Australia and Its Regions - People and Place

This discussion focuses on how regions are created in political, geographical and in social terms within Australia and whether regions matter and if regional governance is important. In almost every indicator regional communities are worse off than their city counterparts: domestic violence is higher; suicide rates are higher; computer literacy and usage is lower; unemployment rates are higher; and, incomes are lower. • Today 66 per cent of people live in cities, a further 20 per cent in inner regional areas. • At the beginning of last century 37 per cent of the population lived in cities and 54 per cent lived outside cities

Seagulls, Phrenology and Trust: Principled Practice in community building

Professor Drew presents some thoughts on the importance of relationship building in a world where the community has lost confidence in authoritative institutions. Since World War 2 there has been demonstrable erosion of community trust and confidence in authoritative decision makers of all kinds. This has been called the decline of deference; a decline in willingness to defer entirely to decision makers in matters that impact on community members. This has led to what may be called the cult of consultation. The consequence of the cult has been a sense of betrayal felt by many communities when their outcomes do not match their aspirations. It is argued that in a climate of cynicism and mistrust, what we do does not matter nearly as much as how we do it. Using the work of the Community Arts Network WA as an example he will explore community building as trust building based on some simple and intuitively appealing principles that ought to guide the way we do business

Colouring-in, a Distraction Technique? A study Looking at The Effects of Colouring-in for Adults in Reducing Negative Affect and State Rumination

Background Adult colouring books have become increasingly popular in recent years, with suggestions that they can reduce stress and increase calmness, but there is currently a limited evidence base in this area. This study explored whether colouring-in is more effective than a neutral distraction activity and rumination in improving affect and state rumination after experiencing a laboratory stressor that involved solving difficult anagrams. Method The study was a mixed (3 x 3) experimental design, with condition as the between-subjects factor (distraction, colouring-in, rumination) and time as the repeated measures factor (baseline, post-stressor, post-manipulation). An undergraduate student sample (N = 90) was randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions. Participants completed the State Rumination Questionnaire (SRQ) and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) to measure the impact of the stressor and the effects of each experimental condition. Results After experiencing the stressor, participants showed a significant increase in negative affect (p <. 001) and state rumination (p <. 001), and a significant reduction in positive affect (p <. 001). Participants in the colouring-in and distraction condition experienced a significantly greater improvement in negative affect than participants in the rumination condition (p = .001). Furthermore, the difference between the effects of the rumination versus the distraction conditions on negative affect was significantly more pronounced for people reporting higher levels of depressive symptoms (p <. 001). No significant difference was found between colouring-in and distraction conditions on state rumination (p = .52), positive affect (p = .92) or negative affect (p = .23). There was no significant difference between conditions change in state rumination (p = .81). Conclusion Findings from this study suggest colouring-in is as good at alleviating negative affect as a traditional distraction intervention. Results replicate previous findings that distraction activities are associated with mood improvement compared to rumination. However, distraction activities used in this study failed to change state rumination across conditions. Further research is required to understand the mechanisms underlying colouring-in which are associated with effects on mood

Sustainable communities and health inequalities

The goal of the Sustainable Communities Network is to seek effective interventions that address health inequalities in rural, remote and Indigenous communities through sustainable development and supporting sustainable communities. The Network is part of the Health Inequalities Research Collaboration, now known as the Health Inequalities Ministerial Advisory Committee, a Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing initiative. Its goal is to enhance Australia’s knowledge of the causes of and effective responses to health inequalities, and to promote vigorously the application of this evidence to reduce health inequalities in Australia. This Committee was established in response to the increasing concern for health inequalities and research about the social determinants of health. Much of this energy has come from the UK, with the Black Report (Black, Morris, Smith & Townsend, 1980), followed by the Independent Inquiry into Inequalities in Health Report (Acheson 1998). The World Health Organisation also commissioned a report collating the social determinants of health ((Marmot & Wilkinson, 1999; Wilkinson & Marmot, 1998). In Australia Turrell, Oldenburg, McGuffog and Dent (1999) have reviewed Australian research on socioeconomic determinants of health. The research from these and other reviews and studies shows that people who experience social and economic disadvantages tend to be sicker and die younger than others do. These health inequalities are compounded by complex biological, behavioural, cultural and geographic factors. The Sustainable Communities Network captures the breadth of these factors by adopting the concept of sustainability as a way of addressing health inequalities

TaxonGrab: Extracting Taxonomic Names From Text

Identification of organism names in biological texts is essential for the management of archival resources to facilitate comparative biological investigation. Because organism nomenclature conforms closely to prescribed rules, automated techniques may be useful for identifying organism names from existing documents, and may also support the completion of comprehensive indices of taxonomic names; such comprehensive lists are not yet available. Using a combination of contextual rules and a language lexicon, we have developed a set of simple computational techniques for extracting taxonomic names from biological text. Our proposed method consistently performs at greater than 96% Precision and 94% Recall, and at a much higher speed than manual extraction techniques. An implementation of the described method is available as a Web based tool written in PHP. Additionally, the PHP source code is available from SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/taxongrab, and the project website is http://research.amnh.org/informatics/taxlit/apps/

Principles of practice in mental health assessment with Aboriginal Australians

In this chapter, concepts and history of assessment and testing in the context of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social and emotional wellbeing and mental health are discussed. Importantly, recently revised diagnostic guidelines and the National Practice Standards for the Mental Health Workforce 20131 and their appropriateness for meeting the distinctive needs of Aboriginal people are reviewed. Various assessment tools and measures that have been validated or proved appropriate for use with particular Aboriginal populations, i.e. youth, women and older people, are described. We conclude that practitioners need to be critically reflective in their role in assessment, and position themselves to play an important transformative role in conducting assessment. This extends to acknowledging and enacting culturally responsive principles, procedures and practices to ensure that Aboriginal people have access to effective, culturally secure mental health care