[Truncated abstract] Background : Triage systems have evolved from battlefield casualty prioritisation tools to integral components of civilian emergency care systems over the last 50 years. There is significant variation in prehospital triage practices in Australia and little research has been undertaken to validate the triage systems used. There is considerable evidence to support the use of the Australasian Triage Scale (ATS) for triage in the emergency department setting and the ATS is used ubiquitously for emergency department triage in Australasia ... Conclusions : The findings of this thesis support integrating prehospital ATS allocations with emergency department triage processes. It is concluded that Paramedics apply the ATS similarly to nurses ... Allocations to ATS 1, 2 and 3 and most ATS 4 allocations by paramedics are valid when compared to nurse ATS allocations. Australasian Triage Scale category 5 is used inappropriately by paramedics and should be used rarely, if at all, by paramedics. The reliability of paramedic and nurse ATS allocations is sufficient to warrant a trial of the omission of retriage of ambulance presentations at Perth metropolitan emergency departments. However, early nursing assessment of a small proportion of ATS 3 patients may be required to ensure timely assessment for some mistriaged bone fide ATS 2 patients. Paramedic ATS allocations appear sufficiently reliable and valid to warrant a trial of their use as part of a two-tier trauma team activation system ... The implementation of standardised training between paramedics and nurses based on current Australasian College for Emergency Medicine guidelines is recommended. The implementation of paramedic triage audit, including comparison of paramedic ATS allocations with nurse ATS allocations may improve reliability between paramedics and nurses, and particularly the reliability of ATS 4 and ATS 5 allocations. Prehospital ATS allocations may prove useful in prehospital casemix analysis, the evaluation of prehospital service delivery and for prehospital research. Research opportunities include actual trials of the integration of prehospital use of ATS with emergency department triage and trauma system activation, and the evaluation of the ATS as a prehospital casemix and performance evaluation tool. Research into alternative triage tools to the ATS for use in the prehospital environment and into the impact of standardised triage training is also suggested.

[Truncated abstract] In the last two decades, the use of microsatellites has revolutionized the study of ecology and evolution. Microsatellites, or short tandem repeats (STRs), are stretches of DNA repeats, 1 to 5 nucleotides long, where the number of repeats varies between individuals. They are co-dominant, highly variable, neutral markers, and are inherited in a Mendelian fashion. Microsatellite loci were isolated from Dawson’s burrowing bee, Amegilla dawsoni, a large, fast-flying solitary nesting bee endemic to the arid zone of Western Australia. Twelve polymorphic loci were found with an observed number of alleles ranging from two to 24 and observed heterozygosities between 0.17 and 0.85. These loci were used to examine two aspects of this bee’s molecular ecology; its population structure and mating system ... The molecular data were also used to show that the nesting female is the mother of all her offspring and that brood parasitism is unlikely in this species. The data indicate that females make daughters at the beginning of the season followed by large sons in the middle, and then small sons at the end. Females often place one brood cell directly above another. The distribution of sex and morph in these doublets follows a pattern with most containing a female on the bottom and a minor male on the top, followed by almost equal numbers of female on top of female and minor male on top of major male. This pattern is likely favoured by emergence patterns, with males emerging before females and minor males emerging before major males. I suggest that although minor males have low reproductive success, their production may nonetheless be beneficial in that minor males open up emergence tunnels for their larger and reproductively more valuable siblings. In addition, minor males may represent the ‘best of a bad job’ provisioning tactic arising from changes in the costs to nesting females of gathering brood provisions over the course of the flight season. This thesis demonstrates that microsatellites can be used to answer many questions regarding the molecular ecology of a species from the behaviour of the bees on a population scale to the mating behaviour of individual bees and how they allocate resources for the next generation. Many other aspects of the bee’s ecology could also be examined now that suitable molecular markers exist.

[Truncated abstract] Conservative, incremental and modest approaches to redressing gendered workplace cultures have had limited success in challenging the demographic profile of densely masculinist workplaces. In this thesis I draw on a study of women in police work to argue that combating highly institutionalised, entrenched masculinist practices calls for more than modesty. Indeed the study shows that ambitious, even contentious, recommendations for new procedures can play an important role when the goal is tangible change in cultures where there is an excess of men. In conclusion I posit the need for some bold risk-taking, alongside incremental tactics, if the aim is to change the habits and practices of masculinist organisations . . . This dissertation maps that interventionist process across a four-year period. In assessing the role played by the feminist methodology I analyse what people can learn to see and say about organisational practices, how they participate in or seek to undermine various forms of teamwork, as well as how individual team members display their new understandings and behaviours. I conclude that the techniques for supporting women in authoritarian, densely masculinist workplaces should include some bold and highly visible ‘critical acts’, based on commitment from the top coupled to strongly motivated and highly informed teamwork.

Shark Bay is an extensive marine embayment located on the central coast of Western Australia that is recognised as a World Heritage Property on the basis of the Outstanding Universal Value of the natural environment of the region. This thesis examines the history of science at Shark Bay between the arrival of the first European explorers in the seventeenth century through to the official recognition of Shark Bay as a World Heritage Area in 1991. Each of the seven chapters is devoted to a different period in the development of scientific investigations, beginning with Dutch and English mariners and naturalists, passing on to French scientific explorers and British surveyors naturalists, and explorers, continuing through a variety of investigations in marine science and research in biogeography and evolution carried out by foreign expeditions and Australian field-workers, and culminating in the transformation of scientific investigations as a result of the rise and development of modern ecological science in the second half of the twentieth century. This development of science at Shark Bay is considered in light of existing frameworks for the development or spread of science in Australia, and in relation to current literature concerning the development or emergence of ecology in Australia. After evaluating the history of science at Shark Bay relative to existing knowledge of the spread of science and the emergence of ecology, the thesis concludes by proposing a new framework for the development of science and the emergence of ecology based on the experience at Shark Bay and with wider application to the history of science in Western Australia.

The Western Australian (WA) mining industry directly employs approximately 56,000 people. Almost half work Fly-in/Fly-out commute arrangements (FIFO, e.g. employees living in a city are flown to a remote worksite where they live and work during their work roster) and approximately half work more than 50 hours per week, on average. There are many anecdotal claims that FIFO has negative impacts on WA mining employees, leading to an elevated risk of high stress levels, depression, binge drinking, recreational drug use and relationship break-ups. Previous studies found FIFO can be stressful, and have negative impacts on WA employees 'and partners' lifestyles and relationships. This project investigated the long-term (Study One) and short-term (Study Two) impacts of FIFO and extended working hours on a representative sample of WA FIFO mining employees and partners. In Study One, a total of 222 FIFO and Daily Commute (DC) mining employees and partners completed an anonymous questionnaire investigating long-term impacts on work satisfaction, lifestyle, relationships and health. A subgroup of 32 Study One FIFO employees and partners also participated in Study Two; a detailed study of the short-term impacts of FIFO and extended working hours and how these impacts fluctuate in intensity during the mining roster. Study Two participants completed a diary and provided saliva samples each day throughout a complete mining roster. The main findings of the study were that FIFO and extended working hours had negative impacts on employees work satisfaction and FIFO was frequently reported to be disruptive to employees 'and partners' lifestyle, in the long-term. However, FIFO and extended working hours did not lead to poor quality relationships, high stress levels or poor health, on average in the long-term; there were generally no significant differences in these characteristics between FIFO and DC employees, or between the FIFO sample and the wider community. There were minor differences between FIFO and DC employees in long-term health characteristics, and Study One employees had similar, or in some cases poorer health outcomes than other community samples.

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This study is concerned with how educational legislation shapes and uses freedom for the purpose of governing the parent. The key question guiding the study was: How does the Act constitute the ‘parent’ as a subject position responsible for schooling the child? Central to the work is an examination of the School Education Act 1999 (the Act) using Foucault’s thinking on governmentality. This is prefaced by historical accounts that bring together freedom and childhood as contrived styles of conduct that provide the governmental logic behind the Act. The study reveals how the Act shapes and uses the truth of freedom/childhood to construct the responsible parent as a style of conduct pegged to a neo-liberal political rationality of government. It is this political rationality that provides the node or point of encounter between the technologies of power and the self within the Act which forms the ‘responsible’ identity of the parent as an active self-governing entrepreneur made more visible by the political construction of ‘others.’ This is a legal-political subjectivity centred on the truth of freedom/childhood and a neo-liberal rationality of government that believes that any change to our current ethical way of being in relation to educating the child would ruin the very freedoms upon which our civilised lifestyle depends. In essence, the Act relies on the production of ‘others’ as the poor, Aboriginal and radical who must be regulated and made autonomous to constitute the ‘parent’ as an active consumer whose autonomous educational choices are an expression of responsibility in relation to schooling the child

This thesis compares the in situ water balance of common annual production systems (wheat, lupin, subclover and serradella) with a grazed perennial system (lucerne) at a site in the Avon Catchment, Western Australia. Using a physically-based water balance approach the value of a plant based solution in redressing the hydrological imbalance that has become a feature of much of the dryland agricultural region of Western Australia is investigated. The effectiveness of lucerne in providing greater available storage for buffering large rainfall events, as compared to the annual systems, is illustrated. Continued transpiration following out-of-season rainfall events maintains a larger available storage capacity. In contrast, the annual systems that are fallow over summer only withdrew a small fraction of water by soil evaporation between rainfall events. Under annual systems, the profile moisture store was sequentially increased to the extent that additional increments of rainfall could potentially contribute to deep drainage. A particular focus of this study has been to investigate the presence of soil constraints to root growth, and to assess how these constraints affect the water balance. A site survey indicated the soil penetration resistance was sufficient to impose a physical constraint to root growth. Published literature on the site shows soil acidity is also at a level imposing chemical constraints to root growth. A root growth model “Rootmodel”, for predicting root growth with and without soil constraints is examined in detail as a method for providing root growth parameters for inclusion into the numerical water balance model, SWIM based on Richard’s equation. Functions developed from “Rootmodel” adequately describe the effect of profile limitations to root growth, such as soil strength, moisture availability and temperature. Recommendations are made for inclusion of a growth suppressing function in “rootmodel” based on the chemical limitation of low pH. The effects of soil acidity on the root growth of several species is investigated experimentally and the resultant root data provided a reference point by which the simplified prediction of root growth built into SWIM could be adjusted using a linear reduction function. A similar linear reduction function is also employed to impose a physical constraint in the form of high penetration resistance.

[Truncated abstract] Establishment of vegetation and ecosystem functioning is central to the mitigation of environmental impacts associated with mining operations. This study investigated the ecophysiological functioning of mature plants in natural vegetation and applied this knowledge to diagnose problems affecting plant health and causes of poor plant cover at a mine-rehabilitation site. Ecophysiological parameters, including plant water relations and mineral nutrition, were studied in conjunction with soil physical, hydraulic and chemical properties. The natural ecosystem at the study location in the Great Sandy Desert is characterised by sand dunes and interdunes with distinct plant communities on each. One of the most notable features of the vegetation is the presence of large Corymbia chippendalei trees high on the dunes and relatively small scattered shrubs in the interdunes. Triodia grasses (spinifex), dominate the vegetation in both habitats but different species occur in each; T. schinzii is restricted entirely to the dunes, and T. basedowii occurs only in the interdunes. It was hypothesised that the deep sandy dunes afford greater water availability but lower nutrient supply to plants in this habitat compared with those occurring in the lower landscape position of the interdunes. Water-relations parameters (leaf water potentials, stomatal conductance, d13C) revealed that dune plants, particularly woody species, displayed higher water status and water use than closely related and often congeneric plants in the interdunes. Nutrient concentrations in soils were significantly higher in the interdunes, but concentrations in foliage were similar for related species between habitats. It is concluded that the dunes provide a greater store of accessible water than the soil profile in the interdunes. ... Following an experimental wetting pulse equivalent to a summer cyclone event, A. ancistrocarpa plants displayed significant increases in stomatal conductance, leaf water potential and sap velocity in lateral roots within three days of irrigation at the natural site and two days at the rehabilitation site. Secondary sinker roots originating from distal sections of lateral roots were evidently supplying water to maintain hydraulic function in laterals, thus enabling a fast pulse response. This was accentuated at the rehabilitation site where roots were confined closer to the surface. These results indicate that plants at the rehabilitation site are more dependent on small pulses of water and have less access to deep reserves than plants at the natural site. It is concluded that high runoff losses and insufficient soil depth are major factors contributing to plant water stress, and combined with the direct impacts of erosion, are largely responsible for plant death and ultimately poor plant cover. These issues can be alleviated if cover soil depth is increased to more than 0.5 m and slope angles are reduced to <12o. This study demonstrates the value of an ecophysiological approach for diagnosing problems affecting plant establishment at mine-rehabilitation sites. Furthermore, it has provided recommendations that will improve the rehabilitation strategy and lead to the development of a well vegetated, resilient ecosystem on a stable and non-polluting land form.

Thesis (PhD) -- Macquarie University, Division of Environmental and Life Sciences, Department of Human Geography, 2007. / "November 2006". / Bibliography: p. 352-398. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / xvi, 399 p. ill., maps