Constructing insecurity: Australian security discourse and policy post-2001

This article explores the construction of security in the contemporary Australian context, arguing that the Australian government has represented, and attempted to construct support for, a statist, exclusionary and militaristic conception or discourse of security. This understanding of security is evident in the government’s representation and response to a range of issues since 2001, including asylum-seekers, terrorism and the war in Iraq. In exploring the processes through which the Australian government has elaborated this discourse and sought to create resonance for it in a domestic context, I argue that there remain important bases not simply for contesting this conception of security, but for acknowledging immanent possibilities for the understanding of security in the Australian context to change in normatively progressive ways. Acknowledging these possibilities is important in identifying the potential for progressive change in Australian security policy, while also shedding light on the role of security in the modern political project

Packing Steiner Trees

Let $T$ be a distinguished subset of vertices in a graph $G$. A $T$-\emph{Steiner tree} is a subgraph of $G$ that is a tree and that spans $T$. Kriesell conjectured that $G$ contains $k$ pairwise edge-disjoint $T$-Steiner trees provided that every edge-cut of $G$ that separates $T$ has size $\ge 2k$. When $T=V(G)$ a $T$-Steiner tree is a spanning tree and the conjecture is a consequence of a classic theorem due to Nash-Williams and Tutte. Lau proved that Kriesell's conjecture holds when $2k$ is replaced by $24k$, and recently West and Wu have lowered this value to $6.5k$. Our main result makes a further improvement to $5k+4$.Comment: 38 pages, 4 figure

A note on forbidding clique immersions

Robertson and Seymour proved that the relation of graph immersion is well-quasi-ordered for finite graphs. Their proof uses the results of graph minors theory. Surprisingly, there is a very short proof of the corresponding rough structure theorem for graphs without $K_t$-immersions; it is based on the Gomory-Hu theorem. The same proof also works to establish a rough structure theorem for Eulerian digraphs without $\vec{K}_t$-immersions, where $\vec{K}_t$ denotes the bidirected complete digraph of order $t$

Application of an Extremal Result of Erdős and Gallai to the (n,k,t) Problem

An extremal result about vertex covers, attributed by Hajnal to Erdős and Gallai, is applied to prove the following: If n, k, and t are integers satisfying n ≥ k ≥ t ≥ 3 and k ≤ 2t - 2, and G is a graph with the minimum number of edges among graphs on n vertices with the property that every induced subgraph on k vertices contains a complete subgraph on t vertices, then every component of G is complete

Prospectus, August 9, 2018

ANTHROPOLOGY STUDENTS MAKE MONTICELLO WOODS THEIR CLASSROOM; Farewell, Parkland!; Political climate affects college students nationwide; Excerpts from Honors Projects from Spring 2018 Honors Program Graduates; Cobras Athletes of the Year 2017-18https://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_2018/1033/thumbnail.jp

Modelling the cooling effects of urban canals

We investigate the effects of canals on urban air temperatures, performing a national-scale analysis of urban canals in the UK and Ireland. Using canal characteristics and high-temporal resolution weather data, we model variability in water temperatures for 2022 at 15-minute intervals and use these data to analyse the effects on surrounding air temperatures. In addition, we incorporate the effects of shading by buildings, which can play a key role in water energy balance. In turn, this has implications for the effectiveness of canals in offsetting temperature extremes as well as the management and regulation of adjacent urban areas