'Big mobs in the city now' : the increasing number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in urban areas

The locations and settings in which Australian Indigenous people live varies, however over 70 % of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia now live in urban or regional urban areas (ABS 2008). Over half of the total population lives in the two states Queensland and New South Wales. The 2006 Census data indicates that 146, 400 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples or 28.3% lives in Queensland. The number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in schools in the greater Brisbane area is approximately 29% of the Queensland population. There are other sizeable urban Indigenous populations along the Queensland coast and larger rural towns. The statistics demonstrate that living in urban centres is as much part of reality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as living in a remote discrete Aboriginal community. Historically, discrete rural and remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have been the focus of most of the research conducted with Indigenous populations. These locations have provided researchers with an easily identifiable study population. However, unlike rural and remote communities, identifying and accessing urban Indigenous communities can be much more difficult despite the growing number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in urban areas. Limited research has been undertaken on the issues that impact on urban Indigenous communities or have explored methods of undertaking research with urban Indigenous communities. This paper will explore the some of the issues and needs of urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in South East Queensland and highlight some of the emerging policy, program and research responses

The Ostrich Market

Marketing,

AN ECONOMIC ASSESSMENT OF WETLAND MITIGATION IN NORTHWEST MINNESOTA

The economic efficiency of wetland mitigation in Minnesota's Red River Valley was examined using the Minnesota Routine Assessment Method on ten wetland case studies to rate the functions of impacted and replacement wetlands. Secondary sources were used to assign dollar values to wetland functions of impacted and replacement wetlands. Mitigation costs for projects ranged from $279 to$4,171 per acre. Estimated annual social values ranged from $207 to$1,027 per acre for impacted wetlands and from $268 to$927 per acre for replacement wetlands. Social values of replacement wetlands exceeded the social value of impacted wetlands in seven cases. Values of replacement wetlands were 1.8 to 4 times greater than the values of impacted wetlands due to 2-to-1 replacement ratios. When society gains benefits from mitigation, public cost-sharing may be appropriate. In one case the value of the impacted wetlands was higher than the value of the replacement wetland. There were insufficient data to evaluate two cases. Results are only indicators of efficiency, since not all social costs and benefits of the impact-mitigation activity are addressed by legislation. These results suggest wetland mitigation policy in Minnesota needs to be reevaluated if efficient use of society's resources is a legislative goal.Wetland(s), mitigation, economics, values, Minnesota, Red River, Wetland Conservation Act, Minnesota Routine Assessment Method, restoration, Land Economics/Use,

Endogenous pararetrovirus sequences associated with 24 nt small RNAs at the centromeres of Fritillaria imperialis L. (Liliaceae), a species with a giant genome

Funded by: Leonardo da Vinci programme, Marie Curie programme, Natural Environment Research Council. Grant Number: NE/G01724/1, Czech Science Foundation. Grant Number: P501/13/10057S

The Role of Chromatin Modifications in the Evolution of Giant Plant Genomes.

Angiosperm genome sizes (GS) range ~2400-fold and comprise genes and their regulatory regions, repeats, semi-degraded repeats, and 'dark matter'. The latter represents repeats so degraded that they can no longer be recognised as repetitive. In exploring whether the histone modifications associated with chromatin packaging of these contrasting genomic components are conserved across the diversity of GS in angiosperms, we compared immunocytochemistry data for two species whose GS differ ~286-fold. We compared published data for Arabidopsis thaliana with a small genome (GS = 157 Mbp/1C) with newly generated data from Fritillaria imperialis, which has a giant genome (GS = 45,000 Mbp/1C). We compared the distributions of the following histone marks: H3K4me1, H3K4me2, H3K9me1, H3K9me2, H3K9me3, H3K27me1, H3K27me2, and H3K27me3. Assuming these histone marks are associated with the same genomic features across all species, irrespective of GS, our comparative analysis enables us to suggest that while H3K4me1 and H3K4me2 methylation identifies genic DNA, H3K9me3 and H3K27me3 marks are associated with 'dark matter', H3K9me1 and H3K27me1 mark highly homogeneous repeats, and H3K9me2 and H3K27me2 mark semi-degraded repeats. The results have implications for our understanding of epigenetic profiles, chromatin packaging and the divergence of genomes, and highlight contrasting organizations of the chromatin within the nucleus depending on GS itself

Economic Impact of the Conservation Reserve Program in North Dakota

Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use,

Researching creatively with pupils in Assessment for Learning (AfL) classrooms on experiences of participation and consultation

This paper reports on an ESRC TLRP project, Consulting Pupils on the Assessment of their Learning (CPAL). The CPAL project provides an additional theoretical perspective to the ‘educational benefits’ perspective of engaging pupil voice in learning and teaching (Rudduck et al., 2003) through its exploration of pupil rights specifically in relation to assessment issues presently on the policy agenda in the Northern Ireland context – notably Assessment for Learning (AfL). An emergent framework for assessing pupil rights, based on Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Lundy, 2007), is being used to explore the ways in which AfL classroom practice creates the conditions for increased pupil participation and consultation. Pupil views on their AfL classroom experiences and participation are explored by means of a variety of pupil-centred, creative research methods that engage and stimulate pupils to observe, communicate and analyse their learning and assessment experiences and give meaning to them. This presentation highlights preliminary data based on a sample of 11-14 years pupils' experiences of participation and consultation in classrooms adopting AfL pedagogical principles, and identifies characteristics that support or inhibit pupil participation in their learning and the expression of their views about such matters

Charmonium Suppression - Interplay of Hadronic and Partonic Degrees of Freedom

Last year the E866-group of the Fermilab measured the $x_F$ dependence of $J/\Psi$ and $\Psi'$ suppression in $pA$ collisions. We discuss two of the effects found in that experiment with regard to color coherence effects: the different suppression of the $J/\Psi$ and the $\Psi'$ at $x_F<0$ and the significant suppression of both at large $x_F$. The small $x_F$ regions is dominated by fully formed charmonium states and thus enables us to discuss the formation time and the cross section of the different charmonium states. In the large $x_F$ region the interaction of the charmonium states with nuclear matter has to be described by partonic degrees of freedom, because in that kinematic domain the formation time is much larger than the nuclear radii. The understanding of this region will be crucial for the interpretation of the data of the future heavy ion colliders RHIC and LHC.Comment: 4 pages, 1 table, 1 figure, Contribution to the Proceedings of the 15th Particles and Nuclei International Conference (PANIC 99), Uppsala, Sweden, June 10-16, 199

Astonishing 35S rDNA diversity in the gymnosperm species Cycas revoluta Thunb

17 p., tablas, gráficos.In all eukaryotes, the highly repeated 35S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) sequences encoding 18S-5.8S-26S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) typically show high levels of intragenomic uniformity due to homogenisation processes, leading to concerted evolution of 35S rDNA repeats. Here, we compared 35S rDNA divergence in several seed plants using next generation sequencing and a range of molecular and cytogenetic approaches. Most species showed similar 35S rDNA homogeneity indicating concerted evolution. However, Cycas revoluta exhibits an extraordinary diversity of rDNA repeats (nucleotide sequence divergence of different copies averaging 12 %), influencing both the coding and non-coding rDNA regions nearly equally. In contrast, its rRNA transcriptome was highly homogeneous suggesting that only a minority of genes ( T substitutions located in symmetrical CG and CHG contexts which were also highly methylated. Both functional genes and pseudogenes appear to cluster on chromosomes. The extraordinary high levels of 35S rDNA diversity in C. revoluta, and probably other species of cycads, indicate that the frequency of repeat homogenisation has been much lower in this lineage, compared with all other land plant lineages studied. This has led to the accumulation of methylation-driven mutations and pseudogenisation. Potentially, the reduced homology between paralogs prevented their elimination by homologous recombination, resulting in long-term retention of rDNA pseudogenes in the genome.The work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (P501/13/10057S and P501/12/G090) and NERC (UK).Peer reviewe

Angiosperms Are Unique among Land Plant Lineages in the Occurrence of Key Genes in the RNA-Directed DNA Methylation (RdDM) Pathway

We are grateful for the FP7 Marie Curie IEF (Lu Ma), the FP7 Marie Curie ITN INTERCROSSING (Andrea Hatlen), the Czech Science Foundation (501/12/G090, Ales Kovarik), China Scholarship Council (Wencai Wang), and NERC (NE/ G01724/1, Laura Kelly, Ilia Leitch, Andrew Leitch). The Illumina sequencing of Fritillaria was funded by NERC (NE/G01724/1) and generated by the Centre of Genomic Research in the University of Liverpool, UK. This research utilised Queen Mary's MidPlus computational facilities, supported by QMUL Research-IT and funded by EPSRC grant EP/K000128/1. We thank an anonymous referee for a rigorous, insightful and helpful revie