School of BioSciences - Research Publications
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ItemEliciting group judgements about replicability: A technical implementation of the IDEA Protocol(Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2021-01-01)In recent years there has been increased interest in replicating prior research. One of the biggest challenges to assessing replicability is the cost in resources and time that it takes to repeat studies. Thus there is an impetus to develop rapid elicitation protocols that can, in a practical manner, estimate the likelihood that research findings will successfully replicate. We employ a novel implementation of the IDEA ('Investigate', 'Discuss', 'Estimate' and 'Aggregate) protocol, realised through the repliCATS platform. The repliCATS platform is designed to scalably elicit expert opinion about replicability of social and behavioural science research. The IDEA protocol provides a structured methodology for eliciting judgements and reasoning from groups. This paper describes the repliCATS platform as a multi-user cloud-based software platform featuring (1) a technical implementation of the IDEA protocol for eliciting expert opinion on research replicability, (2) capture of consent and demographic data, (3) on-line training on replication concepts, and (4) exporting of completed judgements. The platform has, to date, evaluated 3432 social and behavioural science research claims from 637 participants.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableThe Third International Symposium on Fungal Stress - ISFUS(ELSEVIER SCI LTD, 2020-05-01)Stress is a normal part of life for fungi, which can survive in environments considered inhospitable or hostile for other organisms. Due to the ability of fungi to respond to, survive in, and transform the environment, even under severe stresses, many researchers are exploring the mechanisms that enable fungi to adapt to stress. The International Symposium on Fungal Stress (ISFUS) brings together leading scientists from around the world who research fungal stress. This article discusses presentations given at the third ISFUS, held in São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil in 2019, thereby summarizing the state-of-the-art knowledge on fungal stress, a field that includes microbiology, agriculture, ecology, biotechnology, medicine, and astrobiology.
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ItemModelling the spread of transboundary animal disease in and between domestic and wild swine populations(EuFMD, 2020)The challenge of planning for transboundary animal disease outbreaks can be compounded by the complex epidemiological interplay between livestock, wild animals, and the environment. Wild boar populations can form direct and indirect spread pathways for contagious livestock diseases such as FMD, ASF and CSF, both within and between countries. In this poster we describe the enhancement of the EuFMDiS decision support tool to assist disease managers explore the sometimes unpredictable interface between domestic pigs and wild boar. A key modelling outcome was the fusion of an existing agent-based model of livestock disease transmission with a new geographic automata model of wildlife disease transmission.
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ItemOn using 'Emerging Interest' in Scientific Literature to inform Chemical Risk Prioritisation(Brigham Young Universtiy, 2020-09-18)Modern industrial practices employ a large and diverse collection of chemicals. This can challenge regulators charged with environmental protection. Typically, insufficient data is available for risk assessments. Thus, chemicals may find widespread use until adequate evidence of adverse environmental effects prompts regulatory action. Globally, regulators have seen that such ‘reactive’ risk management has disadvantages. Recently in Australia (and elsewhere), relatively rapidly, certain unrestricted, long-used per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) became subjects of concern, then regulation. Such events motivate us to support regulators’ ‘proactive’ risk management efforts. We aim to assist regulators in anticipating the emergence of potentially risky chemicals, enabling their timely actions. We hypothesise that a time series of research interest mined from a scientific publication database may reveal ‘emerging interest’ in a chemical that foreshadows its progress towards regulation. We investigate this for six PFAS by determining the associated research interest in Web of Science. For each chemical, we use R code to apply queries to an application programming interface, and count annual positive results across a publication year range. Inspection of these time series suggests two tests, each of which determines the first year in which some condition is satisfied. We propose classification rules to interpret test outcomes, and compare results against PFAS regulatory histories. For the regulated PFAS, we anticipate the historical progression of Australian regulatory concern. We also judge some unrestricted PFAS as being of concern, and this is validated by interest from other jurisdictions. These results demonstrate our system’s predictive ability, and encourage further development.