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Students making the transition from high school to university often encounter many stressors and new experiences. Many students adjust successfully to university; however, some students do not, often resulting in attrition from the university and mental health issues. The primary aim of the current study was to examine the effects that optimism, self-efficacy, depression, and anxiety have on an individual's life stress and adaptation to university. Eighty-four first-year, full-time students from the Queensland University of Technology (60 female, 24 male) who had entered university straight from high school completed the study. Participants completed a questionnaire assessing their levels of optimism, self-efficacy, depression, anxiety, perceived level of life stress and adaptation to university. In line with predictions, results showed that optimism, depression, and anxiety each had a significant relationship with students' perceived level of stress. Furthermore, self-efficacy and depression had a significant relationship with adaptation to university. We conclude that students with high levels of optimism and low levels of depression and anxiety will adapt better when making the transition from high school to university. In addition, students with high levels of self-efficacy and low levels of depression will experience less life stress in their commencement year of university. The implications of this study are outlined.

In the first 27 years of the Central Australian Laboratory (CAL), to 1980, research focussed almost entirely on the needs of the pastoral industry. By the 1980s, ongoing campaigns for Aboriginal land rights and demands to conserve biodiversity plainly showed that there were other land uses deserving research attention. Initially CAL's research agenda expanded to include conservation in spinifex grasslands and grazing lands but remained biophysical in nature. It subsequently became clear that people's roles in decision-making about land use and management should be part of research. By the 2000s, scientists were able to build trusting relationships with Aboriginal people and organisations and undertake collaborative studies to improve livelihoods and wellbeing on country. Over the 38 years from 1980 to 2018, CAL's research activities responded to diverse societal expectations but it was not enough to prevent the laboratory's eventual closure as public investment in rangelands dwindled. The changing nature of research at CSIRO's Central Australian Laboratory over many decades reflected major shifts in societal expectations, the availability of new knowledge and enabling technologies and the particular skills of its staff. This paper follows the expansion of research from a pastoral focus into, initially, conservation and later into socio-ecological systems and Aboriginal livelihoods. Despite the relevance of the research to participating rangeland communities, the power of remote centralised decision-making led to the slow demise of the laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CSIRO's research in the arid zone was initiated after World War 2 when a strong push to develop the sparsely populated and isolated region of northern Australia was promoted as being in the national interest. This impetus had social and political origins but implementation depended on scientific insights into regional 'potential', which was couched at the time in terms of agronomic and pastoral use. Ray Perry was a key figure in early land resource surveys of the region and later a key motivator for, and supporter of, research in the arid and semi-arid rangelands of Australia. His commitment was fundamental to the establishment of CSIRO's Central Australian Laboratory. Pastoral land use and improving the land for that purpose were the primary concerns when CSIRO's presence in Alice Springs was established in 1953. From an initial focus on 'making the desert bloom', in particular making the vast spinifex grasslands more 'useful', the focus of research shifted to maintaining the productivity of country preferred by cattle and establishing methods for monitoring its health. It was not until the 1970s that Aboriginal and conservation land management appeared in the laboratory's research agenda, somewhat intermittently, in response to important social and political changes in the wider Australian community. When CSIRO's Arid Zone Unit was established in Alice Springs in 1953, the social and political imperative was to develop Australia's north and, more specifically, to make the vast interior more productive for pastoral and agronomic purposes. The research that followed showed the unreality of that goal and the need to nurture the land that cattle preferred to graze. Not until the 1970s were other values for land, such as Aboriginal and conservation uses, considered to be subjects for research, stimulated by social and political change in the wider Australian community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]