The impact of tobacco smoking on treatment for comorbid depression and alcohol misuse

Tobacco use is a major public health concern, and is associated with a number of mental illnesses as well as increased alcohol/other drug (AOD). Research into treatment for individuals experiencing such comorbidities is limited. Participants (n = 447) were those enrolled in the Depression and Alcohol Integrated and Single-focused Interventions project (Baker et al. 2010), and the Self Help for Alcohol/other drugs and DEpression project (Kay-Lambkin et al. Medical Journal of Australia 195:S44-S50, 2011a, Journal of Medical Internet Research 13(1):e11p11, b), who reported current depression and hazardous alcohol use at entry to the study. Smoking cessation was not targeted in, nor a goal of, treatment. After controlling for socioeconomic variables, tobacco use was not associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms at baseline; however heavy smokers (30+ cigarettes per day) consumed significantly more alcohol at baseline than did non-smokers (13 vs. 9 standard drinks per day). Baseline smoking severity did not impact on depression or alcohol use outcomes over a 12-month period. Reductions in tobacco use between baseline and 3-month follow-up were significantly associated with reductions in depression and alcohol consumption over the same time period. The study results suggest that tobacco use does not interfere with treatment for depression and alcohol use problems, and adds weight to the idea of considering specific treatment for tobacco use in the context of treatment for alcohol/other drug use.

Cultural forces in journalism : the impact of cultural values on Māori journalists’ professional views

Social system-level analyses of journalism have tended to focus on political and economic influences, at the expense of other factors, such as the role that culture and cultural values play in shaping journalists' professional views and practices. This paper identifies cultural values as a particularly fruitful area for providing a more nuanced analysis of journalism culture. It examines this issue in the context of in-depth interviews with 20 M?ori journalists from Aotearoa New Zealand. The study finds that Indigenous journalism in that country is strongly influenced by M?ori cultural values, such as showing respect to others, following cultural protocols, and making use of culturally-specific language. Cultural limitations are also identified in the form of the social structures of M?ori society, and journalists' strategies in working around these are discussed. The paper highlights the implications a renewed focus on cultural values can have for the study of journalism culture more broadly.

The “virtual” producer in the recording studio : media networks in long distance peripheral performances

The producer has for many years been a central agent in recording studio sessions; the validation of this role was, in many ways, related to the producer’s physical presence in the studio, to a greater or lesser extent. However, improvements in the speed of digital networks have allowed studio sessions to be produced long-distance, in real-time, through communication programs such as Skype or REDIS. How does this impact on the role of the producer, a “nexus between the creative inspiration of the artist, the technology of the recording studio, and the commercial aspirations of the record company” (Howlett 2012)? From observations of a studio recording session in Lisbon produced through Skype from New York, this article focuses on the role of the producer in these relatively new recording contexts involving long distance media networks. Methodology involved participant observation carried out in Estúdios Namouche in Lisbon (where the session took place), as part of doctoral research. This ethnographic approach also included a number of semi-directed ethnographic interviews of the different actors in this scenario—musicians, recording engineers, composers and producers. As a theoretical framework, the research of De Zutter and Sawyer on Distributed Creativity is used, as the recording studio sets an example of “a cognitive system where […] tasks are not accomplished by separate individuals, but rather through the interactions of those individuals” (DeZutter 2009:4). Therefore, creativity often emerges as a result of this interaction.

Moulding them in the industry's image : journalism education's impact on students' professional views

Long-running debates over the value of university-based journalism education have suffered from a lack of empirical foundation, leading to a wide range of assertions both from those who see journalism education playing a crucial role in moulding future journalists and those who do not. Based on a survey of 320 Australian journalism students from six universities across the country, this study provides an account of the professional views these future journalists hold. Findings show that students hold broadly similar priorities in their role perceptions, albeit to different intensities from working journalists. The results point to a relationship between journalism education and the way in which students' views of journalism's watchdog role and its market orientation change over the course of their degree – to the extent that, once they are near completion of their degree, students have been moulded in the image of industry professionals.

Impact of passenger group dynamics on an airport evacuation process using an agent-based model

The safety of passengers is a major concern to airports. In the event of crises, having an effective and efficient evacuation process in place can significantly aid in enhancing passenger safety. Hence, it is necessary for airport operators to have an in-depth understanding of the evacuation process of their airport terminal. Although evacuation models have been used in studying pedestrian behaviour for decades, little research has been done in considering the evacuees’ group dynamics and the complexity of the environment. In this paper, an agent-based model is presented to simulate passenger evacuation process. Different exits were allocated to passengers based on their location and security level. The simulation results show that the evacuation time can be influenced by passenger group dynamics. This model also provides a convenient way to design airport evacuation strategy and examine its efficiency. The model was created using AnyLogic software and its parameters were initialised using recent research data published in the literature.

Social media and tacit knowledge sharing : physicians' perspectives and experiences

Tacit knowledge sharing amongst physicians is known to have a significant impact on the quality of medical decisions. This thesis posits that social media can provide new opportunities for tacit knowledge sharing amongst physicians, and demonstrates this by presenting findings from a review of relevant literature and a qualitative survey conducted with physicians. Using thematic analysis, the study revealed five major themes and over twenty sub-themes as potential contributions of social media to tacit knowledge flow amongst physicians.

Academics in the policy process : engagement with Australian media policy inquiries 2011-2013

This paper critically evaluates the series of inquires that the Australian Labor government undertook during 2011-2013 into reform of Australian media, communications and copyright laws. One important driver of policy reform was the government’s commitment to building a National Broadband Network (NBN), and the implications this had for existing broadcasting and telecommunications policy, as it would constitute a major driver of convergence of media and communications access devices and content platforms. These inquiries included: the Convergence Review of media and communications legislation; the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) review of the National Classification Scheme; and the Independent Media Inquiry (Finkelstein Review) into Media and Media Regulation. One unusual feature of this review process was the degree to which academics were involved in the process, not simply as providers of expert opinion, but as review chairs seconded from their universities. This paper considers the role played by activist groups in all of these inquiries and their relationship to the various participants in the inquiries, as well as the implications of academics being engaged in such inquiries, not simply as activist-scholars, but as those primarily responsible for delivering policy review outcomes. The paper draws upon the concept of "policy windows" in order to better understand the context in which the inquiries took place, and their relative lack of legislative impact.

Assessing the immediate and short-term impact of flooding on residential property participant behaviour

The past decade has seen an increase in the number of significant natural disasters that have caused considerable loss of life as well as damage to all property markets in the affected areas. In many cases, these natural disasters have not only caused significant property damage, but in numerous cases, have resulted in the total destruction of the property in the location. With these disasters attracting considerable media attention, the public are more aware of where these affected property markets are, as well as the overall damage to properties that have been damaged or destroyed. This heightened level of awareness has to have an impact on the participants in the property market, whether a developer, vendor seller or investor. To assess this issue, a residential property market that has been affected by a significant natural disaster over the past 2 years has been analysed to determine the overall impact of the disaster on buyer, renter and vendor behaviour, as well as prices in these residential markets. This paper is based on data from the Brisbane flood in January 2011. This natural disaster resulted in loss of life and partial and total devastation of considerable residential property sectors. Data for the research have been based on the residential sales and rental listings for each week of the study period to determine the level of activity in the specific property sectors, and these are also compared to the median house prices for the various suburbs for the same period based on suburbs being either flood affected or flood free. As there are 48 suburbs included in the study, it has been possible to group these suburbs on a socio-economic basis to determine possible differences due to location and value. Data were accessed from realestate.com.au, a free real estate site that provides details of current rental and sales listings on a suburb basis, RP Data a commercial property sales database and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The paper found that sales listings fell immediately after the flood in the affected areas, but there was no corresponding fall or increase in sales listings in the flood-free suburbs. There was a significant decrease in the number of rental listings follow the flood as affected parties sought alternate accommodation. The greatest fall in rental listings was in areas close to the flood-affected suburbs indicating the desire to be close to the flooded property during the repair period.

The Arab Spring and its social media audiences : English and Arabic Twitter users and their networks

2011 ‘Arab Spring’ are likely to overstate the impact of Facebook and Twitter on these uprisings, it is nonetheless true that protests and unrest in countries from Tunisia to Syria generated a substantial amount of social media activity. On Twitter alone, several millions of tweets containing the hashtags #libya or #egypt were generated during 2011, both by directly affected citizens of these countries, and by onlookers from further afield. What remains unclear, though, is the extent to which there was any direct interaction between these two groups (especially considering potential language barriers between them). Building on hashtag datasets gathered between January and November 2011, this paper compares patterns of Twitter usage during the popular revolution in Egypt and the civil war in Libya. Using custom-made tools for processing ‘big data’, we examine the volume of tweets sent by English-, Arabic-, and mixed-language Twitter users over time, and examine the networks of interaction (variously through @replying, retweeting, or both) between these groups as they developed and shifted over the course of these uprisings. Examining @reply and retweet traffic, we identify general patterns of information flow between the English- and Arabic-speaking sides of the Twittersphere, and highlight the roles played by users bridging both language spheres.

Everyone’s watching it : the role of hype in television engagement through social media

Social media is playing an ever-increasing role in both viewers engagement with television and in the television industries evaluation of programming, in Australia – which is the focus of our study - and beyond. Twitter hashtags and viewer comments are increasingly incorporated into broadcasts, while Facebook fan pages provide a means of marketing upcoming shows and television personalities directly into the social media feed of millions of users. Additionally, bespoke applications such as FanGo and ZeeBox, which interact with the mainstream social networks, are increasingly being utilized by broadcasters for interactive elements of programming (c.f. Harrington, Highfield and Bruns, 2012). However, both the academic and industry study of these platforms has focused on the measure of content during the specific broadcast of the show, or a period surrounding it (e.g. 3 hours before until 3 am the next day, in the case of 2013 Nielsen SocialGuide reports). In this paper, we argue that this focus ignores a significant period for both television producers and advertisers; the lead-up to the program. If, as we argue elsewhere (Bruns, Woodford, Highfield & Prowd, forthcoming), users are persuaded to engage with content both by advertising of the Twitter hash-tag or Facebook page and by observing their network connections engaging with such content, the period before and between shows may have a significant impact on a viewers likelihood to watch a show. The significance of this period for broadcasters is clearly highlighted by the efforts they afford to advertising forthcoming shows through several channels, including television and social media, but also more widely. Biltereyst (2004, p.123) has argued that reality television generates controversy to receive media attention, and our previous small-scale work on reality shows during 2013 and 2014 supports the theory that promoting controversial behavior is likely to lead to increased viewing (Woodford & Prowd, 2014a). It remains unclear, however, to what extent this applies to other television genres. Similarly, while networks use of social media has been increasing, best practices remain unclear. Thus, by applying our telemetrics, that is social media metrics for television based on sabermetric approaches (Woodford, Prowd & Bruns, forthcoming; c.f. Woodford & Prowd, 2014b), to the period between shows, we are able to better understand the period when key viewing decisions may be made, to establish the significance of observing discussions within your network during the period between shows, and identify best practice examples of promoting a show using social media.

Social media and physicians : exploring the benefits and challenges

Healthcare professionals’ use of social media platforms, such as blogs, wikis, and social networking web sites has grown considerably in recent years. However, few studies have explored the perspectives and experiences of physicians in adopting social media in healthcare. This article aims to identify the potential benefits and challenges of adopting social media by physicians and demonstrates this by presenting findings from a survey conducted with physicians. A qualitative survey design was employed to achieve the research goal. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 physicians from around the world who were active users of social media. The data were analyzed using the thematic analysis approach. The study revealed six main reasons and six major challenges for physicians adopting social media. The main reasons to join social media were as follows: staying connected with colleagues, reaching out and networking with the wider community, sharing knowledge, engaging in continued medical education, benchmarking, and branding. The main challenges of adopting social media by physicians were also as follows: maintaining confidentiality, lack of active participation, finding time, lack of trust, workplace acceptance and support, and information anarchy. By revealing the main benefits as well as the challenges of adopting social media by physicians, the study provides an opportunity for healthcare professionals to better understand the scope and impact of social media in healthcare, and assists them to adopt and harness social media effectively, and maximize the benefits for the specific needs of the clinical community.

Travel Journalism : Exploring Production, Impact and Culture

Travel journalism has experienced enormous growth over recent decades, with a record number of media organizations now involved in producing information for tourists in one way or another. Correspondingly, journalism and media scholars have begun to pay more attention to this phenomenon. This book gives a comprehensive overview of the burgeoning field of travel journalism studies. The contributors explore travel journalism in newspapers and magazines, on television and online, across a wide range of national and cultural contexts. Individual chapters provide critical discussions of theoretical approaches, present studies of production, content and impact, and explain how travel journalism can be understood through the lenses of postcolonialism, sustainability and cosmopolitanism. This fascinating account offers a thoroughly international and interdisciplinary perspective on an increasingly important field of journalism scholarship.

Old mastheads and new media : newspapers striving to adapt in Australia and South-east Asia

As a key element in their response to new media forcing transformations in mass media and media use, newspapers have deployed various strategies to not only establish online and mobile products, and develop healthy business plans, but to set out to be dominant portals. Their response to change was the subject of an early investigation by one of the present authors (Keshvani 2000). That was part of a set of short studies inquiring into what impact new software applications and digital convergence might have on journalism practice (Tickle and Keshvani 2000), and also looking for demonstrations of the way that innovations, technologies and protocols then under development might produce a “wireless, streamlined electronic news production process (Tickle and Keshvani 2001).” The newspaper study compared the online products of The Age in Melbourne and the Straits Times in Singapore. It provided an audit of the Singapore and Australia Information and Communications Technology (ICT) climate concentrating on the state of development of carrier networks, as a determining factor in the potential strength of the two services with their respective markets. In the outcome, contrary to initial expectations, the early cable roll-out and extensive ‘wiring’ of the city in Singapore had not produced a level of uptake of Internet services as strong as that achieved in Melbourne by more ad hoc and varied strategies. By interpretation, while news websites and online content were at an early stage of development everywhere, and much the same as one another, no determining structural imbalance existed to separate these leading media participants in Australia and South-east Asia. The present research revisits that situation, by again studying the online editions of the two large newspapers in the original study, and one other, The Courier Mail, (recognising the diversification of types of product in this field, by including it as a representative of Newscorp, now a major participant). The inquiry works through the principle of comparison. It is an exercise in qualitative, empirical research that establishes a comparison between the situation in 2000 as described in the earlier work, and the situation in 2014, after a decade of intense development in digital technology affecting the media industries. It is in that sense a follow-up study on the earlier work, although this time giving emphasis to content and style of the actual products as experienced by their users. It compares the online and print editions of each of these three newspapers; then the three mastheads as print and online entities, among themselves; and finally it compares one against the other two, as representing a South-east Asian model and Australian models. This exercise is accompanied by a review of literature on the developments in ICT affecting media production and media organisations, to establish the changed context. The new study of the online editions is conducted as a systematic appraisal of the first level, or principal screens, of the three publications, over the course of six days (10-15.2.14 inclusive). For this, categories for analysis were made, through conducting a preliminary examination of the products over three days in the week before. That process identified significant elements of media production, such as: variegated sourcing of materials; randomness in the presentation of items; differential production values among media platforms considered, whether text, video or stills images; the occasional repurposing and repackaging of top news stories of the day and the presence of standard news values – once again drawn out of the trial ‘bundle’ of journalistic items. Reduced in this way the online artefacts become comparable with the companion print editions from the same days. The categories devised and then used in the appraisal of the online products have been adapted to print, to give the closest match of sets of variables. This device, to study the two sets of publications on like standards -- essentially production values and news values—has enabled the comparisons to be made. This comparing of the online and print editions of each of the three publications was set up as up the first step in the investigation. In recognition of the nature of the artefacts, as ones that carry very diverse information by subject and level of depth, and involve heavy creative investment in the formulation and presentation of the information; the assessment also includes an open section for interpreting and commenting on main points of comparison. This takes the form of a field for text, for the insertion of notes, in the table employed for summarising the features of each product, for each day. When the sets of comparisons as outlined above are noted, the process then becomes interpretative, guided by the notion of change. In the context of changing media technology and publication processes, what substantive alterations have taken place, in the overall effort of news organisations in the print and online fields since 2001; and in their print and online products separately? Have they diverged or continued along similar lines? The remaining task is to begin to make inferences from that. Will the examination of findings enforce the proposition that a review of the earlier study, and a forensic review of new models, does provide evidence of the character and content of change --especially change in journalistic products and practice? Will it permit an authoritative description on of the essentials of such change in products and practice? Will it permit generalisation, and provide a reliable base for discussion of the implications of change, and future prospects? Preliminary observations suggest a more dynamic and diversified product has been developed in Singapore, well themed, obviously sustained by public commitment and habituation to diversified online and mobile media services. The Australian products suggest a concentrated corporate and journalistic effort and deployment of resources, with a strong market focus, but less settled and ordered, and showing signs of limitations imposed by the delay in establishing a uniform, large broadband network. The scope of the study is limited. It is intended to test, and take advantage of the original study as evidentiary material from the early days of newspaper companies’ experimentation with online formats. Both are small studies. The key opportunity for discovery lies in the ‘time capsule’ factor; the availability of well-gathered and processed information on major newspaper company production, at the threshold of a transformational decade of change in their industry. The comparison stands to identify key changes. It should also be useful as a reference for further inquiries of the same kind that might be made, and for monitoring of the situation in regard to newspaper portals on line, into the future.

Growth medium selection and its economic impact on plasmid DNA production

Current developments in gene medicine and vaccination studies are utilizing plasmid DNA (pDNA) as the vector. For this reason, there has been an increasing trend towards larger and larger doses of pDNA utilized in human trials: from 100-1000 μg in 2002 to 500-5000 μg in 2005. The increasing demand of pDNA has created the need to revolutionalize current production levels under optimum economy. In this work, different standard media (LB, TB and SOC) for culturing recombinant Escherichia coli DH5α harbouring pUC19 were compared to a medium optimised for pDNA production. Lab scale fermentations using the standard media showed that the highest pDNA volumetric and specific yields were for TB (11.4 μg/ml and 6.3 μg/mg dry cell mass respectively) and the lowest was for LB (2.8 μg/ml and 3.3 μg/mg dry cell mass respectively). A fourth medium, PDMR, designed by modifying a stoichiometrically-formulated medium with an optimised carbon source concentration and carbon to nitrogen ratio displayed pDNA volumetric and specific yields of 23.8 μg/ml and 11.2 μg/mg dry cell mass respectively. However, it is the economic advantages of the optimised medium that makes it so attractive. Keeping all variables constant except medium and using LB as a base scenario (100 medium cost [MC] units/mg pDNA), the optimised PDMR medium yielded pDNA at a cost of only 27 MC units/mg pDNA. These results show that greater amounts of pDNA can be obtained more economically with minimal extra effort simply by using a medium optimised for pDNA production.