A list of reptiles and amphibians from Box Gum Grassy Woodlands in south-eastern Australia

A large-scale biodiversity monitoring program examining the response of herpetofauna to the Australian Government’s Environmental Stewardship Program is taking place in south-eastern Australia within the critically endangered Box Gum Grassy Woodland vegetation community. Field surveys involve counting reptiles in areas under Environmental Stewardship management. These “Stewardship” areas have been matched with areas managed for primary production (domestic livestock grazing). We list reptiles recorded during surveys conducted between 2010 and 2012. We recorded sixty-nine species from ten families. The list will be useful for workers interested in the zoogeographical distribution of reptiles and amphibians in fragmented agricultural woodland ecosystems

Bridging the Gap Between Science, Economics and Policy to Develop and Implement a Pilot Market Based Instrument for Soil Carbon

Increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) has potential to offset greenhouse gas emissions, but the scope for on-farm carbon sequestration is poorly understood. A pilot scheme was developed in Central West NSW, Australia to trial the use of a market-based instrument to encourage farmers to increase soil organic carbon levels. The pilot considered the relationship between land use, management practices and soil carbon levels; offered alternative contract designs to attract landholders; and developed monitoring and reporting protocols. The pilot was rolled-out in 2011 and 2012 and had 11 successful tenders with an average price of $A37 per t CO2-e. The results of this conservation tender will assist the design of future programs aimed at encouraging mitigation effort from the agricultural sector

Cost-Effective Use of Silver Dressings for the Treatment of Hard-to-Heal Chronic Venous Leg Ulcers

Aim To estimate the cost-effectiveness of silver dressings using a health economic model based on time-to-wound-healing in hard-to-heal chronic venous leg ulcers (VLUs). Background Chronic venous ulceration affects 1–3% of the adult population and typically has a protracted course of healing, resulting in considerable costs to the healthcare system. The pathogenesis of VLUs includes excessive and prolonged inflammation which is often related to critical colonisation and early infection. The use of silver dressings to control this bioburden and improve wound healing rates remains controversial. Methods A decision tree was constructed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of treatment with silver compared with non-silver dressings for four weeks in a primary care setting. The outcomes: ‘Healed ulcer’, ‘Healing ulcer’ or ‘No improvement’ were developed, reflecting the relative reduction in ulcer area from baseline to four weeks of treatment. A data set from a recent meta-analysis, based on four RCTs, was applied to the model. Results Treatment with silver dressings for an initial four weeks was found to give a total cost saving (£141.57) compared with treatment with non-silver dressings. In addition, patients treated with silver dressings had a faster wound closure compared with those who had been treated with non-silver dressings. Conclusion The use of silver dressings improves healing time and can lead to overall cost savings. These results can be used to guide healthcare decision makers in evaluating the economic aspects of treatment with silver dressings in hard-to-heal chronic VLUs

Donders is dead: cortical traveling waves and the limits of mental chronometry in cognitive neuroscience

An assumption nearly all researchers in cognitive neuroscience tacitly adhere to is that of space-time separability. Historically, it forms the basis of Donders' difference method, and to date, it underwrites all difference imaging and trial-averaging of cortical activity, including the customary techniques for analyzing fMRI and EEG/MEG data. We describe the assumption and how it licenses common methods in cognitive neuroscience; in particular, we show how it plays out in signal differencing and averaging, and how it misleads us into seeing the brain as a set of static activity sources. In fact, rather than being static, the domains of cortical activity change from moment to moment: Recent research has suggested the importance of traveling waves of activation in the cortex. Traveling waves have been described at a range of different spatial scales in the cortex; they explain a large proportion of the variance in phase measurements of EEG, MEG and ECoG, and are important for understanding cortical function. Critically, traveling waves are not space-time separable. Their prominence suggests that the correct frame of reference for analyzing cortical activity is the dynamical trajectory of the system, rather than the time and space coordinates of measurements. We illustrate what the failure of space-time separability implies for cortical activation, and what consequences this should have for cognitive neuroscience.status: publishe

Generalization of learning by synchronous waves: from perceptual organization to invariant organization

From a few presentations of an object, perceptual systems are able to extract invariant properties such that novel presentations are immediately recognized. This may be enabled by inferring the set of all representations equivalent under certain transformations. We implemented this principle in a neurodynamic model that stores activity patterns representing transformed versions of the same object in a distributed fashion within maps, such that translation across the map corresponds to the relevant transformation. When a pattern on the map is activated, this causes activity to spread out as a wave across the map, activating all the transformed versions represented. Computational studies illustrate the efficacy of the proposed mechanism. The model rapidly learns and successfully recognizes rotated and scaled versions of a visual representation from a few prior presentations. For topographical maps such as primary visual cortex, the mechanism simultaneously represents identity and variation of visual percepts whose features change through time.status: publishe

A list of reptiles and amphibians from Box Gum Grassy Woodlands in south-eastern Australia

A large-scale biodiversity monitoring program examining the response of herpetofauna to the Australian Government's Environmental Stewardship Program is taking place in south-eastern Australia within the critically endangered Box Gum Grassy Woodland vegetation community. Field surveys involve counting reptiles in areas under Environmental Stewardship management. These "Stewardship" areas have been matched with areas managed for primary production (domestic livestock grazing). We list reptiles recorded during surveys conducted between 2010 and 2012. We recorded sixty-nine species from ten families. The list will be useful for workers interested in the zoogeographical distribution of reptiles and amphibians in fragmented agricultural woodland ecosystems

The New Data Quality Task Group (DQTG): ensuring high quality data today and in the future

A new Task Group has been formed within the international Metabolomics Society to provide a focal point for discussions related to experimental data quality within metabolomics experiments. The current group, which was formed in May 2014, consists of co-chairs Dan Bearden (NIST, USA) and Richard Beger (FDA, USA), and an international panel of scientists listed above as co-authors. The voluntary service of these members to this Task Group is predicated on a one-year commitment with the possibility of renewal based upon mutual agreement. The goal of the DQTG is to promote robust quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) in the metabolomics community through increased awareness via communication, outreach and education and through the promotion of best practices. If the Task Group is successful in increasing the use of QC protocols in metabolomics experiments, this will lead to more meaningful data quality metrics and subsequent improvements in data quality. Improvements in data quality will facilitate data exchange, improve inter-laboratory repeatability, enhance the usefulness of publications and improve submissions to metabolomics data repositories. Improved data quality will leverage the potential provided by metabolomics research, findings and approaches, not only in scientific areas, but also for policy and decision makers in regulatory contexts. The strategy of the DQTG is to develop both short term and longer term initiatives. These include: the development of a clear and concise vocabulary and definitions for QA/QC practitioners; educational programs promoting the need for QC in metabolomics; delineation of the various types of QC measurements possible in metabolomics studies; and where and when each type is most suitable for demonstrating data quality. Suggested QC measurements include: blanks, technical replicates, reference materials, pooled samples, spiked samples, synthetic samples, instrument-specific quality measurements, and development of community consensus acceptance criteria for good practice. The DQTG will solicit input from the metabolomics community to obtain a comprehensive view of QA/QC requirements, practices, and approaches in the international community. The DQTG will ask metabolomics scientists to provide feedback through the Metabolomics Society web portal and various public venues. The goal of these efforts is to move toward more consistent QA/QC practices, and potentially, organization of validation exercises for analytical QC techniques with multiple international metabolomics groups. This effort will benefit from the resources, coordination role and global communication channels available through the international Metabolomics Society. The DQTG intend that the information and products generated by the DQTG will be beneficial in persuading researchers, metabolomics services companies, instrument manufacturers and others to provide support for further international analytical QC standardization. Given the increasing role of metabolomics in clinical, pharmaceutical, environmental and general biological research, it is important to start preparing for long-term quality control solutions that can be applied across large numbers of laboratories and measurement platforms that will be applicable for data acquired across many years. Furthermore, it is important to prepare for quality control protocols that are fit-for-purpose for regulatory practice, e.g. in regulatory toxicology. It is equally important that researchers in fields such as systems biology and personalized medicine are able to integrate, confidently and efficiently, metabolomics data with other omics data in large studies. The members of this Task Group are all committed to the importance of data quality and measurement robustness and welcomes your input as the DQTG moves toward a comprehensive QA/QC framework.JRC.I.1-Chemical Assessment and Testin