26564 research outputs found
Sort by
Trait empathy and the treatment of asylum seekers in Australia
No full textObjectives: Attitudes towards asylum seekers in Australia tend to be negative, and this prejudice is prevalent and not always well understood. There is also widespread support for policies about how to process asylum claims that are criticised globally for being overly punitive. The present study explored the relationships between trait empathy and both prejudice towards asylum seekers and support for a range of policies pertaining to the treatment of asylum seekers who claim asylum to be resettled in Australia. Method: A sample of 193 Australians completed self-report measures assessing classical and conditional forms of prejudice, four facets of trait empathy and support for integrative policies (i.e. community processing) and separative policies (i.e. offshore detention and “turn back the boats” policies). Results: The results revealed that higher levels of prejudice were associated with support of separative policies, whilst higher levels of empathy were associated with support of integrative policies. Conclusions: The results of this study have real-world implications regarding the prejudice and discrimination that is often specifically directed towards Australia’s asylum seekers, with ramifications for the ongoing debates about how governments can and should handle the ever-increasing number of asylum seekers and refugee claimants.</p
Why Weight? Development of a Tool to Identify Factors Affecting Participation of Women in Resistance Exercise.
No full textAustralians’ understanding of health benefits of exercise and physical activity generally has increased. Regrettably, this understanding fails to translate into action. National figures indicate 75% of adults do not meet Australian National Physical Activity Guidelines recommendations for aerobic and muscle strengthening activity (Australian Institute of Health & Welfare [AIHW], 2019). Neglecting the resistance exercise component of the physical activity guidelines is prominent in women. During 2017-2018 only 22% of women met these requirements (AIHW, 2019). The aim of this study was to develop a psychometrically valid self-report tool to prospectively identify barriers and motivation factors for resistance exercise participation in women aged 35-54 years. A sequential exploratory mixed methods design was used develop a tool to discern issues for women aged 35-54 years in resistance exercise. This design method facilitated exploration of the composite of issues that need to be addressed in the development of a suitable tool, namely, a self-report tool advocating for resistance exercise - START. The study had eight stages starting with the qualitative components; conducting a review of the literature, identifying key issues influencing participation in resistance exercise for women aged 35-54 years; deciding domain specification and individual items for inclusion in the tool from the literature review; establishing face and content validity using stakeholders. Fourteen women provided opinions and feedback on the tool across three Team sessions using an iterative process to refine the tool. Six Experts were then interviewed for their opinions and feedback on individual item meaning, wording and construct. Stage six was construction of a complete preliminary version of the tool. Stage seven and eight made up the quantitative components of the study design. Data collection using Qualtrics XM as the survey platform was performed in stage seven. The final stage eight was psychometric testing of collected data for validity. Principal Component Analysis (greater than 0.4) was used for item reduction, Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity (p 0.70) to test reliability of the tool. Final reduced items were then collated to create a final version of the tool. The scoping review revealed that engagement and participation in resistance exercise by women is a multifactorial and dynamic behavioural interplay between sociodemographic, pregnancy, intra-personal and inter-personal factors. A subsequent integrative review found five domains of importance for women aged 35-54 years: perceived time constraints, knowledge and education, modality and intensity, social support and behavioural strategies. Following stakeholder input, 20-items addressing knowledge and understanding of resistance exercise and 99-items addressing factors influencing participation in resistance exercise for women were determined for inclusion in the tool (START). Items reflecting barriers were mental challenges (mindset), perception of resistance training (intrinsic), physical barriers (actual and perceived), scheduling, user-friendliness, and programme leadership. Items reflecting motivators were intrinsic factors, extrinsic factors, scheduling, setting/environment, and programme leadership/instructor preference. Refinement and reduction of questions after Principal Component Analyses resulted in 14 questions for, Knowledge and understanding, and 63 questions for, Factors of participation. Knowledge and understanding questions organised into three themes; theoretical understanding; practical understanding; and everyday inclusion. Factors of participation organised into eight content areas; consequences (perceived and actual); social/organised activity; social/instructor characteristics; significance to self; health; value; setting preference; and flexibility. Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant across items (pTo illicit change in resistance exercise participation levels for health and functional ageing, exercise health professionals’ cognisance of resistance exercise specific beliefs, understanding, and behaviours in women aged 35-54 years is necessary. Recurrent use of the START tool can identify shifting barriers and motivators to resistance exercise for individual women in their everyday life. Exercise health professionals may then work concurrently to develop strategies relevant to a woman’s shifting everyday life factors in ways that are meaningful and promote engagement and continued participation in resistance exercise.</p
Beyond the physical: The interplay of experienced weight stigma, internalised weight bias and depression in lipoedema
No full textThis study explored experienced weight stigma, internalised weight bias and depressive symptom severity in lipoedema, a chronic health condition that primarily affects women and involves painful and disproportionate adipose tissue. This study utilised an international cross-sectional online survey involving N = 1070 women over 18 years old (Mage = 48.9 years old) with self-reported diagnosed or suspected lipoedema. Participants completed measures of demographic and health characteristics, experienced weight stigma, internalised weight bias and depressive symptoms (PHQ-9). Chi-square analysis showed experienced weight stigma differed between those with stage 1 (n = 57), stage 2 (n = 311), Stage 3 (n = 664) and stage unknown (n = 38) lipoedema. Hierarchical linear regression determined the effects of weight stigma on depression and the mediating role of internalised weight bias. Experienced weight stigma (p </p
The impact of emergency triage practices on patient safety: A scoping review protocol
No full textImportance: Emergency triage is prone to error, and quality assurance measures to detect errors are mostly retrospective. Undetected triage practice errors may expose patients to unsafe delays in care, contributing to patient deterioration and harm. Objective: To map the academic and gray literature on the impact of emergency triage practice errors on patient outcomes. Evidence Review: The scoping review will incorporates reports of patient outcomes related to emergency triage practice errors. Studies reporting patient outcomes of triage (case and cohort), patient experience surveys, and reviews will be included. Studies will be excluded if they omit patient outcomes of triage or report only accuracy, reliability, validity, or clinician opinion. The search will include the academic literature databases of Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health literature; PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science; Australasian Legal Information Institute; British and Irish Legal Information Institute; and the gray literature search engines of Google Advanced, Patient Safety Network, and the Clinical Excellence Commission. Two reviewers will independently screen titles and abstracts, then full-text papers, with a third reviewer resolving any conflicts. Data extraction and summary will be presented in charts, tables, and narrative formats. Discussion: This protocol details our planned scoping review of the impact of triage practice errors on patient outcomes. Identification of the impact of specific triage practices on patient safety may inform nurses working in and supporting the role of triage.</p
Exploring alternative systems for comprehensive natural capital valuation
No full textThere has been growing concern over the mismatch between anthropocentric nature valuation systems, non-economic values important to certain stakeholder groups—especially First Nations People (FNP)—and the intrinsic value of ecosystems outside human uses.
Positivist methods are proposing increasingly advanced systems to identify, measure and estimate the many benefits and values obtained from natural ecosystems. From the early days of environmental economics to its most recent advance, concepts like environmental functions and ecosystem services have been refined, harmonised, integrated into accounting systems and expended to embrace non-economic value dimensions and the diverse perspectives of multiple types of stakeholders. These different systems and concepts have been essential in expanding our understanding of human-ecosystem interactions and their many socio-economic implications.
However, it is becoming apparent that these systems show important limitations the moment one ventures into the realm of non-use, intangible values like the ones related to social, cultural or spiritual importance. Key challenges include:
1.Limits of nature commodification: Reducing nature’s many contributions to society to economic values is likely a gross simplification. Not all of nature's contributions can be easily transactional. The economy is only a fraction of human society, itself bounded by the limits of the natural ecosystem we live in (i.e., Earth).
2.Holistic vs Atomistic views: Current systems typically break nature into discrete components for valuation (TEV) but tend to miss holistic perspectives. FNPs, for example, view nature as interconnected and emphasise relational values that cannot be captured by atomistic measures. Synergies in their value system suggest that ecosystem value is greater than the sum of its parts.
3.Western vs Alternative views: Positivist, objective measurement systems often don't align with alternative cultural perspectives, like FNP knowledge, which leans towards idealist and interpretivist views that clash with Western worldviews. These views highlight the importance of context, individual interpretation, and cultural heritage, which can't always be objectively measured.
This is a longstanding issue, illustrating the divide between physical and metaphysical worldviews and how they shape reality. The reliance on monetary metrics appears central to the problem. While non-monetary alternatives exist, they typically lack the simplicity and universality of money, making them harder to apply in decision-making.
To address these challenges, we propose three main ideas to reconcile differing perspectives. First, we suggest using time as an alternative to money in nature valuation. As time is finite, it becomes humanity’s ultimate currency, shaping both individual and ecosystem value over thousands of years, giving ecosystems a time-based value far exceeding purely monetary assessments. Second, we argue for valuing community benefits over private ones. Community-based valuation reflects relational values, equity, cultural heritage, and accessibility rights, making it a more just and inclusive approach. Finally, we propose that valuation systems focus on ecosystem resilience. By prioritising adaptive capacity, we can enhance stewardship and ensure ecosystems continue to support human well-being long into the future.
The rest of the paper explores the practical implications of this shift to time-based valuation, community benefits, and resilience, and how these new approaches could aid in decision-making
How should we manage fatigue in on-call workers? A review of guidance materials and a systematic review of the evidence-base
No full textOn-call work is known to contribute to disrupted sleep, fatigue, and an increased risk of incidentor injury. This review aimed to a) identify current on-call management strategies that are suggested or required by regulatory bodies, and b) determine if there is empirical evidence to support these strategies in managing the fatigue of on-call workers. A grey literature search produced 65 relevant guidance materials. A systematic inductive thematic process identified consistent strategies included in these materials: 1) regularity/predictability of shifts, 2) fatigue management policy, 3) prescriptive rule sets, 4) fitness for work assessment, 5) on-the-day control measures, 6) risk assessment, 7) training and education, and 8) call management. Subsequently, a systematic review identified 17 original studies on the effectiveness of fatigue management strategies in on-call workers. Very little research has been done on fatigue management strategies for on-call workers outside of some prescriptive hours of work limitations. These limitations generally reduced fatigue, but often had the unintended consequence of increasing workload, which may inadvertently increase overall risk. Training, education, and call management (e.g., protected naps during on-call periods) also had some supporting evidence. The current gap in evidence emphasises the critical need for research on tailored on-call fatigue management strategies.</p
Annotated Fire -Smoke Image Dataset for fire detection Using YOLO.
No full textThis dataset contains 11027 labeled images for the detection of fire and smoke instances in diverse real-world scenarios. The annotations are provided in YOLO format with bounding boxes and class labels for two classes: fire and smoke. The dataset is divided into an 80% training set with 10,090 fire instances and 9724 smoke instances, a 10% Validation set with 1,255 fire and 1,241 smoke instances, and a 10% Test set with 1,255 fire and 1,241 smoke instances. This dataset is suitable for training and evaluating fire and smoke detection models, such as YOLOv8, YOLOv9, and similar deep learning-based frameworks in the context of emergency response, wildfire monitoring, and smart surveillance.</p
Sustainable transition of cultural heritage: Opportunities, risks, and challenges
No full textAn effective sustainable transition requires a holistic multidimensional approach in which numerous stakeholders, ranging from governments at different
levels to businesses and educational organizations, operate in a systematic fashion. Significant efforts have been placed in this area in recent years, especially
to account for the effects of climate change (Pathak et al., 2022). Cultural heritage has been recognized to be able to play a guiding role in supporting climate-resilient development pathways because “cultural factors
shape the enabling condition for adaptation and mitigation, including whether and how people respond to appeals for climate action” (ICOMOS Climate Change & Cultural Heritage Working Group, 2019). This scenario
forms the basis for future challenges to be addressed in cultural heritage, requiring multidisciplinary approaches and expertise. In this context, this chapter focuses on the most recent advancements in cooling and heat mitigation technologies developed in recent years to address regional climate change and urban overheating, therefore highlighting opportunities, risks, and challenges involved in their development and verifications. Cool paints are a well-established cooling technology capable of passively lowering the temperatures of buildings during the daytime when compared to conventional paints due to their ability to reflect significant incoming solar radiation from the building and absorb less solar energy. As urban overheating is becoming more prevalent, superior cooling technology for future building envelopes
is required to mitigate the intensity of future cooling demands. Supercool materials represent leading candidates, and their distinguishing feature relies on
their ability to exploit an additional cooling mechanism that consists of daytime radiative cooling, and that enables cooling to occur within the wavelengths of
the atmospheric window (8 13 μm), therefore exploiting space as a heat sink (Gentle & Smith, 2015; Raman et al., 2014; Rephaeli et al., 2013). In the following section, the most recent technologies proposed in the literature
for supercool materials have been reported and organized under the categories shown in Fig. 2.1 that are based on the structure of the technology. The subsequent section has been dedicated to modulating or switching technologies that have been introduced in recent years to overcome or prevent the overcooling that supercool materials can potentially lead to during
cold weather conditions. In this manner, the modulating technologies aim to preserve outstanding cooling performance during hot weather conditions while limiting or eliminating the possible need for additional heating and associated energy and costs that might be required under cold conditions (Khan et al., 2021; Lu et al., 2016; Santamouris, 2020; Ulpiani et al., 2020).
This change in performance is obtained by means of a modulating capability embedded within the material or system. In this chapter, the switching technologies
have been distinguished between passive and active ones. The final part of the chapter is devoted to addressing some of the key aspects that need to be considered when applying supercool materials and their modulating technologies within the context of the built heritage
Gerry Griffin – (1952-2023): University leader, researcher, teacher, media commentator, and mentor
No full textGerry Griffin (1952–2023): University leader, researcher,
media commentator, teacher and mentor.</p
The power of playful work design in the hospitality industry: Mapping the implications for employee engagement, taking charge and the moderation of contrived fun
No full textIn the fast-paced and customer-centric hospitality industry, where employee engagement and proactive behavior
are critical for service excellence, organizations face the challenge of fostering a motivated workforce. This paper
explores how integrating play into work through Playful Work Design can enhance employee engagement and
taking charge behaviors. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory, we propose a process model wherein playful
work design, specifically designing fun and designing competition, positively influences employees’ taking
charge behavior through enhanced engagement. Furthermore, we explore the moderating role of contrived
fun—fun activities consciously organized by managers—on the relationship between playful work design and
employee engagement. Using primary data collected from 325 employees and their immediate supervisors in the
hospitality sector, our results offer industry-specific insights into the direct and indirect (via employee
engagement) effects of playful work design on taking charge behaviors. Moreover, we found that contrived fun
moderates the impact of playful work design on engagement. Our findings not only contribute to the advance
ment of hospitality management literature on playful work design but also provide practical insights for hos
pitality managers seeking to cultivate an engaging and proactive workforce. We illustrate how hotel staff can
leverage playful approaches and use friendly competitions to enrich interactions and enhance service delivery</p