HECS System Changes: Impact on Students

This paper examines the impact of changes to Australia’s student financing system on various hypothetical students who choose the Government’s proposed deferred payment options, HECS-HELP and FEE-HELP. The present values of their HECS repayments under the existing (2004) system are compared with the present values of repayments under various alternative systems. These alternative systems relate to increasing the HECS charge by 25 per cent for HECS-HELP students and introducing a fee paid with a debt of $12,500 per year for FEE-HELP students. For HECS-HELP students it is found that the impact of an increase of 25 per cent in the charge is likely to be small. For example, we show that for ‘average’ males and females, an increase of 25 per cent in the HECS charge will result in a much smaller true financial cost than this. Further, graduates earning relatively low incomes are protected from the 25 per cent increase in the HECS charge by the higher repayment thresholds and they (especially female graduates) will pay substantially less HECS compared with the current system. High income graduates, however, will experience true price increases which are considerable and of the order of 20 per cent or more. For FEE-HELP students, not surprisingly, the present values of HECS repayments are substantial given debt accumulations of$12,500 per year for a four-year period of study.. However and importantly, it is found that many low-income graduates will not fully repay debts of this amount. As well, because debt totals are to be limited to $50,000 per student it is possible to model the effect of the need for some to pay a proportion of the charge up-front, and it is clear that in this case FEE-HELP adds very substantially to a student’s payment obligation and is also arguably very regressive. A commentary is offered on ways in which the proposed 2005 changes to financing might be improved.HECS, higher education, financing

Extended exposure paradigms and alcohol-related attentional bias in light and heavy social drinkers and in problem drinkers

It is well-established that the attention of alcoholics (as compared to non-alcoholics, or social drinkers) is captured more by alcohol-related than by neutral stimuli. This phenomenon is called an alcohol-related attentional bias (AAB). The traditional paradigms for measuring AAB have been the modified Stroop and visual dot-probe paradigms. I have adapted the flicker paradigm for induced change blindness paradigm (flicker ICB paradigm) from visual cognition. In the traditional use of the flicker ICB paradigm a singe change is implemented in a visual scene and then removed. If the change process is masked and the implementation/removal of the change is cycled, the change takes a surprisingly long time to spot. The theoretical underpinning of this phenomenon implies that the change is not detected unless attention is directed to the object carrying the change. In my own modification of this paradigm, two (not one) changes are simultaneously made and instructions to detect “the change” are given. In this way an alcohol-related and a neutral change are made to compete for attention. Using this paradigm the AAB hypothesis is that those detecting the alcohol-related change will have higher usual consumption that those detecting the neutral change. In a series of 12 studies, I have shown that social drinkers detecting the alcohol-related change have consumption levels above those detecting the neutral change: a differential AAB within social drinkers. Further, when the object carrying the alcohol-related change is embedded in the neutral group and the neutral object carrying the change is embedded in the alcohol group, the direction of the AAB is reversed. This suggests that the group of objects in which the changing object is embedded drives the change detection rather than the changing object, itself. A similar conclusion is reached when both changing objects are identically-alcohol or identically-neutral. Finally, the role of the context or group in driving change detection was confirmed by embedding the alcohol-changing and neutral-changing objects in groups that did not provide differential alcohol-related and neutral information. Under these latter conditions of test, the AAB disappeared. In the penultimate experiment reported in this thesis continuous eye-movement monitoring over 30 seconds to the same stimuli as described above (but not incorporating changes or masks) was used to measure attention towards alcohol-related objects even more directly. Using this method a differential AAB within social drinkers was shown. In a final experiment the more traditional version of the flicker ICB paradigm (containing a single change) was used to explore AAB in drinkers in treatment in which for the first time it was shown that AAB increased with alcohol problem severity

A Comparative Approach to the Study of Cumulative Cultural Evolution: Where Are We Now, and Where Do We Go?

Evidence for cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) in nonhumans remains rare. Here, we suggest that this results partly from methodological challenges involved in comparative CCE. We discuss two core challenges researchers in the field face: our samples and our protocols. In particular, we encourage more studies that examine diverse species, adopt naturalistic and fair measures, and consider the life stages of participants. Research of this kind is required to fully understand the uniqueness of human CCE

CHANGES IN SUPPORT MOMENT AND MUSCLE ACTIVATION FOLLOWING HIP AND TRUNK NEUROMUSCULAR TRAINING: THE HIP AND ACL INJURY RISK

This study investigated lower limb muscular activation strategies following an 8-week body-weight based training intervention focused on the dynamic control of the hip/trunk. Muscle activation, support moment and frontal plane knee moments of elite female hockey players (n=13) were measured during unplanned sidestepping pre/post training. Post-training, gluteal muscle activation increased (+10%;p=0.006). There was no change in support moment or frontal plane knee moments however, the contribution of hip extension to total support moment increased (+10%;d=0.56) following training. Hip/trunk neuromuscular training is effective in improving hip neuromuscular activation, allowing athletes to more effectively utilise their hip to generate their support moment, which may prevent dangerous ‘dynamic valgus’ knee postures during sidestepping sporting tasks

Celebrating 70 years of nursing and midwifery in NHS Scotland. [Exhibition]

This set of infographics were displayed together in an exhibition celebrating 70 years of nursing and midwifery in NHS Scotland. They highlight events and images covering each decade of the history of NHS Scotland, from the 1940s through to present day and beyond

HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH? MAINTAINING THE BIOMECHANICAL BENEFITS OF AN ACL INJURY PREVENTION TRAINING PROGRAM

This study investigated the effect of a 16-week maintenance training program which directly followed a high-dose 9 week initial training intervention, as part of a biomechanically informed ACL injury prevention program. Three-dimensional kinematic and kinetic data of elite female hockey players (n=16) were collected at baseline, post initial training and post maintenance training during unplanned sidestepping. Maintenance training was effective in retaining reduced peak knee valgus moments in a ‘high-risk’ subgroup elicited from the initial training program. Conversely, although the total group demonstrated no benefits following initial training, they displayed a reduction (?-26.3%, g=0.30) in peak valgus knee moments following maintenance training, suggesting a prolonged albeit moderate dose of training was effective for this population

Expert nurse to novice academic: Reflections on the first year of transition from practitioner to academic

Harper-McDonald, B., & Taylor, G. (2020). Expert nurse to novice academic: Reflections on the first year of transition from practitioner to academic. Nurse Education Today, 90, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2020.10443

Pandemic preparedness:the importance of adequate immune fitness

Pandemic preparedness is an important issue in relation to future pandemics. The two studies described here aimed to identify factors predicting the presence and severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) symptoms. The CLOFIT study comprised an online survey among the Dutch population (n = 1415). Perceived immune fitness before the pandemic (2019) and during the first lockdown period (15 March–11 May 2020) and the number and severity of COVID-19 symptoms were assessed. The COTEST study, conducted between December 2020 and June 2021, replicated the CLOFIT study in n = 925 participants who were tested for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in Dutch commercial test locations. The CLOFIT study revealed that immune fitness before the pandemic was the greatest predictor of the number and severity of COVID-19 symptoms (20.1% and 19.8%, respectively). Other significant predictors included immune fitness during the lockdown (5.5% and 7.1%, respectively), and having underlying diseases (0.4% and 0.5%, respectively). In the COTEST study, for those who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, immune fitness before the pandemic was the single predictor of the number (27.2%) and severity (33.1%) of COVID-19 symptoms during the pandemic. In conclusion, for those who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, immune fitness before the pandemic was the strongest predictor of the number and severity of COVID-19 symptoms during the pandemic. Therefore, the development of strategies to maintain an adequate immune fitness must be regarded as an essential component of pandemic preparedness