Characterization of a Complete Genome Sequence of Molluscum Contagiosum Virus from an Adult Woman in Australia

ABSTRACT The complete genome sequence of molluscum contagiosum virus 1 (MOCV1) isolate NT2017 was sequenced from a tissue sample from an Australian woman. The genome consisted of 185,655 bp encoding 169 predicted open reading frames. Phylogenetically, isolate NT2017 was most closely related to an MOCV1 strain from Slovenia.

Infanticide vs. inherited cardiac arrhythmias

Aims In 2003, an Australian woman was convicted by a jury of smothering and killing her four children over a 10-year period. Each child died suddenly and unexpectedly during a sleep period, at ages ranging from 19 days to 18 months. In 2019 we were asked to investigate if a genetic cause could explain the deaths, as part of an inquiry into the mother’s convictions. Methods and results Whole genomes or exomes of the mother and her four children were sequenced. Functional analysis of a novel CALM2 variant was performed by measuring Ca2+-binding affinity, interaction with calcium channels and channel function. We found two children had a novel calmodulin variant (CALM2 G114R) that was inherited maternally. Three genes (CALM1-3) encode identical calmodulin proteins. A variant in the corresponding residue of CALM3 (G114W) was recently reported in a child who died suddenly at age 4 and a sibling who suffered a cardiac arrest at age 5. We show that CALM2 G114R impairs calmodulin's ability to bind calcium and regulate two pivotal calcium channels (CaV1.2 and RyR2) involved in cardiac excitation contraction coupling. The deleterious effects of G114R are similar to those produced by G114W and N98S, which are considered arrhythmogenic and cause sudden cardiac death in children. Conclusion A novel functional calmodulin variant (G114R) predicted to cause idiopathic ventricular fibrillation, catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia, or mild long QT syndrome was present in two children. A fatal arrhythmic event may have been triggered by their intercurrent infections. Thus, calmodulinopathy emerges as a reasonable explanation for a natural cause of their deaths.

The Pedagogy of Pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago Written into Performance

Blister is a verbatim play that tells the story of Rosie, an Australian woman, who is walking the Camino de Santiago. The Camino is an 800km pilgrimage across Northern Spain that begins in the French Pyrenees and traverses mountains, vineyard covered hills, mesetas (plateaus) and urban centres before concluding at Santiago de Compostela. 200,000 people from across the world walk the Camino every year, often carrying their minimal belongings in a backpack, staying in dormitory-style accommodation with fellow pilgrims in local albergues, and walking between 20-35kms most days. This short essay describes how walking methods merged with the situated, relational and material verbatim theatre practice of community immersion in order to experience and represent the public pedagogy of the Camino in performance. Informed by a feminist position and engaging with theatrical conventions inspired by queer theory, excerpts of Blister are incorporated across the essay to demonstrate how theatre as a live and embodied medium provides a multi-dimensional platform to depict the motion, emotion and learning experienced by pilgrims walking the Camino.

Aesthetic Reader of Kristen Lang’s Modern Ecopoem

The present paper attempts to examine the modern poetic discourse of the most outstanding Australian woman-poet Kristen Lang in terms of aesthetics of the potential energy of feminist ecopoetics. Lang plays a key part in constructing an aesthetic affinity with nature and the non-human world. Moreover, she creates an aesthetic area in her ecopoem to attract her reader to be aesthetically involved in her poetic experience. The poet works as an aesthetic defender of both woman and nature by means of what comes to be called as ecofeminism. Consciously or unconsciously, the poet applies such kind of ecocentric philosophy to her poems. The poet discusses a very sensitive and crucial issue of ‘domination of woman’ by man which has a common ground with ‘domination of nature’. Furthermore, Lang deals with her poetic discourse, as a creator and creative thinker, in terms of aesthetic physicality. Her ecopoem is a body of human and non-human experience. The paper, therefore, debates over such significant issue in some selected poems written by that poet pointing out the role of the aesthetic reader in such modern experience.

Surviving Domestic Violence in an Indian-Australian Household: An Autoethnography of Resilience

This study explores how my personal experiences with domestic violence in my family have shaped my identity and my current self as an Indian-Australian woman, teacher, and researcher. Domestic violence touches many children and their families and affects their sense of identity and belonging as individuals and in their social spaces. An autoethnographical method is used to investigate my experiences within a domestically violent family and how it has shaped my identity as an Indian-Australian woman. The study reveals various themes including three themes that were noted to be the most significant: patriarchy in Indian culture, resilience, identity and belonging. The study reveals my ongoing struggle in a domestically violent household, feeling torn between protecting my mother and protecting myself. It offers insights into how cultural backgrounds, social frameworks and social values and beliefs may influence others and their development as a person.

Following #JillMeagher: Collective meaning-making in response to crime events via social media

In the early morning of Saturday 22 September 2012 an Australian woman, Gillian ‘Jill’ Meagher, was reported missing after spending an evening out with work colleagues in suburban Brunswick (Melbourne, Victoria). Thousands of Australians followed the crime event as it unfolded via the mainstream news and online. On Sunday 23 September, a Facebook group ‘Help Us Find Jill Meagher’ was created, accumulating 90,000 followers in just four days, while the hashtags #jillmeagher and #meagher were two of the highest trending topics on Twitter across Australia. This article focuses on the social media narrative constructions of this crime: from Jill’s initial disappearance, to the identification of her alleged killer and discovery of her body, through to the street march held in her memory on Sunday 30 September 2012. Through a qualitative analysis of a Twitter dataset comprising over 7000 original tweets, the article explores meta-narratives of sexual victimisation, ‘risk’ and ‘safety’, as well as ‘digilantism’ and activism that characterised Australian Twitter users’ responses to this violent crime. In doing so, the article reflects on collective practices of meaning-making in response to public crime events that are enabled in a digital society.

Feminist Digilante Responses to a Slut-Shaming on Facebook

This article examines feminist digilantism in response to the “slut-shaming” of an Australian woman on Facebook in 2015. The activism is used to highlight the nature and significance of the feminist pushback against the worsening problem of cyber violence against women and girls (cyber VAWG). This article builds on my previous research into feminist digilantism and is part of a much larger, mixed-methods, multi-modal study into gendered cyberhate. It uses approaches from Internet historiography, ethnography, and netnography, alongside data drawn from qualitative interviews. Sufficient evidence is available to support the broad argument that the feminist digilantism involved in the case study under analysis was efficacious as well as ethically justified given the dearth of institutional interventions. That said, I demonstrate that while such activism has benefits, it also has risks and disadvantages, and raises ethical issues. This critique of digilantism is not intended as yet another type of victim blaming which suggests the activist responses of cyberhate targets are flawed. Instead, my case is that appraising the efficacy and ethics of such forms of extrajudicial activism should take place within a framing acknowledging that these actions are primarily diagnostic of rather than a solution to cyber VAWG. As such, the increasing prevalence and strength of feminist digilantism lends further support to the case that gendered cyberhate is a problem demanding urgent and multifaceted intervention.