Talking about a nanny nation: investigating the rhetoric framing public health debates in Australian news media

Objectives and importance of study: News media portrayal of public health issues influences public opinion, policy action and decision making. This study aimed to analyse the use of 'nanny state' frames in Australian news media coverage; identify the stakeholders invoking this frame; determine which public health-related policies attract such framing; and investigate whether 'nanny state' framing is directly challenged in news coverage. STUDY TYPE: A qualitative framing analysis. METHODS: Articles featuring the term 'nanny state' that were published in Australian print newspapers during matched periods between March and September in 2017 and 2018 were sourced through Factiva, coded and analysed for content and 'nanny state' framing. Content analysis was used to identify any public health-related issues that the terminology nanny state was applied to, and who was portrayed as imposing the nanny state. Frame analysis was used to analyse what meanings are co-presented with the phrase nanny state. RESULTS: Out of 81 print newspaper articles that included the term 'nanny state', 19% linked the term to restricting personal choice or creating dissatisfaction with too many health-related rules and regulations broadly, across a range of issues, including: bike helmets, e-cigarettes, firearm restrictions, seatbelts, pool fences and smoking bans. The next most frequent links were to regulations on alcohol (17%), road safety (14%), obesity-related issues (7%) and tobacco control (6%). Of the 81 articles, 53% appeared in news publications owned by News Corporation Australia, 20% in Fairfax Media (Nine Entertainment) publications, 17% in Daily Mail and General Trust and 10% in publications owned by other organisations. Governments were the entity most frequently framed as imposing the nanny state. Most nanny state framings (73%) were negative towards public health controls and focused on policies and regulations. Nanny state was portrayed as an assault on freedom and choice (14%) and used to attack proponents of nanny state controls (11%), while few articles framed the nanny state (7%) in a favourable light. CONCLUSIONS: 'Nanny state' is a rhetorical device commonly used in Australian news media that may contribute to discrediting of the regulation of a range of health-related issues. News Corp publications are a major propagator of nanny state rhetoric in Australian newspaper media. Public health advocates are not commonly represented within nanny state debates within the news media

A two-layer approach to the coupled coherent states method

In this paper a two-layer scheme is outlined for the coupled coherent states (CCS) method, dubbed two-layer CCS (2L-CCS). The theoretical framework is motivated by that of the multiconfigurational Ehrenfest (MCE) method, where different dynamical descriptions are used for different subsystems of a quantum mechanical system. This leads to a flexible representation of the wavefunction, making the method particularly suited to the study of composite systems. It was tested on a 20-dimensional asymmetric system-bath tunnelling problem, with results compared to a benchmark calculation, as well as existing CCS, MP/SOFT and CI expansion methods. The two-layer method was found to lead to improved short and long term propagation over standard CCS, alongside improved numerical efficiency and parallel scalability. These promising results provide impetus for future development of the method for on-the-fly direct dynamics calculations

Coupled-coherent-states approach for high-order harmonic generation

In this paper, we report a version of the coupled-coherent-states method which is able to accurately compute the high-order harmonic generation (HHG) spectrum of an electron in a laser field in one dimension by the use of trajectory-guided grids of Gaussian wave packets. It is shown that by periodic reprojection of the wave function and dynamically altering the basis set size, the method can account for a wave function which spreads out to cover a large area in phase space while still keeping computational expense low and ensuring the preservation of coherence of the wave function. The HHG spectra obtained show good agreement with those from a time-dependent Schrödinger equation solver. We show also that the part of the wave function which is responsible for HHG moves along a periodic orbit which is far from that of classical motion. Although this paper is a proof of principle and therefore focused on a simple one-dimensional system, future generalizations for the multielectron case are discussed

Numerical-Analytic Methods of Investigating Periodic Solutions

183 tr.; 20 cm

Annual solar UV exposure and biological effective dose rates on the Martian surface

The ultraviolet (UV) environment of Mars has been investigated to gain an understanding of the variation of exposure throughout a Martian year, and link this flux to biological effects and possible survival of organisms at the Martian surface. To gain an idea of how the solar UV radiation varies between different regions, including planned landing sites of two future Mars surface missions, we modelled the total solar UV surface flux throughout one Martian year for two different dust scenarios. To understand the degree of solar UV stress on micro-organisms and/or molecules essential for life on the surface of Mars, we also calculated the biologically effective dose (BED) for T7 and Uracil in relevant wavelength regions at the Martian surface as a function of season and latitude, and discuss the biological survival rates in the presence of Martian solar UV radiation. High T7/Uracil BED ratios indicate that even at high latitudes where the UV flux is significantly reduced, the radiation environment is still hostile for life due to the persisting UV-C component of the flux