Novita Healthcare (Australia)

In the late nineteenth century, the popularity of cycling prompted a series of medicalised warnings, particularly for women. Among these was "bicycle face": a "nervous condition" attributed to a constant state of stress from attempting to balance a bicycle combined with prolonged facial grimacing, which was believed to result in nervous exhaustion and facial disfigurement. In New Zealand, media coverage peaked between 1895 and 1897, framing it as a threat to women's health, beauty and morals. Related conditions included "cyclemania", "bicycle stoop", "bicycle hump", "bicycle walk" and "bicycle heart". These designations reflected gender norms and anxieties over female independence, rather than medical evidence. The episode mirrors a broader historical pattern in which emerging technologies have triggered dubious health fears which parallel contemporary concerns over the safety of mobile phones, 5G towers and wind turbines. The authors explore the cultural and medical construction of "bicycle face" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, showing how a small number of rogue physicians used the media to amplify unfounded fears, implanting them into the public consciousness. The historical tendency for health practitioners to superimpose prevailing attitudes and beliefs onto health risks linked to new technologies highlights the need for evidence-based evaluations and vigilance against allowing cultural anxieties to masquerade as novel medical conditions.

Improving the safety and efficiency of maritime shipping has the potential to reduce carbon emissions and improve profitability. Stochastic ship routing, the problem of finding a safe, efficient, and timely route for a ship is difficult in large part because of uncertainty in weather forecasts, which come as an ensemble, a collection of many possible future weather conditions. Previous safety-aware ship routing methods have used either conservative interpretations of the ensemble by assuming the worst-case weather conditions, leading to excessive fuel consumption, or by using the average weather conditions, leading to potentially unsafe routes. In this paper, we investigate the use of the well-known Conditional Value-at-risk (CVaR) in the objective and constraint functions for ship routing problems, which allows a range of risk tolerances between the average and the worst case. We illustrate the advantages of using CVaR for the problem of ship routing in several simulation examples using real weather forecasts.

Abstract Wind energy is a rapidly expanding renewable technology with massive global investments; however, operating turbines are associated with bat strikes globally, and evidence suggests that without intervention, wind farm collisions could drive some common species to extinction. One widely regarded method for reducing strike mortality is operational mitigation, or curtailment, where turbine operation is restricted at low wind speeds. Despite an increasing number of studies in the Northern Hemisphere demonstrating curtailment effectiveness, no empirical studies have yet been conducted in Australia. This paper reports the findings of a curtailment study implemented at the Cape Nelson North wind farm in southwest Victoria, Australia. Conservation detection dog teams conducted mortality surveys between January and April in 2018 (before; pre‐curtailment) and 2019 (after; during curtailment). Results were consistent with similar studies in the USA and Europe, as curtailment significantly reduced pooled species mortality by 54%. Bat calls did not decline during the study period, and thus were not an explanation for the reduction in fatalities. This study demonstrates that curtailment is a valid method for reducing bat turbine collision in south‐eastern Australia. Consideration should be given to curtailment as a means to reduce bat turbine impacts in Australia, particularly at sites with known endangered and threatened populations, as we act to reduce anthropogenic climate change and its time‐sensitive negative consequences.

The SARS‐CoV‐2 epidemic infections in Australia during 2020 were small in number in epidemiological terms and are well described. The SARS‐CoV‐2 genomic sequence data of many infected patients have been largely curated in a number of publicly available databases, including the corresponding epidemiological data made available by the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services. We have critically analysed the available SARS‐CoV‐2 haplotypes and genomic sequences in the context of putative deficits in innate immune APOBEC and ADAR deaminase anti‐viral responses. It is now known that immune impaired elderly co‐morbid patients display clear deficits in interferon type 1 (α/β) and III (λ) stimulated innate immune gene cascades, of which APOBEC and ADAR induced expression are part. These deficiencies may help explain some of the clear genetic patterns in SARS‐CoV‐2 genomes isolated in Victoria, Australia, during the 2nd Wave (June–September, 2020). We tested the hypothesis that predicted lowered innate immune APOBEC and ADAR anti‐viral deaminase responses in a significant proportion of elderly patients would be consistent with/reflected in a low level of observed mutagenesis in many isolated SARS‐CoV‐2 genomes. Our findings are consistent with this expectation. The analysis also supports the conclusions of the Victorian government's Department of Health that essentially one variant or haplotype infected Victorian aged care facilities where the great majority (79%) of all 820 SARS‐CoV‐2 associated deaths occurred. The implications of our data analysis for other localized epidemics and efficient coronavirus vaccine design and delivery are discussed.

Choline plays a crucial role in lipid metabolism for fish, and its deficiency in aquafeed has been linked to compromised health and growth performance. A 56-d experiment was conducted to examine the effects of dietary choline on lipid composition, histology and plasma biochemistry of yellowtail kingfish (Seriola lalandi; YTK; 156 g initial body weight). The dietary choline content ranged from 0·59 to 6·22 g/kg diet. 2-Amino-2-methyl-1-propanol (AMP) (3 g/kg) was added to diets, except for a control diet, to limit de novo choline synthesis. The results showed that the liver lipid content of YTK was similar among diets containing AMP and dominated by NEFA. In contrast, fish fed the control diet had significantly elevated liver TAG. Generally, the SFA, MUFA and PUFA content of liver lipid in fish fed diets containing AMP was not influenced by choline content. The SFA and MUFA content of liver lipid in fish fed the control diet was similar to other diets except for a decrease in PUFA. The linear relationship between lipid digestibility and plasma cholesterol was significant, otherwise most parameters were unaffected. When AMP is present, higher dietary choline reduced the severity of some hepatic lesions. The present study demonstrated that choline deficiency affects some plasma and liver histology parameters in juvenile YTK which might be useful fish health indicators. Importantly, the present study elucidated potential reasons for lower growth in choline-deficient YTK and increased the knowledge on choline metabolism in the fish.

Australia’s sandstone-hosted uranium deposits occur in sedimentary basins of Carboniferous, Cretaceous and Tertiary age; these include some of Australia’s largest and highest grade uranium deposits. The conventional model for sandstone-hosted uranium deposits has proved robust and a predictive model leading to the discovery of many deposits in Australia. The location of deposits is strongly influenced by the presence of Mesoproterozoic and Archaean age leachable uranium-rich source rocks in the headwaters of channels draining into basins developed in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia. Australia’s production of uranium from sandstone-hosted deposits is limited to two in-situ leach operations and is relatively minor when compared to production from Kazakhstan and the USA. Nevertheless, Australia has a large inventory of uranium resources in 19 undeveloped sandstone-hosted deposits, amounting to 123 kt U3O8. The average grade of all 21 Australian deposits that have resources is 0·15% U3O8. Tertiary palaeochannels host the greatest number of deposits and include the largest and highest grade deposits. The Callabonna Sub-basin in South Australia is the most richly endowed basin, accounting for 62·4 kt U3O8, being 38% of Australia’s sandstone-hosted resource inventory. Australia remains highly prospective for the discovery of new palaeochannel hosted uranium deposits, with regional airborne geophysical surveys likely to be of great assistance in continuing to define palaeochannel systems that may host uranium in basins draining uranium rich source rocks.

BackgroundConcomitant with the development of in vitro diagnostic multivariate index assays (IVDMIAs) to improve the diagnostic efficiency of ovarian cancer detection is the need to identify appropriate biostatistical approaches to assess improvements in risk predication. In this study, we assessed the utility of three different approaches for comparing diagnostic efficiency of an ovarian cancer multivariate assay in a retrospective case - control phase 2 biomarker trial. The control cohort included both disease-free women and women with benign gynecological conditions to more accurately reflect the target population of symptomatic women.MethodsThe study cohort comprised plasma samples from 244 healthy controls, 223 women with benign gynecological conditions, 53 borderline ovarian cancer cases and 222 women with malignant epithelial ovarian cancer. A multivariate classification model was developed that incorporated plasma concentrations of CA125, C-reactive protein (CRP), serum amyloid-A (SAA), interleukin-6 (IL6) and interleukin-8 (IL8) that were measured using in vitro diagnostics assays on medical device approved clinical analysers. The posterior probability values derived from the implemented algorithm were used for comparisons of the diagnostic performance between the multianalyte panel and CA125 using multiple methods; area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristics curve, integrated discrimination improvement (IDI) and net reclassification improvement (NRI).ResultsEach of the biomarkers displayed significantly elevated plasma concentrations in malignant ovarian cancer patients compared with either benign or control subjects. For the discrimination of borderline and malignant ovarian cancer from control and benign subjects, the multivariate classification model showed a significantly greater AUC than that for CA125 alone (88.4% versus 84.3%, respectively, p < 0.001). At a posterior probability threshold of 0.5, the IVDMIA delivered a specificity of 92.3% and a sensitivity of 76.4%. When set at a specificity of 95%, the multimarker diagnostic delivered a sensitivity of 69.5% compared with 62.5% for CA125. Enhanced diagnostic performance of the IVDMIA over the use of CA125 alone was confirmed statistically by alternative comparisons using IDI and NRI.ConclusionsThis study confirms in an independent sample set that a blood-based multianalyte assay has significant advantages over CA125 for distinguishing symptomatic women with borderline and malignant ovarian cancer from controls or those with benign disease.