College, shared house, or home? The impact of living situation on university students’ drinking

University students are recognised as a heavy drinking group who are at risk of both short and long term harms from their alcohol consumption. This paper explores the social dynamics of drinking and the key differences between three core groups of university students – those who live at home, those living in college and those who live independently. We draw on a large scale survey of Australian university students on alcohol consumption and harm minimisation and extensive qualitative individual and focus group interviews with university students in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. Our data suggests that living at home supports safer drinking in comparison to the less regulated college context or living independently in shared households.

Program-level support for protecting an application from untrustworthy components

Many software applications extend their functionality by dynamically loading executable components into their allocated address space. Such components, exemplified by browser plugins and other software add-ons, not only enable reusability, but also promote programming simplicity, as they reside in the same address space as their host application, supporting easy sharing of complex data structures and pointers. However, such components are also often of unknown provenance and quality and may be riddled with accidental bugs or, in some cases, deliberately malicious code. Statistics show that such component failures account for a high percentage of software crashes and vulnerabilities. Enabling isolation of such fine-grained components is therefore necessary to increase the stability, security and resilience of computer programs. This thesis addresses this issue by showing how host applications can create isolation domains for individual components, while preserving the benefits of a single address space, via a new architecture for software isolation called LibVM. Towards this end, we define a specification which outlines the functional requirements for LibVM, identify the conditions under which these functional requirements can be met, define an abstract Application Programming Interface (API) that encompasses the general problem of isolating shared libraries, thus separating policy from mechanism, and prove its practicality with two concrete implementations based on hardware virtualization and system call interpositioning, respectively. The results demonstrate that hardware isolation minimises the difficulties encountered with software based approaches, while also reducing the size of the trusted computing base, thus increasing confidence in the solution’s correctness. This thesis concludes that, not only is it feasible to create such isolation domains for individual components, but that it should also be a fundamental operating system supported abstraction, which would lead to more stable and secure applications.

Distributing leadership and cultivating dialogue with collaborative EBIP

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the efficacy of collaborative evidence based information practice (EBIP) as an organizational effectiveness model. Shared leadership, appreciative inquiry and knowledge creation theoretical frameworks provide the foundation for change toward the implementation of a collaborative EBIP workplace model. Collaborative EBIP reiterates the importance of gathering the best available evidence, but it differs by shifting decision-making authority from "library or employer centric" to "user or employee centric". University of Colorado Denver Auraria Library Technical Services department created a collaborative EBIP environment by flattening workplace hierarchies, distributing problem solving and encouraging reflective dialogue. By doing so, participants are empowered to identify problems, create solutions, and become valued and respected leaders and followers. In an environment where library budgets are in jeopardy, recruitment opportunities are limited and the workplace is in constant flux, the Auraria Library case study offers an approach that maximizes the capability of the current workforce and promotes agile responsiveness to industry and organizational challenges. Collaborative EBIP is an organizational model demonstrating a process focusing first on the individual and moving to the collective to develop a responsive and high performing business unit, and in turn, organization.

Workplace information literacy : cultivation strategies for 'working smarter' in 21st century libraries

This paper presents a hybrid framework of Swedish cultural practices and Australian grounded theory for organizational development and suggests practical strategies for 'working smarter' in 21st Century libraries. Toward that end, reflective evidence-based practices are offered to incrementally build organizational capacity for asking good questions, selecting authoritative sources, evaluating multiple perspectives, organizing emerging insights, and communicating them to inform, educate, and influence. In addition, to ensure the robust information exchange necessary to collective workplace learning, leadership traits are proposed for ensuring inclusive communication, decision making, and planning processes. These findings emerge from action research projects conducted from 2003 to 2008 in two North American libraries.

The ancient gene C12orf29 : an exploration of its role in the chordate body plan

The sheep (Ovis aries) is commonly used as a large animal model in skeletal research. Although the sheep genome has been sequenced there are still only a limited number of annotated mRNA sequences in public databases. A complementary DNA (cDNA) library was constructed to provide a generic resource for further exploration of genes that are actively expressed in bone cells in sheep. It was anticipated that the cDNA library would provide molecular tools for further research into the process of fracture repair and bone homeostasis, and add to the existing body of knowledge. One of the hallmarks of cDNA libraries has been the identification of novel genes and in this library the full open reading frame of the gene C12orf29 was cloned and characterised. This gene codes for a protein of unknown function with a molecular weight of 37 kDa. A literature search showed that no previous studies had been conducted into the biological role of C12orf29, except for some bioinformatics studies that suggested a possible link with cancer. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that C12orf29 had an ancient pedigree with a homologous gene found in some bacterial taxa. This implied that the gene was present in the last common eukaryotic ancestor, thought to have existed more than 2 billion years ago. This notion was further supported by the fact that the gene is found in taxa belonging to the two major eukaryotic branches, bikonts and unikonts. In the bikont supergroup a C12orf29-like gene was found in the single celled protist Naegleria gruberi, whereas in the unikont supergroup, encompassing the metazoa, the gene is universal to all chordate and, therefore, vertebrate species. It appears to have been lost to the majority of cnidaria and protostomes taxa; however, C12orf29-like genes have been found in the cnidarian freshwater hydra and the protostome Pacific oyster. The experimental data indicate that C12orf29 has a structural role in skeletal development and tissue homeostasis, whereas in silico analysis of the human C12orf29 promoter region suggests that its expression is potentially under the control of the NOTCH, WNT and TGF- developmental pathways, as well SOX9 and BAPX1; pathways that are all heavily involved in skeletogenesis. Taken together, this investigation provides strong evidence that C12orf29 has a very important role in the chordate body plan, in early skeletal development, cartilage homeostasis, and also a possible link with spina bifida in humans.

The getting of wisdom : the future of PM university education in Australia

The dynamic and complex nature of project management (PM) in Australia provides exciting opportunities for universities to that are willing to actively engage with their corporate partners and other key stakeholders to develop program and course offerings that simultaneously address the needs of students, employers, and other stakeholders and further the current body of PM knowledge and research. This article identifies key challenges and opportunities for the future direction of PM university education. This draws on descriptions of successful program models, examining teaching on PM skills on generic business and engineering degrees, dedicated graduate masters programs in PM, doctoral research programs in PM, and forms of effective collaboration between industry and academia.

Valuing student and community voices in the university : action research as a framework for community service-learning

The Community Service-learning Lab (the Lab) was initiated as a university-wide service-learning experience at an Australian university. The Lab engages students, academics, and key community organisations in interdisciplinary action research projects to support student learning and to explore complex and ongoing problems nominated by the community partners. The current study uses feedback from the first offering of the Lab and focuses on exploring student experiences of the service learning project using an action research framework. Student reflections on this experience have revealed some positive outcomes of the Lab such as an appreciation for positive and strengths-based change. These outcomes are corroborated by collected reflections from community partners and academics. The students also identified challenges balancing the requirements for assessment and their goals to serve the community partner’s needs. This feedback has provided vital information for the academic team, highlighting the difficulties in balancing the agenda of the academic framework and the desire to give students authentic experiences.

Untangling the evidence : teacher librarians and evidence based practice

The research was a qualitative study investigating the lived experiences of teacher librarians as evidence based practitioners in Australian school libraries. It addressed how teacher librarians understood, applied and implemented evidence based practice, and investigated what these teacher librarians considered to constitute evidence. Two key critical findings of this research are that evidence based practice for teacher librarians is a holistic experience and evidence for teacher librarians can take many forms, including professional knowledge, observations, statistics, informal feedback and personal reflections. The study is significant to teacher librarians, library and information professionals, schools and school administrators, and the research field.

Plant structure and systematics research at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane

This article provides a general overview of some of the plant research being conducted by a number of researchers at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Brisbane. Details about student projects and research facilities have been limited to those of relevance to plant structure and systematics. Academics, technicians and research students involved in plant research are in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, mainly in the School of Earth, Environment and Biological Sciences (EEBS), with a few exceptions. Our offices and laboratories are housed in a number of different buildings at the Gardens Point campus (e.g., P, Q, R, S, M Blocks) and we have strong collaborative links with Queensland Herbarium (BRI) and Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens.

Towards university lectures' conceptions of student learning

A range of studies conducted since the late 1970s have sought to describe students' conceptions of learning, and more recently, teachers' conceptions of teaching. These studies, using what has come to be known as the phenomenographic approach, have identified conceptions of teaching, and conceptions of learning which have had a significant impact on the teaching-learning culture of higher education institutions in many parts of the world. The study reported here contributes to our understanding of student learning, describing it from the viewpoint of lectures from a range of disciplines. From the viewpoint of these lectures student learning was seen variously as: acquiring knowledge through the use of study skills; the absorption of new knowledge and being able to explain and apply it; the development of thinking skills and the ability to reason; developing the competencies of beginning professionals; changing personal attitudes, beliefs or behaviours in responding to different phenomena; and a participative pedagogic experience. The relationship between these conceptions and previously identified conceptions of teaching and learning is discussed.

Teaching end-user remote online searching

The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Library bas recently commenced teaching higher degree students to search online systems such as BRS, ORBIT and STN. The emphasis is on education rather than training. with students being required to familiarise themselves with system commands and database structures whilst receiving necessarily limited tutorial help. The teaching strategies used and problems encountered in the program are outlined. Student responses to the experience of learning to online search are discussed.