From Assimilation to Self-Determination: The Report of the Select Committee Upon Aborigines

1983 the NSW Government passed Ihe Aboriginal Lond Rights Act 1983 (ALRA). The ALRA established the three-tier community driven land council network, a fifteen year funding arrangement to support enterprises and sustain the network into the future and a mechanism for land recovery. The ALRA came after nearly 200 years of colonial land dealings. Therefore the recognition of Aboriginal land rights has to necessarily deal with this past activity. But there are other detailse nmeshedin the passing of the ALRA. This paper sets out to demonstrate the connections between land dealings, the economy and the administration of Aboriginal Affairs across the policy eras including 'protection', 'assimilation' and 'self-determination'

Land Rights at Last!

In 1978 the Wran Government announced an Inquiry to investigate a range of issues including Aboriginal land rights recognition, the causes of Aboriginal social and economic disadvantage, heritage protection and commonwealth and state relations. The Select Committee, chaired by state member Maurie Keane, in its `First Report that focused on land rights, not only fundamentally changed the way Governments liaise and consult with Aboriginal people, the Committee unanimously endorsed far-reaching recommendations including the ability to recover land, compensation for cultural loss and three-tier community driven administrative structure. All of this was set in the context of Aboriginal rights to self-determination and fundamental attachment to land as a cultural relationship and historical reality. The movement for land rights was the culmination of many years of land justice activism, shifting policy at the Commonwealth level and wider international movements contesting colonial rule and racism. More specifically the land rights movement in NSW was galvanised in response to the previous Governments renewed efforts to assimilate Aboriginal people and revoke reserve lands and the limited land rights recognition made possible through the Aboriginal Lands Trust (herein `the Trust). This paper argues a more focused and pronounced campaign emerged in the mid 1970s whereby land rights `time had come as a result of Aboriginal political activism and the alliances formed with and among left social movements. This movement created the political climate for the Wran Governments announcement of the Select Committee Inquiry in 1978

Educational drama in the teaching of education for sustainability

In this paper, I describe part of my research project that examines the use of Educational Drama in Education for Sustainability in the upper stages of the primary school (10- and 11-year-olds). Central to the research is a small-scale qualitative research study. Here, I describe the educational focus of the study and outline the methodology. Central to the study was a series of drama lessons (taught by me) based on environmental themes. The lessons link with some of the key aims in Education for Sustainability - to help young people to develop awareness, knowledge and concepts, to encourage positive attitudes and personal lifestyle decisions and to help them to acquire action skills in and for the environment. The locus is within the Scottish education system. A number of key data were generated during the teaching and evaluation of the lessons. These take the form of field notes, children's evaluations of their work and learning, observation schedules, taped interviews with participants and observers and videotapes of the lessons. The analysis of the data is ongoing, but already there is substantial evidence to suggest that the drama was instrumental in helping the children to achieve the learning outcomes set for the lessons. Some of that evidence is presented here. I suggest that the active, participative learning central to drama is particularly useful for allowing children to develop skills in communication, collaboration and expressing ideas and opinions. Also, the immersion in the imagined context and narrative, integral to the 'stories' in the drama, allows the children to feel sympathy for and empathy with people who are affected by environmental issues and problems. In giving the children a context for research and in helping them to plan solutions and to suggest alternatives, the drama allows the participants opportunities to rehearse active citizenship and facilitates learning in Education for Sustainability

Probabilistic Model-Based Safety Analysis

Model-based safety analysis approaches aim at finding critical failure combinations by analysis of models of the whole system (i.e. software, hardware, failure modes and environment). The advantage of these methods compared to traditional approaches is that the analysis of the whole system gives more precise results. Only few model-based approaches have been applied to answer quantitative questions in safety analysis, often limited to analysis of specific failure propagation models, limited types of failure modes or without system dynamics and behavior, as direct quantitative analysis is uses large amounts of computing resources. New achievements in the domain of (probabilistic) model-checking now allow for overcoming this problem. This paper shows how functional models based on synchronous parallel semantics, which can be used for system design, implementation and qualitative safety analysis, can be directly re-used for (model-based) quantitative safety analysis. Accurate modeling of different types of probabilistic failure occurrence is shown as well as accurate interpretation of the results of the analysis. This allows for reliable and expressive assessment of the safety of a system in early design stages

Implementation of World Health Organization Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI) Guidelines for the Assessment of Pneumonia in the Under 5s in Rural Malawi

The Cooking and Pneumonia Study (CAPS) is a pragmatic cluster-level randomized controlled trial of the effect of an advanced cookstove intervention on pneumonia in children under the age of 5 years (under 5s) in Malawi (www.capstudy.org). The primary outcome of the trial is the incidence of pneumonia during a two-year follow-up period, as diagnosed by healthcare providers who are using the World Health Organization (WHO) integrated management of childhood illnesses (IMCI) pneumonia assessment protocol and who are blinded to the trial arms. We evaluated the quality of pneumonia assessment in under 5s in this setting via a cross-sectional study of provider-patient encounters at nine outpatient clinics located within the catchment area of 150 village-level clusters enrolled in the trial across the two study locations of Chikhwawa and Karonga, Malawi, between May and June 2015 using the IMCI guidelines as a benchmark. Data were collected using a key equipment checklist, an IMCI pneumonia knowledge test, and a clinical evaluation checklist. The median number of key equipment items available was 6 (range 4 to 7) out of a possible 7. The median score on the IMCI pneumonia knowledge test among 23 clinicians was 75% (range 60% to 89%). Among a total of 176 consultations performed by 15 clinicians, a median of 9 (range 3 to 13) out of 13 clinical evaluation tasks were performed. Overall, the clinicians were adequately equipped for the assessment of sick children, had good knowledge of the IMCI guidelines, and conducted largely thorough clinical evaluations. We recommend the simple pragmatic approach to quality assurance described herein for similar studies conducted in challenging research settings

Lessons from using iPads to understand young children's creativity

This paper explores how iPads can be used as part of a child-centred data collection approach to understanding young children’s creativity. Evidence is presented from a pilot study about 3- to 5-year-old children’s creative play. Researchers’ reflective accounts of children’s engagement with iPad video diaries and free to use apps were logged across two early educational settings over a three-month period. Findings suggest that iPads offer a mechanism to allow children to express their creative play and to encourage involvement in the research process. However, bespoke research software to use with early years children is required to improve this process

Garden and landscape-scale correlates of moths of differing conservation status: significant effects of urbanization and habitat diversity

Moths are abundant and ubiquitous in vegetated terrestrial environments and are pollinators, important herbivores of wild plants, and food for birds, bats and rodents. In recent years, many once abundant and widespread species have shown sharp declines that have been cited by some as indicative of a widespread insect biodiversity crisis. Likely causes of these declines include agricultural intensification, light pollution, climate change, and urbanization; however, the real underlying cause(s) is still open to conjecture. We used data collected from the citizen science Garden Moth Scheme (GMS) to explore the spatial association between the abundance of 195 widespread British species of moth, and garden habitat and landscape features, to see if spatial habitat and landscape associations varied for species of differing conservation status. We found that associations with habitat and landscape composition were species-specific, but that there were consistent trends in species richness and total moth abundance. Gardens with more diverse and extensive microhabitats were associated with higher species richness and moth abundance; gardens near to the coast were associated with higher richness and moth abundance; and gardens in more urbanized locations were associated with lower species richness and moth abundance. The same trends were also found for species classified as increasing, declining and vulnerable under IUCN (World Conservation Union) criteria

Quantum Criticality in Heavy Fermion Metals

Quantum criticality describes the collective fluctuations of matter undergoing a second-order phase transition at zero temperature. Heavy fermion metals have in recent years emerged as prototypical systems to study quantum critical points. There have been considerable efforts, both experimental and theoretical, which use these magnetic systems to address problems that are central to the broad understanding of strongly correlated quantum matter. Here, we summarize some of the basic issues, including i) the extent to which the quantum criticality in heavy fermion metals goes beyond the standard theory of order-parameter fluctuations, ii) the nature of the Kondo effect in the quantum critical regime, iii) the non-Fermi liquid phenomena that accompany quantum criticality, and iv) the interplay between quantum criticality and unconventional superconductivity.Comment: (v2) 39 pages, 8 figures; shortened per the editorial mandate; to appear in Nature Physics. (v1) 43 pages, 8 figures; Non-technical review article, intended for general readers; the discussion part contains more specialized topic