The evidence that exercise during growth or adulthood reduces the risk of fragility fractures is weak

There has never been, and will never be, a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial demonstrating that exercise in youth, adulthood or old age reduces fragility or osteoporosis-related fractures in old age. The next level of evidence, a randomized, controlled but unblinded study with fractures as an end-point is feasible but has never been done. The basis for the belief that exercise reduces fractures is derived from lower levels of ‘evidence’, namely, retrospective and prospective observation cohort studies and case–control studies. These studies are at best hypothesis generating, never hypothesis testing. They are all subject to many systematic biases and should be interpreted with extreme scepticism. Surrogate measures of anti-fracture efficacy are the next level of evidence, such as the demonstration of a reduction in risk factors for falls, a reduction in falls, a reduction in fractures due to falls, an increase in peak bone size and mass, prevention of bone loss in midlife and restoration of bone mass and structure in old age.

Fictions for representing and generating semiotic consciousness: the crime story and educational inquiry

This essay appraises the work of fiction in representing and generating semiotic consciousness in education by examining three intertextual continuities between crime fiction and stories of educational inquiry. First, many reports of educational research resemble detective stories in their quests to determine the (or a) “truth” about something that is problematic or puzzling and this essay describes some of the ways in which the characteristic investigatory methods of fictional detectives resemble forms of educational inquiry. Second, the characteristic ways in which detective stories generate interpretations are compared with the textual strategies deployed in producing meanings and narratives in educational inquiry. Third, recent transformations of both detective fiction and educational inquiry are shown to be comparable — and intertextually linked — manifestations of cultural and semiotic shifts associated with postmodernity. I conclude by suggesting that authors of “anti-detective” crime fiction might provide more appropriate models of educational inquiry than do fictional detectives.

Biotechnology and governance in Australia and Sweden: path dependency or instutional convergence?

The development of new generic technologies occurs within traditional structures of industry-government interaction, but also unleashes a process of 'creative destruction' generating new institutional patterns. This article, focusing on biotechnology, describes and compares policy processes and institutional arrangements in Australia and Sweden. The Swedish biotechnology sector displays a pattern of fragmentation and relatively weak state steering. Australia, by contrast, has implemented a set of comparatively coordinated regulatory and other measures to foster the growth of biotechnology. This observation contradicts the characterisation of Sweden as a 'strong state' economy, and challenges the depiction of Australia as lacking in state steering capacity. The relative open-endedness of the search in these countries for a mode of regulation of biotechnology suggests that the role of the state in economic restructuring today is fundamentally distinct from that of earlier periods.

A grid-based index method for time warping distance

Recently DTW (dynamic time warping) has been recognized as the most robust distance function to measure the similarity between two time series, and this fact has spawned a flurry of research on this topic. Most indexing methods proposed for DTW are based on the R-tree structure. Because of high dimensionality and loose lower bounds for time warping distance, the pruning power of these tree structures are quite weak, resulting in inefficient search. In this paper, we propose a dimensionality reduction method motivated by observations about the inherent character of each time series. A very compact index file is constructed. By scanning the index file, we can get a very small candidate set, so that the number of page access is dramatically reduced. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on real and synthetic datasets.

Generating misorientations in shear deformation structures

Of considerable importance to the generation of ultrafine microstructures is the development of high misorientations. The present work examines the effect of the crystallographic rotation field in simple shear upon the evolution of misorientation during plastic working. A series of Taylor simulations are presented and it is shown that the rotation field is such that small differences in orientation in the region of the main torsion texture components are considerably increased with the application of shear strain. This did not occur in simulations of rolling. The torsion simulations compare favourably with the nature of the misorientations evident in hot worked 1050 Al and Ti-IF steel. It is concluded that shear deformation, by its nature, facilitates the generation of higher misorientations.

Generating heat from conducting polypyrrole-coated PET fabrics

Heating effects in polypyrrole-coated polyethyleneterephthalate (PET)-Lycra® fabrics were studied. Chemical synthesis was employed to coat the PET fabrics by polypyrrole using ferric chloride as oxidant and antraquinone- 2-sulfonic acid (AQSA) and naphthalene sulfonic acid (NSA) as dopants. The coated fabrics exhibited reasonable electrical stability, possessed high electrical conductivity, and were effective in heat generation. Surface resistance of polypyrrole-coated fabrics ranged from approximately 150 to 500 /square. Different connections between conductive fabrics and the power source were examined. When subjected to a constant voltage of 24 V, the current transmitted through the fabric decreased about 10% in 72 h. An increase in resistance of conductive fabrics subjected to constant voltage was observed

Generating best evidence from qualitative research: the role of data analysis

Objective: To outline the importance of the clarity of data analysis in the doing and reporting of interview-based qualitative research.

Approach: We explore the clear links between data analysis and evidence. We argue that transparency in the data analysis process is integral to determining the evidence that is generated. Data analysis must occur concurrently with data collection and comprises an ongoing process of 'testing the fit' between the data collected and analysis. We discuss four steps in the process of thematic data analysis: immersion, coding, categorising and generation of themes.

Conclusion: Rigorous and systematic analysis of qualitative data is integral to the production of high-quality research. Studies that give an explicit account of the data analysis process provide insights into how conclusions are reached while studies that explain themes anchored to data and theory produce the strongest evidence.

Generating an ontology from scientific works : initial results

Attempts to produce adequate and long-lived subject indexes of information systems and computer science research have failed. In this paper we report preliminary results of an approach by which the terms expressed in research literature, such as that in information systems, can be systematically and meaningfully categorised. The approach is based on Roman Ingarden’s ontological theory of the written scholarly work: its nature, existence, and categorisation, and builds on Grounded Theory: a rigorous grounded qualitative research method addressing how meaningful categories can be analysed from text and related to each other. We have found that the key guiding unit of analysis operationalising Ingarden’s approach through Grounded Theory is the “reported research activity” and that the process is possible although labour intensive. On the basis of using the approach, we propose simple steps to improve the quality of keywords in reported research.