Prickly pear land : transnational networks in settler Australia

The story of prickly pear in Australia is usually told as a tale of triumphant scientific intervention into an environmental disaster. Instead, this unarticle considers it as a transnational network in order to better understand the myriad of elements that made this event so important. Through this methodology emerges the complex nature of prickly pear land that included people, places, ideas, rhetoric and objects that traveled from all over the world into settler Australia.

Turbulence in an inundated urban environment during a major flood : implications in terms of people evacuation and sediment deposition

Floods through inundated urban environments constitute a hazard to the population and infrastructure. A series of field measurements were performed in an inundated section of the City of Brisbane (Australia) during a major flood in January 2011. Using an acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV), detailed velocity and suspended sediment concentration measurements were conducted about the peak of the flood. The results are discussed with a focus on the safety of individuals in floodwaters and the sediment deposition during the flood recession. The force of the floodwaters in Gardens Point Road was deemed unsafe for individual evacuation. A comparison with past laboratory results suggested that previous recommendations could be inappropriate and unsafe in real flood flows.

Maiden, Joseph

Joseph Henry Maiden was born in London in 1859 and sailed for Australia in 1880, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He was an ardent Australian nationalist, and like many immigrants of this time, remained proud of his British heritage. His sweetheart, Eliza Jane Hammond, followed him to Australia in 1883. They married in Kew the day after she made port in Melbourne, and together in Sydney they raised five children. [1] During the first phase of his career Maiden presided over the Technological Museum of Sydney from 1882 to 1896. In the second phase, he was the director of the Sydney Botanic Gardens from 1896 to 1924. There he managed a whole complex of parks including the Domain,Centennial Park and the Governor's residences, a state nursery at Campbelltown and a scientific institution, the National Herbarium of New South Wales, devoted to botany. A short time after his retirement, he died at his home in Turramurra in 1925...

The Deleuze Spray, New York 1977 : an Interview with Sanford Kwinter, Professor of Architectural Theory and Criticism at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, on the Architectural Reception of Gilles Deleuze in America

So what do you want to know? I was in Paris between ‘75 and ‘78. But about half way through, Sylvère published the Anti-Oedipus issue of Semiotext(e) and, actually, that was for me one of the deciding events that made me decide to come to the United States, to come study at Columbia University. There appeared to be this little group working at Columbia working around these issues. In 1970, in Paris even, Deleuze was a cult – there was an incredibly small number of people following Deleuze... A transcript of my Interview with Kwinter about the Architectural Reception of Deleuze in America, which took place at Jerry’s,' Soho, New York, 15 January 2003. The transcript appeared as an Appendix at the back of my Masters Thesis undertaken at Yale School of Architecture, printed May 2003.

Cloud computing adoption in Australia : the benefits, risks and implications for accounting

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the state of cloud computing adoption in Australia. I specifically focus on the drivers, risks, and benefits of cloud computing from the perspective of IT experts and forensic accountants. I use thematic analysis of interview data to answer the research questions of the study. The findings suggest that cloud computing is increasingly gaining foothold in many sectors due to its advantages such as flexibility and the speed of deployment. However, security remains an issue and therefore its adoption is likely to be selective and phased. Of particular concern are the involvement of third parties and foreign jurisdictions, which in the event of damage may complicate litigation and forensic investigations. This is one of the first empirical studies that reports on cloud computing adoption and experiences in Australia.

David L. Rosenhan (1929–2012)

Presents an obituary for David L. Rosenhan (1929–2012). A distinguished psychologist and professor emeritus at Stanford University, Rosenhan died February 6, 2012, at the age of 82, after a long illness. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on November 22, 1929, he received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics (1951) from Yeshiva College and a master’s degree in economics (1953) and a doctorate in psychology (1958) from Columbia University. A professor of law and of psychology at Stanford University from 1971 until his retirement in 1998, Rosenhan was a pioneer in applying psychological methods to the practice of law, including the examination of expert witnesses, jury selection, and jury deliberation. A former president of the American Psychology–Law Society and of the American Board of Forensic Psychology, Rosenhan was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, of the American Psychological Association, and of the American Psychological Society. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty, he was a member of the faculties of Swarthmore College, Princeton University, Haverford College, and the University of Pennsylvania. He also served as a research psychologist at the Educational Testing Service. As generations of Stanford students can attest, David Rosenhan was a spellbinding lecturer who managed to convey the sense that he was speaking to each individual, no matter how large the group. To his graduate students, he was consistently encouraging and optimistic, always ready to share a joke or story, and gently encouraging of their creativity and progressive independence as researchers. The lessons he cared most about offering, in the classroom as in his research, were about human dignity and the need to confront abuse of power and human frailties.

Setting water quality objectives for the health of freshwater fish

An important responsibility of the Environment Protection Authority, Victoria, is to set objectives for levels of environmental contaminants. To support the development of environmental objectives for water quality, a need has been identified to understand the dual impacts of concentration and duration of a contaminant on biota in freshwater streams. For suspended solids contamination, information reported by Newcombe and Jensen [ North American Journal of Fisheries Management , 16(4):693--727, 1996] study of freshwater fish and the daily suspended solids data from the United States Geological Survey stream monitoring network is utilised. The study group was requested to examine both the utility of the Newcombe and Jensen and the USA data, as well as the formulation of a procedure for use by the Environment Protection Authority Victoria that takes concentration and duration of harmful episodes into account when assessing water quality. The extent to which the impact of a toxic event on fish health could be modelled deterministically was also considered. It was found that concentration and exposure duration were the main compounding factors on the severity of effects of suspended solids on freshwater fish. A protocol for assessing the cumulative effect on fish health and a simple deterministic model, based on the biology of gill harm and recovery, was proposed. References D. W. T. Au, C. A. Pollino, R. S. S Wu, P. K. S. Shin, S. T. F. Lau, and J. Y. M. Tang. Chronic effects of suspended solids on gill structure, osmoregulation, growth, and triiodothyronine in juvenile green grouper epinephelus coioides . Marine Ecology Press Series , 266:255--264, 2004. J.C. Bezdek, S.K. Chuah, and D. Leep. Generalized k-nearest neighbor rules. Fuzzy Sets and Systems , 18:237--26, 1986. E. T. Champagne, K. L. Bett-Garber, A. M. McClung, and C. Bergman. {Sensory characteristics of diverse rice cultivars as influenced by genetic and environmental factors}. Cereal Chem. , {81}:{237--243}, {2004}. S. G. Cheung and P. K. S. Shin. Size effects of suspended particles on gill damage in green-lipped mussel perna viridis. Marine Pollution Bulletin , 51(8--12):801--810, 2005. D. H. Evans. The fish gill: site of action and model for toxic effects of environmental pollutants. Environmental Health Perspectives , 71:44--58, 1987. G. C. Grigg. The failure of oxygen transport in a fish at low levels of ambient oxygen. Comp. Biochem. Physiol. , 29:1253--1257, 1969. G. Holmes, A. Donkin, and I.H. Witten. {Weka: A machine learning workbench}. In Proceedings of the Second Australia and New Zealand Conference on Intelligent Information Systems , volume {24}, pages {357--361}, {Brisbane, Australia}, {1994}. {IEEE Computer Society}. D. D. Macdonald and C. P. Newcombe. Utility of the stress index for predicting suspended sediment effects: response to comments. North American Journal of Fisheries Management , 13:873--876, 1993. C. P. Newcombe. Suspended sediment in aquatic ecosystems: ill effects as a function of concentration and duration of exposure. Technical report, British Columbia Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks, Habitat Protection branch, Victoria, 1994. C. P. Newcombe and J. O. T. Jensen. Channel suspended sediment and fisheries: A synthesis for quantitative assessment of risk and impact. North American Journal of Fisheries Management , 16(4):693--727, 1996. C. P. Newcombe and D. D. Macdonald. Effects of suspended sediments on aquatic ecosystems. North American Journal of Fisheries Management , 11(1):72--82, 1991. K. Schmidt-Nielsen. Scaling. Why is animal size so important? Cambridge University Press, NY, 1984. J. S. Schwartz, A. Simon, and L. Klimetz. Use of fish functional traits to associate in-stream suspended sediment transport metrics with biological impairment. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment , 179(1--4):347--369, 2011. E. Al Shaw and J. S. Richardson. Direct and indirect effects of sediment pulse duration on stream invertebrate assemb ages and rainbow trout ( Oncorhynchus mykiss ) growth and survival. Canadian Journal of Fish and Aquatic Science , 58:2213--2221, 2001. P. Tiwari and H. Hasegawa. {Demand for housing in Tokyo: A discrete choice analysis}. Regional Studies , {38}:{27--42}, {2004}. Y. Tramblay, A. Saint-Hilaire, T. B. M. J. Ouarda, F. Moatar, and B Hecht. Estimation of local extreme suspended sediment concentrations in california rivers. Science of the Total Environment , 408:4221--

Living City 2013 Workshop

Living City 2013 Workshop, as part of a school term’s design-based curriculum connected to the KGSC/QUT Design Excellence Program and run from 11 February – 1 May, 2013, was essentially a three-day place-based urban design immersion workshop program for 25 Year 11 Visual Art and Design Students and 2 Teachers from Kelvin Grove State College (KGSC) held at both Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Gardens Point Campus and The Edge, State Library of Queensland. Mentored by 4 design professionals, 2 tertiary design academics, 2 public artists, and 12 QUT tertiary design students, the workshop explored youth-inspired public space design solutions for the active Brisbane City Council redevelopment site of Queens Wharf Road precinct. As well as the face-to-face workshops, for Living City 2013, an interactive web environment was introduced to enable students to connect with each other and program mentors throughout the course of the program. The workshop, framed within notions of ecological, economic, social and cultural sustainability, aimed to raise awareness of the layered complexity and perspectives involved in the design of shared city spaces and to encourage young people to voice their own concerns as future citizens about the shape and direction of their city. The program commenced with an introductory student briefing by stakeholders and mentors at KGSC on 11 February, an introduction to site appraisal and site visit held at QUT and Queens Wharf Road on 20 February, and a follow up site analysis session on 6 March. Day 1 Workshop on April 17 at the Edge, State Library of Queensland, as part of the Design Minds partnership (http://designminds.org.au/kelvin-grove-state-college-excellence-in-art-design/), focused on mentoring team development of a concept design for a range of selected sites. Two workshops on April 22 and 23 at QUT, to develop these designs and presentation schemes, followed this. The workshop program culminated in a visual presentation of concept design ideas and discussion with a public audience in the Ideas Gallery on The Deck, King George Square during the Brisbane City Council City Centre Master Plan Ideas Fiesta on 1 May, 2013, as referenced in the Ideas Fiesta Wrap-up Report (http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/planning-building/planning-guidelines-tools/city-centre-master-plan/city-centre-master-plan-ideas-fiesta). Students were introduced to design methodology, team thinking strategies, the scope of design practices and professions, presentation skills and post-secondary pathways, while participating teachers acquired content and design learning strategies transferable in many other contexts. The program was fully documented on the Living City website (http://www.livingcity.net.au/LC2013x/index.html) and has been recognised by the Brisbane City Council Youth Strategy 2014-2019 as a best practice model for making Brisbane a well-designed, subtropical city.

Turbulence in an inundated urban environment during a major flood : implications in terms of people evacuation and sediment deposition

Floods through inundated urban environments constitute a hazard to the population and infrastructure. A series of field measurements were performed in an inundated section of the City of Brisbane (Australia) during a major flood in January 2011. Using an acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV), detailed velocity and suspended sediment concentration measurements were conducted about the peak of the flood. The results are discussed with a focus on the safety of individuals in floodwaters and the sediment deposition during the flood recession. The force of the floodwaters in Gardens Point Road was deemed unsafe for individual evacuation. A comparison with past laboratory results suggested that previous recommendations could be inappropriate and unsafe in real flood flows.

Using value-based partnerships to support community engaged learning : benefits, challenges, stakeholder perspectives

Increasingly, the not-for-profit sector, as an emerging contributor to the creative economy, is creating a context for engaging creative practitioners in developing solutions to complex problems, triggering a demand for skills and knowledge needed to address this complexity. Across the university and community contexts alternative models of engagement are emerging to support this dynamic. This paper presents a case study of a creative project in which a value-based approach is used to foster a collaborative partnership between community partners and a multidisciplinary team of final year Creative Industries students who in the course of the project developed a range of communication resources, including a social media campaign, an interactive game and a series of short films to support volunteer engagement and leadership initiatives. The paper considers the implications this values approach has for the design of service learning curriculum for multidisciplinary creative teams and the potential it has to support meaningful collaboration between creatives and the not-for-profit sector. It further explores how it impact on student and partner engagement, learning outcomes and the benefits for the partner organisation. The paper concludes that a value-based approach to university-community engagement has the potential to support and enable a greater degree of reciprocity, deeper engagement between stakeholders and greater relevance of the final outcome.

Correlates of objectively measured physical activity in preadolescent youth

Objective The purpose of this study was to identify the psychosocial and environmental correlates of objectively measured physical activity behavior in a diverse sample of sixth-grade students. Design Cross-sectional. Participants and Setting One hundred ninety-eight sixth-grade students from 4 public middle schools in Columbia, South Carolina. The study group was 52.0% female, 55.1% African-American, with a mean age of 11.4 +/- 0.6 years. Main Outcome Measures Time spent in moderate physical activity (MPA) and vigorous physical activity (VPA) was assessed using a uniaxial accelerometer (CSA WAM 7164) (Computer Science and Applications Inc., Shalimar, FL). Determinant variables included: age, gender, race/ethnicity (demographic); physical activity self-efficacy, social norms related to physical activity, and beliefs regarding physical activity outcomes (psychosocial); and perceived physical activity habits of parents and peers, involvement in community physical activity organizations, involvement in community-based sports programs, access to fitness/sporting equipment at home, and self-reported hours spent watching television or playing video games (environmental). Results For boys, physical activity self-efficacy, social norms related to physical activity, and involvement in community physical activity organizations were salient predictors of MPA and VPA. Among girls, only physical activity self-efficacy emerged as a clear predictor of objectively measured physical activity. Conclusions These findings are consistent with previous studies using self-reported physical activity and suggest that interventions to increase physical. activity in preadolescent youth should endeavor to boost physical activity self-efficacy by offering a wide selection of enjoyable, developmentally-appropriate physical activity options.

Translations of industry-based student learning and academic performances

We hypothesized that Industry based learning and teaching, especially through industry assigned student projects or training programs, is an integral part of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. In this paper we show that industry-based student training and experience increases students’ academic performances independent to the organizational parameters and contexts. The literature on industry-based student training focuses on employability and the industry dimension, and neglects in many ways the academic dimension. We observed that the association factors between academic attributes and contributions of industry-based student training are central and vital to the technological learning experiences. We explore international initiatives and statistics collected of student projects in two categories: Industry based learning performances and on campus performances. The data collected were correlated to five (5) universities in different industrialized countries, e.g., Australia N=545, Norway N=279, Germany N=74, France N=107 and Spain N=802 respectively. We analyzed industry-based student training along with company assigned student projects compared with in comparisons to campus performance. The data that suggests a strong correlation between industry-based student training per se and improved performance profiles or increasing motivation shows that industry-based student training increases student academic performance independent of organizational parameters and contexts. The programs we augmented were orthogonal to each other however, the trend of the students’ academic performances are identical. An isolated cohort for the reported countries that opposed our hypothesis warrants further investigation.