Contemporary planning education and Indigenous cultural competency agendas : erasing terra nullius, respect and responsibility

As noted in Universities Australia&rsquo;s (2011a, 2011b) investigations into Indigenous Cultural Competency, most universities have struggled with successfully devising and achieving a translation of Indigenous protocols into their curricula. Walliss &amp; Grant (2000: 65) have also concluded that, given the nature of the built environment disciplines, including planning, and their professional practice activities, there is a &ldquo;need for specific cultural awareness education&rdquo; to service these disciplines and not just attempts to insert Indigenous perspectives into their curricula. Bradley&rsquo;s policy initiative at the University of South Australia (1997-2007), &ldquo;has not achieved its goal of incorporation of Indigenous perspectives into all its undergraduate programs by 2010, it has achieved an incorporation rate of 61%&rdquo; (Universities Australia 2011a: 9; http://www.unisa.edu.au/ducier/icup/default.asp).Contextually, Bradley&rsquo;s strategic educational aim at University of South Australia led a social reformist agenda, which has been continued in Universities Australia&rsquo;s release of Indigenous Cultural Competency (2011a; 2011b) reports that has attracted mixed media criticism (Trounson 2012a: 5, 2012b: 5) and concerns that it represents &ldquo;social engineering&rdquo; rather than enhancing &ldquo;criticism as a pedagogical tool ... as a means of advancing knowledge&rdquo; (Melleuish 2012: 10). While the Planning Institute of Australia&rsquo;s (PIA) Indigenous Planning Policy Working Party has observed that fundamental changes are needed to the way Australian planning education addresses Indigenous perspectives and interests, it has concluded that planners &ldquo;! perceptual limitations of their own discipline and the particular discourse of our own craft&rdquo; were hindering enhanced learning outcomes (Wensing 2007: 2). Gurran (PIA 2007) has noted that the core curriculum in planning includes an expectation of &ldquo;knowledge of ! Indigenous Australian cultures, including relationships between their physical environment and associated social and economic systems&rdquo; but that it has not been addressed. This paper critiques these discourses and offers an Indigenous perspective of the debate.<br /

Global Geo-Demographic Data and GIS for E-Business

The results of a comprehensive survey of the availability and characteristics of digital geo-demographic data in 40 countries around the world are presented. Geographic information systems (GIS) often used in conjunction with the Internet are being used by technologically savvy companies to perform marketing studies and provide location specific data such as maps to clients and customers. However, the national level Availability and characteristics of the required digital geo-spatial data vary considerably from nation to nation. Every country’s data differs in terms of existence, cost, accuracy, precision, format, content, and availability over the Internet. Some countries (such as Switzerland and the United Kingdom) have current data on every hectare and house along with demographics for every group of 100 residents available for interactive web-based mapping and analysis. Other nations have such data in only non-digital forms and then only internally. Most nations are intermediate in terms of the use of characteristics and availability of geospatial data relevant for E-business. Presented here are the results, especially those pertaining to E-business, of an e-mail survey of the national census and national mapping authorities of 40 selected countries. These the G7, Russia, China (PRC, Taiwan and Hong Kong), India, Australia, many European countries, along with 4 other Asian, 4 Latin American, 2 Middle Eastern and 2 African nations. Also presented is statistical analysis of the responses and information from follow-up questions

Femtosecond real-time probing of reactions. IV. The reactions of alkali halides

The photodissociation dynamics of some alkali halides are explored via the method of femtosecond transition-state spectroscopy (FTS). The alkali halide dissociation reaction is influenced by the interaction between the covalent and the ground state ionic potential energy surfaces (PES), which cross at a certain internuclear separation. Depending upon the adiabaticity of the PES, the dissociating fragments may be trapped in a well formed by the avoided crossing of these surfaces. Here, we detail the FTS results of this class of reactions, with particular focus on the reaction of sodium iodide: NaI*-->[Na---I]°* -->Na+I. As in our first report [T. S. Rose, M. J. Rosker, and A. H. Zewail, J. Chem. Phys. 88, 6672 (1988)], we observe the dynamical motion of the wave packet along the reaction coordinate and the crossing between the covalent and ionic surfaces. The studies presented here characterize the effects of various experimental parameters, including pump and probe wavelengths, on the dynamics of the dissociation and its detection. Comparisons of the results with classical and quantum mechanical calculations are also presented

Plant virus infections control stomatal development

Stomata are important regulators of carbon dioxide uptake and transpirational water loss. They also represent points of vulnerability as bacterial and fungal pathogens utilise this natural opening as an entry portal, and thus have an increasingly complex relationship. Unlike the situation with bacterial and fungal pathogens, we know very little about the role of stomata in viral infection. Here we report findings showing that viral infection influences stomatal development in two susceptible host systems (Nicotiana tabacum with TMV (Tobacco mosaic virus), and Arabidopsis thaliana with TVCV (Turnip vein-clearing virus)), but not in resistant host systems (Nicotiana glutinosa and Chenopodium quinoa with TMV). Virus infected plants had significantly lower stomatal indices in systemic leaves of susceptible systems; N. tabacum 9.8% reduction and A. thaliana 12.3% reduction, but not in the resistant hosts. Stomatal density in systemic leaves was also significantly reduced in virus infected A. thaliana by 19.6% but not in N. tabacum or the resistant systems. In addition, transpiration rate was significantly reduced in TMV infected N. tabacum

A Phase 1 study of intravenous infusions of tigecycline in patients with acute myeloid leukemia.

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells meet the higher energy, metabolic, and signaling demands of the cell by increasing mitochondrial biogenesis and mitochondrial protein translation. Blocking mitochondrial protein synthesis through genetic and chemical approaches kills human AML cells at all stages of development in vitro and in vivo. Tigecycline is an antimicrobial that we found inhibits mitochondrial protein synthesis in AML cells. Therefore, we conducted a phase 1 dose-escalation study of tigecycline administered intravenously daily 5 of 7 days for 2 weeks to patients with AML. A total of 27 adult patients with relapsed and refractory AML were enrolled in this study with 42 cycles being administered over seven dose levels (50-350 mg/day). Two patients experienced DLTs related to tigecycline at the 350 mg/day level resulting in a maximal tolerated dose of tigecycline of 300 mg as a once daily infusion. Pharmacokinetic experiments showed that tigecycline had a markedly shorter half-life in these patients than reported for noncancer patients. No significant pharmacodynamic changes or clinical responses were observed. Thus, we have defined the safety of once daily tigecycline in patients with refractory AML. Future studies should focus on schedules of the drug that permit more sustained target inhibition

International Trade and Local Labor Markets: Do Foreign and Domestic Shocks Affect Regions Differently?

Despite the attention given to international trade in discussion of the economic struggles of many U.S. regions, it is unclear whether international trade shocks impact local economies more, or differently than shocks originating within the domestic economy. A challenge in making this discernment is separating trade shocks from common or domestic shocks. Therefore, using U.S. county-level data for 1990-2010, this study carefully constructs shocks to local economies, isolating those arising from international imports and exports to assess whether trade shocks have different effects from domestic shocks. In confirmatory analysis, we also employ a novel combination of IV and matching strategies. We examine a variety of indicators including employment growth, population growth, employment rates, wage rates and poverty rates. The results suggest that international trade shocks have some different effects than overall domestic shocks, though likely less than commonly perceived. We also find that domestic shocks dominate international trade shocks in explaining variation in regional labor market outcomes