226 research outputs found
Workers in Australian prebake aluminium smelters: update on risk of mortality and cancer incidence in the Healthwise cohort
No full textObjectives: to investigate mortality and the rates of incident cancer among a cohort of aluminium industry workers.Methods: among 4507 male employees who worked in either of two Australian prebake smelters for at least 3 months, data linkage was undertaken with the Australian National Death Index and Australian Cancer Database. Standardised Mortality Ratios (SMRs) and Standardised Incidence Rates (SIRs) were estimated for the whole cohort and for: production; maintenance and office workers. SMRs and SIRs were calculated by time since first employment.Results: among production workers, there was an excess risk of mortality from mesothelioma (SMR 2.8, 95% CI 1.3 to 5.2), lung (SMR 1.4, 95% CI 1.0 to 1.8), prostate (SMR 1.9, 95% CI 1.3 to 2.7) and liver cancer (SMR 2.0, 95% CI 1.1 to 3.4) and the SIR was also increased for overall respiratory cancers, specifically lung cancers. An excess risk of death from stomach cancer (SMR 2.9, 95% CI 1.2 to 6.1) and Alzheimer's disease (SMR 3.4, 95% CI 1.1 to 7.9) was seen among maintenance workers. The overall risk of death was similar to that of the Australian general population, as was mortality from cancers overall and non-malignant respiratory disease.Conclusions: no excess risk of death from bladder cancer or non-malignant respiratory disease was found. Excess lung cancer mortality and incidence may be explained by smoking and excess mortality from mesothelioma may be explained by asbestos exposure. An excess risk of mortality from liver and prostate cancer has been shown in production workers and requires further investigation.</p
Man of Letters 1: W. Somerset Maugham, undated
No full textHost Malcolm Muggeridge leads a discussion on the work of novelist W. Somerset Maugham with writer and poet James Dickey, opera director Donald Ross, writer and TV commentator Gillian Reynolds, and writer and nephew of the author, Robin Maugham
Incidence and mortality from malignant mesothelioma 1982-2020 and relationship with asbestos exposure: the Australian Mesothelioma Registry
No full textObjectives: malignant mesothelioma is an uncommon cancer associated with asbestos exposure, predominantly occupational. Asbestos has been banned in Australia since 2003 but mesothelioma has a long latency and incident cases continue to present. The Australian Mesothelioma Registry was incepted to collect systematic data about incidence and mortality alongside asbestos exposure.Methods: benefiting from the Australian national system of cancer notification, all incident cases of mesothelioma in all states and territories are fast-tracked and notified regularly. Notified patients are contacted asking for consent to collect exposure information, initially by postal questionnaire and subsequently by telephone interview. Age-standardised annual incidence rates and mortality rates were calculated. Asbestos exposure was categorised as occupational, non-occupational, neither or, both; and as low, or high, probability of exposure.Results: mesothelioma incidence appears to have peaked. The age-standardised incidence rates have declined steadily since the early 2000s (peaking in males at 5.9/100 000 and in all-persons at 3.2/100 000), driven by rates in males, who comprise the majority of diagnosed cases. Rates in women have remained fairly stable since that time. Age-standardised mortality rates have followed similar trends. Mesothelioma remains the most common in those aged over 80 years. Nearly all (94%) cases were linked with asbestos exposure (78% occupational in men; 6.8% in women).Conclusions: with effective control of occupational asbestos use, the decline in age-standardised incidence and death rates has occurred. Incidence rates among women, in whom occupational asbestos exposure is rarely detectable, remain unchanged, pointing to the role of household and /or environmental asbestos exposure.</p
An exploration of the outsider's role in selected works by Joseph Conrad, Malcolm Lowry, V.S. Naipaul.
No full textPhDThis thesis explores ways in which the outsider questions rather than confirms
dominant cultural values whilst avoiding the crudity of overt politicisation. I argue
that the outsider's preference for an observer's stance is not so much an act which
denies responsibility to the world of his day, but rather a means of reassessing its
priorities.
In Section One, I discuss Conrad's role as an outsider in the age of Empires. I
demonstrate the ways in which Conrad employs narrators, frequently using strategies
of irony which can be and have been read in very different ways. I argue that Conrad
uses irony as a tool for condemnation rather than condonement of imperialist practice,
if not its ideology.
In Section Two, I discuss Lowry as an emigre from England (so contrasting
him with Conrad, the immigrant from Europe), and examine his dissenting voice
which opposes bourgeois prejudice against the working class, a totalising ideology
like Fascism, and a Western rationalism which sees too rigid a distinction between
sanity and madness. I demonstrate how Lowry as an outsider reacts to the age of
twentieth century World Wars.
In Section Three, I discuss Naipaul's role as an outsider in the age of
decolonisation, when bogus liberals and false redeemers fail to rebuild the newly
independent post-colonial states. As in Conrad's case, I show how a failure to read
Naipaul's ironic tone of voice has given rise to radically divergent views as to what he
is about. I also link Conrad and Naipaul through their cultural negotiation between the
'centre' and its peripheries.
By looking at these three writers in chronological order and offering a
comparative perspective on their work, I highlight the outsider's disturbing, yet
illuminating role within a historical context. I also draw attention to creative tensions
between artistic concerns and a serious political purpose. I assess the outsider as
observer and man of conscience rather than as a` mere onlooker. I conclude that the
outsider also fulfils a social obligation by promoting critical awareness on the reader's
side by means of his defamiliarising perspective
The forgotten first: John MacCormick's 'Dùn-Àluinn'
No full textThe first Gaelic novel, John MacCormick's Dùn-Àluinn, no an t-Oighre 'na Dhìobarach, was serialised in the People's Journal in 1910 before being published in its entirety in 1912. Within a year of the publication of Dùn-Àluinn as a novel the second Gaelic novel, Angus Robertson's An t-Ogha Mòr, appeared in print, underlining the renaissance which Gaelic literature was experiencing. Both novels, while remarked upon by contemporaries and by general studies of Gaelic literature, have been all but ignored to date, with no criticism or analysis of either having been published. The main aim of this article is to offer some general comments about MacCormick's Dùn-Àluinn and thus to open up both the novel and indeed other early twentieth-century Gaelic writers and their work to further scrutiny. Consideration will be given to the author himself, the contemporary Gaelic literary scene and finally some of the more interesting aspects of the novel itself
Information seeking and utilization behaviors of adult bilinguals
No full textThe purpose of this research is to understand the information seeking and information utilization behaviors of Armenian-English adult bilinguals, while paying particular attention to the contextual and experiential as well as to the affective and motivational aspects involved.
At a meta-theoretical level, the study is rooted primarily in the symbolic interactionism of George Herbert Mead, Herbert Blumer, and Erving Goffman and the social constructionism of Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann. Its central underpinning assumption is that the generation, seeking, and utilization of information are social and collective behaviors.
At a theoretical level, this exploration of the human information behavior of adult bilinguals is informed by ELIS (Everyday Life Information Seeking) and the scholarship of Reijo Savolainen, Kimmo Tuominen, and Sanna Talja, together with the works, among others, of Jerome S. Bruner and his notions pertaining to narrative construction, Elfreda Chatman and her small worlds and life in the round, Ross J. Todd and his information intents, and Marcia J. Bates and her berrypicking. The central assumption here is that, because language plays a key role in social construction, bilinguals – with two or more languages at their disposal – occupy a distinct position within this social process.
The research uses mainly qualitative methods, based primarily on the grounded theory of Juliet Corbin, Anselm Strauss, Kathy Charmaz, Thomas R. Lindlof, and Bryan C. Taylor and the narrative-inquiry method of D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly, while also drawing upon biographical methods, as described by Joanna Bornat, Zhiwei Chen, Sanjeev Sonawane, and Brian Roberts, the thick description of Clifford Geertz, and the case study method of Robert K. Yin.
The study is also inspired, among others, by the andragogy of Malcolm S. Knowles, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, the many notions, including language games, of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the bilingualism of François Grosjean, the communities of practice of Etienne Wenger, the deschooling of Ivan Illich, the hierarchy of needs of Abraham H. Maslow, and the zone of proximal development of Lev Vygotsky.
The value of this endeavor inheres in making a contribution toward understanding the information behaviors of bilinguals, which is prerequisite to designing information products and services optimized for them. Given that half of humanity is bilingual and in view of the paucity of research in this arena, the need for basic research on the human information behavior of adult bilinguals is both evident and pressing.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
Why I Care: Inspired by City Sprouts of Omaha and the Malcolm X Foundation 4X Greenhouse/Shabazz Community Garden
No full textThis digital zine talks about author Ross Gay. The writer of this digital zine also talks about how them and their mom starting a hydroponic garden then used the vegetables they planted to cook a nice family meal.
For access and to download the complete booklet see below additional files.https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/tellallthetruthfall2024/1001/thumbnail.jp
Murdoch University Senators - 002
No full textMurdoch University Senators in the Senate Room at Murdoch University.
Back Row, L-R: Sydney (Syd) D. Corser, Professor Jeffrey (Jeff) M. Gawthorne, Ross Hughes, Maureen J. Bickley, Rabbi Shalom Coleman, Associate Professor Walter R. Bloom, Graham Giffard, Professor Michael (Mike) J. Dilworth, L. Anne Higgott, Associate Professor Horst G. Ruthrof, J. Peter Sim, Desmond (Des) R. Kelly, Unknown, Unknown, Unknown, Professor Malcolm (Mal) E. Nairn, D. Danvers (Dan) Dunn.
Front Row, L-R: David P. Fischer, Unknown, Henry Wallwork QC, Chancellor Sir Ronald D. Wilson, Vice Chancellor Professor Peter J. Boyce, Anne McBeath, Kim E. Beazley AO, Unknown.
The complete set of 16 negatives is available at the Murdoch University Library.
These images are part of the History of Murdoch University Collection
Exploited Edens: paradise discourse in colonial and postcolonial literature
No full textThis thesis examines the relation between figures of paradise and the ideologies and economies of colonialism, imperialism, and global capitalism, arguing that paradise myth is the product of a value-laden discourse related to profit, labour, and exploitation of resources, both human and environmental, which evolves in response to differing material conditions and discursive agendas. The literature of imperialism and conquest abounds with representations of colonies as potential gold-lands to be mined materially or discursively: from the EI Dorado of the New World and the 'infernal paradise' of Mexico, to the 'Golden Ophir' of Africa and the 'paradise of dharma' of Ceylon. Most postcolonial analyses of paradise discourse have focused exclusively on the Caribbean or the South Pacific, failing to acknowledge the appearance of fantasies of paradise in association with Africa and Asia. Therefore, my thesis not only performs a comparative reading of marginalized paradisal topoi and tropes related to Mexico, Zanzibar, and Ceylon, but also uncovers literature from these regions which has been overlooked in mainstream postcolonial .criticism, mapping the circulations, continuities, and reconfigurations of the paradise myth as it travels across colonie{and continents, empires and ideologies. My analysis of these three regions is divided into six chapters, the first of each section excavating colonial uses ofthe paradise myth and constructing its genealogy for that particular region, the second investigating revisionary uses of the motif by postcolonial writers including Malcolm Lowry, Wilson Harris, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and Romesh Gunesekera. I address imperialist discourse from outside the country in conjunction with discourse from within the independent nation in order to demonstrate how paradise begins as a literal topos motivating European exploration and colonization, develops into an ideological myth justifying imperial praxis and economic exploitation, and [mally becomes a literary motif used by contemporary postcolonial writers to challenge colonial representations and criticize neocolonial conditions
Binding of pulmonary surfactant proteins to carbon nanotubes; potential for damage to lung immune defense mechanisms
No full textPotential pulmonary toxicity of carbon nanotubes is a research area that has received considerable attention. Surfactant proteins A and D (SP-A and SP-D) are collectin proteins that are secreted by airway epithelial cells in the lung. They play an important role in firstline defense against infection within the lung. The aim of this study was to investigate the interaction between carbon nanotubes and proteins contained in lung surfactant. By using sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), Western Blotting, a novel technique of affinity chromatography based on carbon nanotube–Sepharose matrix [1] and electron microscopy data it was shown that SP-A and SP-D selectively bind to carbon nanotubes. The binding was Ca2+-ion dependent, and was variable between batches of nanotubes. It was therefore likely to be mediated by surface impurities or chemical modifications of the nanotubes. Chronic level exposure to carbon nanotubes may result in sequestration of SP-D and SP-A. Absence of these proteins in knockout mice leads to susceptibility to lung infection and emphysema
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