Mundane Multiculture: Belonging as Spatial Practice in Suburban Sydney

Global cities are being reconfigured through multiple transformations. Cities are places of increasing heterogeneity as a result of heightened flows of human mobility, setting the stage for negotiations of strangerhood and intercultural encounter. They are epicentres for new registers of belonging, allegiance and citizenship arising in the context of these broader transitions. Drawing on relational theories of the city and critical readings of urban diversity, this thesis interrogates how multi-ethnic neighbourhoods shape experiences of belonging for migrant inhabitants. It argues that pluralist policies largely attempt to coordinate and contain urban diversity, often leaving yawning fissures between politicised rhetoric and the lived socio-materialities of the city. These processes are particularly evident in the city of Sydney, the preeminent global city in Australia, a ‘nation of immigration’. This study and its analysis offers an alternative to conventional migration studies that privilege the ethnic lens, by applying a place-based approach and a Lefebvrian frame of analysis to residents’ place making practices in a highly diverse, transitional suburb. The research uses urban ethnographic methods, including observation and interviews with migrant residents and local ‘space managers’, to analyse the interactional and sociospatial orders of three suburban public spaces. Drawing on this rich empirical data, the study not only argues that local space is produced at the intersection of spatial practices, regimes of urban governance, and multicultural discourses, but that it is fundamental to understanding migrants’ subjective experience of ‘being at home’ in both local and national space. This approach provides critical insight into the uneven integration of arrivals into collective urban culture, as well as possibilities for generating urban civilities in a unique study of Campsie, New South Wales. If new processes of exclusion are regulating human flows at sovereign borders, it is critically important to also understand how spatial marginalisation unfolds in the intimate spaces of the increasingly diverse and mobile city

Meeting the challenge of manned lunar and Martian exploration

As the U.S. space program plans for a return to the Lunar surface and ultimately for a mission to Mars, space units and portable life support systems will have to keep pace to meet the exploration mission requirements. The systems currently in use with the Shuttle program will not be adequate for exploration on the Martian surface or for extensive exploration and work on the Lunar surface. Currently, there are too many unknowns regarding locomotion and work physiology in reduced gravity to accurately design advanced suits and life support systems for routine extravehicular activity (EVA). It would be unwise and costly to arbitrarily develop new designs without first studying how the human body moves and works in these environments. This paper discusses the current state of the art of EVA space suit and PLSS design to meet the need of advanced exploration missions. Current research underway in the Extravehicular Systems Branch at Ames Research Center aimed at advanced system design is highlighted

Own and others’ prior experiences influence children’s imitation of causal acts

Young children learn from others’ examples, and do so selectively. Here we examine whether the efficacy of prior experience influences children’s tendency to imitate. 36-­‐ month-­‐olds received prior experience on a causal learning task. The children either performed the task themselves or watched an adult perform it. The nature of the experience was systematically manipulated such that the actor had either an easy or a difficult experience solving the task. Next, a second adult demonstrated an innovative technique for solving the task. Children who had a difficult first-­‐person experience and those who had witnessed another person having a difficult time were significantly more likely to adopt and imitate the adult’s innovation than those who had or witnessed an easy experience. Overall, children who observed another were even more likely to imitate than were those whose prior experience consisted of their own hands-­‐on motor behavior, confirming that imitation is influenced by both own and others\u27 prior experience

Helping People to Quit

Working in collaboration with the Boise City/Ada County Housing Authority (BC/ACHA) the BSU Nursing Student research group conducted a study to find out how to best help their clients to quit smoking. BC/ACHA provides assistance and affordable housing to low income clients. BC/ACHA’s goals are to improve the health and socioeconomic well being of their clients. The future plans of the Housing Authority include making their housing smoke free. The research group constructed a survey to find the best methods to help this specific population quit smoking. A “smoking cessation” class was offered to the BC/ACHA clients providing relevant education and available community resources

How Early do Children Understand Gesture-speech Combinations with Iconic Gestures?

Children understand gesture+speech combinations in which a deictic gesture adds new information to the accompanying speech by age 1;6 (Morford & Goldin-Meadow, 1992; ‘push’+point at ball). This study explores how early children understand gesture+speech combinations in which an iconic gesture conveys additional information not found in the accompanying speech (e.g., ‘read’+BOOK gesture). Our analysis of two- to four-year-old children\u27s responses in a gesture+speech comprehension task showed that children grasp the meaning of iconic co-speech gestures by age three and continue to improve their understanding with age. Overall, our study highlights the important role gesture plays in language comprehension as children learn to unpack increasingly complex communications addressed to them at the early ages