GST distribution review: final report

The Panel conducting the Review was asked to consider whether the current approach to distributing the GST (according to the principle of horizontal fiscal equalisation, hereafter referred to as HFE) would ensure that Australia is best placed to respond to the expected significant structural changes in the economy and would maintain public confidence in financial relationships within the Federation. However, the commission was not given without restrictions. The Terms of Reference also state that the Review will be guided by a number of factors, including that: the long-standing practice of equalisation between States has served Australia well the GST will continue to be distributed to the States on the basis that they should have equal capacity to provide services and infrastructure to their citizens GST will be distributed as ‘untied’ payments the Commonwealth Grants Commission (CGC) will continue to make recommendations on the distribution of the GST.2 In addition, there is no extra Commonwealth revenue available with which to ‘buy’ reform, or smooth any transition. The Panel has therefore proceeded on the basis that States that are fiscally weaker at any given time must continue to have the capacity to provide substantially similar levels of services and infrastructure to their citizens from within the current revenue envelope

DNA barcoding as new diagnostic tool to lethal plant poisoning in herbivorous mammals

Reliable identification of plant species in the digestive tract of a deceased animal often represents the major key to diagnose a lethal intoxication with poisonous plants in veterinary pathology. In many cases, identification of the species is challenging or even impossible because the diagnostic morphological features have been degraded, and because the interpretation of such features requires a considerable expertise in plant anatomy and biodiversity. The use of DNA barcoding markers can support or even replace classical morphological assessment. While these markers have been widely used for plant taxonomy, their forensic application to clarify causes of animal poisoning is novel. In addition, we use specific single-nucleotide polymorphisms as fingerprints. This allows for a clear decision even in cases, where the conventionally used statistical e-values remain ambiguous. In the current work, we explore the feasibility of this strategy in a couple of exemplary cases, either in concert with anatomical diagnostics, or in cases where visual species identification is not possible, or where chemical toxin detection methods are not well established, complex, time consuming and expensive

The First High Redshift Quasar from Pan-STARRS

We present the discovery of the first high redshift (z > 5.7) quasar from the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System 1 (Pan-STARRS1 or PS1). This quasar was initially detected as an i dropoutout in PS1, confirmed photometrically with the SAO Widefield InfraRed Camera (SWIRC) at Arizona's Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) and the Gamma-Ray Burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector (GROND) at the MPG 2.2 m telescope in La Silla. The quasar was verified spectroscopically with the the MMT Spectrograph, Red Channel and the Cassegrain Twin Spectrograph (TWIN) at the Calar Alto 3.5 m telescope. It has a redshift of 5.73, an AB z magnitude of 19.4, a luminosity of 3.8 x 10^47 erg/s and a black hole mass of 6.9 x 10^9 solar masses. It is a Broad Absorption Line quasar with a prominent Ly-beta peak and a very blue continuum spectrum. This quasar is the first result from the PS1 high redshift quasar search that is projected to discover more than a hundred i dropout quasars, and could potentially find more than 10 z dropout (z > 6.8) quasars.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

High-Energy gamma-ray Astronomy and String Theory

There have been observations, first from the MAGIC Telescope (July 2005) and quite recently (September 2008) from the FERMI Satellite Telescope, on non-simultaneous arrival of high-energy photons from distant celestial sources. In each case, the highest energy photons were delayed, as compared to their lower-energy counterparts. Although the astrophysics at the source of these energetic photons is still not understood, and such non simultaneous arrival might be due to non simultaneous emission as a result of conventional physics effects, nevertheless, rather surprisingly, the observed time delays can also fit excellently some scenarios in quantum gravity, predicting Lorentz violating space-time "foam" backgrounds with a non-trivial subluminal vacuum refractive index suppressed linearly by a quantum gravity scale of the order of the reduced Planck mass. In this pedagogical talk, I discuss the MAGIC and FERMI findings in this context and I argue on a theoretical model of space-time foam in string/brane theory that can accommodate the findings of those experiments in agreement with all other stringent tests of Lorentz invariance. However, I stress the current ambiguities/uncertainties on the source mechanisms, which need to be resolved first before definite conclusions are reached regarding quantum gravity foam scenarios.Comment: 34 pages latex, 12 eps figures incorporated, uses special macros. Based on invited plenary talk at DICE 2008 Conference (Castiglioncello, Italy), September 22-26 200

The ACROBAT 2022 Challenge: Automatic Registration Of Breast Cancer Tissue

The alignment of tissue between histopathological whole-slide-images (WSI) is crucial for research and clinical applications. Advances in computing, deep learning, and availability of large WSI datasets have revolutionised WSI analysis. Therefore, the current state-of-the-art in WSI registration is unclear. To address this, we conducted the ACROBAT challenge, based on the largest WSI registration dataset to date, including 4,212 WSIs from 1,152 breast cancer patients. The challenge objective was to align WSIs of tissue that was stained with routine diagnostic immunohistochemistry to its H&E-stained counterpart. We compare the performance of eight WSI registration algorithms, including an investigation of the impact of different WSI properties and clinical covariates. We find that conceptually distinct WSI registration methods can lead to highly accurate registration performances and identify covariates that impact performances across methods. These results establish the current state-of-the-art in WSI registration and guide researchers in selecting and developing methods

Taxation and market power

"We analyze the incidence and welfare effects of unit sales taxes in experimental monopoly and Bertrand markets. We find, in line with economic theory, that firms with no market power are able to shift a high share of a tax burden on to consumers, independent of whether buyers are automated or human players. In monopoly markets, a monopolist bears a large share of the burden of a tax increase. With human buyers, however, this share is smaller than with automated buyers as the presence of human buyers constrains the pricing behavior of a monopolist." (author's abstract)"Dieser Artikel untersucht Inzidenz- und Wohlfahrtseffekte einer Mengensteuer in experimentellen Monopol- und Bertrand-Märkten. Im Einklang mit der ökonomischen Theorie sind Firmen ohne Marktmacht in der Lage, einen großen Anteil der Last einer Steuererhöhung an die Konsumenten weiterzugeben. Dies gilt unabhängig davon, ob die Käufer simuliert sind oder die Kaufentscheidungen durch reale Käufer getroffen werden. In Monopolmärkten trägt der Monopolist einen großen Anteil der Last einer Steuererhöhung. Werden die Kaufentscheidungen durch reale Käufer getroffen, ist dieser Anteil jedoch kleiner als mit simulierten Käufern, da reale Käufer im Experiment das Preissetzungsverhalten des Monopolisten einschränken." (Autorenreferat

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Community and the press. by Nick Greiner

tag=1 data=Community and the press. by Nick Greiner tag=2 data=Greiner, Nick tag=3 data=Australian Quarterly [AQ], tag=4 data=65 tag=5 data=1 tag=6 data=Autumn 1993 tag=7 data=558-563. tag=8 data=JOURNALISM tag=10 data=The importance of press freedom and quality to any society is self evident and rarely challenged. It is because I uphold their importance, and not through any challenge to those fundamentals, that I offer the criticisms in these pages. tag=11 data=1993/5/9 tag=12 data=93/0551 tag=13 data=CABThe importance of press freedom and quality to any society is self evident and rarely challenged. It is because I uphold their importance, and not through any challenge to those fundamentals, that I offer the criticisms in these pages

Premiers past: Nick Greiner

The fifth program in this eight part series features Nick Greiner, who led a radically conservative government in NSW from 1988 to 1992. His four year term was characterised by cost cutting and economic restructure. Nick Greiner ultimately fell victim to one of his own creations after being named as technically corrupt by the Independent Commission Against Corruption, or ICAC

Collaborative Metadata Definition using Controlled Vocabularies, and Ontologies

Data's role in a variety of technical and research areas is undeniably growing. This can be seen, for example, in the increased investments in the development of data-intensive analytical methods such as artificial intelligence (Zhang 2022), as well as in the rising rate of data generation which is expected to continue into the near future (Rydning and Shirer 2021). Academic research is one of the areas, where data is the lifeblood of generating hypotheses, creating new knowledge, and reporting results. Unlike proprietary industry data, academic research data is often subjected to stricter requirements regarding transparency, and accessibility. This is in part due to the public funding which many research institutions receive. One way to fulfil these requirements is by observing the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reusability) principles for scientific data (Wilkinson et al. 2016). These introduce a variety of benefits, such as increased research reproducibility, a more transparent use of public funding, and environmental sustainability. A way of implementing the FAIR principles in practice is with the help of FAIR Digital Objects (FDOs) (European Commission: Directorate-General for Research and Innovation 2018). A FDO consists of data, an accompanying Persistent Identifier (PID), and rich metadata which describes the context of the data. Additionally, the data format contained in an FDO should be widely used, and ideally open. Our presentation is focused on the third of FDO's components mentioned previously – metadata. It outlines the concept for a framework which enables the collaborative definition of metadata fields which can be used to annotate FDO-encapsulated data for a given domain of research.The first component of the presented framework is a controlled vocabulary of the domain related to the data which needs to be annotated. A controlled vocabulary is a collective that denotes a controlled list of terms, their definitions, and the relations between them. In the framework presented in this contribution, the terms correspond to the metadata fields used in the data annotation process. Formally, the type of controlled vocabularies used in the framework is a thesaurus (National Information Standards Organization 2010). Thesauri consist not only of the elements mentioned previously, but also allow for the inclusion of synonyms for every defined term. This eliminates the ambiguity which can occur when using terms with similar definitions. Additionally, thesauri specify simple hierarchical relations between the terms in the vocabulary, which can provide an explicit structure to the set of defined metadata fields. The most important feature of our framework, however, is that the controlled vocabularies can be developed in a collaborative fashion by the domain experts of a given research field. Specifically, people are able to propose term definitions and edits, as well as cast votes on the appropriateness of terms which have already been proposed.Despite their advantages, one limit of thesauri is their lacking capability of relating metadata fields to each other in a more semantically rich fashion. This motivated the use of the second component of the framework, namely ontologies. An ontology can be defined as “a specification of a conceptualization” (Gruber 1995). More precisely, it is a data structure which represents entities in a given domain, as well as various relations between them. After a set of metadata fields has been defined within a controlled vocabulary, that vocabulary can be transformed into an ontology which contains additional relations between the fields. These can extend beyond the hierarchical structure of a thesaurus and can contain domain-specific information about the metadata fields. For example, one such relation can denote the data type of the value which a given field must take. Furthermore, ontologies can be used to link not only metadata, but also data, as well as individual FDOs themselves. This can contribute to the Reusability aspect of FAIR Data Objects. For example, an FDO generated by a research group in a given domain can be linked to an existing domain ontology. Afterwards, the FDO can be reused more easily by researchers from the same scientific field, because the ontology will have already specified the FDO's relation to the subject area. Additionally, cross-domain ontologies can be combined with each other which can increase the reusability of FDOs beyond their domain boundaries.The components described above are being implemented in the form of multiple software tools related to the framework. The first one, a controlled vocabulary editor written as a Python-based web application called VocPopuli, is the entry point for domain experts who want to develop a metadata vocabulary for their field of research or lab. The software, whose first version is already being tested internally, enables the collaborative definition, and editing of metadata terms. Additionally, it annotates each term, as well as the entire vocabulary, with the help of the PROV Data Model (PROV-DM) (Moreau and Missier 2013) - a schema used to describe the provenance of a given object. Finally, it assigns a PID to each term in the vocabulary, as well as the vocabulary itself. It is worth noting that the generated vocabularies themselves can be seen through the prism of FDOs: they contain data (the defined terms) which is annotated with metadata (e.g., the terms' authors) and provided with a PID.The second software solution will facilitate the transformation of the vocabularies developed with the help of VocPopuli into ontologies. It will handle two distinct use cases – the from-scratch conversion of vocabularies into ontologies, and the augmentation of existing ontologies with the terms from a given thesaurus. As is the case with VocPopuli, the second tool is being developed in the Python programming language. The software solutions will be finally tested by two semi-overlapping groups of users from materials science. On the one hand, domain experts will input, edit, and discuss vocabulary terms in their area of interest, and thus create vocabularies. On the other hand, vocabulary and ontology administrators will oversee the vocabulary creation, and ontology transformation processes in a semi-automatic fashion.After development is complete, the tools will be used in the creation of controlled vocabularies for various experimental procedures, as well as their transformation and/or integration into semantically richer ontologies. This will augment our already published work in the area (Garabedian et al. 2022) and will thereby test the integration of the new framework with already existing resources. The new vocabularies will describe processes in multiple domains, such as materials science, tribology, and metalworking. Afterwards, the developed thesauri will be used in the creation of metadata templates which can be used to annotate experimental data generated in the procedures mentioned above