Australian sandstone-hosted uranium deposits

Australia's seizure divide — indigenous versus non-indigenous seizure hospitalization

The Nuheting deposit, Erlian Basin, NE China: Synsedimentary to diagenetic uranium mineralization

To measure the prevalence of canine leptospirosis in Queensland and to detect infection, if present, in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory by measuring the serological titres of dogs held in animal shelters. Samples were collected through stratified sampling from multiple dog shelters in Queensland and New South Wales, and from one dog shelter located in close proximity to a major urban area in Victoria, South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. All samples were analysed using the microscopic agglutination test at the WHO/FAO/OIE Collaborating Centre for Reference & Research on Leptospirosis, Queensland Health Scientific Services in Brisbane, Queensland. Of a total of 956 samples submitted, 18 (1.9%) had positive leptospirosis titres. True prevalence measured in Queensland was estimated to be 2.5%, and the true prevalence in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory was estimated to be 2.3%, 2.8%, 0%, 1% and 1.1% respectively. An association was found between seropositive status and female dogs (odds ratio (OR) 1.92) and seropositive status and the age group 1 to < 3 years (OR 1.41). Although 11 different serovars were detected, Leptospira interrogans serovar Copenhageni was the most prevalent and was found in 4 of the 18 positive dogs as a single infection. Serological evidence of canine leptospirosis in five states in mainland Australia indicates that the disease is more broadly distributed than previously thought.

The past year has witnessed a breakthrough in Australian oil and gas exploration with 8 new discoveries scattered over a wide geographical area, and adding Northern Territory, South Australia, and Western Australia to the discovery list. However, the commercial potential of most of these discoveries has yet to be established. Queensland continued active, with the most important developments being Union and Kern County Land Company's Alton discovery in the Surat basin and Phillips' deep gas discovery in Devonian strata at Gilmore. Several small, questionably commercial gas fields were found in the Surat basin and in the Bowen basin. The first Drummond basin well found oil shows in the Lower Permian. The Roma gas field can now supply about one-third of Brisbane's requirements. Exoil's Mereenie field in the Amadeus basin, Northern Territory, now has 4 large gas wells producing from the Ordovician. The field has a proved length of 17 miles. Two outer wells indicate 300 feet of oil column in a tight sandstone. Reserves are indicated to be 1 trillion cubic feet. Delhi's Gidgealpa field in South Australia has five large gas wells producing from the Permian in a 30-sq.-mi. area, with estimated reserves of 450 billion cubic feet. Another field of this size will be necessary to justify a pipeline to Adelaide. In the Perth basin, Western Australia, Wapet's Yardarino field has two large oil and gas wells in Permian strata and two dry holes in a small fault-block trap. Wapet's Barrow Island discovery, the first success in the Exmouth Gulf since the Rough Range disappointment in 1953, has three 180-900 B/D flowing wells from thin multiple zone Cretaceous-Jurassic sandstones. Other interesting developments include oil shows in two Cretaceous sandstones in the Port Campbell area, State of Victoria, oil shows in Cambrian dolomite and gas shows in Precambrian limestone in the Alice Springs area of the Amadeus basin, and shows in the Cambrian at Sandover in the Georgina basin. A gas show in Devonian was logged in the Bonaparte basin of Northwest Australia. The year 1965 should have considerable exploration in the basins where production has been indicated, and new ventures in untested basins, including the Bass Strait where Esso is now drilling, and several other offshore areas. End_of_Article - Last_Page 1086------------

Ore-finding criteria of a hydrothermal-overprint sandstone-hosted uranium deposit: A case study from the southern Songliao Basin, China

Removal of judges Historically, judges appointed by the English monarch held office at the pleasure of the Crown ( durante bene placito ). Thus, it was possible for judges to be dismissed peremptorily and without cause. The struggle between the English Parliament and the Crown, which ultimately led to the subjugation of the latter to the former, also led to the advancement of judicial independence. Judicial independence of the Crown was eventually secured by Article III, s 7 of the Act of Settlement 1701 (Eng), which provided as follows: The judges’ commissions be made quamdiu se bene gesserint [during good behaviour] and their salaries ascertained and established; but upon the address of both Houses of Parliament it may be lawful to remove them. At the federal level, judicial independence was given constitutional protection in s 72(ii) of the Commonwealth Constitution . This provides that federal judges (that is, Justices of the High Court and judges of the other courts created by the Commonwealth Parliament) ‘[s]hall not be removed except by the Governor-General in Council, on an address from both Houses of Parliament in the same session, praying for such removal on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity’. In the case of South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania, it is simply provided that it would be lawful to remove judges of the Supreme Court upon the address of both Houses of Parliament, although the Supreme Court judges in South Australia and Western Australia are stated by a separate provision to hold and remain in office ‘during good behaviour’. The grounds of ‘proved misbehaviour’ or ‘incapacity’ are expressly specified in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory. The standard mode of removal is an address of both Houses of Parliament in New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia, or an address of the Legislative Assembly in Queensland (the only State with a bicameral parliament), the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory. In addition, Victoria, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory all provide for the convening of ad hoc bodies where an allegation of misbehaviour or incapacity has been made to the designated authority. These bodies are tasked with determining whether on the facts the misbehaviour or incapacity of the judge warrants his or her removal as a step prior to an address in Parliament to remove the judge.

In Australia, disease registers for acute rheumatic fever (ARF) and rheumatic heart disease (RHD) were previously established to facilitate disease surveillance and control, yet little is known about the extent of case-ascertainment. We compared ARF/RHD case ascertainment based on Australian ARF/RHD register records with administrative hospital data from the Northern Territory (NT), South Australia (SA), Queensland (QLD) and Western Australia (WA) for cases 3–59 years of age. Agreement across data sources was compared for persons with an ARF episode or first-ever RHD diagnosis. ARF/RHD registers from the different jurisdictions were missing 26% of Indigenous hospitalised ARF/RHD cases overall (ranging 17–40% by jurisdiction) and 10% of non-Indigenous hospitalised ARF/RHD cases (3–28%). The proportion of hospitalised RHD cases (36%) was half the proportion of hospitalised ARF cases (70%) notified to the ARF/RHD registers. The registers were found to capture few RHD cases in metropolitan areas (SA Metro: 13%, QLD Metro: 35%, WA Metro: 14%). Indigenous status, older age, comorbidities, drug/alcohol abuse and disease severity were predictors of cases appearing in the hospital data only (p < 0.05); sex was not a determinant. This analysis confirms that there are biases associated with the epidemiological analysis of single sources of case ascertainment for ARF/RHD using Australian data.

Sociodemographic and geographical inequalities in notifiable infectious diseases in Australia: a retrospective analysis of 21 years of national disease surveillance data

Sustainable Development Goal 6.1 seeks universal access to safe drinking water for all by 2030, yet persistent disparities remain even in high-income countries. Indigenous, remote and small communities are disproportionately affected by poor drinking water quality, but comparable evidence to evaluate performance across communities is very limited due to inconsistent monitoring and reporting. To this end, we constructed a community-level meta-panel dataset of 839 communities (4,137 observations) across 4 Australian jurisdictions (Northern Territory, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia) and Ontario, Canada, over the period 2018–2022. Drinking water quality was assessed using the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines and Canadian Boil Water Advisories. Logistic regression was employed to estimate the probability of accessing good-quality drinking water, with Indigenous status, remoteness, population size and socio-economic condition as key explanatory variables. Results reveal systematic disparities: Indigenous and very remote communities are statistically significantly less likely to have good-quality drinking water than non-Indigenous and regional communities after controlling for other factors. Our findings indicate that structural inequities – rather than geographic or demographic variation alone – are critical determinants of poor drinking water outcomes in small, Indigenous communities in both Australia and Canada.

While many studies investigated the higher morbidity and mortality levels of indigenous Australians in the high-density indigenous areas in the Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia, few examined the situation in New South Wales, where more than 28% of the indigenous population lives. Admissions to acute public and private hospitals in New South Wales for 1989-1995 are used in the study reported here to examine indigenous health and its differential patterns by disease categories. The study allowed for the monitoring of disease groups with particularly high indigenous admissions and, accordingly, pinpointed areas for improvement. Age-standardised estimates for the indigenous population are provided. Age composition of admissions for each disease category and admissions by residential area are also estimated.

Carbon isotopic composition of hydrocarbons in ocean-transported bitumens from the coastline of Australia

A fluid inclusion study of uranium and copper mineral systems in the Murphy Inlier, Northern Australia

Purpose – Understanding and simulating construction activities is a vital issue from a macro-perspective, since construction is an important contributor in economic development. Although the construction labor productivity frontier has attracted much research effort, the temporal and regional characteristics have not yet been explored. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the long-run equilibrium and dynamics within construction development under a conditional frontier context. Design/methodology/approach – Analogous to the simplified production function, this research adopts the conditional frontier theory to investigate the convergence of construction labor productivity across regions and over time. Error correction models are implemented to identify the long-run equilibrium and dynamics of construction labor productivity against three types of convergence hypotheses, while a panel regression method is used to capture the regional heterogeneity. The developed models are applied to investigate and simulate the construction labor productivity in the Australian states and territories. Findings – The results suggest that construction labor productivity in Australia should converge to stable frontiers in a long-run perspective. The dynamics of the productivity are mainly caused by the technology utilization efficiency levels of the local construction industry, while the influences of changes in technology level and capital depending appear limited. Five regional clusters of the Australian construction labor productivity are suggested by the simulation results, including New South Wales; Australian Capital Territory; Northern Territory, Queensland, and Western Australia; South Australia; and Tasmania and Victoria. Originality/value – Three types of frontier of construction labor productivity is proposed. An econometric approach is developed to identify the convergence frontier of construction labor productivity across regions over time. The specified model can provides accurate predictions of the construction labor productivity.

Australia is a federation in which law-making powers are shared by the Federal Parliament and the States. Australia is also a common law country, and so its law is a mix of common (judge-made) and statute law. Some areas of law are almost exclusively the province of the Commonwealth,1 while others are the province of the States.2 Law-making powers related to health and medicine, which necessarily cover a diversity of subject matters, are possessed variously by the Commonwealth and the States and Territories.3 There are nine Australian jurisdictions: South Australia, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Queensland, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Tasmania as well as the Federal jurisdiction. Australian laws that safeguard the human rights of patients and research subjects therefore often differ from State to State, sometimes to a considerable degree. This necessarily complicates the task of expounding the rights of patients and research subjects. Further impeding the task of exposition is the fact that biomedical research in Australia is mainly regulated by national guidelines, rather than by national legislation, except where State Governments have seen fit to pass laws on particular types of research, as in the case of research on human embryos (discussed below). Again, this makes for a patchwork of laws and guidelines, with patients and research subjects possessed of variable rights, depending on their location within Australia.

The huge sediment-hosted copper deposits at Olympic Dam and Mount Isa are of unusual types. They formed epigenetically from hydrothermal fluids, as did several other important Australian copper deposits in sedimentary strata. Ore within a palaeoweathering zone at the top of a red-bed unit at Mount Gunson appears to have formed at relatively low temperatures over a long period and to have incorporated biogenic sulfur. Bedded-disseminated mineralization, which is wide-spread in South Australia, formed by reaction of cupriferous fluids with biogenic H2S and early diagenetic iron sulfides. To date, stratiform copper mineralization has not been of major economic significance in Australia.