 3) alteration overprinting and obscuring of primary breccias at contact margins. Mineralisation occurs by sub-seafloor replacement of original host rocks in two ore bodies, Hollandaire Main (~125 x >500 m and ~8 m thick) and Hollandaire West (~100 x 470 m and ~5 m thick), and occurs in three main textural styles, massive sulfides, which are exclusively hosted in turbidites and mudstones, and stringer and disseminated sulfides, which are also hosted in coherent rhyodacite. Most sulfides have textures consistent with remobilisation and recrystallisation. Hydrothermal metamorphism has altered the hangingwall and footwall to similar degrees, with significant gains in Mg, Mn and K and losses in Na, Ca and Sr. Garnet and staurolite porphyryoblasts also exhibit a footprint around mineralisation, extending up to 30 m both above and below the ore zone. High precision thermal ionisation mass spectrometry of zircons extracted from the coherent rhyodacite yield an age of 2759.5 ± 0.9 Ma, which along with geochemical comparisons, places the succession within the 2760–2735 Ma Greensleeves Formation of the Polelle Group of the Murchison Supergroup. Geochemical and geochronological evidence link the coherent rhyodacite sills to the Peter Well Granodiorite pluton ~2 km to the W, which acted as the heat engine driving hydrothermal circulation during VMS mineralisation. This study highlights the importance of both: detailed physical volcanological studies from which an accurate assessment of timing relationships, particularly the possibility of intrusions dismembering ore horizons, can be made; and identifying synvolcanic plutons and other similar suites, for VMS exploration targets in the Youanmi Terrane and worldwide.

Disability performance in Australia

In disability arts, as in so many things, Australia has both its own cultural specificities, as well as the cultural followings that come with being a colonised country. In Australia, our colonial legacy, multiculturalism, and Asia-Pacific location have always made our relation to our own arts and culture fraught, the subject of ongoing aesthetic, cultural and political contestation. We have historically suffered from what Phillips (2006) calls a ‘cultural cringe’, in which we worry about the individuality, value and volume of our arts and culture compared to others, and this comes up again and again in commentary to this day...

Reflections from damaged modernity

The cliché about modern architecture being the fairy-tale fulfillment of every fantasy ceases to be a cliché only when it is accompanied by the fairy tale’s moral: that the fulfillment of the wishes rarely engenders goodness in the one doing the wishing (Adorno). Wishing for the right things in architecture and the city is the most difficult art of all: since the grim childhood-tales of the twentieth century we have been weaned from dreams and utopias, the stuff of modernism’s bad conscience. For Adorno writing in 1953, Hollywood cinema was a medium of “regression” based on infantile wish fulfillment manufactured by the industrial repetition (mimesis) of the filmic image that he called a modern “hieroglyphics,” like the archaic language of pictures in Ancient Egypt which guaranteed immortality after death in Egyptian burial rites. Arguably, today the iconic architecture industry is the executor of archaic images of modernity linked to rituals of death, promises of omnipotence and immortality. As I will argue in this symposium, such buildings are not a reflection of external ‘reality,’ but regression to an internal architectural polemic that secretly carries out the rituals of modernism’s death and seeks to make good on the liabilities of architectural history.