Green Synthesis of Magnetite Nanoparticles (via Thermal Decomposition Method) with Controllable Size and Shape

Magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles with controllable size and shape were synthesized by the thermal decomposition method. In contrast to previously reported thermal decomposition methods, our synthesis method had utilized a much cheaper and less toxic iron precursor, iron acetylacetonate (Fe(acac)3), and environmentally benign and non-toxic polyethylene oxide (PEO) was being used as the solvent and surfactant simultaneously. Fe3O4 nanoparticles of controllable size and shape were prepared by manipulating the synthesis parameters such as precursor concentrations, reaction durations and surfactants

How council mergers and reforms imperil local government democracy

Australia’s local government sector has been undergoing reform in recent decades. The result has been fewer and larger local governments and a reshaped role for elected members or councillors. But do councillors understand what this means for them

Editorial

The Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance is now co-edited and has a new look. Under the continued editorship of Prof. Alison Brown, the Centre for Local Government at the University of Technology, Sydney is pleased to partner with Cardiff University and the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF) to produce the journal. This new partnership will ensure the continued development of the journal as an important platform for local government researchers and practitioners to share knowledge and experience

Local Representation in Australia: A Review of the Legislation and Literature

ACELG has released a comparative study of political governance frameworks for local governments across Australia. The research, Local Representation in Australia - A Review of the Legislation and the Literature, seeks to understand the advantages, constraints and theoretical approaches to representative democracy across Australian local government in view of on-going reform processes. The project was undertaken in partnership with the Victorian Local Governance Association (VLGA). The CEO of the VLGA Maree McPherson said: “Local government is under constant pressure to improve, both from within the sector and from the community. Fostering improved understanding about the various models of political representation across this large and diverse sector is an important step toward enhancing local democracy across Australia." The research is presented in two volumes. The first is a national review of all local representative governance frameworks by legislation, plus relevant guidelines by the local government associations and state agencies. A companion report documents a Victorian perspective of working within such legislative frameworks based on interviews with councillors and senior staff from 18 different councils. In general, the review found there is a great deal of diversity across the nation as to how these themes are dealt with. There is relatively little in terms of thinking or research on how to determine the number of councillors, with further research required to understand the implications of the different approaches and in view of structural provisions. The picture is mixed across Australia in terms of voting, with a question remaining about the inter-relations between the differing approaches and implications for local representation. Descriptions of mayor and councillors’ roles vary in the legislation but what is perhaps most pertinent is the perception of elected representatives themselves of their role. More work needs to be done to understand the implications of the differences for local representation, particularly in a context of reform whereby the number of local governments and councillors is being reduced in view of financial sustainability and efficiency. Useful legislative summaries are included as attachments to the research

Mind the gap: Australian local government reform and councillors’ understandings of their roles

Over the last two decades a feature of local government reforms globally has been the introduction of New Public Management (NPM).  Under this broad approach to public administration there is an expectation that councillors play a greater strategic role and move away from involvement in day-to-day management.  This research, carried out in the state of Victoria, Australia, examines councillors’ understandings of their roles.  Based on 17 in-depth interviews and two focus groups, we found that despite the evolving legislative requirements framing councillors as policymakers not managers, most councillors continued to seek involvement in the day-to-day management of councils.  We argue that this gap may be linked to the diversity of views concerning the role of the councillor and the idea of representation and how both play out at the local level.  It may also signal a lack of awareness as to how the legislatively inscribed role for councillors has changed over time.</jats:p

Optimal gridding and degridding in radio interferometry imaging

In radio interferometry imaging, the gridding procedure of convolving visibilities with a chosen gridding function is necessary to transform visibility values into uniformly sampled grid points. We propose here a parameterised family of "least-misfit gridding functions" which minimise an upper bound on the difference between the DFT and FFT dirty images for a given gridding support width and image cropping ratio. When compared with the widely used spheroidal function with similar parameters, these provide more than 100 times better alias suppression and RMS misfit reduction over the usable dirty map. We discuss how appropriate parameter selection and tabulation of these functions allow for a balance between accuracy, computational cost and storage size. Although it is possible to reduce the errors introduced in the gridding or degridding process to the level of machine precision, accuracy comparable to that achieved by CASA requires only a lookup table with 300 entries and a support width of 3, allowing for a greatly reduced computation cost for a given performance