One Laptop Per Child in remote Indigenous communities

This article describes her visit to a remote Aboriginal community as part of ACER’s review of the One Laptop Per Child program

Shoulder to Shoulder : Information for Aboriginal families who have a child or young person with a disability

This booklet presents information about disability services, respite services, and Aboriginal organisations that provide support for Aboriginal families with a disabled child. Included are stories about how other Aboriginal families have been able to cope with caring for a child with a disability

Assessment of university support services for regional and remote students on transition to university: final report

This report details the development and piloting of an Assessment of university support services for regional and remote students on transition to university. The project forms part of the Australian Government’s response to the Independent Review into Regional, Rural and Remote Education led by Emeritus Professor John Halsey. In its recommendations, the Review highlighted how critical it is to “Support RRR [regional, rural and remote] students to make successful transitions from school to university, training, employment and combinations of them”. In relation to this recommendation, this project is designed to support the Australian Government’s response to the Halsey Review by developing a Framework for a periodical assessment of support services which universities offer to these students

A Testimonial from Wordsworth

Early in 1851 the Senate of the newly-founded University of Sydney began the search for a suitable scholar-administrator to serve as the University's first Principal. The successful candidate was Rev. Dr John Woolley, whose application was accompanied by a printed volume containing 121 testimonials. Under the heading "Testimonials Given November 10th, 1847" appears the following: From William Wordsworth, Esq., D.C.L., Poet Laureate, Rydal Mount, Rydal, Nov. 8th, 1847. Dear Sir, You have my cordial wishes for your success as candidate for the Head Mastership of King Edward's School, Birmingham, though I cannot but regret that your election must deprive the newborn establishment at Rossall of your most valuable superintendence and management. I am concerned to hear that the presentation ofmy volume of poems has caused your upper class of boys the embarrassment to which you allude. No formal acknowledgment was expected on my part. The holidays are approaching, and I shall be anxious to learn by my own examination what progress my grandsons have made in their studies, in which, from unfortunate circumstances occurring before the boys were under your care at Rossall, they have been unable to advance as far as might have been looked for from their respective ages. I remain, my dear Sir, Faithfully your much obliged, W. Wordsworth

Utilizing Gene Tree Variation to Identify Candidate Effector Genes in Zymoseptoria tritici

Zymoseptoria tritici is a host-specific, necrotrophic pathogen of wheat. Infection by Z. tritici is characterized by its extended latent period, which typically lasts two weeks, and is followed by extensive host cell death and rapid proliferation of fungal biomass. This work characterizes the level of genomic variation in 13 isolates for which we have measured virulence on 11 wheat cultivars with differential resistance genes. Between the reference isolate, IPO323, and the 13 Australian isolates we identified over 800,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms, of which ~10% had an effect on the coding regions of the genome. Furthermore we identified over 1700 probable presence/absence polymorphisms in genes across the Australian isolates using de novo assembly. Finally, we developed a gene tree sorting method that quickly identifies groups of isolates within a single gene alignment whose sequence haplotypes correspond with virulence scores on a single wheat cultivar. Using this method we have identified <100 candidate effector genes whose gene sequence correlates with virulence towards a wheat cultivar carrying a major resistance gene

Multi-stage resistance to <i>Zymoseptoria tritici</i> revealed by GWAS in an Australian bread wheat diversity panel

Septoria tritici blotch (STB) has been ranked the third most important wheat disease in the world, threatening a large area of wheat production. Although major genes play an important role in the protection against Zymoseptoria tritici infection, the lifespan of their resistance unfortunately is very short in modern wheat production systems. Combinations of quantitative resistance with minor effects, therefore, are believed to have prolonged and more durable resistance to Z. tritici. In this study, new quantitative trait loci (QTLs) were identified that are responsible for seedling-stage resistance and adult-plant stage resistance (APR). More importantly was the characterisation of a previously unidentified QTL that can provide resistance during different stages of plant growth or multi-stage resistance (MSR). At the seedling stage, we discovered a new isolate-specific QTL, QSt.wai.1A.1. At the adult-plant stage, the new QTL QStb.wai.6A.2 provided stable and consistent APR in multiple sites and years, while the QTL QStb.wai.7A.2 was highlighted to have MSR. The stacking of multiple favourable MSR alleles was found to improve resistance to Z. tritici by up to 40%