Plant diversity predicts beta but not alpha diversity of soil microbes across grasslands worldwide

Aboveground–belowground interactions exert critical controls on the composition and function of terrestrial ecosystems, yet the fundamental relationships between plant diversity and soil microbial diversity remain elusive. Theory predicts predominantly positive associations but tests within single sites have shown variable relationships, and associations between plant and microbial diversity across broad spatial scales remain largely unexplored. We compared the diversity of plant, bacterial, archaeal and fungal communities in one hundred and forty-five 1 m2 plots across 25 temperate grassland sites from four continents. Across sites, the plant alpha diversity patterns were poorly related to those observed for any soil microbial group. However, plant beta diversity (compositional dissimilarity between sites) was significantly correlated with the beta diversity of bacterial and fungal communities, even after controlling for environmental factors. Thus, across a global range of temperate grasslands, plant diversity can predict patterns in the composition of soil microbial communities, but not patterns in alpha diversity.

The limits to public service : rural communities, professional families, and work mobility

Australia faces an ongoing challenge recruiting professionals to staff essential human services in rural and remote communities. This paper identifies the private limits to the implicit service contract between professions and such client populations. These become evident in how private solutions to competing priorities within professional families inform their selective mobility and thus create the public problem for such communities. The paper reports on a survey of doctors, nurses, teachers and police with responsibility for school-aged children in Queensland that plumbed the strength of neoliberal values in their educational strategy and their commitment to the public good in career decisions. The quantitative analysis suggested that neoliberal values are not necessarily opposed to a commitment to the public good. However, the qualitative analysis of responses to hypothetical career opportunities in rural and remote communities drew out the multiple intertwined spatial and temporal limits to such public service, highlighting the priority given to educational strategy in these families’ deliberations. This private/public nexus poses a policy problem on multiple institutional fronts.

Bacterial adherence and biofilm formation on medical implants : a review

Biofilms are a complex group of microbial cells that adhere to the exopolysaccharide matrix present on the surface of medical devices. Biofilm-associated infections in the medical devices pose a serious problem to the public health and adversely affect the function of the device. Medical implants used in oral and orthopedic surgery are fabricated using alloys such as stainless steel and titanium. The biological behavior, such as osseointegration and its antibacterial activity, essentially depends on both the chemical composition and the morphology of the surface of the device. Surface treatment of medical implants by various physical and chemical techniques are attempted in order to improve their surface properties so as to facilitate bio-integration and prevent bacterial adhesion. The potential source of infection of the surrounding tissue and antimicrobial strategies are from bacteria adherent to or in a biofilm on the implant which should prevent both biofilm formation and tissue colonization. This article provides an overview of bacterial biofilm formation and methods adopted for the inhibition of bacterial adhesion on medical implants

Conformational Spread as a Mechanism for Cooperativity in the Bacterial Flagellar Switch

The bacterial flagellar switch that controls the direction of flagellar rotation during Chemotaxis has a highly cooperative response. This has previously been understood in terms of the classic two-state, concerted model of allosteric regulation. Here, we used high-resolution optical microscopy to observe switching of single motors and uncover the stochastic multistate nature of the switch. Our observations are in detailed quantitative agreement with a recent general model of allosteric cooperativity that exhibits conformational spread-the stochastic growth and shrinkage of domains of adjacent subunits sharing a particular conformational state. We expect that conformational spread will be important in explaining cooperativity in other large signaling complexes.

Making stories matter: Using participatory new media storytelling and evaluation to serve marginalised and regional communities

In this chapter, we draw on our experiences facilitating community storytelling workshops in regional Queensland in partnership with the Queensland branch of Oral History Association of Australia (OHAA Qld) in order to develop a best practice model for promoting creative approaches to recording oral narratives using digital tools, informed by creative writing practice and embedded evaluation (Klaebe 2012 & 2013). These experiences offer an insight into how creative approaches to training can facilitate the sharing and preservation of stories in regional communities.

Doing whitefella research in blackfella communities in Australia : decolonizing method in sports related research

There is much for non-Indigenous researchers to consider when researching in Indigenous contexts. This paper is a story of discovery for two researchers working on a project with the Indigenous Sports Program section of the Australian Sports Commission. It documents the slow, meticulous and sometimes clumsy steps taken to gain access to communities and conduct research guided by a social justice ethic. The research was successful in that eventually it was possible to develop the trust of individuals and some of the Indigenous communities more broadly, so that information could be gathered and given within the context of shared understandings and mutual interest. However, it is the turbulent journey, filled as it is, with latent tendencies, privileged assumptions and eventually reflexive readings of the data, which remains the focus of this paper. Tentative recommendations are offered to those wishing to advance this politically and epistemologically challenging approach to culturally based research

Development of a pilot-scale bacterial fermentation for plasmid-based biopharmaceutical production using a stoichiometric medium

The recognition of the potential efficacy of plasmid DNA (pDNA) molecules as vectors in the treatment and prevention of emerging diseases has birthed the confidence to combat global pandemics. This is due to the close-to-zero safety concern associated with pDNA vectors compared to viral vectors in cell transfection and targeting. Considerable attention has been paid to the potential of pDNA vectors but comparatively less thought has been given to the practical challenges in producing large quantities to meet current rising demands. A pilot-scale fermentation scheme was developed by employing a stoichiometrically-designed growth medium whose exceptional plasmid yield performance was attested in a shake flask environment for pUC19 and pEGFP-N1 transformed into E. coliDH5α and E. coliJM109, respectively. Batch fermentation of E. coliDH5α-pUC19 employing the stoichiometric medium displayed a maximum plasmid volumetric and specific yield of 62.6 mg/L and 17.1 mg/g (mg plasmid/g dry cell weight), respectively. Fed-batch fermentation of E. coliDH5α-pUC19 on a glycerol substrate demonstrated one of the highest ever reported pilot-scale plasmid specific yield of 48.98 mg/g and a volumetric yield of 0.53 g/L. The attainment of high plasmid specific yields constitutes a decrease in plasmid manufacturing cost and enhances the effectiveness of downstream processes by reducing the proportion of intracellular impurities. The effect of step-rise temperature induction was also considered to maximize ColE1-origin plasmid replication.

Affinity purification of plasmid DNA directly from crude bacterial cell lysates

We have shown previously that a sequence-specific DNA-binding protein based on the Lac repressor protein can isolate pre-purified DNA efficiently from simple buffer solution but our attempts to purify plasmids directly from crude starting materials were disappointing with unpractically low DNA yields. We have optimized tbe procedure and present a simple affinity methodology whereby plasmid DNA is purified directly by mixing two crude cell lysates, one cell lysate containing the plasmid and the other the protein affinity ligand, without the need for treatment by RNaseA. After IMAC chromatography, high purity supercoiled DNA is recovered in good yields of 100-150 μg plasmid per 200 mL shake flask culture. Moreover, the resulting DNA is free from linear or open-circular plasmid DNA, genomic DNA, RNA, and protein, to the limits of our detection. Furthermore, we show that lyophilized affinity ligand can be stored at room temperature and re-hydrated for use when required.

Mobile phone use in Australian Indigenous communities : future pathways for HC14D

This paper collates recent research on mobile phone use in Indigenous communities in Australia. Its key finding is that mobile phones are heavily used in these communities, albeit in unique and unusual ways that may be difficult to comprehend beneath 'top-down' measurements. Rather than framing these uses as being compromises made in lieu of appropriate infrastructures or literacies, it is argued that HCI4D (Human-Computer Interaction for Development) would be better served by seriously plumbing into the information they reveal about how mobile phones are constructed and placed in these communities, and what these factors might reveal about local understandings of development and well-being. A consideration of these specific patterns of appropriation is necessary to push the field beyond top-down, rationalist approaches to development towards more flexible, creative solutions that build from local knowledge and competencies.

Improving access to housing for low-income communities in Dhaka: From rhetoric to reality in community participation

The research explores how community participation can address affordable housing problems of the poor in Dhaka. The research, based on extensive interviews, community focus groups and household surveys in different Dhaka slums, identifies the limiting factors to promote community participation in affordable housing creation. In Dhaka housing options for poor are currently limited to affordable shelters in informal settlements. Public housing programs have failed to reach the poor and meet affordability levels due to a number of factors including lack of beneficiary participation. Beneficiary participation, though widely recognized for success in housing initiatives, often deteriorates in process of implementation into mere involvement, not reflecting community needs and aspirations and thus failing to meet its core objectives. This research identified the most significant impediments as well as opportunities to advance participation in their own housing provisions in Dhaka city.

Literacy, place, and pedagogies of possibility: Working against residualization effects and deficit discourses in poor school communities

Australia has a long history of policy attention to the education of poor and working-class youth (Connell, 1994), yet currently on standardized educational outcomes measures the gaps are widening in ways that relate to social background, including race, location and class. An economic analysis of school choice in Australia reveals that a high proportion of government school students now come from lower Socio-Economic Status (SES) backgrounds (Ryan & Watson, 2004), indicating a trend towards a gradual residualisation of the poor in government schools, with increased private school enrolments as a confirmed national trend. The spatial distribution of poverty and the effects on school populations are not unique to Australia (Lupton, 2003; Lipman, 2011; Ryan, 2010). Raffo and colleagues (2010) recently provided a synthesis of socially critical approaches towards schooling and poverty arguing that what is needed are shifts in the balances of power to reposition those within the educational system as having some say in the ways schooling is organized. ‘Disadvantaged’ primary schools are not a marginal concern for education systems, but now account for a large and growing number of schools that serve an ever increasing population being made redundant, in part-time precarious work, under-employed or unemployed (Thomson 2002; Smyth, Down et al 2010). In Australia, the notion of the ‘disadvantaged’ school now refers to those, mostly public schools, being residualised by a politics of parental choice that drives neoliberalising policy logic (Bonner & Caro 2007; Hattam & Comber, forthcoming 2014; Thomson & Reid, 2003)...

The Arab Spring on Twitter: Language Communities in #egypt and #libya

Building on hashtag datasets gathered since January 2011, this paper will compare patterns of Twitter usage during the popular revolution in Egypt and the civil war in Libya. Using custom-made tools for processing ‘big data’ (boyd & Crawford, 2011), we will examine the volume of tweets sent by English-, Arabic-, and mixed-language Twitter users over time, and examine the networks of interaction (variously through @replying, retweeting, or both) between these groups as they developed and shifted over the course of these uprisings. Examining @reply and retweet traffic, we will identify general patterns of information flow between the English- and Arabic-speaking sides of the Twittersphere, and highlight the roles played by key boundary riders connecting both language spheres. Further, we will examine the URLs shared in these hashtags by Twitter participants, to identify the most prominent overall information sources, examine differences in the information diet experienced by English- and Arabic-language users, and investigate whether there are any online sources whose URLs are transcending language boundaries more frequently than others.