New South Wales Vegetation classification and Assessment: Part 3, plant communities of the NSW Brigalow Belt South, Nandewar and west New England Bioregions and update of NSW Western Plains and South-western Slopes plant communities, Version 3 of the NSWVCA database

This fourth paper in the NSW Vegetation Classification and Assessment series covers the Brigalow Belt South-/1(BBS) and Nandewar (NAN) Bioregions and the western half of the New England Bioregion (NET), an area of 9.3 million hectares being 11.6% of NSW. It completes the NSWVCA coverage for the Border Rivers-Gwydir and Namoi CMA areas and records plant communities in the Central West and Hunter–Central Rivers CMA areas. In total, 585 plant communities are now classified in the NSWVCA covering 11.5 of the 18 Bioregions in NSW (78% of the State). Of these 226 communities are in the NSW Western Plains and 416 are in the NSW Western Slopes. 315 plant communities are classified in the BBS, NAN and west-NET Bioregions including 267 new descriptions since Version 2 was published in 2008. Descriptions of the 315 communities are provided in a 919 page report on the DVD accompanying this paper along with updated reports on other inland NSW bioregions and nine Catchment Management Authority areas fully or partly classified in the NSWVCA to date. A read-only version of Version 3 of the NSWVCA database is on the DVD for use on personal computers. A feature of the BBS and NAN Bioregions is the array of ironbark and bloodwood Eucalyptusdominated shrubby woodlands on sandstone and acid volcanic substrates extending from Dubbo to Queensland. This includes iconic natural areas such as Warrumbungle and Mount Kaputar National Parks and the 500,000 ha Pilliga Scrub forests. Large expanses of basalt-derived soils support grassy box woodland and native grasslands including those on the Liverpool Plains; near Moree; and around Inverell, most of which are cleared and threatened. Wetlands occur on sodic soils near Yetman and in large clay gilgais in the Pilliga region. Sedgelands are rare but occupy impeded creeks. Aeolian lunettes occur at Narran Lake and near Gilgandra. Areas of deep sand contain Allocasuarina, eucalypt mallee and Melaleuca uncinata heath. Tall grassy or ferny open forests occur on mountain ranges above 1000m elevation in the New England Bioregion and on the Liverpool Range while grassy box woodlands occupy lower elevations with lower rainfall and higher temperatures. The vegetation classification and assessment is based on over 100 published and unpublished vegetation surveys and map unit descriptions, expert advice, extra plot sampling and data analysis and over 25 000 km of road traverse with field checking at 805 sites. Key sources of data included floristic analyses produced in western regional forest assessments in the BBS and NAN Bioregions, floristic analyses in over 60 surveys of conservation reserves and analysis of plot data in the western NET Bioregion and covering parts of the Namoi and Border Rivers- Gwydir CMA areas. Approximately 60% of the woody native vegetation in the study area has been cleared resulting in large areas of “derived” native grasslands. As of June 2010, 7% of the area was in 136 protected areas and 127 of the 315 plant communities were assessed to be adequately protected in reserves. Using the NSWVCA database threat criteria, 15 plant communities were assessed as being Critically Endangered, 59 Endangered, 60 Vulnerable, 99 Near Threatened and 82 Least Concern. 61 of these communities are assessed as part of NSW or Commonwealth-listed Threatened Ecological Communities. Current threats include expanding dryland and irrigated cropping on alluvial plains, floodplains and gently undulating topography at lower elevations; over-grazing of steep hills; altered water tables and flooding regimes; localized mining; and the spread of exotic species, notably Coolatai Grass (Hyparrhenia hirta)

International and Area Studies Workshop – Germanic Collections

The Center for Research Libraries, along with the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM) and the Western European Studies Section (WESS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), is co-sponsoring an International and Area Studies Workshop for Librarians on Friday, June 26, 2015. The workshop is timed to coincide with the ALA Annual 2015 in San Francisco. The full-day workshop is designed to assist librarians who are newly responsible for Western European and Latin American humanities and social sciences collecting. It will cover publishing trends in Western Europe and Latin America, providing reference services, and tips for getting up to speed quickly as a librarian newly assigned to cover these world areas. Specifically, the workshop includes presentations on Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, Francophone and Italian Studies, and Germanic Collections.https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/lib_present/1019/thumbnail.jp

The Viability and Necessity of DesertXpress and the Future of Las Vegas

Purpose The purpose of this professional paper is to determine the effects of the DesertXpress, an interstate high-speed rail which will connect Las Vegas, NV and Southern California and will provide critical information as to the viability and economic strength that the high-speed rail will bring to the region

Exploring a combined biomarker for tuberculosis treatment response: protocol for a prospective observational cohort study.

INTRODUCTION: An improved understanding of factors explaining tuberculosis (TB) treatment response is urgently needed to help clinicians optimise and personalise treatment and assist scientists undertaking novel treatment regimen trials. Promising outcome proxy measures, including sputum bacillary load and host immune response, are widely reported with variable results. However, they have not been studied together in combination with antibiotic exposure. The aim of this observational cohort study is to investigate which antibiotic exposures correlate with sputum bacillary load and which with the host immune response. Subsequently, we will explore if these correlations can be used to inform a candidate combined biomarker predicting cure. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: All patients aged ≥ 18, diagnosed with drug-sensitive pulmonary TB (culture or molecular test), eligible for standard anti-TB treatment, at selected London, UK TB Services, will be invited to participate in this observational cohort study (target sample size=210). Patients will be asked to give blood for host transcriptomics and antibiotic plasma exposure, in addition to standard of care sputum samples for bacillary load. Antibiotic plasma concentrations will be quantified using a validated liquid chromatograph triple quadrupole mass spectrometer (LC-MS/MS) assay and sputum bacillary load by mycobacterial growth incubator tube time to positivity. Expression from a total of 35 prespecified host blood genes will be quantified using NanoString®. Antibiotic exposure, sputum bacillary load and host blood transcriptomic time series data will be analysed using nonlinear mixed-effects models. Correlations between combinations of longitudinal biomarkers and microbiological cure at the end of treatment and remaining relapse free for 1 year thereafter will be analysed using logistic regression and Cox proportional hazard models. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The observational cohort study has been approved by the UK's HRA REC (20/SW/0007). Written informed consent will be obtained. Results will be disseminated via publication, presentation and through engagement with institutes/companies developing novel anti-TB treatment combinations

Statistically-based survey plans to estimate the concrete strength in existing RC buildings

In the proposed study, a framework for the definition of a safety factor leading to a reliableestimate of the mean concrete strength in existing reinforced concrete (RC) buildings is presented. Themain objective is to provide a methodology capable of establishing a reliable correlation between a givenlevel of knowledge that is required (which implies that a number of destructive tests have to be carriedout) and the confidence in the corresponding mean estimate of the strength that is obtained. Thedevelopment of this approach requires dividing the building into areas with a potentially homogeneousconcrete strength (e.g. each building storey). Furthermore, the methodology also uses the notion ofdiscrete structure where the concrete strength of each structural element of a given homogeneousbuilding section is assumed to be defined by a single strength value, which can be different than thoseof the remaining structural elements. The reliable value of the mean concrete strength is established bya boundary value defined according to an admissible variation with respect to the true mean value andincludes the effect of uncertainty due to sampling. This admissible variation is defined by a procedurethat uses both destructive and non-destructive test results. The referred boundary value allows thedefinition of a safety factor which represents the maximum admissible ratio between the true mean valueand the corresponding reliable estimate. The presented study also proposes an alternative approachregarding the definition of the Eurocode 8-Part 3 knowledge levels based on the relation between thenumber of structural members that were tested and the total number of structural members. An adaptiveconfidence factor for the mean value of the material strength is then provided for each knowledge levelas well as an approximation for the admissible global variability of the concrete strength in eachhomogeneous area of the discrete building. The proposed framework can be seen to be a more consistentstatistically-based alternative to the confidence factor values proposed by Eurocode 8-Part 3

The Costa Rican Ecological Corridor and Wildlife Connectivity Project Part III: Understanding Animal Movement

The Alexander Skutch Biological Corridor located in Costa Rica is home to a region possessing one of the “richest concentrations of species and ecosystem diversity in the world ” (Miller, Chang & Johnson 2001, p.7). The area, once teeming with wildlife and greenery, has been subjected to human encroachment and development. The increasing presence of human beings within the corridor has fragmented the area and made it difficult for wildlife to function naturally in their habitats. Because there is so much importance placed on species biodiversity, especially in an area as unique as the biological corridor, conservation measures are being taken to maintain the land. The corridor includes many “fragmentationsensitive species for which corridors are likely” (Beier & Noss, 1998, p. 1242), necessary for their survival. However, since protection of the corridor has not been completely successful, our research will study what effect fragmentation has had on the wildlife currently residing in the area and how human development has affected their movement and home ranges. The Alexander Skutch Biological Corridor acts as a passageway for wildlife to move from Las Nubes to Los Cusingos. With the construction of roads and modification of the land for agriculture and human development, the connectivity of the landscape has been disrupted. Our research focuses on how animal home ranges within the corridor are affected by human activity. By mapping the photographs of wildlife taken by 9 camera traps within the corridor, we can infer if human impact of land use and roads have affected the ease of animal movement. With roads passing throughout the corridor and increased human landuse, we hypothesize that ease of animal movement is decreased. The roads may act as a barrier, as the sound of human activity and the threat of vehicles may deter animals from crossing a road. Furthermore, much of the oncerich rainforest within the corridor has been cleared for coffee farming and human settlement. This poses a threat to some of the native fauna species, as they may be more exposed to predation by leaving the protection of the dense rainforest cover. This may impact their home range, as well

Understanding and applying pharmacometric modelling and simulation in clinical practice and research

Understanding the dose-concentration-effect relationship is a fundamental component of clinical pharmacology. Interpreting data arising from observations of this relationship requires the use of mathematical models; i.e. pharmacokinetic (PK) models to describe the relationship between dose and concentration and pharmacodynamic (PD) models describing the relationship between concentration and effect. Drug development requires several iterations of pharmacometric model-informed learning and confirming. This includes modelling to understand the dose-response in preclinical studies, deriving a safe dose for first-in-man, and the overall analysis of Phase I/II data to optimise the dose for safety and efficacy in Phase III pivotal trials. However, drug development is not the boundary at which PKPD understanding and application stops. PKPD concepts will be useful to anyone involved in the prescribing and administration of medicines for purposes such as determining off-label dosing in special populations, individualising dosing based on a measured biomarker (personalised medicine) and in determining whether lack of efficacy or unexpected toxicity maybe solved by adjusting the dose rather than the drug. In clinical investigator-led study design, PKPD can be used to ensure the optimal dose is used, and crucially to define the expected effect size, thereby ensuring power calculations are based on sound prior information. In the clinical setting the most likely people to hold sufficient expertise to advise on PKPD matters will be the pharmacists and clinical pharmacologists. This paper reviews fundamental PKPD principles and provides some real-world examples of PKPD use in clinical practice and applied clinical research