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It is widely acknowledged that graduates need to develop skills and competences beyond the theoretical knowledge nurtured within higher education curricula. In the last twenty years there has been an increased interest in supporting learners with work-based learning (WBL) (e.g. apprenticeships, practice-based lab sessions, project-based learning). The experience of COVID-19-related lockdowns has ignited a push to support and provide these opportunities for skills development online. In this systematic literature review, the authors explored (1) which innovative technologies and online WBL typologies are implemented in online WBL in higher education; and (2) to what extent there is evidence that online WBL is effective. From an initial pool of 269 studies identified from two datasets, the authors selected thirteen studies which implemented and evaluated online WBL. In total, 1,015 respondents were included in these studies (M = 84.58, SD = 118.28, range: 7-390). The authors' findings indicate that most studies used descriptive, qualitative approaches to explore the lived experiences of participants, mostly from Australia. Substantial differences were found in the designs of online WBL practices and technologies, although there was limited robust evidence of effectiveness due to a lack of evidence-based evaluation approaches. The authors encourage WBL researchers to be more precise in their design parameters of online WBL, and to consider (quasi)experimental designs to measure the impact of their approaches.

This study is sequentially constructed to develop an understanding of 3D seismic attributes working mechanism and algorithmic expressions used for finding key geomorphological features of fluvial system. The study consists of two study areas, Eromanga Basin Naccowlah Block of Australia and North Sea F3 Block Dutch sector. Seismic attributes (amplitude envelope, instantaneous frequency, cosine of phase, spectral decomposition and sweetness) were used to conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis. The geomorphological analysis helped to elucidate channel geometry and identification of lithology in channel course. The systematic methodology for the study was followed for both study areas, which consisted of the selection of desired seismic horizons, its flattening for analysis and application of attributes. With the purpose of understanding fluvial system features, 3D seismic give attributes significant information increment in the existing information. This addition can codicil geological information of the fluvial system, which can also help in investigating other paleo-geomorphic features. Research highlights: 3D seismic geomorphology analysis Seismic attributes application Validation of seismic attributes analysis Fluvial system sinuosity estimations via 3d seismic [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transport is Australia's third-largest source of greenhouse gases accounting for around 17% of emissions. In recent times, and particularly as a result of the global pandemic, the rapid growth within the e-commerce sector has contributed to last-mile delivery becoming one of the main emission sources. Delivery vehicles operating at the last-mile travel long routes to deliver to customers an array of consignment parcels in varying numbers and weights, and therefore these vehicles play a major role in increasing emissions and air pollutants. The work reported in this paper aims to address these challenges by developing an IoT platform to measure and report on real-world last-mile delivery emissions. Such evaluations help to understand the factors contributing to freight emissions so that appropriate mitigation measures are implemented. Unlike previous research that was completed in controlled laboratory settings, the data collected in this research were from a delivery vehicle under real-world traffic and driving conditions. The IoT platform was tested to provide contextualised reporting by taking into account three main contexts including vehicle, environment and driving behaviours. This approach to data collection enabled the analysis of parcel level emissions and correlation of the vehicle characteristics, road conditions, ambient temperature and other environmental factors and driving behaviour that have an impact on emissions. The raw data collected from the sensors were analysed in real-time in the IoT platform, and the results showed a trade-off between parcel weight and total distance travelled which must be considered when selecting the best delivery order for reducing emissions. Overall, the study demonstrated the feasibility of the IoT platform in collecting the desired levels of data and providing detailed analysis of emissions at the parcel level. This type of micro-level understanding provides an important knowledge base for the enhancement of delivery processes and reduction of last-mile delivery emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim and objective: To explore the accuracy with which nursing students can identify the fundamentals of care. Background: A challenge facing nursing is ensuring the fundamentals of care are provided with compassion and in a timely manner. How students perceive the importance of the fundamentals of care may be influenced by the content and delivery of their nursing curriculum. As the fundamentals of care play a vital role in ensuring patient safety and quality care, it is important to examine how nursing students identify these care needs. Design: Cross‐sectional descriptive design. Methods: A total of 398 nursing students (pre‐ and postregistration) from universities in Sweden, England, Japan, Canada and Australia participated. The Fundamentals of Care Framework guided this study. A questionnaire containing three care scenarios was developed and validated. Study participants identified the fundamentals of care for each of the scenarios. All responses were rated and analysed using ANOVA. Results: The data illustrate certain fundamentals of care were identified more frequently, including communication and education; comfort and elimination, whilst respecting choice, privacy and dignity were less frequently identified. The ability to identify all the correct care needs was low overall across the pre‐ and postregistration nursing programmes in the five universities. Significant differences in the number of correctly identified care needs between some of the groups were identified. Conclusions: Nursing students are not correctly identifying all a patient's fundamental care needs when presented with different care scenarios. Students more frequently identifying physical care needs and less frequently psychosocial and relational needs. The findings suggest educators may need to emphasise and integrate all three dimensions. Relevance to clinical practice: To promote students' ability to identify the integrated nature of the fundamentals of care, practising clinicians and nurse educators need to role model and incorporate all the fundamental care needs for their patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the construction industry drives towards sustainability, recycling construction and demolition waste has become paramount. Furthermore, new construction material composed from recycled construction and demolition waste have added to these sustainable practices. The use of recycled aggregate has been explored to lead to a sustainable future as it provides an alternative to traditional natural concrete. Experimental investigations showed that concrete using recycled aggregate compared to natural aggregate have lower strength. For the construction industry to be sustainable, recycled aggregate must be widely used and even replace natural aggregate. However, research into recycled aggregate discovered the shortcomings of this material and the limiting factors to its utilisation due to its low strength. Several research studies attempt to improve the quality of recycled aggregate by either adding various additives or changing its production methods. However, the industry is still behind in the wider use of recycled aggregate using such research findings. Hence, a research question was formulated as ‘what enablers and barriers affect utilisation of recycled aggregate concrete as a structural material?’. Qualitative interviews were conducted in the Australian construction industry to answer this research question, which provided useful enablers and barriers for promoting recycled aggregate as a structural material. Thereby, a “soft” analysis was conducted to motivate of building industry for using RAC. It is hoped that these findings will be useful for researchers, practitioners and policymakers who are responsible for creating a sustainable construction industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian railway networks suffer a large fluctuation of extreme heats each year due to their wide variety of geographical conditions. Depending on climatic, cloud and radiation conditions, an ambient temperature of 20 °C could induce an equivalent thermal load absorption of track components as much as 30 °C to 35 °C or even more. As such, relatively high turnover of timber sleepers (crossties in a plain track), bearers (skeleton ties in a turnout), and transoms (bridge cross beams) can often be observed due to their unstable deformation and rapid deterioration. This paper investigates an application for the replacement of ageing timber transoms mounted on existing railway bridges using fibre reinforced foamed urethane (FFU) transom beams, which are proven to provide environmental, safety and financial benefits. Clear benefits of the FFU material are the maintainability and constructability, especially for existing railway bridges. In this study, numerical simulations using finite element package ABAQUS have been carried out to illustrate the effect of thermal loads on the structural behaviour of a railway transom bridge. The model was developed using a case study of an actual railway bridge in Kiama, Australia and it has been validated by field data measurements. It is found that nonlinear structural behaviour of the bridge components exists at highly elevated temperatures. The better insight into the thermal load responses will lead to safer and more reliable rail stress adjustment practice, preventing rail misalignment or buckling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-throughput sequences were generated from DNA and cDNA from four Southern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum simum) located in the Taronga Western Plain Zoo in Australia. Virome analysis identified reads that were similar to Mus caroli endogenous gammaretrovirus (McERV). Previous analysis of perissodactyl genomes did not recover gammaretroviruses. Our analysis, including the screening of the updated white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum) and black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) draft genomes identified high-copy orthologous gammaretroviral ERVs. Screening of Asian rhinoceros, extinct rhinoceros, domestic horse, and tapir genomes did not identify related gammaretroviral sequences in these species. The newly identified proviral sequences were designated SimumERV and DicerosERV for the white and black rhinoceros retroviruses, respectively. Two long terminal repeat (LTR) variants (LTR-A and LTR-B) were identified in the black rhinoceros, with different copy numbers associated with each (n = 101 and 373, respectively). Only the LTR-A lineage (n = 467) was found in the white rhinoceros. The African and Asian rhinoceros lineages diverged approximately 16 million years ago. Divergence age estimation of the identified proviruses suggests that the exogenous retroviral ancestor of the African rhinoceros ERVs colonized their genomes within the last 8 million years, a result consistent with the absence of these gammaretroviruses from Asian rhinoceros and other perissodactyls. The black rhinoceros germ line was colonized by two lineages of closely related retroviruses and white rhinoceros by one. Phylogenetic analysis indicates a close evolutionary relationship with ERVs of rodents including sympatric African rats, suggesting a possible African origin of the identified rhinoceros gammaretroviruses. IMPORTANCE Rhinoceros genomes were thought to be devoid of gammaretroviruses, as has been determined for other perissodactyls (horses, tapirs, and rhinoceros). While this may be true of most rhinoceros, the African white and black rhinoceros genomes have been colonized by evolutionarily young gammaretroviruses (SimumERV and DicerosERV for the white and black rhinoceros, respectively). These high-copy endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) may have expanded in multiple waves. The closest relative of SimumERV and DicerosERV is found in rodents, including African endemic species. Restriction of the ERVs to African rhinoceros suggests an African origin for the rhinoceros gammaretroviruses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disease chytridiomycosis, caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), has caused dramatic amphibian population declines and extinctions in Australia, Central and North America, and Europe. Bd is associated with >200 species extinctions of amphibians, but not all species that become infected are susceptible to the disease. Specifically, Bd has rapidly emerged in some areas of the world, such as in Australia, USA, and throughout Central and South America, causing population and species collapse. The mechanism behind the rapid global emergence of the disease is poorly understood, in part due to an incomplete picture of the global distribution of Bd. At present, there is a considerable amount of geographic bias in survey effort for Bd, with Asia being the most neglected continent. To date, Bd surveys have been published for few Asian countries, and infected amphibians have been reported only from Indonesia, South Korea, China and Japan. Thus far, there have been no substantiated reports of enigmatic or suspected disease-caused population declines of the kind that has been attributed to Bd in other areas. In order to gain a more detailed picture of the distribution of Bd in Asia, we undertook a widespread, opportunistic survey of over 3,000 amphibians for Bd throughout Asia and adjoining Papua New Guinea. Survey sites spanned 15 countries, approximately 36° latitude, 111° longitude, and over 2000 m in elevation. Bd prevalence was very low throughout our survey area (2.35% overall) and infected animals were not clumped as would be expected in epizootic events. This suggests that Bd is either newly emerging in Asia, endemic at low prevalence, or that some other ecological factor is preventing Bd from fully invading Asian amphibians. The current observed pattern in Asia differs from that in many other parts of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looks at challenges and opportunities for Islamic banking in Australia. Muslim community's reasons for discomfort with the use of the Western financial system; Activities and operations of the Islamic financial institutions.

ABSTRACT This study aimed to review the use of reproductive health services in Family Planning clinics by women from rural (non-metropolitan) Australia through a retrospective analysis of data collected at clinics of seven state/territory Family Planning Organisations (FPO). From a total of 146 157 client visits to FPO clinics between July 1998 and June 1999, 42 497 (29.1%) were by clients who lived outside metropolitan areas. Some 97% of clients were women. Our results show the use of reproductive health services by women from rural areas was different from the services used by women from metropolitan areas. There were fewer male clients, more women over 40 years of age, and fewer clients from a non-English speaking background. More of the attendees had pension cards and fewer were privately insured. We concluded there is considerable demand for reproductive health services among the rural population and reproductive health care needs to be expanded to reach rural women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the study was to characterize the timing and trends of select mitigation policies, changes in community mobility, and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemiology in Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Prospective abstraction of publicly available mitigation policies obtained from media reports and government websites. Data analyzed include seven kinds of mitigation policies (mass gathering restrictions, international travel restrictions, passenger screening, traveler isolation/quarantine, school closures, business closures, and domestic movement restrictions) implemented between January 1 and April 26, 2020, changes in selected measures of community mobility assessed by Google Community Mobility Reports data, and COVID-19 epidemiology in Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. During the study period, community mobility decreased in Australia, Japan, and Singapore; there was little change in Hong Kong. The largest declines in mobility were seen in places that enforced mitigation policies. Across settings, transit-associated mobility declined the most and workplace-associated mobility the least. Singapore experienced an increase in cases despite the presence of stay-at-home orders, as migrant workers living in dormitories faced challenges to safely quarantine. Public policies may have different impacts on mobility and transmission of severe acute respiratory coronavirus-2 transmission. When enacting mitigation policies, decision makers should consider the possible impact of enforcement measures, the influence on transmission of factors other than movement restrictions, and the differential impact of mitigation policies on subpopulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]