Twitter and Sports : Football Fandom in Emerging and Established Markets

Twitter and other social media have become increasingly important tools for maintaining the relationships between fans and their idols across a range of activities, from politics and the arts to celebrity and sports culture. Twitter, Inc. itself has initiated several strategic approaches, especially to entertainment and sporting organisations; late in 2012, for example, a Twitter, Inc. delegation toured Australia in order to develop formal relationships with a number of key sporting bodies covering popular sports such as Australian Rules Football, A-League football (soccer), and V8 touring car racing, as well as to strengthen its connections with key Australian broadcasters and news organisations (Jackson & Christensen, 2012). Similarly, there has been a concerted effort between Twitter Germany and the German Bundesliga clubs and football association to coordinate the presence of German football on Twitter ahead of the 2012–2013 season: the Twitter accounts of almost all first-division teams now bear the official Twitter verification mark, and a system of ‘official’ hashtags for tweeting about individual games (combining the abbreviations of the two teams, e.g. #H96FCB) has also been instituted (Twitter auf Deutsch, 2012).

Effectiveness of pilot car operations in reducing speeds in a long-term rural highway work zone

Pilot cars are used in one-lane two-way work zones to guide traffic and keep their speeds within posted limits. While many studies have examined the effectiveness of measures to reduce vehicle speeds in work zones, little is known about the reductions achievable through the use of pilot cars. This paper examines the effectiveness of a pilot car in reducing travel speeds in a rural highway work zone in Queensland, Australia. Analysis of speed data covering a period of five days showed that a pilot car reduced average speeds at the treatment location, but not downstream. The proportion of vehicles speeding through the activity area was also reduced, particularly those traveling at 10 km/h or more above the posted limit. Motorists were more likely to speed during the day, under a 40 kh/h limit, when traffic volumes were higher and when there were fewer vehicles in the traffic stream. Medium vehicles were less likely to speed in the presence of a pilot car than light vehicles. To maximize these benefits, it is necessary to ensure that the pilot car itself is not speeding.

Book review: ‘Cornea. Color Atlas & Synopsis of Clinical Ophthalmology. Wills Eye Institute’, by C.J. Rapuano. Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Philadelphia 2012

This book is one in a series of seven atlases covering the ophthalmic sub-specialties: cornea, retina, glaucoma, oculoplastics, neuro-ophthalmology, uveitis and paediatrics. The author of Cornea and editor of the series is Christopher Rapuano, Attending Surgeon and Director of the Cornea Service at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. In the introduction to the book, Rapuano states ‘The goal of this series is to provide an up-to-date clinical overview of the major areas of ophthalmology for students, residents and practitioners in all the healthcare professions’...

Lifestyle Journalism

Lifestyle journalism has experienced enormous growth in the media over the past two decades, but scholars in the fields of journalism and communication studies have so far paid relatively little attention to a field that is still sometimes seen as “not real journalism”. There is now an urgent need for in-depth exploration and contextualisation of this field, with its increasing relevance for 21st century consumer cultures. For the first time, this book presents a wide range of studies which have engaged with the field of lifestyle journalism in order to outline the various political, economic, social and cultural tensions within it. Taking a comparative view, the collection includes studies covering four continents, including countries such as Australia, China, Norway, Denmark, Singapore, the UK and the USA. While keeping the broader lifestyle field in mind, the chapters focus on a variety of sub-fields such as travel, music, food, health, fashion and personal technology journalism. This volume provides a fascinating account of the different facets of lifestyle journalism, and charts the way forward for a more sustained analysis of the field. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journalism Practice.

Publishing

Publishing is no doubt one of the oldest and most diverse sectors in the creative economy. While publishing originally was associated with print and paper, the term is nowadays also commonly used to represent organizations that control, administer and license intellectual properties in other sectors of the creative economy such as videogames and music. While the title of this chapter is ‘Publishing’, we have no intention of covering all publishing related activities, but will focus on the economic consequences of digitization on two traditional and important print media sectors, namely books and magazines. Within these sectors we will specifically focus on consumer magazines and trade books, in other words books and magazines that are sold via commercial retailers to consumers. It is relevant to study these two publishing industries, since they share a number of very fundamental characteristics and have experienced similar economic consequences caused by the digitization of the creative economy. Both industries have undergone a gradual shift from print to digital and increasingly rely on revenues based on digital content carriers such as e- books, tablet magazine applications, special interest websites, blogs and so on.

Former Archbishop of York ‘covered up’ sex abuse scandal

The former Archbishop of York stood accused last night of covering up allegations that a senior Church of England clergyman had abused choirboys and school pupils. Lord Hope of Thornes was made aware of the accusations against the Very Rev Robert Waddington, a former Dean of Manchester Cathedral and once the cleric in overall charge of Church schools, in 1999 and again in 2003. Waddington was stripped of his right to conduct church services but the archbishop did not report concerns about alleged past abuse or a potential continuing threat to children to police or child protection agencies. The extent of Waddington’s alleged history of abuse and the Church’s inaction has been revealed through a joint investigation by The Times and The Australian newspaper in Sydney.

Accused headmaster turned me into pedophile, says convicted cleric Peter Gilbert

A CLERGYMAN who allegedly raped boys at a north Queensland boarding school in the 1960s has claimed he was ordered to take female hormones by his headmaster, who encouraged the "romantic love" of children among staff. Former Anglican brother Peter Gilbert - sentenced to seven years' jail in 2006 for the rape and indecent assault of children in the 1980s in South Australia - has blamed St Barnabas headmaster the late Robert Waddington for turning him into a pedophile. In a statement to one of his alleged victims, Gilbert said Waddington was molesting children himself and the Anglican priest would absolve the young teacher of his abuse of children in the confessional. The account has emerged as the top ranks of the Anglican church in Australia and Britain have been rocked by allegations of the covering-up of complaints made in 1999 and 2003 about Waddington's abuse while headmaster at the boarding school in Ravenshoe, north Queensland, and later, when he was dean of Manchester. A full investigation is being demanded into the handling of the complaints by the former Archbishop of York, now Lord (David) Hope of Thornes, and Australian church officials, including the former bishop of north Queensland, Clyde Wood.

Entrenchment of GIS technology for enterprise solutions in Maryland's state and local government

Beginning in 1974, the State of Maryland created spatial databases under the MAGI (Maryland's Automated Geographic Information) system. Since that early GIS, other state and local agencies have begun GISs covering a range of applications from critical lands inventories to cadastral mapping. In 1992, state agencies, local agencies, universities, and businesses began a series of GIS coordination activities, resulting in the formation of the Maryland Local Geographic Information Committee and the Maryland State Government Geographic Information Coordinating Committee. GIS activities and system installations can be found in 22 counties plus Baltimore City, and most state agencies. Maryland's decision makers rely on a variety of GIS reports and products to conduct business and to communicate complex issues more effectively. This paper presents the status of Maryland's GIS applications for local and state decision making.

Proteases and proteomics : cutting to the core of human skin pathologies

Preserving the integrity of the skin's outermost layer (the epidermis) is vital for humans to thrive in hostile surroundings. Covering the entire body, the epidermis forms a thin but impenetrable cellular cordon that repels external assaults and blocks escape of water and electrolytes from within. This structure exists in a perpetual state of regeneration where the production of new cellular subunits at the base of the epidermis is offset by the release of terminally differentiated corneocytes from the surface. It is becoming increasingly clear that proteases hold vital roles in assembling and maintaining the epidermal barrier. More than 30 proteases are expressed by keratinocytes or infiltrating immune cells and the activity of each must be maintained within narrow limits and confined to the correct time and place. Accordingly, over- or under-exertion of proteolytic activity is a common factor in a multitude of skin disorders that range in severity from relatively mild to life-threatening. This review explores the current state of knowledge on the involvement of proteases in skin diseases and the latest findings from proteomic and transcriptomic studies focused on uncovering novel (patho)physiological roles for these enzymes.

Life cycle analysis for sustainability assessment of road projects

Road infrastructure has been considered as one of the most expensive and extensive infrastructure assets of the built environment globally. This asset also impacts the natural environment significantly during different phases of life e.g. construction, use, maintenance and end-of-life. The growing emphasis for sustainable development to meet the needs of future generations requires mitigation of the environmental impacts of road infrastructure during all phases of life e.g. construction, operation and end-of-life disposal (as required). Life-cycle analysis (LCA), a method of quantification of all stages of life, has recently been studied to explore all the environmental components of road projects due to limitations of generic environmental assessments. The LCA ensures collection and assessment of the inputs and outputs relating to any potential environmental factor of any system throughout its life. However, absence of a defined system boundary covering all potential environmental components restricts the findings of the current LCA studies. A review of the relevant published LCA studies has identified that environmental components such as rolling resistance of pavement, effect of solar radiation on pavement(albedo), traffic congestion during construction, and roadway lighting & signals are not considered by most of the studies. These components have potentially higher weightings for environment damage than several commonly considered components such as materials, transportation and equipment. This paper presents the findings of literature review, and suggests a system boundary model for LCA study of road infrastructure projects covering potential environmental components.

Joint 2D and 3D cues for image segmentation towards robotic applications

This thesis investigates the fusion of 3D visual information with 2D image cues to provide 3D semantic maps of large-scale environments in which a robot traverses for robotic applications. A major theme of this thesis was to exploit the availability of 3D information acquired from robot sensors to improve upon 2D object classification alone. The proposed methods have been evaluated on several indoor and outdoor datasets collected from mobile robotic platforms including a quadcopter and ground vehicle covering several kilometres of urban roads.

Wet tropics reef rescue impact report 2009

The Wet Tropics region has a unique water asset and is also considered a priority region for the improvement of water quality entering the Great Barrier Reef due to a combination of high rainfall, intensive agricultural use, urban areas and the proximity of valuable reef assets to the coast. Agricultural activities are one of many identified threats to water quality and water flows in the Wet Tropics in terms of sediment and pollutant-related water quality decline. Information describing the current state of agricultural management practices across the region is patchy at best. Based on the best available information on agricultural management practices in the Wet Tropics in 2008, it is clear that opportunities exist to improve nutrient, sediment and pesticide management practice to reduce the impact on the water asset and the Great Barrier Reef. Based on current understandings of practices and the relationship between practices and reef water quality, the greatest opportunities for improved water quality are as follows: · nutrients – correct rate and the placement of fertilisers; · pesticides – improve weed control planning, herbicide rates and calibration practice; and · soil and sediment – implement new farming system practices. The 2008-09 Reef Rescue program sought to accelerate the rate of adoption of improved management practices and through Terrain invested $6.8M in the 2008-09 year for: · landholder water quality improvement incentive payments; · cross regional catchment repair of wetlands and riparian lands in areas of high sediment or nutrient loss; and · partnerships in the region to lever resources and support for on-ground practice change. The program delivered $3,021,999 in onground incentives to landholders in the Wet Tropics to improve farm practices from D or C level to B or A level. The landholder Water Quality Incentives Grants program received 300 individual applications for funding and funded 143 individual landholders to implement practice change across 36,098 ha of farm land. It is estimated that the Reef Rescue program facilitated practice change across 21% of the cane industry, and 20% of the banana industry. The program levered an additional $2,441,166 in landholder cash contributions and a further $907,653 in non-cash in-kind contributions bringing the total project value of the landholder grants program in the Wet Tropics to $6,370,819. Most funded projects targeted multiple water quality objectives with a focus on nutrient and sediment reduction. Of the 143 projects funded, 115 projects addressed nutrient management either as the primary focus or in combination with strategies that targeted other water quality objectives. Overall, 82 projects addressed two or more water quality targets. Forty-five percent of incentive funds were allocated to new farming system practices (direct drill legumes, zonal tillage equipment, permanent beds, min till planting equipment, GPS units, laser levelling), followed by 24% allocated to subsurface fertiliser applicators (subsurface application of fertiliser using a stool splitter or beside the stool, at the correct Six Easy Steps rate). As a result, Terrain estimates that the incentive grants achieved considerable reductions in nitrogen, phosphorus, sediment and pesticide loads. The program supported nutrient management training of 167 growers managing farms covering over 20% of the area harvested in 2008, and 18 industry advisors and resellers. This resulted in 115 growers (155 farms) developing nutrient management plans. The program also supported Integrated Weed Management training of 80 growers managing farms covering 8% of the area harvested in 2008, and 6 industry advisors and resellers. This report, which draws on the best available Reef Rescue Management Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting, and Improvement (MERI) information to evaluate program performance and impact on water quality outcomes, is the first in a series of annual reports that will assess and evaluate the impact of the Reef Rescue program on agricultural practices and water quality outcomes. The assessment is predominantly focused on the cane industry because of data availability. In the next stage, efforts will expand to: · improve practice data for the banana and grazing industry; · gain a better understanding of the water quality trends and the factors influencing them in the Wet Tropics; in particular work will focus on linking the results of the Paddock to Reef monitoring program and practice change data to assess program impact; · enhance estimations of the impact of practice change on pollutant loads from agricultural land use; · gain a better understanding of the extent of ancillary practice (change not directly funded) resulting from Reef Rescue training/ education/communication programs; and · provide a better understanding of the economic cost of practice change across the Wet Tropics region. From an ecological perspective, water quality trends and the factors that may be contributing to change, require further investigation. There is a critical need to work towards an enhanced understanding of the link between catchment land management practice change and reef water quality, so that reduced nutrient, sediment, and pesticide discharge to the Great Barrier Reef can be quantified. This will also assist with future prioritisation of grants money to agricultural industries, catchments and sub catchments. From a social perspective, the program has delivered significant water quality benefits from landholder education and training. It is believed that these activities are giving landholders the information and tools to implement further lasting change in their production systems and in doing so, creating a change in attitude that is supportive and inclusive of Natural Resource Management (NRM). The program in the Wet Tropics has also considerably strengthened institutional partnerships for NRM, particularly between NRM and industry and extension organisations. As a result of the Reef Rescue program, all institutions are actively working together to collectively improve water quality. The Reef Rescue program is improving water quality entering the Great Barrier Reef Lagoon by catalysing substantial activity in the Wet Tropics region to improve land management practices and reduce the water quality impact of agricultural landscapes. The solid institutional partnerships between the regional body, industry, catchment and government organisations have been fundamental to the successful delivery of the landholder grant and catchment rehabilitation programs. Landholders have generally had a positive perception and reaction to the program, its intent, and the practical, focused nature of grant-based support. Demand in the program was extremely high in 2008-09 and is expected to increase in 2009-2010.

Thoracoscopic scoliosis surgery – a cheaper option? A cost analysis of 189 consecutive cases

INTRODUCTION: Increasing health care costs, limited resources and increased demand makes cost effective and cost-efficient delivery of Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (AIS) management paramount. Rising implant costs in deformity correction surgery have prompted analysis of whether high implant densities are justified. The objective of this study was to analyse the costs of thoracoscopic scoliosis surgery, comparing initial learning curve costs with those of the established technique and to the costs involved in posterior instrumented fusion from the literature. METHODS: 189 consecutive cases from April 2000 to July 2011 were assessed with a minimum of 2 years follow-up. Information was gathered from a prospective database covering perioperative factors, clinical and radiological outcomes, complications and patient reported outcomes. The patients were divided into three groups to allow comparison; 1. A learning curve cohort, 2. An intermediate cohort and 3. A third cohort of patients, using our established technique. Hospital finance records and implant manufacturer figures were corrected to 2013 costs. A literature review of AIS management costs and implant density in similar curve types was performed. RESULTS: The mean pre-op Cobb angle was 53°(95%CI 0.4) and was corrected postop to mean 22.9°(CI 0.4). The overall complication rate was 20.6%, primarily in the first cohort, with a rate of 5.6% in the third cohort. The average total costs were $46,732, operating room costs of $10,301 (22.0%) and ICU costs of $4620 (9.8%). The mean number of screws placed was 7.1 (CI 0.04) with a single rod used for each case giving average implant costs of $14,004 (29.9%). Comparison of the three groups revealed higher implant costs as the technique evolved to that in use today, from $13,049 in Group 1 to $14577 in Group 3 (P<0.001). Conversely operating room costs reduced from $10,621 in Group 1 to $7573 (P<0.001) in Group 3. ICU stay was reduced from an average of 1.2 to 0 days. In-patient stay was significantly (P=0.006) lower in Groups 2 and 3 (5.4 days) than Group 1 (5.9 days) (i.e. a reduction in cost of approximately $6,140). CONCLUSIONS: The evolution of our thoracoscopic anterior scoliosis correction has resulted in an increase in the number of levels fused and reduction in complication rate. Implant costs have risen as a result, however, there has been a concurrent decrease in those costs generated by operating room use, ICU and in-patient stay with increasing experience. Literature review of equivalent curve types treated posteriorly shows similar perioperative factors but higher implant density, 69-83% compared to the 50% in this study. Thoracoscopic Scoliosis surgery presents a low density, reliable, efficient and effective option for selected curves. A cost analysis of Thoracoscopic Scoliosis Surgery using financial records and a prospectively collected database of all patients since 2000, demonstrating a clear cost advantage compared to equivalent posterior instrumentation and fusion.

Law and Global Health

Law and Global Health, the sixteenth volume in the Current Legal Issues series, offers an insight into the scholarship examining the relationship between global health and the law. Covering a wide range of areas from all over the world, articles in the volume look at areas of human rights, vulnerable populations, ethical issues, legal responses and governance.

Health Law in Australia [Second Edition]

Health Law in Australia is the country’s leading text in this area and was the first book to deal with health law on a comprehensive national basis. In this important field that continues to give rise to challenges for society Health Law in Australia takes a logical, structured approach to explain the breadth of this area of law across all Australian jurisdictions. By covering all the major areas in this diverse field, Health Law in Australia enhances the understanding of the discipline as a whole. Beginning with an exploration of the general principles of health law, including chapters on “Negligence”, “Children and Consent to Medical Treatment”, and “Medical Confidentiality and Patient Privacy”, the book goes on to consider beginning-of-life and end-of-life issues before concluding with chapters on emerging areas in health law, such as biotechnology, genetic technologies and medical research. The contributing authors are national leaders who are specialists in these areas of health law and who can share with readers the results of their research. Health Law in Australia has been written for both legal and health audiences and is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers and scholars in the disciplines of law, health and medicine, as well as health and legal practitioners, government departments and bodies in the health area, and private health providers.