Reinstating indigenous landscape planning curatorship : the Lake Condah restoration project

While contemporary Western planning traditions in Australia talk of the last 200 years of innovation and transposition of European and North American planning traditions upon the Australian landscape, they neglect to mention some 40-50,000 years of Indigenous landscape planning initiatives and practice. The ancestral country of the Gunditjmara people is in the Western District of Victoria focused upon the Lake Condah and Mount Eccles localities. The Gunditjmara had, and continue to have a strong social, cultural and land management and planning presence in the region, in particular linked to environmental engineering initiatives and aquaculture curatorship of eel and fish resources. Archaeological evidence confirms that some 10,000 years of pre-European contact landscape planning practice has been applied by the Gunditjmara to construct resources management infrastructure to service a regional food need as well as a community need. Within contemporary reconciliation discourses, the Gunditjmara have activity sought over the last 25 years the rehabilitation of Lake Condah, which is now coming into fruition, and the restoration of their traditional landscape planning and management responsibilities. This paper reviews the restoration of Indigenous landscape planning and management theory and practice by the Gunditjmara, pointing to significant policy and practice success as well as the need to better appreciate this culturally-attuned and ecologically-responsive approach to landscape planning borne out of generations of knowledge.

Corner inlet and Nooramunga habitat mapping project

Deakin University and the University of Tasmania were commissioned by Parks Victoria (PV) to create two updated habitat maps for areas within the Corner Inlet and Nooramunga Marine and Coastal Park and Ramsar area. The team obtained a ground-truth data set using in situ video and still photographs. This dataset was used to develop and assess predictive models of benthic marine habitat distributions incorporating data from both ALOS (Advanced Land Observation Satellite) imagery atmospherically corrected by CSIRO and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) bathymetry. This report describes the results of the mapping effort as well as the methodology used to produce these habitat maps.

Overall accuracies of habitat classifications were good, returning overall accuracies >73 % and kappa values > 0.62 for both study localities. Habitats predicted with highest accuracies included Zosteraceae in Nooramunga (91 %), reef in Corner Inlet (80 %), and bare sediment (no-visible macrobiota/no-visible seagrass classes; both > 76 %). The majority of classification errors were due to the misclassification of areas of sparse seagrass as bare sediment. For the Corner Inlet study locality the no-visible macrobiota (10,698 ha), Posidonia (4,608 ha) and Zosteraceae (4,229 ha) habitat classes covered the most area. In Nooramunga no-visible seagrass (5,538 ha), Zosteraceae (4,060 ha) and wet saltmarsh (1,562 ha) habitat classes were most dominant.

In addition to the commissioned work preliminary change detection analyses were undertaken as part of this project. These analyses indicated shifts in habitat extents in both study localities since the late 1990s/2000. In particular, a post-classification analysis highlighted that there were considerable increases in seagrass habitat (primarily Zosteraceae) throughout the littoral zones and river/creek mouths of both study localities. Further, the numerous channel systems remained stable and were free of seagrass at both times. A substantial net loss of Posidonia in the Corner Inlet locality is likely but requires further investigation due to potential misclassifications between habitats in both the 1998 map (Roob et al. 1998) and the current mapping. While the unsupervised Independent Components Analysis (ICA) change detection technique indicated some changes in habitat extent and distribution, considerable areas of habitat change observed in the post-classification approach are questionable, and may reflect misclassifications rather than real change. A particular example of this is an apparent large decrease in Zosteraceae and increase in Posidonia being related to the classification of Posidonia beds as Zosteraceae in the 1998 mapping. Despite this, we believe that changes indicated by both the ICA and post-classification approaches have a high likelihood of being ‘actual’ change. A pattern of gains and losses of Zosteraceae in the region north of Stockyard channel is an example of this. Further analyses and refinements of approaches in change detection analyses such as would improve confidence in the location and extent of habitat changes over this time period.

This work has been successful in providing new baseline maps using a repeatable method meaning that any future changes in intertidal and shallow water marine habitats may be assessed in a consistent way with quantitative error assessments. In wider use, these maps should also allow improved conservation planning, advance fisheries and catchment management, and progress infrastructure planning to limit impacts on the Inlet environment.

Validation of the aceto-carmine technique for evaluating phenotypic sex in Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) fry

In this study a method for evaluating phenotypic sex in Nile tilapia was validated. A technique that uses aceto-carmine squash mounts to stain the entire gonadal tissue for microscopic examination (Method 2- squash mounts) was compared with a technique based on traditional histology. Approximately 2600 Nile tilapia fry weighing and measuring, respectively, between 0.25-2.50g and 26-53mm, aged 35 to 60 days after hatch (DAH), were sexed using this methodology. In situ microscopic examination on the gonads was also performed. A reliable sexing using squash mount was possible with fish weighing more than 0.500g, 45-47 DAH. Results from microscopic observation using the aceto-carmine stain coincided 100% with the histological examination. Male gonadal tissue was characterized by the presence of cysts containing spermatogonia and spermatocytes, while females were easily identified by the presence of oocytes at the perinucleolar stage. The technique proved to be efficient not only in terms of evaluating sex proportion in fish but also because it allows immediate evaluation of gonadal sex and demands less time and labour.

Development of an intelligent system for the solder paste printing process

A neurogenetic-based hybrid framework is developed where the main components within the framework are artificial neural networks (ANNs) and genetic algorithms (GAs). The investigation covers a mode of combination or hybridisation between the two components that is called task hybridisation. The combination between ANNs and GAs using task hybridisation leads to the development of a hybrid multilayer feedforward network, trained using supervised learning. This paper discusses the GA method used to optimize the process parameters, using the ANN developed as the process mode, in a solder paste printing process, which is part of the process in the surface mount technology (SMT) method. The results obtained showed that the GA-based optimization method works well under various optimization criteria

Web 2.0 : an argument against convergence

Web 2.0 has been a dominant concept in recent discussion and development of Internet applications, businesses and uses. Dating from 2004, the term Web 2.0 is variously understood as new forms of website development and delivery technology, changing uses of the Internet to emphasise sociability over consumption, new understandings of the possible financial exploitation of the web, and more broadly, a new way of thinking about the Internet as a whole. However, Web 2.0 is, conceptually, both more and less than these various understandings and we can only grasp why it has become such a key term in contemporary usage by appreciating two key discursive foundations for this term. Firstly, much Web 2.0 thinking is a re-expression of long-held ideas about the Internet and the web. Secondly, at the particular time when Web 2.0 was made popular, net technology policy makers and financial analysts were primarily enthused by the possibilities of broadband networks for improved and more profitable versions of the well-established businesses of telephony and audio-visual entertainment, and had to some extent consigned novel, web-based services to a lesser role, following the dot.com crash. Thus, as I argue in this paper, Web 2.0 can be understood as a key intervention, from within the dot.com / new media business sector, recovering from the crash, that re-asserts the equal legitimacy of the use of networked computing, over high-speed lines, for computing-oriented activities, and not just video on demand and voice over IP. In short, in the first years of this century, discussions about the future of the Internet had become dominated by arguments for increased broadband access, substantially concerned with providing more traditional video and voice services in new ways. The World Wide Web was seen as relatively unimportant for this purpose, even though it was part of the so-called 'triple play' of voice and data services. At this time, first in the hands of Tim O'Reilly and then from others who took up his position, Web 2.0 became a catchy simple term under which to mount a campaign for the renaissance of the World Wide Web as a quite distinct, yet equally important, form of media and communications. So, Web 2.0 provides evidence that, while there is a convergence of all forms of media and communications towards similar data traffic over the Internet, there remain diverging views over the nature, control and use of the Internet, views that express the degree to which corporate players imagine themselves to be 'media', 'telephony' or 'computing' in primary orientation.

Turnover of bone marrow-derived cells in the irradiated mouse cornea

In light of an increasing awareness of the presence of bone marrow (BM)-derived macrophages in the normal cornea and their uncertain role in corneal diseases, it is important that the turnover rate of these resident immune cells be established. The baseline density and distribution of macrophages in the corneal stroma was investigated in Cx3cr1gfp transgenic mice in which all monocyte-derived cells express enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP). To quantify turnover, BM-derived cells from transgenic eGFP mice were transplanted into whole-body irradiated wild-type recipients. Additionally, wild-type BM-derived cells were injected into irradiated Cx3cr1+/gfp recipients, creating reverse chimeras. At 2, 4 and 8 weeks post-reconstitution, the number of eGFP+ cells in each corneal whole mount was calculated using epifluorescence microscopy, immunofluorescence staining and confocal microscopy. The total density of myeloid-derived cells in the normal Cx3cr1+/gfp cornea was 366 cells/mm2. In BM chimeras 2 weeks post-reconstitution, 24% of the myeloid-derived cells had been replenished and were predominantly located in the anterior stroma. By 8 weeks post-reconstitution 75% of the myeloid-derived cells had been replaced and these cells were distributed uniformly throughout the stroma. All donor eGFP+ cells expressed low to moderate levels of CD45 and CD11b, with approximately 25% coexpressing major histocompatibility complex class II, a phenotype characteristic of previous descriptions of corneal stromal macrophages. In conclusion, 75% of the myeloid-derived cells in the mouse corneal stroma are replenished after 8 weeks. These data provide a strong basis for functional investigations of the role of resident stromal macrophages versus non-haematopoietic cells using BM chimeric mice in models of corneal inflammation.

Physical activity in three regional communities in Queensland

Objective
To describe physical activity participation in three Queensland regional communities.

Design
Cross-sectional mail survey of randomly selected residents, stratified by age and sex.

Setting
Esk, Mareeba and Mount Isa.

Participants
1219 (58% women) adults, with a mean age 46.7 (standard deviation 14.7) years.

Main outcome measures
Proportion of people inactive, meeting Australian activity guidelines (a minimum of 150 min week−1 and five sessions week−1) and walking a dog daily; time spent walking and cycling for transport; location and type of recreational physical activities.

Results
Overall, 18% of respondents were inactive, with the highest proportions among women (22.3%) and older adults in Mount Isa (24.3%). The proportion meeting activity guidelines was 47%, with the lowest proportion among women in Mount Isa (40.4%). Although 63% reported owning a dog, only 22% reported walking a dog daily. Few people reported walking or cycling for transport. The most common types of activities were walking, home-based exercise, running/jogging and swimming, and the most common location was at or near home.

Conclusions
Physical activity levels were lower in these regional communities than the state average. The findings indicate a need for physical activity policy and intervention strategies targeting regional and rural areas. This could focus on women and older adults, dog walking and physical activity opportunities in or near the home.

The small molecule, genistein, increases hepcidin expression in human hepatocytes

Hepcidin, a peptide hormone that decreases intestinal iron absorption and macrophage iron release, is a potential drug target for patients with iron overload syndromes because its levels are inappropriately low in these individuals. Endogenous stimulants of Hepcidin transcription include bone morphogenic protein 6 (BMP6) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) by effects on mothers against decapentaplegic homolog (Smad)4 or signal transducer and activator of transcription (Stat)3, respectively. We conducted a small-scale chemical screen in zebrafish embryos to identify small molecules that modulate hepcidin expression. We found that treatment with the isoflavone, genistein, from 28-52 hours postfertilization in zebrafish embryos enhanced Hepcidin transcript levels, as assessed by whole-mount in situ hybridization and quantitative real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. Genistein's stimulatory effect was conserved in human hepatocytes: Genistein treatment of HepG2 cells increased both Hepcidin transcript levels and promoter activity. We found that genistein's effect on Hepcidin expression did not depend on estrogen receptor signaling or increased cellular iron uptake, but was impaired by mutation of either BMP response elements or the Stat3-binding site in the Hepcidin promoter. RNA sequencing of transcripts from genistein-treated hepatocytes indicated that genistein up-regulated 68% of the transcripts that were up-regulated by BMP6; however, genistein raised levels of several transcripts involved in Stat3 signaling that were not up-regulated by BMP6. Chromatin immunoprecipitation and ELISA experiments revealed that genistein enhanced Stat3 binding to the Hepcidin promoter and increased phosphorylation of Stat3 in HepG2 cells. Conclusion: Genistein is the first small-molecule experimental drug that stimulates Hepcidin expression in vivo and in vitro. These experiments demonstrate the feasibility of identifying and characterizing small molecules that increase Hepcidin expression. Genistein and other candidate molecules may subsequently be developed into new therapies for iron overload syndromes.

Applications of a TransFLash in an embedded system debugging

In this paper, the hardware and software design for using a TF card in debugging an embedded system are described. The used hardware platform is designed based on a PXA310 application processor. The Android open source operating system is used as the software platform. The design of the connection circuit between the application processor and the TF card is introduced first. Secondly, the design of the TF card driver program and the method for Android system to mount the TF card are described. In designing the TF driver program, an SPI operation mode and FAT32 file system are used. The transplant of the FAT32 file system is presented more detail. Finally, the paper introduced the system debugging and the test results are given for the TF card used in a video data acquisition unit of a video monitoring. It is shown that high speed data exchange and good universal property can be obtained by using a TF card to download a system image during developing and debugging. The TF card used in debugging can be used as a mass storage in the embedded product without the need of changing the design for debugging the system and it is also convenient for a user to upgrade operating system.

Thinking with the body: Mind and movement in the work of Wayne McGregor | Random Dance

Thinking with the Body was an exhibition at London's Wellcome Collection, offering a glimpse into Wayne McGregor | Random Dance's interdisciplinary research and the impact it has in the rehearsal studio. Staged in the run-up to the first performances of Atomos at Sadler's Wells (Oct 2013), the exhibition featured the results of over a decade of interdisciplinary research into choreographic creativity which has been applied in the studio, in dance education, and to increase public understanding.

Wellcome Collection is a free visitor destination exploring the connections between medicine, life and art in the past, present and future. Wellcome Collection is part of the Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving improvements in human and animal health.

The exhibition finished on 27 October 2013, but the film exhibits are still available to view online.