Ten principles relevant to health research among Indigenous Australian populations

As committed Indigenous health researchers in Australia, these researchers aim to provide the answers to key questions relating to health that might enable Indigenous Australians to live the lives that they would choose to live. Working with Indigenous communities towards research that is relevant, effective and culturally respectful Writing in the Journal about Indigenous health in 2011, Sir Michael Marmot suggested that the challenge was to conduct research, and to ultimately apply findings from that research, to enable Indigenous Australians to lead more flourishing lives that they would have reason to value.1 As committed Indigenous health researchers in Australia, we reflect Marmot’s ideal — to provide the answers to key questions relating to health that might enable Indigenous Australians to live the lives that they would choose to live. As a group, we have over 120 collective years’ experience in Indigenous health research. Over this time, particularly in recent years as ethical guidelines have come into play, there have been many examples of research done well. However, as the pool of researchers is constantly replenished, we hold persisting concerns that some emerging researchers may not be well versed in the principles of best practice regarding research among Indigenous Australian populations. Implementing any research methodology among Indigenous Australian groups will work best when the following 10 principles are met. These principles are reflected in the many documents related to working and researching with Indigenous Australians; for example, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) ethical guidelines for research among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.2 In this article, we set out these principles in one short, accessible document.   Download PDF Authors: Lisa M Jamieson, Yin C Paradies, Sandra Eades, Alwin Chong, Louise Maple-Brown, Peter Morris, Ross Bailie, Alan Cass, Kaye Roberts-Thomson and Alex Brown. Image: OpalMirror / flick

Creating space to understand school-based community development within a rural Malawian community

The setting for this research is a rural community in the central region of Malawi. As a qualitative case-study it explores attitudes towards development as well as the processes school-based community development might go through to achieve a permanent increase in adaptability (Taylor, 2005). This adaptability is the ability of local communities to finance and maintain interventions and then adapt to changes in the social and economic environment. This thesis explores opportunities the community may develop to avoid dependence on outside control as they become increasingly self-sustaining. The research questions explore these processes and unpack shifts in community power relations while exploring the impact that faith-based organisations bring to the development process. The research positions the researcher within the lived experience of those researched and uses research instruments developed from qualitative research typologies consistent with Berkowitz, and Srivastava & Hopwood underpinned with a philosophical framework drawn from the ideas of Freire, Chambers and Wells. This research considers seven non-governmental organisations (NGOs), six schools and various authority structures within the research locality to explore their roles and the tensions each brings to the other. Drawing on a constructivist epistemology it explores current thinking and practice regarding school-based community development. Additionally, the thesis looks at teacher professionalism and identity, arguing that for teachers to develop a professional identity a degree of autonomy is needed where self-regulation and opportunity to contribute to training is necessary. This exploration is achieved by gathering data using research instruments that include semi-structured interviews, focus groups discussions and reflexive consideration from journaling and regular reviews with assistant researchers. Reflecting on the empirical data gathered to allow theory to emerge it triangulates research methods to increase reliability. I explore the processes, obstacles and hindrances to establish how self-reliance within school-based community development is approached by NGOs, and use the data to support the argument that NGO activity may be contributing to the erosion of traditional authority structures such as the community chief. It is suggested that the creation of space in which to explore common ground between developmental actors is a first step towards the creation of an empowered community whose ownership of the processes is central to a permanently adaptive development

Contracts with Satan: Relations with 'Spirit Owners' and Apprehensions of the Economy among the Coastal Miskitu of Nicaragua

This article examines the role of the 'spirit owners' or dawanka who among the Miskitu control supplies of fish and game, as well as access to other goods. Whereas the existing literature on relations between similar beings and other Amerindian peoples tends to demonstrate a balanced or generalised reciprocity emphasising social reproduction, those between dawanka and the Miskitu of Kakabila are often mutually explotative and destructive. The articl considers the region's socioeconomic history, changing conceptions of personhood, and materials gleaned from fieldwork, concluding that present-day perceptions of dawanka and other 'mythical' beings frequently represent a fear of the individualistic and selfishly motivated forms of exchange which many see as having come to replace those that are socially reproductive

Gyrotorque transmission system for wind turbines

The GyroTorqueTM transmission system employs gyroscopic torque reaction to transmit power offering an alternative to the gearbox and electrical variable speed drive of a conventional wind turbine. The power transmission is fundamentally oscillatory and is rectified by mechanical elements. A precessing gyro maps speed to torque and, since the wind turbine rotor inertia strongly filters rotor speed variation, output power is insensitive to wind turbulence because it reflects wind turbine rotor speed variability rather than rotor torque variability. The GyroTorqueTM system has only bearing losses and potentially a high efficiency. Mechanical control of the input to the GyroTorqueTM system enables wide range variable speed operation of the wind turbine rotor using a conventional synchronous generator. At present, a 6 gyro system driven by an axial cam and connected to a conventional synchronous generator is the preferred system. Loads and power quality have been addressed with computer simulation models of the GyroTorqueTM system. Outline assessment of system mass and cost gives encouragement that it may be less than for conventional transmission systems

Innovative concepts for aerodynamic control of wind turbine rotors

New systems for the aerodynamic control of wind turbine rotors are being studied in various projects funded by the UK Department of Energy. Results from a current project, ongoing at the National Wind Turbine Test Centre (NWTC) in Scotland are presented. These systems show the promise of much cheaper and more affective active control of horizontal axis wind turbines than has been achieved with full span and partial span pitching systems

Technology transfer potential of an automated water monitoring system

The nature and characteristics of the potential economic need (markets) for a highly integrated water quality monitoring system were investigated. The technological, institutional and marketing factors that would influence the transfer and adoption of an automated system were studied for application to public and private water supply, public and private wastewater treatment and environmental monitoring of rivers and lakes

FLAVERS: a Finite State Verification Technique for Software Systems

Software systems are increasing in size and complexity and, subsequently, are becoming ever more difficult to validate. Finite State Verification (FSV) has been gaining credibility and attention as an alternative to testing and to formal verification approaches based on theorem proving. There has recently been a great deal of excitement about the potential for FSV approaches to prove properties about hardware descriptions but, for the most part, these approaches do not scale adequately to handle the complexity usually found in software. In this paper, we describe an FSV approach that creates a compact and conservative, but imprecise, model of the system being analyzed, and then assists the analyst in adding additional details as guided by previous analysis results. This paper describes this approach and a prototype implementation, called FLAVERS, presents a detailed example, and then provides some experimental results demonstrating scalability

Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Child Oral Health in Three Australian States and Territories

Objectives: To explore the prevalence and severity of Indigenous and non-Indigenous child dental disease in relation to age, sex, residential location and socio-economic status in three Australian states and territories

Financial signal processing: a self calibrating model

Previous work on multifactor term structure models has proposed that the short rate process is a function of some unobserved diffusion process. We consider a model in which the short rate process is a function of a Markov chain which represents the 'state of the world'. This enables us to obtain explicit expressions for the prices of zero-coupon bonds and other securities. Discretizing our model allows the use of signal processing techniques from Hidden Markov Models. This means we can estimate not only the unobserved Markov chain but also the parameters of the model, so the model is self-calibrating. The estimation procedure is tested on a selection of U.S. Treasury bills and bonds.Bonds

Potential markets for a satellite-based mobile communications system

The objective of the study was to define the market needs for improved land mobile communications systems. Within the context of this objective, the following goals were set: (1) characterize the present mobile communications industry; (2) determine the market for an improved system for mobile communications; and (3) define the system requirements as seen from the potential customer's viewpoint. The scope of the study was defined by the following parameters: (1) markets were confined to U.S. and Canada; (2) range of operation generally exceeded 20 miles, but this was not restrictive; (3) the classes of potential users considered included all private sector users, and non-military public sector users; (4) the time span examined was 1975 to 1985; and (5) highly localized users were generally excluded - e.g., taxicabs, and local paging