Shadows and Light Pursuing Gender Justice through Students' Photovoice Projects of the Washroom Space

This paper derives from a larger study examining the gendered striations embedded in school washrooms but focuses on two photovoice projects that explore the implications for student understanding and subjectivation.  Thematically linked through elements of lightness and darkness, I examine these photographs through the theoretical frameworks of the closet (Brown, 2000), the heterotopia (Foucault & Miskowiec, 1986), as well as Foucault’s (1975) disciplinary space which position them as material precursors to the issues of exposure and vulnerability for all gendered bodies in the space of the public school sex-segregated washroom.  As a queer methodology, or pedagogy, photovoice values student knowledge and pursues a social justice agenda

A New Palaeolithic Giant Handaxe from Britain: Initial Results from Excavations at Maritime Academy, Medway, Kent

This paper will present initial results from excavations at Maritime Academy, Frindsbury which produced several handaxes, two of which can be classed as ‘giant handaxes’. Artefacts were recovered from fluvial deposits in the Medway Valley and are thought to date from the Marine Isotope Stage 9 interglacial. This paper will focus on the largest of these handaxes and will present metrical data for the artefact and initial comparison with similar artefacts from the British Palaeolithic

Optical limits in Left-Handed Media

This thesis determines the response of Left-Handed Media (LHM) to surface effects. A LHM half-space with a roughened interface, modelled by a graded index boundary, is shown to give rise to an analytical solution for the propagation of electromagnetic radiation through this inhomogeneous layer. Significant field localization is generated within the layer, caused by the coherent superposition of evanescent waves. The localization is shown to greatly deteriorate transmission when losses are present. The addition of a second interface to the LHM, creating a perfect lens configuration, allows for the exploration of evanescent mode propagation through a perfect lens with roughened boundaries. The effects of the field localisations at the boundaries serves to diminish the resolving capability of the lens. Specifically the layers produce an effect that is qualitatively similar to nonlinearly enhanced dissipation. Ray-optics is used to analyse negative refraction through a roughened interface, prescribed by Gaussian statistics. This shows that rays can focus at smaller distances from the interface due to the negative refractive effects. Moreover, a new reflection mechanism is shown to exist for LHM. Consequently an impedance matched configuration involving LHM (such as the perfect lens) with a roughened interface can still display reflection. A physical-optics approach is used to determine the mean intensity and fluctuations of a wave passing into a half-space of LHM through a roughened interface in two ways. Firstly through the perturbation analysis of Rice theory which shows that the scattered field evolves from a real Gaussian process near the surface into a complex Gaussian process as distance into the second media increases. Secondly through large-scale Monte-Carlo simulations that show that illuminating a roughened interface between air and a LHM produces a regime for enhanced focussing of light close to the boundary, generating caustics that are brighter, fluctuate more, and cause Gaussian speckle at distances closer to the interface than in right-handed matter

Properties of rf-sputtered indium-tin-oxynitride thin films

Indium-tin-oxide (ITO) and indium-tin-oxynitride (ITON) thin films have been fabricated by rf-sputtering in plasma containing Ar or a mixture of Ar and N-2, respectively. The structural, electrical and optical properties of ITON films were examined and compared with those of ITO films. The microstructure of ITON films was found to be dependent on the nitrogen concentration in the plasma. Increasing the amount of nitrogen in the plasma increased the resistivity and reduced the carrier concentration and mobility of the films. The electrical properties of the ITON films improved after annealing. The absorption edge of the ITON films deposited in pure N-2 plasma was shifted towards higher energies and showed reduced infrared reflectance compared to the respective properties of ITO films. The potential of indium-tin-oxynitride films for use as a transparent conductive material for optoelectronic devices is addressed

Re-imagining Sydney’s freshwater wetlands through historical ecology

Australian conservation targets commonly focus on preserving a vaguely defined ecological baseline, often conceptualised as a pre-European, 'natural' state. For instance, environmental legislation protects ?Endangered Ecological Communities? (EECs), which purportedly represent remnants of naturally occurring biota. However, EECs are often classified without long-term data, making it unclear as to whether the community being protected is indeed ?natural?. In this essay, we use history, ecology, and geography to map the long-term socio-environmental evolution of Sydney's freshwater wetland EECs, which were once key features of Australia's biggest city. Our data show that today's remnant wetlands are different from those of the early 1800s, highlighting how quickly landscapes can be misremembered. We encourage a reimagining of these wetlands not as snapshots of the past, but as human-impacted places with educational, ecological and historical importance. Our work emphasises the relevance of long-term, cross-disciplinary data for effective conservation, while highlighting limitations in post-colonial land management.Introduction Ecohydrological evolution of southern Sydney’s wetlands 1788 to 1860 CE 1860 To 1930 CE Hydro-social evolution of wetland (mis)management and (mis)remembrance Out of the mire: working towards conservation of holistic hydro-socio-ecologie