National Indigenous Palliative Care Needs Study

This study involved extensive consultation with the community to identify the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in palliative care

Automated Negotiation for Provisioning Virtual Private Networks Using FIPA-Compliant Agents

This paper describes the design and implementation of negotiating agents for the task of provisioning virtual private networks. The agents and their interactions comply with the FIPA specification and they are implemented using the FIPA-OS agent framework. Particular attention is focused on the design and implementation of the negotiation algorithms

A practical approach to network-based processing

The usage of general-purpose processors externally attached to routers to play virtually the role of active coprocessors seems a safe and cost-effective approach to add active network capabilities to existing routers. This paper reviews this router-assistant way of making active nodes, addresses the benefits and limitations of this technique, and describes a new platform based on it using an enhanced commercial router. The features new to this type of architecture are transparency, IPv4 and IPv6 support, and full control over layer 3 and above. A practical experience with two applications for path characterization and a transport gateway managing multi-QoS is described.Most of this work has been funded by the IST project GCAP (Global Communication Architecture and Protocols for new QoS services over IPv6 networks) IST-1999-10 504. Further development and application to practical scenarios is being supported by IST project Opium (Open Platform for Integration of UMTS Middleware) IST-2001-36063 and the Spanish MCYT under projects TEL99-0988-C02-01 and AURAS TIC2001-1650-C02-01.Publicad

Strategic approaches to enhanced health service delivery for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with chronic illness: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with chronic illness confront multiple challenges that contribute to their poor health outcomes, and to the health disparities that exist in Australian society. This study aimed to identify barriers and facilitators to care and support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with chronic illness. METHODS Face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with diabetes, chronic heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (n-16) and family carers (n = 3). Interviews were transcribed verbatim and the transcripts were analysed using content analysis. Recurrent themes were identified and these were used to inform the key findings of the study. RESULTS Participants reported both negative and positive influences that affected their health and well-being. Among the negative influences, they identified poor access to culturally appropriate health services, dislocation from cultural support systems, exposure to racism, poor communication with health care professionals and economic hardship. As a counter to these, participants pointed to cultural and traditional knowledge as well as insights from their own experiences. Participants said that while they often felt overwhelmed and confused by the burden of chronic illness, they drew strength from being part of an Aboriginal community, having regular and ongoing access to primary health care, and being well-connected to a supportive family network. Within this context, elders played an important role in increasing people's awareness of the impact of chronic illness on people and communities. CONCLUSIONS Our study indicated that non-Indigenous health services struggled to meet the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with chronic illness. To address their complex needs, health services could gain considerably by recognising that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients have a wealth of cultural knowledge at their disposal. Strategies to ensure that this knowledge is integrated into care and support programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with chronic illness should achieve major improvements.This study was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council which provided funding for the project

Building distributed heterogeneous smart phone Java applications an evaluation from a development perspective

The advances in mobile phone technology have enabled such devices to be programmed to run general-purpose applications using a special edition of the Java programming language. Java is designed to be a heterogeneous programming language targeting different platforms. Such ability when coupled with the provision of high-speed mobile Internet access would open the door for a new breed of distributed mobile applications. This paper explores the capabilities and limitations of this technology and addresses the considerations that must be taken when designing and developing such distributed applications. Our findings are verified by building a test client-server system where the clients in this system are mobile phones behaving as active processing elements not just mere service requesters

Mathematics and the Internet: A Source of Enormous Confusion and Great Potential

Graph theory models the Internet mathematically, and a number of plausible mathematically intersecting network models for the Internet have been developed and studied. Simultaneously, Internet researchers have developed methodology to use real data to validate, or invalidate, proposed Internet models. The authors look at these parallel developments, particularly as they apply to scale-free network models of the preferential attachment type