Terms of Engagement: Consensus or Control in Remote Australian Resource Management?

Community based natural resource management (NRM) has seen a shift in the discourse from participation to engagement, reflecting a focus on increasingly active citizen involvement in management and action. This paper considers this shift in relation to two contrasting theoretical perspectives. The first is deliberative democracy, drawing on Habermas, which emphasises the importance of discussing and rationalising values and actions. The second is governmentality, or ‘governing through community’ which draws on Foucault, emphasising neo-liberal management styles and ‘self-help’. In considering the empirical relevance of these theoretical perspectives, this paper draws on a case study of public engagement in NRM in the Lake Eyre Basin, a remote, inland region of Australia. This research yielded a practical set of “factors for success” for public engagement in remote areas. The findings support the view that, especially in remote regions, public engagement in NRM reflects contrasting goals. We make two conclusions. First, that these contrasting objectives emphasise the tension between deliberative and neo-liberal conceptualisations of engagement; and second, the evidence for neo-liberal interpretations of engagement are stronger than for deliberative interpretations of engagement in the case study region.participation, decentralisation, governmentality, deliberation

Persistent organic pollutant burden, experimental POP exposure and tissue properties affect metabolic profiles of blubber from grey seal pups

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are toxic, ubiquitous, resist breakdown, bioaccumulate in living tissue and biomagnify in food webs. POPs can also alter energy balance in humans and wildlife. Marine mammals experience high POP concentrations, but consequences for their tissue metabolic characteristics are unknown. We used blubber explants from wild, grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) pups to examine impacts of intrinsic tissue POP burden and acute experimental POP exposure on adipose metabolic characteristics. Glucose use, lactate production and lipolytic rate differed between matched inner and outer blubber explants from the same individuals and between feeding and natural fasting. Glucose use decreased with blubber dioxin-like PCBs (DL-PCB) and increased with acute experimental POP exposure. Lactate production increased with DL-PCBs during feeding, but decreased with DL-PCBs during fasting. Lipolytic rate increased with blubber dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and its metabolites (DDX) in fasting animals, but declined with DDX when animals were feeding. Our data show that POP burdens are high enough in seal pups to alter adipose function early in life, when fat deposition and mobilisation are vital. Such POP-induced alterations to adipose glucose use may significantly alter energy balance regulation in marine top predators with the potential for long term impacts on fitness and survival

Effective Teaching and Learning in Interprofessional Education in Child Welfare

This article reports on research regarding interprofessional education (IPE) in child welfare conducted in 2009 and 2010. Pre service nursing, social worker and teacher education candidates participated in a workshop that “exposed” (Charles, Bainbridge & Gilbert, 2010) students to IPE in child welfare. This paper addresses a gap in literature in IPE in child welfare.   Literature in IPE precedes a description of the workshop followed by an explanation of the integrated expert presentation, case study, modeling, reflection and small and large group processes. Results of the survey administered to workshop attendees are presented. Likert scaled questions indicate a high degree of satisfaction with the workshop organization, pedagogy and objectives. Responses to the open-ended questions align closely with the Thistlethwaite and Moran (2010) learning outcomes framework. It is clear that pre-service students learned with, from and about each other’s discipline. 2 tables and an extensive reference list are included

Pathways of association between maternal haemoglobin and stillbirth: Path-analysis of maternity data from two hospitals in England

© 2018 The Authors. Published by BMJ Publishing Group. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-020149© 2018 Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article). Objective To investigate the mechanisms that link maternal haemoglobin concentration with stillbirth. Design A retrospective cohort analysis using anonymised maternity data from two hospitals in England. Setting The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. Study population 12 636 women with singleton pregnancies ≥24 weeks of gestation giving birth in the two hospitals during 2013-2015. Method A conceptual framework of hypothesised pathways through birth weight-for-gestational age and maternal infection including potential confounders and other risk factors was developed and examined using path-analysis. Path-analysis was performed by fitting a set of regression equations using weighted least squares adjusted for mean and variance. Goodness-of-fit indices were estimated. Main outcome measures Coefficient of association (β) for relationship between each parameter, and direct, indirect and total effects via the postulated pathways. Results The path-model showed a significant adjusted indirect negative effect of maternal haemoglobin on stillbirth mediated via birth weight-for-gestational age (standardised estimate (SE)=-0.01; 95% CI=-0.01 to-0.001; P=0.028). The effect through maternal infection was not significant at P<0.05 (SE=0.001; 95% CI=-0.004 to 0.01; P=0.610). There was a residual direct negative effect of maternal haemoglobin on stillbirth (SE=-0.12; 95% CI-0.23 to-0.02; P=0.020) after accounting for the two pathways. Total indirect SE=-0.004; 95% CI-0.01 to 0.003; P=0.267; total direct and indirect SE=-0.13; 95% CI-0.23 to-0.02; P=0.016. The goodness-of-fit indices showed a good fit between the model and the data. Conclusion While some of the influence on risk of stillbirth acts through low birth weight-for-gestational age, the majority does not. Several new mechanisms have been suggested for how haemoglobin may be exerting its influence on the risk of stillbirth possibly involving genetic, epigenetic and/or alternative obstetric and nutritional pathologies, but much more research is needed.MK is funded by a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research Professorship (NIHR-RP-011-032).Published versio

Ultrasonographic assessment of splenic volume at presentation and after anti-malarial therapy in children with malarial anaemia

Background: Splenic enlargement is a component of the host response to malaria and may also influence the genesis and progression of malarial anaemia. Few cross-sectional and no longitudinal studies have assessed the relationship between splenic volume measured ultrasonographically and haemoglobin concentrations in children with malaria. Methods: Fifteen Papua New Guinean children with severe malarial anaemia (SMA; haemoglobin <50 g/L) and ten with moderate malarial anaemia (MMA; 51-99 g/L) were recruited. The SMA patients were given intramuscular artemether followed by oral artemisinin combination therapy (ACT), and were transfused one unit of packed cells 0.3-4.0 days post-admission. The MMA patients were treated with ACT. Splenic enlargement (Hackett's grade, subcostal distance and ultrasonographically determined volume) and haemoglobin concentrations were measured on days 0, 1, 2, 3, 7, 14, 28, and 42. Results: Associations between Hackett's grade, subcostal distance and splenic volume were modest (r(s) = 0.90). Mean splenic volume had fallen by approximately 50 % at day 14 in children with MMA ( P = 0.30). There was no change in haemoglobin in the MMA group during follow-up but a rise in the SMA group to day 7 ( P <= 0.05 vs days 0, 1, 2, and 3) which paralleled the packed cell volume transfused. Conclusions: Clinical assessment of splenomegaly is imprecise compared with ultrasonography. Serial splenic volumes and haemoglobin concentrations suggest that the spleen does not influence post-treatment haemoglobin, including after transfusion

AI Ethics Principles in Practice: Perspectives of Designers and Developers

As consensus across the various published AI ethics principles is approached, a gap remains between high-level principles and practical techniques that can be readily adopted to design and develop responsible AI systems. We examine the practices and experiences of researchers and engineers from Australia's national scientific research agency (CSIRO), who are involved in designing and developing AI systems for many application areas. Semi-structured interviews were used to examine how the practices of the participants relate to and align with a set of high-level AI ethics principles proposed by the Australian Government. The principles comprise: (1) privacy protection and security, (2) reliability and safety, (3) transparency and explainability, (4) fairness, (5) contestability, (6) accountability, (7) human-centred values, (8) human, social and environmental wellbeing. Discussions on the gained insights from the interviews include various tensions and trade-offs between the principles, and provide suggestions for implementing each high-level principle. We also present suggestions aiming to enhance associated support mechanisms.Comment: submitted to IEEE Transactions on Technology & Societ

Arguments for the biological and predictive relevance of the proportional recovery rule

The proportional recovery rule (PRR) posits that most stroke survivors can expect to reduce a fixed proportion of their motor impairment. As a statistical model, the PRR explicitly relates change scores to baseline values - an approach that arises in many scientific domains but has the potential to introduce artifacts and flawed conclusions. We describe approaches that can assess associations between baseline and changes from baseline while avoiding artifacts due either to mathematical coupling or to regression to the mean. We also describe methods that can compare different biological models of recovery. Across several real datasets in stroke recovery, we find evidence for non-artifactual associations between baseline and change, and support for the PRR compared to alternative models. We also introduce a statistical perspective that can be used to assess future models. We conclude that the PRR remains a biologically relevant model of stroke recovery