Advanced paternal age is associated with impaired neurocognitive outcomes during infancy and childhood

Background Advanced paternal age (APA) is associated with an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, as well as with dyslexia and reduced intelligence. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between paternal age and performance on neurocognitive measures during infancy and childhood. Methods and Findings A sample of singleton children (n = 33,437) was drawn from the US Collaborative Perinatal Project. The outcome measures were assessed at 8 mo, 4 y, and 7 y (Bayley scales, Stanford Binet Intelligence Scale, Graham-Ernhart Block Sort Test, Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Wide Range Achievement Test). The main analyses examined the relationship between neurocognitive measures and paternal or maternal age when adjusted for potential confounding factors. Advanced paternal age showed significant associations with poorer scores on all of the neurocognitive measures apart from the Bayley Motor score. The findings were broadly consistent in direction and effect size at all three ages. In contrast, advanced maternal age was generally associated with better scores on these same measures. Conclusions The offspring of older fathers show subtle impairments on tests of neurocognitive ability during infancy and childhood. In light of secular trends related to delayed fatherhood, the clinical implications and the mechanisms underlying these findings warrant closer scrutiny.

Nation & internation practices in decision support tools in road asset management

This document provides a review of international and national practices in investment decision support tools in road asset management. Efforts were concentrated on identifying analytic frameworks, evaluation methodologies and criteria adopted by current tools. Emphasis was also given to how current approaches support Triple Bottom Line decision-making. Benefit Cost Analysis and Multiple Criteria Analysis are principle methodologies in supporting decision-making in Road Asset Management. The complexity of the applications shows significant differences in international practices. There is continuing discussion amongst practitioners and researchers regarding to which one is more appropriate in supporting decision-making. It is suggested that the two approaches should be regarded as complementary instead of competitive means. Multiple Criteria Analysis may be particularly helpful in early stages of project development, say strategic planning. Benefit Cost Analysis is used most widely for project prioritisation and selecting the final project from amongst a set of alternatives. Benefit Cost Analysis approach is useful tool for investment decision-making from an economic perspective. An extension of the approach, which includes social and environmental externalities, is currently used in supporting Triple Bottom Line decision-making in the road sector. However, efforts should be given to several issues in the applications. First of all, there is a need to reach a degree of commonality on considering social and environmental externalities, which may be achieved by aggregating the best practices. At different decision-making level, the detail of consideration of the externalities should be different. It is intended to develop a generic framework to coordinate the range of existing practices. The standard framework will also be helpful in reducing double counting, which appears in some current practices. Cautions should also be given to the methods of determining the value of social and environmental externalities. A number of methods, such as market price, resource costs and Willingness to Pay, are found in the review. The use of unreasonable monetisation methods in some cases has discredited Benefit Cost Analysis in the eyes of decision makers and the public. Some social externalities, such as employment and regional economic impacts, are generally omitted in current practices. This is due to the lack of information and credible models. It may be appropriate to consider these externalities in qualitative forms in a Multiple Criteria Analysis. Consensus has been reached in considering noise and air pollution in international practices. However, Australia practices generally omitted these externalities. Equity is an important consideration in Road Asset Management. The considerations are either between regions, or social groups, such as income, age, gender, disable, etc. In current practice, there is not a well developed quantitative measure for equity issues. More research is needed to target this issue. Although Multiple Criteria Analysis has been used for decades, there is not a generally accepted framework in the choice of modelling methods and various externalities. The result is that different analysts are unlikely to reach consistent conclusions about a policy measure. In current practices, some favour using methods which are able to prioritise alternatives, such as Goal Programming, Goal Achievement Matrix, Analytic Hierarchy Process. The others just present various impacts to decision-makers to characterise the projects. Weighting and scoring system are critical in most Multiple Criteria Analysis. However, the processes of assessing weights and scores were criticised as highly arbitrary and subjective. It is essential that the process should be as transparent as possible. Obtaining weights and scores by consulting local communities is a common practice, but is likely to result in bias towards local interests. Interactive approach has the advantage in helping decision-makers elaborating their preferences. However, computation burden may result in lose of interests of decision-makers during the solution process of a large-scale problem, say a large state road network. Current practices tend to use cardinal or ordinal scales in measure in non-monetised externalities. Distorted valuations can occur where variables measured in physical units, are converted to scales. For example, decibels of noise converts to a scale of -4 to +4 with a linear transformation, the difference between 3 and 4 represents a far greater increase in discomfort to people than the increase from 0 to 1. It is suggested to assign different weights to individual score. Due to overlapped goals, the problem of double counting also appears in some of Multiple Criteria Analysis. The situation can be improved by carefully selecting and defining investment goals and criteria. Other issues, such as the treatment of time effect, incorporating risk and uncertainty, have been given scant attention in current practices. This report suggested establishing a common analytic framework to deal with these issues.

Drivers of technology substitution : successive generations of high tech products

Principal Topic High technology consumer products such as notebooks, digital cameras and DVD players are not introduced into a vacuum. Consumer experience with related earlier generation technologies, such as PCs, film cameras and VCRs, and the installed base of these products strongly impacts the market diffusion of the new generation products. Yet technology substitution has received only sparse attention in the diffusion of innovation literature. Research for consumer durables has been dominated by studies of (first purchase) adoption (c.f. Bass 1969) which do not explicitly consider the presence of an existing product/technology. More recently, considerable attention has also been given to replacement purchases (c.f. Kamakura and Balasubramanian 1987). Only a handful of papers explicitly deal with the diffusion of technology/product substitutes (e.g. Norton and Bass, 1987: Bass and Bass, 2004). They propose diffusion-type aggregate-level sales models that are used to forecast the overall sales for successive generations. Lacking household data, these aggregate models are unable to give insights into the decisions by individual households - whether to adopt generation II, and if so, when and why. This paper makes two contributions. It is the first large-scale empirical study that collects household data for successive generations of technologies in an effort to understand the drivers of adoption. Second, in comparision to traditional analysis that evaluates technology substitution as an ''adoption of innovation'' type process, we propose that from a consumer's perspective, technology substitution combines elements of both adoption (adopting the new generation technology) and replacement (replacing the generation I product with generation II). Based on this proposition, we develop and test a number of hypotheses. Methodology/Key Propositions In some cases, successive generations are clear ''substitutes'' for the earlier generation, in that they have almost identical functionality. For example, successive generations of PCs Pentium I to II to III or flat screen TV substituting for colour TV. More commonly, however, the new technology (generation II) is a ''partial substitute'' for existing technology (generation I). For example, digital cameras substitute for film-based cameras in the sense that they perform the same core function of taking photographs. They have some additional attributes of easier copying and sharing of images. However, the attribute of image quality is inferior. In cases of partial substitution, some consumers will purchase generation II products as substitutes for their generation I product, while other consumers will purchase generation II products as additional products to be used as well as their generation I product. We propose that substitute generation II purchases combine elements of both adoption and replacement, but additional generation II purchases are solely adoption-driven process. Extensive research on innovation adoption has consistently shown consumer innovativeness is the most important consumer characteristic that drives adoption timing (Goldsmith et al. 1995; Gielens and Steenkamp 2007). Hence, we expect consumer innovativeness also to influence both additional and substitute generation II purchases. Hypothesis 1a) More innovative households will make additional generation II purchases earlier. 1 b) More innovative households will make substitute generation II purchases earlier. 1 c) Consumer innovativeness will have a stronger impact on additional generation II purchases than on substitute generation II purchases. As outlined above, substitute generation II purchases act, in part like a replacement purchase for the generation I product. Prior research (Bayus 1991; Grewal et al 2004) identified product age as the most dominant factor influencing replacements. Hence, we hypothesise that: Hypothesis 2: Households with older generation I products will make substitute generation II purchases earlier. Our survey of 8,077 households investigates their adoption of two new generation products: notebooks as a technology change to PCs, and DVD players as a technology shift from VCRs. We employ Cox hazard modelling to study factors influencing the timing of a household's adoption of generation II products. We determine whether this is an additional or substitute purchase by asking whether the generation I product is still used. A separate hazard model is conducted for additional and substitute purchases. Consumer Innovativeness is measured as domain innovativeness adapted from the scales of Goldsmith and Hofacker (1991) and Flynn et al. (1996). The age of the generation I product is calculated based on the most recent household purchase of that product. Control variables include age, size and income of household, and age and education of primary decision-maker. Results and Implications Our preliminary results confirm both our hypotheses. Consumer innovativeness has a strong influence on both additional purchases (exp = 1.11) and substitute purchases (exp = 1.09). Exp is interpreted as the increased probability of purchase for an increase of 1.0 on a 7-point innovativeness scale. Also consistent with our hypotheses, the age of the generation I product has a dramatic influence for substitute purchases of VCR/DVD (exp = 2.92) and a strong influence for PCs/notebooks (exp = 1.30). Exp is interpreted as the increased probability of purchase for an increase of 10 years in the age of the generation I product. Yet, also as hypothesised, there was no influence on additional purchases. The results lead to two key implications. First, there is a clear distinction between additional and substitute purchases of generation II products, each with different drivers. Treating these as a single process will mask the true drivers of adoption. For substitute purchases, product age is a key driver. Hence, implications for marketers of high technology products can utilise data on generation I product age (e.g. from warranty or loyalty programs) to target customers who are more likely to make a purchase.

How well are Australian children doing in the first year of school : a demographic analysis

Background: The transition to school is a sensitive period for children in relation to school success. In the early school years, children need to develop positive attitudes to school and have experiences that promote academic, behavioural and social competence. When children begin school there are higher expectations of responsibility and independence and in the year one class, there are more explicit academic goals for literacy and numeracy and more formal instruction. Most importantly, children’s early attitudes to learning and learning styles have an impact on later educational outcomes. Method: Data were drawn from The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). LSAC is a cross-sequential cohort study funded by the Australian Government. In these analyses, Wave 2 (2006) data for 2499 children in the Kindergarten Cohort were used. Children, at Wave 2, were in the first year of formal school. They had a mean age of 6.9 years (SD= 0.26). Measures included a 6-item measure of Approaches to Learning (task persistence, independence) and the Academic Rating Scales for language and literacy and mathematical thinking. Teachers rated their relationships with children on the short form of the STRS. Results: Girls were rated by their teachers as doing better than boys on Language and literacy, Approaches to learning; and they had a better relationship with their teacher. Children from an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island (ATSI) background were rated as doing less well on Language and Literacy and Mathematical thinking and on their Approaches to learning. Children from high Socio Economic Position families are doing better on teacher rated Language and Literacy, Mathematical thinking, Approaches to learning and they had a better relationship with their teacher. Conclusions: Findings highlight the importance of key demographic variables in understanding children’s early school success.

A genetic algorithm for the multi-source and multi-sink minimum vertex cut problem and its applications

We present a new penalty-based genetic algorithm for the multi-source and multi-sink minimum vertex cut problem, and illustrate the algorithm’s usefulness with two real-world applications. It is proved in this paper that the genetic algorithm always produces a feasible solution by exploiting some domain-specific knowledge. The genetic algorithm has been implemented on the example applications and evaluated to show how well it scales as the problem size increases.

Targeting injury prevention strategies to adolescents of Pacific Islander descent : what will work?

Background: Ethnicity is rarely considered in injury prevention program development, even though this is known to impact on participation in injury risk behaviour. An understanding of injury, risk behaviour and risk and protective factors specific to adolescents of Pacific Islander descent will inform the development of prevention strategies appropriate to this group.----- Aims: To determine patterns of injury and associated risk behaviour among adolescents of Pacific Islander descent, and to understand the risk and protective factors that influence injury rates among this group.----- Methods: A total of 875 Year 9 students from five Queensland high schools completed a survey during health classes. Seventy-one students (n = 38 male) identified as Pacific Islander. The survey consisted of scales examining injury, risk taking behaviour, and relationships with family, school and police.----- Results: The leading causes of injury among adolescents of Pacific Islander descent were sports (48%) and transport (e.g. 45% reported bicycle injuries). Interpersonal violence related injuries were also relatively frequent, with 28% having been injured in a fight. Reports of alcohol use were relatively low (20% c.f. 40% of the remaining sample), however reports of other risk behaviours were relatively high (e.g. 43% c.f. 25% of remaining sample reported a group fight).----- Discussion and conclusions: Conclusions will be drawn regarding risk-related injuries reported by adolescents of Pacific Islander descent and those of other ethnic backgrounds. Additionally, risk and protective factors relating to family, school and police will be explored, in order to inform prevention strategies appropriate to this group.

The relationship between personality characteristics and postconcussion symptoms in a non-clinical sample

Postconcussion symptoms are relatively common in the acute recovery period following mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI). However, for a small subset of patients, self reported postconcussion symptoms continue long after injury. Many factors have been proposed to account for the presence of persistent postconcussion symptoms. The influence of personality traits has been proposed as one explanation. The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between postconcussion-like symptom reporting and personality traits in a sample of 96 healthy participants. Participants completed the British Columbia Postconcussion Symptom Inventory (BC-PSI) and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory III (MCMI-III). There was a strong positive relation between the majority of MCMI-III scales and postconcussion-like symptom reporting. Approximately half of the sample met the International Classification of Diseases-10 Criterion C symptoms for Postconcussional Syndrome (PCS). Compared with those participants who did not meet this criterion, the PCS group had significant elevations on the negativistic, depression, major depression, dysthymia, anxiety, dependent, sadistic, somatic, and borderline scales of the MCMI-III. These findings support the hypothesis that personality traits can play a contributing role in self reported postconcussion-like symptoms.

Document clustering with K-tree

This paper describes the approach taken to the XML Mining track at INEX 2008 by a group at the Queensland University of Technology. We introduce the K-tree clustering algorithm in an Information Retrieval context by adapting it for document clustering. Many large scale problems exist in document clustering. K-tree scales well with large inputs due to its low complexity. It offers promising results both in terms of efficiency and quality. Document classification was completed using Support Vector Machines.

Measuring school-related stressors in adolescents

Some 1620 high school students responded to 68 items that measure adolescent stressors. Thirty-five of the items were based on J. P. Kohn and G. H. Frazer's Academic Stress Scale [1(1986) An Academic Stress Scale: Identification and Rated Importance of Academic Stressors, Psychological Reports, Vol. 59, pp. 415–426] developed in the United States, while the remaining 33 items were developed from P. Strutynski's [(1985) A Survey of Queensland Year 10, 11 and 12 Student Attitudes to Schools and Schooling, State Planning Committee, International Youth Year, Brisbane] lists of the most frequently named problems of 2336 Australian high school students. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to test and develop a measurement model developed from an extensive review of previous scales. The High School Stressors Scale emerged from the analytic process and measures nine school-related stressors. For researchers focusing on school-related problems and stressors among adolescents, the HSSS promises to be a very useful instrument. It has sound construct and predictive validity and adequate reliability, as demonstrated by the goodness-of-fit indices the squared multiple correlations.

Children's self-talk and significant others' positive and negative statements

A sample of 675 elementary school children in Grades 3-7 were administered the Self-talk Inventory and the Significant Others' Statements Inventory. The psychometric properties of both scales were investigated and the relationships between positive and negative self-talk and significant others' (parents, teachers, siblings and peers) positive and negative statements were explored using correlational and multiple regression analyses. Sex and age differences were also examined. The significant relationships and differences are described.

Validation of the Flinders decision : making questionnaire in course decision making by students

The Flinders Decision Making Questionnaire (DMQ; Mann, 1982) was designed to measure decision making coping patterns identified by Janis and Mann (1977). The validity of four DMQ Scales (vigilance, defensive avoidance, hypervigilance, and decision self-esteem) were tested as predictors of students' course and career decision making. Students administered the DMQ scales were also measured on independence of choice, satisfaction, and planfulness relating to their university course and on planfulness and options relating to their future employment. Two samples were studied. In study 1, 40 students residing in a university college were the subjects. In Study 2, 42 second-year students who completed the DMQ one year earlier constituted the subjects. Modest but significant correlations were found in both samples between DMQ scores and measures of course and career decision making. The findings lend support to the validity of the DMQ as an instrument for measuring decision making behaviour.

The city is connections : Seoul as an urban network

With the rise of ubiquitous computing in recent years, concepts of spatiality have become a significant topic of discussion in design and development of multimedia systems. This article investigates spatial practices at the intersection of youth, technology, and urban space in Seoul, and examines what the author calls ‘transyouth’: in the South Korean context, these people are between the ages of 18 and 24, situated on the delicate border between digital natives and immigrants in Prensky’s (2001) terms. In the first section, the article sets out the technosocial environment of contemporary Seoul. This is followed by a discussion of social networking processes derived from semi-structured interviews conducted in 2007-8 with Seoul transyouth about their ‘lived experiences of the city.’ Interviewees reported how they interact to play, work, and live with and within the city’s unique environment. The article develops a theme of how technosocial convergence (re)creates urban environments and argues for a need to consider such user-driven spatial recreation in designing cities as (ubiquitous) urban networks in recognition of its changing technosocial contours of connections. This is explored in three spaces of different scales: Cyworld as an online social networking space; cocoon housing – a form of individual residential space which is growing rapidly in many Korean cities – as a private living space; and u-City (ubiquitous City) as the future macro-space of Seoul.

How well are Australian children doing in the first year of school?

Background: The transition to school is a sensitive period for children in relation to school success. In the early school years, children need to develop positive attitudes to school and have experiences that promote academic, behavioural and social competence. When children begin school there are higher expectations of responsibility and independence and in the year one class, there are more explicit academic goals for literacy and numeracy and more formal instruction. Most importantly, children’s early attitudes to learning and learning styles have an impact on later educational outcomes. Method: Data were drawn from The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). LSAC is a cross-sequential cohort study funded by the Australian Government. In these analyses, Wave 2 (2006) data for 2499 children in the Kindergarten Cohort were used. Children, at Wave 2, were in the first year of formal school. They had a mean age of 6.9 years (SD= 0.26). Measures included a 6-item measure of Approaches to Learning (task persistence, independence) and the Academic Rating Scales for language and literacy and mathematical thinking. Teachers rated their relationships with children on the short form of the STRS. Results: Girls were rated by their teachers as doing better than boys on Language and literacy, Approaches to learning; and they had a better relationship with their teacher. Children from an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island (ATSI) background were rated as doing less well on Language and Literacy and Mathematical thinking and on their Approaches to learning. Children from high Socio Economic Position families are doing better on teacher rated Language and Literacy, Mathematical thinking, Approaches to learning and they had a better relationship with their teacher. Conclusions: Findings highlight the importance of key demographic variables in understanding children’s early school success.

AITPM Email Newsletter Volume 0904, April 2009: Presidents Message

President’s Report Hello fellow AITPM members, A few weeks ago we saw another example of all levels of Government pulling together in real time to try to deal with a major transport incident, this time it was container loads of ammonium nitrate falling off the Pacific Adventurer during Cyclone Hamish and the associated major oil spill due to piercing of its hull off Moreton Bay in southern Queensland. The oil spill was extensive, affecting beaches and estuaries from Moreton Island north to the Sunshine Coast; a coastal stretch of at least 60km. We saw the Queensland Government, Brisbane, Moreton Bay and Sunshine Coast Regional Council crews deployed quickly once the gravity of the situation was realised to clean up toxic oil on beaches and prevent extensive upstream contamination. Environmental agencies public and private were quick to respond to help affected wildlife. The Navy’s HMAS Yarra and another minesweeper were deployed to search for the containers in the coastal area in an effort to have them salvaged before all ammonium nitrate could leach into and harm marine habitat, which would have a substantial impact not only on that environment but also the fishing industry. all of this during the final fortnight before a State election.) While this could be branded as a maritime problem, the road transport and logistics system was crucial to the cleanup. The private vehicular ferries were enlisted to transport plant and equipment from Brisbane to Moreton Island. The plant themselves, such as graders, were drawn from road building and maintenance inventory. Hundreds of Councils’ staff were released from other activities to undertake the cleanup. While it will take some time for us to know the long term impacts of this incident, it seems difficult to fault “grassroots” government crews and their private counterparts, such as Island tourism staff, in the initial cleanup effort. From a traffic planning and management perspective, we should also remember that this sort of incident has happened on road and rail corridors in the past, albeit on lesser scales. It underlines that we do need to continue to protect communities, commercial interests, and the environment through rigorous heavy vehicle management, planning and management of dangerous goods routesincluding rail corridors through urban areas), and carefully considered incident and disaster recovery plans and protocols. I’d like to close in reminding everyone again that AITPM’s flagship event, the 2009 AITPM National Conference, Traffic Beyond Tomorrow, is being held in Adelaide from 5 to 7 August. SA Branch President Paul Morris informs me that we have had over 50 paper submissions to date, from which a very balanced and informative programme of sessions has been prepared. www.aitpm.com has all of the details about how to register, sponsor a booth, session, etc. Best regards all, Jon Bunker

Development of self-efficacy and expectancy measures for benzodiazepines

This study aimed to develop and assess the reliability and validity of a pair of self-report questionnaires to measure self-efficacy and expectancy associated with benzodiazepine use, the Benzodiazepine Refusal Self- Efficacy Questionnaire (BRSEQ) and the Benzodiazepine Expectancy Questionnaire (BEQ). Internal structure of the questionnaireswas established by principal component analysis (PCA) in a sample of 155 respondents, and verified by confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) in a second independent sample (n=139) using structural equation modeling. The PCA of the BRSEQ resulted in a 16-item, 4-factor scale, and the BEQ formed an 18-item, 2-factor scale. Both scales were internally reliable. CFA confirmed these internal structures and reduced the questionnaires to a 14-item self-efficacy scale and a 12-item expectancy scale. Lower self-efficacy and higher expectancy were moderately associated with higher scores on the SDS-B. The scales provide reliable measures for assessing benzodiazepine self-efficacy and expectancies. Future research will examine the utility of the scales in prospective prediction of benzodiazepine cessation.