This paper explores how the academic performance of Indigenous students has been investigated in the higher education literature and where this fits within the academic support context and teaching and learning developments in Australian universities. The authors suggest an approach to Indigenous academic skills support that equips Indigenous students with tools for managing their engagements with the content of Western disciplines. A case is made for more focussed research around Indigenous students' approaches to processing intellectual content while developing their own Indigenous standpoints.

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To satisfy the demand for more high energy, high brightness x-ray sources at the Advanced Light Source (ALS), a plan is in place to replace three 1.3 Tesla normal conducting bending magnets with three 5 Tesla superconducting magnets (Superbends) in the year 2001. This will result in 12 new x-ray beam lines (four from each superbend) for users. The Superbend sources will be an order of magnitude higher in x-ray brightness and flux at 12 keV than the conventional 1.3 Tesla bending magnets. The Superbend project is a major upgrade to the ALS where the 3 superconducting magnets will be an integral part of the machine lattice. In this paper we discuss the current status of the Superbend projectas well as precomissioning studies prior to the 2001 installation for users.

The Advanced Light Source is currently being upgraded for top-off operation. This major facility upgrade will provide an improvement in brightness from soft x-ray undulators of about one order of magnitude and keep the ALS competitive with the newest intermediate energy light sources. Major components of the upgrade include making the booster synchrotron capable of full energy operation, radiation safety studies, improvements to interlocks and collimation systems, diagnostics upgrades as well as emittance improvements in the main storage ring. Most hardware necessary as part of the upgrade has been installed and commissioned. The radiation safety studies are making good progress and have passed a first outside peer review succesfully.

Abstract.An upgrade of the Advanced Light Source to enable top-off operation has been completed during the last four years. The final work centered around radiation safety aspects, culminating in a systematic proof that top-off operation is equally safe as decaying beam operation. Commissioning and transition to full user operations happened in late 2008 and early 2009. Top-off operation at the ALS provides a very large increase in time-averaged brightness (by about a factor of 10) as well as improvements in beam stability. The following sections provide an overview of the radiation safety rationale, commissioning results, as well as experience in user operations.