Preventing consumer credit over-commitment and irresponsible lending in Australia

Mirroring the trends in other developed countries, levels of household debt in Australia have risen markedly in recent years. As one example, the total amount lent by banks to individuals has risen from $175.5 billion in August 1995 to $590.5 billion in August 2005.1 Consumer groups an~ media commentators here have long raised concerns about the risks of increasing levels of household debt and over-commitment, linking these issues at least in part to irresponsible lending practices. And more recently, the Reserve Bank Governor has also expressed concerns about the ability 'of some households to manage if personal or economic circumstances change.2

Every One, Every Day

Creative Statement: “There are those who see Planet Earth as a gigantic living being, one that feeds and nurtures humanity and myriad other species – an entity that must be cared for. Then there are those who see it as a rock full of riches to be pilfered heedlessly in a short-term quest for over-abundance. This ‘cradle to grave’ mentality, it would seem, is taking its toll (unless you’re a virulent disbeliever in climate change). Why not, ask artists Priscilla Bracks and Gavin Sade, take a different approach? To this end they have set out on a near impossible task; to visualise the staggering quantity of carbon produced by Australia every year. Their eerie, glowing plastic cube resembles something straight out of Dr Who or The X Files. And, like the best science fiction, it has technical realities at its heart. Every One, Every Day tangibly illustrates our greenhouse gas output – its 27m3 volume is approximately the amount of green-house gas emitted per capita, daily. Every One, Every Dayis lit by an array of LED’s displaying light patterns representing energy use generated by data from the Australian Energy Market. Every One, Every Day was formed from recycled, polyethylene – used milk bottles – ‘lent��� to the artists by a Visy recycling facility. At the end of the Vivid Festival this plastic will be returned to Visy, where it will re-enter the stream of ‘technical nutrients.’ Could we make another world? One that emulates the continuing cycles of nature? One that uses our ‘technical nutrients’ such as plastic and steel in continual cycles, just like a deciduous tree dropping leaves to compost itself and keep it’s roots warm and moist?” (Ashleigh Crawford. Melbourne – April, 2013) Artistic Research Statement: The research focus of this work is on exploring how to represent complex statistics and data at a human scale, and how produce a work where a large percentage of the materials could be recycled. The surface of Every One, Every Day is clad in tiles made from polyethylene, from primarily recycled milk bottles, ‘lent��� to the artists by the Visy recycling facility in Sydney. The tiles will be returned to Visy for recycling. As such the work can be viewed as an intervention in the industrial ecology of polyethylene, and in the process demonstrates how to sustain cycles of technical materials – by taking the output of a recycling facility back to a manufacturer to produce usable materials. In terms of data visualisation, Every One, Every Day takes the form of a cube with a volume of 27 cubic meters. The annual per capita emissions figures for Australia are cited as ranging between 18 to 25 tons. Assuming the lower figure, 18tons per capital annually, the 27 cubic meters represents approximately one day per capita of CO2 emissions – where CO2 is a gas at 15C and 1 atmosphere of pressure. The work also explores real time data visualisation by using an array of 600 controllable LEDs inside the cube. Illumination patterns are derived from a real time data from the Australian Energy Market, using the dispatch interval price and demand graph for New South Wales. The two variables of demand and price are mapped to properties of the illumination - hue, brightness, movement, frequency etc. The research underpinning the project spanned industrial ecology to data visualization and public art practices. The result is that Every One, Every Day is one of the first public artworks that successfully bring together materials, physical form, and real time data representation in a unified whole.

Effects of a pediatric weight management program with and without active video games

Importance Active video games may offer an effective strategy to increase physical activity in overweight and obese children. However, the specific effects of active gaming when delivered within the context of a pediatric weight management program are unknown. Objective To evaluate the effects of active video gaming on physical activity and weight loss in children participating in an evidence-based weight management program delivered in the community. Design, Setting, and Participants Group-randomized clinical trial conducted during a 16-week period in YMCAs and schools located in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Texas. Seventy-five overweight or obese children (41 girls [55%], 34 whites [45%], 20 Hispanics [27%], and 17 blacks [23%]) enrolled in a community-based pediatric weight management program. Mean (SD) age of the participants was 10.0 (1.7) years; body mass index (BMI) z score, 2.15 (0.40); and percentage overweight from the median BMI for age and sex, 64.3% (19.9%). Interventions All participants received a comprehensive family-based pediatric weight management program (JOIN for ME). Participants in the program and active gaming group received hardware consisting of a game console and motion capture device and 1 active game at their second treatment session and a second game in week 9 of the program. Participants in the program-only group were given the hardware and 2 games at the completion of the 16-week program. Main Outcomes and Measures Objectively measured daily moderate-to-vigorous and vigorous physical activity, percentage overweight, and BMI z score. Results Participants in the program and active gaming group exhibited significant increases in moderate-to-vigorous (mean [SD], 7.4 [2.7] min/d) and vigorous (2.8 [0.9] min/d) physical activity at week 16 (P < .05). In the program-only group, a decline or no change was observed in the moderate-to-vigorous (mean [SD] net difference, 8.0 [3.8] min/d; P = .04) and vigorous (3.1 [1.3] min/d; P = .02) physical activity. Participants in both groups exhibited significant reductions in percentage overweight and BMI z scores at week 16. However, the program and active gaming group exhibited significantly greater reductions in percentage overweight (mean [SD], −10.9% [1.6%] vs −5.5% [1.5%]; P = .02) and BMI z score (−0.25 [0.03] vs −0.11 [0.03]; P < .001). Conclusions and Relevance Incorporating active video gaming into an evidence-based pediatric weight management program has positive effects on physical activity and relative weight.

The functional liminality of the not-dead-yet students, or, how public schooling became compulsory: A glancing history

This paper redefines the focus for narrating histories of education in the USA through a ‘glancing history’. It highlights the important role played by ‘not-dead-yet students’ who occupied a liminal place on the scale of life in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century. Traditional histories of education have been more singularly focused on the advent and dynamics of public schooling, ignoring the functionality of such child subjects to public schooling’s existence. This paper argues that public schools as historical objects cannot be understood outside of a broader trinary system of prior institutions that were established for ‘delinquent’ and ‘special’ children. These prior institutions facilitated the formation of ‘the public’ in public schooling less in opposition to ‘the private’ and more in consonance with ‘the human’. The existence of prior institutions enabled the enforcement of compulsory attendance legislation. Compulsory attendance legislation, in place across all existing states by 1918, was concerned more with the conditions for exclusion and exemption than with compelling attendance. Thus, at the most immediate level, this paper historicizes some of the discursive and hence institutional events that linked an array of tutelary complexes by the early 1900s, and which enabled such legislation. This part of the argument extends the notion of institution to consider broader places of confinement and systematicity. It examines the prior practice of reservation and slavery systems, and the efficacy they lent to further institutionalized segregation in the USA. At a second level, the narrative reflects on how such a narration has become possible. It considers how histories of education can currently be rethought and rewritten around the notion of dis/ability, historicizing the formation of dis/ability as identity categories made noticeable in part (and circularly) through the crystallization of a segregated but linked common schooling system. The paper thus provides a counter-memory against dominant economic foundationalist and psychomedical accounts of schooling’s past. It documents both ‘external’ conditions of possibility for public schooling’s emergence and ‘internal’ effects that emerged through the experiences of confinement

Small firm internet adoption: opportunities forgone, a journey not begun

This paper explores the endeavours of five small firms to develop web-based commerce capabilities within their existing operations. The focus is upon the strategic acquisition and exploitation of knowledge which underpins new value creating activates related to web-based commerce. A normative web-based commerce adoption model developed from a review of the extant literature related to electronic marketing, entrepreneurship, and the diffusion of new innovations was empirically tested. A multiple case study design enabled the exploration of contemporary marketing and entrepreneurship issues within the real life context of five small firms. The model aimed to emphasis best-practice adoption methods emphasizing the value of a firm's market orientation and entrepreneurial capabilities. A preliminary test of the model's theoretical contentions lent support to its overall focus, but found that the firm's existing learning capabilities were diminished during the adoption of web-based commerce, and that a lack of vision and prior knowledge produced sub-optimal adoption outcomes.

Small firm internet adoption: A market oriented approach

Fundamental to the development of new customer value offerings via web-based commerce is a small firm's ability to strategically acquire and exploit knowledge. The focus of this paper is the empirical testing of a normative web-based commerce adoption model developed from a review of the extant literature related to electronic marketing, the Internet and the diffusion of new innovations. A preliminary test of the model's theoretical contentions lent support to its overall focus, but found that the firm's existing learning capabilities were diminished during the adoption of web-based commerce. Consequently, sub-optimal adoption outcomes were associated with insufficient knowledge development.