Employment outcomes of tertiary international students

Research into workplace readiness and employment outcomes for international students and graduates who seek to work in Australia has been conducted by The Centre for the Study of Higher Education.

The research found that the employment outcomes of international students are not as good as their Australian domestic counterparts and they face greater challenges in finding full-time employment after graduation.

Two main recommendations resulted:

• policies and practices are required to enhance english language proficiency and workplace readiness within educational institutions


• international students need to become aware of the value of the experiences and skills they can develop outside of their studies.

Read the full report here.

CSU publishes in 'Heart and vessels'

Research article co-authored by CSU Professor Lexin Wang titled ‘Interleukin-2 enhances the cytotoxic activity of circulating natural killer cells in patients with chronic heart failure’ was published in ‘Heart and Vessels’ in July this year.

Access this article in the CSU Research Output (CRO)., and also.......

'Amylose content and chemical modification effects on thermoplastic starch from maize – processing and characterisation using conventional polymer equipment'. This was co-written by Senior Lecturer, Peter Torley, and was published in 'Carbohydrate Polymers'. Access in the CRO.

Research Opportunity and Performance Evidence

‘The Australian Research Council wants to ditch its over-reliance on track record in the peer review process and instead take a broader view of a researcher's capabilities in a bid to make teaching and early-career academics more competitive.

In a consultation paper released this week for the first review of the system since it started in 2001, the ARC canvasses giving more weight to the views of specialist reviewers. It also proposes new incentives to counter the chronic shortage of reviewers, such as reporting reviewer performance to universities to boost promotion credentials.’

Trounsen, A. (2009, September 16). ARC for less stress on track record, The Australian, Retrieved from http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,26078248-12332,00.html

Gender (in)equality in participation and opportunity: the case of Australia

This research discusses women and men's labour market participation, remuneration, and advancement which is measured in the 'Gender Gap Index.' Text adapted from AustralianPolicyOnline. Read some interesting results in this report

Monsters from the Deep

Strange beasts are appearing around the world. This week alone, there was a 'Snake with a hand' found in China by an elderly woman, and a 'Gollum-like' creature discovered by a group of teenagers in Panama. The Gollum-creature in particular strikes a remarkable resemblance to the notorious 'Montauk Monster' which appeared in New York a few years ago.

What are these creatures, and where did they come from? Are they aliens? Mutations? Are they clever hoaxes? I'd like to think that they are a new generation of mythical creatures, worthy of being celebrated much like the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot.

As such, I'd like to present some of CSU Libraries collection of books relating to mythical creatures, perfect for school holiday reading or heavy research (depending on your line of thinking).


The Abominable Snowman Adventure by Ralph Izzard
Mythical Creature: Yeti
Check Availability

The Cave of the Cyclops by Homer
Mythical Creature: Cyclops
Check Availability

The Dragons Eye by Dugald Steer
Mythical Creature: Dragon
Check Availability

The Kraken by Gary Crew and Marc McBride
Mythical Creature: Kraken
Check Availability

The Mermaids Revenge: Folk Tales from Britain & Ireland by Forbes Stuart
Mythical Creature: Mermaid
Check Availability

The Mystery of the Loch Ness Monster by Jeanne Bendick
Mythical Creature: Loch Ness Monster
Check Availability

The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer
Mythical Creature: Troll
Check Availability

The Unicorn by Emily Rodda
Mythical Creature: Unicorn
Check Availability

Reading Myths and Legends (CD-Rom)
Mythical Creatures: Mermaid, Medusa, Minotaur, Rainbow Serpent, Hercules and Troll
Check Availability

Google Monopoly: Building an Empire

Internet giant Google, have made a lot of money buying and selling businesses, on their way to monopolising the Internet search industry.

Now Google (along with Hasbro) are giving you the chance to build your own Google empire, with Monopoly City Streets. Based on Google Maps technology, this massive multiplayer online (MMO) game allows you to buy, sell and build any street in the world.

The aim? Be the richest player by January 31, 2010.

2009 Man Booker Prize Shortlist

The 2009 Man Booker Prize Shortlist has been announced in London.

The finalists are:

• S Byatt The Children's Book (Random House, Chatto and Windus)
• J M Coetzee Summertime (Random House, Harvill Secker)
• Adam Foulds The Quickening Maze (Random House, Jonathan Cape)
• Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall (HarperCollins, Fourth Estate)
• Simon Mawer The Glass Room (Little, Brown)
• Sarah Waters The Little Stranger (Little, Brown, Virago)

The six books were selected from the Man Booker Prize longlist of 13.

The winner will be announced on October 6 2009, with the winner receiving £50,000 (approx $96,000 AU).

Books will survive, but not on paper.

Books will survive, but not on paper. Susan Hayes, Literature Director at the Australia Council, outlines her thoughts on digital publishing. (Text adapted from AustralianPolicyOnline). Read the full commentary here

Excess Downloads

New research out of the Coda Research Consultancy in the UK estimates that by 2017, we'll be downloading about 1.8 exabytes of video data per month!

So what exactly is an exabyte?
An exabyte is:

• 1 thousand petabytes (1,000)
  
• 1 million terabytes (1,000,000)
  
• 1 billion gigabytes (1,000,000,000)
  
• 1 trillion megabytes (1,000,000,000,000)
  
• 1 quadrillion kilobytes (1,000,000,000,000,000)
  
• 1 quintillion bytes (1,000,000,000,000,000,000)
  
• 8 quintillion bits (8,000,000,000,000,000,000)

To put that in perspective that's a 3900% increase in the amount of video data currently used!

It's almost hard to imagine what we could possibly use that much bandwidth on, but ReadWriteWeb speculates that with the advent of 4G Wireless technology, we could be looking at streaming HDTV, mobile cloud computing, video chat (as a standard) and much more.

For the full report from Coda titled 'Laptops and Netbooks: Mobile Broadband Traffic Across Regions 2009 - 2017), click here.
For the article from ReadWriteWeb, click here.

How many banned books have you read?

Celebrate the freedom to read!
The last week in September marks banned books week in the US. An annual event observed since 1982 the ALA (American Library Association) hopes that this week serves to remind all to celebrate and appreciate the rights of free speech and in particular the freedom to read. The ALA website provides a list of banned and challenged books. They define a challenge as an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. For more info check out the ALA's Banned & Challenged Books site.
The CSU Library has many of the books from the ALA's list of Banned and Challenged Classics. If you haven't read them already now is a good time!
Click on the links to find these banned and challenged classics in the CSU Library catalogue

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, challenged in Eden
Valley, Minn. (1977) and temporarily banned due to language
used in the novel.



The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, since its publication, this title has been a favourite target of censors. In 1960, a teacher in Tulsa, Okla. was fired for assigning the book to an eleventh grade English class.




1984 by George Orwell, challenged in the Jackson County, FL
(1981) because Orwell's novel is "pro-communist and
contained explicit sexual matter." Source: 2004 Banned Books
Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle.





In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, banned, but later reinstated
after community protests at the Windsor Forest High School in
Savannah, Ga. (2000).


Naked lunch by William S. Burroughs, found obscene in Boston,
Mass. Superior Court(1965). The finding was reversed by the
State Supreme Court the following year. Source: 2004 Banned
Books Resource Guide by Robert P. Doyle.

The Book-less Library

"When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books"

James Tracy, Headmaster of Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Massachusetts has decided that books no longer have a place in his school's library. They are discarding over 20,000 items, and spending $500,000 (US) to create a 'Learning Center' complete with flat screen TVs, laptop friendly carrels, and over a dozen eBook Readers.

Not even the reference desk is safe; in it's place will be a coffee shop, complete with $12,000 (US) cappuccino machine.

"Instead of a traditional library with 20,000 books, we’re building a virtual library where students will have access to millions of books" says Mr Tracey.

To read the full story, visit the Boston Globe

Let us know what you think. CSU Library has over 635,000 items (not including journals). How would you feel if they were suddenly gone?

Tweeting from the most unexpected places

Slashdot is reporting that IBM has recently filed a patent for a television remote control that links to social networking websites, such as Twitter and Facebook, and posts to your blog (or microblog) what you are currently watching.

Is this social-networking gone mad? Or does this have some sort of practical application?

Are we looking at a future where our Internet-enabled fridges tweet that 'the milk is out of date'? Will our washing machines be able to blog that 'the red cap ruined all the whites'? And how will this information be used by those who receive it?

Tom Griffiths Essay wins Alfred Deakin Prize

Tom Griffiths essay 'We Still Have Not Lived Long Enough' has won the Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate in The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. This prize is offered for a published essay by an Australian author that contributes to the national debate by the quality of its writing. The essay can be published in a print or electronic journal, newspaper or book form.
Written in the immediate aftermath of the 2009 Victorian fires (first published 16 February, Inside Story), this lucid, elegant essay responds intelligently and with compassion to the tragedy. In economical and engaging prose, Griffiths brings fine scholarship to bear on our human relationship to a very particular physical landscape, while also deftly locating the Victorian fires in their historical, environmental, climatic and geographic context. Ever dispassionate, Griffiths is able to draw clear policy lessons without acrimony or finger pointing. This is the essay all Australians should read if they wish to understand a particular catastrophe, learn about the precedents, and grasp both the particular circumstances of one Australian region and the general environmental responsibilities of all citizens. (Abstract from State Library of Victoria website).