Violent assault geographies in northeastern Australia

As climate change produces more extreme weather, it is increasingly important to understand the impacts of these changes on social behaviour. The relationship between weather and crime has been studied across numerous contexts. However, few studies examine the correlation between weather and violence in southern, non-temperate climates. In addition, the literature lacks longitudinal research that controls for international changes in crime trends. In this study, we examine over 12 years of assault-related incidents in the state of Queensland, Australia. Controlling for deviations in trend for temperature and rainfall, we explore the relationship between violent crime and weather across Köppen climate classifications. Findings provide important insight into the impact of weather on violence across temperate, tropical, and arid climate regions.

A global portrait of expressed mental health signals towards COVID-19 in social media space

Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has induced a mental health crisis. Social media data offer a unique opportunity to track the mental health signals of a given population and quantify their negativity towards COVID-19. To date, however, we know little about how negative sentiments differ across countries and how these relate to the shifting policy landscape experienced through the pandemic. Using 2.1 billion individual-level geotagged tweets posted between 1 February 2020 and 31 March 2021, we track, monitor and map the shifts in negativity across 217 countries and unpack its relationship with COVID-19 policies. Findings reveal that there are important geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic disparities of negativity across continents, different levels of a nation's income, population density, and the level of COVID-19 infection. Countries with more stringent policies were associated with lower levels of negativity, a relationship that weakened in later phases of the pandemic. This study provides the first global and multilingual evaluation of the public's real-time mental health signals to COVID-19 at a large spatial and temporal scale. We offer an empirical framework to monitor mental health signals globally, helping international authorizations, including the United Nations and World Health Organization, to design smart country-specific mental health initiatives in response to the ongoing pandemic and future public emergencies.

Community resilience to crime: A study of the 2011 Brisbane flood

Understanding and enhancing community resilience is a global priority as societies encounter a rising number of extreme weather events. Given that these events are typically both sudden and unexpected, community resilience is typically examined after the disaster so there can be no before and after comparisons. As such, the extent to which existing community capacities buffer the effects of a traumatic event remains largely unexamined and untested in the literature. Drawing on a longitudinal study of 148 Brisbane suburbs, we examine the key community processes associated with community resilience to the crime before and after the 2011 Brisbane floods. We introduce a novel disaster severity index to simultaneously capture the direct and indirect impacts of the flood and embed this measure within our modeling framework. Results from the models provide important insights for predisaster preparedness and postdisaster rebuilding and recovery.

Neighbourhood correlates of average population walking: using aggregated, anonymised mobile phone data to identify where people walk

Understanding and monitoring socio-spatial patterns of population walking mobility can inform urban planning and geographically targeted health promotion strategies aimed at increasing population levels of physical activity. In this study we use aggregated, anonymous mobile phone mobility data to examine the association between neighbourhood physical and social characteristics and residents' weekly walking behaviour across 313 neighbourhoods in a large metropolitan region of Queensland, Australia. We find that residents in neighbourhoods that are highly fragmented by streets with speed limits above 50 kmph, residents in neighbourhoods with high retail density and those living is economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods walk fewer kilometres and minutes on average per week than their counterparts. These findings can inform urban planning policy on the minimum specifications required in newly developing neighbourhoods and provide targets for retro-fitting features into existing neighbourhoods.

Has the decline in the intensity of internal migration been accompanied by changes in reasons for migration?

The last few decades have seen the intensity of internal migration decline in Australia and other advanced economies including the United States. Recent evidence suggests that changes in the composition of the population alone do not account for this persistent downward trend. This has led migration scholars to suspect that more profound behavioural changes driven by social, economic, and technological transformations are at play and that shifts in migration behaviour are likely to be reflected in changes in reasons for migration. We use data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey to shed new light on the factors driving the decline in internal migration in Australia between 2002 and 2018. This is done by examining annual trends in self-reported reasons for intrastate and interstate migration and applying a series of pooled logistic regressions. Results reveal a decline across all reasons for migration, and not only employment-related migration contrary to explanations proposed in the extant literature. The decline in employment-related migration does not appear to be the result of a rise in alternative forms of mobility such as teleworking or substitution with inter-industry or occupation mobility. Furthermore, we also find that the negative effect of duration of residence has increased for family-related migration. Collectively, these findings suggest that behavioural change, particularly increased place attachment, may have contributed to the decline in internal migration.

The times, they are a-changin': tracking shifts in mental health signals from early phase to later phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia

INTRODUCTION

Widespread problems of psychological distress have been observed in many countries following the outbreak of COVID-19, including Australia. What is lacking from current scholarship is a national-scale assessment that tracks the shifts in mental health during the pandemic timeline and across geographic contexts.

METHODS

Drawing on 244 406 geotagged tweets in Australia from 1 January 2020 to 31 May 2021, we employed machine learning and spatial mapping techniques to classify, measure and map changes in the Australian public's mental health signals, and track their change across the different phases of the pandemic in eight Australian capital cities.

RESULTS

Australians' mental health signals, quantified by sentiment scores, have a shift from pessimistic (early pandemic) to optimistic (middle pandemic), reflected by a 174.1% (95% CI 154.8 to 194.5) increase in sentiment scores. However, the signals progressively recessed towards a more pessimistic outlook (later pandemic) with a decrease in sentiment scores by 48.8% (95% CI 34.7 to 64.9). Such changes in mental health signals vary across capital cities.

CONCLUSION

We set out a novel empirical framework using social media to systematically classify, measure, map and track the mental health of a nation. Our approach is designed in a manner that can readily be augmented into an ongoing monitoring capacity and extended to other nations. Tracking locales where people are displaying elevated levels of pessimistic mental health signals provide important information for the smart deployment of finite mental health services. This is especially critical in a time of crisis during which resources are stretched beyond normal bounds.

A data fusion approach to the estimation of temporary populations: An application to Australia

This study establishes a new method for estimating the monthly Average Population Present (APP) in Australian regions. Conventional population statistics, which enumerate people where they usually live, ignore the significant spatial mobility driving short term shifts in population numbers. Estimates of the temporary or ambient population of a region have several important applications including the provision of goods and services, emergency preparedness and serve as more appropriate denominators for a range of social statistics. This paper develops a flexible modelling framework to generate APP estimates from an integrated suite of conventional and novel data sources. The resultant APP estimates reveal the considerable seasonality in small area populations across Australia’s regions alongside the contribution of domestic and international visitors as well as absent residents to the observed monthly variations. The modelling framework developed in the paper is conceived in a manner such that it can be adapted and re-deployed both for use with alternative data sources as well as other situational contexts for the estimation of temporary populations.

Introduction to the census questions special issue

No abstract

The journey to education

No abstract

The socio-spatial determinants of COVID-19 diffusion: the impact of globalisation, settlement characteristics and population

BACKGROUND

COVID-19 is an emergent infectious disease that has spread geographically to become a global pandemic. While much research focuses on the epidemiological and virological aspects of COVID-19 transmission, there remains an important gap in knowledge regarding the drivers of geographical diffusion between places, in particular at the global scale. Here, we use quantile regression to model the roles of globalisation, human settlement and population characteristics as socio-spatial determinants of reported COVID-19 diffusion over a six-week period in March and April 2020. Our exploratory analysis is based on reported COVID-19 data published by Johns Hopkins University which, despite its limitations, serves as the best repository of reported COVID-19 cases across nations.

RESULTS

The quantile regression model suggests that globalisation, settlement, and population characteristics related to high human mobility and interaction predict reported disease diffusion. Human development level (HDI) and total population predict COVID-19 diffusion in countries with a high number of total reported cases (per million) whereas larger household size, older populations, and globalisation tied to human interaction predict COVID-19 diffusion in countries with a low number of total reported cases (per million). Population density, and population characteristics such as total population, older populations, and household size are strong predictors in early weeks but have a muted impact over time on reported COVID-19 diffusion. In contrast, the impacts of interpersonal and trade globalisation are enhanced over time, indicating that human mobility may best explain sustained disease diffusion.

CONCLUSIONS

Model results confirm that globalisation, settlement and population characteristics, and variables tied to high human mobility lead to greater reported disease diffusion. These outcomes serve to inform suppression strategies, particularly as they are related to anticipated relocation diffusion from more- to less-developed countries and regions, and hierarchical diffusion from countries with higher population and density. It is likely that many of these processes are replicated at smaller geographical scales both within countries and within regions. Epidemiological strategies must therefore be tailored according to human mobility patterns, as well as countries' settlement and population characteristics. We suggest that limiting human mobility to the greatest extent practical will best restrain COVID-19 diffusion, which in the absence of widespread vaccination may be one of the best lines of epidemiological defense.

Capturing temporary populations: assessing the utility of Facebook in the 2019 flood in Townsville, Australia

No abstract

Collecting duct cells show differential retinoic acid responses to acute versus chronic kidney injury stimuli

Retinoic acid (RA) activates RA receptors (RAR), resulting in RA response element (RARE)-dependent gene expression in renal collecting duct (CD). Emerging evidence supports a protective role for this activity in acute kidney injury (AKI) and chronic kidney disease (CKD). Herein, we examined this activity in RARE-LacZ transgenic mice and by RARE-Luciferase reporter assays in CD cells, and investigated how this activity responds to neurotransmitters and mediators of kidney injury. In RARE-LacZ mice, Adriamycin-induced heavy albuminuria was associated with reduced RA/RAR activity in CD cells. In cultured CD cells, RA/RAR activity was repressed by acetylcholine, albumin, aldosterone, angiotensin II, high glucose, cisplatin and lipopolysaccharide, but was induced by aristolochic acid I, calcitonin gene-related peptide, endothelin-1, gentamicin, norepinephrine and vasopressin. Compared with age-matched normal human CD cells, CD-derived renal cystic epithelial cells from patients with autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease (ARPKD) had significantly lower RA/RAR activity. Synthetic RAR agonist RA-568 was more potent than RA in rescuing RA/RAR activity repressed by albumin, high glucose, angiotensin II, aldosterone, cisplatin and lipopolysaccharide. Hence, RA/RAR  in CD cells is a convergence point of regulation by neurotransmitters and mediators of kidney injury, and may be a novel therapeutic target.

Transport-related walking among young adults: when and why?

BACKGROUND

The existing smartphones' technology allows for the objective measurement of a person's movements at a fine-grained level of geographic and temporal detail, and in doing so, it mitigates the issues associated with self-report biases and lack of spatial details. This study proposes and evaluates the advantages of using a smartphone app for collecting accurate, fine-grained, and objective data on people's transport-related walking.

METHODS

A sample of 142 participants (mostly young adults) was recruited in a large Australian university, for whom the app recorded all their travel activities over two weekdays during August-September 2014. We identified eight main activity nodes which operate as transport-related walking generators. We explored the participants' transport-related walking patterns around and between these activity nodes through the use of di-graphs to better understand patterns of incidental physical activity and opportunities for intervention to increase incidental walking.

RESULTS

We found that the educational node - in other samples may be represented by the workplace - is as important as the residential node for generating walking trips. We also found that the likelihood of transport-related walking trips is larger during the daytime, whereas at night time walking trips tend to be longer. We also showed that patterns of transport-related walking relate to the presence of 'chaining' trips in the afternoon period.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings of this study show how the proposed data collection and analytic approach can inform urban design to enhance walkability at locations that are likely to generate walking trips. This study's insights can help to shape public education and awareness campaigns that aim to encourage walking trips throughout the day by suggesting locations and times of the day when engaging in these forms of exercise is easiest and least intrusive.

Drug repurposing for Alzheimer's disease based on transcriptional profiling of human iPSC-derived cortical neurons

Alzheimer's disease is a complex disorder encompassing multiple pathological features with associated genetic and molecular culprits. However, target-based therapeutic strategies have so far proved ineffective. The aim of this study is to develop a methodology harnessing the transcriptional changes associated with Alzheimer's disease to develop a high content quantitative disease phenotype that can be used to repurpose existing drugs. Firstly, the Alzheimer's disease gene expression landscape covering severe disease stage, early pathology progression, cognitive decline and animal models of the disease has been defined and used to select a set of 153 drugs tending to oppose disease-associated changes in the context of immortalised human cancer cell lines. The selected compounds have then been assayed in the more biologically relevant setting of iPSC-derived cortical neuron cultures. It is shown that 51 of the drugs drive expression changes consistently opposite to those seen in Alzheimer's disease. It is hoped that the iPSC profiles will serve as a useful resource for drug repositioning within the context of neurodegenerative disease and potentially aid in generating novel multi-targeted therapeutic strategies.

Correction of Defective T-Regulatory Cells From Patients With Crohn's Disease by Ex Vivo Ligation of Retinoic Acid Receptor-α

BACKGROUND & AIMS

Crohn's disease (CD) is characterized by an imbalance of effector and regulatory T cells in the intestinal mucosa. The efficacy of anti-adhesion therapies led us to investigate whether impaired trafficking of T-regulatory (Treg) cells contributes to the pathogenesis of CD. We also investigated whether proper function could be restored to Treg cells by ex vivo expansion in the presence of factors that activate their regulatory activities.

METHODS

We measured levels of the integrin α4β7 on Treg cells isolated from peripheral blood or lamina propria of patients with CD and healthy individuals (controls). Treg cells were expanded ex vivo and incubated with rapamycin with or without agonists of the retinoic acid receptor-α (RARA), and their gene expression profiles were analyzed. We also studied the cells in cytokine challenge, suppression, and flow chamber assays and in SCID mice with human intestinal xenografts.

RESULTS

We found that Treg cells from patients with CD express lower levels of the integrin α4β7 than Treg cells from control patients. The pathway that regulates the expression of integrin subunit α is induced by retinoic acid (RA). Treg cells from patients with CD incubated with rapamycin and an agonist of RARA (RAR568) expressed high levels of integrin α4β7, as well as CD62L and FOXP3, compared with cells incubated with rapamycin or rapamycin and all-trans retinoic acid. These Treg cells had increased suppressive activities in assays and migrated under conditions of shear flow; they did not produce inflammatory cytokines, and RAR568 had no effect on cell stability or lineage commitment. Fluorescently labeled Treg cells incubated with RAR568 were significantly more likely to traffic to intestinal xenografts than Treg cells expanded in control medium.

CONCLUSIONS

Treg cells from patients with CD express lower levels of the integrin α4β7 than Treg cells from control patients. Incubation of patients' ex vivo expanded Treg cells with rapamycin and an RARA agonist induced expression of α4β7 and had suppressive and migratory activities in culture and in intestinal xenografts in mice. These cells might be developed for treatment of CD. ClinicalTrials.gov, Number: NCT03185000.

Community social capital and individual functioning in the post-disaster context

Disasters can have severe and long-lasting consequences for individuals and communities. While scholarly evidence indicates that access to social support can ameliorate their negative impacts, less understood is whether or not neighbourhood social capital can facilitate recovery. This study uses two waves of survey data-collected before and after a significant flood in Brisbane, Australia, in 2011-to examine the relationship between the severity of the event at the individual and neighbourhood level, access to neighbourhood social capital and individual-level social support, and functioning in the post-disaster environment. In line with previous research, the results indicate that the severity of the flood is the most salient predictor of post-disaster functioning. No evidence was unearthed to show that neighbourhood social capital amassed before the flood leads to better functioning subsequently, but the findings do suggest that individual-level social support can moderate the effect of flood severity on functioning.

Introduction to the special section on Australia’s population policy

Editorial

Magnetic Stress Monitoring Using a Directional Potential Drop Technique

An alternating current potential drop technique is presented that exploits anisotropic magnetostriction to monitor changes in applied stress in steel. The background to the technique is provided together with an ad hoc approximation that describes the sensitivity of the sensor to the underlying properties. A uniaxial loading experiment has been conducted on duplex and mild steel specimens showing that changes in stress are measureable. Saturation and hysteresis afflict the measurement, which, in addition to sensitivity to temperature and magnetisation, may undermine inversion. With the capabilities and limitations of the proposed technique introduced, guidance on possible suitable applications are given, concluding that use for monitoring the number and relative size of fatigue stress cycles may be a suitable and attractive opportunity.

Visualising the internal migration of the mainland China-born population between Australian capital cities over time

No abstract

Introducing Australian Population Studies

Editorial

Evaluating the effects of Australian policy changes on human capital: the role of a graduate visa scheme

High-skilled migration across international borders is becoming increasingly important in policy and academic debates. In Australia, the recognition of the importance of attracting and retaining highly skilled individuals has stimulated fundamental shifts in immigration policies. This paper explores the impacts of one of these policy shifts in focusing on the introduction of a graduate visa scheme. The scheme was introduced in Australia for the first time in September 2007 offering international graduates from Australian universities 18 months of working rights post-graduation. Since the implementation of this visa scheme there has been a sharp increase in the number of overseas graduates staying in Australia. However, no research has been carried out that investigates the working conditions and interregional migration patterns of these graduates remaining in Australia under this temporary 18 months visa. Through the exploration of individual survey data describing the 2005 and 2008 cohorts of graduates representing the ‘before’ and ‘after’ the graduate visa scheme introduction this paper explores the impact of the visa scheme through analysing and comparing the working conditions and migration patterns of two cohorts of graduates. Findings suggest that although the introduction of the graduate visa scheme attracted more international students/graduates into the country, our analysis highlighted that the average working conditions of the international graduates who decided to remain in Australia worsened. Comparing these results with their domestic (Australian) graduate counterparts revealed that this was not due to the overall state of the Australian economy over the period under consideration.

Examining the social porosity of environmental features on neighborhood sociability and attachment

The local neighborhood forms an integral part of our lives. It provides the context through which social networks are nurtured and the foundation from which a sense of attachment and cohesion with fellow residents can be established. Whereas much of the previous research has examined the role of social and demographic characteristic in relation to the level of neighboring and cohesion, this paper explores whether particular environmental features in the neighborhood affect social porosity. We define social porosity as the degree to which social ties flow over the surface of a neighborhood. The focus of our paper is to examine the extent to which a neighborhood's environmental features impede the level of social porosity present among residents. To do this, we integrate data from the census, topographic databases and a 2010 survey of 4,351 residents from 146 neighborhoods in Australia. The study introduces the concepts of wedges and social holes. The presence of two sources of wedges is measured: rivers and highways. The presence of two sources of social holes is measured: parks and industrial areas. Borrowing from the geography literature, several measures are constructed to capture how these features collectively carve up the physical environment of neighborhoods. We then consider how this influences residents' neighboring behavior, their level of attachment to the neighborhood and their sense of neighborhood cohesion. We find that the distance of a neighborhood to one form of social hole-industrial areas-has a particularly strong negative effect on all three dependent variables. The presence of the other form of social hole-parks-has a weaker negative effect. Neighborhood wedges also impact social interaction. Both the length of a river and the number of highway fragments in a neighborhood has a consistent negative effect on neighboring, attachment and cohesion.

Scale mismatches, conservation planning, and the value of social-network analyses

Many of the challenges conservation professionals face can be framed as scale mismatches. The problem of scale mismatch occurs when the planning for and implementation of conservation actions is at a scale that does not reflect the scale of the conservation problem. The challenges in conservation planning related to scale mismatch include ecosystem or ecological process transcendence of governance boundaries; limited availability of fine-resolution data; lack of operational capacity for implementation; lack of understanding of social-ecological system components; threats to ecological diversity that operate at diverse spatial and temporal scales; mismatch between funding and the long-term nature of ecological processes; rate of action implementation that does not reflect the rate of change of the ecological system; lack of appropriate indicators for monitoring activities; and occurrence of ecological change at scales smaller or larger than the scale of implementation or monitoring. Not recognizing and accounting for these challenges when planning for conservation can result in actions that do not address the multiscale nature of conservation problems and that do not achieve conservation objectives. Social networks link organizations and individuals across space and time and determine the scale of conservation actions; thus, an understanding of the social networks associated with conservation planning will help determine the potential for implementing conservation actions at the required scales. Social-network analyses can be used to explore whether these networks constrain or enable key social processes and how multiple scales of action are linked. Results of network analyses can be used to mitigate scale mismatches in assessing, planning, implementing, and monitoring conservation projects.

Drug repositioning for Alzheimer's disease

Existing drugs for Alzheimer's disease provide symptomatic benefit for up to 12 months, but there are no approved disease-modifying therapies. Given the recent failures of various novel disease-modifying therapies in clinical trials, a complementary strategy based on repositioning drugs that are approved for other indications could be attractive. Indeed, a substantial body of preclinical work indicates that several classes of such drugs have potentially beneficial effects on Alzheimer's-like brain pathology, and for some drugs the evidence is also supported by epidemiological data or preliminary clinical trials. Here, we present a formal consensus evaluation of these opportunities, based on a systematic review of published literature. We highlight several compounds for which sufficient evidence is available to encourage further investigation to clarify an optimal dose and consider progression to clinical trials in patients with Alzheimer's disease.

On the search of new I2-IBS aliphatic ligands: Bis-guanidino carbonyl derivatives

Continuing with our search of aliphatic dicationic derivatives as I2-IBS ligands and looking at Amiloride, a known ligand of I2-IBS, we have incorporated the guanidinocarbonyl moiety into our aliphatic compounds with the intention of improving the binding to I2-IBS. Thus, we present the different approaches to the preparation and pharmacological evaluation (in human brain tissue) as I2-IBS ligands of a new series of aliphatic derivatives incorporating the guanidinocarbonyl group and with different chain length (n= 8-12, and 14 methylene groups).