Value of total body potassium in assessing the nutritional status of children with end-stage liver disease

Malnutrition is a common problem in children with end-stage liver disease (ESLD), and accurate assessment of nutritional status is essential in managing these children. In a retrospective study, we compared nutritional assessment by anthropometry with that by body composition. We analyzed all consecutive measurements of total body potassium (TBK, n = 186) of children less than 3 years old with ESLD awaiting transplantation found in our database. The TBK values obtained by whole body counting of 40K were compared with reference TRK values of healthy children. The prevalence of malnutrition, as assessed by weight (weight Z score < -2) was 28%, which was significantly lower (chi-square test, p < 0.0001) than the prevalence of malnutrition (76%) assessed by TBK (< 90% of expected TRK for age). These results demonstrated that body weight underestimated the nutritional deficit and stressed the importance of measuring body composition as part of assessing nutritional status of children with ESLD.

Pacific Journalism Review : Twenty years on the front line of regional identity and freedom

Pacific Journalism Review has consistently, at a good standard, honoured its 1994 founding goal: to be a credible peer-reviewed journal in the Asia-Pacific region, probing developments in journalism and media, and supporting journalism education. Global, it considers new media and social movements; ‘regional’, it promotes vernacular media, human freedoms and sustainable development. Asking how it developed, the method for this article was to research the archive, noting authors, subject matter, themes. The article concludes that one answer is the journal’s collegiate approach; hundreds of academics, journalists and others, have been invited to contribute. Second has been the dedication of its one principal editor, Professor David Robie, always somehow providing resources—at Port Moresby, Suva, and now Auckland—with a consistent editorial stance. Eclectic, not partisan, it has nevertheless been vigilant over rights, such as monitoring the Fiji coups d’etat. Watching through a media lens, it follows a ‘Pacific way’, handling hard information through understanding and consensus. It has 237 subscriptions indexed to seven databases. Open source, it receives more than 1000 site visits weekly. With ‘clientele’ mostly in Australia, New Zealand and ‘Oceania’, it extends much further afield. From 1994 to 2014, 701 articles and reviews were published, now more than 24 scholarly articles each year.

Chronicling the patient journey: Co-creating value with digital health ecosystems

With the introduction of the PCEHR (Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record), the Australian public is being asked to accept greater responsibility for the management of their health information. However, the implementation of the PCEHR has occasioned poor adoption rates underscored by criticism from stakeholders with concerns about transparency, accountability, privacy, confidentiality, governance, and limited capabilities. This study adopts an ethnographic lens to observe how information is created and used during the patient journey and the social factors impacting on the adoption of the PCEHR at the micro-level in order to develop a conceptual model that will encourage the sharing of patient information within the cycle of care. Objective: This study aims to firstly, establish a basic understanding of healthcare professional attitudes toward a national platform for sharing patient summary information in the form of a PCEHR. Secondly, the studies aims to map the flow of patient related information as it traverses a patient’s personal cycle of care. Thus, an ethnographic approach was used to bring a “real world” lens to information flow in a series of case studies in the Australian healthcare system to discover themes and issues that are important from the patient’s perspective. Design: Qualitative study utilising ethnographic case studies. Setting: Case studies were conducted at primary and allied healthcare professionals located in Brisbane Queensland between October 2013 and July 2014. Results: In the first dimension, it was identified that healthcare professionals’ concerns about trust and medico-legal issues related to patient control and information quality, and the lack of clinical value available with the PCEHR emerged as significant barriers to use. The second dimension of the study which attempted to map patient information flow identified information quality issues, clinical workflow inefficiencies and interoperability misconceptions resulting in duplication of effort, unnecessary manual processes, data quality and integrity issues and an over reliance on the understanding and communication skills of the patient. Conclusion: Opportunities for process efficiencies, improved data quality and increased patient safety emerge with the adoption of an appropriate information sharing platform. More importantly, large scale eHealth initiatives must be aligned with the value proposition of individual stakeholders in order to achieve widespread adoption. Leveraging an Australian national eHealth infrastructure and the PCEHR we offer a practical example of a service driven digital ecosystem suitable for co-creating value in healthcare.

The shifting value of design in the Australian Architecture Industry

Architects regularly employ design as a problem-solving tool in the built environment. Within the design process, architects apply design thinking to reframe problems as opportunities, take advantage of contradictory information to develop new solutions, and differentiate outcomes based on context. This research aims to investigate how design can be better positioned to develop greater differentiated value to an architect’s current service offering, and how design as a strategy could be applied as a driver of business innovation within the Australian architecture industry. The research will explore literature relating to the future of architecture, the application of design thinking, and the benefits of strategic design. The future intent of the research is to develop strategies that improve the value offering of architects, and develop design led solutions that could be applied successfully to the business of architecture.

Social media for social good: Value creation in social media based cause brand communities

This thesis presents a case study of value creation in the social media based brand communities of two Australian cause organisations. It improves understanding of how value is created in this increasingly important environment by examining participants' posts and practices, organisational strategies and supporters' perceptions of value creation. The thesis shows that while value creation is complex, value is generated for supporters and organisations alike, and positively influences the outcomes for recipients of the vital services provided by the cause organisations. Value creation in this context thus manifests social good for supporters, service recipients and society at large.

The economic value of new tropical biorefinery industries in Australia

Biorefineries, co-producing fuels, green chemicals and bio-products, offer great potential for enhancing agricultural value, and developing new industries in the bioeconomy. Biomass biorefineries aim to convert agricultural crops and wastes through biochemical and enzymatic processes to low cost fermentable sugars and other products which are platforms for value-adding. Through subsequent fermentation or chemical synthesis, the bio-based platforms can be converted to fuels including ethanol and butanol, oils, organic acids such as lactic and levulinic acid and polymer precursors. Other biorefinery products can include food and animal feeds, plastics, fibre products and resins. In 2014, QUT commissioned a study from Deloitte Access Economics and Correlli Consulting to assess the potential future economic value of tropical biorefineries to Queensland. This paper will report on the outcomes of this study and address the opportunities available for tropical biorefineries to contribute to the future profitability and sustainability of tropical agricultural industries in Queensland and more broadly across northern Australia.

Freedom ride... I have a dream

A play in two parts on the subject of racism. Part One presents the story of the Montgomery bus boycott arising from the refusal of Rosa Parkes to give up her seat on a bus and leading to the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part Two is set in contemporary Australia, in the household of a group of young people who re-create the sixties' Freedom Ride in order to heal the spirit of Auntie, an Aboriginal woman, who is the centre of their world.

Fair value accounting for non-current assets and audit fees: Evidence from Australian companies

We investigate the association between asset revaluations of non-current assets and audit fees, using a sample of ASX 300 companies from the years 2003–2007.We report that there is a significant increase in the audit fees paid when non-financial assets (PPEs, investment properties and intangible assets) are measured at fair values. Moreover, we provide evidence that an independent valuer or appraiser significantly weakens the positive association between asset revaluations and audit fees. Furthermore, companies whose noncurrent assets are revalued upwards and those that revalue their non-current assets upwards every year have significantly higher audit fees. Additional tests provide empirical evidence that the strength of corporate governance has a moderating effect on the level of audit fees. This study contributes to the ongoing debate on the role of fair value accounting. The findings suggest agency costs associated with fair value estimates may offset the benefits from the use of fair value accounting.

Balancing entertainment and behaviour value: M-games as a social marketing agent of change

In a marketplace where millions of dollars are spent on the design of mobile games (m-games), social marketers are now using this technology as a tool for behaviour change. Despite high expenditure by governments and non-profits on social marketing m-games, little is known about their effectiveness in terms of creating value. Value creation has been demonstrated to have an important impact on satisfaction and behaviour. This paper reports the results of a qualitative study involving four focus groups with 23 participants to reveal two categories of experiential value, entertainment and behaviour. Additionally, it was discovered that entertainment could be characterised by amusement and social value dimensions. Whereas, behaviour could be made up of information, simulation and distraction value dimensions. The categories of value, as well as the dimensions of information, simulation and distraction are entirely new to the social marketing literature and thus represents a unique contribution to social marketing.

Social marketers playing to win? Experiential value creation in social marketing mobile games

The rapid change of technological trends in the marketplace has increased the difficulty for social marketers to reach consumers using traditional marketing channels (Della et al., 2008). Traditionally, social marketing interventions have typically used more conventional supporting products and services such as water counters for water conservation or condoms for sex safety. However, recently social marketers are witnessing the diminishing effectiveness of more traditional social products and services in encouraging the uptake and maintenance of behaviour. In light of the technological trends in the marketplace and diminishing effect of previous social products and services (Lefebvre, 2009), social marketers have been encouraged to look to alternate means of delivering valuable offerings...

National media regulations in an age of convergent media: Beyond globalisation, neo-liberalism and internet freedom theories

There is a widely held view that the nation-state has become less central to media and communications policy over the last two decades. As Jan van Cuilenberg and Denis McQuail (2003, p. 181) observed in their overview of trends in communications policy-making, 'the old normative media policies have been challenged and policy-makers are searching for a new communications policy paradigm'. There are characteristically five factors put forward as to why the nation-state has become less central to media in the twenty-first century

Cloud computing services for the small and medium enterprises: Key considerations for sourcing sustainable business value

The concept of cloud computing services (CCS) is appealing to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). However, while there is a significant push by various authorities on SMEs to adopt the CCS, knowledge of the key considerations to adopt the CCS is very limited. We use the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework to suggest that a strategic and incremental intent, understanding the organizational structure and culture, understanding the external factors, and consideration of the human resource capacity can contribute to sustainable business value from CCS. Using survey data, we find evidence of a positive association between these considerations and the CCS-related business objectives. We also find evidence of positive association between the CCS-related business objectives and CCS-related financial objectives. The results suggest that the proposed considerations can ensure sustainable business value from the CCS. This study provides guidance to SMEs on a path to adopting the CCS with the intention of a long-term commitment and achieving sustainable business value from these services.

Following fashion: Visible progressiveness and the social construction of firm value

A central tenet underlying studies on management fashions is that the diffusion of novel forms, models and techniques is driven by an institutional norm of progress, which is the societal expectation that managers will continuously use 'new and improved' management practices. We add to the literature on management fashions by arguing that, if the display of progressiveness in the manner of managing and organizing is expected of organizations, firms that are visibly progressive would be evaluated more positively by organizational audiences following this institutional prescription. Using article counts of co-occurrences of firms and various fashionable management practices in Wall Street Journal, we hypothesize positive effects of such associations on security analysts' evaluations of these firms. Results support this hypothesis. Our study enriches the management fashion literature by highlighting the consequential relevance of organizational adherence to the norm of progress.

A closed-form optimal tuning of mass dampers for one degree-of-freedom systems under rotating unbalance forcing

This paper is focused on the study of a vibrating system forced by a rotating unbalance and coupled to a tuned mass damper (TMD). The analysis of the dynamic response of the entire system is used to define the parameters of such device in order to achieve optimal damping properties. The inertial forcing due to the rotating unbalance depends quadratically on the forcing frequency and it leads to optimal tuning parameters that differ from classical values obtained for pure harmonic forcing. Analytical results demonstrate that frequency and damping ratios, as a function of the mass parameter, should be higher than classical optimal parameters. The analytical study is carried out for the undamped primary system, and numerically investigated for the damped primary system. We show that, for practical applications, proper TMD tuning allows to achieve a reduction in the steady-state response of about 20% with respect to the response achieved with a classically tuned damper. Copyright © 2015 by ASME.