AMS dates and phytolith data from mud wasp and bird nests at Carpenter's Gap, Northern Australia

This paper reports a small suite of AMS radiocarbon dates and phytolith data derived from mud nests collected at the Carpenter's Gap 1 rockshelter in the southwest Kimberley, a site which has a 40,000 year old human occupation sequence. Examination of mud nests was undertaken to supplement the palaeoecological database of the site and help develop a better understanding of issues of phytolith movement, taphonomy and site deposit formation processes in relation to the accumulation of phytoliths in archaeological rockshelter deposits; however, logistical constraints and the novelty of the approach meant this research was designed to be exploratory in nature, rather than exhaustive

Editorial: How will a Biden presidency influence reproductive and women’s health and development on the African continent?

No Abstract

Editorial: Addressing Gaps in Maternal, Neonatal, and Child Health for Achieving SDG 2030 in West Africa

No Abstract

Relationship-Focused Intervention for Substance-Involved Women and Their Children

Children of substance-using mothers experience both internal and external barriers to optimal development and mental health. High quality caregiving is protective for these children; however, substance-using women may experience difficulty providing consistent and sensitive care due to past experiences and current life stressors. The first objective of this study was to provide a profile of substance-using women to contextualize their presenting concerns, risk factors, and treatment needs. The second and third objectives of this study were to assess improvements in parent functioning, that is the cognitive component of parenting, as well as parent behaviour as a result of an integrated relationship-focused intervention and to explore the association between parent functioning and behaviour and child behaviour problems. The final objective of this study was to explore the concordance of changes in mothers and childrens relationship skills and to identify patterns of change in the mother-child relationship. Case examples are provided to help contextualize the changes in relationship skills over time and with treatment. Mother-child dyads were recruited from Breaking the Cycle, a program for mothers with substance use problems and their young children. Sample A comprised 136 mothers and 122 children for whom intake questionnaires were available. Of these women and children, 59 mother-child dyads completed a free-play observation approximately one year after intake (Sample B) and 27 dyads completed a second free-play observation two years after intake (Sample C). The profile of substance-using women in this sample was characterized by high levels of relationship risks, mental health difficulties, and other life stressors. Longer periods of enrolment in the program were associated with higher levels of parent functioning and more emotionally available parenting behaviours two years after intake. Better parent functioning, in turn, was associated with fewer child behaviour problems two years after intake. Contrary to predictions, parent behaviour was not predictive of child behaviour problems. Several patterns of change within the mother-child relationship were observed. Overall, mothers and children were significantly more likely to be concordant in their changes in relationship skills (i.e., both increasing or both decreasing) than discordant indicating that mothers and children develop and change together. Limitations and clinical implications are discussed

Embedding academic skills development in course delivery

Innovative approaches need to be adopted to meet the challenge of ensuring that graduates at the end of their course of study are not only strong in their discipline, but also have the required generic skills to give them a good standing within their selected professions. This paper reports on a study that examined how well academic skills are embedded into the undergraduate Environmental Science curriculum at Deakin University in Australia. It reports on students’ self evaluation of their essay writing skills, and a case study that involves a discipline specialist working with an academic skills advisor to enhance student generic skills. It discusses the patchy nature of current implementation of programs for generic skill education

Producing a GIS based multiple criteria analysis tool for regional sustainability assessment: the problem of weighting

Decision support tools will be useful in guiding regions to sustainability. These need to be simple but effective at identifying, for regional managers, areas most in need of initiatives to progress sustainability. Multiple criteria analysis (MCA) is often used as a decision support tool for a wide range of applications. This method allows many criteria to be considered at one time. It does this by giving a ranking of possible options based on how closely each option meets the criteria. Thus, it is suited to the assessment of regional sustainability as it can consider a number of indicators simultaneously and demonstrates how sustainability can vary at small scales across the region. Coupling MCA with GIS to produce maps, allows this analysis to become visual giving the manager a picture of sustainability across the region. To do this each indicator is standardised to a common scale so that it can be compared to other indicators. A weighting is then applied to each indicator to calculate weighted summation for each area in the region. This paper argues that this is the critical step in developing a useful decision support tool. A study being conducted in south west Victoria demonstrates that the weights chosen can have a dramatic impact on the results of the sustainability assessment. It is therefore imperative that careful consideration be given to determining indicator weights in a way that is objective and fully considers the impact of that indicator on regional sustainability.<br /