Background: Despite a higher prevalence of traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI) amongst Canadian Indigenous peoples, there is a paucity of studies focused on Indigenous TSCI. We present the first Canada-wide study comparing TSCI amongst Canadian Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Methods: This study is a retrospective analysis of prospectively-collected TSCI data from the Rick Hansen Spinal Cord Injury Registry (RHSCIR) from 2004-2019. We divided participants into Indigenous and non-Indigenous cohorts and compared them with respect to demographics, injury mechanism, level, severity, and outcomes. Results: Compared with non-Indigenous patients, Indigenous patients were younger, more female, less likely to have higher education, and less likely to be employed. The mechanism of injury was more likely due to assault or transportation-related trauma in the Indigenous group. The length of stay for Indigenous patients was longer. Indigenous patients were more likely to be discharged to a rural setting, less likely to be discharged home, and more likely to be unemployed following injury. Conclusions: Our results suggest that more resources need to be dedicated for transitioning Indigenous patients sustaining a TSCI to community living and for supporting these patients in their home communities. A focus on resources and infrastructure for Indigenous patients by engagement with Indigenous communities is needed.

Gaining a deeper understanding into the underlying mechanisms associated with intestinal function and immunity during the weaning transition is critical to help shed new light into applied nutrition approaches to improve piglet performance and health during this critical life-stage transition. The transient anorexia triggered at weaning leads to compromised intestinal barrier function and a localized inflammatory response. Considering barrier function, specific nutrient fractions appear to have a significant impact on the development and function of the immune and microbial systems around weaning. Understanding the specific impact of nutrients in the small intestine and hindgut is important for helping to bring more focus and consistency to nutritional approaches to support health and immunity during the weaning transition period. The challenge continues to be how to translate these modes of action into practical and scalable approaches for swine nutrition. We will focus specifically on practical nutritional approaches to influence intestinal immunity through lipid, protein and antioxidant nutrition.

The use of ground granulated blast furnace slag (ggbs) is well established in many cement applications where it provides enhanced durability, including high resistance to chloride penetration, resistance to sulphate attack and protection against alkali silica reaction (ASR). The use of ggbs in soil stabilization is, however, still a novel process in the UK although it has been used in South Africa. This paper reports on efforts to extend the use of ggbs to highway and other foundation layers by determining the beneficial effect which it has on the reduction of expansion due to the presence of sulphates. The paper describes the results of laboratory tests on lime-stabilized kaolinite containing different levels of added sulphate to which different amounts of ggbs have been added. The tests determine the strength development of compacted cylinders, moist cured in a humid environment at 30°C, and the linear expansion of these moist cured cylinders on soaking in water. The results illustrate that small additions of ggbs to sulphate containing clays which are stabilized with lime reduce substantially their expansion when exposed to water and have no significant deleterious effect on strength development.

Late Triassic sandstones from Quadrant 22 in the North Sea contain two generations of chlorite cement. Grain-coating chlorites consisting of curved, irregular crystal plates formed very early in diagenesis and are largely confined to marginal marine beds. Later diagenetic pore-filling chlorites, consisting of euhedral platy crystals, occur throughout the sequence in fluvial as well as marginal marine beds. Both generations of cement show similar XRD patterns; the 001 basal reflection of 14·0–14·06 Å is broad and of low intensity, whereas the 002 reflection at 7·05 Å is sharp and intense. Slight contraction of the 14 Å basal spacing to 13·6 Å occurs after heating to 600°C. Electron microprobe analyses show the cements to be Fe-rich clinochlores with Fe/(Fe + Mg) ratios varying between 0·41 and 0·50. They are more Mg- and Si-enriched than most other reported North Sea authigenic chlorites. The grain-coating chlorites have an average composition of (Fe3·06Al3·93Mg3·32) [(Si6·76Al1·24)O20] (OH)16. The pore-filling chlorites tend to show more variable compositions. The high Si values probably reflect both minor interstratification with smectite or vermiculite and contamination of the analyses by a closely associated illite/smectite clay. An origin related to alteration of a precursor swelling chlorite or corrensite is attractive on chemical and morphological grounds for the early grain-coating chlorites. However, direct precipitation from porewaters is the favoured origin for the later pore-filling chlorites, with the required ions being supplied by mineral decomposition reactions involving detrital silicate minerals and dolomite cements.

Grain-coating chlorite cements commonly occur within sandstones of late Middle and Upper Miocene age deposited in the North Sumatra back-arc basin. Chlorites from the Lower Keutapang Member contain Ca (maximum 0.75 wt% oxide) and show textural evidence for direct precipitation on grains. However, crystals are subhedral, showing curved faces and often ragged edges, and show a tendency to merge together. In overlying beds of the Upper Keutapang Member, grain-coating chlorite-smectite (20% smectite) cements display an identical morphology but are more siliceous, have a lower octahedral occupancy and contain higher total (Na + Ca + K). It is proposed that chlorite cements in the Keutapang Formation originated as smectite-rich cement rims whose initial precipitation was related to the breakdown of volcanic detritus in the sediments. Transformation to chlorite occurred subsequently during burial, facilitated by a high geothermal gradient in the back-arc basin.

Plasmodium knowlesi has risen in importance as a zoonotic parasite that has been causing regular episodes of malaria throughout South East Asia. The P. knowlesi genome sequence generated in 2008 highlighted and confirmed many similarities and differences in Plasmodium species, including a global view of several multigene families, such as the large SICAvar multigene family encoding the variant antigens known as the schizont-infected cell agglutination proteins. However, repetitive DNA sequences are the bane of any genome project, and this and other Plasmodium genome projects have not been immune to the gaps, rearrangements and other pitfalls created by these genomic features. Today, long-read PacBio and chromatin conformation technologies are overcoming such obstacles. Here, based on the use of these technologies, we present a highly refined de novo P. knowlesi genome sequence of the Pk1(A+) clone. This sequence and annotation, referred to as the ‘MaHPIC Pk genome sequence’, includes manual annotation of the SICAvar gene family with 136 full-length members categorized as type I or II. This sequence provides a framework that will permit a better understanding of the SICAvar repertoire, selective pressures acting on this gene family and mechanisms of antigenic variation in this species and other pathogens.

We describe the performance of the Boolardy Engineering Test Array, the prototype for the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope. Boolardy Engineering Test Array is the first aperture synthesis radio telescope to use phased array feed technology, giving it the ability to electronically form up to nine dual-polarisation beams. We report the methods developed for forming and measuring the beams, and the adaptations that have been made to the traditional calibration and imaging procedures in order to allow BETA to function as a multi-beam aperture synthesis telescope. We describe the commissioning of the instrument and present details of Boolardy Engineering Test Array’s performance: sensitivity, beam characteristics, polarimetric properties, and image quality. We summarise the astronomical science that it has produced and draw lessons from operating Boolardy Engineering Test Array that will be relevant to the commissioning and operation of the final Australian Square Kilometre Array Path telescope.

Campylobacter is the leading cause of bacterial diarrhoeal disease worldwide, with raw and undercooked poultry meat and products the primary source of infection. Colonization of broiler chicken flocks with Campylobacter has proved difficult to prevent, even with high levels of biosecurity. Dipteran flies are proven carriers of Campylobacter and their ingress into broiler houses may contribute to its transmission to broiler chickens. However, this has not been investigated in the UK. Campylobacter was cultured from 2195 flies collected from four UK broiler farms. Of flies cultured individually, 0·22% [2/902, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0–0·53] were positive by culture for Campylobacter spp. Additionally, 1293 flies were grouped by family and cultured in 127 batches: 4/127 (3·15%, 95% CI 0·11-6·19) from three broiler farms were positive for Campylobacter. Multilocus sequence typing of isolates demonstrated that the flies were carrying broiler-associated sequence types, responsible for human enteric illness. Malaise traps were used to survey the dipteran species diversity on study farms and also revealed up to 612 flies present around broiler-house ventilation inlets over a 2-h period. Therefore, despite the low prevalence of Campylobacter cultured from flies, the risk of transmission by this route may be high, particularly during summer when fly populations are greatest.

Although several cases of acute hepatic failure associated with the administration of valproic acid (VPA) have been reported, the pathogenesis of this problem remains unclear. We report the case of a 40 month old male with a chronic seizure disorder treated with VPA and phenytoin for two years, who developed sudden progressive neurological deterioration with evidence of increased intracranial pressure and hepatic failure. The clinical features closely resembled those of Reye’s syndrome suggesting the possibility of a common pathogenesis.

A clinical, electrophysiological and pathological review of 14 patients having oculoskeletal myopathy with abnormal mitochondria was undertaken. These patients present with ophthalmoplegia, and mild skeletal muscle weakness. The clinical course is slowly progressive. Electromyographic examination shows myopathic changes. Serum enzymes are normal. The diagnosis is confirmed by skeletal muscle biopsy which shows abnormal mitochondria, including crystalloid inclusions on electron microscopy. These patients form a distinct clinical group in which the risk of sudden cardiac death is much less than it is in the Kearns-Sayre syndrome.

Epidemiological studies have identified increased colorectal cancer (CRC) risk with high red meat (HRM) intakes, whereas dietary fibre intake appears to be protective. In the present study, we examined whether a HRM diet increased rectal O6-methyl-2-deoxyguanosine (O6MeG) adduct levels in healthy human subjects, and whether butyrylated high-amylose maize starch (HAMSB) was protective. A group of twenty-three individuals consumed 300 g/d of cooked red meat without (HRM diet) or with 40 g/d of HAMSB (HRM+HAMSB diet) over 4-week periods separated by a 4-week washout in a randomised cross-over design. Stool and rectal biopsy samples were collected for biochemical, microbial and immunohistochemical analyses at baseline and at the end of each 4-week intervention period. The HRM diet increased rectal O6MeG adducts relative to its baseline by 21 % (P< 0·01), whereas the addition of HAMSB to the HRM diet prevented this increase. Epithelial proliferation increased with both the HRM (P< 0·001) and HRM+HAMSB (P< 0·05) diets when compared with their respective baseline levels, but was lower following the HRM+HAMSB diet compared with the HRM diet (P< 0·05). Relative to its baseline, the HRM+HAMSB diet increased the excretion of SCFA by over 20 % (P< 0·05) and increased the absolute abundances of the Clostridium coccoides group (P< 0·05), the Clostridiumleptum group (P< 0·05), Lactobacillus spp. (P< 0·01), Parabacteroides distasonis (P< 0·001) and Ruminococcus bromii (P< 0·05), but lowered Ruminococcus torques (P< 0·05) and the proportions of Ruminococcus gnavus, Ruminococcus torques and Escherichia coli (P< 0·01). HRM consumption could increase the risk of CRC through increased formation of colorectal epithelial O6MeG adducts. HAMSB consumption prevented red meat-induced adduct formation, which may be associated with increased stool SCFA levels and/or changes in the microbiota composition.

This paper describes the system architecture of a newly constructed radio telescope – the Boolardy engineering test array, which is a prototype of the Australian square kilometre array pathfinder telescope. Phased array feed technology is used to form multiple simultaneous beams per antenna, providing astronomers with unprecedented survey speed. The test array described here is a six-antenna interferometer, fitted with prototype signal processing hardware capable of forming at least nine dual-polarisation beams simultaneously, allowing several square degrees to be imaged in a single pointed observation. The main purpose of the test array is to develop beamforming and wide-field calibration methods for use with the full telescope, but it will also be capable of limited early science demonstrations.

The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) presents a number of challenges in the area of source finding and cataloguing. The data rates and image sizes are very large, and require automated processing in a high-performance computing environment. This requires development of new tools, that are able to operate in such an environment and can reliably handle large datasets. These tools must also be able to accommodate the different types of observations ASKAP will make: continuum imaging, spectral-line imaging, transient imaging. The ASKAP project has developed a source-finder known as selavy, built upon the duchamp source-finder. selavy incorporates a number of new features, which we describe here.

Since distributed processing of large images and cubes will be essential, we describe the algorithms used to distribute the data, find an appropriate threshold and search to that threshold and form the final source catalogue. We describe the algorithm used to define a varying threshold that responds to the local, rather than global, noise conditions, and provide examples of its use. And we discuss the approach used to apply two-dimensional fits to detected sources, enabling more accurate parameterisation. These new features are compared for timing performance, where we show that their impact on the pipeline processing will be small, providing room for enhanced algorithms.

We also discuss the development process for ASKAP source finding software. By the time of ASKAP operations, the ASKAP science community, through the Survey Science Projects, will have contributed important elements of the source finding pipeline, and the mechanisms in which this will be done are presented.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2010 in Portland, Oregon, USA, August 1 – August 5, 2010.