Ecological public health: the 21st century's big idea? An essay by Tim Lang and Geof Rayner

It seems to be the fate of public health as concept, movement, and reality to veer between political sensitivity and the obscure margins. Only occasionally does it gain what policy analysts often refer to as traction. Partly this is because public health tends to be about the big picture of society, and thus threatens vested interests. Also, public health proponents have allowed themselves to be corralled into the narrow policy language of individualism and choice. These notions have extensively framed public discussion about health, as though they are not tempered by other values in the real world. As a result, the public health field suffers from poor articulation, image, and understanding. The connection between evidence, policy, and practice is often hesitant, not helped by the fact that public health can often be a matter of political action—a willingness to risk societal change to create a better fit between human bodies and the conditions in which they live. We have reviewed how public health theory and practice have evolved over the last two or three centuries, and looked at the challenges present and ahead, and we conclude a rethink is in order. In difficult economic times, public health too easily falls down the political agenda. It is judged worthy but not a political priority. Yet there is strong evidence that health is societally determined, that public health is high in the public’s notion of what a good society is, and that health underpins economics

Beyond the Golden Era of public health: charting a path from sanitarianism to ecological public health

The paper considers the long-term trajectory of public health and whether a ‘Golden Era’ in Public Health might be coming to an end. While successful elements of the 20th century policy approach need still to be applied in the developing world, two significant flaws are now apparent within its core thinking. It assumes that continuing economic growth will generate sufficient wealth to pay for the public health infrastructure and improvement needed in the 21st century when, in reality, externalised costs are spiralling. Secondly, there is growing mismatch between ecosystems and human progress. While 20th century development has undeniably improved public health, it has also undermined the capacity to maintain life on a sustainable basis and has generated other more negative health consequences. For these and other reasons a rethink about the role, purpose and direction of public health is needed. While health has to be at the heart of any viable notion of progress the dominant policy path offers new versions of the ‘health follows wealth’ position. The paper posits ecological public health as a radical project to reshape the conditions of existence. Both of these broad paths require different functions and purposes from their institutions, professions and politicians. The paper suggests that eco-systems pressures, including climate change, are already adding to pressure for a change of course

Antimicrobial resistance and biological governance: explanations for policy failure

The paper reviews the state of policy on antimicrobial use and the growth of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). AMR was anticipated at the time of the first use of antibiotics by their originators. For decades, reports and scientific papers have expressed concern about AMR at global and national policy levels, yet the problem, first exposed a half-century ago, worsened. The paper considers the explanations for this policy failure and the state of arguments about ways forward. These include: a deficit of economic incentivisation; complex interventions in behavioural dynamics; joint and separate shifts in medical and animal health regimes; consumerism; belief in technology; and a narrative that in a ‘war on bugs’ nature can be beaten by human ingenuity. The paper suggests that these narratives underplay the biological realities of the human-animal-biosphere being in constant flux, an understanding which requires an ecological public health analysis of AMR policy development and failure. The paper suggests that effective policy change requires simultaneous actions across policy levels. No single solution is possible, since AMR is the result of long-term human intervention which has accelerated certain trends in the evolution of a microbial ecosystem shared by humans, animals and other biological organism inhabiting that ecosystem. Viewing the AMR crisis today through an ecological public health lens has the advantage of reuniting the social-ecological and bio-ecological perspectives which have been separated within public health

Discovery of circularly polarised radio emission from SS 433

We report the discovery of circularly polarised radio emission from the radio-jet X-ray binary SS 433 with the Australia Telescope Compact Array. The flux density spectrum of the circular polarization, clearly detected at four frequencies between 1 - 9 GHz, has a spectral index of (-0.9 +/- 0.1). Multiple components in the source and a lack of very high spatial resolution do not allow a unique determination of the origin of the circular polarization, nor of the spectrum of fractional polarization. However, we argue that the emission is likely to arise in the inner regions of the binary, possibly via propagation-induced conversion of linear to circular polarization, and the fractional circular polarization of these regions may be as high as 10%. Observations such as these have the potential to investigate the composition, whether pairs or baryonic, of the ejecta from X-ray binaries.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Effects of User Age on Smartphone and Tablet Use, Measured with an Eye-Tracker via Fixation Duration, Scan-Path Duration, and Saccades Proportion

The design of user interfaces plays an important role in human computer interaction, especially for smartphones and tablet devices. It is very important to consider the interface design of smartphones for elderly people in order for them to benefit from the variety applications on such devices. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of user age as well as screen size on smartphone/tablet use. We evaluated the usability of smartphone interfaces for three different age groups: elderly age group (60+ years), middle age group (40-59 years) and younger age group (20-39 years). The evaluation is performed using three different screen sizes of smartphone and tablet devices: 3.2", 7", and 10.1" respectively. An eye-tracker device was employed to obtain three metrics: fixation duration, scan-path duration, and saccades amplitude. Two hypothesis were considered. First, elderly users will have both local and global processing difficulties on smartphone/tablet use than other age groups. Second, all user age groups will be influenced by screen sizes; small screen size will have smaller saccades proportion indicating uneasy interface browsing compared to large screen size. All these results have been statistically evaluated using 2-way ANOVA