Life Sciences Commons^™

Ict For Poverty Alleviation In Pacific Island Nations: Study Of Icts4d In Fiji, Deogratias Harorimana, Opeti Rokotuinivono, Emali Sewale, Fane Salaiwai, Marica Naulu, Evangelin Roy

Dr Deogratias Harorimana

ICT for Poverty Alleviation in Pacific Island Nations: Study of ICTs4D in Fiji There has been a vague and little knowledge on the role or potential of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in relation to addressing poverty in Fiji. This may be probably due to the newness of the technology in the South Pacific Region as a whole but also probably due to the fact that only 9.7% of the current Fiji 931,000 populations are internet users (ITC Figures 2011). This paper reports on finding how ICTs is contributing towards poverty alleviation in Fiji. On the basis of reviewed best …

Combining Mbr And Nf/Ro Membrane Filtration For The Removal Of Trace Organics In Indirect Potable Water Reuse Applications, William Price, Nichanan Tadkaew, Long Nghiem, Stuart Khan, Abdulhakeem Alturki, James Mcdonald

Long D Nghiem

The aim of this study was to demonstrate the complementarities of combining membrane bioreactor (MBR) treatment with nanofiltration (NF) or reverse osmosis (RO) membrane filtration for the removal of trace organic contaminants for potential indirect potable water recycling applications. Four commercially available NF/RO membranes, namely NF270, NF90, BW30 and ESPA2, were selected for this investigation. Challenge tests were conducted with 40 trace organic compounds at concentrations of approximately 2 ng/L in initial wastewater solutions using a laboratory scaleMBRsystem and a cross-flow NF/RO rig. The results suggest that the MBR system effectively removes hydrophobic and biodegradable trace organic compounds. The adsorption …

Survival Of Eastern Oysters Crassostrea Virginica From Three Lines Following Experimental Challenge With Bacterial Pathogens, Javier Gomez-Leon, Luisa Villamil, Scott A. Salger, Rachel Sallum, Antonio Remacha-Trivino, Dale F. Leavitt, Marta Gomez-Chiarri

Marta Gomez-Chiarri

Shellfish production is often affected by bacterial pathogens that cause high losses in hatcheries and nurseries. We evaluated the relative survival of larvae and juveniles of 3 Crassostrea virginica oyster lines: (1) GHP, a Rhode Island line; (2) NEHY, a line resistant to dermo and multinucleated sphere X diseases; and (3) FLOWERS, a line resistant to Roseovarius oyster disease, experimental challenge with Vibrio spp. isolates RE22 and RE101, causative agents of bacillary necrosis in Pacific oyster larvae, and the type strain of Roseovarius crassostreae, causative agent of Roseovarius oyster disease. All of the isolates were able to induce significant mortalities …

Infectious Necrotizing Enteritis And Mortality Caused By Vibrio Carachariae In Summer Flounder Paralichthys Dentatus During Intensive Culture, Bruno Soffientino, Todd Gwaltney, David R. Nelson, Jennifer L. Specker, Michael Mauel, Marta Gomez-Chiarri

Marta Gomez-Chiarri

An epizootic causing mortality among cultured summer flounder Paralichthys dentatus occurred in summer of 1998 at a land-based facility on Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, USA. The disease, flounder infectious necrotizing enteritis (FINE), was characterized by reddening around the anal area, distended abdomens filled with opaque serosanguineous fluid, enteritis and necrosis of the posterior intestine. In extreme cases of the disease, the posterior intestine was detached from the anus and was observed coming out the vent. The intestine of individuals that recovered from the dsease ended in a blind-sac; the abdomens of these fish were distended, due to food and water …

Predicting Avian Distributions To Evaluate Spatiotemporal Overlap With Locust Control Operations In Eastern Australia, Judit K. Szabo, Pamela J. Davy, Michael Hooper, Lee Astheimer

Dr Pamela Davy

Locusts and grasshoppers cause considerable economic damage to agriculture worldwide. The Australian Plague Locust Commission uses multiple pesticides to control locusts in eastern Australia. Avian exposure to agricultural pesticides is of conservation concern, especially in the case of rare and threatened species. The aim of this study was to evaluate the probability of pesticide exposure of native avian species during operational locust control based on knowledge of species occurrence in areas and times of application. Using presence-absence data provided by the Birds Australia Atlas for 1998 to 2002, we developed a series of generalized linear models to predict avian occurrences …

A New Phase Unwrapping Algorithm Based On Three Wavelength Phase Shift Profilometry Method, Limei Song, Xiaoxiao Dong, Jiangtao Xi, Yanguang Yu, Chaokui Yang

Dr Yanguang Yu

Phase Shift Profilometry (PSP) method is widely used in 3D shape measurement. The advantage of the PSP method is that it is less sensitive to the surface reflectivity variations and the object can be measured point by point. But if only a single wavelength λ₁ is used, the step height cannot be larger than λ₁/4. In order to measure step height object, Gray Code (GC) and Multi-Wavelength Phase Shift Profilometry (MWPSP) method are used. But the GC method cannot solve the problem of the objects with a variety of colors under different illumination. The shortcoming of MWPSP …

Becoming Differently Modern: Geographic Contributions To A Generative Climate Politics, Lesley M. Head, Christopher R. Gibson

Chris Gibson

Anthropogenic climate change is a quintessentially modern problem in its historical origins and discursive framing, but how well does modernist thinking provide us with the tools to solve the problems it created? On one hand even though anthropogenic climate change is argued to be a problem of human origins, solutions to which will require human actions and engagements, modernity separates people from climate change in a number of ways. On the other, while amodern or more-than-human concepts of multiple and relational agency are more consistent with the empirical evidence of humans being deeply embedded in earth surface processes, these approaches …

Engaging Creative Communities In An Industrial City Setting, Chris Gibson, Ben Gallan, Andrew Warren

Chris Gibson

Much has been said about how ‘creativity’ might infuse policymaking and planning – especially in the wake of popular bestsellers by Richard Florida and Charles Landry on ‘creative places’ and the ‘creative class’ (the latter a supposed demographic group associated with creative industries such as film, design and music, who are said to be the key to the economic fortunes of cities). Creativity, it is said, can be facilitated in particular urban environments, given the right preconditions such as ‘hip’ inner-city precincts, café culture and walkable dense clusters of design firms and retail and residential spaces. The common argument is …

Living Together But Apart: Material Geographies Of Everyday Sustainability In Extended Family Households, Natascha Klocker, Chris Gibson, Erin Borger

Chris Gibson

In the Industrialized West, ageing populations and cultural diversity-combined with rising property prices and extensive years spent in education-have been recognized as diverse factors driving increases in extended family living. At the same time, there is growing awareness that household size is inversely related to per capita resource consumption patterns, and that urgent problems of environmental sustainability are negotiated, on a day-to-day basis (and often unconsciously), at the household level. This paper explores the sustainability implications of everyday decisions to fashion, consume, and share resources around the home, through the lens of extended family households. Through interviews with extended family …

Trial By Fire: Natural Hazards, Mixed-Methods And Cultural Research, Christine Eriksen, Nicholas J. Gill, Ross A. Bradstock

Christine Eriksen

This paper considers the issues of research 'relevance' and 'use' to reflect upon a cultural geography research project on bushfire that did not begin with any specific aim of being useful to policy makers but which has garnered considerable and ongoing interest from a broad audience. It provides an example of how the integration of quantitative and qualitative research methods and data can enhance research into cultural aspects of natural hazards whilst simultaneously playing a key role in ensuring that the research results are of interest to a wide range of groups. Using a mixed-methods research approach was found to …

The Art Of Learning: Wildfire, Amenity Migration And Local Environmental Knowledge, Christine Eriksen, T Prior

Christine Eriksen

Communicating the need to prepare well in advance of the wildfire season is a strategic priority for wildfire management agencies worldwide. However, there is considerable evidence to suggest that although these agencies invest significant effort towards this objective in the lead up to each wildfire season, landholders in at-risk locations often remain under-prepared. One reason for the poor translation of risk information materials into actual preparation may be attributed to the diversity of people now inhabiting wildfire-prone locations in peri-urban landscapes. These people hold widely varying experiences, beliefs, attitudes and values relating to wildfire, which influence their understanding and interpretation …

The Two-Faced Nature Of Small Heat Shock Proteins: Amyloid Assembly And The Inhibition Of Fibril Formation. Relevance To Disease States, Heath W. Ecroyd, S Meehan, John A. Carver

Heath Ecroyd

The ability of small heat-shock proteins (sHsps) such as alphaB-crystallin to inhibit the amorphous (disordered) aggregation of varied target proteins in a chaperone-like manner has been well described. The mechanistic details of this action are not understood. Amyloid fibril formation is an alternative off-folding pathway that leads to highly ordered beta-sheet-containing aggregates. Amyloid fibril formation is associated with a broad range of protein conformational diseases such as Alzhiemer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's and sHsp expression is elevated in the protein deposits that are characteristic of these disease states. The ability of sHsps to prevent fibril formation has been less well characterised. …

Molecular Dynamics Analysis Of Apolipoprotein-D - Lipid Hydroperoxide Interactions: Mechanism For Selective Oxidation Of Met-93, Aaron J. Oakley, Surabhi Bhatia, Heath Ecroyd, Brett Garner

Heath Ecroyd

Background: Recent studies suggest reduction of radical-propagating fatty acid hydroperoxides to inert hydroxides by interaction with apolipoprotein-D (apoD) Met93 may represent an antioxidant function for apoD. The nature and structural consequences of this selective interaction are unknown. Methodology/Principal Findings: Herein we used molecular dynamics (MD) analysis to address these issues. Longtimescale simulations of apoD suggest lipid molecules are bound flexibly, with the molecules free to explore multiple conformations in a binding site at the entrance to the classical lipocalin ligand-binding pocket. Models of 5s- 12s- and 15s hydroperoxyeicosatetraenoic acids were created and the lipids found to wrap around Met93 thus …

Monotremes Provide A Key To Understanding The Evolutionary Significance Of Epididymal Sperm Maturation, Brett Nixon, Russell Jones, Jean-Louis Dacheux, Heath Ecroyd

Heath Ecroyd

"It has been widely accepted that mammalian spermatozoa are infertile when they leave the testes and require a period of maturation in both the epididymis and the female reproductive tract before acquiring the ability to fertilize an oocyte. However, the necessity for such a complex process of posttesticular sperm maturation appears to be unique to mammals because it is well established that these processes do not directly influence the fertilizing ability of the spermatozoa of birds, reptiles, and other lower vertebrates. Because of their key evolutionary position and form of reproduction, we contend that monotremes (platypus and echidna) provide a …

Binding Of The Molecular Chaperone Alphab-Crystallin To Abeta Amyloid Fibrils Inhibits Fibril Elongation, Sarah L. Shammas, Christopher A. Waudby, Shuyu Wang, Alexander K. Buell, Tuomas P. Knowles, Heath W. Ecroyd, Mark E. Welland, John A. Carver, Christopher M. Dobson, Sarah Meehan

Heath Ecroyd

The molecular chaperone αB-crystallin is a small heat-shock protein that is upregulated in response to a multitude of stress stimuli, and is found colocalized with Aβ amyloid fibrils in the extracellular plaques that are characteristic of Alzheimer's disease. We investigated whether this archetypical small heat-shock protein has the ability to interact with Aβ fibrils in vitro. We find that αB-crystallin binds to wild-type Aβ42 fibrils with micromolar affinity, and also binds to fibrils formed from the E22G Arctic mutation of Aβ42. Immunoelectron microscopy confirms that binding occurs along the entire length and ends of the fibrils. Investigations into the effect …

Nmr Spectroscopy Of 14-3-3zeta Reveals A Flexible C-Terminal Extension: Differentiation Of The Chaperone And Phosphoserine-Binding Activities Of 14-3-3zeta, H Fu, Danielle Williams, Heath Ecroyd, John Carver, Lixin Zhang, Huanqin Dai, Joanna Woodcock, K Goodwin

Heath Ecroyd

Intracellular 14-3-3 proteins bind to many proteins, via a specific phosphoserine motif, regulating diverse cellular tasks including cell signalling and disease progression. The 14-3-3 isoform is a molecular chaperone, preventing the stressinduced aggregation of target proteins in a manner comparable with that of the unrelated sHsps (small heat-shock proteins). 1H-NMR spectroscopy revealed the presence of a flexible and unstructured C-terminal extension, 12 amino acids in length, which protrudes from the domain core of 14-3-3 and is similar in structure and length to the C-terminal extension of mammalian sHsps. The extension stabilizes 14-3-3, but has no direct role in chaperone action. …

Enhanced Molecular Chaperone Activity Of The Small Heat-Shock Protein Alphab-Cystallin Following Covalent Immobilization Onto A Solid-Phase Support, V Bellotti, Heath Ecroyd, J Carver, H J Griesser, B Thierry, J G Shapter, S S Griesser, S Giorgetti, M R Nussio, J A Gerrard, J Garvey

Heath Ecroyd

The well-characterized small heat-shock protein, alphaB-crystallin, acts as a molecular chaperone by interacting with unfolding proteins to prevent their aggregation and precipitation. Structural perturbation (e.g., partial unfolding) enhances the in vitro chaperone activity of alphaB-crystallin. Proteins often undergo structural perturbations at the surface of a synthetic material, which may alter their biological activity. This study investigated the activity of alphaB-crystallin when covalently bound to a support surface; alphaB-crystallin was immobilized onto a range of solid material surfaces, and its characteristics and chaperone activity were assessed. Immobilization was achieved via a plasma-deposited thin polymeric interlayer containing aldehyde surface groups and reductive …

Paradoxical Results Of Adaptive False Discovery Rate Procedures In Neuroimaging Studies, Philip T. Reiss, Armin Schwartzman, Feihan Lu, Lei Huang, Erika Proal

Philip T. Reiss

Adaptive false discovery rate (FDR) procedures, which offer greater power than the original FDR procedure of Benjamini and Hochberg, are often applied to statistical maps of the brain. When a large proportion of the null hypotheses are false, as in the case of widespread effects such as cortical thinning throughout much of the brain, adaptive FDR methods can surprisingly reject more null hypotheses than not accounting for multiple testing at all—i.e., using uncorrected p-values. A straightforward mathematical argument is presented to explain why this can occur with the q-value method of Storey and colleagues, and a simulation study shows that …

Nitrogen Flow Pathways Through An Alpine Lake, David Epstein, Wayne Wurtsbaugh

David Epstein

No abstract provided.

Nutrient Transport Through Lakes In A Sub-Alpine Watershed In The Sawtooth Mountains Of Idaho, David Epstein

David Epstein

No abstract provided.

Nitrogen Transport Through A Sub-Alpine Lake: Bull Trout Lake Whole Ecosystem 15N Tracer Study, David Epstein, Wayne Wurtsbaugh

David Epstein

No abstract provided.

Case Study On The Pattern Change In Arabidopsis Thaliana Intron Sequence, Ren Zhang, Rachel Caldwell, Yan-Xia Lin, Jinda Kongcharoen, Yiren Yang

Associate Professor Yan-Xia Lin

A large portion in eukaryotic genomes is introns but their function is not yet fully elucidated. The aims of this study are to employ the generalized Bernoulli modeling approach to estimate the change points based on GC distribution in intron sequences of Arabidopsis thaliana and to investigate whether there is any correlation between gene properties (the gene expression level and the protein function) and these intron pattern changes. The influence of the intron length and the number of GC on the intron sequence pattern changes is demonstrated. Among the random sampled intron sequences, 10.71% have been identified to have pattern …

The Analysis Of Pattern Change In Intron Sequences, Jinda Kongcharoen, Yan-Xia Lin, Rachel Caldwell, Yiren Yang, Ren Zhang

Associate Professor Yan-Xia Lin

The Generalized Bernoulli Modeling approach is used to analyze the pattern change in intron sequences of a model plant species Arabidopsis thaliana. The influence of the intron length and the number of GC on the intron sequence pattern changes is examined. Two other gene properties, the gene expression level and the protein function encoded are also assessed. Among the random sampled intron sequences,10.71% of them have been identified to have sequence pattern change. Our study shows that the number of GC and the intron length significantly influence the intron pattern change while the gene expression level and the protein function …

Improving Promoter Prediction For The Nnpp2.2 Algorithm: A Case Study Using Escherichia Coli Dna Sequences, Ren Zhang, Alexandra Burden, Yan-Xia Lin

Associate Professor Yan-Xia Lin

No abstract provided.

Assessment Of Length Distributions Between Non-Coding And Coding Sequences Amongst Two Model Organisms, Ren Zhang, Rachel Caldwell, Yan-Xia Lin

Associate Professor Yan-Xia Lin

No abstract provided.

The Probability Distribution Of Distance Tss-Tls Is Organism Characteristic And Can Be Used For Promoter Prediction, Yun Dai, Ren Zhang, Yan-Xia Lin

Associate Professor Yan-Xia Lin

Transcription is a complicated process which involves the interactions of promoter cis-elements with multiple trans-protein factors. The specific interactions rely not only on the specific sequence recognition between the cis- and trans-factors but also on certain spatial arrangement of the factors in a complex. The relative positioning of involved cis-elements provides the framework for such a spatial arrangement. The distance distribution between gene transcription and translation start sites (TSS-TLS) is the subject of the present study to test an assumption that over evolution, the TSS-TLS distance becomes a distinct character for a given organism. Four representative organisms (Escherichia cloi, Saccharomyces …

Proposed Coherent Trapping Of A Population Of Electrons In A C60 Molecule Induced By Laser Excitation, Thomas F. George, G.P. Zhang

Thomas George

Improving Promoter Prediction For The Nnpp2.2 Algorithm: A Case Study Using Escherichia Coli Dna Sequences, Ren Zhang, Alexandra Burden, Yan-Xia Lin

Alexandra Burden, Lecturer, School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics, Faculty of Informatics

No abstract provided.

Oxygen Exchange During The Reaction Of Pocl3 And Water, Robert Clark, Robert Morrison, Andrew Thomas, Rebeca Alvarez, Paul Milham

Associate Professor Robert Graham Clark

To investigate O exchange during the reaction of POCl3 and water, natural abundance POCl3 was reacted with water highly enriched in 18O, and the resulting H3PO4 was isolated as KH2PO4. This reaction was conducted with and without tetrahydrofuran (THF) as a solvent, and was controlled in THF and violent in its absence. Approximately 5 x 10-4M aqueous solutions of the KH2PO4 were analyzed using electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, to estimate the proportions of the mass-clumped 16,17,18O isotope analogues of [H2PO4] -. During analysis, ~29% of [H2PO4] - dehydrated to [PO3]-, for which the proportions of the O isotope analogues were …

Paper-Like Free-Standing Polypyrrole And Polypyrrole-Lifepo4 Composite Films For Flexible And Bendable Rechargeable Battery, Jun Chen, Sau Yen Chew, S. Dou, Jiazhao Wang, Guoxiu Wang, Hua Liu, Konstantin Konstantinov, Jian Wu, Shulei Chou

Shulei Chou

Highly flexible, paper-like, free-standing polypyrrole and polypyrrole-LiFePO4 composite films were prepared using the electropolymerization method. The films are soft, lightweight, mechanically robust and highly electrically conductivity. The electrochemical performance of the free-standing pure PPy electrode was improved by incorporating the most promising cathode material, LiFePO4, into the PPy films. The cell with PPy-LiFePO4 composite film had a higher discharge capacity beyond 50 cycles (80 mA h/g) than that of the cell with pure PPy (60 mA h/g). The free-standing films can be used as electrode materials to satisfy the new market demand for flexible and bendable batteries that are suitable …