Revisiting Tony Price’s (1979) account of the native vegetation of Duck River and Rookwood Cemetery, western Sydney

The Duck River Reserve and Rookwood Cemetery in the highly urbanised Auburn district of western-Sydney hold small but botanically valuable stands of remnant native vegetation. In the late 1970s, local resident G.A.-(Tony) Price, recognised the value of these remnants, both for the species they held and the clues they could give us-to the past, and spent three years surveying and collecting plants at these sites. Price recorded the species present and-their abundance, and described the habitats in which they were found. He observed the ecology of plant interactions,-moisture, shading and fire response, interpolating them into a picture of the landscape and vegetation of the district-prior to European settlement. At a time when field botany was inaccessible to many, and the focus of conservation was-largely on the broader scale, Price’s local scale work at these sites was unusual and important. Though never formally-published, Price’s 1979 account ‘The Vegetation of Duck River and Rookwood Cemetery, Auburn’ has been cited in-all subsequent work of consequence for the area. This paper presents and reviews Price’s work and discusses his-observations in relation to the current vegetation of these areas. Tony Price’s contributions also highlight the value and-role that ordinary citizens can play alongside professional botanists and plant ecologists in long term data collection,-considered observation and environmental management. A copy of Price’s original unpublished account has been-included as an appendix to this paper

Tributary Glacier Surges: An Exceptional Concentration at Panmah Glacier, Karakoram Himalaya

Four tributaries of Panmah Glacier have surged in less than a decade, three in quick succession between 2001 and 2005. Since 1985, 13 surges have been recorded in the Karakoram Himalaya, more than in any comparable period since the 1850s. Ten were tributary surges. In these ten a full run-out of surge ice is prevented, but extended post-surge episodes affect the tributary and main glacier. The sudden concentration of events at Panmah Glacier is without precedent and at odds with known surge intervals for the glaciers. Interpretations must consider the response of thermally complex glaciers, at exceptionally high altitudes and of high relief, to changes in a distinctive regional climate. It is suggested that high-altitude warming affecting snow and glacier thermal regimes, or bringing intense, short-term melting episodes, may be more significant than mass-balance change

The Law and the Press

This chapter offers a broad survey of the relationships between the law and the press (primarily the newspaper press) during the nineteenth century. It traces the transition from early decades of vigorous state hostility of the first third of the century, through the gradual relaxation of fiscal and regulatory controls from the 1830s to the 1860s, to the brief period of completely unregulated press production in the 1870s. It examines the main legal engagements of the press in this period: the various forms of libel, political (seditious, blasphemous and obscene), civil and criminal, as well as copyright and contempt of court. In doing so it explores the limits of the ‘free press’ of British constitutional myth, and the complex and mutually constitutive relationship between the press and the law as interests

Thermal duality and gravitational collapse in heterotic string theories

The thermal duality of E(8) x E(8) and SO(32) heterotic string theories may underpin a mechanism that would convert the kinetic energy of infalling matter during gravitational collapse to form a region of a hot string phase that would expel gravitational gradients. This phase would be the continuation of a Ginzburg-Landau like superconductor in the Euclidean regime. In this scenario, there would be no event horizon or singularity produced in gravitational collapse. Solutions are presented for excitations of the string vacuum that may form during gravitational collapse and drive the transition to the hot phase. The proposed mechanism is developed here for the case of approximately spherical gravitational collapse in 4 uncompactified spacetime dimensions. A way to reconcile the large entropy apparently produced in this process with quantum mechanics is briefly discussed. In this scenario, astrophysical objects such as stellar or galactic cores which have undergone extreme gravitational collapse would currently be sites of an on-going conversion process to shells of this high temperature phase. The relationship of this proposal to the `firewall paradox' is noted.Comment: 28 pages, 3 figures Revised estimate for the conversion time scale in this versio

Is corporate Asia ready for the green economy?

This report explores the concept of a ‘green economy’, and its relevance in Asia. It explores the roles that policymakers, investors, corporates and accountants need to play to facilitate the transition to a green economy.Publisher PD

The Karakoram Anomaly? Glacier Expansion and the ‘Elevation Effect,’ Karakoram Himalaya

In the late 1990s widespread evidence of glacier expansion was found in the central Karakoram, in contrast to a worldwide decline of mountain glaciers. The expansions were almost exclusively in glacier basins from the highest parts of the range and developed quickly after decades of decline. Exceptional numbers of glacier surges were also reported. Unfortunately, there has been no on-going measurement of climatic or glaciological variables at these elevations. The present article examines possible explanations for this seemingly anomalous behavior, using evidence from short-term monitoring programs, low-altitude weather stations, and the distinctive environmental characteristics of the region. The latter involve interactions between regional air mass climatology, its seasonality, topoclimate or ‘verticality’ effects on glaciers with extreme altitudinal range, climatic sensitivities of heavy versus thin supraglacial debris, and complex temperature distributions in ice masses with ice falls throughout critical elevations. Valley climate stations indicate increases in precipitation over the past 50 years and small declines in summer temperatures, which may indicate positive trends in glacier mass balance. However, the suddenness of the expansions is problematic, as is their confinement to glaciers from the highest watersheds while others continue to retreat. Thermal shifts in ice masses with extreme altitude ranges may be even more critical, leading to an accelerated redistribution of ice mass by elevation

Music education

The chapter explores the historical development of music education in Scottish secondary schools and summarises current and future trends in pedagogy and assessment. The chapter offers a critical overview of current provision for the non-specialist and identifies contemporary debates around musical genre, technology and instrumental teaching provision