Maintenance of traditional cultural orientation is associated with lower rates of obesity and sedentary behaviours among African migrant children to Australia

Background: Migrants from developing to developed countries rapidly develop more obesity than the host population. While the effects of socio-economic status on obesity are well established, the influence of cultural factors, including acculturation, is not known.

Objective: To examine the association between acculturation and obesity and its risk factors among African migrant children in Australia.

Design and participants: A cross-sectional study using a non-probability sample of 3- to 12-year-old sub-Saharan African migrant children. A bidimensional model of strength of affiliation with African and Australian cultures was used to divide the sample into four cultural orientations: traditional (African), assimilated (Australian), integrated (both) and marginalized (neither).

Main outcome measures: Body mass index (BMI), leisure-time physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviours (SBs) and energy density of food.

Results: In all, 18.4% (95% confidence interval (CI): 14–23%) were overweight and 8.6% (95% CI: 6–12%) were obese. After adjustment for confounders, integrated (ß=1.1; P<0.05) and marginalized ß(=1.4; P<0.01) children had higher BMI than traditional children. However, integrated children had significantly higher time engaged in both PA (ß=46.9, P<0.01) and SBs (ß=43.0, P<0.05) than their traditional counterparts. In comparison with traditional children, assimilated children were more sedentary (ß=57.5, P<0.01) while marginalization was associated with increased consumption of energy-dense foods (ß=42.0, P<0.05).

Conclusions: Maintenance of traditional orientation was associated with lower rates of obesity and SBs. Health promotion programs and frameworks need to be rooted in traditional values and habits to maintain and reinforce traditional dietary and PA habits, as well as identify the marginalized clusters and address their needs.

Identifying house price diffusion patterns among Australian state capital cities

Prior research supports the proposition that house price diffusion shows a ripple effect along the spatial dimension. That is, house price changes in one region would reflect in subsequent house price changes in other regions, showing certain linkages among regions. Using the vector autoregression model and the impulse response function, this study investigates house price diffusion among Australia's state capital cities, examining the response of one market to the innovation of other markets and determining the lagged terms for the maximum absolute value of the other markets' responses. The results show that the most important subnational markets in Australia do not point to Sydney, rather towards Canberra and Hobart, while the Darwin market plays a role of buffer. The safest markets are Sydney and Melbourne. This study helps to predict house price movement trends in eight capital cities.

Gatekeepers : going, going, gone -the challenge of citizenship journalism to traditional practice

Commentators believe that the reporting of the London bombings of July 2005 ushered in a new era of the citizen joumalist. News outlets in Britain were  flooded with emails and mobile phone pictures. But with the sheer quantity of material heading into the editor's inbox, how can we be sure of its veracity? This paper looks at The Herald Sun. The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph and The Adelaide Advertiser to investigate the current systems in place for checking incoming leads and material. The paper raises questions regarding the reliability of current systems and puts forward the possibility that new approaches and systems may be needed to meet the new challenges. The paper further explores if newspapers are still acting as gatekeepers of the traditional system or if they are letting the gate swing ajar in response to  changed circumstances.

Estimating impacts of consumer prices on house prices

Real estate is widely considered as a reliable hedge of inflation rate and there have been many literatures examining the inflation-hedging characteristics of the real estate.  The study described in the paper focuses on testing the significances of impacts of consumer price on house price in eight Australia's capital cities.  The Autoregressive Distributed Lag model is introduced to obtain  the estimates of the coefficient.  The significances of the impacts are defined as the accept probability of t statistics of the coefficients.  Analyses and comparisons of these significances suggested that the impacts of consumer prices on house prices depend on the inherent characteristics of cities. 

Resisting assimilation : the mild aesthetics and wild perceptions of the migrant house

The physical adaptation, remaking and maintenance, or building of the house plays a significant role in immigrants’ sense of belonging to a community, especially in contexts of first generation elderly immigrants with minimal English language skills. Psychoanalytic theories propose that objects are integral to a subject’s identity, but that the path of effect between the subject and object is not causal or direct, rather it goes via the unconscious. This paper seeks to examine the relationship between immigrants and their houses through these theories adapting them to an analysis of the houses. It draws its data from field research of three elderly immigrant households. The iconography of the house has always been perceived as central to the analysis of dreams, here the thesis is that the house is the most significant object of the immigrant because it mediates the many worlds inherent to the migrant’s imaginary landscapes. The analysis will seek to understand this role of the house.

Secondly, while many houses in which migrants live can barely be differentiated in clear physical ways from the typology of houses built in Australia, the perception that they are different is a strong myth. At the least it has resulted in very little, if any, study of this vernacular of new Australian houses. It would be easy to argue that to build a house in Australia is the most important mode of assimilation because a way of life is intrinsically set by this suburban paradigm. But for the reason of this perception of difference I will explore an idea about ethnic aesthetics as a mode of resisting assimilation. In writing on taste in his seminal book, Distinction, the sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, has argued that taste is a way of classifying people into classes, race, culture, but it is also a way for dominant and ruling classes to resist challenges from other parties, and maintain a particular hierarchy of society. In this case those other parties are ethnic communities in Australia whose tastes are not always the same as that of the dominant Anglo-Celtic community.

Between traditions : the villa and the country house

Sir Leslie Martin wrote in 1983, “The formal composition used by Lutyens is something totally related to the problems and culture of his time”. to reinforce this point Martin included a plan of Heathcote (1905) next to an illustration of one of Palladio’s final commissions, the Villa Rotonda (1566). Comparing the planning and symmetry strategies of the two architects, Martin was able to demonstrate how Heathcote embodied an eclectic yet fundamental link between two traditions - the irregularity of an Edwardian planning arrangement, and its containment within the symmetry demanded by the “full classical orchestra of a Doric order” (Hussey, 1950 p128). “Once inside the balanced mass of the exterior, the visitor’s movement through the building is controlled by volumes and composition of a totally different kind” 1. While Palladio appears to have been a significant influence on Lutyens, as revealed in the often quoted letter about the “High Game” which he wrote to Herbert Baker in 1903, few studies appear to explore the extent to which his newfound inspiration went beyond the issue of fenestration in affecting other aspects of his work. The following paper analyses Lutyens’s relationship to Palladio with particular reference to three concepts fundamental to the work of
both architects: proportion, plan arrangement and movement.

Recognizing and celebrating Xhosa traditional music in South Africa

The recognition and celebration of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) as a way forward to promote democracy and inclusivity continues to be part of South Africa's nation building process. One effective platform for this to take place is through community music making as music making in Africa is a way of life. Since democracy in 1994 many initiatives were set up to explore and foster traditional music. This paper presents a brief contextualization of IKS, identity and community music making. It reports on the a Xhosa music research project (2004-2006) as an ethnographic study which is descriptive and interpretive as a holistic cultural portrait. Participants in the project included post-graduate music students, community culture bearers and academics. Only some significant aspects of the Xhose music project at the University of Fort Hare will be reported on. We contextualize the recognition and celebration of IKS within the parameters of the music and the culture of the amaMpondo within the Xhosa people. The paper specifically focuses on the ritual life of the amaMpondo. It also describes the indigenous bow instruments of the Uhadi and Umrhubhe as unique examples of South Africa's traditional music. As this initiative proved a worthy undertaking, we challenge whether such a project could strengthen local IKS elsewhere and be a pathway for tertiary institutions to engage effectively with local community music practitioners in order to prepare students effectively as holistic music educators.

Camera traps : the research paparazzi

The use of cameras to monitor wildlife is commonplace; however, little is known of the effectiveness of different camera technologies for the detection of mammals. We compared the detection success of three different camera systems, a passive infrared (IR) system, an active IR and a constant video camera, alongside a trapping grid of Elliott and cage traps to determine their effectiveness at detecting mammals at multiple locations in the Otways National Park, Victoria, Australia (n = 160 events; 40 ± 23 [SD] events per night). Species detected and detection rates differed between methods (χ2 = 57.95, df = 2, p < 0.0001). Only house mice (Mus musculus) were detected by camera and traditional trapping techniques. Camera systems alone detected foxes (Vulpes vulpes) and a koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), while traditional traps captured bush rats (Rattus fuscipes), agile antechinus (Antechinus agilis) and a brush-tailed possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) which were not detected by the camera systems. Assuming that the video camera detected all mammals at the camera trap, the passive IR system detected almost all mammals detected by the video and it detected significantly more species than the active IR system. The choice of method will ultimately depend on the species of interest, logistics and the study site, and may substantially influence the results of a study.

The migrant house as a site of conflicting cultural identity

This paper amis to explore how migrants attempt to maintain cultural identity while creating a feeling of being at home in the houses of their adopted counrties.  It draws on data collected through a visual study of suburban streetscapes with large proportions of south-east Asian born residents in Melbourne's western suburbs.

Testosterone, dominance signalling and immunosuppression in the house sparrow, Passer domesticus

The immunocompetence handicap hypothesis (ICHH) suggests that dominance signals are costly because their development is controlled by testosterone, which is immunosuppressive. Signal control therefore links an increased disease risk with a high quality signal. The chest bib of the house sparrow, Passer domesticus, is a signal known to be related to dominance and under control of testosterone levels. We experimentally manipulated testosterone in male sparrows during the breeding season and again independently during the post-breeding period to test whether variation in levels of testosterone could cause variation in levels of immunocompetence. There was no effect of testosterone manipulation on the cell-mediated response of birds to phytohaemagglutinin injection, nor did testosterone levels appear to affect either white blood cell ratios or red blood cell counts. In contrast, both breeding season and post-breeding season testosterone levels had significant effects upon the humoral response of the birds to sheep red blood cell injections. However, whilst testosterone during the breeding season appeared to act immunosuppressively, the role of post-breeding levels is less clear. In concordance with a previous study, there was an indication that corticosterone is involved in mediating the immunosuppressive effects of testosterone. The strength of the secondary humoral response and the cell-mediated response were negatively related suggesting the possibility of a trade-off between the different arms of the immune system. These results provide some support for the ICHH as a mechanism promoting the evolution of costly badges of status, although the results question whether the immunosuppressive cost can be mediated by testosterone at the time of badge development.