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This article traces the development of four narratives of financial assistance for Australian university students - to encourage excellence; to meet public need; to build the stock of human capital; and as universal provision - and their effect on the development of a fifth narrative, centred on the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS). Financial support schemes have been provided by governments, industry, philanthropic and religious groups, or a combination of these. These narratives reflect deep-seated ideas about the meaning and value of education, and the emphasis placed on public or private benefits. This article shows how these narratives have affected access to university and who has attended. It shows the influence of student support schemes in shaping higher education in Australia.

To inform future research and enhance intercultural learning in higher education, this article presents findings from a scoping review of international evidence on students' attitudes about the importance of diverse people and beliefs in higher education settings. A final sample of 56 studies were analysed for patterns in their methodological approaches, contexts, aims, and results. Findings suggest that students' conceptualisations of diversity are wider than a focus only on culture, race, or ethnicity, and that students across multiple contexts believe that diversity is an inherent, beneficial part of the learning experience. However, there were inconsistent results related to students' beliefs about the efficacy of diversity practices.

Norovirus is the predominant cause of viral gastroenteritis globally with foodborne outbreaks commonly reported. Filter-feeding bivalve molluscan shellfish can become contaminated with norovirus when grown in waters impacted by inadequately treated effluent wastewater, overflows, or other human fecal sources. Contaminated shellfish pose a significant risk to consumers, because combined with a low norovirus infectious dose, oysters and mussels are often eaten raw or lightly cooked resulting in no or minimal virus inactivation, respectively. In addition, shellfish contamination has significant economic impacts on the seafood industry. To improve risk assessments, reverse transcription (RT)-digital droplet PCR (ddPCR) was used to determine the precise norovirus concentrations in 20 shellfish samples, all positive for norovirus genogroup I and/or II (GI or GII) by RT-quantitative PCR (qPCR), and associated with reported norovirus illness in New Zealand. Using RT-ddPCR, total norovirus GI and/or GII concentrations in shellfish ranged between 44 and 4,630 genome copies (GC)/g digestive tissue. Importantly, 40% (8/20) of shellfish samples contained a total norovirus concentration less than 200 GC/g digestive tissue. In parallel, RNase treatment was applied, prior to viral extraction to remove free viral RNA, which subsequently led to average reductions in norovirus GC/g concentration of 37.1% and 19.4% for GI and GII, respectively. These RT-ddPCR data provide valuable evidence for risk assessment of contaminated shellfish and evaluation of safety guidelines and highlight issues associated with setting a safe threshold of norovirus in shellfish.

Abstract In recent decades, the role of tumor biomechanics on cancer cell behavior at the primary site has been increasingly appreciated. However, the effect of primary tumor biomechanics on the latter stages of the metastatic cascade, such as metastatic seeding of secondary sites and outgrowth remains underappreciated. This work sought to address this in the context of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), a cancer type known to aggressively disseminate at all stages of disease progression. Using mechanically tuneable model systems, mimicking the range of stiffness's typically found within breast tumors, it is found that, contrary to expectations, cancer cells exposed to softer microenvironments are more able to colonize secondary tissues. It is shown that heightened cell survival is driven by enhanced metabolism of fatty acids within TNBC cells exposed to softer microenvironments. It is demonstrated that uncoupling cellular mechanosensing through integrin β1 blocking antibody effectively causes stiff primed TNBC cells to behave like their soft counterparts, both in vitro and in vivo. This work is the first to show that softer tumor microenvironments may be contributing to changes in disease outcome by imprinting on TNBC cells a greater metabolic flexibility and conferring discrete cell survival advantages.

The paper offers a synthesis of findings from an international initiative coordinated by the Asia Productivity Organisation (APO) to measure higher education productivity across nine Asian countries. The paper discusses benefits, barriers, and potential for estimating university productivity across international contexts. Stakeholders from nine participating countries collected and analysed institutional data and reported measurement results. The APO initiative represents the first multi-country test of an adapted productivity measurement model first advanced by the United States National Research Council (NRC). The research provides evidence for proof of concept of the adapted NRC model for use across international contexts. Additional findings demonstrate the range of productivity definitions and interpretations for higher education. The paper concludes by showing priority areas for both targeted and broad developments in research and practice of measuring productivity in higher education.

Abstract Developing protein‐based vaccines against bacteria has proved much more challenging than producing similar immunisations against viruses. Currently, anti‐bacterial vaccines are designed using methods based on reverse vaccinology. These identify broadly conserved, immunogenic proteins using a combination of genomic and high‐throughput laboratory data. While this approach has successfully generated multiple rationally designed formulations that show promising immunogenicity in animal models, few have been licensed. The difficulty of inducing protective immunity in humans with such vaccines mirrors the ability of many bacteria to recolonise individuals despite recognition by natural polyvalent antibody repertoires. As bacteria express too many antigens to evade all adaptive immune responses through mutation, they must instead inhibit the efficacy of such host defences through expressing surface structures that interface with the immune system. Therefore, ‘immune interface interference’ (I3) vaccines that target these features should synergistically directly target bacteria and prevent them from inhibiting responses to other surface antigens. This approach may help us understand the efficacy of the two recently introduced immunisations against serotype B meningococci, which both target the Factor H‐binding protein (fHbp) that inhibits complement deposition on the bacterial surface. Therefore, I3 vaccine designs may help overcome the current challenges of developing protein‐based vaccines to prevent bacterial infections.

One fundamental aspect of organizational transformation in higher education is the change to the profile of universities' non-academic workforce. Key staffing trends identified in recent studies conducted in a variety of national settings include an increase in the proportion of non-academic staff at universities and a shift toward more highly qualified and remunerated non-academic roles. This paper examines the extent to which these trends have played out at Australian universities over the period 1997 to 2017. Drawing on unpublished sets of staffing data, the analyses show that while the proportion of non-academic positions at Australian universities has remained largely stable, there has been a striking and uniform growth in management-rank positions, concurrent with a substantial decline in lower-level and less expensive support roles. This has some significant implications, in particular the growth in more complex "corporate" structures, the relatively fewer staff to support academic work, and the increase in the relative costs associated with maintaining the non-academic workforce at Australian universities.

Phosphites have been used to control Sudden Oak Death; however, their precise mode of action is not fully understood. To study the mechanism of action of phosphites, we conducted an inoculation experiment on two open-pollinated tanoak families, previously found to be partially resistant. Stems of treatment group individuals were sprayed with phosphite, and seven days later, distal leaves were inoculated with the Sudden Oak Death pathogen Phytophthora ramorum. Leaves from treated and untreated control plants were harvested before and seven days after inoculation, and transcriptomes of both host and pathogen were analyzed. We found that tanoak families differed in the presence of innate resistance (resistance displayed by untreated tanoak) and in the response to phosphite treatment. A set of expressed genes associated with innate resistance was found to overlap with an expressed gene set for phosphite-induced resistance. This observation may indicate that phosphite treatment increases the resistance of susceptible host plants. In addition, genes of the pathogen involved in detoxification were upregulated in phosphite-treated plants compared to phosphite-untreated plants. In summary, our RNA-Seq analysis supports a two-fold mode of action of phosphites, including a direct toxic effect on P. ramorum and an indirect enhancement of resistance in the tanoak host.

ATP13A2 is a lysosomal protein involved in polyamine transport with loss of function mutations associated with multiple neurodegenerative conditions. These include early onset Parkinson’s disease, Kufor-Rakeb Syndrome, neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis, hereditary spastic paraplegia, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. While ATP13A2 mutations may result in clinical heterogeneity, the basal ganglia appear to be impacted in the majority of cases. The basal ganglia is particularly vulnerable to environmental exposures such as heavy metals, pesticides, and industrial agents which are also established risk factors for many neurodegenerative conditions. Not surprisingly then, impaired function of ATP13A2 has been linked to heavy metal toxicity including manganese, iron, and zinc. This review discusses the role of ATP13A2 in basal ganglia function and dysfunction, potential common pathological mechanisms in ATP13A2-related disorders, and how gene x environment interactions may contribute to basal ganglia dysfunction.

Abstract Objectives Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have an increased susceptibility to infections, including those caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae. Why RA is associated with increased susceptibility to S. pneumoniae is poorly understood. This study aims to assess the effects of RA and B‐cell depletion therapy on naturally acquired antibody responses to 289 S. pneumoniae protein antigens using a novel protein array. Methods IgG responses to S. pneumoniae were characterised in serum from RA patients and disease controls (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS)) using whole‐cell ELISA, a flow cytometry opsonisation assay and an S. pneumoniae protein array. For the RA patients, results were compared before and after B‐cell depletion therapy. Results Compared to a well‐characterised disease control group of ME/CFS patients, RA patients had reduced antibody responses to multiple S. pneumoniae protein antigens, with significant IgG recognition of approximately half the number of antigens along with reduced median strengths of these responses. Reduction in multiple array antigen‐specific responses also correlated with reduced IgG opsonisation of S. pneumoniae. Although B‐cell depletion therapy with rituximab did not reduce overall IgG recognition of S. pneumoniae in the RA group, it was associated with marked disruption of pre‐existing IgG repertoire to protein antigens in individual patients. Conclusion These data show RA is associated with major disruption of naturally acquired adaptive immunity to S. pneumoniae, which can be assessed rapidly using a protein antigen array and is likely to contribute towards the increased incidence of pneumonia in patients with RA.

Leadership matters for the success of large enterprises and this is also the case for higher education institutions and universities. Yet, the public nature of universities and of academia means these institutions are usually highly dependent on external actors, in particular government. Viewed through a lens of distributed leadership, this paper explores how leaders in universities, national academies and government view and rate key changes associated with this pervasive reorientation and reorganisation of public higher education. It asks where do the views of leaders within universities and those outside universities converge and diverge and what patterns are evident in the differences between leaders? Drawing on 116 in-depth interviews and 114 follow-up surveys with senior higher education leaders in Australia, of which just over half were university senior executives, this paper concludes that all leaders surveyed are largely aligned in their views of most issues.

Public universities worldwide have incorporated neoliberal behaviours and norms across their activities, moulding organizational practices, processes and cultures. In particular, these changes have been expressed through forms of academic capitalism and increasing 'marketization' of public university activities. A little explored perspective on these changes is that of senior leadership within higher education. This paper addresses this topic by examining how 116 higher education leaders view 32 key issues for the future of Australian higher education in the next 10 to 20 years. Half the participants in this study were university vice-chancellors or presidents or those who were part of their senior leadership team, and the other half were leaders outside universities including government leaders responsible for budgets or policy or those in national academic organizations. Generally, both the university and the non-university leaders of the Australian higher education system perceived nearly all of the issues for its future as at least moderately important. Many traditional academic goals of knowledge generation, dissemination and application were seen as high priorities. Rated among the top ten issues were student learning outcomes and ensuring student accessibility to higher education, as well as addressing the needs of society and research on grand challenges facing humanity, such as climate change and food security. At the same time, higher education leaders viewed most of the issues related to both marketization and academic capitalism as important, including issues of internationalization, the balance between tenured and contract academics, and the role of university-industry joint research. Traditional academic goals appear to be tightly bound to components of marketization and academic capitalism. The leaders' perceptions of the importance, meaning and trajectory of Australian universities suggest core goals of higher education will likely need to continue to be balanced with the emerging neoliberal agendas

The onset of COVID-19, along with its various mutations, has played havoc with many activities, not the least of which is education. For the majority of 2020 and 2021 in Australia, much of the teaching in both schools and universities was undertaken online, leading to a re-think of how learning and teaching might look in the future. This paper examines some of the challenges of remote learning, along with some of the unexpected benefits. Of particular interest is assessment, especially in mathematics-based subjects, and how a fair evaluation may be made of the students.