Journal articles on the topic 'Overseas country assessment'

<p><em>The wave of acquiring large-scale farmland investments for overseas both by the private and state-owned company after the 2007/2008 food and energy crisis has brought a lot of attention worldwide among scholars, media experts, and activist. Sooner or later this huge wave towards overseas large-scale farmland investment has raised a conflicting debate among scholars and developmental practitioners on its significance. In this study we investigate effectiveness levels of those overseas farmland investors, who acquire land in Ethiopia from 1995-2016, using time series data for said period collected from the databank of Ethiopian investment agency. We applied descriptive and inferential statistical analysis using E-views version-9. Finally, the findings indicate that effectiveness of overseas farmland investments for those projects that possess the license and that got the land is about 67.4 per cent. The regression result indicates as there is a significant relationship between origin of the investor’s country (0.0039) and farm land size (0.0000) with a P value less than 5 per cent. The result indicates and also substantiates those who perceive the activity as more of land acquisition that the investors are failed to invest appropriately after they possessed the land. Finally, the findings greatly contribute for policy makers and also for implementing appropriate land investment strategy in the whole. </em></p>

Vietnam is a rapidly developing nation in Southeast Asia and has adopted and implemented mandatory legislation for Environmental Assessment since 1994. This review analyses the successes and failures of this legislation and investigates the role of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in the future development of the country. Along with many other developing nations in the region, the implementation of existing environmental legislation is generally weak in Vietnam and increased efforts to educate, train and motivate responsible personnel in the government, non-government and private development sectors is a continuing requirement. Many overseas agencies are currently financing projects to meet these current needs and to develop sustainable development policy within the natural resource management and planning framework in the country. It is concluded that Vietnam does have a good potential for an increased application of SEA, but success will depend on the effective conversion of theory into practice.

Objective The Australian Dental Council is responsible for the assessment of overseas-qualified dentists seeking to practice dentistry in Australia. The aim of this paper is to reflect on the Council’s assessment and examination process through the experiences and perceptions of overseas-qualified dentists in Australia. Methods Qualitative methods were used. Life stories of 49 overseas-qualified dentists from 22 nationalities were analysed to discern significant themes and patterns. We focused on their overall as well as specific experiences of various stages of the examination. The analysis was consistent with a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to social scientific research. Results Most participants referred to ‘cost’ of the examination process in terms of lost income, expenses and time. The examination itself was perceived as a tough assessment process. Some participants seemed to recognise the need for a strenuous assessment due to differences in patient management systems in Australia compared with their own country. Significantly, most of the participants stressed the importance of support structures for overseas-qualified dentists involved in or planning to undertake the examination. These considerations about the examination experience were brought together in two themes: (1) ‘a tough stressful examination’; and (2) ‘need for support.’ Conclusion This paper highlights the importance of support structures for overseas-qualified dentists. Appropriate support (improved information on the examination process, direction for preparation and training, further counselling advice) by recognised bodies may prevent potential exploitation of overseas-qualified dentists. Avenues that have been successful in providing necessary support, such as public sector schemes, offer policy options for limited recruitment of overseas-qualified dentists in Areas of Need locations. Such policies should also be in line with the local concerns and do not reduce opportunities for Australian-qualified dentists. What is known about the topic? During the past decade there has been a substantial increase in the number of overseas-qualified dentists migrating to Australia. Currently, one in every four dentists in Australia qualified overseas. It is likely that approximately three-quarter of migrating dentists in a given year enter through the Australian Dental Council’s examination process. To date, there is no published scholarly evidence on the experiences of overseas-qualified dentists involved in the Council’s assessment and examination process. Because more overseas-qualified dentists are being examined by the Council, it is important to reflect on the examination process so as to identify areas for future improvement. What does this paper add? This paper highlights the importance of support structures for overseas-qualified dentists involved in or planning to undertake the Australian Dental Council’s examination process. Appropriate support (improved information on the examination process, direction for preparation and training, further counselling advice) by recognised bodies may prevent potential exploitation of overseas-qualified dentists. What are the implications for practitioners? A possible implication of the findings of this study for dentists migrating to Australia and intending to take the Australian Dental Council’s examination process would be to consider the advantages of the public sector dental schemes that have been brought to light in this study. Policy makers should also be certain that although recruitment of overseas-qualified dentists reduces the gap in service provision in rural areas, it does not constrain opportunities for Australian-qualified graduates.

The purpose of this study is to examine the socio-economic impact of religious tourism in Nigeria. Data for this study are from secondary sources and it covers 2000-2011. The technique of content analysis was used to analyze the contents of these materials. The paper reveals that the springing up of different Pentecostal Churches across the country and the various conventions and festivals being held annually and quarterly by this churches have virtually increase the numbers of arrivals from overseas countries who visit the country to attend various religious programs. This has generated employment for the inhabitants of the areas; religious tourism has become the highest earner of foreign exchange for the country's tourism industry even though tourism industry is still in embryonic stages and has not yet assumed a significant position in Nigeria’s GDP pie. This paper recommends that the hospitality industry should upgrade existing facilities while the government should construct or upgrade to international standards roads leading to major cities and rural areas and needs to provide basic amenities in tourism destinations. At the local government level, inventory of all tourist sites and festivals in different localities should be published so as to bring these tourist sites into limelight. All religious communities must educate their clergy on the need for religious harmony and the toleration of other faiths.

BackgroundAmbitious overseas recruitment targets have been set by the UK government to help alleviate the current GP shortage. European Economic Area (EEA) doctors can join the UK’s GP register under European law. Non-EEA doctors must obtain a Certificate of Eligibility for General Practice Registration (CEGPR), demonstrating equivalence to UK-trained doctors. CEGPR applications can be time-consuming and burdensome. To meet overseas recruitment targets, it is important to facilitate the most efficient route into UK general practice while maintaining registration standards and patient safety.AimTo develop a methodology to map postgraduate GP training and healthcare contextual data from an overseas country to the UK.Design & settingDesk-based research and stakeholder interviews.MethodFour stages were undertaken: 1) developing a data collection template; 2) conducting a case study (using Australia as a test case); 3) refining the data collection template; and 4) creating a mapping framework. The case study used the 2016 curricula for the UK and Australia.ResultsFive ‘domains’ were identified: healthcare context, training pathway, curriculum, assessment, and continuing professional development (CPD) and revalidation. The final data collection template comprised 49 mapping items across the domains. The methodology incorporated the application of a red, amber, or green (RAG) rating to indicate similarity of data across the five domains. Australia was rated ‘green’ for training pathway, curriculum, and assessment, and ‘amber’ for healthcare context and CPD and revalidation. The overall rating was ‘green’.ConclusionImplementing this systematic methodology for mapping GP training between countries may support the UK’s ambitions to recruit more GPs, and alleviate current GP workforce pressures.

According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 73% of used clothing is landfilled or incinerated globally and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fabric manufacturing in 2015 amounted to 1.2 billion tons. It must be reduced in the future, especially by reusing and recycling used clothing. Based on this perspective, researchers calculated the energy consumption and GHG emissions associated with reusing and recycling used clothing globally with a life cycle assessment (LCA). However, no study was conducted so far to estimate the total GHG emission reductions in Japan by reusing and recycling used clothing. In this study, the amount of used clothing currently discharged from households as combustible and noncombustible waste and their fiber types were estimated using literature. Then, the methods for reusing and recycling of used clothing were categorized into the following 5 types based on fiber type, that is, “reuse overseas,” “textile recycling to wipers,” “fiber recycling,” “chemical recycling” and “thermal recycling.” After that, by applying LCA, the GHG emission reductions by above 5 methods were estimated, based on the annual discharged weights of each fiber type. Consequently, the total GHG emissions reductions by reusing and recycling 6.03 × 108 kg of used clothing totally were estimated around 6.60 × 109 kg CO2e, to range between 6.57 × 109 kg CO2e and 6.64 × 109 kg CO2e, which depended on the type of “chemical recycling.” The largest contribution was “reuse overseas,” which was 4.01 × 109 kg CO2e corresponded to approximately 60% of the total reduction. Where, it was assumed that used clothing were exported from Japan to Malaysia which was currently the largest importing country. In this case, GHG emissions to manufacture new clothing in China, the largest country currently to export them to Japan, can be avoided, which are 29.4 kg CO2e and 32.5 kg CO2e respectively for 1 kg jeans and 1 kg T-shirts. Adding the GHG emissions for overseas transportation to this, on average, 32.0 kg CO2e per kg of used clothing was reduced by “reuse overseas,” which was 19.6 times larger than GHG emissions by incineration, 1.63 kg CO2e per kg, in which carbon neutrality for cotton was not counted. As the result, the total GHG emission reductions above mentioned, around 6.60 × 109 kg CO2e, corresponds to 70% of the GHG emissions by incineration of total household garbage in Japan.

ObjectivesTo compare the likelihood of success at selection into specialty training for doctors who were UK nationals but obtained their primary medical qualification (PMQ) from outside the UK (‘UK overseas graduates’) with other graduate groups based on their nationality and where they gained their PMQ. We also compared subsequent educational performance during postgraduate training between the graduate groups.DesignObservational study linking UK medical specialty recruitment data with postgraduate educational performance (Annual Review of Competence Progression (ARCP) ratings).SettingDoctors recruited into national programmes of postgraduate specialist training in the UK from 2012 to 2016.Participants34 755 UK-based trainee doctors recruited into national specialty training programmes with at least one subsequent ARCP outcome reported during the study period, including 1108 UK overseas graduates.Main outcome measuresOdds of being deemed appointable at specialty selection and subsequent odds of obtaining a less versus more satisfactory category of ARCP outcome.ResultsUK overseas graduates were more likely to be deemed appointable compared with non-EU medical graduates who were not UK citizens (OR 1.29, 95% CI 1.16 to 1.42), although less so than UK (OR 0.25, 95% CI 0.23 to 0.27) or European graduates (OR 0.66, 95% CI 0.58 to 0.75). However, UK overseas graduates were subsequently more likely to receive a less satisfactory outcome at ARCP than other graduate groups. Adjusting for age, sex, experience and the economic disparity between country of nationality and place of qualification reduced intergroup differences.ConclusionsThe failure of recruitment patterns to mirror the ARCP data raises issues regarding consistency in selection and the deaneries’ subsequent annual reviews. Excessive weight is possibly given to interview performance at specialty recruitment. Regulators and selectors should continue to develop robust processes for selection and assessment of doctors in training. Further support could be considered for UK overseas graduates returning to practice in the UK.

Preventing and controlling the risk of importing the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has rapidly become a major concern. In addition to air freight, ocean-going ships play a non-negligible role in spreading COVID-19 due to frequent visits to countries with infected populations. This research introduces a method to dynamically assess the infection risk of ships based on a data-driven approach. It automatically identifies the ports and countries these ships approach based on their Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) data and a spatio-temporal density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (ST_DBSCAN) algorithm. We derive daily and 14 day cumulative ship exposure indexes based on a series of country-based indices, such as population density, cumulative confirmed cases, and increased rate of confirmed cases. These indexes are classified into high-, middle-, and low-risk levels that are then coded as red, yellow, and green according to the health Quick Response (QR) code based on the reference exposure index of Wuhan on April 8, 2020. This method was applied to a real container ship deployed along a Eurasian route. The results showed that the proposed method can trace ship infection risk and provide a decision support mechanism to prevent and control overseas imported COVID-19 cases from international shipping.

Abstract. The need for assessing the risk of extreme weather events is ever increasing. In addition to quantification of risk today, the role of aggravating factors such as high population growth and changing climate conditions matters, too. We present the open-source software CLIMADA (CLIMate ADAptation), which integrates hazard, exposure, and vulnerability to compute the necessary metrics to assess risk and to quantify socio-economic impact. The software design is modular and object oriented, offering a simple collaborative framework and a parallelization strategy which allows for scalable computations on clusters. CLIMADA supports multi-hazard calculations and provides an event-based probabilistic approach that is globally consistent for a wide range of resolutions, suitable for whole-country to detailed local studies. This paper uses the platform to estimate and contextualize the damage of hurricane Irma in the Caribbean in 2017. Most of the affected islands are non-sovereign countries and also rely on overseas support in case disaster strikes. The risk assessment performed for this region, based on remotely available data available shortly before or hours after landfall of Irma, proves to be close to reported damage and hence demonstrates a method to provide readily available impact estimates and associated uncertainties in real time.

BackgroundThere are ambitious overseas recruitment targets to alleviate current GP shortages in the UK. GP training in European Economic Area (EEA) countries is recognised by the General Medical Council (GMC) as equivalent UK training; non-EEA GPs must obtain a Certificate of Eligibility for General Practice Registration (CEGPR), demonstrating equivalence to UK-trained GPs. The CEGPR may be a barrier to recruiting GPs from non-EEA countries. It is important to facilitate the most streamlined route into UK general practice while maintaining registration standards and patient safety.AimTo apply a previously published mapping methodology to four non-EEA countries: South Africa, US, Canada, and New Zealand.Design & settingDesk-based research was undertaken. This was supplemented with stakeholder interviews.MethodThe method consisted of: (1) a rapid review of 13 non-EEA countries using a structured mapping framework, and publicly available website content and country-based informant interviews; (2) mapping of five ‘domains’ of comparison between four overseas countries and the UK (healthcare context, training pathway, curriculum, assessment, and continuing professional development (CPD) and revalidation). Mapping of the domains involved desk-based research. A red, amber, or green (RAG) rating was applied to indicate the degree of alignment with the UK.ResultsAll four countries were rated ‘green’. Areas of differences that should be considered by regulatory authorities when designing streamlined CEGPR processes for these countries include: healthcare context (South Africa and US), CPD and revalidation (US, Canada, and South Africa), and assessments (New Zealand).ConclusionMapping these four non-EEA countries to the UK provides evidence of utility of the systematic method for comparing GP training between countries, and may support the UK’s ambitions to recruit more GPs to alleviate UK GP workforce pressures.

AbstractWhite-nose syndrome (WNS), caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has caused catastrophic declines of bat populations in North America. Risk assessment indicates that cavers could pose a risk for the spread of the fungus, however, information on cavers’ knowledge of WNS and their caving and biosecurity habits is lacking. An anonymous qualitative survey was completed by delegates (n = 134) from 23 countries at an international speleological conference in Sydney, Australia. Cavers indicated that they visit caves frequently (80.6% at least bimonthly), including outside of their own country, but 20.3% of respondents did not know about WNS prior to the conference. Some respondents were incorrect, or unsure, about whether they had visited caves in countries where P. destructans occurs (26.5%) or whether their own country was free of the fungus (7.8%). Although 65.9% of respondents were aware of current decontamination protocols, only 23.9% and 31.2% (when in Australian or overseas caves, respectively) fully adhered to them. Overall, cavers showed strong willingness to help prevent further spread of this disease, but further efforts at education and targeted biosecurity activities may be urgently needed to prevent the spread of P. destructans to Australia and to other unaffected regions of the world.

Algal biofuel is considered as an advanced generation bioenergy fuel which addresses the concerns of the preceding generations of biofuels on crop land competition and water consumption. Microalgae are considered as the only biomass feedstock capable of displacing fossil-fuel based on very high-oil yield per land area and other benefits. The production of biofuels in the Philippines is mandated by its Biofuel Act of 2006 which aims to introduce low-carbon fuels to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the dependence on oil imports. The Philippines’ biodiesel production uses solely coconut as biomass feedstock to produce coconut methyl ester (CME). With the mandate to increase the biodiesel blend to 5% by 2015, this adds pressure to the production of CME while battling for the fluctuating price of coconut. Due to the archipelagic geography and tropical climate of the country, abundance of thriving endemic species of microalgae can be found in the country. Hence, algal biofuel presents a viable option to alternatively produce biodiesel in the Philippines. Thus, policies in sustainable production of algal biofuel based on its environmental impact and natural resource consumption must initially be developed and drafted. A life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach was recommended to evaluate the sustainability of algal biofuel production in the country leading to policy development. Prior finalizing the impact assessment of an LCA study, prioritization of impact factors must initially be established and evaluated based on the programs and goals of the government and other stakeholders. LCA studies on algal biofuels were previously conducted overseas. However, the impact assessment of such studies is not applicable for the Philippines. Furthermore, there has been limited LCA study on algal biofuel production in the Philippines. Hence, this study proposes to establish a multi-criteria decision structure of the life-cycle impact factors of algal biofuels specifically for the Philippines and quantifying its priority levels using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). AHP is a multi-criteria decision analysis which quantifies the prioritization weights of the considered impact factors via pairwise comparison method. Survey shall be conducted to various government agencies, the industry, and other research institutions to establish an initial impact assessment of algal biofuels in the country. The initial results revealed priority are given to global warming potential, eco-toxicity, and photochemical ozone depletion, respectively. The results of this work shall aid the policy and decision makers of the country to develop and draft environmental policies and strategic plans for the proliferation of algal biofuels in the Philippines.

In 2013, China proposed the “Belt & Road Initiative” which aims to invest the “Belt & Road” countries so as to help them develop their infrastructure and economy. China consumes the largest part of fossil energy of the whole world, so it is China’s priority to consider its energy supplying security. Therefore, it becomes urgent for China to invest the “Belt & Road” countries’ energy facilities. There comes a question: how to evaluate the overseas energy investment risk? To answer this question, this paper proposes a deep learning method to assess such risk of the 50 “Belt & Road” countries. Specifically, this paper first proposes an indicator system in which 6 main factors are separated into 36 sub-factors. This paper makes use of hierarchical convolution neural networks (CNN) to encode the historical statistics. The hierarchical structure could help CNN handle the long historical statistics more effectively and efficiently. Afterward, this paper leverages the self-attention layer to calculate the weights of each sub-factor. It could be observed that the resource potential is the most important indicator, while “years of China’s diplomatic relations” is the most important sub-indicator. Finally, we use a conditional random field (CRF) layer and softmax layer to compute the assessment scores of each country. Based on the experimental results, this paper suggests Russia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Kazakhstan to be China’s most reliable choices for energy investment.

Introduction: Participation of anesthesiology residents in international electives may lead to the acquisition of skills as described in the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) competencies. There is great interest in participating in such electives, but it is not clear there are educational or professional benefits. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the educational benefits of participating in overseas electives among anesthesiology residents. Methods: A longitudinal study design was used between 2010 and 2015 to survey all anesthesiology residents selected to participate in the nationally competitive Society for Education in Anesthesia-Health Volunteers Overseas (SEA-HVO) Traveling Fellowship Program in which third-year residents receive scholarships and ABA credit for 1-month teaching electives in a low-resource country. Pre-elective and post-elective surveys were sent via de-identified e-mails during the third year of residency. We investigated residents’ expectations, plans, and comfort level with teaching techniques prior to the elective and after and asked about perceived benefits. Results: The response rate was 68.8% of the 45 residents who received the survey. Participants were motivated by professional and humanitarian goals. Residents reported improved comfort with teaching techniques, especially lecturing and giving feedback. Participants acquired better skills in assessing the learning needs of students. There was a slight but nonsignificant increased comfort dealing with cultural and language barriers. The major self-perceived unique benefit of international electives was improvement in intercultural communication. The systems’ changes reported by residents as the most important to improve were those that affected patient safety. Conclusion: Global health electives have a small positive effect on teaching, cultural proficiency, and systems assessment skills. Residents improve in their ability to identify educational needs and to give feedback. Patient safety during anesthetic care is appreciated as the most important systems’ need.

The PNG LNG Project is a major resource project in Papua New Guinea that should double the GDP of PNG and provide significant benefits to numerous remote, regional and metropolitan communities. Through a commitment to providing optimal training and employment opportunities for PNG nationals, Esso Highlands Limited is recruiting candidates from all over PNG to take up training and employment opportunities. One opportunity for PNG candidates is the Operations and Maintenance Technician Traineeship Program. This involves 18 months of preparatory training in Port Moresby and 12 months at advanced technical training facilities overseas followed by up to 24 months on the job training at the actual facility; either the Hides gas conditioning plant in the Southern Highlands or at the LNG plant outside Port Moresby in PNG. This program is structured to establish a highly-trained workforce of more than 150 technicians for key operational roles in the PNG LNG Project. A nationwide recruitment drive attracted more than 8,000 applicants. Although the scale of this response—in a country with poor socio-economic conditions and limited paid employment opportunities—was anticipated, the linguistic and cultural diversity of the candidates provided a major challenge for Esso Highlands. The challenge involved how to appropriately and fairly assess and select the required number of trainees from this massive pool of candidates. To address some of the assessment and selection needs, Esso Highlands Limited commissioned ValueEdge Consulting in light of their experience and expertise in delivering similar culturally appropriate assessment programs throughout Australia and southeast Asia. This presentation will provide an overview of the staged assessment model used to select the 76 most suitable candidates from the original 8,000 applicants for the first traineeship program, which commenced in Port Moresby in July 2010. The success of this recruitment program in a culturally, linguistically and educationally diverse country is highlighted by the fact that another significant-sized group of the candidates were retained by Esso Highlands Limited in internship positions—this is in addition to the 76 candidates selected for trainee positions. Due to the high-calibre talent pool attracted by this opportunity and assessed through this program, the extended pool of retained candidates enabled Esso Highlands Limited to meet their needs for the traineeships and also to identify suitable candidates to fulfill a range of their other training and employment opportunities. This presentation will outline details of the selection methods and tools used for the assessment of: training potential, technical aptitude, interpersonal skills, technical knowledge, team work, and individual competencies. The presentation also outlines a model for other green-field sites in countries where traditional recruitment methodologies are ineffective or culturally and linguistically biased against the local population.

Regulatory policies on drugs have a major impact on patient safety and survival. Some pharmaceutical companies employ all possible methods to achieve maximum sales in relation to the monopoly of their patented drugs, leading sometimes to irregularities and illegal activities. Misinformation on the orphan drug deferasirox has reached the stage of criminal investigations and fines exceeding USD 100 million. Additional lawsuits of USD 3.5 billion for damages and civil fines were also filed by the FBI of the USA involving deferasirox and mycophenolic acid, which were later settled with an additional fine of USD 390 million. Furthermore, a USD 345 million fine was also settled for bribes and other illegal overseas operations including an EU country. However, no similar fines for illegal practises or regulatory control violations have been issued in the EU. Misconceptions and a lack of clear guidelines for the use of deferasirox in comparison to deferiprone and deferoxamine appear to reduce the effective treatment prospects and to increase the toxicity risks for thalassaemia and other iron loaded patients. Similar issues have been raised for the activities of other pharmaceutical companies promoting the use of new patented versus generic drugs. Treatments for different categories of patients using new patented drugs are mostly market driven with no clear safeguards or guidelines for risk/benefit assessment indications or for individualised effective and safe optimum therapies. There is a need for the establishment of an international organisation, which can monitor and assess the risk/benefit assessment and marketing of drugs in the EU and globally for the benefit of patients. The pivotal role of the regulatory drug authorities and the prescribing physicians for identifying individualised optimum therapies is essential for improving the survival and safety of millions of patients worldwide.

Global Mindset, set of attributes and characteristics that help global leadership to influence individuals, groups and organizations that are anywhere in the world has been described as a critical factor for organizational development. In order to identify factors that affect the Global Mindset of leaders, an on-line survey based on Konyu-Fogel (2011) model was applied to a sample of 163 leaders that work in positions that require international activities in organizations in twenty-two product lines (industries) in Africa, Asia,, South and North America, Europe and Middle East. We conclude that Global Mindset is responsible for 39,1% of variability on leadership behavior, confirming previous studies which identified that global leaders with high Global Mindset are more likely to exhibit leadership behaviors which present understanding on differences across cultures and countries in response to the global environment. Specifically related with demographic factors such as age, gender, number of foreign languages spoken, number of countries worked in and raised/lived in bilíngüe/multiethnic family, the results showed that they do not affect Global Mindset score, different from the factors such as local of employment and posicion. Finnaly, on assessment of organizational factors effects on Global Mindset, we identified a weak relationship under total number of employees, percentage of employees working overseas, location/country of headquarter’s and Global Mindset. On the other hand, product line and percentage of revenue from foreign operations significantly affect business leaders Global Mindset.

Abstract Research-for-development (R4D), as a mode of foreign aid, is a practical way to support developing countries. However, few studies have assessed the scientific impacts of R4D projects. Here, we applied an integrated assessment approach to evaluate the scientific impact of research projects commissioned by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research’s Fisheries Program in the Asia-Pacific region between 2000 and 2012. We use publication metrics and expert panel reviews to examine trends in scientific outputs among 73 fisheries and aquaculture research projects. ‘Among projects, there was considerable variation in publication types and outputs (including academic papers, magazine articles, policy reports, books, and book chapters), and projects produced, on average, 10 publications at a funded-dollar cost of AU$41,000 per publication. Bilateral and multilateral projects tended to produce more refereed journal articles and citations per funded dollar than single-country projects, and publication outputs were poor for certain countries. With the exception of fisheries projects, larger (more highly funded) projects did not produce more journal articles per funded dollar than smaller projects. Project duration had no significant effect on the number of refereed publications, citation rates, or total citations per funded dollar across projects. Aquaculture projects had greater publication impact, per funded dollar than fisheries projects. Beyond the bibliometric measures, qualitative findings indicated that scientific impact was strongly influenced by motivations of project leaders and their institutions. We identified disparate impact performance among industries and countries. These findings could inform future overseas aid investments, policies and strategies. This study offers useful benchmarks for gauging scientific impacts of R4D programs and shows the value of using approaches that go beyond bibliometric measures.

This research establishes a decommissioning timeline for the existing oil and gas facilities across all of the Australian offshore oil and gas production basins. Minimal data exist in the public domain to estimate these decommissioning timelines and, more importantly, the significant waste volumes generated; including potentially hazardous wastes such as naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM). At this time there is no approved onshore radioactive waste disposal pathway in Australia to accommodate this material. Applying an estimation methodology, based on Norwegian decommissioning data with regional activity factors, allows a NORM waste forecast to be established for the decommissioning of Australian oil and gas offshore infrastructure. The total NORM disposal burden is estimated to be in the range of 223–1674 tonnes for decommissioning activity to 2060, with over 68% of this material generated between 2018 and 2025. Due to the sparsity of public domain data this forecast is deemed to be uncertain and excludes the NORM contamination anticipated to be present in subsea export pipelines, trunklines and well production tubing. Current regulations governing the categorisation and disposal of radioactive wastes across Australia are complex and regionally dependent. This regional variation makes the implementation of a national radioactive waste disposal facility more difficult, and encourages the export of radioactive wastes overseas for final disposal. Exporting of radioactive wastes potentially presents a higher risk compared with in-country disposal and is likely not an effective long-term proposition. A comprehensive NORM data collection and quantification assessment programme, spanning all onshore and offshore oil and gas infrastructure, needs to implemented to drive and verify a NORM waste management strategy for the wave of facility decommissioning projects that are fast approaching.

<p><em>It is commonplace to see academic staff (teaching staff) in Nigerian Universities stagnated for a long period of time that is without promotions, due to lack of funds for further academic development and publications. The popular syndrome of “publish or perish” has, over the time, had its toll on academic staff of Nigerian Universities. As succour, the Federal Government of Nigeria set up Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) in 2011 as an intervening agency, to, among other objectives, fund academic staff trainings in tertiary institutions within and outside the country. It has, however, been worrisome that many Universities have not been accessing funds allocated to them due to their inability to fulfil the conditions attached and thereby depriving academic staff of the opportunity of accessing Government funds for academic advancement. This work titled “TETFund International Programmes and Academic Staff Development in South East Nigeria” an attempt to determine the extent to which Universities in the South Eastern part of Nigeria have been able to access and utilize funds allocated to them by this agency with respect to training of academic staff overseas. Two universities were selected for this work viz; University of Nigeria, Nsukka and Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki. Published works of TETFund as well as literature on related terms were reviewed. The survey research was adopted as research design. Primary data were collected with the aid of questionnaire and analysed with correlation coefficient. It was found that there is positive significant relationship between TETFund’s international training programmes and academic staff advancement/development in the Universities in South East of Nigeria. It further revealed that funds allocated to these Universities overtime were under accessed due to their inability to meet conditions. It was recommended that the Universities should expedite action to meeting the conditions for assessment by getting better acquainted with the modalities/conditions for assessment. It is recommended that the Universities should avoid partiality in nominating staff for trainings, conferences and workshops. As well, it was recommended that TETFund should give opportunity to institutions that missed their funds to access them in the next year.</em><em></em></p>

IntroductionAotearoa/New Zealand (NZ) is officially recognised as a bicultural country composed of Māori and non-Māori. Recent estimations have projected a threefold increase in dementia prevalence in NZ by 2050, with the greatest increase in non-NZ–Europeans. The NZ government will need to develop policies and plan services to meet the demands of the rapid rise in dementia cases. However, to date, there are no national data on dementia prevalence and overseas data are used to estimate the NZ dementia statistics. The overall aim of the Living with Dementia in Aotearoa study was to prepare the groundwork for a large full-scale NZ dementia prevalence study.Methods and analysisThe study has two phases. In phase I, we will adapt and translate the 10/66 dementia assessment protocol to be administered in Māori, Samoan, Tongan and Fijian–Indian elders. The diagnostic accuracy of the adapted 10/66 protocol will be tested in older people from these ethnic backgrounds who were assessed for dementia at a local memory service. In phase II, we will address the feasibility issues of conducting a population-based prevalence study by applying the adapted 10/66 protocol in South Auckland and will include NZ–European, Māori, Samoan, Tongan, Chinese and Fijian–Indian participants. The feasibility issues to be explored are as follows: (1) how do we sample to ensure we get accurate community representation? (2) how do we prepare a workforce to conduct the fieldwork and develop quality control? (3) how do we raise awareness of the study in the community to maximise recruitment? (4) how do we conduct door knocking to maximise recruitment? (5) how do we retain those we have recruited to remain in the study? (6) what is the acceptability of study recruitment and the 10/66 assessment process in different ethnic groups?Ethics and disseminationThe validity and feasibility studies were approved by the New Zealand Northern A Health and Disability Ethics Committee (numbers 17NTA234 and 18NTA176, respectively). The findings will be disseminated through peer-reviewed academic journals, national and international conferences, and public events. Data will be available on reasonable request from the corresponding author.

This letter is regarding tackling the highly infectious coronavirus disease (COVID-19).Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has spread across the globe, causing a worldwide pandemic. The total number of cases across the globe is about 11.6 million with over 5 lakh deaths. The number of individuals detected is always less than the actual number of infected, in nearly all respiratory viral pandemics. Rapid Point-of-Care Antigen detection test can detect SARS-CoV-2 early in the field setting. It has moderate sensitivity and high specificity yet limited availability. This test can be employed in the hospitals and containment zones and would aid in contact tracing, isolation of the affected individuals, localized containment and directing quarantine measures. IgG antibodies usually appear after one week of onset of infection and may last for several months. Serosurveys that detect these antibodies using Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) help in the assessment of asymptomatic infection in close contacts, enhance the current understanding of the spread of disease, individual’s immune status and in identifying potential plasma donors. Case fatality rate is positively associated with SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence as was demonstrated in the survey conducted in the Spanish population. Immuno-compromised patients, healthcare workers, relatively young working population comprising of bankers, media persons, individuals working at airports, overseas operations and industries, staff in municipal bodies, shopkeepers, vendors, courier services, telecommunication offices, drivers of hospital ambulances, hearse vans, buses, auto-rickshaw, taxies; bus conductors, farmers, electricity workers, migrant labourers who have travelled back from urban and peri-urban areas to rural/tribal; inhabitants of hard to reach areas, prisoners, densely populated regions of the country as well as natives after coming in contact with returned migrant; police and security personnel, those staying in institutional settings and hostels and inhabitants of containment zones should all be tested for the presence of antibodies against the virus.

PURPOSE Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), including cancer, have emerged as a major public health problem in Vietnam; however, NCD research in Vietnam is limited, primarily because of inadequate research infrastructures, funding, and well-trained investigators. To address these challenges, we established a US-Vietnam-China partnership to plan for building the V-CORE (Vietnam Center of Research Excellence on Cancer and Other Noncommunicable Diseases) with the support of a grant from the US National Cancer Institute. The objectives of this program are to assess the need and current NCD research capabilities and infrastructure in Vietnam and to develop and pilot test research capacity building/enrichment programs, including conducting two research projects for demonstration. METHODS AND RESULTS Through a need- and capacity-assessment workshop, with participation of stakeholders in NCD research and prevention in Vietnam, we identified top priorities and gaps and needs in cancer and other NCD research in Vietnam. We organized two site visits for Vietnam National Cancer Institute delegates to observe epidemiologic research field operations, core laboratories, and biorepositories at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center, as well as at several partner institutes in Shanghai, People’s Republic of China. We organized an in-country workshop on the principles and methodology of epidemiology and biostatistics. We sponsored overseas training for 4 Vietnamese scholars. We conducted two demonstration projects: a case-control study involving 501 patients with breast cancer and 468 controls, and a community survey for diabetes and other metabolic conditions involving 1,035 urban and rural residents of Vietnam. We also jointly sponsored with Vietnam National Cancer Institute an international conference on cancer research and prevention in 2017, and jointly published 11 papers. CONCLUSION Within a 3-year period, we have built a productive collaborative network and laid a solid foundation for building the V-CORE in Vietnam. We strive to maintain and expand the collaboration and bring the success of the National Cancer Institute grant work to full fruition.

The aim of this paper was to present some results of the study of the impact of the sanctions, imposed on the Russian Federation in 2014 and consistently expanded and deepened, not on Russia, but on those who use these sanctions — the countries that imposed the sanctions (the sanctioners). External trade, that is one of the objects of the sanctions, was chosen as the subject of the study. The author’s task was to estimate the role of the Russian Federation in the external trade of the countries, which use the sanctions against Russia, before and after the sanctions, and to evaluate the harm caused to these countries by their sanctions and by Russia’s counter-sanctions. To solve these problems, the author proposed a mathematical tool for the damage quantitative assessment. The World Trade Organization statistics for 2012–2017 formed a database for the study, and economic-mathematical and statistical methods were taken as research instruments. One may summarize the results of the study as follows. First, Russia plays an insignificant role in foreign trade of most countries that imposed sanctions against the Russian Federation. However, the damage from the sanctions and counter-sanctions for some of them turns out to be quite significant. Second, the negative impact of the sanctions on their initiators in the sphere of external trade is the stronger, the more important for the sanctioning country its trade relations with the Russian Federation are. Third, the burden of the sanctions was less heavy for their main initiator — the united States of America, than for their less economically strong partners that imposed the sanctions. The author’s main conclusion is that eventually the economic interests of some of these countries win up over the political goals that go against these interests, and the volume of the foreign trade, that dropped down after the sanctions were imposed on Russia, tends to recover. Russia, shifting from the overseas markets to the domestic one and changing the geographical structure of its international trade, does continue to develop. To present the results of the study to the Russian readers, the version of the article in Russian is submitted to the journal “The World of New Economy”. Its title is “Anti-Russian Sanctions: Damage to the Countries that Declared them”. The version gives the results of the analysis of the impact of sanctions on technology trade and the content of the study of foreign trade in goods, detailed in this paper.

We conducted comparisons for exotic mammal species introduced to New Zealand (28 successful, 4 failed), Australia (24, 17) and Britain (15, 16). Modelling of variables associated with establishment success was constrained by small sample sizes and phylogenetic dependence, so our results should be interpreted with caution. Successful species were subject to more release events, had higher climate matches between their overseas geographic range and their country of introduction, had larger overseas geographic range sizes and were more likely to have established an exotic population elsewhere than was the case for failed species. Of the mammals introduced to New Zealand, successful species also had larger areas of suitable habitat than did failed species. Our findings may guide risk assessments for the import of live mammals to reduce the rate new species establish in the wild.

Structural and macroeconomic imbalances have been an inalienable feature of the socio-economic development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) since independence. Both types of disproportions produce a negative impact upon fundamental development trends in the region. Against this background, this paper analyses the structure and hierarchies of imbalances in the region of the Middle East and North Africa. The article argues that broad-range monitoring of fiscal and macroeconomic indicators can facilitate the identification of emerging imbalances and provide ways of overcoming them. The article contends that the natural and climatic and resource factors quite rigidly determined the economic profile of the region, which, in turn, predetermines the key structural and macroeconomic imbalances that affect MENA socio-economic development. The historical asymmetry in the development of the MENA states, which for a long time had been parts of the British, French and Ottoman colonial empires, with their economic or strategic roles determined by the overseas rulers, created prerequisites for the subsequent economic differentiation of the countries of the region. Over the years of independence, the uneven development of the initially similar agrarian-Bedouin economies has increased dramatically as a result of the socio- economic policies carried out by the sovereign governments in accordance with the resource capacities of each country. The authors categorise MENA countries, dividing them into five groups, depending on the nature and determinants of economic development. The authors insist that almost all the current social and economic problems of the region are related to its two fundamental specific characteristics: colossal rental incomes (mainly of oil and gas origin) and relative overpopulation. The article exposes main macroeconomic imbalances MENA states, demonstrating the asymmetry of intra-regional development and structural distortions of the economic and demographic nature. On the basis of complex fiscal and macroeconomic data analysis the authors identify the existing imbalances. The paper produces a critique of existing macroeconomic stabilization policies in MENA states and their attempts to overcome the existing imbalances. I. Abramova and L. Fituni provide an augmented assessment of the typical policy failures in MENA. The research results in a forecast of the dynamics of financial determinants of macroeconomic stability in the region and the authors’ vision of ways to overcome or limit the existing and imminent imbalances. The authors come to the conclusions that that MENA countries need to accelerate structural reforms in order to overcome imbalances and to achieve diversification of their economies. Expanding the opportunities for the national private sector and increasing its importance in the non- oil segment of the economy could help to alleviate the employment situation and increase the effective consumer demand.

Abstract The right of citizens to privacy in the Republic of Kosovo is guaranteed under the Law on Personal Data Protection. Moreover, this right is guaranteed by the Constitution (Official Gazette, 2008), which is the highest legal act. The purpose of this academic paper goes beyond a superficial assessment of the level of implementation of this fundamental right of the citizen. The core of this paper focuses on highlighting the existing challenges and those that may persist in guaranteeing the privacy of each of us under the reign of the 'Covid 19' Virus in the geographical and psychological space of all citizens of Kosovo. Despite the existence of an independent authority, mandated to oversee the implementation of this right in the public and private sector, its implementation is a permanent mission of this authority, which in our country is the Information and Privacy Agency, but also is subject to challenges, which are not always generated by human negligence. To give the deserved physiognomy to this article, official accessible sources of the sole authority that oversees the implementation of this right in our country have been used. Statistical data presented within the trunk of the paper reinforce the thesis introduced in the introduction of the article, which is confirmed during its full elaboration, reinforcing the view that part of the main challenges for Information and Privacy Agency persists being the limited number of human professional resources, as a guarantee for establishing an unwavering trust among the citizens that their privacy is guaranteed.

South Australia has a small population of older people compared to its geographic size. A Model of Service was developed to guide service delivery, with an Older Persons Mental Health Services project team appointed to guide the service. Their brief was to: develop and implement a Model of Service; develop and impart education on topics relating to mental health in late life to the clinicians, mental health teams, and aged care networks; coordinate the education sessions; develop a referral pathways document; develop an orientation package and orientation for clinicians; communicate with mental health teams and the aged care networks on the progress of the project; coordinate recruitment of clinicians; oversee data on the number of assessments undertaken; ensure that the key performance indicators were being met; and order resources for the clinicians (Nicholson and Nowak, 2010).

Abstract Quality problem Weaknesses in the quality of care delivered at hospitals translates into patient safety challenges and causes unnecessary harm. Low-and-middle-income countries disproportionately shoulder the burden of poor quality of hospital care. Initial assessment In the early 2000s, Rwanda implemented a performance-based financing (PBF) system to improve quality and increase the quantity of care delivered at its public hospitals. PBF evaluations identified quality gaps that prompted a movement to pursue an accreditation process for public hospitals. Choice of solution Since it was prohibitively costly to implement an accreditation program overseen by an external entity to all of Rwanda’s public hospitals, the Ministry of Health developed a set of standards for a national 3-Level accreditation program. Implementation In 2012, Rwanda launched the first phase of the national accreditation system at five public hospitals. The program was then expected to expand across the remainder of the public hospitals throughout the country. Evaluation Out of Rwanda’s 43 public hospitals, a total of 24 hospitals have achieved Level 1 status of the accreditation process and 4 have achieved Level 2 status of the accreditation process. Lessons learned Linking the program to the country’s existing PBF program increased compliance and motivation for participation, especially for those who were unfamiliar with accreditation principles. Furthermore, identifying dedicated quality improvement officers at each hospital has been important for improving engagement in the program. Lastly, to improve upon this process, there are ongoing efforts to develop a non-governmental accreditation entity to oversee this process for Rwanda’s health system moving forward.

ABSTRACT A commonsense approach is proposed for the provision of guidance to developing countries engaged in the formulation of national oil spill response systems. Key to the concept is the development of the system by the country's own professionals with the help of an international assistance team (IAT). The membership of the IAT is custom designed to suit the culture and technical needs of each country. The international assistance team provides the training necessary to the professionals from the receiving country who will draft the national response policy and oversee the drafting of the national contingency plan. The IAT then enters into a partnership with this core group to complete the remaining response system development. The involvement of the IAT decreases as the program progresses towards self-sufficiency. The program's goal is to develop a sustainable response system. The planning process will follow already established, internationally accepted practices such as risk assessment and identification of sensitive areas to protect. In cases where the identified risks and sensitive areas necessitate a larger system than the country can sustain, bilateral and regional agreements will be sought to guarantee rapid assistance in the event of a spill. The program is compatible with the concept of “twinning,” where a developed country enters into partnership with a developing country, thereby increasing the sustainable level of response.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the efficacy of foreign immersion programs in terms of increasing cross-cultural awareness among university students in business, accounting, human resources and agriculture. The authors extrapolate from their population to the practice of developing business professionals on international assignments. Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents findings of a four-year, government-sponsored university exchange program involving 40 professional management and agriculture science students from four US and Brazilian top research universities who participated in a semester-long study abroad experience. Pre-departure and post-exchange data were collected using the well-established Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). In addition, the authors collected academic performance data and verbal mid- and end-project personal assessments. Two of the authors of this paper served as project directors, the third as evaluation specialist. Findings – Despite intensive pre-departure preparation, in-country support and cultural immersion, the research subjects failed to attain significant and consistently higher levels of intercultural awareness. Students tended to overestimate their own level of cross-cultural competence both before and after the program. While students tended to perform well academically and voiced high levels of satisfaction with their own overseas stay, objective measures of cross-cultural awareness did not mirror these outcomes. Research limitations/implications – Multiple measures of cross-cultural competence exist, and it is possible that the development in areas other than those measured by the IDI did take place. It is also sensible to assume that cognitive development might take longer and was not captured by the post-test right after return. Practical implications – The paper suggests that cross-cultural development requires carefully designed interventions, feedback and mentoring/coaching. Simply sending individuals on overseas assignments, no matter how well prepared and supported by the institution, does not guarantee the development of multi-cultural attitudes and cognitive frames of mind. Social Implications – The development of cross-cultural competence has been described as a central concern for universities and workplaces alike. The burgeoning research literature on cross-cultural development reflects not only the importance of the topic but also the struggle to find effective pedagogical and andragogical approaches to fostering such development in university students, expatriate managers, working professionals and members of the workforce in general. Originality/value – The paper presents evaluation findings of a carefully designed and well-supported exchange program over a period of four years and involving three cohorts of students. These students are at the cusp of moving into the workplace, where many will assume professional and leadership positions in international settings. Given the high failure rate of international development and placement and the increasing global interconnectedness of academic and business organizations, the paper suggests the need for carefully designed and well-supported overseas programs to maximize cross-cultural development.

Nepal is a small, lower-middle-income country; with a population of around 30 million. As per WHO, Nepal has a low doctor-patient ratio (0.7/1000) and even lower specialists (e.g., surgical) workforce (0.003/1000); additionally, data from Nepal Medical Council show the number of postgraduate specialists is 1/3rd of the total registered doctors. The mismatch in the doctor-patient ratio is further aggravated by the overwhelming number of doctors in urban areas; when 80% of the population are in rural Nepal. This inequitable discrepancy in the healthcare system requires: proper training of competent medical graduates, a fair distribution across the country, and effective changes in the healthcare system. Competency-based medical education plays an important role in: standardizing education, training competent doctors, and deploying them where they are needed the most. The Government of Nepal has recently established Medical Education Commission-which plans to oversee the entrance exams; and expand the postgraduate training to be conducted by private hospitals, previously not affiliated with any medical colleges or universities. Historically, Civil Medical School started training compounders and dressers in Nepal in 1934. A big milestone was achieved with the establishment of the Institute of Medicine under Tribhuvan University in 1972, which has continued to train all categories of health manpower needed in the country. In 2006 Nepal Medical Council developed “Regulations for Post-graduate Medical education”. Thereafter, several institutions started providing postgraduate training, for example: the BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, Kathmandu University, National Academy of Medical Sciences, and Patan Academy of Health Sciences (PAHS). The PAHS conducts PG programs and post-PG fellowships in line with competency-based medical education. In addition to formative assessments, research thesis, and a publishable article; PAHS requires its trainees to be certified in a pre-set of entrustable professional activities (EPAs) and to master eight Core Competencies domains in: Professionalism, Patient-centered care, Procedural skills, Clinical Reasoning, Communication, Scholarship, Leadership, Community orientation. The number of medical colleges in Nepal has since expanded to 24 (medical 21 and dental colleges 3). Private medical colleges make up about 3/4th of the total medical colleges in Nepal. This makes the inclusion and regulation of more components of the competency-based curriculum in postgraduate training programs, and its monitoring, somewhat of a challenge.

Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) represents a multidisciplinary approach to the delivery of ionizing high-dose radiation to treat a wide variety of disorders. Much of the radiosurgical literature is based upon retrospective single-center studies along with a few randomized controlled clinical trials. More timely and effective evidence is needed to enhance the consistency and quality of and clinical outcomes achieved with SRS. The authors summarize the creation and implementation of a national SRS registry. The American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) through NeuroPoint Alliance, Inc., started a successful registry effort with its lumbar spine initiative. Following a similar approach, the AANS and NeuroPoint Alliance collaborated with corporate partners and the American Society for Radiation Oncology to devise a data dictionary for an SRS registry. Through administrative and financial support from professional societies and corporate partners, a framework for implementation of the registry was created. Initial plans were devised for a 3-year effort encompassing 30 high-volume SRS centers across the country. Device-specific web-based data-extraction platforms were built by the corporate partners. Data uploaders were then used to port the data to a common repository managed by Quintiles, a national and international health care trials company. Audits of the data for completeness and veracity will be undertaken by Quintiles to ensure data fidelity. Data governance and analysis are overseen by an SRS board comprising equal numbers of representatives from the AANS and NeuroPoint Alliance. Over time, quality outcome assessments and post hoc research can be performed to advance the field of SRS. Stereotactic radiosurgery offers a high-technology approach to treating complex intracranial disorders. Improvements in the consistency and quality of care delivered to patients who undergo SRS should be afforded by the national registry effort that is underway.

On June 15, 1624, Dr. Robert Vilvane informed the mayor of Exeter by letter of his displeasure with the haphazard application of poor rates in the city. Vilvane, who owned property within the city and in the surrounding countryside, was protesting the high rates imposed on his modest holdings in the city, since he was already subject to what he felt were excessive assessments on his country properties. Vilvane pointed out that he had taken it upon himself to support the purchase of armor and powder for martial officers, along with voluntary contributions to the poor, to churches, and to “sundry other taxes.” Despite a debt to the city in the amount of £500 (on which he paid interest), he did “freely give 12d weekly to two poor families here, which else would fall into penury.” Having recounted all this, he considered that “there is little cause to hoist me so high to all payments, who (besides my house) have little here [in the city].” At the crux of his argument, he asserted, was “that a Rate to the Poor is no competent Rule…both because it is uncertain…and also unequal, because some are set up too high, and others too low, by fear or favour.” Vilvane had contributed to a certain collection for the poor in a particular part of the city and noted that “many murmur at this day” about the collection, since it appeared that the overseers “did not disburse above half the Contribution.” As an unwilling party to this scheme, the doctor was upset, as he felt others were: “[I] do profess myself in this but an Echo of the Multitude, which are much aggrieved.”

In June 2021, an Employment Tribunal accepted the claim from the complainant that the UK regulator, the General Medical Council may have discriminated against a doctor based on his race, ethnicity or religion in their processes and outcomes. [1] This is perhaps the first time that such a claim of discrimination based on race, ethnicity or religion has been passed in the UK, hence this is hailed as a ‘landmark judgement’. It is not the first time that doctors have claimed that GMC and its processes demonstrate institutional racism. [2] The Kline report described the existence of ‘In groups and out groups’ determined by qualifications (including by country and within the UK by medical school) and ethnicity (including within BME populations). They found that members of ingroups can receive favourable treatment and those in out-groups are at risk of bias and stereotyping.[3] Amitabha Banerjee, wrote in the BMJ, that overt and covert racism within the medical profession is rarely talked about but existed then, and still, unfortunately, exists now, albeit to a lesser extent, to this day.[4] The case of Hadiza Bawa-Garba, a Paediatric trainee who was struck off the register by the GMC on negligence and then subsequently restored demonstrated discrimination in the processes, as the duty White consultant did not face any disciplinary process. Complaints are more likely to be against BAME doctors, and when they proceed to the regulator or the law courts, they are more likely to lead to more serious punitive measures and guilty verdicts. [5–7] The debate on whether GMC’s processes were unfair, discriminatory and racist started in 1996.[8] However, even in 2003, the GMC council has debated the issues of institutional racism and expressed its commitment to fairness [9] but little progress has been made even 2 decades later. In its submission to William’s review in 2018, BAPIO had recommended that the review must advise the GMC and the NHS to acknowledge the existence and impact of racial discrimination and make concerted efforts to improve this image nationally and abroad. [10] About the differential outcomes for doctors from minority ethnic backgrounds in examinations, assessments, and recruitment, the GMC is committed to ensuring that medical education and training pathways are valid, fair and justified. [11] The world including the NHS is changing. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has issued an open statement, together with the NHS Race and Health Observatory, Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) and the GMC, calling on healthcare leaders to ensure that health and care staff across the country are protected from racism or any other form of discrimination. The statement demonstrates a collective commitment to work together to tackle racism, bias and inequalities within the healthcare system, calling on healthcare leaders to ensure that policies and processes are fair, inclusive and in line with the Equality Act 2010. The GMC sets “ambitious” targets to address specific areas within medical the profession to address entrenched bias and racial discrimination, which it believes requires “sustained focus and for healthcare regulators to be aligned on this commitment”. Dame Clare Marx, the chairperson of the GMC UK, reiterated her commitment to creating robust processes which were fair, transparent and just in dealing with all doctors, offer speedy resolutions/ outcomes of cases, offer sensitivity and support to doctors under investigation. She committed the GMC to facilitate change across the system. [12] The NHS has been working to close this gap by adopting national targets in formal disciplinary investigations between White and BAME staff.[13] There is more visibility of the work of overseas doctors and issues of racism are being more openly debated. There has been progress, but if we want to attract the best doctors in the world to the NHS, we have to create an environment where those doctors will be treated fairly and without discrimination. In his Blog following a recent meeting with the GMC in Scotland on equality, diversity and inclusion, Professor Zamvar explores the feedback he has received from his colleagues and issues a wake-up call to the profession.

Introduction Researchers around the globe are utilizing crowdsourcing tools to reach respondents for quantitative and qualitative research (Chambers & Nimon, 2019). Many social science and business journals are receiving studies that utilize crowdsourcing tools such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), Qualtrics, MicroWorkers, ShortTask, ClickWorker, and Crowdsource (e.g., Ahn, & Back, 2019; Ali et al., 2021; Esfahani, & Ozturk, 2019; Jeong, & Lee, 2017; Zhang et al., 2017). Even though the use of these tools presents a great opportunity for sharing large quantities of data quickly, some challenges must also be addressed. The purpose of this guide is to present the basic ideas behind the use of crowdsourcing for survey research and provide a primer for best practices that will increase their validity and reliability. What is crowdsourcing research? Crowdsourcing describes the collection of information, opinions, or other types of input from a large number of people, typically via the internet, and which may or may not receive (financial) compensation (Hargrave, 2019; Oxford Dictionary, n.d.). Within the behavioral science realm, crowdsourcing is defined as the use of internet services for hosting research activities and for creating opportunities for a large population of participants. Applications of crowdsourcing techniques have evolved over the decades, establishing the strong informational power of crowds. The advent of Web 2.0 has expanded the possibilities of crowdsourcing, with new online tools such as online reviews, forums, Wikipedia, Qualtrics, or MTurk, but also other platforms such as Crowdflower and Prolific Academic (Peer et al., 2017; Sheehan, 2018). Crowdsourcing platforms in the age of Web 2.0 use remote labor recruited via the internet to assist employers complete tasks that cannot be left to machines. Key characteristics of crowdsourcing include payment for workers, their recruitment from any location, and the completion of tasks (Behrend et al., 2011). They also allow for a relatively quick collection of data compared to data collection in the field, and participants are rewarded with an incentive—often financial compensation. Crowdsourcing not only offers a large participation pool but also a streamlined process for the study design, participant recruitment, and data collection as well as integrated participant compensation system (Buhrmester et al., 2011). Also, compared to other traditional marketing firms, crowdsourcing makes it easier to detect possible sampling biases (Garrow et al., 2020). Due to advantages such as reduced costs, diversity of participants, and flexibility, crowdsourcing platforms have surged in popularity for researchers. Advantages MTurk is one of the most popular crowdsourcing platforms among researchers, allowing Requesters to submit tasks for Workers to complete (Cummings & Sibona, 2017). MTurk has been used as an online crowdsourcing platform for the recruitment of human subjects for research purposes (Paolacci & Chandler, 2014). Research has also shown MTurk to be a reliable and cost-effective tool, capable of providing representative data for research in the behavioral sciences (e.g., Crump et al., 2013; Goodman et al., 2013; Mason & Suri, 2012; Rand, 2012; Simcox & Fiez, 2014). In addition to its use in social science studies, the platform has been used in marketing, hospitality and tourism, psychology, political science, communication, and sociology contexts (Sheehan, 2018). To illustrate, between 2012 and 2017, more than 40% of the studies published in the Journal of Consumer Research used crowdsourcing websites for their data collection (Goodman & Paolacci, 2017). Disadvantages Although researchers have assessed crowdsourcing platforms as reliable and cost-effective for data collection in the behavioral sciences, they are not exempt of flaws. One disadvantage is the possibility of unsatisfactory data quality. In fact, the virtual setting of the survey implies that the investigator is physically separated from the participant, and this lack of monitoring could lead to data quality issues (Sheehan, 2018). In addition, participants in survey research on crowdsourcing platforms are not always who they claim to be, creating issues of trust with the data provided and, ultimately, the quality of the research findings (McGonagle, 2015; Smith et al., 2016). A recurrent concern with MTurk workers, for instance, is their assessment as experienced survey takers (Chandler et al., 2015). This experience is mainly acquired through completion of dozens of surveys per day, especially when they are faced with similar items and scales. Smith et al. (2016) identified two types of problems performing data collection using MTurk; namely, cheaters and speeders. As compared to Qualtrics—which has a strict screening and quality-control processes to ensure that participants are who they claim to be—MTurk appears to be less exigent regarding the workers. However, a downside for data collection with Qualtrics is more expensive fees—about $5.00 per questionnaire on Qualtrics, against $0.50 to $1.50 on MTurk (Ford, 2017). Hence, few researchers were able to conduct surveys and compare respondent pools with Qualtrics or other traditional marketing research firms (Garrow et al., 2020). Another challenge using MTurk arises when trying to collect a desired number of responses from a population targeted to a specific city or area (Ross et al., 2010). The issues inherent to the selection process of MTurk have been the subject of investigations in several studies (e.g., Berinsky et al., 2012; Chandler et al., 2014; 2015; Harms & DeSimone, 2015; Paolacci et al., 2010; Rand, 2012). Feitosa et al. (2015) pointed out that international respondents may still identify themselves as U.S. respondents with the use of fake addresses and accounts. They found that 5% to 10% of participants identifying themselves as U.S. respondents were actually from overseas locations. Moreover, Babin et al. (2016) assessed that the use of trap questions allowed researchers to uncover that many respondents change their genders, ages, careers, or income within the course of a single survey. The issues of (a) experienced workers for the quality control of questions and (b) speeders, which, for MTurk can be attributed to the platform being the main source of revenue for a given respondent, remain the inherent issues of crowdsourcing platforms used for research purposes. Best practices Some best practices can be recommended in the use of crowdsourcing platforms for data collection purposes. Workers IDs can be matched with IDs from previous studies, thus allowing researchers to exclude responses from workers who had answered previous similar studies (Goodman & Paolacci, 2017). Furthermore, proceed to a manual assignment of qualification on MTurk prior to data collection (Litman et al., 2015; Park & Park, 2020). When dealing with experienced workers, both using multiple attention checks and optimizing the survey in a way to have the participants exposed to the stimuli for a sufficient length of time to better address the questions are also recommended (Sheehan, 2018). In this sense, shorter surveys are preferred to longer ones, which affect the participant’s concentration, and may, in turn, adversely impact the quality of their answers. Most importantly, pretest the survey to make sure that all parts are working as expected. Researchers should also keep in mind that in the context of MTurk, the primary method for measurement is the web interface. Thus, to avoid method biases, researchers should ponder whether or not method factors emerge in the latent measurement models (Podsakoff et al., 2012). As such, time-lagged research designs may be preferred as predictor and criterion variables can be measured at different points in time or administered in different platforms, such as Qualtrics vs MTurk (Cheung et al., 2017). In general, the use of crowdsourcing platforms including MTurk may be appropriate according to the research question; and the quality of data is reliant on the quality-control strategies used by researchers to enhance data quality. Trade-offs between various validity types need to be prioritized according to the research objectives (Cheung et al., 2017). From our experience using crowdsourcing tools for our own research as the editorial team members of several journals and chair of several conferences, we provide the best practices as outlined below: MTurk Worker (Respondent) Selection: Researchers should consider their study population before using MTurk for data collection. The MTurk platform should be used for the appropriate study population. For example, if the study targets restaurant owners or company CEOs, MTurk workers may not be suitable for the study. However, if the target population is diners, hotel guests, grocery shoppers, online shoppers, students, or hourly employees, utilizing a sample from MTurk would be suitable. Researchers should use the selection tool in the software. For example, if you target workers only from one country, exclude responses that came from an internet protocol (IP) address outside the targeted country and report the results in the method section. Researchers should consider the demographics of workers on MTurk which must reflect the study targeted population. For example, if the study focuses on baby boomers use of technology, then the MTurk sample should include only baby boomers. Similarly, the gender balance, racial composition, and income of people on MTurk should mirror the targeted population. Researchers should use multiple screening tools that identify quality respondents and avoid problematic response patterns. For example, MTurk provides the approval rate for the respondents. This refers to how many times a respondent is rejected for various reasons (i.e., wrong code entered). We recommend using a 90% or higher approval rate. Researchers should include screening questions in different places with different type of questions to make sure that the respondents are appropriate for your study. One way is to use knowledge-based questions about the subject. For example, rather than asking “How experienced are you with accounting practices?”, a supplemental question such as “Which of the following is a component of an income statement?” should be integrated into the study in a different section of the survey. Survey Validity: Researchers should conduct a pilot survey from MTurk workers to identify and fix any potential data quality and programming problems before the entire data set is collected. Researcher can estimate time required to complete the survey from the pilot study. This average time should be used in calculating incentive payment for the workers in such a way that the payment should equate or exceed minimum wage in the targeted country. Researchers should build multiple validity-check tools into the survey. One of them is to ask attention check questions such as “please click on ‘strongly agree’ in this question” or “What is 2+2? Please choose 5” (Cobanoglu et al., 2016) Even though these attention questions are good and should be implemented, experienced survey takers or bots easily identify them and answer them correctly, but then give random answers to other questions. Instead, we recommend building in more involved validity check questions. One of the best is asking the same question in different places and in different forms. For example, asking the age of the respondent in the beginning of the survey and then asking them the year of their birth at the end of the survey is an effective way to check that they are replying to the survey honestly. Exclude all those who answered the same question differently. Report the results of these validity checks in the methodology. Cavusoglu (2019) found that almost 20% of the surveys were eliminated due to the failure of the validity check questions which were embedded in different places and in different forms in his survey. Researchers should be aware of internet bot, which is a software that runs automated tasks. Some respondents use a bot to reply to the surveys. To avoid this, use Captcha verification, which forces respondents to perform random tasks such as moving the bar to a certain area, clicking in boxes that has cars, or checking boxes to verify the person taking the survey is not a bot. Whenever appropriate, researchers should use time limit options offered by online survey tools such as Qualtrics to control the time that a survey taker must spend to advance to the next question. We found that this is a great tool, especially when you want the respondents to watch a video, read a scenario, or look at a picture before they respond to other questions. Researchers should collect data in different days and times during the week to collect a more diverse and representative sample. Data Cleaning: Researchers should be aware that some respondents do not read questions. They simply select random answers or type nonsense text. To exclude them from the study, manually inspect the data. Exclude anyone who filled out the survey too quickly. We recommend excluding all responses filled out less than 40% of the average time to take the survey. For example, if it takes 10 minutes to fill out a survey, we exclude everyone who fills out this survey in 4 minutes or less. After we separated these two groups, we compared them and found that the speeders’ (aka cheaters) data was significantly different than the regular group. Researchers should always collect more data than needed. Our rule of thumb is to collect 30% more data than needed. For example, if 500 clean data responses are wanted, collect at least 650 data. The targeted number of data will still be available after cleaning the data. Report the process of cleaning data in the method section of your article, showing the editor and reviewers that you have taken steps to increase the validity and reliability of the survey responses. Calculating a response rate for the samples using MTurk is not possible. However, it is possible to calculate active response rate (Ali et al., 2021). It can be calculated as the raw response numbers deducted from all screening and validity check question results. For example, if you have 1000 raw responses and you eliminated 100 responses for coming from IP address outside of the United States, another 100 surveys for failing the validity check questions, then your active response rate would be 800/1000= 80%.

This paper backgrounds a number of factors that have influenced proposed changes in New Zealand’s senior secondary assessment system. It documents various moves which have been made over the last 30 years, refers to international practices, reviews and developments, and notes the ongoing reluctance to shift from traditional systems in this country. Research about assessment, changing educational needs, and growing recognition of the pervasive influence of high stakes assessment and the opportunities offered by assessment aligned to learning, are seen as further influencing factors. The article emphasises the need for change, contrasts New Zealand and overseas practice, and observes that while the current NCEA design is an improvement over the old, compromises have led to a model with some deficiencies.

The Indian pharmaceuticals market is the third largest in terms of volume and thirteenth largest in terms of value. It has established itself as a global manufacturing and research hub. A large raw material base and the availability of a skilled workforce give the industry a definite competitive advantage. India has one of the lowest manufacturing costs in the world. The regulatory requirements of various countries of the world vary from each other. Therefore, it is challenging for Indian companies to develop a single drug that can be simultaneously submitted in all the countries for approval. The role of the regulatory authorities is to ensure the quality, safety, and efficacy of all medicines in circulation in their country. It not only includes the process of regulating and monitoring the drugs but also the process of manufacturing, distribution, and promotion of it. One of the primary challenges for regulatory authority is to ensure that the pharmaceutical products are developed as per the regulatory requirement of that country. This process involves the assessment of critical parameters during product development. This article covers the processes involved and requirements like import-export code, technical documentation, filing and reviewing process of drug master file, certificate of pharmaceutical product, common technical document (CTD), eCTD, and ACTD, for the registration and approval of Indian drug products in the overseas market.

In order to meet the global demand and face the international competition it has become inevitable for the MNCs to send employees overseas and accomplish the targets. But one of the most important problems that MNCs are troubled with is that of expatriate failure and premature arrival. It is estimated that around 10 to 80 percent of the expatriates sent abroad return back home early. The main reason behind premature return happens to be the cultural diversity and the associated problems faced by the expatriate employees in the host country. Also the lack of proper training to adjust to the changed surroundings makes the employees return back quickly. The expatriate managers face many difficulties and challenges in different forms. They can handle these difficulties only when they are properly prepared for the same through sound cross cultural training. The study includes the qualitative in depth interview with a specific pattern of questionnaire approaching both the employees and their supervisors to understand the effectiveness of cross-cultural training programs on the performance and adjustment levels of the expatriates in the host country. It also focuses on the approaches in the cross-cultural training programs and on the skills needed for effective cross-cultural communication

The importance of the facility maintenance management in the public hospital building has increased rapidly as many organisations aim to become world class. Maintenance management in hospital buildings recognized as a part of sustainability aspects in reaching optimum performances during at peak efficiency. Maintenance problem not only burden government and consumer but it also gives negative perception among foreigner that are made up investors and tourist from overseas, towards public of maintenance culture in this country. Therefore, aim of this study is to determine the key performance indicator (KPI) to seek the best strategy in maintenance management. A total of 32 questionnaires were distributed to maintenance manager. This survey covered 32 public hospitals including public hospitals in Northern region of Peninsular Malaysia. Majority of the respondent agrees that all the elements stated as a key performance indicators to maintenance management effectiveness. Ten factors were categorized as a key performance indicator to measure the effectiveness of maintenance management in the public hospital building. Result shows that monitoring and supervision, task planning and scheduling and computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) as a strong factors thus prove that maintenance manager as an important person and responsible to ensure the maintenance services operate with optimum performances. On the other hand, human resource management plays an important role to assist the maintenance team to achieving the objective and policy. Therefore, this discovery can evaluate implementation policy to increase further effectiveness of maintenance management level to any public hospital building.

This study aims to determine the demographic factors that affect lecturer publication performances in Indonesia. Data of lecturer profile consisting of academic rank, administrative position, highest education, the country where lecturers received their degrees (overseas or regional), age, work years, and gender was collected from the Ministry of Research online database. This study employs data from 658 lecturers in the faculties of economics and business from 7 universities in Indonesia. The lecturer publication score was obtained from the Indonesian research assessment system called SINTA. To find out the relationship of these factors on the performance of lecturers' publications, multivariate regression analysis with a 95% confidence level was carried out and followed by the Tukey test. Academic rank, highest education, and the university where the lecturer received their degree had a significant influence (p-value <0.05) on the 3-years and overall publication performance. Gender and administrative positions only have a significant effect on the 3-years publication performance, while age and work years did not significantly influence publication performance. The results of this study can be used by lecturer management policymakers in developing countries, especially in Indonesia to make appropriate strategies in developing lecturer resources.

Introduction: This paper describes some of the features of family medicine consultations in one clinic in India. In the United Kingdom (UK) there is a significant difference in the success rate in the Royal College of General Practice postgraduate licensing assessment (MRCGP) between those doctors who graduated MBBS from overseas but who trained and work in the UK, and those who graduated in the UK. The reasons for this are not known, but are likely to be multifactorial. India is the country of origin of one of the largest groups of UK International Medical Graduates (IMGs) and some doctors from India feel that their difficulty in passing this exam is in part due to family medicine being performed differently in India. Methods: The reported experiences of family medicine trained doctors in India about contextual aspects of practice are explored through a thematic analysis of focus group and interviews. A conversation analysis of work done by talk-in-interaction in video recordings of actual family medicine consultations in India is also presented. Results and Discussion: The impact of family medicine training, or the lack of it, and Indian structural and societal norms in the practice of family medicine are considered. The Clinical Skills Assessment element of MRCGP (CSA) heavily emphasises talk as used in all three assessment domains - data gathering, clinical management and interpersonal skills. The phrase ‘interactional fluidity’ is coined for the marker of competence with talk that RCGP examiners seek. This has implications in a high-stakes, yet simulated, assessment for those consulting in a second language. Using a model that differentiates between ‘core business work talk’, ‘work-related talk’ and ‘small talk’, the talk from video-recorded real-life consultations in India will be analysed. The risk of UK examiners mistaking unfamiliar patterns of talk for lack of medical competence is discussed. Conclusion: The differential attainment of IMGs has been described for some time and this paper aims to move the discussion on to potential training interventions in response.

Abstract Background Relatively little is known about deaths from surgical conditions in low- and middle- income African countries. The prevalence of untreated surgical conditions in Malawi has previously been estimated at 35%, with 24% of the total deaths associated with untreated surgical conditions. In this study, we wished to analyse the causes of deaths related to surgical disease in Malawi and where the deaths took place; at or outside a health facility. Methods The study is based on data collected in a randomised multi-stage cross-sectional national household survey, which was carried out using the Surgeons Overseas Assessment of Surgical Need (SOSAS) tool. Randomisation was done on 48,233 settlements, using 55 villages from each district as data collection sites. Two to four households were randomly selected from each village. Two members from each household were interviewed. A total of 1479 households (2909 interviewees) across the whole country were visited as part of the survey. Results The survey data showed that in 2016, the total number of reported deaths from all causes was 616 in the 1479 households visited. Data related to cause of death were available for 558 persons (52.7% male). Surgical conditions accounted for 26.9% of these deaths. The conditions mostly associated with the 150 surgical deaths were body masses, injuries, and acute abdominal distension (24.3, 21.5 and 18.0% respectively). 12 women died from child delivery complications. Significantly more deaths from surgical conditions or injuries (55.3%) occurred outside a health facility compared to 43.6% of deaths from other medical conditions, (p = 0.0047). 82.3% of people that died sought formal health care and 12.9% visited a traditional healer additionally prior to their death. 17.7% received no health care at all. Of 150 deaths from potentially treatable surgical conditions, only 21.3% received surgical care. Conclusion In Malawi, a large proportion of deaths from possible surgical conditions occur outside a health facility. Conditions associated with surgical death were body masses, acute abdominal distention and injuries. These findings indicate an urgent need for scale up of surgical services at all health care levels in Malawi.

China’s “Belt &amp; Road Initiative” has been proposed for several years, which has stimulated the economic and financial development of the countries alongside the “Belt &amp; Road”. For a world’s leading energy consuming country, China tries to secure the energy supply from the resource-rich countries via oversea energy investment. In this paper, we propose a sequence to sequence (seq2seq) model to evaluate the energy investment risk of 50 countries alongside the “Belt &amp; Road Initiative”. Specifically, we first build an indicator system mainly containing six factors. Then we adopt Bi-long-short term memory (Bi-LSTM) as encoder to process the historical statistics. Afterward, we use self-attention mechanism to assign the weights on the six factors of the indicator system. Finally we use a hierarchical convolution neural network decoder to generate the assessment results. Our findings indicate that resource potential and Chinese factor are the most important indicators. And through our thorough investigation, we find that Russia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Indonesia are the most recommended target countries for China’s oversea energy investment.

Country surveillance constitutes an essential part of the IMF's mandate to oversee the international monetary system and to monitor the economic and financial policies of its 185 member countries. The IMF's Executive Board conducts regularly scheduled reviews of country surveillance (the Triennial Surveillance Review) to consider ways to improve its effectiveness. The 2008 review is the first such review since the Executive Board approved, in June 2007, a new Decision on Bilateral Surveillance. This Decision affirms that the focus of bilateral surveillance is on those policies of members that can significantly influence present or prospective external stability. The review focused on the implementation of country surveillance in the recent past, as presented in the following set of papers: • The overview paper presents the main findings and priority areas for further work. The review finds that stakeholders hold the quality of IMF surveillance in high regard, but that improvements should focus on risk assessment, integration of macroeconomic and financial sector surveillance, multilateral perspectives (cross-border spillovers and cross-country analysis), and exchange rate assessments. The priority areas identified in the review served as key background for the preparation of the IMF’s Statement of Surveillance Priorities (SSP). • The Thematic Findings (Supplement 1) provides supporting analysis on the implementation of bilateral surveillance in the recent past and, particularly, on the appropriateness of its focus and its analytical value added in particular areas, including the overall “health check”, exchange rates, financial sector issues, cross-country analysis and cross-border spillover analysis (including a case study of surveillance in the run up to the subprime crisis), the degree of candor and evenhandedness in surveillance, and the effectiveness of its communication. • The Background Information paper (Supplement 2) provides further information, including a description of review methodologies, and results including interview findings, surveys of various audiences, and supporting data on the quality of consultation documents. • The External Consultant’s Report provides an independent view of IMF surveillance in Europe.

Internship programmes have the potential to provide learning and professional experiences, build students’ competency and strengthen partnerships between community and training institutions. In this paper, we examine the extent to which a structured internship at The University of the West Indies contributed to experience and competency-building, provided focus and met learners’ expectations and satisfaction among a cohort of unpaid health promotion interns. The contribution of placements to the strengthening of health education and promotion competencies and interns’ feelings about their experiences are included. Twenty-four (24) internship reports were reviewed using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. The majority of interns were Jamaicans (70.8%), 12.5% were from Dominica and the remaining 16.7% represented other nationalities. Health professionals comprised the highest percentage of cohorts (79.2%) and governmental agencies comprised the largest proportion (63%) of internship sites. Activities undertaken were in the areas of planning, implementing and evaluating programmes (71%) and conducting needs assessments (63%). Communication-related activities were reported by 43% of interns. Twenty-one per cent were engaged in lobbying and collaboration with other partners, while 23% established committees to oversee the sustainability of initiatives. While some interns reported negative experiences with supervision at their placement agencies, all valued internship seminars, which they found as a supportive environment in which they were able to share their progress with peers and academics. The opportunity for applying theory to practice and acting as resource persons were reflected as positives. The structured internship approach seems to have merits for building competence and engendering individual satisfaction.

Area Studies and Study Abroad in the 21st Century The future now belongs to societies that organize themselves for learning. - Ray Marshall and Marc Tucker, Thinking for a Living, xiii Few today would argue with the conviction that nearly every phase of our daily lives is shaped and informed by global societies, corporations, events and ideas. More than ever before, it is possible to claim that we are increasingly aware of the dynamic power and penetrating effects of global flows on information, technology, the sciences, the arts, the humanities, and languages. Borderless, spaceless and timeless, such sources of knowledge, it appears, are effortlessly digested and disseminated without clocks, calendars, or physical limitations. It is, of course, a mistake to believe that packages of “instant” knowledge that appear to wing their way at megahertz speeds in and through our earthly lives account for all or nearly all that there is to know—or, more importantly, to learn—about our communities, regions and the globe itself. On the contrary: the “knowing” about how to live, to work, to prosper, or to understand ourselves and those around us is not what educators mean when they speak of intellectual achievement and practical understanding. It is the “learning” about us, our societies and our global knowledge that lies at the heart of the international educator’s life work, and it is the learning that is the most controversial aspect of education. The act of “learning,” in fact, is less objective and more subjective, is less passive and more active, and is less superficial and more profound in each of our lives. By definition, a responsible learner is one who takes on the intellectual challenge and the social and personal obligation to leave this globe a better place for those who follow, who assumes the life work of influencing the lives of others, and who is committed to making the best of every opportunity both within the reach and beyond the vision of the mind’s eye. Study abroad has traditionally been viewed as a time of seeing and viewing, however passively, the differences and similarities of other peoples, societies and cultures. The period of knowing about what others do or say can occur at any time during one’s life; however, the “knowing” of studying abroad is accomplished in the college years prior to the accumulated knowledge about practical learning and living. In this respect, study abroad has been seen as an experience which may or may not invest the students in greater or lesser insights about the peoples, societies or cultures around them. Further, when study abroad is bound up with travel or movement from place to place, it can become a passive act, so much so that travel rather than learning becomes the goal of the study abroad experience. Simply put, the more that one travels, the more, it is argued, one learns. Furthermore, while seen as desirable for “classroom learning,” some would say that no amount of academic preparation appears to be useful in the enterprise of the travel experience, since so many experiences are unpredictable, individualized and, in some cases, arbitrary. From the perspective of study abroad, it might be said that the gods of area studies no longer completely fulfill our students’ needs, while the gods of global studies have not yet fulfilled their promises. Janus-like, international educators look in one direction at a still highly intense and valued picture of local cultures and identities, and in another direction toward an increasingly common culture, economy and society. The former appears to celebrate the differences and “uncommonness” of the human experience while the latter smoothes over the differences to underscore the commonalities and sameness of our contemporary world. The choice appears to be between the particular and the universal, the local and the global. Academic preparations, such as area studies programs, appear to be unnecessary for the individualized forms of learning, such as study abroad. Indeed, since an area studies preparation may raise or strengthen stereotypical perceptions of the overseas peoples, societies and cultures, it has been argued that it best be left aside. In this context, students are viewed as a tabula rasa on which new discoveries from living and studying overseas leave an imprint or impression. It seems that sending as many students as possible in as many directions as possible has become the dominant study abroad objective. Thus, “whole world” presentations and documentation often rely on the “other” as the learning objective with little or no attempt to discriminate or distinguish the levels of learning that such “whole world” immersion entails. In recent times, additional concerns about liability, health, safety and comfort levels have been added to the “pre-departure” orientations and training programs. The “student as self-learner” continues to be viewed and treated as a “customer knowledge-consumer” within both U.S. private and public colleges and universities. In the age of “globalization,” it is the conviction of the editors of Frontiers that knowledge consumption is only a small aspect of the 21st century international educators’ arsenal. More importantly, it will be argued in this special issue on area studies and Study Abroad that the intellectual development of the U.S. undergraduate needs to be enhanced with skills of self-learning and transdisciplinary perspectives on local and regional cultures and languages. The authors contributing to this special thematic issue of Frontiers have been asked to bring their state-of-the-art thinking on area studies to bear on the key question confronting study abroad: How does specialized understanding of geographical and cultural areas of the world enhance and strengthen undergraduate learning on and beyond our campuses? In other words, in what ways do area studies inform overseas learning through the activity of study abroad? The variety of responses demonstrates two principal ways in which area studies has begun to reformulate its goals and strategies. First, area studies reaffirms a commitment to local and regional comprehensive research and teaching, and redefines its mission in terms of the need to come to grips with local knowledge and specific social and cultural practices within a globalized world. Second, area studies specialists question long-held definitions of concepts, including those of “geographical area” and “globalization,” in order to maximize contributions to U.S. undergraduate learning. David Ludden begins our issue with a review of the Social Science Research Council and the Ford Foundation’s understanding of the transition in area studies from the Sputnik era to the globalization era. Ludden notes the faculty dilemma in working in an “area.” He points out the political interests of the Cold War for public funding of such specialized academic skills, skills which, whether funded by the government or not, were and continue to be defined by the scholar first and then by finances. Drawing on his own experience at the South Asia Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, Ludden takes the reader through the intellectual rationale for area studies, and how that rationale is being redefined in favor of stronger area studies in the present globalization era. Gregory Kulacki’s study of China and the Chinese experience points accurately to one approach to defining area studies; that is, in terms of the peoples and cultures studied. In a sense, Kulacki makes it clear that Chinese studies is “legitimate” and has authority as long as it reflects the Chinese themselves, their experiences and lives. Ann Curthoys, on the other hand, notes the growing importance of defining Australians and Australian studies not only in terms of the changing experiences of contemporary Australia, but also in terms of the demands of non-Australians, who ask for more precision in defining Australians, their history, society and cultures. Richard Beach and George Sherman take on a more difficult matter, at least from the viewpoint of U.S. faculty and students. Canada is rarely seen as a study abroad site for U.S. students, not only because of its geographical position but also for its cultural and historical proximity. The overall U.S. view, albeit unflattering, is that Canada and Canadians are very much like the U.S. and Americans, so why study in Canada? Beach and Sherman argue that history, languages, and borders do make a difference, both physically as well as culturally. Using the argument of the previous area studies specialists, they are interested in the ways that Canadians have shaped and informed their cultural and social identities in the teeth of U.S. economic and political domination in the region. The implications of globalization are, perhaps, more immediately evident in the Canadian case than in any other world region. U.S. students would do well to observe the processes of adaptation and acculturation first-hand by studying and living in Canada. James Petras gives us a broader vista of regional adaptation to the economic and political forces of globalization with his essay on Latin America. Indeed, Latin America has a dynamic similar to that of Canada due to its physical, cultural and historical proximity to the U.S. It would be a mistake to see Latin America only in terms of the north-south regional dynamics, since Europe, Asia and Africa have also shaped both past and present structures and institutions within that region in ways far more dramatic than has the United States. Study abroad, Petras reminds us, is an excellent way of learning directly about Latin American societies, cultures and politics from Latin Americans themselves, a learning that may be widely different from the official U.S. diplomatic and corporate perspectives. Finally, the very familiar world regions, such as England, offer in some cases more challenges to the U.S. undergraduate than might be expected. Jane Edwards looks at Britain and all that U.S. students may or may not know about that culture and society. The study of Britain lends itself, Edwards argues, to more than the usual challenges, due to the preconceived notions that U.S. students bring with them to, say, London. Understanding the “European-ness” of Britain and its historic relationship with continental Western Europe will justify the need to see Britain as less familiar and more complex, thus necessitating the need to study, visit and live in parts of Britain and Western Europe. In this case, the area does define the country, its identity and culture in a historical interplay of social, cultural and economic forces. David Lloyd, Philip Khoury and Russell Bova invite the reader to return to large regional perspectives through African, Middle Eastern and Russian area studies. David Lloyd presents an analysis of the broad and immediate contexts of African studies. While recognizing the difficulty of establishing consistently causal links between African studies and study abroad in Africa, he delineates the significance of local, experience-based study for the development of collaborative African studies research. Lloyd argues that the benefits of study abroad in Africa to African studies belie the relatively small number of students involved. Further, assessment for funding and other purposes needs to utilize criteria that take into account the challenges of on-site study in Africa and the depth of post-study abroad participation not just in African studies per se, but in other related areas as well. Considering the recent past of Middle East studies, Philip Khoury charts its response to post-Cold War criticism. He illustrates new directions the field is taking towards including different geographic areas, and new emphasis in organizational priorities, noting the importance of funding for providing first-hand contact for students in Middle Eastern studies with scholars from the Middle East. Khoury assesses the impact of recent historical and political events in the area on Middle Eastern studies, and looks toward more inclusive research efforts. Russell Bova examines another region that has undergone considerable political, social and economic change in the 20th century. Having moved from empire to soviet socialist states and now to a confederation of nation states, Russia and, naturally, Russian area studies, offer an excellent example of local and regional complexities both in the nomenclature of the region and in the changes in Russian studies programs. Bova illustrates the need to understand the specific dynamics of local communities in their relationship to larger administrative units such as provinces, states and national capitals. In referring to the “double transition” of contemporary Russia, Bova reminds us that globalization is both a grass roots and elite process with many unlikely “bedfellows” that is also changing more rapidly each decade than had been the case fifty years ago. Finally, Richard Falk and Nancy Kanach collaborate to discuss the ways in which globalization and study abroad are emerging in the post-Cold War period. The sudden shifts of economic and political power make our world more fragile and more difficult to comprehend without considering the “computer gap” that is rapidly leaving whole communities and even nations in a more uneven relationship with the power brokers than ever before. The need to reflect with care and precision through area studies is complemented by the additional pressing need to study, see and learn outside of the U.S. Globalization means promoting study abroad and reaffirming the strengths of local and regional studies. Taken together, these essays invite international educators to reconsider notions of learning before, during and after study abroad. The writers view study abroad as an opportunity for social and intellectual engagement with other peoples and with oneself. The essays point to a variety of ways of intellectually preparing our students for their initial encounters with sets of real-life global experiences. Reflecting on such engagement and encounters allows students to begin to formulate, with increasing sophistication, specific and general concepts about individual differences, local and regional commonalities, and the global transformations of our present era. In light of the current area studies debates, we might also reconsider approaches to pre-departure preparations, create onsite projects, and reorganize the overseas curricula of study abroad programs themselves. In particular, students can continue to benefit from area and global studies programs back on the home campus upon their return, where they can enter effectively into scholarly debates and continue the learning and personal growth that began while they were abroad. Frontiers welcomes comments and suggestions for future special issues. We see ourselves and our field of international education in greater need of close cooperation with our faculty colleagues both in terms of defining the work of international learning, and in terms of formulating and designing international or global programs. We thus invite our readers to see Frontiers as a forum for such academic exchanges, and promise that Frontiers will respond to articles, essays, book reviews and reviews of resources for study abroad with collegial interest and enthusiasm. We wish to thank especially Brian Whalen, Rhoda Borcherding and our other colleagues on the Editorial Board for their support, encouragement and assistance in completing this special issue. We are particularly pleased with the authors and their willingness to listen to our requests and comments. Thomas Ricks, Villanova University Katharine Krebs, SUNY Binghamton Michael Monahan, Macalester College Suggestions for Further Reading Altbach, Philip G. and Patti McGill Peterson, eds. Higher Education in the 21st Century: Global Challenge and National Response. IIE Research Report Number 29. Annapolis, MD: IIE Books, 1999. This slim volume focuses on principal topics for colleges and universities to consider both locally and globally. Philip Altbach and Todd Davis set the tone of the volume with their “notes for an international dialogue on higher education.” Stressing the need for practical education, the authors also raise issues about the role of technology, the increase in “internationally mobile students,” the global role of graduate education, privatization of higher education, committed faculty and the threats of “managerialized” universities. The eight responses to the opening themes address specific issues for China, India, Africa and South Africa, Latin America, Japan and Europe. The work is a very good discussion text for international educators and their area studies faculty colleagues, and also provides a theoretical basis for the design and development of overseas programs. Stephen R. Graubard, ed. “Education Yesterday, Education Tomorrow.” Daedalus. Vol. 127, No. 4 (Fall, 1998). The eleven authors of this issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences build off the Fall 1995 issue of Daedalus and its topic of “American Education: Still Separate, Still Unequal.” While neither accepting nor rejecting the thrust of A Nation at Risk, the authors look both at what has occurred over the past three decades, and at what is on the horizon for the next decade. In stressing reforms of systems and innovative ways of learning, the authors’ discussions invite the international educator to address a variety of ways in which students learn and to challenge the system in which they thrive. WWW. NAFSA.ORG/SECUSSA.WHYSTUDY In 1989, NAFSA and COUNCIL created the Whole World Committee (WWC). Initially chaired by John Sommers and now chaired by Mick Vandenberg, the WWC set out to find ways by which U.S. students could and would choose non-European overseas sites for a semester of study and learning. One of the tasks that the WWC accomplished was the creation of four area study essays on Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East. Each essay, entitled “Why Study in …,” addresses basic fears and stereotyping of the non-European world regions. The essays then focus on benefits, health and safety, “getting started,” housing, and practical learning in each of these regions. In newly-attached longer versions, the essays also have a bibliography and more informative texts. The shorter versions were published serially in Transitions Abroad. NAFSA has added two additional important essays to this website, on “Class and Study Abroad” and “An African-American in South Africa.” Overall, the readers of Frontiers will be well-advised to access the articles at the website and consider using all the essays in their pre-departure orientation training, faculty area studies discussion groups, and in welcome-back sessions for returning students. Richard Falk. Predatory Globalization: A Critique. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1999. The thesis of Richard Falk’s critique is that “predatory globalization’ has eroded, if not altogether broken, the former social contract that was forged between state and society during the last century or so” (p. 3). The breaking of that contract resulted from the state’s “deference to the discipline of global capital” and the neglect of the common good. Falk argues that only the “massing of strong transnational social pressures on the states of the world could alter the political equation to the point where the state could sufficiently recover its autonomy in relation to the world economy.” He demonstrates the emergence of a new kind of transnational politics referred to as “globalization-from-below.” In restoring “global civil society,” this new politics will need to move forward with the project of cosmopolitan democracy, including the protection of human rights. For the international educator, creating overseas programs that allow for a better understanding of the interconnectedness of regional and global levels is an admirable goal. More important, however, are those programs that offer U.S. undergraduates insights into “world order priorities” such as global poverty, protection of the planet, the sources of transnational violence, and “responsible sovereignty” in ways rarely found in traditional classroom learning on our campuses. Mark Tessler, Jodi Nachtwey and Anne Banda. Eds. Area Studies and Social Science: Strategies for Understanding Middle East Politics. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999. This edited work addresses a wide range of issues involved in the “rational choice” versus area studies debate that is so well elucidated by David Ludden in the opening article of our special issue. Looking at the “area studies controversy” from the perspective of political scientists, the editors’ Introduction underscores questions that we international educators need to address ourselves. It is valuable to wonder about the “uses and abuses” of area studies in planning our overseas programs, or discussing the “internationalization” of our curricula. It is also critical to understand the Eurocentric and overly-simplistic approaches of the social science “rational choice” models. While agreeing that both area studies and the social science theories and methodologies are necessary for a global understanding, the present work places such questions within the context of the Middle East as a stimulus and a model for increasing the value of research about any country or region.

Since its inception in 1851, the Texas State Cemetery in Austin has risen in stature to become the state's premier burial place for state officials, historical figures, and prominent citizens. Extensive renovation work that began in 1995 necessitated an archeological study that included historic archival research, pedestrian survey, geomorphological assessment, mechanical testing in proposed construction zones, recording and investigation of historical features (including three unmarked graves) found in construction zones, and excavation and relocation of 57 graves of Confederate veterans and spouses. Prewitt and Associates, Inc., conducted these investigations between April and August of 1995. Archival research provides a concise history of the development and historical significance of the 145-year-old State Cemetery. Although it was sometimes neglected and remained an obscure burial place prior to 1900, the current project marks the third major renovation phase to be undertaken this century. The earliest extensive improvements occurred between 1910 and 1915 under the direction of Governor O. B. Colquitt. The second major overhaul, promoted by businessman and historian Louis W. Kemp, occurred during the late 1920s and early 1930s. The 1995-1996 renovations are an interagency cooperative effort, overseen by Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock and funded in 1995 as a, Statewide Transportation Enhancement Project under the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991. True to the visions of all its supporters, the Texas State Cemetery is destined to be more than a simple burial ground - it is becoming a cemetery-museum for the curation of Texas history. The pedestrian survey and geomorphological investigation yielded nothing unexpected, but subsurface testing uncovered unusual features in two proposed construction zones. Three previously unknown grave pits were exposed in a Gradall trench in the northeastern corner of the cemetery where construction of a cenotaph is planned. Hand testing revealed outlines of wooden coffins that contained no human remains. Archival research uncovered two facts relating to the empty graves: (1) the northeastern 1-acre of the cemetery was set aside between 1866 and ca. 1875 for the burial of Federal soldiers stationed in Austin during the post-Civil War Reconstruction period; and (2) the Federal burials were later exhumed and reinterred in a National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas. Gradall trenching in the proposed Plaza de los Recuerdos construction zone uncovered extensive concrete curbing associated with a former north-south roadway that entered the cemetery from Seventh Street. Subsequent research identified these features as remnants of Albert Sidney Johnston Avenue, constructed by the short-lived Austin construction firm of Brown & Reissig in 1912-1913 during the Colquitt renovation era. This roadwork was covered over during the 1929-1930 construction of Lou Kemp Highway. The greatest archeological effort involved the moving of historic graves, necessitated by the master renovation plan which called for landscaping to provide a buffer between vehicular traffic along the main cemetery road and the closest graves in Sections D and F. These sections contain the graves of over 2,000 Confederate veterans, soldiers, and wives. Of these, 57 graves fronting along the central roadway were exhumed and reinterred in a safer Iocation in Section D. Headstones associated with each grave, along with additional archival research, provided a great deal of information (minimally name and age at death) on the 1884 to 1951 burials of 51 Confederate veterans and 6 spouses whose remains were excavated. The mortuary artifacts associated with these burials, and detailed osteological analyses on skeletal remains of 56 individuals, are described. The archeological and bioarcheological data reported herein provide a rare look at the evolution of funerary traits during the early twentieth century, as well as insights into the health of an elderly group of people, many of whom fought in and survived the Civil War. Average age at death for the individuals comprising this sample is 77.3 years. An osteological examination of the remains showed that most observable skeletal disorders consisted of age-progressive changes such as arthritis, antemortem tooth loss, and caries. Signs of trauma also were common, with some skeletal conditions interpreted as evidence of war-related wounds.

The Black Summer of 2019/2020 saw the forests of southeast Australia go up in flames. The fire season started early, in September 2019, and by March 2020 fires had burned over 12.6 million hectares (Werner and Lyons). The scale and severity of the fires was quickly confirmed by scientists to be “unprecedented globally” (Boer et al.) and attributable to climate change (Nolan et al.).The fires were also a media spectacle, generating months of apocalyptic front-page images and harrowing broadcast footage. Media coverage was particularly preoccupied by the cause of the fires. Media framing of disasters often seeks to attribute blame (Anderson et al.; Ewart and McLean) and, over the course of the fire period, blame for the fires was attributed to climate change in much media coverage. However, as the disaster unfolded, denialist discourses in some media outlets sought to veil this revelation by providing alternative explanations for the fires. Misinformation originating from social media also contributed to this obscuration.In this article, we investigate the extent to which media coverage of the 2019/2020 bushfires functioned both to precipitate a climate change epiphany and also to support refutation of the connection between catastrophic fires and the climate crisis.Environmental Communication and RevelationIn its biblical sense, revelation is both an ending and an opening: it is the apocalyptic end-time and also the “revealing” of this time through stories and images. Environmental communication has always been revelatory, in these dual senses of the word – it is a mode of communication that is tightly bound to crisis; that has long grappled with obfuscation and misinformation; and that disrupts power structures and notions of the status quo as it seeks to reveal what is hidden. Climate change in particular is associated in the popular imagination with apocalypse, and is also a reality that is constantly being “revealed”. Indeed, the narrative of climate change has been “animated by the revelations of science” (McNeish 1045) and presented to the public through “key moments of disclosure and revelation”, or “signal moments”, such as scientist James Hansen’s 1988 US Senate testimony on global warming (Hamblyn 224).Journalism is “at the frontline of environmental communication” (Parham 96) and environmental news, too, is often revelatory in nature – it exposes the problems inherent in the human relationship with the natural world, and it reveals the scientific evidence behind contentious issues such as climate change. Like other environmental communicators, environmental journalists seek to “break through the perceptual paralysis” (Nisbet 44) surrounding climate change, with the dual aim of better informing the public and instigating policy change. Yet leading environmental commentators continually call for “better media coverage” of the planetary crisis (Suzuki), as climate change is repeatedly bumped off the news agenda by stories and events deemed more newsworthy.News coverage of climate-related disasters is often revelatory both in tone and in cultural function. The disasters themselves and the news narratives which communicate them become processes that make visible what is hidden. Because environmental news is “event driven” (Hansen 95), disasters receive far more news coverage than ongoing problems and trends such as climate change itself, or more quietly devastating issues such as species extinction or climate migration. Disasters are also highly visual in nature. Trumbo (269) describes climate change as an issue that is urgent, global in scale, and yet “practically invisible”; in this sense, climate-related disasters become a means of visualising and realising what is otherwise a complex, difficult, abstract, and un-seeable concept.Unsurprisingly, natural disasters are often presented to the public through a film of apocalyptic rhetoric and imagery. Yet natural disasters can be also “revelatory” moments: instances of awakening in which suppressed truths come spectacularly and devastatingly to the surface. Matthewman (9–10) argues that “disasters afford us insights into social reality that ordinarily pass unnoticed. As such, they can be read as modes of disclosure, forms of communication”. Disasters, he continues, can reveal both “our new normal” and “our general existential condition”, bringing “the underbelly of progress into sharp relief”. Similarly, Lukes (1) states that disasters “lift veils”, revealing “what is hidden from view in normal times”. Yet for Lukes, “the revelation tells us nothing new, nothing that we did not already know”, and is instead a forced confronting of that which is known yet difficult to engage with. Lukes’ concern is the “revealing” of poverty and inequality in New Orleans following the impact of Hurricane Katrina, yet climate-related disasters can also make visible what McNeish terms “the dark side effects of industrial civilisation” (1047). The Australian bushfires of 2019/2020 can be read in these terms, primarily because they unveiled the connection between climate change and extreme events. Scorching millions of hectares, with a devastating impact on human and non-human communities, the fires revealed climate change as a physical reality, and—for Australians—as a local issue as well as a global one. As media coverage of the fires unfolded and smoke settled on half the country, the impact of climate change on individual lives, communities, landscapes, native animal and plant species, and well-established cultural practices (such as the summer camping holiday) could be fully and dramatically realised. Even for those Australians not immediately impacted, the effects were lived and felt: in our lungs, and on our skin, a physical revelation that the impacts of climate change are not limited to geographically distant people or as-yet-unborn future generations. For many of us, the summer of fire was a realisation that climate change can no longer be held at arm’s length.“Revelation” also involves a temporal collapse whereby the future is dragged into the present. A revelatory streak of this nature has always existed at the heart of environmental communication and can be traced back at least as far as the environmentalist Rachel Carson, whose 1962 book Silent Spring revealed a bleak, apocalyptic future devoid of wildlife and birdsong. In other words, environmental communication can inspire action for change by exposing the ways in which the comforts and securities of the present are built upon a refusal to engage with the future. This temporal rupture where the future meets the present is particularly characteristic of climate change narratives. It is not surprising, then, that media coverage of the 2019/2020 bushfires addressed not just the immediate loss and devastation but also dread of the future, and the understanding that summer will increasingly hold such threats. Bushfires, Climate Change and the MediaThe link between bushfire risk and climate change generated a flurry of coverage in the Australian media well before the fires started in the spring of 2019. In April that year, a coalition of 23 former fire and emergency services leaders warned that Australia was “unprepared for an escalating climate threat” (Cox). They requested a meeting with the new government, to be elected in May, and better funding for firefighting to face the coming bushfire season. When that meeting was granted, at the end of Australia’s hottest and driest year on record (Doyle) in November 2019, bushfires had already been burning for two months. As the fires burned, the emergency leaders expressed frustration that their warnings had been ignored, claiming they had been “gagged” because “you are not allowed to talk about climate change”. They cited climate change as the key reason why the fire season was lengthening and fires were harder to fight. "If it's not time now to speak about climate and what's driving these events”, they asked, “– when?" (McCubbing).The mediatised uncovering of a bushfire/climate change connection was not strictly a revelation. Recent fires in California, Russia, the Amazon, Greece, and Sweden have all been reported in the media as having been exacerbated by climate change. Australia, however, has long regarded itself as a “fire continent”: a place adapted to fire, whose landscapes invite fire and can recover from it. Bushfires had therefore been considered part of the Australian “normal”. But in the Australian spring of 2019, with fires having started earlier than ever and charring rainforests that did not usually burn, the fire chiefs’ warning of a climate change-induced catastrophic bushfire season seemed prescient. As the fires spread and merged, taking homes, lives, landscapes, and driving people towards the water, revelatory images emerged in the media. Pictures of fire refugees fleeing under dystopian crimson skies, masked against the smoke, were accompanied by headlines like “Apocalypse Now” (Fife-Yeomans) and “Escaping Hell” (The Independent). Reports used words like “terror”, “nightmare” (Smee), “mayhem”, and “Armageddon” (Davidson).In the Australian media, the fire/climate change connection quickly became politicised. The Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack interviewed by the ABC, responding to a comment by Greens leader Adam Bandt, said connecting bushfire and climate while the fires raged was “disgraceful” and “disgusting”. People needed help, he said, not “the ravings of some pure enlightened and woke capital city greenies” (Goloubeva and Haydar). Gladys Berejiklian the NSW Premier also described it as “inappropriate” (Baker) and “disappointing” (Fox and Higgins) to talk about climate change at this time. However Carol Sparks, Mayor of bushfire-ravaged Glen Innes in rural NSW, contradicted this stance, telling the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) “Michael McCormack needs to read the science”. Climate change, she said, was “not a political thing” but “scientific fact” (Goloubeva and Haydar).As the fires merged and intensified, so did the media firestorm. Key Australian media became a sparring ground for issue definition, with media predictably split down ideological lines. Public broadcasters the ABC and SBS (Special Broadcasting Service), along with The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian Australia, predominantly framed the catastrophe as wrought by climate change. The Guardian, in an in-depth investigation of climate science and bushfire risk, stated that “despite the political smokescreen” the connection between the fires and global warming was “unequivocal” (Redfearn). The ABC characterised the fires as “a glimpse of the horrors of climate change’s crescendoing impact” (Rose). News outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Australia, however, actively sought to play down the fires’ seriousness. On 2 January, as front pages of newspapers across the world revealed horrifying fiery images, Murdoch’s Australian ran an upbeat shot of New Year’s Day picnic races as its lead, relegating discussion of the fires to page 4 (Meade). More than simply obscuring the fires’ significance, News Corp media actively sought to convince readers that the fires were not out of the ordinary. For example, as the fires’ magnitude was becoming clear on the last day of 2019, The Australian ran a piece comparing the fires with previous conflagrations, claiming such conditions were “not unprecedented” and the fires were “nothing new” (Johnstone). News Corp’s Sky News also used this frame: “climate alarmists”, “catastrophise”, and “don’t want to look at history”, it stated in a segment comparing the event to past major bushfires (Kenny).As the fires continued into January and February 2020, the refutation of the climate change frame solidified around several themes. Conservative media continued to insist the fires were “normal” for Australia and attributed their severity to a lack of hazard reduction burning, which they blamed on “Greens policies” (Brown and Caisley). They also promoted the argument, espoused by Energy Minister Angus Taylor, that with only “1.3% of global emissions” Australia “could not have meaningful impact” on global warming through emissions reductions, and that top-down climate mitigation pressure from the UN was “doomed to fail” (Lloyd). Foreign media saw the fires in quite different terms. From the outside looking in, the Australian fires were clearly revealed as fuelled by global heating and exacerbated by the Australian government’s climate denialism. Australia was framed as a “notorious climate offender” (Shield) that was—as The New York Times put it—“committing climate suicide” (Flanagan) with its lack of coherent climate policy and its predilection for mining coal. Ouest-France ran a headline reading “High on carbon, rich Australia denies global warming” in which it called Scott Morrison’s position on climate change “incomprehensible” (Guibert). The LA Times called the Australian fires “a climate change warning to its leaders—and ours”, noting how “fossil fuel friendly Morrison” had “gleefully wielded a fist-sized chunk of coal on the floor of parliament in 2017” (Karlik). In the UK, the Independent online ran a front page spread of the fires’ vast smoke plume, with the headline “This is what a climate crisis looks like” (Independent Online), while Australian MP Craig Kelly was called “disgraceful” by an interviewer on Good Morning Britain for denying the fires’ link to climate change (Good Morning Britain).Both in Australia and internationally, deliberate misinformation spread by social media additionally shaped media discourse on the fires. The false revelation that the fires had predominantly been started by arson spread on Twitter under the hashtag #ArsonEmergency. While research has been quick to show that this hashtag was artificially promoted by bots (Weber et al.), this and misinformation like it was also shared and amplified by real Twitter users, and quickly spread into mainstream media in Australia—including Murdoch’s Australian (Ross and Reid)—and internationally. Such misinformation was used to shore up denialist discourses about the fires, and to obscure revelation of the fire/climate change connection. Blame Framing, Public Opinion and the Extent of the Climate Change RevelationAs studies of media coverage of environmental disasters show us, media seek to apportion blame. This blame framing is “accountability work”, undertaken to explain how and why a disaster occurred, with the aim of “scrutinizing the actions of crisis actors, and holding responsible authorities to account” (Anderson et al. 930). In moments of disaster and in their aftermath, “framing contests” (Benford and Snow) can emerge in which some actors, regarding the crisis as an opportunity for change, highlight the systemic issues that have led to the crisis. Other actors, experiencing the crisis as a threat to the status quo, try to attribute the blame to others, and deny the need for policy change. As the Black Summer unfolded, just such a contest took place in Australian media discourse. While Murdoch’s dominant News Corp media sought to protect the status quo, promote conservative politicians’ views, and divert attention from the climate crisis, other Australian and overseas media outlets revealed the fires’ link to climate change and intransigent emissions policy. However, cracks did begin to show in the News Corp stance on climate change during the fires: an internal whistleblower publicly resigned over the media company’s fires coverage, calling it a “misinformation campaign”, and James Murdoch also spoke out about being “disappointed with the ongoing denial of the role of climate change” in reporting the fires (ABC/Reuters).Although media reporting on the environment has long been at the forefront of shaping social understanding of environmental issues, and news maintains a central role in both revealing environmental threats and shaping environmental politics (Lester), during Australia’s Black Summer people were also learning about the fires from lived experience. Polls show that the fires affected 57% of Australians. Even those distant from the catastrophe were, for some time, breathing the most toxic air in the world. This personal experience of disaster revealed a bushfire season that was far outside the normal, and public opinion reflected this. A YouGov Australia Institute poll in January 2020 found that 79% of Australians were concerned about climate change—an increase of 5% from July 2019—and 67% believed climate change was making the bushfires worse (Australia Institute). However, a January 2020 Ipsos poll also found that polarisation along political lines on whether climate change was indeed occurring had increased since 2018, and was at its highest levels since 2014 (Crowe). This may reflect the kind of polarised media landscape that was evident during the fires. A thorough dissection in public discourse of Australia’s unprecedented fire season has been largely eclipsed by the vast coverage of the coronavirus pandemic that so quickly followed it. In May 2020, however, the fires were back in the media, when the Bushfires Royal Commission found that the Black Summer “played out exactly as scientists predicted it would” and that more seasons like it were now “locked in” because of carbon emissions (Hitch). It now remains to be seen whether the revelatory extent of the climate change blame frame that played out in media discourse on the fires will be sufficient to garner meaningful action and policy change—or whether denialist discourses will again obscure climate change revelation and seek to maintain the status quo. References Anderson, Deb, et al. "Fanning the Blame: Media Accountability, Climate and Crisis on the Australian ‘Fire Continent’." 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"Ducking for Cover in the ‘Blame Game’: News Framing of the Findings of Two Reports into the 2010–11 Queensland floods." Disasters 39.1 (2015): 166-84.Fife-Yeomans, Janet. “Apocalypse Now.” Herald Sun 1 Jan. 2020. Flanagan, Richard. “Australia Is Committing Climate Suicide.” The New York Times 3 Jan. 2020. <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/opinion/australia-fires-climate-change.html>.Fox, Aine, and Hannah Higgins. “Climate Talks for Another Day: NSW Premier.” 7 News 11 Nov. 2019. <https://7news.com.au/news/disaster-and-emergency/climate-change-talk-inappropriate-premier-c-55045>.Goloubeva, Jenya, and Nour Haydar. “Regional Mayors Criticise Politicians for Failing to Link Climate Change and Deadly Bushfires.” ABC News 11 Nov. 2019. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-11/carol-sparks-climate-change-federal-government-claire-pontin/11691444>.Good Morning Britain. “Interview with Craig Kelly MP.” ITV 6 Jan. 2020.Guibert, Christelle. “Dopée au Charbon, la Riche Australie Nie le Réchauffement Climatique.” Ouest France 20 Dec. 2019. <https://www.ouest-france.fr/monde/australie/dopee-au-charbon-la-riche-australie-nie-le-rechauffement-climatique-6664289>.Hamblyn, Richard. “The Whistleblower and the Canary: Rhetorical Constructions of Climate Change.” Journal of Historical Geography 35 (2009): 223–36.Hansen, Anders. 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New York: Routledge, 2010.Happer, Catherine, and Greg Philo. “New Approaches to Understanding the Role of the News Media in the Formation of Public Attitudes and Behaviours on Climate Change.” European Journal of Communication 31.2 (2016): 136–51.Hitch, Georgia. “Bushfire Royal Commission: 'Black Summer' Played Out Exactly as Scientists Predicted It Would.” ABC News 25 May 2020. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-25/bushfire-royal-commission-hearing-updates/12282808>.Johnstone, Craig. “History of Disasters Shows There Is Nothing New about Nation’s Destructive Blazes.” The Australian 31 Dec. 2019. <https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/history-of-disasters-shows-there-is-nothing-new-about-nations-destructive-blazes/news-story/f43c2a6037a8b0e422a69880bce10139>.Karlik, Evan. “Opinion: In Australia’s Raging Bushfires, a Climate-Change Warning to Its Leaders — and Ours.” The Los Angeles Times 10 Jan. 2020. <https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-01-10/australia-fires-prime-minister-politics-united-states>.Kenny, Chris. “Climate Alarmists Don't Want to Look at History.” Sky News 21 Nov. 2019. <https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6106878027001>.Lester, Libby. Media & Environment: Conflict, Politics and the News. Polity: Cambridge, 2010. Lloyd, Graham. “Climate Pressure ‘Doomed to Fail’, Says Angus Taylor.” The Australian 30 Dec. 2019. <https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/climate-pressure-doomed-to-fail-says-angus-taylor/news-story/f2441a20c70b944dd1d54ae15f304791>.Lukes, Stephen. “Questions about Power: Lessons from the Louisiana Hurricane.” Social Science Research Council (2006). 12 May. 2020 <https://items.ssrc.org/understanding-katrina/questions-about-power-lessons-from-the-louisiana-hurricane/>.Matthewman, Steve. Disasters, Risks and Revelation: Making Sense of Our Times. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.McCubbing, Gus. “Declare Climate Emergency: Ex-Fire Chiefs.” The Canberra Times 14 Nov. 2019. <https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6491540/declare-climate-emergency-ex-fire-chiefs/>.McNeish, Wallace. “From Revelation to Revolution: Apocalypticism in Green Politics.” Environmental Politics 26.6 (2017): 1035–54.Meade, Amanda. “The Australian: Murdoch-Owned Newspaper Accused of Downplaying Bushfires in Favour of Picnic Races.” The Guardian 4 Jan. 2020. <https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/04/the-australian-murdoch-owned-newspaper-accused-of-downplaying-bushfires-in-favour-of-picnic-races>.Nisbet Matthew C. “Knowledge into Action: Framing the Debates over Climate Change and Poverty.” Doing News Framing Analysis: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives. Eds. Paul D’Angelo and Jim A. Kuypers. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. 59–99.Nolan, Rachael H., et al. "Causes and Consequences of Eastern Australia’s 2019‐20 Season of Mega‐Fires." Global Change Biology (2020): 1039-41.Parham, John. Green Media and Popular Culture: An Introduction. New York and London: Palgrave, 2016.Redfearn, Graham. “Explainer: What Are the Underlying Causes of Australia's Shocking Bushfire Season?” The Guardian 13 Jan. 2020. <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/13/explainer-what-are-the-underlying-causes-of-australias-shocking-bushfire-season>.Rose, Anna. “The Battle against the Bushfires Should Focus Our Attention on the War against Climate Inaction”. ABC News 2 Feb. 2020. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-02/battle-against-bushfires-war-against-climate-inaction/11909806>.Ross, David, and Imogen Reid. “Bushfires: Firebugs Fuelling Crisis as National Arson Toll Hits 183.” The Australian 15 Jan. 2020. <https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/bushfires-firebugs-fuelling-crisis-asarson-arresttollhits183/news-story/52536dc9ca9bb87b7c76d36ed1acf53f>. “Rupert Murdoch's Son James Criticises News Corp, Fox for Climate Change and Bushfire Coverage.” ABC/Reuters 15 Jan. 2020. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-15/james-murdoch-criticises-news-corp-fox-climate-change-coverage/11868544>.Shield, Charli. “Australian Bushfires: The Canary Building the Coal Mine.” Deutsche Welle 1 Jan. 2020. <https://www.dw.com/en/australian-bushfires-the-canary-building-the-coal-mine/a-51955677>.Smee, Ben. “Darkness at Noon: Australia’s Bushfire Day of Terror.” The Guardian 31 Dec. 2019. <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/31/darkness-at-noon-australia-bushfire-day-of-terror>.“This Is What a Climate Crisis Looks Like.” Independent Online. 2 Jan. 2020. Suzuki, David. “Ecological Crises Deserve Better Media Coverage.” The David Suzuki Foundation, 2020. 18 Mar. 2020. <https://davidsuzuki.org/story/ecological-crises-deserve-better-media-coverage/>.Trumbo, Craig. “Constructing Climate Change: Claims and Frames in US News Coverage of an Environmental Issue.” Public Understanding of Science 5.3 (1996): 269–84.Weber, Derek, et al. "#ArsonEmergency and Australia's ‘Black Summer’: Polarisation and Misinformation on Social Media." arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.00742 (2020).Werner, Joel, and Suzannah Lyons. “The Size of Australia's Bushfire Crisis Captured in Five Big Numbers.” ABC News 5 Mar. 2020. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2020-03-05/bushfire-crisis-five-big-numbers/12007716>.