Projected age- and sex-specific prevalence of cardiovascular diseases in Western Australian adults from 2005-2045

For decades, the incidence and mortality of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) have declined. More recently, we have seen a halting in these declines, especially at younger ages. It is difficult to predict how these changing trends will impact CVD prevalence. We aimed to predict future prevalence of CVDs in Western Australian adults from 2005-2045 based on current incidence and mortality probabilities, population growth and ageing.

Out of Character? Legal responses to intimate partner homicides by men in Victoria 2005-2014

This report reviews 51 cases of intimate partner homicide by men in Victoria, from 2005-2014, to investigate how family violence is recognised in homicide prosecutions. Research and death reviews in Australia and overseas have found that systemic failures in legal responses to family violence contribute to intimate partner homicides. In 2010, Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria and Monash University began a project to explore the impact of the 2005 homicide law reforms on intimate partner homicides. The first phase of the project examined cases of women who killed their intimate partners, focusing on whether the reforms had improved the recognition of family violence victimisation as a factor. This report presents findings from the second phase, which examines legal responses to men who have killed in the context of sexual intimacy. In analysing the cases, it looks at key contextual factors, legal outcomes, family violence risk factors, how prior family violence is understood and discussed by legal professionals, how evidence of prior family violence is used by the prosecution and whether it is admitted as evidence, the types of arguments and narratives made in defence of the accused, the recognition of family violence through the sentencing process, and the use of provocation as a mitigating factor.

Good global governance : custom, the cosmopolitan and international law

International law has both less and more to offer to the cosmopolitan project than one might think. As currently understood, international law presages a global system of obligations comprising the convergent systems of universal customary international laws and near-universal conventional instruments (treaties), both of which legal forms are characterised by natural law tendencies. From the point of view of a pluralistic cosmopolitanism, this is a dead end. Thinking beyond these formulae requires that international law be treated as a species of general law rather than state-centred law.

Deakin Studies Online student survey 2004/2005

The data was collected to gauge Deakin University students' perceptions of the university's centralised learning management system, especially if it enhanced their learning experience. It identified the features that were most used and valued by the students and those they felt could be improved.

The dataset consists of a set of survey questions and the survey results in an electronic database. It comprises of 2908 responses from 2004 and 2526 responses from 2005; including approximately 1000 open-ended comments providing rich qualitative data.

The data includes the following categories of information:
• demographic and background information (including gender, mode of study);
• perception of importance of and satisfaction with a range of LMS functions;
• a number of overall LMS satisfaction measures; and
• open-ended written comments about the LMS.

Deakin Studies Online staff survey 2004/2005

The data was collected to guage Deakin University staff perceptions of the university's centralised learning management system, especially if it enhanced their teaching. It identified the features that were most used and valued by the teaching staff and those they felt could be improved.

The dataset is comprised of a set of survey questions and the survey results in an electronic database. It consists of 156 responses from 2004 and 120 responses from 2005; including approximately 100 open-ended comments providing rich qualitative data.

The data includes the following categories of information:
• demographic and background information (including gender, mode of study);
• perception of importance of and satisfaction with a range of LMS functions;
• a number of overall LMS satisfaction measures; and
• open-ended written comments about the LMS.

Environmental sustainability awareness and academic curriculum improvements: the case of a business and law faculty in an Australian university

Climate change, global warming, rising sea levels, ice cap melting, carbon taxes and trading schemes etc. are all major environmental issues that confront the modern world. Universities are now trying to ensure that their students graduate with an understanding of environmental sustainability regardless of their field of expertise. 

Violence from below : explaining crimes against civilians across Soviet space, 1943–1947

The end of World War II brought little relief to the lands it ravaged most. Mass wartime violence continued in the Soviet space beyond the ‘false peace’ of 1945. Historians have sought to explain this violence in terms of the ‘wartime brutalisation’ of state and citizens alike, though this approach is limited in explaining how and why violence continued after 1945. This article shifts focus from psychology to social history to argue that the disintegration of Soviet state control is central to explaining the enduring violence after 1945 and understanding its emergence as much ‘from below’ as ‘from above’.

An evaluation of the reported sodium content of Australian food products

We assessed the sodium content of Australian food items, trends over time and compared this content with sodium targets established by the UK Food Standards Agency and that of similar food items in the UK. The sodium content indicated on food labels were collected from 2005 to 2007. Fifty-three percent of food products had sodium levels above the targets. Food sub-categories containing <20% of products meeting the targets were white bread, wholemeal bread, cream cheese, low fibre breakfast cereal, savoury snack biscuits, hot dogs, sausages, canned soup, canned beans and spaghetti and canned vegetables. There was an indication that Australia had a lower number of food products that met the sodium targets compared to the UK (46% vs. 56%) and over half remain above the recommended target. A reduction in the sodium content of bread, low fibre breakfast cereals, and a number of processed snack, meat and canned goods is needed to reduce the average salt intake to 6 g day⁻¹.

The Pacific OPIC Project (Obesity Prevention In Communities) : action plans and interventions

Background: The Pacific OPIC Project (Obesity Prevention In Communities) includes whole-of-community intervention programs in four countries (Fiji, Tonga, New Zealand, Australia) aimed at reducing the prevalence of overweight and  obesity in youth.

Development of Action Plans: At each intervention site, preliminary interviews  were conducted with youth to identify the potential socio-cultural barriers and  facilitators to healthy eating and regular physical activity in order to attain and sustain a healthy body size. This and other information was presented at a 2-day workshop with community stakeholders, including youth. The participants then prioritised the components for a draft action plan which was later consolidated through further community consultation.

Action Plan objectives: Each action plan had two overall aims: to build  community capacity and to promote healthy weight. The first three objectives in each action plan were on capacity building, social marketing messages, and evaluation. Next were a set of four to five behavioural objectives with associated strategies involving programs, events, social marketing and environmental  change. Lastly, each site had one or two innovative or developmental objectives.

Progress: Interventions began in all sites from 2005, with the action plans guiding implementation priorities. The initial behavioural objective for targeting in Fiji was eating regular breakfast and meals throughout the day, for Tonga it was physical activity, and for Australia and New Zealand it was increasing water consumption and decreasing consumption of sweet drinks.

Conclusions: The action plans have provided the basis for community engagement in the project, the guide to the implementation of activities and the template for the evaluation plan.

Engaging, exploring, and experiencing multicultural music in Australian music teacher education : the changing landscape of multicultural music education

ln multicultural Australia, the development of positive intercultural attitudes is essential in the creation of a harmonious society. Music education is a powerful medium to address cultural inclusivity. The 2005 National Review of School Music Education challenges Australian higher education institutions to prepare programs that explore multiculturalism to engender tolerance.This research explored how final year teacher education students at Monash University and Deakin University (Victoria, Australia) engage with music of other cultures and how this affects their understanding of cultural diversity in school music. From 2005 to 2008, teacher education students undertaking music methodologies were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews.The data collected from the interviews were transcribed and analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis, and from these data, we developed patterns of meaning that are reported thematically; student teachers' beliefs, attitudes, and understandings of multiculturalism and the classroom realities of multiculturalism.The findings contribute to how we, as tertiary educators, evaluate our role and programs.

Academic libraries

Academic libraries are taken to refer here to two particular types of library: university libraries and those libraries which serve the vocational education and training (VET) sector through colleges or institutes of technical and further education (TAFE). (School libraries are dealt with in a separate chapter.) Universities cover undergraduate programs, principally Bachelors degrees, and postgraduate programs such as the Graduate Certificate, Graduate Diploma, Masters degrees and doctoral programs. The main TAFE awards are Certificate, Diploma and Advanced Diploma. Universities are largely funded by national government - the federal Commonwealth Government in Australia's case - although, as elsewhere, an increasing amount of university funding needs to come from non-government sources, particularly research funding. In Australia institutes of TAFE are funded by state and territory governments, although from 2005 the Federal Government began providing funding for the development of technical colleges outside the TAFE sector that would provide vocational education for secondary school age students. This latter development may well be affected by the change in federal government in late 2007.

The mission for academic libraries globally is to support the teaching, learning and (where appropriate) research activities of their parent institutions. In Australia and New Zealand, universities and their libraries have also had a long tradition of reaching out to the community, contributing to the cultural and intellectual life of the nation. Australia has thirty-nine universities; of which thirty-seven are public institutions and two are private. New Zealand has eight universities. The libraries supporting these institutions are diverse, of high quality and innovative. Based on 2005 figures, there are sixty-eight institutions in Australia's VET sector, with over 1,100 campuses, 1.7 million students and some eleven per cent of Australia's working age population accessing TAPE (Oakley & Vaugha 2007: 43).

Final report : food@school resource pilot

It’s Your Move! was a 3-year community-based obesity prevention project conducted in secondary schools across the Barwon-South West Region in Victoria. The project ran from 2005-2008, with five intervention schools from the East Geelong/ Bellarine Peninsula area as well as seven comparison schools.

Children and adolescents spend a substantial amount of time in school; consequently schools have been identified as a key setting for influencing their nutrition behaviour [1]. In the face of increasing obesity levels among children and adolescents, it is essential that the school environment is conducive to encouraging healthy eating.

The Food@School Resource was developed in response to baseline results from the It’s your Move! project in order to facilitate the implementation of intervention strategies around creating whole-of-school healthy eating environments. Using the Health Promoting Schools Framework, teachers and students were involved in the development and implementation of a number of initiatives and environmental changes to their school around healthy eating. This process of engagement and collaboration ensured that the interventions complemented their existing structures and support e.g. curriculum, canteen and culture. The Food@School Resource is a document to help secondary schools through the process of developing a healthy eating policy.

In order to ensure that the resource was valid beyond the confines of the It’s Your Move! schools, the Department of Human Services funded a six-month pilot project. The Food@School Resource was pilot tested in six diverse secondary schools across both rural and metropolitan Victoria as well as being expertly reviewed by Home Economics Victoria.

Process evaluation of a community-based adolescent obesity prevention project in Tonga

Background: The rising burden of obesity in Tonga is alarming. The promotion of healthy behaviours and environments requires immediate urgent action and a multi-sectoral approach. A three-year community based study titled the Ma’alahi Youth Project (MYP) conducted in Tonga from 2005-2008 aimed to increase the capacity of the whole community (schools, churches, parents and adolescents) to promote healthy eating and regular physical activity and to reduce the prevalence of overweight and obesity amongst youth and their families. This paper reflects on the process evaluation for MYP, against a set of Best Practice Principles for community-based obesity prevention.
Methods: MYP was managed by the Fiji School of Medicine. A team of five staff in Tonga were committed to planning, implementation and evaluation of a strategic plan, the key planks of which were developed during a two day community workshop. Intervention activities were delivered in villages, churches and schools, on the main island of Tongatapu. Process evaluation data covering the resource utilisation associated with all intervention activities were collected, and analysed by dose, frequency and reach for specific strategies. The action plan included three standard objectives around capacity building, social marketing and evaluation; four nutrition; two physical activity objectives; and one around championing key people as role models.
Results: While the interventions included a wide mix of activities straddling across all of these objectives and in both school and village settings, there was a major focus on the social marketing and physical activity objectives. The intervention reach, frequency and dose varied widely across all activities, and showed no consistent patterns.
Conclusions: The adolescent obesity interventions implemented as part of the MYP program comprised a wide range of activities conducted in multiple settings, touched a broad spectrum of the population (wider than the target group), but the dose and frequency of activities were generally insufficient and not sustained. Also the project confirmed that, while the MYP resulted in increased community awareness of healthy behaviours, Tonga is still in its infancy in terms of conducting public health research and lacks research infrastructure and capacity.

Intellectual property, creativity and innovation : IP models and the political economy of developing Asia

In advanced capitalist societies, intellectual property laws protecting such subject matter as copyright and patents are justified by a combination of theories, which include the provision of economic incentives to foster creativity and innovation and the prevention of unfair competition. IP academics and policy makers have differing views about the appropriate balance between these objectives and public interest considerations such as health, education and the protection of the environment. These different views entered the policy debate in Asian developing countries in connection with an unprecedented introduction and expansion of IP laws over the last 25 years. This paper will use case studies of law reform from Asia, in particular Southeast Asia, to show that the policy considerations of governments in reforming their laws were often quite different from the standard rationale mentioned above. As much of the IP was, at least initially, held by foreigners and introduced to attract foreign investment, national development considerations were joined with the more commonly quoted objectives to promote the rights, creativity and innovation of individuals. Such national development objectives at times coincided and at other times collided with official explanations and received wisdom about the effects of stronger IP rights.

Especially in the early postcolonial period, copyright laws and other IP laws were frequently restricted or simply not implemented, if they conflicted with development policies in areas such as education or public health. Such policies were slowly changing in the wake of WTO-TRIPS and other international agreements. Nevertheless, the implementation and enforcement of the IP laws has been uneven. Specialised institutions such as courts and IP administering agencies compete with other branches of government and administration for limited funding and a rich repertoire of informal dispute settlement procedures has kept the number of court cases relatively low. In some countries, censorship laws have influenced freedom of expression and led to quite idiosyncratic interpretations of intellectual property laws. Governments often also retain a role in the assessment of licensing and technology transfer contracts. And while there are many programs to foster individual creativity, in most cases R & D activities are still largely taking place in government institutions and this has influenced the thinking about intellectual property rights and creativity in the context of employment.

The paper uses a few case studies to examine the implementation of IP laws in selected Asian developing countries to point to the quite different institutional setting for IP law reform in comparison to European or American models. It reaches some tentative conclusions as to the likely effects on creativity and innovation under these different circumstances.