447 research outputs found

    REM: A Collaborative Framework for Building Indigenous Cultural Competence

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    © 2015, © The Author(s) 2015. The well-documented health disparities between the Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous population mandates a comprehensive response from health professionals. This article outlines the approach taken by one faculty of health in a large urban Australian university to enhance cultural competence in students from a variety of fields. Here we outline a collaborative and deeply respectful process of Indigenous and non-Indigenous university staff collectively developing a model that has framed the embedding of a common faculty Indigenous graduate attribute across the curriculum. Through collaborative committee processes, the development of the principles of “Respect; Engagement and sharing; Moving forward” (REM) has provided both a framework and way of “being and doing” our work. By drawing together the recurring principles and qualities that characterize Indigenous cultural competence the result will be students and staff learning and bringing into their lives and practice, important Indigenous cultural understanding

    Corpus Analysis Tools for Computational Hook Discovery.

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    Compared to studies with symbolic music data, advances in music description from audio have overwhelmingly focused on ground truth reconstruction and maximizing prediction accuracy, with only a small fraction of studies using audio description to gain insight into musical data. We present a strategy for the corpus analysis of audio data that is optimized for interpretable results. The approach brings two previously unexplored concepts to the audio domain: audio bigram distributions, and the use of corpus-relative or 'second-order' descriptors. To test the real-world applicability of our method, we present an experiment in which we model song recognition data collected in a widely-played music game. By using the proposed corpus analysis pipeline we are able to present a cognitively adequate analysis that allows a model interpretation in terms of the listening history and experience of our participants. We find that our corpus-based audio features are able to explain a comparable amount of variance to symbolic features for this task when used alone and that they can supplement symbolic features profitably when the two types of features are used in tandem. Finally, we highlight new insights into what makes music recognizable

    Competitor phenology as a social cue in breeding site selection

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    Predicting habitat quality is a major challenge for animals selecting a breeding patch, because it affects reproductive success. Breeding site selection may be based on previous experience, or on social information from the density and success of competitors with an earlier phenology. Variation in animal breeding phenology is often correlated with variation in habitat quality. Generally, animals breed earlier in high-quality habitats that allow them to reach a nutritional threshold required for breeding earlier or avoid nest predation. In addition, habitat quality may affect phenological overlap between species and thereby interspecific competition. Therefore, we hypothesized that competitor breeding phenology can be used as social cue by settling migrants to locate high-quality breeding sites. To test this hypothesis, we experimentally advanced and delayed hatching phenology of two resident tit species on the level of study plots and studied male and female settlement patterns of migratory pied flycatchers Ficedula hypoleuca. The manipulations were assigned at random in two consecutive years, and treatments were swapped between years in sites that were used in both years. In both years, males settled in equal numbers across treatments, but later arriving females avoided pairing with males in delayed phenology plots. Moreover, male pairing probability declined strongly with arrival date on the breeding grounds. Our results demonstrate that competitor phenology may be used to assess habitat quality by settling migrants, but we cannot pinpoint the exact mechanism (e.g. resource quality, predation pressure or competition) that has given rise to this pattern. In addition, we show that opposing selection pressures for arrival timing may give rise to different social information availabilities between sexes. We discuss our findings in the context of climate warming, social information use and the evolution of protandry in migratory animals

    Two decades of numerical modelling to understand long term fluvial archives: Advances and future perspectives

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    The development and application of numerical models to investigate fluvial sedimentary archives has increased during the last decades resulting in a sustained growth in the number of scientific publications with keywords, 'fluvial models', 'fluvial process models' and 'fluvial numerical models'. In this context we compile and review the current contributions of numerical modelling to the understanding of fluvial archives. In particular, recent advances, current limitations, previous unexpected results and future perspectives are all discussed. Numerical modelling efforts have demonstrated that fluvial systems can display non-linear behaviour with often unexpected dynamics causing significant delay, amplification, attenuation or blurring of externally controlled signals in their simulated record. Numerical simulations have also demonstrated that fluvial records can be generated by intrinsic dynamics without any change in external controls. Many other model applications demonstrate that fluvial archives, specifically of large fluvial systems, can be convincingly simulated as a function of the interplay of (palaeo) landscape properties and extrinsic climate, base level and crustal controls. All discussed models can, after some calibration, produce believable matches with real world systems suggesting that equifinality - where a given end state can be reached through many different pathways starting from different initial conditions and physical assumptions - plays an important role in fluvial records and their modelling. The overall future challenge lies in the development of new methodologies for a more independent validation of system dynamics and research strategies that allow the separation of intrinsic and extrinsic record signals using combined fieldwork and modelling

    Bodemindicatoren in BASIS : Identificatie van de belangrijkste biologische en chemische bodemparameters (“bodemindicatoren”) in het project BASIS over de periode 2009-2016

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    In deze studie is nagegaan welke gemeten chemische en biologische bodemparameters het beste onderscheid maken tussen de verschillende grondbewerkingssystemen en teeltsystemen in de systeemproef BASIS in Lelystad. Met variantieanalyse en multivariate statistische technieken zijn bodemparameters in BASIS geanalyseerd. Samenvattend blijkt potentieel mineraliseerbare stikstof (PMN) en de N-totaal de beste bodemindicatoren te zijn om verschillen tussen systemen van hoofdgrondbewerking (ploegen versus niet-kerende bewerkingen) en verschillen tussen teeltsystemen (biologisch versus gangbaar) weer te geven. Daarnaast zijn HWC, biomassa schimmels, biomassa bacteriën en borium- en magnesiumgehalte goede bodemindicatoren om deze verschillen te duiden. De correlatie tussen PMN en organische stof en de correlatie tussen HWC en organische stof blijkt goed te zijn. Vanwege de hoge correlatie tussen HWC en PMN en de hoge prijs van de PMN meting heeft HWC de voorkeur. Aanbevolen wordt de analyse te gebruiken in de ontwikkeling van de BLN en vergelijkbare analyses te doen voor andere maatregelen en andere systeemproeven

    Fecal occult blood and fecal calprotectin as point-of-care markers of intestinal morbidity in Ugandan children with Schistosoma mansoni infection.

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    BACKGROUND: Calprotectin is a calcium-binding cytoplasmic protein found in neutrophils and increasingly used as a marker of bowel inflammation. Fecal occult blood (FOB) is also a dependable indicator of bowel morbidity. The objective of our study was to determine the applicability of these tests as surrogate markers of Schistosoma mansoni intestinal morbidity before and after treatment with praziquantel (PZQ). METHODS: 216 children (ages 3-9 years old) from Buliisa District in Lake Albert, Uganda were examined and treated with PZQ at baseline in October 2012 with 211 of them re-examined 24 days later for S. mansoni and other soil transmitted helminths (STH). POC calprotectin and FOB assays were performed at both time points on a subset of children. Associations between the test results and infection were analysed by logistic regression. RESULTS: Fecal calprotectin concentrations of 150-300 µg/g were associated with S. mansoni egg patent infection both at baseline and follow up (OR: 12.5 P = 0.05; OR: 6.8 P = 0.02). FOB had a very strong association with baseline anemia (OR: 9.2 P = 0.03) and medium and high egg intensity schistosomiasis at follow up (OR: 6.6 P = 0.03; OR: 51.3 P = 0.003). Both tests were strongly associated with heavy intensity S. mansoni infections. There was a significant decrease in FOB and calprotectin test positivity after PZQ treatment in those children who had egg patent schistosomiasis at baseline. CONCLUSIONS: Both FOB and calprotectin rapid assays were found to correlate positively and strongly with egg patent S. mansoni infection with a positive ameloriation response after PZQ treatment indicative of short term reversion of morbidity. Both tests were appropriate for use in the field with excellent operational performance and reliability. Due to its lower-cost which makes its scale-up of use affordable, FOB could be immediately adopted as a monitoring tool for PC campaigns for efficacy evaluation before and after treatment
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