Change in walking for transport : a longitudinal study of the influence of neighbourhood disadvantage and individual-level socioeconomic position in mid-aged adults

Background Unlike leisure time physical activity, knowledge of the socioeconomic determinants of active transport is limited, research on this topic has produced mixed and inconsistent findings, and it remains unknown if peoples’ engagement in active transport declines as they age. This longitudinal study examined relationships between neighbourhood disadvantage, individual-level socioeconomic position and walking for transport (WfT) during mid- and early old-age (40 – 70 years). Three questions were addressed: (i) which socioeconomic groups walk for transport, (ii) does the amount of walking change over time as people age, and (iii) is the change socioeconomically patterned? Methods The data come from the HABITAT study of physical activity, a bi-annual multilevel longitudinal survey of 11,036 residents of 200 neighbourhoods in Brisbane, Australia. At each wave (2007, 2009 and 2011) respondents estimated the duration (minutes) of WfT in the previous 7 days. Neighbourhood disadvantage was measured using a census-derived index comprising 17 different socioeconomic components, and individual-level socioeconomic position was measured using education, occupation, and household income. The data were analysed using multilevel mixed-effects logistic and linear regression. Results The odds of being defined as a ‘never walker’ were significantly lower for residents of disadvantaged neighbourhoods, but significantly higher for the less educated, blue collar employees, and members of lower income households. WfT declined significantly over time as people aged and the declines were more precipitous for older persons. Average minutes of WfT declined for all neighbourhoods and most socioeconomic groups; however, the declines were steeper for the retired and members of low income households. Conclusions Designing age-friendly neighbourhoods might slow or delay age-related declines in WfT and should be a priority. Steeper declines in WfT among residents of low income households may reflect their poorer health status and the impact of adverse socioeconomic exposures over the life course. Each of these declines represents a significant challenge to public health advocates, urban designers, and planners in their attempts to keep people active and healthy in their later years of life.

Hydrological consequences of land-cover change: Quantifying the influence of plants on soil moisture with time-lapse electrical resistivity

Electrical resistivity of soils and sediments is strongly influenced by the presence of interstitial water. Taking advantage of this dependency, electrical-resistivity imaging (ERI) can be effectively utilized to estimate subsurface soil-moisture distributions. The ability to obtain spatially extensive data combined with time-lapse measurements provides further opportunities to understand links between land use and climate processes. In natural settings, spatial and temporal changes in temperature and porewater salinity influence the relationship between soil moisture and electrical resistivity. Apart from environmental factors, technical, theoretical, and methodological ambiguities may also interfere with accurate estimation of soil moisture from ERI data. We have examined several of these complicating factors using data from a two-year study at a forest-grassland ecotone, a boundary between neighboring but different plant communities.At this site, temperature variability accounts for approximately 20-45 of resistivity changes from cold winter to warm summer months. Temporal changes in groundwater conductivity (mean=650 S/cm =57.7) and a roughly 100-S/cm spatial difference between the forest and grassland had only a minor influence on the moisture estimates. Significant seasonal fluctuations in temperature and precipitation had negligible influence on the basic measurement errors in data sets. Extracting accurate temporal changes from ERI can be hindered by nonuniqueness of the inversion process and uncertainties related to time-lapse inversion schemes. The accuracy of soil moisture obtained from ERI depends on all of these factors, in addition to empirical parameters that define the petrophysical soil-moisture/resistivity relationship. Many of the complicating factors and modifying variables to accurately quantify soil moisture changes with ERI can be accounted for using field and theoretical principles.

The influence of injury cause, contact-sport participation, and personal knowledge on expectation of outcome from mild traumatic brain injury

Objective: This study investigated the influence of injury cause, contact-sport participation, and prior knowledge of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) on injury beliefs and chronic symptom expectations of mTBI. Method: A total of 185 non-contact-sport players (non-CSPs) and 59 contact-sport players (CSPs) with no history of mTBI were randomly allocated to one of two conditions in which they read either a vignette depicting a sport-related mTBI (mTBIsport) or a motor-vehicle-accident-related mTBI (mTBIMVA). The vignettes were otherwise standardized to convey the same injury parameters (e.g., duration of loss of consciousness). After reading a vignette, participants reported their injury beliefs (i.e., perceptions of injury undesirability, chronicity, and consequences) and their expectations of chronic postconcussion syndrome (PCS) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Results: Non-CSPs held significantly more negative beliefs and expected greater PTSD symptomatology and greater PCS affective symptomatology from an mTBIMVA vignette thann mTBIsport vignette, but this difference was not found for CSPs. Unlike CSPs, non-CSPs who personally knew someone who had sustained an mTBI expected significantly less PCS symptomatology than those who did not. Despite these different results for non-CSPs and CSPs, overall, contact-sport participation did not significantly affect injury beliefs and symptom expectations from an mTBIsport. Conclusions: Expectations of persistent problems after an mTBI are influenced by factors such as injury cause even when injury parameters are held constant. Personal knowledge of mTBI, but not contact sport participation, may account for some variability in mTBI beliefs and expectations. These factors require consideration when assessing mTBI outcome.

The influence of flight speed on the ranging performance of bats using frequency modulated echolocation pulses

Many species of bat use ultrasonic frequency modulated (FM) pulses to measure the distance to objects by timing the emission and reception of each pulse. Echolocation is mainly used in flight. Since the flight speed of bats often exceeds 1% of the speed of sound,Doppler effects will lead to compression of the time between emission and reception as well as an elevation of the echo frequencies, resulting in a distortion of the perceived range. This paper describes the consequences of these Doppler effects on the ranging performance of bats using different pulse designs. The consequences of Doppler effects on ranging performance described in this paper assume bats to have a very accurate ranging resolution, which is feasible with a filterbank receiver. By modeling two receiver types, it was first established that the effects of Doppler compression are virtually independent of the receiver type. Then, used a cross-correlation model was used to investigate the effect of flight speed on Doppler tolerance and range–Doppler coupling separately. This paper further shows how pulse duration, bandwidth, function type, and harmonics influence Doppler tolerance and range–Doppler coupling. The influence of each signal parameter is illustrated using calls of several bat species. It is argued that range–Doppler coupling is a significant source of error in bat echolocation, and various strategies bats could employ to deal with this problem, including the use of range rate information are discussed.

Microalgal growth characteristics and subsequent influence on dewatering efficiency

Dewatering of microalgal culture is a major bottleneck towards the industrial-scale processing of microalgae for bio-diesel production. The dilute nature of harvested microalgal cultures poses a huge operation cost to dewater; thereby rendering microalgae-based fuels less economically attractive. This study explores the influence of microalgal growth phases and intercellular interactions during cultivation on dewatering efficiency of microalgae cultures. Experimental results show that microalgal cultures harvested during a low growth rate phase (LGRP) of 0.03 d-1 allowed a higher rate of settling than those harvested during a high growth rate phase (HGRP) of 0.11 d-1, even though the latter displayed a higher average differential biomass concentration of 0.2 g L-1 d-1. Zeta potential profile during the cultivation process showed a maximum electronegative value of -43.2 ± 0.7 mV during the HGRP which declined to stabilization at -34.5 ± 0.4 mV in the LGRP. The lower settling rate observed for HGRP microalgae is hence attributed to the high stability of the microalgal cells which electrostatically repel each other during this growth phase. Tangential flow filtration of 20 L HGRP culture concentrated 23 times by consuming 0.51 kWh/m3 of supernatant removed whilst 0.38 kWh/m3 was consumed to concentrate 20 L of LGRP by 48 times.

Course evidence matrix : a collaborative evaluation using multiple lines of evidence

Welcome to the Evaluation of course matrix. This matrix is designed for highly qualified discipline experts to evaluate their course, major or unit in a systemic manner. The primary purpose of the Evaluation of course matrix is to provide a tool that a group of academic staff at universities can collaboratively review the assessment within a course, major or unit annually. The annual review will result in you being ready for an external curricula review at any point in time. This tool is designed for use in a workshop format with one, two or more academic staff, and will lead to an action plan for implementation. I hope you find this tool useful in your assessment review.

The influence of internal load density on the energy and thermal performance of air-conditioned office buildings in the face of global warming

Internal heat sources may not only consume energy directly through their operation (e.g. lighting), but also contribute to building cooling or heating loads, which indirectly change building cooling and heating energy. Through the use of building simulation technique, this paper investigates the influence of building internal load densities on the energy and thermal performance of air conditioned office buildings in Australia. Case studies for air conditioned office buildings in major Australian capital cities are presented. It is found that with a decrease of internal load density in lighting and/or plug load, both the building cooling load and total energy use can be significantly reduced. Their effect on overheating hour reduction would be dependent on the local climate. In particular, it is found that if the building total internal load density is reduced from the base case of “medium” to “extra–low, the building total energy use under the future 2070 high scenario can be reduced by up to 89 to 120 kWh/m² per annum and the overheating problem could be completely avoided. It is suggested that the reduction in building internal load densities could be adopted as one of adaptation strategies for buildings in face of the future global warming.

Changing influences on the concept of ‘media influence’

The concept of media influence has a long history in media and communication studies, and has also had significant influence on public policy. This article revisits questions of media influence through three short case studies. First, it critically analyses the strongly partisan position of News Corporation’s newspapers against the Labor government during the 2013 Australian Federal election to consider whether the potential for media influence equated to the effective use of media power. Second, it discusses the assumption in broadcasting legislation, in both the United Kingdom and Australia, that terrestrial broadcasting should be subject to more content regulation than subscription services, and notes the new challenges arising from digital television and over-the-top video streaming services. Finally, it discusses the rise of multi-platform global content aggregators such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and others, and how their rise necessitates changes in ways of thinking about concentration of media ownership, and regulations that may ensue from it.

Competition and its influence on consumer decision making in social marketing

This paper extends the largely conceptual understanding of competition in social marketing by empirically investigating, from a consumer perspective, the nature of competition and its influence on decision making at the individual level. Two phases of qualitative inquiry in Australia, comprising 30 and 20 semi-structured interviews respectively, examined the role of competition in young adults’ decision to adopt and maintain help-seeking for mental ill-health. The findings from thematic analysis suggest that competition operates at both the behavioural and goal level to influence consumers’ decision to perform behaviour and that the types of competition in operation may vary from the adoption to the maintenance of behaviour. The findings are integrated into a framework that social marketers could employ to identify, analyse and address competition.