Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and the law school

Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in legal education, emphasises fairness, representation, and a supportive environment within universities. Equality ensures equal opportunities for all, eliminating discrimination. Diversity values differences in race, gender, etc., aiming for a community mirroring society. Inclusion fosters respect and support for all, especially underrepresented groups. EDI provides a critique of legal education for perpetuating social hierarchies and advocates for a more socially aware approach. Legal obligations prohibit discrimination and require accommodation for diverse needs. EDI initiatives include diversity statements, affirmative action, and scholarships. Some law schools engage in community social justice initiatives. EDI is integrated into the curriculum, reflecting the need for graduates to engage diverse communities.Peter Burdo

Structural evolution of the resource-rich Proterozoic western greater McArthur Basin: A focus on the Daly Waters Fault Zone, northern Australia

Proterozoic basins cover vast cratonic areas on every continent. Their basin architecture preserves considerable information that can unravel the tectonic evolution of large parts of the world, yet many do not yet have the resolution of seismic data across them to reveal their internal structure. The ca. 1820–1320 Ma greater McArthur Basin, in the North Australian Craton, is a data-rich exception. Surface exposures in the west (Birrindudu Basin), south (Tomkinson Province) and north (McArthur Basin sensu stricto) are linked together in seismic profiles through the Beetaloo Sub-basin that allow the full basin evolution to be determined. A key feature of the basin is the Daly Waters Fault Zone, a north–south-oriented structural formation about 200 km in length. This fault zone serves as a boundary, dividing the Birrindudu Basin and the western Beetaloo Sub-basin from the eastern Beetaloo Sub-basin. It is a complex fault zone with multiple phases of structural extension and compression that have influenced the greater McArthur Basin fill from the Redbank Package (ca. 1820–1700 Ma) to the Wilton Package (ca. 1500–1320 Ma). Two dimensional seismic lines and 17 well penetrations in an area encompassing the Birrindudu Basin to the western portion of the Beetaloo Sub-basin and across the Daly Waters Fault Zone are re-interpreted to better understand the evolution of the basin and the role of the Daly Waters Fault Zone. We reveal at least five tectonic events that controlled deposition and exhumation in the region: 1) Extension during the early Redbank Package (ca. 1820–1750 Ma), followed by compression that inverted the Redbank Package (ca. 1740–1700 Ma). 2) Extension during the Glyde Package (ca. 1660–1620 Ma). 3) Compression after deposition of the Glyde Package (ca. 1620–1520 Ma). 4) Extension during the lower Wilton Package (ca. 1500–1400 Ma), and 5) compression after deposition of the Wilton Package (after ca. 1320 Ma).Johann Soares, Rosalind King, Simon Holford, Alan S. Collin

Seminal fluid effects on uterine receptivity to embryo implantation: transcriptomic strategies to define molecular mechanisms

Embryo implantation requires both a developmentally competent embryo and a receptive uterus. Impaired uterine receptivity is a common constraint on implantation success and reproductive outcome. Ovarian steroid hormones oestrogen and progesterone play a central role in establishing uterine receptivity, but other factors also contribute. One additional regulating factor is male partner seminal fluid. However, the full physiological impacts of seminal fluid on uterine receptivity and the specific molecular pathways involved are not yet completely defined. New advances in RNA-sequencing technologies provide a powerful means to examine how uterine tissues and cells respond to seminal fluid contact. Findings utilising sequencing technology provide strong cellular and molecular evidence in humans and mice that seminal fluid contact around the time of ovulation drives immune and vascular changes with potential to affect endometrial receptivity in the periimplantation phase. This approach hasled to the discovery of novel mediators and regulatory factors subsequently shown to facilitate embryo implantation in genetic mouse models, enabling functional validation. Here, we summarise the evidence from recent microarray and RNA-sequencing findings that seminal fluid contact can directly and indirectly impact the transcriptional state of endometrial tissue during the implantation window in mice and also in humans. Progress in elucidating the female reproductive tract response to seminal fluid will improve understanding of male partner effects on endometrial receptivity, and the knowledge gained will have practical applications for achieving healthy pregnancy and offspring outcomes.Hon Y. Chan, and Sarah A. Robertso

Appropriateness of lumbar spine imaging in patients presenting to the emergency department with low back pain in a Western Australian tertiary hospital

Background: The Australian Rheumatology Association identified the use of imaging in patients with low back pain without indication of serious pathology as a low-value practice. Aims: To determine the appropriateness of diagnostic lumbar spine imaging requests in patients with low back pain presenting to a Western Australian hospital’s emergency department. Methods: We conducted a retrospective review of all adult patients (18 years and older) who presented with low back pain to the Fiona Stanley Hospital emergency department from 1 July 2020 to 31 December 2020. The appropriateness of the imaging requests was judged using the American College of Radiology’s Appropriateness Criteria. The number and proportion of appropriate and inappropriate lumbar spine imaging requests were reported overall and by imaging modality together with reasons for the judgements. Results: A total of 1459 patients were included. Three hundred eight patients (21.1%) received lumbar spine imaging requests, with 350 diagnostic imaging requests eligible for analysis. Two hundred eighty (80.0%) imaging requests were judged to be appropriate (194/253 (76.7%) plain radiographs, 57/66 (86.4%) computed tomography, 29/31 (93.5%) magnetic resonance imaging). The most common reasons for an appropriate imaging request were suspected vertebral fracture (n = 223, 79.6%), followed by malignancy (n = 26, 9.3%). Of the 70 inappropriate imaging requests, 62 (88.6%) requests occurred in the absence of alerting features and eight (11.4%) requests were the wrong choice of modality. Conclusions: Four in five lumbar spine imaging requests for investigating low back pain were appropriate. Of the inappropriate requests, the most common reason was the absence of alerting features, while a small number were the incorrect imaging modality.Aaron W. K. Mau, Helen I. Keen, Catherine L. Hill, and Rachelle Buchbinde

Filtering out the noise: metagenomic classifiers optimize ancient DNA mapping

Contamination with exogenous DNA presents a significant challenge in ancient DNA (aDNA) studies of single organisms. Failure to address contamination from microbes, reagents, and present-day sources can impact the interpretation of results. Although field and laboratory protocols exist to limit contamination, there is still a need to accurately distinguish between endogenous and exogenous data computationally. Here, we propose a workf low to reduce exogenous contamination based on a metagenomic classifier. Unlike previous methods that relied exclusively on DNA sequencing reads mapping specificity to a single reference genome to remove contaminating reads, our approach uses Kraken2-based filtering before mapping to the reference genome. Using both simulated and empirical shotgun aDNA data, we show that this workf low presents a simple and efficient method that can be used in a wide range of computational environments—including personal machines. We propose strategies to build specific databases used to profile sequencing data that take into consideration available computational resources and prior knowledge about the target taxa and likely contaminants. Our workf low significantly reduces the overall computational resources required during the mapping process and reduces the total runtime by up to ∼94%. The most significant impacts are observed in low endogenous samples. Importantly, contaminants that would map to the reference are filtered out using our strategy, reducing false positive alignments.We also show that our method results in a negligible loss of endogenous data with no measurable impact on downstream population genetics analyses.Shyamsundar Ravishankar, Vilma Perez, Roberta Davidson, Xavier Roca-Rada, Divon Lan, Yassine Souilmi, Bastien Llama

Lower Limb Myxofibrosarcoma Presenting as a Pulmonary Tumour Embolism: A Case Report

Pulmonary tumour embolism is a rare complication of malignancy and should be considered a differential diagnosis if imaging features are atypical for a bland thrombus. It can arise from a range of primary tumours, including soft tissue sarcomas; however, reported cases are sparse. We present a case of pulmonary tumour embolism secondary to a large right knee myxofibrosarcoma, with diagnosis confirmed following biopsy of a pulmonary nodule and a palpable inguinal lymph nodeHritik J. John, Samuel J. White, Pallavi Byrapu, Smita Raj

Probabilistic emotion and sentiment modelling of patient-reported experiences

Available online 8 June 2025. OnlinePublPatient feedback is necessary to assess the extent to which healthcare delivery aligns with public needs and expectations. Surveys provide structured feedback that is readily analysed; however, they are costly, infrequent, and constrained by predefined questions, limiting a comprehensive understanding of patient experience. In contrast, the unstructured nature of online reviews and social-media posts can reveal unique insights into patient perspectives, yet that very lack of structure presents a challenge for analysis. In this study, we present a methodology for interpretable probabilistic modelling of patient emotions from patient-reported experiences. We employ metadata-network topic modelling to uncover key themes in 13,380 patient-reported experiences from Care Opinion (2012-2022) and reveal insightful relationships between these themes and labelled emotions. Our results show positivity and negativity relate most strongly to aspects of patient experience, such as patient-caregiver interactions, rather than clinical outcomes. Patient educational engagement exhibits strong positivity, whereas dismissal and rejection are linked to suicidality and depression. We develop a context-specific probabilistic emotion recommender system that predicts both multi-label emotions and binary sentiments with a Naïve Bayes classifier using topics as predictors. We assess performance with nDCG and Q-measure and achieve an F1 of 0.921, significantly outperforming standard sentiment lexicons. This methodology offers a cost-effective, timely, and transparent approach to harness unconstrained patient-reported feedback, with the potential to augment traditional patient-reported experience collection. Our R package and interactive dashboard make the approach readily accessible for future research and clinical practice applications, enabling hospitals to integrate emotional insights into surveys and tailor care to patient needs. Overall, this study provides a new avenue for understanding and improving patient experience and the quality of healthcare delivery.Curtis Murray, Lewis Mitchell, Jonathan Tuke, Mark Macka

New ways of measuring energy poverty: Moving beyond temperature sensor data to assess and measure cold housing

Many people live in cold homes that are hazardous to health. In the absence of high-quality observed data, researchers have measured cold housing and assessed its prevalence using secondary proxy indicators. Proxy measures previously used in literature include self-assessed warmth of the home, perceived energy affordability, financial inability to heat the home in winter, and local climate zone. Using matched in-home temperature sensor data from 502 Australian homes, we assess the validity of these proxy measures by estimating the degree of association with measured indoor temperature. We also examine twelve correlated socio-demographic characteristics to explore promising alternative proxy measures. Self-assessed perception of home warmth was shown to be the best existing proxy indicator of cold indoor air temperature (OR 2.5, CI 1.4 to 4.3), with climate zone (OR 2.4, CI 1.6 to 3.8) also shown to be a strong measure. Perceived energy affordability (OR 1.1, CI 0.7 to 1.9) and financial inability to adequately heat the home (OR 1.0, CI 0.6 to 1.6), were shown to be unsuitable proxy measures. Of the correlated socio-demographic characteristics, heating appliance type (electric heater OR 3.0, CI 1.4 to 6.2), household structure (living alone OR 2.5 CI 1.2 to 5.5), built date (built <1990 OR 2.11, CI 1.38 to 3.23) and flooring type (timber floor OR 1.99, CI 1.23 to 3.22) were strong indicators of cold indoor temperatures, and would make sound proxy measures. Our assessment of the reliability of existing and potential proxy measures of cold home temperature suggests a need to carefully select proxies, based on their known or established validity.Cynthia Faye Barlow, Lyrian Daniel, Emma Bake

Methods for the health technology assessment of complex interventions: a scoping review

Introduction: Health Technology Assessment (HTA) methods have been developed to support evidence-informed policy-making by assessing the comparative value and costs of health interventions and programs. However, the complexity of many health interventions presents challenges to the use of conventional HTA methods. This scoping review collated and synthesised international approaches to the HTA of complex interventions including identifying assessment criteria, types of evidence and the domains of value that are most favoured. Materials and methods: A systematic scoping review was conducted using JBI guidelines, Arksey and O’Malley’s six-stage framework and recent advances in scoping review methodology. Seven electronic databases, grey literature sources, three leading HTA journals and backward citation searching were used to search complex intervention HTA records written in English from January 2000 to December 2023. Supplementary searches were also conducted to identify actual HTA reports produced by certain countries. The Population (or Participants), Concept and Context framework guided the literature selection process, with a two-phase screening process and subsequent narrative synthesis. The PRISMA-ScR checklist guided reporting. Independent screening by two reviewers ensured accuracy of study selection, and data extraction followed a customised form grounded in the HTA-core model. Results: A total of 10684 references yielded 35 records from twelve countries. The review identified two clusters of research on HTA of complex interventions: methodological orientation and conceptual models (n=19) and actual HTAs conducted on complex interventions (n=16). Several evaluation criteria and domains were used or recommended for use that extended beyond the core HTA domains. Three distinct HTA approaches emerged: the integrative approach, highlighted in methodological guides and theoretical frameworks; and either sequential or concurrent approaches, emphasised in practical HTAs. In the theoretical literature, equal weight is given to various HTA domains for complex intervention assessment, but in practice, the scope and specificity of domains vary across reports, with countries exhibiting differing priorities. Cost-effectiveness, clinical effectiveness and organisational aspects predominated in complex intervention evaluation, albeit with gradually increasing emphasis on a technology’s description, intended use, safety and patient and social aspects over the past decade. There was less focus on ethical and legal considerations. This trend is consistent with the evaluation of non-complex interventions in HTA. HTAs undertaken on complex interventions introduced unique domains like politics, implementation, early stakeholder engagement, outcome uncertainty, adaptive methods and real-world data, with expert opinion recommended when data were insufficient. Conclusion: A shift towards considering broader contextual and implementation factors in the HTA of complex interventions was evident in this scoping review, extending beyond traditional HTA domains. However, discrepancies persist between theoretical and methodological guidance suggesting one approach and practical HTAs often adopting another. The implications of the shift towards contextual and implementation factors require exploration in future research. This could help to establish consensus on metrics and evidentiary elements, optimising HTA for complex health interventions.Abdolvahab Baghbanian, Drew Carter, Tracy Merli

Exceptionally Low-Coordinated Bismuth–Oxygen Vacancy Defect Clusters for Generating Black In₂O₃ Photocatalysts with Superb CO₂ Reduction Performance

Indium oxide (In₂O₃) is a widely used catalyst for CO₂ reduction, yet its inherent properties, such as a wide band gap and low-active surface, necessitate a modification to achieve broad-wavelength absorption and enhanced surface activity. However, simultaneously achieving these goals through a single material modulation approach remains challenging. Here, we present a simple yet innovative strategy to develop a black catalyst, BixIn₂–xO₃–y, comprising notably low-coordinated bismuth on oxygen-defect-laden In₂O₃. This approach induces local structural and charge carrier changes, resulting in remarkably high visible light absorption and preeminent surface activity. In situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS) confirms the spontaneous dissociation of CO₂ species into CO even in the dark on the BixIn₂–xO₃–y surface, underscoring the catalyst’s enhanced activity. Compared to pristine In₂O₃, BixIn₂–xO₃–y exhibits approximately 24 times greater CO production. Characterization techniques, including extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) and X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) analyses, along with density functional theory (DFT) calculations, reveal that oxygen vacancies in the reduced sample decrease both the average coordination number of bismuth and its effective oxidation state. Our findings indicate that the unusually low-coordinated bismuth dopant preferably promotes the formation of oxygen vacancies close to bismuth (Bi-Vö) rather than near indium, which induces local structural and charge carrier changes. These Bi-Vö clusters enhance light harvesting, charge separation, and CO₂ adsorption/activation/reduction. Importantly, our approach demonstrates promise for a wide range of applications, addressing key challenges in catalyst modification for CO₂ reduction and offering opportunities for further advancement in this field.Farzin Nekouei, Christopher J. Pollock, Tianyi Wang, Zhong Zheng, Yanzhao Zhang, Zelio Fusco, Huanyu Jin, Thrinath Reddy Ramireddy, Ary Anggara Wibowo, Teng Lu, Shahram Nekouei, Farzaneh Keshtpour, Julien Langley, Elwy H. Abdelkader, Nicholas Cox, Zongyou Yin, Hieu Nguyen, Alexey Glushenkov, Siva Karuturi, Zongwen Liu, Li Wei, Hao Li, Yun Li