37 research outputs found
Regulating Clothing Outwork: A Sceptic's View
By applying the strategies of international anti-sweatshop campaigns to the Australian context, recent regulations governing home-based clothing production hold retailers
responsible for policing the wages and employment conditions of clothing outworkers who manufacture clothing on their behalf. This paper argues that the new approach
oversimplifies the regulatory challenge by assuming (1) that Australian clothing production is organised in a hierarchical âbuyer-ledâ linear structure in which core
retail firms have the capacity to control their suppliersâ behaviour; (2) that firms act as unitary moral agents; and (3) that interventions imported from other times and places
are applicable to the contemporary Australian context. After considering some alternative regulatory approaches, the paper concludes that the new regulatory strategy effectively privatises responsibility for labour market conditions â a development that cries out for further debate
A microsporidian impairs Plasmodium falciparum transmission in Anopheles arabiensis mosquitoes
A possible malaria control approach involves the dissemination in mosquitoes of inherited symbiotic microbes to block Plasmodium transmission. However, in the Anopheles gambiae complex, the primary African vectors of malaria, there are limited reports of inherited symbionts that impair transmission. We show that a vertically transmitted microsporidian symbiont (Microsporidia MB) in the An. gambiae complex can impair Plasmodium transmission. Microsporidia MB is present at moderate prevalence in geographically dispersed populations of An. arabiensis in Kenya, localized to the mosquito midgut and ovaries, and is not associated with significant reductions in adult host fecundity or survival. Field-collected Microsporidia MB infected An. arabiensis tested negative for P. falciparum gametocytes and, on experimental infection with P. falciparum, sporozoites arenât detected in Microsporidia MB infected mosquitoes. As a microbe that impairs Plasmodium transmission that is non-virulent and vertically transmitted, Microsporidia MB could be investigated as a strategy to limit malaria transmission
Application of Phylogenetic Microarray Analysis to Discriminate Sources of Fecal Pollution
Conventional methods for fecal source tracking typically
use single
biomarkers to systematically identify or exclude sources. High-throughput
DNA sequence analysis can potentially identify all sources of microbial
contaminants in a single test by measuring the total diversity of
fecal microbial communities. In this study, we used phylogenetic microarray
analysis to determine the comprehensive suite of bacteria that define
major sources of fecal contamination in coastal California. Fecal
wastes were collected from 42 different populations of humans, birds,
cows, horses, elk, and pinnipeds. We characterized bacterial community
composition using a DNA microarray that probes for 16S rRNA genes
of 59â316 different bacterial taxa. Cluster analysis revealed
strong differences in community composition among fecal wastes from
human, birds, pinnipeds, and grazers. Actinobacteria, Bacilli, and
many Gammaproteobacteria taxa discriminated birds from mammalian sources.
Diverse families within the Clostridia and Bacteroidetes taxa discriminated
human wastes, grazers, and pinnipeds from each other. We found 1058
different bacterial taxa that were unique to either human, grazing
mammal, or bird fecal wastes. These OTUs can serve as specific identifier
taxa for these sources in environmental waters. Two field tests in
marine waters demonstrate the capacity of phylogenetic microarray
analysis to track multiple sources with one test