Are schools able to bring sense into pupils' lives? - an experiment to use Antonovsky's concept sense of coherence from a school perspective. : Paper presented at the ENIRDEM conference in Kilkenny, Ireland 26th-29th September, 2002

Young people now spend a longer and longer period of their lives at school then ever before. Not always because that they want to, but because society has nothing else to offer. The situation in many schools may also, in different aspects, be seen as highly problematic. Andersson (2001) has, for example, found in a large longitudinal study - The Life Project – that schools seem to be adapted to the needs of only a minority of the students - around 30%. On the other hand school is badly adjusted to the requirements of another 30 %. This group of students often find school meaningless, uninteresting and boring. For these students school is mostly a waste of time. In such circumstances, it seems natural that society has a responsibility to offer young people a meaningful time at school, both here and now and to prepare them for a future live as adults, not only as a part of the work force.As a part of departure I briefly describe the model that Antonovsky has developed and try to use it in a school context instead. I have here, of course, no possibility to make a deeper analysis of a complex problem such as this.In Antonovsky’s spirit, using a salutogenic perspective, instead of asking ourselves why do pupils fail or perhaps also not like being at school we have to ask, instead: What it is that makes pupils successful? From this background the purpose of this paper is to discuss some aspects of how pupils may use different strategies to handle their school situation in a proper way.

A framework for electronic commerce research in small to medium-sized enterprises

It is believed that the recent emergence of electronic commerce (e-commerce) in the early '90s could provide different opportunities to small to medium-sized enterprises (SME's) in overcoming part of their technological, environmental, organizational, and managerial inadequacies. However, recent research portrays a gloomy picture about e-commerce uptake and use in SME's. Therefore, the implication here is twofold. Initially, there is a need to generate more e-commerce research that could penetrate much deeper into main impending issues pertaining to the SME’s in their potential uptake and use of e-commerce. On the other hand, e-commerce is characterized of being embryonic but growing very fast and fragmented across the different disciplines, which makes the task of capturing its different perspectives a very complex one. The preceding two implications represent the greatest challenge for researchers and professionals interested in undertaking e-commerce research in SME’s. In line with the above implications, the first objective of this research aims at capturing the different e-commerce perspectives from the SMEs' point of view, and the second objective aims at capturing the e-commerce perspective from the theoretical and the methodological point of view. Addressing the preceding implications in this research could shed some light into some of the gray areas in the e-commerce research in SMEs.

Balancing the risk of injury to gymnasts : how effective are the counter measures?

Background—To minimise injury risk and maximise gymnastics performance, coaches, parents, and health professionals working with young gymnasts need to understand and practise safe gymnastics.

Aims—To (a) identify the various injury counter measures specific to gymnastics, (b) critically review the literature describing each injury prevention measure, and (c) assess, using available risk factor and injury data, the weight of evidence to support each of these counter measures. Specific recommendations for further research and implementation strategies to prevent injury and improve safety are also given.

Methods—The relevant literature was identified through the use of Medline (1966 to May 1998) and SPORT Discus (1975 to May 1998) searches, hand searching of journals and reference lists, and discussions with key Australian gymnastics organisations.

Results—The key gymnastics injury counter measures identified in this review include coaching (physical preparation, education, spotting, and performance technique), equipment, and the health support system (medical screening, treatment, and rehabilitation). Categorisation of the type of evidence for the effectiveness of each of these counter measures in preventing injury showed that most of it is based on informal opinion/anecdotal evidence, uncontrolled data based studies, and several prospective epidemiological studies. There is no evidence from formally controlled trials or specific evaluation studies of counter measures for gymnastics.

Conclusions—Although gymnastics is a sport associated with young participants and frequent high volume, high impact training, there is a paucity of information on injury risk factors and the effectiveness of injury practices. Further controlled trials are needed to examine the extent to which injury prevention counter measures can prevent or reduce the occurrence of injury and re-injury. Particular attention should be devoted to improving training facilities, the design and testing of apparatus and personal equipment used by gymnasts, and coaching and the role of spotting in preventing injury.

Judicial responses to the protected confidential communications legislation in Australia

The article examines the background, aims and scope of recent legislation enacted in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia to protect from disclosure in court of "confidential communications" generated in the context of counselling persons who allege that they were victims of sexual offences. In drafting the "confidential communications" legislation, the legislators undertook a difficult task of balancing the public interest in therapeutic confidentiality that would encourage victims of sexual assaults to report these offences and seek psychological and psychiatric care on the one hand, and the public interest in fairness of the trial, which may be prejudiced by exclusion of evidence pertinent to the forensic process on the other. In South Australia this task was fulfilled with greater success than in New South Wales and Victoria.

Evidence-based strategies to promote physical activity among children, adolescents and young adults: review and update

This paper updates evidence reviewed in the first edition of Getting Australia Active on effective physical activity (PA) intervention strategies among children, adolescents and young adults. Intervention studies published between 1999 and September 2003 were identified using electronic databases and hand searching. A total of 28 discrete studies were identified (31 papers). Six of nine studies reported significant effects on child or youth PA in school settings. Those that incorporated whole-of-school approaches including curriculum, policy and environmental strategies appeared to be more effective than those that incorporated curriculum-only approaches. Five of 10 studies with children and two of five studies with adolescents reported increased PA or decreased sedentary behaviour in other settings. Interventions that included contact with families generally appeared to be most effective. One study with adolescents provided some evidence of the potential effectiveness of interventions based in primary care. Two of four papers reported modest short-term results among young adults, including increased PA stage of change or a higher likelihood of being adequately physically active, but none showed any evidence of sustained increases in PA. There is an urgent need for additional studies examining interventions aimed at young adults. Across the three life stages, future studies should include objective PA measures, longer-term follow-up, larger sample sizes, a specific focus on PA (rather than weight) and culturally-specific strategies that build evidence in Australian populations. Future studies should target high risk groups and a broad range of settings and strategies focusing on reducing sedentary behaviours as well as increasing PA.

Performance of murray cod, Maccullochella peelii peelii (Mitchell) in response to different feeding schedules

The Australian freshwater fish Murray cod, Maccullochella peelii peelii (Mitchell) is gaining popularity as a suitable species for intensive culture, particularly in closed systems. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of Murray cod in response to different feeding schedules. Growth, survival, food conversion and a range of other related parameters including carcass proximate composition were evaluated for fish in five feed management regimes. The feeding regimes used in the experiment were hand fed to satiation twice daily (SAT), a pre-determined ration of 1.2% of the body weight day−1 which was hand fed twice daily (HFR), and belt fed through the day only (B/D), belt fed through the night only (B/N) and belt fed for 24 h (B/DN). Each of the five feeding regimes was randomly allocated to three tanks (triplicates). All of the feeding regimes used a commercially prepared diet formulated specifically for Murray cod, containing ≈50% protein and ≈16% lipid. The experiment was conducted for 84 days. Specific growth rate ranged from 0.89±0.01 to 1.07±0.04% day−1. Food conversion ratio (FCR) ranged from 1.09±0.02 to 0.92±0.03. The fastest growth and greatest final body weight were observed in the SAT treatment; however, the highest FCR, visceral fat index (VFI %) and hepatosomatic index (HSI %) were also observed in this treatment. Significant differences were found in specific growth rate and final mean weight between fish in the B/D and SAT treatments. B/N and B/DN feeding regimes appeared to result in the most favourable fish performance.

Towards a Protocol for the Attachment of Semantic Descriptions to Grid Services

Service discovery in large scale, open distributed systems is difficult because of the need to filter out services suitable to the task at hand from a potentially huge pool of possibilities. Semantic descriptions have been advocated as the key to expressive service discovery, but the most commonly used service descriptions and registry protocols do not support such descriptions in a general manner. In this paper, we present a protocol, its implementation and an API for registering semantic service descriptions and other task/user-specific metadata, and for discovering services according to these. Our approach is based on a mechanism for attaching structured and unstructured metadata, which we show to be applicable to multiple registry technologies. The result is an extremely flexible service registry that can be the basis of a sophisticated semantically-enhanced service discovery engine, an essential component of a Semantic Grid.

Towards a Protocol for the Attachment of Metadata to Service Descriptions and its Use in Semantic Discovery

Service discovery in large scale, open distributed systems is difficult because of the need to filter out services suitable to the task at hand from a potentially huge pool of possibilities. Semantic descriptions have been advocated as the key to expressive service discovery, but the most commonly used service descriptions and registry protocols do not support such descriptions in a general manner. In this paper, we present a protocol, its implementation and an API for registering semantic service descriptions and other task/user-specific metadata, and for discovering services according to these. Our approach is based on a mechanism for attaching structured and unstructured metadata, which we show to be applicable to multiple registry technologies. The result is an extremely flexible service registry that can be the basis of a sophisticated semantically-enhanced service discovery engine, an essential component of a Semantic Grid.

Cross cultural engagement: teaching African music to Australian students

This paper reports on research that examined the effectiveness of introducing rhythmic concepts through an unfamiliar musical genre to Australian generalist prim my teacher education students. The genre selected was African music, in particular action songs, dance and instrumental improvisation. The methodologies of Orff, Kodaly and Dalcroze were taught through the repertoire of African music in order to foster a closer relationship between pedagogical theory and practice and to teach rhythm through cross-cultural engagement. Through analyses of questionnaire and interview data, it was demonstrated that African music had a positive effect on students' conjidence as non-specialists music teachers and enhanced their skills in staff, sol-fa, hand notation and performance. Also students were not only highly motivated to engage with this new musical genre, but also gained an increased understanding of African culture. It is argued that African music was perceived by students not so much as a "novelty", but as a source of genuine motivation, interest and enjoyment. Its potential for extending student understanding of rhythm as well as taking a significant step towards internationalizing the curriculum for a cohort of predominantly Anglo-Celtic, pre-service teachers is also explored.

Is a contained fire less risky than a going fire? Career and volunteer firefighters

Since fighting fires can pose a great risk to the lives of firefighters, it is important to understand how they perceive risks in dynamic wildfire situations. The aim of the current study was to determine whether career and volunteer firefighters differ in their perception of the risk of a going vs. contained fire and whether descriptions of a fire as either going or contained affected perceptions of risk. It was expected that career firefighters would rate a contained fire as significantly riskier than would volunteer firefighters. The sample consisted of 55 career and 84 volunteer CFA Victorian firefighters (134 males and 5 females). An ambiguous wildfire scenario was presented and described as either going or contained and risk ratings were recorded. Two-way ANOVA results showed that career firefighters rated a going fire as equally risky as a contained fire. On the other hand, volunteer firefighters perceived a fire described as contained to be significantly less risky than a fire described as going, despite the fact that the same fireground conditions were described in both cases. It was concluded that a framing effect had occurred and that career firefighters demonstrated a higher level of situation awareness than volunteer firefighters due to their heightened levels of risk perception when exposed to contained wildfire scenarios. A practical implication of the current research is that those conducting firefighting briefings need to be aware of possible framing effects in the way information is presented to firefighters and need to ensure that all briefings make risks cognitively salient to firefighters.

Use of calcium or calcuim in combination with vitamin D supplementation to prevent fractures and bone loss in people aged 50 years and older: a meta-analysis

Background:  Whether calcium supplementation can reduce osteoporotic fractures is uncertain. We did a meta-analysis to include all the randomised trials in which calcium, or calcium in combination with vitamin D, was used to prevent fracture and osteoporotic bone loss.

Methods:  We identified 29 randomised trials (n=63 897) using electronic databases, supplemented by a hand-search of reference lists, review articles, and conference abstracts. All randomised trials that recruited people aged 50 years or older were eligible. The main outcomes were fractures of all types and percentage change of bone-mineral density from baseline. Data were pooled by use of a random-effect model.

Findings:  In trials that reported fracture as an outcome (17 trials, n=52 625), treatment was associated with a 12% risk reduction in fractures of all types (risk ratio 0·88, 95% CI 0·83–0·95; p=0·0004). In trials that reported bone-mineral density as an outcome (23 trials, n=41 419), the treatment was associated with a reduced rate of bone loss of 0·54% (0·35–0·73; p<0·0001) at the hip and 1·19% (0·76–1·61%; p<0·0001) in the spine. The fracture risk reduction was significantly greater (24%) in trials in which the compliance rate was high (p<0·0001). The treatment effect was better with calcium doses of 1200 mg or more than with doses less than 1200 mg (0·80 vs 0·94; p=0·006), and with vitamin D doses of 800 IU or more than with doses less than 800 IU (0·84 vs 0·87; p=0·03).

Interpretation:  Evidence supports the use of calcium, or calcium in combination with vitamin D supplementation, in the preventive treatment of osteoporosis in people aged 50 years or older. For best therapeutic effect, we recommend minimum doses of 1200 mg of calcium, and 800 IU of vitamin D (for combined calcium plus vitamin D supplementation).

Overseas Chinese as expatriate managers in China: is their recruitment a solution to cross-cultural management problems for multinationals operating in China?

This paper examines the issue of diversity in Chinese identity and how it impacts on the operations of multinationals in China who recruit Overseas Chinese to handle cross-cultural issues. China’s rapid economic development and entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 made her a formidable player in the global economy and direct foreign investment surged. Yet it is acknowledged that for the foreign investor in China, cross-cultural issues create difficulty at every level, from the interpersonal level relating to communication and negotiation, to the organizational level relating to decision making, human resource management practices, corporate legal institutions and liaison with government institutions. Western multinationals have considered the advantages of posting Overseas Chinese from Southeast Asian countries, Taiwan and Hong Kong to their China operations as a solution to cross-cultural management issues. But has this policy been successful? In terms of language expertise this would seem to be a good strategy, yet organizational case material contradicts this in reality. Overseas Chinese, while sharing some elements of Chinese culture with mainland Chinese, the Confucian heritage and other aspects such as language and diet, nevertheless have different world views and values and behave differently from mainland Chinese in areas critical to business management. As a survival strategy, Overseas Chinese have often developed dual identities which operate simultaneously. For political and historical reasons, many of them have had to adapt to the local culture of their country of citizenship or even hide their own ethnicity in order to survive. On the other hand, the mainland Chinese are different in that their behaviour has only had to be Chinese, but overlaid with this has been the experience of participating in a communist political environment for decades, which has left its mark on mainland Chinese culture. On the basis of their different historical experiences, in the current business environment in China, cultural confusion, difficulty and conflict may occur for the Overseas Chinese.

This paper focuses attention on the subtle cultural differences between the Overseas Chinese and mainland Chinese in an organizational context. This problem has yet to be researched in depth within international business and international management studies. It provides evidence that Overseas Chinese are not often favoured by the local Chinese. It gives insights on how to manage the local Chinese for foreign multinationals operating in China.

Estimating mean exposures from censored data: exposure to benzene in the Australian petroleum industry

A retrospective assessment of exposure to benzene was carried out for a nested case control study of lympho-haematopoietic cancers, including leukaemia, in the Australian petroleum industry. Each job or task in the industry was assigned a Base Estimate (BE) of exposure derived from task-based personal exposure assessments carried out by the company occupational hygienists. The BEs corresponded to the estimated arithmetic mean exposure to benzene for each job or task and were used in a deterministic algorithm to estimate the exposure of subjects in the study. Nearly all of the data sets underlying the BEs were found to contain some values below the limit of detection (LOD) of the sampling and analytical methods and some were very heavily censored; up to 95% of the data were below the LOD in some data sets. It was necessary, therefore, to use a method of calculating the arithmetic mean exposures that took into account the censored data. Three different methods were employed in an attempt to select the most appropriate method for the particular data in the study. A common method is to replace the missing (censored) values with half the detection limit. This method has been recommended for data sets where much of the data are below the limit of detection or where the data are highly skewed; with a geometric standard deviation of 3 or more. Another method, involving replacing the censored data with the limit of detection divided by the square root of 2, has been recommended when relatively few data are below the detection limit or where data are not highly skewed. A third method that was examined is Cohen's method. This involves mathematical extrapolation of the left-hand tail of the distribution, based on the distribution of the uncensored data, and calculation of the maximum likelihood estimate of the arithmetic mean. When these three methods were applied to the data in this study it was found that the first two simple methods give similar results in most cases. Cohen's method on the other hand, gave results that were generally, but not always, higher than simpler methods and in some cases gave extremely high and even implausible estimates of the mean. It appears that if the data deviate substantially from a simple log-normal distribution, particularly if high outliers are present, then Cohen's method produces erratic and unreliable estimates. After examining these results, and both the distributions and proportions of censored data, it was decided that the half limit of detection method was most suitable in this particular study.

Ice and pulsed electromagnetic field to reduce pain and swelling after distal radius fractures

Objective: To examine the relative effectiveness of ice therapy and/or pulsed electromagnetic field in reducing pain and swelling after the immobilization period following a distal radius fracture.Methods: A total of 83 subjects were randomly allocated to receive 30 minutes of either ice plus pulsed electromagnetic field (group A); ice plus sham pulsed electromagnetic field (group B); pulsed electromagnetic field alone (group C), or sham pulsed electromagnetic field treatment for 5 consecutive days (group D). All subjects received a standard home exercise programme. A visual analogue scale was used for recording pain; volumetric displacement for measuring the swelling of the forearm; and a hand-held goniometer for measuring the range of wrist motions before treatment on days 1, 3 and 5.Results: At day 5, a significantly greater cumulative reduction in the visual analogue scores as well as ulnar deviation range of motion was found in group A than the other 3 groups. For volumetric measurement and pronation, participants in group A performed better than subjects in group D but not those in group B.Conclusion: The addition of pulsed electromagnetic field to ice therapy produces better overall treatment outcomes than ice alone, or pulsed electromagnetic field alone in pain reduction and range of joint motion in ulnar deviation and flexion for a distal radius fracture after an immobilization period of 6 weeks.