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Regenerative Aquaculture Farming on the NSW South Coast: Investigation of Business Cluster
No full textRegenerative aquaculture farming as a solution
for food security and economic growth gains
more traction. These regenerative practices
involve cultivating of seaweed and shellfish
in coastal areas to meet seafood demand
sustainably.
Research suggests it can benefit ocean health
and at a large scale create significant economic
opportunities for coastal communities around
the world, expanding on the USD $264 billion
in revenue and employment opportunities
for 20 million people that the aquaculture
sector is already providing to. However, clear
implementation pathways are critical.
This report examines the business cases for kelp
and shellfish farming on the NSW South coast
from an innovative industry cluster perspective.
While kelp farming lacks a clear business case
due to unknown biomass models, there is
significant potential for growth from a market
demand site.
Currently, a few businesses processing beach
collected kelp into value-added products for
local/ national consumption.
Furthermore, innovation in kelp is striving
through a novel kelp hatchery. However, further
progress in regenerative aquaculture farming
is prevented by complex and costly application
processes (see reports 1-3). Shellfish farming is
well established in the NSW South Coast and
offers significant opportunities for scaling and
diversification.
This report centres around two established
business case studies from the NSW south
coast (kelp and shellfish) to illustrate the
opportunities, challenges, and bottlenecks for
each business case. The report will further mapout
existing and emerging innovative aquaculture
businesses within the region before concluding
with key recommendations for government and
industry.</p
Towards a theory of ‘Big plastic’
No full textThis paper aims to shed light on the nature of the plastic industry’s political power by developing the concept of Big Plastic. To date, the nascent field of ‘plastic political economy’ has shied away from engaging fully with this neologism, typically using it as a throwaway term to note the sector’s influence over governments, or simply rejecting it, noting that the disaggregated nature of the plastics supply chain means that the industry cannot be understood as a monopolised juggernaut similar to Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Tech, or other highly consolidated sectors that have been assigned this descriptor. In contrast, we argue that, properly understood, the concept has significant value in helping international political economy (IPE) scholars and environmentalists understand the nature of the industry’s power, and how it might be challenged. Drawing on Fuch’s (2007) ‘three faces of business power’ framework, we sketch a picture of an industry which, despite its heterogeneous supply chain, nevertheless acts to a considerable degree as a coherent political force, leveraging its extensive power at a structural, discursive, and instrumental level to defend the continuity of unmitigated plastic production and consumption.</p
A comprehensive Python tool for predicting mining-induced subsidence
No full textAccurate prediction of surface deformations from longwall mining is vital for effective subsidence management and infrastructure protection. This paper introduces the Python-based Subsidence Prediction for Underground Mining (PySPUM) framework, developed from the Surface Deformation Prediction System (SDPS). The SDPS uses the Influence Function Method, allowing for consideration of different mining geometries, multi-seam mining operations, and calculation of horizontal strains and related deformations. Validation was conducted using survey data from a Australian longwall operation in Bown Basin. Results indicated that a 30% average hard rock content is suitable for Bowen Basin operations, with potential applications to other mining projects. The PySPUM framework was also employed in a separate project to evaluate subsidence impacts near a Run-of-Mine (ROM) dam, enhancing management and mitigation strategies for large-scale longwall mining operations.</p
Rural resuscitation research: insights and ethical reflections
No full textNSW CVRN Rising Stars Seminar Series</p
Simplicity is Key: Advancing NLP Models with Optimal Transport Theory
No full textThe accurate understanding and interpretation of context is critical for the rapidly evolving field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). Human language, with its inherent complexity, marked by ambiguity, redundant contents, and subtle meanings, demands a comprehensive approach to contextual analysis. This becomes particularly crucial in downstream tasks, such as Question Answering (QA) and Anomaly Detection (AD), among others. For instance, in QA tasks, the ability to identify relevant contextual cues within the provided question/passage directly impacts the precision of generated answers. Similarly, in AD tasks, the challenge lies in accurately identifying outliers from the norm within textual data, necessitating a deep understanding of context to differentiate between genuine anomalies and normal data. These examples emphasize the critical importance of context understanding in NLP, highlighting the need for novel methods to capture semantic meaning from input contents. Therefore, this thesis introduces an advanced approach that leverages Optimal Transport (OT) theory to enhance the model capacity for context analysis.The OT theory, originally developed for solving problems in economics and physics, presents a robust mathematical framework applicable in various disciplines. Specifically, it offers a powerful means of comparing and transporting probability distributions in a geometric space. Its relevance to NLP tasks stems from its ability of quantifying the distance between textual elements in a coherent and geometrically consistent manner, making it invaluable for understanding of the semantic relationships and structures within natural language data. As a result, this thesis explores the application of the OT theory in both Multiple-Choice Question Answering (MCQA) and Out-of-Domain (OOD) detection tasks.Firstly, for the MCQA task, OT facilitates a precise comparison of question and answer contents by identifying and aligning their key elements. This alignment, driven by the cost of transporting one content element to another, allows for a deeper understanding of contextual relationships beyond superficial embedding similarities. Consequently, only identified key clues are utilized for the subsequent question answering, thereby improving the model efficiency and effectiveness.Secondly, for the OOD detection task, the OT framework is utilized to measure and quantify geometric differences between distributions. This capability enables the identification of outliers, considering not only their content but also their contextual relevance. This distinction becomes crucial for accurately distinguishing between genuine anomalies and normal instances. By utilizing OT, models can detect subtle textual variations that traditional methods might miss, leading to a reduction in false positives and an improvement in detection accuracy.Extensive experimentation and comparative analysis are carried out in this thesis, revealing the superior performance of the OT-based approach compared to traditional methods. Overall, the findings highlight the considerable promise of OT within the NLP domain. Unlike conventional techniques, which typically rely on direct comparisons or surface-level feature matching, OT evaluates the structural and contextual coherence of text within the latent space. This unique capability enables OT to effectively tackle the complexities and subtleties inherent in human language, resulting in NLP models that exhibit enhanced precision, reliability, and contextual awareness.</p
Active Site Plasticity of the Bacterial Sliding Clamp
No full textThe rise of antibiotic resistance poses a severe global threat, specifically due to the emergence of multiresistant bacteria (ESKAPE pathogens), which are responsible for countless deaths globally. Consequently, the development of novel antibiotics is in dire need. Targeting proteins essential to DNA replication is a promising pathway, making the β-sliding clamp (β-SC) an attractive target. Currently, there are no antibiotics on the market that target the β-SC. However, numerous compounds are being investigated to create an antibiotic with high potency against a broad range of bacterial species. Interestingly, most proposed compounds do not bind to the entire active site, which may reduce their potential as high-potency inhibitors. This is due to the active site residue Met at position 362, adopting a “closed” conformation, preventing inhibitors access into Subsite II of the active site. This study explored the effect of key residues on the plasticity of the β-SC active site using molecular dynamics and metadynamics simulations under different physiological states. Our results show that the Met gate exhibits flexibility and both open and closed states are thermodynamically and kinetically accessible.</p
Does 'Uncertainty Tolerance' Influence Clinical Decisions Regarding Antibiotics? Informing Stewardship for Healthcare Staff in Aged-Care Settings
No full textAntibiotic overprescribing continues to be a problem in residential aged-care settings, with at least 50% of prescribing considered to be inappropriate. High levels of diagnostic uncertainty, lack of diagnostic testing, time constraints and pressure from families shape risk perceptions of staff involved in providing care and have been linked to prescribing antibiotics ‘just in case’. The primary aim of this thesis was to investigate the role of uncertainty and its tolerance in influencing the inappropriate initiation of antibiotics in residential aged-care settings.Study 1 involved a systematic review of the literature regarding aged-care staff attitudes relevant to antimicrobial prescribing and stewardship. Multiple domains of attitudes, lack of theory defining these domains and large variations in measurement of these domains complicated the synthesis of findings. Attitudes were predominantly captured through beliefs and endorsement of behaviours and measures pertaining to affective responses were lacking. Additionally, perceptions of professional risk (e.g., deregistration) regarding reducing antibiotics have not been measured, despite fear regarding malpractice being associated with prescribing antibiotics ‘just in case’.Research points to the key role of the registered nurse in driving clinical decisions in the context of providing clinical assessments, monitoring residents and coordinating care between multiple stakeholders in aged-care facilities. As such, Study 2 aimed to develop a measure that quantified nursing behaviours under conditions of uncertainty related to common infections in the aged-care context. A new vignette-based measure was developed and administered to 157 nurses. Factor analysis identified three scales, including a 4-item factor labelled as Immediate Assessment and Antibiotics (IAA). The IAA scale demonstrated significant positive correlations with the domain-specific or clinical tolerance of uncertainty but not general tolerance of uncertainty. Using the same sample, Study 3 then explored the relationship between situational anxiety, clinical tolerance of uncertainty and the clinical decisions favouring antibiotics. Nurses’ anxiety fully mediated the relationship between tolerance of uncertainty and perceived need for antibiotics and assessment, however only 6% of variance was predicted by the model. Taken together, findings from Studies 2 and 3 provide evidence supporting the influence of affective states, particularly situational anxiety arising from uncertainty in influencing some of the antibiotic initiation in RACFs.Lastly, Study 4 involved interviews conducted with 16 aged-care nurses regarding the management of their uncertainty, within the context of antibiotic prescribing and stewardship. The theoretical framework of medical uncertainty proposed by Han et al. (2021) was used to map strategies engaged by nurses in the aged-care setting. Nurses described relying on ignorance-focused strategies (e.g., initiating diagnostic evaluation, consulting colleagues) to manage issues of scientific uncertainty, while uncertainty-focused strategies (e.g., maximizing attention, decision deferral) were used to navigate issues of both, scientific and practical uncertainty. Response (e.g., cultivating virtues) and relationship-focused strategies (e.g., sharing with families) emerged as important in managing issues of practical and personal uncertainty, particularly in sharing burdens associated with uncertainty and decision-making. A smaller number of nurses also described using response-focused strategies of ‘reflection’ and ‘avoidance’ to manage competing priorities in their roles that were previously not described in the existing taxonomy. The ongoing and iterative nature of managing risk was evident in the wide variety of strategies that nurses described using under conditions of uncertainty.Together these studies demonstrate the importance of clinicians’ affective states, particularly anxiety, in influencing clinical decisions associated with the inappropriate initiation of antibiotics in aged-care facilities. The role of affect has tended to be neglected in designing stewardship interventions to date, with a focus on educational stewardship that reduces scientific uncertainty. Aged-care staff describe aversive affective states, such as anxiety, frustration and guilt and they fear consequences (e.g., worsening of symptoms, complaints from families) when facing scientific, practical and ethical issues of uncertainty in making clinical decisions. It is therefore unsurprising that they are required to draw on several strategies to manage the different types of uncertainty experienced when providing care for residents. Findings from this thesis indicate the need for acknowledging the impact of domain-specific tolerance of uncertainty on situational anxiety that nurses experience and its’ potential for influencing clinical decisions related to antibiotics. As such, it may be helpful to support clinicians in their decision-making through the inclusion of interventions that explicitly target the negative states arising from uncertainty and increase clinicians’ tolerance of uncertainty in the clinical context.</p
Exploring Men’s Experiences of Engagement With General Practice: A Qualitative Study
No full textIntroduction: As males are less engaged with healthcare than females, they often present when a condition is more advanced, reducing the potential for early intervention. Little is known about why men are less engaged and what influences them to be more proactive. This study sought to explore men’s experiences of engagement with general practice. Methods: A qualitative descriptive study was nested within a sequential mixed-methods project. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 17 male staff and volunteers of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service about their experiences, attitudes, and preferences for general practice engagement. Thematic analysis was used to analyze data. Results: Five sub-themes emerged about men’s engagement with general practice. “Reasons for engagement” revealed motivations for seeking healthcare. “Seeking validation” explained how social influences impacted engagement. The “importance of relationships” highlighted the value men place on trust with the healthcare provider/team, and how this impacts engagement. “Interpersonal communication” addressed preferences for direct and authentic communication. Finally, “barriers to engagement” revealed the challenges in accessing care. Conclusions: Awareness of the barriers and facilitators to men’s engagement with general practice can inform strategies to improve care. This study suggests that health professionals play a crucial role in building therapeutic relationships with men and partnering with them in their healthcare journey to improve engagement and health outcomes.</p
Exploring the relationship between immersive nature play programs and children’s social-emotional wellbeing - A multiple case study
No full textIn Australia, the early childhood education (ECE) encompasses services for children prior to their entry to formal schooling. Preschools, kindergartens and childcare settings emphasise play-based learning which focuses on holistic child development. The Australian government plays a significant role in regulating and supporting ECE, through implementation of the National Quality Framework (NQF). One of the central guiding documents within this framework, the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), requires that educators support children’s social- emotional (SE) wellbeing in their settings. Drawing influence from the international Forest School movement, immersive nature play programs (INPPs) are emerging more and more across Australia either as standalone programs or within ECE services. While there exists research exploring the benefits of these programs on children’s learning and development, particularly internationally, there is a paucity of research focusing on INPPs and their connection to children’s SE wellbeing in an Australian ECE context.This study aimed to explore the relationship between INPPs and children’s SE wellbeing in ECE settings in Australia, through the perspectives of key stakeholders - educators, children and parents/guardians. It aimed to examine specific principles which drive and determine the practice of educators in the INPPs, the perspectives of children, educators and parents on the relationship between INPPs and SE wellbeing and the key elements that influence the relationship between INPPs and SE wellbeing.A qualitative research design offered an effective means of exploring the relationship between INPPs and SE wellbeing. This multiple case study involved three INPPs in Australia - one location being in bushland/rainforest, another at the beach and another on a tidal riverbank. Participants were educators, children who took part in these programs, and the children’s parents/guardians. Given the strong connection to SE wellbeing, the study was framed by Basic Psychological Needs Theory (BPNT) which is a sub-theory of Self-Determination Theory (SDT). Methods of data collection involved questionnaires, observations, document analysis, a small group drawing experience and discussion, and interviews. The data analysis was an involved process of thematic analysis that helped to verify theories and draw conclusions in later stages of the research.The findings revealed a positive relationship between this fast-growing educational approach and children’s SE wellbeing. INPPs are conducive to children’s SE wellbeing, and experiences within these programs have multifaceted benefits for children, with the potential to enhance their SE wellbeing. When INPPs provide opportunities for children to meet their basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, INPPs can be an exciting and worthwhile way to enhance children’s SE wellbeing.This study is a significant addition to the growing evidence base relating to practice in INPPs in Australia, helping to address the gap in research pertaining to the relationship between INPPs and children’s SE wellbeing. INPPs provide a unique opportunity for educators to meet the SE wellbeing related outcomes within the EYLF. It confirms research on INPPs in the broader context, reiterating that learning in nature, with peers and responsive educators, immersed in an environment rich with beneficial risk, strengthens the SE wellbeing of children and provides a multitude of positive outcomes.</p
Nangs are popular with young people. But are they aware of the serious harms of nitrous oxide?
No full textNitrous oxide – also known as laughing gas or nangs – is cheap, widely available and popular among young people.Yet it often flies under the radar in public health programs and education settings. For example, it’s not included in the drug education curriculum in Australian Schools.In our new study, we spoke to young people (aged 18 to 25) who have used nitrous oxide. We found they were are unaware of its risks – even when they reported symptoms such as “brain fog” and seizures.</p