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Insights from the chancellery: considerations for a university lead on equity, diversity, and inclusion
No full textThe success of chancellery diversity leads is dependent upon how their roles are designed and resourced. This article will provide insights into the design and support of an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) role within the university’s chancellery. 66 interviews were conducted with key stakeholders, including chancellery members, EDI officers, and advisory groups, representing diverse Australian and international universities. Thematic analysis identified four crucial themes: achievement measurement, appropriate support and design, lived experience, and warnings. Findings emphasize the significance of appointing a dedicated Deputy Vice-Chancellor (DVC) or senior executive to address EDI matters within the chancellery. Clear Key Performance Indicators and well-defined responsibilities were highlighted for effective governance. Lived experience emerged as a critical factor, promoting normalization and representation of diverse backgrounds. The study cautions against tokenism and stresses collective responsibility for EDI. Recommendations include prioritizing EDI on the strategic agenda, fostering inclusivity, and learning from Indigenous leadership experiences. Embracing these measures can create a more equitable and diverse university environment
Parent/carer experiences and challenges in redeeming the First Lap swimming lesson voucher in New South Wales, Australia
No full textRationale: Swimming is a popular, enjoyable, and important form of physical activity. Swimming skills play a vital role in water safety and drowning prevention, particularly among young children. The First Lap program is a New South Wales government swimming lesson subsidy voucher program for preschool-aged children. This study examined parent/carer program views and experiences in 2021–2022, specifically reasons for voucher non-redemption. Approach: A thematic analysis examined 1031 parent/carer qualitative responses concerning reasons for voucher non-redemption and overall views and experiences of the program in an online parent/carer survey.Findings: Voucher non-redemption was evident through: seasonal, weather and health; program parameter; parent/carer (user); and swim school (provider) themes. Despite non-redemption, parent/carer program views were additionally evident through: positive feedback about the program and its objectives; evidence of knowledge and awareness of the importance of water safety and learning to swim; lesson affordability concerns. Practical implications: Swim school and lesson availability, accessibility, and affordability can be addressed through clear engagement and communication with both the user and provider sides. Research contribution: Reasons for First Lap voucher non-redemption represent barriers to swimming lesson participation for preschool-aged children. Originality: Voucher programs must consider the impacts of the broader socio-ecological context and ecosystem
Association between polygyny and justification of violence among women in sexual unions in sub-Saharan Africa
No full textBackground: There remains a dearth of comprehensive understanding of the fundamental origins of intimate partner violence within the context of marital structure. This study examines the association between polygyny and justification of violence among women in sub-Saharan Africa.
Methods: We used up-to-date data from the Demographic and Health Surveys of twenty-one sub-Saharan African countries. A multilevel binary mixed-effect regression analysis was used to examine the association between polygyny status and justification of violence, controlling for potential covariates. The results were presented utilising adjusted odds ratios (aOR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI).
Results: Women whose husbands/partners had other wives (co-wives) (aOR = 1.35; 95% CI 1.30, 1.40) had higher odds of justifying wife beating if wife goes out without telling compared to those whose husbands/partners had no co-wives. Similar results were obtained concerning the association between polygyny and justification of wife beating if wife burns food (aOR = 1.31; 95% CI 1.25, 1.36), neglects children (aOR = 1.31; 95% CI 1.27, 1.36), argues with the husband (aOR = 1.37; 95% CI 1.32, 1.43), and refuses to have sex with her husband (aOR = 1.30; 95% CI 1.25, 1.35).
Conclusions: The endorsement of violence against women within relationships, irrespective of the rationale, undermines worldwide and national endeavours aimed at tackling the issue of intimate partner violence and its associated repercussions. It is imperative to implement diverse approaches to effectively tackle the situation. Increased education and awareness campaigns focused on intimate partner violence are expected to play significant roles in effectively tackling this issue. Implementing punitive measures against individuals who perpetrate intimate partner violence upon their partners could also be adopted
The estimated cost of preventing extinction and progressing recovery for Australia’s priority threatened species
No full textThe global extinction crisis is intensifying rapidly, driven by habitat loss, overexploitation, climate change, invasive species, and disease. This unprecedented loss of species not only threatens ecological integrity but also undermines ecosystem services vital for human survival. In response, many countries have set ambitious conservation targets such as halting species extinctions, yet the necessary financial commitments to achieve this are rarely prescribed. Estimating costs can be achieved using an ensemble of spatially variable species-specific cost models for threat abatement activities. We employ this method to provide a cost assessment to halt extinctions for Australia’s priority terrestrial and freshwater species. We show that it will cost ~AUD15.6 billion/year for 30 y to halt extinctions for these 99 priority species (comparable to 1% of Australia’s GDP). The more ambitious objectives to move priority species down one threat category (~AUD103.7 billion/year) or remove from the threatened species list entirely (~AUD157.7 billion/year) would require considerably more investment. Regardless of what is spent, we found that 16 (16%) priority species could not be removed from the threatened species list due to extensive historical declines and pervasive, ongoing, unmanageable threats, such as climate change. But implementing these efforts could ensure conservation benefits for over 43% of all nationally listed nonmarine threatened species. Adequate funding is crucial for meeting government commitments and requires both government leadership and private sector investment
Systematic evaluation of molecular genetic, morphological and acoustic variation reveals three species in the Litoria revelata complex (Anura: Pelodryadidae)
No full textWe used a combination of nuclear and mitochondrial genetic data, body measurements and colouration, and male advertisement calls to analyse the systematic implications of variation in the whirring treefrog Litoria revelata complex, which occurs in three allopatric populations—north-eastern New South Wales/south-eastern Queensland, mid-eastern Queensland, and northern Queensland. The three populations each form divergent lineages for both the nuclear (single nucleotide polymorphisms; SNP) and mitochondrial datasets and are diagnosable also on the basis of morphology and advertisement calls. In combination, we use these lines of data to recognise three species: L. revelata in north-eastern New South Wales/south-eastern Queensland, L. eungellensis sp. nov. in mid-eastern Queensland, and the resurrected L. corbeni in northern Queensland. We provide a preliminary conservation assessment for each species, with the latter two species being localised to very small upland areas and warranting conservation listing and attention
Rare-Earth 4-Hydroxyphenylacetate Complexes: Synthesis, Structural Characterization, and Corrosion Inhibition Properties
No full textFour structural types of rare-earth aqua 4-hydroxyphenylacetate complexes {[Ce(L)3(H2O)2]·H2O}n (a), {[RE2(L)6(H2O)]·4H2O]}n (RE = Nd (b), Gd (c)), {[RE2(L)6(H2O)]·3H2O]}n (RE = Dy (d), Y (e)), {[RE2(L)6(H2O)]·5H2O]}n (RE = Er (f), Yb (g)), (L = 4-hydroxyphenylacetate) have been synthesized by salt metathesis reactions of corresponding rare-earth metal chlorides or nitrates and sodium 4-hydroxyphenylacetate (NaL) in a water/ethanol solvent system. The compounds are targeted for structural interest and to determine if the 4-hydroxy (4-OH) substituent would enhance the anti-corrosion properties of rare-earth phenylacetates. Single crystal X-ray diffraction (XRD) determined the crystal structures of all compounds except the complex of Gd (c), which was shown to be isomorphous with the Nd complex (b) by the powder XRD pattern. All compounds were obtained as one-dimensional polymeric structures. The structure of a differs in being a monometallic repeating unit and having two coordinated waters whilst the others have binuclear repeating units that resulted from the alternating coordination of one water molecule along the chain. Weight loss and potentiodynamic polarization tests reveal that {[Gd2(L)6(H2O)]·4H2O}n has the best corrosion inhibition properties for mild steel in 0.01 M NaCl. Furthermore, all a–g complexes are more effective corrosion inhibitors than the aqua and 2,2’-bipyridine (bpy) complexes of unsubstituted phenylacetate indicating that 4-OH substitution of phenylacetate enhances anti-corrosion properties
Immersive Realities in the “Place of Flowers” and Southern Sea Country, Australia: Slow Science, Artistic Visualizations, and Deep Time Stories of the Earth Otherwise
No full textThis article explores how immersion in deep space-times of the earth, Indigenous storytelling, and virtual realities disrupt dystopian futures shaped by Western scientific perspectives on environmental change and climate events. As a Nyul Nyul sand artist, Larrakia story-keeper, physical geographer, cultural geographer, and creative transmedia producer, we reflect on our journey across First Nations lands through the immersive full-dome film The Earth Above: A Deep Time View of Australia’s Epic History and the exhibition The Fire Within, celebrating the 2024 National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee week theme, “Keep the fire burning! Blak, loud and proud.” The Earth Above integrates Indigenous and Western scientific knowledges, highlighting four cultural stories linked by sand artist Lowell Hunter’s footwork along Nyul Nyul Sea Country (Western Australia). One story, about Girraween Lagoon (the “Place of Flowers”), uses a 150,000-year-old sedimentary record to reveal climatic and ecological shifts, interpreted through the Larrakia seasonal calendar. The article shows that science stories (Indigenous and Western) of environmental change when augmented by immersive technologies can engage diverse publics and enact imaginaries of the earth otherwise. This human and more-than-human collaborative praxis of crafting public stories is a slow “pedagogical practice” (Liboiron 2020, 102) of exchange and gift-giving with Country (Buku-Larrŋgay Mulka Centre 1999)
‘I own this here (adj.) country, as fur as the eye can reach’: Reading Realism, 1 Romance and Country in Joseph Furphy’s Such is Life.
No full textIn Australian literary history, Joseph Furphy’s Such is Life (1903) retains a prominent position in arguments about the “great Australian novel” and serves many scholars as a touchstone for discussions about nineteenth century realism and romance. The comedy associated with the narrator Tom Collins’ delusions that he has an “intuition which reads men like sign-boards” is elevated in latter parts of the novel when he confronts Toby, a young Aboriginal stockman. Disguised in a borrowed coat, bell-topper, and shaded glasses, Tom Collins represents a flawed figure whose ability to “see” his surroundings is tested. When Tom mistakenly assumes Toby is of “slave stock”, Toby protests and replies “Why, properly speaking, I own this here (adj.) country, as fur as the eye can reach”. Toby is a minor character in Such is Life, but this sentence encourages further analysis of the depiction of land and landscape in the novel, and the ways in which literary critics have laboured over the distinction without any consideration of the unceded Wiradjuri land on which the novel is set. As a first step towards such analysis, this paper considers the ways in which literary critics have analysed land and landscape in Such is Life and reflects on ways in which this analysis can be both disrupted and enhanced by listening to contemporary Wiradjuri voices
Insights into Infant Strongyloidiasis, Papua New Guinea
No full textThe human-infecting parasite Strongyloides fuelleborni subspecies kellyi has been reported from the island of New Guinea. We analyzed fecal DNA extracts (n = 164) from 19 infants in Papua New Guinea by using Strongyloides real-time PCR and undertook metabarcoding of cox1 and 18S rRNA hypervariable regions I and IV loci. Eight infants were infected with Strongyloides spp.; 7 were infected with S. fuelleborni subsp. fuelleborni and 1 with a Strongyloides sp. previously misattributed to S. fuelleborni subsp. kellyi. Phylogenetic and haplotyping analyses indicated S. fuelleborni in Papua New Guinea belongs to the Indochina subclade of S. fuelleborni subsp. fuelleborni and is not a unique subspecies. We report molecular evidence of S. fuelleborni subsp. fuelleborni infection in humans in the Pacific. Our findings also demonstrate the potential co-existence of an undescribed human-infecting Strongyloides sp. on the island of New Guinea, indicating a need for renewed clinical and epidemiologic investigations into infant strongyloidiasis
Utility-Value Interventions to Promote Interest and Value Perceptions for Undergraduate Psychology Research Subjects
No full textPrevious research shows psychology students perceive research subjects to be far less interesting and have less value compared to non-research subjects (Lloyd-Lewis et al., 2024). Two studies were conducted to investigate whether a utility value intervention approach might impact students’ perceptions. Utility-value interventions aim to enhance students’ motivation and/or interest in a subject area by showing its personal relevance (e.g., the connection between subject and one’s intended career). In both studies, first-year undergraduate psychology students from Australia and Singapore completed an online experiment which included rating 32 psychology subjects on a five-point scale for interest and value. In Study 1 (N = 181), participants were randomly allocated to one of three conditions in which the description of the research subjects was modified to highlight its relevance to (1) working as a researcher, (2) clinical psychological practice, or (3) a broad range of careers. As hypothesized, research subjects were rated as significantly less interesting and valuable than non-research subjects (interest: p < .001, d = 0.84; value: p < .001, d = 0.19). However, there was no difference between the conditions in terms of interest in (p = .837, η2 < .01), or value of (p = .889, η2 < .01), for the research subjects. In Study 2 (N = 180), in addition to the change to the subject description, participants also watched a brief video of a recent psychology graduate discussing the utility of the research to the three conditions (1 = research relevance, 2 = clinical practice relevance, 3 = broad career relevance). Parallel scripts were created based on real-world graduate feedback. The same presenter was used for all videos. Participants were randomly assigned to view one of the videos. They then completed the same subject interest and value measure as in Study 1. Planned contrasts comparing the research relevance and clinical practice relevance conditions
revealed a significant effect for research subject interest (p = .009, d = 0.44) but not research subject value (p = .286, d = 0.11). That is, when research was shown to be highly relevant to work in clinical psychology students showed greater interest in learning research compared to those in the research relevance condition. This study has important implications for educators seeking effective strategies to engage psychology students in tertiary research subjects, highlighting the potential benefit of utility-value interventions in this space