The oldest new woodland on earth: Recognising, mapping, naming and narrating the Great Western Woodlands

The Great Western Woodlands (GWW) cover an area of 160,000 km2 of largely intact semi-arid woodland in inland south-western Australia. The highly biodiverse GWW is a large-scale ecosystem and a refuge for native species endangered elsewhere, but faces many challenges, including poor fire management, mining and mining exploration impacts, proposed clearing for agriculture, introduced species and climate change. This paper traces the way in which stories about the region have powerfully shaped different groups' dealings with it. In Western Australia, settler society's long-standing focus on the agricultural zone of the Wheatbelt and the mineral wealth of the goldfields as 'productive' landscapes produced a dominant narrative about conquering nature, physical labour and economic wealth that marginalised the ecologies and First Peoples of the GWW. More recently, a network of local settler and Indigenous people, NGOs, scientists and conservationists have begun to produce a new narrative with the cultural and natural values of the woodland at its heart, as a foundation for better understanding, managing and protecting the GWW. Reflecting on the historical framing of a particular region reveals the important cultural-ecological work performed by regional narratives

Frogs and Feeling Communities:A Study in History of Emotions and Environmental History

This article offers an overview of some approaches from the history of emotions that environmental historians could employ in order to sharpen engagement with emotion, and applies some of these approaches to a long history of human–frog interactions, by way of example. We propose that emotions have played a key role in the constitution of human communities, as well as enabling or inhibiting particular kinds of human thoughts and actions in relation with the living planet. In tracing human–frog relations over time we tease apart the complex historic relationships between cultural frameworks, scientific expectations and conventions, and the texts and images emerging from these contexts, which operate explicitly or implicitly to train and discipline the emotional selves of human adults and children

Contesting identity and status: a study of female commercial sex workers and citizenship.

The extant research concerning commercial-sexwork is extensive, covering a diverse range of issues, such as physical and psychological risks; with on-street work regarded as persistently perilous. CSWs are marginalised from mainstream society by their work identity and associated behaviours which are incongruous with societal mores and norms for ideal citizens. Yet, apart from research related to geographical space and citizenship rights, and a few studies relating to sexual citizenship; the relationship between citizenship status/identity and commercial-sexwork is overlooked or included as an ‘add on’ to other concerns. This is regarded as an omission as those who do not conform to citizenship ideals are offered a “hand-up” or experience increased monitoring by the state in the form of law and policy directives. Importantly, for CSWs historical and contemporary legal and policy discourses (such as nuisance, victim, abuser, exiting and criminal) impact negatively upon their relationship with citizenship status compounding their marginalisation. Thus the overarching aim within this thesis is that it explores the citizenship journeys of CSWs utilising Lister’s (2003a) differentiated universalism citizenship concept. To achieve this aim there are four research questions; ‘How do CSWs experience citizenship?’, ‘How do participants express their understandings of citizenship?’, ‘To what extent are values and ethics a component of commercial-sexwork?’ and ‘How does a citizenship identity relate to a commercial-sexwork identity?’. A thematic analysis of data from five semi-structured interviews and 123 online forum correspondents found three overarching themes: ‘Understanding citizenship: Civil rights and duties, and social rights’; ‘Enacting citizenship: active citizenship and intimate citizenship and commercial sex work’ and ‘Exiting commercial-sexwork: becoming ‘normal’ citizens’. The main findings were that CSWs understand the conditional nature of citizenship; they pursue the right to work and the duties to pay tax and national insurance; evidence active citizenship behaviours, a community of practice and there is support for the notion that the disembodied nature of commercial-sexwork corresponds to work within the public arena - challenging the public/private binary. Yet, the state has appropriated these CSWs citizenship contributions without the corresponding benefits of citizenship status or identity. Further, via the quasi-legal status of commercial-sex work, the state has ignored or misrecognised key citizenship attributes such as agency in terms of their right to choose to work in this arena; such omissions amount to an injustice. This is compounded by the state’s exiting process which does little to advance CSWs status and identity but rather leads to a disciplined citizenship status. This thesis concludes that for transformative recognition, a more differentiated citizenship concept which recognises the similarity between CSWs and other females in terms of claims to rights, agency and justice but acknowledges their diversity is a necessity. Additionally, policy and legal discourses are ineffective in reducing CSWs marginalisation which impacts on their citizenship status. The latter will continue unless law and policy makers explicitly recognise CSWs citizenship contributions whilst considering how legal and policy discourse negatively construct the citizenship status of those who conform (victims or those who exit) and those who do not (nuisances or criminals)

Eco-anxiety and environmental history: a forum

Environmental historians, like others who study and write about the environment, have long worked with the emotional and psychological impacts of environmental change, including grief, anxiety, rage, and despair. But the increasing prevalence of ecological anxiety in recent years, prompted by new indicators of planetary distress, suggests the need for new histories which address humans as subject together with other species to these disruptions in earth systems. We suggest that disturbed earth systems demand histories that are more fluid and more expansive, and more aware of human vulnerabilities. We present several possible modes for these histories, approaching human vulnerability with the languages of emotion and mental illness and through acute affective responses to the production of historical narratives. What, asks each contribution, do we do with these anxieties and emotions? How do we write the psychological and affective dimensions of extreme climates and weather events in contemporary histories? Implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, temporal and spatial scale are modulated through these case studies of emotional entanglements and vulnerability

Why don't we share data and code? Perceived barriers and benefits to public archiving practices

The biological sciences community is increasingly recognizing the value ofopen, reproducible and transparent research practices for science and societyat large. Despite this recognition, many researchers fail to share their dataand code publicly. This pattern may arise from knowledge barriers abouthow to archive data and code, concerns about its reuse, and misalignedcareer incentives. Here, we define, categorize and discuss barriers to dataand code sharing that are relevant to many research fields. We explorehow real and perceived barriers might be overcome or reframed in thelight of the benefits relative to costs. By elucidating these barriers and thecontexts in which they arise, we can take steps to mitigate them and alignour actions with the goals of open science, both as individual scientistsand as a scientific community

A High-Throughput Organoid Microinjection Platform to Study Gastrointestinal Microbiota and Luminal Physiology

Background & Aims The human gut microbiota is becoming increasingly recognized as a key factor in homeostasis and disease. The lack of physiologically relevant in vitro models to investigate host–microbe interactions is considered a substantial bottleneck for microbiota research. Organoids represent an attractive model system because they are derived from primary tissues and embody key properties of the native gut lumen; however, access to the organoid lumen for experimental perturbation is challenging. Here, we report the development and validation of a high-throughput organoid microinjection system for cargo delivery to the organoid lumen and high-content sampling. Methods A microinjection platform was engineered using off-the-shelf and 3-dimensional printed components. Microinjection needles were modified for vertical trajectories and reproducible injection volumes. Computer vision (CVis) and microfabricated CellRaft Arrays (Cell Microsystems, Research Triangle Park, NC) were used to increase throughput and enable high-content sampling of mock bacterial communities. Modeling preformed using the COMSOL Multiphysics platform predicted a hypoxic luminal environment that was functionally validated by transplantation of fecal-derived microbial communities and monocultures of a nonsporulating anaerobe. Results CVis identified and logged locations of organoids suitable for injection. Reproducible loads of 0.2 nL could be microinjected into the organoid lumen at approximately 90 organoids/h. CVis analyzed and confirmed retention of injected cargos in approximately 500 organoids over 18 hours and showed the requirement to normalize for organoid growth for accurate assessment of barrier function. CVis analyzed growth dynamics of a mock community of green fluorescent protein– or Discosoma sp. red fluorescent protein-expressing bacteria, which grew within the organoid lumen even in the presence of antibiotics to control media contamination. Complex microbiota communities from fecal samples survived and grew in the colonoid lumen without appreciable changes in complexity. Conclusions High-throughput microinjection into organoids represents a next-generation in vitro approach to investigate gastrointestinal luminal physiology and the gastrointestinal microbiota