Griffith students Madison de Rozario and Laura Waldie have crowned a memorable year as winners … again.
Madi, a Bachelor of Business student, has taken out the Most Outstanding Sporting Achievement in the Unisport Australia Awards for 2018.
Madi won double gold at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games in the Women’s T54 (Wheelchair) 1500m and the Women’s T54 (Wheelchair) Marathon.
She wasalso Australia’s first London Marathon women’s wheelchair event winner.
Last month she was acknowledged with the Most Outstanding Sporting Achievement Award at Griffith’s Blues Awards for Sporting Excellence.
Laura, a Bachelor of Oral Health Dental Science student, was named the Female Athlete of the Year at the Unisport Australia Awards for her exploits on the rugby field in the AON Uni Seven Series.
Laura produced a series of top-class, all-action performances throughout the series, catching the eyes of the Australian 7s coaching staff which selected her on the AON Dream Team for 2018.
She received the Griffith Sports College Award for Most Outstanding Griffith Student Player and was also named Players’ Player of the Series at an awards ceremony at Griffith’s Gold Coast campus.
During a very busy year on the university and university sport front, Laura also represented the silver-medal winning Australian Uniroos in Namibia as co-captain and was a key player in the gold-medal winning Griffith team that competed at Nationals Div 1 held on the Gold Coast.
“It is great to see two members of the Griffith Sports College recognised on the national stage,” Naomi McCarthy, Manager, Griffith Sports College, said. “Both are top students who are also top of their game in sport.
“Seeing Madi win gold in the Commonwealth Games marathon was a special moment, especially with Griffith the event’s presenting partner.
“Laura was a leader on and off the field as Griffith won the AON Series for the first time.”
The UniSport Australia Awards recognise the successes and top performances of Australian student-athletes and universities in the university sport and the international sporting arena. ​Previous award winners include Grant Hackett, Cate Campbell, Dane Bird-Smith and Dylan Alcott.
UniSport Australia promotes the importance of university sport as an integral part of university life at43member universities, who collectively representmore than one million students nationwide.
Griffith University researchers are putting timber to the test to see if tall wooden buildings are the way forward for our cities.
For the first time in the world, the behaviour of mass timber buildings to resist the loss of a main structural element has been investigated using hi-tech laboratory equipment at the Gold Coast campus.
The demonstration was observed by representatives from the Queensland Government, Arup, Lendlease, and will lead to a better understanding of the behaviour of timber buildings and eventually inform the improvement of current design rules and yield safer buildings.
Reaching timber building heights of five to six storeys has been made possible thanks to products such as these. Australian examples of mid-rise timber buildings include International House Sydney at Barangaroo and the world’s tallest mass timber office building on King St in Brisbane, which has just been commissioned.
Associate Professor Gilbert said recent changes in legislation has prompted the rise in popularity for mid-rise buildings internationally.
“Timber has many functional, aesthetic and environmental benefits: it’s a renewable, durable and environmentally sustainable building material,” Associate Professor Gilbert said.
“Using timber in building constructions enables less resources and less energy to be consumed when compared to traditional steel and concrete buildings, and the buildings require less time to be constructed as they are erected from prefabricated elements.
“Griffith University has a well-equipped structural laboratory where full-scale tests of timber elements are being performed and the structural behaviour of mass timber buildings under large deformations is investigated.”
A three-year collaborative project investigating the prospect of even taller timber buildings — or mass timber buildings) has been recently funded between Griffith, the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, the Queensland Government, Arup and Lendlease.
The project will examine the progressive collapse behaviour of mass timber buildings with CLT floors.
Lendlease Senior Structural Engineer RichardNeuherczsaid testing robustness was very important with multi-story buildings, especially when part of a structure was compromised to determine if the rest of the structure will remain stable.
“Testing will help illustrate the way this works – we can learn a lot from these tests, which will help inform and support decisions,”Neuherczsaid.
Toby Hodsdon, and Associate with Arup Queensland, said seeing afull scalerobustness test like Griffith Engineering’s will give a valuable insight into how mass timber structures behave.
“In the event of an accident like a blast, impact from a moving vehicle or a fire, it gives an insight into what happens when a column in the structure is removed,” Hodsdon said.
XlamDesign Manager and Structural Engineer Jeremy Church said testing a specific connection or joint was common, but a larger scale test of system has not been seen.
“I think it will be the catalyst around designing progressive collapse theories,” Church said.
Griffith Humanities senior lecturerHamish McLean joined forces with School of Medicine senior lecturer Duncan McConnell to train more than 60 doctors and nurses from acrossMongolia‘s 21 provinces in the capitalUlaanbaatar.
Hamish McLean is a Crisis and Disaster Management specialist, but found that even his 30 years experience in crisis communication was tested to the limit, by the harsh realities of saving lives in the desperately poor country.
“People are dying particularly on the roadsthey’ve got no resources and their training is very much lacking, they’re staffed by doctors but very young doctors who have no experience of road accidents and they’re training doesn’t include road trauma,” Dr McLean says.
“These doctors were just absolutely amazed at what could be done with the resources they’ve got, and they were overwhelmed by the training and what Duncan has done. The feedback has been that lives have been saved because of that.
Duncan McConnell instructing students in Mongolia
“It’s an amazing place, big distances, lovely people, very welcoming people, we were taken to every hospital in the area to have a look at their particular work andthey’re very proud of what they do and they just want to do it better.
“They regard us as genuine. We’re there to help genuinely not there to sell them a new defibrillator or to sell them five new ambulance vehicles or to blow in say how wonderful Australian paramedics areand Australian disaster relief management is and disappear, and I think they really appreciate that.”
Dr McLean filmed much of the training and is now cutting together a documentary on the experience.
He also became an unplanned focus of the training, when he faced his own medical emergency on the trip. Duncan McConnell spent 13 hours by Hamish’s side overseeing his treatment toensure that he survived.
“I actually became his patient,” Dr McLean says.
“I was unconscious, he put drips in me and looked after me in the hospital and organised a medical helicopter and flew back with me.
“I don’t know what the cause was, some sort of abdominal issue.I’m absolutely fine now, I recovered really well.”
Their training focussed on the high number of car accidents in the country, and was such a success they hope to roll out more specialised training next year.
Duncan McConnell was similarly stretched, with the most basic equipment for pre-hospital ambulance care he’s ever seen. He says his rural and remote experience as a paramedic proved invaluable.
His trauma teaching inMongoliausingtourniquets made from people’s belts, and treating burns by wrapping in cling wrap,undoubtedly saved lives during their visit, and into the future.
“This wasn’t a trip to do show and tell, it was looking at what their need was, looking at what they have and applying this early `train the trainer’ approach based on their own needs and equipment,” Mr McConnell says.
“Overall we looked at a sustainable implementation plan that suits what they have and what equipment they can get.”
By Dr Tim Cadman
Griffith Law School
The first thing to greet delegates at the 24th Conference of the Parties (COP 24) once they emerge from the remotely located airport of Katowice, besides the cold, is the smell of burning coal. On the long bus ride into town those that look out of the window will see the reason in the distance — a large power station. Portents for the negotiations? Maybe. With rumours of apro-coal side event from the Trump administrationandBrazil’s rightist government backing out of hosting the next conference, the future is looking cloudy.
Inside the venue itself the side events are already underway. It was disappointing to attenda retrospective on the Clean Development Mechanismto hear concerns about the human rights failings of a number of CDM projects dismissed as coming from “a few very loud opposition voices.”
If theParis Agreementis to be successful it needs to learn from the lessons of theKyoto Protocol, and tackle issues of historical bad governance head on. COP 24 is expected to finalise the the so-called Paris ‘rulebook’ that will elaborate how adaptation and mitigation activities are to be constructed, funded and reported. The world’s citizens are watching — especially those who are feeling the impacts of climate change already. The global community wants to see what the proposed ‘sustainable development mechanism’ will look like, the scale of the ambition of developed countries to provide finance for vulnerable states, and how corruption will be avoided.
With civil society largely silenced by a law and ordercrackdown by the Polish authorities, the likelihood of securing a robust rulebook from this COP seems remote at this stage in week one.
Griffith University professor Peter van Onselen has been announced as Network 10’s new political editor.
A prolific and respected media commentator, Professor van Onselen will join the station from Monday 10 December, and lead its spectrum of political coverage for shows and outlets including 10 News First, The Project, Studio 10, 10 Daily and 10 Speaks.
Professor van Onselen said the new appointment is a “fantastic opportunity”, and expressed his excitement at entering the fray as the Australian political community ramps up for next year’s federal election.
“Queensland will be a pivotal battleground in the 2019 election, and the issues that come to the fore will prove a fascinating litmus test for the rest of the nation throughout the campaign and beyond,” Professor van Onselen said.
“I can’t wait to get started on working with 10’s roster of hard-working, insightful journalists. I hope to add value where I can by offering a fresh take in analysing the political machinations.”
In addition to his academic roles at Griffith and the University of Western Australia, Professor van Onselen brings a depth of media experience to his role at 10, having previously been a long-serving member of Sky News’ political commentary team.
A Logie- and Walkley-winning broadcast journalist, Professor van Onselen also acts as a contributing editor for The Australian, and has appeared as a commentator for the ABC and Nine.
In announcing the appointment, 10’s director of news content, Ross Dagan, acknowledged Professor van Onselen’s skills and renown.
“At a time when cutting through the spin is more important than ever, Peter will ensure we know exactly what’s going on in Canberra, even when the politicians might not want that to be the case,” he said in a statement.
“The addition of Peter bolsters our already-experienced and talented line-up of journalists ahead of what’s sure to be a crucial election.”
After a long gestation, Corporations Act amendments set to be introduced by the Morrison government this week could be the first step to a whole new level of whistleblower protection — if they can get priority in our volatile, pre-election parliament.
Whistleblower protection featured prominently in last week’s debate over a new national integrity commission. It’s especially topical given the role played by whistleblowers like Jeff Morris in uncovering the wrongdoing at the Banking Royal Commission.
And last week, as well, the role of James Shelton and Brian Hood could be told. These were the managers who stepped up to reveal appalling foreign bribery by Australia’s Reserve Bank-owned companies, Securency and Note Printing Australia — our biggest and worst corruption scandal.
So the Government’s amendments to overhaul protections for corporate employees — nutted out with South Australian Centre Alliance Senator Rex Patrick — could not come at a better time.
For the media, and for corporate accountability, the big breakthrough is wider rules for when employees will retain the new, stronger legal protections even if they go to journalists.
Previous plans to limit this to extreme, unlikely emergencies have been shelved. Instead, if employees blow the whistle at least to a regulator, and nothing is happening in 90 days, it’s relatively simple for them to go public.
There are some hoops to go through, and time will tell if they’re still too tight. But this is Australia’s most powerful driver yet, not just for companies to improve their culture and compliance, but for federallaw enforcement agencies andregulators like the Australian Federal Police,ASIC and APRA to change their previous lax ways.
A second big step is no shock to companies already putting in place better whistleblowing policies.
Now, companies face the world’s first ever requirement to not simply have a policy ‘on paper’, but spell out exactly how they plan to “support and protect” those who speak up, before anyone starts taking out reprisals.
Again, it’s a huge, culture-changing step. Many companies are quite good at getting their employees to reveal wrongdoing, so they can deal with it themselves. Where they fall down is in making sure their people don’t come off second-best, or worse, as a result.
With new requirements and a lot of new research on what to do, including from our own Whistling While They Work 2 project, that can change.
Third, the amendments start to fix the problem that until now, only deliberate, direct criminal “victimisation” of whistleblowers could ever be punished — something that’s almost impossible to prove and, consequently, never has been.
Now, any “detrimental” acts or omissions can result in an employer’s liability for compensation, including a failure to prevent such impacts, such as by having no protection policy or failing to implement it.
This is also a world-first, building on new rules championed by the Nick Xenophon team and imposed on unions after the 2016 election but, now, as promised by the Turnbull government, rolled out to employers themselves.
There are devils in the detail. It’s still likely to be tough for whistleblowers to activate these rights, which will have to be tested out in the courts.
Part of the answer to that is still a whistleblower protection authority, which everyone agrees is also needed.
A properly resourced agency was recommended by last year’s unanimous report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Corporations, and features in the cross-bench proposals for a national integrity commission, tabled last week. The Government is yet to respond.
Even The Australian, in its editorial last week, agreed whistleblower protection has to be a top priority in the design of a federal anti-corruption agency.
And with these new corporate rules on the table, it’s even clearer how out-of-date our public sector whistleblower protections have become.
But with these new rules, there is a new fighting chance for whistleblowers, and for corporate transparency and accountability to actually take hold. Whether with improvements or not, if they can get through this week, these laws will be one of the best legacies of the 2016-2017 federal parliament.
A J Brown is professor of public policy and law at Griffith University, and a board member of Transparency International in Australia and globally. He was a member of the Commonwealth Government’s expert advisory panel on whistleblower protection.
Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore (MINDS), was founded to provide equal opportunities for children with intellectual disabilities. It has grown to become one of the oldest and largest non-government organisations catering to the needs of persons with intellectual disability in Singapore.
Griffith’s Autism Centre of Excellence (ACE) will deliver a professional development program to MINDS staff, which has a multi-disciplinary, whole-of-life focus. MINDS participants will develop an in-depth understanding of autism and strategies to support the learning and development of people with autism which are holistic, functional and tailored to individual strengths and needs. The program focuses on the translation of high-quality research evidence into research-informed practice.
The program will be delivered online with the addition of two face-to-face intensive workshops in Singapore.
“There is huge excitement about the collaboration and a desire to extend the partnership further, especially around research possibilities, “said Professor Donna Pendergast,Head and Dean of the School of Education and Professional Studies.
“I was taken on a tour of the headquarters which includes a workplace for adults to learn skills for integration. There is particular interest in our collaboration with AEIOU and the early intervention model,” she said.
The MINDS program will commence in Trimester 1, 2019.
In 2016, a team of Griffith’s School of Education and Professional Studies researchers (Associate Professor Jeanne Allen (team leader), Dr Glenda McGregor, Professor Donna Pendergast and Dr Michelle Ronksley-Pavia) were commissioned by the ACT to develop measures to support the educational engagement of high school students (Years 7-10).
The team developed the Young Adolescent Engagement in Learning Model (YAEL) which provides a best practice, holistic model of schooling support for all students, and with increasing levels of assistance and alternative educational pathways for students with additional behavioural, emotional, psychological, and educational needs.
Building on the development of the YAEL Model, the team of researchers, in conjunction with senior technical researchers, designed and developed a baseline application (app) aimed at enabling teachers to draw on the YAEL Model for professional learning to enhance their skills in engaging and retaining students in learning.
The app, entitled the Student Engagement and Teacher Reflection App (SETRA), has been successfully piloted for proof of concept, enabling the research team to move to the next stage of a fully developed and sophisticated app, which will provide teacher access to a range of inquiry questions and to preventive, supportive and corrective measures and strategies for learner engagement.
The SETRA app will provide an innovative, cutting edge professional learning approach to enhancing student engagement, and there is currently nothing like it in use in Australian schools.
“We piloted the base-line app in a state secondary school in the south-east region in 2017, which provided us with valuable data for the next stage of development,’’ says Associate Professor Jeanne Allen.
“SETRA is an opportunity to partner with Griffith University and play a leading role in the future of professional learning for teachers. We are seeking partners from Queensland schools with middle years, young adolescent learners.”
Griffith University researchers are Associate Professor Jeanne Allen (team leader), Dr Glenda McGregor, Professor Donna Pendergast, and Dr Kevin Larkin.
A Griffith University researcher has played a key role in establishing new evidence of ancient human occupation in Algeria as the oldest ever found in Northern Africa, surpassing previous findings by half a million years.
This discovery indicates ancient humans (hominins) occupied this region more than half a million years earlier than previously thought.
The research, published inScience, describes the discovery of two archaeological levels at the AinBoucheritsite, in Algeria, Northern Africa. They have been dated to approximately 1.9 million and 2.4 million years old, which makes them the oldest archaeological evidence ever found in the Southern Margin of theMediterranean sea.f
The material found during archaeological excavations at AinBoucheritincludes stone tools andcutmarkedbones, which the research team said is indirect but clear evidence of hominin presence.
The technological and typological features of the AinBoucheritstone assemblages, dominated by cores, flakes and a few retouched pieces aresimilar tothe Oldowan assemblages from the Early Pleistocene sites in East Africa.
The work, led by Prof MohamedSahnouni(CENIEH, Spain and CNRPAH, Algeria), involves an international team from different key institutions in Algeria, Spain, France and Australia.
“We had to use a combination of different methods to date AinBoucherit, namely stratigraphy, palaeomagnetism, electron spin resonance and biochronology,” Dr Duval said.
“The different methods provided consistent results and helped to chronologically constrain the lower and upper archaeological levels to about 2.4 and 1.9millionsyears, respectively.”
The AinBoucheritsite is 600,000 years older than the previous oldest evidence of hominin presence in the North Africa, which was estimated to 1.8 million years at AinHanech, a site located about 200m from AinBoucherit.
These new results indicate that the earliest settlement of North Africa is much older than previously thought, which brings additional complexity to the ever-changing story of human evolution.
So far, East Africa has provided the earliest known evidence for Oldowan stone artefacts dated to ~2.6 million years ago (Ma).
The discovery made at AinBoucheritstrongly argues for an early and rapid dispersal of stone tool manufacture and use from East Africa, or even a possible multiple origin scenario of stone technology in both East and North Africa.
A cookbook full of recipes designed specifically for people who have difficulty swallowing is now just a click of the mouse button away.
Beyond the Blender: Dysphagia Made Easy is the brainchild of speech pathologist and Griffith researcher Simone Howells, and has been created by Master of Speech Pathology students at the School of Allied Health Sciences. It is available as a free download here
Simone Howells.
“When I graduated as a speech pathologist I was working with patients with dysphagia in hospitals,” Simone Howells said. “That’s a very controlled environment. What’s brought up from the kitchen is exactly what the patient with dysphagia eats.”
However, when her work took her into the wider community and people’s homes, Simone realised that environment was unlike the clinical setting. “They can walk up to the fridge and grab just about whatever they want. The temptation is there to essentially eat or drink something that may not go down the right way which can be catastrophic for the patient with dysphagia.”
Dysphagia is known to affect up to one in three people in the community. It is most common among people aged over 65 and can be caused by neurological conditions like stroke and Parkinson’s disease and if left untreated it can be fatal.
“The symptoms can be as simple as taking longer at mealtimes and needing more time to chew and to swallow. But dysphagia can also cause pain and discomfort, the feeling of something stuck in the throat. It can cause coughing, throat clearing or sneezing during eating and drinking, so it can manifest in any number of different ways.”
Simone’s research at Griffith Health aims to build a greater understanding of the difficulties experienced by adults with dysphagia who live at home, and identify new ways that speech pathology services can support them. Along with physical and clinical factors, her work also recognises psychosocial issues connected to the condition.
“Social lives are impacted. A person with dysphagia can’t go to a normal café and order off a normal menu. It is also difficult for them to manage it at work, preparing drinks that need to be thickened, bringing special lunches that might need to be pureed or mashed up.
“People with dysphagia are much more likely to experience social anxiety and depression. It is also known to impact their relationships and how they function in society. Often they disengage from their regular activities.”
Beyond the Blender is a creative approach to supporting people with dysphagia and the families and friends who share their lives. It represents a platform to make informed choices that don’t compromise on flavour, appearance or social acceptability. Within the cookbook are three different categories which are compliant with the Australian standards for texture modified foods — soft, mince moist, and pureed.
“When I looked for places where people with dysphagia might look for appropriate recipes I found there was very little out there. Now our students have developed a series of very tasty recipes that have been audited for texture compliance,” Simone said. Friday’s launch will include a morning tea created from recipes in the cookbook.
Laura produced a series of top-class, all-action performances throughout the series, catching the eyes of the Australian 7s coaching staff which selected her on the AON Dream Team for 2018.
The research, published in
