Four rural cemeteries in central western NSW: Islands of Australiana in a European sea?

Vascular plants present in groundstoreys of variously–managed areas in four cemeteries in central western NSW – two on the Central Western Slopes (Garra and Toogong) and two on the Central Tablelands (Lyndhurst and Carcoar) – were recorded over periods of 6–10 years. It was hypothesised that (a) areas of the cemeteries with a history of nil or low disturbance would represent high quality remnant vegetation (i.e. contain a diversity of native species but few naturalised species), and (b) that clearing of woody vegetation, together with similar management (e.g. regular mowing) would result in homogenisation of the groundstoreys such that many species, native and naturalised, would be common to all sites. 344 species (176 native, 154 naturalised and 14 non–naturalised exotics) were recorded across the four cemeteries. Many native species that were rare in the surrounding agricultural lands were present in the cemeteries (enhancing their value as conservation areas) but no cemetery contained areas of groundstorey that would qualify as ‘pristine’. Across all management areas, the proportions of naturalised species in the native + naturalised floras of the cemeteries ranged from 46 to 55 %. Though never dominant, naturalised species also comprised high proportions (42 to 51 %) of the floras of the least disturbed (nil or infrequently mown) areas within each cemetery. Many (40 %) of the species recorded occurred at only one cemetery. This partly explained why the floras of similarly– managed parts of cemeteries on the Central Western Slopes were, contrary to expectations, markedly different to those on the Central Tablelands. However, within the same botanic subdivision, floras – particularly of naturalised species in regularly mown grasslands – were more similar (‘homogenised’) than those of nil or infrequently mown grasslands

History researcher development and research capacity in Australia and New Zealand

 This article presents data and discussion on history researcher development and research capacities in Australia and New Zealand, as evidenced in analysis of history PhD theses’ topics. The article is based on two independent studies of history PhD thesis topics, using a standard discipline coding system. It shows some marked differences in the Australian and New Zealand volumes and distributions of history PhDs, especially for PhDs conducted on non-local/national topics. These differences reflect national researcher development, research capacities and interests, in particular local, national and international histories, and have implications for the globalisation of scholarship. Thesis topics are used as a proxy for the graduate’s research capacity within that topic. However, as PhD examiners have attested to the significance and originality of the thesis, this is taken as robust. The longitudinal nature of the research suggests that subsequent years’ data and analysis would provide rich information on changes to history research capacity. Other comparative (i.e. international) studies would provide interesting analyses of history research capacity. There are practical implications for history departments in universities, history associations, and government (PhD policy, and history researcher development and research capacity in areas such as foreign affairs). There are social implications for local and community history in the knowledge produced in the theses, and in the development of local research capacity. The work in this article is the first to collate and analyse such thesis data either in Australia or New Zealand. The comparative analyses of the two datasets are also original

A Note on Ted Hughes and Jonathan Swift

Ted Hughes, three months before he died, when he had completed the huge project that became Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being (1992) and the two long original essays in the collected prose of Winter Pollen (1994), complained that he had spent too much time writing prose. He even believed that this had somehow destroyed his immune system (Letters 719). He wrote that, avoiding the issue of engaging with the material in what became Birthday Letters, he ‘took refuge in prose’ (ibid). Certainly his major poetry collections were behind him (with River in 1983). He described his late absorption in prose with a reference to an image from an iconic, not to say mythologised, moment from his days as a Cambridge undergraduate: ‘5or 6 years nothing but prose – nothing but burning the foxes’ (ibid). In his famous record of a dream he was writing his weekly essay on the English course, this time on Samuel Jonson, and a fox had appeared with burnt paws which he planted on the page and said ‘You are destroying us’ (see Winter Pollen pp. 8-9). Hughes switched, as was actually not uncommon amongst English students, to Archaeology and Anthropology for his final year

The Research Commission on Poverty and Policy Advocacy: A Report from One of the BERA Research Commissions. Summary Report

No abstract available

The Research Commission on Poverty and Policy Advocacy: A Report from One of the BERA Research Commissions. Final Report

No abstract available

Optimizing superplastic response in lithium containing aluminum-magnesium alloys.

http://archive.org/details/optimizingsuperp00munrNAN

A 3D antiferromagnetic ground state in a quasi-1D π-stacked charge-transfer system

With the rising interest in organic based materials for spintronic and multiferroic applications it is important to fully understand their electrical and magnetic properties and to identify correlations between their structural and physical attributes. One material that still holds some ambiguity is triethylammonium bis-7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane (TEA(TCNQ)2). This charge transfer compound has one electron delocalised across two TCNQ molecules along quasi-1D stacks. Previous work has shown that there is magneto-electrical coupling associated with the magnetic transition at ∼120 K, however the magnetism and magnetic ground-state are not well understood. Within this manuscript we provide evidence for a long range magnetic order that is 3D in nature

Hunch Mining: Intuition Augmented with Cognitive Computing, Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence

Hunches are important tools for executives making time-critical highly complex decisions in turbulent environments. However, hunches are also elusive and exist below the surface when not being used for immediate decision making. These latent hunches can be useful for developing analytical models. This paper coins the term hunch mining to describe the process of surfacing latent hunches from corporate decision makers as well as workers and using them as models for data analytics. We present the Organizational Hunch Matrix and show how organizations can make the leap from time-consuming manual cognitive analysis to artificial intelligence and analytics driven analysis facilitated by Cognitive Computing Engineers