Reassortant highly pathogenic influenza a H5N2 virus containing gene segments related to eurasian H5N8 in British Columbia, Canada, 2014

In late November 2014 higher than normal death losses in a meat turkey and chicken broiler breeder farm in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia initiated a diagnostic investigation that led to the discovery of a novel reassortant highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N2 virus. This virus, composed of 5 gene segments (PB2, PA, HA, M and NS) related to Eurasian HPAI H5N8 and the remaining gene segments (PB1, NP and NA) related to North American lineage waterfowl viruses, represents the first HPAI outbreak in North American poultry due to a virus with Eurasian lineage genes. Since its first appearance in Korea in January 2014, HPAI H5N8 spread to Western Europe in November 2014. These European outbreaks happened to temporally coincide with migratory waterfowl movements. The fact that the British Columbia outbreaks also occurred at a time associated with increased migratory waterfowl activity along with reports by the USA of a wholly Eurasian H5N8 virus detected in wild birds in Washington State, strongly suggest that migratory waterfowl were responsible for bringing Eurasian H5N8 to North America where it subsequently reassorted with indigenous viruses.

Epidemiological and evolutionary inference of the transmission network of the 2014 highly pathogenic Avian Influenza H5N2 outbreak in British Columbia, Canada

The first North American outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) involving a virus of Eurasian A/goose/Guangdong/1/1996 (H5N1) lineage began in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, Canada in late November 2014. A total of 11 commercial and 1 non-commercial (backyard) operations were infected before the outbreak was terminated. Control measures included movement restrictions that were placed on a total of 404 individual premises, 150 of which were located within a 3 km radius of an infected premise(s) (IP). A complete epidemiological investigation revealed that the source of this HPAI H5N2 virus for 4 of the commercial IPs and the single non-commercial IP likely involved indirect contact with wild birds. Three IPs were associated with the movement of birds or service providers and localized/environmental spread was suspected as the source of infection for the remaining 4 IPs. Viral phylogenies, as determined by Bayesian Inference and Maximum Likelihood methods, were used to validate the epidemiologically inferred transmission network. The phylogenetic clustering of concatenated viral genomes and the median-joining phylogenetic network of the viruses supported, for the most part, the transmission network that was inferred by the epidemiologic analysis.

The cultural role of capital cities : Hanoi and Hue, Vietnam

Hanoi promotes itself both as a place for foreign investment in urban development and as the 'cradle of Vietnamese civilisation'. Special status is given to places of national heritage significance, and policy makers and planners face challenges of balancing heritage conservation and modern development. By contrast, the former capital, Hue, continues to decline economically relative to other Vietnamese cities and is discovering value in its imperial heritage as a 'vector for development'. These Vietnamese capital cities demonstrate that heritage conservation is a key consideration in government efforts to improve the position of their constituencies in the newly-shaping global and national economic systems.

Moving from face-to-face to online classrooms: the reflective university teacher

This study explores the similarities, differences and possible interaction between two small groups of Canadian and Australian university teachers’ face-to-face and online teaching approaches and philosophies. The paper compares their perspectives on teaching face-to-face and online at two comparable Canadian and Australian universities, both of which offer instruction in these two modes. Teaching philosophy data were gathered with the ‘Teaching Perspectives Inventory’ developed by Pratt and Collins at the University of British Columbia, which assessed participants’ teaching approaches and philosophies in terms of their beliefs, intentions and actions in both modalities. The study upon which this paper is based builds upon a well established research partnership of the two authors who have previously explored emerging philosophies of learner centred teaching in distributed classrooms in Canada and Australia.

What is a presentational media regime? The contemporary breakdown in systems of representation

Foundational to both the operation and legitimation of our traditional media is the idea of representation: in some sense the images of television, the sounds of radio, the narratives of film, and the various public personalities stand in or in place of ourselves. Likewise our contemporary political system function as an elaborate representational system, where regions, "seats", electorates, the nation, and the nationstate are represented by individuals, parties and symbols. Although, there are differences between and among modern nation-states as clearly different political and cultural agendas are at play, the interplay of contemporary media, culture and politics has produced what can be called a 'representational regime' that more or less operates globally, albeit fragmented into national and regional groupings.

This paper explores the initial stages in the breakdown of this system of representation that has allowed a certain organization of culture and politics to expand and develop over the last two centuries. It acknowledges that central to this regime is something Nick Couldry has identified as "the myth of the mediated centre" (Couldry, 2003). What the paper argues, and therefore differs from Couldry's conclusion, is that there are cracks in the glue that holds the system together and they are emerging in the uses of new media. Through an exploration of presentational media - that is, media that is more involved with the presentation of the self for public/private and networked consumption than traditional media's effort to embody their audience in its narratives - the paper reaches for conclusions that identify a more elaborate legitimation crisis looming in our political and cultural worlds.

Broadening conceptions of curriculum for young people : reports from three student - teachers on exchange

Research reports prepared by three Australian preservice teachers Paula Shaw, Chris Sharp and Scott McDonald undertaking their teacher education practicum in Canada, form the basis of this paper. The reports provide critical insights into three aspects of education for young people in both Canada and Australia. They also provide critical insight into the ways in which a practicum research project, along with the opportunities afforded through an international experience, enabled the preservice teachers to broaden their understanding of the curriculum for young people, of issues relevant to the diverse needs of young people, and of themselves and their priorities as teachers. The preservice teachers investigated three topics: attempts to reduce homophobia in schools; the presence or absence of Aboriginal content in the school curricula in British Columbia and Queensland; and “schools-within-schools” as a means to meet the needs of diverse student populations. Linda Farr Darling from the University of British Columbia provides a response to the three reports.

Asymmetric impact of piscivorous birds on size-structured fish populations

Fish are frequently considered the top predator in freshwater food web models despite evidence that predatory birds can impact fish populations. In this study, we quantified bird predation rates on experimental populations of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss (Walbaum, 1792)) created by stocking nine small lakes in British Columbia, Canada. Combining estimates of fish mortality with estimated bird predation rates allowed us to partition fish mortality into that due to birds versus cannibalism. Our results indicated that bird predators had significant impacts on age-1 trout populations, but little impact on age-0 trout. Common loons (Gavia immer Brunnich, 1764) were the principle predator among eight predatory bird species present, apparently consuming nearly 50% of all stocked age-1 trout and explaining almost 50% of variation in mortality rates. Age-1 trout mortality did not differ significantly from zero in lakes without loons. Birds consumed a small proportion of age-0 trout, and estimated consumption explained none of the variation in age-0 trout mortality among lakes. We conclude that birds affect fish populations by asymmetric predation on different age (size) classes and can be important top predators that should not be ignored when characterizing freshwater food webs in lakes.

A social justice scrutiny of the seating service experiences: what can we learn?

The paper presents the social justice findings from a study into the Australian  (wheelchair) seating service experience. As this study explored the insider's perspective, three participants' examples are shared (in the presentation) to demonstrate the benefits accorded to equality, equity and equal opportunity and the injustices experienced when denied;
- Brian* (pseudonym) a young Australian whose two accessories for his power chair changed his life.
- Donna* whose adult son was provided a heavy standard manual wheelchair instead of the power chair requested.
- Vince* a young self-employed businessman whose newly provided robust power chair is crimping his productivity.

The development of a conceptual model and self-reported measure of occupational health and safety vulnerability

Injuries at work have a substantial economic and societal burden. Often groups of labour market participants, such as young workers, recent immigrants or temporary workers are labelled as being "vulnerable" to work injury. However, defining groups in this way does little to enable a better understanding of the broader factors that place workers at increased risk of injury. In this paper we describe the development of a new measure of occupational health and safety (OH&S) vulnerability. The purpose of this measure was to allow the identification of workers at increased risk of injury, and to enable the monitoring and surveillance of OH&S vulnerability in the labour market. The development included a systematic literature search, and conducting focus groups with a variety of stakeholder groups, to generate a pool of potential items, followed by a series of steps to reduce these items to a more manageable pool. The final measure is 29-item instrument that captures information on four related, but distinct dimensions, thought to be associated with increased risk of injury. These dimensions are: hazard exposure; occupational health and safety policies and procedures; OH&S awareness; and empowerment to participate in injury prevention. In a large sample of employees in Ontario and British Columbia the final measure displayed minimal missing responses, reasonably good distributions across response categories, and strong factorial validity. This new measure of OH&S vulnerability can identify workers who are at risk of injury and provide information on the dimensions of work that may increase this risk. This measurement could be undertaken at one point in time to compare vulnerability across groups, or be undertaken at multiple time points to examine changes in dimensions of OH&S vulnerability, for example, in response to a primary prevention intervention.

Hierarchical analysis of avian re-nesting behavior: mean, across-individual, and intra-individual responses

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. Anti-predator behavior is a key aspect of life history evolution, usually studied at the population (mean), or across-individual levels. However individuals can also differ in their intra-individual (residual) variation, but to our knowledge, this has only been studied once before in free-living animals. Here we studied the distances moved and changes in nest height and concealment between successive nesting attempts of marked pairs of grey fantails (Rhipidura albiscapa) in relation to nest fate, across the breeding season. We predicted that females (gender that decides where the nest is placed) should on average show adaptive behavioral responses to the experience of prior predation risk such that after an unsuccessful nesting attempt, replacement nests should be further away, higher from the ground, and more concealed compared with replacement nests after successful nesting attempts. We found that, on average, females moved greater distances to re-nest after unsuccessful nesting attempts (abandoned or depredated) in contrast to after a successful attempt, suggesting that re-nesting decisions are sensitive to risk. We found no consistent across-individual differences in distances moved, heights, or concealment. However, females differed by 53-fold (or more) in their intra-individual variability (i.e., predictability) with respect to distances moved and changes in nest height between nesting attempts, indicating that either some systematic variation went unexplained and/or females have inherently different predictability. Ignoring these individual differences in residual variance in our models obscured the effect of nest fate on re-nesting decisions that were evident at the mean level.