The communication of diabetes health campaign information in remote Botswana

This study was essentially about health promotion, and specifically about diabetes health campaigns in remote rural villages of Botswana. Its overall objective was to explore whether or not diabetes campaign messages were communicated in ways that were beneficial to remote villagers in Botswana. It was driven by social constructionist scholarship which emphasizes embedding the dissemination of information within the socio-cultural context, norms and value systems of target audiences.

Monitoring protected areas using remote sensing technology

Due to irrational use of natural resources, human society is facing unprecedented threats. Remote sensing is one of the essential tools to determine changes in various forms of biological diversity over time. There are many methods to determine changes in protected areas, using satellite images. In this paper after introducing different change detection methods and their advantages and disadvantages, a hybrid method is used to analyse changes in forests and protected areas in a national park. Two Landsat images of Golestan National Park in Iran (taken in 1998 and 2010) were used. This hybrid approach combines Change Vector Analysis (CVA) for flagging the occurrence of changes, followed by signature extension to assign labels to changedpixels. The main objective of this paper is to propose a method for discovering and assessing environmental threats to natural treasures.

Evaluating coverage changes in national parks using a hybrid change detection algorithm and remote sensing

Remote sensing is a useful tool for detecting change over time.We introduce a hybrid change-detection method for forest and protected-area vegetation and demonstrate its use with two satellite images of Golestan National Park in northern Iran (1998 and 2010). We report on the advantages and disadvantages of the hybrid method relative to the standard change-detection method. In the proposed hybrid algorithm, the change vector analysis technique was used to determine changes in vegetation. Following this, we used postclassification comparison to determine the nature of the changes observed and their accuracy and to evaluate the effects of different parameters on the performance of the proposed method. We determined 85% accuracy for the proposed hybrid change-detection method, thus demonstrating a method for discovering and assessing environmental threats to natural treasures. © 2014 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.

Remote monitoring system enabling cloud technology upon smart phones and inertial sensors for human kinematics

Stroke is a common neurological condition which is becoming increasingly common as the population ages. This entails healthcare monitoring systems suitable for home use, with remote access for medical professionals and emergency responders. The mobile phone is becoming the easy access tool for self-evaluation of health, but it is hindered by inherent problems including computational power and storage capacity. This research proposes a novel cloud based architecture of a biomedical system for a wearable motion kinematic analysis system which mitigates the above mentioned deficiencies of mobile devices. The system contains three subsystems: 1. Bio Kin WMS for measuring the acceleration and rotation of movement 2. Bio Kin Mobi for Mobile phone based data gathering and visualization 3. Bio Kin Cloud for data intensive computations and storage. The system is implemented as a web system and an android based mobile application. The web system communicates with the mobile application using an encrypted data structure containing sensor data and identifiable headings. The raw data, according to identifiable headings, is stored in the Amazon Relational Database Service which is automatically backed up daily. The system was deployed and tested in Amazon Web Services.

Use of geographical information system and remote sensing techniques for planning culture-based fisheries in non-perennial reservoirs of Sri Lanka

 The presence of a wide areal extent of small-sized village reservoirs offers a considerable potential for the development of culture-based fisheries (CBFs) in Sri Lanka. To this end, this study uses geographical information systems (GISs) and remote sensing (RS) techniques to determine the morphometric and biological characteristics most useful for classifying non-perennial reservoirs for CBF development and for assessing the influence of catchment land-use patterns on potential CBF yields. The reservoir shorelines at full water supply level were mapped with a Global Positioning System to determine shoreline length and reservoir areal extent. The ratio of shoreline length to reservoir extent, which was reported to be a powerful predictor variable of CBF yields, could be reliably quantified using RS techniques. The areal extent of reservoirs, quantified with RS techniques (RS extent), was used to estimate the ratio of forest cover plus scrubland cover to RS extent and was found to be significantly related to the CBF yield (R2 = 0.400; P < 0.05). The results of this study indicated that morphometric characteristics and catchment land-use patterns, which might be viewed as indices of biological productivity, can be quantified using RS and GIS techniques. © 2014 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.

An efficient anonymous remote attestation scheme for trusted computing based on improved CPK

 The platform remote attestation (RA) is one of the main features of trusted computing platform proposed by the trusted computing group (TCG). The privacy certificate authority (CA) solution of RA requires users to pay for multiple certificates, and the direct anonymous attestation (DAA) solution leads to inefficiency. TCG RA also suffers from limitations of platform configuration privacy. This paper proposed a RA scheme based on an improved combined public key cryptography (ICPK) (abbreviated to RA-ICPK). RA-ICPK is a certificate-less scheme without using public key infrastructure CA signature or DAA signature, which combines commitment scheme, zero-knowledge proof and ring signature (RS) to own the property of unforgeability and privacy. RA-ICPK is mainly based on elliptic curve cryptography without bilinear pair computing, and only carries out zero-knowledge proof one time. RA-ICPK need not depend on trusted third parties to check trusted platform modules identity and integrity values revocations. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

Healthcare in continuum for an ageing population - national self monitoring or remote offshore monitoring for Australia?

Australia is a country, similar to other developed nations, confronting an ageing population with complex demographics. Ensuring continued healthcare for the ageing, while providing sufficient support for the already aged population requiring assistance, is at the forefront of the national agenda. Varied initiatives are with foci to leverage the advantages of ICTs leading to e-Health provisioning and assisted technologies. While these initiatives increasingly put budgetary constraints on local and federal governments, there is also a case for offshore resourcing of non-critical health services, to support, streamline and enhance the continuum of care, as the nation faces acute shortages of medical practitioners and nurses. However, privacy and confidentiality concerns in this context are a significant issue in Australia. In this paper, we take the position that if the National and state electronic health records system initiatives, are fully implemented, offshore resourcing can be a feasible complementary option resulting in a win-win situation of cutting costs and enabling the continuum of healthcare.

The ‘r’ word and closure of remote Aboriginal communities in Western Australia; a potential framework for change

AbstractThe latest Australian Commonwealth Government Close the Gap Report reveals the circumstances of many of Australia’s Indigenous Peoples are either stagnant or going backwards. This paper argues that such ongoing injustice is a consequence of systemic racism that has been perpetuated since colonization and sustained in the twenty first century by discussion or mention of racism being taboo. A counter colonial educational framework is then provided that has the potential to address such institutional racism. The paper begins by providing a definition of systemic racism. Following this there is a brief explanation of the unique geographical context and the racist history of colonization in Australia. The nature of remote communities, the link between traditional law, country and identity will be outlined. Based on readily available sources such as media reports, social media links, and public policy announcements by government the paper then reflects on what has been reported about closure of remote communities in Western Australia. Government policy, announcements and events of the past year will be described and critically discussed in light of the definition of racism provided at the beginning of the article. The proposed framework requires self-reflexivity of organisations and individuals with a particular focus on aspects of sovereignty, healing, re-learning history and starting with a focus on agency instead of deficit. Being guided by this framework has the potential to avoid arbitrarily forcing people from their physical, spiritual and ancestral home, though this is likely to be a long term proposition rather than a quick fix.

Measuring community and service provider attitudes to child sexual abuse in remote indigenous communities in Western Australia

This study aimed to evaluate a scale to measure attitudes to child sexual abuse (CSA) in remote Australian Indigenous communities. The scale was developed to gauge attitudes that may be inhibiting the reporting of cases of CSA to police, as well as to evaluate whether interventions that focused on collaborative relationships between community members and police resulted in changes in attitudes. Participants included service providers living outside the community (58%), community members (living within the community; 9%), and service providers who were also community members (33%); 18% of participants identified as Indigenous. Principal components analysis revealed a nonintuitive six-factor solution that did not support the original four concepts. Four intuitive factors emerged from an abridged version of the scale: entrenched issues, personal understanding and knowledge, communication between community and government, and community action. The scale detected significant differences between community status and between Indigenous status groups on some factors.

Action research in a remote district in Papua New Guinea: final report

This project investigated whether action research could be used to address ‘grassroots’ community problems in a remote district of PNG. The research team introduced, supported and researched the implementation of a pilot action research project from April to November 2015 in Abau, Central Province. The project was funded by the Australian Government and commissioned through the Economic and Public Sector Program (EPSP) managed by Coffey. The action research participants comprised people from throughout Abau with interests in women’s and gender equity issues from community groups and agencies in the district. The action research teams developed evidence-based understandings of the causes and consequences of the problems that they were addressing through their actions. The research team provided each participant with a mobile phone connected to a ‘common user group’ (CUG). This enabled each participant unlimited phone calls and SMS messaging to other participants and to the research team. The research team sent weekly sets of SMS messages to all participants to assist their action research work. The use of mobile phones to support action research in remote communities was an important element of both facilitating the action research and of the research on the pilot project itself. With such knowledge they were strengthened in purpose and intention to help their own community. This suggests that an extension of this work in other remote areas of PNG may be successful.