Responses of freshwater biota to rising salinity levels and implications for saline water management: a review

All of the plants and animals that make up freshwater aquatic communities are affected by salinity. Many taxa possess morphological, physiological and life-history characteristics that provide some capacity for tolerance, acclimatisation or avoidance. These characteristics impart a level of resilience to freshwater communities.     To maintain biodiversity in aquatic systems it is important to manage the rate, timing, pattern, frequency and duration of increases in salinity in terms of lethal and sublethal effects, sensitive life stages, the capacity of freshwater biota to acclimatise to salinity and long-term impacts on community structure.     We have limited understanding of the impacts of saline water management on species interactions, food-web structures and how elevated salinity levels affect the integrity of communities. Little is known about the effect of salinity on complex ecosystem processes involving microbes and microalgae, or the salinity thresholds that prevent semi-aquatic and terrestrial species from using aquatic resources. Compounding effects of salinity and other stressors are also poorly understood.    Our current understanding needs to be reinterpreted in a form that is accessible and useful for water managers. Because of their complexity, many of the remaining knowledge gaps can only be addressed through a multidisciplinary approach carried out in an adaptive management framework, utilising decision-making and ecological risk assessment tools.

Breeding biology, adult survival and territoriality of the white-browed treecreeper (climacteris affinis) in north-west Victoria, Australia

This is the first study to present empirical data describing the social organisation and breeding biology of the White-browed Treecreeper (Climacteris affinis). The species is typical of many small Australian passerines in that it has high annual survival (~80%), small clutches (mean = 1.95 ± 0.05), long breeding seasons (eggs laid August to November) and long incubation (17–18 days) and nestling periods (25–26 days), corrected for body weight. Reproductive effort is modified in response to variation in climatic conditions by adjusting the commencement of breeding and number of clutches laid per season, which is facilitated by an extended breeding season. White-browed Treecreepers occupied relatively large (mean = 8.4 ± 0.8 ha), all-purpose territories throughout the year. However, unlike many group territorial birds, territory size was not related to the number of occupants. The role of food limitation and climatic variability in relation to territory dispersion and life-history traits is explored. Facultative cooperative breeding was confirmed. Cooperative groups were formed through male philopatry, with usually only one, but up to three, male helpers present in a moderate fraction (35%) of breeding units. Thus, all species of Climacteris are now confirmed as facultative cooperatively breeding species, which provides further evidence for the aggregation of cooperative breeders at the generic level in mixed (i.e. cooperative and pair breeders) phylogenetic clades. In C. affinis, males may attain breeding positions through inheritance of their natal territory or by filling vacancies in nearby territories. Females obtained breeding positions by ‘floating’ as non-breeding residents in established territories, waiting for a vacancy to arise.

Methodological and conceptual issues in the search for a relationship between animal body-size distributions and benthic habitat architecture

Benthic ecologists have studied the distribution of animal body sizes because it is a form of ‘taxon-free’ classification that may be a useful metric for describing variation within and between ecological communities. In particular, the idea that the allometry of physiological and life-history traits may control species composition and relative abundances implies a functional link between body-size distributions and communities. The physical structure of aquatic habitats has often been cited as the mechanism by which habitat may determine body-size distributions in communities. However, further progress is hindered by a lack of theoretical clarity regarding the mechanisms that connect body size to the characteristics of ecological communities, leading to methods that may obscure interesting trends in body-size data. This review examines the methodological and conceptual issues hindering progress in the search for a relationship between animal body size and habitat architecture and suggests ways to resolve these issues. Problems are identified with current methods for the measurement of animal body size, the data and measures used to quantify body-size distributions and the methods used to identify patterns therein. Fundamentally, renewed emphasis on the mechanisms by which animal body sizes are influenced by habitat architecture is required to refine methodology and synthesise results from pattern-seeking and mechanistic studies.

The use and misuse of religious language: Zionism and the Palestinians

Every discipline which deals with the land question in Canaan-Palestine- Israel is afflicted by the problem of specialisation. The political scientist and historian usually discuss the issue of land in Israel purely in terms of interethnic and international relations, biblical scholars concentrate on the historical and archaeological question with virtually no reference to ethics, and scholars of human rights usually evade the question of God. What follows is an attempt, through theology and political history, to understand the history of the Israel-Palestine land question in a way which respects the complexity of the question. From a scrutiny of the language used in the Bible to the development of political Zionism from the late 19th century it is possible to see the way in which a secular movement mobilised the figurative language of religion into a literal 'title deed' to the land of Palestine signed by God.

There's no place like home : unhomely moments in three postcolonial picture books

One of the principal strands of postcolonial theory and critical practice is the interrogation of received versions of colonial history. This paper investigates the extent to which three contemporary picture books, Gavin Bishop's The House that Jack Built, John Marsden and Shaun Tan's The Rabbits, and Thomas King and William Kent Monkman's A Coyote Columbus Story, mobilise postcolonial strategies in their representations of place. In particular, it focuses on how postcolonial textuality unsettles and transgresses notions of "homeliness" in narratives involving the displacement of colonised and colonising peoples. As the shifting power relations of colonialism render unhomely what has previously been homely (especially for colonised peoples), so they involve a contrary move in which unhomely spaces are changed into simulacra of lost or abandoned homes. Drawing upon Walter Benjamin's formulation of materialist historiography, Homi Bhabha describes what he terms 'the unhomely moment' as that in which personal and psychic histories intersect with the violent dislocations of colonialism. This paper will argue that such unhomely moments shape the visual and verbal narratives of The House that Jack Built, The Rabbits and A Coyote Columbus Story, all of which deal with the trauma which occurs when cultures previously geographically and psychically distant are brought into close contact with each other. Written to and for children who are citizens of postcolonial cultures, these texts disclose the unease which persists in contemporary societies where colonial histories are rehearsed and revisioned. However, the paper will argue that the three texts position readers in quite different ways; for instance, while the verbal text of The Rabbits constructs an implied author capable of speaking for the colonised and offering readers a very circumscribed subject position, Thomas King's narrative in A Coyote Columbus Story engages in a dialogic playfulness which allows readers to adopt a variety of reading positions. For each text, some key representations of unhomely moments will be considered, and the paper will explore the extent to which they construct forms of temporality which negotiate the space between history and its significances within crosscultural and intercultural formations.

Industrial relations and catholic social doctrine

This paper reviews the key principles of Catholic Social thought as they pertain to relations between labour and capital. It is argued that such principles are foundational for the conduct of ethical relations and the exercise of moral values in the workplace, and are recognisable in the right of workers to employment and just compensation for their labours, in the duty of employers to provide safe and engaging work for those in their charge, and in the obligation of the state to dispense wise governance in a manner that guarantees the welfare and security of all its citizens. It is argued that these principles have had de facto airing in Australian political and economic history, and that they might be usefully drawn upon again to protect the rights of workers under the current ascendency of neo-liberal policy solutions.

Public finance and income redistribution in interwar Australia: towards a class analysis

In this paper I focus on a neglected aspect of Australian political history, the extent to which Australian governments actually redistributed income. The German sociologist Rudolf Goldscheid argued that 'the budget is the skeleton of the state stripped of all misleading ideologies'. In Australia a party that claimed to represent lower income earners, the Labor Party, was a major political force, but did Labor actually make a difference to the distribution of income across social classes, or did Labor's rhetoric of equity merely serve to incorporate workers into the capitalist system? A quantitative approach to the political history of labour may enable us to escape both nostalgia for old labourism (which the Howard years have encouraged) and a simple and undifferentiated rejection of labourism as a reformist agent of social integration.

This paper incorporates some material from a 2005 paper that examined overall expenditure patterns and taxation patterns across the states and Commonwealth from 1910 to 1940 but it goes beyond the aggregate approach of this paper to consider the extent which the varying patterns of taxation and public expenditure across Australia impacted on different social classes during the 1930s. It is very much a preliminary analysis based on existing compilations of taxation statistics. It is a static analysis and does not consider if nominally redistributive taxation and expenditure patterns might be rendered ineffective by consequent interstate migration.

The Politics of Indonesia

"Completely revised and updated, this new edition of The Politics of Indonesia is an engaging and accessible account of the main political issues and challenges confronting Indonesia as it moves forward into the twenty-first century. Since the forced resignation of Suharto as president in 1998, Indonesia has seemingly lurched from one crisis to the next: the country's first democratically elected president, Abdurrahman Wahid was ejected from government; the army has become politically active again; and militant Islamic politics and a chauvinistic nationalism have emerged as significant forces on the political landscape. Now, with the ascension of Megawati Sukarnoputri to the presidency, Damien Kingsbury looks in detail at her style of government and the fundamental issues and concerns facing Indonesia.
The biggest question facing this heterogeneous nation seems to be whether the Republic of Indonesia will be able to hold together or whether this unitary state was just a brief moment in post-colonial history." "This book is a valuable resource for students of Asian studies, politics, and related disciplines. Likewise, it remains essential reading for those wishing to travel or do business in Indonesia and for anyone living in the strategic shadow of this important, diverse, and fragile country."

Exhausting dance : performance and the politics of movement, by Andre Lepecki

The article reviews the book "Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement," by Andre Lepecki.

Application of radial return mapping algorithm for finite strain elastoplasticity in a hybrid finite element and particle-in-cell model

The radial return mapping algorithm within the computational context of a hybrid Finite Element and Particle-In-Cell (FE/PIC) method is constructed to allow a fluid flow FE/PIC code to be applied solid mechanic problems with large displacements and large deformations. The FE/PIC method retains the robustness of an Eulerian mesh and enables tracking of material deformation by a set of Lagrangian particles or material points. In the FE/PIC approach the particle velocities are interpolated from nodal velocities and then the particle position is updated using a suitable integration scheme, such as the 4th order Runge-Kutta scheme[1]. The strain increments are obtained from gradients of the nodal velocities at the material point positions, which are then used to evaluate the stress increment and update history variables. To obtain the stress increment from the strain increment, the nonlinear constitutive equations are solved in an incremental iterative integration scheme based on a radial return mapping algorithm[2]. A plane stress extension of a rectangular shape J2 elastoplastic material with isotropic, kinematic and combined hardening is performed as an example and for validation of the enhanced FE/PIC method. It is shown that the method is suitable for analysis of problems in crystal plasticity and metal forming. The method is specifically suitable for simulation of neighbouring microstructural phases with different constitutive equations in a multiscale material modelling framework.

Public relations, sophistry and the rhetoric of democracy

The intention of this paper is to explain the activities of public relations in terms of rhetorical theory and the history of sophistry. There is a burgeoning field of study in the US which is incorporating much cultural and communication theory into both historical and contemporary perspectives on these two ancient arts. Consequently, an examination of the purposive communication activities of public relations offers an opportunity to involve semiotics as a central concept for analysing the creation and maintenance of democratic thought and institutions. This paper highlights Peircean semiotics in this respect and suggests the relevance of Peirce's notion of the 'Pragmatic Maxim' and his use of the concept of 'habit' in terms of how public relations might be said to 'cast' the quality of the democracy which we experience.

The ultrasound appearance of the patellar tendon attachment to the tibia in young athletes is conditional on gender and pubertal stage

This cross-sectional study investigated the imaging appearance of the previous termpatellarnext term tendon attachment to the tibia in young male and female tennis players of different ages and pubertal status. Forty-four competitive young players, who had been playing tennis at least for 2 years, were recruited from a tennis school and local tennis clubs. All subjects had bilateral ultrasound imaging of the previous termpatellarnext term tendon attachment to the tibia. Standard anthropometric measurements, pubertal status and injury history were recorded. Ultrasound appearance of the previous termpatellarnext term tendon attachment was categorised into three stages: cartilage attachment, insertional cartilage and mature attachment. Cartilage attachment was more prevalent in boys (32%) and extended further into puberty (until Tanner stage 4) compared to girls (6% and Tanner stage 1). Tendons with Osgood–Schlatter Disease symptoms (n = 3) did not have a cartilage attachment. Imaging appearance commonly seen in young active athletes, consistent with a clinical diagnosis of OSD, was more common in boys and in the pre- and peri-pubertal stages.