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IBS Rides the Internet (A Fictional Memoir)
Get PDF'In this fictional memoir the mistaken funeral episode really took place, and it made me think a lot about my father's family. Then, thinking about my Peace Corps days in the 1960s, I remembered how many of my co-volunteers had died. I hope this story captures the spirit of those times, which combined idealism and serious work with silliness.
Indigenous land management as primary health care: qualitative analysis from the Interplay research project in remote Australia
Get PDFThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: For Indigenous Australians, health transcends the absence of disease, and includes the health and wellbeing of their community and Country: their whole physical, cultural and spiritual environment. Stronger relationships with Country and greater involvement in cultural practices enhance the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians, and those in more remote regions have greater access to their Country and higher levels of wellbeing. However this does not translate into improvements in clinical indicators, and Indigenous Australians in more remote regions suffer higher levels of morbidity and mortality than Indigenous people in non-remote areas, and other Australians. The Interplay research project aimed to explore how Indigenous Australians in remote regions experience high levels of wellbeing despite poor health statistics, and how services could more effectively enhance both health and wellbeing. Methods: Indigenous Australians in remote regions, together with researchers and government representatives developed a wellbeing framework, comprising government and community priorities: education, employment and health, and community, culture and empowerment respectively. To explore these priorities Indigenous community researchers recruited participants from diverse Indigenous organizations, including Indigenous land management, art, business development, education, employment, health and municipal services. Fourteen focus groups and seven interviews, involving 75 Indigenous and ten non-Indigenous service providers and users were conducted. These were recorded, transcribed and analyzed, using thematic analysis, based on the wellbeing framework. Results: Research participants highlighted Indigenous land management as a source of wellbeing, through strengthened identity and empowerment, access to traditional food sources, enjoyable physical activity, and escape from communities where high levels of alcohol are consumed. Participants described how collaboration and partnerships between services, and recognition of Indigenous languages could enhance wellbeing, while competition between services undermines wellbeing. Indigenous land management programs work across different sectors and promote collaboration between services, serving as a source of comprehensive primary health care. Conclusions: Developing primary health care to reflect distinctive health needs of Indigenous Australians will enhance their health and wellbeing, which includes their communities and Country. Indigenous land management consolidates aspects of comprehensive primary health care, providing both clinical benefits and wellbeing, and can provide a focus for service collaboration.Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation (CRC-REP, hosted by Ninti One Limited).
Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation, through the Royal Australasian College of Physician
A standardised framework for analysing animal detections from automated tracking arrays
Get PDFThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: Over the past 15 years, the integration of localised passive telemetry networks into centralised data repositories has greatly enhanced our ability to monitor the presence and movements of highly mobile and migratory species. These large-scale networks are now generating big data, allowing meta-analyses across multiple species, locations, and temporal scales. Broad-scale comparisons of animal movement metrics are constrained by the use of diverse analytical techniques among researchers. Accordingly, there is a need for a tool-set to assist in calculating animal movement metrics that can be easily applied to datasets from local studies to large-scale cooperative networks. Results: We present a standardised framework and an associated analysis tool-set that facilitates the calculation of a range of activity space and movement metrics for passive telemetry datasets. Application of the tool-set is demonstrated using data from the Integrated Marine Observing System continental-scale network of underwater acoustic receivers. We show how the metrics can: (1) be directly compared among multiple species monitored at multiple sites; (2) be compared among multiple species tagged at a single study site; and (3) assess changes in activity space metrics over time. Conclusions: Establishing a framework and tool-set to analyse data from large-scale networks progresses the field of passive telemetry beyond the traditional individual-, species-, or location-centric approaches to facilitate national- or international-scale outputs that better address important questions in the field of movement ecology.Integrated Marine Observing Syste
Detecting synchrony in EEG: A comparative study of functional connectivity measures
Get PDF© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This author accepted manuscript is made available following 12 month embargo from date of publication (December 2018) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policyIn neuroscience, there is considerable current interest in investigating the connections between different parts of the brain. EEG is one modality for examining brain function, with advantages such as high temporal resolution and low cost. Many measures of connectivity have been proposed, but which is the best measure to use? In this paper, we address part of this question: which measure is best able to detect connections that do exist, in the challenging situation of non-stationary and noisy data from nonlinear systems, like EEG. This requires knowledge of the true relationship between signals, hence we compare 26 measures of functional connectivity on simulated data (unidirectionally coupled Hénon maps, and simulated EEG). To determine whether synchrony is detected, surrogate data were generated and analysed, and a threshold determined from the surrogate ensemble. No measure performed best in all tested situations. The correlation and coherence measures performed best on stationary data with many samples. S-estimator, correntropy, mean-phase coherence (Hilbert), mutual information (kernel), nonlinear interdependence (S) and nonlinear interdependence (N) performed most reliably on non-stationary data with small to medium window sizes. Of these, correlation and S-estimator have execution times that scale slower with the number of channels and the number of samples
Increased private health fund involvement in Australia's primary health care: Implications for health equity
No full text© 2018 Australian Social Policy AssociationThis study identifies current practices of private health funds (PHFs) in Australian primary health care (PHC), including areas where their involvement is increasing, and examines the risks and benefits of these practices for quality of, and equity of access to PHC. The paper draws on research to investigate equity implications of current PHF involvement in PHC in Australia. We reviewed literature, analysed documents relating to a Senate Committee inquiry and interviewed stakeholders and experts in private health insurance policy from government, private sector and nongovernment organisations. Involvement of PHFs in the PHC sector in Australia is increasing, presenting risk of increased inequities in access to PHC based on insurance status, which could undermine the universality of PHC under Medicare. However, some stakeholders think these risks can be managed within current policy arrangements. There are also risks for quality of PHC services arising from greater involvement of PHFs in service delivery and “preferred provider” models. Differing stakeholder views on equity implications of PHF involvement in PHC are associated with different views on desirable policy action. We conclude that there is a risk of increased involvement of PHFs in PHC risks exacerbating existing inequities in the health system, but this is moderated by public support for Medicare
Young People, the Internet, and Emerging Pathways into Criminality: A Study of Australian Adolescents
Get PDF© 2018 International Journal of Cyber Criminology (Diamond Open Access Journal). Under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) LicenseThis article explores the ways in which young people experience the Internet as a potentially criminogenic medium. To date, little research has explored the possible links between the mundane, ubiquitous use of digital communication technologies by young people and involvement in delinquency in online contexts. The current empirical study seeks to address this gap, by investigating how a young person’s digital pursuits (i.e. relative access, technical competencies, and exposure to pertinent technologies, Internet sites and services), as well as various developmental considerations, are linked to delinquent online encounters – be they tentative engagements of a naïve or non-criminal kind or deliberate, more serious forms of technologically-mediated criminality. Drawing on data collected from a cohort of adolescents enrolled at a secondary school in a large Australian city, the results establish significant relationships between many of these concepts, but also flag that online delinquent encounters amongst young adolescents are unlikely to correspond with serious criminal involvements, with such activities being episodic and for the most part trifling. The results further highlight the need for a better understanding of the role of digital communication technologies on pathways into cybercrime
Impacts of Different Onset Time El Niño Events on Winter Precipitation over South China
Get PDF© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Winter precipitation over South China tended to be much higher than normal for the spring El Niño events during 1979–2016. For the spring El Niño events, the meridional and zonal circulations served as a bridge, linking the warmer sea surface temperature (SST) in the eastern equatorial Pacific (EEP) and South China winter precipitation. This possible physical process can be described as follows: During boreal winter, a positive SST anomaly in the EEP was concurrent with strong anomalous convection activity over South China via anomalous Walker circulation, an anomalous Hadley Cell along 110°–130° E, and a zonal westward teleconnection wave train pattern at 700 hPa in the Northern Hemisphere. In addition, an anomalous pumping effect at 200 hPa contributed to the convective activity. Meanwhile, the western Pacific subtropical high moved southwards and strengthened at 500 hPa, and abnormal southwesterly winds brought plentiful water vapor to South China at 850 hPa. All these factors favored an increase in precipitation over South China. For the summer El Niño events, the aforementioned anomalies were weaker, which resulted in a precipitation close to normal over South China
Characterizing the shape patterns of dimorphic yeast pseudohyphae
Get PDF© 2018 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.Pseudohyphal growth of the dimorphic yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is analysed using two-dimensional top-down binary images. The colony morphology is characterized using clustered shape primitives (CSPs), which are learned automatically from the data and thus do not require a list of predefined features or a priori knowledge of the shape. The power of CSPs is demonstrated through the classification of pseudohyphal yeast colonies known to produce different morphologies. The classifier categorizes the yeast colonies considered with an accuracy of 0.969 and standard deviation 0.041, demonstrating that CSPs capture differences in morphology, while CSPs are found to provide greater discriminatory power than spatial indices previously used to quantify pseudohyphal growth. The analysis demonstrates that CSPs provide a promising avenue for analysing morphology in high-throughput assays
Development of an integrated model for the Campaspe catchment: a tool to help improve understanding of the interaction between society, policy, farming decision, ecology, hydrology and climate
Get PDFCopyright © Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.Management of water resources requires understanding of the hydrology and hydrogeology, as well as the policy and human drivers and their impacts. This understanding requires relevant inputs from a wide range of disciplines, which will vary depending on the specific case study. One approach to gain understanding of the impact of climate and society on water resources is through the use of an integrated modelling process that engages stakeholders and experts in specifics of problem framing, co-design of the underpinning conceptual model, and discussion of the ensuing results. In this study, we have developed such an integrated modelling process for the Campaspe basin in northern Victoria, Australia. The numerical model built has a number of components:
Node/link based surface water hydrology module based on the IHACRES rainfall-streamflow model
Distributed groundwater model for the lower catchment (MODFLOW)
Farm decision optimisation module (to determine irrigation requirements)
Policy module (setting conditions on availability of water based on existing rules)
Ecology module (determining the impacts of available streamflow on platypus, fish and river red gum trees)
The integrated model is component based and has been developed in Python, with the MODFLOW and surface water hydrology model run in external programs, controlled by the master program (in Python). The integrated model has been calibrated using historical data, with the intention of exploring the impact of various scenarios (future climate scenarios, different policy options, water management options) on the water resources. The scenarios were selected based on workshops with, and a social survey of, stakeholders in the basin regarding what would be socially acceptable and physically plausible options for changes in management. An example of such a change is the introduction of a managed aquifer recharge system to capture dam overflows, and store at least a portion of this in the aquifer, thereby increasing the groundwater resource as well as reducing the impact of existing pumping levels
A Roberts Syndrome Individual With Differential Genotoxin Sensitivity and a DNA Damage Response Defect
Get PDF© 2018 Elsevier. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This author accepted manuscript is made available following 12 month embargo from date of publication (November 2018) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policyPurpose
Roberts syndrome (RBS) is a rare, recessively transmitted developmental disorder characterized by growth retardation, craniofacial abnormalities, and truncation of limbs. All affected individuals to date have mutations in the ESCO2 (establishment of cohesion 2) gene, a key regulator of the cohesin complex, which is involved in sister chromatid cohesion and DNA double-strand break (DSB) repair. Here we characterize DNA damage responses (DDRs) for the first time in an RBS-affected family.
Methods and Materials
Lymphoblastoid cell lines were established from an RBS family, including the proband and parents carrying ESCO2 mutations. Various DDR assays were performed on these cells, including cell survival, chromosome break, and apoptosis assays; checkpoint activation indicators; and measures of DNA breakage and repair.
Results
Cells derived from the RBS-affected individual showed sensitivity to ionizing radiation (IR) and mitomycin C–induced DNA damage. In this ESCO2 compound heterozygote, other DDRs were also defective, including enhanced IR-induced clastogenicity and apoptosis; increased DNA DSB induction; and a reduced capacity for repairing IR-induced DNA DSBs, as measured by γ-H2AX foci and the comet assay.
Conclusions
In addition to its developmental features, RBS can be, like ataxia telangiectasia, considered a DDR-defective syndrome, which contributes to its cellular, molecular, and clinical phenotype