Most Popular Books by Michael Leonard

The temporal and spatial variability of Australia''s climate affects the quantity and quality of its water resources, the productivity of its agricultural systems, and the health of its ecosystems. This variability should be taken into account when assessing the risks associated with flooding. Continuous simulation rainfall models are one means for doing this, whereby sequences of storms are generated for an arbitrarily long time period and over some region of interest. The simulated rainfall should reproduce observed statistics in time and space so that it can be used as a suitable input for hydrologic models at the catchment scale, with particular emphasis on extreme events. There are a variety of approaches to modelling rainfall, including a broad range of single-site and multi-site rainfall models. By way of contrast there are few models that aim to simulate rainfall across all points within a region at daily or sub-daily increments. This thesis focuses on models calibrated solely to rain gauges, and a specific type known as Neyman-Scott Rectangular Pulse (NSRP) models. Existing NSRP models have a mature history of modelling developments including calibration methodology and an ability to reproduce key statistics across a range of timescales. Nonetheless, these models also have several limitations (and other space-time models not withstanding) that are addressed in this thesis. These developments include improvements to the conceptual representation of rainfall and improvements to calibration and simulation techniques. Specifically these improvements include (i) the development of an efficient simulation technique, (ii) assessing the impact of monthly parameter changes on rainfall statistics, (iii) the use of simulated statistics within calibration to overcome reliance on derived model properties (iv) incorporating a storm extent parameter to better match spatial correlations, (v) incorporating long term climatic variability and developing a methodology to assess climatic and seasonal variability in simulated extremes (vi) incorporating inhomogeneity of rainfall occurrence across a region. Numerous case studies are used at various locations about Australia to illustrate these improvements and highlight the applicability of the model under varied climatic conditions.

Logically, it is sensible that you simply want to wash your body with something, well, clean. That raises some interesting questions about soap. Unlike soap that you simply dispense from a container, soap sits in the open, seemingly susceptible to all the germs in your shower.

Employment skill training for transition-aged youth with disabilities is important to their long-term growth and development. Most young adults with disabilities will enter the workforce post-high school rather than attending college. That is why it can be imperative for youth with disabilities to establish work skill development and training prior to exiting high school. It is established that certain disabilities can impair youth more than others in terms of employment outcomes. Although the prevalence of autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes mellitus, Crohn''s disease, lupus, psoriasis and multiple sclerosis has been rising among youth, relatively little is known about this population''s level of participation in vocational rehabilitation (VR), pre-employment transition services, or employment. The present study sought to address this by comparing the involvement of youth with autoimmune conditions with another disability group, youth with physical disabilities/conditions (not listed elsewhere) using the Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) longitudinal VR database, or RSA-911 database, for the post-COVID-19 pandemic federal Program Years 2021-2023. This study compared rates of participation of both disability categories in (1) pre-employment transition services ((a) job exploration counseling, (b) work-based learning experiences, (c) counseling on post-secondary education opportunities, (d) workplace readiness training, and (e) instruction in self-advocacy), (2) the rates of exiting vocational rehabilitation services employed; and (3) wages per hour and the number of hours worked per week among employed participants.This study included a total of 5,559 VR consumers from both disability groups (autoimmune disorders, physical disorders/conditions (not listed elsewhere)). The sample with autoimmune disorders contained participants from five separate categories in the RSA-911 database (arthritis and rheumatism, diabetes mellitus, digestive, immune deficiencies excluding HIV/AIDS, or multiple sclerosis) and included 1,165 participants. The physical disorder/conditions (not listed elsewhere) group contained 4,394 participants. Descriptive, chi-square, and t-test analyses were utilized to examine the associations between individual-level variables, utilization of pre-employment transition services, and employment outcomes. Results indicated that participants with autoimmune disorders were significantly less likely to participate in two of the five pre-employment transition services (job exploration counseling, work-based learning experiences) than those with physical disorders/conditions (not listed elsewhere). There was a significant difference between the two groups in terms of exiting employed (4.6% of the autoimmune disorder sample exited VR services employed compared with 13.7% of the physical disability/conditions (not listed elsewhere) sample). Yet, participants in the autoimmune disorders group earned more per hour ($15.09 per hour for the autoimmune disorders group compared with $13.76 per hour for the physical disorders/conditions (not listed elsewhere) group) and worked more hours per week (32.4 hours per week for the autoimmune disorders group compared with 29.8 hours for the physical disorders/conditions (not listed elsewhere) group). Findings from this study can help to initiate better service utilization of pre-employment transition services by transition-aged youth within these disability categories to improve employment outcomes. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

Understanding the impact that disability can impart on parents can help to develop better programming and support. For those in rural areas, there is a noticeable lack in the capability to develop and access structural and social supports, despite having the social capacity to do so. This results in a lack of support structures that are needed for coping and avoiding types of stress accrual that impacts all facets of daily life. Without access to capital generating networks that create emotional and instrumental support there is a lived experience of social separation and isolation. Overall, research results show that parents of children with disabilities face a lived experience significantly different from parents of neurotypical children and report that having support networks would increase emotional support and instrumental support.