Finding Meaning: a talking points brief on underemployment of service personnel

NZDF provides transition programmes for military personnel, these programmes have not been seen by the individual as being ‘useful’. It is this desire to be useful that makes an ex-service person a valuable employee. However most service personnel leave without a civilian or trade qualification. It takes them a long time to get a job. In addition even those that leave with a qualification that is recognised in the civilian world find themselves ‘starting over’ and their years of service ignored or discounted.falseAucklandPost Transition Lt

Witnessing Torture: Staged Violence, Spectatorship and the Theatre of Political Imprisonment

In a recent interview, renowned fight director B.H. Barry said of his work, and of the nature of violence, I’m not frightened of violence. It’s a way of expressing something that you can’t do with words (Kennedy). Staged violence has been common in performance from its origins, often necessitated by a text, and has evolved into its own discipline of theatre practice with regulations and credentialing processes to ensure the safety of actors and audiences. As such, we have come to know staged violence as a practical problem to be solved, a cog in the machine of a production process. But it is the moments in which violence is the narrative, where histories or lived experiences of violence are restaged before the audience as a means of exposition or catharsis, which still emerge as the most challenging for artists and audiences. Moreover, though performance for social and political change is far from a novel concept, we continue to see more graphic instances of staged violence isolated from their narrative purpose and dismissed as gratuitous, or existing for the sole purpose of shock - a tactic which, however effective, audiences have become averted to. The experience of spectatorship often contains an element of safety, a degree of separation which protects the audience from the action and upholds the theatre\u27s status as a place of escape. Apoliticism, and the desire not to be confronted with real issues in the theatre, perseverate among popular audiences, but it is these willfully ignorant audiences that political theatre often seeks to affect action from. When examining the theatre of political imprisonment and state torture, an ongoing global issue, an important question is raised - how might the recreation of real violence before our audiences active in them a more heightened awareness and inclination to act on this issue

Réserves de carbone organique nouvellement révélées dans la glace des lacs nordiques

Au cours des dernières décennies, le réchauffement climatique a entraîné des réductions importantes de l'épaisseur et de la durée du couvert de glace des lacs et des rivières à travers le monde. Considérant que près de 50% des lacs du monde sont couverts de glace de façon saisonnière, il y a un évident besoin de mener des recherches sur les écosystèmes de glace afin de pouvoir prédire les effets de la perte du couvert de glace sur l'écologie et la productivité des lacs. Malgré l'attention croissante portée à l'écologie hivernale, seulement 2% de la littérature revue par les pairs sur l'écologie des lacs comprend l’étude de processus sous glace. Ce projet de maîtrise vise à i) mesurer la répartition de la biomasse algale entre la glace et l'eau pour étudier la glace de lac en tant qu'habitat pour les algues et autres micro-organismes qui pourraient contribuer à la productivité de l'écosystème des lacs, ii) comparer les fractions dissoutes et particulaires de matière organique dans la glace et l'eau pour évaluer comment le carbone et les nutriments sont stockés dans la glace des lacs, iii) caractériser la source de carbone dans la glace et iv) évaluer la façon dont la matière organique est répartie entre la glace et l'eau au cours de la saison. Pour atteindre ces objectifs, nous avons échantillonné la glace et l'eau de 16 lacs boréaux et arctiques qui couvraient un large gradient latitudinal, de la forêt boréale à 48°N au désert polaire à 83°N. Nos résultats montrent qu'il y avait de la chl-a dans toute la glace des lacs que nous avons échantillonnée, ce qui suggère que les algues de glace d'eau douce ne sont peut-être pas aussi rares qu'on ne le pensait auparavant. Dans les lacs boréaux du Saguenay, la glace contenait beaucoup plus de chl-a que l'eau sous-jacente. Tous les échantillons de glace contenaient à la fois du carbone organique particulaire et dissous et leur concentration variait différemment entre la glace et l'eau pour différentes variables. Nous avons également mesuré des sources de carbone totalement différentes dans la glace et l'eau sous-jacente, la glace contenant des proportions plus élevées d'acides gras terrestres, indiquant une importante source allochtone de carbone. Enfin, ce mémoire rapporte des tendances saisonnières intéressantes. Dans le lac boréal Simoncouche (Saguenay, QC), nous avons mesuré, au cours de l'hiver et à mesure que la couverture de glace gagnait en épaisseur, une diminution de la concentration de COD dans la glace, soutenant l'exclusion de COD pendant la formation de la glace, alors que les propriétés dissoutes et particulaires de la glace et de l'eau du lac arctique Greiner (Cambridge Bay, NU) ne semblaient pas beaucoup fluctuer pendant l'hiver. L'hiver est la saison la plus inexplorée en écologie, en particulier pour les écosystèmes recouverts de glace. Nos résultats montrent que la glace forme une importante réserve de carbone organique dans les lacs nordiques. Toute la matière organique accumulée dans la glace pourrait potentiellement être transformée physiquement et par les bactéries présentes dans la glace en hiver en particules plus petites, disponibles pour les organismes lorsque la glace fond au printemps. Ce rejet de matière accumulée dans la glace pourrait également augmenter à l'avenir, à mesure que les pluies hivernales et le ruissellement associé du bassin versant augmenteront dans les régions boréales, et que le sol gelé en permanence, le pergélisol, continue de dégeler en Arctique, exposant de nouveaux sols et du carbone organique à l'effet du vent. Over the last decades, global warming has led to significant reductions in the thickness and duration of lake and river ice cover worldwide. Considering that nearly 50% of the world's lakes are seasonally covered with ice, there is an urgent need to evaluate the impacts of the loss of this ice cover on the ecology and productivity of lakes. Despite the increasing attention to winter ecology, only 2% of the peer-reviewed literature on lake ecology includes under-ice processes. This M.Sc. project aimed i) to measure the partitioning of algal biomass between ice and water and thereby study lake ice as a habitat for algal and other microorganisms that could contribute to lake ecosystem productivity, ii) to compare the dissolved and particulate fractions of organic matter within the ice and the water to evaluate how carbon and nutrients are stored in lake ice, iii) to characterize the carbon source within the ice and iv) to evaluate how the organic matter is distributed among the ice and water throughout the season. To address these objectives, we sampled the ice and water column of 16 northern lakes that covered a broad latitudinal range, from boreal forest at 48°N to Arctic polar desert at 83°N. Our results show that there was chl-a in all the lake ice we sampled, suggesting that freshwater ice algae may not be as rare as previously thought. In boreal lakes of Saguenay, the ice had significantly more chl-a than the underlying water. All ice samples contained both particulate and dissolved organic carbon, and the concentrations varied differently between ice and water for different variables. We also measured different carbon sources in the ice and the underlying water, the ice containing higher terrestrial fatty acid proportions, indicating a large allochthonous source of carbon. Finally, this study identified contrasting seasonal patterns. In the boreal Lake Simoncouche (Saguenay, QC), we measured, over the winter and as the ice cover gained in thickness, a decrease of DOC concentration in the ice, indicating DOC exclusion during ice formation. In Arctic Greiner Lake (Cambridge Bay, NU), the dissolved and particulate properties of the ice and water appeared to show little fluctuation during the winter. Winter is the most unexplored season in ecology, especially for ice-covered ecosystems. Our results show that the ice forms a large reserve of organic carbon in northern lakes. All of the organic material accumulated in the ice could potentially be transformed physically and biologically (by bacteria present in the ice in winter) into smaller particles, available to organisms when the ice melts in the spring. This accumulated material release from the ice may also increase in the future, as winter rain events and associated runoff from the catchment increase in the boreal regions, and as the permanently frozen ground, permafrost, continues to thaw in the Arctic, exposing new ground to wind that may transport organic carbon to the lake ice

Promoting Student Voice by Creating Choices

As a rule, all of us are more motivated and interested in completing a task when we have some say in the work. So, what are some strategies we can use in our teaching that can give students a voice in their assignments? In this brief presentation I will share a few instructional strategies I have used in my classes to generate choices for student assignments and hope you will also share what has worked for you

Les déterminants des politiques provinciales au Canada : Une synthèse des études comparatives

Cet article est un bilan des écrits ayant pour objet l’analyse comparative des politiques publiques dans les dix provinces canadiennes. Le bilan est fait en deux temps. D’abord, nous caractérisons le choix des politiques gouvernementales étudiées (la variable dépendante) en fonction de quatre critères : le secteur d’intervention, le point de vue, le type d’observation et la forme de l’activité gouvernementale. Ensuite, nous regardons plus attentivement le choix des facteurs explicatifs (les variables indépendantes) en nous attardant à la pertinence des arguments donnés par les écoles de la convergence et du « Politics Matters ».This article is a review of the studies on provincial public policies in a comparative perspective. We first caracterise the choice of government policies (the dependent variable) using four criteria: the sector of intervention, the point of view, the type of observation, and the form of government activity. Then we direct our attention to the choice of explanatory factors (the independent variables) looking at the relevance of the arguments presented by two approaches: the "Convergence Approach" and the "Politics Matters Approach"

Parliamentary Oversight and Corruption in the Caribbean: Comparing Trinidad & Tobago and Grenada

Parliamentary oversight is a key determinant of corruption levels. This article presents research findings on parliamentary oversight in two Caribbean countries: Trinidad & Tobago and Grenada. Our results cast doubt on the results of previous research and also indicate that certain facets of ‘the Westminster’ system need to be relaxed, to reflect contextual reality in smaller island economies. Political will to adopt our recommended reforms is critical, but, as in other countries, inertia often dominates the political environment. Until citizens demand that their elected representatives establish various oversight and anti-corruption mechanisms and ensure these mechanisms are free of political influence, the institutions will be ‘window dressing’ and corrupt actions will go undeterred and unpunished