The interface of acute and aged care : the role of the nurse in a provincial area

Objective This study was to investigate issues that arose from pre-admission to post-discharge, for people in Toowoomba, Queensland over the age of 65 admitted to an acute facility. This paper concentrates on a significant concern that emerged from the large amount of data collected during this project, that is,the role of the nurse in the continuum of health care involving elderly people. Method The study involved a multi-site, multi-agency and multi-method (qualitative and quantitative) approach. Data was collected from regional service providers, the Department of Health and Aged Care (DHAC), the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Home and Community Care (HACC), the Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT), elderly people who had been discharged from regional hospitals and their carers, residents of regional aged care facilities, area health professionals and elderly regional hospital inpatients. Results The data indicated that nurses in this provincial area currently play a limited role in preadmission planning, being mostly concerned with elective surgery, especially joint replacements. While nurses deliver the majority of care during hospitalisation, they do not appear to be cognizant of the needs of the elderly regarding post-acute discharge. Conclusion The recent introduction of the model of nurse case management in the acute sector appears to be a positive development that will streamline and optimise the health care of the elderly across the continuum in the Toowoomba area. The paper recommends some strategies, such as discharge liaison nurses based in Emergency Departments and the expansion of the nurse case management role, which would optimise care for the elderly person at the interface of care.

Street computing : towards an integrated open data Application Programming Interface (API) for cities

This special issue of the Journal of Urban Technology brings together five articles that are based on presentations given at the Street Computing Workshop held on 24 November 2009 in Melbourne in conjunction with the Australian Computer- Human Interaction conference (OZCHI 2009). Our own article introduces the Street Computing vision and explores the potential, challenges, and foundations of this research trajectory. In order to do so, we first look at the currently available sources of information and discuss their link to existing research efforts. Section 2 then introduces the notion of Street Computing and our research approach in more detail. Section 3 looks beyond the core concept itself and summarizes related work in this field of interest. We conclude by introducing the papers that have been contributed to this special issue.

Acknowledging, moving toward and transcending psychophysiological angst during a paradox of conflicting desires

In this paper I integrate the work of a number of philosophers to clarify some psychological issues that can arise in human existence when a conflict of intrapersonal or interpersonal desires arises. This paper utilises the work of Deleuze, Freud, Jung, Heidegger, Hegel and Nietzsche to provide a conceptual framework as to how mental disturbances can arise if unconscious desires cannot be satisfied due to the experience of a resistance from a conflicting or opposing desire. This paper argues that the phenomenal experience of a conflict of desires can be unconcealed in moments of un-readiness-to-hand and from the awareness of the psychophysiological experience of stress or angst. The work that is presented, results in the conclusion that it is fundamentally necessary to embrace Nietzsche’s idea of the ‘will to power’ to overcome these difficulties and to achieve personal individuation and authentic wellbeing. This advice is in contrast to an inauthentic choice of depending on the use of Freudian defence mechanisms to conceal a conflict of desires from consciousness. A detailed theoretical example of the process involved in the resolution of a conflict of desires through self-transcendence is specifically informed by the ideas of Nietzsche and Jung.

Swimmer localization from a moving camera

At the highest level of competitive sport, nearly all performances of athletes (both training and competitive) are chronicled using video. Video is then often viewed by expert coaches/analysts who then manually label important performance indicators to gauge performance. Stroke-rate and pacing are important performance measures in swimming, and these are previously digitised manually by a human. This is problematic as annotating large volumes of video can be costly, and time-consuming. Further, since it is difficult to accurately estimate the position of the swimmer at each frame, measures such as stroke rate are generally aggregated over an entire swimming lap. Vision-based techniques which can automatically, objectively and reliably track the swimmer and their location can potentially solve these issues and allow for large-scale analysis of a swimmer across many videos. However, the aquatic environment is challenging due to fluctuations in scene from splashes, reflections and because swimmers are frequently submerged at different points in a race. In this paper, we temporally segment races into distinct and sequential states, and propose a multimodal approach which employs individual detectors tuned to each race state. Our approach allows the swimmer to be located and tracked smoothly in each frame despite a diverse range of constraints. We test our approach on a video dataset compiled at the 2012 Australian Short Course Swimming Championships.

Conceptualising Women's Working Lives : Moving the Boundaries of Discourse

"Theoretical work on the career development of women has travelled a journey from critique to creation. Early work responded to and criticised a literature that focused on theorising male roles in a workplace that was conceptualised as providing vertical career paths primarily for middle class males. More recently theorists are creating new constructions and frameworks to enable a more holistic understanding of career, applicable to both women and men. These constructions include broadening the discussion from women’s careers to women’s working lives. This is the fifth book in the Sense Publishers Career Development Series. It features the vibrant work of contributors from around the world writing in the field of women’s working lives. It emphasises the need to explore theoretical connections and understandings in order to facilitate a more holistic and inclusive understanding of women’s working lives. The writers in the current volume acknowledge the changing roles of women, in both public and private spheres. Women’s roles in paid work are changing both in their nature and type of engagement. In addition, with an ageing population, women’s roles in care work are increasingly being extended from child care to aged care. This book provides a history of theorising about women's careers, in addition to presenting a focus on current empirical and theoretical work which contributes to understandings of women's working lives. It’s contributions both map the current discourse and challenge future work to extend the boundaries of that discourse."--publisher website

Cross-cultural web user interface design for Indigenous internet users

This project investigated 1) Australian web designers’ cultural perceptions towards Australian Indigenous users and 2) Australian Indigenous cultural features in terms of user interface design. In doing so, it reviews the literature of cross-cultural user interface design by focusing on feasible models and arguments to articulate and integrate Australian Indigenous Internet users’ cultural needs of web user interface. The online survey results collected from 101 Indigenous users and 126 Web designers showed a distinctive difference between them on the integration of Indigenous users' cultural in Web sites. The interview data collected from 14 Indigenous users and 14 web designers suggested practical approaches to the design implications of Indigenous culture.

Should I stay or should I go? The challenges and opportunities of moving between university systems

The scientific job market has evolved to a truly globalized market. This is epitomized not only by the English language being the de facto scientific language but also by the increasing share of native language journals that are being offered in multiple languages or have or will fully converted to English (such as, for example, the BISE journal in 2015). Similarly, a plethora of exchange programs exists that allow students and academic staff to visit other institutions and exchange knowledge, ideas, and learning opportunities. While student migration across scientific institutions is an established phenomenon (Gribble, 2008) with ample structures, policies, and schemes such as ERASMUS1 in place, academic staff migration between countries is still a challenge, even if exchange programs exist (Enders, 1998). One reason may be that different career paths, varying teaching loads and different evaluation schemes for what constitutes scientific excellence are notable. This also influences the decision of where to start and continue an academic career. While the university systems themselves have been examined previously (Galliers and Whitley, 2007; Lyytinen et al., 2007) and while there is knowledge about career requirements in different university systems (Dennis et al., 2006; Dean et al., 2011; Loos et al., 2013; Recker, 2013), we still do not know much about individual and contextual decisions of academics that either consider or execute a migration between university systems.

Tracking-based moving object detection

We present a novel approach for multi-object detection in aerial videos based on tracking. The proposed method mainly involves three steps. Firstly, the spatial-temporal saliency is employed to detect moving objects. Secondly, the detected objects are tracked by mean shift in the subsequent frames. Finally, the saliency results are fused with the weight map generated by tracking to get refined detection results, and in turn the modified detection results are used to update the tracking models. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on VIVID aerial videos, and the results show that our approach can reliably detect moving objects even in challenging situations. Meanwhile, the proposed method can process videos in real time, without the effect of time delay.

Moving object detection in aerial video based on spatiotemporal saliency

In this paper, the problem of moving object detection in aerial video is addressed. While motion cues have been extensively exploited in the literature, how to use spatial information is still an open problem. To deal with this issue, we propose a novel hierarchical moving target detection method based on spatiotemporal saliency. Temporal saliency is used to get a coarse segmentation, and spatial saliency is extracted to obtain the object’s appearance details in candidate motion regions. Finally, by combining temporal and spatial saliency information, we can get refined detection results. Additionally, in order to give a full description of the object distribution, spatial saliency is detected in both pixel and region levels based on local contrast. Experiments conducted on the VIVID dataset show that the proposed method is efficient and accurate.

How much information can be obtained from tracking the position of the leading edge in a scratch assay?

Moving cell fronts are an essential feature of wound healing, development and disease. The rate at which a cell front moves is driven, in part, by the cell motility, quantified in terms of the cell diffusivity $D$, and the cell proliferation rate �$\lambda$. Scratch assays are a commonly-reported procedure used to investigate the motion of cell fronts where an initial cell monolayer is scratched and the motion of the front is monitored over a short period of time, often less than 24 hours. The simplest way of quantifying a scratch assay is to monitor the progression of the leading edge. Leading edge data is very convenient since, unlike other methods, it is nondestructive and does not require labeling, tracking or counting individual cells amongst the population. In this work we study short time leading edge data in a scratch assay using a discrete mathematical model and automated image analysis with the aim of investigating whether such data allows us to reliably identify $D$ and $\lambda$�. Using a naıve calibration approach where we simply scan the relevant region of the ($D$;$\lambda$�) parameter space, we show that there are many choices of $D$ and $\lambda$� for which our model produces indistinguishable short time leading edge data. Therefore, without due care, it is impossible to estimate $D$ and $\lambda$� from this kind of data. To address this, we present a modified approach accounting for the fact that cell motility occurs over a much shorter time scale than proliferation. Using this information we divide the duration of the experiment into two periods, and we estimate $D$ using data from the first period, while we estimate �$\lambda$ using data from the second period. We confirm the accuracy of our approach using in silico data and a new set of in vitro data, which shows that our method recovers estimates of $D$ and $\lamdba$� that are consistent with previously-reported values except that that our approach is fast, inexpensive, nondestructive and avoids the need for cell labeling and cell counting.

Analysis of the NF-κB p50 dimer interface by diversity screening

An in vivo screen has been devised for NF-κB p50 activity in Escherichia coli exploiting the ability of the mammalian transcription factor to emulate a prokaryotic repressor. Active intracellular p50 was shown to repress the expression of a green fluorescent protein reporter gene allowing for visual screening of colonies expressing active p50 on agar plates. A library of mutants was constructed in which the residues Y267, L269, A308 and V310 of the dimer interface were simultaneously randomised and twenty-five novel functional interfaces were selected which repressed the reporter gene to similar levels as the wild-type protein. The leucine-269 alanine-308 core was repeatedly, but not exclusively, selected from the library whilst a diversity of predominantly non-polar residues were selected at positions 267 and 310. These results indicate that L269 and A308 may form a hot spot of interaction and allow an insight into the processes of dimer selectivity and evolution within this family of transcription factors.

Multiphasic construct studied in an ectopic osteochondral defect model

In vivo osteochondral defect models predominantly consist of small animals, such as rabbits. Although they have an advantage of low cost and manageability, their joints are smaller and more easily healed compared with larger animals or humans. We hypothesized that osteochondral cores from large animals can be implanted subcutaneously in rats to create an ectopic osteochondral defect model for routine and high-throughput screening of multiphasic scaffold designs and/or tissue-engineered constructs (TECs). Bovine osteochondral plugs with 4 mm diameter osteochondral defect were fitted with novel multiphasic osteochondral grafts composed of chondrocyte-seeded alginate gels and osteoblast-seeded polycaprolactone scaffolds, prior to being implanted in rats subcutaneously with bone morphogenic protein-7. After 12 weeks of in vivo implantation, histological and micro-computed tomography analyses demonstrated that TECs are susceptible to mineralization. Additionally, there was limited bone formation in the scaffold. These results suggest that the current model requires optimization to facilitate robust bone regeneration and vascular infiltration into the defect site. Taken together, this study provides a proof-of-concept for a high-throughput osteochondral defect model. With further optimization, the presented hybrid in vivo model may address the growing need for a cost-effective way to screen osteochondral repair strategies before moving to large animal preclinical trials.

Design of a robust grid interface system for PMSG-based wind turbine generators

A robust and reliable grid power interface system for wind turbines using a permanent-magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) is proposed in this paper, where an integration of a generator-side three-switch buck-type rectifier and a grid-side Z-source inverter is employed as a bridge between the generator and the grid. The modulation strategy for the proposed topology is developed from space-vector modulation and Z-source network operation principles. Two PMSG control methods, namely, unity-power-factor control and rotor-flux-orientation control (Id = 0), are studied to establish an optimized control scheme for the generator-side three-switch buck-type rectifier. The system control scheme decouples active- and reactive-power control through voltage-oriented control and optimizes PMSG control for the grid- and generator-side converters independently. Maximum power point tracking is implemented by adjusting the shoot-through duty cycles of the Z-source network. The design considerations of the passive components are also provided. The performances and practicalities of the designed architecture have been verified by simulations and experiments.

Moving from outsider to insider : peer status and partnerships between electricity utilities and residential consumers

An electricity demand reduction project based on comprehensive residential consumer engagement was established within an Australian community in 2008. By 2011, both the peak demand and grid supplied electricity consumption had decreased to below pre-intervention levels. This case study research explored the relationship developed between the utility, community and individual consumer from the residential customer perspective through qualitative research of 22 residential households. It is proposed that an energy utility can be highly successful at peak demand reduction by becoming a community member and a peer to residential consumers and developing the necessary trust, access, influence and partnership required to create the responsive environment to change. A peer-community approach could provide policymakers with a pathway for implementing pro-environmental behaviour for low carbon communities, as well as peak demand reduction, thereby addressing government emission targets while limiting the cost of living increases from infrastructure expenditure.