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Evaluation of the likelihood of establishing false codling moth (Thaumatotibia leucotreta) in Australia via the international cut flower market
Get PDFKenya and some other African countries are threatened by a serious pest Thaumatotibia leucotreta (Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), the false codling moth. The detection of T. leucotreta is quite difficult due to the cryptic nature of the larvae during transportation and is therefore a concern for Australia. This insect is a known pest of agriculturally important crops. Here, Maxent was used to assess the biosecurity threat of T. leucotreta to Australia. Habitat suitability and risk assessment of T. leucotreta in Australia were identified based on threatened areas under suitable climatic conditions and the presence of hosts in a given habitat. Modeling indicated that Australia is vulnerable to invasion and establishment by T. leucotreta in some states and territories, particularly areas of western and southern Australia. Within these locations, the risk is associated with specific cropping areas. As such, invasion and establishment by T. leucotreta may have serious implications for Australia’s agricultural and horticultural industries e.g., the fruit and vegetable industries. This study will be used to inform the government and industry of the threat posed by T. leucotreta imported via the cut flower industry. Targeted preventative measures and trade policy could be introduced to protect Australia from invasion by this pest
Elastic tubes: the ideal equipment for telehealth exercise medicine in the management of prostate cancer?
Get PDFProstate cancer (PCa) affects 1 in 8 men, but exercise therapy has been shown to be a very effective intervention not only to induce physiological benefits but to also reduce the side effects of cancer treatments typically administered during PCa. The COVID19 pandemic has restricted access to exercise clinics, a problem which always existed for people living in rural and remote areas. This caused many exercise physiologists and researchers to transition their clinic-based exercise to online, home-based exercise. We would like to propose that researchers and exercise physiologists should consider the use of elastic tubes in both research and the clinical management of PCa, when exercise programs are administered remotely, as their characteristics make them an ideal exercise equipment. In this article, the characteristics, considerations, and information on quantifying exercise dosage when using elastic tubes in remote exercise delivery are discussed
The impact of student and peer behaviour on EFL teachers' motivation and job satisfaction in a Saudi Arabian context
Get PDFThis article investigates the effect that students and peers, their behaviours, and the way classes are practically and physically taught affect teachers’ motivation and job satisfaction in a Saudi Arabian context. A lack of trained teachers, unawareness of the cultural differences between their home country and that of Saudi Arabia, and the lack of training and induction in their working life, means it may be difficult to integrate into the workplace and, indeed, society. This has a knock on effect on their personal and professional lives, and added to the somewhat perplexing attitudes of some students and peer teachers, who for reasons including non-compliance, unwillingness and demotivation among students, as well as peer teachers who were perceived as poor, untrained and uncooperative, can make time at work within the Kingdom difficult, unrewarding and lonely. This results in many teachers feeling unappreciated, demotivated and demoralised, and they have little satisfaction in the job they are doing
Editorial: Managing physiological and biomechanical load-adaptation pathways in high performance sport: Challenges and opportunities
Get PDFHigh performance sport is continuing to push the barriers of elite athletes' physiological and biomechanical adaptation in an effort to gain an edge in highly competitive sporting environments, where the winning margins can be extremely thin. Methods for individualizing and optimizing the load-adaptation relationship to different training interventions have long been sought (1, 2), and continue to this day (3, 4). But while physiological adaptations to training have been well-studied, differentiating between physiological and biomechanical load-adaptation pathways is vital for understanding how best to optimize individualized training programs (5). Also of significant interest is the use of ergogenic aids such as dietary supplements (6), environmental manipulation (7), or sophisticated footwear designs (8) on physiological and biomechanical training adaptations, respectively. In addition to understanding load-adaptation pathways, and of equal importance, is determining rigorous methodology for assessing training load, so that the load-adaptation relationship can be better quantified (9, 10). However, despite the growing interest in training and ergogenic intervention research, there remains much to be learnt about assessing and managing the load-adaptation pathway within elite athlete populations
Letter writing and critical Self-Reflection: An insiders account of academic casualisation in the Australian Neoliberal University
No full textSharing the lived experience of academic casualisation is challenging, based on a power imbalance with many oppositional points, including cost savings versus fair wages, precarity versus security. As researcher/participant, Jennifer initially struggled with sharing experiences emotionally and academically without stripping humanity and affect from her writing. Drawing on the tradition of critical autoethnography, this article uses letter writing as a means of investigating personal-professional experience through critical self-reflection. These letters are written to a fictional colleague (Q) for the purpose of ‘wondering aloud’ about her experience of casualised labour and the difficulties of constructing a personal-professional identity within the context of the Australian neoliberal university
Information processing biases: The effects of negative emotional symptoms on sampling pleasant and unpleasant information.
No full textAlthough theories of emotion associate negative emotional symptoms with cognitive biases in information processing, they rarely specify the details. Here, we characterize cognitive biases in information processing of pleasant and unpleasant information, and how these biases covary with anxious and depressive symptoms, while controlling for general stress and cognitive ability. Forty undergraduates provided emotional symptom scores (Depression Anxiety Stress Scale–21) and performed a statistical learning task that required predicting the next sound in a long sequence of either pleasant or unpleasant naturalistic sounds (blocks). We used an information weights framework to determine if the degree of behavioral change associated with observing either confirmatory (“B” follows “A”) or disconfirmatory (“B” does not follow “A”) transitions differs for pleasant and unpleasant sounds. Bayesian mixed-effects models revealed that negative emotional symptom scores predicted performance as well as processing biases of pleasant and unpleasant information. Further, information weights differed between pleasant and unpleasant information, and importantly, this difference varied based on symptom scores. For example, higher depressive symptom scores predicted a bias of underutilizing disconfirmatory information in unpleasant content. These findings have implications for models of emotional disorders by offering a mechanistic explanation and formalization of the associated cognitive biases
Controllable software licensing system for sub-licensing
No full textThe digital rights management is mainly about license management. Take software licensing as an example. A software license can be assigned to a user, a group of users, or an organization. To protect the copyright against software piracy, a software license is usually bound to the IP of the device or the identity of user. When a user wants to use a software product lawfully on multiple devices he owns, he has to purchase multiple licenses. We consider a scenario of software licensing where upon receiving a software license, the user can legally create a bounded number of licenses for his own devices. Our system is based on a novel chameleon function which is featured with -time trapdoors. By using this feature, we can construct a secure software licensing system, called “controllable -time software licensing system”. We formally prove that our software licenses are unforgeable, thanks to the collision resistance and indistinguishability feature of the proposed chameleon hash. We also provide the experimental results to demonstrate the computational efficiency of our system
Regional variation in anthropogenic threats to Indian Ocean whale sharks
Get PDFConservation and management of mobile marine species requires an understanding of how movement behaviour and space-use varies among individuals and populations, and how intraspecific differences influence exposure to anthropogenic threats. Because of their long-distance movements, broad distribution and long lifespan, whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) can encounter multiple, cumulative threats. However, we lack knowledge on how sharks at different aggregations use their habitats, and how geographic variation in anthropogenic threats influences their vulnerability to population decline. Using movement data from 111 deployments of satellite-linked tags, we examined how whale sharks at five aggregations in the Indian Ocean varied in their exposure to six anthropogenic impacts known to threaten this endangered species. Tagged sharks were detected in territorial waters of 24 countries, and international waters, with individuals travelling up to 11,401 km. Despite long-distance movements, tagged sharks from each aggregation occupied mutually exclusive areas of the Indian Ocean, where they encountered different levels of anthropogenic impacts. Sharks in the Arabian Gulf had the greatest proximity to oil and gas platforms, and encountered the warmest sea surface temperatures and highest levels of shipping, pollution and ocean acidification, while those from the Maldives and Mozambique aggregations had the highest exposure to fishing and human population impacts respectively. Our findings highlight the need for aggregation-specific conservation efforts to mitigate regional threats to whale sharks. Multinational coordination is essential for implementing these efforts beyond national jurisdictions and tackling issues of global conservation concern, including the consequences of climate change and an expanding human population
Necrotic enteritis in broiler chickens: Disease characteristics and prevention using organic antibiotic alternatives – a comprehensive review
Get PDFIn line with the substantial increase in the broiler industry worldwide, Clostridium perfringens-induced necrotic enteritis (NE) became a continuous challenge leading to high economic losses, especially after banning antimicrobial growth promoters in feeds by many countries. The disease is distributed worldwide in either clinical or subclinical form, causing a reduction in body weight or body weight gain and the feed conversion ratio, impairing the European Broiler Index or European Production Efficiency Factor. There are several predisposing factors in the development of NE. Clinical signs varied from inapparent signs in case of subclinical infection (clostridiosis) to obvious enteric signs (morbidity), followed by an increase in mortality level (clostridiosis or clinical infection). Clinical and laboratory diagnoses are based on case history, clinical signs, gross and histopathological lesions, pathogenic agent identification, serological testing, and molecular identification. Drinking water treatment is the most common route for the administration of several antibiotics, such as penicillin, bacitracin, and lincomycin. Strict hygienic management practices in the farm, careful selection of feed ingredients for ration formulation, and use of alternative antibiotic feed additives are all important in maintaining broiler efficiency and help increase the profitability of broiler production. The current review highlights NE caused by C. perfringens and explains the advances in the understanding of C. perfringens virulence factors involved in the pathogenesis of NE with special emphasis on the use of available antibiotic alternatives such as herbal extracts and essential oils as well as vaccines for the control and prevention of NE in broiler chickens
Counting the bodies: Estimating the numbers and spatial variation of Australian reptiles, birds and mammals killed by two invasive mesopredators
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Introduced predators negatively impact biodiversity globally, with insular fauna often most severely affected. Here, we assess spatial variation in the number of terrestrial vertebrates (excluding amphibians) killed by two mammalian mesopredators introduced to Australia, the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and feral cat (Felis catus). We aim to identify prey groups that suffer especially high rates of predation, and regions where losses to foxes and/or cats are most substantial.
Location
Australia.
Methods
We draw information on the spatial variation in tallies of reptiles, birds and mammals killed by cats in Australia from published studies. We derive tallies for fox predation by (i) modelling continental-scale spatial variation in fox density, (ii) modelling spatial variation in the frequency of occurrence of prey groups in fox diet, (iii) analysing the number of prey individuals within dietary samples and (iv) discounting animals taken as carrion. We derive point estimates of the numbers of individuals killed annually by foxes and by cats and map spatial variation in these tallies.
Results
Foxes kill more reptiles, birds and mammals (peaking at 1071 km−2 year−1) than cats (55 km−2 year−1) across most of the unmodified temperate and forested areas of mainland Australia, reflecting the generally higher density of foxes than cats in these environments. However, across most of the continent – mainly the arid central and tropical northern regions (and on most Australian islands) – cats kill more animals than foxes. We estimate that foxes and cats together kill 697 million reptiles annually in Australia, 510 million birds and 1435 million mammals.
Main conclusions
This continental-scale analysis demonstrates that predation by two introduced species takes a substantial and ongoing toll on Australian reptiles, birds and mammals. Continuing population declines and potential extinctions of some of these species threatens to further compound Australia's poor contemporary conservation record