Earth resources activities on Crown land: guidelines and procedures for land managers

The purposes of this document are to:
• outline some processes in relation to the administration and/or handling of earth resources activities (particularly exploration and mining for minerals) on Crown land;
• provide Crown land managers with guidelines and procedures to assist in administration of exploration and mining cases;
• provide a broad framework within which regional or localised guidelines and procedures can be developed or utilised;
• provide guidance to proponents wishing to undertake exploration or mining for minerals on Crown land.

A comparison of the psychological outcomes of cosmetic surgical procedures

Studies of psychological outcomes of cosmetic surgery generally provide low standards of evidence due to significant methodological limitations and few studies have explored the outcomes of surgery types other than breast reduction or have compared post-operative outcomes for different surgery types. This study therefore aimed to explore the psychological outcomes and post-operative satisfaction of cosmetic surgery and compare the outcomes and satisfaction of participants undergoing different procedures.

Surveys were administered to a sample of 142 elective cosmetic surgery patients prior to surgery and six months after surgery. The surveys included standardised measures of body image (appearance evaluation, appearance orientation, body areas satisfaction), self-esteem, and mental health (psychiatric disturbance, anxiety, depression, dysmorphic concerns).

The findings revealed high rates of post-operative satisfaction and significant improvements in several dimensions of body image (appearance evaluation and body area satisfaction) and mental health (anxiety, depression, and dysmorphic concerns), but not self-esteem. Breast augmentation patients reported significantly higher improvement on appearance evaluation, significantly higher ratings of how likely they thought it was that they had achieved, or would achieve, what they were looking for in having the procedure, and a trend to report that the overall result of surgery was better than or as expected than rhinoplasty patients.

It is recommended that future research clarifies the degree to which self-esteem and indices of mental health improve after cosmetic surgery and fully establishes the impact of different procedures on psychological outcomes.

Taking the sting out of darting : Risks, restraint drugs and procedures for the chemical restraint of Southern Hemisphere otariids

The need to manage otariid populations has necessitated the development of a wide range of capture methods. Chemical restraint by remote drug delivery (i.e., darting) is a highly selective method that can be used to facilitate otariid capture in a range of scenarios, when other methods may be impracticable. However, the risks associated with darting otariids are not widely known and guidelines necessary to promote and refine best practice do not exist. We review the risks associated with darting and in light of our findings, develop darting guidelines to help practitioners assess and minimize risks during capture, anesthesia and recovery. Published studies reveal that mortalities associated with darting predominantly result from complications during anesthetic maintenance (e.g., prolonged respiratory depression, apnea, or hyperthermia), rather than from complications during capture or recovery. In addition to monitoring vital signs and proper intervention, the risk of irreversible complications during anesthesia can be reduced by administering drug doses that are sufficient to enable the capture and masking of animals, after which anesthetic depth can be regulated using gas anesthesia.

Estimating capability index in multivariate processes using bootstrap sequential sampling procedures

Capability indices in both univariate and multivariate processes are extensively employed in quality control to assess the quality status of production batches before their release for operational use. It is traditionally a measure of the ratio of the allowable process spread and the actual spread. In this paper, we will adopt a bootstrap and sequential sampling procedures to determine the optimal sample size for estimating a multivariate capability index introduced by Pearns et. al. [12]. Bootstrap techniques have the distinct advantage of placing very minimum requirement on the distributions of the underlying quality characteristics, thereby rendering them more relevant under a wide variety of situations. Finally, we provide several numerical examples where the sequential sampling procedures are evaluated and compared.