Going to Market with Deweyfish: The Journey from Partnership to Commercialisation

In 2016-7, The University of Western Australia Library partnered with researchers in the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology to produce cropPAL2, a database providing the subcellular locations for proteins in crops significant for food production. The project was funded by the Australian National Data Service as part of its High Value Collections program, with the team consisting of computational biologists, software engineers and a librarian. The project involved many hours of manual article evaluation and data extraction by specialists in the plant species included in cropPAL, and the team decided that developing in-house software could make managing the process of article evaluation by multiple people much easier. Key software features were that it prevented assessing the same article twice, simplified finding and adding new articles to the database, provided real-time access by international group members, and the cut and drop function facilitated saving images and notes. Use of this software represented a 90% saving in time and therefore salaries. The team realised the in-house software could be applied across many areas of research. Known as Team DeweyFish, the group embarked on the CSIRO’s ON Prime program in 2018 to learn how to commercialise the software. This process involved the team generating and testing 15 hypotheses about researcher behaviour through conducting 66 one on one interviews with potential users. This data lead to some significant insights, clarifying the needs of various user groups and refining the software specifications. An initial target market has been selected, and the team is now working towards developing a commercialisable prototype. This paper will discuss the role of the Library as a key player in this collaboration, a first for the University of WA, both in the innovative process and as a key driver in directing the development towards the wider benefit of researchers at UWA and beyond

The Treatment of People with Mental Illness in the Criminal Justice System: The Example of Oneida County, New York

This publication is two-fold: an executive summary and the report itself. The executive summary provides a general overview of the larger report, on the criminalization of the mentally ill. It begins by summarizing three case studies from the report that concern the intersection of mental health issues and the criminal justice system in Oneida County in New York State. It then provides a brief historical overview of mental health issues and the criminal justice system before going on to discuss the current best practices in addressing the criminalization of the mentally ill, including law-enforcement mechanisms, mental health courts, and reintegration programs. Next, the paper identifies the shortcomings of these practices and the lack of organizational and financial capacity that hobbles concerned stakeholders from effectively tackling the issue. The paper concludes by proposing a general program for immediate action on local and national scales

Street connectivity and obesity in Glasgow, Scotland : impact of age, sex and socioeconomic position

This study investigated associations of street connectivity with body mass index (BMI), and whether these associations varied by sex, age and socioeconomic position, amongst adults in Glasgow, Scotland. Data on socio-demographic variables, height and weight were collected from 1062 participants in the Greater Glasgow Health and Well-being Study, and linked with neighbourhood-level census and geo-referenced data on area level deprivation and street connectivity. Results of multilevel models showed that, after adjustment for individual level covariates, street connectivity was not significantly associated with either BMI or BMI category; nor were there any significant interactions between age, sex or socioeconomic position and street connectivity

Museums and the ‘new museology’ : theory, practice and organisational change

The widening of roles and expectations within cultural policy discourses has been a challenge to museum workers throughout Great Britain. There has been an expectation that museums are changing from an ‘old’ to a ‘new museology’ that has shaped museum functions and roles. This paper outlines the limitations of this perceived transition as museum services confront multiple exogenous and endogenous expectations, opportunities, pressures and threats. Findings from 23 publically funded museum services across England, Scotland and Wales are presented to explore the roles of professional and hierarchical differentiation, and how there were organisational and managerial limitations to the practical application of the ‘new museology’. The ambiguity surrounding policy, roles and practice also highlighted that museum workers were key agents in interpreting, using and understanding wide-ranging policy expectations. The practical implementation of the ‘new museology’ is linked to the values held by museum workers themselves and how they relate it to their activities at the ground level

Darlington Statement: Joint consensus statement from the intersex community retreat in Darlington, March 2017

More than 20 intersex advocates from Australian and Aotearoa/New Zealand intersex organisations, along with other independent activists came together at a two-day retreat in Darlington, Sydney, on 2-3 March. A year in the making, the collaborative event also led to the issuing of the "Darlington Statement”, outlining key priorities including legal reform to recognise our bodily autonomy, effective rights-based oversight of clinical decisions, alongside access to affirmative health care and the importance of peer support

Is proximity to a food retail store associated with diet and BMI in Glasgow, Scotland?

<p><b>Background:</b> Access to healthy food is often seen as a potentially important contributor to diet. Policy documents in many countries suggest that variations in access contribute to inequalities in diet and in health. Some studies, mostly in the USA, have found that proximity to food stores is associated with dietary patterns, body weight and socio-economic differences in diet and obesity, whilst others have found no such relationships. We aim to investigate whether proximity to food retail stores is associated with dietary patterns or Body Mass Index in Glasgow, a large city in the UK.</p> <p><b>Methods:</b> We mapped data from a 'Health and Well-Being Survey' (n = 991), and a list of food stores (n = 741) in Glasgow City, using ArcGIS, and undertook network analysis to find the distance from respondents' home addresses to the nearest fruit and vegetable store, small general store, and supermarket.</p> <p><b>Results:</b> We found few statistically significant associations between proximity to food retail outlets and diet or obesity, for unadjusted or adjusted models, or when stratifying by gender, car ownership or employment.</p> <p><b>Conclusions:</b> The findings suggest that in urban settings in the UK the distribution of retail food stores may not be a major influence on diet and weight, possibly because most urban residents have reasonable access to food stores.</p&gt

Stores healthy options project in remote indigenous communities (SHOP@RIC): a protocol of a randomised trial promoting healthy food and beverage purchases through price discounts and in-store nutrition education

BackgroundIndigenous Australians suffer a disproportionate burden of preventable chronic disease compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts – much of it diet-related. Increasing fruit and vegetable intakes and reducing sugar-sweetened soft-drink consumption can reduce the risk of preventable chronic disease. There is evidence from some general population studies that subsidising healthier foods can modify dietary behaviour. There is little such evidence relating specifically to socio-economically disadvantaged populations, even though dietary behaviour in such populations is arguably more likely to be susceptible to such interventions.This study aims to assess the impact and cost-effectiveness of a price discount intervention with or without an in-store nutrition education intervention on purchases of fruit, vegetables, water and diet soft-drinks among remote Indigenous communities.Methods/DesignWe will utilise a randomised multiple baseline (stepped wedge) design involving 20 communities in remote Indigenous Australia. The study will be conducted in partnership with two store associations and twenty Indigenous store boards. Communities will be randomised to either i) a 20% price discount on fruit, vegetables, water and diet soft-drinks; or ii) a combined price discount and in-store nutrition education strategy. These interventions will be initiated, at one of five possible time-points, spaced two-months apart. Weekly point-of-sale data will be collected from each community store before, during, and for six months after the six-month intervention period to measure impact on purchasing of discounted food and drinks. Data on physical, social and economic factors influencing weekly store sales will be collected in order to identify important covariates. Intervention fidelity and mediators of behaviour change will also be assessed.DiscussionThis study will provide original evidence on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of price discounts with or without an in-store nutrition education intervention on food and drink purchasing among a socio-economically disadvantaged population in a real-life setting

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Laser acupuncture does not improve menopausal symptoms

Objective: Acupuncture is commonly used to treat menopausal symptoms and other gynecological conditions. Laser acupuncture, more accurately named "laser acupoint stimulation," has the advantages of being noninvasive, reproducible, and convenient. A few studies of conventional acupuncture have suggested a beneficial effect in treating menopausal symptoms. This study sought to investigate the effectiveness of laser acupoint stimulation in relieving symptoms associated with menopause. Methods: A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study was conducted in 40 women experiencing active symptoms of menopause. Outcome variables were numbers of diurnal and nocturnal flushes and symptom score, determined using a previously validated scale. A laser acupoint stimulation device was altered to produce identical flashing lights whether or not the laser was operating to allow for a placebo ("laser off") control. Participants received either active or placebo treatment on a fortnightly basis for 12 weeks. The acupoint selection in both groups was individualized to each participant, selected from a set of 10 acupoints. Results: There were no significant differences between the active and placebo treatment groups in numbers of diurnal or nocturnal flushes or in nonflushing symptom scores. Conclusions: Laser acupoint stimulation chosen from a fixed set of acupoints is no more efficacious than manual stimulation with an inert laser probe in altering menopausal symptoms

Realizing Sustainability: Exchanging Concepts for Solutions

Global climate change is becoming a visible global issue. Many sectors of our society are taking on the challenge of mitigating climate change through sustainable practices. The business community in particular is tackling the challenge. Sustainability may be defined as doing things today that do not compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. However, the business community has a distinct definition of sustainability. Many companies view “sustainability as an opportunity to gain a competitive edge and create tangible, economic value,” (Sommer, 2012, p. 3). Because our review of the literature demonstrated that businesses have a significant influence on trends in society, we wanted to further explore sustainable business as a platform for global and local climate change mitigation. Our project analyzed the interplay between business practices and sustainability on a local scale. We are working with a Missoula business to develop and implement, where possible, a specific sustainable business plan, which is realistic, affordable, and coincides with the goals of the business. We are working closely with the business to analyze current business practices, identify barriers in the environment that may prevent sustainable practices from being implemented, develop a current carbon footprint analysis, and look into local best practices for comparison. We also developed a survey to augment our work that was administered to local business owners to assess their understanding of sustainable business practices. This project will provide a proposal of business practices that equips the local business with ideas on how to implement sustainable practices into their current business operations