Plastic water the social and material life of bottled water

How did branded bottles of water insinuate themselves into our daily lives? Why did water become an economic good—no longer a common resource but a commercial product, in industry parlance a “fast moving consumer good,” or FMCG? Plastic Water examines the processes behind this transformation. It goes beyond the usual political and environmental critiques of bottled water to investigate its multiplicity, examining a bottle of water’s simultaneous existence as, among other things, a product, personal health resource, object of boycotts, and part of accumulating waste matter. Throughout, the book focuses on the ontological dimensions of drinking bottled water—the ways in which this habit enacts new relations and meanings that may interfere with other drinking water practices.

Struggling with food and eating - life after major upper gastrointestinal surgery

Purpose

Few qualitative studies have explored patients' experience of food and eating following major upper gastrointestinal cancer surgery. The aim of this article was to explore the longer-term impact of different types of major upper gastrointestinal surgeries on people's relationship with food.

Methods

Twenty-six people having had major upper gastrointestinal cancer surgery greater than 6 months ago participated in semi-structured interviews. These interviews aimed to explore a person's physical, emotional and social relationship with food and eating following surgery. Interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed and analysed using an inductive thematic analysis approach.

Results

Interview findings revealed a journey of adjustment, grieving and resignation. The physical symptoms and experiences of people differed between types of surgery, but the coping mechanisms remained the same.

Conclusions

The grieving and resignation people experienced suggest adjustment and coping similar to that of someone with a chronic illness. Remodeling of health services is needed to ensure this patient group receives ongoing management and support.

‘Cemented in their cells’: a human rights analysis of Blessington, Elliott and the life imprisonment of children in New South Wales

In 2010, two Australians, convicted in childhood of rape and murder, lodged a joint submission with the United Nations Human Rights Committee, claiming that successive changes to sentencing legislation in New South Wales breached their human rights by denying them any meaningful prospect of release. In this article, we examine the political, legislative and procedural moves that have resulted in Australian children being sentenced to life without parole or release. We argue that successive legislative changes in various Australian jurisdictions have resulted in a framework for sentencing decisions that is considerably out of step with international legal standards for criminal justice. These increasingly punitive legislative changes exacerbate Australia’s already declining record of cooperation with UN processes, and reveal Australia’s reluctance to respect the legitimacy and authority of international law. Against this troubling context, the views of the Human Rights Committee serve as a much-needed reminder about the importance of a principled approach to child sentencing that forecloses neither the goal of rehabilitation nor the prospect of release and reintegration.

Effect of different potting media combinations on growth and vase life of tuberose (Polianthes tuberosa Linn.)

The present study was carried out in the agro-metrological conditions of Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Different potting media were used in different combinations to check their effect on the morphological parameters as well as on the vase life of the tuberose. The different treatments included the combinations of FYM, poultry manure, sand, leaf compost and coconut coir in equivalent ratio. The data was analyzed statistically which showed significant effect of media combinations over control values. Maximum plant spread, number of leaves and vase life was recorded in sand+FYM. Coconut coir + FYM contributed to the maximum values of plant height, leaf area and spike length. Maximum plantlets were counted for sand+poultry manure. The highest values of floral diameter, number of flowers per spike and shelf life were observed in sand+leaf compost. These findings lead toward better quality cut flower production with maximum vase life.

Family centred care before and during life-sustaining treatment withdrawal in intensive care: a survey of information provided to families by Australasian critical care nurses

BACKGROUND: A core component of family-centred nursing care during the provision of end-of-life care in intensive care settings is information sharing with families. Yet little is known about information provided in these circumstances.

OBJECTIVE: To identify information most frequently given by critical care nurses to families in preparation for and during withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment.

DESIGN: An online cross-sectional survey.

METHODS: During May 2015, critical care nurses in Australia and New Zealand were invited to complete the Preparing Families for Treatment Withdrawal questionnaire. Data analysis included descriptive statistics to identify areas of information most and least frequently shared with families. Cross tabulations with demographic data were used to explore any associations in the data.

RESULTS: From the responses of 159 critical care nurses, information related to the emotional care and support of the family was most frequently provided to families in preparation for and during withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment. Variation was noted in the frequency of provision of information across body systems and their associated physical changes during the dying process. Significant associations (p<0.05) were identified between the variables gender, nursing experience and critical care experiences and some of the information items most and least frequently provided.

CONCLUSIONS: The provision of information during end-of-life care reflects a family-centred care approach by critical care nurses with information pertaining to emotional care and support of the family paramount. The findings of this study provide a useful framework for the development of interventions to improve practice and support nurses in communicating with families at this time.

Access to a healthy diet and fast foods in the City of Casey

It is known that the consumption of fast food is associated with obesity (Binkley 2000). Relative ease of access to fast foods compared with healthy foods may contribute to the increasing prevalence of obesity. The aim of this study was to determine and compare the access by car to fast foods and a healthy diet. The study was located in the City of Casey, a municipality in South East Melbourne with a population of 220,000. We have previously shown that ease of access to a large chain supermarket ensures access to a basket of healthy foods adequate to meet the nutritional needs of a family of 6 (Burns 2004). The City of Casey council provided location details for major fast food outlets and supermarkets. Fast food was defined as food sourced from an outlet without table service. We included only those major fast food chain outlets which had more than 10 franchises within Australia. We included the 3 major supermarket chains that account for 87% total food retailing in Victoria. Geographic details from the City of Casey were used to map the location of these outlets. Then using these locations and road network a basic cost distance model was created for either the supermarket chains or fast food chains outlets. The cost unit is (time), it was to calculate by giving the roads in the network an average travel speed depending in the type of road (minor, major or highway) and then calculating how long it would take to reach the closest outlet. Access to supermarket and fast food outlets were determined relative to population density.
Our results indicate that in the City of Casey most (> 80%) people live within an 8-10 minute car journey of a major supermarket and a fast food outlet. Fifty percent of the fast food outlets are co-located with a supermarket. We conclude that access to both healthy food and fast food in the City of Casey is good if you own a car. The increasing demand for fast food is easily met in this municipality. Obesity prevention strategies in Casey should concentrate on the food choices available at fast food outlets and town planning to ensure a mix of food outlets to maximize the likelihood of healthy food choices.

Rural living and health-related quality of life in Australians with Parkinson's disease

Introduction: The motor and non-motor symptoms associated with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD) may compromise the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of some individuals living with this debilitating condition. Although growing evidence suggests that PD may be more prevalent in rural communities, there is little information about the life quality of these individuals. This study examines whether HRQOL ratings vary in relation to rural and metropolitan life settings.
Methods: An analytic cross-sectional study was conducted to compare the HRQOL of two separate samples of people with PD living in metropolitan Melbourne and rural Victoria. The metropolitan sample consisted of 210 individuals who had participated in the baseline assessment for an existing clinical trial. The rural sample comprised 24 participants who attended community-based rehabilitation programs and support groups in rural Victoria. Health-related quality of life was quantified using the Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire-39 (PDQ-39).
Results: The HRQOL of participants in rural Australia differed from individuals living in a large metropolitan city (p=0.025). Participants in rural Australia reported worse overall HRQOL, after controlling for differences in disease duration. Their overall HRQOL was lower than for city dwellers. Rural living was also found to be a significant negative predictor of HRQOL (β=0.14; 95% CI -1.27 to -0.08; _p=0.027).
Conclusion: The findings of this study suggest that some people with PD living in rural Victoria perceive their HRQOL to be relatively poor. In order to minimise the debilitating consequences of this disease, further studies examining the factors that may contribute to the HRQOL of individuals living in rural and remote areas are required.

The social life of historical neighbourhoods: case study of a Middle Eastern city, Shiraz

Historic neighbourhoods have usually shaped on an organic structure in regard to their residents’ requirements. Due to the limitations in mobility, historical neighbourhoods were usually able to perform as a small city comprising all the elements required for satisfying physical, social, and cultural needs. This paper seeks to explore the patterns of social life in the traditional settlements in Shiraz and investigate the elements that have shaped the social life of these neighbourhoods. Exploring the social structure of historic neighbourhoods may introduce new approaches to the design of contemporary suburbs and neighbourhoods in terms of their vitality and social life. A review of the literature and comparing it to the historical core in Shiraz shows that there are five contributing factors to the social life of historic neighbourhoods in Shiraz, including density, human scale development, walkability, mixed land-use and qualities of public spaces. Exploring the features of public places and communal facilities indicates that the fine social performance of these settlements is rooted in their compatibility and adaptability to the environment, the residents’ requirements and culture.

Critical injuries ; collaborative Indigenous life writing and the ethics of criticism

The publication of collaborative Indigenous life writing places both the text and its production under public scrutiny. The same is true for the criticism of life writing. For each, publication has consequences. Taking as its starting point the recent critical concern for harm occasioned in life writing, this
article argues that in the reading of collaborative Indigenous life writing, injury may eventuate from critical commentary itself. The critical work of G Thomas Couser and his concern for vulnerable subjects, whose life narratives reach published form through the efforts or with the assistance of another, has its
parallel in the critical attention given to collaboratively produced Indigenous life writing in Australia and Canada. In some cases, however, such analysis is generated without consultation with the Indigenous producers of collaborative texts. Criticism directing its arguments toward the conditions
of editorial constraint by which the Indigenous subject is enclosed or silenced has the ironic and surely unintended consequence of removing the Indigenous participants of collaboration from the field of critical engagement. With particular regard to the collaborative texts Ingelba and the Five Black Matriarchs and Stolen Life: the journey of a Cree woman, this article argues that literary criticism can benefit from the practice of consultation with the Indigenous subjects whose representations it comments upon.

Mortgages and bonds: the asset management practices of Australian life insurers to 1960

Recent studies of the experience of the British life insurance industry indicate that a period of transition, and the development of more diversified investment strategies, began in the interwar period. Australian life insurers lagged behind their British counterparts in the introduction of such strategies. This paper investigates why this was the case. It argues that in the Australian market there was both a lack of opportunity and incentive to broaden asset portfolios. However, this did not mean that asset management practices did not advance. Australian life offices became progressively more sophisticated in their approach to portfolio management during this period. Developments in the interwar period provided a grounding for post-war expansion into the equity market.

Valuing the arts : theorising and realising cultural capital in an Australian city

For those who make and admire artistic works, there is no question of their value. However, for others interested in economic development, the value of the arts is often more tangential, contested and questionable. While the post-modern world of consumption and spectacle suggests to some academics and governments that the arts and cultural industries are the way of the future, others remain sceptical about their social and economic value. This is a theoretical as well as a practical issue this paper explores by offering a reconceptualisation of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital as a way of re-assessing the value of the arts. The paper then applies this framework to quantify and qualify the value of the arts in one regional city in Australia – Geelong in Victoria – focusing on the work of two artists. The aim is to describe the interconnected processes by which the arts generate cultural capital in the form of confidence, image, individual well-being, social cohesion and economic viability. The analysis also highlights the ongoing power relations which prescribe artistic production, circulation and valuation. The implications of such a rethinking and application go well beyond one city and region to other places grappling with the relationship between artistic production and urban well being. By focusing on the broad-ranging process by which artistic value is created for individuals, groups, professionals, communities and governments, a model becomes available for other places to use in realising their cultural capital.

Women`s satisfaction with life following marital separation : coping resources and adjustment of lone-parent women

This questionnaire study examined the adjustment of 245 lone-parenting women following marital separation. A composite model included intrapsychic variables as intervening between demographic and contextual variables and adjustment (life satisfaction). Regression analyses showed that the demographic and contextual variables were partially mediated by the intrapsychic variables. The path model indicated that the intrapsychic variables (sense of coherence, control, depression, and grief) had a direct impact on life satisfaction and that there was an indirect path for depression through sense of coherence (SOC) and control. It was concluded that the intrapsychic variables had a more powerful relationship with women's post-separation life satisfaction than did the demographic/contextual variables. Social implications and recommendations for future policy are considered.

From city symphony to global city film : documentary display and the corporeal

In the introduction to his history of the relationship between the body and the city in Western civilisation, Richard Sennett includes an anecdote about attending a cinema in New York. Sennett uses the story of watching film as a way of commenting on the place of the body and senses within urban settings and is concerned to document 'physical sensations in urban space' as a way of addressing what he sees as the 'tactile sterility which afflicts the urban environment.'[1] While Sennett's work performs an important task by drawing attention to various historical conditions implicated in urban and metropolitan experience, it is possible to rework the categories he deploys - bodies, the city, and film - into a very different argument concerning representations of the city. Indeed the three categories coalesce in the so-called city film - works which include the 'city symphony' of the 1920s and subsequent documentary representations of urban spaces, among them the New York City films of the 1940s and 1950s, and films of non-Western cities produced in the decades from the 1960s to the present - within which the city is realised through a focus on people.

Need for belonging, relationship satisfaction, loneliness, and life satisfaction

Loneliness and the need to belong are two subjective states that, on the basis of prior research and theory, would appear to be related both to one another and to wellbeing. This study explored these relationships with a sample of 436 volunteer participants drawn from the Australian Unity Wellbeing database. Participants completed a survey that included a measure of satisfaction with personal relationships embedded in the Personal Wellbeing Index, the UCLA Loneliness scale, a measure of life satisfaction, and the Need to Belong Scale. While loneliness was weakly related to need to belong, it was strongly associated with the discrepancy between need to belong and satisfaction with personal relationships, which we used to measure unmet need for belonging. People living alone reported a lower need to belong and less satisfaction with personal relationships than those living with others. However, the discrepancy scores, life satisfaction scores and loneliness scores did not differ between these groups. Loneliness mediated the relationship between unmet need for belonging and wellbeing (life satisfaction). These findings support Baumeister and Leary’s “belongingness hypothesis” and clarify the relationship between these variables.

Secrecy and illusion : Second Life and the construction of unreality

This paper analyses the main Second Life Grid-an Internet-based business platform with dynamic social, techno-economic, sensual-aesthetic, and psychological complexities-as an example of public relations. It argues that Second Life is a more subversive, politically oriented, and powerful form of public relations, because it invisibly exploits and invades the process of the formation of public opinion. The paper argues that Australian organisations such as Telstra, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), and the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS), which lend Second Life credibility through their recruitment, need to ask critical questions about the ethical implications of promoting this market-driven cyber-illusion. The paper begins by defining public relations (Habermas, 1995, 1984, 1989; Gramsci in Storey, 2006) and investigating any links between public relations and Second Life. In particular, it investigates Second Life's defining claim that it is 'imagined, created and owned by its residents', and concludes with a series of questions that organisations seeking involvement in Second Life should consider as part of their decision-making.