Objective: Decades of health‐related research have produced a large body of knowledge describing alarming rates of morbidity, mortality and social/cultural disruption among Indigenous Australians, ...but have failed to deliver sustainable interventions to arrest the deepening spiral of ill‐health. This paper explores the potential of Indigenous natural resource management (NRM) activities to promote and preserve Indigenous health in remote areas of northern Australia.
Method: A literature review of the health, social science and ecology peer‐reviewed journals and secondary literature.
Conclusions and Implications: Effective interventions in Indigenous health will require trans‐disciplinary, holistic approaches that explicitly incorporate Indigenous health beliefs and engage with the social and cultural drivers of health. Aboriginal peoples maintain a strong belief that continued association with and caring for ancestral lands is a key determinant of health. Individual engagement with ‘country’ provides opportunities for physical activity and improved diet as well as boosting individual autonomy and self‐esteem. Internationally, such culturally congruent health promotion activities have been successful in programs targeting substance abuse and chronic diseases.
NRM is fundamental to the maintenance of biodiversity of northern Australia. Increased support for Indigenous involvement in land and sea NRM programs would also deliver concrete social benefits for communities including opportunities for sustainable and culturally apt regional employment, applied education and economic development. NRM may also reinvigorate societal/cultural constructs, increasing collective esteem and social cohesion.
Aims
Factors such as seasonal temperature and diet components, for example, fishmeal (FM) inclusion, can influence the composition of the gut microbiota of fish. In this study, we examined changes in ...the gut bacterial populations, in particular lactic acid bacteria (LAB), of farmed Tasmanian Atlantic salmon in response to different diets, during periods of higher water temperature.
Methods and Results
Between December 2011 and March 2012 hindgut faecal samples were collected from Atlantic salmon from a commercial fish farm in south of Hobart, Tasmania, fed with one of four trial diets containing either high or low FM inclusion levels with or without prebiotics. Overall there was little difference in the cultivatable bacterial populations in response to varying levels of FM and prebiotic supplementation, with LAB counts decreasing in response to increased water temperatures. However, it was observed that the high FM diet supported the presence of LAB in January, when these were not detected in the low FM diets.
Conclusions
Our study indicates that the inclusion of higher amounts of FM rather than the addition of prebiotics has a greater effect on LAB colonization of the gut in Atlantic salmon.
Significance and Impact of the Study
This study highlights the importance of the new fish feeds for promoting salmon health in aquaculture industry.
Abstract
The Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass for the International Space Station (ISS-CREAM) experiment successfully recorded data for 539 days from 2017 August to 2019 February. We report the energy ...spectrum of cosmic-ray protons from the ISS-CREAM experiment at energies from 1.60 × 10
3
to 6.55 × 10
5
GeV. The measured spectrum deviates from a single power law. A smoothly broken power-law fit to the data, including statistical and systematic uncertainties, shows the spectral index change at 9.0 × 10
3
GeV from 2.57 ± 0.03 to 2.82 ± 0.02 with a significance of greater than 3
σ
. This bump-like structure is consistent with a spectral softening recently reported by the balloon-borne CREAM, DAMPE, and NUCLEON, but ISS-CREAM extends measurements to higher energies.
Abstract
16S rDNA clone library analysis was used to identify bacterial biodiversity in a variety of sea-ice microbial communities (SIMCO). DNA was extracted from seven Antarctic sea-ice samples and ...one Arctic sea-ice sample and 16S rDNA PCR-amplified using universal and Archaea-specific primers. Recombinant 16S rDNA clones were obtained and dereplicated using restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis (RFLP). After RFLP analysis, 100 distinct phylotypes (a unique clone or group of clones with sequence similarity of >0.98) were defined. From the clone libraries 16S rDNA sequences of bacterial and eukaryotic origin were detected, however Archaea were not detected either with universal or Archaea-specific 16S rDNA primer sets. Bacterial phylotypes grouped within the α and γ proteobacteria, the Cytophaga–Flavobacterium–Bacteroides division, the Gram-Positive bacteria and the orders Chlamydiales and Verrucomicrobiales. The majority of bacterial phylotypes were affiliated with heterotrophic taxa and many grouped closely with cultivated genera and species. Eukaryotic clones were affiliated with a variety of autotrophic and heterotrophic nanoplankton and included a large number of chloroplast 16S rDNA genes. The findings of this investigation corroborated culture data indicating bacterial biodiversity increased in SIMCO displaying high levels of primary production, however the bacterial communities within SIMCO were highly heterogeneous at the genus/species-level between different samples. A comparison of Antarctic and Arctic SIMCO revealed certain sea-ice dwelling bacterial genera are common at both poles.
Shifts in species distributions due to environmental change may affect the spatial pattern of genetic structure within a species' range, including possible changes to the adaptive potential of ...populations. We investigated spatial patterns of neutral genetic diversity and differentiation at the southern edge of the Canada lynx Lynx canadensis distribution in Ontario, Canada. We analyzed provincial fur harvest records (1972–2010) and collected and genotyped lynx pelt samples (2007–2009) from 702 lynx at 14 microsatellite loci. We show that the southern range boundary of lynx in central Canada has contracted northward by > 175 km since the 1970s, and that high winter temperature, low snow depth, and low proportion of suitable habitat are strongly correlated with low neutral genetic diversity and high genetic differentiation at the trailing range edge. Our work tests fundamental ideas about species range limits and demonstrates that environmental conditions can have a marked influence on neutral genetic structure. Our results suggest that changes in environmental conditions will result in further loss of genetic diversity and possibly reduce adaptive potential in southern peripheral lynx populations.
Remote transport of material is an utmost useful, but challenging, property expanding the design possibilities of many applications such as microfluidics or robotics where species can be carried ...without interfering with its environment. Nature has solved the problem of transport in e.g., the respiratory system by a concerted motion of cilia. This study addresses a new method to fabricate an array of small parallel fibers acting as cilia placed side by side on a substrate. The fibers consist of a crosslinked liquid crystal main chain polymer functionalized with coreactant azobenzene molecules. The fibers bend toward a light source in a concerted manner. When placed in a liquid, the cooperative bending motion of the fibers creates a flow able to efficiently carry objects. The proposed fabrication process of the fibers is scalable to large area and requires an optimized rheology which is achieved by converting low molecular weight reactive liquid crystal acrylate monomers to oligomers using a multiplication of the monomeric units by the Michael addition reaction with dithiol. The oligomer properties and the elasticity of the fibers are adjusted by changing the thiol spacer leading to optimized manufacturing and maximized optical response.
An easily scalable and modular method is developed to create an array of responsive fibers. The fibers are able to respond to UV light in a concerted way to mimic the natural cilia motion. This efficient collective bending gives a directional transport of floating object by use of light. Such hairy surfaces could be integrated in microfluidic device.
The genus Pseudoalteromonas is a marine group of bacteria belonging to the class Gammaproteobacteria that has come to attention in the natural product and microbial ecology science fields in the last ...decade. Pigmented species of the genus have been shown to produce an array of low and high molecular weight compounds with antimicrobial, anti-fouling, algicidal and various pharmaceutically-relevant activities. Compounds formed include toxic proteins, polyanionic exopolymers, substituted phenolic and pyrolle-containing alkaloids, cyclic peptides and a range of bromine-substituted compounds. Ecologically, Pseudoalteromonas appears significant and to date has been shown to influence biofilm formation in various marine econiches; involved in predator-like interactions within the microbial loop; influence settlement, germination and metamorphosis of various invertebrate and algal species; and may also be adopted by marine flora and fauna as defensive agents. Studies have been so far limited to a relatively small subset of strains compared to the known diversity of the genus suggesting that many more discoveries of novel natural products as well as ecological connections these may have in the marine ecosystem remain to be made.
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► The structures of 4 novel compounds called liamocins are reported. ► Liamocins are mannitol-linked 3,5-dihydroxydecanoic polyesters. ► Novel exophilins, unsubstituted ...3,5-dihydroxydecanoic polyesters, were also found. ► These biomaterials are produced by Aureobasidium, a commercially-used yeast strain.
Aureobasidium pullulans is a common, ubiquitous fungus, which is used industrially to produce the polysaccharide pullulan. We have previously shown that A. pullulans produces various heavier-than-water oils, first named here as liamocins, that accumulate in fermentations. Here we report the structural characterization of four liamocins, A1, A2, B1, and B2, produced by A. pullulans strain NRRL 50380 using a combination of MALDI-TOF/MS, quadrupole-TOF/MS, isotopic labeling, NMR, GC/MS, and classical carbohydrate analysis. The data showed that the liamocins are composed of a single mannitol headgroup partially O-acylated with three (for liamocin A1 and A2) or four (for liamocin B1 and B2) 3,5-dihydroxydecanoic ester groups. Liamocins A1 and B1 are non-acetylated, whereas A2 and B2 each contain a single 3′-O-acetyl group. Each of these compounds is characterized by pseudomolecular M+Na+ ions in the MALDI-TOF/MS spectra at m/z 763.22, 949.35, 805.22, and 991.37, respectively. The 186Da mass difference between A-type and B-type liamocins corresponds to one O-linked 3,5-dihydroxydecanoate group. HMBC NMR showed that one 3,5-dihydroxydecanoate carbonyl group is ester linked to a primary hydroxyl on the mannitol. Other long range 13C–1H couplings across 1,5-ester bridges showed that the 3,5-dihydroxydecanoate groups form 1–5-linked polyester chains, similar in structure to the antibiotic substance exophilin A. Moreover, the MS analysis identified several non-conjugated poly-3,5-dihydroxydecanoate esters as minor components that are tentatively assigned as exophilins A1, A2, B1, and B2. The liamocins, and three of the exophilins, are new, previously unreported structures.
Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) associations with milk production traits found to be significant in different screening experiments, including SNP in genes hypothesized to be in gene pathways ...affecting milk production, were tested in a validation population to confirm their association. In total, 423 SNP were genotyped across 411 Holstein bulls, and their association with 6 milk production traits—Australian Selection Index (indicating the profitability of an animal's milk production), protein, fat, and milk yields, and protein and fat composition—were tested using single SNP regressions. Seventy-two SNP were significantly associated with one or more of the traits; their effects were in the same direction as in the screening experiment and therefore their association was considered validated. An over-representation of SNP (43 of the 423) on chromosome 20 was observed, including a SNP in the growth hormone receptor gene previously published as having an association with protein composition and protein and milk yields. The association with protein composition was confirmed in this experiment, but not the association with protein and milk yields. A multiple SNP regression analysis for all SNP on chromosome 20 was performed for all 6 traits, which revealed that this mutation was not significantly associated with any of the milk production traits and that at least 2 other quantitative trait loci were present on chromosome 20.
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