9,747 research outputs found
Making the “Unfit, Fit”: The Rhetoric of Mainstreaming in the World Bank’s Commitment to Gender Equality and Disability Rights
In the 1990s The World Bank president James Wolfensohn urged Bank policy- makers to consider gender in their development policies; in 2004 the Bank made a similar commitment to include people with disabilities in their programmatic plans. Examining materials from Bank archives and from “The World Bank: Disability and Development” conference in 2004, this essay demonstrates the contradictory arguments put forth by the World Bank’s gender, disability, and development programs
Reading Dingo Stories
A short review of Deborah Bird Rose's Wild Dog Dreaming (2011) University of Virginia Pres
Sheep, dingoes and kangaroos: new challenges and a change of direction 20 years on
Predation and competition are two primary forces limiting the extent to which sheep can be grazed in the Australian rangelands, particularly in Queensland. Dingo predation has been non-existent in much of the sheep zone since the localised eradication of dingoes in the early 1900s. Competition with kangaroos has been ever-present, but was previously managed (to some extent) by the commercial kangaroo harvesting industry. However, changes to dingo distribution and kangaroo densities and harvesting over the last 20 years have meant that dingo predation and kangaroo competition again threaten viable sheep production in the rangelands. Dingoes have increased their distribution and density in almost all sheep grazing areas and contemporary lethal control efforts are not preventing the decline of sheep. Loss of valuable international markets and moves to now harvest only adult male kangaroos means that the kangaroo harvesting industry produces little relief from kangaroo grazing pressure (given that kangaroo population growth is little affected by removal of adult males; see Finch et al. this volume). New approaches to dingo and kangaroo management are sorely needed to salvage and restore the production of sheep in the rangelands. In response, the installation and use of pest-proof fences is rapidly increasing in Queensland and other areas, facilitating, for the first time in nearly a century, the localised eradication of dingoes and the suppression of kangaroos to manageable numbers within fenced areas. We describe these challenges and opportunities for one site in particular (Leander Station), and offer a sheep grazier’s perspective on past and future use and management of problematic wildlife in sheep production zones
Predictions for ASKAP Neutral Hydrogen Surveys
The Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) will revolutionise
our knowledge of gas-rich galaxies in the Universe. Here we present predictions
for two proposed extragalactic ASKAP neutral hydrogen (HI) emission-line
surveys, based on semi-analytic models applied to cosmological N-body
simulations. The ASKAP HI All-Sky Survey, known as WALLABY, is a shallow 3 Pi
survey (z = 0 - 0.26) which will probe the mass and dynamics of over 600,000
galaxies. A much deeper small-area HI survey, called DINGO, aims to trace the
evolution of HI from z = 0 - 0.43, a cosmological volume of 40 million Mpc^3,
detecting potentially 100,000 galaxies. The high-sensitivity 30 antenna ASKAP
core (diameter ~2 km) will provide an angular resolution of 30 arcsec (at z=0).
Our simulations show that the majority of galaxies detected in WALLABY (87.5%)
will be resolved. About 5000 galaxies will be well resolved, i.e. more than
five beams (2.5 arcmin) across the major axis, enabling kinematic studies of
their gaseous disks. This number would rise to 160,000 galaxies if all 36 ASKAP
antennas could be used; the additional six antennas provide baselines up to 6
km, resulting in an angular resolution of 10 arcsec. For DINGO this increased
resolution is highly desirable to minimise source confusion; reducing confusion
rates from a maximum of 10% of sources at the survey edge to 3%. We estimate
that the sources detected by WALLABY and DINGO will span four orders of
magnitude in total halo mass (from 10^{11} to 10^{15} Msol) and nearly seven
orders of magnitude in stellar mass (from 10^{5} to 10^{12} Msol), allowing us
to investigate the process of galaxy formation across the last four billion
years.Comment: 21 pages, accepted for publication in MNRAS, minor updates to
published version and fixed links. Movies and images available at
http://ict.icrar.org/store/Movies/Duffy12c
Exploring the HI Universe with ASKAP
The survey speed of ASKAP makes it a prime instrument with which to survey
the HI universe, enabling it to carry out both wide surveys of the entire sky,
as well as deep surveys covering cosmologically representative volumes. Here,
the use of ASKAP to study deep HI fields is discussed as proposed by the Deep
Investigation of Neutral Gas Origins (DINGO) survey. This ASKAP science survey
project anticipates observing in excess of 10^5 sources out to redshift z~0.4.
Key science goals include: Omega_HI and its evolution, the cosmic web as traced
by distributions such as the HI mass function and the 2pt correlation function,
and the formation and evolution of galaxies. Science returns are maximised by
targeting the GAMA survey regions, enabling the HI content of galaxies to be
studied and understood in full context with all the major galactic constituents
over the past 4 Gyr.Comment: Panoramic Radio Astronomy conference, Groningen, The Netherlands;
2009 June 2-
Statistical Image Reconstruction for High-Throughput Thermal Neutron Computed Tomography
Neutron Computed Tomography (CT) is an increasingly utilised non-destructive
analysis tool in material science, palaeontology, and cultural heritage. With
the development of new neutron imaging facilities (such as DINGO, ANSTO,
Australia) new opportunities arise to maximise their performance through the
implementation of statistically driven image reconstruction methods which have
yet to see wide scale application in neutron transmission tomography. This work
outlines the implementation of a convex algorithm statistical image
reconstruction framework applicable to the geometry of most neutron tomography
instruments with the aim of obtaining similar imaging quality to conventional
ramp filtered back-projection via the inverse Radon transform, but using a
lower number of measured projections to increase object throughput. Through
comparison of the output of these two frameworks using a tomographic scan of a
known 3 material cylindrical phantom obtain with the DINGO neutron radiography
instrument (ANSTO, Australia), this work illustrates the advantages of
statistical image reconstruction techniques over conventional filter
back-projection. It was found that the statistical image reconstruction
framework was capable of obtaining image estimates of similar quality with
respect to filtered back-projection using only 12.5% the number of projections,
potentially increasing object throughput at neutron imaging facilities such as
DINGO eight-fold
Assessing Predation Risk to Threatened Fauna from their Prevalence in Predator Scats: Dingoes and Rodents in Arid Australia
The prevalence of threatened species in predator scats has often been used to gauge the risks that predators pose to threatened species, with the infrequent occurrence of a given species often considered indicative of negligible predation risks. In this study, data from 4087 dingo (Canis lupus dingo and hybrids) scats were assessed alongside additional information on predator and prey distribution, dingo control effort and predation rates to evaluate whether or not the observed frequency of threatened species in dingo scats warrants more detailed investigation of dingo predation risks to them. Three small rodents (dusky hopping-mice Notomys fuscus; fawn hopping-mice Notomys cervinus; plains mice Pseudomys australis) were the only threatened species detected in <8% of dingo scats from any given site, suggesting that dingoes might not threaten them. However, consideration of dingo control effort revealed that plains mice distribution has largely retracted to the area where dingoes have been most heavily subjected to lethal control. Assessing the hypothetical predation rates of dingoes on dusky hopping-mice revealed that dingo predation alone has the potential to depopulate local hopping-mice populations within a few months. It was concluded that the occurrence of a given prey species in predator scats may be indicative of what the predator ate under the prevailing conditions, but in isolation, such data can have a poor ability to inform predation risk assessments. Some populations of threatened fauna assumed to derive a benefit from the presence of dingoes may instead be susceptible to dingo-induced declines under certain conditions
Recommended from our members
Ecologists need robust survey designs, sampling and analytical methods
1. Research that yields conflicting results rightly causes controversy. Where methodological weaknesses are apparent, there is ready opportunity for discord within the scientific community, which may undermine the entire study.
2. We use the debate about the role of dingoes Canis dingo in conservation in Australia as a case study for a phenomenon that is relevant to all applied ecologists, where conflicting results have been published in high quality journals and yet the problems with the methods used in these studies have led to significant controversy.
3. To alleviate such controversies, scientists need to use robust methods to ensure that their results are repeatable and defendable. To date, this has not occurred in Australia’s dingo debate due to the use of unvalidated indices that rely on unsupported assumptions.
4. We highlight the problems that poor methods have caused in this debate. We also reiterate our recommendations for practitioners, statisticians and researchers to work together to develop long-term, multi-site experimental research programmes using robust methods to understand the impacts of dingoes on mesopredators.
5. Synthesis & applications. Incorporating robust methods and appropriate experimental designs are needed to ensure that conservation actions are appropriately focused and are supported with robust results. Such actions will go
a long way towards resolving the debate about the role of dingoes in conservation in Australia, and other, ecological debates
Spectroscopic Confusion: Its Impact on Current and Future Extragalactic HI Surveys
We present a comprehensive model to predict the rate of spectroscopic
confusion in HI surveys, and demonstrate good agreement with the observable
confusion in existing surveys. Generically the action of confusion on the HI
mass function was found to be a suppression of the number count of sources
below the `knee', and an enhancement above it. This results in a bias, whereby
the `knee' mass is increased and the faint end slope is steepened. For ALFALFA
and HIPASS we find that the maximum impact this bias can have on the Schechter
fit parameters is similar in magnitude to the published random errors. On the
other hand, the impact of confusion on the HI mass functions of upcoming medium
depth interferometric surveys, will be below the level of the random errors. In
addition, we find that previous estimates of the number of detections for
upcoming surveys with SKA-precursor telescopes may have been too optimistic, as
the framework implemented here results in number counts between 60% and 75% of
those previously predicted, while accurately reproducing the counts of existing
surveys. Finally, we argue that any future single dish, wide area surveys of HI
galaxies would be best suited to focus on deep observations of the local
Universe (z < 0.05), as confusion may prevent them from being competitive with
interferometric surveys at higher redshift, while their lower angular
resolution allows their completeness to be more easily calibrated for nearby
extended sources.Comment: Accepted to MNRAS, 14 pages, 9 figures, 2 table
The Australasian dingo archetype: de novo chromosome-length genome assembly, DNA methylome, and cranial morphology
BACKGROUND: One difficulty in testing the hypothesis that the Australasian dingo is a functional intermediate between wild wolves and domesticated breed dogs is that there is no reference specimen. Here we link a high-quality de novo long-read chromosomal assembly with epigenetic footprints and morphology to describe the Alpine dingo female named Cooinda. It was critical to establish an Alpine dingo reference because this ecotype occurs throughout coastal eastern Australia where the first drawings and descriptions were completed.
FINDINGS: We generated a high-quality chromosome-level reference genome assembly (Canfam_ADS) using a combination of Pacific Bioscience, Oxford Nanopore, 10X Genomics, Bionano, and Hi-C technologies. Compared to the previously published Desert dingo assembly, there are large structural rearrangements on chromosomes 11, 16, 25, and 26. Phylogenetic analyses of chromosomal data from Cooinda the Alpine dingo and 9 previously published de novo canine assemblies show dingoes are monophyletic and basal to domestic dogs. Network analyses show that the mitochondrial DNA genome clusters within the southeastern lineage, as expected for an Alpine dingo. Comparison of regulatory regions identified 2 differentially methylated regions within glucagon receptor GCGR and histone deacetylase HDAC4 genes that are unmethylated in the Alpine dingo genome but hypermethylated in the Desert dingo. Morphologic data, comprising geometric morphometric assessment of cranial morphology, place dingo Cooinda within population-level variation for Alpine dingoes. Magnetic resonance imaging of brain tissue shows she had a larger cranial capacity than a similar-sized domestic dog.
CONCLUSIONS: These combined data support the hypothesis that the dingo Cooinda fits the spectrum of genetic and morphologic characteristics typical of the Alpine ecotype. We propose that she be considered the archetype specimen for future research investigating the evolutionary history, morphology, physiology, and ecology of dingoes. The female has been taxidermically prepared and is now at the Australian Museum, Sydney
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