New test for Down’s raises important ethical questions

For a pregnant woman, easily and safely finding out for certain whether her baby will have Down’s syndrome is an attractive prospect. The point of non-invasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD), as with current tests, is to give information about the health of the foetus. It’s just that this test is risk free and doesn’t need a needle to be inserted into a woman’s uterus. Should we worry about medicine making this test safer? This test is an amazing development. Imagine the heartbreak of having an invasive test to then miscarry as a result. But before we roll this test out across the NHS, we need to address important ethical questions.This article was written by Dr Ainsley Newson during the time of her employment with the University of Bristol, UK (2006-2012). Self-archived in the Sydney eScholarship Repository with permission of Bristol University, Sept 2014

Und alles kam wie es kommen musste:In Amsterdam, Berlin, Budapest, Frankfurt, Riga, and Vienna? Jewish-Gentile intermarriage 1900-1940

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Aesthetics for Visual Arts in Hospitals

The impetus for Aesthetics for Art in Hospitals emerged from my first waiting experiences in hospitals whilst being well, from my first pregnancy check ups ten years ago, accompanying my children to our doctor’s surgery, and later, sitting with my mother in palliative care; I was acutely aware of the lack of thought and organisation behind the display of visual imagery and signage in hospital waiting rooms. As an artist, I wondered who decides what images will be displayed in waiting areas of health clinics and hospitals. This idea gradually developed from 2005 when I attended the Arts Health and Humanities Conference in Newcastle, and realised that patient’s perspectives regarding aesthetics appeared to be overlooked. It was from this point that this inquiry became a research project that led me to the University of Sydney and in particular to The Sydney College of the Arts and the Medical Humanities Unit. This thesis is the outcome of this original inquiry and examines the questions, how can visual arts be received in hospitals? and how does western society represent illness and death? These questions explores how patients, their family members, and carers respond to art in hospitals, while acknowledging their discomfort experienced in hospital settings. This inquiry took the form of a comparative case study between Balmain and Wyong Hospitals, NSW, Australia. The aim of the study was to produce a reflective and empathetic response to elderly patients in waiting rooms as a mode to investigate the potential of evidence based art for hospitals. The intention was to produce a series of digital photographs that reflected the art preference of elderly patients. The outcomes of the study uncovered the patients waiting experience and recorded their levels of discomfort. It established the potential and significance of landscape photography in hospital waiting rooms to create a less threatening environment. The participants selected landscapes as their preferred subject matter for visual arts in hospitals. The study contributes to Australian arts health research by comparing Australian arts health projects to international examples. These comparisons indicate that further research is required to comprehensively understand the hospital waiting experience of Australian patients, and their family members in order to create visual arts that they can appreciate and respond to

Science: a model and a metaphor in the work of four British composers

Many composers of the 20th century have drawn upon science in their endeavours to create music. The development of technologies has been an additional impetus for composers to interface with scientific and technological paradigms. This thesis explores the extent and scope of the application of scientific metaphors and models in the compositional œuvres of four British-born composers of the later half of the 20th century: Richard Barrett, Chris Dench, James Dillon and Brian Ferneyhough. These composers have been commonly regarded as part of a group called the ‘New Complexity’. Much of the discourse about this group has centred on the dense polyphonic textures and formidable rhythms that feature in their work. This study extends the understanding of the composers from the surface characteristics of their projects to the ideas and conceptualisation that lies behind them, with the aim of clarifying essential differences and similarities among the individual composers. The thesis finds that, although all four composers share an interest in science and a belief in its relevance to their compositional projects, specific differences can be identified in the application of scientific metaphors and models. Moreover, the findings indicate that the composers often couple these scientific references with notions of cognition. The linking of these scientific tropes to cognition not only reveals the significance of science in the composers’ respective projects, but also points us to a deeper understanding of what these composers consider music to mean

Evolving eusociality: The effects of manipulation, relatedness and genetic diversity.

Contains fulltext : 141077.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)25 p

Overview of Public Transport Policy Developments in South Africa

The public transport system in South Africa is undergoing significant change and large amounts of capital is being made available in support of a high speed intercity rail service between Johannesburg and Pretoria, the development of a number of Bus Rapid Transit Systems, the recapitalisation of the rail commuter services, the recapitalisation of the minibus taxi industry and the implementation of a contracting regime in the commuter bus industry. This paper will provide a broad overview of the progress made with the public transport policy and strategy implementation in the countryInstitute of Transport and Logistics Studies. Faculty of Economics and Business. The University of Sydne

When does cheating pay? worker reproductive parasitism in honeybees

In all societies, cooperation between members is necessary to allow the society to function smoothly. However, as the interests of individuals rarely overlap completely, all societies contain members that act selfishly at the expense of the greater entity. Thus, policing mechanisms are generally required in order to maintain cohesion within the society. In social insects, conflict between individuals and the society are often reproductive in nature. Kin selection theory predicts that in haplo-diploid, polyandrous species such as honeybees, workers should largely refrain from producing their own offspring, as the workers collectively have higher inclusive fitness if they rear the sons of their mother, the queen. However, opportunities for personal reproduction at the expense of colony-level fitness are often exploited by individual workers, a phenomenon known as worker reproductive parasitism (WRP). This has led to the evolution of worker ‘policing’, in which workers selectively destroy worker-laid eggs that would otherwise be reared at the colony’s expense. In my PhD, I have investigated WRP in both the Western honeybee Apis mellifera, and the Asian hive bee A. cerana. The major theme of my research has been to elucidate the circumstances that afford opportunities for potential reproductive parasites to evade worker policing. This research is significant, as it yields insights into the conflicting selective forces that lead to the formation of societies, the selfish behaviour of the individuals that comprise them and how this behaviour is controlled. These insights are applicable to all social species, including humans