Australian adolescents' sun protection behavior : who are we kidding?

Purpose
To examine the influence of tan preference and skin type on sun protection behaviors of Australian adolescents.

Methods
The Australian Secondary School Alcohol and Drug Questionnaires were conducted in 1993, 1996, 1999 and 2002 among randomly selected students aged 12–-17. Schools were randomly selected from each education sector in each state. The self-administered questionnaire contained questions about tan preferences, skin type and usual SunSmart behavior (use of sunscreen, hats and covering clothing).

Results
The routine use of SunSmart behavior was low in all survey years. There was a significant decrease over time in the proportion of students who practiced SunSmart behavior, with prevalence rates lower in 2002 than in any other survey year (males: p < 0.01 and females: p < 0.01). As desire for a tan increased, routine practice of SunSmart behaviors decreased. Across the four survey periods, male (p < 0.01) and female (p < 0.01) students who preferred no tan were significantly more likely to practice SunSmart behavior than students who preferred any sort of tan. Across the four survey years, male (p < 0.01) and female (p < 0.01) students with skin that ‘just burns’ were most likely to routinely practice SunSmart behavior.

Conclusions
Sun protection practices among adolescents have continued to decline significantly over time. Future educational programs require an innovative approach to modify adolescent behaviors in relation to sun exposure and sun protection.

Interpreting Fanger's comfort equation within the adaptive paradigm

This paper reviews the evolution of Fanger's heat balance equation in regard of adaptive opportunities. Heat balance and adaptive response are integrated into one model as two fundamental aspects of human-environment interaction that define thermal comfort perception, rather than being seen as two concepts of alternative comfort paradigms. The paper suggests to extent Fanger's model with a heat storage term in order to account for comfort perception under transient thermal conditions, and to review Fanger's modelling assumptions in order to allow for a greater variety of adaptive response options. In the presented model heat exchange is modulated through adaptation of physiological, environmental and behavioural parameters in the human-environment system defined through Fanger's heat exchange equations. A computational prototype is implemented to determine 'comfortable' values and ranges of the six comfort dimensions alternatively to Fanger's comfort indices. Thereby values of for example 'comfortable' clothing and metabolic rate are results rather than necessary input parameters, which are difficult to determine. This approach allows generating design advice for physical, organisational and social environments based on heat balance calculation in the six-dimensional opportunity space defined through Fanger's comfort equation. A starting point for the development of a dynamic adaptive comfort model is set.

Altered images : the relations between design representations and design practice

As information systems move out of the office into the wider world and are merged with mobile appliances, buildings and even clothing, the representations traditionally used in any one discipline may not be adequate for understanding these new domains. Design representations are ‘ways of seeing and not seeing’. Despite the central role representations play in design, the information systems design community has little understanding of the relation, ideal or actual, between design practice and design representation. This paper reports on an extensive design case study that aims at increasing understanding of the nature and affordances of representations in the design process and argues for the need for information systems as a discipline to open up discussion of the design representations that may be required to effectively design systems that mix traditional IS with disciplines such as industrial design, architecture and fashion design.

Fabric of a dream: the Fletcher Jones story

This is the story of how a shell-shocked World War I veteran, who left school at 12, ended up building a national icon. An inspiring man with bold and imaginative ideas, Fletcher Jones was influenced by Japanese reformer Toyohiko Kagawa. Jones established his clothing design, retail and manufacturing business with emphasis on quality, service and innovation. But his primary concern was for people both his customers and his workers and they, in turn, were intensely loyal.

Strength of faith and body image in Muslim and non-Muslim women

A questionnaire was completed by 98 Muslim and 91 non-Muslim Australian  women to examine the relationship between Islam and body image. Path analyses revealed that for Muslim women (but not non-Muslim women) strength of religious faith was inversely related to body dissatisfaction, body self-objectification, and dietary restraint. These relationships were mediated by increased use of modest clothing and by reduced media consumption. These results are consistent with the proposition that adherence to Islam can indirectly protect women's body image from appearance-based public scrutiny and from exposure to Western media.

CSR orientation and organisational performance in the Australian retail industry

This paper aims to contribute to current business ethics literature by conceptualising the relationship between organisational culture, corporate strategy, and target stakeholders and the formation of a CSR orientation. The paper will further explore whether corporate social responsibility policies and practices will result in an overall improved positional advantage for the firm and, as a consequence, positively enhance organisational performance. These relationships will be examined within the context of the retail industry in Australia, focusing on the food, clothing and textiles, and footwear sectors.

Visions of Utopia

Since 1949, propaganda posters have been produced in China as a visual language to unite the masses. Posters and billboards portraying images of youth in minority costumes, traditional paper cuts and China’s abundant workforce engaged in modernisation were meant to unite the masses through ‘revolutionary realism with revolutionary romanticism’. These images offer interesting insight into Mao’s version ‘socialist utopia’. With the opening of China to foreign investment and trade in 1979, the vision of a ‘socialist utopia’ has changed once again. Propaganda posters are replaced with large-scale billboards featuring luxury cars, clothing and products from the West. In order to illustrate this change, artists from Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, Lisa Scharoun (Lecturer of Graphic Design) and Frances Tatarovic (Lecturer of Photography), have created a series of ‘advertisements’ that utilize similar themes of Maoist era propaganda posters with the infusion of the glossy characteristics of luxury fashion advertising. The images reference techniques and the visual language of contemporary western commercial fashion photography. Within the artworks, the past and present visual culture of China is juxtaposed to create a dialogue between the icons of the Maoist vision of a socialist utopia and the contemporary visual icons of fashion and luxury advertising.

Intersection of autonomy and social control : negotiating teenage motherhood

Contrary to popular belief, teenage mothers are a declining proportion of birthing women; however they receive much negative public attention. Of particular public concern is the high cost of supporting teenage mothers, in terms of financial, health and welfare resources. Historically, the typical founding mother of white Australia was single, but post-war changes in the family structure incorporated the expectation that children be born into two-parent households with the male as the breadwinner. Policy changes in the seventies saw the introduction of the Sole Parents Pension which meant that many birthing teenage women could choose to keep their infants rather than have a clandestine adoption or an enforced marriage. The parenting practices of teenage mothers have been criticised for being less than optimal, and mother and child are reported as being disadvantaged cognitively, psychosocially, and educationally. One widespread nursing service which provides support for new mothers in Victoria is the Maternal and Child Health Service; however, teenage mothers appear reluctant to use such services. Why this should be so became an important question for this research, since little is known about the parenting practices of teenage mothers. This study therefore sought to explore mothering from the perspective of five sole supporting teenage mothers each of whom had a child over six months of age. The research methodology took an interpretive ethnographic approach and was guided by feminist principles. The data were collected through repeated interviewing, participant observation, informal discussions with key informants, field notes and journalling. Data analysis was aided by the use of the software, program NUD-IST. It was found that the young women in this study each chose to give birth with full realisation that their existence was dependent on the Welfare State. Unanticipated, however, were the many structural barriers which made their lives cataclysmic, but these reinforced their determination to prove themselves worthy and capable mothers. The young women negotiated motherhood through a range of social supports and through maternal practice. Unquestionably, their social dependency on the welfare system forced them into marginal citizen status. Moreover, absolute and intrinsic poverty levels were experienced, brought about by inadequate welfare payments. Formal support agencies, such as the Maternal and Child Health nurses were rarely approached to provide childrearing support beyond the initial months following birthing, since the teenagers' basic needs such as shelter, food and clothing took precedence over their parenting needs. Additionally, some nurses were perceived to hold judgmental attitudes towards teenage mothers. It was far easier to forestall confrontation with nurses and the other 'older' women clientele by avoiding them. Thus XI they turned to charitable agencies who provided a safety net in the form of emergency supplies of money, food, or equipment. Informal networks of friends provided alternative modes of support when family help failed to materialise. The children, however, provided the young women with an opportunity to transform their lives by breaking free of the past, and by creating a new, mature existence for themselves. Despite being abandoned by family, friends, lovers and society, in the privacy and isolation of their own homes, they attempted to provide a more nurturing environment for their children than they themselves had received. Each bestowed unconditional maternal love on the child and were rewarded through the pleasures of watching their children grow and develop into worthwhile individuals. The children became the focus of their attention and their reason for living. In the course of their welfare dependency, the young women became public property, targets of surveillance, and were subjected to stigmatising and condescending public attitudes wherever they went. In this way, it was evident that they were an oppressed group, but each found ways of resisting. Rather than focussing on their oppressive or disabling lives, or dwelling on their disadvantaged status, the young women sought their identities as mature women through motherhood and by demonstrating that they could do this important job well. Through motherhood their lives had meaning and a sense of purpose. The thesis concludes that motherhood in the teenage years is difficult. However, if appropriate supports are made available, teenage mothers need be no different from non-teenage mothers. But with state resources shrinking, and their own resources limited, teenage mothers are disadvantaged. In some ways, this study showed that all levels of support were inadequate, although those provided through the charitable organizations were seen to be the most appropriate. This reflects the current policy of economic rationalism adopted by most Western liberal democracies in the 1980s and 1990s and no less by the former Keating Labor Government in Australia.

Motivations for an organisation within a developing country to report social responsibility information

Purpose – The aim of the paper is to describe and explain, using a combination of interviews and content analysis, the social and environmental reporting practices of a major garment export organisation within a developing country.

Design/methodology/approach – Senior executives from a major organisation in Bangladesh are interviewed to determine the pressures being exerted on them in terms of their social and environmental performance. The perceptions of pressures are then used to explain – via content analysis – changing social and environmental disclosure practices.

Findings – The results show that particular stakeholder groups have, since the early 1990s, placed pressure on the Bangladeshi clothing industry in terms of its social performance. This pressure, which is also directly related to the expectations of the global community, in turn drives the industry's social policies and related disclosure practices.

Research limitations/implications – The findings show that, within the context of a developing country, unless we consider the managers' perceptions about the social and environmental expectations being imposed upon them by powerful stakeholder groups then we will be unable to understand organisational disclosure practices.

Originality/value – This paper is the first known paper to interview managers from a large organisation in a developing country about changing stakeholder expectations and then link these changing expectations to annual report disclosures across an extended period of analysis.

Novel conducting polymer films and coated textiles

This research developed non-hazardous methods for coating wool with conductive polymers for thermal and anti-static clothing. Conductive polymers are black in colour, thus the synthesis of new conductive polymers was required to produce coloured or fluorescent conductive textile. Cross-linked conductive polymers were also synthesised to increase their durability.

SEMI-SYNTHETIC MATERIAL

The invention relates to a modified ultra-fine natural fibre powder for use in a melt forming process for the preparation of a semi-synthetic material, the powder including particles of a natural fibre modified to improve the heat stability of the natural fibre powder particles during said melt forming process. The invention also relates to a semi-synthetic material including a modified ultra-fine natural fibre powder and a synthetic polymer component.