Assessing time knowledge in children aged 10 to 11 years

The acquisition of time knowledge involves learning how to read clocks, estimate time, read dates and learn about temporal sequences. Evidence suggests that many of these competencies are acquired by 10 years of age although not all children may follow this developmental path. The main purpose of this study was to collect normative data for a screening tool that assesses time knowledge. These data identify the prevalence and pattern of difficulties with time knowledge among a UK sample of Year 6 pupils (aged 10 to 11 years). The Time Screening Assessment tool (Doran, Dutt & Pembery, 2015), designed to assess time knowledge, was administered individually to a sample of 79 children. Findings revealed a median overall score of 32 out of a maximum score of 36. 25% of children performed at or close to ceiling, however seven children scored more than -1.5 standard deviations below the mean. The value of these findings to practitioners working with children in schools is discussed

Theory Challenges of the Accelerating Universe

The accelerating expansion of the universe presents an exciting, fundamental challenge to the standard models of particle physics and cosmology. I highlight some of the outstanding challenges in both developing theoretical models and interpreting without bias the observational results from precision cosmology experiments in the next decade that will return data to help reveal the nature of the new physics. Examples given focus on distinguishing a new component of energy from a new law of gravity, and the effect of early dark energy on baryon acoustic oscillations.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures; minor changes to match J. Phys. A versio

Worldsheet Matter Superfields on Half-Shell

In this paper we discuss some of the effects of using "unidexterous" worldsheet superfields, which satisfy worldsheet differential constraints and so are partly on-shell, i.e., on half-shell. Most notably, this results in a stratification of the field space that reminds of "brane-world" geometries. Linear dependence on such superfields provides a worldsheet generalization of the super-Zeeman effect. In turn, non-linear dependence yields additional left-right asymmetric dynamical constraints on the propagating fields, again in a stratified fashion.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures; minor algebraic correction

New Techniques for Analysing Axisymmetric Gravitational Systems. 1. Vacuum Fields

A new framework for analysing the gravitational fields in a stationary, axisymmetric configuration is introduced. The method is used to construct a complete set of field equations for the vacuum region outside a rotating source. These equations are under-determined. Restricting the Weyl tensor to type D produces a set of equations which can be solved, and a range of new techniques are introduced to simplify the problem. Imposing the further condition that the solution is asymptotically flat yields the Kerr solution uniquely. The implications of this result for the no-hair theorem are discussed. The techniques developed here have many other applications, which are described in the conclusions.Comment: 30 pages, no figure

Building Clinical Ethics Capacity, Final Report of the Developing Clinical Ethics Capacity in NSW Partnership project 2014

Clinical ethics support services are an established feature of health care in the US and Canada and are becoming so in the UK, France, Belgium and elsewhere in Europe. They are yet to be widely established in NSW or elsewhere Australia. Clinical ethics support typically involves the provision of expert ethics input into clinical education, policy development and the care of individual patients, particularly where this involves value, rather than clinical, or scientific, conflict. Ethics support is generally provided by an individual consultant, an ethics committee or some combination of the two. In its case consultation function, expert support is intended to clarify the values that are in tension and through promoting open and inclusive discussion, facilitate consensus on the appropriate next steps. Internationally, the guidance and recommendations issued by a support service on a particular case are, in most cases, advisory and not binding. Advocates argue that clinical ethics support is necessary because contemporary clinical work takes place in a technologically, socially and ethically complex environment. The medical encounter has become far more open to scrutiny and is accountable to a more diverse public holding often quite different interests, ideas and values. In a more pluralist society, professional training, professional codes and institutional polices aren’t sufficient to establish ethical practices and procedures or resolve the ethical dilemmas that arise in the care of individual patients. The ethics expertise provided by an ethicist or a panel of ethically trained clinicians is necessary to astutely appraise the values and arguments and generate consensus. Without such expertise the ethicality of practices cannot be assured. Clinical ethics support is intended to promote ethically sound clinical and organisational practices and decision-making and thereby contribute to health organisation and system quality improvement. The under-developed state of clinical ethics support in Australia and NSW prompted NSW Health, in partnership with the Centre of Values Ethics and Law in Medicine and the Centre for Health Law and Governance , to ask: 1. Do changes to the environment in which clinical practice occurs mean there is a need to change the way we deal with ethical dilemmas? 2. Is more formalised support for clinicians, when making difficult and possibly controversial ethical decisions, desirable or warranted? 3. If it is agreed that clinical ethics support should be enhanced, what model is most appropriate for local conditions?funding provided by the Centre for Epidemiology and Evidence, NSW Ministry of Healt

Dilemmas in the Compassionate Supply of Investigational Cancer Drugs

In Australia, patients who want to access medicines that are not yet approved have only two options: to enrol in a clinical trial if they are eligible, or obtain their medicine through ‘compassionate supply’, which is provided at the discretion of the manufacturer. In this article, we explore ethical issues associated with the provision of oncology medicines that are still in development, either prior to regulatory approval or government reimbursement. Keywords: ethics; evidence-based medicine; health services accessibility; oncolog

The Demand for Beef in Indonesia: Implications for Australian Agribusiness

Meat consumption and socio-demographic data from the 1990, 1993 and 1996 SUSENAS Household Food Expenditure and Consumption Surveys were employed to estimate the demand for meats in Indonesia. The focus was on the Provinces of DKI Jakarta and West Java where about one-fourth of the Indonesian population reside. Statistical and econometric procedures were used to aggregate the 16 meat types recorded in the SUSENAS into four Meat Groups. They were then used to estimate the Linear Approximation of the Almost Ideal Demand System (LA/AIDS) model, taking into account zero observations and the restrictions on budget shares. The demand for Meat Group 1 (with the dominant meat, beef) is income-inelastic, whereas for Meat Group 2 (with the dominant meat, commercial and native chicken) it is income-elastic. These two groups comprise nearly 95 per cent of all meat purchases. The estimated own-price elasticity of the beef group is -0.92, while that for the chicken group is -1.09. The cross-price elasticities indicate that all the meat groups are substitute goods, as expected. The results suggest that the current focus of the Indonesian government on strengthening the domestic poultry industry is well placed, as the demand for chicken is likely to respond more quickly to income growth than the demand for beef. Further, consumers seem more likely to adapt their chicken consumption patterns to price changes than they do for beef. However, these differences are relatively minor and there is still a major opportunity for Australian agribusiness firms in the cattle and beef sectors to take advantage of the projected rapid growth in Indonesian beef demand.beef demand, almost ideal demand system, commodity aggregation, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Livestock Production/Industries,

Early Dark Energy Cosmologies

We propose a novel parameterization of the dark energy density. It is particularly well suited to describe a non-negligible contribution of dark energy at early times and contains only three parameters, which are all physically meaningful: the fractional dark energy density today, the equation of state today and the fractional dark energy density at early times. As we parameterize Omega_d(a) directly instead of the equation of state, we can give analytic expressions for the Hubble parameter, the conformal horizon today and at last scattering, the sound horizon at last scattering, the acoustic scale as well as the luminosity distance. For an equation of state today w_0 < -1, our model crosses the cosmological constant boundary. We perform numerical studies to constrain the parameters of our model by using Cosmic Microwave Background, Large Scale Structure and Supernovae Ia data. At 95% confidence, we find that the fractional dark energy density at early times Omega_early < 0.06. This bound tightens considerably to Omega_early < 0.04 when the latest Boomerang data is included. We find that both the gold sample of Riess et. al. and the SNLS data by Astier et. al. when combined with CMB and LSS data mildly prefer w_0 < -1, but are well compatible with a cosmological constant.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; references added, matches published versio

Imposing Observation-Varying Equality Constraints Using Generalised Restricted Least Squares

Linear equality restrictions derived from economic theory are frequently observation-varying. Except in special cases, Restricted Least Squares (RLS) cannot be used to impose such restrictions without either underconstraining or overconstraining the parameter space. We solve the problem by developing a new estimator that collapses to RLS in cases where the restrictions are observation-invariant. We derive some theoretical properties of our so-called Generalised Restricted Least Squares (GRLS) estimator, and conduct a simulation experiment involving the estimation of a constant returns to scale production function. We find that GRLS significantly outperforms RLS in both small and large samples