Australia's international health relations in 2003

A survey for the year 2003 of significant developments in Australia's official international health relations, and their domestic ramifications, is presented. The discussion is set within the broader context of Australian foreign policy. Sources include official documents, media reports and consultations with officers of the Department of Health and Ageing responsible for international linkages

Malaysia: the persuasive discourse techniques of a transnational mining corporation and its supporters

Persuasion, a vital element in commercial marketing, is also an essential tool for the winning and maintenance of political power. Corporations seek to persuade customers to purchase their products and services but may also need to influence wider public opinion and political decision-makers in ways that serve their interests. In this article, we present an account of environmental-related conflict in Malaysia and the use of persuasion in the discourse of an Australian transnational mining corporation and its supporters. We analyse the strategies used by the corporation as it engages in intense conflict with environmental campaigners and concerned residents following its moves to establish the world's largest rare earth metals extraction plant in peninsular Malaysia. Following the political ecology perspective, we note that the efforts at persuasion used by the corporation have been actively backed by the Malaysian state itself. This is not simply a case of environmental conflict but strongly connected to the underlying political economy of Malaysia - a country with an authoritarian regime where corruption and 'crony capitalism' are rife, and public opinion is often ignored or consistently manipulated by government-controlled mass media. Keywords: environmental-related conflict, rare earth, persuasion techniques, Malaysi

The Australian Space Eye: studying the history of galaxy formation with a CubeSat

The Australian Space Eye is a proposed astronomical telescope based on a 6U CubeSat platform. The Space Eye will exploit the low level of systematic errors achievable with a small space based telescope to enable high accuracy measurements of the optical extragalactic background light and low surface brightness emission around nearby galaxies. This project is also a demonstrator for several technologies with general applicability to astronomical observations from nanosatellites. Space Eye is based around a 90 mm aperture clear aperture all refractive telescope for broadband wide field imaging in the i and z bands.Comment: 19 pages, 14 figures, submitted for publication as Proc. SPIE 9904, 9904-56 (SPIE Astronomical Telescopes & Instrumentation 2016

Multi-locus phylogeny and species delimitation of Australo-Papuan blacksnakes (Pseudechis Wagler, 1830: Elapidae: Serpentes)

Genetic analyses of Australasian organisms have resulted in the identification of extensive cryptic diversity across the continent. The venomous elapid snakes are among the best-studied organismal groups in this region, but many knowledge gaps persist: for instance, despite their iconic status, the species-level diversity among Australo-Papuan blacksnakes (Pseudechis) has remained poorly understood due to the existence of a group of cryptic species within the P. australis species complex, collectively termed ‘‘pygmy mulga snakes”. Using two mitochondrial and three nuclear loci we assess species boundaries within the genus using Bayesian species delimitation methods and reconstruct their phylogenetic history using multispecies coalescent approaches. Our analyses support the recognition of 10 species, including all of the currently described pygmy mulga snakes and one undescribed species from the Northern Territory of Australia. Phylogenetic relationships within the genus are broadly consistent with previous work, with the recognition of three major groups, the viviparous red-bellied black snake P. porphyriacus forming the sister species to two clades consisting of ovoviviparous specie

OzFuel Pre-Phase A Study

This document presents the results of a Pre-Phase A study for the OzFuel bushfire fuel monitoring mission in accordance with NASA system engineering standards. The OzFuel Pre-Phase A Study (Australian Forest Fuel Monitoring from Space) report was developed by the Australian National University (ANU) Institute for Space for Geoscience Australia (GA) and CSIRO in support of their contribution to Australia’s Satellite Cross-Calibration Radiometer (SCR) and AquaWatch missions (UNSW Canberra Space, 2021). The OzFuel study conceptualises a multispectral bushfire fuel monitoring satellite mission to fulfil two major goals: To launch a dedicated science and research mission to mitigate the risk of future catastrophic bushfires; and To deliver an Australian designed and built pathfinder mission to de-risk the SCR program. Key outcomes of the OzFuel mission are: Australian capability enables the forward-looking development of a fully operational satellite constellation for bushfire prevention, mitigation and resilience. ANU expertise in global fuel hazard spatial data augments international commercial and government fire detection initiatives. Space-proven Australian detector technology becomes available for national and commercial small satellite missions. This report comprises two parts: Part 1: OzFuel Mission Requirements developed by Nicolas Younes and Marta Yebra from the ANU Fenner School of Environment & Society. The report introduces the OzFuel mission, the need for a dedicated fuel monitoring mission, and the remote sensing requirements for a pathfinder mission. Part 2: OzFuel Technical Overview developed by Rob Sharp from the ANU Advanced Instrumentation & Technology Centre. The overview outlines the technical design and payload options for the OzFuel-1mission. The climate crisis over the past decade culminated in the unprecedented 2019/2020 Australian bushfire conditions that were more catastrophic than expected or modelled. The risk of larger and more frequent mega-fires is only going to increase in future years. Allocating further ground resources to suppress fires is extremely costly and dangerous, and needs to be augmented with more effective prediction, prevention and mitigation strategies before an unforeseen ignition event burns out of control. One of the most crucial aspects of fire prevention is understanding vegetative fuel state. The 2020 Royal Commission into National Natural Disasters highlights the need for whole-of-continent visibility of vegetative fuel state – how much fuel there is and how dry it is. Australia relies on foreign satellite data which is not optimised for measuring our unique bush landscape. The growing need forsovereign satellites to remotely sense Australia’s unique vegetation has been supported by recommendations from government, agencies, industry and research institutions.Geoscience Australi

FOOD, FOOD SECURITY AND UN REFORM

SUMMARY The article addresses the question of UN reform from the perspective of food security. It offers a balance sheet of UN strengths and weaknesses, praising the UN role in advocacy, technical coordination and resource mobilization, but identifying serious politico?bureaucratic problems, and new challenges to the UN mandate caused by the coexistence of hunger and conflict. In understanding why the weaknesses occur, there are useful connections to be made in the debates on public administration, good government and the sociology of international politics, as well as those more directly on UN reform. These lead the article to identify four general principles for UN reform in the food security area, and to explore two options for change, one to improve the status quo and one to introduce more radical change. The latter is preferred: the UN mandate needs review, particularly in the area of conflict; there are too many agencies; and there are too many independent budgets. The article argues for a focal point in the UN system for policy determination and resource allocation for food security

Determinants of legacy effects in pine trees - implications from an irrigation-stop experiment

Tree responses to altered water availability range from immediate (e.g. stomatal regulation) to delayed (e.g. crown size adjustment). The interplay of the different response times and processes, and their effects on long-term whole-tree performance, however, is hardly understood. Here we investigated legacy effects on structures and functions of mature Scots pine in a dry inner-Alpine Swiss valley after stopping an 11-yr lasting irrigation treatment. Measured ecophysiological time series were analysed and interpreted with a system-analytic tree model. We found that the irrigation stop led to a cascade of downregulations of physiological and morphological processes with different response times. Biophysical processes responded within days, whereas needle and shoot lengths, crown transparency, and radial stem growth reached control levels after up to 4 yr only. Modelling suggested that organ and carbon reserve turnover rates play a key role for a tree's responsiveness to environmental changes. Needle turnover rate was found to be most important to accurately model stem growth dynamics. We conclude that leaf area and its adjustment time to new conditions is the main determinant for radial stem growth of pine trees as the transpiring area needs to be supported by a proportional amount of sapwood, despite the growth-inhibiting environmental conditions.Peer reviewe

Localisation of gamma-ray bursts from the combined SpIRIT+HERMES-TP/SP nano-satellite constellation

Multi-messenger observations of the transient sky to detect cosmic explosions and counterparts of gravitational wave mergers critically rely on orbiting wide-FoV telescopes to cover the wide range of wavelengths where atmospheric absorption and emission limit the use of ground facilities. Thanks to continuing technological improvements, miniaturised space instruments operating as distributed-aperture constellations are offering new capabilities for the study of high energy transients to complement ageing existing satellites. In this paper we characterise the performance of the upcoming joint SpIRIT + HERMES-TP/SP nano-satellite constellation for the localisation of high-energy transients through triangulation of signal arrival times. SpIRIT is an Australian technology and science demonstrator satellite designed to operate in a low-Earth Sun-synchronous Polar orbit that will augment the science operations for the equatorial HERMES-TP/SP. In this work we simulate the improvement to the localisation capabilities of the HERMES-TP/SP when SpIRIT is included in an orbital plane nearly perpendicular (inclination = 97.6$^\circ$) to the HERMES orbits. For the fraction of GRBs detected by three of the HERMES satellites plus SpIRIT, the combined constellation is capable of localising 60% of long GRBs to within ~ 30 deg$^2$ on the sky, and 60% of short GRBs within ~ 1850 deg$^2$. Based purely on statistical GRB localisation capabilities (i.e., excluding systematic uncertainties and sky coverage), these figures for long GRBs are comparable to those reported by the Fermi GBM. Further improvements by a factor of 2 (or 4) can be achieved by launching an additional 4 (or 6) SpIRIT-like satellites into a Polar orbit, which would both increase the fraction of sky covered by multiple satellite elements, and enable $\geq$ 60% of long GRBs to be localised within a radius of ~ 1.5$^\circ$ on the sky.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in PAS