Assessing the conservation status of mangroves in Rakhine, Myanmar

Ecosystem degradation is a key challenge that human society faces, as ecosystems provide services that are tied to human well-being. Particularly, mangrove ecosystems provide important services to communities but are suffering heavy degradation, loss and potential collapse due to anthropogenic activities. The IUCN Red List of Ecosystems is a transparent and consistent framework for assessing ecosystems' risk of collapse and is increasingly used to inform legislation and ecosystem management globally. Satellite data have become increasingly common in environmental monitoring due to their extensive spatial and temporal coverage. Here, recent advances in analyses using satellite-derived data were implemented to reassess the conservation status of the ‘Rakhine mangrove forest on mud’, an important intertidal ecosystem in Myanmar, extending a previous national Red List assessment that assessed the ecosystem as Critically Endangered. By incorporating additional data sources and analyses, the extended assessment produced more robust results and reduced the uncertainty in the previous assessment. Overall, the ecosystem was assessed as Critically Endangered (range: Vulnerable to Critically Endangered) as a result of historical mangrove extent loss. Recent losses and biotic disruptions were also observed, which would have led to the ecosystem being assessed as Vulnerable. While the final outcome of the Red List assessment remained at Critically Endangered due to the historical state of the mangroves pre-dating the temporal coverage from satellite data, the uncertainty of the ecosystem's status was reduced, and the reassessment highlighted the recent areal changes and mangrove degradation that has occurred. The importance of conducting reassessments when new data become available is discussed, and a template for future mangrove Red List assessments that use satellite data as their primary source of information to improve the robustness of their results is presented

What does the Service System Know about the Community it Serves? A Grey Literature Review of Children, Young People, and Families Experiencing Place-based Disadvantage

Place of residence significantly influences health, well-being, and quality of life. This study reviewed the grey literature using evidence mapping and thematic analyses to identify, describe, and synthesise service system knowledge concerning children and families experiencing place-based disadvantage. Twenty-four documents were reviewed and four key themes identified (1) infrastructure and safety; (2) access and navigation of services; (3) gaps in the support system and (4) the user experience. Our findings highlight target areas to improve the outcomes of children and families in the context of spatial deprivation, and notes a need for better coordination and management of service system knowledge

Doing research with busy people: Enacting rapid walking methodologies with teachers in a primary school

Teachers are busy people. How do we, as researchers, address the challenges of doing research with busy people—especially if we wish to enact ethical, more radical futures? How do we adhere to the pressures of fast-paced urban life when research, especially interviews, takes away people's time? This paper presents a novel method for doing research with busy people, combining the ‘walking interview’ method with a ‘free listing technique.’ The interviews were carried out with teachers at a north Queensland primary school in a rapidly urbanising neighbourhood, and formed part of a larger project exploring the barriers and opportunities of incorporating community gardens (as important green spaces) into schools. The method itself yielded important findings and this paper is a reflective analysis of how simple factors such as the weather, noise, and interruptions shaped 20 min of a teacher's day. We extend these ideas to explore how conditioned and situational temporalities, along with more-than-human influences, affect the knowledge produced in rapid walking interviews. Keeping track of these affections can yield important data relevant to the project. The research will be invaluable for other researchers struggling with ethical and other issues shaping access to stakeholders in a diverse range of urban environments

Critiquing the concept of health systems resilience

Concepts are abstract ideas used in everyday conversation and academic writing to help us make sense of the world by explaining and analysing problems, exploring contexts and issues, or helping to generate solutions or responses. Yet a foundational requirement for any concept to serve these ends is that it be adequately defined. Despite a rapidly expanding body of theoretical, summative and empirical literature focused on health systems resilience, the concept remains a slippery one, defined, theorized and ultimately operationalized in different ways. The following chapter revisits some of the key criticisms of the concept, highlighting their ongoing relevance, and providing suggestions for how both the framing and operationalization of health system resilience may better serve the project of strengthening the performance of health systems in the face of multiple and overlapping shocks

Divalent ansa-Octaphenyllanthanocenes: Synthesis, Structures, and EuII Luminescence

Reductive dimerization of fulvenes using low-valent metal precursors is a straightforward one-step approach to access ethylene-bridged metallocenes. This process has so far mainly been employed with fulvenes carrying one or two substituents in the exocyclic position. In this work, a new synthesis of the unsubstituted exocyclic 1,2,3,4-tetraphenylfulvene (1), its full structural characterization by NMR spectroscopy and single-crystal X-ray diffraction, as well as some photophysical properties and its first use in reductive dimerization are described. This fulvene reacted with different lanthanoid metals in thf to provide the divalent ansa-octaphenylmetallocenes [Ln(C5Ph4CH2)2(thf)n] (Ln = Sm, n = 2 (2); Ln = Eu, n = 2 (3); and Ln = Yb, n = 1 (4)). These complexes were characterized by X-ray diffraction, laser desorption/ionization time of flight mass spectrometry, and, in the case of Sm and Yb, multinuclear NMR spectroscopy, showing the influence of the ansa-bridge on solution and solid-state structures compared to previously reported unbridged metallocenes. Furthermore, the luminescence properties of the Eu ansa complex 3 were studied in solution and the solid state, revealing significant differences with the known octa- and deca-phenyleuropocenes, [Eu(C5Ph4H)2(dme)] and [Eu(C5Ph5)2]

Walking the stories of colonial ghosts: A method of/against the geographically mundane

The worlds we inhabit tell stories, stitched into the material and symbolic representations of the past that comes to define the features of our places. These stories are never neutral, anchored as they are in the intentional (re)presentation of a racialized white, masculine, and settler story as “our” story. Indeed, space, as an ostensibly neutral platform for storytelling, is called into service of settler-state anxieties to write itself into every (spatial) corner of our lives. This paper takes up this issue by theorizing how the street naming practices of settler communities write into everyday life a settler collective memory that, as a consequence, both shapes space into (settler) place and powerfully intervenes in individual (student) geographic consciousness. By way of vignettes woven throughout theoretical considerations as examples of everyday encounters, I unpack what it means to think of the language of invaded place with greater critical intention as an example of how walking through space can become a pedagogical method, with a focus on detailing what it might mean to support learner engagement with the names that make their communities coherent and media of normalized colonial memory

Creativity and the doctor of philosophy: the case for creativity education within doctoral programs

Doctoral education is an increasingly prevalent part of the worldwide higher education landscape. Although there are variations in how programs are constructed and delivered, there is general agreement that evidence of creativity is expected in the final thesis. Despite the significant attention the supervisory process has received in the literature, students’ views on creativity as it applies to their candidature have not been extensively explored. This article reports on interviews with a sample of 12 current doctoral students in the areas of the arts, social sciences, and education from the theoretical perspective of the systems model of creativity. Interview participants were invited to reflect on the concept of creativity, and the factors which support or constrain their potential to be creative. The findings reveal that on reflection, students are able to identify the creative elements of their work, however the findings also indicate that creativity education should be given greater focus in doctoral programs, in order to embed this important concept and process to support students’ learning journey

Vietnam's Export-Led Growth Model and Environment Performance

This chapter aims to investigate the impact of Vietnam’s export-led growth model driven by analyzing the impact of exports and foreign direct investment (FDI) on environmental performance. The environmental performance is investigated by looking into greenhouse emission measured by CO2 emission intensity and bio-diversity loss measured by the Red List Index. The Bayesian linear regression was employed to analyze the data that was extracted from multiple sources including General Statistics Office Vietnam, World Bank, and the United Nations Statistics from between 1985 and 2023. The results show that exports have a U-shaped relationship with CO2 emission intensity and biodiversity loss, while industrial goods exports are always positively related to CO2 emission intensity. Furthermore, the foreign sectors’ export shows a U-shaped relationship with CO2 emission intensity. FDI inflow does significantly affect CO2 emission intensity but contributes to biodiversity loss. From our assessment of the results, a series of relevant policy recommendations are also provided

Book Review of "W.E.H. Stanner: Selected Writings" by W.E.H. Stanner. Melbourne, Australia, La Trobe University Press, 2024. ISBN 9781760644048

[Extract] The works of W.E.H. Stanner loom large within the Australian tradition of progressive writing on Aboriginal and settler relations. Before Henry Reynolds rewrote the history of Australian settlement, Bill Stanner revolutionised Australian anthropology. In any format, Stanner should be considered mandatory reading for settler Australians, and the new edition of his essays and lectures published by La Trobe University Press in conjunction with Black Inc. is currently the best way to engage with this important body of work. It contains all the pieces found in the 2009 collection, The Dreaming & Other Essays, with the addition of “Aboriginal Humour” from 1956. Stanner’s greatest contribution to Australia’s intellectual life was, however, helping to create space for more suitable authors to take up the work at hand, primarily through his role in helping to establish the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS), but also by lending his name and authority to the Stanner Award, established by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) after his death. The award provides valuable support for Indigenous researchers seeking to publish their work. This year, the Stanner Award was presented to the Gugu Badhun scholar, Dr Janine Gertz, to assist with the publication of her research on Aboriginal sovereignty as a monograph

Barramundi (Lates calcarifer) from Iraq: a new record for the Arabian Gulf, with a highlight on it genetic origins and description of two skeletal deformities

The natural distribution of Lates calcarifer (barramundi or Asian sea bass), ranges from western India, around Sri Lanka to the Bay of Bengal, and through the whole of Southeast Asia to Papua New Guinea and northern Australia. It is not known to be native to the Arabian Gulf, although the species has recently been introduced for aquaculture production in Iran. In 2019, 12 adult barramundi were caught from freshwater in the Shatt al-Arab River, its estuary and marine waters bordering Iraq. This is the first wild-capture record of this species for Iraq’s inland waters and the northern Arabian Gulf. The specimens were morphologically described, while genetic structure analyses indicated that the specimens likely originated from Australian and Thailand genetic stocks and thus probably were aquaculture escapees from farmed populations. Among the L. calcarifer collected from the freshwater environment on the Shatt al-Arab River, one specimen exhibited saddleback syndrome, and another showed abnormality in the left operculum. The results are interesting and useful in reminding people to prevent aquaculture escapees. The aim of this study was to morphologically describe the specimens and undertake a genetic analysis to determine the likely provenance of the fish