Island home country : subversive mourning : working with Aboriginal protocols in a documentary film about colonisation and growing up white in Tasmania. A cine-essay and exegesis

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.In this doctorate, Island Home Country, a documentary film and exegesis, I reflect on growing up in a white settler-invader family in Tasmania in the late 1940s-1950s oblivious to any Tasmanian Aboriginal culture or history on the island. The working method of the film was initially based on Freud’s notion of ‘the work of mourning’ as a way of working through repressed history. However the project’s engagement in a six-year protocols process with Tasmanian Aboriginal community members influenced this research paradigm. It triggered a ‘meditation on discomfort’, involving a turn towards critical race and whiteness studies, decolonising methodologies and a consideration of white privilege and ways to challenge it. This exegesis seeks to articulate the film’s textual strategies alongside theoretical and political issues that surfaced while making the film, in particular the impact of protocols, the ethics and responsibilities they entail and their repercussions into the text of the film and the project’s research paradigm. The film is in the documentary essay mode. My aim has been to work in an affective and performative register with image, poetry, sound and music to try and penetrate amnesia and to think and see ‘beyond the colonial construct’. The process of making a film in consultation with Tasmanian Aboriginal community members, as well as my own family is examined, particularly the subject position of being a white person producing a work amidst the complex borderlines of 21st century colonial-post-colonising Tasmania. The six chapters of the exegesis - Amnesia, Possession, Memory, Mourning, Encounter and Reckoning follow the chapters of the film, opening out the ebb and flow of protocols process for discussion. This exegesis analyses the film’s attempt to ‘work through’ the historical trauma of colonisation at both an individual and community level, examining the film’s intention to reckon with the ghosts of history and how they may live on. I conclude that the film’s intention to ‘make a reckoning’ may be flawed. The film’s practice-led process and the ethics and politics involved in working with protocols both challenged the project’s ‘work of mourning’ thesis and facilitated the project’s shift from the layer of ‘text’ only, to become a work grounded in responsible relationships with community. In this context 1 consider the potential of creative and collaborative works to become sites of negotiation and dialogue around cultural differences, rights and responsibilities. Both the exegesis and the film suggest that this negotiated process may contribute towards a decolonising process as ‘newcomer’ Australians, such as myself, become ‘unsettled’ and learn to come into country in recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty

Rekindling Hope in Dark Times: San Francisco Night Ministry

Trent J. Thornley shares recent developments in the San Francisco Night Ministry and its related CPE program, including changes in its structure, while affirming its traditional core values, such as universal human right to spiritual care

Modelling Grassland Ecosystems

In this contribution a view of the promise and difficulties of modelling grassland is given. This is largely centred around work with a grassland ecosystem simulator known as the Hurley Pasture Model. A brief introduction sets forth possible reasons for building a large ecosystem model, and stresses the importance of modelling objectives. It is suggested that a model is de rigeur for any research programme which aims to take a firm grasp of the complex responses of grassland. Mechanistic models are required to provide the understanding needed for intelligent and flexible management of grassland, whatever the prevailing environmental or economic objectives. The models are necessarily large, reflecting the complexity of the ‘real’ system, and, in a sense, are ‘big’ science. The challenge is to develop models of ‘engineering strength’. This requires an appropriate research environment, which should be reasonably stable, multidisciplinary, well-connected to experimental programmes, and permit adequate support for the three essential legs of an ecosystem model: development, documentation, and application. Some modelling researchers are dismayed by the wasteful fragmentation of many plant ecosystem modelling research programmes. Next an outline account of the Hurley Pasture Model (HPM) is given. Most plant ecosystem models are now quite similar at the qualitative level, and few would dispute the statement that a reasonable level of consensus is emerging. The HPM is a standard model of the genre. It comprises plant, animal, soil and water submodels. To-date there is no phenology submodel. There are environmental and management drivers, the former accepting monthly, daily or diurnal data, the latter permitting the simulation of fertilizer, grazing, and cutting scenarios, more or less ad libitum. Recent developments of the HPM include a submodel to take account of acclimation of photosynthesis to light, nitrogen, carbon dioxide (‘down-regulation’) and temperature; and a simple method of using the HPM to simulate legume dynamics in a grass-legume pasture. Finally, some applications of the model are presented, relating to fertilizer application, grazing, harvesting, and climate change. These are to illustrate the scope of the model, for both application and understanding. The last application shows that in grassland ecosystems climate change responses can be greatly affected by (i) a variable legume content; (ii) management, e.g. how the crop is grazed or cut; and (iii) water stress, as occurs in southern Britain. The impact of climate change on grassland ecosystems is of particular interest. It is known that, in a constant climate, a grassland ecosystem can take hundreds of years to come to equilibrium. Experiments cannot address the problem directly. Short-term experiments can give very variable responses, depending on conditions, which are often misleading, even opposite in sign from long-term responses. Mechanistic models provide a clear framework for unifying these variable results, understanding why they arise, and making predictions about the future time course of plant ecosystems. There seems to be no other way of doing this work

Community pharmacy type 2 diabetes risk assessment: demographics and risk results

Objectives: To determine the demographics and risk results of patients accessing a community pharmacy diabetes risk assessment service. Method: Participating patients underwent an assessment using a validated questionnaire to determine their 10-year risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Patients were given appropriate lifestyle advice or referred to their general practitioner if necessary. Key findings: In total, 21 302 risk assessments were performed. Nearly one-third (29%) of 3427 risk assessments analysed yielded a result of moderate or high chance of developing the condition. Conclusions: Community pharmacies can identify a significant number of patients at risk of developing type 2 diabetes in the next 10 years. Further follow-up work needs to be done to determine the cost-effectiveness of such a service and the consequences of receiving a risk assessment

How to Measure Subdiffusion Parameters

We propose a method to measure the subdiffusion parameter $\alpha$ and subdiffusion coefficient $D_{\alpha}$ which are defined by means of the relation $=\frac{2D_\alpha} {\Gamma(1+\alpha)} t^\alpha$ where $$ denotes a mean square displacement of a random walker starting from $x=0$ at the initial time $t=0$. The method exploits a membrane system where a substance of interest is transported in a solvent from one vessel to another across a thin membrane which plays here only an auxiliary role. We experimentally study a diffusion of glucose and sucrose in a gel solvent, and we precisely determine the parameters $\alpha$ and $D_{\alpha}$, using a fully analytic solution of the fractional subdiffusion equation.Comment: short version of cond-mat/0309072, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let