Tyranny Of Distance Research Articles

We are here and we are many: Using a telepresence robot for shared exploration and learning (and fun)

AbstractMobile remote presence bots (MRP) have emerged as a potential way of addressing the “tyranny of distance” when having to attend meetings at far away locations. In this contribution we report on how we used an MRP to share with two cohorts of postgraduate students at a regional university the formal “conferencing” and the informal “mingling” that takes place at quality academic conferences and that many would consider essential for effective networking and knowledge sharing. Simultaneously, students were able to experience and explore what it meant to be “different” in a room full of people interacting in “regular” ways, observing the conference attendees reacting to the MRP aka “ipad on a stick” in ways from genuine interest to forced indifference.

The Tyranny of Distance: Assessing and Explaining the Apparent Decline in U.S. Military Performance

AbstractThere is a growing sense that US military effectiveness has been on the wane in recent years. Is this the case? If so, what are the reasons for the decay in American combat performance? We first examine the available systematic evidence for American military decline, showing that the United States has indeed experienced a drop in the quality of outcomes of its military contests. Observers have offered a number of explanations for declining American military success, most predominantly an increase in intrastate conflict after the Second World War. After showing that a decline in performance is observed even after fully excluding intrastate conflict, we propose an alternative explanation: the increasing distance from home at which the United States has been fighting. Distance is tyrannical: it saps military strength and increases the cost of contests, even as it reduces US expertise and motivations to prevail. We then show that the distance from home at which the United States fights is the best predictor of the outcome of the conflict. We conclude by noting some avenues for future research and policy implications as the world returns to great power competition.

The tyranny of distance: The social effects and practice adaptations resulting from Covid-19 lockdown rules

This reflective commentary identifies and discusses the effects of the social distancing rules required by the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowni. The rules required rapid adaptation that many found challenging, creating new norms for behaviour that were governed by both the state and many citizens. These rules changed patterns of social interaction, attitudes towards others and how families and communities were defined. Existing inequities relating to class were exacerbated, and inequities relating to gender and childcare made more visible. Those with more resources and secure jobs that could be undertaken “from home” were less exposed to the economic fallout and the virus itself. Attitudes towards the body and its physicality were heightened as the body became the target for intervention and isolation. Place-based communities of the neighbourhood were strengthened while other types of physical communities diminished.All these changes created new opportunities for accelerating the morphing of people with the digital world, intensifying the use of online technologies to mediate the self, and shape employment practices, social work provision, and personal relationships. While some experienced this rapid transition online as a barrier to relationships, others, especially those already proficient in online technologies, experienced areas of improved functionality and efficiencies. Social work practice also adapted to this environment, finding new ways to meet the practice, support and ethical commitments of the profession.

Collaboration despite the tyranny of distance

ABSTRACT In his influential book, historian Geoffrey Blainey coined the term The Tyranny of Distance (1982) as a descriptor that continues to influence the psyche. For the first time in 2019, the three leading performing arts schools in Australia approached the design for the student exhibition at the Prague Quadrennial (PQ) as a collaborative project. The theme of isolation and its influence on current Australian politics shaped not only the conception and development, but also the curation and realisation of the exhibition. The student exhibition presented the opportunity to explore the creation of a site-specific installation but required the navigation of distance in conception and realisation as installation of the various elements could only occur once on site in Prague. Distance also needed to be negotiated between cohorts, timelines and requirements of the different institutions. The tyranny of delayed international shipping was overcome, as with all other obstacles, by the application of a distinctly Australian sense of humour in the formation of a temporary installation – ShippingWrecked – to hold our place until the full exhibition arrived. PQ presents the opportunity to overcome our physical isolation but also test the benefits that isolation extends to our artistic practice.

A room with a (re)view. Short-term rentals, digital reputation and the uneven spatiality of platform-mediated tourism

The article investigates how users’ reviews on digital accommodation platforms represent the city and mediate urban tourism practices. Drawing upon research on user-generated contents, digital reputation, platform capitalism, and the spatiality of short-term rentals, the aim is to show the performative power of the reviewing mechanism in enhancing visibility, building trust and distributing value unevenly in the city. We show how such unevenness is constructed through the layering of different meanings conveyed by guests’ reviews, each having its own specific spatiality. In order to detect and map these meanings, we develop a textual analysis of the content of reviews and a spatial analysis of the distribution of their most salient topics in the city of Florence (Italy), based on a dataset of 491,379 reviews left by guests on Airbnb.com. Platform users - we argue - display an overtly calculative rationality and portray the city as an abstract space where the choice of the accommodation is aimed at minimizing travel distances from an access point to a few top attractions. Distance and centrality override any other concerns about the characteristics of the apartment, the host, the service, and even the price. Peripheral listings are not evaluated negatively; they are almost invisible. This “tyranny of distance” is co-produced by users and amplified by the platform’s algorithms and interface: it contributes to the further shrinking of the tourist city into a few privileged neighbourhoods, and raises questions about the selectiveness and increasing pervasiveness of platform-mediated tourism practices.

Using digital and social media for health promotion: A social marketing approach for addressing co-morbid physical and mental health.

This study examines consumer engagement with a social marketing digital media strategy designed to support the implementation of Equally Well-a program to improve the physical health of people living with mental illness. A four-stage strategic analysis and intervention mix were used as the theoretical framework to assess stakeholder needs and to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. Online and digital media. Mental health consumers, carers, clinicians and service managers. A digital media, social marketing intervention to support those seeking to improve the physical health of people living with mental illness. The strategy was developed using a co-design methodology and provided links to self-care resources, access to service providers, clinical tools for health professionals and links to existing successful rural programs. The main outcome measures were the number of people from each category accessing the media, making connections and downloading resources. The program has resulted in more than 24500 website hits per annum, 3500 tweets and 14.5million Twitter impressions with good bounce and download rates. The analysis suggested the materials were mostly used by clinicians and service managers using desktop computers. Using a co-design approach, the study demonstrated the potential of a social marketing digital media strategy as a health promotion methodology. The paper has provided a framework for implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of digital social media campaigns that can help consumers, carers, clinicians and service planners address the challenges of rural health service delivery and the tyranny of distance.

Experiences of Young People Living with Cancer in Nonmetropolitan Areas: A Review of the Literature.

This review explores the literature on experiences of young people (15-39 years) living with cancer from nonmetropolitan areas, given most available research has focused on those living in major metropolitan areas. The purpose of the review was to inform (a) clinical practice and (b) future research on young people living with cancer in nonmetropolitan areas. An integrative review method explored peer-reviewed publications in CINAHL, Medline, PsycINFO, SSCI, PsycARTICLES, Socindex, and Google Scholar for literature published over the past 20 years. Twelve studies (reported in 17 articles) were eligible for inclusion, of which most (n = 8) had been conducted in Australia. Findings highlighted "the tyranny of distance" from metropolitan specialist cancer care centers negatively affected young people's health (e.g., delayed diagnoses), with financial distress1, psychosocial, cultural, and other challenges resulting. Negative effects were heightened during major treatment transitions at diagnosis, during, and after cancer treatment. One study found some Indigenous Australians did not report symptoms and refused referrals if it necessitated travelling long distances. Five studies did not report greater challenges experienced by nonmetropolitan compared with metropolitan respondents. Health care professionals helping young people can mitigate negative challenges through education and support at diagnosis about financial distress and psychosocial challenges. We recommend further research target ways to minimize delays in diagnosis, reporting of symptoms or accepting allied health referrals, psychosocial upheaval, financial distress, and explore issues particular to First Nations people, to inform services how to meet unique needs of young people living with cancer from nonmetropolitan areas.

Budget poor, but outcomes rich: How to set up tele-assisted systems in a regional and rural cancer center.

4 Background: Tyranny of distance in Australia has motivated oncologists to try innovations in oncology care to improve cost efficiency, access, and compliance. This is often done with little budget availability as health funds are metrocentric. The aim is to bring novel approaches to utilisation of oncology care and show its applicability to most countries even with financial constraints. Methods: Mt Gambier Hospital is a regional hospital in South Eastern South Australia (SE SA). The data collected from clinics was commenced in January 2016, to gain knowledge of epidemiology of cancer in the region, and numbers of patients seen. Despite gold standard cancer care being performed in consultations which are face-to-face, we rolled out telemedicine consultations. We also, implemented a Survivorship Care Model, and entered into a Teletrials Project which sets up a regional trials centre with support from a tertiary hospital, Flinders Medical Centre. Results: Telemedicine has been made in Mt Gambier Hospital’s cancer service a part of every day practice to save patients from unnecessary travel. From January 2016, until May 2019, there were 812 consultations with nurse practitioner, 2542 consultations with consultant in clinic, and 246 telemedicine consultations. Survivorship clinic has been implemented according to South Australian Framework for Survivorship with no extra funding. Since 2017, 49 patients were seen with curative therapy. A re-alignment of appointment scheduling will see 6 patients in the next 2 months, thus increasing clinic potential. Teletrials Project was born from collaboration with Flinders Medical Centre, and gained funding by Beat Cancer South Australia. We are now entering into final stages of Governance agreement for our 1st trial, 18 months from commencing the project. Since then, we also got 2 more collaboration grants from Beat Cancer SA. Conclusions: With limited resources, regional cancer centres are able to maximise their patient outcomes by applying novel strategies. These novel ways of doing things, may be able to be implemented on either existing budgets or through collaboration with metropolitan cancer centres to attract financial grants to improve patient outcomes.

Overcoming the ‘tyranny of distance’ in instrumental music tuition in Australia: The iMCM project

Instrumental and vocal music students in regional and remote areas of Australia are often significantly disadvantaged in their development by the lack of local teachers who specialize in the instrument being learned. The current rollout of National Broadband Network (NBN) across Australia offers the potential for overcoming this geographical disadvantage by providing specialist online tuition through videoconferencing. This article reports on an investigation of technical and pedagogical issues associated with synchronous online instrumental tuition. The outcomes from laboratory- and field-based trials included identification of optimal hardware and software delivery systems and pedagogical considerations for optimizing online instrumental learning.

The tyranny of distance

The tyranny of distance

Make It So: Harnessing Technology to Provide Professional Development to Regional Museum Workers

Make It So: Harnessing Technology to Provide Professional Development to Regional Museum Workers

International Commercial Arbitration in Australia: Judicial Control over Arbitral Awards

Geographical remoteness has not prevented Australia from pursuing its ambition to become a major hub for international commercial arbitration (ICA). While regional competitors in the Asia-Pacific region such as Singapore and Hong Kong have already achieved great success in the arbitration world, Australia’s ‘Tyranny of Distance’ requires extra efforts to attract ICA cases. Recent marketing from the Australian government emphasises (1) a harmonised legal framework for ICA in line with international standards; (2) sophisticated arbitration institutions; and (3) some of the world’s leading arbitration practitioners. While these factors do reveal strong potential to attract ICA cases, to ensure that this goes beyond a mere possibility, the Australian government and judiciary are making quite concerted broader efforts. The former has recently become more vigorous in marketing Australia-based ICA in and out of the country. The latter has generally tried to issue pro-arbitration judgments particularly over the last ten years, and in public speeches or publications leading judges have been actively summarising and promoting Australian developments both domestically and world-wide. However the court system has structural problems, due to the shared ICA jurisdiction of State and Territory Courts alongside the Federal Courts, compared to the unitary system in Hong Kong and Singapore. There are also persistent delays in court-related ICA matters under the IAA, even in the Federal Court of Australia. Nonetheless, perfection is never attainable. The rest of this paper argues that Australia has significantly improved legal environment for ICA in line with international standards, focusing on the main topics identified for a wider cross-jurisdictional research project: (1) arbitrator bias; (2) conflicts of interests; (3) procedural irregularities and arbitrator’s misconduct during proceedings; (4) arbitrability (objective arbitrability) (5) judicial interpretation of arbitration clauses (subjective arbitrability); and (6) enforceability of arbitral awards.

Residential location choice in a developing country: What matter? A choice experiment application in Burkina Faso

This paper assesses the benefits derived from environmental amenities, and more specifically from an urban park, from data on residential location choices. Household decisions regarding their residential location have important implications for urban planning. This paper uses a choice experiment pivot design (CE) to empirically analyze the trade-off between location attributes such as distance to an urban park and distance to workplace in the context of a developing country in which environmental questions are generally considered of lower priority. The limitation of transportation and communication networks suggests that the “tyranny of distance” is even more significant in this particular context than in larger cities located in more developed countries. Results show that inhabitants are willing to pay more in order to live close to an urban park than to their workplace. Furthermore, I find that preferences are heterogeneous and that the attribute corresponding to the presence of relatives in the area is associated with the highest willingness to pay.

Do social networking sites build and maintain social capital online in rural communities?

Social capital (SC) is a cornerstone of rural communities but is not well understood in terms of how Social Networking Sites (SNS) can be used to build and maintain SC online. There are limited studies which have attempted to measure SC online and its two distinct dimensions – bonding and bridging SC. The main objectives of this paper are to: (i) confirm that building and maintaining of SC online can be measured reliably and validly as two factors of bonding and bridging SC, and (ii) to determine to what extent the use of SNS facilitates building and maintaining bonding and bridging SC online when rural households have broadband connectivity. This study used a large-scale survey to collect quantitative data in the Western Downs Region of Queensland, Australia regarding households’ adoption and use of broadband Internet including use of SNS and their contribution to building and maintaining bonding and bridging SC online in rural communities. This study confirmed that SC online can be reliably and validly measured as a first order two-factor hierarchical model providing further support for the findings of previous empirical studies. Evaluating the association between SNS use and building and maintaining bonding and bridging SC online in rural communities showed that Heavy and Light users of SNS in rural communities are more likely to have higher levels of bonding and bridging SC online than Non-users of SNS. The findings also suggest that higher levels of SNS use are more effective in building and maintaining bridging SC online than bonding SC online. This suggests that SNS usages may be able to play an important role in building and maintaining SC and improving social connectivity both within rural communities such as WDR and more widely with other communities regardless of geographical location. This is despite the tyranny of distance and poor telecommunications which has historically been a communication barrier for rural communities.

Towards a Fishing Pressure Prediction System for a Western Pacific EEZ

Fisheries management faces numerous monitoring and enforcement challenges that are becoming more complex as fish stocks are depleted; and illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing becomes more sophisticated. For remote island nations, the challenges are compounded by a loosely understood association of pelagic stocks to the ocean environment, and the tyranny of distance in monitoring and surveilling large exclusive economic zones (EEZ). An approach to ocean conservation is establishing protected areas, with the Pacific island nation of Palau as a leader with the recently established National Marine Sanctuary, which closes 80% of their EEZ to commercial fishing in 2020. Here we present an EEZ-wide analysis of Palau commercial fishing over a 6-year period (2011–2016), and develop a system for predicting fishing activity accounting for oceanic variables, climate indices, and vessel flag. Linking pelagic habitat to fishing activity provides high-resolution decision aids for management, highlighting the need for EEZ-specific analyses in addressing fisheries.

From Anderson to ORDAC: A History of Bibliographic Policy Discussion in Australia

ABSTRACTThis article presents a history of national bibliographic policy discussion in Australia, from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day, assessing the contribution this discussion has made to the development of international bibliographic standards. In earlier times, various factors worked against progress towards standardisation and policy innovation, including the extant Anglo-American codes and inherited bibliographic conventions, the difficulties of establishing a national cataloguing agency, and the tyranny of distance experienced by national cataloguing committees. In the mid-twentieth century, Australian cataloguers became more involved in international bibliographic developments, but it was the advent of Machine Readable Cataloguing (MARC) cataloguing in Australia, in the 1970s and 1980s, that gave them a much stronger voice both within and outside the country, as records became much more sharable. Tensions between institutional and individual cataloguing views were eased through the establishment of the Australian Committee on Cataloguing, which represented both, while a broader level of engagement was successfully fostered by the Cataloguers Sections of the Library Association of Australia. This engagement has weakened in recent times, but this is symptomatic of a more general trend towards the globalisation of cataloguing and metadata, whereby national policy discussions are less relevant than are discussions in particular domains.

Staging international communism: British–Australian radical theatre connections

ABSTRACT Encouraged by Communist parties and left-wing trade unions, radical, or working-class, theatre groups of the twentieth century were crucial in the development of a long-lasting left-wing cultural activist impulse in a number of nations. The branches of the Unity Theatre in UK and the New Theatre in Australia had a highly conscious democratic and explicit working class orientation, and presented various combinations of mainstream and radical dramatic genres and plays. Drawing on oral histories and archival research, this chapter explores the politics of popular culture by focusing on the degrees of mobility of ideas, dramatic texts and people and politics between the two theatres. The emergent mobility patterns across these elements demonstrated the effect of ‘tyranny of distance’ to invoke Blainey’s phrase1 and the sociocultural mores of ‘Empire’ on those transnational flows. Whether it was the mobility of ideas, texts or people, a more complex picture emerged than simple exchange or reciprocal influence. Informing our discussion is the mobility studies literature, following the ‘mobility turn’ in the social sciences. A number of concepts within mobility studies provide a lens for analysing the movement of ideas, scripts and people between Unity and the New Theatre.

Overcoming the Tyranny of Distance: Revealing Type Collections Down-Under.

Auckland Museum’s Natural Science collections contain several thousands of biological primary types, some dating back to well over a 100 years. Biological type specimens are important for the recognition of new species, because they are the specimens on which species names and descriptions are based, and so they are the standards against which all potentially new species are measured. As by definition there can only ever be one primary type for each species, these are the unique specimens with highest scientific value. Fun fact one: More than almost any other country, New Zealand has a very high percentage of endemic fauna and flora, which means species that are found nowhere else. Fun fact two: In New Zealand we only know about 50% of our biodiversity, which means half of all our species are yet to be discovered and described. Therefore, our type collections are actively growing as more and more species are discovered and more and more type specimens are lodged in our collections. Because they are unique, types are of great interest to researchers. However, because of our remote position on the globemany researchers request loans of our type specimens rather than travel the long distance to Auckland. Although such practices were common in the past, we, like many other modern natural history institutions no longer allow the loan of many of these unique items. The risk of damage or loss en route to the recipient and back is considered too great. However, it is a disservice to science not to make types available for study. So in 2008 we launched a project to digitise our type collections. This talk will focus on how high resolution images of our primary types, and their online publication, has removed much of the need for loans and thereby lessened the risks to these important specimens. At the same time it has made our type collections more visible and accessible to a much greater audience.

Overcoming legacies of foreign policy (dis)interests in the negotiation of the European Union–Australia free trade agreement

ABSTRACTDespite a troubled trade history dominated by disputes over agriculture, the negotiation of a European Union (EU)–Australia free trade agreement (FTA) was initiated in 2015. The initiation of these negotiations was made possible because of the shift in EU trade policy towards the negotiation of what the EU terms ‘new generation free trade agreements’. The EU has concluded FTA negotiations with South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam and Canada, and is negotiating other FTAs— notably with Japan and the USA . The EU faces many commercial challenges to its FTA negotiations that go beyond tariff reduction, including the protection of its geographical indicators, public procurement and investor–state dispute settlement. These issues are likely to be substantial features of any EU FTA with Australia. In addition to these challenges, the promotion of sustainable development interests and human rights through FTA negotiations is an important component of the EU’s approach. The EU’s position on the trade-related aspects of sustainable development and the negotiation of human rights conditionality has presented significant challenges to the EU’s trade agenda, particularly in negotiations with Canada and Singapore. This article draws lessons from the EU’s new generation trade agreement negotiations to date. It compares these negotiations with Australia’s approach to FTA negotiations, and analyses potential stumbling blocks for an EU–Australia FTA in light of past tensions in the relationship. The article argues that shifts in both EU and Australian trade policies and positive developments in the relationship mitigate past obstacles to a negotiated agreement. However, EU– Australia relations still suffer from the tyranny of distance. The resulting deficit in foreign policy salience between the EU and Australia broadens the best alternatives to a negotiated agreement.

Medicinal Cannabis and the Tyranny of Distance: Policy Reform Required for Optimizing Patient and Health System Net Benefit in Australia.

Medicinal Cannabis and the Tyranny of Distance: Policy Reform Required for Optimizing Patient and Health System Net Benefit in Australia.