Prevalence, determinants and impact of unawareness about the health consequences of tobacco use among 17,929 school personnel in 29 African countries.

Objectives: To assess prevalence, determinants and impact of unawareness about the health consequences of tobacco use among school personnel in Africa. Design: Cross-sectional surveys. Setting: Twenty-nine African countries. Participants: Representative samples of school personnel from 29 African countries (n=17 929), using data from the 2006-2011 Global School Personnel Surveys. Outcome: We assessed if school personnel were aware of the following five facts about tobacco use: (1) tobacco use is addictive; (2) secondhand smoke exposure is harmful; (3) smoking causes lung cancer; (4) smoking causes heart disease and (5) smoking does not cause malaria. Using multivariate logistic regression, we measured the impact of unawareness of the health consequences of tobacco use on behaviour and attitudes towards tobacco control. Results: A median of 62.6% of school personnel were unaware of at least one health consequence of tobacco use. School personnel in countries with mandatory cigarette health warning labels had lower odds of being unaware of any health consequence of tobacco use than countries where health warning labels were not mandatory (adjusted OR [aOR]=0.51; 95% CI 0.37 to 0.71). A significant dose-response relationship was seen between being ignorant of 1; 2; or ≥3 tobacco use health consequences respectively (compared with not being ignorant of any), and the odds of the following outcomes: non-support of bans on tobacco industry sponsorship of school or extracurricular activities (aOR=1.47; 1.91; and 2.98); non-support of bans on all tobacco advertisements (aOR=1.24; 1.78; and 2.68) and non-support of policies prohibiting tobacco use by school personnel on campus (aOR=1.79; 4.45; and 4.56). Conclusions: Unawareness of the health consequences of tobacco use was associated with poor support for tobacco control policies. Intensified efforts are needed in African countries to warn about the dangers of tobacco use

The genesis and tectonic significance of chromitite-bearing serpentinites in southern NSW

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Science.The Tumut Serpentinite Province consists of four major serpentinite belts and numerous small serpentinite bodies, that occupy a long narrow tract within the Lachlan Fold Belt of southern NSW. The tectonic setting of one belt, the Coolac Serpentinite Belt, has been contentious. Much of the uncertainty results from lack of a combined study on the major belts and inadequate age constraints. Resolving the uncertainty will benefit construction of a tectonic model for the evolution of the Lachlan Fold Belt. The belts mainly comprise massive serpentinite or harzburgite, with internal shear zones of schistose serpentinite, and intrusions of plagiogranite, gabbro, basalt, pyroxenite, dunite and chromitite. The main foliation has a consistent NNW-SSE trend and is similar in the adjacent rock units. The various rock types of the serpentinite belts are geochemically akin to similar rocks from ophiolite sequences. Podiform chromitites are geochemically, mineralogically and geometrically akin to those in the mantle sequence ofmost ophiolites. The different chromitite types are interpreted in tenns of the degree of evolution of the MORB-type magma and hence the extent of fractionation ofthe source. Serpentinisation and rodingitisation occurred during progressive cooling of the chromitites and host rocks and were accompanied by systematic fracturing and remobilisation of chemical components. Radioisotope dating gives an age of crystallisation of41Z-400 Ma for the plagiogranites and leucogabbros, whilst an inherited zircon age of 430 Ma appears to be derived from Early Silurian felsic volcanic rocks of the region. As the plagiogranites, leucogabbros and other rock types within the serpentinite belts have common deformational and metamorphic histories, their crystallisation age constrains the ages of deformation and metamorphism. The serpentinite belts are interpreted as ophiolites of the 'embryonic' type that formed within a back-arc basin setting in the Late Silurian-Early Devonian. Crystallisation of the MORB sequence and emplacement onto continental crust, together with metamorphism and deformation may have only spanned 20 Ma. In the Late Silurian to Early Devonian, the Tumut Serpentinite Province differed from basins elsewhere within the Lachlan Fold Belt in.that a volcanic arc was ruptured by mantle-derived MORB magmas which ascended to the stuface. Their extrusion was short-lived and after the Early Devonian, the development of the Tumut region differed little from that in the rest of the Lachlan Fold Belt. The development of oceanic crust within the Tumut Serpentinite Province and the generation of granitic magmas within the central and eastern parts of the Lachlan Fold Belt are symptomatic of the same Late Silurian to Early Devonian tectonothennal event. An important aspect of this is that oceanic and crustal rocks need not fonn from different events or in substantially different tectonic settings

Open modeling for designing community ecosystems

The paper proposes an open approach to modeling to cater for the emerging trend to complex adaptive systems. Such systems are seen as collections of people, programs, computers and other physical objects that must coexist and work towards a vision in a continually changing environment. The information system here is perceived as a network of physical, knowledge and other kinds of entities connected into a network that emerges as the environment evolves. The paper describes a community oriented approach to model such systems where each community is seen as a collection of such entities. The communities themselves are connected to create a system of systems or a community ecosystem where the communities collaborate to realize a continually emerging vision. The paper describes an open modeling approach for such ecosystems to provide designers a systematic way to design community coordination. It first uses living systems and complexity as metaphors to design community structures that ensure collaboration persists over a long time. The modeling methods provide a flexible approach to show networks of community collaborating within their context. An open approach is to provide users with a flexible method to create community networks using semantics natural to the user and emphasizing perspectives to visualize the complex relationships within such systems

It\u27s Raining, It\u27s Pouring

Do teachers still tell students not to say They say summer\u27s going to be cool or They say magenta and turquoise are the hot new colors because they in this usage is too indefinite? Who does it refer to? was always the standard question my teacher posed. Who are \u27they\u27 and who are doing all these things? she would ask emphatically, then go into something about antecedents

Funder Collaboration Is it worth it?

The Child Sexual Exploitation Funders' Alliance (CSEFA) is a group of 12 charitable fundersi who came together in 2012 to bring about a step change in the way child sexual exploitation is dealt with in the UK. Specifically, they wanted to see responses to child sexual exploitation positioned as an integral part of mainstream safeguarding. CSEFA members believe that by bringing together funders' knowledge, reach, resources and time, more has been achieved than would have been the case had the funders worked individually. As such, in this context, funder collaboration is definitely worth it. In the spirit of learning, and for the benefit of others interested in funder collaboration, this short paper sets out CSEFA's key features, benefits and challenges