Preliminary Submission to the House of Representatives Economic, Finance and Public Administration Committee Inquiry into Cost Shifting by State Governments to Local Governments

The Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) is the peak body for local authorities across Australia. Representing 698 councils, shires and other local governing bodies, ALGA advocates on behalf of local institutions, the local communities they represent and the process through which they interact. Founded in 1947 by the six states, ALGA now represents all states and territories and is a full member of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). This article is an edited version of the ALGA's preliminary submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee inquiry into the Financial Position of, and Cost Shifting onto, Local Government.     

A validated SPME-GC-MS method for simultaneous quantification of club drugs in human urine

A solid-phase microextraction-gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric (SPME-GC-MS) method has been developed and validated for measuring four club drugs in human urine. These drugs include gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), ketamine (KET), methamphetamine (MAMP), and methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). These drugs are referred to as 'club drugs' because of their prevalence at parties and raves. Deuterium labeled internal standards for each of the four drugs was included in the assay to aid in quantitation. The drugs were spiked into human urine and derivatized using pyridine and hexylchloroformate to make them suitable for GC-MS analysis. The SPME conditions of extraction time/temperature and desorption time/temperature were optimized to yield the highest peak area for each of the four drugs. The final SPME parameters included a 90 degrees C extraction for 20min with a 1min desorption in the GC injector at 225 degrees C using a splitless injection. All SPME work was done using a 100microm PDMS fiber by Supelco. The ratio of pyridine to hexylchloroformate for derivatization was also optimized. The GC separation was carried out on a VF-5ht column by Varian (30m, 0.25mm i.d., 0.10microm film thickness) using a temperature program of 150-270 degrees C at 10 degrees C/min. The instrument used was a ThermoFinnigan Trace GC-Polaris Q interfaced with a LEAP CombiPal autosampler. The data was collected by using extracted ion chromatograms of marker m/z values for each drug from the total ion chromatograms (TIC) (full scan mode). Calibration curves with R(2)>0.99 were generated each day using the peak area ratios (peak area drug/peak area internal standard) versus concentration. The validated method resulted in intra-day and inter-day precision (% R.S.D.) of less than 15% and a % error of less than 15% for four concentrations in the range of 0.05-20microg/mL (MAMP) and 0.10-20microg/mL (GHB, KET, and MDMA). This method has the advantage of an easy sample preparation with acceptable accuracy and precision for the simultaneous quantification of these four drugs of abuse and shows no interference from the urine matrix.     

Patella sex determination by 3D statistical shape models and nonlinear classifiers

Sex determination is one of the essential steps in personal identification of an individual from skeletal remains. Most elements of the skeleton have been subjected to discriminant function analysis for sex estimation, but little work has been done in terms of the patella. This paper proposes a new sex determination method from the patella using a novel automated feature extraction technique. A dataset of 228 patellae (95 females and 133 males) was amassed from the William M. Bass Donated Skeletal Collection from the University of Tennessee and was subjected to noninvasive high resolution computed tomography (CT). After the CT data were segmented, a set of features was automatically extracted, normalized, and ranked. The segmentation process with surface smoothing minimizes the noise from enthesophytes and ultimately allows our methods to distinguish variations in patellar morphology. These features include geometric features, moments, principal axes, and principal components. A feature vector of dimension 45 for each subject was then constructed. A set of statistical and supervised neural network classification methods were used to classify the sex of the patellar feature vectors. Nonlinear classifiers such as neural networks have been used in previous research to analyze several medical diagnosis problems, including quantitative tissue characterization and automated chromosome classification. In this paper, different classification methods were compared. Classification success ranged from 83.77% average classification rate using labels from a Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) clustering step, to 90.3% for linear discriminant classification (LDC). We obtained results of 96.02% and 93.51% training and testing classification rates, respectively, using feed-forward backpropagation neural networks (NN). These promising results using newly developed features and the application of nonlinear classifiers encourage the usage of these methods in forensic anthropology for identifying the sex of an individual from incomplete skeletons retaining at least one patella.     

Parenting education: Primary prevention in a rural community

SUMMARY

The present paper describes the educational background and current role of a community psychologist conducting tobacco control studies at a research institute affiliated with a university medical school. This includes how the author originally became interested in community psychology as an undergraduate, chose a graduate training program and postdoctoral fellowship, and how this training was instrumental in obtaining the current position.     

Improving performance in a Swedish police traffic unit: Results of an intervention

This article describes the results of a feedback system designed to improve performance for a Swedish traffic police unit and examined whether such a feedback system was beneficial or detrimental to the attitudes of the officers. As in many Western countries, government organizations are being required to demonstrate their effectiveness with quantitative performance measures. An approach called the Productivity Measurement and Enhancement System (ProMES) was used with three groups of Swedish Traffic Police to do this. ProMES is a method for identifying unit's objectives, developing measures for these objectives, and using this information as feedback. ProMES was developed with these police units and feedback from the system was used over a four-year period. Results indicate that there were substantial increases in performance. There were also decreases in accidents, injuries, and fatalities compared both to baseline and to comparison groups in Sweden. These improvements were made with fewer and fewer police officers each year.     

Brand Innovation and Value-Creating Practices of the City of Johannesburg’s Twitter Community

Abstract

Brands facilitating and sustaining healthy brand communities on social networks such as Twitter benefit from collaborative engagements where members are inspired to suggest innovative ideas, solve problems and enjoy a sense of commitment to their social membership co-creative space. We explored how brand innovation practices contribute to the collective value-creating practices within the social media-based brand community hosted by the official City of Johannesburg (CoJ) Twitter account. This purposive sample include 1,232 tweets during Youth Day, followed by one in-depth, semi-structured interview with the social media manager of the CoJ Twitter account to confirm and contextualise findings. Thematic analysis in a qualitative design found five of six brand innovation practices, namely animation, openness, linking, structuring and theorisation. The CoJ social media-based brand community was co-created innovatively owing to high levels of engagement, room for fun and effective communication on service delivery issues so that the brand community continuously increases its membership and commitment. Findings confirmed eight of twelve value-creating practices, namely welcoming, empathising, governing, evangelising, justifying, grooming, customising and commoditising. The healthier a brand community, the more extensive the variety of innovation practices for a brand.     

Suicide and undetermined deaths among youths and young adults in Latin America: comparison with the 10 major developed countries--a source of hidden suicides?

In Latin American (LA) and the major developed countries' (MDC) suicide and undetermined deaths are analyzed as methods of suicide and the number of undetermined deaths are similar, possibly containing hidden suicides. The goal was to test the likelihood that LA cultural attitudes lead to higher undetermined rates and more hidden suicides. We used 3-year WHO average mortality data to compare LA and MDC mortality by age and gender, and chi2 tests to examine any differences. In 13 LA countries younger-aged (15-34) men and women's suicides were higher than all-age rates, and undetermined deaths exceeded the suicide rates. Nine LA countries had significantly more undetermined younger-aged male deaths than females. Sixteen of 18 LA countries had significantly higher undetermined death rates than the MDC. LA younger-aged malefs24 146s differential suicide: Undetermined rates indicated they may contain substantial numbers of hidden suicides. Inadvertently, cultural attitudes to suicide may hinder prevention.     

Dynamics of protest and electoral politics in the Great Recession

This article links the consequences of the Great Recession on protest and electoral politics. It innovates by combining the literature on economic voting with social movement research and by presenting the first integrated, large-scale empirical analysis of protest mobilisation and electoral outcomes in Europe. The economic voting literature offers important insights on how and under what conditions economic crises play out in the short-run. However, it tends to ignore the closely connected dynamics of opposition in the two arenas and the role of protests in politicising economic grievances. More specifically, it is argued that economic protests act as a ‘signalling mechanism’ by attributing blame to decision makers and by highlighting the political dimension of deteriorating economic conditions. Ultimately, massive protest mobilisation should, thus, amplify the impact of economic hardship on the electoral losses of incumbents and mainstream parties more generally. The empirical analysis to study this relationship relies on an original semi-automated protest event dataset combined with an updated dataset of electoral outcomes in 30 European countries from 2000 to 2015. The results indicate that the dynamics of economic protests and electoral punishment are closely related and point to a destabilisation of European party systems during the Great Recession.     

Sudden death by Lepomis macrochirus (the killer fish)

In this unusual case, death was not caused by either anaphylactoid reaction to fish or by fish poisoning. Death was due to asphyxia caused by a live, whole fish occluding the mouth and upper airway.     

Molecular Assay for Screening and Quantifying DNA in Biological Evidence: The Modified Q‐TAT Assay*

Abstract: A method is described for the quantitation of total human and male DNA. Q‐TAT utilizes end‐point, multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of the amelogenin and SRY loci to quantify DNA and incorporates a cloned nonhuman template to detect PCR inhibition. Standard curves of fluorescence from amelogenin or SRY amplicons were generated from amplification of known amounts of NIST traceable SRM‐female or SRM‐male DNA. Curves showed good linearity up to 500 pg of SRM‐template (R² > 0.99) and reliably estimated total and male DNA content in casework samples. The nonhuman pRL_null template included in each PCR was a sensitive indicator of known PCR inhibitors including EDTA, hemin, blue denim dye, and humic acid. Finally, the SRY amplicon was a sensitive indicator of male DNA and, in mixtures, could reliably estimate male DNA present in an excess of female DNA. The Q‐TAT multiplex is a reliable quantitation method for forensic DNA typing.