Secrecy capacity against adaptive eavesdroppers in a random wireless network using friendly jammers and protected zone
- Authors: Giti, Jishan , Sakzad, Amin , Srinivasan, Bala , Kamruzzaman, Joarder , Gaire, Raj
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Network and Computer Applications Vol. 165, no. (2020), p.
- Full Text: false
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- Description: In this paper, we consider deceptive friendly jammers in a half-duplex random wireless network against a group of adaptive eavesdroppers. The destinations, eavesdroppers and friendly jammers are distributed according to homogeneous Poisson point process (HPPP). To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to study such a system model. As we may combine hostile jamming and passive eavesdropping, the secrecy of legitimate communication might be compromised. To combat this and improve secrecy of transmission, a group of friendly jammers thus transmit a source-like signal to deceive the eavesdroppers and try to force them to be passive listeners as much as possible. We derive the secrecy capacity for this scenario. The secrecy performance is evaluated for different parameters and with a secrecy protected zone surrounding the source. Performance evaluation through illustrative numerical results demonstrates that the friendly jammers can enhance the secrecy of a random wireless network. The advantages of friendly jammers are particularly prominent if the secrecy protected zone is very small and/or the node intensity of the destinations is low. The results show that the friendly jammers can restore the secrecy in a hostile environment if sufficient friendly jammers (e.g., 0.01 km−2 for the provided system model) are hired. © 2020
- Description: Funding details: Australian Research Council, ARC Funding text 1: Joarder Kamruzzaman received the BSc and MSc degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, and the PhD degree in Information Systems Engineering from Muroran Institute of Technology, Hokkaido, Japan. He is currently a Professor in the School of Science, Engineering and Information Technology, Federation University Australia. Previously, he served as the Director of the Centre for Multimedia Computing, Communications and Artificial Intelligence Research hosted first by Monash University and later by Federation University. His research interests include distributed computing, Internet of Things, machine learning and cyber security. He has published 260+ peer-reviewed publications which include over 80 journal papers, 170 conferences, 11 book chapters and two edited reference books. He is the recipient of Best Paper award in four international conferences: ICICS′15, Singapore; APCC′14, Thailand; IEEE WCNC′10, Sydney, Australia and in the IEEE-ICNNSP′03, Nanjing, China. He has received nearly A$2.3m competitive research funding, including prestigious ARC (Australian Research Council) grant and large CRC (Collaborative Research Centre) grant. He was the founding Program co-Chair of the first International Symposium on Dependability in Sensor, Cloud, and Big Data Systems and Applications (DependSys), China in 2015. He has served 32 conferences in leadership capacities including Program co-Chair, Publicity Chair, Track Chair and Session Chairs, and since 2012 as an Editor of the Elsevier Journal of Network and Computer Applications, and had served as the lead Guest of Elsevier Journal Future Generation Computer Systems.
Invasion of the noxious weed Nicotiana glauca R. Graham after an episodic flooding event in the arid zone of Australia
- Authors: Florentine, Singarayer , Westbrooke, Martin
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Arid Environments Vol. 60, no. 4 (Mar 2005), p. 531-545
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- Description: During November 1997, an extreme rainfall event caused flooding in the Olary Creek and created a terminal lake within mallee vegetation on Nagaela Station, far western New South Wales. To assess the effect of this rare event on native flora, six 25×25 m2 grazing exclusion plots were established on flooded (4), and un-flooded control (2) areas. We investigated (i) the distribution of Nicotiana glauca in relation to the 1997 flooding event (ii) the variation in density of N. glauca soil-stored seed between soil in control and exclosure plots (iii) the allelopathic effects of N. glauca on germination of Lactuca sativa seeds. Analysis of N. glauca stem sections revealed a maximum of five growth rings, confirming an origin following the 1997 flood event. At a September 1998 assessment, no N. glauca were found across flooded and control plots. In October 2000 N. glauca occurred at densities of 24 and 12 N. glauca seedlings ha−1 in the flooded unfenced and fenced plots respectively. No N. glauca individuals were recorded either from control fenced or unfenced plots. The soil-stored seed study revealed that larger numbers of N. glauca seeds were recovered from the flooded open plot (1936±968) than in flooded fenced plots (856±428.12) but none was found in the control plots. Leachates obtained from dry leaves and twigs had a significantly greater negative impact (p>0.001) on germination of L. sativa seeds than leachates obtained from fresh leaves and bark. This study showed that the density of N. glauca is high in areas where grazing had eliminated competition from native shrubs and grasses. N. glauca is potentially a serious weed along the Olary Creek and ephemeral lake boundaries. Management strategies such as reducing grazing pressure from native and introduced animals and/or effective eradication programs should be adopted, to minimize further infestation.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001049
Assessing the conservation and enhancement value of revegetated strips on arthropod assemblages in a pasture landscape
- Authors: O'Donnell, Peter , Wright, Wendy
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Environmental Management Vol. 278, no. (2021), p.
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Examining population dynamics of arthropod communities in habitats neighboring arable lands is essential to understanding how agroecosystems can be engineered to enhance ecosystem services and contribute to sustainable intensification. Arthropods comprise the bulk of faunal biomass on farms, are taxonomically diverse, and are the main drivers of many ecosystem functions. This study aimed to compare arthropod assemblages in revegetated strips of native plants and exotic pastures, and examine taxa of beneficial arthropods in revegetated strips and adjacent pasture in early spring (September 2009) and mid-summer (December 2009–January 2010) on two farms in southeastern Gippsland, Victoria, Australia. Arthropod community assemblages were distinctly different between revegetated strips and adjacent pasture with the exception of functional groups in early spring. Several taxa of beneficial arthropods including Carabidae (ground beetles) and Syrphidae (hoverflies) were of similar abundance in the two habitats. Only Formicidae (ants) were of higher abundances in revegetated strips compared to adjacent pasture in both seasons. Five of the 10 ant genera present, seven spider families and Dolichopodidae flies (long-legged flies) were found exclusively in revegetated strips. Apidae (bees) and Tachinidae (tachinid flies) had higher abundances in revegetated strips compared to 80 m into the adjacent pasture in mid-summer. Lycosidae (wolf spiders) were more abundant along the edge of revegetated strips and 20 m into adjacent pasture compared to the center (core) of revegetated strips and 80 m into pasture. These results illustrate that beneficial arthropods use revegetated strips as refugia and that revegetated strips clearly enhanced biological conservation of arthropods in pasturelands. Relevance of findings to enhanced biological control is also discussed. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd
Decentralized content sharing among tourists in visiting hotspots
- Authors: Kaisar, Shahriar , Kamruzzaman, Joarder , Karmakar, Gour , Gondal, Iqbal
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Network and Computer Applications Vol. 79, no. (2017), p. 25-40
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- Description: Content sharing with smart mobile devices using decentralized approach enables users to share contents without the use of any fixed infrastructure, and thereby offers a free-of-cost platform that does not add to Internet traffic which, in its current state, is approaching bottleneck in its capacity. Most of the existing decentralized approaches in the literature consider spatio-temporal regularity in human movement patterns and pre-existing social relationship for the sharing scheme to work. However, such predictable movement patterns and social relationship information are not available in places like tourist spots where people visit only for a short period of time and usually meet strangers. No works exist in literature that deals with content sharing in such environment. In this work, we propose a content sharing approach for such environments. The group formation mechanism is based on users' interest score and stay probability in the individual region of interest (ROI) as well as on the availability and delivery probabilities of contents in the group. The administrator of each group is selected by taking into account its probability of stay in the ROI, connectivity with other nodes, its trustworthiness and computing and energy resources to serve the group. We have also adopted an incentive mechanism as encouragement that awards nodes for sharing and forwarding contents. We have used network simulator NS3 to perform extensive simulation on a popular tourist spot in Australia which facilitates a number of activities. The proposed approach shows promising results in sharing contents among tourists, measured in terms of content hit, delivery success rate and latency.
- Description: Content sharing with smart mobile devices using decentralized approach enables users to share contents without the use of any fixed infrastructure, and thereby offers a free-of-cost platform that does not add to Internet traffic which, in its current state, is approaching bottleneck in its capacity. Most of the existing decentralized approaches in the literature consider spatio-temporal regularity in human movement patterns and pre-existing social relationship for the sharing scheme to work. However, such predictable movement patterns and social relationship information are not available in places like tourist spots where people visit only for a short period of time and usually meet strangers. No works exist in literature that deals with content sharing in such environment. In this work, we propose a content sharing approach for such environments. The group formation mechanism is based on users' interest score and stay probability in the individual region of interest (ROI) as well as on the availability and delivery probabilities of contents in the group. The administrator of each group is selected by taking into account its probability of stay in the ROI, connectivity with other nodes, its trustworthiness and computing and energy resources to serve the group. We have also adopted an incentive mechanism as encouragement that awards nodes for sharing and forwarding contents. We have used network simulator NS3 to perform extensive simulation on a popular tourist spot in Australia which facilitates a number of activities. The proposed approach shows promising results in sharing contents among tourists, measured in terms of content hit, delivery success rate and latency. © 2016
An algorithm for network and data-aware placement of multi-tier applications in cloud data centers
- Authors: Ferdaus, Md Hasanul , Murshed, Manzur , Calheiros, Rodrigo , Buyya, Rajkumar
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Network and Computer Applications Vol. 98, no. (2017), p. 65-83
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Today's Cloud applications are dominated by composite applications comprising multiple computing and data components with strong communication correlations among them. Although Cloud providers are deploying large number of computing and storage devices to address the ever increasing demand for computing and storage resources, network resource demands are emerging as one of the key areas of performance bottleneck. This paper addresses network-aware placement of virtual components (computing and data) of multi-tier applications in data centers and formally defines the placement as an optimization problem. The simultaneous placement of Virtual Machines and data blocks aims at reducing the network overhead of the data center network infrastructure. A greedy heuristic is proposed for the on-demand application components placement that localizes network traffic in the data center interconnect. Such optimization helps reducing communication overhead in upper layer network switches that will eventually reduce the overall traffic volume across the data center. This, in turn, will help reducing packet transmission delay, increasing network performance, and minimizing the energy consumption of network components. Experimental results demonstrate performance superiority of the proposed algorithm over other approaches where it outperforms the state-of-the-art network-aware application placement algorithm across all performance metrics by reducing the average network cost up to 67% and network usage at core switches up to 84%, as well as increasing the average number of application deployments up to 18%. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd
Human health risks and socio-economic perspectives of arsenic exposure in Bangladesh : A scoping review
- Authors: Rahman, Aziz , Rahman, Ahmed , Khan, Zaved , Renzaho, Andre
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article , Review
- Relation: Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety Vol. 150, no. (2018), p. 335-343
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Arsenic contamination of drinking water, which can occur naturally or because of human activities such as mining, is the single most important public health issue in Bangladesh. Fifty out of the 64 districts in the country have arsenic concentration of groundwater exceeding 50 µg L
Tumour microenvironment and metabolic plasticity in cancer and cancer stem cells : Perspectives on metabolic and immune regulatory signatures in chemoresistant ovarian cancer stem cells
- Authors: Ahmed, Nuzhat , Escalona, Ruth , Leung, Dilys , Chan, Emily , Kannourakis, George
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article , Review
- Relation: Seminars in Cancer Biology Vol. 53, no. (2018), p. 265-281
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- Description: Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are a sub-population of tumour cells, which are responsible to drive tumour growth, metastasis and therapy resistance. It has recently been proposed that enhanced glucose metabolism and immune evasion by tumour cells are linked, and are modulated by the changing tumour microenvironment (TME) that creates a competition for nutrient consumption between tumour and different sub-types of cells attracted to the TME. To facilitate efficient nutrient distribution, oncogene-induced inflammatory milieu in the tumours facilitate adaptive metabolic changes in the surrounding non-malignant cells to secrete metabolites that are used as alternative nutrient sources by the tumours to sustain its increasing energy needs for growth and anabolic functions. This scenario also affects CSCs residing at the primary or metastatic niches. This review summarises recent advances in our understanding of the metabolic phenotypes of cancer cells and CSCs and how these processes are affected by the TME. We also discuss how the evolving TME modulates tumour cells and CSCs in cancer progression. Using previously described proteomic and genomic platforms, ovarian cancer cell lines and a mouse xenograft model we highlight the existence of metabolic and immune regulatory signatures in chemoresistant ovarian CSCs, and discuss how these processes may affect recurrence in ovarian tumours. We propose that progress in cancer control and eradication may depend not only on the elimination of highly chemoresistant CSCs, but also in designing novel strategies which would intervene with the tumour-promoting TME factors.
PRADD : A path reliability-aware data delivery protocol for underwater acoustic sensor networks
- Authors: Nowsheen, Nusrat , Karmakar, Gour , Kamruzzaman, Joarder
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Network and Computer Applications Vol. 75, no. (2016), p. 385-397
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (UASNs) are becoming increasingly promising to monitor aquatic environment. However, reliable data delivery remains challenging due to long propagation delay and high error-rate of underwater acoustic channel, limited energy and inherent mobility of sensor nodes. To address these issues, we propose a protocol called Path Reliability-Aware Data Delivery (PRADD) to improve data transfer reliability for delay tolerant underwater traffic. Data delivery reliability is significantly improved by selecting the next hop forwarder on-the-fly based on its link reliability, reachability to gateways and coverage probability through probabilistic estimation. Data forwarding solution is coupled with delay tolerant networking paradigm to improve delivery with reduced overhead. PRADD does not require active localization technique to estimate the updated location of a sensor node except its initial coarse location. The movement of an anchored node is exploited to estimate its coverage probability. Mobile message ferries are used to collect stored data from one or more nodes, called gateways. A strategy for gateway selection is devised to maximize their lifetime. Simulation results show that PRADD achieves significant performance improvement over competing protocols using low overhead and less energy.
Decade-long response of arid-land mallee vegetation to fire, flooding and grazing in south-eastern Australia
- Authors: Florentine, Singarayer , Milberg, Per , Di Stefano, Julian , Westbrooke, Martin , Graz, Patrick
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Arid Environments Vol. 121, no. October (2015), p. 7-14
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- Description: Australian arid vegetation has evolved within highly variable environments characterised by low rainfall and sporadic fire events. Episodic high rainfall events are a significant factor in plant species recruitment, but their unpredictability makes them difficult to study. We report on the response of vascular plants to a major rainfall event and flood in an arid region of south-eastern Australia. Fire that occurred two months before the flood was incorporated into the study. Paired fenced and unfenced plots were established at control locations and also in areas that had been either flooded, burnt, or flooded and burnt. Objectives were to quantify the long-term effects of fire, flood and vertebrate herbivory, and their interactions, on vegetation composition, plant life forms and species diversity. We found that relative to controls (i) there was a significant effect of flooding on vegetation composition, (ii) changes in life form abundance were driven by flooding and grazing, (iii) there was a strong positive relationship between grazer exclusion and species diversity that was maintained over time and (iv) there was little effect of fire. Understanding the long-term effects of both natural disturbances and vertebrate herbivory will benefit plant conservation in the arid zone. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd.
Immunity to Haemonchus contortus and Vaccine development
- Authors: Nisbet, Alasdair , Meeusen, Els , Gonzalez, Jorge , Piedrafita, David
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Haemonchus contortus and Haemonchosis ? Past, Present and Future Trends, 2016 (Advances in Parasitology series) Chapter 8 p. 353-396
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Sheep are capable of developing protective immunity to Haemonchus contortus through repeated exposure to this parasite, although this immune protection is the result of a complex interaction among age, gender, physiological status, pregnancy, lactation, nutrition and innate and adaptive immunity in the host animal. There are multiple effectors of the protective immune response, which differ depending on the developmental stage of the parasite being targeted, and our understanding of the effector mechanisms has developed considerably in the 2000s. The rational design of vaccines based on 'natural' or 'exposed' antigens depends on an understanding of this exposure-induced immunity. However, the most effective current vaccines rely on protection via the induction of high circulating antibody levels to 'hidden' gut antigens of H. contortus. The success of this latter strategy has resulted in the launch of a vaccine, which is based on extracts of the parasite's gut, to aid in the control of Haemonchus in Australia. The development of recombinant subunit vaccines based on the components of the successful native vaccine has not yet been achieved and most of the recent successes with recombinant subunit vaccines have focussed on antigens unrelated to the gut antigens. The future integration of an understanding of the immunobiology of this parasite with advances in antigen identification, expression (or synthesis) and presentation is likely to be pivotal to the further development of these recombinant subunit vaccines. Recent progress in each of the components underpinning this integrated approach is summarized in this review. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd.
- Description: Advances in Parasitology
A perspective on the discovery of selected compounds with anthelmintic activity against the barber's pole worm—Where to from here?
- Authors: Jiao, Yaqing , Preston, Sarah , Hofmann, Andreas , Taki, Aya , Baell, Jonathan , Chang, Bill , Jabbar, Abdul , Gasser, Robin
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Advances in Parasitology p. 1-45
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Parasitic roundworms (nematodes) cause substantial morbidity and mortality in animals worldwide. Anthelmintic treatment is central to controlling these worms, but widespread resistance to most of the commercially available anthelmintics for veterinary and agricultural use is compromising control, such that there is an urgency to discover new and effective drugs. The purpose of this article is to review information on parasitic nematodes, the treatment and control of parasitic nematode infections and aspects of discovering new anthelmintics in the context of anthelmintic resistance problems, and then to discuss some progress that our group has made in identifying selected compounds with activity against nematodes. The focus of our recent work has been on discovering new chemical entities and known drugs with anthelmintic activities against Haemonchus contortus as well as other socioeconomically important parasitic nematodes for subsequent development. Using whole worm-based phenotypic assays, we have been screening compound collections obtained via product-development-partnerships and/or collaborators, and active compounds have been assessed for their potential as anthelmintic candidates. Following the screening of 15,333 chemicals from five distinct compound collections against H. contortus, we have discovered one new chemical entity (designated SN00797439), two human kinase inhibitors (SNS-032 and AG-1295), 14 tetrahydroquinoxaline analogues, one insecticide (tolfenpyrad) and two tolfenpyrad (pyrazole-5-carboxamide) derivatives (a-15 and a-17) with anthelmintic activity in vitro. Some of these 20 ‘hit’ compounds have selectivity against H. contortus in vitro when compared to particular human cell lines. In our opinion, some of these compounds could represent starting points for ‘lead’ development. Accordingly, the next research steps to be pursued include: (i) chemical optimisation of representative chemicals via structure-activity relationship (SAR) evaluations; (ii) assessment of the breadth of spectrum of anthelmintic activity on a range of other parasitic nematodes, such as strongyloids, ascaridoids, enoplids and filarioids; (iii) detailed investigations of the absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity (ADMET) of optimised chemicals with broad nematocidal or nematostatic activity; and (iv) establishment of the modes of action of lead candidates. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd
Comparative analysis of numerical solution of optimal control problems
- Authors: Shangareeva, Gulnaz , Grigoryev, Igor , Mustafina, Svetlana
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Vol. 110, no. 4 (2016), p. 645-649
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- Description: In this article step by step algorithms were developed for solving optimal control problems based on the method of successive approximations and the method of variations in the space of controls. The algorithm of the method of successive approximations requires details of the problem to the boundary problem of the maximum principle. In turn, the algorithm of the variations is more versatile because it is based on iterating state variables and control in the phase space. A numerical study and comparative analysis of the developed algorithms performed at different values of accuracy. © 2016 Academic Publications, Ltd.
Toxocara seroprevalence in the USA and its impact for individuals and society
- Authors: Bradbury, Richard , Hobbs, Charlotte
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Advances in Parasitology p. 317-339
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Toxocara species are intestinal helminths of dogs and cats, the larval stages of which may infect humans and cause severe neural, ocular and visceral larva migrans disease. Such cases of severe overt disease represent only a small fraction of the of the US population who have been exposed and infected with Toxocara, subsequently developing IgG antibodies to the larvae. The true impact of exposure to Toxocara in this large group of Americans remains uncertain. Toxocara antibody positivity is associated with poverty, but other specific risk factors have been identified, including sex, age, rural residence, region of residence, race and exposure to pets. This seropositive status has also been associated with several childhood diseases, including asthma and epilepsy, increased serum lead levels, and poor neurocognitive function. Three large-scale NHANES studies have provided comprehensive datasets, while several smaller studies have explored specific disease associations. Each seroprevalence study must be interpreted in consideration of the sensitivity and specificity of the individual serological methods employed. This chapter summarizes all historical Toxocara prevalence data from dogs, cats and soil in the United States. It then carefully examines all previous human Toxocara seroprevalence surveys performed in the United States. Data from these surveys is assimilated, compared and discussed to determine the validity of findings and to accurately identify risk factors for Toxocara seropositivity. The validity of associations of exposure to Toxocara larvae and childhood diseases such as asthma and epilepsy and effects neurocognitive function within the American context are also explored. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd
Animals and Human Society
- Authors: Scanes, Colin , Toukhsati, Samia
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Book
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Animals and Human Society provides a solid, scientific, research-based background to advance understanding of how animals impact humans. Animals have had profound effects on people from the earliest times, ranging from zoonotic diseases, to the global impact of livestock, poultry and fish production, to the influences of human-associated animals on the environment (on extinctions, air and water pollution, greenhouse gases, etc.), to the importance of animals in human evolution and hunter -gatherer communities.
Advances in the discovery and development of anthelmintics by harnessing natural product scaffolds
- Authors: Herath, H. M. P. Dilrukshi , Taki, Aya , Sleebs, Brad , Hofmann, Andreas , Nguyen, Nghi , Preston, Sarah , Davis, Rohan , Jabbar, Abdul , Gasser, Robin
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Advances in Parasitology p. 203-251
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Widespread resistance to currently-used anthelmintics represents a major obstacle to controlling parasitic nematodes of livestock animals. Given the reliance on anthelmintics in many control regimens, there is a need for the continued discovery and development of new nematocides. Enabling such a focus are: (i) the major chemical diversity of natural products; (ii) the availability of curated, drug-like extract-, fraction- and/or compound-libraries from natural sources; (iii) the utility and practicality of well-established whole-worm bioassays for Haemonchus contortus—an important parasitic nematodes of livestock—to screen natural product libraries; and (iv) the availability of advanced chromatographic (HPLC), spectroscopic (NMR) and spectrometric (MS) techniques for bioassay-guided fractionation and structural elucidation. This context provides a sound basis for the identification and characterisation of anthelmintic candidates from natural sources. This chapter provides a background on the importance and impact of helminth infections/diseases, parasite control and aspects of drug discovery, and reviews recent work focused on (i) screening well-defined compound libraries to establish the methods needed for large-scale screening of natural extract libraries; (ii) discovering plant and marine extracts with nematocidal or nematostatic activity, and purifying bioactive compounds and assessing their potential for further development; and (iii) synthesising analogues of selected purified natural compounds for the identification of possible ‘lead’ candidates. The chapter describes some lessons learned from this work and proposes future areas of focus for drug discovery. Collectively, the findings from this recent work show potential for selected natural product scaffolds as candidates for future development. Developing such candidates via future chemical optimisation, efficacy and safety evaluations, broad spectrum activity assessments, and target identification represents an exciting prospect and, if successful, could pave the way to subsequent pre-clinical and clinical evaluations. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd
HTLV-I and strongyloides in Australia : the worm lurking beneath
- Authors: Gordon, Catherine , Shield, Jennifer , Bradbury, Richard , Muhi, Stephen , Page, Wendy
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Advances in Parasitology p. 119-201
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Strongyloidiasis and HTLV-I (human T-lymphotropic virus-1) are important infections that are endemic in many countries around the world with an estimated 370 million infected with Strongyloides stercoralis alone, and 5–10 million with HTVL-I. Co-infections with these pathogens are associated with significant morbidity and can be fatal. HTLV-I infects T-cells thus causing dysregulation of the immune system which has been linked to dissemination and hyperinfection of S. stercoralis leading to bacterial sepsis which can result in death. Both of these pathogens are endemic in Australia primarily in remote communities in Queensland, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia. Other cases in Australia have occurred in immigrants and refugees, returned travellers, and Australian Defence Force personnel. HTLV-I infection is lifelong with no known cure. Strongyloidiasis is a long-term chronic disease that can remain latent for decades, as shown by infections diagnosed in prisoners of war from World War II and the Vietnam War testing positive decades after they returned from these conflicts. This review aims to shed light on concomitant infections of HTLV-I with S. stercoralis primarily in Australia but in the global context as well. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. *Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Richard Bradbury" is provided in this record**
How practitioners integrate decision triggers with existing metrics in conservation monitoring
- Authors: Foster, Claire , O'Loughlin, Luke , Sato, Chloe , Westgate, Martin , Barton, Philip
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Environmental Management Vol. 230, no. (2019), p. 94-101
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Decision triggers are defined thresholds in the status of monitored variables that indicate when to undertake management, and avoid undesirable ecosystem change. Decision triggers are frequently recommended to conservation practitioners as a tool to facilitate evidence-based management practices, but there has been limited attention paid to how practitioners are integrating decision triggers into existing monitoring programs. We sought to understand whether conservation practitioners’ use of decision triggers was influenced by the type of variables in their monitoring programs. We investigated this question using a practitioner-focused workshop involving a structured discussion and review of eight monitoring programs. Among our case studies, direct measures of biodiversity (e.g. native species) were more commonly monitored, but less likely to be linked to decision triggers (10% with triggers) than measures being used as surrogates (54% with triggers) for program objectives. This was because decision triggers were associated with management of threatening processes, which were often monitored as a surrogate for a biodiversity asset of interest. By contrast, direct measures of biodiversity were more commonly associated with informal decision processes that led to activities such as management reviews or external consultation. Workshop participants were in favor of including more formalized decision triggers in their programs, but were limited by incomplete ecological knowledge, lack of appropriately skilled staff, funding constraints, and/or uncertainty regarding intervention effectiveness. We recommend that practitioners consider including decision triggers for discussion activities (such as external consultation) in their programs as more than just early warning points for future interventions, particularly for direct measures. Decision triggers for discussions should be recognized as a critical feature of monitoring programs where information and operational limitations inhibit the use of decision triggers for interventions. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Philip Barton” is provided in this record**
A dynamic content distribution scheme for decentralized sharing in tourist hotspots
- Authors: Kaisar, Shahriar , Kamruzzaman, Joarder , Karmakar, Gour
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Network and Computer Applications Vol. 129, no. (2019), p. 9-24
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Decentralized content sharing (DCS) is emerging as a suitable platform for smart mobile device users to generate and share contents seamlessly without the requirement of a centralized server. This feature is particularly important for places that lack Internet coverage such as tourist attractions where users can form an ad-hoc network and communicate opportunistically to share contents. Existing DCS approaches when applied for such type of places suffer from low delivery success rate and high latency. Although a handful of recent approaches have specifically targeted improvement of content delivery service in tourist spot like scenario, these and other DCS approaches do not focus on contents’ demand and supply which vary considerably due to visitor in-and-out flow and occurrence of influencing events. This is further compounded by the lack of any content distribution (replication) scheme. The content delivery service will be improved if contents can be proactively distributed in strategic positions based on dynamic demand and supply and medium access contention. In this paper, we propose a dynamic content distribution scheme (DCDS) considering these practical issues for sharing contents in tourist attractions. Simulation results show that the proposed approach significantly improves (7
Animal Extinctions
- Authors: Toukhsati, Samia
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Animals and Human Society Chapter 21 p. 499-518
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Extinctions refer to the death of a single or multiple species (or taxon) and are common in the history of life on this planet. Using the fossil record, it has been estimated that 99.9% of the species that existed on earth is now extinct. Extinctions occur when a species fails to meet or adapt to changing environmental forces (such as global warming or cooling, habitat loss, destruction, or fragmentation) or when species origination is low, creating ecological niches for new, better adapted, species. This process of “background” extinction and new species evolution is natural, occurs continuously, and describes the way life diversified and radiated on this planet. However, when extinctions involve vast numbers of species and appear to occur around the same time in many different regions, as may be the case in modern times, they are termed “mass extinctions”; these are much less common, but greatly reduce species diversity. There is much debate and little consensus as to the cause and timescale of mass extinctions, generally referred to as the “Big Five” extinction events, which mark the point of transition to new geological epochs. This chapter will focus on the modern-day Holocene–Anthropocene extinction, which attributes the possible loss of up to 58,000 species per year to human activities.
Region based cooperative routing in underwater wireless sensor networks
- Authors: Javaid, Nadeem , Hussain, Sheraz , Ahmad, Ashfaq , Imran, Muhammad , Khan, Abid , Guizani, Mohsen
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Network and Computer Applications Vol. 92, no. (2017), p. 31-41
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- Description: Cooperative routing is an appealing challenge in underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs). In this paper, we propose a region based cooperative routing protocol (RBCRP) for amplify and forward (AF) technique over Rayleigh faded channels in UWSNs. The source node sends the sensed signal to the destination and available relay nodes. At the destination node, bit error rate (BER) is checked on the basis of which, either positive or negative acknowledgement (ACK or NACK) is sent to the source and relay nodes. We also use mobile sinks (MSs) and energy harvesting techniques to further prolong the network lifetime and maximize the throughput. Our derived mathematical equations for the SNR gain and outage probability are verified by simulations. Results show that RBCRP performs better than the existing incremental best relay technique (IBRT) in terms of throughput, network lifetime and outage probability. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd