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In de laatste editie van de Levende Natuur beschrijven onderzoekers van Bosgroep Zuid en Stichting Bargerveen de noodzaak en uitvoering van herstelmaatregelen in de Brabantse leembossen. Het merendeel van deze bossen is aangetast door intensieve ontwatering. In 2018 zijn pilots gestart in zes gebieden. De effecten van de maatregelen worden gemonitord en de eerste resultaten zien er positief uit.

De Noord-Brabantse leembossen behoren tot Nederlands soortenrijkste bossen. Ontwatering en aanleg van rabatten - dammen van aarden, afgewisseld met ontwateringsgreppels - hebben echter geleid tot kwaliteitsverlies en achteruitgang van de floristische rijkdom. Herstelmaatregelen kennen risico’s, zoals bossterfte en vernietiging van relictpopulaties van zeldzame soorten. Tegelijkertijd zijn maatregelen noodzakelijk om diezelfde relictpopulaties te behouden en de natuurkwaliteit van de bossen te herstellen. Uit onze onderzoeken en herstelpilots blijkt herstel van de lokale waterhuishouding mogelijk door maatregelen zoals het dempen van sloten en het egaliseren van rabatten. De maatregelen zorgen voor nattere omstandigheden en herstel van de geleidelijke gradiënten die de basis vormen voor herstel.

Drawing on data collected for a comprehensive workforce survey of the audio-visual camera profession in Australia (n = 582), this article investigates discrimination and devaluation in screen industry workplaces. Employing a mixed method approach, we analyse the intersection of gender, sexuality and ethnicity to show that group differences play an important role in understanding workplace cultures defined by power imbalances. To address the problem of these toxic workplaces, we propose the importance of attending to job precarity and suggest the need for policymakers, guilds and trade unions to work collaboratively to set and enforce standards of workplace equality and respect. JEL Classification: Z13

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Item does not contain fulltext, BACKGROUND: Skill deterioration of minimally invasive surgical (MIS) skills may be prevented by continuous training. The aim of this study is to evaluate whether unsupervised continuous at-home training of MIS skills results in better skill retention compared to no training. METHODS: Medical doctors followed a two-week interval training for two MIS tasks (precise peg transfer and interrupted suture with knot tying), ending with a baseline test. They were randomly assigned to the no-practice group or continuous-practice group. The latter practiced unsupervised at home every two weeks during the study period. Skill retention was measured after three and six months on both tasks by the total time needed, distance traveled by instruments and LS-CAT score (8 best possible score and > 40 worst score). RESULTS: A total of 38 participants were included. No significant differences in performance were found at pre-test or baseline. At six months the no-practice group needed more time for the suturing task (309 s vs. 196 s at baseline, p = 0.010) and the LS-CAT score was significantly worse (30 vs. 20 at baseline, p < 0.0001). The continuous-practice group performed the suturing task significantly better than the no-practice group at both three and six months (17 vs. 25, p < 0.001 and 17 vs. 30, p < 0.001) and faster as well (p = 0.034 and p = 0.001). CONCLUSION: This study shows a skill decay after only a few months of non-use and shows better skill retention after continuous unsupervised at-home practice of MIS skills. This indicates an added value of regular at-home practice of surgical skills.

Quality indicators (QIs) for the management of breast cancer (BC) have been published in Europe and internationally. In Belgium, a task force was established to select measurable process indicators of systemic treatment for BC, focusing on appropriateness of delivered care. The objective of this study was to evaluate the results of the selected QIs, both nationally and among individual centres. Female Belgian residents with unilateral primary invasive BC diagnosed between 2010 and 2014 were selected from the Belgian Cancer Registry database. The national number enabled linkage with the national reimbursement database, which contains information on all reimbursed medical procedures. A total of 12 process indicators were measured on the population and hospital level. Intercentre variability was assessed by median results and interquartile ranges. A total of 48 872 patients were included in the study. QIs concerning specific BC subtypes only applied to patients diagnosed in 2014 (n = 9855). Clinical stage (cStage) I patients (n = 17 116) were staged with positron emission tomography/computed tomography. Among patients who were pT1aN0 human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) positive (n = 47), 25.5% (n = 12) received adjuvant trastuzumab. Among patients with de novo metastatic luminal A/B-like HER2-negative BC (n = 295), 17.3% (n = 51) received upfront chemotherapy. (Neo)adjuvant chemotherapy was administered in 52.4% (n = 12 592) of operated women with cStage I-III, in 37.0% (n = 1270) of operated women with cStage I-III luminal A/B-like HER2-negative BC, and in 19.1% of operated women with cStage I luminal A/B-like HER2-negative BC. In the population of operated patients with cStage I-III, of those younger than 70 years that started adjuvant endocrine therapy (n = 3591), 81.7% (n = 2932) continued treatment for ≥4.5 years. Among patients in cStage I-III older than 70 years (n = 8544), 19.0% (n = 1622) received (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy, whereas among patients

Despite evident and mutual benefits, international co-production treaties are an under utilised aspect of Australia’s screen production slate. This chapter explores the various reasons why this is the case through the lens of Australian-German co-productions. The research finds that, in Australia, there are heterogenous reasons for this operative reluctance that stem from the specific (finding the right partners), the structural (the complexity of working in different financing and production jurisdictions), to the systemic (the impetus for national cinemas has historically favoured an inward-looking film production culture). In addition to these reasons, we may expect additional challenges and, potentially, unexpected opportunities resulting from the global COVD-19 pandemic.

Big Tech supports social media, the stock market, insurance companies, scientific research, financial transactions, mass surveillance and monitoring, the ‘Internet of things’, ‘smart city’ sensors and grids, and mobile communications for Internet users writ large. By most industry accounts, data centres—and the cloud infrastructure that undergirds it—has become the most important sociotechnical system of our time, but also the least sustainable. Interestingly, one of the alternatives to these water- and energy-intensive data storage solutions has emerged from advancements in synthetic DNA technologies, now touted by the industry as a safer, greener and more efficient alternative. But how did we get here? How might ideas of ‘sustainability’ and ‘efficiency’ function in this context? In conversation, Mél Hogan and Deb Verhoeven discuss the idea of ‘Sustainable DNA’—in its various instantiations—as an object of critical media studies.

This paper reports on an Australian project that is developing an online system to deliver researcher-driven national-scale infrastructure for the humanities, focused on mapping, time series, and data integration. Australian scholars and scholars of Australia worldwide are well served with digital resources and tools to deepen the understanding of Australia and its historical and cultural heritage. There are, however, significant barriers to use. The Time Layered Cultural Map of Australia (TLCMap) will provide an umbrella infrastructure related to time and space, helping to activate and draw together existing high-quality resources. TLCMap expands the use of Australian cultural and historical data for research through sharply defined and powerful discovery mechanisms. See https://tlcmap.newcastle.edu.au/.

© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. In Australia, cultural policy settings differentiate between purported ‘small-to-medium’ and ‘major’ performing arts organisations, primarily in relation to their revenue size and institutional stability. This article publishes a quantitative analysis of the relative creative outputs of these Australian performing arts organisations, focusing primarily on the production of so-called ‘new works’: original cultural texts, created and performed recently. Using survey data from 21 Australian performing arts organisations, as well as aggregated government data regarding 173 performing arts organisations, and repertoire data for 8 symphony orchestras, across 7 years, we set out to determine the relationship (if any) of organisational scale and artform to the amount of new work in the Australian publicly subsidised performing arts sector. We find that the majority of the new work is produced by the small-to-medium sector. Smaller organisations are more likely to produce new work than larger ones, and large organisations produce relatively little new work. The small-to-medium sector has, in aggregate, larger audiences than the major companies. These findings have specific implications for Australia’s lively cultural policy debate.

Studies of gender inequality in film industries have noted the persistence of male domination in creative roles (usually defined as director, producer, writer) and the slow pace of reform. Typical policy remedies are premised on aggregate counts of women as a proportion of overall industry participation. Network science offers an alternative way of identifying and proposing change mechanisms, as it puts emphasis on relationships instead of individuals. Preliminary work on applying network analysis to understand inequality in the film industry has been undertaken. However, in this study we offer a comprehensive approach that enables us to not only understand what inequality in the film industry looks like through the lens of network science but also how we can attempt to address this issue. We offer a data-driven simulation framework that investigates various what-if scenarios when it comes to network evolution. We then assess each of these scenarios with respect to its potential to address gender inequality in the film industry. As suggested by previous studies, inequality is exacerbated when industry networks are most closed. We review evidence from three different national film industries on network relationships in creative teams and identify a high proportion of men who only work with other men. In response to this observation, we test several mechanisms through which industry structures may generate higher levels of openness. Our results reveal that the most critical factor for improving network openness is not simply the statistical improvement of the number of women in a network, nor the removal of men who do not work with women. The most likely behavioural changes to a network will involve the production of connections between women and powerful men.