Conceptions of geographic information systems (GIS) held by senior geography students in Queensland

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) represent one of the major contributions to spatial analysis and planning of the new technologies. While teachers and others have viewed its potential contribution to geographical education as considerable, it has not been known with any certainty whether they present a valuable educational tool that aids geographical education. The value of GIS to geographical education is viewed as depending on a geographical education being, in itself, valuable. Within this context, synergetic focus groups are employed to explore the conceptions of GIS held by 109 secondary school students studying Senior Geography in metropolitan and regional Queensland, Australia. A phenomenographic approach is adopted to identify the six qualitatively different ways, or conceptions, in which the participating students experience GIS as: 1. Maps and a source of maps in geography. 2. Mapping in geography: a way to use and create maps. 3. A professional mapping tool: exceeding the needs of senior geography. 4. Frustrating geography: irksome and presenting many challenges to the student-user. 5. Relevant geography: within and beyond the school experience. 6. A better geography: offering a superior curriculum, and broader geographical education, when contrasted to a senior geography that omits its use. The structural and referential elements of each of these conceptions are elucidated within corresponding Categories of Description. The qualitatively different ways in which the conceptions may be experienced are illustrated through an Outcome Space, comprising a metaphoric island landscape. This structural framework reveals that for the Senior Geography students who participated in this investigation, the extent to which GIS may augment the curriculum is influenced by the nature of students' individual understandings of how GIS manages spatial data. This research project is a response to repeated calls in the literature for teachers of geography themselves to become researchers and for a better understanding of GIS within geography education. It reviews the salient literature with respect to geography and geography education generally, and GIS within geographical education specifically. The investigation has confirmed that qualitatively different conceptions of GIS exist amongst students and that these are not consistently aligned with assumptions about its use and benefits as presented by current literature. The findings of the study contribute to knowledge of the potential educational outcomes associated with the use of GIS in geography education and decisions related to current and potential geography curricula. It provides guidance for future curriculum development involving GIS and argues for additional research to inform educators and the spatial sciences industry about the actual and perceived role of GIS within geography education

Fuel transfer system permits rapid coupling

Docking and fuel transfer system provides an efficient method for transferring fuel from a tanker to another vehicle. With this system, no triggering operation is required prior to docking, the support system can be rigidized by simply locking the rams of shock absorbers, and no separate fuel line coupling action is required

Generalised Space-time and Gauge Transformations

We consider the generalised space-time introduced by the author in 2003 in the context of the non-linear realisation of the semi-direct product of E11 and its first fundamental representation. For all the fields we propose gauge transformations which are compatible with the underlying E11 structure. A crucial role is played by the generalised vielbein that the generalised space-time possess. We work out the explicit form of the gauge transformations, at low levels, in four, five and eleven dimensions.Comment: 33 page

Smoking cessation activities by general practitioners and practice nurses

OBJECTIVES—To assess general practitioners' and practice nurses' self reported behaviour, attitudes, and knowledge in relation to smoking cessation.
DESIGN AND SETTING—Two postal surveys of random national samples of 303 GPs (survey 1) and 459 practice nurses (survey 2) covering England and Wales; effective response rates were 75% and 96%, respectively.
RESULTS—Survey 1 found that 96% of GPs accepted that intervening against smoking was part of their role and almost all (99%) said that they recorded smoking status when patients registered; 57% reported that they routinely updated their records on smoking status, 50% said they advised smokers to stop during most or all consultations, and 76% said they advised smokers to cut down if they cannot stop. A large majority (83%) said they either recommended or prescribed nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). Although most GPs (86%) thought that NRTs were effective, only a minority thought they were worth the cost (47%) or should be on National Health Service (NHS) prescription (32%). There was little evidence that previous training in smoking cessation was associated with more activity, more positive attitudes, or greater knowledge. Survey 2 found that almost all practice nurses (99%) agreed that intervening against smoking was part of their role and 95% said they advised patients to stop at least occasionally; 71% said they advised smokers to stop at most or all consultations. A majority (74%) said that they recommended NRT to their patients. As with the GPs most practice nurses thought that nicotine replacement was effective (79%), but fewer (42%) thought the cost was justified, and only about half (53%) thought it should be available on NHS prescription. Nurses who said they had been trained in smoking cessation engaged in more activity relating to smoking cessation, had more positive attitudes, and were more knowledgeable.
CONCLUSION—GPs and practice nurses accepted that intervening with smoking was an important part of their role and a large majority reported that they intervened at least with some smokers. This represents a promising baseline from which to proceed in terms of implementation of the new smoking cessation guidelines, but it is hoped that improvements can be made in terms of the frequency of updating records and intervening, and acceptance of the cost-effectiveness of NRT as a life preserving intervention.


Keywords: cessation interventions; general practitioners; practice nurse

Representations of G+++ and the role of space-time

We consider the decomposition of the adjoint and fundamental representations of very extended Kac-Moody algebras G+++ with respect to their regular A type subalgebra which, in the corresponding non-linear realisation, is associated with gravity. We find that for many very extended algebras almost all the A type representations that occur in the decomposition of the fundamental representations also occur in the adjoint representation of G+++. In particular, for E8+++, this applies to all its fundamental representations. However, there are some important examples, such as An+++, where this is not true and indeed the adjoint representation contains no generator that can be identified with a space-time translation. We comment on the significance of these results for how space-time can occur in the non-linear realisation based on G+++. Finally we show that there is a correspondence between the A representations that occur in the fundamental representation associated with the very extended node and the adjoint representation of G+++ which is consistent with the interpretation of the former as charges associated with brane solutions.Comment: 45 pages, 9 figures, 9 tables, te

Macroeconomic risk factors in Australian commercial real estate, listed property trust and property sector stock returns: A comparative analysis using GARCH-M

This paper employs a Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity in Mean (GARCH-M) model to consider the effect of macroeconomic factors on Australian property returns over the period 1985 to 2002 Three direct (office, retail and industrial property) and two indirect (listed property trust and property stock) returns are included in the analysis, along with market returns, short, medium and long-term interest rates, expected and unexpected inflation, construction activity and industrial employment and production. In general, the macroeconomic factors examined are found to be significant risk factors in Australian commercial property returns. However, the results also indicate that forecast accuracy in these models is higher for direct office, listed property trust and property stock returns and that the persistence of volatility shocks varies across the different markets, with volatility half lives of between five and seven months for direct retail and industrial property, two and three months for direct office property and less than two months with both forms of indirect property investment

Mining Missing Hyperlinks from Human Navigation Traces: A Case Study of Wikipedia

Hyperlinks are an essential feature of the World Wide Web. They are especially important for online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia: an article can often only be understood in the context of related articles, and hyperlinks make it easy to explore this context. But important links are often missing, and several methods have been proposed to alleviate this problem by learning a linking model based on the structure of the existing links. Here we propose a novel approach to identifying missing links in Wikipedia. We build on the fact that the ultimate purpose of Wikipedia links is to aid navigation. Rather than merely suggesting new links that are in tune with the structure of existing links, our method finds missing links that would immediately enhance Wikipedia's navigability. We leverage data sets of navigation paths collected through a Wikipedia-based human-computation game in which users must find a short path from a start to a target article by only clicking links encountered along the way. We harness human navigational traces to identify a set of candidates for missing links and then rank these candidates. Experiments show that our procedure identifies missing links of high quality

GP prescribing of nicotine replacement and bupropion to aid smoking cessation in England and Wales

Aims Prescribing nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) or bupropion for smoking cessation is of considerable importance to public health but little is known about prescribing practices. This paper examines general practitioners' (GPs') prescribing patterns in Britain where these drugs are reimbursed. The results have implications for other health-care systems considering introducing reimbursement.Design, participants and setting Postal survey conducted in 2002 of a random sample of 1088 GPs in England and Wales, of whom 642 (59%) responded.Measures Number of requests GPs reported having received from patients for NRT and bupropion over the past month, the number of prescriptions they reported issuing and ratings of attitudes to these medications.Findings GPs reported receiving an average of 4.3 requests for NRT and 1.9 for bupropion in the previous month. They reported issuing 3.5 prescriptions for NRT and 1.2 for bupropion. Almost all GPs accepted that NRT (95%) and bupropion (97%) should be reimbursable on National Health Service (NHS) prescription. However, a significant minority of those who received requests for prescriptions did not issue any (81% for NRT and 26% for bupropion). This was related to whether they thought these products should be available on NHS prescription for both NRT and bupropion (OR = 0.66, P < 0.05), which in turn was related to beliefs about whether smokers should have to pay for treatment themselves, the cost-effectiveness of NRT/bupropion and the low priority they would give NRT/bupropion in the drug budget. For bupropion, concern about side-effects independently predicted not prescribing [odds ratio (OR) = 1.46, P < 0.03].Conclusion In the British health-care system, which has a well-established system for technology assessment and professionally endorsed guidelines, a significant minority of GPs decline all patient requests for stop-smoking medicines