What's On at UWA

The Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis (CMCA) provides local researchers and students in biology and biomaterials with access to infrastructure and expertise across imaging (small animal, optical, confocal, 3-D and electron microscopies), analytical (elemental, isotopic, and compound analysis) and flow cytometry (population analysis, phenotyping and sorting) platforms.

With the ongoing acquisition of new bio-focussed key facilities and staff, this seminar will aim to present an overview of CMCA’s current capabilities in the biological and biomaterials space. In particular, new capabilities, research applications, plus current and future opportunities for local researchers working with bio-related samples to engage with CMCA will be presented. For more information on CMCA see: www.cmca.uwa.edu.au/facilities

About the speaker: Peta Clode has been at the CMCA for almost 10 years. Currently she is head of CMCA’s biological and biomedical applications area. Peta’s main interests lie in metals in biology and cell structure-function relationships, with particular expertise in sample preparation, imaging and analytical techniques in the biosciences. Through her position at CMCA, Peta has experience working with plants, animals, cell cultures, bacteria, algae, polymers, liquid suspensions, biominerals, soils, parasites and various other sample types.

Dr Melonek completed her PhD in 2010 in Plant Cell Biology at University of Kiel, Germany. She continued her work in Kiel for the next 1.5 years but recently moved to Perth to join the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology at UWA. Her research will focus on characterization of proteins implicated in regulation of chloroplast gene expression in Arabidopsis. MORE INFO AT http://www.plantenergy.uwa.edu.au/aboutus/seminars/seminars.shtml or email [email protected]

The Seminar: Despite the considerable knowledge we have accumulated about gibbons (Primates: Hylobatidae), which now include 17 recognized species, some of the most basic questions about their biology remain unanswered. One challenge is to explain why there is so little overlap in ranges (sympatry) between species, and a related phenomenon, the general lack of ecological radiation of the species. There are several possible reasons, which will lead to a discussion of the unique ecology and behavior patterns, including foraging habits, competition and social structure. The ecology and behavior of two species, Hylobates lar and H. pileatus, in a contact zone in Thailand will be brought into focus, as this zone provides an important testing ground for several theories.

The Speaker: Warren Brockelman is a retired professor of Biology at Mahidol University, Thailand and currently serves as an advisor at the Institute of Molecular Biosciences at Mahidol University, and works as an Associate Researcher at the BIOTEC Central Research Unit, National Science and Technology Development Agency. His basic interests lie in ecology and population biology, but he has carried out research in several distinct fields including amphibian ecology, human helminth transmission and primate ecology. Since 1975, his interests have emphasized the ecology and behavior of gibbons, and also the transmission of human parasites.

This course will take you through the basics you need to do statistical analyses in R, a powerful freeware statistical package.

The course will cover basic statistics such as t-tests, regression and ANOVA as well as producing high quality graphics.

The course is hosted by the Centre for Applied Statistics and we offer discounted rate fees to UWA Graduate Research Students.

Fee information is available on our website http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

The Seminar: Respiratory loads have long been used to stress the respiratory muscles. When these loads cause failure, however, this has been attributed to inadequate pressure generation by the respiratory muscles, especially the diaphragm. Recently, we discovered that in a rat model of load-induced failure, inspiratory drive to the diaphragm was still elevated at the time of failure, indicating that the origin of failure was not central. However, blood pressure decreased and we observed that cardiac troponin, a marker specific for myocardial necrosis, was present. Troponin was released regardless of the type of respiratory load (inspiratory resistive, repeated inspiratory occlusions, and expiratory threshold). Thus, respiratory loads, by causing arterial hypoxemia, reduce O2 delivery to the heart and respiratory muscles. Inadequate O2 delivery, in the face of increased O2 demands, leads therefore to cardiorespiratory, not respiratory, failure. These results may be relevant to acute exacerbations of respiratory diseases, particularly when supplementary O2 is not available.

The Speaker: Prof Iscoe completed his undergraduate and Doctoral studies at McGill University and his post-doc at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He now holds a cross-appointment with the Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences and Department of Medicine at Queen’s University. Prof Iscoe is a respiratory physiologist with a research interests in the control of the diaphragm; skeletal muscle fatigue and injury; cardiorespiratory failure; treatment of carbon monoxide poisoning; and hypercoagulability in obstructive sleep apnoea.

Society for Ecological Restoration Australasia (SERA) meetings aim to provide an essential international forum for scientists and practitioners who look to restoration as a means to conserve the planet's dwindling biodiversity and failing ecosystems. These meetings provide a critical platform to assist us in defining the principles of restoration, understanding goals and milestones, debating what ecosystem functions to measure and closing the gap between the science of restoration ecology and the practice of ecological restoration.

The inaugural conference of the Society for Ecological Restoration Australasia (SERA) will be held in Perth, Western Australia, on 28-30 November 2012. For land managers, scientists and practitioners who work in biodiversity restoration, this SERA meeting will provide a critical international forum at a time of significance for the region's species, ecosystems and landscapes.

The course is designed for people with knowledge of basic statistics who want to learn more about designing and analysing experiments.

It will cover material ranging from a review of simple one-way ANOVA, to more complex designs and analyses including crossed and nested factors with fixed and random effects.

The course is hosted by the Centre for Applied Statistics and we offer discounted rate fees to UWA Graduate Research Students.

Fee information is available on our website http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

SEM is used widely by researchers to test complex relationships among observed (measured) and latent (unobserved) variables. This course will introduce you to SEM and also covers issues relating to model specification, identification and estimation, assessing model fit (goodness-of-fit criteria), and dealing with problem data.

The course is hosted by the Centre for Applied Statistics and we offer discounted rate fees to UWA Graduate Research Students.

Fee information is available on our website http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

The course is designed as a comprehensive coverage of applied SEM techniques using the Mplus statistical software package. Mplus offers a general modelling framework that allows both the modelling of cross-sectional and longitudinal data using observed variables that are a combination of continuous and categorical variables.

The course is hosted by the Centre for Applied Statistics and we offer discounted rate fees to UWA Graduate Research Students.

Fee information is available on our website http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

The Australian Synchrotron Imaging and Medical Beamline opened for general users on 7 November. The new facility provides researchers with substantially enhanced capabilities over conventional techniques, and beamtime will become increasingly available during 2013.

CMCA is hosting an information seminar presented by Prof Rob Lewis from Monash University which will explain how researchers can utilise the new capabilities of this beamline in their research.

Who should attend? This seminar is for researchers in biomedical and preclinical research. Potential applications include research into cancer, degenerative diseases, regenerative medicine, in-vivo biological and physiological processes as well as material sciences.

The IM beamline offers: -Microbeam radiation therapy, including dosimetry with user-controlled beam energy and spatial distribution -Rapid-acquisition 3D imaging for small samples -Large-scale 2D imaging using different contrast modality (including the superior detail for soft tissue imaging provided by phase contrast).

The Speaker:

Professor Susan Shore from the Department of Otolaryngology, University of Michigan has been working in the field of Neuroanatomy and Neurophysiology of the auditory system for more than two decades. Much of her work has focused on the role of neural connections from other parts of the brain to the cochlear nucleus. A strong emphasis has been on two major projection systems: the somatosensory innervation to the external regions of the cochlear nucleus, and descending connections from other auditory structures to core regions of the cochlear nucleus. In addition to the normal innervation, her laboratory also study changes in these pathways after various forms of hearing loss, and their possible roles in tinnitus, loudness recruitment and central auditory processing.

Marc Diederich was awarded his PhD in molecular pharmacology in 1994 by the University Henri Poincaré Nancy 1, France. After training at the University of Cincinnati, USA, he focused his research on cancer and leukemia cell signaling pathways and gene expression mechanisms triggered by natural compounds with epigenetic-, anti-inflammatory- and cell death-inducing potential. Professor Diederich directs the Laboratory for molecular and cellular biology of cancer (LBMCC) at Kirchberg Hospital in Luxemburg. In 2012 he was appointed Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the College of Pharmacy of Seoul National University. Since 1998, he has been the organizer of the “Signal Transduction” meetings in Luxembourg. Professor Diederich’s research focuses on the development of novel anti-cancer drugs,for example, natural marine compounds which represent an interesting source of novel leads with potent chemotherapeutic or chemo-preventive activities. In the last decades, structure-activity-relationship studies have led to the development of naturally-derived or semi-synthetic analogues with improved bioactivity, a simplified synthetic target or less toxicity. Professor Diederich and his collaborators investigated for example chalcones that are aromatic ketones, known to exhibit anti-microbial, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer activities. Organic sulfur compounds (OSCs) derived from plants, fungi or bacteria can also serve as chemopreventive and/or chemotherapeutic agents and attracted Professor Diederich’s interest as a promising source for novel anti-cancer agents.

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).

Subsidised rates are available for UWA Graduate Research Students.

Please register online.

The Seminar: For over more than a decade the research on BARD1 was a side-product of the research on the breast cancer gene and protein BRCA1. Co-expression of both proteins in most tissues, their similar structure, the same phenotypes in knock-out mice, and the hetero-dimeric complex formation of BRCA1 and BARD1 supported the commonly accepted few of BARD1 as an accessory protein of BRCA1. Work from my team was initiated with the assumption that BRCA1 and BARD1 proteins and genes might have common and separate functions. In recent years we discovered that differentially spliced forms of BARD1 are heavily overexpressed in many cancers. It appears plausible that BARD1 isoforms of different domain composition may be involved in the same pathways as FL BARD1, yet play a different role or compete for normal BRCA1-BARD1 functions. In my talk I will give an overview of the current state of research on BARD1, and, as far as possible within this given frame, on BRCA1. I will highlight the work from my group and provide the experimental evidence for the tumor promoting roles of aberrant forms of BARD1 that are associated with various types of cancer.

The Speaker: Irmgard IRMINGER-FINGER studied biology and biochemistry in Zurich, where she graduated in molecular biology and biochemistry and obtained a PhD in molecular genetics. After a three year postdoctoral period at the Molecular Cell Biology Department at the Harvard University, she returned to Switzerland and first had a position as independent researcher at the Biochemistry Department of the University of Geneva. In 1997 she moved into oncology at the Medical Faculty of the University of Geneva, having obtained a Swiss federal career development award. In 1998 she started her own research group focusing on the molecular pathways at the aging and cancer interface as part of the Biology of Aging Institute at the same institution. Since 2006 she heads the Molecular Gynecology and Obstetrics Laboratory at the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics at the Geneva University Hospitals. The main interest of this laboratory is the function of tumor suppressor genes in normal and cancer cells and their implication in carcinogenesis and cancer progression, in particular the breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BARD1. Over the years, Dr. Irmgard Irminger-Finger built up her reputation as expert in the Cancer and Aging field and as expert on the BRCA1 and BARD1 genes, as author of scientific articles, speaker at conferences, organizer of meetings, editorial board member, and member of specific study groups and Task Forces.

You are invited to join us mark the 100th anniversary of the first meeting of the University of Western Australia’s Convocation.

The First meeting was held on March 4th 1913 in St George’s Hall, Hay St near the corner of Irwin Street. The historic façade including the portico, steps and tall white columns were restored when the new Perth District Court was constructed behind it at 500 Hay Street. To celebrate the Centenary of this meeting, a photo-shoot of 100 'graduates' will take place on the steps of the façade at 10am on Monday March 4th 2013.

The UWA Historical Society would be delighted if you could join us.

If you have academic robes, please bring them. If not please come anyway, as having just a few robed members will provide the ‘flavour’. Balloons for a joint release will be provided.

Monday March 4th is a public Holiday (Labour Day). There should be nearby street parking available and there is a public parking station across the road at King’s Hotel.

The UWA Centum will be there

The Seminar: This presentation will introduce you to the resources and expertise iVEC can provide to support your research. iVEC is encouraging the use of supercomputing, large scale data storage and visualisation for WA researchers. This is achieved by making available facilities and expertise to the research, education and industrial communities. Application areas include nanotechnology, radioastronomy, high energy physics, medical and mining training, medical research, mining and petroleum, architecture and construction, multimedia, and urban planning.

The Speakers:

Valerie is the Education Program Leader for iVEC. Valerie is responsible for training in supercomputing and eResearch along with internships and school outreach. She enjoys the challenge of communicating complex concepts to diverse audiences – breaking through the jargon to create a shared understanding. Valerie holds a PhD in Computer Science (SoftwareEngineering) and an honours degree in Computer Science.

Chris is a HPC Application Analyst and Parallel Programmer. He joins iVEC from Paratools, Inc. located in Eugene, Oregon where he was the Principle Investigator in several small business innovative research projects focused on developing HPC tools to support HPC application development and research.

Chris has also worked at University HPC centres both in the United States and in the United Kingdom as a Parallel Programmer. His career in High Performance Computing started at the Army Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland as an Application Analyst. He has a Masters degree in Scientific Computing at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden; while his undergraduate degree is in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

The “21st century microscope” will not be a single instrument; rather it will be an orchestration of specialised imaging technologies, data storage facilities, and specialised data processing engines. This presentation will detail two complimentary national projects that are creating an integrated computer environment for researchers who work with imaging data. The Multi-modal Australian ScienceS Imaging and Visualisation Environment (MASSIVE – www.massive.org.au) is a specialised high performance computing (HPC) facility for computational imaging and visualisation. This facility provides the hardware, software and expertise to drive research in the biomedical science, materials research, engineering, and geoscience communities, and it stimulates advanced imaging research that will be exploited across a range of imaging modalities, including synchrotron x-ray and infrared imaging, functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging, x-ray computer tomography (CT), electron microscopy and optical microscopy. MASSIVE is a unique Australian facility with a focus on fast data processing, including processing data “in-experiment”, large-scale visualisation, and analysis of large-cohort and longitudinal research studies. The facility runs an instrument integration project to allow researchers to more easily process instrument data, and provides a remote desktop environment for researchers to use desktop tools to process, analyse and visualize their data. A major undertaking under the MASSIVE program, is the NeCTAR-funded Characterisation Virtual Laboratory (CVL), a project that is developing software infrastructure on the cloud to provide easier access to the tools and techniques that researchers use to process, analyse and visualise imaging data. The CVL is developing three exemplar platforms for multi-modal or large-scale imaging in neuroscience, structural biology, and energy materials. This presentation will describe MASSIVE and the CVL, highlight research that is being conducted using these environments, and describe how researchers can access them. Wojtek James Goscinski is the coordinator of the Multimodal Australian ScienceS Imaging and Visualisation Environment (MASSIVE), a specialist Australian high performance computing facility for imaging and visualization, and he is the External Collaborations Manager at the Monash e-Research Centre a role in which he promotes effective and creative applications of technology in research.

UWA Enviro Fest aims to empower UWA students and staff to reduce their environmental impact, and increase their appreciation of the natural environment.

Each year Enviro Fest provides opportunities to indulge your interest in the natural environment and learn more about sustainable initiatives on campus. From gardening workshops, to live animal demonstrations to public discussions of important environmental issues, there’s something for all staff, students and their children. If you'd like to get involved with the Enviro Fest event, by holding an sustainability-related information stall or educational activity contact UWA Sustainable Development or the Guild's Event Manager.

With the added benefit of being held in common lunch hour, Enviro Fest '13 promises to be one of the year's biggest, most diverse, exciting, and unique events.

Image contrast arises in conventional X-ray radiography due the differential absorption of X-rays throughout the sample. Many objects of interest, for example, soft biological tissue, possess weak absorption contrast. Furthermore, by definition, absorption contrast is directly correlated with the radiation dose received by the sample. X-ray phase imaging was developed, initially using synchrotron radiation, in order to overcome the limitation of weak absorption contrast. This technique develops contrast based upon the difference in X-ray propagation times through a sample, which, in general, results in greater contrast than absorption based imaging. In this seminar I will discuss how X-ray phase imaging can be performed using conventional X-ray sources such as those used in clinics and give examples from a variety of fields including mammography, non-destructive testing, security screening and small animal imaging.

The Seminar: The femur of armadillos and their fossil relatives, the glyptodonts is characterised by a large third trochanter projecting from the lateral side of the shaft. The role of this prominent structure and the muscles that attach there is unknown. This presentation looks at the variation in the shape the xenarthran femur and explores the hypothesis that the third trochanter plays a role in regulating coronal plane bending strains in these strange animals.

The Speaker: Nick Milne began his research career in the 1980s looking at the uncinate processes of cervical vertebrae. He was interested in what role they played in the human neck and turned to comparative anatomy and function to try to understand these structures in a broader context. His interest in the comparative structure and function of bones has continued and collaborations with South American palaeontologists led to a fascination with armadillos and their strange glyptodont and ground sloth relatives. Collaborations with Paul O’Higgins in the UK have led to the application geometric morphometric and finite elements analysis techniques to try to understand aspects of xenarthran structure and function.