Children exposure assessment to ultrafine particles and black carbon: The role of transport and cooking activities

An accurate evaluation of the airborne particle dose-response relationship requires detailed measurements of the actual particle concentration levels that people are exposed to, in every microenvironment in which they reside. The aim of this work was to perform an exposure assessment of children in relation to two different aerosol species: ultrafine particles (UFPs) and black carbon (BC). To this purpose, personal exposure measurements, in terms of UFP and BC concentrations, were performed on 103 children aged 8-11 years (10.1 ± 1.1 years) using hand-held particle counters and aethalometers. Simultaneously, a time-activity diary and a portable GPS were used to determine the children’s daily time-activity pattern and estimate their inhaled dose of UFPs and BC. The median concentration to which the study population was exposed was found to be comparable to the high levels typically detected in urban traffic microenvironments, in terms of both particle number (2.2×104 part. cm-3) and BC (3.8 μg m-3) concentrations. Daily inhaled doses were also found to be relatively high and were equal to 3.35×1011 part. day-1 and 3.92×101 μg day-1 for UFPs and BC, respectively. Cooking and using transportation were recognized as the main activities contributing to overall daily exposure, when normalized according to their corresponding time contribution for UFPs and BC, respectively. Therefore, UFPs and BC could represent tracers of children exposure to particulate pollution from indoor cooking activities and transportation microenvironments, respectively.

Addressing Public and Private Issues in a Virtual Ethnography Study of an Open Online Community: a Reflective Paper

This paper discusses the ethical consequences of employing virtual ethnography to observe human behaviour in open online communities. In this paper, we discuss the nature of the online community being studied as well as the lessons learned from both literature and also the ethical clearance application process undertaken by the research team. A key finding was that despite the community being open to the public, generally community members expected the research team to employ strategies similar to those required when dealing with a private community.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cookbooks : promoting Indigenous foodways or reinforcing Western traditions?

This article examines the recent emergence of cookbooks written for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia. The cookbooks are health promotion initiatives, developed through a desire to improve the health status of Indigenous Australians. They focus on nutritious, family meals that can be cooked on a low budget. In this article, the authors argue that the cookbooks designed for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are developed within a Western paradigm of health and nutrition that subtly reinforces Western approaches to food and disregards traditional diets. While the authors recognize the value of the cookbooks as health promotion tools, they suggest that cookbooks centred around Indigenous foodways – with a focus on traditional ingredients and traditional cooking methods – may be more appropriate for improving the health of Indigenous people and helping Indigenous cultures to thrive. They advocate for a decolonizing approach to food and nutrition, that specifically promotes Indigenous traditions and culture, and incorporates traditional foodways into modern recipes.

The microbial content of vacuum cleaner bag dust and emitted bioaerosols : implications for human exposures indoors

Vacuum cleaners can release large concentrations of particles, both in their exhaust air and from resuspension of settled dust. However, the size, variability and microbial diversity of these emissions are unknown, despite evidence to suggest they may contribute to allergic responses and infection transmission indoors. This study aimed to evaluate bioaerosol emission from various vacuum cleaners. We sampled the air in an experimental flow tunnel where vacuum cleaners were run and their airborne emissions sampled with closed-face cassettes. Dust samples were also 35 collected from the dust bag. Total bacteria, total archaea, Penicillium/Aspergillus and total Clostridium cluster 1 were quantified with specific qPCR protocols and emission rates were calculated. Clostridium botulinum, as well as antibiotic resistance genes were detected in each sample using endpoint PCR. Bacterial diversity was also analyzed using denaturing gel electrophoresis (DGGE), image analysis and band sequencing. We demonstrated that emission of bacteria and moulds (Pen/Asp) can reach values as high as 1E05/min and that those emissions are not related to each other. The bag dust bacterial and mould content was also consistently across the vacuums we assessed, reaching up to 1E07 bacteria or moulds equivalent/g. Antibiotic resistance genes were detected in several samples. No archaea or C. botulinum were detected in any air samples. Diversity analyses showed that most bacteria are from human sources, in keeping with other recent results. These results highlight the potential capability of vacuum cleaners to disseminate appreciable quantities of moulds and human-associated bacteria indoors and their role as a source of exposure to bioaerosols.

Transitions in taste in Vietnam and the diaspora

This paper argues that food and styles of eating have become the predominant markers of social change for the Vietnamese in both Vietnam and in the diaspora. In post-socialist Vietnam the transition to a market economy has allowed for a huge growth in the number of restaurants and cafes, and in the north, a return to an earlier style of cooking. The intense interest and emphasis on food as embodied pleasure has meant that it has come to stand for the transition away from a heavily state-controlled economy. The new configurations of family and friendship are being framed by newly available ways of ‘eating out’, which are both a means of social display and distinction as well as an indicator of the tensions between reform and festivity within an authoritarian nation-state struggling to define itself in a globalising world. At the same time as food in Vietnam is undergoing rapid transformation so too has the Vietnamese diaspora enerationally changed its eating patterns. Although there as been a focus in the literature on food in the diaspora that emphasises the nostalgic and recuperative elements of ‘migrant food’, I argue that food is the prime mechanism of intercultural engagement for each diasporic generation. For older Vietnamese, Vietnamese restaurants and barbecues have been the sites of interplay between cultural tradition’ and innovation, and between Australianness and Vietnameseness, and these interstitial places continue to be important for younger Vietnamese. Within this established framework of cross-cultural interaction, for Vietnamese youth, the social settings of ‘ethnic food’, eaten at home and shared with family, have been grafted onto a sociality of eating fast food. This melding together of both invention and convention, of transgression and ordinariness provides the background against which young people from migrant backgrounds are reinvigorating the social spaces of food consumption and in the process both e-enchanting and destabilising the notion of migrant food.

A sensitive assay for creatine kinase in serum samples dried on paper : enhanced thermal stability of the dried enzyme

A new bioluminescent creatine kinase (CK) assay using purified luciferase was used to analyse CK activity in serum samples dried on filter paper. Enzyme activity was preserved for over 1 wk on paper stored at room temperature. At 60°C, CK activity in liquid serum samples was rapidly inactivated, but the activity of enzyme stored on paper was preserved for at least 2 days.

Copyright and the digital economy : submission to ALRC Discussion Paper 79

Australia should take the opportunity to clearly permit transformative uses of existing material, without requiring consideration of all four fairness factors. The key test should be the effect on the core licensing market of existing copyright expression. To accomplish this, a new transformative use exception should be introduced into Australian law. Alternatively, it should be presumptively fair to make a transformative use of existing material, regardless of commercial purpose, the character of the plaintiff's work, and amount and substantiality of the portion used, if the transformative work does not displace the market for the existing material.

Paper, prices and politics : an evaluation of the Swedish support to the Bai Bang project in Vietnam : a Sida evaluation report

Sweden’s protest against the Vietnam War was given tangible form in 1969 through the decision to give economic aid to the Government of North Vietnam. The main outcome was an integrated pulp and paper mill in the Vinh Phu Province north-west of Hanoi. Known as Bai Bang after its location, the mill became the most costly, one of the longest lasting and the most controversial project in the history of Swedish development cooperation. In 1996 Bai Bang produced at its full capacity. Today the mill is exclusively managed and staffed by the Vietnamese and there are plans for future expansion. At the same time a substantial amount of money has been spent to reach these achievements. Looking back at the cumbersome history of the project the results are against many’s expectations. To learn more about the conditions for sustainable development Sida commissioned two studies of the Bai Bang project. Together they touch upon several important issues in development cooperation over a period of almost 30 years: the change of aid paradigms over time, the role of foreign policy in development cooperation, cultural obstacles, recipient responsibility versus donor led development etc. The two studies were commissioned by Sida’s Department for Evaluation and Internal Audit which is an independent department reporting directly to Sida’s Board of Directors. One study assesses the financial and economic viability of the pulp and paper mill and the broader development impact of the project in Vietnam. It has been carried out by the Centre for International Economics, an Australian private economic research agency. The other study analyses the decision-making processes that created and shaped the project over a period of two decades, and reflects on lessons from the project for development cooperation in general. This study has been carried out by the Chr. Michelsen Institute, a Norweigan independent research institution.

Use of serum and blood samples on filter paper to improve the surveillance of dengue in Pacific Island Countries

Background In Pacific Island Countries (PICs) the epidemiology of dengue is characterized by long-term transmission of a single dengue virus (DENV) serotype. The emergence of a new serotype in one island country often indicates major outbreaks with this serotype will follow in other PICs. Objectives Filter paper (FP) cards on which whole blood or serum from dengue suspected patients had been dried was evaluated as a method for transportation of this material by standard mail delivery throughout the Pacific. Study design Twenty-two FP-dried whole blood samples collected from patients in New Caledonia and Wallis & Futuna Islands, during DENV-1 and DENV-4 transmission, and 76 FP-dried sera collected from patients in Yap State, Majuro (Republic of Marshall Islands), Tonga and Fiji, before and during outbreaks of DENV-2 in Yap State and DENV-4 in Majuro, were tested for the presence of DENV RNA, by serotype specific RT-PCR, at the Institut Louis Malardé in French Polynesia. Results The serotype of DENV could be determined, by a variety of RT-PCR procedures, in the FP-dried samples after more than three weeks of transport at ambient temperatures. In most cases, the sequencing of the envelope gene to genotype the viruses also was possible. Conclusions The serotype and genotype of DENV can be determined from FP-dried serum or whole blood samples transported over thousands of kilometers at ambient, tropical, temperatures. This simple and low-cost approach to virus identification should be evaluated in isolated and resource poor settings for surveillance for a range of significant viral diseases.

‘We’ve always cooked kangaroo. We still cook kangaroo. Although sometimes we use cookbooks now’ : Aboriginal Australians and cookbooks

Aboriginal Australians have a long history of eating native animals and plants. Food preparation techniques were handed down through the generations, without any need for cookbooks. But colonisation changed the diets of Aboriginal Australians, introducing us to a processed diet high in salt, sugar and fat, and causing a wide range of diet-related health problems. Over the years, many Aboriginal Australians lost their connections to traditional food preparation practices. In this paper, the authors provide a brief overview of Aboriginal food history and describe a newly-emerging focus on reintroducing native foods. They describe the work of an Aboriginal chef, Dale Chapman, who is actively promoting native foods and creating a native-Western food fusion. Chapman has developed native food recipes and a cookbook, in an effort to make native foods accessible to all Australians. She promotes a future when native foods are part of the identity of all Australians – both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal.

Fiction as a form of change : a paper overview of a literature panel discussion

It is well established that literary work can promote insights that result in future change, whether on a personal or an institutional level. As Umberto Eco (1989) notes, the act of reading does not stop with the artist but continues into the work of communities. The papers delivered in this panel consider the regenerative role of literature within culture, arguing that the special properties of literature can convey an important sense of nature (Bateson 1973, Zapf 2008). These concepts are discussed in relation to writing about Australian flora and fauna. Using an ecocritical focus based on ideas about the relationship between literature and the environment the paper considers Australian works and the way in which literature enlivens this complex intersection between humans, animals and the environment. This engagement is investigated through three modes: the philosophical, the literary, and the practical. The novels discussed include Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria, Richard Flanagan’s Wanting, and Sonya Hartnett’s Forest, as well as a range of fictional and non-fictional works that describe the Blue Mountains region in New South Wales. The paper closes with a discussion of the role of story-telling as a way of introducing the public to specific environmental locations and issues.

Semi-binary based video features for activity representation

Efficient and effective feature detection and representation is an important consideration when processing videos, and a large number of applications such as motion analysis, 3D scene understanding, tracking etc. depend on this. Amongst several feature description methods, local features are becoming increasingly popular for representing videos because of their simplicity and efficiency. While they achieve state-of-the-art performance with low computational complexity, their performance is still too limited for real world applications. Furthermore, rapid increases in the uptake of mobile devices has increased the demand for algorithms that can run with reduced memory and computational requirements. In this paper we propose a semi binary based feature detectordescriptor based on the BRISK detector, which can detect and represent videos with significantly reduced computational requirements, while achieving comparable performance to the state of the art spatio-temporal feature descriptors. First, the BRISK feature detector is applied on a frame by frame basis to detect interest points, then the detected key points are compared against consecutive frames for significant motion. Key points with significant motion are encoded with the BRISK descriptor in the spatial domain and Motion Boundary Histogram in the temporal domain. This descriptor is not only lightweight but also has lower memory requirements because of the binary nature of the BRISK descriptor, allowing the possibility of applications using hand held devices.We evaluate the combination of detectordescriptor performance in the context of action classification with a standard, popular bag-of-features with SVM framework. Experiments are carried out on two popular datasets with varying complexity and we demonstrate comparable performance with other descriptors with reduced computational complexity.

Position paper : benchmarking the performance of global and emerging knowledge cities

Knowledge-based development has become a new urban policy approach for the competitive cities of the global knowledge economy era. For those cities seeking a knowledge-based development, benchmarking is an essential prerequisite for informed and strategic vision and policy making to achieve a prosperous development. Nevertheless, benchmarked knowledge-based development performance analysis of global and emerging knowledge cities is an understudied area. This paper aims to contribute to the field by introducing the methodology of a novel performance assessment model—that is the Knowledge-Based Urban Development Assessment Model—and providing lessons from the application of the model in an international knowledge city performance analysis study. The assessment model puts renowned global and emerging knowledge cities—that are Birmingham, Boston, Brisbane, Helsinki, Istanbul, Manchester, Melbourne, San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, and Vancouver—under the knowledge-based development microscope. The results of the analysis provide internationally benchmarked snapshot of the degree of achievements in various knowledge-based urban development performance areas of the investigated knowledge cities, and reveals insightful lessons on scrutinizing the global perspectives on knowledge-based development of cities.

Frequency dielectric influence of imaginary admittance on oil-paper insulation system-a case study

Frequency Domain Spectroscopy (FDS) is used to assess the insulation condition of oil-paper power transformers. Dissipation factor is one of the conventional indicators to analyze insulation ageing status. In this paper, the imaginary admittance of the transformers insulation, after removal of the geometric capacitance, is proposed as an alternative indicator to assist in the interpretation of ageing status. Ageing effects on the imaginary admittance are investigated both through simulation results and experimental results.

Real-time image classification for adaptive mission planning using an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

Real-time image analysis and classification onboard robotic marine vehicles, such as AUVs, is a key step in the realisation of adaptive mission planning for large-scale habitat mapping in previously unexplored environments. This paper describes a novel technique to train, process, and classify images collected onboard an AUV used in relatively shallow waters with poor visibility and non-uniform lighting. The approach utilises Förstner feature detectors and Laws texture energy masks for image characterisation, and a bag of words approach for feature recognition. To improve classification performance we propose a usefulness gain to learn the importance of each histogram component for each class. Experimental results illustrate the performance of the system in characterisation of a variety of marine habitats and its ability to operate onboard an AUV's main processor suitable for real-time mission planning.