Water use and the water cycle
Water is arguably the most important physical resource as it is the one that is essential to human survival. Understanding the global water cycle and how we use water is essential to planning a sustainable source of water for the future.
First Taste History & Culture in Indigenous Alcohol Use
This public lecture challenges some of the common beliefs that surround Indigenous Australians and the history of 'grog', by discussing the findings of the newly released publication First Taste: How Indigenous Australians Learned About Grog by Maggie Brady (published by the Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation). This publication was released the morning before the lecture and is a series of six books. The series is designed to educate and empower Indigenous people on alcohol issues,
Making decisions
Do you hate making decisions? Does the ability of others to make snap decisions really frustrate you? This unit will help you understand some of the processes involved in decision making. Attention to the psychology of decision making and the social context in which decisions are made can improve your understanding of others and yourself.
The market-led organisation
Marketing means different things to different people. How do you decide who to aim a campaign at? If you already have a background in marketing, this unit will improve your understanding of market orientation and (going to market). It also assesses the importance of managing key internal and external relationships.
Dialogue, Justice and Peace
Our interdependent world creates both new opportunities and new challenges. The gravest danger today is insecurity, which has taken on global proportions. In order to deal with the threat of this insecurity, it is imperative for the world community to engage in constructive dialogue, but this must be based on two foundations: a deep comprehension of civilisations, religions and cultures; and justice. Indeed, in our insecure world, full of extremism and conflict, only serious di
Human Evolution and the Atmosphere: A Return to the Pliocene?
The evolution of Australopithecines and subsequently the Genus Homo from about 4.5 million years ago was intimately related to an overall cooling trend associated with orbital forcing of the Milankovic cycles, natural long-term rhythms of global climate change caused by changes in the position of Earth relative to the sun. These included extreme conditions which forced humans to migrate and adapt through development of sophisticated communications (language) and technological innovation,
Inaugural Crawford-Nishi Lecture on Japan and Australia: A Vision for the Future
The Minister for Foreign Affairs discusses where the Australian Government is taking a relationship that Prime Minister Aso recently described as having reached the most productive time in its history. Particularly focussing on:
quick, coordinated action through the G20 to get the global economy working again
enhancing our already close economic relationship through the early conclusion of a comprehensive free trade agreement
turning our bilateral defence cooperation to efforts to improve
Clear Thinking about National Security: Why is it so Hard?
We often behave as if National Security is too important to think clearly about. Some risks are ignored, while others are exaggerated. Policies are adopted to meet threats without any clear idea of what exactly the threat is, how serious it might be, and how it could most cost-effectively be addressed. Major decisions are made on the most slender of bases: invading Iraq, rebuilding Afghanistan, toughening terrorism laws, buying battleships, have all been undertaken without due
The Global Migration of Skill
This lecture examined the growing phenomenon of international skilled migration with particular attention to its impact on developing countries. A framework was developed for understanding the different measures of ‘brain drain' and how they are related to wage and income differences across countries around the world. Based on new data sources, differences in the prices of skill across countries were estimated and were used to explore how skill price differentials affect the magnitud
China and the West in the 21st Century
China’s phenomenal economic growth is paralleled in scale and speed
only by the rise of the United States between the Civil War and the
First World War in 1914. Since 1978 the economy has grown ninefold, and
is set to become the second largest within a decade. From inauspicious
beginnings, China has become a $2 trillion economy because the
Communist Party has channelled huge savings into investment, and
encouraged millions of workers into its booming cities, the biggest
migration in histor
Climate Change and the Australian Reform Agenda
This lecture is the ninth annual Sir Leslie Melville Lecture presented by the Australian National University. The introduction of an emissions trading scheme in Australia constitutes a significant economic reform. Unlike other key reforms with such a broad impact across the economy, there has not been a broad consensus within the economics profession on the merits of this reform or the general approach to how it should be implemented. In part this is due to the complex and multidimensional natur
Sailing into the Final Frontier: The Giant Magellan Telescope
In the centuries-old quest to refine human understanding of the
universe in which we live, the tools we use to throw light at the dim
frontiers of knowledge are evolving rapidly. Australian astronomers,
engineers, and technologists have just embarked an international
partnership to design and build the most powerful extension to the
human eye yet known – the Giant Magellan Telescope.
Scheduled
for completion in 2016, this telescope will be able to detect cosmic
objects 75 times fainter tha
Dimensions of the Global Food Crisis: Session 11
Barry Coates, Oxfam, New Zealand presents "Need and greed: Food security, trade and global supply chains". 44th Otago Foreign Policy School - Salmond Hall, Dunedin, New Zealand. Friday 26 June to Sunday 28 June 2009.
China's Ascent: New Superpower or New Global System? Session 13
Dr Marco Buente, German Institute of Global and Area Studies presents "China's Policy towards the ASEAN organisation". 45th Otago Foreign Policy School - Salmond Hall, Dunedin, New Zealand. Friday 25 June to Sunday 25 June 2010.
Interview with the Vice Chancellor, Dr John Hood
Dr John Hood talks about the impact of the global recession on universities and how they themselves will contribute to the solution. He also presents his vision for the future of higher education.
5 Questions and answers
Human communication is vastly more complex than that of any other species we know about. It is so complex that linguists are only just beginning to identify the processes in the brain that are related to understanding language. This unit looks at how language is understood by taking an interdisciplinary approach.
2.4 From phoneme to meaning: the semantic problem
Human communication is vastly more complex than that of any other species we know about. It is so complex that linguists are only just beginning to identify the processes in the brain that are related to understanding language. This unit looks at how language is understood by taking an interdisciplinary approach.
2.1 Preliminaries
Human communication is vastly more complex than that of any other species we know about. It is so complex that linguists are only just beginning to identify the processes in the brain that are related to understanding language. This unit looks at how language is understood by taking an interdisciplinary approach.
Software development for enterprise systems
Enterprise systems are software applications that automate and integrate all many of the key business processes of an organisation. With some understanding of software development, you will learn about current development practices for this type of system and develop relevant skills to apply them to real-world problems. You will develop core skills in object-oriented analysis and design, allowing you to develop software that is fit for purpose, reusable and amenable to change.
Acknowledgements
The ‘Big Bang’ is said to be the origin of our Universe. This unit will help you to comprehend what happened in the moments immediately after the Big Bang and during the initial cooling period. You will also gain an understanding of how this event turned in to the Universe we live in today.
