Pittwater Online News

Pittwater Reserves

PNHA Newsletter 76 

Friends Of Narrabeen Lagoon Catchment August 2018 Forum

Next forum: Creeks in the Catchment

Green buildings easier to find

Sydney Science Festival: Tiny Ocean Plants with Eva Fernandez

Marine Aquaculture Strategy

9 Million More Ways To Save Threatened Species

Tuesday June 26, 2018: NSW Minister for the Environment, The Hon. Gabrielle Upton 

The NSW Government has put $9 million on the table to deliver more local projects to save threatened species.

"This is the first time this scale of funding has been available to the community from the Saving our Species (SOS) program," Environment Minister Gabrielle Upton said.

"The new grants program is designed to maximise the number of species that can be secured in the wild under the NSW Government's Saving our Species initiative.

"Saving our Species is investing $100 million over five years to secure populations of threatened species in the wild. Projects are currently in place for some 350 species. Applications open today and I encourage groups to apply for funding for local projects," Ms Upton said.

"By creating long-term partnerships between the NSW Government, community groups and other organisations, more threatened plants and animals can be managed and supported. All applicants are strongly encouraged to develop and deliver projects with other collaborating partners."

Minister Upton announced the grant funding at a function for the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife held in Manly today.

"This grant is a tremendous opportunity for community groups and organisations to identify a threatened or iconic species and seek shared funding for a project," said the Member for Manly, James Griffin.

"Here in Manly, native animals such as the Long Nosed Potoroo on North Head have benefitted from Save our Species funded programs.

"It's a win for the community, a win for the environment and, most importantly, it's a win for animals facing the threat of extinction," he said.

Under the program individual grants of up to $350,000 are available for projects that will run for 7 years and will require a contribution from the successful organisation and project partners.

Applications are open from 26 June – 13 August 2018.

More information and forms on the: Saving Our Species Contestable Grants Program 2018 webpage

Friends Of Narrabeen Lagoon Catchment Activities

Bush Regeneration - Narrabeen Lagoon Catchment  

Bushcare in Pittwater 

Climate change-driven droughts are getting hotter, study finds

August 1, 2018: University of California - Irvine

Dry months are getting hotter in large parts of the United States, another sign that human-caused climate change is forcing people to encounter new extremes.

In a study published today in Science Advances, researchers at the University of California, Irvine report that temperatures during droughts have been rising faster than in average climates in recent decades, and they point to concurrent changes in atmospheric water vapor as a driver of the surge.

"Available soil moisture can remove surface heat through evaporation, but if the land is dry, there is no opportunity to transport it away, which increases the local temperature," said lead author Felicia Chiang, a UCI graduate student in civil & environmental engineering. "Atmospheric conditions can influence soil, and we argue that they're shaping the temperatures we experience during droughts."

UCI's research team analyzed observed temperature and precipitation data from the early and late 20th century and discovered that regions undergoing droughts warmed more than four times faster than areas in the southern and northeastern United States with average weather conditions. In addition, climate models showed a significant warming shift in Southern states between the late 20th century and early 21st century.

These changes point to a greater number of droughts and heat waves co-occurring. This can lead to such calamities as wildfires and loss of crop yields. Widespread conflagrations, spurred on by abnormally high summer temperatures, are currently burning around the world, including in parts of California, Scandinavia and Greece.

"Heat waves and droughts have significant impacts on their own, but when they occur simultaneously, their negative effects are greatly compounded," said co-author Amir AghaKouchak, UCI associate professor of civil & environmental engineering and Earth system science. "Both phenomena, which are intensifying due to climate warming, are expected to have increasingly harmful consequences for agriculture, infrastructure and human health."

He suggested that society has a responsibility to respond to the challenges presented by this new climate reality.

"The observed escalation in the number and intensity of wildfires is likely caused by the increase in frequency of hot droughts," AghaKouchak said. "We need to bolster our resiliency against these threats to protect our population health, food supply and critical infrastructure."

Felicia Chiang, Omid Mazdiyasni, Amir AghaKouchak. Amplified warming of droughts in southern United States in observations and model simulations. Science Advances, 2018; 4 (8): eaat2380 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aat2380

The concurrence of droughts and heat waves can exacerbate conditions and lead to another hazard, wildfires. In the western U.S., the number of blazes larger than 4 square kilometers has risen by about seven fires per year in the past three decades. In the same period, the total scope of burned areas has grown by more than 350 square kilometers per year. This upward trend will most likely continue, due to global warming and population growth. Amir AghaKouchak / UCI

Winter wattle appearing in Pittwater Means Spring is on its way!

Reminder: Local Fauna Gets Thirsty in Winter Too

Please remember our local fauna will also get thirsty during Winter - especially during long dry periods with little or no rain and lots of wind. Leaving a dish of water outside will enable them to quench their thirst. 

A shallow dish with twigs leading into and out of it is great for smaller lizards like slinks while this lovely, a Newport ring-tailed possum, will quite happily sup from a deeper dish. Photo courtesy Sonja Elwood.

Should you share data of threatened species?
Or should you decline a nature selfie to save exotics from the hordes?

July 23, 2018: University of Sydney

Scientists publishing locations of rare species have been blamed for helping poachers drive them to extinction, such as the local extinction of the Chinese cave gecko.

But an international group of scientists lead by Dr Ayesha Tulloch from the University of Sydney and the University of Queensland believes that data publishing is important to help many species.

"Species, like Australia's tiny grassland earless dragon, have received greater environmental protection because published data was available to show that they were in trouble," said Dr Tulloch.

"The challenge is to share data in a way that avoids perverse outcomes such as local species extinctions from human exploitation.

"It is undeniable that in some cases, poachers have used published data to hunt down rare animals for the illegal wildlife trade.

"And even well-meaning people like bird watchers and sight seers can sometimes do damage when enough of them trample a patch of habitat."

"Which is why scientists and conservationists have continually called on location data to be turned off in nature photos to help preserve species."

"But stopping all data publishing is not the answer. Data publishing has also led to improved protection and conservation for many species.

"Good data helps conservation managers know where action is needed."

Dr Tulloch -- whose affiliations include The Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions and the Threatened Species Recovery Hub of the National Environmental Science Program; and the Desert Ecology Research Group -- said sharing data takes a balanced approach.

To address the challenge Dr Tulloch collaborated with scientists from nine organisations to design a framework that helps researchers and conservationists choose how to share sensitive data.

"A key aspect is identifying whether poaching, illegal trade or disturbance from eager spectators really poses a real threat which can't be managed.

"Then there are a number of ways you can deal with that data, such as only showing locations in 100km grid squares, that could allow it to be published without putting those species at risk.

"The sharing of species information is here to stay," said Dr Tulloch.

"Being clear about the pros and cons of making the data public will ensure that species are not put in more danger from new data being out in the public domain."

The authors of this paper are from the University of Queensland, Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Sydney, Birdlife Australia, the University of Kansas, CSIRO, Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network at the University of Adelaide, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, and the Australian Museum.

Ayesha I. T. Tulloch, Nancy Auerbach, Stephanie Avery-Gomm, Elisa Bayraktarov, Nathalie Butt, Chris R. Dickman, Glenn Ehmke, Diana O. Fisher, Hedley Grantham, Matthew H. Holden, Tyrone H. Lavery, Nicholas P. Leseberg, Miles Nicholls, James O’Connor, Leslie Roberson, Anita K. Smyth, Zoe Stone, Vivitskaia Tulloch, Eren Turak, Glenda M. Wardle, James E. M. Watson. A decision tree for assessing the risks and benefits of publishing biodiversity data. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2018; 2 (8): 1209 DOI: 10.1038/s41559-018-0608-1

The Night Parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis), was recently rediscovered in the arid zone of Australia. Exact population locations were kept secret to prevent the birds being disturbed by eager bird watchers or targeted by poachers. Historical published data is helping conservation managers to better understand the species. Credit: Nicholas P. Leseberg.

Stem cell research for cystic fibrosis leaps forward

Strengthening privacy protections for My Health Record

Muscle 'switch' may control the benefits of exercise

Latent TB treatment: Shorter is better

After 60 years; scientists uncover how thalidomide produced birth defects

August 1, 2018: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

More than 60 years after the drug thalidomide caused birth defects in thousands of children whose mothers took the drug while pregnant, scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have solved a mystery that has lingered ever since the dangers of the drug first became apparent: how did the drug produce such severe fetal harm?

The answer, published online today by the journal eLife, not only helps resolve an issue that has been the subject of scientific curiosity for two generations, but will be critical as pharmaceutical companies develop a promising new generation of anticancer drugs that share a basic chemical architecture with thalidomide, the study authors say.

This is a thalidomide molecule. Credit: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Building on years of previous research, the researchers found that thalidomide acts by promoting the degradation of an unexpectedly wide range of transcription factors -- cell proteins that help switch genes on or off -- including one called SALL4. The result is the complete removal of SALL4 from cells.

The degradation of SALL4 interferes with limb development and other aspects of fetal growth. The result is the spectrum of complications indelibly linked to thalidomide: the deformed limbs and defective organs in children whose mothers took thalidomide during pregnancy as a treatment for morning sickness.

Support for these findings came from reports in medical literature. Individuals who carry a mutation in the gene for SALL4 are often born with missing thumbs, underdeveloped limbs, eye and ear defects, and congenital heart disease -- problems which mirror those in children exposed to thalidomide in the womb.

"The similarities between the birth defects associated with thalidomide and those in people with a mutated SALL4 gene are striking," says the new study's senior author, Eric Fischer, PhD, of Dana-Farber. "They make the case even more strongly that disruption of SALL4 is at the root of the devastation produced by thalidomide in the 1950s."

The findings are apt to mark an important inflection point in the history of thalidomide, a drug more infamous than famous. Marketed and sold extensively in Europe, Australia, and some South American countries -- though never approved in the United States -- as a treatment for pregnancy-related morning sickness, it became a source of anguish when it became clear that it was responsible for birth defects in more than 10,000 children and an unknown number of miscarriages. The medical community was slow to discover the danger of thalidomide because the drug gave rise to birth defects only when taken between the fourth and eighth weeks of pregnancy. It was officially banned in 1961.

In the 1980s, thalidomide gained a second life when it was found to be a powerful anti-angiogenic drug, inhibiting the growth of blood vessels in tumors. As such, it has come into wide use as a cancer drug, primarily in the treatment of multiple myeloma.

Knowing the mechanism by which thalidomide produces birth defects will be critical as drug developers devise and test new drugs that use the same structural "scaffold" as thalidomide, Fischer remarks. "As new derivatives are tested, we'll be able to explore whether they have the same potentially damaging effects as thalidomide. We know that the therapeutic effect of these drugs is based on their ability to degrade specific proteins. Our findings will help drug developers distinguish between proteins whose degradation is likely to be beneficial and whose may be harmful."

The lead author of the eLife study is Katherine A. Donovan, of Dana-Farber. Co-authors are Jian An, PhD, Radoslaw P. Nowak, Jingting C. Yuan, of Dana-Farber; and Emma C. Fink, Bethany Berry, Benjamin L. Ebert, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber and Brigham and women's Hospital.

Financial support for the research was provided by the National Institutes of Health (grant NCI R01CA214608), the Novartis/Dana-Farber Drug Discovery Program, the Friends of Dana-Farber, and the Linde Family Foundation.

Katherine A Donovan, Jian An, Radoslaw P Nowak, Jingting C Yuan, Emma C Fink, Bethany C Berry, Benjamin L Ebert, Eric S Fischer. Thalidomide promotes degradation of SALL4, a transcription factor implicated in Duane Radial Ray Syndrome. eLife, 2018; 7 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.38430

Champions of Indigenous recognition to feature in Mason Conversation

August 1, 2018: Diane Nazaroff, UNSW

Two prominent Aboriginal women who led the unique process that culminated in the historic Uluru Statement from the Heart will take part in the second Mason Conversation at UNSW on August 16.

Patricia Anderson AO and Professor Megan Davis shared the leadership of the deliberative Regional Dialogues and First Nations Constitutional Convention which resulted in the Statement.

"Landmark process in Australian law and politics": Patricia Anderson and Megan Davis. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen, Fairfax Media

Associate Professor Sean Brennan, Director of the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law which is co-hosting the event with UNSW Law, said the Statement “transformed the debate in Australia over constitutional recognition”.

“The 2018 Mason Conversation is the opportunity to hear from these two inspiring Aboriginal women from different generations and backgrounds, about this landmark process in Australian law and politics, and the personal journey that brought them to be involved in the campaign for structural change,” Associate Professor Brennan said.

Professor Davis is the Pro Vice-Chancellor Indigenous at UNSW.

She was raised in Queensland by a mother with a love of literature and a zealous commitment to education.

Professor Davis has emerged as a national and international leader for Indigenous peoples, most recently as an elected member of the UN Human Rights Council's Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous peoples and a Referendum Council member.

 “Megan Davis is a lawyer and public intellectual known nationally and internationally for her leadership in the field of Indigenous peoples and their rights,” Associate Professor Brennan said.

“The role she played with Pat in leading the consultation process through to Uluru drew on years of involvement as a United Nations expert overseas and as a major player in constitutional law debates here in Australia.“

Patricia Anderson grew up with her family in Parap camp in Darwin.

After more than 50 years of working life spent mainly in Aboriginal health and education, Ms Anderson brought her leadership skills and personal commitment to the cause of constitutional and structural change by agreeing to co-chair the Referendum Council appointed by the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition in December 2015.

She is the presently the Chairperson of the Lowitja Institute, Australia’s National Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research.

 “With her pioneering contributions over decades in Aboriginal health and education, Pat Anderson has been a fighter for her people all her working life,” Associate Professor Brennan said.

“We are honoured to have her at UNSW soon after she was presented with the 2018 NAIDOC Lifetime Achievement Award.”

The conversational nature of the event allows for unique insights into the people behind processes at the highest level of politics and government in Australia.

Professor George Williams AO, Dean of UNSW Law, will lead off the conversation with Ms Anderson and Professor Davis before opportunities for questions from the audience.

The Mason Conversation series is named in honour of Sir Anthony Mason and his decades-long contributions to UNSW, UNSW Law and the public law community.

As well as a distinguished career in the law, including as Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia (1987-95), Sir Anthony was the fifth Chancellor of the University of NSW  between 1994 and 1999 and the inaugural Chair of the Advisory Committee to the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law.

Sir Anthony was the first speaker for the inaugural Mason Conversation in 2016.

What: The 2018 Mason Conversation
When: Thursday 16 August, 6.30pm-9pm
Where: Law Theatre G04, the Law Building, UNSW Kensington Campus
Details: www.eventbrite.com.au/e/2018-mason-conversation-tickets

Stem cell research to tackle blindness and congenital heart disease in kids

August 1, 2018: The Hon Greg Hunt MP, Minister for Health

The Turnbull Government will invest $3 million in stem cell research including projects that aim to tackle congenital heart disease and genetic defects that cause blindness in kids.

This cutting edge science offers new ways to repair parts of the body through stem cell therapy. It has now advanced to the stage where it can be used to develop and test the effectiveness of new therapies and medicines.

The $3 million investment will enable Stem Cells Australia to advance a number of projects which directly support patients. 

Among them is a project that is searching for treatments for genetic causes of blindness, aiming to save the sight of children with this condition.

It is possible to build a model of a human eye from a patient’s stem cells and by using this approach researchers will carry out a unique human-based approach to determine whether this treatment is likely to work.

Another project aims to repair and reconstruct tissues for kids with heart defects. 

More than 2000 children are born with major heart defects in Australia each year. 

A national heart stem cell network is modelling heart disease, improving heart repair and potentially recreating heart tissue to treat kids with congenital heart disease. 

I am committed to helping alleviate the enormous suffering these conditions cause children and their families. 

This funding will help maintain the continuity and momentum of Stem Cells Australia’s vital work.

Supporting medical research is a key priority in the Turnbull Government’s long term national health plan. 

All Australians benefit from investment in health and medical research, with the Turnbull Government investing $7 billion over six years through the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Medical Research Future Fund and the Biomedical Translation Fund.

Stem Cells Australia is administered by the University of Melbourne. Partners and collaborators include Monash University, University of Queensland, University of New South Wales, Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Florey Neuroscience Institutes and CSIRO.

Gas sensing gut pill beats breath test diagnosis

August 1, 2018: RMIT University

New trials of a breakthrough swallowable sensor have revealed the device is 3,000 times more accurate than current technology used to diagnose many gut disorders.

This is the vitamin pill-sized capsule, currently being commercialized by Atmo Biosciences. Credit: RMIT University

The findings show the revolutionary gas-sensing capsule developed by researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, could surpass breath testing as the benchmark for diagnosing gut disorders, paving the way to solving previously undiagnosed conditions.

The vitamin pill-sized capsule, currently being commercialised by Atmo Biosciences, provides real time detection and measurement of hydrogen, carbon dioxides and oxygen in the gut. This data can be sent to a mobile phone.

Capsule co-inventor, RMIT's Dr Kyle Berean, said the second human trials have revealed information about gas production in the gut previously masked when measured indirectly through the breath.

"The rate of false positive and false negative diagnosis that breath tests give is a real problem in gastroenterology," Berean, who is also Chief Technology Officer at Atmo Bioscience, said.

"Being able to measure these biomarkers at concentrations over 3,000 times greater than breath tests is quite astonishing.

"Importantly this test is non-invasive and allows the patient to continue with their daily life as normal."

Intestinal gases are currently used to diagnose disorders including small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) and carbohydrate malabsorption.

Of the one-in-five people worldwide who will suffer from a gastrointestinal disorder in their lifetime, almost a third remain undiagnosed due to a lack of reliable tests available to gastroenterologists.

Study lead and capsule co-inventor Professor Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh said the results showed high sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratio in measuring the concentration of intestinal hydrogen, providing valuable information at the site of intestinal gas production.

"This gives us confidence that our new technology could potentially solve many mysteries of the gut and help the large portion of the population who have not been able to find a useful diagnosis or treatment for their symptoms," Kalantar-zadeh said.

Findings from the first human trials revealed the stomach releases oxidising chemicals to break down and beat foreign compounds that are staying in the stomach for longer than usual. Such an immune mechanism has never been reported before.

This second paper made a direct comparison between measuring hydrogen production within the gut via the gas-sensing capsule and indirect measurement through breath testing.

Trials were conducted on nine healthy individuals in a blinded comparative study on absorbable versus fermentable carbohydrates.

Melbourne based start-up Atmo Biosciences is set to commercialise this revolutionary technology.

The trials were conducted with colleagues from Monash University. The findings have been published in the medical journal Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

Kyle J. Berean, Nam Ha, Jian Zhen Ou, Adam F. Chrimes, Danilla Grando, Chu K. Yao, Jane G. Muir, Stephanie A. Ward, Rebecca E. Burgell, Peter R. Gibson, Kourosh Kalantar‐Zadeh. The safety and sensitivity of a telemetric capsule to monitor gastrointestinal hydrogen production in vivo in healthy subjects: a pilot trial comparison to concurrent breath analysis. Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 2018; DOI: 10.1111/apt.14923

Real or crocodile tears? Psychopaths may not know the difference

August 2, 2018: Australian National University

New research from The Australian National University (ANU) has found people with high levels of psychopathic traits have difficulty telling when someone is genuinely afraid or upset, based on people's facial expressions.

The study involved participants looking at photographs of faces expressing different emotions. Some faces were showing real emotions and others were faking it.

Lead researcher Dr Amy Dawel of the ANU Research School of Psychology said the results showed people with high levels of psychopathic traits don't respond to genuine emotions in the same way as most people.

"For most people, if we see someone who is genuinely upset, you feel bad for them and it motivates you to help them," Dr Dawel said. "People who are very high on the psychopathy spectrum don't show this response."

"We found people with high levels of psychopathic traits don't feel any worse for someone who is genuinely upset than someone who is faking it. They also seem to have problems telling if the upset is real or fake. As a result, they are not nearly as willing to help someone who is expressing genuine distress as most people are."

Interestingly, these problems in responding to other peoples' emotions seem to be just for people who are sad or afraid.

"For other emotions such as anger, disgust, and happy, high psychopathy individuals had no problems telling if someone was faking it. The results were very specific to expressions of distress."

Dr Dawel hopes her research will lead to better understanding and treatments for psychopathy.

"There seems to be a genetic contribution to these traits, we see the start of them quite early in childhood," she said.

"Understanding exactly what is going wrong with emotions in psychopathy will help us to identify these problems early and hopefully intervene in ways that promote moral development."

Amy Dawel, Luke Wright, Rachael Dumbleton, Elinor McKone. All tears are crocodile tears: Impaired perception of emotion authenticity in psychopathic traits. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 2018; DOI: 10.1037/per0000301

Disclaimer: These articles are not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.  Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Pittwater Online News or its staff.