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Accurately predicting river flows over daily timescales is considered as an important task for sustainable management of freshwater ecosystems, agricultural applications, and water resources management. In this research paper, artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, namely the cascade correlation neural networks (CCNN) and the random forest (RF) models, were employed in daily river stage and river flow prediction for two river systems (i.e., Dulhunty River and Herbert River) in Australia. To develop the CCNN and RF models, a significant 3-day antecedent river stage and river flow time series were used. 80% of the whole data were used for model training and the remaining 20% for model testing. A total of ten different model structures with different input combinations were used to evaluate the optimal model in the training phase, and the results were analyzed using statistical metrics including the root mean square error (RMSE), Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient (NS), Willmott's index of agreement (WI), and Legate and McCabe's index (ELM) in the testing phase. The inter-comparison of CCNN and RF models for both river systems showed that the CCNN model was able to generate a more accurate prediction of the river stage and river flow compared to the RF model. Due to hydro-geographic differences leading to a different underlying historical data characteristics, the optimal CCNN's performance for the Dulhunty River was found to be most accurate, in terms of ELM = 0.779, WI = 0.964, and ENS = 0.862 versus 0.775, 0.968, and 0.885 for the Herbert River. Following the performance accuracies, the authors ascertained that the CCNN model can be taken as a preferred data intelligent tool for river stage and river flow prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This paper reports on the valuation of quality-of-life states in the Alzheimer's Disease Five Dimensions (AD-5D) instrument in a representative sample of the general population in Australia using the discrete-choice experiment with duration (DCETTO) elicitation technique. Method: A DCE with 200 choice sets of two quality-of-life (QoL) state–duration combinations blocked into 20 survey versions, with ten choice sets in each version, was designed and administered online to a sample representative of the Australian population. Two additional choice sets comprising internal consistency and dominance checks were included in each survey version. A range of model specifications investigating preferences with respect to duration and interactions between AD-5D dimension levels were estimated. Utility weights were developed, with estimated coefficients transformed to the 0 (being dead) to 1 (full health) scale, suitable for the calculation of quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) weights for use in economic evaluation. Results: In total, 1999 respondents completed the choice experiment. Overall, respondents were slightly better educated and had higher annual incomes than the Australian general population. The estimation results from different specifications and models were broadly consistent with the monotonic nature of the AD-5D: utility increased with increased life expectancy and decreased as the severity level for each dimension worsened. A utility value set was generated for the calculation of utilities for all QoL states defined by the AD-5D descriptive system. Conclusion: The DCE-based utility value set is now available to use to generate QALYs for the economic evaluation of treatments and interventions targeting people with dementia and/or their family caregivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This manuscript describes a range of technical deliberations undertaken by the authors during their work as members of the Australian Government's Independent Scientific Committee on Wind Turbines. Central to these deliberations was the requirement upon the committee to improve understanding and monitoring of the potential impacts of sound from wind turbines (including low frequency and infrasound) on health and the environment. The paper examines existing wind turbine sound limits, possible perceptual and physiological effects of wind turbine noise, aspects of the effects of wind turbine sound on sleep health and quality of life, low-frequency noise limits, the concept of annoyance including alternative causes of it and the potential for it to be affected by low-frequency noise, the influence of amplitude modulation and tonality, sound measurement and analysis and management strategies. In so doing it provides an objective basis for harmonisation across Australia of provisions for siting and monitoring of wind turbines, which currently vary from state to state, contributing to contention and potential inequities between Australians, depending on their place of residence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving irrigation efficiency on farms is crucial in securing a sustainable future for irrigators as well as the environment, especially in water scarce regions such as Australia. More efficient irrigation designs are increasingly being investigated using irrigation simulation models but there is a dearth of readily available two-dimensional (2D) models for investigating surface water flow within irrigation bays. This paper adapted the 2D ANUGA open source model to simulate border and basin irrigation by incorporating an infiltration algorithm based on the modified Kostiakov equation. The algorithm was successfully incorporated in ANUGA and the adapted model, ANUGA_MK, was tested using eight border and two basin irrigation events. ANUGA_MK performance was benchmarked against the one-dimensional (1D) SISCO irrigation model for border irrigation events, against the 2D B2D basin irrigation model for basin irrigation events and against observed data. ANUGA_MK adequately simulated surface water advance and depth. SISCO's total infiltration was comparable to that of ANUGA_MK, but its spatio-temporal dynamics differed due to differences in representation of microtopography. For example, the 1D SISCO model did not account for surface depression water storage remaining long after cessation of runoff. Performance of ANUGA_MK was similar to that of B2D in simulating basin irrigation. ANUGA can represent surface water flow on complex surfaces with diverse boundary conditions, and with an appropriate infiltration algorithm, has been adapted as a surface irrigation model that can be used to investigate bay surfaces engineered to improve surface drainage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emerging complex circumstances caused by economy, technology, and government policy and the requirement of low-carbon development of power grid lead to many challenges in the power system coordination and operation. However, the real-time scheduling of electricity generation needs accurate modeling of electricity demand forecasting for a range of lead times. In order to better capture the nonlinear and non-stationary characteristics and the seasonal cycles of future electricity demand data, a new concept of the integrated model is developed and successfully applied to research the forecast of electricity demand in this paper. The proposed model combines adaptive Fourier decomposition method, a new signal preprocessing technology, for extracting useful element from the original electricity demand series through filtering the noise factors. Considering the seasonal term existing in the decomposed series, it should be eliminated through the seasonal adjustment method, in which the seasonal indexes are calculated and should multiply the forecasts back to restore the final forecast. Besides, a newly proposed moth-flame optimization algorithm is used to ensure the suitable parameters of the least square support vector machine which can generate the forecasts. Finally, the case studies of Australia demonstrated the efficacy and feasibility of the proposed integrated model. Simultaneously, it can provide a better concept of modeling for electricity demand prediction over different forecasting horizons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally policymakers have paid little attention to the consumption of steroids and other performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs) in Australia. Yet, in recent times PIEDs have come to occupy an increasing amount of discursive space and, indeed, regulatory action. This newfound interest may be attributed to several broader developments, not least the perception of the involvement of organized crime in distributing PIEDs to the professional sports world and other sectors of this illicit market. This paper seeks to explore the empirical reality of the claim that the production and supply of PIEDs in Australia is the prerogative of organized crime groups. A retrospective content analysis of Australian PIED provider cases was conducted between 2010 and 2016. To widen our search, both media articles describing court cases, obtained from the Factiva database, and public online court records, using the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) database, were searched. Search terms included "steroid*", "doping" and "testosterone" in combination with the terms "traffic*", "production", "supply*" and "import*". In total, 477 PIED provider cases were identified yet most cases were duplicates, irrelevant or lacked sufficient detail, resulting in a final dataset of 144 cases. A coding schedule was developed based on existing PIED supply literature. Our data shows that most PIED provider cases took place in Queensland (41.7%), followed by New South Wales (25%) and Victoria (13.2%). Regarding the type of providers, the largest group consisted of people active in the gym industry (22%), followed by the healthcare sector (17%), the 'other' category (12%) and the security sphere (8%). Of the 144 steroid-provider cases, only 12% of the cases indicated the potential involvement of organized crime groups, with half of those being linked to outlaw motorcycle gangs. In contrast to the claims of authorities, our data suggests that organized crime groups currently play a proportionally small role in the illicit production and supply of steroids and other performance and image enhancing drugs in Australia. Indeed, various actors are involved of which only a small fraction are part of or involved with organized crime groups. Many suppliers are particularly active in the gym industry and healthcare sector. The relative presence of such suppliers has important policy implications, not least with regard to the role of criminal law in addressing the provision of PIEDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon accountability and legitimacy theories to explore for what social enterprises are accountable, how they communicate accountability, and to what extent they publicly communicate accountability. Case study methodology was employed, examining four work-integrated social enterprises in Australia. Data collection involved interviews with managers of each social enterprise, and a review of various secondary data including social enterprise websites and internal and external reports. Findings reveal a temporal dimension of accountability, as social enterprises acknowledged their dual social and financial accountability, but prioritised financial over social performance. Communication of social performance was limited, with publicly available reports partial and selective in nature. Communication of financial performance was even more limited, reporting typically directed to internal stakeholders. Implications include the need for social enterprises to communicate social and financial performance more broadly, in order to advance their legitimacy from moral (based on intentions) to consequential (based on achievements). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attends to the sociality available in the clozapine clinic regimen and suggests that the social dimensions of clozapine treatment may be as important as the biochemical efficacy of clozapine. The clozapine clinic is where people diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia who take the antipsychotic clozapine go for routine monitoring of clozapine side effects, particularly haematological effects. Psychopharmaceutical treatments are often criticized for being reductionistic and dehumanizing, but clozapine clinics offer increased clinical contact in the age of deinstitutionalization. The inadvertent social benefits of biomedically reductive treatments have not previously been ethnographically attended to in the clozapine-only context. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork with 43 clozapine clients and 16 clinical caregivers in two clozapine clinics in the United Kingdom in Australia, I argue that routine clinical attachments in the clozapine clinic can serve a therapeutic role in terms of providing opportunities for clients' health agency, social competence and accountability. This socio-therapeutic quality appeared to be available because the clinical emphasis was not on psychotic illness. It depended, however, on reliable and familiar social exchanges inside the clinic and on the predictability of clinical activity. The importance of unemotional but unfailing relationships and rhythms in the clozapine clinic context echoes cross-cultural findings about how schizophrenia is managed more productively in environments that invite more neutral and equal social exchanges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of laboratory tests conducted on a series of mini-cylinder specimens to measure the uniaxial compressive strength of sub-bituminous coal, which is sparsely recorded in the public domain. The measurements were made on mini-cylinder specimens (non-standard) sized from 9.3 to 22.6 mm in diameter, sourced from the Surat–Clarence–Moreton Basin in Australia, an important region for coal mining and coal seam gas extraction. The tested specimens presented poorly developed cleats and were texturally classified as non to poorly banded, although the composition is rich in vitrinite group macerals. The inherent variability of experimental coal strength results was found to be related to fabric and texture. The results from the mini-cylinder specimens could be scaled to predict the behaviour of larger core sizes commonly used for testing mechanical variability and for estimating full seam rock mass strength. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) drives substantial variability in precipitation and drought risk over Australia. Understanding the combined effect of anthropogenic forcing and ENSO on Australian precipitation extremes over the coming century can assist adaptation efforts. Here we use 24 CMIP5 climate models to examine externally forced changes in the frequency of "droughts", when precipitation falls below the pre-industrial Decile 1 threshold. We focus on June to November (i.e., southern hemisphere Winter–Spring season) because precipitation during this period is important for agricultural production and recharging reservoirs in many parts of the country. The analysis in this paper is based on two 90-year simulations (1900–1989 and 2010–2099) for Historical and RCP8.5 scenarios. We show that the frequency of droughts, including droughts occurring in consecutive Winter–Spring seasons, is projected to increase in the twenty-first century under the RCP8.5 scenario in all eight Natural Resource Management (NRM) "clusters". Approximately 60% of years are projected to be drought years in Perth, 35% in Adelaide, 30% in Melbourne, and approximately 20–25% of years in Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane. The relative frequency distributions of seasonally averaged Winter–Spring precipitation shift to lower values in all NRM clusters. However, apart from the Southern and Southwestern Flatlands, the shifts are accompanied by changes in the shape of the distributions whereby the high end of the distributions do not shift as much as other parts of the distribution and the wettest seasons become marginally wetter. This means that in most locations generally drier conditions are projected to be infrequently punctuated by seasons that are just as wet or wetter than the wettest years experienced during the twentieth century. While the models generally do a poor job in simulating ENSO precipitation teleconnections over Australia, an increase in ENSO-driven variability is suggested for the Wet Tropics, the Monsoonal North, the Central Slopes and the Southern and Southwestern Flatlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the interplay of transmission and storage investments in a multistage game that we translate into a bilevel market model. In particular, on the first level we assume that a transmission system operator chooses optimal line investments and a corresponding optimal network fee. On the second level we model competitive firms that trade energy on a zonal market with limited transmission capacities and decide on their optimal storage facility investments. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to analyze interdependent transmission and storage facility investments in a zonal market environment that accounts for the described hierarchical decision structure. As a first best benchmark, we also present an integrated, single-level problem that may be interpreted as a long-run nodal pricing model. Our numerical results show that adequate storage facility investments of firms may in general have the potential to reduce the amount of line investments of the transmission system operator. However, our bilevel zonal pricing model may yield inefficient investments in storages, which may be accompanied by suboptimal network facility extensions as compared to the nodal pricing benchmark. In this context, the chosen zonal configuration of the network will highly influence the equilibrium investment outcomes including the size and location of the newly invested facilities. As zonal pricing is used for instance in Australia or Europe, our models may be seen as valuable tools for evaluating different regulatory policy options in the context of long-run investments in storage and network facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advances in prosthetic design should benefit people with limb difference. But empirical evidence demonstrates a lack of uptake of prosthetics among those with limb difference, including of advanced designs. Non-use is often framed as a problem of prosthetic design or a user's response to prosthetics. Few studies investigate user experience and preferences, and those that do tend to address satisfaction or dissatisfaction with functional aspects of particular designs. This results in limited data to improve designs and, we argue, this is pragmatically and ethically problematic. This paper presents results of a survey we conducted in 2017 with people with upper limb difference in Australia. The survey sought to further knowledge about preferences surrounding prosthetics and understanding of how preferences relate to user experience, perspective, and context. Survey responses demonstrated variety in the uptake, use and type of prosthetic—and that use of, preferences about, and impacts of prosthetics rely not just on design factors but on various contextual factors bearing on identity and social understandings of disability and prosthetic use. From these results, we argue that non-use of prosthetics could be usefully reframed as an issue of understanding how prosthetics can best support users' autonomy. This supports the claim that there is a need to incorporate user engagement into design processes for prosthetic limbs, though further work is needed on methods for doing so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three-dimensional inversion for susceptibility distributions is a common approach for quantitative interpretation of magnetic data. However, this approach will fail when strong remanence exists because the total magnetization direction is unknown. Magnetic amplitude inversion can reduce remanence effects and thus improve reconstructed results. In this paper, we propose a sparse magnetic amplitude inversion method which minimizes an L0-like-norm of model parameters subject to bound constraints. By using the iteratively reweighed least squares technique, the bound-constrained L0-like-norm sparse inversion is transformed to a sequence of bound-constrained nonlinear least squares subproblems. To deal with the bound constraints, we use a logarithm barrier algorithm to solve each subproblem. Compared with the classical L2-norm inversion method, the proposed sparse method utilizes the known physical property information to produce binary results characterized by sharp boundaries. This method is tested on synthetic data produced by a dipping dyke model and a field data set acquired in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This literature review presents a critical appraisal of the dominant approaches toward the sexuality and relationships of people with acquired brain injury. In particular, we sought to identify and review existing programs focusing on sexuality and relationships which use an educational and/or peer–peer approach. A systematic and comprehensive search of the EBSCOHOST database was conducted within an unlimited time-frame to yield the highest number of relevant results possible, along with hand-searching of key journals and databases. Reports, papers and webpages, documents commonly referred to as 'grey literature' that are not published in peer-reviewed journals, were also hand searched as a part of this review. The database search yielded 862 results, 14 of which were found to be relevant to our research interests. All of the sexuality education programs identified in this review were experienced positively by participants, families, caregivers, and professionals working with people with acquired brain injury. No peer–peer sexuality and relationships programs were identified. However, we found strong support for the use of peer–peer approaches in other programs for people with acquired brain injury. This literature review provides strong support for the development peer–peer sexuality and relationships programs for people with acquired brain injury. However, any future programs would have to overcome the limitations of existing sexuality and relationships programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aspiration for higher education has been a focus of significant policy intervention in Australia for some time, with numerous large-scale research studies investigating the formation of aspiration amongst high school students. However, case studies in particular schools which might provide insights into the complexities and contradictions of aspirations for individual young people are scarce. This paper explores aspirations for particular futures from the perspectives of young women in a single-sex NSW government school in an area of historically lower HE participation. Rather than conventional interview-based methods where researchers ask young people to articulate their plans for the future, the study adopted creative arts-based methods which enabled students to engage with each other and a range of materials to produce multimodal 'aspiration artefacts' of their imagined futures. The method assemblage privileged imagination and embodied feelings, beyond the rational information-driven pedagogies that are promoted in widening participation policies. Our close readings of artefacts created by three Year 9 girls demonstrate that aspiration is a process that is relational, embodied, affectively and discursively constituted; and further, that this is inflected by gender, class and other positionalities in elusive and unanticipated ways. Arts-based methods allow us to tentatively trace the work of thinking–feeling–imagining that is entailed in developing and articulating aspirations for particular futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite numerous equity initiatives aimed at increasing participation in higher education, students from regional and remote communities continue to be underrepresented in Australia. This paper presents a scoping review of empirical studies, published between 1991 and 2016, that examined aspirations for higher education of students from regional and remote areas. Analysis of the 65 articles revealed an emphasis on enablers and barriers to participation in higher education including: cost and distance, supportive environments, attachment to home, schooling and academic achievement, knowledge of pathways, and individual characteristics. However, much of the research offers a homogeneous view of regional and remote communities which elides location-specific characteristics that are powerful in shaping educational aspirations. We argue that there is a critical need for greater understanding of the diversity of experiences, influences, and aspirations among students within rural and remote communities to underpin the provision of appropriate infrastructure and support for their higher education aspirations. We identify some key avenues for further research into the aspirations of students in rural and remote communities and the ways in which this research can inform and improve outreach activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer engagement in decisions about the funding of medicines is often framed as a good in and of itself and as an activity that should be universally encouraged. A common justification for calls for consumer engagement is that it enhances equity. In this paper we systematically critique this assumption. We show that consumer engagement may undermine equity as well as enhance it and show that a simple relationship cannot be assumed but must be justified and demonstrated. In concluding, we present a number of challenges that need to be overcome in order for consumer engagement to contribute to health technology assessment in a morally and politically sound manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Newly acquired high-quality data are being used to reinterpret the Surat Basin flow systems of the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) in Australia. This paper revisits and updates previous interpretations of flow in the Hutton Sandstone with detailed analysis of the Dawson River area in the northern Surat Basin. Combining analysis of high-resolution permeability measurements with hydraulic head and hydrochemistry data supports the contention that there is significant flow towards the northeast, counter to the canonical regional flow conceptualisation of the GAB. The analysis in this work better identifies the likely discharge to be in the area that the Dawson River intersects the Hutton Sandstone. Heterogeneity in physical and hydrochemical properties suggests that local flowpaths are more complex than previously thought and, at least in this part of the Hutton aquifer, very little recharge contributes to flow deeper in the basin. These results provide a firm basis on which to refine and develop numerical hydrodynamic models of the basin, at least for the Hutton aquifer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Late Jurassic Springbok Sandstone in the Surat Basin, Australia, is highly heterogeneous in terms of lithology and hydrogeological properties. This heterogeneity is poorly defined in well logs, due, in part, to clay phases that do not exhibit a prominent gamma ray signature. The resulting uncertainties in the hydrogeological properties are propagated to uncertainties in the groundwater models of the Springbok Sandstone. Further, only a small amount of porosity and permeability data are publicly available and the discussion of petrophysical models for the Springbok Sandstone in the peer-reviewed literature has been limited. At the same time, accurately predicting the potential groundwater impact due to coal seam gas production from the underlying Walloon Subgroup is of significant societal and economic importance. This paper presents new porosity and permeability data from more than 50 core samples from the Springbok Sandstone alongside a review of existing data. Based on this dataset and wireline data from five study wells, a new petrophysical model for the formation is proposed. The results show that (1) the Springbok Sandstone is highly variable in terms of hydrogeological parameters, (2) this variability can be captured with a petrophysical model that draws on a full log suite (i.e. triple-combo) and (3) electrofacies classifications based on gamma-ray and bulk-density log cut-offs do not reflect this variability. This improved understanding of the Springbok Sandstone will contribute to best practice management of the water and hydrocarbon resources in the Great Artesian Basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding groundwater use, both current and historical, is important for understanding the hydrogeology of groundwater systems, and for water planning. The Queensland portion of Australia's Great Artesian Basin (GAB) is managed under the Water Plan (Great Artesian Basin and Other Regional Aquifers) 2017. Methods were developed to estimate current and historical abstractions from the different hydrostratigraphic units of the basin. In the first stage, source aquifers were assigned to ~96,000 bores within the Queensland GAB footprint. Of these, 31,503 bores were assigned directly to the GAB, with other bores sourcing groundwater from units above or below the GAB. In the second stage, current groundwater use for all bores and historic groundwater-use trends were estimated, covering the 115-year period between 1900 and 2015. These estimates took account of periods of inactivity at the bore, the aquifer condition (sub-artesian, artesian), and the nature of discharge (controlled or uncontrolled). The process used publicly available datasets. This paper presents an overview of the methodology and how the estimates were used to support water planning. The current groundwater use from the GAB in Queensland was estimated to be 322 GL/year, which is lower than previous estimates, partly because of improved estimation techniques, the bore capping and piping programs that have been in progress since 1989, and the naturally reducing discharge rates from uncontrolled artesian bores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groundwater management in the Great Artesian Basin (Australia) is challenging due to the large areas and heterogeneity of sequences involved. This challenge has often been addressed with up-scaled conceptual models; however, where there is significant heterogeneity or local competing groundwater uses, more detail is required. When good understanding of heterogeneity within sequences is not available, the upscaled approach can lead to a disparity between model predictions based on homogenisation inherent in upscaling and the observed behaviour of heterogeneous systems, leading to bias in results. This requires improved conceptual resolution of these heterogeneous systems. Geological data are often insufficient to achieve the required resolution. This paper reports on the use of hydrochemical data from existing bores in the Walloon subgroup of the Surat Basin, using compositional data analysis techniques to refine the unit description. The approach moves beyond simple hydrochemical characterisations of water type via conventional hydrochemical interpretations to use a combination of centred- and isometric-log ratios to describe discrete end members. The results show that, despite similar water types, the upper Juandah and lower Taroom coal seams of Walloon subgroup are distinguished by an inverse relationship between ions Cl−, Ca2+, Mg2+, Sr2+, Li− and H+ and ions HCO3−, F− and B3+, and by an isometric log ratio that describes the balance between the activities of Cl, H+ and HCO3. These relationships suggest that higher-resolution conceptual models based on flow paths mapped from hydrochemical data can form the basis for refined groundwater models that address both heterogeneity and regional model domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groundwater resources in Queensland (Australia) have been depleting in many aquifers for the last 100 years and natural recharge processes are not replenishing these resources at the rate of extraction. At the same time, the need to address carbon emissions to reach global climate-change targets is becoming increasingly recognised. Plentiful deep fresh groundwater is available but is difficult, and typically uneconomical, to access due to the high costs of borehole drilling and completion. The emerging concept of 'enhanced water recovery' (EWR) hypothesises that carbon dioxide (CO2) injection into the deep aquifers will increase pressure, making groundwater more easily available at shallower depths across a broad region while simultaneously contributing to a reduction in CO2 emissions. One example where this has been proposed is in the Great Artesian Basin's Surat Basin in Queensland. The findings from a series of focus groups held with different stakeholders, including agricultural producers, rural residents, and urban residents, demonstrate how different groups perceived the risks and benefits of injecting CO2 as part of the carbon capture and storage (CCS) process to raise borehole water levels. The paper discusses the trade-offs that the different stakeholder groups found more acceptable. The significance of this research is that it will be the first to publish public responses to an emerging technology that has the potential to provide multiple benefits in terms of climate-change mitigation and groundwater use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Artesian Basin (GAB) in Australia underlies semi-arid and arid regions across 1.7 million km2 or one-fifth of Australia. The basin's groundwater resources were discovered around 1880 and their development allowed pastoral activities, homestead and town water supplies, and petroleum and mining ventures to exist. The GAB is a multi-layered confined aquifer system, with aquifers in Jurassic and Cretaceous continental sandstones and intervening confining beds of siltstone and mudstone of the constituent Eromanga, Surat and Carpentaria sedimentary basins. The basin is up to 3,000 m thick and forms a large synclinal structure, uplifted and exposed along its eastern margin and tilted southwest. Recharge to the exposed aquifers occurs in the eastern margin, an area of relative high rainfall. The western margin in Australia's arid centre receives minor recharge. Regional groundwater flow is towards the southern, south-western, western and northern margins. Flowing artesian springs discharge in the southwest margin and have produced carbonate mounds. Although lateral groundwater movement dominates, vertical upwards leakage is considered important. Potentiometric surfaces of the Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous aquifers are still above ground level throughout most of the basin, though pressure drawdowns of up to 100 m have been recorded in recent decades in highly developed areas, and consequently some artesian water boreholes and springs have ceased flowing. Government borehole rehabilitation programs have led to groundwater pressure recovery in some areas. This paper outlines the history of GAB exploration, scientific investigations (hydrogeology, hydrochemistry, isotope hydrology, groundwater modelling) and management, summarising the recent knowledge on the GAB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Having children compels parents to examine their vaccine beliefs, particularly if they are vaccine-hesitant or refuse all vaccines. Presently, little is known about the specific ways in which having children influences the vaccine beliefs of parents. This research examined how having children changed the attitudes of Australian vaccine-hesitant and vaccine-refusing parents towards childhood vaccination. We asked 904 Australian parents who believed that having children changed their attitudes to vaccination to describe these changes. Parents' responses were inductively, iteratively coded and thematically analysed. Themes were compared between parents who believed all vaccines should be refused, parents with varying degrees of vaccine hesitancy, and parents who were fully vaccine-accepting. Low numbers of responses from fully vaccine-accepting parents meant that this paper focused on mostly vaccine-hesitant and vaccine-refusing vaccine parents. Five themes were identified. Having children prompted all parents to learn about vaccine choices. Hesitant and refusing parents' interpreted vaccine choices through a lens of distrust of pharmaceutical companies and regulatory bodies overseeing vaccine safety. The distrust fuelled parents' fears about vaccination risks, such as side effects. Parents became concerned about the scheduled timing of vaccinations, particularly of the Hepatitis B vaccine. Parents among the three groups that believed some or all vaccines should be refused reported that a vaccine permanently injured their child. This research contributes to understanding how having children affects the vaccine attitudes among vaccine-hesitant and vaccine-refusing parents. Greater support for parents with negative vaccination experiences may prevent hesitant attitudes. The vaccination schedule needs to be communicated to parents better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While precision agriculture (PA) technologies are widely used in cropping systems, these technologies have received less attention in mixed farming systems. Little is known about the nature, extent, and temporal stability of spatial variability of pastures in mixed farming systems and the feasibility of managing this variability. This paper describes a technique to create a Stability Index based on both crop grain yield and pasture total green dry matter (TGDM) production over time, using high resolution spatial data in two climatic zones of Australia. Four productivity zones were used to characterise the Stability Index: high and stable, high and unstable, low and stable, and low and unstable. Mapping the indices shows the location and size of the spatial and temporal features of each paddock. The features of the stability zones generally corresponded with soil texture classes. Testing the Stability Indices with a Kruskal–Wallis one-way ANOVA showed significantly different medians for high and low production categories for both grain yield and pasture TGDM (p < 0.01). Crop grain yield stability showed significant differences between medians. In pasture TGDM, the differences between stability medians were not significant, but the technique still separated medians into stable and unstable groupings. This production Stability Index has the potential to be used by farmers to manage spatial variability in mixed farming systems by identifying homogenous areas within a paddock for investigation/amelioration and can also separate out areas of either spatial and/or temporal instability for specific management strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting international patterns, Aboriginal people in Victoria are more likely to gamble and to experience gambling harm than non-Indigenous Victorians. This paper describes experiences of gambling reported by 50 Aboriginal people interviewed in regional Victoria in 2016 and 2017 as part of studies initiated by two Aboriginal community-controlled organisations. Data were analysed using social practice theory (SPT) and coded to the elements of 'meaning', 'material', 'competence', and 'temporality'. Across each element we identified highly contradictory experiences. Gambling held meaning as an opportunity for community gatherings but was also regarded as a cause of domestic violence, conflict, isolation and shame. Materially, the venues that offered gambling were experienced by many Aboriginal people as safe and welcoming, but at the same time gambling produced a damaging affective sense of addiction for some. Gambling was a competency that some people valued and taught to children, but it was also seen as undermining cultural practices. While Aboriginal people were historically denied access to licensed venues offering commercial gambling, many participants now found opportunities to gamble inescapable. The intermingling of benefits and harms described above supports the need for a multi-faceted response to gambling in Aboriginal communities, which includes harm reduction as well as supply restriction and treatment. Some experiences of gambling related by our participants reflected those reported also by non-Indigenous Australians, while others were differently nuanced. Because SPT is used to understand collectively-shared practices, it facilitates the identification of gambling interventions at the level of the community, as recommended by our research participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constructs a multi-dimensional individual well-being (MIW) indicator framework to explicitly recognise the inter-relationship between economic and non-economic dimensions in encapsulating the totality of an individual's life. The MIW framework treats individual well-being as a multi-dimensional concept disaggregable into uniquely defined but latent well-being dimensions with observable indicators attached to each. A composite well-being index applicable to individual level analysis is developed through a series of intra-personal aggregative procedures. The results are based on person-level data from the household, income and labour dynamics in Australia survey and applied to an assessment of the individual well-being of older Australians, aged 65 years and over. The findings indicate that, although older Australians have slightly lower overall well-being compared to non-older adults, driven primarily by declining physical health and to a lesser extent mental health, they maintain strong personal relationships, and engage actively in their communities. More generally, the approach outlines how to quantify objective multi-dimensional assessments of individual well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are numerous studies that have estimated the number of deaths attributable to heat and cold using city-level or provincial-level data. However, none of these studies have assessed temperature-mortality relationships using meteorological climate zones and data that covers an entire population/country. This analysis uses a national data set of death records to create time-series data for different regional aggregations. Temperature-mortality relationships are estimated using this data set of 1,717,224 deaths, which covers the whole of Australia between 2006 and 2017. This paper finds that the majority of deaths related to temperature in Australia are caused by heat. It also finds that the reference temperature used to separate impacts into heat-/cold-related mortality has a notable impact on the magnitude of these estimates. Previous studies (using the same methodology) found that most of the temperature-related mortality burden in Australia was attributed to cold temperatures. This led to studies that associated this with a net benefit from climate change. This analysis indicates that studies that found net benefits from climate change need to be re-assessed, especially for Australia and warmer climate zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-management through local collective action appeals as a way of effectively responding to critical groundwater management issues, including groundwater quality degradation and pumping that lowers water tables. Co-management may also build sufficient trust for stakeholders to agree to investigate, and potentially implement, new opportunities for the use and management of groundwater resources. This paper examines the potential of collective action to underpin co-management and lead to improved groundwater management. The case study is the Angas Bremer (AB) irrigation district in South Australia, which provides a rare example of community-lead groundwater management since the late 1970s. The key questions were: (1) Was the AB an example of collective action, and did that spark successful co-management? and, (2) What were the key outcomes of collective action throughout the years? Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. By working together, and with government departments, AB irrigators successfully recovered an aquifer that was at risk of depletion and salinization. Drawing on this evidence, it is suggested that co-management through local collective action may be a useful option for those setting out to improve the social acceptability of new groundwater initiatives in farming landscapes, including managed aquifer recharge (MAR) and conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, debates around school funding tend to focus on comparisons of funding between school systems and what this means for equity. In this paper, while we look at school-level funding between systems, our emphasis is on private funding in public schools with a particular emphasis on the relationship between private funding and ICSEA. Using data provided by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, we present a series of analyses that document the current funding arrangements of Australian schools. In particular, we focus on how private income and parental contributions are mediated by sector (Government, Catholic and Independent), system (States and Territories) and educational advantage. These analyses show that government schools are generating notable private funding per student with the majority coming from parental fees, charges and other contributions. We further demonstrate that these private contributions advantage may exacerbate inequalities within public systems across Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the facies sequence character for sandstone rocks of the subsurface upper Middle Devonian and Upper Devonian Ravendale Interval in the Bancannia Trough, western Darling Basin. The integration of multiple correlation techniques (recognition of changes in core and cutting facies, electrofacies and lithostratigraphic-facies associations) has helped define an internal stratigraphic correlation framework for the Ravendale Interval. This provides a powerful tool for understanding the distribution of the lithostratigraphic architectural controls on reservoir potential. This study has re-evaluated the stratigraphic boundaries of the Ravendale Interval (bottom and top) using marked changes in gamma-ray and sonic log characteristics, and depth estimates of the boundaries were derived from the wireline log data in the Bancannia South-1, Bancannia North-1 and Jupiter-1 wells. The internal stratigraphy of the Ravendale Interval consists of 20 facies and 19 subfacies that define 4 facies associations (FA). These facies associations are characterised as facies association-A (FAA), a braided channel-fill system; facies association-B (FAB), a meandering channel-fill system; facies association-C (FAC), a multistory fluvial channel-fill complex system, and facies association-D (FAD), a meandering channel delta system. The Ravendale Interval has been subdivided into five wireline log lithostratigraphic units (RI1, RI2, RI3, RI4 and RI5, in ascending order) in the three available wells. Use of the suggested wireline log lithostratigraphic unit correlations versus facies association of the Ravendale Interval has the potential to refine existing stratigraphic sequence schemes and, given the higher resolution and more detailed correlation, may significantly improve subsurface sedimentological framework relationships in lithostratigraphic unit reconstructions. Wireline log correlations indicate that potentially productive sand-rich units of the major Ravendale Interval in the Bancannia Trough can be correlated over large distances, suggesting significant continuity into lightly drilled and undrilled areas, and aid in the prediction of potential hydrocarbon-bearing reservoirs within the Darling Basin region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anticyclones are one of the main synoptic features of the global midlatitudes, where they are associated with dry, settled conditions. Previous studies have identified southern Australia as a region where significant long-term changes have occurred in recent decades, including a decline in cool season rainfall and an increase in the frequency of anticyclones. This paper uses several reanalyses to assess the climatology, variability, trends and impacts of anticyclones in southern Australia and several subregions. A robust increase in the frequency of anticyclones in southern Australia is demonstrated between 1960–1979 and 1997–2014, particularly in southeast Australia and the Tasman Sea during the cool months of the year. At least 30% of the recent cool season rainfall decline in southeast Australia can be associated with an increased frequency of anticyclones in this region. However, there are no clear trends in anticyclone frequency near southwestern Western Australia, where long-term rainfall declines are due to changes in other weather systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tradescantia fluminensis is an invasive plant species in New Zealand, Australia and parts of the USA. It reproduces vegetatively and can grow to form dense mats up to 60 cm deep. Growth is limited by available light, and shading is one of the few effective methods of control. In this paper, we develop a dynamic model of a vertical cross section of a T. fluminensis mat, capturing vertical variation in its biomass and internal light intensity. We measure both variables at different heights in experimental mats of the species and use these data to parameterize the model. The model produces realistic vertical biomass and light intensity profiles. We show that the mat grows to a steady-state biomass that depends only on: (i) the light absorption coefficient, which we estimate from experimental data and (ii) the ratio of photosynthesis to respiration rate. This steady state undergoes a transcritical bifurcation; when the ambient light intensity falls below a critical level, the biomass shrinks to zero and the mat cannot survive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses two key strategies detailing how "relationship-focused" and "trauma-informed" intervention practices, which form the basis of an Australian therapeutic program called Treatment and Care for Kids (TrACK), made a difference in the lives of highly traumatised children. The TrACK program fosters highly traumatised children who, due to the complexity of their trauma needs, cannot be placed in traditional generalist foster care. Case files of 48 children were reviewed. Children were either current or former clients over a period of 18 years since the program was initiated. In analysing the data, we noticed that children who were once highly dysregulated in the domains of foster care placement, education, arousal regulation and peer relationships were now enjoying an enhanced level of stability in their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overcoming barriers to large-scale urban redevelopment on brownfield land is an essential step in the global drive toward achieving the UN's sustainable development goals. Arguably the most significant barrier is site contamination. Decision support tools (DSTs) are potentially effective ways to assess contaminated sites and evaluate different remediation/management strategies as appropriate to local conditions. Whilst there has been extensive development of DSTs for single contaminated sites, only a limited number are available for assessing contamination at the 'precinct' (district) scale. This paper presents a framework and simple DST for the assessment of contaminated groundwater, using Australia's largest urban redevelopment project, Fishermans Bend in Melbourne, as a case study. The value of the inclusion of precinct-wide data into individual site-scale investigations is demonstrated via the DST. Common contaminant sources identified across Fishermans Bend include fill contaminated with heavy metals, legacy landfill leachate containing heavy metals and per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and naturally occurring ammonia and methane in organic-rich sediments. By comparison, point sources of heavy metals and PFAS appear related to industrial sources. By using the DST, environmental practitioners and auditors can more effectively separate background conditions from point sources, characterise the ambient conditions of the aquifer and their relationships to natural and anthropogenic processes, and use contaminant data to inform remedial options assessment. Where these increasingly complex and varied environmental datasets can be collected, stored and managed within one central database, cross- or inter-disciplinary collaborations may drive improvements in solving environmental problems which typically arise during the redevelopment process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists, Indigenous peoples, and local communities are increasingly seeking to combine their expertise to support sustainable management of social-ecological systems for diverse values, from local to global scales. In this paper we present an Indigenous-led approach to enable multiple evidence-based research, monitoring, and evaluation of the health of 'Saltwater Country.' This highlights the need to ensure knowledge can be shared, used, and co-developed to care for coastal and marine social-ecological systems within and across the Kimberley region of north-western Australia in an ethical and equitable manner. Structured yet fluid knowledge networks need to be negotiated and supported to enable Indigenous communities to implement this approach, which also requires coordinated institutional support and resourcing to produce useable knowledge that is easily translated into programs of action. We here present a process for regional-scale collaboration between Indigenous and local knowledge systems, western science, and other knowledge systems for the purpose of collaborative natural and cultural resource management and sustainable Indigenous futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The origin and the Precambrian tectonic evolution of the Alxa Block have not been well studied, largely due to widespread desert coverage and a lack of high-resolution geochronological data. This paper reports zircon U–Pb ages and Hf isotopic data for the Langshan Group in the northeastern Alxa Block. Detrital zircons from the Langshan Group mainly provide U–Pb ages between ca. 2000 Ma and 1100 Ma, suggesting that their provenance was dominated by late Palaeoproterozoic to Mesoproterozoic rocks, which yield two main peak ages at 1592 Ma and 1745 Ma. These zircons possess εHf (t) values between − 15 and + 8, implying the derivation of their precursor magmas from old crust and juvenile materials. Zircon U–Pb dating yields ages of 898 ± 4 Ma and 808 ± 4 Ma for the granite cobbles in coarse conglomerate in the Fourth Formation and the diorite intruding into the Second Formation of the Langshan Group, which constrains the depositional age of the main part of the Langshan Group to between 898 and 804 Ma. Our data show that the Langshan Group was probably deposited in an intra-continental rift basin and originated from recycled orogens. The geochronology and palaeocurrent data indicate that the North China Craton (NCC) could not have provided source materials for the Langshan Group. Instead, the Langshan Group shares a similar origin and detrital zircon age spectrum with the Beishan Complex in the South Beishan Collage. Combining these findings with published data, we propose that the Alxa Block was not a part of the NCC during the Neoproterozoic but a Precambrian micro-continent block. The Alxa Block recorded footprints that are related to the late amalgamation of the Rodinia supercontinent and the initial breakup. We suggest that the Alxa Block laid between Australia and Laurentia in the Rodinia supercontinent during the Neoproterozoic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barriers and facilitators affecting the social activities of people with congenital physical and communication disabilities are well documented. However, little is known of their experiences of developing sexual and intimate relationships. This study conducted a systematic review of the literature to address this gap in knowledge. Ten online databases were searched for relevant papers between 1990 and 2014. In addition, hand searches of Augmentative and Alternative Communication Journal and the Sexuality and Disability Journal were conducted. Fifteen papers were identified and appraised. The thematic coding approach identified six principal themes. However, the content analysis revealed that the majority of the literature focused on the social needs of people with physical and communication disabilities. Despite evidence that people with disabilities are sexually active, there is little focus on the experiences of people with disabilities developing intimacy and expressing sexuality. The few references to sexuality in the relevant literature focused on protection from abuse, though some researchers called for improved counseling on sexuality and relationships, and improved access to sexual health services. Further research is required to focus on practical and theoretical outcomes to enhance social relationships and sexuality, and offer lovers who use AAC real advice in their search for intimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While an increasing body of Australian and international research has explored the relationship between media and education, few studies have examined this relationship in the context of early childhood education. This paper contributes to this research gap by reporting on a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of how childcare is represented in 801 newspaper texts from six Australian newspapers. As a foundational paper of a broader study investigating public and political influences on parents' childcare choices, the paper details the use and utility of corpus linguistic tools for exploring the discourse construction of childcare in a large corpus of media texts. It also highlights the value of analysing media corpora via media ownership, focusing on the two dominant Australian media organisations, Fairfax and News Corp. Analyses reveal similarities but also key differences in the representation of childcare in Fairfax and News Corp newspapers. In Australia, print media still sets the daily media agenda and reflects the dominant discourse constructions surrounding major public issues. Accordingly, the beliefs, practices and decision-making of current and potential parent users of formal childcare may be differentially influenced depending not just on their (direct or indirect) access to print media, but by the format (tabloid or broadsheet) and thus ownership (Fairfax or News Corp). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational research often portrays culturally, linguistically and economically disenfranchised (CLED) children's disengagement from school learning as individual behaviour, ignoring the contribution of race, gender, socio-cultural, ethnic and social class factors. This paper analyses a specific community engagement programme in Australia which uses experiential learning in an informal setting. The programme, which has been running for seven years, partners pre-service teachers, volunteer high school students and volunteers from a national bank with primary schools where many pupils are experiencing learning difficulties and school engagement problems as a result of their socio-economic status, their poverty, and their ethnic and cultural diversity. Drawing on the perspectives of the children and volunteers participating in the pilot study, and privileging their voices, this paper illustrates how community partnerships may be developed and sustained. The programme's conceptual framework of Connecting-Owning-Responding-Empowering (CORE) pedagogy is explored for its potential to enhance student engagement, achievement and empowerment through focused community involvement. The findings show that when students feel connected to and involved in their community, all participants are empowered in their learning and teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past eight years, Australian school students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 have engaged in the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) writing test, with a one-in-two chance they will be tasked with producing a ‘narrative’ genre. This paper examines the way in which the very notion of storytelling and narrative is conceptualised in the NAPLAN supporting documentation, and its potential negative consequences. The paper begins by providing a review of the literature on storytelling, paying particular attention to research which has established the ‘Complication- Resolution’ narrative as one type of storytelling. It then provides an account of how story and narrative are typically characterised and defined in the official NAPLAN documentation, that is, as the ‘Complication-Resolution’ narrative exclusively. The final section of the paper presents a genre analysis of eight student writing samples and the related comments and gradings from the NAPLAN narrative marking guide. The analysis found a number of student texts in the marking guide that were effectively structured stories, but which had been marked down for Text Structure because they did not comply with the specific structure of the ‘Complication-Resolution’ narrative. The analysis also found a number of texts that scored highly with respect to the Text Structure criterion, even though they were not instances of the Complication-Resolution narrative sub-type. Drawing on these findings, the paper argues that various inconsistencies and points of apparent confusion in these comments and gradings can be taken as evidence that other sub-types of storytelling are being inappropriately devalued, and that ultimately, there is a lack of understanding in the nature of storytelling in the NAPLAN documentation. By way of conclusion, the paper reflects on some of the negative consequences that may flow from storytelling being defined in this limited way, including the implications for how storytelling is taught by teachers and caregivers, the potential misdirection of students as to what constitutes a ‘good’ story, as well as the cultural implications of limiting stories to one specific type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The student category of ‘at risk’ is often assigned to learners who are considered by teachers and school administrators to not meet specified curriculum and assessment requirements. It is a pervasive term that manages to go unquestioned. Being ‘at risk’ implies being out of alignment with opposite terms, that is terms such as stability, safety, not at risk. This way of thinking can lead to an assumption that there is a fixed, normal position for learners, and that being other than that involves becoming ‘risky’. This paper questions the very idea that such a binary exists and explores the ways teachers talk about learners who are considered to be ‘at risk’ within the schooling system. We also argue that teachers’ talk about such learners and their ‘at riskness’ can constitute learners in ways that are either more constraining or more enabling to their pathways through schooling. The paper draws on our experience of analysing teacher interview data collected across a variety of research projects with teachers in Australian schools. Employing discourse analysis focusing on the discursive element of time as we trace temporal markers in teacher interview talk, we provide specific analysis of one teacher’s talk about her English language learners on their path to also becoming literate in English. Her talk demonstrates an optimistic and generative discursive position that challenges views of English language learners as ‘wanting’ and potentially as ‘at risk’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning analytics is an emerging field in which sophisticated analytic tools are used to inform and improve learning and teaching. Researchers within a regional university in Australia identified an association between interaction and student success in online courses and subsequently developed a learning analytics system aimed at informing learning and teaching practices. Contemporary literature draws attention to ethical considerations and moral tensions in the implementation of learning analytics. This paper presents a case study of the ethical implications of a learning analytics implementation at CQUniversity, a regional Australian university. There was an institutional assumption that student data, consensually gathered at enrollment could be analyzed beyond the scope of the original consent. Further, academics were using the data in a manner not intended by the designers of the learning analytic system, and academics interpreted the student's individualized data to label students based on their estimate of success. The learning analytics system is still being used and the ethical findings from this paper have implications for CQUniversity, academics and students. In order to resolve the ethical dilemmas the university could increase transparency of the process to students and obtain consent at multiple levels throughout the student journey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rockbursts are violent events that result in the ejection of volumes of rock from the walls of underground excavations. They can be extremely hazardous and have been responsible for many accidents in underground excavations. They also are responsible for significant direct and indirect costs in mining and civil engineering projects. The occurrence of rockbursting can be reduced by optimising the design with regard to excavation layout, excavation geometry and size, excavation sequence, and by the application of destressing/preconditioning measures. Thereafter, containment of damage relies on rock support. Conventional design of rock support for the containment of rockburst damage is not possible since neither the demand that is generated, nor the capacity of support systems, are known, and thus there is a state of design indeterminacy. The approach recommended in this paper is a risk-consequence one: evaluation of the risk (the product of the probability of occurrence of a rockburst and its consequence, in financial terms), and use of this quantified risk as a decision making tool regarding the justification for significant dynamically capable rock support. A typically suitable rock support system for rockbursting conditions is suggested in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the concept of the phallic teacher, a spectral figure negotiated in teachers' everyday work and in school-based disciplinary communities of practice. Reporting the findings of a 3-year Australian doctoral study completed in 2014, the paper looks closely at how English teachers design both curriculum and identity in an environment where feminist and poststructuralist work of the late 20th century seems to have lost traction. These observations made here are based on empirical research in a Victorian school, combined with autoethnographic writing and other materials connecting teachers' and researchers' lives to the broader cultural postfeminist debate. The paper makes room for an absent subject, the teacher, marginalised in neoliberal discourses of curriculum and critiques the masculinist hegemony of outcomes and standards-based education. This provides us with new ways to challenge increasingly dominant current paradigms and to conceptualise a different future in which the standpoints of teachers are privileged in curriculum theory and curricular innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enabling education has a respected and established place in Australian higher education as an alternative pathway into university study. While the value of enabling education in providing access to higher education is undeniable, its provision across Australia is necessarily diverse, as individual programs respond to the needs of their local communities. This resulting diversity makes it difficult to gain insight into the field of enabling education. Given the purpose of enabling education is to prepare students for tertiary study, the role of academic literacies and language (ALL) is central for both Native English Speaker and Language Background Other Than English students, and it is to this focus that this paper attends. To shed light on the field, this paper presents the findings from a national audit of enabling education, providing a much-needed overview of the enabling programs offered across Australia, focusing on the ways that language and literacies are taught, positioned and, in some cases, disconnected from practice. Drawing on this analysis, we discuss how language and literacies are positioned as either central or periphery to the core work of enabling programs and begin a discussion which seeks to place ALL at the centre of enabling education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's information systems log vast amounts of data. These collections of data (implicitly) describe events (e.g. placing an order or taking a blood test) and, hence, provide information on the actual execution of business processes. The analysis of such data provides an excellent starting point for business process improvement. This is the realm of process mining, an area which has provided a repertoire of many analysis techniques. Despite the impressive capabilities of existing process mining algorithms, dealing with the abundance of data recorded by contemporary systems and devices remains a challenge. Of particular importance is the capability to guide the meaningful interpretation of 'oceans of data' by process analysts. To this end, insights from the field of visual analytics can be leveraged. This article proposes an approach where process states are reconstructed from event logs and visualised in succession, leading to an animated history of a process. This approach is customisable in how a process state, partially defined through a collection of activity instances, is visualised: one can select a map and specify a projection of events on this map based on the properties of the events. This paper describes a comprehensive implementation of the proposal. It was realised using the open-source process mining framework ProM. Moreover, this paper also reports on an evaluation of the approach conducted with Suncorp, one of Australia's largest insurance companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper responds to the call for more research to fully understand out of pocket (OOP) costs for cancer patients by providing a detailed discussion of such costs for adult haematology patients from Queensland, Australia.Methods: The descriptive qualitative research was based on in-depth interviews with 45 (n = 45) haematology patients from regional, rural and remote areas.Results: The discussion itemises the OOP costs under four categories including the costs associated with travel and accommodation, the costs associated with family and friends during relocation, the costs associated with diagnosis and treatment, and the costs of parking.Conclusions: The paper provides evidence of the categories of financial burden experienced by haematology patients who have to relocate for specialist treatment by detailing the extensive range of OOP costs. The expectation is that the itemisation of OOP cost variables will contribute to future efforts of quantification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-term air temperature prediction is of major importance in a large number of applications, including climate-related studies, energy, agricultural, or medical. This paper examines the performance of two Machine Learning algorithms (Support Vector Regression (SVR) and Multi-layer Perceptron (MLP)) in a problem of monthly mean air temperature prediction, from the previous measured values in observational stations of Australia and New Zealand, and climate indices of importance in the region. The performance of the two considered algorithms is discussed in the paper and compared to alternative approaches. The results indicate that the SVR algorithm is able to obtain the best prediction performance among all the algorithms compared in the paper. Moreover, the results obtained have shown that the mean absolute error made by the two algorithms considered is significantly larger for the last 20 years than in the previous decades, in what can be interpreted as a change in the relationship among the prediction variables involved in the training of the algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehensive cancer centres are on the rise as patients seek a more holistic approach to maintaining their wellbeing when living with a cancer diagnosis. Many cancer centres worldwide now incorporate a selection of evidence-based complementary therapies and qualified therapists into their offerings. The Chris O'Brien Lifehouse, a comprehensive cancer centre in Sydney, Australia, provides integrative oncology services including acupuncture, massage, reflexology, dietetics and exercise physiology for individual patients, along with group programmes, and an integrative and supportive care medical specialist. The purpose of this paper is to reflect on one model of integrative oncology service and approach to integration and team and service development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]