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The understanding developed through intensive monitoring over 18 years of Eighteen Mile Swamp on North Stradbroke Island, south-eastern Queensland, Australia, is discussed in this paper. This wetland is the largest coastal peat swamp in eastern Australia and is typified by its sandy, poor nutrient substrate and peat base. On-ground and remote monitoring was commissioned to detect any changes resulting from water extraction from the Swamp, which commenced in 1992. During the monitoring period (1988 until 2006) the Swamp was subject to fires and drought. The vegetation has displayed great resilience to many environmental perturbations, but changes in water level can, and have, altered the biota profoundly. Through analysis of structural and floristic data collected against the backdrop of natural and artificial change, the limitations to monitoring, when the basic function of the ecosystem is unknown, are highlighted. The monitoring goal is confounded by a high degree of natural variation, the long cycles of natural change, and the effect of extreme events. In order to determine the effect of human activity on such areas it is imperative to have a network of reference sites in similar areas and to sustain monitoring for long periods—at least 50 years—accompanied by information on relevant environmental effectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drought in the earliest years of the twentieth century stimulated much discussion in Brisbane about the quality of the water supplied to the rapidly growing city. One of the various schemes developed by the Board of Waterworks to obtain better water was the Stradbroke Island Scheme. Although not adopted, its consideration required the close examination of the island's topographic and hydrological features, including an exhaustive survey of the island by Herbert W. Lethem, completed early in 1903. His detailed map and report, together with reports by others such as Board engineers H. G. Foster-Barham (1901) and J. Kemp (1906), and American expert A. Hazen (1907), provide a signifi cant body of scientifi c knowledge of Stradbroke Island. These records portray the island long before the beginning of mineral sand mining (1940s) and municipal water extraction (1990s). This paper is an historical account of the Stradbroke Island Scheme and an assessment of its legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND Findings from observational studies suggest that dietary patterns may offer protective benefits against cognitive decline, but data from clinical trials are limited. The Mediterranean--DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay, known as the MIND diet, is a hybrid of the Mediterranean diet and the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet, with modifications to include foods that have been putatively associated with a decreased risk of dementia. METHODS We performed a two-site, randomized, controlled trial involving older adults without cognitive impairment but with a family history of dementia, a body-mass index (the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters) greater than 25, and a suboptimal diet, as determined by means of a 14-item questionnaire, to test the cognitive effects of the MIND diet with mild caloric restriction as compared with a control diet with mild caloric restriction. We assigned the participants in a 1:1 ratio to follow the intervention or the control diet for 3 years. All the participants received counseling regarding adherence to their assigned diet plus support to promote weight loss. The primary end point was the change from baseline in a global cognition score and four cognitive domain scores, all of which were derived from a 12-test battery. The raw scores from each test were converted to z scores, which were averaged across all tests to create the global cognition score and across component tests to create the four domain scores; higher scores indicate better cognitive performance. The secondary outcome was the change from baseline in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)--derived measures of brain characteristics in a nonrandom sample of participants. RESULTS A total of 1929 persons underwent screening, and 604 were enrolled; 301 were assigned to the MIND-diet group and 303 to the control-diet group. The trial was completed by 93.4% of the participants. From baseline to year 3, improvements in global cognition scores were observed in both groups, with increases of 0.205 standardized units in the MIND-diet group and 0.170 standardized units in the control-diet group (mean difference, 0.035 standardized units; 95% confidence interval, -0.022 to 0.092; P=0.23). Changes in white-matter hyperintensities, hippocampal volumes, and total gray- and white-matter volumes on MRI were similar in the two groups. CONCLUSIONS Among cognitively unimpaired participants with a family history of dementia, changes in cognition and brain MRI outcomes from baseline to year 3 did not differ significantly between those who followed the MIND diet and those who followed the control diet with mild caloric restriction. (Funded by the National Institute on Aging; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT02817074.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most commonly recognized sources of sand and gravel aggregate are the deposits of coastal, fluvial and glacial sedimentary processes.It is not commonly recognized that weathered bedrock is also an important source of sand and gravel aggregate. In the case of weathered sedimentary bedrock the product may be indistinguishable from modern sedimentary materials and deposits may be misidentified. Batson's quarry is a major sand and gravel aggregate resource for the rapidly developing region of north-eastern New South Wales. The deposit has previously been assumed to be a young sedimentary deposit, but detailed field examination and comparison with surrounding rock types indicates that it has formed from weathered Mesozoic sandstone bedrock. The extraction of weathered bedrock aggregate deposits has distinctive environmental implications because, unlike sedimentary aggregates, they are not restricted by the geometry of sedimentary environments and do not necessarily interfere with surface drainage systems. This study shows that the recognition of the geological origin of a resource is essential in order to determine its potential geographical extent, and thereby maximize its utilization and minimize land use conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioconductor's SummarizedExperiment class unites numerical assay quantifications with sample- and experiment-level metadata.  SummarizedExperiment is the standard Bioconductor class for assays that produce matrix-like data, used by over 200 packages.  We describe the restfulSE package, a deployment of  this data model that supports remote storage.  We illustrate use of SummarizedExperiment with remote HDF5 and Google BigQuery back ends, with two applications in cancer genomics.  Our intent is to allow the use of familiar and semantically meaningful programmatic idioms to query genomic data, while abstracting the remote interface from end users and developers., Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.