Other

The recently completed audit of Australia’s land and water resources has painted a rather grim picture of the state of our natural capital (NLWRA, 2001) and it is clear that some of our current land use practices are ecologically unsustainable. Many of our rivers and wetlands are in a degraded state and it is likely that without direct intervention and better management, their condition will continue to deteriorate. I have chosen the theme of my lecture this evening “Healthy river ecosystems: vision or reality?” to highlight some of these issues and consider what may be done to address them. I want to start by exploring what we mean by the term river health and, hopefully, provide a convincing explanation as to why the health of our rivers should be of great concern to us. I then will consider how we might go about making decisions as to what a healthy river looks like and what tools are available to us to measure ecosystem health. To conclude, I want to consider whether it is possible to sustain healthy river ecosystems (should we share this vision), given the kinds of things we do to rivers and their catchments. As I work through this, I wish to draw on some of the research undertaken in our Centre to highlight the important role that science, and aquatic ecology in particular, has played in informing this debate.

This paper provides an overview on whether capital market prices are determined by rational fundamentals or by noise traders. The paper serves as both a reinforcement and refutation of a recent review paper by Kothari (2001). In his excellent review on capital market research, Kothari (2001) surveys a vast collection of work that spans over thirty years. This lucid chronology will no doubt find its place among the more influential review studies in the literature. Like all useful survey papers, his article offers sufficient structure for young researchers to become acquainted with the main themes in this literature. At the same time, the paper provides seasoned researchers with a useful reference source on a broad spectrum of market related topics in the disciplines of accounting and finance.

Citing extracts from nearly 350 years ago, Professor Wanna questions how much has really changed in accounting for public spending. The lecture concludes that the key issue is to bring forward the debate about strategic directions and use this to inform budgetary decision-making. Some Canadian and US governments have attempted to use community-inspired strategic directions to inform budget choices and provide performance targets for public officials. Some have come from the right (like Alberta) with an austerity strategy and certain moral stances (for example, governments have accepted the goal of reducing the number of young single parents). Others have come from a more social democratic bent (Saskatchewan, Wisconsin, New Jersey) where the goals are about economic adjustment, community ­building and living standards. Very few people in Australia could name a single strategy that has informed the federal government's overall budgetary stance other than sound financial management since the days of Whitlam and his social spending commitments. The challenge for government today is to develop a sense of direction, win some community acceptance and use this as a basis for planning and deploying its resources.

In his lecture, Professor Saunders outlines two future projects, one on the history of anti-juridism, the other a biography of people in the mid-1600s. Both projects mark a return for the humanities from great abstractions to an institutional focus, from the excitement of theoretical explanations and critical reflection to the work of positive historical description and complicity with the institutions of law and state. This complicity is not complacency. The complacent are those who imagine themselves beyond the institutional circumstances that make them possible.

Mostyn Bramley-Moore's paintings have always challenged viewers in that they paradoxically appear, within single works, to address quite different kinds of concerns. They can present as both abstract and narrative in nature, and also act simultaneously as personal visual diaries and arenas for philosophical debate. In this lecture, Professor Bramley-Moore will provide an overview of his paintings from a fifteen-year time span. He will talk about working from the landscape and about being part of the landscape.

In his lecture Professor Hogarth discusses mathematical modelling in the context of its usefulness in studying the impact of water and to a much lesser extent wind on soil. He keeps the number of equations to one and concentrates on discussing the nature of the problems, and the potential of mathematical modelling to predict outcomes. His discussion of the impact of water on soil will focus on a small part of the hydrological cycle (that is the movement or exchange of water between the atmosphere and earth). This will consider the impact of rainfall on the soil, infiltration of water into soil, involving the prediction of the depth of water penetration into the soil and its position relative to the groundwater and surface water runoff from rainfall.

In this professorial lecture Professor O'Regan explores the dual movement of embracing and challenging cultural policy frameworks. Cultural policy development is moving in directions which require cultural policy studies to transform itself in ways which take it beyond cultural and media studies as presently conceived. In response cultural policy studies is opening up to other “disciplines” including intellectual property, administrative and international law, political science, public policy, economics, sociology, art history, strategic management and international relations, gender studies, leisure sport and recreation studies, tourism and town planning. Cultural policy studies is getting as dispersed as the sites cultural policy making is taking place in. With this dispersion comes the imperative for diverse sets of disciplinary engagements. As culture’s web grows this will inevitably imply a greater fragmentation of cultural policy studies. But it is precisely in these diverse disciplinary engagements that cultural policy studies will be productively rejuvenated.

The 'end of religion' is an old theme in the Humanities. It is a theme to which I return tonight from an unexpected direction as I apply constructive history to the horizon of postreligion. My lecture develops in stages. First, I note that religion is currently enjoying a positive re­-evaluation which contrasts with the widespread eighteenth and nineteenth century expectation that religion would die out. Secondly, I clarify what is at stake by reconsidering Hegel's philosophy of religion, which, on a certain reading, implied that the end of 'religion' had already occurred, in principle, if not in empirical reality. Third, I argue that constructive history necessarily disaggregates and complicates Western generic notions of religion, and, because it does so, makes possible new and productive ways of studying religious materials found in the historical record. Fourth, I apply the techniques of constructive history to the consideration of three religious or esoteric movements which, in my estimation, are of interest for attempts to think about the end of religion. Fifth, on the basis of these and other case studies I have carried out, I set out a prospection about postreligion as a set of horizonal organisational possibilities which we should debate and discuss in order to raise the level of rationality and historical sensitivity with which we approach the question of the end of religion. Finally, I consider some objections to my procedure before summarising what the lecture has achieved.

Man differs in one major respect to all other species. Through evolution, man has gained the intellectual power to investigate the structure of DNA and the mechanisms whereby it regulates our very existence. Corporate DNA, as Griffith University, is now under new governance. This lecture will explore, albeit in brief, some of the great advances of the past forty years. It will reveal that some of the facts of life are closer to the substance of science fiction than many might wish to contemplate.

In this address, Professor Nesdale proposes to explore the nature of prejudice - particularly in relation to race or ethnicity. The issues that he will touch upon include the following: What is ethnic or racial prejudice? How widespread is it? Why does it develop and why is it seemingly so resistant to extinction? Can it be modified and/or prevented?

This paper concentrates on the professional development of principals, the kind they get as well as the kind they deserve. It does so in five parts. First, Professor Dempster puts forward a theoretical framework describing four different orientations to professional development in education as a background to the examination of recent research related to principals’ professional development. Second, he describe some of the outcomes of three research projects in which he has been involved in the last ten years to identify what they say about the kind of professional development to which principals have been exposed. This is followed by an examination of a wider research literature, scholarly writing and current practice in principals’ professional development to identify where the emphases lie. These emphases are charted against the theoretical framework to contrast present realities with other possibilities. The paper concludes with a series of questions principals and their employers might ask of themselves if the kind of balance argued for is to be achieved in their professional learning over time.

In this lecture Professor Drew wants to illustrate that we can and should combine both, basic and applied research, to the benefit of all. Also, he will suggest that our research must have a strong element of creativity that stretches our understanding and engenders a more lateral and contextual exploration of our subjects. In his fruit fly research, Professor Drew has held the view that basic research into systematics, ecology and behaviour of species, with its synthesis and analysis, provides the all important foundation for major contributions to world food production, while preserving our environment.

This lecture is about a search for fundamental ideas that form the basis of reasoning and action. In the existing scientific paradigm, the correct way of saying this would be that the lecture is about fundamental principles, given that a typical definition of principle is "a fundamental truth or law as the basis of reasoning or action". Yet, reasoning and actions of people do not blindly follow strict principles and can be unpredictable. There is a difference between fundamental ideas, that is concepts, and absolute truths or laws. The thinking presented in this lecture is based on somewhat flexible concepts rather than on absolute principles.

This lecture engages with some recent developments in the debates about value and the arts. Although there are particular anxieties about this in Australia, the definition and measurement of the impacts of the arts and culture has preoccupied arts advocates and policy makers internationally. Recent reports published in the United States and the United Kingdom take these debates in a new direction. They identify the limitations of methodologies that attempt to capture ‘instrumental’ benefits and argue that new conceptual and empirical work is needed which focuses on ‘intrinsic’ values.

The cells of the cardiovascular system generate and release the compound adenosine in increasing quantities when they are “stressed” or subjected to injury/disease. This increased amount extra-cellular adenosine can then interact with receptors in myocardial, vascular, and inflammatory cells to regulate their function. In addition, the adenosine formed can be rapidly re-incorporated back into the cells ‘nucleotide’ pool to aid in maintenance of energy. Via these receptor-dependent and independent (metabolic) paths adenosine plays a crucial role in controlling the balance between energy supply and demand in the heart, and providing tolerance to damaging conditions such as ‘ischaemia’ (myocardial infarction or heart attack). The molecular basis for control of adenosine release, and the precise actions of adenosine, remain incompletely understood. Amongst other things, our research over the past 16 years has contributed to our knowledge regarding formation and actions of adenosine in the normal and diseased heart. What follows is a lay description of some of this work - a portion of the story of adenosine in the heart.

This paper presents a range of evidence supporting a sanguine view of the impact of population ageing on a nation’s average living standards, with particular reference to Australia. The evidence points to a small decrease in the growth of living standards over the next few decades, and no decline in the average level of living standards. There are essentially two reasons for this benign view, which is at odds with the dire consequences of ageing predicted by media commentators and politicians. The first is simply the power of compound growth in technical progress that is expected to be more or less unaffected by population ageing. The second is the adjustments that will occur in the behaviour of consumers, workers and firms, and in government policies, that will ameliorate the impact of ageing on living standards. Several policy implications flow from the assessment presented here. Pro-fertility policies, such as the baby bonus in Australia, cannot be justified on the basis of the need to protect living standards in the future, nor on the grounds of intergenerational equity. Similarly, the case for boosting national saving through increased compulsory superannuation, for example, is weak on the grounds of a response to population ageing. There may be good reasons to boost fertility and national saving, but population ageing is not one of them.

Applied to criminal justice, the contested politics of race and gender are about the relative importance we give to reducing the hard edge of criminal law and its effects on social exclusion and segregation, compared to ‘righting’ the inequality caused by crime and ensuring victim and community safety. The vision of a more just society will not be secured by making institutions of criminal justice larger or even smarter. Rather, that vision will be secured by policies in other domains, along with vibrant and active movements for social change.

Traditionally, carbohydrates (sugars) have been recognised as having roles in the provision and storage of energy, as structural units, and as being backbone components of 'more important' biological units such as the nucleotides. They have also, however, far more intricate and delicate roles to play in the areas of biological interactions and information transfer. Increasingly, their roles in receptor interactions, between cells, and between cells and other biological materials and microbes, are becoming better understood.

Signal compression is the process of finding a compact digital representation of a signal. Its aim is to reduce the bit-rate of a digital signal with or without loss of information about the signal. When compression is achieved with a loss of signal information, it is called lossy signal compression; otherwise it is called lossless signal compression. In the literature, the process of signal compression is also described by other names (such as signal coding, bandwidth compression, data compression, source coding, digital coding, etc.). In this paper, we will use the terms signal compression and coding alternately, both describing the same process. Currently, signal compression (or, coding) is very much a part of our everyday life. Its applications are primarily in transmission and storage. When you talk to your friend on a cellular phone, your speech is first converted into digital form and then compressed so that it can be transmitted over a limited-­bandwidth radio channel. Image and video clips are compressed prior to their storage on network servers. When you download an image through the Internet, you most likely receive a compressed image and your web browser decompresses it prior to its display on your computer. In this case, the compression process is reducing both the storage requirement on the net server and transmission time on the Internet. In the Signal Processing Laboratory at Griffith University, we are interested in the compression of telephone speech, wideband speech, audio, image and video signals. In this paper, we confine our scope to speech and image coding, and describe the research work done at our laboratory in the following three areas: 1) lossy speech coding, 2) lossy image coding, and 3) lossless image coding.

A recent Nobel Prize, awarded to John Pople and Walter Kohn in 1998, recognised the importance of our ability to predict chemical, physical and even some biological properties to a useful accuracy from first principles, via many-electron quantum mechanics. The present Lecture is partly about just this venture: the explanation, design and prediction of chemical and material properties from basic theoretical physics. Where this is possible, it has the attractive feature that a very few simple basic concepts, rules and mathematical equations are sufficient to explain and predict complicated phenomena and properties. Thus many aspects of the complex world can be reduced to simple considerations after all. The practical spinoffs from this kind of theoretical physics are very widespread, including for example several aspects of magnetic resonance imaging, a very important modern medical diagnostic tool. Another application that I will discuss later on is the absorption of hydrogen into carbon-based graphitic materials, of importance in creating a greenhouse-safe world energy economy.