Convergence and Australian content: The importance of access

In the light of new and complex challenges to media policy and regulation, the Austrlaian government commissioned the Convergence Review in late 2010 to assess the continuing applicability and utility of the principles and objectives that have shaped the policy framework to this point. It proposed a range of options for policy change and identified three enduring priorities for continued media regulation: media ownership and control; content standards; and Australian content production and distribution. The purpose of this article is to highlight an area where we feel there are opportunities for further discussion and research: the question of how the accessibility and visibility of Australian and local content may be assured in the future media policy framework via a combination of regulation and incentives to encourage innovation in content distribution

The Creative Industries After Cultural Policy. A Genealogy and Some Possible Preferred Futures

How can we most usefully appropriate the rhetorics of the new economy to advance a contemporary understanding of the production and consumption of creative and informational content? Can the concept of creativity be broadened, but not so much that it becomes everything and nothing – the newest business lit fad and just as ephemeral as the rest – such that claims for its role as a driver of economic growth can be sustained? Can the analytical and research context for ‘experiential’ or ‘cultural’ consumption – core business for cultural, communications and media studies academics be helpfully developed through new economy models? This piece takes an explicitly policy orientated line and tendentiously tracks a genealogy and some possible preferred futures for the creative industries beyond their framing within a cultural policy problematic. I track the fate of creative and informational content as it passes across three grids of understanding: ‘culture’, ‘services’ and ‘knowledge’. These grids also serve as historical and/or possible rationales for state intervention in the creative industries as well as industry’s own understandings of their nature and role

Research on Social Engagement with a Rabbitic User Interface

Companions as interfaces to smart rooms need not only to be easy to interact with, but also to maintain long-term relationships with their users. The FP7-funded project SERA (Social Engagement with Robots and Agents) contributes to knowledge about and modeling of such relationships. One focal activity is an iterative field study to collect real-life long-term interaction data with a robotic interface. The first stage of this study has been completed. This paper reports on the set-up and the first insights

The respiratory system of the Carolina locust (Dissosteira carolina Linn.)

The present paper, which is offered as a portion of a thesis for the degree of Master of Science at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, is one of a series of studies being conducted at this institution on the anatomy of the Carolina locust for the purpose of furnishing a description of the morphology of a common and widely distributed insect which is both primitive in its organization and of sufficient size to be readily dissected. In the preparation of this paper I have received much encouragement and assistance from Dr. H. T. Fernald, Dr. G. C. Crampton, and Dr. V. S. Regan, and I would take this opportunity of expressing my appreciation of their kindly interest and advice