Jumping Ship - Skirting Empire: Indians, Aborigines and Australians across the Indian Ocean

Relationships between South Asians and Australians during the colonial period have been little investigated. Closer attention to the dramatically expanded sea trade after 1850 and the relatively uncontrolled movement of people, ideas and goods which occurred on them, despite claims of imperial regulation, suggests that significant numbers of Indians among others entered Australia outside the immigration restrictions of empire or settlers. Given that many of them entered or remained in Australia without official sanction, their histories will not be found in the official immigration records, but rather in the memories and momentos of the communities into which they might have moved. Exploring the histories of Aboriginal communities and of maritime working class networks does allow a previously unwritten history to emerge: not only of Indian individuals with complex personal and working histories, but often as activists in the campaigns against racial discrimination and in support of decolonization. Yet their heritage has been obscured. The polarizing conflict between settlers and Aboriginal Australians has invariably meant that Aboriginal people of mixed background had to `choose sides to be counted simplistically as either `black or `white. The need to defend the communitys rights has meant that Aboriginal people had to be unequivocal in their identification and this simplification has had to take precedence over the assertion of a diverse heritage. In working class histories, the mobilization of selective ethnic stereotyping has meant that the history of Indians as workers, as unionists and as activists has been distorted and ignored

Talking to water: Memory, gender and environment for Hazara refugees in Australia

This article explores the life histories of 12 Hazara women in south-eastern Australia, each of whom arrived from 2005 onwards. It traces the environmental dimensions of their experiences of home, flight and new settlement, with a sustained focus on how water played a role in their journeys. There has been little discussion to date about the gendered relationships to place and environments for refugees, nor on how the well-publicised depictions of refugee journeys are often gendered, although seldom recognised as such. During in-depth oral history interviews, these Hazara refugee women talked about 'home' and 'water', depicting them as entwined concepts in their recollected early lives in Afghanistan, their long, enforced residence in transit ghettos and their new experiences in south-eastern Australia. The 'everyday' and material experiences they recall and narrate about 'homes' and 'water' in each of these locations of their past and present point not only to the environmental context and implications of their experiences but to the processes of mourning that accompany such traumatic journeys

Fishing the georges river: Cultural diversity and urban environments

The Georges River runs through the heart of Sydney’s most culturally diverse population, including long-established Aboriginal and Anglo-Celtic communities as well as the many more recent immigrant communities that have developed since the 1980s. Most people in all these communities are in working-class employment (if they have jobs at all), are living in densely packed suburbs and, despite some gentrification on the margins, still have significant disadvantages in educational and social infrastructure. As well as being a large river with scenic parklands threading along its lower estuarine reaches, the Georges River is also the focus of intensifying ethnic conflicts which often spill over into the media. The names of the river’s suburbs – Cabramatta, Liverpool, Bankstown, Macquarie Fields and Lakemba – are well known around Australia for their tensions. Yet, recent surveys of Australian attitudes to cultural diversity have demonstrated a widespread endorsement of the desire to reach across cultural differences despite the effect of international events and the media in increasing the hostile polarisation between ethnic groups (Ang et al. 2002, 2006). This paper will ask whether considering the area’s complex relationships and tensions through the lens of ‘everyday’ activities might allow us to understand those conflicts more clearly

Factors Associated with the Diversification of the Gut Microbial Communities within Chimpanzees from Gombe National Park.

The gastrointestinal tract harbors large and diverse populations of bacteria that vary among individuals and within individuals over time. Numerous internal and external factors can influence the contents of these microbial communities, including diet, geography, physiology, and the extent of contact among hosts. To investigate the contributions of such factors to the variation and changes in gut microbial communities, we analyzed the distal gut microbiota of individual chimpanzees from two communities in Gombe National Park, Tanzania. These samples, which were derived from 35 chimpanzees, many of whom have been monitored for multiple years, provide an unusually comprehensive longitudinal depth for individuals of known genetic relationships. Although the composition of the great-ape microbiota has been shown to codiversify with host species, indicating that host genetics and phylogeny have played a major role in its differentiation over evolutionary timescales, the geneaological relationships of individual chimpanzees did not coincide with the similarity in their gut microbial communities. However, the inhabitants from adjacent chimpanzee communities could be distinguished based on the contents of their gut microbiota. Despite the broad similarity of community members, as would be expected from shared diet or interactions, long-term immigrants to a community often harbored the most distinctive gut microbiota, suggesting that individuals retain hallmarks of their previous gut microbial communities for extended periods. This pattern was reinforced in several chimpanzees sampled over long temporal scales, in which the major constituents of the gut microbiota were maintained for nearly a decade

Structural metamaterial lattices by laser powder-bed fusion of 17-4PH steel

Additive manufacturing build parameters are used to engineer structural metamaterials lattices with controllable mechanical performance, achieved through microstructural grading of 17-4PH steel without compositional or geometric modification. The high solidification rates of laser powder-bed fusion suppress the thermal martensitic transformation and lead to elevated levels of retained austenite. Diamond cubic lattices built at low energy density (low thermal strain) retain a low martensite phase fraction (3 wt%) and exhibit a bend-dominated compression response. Lattices built at high energy density experience increased thermal strain during the build, causing in-situ deformation-driven transformation, yielding 44 wt% martensite; these exhibit a stretch-dominated compression response. Metamaterial lattices, with high and low energy density parameters in different configurations, exhibit mixed compression responses. Controllable mechanical response was achieved through control of microstructure, using build parameters to adjust thermal strain and selectively suppress or trigger the martensitic phase transformation in-situ

The interview as narrative ethnography : seeking and shaping connections in qualitative research.

Acts of counter-subjectification in qualitative research are always present but are often submerged in accounts that seek to locate the power of subjectification entirely with the researcher. This is particularly so when talking to people about sensitive issues. Based on an interview-based study of infertility and reproductive disruption among British Pakistanis in Northeast England, we explore how we, as researchers, sought and were drawn into various kinds of connections with the study participants; connections that were actively and performatively constructed through time. The three of us that conducted interviews are all female academics with Ph.Ds in anthropology, but thereafter our backgrounds, life stories and experiences diverge in ways that intersected with those of our informants in complex and shifting ways. We describe how these processes shaped the production of narrative accounts and consider some of the associated analytical and ethical implications

An assessment of the high-entropy alloy system VCrMnFeAlx

A major consideration when choosing materials for nuclear reactors is the future radioactive waste produced by the irradiation of their component parts. Only a handful of structural metals can be considered ‘low activation’ in a fusion environment. In recent work, we showed that the low-activation multicomponent equiatomic alloy VCrMnFe comprises a single BCC (A2) phase at 1200°C. Here, we examine its stability on ageing at lower temperatures, and the effect of Al additions (to create VCrMnFeAlx alloys) to destabilise the sigma phase and form strengthening superlattice structures. It is found that substantial volume fractions of sigma phase form after ageing VrCrMnFe at 600°C and 800°C for 1000 h. The addition of Al was found to destabilise the sigma phase, as predicted using thermodynamic modelling, with it being eliminated at all temperatures with additions of 6.6 at% Al. Increasing Al additions also led to the formation of superlattice structures: B2 and L21 (Heusler). Higher Al content had a slight increasing effect on the alloys’ hardness, but also embrittled the alloys (at room temperature). Significant hardening was produced by nano-segregation induced in the higher Al x = 0.25, 0.5 and 1.0 alloys after aging at 600 °C. This alloy system presents an attractive opportunity to fine-tune the composition to obtain a balance of ductility and high-temperature strength and stability. Of particular interest was the formation a two-phase basket weave cube-on-cube orientated, coherent, microstructure in VCrMnFeAl1.0 after aging at 800 °C

Parenting ‘gifted and talented’ children in urban areas: Parents' voices

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright © 2014 by SAGE Publications.International evidence demonstrates the importance of engaging parents in the education of their ‘high-potential’ children, yet limited research has focused on the involvement of parents from differing economic strata/backgrounds. The current study explored the dilemmas of parenting academically high-ability children from economically deprived urban areas in the UK. Data were gathered from a sample of parents whose children attended a university-based sustained intervention programme for designated ‘gifted’ pupils aged 12–16. Parental perceptions were sought in relation to (a) the usefulness/impact of the intervention programme, (b) parents’ aspirations for their children growing up in economically deprived urban areas and (c) parents’ views on the support provided by the extended family, peer groups and the wider community. The findings have significant implications for both policy and practice and, more specifically, for engaging parents in intervention programmes offered by universities and schools to children in order to increase their access to higher education and for enhancing their life chances