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Objective: To describe patterns of use of the available Government-subsidised mental health services among people living in Australian residential aged care facilities. Methods: A retrospective population-based trend analysis was conducted, including all non-Indigenous people living in an Australian facility between 2012 and 2017. Adjusted incidence proportions and trends were estimated for four groups of mental health services. Results: The use of Medicare-subsidised mental health services was very low overall. The proportion of residents who accessed primary care mental health services increased from 1.3% in 2012/2013 to 2.4% in 2016/2017, while psychiatry service use increased from 1.9 to 2.3%. Claims for clinical psychology increased from 0.18 to 0.26%, and claims for a registered psychologist, occupational therapist or social worker rose from 0.45 to 1.2%. People with dementia were less likely than people without dementia to access all services aside from psychiatry services. Conclusions: Less than 3% of residents accessed funding subsidies for mental health services and people with dementia experienced pronounced barriers to service access. Mental health care is a pillar of the publicly-funded health system in Australia, and low use of these services among aged care residents indicates a need for organisational and policy changes to improve access. What is known about the topic? People living in residential aged care facilities report very high rates of mental health conditions, including depression and anxiety. What does this paper add? We demonstrate very low use (<3%) of Government-funded mental health services among people living in residential aged care facilities in Australia, with only small increases in use over time. What are the implications for practitioners? Practitioners should routinely assess the mental health needs of people living in residential aged care and refer for in-reach mental health services where needed, noting that facility staff are usually not trained for this role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Head injuries in children are a common and potentially devastating presentation. The CareTrack Kids (CTK) study assessed care of Australian children aged 0–15 years, in 2012 and 2013, to evaluate the proportion in line with guideline-based indicators for 17 common conditions. Overall adherence to guideline-based recommended practice occurred 59.8% of care encounters (95% CI: 57.5–62.0), and 78.3% (95% CI: 75.1–81.2) for head injury. This paper presents results for head injury, at indicator level. Methods: A modified version of the RAND-UCLA method of indicator development was used. Indicators, measurable components of a standard or guideline, were developed from international and national guidelines relating to head injury in children and were ratified by clinical experts using a Delphi process. Paediatric nurses extracted data from medical records from general practitioners (GPs), emergency departments (EDs) and inpatient wards in Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia, for children under 15 years receiving care in 2012–13. Our purpose was to estimate the percentage adherent for each indicator. Results: The medical records of 629 children with head injury were examined. Fifty-one percent of children were under 5 years old, with more males (61%) than females. Thirty-eight indicators were assessed. Avoidance of nasotracheal airways (100%; 95% CI: 99.4–100) or nasogastric tubes (99.7%; 95% CI: 98.5–100) for children with a head injury had the highest adherence. Indicators relating to primary and secondary assessment of head injuries were mostly adhered to. However, adherence to other indicators was poor (e.g., documentation of the past history of children (e.g., presence or absence of seizures) before the injury; 29.9% (95% CI: 24.5–35.7)), and for others was difficult to estimate with confidence due to small sample sizes (e.g., Children with a head injury who were intubated had PaO2above 80mm Hg; 56.0% (95% CI: 28.6–80.9)). Indicators guiding clinical decision making regarding the need for CT scan had insufficient data to justify reporting. Conclusion: This study highlights that management of head injury in children mostly follows guidelines, but also flags some specific areas of inconsistency. Individual sites are encouraged to use these results to guide investigation of local practices and inform quality improvement endeavours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tully Alliance Project delivered a 15.5 km National Highway realignment of the Bruce Highway across the combined Tully and Murray Rivers flood plain in north Queensland. This flood plain is located in one of the wettest regions in Australia, with an annual average rainfall throughout the catchment in excess of 4 m. In this area, the previous Bruce Highway could be inundated several times a year for extended periods and this had a significant impact on the movement of freight, tourists and local residents. There were long stretches of the highway that were cut regularly by floodwaters. As well as the low flood immunity, there were safety concerns with the highway formation across the floodplain being essentially a two-lane embankment with no shoulder or stopping lanes. While a high standard of flood immunity was desirable and needed to meet the Department of Main Roads flood immunity standards, the large flood flows experienced on this floodplain meant that a compromise was required. The main reason for this was the high cost associated with the required upgrading works. In addition, raising the highway significantly would cause severe impacts on flood levels for properties located on the flood plain, which was considered unacceptable. Adopted design criteria for the project were therefore related to the time of closure and the minimizing impacts on surrounding land. This paper details the hydraulic analysis undertaken throughout the various phases of the project, and discusses the critical role that hydraulic modelling played in the development of the final vertical and horizontal alignment of the upgraded highway. In addition it discusses the role the community and other stakeholder's played in validating the results of the hydraulic model, and how the flood model was able to assist the community in understanding and accepting the impacts of the proposed upgrade. The final outcomes of the hydraulic investigation are presented, including how the upgraded highway performs against the adopted design criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the basic guarantee for the reliability and economic operations of state grid corporations, power load prediction plays a vital role in power system management. To achieve the highest possible prediction accuracy, many scholars have been committed to building reliable load forecasting models. However, most studies ignore the necessity and importance of data preprocessing strategies, which may lead to poor prediction performance. Thus, to overcome the limitations in previous studies and further strengthen prediction performance, a novel short-term power load prediction system, VMD-BEGA-LSTM (VLG), integrating a data pretreatment strategy, advanced optimization technique, and deep learning structure, is developed in this paper. The prediction capability of the new system is evaluated through simulation experiments that employ the real power data of Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australia. The experimental results indicate that the developed system is significantly better than other comparative systems and shows excellent application potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]