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Australia has witnessed long-standing cuts in the arts and culture federal budget. Most recently, the disappearance of the arts portfolio into a “super-ministry” along with infrastructure, transport, regional development and communications further signals the lack of support, both ideologically through public rhetoric, and financially through (absent) support packages, the current federal government holds towards the arts and arts workers. This paper accounts for how such ideological fractures have underserved freelancers, casuals, temporary and part-time workers in the arts who missed out on the critical initial support packages, and how state governments were more willing to make up for this initial shortfall. This paper further accounts for how the federal government lacks the necessary understanding of working patterns of those engaged in creative occupations, and over emphasizes funding bailouts for primary industry. This also has broader implications for how women are disproportionately impacted by sectors the federal government chooses to support. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Student attrition is an area of constant concern for higher education managers and policymakers alike, yet little is known of the outcomes of those who depart higher education prematurely. We examine the educational and financial outcomes of students who start, but do not complete, a Bachelor-level course using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We find that the number of non-completers is remarkably high, but also that the majority of Bachelor non-completers have completed some other form of tertiary-level qualification. Consistent with other research, we also find that Bachelor non-completers report higher incomes than those who have not attempted a Bachelor degree. The results suggest that the current sectoral focus on preventing student attrition is limited. Further strategies are required to re-engage students who have withdrawn from higher education and to understand the trajectories of partial completers and the impacts of partial completion.

This account of practice examines the implementation of and reactions to action learning through the Lean methodology in a unique, cross-cultural context. I review my time spent as a Lean coach; engaging with, training, and using action learning with employees in a garment manufacturing facility located in Bali, Indonesia. This research addresses the issue of action learning as it applies to line-level manufacturing workers in an Indonesian national culture. The paper first examines the role of action learning as it applies to the Lean methodology. Then I reflect on broad observations from my ethnographic research, before delving more deeply into the process and reflections of the action learning group. I conclude with some key learning points for the role of action learning for manufacturing work in cross-cultural environments.

In this article I offer a critical examination of Darwin’s contemporary food markets and, in particular, the Mindil Beach Night Markets, as sites of 'tropical cosmopolitanism'. To do so, I focus on the intersection of place and food to illuminate what it reveals about the rich and complex history of cultural exchange on this small city site and, in turn, what this may reveal about contemporary postcolonial multiculture. As a high profile and significant place, both geographically and socially, Mindil Beach furnishes the researcher with a rich cultural text through which the various affordances of space and food reflect broader politico-cultural thinking. Within such a framework I consider the erasures and silences, presences and absences contributing to the degree to which the multiculturally rich Mindil hawker stalls can be considered demonstrative of a national vision of cosmopolitanism that is truly postcolonial, and hence more than simply 'banal cosmopolitanism'. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This article discusses how geographic information system (GIS) technologies were used to enhance ethnographic methodologies within a cultural research project, Creative Tropical City: Mapping Darwin's Creative Industries. It shows how mapping technologies can broaden the scope of data available via interview practices and produce innovative ways of communicating research results to stakeholder communities. A key component of the interview process was a "mental mapping" exercise whereby interviewees drew sketches, revealing important sites and linkages between people and places. A GIS linked responses to real-world locations, collating and displaying them in meaningful ways. Responses uncovered Darwin's unique geography of creative inspiration-a geography that preferences Darwin's natural environment over sites of urban creative milieu. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

In the present article, we seek to bring critical attention to the idea of ‘scene’ in relation to musical activity in Darwin, an iconic northern, remote, (post)colonial city. The idea of ‘scenes’, ...

This special edition of Continuum draws from papers delivered at the 2011 CSAA annual conference, hosted by The International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding(the MnM Centre), University of South Australia, Adelaide. The theme – Cultural Reorientations and Comparative Colonialities – was a provocation to reconsider Australasian cultural studies’ continued orientation towards the northern hemisphere for intellectual sustenance, which serves to reinforce the notion of Australia and, arguably to a lesser extent, New Zealand as ‘Norths in the South’ and the ‘Wests in the East’. These concerns and critiques have a long history in Australian and New Zealand/Aotearoa cultural studies. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

In much of the world, climate change is causing water supply to be increasingly uncertain while mounting human pressure is straining the availability of water, other resources, and ecosystem services. One result of these twin forces is a palpable rise in societal vulnerability. The arid Americas" as characterized by the Southwest United States, Northwest Mexico, North-central Chile and Argentina, and Northeast Brazil" manifest the above challenges especially well. In these areas water remains acutely limited, ecosystems are under growing pressure, and economic globalization drives water demand. These global change conditions threaten the security of access to water. Yet the foregoing conditions prevail?with little regard for constraints to supply, insufficient understanding of vulnerability, and inadequate attention to adaptive measures. To the extent that such problems are attributable to human agency, there is evidence that effective policies and actions can alleviate some of the harm. Among the policy instruments available, the formation and activation of interactive networks of scientists, agency personnel, civil society, and decisionmakers is an important and innovative strategy. Our essay describes two such networks, at different stages of development, in the arid Americas that have helped catalyze a sustained effort to reduce vulnerability and heighten adaptation to global change through science-policy dialogues in their respective regions. Fil: Scott, Christopher A.. University of Arizona; Estados Unidos Fil: Varady, Robert G.. University of Arizona; Estados Unidos Fil: Meza, Francisco. Universidad Católica de Chile; Chile Fil: Montaña, Elma Carmen. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo; Argentina Fil: De Raga, Graciela B.. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; México Fil: Luckman, Brian. University of Western Ontario; Canadá Fil: Martius, Christopher. No especifica

Climate warming is having a more pronounced impact ontemperature change in alpine and polar regions than on aglobal scale (Beniston 2006, Lemke et al. 2007). For theCordillera region of North America, climate models predictthat warming will increase with elevation, reaching its maxi-mum at mid-northern latitudes (Bradley et al. 2004). Den-drochronological models have already shown that summertemperatures in the Canadian Rockies were anomalouslywarm during the 20

Tree-ring chronologies from moisture-sensitive sites can provide annually resolved proxy records for precipitation, streamflow and other hydrological variables for periods several hundred years longer than available instrumental records. This paper reviews some previous North American work in this field (concentrating on western Canada), examining the limitations and potential of these studies with specific examples from ongoing research in the Canadian Cordillera. Although they cannot be used to predict future flows or precipitation, proxy data can document the long-term natural variability and periodicities of these phenomena—information vital for better approximations of future probabilities. In addition, by establishing relationships between hydrometeorological variables and persistent modes of atmospheric and oceanic circulation, such research may provide some predictive skill in short-term forecasting.

Considering recent progress in the development of techniques and methods to achieve biomass estimates and full carbon accounting, remote sensing research of forested ecosystems needs to be aimed towards the retrieval of information at global scales. In this paper, an algorithm for the estimation of growing stock volume, an important parameter for the commercial forest community and a proxy for woody biomass density, from ERS and JERS synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data is described. The algorithm is based on the information content of both ERS tandem coherence and JERS backscatter images and was developed using ground data, made available by the Russian Forestry Services. It is tested on SAR datasets of boreal forests in Siberia, a managed, temperate forest plantation in the United Kingdom and a semi-natural boreal forest at Siggefora in Sweden. Comparisons of the classified products, comprising three growing stock interval classes and one non-forest class are made with ground data. The results of this ac...

Stricter regulation by OFWAT has encouraged water companies to optimize all stages of the water treatment process. This work reviews the ozonation process, in order to evaluate the benefits and disadvantages of continuous versus intermittent ozone operation. Two Advanced Water Treatment Works (AWTW) were surveyed, Farmoor AWTW, which involves traditional (chemical) treatment processes, and Kempton Park AWTW, which incorporates slow sand filter Sandwich beds. Both reviews indicated that continuous ozone operation would result in an optimized solution based on dependability of ozone plant, reliability of water quality and cost efficiency.

A Short History of Cultural StudiesJohn HartleyLondon: Sage, 2003, 189 pp. (pbk), ISBN 0-7619-5028-1 Once upon a time, there was a Marxist intellectual project, operating both within the organized ...

Rule-based classifiers are used regularly with geographical information systems to map categorical attributes on the basis of a set of numeric or unordered categorical attributes. Although a variety of methods exist for inducing rule-based classifiers from training data, these tend to produce large numbers of rules when the data has noise. This paper describes a method for inducing compact rule-sets whose classification accuracy can, at least in some domains, compare favourably with that achieved by larger less succinct rule-sets produced by alternative methods. One rule is induced for each output class. The condition list for this rule represents a box in n-dimensional attribute space, formed by intersecting conditions which exclude other classes. Despite this simplicity, the classifier performed well in the test application prediction of soil classes in the Port Hills, New Zealand, on the basis of regolith type and topographic attributes obtained from a digital terrain model.

Snow avalanche landforms are identified at 22 sites in the Lairig Ghru based on morphology and distinctive surface sediment sorting patterns. Avalanche boulder tongues intermediate between ...

(1998). Pilgrims Progress: The Sport Education Crusade down Under. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance: Vol. 69, No. 4, pp. 21-23.