The records of women attending a large Australian regional hospital for antenatal care were retrospectively analysed to determine what proportion had undergone or been offered first trimester screening for fetal abnormalities; only 609 (54%) of 1114 women had undergone or been offered screening. Younger women, multiparous women and women living in rural Australia were less likely to be offered screening. Barriers to screening and solutions for overcoming these need to be identified to improve access and equality in antenatal screening for all women.

The Meat Standards Australia beef-grading model applies a variable adjustment for different cuts of hormonal growth promotant (HGP)-treated carcasses, but does not differentiate between different HGP types. Using 300 non-implanted Bos indicus–Bos taurus composite steers, an experiment was conducted to compare the effects of an oestradiol only (OES) and a combination trenbolone acetate and oestradiol (TBA+OES) implant with non-implanted animals (CON) fed a concentrate ration for 73 days before slaughter, on eating quality of the mm. longissimus lumborum (LL) and gluteus medius (GM) muscles. Sensory and objective LL and GM samples were aged for either 5 or 35 days before freezing at -20°C. Carcass weights from each group were significantly (P < 0.05) different. Corrected for carcass weight, HGP treatment had a significant effect on hump height, ossification score, marble score, P8 fat depth and eye-muscle area. The TBA+OES treatment resulted in significantly (P < 0.05) tougher meat than the OES and CON treatments as assessed by shear force, although this difference was reduced with aging. Sensory scores (tenderness, juiciness, like flavour, overall liking and a composite MQ4 score) confirmed a negative HGP treatment effect, whereby TBA+OES was significantly lower than the CON and OES treatments after 5 days of aging, and these differences were reduced through aging. TBA+OES had a greater impact on sensory scores in the LL when compared to the GM. Both HGP treatments increased calpastatin activity, and the TBA+OES treatment was significantly (P < 0.05) different from the CON and OES treatments. It was concluded that OES and TBA+OES implants have different impacts on meat eating-quality measurements, which could have important implications for the Australian and international beef industry.

1. For many animals, sperm can be a limiting resource and impact lifetime reproductive success. Sperm limitation can arise from reduced male availability in a population, but may also be a consequence of external influences, such as sperm wastage. If sperm is finite and not always cost-free to produce, do males vary sperm use strategies in response to sperm limitation? One way to answer this is to examine male sperm allocation in response to sexual deception that elicits sperm wastage.

2. Cryptostylis orchids trick their parasitoid wasp pollinator, male Lissopimpla excelsa, into mating with the flower and ejaculating. For many parasitoids sperm is limited; so this exploitative interaction could impose a high cost to males. Here, we ask whether this duped wasp can become sperm limited, and whether this impacts his ejaculate size following deception. Sperm limitation has implications for his future and lifetime reproductive success, and consequently, the ultimate fitness of the orchid, and the evolutionary maintenance of orchid deception systems in general.

3. We compared sperm use and availability for male L. excelsa wasps from wild populations that either did or did not co-occur with sexually deceptive Cryptostylis orchids.

4. On average, males had ~50,000 sperm cells in their seminal vesicles and ejaculated ~10% of their existing sperm stock in a single encounter. Pollinators that were permitted to mate with an orchid had significantly less sperm than males that were not, suggesting they may become temporarily sperm limited. Pollinators from sites with orchids ejaculate significantly less sperm on orchids than naïve males.

5. The difference in ejaculate size for pollinators that do and do not co-occur with orchids may be a consequence of males learning to avoid orchids, or an adaptation to avoid sperm depletion. Alternatively, males may reduce sperm allocation when they perceive more available ‘females’ (either orchids or real females) in the environment. These costs and responses to exploitation show how plants can influence the population dynamics of their pollinators, and, more broadly, provides an explanation for the maintenance antagonistic co-evolutionary relationships. We suggest that by interfering with the population dynamics of a duped species, exploiters might improve their own persistence.

Objectives Stigmatising attitudes towards mental illness are an established barrier to help-seeking in adolescent males with anxiety. This study aimed to investigate specific forms of personal mental health stigma elicited in response to vignettes of individuals with clinical and non-clinical symptoms of anxiety within a sample of Australian adolescent males. The relationship between stigma and mental health help seeking was also investigated.

Methods Seven hundred and two males (aged 12–18 years) completed a vignette-based mental health literacy survey and measures of help-seeking attitudes, intentions and behaviour online. Open-response items were coded for frequency, intensity and form of stigma.

Results A larger percentage of participants exhibited stigma in response to the non-clinical vignette than in response to the non-clinical vignettes. Stigmatising comments towards the non-clinical vignette were also found to be more severe than towards the clinical vignettes. When stigma occured, it was predominantly related to a belief that a mental disorder was due to a personal weakness. Individuals who used stigmatising comments were also more likely to have negative views towards help-seeking. Yet individuals who made stigmatising comments about a peer with clinical social anxiety were more likely to have previously sought mental health help.

Conclusions It is uncommon for adolescent males to hold stigmatising views towards other adolescent males with clinical levels of anxiety. More severe stigma is evident in response to experiences of normative levels of anxiety in response to an event which would typically be considered mildly anxiety-provoking (leaving home to go to university). Implications for youth mental health initiatives targeting help-seeking for anxiety in adolescent males are discussed.