What's On at UWA

Symmetry is one of the essential and most visible patterns that can be seen in nature. Starting from the left-right symmetry of the human body, all types of symmetry can be found in crystals, plants, animals and nature as a whole.

Similarly, principals of symmetry are also some of the fundamental and most useful tools in modern mathematical natural science that play a major role in theory and applications. As a consequence, it is not surprising that the desire to understand the origin of life, based on the genetic code, forces us to involve symmetry as a mathematical concept.

The genetic code can be seen as a key to biological self-organisation. All living organisms have the same molecular bases - an alphabet consisting of four letters (nitrogenous bases): adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. Linearly ordered sequences of these bases contain the genetic information for synthesis of proteins in all forms of life. Thus, one of the most fascinating riddles of nature is to explain why the genetic code is as it is.

Genetic coding possesses noise immunity which is the fundamental feature that allows to pass on the genetic information from parents to their descendants. Hence, since the time of the discovery of the genetic code, scientists have tried to explain the noise immunity of the genetic information. In this talk we will discuss recent results in mathematical modelling of the genetic code with respect to noise immunity, in particular error-detection and error-correction.

Cheese and wine to follow in the Maths common room (5pm-6pm)

CSIRO Mineral Resources will hold its annual Mineral Exploration Seminar on Friday 9 February 2018. The seminar presents the latest research into exploration concepts and tools being developed at CSIRO.

Presentations will be targeted at Australian exploration and technology issues with talks on using big data, regional- to camp-scale exploration, multiple scales of ore body characterisation, and innovative, cost-saving sampling, along with a ‘classic’ seminar around nickel and strategic metal exploration.

Topics include: - Active sampling during exploration - Regolith mapping, characterisation, and sampling in the Capricorn Orogen - Multi-scale core characterisation facilities - Landscape geochemistry at the DeGrussa VMS deposit and in the Fraser Range - New tools for pXRF data processing - AEM and regolith integration - Automated mineralogy for alteration mapping and vectoring - Opportunities for audience voting on preferred talk topics

Registration: $170 incl. GST AIG/GSA member discounted registration: $140 incl. GST Unemployed/student discounted registration: $70 incl. GST

Are you interested in studying health care or pursuing a career in the fast-growing and in-demand health industry? UWA is holding a Health Campus Open Day on Sunday 8 April for prospective students to find out all about the health related courses on offer in areas like medicine, biomedical engineering, sports science and psychology. You will be able to meet staff, current students and Alumni, listen to information sessions, participate in interactive activities, and discover pathways and career opportunities.

Held over 5 days, AMSI BioInfoSummer is a key training event in Australia, that allows attendees to develop their bioinformatics skills, national networks and employability, and nurtures the collaborations between the mathematics, statistics and information technology disciplines. AMSI BioInfoSummer brings together Australian and international researchers from the mathematical, statistical and biological sciences to develop further applications of mathematics and statistics to bioinformatics and introduce students and early career researchers to state-of-the-art bioinformatics research. AMSI BioInfoSummer is funded jointly by the Department of Education and Traning and the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI). In 2018, AMSI BioInfoSummer will be hosted by the University of Western Australia in partnership with Murdoch University and Edith Cowan University.

This is the first time AMSI BioInfoSummer will be held in WA so we would appreciate your support in promoting this event. We are expecting 150 -200 attendees to the 2018 symposium.