Current child restraint practice in Queensland, new legislation and future challenges

Correct use of child restraints reduces the risk of death and injury. Use of adult seat belts is better than being unrestrained but can result in injury to children who are too small. New Australian legislation extends the requirement for using child-specific restraints until children are 7 years old and thus requires more appropriate levels of protection for these children. As part of a larger study of injury prevention in Queensland, parents of children 0-9 years old were surveyed regarding their restraint practices before the introduction of the new legislation. The restraint status of 18% of the children would not be compliant with the new legislation, with the problem being more prevalent for 5-9 year olds (22%) than 0-4 year olds (16%). A high proportion of older children used an adult seat belt. Very few children aged 0-4 (1.3%) usually travelled in the front seat in contravention of the new requirement, but around 11% of this age group were reported as ever having done so. Usual travel in the front seat was higher among 5-9 year olds (8.5%), with more than half of the 5-9 year olds reported as ever having done so. Given the widespread use of adult seat belts by older children, there is a need to consider improving protection of children in the ‘gap’ between when the requirement for the child to use a booster ceases (effectively age 7) and when the adult belt is likely to actually fit the child (closer to age 9 or 10).

Practising public relations in the global community of the 21st century : a comparison of business practices and culture in three world regions

Non-Western practitioners across the globe instinctively attempt to implement Western-based public relations models and theories, often unsuccessfully, regardless of their surrounding environment. This paper reviews business practices and reveals that in Europe, company interests are a main priority, while in Asia, the line between business and personal relationships is extremely blurred. Cultural dimensions and topois were even more varied between the three regions. Implications for the adoption of Western models of public relations practice are discussed.

Shrek meets Vygotsky : rethinking adolescents' multimodal literacy practices in schools

Recent research has emphasized the multimodal and digital nature of adolescent literacy practices. These practices cross multiple social spaces, particularly settings outside of schools. This article re-examines current research to yield three caveats that counter assumptions about the pervasiveness, relevance, and spontaneity of youths’ multimodal practices in the digital communications environment: 1. It is incorrect to assume that today’s adolescents are all “digital natives”; 2. Engaging adolescents in multimodal textual practices must involve more than conforming the curriculum to their interests and practices, extending students’ repertoire of skills and genres; and 3. While some new multimodal practices are taken up by adolescents with minimal instruction in informal contexts, greater emphasis should be placed on expert scaffolding of these literacies in school settings.

Survey of eResearch practices and skills at QUT, Australia

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a multidisciplinary university in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, and has 40,000 students and 1,700 researchers. Notable eResearch infrastructure includes the QUT ePrints repository, Microsoft QUT Research Centre, the OAK (Open Access to Knowledge) Law Project, Cambia and leading research institutes. ---------- The Australian Government, via the Australian National Data Service (ANDS), is funding institutions to identify and describe their research datasets, to develop and populate data repositories and collaborative infrastructure, and to seed the Australian Research Data Commons. QUT is currently broadening its range of research support services, including those to support the management of research data, in recognition of the value of these datasets as products of the research process, and in order to maximize the potential for reuse. QUT is integrating Library and High Performance Computing (HPC) services to achieve its research support goals. ---------- The Library and HPC released an online survey using Key Survey to 1,700 researchers in September 2009. A comprehensive range of eResearch practices and skills was presented for response, and grouped into areas of scholarly communication and open access publishing, using collaborative technologies, data management, data collection and management, computation and visualization tools. Researchers were asked to rate their skill level on each practice. 254 responses were received over two weeks. Eight focus groups were also held with 35 higher degree research (HDR) students and staff to provide additional qualitative feedback. A similar survey was released to 100 support staff and 73 responses were received.---------- Preliminary results from the researcher survey and focus groups indicate a gap between current eResearch practices, and the potential for researchers to engage in eResearch practices. Researchers are more likely to seek advice from their peers, than from support staff. HDR students are more positive about eResearch practices and are more willing to learn new ways of conducting research. An account of the survey methodology, the results obtained, and proposed strategies to embed eResearch practices and skills across and within the research disciplines will be provided.

Dynamic analysis of on-board mass data to determine tampering in heavy vehicle on-board mass systems

Transport Certification Australia Limited, jointly with the National Transport Commission, has undertaken a project to investigate the feasibility of on-board mass monitoring (OBM) devices for regulatory purposes. OBM increases jurisdictional confidence in operational heavy vehicle compliance. This paper covers technical issues regarding potential use of dynamic data from OBM systems to indicate that tampering has occurred. Tamper-evidence and accuracy of current OBM systems needed to be determined before any regulatory schemes were put in place for its use. Tests performed to determine potential for, and ease of, tampering. An algorithm was developed to detect tamper events. Its results are detailed.

Static accuracy and precision of heavy vehicle on-board mass systems

Objective • Feasibility programme for on-board mass (OBM) monitoring of heavy vehicles (HVs) • Australian road authorities through Transport Certification Australia (TCA) • Accuracy of contemporary, commercially-available OBM units in Australia • Results need to be addressed/incorporated into specifications for Stage 2 of Intelligent Access Program (IAP) by Transport Certification Australia

Birthing practices of traditional birth attendants in south Asia in the context of training programmes

Traditional Birth Attendants (TBA) training has been an important component of public health policy interventions to improve maternal and child health in developing countries since the 1970s. More recently, since the 1990s, the TBA training strategy has been increasingly seen as irrelevant, ineffective or, on the whole, a failure due to evidence that the maternal mortality rate (MMR) in developing countries had not reduced. Although, worldwide data show that, by choice or out of necessity, 47 percent of births in the developing world are assisted by TBAs and/or family members, funding for TBA training has been reduced and moved to providing skilled birth attendants for all births. Any shift in policy needs to be supported by appropriate evidence on TBA roles in providing maternal and infant health care service and effectiveness of the training programmes. This article reviews literature on the characteristics and role of TBAs in South Asia with an emphasis on India. The aim was to assess the contribution of TBAs in providing maternal and infant health care service at different stages of pregnancy and after-delivery and birthing practices adopted in home births. The review of role revealed that apart from TBAs, there are various other people in the community also involved in making decisions about the welfare and health of the birthing mother and new born baby. However, TBAs have changing, localised but nonetheless significant roles in delivery, postnatal and infant care in India. Certain traditional birthing practices such as bathing babies immediately after birth, not weighing babies after birth and not feeding with colostrum are adopted in home births as well as health institutions in India. There is therefore a thin precarious balance between the application of biomedical and traditional knowledge. Customary rituals and perceptions essentially affect practices in home and institutional births and hence training of TBAs need to be implemented in conjunction with community awareness programmes.

How nonprofit boards monitor, judge and influence organisational performance

The law and popular opinion expect boards of directors will actively monitor their organisations. Further, public opinion is that boards should have a positive impact on organisational performance. However, the processes of board monitoring and judgment are poorly understood, and board influence on organisational performance needs to be better understood. This thesis responds to the repeated calls to open the ‘black box’ linking board practices and organisational performance by investigating the processual behaviours of boards. The work of four boards1 of micro and small-sized nonprofit organisations were studied for periods of at least one year, using a processual research approach, drawing on observations of board meetings, interviews with directors, and the documents of the boards. The research shows that director turnover, the difficulty recruiting and engaging directors, and the administration of reporting, had strong impacts upon board monitoring, judging and/or influence. In addition, board monitoring of organisational performance was adversely affected by directors’ limited awareness of their legal responsibilities and directors’ limited financial literacy. Directors on average found all sources of information about their organisation’s work useful. Board judgments about the financial aspects of organisational performance were regulated by the routines of financial reporting. However, there were no comparable routines facilitating judgments about non-financial performance, and such judgments tended to be limited to specific aspects of performance and were ad hoc, largely in response to new information or the repackaging of existing information in a new form. The thesis argues that Weick’s theory of sensemaking offers insight into the way boards went about the task of understanding organisational performance. Board influence on organisational performance was demonstrated in the areas of: compliance; instrumental influence through service and through discussion and decision-making; and by symbolic, legitimating and protective means. The degree of instrumental influence achieved by boards depended on director competency, access to networks of influence, and understandings of board roles, and by the agency demonstrated by directors. The thesis concludes that there is a crowding out effect whereby CEO competence and capability limits board influence. The thesis also suggests that there is a second ‘agency problem’, a problem of director volition. The research potentially has profound implications for the work of nonprofit boards. Rather than purporting to establish a general theory of board governance, the thesis embraces calls to build situation-specific mini-theories about board behaviour.