Non-wearing of adult seat belts in Australia: Where to next? [Austroads Publication No. AP-R346/09]

Seat belts are one of the most effective passive safety features in vehicles and there is a host of research literature attesting to the effectiveness of seat belts in protecting against death and injury. Even when use rates are high the potential gains in trauma reduction from further improvements in wearing rates are substantial. However, those currently most resistant to restraint use have also proven most difficult to target using conventional countermeasures. It is necessary to address the issues of non-wearing in order to achieve further gains in seat belt wearing. This study provide evidence-based recommendations for the way forward to tackle the problems of adult restraint non-use in light passenger vehicles in the short, medium and longer term in Australia. While there are substantial issues to be addressed for these groups, these are outside the scope of this study.

Lost in translation? : Translating allusions in two of Reginald Hill's Dalziel & Pascoe novels

This study examines strategies used to translate various thematic and character delineating allusions in two of Reginald Hill's detective novels, The Wood Beyond and On Beulah Height and their Swedish translations Det mörka arvet and Dalen som dränktes. In this study, thematic allusions and allusions used in character delineation are regarded as intertextual networks. Intertextual networks comprise all the texts that are in one way or another embedded into a text, all the texts referred to in it and even the texts somehow rejected from a text's own canon. Studying allusions as intertextual networks makes it warranted to pay minute attention to even the smallest of details. Seen together, these little details form extensive networks of meaning that readers use to interpret the text. Allusion can be defined as a reference, often covert or indirect, to another text in a way that brings into the text some of the associations of that other text. A text is here understood broadly, hence sources of allusions include all cultural texts from literature and history to cinema and televisions serials. Allusions are culture bound and each culture tends to allude to its own cultural products. The set of transcultural allusions is therefore fairly small. Translation strategies are translatorial ways of solving translation problems. Being culture-bound, allusions are potential translation problems. In order to transmit the thoughts evoked by the allusions in source text readers to the target text readers translators may add guidance to the translated text. Often guidance is not added, which may result in changes in handling of themes or character delineation, clear in the source text but confusing or incomprehensible in the target text. However, norms in target culture may not always allow the translators the possibility to make the text comprehensible. My analyses of translation strategies show that in the two translated novels studied minimum change is a very frequently used strategy. This results in themes and character delineation losing some of the effect they have in the source texts. Perhaps surprisingly, the result is very much the same even where it is possible to discern that the two translators have had differing translation principles. Keywords: allusions, intertextuality, literary translation, translation strategies, norms, crime fiction, Hill, Reginald

Country of Origin and Internet Publication: Applying the Berne Convention in the Digital Age

Historically, determining the country of origin of a published work presented few challenges, because works were generally published physically – whether in print or otherwise – in a distinct location or few locations. However, publishing opportunities presented by new technologies mean that we now live in a world of simultaneous publication – works that are first published online are published simultaneously to every country in world in which there is Internet connectivity. While this is certainly advantageous for the dissemination and impact of information and creative works, it creates potential complications under the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (“Berne Convention”), an international intellectual property agreement to which most countries in the world now subscribe. Under the Berne Convention’s national treatment provisions, rights accorded to foreign copyright works may not be subject to any formality, such as registration requirements (although member countries are free to impose formalities in relation to domestic copyright works). In Kernel Records Oy v. Timothy Mosley p/k/a Timbaland, et al. however, the Florida Southern District Court of the United States ruled that first publication of a work on the Internet via an Australian website constituted “simultaneous publication all over the world,” and therefore rendered the work a “United States work” under the definition in section 101 of the U.S. Copyright Act, subjecting the work to registration formality under section 411. This ruling is in sharp contrast with an earlier decision delivered by the Delaware District Court in Håkan Moberg v. 33T LLC, et al. which arrived at an opposite conclusion. The conflicting rulings of the U.S. courts reveal the problems posed by new forms of publishing online and demonstrate a compelling need for further harmonization between the Berne Convention, domestic laws and the practical realities of digital publishing. In this chapter, we argue that even if a work first published online can be considered to be simultaneously published all over the world it does not follow that any country can assert itself as the “country of origin” of the work for the purpose of imposing domestic copyright formalities. More specifically, we argue that the meaning of “United States work” under the U.S. Copyright Act should be interpreted in line with the presumption against extraterritorial application of domestic law to limit its application to only those works with a real and substantial connection to the United States. There are gaps in the Berne Convention’s articulation of “country of origin” which provide scope for judicial interpretation, at a national level, of the most pragmatic way forward in reconciling the goals of the Berne Convention with the practical requirements of domestic law. We believe that the uncertainties arising under the Berne Convention created by new forms of online publishing can be resolved at a national level by the sensible application of principles of statutory interpretation by the courts. While at the international level we may need a clearer consensus on what amounts to “simultaneous publication” in the digital age, state practice may mean that we do not yet need to explore textual changes to the Berne Convention.

A noticeboard in "both worlds" unsurprising interfaces supporting easy bi-cultural content publication

We describe the design of a digital noticeboard to support communication within a remote Aboriginal community whose aspiration is to live in "both worlds", nurturing and extending their Aboriginal culture and actively participating in Western society and economy. Three bi-cultural aspects have emerged and are presented here: the need for a bi-lingual noticeboard to span both oral and written language traditions, the tension between perfunctory information exchange and social, embodied protocols of telling in person and the different ways in which time is represented in both cultures. The design approach, developed iteratively through consultation, demonstration and testing led to an "unsurprising interface", aimed at maximizing use and appropriation across cultures by unifying visual, text and spoken contents in both passive and interactive displays in a modeless manner.

Bi-cultural content publication on a digital noticeboard: A design and cultural differences case study

We present our observations of Aboriginal Australian practices around a custom digital noticeboard and compare our insights to related research on cultural differences, literacy and ICT4D. The digital noticeboard was created, upon a request by the community Elders, to foster communication across the community. The initial design, informed by discussions and consultations, aimed at supporting the local Aboriginal language and English, both in written and spoken form, at supporting the oral tradition, and at accommodating for different perceptions and representations of time. This paper presents observations about the first encounters with the digital noticeboard by those members of the community that took part in its conceptualization. Such observations reinforce existing knowledge on such cultural phenomena as collectivism and time perception, issues related to literacy, moderation and censorship. We contribute to framing such knowledge within a concrete case study and draw implication for design of tools for bi-cultural content publication.

A Method for Comparing Scholarly Journals as Service Providers to Authors

When authors of scholarly articles decide where to submit their manuscripts for peer review and eventual publication, they often base their choice of journals on very incomplete information abouthow well the journals serve the authors’ purposes of informing about their research and advancing their academic careers. The purpose of this study was to develop and test a new method for benchmarking scientific journals, providing more information to prospective authors. The method estimates a number of journal parameters, including readership, scientific prestige, time from submission to publication, acceptance rate and service provided by the journal during the review and publication process. Data directly obtainable from the web, data that can be calculated from such data, data obtained from publishers and editors, and data obtained using surveys with authors are used in the method, which has been tested on three different sets of journals, each from a different discipline. We found a number of problems with the different data acquisition methods, which limit the extent to which the method can be used. Publishers and editors are reluctant to disclose important information they have at hand (i.e. journal circulation, web downloads, acceptance rate). The calculation of some important parameters (for instance average time from submission to publication, regional spread of authorship) can be done but requires quite a lot of work. It can be difficult to get reasonable response rates to surveys with authors. All in all we believe that the method we propose, taking a “service to authors” perspective as a basis for benchmarking scientific journals, is useful and can provide information that is valuable to prospective authors in selected scientific disciplines.

Assisting blog publication: annotation, model transformation, and crossblogging techniques

Although blogs exist from the beginning of the Internet, their use has considerablybeen increased in the last decade. Nowadays, they are ready for being used bya broad range of people. From teenagers to multinationals, everyone can have aglobal communication space.Companies know blogs are a valuable publicity tool to share information withthe participants, and the importance of creating consumer communities aroundthem: participants come together to exchange ideas, review and recommend newproducts, and even support each other. Also, companies can use blogs for differentpurposes, such as a content management system to manage the content of websites,a bulletin board to support communication and document sharing in teams,an instrument in marketing to communicate with Internet users, or a KnowledgeManagement Tool. However, an increasing number of blog content do not findtheir source in the personal experiences of the writer. Thus, the information cancurrently be kept in the user¿s desktop documents, in the companies¿ catalogues,or in another blogs. Although the gap between blog and data source can be manuallytraversed in a manual coding, this is a cumbersome task that defeats the blog¿seasiness principle. Moreover, depending on the quantity of information and itscharacterisation (i.e., structured content, unstructured content, etc.), an automaticapproach can be more effective.Based on these observations, the aim of this dissertation is to assist blog publicationthrough annotation, model transformation and crossblogging techniques.These techniques have been implemented to give rise to Blogouse, Catablog, andBlogUnion. These tools strive to improve the publication process considering theaforementioned data sources.

Fishery Publication Index, 1980-85 and Technical Memorandum Index, 1972-85

The following series of fishery publications produced in calendar years 1980-85 by the Scientific Publications OffIce of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), are listed numerically and indexed by author and subject: Circular, Fishery BuUetin, Marine Fisheries Review, Special Scientific Report-Fisheries, and Technical Report NMFS. Also included is an alphanumeric listing of the NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS series published in calendar years 1972-85 by NMFS regional offices and fisheries centers. Authors and subjects for the Memoradum series are indexed with the other publication series. (PDF file contains 156 pages.)