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Learning from Wye river and Separation creek: Towards improved community bushfire safety
No full textSafety in human settlements is the result of a complex interplay between the existing physical forms of places, including natural and human made elements, the particular hazards faced, and the capabilities of people and services in the face of potential threats. The Wye River and Separation Creek fires of Christmas Day 2015 represent a disaster in which a small community’s capabilities were overwhelmed by bushfires. The current paper reviews documentation of the fire’s progression and the main factors of its interaction with these settlements. This documentation is then used to pose key directions for improvement and initial lessons learnt regarding the factors impacting upon community safety in the fires, as a key element of adaptive recovery
THE EFFECT OF SHOCKWAVE PROCESSING ON MUSCLE PROTEIN STRUC TU RE AND DIGESTIBILITY IN VITRO
Full text linkMaking Trouble with Vehicularity
Full text linkThe notion that ‘vehicular ideas’ – that is, ideas which sustain socio-political argument in the absence of new normative vision – are artefacts of informational capitalism (McLennan 2004), suggests that critical interrogation of ideas deemed ‘vehicular’ need involve a ‘double movement’. That movement comprises the identification both of ‘radical variants’ of the vehicular idea amongst the networks of its appearances, and of radicalising deviations of vehicularity itself. In themselves, the constitutive features of vehicularity lack the pulsion to induce this double movement. As a means by which to identify the conditions of possibility for that double movement, I differentiate between three forms of vehicularity. I do so in relation to a particular vehicular idea – knowledge management – within the context of its application to the collaborative production of ecological knowledge between scientific and indigenous communities under the conditions of climate change. The three forms – vehicularity that induces systemacity (‘system inducing’); vehicularity that produces normative traction (‘system reinforcing’); and vehicularity that engages its own excess (‘system troubling’) – produce different analytic outcomes. The latter approach provides the greatest possibility for the simultaneous radicalisation of the given idea (knowledge management) and subversion of the logics of late capital under climate change. The exemplar of knowledge management of this kind is Sartre’s phenomenology of ‘matter as inverted praxis’
China and International Housing Price Growth
Full text linkWe document Chinese effects on international residential property price growth. We show that faster growth of the housing prices is associated with larger declines in recent past growth of China’s GDP, larger increases in China’s savings rate, or stronger rise in China’s risks. These results are consistent with the notion of Chinese investing in overseas property markets when faced with less promising investment opportunities at home and when they have the means to invest offshore. These effects are stronger for countries where English is the primary spoken language, with better tertiary education quality, and that exhibit lower correlations between local property market price growth and China’s interest rate
Nitrogen decisions for cereal crops: a risky and personal business
No full textCereal crops principally require Nitrogen (N) and water for growth. Fertiliser economics are important
because of the cost at sowing with expectation of a financial return after harvest. The production economics
framework can be used to develop information for ‘best’ fertiliser decisions. But the variability of yield
responses for rainfed production systems means that fertiliser decisions are a risky business. How do farmers
make such decisions, and can economics give any guidance? Simulated wheat yield responses to N fertiliser
applications show tremendous variation between years or seasons. There are strong agronomic arguments for
a Mitscherlich equation to represent yield responses. Plots of the 10th, 50th and 90th percentiles of yield
response distributions show likely outcomes in ‘Poor’, ‘Medium’ and ‘Good’ seasons at four Australian
locations. By adding the prices for Urea and wheat we predict that the ‘best’ decisions vary with location,
soil, and (sometimes) season. We compare these predictions with typical grower fertiliser decisions.
Australian wheat growers understand the yield responses in their own paddocks and the relative prices, so
they are making relevant short-term fertiliser decisions. These are subjective or personal decisions. Myanmar
smallholders grow rice and maize in the Central Dry Zone, with relatively low levels of fertiliser and low
crop yields. They have pre-existing poverty, high borrowing costs and are averse to risky outcomes. A
Marginal Rate of Return (MRR) analysis with a hurdle rate of 100% is illustrated for the Australian
locations, and this approach will be tested in Myanmar
A review of practices in precision application of granular fertilisers
Full text linkThere is an implicit assumption in cited literature on precision agriculture (PA) that spreading of
fertiliser is performed perfectly in the field leading to uniform application, this is not true. Variation can
be large and often the actual performance of spreading equipment used has never been measured or
verified. In various countries around the world there are quality assurance (QA) systems designed to
achieve a prescribed level of performance. Even within these QA schemes limited testing is
undertaken and always under perfect or near perfect conditions.
The test methods are designed to establish an acceptable bout width which meets an acceptable
evenness of spread if driven accurately. The test does not take into account wind conditions (except
for requiring less than 15kmhr-1 for testing), humidity, slope, terrain or the instrumentation to maintain
the desired bout width.
This paper examines the effect of the farm environment and the physical characteristics of fertilisers
on the spread patterns of fertilisers in the field. Fertilisers with heterogeneous particle size
distributions proved to have more robust spread patterns under field conditions than those with
homogeneous particle size distributions