“I call it the blame and shame disease”: a qualitative study about perceptions of social stigma surrounding type 2 diabetes

Abstract
Objectives While health-related stigma has been the subject of considerable research in other conditions (obesity and HIV/AIDS), it has not received substantial attention in diabetes. The aim of the current study was to explore the social experiences of Australian adults living with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), with a particular focus on the perception and experience of diabetes-related stigma.

Design A qualitative study using semistructured interviews, which were audio recorded, transcribed and subject to thematic analysis.

Setting This study was conducted in non-clinical settings in metropolitan and regional areas in the Australian state of Victoria. Participants were recruited primarily through the state consumer organisation representing people with diabetes.

Participants All adults aged ≥18 years with T2DM living in Victoria were eligible to take part. Twenty-five adults with T2DM participated (12 women; median age 61 years; median diabetes duration 5 years).

Results A total of 21 (84%) participants indicated that they believed T2DM was stigmatised, or reported evidence of stigmatisation. Specific themes about the experience of stigma were feeling blamed by others for causing their own condition, being subject to negative stereotyping, being discriminated against or having restricted opportunities in life. Other themes focused on sources of stigma, which included the media, healthcare professionals, friends, family and colleagues. Themes relating to the consequences of this stigma were also evident, including participants’ unwillingness to disclose their condition to others and psychological distress. Participants believed that people with type 1 diabetes do not experience similar stigmatisation.

Conclusions Our study found evidence of people with T2DM experiencing and perceiving diabetes-related social stigma. Further research is needed to explore ways to measure and minimise diabetes-related stigma at the individual and societal levels, and also to explore perceptions and experiences of stigma in people with type 1 diabetes

Material writing: Towards hybrid-making

Writing operates in an expanding field of intersections between symbol, inflection and further meaning. The materiality of writing, its embodied action, situated context and myriad substantive expressions, requires an interdisciplinary approach best advanced by collaborative teams and fuelled by collective concerns. At a recent design conference, Doha 2013: Hybrid Making, our team of creative arts researchers (Jondi Keane, Patrick West and Valerie Jeremijenko) conducted a workshop based on the idea of reverse engineering the notion of a souvenir, by starting with the sensation rather than the iconic image. The approaches explored by the group focused on the ways in which a sensation, emotion and/or idea attach to an object and how an object offers itself as an attractor for memory and indicate that when experience, sensation and place are emphasized, the materiality of writing comes to the fore. We assert that material writing allows or even requires a fluid movement between conceptual and perceptual modes of creative practice. In this paper we will unpack different methods of material writing: the materiality of the act of writing with substances, site-specific/site-conditioned writing and 3D printing. Through the particularity of each mode of material writing our discussions will examine the points of attachment that we, as symbolizing creatures, produce in order to orient and reconstruct a world on the fly. Material writing constantly brings us back to earth, anchoring us to the expanded processes integral to hybrid-making.

Fly rhythm

This book contains 2 essays, a forward and 15 colour plates on hand made paper. The text supports research in the form of 13 images taken with a digital pinhole camera in an unconventional way ie with subject and author in motion.  The images are further removed from traditional photography by light distribution in Photoshop and printing methods displayed in the book. The essays and forward explore the phenomena of light, photography in a digital age, body memory and 'capture' of images contextualising the work in philosophical (Rosalind Krauss,Merleau Ponty) and art historical (James Turrel, Doug Wheeler) terms.

Scalable Solid-Template Reduction for Designed Reduced Graphene Oxide Architectures

Herein, we report a solid-state reduction process (in contrast to solution-based approach) by using an environmentally friendly reductant, such as vitamin C (denoted VC), to be directly employed to solid-state graphene oxide (GO) templates to give the highly active rGO architecture with a sheet resistance of as low as 10 Ω sq–1. In addition, predesigned rGO patterns/tracks with tunable resistivity can be directly “written” on a preprepared solid GO film via the inkjet-printing technique using VC/H2O as the printing-ink. This advanced reduction process allows foreign active materials to be preincorporated into the GO matrix to form quality active composite architectures.

New approaches for adding value to paper and other substrates

This paper describes research into three different but interrelated technologies that can add value to commodity printing substrates by taking advantage of developments in synthetic chemistry, materials science and plasma physics. These investigations have been conducted in a Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) in Australia, called CRC Smartprint. Research into ink receptive coatings based on pigments possessing a positive surface charge has led to coatings that display improved resolution and colour saturation compared with silica based formulations. Although silica exhibits a high level of liquid absorption, it has relatively poor affinity for dye molecules contained in ink-jet ink. The second development involves the use of plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition at atmospheric pressure to change surface functionality with particular emphasis on absorptive and printing properties. Thirdly, the development of a prototype labelling system based on the application of electrochromic conductive polymer to a flexible substrate that responds to electrical stimuli is discussed. Taken together, these three developments illustrate how both impact and non-impact printing technologies can be judiciously used to apply not only improved visual imagery to paper and paperboard, but also have the potential to enable printing of micro-electronic circuitry directly onto packaging materials, or onto labels that will enable a wide range of improved tracking, security and marketing functions to be incorporated cost-effectively into packaged goods in future.

3D-printed and CNC milled flow-cells for chemiluminescence detection

Herein we explore modern fabrication techniques for the development of chemiluminescence detection flow-cells with features not attainable using the traditional coiled tubing approach. This includes the first 3D-printed chemiluminescence flow-cells, and a milled flow-cell designed to split the analyte stream into two separate detection zones within the same polymer chip. The flow-cells are compared to conventional detection systems using flow injection analysis (FIA) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), with the fast chemiluminescence reactions of an acidic potassium permanganate reagent with morphine and a series of adrenergic phenolic amines.

Homogeneous isolation of nanocelluloses by controlling the shearing force and pressure in microenvironment

Nanocelluloses were prepared from sugarcane bagasse celluloses by dynamic high pressure microfluidization (DHPM), aiming at achieving a homogeneous isolation through the controlling of shearing force and pressure within a microenvironment. In the DHPM process, the homogeneous cellulose solution passed through chambers at a higher pressure in fewer cycles, compared with the high pressure homogenization (HPH) process. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) demonstrated that entangled network structures of celluloses were well dispersed in the microenvironment, which provided proper shearing forces and pressure to fracture the hydrogen bonds. Gel permeation chromatography (GPC), CP/MAS 13C NMR and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) measurements suggested that intra-molecular hydrogen bonds were maintained. These nanocelluloses of smaller particle size, good dispersion and lower thermal stability will have great potential to be applied in electronics devices, electrochemistry, medicine, and package and printing industry. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

After Charlie: free speech and the political economy of communication

Three significant events at the start of 2015 have put freedom of speech firmly on the global agenda. The first was the carry-over from the December 2014 illegal entry to the Sony Corporation’s file servers by anonymous hackers, believed to be linked to the North Korean regime. The second was the horrible attack on journalists, editors, and cartoonists at the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo on 7 January. The third was the election of leftwing anti-austerity party Syrzia in Greece on 25 January.While each event is different in scope and size, they are important to scholars of the political economy of communication because they all speak to ongoing debates about freedom of expression, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. I name each of these concepts separately because, despite popular confusion, they are not the same thing (Patching and Hirst, 2014) . Freedom of expression is the right to individual self-expression through any means; it is an inalienable human right. Freedom of speech refers to the right (and the physical ability) to utter political speech, to say what others wish to repress and to demand a voice with which to express a range of social and political thoughts. Freedom of the press is a very particular version of freedom of expression that is intimately bound with the political economy of speech and of the printing press. Freedom of the press is impossible without the press and, despite its theoretical availability to all of us, this principle is impossible to articulate without the material means (usually money) to actually deploy a printing press (or the electronic means of broadcasting and publishing).Freedom of expression is immutable; freedom of speech subject to legal, ethical and ideological restriction (for better, or worse) and freedom of the press is peculiar to bourgeois society in that it entails the freedom to own and operate a press, not the right to say or publish on a level playing field. Access to freedom of the press is determined in the marketplace and is subject to the unequal power relationships that such determination implies.It is fitting to start with the Charlie Hebdo massacre because the loss of 17 lives makes this the most chilling of the three events and demands that it be given prominence in any analysis. No lives have been lost yet because Sony’s computers were hacked and the election of Syriza has not (yet) led to mass deaths in Greece.

Family violence happens to everybody: gender, mental health and violence in Australian media representations of filicide 2010–2014

This discussion of three cases of filicide reported and reviewed extensively by the Australian news media between 2010 and 2014 is concerned with the politics of representation and its links to material violence. Moving through the architecture of the coverage rather than focusing on it this article observes popular, if mostly tacit, assumptions about masculinity and femininity in representing ‘family violence’. It locates coverage patterns to illustrate perceptions of violence against women and children and inaccurate stereotyping of such family violence as the extraordinary consequences of mental illness, which are mostly reproduced by the Australian media. It is suggested that such media representations are part of a downplaying of family violence as a public issue of urgency.