Test of a model of the effects of parental illness on youth and family functioning

Objective: Parental illness (PI) may have adverse impacts on youth and family functioning. Research in this area has suffered from the absence of a guiding comprehensive framework. This study tested a conceptual model of the effects of PI on youth and family functioning derived from the Family Ecology Framework (FEF; Pedersen & Revenson, 2005). Method. A total of 85 parents with multiple sclerosis and 127 youth completed questionnaires at Time 1 and 12 months later at Time 2. Results. Structural equation modeling results supported the FEF with regards to physical-illness disability. Specifically, the proposed mediators (role redistribution, stress, and stigma) were implicated in the processes that link parental disability to several domains of youth adjustment. The results suggest that the effects of parental depression (PD) are not mediated through these processes; rather, PD directly affects family functioning, which in turn mediates the effects onto youth adjustment. Family functioning further mediated between PD and youth well-being and behavioral-social difficulties. Conclusions. Although results support the effects of parental-illness disability on youth and family functioning via the proposed mediational mechanisms, the additive effects of PD on youth physical and mental health occur through direct and indirect (via family functioning) pathways, respectively.

A first stage test of Dunning's framework on multinational contracting into Australia : reviewing secondary data.

In response to the need to leverage private finance and the lack of competition in some parts of the Australian public sector infrastructure market, especially in the very large economic infrastructure sector procured using Pubic Private Partnerships, the Australian Federal government has demonstrated its desire to attract new sources of in-bound foreign direct investment (FDI). This paper aims to report on progress towards an investigation into the determinants of multinational contractors’ willingness to bid for Australian public sector major infrastructure projects. This research deploys Dunning’s eclectic theory for the first time in terms of in-bound FDI by multinational contractors into Australia. Elsewhere, the authors have developed Dunning’s principal hypothesis to suit the context of this research and to address a weakness arising in this hypothesis that is based on a nominal approach to the factors in Dunning's eclectic framework and which fails to speak to the relative explanatory power of these factors. In this paper, a first stage test of the authors' development of Dunning's hypothesis is presented by way of an initial review of secondary data vis-à-vis the selected sector (roads and bridges) in Australia (as the host location) and with respect to four selected home countries (China; Japan; Spain; and US). In doing so, the next stage in the research method concerning sampling and case studies is also further developed and described in this paper. In conclusion, the extent to which the initial review of secondary data suggests the relative importance of the factors in the eclectic framework is considered. It is noted that more robust conclusions are expected following the future planned stages of the research including primary data from the case studies and a global survey of the world’s largest contractors and which is briefly previewed. Finally, and beyond theoretical contributions expected from the overall approach taken to developing and testing Dunning’s framework, other expected contributions concerning research method and practical implications are mentioned.

Peer state assessment of TxDOT maintenance program and practices, part II : test section survey findings and recommendations

This paper presents a road survey as part of a workshop conducted by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to evaluate and improve the maintenance practices of the Texas highway system. Directors of maintenance from six peer states (California, Kansas, Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, and Washington) were invited to this 3-day workshop. One of the important parts of this workshop was a Maintenance Test Section Survey (MTSS) to evaluate a number of pre-selected one-mile roadway sections. The workshop schedule allowed half a day to conduct the field survey and 34 sections were evaluated. Each of the evaluators was given a booklet and asked to rate the selected road sections. The goals of the MTSS were to: 1. Assess the threshold level at which maintenance activities are required as perceived by the evaluators from the peer states; 2. Assess the threshold level at which maintenance activities are required as perceived by evaluators from other TxDOT districts; and 3. Perform a pilot evaluation of the MTSS concept. This paper summarizes the information obtained from survey and discusses the major findings based on a statistical analysis of the data and comments from the survey participants.

International entrepreneurial values elicited through repertory test and laddering analysis : an SME, internet-enabled tourism perspective

This study explores the international entrepreneurial values influencing the intensity of Internet use in the internationalization process of small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs), within the Australian tourism industry. The findings point to a relationship between the values of international entrepreneurs and the inclination of the firm to develop and initiate international activity. And so, this study endeavors to offer insight into issues that remain unresolved in existing tourism and international entrepreneurship (IE) literature. Two effective but underutilized qualitative methods were used in this study to identify the values of international entrepreneurs. They are repertory test and laddering analysis.

China media research : the trans-disciplinary challenge

This paper addresses the permeability of the field of China media research, its openness to new ideas; it argues that we need to adopt a wide angle view on research opportunities. Expansion of China’s media during the past decade has opened up possibilities for broadening of the field. The discussion first identifies boundary tensions as the field responds to transdisciplinary knowledge; in the second part the paper addresses challenges faced by Chinese researchers or visiting scholars in ‘Western’ media environments. Finally the paper addresses what a wide angle perspective might include.

The moderator effect of cognitive modifiability on a traditional undergraduate admissions test for disadvantaged Black students in South Africa

Contends that South African universities must find admissions criteria, other than high school grades, that are both fair and valid for Black applicants severely disadvantaged by an inferior school education. The use of traditional intellectual assessments and aptitude tests for disadvantaged and minority students remains controversial as a fair assessment; they do not take account of potential for change. In this study, therefore, a measure of students' cognitive modifiability, assessed by means of an interactive assessment model, was added as a moderator of traditional intellectual assessment in predicting 1st-yr university success. Cognitive modifiability significantly moderated the predictive validity of the traditional intellectual assessment for 52 disadvantaged Black students. The higher the level of cognitive modifiability, the less effective were traditional methods for predicting academic success and vice versa.

Perceptions of charities and the ultimate gift : the use of the Repertory Test to elicit salient bequest decision criteria

This paper reports a practitioner/academic collaboration that sought to identify the attributes salient in the decision-making process of individuals considering a charitable bequest in Australia. Philanthropy scholars concur that bequest making behaviour is generally not well understood or researched and is fertile terrain for new enquiry. They urge scholars and practitioners to integrate learning from other relevant disciplines to reveal new insights and understandings into why so many individuals elect to make a testamentary gift to a charity in their will or other planned giving instrument. This research draws on the branding literature; and effectively trialed the use of Kelly’s (1955) Repertory Test from clinical psychology, the results of which will provide researchers and charity marketing practitioners with an enhanced understanding of bequest decision criteria.

Information technology resources,complementaries and capabilities : towards a deeper understanding of leveraging business value from IT

Organisations devote substantial resources to acquire information technology (IT), and explaining the important issue of how IT can affect performance has posed a significant challenge to information system (IS) researchers. Owing to the importance of expanding our understanding on how and where IT and IT-related resources impact organisational performance, this study investigates the differential effects of IT resources and IT-related capabilities, in the presence of platform-related complementarities, on business process performance. We test these relationships empirically via a field survey of 216 firms. The findings suggest that IT resources and IT-related capabilities explain variance in performance. Of interest is the finding that IT resources and IT-related capabilities ability to explain variance in business process is further enhanced by the presence of the platform-related complementarities. Our findings are largely consistent with the resource-based and complementarity arguments of sources of IT-related business value.

Developing sustainable IT-related capabilities : instrument development and test

Research has established that firms' IT-related capabilities at a point in time explain IT-related performance differences across firms. IT resources, however, are dynamic, and evolve at an exponential rate. This means we need to understand how to sustain firms' existing capabilities to leverage opportunities offered by new IT resources. Wet suggests a higher-level resource that can sustain firms' existing IT-related capabilities. Second, we report on the development of a valid and reliable measurement instrument for measuring this higher-level resource in four stages, which includes expert feedback and a field test. The validated instrument would be useful in extending the IT business value studies to investigate how firms can sustain their IT-related capabilities. This effort will provide a deeper understanding of how firms can secure sustainable IT-related business value from their acquired IT resources.

Wikileaks and the challenge of the “Fifth Estate”

The Time magazine ‘Person of theYear’ award is a venerable institution. Established by Time’s founder Henry Luce in 1927 as ‘Man of the Year’, it is an annual award given to ‘a person, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that ‘for better or for worse ... has done the most to influence the events of the year’ (Time 2002, p. 1). In 2010, the award was given to Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of the social networking site Facebook.There was, however, a strong campaign for the ‘People’s Choice’ award to be given to Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, the online whistleblowing site. Earlier in the year Wikileaks had released more than 250 000 US government diplomatic cables through the internet, and the subsequent controver- sies around the actions of Wikileaks and Assange came to be known worldwide as ‘Cablegate’. The focus of this chapter is not on the implications of ‘Cablegate’ for international diplomacy, which continue to have great significance, but rather upon what the emergence of Wikileaks has meant for journalism, and whether it provides insights into the future of journalism. Both Facebook and Wikileaks, as well as social media platforms such as Twitter and YouTube, and independent media practices such as blogging, citizen journalism and crowdsourcing, are manifestations of the rise of social media, or what has also been termed web 2.0.The term ‘web 2.0’ was coined by Tim O’Reilly, and captures the rise of online social media platforms and services, that better realise the collaborative potential of digitally networked media. They do this by moving from the relatively static, top-down notions of interactivity that informed early internet development, towards more open and evolutionary models that better harness collective intelligence by enabling users to become the creators and collaborators in the development of online media content (Musser and O’Reilly 2007; Bruns 2008).

Social network media and political activism: a growing challenge for law enforcement

The use of the internet for political purposes is not new; however, the introduction of social media tools has opened new avenues for political activists. In an era where social media has been credited as playing a critical role in the success of revolutions (Earl & Kimport, 2011; Papic & Noonan, 2011; Wooley, Limperos & 10 Beth, 2010), governments, law enforcement and intelligence agencies need to develop a deeper understanding of the broader capabilities of this emerging social and political environment. This can be achieved by increasing their online presence and through the application of proactive social media strategies to identify and manage potential threats. Analysis of current literature shows a gap 15 in the research regarding the connection between the theoretical understanding and practical implications of social media when exploited by political activists,and the efficacy of existing strategies designed to manage this growing challenge. This paper explores these issues by looking specifically at the use of three popular social media tools: Facebook; Twitter; and YouTube. Through the examination of 20 recent political protests in Iran, the UK and Egypt from 2009�2011, these case studies and research in the use of the three social media tools by political groups, the authors discuss inherent weaknesses in online political movements and discuss strategies for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to monitor these activities.

'Nothing exists for one cause' : putting biology back into evolution

The opening phrase of the title is from Charles Darwin’s notebooks (Schweber 1977). It is a double reminder, firstly that mainstream evolutionary theory is not just about describing nature but is particularly looking for mechanisms or ‘causes’, and secondly, that there will usually be several causes affecting any particular outcome. The second part of the title is our concern at the almost universal rejection of the idea that biological mechanisms are sufficient for macroevolutionary changes, thus rejecting a cornerstone of Darwinian evolutionary theory. Our primary aim here is to consider ways of making it easier to develop and to test hypotheses about evolution. Formalizing hypotheses can help generate tests. In an absolute sense, some of the discussion by scientists about evolution is little better than the lack of reasoning used by those advocating intelligent design. Our discussion here is in a Popperian framework where science is defined by that area of study where it is possible, in principle, to find evidence against hypotheses – they are in principle falsifiable. However, with time, the boundaries of science keep expanding. In the past, some aspects of evolution were outside the current boundaries of falsifiable science, but increasingly new techniques and ideas are expanding the boundaries of science and it is appropriate to re-examine some topics. It often appears that over the last few decades there has been an increasingly strong assumption to look first (and only) for a physical cause. This decision is virtually never formally discussed, just an assumption is made that some physical factor ‘drives’ evolution. It is necessary to examine our assumptions much more carefully. What is meant by physical factors ‘driving’ evolution, or what is an ‘explosive radiation’. Our discussion focuses on two of the six mass extinctions, the fifth being events in the Late Cretaceous, and the sixth starting at least 50,000 years ago (and is ongoing). Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary; the rise of birds and mammals. We have had a long-term interest (Cooper and Penny 1997) in designing tests to help evaluate whether the processes of microevolution are sufficient to explain macroevolution. The real challenge is to formulate hypotheses in a testable way. For example the numbers of lineages of birds and mammals that survive from the Cretaceous to the present is one test. Our first estimate was 22 for birds, and current work is tending to increase this value. This still does not consider lineages that survived into the Tertiary, and then went extinct later. Our initial suggestion was probably too narrow in that it lumped four models from Penny and Phillips (2004) into one model. This reduction is too simplistic in that we need to know about survival and ecological and morphological divergences during the Late Cretaceous, and whether Crown groups of avian or mammalian orders may have existed back into the Cretaceous. More recently (Penny and Phillips 2004) we have formalized hypotheses about dinosaurs and pterosaurs, with the prediction that interactions between mammals (and groundfeeding birds) and dinosaurs would be most likely to affect the smallest dinosaurs, and similarly interactions between birds and pterosaurs would particularly affect the smaller pterosaurs. There is now evidence for both classes of interactions, with the smallest dinosaurs and pterosaurs declining first, as predicted. Thus, testable models are now possible. Mass extinction number six: human impacts. On a broad scale, there is a good correlation between time of human arrival, and increased extinctions (Hurles et al. 2003; Martin 2005; Figure 1). However, it is necessary to distinguish different time scales (Penny 2005) and on a finer scale there are still large numbers of possibilities. In Hurles et al. (2003) we mentioned habitat modification (including the use of Geogenes III July 2006 31 fire), introduced plants and animals (including kiore) in addition to direct predation (the ‘overkill’ hypothesis). We need also to consider prey switching that occurs in early human societies, as evidenced by the results of Wragg (1995) on the middens of different ages on Henderson Island in the Pitcairn group. In addition, the presence of human-wary or humanadapted animals will affect the distribution in the subfossil record. A better understanding of human impacts world-wide, in conjunction with pre-scientific knowledge will make it easier to discuss the issues by removing ‘blame’. While continued spontaneous generation was accepted universally, there was the expectation that animals continued to reappear. New Zealand is one of the very best locations in the world to study many of these issues. Apart from the marine fossil record, some human impact events are extremely recent and the remains less disrupted by time.

Visualising the 48 hour game making challenge

We have always felt that “something very special” was happening in the 48hr and other similar game jams. This “something” is more than the intensity and challenge of the experience, although this certainly has appeal for the participants. We had an intuition that these intense 48 hour game jams exposed something pertinent to the changing shape of the Australian games industry where we see the demise of the late 20th century large studio - the “Night Elf” model and the growth of the small independent model. There are a large number of wider economic and cultural factors around this evolution but our interest is specifically in the change from “industry” to “creative industry” and the growth of games as a cultural media and art practice. If we are correct in our intuition, then illuminating this something also has important ramifications for those courses which teach game and interaction design and development. Rather than undertake a formal ethno-methodological approach, we decided to track as many of the actors in the event as possible. We documented the experience (Keith Novak’s beautiful B&W photography), the individual and their technology (IOGraph mouse tracking), the teams as a group (Time lapse photography) and movement tracking throughout the whole space (Blue tooth phone tracking). The raw data collected has given us opportunity to start a commentary on the “something special” happening in the 48hr.

A tan in a test tube -in vitro models for investigating ultraviolet radiation-induced damage in skin

Presently, global rates of skin cancers induced by ultraviolet radiation (UVR) exposure are on the rise. In view of this, current knowledge gaps in the biology of photocarcinogenesis and skin cancer progression urgently need to be addressed. One factor that has limited skin cancer research has been the need for a reproducible and physiologically-relevant model able to represent the complexity of human skin. This review outlines the main currently-used in vitro models of UVR-induced skin damage. This includes the use of conventional two-dimensional cell culture techniques and the major animal models that have been employed in photobiology and photocarcinogenesis research. Additionally, the progression towards the use of cultured skin explants and tissue-engineered skin constructs, and their utility as models of native skin's responses to UVR are described. The inherent advantages and disadvantages of these in vitro systems are also discussed.

Long term exposure to asbestos satisfies test for causation

Background In Booth v Amaca Pty Ltd and Amaba Pty Ltd,1 the New South Wales Dust Diseases Tribunal awarded a retired motor mechanic $326 640 in damages for his malignant pleural mesothelioma allegedly caused by exposure to asbestos through working with the brake linings manufactured by the defendants. The evidence before the Tribunal was that the plaintiff had been exposed to asbestos prior to working as a mechanic from home renovations when he was a child and loading a truck as a youth. However, as a mechanic he had been exposed to asbestos in brake linings on which he worked from 1953 to 1983. Curtis DCJ held at [172] that the asbestos from the brake linings ‘materially contributed to [the plaintiff’s] contraction of mesothelioma’. This decision was based upon acceptance that the effect of exposure to asbestos on the development of mesothelioma was cumulative and rejection of theory that a single fibre of asbestos can cause the disease...