Didiman: Australian agricultural extension officers in the territory of Papua and New Guinea, 1945-1975

Historically, the development philosophy for the two Territories of Papua and New Guinea (known as TPNG, formerly two territories, Papua and New Guinea) was equated with economic development, with a focus on agricultural development. To achieve the modification or complete change in indigenous farming systems the Australian Government’s Department of External Territories adopted and utilised a programme based on agricultural extension. Prior to World War II, under Australian administration, the economic development of these two territories, as in many colonies of the time, was based on the institution of the plantation. Little was initiated in agriculture development for indigenous people. This changed after World War II to a rationale based on the promotion and advancement of primary industry, but also came to include indigenous farmers. To develop agriculture within a colony it was thought that a modification to, or in some cases the complete transformation of, existing farming systems was necessary to improve the material welfare of the population. It was also seen to be a guarantee for the future national interest of the sovereign state after independence was granted. The Didiman and Didimisis became the frontline, field operatives of this theoretical model of development. This thesis examines the Didiman’s field operations, the structural organisation of agricultural administration and the application of policy in the two territories

Short-term growth and biomechanical responses of the temperate seagrass Cymodocea nodosa to CO2 enrichment

Seagrasses are often regarded as climate change 'winners' because they exhibit higher rates of photosynthesis, carbon fixation and growth when exposed to increasing levels of ocean acidification. However, questions remain whether such growth enhancement compromises the biomechanical properties of the plants, altering their vulnerability to structural damage and leaf loss. Here, we investigated the short-term (6 wk) effects of decreasing pH by CO2 enrichment on the growth, morphology and leaf-breaking force of the temperate seagrass Cymodocea nodosa. We found that the plant biomass balance under levels of acidification representative of short-term climate change projections (pH 8.04) was positive and led to an increase in leaf abundance in the shoots. However, we also found that plant biomass balance was negative under levels of acidification experienced presently (pH 8.29) and those projected over the long-term (pH 7.82). Leaf morphology (mean leaf length, thickness and width) was invariant across our imposed acidification gradient, although leaves were slightly stronger under [CO2] representative of short-term climate change. Taken together, these findings indicate that a subtle increase in growth and mechanical resistance of C. nodosa is likely to occur following short-to medium-term changes in ocean chemistry, but that these positive effects are unlikely to be maintained over the longer term. Our study emphasises the need to account for the interdependencies between environmental conditions and variations in multiple aspects of the structure and functioning of seagrass communities when considering the likely consequences of climate change.Mobility Fellowships Programme of the EuroMarine Consortium (European Commission Seventh Framework Programme) [FP7-ENV-2010.2.2.1-3]; Foundation of Science and Technology of Portugal [SFRH/BPD/119344/2016, PTDC/MAR-EST/3223/2014]; Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) through the UK Ocean Acidification Research Programme (UKOARP) [NE/H017445/1]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A philosophical critique of the best interests test as a criterion for decision making in law and clinical practice

The best interest test is the legal mechanism which governs decision making on behalf of adults who lack the capacity to make their own health care treatment decisions. The test has attracted considerable criticism from health professionals, academics, judges and lawyers for being ill-defined and non-specific. The question of what is meant by 'best interests' remains largely unanswered. As a consequence, the test gives medical and legal decision makers considerable discretion to apply their personal value judgements within supposedly value-free philosophical frameworks - unreasoned and opaque decision making processes are the inevitable result. Because of the dominance of supposedly value-free philosophical frameworks, the place of values in decision making is not always fully understood. Reasoning is not possible without values, which stem from our emotions and passions, our upbringing, our religion, our cultures, our processes of socialisation and from our life experiences. Values help us make sense of our daily lives. I argue that law - like any other social institution - is essentially a human, values based construct. I put forward a theory of values-based law which argues for the recognition that laws, rules and conventions are based on, and contain, individual values. Currently, medical and legal decision makers justify grave decisions on behalf of society's most vulnerable citizens without revealing, or even acknowledging the values which drive and inform their decisions. Any opportunities to scrutinise or debate the values driving decisions are lost. Ultimately, values-based law argues that values underlying best interest determinations must be exposed to facilitate honest, transparent and fulsome decision making on behalf of adults who lack capacity. By applying the theory of values-based law, supposedly value-free decision making processes are exposed as insufficient to facilitate fulsome, honest and transparent legal reasoning

Patterns in sense making interactions : how people make sense of kidney failure in online renal discussion groups

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.Sense making matters because people make sense to understand situations and decide what to do next. Researchers study sense making to understand why space programs fail, why employees resist change, how doctors make diagnoses and how patients cope with experiences and care for themselves. Yet in Library and Information Studies (LIS), sense making research mainly restricts itself to how people interact with information systems. Sense making is rarely defined in any field, but is generally described as a cognitive activity, ignoring potential emotional or experiential aspects of sense making. My aim with this research is to define sense making and extend LIS conceptions of sense making to include whatever might be involved, whether cognitive or not and looking beyond the involvement of information systems. I examined people making sense of kidney failure, a likely situation in which to perceive physicality and emotions in sense making. This thesis has several methodological components including influences by two major sense making theorists, Brenda Dervin and Karl Weick. Based on their insight, I conceive sense making as social, ongoing, enactive processes. Influenced by ethnomethodological descriptions of how meanings emerge in interactions, I participated in online renal support groups, following interactions en vivo. Influenced by practice theory, I view activities as evidence of sense making, and examine discussion posts as written sense making. Therefore I describe external performances of sense making, not internal psychological understandings. The result is a longitudinal, social constructionist investigation of text-based sense making interactions, using content and thematic analyses to attend to collaborative sequences. I found that people collaborated online by developing and breaking patterns of ideas and emotional tones, requiring repetition and time. They connected discussions to their own lives, interrelating feelings, ideas and experiences. Also, they created customized, personalised understandings, improvising shifting connections which allowed them to respond to complexity. These findings confirm conceptions both of sense making as located in time, and as embodied, emotional and lived, not only a mental activity. They also contribute to conceptions of knowing as flexible and transient rather than stable and structured. These are shifts from common LIS conceptions of sense making and knowledge. This thesis describes the important practical implications for clinicians and information professionals that follow from these significant conceptual shifts, demonstrating the practical relevance of having looked beyond information-related data to extend LIS conceptions of sense making

Beyond information seeking: towards a general model of information behaviour.

Introduction. The aim of the paper is to review models of information behaviour and to propose new models that extend the concept beyond simply information seeking to consider other modes of behaviour. The models chiefly explored are those of Wilson and Dervin. Argument A shortcoming of some models of information behaviour is that they present a sequence of stages in that behaviour and it is evident that actual behaviour is not always explained effectively by stages in a sequence. Development. A model of 'multi-directionality' is explored, to overcome the notion of sequential stages and, using Dervin's concept of 'the gap', modes of information behaviour are developed that include, for example, creating, destroying and avoiding information as well as seeking it. Conclusion. New models of information behaviour are presented that: replace the notion of 'barriers' with the concept of 'gap', as a means of integrating the views of Wilson and Dervin; incorporate the notion of multi-directionality; and identify ways in which an individual may navigate 'the gap' using different modes of information behaviour

Use of remotely-derived bathymetry for modelling biomass in marine environments

The paper presents results on the influence of geometric attributes of satellite-derived raster bathymetric data, namely the General Bathymetric Charts of the Oceans, on spatial statistical modelling of marine biomass. In the initial experiment, both the resolution and projection of the raster dataset are taken into account. It was found that, independently of the equal-area projection chosen for the analysis, the calculated areas are very similar, and the differences between them are insignificant. Likewise, any variation in the raster resolution did not change the computed area. Although the differences were shown to be insignificant, for the subsequent analysis we selected the cylindrical equal area projection, as it implies rectangular spatial extent, along with the automatically derived resolution. Then, in the second experiment, we focused on demersal fish biomass data acquired from trawl samples taken from the western parts of ICES Sub-area VII, near the sea floor. The aforementioned investigation into processing bathymetric data allowed us to build various statistical models that account for a relationship between biomass, sea floor topography and geographic location. We fitted a set of generalised additive models and generalised additive mixed models to combinations of trawl data of the roundnose grenadier (Coryphaenoides rupestris) and bathymetry. Using standard statistical techniques—such as analysis of variance, Akaike information criterion, root mean squared error, mean absolute error and cross-validation—we compared the performance of the models and found that depth and latitude may serve as statistically significant explanatory variables for biomass of roundnose grenadier in the study area. However, the results should be interpreted with caution as sampling locations may have an impact on the biomass–depth relationship

Tree roots in a changing world

Globally, forests cover 4 billion hectares or 30% of the Earth's land surface, and 20%-40% of the forest biomass is made up of roots. Roots play a key role for trees: they take up water and nutrients from the soil, store carbon (C) compounds, and provide physical stabilization. Estimations from temperate forests of Central Europe reveal that C storage in trees accounts for about 110 t C ha−1, of which 26 t C ha−1 is in coarse roots and 1.2 t C ha−1 is in fine roots. Compared with soil C, which is about 65 t C ha−1 (without roots), the contribution of the root C to the total belowground C pool is about 42%. Flux of C into soils by plant litter (stemwood excluded) compared with the total soil C pool, however, is relatively small (4.4 t C ha−1 year−1) with the coarse and fine roots each contributing about 20%. Elevated CO2 concentrations and N depositions lead to increased plant biomass, including that of roots. Recent analysis in experiments with elevated CO2 concentrations have shown increases of the forest net primary productivity by about 23%, and, in the case of poplars, an increase of the standing root biomass by about 62%. The turnover of fine roots is also positively influenced by elevated CO2 concentrations and can be increased in poplars by 25%-45%. A recently established international platform for scientists working on woody root processes, COST action E38, allows the exchange of information, ideas, and personnel, and it has the aim to identify knowledge gaps and initiate future collaborations and research activitie

Putative fishery-induced changes in biomass and population size structures of demersal deep-sea fishes in ICES Sub-area VII, Northeast Atlantic Ocean

This work was supported by a series of NERC grants to the principal investigators including NE/C512961/1. The results of the early joint SAMS and IOS surveys were digitized with support from EU MAST Contract MAS2-CT920033 1993–1995, and data analyses was supported by EU FP7 Projects HERMES and HERMIONE. We thank Alain Zuur from Highland Statistics Ltd. for advice with the statistical analyses and Odd Aksel Bergstad for valuable comments that helped to improve the manuscript. We thank the ships’ companies of the RRS Challenger and RRS Discovery.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

How do student nurses learn to care? An analysis of pre-registration adult nursing practice assessment documents

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Kate Young, Rosemary Godbold, and Pat Wood, ‘How do student nurses learn to care? An analysis of pre-registration adult nursing practice assessment documents’, Nurse Education in Practice, Vol. 28: 168-174, January 2018. Under embargo until 6 October 2018. The final, definitive version is available online at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2017.10.004.There is international concern about the quality of nursing in resource constrained, high technology health care settings. This paper reports findings from a research study which explored the experiences and views of those involved in the education and learning of 'caring' with adult pre-registration students. A novel dataset of 39 practice assessment documents (PADs) were randomly sampled and analysed across both bachelors and masters programmes from September 2014–July 2015. Using an appreciative enquiry approach, the Caring Behaviours Inventory aided analysis of qualitative text from both mentors and students within the PADs to identify how student nurses learn to care and to establish whether there were any differences between Masters and Bachelors students. In contrast with existing research, we found a holistic, melded approach to caring. This combined softer skills with highly technologized care, and flexible, tailored approaches to optimise individualised care delivery. Both of these were highly valued by both students and mentors. Pre-registration MSc students tended to have higher perceptual skills and be more analytical than their BSc counterparts. We found no evidence to suggest that caring behaviour or attitudes diminish over the course of either programme.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio