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Success and failure in foreign policy: Comparing Bob Hawke and Kevin Rudd's regional order-building initiatives
No full textRemarkably little is known about what factors drive success or failure in foreign policy. In part, this is because there is little fundamental agreement on what constitutes success or failure in this domain in the first place. This article engages with these shortcomings by comparing two similar regional order-building initiatives overseen by Australian leaders: Bob Hawke's establishment of APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) in 1989, which is routinely celebrated as a success, and Kevin Rudd's Asia Pacific Community (APC) project, launched in 2008 and generally considered a failure. Despite their respective reputations, the reasons for the contrary outcomes in these cases are not as straightforward as might be assumed. Factors cited as chief reasons for the successful establishment of APEC—the creative middle power diplomacy embraced by Hawke's government and the diplomatic skill of envoy Richard Woolcott—were also present in the APC case. Meanwhile, the reasons typically offered for the failure of the APC initiative—that it had not been properly thought through when announced and hence surprised regional partners—are similarly true of the APEC example. Juxtaposing these cases reveals the highly contingent nature of success and failure in foreign policy while also calling attention to the influence of leadership, timing, and strategic narrative in determining these outcomes. Points for practitioners: Foreign policy, as a domain of public policy domain, is distinguished by three mutually reinforcing qualities: the extreme dominance of the executive and especially the leader; its low salience; and low domestic political contestation. These ‘special’ characteristics of foreign policy amplify the challenges of assessing success and failure in this domain. When making foreign policy, states and their leaders seek to exert influence outside their domestic jurisdiction, beyond where they enjoy exclusive decision-making authority. This elevates the degree of complexity and contingency potentially involved in achieving and attributing foreign policy ‘success’. Leadership, timing, and the ability to develop strategic narratives are especially important in determining foreign policy success and failure.Peer-reviewe
Reusing CO<sub>2</sub> for the sustainable development of several new technologies
No full textPromising technologies to capture CO2 from the atmosphere require major additional research to develop efficient and cost-effective techniques for large-scale operations. However, there could be other ways to help mitigate these issues: that is, by developing new technologies that use CO2 as input to address other important environmental challenges. This work discusses such technologies that our group patented based on a long-term research program. The study highlights CO2's role as an input in sustainable solutions for water desalination, as a fire retardant, and water disinfection, challenging previous perceptions and opening avenues for further research.Peer-reviewe
Flirting with Autocracy in Indonesia:: Jokowi's Majoritarianism and its Democratic Legacy
No full textAfter ruling Indonesia for a decade, Joko Widodo (or popularly called "Jokowi") left the presidency in 2024 amid a heated debate over his democratic record. While his high approval ratings indicated support in the broader population, pro-democracy activists were scathing. Indeed, under his presidency, many democratic achievements of previous periods eroded. Yet democracy, however damaged, survived Jokowi’s rule. This article adds to scholarship on this outcome of a harmed but enduring Indonesian democracy. It looks at how Jokowi’s majoritarian thinking led him to undermine democracy when he felt he had the majority’s support for his actions. Believing that democracy is doing what the majority wants, approves, or tolerates, he used polls to identify segments of democracy he could attack. At the same time, his majoritarianism also set him limits: if a majority was opposed, he retreated. This left Indonesia with a declining democracy, but one that did not cross over into fully authoritarian territory.The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (grant number DP150104277).Peer-reviewe
Unsupervised Dense Prediction Using Differentiable Normalized Cuts
No full textWith the emergent attentive property of self-supervised Vision Transformer (ViT), Normalized Cuts (NCut) has resurfaced as a powerful tool for unsupervised dense prediction. However, the pre-trained ViT backbone (e.g., DINO) is frozen in existing methods, which makes the feature extractor suboptimal for dense prediction tasks. In this paper, we propose using Differentiable Normalized Cuts for self-supervised dense feature learning that can improve the dense prediction capability of existing pre-trained models. First, we review an efficient gradient formulation for the classical NCut algorithm. This formulation only leverages matrices computed and stored in the forward pass, making the backward pass highly efficient. Second, with NCut gradients in hand, we design a self-supervised dense feature learning architecture to finetune pre-trained models. Given two random augmented crops of an image, the architecture performs RoIAlign and NCut to generate two foreground masks of their overlapping region. Last, we propose a mask-consistency loss to back-propagate through NCut and RoIAlign for model training. Experiments show that our framework generalizes to various pre-training methods (DINO, MoCo and MAE), network configurations (ResNet, ViT-S and ViT-B), and tasks (unsupervised saliency detection, object discovery and semantic segmentation). Moreover, we achieved state-of-the-art results on unsupervised dense prediction benchmarks.This work was supported by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship (project number FT200100421). Yanbin Liu was partly supported by the Google Cloud Research Credits program with the award GCP19980904.Peer-reviewe
Can Augmented Reality Head-Mounted Display Exergames Support the Management of Multiple Sclerosis at Home? Workshop Discussions with Researchers and Experts with Lived Experience of MS
No full textExercising is a beneficial rehabilitation strategy for people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Exergaming provides an alternative to traditional rehabilitation programs, increasing accessibility and adherence to home-based exercise. Augmented reality (AR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) offer a promising solution for safer and more inclusive in-home exergaming experiences, which is important for people with MS. However, research on AR HMDs for exergaming in MS rehabilitation is still limited and evolving. It is still unclear whether these systems are suitable for supporting physical rehabilitation, particularly in managing MS at home. To investigate, we conducted an online workshop with eight multidisciplinary researchers and experts with lived experience of MS conducting research in MS and related technologies. We produced themes relating to accessibility and equipment considerations, and the importance of social interaction. We present our key findings from the workshop and offer recommendations for using AR HMD exergames in the rehabilitation of MS
In and out of place: Diverse experiences and perceived exclusion in UK greenspace settings
No full textPeople from all sections of society should feel welcome and included to enjoy greenspaces. However, people from ethnic minority backgrounds may experience exclusionary practices and discriminatory processes, limiting their access, enjoyment, and benefits from such spaces. This paper aims to address these issues through an in-depth qualitative study exploring how 53 individuals from UK ethnic minority backgrounds residing in Bristol perceive and experience exclusion in UK greenspaces. Going beyond narratives that pathologise the exclusion of ethnic minorities from greenspaces, this research reveals a spectrum of experiences related to perceived exclusion, including both positive and negative, and challenges and expressions of empowerment and agency. Common experiences of exclusion are often intangible, necessitating sensitivity to their elusive and relational nature, with variation between urban and rural contexts. Drawing on Bourdieusian theories of practice, this study illuminates how social and cultural capital, habitus, and symbolic violence shape exclusionary practices and discriminatory processes, contributing to feelings of otherness, discomfort among UK ethnic minority group members in greenspaces. By highlighting the diverse nature of these processes and their variations across social and geographic contexts, this study emphasises the need for tailored, coproduced interventions to enhance greenspace accessibility and engagement. It advocates for recognising diverse experiences, integrating critical thought into environmental planning, and leveraging social and cultural capital to promote inclusivity and address systemic inequalities.Deepest thanks to all the participants for contributing their experiences and insights to this study; to the Economic and Social Research Council and Natural England for funding this research; and to the community organisations that helped with introductions in Bristol. The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research originates from an ESRC funded CASE Studentship in collaboration with Natural England, award number: ES/P000665/1.Peer-reviewe
Direct double ionization of the He-like B3+ ion by a single photon
No full textWithin a joint experimental and theoretical research project, double photoionization of the He-like B3+ ion by a single photon was studied in the energy range from approximately 350 to 1160 eV. With the parent-ion beam in the experiment containing both 1s21S ground-state (90.9%) and 1s2sS3 metastable B3+ ions (9.1%), two contributions to the apparent single- and double-ionization cross sections, σ34app and σ35app, respectively, are involved in the measurements. Ratios Y(5+)/Y(4+) of double- over single-ionization yields were experimentally determined. By multiplying the measured ratios by the known cross section σ34app, the apparent cross section σ35app for double ionization was inferred. Using the information thus obtained, the measured yield of B5+ ions produced from hydrogenlike B4+ could also be normalized. The results show good agreement with theoretical benchmark cross sections σ45 for single photoionization of B4+. Convergent close-coupling calculations were performed to determine double-photoionization cross sections σ35 for B3+(1s2) and B3+(1s2s) ions. The result for the ground state agrees very well with theoretical data obtained previously with an intermediate-energy R-matrix approach. Within the systematic uncertainty of the normalized experimental cross sections, calculated and measured data are in agreement with one another.We acknowledge DESY (Hamburg, Germany), a member of the Helmholtz Association HGF, for the provision of experimental facilities. Parts of this research were carried out at beamline P04 of PETRA III. Beamtime was allocated for Proposal No. I-20220764. We gratefully acknowledge support from Bundesministerium f\u00FCr Bildung und Forschung provided within the \u201CVerbundforschung\u201D funding scheme (Contracts No. 05K19GU3 and No. 05K19RG3). F.T. acknowledges funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), Project 509471550, Emmy Noether Programme. M.M. acknowledges funding by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft via Grant No. 510114039. E.L. is gratefully acknowledging support from the Swedish Research Council (Grant No. 2020-03315). A.S.K. and I.B. acknowledge the support of the Australian Research Council, the National Computer Infrastructure, and the Pawsey Supercomputer Centre of Western Australia. A.S.K. acknowledges the support of the Australian Research Council in the form of the Discovery Grant DP230101253.Peer-reviewe
Climate change adaptation benefits from rejuvenated irrigation farming systems in Mozambique
No full textSmallholder irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa suffers from the impacts of flooding and droughts, which are predicted to increase in frequency and severity. This increases the need to improve farmers’ adaptive capacity to climate change. This paper explores how agricultural innovation platforms and nutrient monitoring tools impact farmers’ adaptive capacity in a smallholder irrigation scheme in Mozambique. Through qualitative and quantitative data, we assess the impacts across four domains of adaptation: farm, household, community/scheme and markets. The multi-faceted interventions improved farmers’ productivity, irrigation practices, scheme maintenance and livelihoods, thereby enhancing resilience and adaptive capacity to climate change in all assessed domains.This research was part of the project \u2018Transforming smallholder irrigation into profitable and self-sustaining systems in southern Africa\u2019, funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research [FSC/2013/006 and LWR/2016/137]. The authors sincerely appreciate the time and e\uFB00ort the reviewers have dedicated to reviewing this manuscript.Peer-reviewe
Quantifying the Dietary Overlap of Two Co-Occurring Mammal Species Using DNA Metabarcoding to Assess Potential Competition
No full textInterspecific competition is often assumed in ecosystems where co-occurring species have similar resource requirements. The potential for competition can be investigated by measuring the dietary overlap of putative competitor species. The degree of potential competition between generalist species has often received less research attention than competition between specialist species. We examined dietary overlap between two naturally co-occurring dietary generalist species: the common brushtail possum Trichosurus vulpecula and the bush rat Rattus fuscipes. To gauge the potential for competition, we conducted a diet analysis using DNA extracted from faecal samples to identify the range of food items consumed by both species within a shared ecosystem and quantify their dietary overlap. We used DNA metabarcoding on faecal samples to extract plant, fungal, and invertebrate DNA, identifying diet items and quantifying dietary range and overlap. The species' diets were similar, with a Pianka's overlap index score of 0.84 indicating high dietary similarity. Bush rats had a large dietary range, consisting of many plant and fungal species and some invertebrates, with almost no within-species variation. Possums had a more restricted dietary range, consisting primarily of plants. We suggest that the larger dietary range of the bush rat helps buffer it from the impacts of competition from possums by providing access to more food types. We conclude that, despite the high ostensible overlap in the foods consumed by dietary generalist species, fine-scale partitioning of food resources may be a key mechanism to alleviate competition and permit co-existence.Funding: This work was supported by The Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment and The Ecological Society of Australia. We acknowledge and thank the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community, owners of Booderee National Park, for providing access to and support for our work in the park, and to the staff at Booderee National Park and all volunteers for assisting in data collection. We also acknowledge the Biomolecular Resource Facility at the John Curtin School of Medical Research at ANU for processing and sequencing the extracted DNA. Open access publishing facilitated by Australian National University, as part of the Wiley - Australian National University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.Peer-reviewe