The Blindside Flick: Race and Rugby League

The issue of race was virtually beyond the touchline in Australian rugby league before the 1960s. It was a white man’s game. Institutionalised racism meant that few Aboriginal men played rugby league at the highest professional level. It is now presumed that race and racism has no place in a game where these questions have been historically ‘out of bounds’. The dearth of critical writing in rugby league history indicates that racism in the sport has been subject to a form of social blindness and deemed unworthy of study. Rugby league’s white exclusionist past and the denial of racism in the present era indicate habits of mind which may be described in league argot as the ‘blindside flick’

Open-cut coal mining in Australia's Hunter Valley: Sustainability and the industry's economic, ecological and social implications

This article questions the sustainability of open-cut coal mining in the Hunter Valley region of Australia. The issue of sustainability is examined in relation to the economic, ecological and social implications of the Hunter Valley’s open-cut coal mining industry. The article demonstrates that critical social and ecological ramifications have been overshadowed by the open-cut coal mining industry’s importance to the economy of the Hunter region and of New South Wales

The Indonesian Coup and Mass Killings, 1965-1967: A Reconceptualization of the Infuence of the Cold War

This article explores how the local situation – politically, economically and socially – contributed to the occurrence in Indonesia of two crucial and interlinked Cold War events, the Indonesian coup and massacre. The article explains how an Indonesian army general, Suharto, was able to utilise Cold War narratives to instigate anti-communist fervour, which resulted in the massacre of more than half a million alleged communists.  Suharto was able to gradually usurp power and eventually replace Sukarno as the president of Indonesia.  It is argued that the convergence of domestic factors was critical to these events, which can be understood as a localised Cold War

Population-Based Trachoma Mapping in Six Evaluation Units of Papua New Guinea.

PURPOSE: We sought to determine the prevalence of trachomatous inflammation - follicular (TF) in children aged 1-9 years, and trachomatous trichiasis (TT) in those aged ≥15 years, in suspected trachoma-endemic areas of Papua New Guinea (PNG). METHODS: We carried out six population-based prevalence surveys using the protocol developed as part of the Global Trachoma Mapping Project. RESULTS: A total of 19,013 individuals were sampled for inclusion, with 15,641 (82.3%) consenting to participate. Four evaluation units had prevalences of TF in children ≥10%, above which threshold the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends mass drug administration (MDA) of azithromycin for at least three years; Western Province (South Fly/Daru) 11.2% (95% confidence interval, CI, 6.9-17.0%), Southern Highlands (East) 12.2% (95% CI 9.6-15.0%), Southern Highlands (West) 11.7% (95% CI 8.5-15.3%), and West New Britain 11.4% (95% CI 8.7-13.9%). TF prevalence was 5.0-9.9% in Madang (9.4%, 95% CI 6.1-13.0%) and National Capital District (6.0%. 95% CI 3.2-9.1%) where consideration of a single round of MDA is warranted. Cases of TT were not found outside West New Britain, in which four cases were seen, generating an estimated population-level prevalence of TT in adults of 0.10% (95% CI 0.00-0.40%) for West New Britain, below the WHO elimination threshold of 0.2% of those aged ≥15 years. CONCLUSION: Trachoma is a public health issue in PNG. However, other than in West New Britain, there are few data to support the idea that trachoma is a cause of blindness in PNG. Further research is needed to understand the stimulus for the active trachoma phenotype in these populations

Highlights from the 2019 International Myopia Summit on 'controversies in myopia'.

Myopia is an emerging public health issue with potentially significant economic and social impact, especially in East Asia. However, many uncertainties about myopia and its clinical management remain. The International Myopia Summit workgroup was convened by the Singapore Eye Research Institute, the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific and the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness in 2019. The aim of this workgroup was to summarise available evidence, identify gaps or unmet needs and provide consensus on future directions for clinical research in myopia. In this review, among the many 'controversies in myopia' discussed, we highlight three main areas of consensus. First, development of interventions for the prevention of axial elongation and pathologic myopia is needed, which may require a multifaceted approach targeting the Bruch's membrane, choroid and/or sclera. Second, clinical myopia management requires co-operation between optometrists and ophthalmologists to provide patients with holistic care and a tailored approach that balances risks and benefits of treatment by using optical and pharmacological interventions. Third, current diagnostic technologies to detect myopic complications may be improved through collaboration between clinicians, researchers and industry. There is an unmet need to develop new imaging modalities for both structural and functional analyses and to establish normative databases for myopic eyes. In conclusion, the workgroup's call to action advocated for a paradigm shift towards a collaborative approach in the holistic clinical management of myopia

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

The Mediterranean diet: Effects on proteins that mediate fatty acid metabolism in the colon

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/88101/1/j.1753-4887.2011.00439.x.pd

The monopolisation of the Australian funeral industry?

There is one service everyone requires once per lifetime – a service provided by the funeral industry. Death as a saleable commodity has become as important on the bourse as it was in the hearse. However, no definitive study of the Australian funeral industry has been conducted to date. Writing two decades ago about the funeral industry in New South Wales, Duncan Waterson and Sandra Tweedie (1985:133) concluded that it was imperative to examine the funeral industry’s economic structure and ‘its provision of goods and services’ within the wider context of Australian society. Waterson and Tweedie delineated the historical contours of the funeral industry in New South Wales until the 1980s. More recently, Pat Jalland (2002) devoted a chapter of Australian Ways of Death to funerals and undertakers, but her historical study ended its exploration in the 1920s. This article seeks to tentatively fill the gap by providing a composite picture of the Australian funeral industry and the changes it has experienced from the early 1980s until the present

The fibro years : Roy Masters and Wests Rugby League Football Club,1978-1981

Roy Masters has described rugby league as a 'stoic, grim and often painful struggle interspersed with rare moments of exhilaration.' This description is an accurate portrayal of Masters' first professional coaching job with the Western Suburbs Rugby League Football Club (RLFC) between 1978 and 1981. This period of Wests' history might also be described as their 'Fibro Years'. During these years, Wests played most games with a ferocity and determination usually only seen in grand finals, yet they never succeeded in winning a premiership