What's On at UWA

The Graduate Education Officers will outline the UWA rules on formatting your thesis as a series of papers. The advantages and disadvantages of this format will also be discussed.

Special talk during Honey Week 2013

Pelagic fishes and sharks have been the target of an expanding industrial fishing fleet for the last 60 years, leading to depletions and in some cases, trophic cascades. Following widespread collapse of coastal fish populations, no-take marine protected areas (MPAs) are increasingly recognised as an integral part of ecosystem based management strategies, in combination with fisheries management. Empirical evidence of biomass recovery in coastal MPAs is now ample. With the relatively recent establishment of large open-ocean MPAs, there is a need to establish effective monitoring approaches to establish how pelagic species respond to this new protection. Here we demonstrate a novel approach to the sampling of pelagic species in two recently implemented MPAs, following mid-water baited camera trials in Shark Bay, Western Australia. These include:

1) A mid-water baited camera survey conducted in Australia’s newly established MPA in the Timor Sea, the Oceanic Shoal Commonwealth Marine Reserve (>70,000 km2), to assess spatial heterogeneity in pelagic species and their distribution relative to seabed features. A hundred and seventeen moored mid-water baited cameras were successfully deployed in seabed depths to 165 m.

2) A multidisciplinary sampling regime undertaken in a large (>500,000 km2) MPA, the British Indian Ocean Territory Marine Reserve, to establish techniques for monitoring pelagic species with respect to their distribution, abundance and biomass. Our approach combined mid-water baited cameras, hydro-acoustics and seabird surveys. A hundred and forty-four mid-water camera deployments were made, both moored to the seabed (n=30) and drifting in a long-line formation (n=105).

Our approach establishes that information on spatial heterogeneity and long term monitoring of pelagic species can be attained using non-extractive means only. The implementation of large-scale open-ocean MPAs closed to extractive activities means that monitoring methods and metrics pertaining to the efficiency of closures are needed. Ideally, such methods would also become standardized between regions and oceans. We recommend similar multifaceted, and non-extractive approaches in other large open-ocean MPAs.

from the wheatbelt to the Murchison in the path of Surveyor Robert Austin’s 1854 expedition.

An Inquiring Minds Lecture by Stephen Hopper, Winthrop Professor of Biodiversity,The University of Western Australia.

In this talk, Professor Hopper will present a modern journey taken from the central wheatbelt to the Murchison goldfields in the path of Surveyor Robert Austin’s 1854 expedition. The team comprised staff from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Kings Park and Botanic Garden, a consultant landscape ecologist and a Noongar elder.

Cost: Free, but RSVP essential.

To register a place visit http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/stephen-hopper

My Seminar deals with two Aurecon Projects on opposite ends of the African Continent that might appear widely divergent, but which are actually closely related within the domain of IWRM.   Nile Basin DSS:   Aurecon is the lead consultant on Pilot Studies on the development and establishment of the NB-DSS, the primary objective of which is to ensure that the NB-DSS becomes a reliable and sustainable software system. This entails demonstrating and showcasing the NB-DSS capabilities within the context of transboundary, integrated water resource planning and management in the Nile Basin.

Aurecon and its multi-disciplinary team of experts are intricately involved with all aspects of the project, including hydrological and system analyses, the quantification of environmental, social and economic impacts associated with large-scale water resource developments, advanced multi-criteria analysis across various pilot case areas and extensive training of NB-DSS representatives from all of the Nile riparian countries. These include, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.   Western Cape Water Reconciliation Strategy:    This long-term Project involves a review of the rising future water requirements within the supply area of the Western Cape Bulk Water Resources System, which supplies water to more than three million people in the Greater Cape Town Region (photo below). The Project further continuously evaluates a wide range of soft and hard options for meeting these increasing demands.

Further to the Reconciliation Strategy with its Action Plan, the Project identifies the most favourable intervention options and recommends a programme of feasibility studies and other investigations to improve the operation and planning of the system, and to ensure that the necessary infrastructure or other interventions were implemented timeously so as to reconcile the supplies with the future demands.

The reconciliation study also involves scenario planning of alternative development options and the development of a Reconciliation Planning Support Tool (RPST) which enables the ranking of alternative water resource and water demand intervention options.

SHORT BIO:

André holds BSc, BEng and MEng degrees from the University of Stellenbosch and a PhD in engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. He is currently a Technical Director in the Cape Town Office of Aurecon, a global consulting firm, as well as the Water Resources Management Leader globally in Aurecon. He has 39 years of Water Sector experience in academic, research and consulting roles.

In the latter part of his career he was a full-time and later part-time Professor of Hydrology and Water Resources at Stellenbosch University. During recent years he has been deeply involved in strategic water resources management projects related to bulk infrastructure planning and design, institutional development and policy implementation support, optimisation of the operation of multi-purpose water resources schemes; and flood and drought management. His research focus has encompassed various themes in hydrological, hydrodynamic and water resources systems modelling and related decision support tools, as well as design flood hydrology. He has produced more than 50 papers, publications and research reports.

PS* This seminar is free and open to the public & no RSVP required.

****All Welcome****

Through the UWA Health & Rehabiliation Clinic a variety of Clinical Pilates options are now available to staff and general public!

Clinical Pilates is a form of physical exercise that focuses on posture, balance, control, strength, flexibility, and breathing. It incorporates mat and equipment based exercises to optimise function, improve fitness and aid the management or rehabilitation following pain or injury. Using the experitse of Physiotherapy and Exercise Physiology trained staff to tailor exercises, Clinical Pilates is able to ensure optimal gains whilst minimising risk of injury or aggravation.

Initial assessment may be required prior to starting classes. Sessions are available Mon-Fri at various times between 6am-6pm. Private Health Rebates May Apply.

Statistical meta-analysis deals with a variety of sophisticated statistical methods to efficiently combine the results of several studies that have a common target. In this course, we will describe the basic concepts of effect size for continuous measurements as well as qualitative attributes, combination of tests and estimates of effect size, tests for homogeneity of effect sizes, fixed versus random effects model of meta-analysis, combination of Gallup polls, meta-analysis of binary data, meta-regression, and publication bias.

Each year The UWA Institute of Agriculture hosts an annual Postgraduate Showcase where selected postgraduate students in Agriculture and related areas present their research.

The Postgraduate Showcase brings together some of UWA’s best PhD students at an advanced stage of their research. It highlights relevant research and progress being made in the area of Agriculture and Natural Resource Management at UWA.

This afternoon event will be opened by Hon Ken Baston MLC, Minister for Agriculture and Food WA, and promote interaction and networking between industry representatives, prospective employers, funding bodies, UWA staff and postgraduate students undertakling research in agriculture and related areas.

RSVP (for catering purposes) by 27 May.

The aim of this course is to introduce you to basic statistics. It will cover descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations); data exploration; basic categorical data analysis; simple linear regression and basic analysis of variance (ANOVA).

The course is subsidised for UWA postgraduate research students.

This masterclass for doctoral and early career doctoral researchers will focus on the development of plans for achieving research impact through collaborations and the two-way exchange of knowledge between the university and a range of external stakeholders.

The course is designed for those who have no experience with R, but have a basic understanding of statistics. Those without this experience are encouraged to attend the Introductory Statistics course first.

This course covers material ranging from Kaplan Meier curves to the analysis of censored data and Cox's proportional hazards models.

Participants must bring their own laptop with R installed.

This course covers techniques that can be used to analyse data with continuous and categorical variables. The course will begin with simple linear regression and then proceed with approaches that can be used with more than two variables such as multiple regression. ANOVA with interactions and blocking will also be covered. The course will end with techniques that address the analysis of binary or ordinal variables.

Subsidised fees are available for UWA Graduate Research Students.

Wetlands in north-western Australia have significant national and international value since they sustain a large number of endemic Samphire, species growing under saline, waterlogged, and dry conditions. We investigate the ecophysiological aspects of these succulent species using a combination of spectral measurements, pigment concentrations and environmental variables.

We correlated samphire tissue pigment concentrations with climatic data and determined the relationships between pigments and field spectroradiometer readings for Tecticornia indica, one of the dominant samphire species in WA. Tecticornia plants with visually different colour contained different pigment concentrations and reflected differentially the visible light, in particular at wavelengths between 500 and 700 nm.

The reflectance data obtained by the spectrometry indicated that spectral detection of pigments could be used to identify changes in plant pigments, as well as other changes in vegetation status produced by different stress drivers. This methodology offers a rapid/reliable approach to describe natural ecosystems and evaluate the impact of human activities in marshes and wetlands ecosystems.

Biography:

Victoria, Completed a PhD in Agronomy Sciences from University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her study area is the Ecohydrology of arid zones. Since 2011 I have worked with Dr Erik Veneklaass and Tim Colmer at the School of Plant Biology (UWA) on a project related to vegetation dynamics in areas affected by mining activities in the Pilbara’s region. she has work at different spatial scales, from leaf and plant and plot scale using both glasshouse and field experiments and remote sensing technologies.

PS* This seminar is free and open to the public & no RSVP required.

****All Welcome****

Cereals typically are not considered as dietary sources of antioxidants even though they can compare well with some berries known for their high antioxidant content. Wheat antioxidant levels vary substantially –even within a cultivar– across years and geographic location. Learning how to enhance levels of antioxidant compounds in wheat has been Professor Madl's research focus for over 10 years.

In his lecture, he talks about external events that can significantly increase antioxidant levels and about the search of chemical elicitors that trigger the same biosynthetic pathways.

He talks about his studies on mice which found that consumption of wheat bran with high antioxidant levels significantly decreased the occurrence of colon cancer in the mice.

His lecture also explores whether increased antioxidant levels in wheat enhance other compounds that express the same benefits in cancer suppression, such as phenolic compounds.

Associate Professor Mylne will describe a system that he established which allows the monitoring of the physical position of a gene within a nucleus by confocal microscopy. He will illustrate its use to monitor the dynamic changes in gene position for one particular Arabidopsis gene as it gets silenced by low temperature. The system allows monitoring a single gene's position in live whole plants.

Assoc. Prof. Mylne (PhD, Botany) worked at the John Innes Centre (2001-2005), using molecular genetics to study proteins that accelerate flowering in response to prolonged cold (vernalization). In 2006 he moved to the Division of Chemistry & Structural Biology at The Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB, UQ) where he held a QEII Fellowship (2008-2012) and was the inaugural John S. Mattick Fellow (2010-2012). In 2013 he joined the faculty at The University of Western Australia and took up an ARC Future Fellowship in the School of Chemistry & Biochemistry and The ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology. His research interests are protein evolution and the molecular mechanisms underlying the biosynthesis of bioactive peptides.

The task for the 10 finalists is to give an engaging talk on their PhD topic and it's significance in language that everyone can understand - in just 3 minutes. The audience will vote for its People's Choice.

Come and find out about our undergraduate and postgraduate courses, career options, scholarship opportunities, our valuable research, community programs and facilities.

There's also residential college tours, hands-on activities, live music, entertainment, and plenty of fun activities for the whole family as we celebrate our 100th birthday.

The International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) sets clear targets: by 2020 its research efforts will have contributed to lifting 11 million Africans out of poverty and to restoring 7.5 million hectares of land into sustainable use. IITA's Deputy Director General for Research, Prof Ylva Hilbur, will provide an overiew of: the institute's scientific focus, its priority areas for future investment, its role in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), its initiatives to build public/private partnerships and its activities to stimulate youth employment and entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector.

iVEC@UWA in conjunction with the iVEC Visualisation and Education program invite expressions of interest for hands on training using the Avizo or Amira 3D visualisation and analysis software, to be held during September/October.

The Visualisation Sciences Group (VSG) provided some introductory training to researchers across the iVEC partner institutions in April 2013 and this second round of proposed workshops are intended to build upon that earlier training. In particular this is an opportunity to arrange a session with one of the VSG team for one-on-one training targetting your particular research problem, ideally with a pre-arranged dataset of your own.