Improving the early life outcomes of Indigenous children: implementing early childhood development at the local level

One of Australia’s greatest challenges is the elimination of the gap between the developmental outcomes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous children in the early years of life. This paper reviews existing research and presents strategies to improve early childhood development among Indigenous Australians. Aims of this paper The aims of this paper are to: outline what we know about the size of the gap in early childhood development (ECD) between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and the social determinants of ECD establish why localised ECD is an effective means to close the gap in the early childhood years describe the conditions under which localised ECD is more likely to be successful and how to put them into practice describe 3 broad strategies to promote physical, social-emotional and language-cognitive domains of development and reduce developmental risk. To review and synthesise the broad and diverse knowledge relevant to localised ECD, several sources were consulted including peer-reviewed scientific literature, policy documents and reports from governments, international agencies and civil society groups

10-04 "Buyer Power in U.S. Hog Markets: A Critical Review of the Literature"

The U.S. Departments of Justice and Agriculture have focused attention recently on rising levels of corporate concentration in agricultural markets and the challenges that may pose to U.S. anti-trust enforcement and agricultural policies. Both agencies have raised particular concerns about dominant firms’ exercise of buyer power over farmers, especially in livestock markets controlled by a shrinking number of large multinational meat packers. U.S. hog markets have undergone rapid concentration in the last 25 years, with the top four packers now controlling two-thirds of the market and Smithfield Foods, the industry leader, commanding 31 percent. Despite the rapid structural changes in the U.S. hog industry, the literature on buyer power in hog markets is quite limited. In this paper, we review the available literature, which has been generally presented as demonstrating that buyer power is not a significant problem. We find that interpretation to be poorly justified. Researchers have found well-documented evidence of market power on both the seller and the buyer sides of the market, though the studies have been less clear on the specific causes. Mirroring prevailing practices in Justice Department merger reviews, researchers have often discounted buyer power using methodologies more appropriate to seller power, then dismissed findings of seller power by pointing to offsetting “efficiency gains” from concentration. Yet such apparent efficiency gains in seller markets can include reductions in the prices concentrated firms pay for animals through their exercise of buyer power. We also raise the question of how buyer power in concentrated retail markets may compound the exercise of buyer power by packers. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for further research, including the refinement of methodologies for the study of buyer power, and an assessment of proposed new USDA regulations on packer buying practices.

Ambivalence in Teaching Publicly Controversial Science

p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Times New Roman ; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } A recent national study of secondary evolution education suggested that a “cautious 60%” of high school teachers undermine their students’ ability to understand evolution, by teaching in a variety of ways that avoid controversy. In a study I conducted with middle and high school teachers in Colorado, I found a similar pattern with respect to the topic of climate change. A “cautious 86%” of middle and high school teachers hold beliefs about teaching climate change that would undermine their students’ ability to arrive at a clear understanding of the science behind the phenomenon. Paradoxically, most of this “cautious 86%” indicate that on a personal level, they believe the scientific consensus that recent climate change is primarily caused by human activity. I will explore some of the root causes of ambivalence in teaching important but controversial science topics in the United States, including an inappropriate application of the ethical standard to “be fair to both sides” to science education, and a lack of emphasis on these topics within state science education standards. Together, we will discuss implications of these findings for teaching these topics at the college level. I will point participants to resources for assessing the knowledge base and attitudes of incoming college students on these topics, such as the Bio-CLASS, the Concept Inventory of Natural Selection and the Greenhouse Effect Concept Inventory

Inspiring Rich Clicker Question Discussions

In the past decade, guidelines have been developed for the effective implementation of clicker technology in large undergraduate classes. Observational studies have found that student engagement in clicker discussion is quite variable, however. We are interested in understanding instructional factors that might influence the richness of peer discussion of clicker questions. We recorded, transcribed and characterized conversations between four small groups of students engaged in clicker discussions during 17 class periods of an upper level developmental biology course. Of 102 recorded and transcribed conversations, 10% included a discussion of answers only with no reasoning, 14% employed a solely transmissionist approach, where one student told other students their answer and reasoning, and 76% of conversations employed a constructivist approach, where at least 2 students exchanged answers and reasoning about those answers. We are currently engaged in a finer-grained characterization of each conversation for the number of claims and the number and depth of reasoning statements, that could impact student learning. Finally, we plan to further correlate the nature of the discussions to whether students select the correct answer after their discussion, as well as measure the effects of different instructional conditions (for example, whether the instructor prompted students to share their reasoning) on the conversations. The results of these studies could provide practical insights for instructors interested in inspiring their students to engage in richer discussions of clicker questions

Agent-Based Modelling and Disease: Demonstrating the Role of Human Remains in Epidemic Outbreaks

Hemorrhagic fever viruses present a high risk to humans, given their associated high fatality rates, extensive care requirements, and few relevant vaccines. One of the most famous such viruses is the Ebola virus, which first came to international attention during an outbreak in 1976. Another is Marburg virus, cases of which are being reported in Equatorial Guinea at the time of writing. Researchers and governments all over the world share a goal in seeking effective ways to reduce or prevent the influence or spreading of such diseases. This study introduces a prototype agent-based model to explore the epidemic infectious progression of a simulated fever virus. More specifically, this work seeks to recreate the role of human remains in the progression of such an epidemic, and to help gauge the influence of different environmental conditions on this dynamic

Injury & Poisoning: Mortality Among Residents of the Illawarra Health Area

Causes of death due to injury and poisonings in 1994-1998 among people resident in the Illawarra Health Area, and each ofits Local Government Areas (LGAs), as recorded by the Australian Bureau of Statistics\u27 Death Registrations, are reported in this issue of The Illawarra Population Health Profiler

Calibration in a Data Sparse Environment: How Many Cases Did We Miss?

Reported case numbers in the COVID-19 pandemic are assumed in many countries to have underestimated the true prevalence of the disease. Deficits in reporting may have been particularly great in countries with limited testing capability and restrictive testing policies. Simultaneously, some models have been accused of over-reporting the scale of the pandemic. At a time when modeling consortia around the world are turning to the lessons learnt from pandemic modelling, we present an example of simulating testing as well as the spread of disease. In particular, we factor in the amount and nature of testing that was carried out in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (March - September 2020), calibrating our spatial Agent Based Model (ABM) model to the reported case numbers in Zimbabwe