Creative industries in China : art, design and media

Creative industries in China provides a fresh account of China’s emerging commercial cultural sector. The author shows how developments in Chinese art, design and media industries are reflected in policy, in market activity, and grassroots participation. Never has the attraction of being a media producer, an artist, or a designer in China been so enticing. National and regional governments offer financial incentives; consumption of cultural goods and services have increased; creative workers from Europe, North America and Asia are moving to Chinese cities; culture is increasingly positioned as a pillar industry. But what does this mean for our understanding of Chinese society? Can culture be industrialised following the low-cost model of China’s manufacturing economy. Is the national government really committed to social liberalisation? This engaging book is a valuable resource for students and scholars interested in social change in China. It draws on leading Chinese scholarship together with insights from global media studies, economic geography and cultural studies.

Are insect frugivores always plant pests? The impact of fruit fly (Diptera: Tephritidae) larvae on host plant fitness

Herbivory is generally regarded as negatively impacting on host plant fitness. Frugivorous insects, which feed directly on plant reproductive tissues, are predicted to be particularly damaging to hosts. We tested this prediction with the fruit fly, Bactrocera tryoni, by recording the impact of larval feeding on two direct (seed number and germination) and two indirect (fruit decay rate and attraction/deterrence of vertebrate frugivores) measures of host plant fitness. Experiments were done in the laboratory, glasshouse and tropical rainforest. We found no negative impact of larval feeding on seed number or germination for three test plants: tomato, capsicum and eggplant. Further, larval feeding accelerated the initiation of decay and increased the final level of fruit decay in tomatoes, apples, pawpaw and pear, a result considered to be beneficial to the fruit. In rainforest studies, native rodents preferred infested apple and pears compared to uninfested control fruit; however, there were no differences observed between treatments for tomato and pawpaw. For our study fruits, these results demonstrate that fruit fly larval infestation has neutral or beneficial impacts on the host plant, an outcome which may be largely influenced by the physical properties of the host. These results may contribute to explaining why fruit flies have not evolved the same level of host specialization generally observed for other herbivore groups.

Realizing 'four comforts' in the urban fringe : the case of White Horse Lake Eco-creative City Project, Hangzhou, China

This article examines a cultural and creative industries park project – the White Horse Lake Ecocreative City on land outside the urban centre of Hangzhou, China, which uses an imaginary rural lifestyle as its key attraction. By analysing government policies and development plans, and through interviews with initiators, managers and creative practitioners, the article first assesses the geographical position, that is, the impact of locality with regard to both hard and soft infrastructure of the project; it then examines the synergies and tensions embedded in the strategic goals, that is, to build the right city for ‘four comforts’ (siyi, 四宜) – for residence, for business, for travel and for culture. The article concludes that Chinese-style cultural conversion remains locked in a top-down ideological framework, one that rural residents and the new ‘creative class’ are expected to respect.

Host location behaviour in the desert caterpillar, Heliothis punctifera

The host location behaviour of foraging caterpillars has received little attention, despite the wealth of theoretical and empirical studies that have been directed at this behavioural trait in adult Lepidoptera. Here, we study caterpillars of the moth Heliothis punctifera Walker (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), which inhabits the arid inland desert areas of Australia. Caterpillars of this species consume many flowerheads before completing development and can be observed moving across the sand in search of new hosts. Consequently, if host location behaviour favours attraction to certain plant species, it might be expected to influence the distribution and abundance of caterpillars in the field. We present field data showing that H. punctifera caterpillars are unevenly distributed throughout mixed patches of two of its host species, with a higher abundance on Senecio gregorii F. Muell., the annual yellow top, compared to Myriocephalus stuartii (F. Muell. & Sond.) Benth., the poached egg daisy (both Asteraceae). Using laboratory studies, we test whether this distribution may, in part, be due to host location behaviour of caterpillars. Our results show that caterpillars exhibit a preference for locating S. gregorii in their pre- and post-contact foraging behaviour. In addition, our results provide evidence that feeding history plays a role in host location behaviour in this insect. We propose that key features of the desert environment and the ecology of H. punctifera would favour adaptations to host location behaviour by immatures.

Footprints to pathways : reconciliation action planning in industry to sustain Indigenous employment in Queensland

This paper provides an introductory discussion to a study focusing on industry Reconciliation Action Plans (RAP) and sustaining Indigenous employment in Queensland. Indigenous people continue to experience deep and persistent disadvantage in employment, which limits their life prospects (McLachlan, Gilgillan & Gordon, 2013). A major contributing factor to this detriment is irregular employment and or unemployment. A reasonable standard of living has been found to be determined by access to economic resources such as income and wealth. Denial of this access, denies access to income streams, social status, and engagement in meaningful activities. Hence, job loss and joblessness are triggers of disadvantage (McLachlan, et al., 2013). For young Indigenous people, lack of access has lasting effects particularly if they have multiple characteristics that place them at risk of disadvantage. The project aims to develop knowledge and understanding of Industry RAPs mediate employment opportunities for Indigenous people and how young Indigenous people conceive of their employment options and the processes by which employers can best support Indigenous people. It adopts two theoretical frameworks to investigate the aim of the study : (1) Lave and Wenger’s (1991) theory of communities of practice and, (2) Sen’s (1993) capability approach which provides a structure for examining individual well-being in the context of societal inequality. This paper discusses the first research question of the study: What are Industry Reconciliation Action Plans? What is included in RAPs? Why do Industries develop RAPs? How do RAPs attract, recruit, retain, and tenure Indigenous people? The project’s significance rests with its focus on Industry, employers, policies and practices that aid the attraction and retention of Indigenous people in employment.

Detouring to Grafton : the Sydney Botanic Gardens and the making of an Australian urban aesthetic

For the last seventy-five years Grafton has celebrated the Jacaranda Festival in late October. The festival commences in the town square with the crowning of the Jacaranda Queen and ends a week later with a parade through the town. The event is now a major regional tourist attraction that aims to bring locals and visitors together to celebrate everything purple. During this week one can attend the jacaranda children's party, the jacaranda maypole dancing, the jacaranda choral service or the jacaranda organ recital. Local businesses are encouraged to compete in the decorated window displays competition and everyone can join in the procession. The festival pays homage to the extraordinary display of beautiful jacaranda blooms which carpet the city during this time. The festival was inaugurated in 1935 when the slow growing jacarandas planted in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were coming to maturity...

The role of the Eph and ephrin proteins in prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed malignancy and the second leading cause of cancer related deaths in Australian men. Treatment in the early stages of the disease involves surgery, radiation and/or hormone therapy. However, in late stages of the disease these treatments are no longer effective and only palliative care is available. Therefore, there is a focus on exploration of novel therapies to increase survival and treatment efficacy. Advanced prostate cancer is characterised by bone or other distant metastasis. Spreading of the primary tumour to a secondary location is a complex process requiring an initial loss in cell-cell adhesion followed by increased cell migration and invasion. One gene family that has been known to affect cell-to-cell contact in other model systems are the Eph receptor tyrosine kinases. They are the largest family of receptor tyrosine kinases made up of 14 vertebrate Eph receptors that bind to nine cell membrane bound ephrin ligands. Eph-ephrin interaction is crucial in regulating cell behaviour in developmental processes and it is now thought that the underlying mechanisms involved in development may also be involved in cancer. Aberrant expression has been reported in many human malignancies including prostate cancer. Furthermore, expression has been linked with metastasis and poor prognosis in other tumour models. This study explores the potential role of the Eph receptor family in prostate cancer, in particular the roles of EphA2, EphA3 and ephrin-A5. Gene expression profiles were established for the Eph family in a series of prostate cancer cell lines using quantitative real time RT-PCR. A smaller subset of the most prominently expressed genes was chosen to screen a cohort of clinical samples. Elevated levels of EphA2, EphA3 and their ligands, ephrin-A1 and ephrin-A5 were observed in individual cell lines. Interestingly high EphA3 expression was observed in the androgen responsive cell lines while EphA2 was more prominent in the androgen independent cell lines. However, studies using 5-dihydrotestosterone suggest that EphA3 expression in not regulated by androgen. Cells expressing EphA2 showed a greater ability for migration and invasion while cells expressing EphA3 showed poor migration and invasion. Forced expression of EphA2 in the LNCaP cell line resulted in a more invasive phenotype while forced expression of EphA3 in the PC-3 cell line suggests a possible negative effect for EphA3 on cell migration and invasion. Cell signalling studies show activation of EphA2 decreases activity of proteins thought to be involved in pathways regulating cell movement including Akt, Src and FAK. Changes to the activation status of Rho family members, including RhoA and Rac1, associated with reorganisation of the actin cytoskeleton, an important part of cell migration was also observed. As a result, activation of EphA2 in PC-3 cells resulted in a less invasive phenotype. A novel finding in this study was the discovery of a combination of two EphA2 Mabs able to activate EphA2. Preliminary results show a potential for this antibody combination to reduce prostate cancer invasion in vitro. A unique aspect of Eph-ephrin interaction is the resulting bi-directional signalling that occurs through both the receptor and ligand. In this study a potential role for ephrin-A5 mediated signalling in prostate cancer was observed. LNCaP cells express high levels of EphA3 and its high affinity ligand ephrin-A5. In stripe assays, used to study guidance cues, LNCaP cells show strong attraction/migration to EphA3-Fc stripes but not ephrin-A5-Fc stripes suggesting ephrin-A5 mediated reverse cell signalling is involved. Knockdown of ephrin-A5 using shRNA resulted in a decrease in attraction/migration to EphA3-Fc stripes. Furthermore a reduction in proliferation was also observed in vitro. A subcutaneous xenograft model using ephrin-A5 shRNA cells versus controls showed a decrease in tumour formation. This study demonstrates a difference in EphA2 and EphA3 function in prostate cancer migration/invasion and a potential role for ephrin-A5 in prostate cancer cell adhesion and growth.

Teachers' motivations for working in rural schools

This paper reports on the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data concerning Australian teachers’ motivations for taking up, remaining in, or leaving teaching positions in rural and regional schools. The data were collected from teachers (n = 2940) as part of the SiMERR National Survey, though the results of the qualitative data analysis were not published with the survey report in 2006. The teachers’ comments provide additional insight into their career decisions, complementing the quantitative findings. Content and frequency analyses of the teachers’ comments reveal individual and collective priorities which together with the statistical evidence can be used to inform policies aimed at addressing the staffing needs of rural schools.

Attracting and retaining specialist teachers and non-teaching professionals in Queensland secondary schools : a report to the Queensland Department of Education and Training

This report provides the Queensland Department of Education and Training (DET) with independent evidence based data to enable the identification of barriers and enablers to effective attraction and retention of suitably qualified people to specialist teaching and non‐teaching roles in Queensland secondary schools. The scope of this report is to consider the strategic imperatives, trends, and drivers as they apply to the recruitment and retention of specialised teachers and non‐teaching professionals. The research was specifically designed to inform DET on innovative and novel strategies to recruit and retain staff within Education Queensland in areas specifically identified as at risk of experiencing shortages in the near future. Those areas considered to be at risk of experiencing shortages included: • Teaching principals • Specialist teachers in mathematics, science, industrial technology and design, and special education • Non‐teaching professional roles, such as speech pathologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and registered nurses providing services in schools to students with special needs.

Competition Hertz : the culture and practice of car audio competitions

The present paper explores extreme car audio systems and the culture and practices that surround car audio competitions. I begin by examining whether, and how, car audio can be thought of as a 'music scene' and in what ways the culture and practice of car audio may fit within post-subcultural discourses. Following this, I offer a description of car audio competitions, revealing some of the practices that define this aspect of car audio scenes. In particular, I concentrate on sound pressure level (SPL) competitions and some of the interesting aspects of the SPL scene. Finally, I briefly examine how the powerful effects (and affects) of bass frequencies are an important part of the attraction of loud car audio systems and how car audio systems contribute to the territorializing of urban spaces.

Molecular dynamics simulation of mechanical behavior of osteopontin-hydroxyapatite interfaces

Bone is characterized with an optimized combination of high stiffness and toughness. The understanding of bone nanomechanics is critical to the development of new artificial biological materials with unique properties. In this work, the mechanical characteristics of the interfaces between osteopontin (OPN, a noncollagenous protein in extrafibrillar protein matrix) and hydroxyapatite (HA, a mineral nanoplatelet in mineralized collagen fibrils) were investigated using molecular dynamics method. We found that the interfacial mechanical behaviour is governed by the electrostatic attraction between acidic amino acid residues in OPN and calcium in HA. Higher energy dissipation is associated with the OPN peptides with a higher number of acidic amino acid residues. When loading in the interface direction, new bonds between some acidic residues and HA surface are formed, resulting in a stick-slip type motion of OPN peptide on the HA surface and high interfacial energy dissipation. The formation of new bonds during loading is considered to be a key mechanism responsible for high fracture resistance observed in bone and other biological materials.

Effect of trash on the coagulation and flocculation of sugarcane juice

The processing of juice expressed from whole green sugarcane crop (stalk and trash) leads to poor clarification performance, reduced sugar yield and poor raw sugar quality. The cause of these adverse effects is linked to the disproportionate contribution of impurities from the trash component of the crop. This paper reports on the zeta (ζ) potential, average size distribution (d50) and fractal dimension (Df) of limed juice particles derived from various juice types using laser diffraction and dynamic light scattering techniques. The influence of non-sucrose impurities on the interactive energy contributions between sugarcane juice particles was examined on the basis of Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek (DLVO) theory. Results from these investigations have provided evidence (in terms of particle stability) on why juice particles derived from whole green sugarcane crop are relatively difficult to coagulate (and flocculate). The presence of trash reduces the van der Waals forces of attraction between particles, thereby reducing coagulation and flocculation processes. It is anticipated that further fundamental work will lead to strategies that could be adopted for clarifying juices expressed from whole green sugarcane crop.

Effect of trash on the coagulation and flocculation of sugarcane juice

The processing of juice expressed from whole green sugarcane crop (stalk and trash) leads to poor clarification performance, reduced sugar yield and poor raw sugar quality. The cause of these adverse effects is linked to the disproportionate contribution of impurities from the trash component of the crop. This paper reports on the zeta (?) potential, average size distribution (d50) and fractal dimension (Df) of limed juice particles derived from various juice types using laser diffraction and dynamic light scattering techniques. The influence of non-sucrose impurities on the interactive energy contributions between sugarcane juice particles was examined on the basis of Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek (DLVO) theory. Results from these investigations have provided evidence (in terms of particle stability) on why juice particles derived from whole green sugarcane crop are relatively difficult to coagulate (and flocculate). The presence of trash reduces the van der Waals forces of attraction between particles, thereby reducing coagulation and flocculation processes. It is anticipated that further fundamental work will lead to strategies that could be adopted for clarifying juices expressed from whole green sugarcane crop.

Evaluating a model of parental influence on youth physical activity

Objective To test a conceptual model linking parental physical activity orientations, parental support for physical activity, and children's self-efficacy perceptions with physical activity participation. Participants and setting The sample consisted of 380 students in grades 7 through 12 (mean age, 14.0±1.6 years) and their parents. Data collection took place during the fall of 1996. Main outcome measures Parents completed a questionnaire assessing their physical activity habits, enjoyment of physical activity, beliefs regarding the importance of physical activity, and supportive behaviors for their child's physical activity. Students completed a 46-item inventory assessing physical activity during the previous 7 days and a 5-item physical activity self-efficacy scale. The model was tested via observed variable path analysis using structural equation modeling techniques (AMOS 4.0). Results An initial model, in which parent physical activity orientations predicted child physical activity via parental support and child self-efficacy, did not provide an acceptable fit to the data. Inclusion of a direct path from parental support to child physical activity and deletion of a nonsignificant path from parental physical activity to child physical activity significantly improved model fit. Standardized path coefficients for the revised model ranged from 0.17 to 0.24, and all were significant at the p<0.0001 level. Conclusions Parental support was an important correlate of youth physical activity, acting directly or indirectly through its influence on self-efficacy. Physical activity interventions targeted at youth should include and evaluate the efficacy of individual-level and community-level strategies to increase parents’ capacity to provide instrumental and motivational support for their children's physical activity.

A coupled SPH-DEM model for micro-scale structural deformations of plant cells during drying

A single plant cell was modeled with smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and a discrete element method (DEM) to study the basic micromechanics that govern the cellular structural deformations during drying. This two-dimensional particle-based model consists of two components: a cell fluid model and a cell wall model. The cell fluid was approximated to a highly viscous Newtonian fluid and modeled with SPH. The cell wall was treated as a stiff semi-permeable solid membrane with visco-elastic properties and modeled as a neo-Hookean solid material using a DEM. Compared to existing meshfree particle-based plant cell models, we have specifically introduced cell wall–fluid attraction forces and cell wall bending stiffness effects to address the critical shrinkage characteristics of the plant cells during drying. Also, a moisture domain-based novel approach was used to simulate drying mechanisms within the particle scheme. The model performance was found to be mainly influenced by the particle resolution, initial gap between the outermost fluid particles and wall particles and number of particles in the SPH influence domain. A higher order smoothing kernel was used with adaptive smoothing length to improve the stability and accuracy of the model. Cell deformations at different states of cell dryness were qualitatively and quantitatively compared with microscopic experimental findings on apple cells and a fairly good agreement was observed with some exceptions. The wall–fluid attraction forces and cell wall bending stiffness were found to be significantly improving the model predictions. A detailed sensitivity analysis was also done to further investigate the influence of wall–fluid attraction forces, cell wall bending stiffness, cell wall stiffness and the particle resolution. This novel meshfree based modeling approach is highly applicable for cellular level deformation studies of plant food materials during drying, which characterize large deformations.