Australia mine collapse: Two men missing at Dugald River

It is believed the men's vehicle fell 25m when the mine collapsed

By Tom Housden
BBC News, Sydney

A search is under way for two men who have been missing for more than 24 hours after a Queensland mine collapse.

The men were driving 125m (410ft) underground inside the Dugald River mine near Cloncurry when the ground gave way on Wednesday, local media say.

They fell 25m into a void, but a third person they were working with escaped and raised the alarm.

Their vehicle has been located using a drone, but rescuers have found no sign of the missing men.

The pair have not responded to efforts to contact them by radio.

The men - named in local media reports as Dylan Langridge and Trevor Davis - are believed to be "fly-in, fly-out workers", a common practice in parts of Australia where staff are flown temporarily to remote work sites.

All operations at the zinc mine have been halted as the search intensifies, mine owner MMG said.

MMG's parent company Perenti said rescuers worked all night using heavy equipment to gain access to the vehicle.

And on Thursday morning a spokesman for the mine said a mission had begun to recover it from below.

"We expect that this process will take some time," he said, adding, "our thoughts remain very strongly with the families of our missing colleagues."

In a statement, Perenti CEO Mark Norwell said rescue teams were focused on resolving the "evolving" situation "as quickly and safely as possible".

"Everyone at Perenti is feeling the impact of this incident and whilst we hold deep concerns for the safety of our colleagues, we continue to be hopeful that a positive outcome can be achieved."

Sydney WorldPride launches biggest event in city since Olympics

Kat Wong14:13, Feb 16 2023

ANNA KUCERA/SUPPLIED
Sydney WorldPride creative director Ben Graetz (in drag as his alter ego Miss Ellaneous).

With rainbow trains and trams at the ready, the stage is set for WorldPride to take over Sydney, Australia for the harbour city's biggest event since the 2000 Olympics.

The 17-day celebration of the LGBTQI community opens on Friday with 500,000 visitors expected to attend some 300 free and ticketed events.

Arts Minister Ben Franklin says the festivities will give Sydney "a rainbow-coloured shot in the arm".

"We're all holding hands to show the world what an extraordinary city this is - that it is truly vibrant and inclusive and diverse," he said on Thursday.


Rainbow-wrapped trams and trains will take visitors to a variety of events including Fair Day, an all-day extravaganza of food, shopping and picnic opportunities.

Locations around Sydney's CBD are painted as a rainbow display.

The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade will celebrate its 45th anniversary when it takes the street party back to its spiritual home on Oxford Street on February 25.

The celebrations will conclude with the Pride March on March 5, when 50,000 people will walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in a show of global equality.

Sydney WorldPride CEO Kate Wickett says everyone is invited.

"There are going to be parties. Lots and lots of them," she told reporters.

"Parties, performance art, theatre, comedy, sports - you name it, we've got it because you're all invited.

"The city will be abuzz and alive with colour and we couldn't be more proud."

However, Wickett says WorldPride is more than a month-long jamboree.

1000 Sydneysiders create a Progress Pride flag at the Opera House

"We're a party with purpose," she said.

The harbour city will also host the southern hemisphere's largest-ever LGBTQI human rights conference.

More than 1500 activists, commissioners and politicians, including United States envoy Jessica Stern, will discuss issues affecting the queer community around the world.

"Sydney is a wonderful and open city for all and we want to share that with the world," Wickett said.

"We are a beacon and we have a responsibility to help others."

Sydney Mardi Gras CEO Albert Kruger says the event is also an opportunity to shine a light on issues on Sydney's doorstep.

"Here in NSW, the home of Mardi Gras, religious schools can still discriminate against LGBTQI students and teachers," he said.

"Trans and gender diverse people face cruel barriers accessing identity documents and LGBTQI people are still subject to conversion practices," he said.

"We still have a long way to go and this is indeed a vehicle for protest and change."

Pablo Neruda died with toxic bacteria in his body, say forensic scientists

IVAN SEMENIUK

SCIENCE REPORTER

Judge Paola Plaza speaks to reporters in Santiago, Chile, on Feb. 15, after receiving a report by international forensic experts regarding the cause of death of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.

The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda died with toxic bacteria in his body, scientists have found, a result that is consistent with – though not proof of – allegations that the Nobel laureate and diplomat was poisoned soon after a military coup toppled Chile’s government in 1973.

After a detailed analysis, parallel teams working in Canada and Denmark found DNA belonging to Clostridium botulinum in a single molar and in bone fragments that were sampled in 2015 after the poet’s body was ordered exhumed.

The neurotoxin-producing species, which causes botulism, is one of the most dangerous pathogens known.

“We’re feeling very confident that it was present in his body when he died,” said Debi Poinar, a research associate with McMaster University’s Ancient DNA laboratory in Hamilton, who led the Canadian part of the investigation.

Researchers hope Pablo Neruda's bones hold answer to poet's death

Ms. Poinar was among the experts who presented their findings to a Chilean tribunal on Wednesday. Although the hearing was not open to the press, lawyers had leaked news earlier in the week that suggested forensic teams had verified that Mr. Neruda was poisoned.

“We made it clear that we could not say that,” Ms. Poinar said. She added that further investigations could help remove some of the remaining ambiguity around the poet’s death.

Born in 1904, Mr. Neruda was internationally celebrated for his literary works, including Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, first published in 1924. A prominent left-wing intellectual and avowed communist, he served as Chile’s ambassador to France from 1970 to 1972 during the government of president Salvador Allende.

He died on Sept. 23, 1973, just 12 days after the U.S.-backed coup that swept Mr. Allende from power and hours after he returned home from a clinic where he suspected that he had been injected with something.

The suspicion that Mr. Neruda was the victim of a covert assassination is long-standing. It is bolstered by the fact that Clostridium botulinum is a known biological weapon that was employed by agents of general Augusto Pinochet, who ruled Chile following the coup until 1990. In 2021, five ex-officials of the regime were convicted of using the toxic bacteria to poison a group of political prisoners who were held in a Santiago jail in 1981.

In 2017, the McMaster team helped to determine that Mr. Neruda did not die of prostate cancer, which has been listed as his official cause of death.

Together with their Danish counterparts, the team was then able to demonstrate the presence of Clostridium botulinum after collecting and reconstructing fragments of bacterial DNA from Mr. Neruda’s remains, in particular the interior of the tooth that they sampled.

In their investigation, researchers turned up the DNA of other bacteria, including those that cause tooth decay, and another species associated with a urinary-tract infection that the poet is known to have had. This added to the team’s confidence that they were sampling microbes that were present in Mr. Neruda’s blood when he died rather than those that may have shown up long after his burial.

“We think we’ve done a pretty good job of creating a picture of what the microbial life of his blood was at the time of death,” Ms. Poinar said.

But the result was not enough to make firm conclusions about the cause of Mr. Neruda’s death because, unlike some human pathogens, Clostridium botulinum can also live in soil.

To eliminate the possibility, the McMaster team then tested soil samples obtained from around the burial site. They were not able to find a match with the Clostridium botulinum present in Mr. Neruda’s body.

The team also undertook a more detailed exploration of the DNA they retrieved to see if they could identify the genes associated with the neurotoxin that is produced by the deadliest strains of the Clostridium botulinum. However, the team was only able to reconstruct about one-third of the bacterial genome that lacked most of the genes required to enable the toxin. This meant the result was not enough, on its own, to say that Mr. Neruda had been killed by the bacterium.

“We got some really interesting scientific information on this thing, but it’s not definitive. It doesn’t tell us what happened,” said Charles Brenner, an expert panel member and forensic mathematician affiliated with the University of California Berkeley Human Rights Center.

Dr. Brenner added that the result was still a big step forward, considering that “up to now there was nothing but rumours.”

In their report, the McMaster team said that another avenue of investigation would be to sample the remains of those prisoners who were known to have died of Clostridium botulinum in 1981. If the bacteria that killed them were to match the one that was found in connection with Mr. Neruda, it would provide a definitive link to the Pinochet regime, since the chance of two genetically identical strains showing up under such circumstances would be astronomically small.

“It would be a slam dunk,” Ms. Poinar said.

OFF ON A WILD CONSPIRACY CHASE

House Judiciary Committee subpoenas Big Tech executives as content moderation probe escalates

Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, speaks during a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on what Republicans say is the politicization of the FBI and Justice Department and attacks on American civil liberties, on Capitol Hill, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023, in Washington.

By Joseph Clark - The Washington Times - Wednesday, February 15, 2023

The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed executives from the five major U.S. technology firms on Wednesday as the panel deepens its probe into alleged collusion between Big Tech and the federal government to suppress free speech.

Committee Chairman Jim Jordan is demanding that the chief executive officers from Facebook parent, Meta Platforms; Google parent, Alphabet; Microsoft; Apple and Amazon.com turn over any communication between their companies and the federal government relating to content moderation or suppression.

In letters accompanying the subpoenas, Mr. Jordan wrote that his committee aims to “understand how and to what extent the Executive Branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.” He said the goal is to develop new legislation “such as the possible enactment of new statutory limits on the Executive Branch’s ability to work with Big Tech to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users.”

Mr. Jordan, Ohio Republican, requested last year that the companies cooperate voluntarily with a Republican-led probe into the matter, before the GOP gained the majority in the House, giving the party subpoena power.

The companies failed adequately to respond “without compulsory process,” the chairman wrote.

Not included in the list of CEOs receiving subpoenas is Elon Musk, who began releasing a trove of internal documents following his takeover of Twitter. The documents revealed the liberal bent among Twitter employees that led to suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story on the platform weeks before the 2020 presidential election and the suspension of former President Donald Trump’s account days after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

Republicans have long suspected a concerted effort on behalf of the platforms to silence conservative voices online through so-called shadow bans or by bending internal content moderation policy to outright ban certain users. Those suspicions have largely been proven true, in Twitter’s case, by Mr. Musk’s steady drip of internal documents.

The “Twitter Files” have also unveiled the extent to which the platform’s executives worked with federal law enforcement and intelligence officials to moderate content.

Republicans on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee grilled Twitter’s former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, former deputy general counsel James Baker and former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth in a hearing earlier this month focused on their decision to suppress The New York Post’s story on Oct. 14, 2020, exposing the Hunter Biden laptop.

The executives told lawmakers that they made a mistake when they censored the Hunter Biden laptop computer story weeks before the 2020 presidential election, but they brushed off accusations that they were directed to do so by the federal government.

Mr. Jordan, who also serves on the oversight panel, seized on the witnesses as they dismissed concerns that the government was involved. He noted that the FBI held weekly meetings with Twitter executives before the company suppressed the Post’s report.

In his letters on Wednesday, Mr. Jordan noted the “benchmark” that Mr. Musk set on “how transparent Big Tech companies can be about interactions with government over censorship.”

“The Twitter Files have exposed how Big Tech and the federal government have worked hand in hand in ways that undermine First Amendment principles,” he said. “Numerous internal documents from Twitter reflect the weaponization of the federal government’s power to censor speech online.”

He said it is “necessary for Congress to gauge the extent to which this occurred” at the five other companies as well.

Democrats have dismissed the Republican-led probes into Big Tech as a political stunt and have gone on the attack against Mr. Jordan, specifically, for doling out subpoenas after bucking those sent his way by the Democrat-led House Jan. 6 committee.

“He is playing partisan politics in the most obvious and ham-handed way,” Congressional Integrity Project Executive Director Kyle Herrig said of Mr. Jordan. “After defying his own subpoena to appear before the committee investigating an insurrection against the United States, an insurrection that he lent a hand in, Jordan is handing out subpoenas like candy on Halloween.”


• Joseph Clark can be reached at jclark@washingtontimes.com.

HUBRIS

Starbucks' Schultz declines to appear before Senate panel

Starbucks’ interim CEO Howard Schutz has declined a request to appear before a Senate committee seeking to question him about the coffee chain’s response to an ongoing unionization campaign at the company’s U.S. stores

ByDEE-ANN DURBIN AP Business Writer

February 15, 2023, 

Starbucks’ interim CEO Howard Schutz has declined a request to appear before a Senate committee seeking to question him about the coffee chain's response to an ongoing unionization campaign at the company's U.S. stores.

In declining the call from the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Shultz earned a stern rebuke from the committee’s chairman, Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“Apparently, it is easier for Mr. Schultz to fire workers who are exercising their constitutional right to form unions and to intimidate others who may be interested in joining a union than to answer questions from elected officials,” Sanders, a Vermont Independent, said Wednesday in a statement.

The Vermont Independent sent a letter to Schultz earlier this month asking him to appear March 9 for a hearing about the unionization campaign and Starbucks' “compliance with federal labor law.” The letter was signed by the committee’s 10 Democrats.

At least 286 company-owned U.S. Starbucks stores have voted to unionize since late 2021. Starbucks doesn’t support the effort, and the process has been contentious. Regional officers for the National Labor Relations Board have filed 76 complaints against the company for various issues, including failure to bargain. Starbucks, meanwhile, has filed 86 unfair labor practice charges against the union, Starbucks Workers United.

In its own letter sent to the committee on Tuesday, Starbucks noted that Schultz __ a longtime Starbucks CEO who came out of retirement last year to assume the interim CEO job __ will be transitioning out of that role at the end of March. Laxman Narasimhan, a former PepsiCo executive, will become Starbucks’ new CEO on April 1. Schultz will remain on the company’s board.

Seattle-based Starbucks said AJ Jones II, Starbucks’ chief public affairs officer, would be better suited to discussing the unionization campaign since he has been more closely involved. The company also said it has been bargaining to reach a contract agreement at more than 200 stores that have voted to unionize.

It’s unclear how the committee will proceed. In his statement Wednesday, Sanders said he intended to “hold Mr. Schultz and Starbucks accountable for their unacceptable behavior and look forward to seeing him before our committee.”

The committee has the power to subpoena Schultz, but it’s not yet clear if it will use it. A message seeking comment was emailed to a committee spokesman Wednesday.

REST IN POWER

Raquel Welch, star of ‘One Million Years B.C.’ and ‘The Three Musketeers,’ dies at 82

BYMARK KENNEDY AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 15, 2023 


Raquel Welch, whose emergence from the sea in a skimpy, furry bikini in the film “One Million Years B.C.” would propel her to international sex symbol status throughout the 1960s and ’70s, has died. She was 82.

Welch died early Wednesday after a brief illness, according to her agent, Stephen LaManna of the talent agency Innovative Artists.

Welch’s breakthrough came in 1966’s campy prehistoric flick “One Million Years B.C.,” despite having a grand total of three lines. Clad in a brown doeskin bikini, she successfully evaded pterodactyls but not the notice of the public.

“I just thought it was a goofy dinosaur epic we’d be able to sweep under the carpet one day,” she told The Associated Press in 1981. “Wrong. It turned out that I was the Bo Derek of the season, the lady in the loin cloth about whom everyone said, ‘My God, what a bod’ and they expected to disappear overnight.”

She did not, playing Lust for the comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in their film “Bedazzled” in 1967 and playing a secret agent in the sexy spy spoof “Fathom” that same year.




Her curves and beauty captured pop culture attention, with Playboy crowning her the “most desired woman” of the ’70s, despite never being completely naked in the magazine. In 2013, she graced the No. 2 spot on Men’s Health’s “Hottest Women of All Time” list. In the film “The Shawshank Redemption,” a poster of Welch is used to cover an escape tunnel, the last of three women he used images of after Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe.

In addition to acting, Welch was a singer and dancer. She surprised many critics — and won positive reviews — when she starred in the 1981 musical “Woman of the Year” on Broadway, replacing a vacationing Lauren Bacall. She returned to the Great White Way in 1997 in “Victor/Victoria.”

She knew that some people didn’t take her seriously because of her glamorous image. “I’m not Penny Marshall or Barbra Streisand,” she told the AP in 1993. “They’ll say, ‘Raquel Welch wants to direct? Give me a break.”‘

Welch was born Jo-Raquel Tejada in Chicago and raised in La Jolla, California. (The Jo in her name was from her mother, Josephine). Welch was a divorced mother when she met ex-actor turned press agent, Patrick Curtis.

“The irony of it all is that even though people thought of me as a sex symbol, in reality I was a single mother of two small children!” she wrote in her autobiography, “Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage.”

Curtis became her manager and second husband and helped shape her into a glamor-girl with hundreds of magazine covers and a string of movies, plus exercise videos and books like “The Raquel Welch Total Beauty and Fitness Program.”

Though she would appear in exploitative films, she also surprised many in the industry with fine performances, including in Richard Lester’s “The Three Musketeers,” which earned her a Golden Globe, and opposite James Coco in “Wild Party.” She was also nominated for a Globe in 1988 for the TV movie “Right to Die.”

Married and divorced four times, she is survived by two children, Damon Welch and Tahnee Welch, who also became an actress, including landing a featured role in 1985’s “Cocoon.”

SHE PLAYED A TRANS WOMAN

IN MYRA BRECKENRIDGE

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/raquel-welshs-sex-change-calamity-making-myra-breckinridge-worst

the making of Myra Breckinridge, the worst movie of all time

 

Jun 22, 2020 ... Raquel Welch's sex-change calamity: the making of Myra Breckinridge, ... and a San Francisco transsexual known as 'Bunny' Breckinridge, ...

https://www.advocate.com/news/daily-news/2012/02/09/raquel-welch-myra-breckinridge-mae-west-janis-joplin

Raquel Welch on Myra Breckinridge Mae West Janis Joplin

 

Feb 9, 2012 ... Actress Raquel Welch calls her 1970 film version of Myra Breckinridge, in which she played a transgender woman, a "stinker" and hopes ...

https://groovyhistory.com/mae-west-raquel-welch-myra-breckinridge-facts-trivia

Mae West, Raquel Welch, And 'Myra Breckinridge:' Facts And Trivia ... 

Aug 17, 2020 ... In 1970 20th Century Fox thought it had a hit on its hands with Myra Breckinridge, an X-Rated sex comedy starring Raquel Welch and Mae West ...

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/raquel-welch-dead-star-one-million-years-bc-myra-breckinridge-1235326714

Raquel Welch Dead: One Million Years BC, Myra Breckinridge Star ... 

2 hours ago ... Raquel Welch, a Hollywood sex symbol and '60s actress famous for her ... as Lilian Lust in (1967), as a transgender revolutionary in Myra ...

https://www.out.com/entertainment/popnography/2012/02/09/catching-raquel-welch

Catching Up With Raquel Welch - Out Magazine 

Feb 9, 2012 ... Before we even have the chance to gather our courage and ask film legend Raquel Welch about the infamous movie flop Myra Breckinridge--which ...

New discovery to bulk up gluten-free fibre supplement

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE

Scientists have for the first time constructed the reference genome for the source of the popular fibre supplement, psyllium husk, which could boost supplies of the versatile plant-derived product.

University of Adelaide experts conducted research on psyllium, also known as Plantago ovata.

“We extracted and sequenced the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) from leaf tissue to construct the chromosome-level reference genome for Plantago ovata and used ribonucleic acid (RNA) from other parts of the plant to predict the function of its genes,” said the University of Adelaide’s Professor Rachel Burton, a researcher from the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine.

“This is a significant development because it will pave the way for improvements to the quality and quantity of psyllium crops.”

DNA is the molecule that contains genetic information needed for the development and functioning of an organism while RNA acts as a messenger, carrying instructions from DNA to build proteins.

This finding has been published in the journal Scientific Reports and is the result of a decade-long investigation by University of Adelaide researchers into the genetic makeup of the plant.

Psyllium has been used for food and medicinal purposes for thousands of years.

The seeds of the plant are milled to produce a soluble fibre used in pharmaceuticals and supplements to improve gut health and control blood cholesterol.

Psyllium is also a common ingredient in gluten-free food. The seeds and their husks are naturally gluten-free and when mixed with water, produce a sticky substance that replicates some of the functions of gluten in bread.

This quality makes psyllium an essential ingredient in gluten-free bread and it can be used in a whole range of other baked goods. With the market size of gluten-free foods expected to reach USD$8.3 billion in 2025, demand for psyllium is predicted to increase.

The plant is highly susceptible to changes in environmental conditions and diseases which not only affects the yield, but also the price and quality of this valuable commodity.

“To date, efforts to improve the quality and quantity of psyllium husk have been hampered by the lack of a reference genome,” said the University of Adelaide’s Dr James Cowley, who is also from the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine and co-authored this study.

“The development of a high-quality Plantago ovata reference genome will not only help to boost breeding programs but will also support lab-based experiments to better understand how carbohydrates in plants are constructed so we can tailor them for food and pharmaceutical uses.”

First author Dr Lina Herliana conducted this research while pursuing her PhD at the University of Adelaide’s Waite Campus.

“We predict the availability of this reference genome will lead to the development of new cultivars with higher yields that are more adaptable to environmental conditions. This will stabilise the production of psyllium products and seed or husk prices,” said Dr Herliana.

The long-term project to understand the fundamental biology of psyllium was supported by an Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence and Linkage Project.

It is expected that this discovery will accelerate further research into genetic improvement and breeding of psyllium.

---

JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-022-25078-5 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A chromosome-level genome assembly of Plantago ovata

Soil restoration the key to better health and wellbeing in urban areas

City-dwellers disadvantaged by loss of biodiversity in the environment

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: DR CRAIG LIDDICOAT, LEFT, AND ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR MARTIN BREED WITH ONE OF THE EDIBLE GARDENS ESTABLISHED FOR STUDENTS AND STAFF AT FLINDERS UNIVERSITY’S BEDFORD PARK CAMPUS IN ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA. view more 

CREDIT: FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

From China’s mega-cities to Australia’s sprawling suburbs, scientists are calling for grassroots action to raise awareness about the role of soil biodiversity to promote better human health and wellbeing.

Loss of urban biodiversity, declining green open spaces and increasing pollution in urban ecosystems around the world are reducing citizens’ exposure to the age-old beneficial elements of soil microbes to promote immunity and reduce allergies and other illnesses including asthma in humans, warn experts from China, Europe and Flinders University in South Australia in a new article in the journal njp Urban Sustainability.

“With 70% of the human population expected to live in cities by 2050, we argue that we need to maintain contact with healthy soil both indoors and outdoors to maintain and improve immune fitness, help to suppress pathogens and benefit the human microbiome,” says the first author Professor Xin Sun, who leads the Urban Soil Ecology Group at the Institute of Urban Environment at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“The potential for improving human health by enhancing urban soil biodiversity is an important yet little understood field of fundamental and applied research,” she says.

She joined colleague Professor Yong-Guan Zhu, Director General of the Institute of Urban Environment, Dr Stefan Geisen and colleagues from Germany’s University of Göttingen, Russia and the Netherlands, as well as experts from Flinders University College of Science and Engineering in drawing attention to the importance of soil biodiversity to human health – along side its vital role in producing food and greenery in urban settings. 

“Unfortunately, land management linked to urbanisation, surface sealing, compaction, pollution and removal of vegetation can adversely affect soil biodiversity which traditionally have been one of Earth’s largest reservoirs of biological diversity,” says Flinders University collaborator on the study, restoration genomics researcher Dr Craig Liddicoat.

“Cities are seeing the collapse of the natural environment, destablised food webs and rapid changes to soil biodiversity, which in turn risks creating unhealthy urban environments,” says Associate Professor Martin Breed, who is working with New Zealand’s University of Waikato to investigate 'restoring health-promoting soil biodiversity'.

“We need to revisit strategies to rebuild the quality and exposure to soils via restoration and work on more creative ways of greening and rewilding our cities to improve not only the environment, but also our own health,” he says.

As well as large urban parks, researchers point out that private backyards, potted indoor plants, and even road verges, footpaths and green roofs and walls can all elevate exposure to soil – in tandem with efforts to remediate and remove soil pollutants to regain a balance of soil biodiversity necessary for more healthy city environments.

Conserving and restoring biodiverse green spaces and establishing more green infrastructure benefit the maintance of soil health by increasing soil biodiversity, suppressing soil pathogens and antibiotic resistance bacteria and reducing the amount of the microorganisms associated with methane and nitrous oxide emissions.

Appropriate management of soil biodiversity in cities can reduce the risk of immune-mediated diseases and improve human health in cities via reducing pathogens, purifying soil pollutants, as well as enhancing the human immunoregulation and modulating the human microbiome, the research concludes (see attached Figure 2).

The article, ‘Harnessing soil biodiversity to promote human health in cities’ (2023) by Xin Sun, Craig Liddicoat, Alexei Tiunov, Bin Wang, Yiyue Zhang, Changyi Lu, Zhipeng Li, Stefan Scheu, Martin F Breed, Stefan Geisen and Yong-Guan Zhu has been published in npj Urban Sustainability (Nature Partner Journals, Stringer Nature) DOI: 10.1038/s42949-023-00086-0

---

JOURNAL

npj Urban Sustainability

DOI

10.1038/s42949-023-00086-0 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Harnessing soil biodiversity to promote human health in cities

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Feb-2023

Community co-design model targets Indigenous diet and diabetes

Ngarrindjeri leaders work with clinicians trained in keto eating

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

Effective targeting of diabetes and metabolic syndrome in Australian Indigenous people requires remission strategies that are co-designed by Indigenous communities, according to a team of Flinders University researchers.

An article published in Nature Medicine journal identifies a project in South Australia’s Coorong region being led by Flinders University that takes a fresh approach through involving Ngarrindjeri leaders with clinicians trained in Eurocentric-based medicine to help tackle diabetes remission within its local community.

Diabetes contributes to 11% of all deaths in Australia, costing the healthcare system $2.7 million each year, and Australian Indigenous communities are disproportionately affected. Their prevalence rates are three times greater, hospitalisation rates four times higher, and death due to complications five times more likely than in non-Indigenous Australians.

Of equal concern is metabolic syndrome, responsible for earlier and more severe complications in individuals diagnosed with diabetes, including such conditions as hypertension, dyslipidemia, abdominal obesity and insulin resistance.

“Rates of diabetes in Australian Indigenous communities are rising, which suggests that current approaches for detection, care and management are failing,” says Associate Professor Courtney Ryder, from Flinders University’s College of Medicine and Public Health.

“This leaves many Australian Indigenous communities feeling that a diagnosis of diabetes or metabolic syndrome is an unavoidable death sentence, creating a ripple effect beyond the individual, affecting the whole family and community.”

While Diabetes Australia recommends three remission strategies, the option for Indigenous people of bariatric surgery is not easily accessible, and participant adherence to long-term low-calorie diets is poor. However, a ketogenic eating plan can put diabetes into remission without the need for glucose-lowering medication.

Ketogenic eating works by restricting carbohydrate intake, so the body uses fat as the principal energy source rather than carbohydrate.

“A low-carbohydrate ketogenic eating plan appears similar to that of pre-colonisation eating patterns for Australian Indigenous people, so the uptake and maintenance of a ketogenic diet aligns with Indigenous knowledges,” says Associate Professor Ryder.

“A critical aspect to targeting diabetes and metabolic syndrome remission within Australian Indigenous communities is through centralising Indigenous knowledges and methodologies which have passed through generations and continue to evolve.”

The Coorong Diabetes Collaborative project emerged from intensive engagement during COVID-19 outbreaks, when clinicians trained in Eurocentric-based medicine and the Ngarrindjeri community recognised that diabetes and metabolic syndrome levels in the community were a critical, ongoing vulnerability.

Ngarrindjeri leaders called for a community-designed program centering on cultural determinants of health (ownership, control and reciprocity) to produce longevity for their people, connecting Ngarrindjeri knowledge holders and Australian Indigenous researchers to clinicians and health professionals with Eurocentric knowledge and research methods.

As a result of respectful collaboration, this project will co-develop an eating program based on a ketogenic diet that includes important cultural and contextual factors, as identified by the community, along with educational and motivational strategies for a ketogenic eating program, and monitor physiological, social and economic outcomes.

“The project aims to explore how Australian Indigenous peoples are advantaged by adopting a ketogenic diet,” says Associate Professor Ryder. “It is the first co-designed targeted and scalable diabetes remission program for Indigenous peoples on Ngarrindjeri country.”

The article – ‘Community co-design to target diabetes and metabolic syndrome in Australian Indigenous peoples’ by C. Ryder, S. Wingard, D. Cameron, C. Kerrigan, P. Worley, B. Spaeth, S. Stranks, B. Kaambwa, S. Ullah, J. Wang and A. Wilson – has been published by Nature Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-02174-7

---

JOURNAL

Nature Medicine

DOI

10.1038/s41591-022-02174-7 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Community co-design to target diabetes and metabolic syndrome in Australian Indigenous peoples

Machine learning techniques identify thousands of new cosmic objects

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TATA INSTITUTE OF FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH

 

IMAGE: APPLICATION OF MACHINE LEARNING TECHNIQUES TO LARGE ASTRONOMY DATA SETS CAN DISCOVER THOUSANDS OF COSMIC OBJECTS OF VARIOUS CLASSES. view more 

CREDIT: SHIVAM KUMARAN

Scientists of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, India and Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Thiruvananthapuram, India, viz., Prof. Sudip Bhattacharyya (TIFR) and Mr. Shivam Kumaran (IIST & SAC), Prof. Samir Mandal and Prof. Deepak Mishra (IIST), have identified the nature of thousands of new cosmic objects in X-ray wavelengths using machine learning techniques. Machine learning is a variant or part of artificial intelligence.

Astronomy is entering a new era, as a huge amount of astronomical data from millions of cosmic objects are becoming freely available. This is a result of large surveys and planned observations with high-quality astronomical observatories, and an open data access policy. Needless to say that these data have a great potential for many discoveries and new understanding of the universe. However, it is not practical to explore the data from all these objects manually, and automated machine learning techniques are essential to extract information from these data. But application of such techniques to astronomical data is still very limited and in a preliminary stage.

In this background, the TIFR-IIST team applied machine learning techniques to hundreds of thousands of cosmic objects observed in X-rays with USA’s Chandra space observatory. This demonstrated how a new and topical technological progress could help and revolutionise the basic and fundamental scientific research. The team applied these techniques to about 277000 X-ray objects, the nature of most of which were unknown. A classification of the nature of unknown objects is equivalent to the discovery of objects of specific classes. Thus, this research led to a reliable discovery of many thousands of cosmic objects of classes, such as black holes, neutron stars, white dwarfs,  stars,  etc., which opened up an enormous opportunity for the astronomy community for further detailed studies of many interesting new objects.

This collaborative research has also been important to establish a state-of-the-art capacity to apply new machine learning techniques to fundamental research in astronomy, which will be crucial to scientifically utilise the data from current and upcoming  observatories.

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JOURNAL

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

DOI

10.1093/mnras/stad414 

ARTICLE TITLE

Automated classification of Chandra X-ray point sources using machine learning methods