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Linguistic diversity has been increasing rapidly in Australian and New Zealand societies, and according to the most recent census (ABS, 2022) more than one in fiveAustralian households speak a language other than English. Fostering bilingualism is important atall levels of education because it plays a crucial role in identity development (Caldas, 2006) and enhancesacademic performance (Han, 2012" Lindholm-Leary, 2016" Yurtsever et al., 2023). The home environment is obviously crucial for bilingual development(Mak et al., 2023)but broader community engagement is also needed. With heritage language communities often distributed broadly across contexts such as Australiaand New Zealand,technology mediated language learning approaches (e.g., Zoom) hold strong potential in systematic efforts to promote bilingualism.A keyelement of effective online education is the quality of involvement of stakeholders, and in the case of online heritage language education involving young learners, parental involvementis crucial (El Nokali et al., 2010" Yang et al., 2023). To date, however, the involvement of parents in online heritage language education has not been adequately researched.

Objective: A body of empirical work demonstrates that high within-individual blood pressure variability (BPV) holds prognostic value to predict stroke and transient ischemic attack. The magnitude of association between BPV and other neurological outcomes remains less clear. We aimed to summarise the current evidence on whether BPV is associated to dementia and cognitive impairment in healthy older adults.

Design and method: Electronic databases were searched for full-text articles and conference abstracts in English. Prospective and cross-sectional cohort studies or clinical trials in adults without cognitive impairment at baseline were eligible. Measures of BPV included any metric over any duration (i.e. visit-to-visit BPV, day-to-day BPV, 24-hour BPV), but not day-night patterns. Outcomes included: 1. incident dementia, 2. cognitive impairment (change in cognition over time), 3. the combined endpoint of dementia and cognitive impairment, and 4. cognitive function (cross-sectional studies). If the association of mean BP with the study outcome was reported, this was extracted as well, to compare to prognostic ability of BPV with mean BP.

Results: After screening of the initial search of 2214 references, 40 papers were included. Seven studies assessed incident dementia, 12 assessed cognitive impairment and 23 assessed cognitive function. The majority of studies assessed visit-to-visit BPV (n=23), followed by 24-hour BPV (n=14) and day-to-day BPV (n=3). Increased systolic BPV was associated with the combined endpoint of dementia and cognitive impairment (odds ratio [OR] 1.24, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.14-1.35), however mean systolic BP was not (OR = 1.13, 95% CI 0.87 to 1.45). There was no evidence of heterogeneity between BPV and mean systolic BP effect sizes (p=0.47 for comparison, I² = 0%). Results for diastolic BP(V) were similar. Meta-analysis for all outcomes will be available in May 2020 at the conference.

Conclusions: On the basis of the available studies, high fluctuations in systolic BP were associated with cognitive impairment. However, there was large methodological and statistical heterogeneity among studies. To clarify whether BPV is an independent risk factor for dementia and cognitive impairment, future work should involve an individual participant data meta-analysis to overcome heterogeneity in analytical approaches

The malodours released when vacuum packaged lamb meat is first opened (confinement odour) are sometimes used to characterise its freshness and quality. Yet, safe and unspoilt meat may generate confinement odour and the associated sour, dairy-cheesy, sulphurous, and yeasty smells will only persist for a short period of time after opening the packaging [1]. Microbes contribute to the generation of volatile organic compounds and the odour of vacuum packaged meat [2]. Microbial growth is a secondary outcome to wet ageing, a practice to enhance the eating quality of meat. Frozen storage will restrict microbial growth on lamb meat and facilitate its sustainable access to high value markets. Storage effects on confinement odour are not fully understood, specifically, for bone-in cuts of lamb that have been wet aged, frozen, and ultimately thawed – by the end consumer. Therefore, quantifying these effects will help meat processors to better understand their clients and adjust lamb meat storage practices to enhance its appeal. This study investigated the pack sensory scores for thawed lamb racks (bone-in) that were frozen, after being aged for up to 3 weeks.

Theileria orientalis is a tick-borne protozoan parasite of bovine red blood cells inducing persistent infection. Clinical theileriosis, caused by T. orientalis has become a cattle disease of economic importance in Australia since 2006 with the emergence of pathogenic genotypes of the parasite. There is a scarcity of information on the identification of these genotypes and their epidemiology in central Queensland. We used recently developed molecular methods to differentiate and quantify pathogenic and non-pathogenic T. orientalis genotypes in cattle and ticks on a property near Capella, Central Queensland where clinical theileriosis is believed to be absent. Thirty blood samples were collected from cattle and ticks were collected off pasture and off animals fortnightly between February and June 2018. Real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) analysis of the blood samples revealed a generic T. orientalis prevalence of 100% with prevalence of the different genotypes being 100% for Buffeli (non-pathogenic), 80% for Chitose (possibly pathogenic) and 0% for the pathogenic Ikeda genotype. Absolute quantification revealed similar parasite burdens of Buffeli and Chitose with no association between the two. It also revealed significantly higher Theileria burdens in sampled cows than heifers. On pasture, two tick types were detected, Amblyomma sp. (95.8%) and Haemaphysalis bancrofti (4.2%). The ticks collected from cattle were very different being 98.6% Rhipicephalus microplus and 1.4% Amblyomma triguttatum. Quantitative PCR of pooled tick head parts of the three tick species revealed high levels of genotype Buffeli in H. bancrofti and moderate levels in R. microplus. No other Theileria genotypes were detected. Based on these and other findings the most likely vector of T. orientalis in this area is Haemaphysalis bancrofti despite the lack of detection on cattle. Further research is required on the role of Rhipicephalus microplus. T. orientalis was endemic on this property but the most pathogenic genotype, Ikeda was absent.

Background: It came as a surprise when research revealed that Icelandic 10th graders in 2006 held less egalitarian views on gendered division of labor than did the their coevals in 1992, suggesting that Icelandic youth in 2006 held more traditional attitudes towards housework than did their counterparts in the 1990s.

Objective(s): Adding evidence from a 2014 survey to examine these trends further among Icelandic 10th graders.

Method: Data from three Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) surveys in 1992, 2006, and 2014 for year 10 students in Iceland were examined. The sampling proportions, 85.1% in 1992, 43.2% in 2006, and 77.9% in 2014, suggest that the results reflect population values rather than sample values.

Results: The percentage of boys who rate the different jobs as being equally for men and women has increased from 1992 to 2014 despite a dip in 2006, with large increases in equality for ‘minor house repairs’ and ‘car maintenance’. The changes from 1992 to 2014 are mixed for girls. Girls report higher equality in jobs such as getting up at night to tend to young children and car maintenance, while there was an increased view among girls that cooking is a man’s job.

Conclusions: The findings of the present study suggest that Iceland has distinguished itself as a safe haven of gender equality. Attitudes towards gender equality are moving in the right direction in Iceland with girls tending to have more gender equal attitudes than boys.

The hypothalamus controls feed intake in response to various physical, nutrient and hormone signals that are integrated in the arcuate nucleus (ARC). The ARC contains both orexigenic and anorexigenic neurons which communicate with the theoretical hunger (lateral hypothalamic area; LHA) and satiety (ventromedial hypothalamus; VMH) centres to control feed intake. Cattle in northern Australia have a 35 to 60% reduction in voluntary feed intake during the annual dry season (April to November) due to a very low crude protein [CP; 25 to 40g/kg dry matter (DM)] content of available pasture. This reduction in intake is likely regulated by metabolic mechanisms. It was hypothesised that gene pathways within the ARC, LHA and VMH of steers would be differentially expressed in response to the CP content of the diet and metabolisable energy (ME) intake.

Bos indicus steers (n=15; 194 ± 10kg liveweight, mean ± S.D.) were fed a high CP-high dry matter digestibility (DMD) diet ad libitum to provide unrestricted ME intake (HCP-HDMD-U), a low CP-low DMD diet ad libitum to provide unrestricted ME intake (LCP-LDMD-U) or a HCP-HDMD diet restricted to an equivalent ME intake of the LCP-LDMD diet (HCP-HDMD-R) for 98 days. Intake of steers was significantly different between all treatments (P<0.001; 28.5, 17.0 and 9.7 gDM/kg LW.day for HCP-HDMD-U, LCP-LDMD-U and HCP-HDMD-R respectively). ME intake was significantly higher (P<0.001) for steers fed the HCP-HDMD-U (0.24 MJ/kg LW.day) but was similar for steers fed the LCP-HDMD-U and HCP-HDMD-R (0.07 MJ/kg LW.day) diets.

Steers were euthanised and RNA was extracted from the ARC, VMH and LHA of these steers followed by preparation of cDNA libraries and subsequent sequencing on Illumina NovaSeq 6000 (producing 100 bp single end reads). FASTQ files were trimmed using ‘trimmomatic’ and mapped against Bos taurus reference genome release 9 using HISAT2 (average 56% reads mapped within genes). Within the ARC, 179 and 142 genes were differentially expressed between the HCP-HDMD-U and the LCP-LDMD-U and HCP-HDMD-R treatments, respectively. The VMH and LAT had minimal differentially expressed genes in response to dietary treatments. These data indicate the importance of the ARC in integrating signals in steers with different levels of ME intake.

Sequencing performed by Australian Genome Research Facility, Australia. Bioinformatics performed by QFAB@QCIF, Institute of Molecular Biology, The University of Queensland. We gratefully acknowledge Meat and Livestock Australia for funding this work. D Innes was in receipt of scholarships from The University of Queensland and Meat and Livestock Australia.

The effect of including general immune competence (IC) as a novel trait in a fibre production (FP) and a dual purpose selection (DP) index was investigated. Two levels of economic values were assumed for IC and the sensitivity of index responses to these were tested. The results showed that the addition of IC to a selection index requires careful consideration in order to achieve the envisaged improvements in health and welfare outcomes expected while addressing primary production objectives.

Introduction

Current feeding systems calculate heat production (HP) and energy requirements for a given level of production or feed intake from the sum of maintenance energy and energy used for gain. Changes in body composition are calculated from fixed, empirically-derived, relationships between fat and protein gain relative to degree of maturity and body condition (Freer et al., 2007). However, these fixed relationships may not be able to capture the variation in body protein and fat as animals respond to nutritional changes, nor the effects of compensatory growth on body composition.

Since humans are obligate bipeds, the foot represents the only structure that directly interfaces with the ground during locomotion, and for this reason it is highly specialized. Particularly, the human talus occupies a pivotal position between the lower limb and foot, as 1) it sustains the weight of the body while distributing the load anteriorly (i.e., to the navicular) and inferiorly (i.e., to the calcaneus), and 2) it allows plantar and dorsal flexion of the foot¹. Recent contributions have employed digital methods to investigate shape variation in hominoid tali^2,3,4. However, little of this work has assessed talar morphology within modern humans. Here we apply a (semi) landmark based method to assess talar morphological differences between groups of modern humans living in different terrain.

Dual energy Xray absorptiometry (DEXA) is regularly used to measure body composition and bone characteristics in human medicine. Medical grade DEXA can accurately measure the proportion of fat, lean and bone in production animals, as well as bone minerals in lambs. Recently, DEXA modified for lamb carcase scanning at abattoir-chainspeed precisely predicted CT fat and lean % over a range of lamb genotypes. There is opportunity to measure new traits and identify the genetic variation of these traits on live sheep using a medical grade DEXA. Lambs from the Genetic Resource Flock (n=400) are live DEXA scanned at the Katanning Research Station and subsequently DEXA scanned as carcases at the processing facility. DEXA technology scans an object at two different energy levels. The ratio (R value) between the high and low energy level for each pixel in the image relates to the atomic mass of the tissue. Analysis will include whole body and sub-regional lean and fat %, and bone %. Individual pelvic bones are also analysed on the live DEXA scans to measure pelvic area and bone content. This data will provide the opportunity to identify correlations between live DEXA and carcase DEXA measures of body composition within and across sire types. Furthermore, there is potential to link individual bone analysis to important genetic reproduction traits such as lamb birthweight and lamb survival.

The poultry industry is globally affected by Necrotic enteritis (NE) due to the lack of effective preventive strategies, high mortality and reduced productivity in infected flocks. The extent to which long non-coding RNA (lncRNAs) are associated with the gene expression profile of sick chickens has yet to be understood. This study aimed to characterise the lncRNAs present in chicken and identify the cis- and trans-lncRNAs based on their location of action and association with other coding genes. Briefly, birds were inoculated with Eimeria species and Clostridium perfringens to induce NE. Tissue samples were obtained on day 16 from 12 chickens in a control group (n=6) and a challenge group (n=6). RNA sequences were obtained from the Illumina HiSeq2000 platform. The bioinformatics pipeline contemplated cleaning the sequences, aligning to the Gallus gallus reference genome (GRCg7b) with STAR, and merging the assemblies with cuffmerge from Cufflink. Transcripts were classified as lncRNAs if the length was greater than 200 bp, selected class code, lack of an open reading frame or a shorter one (< 300 nt), lack of coding potential, no miRNA precursor, more than one exon present and an average expression (FRKM) > 0.1. In total, 679 transcripts were identified as lncRNAs distributed across the genome. From these lncRNAs, 193 transcripts were classified as cis-acting due to their proximity to 359 coding genes, while the expression profile of 81 trans-acting lncRNA was associated with 219 genes. Our results provide an overview of the lncRNAs and target genes in chickens infected with NE.

The ability of lambs to respond to the ewe in the early neonatal period is important for subsequent lamb survival. This experiment used a modified barrier test to assess lamb vigour in two breeds known to differ in other methods of measuring vigour and at different ages (4h and 10h of age). It was found that Scottish Blackface lambs performed better in the test than Suffolk lambs with more Blackface lambs reaching the ewe (25.4% vs 8.5%). Older lambs reached the ewe more quickly (88.87s vs 150.94s). This test may provide an alternative measure of lamb vigour in terms of the ability of lambs to make contact with the ewe as it can be done at an early age and it does not require the presence of the dam.

Chiral glycidyl esters – such as (S)-ethyl- or (S)-methyl-4,5-epoxypentanoates - are valuable precursors in many chemical syntheses. Until recently, these compounds were synthesized from glutamic acid in four steps (deamination, reduction, tosylation and epoxide formation) in low to average global yield (20-50%). Moreover, this procedure requires some harmful reagents such as sodium nitrite (toxic and ecotoxic) and boron hydride (carcinogen).

Herein, to access these chiral glycidyl esters, we propose a safer chemo-enzymatic synthetic pathway starting from levoglucosenone (aka LGO, CAS 37112-31-5), a biobased compound obtained through the flash pyrolysis of cellulose. Firstly, LGO was submitted to a lipase-mediated Baeyer-Villiger oxidation followed by an acidic hydrolysis to afford (S)-γ-hydroxymethyl-α,β-butenolide. The latter then underwent a palladium-catalyzed hydrogenation to give (S)-γ-hydroxymethyl-γ-butyrolactone. Finally, after tosylation, the corresponding intermediate was treated with sodium ethoxide/methoxide to afford (S)-Ethyl and (S)-Methyl-4,5-epoxypentanoates in 57% yield, respectively.

Setup time is pivotal in printed circuit board (PCB) assembly line operations. However, PCB production encounters varying setup times due to multiple influencing factors. This paper addresses an uncertain setup time prediction problem in PCB assembly production lines. Unlike existing production time prediction models, our proposed approach integrates a comprehensive range of production features, not only with features related to PCBs but also production line operators, setup procedures and so on. To enhance model accuracy and mitigate overfitting, we implemented some data preprocessing phases and designed a random forest-integrated feature selection method. With the selected features, we used a light gradient boosting machine (LightGBM) as the predictive model and optimised its hyperparameters by a differential evolution (DE) algorithm. We validated our model's performance through extensive computational experiments based on real-world industrial data, focusing on feature selection efficiency and hyperparameter optimisation. The experimental results confirmed that our proposed DE-LightGBM can reduce redundant features and optimise the integral hyperparameters for model training. We also compared the DE-LightGBM model to some well-established machine learning approaches in different setup scenarios. The proposed DE-LightGBM outperformed other machine learning methods being compared, delivering accurate setup time predictions in both standard and complex scenarios.

Cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) and task-based BOLD fMRI signals are closely linked. Understanding whether the relationship between CVR and task-based BOLD responses varies across the brain is important for interpreting BOLD, particularly in studies of aging where both CVR and BOLD activation differences are observed. Therefore, this work aimed to investigate the linear relationship between breath-hold (BH) CVR and task-based BOLD across the cerebral cortex to different cognitive tasks. Significant linear relationships were observed in posterior regions independent of task, while anterior regions were task-specific. These findings might contribute to understanding age-related posterior-anterior BOLD activation differences commonly observed in fMRI studies.

Stock market prediction plays an important role in financial decisionmaking for investors. Many of them rely on news disclosures to make their decisions in buying or selling stocks. However, accurate modelling of stock market trends via news disclosures is a challenging task, considering the complexity and ambiguity of natural languages used. Unlike previous work along this line of research, which typically applies bag-of-words to extract tens of thousands of features to build a prediction model, we propose a sentiment analysis-based approach for financial market prediction using news disclosures. Specifically, sentiment analysis is carried out in the pre-processing phase to extract sentiment-related features from financial news. Historical stock market data from the perspective of time series analysis is also included as an input feature. With the extracted features, we use a support vector machine (SVM) to build the prediction model, with its parameters optimised through particle swarm optimisation (PSO). Experimental results show that our proposed SVM and PSO-based model is able to obtain better results than a deep learning model in terms of time and accuracy. The results presented here are to date the best in the literature based on the financial news dataset tested. This excellent performance is attributed to the sentiment analysis done during the pre-processing stage, as it reduces the feature dimensions significantly.

Root system architecture of plants is a complicated phenotype that is pivotal to processes as fundamental as acquisition of water and nutrients, stress tolerance and anchorage in soil. This poster presents preliminary results of a search for genes that contribute to root system architecture in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. With the aid of microscopic observations, reverse and molecular genetics, we have identified genes functioning in different cellular pathways that contribute to Arabidopsis root system architecture. The study will expand our current understanding of how root systems grow and develop in plants, potentially facilitating the improvement of crop species.

Contemporary research suggests that the alpha band (8-12Hz) of the human EEG signal can be divided into functionally discrete sub-bands. Within the alpha range, at least two additional functional rhythms are proposed" tau (6.5-9.5Hz) and mu (7.5-12.5Hz). These sub-bands are primarily distinguished based on oscillatory activity at specific cortical sites" thus mu is associated with activity in motor/sensorimotor areas and tau with activity in auditory areas" thus event-related synchronisation/desynchronisation (ERS/ERD) to auditory stimuli in the lower alpha range by sources within the temporal lobes would be classified as a tau rhythm. Although tau has previously been associated with lower order sound processing, any involvement in higher order processing is unknown. To explore this further, the current study collected continuous 64 channel EEG from 27 participants as they undertook two tasks: (i) passive listening to a variety of animal noises" and (ii) a grammatical decision task involving both real and nonsense English word stimuli. Following FFT, significantly higher ERD was observed in the lower alpha, or tau range for human words and primate vocalisations when compared to other animal vocalisation types. This difference was independent of acoustic differences. The ERD data was then analysed via eLoreta with desynchronization localised to both primary and secondary auditory processing areas suggesting that tau responds to both lower and higher order processing. Given that this response was common to both human speech and primate vocalisations, with primate vocalisations and nonsense words evoking the greatest ERD, this suggests that tau may also be suppressed when identifying whether a complex sound is meaningful, that is speech related, and deserving of further language processing.

The effect of litter size (LS) on the variability in neonatal behaviour in the context of lamb survival was investigated. Merino ewes (n=270) were oestrus synchronised in three mating groups (MG) 10 days apart and naturally mated. Eighteen ewes from each MG were selected, balanced for LS (singles and twins) following pregnancy scanning at day 60. Ewes were maintained on pasture until day 100 of pregnancy before being fed a concentrate ration in group pens. Ewes were housed five days prior to lambing, in individual pens. Video records from birth until three hours post partum were taken and times to stand, reach the udder, unsuccessfully and successfully suckle determined. At 10-15 minutes post partum, lambs were removed for blood sampling and morphometric and temperature measurement. MG3 lambs also had an infrared thermal image taken and consequently, were separated from their dams 1 minute longer (P<0.05) than MG1 and 2 lambs. Data were analysed using Proc GLM (SAS) with LS and MG plus their interaction included as terms in the model. MG was added as it was a potential source of variance. There was a significant interaction (P<0.05) between LS and MG for times to stand and reach the udder. Twins were quicker to stand than singletons in MG1 (15.4 and 31.0 min) and MG2 (18.8 and 29.3 min) but this was reversed in MG3 (42.4 and 20.6 min). Similar trends were observed for time to reach the udder (MG1 20.4 and 42.4 min" MG2 31.0 and 39.7 min" MG3 57.1 and 38.5 min). Singletons did not differ in times to perform these behaviours between MG. The reasons for this MG effect in twins are unclear. The additional time away from the ewe or more exposure to high quality Spring pasture for MG3 compared to the other groups could have contributed.

Trifolium subterraneum is widely grown in the P-deficient soils of southern Australia. However, this pasture legume has a high critical external P requirement and requires annual applications of P-fertiliser for high productivity. Twenty six cultivars or lines of T. subterraneum were grown to determine: (i) the difference between cultivars in shoot growth and P uptake under low P supply, and (ii) the root morphology traits important for P acquisition. Micro-swards of each cultivar were grown with a topsoil layer that was either deficient in P for plant growth (40 mg P applied kg^-1 ) or had P supplied in excess of the critical requirement for maximum yield (250 mg P applied kg^-1; “luxury P”). The subsoil was P-deficient (0 mg P applied kg^-1 ). Yield and P content of shoots, topsoil and subsoil roots were determined after 5 weeks growth. Root samples were assessed for diameter, length and root hair length. When luxury P was supplied, all cultivars were equally highly productive. However, in P-deficient soil shoot yield ranged from 38% to 71% of maximum yield. Root morphology traits such as total root length of the cultivars ranged from 63 to 129 m, and correlated well with cultivar plant P acquisition (R^~0.86). Topsoil root length density (14-26 cm^-3 ) and topsoil specific root length (99 to 172 m g-1 ) varied between cultivars. Variation was also observed for traits such as root hair length (0.19-0.33 mm) and root diameter (0.30-0.35 mm). These traits were used to calculate the total surface area of the root hair cylinder for each cultivar, which correlated well with cultivar plant P acquisition (R^~0.83). The results demonstrated that there is potential to identify cultivars of T. subterraneum for improved P acquisition and higher yields in low P soil.