Walking when intoxicated : an investigation of the factors which influence individuals' drink walking intentions

Annually, in Australia, 10-15% of all road-related fatalities involve pedestrians. Of those pedestrians fatally injured, approximately 45% were walking while intoxicated or 'drink walking'. Drink walking is increasing in prevalence and younger persons may be especially prone to engage in this behaviour and, thus, are at heightened risk of being injured or killed. Presently, limited research is available regarding the factors which influence individuals to drink walk. This study explored young people's (17-25 years) intentions to drink walk, using an extended Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). Participants (N = 215), completed a self-report questionnaire which assessed the standard TPB constructs (attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control) as well as the extended constructs of risk perception, anticipated regret, and past behaviour. It was hypothesised that the standard TPB constructs would significantly predict individuals' reported intentions to drink walk and that the additional constructs would predict intentions over and above the TPB constructs. The TPB variables significantly predicted 63.2% of the variance in individuals' reported intentions to drink walk, and the additional variables, combined, explained a further 6.1% of the variance. Of the additional constructs, anticipated regret and past behaviour, but not risk perception, were significant predictors of drink walking intentions. As one of the first studies to provide a theoretically-based investigation of factors influencing individuals' drink walking intentions, the current study's findings have potentially significant implications for understanding young people's decisions to drink walk and the design of future countermeasures to ultimately reduce this behaviour.

Legal issues in carbon farming : biosequestration, carbon pricing, and carbon rights

This paper critically analyses the proposed Australian regulatory approach to the crediting of biological sequestration activities (biosequestration) under the Australian Carbon Farming Initiative and its interaction with State-based carbon rights, the national carbon-pricing mechanism, and the international Kyoto Protocol and carbon-trading markets. Norms and principles have been established by the Kyoto Protocol to guide the creation of additional, verifiable, and permanent credits from biosequestration activities. This paper examines the proposed arrangements under the Australian Carbon Farming Initiative and Carbon Pricing Mechanism to determine whether they are consistent with those international norms and standards. This paper identifies a number of anomalies associated with the legal treatment of additionality and permanence and issuance of carbon credits within the Australian schemes. In light of this, the paper considers the possible legal implications for the national and international transfer, surrender and use of these offset credits.

A fast tabu search algorithm for the group shop scheduling problem

Three types of shop scheduling problems, the flow shop, the job shop and the open shop scheduling problems, have been widely studied in the literature. However, very few articles address the group shop scheduling problem introduced in 1997, which is a general formulation that covers the three above mentioned shop scheduling problems and the mixed shop scheduling problem. In this paper, we apply tabu search to the group shop scheduling problem and evaluate the performance of the algorithm on a set of benchmark problems. The computational results show that our tabu search algorithm is typically more efficient and faster than the other methods proposed in the literature. Furthermore, the proposed tabu search method has found some new best solutions of the benchmark instances.

Prevention of pelvic sepsis in major open pelviperineal injury

Compound pelvic fractures are deemed to be one of the most severe orthopaedic injuries with an extremely high morbidity and mortality. After the initial resuscitation phase the prevention of pelvic sepsis is one of the main treatment goals for patients with an open pelvic fracture. If there is a suspicion of a rectal injury or if the wounds are in the perineal area, The Princess Alexandra Hospital's management plan includes early faecal diversion combined with vigorous soft tissue debridement, VAC(®) therapy and (if indicated) external fixation of the pelvic fracture. We present our flowchart for the treatment of trauma patients with compound pelvic fractures illustrated by a case report describing a 32 year old patient who sustained an open pelvic ring injury in a workplace accident. The aim of this paper is to underline the importance of a safe, straightforward approach to compound pelvic fractures.

Vibrational spectroscopic study of the minerals cavansite and pentagonite Ca(V4+O)Si4O10.4H2O

The bright blue minerals cavansite and pentagonite, a calcium vanadium silicate Ca(V4+O)Si4O10.4H2O, have been studied by UV–Visible, Raman and infrared spectroscopy. Cavansite shows an open porous structure with very small micron sized holes. Strong UV–Visible absorption bands are observed at around 403, 614 and 789 nm for cavansite and pentagonite. The Raman spectrum of cavansite is dominated by an intense band at 981 cm -1 and pentagonite by a band at 971 cm-1 attributed to the stretching vibrations of (SiO3)n units. Cavansite is characterised by two intense bands at 574 and 672 cm-1 whereas pentagonite by a single band at 651 cm-1. The Raman spectrum of cavansite in the hydroxyl stretching region shows bands at 3504, 3546, 3577, 3604 and 3654 cm-1 whereas pentagonite is a single band at 3532 cm_1. These bands are attributed to water coordinated to calcium and vanadium. XPS studies show that bond energy of oxygen in oxides is 530 eV, and in hydroxides -531.5 eV and for water -533.5 eV. XPS studies show a strong peak at 531.5 eV for cavansite, indicating some OH units in the structure of cavansite.

Concentration and oxidative potential of on-road particle emissions and their relationship with traffic composition : Relevance to exposure assessment

Particles emitted by vehicles are known to cause detrimental health effects, with their size and oxidative potential among the main factors responsible. Therefore, understanding the relationship between traffic composition and both the physical characteristics and oxidative potential of particles is critical. To contribute to the limited knowledge base in this area, we investigated this relationship in a 4.5 km road tunnel in Brisbane, Australia. On-road concentrations of ultrafine particles (<100 nm, UFPs), fine particles (PM2.5), CO, CO2 and particle associated reactive oxygen species (ROS) were measured using vehicle-based mobile sampling. UFPs were measured using a condensation particle counter and PM2.5 with a DustTrak aerosol photometer. A new profluorescent nitroxide probe, BPEAnit, was used to determine ROS levels. Comparative measurements were also performed on an above-ground road to assess the role of emission dilution on the parameters measured. The profile of UFP and PM2.5 concentration with distance through the tunnel was determined, and demonstrated relationships with both road gradient and tunnel ventilation. ROS levels in the tunnel were found to be high compared to an open road with similar traffic characteristics, which was attributed to the substantial difference in estimated emission dilution ratios on the two roadways. Principal component analysis (PCA) revealed that the levels of pollutants and ROS were generally better correlated with total traffic count, rather than the traffic composition (i.e. diesel and gasoline-powered vehicles). A possible reason for the lack of correlation with HDV, which has previously been shown to be strongly associated with UFPs especially, was the low absolute numbers encountered during the sampling. This may have made their contribution to in-tunnel pollution largely indistinguishable from the total vehicle volume. For ROS, the stronger association observed with HDV and gasoline vehicles when combined (total traffic count) compared to when considered individually may signal a role for the interaction of their emissions as a determinant of on-road ROS in this pilot study. If further validated, this should not be overlooked in studies of on- or near-road particle exposure and its potential health effects.

Consecutive days of cold water immersion: effects on cycling performance and heart rate variability.

We investigated performance and heart rate (HR) variability (HRV) over consecutive days of cycling with post-exercise cold water immersion (CWI) or passive recovery (PAS). In a crossover design, 11 cyclists completed two separate 3-day training blocks (120 min cycling per day, 66 maximal sprints, 9 min time trialling [TT]), followed by 2 days of recovery-based training. The cyclists recovered from each training session by standing in cold water (10 °C) or at room temperature (27 °C) for 5 min. Mean power for sprints, total TT work and HR were assessed during each session. Resting vagal-HRV (natural logarithm of square-root of mean squared differences of successive R-R intervals; ln rMSSD) was assessed after exercise, after the recovery intervention, during sleep and upon waking. CWI allowed better maintenance of mean sprint power (between-trial difference [90 % confidence limits] +12.4 % [5.9; 18.9]), cadence (+2.0 % [0.6; 3.5]), and mean HR during exercise (+1.6 % [0.0; 3.2]) compared with PAS. ln rMSSD immediately following CWI was higher (+144 % [92; 211]) compared with PAS. There was no difference between the trials in TT performance (-0.2 % [-3.5; 3.0]) or waking ln rMSSD (-1.2 % [-5.9; 3.4]). CWI helps to maintain sprint performance during consecutive days of training, whereas its effects on vagal-HRV vary over time and depend on prior exercise intensity.

Do high levels of physical activity favor favorable cardiovascular risk factors regardless of sleep?

This study suggests that physical activity is a more important lifestyle modification than sleep to improve cardiovascular risk factors in postmenopausal women; however both lifestyle modifications, including, ensuring sufficient sleep quality and duration and increasing physical activity should be strongly encouraged by menopause practitioners in postmenopausal women care.

Changing patterns of contraceptive use in Australian women

Background: This longitudinal analysis examines how patterns of contraceptive use changed over 11 years among Australian women born between 1973 and 1978. Study Design: The analysis included 6708 women sampled from the Australian universal health insurance database who completed four self-report postal surveys between 1996 and 2006. Change over time in use of any method of contraception and the common single methods of the oral contraceptive pill and condom was examined using a longitudinal logistic regression model. Results: The oral contraceptive pill was the most commonly used single method at each survey (27-44%) but decreased over time. Over time, contraceptive users were increasingly more likely to be single or in a de facto relationship or to have had two or more births. Conclusions: Women's contraceptive use and the factors associated with contraceptive use change over time as women move into relationships, try to conceive, have babies and complete their families.

A dual-scale modelling approach for drying hygroscopic porous media

A new dualscale modelling approach is presented for simulating the drying of a wet hygroscopic porous material that couples the porous medium (macroscale) with the underlying pore structure (microscale). The proposed model is applied to the convective drying of wood at low temperatures and is valid in the so-called hygroscopic range, where hygroscopically held liquid water is present in the solid phase and water exits only as vapour in the pores. Coupling between scales is achieved by imposing the macroscopic gradients of moisture content and temperature on the microscopic field using suitably-defined periodic boundary conditions, which allows the macroscopic mass and thermal fluxes to be defined as averages of the microscopic fluxes over the unit cell. This novel formulation accounts for the intricate coupling of heat and mass transfer at the microscopic scale but reduces to a classical homogenisation approach if a linear relationship is assumed between the microscopic gradient and flux. Simulation results for a sample of spruce wood highlight the potential and flexibility of the new dual-scale approach. In particular, for a given unit cell configuration it is not necessary to propose the form of the macroscopic fluxes prior to the simulations because these are determined as a direct result of the dual-scale formulation.

A distributed memory for networked livecoding performance

The symbolic and improvisational nature of Livecoding requires a shared networking framework to be flexible and extensible, while at the same time providing support for synchronisation, persistence and redundancy. Above all the framework should be robust and available across a range of platforms. This paper proposes tuple space as a suitable framework for network communication in ensemble livecoding contexts. The role of tuple space as a concurrency framework and the associated timing aspects of the tuple space model are explored through Spaces, an implementation of tuple space for the Impromptu environment.

Self-assembled hyperbranched polymer - gold nanoparticle hybrids : understanding the effect of polymer coverage on assembly size and SERS performance

In the past few years, remarkable progress has been made in unveiling novel and unique optical properties of strongly coupled plasmonic nanostructures. However, application of such plasmonic nanostructures in biomedicine remains challenging due to the lack of facile and robust assembly methods for producing stable nanostructures. Previous attempts to achieve plasmonic nano-assemblies using molecular ligands were limited due to the lack of flexibility that could be exercised in forming them. Here, we report the utilization of tailor-made hyperbranched polymers (HBP) as linkers to assemble gold nanoparticles (NPs) into nano-assemblies. The ease and flexibility in tuning the particle size and number of branch ends of a HBP makes it an ideal candidate as a linker, as opposed to DNA, small organic molecules and linear or dendrimeric polymers. We report a strong correlation of polymer (HBP) concentration with the size of the hybrid nano-assemblies and “hot-spot” density. We have shown that such solutions of stable HBP-gold nano-assemblies can be barcoded with various Raman tags to provide improved surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) compared with non-aggregated NP systems. These Raman barcoded hybrid nano-assemblies, with further optimization of NP shape, size and “hot-spot” density, may find application as diagnostic tools in nanomedicine.

The Citizen’s Round Table process : canvassing public opinion on energy technologies to mitigate climate change

This study draws on communication accommodation theory, social identity theory and cognitive dissonance theory to drive a ‘Citizen’s Round Table’ process that engages community audiences on energy technologies and strategies that potentially mitigate climate change. The study examines the effectiveness of the process in determining the strategies that engage people in discussion. The process is designed to canvas participants’ perspectives and potential reactions to the array of renewable and non-renewable energy sources, in particular, underground storage of CO2. Ninety-five people (12 groups) participated in the process. Questionnaires were administered three times to identify changes in attitudes over time, and analysis of video, audio-transcripts and observer notes enabled an evaluation of level of engagement and communication among participants. The key findings of this study indicate that the public can be meaningfully engaged in discussion on the politically sensitive issue of CO2 capture and storage (CCS) and other low emission technologies. The round table process was critical to participants’ engagement and led to attitude change towards some methods of energy production. This study identifies a process that can be used successfully to explore community attitudes on politically-sensitive topics and encourages an examination of attitudes and potential attitude change.

Corporate commitment to sustainability : is it all hot air? An Australian review of the linkage between executive pay and sustainable performance

Across time, companies have increasingly made public commitments to sustainable development and to reducing their impacts on climate change. Management remuneration plans (MRPs) are a key mechanism to motivate managers to achieve corporate goals. We review the MRPs negotiated with key management personnel in a sample of large Australian carbon-intensive companies. Our results show that, as in past decades, the companies in our sample have MRPs in place that continue to fixate on financial performance. We argue that this provides evidence of a disconnection, or ‘decoupling’, between the sustainability-related rhetoric of the sample companies, and their ‘real’ organisational practices and priorities.