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Text Neck is a diagnosed condition denoting overuse of the neck muscles with technology devices such as tablets, smartphones, and video game consoles. The condition is prevalent in all age groups, particularly in those who are heavy users of smartphones , ,. The main contributor to text neck is the frequency of handheld technology device use and the length of time that a user is engaged with their device without physical movement, while their head is in a forward posture. It is said to be a type of repetitive stress injury that can affect the spine, neck, shoulder, upper back, muscles, and associated ligaments. Although studies vary in their findings, adults use their mobile phones on average for 5 hours per day, university students for about 8.5 hours per day, and others on average about 2 hours per day , , ,. Some studies have shown that people have their mobile phones with them for all but 2 hours of the whole day, increasing the ease with which to access online applications, thus continuing to aggravate existing strains. Text Neck, also referred to as iNeck, is now recognized as a global public health problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Have You Ever wondered what governments that collect deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), do with the data? In 2009, I completed a Masters in the Faculty of Law at the University of Wollongong Australia, exploring the impact of DNA storage in all its forms (). Encouraged by my thesis supervisor, Associate Professor Clive Harfield, formerly of the Center for Transnational Crime Prevention (CTCP) at UOW, I investigated the S and Marper case , [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale public sector information systems (PSIS) that administer social welfare payments face considerable challenges. Between 2014 and 2023, an Australian government agency conceived and implemented the Online Compliance Intervention (OCI) scheme, widely referred to as Robodebt. The scheme's primary purpose was to apply digital transformation in order to reduce labour costs and increase recovery of overpayments. Among its key features were a simplified, but inherently erroneous, estimation method called income averaging, and a new requirement that welfare recipients produce documentation for income earned years earlier. Failure by welfare recipients to comply with mandates resulted in the agency recovering what it asserted to be overpayments. This article presents a case study of Robodebt and its effects on over 1 million of its clients. The detailed case study relies on primary data through Senate and other government hearings and commissions, and secondary data, such as media reports, supplemented by academic sources. Relevant technical features include (1) the reliance on the digital persona that the agency maintains for each client, (2) computer-performed inferencing from client data, and (3) automated decision-making and subsequent action. This article employs a socio-technical systems approach to understanding the factors underlying a major PSIS project failure, by focusing on the system's political and public service sponsors; its participants (users); the people affected by it (usees); and the broader economic, social, and political context. Practical and theoretical insights are presented, with the intention of highlighting major practical lessons for PSIS, and the relevance of an articulated socio-technical frame for PSIS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Security and securitization can be defined in numerous ways. For example, an all-hazards approach to (national) security has been considered in the literature whereby we may refer to economic, environmental, and energy security , in addition to other nonmilitary facets inclusive of food-, health-, demographic-, informational-, and resource-related aspects. Furthermore, the literature points to various sectors of securitization , which collectively denote a broad-ranging perspective. Securitization, based on this wider view, implies “survival across a number of dimensions” , and as a necessary offshoot, across numerous academic disciplines. As such, there is the need to turn our attention to transdisciplinary perspectives of securitization to explore the nature of such perspectives and the various streams or tracks that are encompassed within, particularly within the context of complex socio-technical systems, and when considering the implications of technology, in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]