Regional geology of the southern Furneaux Group

The lower Palaeozoic Mathinna Beds are intruded and contact metamorphosed by sixteen Devonian, granitoid plutons in the southern Ferneaux Group, northeastern Tasmania. Contact metamorphic aureoles range from 200m to 2km wide and on Clarke Island the metamorphic assemblage cordierite-andalusite-biotite-quartz-potash feldspar is preserved. Approximately 70 per cent by area of the granitoid terrain is composed of garnet and/or cordierite-bearing biotite granites (eight plutons), 20 per cent biotite granites (five plutons) including two altered plutons, and 10 per cent hornblendebiotite granodiorites (three plutons). The granitoids were intruded by widespread dolerite dykes of pre-Tertiary age. Cainozoic sedimentary sequences are thin and irregularly distributed. Mid-Tertiary sediments formed in lagoonal and shallow water marine environments have been reworked during the Quaternary by alluvial and aeolian processes In the Rooks River tinfield the cassiterite, which was eroded from pervasively altered Rooks River granite, is thought to be a lag deposit derived by reworking of the Tertiary sediments. Potential areas of exploration include southern end of the Lee River valley near the strongly altered RooksRiver granite and the alluvial fans north and south of the altered Hogans Hill granite pluton

Kairos time: the performativity of timing and timeliness … or; between biding one’s time and knowing when to act

This paper investigates contemporary performance and artistic practice through the prism of kairos, a concept that in spite of the ‘temporal turn’ within the arts and humanities - and its familiarity within literary and rhetorical studies - has remained relatively under-interrogated in relation to artistic making and thinking. Kairos is an Ancient Greek term meaning a fleeting opportunity that needs to be grasped before it passes: not an abstract measure of time passing (chronos) but of time ready to be seized, an expression of timeliness, a critical juncture or ‘right time’ where something could happen. Kairos has origins in two different sources as Eric Charles White notes: archery - “an opening … through which the archer’s arrow has to pass”, and weaving - the “ ‘critical time’ when the weaver must draw the yarn through a gap that momentarily opens in the warp” (1987, p.13). The Ancient Greek art of technē (referring to a ‘productive’ or ‘tactical’ knowledge, rather than craft) is underpinned by the principles of kairos (opportune timing) and mêtis (cunning intelligence). Alternatively, for philosopher Antonio Negri, kairòs refers to the ‘restless’ instant where naming and the thing named attain existence (in time), for which he draws example from the way that the poet “vacillating, fixes the verse” (2003, p.153.) Drawing Negri’s writing on the ‘revolutionary time’ of kairos into dialogue with Ancient Greek rhetoric, this paper elaborates the significance of kairos to contemporary art practice and critical imagination, identifying various artistic practices that operate as contemporary manifestations of Ancient technē, or analogously to Negri’s ‘poet’: practices alert or attentive to the live circumstances or ‘occasionality’ of their own making, based on kairotic principles of immanence, intervention and invention-in-the-middle

The public library, exclusion and empathy: a literature review

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a review of the literature within the fields of public librarianship, social exclusion and empathy. Design/methodology/approach – The cross-disciplinary review involved the consultation of material from disciplines including library and information management, politics, social policy and social sciences, cultural studies, psychology, management and organizational theory. It was structured according to the following themes: exclusion, inclusion and social policy, social inclusion in public services and the cultural sector, the role of public libraries in social inclusion and professional empathy and the public library service. Findings –The concept of social inclusion remains at the core of public library policy and strategy, and is embedded in contemporary social theory. Conflicting views have emerged as to the perceived and actual role of the public library in combating social exclusion, with a need expressed for research to be conducted that bridges the gap between the “philosophical” interpretations of community librarianship and the more practical, “real world” studies, in order to fully understand the concept of community librarianship. A critical link is made between social inclusion and public librarianship to professional empathy. Research limitations/implications – The paper provides an edited version of the overall literature review, yet it is felt that it would be of theoretical and practical relevance and value to the professional and academic communities. Originality/value – Empathy is a relatively new concept in librarianship research, and prior to the study of which this review forms a part only limited findings have been available

Can network coding bridge the digital divide in the Pacific?

Conventional TCP performance is significantly impaired under long latency and/or constrained bandwidth. While small Pacific Island states on satellite links experience this in the extreme, small populations and remoteness often rule out submarine fibre connections and their communities struggle to reap the benefits of the Internet. Network-coded TCP (TCP/NC) can increase goodput under high latency and packet loss, but has not been used to tunnel conventional TCP and UDP across satellite links before. We report on a feasibility study aimed at determining expected goodput gain across such TCP/NC tunnels into island targets on geostationary and medium earth orbit satellite links.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, conference (Netcod2015

A qualitative study of parents' experiences using family support services: applying the concept of surface and depth

UK policy and practice endorses family support for child well-being. Achieving such support requires multi-agency approaches, that consider all aspects of parents’ and children’s lives and which offer practical, social and emotional help. The potential for services to make a positive impact on parents and their families will depend in part on the level and nature of engagement. In this paper a case is made for the application of the two-part ‘surface and depth’ concept for understanding how practitioners engage with families and how they might improve the chances of supporting sustainable differences for parents and families. To illustrate, qualitative data from a review of family centre support provided by a north of England local authority, are presented. The review was commissioned to explore why families often need to re-engage with intensive support services. Data are drawn from interviews with parents (n=18, recruited following a survey of all those registered with the service during April – May 2009) and discussions with family centre support workers (n=4) and following thematic analysis three dominant themes emerged: ‘resources available’, ‘staff approach’ and ‘real life’, were appraised in light of the ‘surface and depth’ concept. Much of the work with parents effectively dealt with pressing needs. This felt gratifying for both parent and worker and supported immediate service engagement. However, each noted that the more complex issues in parents’ lives went unchallenged and thus the sustainability of progress in terms of parenting practice was questionable. A ‘strengths focused’ approach by staff, that understood needs in the context of parents’ ‘real life’ circumstances was important to parent engagement. Thus, longer term benefits from family support requires practitioners to work with parents to problem solve immediate issues whilst also digging deeper to acknowledge and seek to resolve the more complex challenges parents face in their real lives

The Italic I: between liveness and the lens

In this article, the question of ‘the alternative document’ is addressed with reference to The Italic I, a practice-based artistic enquiry developed through collaboration between writer-artist Emma Cocker and interdisciplinary artist Clare Thornton. Evolving gradually (since 2012) through a series of research residencies, exhibitions, publications and performance-lectures, The Italic I explores the event of repeatedly falling apprehended consciously as an exercise of mind and muscle, tested out in physical and cognitive terms. The conceptual implications of falling itself (conceived within The Italic I as both a bodily-kinesthetic and verbal-linguistic act) have been elaborated within other research articles, where we have framed the purposeful action of surrendering to a repeated fall as a training practice or exercise for cultivating a willfully non-corrective tendency in thought, speech and action; for operating against expectation, against normative conditioning (Cocker and Thornton 2016, 2017). For this context, our research focus shifts to address the functioning and performativity of the various ‘documents’ generated within The Italic I, exploring what is at stake at the threshold where live and lens meet, in the gap or interval between live performance and lens-based mediation, between event and document