Sea change: public reporting and the safety and quality of the Australian health care system.

The pursuit of demonstrable safety and quality in health care is an evolving process; there has been notable progress in measuring safety and quality in Australia. The first attempts to measure outcomes were in the field of anaesthesia, while national perinatal mortality reports have provided clinically useful information for many years. Nationwide reporting by the Quality in Australian Health Care Study (QAHCS) in 2005 triggered a more systemic approach to safety and quality.

Variability in life history traits of the aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum (Harris), from sexual and asexual populations.

Many aphid species have shown remarkable adaptability by invading new habitats and agricultural crops, although they are parthenogenetic and might be expected to show limited genetic variation. To determine if the mode of reproduction limits the level of genetic variation in adaptively important traits, we assess variation in 15 life history traits of the pea aphid, Acyrhosiphon pisum (Harris), for five populations sampled along a north-south transect in central North America, and for three traits for three populations from eastern Australia. The traits are developmental times and rates as affected by temperature, body weights as affected by temperature, fecundity, measures of migratory tendency, and photoperiodic responses.

Migratory tendency in aging populations of the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum.

Sweep samples of the aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum, were collected from six natural populations ranging in age from one to five years. Clones were established in the laboratory from the field-collected adults and tested for their migratory tendency in two subsequent generations by measuring the percentage of winged offspring produced in response to a standard stimulus. The number of aphids in sweep samples and the percentage of winged and wingless aphids were also determined.

Variability in migratory tendency within and among natural populations of the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum.

The migratory tendencies of pea aphids were measured by determining the numbers of winged and non-winged offspring produced by parthenogenetic wingless females after a crowding test. Sources of variability in this measure were investigated. The migratory tendency of an individual clone was found to be stable.