Going solar: renewing Australia’s electricity options

Recent debates around electricity prices and renewable energy policy have ignored the crucial factors of rapidly dropping solar technology costs, and the critical risks involved in continuing with \u27business as usual\u27. Going solar is the first economic assessment of future electricity price shocks if fossil fuels continue to dominate. The report takes a close look at Australia’s electricity price security and singles out rising gas prices and more frequent droughts as key risks. Prices for gas-fired electricity are now linked to volatile international fuel prices. Water scarcity reduces supply from water-cooled coal plants, pushing up wholesale electricity prices. Without stable policies to support renewable energy, we risk future bill shocks of up to $250 a year for the average household, plus supply interruptions. Embracing the shift to renewable energy – a line powerfully supported by trends in the USA and China – can reduce vulnerability to electricity price shocks and energy insecurity. Rising popularity and rapidly falling costs put rooftop solar at the leading edge of this change, threatening traditional electricity business models

Alien Registration- Cameron, Laura B. (Brewer, Penobscot County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/11373/thumbnail.jp

Alien Registration- Cameron, Laura B. (Brewer, Penobscot County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/11373/thumbnail.jp

Assessment worlds colliding? Negotiating between discourses of assessment on an online open course

Using the badged open course, Taking your first steps into Higher Education, this case study examines how assessment on online open courses draws on concepts of assessment used within formal and informal learning. Our experience was that assessment used within open courses, such as massive open online courses, is primarily determined by the requirements of quality assurance processes to award a digital badge or statement of participation as well as what is technologically possible. However, this disregards much recent work in universities that use assessment in support of learning. We suggest that designers of online open courses should pay greater attention to the relationship of assessment and learning to improve participant course completion

"Swee-ee-et Cán-a-da, Cán-a-da, Cán-a-da": Sensuous Landscapes of Birdwatching in the Eastern Provinces, 1900–1939

Birdwatching emerged as a popular Canadian pastime as rapid industrialization and urbanization encroached on rural and wilderness landscapes at the end of the nineteenth century. This paper analyses birdwatching as a bodily engagement with place and a sensuous transformation of material setting into landscapes of personal and collective identity. Focusing on the development of activities such as Nature Study and "camera hunting," we argue that birds linked people to specific places and that these relationships helped (re)define national identities and landscapes in eastern Canada. In attending to ways in which sensuous experience of birds has been informed by normative and nationalistic discourse, we also begin to trace the imaginative and moral geographies that have "placed" birds in idealized landscapes, protected zones and categories such as "native" and "foreigner." Résumé L'observation des oiseaux est devenue un loisir populaire au Canada lorsque l'industrialisation et l'urbanisation ont empiété sur les campagnes et les paysages inexplorés à la fin du XIXe siècle. Cet article examine ce passe-temps sous l'angle du rapport physique avec un lieu et de la transformation par les sens de cadres matériels en paysages d'identité individuelle et collective. En se concentrant sur l'émer gence d'activités telles que « l'observation de la nature » et « la chasse aux images », les auteures soutiennent que les oiseaux ont relié les gens à des endroits déterminés et que ces liens ont contri bué à (re)définir identités nationales et paysages dans l'Est du Canada. En considérant les façons dont l'expérience sensorielle vécue avec les oiseaux a influencé les discours normatifs et nationalistes, elles relèvent les géographies morales et imaginatives qui ont « placé » les oiseaux dans des paysages idéalisés, des zones protégées et des classifications en oiseaux « indigènes » et « étrangers »

The Success Story of Gold-Based Catalysts for Gas- and Liquid-Phase Reactions: A Brief Perspective and Beyond

Gold has long held the fascination of mankind. For millennia it has found use in art, cosmetic metallurgy and architecture; this element is seen as the ultimate statement of prosperity and beauty. This myriad of uses is made possible by the characteristic inertness of bulk gold; allowing it to appear long lasting and above the tarnishing experienced by other metals, in part providing its status as the most noble meta

Using audit and feedback to increase clinician adherence to clinical practice guidelines in brain injury rehabilitation: v

ObjectiveThis study evaluated whether frequent (fortnightly) audit and feedback cycles over a sustained period of time (>12 months) increased clinician adherence to recommended guidelines in acquired brain injury rehabilitation.DesignA before and after study design.SettingA metropolitan inpatient brain injury rehabilitation unit.ParticipantsClinicians; medical, nursing and allied health staff.InterventionsFortnightly cycles of audit and feedback for 14 months. Each fortnight, medical file and observational audits were completed against 114 clinical indicators.Main outcome measureAdherence to guideline indicators before and after intervention, calculated by proportions, Mann-Whitney U and Chi square analysis.ResultsClinical and statistical significant improvements in median clinical indicator adherence were found immediately following the audit and feedback program from 38.8% (95% CI 34.3 to 44.4) to 83.6% (95% CI 81.8 to 88.5). Three months after cessation of the intervention, median adherence had decreased from 82.3% to 76.6% (95% CI 72.7 to 83.3, pConclusionA fortnightly audit and feedback program increased clinicians’ adherence to guideline recommendations in an inpatient acquired brain injury rehabilitation setting. We propose future studies build on the evidence-based method used in the present study to determine effectiveness and develop an implementation toolkit for scale-up.</div