Australia's Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme and its interface with the Australian horticultural labour market: is it time to refine the policy?

The Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme (PSWPS) signals a new level of engagement between Australia and Pacific island countries and is of major significance for all participating countries. It embodies the ramping up of the globalisation of labour markets, communities and nations in the Pacific region and constitutes international people movement that inevitably will have a transformative impact on labour receiving and sending nations in terms of their social, political and economic structures. This article focuses on the demand side of this relationship, with emphasis on the newly established Australian PSWPS. The article raises questions concerning how, after an overview of New Zealand's Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme and the Australian PSWPS, the advent of seasonal emigration from the Pacific will affect, and be affected by, existing employment and labour relations in the Australian horticultural sector. In this context, it examines information about undocumented workers in the Australian horticultural labour market and the degree they are impacting on the success of the pilot scheme. Finally, the article discusses the long-term viability of the pilot, based on a range of stakeholders' perspectives, and identifies some impediments to its expansion in its current form

History of writing and record keeping

The ultimate cause of much historical, social and cultural change is the gradual accumulation of human knowledge of the environment. Human beings use the materials in their environment to meet their needs and increased human knowledge of the environment enables human needs to be met in a more efficient manner. The human environment includes the human being itself and the human ability to communicate by means of language and to make symbolic representations of the sounds produced by language, allowed the development of writing. Writing developed over time in a necessary and inevitable manner from logographic, to syllabic, to alphabetical systems. This development from simpler word based writing to more complex syllable based systems and then even more complex sound based writing systems was a logical progression from, simple less useful systems, to more complex, but more useful systems. This is an example of how the simplest knowledge is acquired first and more complex knowledge is acquired later. The order of discovery determines the course of human social and cultural history as knowledge of new and more efficient means of meeting human needs, results in new technology, which results in the development of new social and ideological systems. This means human social and cultural history, has to follow a particular course, a course that is determined by the structure of the human environment

Review of: The Ethics of Reproductive Technology (Kenneth D. Alpern ed., Oxford University Press 1992)

Review of: The Ethics of Reproductive Technology (Kenneth D. Alpern ed., Oxford University Press 1992). Additional readings, glossary, introduction, notes, preface. LC 92-8252; ISBN 0-19-507435-1. [370 pp. Paper $19.95. 200 Madison Avenue, New York NY 10016.

Preserving Homeownership: Analyzing the Elements of Leading Foreclosure Prevention Programs

Foreclosures have been increasing across the nation, reaching record levels in 2006 and 2007, with elevated levels of foreclosure likely for several more years. Responses to the rise in foreclosure have been decidedly local. Local governments and local nonprofits working on the ground have developed unique solutions to help keep families from losing their homes and neighborhoods from becoming blighted by foreclosed properties. These efforts have generally been small, and few have reached a national scale. This report summarizes lessons from five successful foreclosure prevention programs that may be instructive for national and local replication. While each program is unique, together these five leading strategies provide examples of innovative practices that can be adopted by other organizations and other communities

Alumni of the First Ten Years of Nippon Foundation/GEBCO Postgraduate Certificate in Ocean Bathymetry Training Program

The Nippon Foundation/GEBCO Training Programme is a twelve-month course leading to a Postgraduate Certificate in Ocean Bathymetry (PCOB). It is held at the University of New Hampshire, USA and is helping to develop a new generation of seafloor mappers. The course is now in its 11th year. Funding for the programme is provided by the Nippon Foundation of Japan. The PCOB alumni present at the conference were Eunice Tetteh (Year 9, from Ghana), Norhizam Hassan (Year 8, from Malaysia) and Rochelle Wigley (Year 4, from South Africa) with Kentaro Kaneda (Year 5) and Naoto Ujihara (Year 6) also present as official Japanese delegates. The PCOB programme had four posters on display Alumni of the First Ten Years of Nippon Foundation/GEBCO Postgraduate Certificate in Ocean Bathymetry Training Program Nippon Foundation/GEBCO Postgraduate Certificate in Ocean Bathymetry Alumni perspectives - poster 1 Alumni perspectives - poster

The in vitro assessment of the bioavailability of iron in New Zealand beef : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Physiology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand /

The bioavailability of iron in New Zealand beef either alone or as part of a 'typical' New Zealand meal was investigated. The solubility of iron and its in vitro absorption by mouse intestinal tissue were used to evaluate iron bioavailability. The solubility of haem and/or non-haem iron in meat (beef longissimus muscle), vegetables and meat-plus-vegetables was investigated. Samples were cooked and then subjected to in vitro gastrointestinal digestion with pepsin followed by a combination of pancreatic enzymes and bile. Cooking at 65°C for 90 minutes reduced the soluble iron concentration in meat by 81% and reduced the haem iron concentration by 27%, which coincided with a 175% increase in non-haem iron concentrations. However, gastrointestinal digestion increased the solubility of iron in cooked meat (333%), vegetables (367%) and meat-plus-vegetables (167%). A proportion (35%) of the haem iron in the meat was broken down by the action of pancreatic enzymes leading to a 46% increase in non-haem iron concentrations, although this was not the case for the meat-plus-vegetables. Validation studies showed that mouse intestinal segments mounted in Ussing chambers maintained integrity and viability, and were responsive to glucose, theophylline and carbachol. Intestinal tissue from iron deficient mice was then used in the Ussing chambers to investigate the absorption of iron from ferrous gluconate and the soluble fractions of meat, vegetables and meat-plus-vegetables after gastrointestinal digestion. Results indicated a trend towards a higher absorption of iron from meat and ferrous gluconate, compared to vegetables and meat-plus-vegetables. However, iron absorption results were difficult to interpret due to the wide variation in the data. This variation was possibly due to errors associated with the sample processing and the analysis of iron, which was by inductively coupled-mass spectroscopy. Overall, the present study showed that before estimations can be made on the bioavailability of food iron, the effects of the cooking and gastrointestinal digestion processes must be considered. Further, the use of in vitro gastrointestinal digestion followed by the use of Ussing chambers to assess intestinal absorption is a potentially valuable system for assessing mineral bioavailability

The Bohr and Einstein debate - Copenhagen Interpretation challenged

The Bohr Einstein debate on the meaning of quantum physics involved Einstein inventing a series of thought experiments to challenge the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum physics. Einstein disliked many aspects of the Copenhagen Interpretation especially its idea of an observer dependent universe. Bohr was able to answer all Einstein’s objections to the Copenhagen Interpretation and so is usually considered as winning the debate. However the debate has continued into the present time as many scientists have been unable to accept the idea of an observer dependent universe and many alternatives to the Copenhagen Interpretation have been proposed. However none of the alternatives has won general acceptance because all have problems that make them implausible or impossible

Poetic Economics: Phillis Wheatley and the Production of the Black Artist in the Early Atlantic World

This essay reads Wheatley as a key participant in the shifting economic and emotional relationships between artists, audiences, and texts that we now associate with romanticism. To recover facets of the role that the black artist played in the romantic movement(s), I examine three portraits of Wheatley-the poetic spectacle managed by her promoters, the actual portrait that appeared as the frontispiece for her Poems on Various Subjects, and the portrait that Wheatley herself created through her poetry. These portraits chart the tensions that circulated around the figure of the black African artist 111 the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, tensions between genius and barbarity, originality and imitation, exteriority and interiority, and artistic expression and commodification. These binaries have often characterized the terrain of Wheatley studies, marking opposing positions and points of contention. I argue for a different way of reading, one that sees the figure of Phillis Wheatley as produced through the interplay of all of these forces within the context of the early black Atlantic. Wheatley and her work exposed both the emphasis on authentic self-expression through art and the ways in which the mental life of the artist became available to the reader as a consumer product. She created a different vision of the black artist than that which commonly circulated in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, one that fused Christian discourse with romantic elements of imagination, Nature, and the poetic sublime, yet remained distant from and somewhat inaccessible to white readers. Keywords: Wheatley, black Atlantic, poetry, romanti

The dementia family caregiver

This report provides insight into the unique emotional and subjective experiences of the dementia family caregiver. Caring clinically for the caregiver requires an acute sensitivity to the needs of the individual. Healthcare professionals need to recognize the complex contributing factors that influence this experience. The subsequent decision for a caregiver to eventually move a family member from a home care environment into a long term living facility often is associated with an intense and conflicting emotional guilt response. Understanding the dementia caregiving experience provides an opportunity for clinicians to offer appropriate levels of support and assist the former primary caregiver in adapting to new roles and responsibilities during the transition out of homecare, recognizing family members as partners in the ongoing care process, and fostering positive family staff interactions within the facility.Communication Sciences and Disorder