Assessing vulnerability at the urban interface

House loss during unplanned bushfires is a complex phenomenon where design, configuration, material and siting, can significantly influence the loss. In collaboration with the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre the CSIRO has developed a tool to assess the vulnerability of a specific house at the urban interface. The tool is based on a spatial profiling of urban assets including their design, material, surrounding objects and their relationship amongst one another. The analysis incorporates both probabilistic and deterministic parameters, and is based on the impact of radiant heat, flame and embers on the surrounding elements and the structure itself. It provides a breakdown of the attributes and design parameters that contribute to the vulnerability level. This paper describes the tool which allows the user to explore the vulnerability of a house to varying levels of bushfire attacks. The tool is aimed at government agencies interested in building design, town planning and community education for bushfire risk mitigation.

A multi-centre open-label randomised non-inferiority trial comparing watchful waiting to antibiotic treatment for acute otitis media without perforation in low-risk urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children (the WATCH trial): study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

Background Treatment guidelines recommend watchful waiting for children older than 2 years with acute otitis media (AOM) without perforation, unless they are at high risk of complications. The high prevalence of chronic suppurative otitis media (CSOM) in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities leads these children to be classified as high risk. Urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are at lower risk of complications, but evidence to support the subsequent recommendation for watchful waiting in this population is lacking. Methods/Design This non-inferiority multi-centre randomised controlled trial will determine whether watchful waiting is non-inferior to immediate antibiotics for urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children with AOM without perforation. Children aged 2 − 16 years with AOM who are considered at low risk for complications will be recruited from six participating urban primary health care services across Australia. We will obtain informed consent from each participant or their guardian. The primary outcome is clinical resolution on day 7 (no pain, no fever of at least 38 °C, no bulging eardrum and no complications of AOM such as perforation or mastoiditis) as assessed by general practitioners or nurse practitioners. Participants and outcome assessors will not be blinded to treatment. With a sample size of 198 children in each arm, we have 80 % power to detect a non-inferiority margin of up to 10 % at a significance level of 5 %, assuming clinical improvement of at least 80 % in both groups. Allowing for a 20 % dropout rate, we aim to recruit 495 children. We will analyse both by intention-to-treat and per protocol. We will assess the cost- effectiveness of watchful waiting compared to immediate antibiotic prescription. We will also report on the implementation of the trial from the perspectives of parents/carers, health professionals and researchers. Discussion The trial will provide evidence for the safety and effectiveness of watchful waiting for the management of AOM in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children living in urban settings who are considered to be at low risk of complications.

Modulatory roles of microRNAs in the regulation of different signalling pathways in large bowel cancer stem cells

There are emerging data to suggest that microRNAs (miRNAs) have significant roles in regulating the function of normal cells and cancer stem cells (CSCs). This review aims to analyse the roles of miRNAs in the regulation of colon CSCs through their interaction with various signalling pathways. Studies showed a large number of miRNAs that are reported to be deregulated in colon CSCs. However, few of the studies available were able to outline the function of miRNAs in colon CSCs and uncover their signalling pathways. From those miRNAs, which are better described, miR-21 followed by miR-34, miR-200 and miR-215 are the most reported miRNAs to have roles in colon CSC regulation. In particular, miRNAs have been reported to regulate the stemness features of colon CSCs mainly via Wnt/B-catenin and Notch signalling pathways. Additionally, miRNAs have been reported to act on processes involving CSCs through cell cycle regulation genes and epithelial-mesenchymal transition. The relative paucity of data available on the significance of miRNAs in CSCs means that new studies will be of great importance to determine their roles and to identify the signalling pathways through which they operate. Such studies may in future guide further research to target these genes for more effective cancer treatment. miRNAs were shown to regulate the function of cancer stem cells in large bowel cancer by targeting a few key signalling pathways in cells.

Cities of Light: Two Centuries of Urban Illumination

Cities of Light is the first global overview of modern urban illumination, a development that allows human wakefulness to colonize the night, doubling the hours available for purposeful and industrious activities. Urban lighting is undergoing a revolution due to recent developments in lighting technology, and increased focus on sustainability and human-scaled environments. Cities of Light is expansive in coverage, spanning two centuries and touching on developments on six continents, without diluting its central focus on architectural and urban lighting. Covering history, geography, theory, and speculation in urban lighting, readers will have numerous points of entry into the book, finding it easy to navigate for a quick reference and or a coherent narrative if read straight through. With chapters written by respected scholars and highly-regarded contemporary practitioners, this book will delight students and practitioners of architectural and urban history, area and cultural studies, and lighting design professionals and the institutional and municipal authorities they serve. At a moment when the entire world is being reshaped by new lighting technologies and new design attitudes, the longer history of urban lighting remains fragmentary. Cities of Light aims to provide a global framework for historical studies of urban lighting and to offer a new perspective on the fast-moving developments of lighting today.

Women bashing: An urban Aboriginal perspective

ABORIGINAL people in urbanised Australia experience violence on a daily basis. This violence ranges from the psychological (the covert hostility of the corner shop, the denial of the Aboriginality of fair-skinned or urban Blacks) through to the physical brutality of the criminal justice system. For Aboriginal women and children this daily violence is not only public but also has a private, B1ack-on-B1ack dimension. The Aboriginal home may be some refuge from the slights of white Australia but this is cold comfort to women for whom being 'flogged up' by their partners is so ordinary an event as to be unremarkable.

Structural analysis of the roles of influenza A virus membrane-associated proteins in assembly and morphology

The assembly of influenza A virus at the plasma membrane of infected cells leads to release of enveloped virions that are typically round in tissue culture-adapted strains but filamentous in strains isolated from patients. The viral proteins hemagglutinin (HA), neuraminidase (NA), matrix protein 1 (M1), and M2 ion channel all contribute to virus assembly. When expressed individually or in combination in cells, they can all, under certain conditions, mediate release of membrane-enveloped particles, but their relative roles in virus assembly, release, and morphology remain unclear. To investigate these roles, we produced membrane-enveloped particles by plasmid-derived expression of combinations of HA, NA, and M proteins (M1 and M2) or by infection with influenza A virus. We monitored particle release, particle morphology, and plasma membrane morphology by using biochemical methods, electron microscopy, electron tomography, and cryo-electron tomography. Our data suggest that HA, NA, or HANA (HA plus NA) expression leads to particle release through nonspecific induction of membrane curvature. In contrast, coexpression with the M proteins clusters the glycoproteins into filamentous membrane protrusions, which can be released as particles by formation of a constricted neck at the base. HA and NA are preferentially distributed to differently curved membranes within these particles. Both the budding intermediates and the released particles are morphologically similar to those produced during infection with influenza A virus. Together, our data provide new insights into influenza virus assembly and show that the M segment together with either of the glycoproteins is the minimal requirement to assemble and release membrane-enveloped particles that are truly virus-like.

Understanding urban rail travel for improved patronage forecasting

Improved forecasting of urban rail patronage is essential for effective policy development and efficient planning for new rail infrastructure. Past modelling and forecasting of urban rail patronage has been based on legacy modelling approaches and often conducted at the general level of public transport demand, rather than being specific to urban rail. This project canvassed current Australian practice and international best practice to develop and estimate time series and cross-sectional models of rail patronage for Australian mainland state capital cities. This involved the implementation of a large online survey of rail riders and non-riders for each of the state capital cities, thereby resulting in a comprehensive database of respondent socio-economic profiles, travel experience, attitudes to rail and other modes of travel, together with stated preference responses to a wide range of urban travel scenarios. Estimation of the models provided a demonstration of their ability to provide information on the major influences on the urban rail travel decision. Rail fares, congestion and rail service supply all have a strong influence on rail patronage, while a number of less significant factors such as fuel price and access to a motor vehicle are also influential. Of note, too, is the relative homogeneity of rail user profiles across the state capitals. Rail users tended to have higher incomes and education levels. They are also younger and more likely to be in full-time employment than non-rail users. The project analysis reported here represents only a small proportion of what could be accomplished utilising the survey database. More comprehensive investigation was beyond the scope of the project and has been left for future work.

On the roles of the northeast cold surge, the Borneo vortex, the Madden-Julian Oscillation, and the Indian Ocean Dipole during the extreme 2006/2007 flood in southern Peninsular Malaysia

The mid-December 2006 to late January 2007 flood in southern Peninsular Malaysia was the worst flood in a century and was caused by three extreme precipitation episodes. These extreme precipitation events were mainly associated with strong northeasterly winds over the South China Sea. In all cases, the northeasterlies penetrated anomalously far south and followed almost a straight trajectory. The elevated terrain over Sumatra and southern Peninsular Malaysia caused low-level convergence. The strong easterly winds near Java associated with the Rossby wave-type response to Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) inhibited the counter-clockwise turning of the northeasterlies and the formation of the Borneo vortex, which, in turn, enhanced the low-level convergence over the region. The abrupt termination of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) in December 2006 played a secondary role as warmer equatorial Indian Ocean helped in the MJO formation.

Urban satellite image classification using biologically inspired techniques

This paper focuses on optimisation algorithms inspired by swarm intelligence for satellite image classification from high resolution satellite multi- spectral images. Amongst the multiple benefits and uses of remote sensing, one of the most important has been its use in solving the problem of land cover mapping. As the frontiers of space technology advance, the knowledge derived from the satellite data has also grown in sophistication. Image classification forms the core of the solution to the land cover mapping problem. No single classifier can prove to satisfactorily classify all the basic land cover classes of an urban region. In both supervised and unsupervised classification methods, the evolutionary algorithms are not exploited to their full potential. This work tackles the land map covering by Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO) and Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) which are arguably the most popular algorithms in this category. We present the results of classification techniques using swarm intelligence for the problem of land cover mapping for an urban region. The high resolution Quick-bird data has been used for the experiments.

Light and the Urban Nightscape

The design of nighttime environments that instill feelings of both safety and enjoyment is of critical importance to the economic and cultural vitality of urban centers around the world. This has been broadly recognized in Europe for several decades, but has only recently been seriously addressed in North America. The following considers lighting design for the urban nightscape through the examination of two progressive urban lighting projects, organizations like the Lighting Urban Community International (LUCI), the City-People-Light program, and the role of lighting festivals and workshops in advancing urban lighting design.