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There is an academic acceptance that doctoral studies are a complex, multifaceted endeavour bound with the differing, emerging and contrasting identities of the students who undertake them. This article explores such journeys in the context of one of the most disruptive events to hit the higher educational sector worldwide: COVID-19. The study utilises data collected via an online forum established to collectively explore the challenges, the opportunities and the tensions in the lives of 12 students enrolled in a doctoral degree in an Australian higher education institution. Results indicate that the journey of such students pre-COVID-19 was characterised by a sense of liminality, agency and journey. COVID-19 exacerbated such feelings. The conclusion points to a need to enhance spaces of agency in the graduate research experience to reflect the multidimensionality of students' lives.

This research engaged with how secondary schools in Christchurch framed sustainability through web based interfaces. The key focus of the research was how schools are engaging students in sustainability through their web-site messaging. While some research has been done around whole-school approaches to sustainability, no research has been done around schools engaging students through their web-based sustainability material. This article is part of a wider project involving a series of case studies which sought to understand more about how to engage youth in sustainable practices. A qualitative case study aims to describe the topic in detail and in context (Yin, 2009). The benefit of gathering varied evidence from multiple cases, allows for cross-case comparison and greater generalisation. From these cases the team identified four key themes which underpinned sustainability: a future focus; diversity/inclusiveness; community; and environment. The findings indicated that while there was little strategic framing, a bottom-up approach which allowed staff, students and the community to initiate a range of projects was a successful model. This appears to increase the engagement and commitment in schools and allows local communities to address local problems rather than trying to adapt to a centralised or over-arching strategic plan which may be less able to respond quickly and spontaneously to local issues.

As many cultural groups in Western societies have become disaffected with mainstream sports cultures and their logics of practice, sociologists of sport and physical culture have turned their attention to the existential benefits of play and games. There is growing interest in revisiting and exploring the classic theories of play in society, including those of Roger Caillois. The author considers the increasingly popular practice of fell running among a group of enthusiasts in the United Kingdom as an activity that playfully embraces and celebrates the voluptuous panic of "ilinx" activities. He argues that fell running is not a pure form of ilinx as defined by Caillois but that the sport's willful--and highly pleasurable--disruption of the mind and body through vertigo and panic fits Caillois's description of the benefits of play and games. Using ethnographic data about fell runners collected during two years in the United Kingdom, the author suggests that they make existential connections with time, space, and the elements through the voluptuous panic and animal mimicry described by Caillois and others.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors which enhance transformational learning in adult learning spaces for people experiencing cultural marginalisation. Design/methodology/approach: This paper reports on a study which compared the transformational experiences of long-term unemployed migrants within two very different programs in Melbourne, Australia. One was an adult refugee mentoring programme run by a non-government organisation, the other was set in the social space of the contemporary adult learning classroom. A theoretical framework constructed around understandings of social and dialogical learning informed the method of data collection, based on one-to-one interviews, observation and personal reflection. Findings: Findings revealed similarities across the two case study sites in terms of the cultural, social as well as functional challenges facing learners and the desire of teachers and mentors to act on these challenges. A recourse to human values of caring and sensitivity supported meaningful learning spaces. Transformation was limited, however, within an institutional agenda which highlighted individual values of competency above the aspirations of learners and their sense of identity. Research limitations/implications: This research focuses on only two of the many approaches to adult learning. Nevertheless, as the author contends, they collectively reveal the limitations of focusing on employability skills and a competency-based curriculum in the lives of marginalised learners. Originality/value: The paper draws attention to the concept of transformation and how it may be supported even in the adult education classroom framed by the neo-liberal agenda of economic rationalism.

Ostensibly, the orientation towards learning outcomes in adult English language and literacy delivery ensures that the focus is on standardised skill development and knowledge acquisition of students. Such measureable development is seen as foundational to broader employability skills and job readiness. It is an agenda however which ignores the socio-cultural differences of learners and their aspirations of integration with mainstream society. It also ignores the transformational potential of the classroom and the dialogical interactions between all class members to act as catalysing agents for change. Based on a case study design and a conceptual framework anchored in dialogical theory, this paper explores the social space of the contemporary adult learning classroom and its potential to act on the socio-cultural confidence of learners. It shows that the classroom is a space of multiple stakeholders and diverse tensions. Through generating a shared ethos, teachers can enhance both dialogue and mutual learning. Opportunities for student transformation are hindered however by a standardised curriculum which fails to hear the aspirations of learners and management models which prioritise their own needs.

In the pursuit of understanding declining levels of participation from scholastic Health and Physical Education (HPE), ethnographic research has been increasingly utilised as a tool to explore the intersubjective and intrasubjective meaning-making processes that concurrently invite or dissuade participation. Despite the ostensible epistemological benefits of deploying ethnographic research as a vehicle for better understanding contextual HPE (dis)engagement processes and meanings, a critical methodological discussion of the actual implementation and positionality of these methods is largely absent in the extant literature. Reflecting on an ethnographic study conducted with adolescent boys at a Canadian elementary school, this paper provides HPE ethnographers with a series of methodological deliberations, and reflexive points of departure for consideration in the design and implementation of ethnographic research. Specifically, this paper elucidates the process of rapport building with teachers/students, the omnipresent tensions, ethical dilemmas and triumphs that can emerge during ethnography, and the various socio-contextual interview factors that can influence data generation.

Over the past 10 years, sociologists have attended to the impacts of the Internet on youth subcultural coalescence, display, identity, and resistance. In this article, the authors develop a critique of this body of work, describing how existing research places undue emphasis on young people's experiences either online or offline and how a lack of consideration has been given to the ways that subcultural expressions are continuous across the apparent "virtual-real" divide. With the aim of addressing some of these concerns, the authors draw on ethnographic case studies of "Rave" and "Straightedge" to explore the impact of the two realities (i.e., online and offline realities) on understandings of subcultural experience in these youth formations and articulate how the theoretical split between the virtual and real in cyber-subcultural research does not accurately capture the lived experiences or identity negotiations of these youth.

A common network security approach is to create a De‐Militarized Zone (DMZ) comprising two layers of network defense. The DMZ structure provides an extra layer of security between the sensitive information in a network (e.g., research and development files) and the component of the network that must interface with the general internet (e.g., the mail server). We consider a cyber‐attack on a DMZ network where both attacker and defender have limited resources and capabilities to attack and defend, respectively. We study two optimization problems and one game‐theoretic problem. Given that the attacker (defender) knows the potential capabilities of the defender (attacker) in the two layers, we obtain the optimal allocation of resources for the attacker (defender). The two‐optimization problems are not symmetrical. Absent any knowledge regarding the allocation of the adversary's resources, we solve a game‐theoretic problem and obtain some operational insights regarding the effect of combat (e.g., cyber) capabilities and their optimal allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers input and advice to students, parents, and professionals--faculty and counselors--in connection with the so-called millennials, young students entering university since year 2000. Students must recognize the change in the academy. They must be prepared for large first-year classes in which everyone enters as an A student. However, there will be a distribution after the first exam, and most likely, only 15% of students will achieve a grade of A. The primary instructional style is the lecture and group work may not be part of the course. Students also need to recognize that strategies such as cramming and memorizing are unlikely to produce good results. Students will be expected to do a fair amount of work on their own such as reading texts or preparing study notes. On average, students should be prepared to spend nine to twelve hours per week on each course, in addition to class time. The faculty should recognize that students are entering first year with a high degree of anxiety. They want to do well but may not have the requisite study skills. Hold organized review sessions and direct students to learning skills workshops. If possible, incorporate some group work into the course. (Contains 1 note and 1 table.)

We formulate and solve an optimization problem in which a terrorist is attempting to drive a nuclear weapon toward a city center, but needs to travel through an array of imperfect neutron radiation sensors that form a wall around the periphery of the city. A fleet of interdiction vehicles are available to chase, and attempt to interdict, vehicles that set off a sensor alarm. In our model, the government chooses the thickness (in terms of number of sensors) of the radiation wall, the neutron threshold in the sensors, and the number of interdiction vehicles to minimize the expected damage inflicted by a terrorist, subject to a budget constraint on sensors and interdiction vehicles. The terrorist observes the wall thickness and at each node he updates his likelihood of passing through a sensor without triggering an alarm and decides whether to proceed through the sensor or stop and detonate the bomb. Our results suggest that for an annual cost ranging from several million dollars to several tens of millions of dollars, depending upon the city's roadway topology, a single layer of sensors placed tens of miles from the city center and 10-20 dedicated interdiction vehicles could mitigate the damage from an unshielded or lightly-shielded plutonium weapon, but not from a uranium weapon or a radiological dispersal device. Index Terms--Game theory, optimal stopping, queueing theory, radiation detection.