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Introduction: Research suggests that flexible models of care which include across-discipline support and practices can overcome the limitations caused by scattered populations and fewer health practitioners in rural and remote areas across Australia. Innovative models of care bring together the clinician and the individual to plan and manage chronic disease to prevent hospital admissions, promote medication compliance and improve service provision. However, models of care cannot stand alone as effective tools for the management and minimisation of chronic diseases in any given area. A sound knowledge of what services are currently available within any given catchment is necessary in planning, commissioning and coordinating chronic care. Pinpointing the core activities of specific services on the ground can assist with integrating service provision. Practice Change: A recent pilot project has been completed to compile an Integrated Atlas of Chronic Care for Dubbo and Coonamble, providing the first detailed service provision description for a specific geographic region within Australia. Based on the international DESDE-LTC classification system, this document goes beyond simply listing services in a directory, toward being able to understand the functional service delivery teams working in a region, where there may be gaps in service provision and where the greatest need for care may be. Highlights: Furthermore, the consistent classification system employed by the atlas methodology allows for later comparison of service provision with other regions. The utility of a validated, comparable and transferable classification system enables policy makers, service planners and commissioning bodies to make informed decisions related to service provision based on the current service provision patterns. Conclusion: In order to ensure rural and remote communities are more likely to have their health needs met, there needs to be a comprehensive understanding of not only what communities need but also what services are currently available that could cooperate to meet the needs in appropriate ways. Locally relevant information on services therefore has a key role in improving rural and remote health.

Over the last 5 years, deep dry etching of silicon has developed into a mainstream microsystems process technology. To transition from R&D into production, some of the main issues to address are the CoO (cost of ownership), reliability and reproducibility of capital equipment. Commensurate with this, it is essential to achieve high etch rates with good profile control. MICROSPECT (Microsystems Production Evaluated Cluster Tool), a project within the EC SEA programme, has sought to address these issues. The project has evaluated and significantly enhanced the performance of STS ASE modules for deep dry etching on an ASPECTHR production cluster platform. The development phase of the project has provided an ideal opportunity for the equipment supplier to test and respond to feedback on the tool and the latest hardware and software developments with multiple end users, including a new high density inductively coupled plasma (ICP) source. This has resulted in higher etch rates for greater throughput and improved profile control across a variety of applications, including silicon-on-insulator (SOI)-based MEMS and microfluidics. During the evaluation phase, the system was operated under close-to-production conditions to establish system reliability and metrics.

All Campylobacter jejuni strains have a major outer membrane protein (OMP) that migrates between a molecular weight of 41,000 (41K) and 45K and represents more than 50% of protein present, plus several more minor bands. Using 125I-radiolabeled C. jejuni cells in a radioimmunoprecipitation procedure to assess whether the OMPs were antigenic, we studied serum from rabbits immunized with C. jejuni cells, from humans convalescent after C. jejuni infection, and from appropriate controls. In this assay, the major OMP was the major antigen for both homologously and heterologously immunized rabbits and infected humans but not for controls. Minor bands at 29K and 50K were also antigenic. We tested human and animal sera in a Western blot procedure using anti-immunoglobulin A (IgA), anti-IgG, or anti-IgM conjugates. Homologous and heterologous immune rabbit serum, but not control serum, recognized a large number of membrane proteins between 15K and 91K, including the major OMP. Both Campylobacter spp.-infected and healthy humans showed IgA, IgG, and IgM responses to the major OMP, although the response was more pronounced in the former group. Sera from infected humans recognized several minor bands to a significantly greater extent than control sera did. Our data suggest that there is antigenic similarity between the OMPs of different C. jejuni strains and that some of these OMPs recognized by infected animals and humans have vaccinogenic potential.