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While ChatGPT has recently become very popular, AI has a long history and philosophy. This paper intends to explore the promises and pitfalls of the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) AI and potentially future technologies by adopting a speculative methodology. Speculative future narratives with a specific focus on educational contexts are provided in an attempt to identify emerging themes and discuss their implications for education in the 21st century. Affordances of (using) AI in Education (AIEd) and possible adverse effects are identified and discussed which emerge from the narratives. It is argued that now is the best of times to define human vs AI contribution to education because AI can accomplish more and more educational activities that used to be the prerogative of human educators. Therefore, it is imperative to rethink the respective roles of technology and human educators in education with a future-oriented mindset.

In terms of scale, shock, and disenfranchisement, the disruption to formal education arising from COVID-19 has been unprecedented. Anecdotally, responses from teachers and educators around the world range from heightened caution to being inspired by distance education as the "new normal." Of all the challenges, face-to-face and formal teaching have been most heavily affected. Despite some education systems demonstrating resilience, a major challenge is sustaining quality and inclusiveness in formal education suddenly delivered at a distance. In probing these issues, this article profiles international perspectives on the role of open education in responding to the impact on formal school and higher education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We proceed by highlighting and analysing practices and case studies from 13 countries representing all global regions, identifying and discussing the challenges and opportunities that have presented themselves. Reports cover the period from the beginning of 2020 until 11 March 2021, the first anniversary of the COVID-19 outbreak as declared by the World Health Organization. In our comparative study, we identify seven key aspects of which three (missing infrastructure and sharing OER, open education and access to OER, and urgent need for professional development and training for teachers) are directly related to open education at a distance. After comparing examples of existing practice, we make recommendations and offer insights into how open education strategies can lead to interventions that are effective and innovative--to improve formal education at a distance in schools and universities in the future.

Uncertain times require prompt reflexes to survive and this study is a collaborative reflex to better understand uncertainty and navigate through it. The Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic hit hard and interrupted many dimensions of our lives, particularly education. As a response to interruption of education due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this study is a collaborative reaction that narrates the overall view, reflections from the K12 and higher educational landscape, lessons learned and suggestions from a total of 31 countries across the world with a representation of 62.7% of the whole world population. In addition to the value of each case by country, the synthesis of this research suggests that the current practices can be defined as emergency remote education and this practice is different from planned practices such as distance education, online learning or other derivations. Above all, this study points out how social injustice, inequity and the digital divide have been exacerbated during the pandemic and need unique and targeted measures if they are to be addressed. While there are support communities and mechanisms, parents are overburdened between regular daily/professional duties and emerging educational roles, and all parties are experiencing trauma, psychological pressure and anxiety to various degrees, which necessitates a pedagogy of care, affection and empathy. In terms of educational processes, the interruption of education signifies the importance of openness in education and highlights issues that should be taken into consideration such as using alternative assessment and evaluation methods as well as concerns about surveillance, ethics, and data privacy resulting from nearly exclusive dependency on online solutions.

Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education cannot be put into practice without considering institutional contexts, which differ not only globally but also within the same country. Each institutional context provides educators with opportunities or limitations where Open Educational Practices (OEP) and OER for teaching and learning are involved. As part of a broader research project, and as a follow-up to national perspectives, an international comparison was conducted, based on institutional cases of nine different higher education systems (Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Turkey). Aspects regarding the availability of infrastructure and institutional policies for OER, as well as the existence of measures directed at OER quality assurance and at the promotion of the development and use of OER were covered. The resulting theoretical contribution sheds light on an international comparative view of OER and points towards country-specific trends, as well as differences among institutions. These aspects could provide an impetus for the development of institutional guidelines and measures. In line with international literature on the topic, recommendations are derived to promote/enhance the use of OER in teaching and learning in higher education at the institutional level.

This study investigated the Family Language Policy of second- and third-generation Turkish parents in Melbourne, Australia. Earlier research has shown that the family home is a crucial site for language maintenance [Fishman 1991. "Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages." Clevedon: Multilingual Matters]. The family, and the family home, remains for most migrant groups and their younger generations the main domain for heritage language use. The presence of heritage language speakers, especially those with lower majority language (English) proficiency levels in the family, is conducive to language maintenance. However, in the case of second and third-generation, particularly Australian-born parents, communication in English with their children becomes more dominant. As there has been no earlier study on Family Language Policy of Turkish-speaking parents in Australia, data were collected on the language beliefs and practices of 45 bilingual families. The findings show that Turkish maintenance is a symbolic part of cultural identity of the families studied. Findings reveal the challenges faced by families concerning heritage language maintenance within the family home, particularly as children become more fluent in English and as further generations become more intertwined within other cultures and an expectation to assimilate towards Australian culture and the English-speaking mainstream.

This paper explores faculty's perspectives and use of open educational resources (OER) and their repositories across different countries by conducting a multiple case study to find similarities and differences between academics' awareness, perceptions and use of OER, as well as examining related aspects of institutional policy and quality that may influence individual views. Data were collected through nine expert reports on each country studied (Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Spain and Turkey) and were analyzed through qualitative content analysis using thematic coding. Findings show the impact on individual OER adoption with regard to the individual control of diverse factors by faculty members; of institutional policies and quality measures on the externally determined factors (by the institution); and of institutional professional development and provision of incentives in more internally determined factors (by the faculty members themselves). These findings carry implications for higher education institutions around the world in their attempt to boost OER adoption by faculty members.

This paper presents a review of peer-reviewed publications (2007-2017) on digital open educational practices (OEPs). It explores trends and patterns in this emerging area of study by examining paper abstracts and bibliographic data indexed in the Scopus database using a combination of descriptive statistics, text mining, social network analysis, and content analysis. Findings demonstrated two major strands of OEP research: those who discuss OEP in the context of open educational resources, mostly in terms of open educational resource creation, adoption and use, and those who discuss OEP in relation to other areas, including open scholarship, open learning, open teaching or pedagogy, open systems and architectures, and open source software. Based on the findings of this study and in the light of the broader literature on OEPs, we echo the calls for a need to conceptualize OEPs as a multidimensional and unifying construct.

The assessment of the stope stability is of great importance in the underground mine design process. The instability of stopes leads to serious economic and safety problems in mining operations. This paper aims to assist in the prediction of stope stability by making use of machine learning algorithms. For this purpose, a hybrid grid search-based Artificial Neural Network method is proposed. In the experiments, a total of 215 stope cases which have been collected from six underground mining operations located across Australia are used to prove the validity of the proposed method. Then, the performance of the proposed method is compared with k-nearest neighbour (kNN), naive Bayes (NB), support vector machine (SVM), decision tree (DT) and the stability graph method. Furthermore, several performance measures, such as accuracy, precision, specificity, recall, f-measure, and g-mean are considered during the performance comparison of the methods. The accuracy values are obtained as 91.63%, 81.86%, 77.21%, 76.74%, 73.95%, and 69.77% with the proposed hybrid grid search-based ANN method, SVM, DT, NB, kNN, and the stability graph method, respectively. The empirical results from the experiments indicated that the proposed hybrid approach outperformed the other aforementioned methods, which confirms that the proposed method is a useful tool to predict stope stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fresh apples are expected to have a minimal risk of causing foodborne illness from Escherichia coli O157:H7 because of their low pH and refrigerated storage under modified atmosphere. To assess this expectation, improve understanding of the various factors that contribute to risk, and identify potential risk management improvements to maintain low risk a quantitative risk assessment model was developed to estimate the risk of illness from Australian apples throughout the apple supply chain. The model incorporated orchard conditions, proportion of apples damaged, effects of storage time and temperature on pathogen survival through the supply chain, and orchard and packhouse activities that affect contamination levels. The model was constructed in Analytica® with uncertainty in predictions modelled through use of 150,000 (5 × 30,000) iterations. Alternative scenarios of orchard management practices, wash water controls, equipment cleaning, and verification activities were examined using current Australian harvest guidelines and water washing as a baseline. The mean risk of illness from E. coli O157:H7 after consuming fresh Australian apples was estimated to be 1.43 × 10−10 per serving (min. 0, max. 1.21 × 10−6) or approximately one illness per 10 billion apples consumed. Under a scenario with conservative (i.e., worst-case) assumptions, one case of E. coli O157:H7 illness every five years, caused by fresh apples in Australia was predicted. Sensitivity analyses indicated that wash water control, removal of damaged fruit, and prevention of cross-contamination were the most crucial factors affecting the predicted number of illnesses. Despite the adoption of several conservative assumptions to fill identified data gaps, it is predicted that Australian apples have a low probability of causing foodborne illness. Nonetheless, this risk assessment will assist industry to reinforce risk management best practices for risk mitigations against E. coli on apples. • Quantitative risk assessment model for apple supply chains identifies key controls. • Low temperatures and packhouse sanitary controls are crucial to ensure safe apples. • Damaged fruit, wash water, and equipment cleaning are the most important factors. • Prevention of cross-contamination post packhouse is vital for value-add products. • Quantitative assessment shows fresh apples are a low-risk cause of E. coli illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Re-evaluation of structural evolution on the Laminaria High (Timor Sea, Australia), shows that lithosphere flexure, associated with the Tertiary collision between the Australian north-west margin and the Banda volcanic arc, is an important mechanism for Neogene fault development and the reactivation of Jurassic structures. 2D elastic models of the lithosphere flexure show that increasing flexural extension is likely to affect the Laminaria High from the Late Miocene onwards. The evaluation of the Neogene fault slip history, based on instantaneous throw estimates, suggests an initiation of faulting during the Late Miocene when the Laminaria High entered the flexed area (forebulge). Increasing fault growth is recorded during the Pliocene and correlates with the Laminaria High reaching the hinge of the forebulge structure. Maximum episodes of fault growth are recorded between the Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene when the Laminaria High was located near the forebulge hinge or in the slope where curvature and flexural stress are likely to be maximal. NNW extension associated with plate flexure allowed the oblique extensional reactivation of buried reservoir-bounding Jurassic structures. The orientation of the Jurassic structures relative to the flexural extensional front appears as a key factor controlling the type of segment linkage between the reactivated Jurassic faults and the newly developed Neogene faults. Observations from the Laminaria High suggest that with an angle >20° between σHmax and strike orientation of the Jurassic faults, soft-linkage is likely to occur between Jurassic and Neogene segments. An angle <20° is more likely to trigger hard-linkages between these segments. The development of continuous fault zones results in a higher up-fault migration risk for hydrocarbon leaking from fault-bounded reservoirs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Escherichia coli O157:H7 risk associated with the consumption of fresh cut-cos lettuce during Australian industrial practices was assessed. A probabilistic risk assessment model was developed and implemented in the @Risk software by using the Monte Carlo simulation technique with 1,000,000 iterations. Australian preharvest practices yielded predicted annual mean E. coli O157:H7 levels from 0.2 to −3.4 log CFU/g and prevalence values ranged from 2 to 6.4%. While exclusion of solar radiation from the baseline model yielded a significant increase in concentration of E. coli O157:H7 (−5.2 -log fold), drip irrigation usage, exclusion of manure amended soil and rainfall reduced E. coli O157:H7 levels by 7.4, 6.5, and 4.3-log fold, respectively. The microbial quality of irrigation water and irrigation type both had a significant effect on E. coli O157:H7 concentrations at harvest (p < 0.05). The probability of illness due to consumption of E. coli O157:H7 contaminated fresh cut-cos lettuce when water washing interventions were introduced into the processing module, was reduced by 1.4–2.7-log fold (p < 0.05). This study provides a robust basis for assessment of risk associated with E. coli O157:H7 contamination on fresh cut-cos lettuce for industrial practices and will assist the leafy green industry and food safety authorities in Australia to identify potential risk management strategies. • The usage of manure and quality of irrigation water were found to be very relevant on pathogen level. • E. coli O157:H7 levels over seasons influenced primarily by solar radiation and rainfall. • The implementation of GAP is an important mitigation strategy within growers' control. • Postharvest washing, and temperature control were identified as important risk control steps. • Risk management strategies should be based on local data for reliable risk characterization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food safety management criteria are often described in general terms rather than specific actions and potentially introduces subjectivity to interpretation and implementation. In the tree fruit sector, management systems would be more useful if developed with specific reference to production and processing practices used. There is insufficient evidence that requirements for the Australian tree fruit industry are appropriate to control foodborne pathogen contamination of ready-to-eat products. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore industry interpretations of food safety guidelines by describing the application of controls in Australian orchards and packhouses and to evaluate production practices by characterising potential microbial risks in the apple industry, quantifying microbial load in wash water and fruit, and assessing fruit quality as indicators. Thirteen orchards and packhouses across Australia were visited from July 2016 to April 2018 to observe apple orchard practices, packhouse systems, wash water controls, general hygiene and to evaluate the presence of Escherichia coli , Salmonella spp. and Listeria spp. on multiple apple cultivars. The assessment revealed that the inconsistent application of water sanitation resulted in variable control of wash water quality and hygiene, but the prevalence of pathogens on apples was less than 2%. Variation in practices could increase the risk of foodborne illness to consumers if contamination occurs. The Australian apple industry could benefit from a better understanding of effective risk mitigation strategies, consistent industry application of food safety controls and improved evidence of controls achieving desired food safety outcomes. • The variation in wash water sanitary control affected detected E. coli levels. • E. coli and Salmonella spp. were not detected on apples. • There was low detection rate of Listeria spp. on apples. • Interpretation of food safety guidelines for apples varies between packhouses. • Food safety controls applied differently results in variable practices and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]