Economic evaluation of the Darwin Festival

The aim of this study is to pilot a methodology for measuring the economic impact of festivals and similar events in the Northern Territory. The study builds on a previous study Assessing the Value and Contribution of the Darwin Festival 2004

Places Lived: An Ego-Histoiriste and Jurisographer Discuss Living with Law in Sydney

The following essays, by John Docker and myself, were delivered on the final panel of the ‘Lives Lived with Law’ symposium, held at the Melbourne Law School in December 2014. The panel was called ‘Places Lived’, and our purpose was to reflect together on how intellectual traditions are inherited and inhabited in a place. The essays were written and presented as they are published here, commencing with this short introduction. We wanted to stage in public a long-standing personal discussion about what it might mean to write about Australia, in many forms and styles of address and how this involves, for us, self-fashioning a life through writing in Australia, and as Australians. In both instances, as will become evident in my essay, I have a debt to pay to John

Modelo pedagógico-terapéutica para atención a la educación especial en Guatemala

Throughout history, the population with special educational needs has faced difficulties in social, cultural and educational inclusion. Guatemala is not the exception for being a developing country and with great deficiencies in the attention of the educational system. Currently, there is a lack of pedagogy and didactics that solve this problem for teachers who work with students with special educational needs, just as educational centers lack training in relation to special education together with therapeutic programs that provide results for people. In this investigation, the validity of the pedagogical-therapeutic model "Cetumismo" against the "Aula Recurso" program of the Ministry of Education of Guatemala was analyzed. This was done in a selected sample of teachers who work in educational centers, after answering a standardized Questionnaire to assess the quality of Special Education in educational centers through the statistical process t student according to the DSM model, where the means were compared in the two moments of evaluation, obtaining the variance. The results obtained establish that with a significance level of 0.05, the null hypothesis is rejected and the alternative hypothesis is accepted; reason why the comparison of the means in the statistical process carried out determines that, between both programs, the program that solves the special educational needs in relation to special education is the Therapeutic Pedagogical Model “Cetumismo”. The teachers evaluated despite belonging to a school that uses the “Aula Recurso” program imposed by the Guatemalan Ministry of Education, consider that a pedagogical-therapeutic model such as “Cetumismo” would bring greater benefits in the special education needs of people with disability, with specific curricular adaptations for each student, constant and updated training for teachers, a differentiated curriculum, an inclusive educational process after the scope of the competencies proposed per case.La población con necesidades educativas especiales ha enfrentado a lo largo de la historia dificultades en la inclusión social, cultural y también educativa. Guatemala no es la excepción por ser un país en vías de desarrollo y con grandes deficiencias de atención en el sistema educativo. Actualmente se carece de una pedagogía y didáctica que solucione esta problemática para los docentes que trabajan con alumnos con necesidades educativas especiales, como a la vez los centros educativos carecen de un adiestramiento en relación con educación especial junto a programas terapéuticos que brinden resultados para las personas con discapacidad. En esta investigación se analizó la validez del modelo pedagógico-terapéutico “Cetumismo” contra el programa “Aula Recurso” del Ministerio de Educación de Guatemala. Esto se efectuó en una muestra seleccionada de docentes que laboran en centros educativos, luego de responder un Cuestionario estandarizado para valorar la calidad de la Educación Especial en los centros educativos por medio del proceso estadístico prueba t de student, en donde se compararon las medias obtenidas en los dos momentos de evaluación, obteniendo la varianza.  Los resultados obtenidos establecen que con un nivel de significancia de 0.05 se rechaza la hipótesis nula y se acepta la hipótesis alternativa; por lo que la comparación de las medias en el proceso estadístico realizado determina que, entre ambos programas, el programa que resuelve las necesidades educativas especiales en relación con la educación especial es Modelo Pedagógico Terapéutico “Cetumismo”. Los docentes evaluados a pesar de pertenecer a una escuela que utiliza el programa “Aula Recurso” impuesto por el Ministerio de Educación de Guatemala, consideran que un modelo pedagógico-terapéutico como “Cetumismo” traería mayores beneficios en las necesidades de educación especial de personas con discapacidad, con adecuaciones curriculares específicas para cada alumno, capacitaciones constantes y actualizadas para docentes, pensum diferenciado, proceso educativo inclusivo luego del alcance de las competencias propuestas por caso

'To live and die [for] Dixie': Irish civilians and the Confederate States of America

Around 20,000 Irishmen served in the Confederate army in the Civil War. As a result, they left behind, in various Southern towns and cities, large numbers of friends, family, and community leaders. As with native-born Confederates, Irish civilian support was crucial to Irish participation in the Confederate military effort. Also, Irish civilians served in various supporting roles: in factories and hospitals, on railroads and diplomatic missions, and as boosters for the cause. They also, however, suffered in bombardments, sieges, and the blockade. Usually poorer than their native neighbours, they could not afford to become 'refugees' and move away from the centres of conflict. This essay, based on research from manuscript collections, contemporary newspapers, British Consular records, and Federal military records, will examine the role of Irish civilians in the Confederacy, and assess the role this activity had on their integration into Southern communities. It will also look at Irish civilians in the defeat of the Confederacy, particularly when they came under Union occupation. Initial research shows that Irish civilians were not as upset as other whites in the South about Union victory. They welcomed a return to normalcy, and often 'collaborated' with Union authorities. Also, Irish desertion rates in the Confederate army were particularly high, and I will attempt to gauge whether Irish civilians played a role in this. All of the research in this paper will thus be put in the context of the Drew Gilpin Faust/Gary Gallagher debate on the influence of the Confederate homefront on military performance. By studying the Irish civilian experience one can assess how strong the Confederate national experiment was. Was it a nation without a nationalism

Informed Conditioning on Clinical Covariates Increases Power in Case-Control Association Studies

Genetic case-control association studies often include data on clinical covariates, such as body mass index (BMI), smoking status, or age, that may modify the underlying genetic risk of case or control samples. For example, in type 2 diabetes, odds ratios for established variants estimated from low–BMI cases are larger than those estimated from high–BMI cases. An unanswered question is how to use this information to maximize statistical power in case-control studies that ascertain individuals on the basis of phenotype (case-control ascertainment) or phenotype and clinical covariates (case-control-covariate ascertainment). While current approaches improve power in studies with random ascertainment, they often lose power under case-control ascertainment and fail to capture available power increases under case-control-covariate ascertainment. We show that an informed conditioning approach, based on the liability threshold model with parameters informed by external epidemiological information, fully accounts for disease prevalence and non-random ascertainment of phenotype as well as covariates and provides a substantial increase in power while maintaining a properly controlled false-positive rate. Our method outperforms standard case-control association tests with or without covariates, tests of gene x covariate interaction, and previously proposed tests for dealing with covariates in ascertained data, with especially large improvements in the case of case-control-covariate ascertainment. We investigate empirical case-control studies of type 2 diabetes, prostate cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, age-related macular degeneration, and end-stage kidney disease over a total of 89,726 samples. In these datasets, informed conditioning outperforms logistic regression for 115 of the 157 known associated variants investigated (P-value = 1×10−9). The improvement varied across diseases with a 16% median increase in χ2 test statistics and a commensurate increase in power. This suggests that applying our method to existing and future association studies of these diseases may identify novel disease loci

Rare coding variants in ten genes confer substantial risk for schizophrenia

Rare coding variation has historically provided the most direct connections between gene function and disease pathogenesis. By meta-analysing the whole exomes of 24,248 schizophrenia cases and 97,322 controls, we implicate ultra-rare coding variants (URVs) in 10 genes as conferring substantial risk for schizophrenia (odds ratios of 3-50, PPeer reviewe

Oral abstracts 3: RA Treatment and outcomesO13. Validation of jadas in all subtypes of juvenile idiopathic arthritis in a clinical setting

Background: Juvenile Arthritis Disease Activity Score (JADAS) is a 4 variable composite disease activity (DA) score for JIA (including active 10, 27 or 71 joint count (AJC), physician global (PGA), parent/child global (PGE) and ESR). The validity of JADAS for all ILAR subtypes in the routine clinical setting is unknown. We investigated the construct validity of JADAS in the clinical setting in all subtypes of JIA through application to a prospective inception cohort of UK children presenting with new onset inflammatory arthritis. Methods: JADAS 10, 27 and 71 were determined for all children in the Childhood Arthritis Prospective Study (CAPS) with complete data available at baseline. Correlation of JADAS 10, 27 and 71 with single DA markers was determined for all subtypes. All correlations were calculated using Spearman's rank statistic. Results: 262/1238 visits had sufficient data for calculation of JADAS (1028 (83%) AJC, 744 (60%) PGA, 843 (68%) PGE and 459 (37%) ESR). Median age at disease onset was 6.0 years (IQR 2.6-10.4) and 64% were female. Correlation between JADAS 10, 27 and 71 approached 1 for all subtypes. Median JADAS 71 was 5.3 (IQR 2.2-10.1) with a significant difference between median JADAS scores between subtypes (p < 0.01). Correlation of JADAS 71 with each single marker of DA was moderate to high in the total cohort (see Table 1). Overall, correlation with AJC, PGA and PGE was moderate to high and correlation with ESR, limited JC, parental pain and CHAQ was low to moderate in the individual subtypes. Correlation coefficients in the extended oligoarticular, rheumatoid factor negative and enthesitis related subtypes were interpreted with caution in view of low numbers. Conclusions: This study adds to the body of evidence supporting the construct validity of JADAS. JADAS correlates with other measures of DA in all ILAR subtypes in the routine clinical setting. Given the high frequency of missing ESR data, it would be useful to assess the validity of JADAS without inclusion of the ESR. Disclosure statement: All authors have declared no conflicts of interest. Table 1Spearman's correlation between JADAS 71 and single markers DA by ILAR subtype ILAR Subtype Systemic onset JIA Persistent oligo JIA Extended oligo JIA Rheumatoid factor neg JIA Rheumatoid factor pos JIA Enthesitis related JIA Psoriatic JIA Undifferentiated JIA Unknown subtype Total cohort Number of children 23 111 12 57 7 9 19 7 17 262 AJC 0.54 0.67 0.53 0.75 0.53 0.34 0.59 0.81 0.37 0.59 PGA 0.63 0.69 0.25 0.73 0.14 0.05 0.50 0.83 0.56 0.64 PGE 0.51 0.68 0.83 0.61 0.41 0.69 0.71 0.9 0.48 0.61 ESR 0.28 0.31 0.35 0.4 0.6 0.85 0.43 0.7 0.5 0.53 Limited 71 JC 0.29 0.51 0.23 0.37 0.14 -0.12 0.4 0.81 0.45 0.41 Parental pain 0.23 0.62 0.03 0.57 0.41 0.69 0.7 0.79 0.42 0.53 Childhood health assessment questionnaire 0.25 0.57 -0.07 0.36 -0.47 0.84 0.37 0.8 0.66 0.4