Key influences on motivations for utility cycling (cycling for transport to and from places)

Issue addressed: Although increases in cycling in Brisbane are encouraging, bicycle mode share to work in the state of Queensland remains low. The aim of this qualitative study was to draw upon the lived experiences of Queensland cyclists to understand the main motivators for utility cycling (cycling as a means to get to and from places) and compare motivators between utility cyclists (those who cycle for utility as well as for recreation) and non-utility cyclists (those who cycle only for recreation). Methods: For an online survey, members of a bicycle group (831 utility cyclists and 931 non-utility cyclists, aged 18-90 years) were asked to describe, unprompted, what would motivate them to engage in utility cycling (more often). Responses were coded into themes within four levels of an ecological model. Results: Within an ecological model, built environment influences on motivation were grouped according to whether they related to appeal (safety), convenience (accessibility) or attractiveness (more amenities) and included adequate infrastructure for short trips, bikeway connectivity, end-of-trip facilities at public locations and easy and safe bicycle access to destinations outside of cities. A key social-cultural influence related to improved interactions among different road users. Conclusions: The built and social-cultural environments need to be more supportive of utility cycling before even current utility and non-utility cyclists will be motivated to engage (more often) in utility cycling. So what?: Additional government strategies and more and better infrastructure that support utility cycling beyond commuter cycling may encourage a utility cycling culture.

Hospitalisation of Indigenous children in the Northern Territory for lower respiratory illness in the first year of life

Objective To describe the epidemiology of acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) and bronchiectasis in Northern Territory Indigenous infants hospitalised in the first year of life. Design A historical cohort study constructed from the NT Hospital Discharge Dataset and the NT Imm(u)nisation Register. Participants and setting All NT resident Indigenous infants, born 1 January 1999 to 31 December 2004, admitted to NT public hospitals and followed up to 12 months of age. Main outcome measures Incidence of ALRI and bronchiectasis (ICD-10-AM codes) and radiologically confirmed pneumonia (World Health Organization protocol). Results Data on 9295 infants, 8498 child-years of observation and 15 948 hospitalised episodes of care were analysed. ALRI incidence was 426.7 episodes per 1000 child-years (95% Cl, 416.2-437.2). Incidence rates were two times higher (relative risk, 2.12; 95% Cl, 1.98-2.27) for infants in Central Australia compared with those in the Top End. The median age at first admission for an ALRI was 4.6 months (interquartile range, 2.6-7.3). Bronchiolitis accounted for most of the disease burden, with a rate of 227 per 1000 child-years. The incidence of first diagnosis of bronchiectasis was 1.18 per 1000 child-years (95% Cl, 0.60-2.16). One or more key comorbidities were present in 1445 of the 3227 (44.8%) episodes of care for ALRI. Conclusions Rates of ALRI and bronchiectasis in NT Indigenous infants are excessive, with early onset, frequent repeat episodes, and a high prevalence of comorbidities. These high rates of disease demand urgent attention.

Quality of life and survival in patients treated with radical chemoradiation alone for oesophageal cancer

Aims: To report cancer-specific and health-related quality-of-life outcomes in patients undergoing radical chemoradiation (CRT) alone for oesophageal cancer. Materials and methods: Between 1998 and 2005, 56 patients with oesophageal cancer received definitive radical CRT, due to local disease extent, poor general health, or patient choice. Data from European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer quality-of-life questionnaires QLQ-30 and QLQ-OES24 were collected prospectively. Questionnaires were completed at diagnosis, and at 3, 6 and 12 months after CRT where applicable. Results: The median follow-up was 18 months. The median overall survival was 14 months, with a 51, 26 and 13% 1-, 3- and 5-year survival, respectively. At 12 months after treatment there was a significant improvement compared with before treatment with respect to dysphagia and pain. Global health scores were not significantly affected. Conclusions: Considering the relatively short long-term survival for this cohort of patients, maximising the quality of those final months should be very carefully borne in mind from the outset. The health-related quality-of-life data reported herein helps to establish benchmarks for larger evaluation within randomised clinical trials. © 2007 The Royal College of Radiologists.

The beneficial effects of specialist thoracic surgery on the resection rate for non-small-cell lung cancer

We aimed to evaluate the effect of the appointment of a dedicated specialist thoracic surgeon on surgical practice for lung cancer previously served by cardio-thoracic surgeons. Outcomes were compared for the 240 patients undergoing surgical resection for lung cancer in two distinct 3-year periods: Group A: 65 patients, 1994-1996 (pre-specialist); Group B: 175 patients, 1997-1999 (post-specialist). The changes implemented resulted in a significant increase in resection rate (from 12.2 to 23.4%, P<0.001), operations in the elderly (over 75 years) and extended resections. There were no significant differences in stage distribution, in-hospital mortality or stage-specific survival after surgery. Lung cancer surgery provided by specialists within a multidisciplinary team resulted in increased surgical resection rates without compromising outcome. Our results strengthen the case for disease-specific specialists in the treatment of lung cancer. © 2004 Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

The potential of combining phenomenography, variation theory and threshold concepts to inform curriculum design in higher education

This chapter describes an innovative method of curriculum design that is based on combining phenomenographic research, and the associated variation theory of learning, with the notion of disciplinary threshold concepts to focus specialised design attention on the most significant and difficult parts of the curriculum. The method involves three primary stages: (i) identification of disciplinary concepts worthy of intensive curriculum design attention, using the criteria for threshold concepts; (ii) action research into variation in students’ understandings/misunderstandings of those concepts, using phenomenography as the research approach; (iii) design of learning activities to address the poorer understandings identified in the second stage, using variation theory as a guiding framework. The curriculum design method is inherently theory and evidence based. It was developed and trialed during a two-year project funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, using physics and law disciplines as case studies. Disciplinary teachers’ perceptions of the impact of the method on their teaching and understanding of student learning were profound. Attempts to measure the impact on student learning were less conclusive; teachers often unintentionally deviated from the design when putting it into practice for the first time. Suggestions for improved implementation of the method are discussed.

A needle in a haystack : the use of routinely collected emergency department injury surveillance data to help identify physical child abuse

A retrospective, descriptive analysis of a sample of children under 18 years presenting to a hospital emergency department (ED) for treatment of an injury was conducted. The aim was to explore characteristics and identify differences between children assigned abuse codes and children assigned unintentional injury codes using an injury surveillance database. Only 0.1% of children had been assigned the abuse code and 3.9% a code indicating possible abuse. Children between 2-5 years formed the largest proportion of those coded to abuse. Superficial injury and bruising were the most common types of injury seen in children in the abuse group and the possible abuse group (26.9% and 18.8% respectively), whereas those with unintentional injury were most likely to present with open wounds (18.4%). This study demonstrates that routinely collected injury surveillance data can be a useful source of information for describing injury characteristics in children assigned abuse codes compared to those assigned no abuse codes.

Hydrogel microwell arrays allow the assessment of protease-associated enhancement of cancer cell aggregation and survival

Current routine cell culture techniques are only poorly suited to capture the physiological complexity of tumor microenvironments, wherein tumor cell function is affected by intricate three-dimensional (3D), integrin-dependent cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix (ECM) interactions. 3D cell cultures allow the investigation of cancer-associated proteases like kallikreins as they degrade ECM proteins and alter integrin signaling, promoting malignant cell behaviors. Here, we employed a hydrogel microwell array platform to probe using a high-throughput mode how ovarian cancer cell aggregates of defined size form and survive in response to the expression of kallikreins and treatment with paclitaxel, by performing microscopic, quantitative image, gene and protein analyses dependent on the varying microwell and aggregate sizes. Paclitaxel treatment increased aggregate formation and survival of kallikrein-expressing cancer cells and levels of integrins and integrin-related factors. Cancer cell aggregate formation was improved with increasing aggregate size, thereby reducing cell death and enhancing integrin expression upon paclitaxel treatment. Therefore, hydrogel microwell arrays are a powerful tool to screen the viability of cancer cell aggregates upon modulation of protease expression, integrin engagement and anti-cancer treatment providing a micro-scaled yet high-throughput technique to assess malignant progression and drug-resistance.

New security notions and relations for public-key encryption

Since their introduction, the notions of indistinguishability and non-malleability have been changed and extended by different authors to support different goals. In this paper, we propose new flavors of these notions, investigate their relative strengths with respect to previous notions, and provide the full picture of relationships (i.e., implications and separations) among the security notions for public-key encryption schemes. We take into account the two general security goals of indistinguishability and non-malleability, each in the message space, key space, and hybrid message-key space to find six specific goals, a couple of them, namely complete indistinguishability and key non-malleability, are new. Then for each pair of goals, coming from the indistinguishability or non-malleability classes, we prove either an implication or a separation, completing the full picture of relationships among all these security notions. The implications and separations are respectively supported by formal proofs (i.e., reductions) in the concrete-security framework and by counterexamples.

JPEG image steganalysis improvement via image-to-image variation minimization

In this research, we introduce an approach to enhance the discriminative capability of features by employing image-to-image variation minimization. In order to minimize image-to-image variation, we will estimate the cover image from the stego image by decompressing the stego image, transforming the decompressed image and recompressing back. Since the effect of the embedding operation in an image steganography is actually a noise adding process to the image, applying these three processes will smooth out the noise and hence the estimated cover image can be obtained.

Aggregate quality of service computation for composite services

This paper addresses the problem of computing the aggregate QoS of a composite service given the QoS of the services participating in the composition. Previous solutions to this problem are restricted to composite services with well-structured orchestration models. Yet, in existing languages such as WS-BPEL and BPMN, orchestration models may be unstructured. This paper lifts this limitation by providing equations to compute the aggregate QoS for general types of irreducible unstructured regions in orchestration models. In conjunction with existing algorithms for decomposing business process models into single-entry-single-exit regions, these functions allow us to cover a larger set of orchestration models than existing QoS aggregation techniques.

Integrated design and delivery solutions

Integrated design and delivery solutions (IDDS) is a priority theme of the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB), which will be used to drive the global research agenda forward. IDDS will use collaborative work processes and enhanced skills together with integrated data, information and knowledge management to minimize structural and process inefficiencies and to enhance the value delivered during design, build, operation, and across projects. IDDS build on building information modelling (BIM), incorporating advances in the training and employment of people, together with supporting new technologies. The successful use of IDDS involves changes in each of the project phases from conceptual planning and business case formulation to all stages of the supply chain: design, construction, commissioning, operation, retrofit and decommissioning. For each of these phases, key changes in the structure and culture of the project team across the different collaborating firms create a favourable context for IDDS. Special for IDDS thinking is the idea of adding project and whole-life value in all phases, for all stakeholders...

Hormone resistance, invasiveness, and metastatic potential in breast cancer

Critical phenotypic changes that occur during the progression of breast cancer include the loss of hormone-dependence, acquired resistance to systemic therapies, and increased metastatic potential. We have isolated a series of MCF-7 human breast cancer variants which exhibit hormone-independent growth, antiestrogen resistance, and increased metastatic potential. Analysis of the phenotypes of these variants strongly suggests that changes in the expression of specific genes may be critical to the generation of phenotypic diversity in the process of malignant progression in breast cancer. Epigenetic changes may contribute significantly to the generation of these phenotypic changes observed during breast cancer progression. Many of the characteristics of the progressed phenotypes appear to have arisen in response to appropriate selective pressures (growth in ovariectomized nude mice; growth in the presence of antiestrogens). These observations are consistent with the concept of clonal selection and expansion in the process of malignant progression.