Central Northern Adelaide Health Service: A Social Health Atlas

Copyright © 2005 State of South AustraliaThe purpose of this Social Health Atlas is to provide the basis for the region to understand and determine priorities for regional health planning, and for key partners in other government or non-goverment agencies to utilise the data to inform their planning processes

Power grids vulnerability: a complex network approach

Power grids exhibit patterns of reaction to outages similar to complex networks. Blackout sequences follow power laws, as complex systems operating near a critical point. Here, the tolerance of electric power grids to both accidental and malicious outages is analyzed in the framework of complex network theory. In particular, the quantity known as efficiency is modified by introducing a new concept of distance between nodes. As a result, a new parameter called net-ability is proposed to evaluate the performance of power grids. A comparison between efficiency and net-ability is provided by estimating the vulnerability of sample networks, in terms of both the metrics.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures. Figure 2 and table II modified. Typos corrected. Version accepted for publication in Chao

Relationship of Fungal Vaginitis Therapy to Prior Antibiotic Exposure

Objective: To address the putative association of antibiotic use and subsequent yeast vaginitis in a population of non-pregnant women. Methods: Three hundred and sixteen women who received medical care in rural family medicine clinics enrolled in this study. Participants were pre-menopausal and non-pregnant and were followed until they used a course of antifungal therapy for vaginitis, became pregnant or moved from the catchment area. At entry subjects were free of vaginitis symptoms and had taken no antibiotics for 30 days. Patients were followed by repeated review of clinic records, hospital records and telephone or personal interviews. Data collection included documentation of episodes of antifungal treatment for vulvovaginal candidiasis and confirmed antibiotic treatment or credible history of antibiotic use prior to the use of antifungal therapy. Physician-reported uses of antibiotic and antifungal as well as patient-reported uses of these were recorded. Results: There were four reported cases of antifungal therapy following within a month of antibiotic use, in contrast to 484 antibiotic uses not followed by antifungal use. If time of observation was extended to 6 months from antibiotic use, there were 13 uses of antifungal therapy after antibiotics and 475 uses of antibiotics not followed by antifungal therapy. Conclusion: Our results cast doubt on the association of antibiotics as a putative cause of yeast vulvovaginitis

Weed Control for Reduced Tillage Systems

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The Kinetic Activation-Relaxation Technique: A Powerful Off-lattice On-the-fly Kinetic Monte Carlo Algorithm

Many materials science phenomena, such as growth and self-organisation, are dominated by activated diffusion processes and occur on timescales that are well beyond the reach of standard-molecular dynamics simulations. Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) schemes make it possible to overcome this limitation and achieve experimental timescales. However, most KMC approaches proceed by discretizing the problem in space in order to identify, from the outset, a fixed set of barriers that are used throughout the simulations, limiting the range of problems that can be addressed. Here, we propose a more flexible approach -- the kinetic activation-relaxation technique (k-ART) -- which lifts these constraints. Our method is based on an off-lattice, self-learning, on-the-fly identification and evaluation of activation barriers using ART and a topological description of events. The validity and power of the method are demonstrated through the study of vacancy diffusion in crystalline silicon.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

EXISTENCE OF UNIQUE LIMITING PROBABILITY VECTORS IN STOCHASTIC PROCESSES WITH MULTIPLE TRANSITION MATRICES

Concepts associated with stochastic process containing multiple transition matricies are discussed. It is proved that under certain conditions, a process with m transition matrices has m unique limiting probability vectors. This result extends the notion of discrete Markov processes to problems with intrayear and interyear dynamics. An example using a large DP model illustrates the usefulness of the concepts developed to applied problems.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Inequality in South Australia: Key determinants of wellbeing, Volume 1: The Evidence

Copyright © 2003 State of South AustraliaThe purpose of this report, Inequality in South Australia - key determinants of wellbeing, Volume 1: The Evidence, is to deepen our understanding of the impact that social, physical and economic factors have on health and wellbeing, and to describe the distribution of some of these factors across the South Australian population. A number of indicators have been selected to describe different aspects of wellbeing of the population at the present time, and, by using them, to highlight the extent of some of the existing social and economic inequalities. The report contains detailed findings for each of the indicators. It is intended that a companion volume be published at a later date, containing examples of projects and programs that have been successful in addressing social inequality

Atlas of Avoidable Hospitalisations in Australia: ambulatory care-sensitive conditions

Avoidable hospitalisations represent a range of conditions for which hospitalisation should be able to be avoided because the disease or condition has been prevented from occurring, or because individuals have had access to timely and effective primary care. This report addresses the level and extent of regional variation in Australia in a sub-set of avoidable hospitalisations, namely those arising from ambulatory care-sensitive (ACS) conditions. ACS conditions are certain conditions for which hospitalisation is considered potentially avoidable through preventive care and early disease management, usually delivered in a primary care setting, for example by a general medical practitioner, or at a community health centre

MULTI-PARENTAL MATING DESIGN ANALYSIS: MODEL EVALUATION AND APPLICATION IN SPRING WHEAT

Conventional quantitative genetics studies have mainly focused on bi-parental mating systems. However, genetic potential of selected individuals within a segregating population may be limited due to only two parents being used for each cross. Multiple-parental mating systems have been proposed that involve three or four diverse parents. This provides a higher potential of combining desirable genes. Due to complexity of the data structure of multi-parental mating systems, analysis of variance (ANOVA) methods are not applicable in analysis. The objective of this study is to validate and apply a mixed linear model approach, minimum norm quadratic unbiased estimation (MINQUE), to analyze a widely used additive-dominance (AD) genetic model. Various simulations were conducted to validate the use of this approach. Twelve different spring wheat genotypes were used to develop populations in the study. Phenotypic data containing parents and their F2 (second filial generation) on preharvest sprouting (PHS) resistance in spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) developed by multi-parental crosses were used as a demonstration. The simulation study showed that a modified AD model can be used to estimate variance components in an unbiased manner within this complex data structure. Actual data analysis revealed that both additive and dominance effects were responsible for PHS resistance. Several parents associated with desirable additive effects for PHS were identified. In addition, some crosses with desirable heterozygous dominance effects were also identified, which can be used for hybrid development. Results should help breeders to obtain useful genetic information by using the methods suggested in this study