Funding Indigenous organisations: improving governance performance through innovations in public finance management in remote Australia

This review explains the context and past experience of public finance reform and its effects on governance in remote Indigenous communities. Preamble The poor development standards experienced by Indigenous Australians, especially in places remote from urban areas, are regularly characterised in public and academic discourse as a crisis, with calls for ‘new approaches, new thinking and new commitment’. This paper focuses on the modalities used to manage the conversion of public financing of Indigenous organisations into activities designed to impact on these standards. By modalities we mean the policies and instruments that structure and govern how funding is delivered and aligned with government priorities, including administrative, financing and accountability mechanisms. In this review, block funding was identified for its potential to reform the public finance system to create enabling conditions for enhanced Indigenous governance. Building a devolved accountability framework around the organisation, rather than the centralised grant program, is a sensible alternative to multiple grants and ineffective cycles of grant risk management and attendant accountability measures. As block funding has never been explicitly trialled in Australia, there is a lack of evaluations and other evidence for its efficacy in remote Indigenous contexts. In comparison, the international development literature documents a wealth of experience of the success and shortcoming of generically similar financing modalities. The paper therefore considers the circumstances under which block funding could be usefully adapted to the unique context of remote Indigenous communities in Australia. This review examines the literature and evidence from two principal sources. First and foremost, lessons are distilled and the context defined from a wide array of experience over the past two decades across remote Australia. This is then compared with the evidence from similar contexts abroad; that is, countries and regions that are remote from centres of economic wealth and political power, where populations are generally relatively isolated, scattered and highly diverse. These are often poorly served by administrative and service delivery arrangements due to the impost of great distances and high costs. In these settings, whether abroad or in Australia, local authorities are often referred to as being ‘fragile’ and ‘weak’. Two quite different approaches to handling public finances can be found in these contexts: One is to centralise responsibilities to govern public finances and to institute a host of compliance and reporting obligations on local authorities to manage perceived risks to fiduciary standards. This approach can be an effective way to respond to crises in the short term, but over time, this response tends to corrode local capability and introduce perverse incentives to ‘break the rules’ and ‘game the system’ to respond to local needs and demands. A second, contending approach has developed, particularly in the past decade. This approach shifts responsibility in the direction of local authorities and organisations for a specific range of services and functions. It also negotiates mutually acceptable agreements about the conditions under which public monies can be used and how performance will be jointly assessed. This paper synthesises Australian and international experiences, then suggests avenues for future engagement, including both new experimentation and upscaling of already promising precedents

Algunas pautas didácticas para la introducción del concepto de límite finito

En la práctica docente en matemática y específicamente con relación al concepto de límite, es posible observar algunas dificultades que ocurren en situaciones de su enseñanza y aprendizaje. En este trabajo se analizan algunas de esas dificultades y se presenta una propuesta de trabajo, que fue puesta en práctica en el aula con alumnos de primer año de una universidad argentina, para la introducción del concepto de límite finito de una sucesión de números reales. La experiencia derivada de la aplicación de la propuesta sugiere la promoción de una mejor comprensión del concepto de límite por parte de los estudiantes

Molecular architecture of the human protein deacetylase Sirt1 and its regulation by AROS and resveratrol

Sirtuins are NAD+-dependent protein deacetylases regulating metabolism, stress responses and ageing processes. Among the seven mammalian Sirtuins, Sirt1 is the physiologically best-studied isoform. It regulates nuclear functions such as chromatin remodelling and gene transcription, and it appears to mediate beneficial effects of a low calorie diet which can partly be mimicked by the Sirt1 activating polyphenol resveratrol. The molecular details of Sirt1 domain architecture and regulation, however, are little understood. It has a unique N-terminal domain and CTD (C-terminal domain) flanking a conserved Sirtuin catalytic core and these extensions are assumed to mediate Sirt1-specific features such as homo-oligomerization and activation by resveratrol. To analyse the architecture of human Sirt1 and functions of its N- and C-terminal extensions, we recombinantly produced Sirt1 and Sirt1 deletion constructs as well as the AROS (active regulator of Sirt1) protein. We then studied Sirt1 features such as molecular size, secondary structure and stimulation by small molecules and AROS. We find that Sirt1 is monomeric and has extended conformations in its flanking domains, likely disordered especially in the N-terminus, resulting in an increased hydrodynamic radius. Nevertheless, both termini increase Sirt1 deacetylase activity, indicating a regulatory function. We also find an unusual but defined conformation for AROS protein, which fails, however, to stimulate Sirt1. Resveratrol, in contrast, activates the Sirt1 catalytic core independent of the terminal domains, indicating a binding site within the catalytic core and suggesting that small molecule activators for other isoforms might also exist

A Lexically Driven Taxonomy for Political Campaign Interactions on Twitter

Political candidates continuously develop new techniques for communicating to their targeted publics effectively through social media. One way to do so is through Twitter. This exploratory study maps Aristotelian rhetorical appeals to electoral tweets issued in the 2016 presidential election. Using automatic and human coding, the study proposes four different types of Twitter rhetorical appeals. Results show 58.8% of tweets issued during the presidential election are captured by the rhetorical taxonomy. The findings also show that the primary appeals both candidates use in both mass and salience did not always influence intention to vote. Finally, there are correlations between contextually relevant appeal use and an increase in public intention to vote. The appeal with the strongest positive correlation between changes in public opinion and rhetorical appeal use is the deliberative appeal, suggesting politicians need to focus on crafting messages foreshadowing the future. The major contribution of this study is in showing how a traditional persuasive framework can be applied to explain a modern political communication medium’s impact in influencing public opinion

Climate Change and the Myth of the Adirondack Asbestos Forest

The history of the Adirondacks offers a valuable lesson about what can happen when widespread commercial activity intersects with episodic climate events to cause extreme forest fire danger. New York State’s response to such events has been largely successful in the past, leading to a myth that the Adirondack forest is unlikely to burn because it is an “asbestos forest”

Observing the Abundance of Avian Families in Different Layers of Lowland Floodplain Rainforest at Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica, Peru

This research project aims to observe the abundance and diversity of avian families and subfamilies in the Peruvian Amazon basin at Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica at Madre de Dios, Peru by performing bird surveys, fixed-radius point counts, and placing down camera traps. Over a one-week period, we will observe species of the floodplain understory and canopy to observe niche separation and specialization. In addition, we hope to see species of conservation concern and ecological importance, such as the endemic black-faced cotinga and the pale-winged trumpeter, along with indicator species, to analyze the health of the rainforest near Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica