Elephant-seal movements: Modelling migration

Elephant seals migrate over vast areas of the eastern North Pacific Ocean between rookeries in southern California and distant northern foraging areas. Several models of particle movement were evaluated and a model for great-circle motion found to give reasonable results for the movement of an adult female. This model takes specific account of the fact that the movement is on the surface of a sphere and that the animal is apparently heading toward a particular destination. The parameters of the motion were estimated. Such a great-circle path of migration may imply that these seals have the ability to assess their position with respect to some global or celestial cues, allowing them to continually adjust their course and achieve the most direct geodesic route between origin and destination of migration. But the navigational mechanism actually used by these seals to accomplish such feats is as yet unknown.     

The model of human occupation: understanding the worker who is injured or disabled

This paper discusses application of the model of human occupation to the worker with an injury or disability. Concepts from the model of human occupation (MOHO) are used to frame potential work-related strengths and weaknesses. Using MOHO as a framework to understand the worker with an injury or disability provides a more complete and holistic understanding of the many factors which can affect a worker. In particular, the model illuminates how factors of capacity, motivation, lifestyle, and environment inter-relate in determining a worker's success or failure. Implications for using the model to achieve a more effective work-related practice are discussed.     

Immigrant retention in NB: an analysis using administrative Medicare Registry data

Journal of Population Research - This paper examines immigrant retention using a novel approach based on data contained in New Brunswick’s Medicare Registry database. To date, researchers...     

Community Resilience to Change: Development of an Index

Social Indicators Research - Structural economic change is inherently impacting upon community systems. Sustainable and adaptive processes are critical for community systems to respond and manage...     

‘If it weren’t for rugby I’d be in prison now’: Pacific Islanders,rugby and the production of natural spaces

This paper examines the positive role of sport in building social cohesion and the accrual of social and cultural capital for many young Pasifika men. In the process, we also critique the disciplinary discourse, underpinned by bio-racism and commodification, which is enacted on the bodies of Pacific Island men in the context of post-colonial, neoliberal, Australia. This results in over-representation in the rugby codes, manual labour, the security industry, and in prison. Of specific interest to this paper are the ways in which certain spaces, and the means to occupy them, become naturalised. This naturalisation serves to obscure the actual regulatory, and at times exploitative, function of sports; instead positing them as exemplars of individualism and self-governance. In positioning neoliberalism as the reengineering, rather than simply the deregulation, of the state, sports such as rugby enact considerable disciplinary power over the bodies of a minority ethnicity. We refer to this diversion from conventional working class employment opportunities as ‘sportfare’. Qualitative data for this paper has been drawn from several independent studies engaging with Pasifika communities in Australia.     

Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy for Parents Raising a Child with an Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Pilot Study

Many couples raising children diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are often resilient in confronting unique parental demands, while others experience greater risk for relational distress. Research has shown that Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT) is efficacious with couples raising chronically ill children and relevant to the relational demands of parents of children diagnosed with an ASD. This pilot study tested the effectiveness of EFT with seven couples presenting with moderate to severe distress, who were also parents of a child diagnosed with an ASD. Results demonstrated significant decreases in marital distress at posttreatment and 6‐month follow‐up. The study also identified several unique themes associated with couple distress and the parenting experiences of this population.     

An inconvenient truth: why evidence-based policies on obesity are failing Māori,Pasifika and the Anglo working class

Public health initiatives around obesity have generally worked well for middle class Australians and New Zealanders. This message has not had the same impact in Anglo working class areas and certain CALD communities, especially Māori and Pasifika, where obesity rates remain highest. This paper employs qualitative data from interviews with eighty-five Māori and Pasifika migrants to Australia to explore attitudes to food purchasing and consumption behaviours and associated health risks. It is evident the individual, medicalised approach to improving obesity rates has not been effective and there needs to be a new culturally responsive structural approach. This would require governments to prioritise population health over existing relationships with commercial food manufacturers – especially in relation to spatial domination of commercialised fast food outlets in low socio-economic status districts and in the areas of sports and education sponsorship. We also explore the assumptions of evidence-based health policy more generally, providing a critique of who is represented and served by the commercial solicitation and management of health research. This includes what constitutes ‘evidence’, who is conducting and funding the research, who appraises and compares the data and how is it interpreted and employed.     

The Case for Better Maps of Social Service Provision: Using the Holy Cross Dispute to Illustrate More Effective Mapping

Third-sector organizations provide essential services, but not all types of organizations operate equally well given different intensities of public problems. This article argues for maps that would help social service funding bodies. Those maps would include three elements: (1) a measure of service demanded by a community, (2) data on the full range of organizations able to supply those services, and (3) a chart that identifies those organizations that provide services at different intensities of need. By providing information about the supply of organizations in a community, with measures of demand for services, state funding bodies, foundations, and individual philanthropists can make informed decisions about where to allocate funds. An ideal map is illustrated by using the case of the Holy Cross Dispute (2001), whereby a host of voluntary sector organizations provided a voice for residents in this divided Belfast community. The result is a call for more intensive mapping exercises of voluntary sector social service provision.