University of Western Australia

About: University of Western Australia is a education organization based out in Perth, Western Australia, Australia. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 29613 authors who have published 87405 publications receiving 3064466 citations. The organization is also known as: UWA & University of WA.

'Virtual' intimacies? Families communicating across transnational contexts

Abstract: Many analyses of the uses of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) focus on factors such as gender, class and communication infrastructures in explaining how and whether people communicate across distance. In this article, I argue that such analyses fail to capture the full complexity of ICT use. I use the results of a large qualitative study of transnational families, conducted in Australia, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Iran, Singapore and New Zealand, to examine how and whether kin maintain contact across time and space. The research demonstrates that ICTs are more available for some people than for others. However, also and possibly more important in the decisions people make about using particular com- munication technologies are the social and cultural contexts of family life, which render some ICTs more desirable than others at specific points in time. Acknowledg- ing this provides an important corrective to economic analyses of transnationalism, and contributes to theorizing and documenting the role of ICTs in the maintenance of transnational social networks. When Arturo Escobar (1994) welcomed us to Cyberia, he was encouraging anthro- pologists to step outside a discipline that continued to be ordered by concerns with the differences between the modern and the savage. Instead, he asked us to use the new attention to cyberculture - specifically, information and communication technologies and biotechnologies - to rejuvenate what anthropology is really about: 'the story of life as it has been lived and is being lived at this very moment' (Escobar 1994: 223). The terms 'cyberia' and 'cyberculture' invoked the radical newness of the contexts that anthropologists might begin to explore as they charted the implications, con- sequences and contexts of the construction of these new technologies. In Escobar's account, cyberculture is acknowledged as emerging out of the familiar sociocultural environment of modernity. However, Cyberia is also presented as an exotic new land, in which we might imagine a future of cyborgs, cyberspaces and cyberpunks, among other exciting innovations. In this exotic world, the virtual competes with and in many respects supplants the 'real' world even as it evades being restricted to that world. This prospect of a virtual environment allows Escobar to anticipate utopian visions of a future where 'anthropological studies of cybercultures can help us to imagine contexts in which possibilities for relating to technoculture that do not exacerbate the power imbalances in society might emerge' (Escobar 1994: 221).

Habitat Fragmentation and Landscape Change: An Ecological and Conservation Synthesis

Abstract: Habitat loss and degradation that comes as a result of human activity is the single biggest threat to biodiversity in the world today. \"Habitat Fragmentation and Landscape Change\" is a groundbreaking work that brings together a wealth of information from a wide range of sources to define the ecological problems caused by landscape change and to highlight the relationships among landscape change, habitat fragmentation, and biodiversity conservation. The book: synthesizes a large body of information from the scientific literature; considers key theoretical principles for examining and predicting effects; examines the range of effects that can arise; explores ways of mitigating impacts; reviews approaches to studying the problem; and discusses knowledge gaps and future areas for research and management. \"Habitat Fragmentation and Landscape Change\" offers a unique mix of theoretical and practical information, outlining general principles and approaches and illustrating those principles with case studies from around the world. It represents a definitive overview and synthesis on the full range of topics that fall under the widely used but often vaguely defined term \"habitat fragmentation.\

Predicting climate-driven regime shifts versus rebound potential in coral reefs

Abstract: Climate-induced coral bleaching is among the greatest current threats to coral reefs, causing widespread loss of live coral cover1. Conditions under which reefs bounce back from bleaching events or shift from coral to algal dominance are unknown, making it difficult to predict and plan for differing reef responses under climate change2. Here we document and predict long-term reef responses to a major climate-induced coral bleaching event that caused unprecedented region-wide mortality of Indo-Pacific corals. Following loss of >90% live coral cover, 12 of 21 reefs recovered towards pre-disturbance live coral states, while nine reefs underwent regime shifts to fleshy macroalgae. Functional diversity of associated reef fish communities shifted substantially following bleaching, returning towards pre-disturbance structure on recovering reefs, while becoming progressively altered on regime shifting reefs. We identified threshold values for a range of factors that accurately predicted ecosystem response to the bleaching event. Recovery was favoured when reefs were structurally complex and in deeper water, when density of juvenile corals and herbivorous fishes was relatively high and when nutrient loads were low. Whether reefs were inside no-take marine reserves had no bearing on ecosystem trajectory. Although conditions governing regime shift or recovery dynamics were diverse, pre-disturbance quantification of simple factors such as structural complexity and water depth accurately predicted ecosystem trajectories. These findings foreshadow the likely divergent but predictable outcomes for reef ecosystems in response to climate change, thus guiding improved management and adaptation.

Probabilistic Forecasting of Wind Power Generation Using Extreme Learning Machine

Abstract: Accurate and reliable forecast of wind power is essential to power system operation and control. However, due to the nonstationarity of wind power series, traditional point forecasting can hardly be accurate, leading to increased uncertainties and risks for system operation. This paper proposes an extreme learning machine (ELM)-based probabilistic forecasting method for wind power generation. To account for the uncertainties in the forecasting results, several bootstrap methods have been compared for modeling the regression uncertainty, based on which the pairs bootstrap method is identified with the best performance. Consequently, a new method for prediction intervals formulation based on the ELM and the pairs bootstrap is developed. Wind power forecasting has been conducted in different seasons using the proposed approach with the historical wind power time series as the inputs alone. The results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective for probabilistic forecasting of wind power generation with a high potential for practical applications in power systems.