Orientation to mission: Assessing the perceptions of effectiveness of an in-house orientation program focussed on mission, vision and values within a large-scale, not-for-profit, private hospital

St John of God Healthcare (SJGHC), as a large Catholic, not-for-profit, healthcare provider, has explicit statements which reflect the Mission, Vision and Values of the organisation. New employees receive a comprehensive induction and orientation program, part of which includes ensuring new recruits are conversant with the Mission, Vision and Values. This program is deemed as formation, rather than training, to reflect a desire for the input to have a direct and personal impact on new employees, to increase their motivation and engagement with the ideals of the organisation. This research attempted to measure the perceived efficacy of the Mission component of Orientation at one particular SJGHC site, the hospital located in Subiaco, Western Australia, through both participant surveys and interviews. The results of 120 surveys were analysed and 16 semi-structured interviews were used to validate and probe information obtained from the participant surveys. Importantly, the research demonstrated that the session was perceived as valuable by participants and showed an increase in knowledge. This research has led to further ongoing research to determine if the perceptions of patients and their visitors align with staff perceptions of the way Mission is integrated in to the life of this hospital. The latter work will provide an important adjunct to this project since the work of hospital staff is ultimately not measured by individual staff members’ knowledge, attitude or intentions, but by how their work impacts on the patients and their visitors

Changing practices to better support first-year Health Science students

Entrance to university in Australia, in a post-Bradley era, is diversified and massified, with targets and programs to increase the participation of equity groups that were previously not represented. The changed cohorts have major implications for universities, in meeting the students’ needs, and as a moral and ethical response to enrolment. At the University of Notre Dame Australia (UNDA) Fremantle campus, the 2011 cohort entering Health Sciences, experienced a high rate of failure and withdrawal from university. They entered university at a time when UNDA had begun to implement first year experience (FYE) pedagogical approaches but these had not been entirely implemented in all the Schools across campus. This research has tracked the performance of first year Health Science students from 2011 -2015.This paper discusses the School and Institutional-wide response that was initiated to address the issue of student attrition and how this led to a significant changes to the FYE transition approaches within the School to support students better at the start of their courses and student success with a reduction in failure rate and withdrawal rate of First Year students

The use of social media in undergraduate curriculum

Social media (SoMe) and mobile technology (MT) have been topics of interest to many educators, health professionals and policy developers over the last decade. This year, two editorials in leading nursing journals have described the potential for SoMe in nursing (Jones & Hayter 2013; Ferguson 2013). A recent Australian journal publication further supports the potential of SoMe and in particular Twitter (Wilson, R, et al. 2013). Increasingly, nurses and other health professionals and the general public are actively utilizing new technology to improve health and enhance practice (Barton, A 2012)]. To-date, there is limited evidence on the use of information technology and SoMe within the undergraduate nursing curriculum. Today’s students have a variety of technologies at their fingertips, from mobile devices to cloud technologies. It is imperative that higher education facilities look at innovative teaching methods to engage students in this digital era and enhance their learning. For the nursing and midwifery profession to innovate and remain current it must connect and collaborate with health care practitioners that exist outside of the traditional classroom. SoMe allows for this method of learning

Eradication of two incursions of the Red Imported Fire Ant in Queensland, Australia

Of the five known incursions of the highly invasive Red Imported Fire Ant in Australia, two are regarded to have been eradicated. As treatment efforts continue, and the programme evolves and new tools become available, eradication is still considered to be feasible for the remaining Red Imported Fire Ant populations with long-term commitment and support

Seabed protection systems to prevent scour from high-speed ships

This document reviews the scour protection systems required around port structures where these are to be used for the berthing of vessels powered by water jet systems. The development of a scour protection system at Poole Harbour in Dorset has been documented and reviewed and a series of laboratory investigations were then undertaken. This has enabled a greater understanding of the scour mechanisms from the water jet propulsion systems of High Speed Ships. This work has shown that current design guidance on scour protection is not appropriate for use on berths used by High Speed Ships, that failure of these systems can occur rapidly and catastrophically, and secondary effects from water jets may promote the failure of quay walls. The scour protection system should comprise two individual elements, a filter layer and an armour layer. It has been found that systems involving individual isolated armour units are inappropriate and prone to failure and that shaped linked armour blocks need to be used. The loads on the armour layer were also found to be oscillatory and the materials used for both the armour and filter layers need to be designed for cyclic fatigue loading and fretting. Water jets are also capable of reducing the strength of permeable, seabed strata.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

A practical approach to the sensitivity analysis for kinetic Monte Carlo simulation of heterogeneous catalysis

Lattice kinetic Monte Carlo simulations have become a vital tool for predictive quality atomistic understanding of complex surface chemical reaction kinetics over a wide range of reaction conditions. In order to expand their practical value in terms of giving guidelines for the atomic level design of catalytic systems, it is very desirable to readily evaluate a sensitivity analysis for a given model. The result of such a sensitivity analysis quantitatively expresses the dependency of the turnover frequency, being the main output variable, on the rate constants entering the model. In the past, the application of sensitivity analysis, such as degree of rate control, has been hampered by its exuberant computational effort required to accurately sample numerical derivatives of a property that is obtained from a stochastic simulation method. In this study, we present an efficient and robust three-stage approach that is capable of reliably evaluating the sensitivity measures for stiff microkinetic models as we demonstrate using the CO oxidation on RuO2(110) as a prototypical reaction. In the first step, we utilize the Fisher information matrix for filtering out elementary processes which only yield negligible sensitivity. Then we employ an estimator based on the linear response theory for calculating the sensitivity measure for non- critical conditions which covers the majority of cases. Finally, we adapt a method for sampling coupled finite differences for evaluating the sensitivity measure for lattice based models. This allows for an efficient evaluation even in critical regions near a second order phase transition that are hitherto difficult to control. The combined approach leads to significant computational savings over straightforward numerical derivatives and should aid in accelerating the nano-scale design of heterogeneous catalysts

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) : galaxy close pairs, mergers and the future fate of stellar mass

ASGR acknowledges STFC and SUPA funding that were used to do this work. GAMA is funded by the STFC (UK), the ARC (Australia), the AAO and the participating institutions.We use a highly complete subset of the Galaxy And Mass Assembly II (GAMA-II) redshift sample to fully describe the stellar mass dependence of close pairs and mergers between 10(8) and 10(12)M(circle dot). Using the analytic form of this fit we investigate the total stellar mass accreting on to more massive galaxies across all mass ratios. Depending on how conservatively we select our robust merging systems, the fraction of mass merging on to more massive companions is 2.0-5.6 per cent. Using the GAMA-II data we see no significant evidence for a change in the close pair fraction between redshift z = 0.05 and 0.2. However, we find a systematically higher fraction of galaxies in similar mass close pairs compared to published results over a similar redshift baseline. Using a compendium of data and the function gamma(M) = A(1 + z)(m) to predict the major close pair fraction, we find fitting parameters of A = 0.021 +/- 0.001 and m = 1.53 +/- 0.08, which represents a higher low-redshift normalization and shallower power-law slope than recent literature values. We find that the relative importance of in situ star formation versus galaxy merging is inversely correlated, with star formation dominating the addition of stellar material below M* and merger accretion events dominating beyond M*. We find mergers have a measurable impact on the whole extent of the galaxy stellar mass function (GSMF), manifest as a deepening of the 'dip' in the GSMF over the next similar to Gyr and an increase in M* by as much as 0.01-0.05 dex.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Multi Agent System for Machine Learning Under Uncertainty in Cyber Physical Manufacturing System

Recent advancement in predictive machine learning has led to its application in various use cases in manufacturing. Most research focused on maximising predictive accuracy without addressing the uncertainty associated with it. While accuracy is important, focusing primarily on it poses an overfitting danger, exposing manufacturers to risk, ultimately hindering the adoption of these techniques. In this paper, we determine the sources of uncertainty in machine learning and establish the success criteria of a machine learning system to function well under uncertainty in a cyber-physical manufacturing system (CPMS) scenario. Then, we propose a multi-agent system architecture which leverages probabilistic machine learning as a means of achieving such criteria. We propose possible scenarios for which our architecture is useful and discuss future work. Experimentally, we implement Bayesian Neural Networks for multi-tasks classification on a public dataset for the real-time condition monitoring of a hydraulic system and demonstrate the usefulness of the system by evaluating the probability of a prediction being accurate given its uncertainty. We deploy these models using our proposed agent-based framework and integrate web visualisation to demonstrate its real-time feasibility

ChEBI: a database and ontology for chemical entities of biological interest

Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) is a freely available dictionary of molecular entities focused on ‘small’ chemical compounds. The molecular entities in question are either natural products or synthetic products used to intervene in the processes of living organisms. Genome-encoded macromolecules (nucleic acids, proteins and peptides derived from proteins by cleavage) are not as a rule included in ChEBI. In addition to molecular entities, ChEBI contains groups (parts of molecular entities) and classes of entities. ChEBI includes an ontological classification, whereby the relationships between molecular entities or classes of entities and their parents and/or children are specified. ChEBI is available online at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/chebi

How Russian Rap on YouTube Advances Alternative Political Deliberation: Hegemony, Counter- Hegemony, and Emerging Resistant Publics

The late 2010s have seen the unprecedented rise of Russian rap culture on YouTube. This study delves into the unexplored area of the relationship between rap music, politics, and the Internet audience in Russia. It focuses on the analysis of the production of the most popular rap videos—their narratives, power relations, and socio-political themes, as well as the prevailing patterns in the discussion on socio-political issues by the YouTube audience. The study brings three contributions that identify the power relations in the Russian society that manifest in the field of rap music. First, the Russian-speaking users demonstrate a high level of criticality toward the pro-Kremlin rap music on YouTube and challenge the lies of propaganda rap. Second, pro-government rappers follow the Soviet authoritarian ethos and praise belonging to the collective of elites, while liberal ones adhere to the individual responsibility. Third, we demonstrate the prevalence of patriarchal gender values, including macho politics and unquestioned sexism, which are representative of gender politics in the country. This article proves the importance of socio-political commentary on YouTube and points to the rap videos as the popular hubs for the socio-political debates. Users flow to rap videos and utilize the comment section to have their say on the political context and power relations rather than the music, to engage with others, and to contribute to the emerging collective debate. The comment sections on these rap videos have a unique value for the Russian users who exploit them as the negotiation space in the void of other platforms for social dialogue in Russia