Shoulder to Shoulder : Information for Aboriginal families who have a child or young person with a disability

This booklet presents information about disability services, respite services, and Aboriginal organisations that provide support for Aboriginal families with a disabled child. Included are stories about how other Aboriginal families have been able to cope with caring for a child with a disability

One Laptop Per Child in remote Indigenous communities

This article describes her visit to a remote Aboriginal community as part of ACER’s review of the One Laptop Per Child program

Assessment of university support services for regional and remote students on transition to university: final report

This report details the development and piloting of an Assessment of university support services for regional and remote students on transition to university. The project forms part of the Australian Government’s response to the Independent Review into Regional, Rural and Remote Education led by Emeritus Professor John Halsey. In its recommendations, the Review highlighted how critical it is to “Support RRR [regional, rural and remote] students to make successful transitions from school to university, training, employment and combinations of them”. In relation to this recommendation, this project is designed to support the Australian Government’s response to the Halsey Review by developing a Framework for a periodical assessment of support services which universities offer to these students

Failing professional practice placements in allied health : What do we understand about the student experience? A scoping review

Professional practice placements are an essential component of allied health and nursing programs. Whilst most students pass these placements, a small percentage of students will fail or be at risk of failing. Supporting students undergoing a failing experience is a time critical, time consuming, emotional and resource-heavy task which is often undertaken by key university staff and impacts all stakeholders. Whilst several studies have provided insight into this experience from the educator and/or university perspective, this scoping review aimed to identify the students’ experience of failing or nearly failing a professional practice experience. Following Arskey and O’Malley’s framework for scoping reviews, 24 papers were included in this review. This review generated six themes including the reasons for failure, how failure looks and feels, how supports, service and strategies influence the student experience of failure, the importance of communication, relationships and organisational culture, the impact infrastructure and policies have, and the consequences of failure. The outcomes of this scoping review highlighted three key characteristics of the research to date: (a) the student voice is still largely missing; (b) the student perspective is distinctly different to that of other stakeholders; and (c) the interventions used appear not to be student-informed or student-led. Better understanding this experience from the student’s perspective could create a more sustainable practice education environment by designing and implementing more effective supports, services or strategies that reduce the overall impact a failing experience has on students and key stakeholders

A Testimonial from Wordsworth

Early in 1851 the Senate of the newly-founded University of Sydney began the search for a suitable scholar-administrator to serve as the University's first Principal. The successful candidate was Rev. Dr John Woolley, whose application was accompanied by a printed volume containing 121 testimonials. Under the heading "Testimonials Given November 10th, 1847" appears the following: From William Wordsworth, Esq., D.C.L., Poet Laureate, Rydal Mount, Rydal, Nov. 8th, 1847. Dear Sir, You have my cordial wishes for your success as candidate for the Head Mastership of King Edward's School, Birmingham, though I cannot but regret that your election must deprive the newborn establishment at Rossall of your most valuable superintendence and management. I am concerned to hear that the presentation ofmy volume of poems has caused your upper class of boys the embarrassment to which you allude. No formal acknowledgment was expected on my part. The holidays are approaching, and I shall be anxious to learn by my own examination what progress my grandsons have made in their studies, in which, from unfortunate circumstances occurring before the boys were under your care at Rossall, they have been unable to advance as far as might have been looked for from their respective ages. I remain, my dear Sir, Faithfully your much obliged, W. Wordsworth

The identification of a transposon affecting the asexual reproduction of the wheat pathogen <i>Zymoseptoria tritici</i>

Zymoseptoria tritici, the causal agent of Septoria tritici blotch, is a fungal wheat pathogen that causes significant global yield losses. Within Z. tritici populations, quantitative differences in virulence among different isolates are commonly observed; however, the genetic components that underpin these differences remain elusive. In this study, intraspecific comparative transcriptomic analysis was used to identify candidate genes that contribute to differences in virulence on the wheat cultivar WW2449. This led to the identification of a multicopy gene that was not expressed in the high-virulence isolate when compared to the medium- and low-virulence isolates. Further investigation suggested this gene resides in a 7.9-kb transposon. Subsequent long-read sequencing of the isolates used in the transcriptomic analysis confirmed that this gene did reside in an active Class II transposon, which is composed of four genes named REP9-1 to -4. Silencing and overexpression of REP9-1 in two distinct genetic backgrounds demonstrated that its expression alone reduces the number of pycnidia produced by Z. tritici during infection. The REP9-1 gene identified within a Class II transposon is the first discovery of a gene in a transposable element that influences the virulence of Z. tritici. This discovery adds further complexity to genetic loci that contribute to quantitative virulence in this important pathogen.China Scholarship Council; Grains Research and Development Corporation; Australian National Universit

Implementing sustainability in multi-tier supply chains: strategies and contingencies in managing sub-suppliers

Buying firms must pay increased attention to supply chain sustainability issues, as stakeholders might hold them responsible for non-sustainable supply chain activities. Frequently, sustainability problems occur upstream at the sub-supplier level. Building on the literature on multi-tier supply chains (MSCs), we investigated the sustainability management strategies of buying firms in the food, apparel, packaging, and consumer electronics with regard to second-tier suppliers and beyond. In particular, we analyzed seven cases of global MSCs and found four different characteristic MSC types—open, closed, third party, and “don't bother”. We identified three main factors—supply chain complexity, the sustainability management capabilities of the first-tier supplier, and the type of sustainability in focus (i.e., environmental or social sustainability)—that determine when and how buying firms actually extend their sustainability strategies to their sub-suppliers

Utilizing Gene Tree Variation to Identify Candidate Effector Genes in Zymoseptoria tritici

Zymoseptoria tritici is a host-specific, necrotrophic pathogen of wheat. Infection by Z. tritici is characterized by its extended latent period, which typically lasts two weeks, and is followed by extensive host cell death and rapid proliferation of fungal biomass. This work characterizes the level of genomic variation in 13 isolates for which we have measured virulence on 11 wheat cultivars with differential resistance genes. Between the reference isolate, IPO323, and the 13 Australian isolates we identified over 800,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms, of which ~10% had an effect on the coding regions of the genome. Furthermore we identified over 1700 probable presence/absence polymorphisms in genes across the Australian isolates using de novo assembly. Finally, we developed a gene tree sorting method that quickly identifies groups of isolates within a single gene alignment whose sequence haplotypes correspond with virulence scores on a single wheat cultivar. Using this method we have identified &lt;100 candidate effector genes whose gene sequence correlates with virulence towards a wheat cultivar carrying a major resistance gene