Sleep, anxiety and challenging behaviour in children with intellectual disability and/or autism spectrum disorder

Children with an intellectual disability (ID) and/or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are known to suffer from significantly more sleep problems, anxiety and challenging behaviour (CB) than typically developing children (TD), yet little is known about the relationship between these factors in the child ID/ASD population. The study aim was to examine these relationships. We hypothesised that there would be significant positive correlations between the three factors and that sleep problems and anxiety would predict a significant amount of the variance in levels of CB. Parental measures of sleep problems, anxiety and CB were completed by 187 parents of children with ID and/or ASD. Significant positive associations were found between the three factors. A hierarchical multiple regression showed that medication, sleep problems and anxiety accounted for 42% of the variance in CB, with a large effect size. These findings suggest that these relationships should be considered during clinical practice, particularly in the case of CB interventions where sleep problems and/or anxiety are also present

Preliminary findings from 'the Australian tax system survey of tax scheme investors'

Between January and July 2002, researchers at the Centre for Tax System Integrity conducted a national survey of 6000 Australian taxpayers involved in tax planning schemes. According to the Australian Taxation Office (Tax Office) scheme investments were largely funded through tax deductions and relatively little private capital was at risk. The Tax Office therefore believed that these schemes exploited loopholes in the tax law and were designed in such a way to avoid tax. The anti-avoidance provisions of Part IVA of the Income Tax Assessment Act were applied to scheme related investments and action was first taken against investors in 1998 to recover the tax owing. Approximately 42 000 investors were issued with amended assessments telling them that they had to pay back taxes, interest and appropriate penalties. Specific issues of interest to the survey researchers were scheme investors’ views of the Tax Office, the Australian tax system and how they believed the Tax Office dealt with the schemes issue. The survey was also designed to identify the possible reasons why taxpayers invested in tax minimisation schemes, why there was such widespread taxpayer resistance against the Tax Office’s debt recovery procedures, and perhaps more importantly, whether the aggressive tax planning market in Australia is supply or demand driven. This report provides a descriptive analysis of some of the more important findings from the survey, followed by a discussion of the key findings and their implications

A user's guide to 'the Australian tax system survey of tax scheme investors'

Between January and July 2002, researchers at the Centre for Tax System Integrity conducted a national survey of 6000 Australian taxpayers involved in tax planning schemes. According to the Australian Taxation Office (Tax Office) scheme investments were largely funded through tax deductions and relatively little private capital was at risk. The Tax Office therefore believed that these schemes exploited loopholes in the tax law and were designed in such a way to avoid tax. The anti-avoidance provisions of Part IVA of the Income Tax Assessment Act were applied to scheme related investments and action was first taken against investors in 1998 to recover the tax owing. Approximately 57000 investors were issued with amended assessments telling them that they had to pay back taxes, interest and appropriate penalties. Specific issues of interest to the survey researchers were scheme investors’ views of the Tax Office, the Australian tax system and how they believed the Tax Office dealt with the schemes issue. The survey was also designed to identify the possible reasons why taxpayers invested in tax minimisation schemes, why there was such widespread taxpayer resistance against the Tax Office’s debt recovery procedures, and perhaps more importantly, whether the aggressive tax planning market in Australia is supply or demand driven. This report provides the reader with a guide to using and analysing the survey findings. More specifically, it discusses the methodology of the survey process and presents the scales used to measure various constructs. Also presented at the back of the report is a codebook that details the frequencies, means and standard deviations to each question of the survey

Audio and video processing for automatic TV advertisement detection

As a partner in the Centre for Digital Video Processing, the Visual Media Processing Group at Dublin City University conducts research and development in the area of digital video management. The current stage of development is demonstrated on our Web-based digital video system called Físchlár [1,2], which provides for efficient recording, analyzing, browsing and viewing of digitally captured television programmes. In order to make the browsing of programme material more efficient, users have requested the option of automatically deleting advertisement breaks. Our initial work on this task focused on locating ad-breaks by detecting patterns of silent black frames which separate individual advertisements and/or complete ad-breaks in most commercial TV stations. However, not all TV stations use silent, black frames to flag ad-breaks. We therefore decided to attempt to detect advertisements using the rate of shot cuts in the digitised TV signal. This paper describes the implementation and performance of both methods of ad-break detection

Google online marketing challenge and research opportunities

The Google Online Marketing Challenge is an ongoing collaboration between Google and academics, to give students experiential learning. The Challenge gives student teams US$200 in AdWords, Google’s flagship advertising product, to develop online marketing campaigns for actual businesses. The end result is an engaging in-class exercise that provides students and professors with an exciting and pedagogically rigorous competition. Results from surveys at the end of the Challenge reveal positive appraisals from the three—students, businesses, and professors—main constituents; general agreement between students and instructors regarding learning outcomes; and a few points of difference between students and instructors. In addition to describing the Challenge and its outcomes, this article reviews the postparticipation questionnaires and subsequent datasets. The questionnaires and results are publicly available, and this article invites educators to mine the datasets, share their results, and offer suggestions for future iterations of the Challenge

Proceedings of the 2013 meeting of the Australasian Section of the American Oil Chemists Society (AAOCS)

The Australasian section of the American Oil Chemists Society (AAOCS) held their biennial meeting in Newcastle, Australia from 6 to 8 November, 2013. Over 150 scientists, researchers and industry representatives gathered for three days of talks and discussions on a variety of lipid related topics. The AAOCS awarded its inaugural AAOCS Award for Scientific Excellence in Lipid Research to Dr Allan Green from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Dr Green is deputy chief of the CSIRO Division of Plant Industry and has been active in lipid research for several decades. His main research focus is on plant breeding and genetic engineering techniques to develop improved oilseeds with enhanced human nutritional value and novel industrial uses. Refer to “AAOCS Award for Scientific Excellence in Lipid Research” for more detail of his contributions