The effects of organic farming on the soil physical environment

The aim of this research was to investigate the effects of organic farming practices on the development of soil physical properties, and in particular, soil structure in comparison with conventional agricultural management. The soil structure of organically and conventionally managed soils at one site was compared in a quantitative manner at different scales of observations using image analysis. Key soil physical and chemical properties were measured as well as the pore fractal geometry to characterise pore roughness. Organically managed soils had higher organic matter content and provided a more stable soil structure than conventionally managed soils. The higher porosity (%) at the macroscale in soil under conventional management was due to fewer larger pores while mesoand microscale porosity was found to be greater under organic management. Organically managed soils typically provided spatially well distributed pores of all sizes and of greater roughness compared to those under conventional management. These variations in the soil physical environment are likely to impact significantly on the performance of these soils for a number of key processes such as crop establishment and water availabilit

Highly electronegative metallic contacts to semiconductors using polymeric sulfur nitride

The Schottky barriers formed on n‐ZnS and n‐ZnSe by polymeric sulfur nitride have been compared to barriers formed by Au. Barrier energies as determined by photoresponse, current‐voltage, and capacitance‐voltage methods show that (SN)_x is approximately 1.0 eV higher than Au on n‐ZnS and 0.3–0.4 eV higher than Au on n‐ZnSe. We believe that this is the first report of any metallic contact more electronegative than Au

Ecosystem physiology responses to global change

Journal ArticleMost ecosystems exposed to double ambient C02 show higher peak season net carbon uptake than those growing at current-ambient C02. For grasslands, above-ground biomass increased by an average of 14%, although individual responses for a given system and year range from negative to +85%. The wide range of the biomass response shows the highly interactive nature of the C02 response with other environmental factors, including water and nutrient availability, and temperature. For instance, low-temperature dominated systems, such as alpine grassland, Arctic tundra, and cool climate coniferous forest trees, are among the least responsive to elevated C02 , showing in some instances no growth response and complete acclimation of peak season gas exchange after a few years

Masses, luminosities and dynamics of galactic molecular clouds

Star formation in galaxies takes place in molecular clouds and the Milky Way is the only galaxy in which it is possible to resolve and study the physical properties and star formation activity of individual clouds. The masses, luminosities, dynamics, and distribution of molecular clouds, primarily giant molecular clouds in the Milky Way are described and analyzed. The observational data sets are the Massachusetts-Stony Brook CO Galactic Plane Survey and the IRAS far IR images. The molecular mass and infrared luminosities of glactic clouds are then compared with the molecular mass and infrared luminosities of external galaxies

Young Indigenous Australians’ sexually transmitted infection prevention practices: A Community-based Participatory Research project

Funded by the International Collaborative Indigenous Health Research Partnership (ID: 361621), a trilateral partnership between the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Health Research Council of New ZealandNational surveillance data indicate marked differences between Indigenous and other Australians in the prevalence of many sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Young Indigenous people bear a particularly high burden of these infections. A collaboration of university researchers, Indigenous health workers and young Indigenous people conducted 45 field interviews to examine how young Indigenous Australians keep themselves healthy and protected against STIs. Our findings emphasise the complexity of health behaviours, where individuals are rarely always ‘risky’ or always ‘safe’, as well as subtle gender differences in health practices. Preventive strategies employed by the young people were contingent on beliefs and knowledge about sexual partners, the type of relationship, the context of the sexual encounter, and access to condoms. Tangible strengths identified by our study should be celebrated and bolstered to enhance young Indigenous people’s ability to protect themselves against adverse health outcomes and enhance their resilience against STIs. Focusing on strengths helps to counter the deficit model of health commonly deployed in Indigenous health research and draws attention to health issues facing young Indigenous people and their communities, without reinforcing negative stereotypes or focusing solely on individual risk behaviour. We provide concrete recommendations for health promotion and education. Keywords Sexual health; STI prevention; young people; Indigenous people; AustraliaInternational Collaborative Indigenous Health Research Partnership (ID: 361621

Addressing health inequities for same sex attracted women in New South Wales, Australia, who use drugs

ACON’s Alcohol and Other Drugs Program provides a Needle Syringe Program, peerbased harm reduction programs, drug education targeted at members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, and counselling services. The Lesbian Health Project works with lesbians and other same-sex attracted (SSA) women to improve their health and wellbeing through health promotion, peer education and community development programs as well as providing capacity development for mainstream service providers. In Australia, LGBT people have considerably higher rates of drug use than the general population. While there is considerable funding support from Australian state and federal governments for education interventions that address gay men’s drug use, it has been more difficult to address the needs of lesbians and other SSA women. Efforts to address lesbian health needs are hampered by lack of research, poor understanding of the issues by potential funding bodies, and the lack of a single defining health issue (such as HIV among gay men) around which to focus advocacy efforts. Equally problematic is the absence of consideration given to lesbians and SSA women in any Australian national and state health policies. In response to the consistently low uptake of both harm reduction and treatment services by SSA women, ACON has successfully advocated with a major funder of our drug and alcohol work to re-allocate some existing funding to produce SSAwomen specific drug resources, in the interests of equity. This project (currently under development) seeks to engage with networks of SSA women who use drugs and who do not normally access ACON’s drugs and alcohol services, to produce resources that ‘speak to’ their issue

Sexual health through the eyes of Indigenous youth: Community-based participatory research with young Indigenous people in Townsville

The project had the following aims: 1. Build the capacity of Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services in research practice; 2. Identify, assess and enhance the blood borne viral and sexually transmitted infection (BBV/STI) resilience capability of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; 3. Inform on opportunities to decrease the risk of BBV /STI transmission in site communities; 4. Provide information for local and area health service planning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander BBV/STI. 1.2 Methods A Community-Based Participatory Research framework was used to develop a qualitative study of young people’s perspectives on blood borne and sexually transmitted infections...The Indigenous Resiliency Project is funded by the International Collaboration in Indigenous Health Research Program, a trilateral partnership between the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Health Research Council of New Zealand

Young Indigenous Australians’ sexually transmitted infection prevention practices: A Community-based Participatory Research project

National surveillance data indicate marked differences between Indigenous and other Australians in the prevalence of many sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Young Indigenous people bear a particularly high burden of these infections. A collaboration of university researchers, Indigenous health workers and young Indigenous people conducted 45 field interviews to examine how young Indigenous Australians keep themselves healthy and protected against STIs. Our findings emphasise the complexity of health behaviours, where individuals are rarely always ‘risky’ or always ‘safe’, as well as subtle gender differences in health practices. Preventive strategies employed by the young people were contingent on beliefs and knowledge about sexual partners, the type of relationship, the context of the sexual encounter, and access to condoms. Tangible strengths identified by our study should be celebrated and bolstered to enhance young Indigenous people’s ability to protect themselves against adverse health outcomes and enhance their resilience against STIs. Focusing on strengths helps to counter the deficit model of health commonly deployed in Indigenous health research and draws attention to health issues facing young Indigenous people and their communities, without reinforcing negative stereotypes or focusing solely on individual risk behaviour. We provide concrete recommendations for health promotion and education. Keywords Sexual health; STI prevention; young people; Indigenous people; AustraliaInternational Collaborative Indigenous Health Research Partnership (ID: 361621

Statistical Mechanics of Semi-Supervised Clustering in Sparse Graphs

We theoretically study semi-supervised clustering in sparse graphs in the presence of pairwise constraints on the cluster assignments of nodes. We focus on bi-cluster graphs, and study the impact of semi-supervision for varying constraint density and overlap between the clusters. Recent results for unsupervised clustering in sparse graphs indicate that there is a critical ratio of within-cluster and between-cluster connectivities below which clusters cannot be recovered with better than random accuracy. The goal of this paper is to examine the impact of pairwise constraints on the clustering accuracy. Our results suggests that the addition of constraints does not provide automatic improvement over the unsupervised case. When the density of the constraints is sufficiently small, their only impact is to shift the detection threshold while preserving the criticality. Conversely, if the density of (hard) constraints is above the percolation threshold, the criticality is suppressed and the detection threshold disappears.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Learning from the past: young Indigenous people’s accounts of blood-borne viral and sexually transmitted infections as resilience narratives

The Indigenous Resilience Project is an Australian community-based participatory research project using qualitative methods to explore young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's views of blood-borne viral and sexually transmitted infections (BBV/STI) affecting their communities. In this paper we present an analysis of narratives from young people who had a previous BBV/STI diagnosis to explore how they actively negotiate the experience of BBV/STI infection to construct a classic resilience narrative. We examine two overarching themes: first, the context of infection and diagnosis, including ignorance of STI/BBV prior to infection/diagnosis and, second, turning points and transformations in the form of insights, behaviours, roles and agency. Responding to critical writing on resilience theory, we argue that providing situated accounts of adversity from the perspectives of young Indigenous people prioritises their subjective understandings and challenges normative definitions of resilience.Keywords resilience, sexual health, young people, Indigenous people, Australiafunded by the International Collaborative Indigenous Health Research Partnership (ID: 361621), a trilateral partnership between the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Health Research Council of New Zealan