Добірка наукової літератури з теми "Pulp mills New South Wales"

Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of female cancer mortality in the U.S. and accounts for five percent of all cancer deaths among women. No environmental risk factors for ovarian cancer have been confirmed. We previously reported that ovarian cancer incidence rates at the state level were significantly correlated with the extent of pulp and paper manufacturing. We evaluated that association using county-level data and advanced geospatial methods. Specifically, we investigated the relationship of spatial patterns of ovarian cancer incidence rates with toxic emissions from pulp and paper facilities using data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory (TRI). Geospatial analysis identified clusters of counties with high ovarian cancer incidence rates in south-central Iowa, Wisconsin, New York, Pennsylvania, Alabama, and Georgia. A bivariate local indicator of spatial autocorrelation (LISA) analysis confirmed that counties with high ovarian cancer rates were associated with counties with large numbers of pulp and paper mills. Regression analysis of state level data indicated a positive correlation between ovarian cancer and water pollutant emissions. A similar relationship was identified from the analysis of county-level data. These data support a possible role of water-borne pollutants from pulp and paper mills in the etiology of ovarian cancer.

THE pre Holocene-Late Pleistocene record of Phascolarctos in Australia is extremely meagre. There are at least two, possibly three extinct species of Phascolarctos in addition to the extant Phascolarctos cinereus (Black 1999). P. yorkensis (syn. Cundokoala yorkensis; Black and Archer 1997) is known from the Early Pliocene Curramulka Local Fauna, South Australia (SA), and the Late Pleistocene Wellington Caves Local Fauna, New South Wales (Archer et al. 1997; Pledge 1992). P. stirtoni occurs in the Late Pleistocene Cement Mills Local Fauna, Queensland, and is known only from a partial maxilla containing P3-M2 (Bartholomai 1968, 1977). Phascolarctos material from the mid- Pleistocene Victoria Fossil Cave and Spring Cave, Naracoorte, SA, have also been referred to P. cf. stirtoni but remain undescribed (Reed and Bourne 2000; Moriarty et al. 2000). P. maris is known from a single lower molar from the Early Pliocene Sunlands Local Fauna, SA (Pledge 1987). Black (1999) cast doubt on its validity, suggesting its features may fall within the intraspecific variation of P. stirtoni. If P. maris is referable to P. stirtoni it is another South Australian instance of this species, and extends its range back to the Early Pliocene. The new phascolarctid material documented here is from the early Pleistocene Nelson Bay Local Fauna, Portland, Victoria (141o 35? E; 38o 36? S). It is therefore an important additional southern occurrence of a species larger than the living P. cinereus, and is the only pre- Late Pleistocene record of the Phascolarctidae in Victoria.

Australia has a diverse array of gall-inducing scale insects (Hemiptera: Sternorrhyncha: Coccoidea), most of which feed on eucalypts. Here we describe a recently discovered and previously unrecognised species of Apiomorpha Rübsaamen that induces an unusual gall. Galls of the adult females were first found in bushland in South West Rocks, in northern New South Wales (Australia), but the original location has been cleared for housing development. Additional specimens have been discovered in nearby bushland and near the Arakoon Conservation Park, NSW. All specimens observed to date occur on Eucalyptus racemosa Cav. The morphology of the adult female and COII mtDNA sequences suggest affinities with the Apiomorpha minor (Froggatt) species-group of Gullan (1984), but the gall of the adult female is quite distinct from those of other members of that species-group in that it has two chambers instead of one. In addition, the newly recognised species, A. nookara Mills, MacDonald, Rigby & Cook sp. n., has a diploid chromosome complement of 2n = 6, a count not yet noted for members of the A. minor species-group. The description of the species was partly prepared by undergraduates at The University of Queensland, who were helping to overcome the so-called "taxonomic impediment" by describing and naming previously undescribed taxa.

THE EXTRAORDINARY COVERAGE of complaints of poor and dangerous patient care at Macarthur Health Service (Campbelltown and Camden Hospitals) has all the hallmarks of a pulp novel ? relentless and emotional media coverage, tragic personal stories, political intrigue at high levels and eloquent legal argument. Never before has New South Wales experienced such an event, nor most other jurisdictions for that matter. Perhaps only the coverage of King Edward Hospital in Perth comes close. Clinicians at the two hospitals have been variously portrayed as everything from doctors and nurses who were happy to turn their backs on dying patients through to one of the many victims of a fundamental political, policy and structural failure to distribute health care resources in proportion to need. In the same vein, the local hospital- management group has been portrayed as either an incompetent and corrupt group who engaged in cover-ups, shredding documents and targeting anyone who raised concerns, or as a caring but embattled group who were doing their best to manage a continuously increasing gap between demand and supply. Likewise, the nurses who publicly raised the allegations have been variously portrayed as either whistleblowers acting solely in the public interest, who were punished and sacked for bringing the truth to light, or as vexatious troublemakers seeking revenge on hospital managers who had previously disciplined them for bullying, harassment and/or poor clinical care. And, as usual, the truth lies somewhere in between.

Woodlots ranging in area from 0.18 to 0.5 ha were established within the Cicerone Project farmlet trial on the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia, due to a lack of physical protection in most paddocks across the farmlets. Two percent of each farmlet was planted to trees to examine the commercial and environmental potential of seven species to provide shade and shelter for livestock, increase biodiversity or contribute to cash flow through farm forestry diversification. Eucalyptus caliginosa (timber), E. nitens (timber, pulp wood), E. radiata (essential oil) and Pinus radiata (timber) were planted in four upslope plots (1059–1062 m a.s.l.) in different paddocks. Casuarina cunninghamiana (timber, shelter), E. acaciiformis (shade, shelter and biodiversity), E. dalrympleana (timber, biodiversity), E. nitens (timber, pulp wood), E. radiata (essential oil) and P. radiata (timber) were planted in four low-lying plots (1046–1050 m a.s.l.) in separate paddocks, 400–1200 m distant. The pines and natives were planted in August and October 2003, respectively, into a well prepared, weed-free, mounded, planting bed. After 5 years, P. radiata (98% survival) and E. nitens (83%) survived best in upslope plots, reaching maximum heights of 7.8 and 8.8 m and exhibiting no or only modest insect damage, respectively. In low-lying plots, E. acaciiformis (75% survival) and E. dalrympleana (80%) survived best, reaching maximum heights of 5.5 and 4.5 m, and exhibiting little or only moderate insect damage, respectively. P. radiata exhibited 17–69% survival in the two lowest-lying plots but 100% survival in the other two lowland plots. On average, <50% of C. cunninghamiana, E. nitens and E. radiata survived in low-lying plots and survivors grew poorly. Early frosts in March 2004 were the primary cause of losses in low-lying plots, and frost, waterlogging, insect attack and some inadvertent livestock browsing explain the slower growth of species in low-lying plots compared with their performance upslope. P. radiata and perhaps E. nitens have commercial promise for timber production on Northern Tablelands farms, but only in higher (well drained, less frost-prone) parts of the landscape. E. acaciiformis can withstand the stressful growing conditions in open pasture in low-lying plots, and should be planted more widely for on-farm shade and shelter. E. dalrympleana can also be considered for amenity and biodiversity plantings in lower parts of the landscape.

Roslynn D. Haynes, From Faust to Strangelove, Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature , Baltimore and London. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, Pp.417, paperback £16.50, (Hardback £45.50). ISBN 0-89263-314-X. Roslynn Haynes, who is Associate Professor of English at the University of New South Wales, has written a scholarly tour de force ; a detailed study of the way in which scientists have been represented in Western literature from the late fourteenth to the late twentieth centuries. Though Chaucer’s deceitful alchemist, the Canon of the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale , was probably the earliest scientist to appear in Western literature, she settles upon the Faust story, in its several manifestations, as archetypical: the scientist seen as one whose arrogant search for knowledge, usually by arcane means, destroys his humanity, encroaches on matters forbidden by God, and ultimately brings terrible retribution. Dr Faustus, Victor Frankenstein and Dr Strangelove provide her with temporal landmarks in a wide-ranging exploration of the fluctuating literary images of scientists down the centuries, extending into film and pulp science fiction. Amoral, arrogant, bumbling, clumsy, deceptive, devious, forgetful, insensitive, irreligious, power-obsessed, at best grossly misguided, the scientist has usually been anathema to the holistic, religious, naturalistic, aesthetic writer over the centuries. It is almost a relief to come across periods when the benefits of advancing technology briefly overrode fear and loathing of science, and scientists were depicted more positively, as in the mid nineteenth century, (e.g. the upright, reforming Dr Lydgate of George Eliot’s Middlemarch ), or the early twentieth century (e.g. Holsten, who salvages civilization in H.G. Wells’s The World Set Free ). I wish she had included William Cooper’s subtle corrective to C.P. Snow, The Struggles of Albert Woods (1952), an accurate and amusing account of the scientist as a Perfectly Ordinary Person, which was seminal among other post-war British writers such as Kinglsey Amis. However, Roslynn Haynes’s report on her area of literature is generally comprehensive and well indexed, and the notes fill out the text admirably, often with fascinating snippets, such as the origin of the name ‘Bovril’ for a proprietary meat extract, or the titles of the nineteen Frankenstein spin-off films.

In the third episode of the British sci-fi/thriller television series Torchwood (BBC3, 2007-) the team are investigating a portable ‘ghost machine’, which allows its users to see events which occurred in the past. After visiting an old man whose younger self the device may have allowed them to witness, the team’s medic, Owen Harper, spots Bernie Harris, who’d previously been in possession of the machine. A chase ensues; they run past a park, between a gang of kids playing football, over a railway bridge, through a housing estate, and eventually Bernie is cornered in a back garden and taken away for questioning. The scene demonstrates the series’ intention to be a fast-paced, modern, glossy thriller, with loud incidental music, fast cuts, and energetic camerawork. Yet for me the scene has quite a different meaning. The housing estate they run through is the one in which I used to live; the railway bridge they run over is the one I crossed every day on my way to and from work; the street they run down is my street; and there, in the background, clear and apparent and obvious for all to see, is my home. Yes; my house was on Torchwood. As Blunt and Dowling note, “home does not simply exist, but is made … [and] … this process has both material and imaginative elements” (23). It is through such imaginative elements that we turn ‘spaces’ that are “unnamed, unhistoried, unnarativized” into ‘places’ that are “indubitably bound up with personal experience” (Darby 50). Such experiences may be ‘real’ (as in things that actually happened there) or ‘representational’ (as in seen on television); my relationship to ‘home’ is here being inflected through the “indexical bond” (Kilborn and Izod 29) that links both of these strategies. In using a scene from Torchwood to say something about my personal history, I’m taking what is, in essence, a televisual ‘space’ and converting it into a ‘place’ which is not only defined by my “profilmic” (Ward 8) relationship to it, but also helps express that relationship. Telling everyone that my house was on Torchwood certainly says something about the programme; but more fundamentally I’m engaging in a process intended to say something about me. A bit of autobiography. The house is in Splott, a residential area of Cardiff, the capital of Wales, where Torchwood is set and filmed. I lived in Cardiff from 2000 to 2006, when I worked at the University of Glamorgan. For much of that time I lived in rented accommodation in Cathays, the student area of Cardiff. But in 2005 I bought a house in Splott, and this was the first property I ever owned. A year later I moved to Norwich (virtually the other side of the UK from Cardiff) to take a job at the University of East Anglia, but I kept the house in Cardiff and now rent it out. It was while living in Norwich that my house appeared on Torchwood, and I had no idea that the programme had been filming in that area. This means that, strictly speaking, at the time it was on television the property was no longer my ‘home’, but was instead my tenants’. Yet what I want to examine here is the “geography of feeling and emotion” (Rodaway 263) which is central to the idea of ‘home’, and which has been kick-started in me since some fictional television characters ran down the street I used to live in and the ‘real’ and the ‘representational’ began to intersect. There certainly is something personal which is required in order to turn a ‘space’ into a ‘place’, but what is it that then transforms it into ‘home’? That is, for me Cardiff is more than a ‘place’ which I know. Owning a property there makes a difference, but that is to too easily equate a commercial transaction with an emotive sense of feeling. Indeed, Cardiff felt like ‘home’ before I’d bought a house, and the majority of my memories of the city are connected to other properties I’ve lived in. In a capitalist society it’s tempting to equate ‘home’ with the property we own, and this probably is the case for the majority of people (Morley 19). Nevertheless, something emotive stirred in me when I saw my house in a chase sequence on a science-fiction television programme when I live in an entirely different city. Tuan defines this as ‘topophilia’, which is “the affective bond between people and place or setting” (Topophilia 4), and it’s clear that such bonds can be highly emotionally charged and a significant aspect of one’s sense of self. This is noticeable because of the ways in which I’ve used my house’s appearance on television. I’ve not been quiet about it; I was telling everyone at work the day after it appeared. Whenever people mention Torchwood it’s something I point out. This might not sound as if that is likely to occur very often, but considering the programme is a spin-off from the highly successful revival of Doctor Who (BBC1, 1963-89, 1996, 2005-) it is part of a well-known media landscape. Both Doctor Who and Torchwood are predominantly filmed in Cardiff and the surrounding areas of South Wales, but whereas Torchwood is also narratively set in Cardiff, Doctor Who merely uses the locations to represent other places, most often London. Yet many of these places are distinctive and therefore obviously Cardiff for those who know the area. For example, the hospital in the episode ‘New Earth’ (2006) is recognisably the interior of the Wales Millennium Centre, just as the exterior location where the Tardis lands at the beginning of the episode is clearly Rhossili on the Gower Peninsula. Inevitably, the use of such locations has often disrupted my understanding of the story being told. That is, it’s hard to accept that this episode is taking place on a planet at the other end of the galaxy thousands of years into the future if the characters are standing on a cliff you recognise because you’ve been camping there. Of course, the use of locations to represent other places is necessary in media fictions, and I’m not trying to carry out some kind of trainspotter location identification in an attempt to undermine the programme’s diegesis. But it is important to note that while “remembering is a process that today is increasingly media-afflicted” (Hoskins 110), media texts can also be affected by the memories, whether communal or individual, that we bring to bear on them. A ‘real’ relationship with a place can be so intimate that it refuses to be ignored when ‘representations’ require it to be unnecessary. I’m a fan of Doctor Who and would rather not recognise the places so I can just get on with enjoying the programme. But it’s not possible to simply erase “Expressions of community” (Moores 368) which bring together identity and place, especially when that place is your home. Importantly, my idea of ‘home’ is inextricably bound up in the past. As it is a place I no longer live in, the ways in which I feel towards it are predicated on the notion that I used to live there, but no longer do. It’s clear that notions of home – especially those related to nation – are often predicated on ideas of history with significant emotional resonance (Anderson; Blunt and Dowling 140-195; Calhoun). This is a place that is an emotional rather than geographical home, even if it used to also be my home geographically. In buying a house, and engaging in the consumer culture which dominates the ways in which we turn a house into a home (oh, those endless hours at Ikea), I spent a lot of time wondering what it was that this sofa, or those lampshades, or that rug, said about me. The idea that the buildings that we own are a key way of creating and demonstrating a particular kind of identity or affiliation with a certain social group is necessary to consumer capitalism. But as I no longer live in it, the inside of this house can no longer be used as something I can show to other people hoping that they’ll ‘read’ my home how I want them to. Instead, the sense of home invigorated by my house’s appearance on Torchwood is one centred on location, related to the city and the housing estate where my house is, rather than what I did to it. ‘Home’ here becomes something symbolised by the bricks and mortar of the house I bought, but is instead more accurately located in the city and area which the house sits in; Cardiff. More importantly, Cardiff and my house become emotionally meaningful because I’m no longer there. That is, while it’s clear I had a particular relationship to Cardiff when I was a resident, this has altered since my move to Norwich. In moving to a new city – one which I had never visited before, and had no family or friends living in – it seems that my understanding of Cardiff as my ‘home’ has become intensified. This might be because continuing to own property there gives me an investment in the city, both emotionally and financially. But this idea of ‘home’ would, I think, have existed even if I’d sold my house. Instead, Cardiff-as-home is predicated on an idea of personal history and nostalgia (Wheeler; Massey). Academics are used to moving great distances in order to get jobs; indeed, “To spend an entire working career in a single department may seem to be a failure of geographical imagination” (Ley 182). The labour market insists that “All people may now be wanderers” (Bauman, Globalization 87), and hence geographical origins become something to be discussed with new colleagues. For me, like most people, this is a complicated question; does it mean where I was born, or where I grew up, or where I studied, or where I have lived most of my life? In the choices I make to answer this question, I’m acknowledging that “migration is a complex process of cultural negotiation, resistance, and adaptation” (Sinclair and Cunningham 14). As Freeman notes, “the history one tells, via memory, assumes the form of a narrative of the past that charts the trajectory of how one’s self came to be” (33, italics in original). Importantly, this narrative must be seen to make sense; that is, it must help explain the present, conforming to narrative ideas of cause and effect. In constructing a “narratable self” (Caravero 33, italics in original) I’m demonstrating how I think I came to end up where I am now, doing the job I’m doing. In order to show that “I am more than what the thin present defines” (Tuan, Space and Place 186) it’s necessary to reiterate a notion of ‘home’ which supports and illustrates the desired identity narrative. This narrative is as much about “the reflexive project of the self” (Gauntlett 99) in these “liquid times” (Bauman, Liquid Times), as it is a “performance” (Goffman) for others. The coherence and stability of my performance was undercut in a recent episode of Doctor Who – ‘Smith and Jones’ (2007) – in which a family row occurred outside a pub. I became quite distraught that I couldn’t work out where that pub was, and was later reassured to discover that it was in Pontypridd, a town a good few miles from Cardiff, and therefore it wasn’t surprising that I couldn’t recognise it. But in being distraught at not recognising locations I was demonstrating how central knowledge is to an idea of ‘home’. Knowing your way around, knowing where certain shops are, knowing the history of the place; these are all aspects of home, all parts of what Crouch calls “lay knowledge” (217). Ignorance of a space marks the outsider, who must stand on street corners with a map and ask locals for directions. For someone like me who prides himself on his sense of direction (who says I conform to gender stereotypes?) an inability to recognise a pub that I thought I should know suggested my knowledge of the area was dissipating, and so perhaps my ability to define that city as my home was becoming less valid. This must be why I take pleasure in noting that Torchwood’s diegesis is often geographically correct, for the ‘representational’ helps demonstrate my knowledge of the ‘real’ place’s layout. As Tuan notes, “When space feels thoroughly familiar to us, it has become place” (Space and Place 73), and the demonstration of that familiarity is one of the ways of reasserting one’s relationship to home. In demonstrating a knowledge of the place I’m defining as home, I’m also insisting that I’m not a tourist. Urry shows how visitors use a “tourist gaze” (The Tourist Gaze), arguing viewing is the most important activity when encountering a place, just as Tuan (Space and Place 16) and Strain (3) do. To visit somewhere is to employ “a dominance of the eye” (Urry, “Sensing the City” 71); this is why photography has become the dominant manner for recording tourist activity. Strain sees the tourist gaze as one “trained for consumerism” (15) with tourist activity defined primarily by commerce. Since Doctor Who returned Cardiff has promoted its association with the programme, opening an ‘Up Close’ exhibition and debating whether to put together a tourist trail of locations. As a fan of these programmes I’m certainly excited by all of this, and have been to the exhibition. Yet it feels odd being a tourist in a place I want to call home, and some of my activity seems an attempt to demonstrate that it was my home before it became a place I might want to visit for its associations with a television programme. For example, I never went and watched the programme being filmed, even though much of it was shot within walking distance of my house, and “The physical places of fandom clearly have an extraordinary importance for fans” (Sandvoss 61). While some of this was due to not wanting to know what was going to happen in the programme, I was uncomfortable with carrying out an activity that would turn a “landscape” into a “mediascape” (Jansson 432), replacing the ‘real’ with the ‘representational’. In insisting on seeing Cardiff, and my house, as something which existed prior to the programmes, I’m attempting to maintain the “imagined community” (Anderson) I have for my home, distinguishing it from the taint of commerce, no matter how pointless or naïve such an act is in effect. Hence, home is resolutely not a commercial place; or, at least, it is a location whose primary emotive aspects are not defined by consumerism. When houses are seen as nothing more than aspects of commerce, that’s when they remain ‘houses’ or ‘properties’; the affective aspects of ‘homes’ are instead emotionally detached from the commercial factors which bring them about. I think this is why I’m keen to demonstrate that my associations with Cardiff existed before Doctor Who started being made there, for if the place only meant anything to me because of the programme that would define me as a tourist and therefore undermine those emotional and personal aspects of the city which allow me to call it ‘home’. It also means I can be proud that such a cultural institution is being made in ‘my’ city. But it’s a city I can no longer claim residence in. This means that Torchwood and Doctor Who have become useful ways for me to ‘visit’ Cardiff. It seems I have started to adopt a ‘tourist gaze’, for the programmes visually recreate the locations and all I can do is view them, no matter how much I use my knowledge of location in an attempt to interpret those images differently from a tourist. It’s tempting to suggest that this shows how there is a “perpetual negotiation between the real event and its representation” (Bruzzi 9), and how willing I am to engage in the “mobile privatization” that Williams saw as a defining aspect of television (26). But this would be to accept the “unhomeyness” which results from “the ultimate failures of the home in postmodern times” (Lewis and Cho 74). In adopting an autobiographical approach to these issues, I hope I’ve demonstrated the ways in which individuals can experience emotional resonances related to ‘home’ which, while clearly inflected through the social, cultural, and technological aspects I’ve outlined, are nevertheless meaningful and maintain a dominance of the ‘real’ over the ‘representational’. Furthermore, my job tells me I shouldn’t feel this way about my home; or, at least, it reminds me that such emotionality can be explained away through cultural analysis. But that doesn’t in any way make ‘home’ any less powerful nor fully explain how such dry criteria mutate into humanist, emotional significance. So, I can tell you what my home is: but I’m not sure I can get you to understand how seeing my home on television makes me feel. In that sense it’s almost too neat that the episode which kick-started all of this is called ‘Ghost Machine’, for television has become the technology through which the ghosts of my home haunt me on a weekly basis, and ghosts have always been difficult to make sense of. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1983. Bauman, Zygmunt. Globalization: The Human Consequences. Cambridge: Polity, 1998. ———. Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity, 2007. Blunt, Alison, and Robyn Dowling. Home. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Bruzzi, Stella. New Documentary: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Calhoun, Craig. Nations Matter: Culture, History, and the Cosmopolitan Dream. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Caravero, Adriana. Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood. Trans. Paul A. Kottman. London and New York: Routledge, 2000/1997. 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Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/08-mills.php>. APA Style Mills, B. (Aug. 2007) "What Happens When Your Home Is on Television?," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/08-mills.php>.

I sat alone on the beach under the shade of a big umbrella. My husband, Bill, and our three children were in the condo taking a break from the Florida sunshine. Dreamily, I gazed at the vast Gulf of Mexico, the brilliant blue sky stretching endlessly above. I was sitting about 50 feet from the surf, but I couldn't actually see the waves hitting the beach; I was almost blind. It was a windy day in late May and I loved feeling the ocean breeze sweeping over me. I imagined I could hear the waves crashing onto the surf, but the sound was only a memory. I was totally deaf. Although I had a cochlear implant and could hear the waves, the cry of sea gulls, and many other sounds with the technology, I wasn't wearing it at the moment and everything I heard was in my mind. As a child, my understanding of speech was better and my vision was clearer. My diagnosis was optic atrophy at age 5 and my vision gradually degenerated over the years. For unknown reasons, nerve damage caused hearing loss and during my teens, my hearing grew worse and worse until by the time I was ready for college, I was profoundly deaf. I chose to attend Gallaudet University because my high school teachers and my parents felt I would receive better services as a deaf and blind student. I feel it was a very good decision; when I entered Gallaudet, it was like entering a new and exhilarating world. Before attending Gallaudet, while I struggled to cope with hearing loss combined with severely low vision, my world grew smaller and smaller, not being able to communicate efficiently with others. At Gallaudet, I suddenly found I could communicate with almost anybody I met on campus using sign language. Thus, my self-confidence and independence grew as I proceeded to get a college education.It wasn't an easy route to follow. I didn't know Braille at the time and depended on using a CCTV (closed captioned television) electronic aid which magnified text, enabling me to read all my college books. I also relied on the assistance of a class aid who interpreted all my teachers' lectures and class discussions because I was unable to see people's signing unless they signed right in front of my face. It was slow going and often frustrating, trying to keep involved socially and keeping up with my coursework but when I was 13 years old, my vision specialist teacher who had worked with me from 5th grade until I graduated from high school, wrote a note for me saying, "Anything worthwhile seldom comes easy." The phrase stuck in my mind and I tried to follow this philosophy. In 1989 after 7 years of persistence, I graduated with a Bachelor's of Arts degree in psychology. With the B.A. in hand and having developed good communication skills with deaf and deaf-blind people using sign language and ASL (American Sign Language), I was ready to face the world. But I wasn't exactly ready; I knew I wanted a professional job working with deaf-blind people and the way to get there was to earn a master's degree. I applied for admission into Gallaudet's graduate school and was accepted into the vocational rehabilitation counselling program. While I thoroughly enjoyed graduate school experience, I got to work with my class mates one-on-one more often and there were a lot more hands-on activities, it became obvious to me that I wasn't prepared for graduate school. I needed to learn Braille and how to use Braille technology; my vision had worsened a lot since starting college. In addition, I needed a break from school and needed to gain experience in the working world. After completing one and a half years and earning 15 credit hours in the master's program, I left Gallaudet and found a job in Baltimore, Maryland.The job was with a new program for adults who were visually and hearing impaired and mentally disabled. My job was assisting the clients with independent living and work related skills. Most of the other staff were deaf, communicating via ASL. By then, I was skilled using tactile signing, putting my hand on the back of the signer's hand to follow movements by touch, and I made friends with co-workers. I felt grown up and independent working full-time, living in my own apartment, using the subway train and bus to travel to and from work. I didn't have any serious problems living on my own. There was a supermarket up the road to which I could walk or ride a bus. But I needed a taxi ride back to the apartment when I had more groceries than I could carry. I would leave a sign I made out of cardboard and wrote my address in big black numbers, on my apartment door to help the driver find my place. I used a white cane and upon moving to Baltimore, an Orientation and Mobility (O and M) teacher who worked with blind people, showing them how to travel in the city, taught me the route to my work place using the subway and bus. Thus, I was independent and knew my way to work as well as to a nearby shopping mall. One day as I stood on the subway station platform holding my white cane, waiting for my train, the opposite train pulled in. As I stood watching passengers hurrying to board, knowing my train would arrive soon on the other side, a woman ran up to me and started pulling my arm. I handed her my notebook and black marker I used for communicating with people in the public, telling her I couldn't hear and would she please write in large print? She frantically scribbled something, but I couldn't read the note. She then gave me back the pen and pad, grabbed my arm again and started pulling me towards the train. I refused to budge, gesturing towards the opposite tracks, clearly indicating I was waiting for the other train. Finally, she let go, dashed into the train before the doors closed. I watched the train pull away, sadly reflecting that some people who wanted to help, just didn't understand how to approach disabled people. As a deaf-blind traveller, it was my duty to help educate the general public how to assist disabled persons in a humane way. After I established my new life for a few months, Bill was offered a position in the same program and moved to Baltimore to join me. He had worked at the Helen Keller National Centre in New York where I met him while doing a summer internship there three years before. I was thrilled when he got the job working beside me and we got to know each other on a daily basis. We had been dating since we met although I was in college and he was working and living in New York and then Cleveland, Ohio. Bill being hearing and sighted, was skilled in sign language and communication techniques with deaf-blind people. He had a wonderful attitude towards disabled people and made me feel like a normal person who was capable of doing things. We shared a lot and were very comfortable with each other. After nearly six months together in Baltimore, we married in May 1992, several weeks before my 28th birthday.After our first year of marriage living in Maryland, Bill and I moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. We wanted to live closer to my family and parents, Ron and Judy Cummings, who lived in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, 176 miles north of Little Rock. I wanted to go back to school and entered the deaf education program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with the goal of becoming a teacher for deaf-blind students. I never dreamed I would have a deaf-blind child of my own one day. My vision and hearing loss were caused by nerve damage and no one else in my family nor Bill's had a similar disability.I was pregnant with our first child when I entered UALR. In spite of my growing belly, I enjoyed the teacher training experience. I worked with a deaf-blind 12-year-old student and her teacher at the Arkansas School for the Deaf; observed two energetic four-year-olds in the pre-school program. But when my son, Joe was born in June 1994, my world changed once again. School became less important and motherhood became the ultimate. As a deaf-blind person, I wanted to be the best mom within my abilities.I decided that establishing good communication with my child was an important aspect of being a deaf-blind mom. Bill was in full agreement and we would set Joe on the kitchen table in his infant carrier, reciting together in sign language, "The three Bears". I could see Joe's tiny fists and feet wave excitedly in the air as he watched us signing children's stories. I would encourage Joe to hold my fingers while I signed to him, trying to establish a tactile signing relationship. But he was almost two years old when he finally understood that he needed to sign into my hands. We were sitting at the table and I had a bag of cookies. I refused to give him one until he made the sign for "cookie" in my hand. I quickly rewarded him with a cookie and he got three or four each time he made the sign in my hand. Today at 16, Joe is an expert finger speller and can effectively communicate with me and his younger deaf-blind brother, Ben.When Joe was two and a half, I decided to explore a cochlear implant. It was 1996 and we were living in Poplar Bluff by then. My cousin, who was studying audiology, told me that people using cochlear implants were able to understand sound so well they didn't need good vision. I made an appointment with the St. Louis cochlear implant program and after being evaluated, I decided to go ahead. I am glad I have a cochlear implant. After months of practice I learned to use the new sound and was eventually able to understand many environmental sounds. I never regained the ability of understanding speech, though, but I could hear people's voices very clearly, the sound of laughter, birds singing, and many more. Being able to hear my children's voices is especially wonderful, even when they get noisy and I get a headache. That fall I went to Leader Dogs School for the Blind (LDSB) where I met Milo, a large yellow Labrador retriever. At LDSB I learned how to care for and work with a dog guide. Having Milo as my companion and guide was like stepping into another new and wonderful world of independence. With Milo, I could walk briskly and feel secure. Milo was a big help as a deaf-blind mom, too. With Milo's guiding help, it was wonderful following my children while they rode tricycles or bikes and the whole family enjoyed going out for walks together. Our second son, Ben, was born in February 1999. He was a perfectly healthy little boy and Bill and I were looking forward to raising two sons. Joe was four and a half years old when Ben was born and was fascinated in his new brother. But when Ben was 5 months old, he was diagnosed with Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis (LCH), a rare childhood disease and in some cases, fatal. It was a long, scary road we followed as Ben received treatment at the children's hospital in St. Louis which involved making the 150 mile trip almost weekly for chemotherapy and doctor check-ups. Through it all, Ben was a happy little boy, in spite of the terrible rash that affected his scalp and diaper area, a symptom of LCH. Bill and I knew that we had to do everything possible to help Ben. When he was a year old, his condition seemed stable enough for me to feel comfortable leaving my family for two months to study Braille and learn new technology skills at a program in Kansas City. My vision had deteriorated to a point where I could no longer use a CCTV.Bill's mom, Marie Reid, who lived in Cleveland, Ohio, made a special trip to stay at our home in Poplar Bluff to help Bill with the boys while I was gone. I was successful at the program, learning Braille, making a change from magnification to Braille technology. Upon returning home, I began looking for a job and found employment as a deaf-blind specialist in a new project in Mississippi. The job was in Tupelo and we moved to northern Mississippi, settling into a new life. We transferred Ben's treatment to St. Judes Children's hospital located in Memphis, 94 miles west of Tupelo. I went to work and Bill stayed home with the boys, which worked well. When Ben had to go to St. Judes every three weeks for chemotherapy, Bill was able to drive him. The treatment was successful, the rash had disappeared and there were no traces of LCH in Ben's blood tests. But when he was almost 3 years old, he was diagnosed with optic atrophy, the same eye disease I suffered from and an audiologist detected signs of inner ear hearing loss.Shocked at the news that our little son would grow up legally blind and perhaps become deaf, Bill and I had to rethink our future. We knew we wanted Ben to have a good life and as a deaf-blind child, he needed quality services. We chose to move to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania because I knew there were good services for deaf-blind people and I could function independently as a stay-home mom. In addition, Cleveland, Ohio, where Marie Reid and several of Bill's siblings lived, was a two hour's drive from Pittsburgh and living near family was important to us. With regret, I left my job opportunity and new friends and we re-located to Pittsburgh. We lived on a quiet street near Squirrel Hill and enrolled Joe into a near-by Catholic school. Ben received excellent early intervention services through the Pittsburgh public school, beginning Braille, using a white cane and tactile signing. The Pennsylvania services for the blind generously purchased a wonderful computer system and Braille display for me to use at home. I was able to communicate with Joe's and Ben's teachers and other contacts using e-mail. Ben's Braille teacher provided us with several print/Braille books which I read to the boys while Ben touched the tactile pictures. I made friends in the deaf and deaf-blind community and our family attended social events. Besides the social benefits of a deaf community, Pittsburgh offered a wonderful interpreting service and I was able to take Ben to doctor appointments knowing an interpreter would meet me at the hospital to assist with communication. I also found people who were willing to help me as volunteer SSPs (support Service Providers), persons whose role is to assist a deaf-blind person in any way, such as shopping, going to the bank, etc. Thus, I was able to function quite independently while Bill worked. Perhaps Bill and I were a bit crazy; after all, we had enough on our plate with a deaf-blind son and a deaf-blind mom, but love is a mysterious thing. In October 2003, Tim was born and our family was complete. Having two school-aged children and a baby on my hands was too much for me to handle alone. Bill was working and busy with culinary arts school. We realized we needed more help with the children, plus the high cost of living in the city was a struggle for us. We decided for the family's best interest, it would be better to move back to Poplar Bluff. After Joe and Ben were out of school in June, my mom flew out to Pittsburgh to escort them back to her home while Bill finished his externship for his culinary arts degree and in the late summer of 2004, we packed up our apartment, said good-bye to Pittsburgh, and drove to Missouri. The move was a good decision in many ways. Poplar Bluff, a rural town in south-eastern Missouri, has been my hometown since I was 10 years old. My extended family live there and the boys are thriving growing up among their cousins. Ben is receiving Braille and sign language services at public school and reads Braille faster than me!While both Bill and I are deeply satisfied knowing our children are happy, we have made personal sacrifices. Bill has given up his career satisfaction as a professional cook, needing to help look after the children and house. I have given up the benefits of city life such as interpreting and SSP services, not to mention the social benefits of a deaf community. But the children's well-being comes first, and I have found ways to fulfil my needs by getting involved with on-line groups for deaf-blind people, including writers and poets. I have taken a great interest in writing, especially children's stories and hope to establish a career as a writer. While I work on my computer, Bill keeps busy engaging the boys in various projects. They have built a screened-in tree house in the backyard where Ben and Tim like to sleep during warm summer nights.“It's almost 5 o'clock," Bill signed into my hand, rousing me from my thoughts. Time to prepare for our homeward journey the next day to Poplar Bluff, Missouri.Christy and Family

Refereed publications (also known as peer-reviewed) are the currency of academia, yet many PhD theses in Australia result in only one or two such papers. Typically, a doctoral thesis requires the candidate to present (and pass) a public Confirmation Seminar, around nine to twelve months into candidacy, in which a panel of the candidate’s supervisors and invited experts adjudicate upon whether the work is likely to continue and ultimately succeed in the goal of a coherent and original contribution to knowledge. A Final Seminar, also public and sometimes involving the traditional viva voce or oral defence of the thesis, is presented two or three months before approval is given to send the 80,000 to 100,000 word tome off for external examination. And that soul-destroying or elation-releasing examiner’s verdict can be many months in the delivery: a limbo-like period during which the candidate’s status as a student is ended and her or his receipt of any scholarship or funding guerdon is terminated with perfunctory speed. This is the only time most students spend seriously writing up their research for publication although, naturally, many are more involved in job hunting as they pin their hopes on passing the thesis examination.There is, however, a slightly more palatable alternative to this nail-biting process of the traditional PhD, and that is the PhD by Published Papers (also known as PhD by Publications or PhD by Published Works). The form of my own soon-to-be-submitted thesis, it permits the submission for examination of a collection of papers that have been refereed and accepted (or are in the process of being refereed) for publication in academic journals or books. Apart from the obvious benefits in getting published early in one’s (hopefully) burgeoning academic career, it also takes away a lot of the stress come final submission time. After all, I try to assure myself, the thesis examiners can’t really discredit the process of double-blind, peer-review the bulk of the thesis has already undergone: their job is to examine how well I’ve unified the papers into a cohesive thesis … right? But perhaps they should at least be wary, because, unfortunately, the requirements for this kind of PhD vary considerably from institution to institution and there have been some cases where the submitted work is of questionable quality compared to that produced by graduates from more demanding universities. Hence, this paper argues that in my subject area of interest—film and television studies—there is a huge range in the set requirements for doctorates, from universities that award the degree to film artists for prior published work that has undergone little or no academic scrutiny and has involved little or no on-campus participation to at least three Australian universities that require candidates be enrolled for a minimum period of full-time study and only submit scholarly work generated and published (or submitted for publication) during candidature. I would also suggest that uncertainty about where a graduate’s work rests on this continuum risks confusing a hard-won PhD by Published Papers with the sometimes risible honorary doctorate. Let’s begin by dredging the depths of those murky, quasi-academic waters to examine the occasionally less-than-salubrious honorary doctorate. The conferring of this degree is generally a recognition of an individual’s body of (usually published) work but is often conferred for contributions to knowledge or society in general that are not even remotely academic. The honorary doctorate does not usually carry with it the right to use the title “Dr” (although many self-aggrandising recipients in the non-academic world flout this unwritten code of conduct, and, indeed, Monash University’s Monash Magazine had no hesitation in describing its 2008 recipient, musician, screenwriter, and art-school-dropout Nick Cave, as “Dr Cave” (O’Loughlin)). Some shady universities even offer such degrees for sale or ‘donation’ and thus do great damage to that institution’s credibility as well as to the credibility of the degree itself. Such overseas “diploma mills”—including Ashwood University, Belford University, Glendale University and Suffield University—are identified by their advertising of “Life Experience Degrees,” for which a curriculum vitae outlining the prospective graduand’s oeuvre is accepted on face value as long as their credit cards are not rejected. An aspiring screen auteur simply specifies film and television as their major and before you can shout “Cut!” there’s a degree in the mail. Most of these pseudo-universities are not based in Australia but are perfectly happy to confer their ‘titles’ to any well-heeled, vanity-driven Australians capable of completing the online form. Nevertheless, many academics fear a similarly disreputable marketplace might develop here, and Norfolk Island-based Greenwich University presents a particularly illuminating example. Previously empowered by an Act of Parliament consented to by Senator Ian Macdonald, the then Minister for Territories, this “university” had the legal right to confer honorary degrees from 1998. The Act was eventually overridden by legislation passed in 2002, after a concerted effort by the Australian Universities Quality Agency Ltd. and the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee to force the accreditation requirements of the Australian Qualifications Framework upon the institution in question, thus preventing it from making degrees available for purchase over the Internet. Greenwich University did not seek re-approval and soon relocated to its original home of Hawaii (Brown). But even real universities flounder in similarly muddy waters when, unsolicited, they make dubious decisions to grant degrees to individuals they hold in high esteem. Although meaning well by not courting pecuniary gain, they nevertheless invite criticism over their choice of recipient for their honoris causa, despite the decision usually only being reached after a process of debate and discussion by university committees. Often people are rewarded, it seems, as much for their fame as for their achievements or publications. One such example of a celebrity who has had his onscreen renown recognised by an honorary doctorate is film and television actor/comedian Billy Connolly who was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters by The University of Glasgow in 2006, prompting Stuart Jeffries to complain that “something has gone terribly wrong in British academia” (Jeffries). Eileen McNamara also bemoans the levels to which some institutions will sink to in search of media attention and exposure, when she writes of St Andrews University in Scotland conferring an honorary doctorate to film actor and producer, Michael Douglas: “What was designed to acknowledge intellectual achievement has devolved into a publicity grab with universities competing for celebrity honorees” (McNamara). Fame as an actor (and the list gets even weirder when the scope of enquiry is widened beyond the field of film and television), seems to be an achievement worth recognising with an honorary doctorate, according to some universities, and this kind of discredit is best avoided by Australian institutions of higher learning if they are to maintain credibility. Certainly, universities down under would do well to follow elsewhere than in the footprints of Long Island University’s Southampton College. Perhaps the height of academic prostitution of parchments for the attention of mass media occurred when in 1996 this US school bestowed an Honorary Doctorate of Amphibious Letters upon that mop-like puppet of film and television fame known as the “muppet,” Kermit the Frog. Indeed, this polystyrene and cloth creation with an anonymous hand operating its mouth had its acceptance speech duly published (see “Kermit’s Acceptance Speech”) and the Long Island University’s Southampton College received much valuable press. After all, any publicity is good publicity. Or perhaps this furry frog’s honorary degree was a cynical stunt meant to highlight the ridiculousness of the practice? In 1986 a similar example, much closer to my own home, occurred when in anticipation and condemnation of the conferral of an honorary doctorate upon Prince Philip by Monash University in Melbourne, the “Members of the Monash Association of Students had earlier given a 21-month-old Chihuahua an honorary science degree” (Jeffries), effectively suggesting that the honorary doctorate is, in fact, a dog of a degree. On a more serious note, there have been honorary doctorates conferred upon far more worthy recipients in the field of film and television by some Australian universities. Indigenous film-maker Tracey Moffatt was awarded an honorary doctorate by Griffith University in November of 2004. Moffatt was a graduate of the Griffith University’s film school and had an excellent body of work including the films Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (1990) and beDevil (1993). Acclaimed playwright and screenwriter David Williamson was presented with an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by The University of Queensland in December of 2004. His work had previously picked up four Australian Film Institute awards for best screenplay. An Honorary Doctorate of Visual and Performing Arts was given to film director Fred Schepisi AO by The University of Melbourne in May of 2006. His films had also been earlier recognised with Australian Film Institute awards as well as the Golden Globe Best Miniseries or Television Movie award for Empire Falls in 2006. Director George Miller was crowned with an Honorary Doctorate in Film from the Australian Film, Television, and Radio School in April 2007, although he already had a medical doctor’s testamur on his wall. In May of this year, filmmaker George Gittoes, a fine arts dropout from The University of Sydney, received an honorary doctorate by The University of New South Wales. His documentaries, Soundtrack to War (2005) and Rampage (2006), screened at the Sydney and Berlin film festivals, and he has been employed by the Australian Government as an official war artist. Interestingly, the high quality screen work recognised by these Australian universities may have earned the recipients ‘real’ PhDs had they sought the qualification. Many of these film artists could have just as easily submitted their work for the degree of PhD by Published Papers at several universities that accept prior work in lieu of an original exegesis, and where a film is equated with a book or journal article. But such universities still invite comparisons of their PhDs by Published Papers with honorary doctorates due to rather too-easy-to-meet criteria. The privately funded Bond University, for example, recommends a minimum full-time enrolment of just three months and certainly seems more lax in its regulations than other Antipodean institution: a healthy curriculum vitae and payment of the prescribed fee (currently AUD$24,500 per annum) are the only requirements. Restricting my enquiries once again to the field of my own research, film and television, I note that Dr. Ingo Petzke achieved his 2004 PhD by Published Works based upon films produced in Germany well before enrolling at Bond, contextualized within a discussion of the history of avant-garde film-making in that country. Might not a cynic enquire as to how this PhD significantly differs from an honorary doctorate? Although Petzke undoubtedly paid his fees and met all of Bond’s requirements for his thesis entitled Slow Motion: Thirty Years in Film, one cannot criticise that cynic for wondering if Petzke’s films are indeed equivalent to a collection of refereed papers. It should be noted that Bond is not alone when it comes to awarding candidates the PhD by Published Papers for work published or screened in the distant past. Although yet to grant it in the area of film or television, Swinburne University of Technology (SUT) is an institution that distinctly specifies its PhD by Publications is to be awarded for “research which has been carried out prior to admission to candidature” (8). Similarly, the Griffith Law School states: “The PhD (by publications) is awarded to established researchers who have an international reputation based on already published works” (1). It appears that Bond is no solitary voice in the academic wilderness, for SUT and the Griffith Law School also apparently consider the usual milestones of Confirmation and Final Seminars to be unnecessary if the so-called candidate is already well published. Like Bond, Griffith University (GU) is prepared to consider a collection of films to be equivalent to a number of refereed papers. Dr Ian Lang’s 2002 PhD (by Publication) thesis entitled Conditional Truths: Remapping Paths To Documentary ‘Independence’ contains not refereed, scholarly articles but the following videos: Wheels Across the Himalaya (1981); Yallambee, People of Hope (1986); This Is What I Call Living (1988); The Art of Place: Hanoi Brisbane Art Exchange (1995); and Millennium Shift: The Search for New World Art (1997). While this is a most impressive body of work, and is well unified by appropriate discussion within the thesis, the cynic who raised eyebrows at Petzke’s thesis might also be questioning this thesis: Dr Lang’s videos all preceded enrolment at GU and none have been refereed or acknowledged with major prizes. Certainly, the act of releasing a film for distribution has much in common with book publishing, but should these videos be considered to be on a par with academic papers published in, say, the prestigious and demanding journal Screen? While recognition at awards ceremonies might arguably correlate with peer review there is still the question as to how scholarly a film actually is. Of course, documentary films such as those in Lang’s thesis can be shown to be addressing gaps in the literature, as is the expectation of any research paper, but the onus remains on the author/film-maker to demonstrate this via a detailed contextual review and a well-written, erudite argument that unifies the works into a cohesive thesis. This Lang has done, to the extent that suspicious cynic might wonder why he chose not to present his work for a standard PhD award. Another issue unaddressed by most institutions is the possibility that the publications have been self-refereed or refereed by the candidate’s editorial colleagues in a case wherein the papers appear in a book the candidate has edited or co-edited. Dr Gillian Swanson’s 2004 GU thesis Towards a Cultural History of Private Life: Sexual Character, Consuming Practices and Cultural Knowledge, which addresses amongst many other cultural artefacts the film Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean 1962), has nine publications: five of which come from two books she co-edited, Nationalising Femininity: Culture, Sexuality and Cinema in Britain in World War Two, (Gledhill and Swanson 1996) and Deciphering Culture: Ordinary Curiosities and Subjective Narratives (Crisp et al 2000). While few would dispute the quality of Swanson’s work, the persistent cynic might wonder if these five papers really qualify as refereed publications. The tacit understanding of a refereed publication is that it is blind reviewed i.e. the contributor’s name is removed from the document. Such a system is used to prevent bias and favouritism but this level of anonymity might be absent when the contributor to a book is also one of the book’s editors. Of course, Dr Swanson probably took great care to distance herself from the refereeing process undertaken by her co-editors, but without an inbuilt check, allegations of cronyism from unfriendly cynics may well result. A related factor in making comparisons of different university’s PhDs by Published Papers is the requirements different universities have about the standard of the journal the paper is published in. It used to be a simple matter in Australia: the government’s Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) held a Register of Refereed Journals. If your benefactor in disseminating your work was on the list, your publications were of near-unquestionable quality. Not any more: DEST will no longer accept nominations for listing on the Register and will not undertake to rule on whether a particular journal article meets the HERDC [Higher Education Research Data Collection] requirements for inclusion in publication counts. HEPs [Higher Education Providers] have always had the discretion to determine if a publication produced in a journal meets the requirements for inclusion in the HERDC regardless of whether or not the journal was included on the Register of Refereed Journals. As stated in the HERDC specifications, the Register is not an exhaustive list of all journals which satisfy the peer-review requirements (DEST). The last listing for the DEST Register of Refereed Journals was the 3rd of February 2006, making way for a new tiered list of academic journals, which is currently under review in the Australian tertiary education sector (see discussion of this development in the Redden and Mitchell articles in this issue). In the interim, some university faculties created their own rankings of journals, but not the Faculty of Creative Industries at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) where I am studying for my PhD by Published Papers. Although QUT does not have a list of ranked journals for a candidate to submit papers to, it is otherwise quite strict in its requirements. The QUT University Regulations state, “Papers submitted as a PhD thesis must be closely related in terms of subject matter and form a cohesive research narrative” (QUT PhD regulation 14.1.2). Thus there is the requirement at QUT that apart from the usual introduction, methodology and literature review, an argument must be made as to how the papers present a sustained research project via “an overarching discussion of the main features linking the publications” (14.2.12). It is also therein stated that it should be an “account of research progress linking the research papers” (4.2.6). In other words, a unifying essay must make an argument for consideration of the sometimes diversely published papers as a cohesive body of work, undertaken in a deliberate journey of research. In my own case, an aural auteur analysis of sound in the films of Rolf de Heer, I argue that my published papers (eight in total) represent a journey from genre analysis (one paper) to standard auteur analysis (three papers) to an argument that sound should be considered in auteur analysis (one paper) to the major innovation of the thesis, aural auteur analysis (three papers). It should also be noted that unlike Bond, GU or SUT, the QUT regulations for the standard PhD still apply: a Confirmation Seminar, Final Seminar and a minimum two years of full-time enrolment (with a minimum of three months residency in Brisbane) are all compulsory. Such milestones and sine qua non ensure the candidate’s academic progress and intellectual development such that she or he is able to confidently engage in meaningful quodlibets regarding the thesis’s topic. Another interesting and significant feature of the QUT guidelines for this type of degree is the edict that papers submitted must be “published, accepted or submitted during the period of candidature” (14.1.1). Similarly, the University of Canberra (UC) states “The articles or other published material must be prepared during the period of candidature” (10). Likewise, Edith Cowan University (ECU) will confer its PhD by Publications to those candidates whose thesis consists of “only papers published in refereed scholarly media during the period of enrolment” (2). In other words, one cannot simply front up to ECU, QUT, or UC with a résumé of articles or films published over a lifetime of writing or film-making and ask for a PhD by Published Papers. Publications of the candidate prepared prior to commencement of candidature are simply not acceptable at these institutions and such PhDs by Published Papers from QUT, UC and ECU are entirely different to those offered by Bond, GU and SUT. Furthermore, without a requirement for a substantial period of enrolment and residency, recipients of PhDs by Published Papers from Bond, GU, or SUT are unlikely to have participated significantly in the research environment of their relevant faculty and peers. Such newly minted doctors may be as unfamiliar with the campus and its research activities as the recipient of an honorary doctorate usually is, as he or she poses for the media’s cameras en route to the glamorous awards ceremony. Much of my argument in this paper is built upon the assumption that the process of refereeing a paper (or for that matter, a film) guarantees a high level of academic rigour, but I confess that this premise is patently naïve, if not actually flawed. Refereeing can result in the rejection of new ideas that conflict with the established opinions of the referees. Interdisciplinary collaboration can be impeded and the lack of referee’s accountability is a potential problem, too. It can also be no less nail-biting a process than the examination of a finished thesis, given that some journals take over a year to complete the refereeing process, and some journal’s editorial committees have recognised this shortcoming. Despite being a mainstay of its editorial approach since 1869, the prestigious science journal, Nature, which only publishes about 7% of its submissions, has led the way with regard to varying the procedure of refereeing, implementing in 2006 a four-month trial period of ‘Open Peer Review’. Their website states, Authors could choose to have their submissions posted on a preprint server for open comments, in parallel with the conventional peer review process. Anyone in the field could then post comments, provided they were prepared to identify themselves. Once the usual confidential peer review process is complete, the public ‘open peer review’ process was closed and the editors made their decision about publication with the help of all reports and comments (Campbell). Unfortunately, the experiment was unpopular with both authors and online peer reviewers. What the Nature experiment does demonstrate, however, is that the traditional process of blind refereeing is not yet perfected and can possibly evolve into something less problematic in the future. Until then, refereeing continues to be the best system there is for applying structured academic scrutiny to submitted papers. With the reforms of the higher education sector, including forced mergers of universities and colleges of advanced education and the re-introduction of university fees (carried out under the aegis of John Dawkins, Minister for Employment, Education and Training from 1987 to 1991), and the subsequent rationing of monies according to research dividends (calculated according to numbers of research degree conferrals and publications), there has been a veritable explosion in the number of institutions offering PhDs in Australia. But the general public may not always be capable of differentiating between legitimately accredited programs and diploma mills, given that the requirements for the first differ substantially. From relatively easily obtainable PhDs by Published Papers at Bond, GU and SUT to more rigorous requirements at ECU, QUT and UC, there is undoubtedly a huge range in the demands of degrees that recognise a candidate’s published body of work. The cynical reader may assume that with this paper I am simply trying to shore up my own forthcoming graduation with a PhD by Published papers from potential criticisms that it is on par with a ‘purchased’ doctorate. Perhaps they are right, for this is a new degree in QUT’s Creative Industries faculty and has only been awarded to one other candidate (Dr Marcus Foth for his 2006 thesis entitled Towards a Design Methodology to Support Social Networks of Residents in Inner-City Apartment Buildings). But I believe QUT is setting a benchmark, along with ECU and UC, to which other universities should aspire. In conclusion, I believe further efforts should be undertaken to heighten the differences in status between PhDs by Published Papers generated during enrolment, PhDs by Published Papers generated before enrolment and honorary doctorates awarded for non-academic published work. Failure to do so courts cynical comparison of all PhD by Published Papers with unearnt doctorates bought from Internet shysters. References Brown, George. “Protecting Australia’s Higher Education System: A Proactive Versus Reactive Approach in Review (1999–2004).” Proceedings of the Australian Universities Quality Forum 2004. Australian Universities Quality Agency, 2004. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.auqa.edu.au/auqf/2004/program/papers/Brown.pdf>. Campbell, Philip. “Nature Peer Review Trial and Debate.” Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science. December 2006. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/> Crisp, Jane, Kay Ferres, and Gillian Swanson, eds. Deciphering Culture: Ordinary Curiosities and Subjective Narratives. London: Routledge, 2000. Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). “Closed—Register of Refereed Journals.” Higher Education Research Data Collection, 2008. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/research_sector/online_forms_services/ higher_education_research_data_ collection.htm>. Edith Cowan University. “Policy Content.” Postgraduate Research: Thesis by Publication, 2003. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.ecu.edu.au/GPPS/policies_db/tmp/ac063.pdf>. Gledhill, Christine, and Gillian Swanson, eds. Nationalising Femininity: Culture, Sexuality and Cinema in Britain in World War Two. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1996. Griffith Law School, Griffith University. Handbook for Research Higher Degree Students. 24 March 2004. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.griffith.edu.au/centre/slrc/pdf/rhdhandbook.pdf>. Jeffries, Stuart. “I’m a celebrity, get me an honorary degree!” The Guardian 6 July 2006. 11 June 2008 ‹http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/comment/story/0,,1813525,00.html>. Kermit the Frog. “Kermit’s Commencement Address at Southampton Graduate Campus.” Long Island University News 19 May 1996. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.southampton.liu.edu/news/commence/1996/kermit.htm>. McNamara, Eileen. “Honorary senselessness.” The Boston Globe 7 May 2006. ‹http://www. boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/05/07/honorary_senselessness/>. O’Loughlin, Shaunnagh. “Doctor Cave.” Monash Magazine 21 (May 2008). 13 Aug. 2008 ‹http://www.monash.edu.au/pubs/monmag/issue21-2008/alumni/cave.html>. Queensland University of Technology. “Presentation of PhD Theses by Published Papers.” Queensland University of Technology Doctor of Philosophy Regulations (IF49). 12 Oct. 2007. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.mopp.qut.edu.au/Appendix/appendix09.jsp#14%20Presentation %20of%20PhD%20Theses>. Swinburne University of Technology. Research Higher Degrees and Policies. 14 Nov. 2007. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.swinburne.edu.au/corporate/registrar/ppd/docs/RHDpolicy& procedure.pdf>. University of Canberra. Higher Degrees by Research: Policy and Procedures (The Gold Book). 7.3.3.27 (a). 15 Nov. 2004. 11 June 2008 ‹http://www.canberra.edu.au/research/attachments/ goldbook/Pt207_AB20approved3220arp07.pdf>.

As an alternative to conventional tracking trough systems, one may use line focus Fresnel reflector systems. Before the current Australian work, each field of Fresnel reflectors was directed to a single tower. However, efficient systems of very high ground utilisation can be set up if a field of reflectors uses multiple receivers on different towers (Mills and Morrison, 1999). This paper describes an Australian line focus system, called the Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR) system and a project to produce an initial 25MWe solar array. The array will be used as a retrofit preheater for a coal fired generating plant. Future use of such arrays as stand alone high capacity factor powerplants in New South Wales are discussed.