The life-cycle of the fashion garment and the role of Australian mass market designers

This paper uses the lens of life-cycle thinking to discuss recent developments in the Australian mass market fashion industry, and to explore the opportunities and barriers to implementing lifecycle thinking within mass market design processes. Life-cycle analysis is a quantitative tool used to assess the environmental impact of a material or product. However the underlying thinking of life-cycle analysis can also be employed more generally, enabling a designer to assess their processes and design decisions for sustainability. A fashion designer employing life cycle thinking would consider every stage in the life of a garment from fibre and textiles through to consumer use, to eventual disposal and beyond disposal to reuse and later disassembly for fibre recycling. Although life-cycle thinking is rarely considered in the design processes of the fast-paced, price-driven mass market, this paper explores its potential and suggests ways in which it could be implemented.

Molecular structure of the mineral svanbergite SrAl3(PO 4,SO4)2(OH)6 - A vibrational spectroscopic study

The mineral svanbergite SrAl 3(PO 4,SO 4) 2(OH) 6 is a hydroxy phosphate-sulphate mineral belonging to the beudantite subgroup of alunites and has been characterised by vibrational spectroscopy. Bands at various wavenumbers were assigned to the different vibrational modes of svanbergite, which were then associated with the structure of the mineral. Bands were primarily assigned to phosphate and sulphate stretching and bending modes. Two symmetric stretching modes for both phosphate and sulphate supported the concept of non-equivalent phosphate and sulphate units in the mineral structure. Bands in the OH stretching region enabled hydrogen bond distances to be calculated. Comparison of the hydrogen bond distances and the calculated hydrogen bond distances from the structure models indicates that hydrogen bonding in svanbergite occurs between the two OH units rather than OH to SO42- units.

An examination of the psychologists' attitudes towards complementary and alternative therapies scale within a practitioner sample

This study assessed the validity of a scale measuring psychologists' attitudes towards complementary and alternative therapies and compared the attitudes of psychologists with a previous sample of psychology students. The scale, derived from existing measures for medical professionals and previously tested on a sample of psychology students, was completed by practising psychologists (N = 122). The data were factor analysed, and three correlated subscales were identified, assessing the perceived importance of knowledge about available therapies, attitudes towards integration with psychological practice, and concerns about associated risks of use. This structure was similar, but not identical, to that found in a previous sample of psychology students; however, psychologists expressed more concern for risks associated with integration and were less likely to hold a positive attitude towards integration. This scale will be useful in gauging changes in psychologists' attitudes towards integrative practice over time.

Pragmatics, perceptions and strategies in Chinese college English learning

This study investigated Chinese College English students. perceptions of pragmatics, their pragmatic competence in selected speech acts, strategies they employed in acquiring pragmatic knowledge, as well as their general approach to learning English as a foreign language. The research was triggered by a national curriculum initiative that prioritizes the need for College English students to enhance their ability to use English effectively in different social interactions (Chinese College English Education and Supervisory Committee, 2007). The traditional "grammar-translation" and "examination-oriented" method is believed to have reduced Chinese College English students to what is dubbed "mute" and "deaf" language learners (Zhang, 2008; Zhao, 2009). Many students lack pragmatic knowledge on how to interpret discourse by relating utterances to their meanings, understanding the intention of language users, and how language is used in specific settings (Bachman & Palmer, 1996, 2010). There is an increasing body of literature on awareness-raising of the importance of pragmatic knowledge and strategies for classroom instruction. However, to date, researchers have tended to focus largely on the teaching of pragmatics, rather than on how students acquire pragmatic competence (Bardovi-Harlig & Dornyei, 1998; Du, 2004; Hou, 2007; Ruan, 2007; Schauer, 2009). It is this gap in the research that this study fills, with a focus on different types of pragmatic knowledge, learner perceptions of such knowledge, and learning strategies that College English students employ in the process of learning English in general, and pragmatics in particular. Three strands of theories of second language acquisition (Ellis, 1985, 1994): pragmatics (Levinson, 1983; Mey, 2001; Yule, 1996), intercultural communications (Kramsch, 1998; Samovar & Porter, 1997; Samovar, Porter & McDaniel, 2009) and English as a lingua franca (ELF) (Canagarajah, 2006; Firth, 1996; Pennycook, 2010) were employed to establish a conceptual framework for data collection and analyses. Key constructs derived from the three related theories helped to form a typology for a detailed examination and theorization of the empirical evidence gathered from different sources. Four research instruments: a questionnaire (N=237), Discourse Completion Tasks (DCTs) (N=55), focus group interviews (N=18), and a textbook tasks analysis were employed to collect data for this systematic inquiry. Data collected by different instruments were analyzed and compared by way of a triangulation to enhance its validity and reliability. Major findings derived from different sources highlighted that, although College English students were grammatically advanced language learners, they displayed limited pragmatic knowledge and a highly restricted repertoire of language learning strategies. The majority of the respondents, however, believed that pragmatic knowledge was as important as linguistic knowledge in the process of developing communicative competence for interaction in different contexts. It was argued that a combination of a less than sufficient English proficiency, limited knowledge of pragmatics, inadequate language materials and tasks, and a small stock of language learning strategies, were a major hindrance to effective learning and communication, resulting in pragmatic failures in many intercultural communication situations. As the first systematic study of how Chinese College English students learned pragmatics, the research provided a solid empirical base for developing a tentative model for the learning of pragmatics in a College English classroom in China and similar educational contexts. The model was strengthened by a unique combination of theories of pragmatics, intercultural communication and ELF. Findings from this research provided insights into how Chinese College English students perceived pragmatics in the English as foreign language (EFL) curriculum, the processes of learning, as well as strategies they utilized in developing linguistic and pragmatic knowledge and competence.

Tactically-driven nonmonotone travelling waves

Models of cell invasion incorporating directed cell movement up a gradient of an external substance and carrying capacity-limited proliferation give rise to travelling wave solutions. Travelling wave profiles with various shapes, including smooth monotonically decreasing, shock-fronted monotonically decreasing and shock-fronted nonmonotone shapes, have been reported previously in the literature. The existence of tacticallydriven shock-fronted nonmonotone travelling wave solutions is analysed for the first time. We develop a necessary condition for nonmonotone shock-fronted solutions. This condition shows that some of the previously reported shock-fronted nonmonotone solutions are genuine while others are a consequence of numerical error. Our results demonstrate that, for certain conditions, travelling wave solutions can be either smooth and monotone, smooth and nonmonotone or discontinuous and nonmonotone. These different shapes correspond to different invasion speeds. A necessary and sufficient condition for the travelling wave with minimum wave speed to be nonmonotone is presented. Several common forms of the tactic sensitivity function have the potential to satisfy the newly developed condition for nonmonotone shock-fronted solutions developed in this work.

On governing collaborative Information Technology (IT) : a relational perspective

Organizations today invest in collaborative IT to engage in collaborative alliances to sustain or improve their competitive positions. Effective use of this collaborative IT in an alliance requires a deeper understanding of their governance structures. This effort is to ensure the sustainability of these alliances. Through the relational view of the firm, we suggest relational lateral IT-steering committees, relational IT operational committees, and relational IT performance management systems as IT governance structures for collaborative alliances. We then incorporate these structures, develop a model for approaches to governing collaborative IT, and evaluate the effectiveness for such governance structures in the IT-dependent alliances. We suggest that IT governance efforts of an alliance should contribute to their collaborative rent. We also suggest that the collaborative rent of an alliance would relate to the business value of its alliance partners. Field survey data containing 192 responses indicates a positive influence of the suggested IT governance efforts of the alliance on the collaborative rent of the alliance. The results also suggest a positive impact of the collaborative rent of the alliance on the business value of the alliance partners.

Food insecurity among adults residing in disadvantaged urban areas : potential health and dietary consequences

Objective: Food insecurity is the limited or uncertain availability or access to nutritionally-adequate, culturally-appropriate and safe foods. Food insecurity may result in inadequate dietary intakes, overweight or obesity and the development of chronic disease. Internationally, few studies have focused on the range of potential health outcomes related to food insecurity among adults residing in disadvantaged locations and no such Australian studies exist. The objective of this study was to investigate associations between food insecurity, socio-demographic and health factors and dietary intakes among adults residing in disadvantaged urban areas. Design: Data were collected by mail survey (n= 505, 53% response rate), which ascertained information about food security status, demographic characteristics (such as age, gender, household income, education) fruit and vegetable intakes, take-away and meat consumption, general health, depression and chronic disease. Setting: Disadvantaged suburbs of Brisbane city, Australia, 2009. Subjects: Individuals aged ≥ 20 years. Results: Approximately one-in-four households (25%) were food insecure. Food insecurity was associated with lower household income, poorer general health, increased healthcare utilisation and depression. These associations remained after adjustment for age, gender and household income. Conclusion: Food insecurity is prevalent in urbanised disadvantaged areas in developed countries such as Australia. Low-income households are at high risk of experiencing food insecurity. Food insecurity may result in significant health burdens among the population, and this may be concentrated in socioeconomically-disadvantaged suburbs.

NOS1AP is associated with increased severity of PTSD and depression in untreated combat veterans

Background Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depressive disorder are over represented in combat veterans. Veterans with both disorders have an increased risk of suicide. The nitric oxide synthase 1 adaptor protein (NOS1AP) gene, which modulates stress-evoked N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) activity, was investigated in combat veterans. Methods A comprehensive genetic analysis of NOS1AP and its association with PTSD was investigated in Vietnam combat veterans with PTSD (n=121) and a group of healthy control individuals (n=237). PTSD patients were assessed for symptom severity and level of depression using the Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related PTSD and the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI). Results The G allele of NOS1AP SNP rs386231 was significantly associated with PTSD (p = 0.002). Analysis of variance revealed significant differences in BDI-II and Mississippi scores between genotypes for rs386231 with the GG genotype associated with increased severity of depression (p = 0.002 F = 6.839) and higher Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related PTSD scores (p = 0.033). Haplotype analysis revealed that the C/G haplotype (rs451275/rs386231) was significantly associated with PTSD (p = 0.001). Limitations The sample sizes in our study were not sufficient to detect SNP associations with very small effects. In addition the study was limited by its cross sectional design. Conclusions This is the first study reporting that a variant of the NOS1AP gene is associated with PTSD. Our data also suggest that a genetic variant in NOS1AP may increase the susceptibility to severe depression in patients with PTSD and increased risk for suicide.

Telephone support to rural and remote patients with heart failure : the Chronic Heart failure Assessment by Telephone (CHAT) study

Background Heart failure (HF) remains a condition with high morbidity and mortality. We tested a telephone support strategy to reduce major events in rural and remote Australians with HF, who have limited healthcare access. Telephone support comprised an interactive telecommunication software tool (TeleWatch) with follow-up by trained cardiac nurses. Methods Patients with a general practice (GP) diagnosis of HF were randomised to usual care (UC) or UC and telephone support intervention (UC+I) using a cluster design involving 143 GPs throughout Australia. Patients were followed for 12 months. The primary end-point was the Packer clinical composite score. Secondary end-points included hospitalisation for any cause, death or hospitalisation, as well as HF hospitalisation. Results Four hundred and five patients were randomised into CHAT. Patients were well matched at baseline for key demographic variables. The primary end-point of the Packer Score was not different between the two groups (P=0.98), although more patients improved with UC+I. There were fewer patients hospitalised for any cause (74 versus 114, adjusted HR 0.67 [95% CI 0.50-0.89], p=0.006) and who died or were hospitalised (89 versus 124, adjusted HR 0.70 [95% CI 0.53 – 0.92], p=0.011), in the UC+I vs UC group. HF hospitalisations were reduced with UC+I (23 versus 35, adjusted HR 0.81 [95% CI 0.44 – 1.38]), although this was not significant (p=0.43). There were 16 deaths in the UC group and 17 in the UC+I group (p=0.43). Conclusions Although no difference was observed in the primary end-point of CHAT (Packer composite score), UC+I significantly reduced the number of HF patients hospitalised amongst a rural and remote cohort. These data suggest that telephone support may be an efficacious approach to improve clinical outcomes in rural and remote HF patients.

Front interactions in a three-component system

The three-component reaction-diffusion system introduced in [C. P. Schenk et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 78 (1997), pp. 3781–3784] has become a paradigm model in pattern formation. It exhibits a rich variety of dynamics of fronts, pulses, and spots. The front and pulse interactions range in type from weak, in which the localized structures interact only through their exponentially small tails, to strong interactions, in which they annihilate or collide and in which all components are far from equilibrium in the domains between the localized structures. Intermediate to these two extremes sits the semistrong interaction regime, in which the activator component of the front is near equilibrium in the intervals between adjacent fronts but both inhibitor components are far from equilibrium there, and hence their concentration profiles drive the front evolution. In this paper, we focus on dynamically evolving N-front solutions in the semistrong regime. The primary result is use of a renormalization group method to rigorously derive the system of N coupled ODEs that governs the positions of the fronts. The operators associated with the linearization about the N-front solutions have N small eigenvalues, and the N-front solutions may be decomposed into a component in the space spanned by the associated eigenfunctions and a component projected onto the complement of this space. This decomposition is carried out iteratively at a sequence of times. The former projections yield the ODEs for the front positions, while the latter projections are associated with remainders that we show stay small in a suitable norm during each iteration of the renormalization group method. Our results also help extend the application of the renormalization group method from the weak interaction regime for which it was initially developed to the semistrong interaction regime. The second set of results that we present is a detailed analysis of this system of ODEs, providing a classification of the possible front interactions in the cases of $N=1,2,3,4$, as well as how front solutions interact with the stationary pulse solutions studied earlier in [A. Doelman, P. van Heijster, and T. J. Kaper, J. Dynam. Differential Equations, 21 (2009), pp. 73–115; P. van Heijster, A. Doelman, and T. J. Kaper, Phys. D, 237 (2008), pp. 3335–3368]. Moreover, we present some results on the general case of N-front interactions.

Pulse dynamics in a three-component system : stability and bifurcations

In this article, we analyze the stability and the associated bifurcations of several types of pulse solutions in a singularly perturbed three-component reaction-diffusion equation that has its origin as a model for gas discharge dynamics. Due to the richness and complexity of the dynamics generated by this model, it has in recent years become a paradigm model for the study of pulse interactions. A mathematical analysis of pulse interactions is based on detailed information on the existence and stability of isolated pulse solutions. The existence of these isolated pulse solutions is established in previous work. Here, the pulse solutions are studied by an Evans function associated to the linearized stability problem. Evans functions for stability problems in singularly perturbed reaction-diffusion models can be decomposed into a fast and a slow component, and their zeroes can be determined explicitly by the NLEP method. In the context of the present model, we have extended the NLEP method so that it can be applied to multi-pulse and multi-front solutions of singularly perturbed reaction-diffusion equations with more than one slow component. The brunt of this article is devoted to the analysis of the stability characteristics and the bifurcations of the pulse solutions. Our methods enable us to obtain explicit, analytical information on the various types of bifurcations, such as saddle-node bifurcations, Hopf bifurcations in which breathing pulse solutions are created, and bifurcations into travelling pulse solutions, which can be both subcritical and supercritical.

Qualitative study of adversity activated development and resilience in adolescents and young adults with congenital heart disease and their parents

What is it like to have a medical condition that few people have ever heard about? How does it feel to have to question whether daily physical activities are dangerous for you, whilst you watch your friends enjoy those activities without a care? Can you imagine that you need to have a complicated heart surgery, with risks such as paralysis or death? Or even imagine facing the painful recovery period and scars after such a surgery? Then imagine that you are a child or teenager dealing with this medical condition when all your friends are simply occupied with school and normal life. Now consider that surgery has been undertaken to extend your lifespan, but the operation is so new that the long-term outcomes are just not known? All you really know is that you might have ‘surgical repairs’ to your heart and symptoms may be relieved or managed by medications or cardiac devices, but you are never going to be cured. What if you had already experienced painful, frightening, lonely and tedious hospitalisations and you were forced to put your life on hold to re-enter that situation, time and time again. This may be your life, as a Congenital Heart Disease or CHD patient. How do such patients cope and in many cases even thrive? This chapter will review current international literature regarding the medical and personal impact of CHD. Our qualitative study of the perspectives of young CHD patients and their parents contributes to the Australian story of CHD, as well as highlighting the potential for CHD related adversity to promote personal development.