The Role and Function of the Library Board

This session defined what the Board’s actual roles and functions are with respect to governance and dealing with politicians, community leaders and staff, including the CEO/Director/Librarian

The Role and Function of the Library Board

This session defined what the Board’s actual roles and functions are with respect to governance and dealing with politicians, community leaders and staff, including the CEO/Director/Librarian

Design as conversation with digital materials

This paper explores Donald Schön's concept of design as a conversation with materials, in the context of designing digital systems. It proposes material utterance as a central event in designing. A material utterance is a situated communication act that depends on the particularities of speaker, audience, material and genre. The paper argues that, if digital designing differs from other forms of designing, then accounts for such differences must be sought by understanding the material properties of digital systems and the genres of practice that surround their use. Perspectives from human-computer interaction (HCI) and the psychology of programming are used to examine how such an understanding might be constructed.</p

The practical politics of sharing personal data

The focus of this paper is upon how people handle the sharing of personal data as an interactional concern. A number of ethnographic studies of domestic environments are drawn upon in order to articulate a range of circumstances under which data may be shared. In particular a distinction is made between the in situ sharing of data with others around you and the sharing of data with remote parties online. A distinction is also drawn between circumstances of purposefully sharing data in some way and circumstances where the sharing of data is incidental or even unwitting. On the basis of these studies a number of the organisational features of how people seek to manage the ways in which their data is shared are teased out. The paper then reflects upon how data sharing practices have evolved to handle the increasing presence of digital systems in people’s environments and how these relate to the ways in which people traditionally orient to the sharing of information. In conclusion a number of ways are pointed out in which the sharing of data remains problematic and there is a discussion of how systems may need to adapt to better support people’s data sharing practices in the future

A randomised controlled trial of a physical activity and nutrition program targeting middle-aged adults at risk of metabolic syndrome in a disadvantaged rural community

Background: Approximately 70% of Australian adults aged over 50 are overweight or obese, with the prevalence significantly higher in regional/remote areas compared to cities. This study aims to determine if a low-cost, accessible lifestyle program targeting insufficiently active adults aged 50-69 y can be successfully implemented in a rural location, and whether its implementation will contribute to the reduction/prevention of metabolic syndrome, or other risk factors for type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.Methods/Design: This 6-month randomised controlled trial will consist of a nutrition, physical activity, and healthy weight intervention for 50–69 year-olds from a disadvantaged rural community. Five hundred participants with central obesity and at risk of metabolic syndrome will be recruited from Albany and surrounding areas in Western Australia (within a 50 kilometre radius of the town). They will be randomly assigned to either the intervention (n = 250) or wait-listed control group (n = 250). The theoretical concepts in the study utilise the Self-Determination Theory, complemented by Motivational Interviewing. The intervention will include a custom-designed booklet and interactive website that provides information, and encourages physical activity and nutrition goal setting, and healthy weight management. The booklet and website will be supplemented by an exercise chart, calendar, newsletters, resistance bands, accelerometers, and phone and email contact from program staff. Data will be collected at baseline and post-intervention.Discussion: This study aims to contribute to the prevention of metabolic syndrome and inter- related chronic illnesses: type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers; which are associated with overweight/obesity, physical inactivity, and poor diet. This large rural community-based trial will provide guidelines for recruitment, program development, implementation, and evaluation, and has the potential to translate findings into practice by expanding the program to other regional areas in Australia. Trial registration: Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry [ACTRN12614000512628, registration date 14th May 2014]

Ivermectin treatment of Loa loa hyper-microfilaraemic baboons (Papio anubis): Assessment of microfilarial loads, haematological and biochemical parameters and histopathological changes following treatment.

Individuals with high intensity of Loa loa are at risk of developing serious adverse events (SAEs) post treatment with ivermectin. These SAEs have remained unclear and a programmatic impediment to the advancement of community directed treatment with ivermectin. The pathogenesis of these SAEs following ivermectin has never been investigated experimentally. The Loa/baboon (Papio anubis) model can be used to investigate the pathogenesis of Loa-associated encephalopathy following ivermectin treatment in humans. 12 baboons with microfilarial loads > 8,000mf/mL of blood were randomised into four groups: Group 1 (control group receiving no drug), Group 2 receiving ivermectin (IVM) alone, Group 3 receiving ivermectin plus aspirin (IVM + ASA), and Group 4 receiving ivermectin plus prednisone (IVM + PSE). Blood samples collected before treatment and at Day 5, 7 or 10 post treatment, were analysed for parasitological, hematological and biochemical parameters using standard techniques. Clinical monitoring of animals for side effects took place every 6 hours post treatment until autopsy. At autopsy free fluids and a large number of standard organs were collected, examined and tissues fixed in 10% buffered formalin and processed for standard haematoxylin-eosin staining and specific immunocytochemical staining. Mf counts dropped significantly (p0.05). All animals became withdrawn 48 hours after IVM administration. All treated animals recorded clinical manifestations including rashes, itching, diarrhoea, conjunctival haemorrhages, lymph node enlargement, pinkish ears, swollen face and restlessness; one animal died 5 hours after IVM administration. Macroscopic changes in post-mortem tissues observed comprised haemorrhages in the brain, lungs, heart, which seen in all groups given ivermectin but not in the untreated animals. Microscopically, the major cellular changes seen, which were present in all the ivermectin treated animals included microfilariae in varying degrees of degeneration in small vessels. These were frequently associated with fibrin deposition, endothelial changes including damage to the integrity of the blood vessel and the presence of extravascular erythrocytes (haemorrhages). There was an increased presence of eosinophils and other chronic inflammatory types in certain tissues and organs, often in large numbers and associated with microfilarial destruction. Highly vascularized organs like the brain, heart, lungs and kidneys were observed to have more microfilariae in tissue sections. The number of mf seen in the brain and kidneys of animals administered IVM alone tripled that of control animals. Co-administration of IVM + PSE caused a greater increase in mf in the brain and kidneys while the reverse was noticed with the co-administration of IVM + ASA. The treatment of Loa hyper-microfilaraemic individuals with ivermectin produces a clinical spectrum that parallels that seen in Loa hyper-microfilaraemic humans treated with ivermectin. The utilization of this experimental model can contribute to the improved management of the adverse responses in humans

Strong constraints on aerosol-cloud interactions from volcanic eruptions.

Aerosols have a potentially large effect on climate, particularly through their interactions with clouds, but the magnitude of this effect is highly uncertain. Large volcanic eruptions produce sulfur dioxide, which in turn produces aerosols; these eruptions thus represent a natural experiment through which to quantify aerosol-cloud interactions. Here we show that the massive 2014-2015 fissure eruption in Holuhraun, Iceland, reduced the size of liquid cloud droplets-consistent with expectations-but had no discernible effect on other cloud properties. The reduction in droplet size led to cloud brightening and global-mean radiative forcing of around -0.2 watts per square metre for September to October 2014. Changes in cloud amount or cloud liquid water path, however, were undetectable, indicating that these indirect effects, and cloud systems in general, are well buffered against aerosol changes. This result will reduce uncertainties in future climate projections, because we are now able to reject results from climate models with an excessive liquid-water-path response

Strategic Planning: Charting the Future of Your Library

In these challenging times, it is important for all libraries to have a strategic plan in order to provide direction for current and future boards and staff. This presentation by British Columbia Library Trustees Association President and Myriad Consulting Principal Andy Ackerman will provide you with the basics of strategic planning - the why, when, who, and how - so you are ready to face challenges, think creatively, and plan for the future of your library

Impact of drizzle and 3D cloud structure on remote sensing of cloud effective radius

Remote sensing of cloud particle size with passive sensors like MODIS is an important tool for cloud microphysical studies. As a measure of the radiatively relevant droplet size, effective radius can be retrieved with different combinations of visible through shortwave infrared channels. The resulting effective radii are often quite different, indicative of different penetration depths for the spectral radiances used. Operational liquid water cloud retrievals are based on the assumption of a relatively narrow distribution of droplet sizes; the potential impact of precipitation on these distributions is neglected. MODIS observations sometimes show significantly larger effective radii in marine boundary layer fields derived from the 1.6 and 2.1 μm channel observations than for 3.7 μm retrievals. Possible explanations range from 3D radiative transport effects and sub-pixel cloud inhomogeneity aspects to the impact of drizzle formation. To investigate possible factors of influence, we use LES simulated boundary layer cloud situations in combination with 3D Monte Carlo simulations of MODIS observations. LES simulations of warm cloud spectral microphysics for cases of marine stratus and broken cumulus produce cloud structures comprising droplet size distributions with and without drizzle size drops. From 3D radiative transport simulations considering individual droplet size distributions synthetic MODIS observations are obtained. On these scenes the operational MODIS effective radius retrievals are applied and the results are compared to the given LES microphysics