Savanna burning methodology for fire management and emissions reduction: a critical review of influencing factors

Savanna fire is a major source of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In Australia, savanna fire contributes about 3% of annual GHG emissions reportable to the Kyoto Protocol. In order to reduce GHG emissions from savanna burning, the Australian government has developed and approved a Kyoto compliant savanna controlled burning methodology—the first legal instrument of this kind at a global level—under its Emission Reduction Fund. However, this approved methodology is currently only applicable to nine vegetation fuel types across northern parts of Australia in areas which receive on average over 600 mm rainfall annually, covering only 15.4% of the total land area in Australia.Savanna ecosystems extend across a large proportion of mainland Australia. This paper provides a critical review often key factors that need to be considered in developing a savanna burning methodology applicable to the other parts of Australia. It will also inform discussion in other countries intent on developing similar emissions reduction strategies

Parkinson’s disease mouse models in translational research

Animal models with high predictive power are a prerequisite for translational research. The closer the similarity of a model to Parkinson’s disease (PD), the higher is the predictive value for clinical trials. An ideal PD model should present behavioral signs and pathology that resemble the human disease. The increasing understanding of PD stratification and etiology, however, complicates the choice of adequate animal models for preclinical studies. An ultimate mouse model, relevant to address all PD-related questions, is yet to be developed. However, many of the existing models are useful in answering specific questions. An appropriate model should be chosen after considering both the context of the research and the model properties. This review addresses the validity, strengths, and limitations of current PD mouse models for translational research

Disease: A Hitherto Unexplored Constraint on the Spread of Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) in Pre-Columbian South America

Although debate continues, there is agreement that dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) were first domesticated in Eurasia, spreading from there to other parts of the world. However, while that expansion already extended as far as Europe, China, and North America by the early Holocene, dogs spread into (and south of) the tropics only much later. In South America, for example, the earliest well attested instances of their presence do not reach back much beyond 3000 cal. BC, and dogs were still absent from large parts of the continent – Amazonia, the Gran Chaco, and much of the Southern Cone – at European contact. Previous explanations for these patterns have focused on cultural choice, the unsuitability of dogs for hunting certain kinds of tropical forest prey, and otherwise unspecified environmental hazards, while acknowledging that Neotropical lowland forests witness high rates of canine mortality. Building on previous work in Sub-Saharan Africa (Mitchell 2015) and noting that the dog’s closest relatives, the grey wolf (C. lupus) and the coyote (C. latrans), were likewise absent from South and most of Central America in Pre- Columbian times, this paper explores instead the possibility that infectious disease constrained the spread of dogs into Neotropical environments. Four diseases are considered, all likely to be native and/or endemic to South America: canine distemper, canine trypanosomiasis, canine rangeliosis, and canine visceral leishmaniasis caused by infection with Leishmania amazonensis and L. colombiensis. The paper concludes by suggesting ways in which the hypothesis that disease constrained the expansion of dogs into South America can be developed further

Numerical simulation of incompressible flow problems using an unstructured staggered mesh method

A number of two dimensional staggered unstructured discretisation schemes for the solution of fluid flow and heat transfer problems have been developed. All schemes store and solve velocity vector components at cell faces with scalar variables solved at cell centres. The velocity is resolved into face-normal and face-parallel components and the various schemes investigated differ in the treatment of the parallel component. Steady-state and time-dependent fluid flow and thermal energy equations are solved with the well known pressure correction scheme, SIMPLE, employed to couple continuity and momentum. The numerical methods developed are tested on well known benchmark cases: the Lid-Driven Cavity, Natural Convection in a Cavity and Melting of Gallium in a rectangular domain. The results obtained are shown to be comparable to benchmark, but with accuracy dependent on scheme selection