The Single Stage AMS radiocarbon facility at the Australian National University has operated for the past 14 years. This paper presents the pretreatment methods used for the major sample types dated and reflects on whether quality assurance protocols can adequately detect altered materials. The majority of fossil samples dated by the facility are from tropical and arid environments where diagenesis of both organic samples and carbonates is often severe. A large proportion of the samples submitted cannot be dated, and screening and quality assurance methods are crucial. Based on analysis of 250 measurements on bone collagen, quality assurance indicators for bone are revised. From May 2021, the laboratory has accepted dates on collagen where yield >0.5%, %C is in the range of 39.7–46.9, and the C:N ratio is between 3.00 and 3.30.

Facing a bottleneck in the growth of aquaculture, and a gap in the supply and demand of the highly beneficial n-3 long-chain PUFA (LC-PUFA), sustainable alternatives to traditional marine-based feeds are required. Therefore, in the present trial, a novel oil obtained from a genetically engineered oilseed crop, Camelina sativa, that supplied over 25 % n-3 LC-PUFA was tested as a sole dietary-added lipid source in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) feed. Three groups of fish were fed three experimental diets for 12 weeks with the same basal composition and containing 20 % added oil supplied by either a blend of fish oil and rapeseed oil (1:3) (COM) reflecting current commercial formulations, wild-type Camelina oil (WCO) or the novel transgenic Camelina oil (TCO). There were no negative effects on the growth, survival rate or health of the fish. The whole fish and flesh n-3 LC-PUFA levels were highest in fish fed TCO, with levels more than 2-fold higher compared with those of fish fed the COM and WCO diets, respectively. Diet TCO had no negative impacts on the evaluated immune and physiological parameters of head kidney monocytes. The transcriptomic responses of liver and mid-intestine showed only mild effects on metabolism genes. Overall, the results clearly indicated that the oil from transgenic Camelina was highly efficient in supplying n-3 LC-PUFA providing levels double that obtained with a current commercial standard, and similar to those a decade ago before substantial dietary fishmeal and oil replacement.

Many studies of Barium Strontium Titanate (BST) thin films for RF / microwave applications have employed MgO, LaAlO3 or Pt/Si as the substrate material for BST deposition. However, there have been relatively few reports of BST films grown on sapphire, despite the excellent microwave properties of this material. In this investigation, BST thin films were deposited by RF magnetron sputtering on (001) single crystal c-plane sapphire substrates. Interdigitated capacitors (IDCs) patterned on the film surface were used to measure the dielectric tunability and loss tangent at microwave frequencies. Thick Au conductors were electroplated to minimize conductor losses. Post deposition annealing in air was found to significantly improve the tunability of the sputtered films.

A general theory of piecewise multiharmonic splines is constructed for a class of fractals (post-critically finite) that includes the familiar Sierpinski gasket, based on Kigami's theory of Laplacians on these fractals. The spline spaces are the analogues of the spaces of piecewise Cj polynomials of degree 2j + 1 on an interval, with nodes at dyadic rational points. We give explicit algorithms for effectively computing multiharmonic functions (solutions of Δj+1u = 0) and for constructing bases for the spline spaces (for general fractals we need to assume that j is odd), and also for computing inner products of these functions. This enables us to give a finite element method for the approximate solution of fractal differential equations. We give the analogue of Simpson's method for numerical integration on the Sierpinski gasket. We use splines to approximate functions vanishing on the boundary by functions vanishing in a neighbourhood of the boundary.