Out of Europe. Agency, Biographicity and Discourses of Ethnic-cultural Belonging, Inclusion and Exclusion

Traducción del inglés: Julia González-Calderón, Universidad de Sevilla (España). Revisión técnica de la traducción: José González-Monteagudo, Universidad de Sevilla (España).Este artículo pretende explorar las transformaciones contemporáneas en los caminos de vida y las nuevas formas de agencia humana que se demanda a los adultos que disponen de recursos muy desiguales. Para ello, vamos a considerar las expresiones de agencia desarrolladas en narraciones biográficas de aprendizaje relacionadas con movimientos individuales entre la pertenencia y la exclusión.This paper wishes to explore contemporary transformations in life paths and the new forms of human agency that they demand of adults who have very unequal resources at their disposal. This paper will consider expressions of agency developed in biographical narratives of learning related by individuals moving between belonging and exclusion

Learning biographies in a European space for social mediation

Within the framework of a European Erasmus+ project, trainee mediators were interviewed about their experience. The encounters took place in unstructured, in-depth qualitative biographical-narrative interviews, in which individuals who are engaged in dialogic interaction create shared understanding and give meaning to their stories. The interview is interactive, co-constructed. The detail of the interview language documents how meaning-making takes place, and how this is affected by group belonging, ethnic or cultural discourses, as well as gender, age, professional and educational relationships, and so on. The interview is sensitive to language resources and their use in the co-construction of meaning. This paper, using extracts from one biographical narrative, shows that the languaged form that these narratives of the biographical learning of mediators take can offer insight into the learning processes triggered by learning in communities of practice, and that the creation of a common space of experience can be heard as it emerges in biographical talk. Biographical resources, biographicity, and their relationship with language and society are considered, and in the interview narratives the creation of a learning space, a space for the development and unfolding of notions and practices of mediation can be observed, heard and shared

Competition in financial services

In the financial services sector, the failure of a single institution can have a compounding effect on the sector, and on national and global economies. In particular, there is systemic risk from inter-institution lending, and this effect is more complex in Australia due to the small number of major players. In retail banking in Australia, following a similar practice in most developed countries, if an unsecured creditor is a retail depositor, their deposit is insured by the government. That is, if a retail bank fails, the Federal Government will make the depositors whole. The regulatory system, particularly the prudential regulatory system, is designed to protect depositors’ and borrowers’ interests, and this protects the interest of the government. The effect is that regulatory policy on banking has prioritised stability in consideration of the sovereign risk associated with the risk of retail bank failure. However, this approach also creates a policy dilemma. The dilemma concerns the extent to which the retail banking sector can attain the benefits of the vigorous rivalry from effective and efficient competition, without unduly risking stability and the potential of a devastating call on the public purse. Specifically, in the context of effective and efficient competition, there is limited competitiveness in retail banking in Australia. This is reflected in the static state of market share between the four major banks, and very slow and marginal improvements gains even by strong second tier competitors. Furthermore, the retail banking sector’s capacity for product and service innovation is limited. Although the absence of vigorous rivalry is conducive to stability within the retail banking sector, it is likely to detract from the welfare of retail banking consumers. Furthermore, the level of innovation may not be as high as is feasible and barriers, including prudential regulatory barriers to entry or expansion, mean that the extent of rivalry is unlikely to change without some form of promotion of competition. The paper consequently makes a four-point recommendation for the removal of the ‘four pillars’ policy:  The four major banks are protected by an implicit government guarantee that impacts market operation with little observable benefit to consumers, and may be a source of consumer disutility.  The four pillars policy has prompted increased vertical integration within the sector, particularly in the area of mortgage products.  There are sufficient merger protections provided by Part IV of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth).  Competition and contestability arise when there are reasonably low barriers to entry and exit from the sector. It is not clear that low barriers to entry exist in Australia, and evidence to support this view comes from the failure of international banks to gain a significant toehold in the retail banking sector in Australia. One deterrent to entry is the regulatory focus on the four pillars. The authors recognise that this position is at odds with the view of the Financial System Inquiry. However, the rationale in the report of the Inquiry was to prevent mergers, and the current competition law achieves this objective. The paper recommends two specific policies to promote competition in retail banking without the structural intervention that would otherwise be required to improve the intensity of competition in the retail banking sector:  Introduce bank account number portability. This would use ‘know your customer’ and central database systems in a similar form to those that have been used for mobile number portability in Australia for the last decade and a half.  Introduce customer access to data held by banks to allow third parties to compare bank offerings across all banks.  Significantly, these two recommendations are consistent with the productivity proposals issued by the UK Government in July 2015. The research paper also examines crowd equity funding as a disruptive force in the banking sector, and recommends that crowd equity funding be permitted with the following safeguards:  ASIC should take an active role in monitoring crowd equity funding and be willing to sue in case of fraudulent action.  Any intermediary online platform should have a financial services licence with limited duty of care.  There should be a cap for business raisings through crowd equity funding of $2 million in a 12-month period.  Crowd equity funding is a social phenomenon. Through its use of social media, it has attracted people who have previously never been interested in investing in companies. Instead of being feared, this interest should be nurtured through the promotion of investors’ financial education

Constraints on lithospheric mantle and crustal anisotropy in the NoMelt area from an analysis of long-period seafloor magnetotelluric data

© The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Earth, Planets and Space 69 (2017): 138, doi:10.1186/s40623-017-0724-1.Despite strong anisotropy seen in analysis of seismic data from the NoMelt experiment in 70 Ma Pacific seafloor, a previous analysis of coincident magnetotelluric (MT) data showed no evidence for anisotropy in the electrical conductivity structure of either lithosphere or asthenosphere. We revisit the MT data and use 1D anisotropic models of the lithosphere to demonstrate the limits of acceptable anisotropy within the data. We construct 1D models by varying the thickness and the degree of anisotropy within the lithosphere and conduct a series of tests to investigate what types of electrical anisotropy are compatible with the data. We find that electrical anisotropy is possible in a sheared and/or hydrous mantle within the lower lithosphere (60–90 km depth). The data are not compatible with pervasive electrical anisotropy in the crust. Causes of anisotropy within the highly resistive upper and mid-lithosphere, as seen seismically, are not expected to cause measurable impacts on MT response.RLE was supported by NSF Grant OCE-0928663

U–Pb zircon age constraints for the Ordovician Fishguard Volcanic Group and further evidence for the provenance of the Stonehenge bluestones

New U–Pb zircon ages from rhyolite samples of the Fishguard Volcanic Group, SW Wales, confirm a Middle Ordovician (Darriwilian) age for the group. One of the samples is from Craig Rhos-y-felin, which has recently been identified on petrological and geochemical grounds as the source of much of the debitage (struck flakes) at Stonehenge. Analysis of a Stonehenge rhyolite fragment yields an age comparable with that of the Craig Rhos-y-felin sample. Another Stonehenge fragment, thought to come from orthostat (standing stone) 48 and on petrographical grounds to be derived from the Fishguard Volcanic Group (but not Craig Rhos-y-felin), yields an age also consistent with a Fishguard Volcanic Group source. Supplementary material: Details of analytical methods and a table of data are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3518175

Biografias de aprendizagem num espaço europeu de mediação social

Dentro da estrutura de um projeto Erasmus+ europeu, foram entrevistados mediadores estagiários sobre a sua experiência. Os contactos realizaram-se através de entrevistas não estruturadas, biográfico-narrativas qualitativamente profundas, nas quais indivíduos comprometidos com a interação dialógica criaram um entendimento partilhado, dando significado às suas histórias. Trata-se de entrevistas interativas, co-construídas. O detalhe da linguagem da entrevista documenta como a construção do significado ocorre, e como esta é afetada por motivos de pertença a determinados grupos, por discursos sobre etnias e culturas, assim como pelo género, idade, relações profissionais e educacionais, entre outros. A entrevista é sensível aos recursos da linguagem e aos seus usos na co-construção do significado. Este artigo, usando excertos de uma narrativa biográfica, mostra que a forma falante destas narrativas da aprendizagem biográfica dos mediadores pode oferecer uma visão do processo do conhecimento despoletado pela aprendizagem em comunidades de práticas, e que a criação de um espaço comum de experiência pode ser ouvido na conversa biográfica. Os recursos biográficos, a biograficidade e a sua relação com a linguagem e sociedade são considerados e, nas narrativas da entrevista podem ser observadas, ouvidas e partilhadas a criação de um espaço de aprendizagem, um espaço para o desenvolvimento e a revelação de noções e práticas de mediação

Izobraževanje 2030 in izobraževanje odraslih: globalne perspektive in lokalne skupnosti – mostovi ali vrzeli?

This thematic issue of Studies in Adult Education and Learning was born out of the work done at the 10th Conference of the ESREA Research Network Between Global and Local: Adult Learning and Communities (BGL-ALC) which was held in Opatija in Croatia, from the 7th to the 10th of June 2018, organised by the Adult Education Institution DANTE (Ustanova za obrazovanje odraslih), an institution with vigorous roots in local and regional educational networks and active at a European level in numerous EU projects and cooperative efforts. The organisers of the conference together with the convenors of the BGL-ALC Research Network chose as a title for the conference: “Education 2030 & Adult Learning: Global Perspectives and Local Communities - Bridges or Gaps? Agendas, praxis and research”.Ta tematska številka Andragoških spoznanj izhaja iz 10. konference raziskovalne mreže ESREA Med globalnim in lokalnim – Izobraževanje odraslih in skupnosti (Between Global and Local: Adult Learning and Communities, BGL-ALC), ki je potekala v Opatiji na Hrvaškem med 7. in 10. junijem 2018 v organizaciji Ustanove za izobraževanje odraslih DANTE. Ta institucija je močno vpeta v lokalne in regionalne izobraževalne mreže ter dejavna na evropski ravni v številnih projektih EU in v različnih oblikah sodelovanja. Organizatorji konference so skupaj s koordinatorji raziskovalne mreže BGL-ALC za naslov srečanja izbrali Izobraževanje 2030 in izobraževanje odraslih: Globalne perspektive in lokalne skupnosti – mostovi ali vrzeli? Agende, prakse in raziskave

Supersets save time in the gym: which may help you reach fitness goals faster. [Blog post]

Resistance training is an increasingly popular way to build strength, lose weight and get in shape. But despite its many benefits, it can also be time consuming – which is why many fitness enthusiasts have started incorporating "supersets" into gym routines. When done properly, supersets have the potential to help you build strength and muscle – all while spending less time in the gym. Sometimes called paired sets, supersets are a form of strength training in which you perform a set of repetitions of usually two exercises, back-to-back with minimal or no rest between them. The exercises should also target opposing muscle groups – namely the agonists (the force-generating muscles) and the antagonists (the muscle that relaxes when the agonist contracts). For example, leg curls (where the hamstrings are the agonists and the quadriceps the antagonists) would typically be followed by leg extensions (where the quadriceps are the agonists and the hamstrings the antagonists) to make up a superset. However, many people perform supersets incorrectly. Many believe supersets to be the same as compound sets, in which two exercises engaging the same muscle group are performed back-to-back. Or they get confused with contrast training, in which two similar exercises are paired to increase power, the first performed with a heavier load, while the second is performed explosively with a lighter load – such as heavy squats followed by vertical jumps. Many also think supersets comprise upper and lower body exercises performed in succession

Resistance training: here's why it's so effective for weight loss. [Blog post]

Weight lifting, also known as resistance training, has been practised for centuries as a way of building muscular strength. Research shows that resistance training, whether done via body weight, resistance bands or machines, dumbbells or free weights, not only helps us build strength, but also improves muscle size and can help counteract age-related muscle loss. More recently it's become popular among those looking to lose weight. While exercises such as running and cycling are indeed effective for reducing body fat, these activities can simultaneously decrease muscle size, leading to weaker muscles and greater perceived weight loss, as muscle is more dense than fat. But unlike endurance exercises, evidence shows resistance training not only has beneficial effects on reducing body fat, it also increases muscle size and strength