Double blind : women as creative practice-led researchers

While the productive relationship between praxis and feminist research has been well established, the situation is more complicated for female artist/researchers in the fraught field of creative practice-led research. Firstly, their research is being conducted in the context of ongoing debate, as Andrea Phillips has summarized, over whether practice-led research has been embraced in order to potentially produce emancipatory knowledge, or whether it is simply the rationalization and quantification of creative processes. Secondly, there is a pervasive paradox whereby, rather than feeling empowered by the process of critical and reflective self-analysis, many women are inhibited by enduring insecurities about the value of their work and/or their ownership of it. The reasons for this appear to be twofold: they are disheartened by the ongoing disproportion of successful women artists, and they are intimidated by the fundamentally masculine discourse surrounding research in the university. Many of these anxieties appear to have been exacerbated by the research quality assessment process, the Excellence in Research for Australia Initiative (ERA). This collaborative paper draws on the authors' experiences as both artist-researchers and educators to contextualize this paradox and also discuss what forms of praxis intervention may be useful in the preparation for, and supervision of, creative practice-led research by women.

Contemporary Australia : women, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane 21 April–22 July 2012

'Contemporary Australia: Women' is the second in a series of triennial exhibitions at the Gallery of Modern Art in Queensland, providing a survey of contemporary art practices across the country. This exhibition's focus on women artists comes in the wake of a number of high profile international exhibitions looking at women artists in both contemporary and historical contexts. This review situates the exhibition within this field and considers its significance.

On APT 6 : Rohan Wealleans performing identity at the disjuncture between customary and contemporary culture

A review of the 6th APT focusing on the work and performance of Rohan Wealleans

Workable solutions : the intersubjective careers of women with families

This chapter considers to what degree the careers of women with young families, both in and out of paid employment, are lived as contingent, intersubjective projects pursued across time and space, in the social condition of growing biographical possibilities and uneven social/ideological change. Their resolutions of competing priorities by engaging in various permutations of home-work and paid work are termed ‘workable solutions’, with an intentional play on the double sense of ‘work’ – firstly as labour, thus being able to perform work, whether paid or not; secondly as in being able to make things work or function in the family unit’s best interests, however defined.

Identity theft, computers and behavioral biometrics

The increase of online services, such as eBanks, WebMails, in which users are verified by a username and password, is increasingly exploited by Identity Theft procedures. Identity Theft is a fraud, in which someone pretends to be someone else is order to steal money or get other benefits. To overcome the problem of Identity Theft an additional security layer is required. Within the last decades the option of verifying users based on their keystroke dynamics was proposed during login verification. Thus, the imposter has to be able to type in a similar way to the real user in addition to having the username and password. However, verifying users upon login is not enough, since a logged station/mobile is vulnerable for imposters when the user leaves her machine. Thus, verifying users continuously based on their activities is required. Within the last decade there is a growing interest and use of biometrics tools, however, these are often costly and require additional hardware. Behavioral biometrics, in which users are verified, based on their keyboard and mouse activities, present potentially a good solution. In this paper we discuss the problem of Identity Theft and propose behavioral biometrics as a solution. We survey existing studies and list the challenges and propose solutions.

Continuous and non-intrusive identity verification in real-time environments based on free-text keystroke dynamics

Internet services are important part of daily activities for most of us. These services come with sophisticated authentication requirements which may not be handled by average Internet users. The management of secure passwords for example creates an extra overhead which is often neglected due to usability reasons. Furthermore, password-based approaches are applicable only for initial logins and do not protect against unlocked workstation attacks. In this paper, we provide a non-intrusive identity verification scheme based on behavior biometrics where keystroke dynamics based-on free-text is used continuously for verifying the identity of a user in real-time. We improved existing keystroke dynamics based verification schemes in four aspects. First, we improve the scalability where we use a constant number of users instead of whole user space to verify the identity of target user. Second, we provide an adaptive user model which enables our solution to take the change of user behavior into consideration in verification decision. Next, we identify a new distance measure which enables us to verify identity of a user with shorter text. Fourth, we decrease the number of false results. Our solution is evaluated on a data set which we have collected from users while they were interacting with their mail-boxes during their daily activities.

Perceived barriers to healthy lifestyle activities in midlife and older Australian women with type 2 diabetes

Purpose: Type 2 diabetes is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in midlife and older Australian women with known modifiable risk factors for type 2 diabetes including smoking, nutrition, physical activity and obesity. In Australia little research has been done to investigate the perceived barriers to healthy lifestyle activities in midlife and older women with type 2 diabetes. The primary aim of this study was to explore the level and type of perceived barriers to health promotion activities. The secondary aim was to explore the relationship of perceived barriers to smoking behaviour, fruit and vegetable intake, physical activity, and body mass index. Methods: The study was a cross sectional survey of women, aged over 45 with type 2 diabetes, attending metropolitan community health clinics (N = 41). Data was collected from self-report questionnaire and analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: Women in the study had average total barriers scores similar to those reported in the literature for women with a range of physical disabilities and illnesses. The leading barriers for this group of women were: lack of interest, concern about safety, too tired, lack of money and feeling what they do does not help. There was no association between total barriers scores and body mass index, physical activity, fruit and vegetable intake or socio-demographic variables. Conclusion: This study contributes to understanding the perceptions of midlife and older women with type 2 diabetes about the level and type of barriers to healthy lifestyle activities that they experience. Evidence from this study can be applied to inform health promotion for lifestyle risk factor reduction in women with type 2 diabetes.

Prediction of multilocus identity-by-descent

Previous studies have enabled exact prediction of probabilities of identity-by-descent (IBD) in randommating populations for a few loci (up to four or so), with extension to more using approximate regression methods. Here we present a precise predictor of multiple-locus IBD using simple formulas based on exact results for two loci. In particular, the probability of non-IBD X ABC at each of ordered loci A, B, and C can be well approximated by XABC = XABXBC/XB and generalizes to X123. . .k = X12X23. . .Xk-1,k/ Xk-2, where X is the probability of non-IBD at each locus. Predictions from this chain rule are very precise with population bottlenecks and migration, but are rather poorer in the presence of mutation. From these coefficients, the probabilities of multilocus IBD and non-IBD can also be computed for genomic regions as functions of population size, time, and map distances. An approximate but simple recurrence formula is also developed, which generally is less accurate than the chain rule but is more robust with mutation. Used together with the chain rule it leads to explicit equations for non-IBD in a region. The results can be applied to detection of quantitative trait loci (QTL) by computing the probability of IBD at candidate loci in terms of identity-by-state at neighboring markers.

Gifted early adolescents’ negotiating identity : A case study of self-presentation theory

Academically gifted students are recognised as possessing considerable achievement potential. Yet many fail to perform at a level commensurate with their ability. Often gifted students in early adolescence are faced with a forced choice between fulfilment of potential and achieving stable positive relationships with peers. This choice can affect their achievement and may have far-reaching personal and social costs. This case study explored the viability of self-presentation theory to explain students' ways of negotiating their sense of self whilst developing public identity and the concomitant affects on achievement and the fulfilment of potential. It examined how gifted students moderate their images in their learning and extra-curricular environments. Further, the study identifies those self-presentation strategies adopted that either facilitate or hinder achievement. This study may assist parents, educators and school counsellors to provide greater support for gifted adolescents.

Diabetes health program development for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women

According to Australian Health (2008), the area of endocrine, nutritional and metabolic disorders (mainly diabetes) yields the highest cause of death for Indigenous Australian women at 10.1%. Indigenous Brisbane North women’s results reiterate this with slightly higher percentages and are a cause for concern and action due to the noted levels of undiagnosed/unaware Indigenous Brisbane North women with abnormal blood glucose levels, whom participated in the research. A sub-sample of the group (N=17) were piloted to test the feasibility of method of eliciting health information on Indigenous Women within this community. This pilot study revealed the following health information regarding this group of women. 41.2% of Indigenous Brisbane North women were found to have blood glucose levels that were outside normal ranges, however only 29.4% had been diagnosed with diabetes and or endocrine abnormalities. These findings highlight that 11.8% of participants have signs indicating that they may have undiagnosed diabetes or/and pre diabetes juxtaposed to unacceptable endocrine levels compatible with health and wellness. The percentages of Indigenous Brisbane North Women whom have indicated that they have a diagnosis of diabetes have been compared to both National Indigenous peoples percentages and the national percentages for the wider Australian community (all Australians). The rate of diabetes within this population is 9 times that of the wider Australian community and 5 times that of the wider Australian Indigenous community. Data was collected from Indigenous participants on arrival and the attendance numbers of 112 women was recorded for comparison with other current health prevention wellness programs being delivered. Data was also collected through the use of specially designed culturally safe questionnaires undertaken in conjunction with health checks and health service information given to participants.

Facilitating lifestyle changes to manage menopausal symptoms in women with breast cancer : delivering the Pink Women’s Wellness Program

Women diagnosed as having breast cancer may experience difficulties with posttreatment effects such as menopausal symptoms. The aims of this pilot study were to (1) evaluate the impact of a multimodal lifestyle program on reducing menopausal symptoms in women with breast cancer and (2) examine the impact of the program on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and adherence to lifestyle recommendations.

Determinants of place identity and dependence : the case of international tourism in Tanzania

This research examines the effects of expectation (perceived attractiveness) on satisfaction, place identity, and place dependence. Place identity and place dependence are viewed as relational components of choice and relate to deeper needs. This study proposes that these two relational components depend on transactional expectations, which are emergent and determined by past experiences and visitor goals. In a theoretically elaborated and tested Structural Equation Model (SEM) this study assumes that these relationships vary according to intentions to return. The study addresses the conditions under which loyalty intentions influence the deeper place attachments (place identity and place dependence) that visitors associate with attractive cultural and natural destinations. The model is tested on a sample of 504 international tourists visiting Tanzania during fall 2010, and explains 59% of variance in the predicted dependent variables. The results are linked to a discussion on loyalty programs.

Multipurpose identity-based signcryption : a Swiss army knife for identity-based cryptography

Identity-Based (IB) cryptography is a rapidly emerging approach to public-key cryptography that does not require principals to pre-compute key pairs and obtain certificates for their public keys— instead, public keys can be arbitrary identifiers such as email addresses, while private keys are derived at any time by a trusted private key generator upon request by the designated principals. Despite the flurry of recent results on IB encryption and signature, some questions regarding the security and efficiency of practicing IB encryption (IBE) and signature (IBS) as a joint IB signature/encryption (IBSE) scheme with a common set of parameters and keys, remain unanswered. We first propose a stringent security model for IBSE schemes. We require the usual strong security properties of: (for confidentiality) indistinguishability against adaptive chosen-ciphertext attacks, and (for nonrepudiation) existential unforgeability against chosen-message insider attacks. In addition, to ensure as strong as possible ciphertext armoring, we also ask (for anonymity) that authorship not be transmitted in the clear, and (for unlinkability) that it remain unverifiable by anyone except (for authentication) by the legitimate recipient alone. We then present an efficient IBSE construction, based on bilinear pairings, that satisfies all these security requirements, and yet is as compact as pairing-based IBE and IBS in isolation. Our scheme is secure, compact, fast and practical, offers detachable signatures, and supports multirecipient encryption with signature sharing for maximum scalability.

The relationship between anti-mullerian hormone in women receiving fertility assessments and age at menopause in subfertile women : evidence from large population studies

Context: Anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) concentration reflects ovarian aging and is argued to be a useful predictor of age at menopause (AMP). It is hypothesized that AMH falling below a critical threshold corresponds to follicle depletion, which results in menopause. With this threshold, theoretical predictions of AMP can be made. Comparisons of such predictions with observed AMP from population studies support the role for AMH as a forecaster of menopause. Objective: The objective of the study was to investigate whether previous relationships between AMH and AMP are valid using a much larger data set. Setting: AMH was measured in 27 563 women attending fertility clinics. Study Design: From these data a model of age-related AMH change was constructed using a robust regression analysis. Data on AMP from subfertile women were obtained from the population-based Prospect-European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (Prospect- EPIC) cohort (n � 2249). By constructing a probability distribution of age at which AMH falls below a critical threshold and fitting this to Prospect-EPIC menopausal age data using maximum likelihood, such a threshold was estimated. Main Outcome: The main outcome was conformity between observed and predicted AMP. Results: To get a distribution of AMH-predicted AMP that fit the Prospect-EPIC data, we found the critical AMH threshold should vary among women in such a way that women with low age-specific AMH would have lower thresholds, whereas women with high age-specific AMH would have higher thresholds (mean 0.075 ng/mL; interquartile range 0.038–0.15 ng/mL). Such a varying AMH threshold for menopause is a novel and biologically plausible finding. AMH became undetectable (�0.2 ng/mL) approximately 5 years before the occurrence of menopause, in line with a previous report. Conclusions: The conformity of the observed and predicted distributions of AMP supports the hypothesis that declining population averages of AMH are associated with menopause, making AMH an excellent candidate biomarker for AMP prediction. Further research will help establish the accuracy of AMH levels to predict AMP within individuals.