85000 research outputs found
Sort by
Sustainable coffee: A review of the diverse initiatives and governance dimensions of global coffee supply chains
No full textWith a global footprint of 10 million hectares across 12.5 million farms, coffee is among the world’s most traded commodities. The coffee industry has launched a variety of initiatives designed to reduce coffee’s contribution to climate change and biodiversity loss and enhance the socio-economic conditions of coffee producers. We systematically reviewed the literature on the sustainability and governance of coffee production and developed a typology of eleven sustainability initiatives. Our review shows that coffee sustainability research has focused primarily on the economic outcomes of certification schemes. The typology expands our knowledge of novel sustainability initiatives being led by coffee farming communities themselves, allowing for an improved consideration of power dynamics in sustainability governance. Sustainability initiatives governed by local actors can improve sustainability outcomes by empowering local decision makers to assess direct risks and benefits of sustainable practices to the local environment, economy, and culture
‘Little things that are big’: An evaluation of the YWCA's Women’s Housing Support Program
No full textThe YWCA's Women's Housing Support Program (WHSP) offers an important and effective intervention to older women experiencing homelessness, who would otherwise have few specialised housing and support options. Older women’s trajectories into homelessness typically differ from other populations, making a targeted service response that caters to their specific needs, such as provided through the WHSP, crucial. This evaluation provides evidence that the WHSP is successfully delivering an essential service that is achieving beneficial and effective outcomes, particularly in the areas of housing stabilisation, service systems navigation, and pathways into ongoing housing. The WHSP achieves these outcomes through its sustaining tenancies model, which offers flexible support and service delivery, and which is client-centred and trauma-informed. The evaluation employed mixed methods to examine program processes and efficacy that can be used to inform the evidence base and make recommendations for future sustainability and development of the WHSP. This evaluation used both qualitative and quantitative research methods and engaged 17 stakeholders comprising nine clients, four senior managers, three program staff, and one external service provider. In addition to these qualitative data, the evaluators analysed deidentified program administrative data to inform the findings of this report.</p
Road to Net-Zero: Impact of Economic Development in the United Arab Emirates on Greenhouse Gas Emissions as a Result of Substitution of Conventional Energy with Renewable and Clean Energy Sources
No full textDecarbonisation of economy and climate change has become a pressing issue in current times. Many countries have pledged to improve their emission performance to achieve net-zero emission targets by the year 2050, as reached by an internationally recognized scientific consensus. The UAE, amongst many nations in the Middle East, is a signatory of the Paris agreement, and have set in motion multiple government initiatives to combat the current climate crisis. For such a small and developing nation, the UAE has been ranked amongst the highest consumers, and consequently, highest emitters, on a global scale. This presents a dire need to assess the current economic, demographic, and social climate of the UAE to better approach the issue. As a response, the country introduced the UAE Energy Strategy to introduce a higher contribution of both clean and renewable energy sources into the fuel mix, and achieve a 50% contribution by the target year, 2050. The government has planned to triple renewable contribution by 2030 and invest over USD 54 billion to facilitate the ongoing energy demand and rapid economic development.
With notable gaps in the data available for GHG inventory in the UAE, this research aimed to assess the effects of growing population and migration, electricity consumption rates and Emission Factors (EF) on the over GHG emissions of the UAE over the next 30 years. What proposed as a challenge for this research was the lack of inventory available to conduct an accurate calculation of a unique EF for the UAE. A country-specific EF would assist in more accurate emission estimations, which would in return support better policy applications and amendments to support achieving the net-zero target set forth by the government. This research implemented modelling and scenario analysis techniques to project future emission behaviour of the UAE under varying fuel mixes. The research used the theoretical approach proposed by the Kaya Identity to create a unique emission model for the case study. Additionally, the results of the model were further assessed to understand the cost analysis of these changes and how they would impact future decision regarding technology advancement and implementation. The study concluded that an aggressive stance towards reduced consumption behaviours and increased green energy sources is the optimal solution to result in a dramatic decrease in UAE’s emission trends by the year 2050. Despite the costly implementation of new technologies, particularly nuclear energy and CSS technology for clean coal applications, the cost benefit of these changes will only be observed in the long run.</p
Digital Fashion Bodies: Performing Posthumanity In Virtual Reality
No full textThis research situated at the nexus of fashion and digital media investigates the notion of digital fashion bodies. The increasing convergence of game and fashion practices is resulting in the digitisation of actual bodies and increased interactions with born-digital virtual characters in sociotechnical contexts. Social bodies being dressed bodies, it has become important not only to ask what digital fashion bodies are, but also, what they do. Adopting a critical feminist paradigm, this practice-based study configured Deleuzian concepts with Rosi Braidotti’s posthumanism and the intersectional feminist theory of Zakkiyah Iman Jackson, amongst others, to inform my fashion filmmaking practice in a material-discursive space. From my situated and embodied position of postcolonial hybridity, I dislocate and transvalue hegemonic discourse in this project of creative deterritorialisation through practice. Practice emerged as speculative and rhizomatic and, necessarily embedded in a network of human and non-human agents. Obsidian, 9318_ and 444.2, are the three fashion XR works developed with collaborators by putting together digital studio toolkits to output a combination of animation and real-time virtual reality prototypes. Obsidian is a multi-user VR project diffractively revealed as digital baroque and scenographic space of encounter with born-digital cyborgian bodies. In 9318_, digital surfaces are proposed as metasurface for their ability to morph and confound the different orders between body and dress, alluding to the osmotic qualities of their materiality. Digital bodies as posthumanistic embodiments of fashion are deemed performative. Diffracting 9318_ through N Katherine Hayles’ theory of inscription and incorporation, I conclude that these come into being through material-discursive relationship with actual fashioned bodies, calling for a Baradian ethico-onto-epistemological approach to practice. A post-qualitative research design and diffractive approach allowed for my situated practice to perform a posthumanist position and through this, 444.2 as an Afro-diasporic volumetric journey in VR, has taken shape as pluriversal, and a decolonial contribution to fashion studies.</p
“I feel complete when I’m wearing my vegan boots” The impacts of veganism on fashion use and consumption through new social movement theory: a consumer culture investigation
No full textFashion is a vehicle of cultural and social identity; a shared discourse of symbolic meaning communicated through a system of signs built on a communal cultural understanding. Fashion objects, which play an important role in the construction of identity projects, can however become imbued with alternative ideological meanings. Veganism, an ideology with important identity implications and a moral lens affecting everyday consumption decisions, attempts to change cultural norms and challenges the existence of animal products within markets. This thesis therefore explores how veganism as a New Social Movement informs vegan consumers’ use, consumption, and display of fashion products, a relevant site to understand processes of identity transitions.
Broadly building on consumer culture literature, and New Social Movements Theory, the research investigates how the individual, collective and public dimensions of identity shape consumers’ decisions in the context of movement membership. While the public identity of the vegan movement presents a stigmatised image, the individual and collective identity dimensions incorporate a variety of behaviours, beliefs, values, and meanings that affect both the life-world of those who adopt it, and how they engage with consumption in a non-vegan world. Additionally, this research examines the impacts of a new ideology and movement adherence on fashion objects containing materials of animal origin, how this affects consumers’ existing non-vegan possessions, as well as their ongoing engagement with the fashion marketplace.
This phenomenological exploratory research engaged qualitative methods of data collection in attempting to understand the multilayered nature of vegan consumption in the context of fashion. Data was collected within four vegan communities on Facebook as well as through 28 interviews with self-identified vegans. The data was analysed utilising interpretive methods of iterative coding guided by Grounded Theory. The findings show that the impacts of veganism on fashion use and consumption are multilayered, and that fashion is a contentious area within the vegan community, especially within a collective identity context.
The findings first reveal tensions between concepts often discussed synonymously, namely the community and the collective identity. Multi-directional tensions also arise between the collective and individual performance of a vegan identity as regulated by the public and stigmatised image of the vegan movement and mediated through the use and consumption of fashion products. The rigidity of the collective identity is found to impose on individuals the weight of displaying veganism on behalf of all others. Exchanges with non-vegans showcase the experience of delegitimisation strategies, where the consistency or integrity of the vegan identity is questioned.
The findings then highlight that transition to a vegan identity guides consumption practices and modifies the understanding and response to materials of animal origin. It does this through engagement with confronting or morally shocking information, which reframe the established cultural meaning of products, in turn affecting existing possessions. It is in this context that materials of animal origin become carriers of harm, pain, and suffering, as opposed to their culturally normative meaning as desirable materials and objects. This meaning transformation also fractures relationship with possessions, leading to either repossession, or object disposal.
The findings finally illuminate the multi-layered and multi-sited strategies of activism within the fashion marketplace enacted by vegan consumers, and the role played by the market in legitimising individual and collective efforts. The data shows that most vegan consumption decisions are evaluated and undertaken with a counter-normative agenda of cultural transformation. Consumer activism become second nature, with most decisions evaluated through the prism of New Social Movement objectives via both overt and covert forms of everyday resistance. Vegan consumers are seen to adopt a counter-cultural identity that resists, and attempts to change, socially normative engagement with animals as resources.
From a theoretical perspective, this study offers a new understanding of the impacts of ideological lifestyle transition on both identity performance and fashion objects consumption behaviour. This thesis therefore contributes to knowledge surrounding the market impact of New Social Movement participation, to literature surrounding materiality, meaning and object biographies, as well as research on consumer activism in the context of ideological consumption.
From a practical lens, the findings offer a deeper understanding of vegan consumption, a growing consumer-driven movement within the marketplace. The findings also suggest important implications for vegan organisations, and mainstream market players. Vegan consumers are found to expect additional ethical and environmental attributes in the development vegan products, which affects their consumption decisions. Additionally, the use of vegan labels and certifications on fashion products is found to play an important role in legitimising vegan consumption and sustaining movement membership, positively impacting vegan consumers
Effects of In-Situ Produced Exopolysaccharides on Techno-Functional Properties of Fermented Lupin Flour
No full textThe increasing global demand for alternative protein sources is driven by concerns over resource scarcity, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness. Legumes have emerged as a promising option, but their techno-functional, sensory, and nutritional limitations pose challenges for their use in the food industry. Microbial fermentation is one of the food processing technologies with the potential to overcome these challenges. The integration of microbial fermentation with exopolysaccharide (EPS) producing lactic acid bacterial (LAB) strains greatly enhances the ability to address these limitations effectively.
Among legumes, lupin (Lupinus spp.) stands out for its high protein content (34-44%), which is comparable to soybeans. Additionally, lupin is rich in dietary fibre and contains various bioactive compounds, including antioxidants, which contribute to its health-promoting properties. Despite these advantages, lupin remains underutilised as a human food due to its techno-functional limitations such as poor solubility, inferior foaming, emulsification, and rheological properties. As a result, the applications of lupin in the food industry so far are limited.
In the realm of legume fermentation, significant attention has been devoted to crops such as soybeans, chickpeas, and peas. Extensive research has been conducted on these legumes, including studies on EPS-producing LAB and their role in overcoming limitations associated with legumes, including techno-functional constraints. However, there is a critical lack of research related to lupin fermentation in general. Fermentation of lupin with EPS-producing LAB strains is exceedingly rare to our knowledge. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate this underexplored domain to harness the potential of lupin and enhance its industrial applications, with a specific focus on addressing techno-functional limitations.
With this objective, this research sought to enhance the techno-functional properties of lupin through the application of EPS-producing LAB. Initially, 26 novel LAB strains, including Lactiplantibacillus plantarum and Leuconostoc mesenteroides, were assessed for their genetic potential to produce EPS using a customised bioinformatics pipeline, which incorporates a specialised database for bacterial EPS, various bioinformatics tools and steps. The strains L. mesenteroides C13, C18, and C20 exhibited the highest genetic potential for EPS production, containing 50, 51, and 39 EPS production-related genes, respectively. This genetic potential was confirmed experimentally through EPS quantification using MRS broth as a model medium. These three strains were the highest EPS producers among all the strains tested, with EPS production levels of 1.67 mg/mL, 1.57 mg/mL, and 0.82 mg/mL. Furthermore, it was found that these strains predominantly possessed genes for the extracellular EPS biosynthesis pathway, suggesting the production of dextransucrase and levansucrase by these strains. They did not possess genes related to the synthase-dependent EPS producing pathway but did have certain genes related to the ABC-transporter dependent pathway and the wzx/wzy-dependent pathway.
Based on previous research indicating that the application of abiotic stress on LAB can enhance EPS production, the second experimental chapter investigated the effects of pre-stressing L. mesenteroides C13 and C18 at various pH (3.0, 4.5, and 6.0) and temperatures (10 °C, 25 °C, and 40 °C) levels on their EPS production, proteomics, and transcriptomics profiles. Pre-stressing at pH 3.0 resulted in a notable reduction in colony-forming units but increased EPS production per cell. Proteomics identified key proteins related to EPS production and stress response, including dextransucrase, levansucrase, sucrose phosphorylase, biofilm regulatory proteins, cold shock-like proteins, and universal stress proteins, which were upregulated on per cell basis in response to acid stress (pH 3.0).
Based on these findings, L. mesenteroides C18 was selected for use as a starter culture in experimental trials to assess the feasibility of fermentation using EPS producing LAB for improving the techno-functional properties of lupin. The experimental design included pre-stressing the starter cultures at pH 3.0 (25 °C for 2 h in MRS broth), followed by fermentation for 24 h at 25 °C. Lupin suspension (20 %) was used as fermentation substrate. Fermentation using unstressed culture (pH 6.0, 25 °C for 2 h in MRS broth) was conducted under the same condition for comparison. Unfermented and acidified unfermented samples were used as controls. While pre-stressing did not significantly increase the overall EPS production compared to unstressed fermentation, it did enhance EPS production per cell. Fermentation, particularly using non-stressed cultures significantly improved the viscosity, and increased foaming, water and oil absorption, emulsification, and protein solubility of lupin suspensions compared to the unfermented treatments. This enhancement indicates a correlation between EPS production and improvement in these techno-functional attributes. Therefore, the future research should focus on optimising fermentation conditions to maximise EPS yield under unstressed pH conditions and temperature (pH 6.0, 25 °C) and exploring other stress types such as osmotic, oxidative, and nutrient stress to further enhance lupin's techno-functional properties.
The work produced from this thesis will extend the understanding of lupin's techno-functional properties and how they can be enhanced under different pH and temperature conditions. Additionally, the bioinformatics pipeline developed in this study can be used with other microorganisms to identify the presence of various genes of interest. This research also provides valuable insights into the EPS-producing pathways in novel strains tested.</p
Governing Development, Governing Conservation: A Genealogy of Biodiversity Offset Politics Across Scales and Time
No full textBiodiversity offsetting – compensation for biodiversity losses due to authorised development via production of offset gains – has become a major instrument in biodiversity conservation governance. Its rapid mobilization over the past 15 years contrasts with the controversy it has unleashed in the conservation research community. This thesis aims to clarify the debates around biodiversity offsetting by elucidating political projects and governing effects of offsetting.
I do so by conducting a genealogy of offset politics, with attention paid to institutional scales and socio-political contexts. Offsetting is re-politicised by adopting a Foucauldian post-structural lens; and conceptualized as an assemblage of rationales, technologies of government, and practices seeking to govern specific subjects and natures, transformed by competing environmental discourses and environmentalities that change across time, scales and contexts. The genealogy involves an embedded case study design as a research strategy, composed of three units of analysis, and gathering a corpus of texts and 26 interviews. Firstly, I conduct a document-based analysis of the environmental discourses having competed over the meanings ascribed to offsetting across the US, Australia, international, transnational and European scales. Secondly, I centre the analysis on the specific socio-political context of Victoria, Australia. Based on both documents and interviews, I conduct a detailed analysis of these competing discourses, the environmentalities they embody and their effects on the offset assemblage and the governing of development, conservation and nature. This analysis is deepened via the study of a development project and its on-ground offset measures in Victoria.
I demonstrate how the politics of biodiversity offsetting pivot around a deep struggle between Prometheans, reformists and radicals over limits to development, grounded, in the case of Victoria, in the settler-colonial foundations of the state. Offsetting emerged within a reformist, sovereign-disciplinary logic, initially constructed for resource management and pollution control, later applied to biodiversity. This logic sought to regulate development through its limitation, channelling, and the treatment of its effects. Yet, in Victoria, through the rise of neoliberalism as a hegemonic discourse but also Promethean backlashes from the 1990s, biodiversity offsetting progressively came to instead embody a sovereign-neoliberal logic. This logic re-normalized development and organized the delivery of offsets via a hybrid offset ‘market’. As backlashes unfolded, it increasingly leaned on its sovereign pole to ensure development certainty through accelerated land fencing as cheaper offset deals.
Through this genealogy, a deeper story is told. One that started before neoliberalism and likely will continue beyond it. It revolves around the unquestioned norms of land ownership, the right to exploit the land; and how biodiversity offsetting can come to seduce biodiversity conservationists, historically born out of a radical ethical stance for biodiversity, into the role of service providers to development.</p
Growth Areas Liveability Scorecard for Adelaide
No full textThis report is the first series of Growth Areas Liveability Scorecard
Reports developed in partnership with the National Growth Areas
Alliance. The Growth Area Liveability Scorecards have been
developed for the capital cities of Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne,
Sydney and Perth include indicators and maps from the
Australian Urban Observatory measuring the liveability of 21
Australian cities. The Scorecards focus on the fastest growing
Local Government Areas located in outer metropolitan and
peri-urban regions of Australia’s five largest capital cities. The
Growth Area Liveability Scorecards identify differences between
Growth Areas and Non-Growth Areas across Australian capital
cities. Results are based on previous City Liveability Scorecards
developed by the Australian Urban Observatory @ RMIT University
and are based on 2021 indicator results.
More detailed neighbourhood, suburb, and Local Government
Area results across Australian cities are available online at
auo.org.au.</p
Acupuncture analgesia for temporal summation of experimental pain: A randomised controlled study
No full textBackground: Temporal summation of pain, a phenomenon of the central nervous system (CNS), represents enhanced painful sensation or reduced pain threshold upon repeated stimulation. This pain model has been used to evaluate the analgesic effect of various medications on the CNS. Aims: The present study aimed to evaluate the effects and characteristics of analgesia induced by electroacupuncture (EA), manual acupuncture (MA) and non-invasive sham-acupuncture (SA) in healthy humans on temporal summation of pain. Methods: Thirsty-six pain-free volunteers were randomised into one of the three groups EA (2/100 Hz), MA or SA. Acupuncture intervention was on ST36 and ST40 on the dominant leg delivered by an acupuncturist blinded to the outcome assessment. Both subjects and the evaluator were blinded to the treatment allocation. Pain thresholds to a single pulse (single pain threshold, SPT) and repeated pulses electrical stimulation (temporal summation thresholds, TST) were measured before, 30 min after and 24 h after each treatment. Results: The baseline values of three groups were comparable. Compared to SA, EA significantly increased both SPT and TST immediately after the treatment on the treatment leg as well as 24 h after on both the treatment and non-treatment legs (ANOVA, p < 0.05). MA also increased SPT and TST, but the changes were not significantly different from those induced by SA. Conclusion: EA induces bilateral, segmentally distributed and prolong analgesia on both SPT and TST, indicating a non-centrally specific effect. This effect needs to be verified with heat or mechanical model and in pain patients.</p
Generating all efficient solutions of a rescheduling problem on unrelated parallel machines
No full textIn this paper, we consider a rescheduling problem where a set of jobs has already been assigned to unrelated parallel machines. When a disruption occurs on one of the machines, the affected jobs are rescheduled, considering the efficiency and stability measures. Our efficiency measure is the total flow time and stability measure is the total reassignment cost caused by the differences in the machine allocations in the initial and new schedules. We propose a branch and bound algorithm to generate all efficient solutions with respect to our efficiency and stability measures. We improve the efficiency of the algorithm by incorporating powerful reduction and bounding mechanisms. Our computational tests on large sized problem instances have revealed the satisfactory behaviour of our algorithm.This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Production Research in 2009, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00207540802043998</p