Determining trends and environmental drivers from long-term marine mammal and seabird data : examples from Southern Australia

Climate change is acknowledged as an emerging threat for top-order marine predators, yet obtaining evidence of impacts is often difficult. In south-eastern Australia, a marine global warming hotspot, evidence suggests that climate change will profoundly affect pinnipeds and seabirds. Long-term data series are available to assess some species' responses to climate. Researchers have measured a variety of chronological and population variables, such as laying dates, chick or pup production, colony-specific abundance and breeding success. Here, we consider the challenges in accurately assessing trends in marine predator data, using long-term data series that were originally collected for other purposes, and how these may be driven by environmental change and variability. In the past, many studies of temporal changes and environmental drivers used linear analyses and we demonstrate the (theoretical) relationship between the magnitude of a trend, its variability, and the duration of a data series required to detect a linear trend. However, species may respond to environmental change in a nonlinear manner and, based on analysis of time-series from south-eastern Australia, it appears that the assumptions of a linear model are often violated, particularly for measures of population size. The commonly measured demographic variables exhibit different degrees of variation, which influences the ability to detect climate signals. Due to their generally lower year-to-year variability, we illustrate that monitoring of variables such as mass and breeding chronology should allow detection of temporal trends earlier in a monitoring programme than observations of breeding success and population size. Thus, establishing temporal changes with respect to climate change from a monitoring programme over a relatively short time period requires careful a priori choice of biological variables. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

The influence of transmedia storytelling portfolio examples on employer perceptions of public relations graduate employability – a pilot study

Transmedia storytelling is the process of telling stories in an integrated fashion across multiple platforms, traditional and new (Jenkins, 2010). This paper suggests that public relations graduates who include transmedia storytelling examples in their portfolios are considered by hiring managers as displaying greater employability than graduates without them. This finding encourages public relations educators to assess current pedagogy to explore how it approaches the practice of transmedia storytelling. Additionally, educators are encouraged to ascertain whether current curriculum provides ample opportunities for students to develop transmedia storytelling examples as portfolio inclusions for perusal by prospective employers.

A development and evaluation process for mHealth interventions: examples from New Zealand

The authors established a process for the development and testing of mobile phone-based health interventions that has been implemented in several mHealth interventions developed in New Zealand. This process involves a series of steps: conceptualization, formative research to inform the development, pretesting content, pilot study, pragmatic randomized controlled trial, and further qualitative research to inform improvement or implementation. Several themes underlie the entire process, including the integrity of the underlying behavior change theory, allowing for improvements on the basis of participant feedback, and a focus on implementation from the start. The strengths of this process are the involvement of the target audience in the development stages and the use of rigorous research methods to determine effectiveness. The limitations include the time required and potentially a less formalized and randomized approach than some other processes. This article aims to describe the steps and themes in the mHealth development process, using the examples of a mobile phone video messaging smoking cessation intervention and a mobile phone multimedia messaging depression prevention intervention, to stimulate discussion on these and other potential methods.

Examples of individual supported living for adults with intellectual disability

BACKGROUND: This article provides a qualitative account of four models of support for adults with intellectual disability in individual supported living (ISL) arrangements. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Completion of the first 50 evaluations of 150 arrangements for the third phase of the ISL project provided the examples. RESULTS: Four approaches are described: living alone, co-residency, relationship and host family. Within each type, wide variations occur particularly based on security of tenure, formal and informal support and management variations. CONCLUSION: Fifty evaluations so far illustrated a wide range of approaches to ISL, providing evidence of the critical importance of the formal and informal support environment and reinforcing the contention that ISL is appropriate for people with high support needs.

Can the direct medical cost of chronic disease be transferred across different countries? Using cost-of-illness studies on type 2 diabetes, epilepsy and schizophrenia as examples

OBJECTIVES: To systematically review cost of illness studies for schizophrenia (SC), epilepsy (EP) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and explore the transferability of direct medical cost across countries.

METHODS: A comprehensive literature search was performed to yield studies that estimated direct medical costs. A generalized linear model (GLM) with gamma distribution and log link was utilized to explore the variation in costs that accounted by the included factors. Both parametric (Random-effects model) and non-parametric (Boot-strapping) meta-analyses were performed to pool the converted raw cost data (expressed as percentage of GDP/capita of the country where the study was conducted).

RESULTS: In total, 93 articles were included (40 studies were for T2DM, 34 studies for EP and 19 studies for SC). Significant variances were detected inter- and intra-disease classes for the direct medical costs. Multivariate analysis identified that GDP/capita (p<0.05) was a significant factor contributing to the large variance in the cost results. Bootstrapping meta-analysis generated more conservative estimations with slightly wider 95% confidence intervals (CI) than the parametric meta-analysis, yielding a mean (95%CI) of 16.43% (11.32, 21.54) for T2DM, 36.17% (22.34, 50.00) for SC and 10.49% (7.86, 13.41) for EP.

CONCLUSIONS: Converting the raw cost data into percentage of GDP/capita of individual country was demonstrated to be a feasible approach to transfer the direct medical cost across countries. The approach from our study to obtain an estimated direct cost value along with the size of specific disease population from each jurisdiction could be used for a quick check on the economic burden of particular disease for countries without such data.

Resilience as a double-edged health promotion goal : examples from Lao PDR

Individual and community resilience are undoubtedly important targets for health enhancement and invaluable aspirational outcomes in the health promotion endeavour especially in disaster contexts. However, overreliance on resilience as a proxy for positive well-being has serious personal and political implications in many contexts, as illustrated in research findings on women's quality of life in southern Lao PDR. Case studies derived from focus group interviews with ethnic minority Lao women about their quality of life are used to exemplify how overt signs of resilience may mask, rather than mirror, covert existential reality leaving women without a voice. The political implications of this silencing are profound. Private troubles remain hidden rather than being identified as public issues subject to public policy. This conundrum is not confined to third world countries. Structural limitations to achieving profound fulfilment abound in affluent countries also, yet neo-liberal governments rely heavily on the resilience of populations to minimize public spending. The challenge for health promotion researchers, policy makers and practitioners is to explore the nexus between individual agency and structural change in each specific context to ensure that health promotion initiatives do not inadvertently perpetuate disparities in access to power and resources.