Listening to Women's Voices in the Australian Forestry Workforce

Forestry is one of the last bastions of male dominance in the professions; despite the fact that women have graduated from the two Australian Forestry schools since the 1970s only a handful of women have been working for a State forest agency for more than 15 years. Women on average tend to leave the profession after 5 years or so (Crompton 2000); this is a concern for organisations which, despite equal employment opportunity policies fail to retain a gender diversity in their workforce. Quote 1 suggests that women who leave the profession don't necessarily leave the workforce, but just leave forestry. This study started on the assumption that if female foresters tended to leave the profession, it was because they did not feel comfortable in their workplace and more specifically that the gender differences and the relationships between the genders may be at the root of the problem. Being a traditionally exclusive male territory, could it be culturally and structurally difficult for one gender to make place for the other and a new organisational culture to emerge from the diversity? Numerous scholars have argued that there is no such thing as "gender neutral" organisations and that historically organisations having been set up by men were fundamentally women-unfriendly places to work in (Aker 1990, Burton 1991, Cockburn 1991, Witz 1992). Based on women's perceptions of their workplace, professional practice and aspirations this study attempts to list and understand the diversity of issues faced by female foresters. Although no doubt some of those issues will be shared by their male colleagues, this paper aims at taking stock of gender related issues in the forestry profession

Understanding Public Participation in Forest Planning in Australia: How Can We Learn From Each Other?

A round table discussion on public participation in forest planning, during a meeting of the Forest Planners Working group in February 1997 at the ANU, revealed a wealth of unexplored and unrecorded experiences of public participation across the country. It became clear that public participation, which is a legal requirement in most states, was perceived and implemented in different ways by different government agencies to various degrees of success. The first author who attended part of the meeting, could sense some ambient frustration at the ever increasing energy and resources devoted by the various forest agencies to involve the public in planning matters, while the very same 'public' never seemed to be satisfied and was making more and more unreasonable demands. Subsequent discussions with NRE Victoria, DNR Queensland, Forestry Tasmania and CALM WA reiterated that a collaborative effort to systematically record and analyse the experiences of public participation in forestry planning could deliver concrete learning outputs valid for all. Thanks to a grant from NRE Victoria, DNR Queensland and the ANU we designed a research program. It was based on reviewing relevant literature on participatory management processes and conducting field surveys to 1) develop an analytical framework , 2) record field realities in 4 states Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania, Western Australia 3) analyse the processes in those states and 4) put forward ideas and recommendations for further consultation processes. This paper reports on the various findings of the study.This research was made possible thanks to a grant from the ANU, DNR Queensland and NRE Victoria and to logistical support from Forestry Tasmania and CALM

Cognitive Insight in Youth at Clinical High Risk of Psychosis

Introduction: Cognitive insight reflects one’s Self-Reflectiveness (recognition of dysfunctional reasoning, corrigibility) and Self-Certainty (overconfidence). In schizophrenia, lower Self-Reflectiveness and higher Self-Certainty has been associated with severity of symptoms and poor functioning. There is some evidence that lower Self-Reflectiveness and higher Self-Certainty are associated with attenuated symptoms in youth at clinical high risk (CHR) of psychosis. The present study evaluated in a CHR sample the relationship between cognitive insight and attenuated symptoms, current functioning, and evaluated change in cognitive insight at baseline and 1-month follow-up. Methods: Twenty-four individuals at CHR of psychosis completed the Beck Cognitive Insight Scale. Attenuated psychotic symptoms were assessed with the Scale of Prodromal Symptoms and functioning with the Global Functioning Social and Role scales. A subset of the sample completed the Calgary Depression Scale for Schizophrenia. Self-Reflectiveness, Self-Certainty, and Composite Index scores were correlated with clinical and functional variables. In addition, cognitive insight levels were compared at baseline and 1-month follow-up. Results: Trends were observed toward both increased attenuated perceptual abnormalities/hallucinations and higher Self-Reflectiveness, and increased avolition and increased Self-Reflectiveness. Cognitive insight did not significantly correlate with social or role functioning, or depression. Cognitive insight scores did not significantly differ between baseline and 1-month follow-up. Discussion: These findings provide little evidence for a relation between cognitive insight and clinical and functional variables in CHR, and suggest that cognitive insight remains stable over a 1-month time period in our sample. These data add to a growing body of literature on cognitive insight across the schizophrenia spectrum

Highly pathogenic influenza a(h5n1) virus survival in complex artificial aquatic biotopes

Background: Very little is known regarding the persistence of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N1 viruses in aquatic environments in tropical countries, although environmental materials have been suggested to play a role as reservoirs and sources of transmission for H5N1 viruses. Methodology/Principal Findings: The survival of HPAI H5N1 viruses in experimental aquatic biotopes (water, mud, aquatic flora and fauna) relevant to field conditions in Cambodia was investigated. Artificial aquatic biotopes, including simple ones containing only mud and water, and complex biotopes involving the presence of aquatic flora and fauna, were set up. They were experimentally contaminated with H5N1 virus. The persistence of HPAI H5N1 virus (local avian and human isolates) was determined by virus isolation in embryonated chicken eggs and by real-time reverse-polymerase chain reaction. Persistence of infectious virus did not exceed 4 days, and was only identified in rain water. No infectious virus particles were detected in pond and lake water or mud even when high inoculum doses were used. However, viral RNA persisted up to 20 days in rain water and 7 days in pond or lake water. Viral RNA was also detected in mud samples, up to 14 days post-contamination in several cases. Infectious virus and viral RNA was detected in few cases in the aquatic fauna and flora, especially in bivalves and labyrinth fish, although these organisms seemed to be mostly passive carriers of the virus rather than host allowing virus replication. Conclusions/Significance: Although several factors for the survival and persistence of HPAI viruses in the environment are still to be elucidated, and are particularly hard to control in laboratory conditions, our results, along with previous data, support the idea that environmental surveillance is of major relevance for avian influenza control programs. © 2012 Horm et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.published_or_final_versio

Early Childhood Education Quality and Family Engagement

Empirical literature demonstrates that the quality of early childhood education (ECE) impacts children’s learning in multiple domains. Quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs), which are active in nearly every state, are designed to rate the quality of ECE programs, encourage programs to improve quality, and help families make more informed enrollment decisions. However, many families are unaware of QRISs and MD EXCELS (Maryland’s QRIS) in particular. This research study examined survey data to understand family perceptions of ECE quality and awareness of MD EXCELS. Based on these data and a review of literature, a YouTube video was implemented to increase family awareness of ECE quality and MD EXCELS and build family capacity to engage as choosers of education options. Analysis of quantitative and qualitative data suggests the YouTube video positively impacted family awareness of MD EXCELS and may have increased the likelihood that families will use quality ratings when making a future ECE enrollment decision. Qualitative data collected indicate that augmenting family decision-making models to include the effect of emotion on decisions may better represent the complexity of ECE enrollment decisions and may be useful to inform future family outreach and engagement efforts