Treeless vegetation of the Australian Alps

Based on 1222 floristic quadrat samples, 56 plant communities were identified in treeless vegetation in the Australian Alps of south-eastern Australia. (c. 35º 30´–38ºS, 146°–149°E). The study encompassed vegetation from above the upper limit of trees on mountain tops (i.e. the truly alpine environment) and below the inverted treeline in subalpine valleys. Generally, grasslands develop on deep humus soils, heathlands occur on shallower or rocky soils, and wetland communities are found in places of permanent or intermittent wetness. Duration of snow cover, lithology, altitude and exposure are also important determinants of the spatial arrangement of communities. Broadly, communities within a geographic region are more closely related to each other than to communities of similar structure or dominants from other geographic areas. Many communities are either very localised or are widespread with a small area of occupancy. Fourteen communities are probably eligible for listing as threatened, either alone or as aggregates with associated communities. A total of 710 native taxa from 82 families has been recorded. There is a high level of endemism – 30% of taxa are ± restricted to treeless vegetation in the Australia Alps and a further 14% are ± restricted to treeless vegetation but occur in mountain areas outside the Australian mainland (e.g. Tasmania and New Zealand). Thirteen taxa are listed in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 as threatened and a further 18 taxa are identified that may be eligible for listing as threatened nationally. 131 non-native taxa have been recorded in natural vegetation. Treeless vegetation has been intensively utilised since European settlement, initially as summer pastures for cattle and sheep but more recently as water catchments for electricity production and as tourist attractions both in winter and summer. Many communities are slowly recovering from past pressures and from the fires of 2003, which burnt most of the area for the first time since 1939. The treeless vegetation of the Australian Alps faces an uncertain future because of increased pressure from tourism and the unknown impacts of global warming

Engaged followership and organisational misconduct

Work on this paper was supported by a pump-priming grant from the British Psychological Society.PostprintPeer reviewe

Violence brief interventions: a rapid review

Provision of a Violence Brief Intervention (VBI) to young men undergoing treatment for a violent injury may represent a teachable moment for the prevention of future interpersonal violence in Scotland. Prior to intervention design, a rapid review of the research literature was necessary to examine existing programmes. After title and abstract screening, eight distinct VBIs were identified from full texts. Whilst none of the programmes were a perfect match for our intervention goals, they did demonstrate the potential effectiveness of brief interventions for violence prevention at both cognitive and behavioural levels. Key themes of successful interventions included brief motivational interviewing as an effective method of engaging with at-risk participants and encouraging change, the utility of social norms approaches for correcting peer norm misperceptions, the usefulness of working with victims of violence in medical settings (particularly oral and maxillofacial surgeries), the importance of addressing the role of alcohol after violent injury, the advantages of a computer-therapist hybrid model of delivery, and the need for adequate follow-up evaluation as part of a randomised control trial. This information has been used to design a VBI which is currently under evaluation

Providing adhesion for a miniture mobile intra-abdominal device based on biomimetic principles

This paper investigates the surface adhesion characteristics required for a miniature mobile device to move around the abdominal cavity. Such a device must be capable of adhering to the tissue lining and move freely across the upper surface of the insufflated abdomen. Accordingly, the potential of utilising bioinspired solutions to facilitate wet adhesion is assessed

Principal appraisal : fluxion and abatement : a grounded theory of principal appraisal in a small selection of New Zealand schools : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Educational Administration at Massey University

The purpose of this study was to investigate the circumstances in and around the principal appraisal process in five New Zealand primary schools. An outcome of this investigation was to generate a theoretical explanation of what was happening in this appraisal process. Data were gathered from five principals and their appraisers through a questionnaire and an interview. Through a constant comparative analysis of the data, a basic social process was discovered that consisted of four conceptual categories labelled as metamorphosis, metamorphic reaction, adaptation and palatableness. These categories were linked into a core category labelled fluxion and abatement. Fluxion and abatement is a conceptual statement of a continually changing appraisal process that has been grappled with and abated in a meaningful way by the appraisal participants. That no school site, of principal appraisal development and implementation, closely resembles another, is testimony of the fluxion and abatement theory. That schools are still talking of adaptation to the latest metamorphosis of professional standards and that a palatableness state is some time, even years, away, strengthens the theory produced in this study. These findings have important implications for a number of areas of school operation. The first is leadership. Will the school site strengthen or move away from a collaborative model of leadership? The study argues for a supportive board of trustees to the principal, who should engender a transformational leadership style. These collaborative approaches will see schools as educative communities rather than managed organisations. The second implication is in teaching and learning. Principals, working with their staff, need to have refined the meaningful data on what is happening in teaching and learning within their schools. The third implication is the principal appraisal process. This process should be used as a purposeful tool to achieve and produce evidence of the other stated implications. The last implication, school effectiveness, is the prospective outcome of such a principal appraisal process

The use of email as a component of adult stammering therapy : a preliminary report

In West Glasgow email has evolved from a rapid means of arranging therapy appointments with adults who stammer into a medium for exchange of therapeutic messages with some clients. Since 2004, sixteen clients have used email to communicate as part of their therapy programme. The benefits include improving access to services, supporting speech change, facilitating lasting personal growth, improving clinical decision-making, equalizing the therapist-client relationship and enhancing caseload management. Although this experience suggests that email is appropriate for stammering therapy, the effectiveness and ethics of, and the rationale for, clinical practice that includes email need careful consideration. Further research is required to formally evaluate the client experience

Plane waves in quantum gravity: breakdown of the classical spacetime

Starting with the Hamiltonian formulation for spacetimes with two commuting spacelike Killing vectors, we construct a midisuperspace model for linearly polarized plane waves in vacuum gravity. This model has no constraints and its degrees of freedom can be interpreted as an infinite and continuous set of annihilation and creation like variables. We also consider a simplified version of the model, in which the number of modes is restricted to a discrete set. In both cases, the quantization is achieved by introducing a Fock representation. We find regularized operators to represent the metric and discuss whether the coherent states of the quantum theory are peaked around classical spacetimes. It is shown that, although the expectation value of the metric on Killing orbits coincides with a classical solution, its relative fluctuations become significant when one approaches a region where null geodesics are focused. In that region, the spacetimes described by coherent states fail to admit an approximate classical description. This result applies as well to the vacuum of the theory.Comment: 11 pages, no figures, version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Symmetric angular momentum coupling, the quantum volume operator and the 7-spin network: a computational perspective

A unified vision of the symmetric coupling of angular momenta and of the quantum mechanical volume operator is illustrated. The focus is on the quantum mechanical angular momentum theory of Wigner's 6j symbols and on the volume operator of the symmetric coupling in spin network approaches: here, crucial to our presentation are an appreciation of the role of the Racah sum rule and the simplification arising from the use of Regge symmetry. The projective geometry approach permits the introduction of a symmetric representation of a network of seven spins or angular momenta. Results of extensive computational investigations are summarized, presented and briefly discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, presented at ICCSA 2014, 14th International Conference on Computational Science and Application

The Effect of Protein Structure and Concentration on Tribocorrosion and Film Formation on CoCrMo Alloys

The formation of tribochemical reaction layers, better known as tribofilms, on cobalt-chromium-molybdenum (CoCrMo) alloys commonly used in orthopaedic applications has been hypothesized to reduce degradation owing to wear and corrosion. However, the mechanisms and pathways influencing tribofilm formation remain largely unknown. This study aims to develop a clearer understanding of the role of protein structures and its concentration on tribocorrosion and surface tribofilms formed on CoCrMo alloys during boundary regime sliding. A reciprocating tribometer with a three-electrode electrochemical cell was employed to simulate and monitor the tribocorrosion of CoCrMo in situ. As-received Foetal Bovine Serum (as-FBS) and pre-heated FBS at 70 °C for 1 h (de-FBS) were diluted with saline (0.9% NaCl) at different concentrations (25% and 75% v/v) and utilized as electrolytes during the tribocorrosion tests. The result shows that the denatured protein structure in electrolyte tends to reduce the volume losses due to wear and corrosion on the CoCrMo samples with an appreciation of the protein tribofilms. On the other hand, an increased protein concentration increased the total volume loss due to corrosive processes. A novel finding revealed in this study is that the tribocorrosion mechanism of the CoCrMo surface is dependent on the protein structure, concentration and sliding duration due to the change in surface condition.</p