The 1967 Referendum

The 1967 Referendum symbolised the political and legal emancipation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. However, despite the high hopes the referendum set out to achieve, the equivocation of the ‘yes’ vote over constitutional reform led to no real or clear-cut changes at al

In memory of Prof. Dr. Karl Mais (1940-2012)

Our friend, colleague, supervisor, chairman... our Charlie, who came back from the underground so many times, entered it the last time, without return. On January 25, 2012 the Earth opened for him, as would say the old Romans: “Mundus subterraneus patet”. Charlie will not come back, but for us, his colleagues and friends, he will stay among us for a long time. Wwhenever we will talk about past events, we shall say: “Charlie was with us  ... Charlie organised  ... it was Charlie’s idea  ... Charlie took care for this ...” Archaeologist by education, caver, speleologist, karstologist, professor, “Hofrath”, head of the Speleological institute, co-worker of Vienna’s museum, chair of the International Speleological Union commission, organiser and Nestor of ALCADI  ... for sure I cannot enumerate all. Probably I omitted more than I mentioned. For Acta carsologica it is more important to tell a little more about the contacts of Prof. Mais with Slovenia. He was a sort of a bridge between older generation of Austrian speleologists, just to mention G. Abel and H. Trimmel, who cultivated traditionally friendly contacts with Slovene cavers, where late F. Habe was the animator, and younger generation, where friendly contacts and reciprocal visits are no more the main topic, but are replaced by professional contacts and co-operation. Prof. Mais was very active at both sides. In Slovenia he attended professional meetings, congresses, and symposia, especially International Karstological School “Classical Karst”. In the 20 years of school existence he participated ten times, being one of the most frequent participants. I remember well his interesting, attractive and lively presented papers where he always told us something new and surprising related to history of karstology and speleology. He was always prepared to help. He took every question or demand for the advice very seriously, studied it and his answer brought much more than anybody expected; it did not matter whether the question was related to an important Austrian researcher from the 18th century or to a recently edited “karst” stamp. He liked to come to the Karst Institute at Postojna very much. Archives materials from Postojna were good supplement to his studies at Vienna’s archives. He had still many plans and wishes to realize regarding the history of karst research. We discussed open questions on Nagel, Hauer, Penck, Putick. Wwithout Karl’s help maybe we will never get the answers. Wwhen our journal Acta carsologica became oriented more towards international spheres, Prof. Mais co-operated as the author and as the reviewer. Between the years 1994-1999 he published four important papers on karst geomorphology and karst research history in Acta carsologica. At the University of Nova Gorica he was a supervisor of doctoral students, which was a very important help for this young university and even more for still younger programme of karstology. At the end I must mention that not only his professionalknowledge but also his kind-heartedness, understanding, good wiliness, and optimism will be missed the most. Even in the most unpleasant situation, when the group of excursionists waited in front of the cave door and nobody had the key, or when he has to sleep in the car in front of the hotel where he booked the room and had to start to sort the slides at twilight because he was the first speaker at the symposium he remained in good mood. This is Charlie I will keep in my mind: smiling, gentle, and in good humour discussing and explaining complicated professional questions.Andrej Kranj

Anthron Society (Postojna 1889 - 1911), the Beginning of Organised Speleology in Slovenia

Sredi 19. stol. sta bila jamarstvo in speleologija na Kranjskem že dobro razvita. Od 1878 se je za naš kras pričel zanimati F. Kraus. 1879 je ustanovil “Verein für Höhlenkunde”, leto kasneje pa “Karst Comité”. Kmalu zatem je želel ustanoviti tudi podružnico tega društva v Postojni. V Planini je bilo že 50 bodočih članov. Poleti 1889 sta domačina z Velikega Otoka pri Postojni odkrila vhod v Otoško jamo, del postojnskega jamskega sistema. Nastal je spor za lastništvo Postojnske jame in kako naj bi delili dohodek. Takoj za tem je bilo ustanovljeno društvo Anthron - odziv na odkritje Otoške jame. Anthron je bilo ekskluzivno društvo z omejenim številom članom, ki so morali živeti v Postojni - večina jih je bila članov postojnske Jamske komisije. »lani Anthrona so odkrili pomembne del Postojnskega jamskega sistema, raziskovali jame v okolici in pomagali takratnim najvidnejšim speleologom Krausu, Martelu, Perku in Puticku. Ko je bilo v Ljubljani ustanovljeno Društvo za raziskavanje podzemskih jam in je Perko objavil namen ustanoviti speleološki inštitut v Postojni, je bilo društvo Anthron ukinjeno. Tako je mogoče dokumentirano podpreti trditev, da se je organizirana speleološka dejavnost v Sloveniji pričela 1889.In the middle of the 19th century caving and speleological activities were well developed in Kranjska (Carniola) already. F. Kraus took an interest in our karst by 1878. In 1879 he founded ˝Verein für Höhlenkunde˝ and a year later ˝Karst Comité˝. Soon afterwards he wanted to set up a branch of ˝Verein˝ at Postojna. In Planina he had 50 future members already. In summer of 1889 some villagers of Veliki Otok near Postojna discovered the entrance to so-called Otoška jama, making a part of Postojnska jama system. The dispute about the ownership and how to share the income of Postojnska jama aroused. And soon afterwards in Postojna the club Anthron was founded - a reaction to this discovery. Anthron was an exclusive club with limited number of members who must live in Postojna - and majority were members of Postojnska jama Cave (Managing) Commission. The Anthron members discovered an important part of Postojnska jama system, explored caves nearby and helped the best known speleologists of that time such as Kraus, Martel, Perko and Putick. When Speleological club was set up in Ljubljana and Perko announced the foundation of Speleological Institute at Postojna, the club Anthron was dismissed. Thus the documents prove that continuous organised speleological activity started in Slovenia in 1889

Expanding the flexibility of genome editing approaches for population control of the malaria mosquito

Discovery and adaptation of CRISPR-Cas systems for genome editing have allowed us to gain an efficient and yet simple tool for genetic manipulation in various fields of molecular biology and biotechnology. One of the most promising applications is the use of CRISPR-Cas9 endonuclease for gene drive systems as a population control strategy for various insect pests of medical and agricultural importance. Use of CRISPR-Cas9 endonuclease in gene drive applications has shown great promise in the laboratory, particularly for the control of Anopheles gambiae, the major vector of malaria. However, the performance of such gene drives can be limited by the range of available target sequences and by a propensity of existing endonuclease formulations to generate resistant mutations that hinder the gene drive’s efficiency. To expand the flexibility of gene drive systems, computational analysis was performed to identify additional Cas9 orthologs and their specificities that could usefully augment the targeting range of endonuclease-based gene drives. Two alternative variants of CRISPR-Cas endonucleases found in the bacterial species Lactobacillus rhamnosus and Bacteroides fragilis were assessed for their potential to expand the targeting space in the genome Anopheles gambiae. In addition, a computational tool was developed that evaluates neighbouring sequences to the target site to measure both its likely functional constraint and its likely propensity for DNA repair that could generate in-frame alleles. Using this approach we were able to generate a prioritized list of Anopheles gambiae target sites for gene drive applications that are less likely to be compromised by resistant alleles.Open Acces

Characterizing Structure, Properties, and Deformation in Metallic Glasses and Olivine Using Instrumented Nanoindentation

Micro- and nanomechanical testing can provide significant insight about the structure, properties, and behavior of materials. These techniques are nondestructive, require only limited amounts of material, and have been known to detect a brittle-to-ductile transition in mechanical behavior due to a size effect. This work utilizes this type of testing to explore fundamental questions about the structure, properties, and behavior of two disparate material systems: metallic glasses and olivine. Metallic glasses are metallic alloys devoid of any long-range order. Their unique atomic structure imbues them with properties such as a high elastic strain limit, near-theoretical strengths, and the ability to be thermoplastically formed. Despite their high strengths, metallic glasses suffer from an intrinsic lack of tensile ductility compared to other high-performance materials. Recent studies have shown that the macroscopic deformation behavior of these materials might be controlled by structural heterogeneities, the exact nature of which remains ill-defined. To further this area of research, the heterogeneous microstructure of a Zr-based monolithic bulk metallic glass as well as the glass phase of a Ti-based bulk metallic glass matrix-crystalline composite was investigated using nanoindentation and dynamic modulus mapping. Significant spatial variations in the mechanical properties measured by both techniques suggest a hierarchical arrangement of mechanical heterogeneities in bulk metallic glasses and their composites. Moreover, a previously unobserved elastic microstructure, comprising an interconnected network of elastic features, was revealed by dynamic modulus mapping. Parameters such as aspect ratio and orientation of the microstructural features were defined here, which highlighted the presence of microstructural domains or colonies in the elastic microstructure. The effects of heat treatment and deformation on these heterogeneities were also investigated. The rheology of olivine plays an important role in the dynamics of Earth__s upper mantle. At conditions of low temperature and high stress, such as in semi-brittle regions of the lithosphere, the deformation mechanism transitions into low temperature plasticity. Low temperature plasticity is difficult to study in typical laboratory conditions, requiring high confining pressures to suppress cracking in favor of dislocation glide. Low temperature plasticity of olivine was investigated using nanoindentation and micropillar compression. Nanoindentation provided a means of achieving plastic deformation in the absence of cracking, but measurements obtained via this method are notoriously difficult to translate into uniaxial properties. Using available models to obtain these properties, the data were fit to an established low temperature plasticity flow law, which predicted Peierls stresses for the olivine in the range of 5.32 __ 6.45 GPa. As a complement to the nanoindentation, room temperature plasticity was also achieved using micropillar compression. While some of the pillars exhibited catastrophic shearing after a dwell time during creep testing, other pillars showed evidence of plastic deformation after creep testing that was confirmed to be dislocation slip. The data obtained from the micropillar compression was in good agreement with the flow law fits from the nanoindentation. These results provide increased confidence in the extrapolation of high-pressure and high-temperature laboratory experiments to low-temperature conditions and illustrate the applicability of micromechanical testing methods to the study of mineral rheology