An adequate knowledge of Australia : constituting the knowing citizen in contemporary Australia

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.The Australian citizenship test was introduced by the Howard Government in October 2007 in order to assess whether migrants and refugees seeking the conferral of Australian citizenship had ‘an adequate knowledge of Australia’. This new requirement was enacted in the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Testing) Act 2007 and it was made technical and calculable through a standardised computerised test administered to prospective citizens by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. The requirement that test candidates have an adequate knowledge of Australia placed the onus on migrants to learn about Australian history and a set of ‘core’ values known as ‘Australian values’ that were believed to epitomise the ‘Australian way of life’. In this way, the Howard Government viewed the conferral of Australian citizenship not as a status that bestowed civic rights and responsibilities on new citizens but instead conflated becoming a naturalised Australian citizen with the notion of ‘being Australian’, a form of subjectivity that the new citizen had to learn, embody and live by. This new order of knowledge was a key governmental strategy that required migrants become knowledgeable citizens of Australian culture in order to integrate into the broader Australian community and secure social cohesion. New, too, under this testing regime was the requirement that candidates self-regulate their learning and preparation for the test. Civic education no longer remained part of settlement and language programs for newly arrived migrants as they now had to engage in private study of the contents of the resource booklets, Becoming an Australian Citizen and Australian Citizenship: Our Common Bond. Since the electoral victory of the Rudd-Gillard Governments, the legislative requirement to have an adequate knowledge of Australia that is included in the revised Australian citizenship test has shifted from a mandatory knowledge of Australian values and Australian history to knowledge constituted as the responsibilities and privileges of Australian citizenship that are promoted as part of the taking of the Pledge of Commitment. Yet, while the orders of knowledge required to pass the test have changed, the desire that new citizens ‘perform’ Australianness still remains. Informed by Foucault’s writings on genealogy and governmentality and situated in the field of cultural studies, this thesis explores how the concept of becoming an Australian citizen is produced in and through the assemblage of texts, discourses and institutions engaged in the production of becoming an Australian. Using textual analyses of key government documents on Australian citizenship, political speeches, newspaper reports and migrant interviews, the analysis suggests that the main aim of the Australian citizenship test is to reassure the ‘mainstream’ community that the Australian way of life will prevail in modern Australia. By revealing the shifts, effects and inventiveness of these discourses about what constitutes the ‘true’ Australian identity and what represents the ‘real’ Australian, this study allows us to imagine other forms of subjectivity and alternative versions of national histories and civic values that come together to make up the everyday desires of belonging within the Australian community

The Medication Adherence Report Scale (MARS-5): a measurement tool for eliciting patients’ reports of non-adherence

Aims: This study aimed to develop a questionnaire measure of patients' adherence to medications to elicit patients' report of medication use. The reliability and validity were assessed in patients with hypertension. Additional analyses were performed on other patient groups. Methods: Using a cross‐sectional study design, a 10‐item version of the Medication Adherence Report Scale (MARS)© Professor Rob Horne was piloted in two samples of patients receiving treatment for hypertension (n=50 + 178), asthma (n=100) or diabetes (n=100) at hospital outpatient or community clinics in London and the South‐East of England. Following principal components analysis, five items were retained to form the ‘MARS‐5'©Professor Rob Horne. Evaluation comprised internal reliability, test‐retest reliability, criterion‐related validity (relationship with blood pressure control) and construct validity (relationship with patients' beliefs about medicines). Results: The MARS‐5 demonstrated acceptable reliability (internal and test‐retest) and validity (criterion‐related and construct validity). Internal reliability (Cronbach's α) ranged from 0.67 to 0.89 across all patient groups; test‐retest reliability (Pearson's r) was 0.97 in Hypertension. Criterion‐related validity was established with more adherent hypertension patients showing better blood‐pressure control (χ2=4.24, df=1, p<0.05). Construct validity with beliefs about medicines was demonstrated with higher adherence associated with stronger beliefs in treatment necessity, and lower concerns. Conclusions: The MARS‐5 performed well on several psychometric indicators. It shows promise as an effective self‐report tool for measuring patients' reports of their medication use across a range of health conditions

The dependence of intrinsic alignment of galaxies on wavelength using KiDS and GAMA

The outer regions of galaxies are more susceptible to the tidal interactions that lead to intrinsic alignments of galaxies. The resulting alignment signal may therefore depend on the passband if the colours of galaxies vary spatially. To quantify this, we measured the shapes of galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts from the GAMA survey using deep gri imaging data from the KiloDegree Survey. The performance of the moment-based shape measurement algorithm DEIMOS was assessed using dedicated image simulations, which showed that the ellipticities could be determined with an accuracy better than 1% in all bands. Additional tests for potential systematic errors did not reveal any issues. We measure a significant difference of the alignment signal between the g,r and i-band observations. This difference exceeds the amplitude of the linear alignment model on scales below 2 Mpc/h. Separating the sample into central/satellite and red/blue galaxies, we find that that the difference is dominated by red satellite galaxies.Comment: 16 pages, 13 figures, accepted, to appear in A&

Neuroplastic Changes Following Brain Ischemia and their Contribution to Stroke Recovery: Novel Approaches in Neurorehabilitation

Ischemic damage to the brain triggers substantial reorganization of spared areas and pathways, which is associated with limited, spontaneous restoration of function. A better understanding of this plastic remodeling is crucial to develop more effective strategies for stroke rehabilitation. In this review article, we discuss advances in the comprehension of post-stroke network reorganization in patients and animal models. We first focus on rodent studies that have shed light on the mechanisms underlying neuronal remodeling in the perilesional area and contralesional hemisphere after motor cortex infarcts. Analysis of electrophysiological data has demonstrated brain-wide alterations in functional connectivity in both hemispheres, well beyond the infarcted area. We then illustrate the potential use of non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques to boost recovery. We finally discuss rehabilitative protocols based on robotic devices as a tool to promote endogenous plasticity and functional restoration

A randomized clinical control study on the efficacy of three-dimensional upper limb robotic exoskeleton training in chronic stroke

Background : Although robotics assisted rehabilitation has proven to be effective in stroke rehabilitation, a limited functional improvements in Activities of Daily Life has been also observed after the administration of robotic training. To this aim in this study we compare the efficacy in terms of both clinical and functional outcomes of a robotic training performed with a multi-joint functional exoskeleton in goal-oriented exercises compared to a conventional physical therapy program, equally matched in terms of intensity and time. As a secondary goal of the study, it was assessed the capability of kinesiologic measurements—extracted by the exoskeleton robotic system—of predicting the rehabilitation outcomes using a set of robotic biomarkers collected at the baseline. Methods : A parallel-group randomized clinical trial was conducted within a group of 26 chronic post-stroke patients. Patients were randomly assigned to two groups receiving robotic or manual therapy. The primary outcome was the change in score on the upper extremity section of the Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA) scale. As secondary outcome a specifically designed bimanual functional scale, Bimanual Activity Test (BAT), was used for upper limb functional evaluation. Two robotic performance indices were extracted with the purpose of monitoring the recovery process and investigating the interrelationship between pre-treatment robotic biomarkers and post-treatment clinical improvement in the robotic group. Results : A significant clinical and functional improvements in both groups (p &lt; 0.01) was reported. More in detail a significantly higher improvement of the robotic group was observed in the proximal portion of the FMA (p &lt; 0.05) and in the reduction of time needed for accomplishing the tasks of the BAT (p &lt; 0.01). The multilinear-regression analysis pointed out a significant correlation between robotic biomarkers at the baseline and change in FMA score (R2 = 0.91, p &lt; 0.05), suggesting their potential ability of predicting clinical outcomes. Conclusion : Exoskeleton-based robotic upper limb treatment might lead to better functional outcomes, if compared to manual physical therapy. The extracted robotic performance could represent predictive indices of the recovery of the upper limb. These results are promising for their potential exploitation in implementing personalized robotic therapy. Clinical Trial Registration clinicaltrials.gov, NCT03319992 Unique Protocol ID: RH-UL-LEXOS-10. Registered 20.10.2017, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT0331999

A preliminary study of the subsoil of the Roman Amphitheatre of Catania (Sicily) through integrated geophysical and stratigraphic data

To reconstruct the stratigraphy of the subsoil and the geometry of the lava deposits beneath the Roman Amphitheatre located within the city of Catania (Sicily) we performed non-invasive geophysical prospections (seismic and electric tomography). In urbanized contexts this kind of surveys represents the best support to following more specific studies aimed at the conservation of monuments. Seismic tomography allowed us to reconstruct seismostratigraphic sections by imaging the distribution of seismic waves velocity in the internal ambulatory wall and its substrate and outside the Amphitheatre. Electric tomography allowed us to image the resistivity distribution outside the Amphitheatre and to locate anomalies related to the possible presence of cavities, water table and waste waters. The stratigraphic data obtained from mechanical drillings carried out in the study area were used to calibrate the information obtained from the geophysical surveys

Motor skills in children with primary headache: A pilot case-control study

Background: Headache is the most common painful manifestation in the developmental age, often accompanied by severe disability such as scholastic absenteeism, low quality of academic performance and compromised emotional functioning. The aim of the study is to evaluate praxic abilities in a population of children without aural migraine. Materials and methods: The test population consists of 10 subjects without migraine without aura (MwA), (8 Males) (mean age 8.40, SD ± 1.17) and 11 healthy children (7 Males) (mean age 8.27; SD ± 1.10; p = 0.800). All subjects underwent evaluation of motor coordination skills through the Battery for Children Movement Assessment (M-ABC). Results: The two groups (10 MwA vs 11 Controls) were similar for age (8.40 ± 1.17 vs 8.27 ± 1.10; p = 0.800), sex (p = 0.730), and BMI (p = 0.204). The migraine subjects show an average worse performance than the Movement ABC; specifically, migraineurs show significantly higher total score values (31.00 ± 23.65 vs 4.72 ± 2.61; p = 0.001), manual dexterity (12.10 ± 11.20 vs 2.04 ± 2.65; p = 0.009) and balance (14.85 ± 10.08 vs. 1.04 ± 1.05; p &lt;0.001). The mean percentile of migraine performance is significantly reduced compared to controls (9.00 ± 3.82 vs 51.00 ± 24.34, p &lt;0.001) (Table 1). Conclusion: Migraine can alter many cognitive and executive functions such as motor skills in developmental age

Eating and feeding disorders in pediatric age

Eating and feeding disorders are common in pediatric age and may be important to discover and recover the early symptoms in order to optimize the treatment and management