Modelling six sustainable development transformations in Australia and their accelerators, impediments, enablers, and interlinkages

There is an urgent need to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and recent research has identified six critical transformations. It is important to demonstrate how these transformations could be practically accelerated in a national context and what their combined effects would be. Here we bridge national systems modelling with transformation storylines to provide an analysis of a Six Transformations Pathway for Australia. We explore important policies to accelerate progress, synergies and trade-offs, and conditions that determine policy success. We find that implementing policy packages to accelerate each transformation would boost performance on the SDGs by 2030 (+23% above the baseline). Policymakers can maximize transformation synergies through investments in energy decarbonization, resilience, social protection, and sustainable food systems, while managing trade-offs for income and employment. To overcome resistance to transformations, ambitious policy action will need to be underpinned by technological, social, and political enabling conditions

Play and the exhibition:the problematic fun of showcasing of videogames in informal and formal contexts

Video games are inherently problematic as cultural artefacts, presenting issues of stability, currency, interaction and participation (to name but a few) in their curation. These issues are not necessarily unique to video games in an exhibition context, but their combination with the on-going debate about the status of video games as an art form inspire discussion and debate. Despite the issues presented by video games, there have been countless video game exhibitions in formal and informal contexts, typically focussing upon the historical narrative around games or their position as artefacts with cultural value. It is only in the last few years that artistic and academic study of this problematic field has developed traction, through both an emerging body of literature looking to formalise video games exhibitions practices and practitioner debate. 2019 sees the inaugural Game Arts International Assembly “a think tank for the international games arts ecosystem” bringing together leading curators and makers working at the forefront of public display of interactive arts and playful media.This paper contributes to the developing body of knowledge which analyses video games exhibition methods by formalising and evaluating the methods utilised within informal and formal contexts of video games exhibition from the perspective of reception theory. The study of both large scale exhibition such as those orchestrated by the Victoria and Albert museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum alongside the one night indie game night or play party is a unique contribution to the field, with studies typically focussing on approaches within one given context. Reception theory provides a lens through which the active participative role of the attendee or visitor in meaning making can be evaluated and allows consideration of the connection between selected methods of exhibition and the resulting meaning making opportunities possible for a range of potential audiences

Costs Associated with Low Birth Weight in a Rural Area of Southern Mozambique

BACKGROUND: Low Birth Weight (LBW) is prevalent in low-income countries. Even though the economic evaluation of interventions to reduce this burden is essential to guide health policies, data on costs associated with LBW are scarce. This study aims to estimate the costs to the health system and to the household and the Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) arising from infant deaths associated with LBW in Southern Mozambique. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Costs incurred by the households were collected through exit surveys. Health system costs were gathered from data obtained onsite and from published information. DALYs due to death of LBW babies were based on local estimates of prevalence of LBW (12%), very low birth weight (VLBW) (1%) and of case fatality rates compared to non-LBW weight babies [for LBW (12%) and VLBW (80%)]. Costs associated with LBW excess morbidity were calculated on the incremental number of hospital admissions in LBW babies compared to non-LBW weight babies. Direct and indirect household costs for routine health care were 24.12 US$(CI 95$ (CI 95% 6.33; 10.72). Of the 3,322 live births that occurred in one year in the study area, health system costs associated to LBW (routine health care and excess morbidity) and DALYs were 169,957.61 US$ (CI 95% 144,900.00; 195,500.00) and 2,746.06, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: This first cost evaluation of LBW in a low-income country shows that reducing the prevalence of LBW would translate into important cost savings to the health system and the household. These results are of relevance for similar settings and should serve to promote interventions aimed at improving maternal care

Is it in the Game? Reconsidering play spaces, game definitions, theming and sports videogames

From the very first days of digital gaming, sport-themed videogames have been a constant and ever-popular presence. However, compared with many other genres of games, sports-themed videogames have remained relatively under-research. Using the case of ‘sports videogames’ this paper advocates a critical and located approach to understanding videogames and gameplay. Unlike many existing theorisations of gameplay, such as the ‘magic circle’ (Huizinga 1949 [1938]), which theorise play as a break from ordinary life, this paper argues for a consideration of play as a continuation of ‘the control of the established order’ (Lefebvre (1991 [1974]: 383). It argues that many videogames, and in particular sports videogames, can be understood as ‘themed’ spaces; which share similarities to other themed locations, such as fast-food restaurants and theme parks. These are ‘non-places’ (Augé 1995) themed to provide a sense of individuality, control and escape in a society that increasingly offers none

Italian regional health service costs for diagnosis and 1-year treatment of ADHD in children and adolescents

The main aim of this study was to estimate the costs associated with diagnostic assessment and 1-year therapy in children and adolescents enrolled in 18 ADHD reference centres. Data concerning 1887 children and adolescents from the mandatory ADHD registry database during the 2012-2014 period were analysed. The overall diagnostic and treatment costs per patient amounts to \u20ac574 and \u20ac830, respectively. The ADHD centre, the school as sender, and the time to diagnosis constitute cost drivers. Non-pharmacological therapy resulted as being more expensive for patients concomitantly treated with drugs (\u20ac929) compared to those treated with psychological interventions alone (\u20ac590; p=0.006). This study gives the first and reliable estimate of the costs associated with both diagnosis and treatment of ADHD in Italy. Although costs associated with mental disorders are difficult to estimate, continuing efforts are need to define costs and resources to guarantee appropriate care, also for ADHD

The effect of prior exploration as an instructional strategy in system dynamics learning environments

In complex simulation-based learning environments, participants’ learning and performance may suffer due to demands on their cognitive processing, their struggle to develop adequate mental models, failure to transfer what is learned to subsequent learning or activities, and fear of failure. This study investigates an instructional strategy addressing those four problems, which we call prior exploration strategy. It was implemented in a simulation requiring participants to optimize a developing nation’s per capita income. The prior exploration strategy allows participants to manipulate and see the results of a simulation model in practice mode before they manage a similar simulation in a more final mode. The strategy was assessed in an experiment comparing participants using the prior exploration strategy with participants studying equivalent content in a non-exploratory fashion. The dependent variables were performance within the simulation and improvement of participants’ understanding. The prior exploration strategy significantly improved participants’ performance, as measured by per capita income. It also significantly improved some aspects of the participants’ understanding (e.g., their understanding of the nation’s debt accumulation), but not others (e.g., their understanding of the need to balance the nation’s health, education, and infrastructure investments; those that appear to have complex interrelations).acceptedVersio

The effect of prior exploration as an instructional strategy in system dynamics learning environments

In complex simulation-based learning environments, participants’ learning and performance may suffer due to demands on their cognitive processing, their struggle to develop adequate mental models, failure to transfer what is learned to subsequent learning or activities, and fear of failure. This study investigates an instructional strategy addressing those four problems, which we call prior exploration strategy. It was implemented in a simulation requiring participants to optimize a developing nation’s per capita income. The prior exploration strategy allows participants to manipulate and see the results of a simulation model in practice mode before they manage a similar simulation in a more final mode. The strategy was assessed in an experiment comparing participants using the prior exploration strategy with participants studying equivalent content in a non-exploratory fashion. The dependent variables were performance within the simulation and improvement of participants’ understanding. The prior exploration strategy significantly improved participants’ performance, as measured by per capita income. It also significantly improved some aspects of the participants’ understanding (e.g., their understanding of the nation’s debt accumulation), but not others (e.g., their understanding of the need to balance the nation’s health, education, and infrastructure investments; those that appear to have complex interrelations)

The Effect of Postretrieval Extinction of Nicotine Pavlovian Memories in Rats Trained to Self-Administer Nicotine.

INTRODUCTION: Retrieval (reactivation) of smoking-related memories is a potent trigger of relapse among ex-smokers; manipulation of smoking-related memories is considered as a promising target for therapeutic intervention. Recent studies have shown that postreactivation extinction attenuates drug-related memories and relapse to drug-seeking both in rodents and in human. We investigated the effect of postreactivation extinction in a rat-model of relapse to nicotine-seeking. METHODS: Rats were trained to self-administer nicotine in context A (CxA). Pressing the active lever resulted in the nicotine infusion paired with a cue-light (CS). Nicotine-related Pavlovian memories were then reactivated via presentation of three non-contingent CS. We then extinguished nicotine-related memories in a distinct context (CxB), followed 24hr later by the assessment of renewal of responding in CxA. RESULTS: Postreactivation extinction, applied 1 but not 6hr after reactivation, induced a significant reduction of the rate of responding on renewal as compared to responding during nicotine self-administration, whereas no such effect of CS-Extinction was observed in No-Reactivation group. However, between-groups comparisons of responding during renewal did not show any significant difference. CONCLUSIONS: Current results show that the reactivation of nicotine-related Pavlovian memories may reduced the effect of renewal to exert nicotine-seeking. On the other hand, it appears that this effect is small in size and is not significantly different from CS-Extinction alone