Reducing intoxication among bar patrons: some lessons from prevention of drinking and driving

Intoxication in and around licensed premises continues to be common, despite widespread training in the responsible service of alcohol and laws prohibiting service to intoxicated individuals. However, research suggests that training and the existence of laws are unlikely to have an impact on intoxication without enforcement, and evidence from a number of countries indicates that laws prohibiting service to intoxicated individuals are rarely enforced. Enforcement is currently hampered by the lack of a standardized validated measure for defining intoxication clearly, a systematic approach to enforcement and the political will to address intoxication. We argue that adoption of key principles from successful interventions to prevent driving while intoxicated could be used to develop a model of consistent and sustainable enforcement. These principles include: applying validated and widely accepted criteria for defining when a person is ‘intoxicated’; adopting a structure of enforceable consequences for violations; implementing procedures of unbiased enforcement; using publicity to ensure that there is a perceived high risk of being caught and punished; and developing the political will to support ongoing enforcement. Research can play a critical role in this process by: developing and validating criteria for defining intoxication based on observable behaviour; documenting the harms arising from intoxication, including risk curves associated with different levels of intoxication; estimating the policing, medical and social costs from intoxicated bar patrons; and conducting studies of the cost-effectiveness of different interventions to reduce intoxication.

Response to letter from Barry & Dennis

This letter is a reply to Barry A., Dennis M. Methodological and practical limitations to visually determining intoxication. Addiction 2013; doi: 10.1111/add.12352

The films of John Hughes: a history of independent screen production in Australia

ABSTRACTIn The Films of John Hughes: A history of independent screen production in Australia filmmaker and academic John Cumming tells the ongoing story of Hughes’ work illustrating the delicate balance of individual, collective and corporate agendas that many contemporary artists need to negotiate. This story begins in the 1960s with a generation of intelligent, socially engaged young people who challenge established power structures, conventions and stereotypes in art, politics and the media. Experiments were being made with grassroots democracy, with new social formations and new ways of seeing and communicating. The book also pays attention to earlier periods of cultural and political activism that captured Hughes’ imagination in the 1970s and became the subject of a number of his films over a period of nearly forty years. Through these films Cumming traces the outline of post-war film culture and production in Melbourne from the 1940s and sets this history within the context of international trends in independent filmmaking throughout the 20th Century and into the 21st.The work of an independent filmmaker has always included a great deal more than directing films. Working in an artisanal mode, he or she often performs, or has a hand in, every aspect of craft at the same time as engaging in discussion and organisation around the wider sphere of screen culture and industry. In addition to having proficiency as a producer, photographer, sound recordist, editor, distributor and exhibitor of films, there is research, organisation, lobbying, entrepreneurship and mentoring to be done. As an independent producer-director, John Hughes has engaged in all of these activities – often simultaneously. He is also a scholar, writer, organiser, activist and teacher. As a television bureaucrat he was both eminent and innovative, and through his filmmaking he has become a leading historian of Australian documentary cinema. ‘… that view – that art and politics are inherently at odds – is still lurking around. It is at the heart of cultural conservatism; and John Hughes’s film-making, from the 1970s to the present, confounds its proponents. His cinema is at once crowded, detailed, elegant and absolutely lucid; at the same time, it is shot through with political and historical understandings.’ Sylvia Lawson, ‘Such a Bloody Wonderful Place’, Inside Story, 28 April 2013.

Sequence-dependent structure/function relationships of catalytic peptide-enabled gold nanoparticles generated under ambient synthetic conditions

Peptide-enabled nanoparticle (NP) synthesis routes can create and/or assemble functional nanomaterials under environmentally friendly conditions, with properties dictated by complex interactions at the biotic/abiotic interface. Manipulation of this interface through sequence modification can provide the capability for material properties to be tailored to create enhanced materials for energy, catalysis, and sensing applications. Fully realizing the potential of these materials requires a comprehensive understanding of sequence-dependent structure/function relationships that is presently lacking. In this work, the atomic-scale structures of a series of peptide-capped Au NPs are determined using a combination of atomic pair distribution function analysis of high-energy X-ray diffraction data and advanced molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The Au NPs produced with different peptide sequences exhibit varying degrees of catalytic activity for the exemplar reaction 4-nitrophenol reduction. The experimentally derived atomic-scale NP configurations reveal sequence-dependent differences in structural order at the NP surface. Replica exchange with solute-tempering MD simulations are then used to predict the morphology of the peptide overlayer on these Au NPs and identify factors determining the structure/catalytic properties relationship. We show that the amount of exposed Au surface, the underlying surface structural disorder, and the interaction strength of the peptide with the Au surface all influence catalytic performance. A simplified computational prediction of catalytic performance is developed that can potentially serve as a screening tool for future studies. Our approach provides a platform for broadening the analysis of catalytic peptide-enabled metallic NP systems, potentially allowing for the development of rational design rules for property enhancement.

O Impacto da Abertura Comercial Sobre Mark-Up e Produtividade Industrial Brasileira

Rio de Janeiro