To work or not to work? The postgraduate balancing act.

This time of the year can be difficult for postgraduate students. You are likely to become very popular with academics as they vie for your available time to do tutorials, lectures, marking, and research for them. When you are an early career researcher, it is difficult to say 'no' when you feel the pressure to impress as well as the pressure of a not-so-great financial situation. So in this first in a series of discussions about postgraduate issues, I thought I would offer some useful tips on how to negotiate this balancing act

'Just stupid drama queens': How police constrain, regulate and punish the visibilities of sexual/gender diversity as out of place

Using interview data on LGBT young peoples’ policing experiences, I argue policing practices work to constrain public visibilities of sexual and gender diversity in public spaces. Police actions recounted by LGBT young people suggest the workings of a certain kind of visuality (Mason, 2002) and evidenced more subtle actions that sought to constrain, regulate, and punish public visibilities of sexual and gender diversity. Aligning with the work of sexualities academics and theorists, this paper suggests that, like violence is itself a bodily spectacle from which onlookers come to know things, policing works to subtly constrain public visibilities of “queerness”. Policing interactions with LGBT young people serves the purpose of visibly yet unverifiably (Mason, 2002) regulating displays of sexual and gender diversity in public spaces. The paper concludes noting how police actions are nonetheless visible and therefore make knowable to the public the importance of keeping same sex intimacy invisible in public spaces

Visibly invisible: Policing Queer young people as a research gap

This paper argues that queer young people occupy an ironic position in public space that requires further empirical attention in relation to policing. The paper suggests that queer young people are visibly invisible: they are visible in their youthfulness, a characteristic that research shows is generally over-policed in wider public space; and they are invisible in their queerness, a characteristic that renders these communities invisible not only in wider legal discourse but also in policing practices more specifically. Interestingly, to this point the question of how sexual orientation mediates policing relationships is yet to be addressed in criminological research. There has been some international research examining queer young peoples’ experiences in the criminal justice system more broadly but these issues have yet to be made the subject of research in Australia. Given their position as visibly invisible, and the wealth of research indicating that diverse groups of young people are over-policed, this paper represents a ‘call-for-research’ on these issues in an Australian context

'There is no relationship': service provider staff on how LGBT young people experience policing

There has been an extended engagement with how young people experience policing, with a focus on the intersection between policing and indigeneity, ethnicity, gender, and social class. Interestingly, sexuality and/or gender diversity has been almost completely overlooked, both nationally and internationally. This paper reports on LGBT youth service providers’ accounts about police and LGBT young people interactions. It overviews the outcomes of semi-structured interviews with key LGBT youth service providers in different regions of Brisbane, Queensland. As the first qualitative engagement with these issues from the perspective of service providers, it highlights not only how LGBT young people experience policing, but also how service providers need to ‘work the system’ of policing to produce the best outcomes for LGBT young people

Submission to the Legal Affairs and Community Safety Committee: Youth Justice (Boot Camp Orders) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2012

This submission addresses the Youth Justice (Boot Camp Orders) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2012 which has as its objectives (1) the introduction of a Boot Camp Order as an option instead of detention for young offenders and (2) the removal of the option of court referred youth justice conferencing for young offenders. As members of the QUT Faculty of Law Centre for Crime and Justice we welcome the invitation to participate in the discussion of these issues which are critically important to the Queensland community at large but especially to our young people

Review of 'Speaking Out: Stopping Homophobic and Transphobic Abuse In Queensland'

Speaking Out documents the outcomes of the largest ever study to examine homophobic and transphobic abuse and reporting in Queensland, Australia. It reports the results of a quantitative survey on victimisation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) people and how this victimisation is reported to police. Follow-up qualitative interviews and focus groups were also conducted with LGBTIQ people to examine the impact of this abuse and the reporting to police. This research is timely as we can sometimes assume LGBTIQ victimisation is a historical problem and may be settled by the idea that relations with police are in good shape. This book clearly demonstrates that we have some way to go before we can be assured these issues have been resolved..

Rethinking Street Culture: Enacting Youthful Defiance?

Review of: Ilan, Jonathan. Understanding Street Culture: Poverty, Crime, Youth and Cool. Palgrave MacMillan, 2015.   DOI: 10.1353/jeu.2017.001

Adaptive paternal effects? Experimental evidence that the paternal environment affects offspring performance

The ability of females to adaptively influence offspring phenotype via maternal effects is widely acknowledged, but corresponding nongenetic paternal effects remain unexplored. Males can adjust sperm phenotype in response to local conditions, but the transgenerational consequences of this plasticity are unknown. We manipulated paternal density of a broadcast spawner (Styela plicata, a solitary ascidean) using methods shown previously to alter sperm phenotype in the field, then conducted in vitro fertilizations that excluded maternal effects and estimated offspring performance under natural conditions. Offspring sired by males from low-density experimental populations developed faster and had a higher hatching success than offspring sired by males living in high densities. In the field, offspring survived relatively better when their environment matched their father's, raising the possibility that fathers can adaptively influence the phenotype of their offspring according to local conditions. As the only difference between offspring is whether they were artificially fertilized by sperm from males kept in high- vs. low-density cages, we can unequivocally attribute any differences in offspring performance to an environmentally induced paternal effect. Males of many species manipulate the phenotype of their sperm in response to sperm competition: our results show this plasticity can influence offspring fitness, potentially in adaptive ways, raising the possibility that adaptive nongenetic paternal effects may be more common than previously thought

Uncertainty, precaution, and listing in Australia : a key to the anteroom

The Precautionary Principle (or 'the Principle') has been controversial and subject to debate over terminology, definition, and means of implementation and, even when articulated in legislation, it is frequently not used in the discretionary decision-making process. This thesis proposes that the Principle has a role to play in the conservation of threatened species and ecological communities in Australia. In Australia, the protection of threatened species and ecological communities has not been immune from the general reluctance to embrace the Precautionary Principle, although it is an area that lends itself to its use. The potential for serious or irreversible harm is high if incorrect decisions are made about the characterisation or status of species or ecological communities, or processes that may impact on them. Often the available scientific evidence is uncertain, inadequate, or inexact. The decisions are made against a background of potential conflict as there can be numerous stakeholders affected by the outcomes. The decisions are further complicated by being science-based, and the nexus between science and policy is confusing. Under the current national 'listing' system there is no effective provision made for species or communities where there is genuine concern that they are threatened, but the science is uncertain. Uncertainty will generally defeat a listing nomination: there is no ante-room for nominations of concern, no place for species or ecological communities to be watched over pending clarification of the uncertainty. This thesis examines the Australian approach to the Precautionary Principle. The key elements of the Principle and triggers for the application of the Principle are identified, and key issues in relation to the role of science, the choice of science, and 'scientific uncertainty' are clarified. The thesis concludes that the Principle should be a significant tool in the environmental decision-making framework. The thesis then examines the application of precaution in the listing of species, ecological communities, and key threatening processes under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth). Precaution is available to both the key decision-makers, the Minister and the Threatened Species Scientific Committee, under the legislation but both have failed to apply the Principle in listing. The thesis draws upon the approaches of the International Union for Conservation of Nature , the Endangered Species Act of 1973 in the United States of America and domestic examples to inform the discussion, and concludes that, under appropriate circumstances, the Precautionary Principle could play a key role in the listing of species, ecological communities and key threatening processes. It is asserted that a lack of will rather than 'way' hinders its appropriate use. A checklist and guidelines are proposed for the application of the Principle and, in the absence of legislative reform, the thesis highlights the potential of the existing legislation for a balanced precautionary approach to listing. The door to the anteroom would thus be opened

Autonomous Aerobraking Development Software: Phase One Performance Analysis at Mars, Venus, and Titan

When entering orbit about a planet or moon with an appreciable atmosphere, instead of using only the propulsion system to insert the spacecraft into its desired orbit, aerodynamic drag can be used after the initial orbit insertion to further decelerate the spacecraft. Several past NASA missions have used this aerobraking technique to reduce the fuel required to deliver a spacecraft into a desired orbit. Aerobraking was first demonstrated at Venus with Magellan in 1993 and then was used to achieve the science orbit of three Mars orbiters: Mars Global Surveyor in 1997, Mars Odyssey in 2001, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2006. Although aerobraking itself reduces the propellant required to reach a final low period orbit, it does so at the expense of additional mission time to accommodate the aerobraking operations phase (typically 3-6 months), a large mission operations staff, and significant Deep Space Network (DSN) coverage. By automating ground based tasks and analyses associated with aerobraking and moving these onboard the spacecraft, a flight project could save millions of dollars in operations staffing and DSN costs (Ref. 1)