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Review Essay: Nzuri Na Mengi (‘Good and Plenty’): The Caine Prize for African Literature, 2007-2016
Get PDFReview essay discussing the Caine Prize for African Literature, 2007-2016
Review of Jane Austen's Names: Riddles, Persons, Places by Margaret Doody
No full textReview of Jane Austen's Names: Riddles, Persons, Places by Margaret Dood
Contributors to Transnational Literature, Volume 10, no. 1, November 2017
No full textContributors to Volume 10, no. 1, November 201
An integrative review of e-learning in the delivery of self-management support training for health professionals
Get PDFThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background
E-learning involves delivery of education through Information and Communication Technology (ITC) using a wide variety of instructional designs, including synchronous and asynchronous formats. It can be as effective as face-to-face training for many aspects of health professional training. There are, however, particular practices and skills needed in providing patient self-management support, such as partnering with patients in goal-setting, which may challenge conventional practice norms. E-learning for the delivery of self-management support (SMS) continuing education to existing health professionals is a relatively new and growing area with limited studies identifying features associated with best acquisition of skills in self-management support.
Methods
An integrative literature review examined what is known about e-learning for self-management support. This review included both qualitative and quantitative studies that focused on e-learning provided to existing health professionals for their continuing professional development. Papers were limited to those published in English between 2006 and 2016. Content analysis was used to organize and focus and describe the findings.
Results
The search returned 1505 articles, with most subsequently excluded based on their title or abstract. Fifty-two full text articles were obtained and checked, with 42 excluded because they did not meet the full criteria. Ten peer-reviewed articles were included in this review. Seven main themes emerged from the content analysis: participants and professions; time; package content; guiding theoretical framework; outcome measures; learning features or formats; and learning barriers. These themes revealed substantial heterogeneity in instructional design and other elements of e-learning applied to SMS, indicating that there is still much to understand about how best to deliver e-learning for SMS skills development.
Conclusions
Few e-learning approaches meet the need for high levels of interactivity, reflection, practice and application to practice for health professionals learning to deliver effective SMS. Findings suggest that the context of SMS for patients with chronic condition matters to how health professional training is delivered, to ensure partnership and person-centred care. Further creative approaches and their rigorous evaluation are needed to deliver completely online learning in this space. Blended learning that combines e-learning and face-to-face methods is suggested to support SMS skills development for health professionals
Understanding the perceived logic of care by vaccine-hesitant and vaccine-refusing parents: A qualitative study in Australia
Get PDFThis is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.In terms of public health, childhood vaccination programs have benefits that far outweigh risks. However, some parents decide not to vaccinate their children. This paper explores the ways in which such parents talked about the perceived risks and benefits incurred by vaccinating (or not vaccinating) their children. Between 2013–2016 we undertook 29 in-depth interviews with non-vaccinating and/or ‘vaccine hesitant’ parents in Australia. Interviews were conducted in an open and non-judgmental manner, akin to empathic neutrality. Interviews focused on parents talking about the factors that shaped their decisions not to (or partially) vaccinate their children. All interviews were transcribed and analysed using both inductive and deductive processes. The main themes focus on parental perceptions of: 1. their capacity to reason; 2. their rejection of Western medical epistemology; and 3. their participation in labour intensive parenting practices (which we term salutogenic parenting). Parents engaged in an ongoing search for information about how best to parent their children (capacity to reason), which for many led to questioning/distrust of traditional scientific knowledge (rejection of Western medical epistemology). Salutogenic parenting spontaneously arose in interviews, whereby parents practised health promoting activities which they saw as boosting the natural immunity of their children and protecting them from illness (reducing or negating the perceived need for vaccinations). Salutogenic parenting practices included breastfeeding, eating organic and/or home-grown food, cooking from scratch to reduce preservative consumption and reducing exposure to toxins. We interpret our data as a ‘logic of care’, which is seen by parents as internally consistent, logically inter-related and inter-dependent. Whilst not necessarily sharing the parents’ reasoning, we argue that an understanding of their attitudes towards health and well-being is imperative for any efforts to engage with their vaccine refusal at a policy level
The experiences and perceptions of food banks amongst users in high-income countries: An international scoping review
Get PDFThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This author accepted manuscript is made available following 24 month embargo from date of publication (Oct 2017) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policyPurpose
Food banks have become the main response to food insecurity in many high-income countries, but it has been argued that they lack the capacity to respond consistently and fully to the food needs of the people who use them. This literature review set out to answer the question ‘how do food bank recipients experience food relief services and how does this impact their lives and wellbeing?’
Results
A comprehensive search of electronic databases yielded twenty qualitative studies, conducted in developed countries, exploring user perspectives of food banks. From the studies reviewed, there emerged three main categories that represented the different aspects of the food bank process from the food bank user's perspective: the user's perceptions about the idea of being fed from food banks, the user's perceptions about food bank offerings and operations, and the socio-psychological impact of receiving food from food banks. While participants of these studies spoke positively of the volunteers and were thankful for the service, they also consistently report limited food choice, poor quality, shame, stigma and embarrassment associated with food bank use.
Conclusions
The food bank industry continues to expand despite there being little evidence that food banks are an appropriate response for those facing food insecurity. This is worrying as the results of this review indicate that although participants value the service provided by the food bank, the experience can be largely negative. These findings raise questions about the food bank model as a long-term strategy
Early Flowering as a Drought Escape Mechanism in Plants: How Can It Aid Wheat Production?
Get PDFThis is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.Drought escape (DE) is a classical adaptive mechanism which involves rapid plant development to enable the completion of the full life-cycle prior to a coming drought event. This strategy is widely used in populations of native plants, and is also applicable to cereal crops such as wheat. Early flowering time and a shorter vegetative phase can be very important for wheat production in conditions of terminal drought since this can minimize exposure to dehydration during the sensitive flowering and post-anthesis grain filling periods. A gradual shift toward early flowering has been observed over the last century of wheat breeding in countries with a Mediterranean-type climate and frequent terminal drought. This trend is predicted to continue for wheat production in the coming years in response to global climate warming. The advantage of early flowering wheat is apparent under conditions of impending terminal drought, and modern varieties are significantly more productive due to minimization of the risk associated with drought stress. Under favorable conditions, a short vegetative phase can result in reduced plant biomass due to the reduction in time available for photosynthetic production and seed nutrient accumulation. However, high yield potential has been reported for the development of both shallow and deep roots, representing plasticity in response to drought in combination with the early flowering trait. Wheat productivity can be high both in well-watered and drought-affected field trials, where an efficient strategy of DE was associated with quick growth, yield potential and water use efficiency. Therefore, early flowering provides a promising strategy for the production of advanced drought-adapted wheat cultivars
Spatial-Temporal Simulation of LAI on Basis of Rainfall and Growing Degree Days
Get PDFThis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).The dimensionless Leaf Area Index (LAI) is widely used to characterize vegetation cover. With recent remote sensing developments LAI is available for large areas, although not continuous. However, in practice, continuous spatial-temporal LAI datasets are required for many environmental models. We investigate the relationship between LAI and climatic variable rainfall and Growing Degree Days (GDD) on the basis of data of a cold semi-arid region in Southwest Iran. For this purpose, monthly rainfall and temperature data were collected from ground stations between 2003 and 2015; LAI data were obtained from MODIS for the same period. The best relationship for predicting the monthly LAI values was selected from a set of single- and two-variable candidate models by considering their statistical goodness of fit (correlation coefficients, Nash-Sutcliffe coefficients, Root Mean Square Error and mean absolute error). Although various forms of linear and nonlinear relationships were tested, none showed a statistically meaningful relationship between LAI and rainfall for the study area. However, a two-variable nonlinear function was selected based on an iterative procedure linking rainfall and GDD to the expected LAI. By taking advantage of map algebra tools, this relationship can be used to predict missing LAI data for time series simulations. It is also concluded that the relationship between MODIS LAI and modeled LAI on basis of climatic variables shows a higher correlation for the wet season than for dry season
Silver-assisted development and imaging of fingermarks on non-porous and porous surfaces
Get PDFThis manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This author accepted manuscript is made available following 24 month embargo from date of publication (Aug 2017) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policyIn order to deal with the range of surfaces encountered in crime scenes and items associated with crimes, forensic fingermark examiners must have access to a range of latent mark enhancement techniques, each compatible with a particular type of surface. Consequently, the development of techniques with universal or even wide-ranging surface compatibility would be valuable to law enforcement.
Herein, we describe a one-step silver sputtering method for the enhancement of latent fingermarks on plastic, glass, paper and metal substrates. This method allows for the ridge pattern to be captured for human identification purposes and, more importantly, for the downstream mass spectrometric imaging of the fingermark in order to display the spatial distribution of common endogenous and exogenous substances such as illicit drug
Is It Last Call for the Gay Bar? Why gay nightclubs and bars still matter for same-sex attracted people
Get PDFI was saddened when I heard some months ago that The Mars Bar, the only dedicated gay and lesbian nightclub in Adelaide, South Australia, would be closing after 40 years in business. The announcement followed several years of difficulties for the club due to declining patronage.
The problems faced by The Mars Bar are not specific to this one nightclub or the city/state in which it was run. In a 2015 paper (link is external), Toby Lea, John de Wit, and Robert Reynolds outlined previous research regarding reasons for changes in socialization and, drawing on previous work (link is external), the “structural decline” of lesbian and gay scenes, such as that of Oxford Street in Sydney. Increased use of online dating, changes in neighborhood composition and property values, and costs in attending such venues have been identified as being related to declines in physical spaces and attendance at the venues that remain. The researchers outlined theoretical debate as to whether the gay liberation movement has given way to a post-gay era, where sexual orientation is not central to identity, there is decreased stigmatization, and less isolation is felt by same-sex attracted persons; all of which translates to different methods of socialization and relationship formation