We need to fund more than just science priorities for Australia’s future

Australia's Science and Research Priorities focus on activating STEM researchers (science, technology, engineering, maths). In this article in The Conversation, Professor Marcus Foth argues that we need to fund more than just science priorities for Australia’s future.

Mango anthracnose disease: Present status and future research priorities

Occurrence and Importance: Anthracnose is presently recognized as the most important field and post-harvest disease of mango worldwide (Ploetz and Prakasli, 1997). It is the major disease limiting fruit production in all countries where mangoes are grown, especially where high humidity prevails during the cropping season. The post-harvest phase is the most damaging and economically significant phase of the disease worldwide. It directly affects the marketable fruit rendering it worthless. This phase is directly linked to the field phase where initial infection usually starts on young twigs and leaves and spreads to the flowers, causing blossom blight and destroying the inflorescences and even preventing fruit set.

Concordant molecular and phenotypic data delineate new taxonomy and conservation priorities for the endangered mountain yellow-legged frog

The mountain yellow-legged frog Rana muscosa sensu lato, once abundant in the Sierra Nevada of California and Nevada, and the disjunct Transverse Ranges of southern California, has declined precipitously throughout its range, even though most of its habitat is protected. The species is now extinct in Nevada and reduced to tiny remnants in southern California, where as a distinct population segment, it is classified as Endangered. Introduced predators (trout), air pollution and an infectious disease (chytridiomycosis) threaten remaining populations. A Bayesian analysis of 1901 base pairs of mitochondrial DNA confirms the presence of two deeply divergent clades that come into near contact in the Sierra Nevada. Morphological studies of museum specimens and analysis of acoustic data show that the two major mtDNA clades are readily differentiated phenotypically. Accordingly, we recognize two species, Rana sierrae, in the northern and central Sierra Nevada, and R. muscosa, in the southern Sierra Nevada and southern California. Existing data indicate no range overlap. These results have important implications for the conservation of these two species as they illuminate a profound mismatch between the current delineation of the distinct population segments (southern California vs. Sierra Nevada) and actual species boundaries. For example, our study finds that remnant populations of R. muscosa exist in both the southern Sierra Nevada and the mountains of southern California, which may broaden options for management. In addition, despite the fact that only the southern California populations are listed as Endangered, surveys conducted since 1995 at 225 historic (1899-1994) localities from museum collections show that 93.3% (n=146) of R. sierrae populations and 95.2% (n=79) of R. muscosa populations are extinct. Evidence presented here underscores the need for revision of protected population status to include both species throughout their ranges.

Social objectives of fisheries management: What are managers' priorities?

Increasingly, social considerations are having an influence on fisheries policy as well as day-to-day management decision making. Social objectives, unlike economic or conservation objectives, are often poorly defined in fisheries policy, providing substantial leeway for managers to develop management plans in response to the perceived importance of different social outcomes, and potential inconsistencies between different fisheries and jurisdictions. In this paper, through a literature review and workshop with managers across different Australian jurisdictions, we develop a set of social objectives that may be applicable in Australian fisheries. We assess the importance of these different objectives using the Analytic Hierarchy Process, and find considerable diversity in opinion as to which social objectives fisheries management should prioritise to achieve. This diversity of opinion is not directly related to jurisdiction, but does seem related to the context and social environment in which fisheries managers are operating.

Juggling priorities: Balancing economic and social drivers to address the LLN needs of students in the VET sector

Economic success, and a commitment to the social benefits of inclusive training opportunities are important goals for public vocational education and training (VET). Currently, in Australia, VET policy is a shared responsibility between the Commonwealth and the States and Territories. Priorities for investment are juggled between: a) improving efficiency and responsiveness; and b) providing societal prosperity. Amid recent VET educational reforms and policy directives the authors of this paper undertook a pilot study examining language, literacy and numeracy support and inclusive teaching and learning practices in a Diploma of Nursing course. The data highlighted implications arising from new market driven education reforms. This article reports on identified factors that influenced inclusive learning opportunities, noticeably associated with two recent policy developments: the release of the FSK Foundation Skills Training Package (IBSA 2014); and the Queensland's Higher Skills Program Policy 2014-15.

Strategic Priorities, Company Performance and Attitudes Towards Management Accounting Techniques: an Empirical Study

The study investigates whether there is an association between different combinations of emphasis on generic strategies (product differentiation and cost efficiency) and perceived usefulness of management accounting techniques. Previous research has found that cost leadership is associated with traditional accounting techniques and product differentiation with a variety of modern management accounting approaches. The present study focuses on the possible existence of a strategy that mixes these generic strategies. The empirical results suggest that (a) there is no difference in the attitudes towards the usefulness of traditional management accounting techniques between companies that adhere either to a single strategy or a mixed strategy; (b) there is no difference in the attitudes towards modern and traditional techniques between companies that adhere to a single strategy, whether this is product differentiation or cost efficiency, and c) companies that favour a mixed strategy seem to have a more positive attitude towards modern techniques than companies adhering to a single strategy

Materials Research Priorities

R. Chidambaram is the principal scientific advisor to the government of India and is past president of the Materials Research Society-India. He joined the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) in 1962, became its director in 1990, and is currently the Department of Atomic Energy Homi Bhabha Chair Professor. He served as chair of the Atomic Energy Commission and secretary to the government of India in the Department of Atomic Energy from February 1993 to November 2000. Chidambaram is a fellow of all of the major science academies in India and also of the Third World Academy of Sciences in Trieste, Italy. He chaired the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) during 1994–1995. Until recently, he was vice president of the International Union of Crystallography. Chidambaram is currently chair of the council and the governing body of the Technology Information, Forecasting, and Assessment Council (TIFAC). He received his PhD and DSc degrees from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and holds honorary DSc degrees from several Indian universities.

PriDyn: Enabling Differentiated I/O Services in Cloud Using Dynamic Priorities

Virtualization is one of the key enabling technologies for Cloud computing. Although it facilitates improved utilization of resources, virtualization can lead to performance degradation due to the sharing of physical resources like CPU, memory, network interfaces, disk controllers, etc. Multi-tenancy can cause highly unpredictable performance for concurrent I/O applications running inside virtual machines that share local disk storage in Cloud. Disk I/O requests in a typical Cloud setup may have varied requirements in terms of latency and throughput as they arise from a range of heterogeneous applications having diverse performance goals. This necessitates providing differential performance services to different I/O applications. In this paper, we present PriDyn, a novel scheduling framework which is designed to consider I/O performance metrics of applications such as acceptable latency and convert them to an appropriate priority value for disk access based on the current system state. This framework aims to provide differentiated I/O service to various applications and ensures predictable performance for critical applications in multi-tenant Cloud environment. We demonstrate through experimental validations on real world I/O traces that this framework achieves appreciable enhancements in I/O performance, indicating that this approach is a promising step towards enabling QoS guarantees on Cloud storage.

Regional research priorities in brain and nervous system disorders

The characteristics of neurological, psychiatric, developmental and substance-use disorders in low-and middle-income countries are unique and the burden that they have will be different from country to country. Many of the differences are explained by the wide variation in population demographics and size, poverty, conflict, culture, land area and quality, and genetics. Neurological, psychiatric, developmental and substance-use disorders that result from, or are worsened by, a lack of adequate nutrition and infectious disease still afflict much of sub-Saharan Africa, although disorders related to increasing longevity, such as stroke, are on the rise. In the Middle East and North Africa, major depressive disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder are a primary concern because of the conflict-ridden environment. Consanguinity is a serious concern that leads to the high prevalence of recessive disorders in the Middle East and North Africa and possibly other regions. The burden of these disorders in Latin American and Asian countries largely surrounds stroke and vascular disease, dementia and lifestyle factors that are influenced by genetics. Although much knowledge has been gained over the past 10 years, the epidemiology of the conditions in low-and middle-income countries still needs more research. Prevention and treatments could be better informed with more longitudinal studies of risk factors. Challenges and opportunities for ameliorating nervous-system disorders can benefit from both local and regional research collaborations. The lack of resources and infrastructure for health-care and related research, both in terms of personnel and equipment, along with the stigma associated with the physical or behavioural manifestations of some disorders have hampered progress in understanding the disease burden and improving brain health. Individual countries, and regions within countries, have specific needs in terms of research priorities.

Charting multidisciplinary research and action priorities towards the conservation and sustainable management of sea turtles in the Pacific Ocean: a focus on Malaysia

The four sea turtle species found in Malaysia are the leatherback, olive ridley, green and hawksbill. The threats to these species are acute. Populations of leatherback, olive ridley and hawksbill turtles are on the brink of collapse – threatening a biodiversity crisis in Malaysia and the region. This proceedings contains 8 technical papers presented at a workshop convened in Kijal, Terengganu to chart new directions in the conservation of Malaysia's critically endangered sea turtles and to reverse population decline. They represent a wide range of issues from aspects of biology to a review of 40 years of sea turtle conservation. A paper on the socioeconomic linkages and impacts of fisheries was also included as the workshop adopted a multidisciplinary approach to address the issues. Two case studies, including successful restoration examples from international experiences and restoration efforts in Sabah, pave the way for enhancing turtle conservation in the country.

Establishing National Ocean Service Priorities for Estuarine, Coastal, and Ocean Modeling: Capabilities, Gaps, and Preliminary Prioritization Factors

This report was developed to help establish National Ocean Service priorities and chart new directions for research and development of models for estuarine, coastal and ocean ecosystems based on user-driven requirements and supportive of sound coastal management, stewardship, and an ecosystem approach to management. (PDF contains 63 pages)

Strategic priorities and investment areas 2015/16

Our key strategic priorities for 2015-16 include developing and delivering new digital products and services that will make a real difference to UK education and research and maintaining the uninterrupted delivery of quality services that our customers value.

CGIAR aquatic research priorities revisited: a case for a higher priority for reservoir-lake system research

The case presented in this article clearly indicates that reservoir and lake resource systems, reservoirs in the Asian context lakes plus reservoirs in the African context, have been given a lower priority than deserved.