Measuring the Impact of Nextstep Career Advice in the North East of England

In September, 2007, the main contractors of the four nextstep networks in the North East (referred to in this paper as the ‘consortium’) successfully submitted a proposal to the Learning & Skills Council (LSC) for funding to develop a framework for measuring the impact of career advice. It was agreed that the project would result in a practice-based ‘Impact Toolkit’ that would include:- • a set of impact measures that should be used in the new adult careers service with a rationale for their inclusion; • methodologies for each of the impact measures identified; • approaches to obtaining information on progression in learning and work – with templates and case study material; • approaches to measuring soft outcomes; and • suggested Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

War with Iraq?

On 11 September 2001 terrorists from the amorphous transnational Al Qaeda network killed thousands of Americans and other nationals by flying planes into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington, and a field in Pennsylvania. A year later the United States is preparing to launch a war against the state of Iraq, emphasising the grave and imminent danger posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, but animated also by a long-standing goal of 'regime change'. What explains this 'statising' of the so-called 'war against terrorism'? What risks does it pose for regional and world order? This Keynote brings together some of Australia's leading thinkers and commentators on American foreign policy, the politics of the Middle East, strategic and defence issues, and global governance to reflect on the multiple issues raised by the prospect of war with Iraq

Enabling global clinical collaborations on identifiable patient data: The Minerva Initiative

The clinical utility of computational phenotyping for both genetic and rare diseases is increasingly appreciated; however, its true potential is yet to be fully realized. Alongside the growing clinical and research availability of sequencing technologies, precise deep and scalable phenotyping is required to serve unmet need in genetic and rare diseases. To improve the lives of individuals affected with rare diseases through deep phenotyping, global big data interrogation is necessary to aid our understanding of disease biology, assist diagnosis, and develop targeted treatment strategies. This includes the application of cutting-edge machine learning methods to image data. As with most digital tools employed in health care, there are ethical and data governance challenges associated with using identifiable personal image data. There are also risks with failing to deliver on the patient benefits of these new technologies, the biggest of which is posed by data siloing. The Minerva Initiative has been designed to enable the public good of deep phenotyping while mitigating these ethical risks. Its open structure, enabling collaboration and data sharing between individuals, clinicians, researchers and private enterprise, is key for delivering precision public health

Silver Russel syndrome in an aboriginal patient from Australia

Silver-Russell syndrome (SRS OMIM 180860) is a rare, albeit well-recognized disorder characterized by severe intrauterine and postnatal growth retardation. It remains a clinical diagnosis with a molecular cause identifiable in approximately 60%–70% of patients. We report a 4-year-old Australian Aboriginal girl who was born at 32 weeks gestation with features strongly suggestive of SRS, after extensive investigation she was referred to our undiagnosed disease program (UDP). Genomic sequencing was performed which identified a heterozygous splice site variant in IGF2 which is predicted to be pathogenic by in-silico studies, paternal allelic origin, de novo status, and RNA studies on fibroblasts. We compare clinical findings with reported patients to add to the knowledge base on IGF2 variants and to promote the engagement of other Australian Aboriginal families in genomic medicine

Australia and the world, prologue and prospects

In December 1988, as part of Australia's Bicentennial activities, the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre held a major international conference which was designed to take stock of Australia's current defence and security circumstances, in the light of both the last 200 years of history and relevant regional and global security developments, and assess our future prospects. It was the most ambitious conference organised by the Centre, and was reckoned to have been extremely successful. This volume consists of the revised and edited versions of papers prepared for that conference. The security environment which faces Australia as it enters the third century of its European settlement is increasingly complex and uncertain. Bipolarity is now history. Other powers, such as Japan, China and India, will be increasingly active in the region. Security is becoming more multi-dimensional, with the military dimension decreasing in significance relative to economic and environmental concerns. Political, economic and technological change will be more dynamic. The management of this new security environment will not be easy. It requires the careful and considered marshalling of economic and diplomatic resources together with military capabilities. Australia's influence in the world will inevitably be modest. Securing our country's future will be a challenge to our wit and ingenuity - which makes the excercise an interesting and exciting prospect

A synopsis of the Bee occurrence data of northern Tanzania

Background Bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila) are the most important group of pollinators with about 20,507 known species worldwide. Despite the critical role of bees in providing pollination services, studies aiming at understanding which species are present across disturbance gradients are scarce. Limited taxononomic information for the existing and unidentified bee species in Tanzania make their conservation haphazard. Here, we present a dataset of bee species records obtained from a survey in nothern Tanzania i.e. Kilimanjaro, Arusha and Manyara regions. Our findings serve as baseline data necessary for understanding the diversity and distribution of bees in the northern parts of the country, which is a critical step in devising robust conservation and monitoring strategies for their populations. New information In this paper, we present information on 45 bee species belonging to 20 genera and four families sampled using a combination of sweep-netting and pan trap methods. Most species (27, ~ 60%) belong to the family Halictidae followed by 16 species (35.5%) from the family Apidae. Megachilidae and Andrenidae were the least represented, each with only one species (2.2%). Additional species of Apidae and Megachilidae sampled during this survey are not yet published on Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), once they will be available on GBIF, they will be published in a subsequent paper. From a total of 953 occurrences, highest numbers were recorded in Kilimanjaro Region (n = 511), followed by Arusha (n = 410) and Manyara (n = 32), but this pattern reflects the sampling efforts of the research project rather than real bias in the distributions of bee species in northern Tanzania

Strategic studies in a changing world: global, regional and Australian perspectives

To mark its 25th anniversary, in 1991 the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre held a major conference to consider how strategic studies has changed over that period, and where it should be heading. An outstanding group of specialists - both academic and practitioners - brought global, regional and Australian perspectives to a range of issues that will be important in the next decade. This volume consists of the revised and edited versions of the papers prepared for the conference. It was an appropriate time for this examination as the world was and is still undergoing the most fundamental transformations since the end of the Second World War. But while at first glance the strategic environment is more benign there are new world tensions. What will happen to the Soviet nuclear arsenal? What new challenges are ahead? What are the prospects for stability and security in our region? Security studies is becoming more complex. In our region there are more actors, both within the ASEAN countries and among the extra-regional countries such as China, Japan and India. A more profound complexity is the broadening concept of security, with the traditional concerns of insurgencies, separatism, expansion of maritime capabilities and power projection, being supplemented by issues of economic and environmental security. In a challenging way this volume examines the issues that will be crucial for security in the years to come