Is it time to revisit the problem young driver?

For decades there have been two young driver concepts: the „young driver problem‟ where the driver cohort represents a key problem for road safety; and the „problem young driver‟ where a sub-sample of drivers represents the greatest road safety problem. Given difficulties associated with identifying and then modifying the behaviour of the latter group, broad countermeasures such as graduated driver licensing (GDL) have generally been relied upon to address the young driver problem. GDL evaluations reveal general road safety benefits for young drivers, yet they continue to be overrepresented in fatality and injury statistics. Therefore it is timely for researchers revisit the problem young driver concept to assess its potential countermeasure implications. Personal characteristics, behaviours and attitudes of 378 Queensland novice drivers aged 17-25 years were explored during their pre-, Learner and Provisional 1 (intermediate) licence as part of a larger longitudinal research project. Self-reported risky driving was measured by the Behaviour of Young Novice Drivers Scale (BYNDS), and five subscale scores were used to cluster the drivers into three groups (high risk n = 49, medium risk n = 163, low risk n = 166). High risk „problem young‟ drivers were characterised by self-reported pre-Licence driving, unsupervised Learner driving, and speeding, driving errors, risky driving exposure, crash involvement, and offence detection during the Provisional period. Medium risk drivers were also characterised by more risky road use behaviours than the low risk group. Interestingly problem young drivers appear to have some insight into their high-risk driving, and they report significantly greater intentions to bend road rules in future driving. The results suggest that in addition to broad countermeasures such as GDL which target the young driver problem, tailored intervention efforts may need to target problem young drivers. Driving behaviours and crash-involvement could be used to identify these drivers as pre-intervention screening measures.

Educational and occupational outcomes amongst African men from refugee backgrounds living in urban and regional Southeast Queensland

Over the last ten years, approximately one third of refugee and humanitarian entrants to Australia have been adult men. To date, little research has been done on their health and settlement issues. Many of these men have come from the African continent. This paper reports on the educational and employment outcomes of a group of 173 recently arrived adult African men from refugee backgrounds who have settled in Southeast Queensland. Given the current government policy focus on regional resettlement, the paper compares key outcomes between the adult African men who settled in metropolitan Brisbane with those living in the Toowoomba-Gatton region. The study uses a peer interviewer model and a mixed method approach. Overall, we have found that African men who have settled in regional areas face significantly greater educational and occupational challenges than those who settled in the urban area. They report more negative experiences at educational institutions, are more likely to take jobs that are below their level of skills and qualifications, are more dissatisfied with their jobs, and report greater discrimination and difficulties while trying to secure adequate employment in Australia. A number of policy implications are discussed.

A micro-level indexing model for assessing urban ecosystem sustainability

Purpose – As a consequence of rapid urbanisation and globalisation, cities have become the engines of population and economic growth. Hence, natural resources in and around the cities have been exposed to externalities of urban development processes. This paper introduces a new sustainability assessment approach that is tested in a pilot study. The paper aims to assist policy-makers and planners investigating the impacts of development on environmental systems, and produce effective policies for sustainable urban development. Design/methodology/approach – The paper introduces an indicator-based indexing model entitled “Indexing Model for the Assessment of Sustainable Urban Ecosystems” (ASSURE). The ASSURE indexing model produces a set of micro-level environmental sustainability indices that is aimed to be used in the evaluation and monitoring of the interaction between human activities and urban ecosystems. The model is an innovative approach designed to assess the resilience of ecosystems towards impacts of current development plans and the results serve as a guide for policymakers to take actions towards achieving sustainability. Findings – The indexing model has been tested in a pilot case study within the Gold Coast City, Queensland, Australia. This paper presents the methodology of the model and outlines the preliminary findings of the pilot study. The paper concludes with a discussion on the findings and recommendations put forward for future development and implementation of the model. Originality/value – Presently, there is a few sustainability indices developed to measure the sustainability at local, regional, national and international levels. However, due to challenges in data collection difficulties and availability of local data, there is no effective assessment model at the microlevel that the assessment of urban ecosystem sustainability accurately. The model introduced in this paper fills this gap by focusing on parcel-scale and benchmarking the environmental performance in micro-level.

Seeking inclusion : views from ‘vulnerable’ communities about reporting by the Australian news media

This conference paper reports on the findings of the 'Vulnerability and the News Media’ project about news reporting on communities that are commonly regarded as ‘vulnerable’ by virtue of their issues or circumstances. The project focuses on news reporting of Indigenous and ethnically diverse communities, as well as people affected by mental health issues, people with disabilities, and survivors of crime and traumatic events. Numerous educational initiatives have tried to improve the quality of media reports about these communities and their issues. Despite this, the project’s research with stakeholders from those communities has found that they continue to raise the same concerns that have been expressed about the news media since the 1970s. In focus group research, stakeholders from these communities expressed concern about their continuing under-representation or omission from the news media. They felt that voices, experiences, perspectives and issues from their communities rarely appeared, or if they did appear, it was in limited contexts – often in circumstances that portrayed them as vulnerable or disruptive. They also pointed to ongoing media misrepresentation, such as stereotyping, inappropriate framing, and over-reliance on ‘usual suspects’ to talk about their communities. A common theme that they voiced was their need for greater inclusiveness in the media. Participants wished that journalists would better represent the diversity of life experiences and perspectives within their communities. Stakeholders also wanted an increased in representation of their political frameworks, such as stories about the difficulties they encountered in dealing with social and bureaucratic systems, and their understandings of causes and potential solutions for issues affecting their communities.

Rating the Audience : the Business of Media

Knowing, measuring and understanding media audiences have become a multi-billion dollar business. But the convention that underpins that business, audience ratings, is in crisis. Rating the Audience is the first book to show why and how audience ratings research became a convention, an agreement, and the first to interrogate the ways that agreement is now under threat. Taking a historical approach, the book looks at the evolution of audience ratings and the survey industry. It goes on to analyse today's media environment, looking at the role of the internet and the increased difficulties it presents for measuring audiences. The book covers all the major players and controversies, such as Facebook's privacy rulings and Google's alliance with Nielsen. Offering the first real comparative study, it will be critical for media students and professionals.

A longitudinal study of mental health in refugees from Burma : the impact of therapeutic interventions

Objective: The present study seeks to examine the impact of therapeutic interventions for people from refugee backgrounds within a naturalistic setting. Method: Sixty-two refugees from Burma were assessed soon after arriving in Australia. All participants received standard interventions provided by a resettlement organisation which included therapeutic interventions, assessment, social assistance, and referrals where appropriate. At the completion of service provision a follow-up assessment was conducted. Results: Over the course of the intervention, participants experienced a significant decrease in symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and somatisation. Pre-intervention symptoms predicted symptoms post-intervention for post-traumatic stress, anxiety, and somatisation. Post-migration living difficulties, the number of traumas experienced, and the number of contacts with the service agency were unrelated to all mental health outcomes. Conclusions: In the first Australian study of its kind, reductions in mental health symptoms post-intervention were significantly linked to pre-intervention symptomatology and the number of therapy sessions predicted post-intervention symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Future studies need to include larger samples and control groups to verify findings.

Direct fabrication as a patient-targeted therapeutic in a clinical environment

A paradigm shift is taking place in orthopaedic and reconstructive surgery. This transition from using medical devices and tissue grafts towards the utilization of a tissue engineering approach combines biodegradable scaffolds with cells and/or biological molecules in order to repair and/or regenerate tissues. One of the potential benefits offered by solid freeform fabrication (SFF) technologies is the ability to create such biodegradable scaffolds with highly reproducible architecture and compositional variation across the entire scaffold due to their tightly controlled computer-driven fabrication. Many of these biologically activated materials can induce bone formation at ectopic and orthotopic sites, but they have not yet gained widespread use due to several continuing limitations, including poor mechanical properties, difficulties in intraoperative handling, lack of porosity suitable for cellular and vascular infiltration, and suboptimal degradation characteristics. In this chapter, we define scaffold properties and attempt to provide some broad criteria and constraints for scaffold design and fabrication in combination with growth factors for bone engineering applications. Lastly, we comment on the current and future developments in the field, such as the functionalization of novel composite scaffolds with combinations of growth factors designed to promote cell attachment, cell survival, vascular ingrowth, and osteoinduction.

Comparison of two methods to assess malnutrition in community-dwelling people with Parkinson's disease

Nutritional status in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD) has previously been assessed in a number of ways including BMI, % weight loss and the Mini-Nutritional Assessment(MNA). The symptoms of the disease and the side effects of medication used to manage them result in a number of nutrition impact symptoms that can negatively influence intake. These include chewing and swallowing difficulties, lack of appetite, nausea, and taste and smell changes, among others. Community-dwelling people with PD, aged >18 years, were recruited (n=97, 61 M, 36 F). The Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment(PG-SGA) and (MNA) were used to assess nutritional status. Weight, height, mid-arm circumference(MAC) and calf circumference were measured. Based on SGA, 16(16.5%) were moderately malnourished (SGA B) while none were severely malnourished (SGA C). The MNA identified 2(2.0%) as malnourished and 22(22.7%) as at risk of malnutrition. Mean MNA scores were different between the three groups,F(2,37)=7.30,p<.05 but not different between SGA B (21.0(2.9)) and MNA at risk (21.8(1.4)) participants. MAC and calf circumference were also different between the three groups,F(2,37)=5.51,p<.05 and F(2,37)=15.33,p<.05 but not between the SGA B (26.2(4.2), 33.3(2.8)) and MNA at risk (28.4(5.6), 36.4(4.7)) participants. The MNA results are similar to other PD studies using MNA where prevalence of malnutrition was between 0-2% with 20-33% at risk of malnutrition. In this population, the PG-SGA may be more sensitive to assessing malnutrition where nutrition impact symptoms influence intake. With society’s increasing body size, it might also be more appropriate as it does not rely on MAC and calf circumference measures.

A hardware virtualization-based component sandboxing architecture

Modern applications comprise multiple components, such as browser plug-ins, often of unknown provenance and quality. Statistics show that failure of such components accounts for a high percentage of software faults. Enabling isolation of such fine-grained components is therefore necessary to increase the robustness and resilience of security-critical and safety-critical computer systems. In this paper, we evaluate whether such fine-grained components can be sandboxed through the use of the hardware virtualization support available in modern Intel and AMD processors. We compare the performance and functionality of such an approach to two previous software based approaches. The results demonstrate that hardware isolation minimizes the difficulties encountered with software based approaches, while also reducing the size of the trusted computing base, thus increasing confidence in the solution's correctness. We also show that our relatively simple implementation has equivalent run-time performance, with overheads of less than 34%, does not require custom tool chains and provides enhanced functionality over software-only approaches, confirming that hardware virtualization technology is a viable mechanism for fine-grained component isolation.

Concurrent and longitudinal links between children’s and their friends’ antisocial and prosocial behavior in preschool

Concurrent and longitudinal links between children’s own and their nominated best friends’ antisocial and prosocial behavior were studied in a normative sample of 3–5-year-olds (N = 203). Moderating effects of age and gender were also explored. Subscales of the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) were used to obtain teacher ratings of behavior for each target child and his/her nominated best friends. Nomination of best friends with higher levels of antisocial behavior and lower levels of prosocial behavior was concurrently linked to more antisocial behavior in boys. Nomination of highly prosocial best friends was concurrently linked to more prosocial behavior in both boys and girls. However, the study found no longitudinal effects of best friends’ behavior on target child’s behavior over a one-year period. A group of children who nominated no best friends at T1 were generally perceived as less prosocial, but not more antisocial, than other children. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Wrong way go back! Rediscovering the path for charity law reform

Problems with charity law jurisprudence persist. The difficulties arose in the 20th century and are fundamental to the way the doctrine is presently theorised. They grew out of the approach taken in Pemsel’s Case to the categorisation of the ‘spirit and intendment’ of the Preamble to the Statute of Charitable Uses. Recent statutory reforms, such as the Charities Act 2006 (Eng&W), have compounded the underlying problems rather than resolving them. This paper aims to stimulate thinking about a new foundation for charity jurisprudence – while the approach may seem radical, the paper argues that these new foundations can be discerned underlying the current jurisprudence. The difficulties can be overcome by rediscovering the underlying jurisprudence which is disregarded in the current approach to categorisation. Giving voice, in contemporary language, to that foundational jurisprudence, this paper provides a way out of the current problems. It also provides an alternative way of conceptualising the doctrine of charitable purpose to guide reform.

Proportionality of sanctions under the WADA Code : CAS jurisprudence and the need for a strict approach

This article suggests that the issue of proportionality in anti-doping sanctions has been inconsistently dealt with by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Given CAS’s pre-eminent role in interpreting and applying the World Anti-Doping Code under the anti-doping policies of its signatories, an inconsistent approach to the application of the proportionality principle will cause difficulties for domestic anti-doping tribunals seeking guidance as to the appropriateness of their doping sanctions.

Feminist criminologies’ contribution to understandings of sex, gender, and crime

This chapter provides an overview of the contribution of feminist criminologies to understandings of the complex intersections between sex, gender and crime. Dozens of scholars and activists have participated in these debates over the past four decades. For our contribution to this handbook, we interviewed ten distinguished scholars whose contributions are recognized internationally. Through the commentary provided by these scholars, this chapter examines some of the distinctive contributions of feminism to our knowledge about sex, gender, and crime, as well as some of the challenges it continues to face in the field of criminology. We conclude that feminist work within criminology continues to face a number of lingering challenges, most notably in relation to the struggle to maintain relevance in a world where concerns about gender inequality are marginalized and considered as historical relics not contemporary issues; where there are on-going tensions around the best strategies for change, as well as difficulties in challenging distorted representations of female crime and violence; and where a backlash, anti-feminist politics seeks to discredit explanations that draw a link between sex, gender, and crime. This chapter critically reviews these lingering challenges—locating feminist approaches (of which there are many) at the centre and not the periphery of advancing knowledge about gender, sex, and crime.

What if you're really different? Case studies of children with high functioning autism participating in the Get REAL programme who had atypical learning trajectories.

Evaluation of the Get REAL programme in an inclusive primary school setting has indicated its effectiveness in promoting pro-social behaviour for children with high functioning Autism. However, two children with co-morbid diagnoses and complex personal circumstances showed less consistent improvements. In order to explain their unique trajectories, not readily derived from quantitative studies, an exploratory case study approach was used to examine contextual influences on patterns of progress. Multiple data sources included coded video footage from the Get REAL programme, school reports on conduct, and parents and classroom teacher reports using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. While results provide support for the efficacy of the Get REAL programme for the two children, they also highlight the value of co-ordinated strategies and collaborative individualised approaches in more complex cases. This paper outlines the Get REAL intervention and a range of other school and support agency strategies impacting progress.

Parking, parties and pets : disputes - the dark side of community living

In the last decade community living, in master planned communities or strata titled complexes, has increased. As land becomes scarcer, the popularity of these schemes is predicted to grow. Offsetting this popularity is the peculiarities of community living, in particular the often unthought-of difficulties arising from living in very close proximity to your neighbour. Such difficulties affect both amenity of life and property value. This paper seeks to inform practitioners of the issues arising from community living. It does this by identifying the more common forms of disputes and considering recent tribunal and court decisions. The paper concludes by identifying the dispute warning signs to assist to practitioners with the valuation process.