Production, properties and processing of American bison (Bison bison) wool grown in southern Australia

American bison grow a thick coat of fibres which assists them to withstand severe climatic conditions. Bison fibre was traditionally used in textiles by native North Americans. This study aimed to quantify the production, fibre attributes and dehairing processing of bison fibre produced from bison grazed in north-eastern Victoria. Three age/sex classes were sampled (n = 16) at seven body positions in spring. The fibre growing area was measured. Fibre was tested for diameter distribution, clean washing yield, proportion of fine fibres <36µm and fine fibre length, and processed by cashmere dehairing. Bison were 12 years of age, liveweights 160450 kg and had mean fibre growing area of 1.4 m². They produced an average 1184 g (range 5301640 g) of fine fibre with mean fibre diameter 18.5µm, clean washing yield 76.5%, wax content 9.8%, suint content 14.5%, clean fine fibre yield 56.4%, fine fibre length 37 mm and fibre curvature was 93/mm. Mid-side fibre had a crimp frequency of 6.5/cm and mean resistance to compression of 6.6 kPa. Fibre had a tenacity of 8.7 cN/tex and an extension of 39.3%. Restricted maximum likelihood mixed model analysis showed age/sex class and sampling site significantly affected all fibre attributes. Finer and longer fibre was produced in anterior sites and in younger bison. Fibre curvature declined 5.3°/mm for each 1-µm increase in mean fibre diameter. Dehaired fibre had a mean fibre diameter of 17.8 µm and mid-length of 28 mm, suitable for woollen spinning. The production by bison of coats containing significant amounts of fibre indicates that careful harvesting of fibre could form an important source of income in bison enterprises.

Effect of substructure characteristics on the dislocation annihilation process during post-deformation annealing

Two distinct substructures were produced in a Ni-30Fe austenitic model alloy by different thermomechanical processing routes. The first substructure largely displayed organized, banded subgrain arrangements with alternating misorientations, resulting from the deformation at a strain just before the initiation of dynamic recrystallization (DRX). By contrast, the second substructure was more random in character and exhibited complex subgrain/cell arrangements characterized by local accumulation of misorientations, formed through DRX. During the post-deformation annealing, the latter substructure revealed a rapid disintegration of dislocation boundaries leading to the formation of dislocation-free grains within a short holding time, though the former largely preserved its characteristics till becoming replaced by growing statically recrystallized grains.

Recommendations for improved data processing from expired gas analysis indirect calorimetry

There is currently no universally recommended and accepted method of data processing within the science of indirect calorimetry for either mixing chamber or breath-by-breath systems of expired gas analysis. Exercise physiologists were first surveyed to determine methods used to process oxygen consumption ([OV0312]O 2) data, and current attitudes to data processing within the science of indirect calorimetry. Breath-by-breath datasets obtained from indirect calorimetry during incremental exercise were then used to demonstrate the consequences of commonly used time, breath and digital filter post-acquisition data processing strategies. Assessment of the variability in breath-by-breath data was determined using multiple regression based on the independent variables ventilation (VE), and the expired gas fractions for oxygen and carbon dioxide, FEO 2 and FECO2, respectively. Based on the results of explanation of variance of the breath-by-breath [OV0312]O2 data, methods of processing to remove variability were proposed for time-averaged, breath-averaged and digital filter applications. Among exercise physiologists, the strategy used to remove the variability in sequential [OV0312]O2 measurements varied widely, and consisted of time averages (30 sec [38%], 60 sec [18%], 20 sec [11%], 15 sec [8%]), a moving average of five to 11 breaths (10%), and the middle five of seven breaths (7%). Most respondents indicated that they used multiple criteria to establish maximum [OV0312]O 2 ([OV0312]O2max) including: the attainment of age-predicted maximum heart rate (HRmax) [53%], respiratory exchange ratio (RER) >1.10 (49%) or RER >1.15 (27%) and a rating of perceived exertion (RPE) of >17, 18 or 19 (20%). The reasons stated for these strategies included their own beliefs (32%), what they were taught (26%), what they read in research articles (22%), tradition (13%) and the influence of their colleagues (7%). The combination of VE, FEO 2 and FECO2 removed 96-98% of [OV0312]O2 breath-by-breath variability in incremental and steady-state exercise [OV0312]O2 data sets, respectively. Correction of residual error in [OV0312]O2 datasets to 10% of the raw variability results from application of a 30-second time average, 15-breath running average, or a 0.04 Hz low cut-off digital filter. Thus, we recommend that once these data processing strategies are used, the peak or maximal value becomes the highest processed datapoint. Exercise physiologists need to agree on, and continually refine through empirical research, a consistent process for analysing data from indirect calorimetry.

Context sensitivity in action decreases along the autism spectrum: a predictive processing perspective

Recent predictive processing accounts of perception and action point towards a key challenge for the nervous system in dynamically optimizing the balance between incoming sensory information and existing expectations regarding the state of the environment. Here, we report differences in the influence of the preceding sensory context on motor function, varying with respect to both clinical and subclinical features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Reach-to-grasp movements were recorded subsequent to an inactive period in which illusory ownership of a prosthetic limb was induced. We analysed the sub-components of reach trajectories derived using a minimum-jerk fitting procedure. Non-clinical adults low in autistic features showed disrupted movement execution following the illusion compared to a control condition. By contrast, individuals higher in autistic features (both those with ASD and non-clinical individuals high in autistic traits) showed reduced sensitivity to the presence of the illusion in their reaching movements while still exhibiting the typical perceptual effects of the illusion. Clinical individuals were distinct from non-clinical individuals scoring high in autistic features, however, in the early stages of movement. These results suggest that the influence of high-level representations of the environment differs between individuals, contributing to clinical and subclinical differences in motor performance that manifest in a contextual manner. As high-level representations of context help to explain fluctuations in sensory input over relatively longer time scales, more circumscribed sensitivity to prior or contextual information in autistic sensory processing could contribute more generally to reduced social comprehension, sensory impairments and a stronger desire for predictability and routine.

Displaced metaphors: collaborative poetic responses to language in a post-physical world

This paper discusses an ongoing creative and conceptual collaboration between three authors, in which poetry has been approached as a way of exploring how lived experience and language are being transformed by the rapid evolution of virtual reality and its lexicon. We recognise, via Bakhtin, that language is always shared, in-use and redolent with multiple meanings. We acknowledge that we have written within a metaphorical space where we, as avatars of ourselves, use word processing software loaded with its own metaphors of page and print. The poems we have collaborated on have interrupted the increasing invisibility of metaphors such as ‘cloud’ and ‘screen’ as applied to technology, by working in the disjunction between metaphor and what it describes. We now reflect on the collaborative process and on the influence of technology on our practice, whilst maintaining a collaborative strategy. The paper explores the poetics of longing (Stewart) and Baudrillard’s simulacra and argues that concerns over remembering the real and the effects of nostalgia are offset by the generative potential of collaborative writing and its surprising forms of heteroglossia, which have exciting possibilities for creative practice.

Re-processing The Mystical Rose

This essay explores the animation practice of Australian filmmaker Michael Lee, whose career spans the late 60s to the present. His notoriously dissident and innovative feature length work The Mystical Rose (1976, 65 minutes) is the primary focus, the fulcrum point of an analysis balanced by a review of his earlier shorter formative films, his cultural milieu, the thinkers that shaped his youth and particularly his changing relation to the Catholic Church. This relationship with Christianity has gone full circle through a critical rejection, worked through in The Mystical Rose, to a re-embrace in his later films Turnaround (1983, 60 mins) and The Contemplation of the Cross (1989, 27 minutes). This trajectory is understood here in relation to Magic Realism, Michael Bakhtin’s conception of the ‘Carnivalesque’ and Surrealism. What is of particular interest historically for animation is Lee’s pioneering innovative combination of animation with live action documentation, conveying both inner and outer realities, and mapping the relationships between them.