Re-Presenting/Representing Melbourne: A literary and cultural analysis of Melbourne’s inner city and outer suburbs in contemporary fiction

This article provides an overview of a research project investigating contemporary literary representations of Melbourne’s inner and outer suburban spaces. It will argue that the city represented by local writers is an often more complex way of envisioning the city than the one presented in public policy and cultural discourses. In this view, the writer’s vision of a city does not necessarily override or provide a “truer’ account but it is in the fictional city where the complexity of the everyday life of a city is most accurately portrayed. The article will also provide an overview of the theoretical framework for reading the fictional texts in this way, examining how Soja’s concept of Thirdspace (2006) provides a place to engage “critically with theoretical issues, while simultaneously being that space where the debate occurs” (Mole 2008: 3).

The bondage of an imposed visual discourse : understanding the built environment's influence on the 'oldest-old' aged care residents' sense of peace

This study investigates the influence of the built environment upon residents' sense of familiarity, concept of self and thus, their facilitation of place through the theory of "The Bondage of Imposed Visual Discourse". Simone de Beauvoir's theory "The Bondage of Feminine Elegance" provides the conceptual understanding of the visual discourse between the physicality of clothing and the wearer's personal identity. This fashion theory is transposed to explore the influence of the built environment's physicality upon aged care residents' personal identity. This paper presents findings from a study of professionals' opinions in reference to the built environment of permanent residential aged care for the 'oldest-old' of Australia. The researcher conducted qualitative interviews with four participants: an architect, occupational therapist, nursing home facility manager and an aged care lobbyist in the South-East Queensland. This study is structured towards proposing "place-focused" qualitative design principles to encourage residents' sense of place through the built environment. These proposed principles are addressed with reference to existing Standards and Principles outlined by the Australian Government.

Raman spectroscopic study of the minerals diadochite and destinezite Fe3+2(PO4,SO4)2(OH)•6H2O – implications for soil science

The two minerals diadochite and destinezite of formula Fe2(PO4,SO4)2(OH)•6H2O have been characterised by Raman spectroscopy and complimented with infrared spectroscopy. These two minerals are both found in soils and are identical except for their morphology. Diadochite is amorphous whereas destinezite is highly crystalline. The spectra of diadochite are broad and ill-defined, whereas the spectra of destinezite are intense and well defined. Bands are assigned to phosphate and sulphate stretching and bending modes. Two symmetric stretching modes for both the phosphate and sulphate symmetric stretching modes support the concept of non-equivalent phosphate and sulphate units in the mineral structure. Multiple water bending and stretching modes imply that non-equivalent water molecules in the structure exist with different hydrogen bond strengths.

Legal ethics in a post-Westphalian world : building the international rule of law and otehr tasks

The emergence of strong sovereign states after the Treaty of Westphalia turned two of the most cosmopolitan professions (law and arms) into two of the least cosmopolitan. Sovereign states determined the content of the law within their borders – including which, if any, ecclesiastical law was to be applied; what form of economic regulation was adopted; and what, if any, international law applied. Similarly, states sought to ensure that all military force was at their disposal in national armies. The erosion of sovereignty in a post-Westphalian world may significantly reverse these processes. The erosion of sovereignty is likely to have profound consequences for the legal profession and the ethics of how, and for what ends, it is practised. Lawyers have played a major role in the civilization of sovereign states through the articulation and institutionalisation of key governance values – starting with the rule of law. An increasingly global profession must take on similar tasks. The same could be said of the military. This essay will review the concept of an international rule of law and its relationship to domestic conceptions and outline the task of building the international rule of law and the role that lawyers can and should play in it.

Construction safety : development of an assessment tool to reduce risk on building sites

Australian construction and building workers are exposed to serious workplace risks - including injury, illness and death - and although there have been improvements in occupational health and safety (OHS) performance over the past 20 years, the injury and fatality rate in the Australian construction industry remains a matter of concern. The concept of safety culture is rapidly being adopted in the industry, including recognising the critical role that organisational leaders play in overall safety performance. This paper reviews recent research in construction safety leadership and provides some examples and applications relevant to risk reduction in the workforce. By focusing on developing safety competency in those that fulfil safety critical roles, and clearly articulating the relevant safety management tasks, leaders can positively influence the organisation’s safety culture. Finally, some promising research on Safety Effectiveness Indicators (SEIs) may be an industry-friendly solution to reducing workplace risks across the industry, by providing a credible, accurate, and timely measure of safety performance.

Extending the task of diarization to speaker attribution

In this paper we extend the concept of speaker annotation within a single-recording, or speaker diarization, to a collection wide approach we call speaker attribution. Accordingly, speaker attribution is the task of clustering expectantly homogenous intersession clusters obtained using diarization according to common cross-recording identities. The result of attribution is a collection of spoken audio across multiple recordings attributed to speaker identities. In this paper, an attribution system is proposed using mean-only MAP adaptation of a combined-gender UBM to model clusters from a perfect diarization system, as well as a JFA-based system with session variability compensation. The normalized cross-likelihood ratio is calculated for each pair of clusters to construct an attribution matrix and the complete linkage algorithm is employed to conduct clustering of the inter-session clusters. A matched cluster purity and coverage of 87.1% was obtained on the NIST 2008 SRE corpus.

Professions without borders : global ethics and the international rule of law

The emergence of strong sovereign states after the Treaty of Westphalia turned two of the most cosmopolitan professions (law and arms) into two of the least cosmopolitan. Sovereign states determined the content of the law within their borders – including which, if any, ecclesiastical law was to be applied; what form of economic regulation was adopted; and what, if any, international law applied. Similarly, states sought to ensure that all military force was at their disposal in national armies. The erosion of sovereignty in a post-Westphalian world may significantly reverse these processes. The erosion of sovereignty is likely to have profound consequences for the legal profession and the ethics of how, and for what ends, it is practised. Lawyers have played a major role in the civilization of sovereign states through the articulation and institutionalisation of key governance values – starting with the rule of law. An increasingly global profession must take on similar tasks. The same could be said of the military. This essay will review the concept of an international rule of law and its relationship to domestic conceptions and outline the task of building the international rule of law and the role that lawyers can and should play in it.

A case for addressing the literacy demands of student assessment

The development and implementation of the Australian Curriculum together with national testing of students and the publication of school results place new demands on teachers. In this article we address the importance of teachers becoming attuned to the silent assessors in assessment generally and in the National Literacy and Numeracy Program (NAPLAN) more specifically. Using the concept of literacies, we develop a method to conduct a literacy audit of assessment tasks that teachers can use to help both themselves and their students. Providing assistance to students as a consequence of such an audit is imperative to improve the outcomes for students and to address issues of equity.

Assessing the resilience of potable water supplies in Southeast Queensland Australia

Historically, cities as urban forms have been critical to human development. In 1950, 30% of the world’s population lived in major cities. By the year 2000 this had increased to 47% with further expected growth to 50% by the end of 2007. Projections suggest that city-based densities will edge towards 60% of the global total by 2030. Such rapidly increasing urbanisation, in both developed and developing economies, challenges options for governance and planning, as well as crisis and disaster management. A common issue to the livability of cities as urban forms through time has been access to clean and reliable water supply. This is an issue that is particularly important in countries with arid ecosystems, such as Australia. This paper examines preliminary aspects, and theoretical basis, of a study into the resilience of the (potable) water supply system in Southeast Queensland (SEQ), an area with one of the most significant urban growth rates in Australia. The first stage will be to assess needs and requirements for gauging resilience characteristics of a generic water supply system, consisting of supply catchment, storage reservoir/s and treatment plant/s. The second stage will extend the analysis to examine the resilience of the SEQ water supply system incorporating specific characteristics of the SEQ water grid made increasingly vulnerable due to climate variability and projected impacts on rainfall characteristics and compounded by increasing demands due to population growth. Longer-term findings will inform decision making based on the application of the concept of resilience to designing and operating stand-alone and networked water supply infrastructure systems as well as its application to water resource systems more generally.

The 'nurdle to leg' and other ways of winning cricket matches

The emergence of Twenty20 cricket at the elite level has been marketed on the excitement of the big hitter, where it seems that winning is a result of the muscular batter hitting boundaries at will. This version of the game has captured the imagination of many young players who all want to score runs with “big hits”. However, in junior cricket, boundary hitting is often more difficult due to size limitations of children and games played on outfields where the ball does not travel quickly. As a result, winning is often achieved via a less spectacular route – by scoring more singles than your opponents. However, most standard coaching texts only describe how to play boundary scoring shots (e.g. the drives, pulls, cuts and sweeps) and defensive shots to protect the wicket. Learning to bat appears to have been reduced to extremes of force production, i.e. maximal force production to hit boundaries or minimal force production to stop the ball from hitting the wicket. Initially, this is not a problem because the typical innings of a young player (<12 years) would be based on the concept of “block” or “bash” – they “block” the good balls and “bash” the short balls. This approach works because there are many opportunities to hit boundaries off the numerous inaccurate deliveries of novice bowlers. Most runs are scored behind the wicket by using the pace of the bowler’s delivery to re-direct the ball, because the intrinsic dynamics (i.e. lack of strength) of most children means that they can only create sufficient power by playing shots where the whole body can contribute to force production. This method works well until the novice player comes up against more accurate bowling when they find they have no way of scoring runs. Once batters begin to face “good” bowlers, batters have to learn to score runs via singles. In cricket coaching manuals (e.g. ECB, n.d), running between the wickets is treated as a separate task to batting, and the “basics” of running, such as how to “back- up”, carry the bat, calling and turning and sliding the bat into the crease are “drilled” into players. This task decomposition strategy focussing on techniques is a common approach to skill acquisition in many highly traditional sports, typified in cricket by activities where players hit balls off tees and receive “throw-downs” from coaches. However, the relative usefulness of these approaches in the acquisition of sporting skills is increasingly being questioned (Pinder, Renshaw & Davids, 2009). We will discuss why this is the case in the next section.

Molecular Structure of the mineral woodhouseite CaAl3(PO4,SO4)2(OH)6

The mineral woodhouseite CaAl3(PO4,SO4)2(OH)6 is a hydroxy phosphate-sulphate mineral belonging to the beudantite subgroup of alunites, and has been characterised by Raman spectroscopy, complimented with infrared spectroscopy. Bands at various wavenumbers were assigned to the different vibrational modes of woodhouseite, which were then associated to the molecular structure of the mineral. Bands were primarily assigned to phosphate and sulphate stretching and bending modes. Two symmetric stretching modes for both phosphate and sulphate supported the concept of non-equivalent phosphate and sulphate units in the mineral structure. Bands in the OH stretching region enabled hydrogen bond distances to be calculated.

A vibrational spectroscopic study of the mineral hinsdalite (Pb,Sr)Al3(PO4)(SO4)(OH)6

The objective of this research is to determine the molecular structure of the mineral hinsdalite using vibrational spectroscopy. The mineral hinsdalite (Pb,Sr)Al3(PO4,SO4)2(OH)6 is a hydroxy phosphate-sulphate mineral belonging to the beudantite subgroup of alunites. The mineral is interesting because it contains two oxyanions, phosphate and sulphate, which is unusual. The formation of hinsdalite offers a mechanism for the removal of phosphate from the environment. The mineral has been characterised by Raman spectroscopy and infrared spectroscopy. The spectra are then related to the molecular structure of the mineral. Bands at various wavenumbers are assigned to the different vibrational modes of hinsdalite, which were then associated to the molecular structure of the mineral. Bands were primarily assigned to phosphate and sulphate stretching and bending modes. The Raman spectrum is characterised by an intense sharp band at 982 cm-1 with a component band at 997 cm-1 assigned to the ν1 (PO4)3- symmetric stretching modes. Two symmetric stretching modes for both phosphate and sulphate supported the concept of non-equivalent phosphate and sulphate units in the mineral structure. Bands in the OH stretching region enabled hydrogen bond distances to be calculated. Hinsdalite is characterised by disordered phosphate/sulphate tetrahedra and non-equivalent phosphate units are observed in the vibrational spectrum of hinsdalite.

Relational contracting and its efficacy of project outcomes in the Australian construction industry

The Australian construction industry is characterized as being a competitive and risky business environment due to lack of cooperation, insufficient trust, ineffective communication and adversarial relationships which are likely lead to poor project performance. Relational contracting (RC) is advocated by literature as an innovative approach to improve the procurement process in the construction industry. Various studies have collectively added to the current knowledge of known RC norms, but there seem to be little effort on investigating the determinants of RC and its efficacy on project outcomes. In such circumstances, there is a lack of evidence and explanation on the manner on how these issues lead to different performance. Simultaneously, the New Engineering Contract (NEC) that embraced the concept of RC is seen as a modern way of contracting and also considered as one of the best approaches to the perennial problem of improving adversarial relationships within the industry. The reality of practice of RC in Australia is investigated through the lens of the NEC. A synthesis of literature views on the concept, processes and tools of RC is first conducted to develop the framework of RC.

Raman spectroscopic study of the magnesium carbonate mineral– hydromagnesite Mg5[(CO3)4(OH)2]•4H2O

Magnesium minerals are important for the understanding of the concept of geosequestration. One method of studying the hydrated hydroxy magnesium carbonate minerals is through vibrational spectroscopy. A combination of Raman and infrared spectroscopy has been used to study the mineral hydromagnesite. An intense band is observed at 1121 cm-1 attributed CO32- ν1 symmetric stretching mode. A series of infrared bands at 1387, 1413, 1474 cm-1 are assigned to the CO32- ν3 antisymmetric stretching modes. The CO32- ν3 antisymmetric stretching vibrations are extremely weak in the Raman spectrum and are observed at 1404, 1451, 1490 and 1520 cm-1. A series of Raman bands at 708, 716, 728, 758 cm-1 are assigned to the CO32- ν2 in-plane bending mode. The Raman spectrum in the OH stretching region is characterised by bands at 3416, 3516 and 3447 cm-1. In the infrared spectrum a broad band is found at 2940 cm-1 assigned to water stretching vibrations. Infrared bands at 3430, 3446, 3511, 2648 and 3685 cm-1 are attributed to MgOH stretching modes.

Making use of theories about literacy and justice: teachers re-searching practice

This article considers teachers’ work as they grapple with theories in practice in the everyday worlds of their classroom. It argues that Bourdieu’s theory of practice and the concept of habitus may be useful in moving past theory/practice dichotomies. After establishing the historical context for teacher research in South Australia, the work of two school-based literacy educators with an overt social justice standpoint is explored. The complexity of teachers’ intellectual work and identity formation over time is outlined and implications for teacher education are discussed.