Treevan 🇦🇺
You have to ask @lodion@aussie.zone nicely.
https://usc.shorthandstories.com/scratching-the-itch/index.html
Concern about drug resistance in scabies mites is not isolated to wombats.
Why don’t certain chemicals that kill other skin parasites work well in this instance? Are there application issues? Is drug metabolism a factor? Is something else happening in the mite at a cellular level?".
Professor Harvey, an expert in molecular neuroscience, explains that specific ion channels are the key targets of acaricides - the drugs that kill mites.
“As the ion channel genes are conserved between scabies mites isolated from different animal hosts, our research findings are directly translatable to human scabies,” he said.
“We are analysing mite ion channel sequences in the lab and are already seeing interesting variations in ion channel genes that could cause altered responses to certain drugs.”
Thank you for the post.
https://www.greeningaustralia.org.au/enticing-kangaroo-island-glossy-black-cockatoo/
Kangaroo Island is the last refuge for the South Australian subspecies of glossy black-cockatoo - which is smaller but has a bigger bill than glossies in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.
In 1995 the subspecies was heading towards extinction with fewer than 200 SA glossies left on Kangaroo Island.
The Kangaroo Island Glossy Black-Cockatoo Recovery Program, with local community support, turned that around boosting the population to about 454 by 2020.
The fires highlighted an urgent need to reestablish habitat for glossies on the Fleurieu Peninsula, just across from Kangaroo Island.
The glossy flock on eastern Kangaroo Island, unaffected by the fires and closer to the Fleurieu, continues to grow and it is hoped they will expand their range across Backstairs Passage if enough habitat is created.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-14/insurance-crisis-disaster-affordability/102727416
A new report by the Actuaries Institute shows nearly one in eight Australian households is facing home insurance affordability stress.
Households spending more than a month’s worth of their gross annual income on home insurance rose from 10 to 12 per cent.
Who should pay for an increase in home insurance claims? One in 25 Australians have lodged an insurance claim because of extreme weather since 2020, but should the remaining policyholders be responsible for sharing the cost of increased premiums?
The Actuaries Institute points to the introduction of insurance pools as a way to reduce costs, similar to the federal government’s cyclone insurance pool.
Mr Paddam said insurance still worked for seven out of eight Australian households.
Are new posts and comments appearing in those communities since you’ve subscribed?
Studies and abstracts from article author:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-023-00432-0
The global health burden from wildfire smoke is expected to worsen under climate change, yet we lack quantitative estimates of the economic costs of increased mortality and hospital admissions for cardiovascular and respiratory conditions. Using a quantitative wildfire risk assessment framework and a 12-member climate model ensemble, we find a median increase in wildfire smoke health costs of 1–16% by 2070 across diverse landscapes in south-eastern Australia. Ensemble maximum cost increases (5–38%) often exceed abatements from fuel treatment, while costs decline moderately (0–7%) for the ensemble minimum. Unmitigated climate change will increase the health burden of wildfire smoke and undermine prescribed burning effectiveness.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378023000882?via%3Dihub
Fire management aims to change fire regimes. However, the challenge is to provide the optimal balance between the mitigation of risks to life and property, while ensuring a healthy environment and the protection of other key values in any given landscape. Incorporating cost-effectiveness and climate change impacts magnifies this task. We present an objective framework for quantitative comparison of the risk mitigation potential of alternative fuel treatment scenarios in south-eastern Australia. There is no single optimal strategy for all values in a given region, nor for any individual value in all regions. Trade-offs are required and cost-effectiveness is highly sensitive to the addition of management values. Climate change is likely to decrease prescribed burning effectiveness and increase total costs, therefore a rethink of best practice is required. Our study highlights the need for flexibility in the development and implementation of fire management strategies, which is something that risk-based approaches can provide. We discuss prospects of extending our framework to values for which we currently lack robust quantitative information and issues of compatibility with Aboriginal cultural burning and by implication other approaches that do not stem from within the prevailing fire management paradigm.
The link is bugged. Reads Cairns but goes to the right page, I hope.