Ship in foggy, stormy weather SFX

A sound effect of a foggy and stormy ambiance at sea with a distant fog horn.

The volume of water filtered by a Continuous Plankton Recorder sample: the effect of ship speed

The Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey is one of the largest plankton-monitoring programmes in the world. Since 1931, the CPR has collected ∼380 000 samples, each representing 10 miles of tow. It has been assumed that the volume of seawater filtered by each sample remained constant and close to 3 m3. In this study, the volume filtered for each CPR sample was measured on two routes (SA and IN), monitored by the CPR survey, between 1995 and 2000. Although the filtered volume was near the theoretical value of 3 m3 on the SA route (3.2 m3), it was significantly higher on the IN route (3.8 m3). A significant negative relationship was found between the volume filtered and the speed of the ships. This relationship indicates that the faster the speed of the ship, the lower the volume filtered. This could have implications for the CPR survey as the speed of the ships has increased continuously since the end of the 1950s. However, no significant correlation was found between the long-term changes in the speed of the ships and two commonly used indicators of plankton variability: the Phytoplankton Colour and the Total Copepods indices. This absence of relationship may indicate that the effect found is small in comparison with the influence of hydroclimatic forcing, although a more extensive study is needed to confirm these findings.

Terrify and control: the politics of risk society

The article presents information on the idea of risk management. The origins of the contemporary constructions of risk are found in the seventeenth century, with the development of maritime insurance. In the context of maritime trading, risk came to be seen in terms of the balance between acquisitive opportunities and potential dangers and calculations of future loss of a ship or cargo. Today perceptions of risk affect our actions and strategies in areas of our life as diverse as health, parenting, crime prevention, recreation and travel. Public policy tends to be focused around risk avoidance and risk management, particularly in areas of child protection and aged care. While most of the discussions of risk have focused on risks as bads in society, risk has also been identified as a good. Risk is deemed a good when it challenges people to think differently and creatively. From a neo-liberal perspective risk opens up opportunities for unleashing of entrepreneurial capacity. In the context of the modernist commitment to the idea that people have the potential to control their own destiny, identification of threats and dangers can energize people to be adventurous. The discourse of risk has framed all the reports of the outbreaks of new strains of infection and includes instructions on how to recognize the risk assessments of its spread and instructions on how to avoid its spread.

Community language programs in Australian schools: policy at the crossroads

The linguistic situation in Australia today presents an intriguing case for sociolinguistic inquiries. Despite the recent waves of migration from non Anglo-Celtic regions, the majority of Australians today are primarily monolingual with English being the dominant language. More critical, perhaps, is the diminishing appeal of second language learning even among second generation speakers of the large ethnic communities. This is indeed ironic giving that prior to white settlement in Australia, the Aboriginal inhabitants were predominantly multilingual with more than 250 languages (and many of their dialects) spoken by the 300 000 original inhabitants at the time when Captain James Cook's ship reached Botany Bay in Sydney in 1770. Given the size of the post-War migration, it was not until 1987 that the Australian government adopted a formal national policy on languages becoming 'the first English-speaking country to have such a policy and the first in the world to have a multilingual languages policy' (Australian Alliance for Languages 2001: 2). This paper will discuss the historical context for multilingualism in Australia and the current trend in government policy and funding. It will provide insights into community language programs and the challenges of remaining viable and relevant in the current social and political climate. Statistical analyses will be used to highlight emerging trends and future prospects.

Playful learning : Melville's artful art in Moby-Dick

It remains one of the great ironies of American literary history that Melville's Moby-Dick struggled so long for critical and popular recognition. It is a peculiar text (but, then, so are Hawthorne's novels), a romance of the whale fishery that involves such explorations of language itself, of words, metaphor, symbol, allegory and the processes (and significance) of narrative construction. This article analyses its 'peculiarities' as fundamental indicators of Melville's 'playful art' to argue the usefulness of a concept of 'play' to its appreciation. That Moby-Dick is allusive and multi-layered is well known. But for what apparent purpose and to what effect? Here, a claim is made that Melville simultaneously constructs and deconstructs meaning by demonstrating that things ('in complex subjects') never come simply or singly. The later Barthes and Derrida become part of this ship's crew and Moby-Dick is a postmodernist novel avant la lettre.

Postcolonial bildungsroman: indigenous subjects and identity-formation

In the bildungsroman as it has conventionally been defined, individuals attain self-actualisation through a series of experiences whereby they accommodate their individuality to a social order.  Protagonists negotiate their transition from childhood to young-adulthood by way of educative experiences, trials of various kinds, and a search for identity, which is generally formulated as a fixed or stable essence which they must discover or accept.  In this paper I focus on two examples of bildungsroman by Indigenous Canadian and Australian authors: Jeannette Armstrong’s Slash (1985),and Richard J. Frankland’s Digger J. Jones (2007).  Both novels feature male protagonists whose stories play out against the background of Indigenous activism in the 1960s.  As they track the identity-formation of their protagonists, the two novels deconstruct simple or fixed ideas of national identity by pointing to the complex cross-cultural relationships which have characterised settler societies.  At the same time,these novels dramatise the power of socialising practices which promote white superiority and position Indigenous peoples as supplicants or victims.  Both novels draw on what Paul Havemann terms the "new politics of identity and cultural recognition" which characterise contemporary Indigenous activism, re-reading events and settings of the 1960s in the light of discourses of cultural recognition and self-determination.

Victorian marine habitat mapping project

Deakin University along with the CRC for Coastal Zone, Estuary and Waterway Management, the Glenelg Hopkins CMA and the Marine & Coastal Community Network have formed a partnership to map the benthic habitats at 14 sites across approximately 5% of Victorian State waters. The project is funded through the Federal Government by the Natural Heritage Trust and brings together expertise from universities, government agencies and private enterprise. We will be using hydro-acoustic sonar technologies, towed video camera and remotely operated vehicles to collect information on the types of substrate and bathymetry to derive habitat maps. The coastal fringe of Victoria encompasses rich and diverse ecosystems which support a range of human uses including commercial and recreational fisheries, whale watching, navigation, aquaculture and gas development. The Deakin lead initiative will map from the 10-metre contour (safe ship passage) to the three nautical mile mark for selected regions and will provide a geospatial framework for managing and gaining better understanding of the near-shore marine environment Research products will be used for management, educational and research purposes over the coming years.

Use of complementary and alternative medicines by a sample of Australian women during pregnancy

Background: The use of complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) is growing in Australia, with women higher users than men. Yet, only a few Australian studies have explored the use of CAM during pregnancy.

Aims: To explore the use of CAM, the types of CAM practitioners consulted, physical symptoms/complaints for which CAM are used by a sample of pregnant Australian women, and women's perceptions of the efficacy of CAM in treating those complaints.

Methods: Three hundred and twenty-one pregnant women, who volunteered for a study exploring women's well-being during pregnancy, completed a self-report questionnaire in their late second/early third trimester.

Results: Seventy-three per cent of women had used at least one kind of complementary therapy in the prior eight weeks of pregnancy. Over one-third of the women had visited at least one alternative medicine practitioner during pregnancy. Approximately one-third of the women reported taking CAM to alleviate a specific physical symptom, with 95.7% of these women reporting they either got completely better or a little bit better with use of CAM; one quarter reported planning to use an alternative therapy to assist with labour preparation. Age, number of physical symptoms experienced, income level and level of education were not associated with greater use of CAM (P < 0.05); however, women reporting more physical symptoms were more likely to consult a CAM practitioner.

Conclusion: Findings highlight the substantial use of CAM during pregnancy and the need to have all health professionals adequately informed about such therapies during this life stage.

Sleep quality and depression during pregnancy: a prospective study

For the first time, the relationship between depressive symptoms and sleep quality was explored prospectively during pregnancy. Participants (n = 273) completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and Beck Depression Inventory at three 8-week intervals, starting from 15–23 weeks gestation. In addition to sleep quality and depression remaining relatively stable during pregnancy, findings revealed that sleep quality earlier in pregnancy predicted higher levels of depressive symptoms at later stage in pregnancy (after controlling for prior depression levels). In contrast, there was no evidence to suggest that depressive symptoms earlier in pregnancy impacted on sleep quality later on. Given that depressive symptomatology can lead to major depression and given the prevalence of pre- and postnatal depression, our findings suggest that screening for sleep problems during pregnancy may be of clinical significance.

Pregnant women's alcohol consumption : the predictive utility of intention to drink and prepregnancy drinking behaviour

Objective: This study had two aims: (1) to examine pregnant women's alcohol consumption across time from prepregnancy until childbirth and (2) to explore whether prepregnancy drinking and intention to drink predict prenatal alcohol consumption while controlling for relevant demographic variables.

Methods: At 17–21 weeks, 248 pregnant women completed questions about demographics, intention to drink alcohol during the subsequent pregnancy, and retrospective measures of prepregnancy and early pregnancy consumption. After this time, calendars were sent fortnightly assessing daily alcohol consumption until birth.

Results: For women who drank both prepregnancy and postpregnancy confirmation, average fortnight alcohol consumption in the first weeks of pregnancy was lower than during prepregnancy, and consumption continued to decrease between gestational weeks 1 and 8, particularly following pregnancy confirmation, after which it remained relatively stable. When predicting whether women drank in late pregnancy, intention accounted for unique variance after controlling for income and prepregnancy drinking. For women who drank after pregnancy confirmation, prepregnancy drinking quantity significantly predicted intention to drink, which in turn predicted fortnight alcohol consumption in later pregnancy, after controlling for prepregnancy drinking and income.

Conclusions: Findings highlight the need to measure alcohol consumption at multiple time points across pregnancy, the need for educating and supporting women to reduce consumption when planning pregnancies, and the usefulness of intention to drink as a predictor of drinking during pregnancy.

The relationship between depression and body dissatisfaction across pregnancy and the postpartum : a prospective study

The overall aim of this study was to examine the relationship between depression and body dissatisfaction across pregnancy and the first 12 months postpartum. During pregnancy, women's (N = 116) perceived attractiveness and strength/fitness remained stable, while feeling fat and salience of weight/shape decreased in late pregnancy. During the postpartum, feeling fat and salience of weight/shape increased. Depression and body dissatisfaction scores were correlated with each other concurrently and across multiple time points. However, in baseline-controlled prospective analyses, only a model of greater depression late in pregnancy predicting body dissatisfaction at six weeks postpartum and feeling fat throughout the postpartum was supported.

Effectiveness of a modified mother–infant transaction program on outcomes for preterm infants from 3 to 24 months of age

Mothers of hospitalised preterm infants were randomised into an intervention or control condition. Intervention mothers received a modified Mother–Infant Transaction Program over seven sessions prior to infant discharge and two sessions over the next 3 months. Infant temperament, mother–infant interaction and parenting stress were assessed at 3 and 6 months and infant development was measured by parental report at 24 months. Intervention compared with control dyads showed enhanced mother–infant interactions, infants were temperamentally more “approaching” and “easier”, had fewer regulatory problems (colic, sleep, excessive crying), and had more developed communication skills, while mothers were less stressed by their infant at 3 months. These early gains in the development of preterm infants and in the relationship with and adjustment of their mothers, may explain the process by which intervention infants in the original study showed increasing cognitive advantages to 9 years of age [Rauh, V. A., Nurcombe, B., Achenbach, T., & Howell, C. (1990). The mother–infant transaction program. Clinical Perinatology, 17, 31–45].

Assessing Sleep during Pregnancy - a study across two time points examining the pittsburg sleep quality index and associations with depressive symptoms

Background and Purpose: Sleep quality seems to be an antecedent to depressive symptoms during pregnancy. We sought to 1) examine the psychometrics of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) in pregnancy; 2) examine whether sleep quality predicted increases in depressive symptoms; and 3) compare PSQI scores across 3 or 2 levels of depressive symptoms.

Methods: Each of the 252 participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory (short form) and a sleep quality measure at mid and late pregnancy.

Results: PSQI total scores showed good internal consistency and construct validity. An improved model of the internal structure of the PSQI in pregnancy was found with 1 factor labeled Sleep Efficiency, a second labeled Night and Daytime Disturbances, and an Overall Sleep Quality component associated with, but separate from, both of these 2 factors. Although PSQI scores showed moderate stability over time, sleep disturbance scores increased in late pregnancy. Importantly, PSQI prospectively predicted increases in depressive symptoms.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that the PSQI is useful in pregnancy research. Findings also support the idea that sleep problems are prospective risk factors for increases in depressive symptoms during pregnancy. Practitioners are advised to screen for sleep quality during early pregnancy.

Examination of a multi-factorial model of body-related experiences during pregnancy : the relationships among physical symptoms, sleep quality, depression, self-esteem, and negative body attitudes

The aim of this cross-sectional study was to investigate relationships among women's body attitudes, physical symptoms, self-esteem, depression, and sleep quality during pregnancy. Pregnant women (N = 215) at 15–25 weeks gestation completed a questionnaire including four body image subscales assessing self-reported feeling fat, attractiveness, strength/fitness, and salience of weight and shape. Women reported on 29 pregnancy-related physical complaints, and completed the Beck Depression Inventory, Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale, and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. In regressions, controlling for retrospective reports of body image, more frequent and intense physical symptoms were related to viewing the self as less strong/fit, and to poorer sleep quality and more depressive symptoms. In a multi-factorial model extending previous research, paths were found from sleep quality to depressive symptoms to self-esteem; self-esteem was found to be a mediator associated with lower scores on feeling fat and salience of weight and shape, and on higher perceived attractiveness.