With budget cuts coming, ABC and SBS stand divided

Did SBS chief executive Michael Ebeid score a well-timed free kick or an own goal in his attack on the ABC this week? The ABC recently secured the free-to-air television rights for the Asian Cup football tournament to be held in Australia early next year, together with tonight’s match between the Socceroos and Japan. A lower bid by SBS – still in some circles fondly known as the “Soccer Broadcasting Service” – was rejected, dealing a significant blow to the smaller public broadcaster. The ABC was reportedly asked to make a bid by Football Federation Australia. The FFA presumably believes the ABC’s coverage will attract larger audiences to the game. This is despite SBS’s long-term success with the sport. It should not be forgotten, however, that while SBS has largely been defined by its long connection with the world game, ABC was the home of football from the late 1950s until the 1980s. But the stoush is only partly about football. It was surely no coincidence that it comes on the eve of the government’s formal announcement of the size of the cuts to public broadcasting...

Investigations on road noise level spatial variability within a specially designed acoustic balcony

An investigation into the spatial distribution of road traffic noise levels on a balcony is conducted. A balcony constructed to a special acoustic design due to its elevation above an 8 lane motorway is selected for detailed measurements. The as-constructed balcony design includes solid parapets, side walls, ceiling shields and highly absorptive material placed on the ceiling. Road traffic noise measurements are conducted spatially using a five channel acoustic analyzer, where four microphones are located at various positions within the balcony space and one microphone placed outside the parapet at a reference position. Spatial distributions in both vertical and horizontal planes are measured. A theoretical model and prediction configuration is presented that assesses the acoustic performance of the balcony under existing traffic flow conditions. The prediction model implements a combined direct path, specular reflection path and diffuse reflection path utilizing image source and radiosity techniques. Results obtained from the prediction model are presented and compared to the measurement results. The predictions are found to correlate well with measurements with some minor differences that are explained. It is determined that the prediction methodology is acceptable to assess a wider range of street and balcony configuration scenarios.

Special Issue : Media/Politics in Indonesia [Editors]

Emma Baulch and Julian Millie are editors of this special issue.

Evaluation of Indigenous justice programs.: final report / Project D, Safe Aboriginal Youth Patrol Programs in New South Wales and Northbridge Policy and Juvenile Aid Group in Western Australia

The Australian Government has provided funding to evaluate the effectiveness of Indigenous law and justice programs across five subject areas to identify the best approaches to tackling crime and justice issues and better inform government funding decisions in the future. This report presents the findings of subject area "D", which examined two different approaches to delivering community and night patrol services for young people: the Safe Aboriginal Youth Patrol programs in New South Wales, and the Northbridge Policy project (the Young People in Northbridge project), in Western Australia. Night patrols can address crime either directly or indirectly, by prevention work or by addressing the social causes of crime through community development.

Networked livecoding at VL/HCC 2013

Network connectivity offers the potential for a group of musicians to play together over the network. This paper describes a trans-Atlantic networked musical livecoding performance between Andrew Sorensen in Germany (at the Schloss Daghstuhl conference on Collaboration and Learning through Live Coding) and Ben Swift in San Jose (at YL/HCC) in September 2013. In this paper we describe the infrastructure developed to enable this performance.

Patient group directions : the application and integration of knowledge in advancing nursing practice

Background: The introduction of Patient Group Directions (PGD) has changed significantly the way in which nurses can now administer prescription only medicines as a one-off for patients requiring this level of service. PGD’s are a written authority to administer drugs to patients that are not identified at the time of treatment. Aim: The aim of this project was to develop a PGD for use within an Outreach team to administer colloid boluses to patients presenting with hypovolemia. Method: Using a case exemplar this paper will discuss the development of a PGD using aspects of transitional change theory to highlight the potential barriers that were encountered. Implications for Practice: The implications for this PGD are wide reaching. First it now enables members from the nursing Outreach team to administer colloid fluid boluses to a prescribed patient cohort without the need for prescription. Second, it ensures the deteriorating patient has interventions initiated in a timely and appropriate manner to reduce inadvertent admission to high care areas. Last, it will improve inter-professional team-working and communication so much so that collaborative patient care reduces health costs and identifies earlier those patients requiring substantially greater nursing and medical input. Conclusion: The experience of developing a working PGD for fluid administration has meant that the Outreach team is able to respond to patients in a more effective way. In addition, it is the experience of developing this PGD that has enabled the team to contemplate other PGD’s in the execution of Outreach work.

What Costs Accountability? Financial Accountability, Mission and Fundraising in Nonprofits

Although greater calls for accountability have been articulated by academics, policy makers and donors in the recent years, a stream of thought has been questioning where the giving of an account should stop. In conveying the limits to the giving of an account (Messner, 2009) and associated transparency (Roberts, 2009), critical accounting scholars have also pointed to as yet unresolved contradictions intrinsic to accountability (McKernan, 2012), especially when it comes to be operationalised (Joannides, 2012). The impact of accountability's discharging on nonprofits' strategy or operations has to date been underexplored (Dhanni & Connelly, 2012; Tucker & Parker, 2013). Accordingly, this chapter seeks to contribute to this body of literature on the consequences of accountability on fundraising strategies in nonprofits, questioning whether accountability practice may hamper the effectiveness of the nonprofit sector by restraining the fundraising profession. Our chapter seeks to fill a dual theoretical gap. Firstly, only a number of publications have investigated the interplay between accountability and the making of organisational strategy (Parker, 2002, 2003b, 2011, 2012, 2013; Tucker & Parker, 2013). Therefore, we seek to fill a theoretical gap as to the impact of accountability on the conduct of straegic operations. By questioning whether accountability hampers fundraising strategy in non-profits we are also contributing to the literature balancing accountability and the mission. In this literature, it appears that money and the mission are often conflictual, financial managers being often seen by mission advocates as guardians shielding organisational resources (Chiapello, 1993, 1998; Lightbody, 2000, 2003). Another approach shows that making nonprofits accountable to capital and multiple stakeholders (donors, public authorities) leaders to changes in organisational culture (O'Dwyer & Unerman, 2007; Unerman & Bennett, 2004; Underman & O'Dwyer, 2006a, 2006b, 2008). By examining a small number of cases we show how accountability practices result in fundraising adapting and adjusting under such external pressures and constraints. We also show accountability systems may have a direct impact on the conduct of strategic operations, which might hamper mission conduct.

An open pit multistage mine production scheduling model for drilling, blasting and excavating operations

This paper proposes a new multi-resource multi-stage scheduling problem for optimising the open-pit drilling, blasting and excavating operations under equipment capacity constraints. The flow process is analysed based on the real-life data from an Australian iron ore mine site. The objective of the model is to maximise the throughput and minimise the total idle times of equipment at each stage. The following comprehensive mining attributes and constraints have been considered: types of equipment; operating capacities of equipment; ready times of equipment; speeds of equipment; block-sequence-dependent movement times of equipment; equipment-assignment-dependent operation times of blocks; distances between each pair of blocks; due windows of blocks; material properties of blocks; swell factors of blocks; and slope requirements of blocks. It is formulated by mixed integer programming and solved by ILOG-CPLEX optimiser. The proposed model is validated with extensive computational experiments to improve mine production efficiency at the operational level. The model also provides an intelligent decision support tool to account for the availability and usage of equipment units for drilling, blasting and excavating stages.

Effects of clear-fell harvest on bat home range.

We investigated effects of roost loss due to clear-fell harvest on bat home range. The study took place in plantation forest, inhabited by the New Zealand long-tailed bat (Chalinolobus tuberculatus), in which trees are harvested between the ages 26-32 years. We determined home ranges by radiotracking different bats in areas that had and had not been recently clear-fell harvested. Home ranges were smaller in areas that had been harvested. Adult male bats selected 20-25 year old stands within home ranges before and after harvest. Males selected edges with open unplanted areas when harvest had not occurred but no longer selected these at proportions greater than their availability post harvest, probably because they were then readily available. This is the first radiotracking study to demonstrate a change in home range size and selection concomitant with felling of large areas of plantation forest, and thus quantify negative effects of forestry operations on this speciose group. The use of smaller home ranges post-harvest may reflect smaller colony sizes and lower roost availability, both of which may increase isolation of colonies and vulnerability to local extinction.

Bat colony size reduction coincides with clear-fell harvest operations and high rates of roost loss in plantation forest

Clear-fell harvest of forest concerns many wildlife biologists because of loss of vital resources such as roosts or nests, and effects on population viability. However, actual impact has not been quantified. Using New Zealand long-tailed bats (Chalinolobus tuberculatus) as a model species we investigated impacts of clear-fell logging on bats in plantation forest. C. tuberculatus roost within the oldest stands in plantation forest so it was likely roost availability would decrease as harvest operations occurred. We predicted that post-harvest: (1) roosting range sizes would be smaller, (2) fewer roosts would be used, and (3) colony size would be smaller. We captured and radiotracked C. tuberculatus to day-roosts in Kinleith Forest, an exotic plantation forest, over three southern hemisphere summers (Season 1 October 2006–March 2007; Season 2 November 2007–March 2008; and Season 3 November 2008–March 2009). Individual roosting ranges (100% MCPs) post harvest were smaller than those in areas that had not been harvested, and declined in area during the 3 years. Following harvest, bats used fewer roosts than those in areas that had not been harvested. Over 3 years 20.7% of known roosts were lost: 14.5% due to forestry operations and 6.2% due to natural tree fall. Median colony size was 4.0 bats (IQR = 2.0–8.0) and declined during the study, probably because of locally high levels of roost loss. Post harvest colonies were smaller than colonies in areas that had not been harvested. Together, these results suggest the impact of clear-fell harvest on long-tailed bat populations is negative.

Meta-analysis of prevalence

Meta-analysis is a method to obtain a weighted average of results from various studies. In addition to pooling effect sizes, meta-analysis can also be used to estimate disease frequencies, such as incidence and prevalence. In this article we present methods for the meta-analysis of prevalence. We discuss the logit and double arcsine transformations to stabilise the variance. We note the special situation of multiple category prevalence, and propose solutions to the problems that arise. We describe the implementation of these methods in the MetaXL software, and present a simulation study and the example of multiple sclerosis from the Global Burden of Disease 2010 project. We conclude that the double arcsine transformation is preferred over the logit, and that the MetaXL implementation of multiple category prevalence is an improvement in the methodology of the meta-analysis of prevalence.

Comparisons between youth of a parent with MS and a control group on adjustment, caregiving, attachment and family functioning

Few studies have examined the effects of parental MS on children, and those that have suffered from numerous methodological weaknesses, some of which are addressed in this study. This study investigated the effects of parental MS on children by comparing youth of a parent with MS to youth who have no family member with a serious health condition on adjustment outcomes, caregiving, attachment and family functioning. A questionnaire survey methodology was used. Measures included youth somatisation, health, pro-social behaviour, behavioural-social difficulties, caregiving, attachment and family functioning. A total of 126 youth of a parent with MS were recruited from MS Societies in Australia and, were matched one-to-one with youth who had no family member with a health condition drawn from a large community sample. Comparisons showed that youth of a parent with MS did not differ on any of the outcomes except for peer relationship problems: adolescent youth of a parent with MS reported lower peer relationship problems than control adolescents. Overall, results did not support prior research findings suggesting adverse impacts of parental MS on youth.