353 research outputs found
Ecological dataset from: 'Rats and the city: implications of urbanization on zoonotic disease risk in Southeast Asia'
No full textThis dataset includes the ecological and environmental data, a description of the analysis steps, and the related R code associated with the manuscript: "Rats and the city: implications of urbanization on zoonotic disease risk in Southeast Asia" by Kim R. Blasdell, Serge Morand, Susan G.W. Laurance, Stephen L Doggett, Amy Hahs, David Perera, and Cadhla Firth, available at: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2112341119
This dataset also relates to the preprint: "Rats in the city: implications for zoonotic disease risk in an urbanizing world" available at: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.18.436089v1
A detailed description of the files can be found in README.txtThis study was funded by the Australian Research Council (Award #: DE150101259
The nature of domestic electricity-loads and effects of time averaging on statistics and on-site generation calculations
No full textWright was lead author. Firth is a Research Assistant, supervised by Wright
Storegga Slide
No full textGlasgow-based author of short stories and psychological thrillers, Louise has developed a poetic statement about our shared origins and culture, accompanied by a series of words translated between Scots and European mainland languages which demonstrate that though our dialects are different we can still be understood.
Emlyn Firth will use a typographic approach to illustrate Louise’s work, playing with themes of language and communication
Marine Spatial Planning in Action: Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters case study
No full textNo abstracts are to be cited without prior reference to the author. The Marine (Scotland) Act 2010 makes provision for statutory marine planning in Scotland’s seas. • Regional marine spatial planning is being piloted in the Pentland Firth & Orkney Waters area (Figure 1). • This non statutory process will be used to inform the statutory Regional Marine Plans
The Genomics of Emerging Pathogens
No full textGlobalization and industrialization have dramatically altered the vulnerability of human and animal populations to emerging and reemerging infectious diseases while shifting both the scale and pace of disease outbreaks. Fortunately, the advent of high-throughput DNA sequencing platforms has also increased the speed with which such pathogens can be detected and characterized as part of an outbreak response effort. It is now possible to sequence the genome of a pathogen rapidly, inexpensively, and with high sensitivity, transforming the fields of diagnostics, surveillance, forensic analysis, and pathogenesis. Here, we review advances in methods for microbial discovery and characterization, as well as strategies for testing the clinical and public health significance of microbe-disease associations. Finally, we discuss how genetic data can inform our understanding of the general process of pathogen emergence
Viral surveillance and discovery
No full textThe field of virus discovery has burgeoned with the advent of high throughput sequencing platforms and bioinformatics programs that enable rapid identification and molecular characterization of known and novel agents, investments in global microbial surveillance that include wildlife and domestic animals as well as humans, and recognition that viruses may be implicated in chronic as well as acute diseases. Here we review methods for viral surveillance and discovery, strategies and pitfalls in linking discoveries to disease, and identify opportunities for improvements in sequencing instrumentation and analysis, the use of social media and medical informatics that will further advance clinical medicine and public health
Inanimation
No full textMy practice borrows from early material processes of animation. The tools and techniques I primarily use were developed for commercial entertainment but are now obsolete outside of education and experimentation. The demanding labor process of producing cel animation independently applies technical constraints to my practice and forces a close examination of motion. I find my technique of tracing acute changes in images to be generative because the action of drawing and redrawing creates unexpected and unnatural movements. The motion created by unedited hand-drawn animation is slippery and constantly appears on the verge of transformation. My animations are short compiled loops of subjects which endlessly repeat small gestures and actions. Animating compact loops creates a perpetual anticipation of change while always rejecting progression. The movement produced in my loops refuses classification under the dichotomy of still and moving and instead calls for a more complex understanding of motion. My looping animations are primarily made for non-theater settings like galleries and web-based settings. In the current internet landscape, time-based media are regularly encountered in perpetual forms like gifs or endlessly scrolling websites. These new forms recall a history of cinema and early cinema devices where emerging technologies restricted media viewing to short repeating clips. Linear timelines as well as beginnings and ends in media have become unfamiliar with the new pervasiveness of looped forms. Working within a late-capitalist context where political power and resistance seem to operate in terms of perpetuity, my work examines a complex kind of movement where endless motion and stillness are simultaneously depicted. My practice involves animating scenes where constrained depictions of movement, change and progress are complicated by unusual treatments of space and time
Phylogenetic Analysis Reveals Rapid Evolutionary Dynamics in the Plant RNA Virus Genus Tobamovirus
No full textEarly studies on the evolutionary dynamics of plant RNA viruses suggested that they may evolve more slowly than their animal counterparts, sometimes dramatically so. However, these estimates were often based on an assumption of virus–host codivergence over time-scales of many millions of years that is difficult to verify. An important example are viruses of the genus Tobamovirus, where the assumption of host–virus codivergence over 100 million years has led to rate estimates in the range of ~1 × 10−8 nucleotide substitutions per site, per year. Such a low evolutionary rate is in apparent contradiction with the ability of some tobamoviruses to quickly overcome inbred genetic resistance. To resolve how rapidly molecular evolution proceeds in the tobomaviruses, we estimated rates of nucleotide substitution, times to common ancestry, and the extent of congruence between virus and host phylogenies. Using Bayesian coalescent methods applied to time-stamped sequences, we estimated mean evolutionary rates at the nucleotide and amino acid levels of between 1 × 10−5 and 1.3 × 10−3 substitutions per site, per year, and hence similar to those seen in a broad range of animal and plant RNA viruses. Under these rates, a conservative estimate for the time of origin of the sampled tobamoviruses is within the last 100,000 years, and hence a far more recently than proposed assuming codivergence. This is supported by our cophylogeny analysis which revealed significantly discordant evolutionary histories between the tobamoviruses and the plant families they infect
Occupancy of urban roosts by spectacled flying-foxes (Pteropus conspicillatus) is not affected by diurnal microclimate
No full textOne of the most significant changes to Earth's climate in recent decades has been an increase in the frequency, intensity and duration of heatwaves. During heatwaves, animal's thermal window can be exceeded, and in extreme cases, mass mortality events have been observed. In 2018, a heatwave in north-eastern Australia resulted in the death of approximately one-third of the spectacled flying-fox (Pteropus conspicillatus) population at urban roosts in Cairns. The species has now been listed as endangered with future heatwaves considered the greatest threat to its survival. In this study, we investigated long-term climatic trends for Cairns, paying particular attention to the frequency of extreme heat events from 1943 to 2022. We then characterized the microclimate of urban flying-fox roosts during the Austral summers of 2021/2022 and 2022/2023 across Cairns to assess the long-term feasibility of urban spectacled flying-fox roosts. From the long-term climate records, we observed an overall increase in Cairns' average annual temperature of 1.3°C from 1943 to 2022 and an increase in the number of excessively hot days per decade, from 16 in the first decade (1943–1952) to 67 in the last (2013–2022). We regularly detected maximum roost temperatures of 30–35°C during our study, with excessively hot days (>35°C) recorded more frequently than expected compared to Cairns's maximum temperatures from the last decade (2013–2023). We detected only 1 day where roost temperatures exceeded 40°C and no period that replicated the 2018 heatwave conditions. Furthermore, we found a significant negative relationship between roost ambient temperature and humidity, where the hottest days also coincided with those with the lowest humidity. Importantly, we found no difference in microclimate between roosts that were occupied and unoccupied by flying-foxes during our study, suggesting that other environmental or behavioural factors are more influential for roost selection than the roosting microclimate. Ensuring the long-term conservation of spectacled flying-foxes under a changing climate will require the management of urban roosts to increase their thermal resistance to heatwaves, and more research is needed to identify the variables modulating this aspect
Exploring the Hoard: Constructing New Maps of Understanding
No full textHow do images and diagrams inform cultural identity and the navigation of social space? This is a core question motivating my art practice.
To produce my artwork, I glean images and texts from magazine collections, which I deconstruct and reconfigure into new iconographies. My goal in this process is to simultaneously destabilize knowledge systems that pretend to obscure uncertainty, even while hinting at possible new understandings. Building on the history of collage as a critical strategy, I explore the role of technical images in identity formation, knowledge production, and expressions of power and authority. In this way, my work maps contextual frameworks that span disparate image cultures and identity systems.
The ‘hoard’, as a type of collection, is an important space for my practice; I see the hoard as an archive and active site of social and political possibilities — a physical manifestation of the excess of capitalist culture (In this text, I will refer to the hoard as a metaphor for the overwhelming volume of cultural imagery at large as well as, a specific collection of print imagery that I see as physical symptom of the pressure of image culture). I mine these archives for veins of source materials, looking for patterns that emerge through formal aesthetic similarities. Colour and line speak from within images to reveal possible hybrid visualizations and derive new trajectories of meaning. In this work, I am exorcising my suspicion of a tendency to slip into a passive viewing position; in this way, my work is calling to (and being beckoned by) Vilém Flusser’s cautionary writings on the inherent perils of technical images in mass media.
My works traverse image and objecthood. I transform print materials into photographs, then into pixels, and finally to printed-paper structures. In this way I usher meanings from objecthood to image and back again, questioning visual language along the way. With each work, I engage in a struggle to decipher and map historical traces of print images. At the same time, I am actively trying to confuse, question, and re-code visual tropes, questioning the impact of images on identity construction and broader ontologies. I bury my tracks knee-deep in scrap
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