Comparison of charged nanoparticle concentrations near busy roads and overhead high-voltage power lines

Overhead high-voltage power lines are known sources of corona ions. These ions rapidly attach to aerosols to form charged particles in the environment. Although the effect of ions and charged particles on human health is largely unknown, much attention has focused on the increasing exposure as a result of the expanding power network in urban residential areas. However, it is not widely known that a large number of charged particles in urban environments originate from motor vehicle emissions. In this study, for the first time, we compare the concentrations of charged nanoparticles near busy roads and overhead power lines. We show that large concentrations of both positive and negative charged nanoparticles are present near busy roadways and that these concentrations commonly exceed those under high-voltage power lines. We estimate that the concentration of charged nanoparticles found near two freeways carrying around 120 vehicles per minute exceeded the corresponding maximum concentrations under two corona-emitting overhead power lines by as much as a factor of 5. The difference was most pronounced when a significant fraction of traffic consisted of heavy-duty diesel vehicles which typically have high particle and charge emission rates.

Water solutions adapted for climate change

The Water Transformed online education package demonstrates how Australia is leading in many aspects of water management, as well as how, across a number of sectors, companies and organisations are achieving significant savings – of both water and money...

Public Health Psychology: A Conceptual and Practical Framework

Introduction For many years concern for public health has transcended the boundaries of the medical sciences and epidemiology. For the last 50 years or so psychologists have been increasingly active in this field. Recently, psychologists have not only begun to see the need to take action to mould health promoting behaviours in individuals, but have also pointed out the need to join in an effort to develop appropriate social, political, economic and institutional conditions which would help to improve the state of public health. Psychologists have postulated the need to distinguish a new subdiscipline of psychology called public health psychology which, together with other disciplines, would further the realization of this goal. In the following article the historical and international context of health psychology and the changing nature of public health are put forward as having important implications for the establishment of a ‘public health psychology’. These implications are addressed in later sections of the article through the description of conceptual and practical framework of public health psychology in which theory, methods and practice are considered. Many aspects of the conceptual and practical framework of public health psychology have relevance to the health social sciences more generally and forming a basis for interdisciplinary work. The framework of public health psychology, together with the obstacles that need to be overcome, are critically examined within an overall approach that contends it is necessary to increase and improve the contribution of health psychology to public health.

Donor research in Australia: Challenges and promise

Donors are the key to the core business of Blood Collection Agencies (BCAs). However, historically, they have not been a focus of research undertaken by these organizations. This model is now changing, with significant donor research groups established in a number of countries, including Australia. Donor research in the Australian Red Cross Blood Service (Blood Service) is concentrated in the Donor and Community Research (DCR) team. Cognizant of the complex and ever-changing landscape with regard to optimal donor management, the DCR team collaborates with academics located at universities around Australia to coordinate a broad program of research that addresses both short- and-long term challenges to the blood supply. This type of collaboration is not, however, without challenges. Two major collaborative programs of the Blood Service's research, focusing on i) the recruitment and retention of plasmapheresis donors and ii) the role of the emotion pride in donor motivation and return, are showcased to elucidate how the challenges of conducting collaborative BCA research can be met. In so doing, these and the other research programs described herein demonstrate how the Blood Service supports and contributes to research that not only revises operational procedures but also contributes to advances in basic science.

Implementation of a chest pain management service improves patient care and reduces length of stay

Objective Chest pain is one of the most common complaints in patients presenting to an emergency department. Delays in management due to a lack of readily available objective tests to risk stratify patients with possible acute coronary syndromes can lead to an unnecessarily lengthy admission placing pressure on hospital beds or inappropriate discharge. The need for a co-ordinated system of clinical management based on enhanced communication between departments, timely and appropriate triage, clinical investigation, diagnosis, and treatment was identified. Methods An evidence-based Chest Pain Management Service and clinical pathway were developed and implemented, including the introduction of after-hours exercise stress testing. Results Between November 2005 and March 2013, 5662 patients were managed according to a Chest Pain Management pathway resulting in a reduction of 5181 admission nights by more timely identification of patients at low risk who could then be discharged. In addition, 1360 days were avoided in high-risk patients who received earlier diagnosis and treatment. Conclusions The creation of a Chest Pain Management pathway and the extended exercise stress testing service resulted in earlier discharge for low-risk patients; and timely treatment for patients with positive and equivocal exercise stress test results. This service demonstrated a significant saving in overnight admissions.

Design and a deep customer insight approach to innovation

This paper proposes and explores the Deep Customer Insight Innovation Framework in order to develop an understanding as to how design can be integrated within existing innovation processes. The Deep Customer Insight Innovation Framework synthesises the work of Beckman and Barry (2007) as a theoretical foundation, with the framework explored within a case study of Australian Airport Corporation seeking to drive airport innovations in operations and retail performance. The integration of a deep customer insight approach develops customer-centric and highly integrated solutions as a function of concentrated problem exploration and design-led idea generation. Businesses’ facing complex innovation challenges or seeking to making sense of future opportunities will be able to integrate design into existing innovation processes, anchoring the new approach between existing market research and business development activities. This paper contributes a framework and novel understanding as to how design methods are integrated into existing innovation processes for operationalization within industry.

Given and News : Media discourse and the construction of community on national days

National anniversaries such as independence days demand precise coordination in order to make citizens change their routines to forego work and spend the day at rest or at festivities that provide social focus and spectacle. The complex social construction of national days is taken for granted and operates as a given in the news media, which are the main agents responsible for coordinating these planned disruptions of normal routines. This study examines the language used in the news to construct the rather unnatural idea of national days and to align people in observing them. The data for the study consist of news stories about the Fourth of July in the New York Times, sampled over 150 years and are supplemented by material from other sources and other countries. The study is multidimensional, applying concepts from pragmatics (speech acts, politeness, information structure), systemic functional linguistics (the interpersonal metafunction and the Appraisal framework) and cognitive linguistics (frames, metaphor) as well as journalism and communications to arrive at an interdisciplinary understanding of how resources for meaning are used by writers and readers of the news stories. The analysis shows that on national anniversaries, nations tend to be metaphorized as persons having birthdays, to whom politeness should be shown. The face of the nation is to be respected in the sense of identifying the nation's interests as one's own (positive face) and speaking of citizen responsibilities rather than rights (negative face). Resources are available for both positive and negative evaluations of events and participants and the newspaper deftly changes footings (Goffman 1981) to demonstrate the required politeness while also heteroglossically allowing for a certain amount of disattention and even protest - within limits, for state holidays are almost never construed as Bakhtinian festivals, as they tend to reaffirm the hierarchy rather than invert it. Celebrations are evaluated mainly for impressiveness, and for the essentially contested quality of appropriateness, which covers norms of predictability, size, audience response, aesthetics, and explicit reference to the past. Events may also be negatively evaluated as dull ("banal") or inauthentic ("hoopla"). Audiences are evaluated chiefly in terms of their enthusiasm, or production of appropriate displays for emotional response, for national days are supposed to be occasions of flooding-out of nationalistic feeling. By making these evaluations, the newspaper reinforces its powerful position as an independent critic, while at the same time playing an active role in the construction and reproduction of emotional order embodied in "the nation's birthday." As an occasion for mobilization and demonstrations of power, national days may be seen to stand to war in the relation of play to fighting (Bateson 1955). Evidence from the newspaper's coverage of recent conflicts is adduced to support this analysis. In the course of the investigation, methods are developed for analyzing large collections of newspaper content, particularly topical soft news and feature materials that have hitherto been considered less influential and worthy of study than so-called hard news. In his work on evaluation in newspaper stories, White (1998) proposed that the classic hard news story is focused on an event that threatens the social order, but news of holidays and celebrations in general does not fit this pattern, in fact its central event is a reproduction of the social order. Thus in the system of news values (Galtung and Ruge 1965), national holiday news draws on "ground" news values such as continuity and predictability rather than "figure" news values such as negativity and surprise. It is argued that this ground helps form a necessary space for hard news to be seen as important, similar to the way in which the information structure of language is seen to rely on the regular alternation of given and new information (Chafe 1994).

Turning the Kaleidoscope - (E)FL Educational Experience and Inquiry as Auto/biography

This book is a study on learning, teaching/counselling, and research on the two. My quest has been to find a pedagogically-motivated way of researching learning and teaching interaction, and in particular counselling, in an autonomous language-learning environment. I have tried to develop a method that would make room for lived experience, meaning-making and narrating, because in my view these all characterise learning encounters between language learners and counsellors, and learners and their peers. Lived experience as a source of meaning, telling and co-telling becomes especially significant when we try to listen to the diverse personal and academic voices of the past as expressed in autobiographical narratives. I have aimed at researching various ALMS dialogues (Autonomous Learning Modules, University of Helsinki Language Centre English course and programme), and autobiographical narratives within them, in a way that shows respect for the participants, and that is relevant, reflective and, most importantly, self-reflexive. My interest has been in autobiographical telling in (E)FL [(English as a) foreign language], both in students first-person written texts on their language- learning histories and in the sharing of stories between learners and a counsellor. I have turned to narrative inquiry in my quest and have written the thesis as an experiential narrative. In particular, I have studied learners and counsellors in one and the same story, as characters in one narrative, in an attempt to avoid the impression that I am telling yet another separate, anecdotal story, retrospectively. Through narrative, I have shed light on the subjective dimensions of language learning and experience, and have come closer to understanding the emotional aspects of learning encounters. I have questioned and rejected a distanced and objective approach to describing learning and teaching/counselling. I have argued for a holistic and experiential approach to (E)FL encounters in which there is a need to see emotion and cognition as intertwined, and thus to appreciate learners and counsellors emotionally-charged experiences as integral to their identities. I have also argued for a way of describing such encounters as they are situated in history, time, autobiography, and the learning context. I have turned my gaze on various constellations of lived experience: the data was collected on various occasions and in various settings during one course and consists of videotaped group sessions, individual counselling sessions between students and their group counsellor, biographic narrative interviews with myself, open-ended personally-inspired reflection texts written by the students about their language-learning histories, and student logs and diaries. I do not consider data collection an unproblematic occasion, or innocent practice, and I defend the integrity of the research process. Research writing cannot be separated from narrative field work and analysing and interpreting the data. The foci in my work have turned to be the following: 1) describing ALMS encounters and specifying their narrative aspects; 2) reconceptualising learner and teacher autonomy in ALMS and in (E)FL; 2) developing (E)FL methodologically through a teacher-researcher s identity work; 4) research writing as a dialogical narrative process, and the thesis as an experiential narrative. Identity and writing as inquiry, and the deeply narrative and autobiographical nature of the (E)FL teaching/counselling/researching have come to the fore in this research. Research writing as a relational activity and its implications for situated ways of knowing and knowledge turned out to be important foci. I have also focussed on the context-bound and local teacher knowledge and ways of knowing about being a teacher, and I have argued for personal ways of knowing about, and learning and studying foreign languages. I discuss research as auto/biography: as a practising counsellor I use my own life and (E)FL experience to understand and interpret the stories of the research participants even though I was not involved in their course work. The supposedly static binaries of learner/teacher, and also learner autonomy/teacher autonomy, are thus brought into the discussion. I have highlighted the infinite variability and ever-changing nature of learning and teaching English, but the book is also of relevance to foreign language education in general.

Natural convection from a vertical cone in a porous medium due to the combined effects of heat and mass diffusion with non-uniform wall temperature/concentration or heat/mass flux and suction/injection

An analysis has been carried out to study the non-Darcy natural convention flow of Newtonian fluids on a vertical cone embedded in a saturated porous medium with power-law variation of the wall temperature/concentration or heat/mass flux and suction/injection with the streamwise distance x. Both non-similar and self-similar solutions have been obtained. The effects of non-Darcy parameter, ratio of the buoyancy forces due to mass and heat diffusion, variation of wall temperature/concentration or heat/mass flux and suction/injection on the Nusselt and Sherwood numbers have been studied.

A comparison of a blocking ELISA and a haemagglutination inhibition assay for the detection of antibodies to Avibacterium (Haemophilus) paragallinarum in sera from artificially infected chickens

The ability of blocking ELISAs and haemagglutination-inhibition (HI) tests to detect antibodies in sera from chickens challenged with either Avibacterium (Haemophilus) paragallinarum isolate Hp8 (serovar A) or H668 (serovar C) was compared. Serum samples were examined weekly over the 9 weeks following infection. The results showed that the positive rate of serovar A specific antibody in the B-ELISA remained at 100% from the second week to the ninth week. In chickens given the serovar C challenge, the highest positive rate of serovar C specific antibody in the B-ELISA appeared at the seventh week (60% positive) and was then followed by a rapid decrease. The B-ELISA gave significantly more positives at weeks 2, 3, 7, 8 and 9 post-infection for serovar A and at week 7 post-infection for serovar C. In qualitative terms, for both serovar A and serovar C infections, the HI tests gave a lower percentage of positive sera at all time points except at 9 weeks post-infection with serovar C. The highest positive rate for serovar A HI antibodies was 70% of sera at the fourth and fifth weeks post-infection. The highest rate of serovar C HI antibodies was 20% at the fifth and sixth weeks post-infection. The results have provided further evidence of the suitability of the serovar A and C B-ELISAs for the diagnosis of infectious coryza.

Child temperament and parental personality: continuity and transactional change

Studying the continuity and underlying mechanisms of temperament change from early childhood through adulthood is clinically and theoretically relevant. Knowledge of the continuity and change of temperament from infancy onwards, especially as perceived by both parents is, however, still scanty. Only in recent years have researchers become aware that personality, long considered as stable in adulthood, may also change. Further, studies that focus on the transactional change of child temperament and parental personality also seem to be lacking, as are studies focusing on transactions between child temperament and more transient parental characteristics, like parental stress. Therefore, this longitudinal study examined the degree of continuity of temperament over five years from the infant s age of six months to the child s age of five and a half years, as perceived by both biological parents, and also investigated the bidirectional effects between child temperament and parents personality traits and overall stress experienced during that time. First, moderate to high levels of continuity of temperament from infancy to middle childhood were shown, depicting the developmental links between affectively positive and well-adjusted temperament characteristics, and between characteristics of early and later negative affectivity. The continuity of temperament was quantitatively and qualitatively similar in both parents ratings. The findings also demonstrate that infant and childhood temperament characteristics cluster to form stable temperament types that resemble personality types shown in child and adult personality studies. Second, the parental personality traits of extraversion and neuroticism were shown to be highly stable over five years, but evidence of change in relation to parents views of their child s temperament was also shown: an infant s higher positive affectivity predicted an increase in parental extraversion, while the infant s higher activity level predicted a decrease in parental neuroticism over five years. Furthermore, initially higher parental extraversion predicted higher ratings of the child s effortful control, while initially higher parental neuroticism predicted the child s higher negative affectivity. In terms of changes in parental stress, the infant s higher activity level predicted a decrease in maternal overall stress, while initially higher maternal stress predicted a higher level of child negative affectivity in middle childhood. Together, the results demonstrate that the mother- and father-rated temperament of the child shows continuity during the early years of life, but also support the view that the development of these characteristics is sensitive to important contextual factors such as parental personality and overall stress. While parental personality and experienced stress were shown to have an effect on the child s developing temperament, the reverse was also true: the parents own personality traits and perceived stress seemed to be highly stable, but also susceptible to their experiences of their child s temperament.

The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC): Dimensionality and age-related measurement invariance with Australian cricketers

Objective This study explored the dimensionality and measurement invariance of the 25-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC; Connor & Davidson, 2003) across samples of adult (n = 321; aged 20–36) and adolescent (n = 199; aged 12–18) Australian cricketers. Design Cross-sectional, self-report survey Methods An online, multi-section questionnaire. Results Confirmatory factor and item level analyses supported the psychometric superiority of a revised 10-item, unidimensional model of resilience over the original 25-item, five-factor measurement model. Positive and moderate correlations with hardiness as well as negative and moderate correlations with burnout components were evidenced thereby providing support for the convergent validity of the unidimensional model. Measurement invariance analyses of the unidimensional model across the two age-group samples supported configural (i.e., same factor structure across groups), metric (i.e., same pattern of factor loadings across the groups), and partial scalar invariance (i.e., mostly the same intercepts across the groups). Conclusion Evidence for a psychometrically sound measure of resilient qualities of the individual provides an important foundation upon which researchers can identify the antecedents to and outcomes of resilience in sport contexts.

Kodin ja työn rajavyöhykkeellä - yhteensovittamisen jännitteitä ja ratkaisuja arjessa

The aim of this research is to study the boundary zone of home and work and the tensions people experience while reconciling home and work? How are the requirements of the family, the home and the work taken care of in everyday life? What kind of difficulties does the individual experience when reconciling home activities and job requirements together? What kind of activity policies have families created to ease the everyday life? What kind of goals and requirements do families feel behind the difficulties in adjusting home and work? What kind of changes would make the adjusting of home and work easier? The changing family life, everyday home activities and the changing Finnish working life are studied to describe the adjusting of home and work. In addition the boundary zone of home and work and its tensions are studied. 337 research persons who find reconciling home and work challenging were elected from different sectors of the working life. Research persons were gathered from the public, private and third sectors. The research material was gathered with a semi-structured qualitative questionnaire published in internet. Contents analysis was the analysis method of the research material. The tensions of adjusting home and work are various. Several activity systems meet on the boundary zone of home and work causing boundary zones to expand and tensions to increase and expand like a network. In the everyday life of an individual the boundary zone fades out and home and work overlap. Tensions can be examined as internal conflicts of the individual through the activity system of everyday life. Individuals balance between individualism and familism, feeling bad, suffering from lack of time and struggling with childcare organizing problems and inflexible employers. The solutions to reconciling home and work difficulties are situational. Often is the help of family and friends required without any solid solutions. The conflict of the goals, requirements and the reality is behind the problems as well as the tightening terms of the working life and its growing expectations. Change requests are proposed on the levels of individual, home, work and the society. Reconciling home and work is not only a challenge between the employee and the employer. It s a problem that needs multilateral solutions and changes on the levels of individual, home, work and society. The challenge remaining is to find out if it would be successful to take the everyday life as starting point to negotiate the reconciling of home and work and how the possible family, social and work political solutions appear in everyday life.

The mechanisms of human renal epithelial cell modulation of autologous dendritic cell phenotype and function

Proximal tubule epithelial cells (PTEC) of the kidney line the proximal tubule downstream of the glomerulus and play a major role in the re-absorption of small molecular weight proteins that may pass through the glomerular filtration process. In the perturbed disease state PTEC also contribute to the inflammatory disease process via both positive and negative mechanisms via the production of inflammatory cytokines which chemo-attract leukocytes and the subsequent down-modulation of these cells to prevent uncontrolled inflammatory responses. It is well established that dendritic cells are responsible for the initiation and direction of adaptive immune responses. Both resident and infiltrating dendritic cells are localised within the tubulointerstitium of the renal cortex, in close apposition to PTEC, in inflammatory disease states. We previously demonstrated that inflammatory PTEC are able to modulate autologous human dendritic cell phenotype and functional responses. Here we extend these findings to characterise the mechanisms of this PTEC immune-modulation using primary human PTEC and autologous monocyte-derived dendritic cells (MoDC) as the model system. We demonstrate that PTEC express three inhibitory molecules: (i) cell surface PD-L1 that induces MoDC expression of PD-L1; (ii) intracellular IDO that maintains the expression of MoDC CD14, drives the expression of CD80, PD-L1 and IL-10 by MoDC and inhibits T cell stimulatory capacity; and (iii) soluble HLA-G (sHLA-G) that inhibits HLA-DR and induces IL-10 expression by MoDC. Collectively the results demonstrate that primary human PTEC are able to modulate autologous DC phenotype and function via multiple complex pathways. Further dissection of these pathways is essential to target therapeutic strategies in the treatment of inflammatory kidney disorders.

Forces shaping the future of work in a changing regional economy

This paper presents research which examined perceptions on the future of work in Queensland. It highlights the major drivers of change including: changing technology, demographics, increasing globalisation and economic shifts. Focus groups were conducted and findings show that Queensland businesses are acutely aware of the coming changes, but are less certain about how to respond. Current good practices plus recommendations for the future - particularly the lead role government and industry bodies need to play - are discussed. These recommendations will support Queensland businesses to thrive and adapt to the forces shaping work in this changing regional economy.