What's On at UWA

This course is aimed at anyone wishing to improve their survey questionnaires. This course is useful for both people new to questionnaire design and those who have experience and would like to extend their knowledge. It will be a benefit not only for people who anticipate designing a questionnaire in the future, but for those in the role of critiquing commissioned or existing research.

UWA Postgraduate Research students receive subsidised fees.

Pastoralists and Graziers Association of WA will host a free forum on genetically modified technology and its future in agriculture.

The public forum is an opportunity for city-based consumers and decision-makers to further their understanding of GM technology.

It will be chaired by former UWA Vice-chancellor and agriculture dean Emeritus Professor Alan Robson, with contributions from WA chief scientist Professor Lyn Beasley, Professor Jim Peacock, John Manners, Bryan Whan, John Snooke and Bill Crabtree.

RSVP to [email protected] tel 9479 4599

A cover letter is usually the first part of the application process that an employer reads. It is a one page document highlighting how you would be perfect for the position. Writing a high impact cover letter encourages the employer to turn the page and read your resume.

The Seminar: The role of early auditory processing may be to extract some elementary features from an acoustic mixture in order to organize the auditory scene. To accomplish this task, the central auditory system may rely on the fact that sensory objects are often composed of spectral edges, i.e. regions where the stimulus energy changes abruptly over frequency. The processing of acoustic stimuli may benefit from a mechanism enhancing the internal representation of spectral edges. While the visual system is thought to rely heavily on this mechanism (enhancing spatial edges), it is still unclear whether a related process plays a significant role in audition. We investigated the cortical representation of spectral edges, using acoustic stimuli composed of multi-tone pips whose time-averaged spectral envelope contained suppressed or enhanced regions. Importantly, the stimuli were designed such that neural responses properties could be assessed as a function of stimulus frequency during stimulus presentation. Our results suggest that the representation of acoustic spectral edges is enhanced in the auditory cortex, and that this enhancement is sensitive to the characteristics of the spectral contrast profile, such as depth, sharpness and width.

The Speaker: Arnaud Norena undertook his PhD at the University of Lyon, France (1998-2001) before accepting a Post Doctorate position at the University of Calgary, Canada (2001-2003). He returned to the University of Lyon in (2003-2007) as an Assistant Professor. Since 2007 he has been an Assistant Professor at the Universite de Provence, France.

The Seminar: In this seminar we discuss the relevance of comparative physiology to aspects of temperature regulation, and the problems of extrapolating from animal models to humans. Students of comparative physiology learn detail of size scaling laws in animal energetics, including laws that describe the effect of body size on heat exchange and on the thermoneutral zone. Much of the research on animal models of human disease, including genetic risk models, is done on rodents maintained at 22-23°C, a temperature well below a rodent’s thermoneutral zone. In some disease domains this experimental anomaly may not matter, but the increase in metabolism and decrease in RQ (indicative of increased fat oxidation) that occurs below the thermoneutral zone may confound extrapolations to humans in any disease with a metabolic component. Another medical issue topical currently is whether isolated cooling of the traumatized human brain is feasible, the study of which is confounded by the difficulty of measuring deep brain temperature in healthy humans. Based on studies of many other species, we show that capacity for selective brain cooling depends on the carotid rete, a structure that humans and other primates do not possess, rendering it improbable that humans can implement selective brain cooling. The primary determinant of brain temperature is the temperature of the blood reaching it. If the temperature of blood destined for the brain is manipulated, isolated cooling of the brain is possible. Cooling the head without cooling the blood destined for the brain does not result in isolated

The Speaker: Shane Maloney is a Professor in the School of Anatomy, Physiology, and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia. He did his PhD at the University of New South Wales on thermal biology of the emu followed by a post-doctoral fellowship in the Brain Function Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he focussed on brain temperature regulation in mammals. Since 1999 he has been at the University of Western Australia where his research centres on environmental physiology in man and other animals, with a focus on heat balance, energy use, and the mechanisms of thermoregulation.

We will be hosting our next Animal Biology Seminar next Thursday, 31 October, from 4-5pm in the Jennifer Arnold Lecture Theatre. We're very fortunate to have an invited guest coming to UWA from Monash University, A/Prof. Dustin Marshall.

We will also be serving wine and cheese, which will be set up in JALT for your enjoyment during the Seminar. Make sure you get there a few minutes early to get your snacks and get your seat for an amazing seminar by: A/Prof Dustin Marshall, Australian Research Fellow at Monash University

Host: Jon Evans Thursday, 31 October 2013, 4:00pm – 5:00pm, Jennifer Arnold Lecture Theatre Title: Links Among Life History Stages Abstract: Most animals have complex lifecycles with one or more larval phases that often differ dramatically in morphology, habitat and trophic mode. Despite these differences among life-history stages, there are also strong links among each stage: they share the same genome and tissues such that there can be strong genetic and phenotypic correlations across the life history. Such links complicate the ecology and evolution of organisms with complex lifecycles. In this talk I will illustrate just how linked different stages of the life history can be, and how these links constrain the evolution and dynamics of organisms with complex life histories.

In the early morning of 6 April 2009, the town of L’Aquila in the Abruzzo region of central Italy experienced a Magnitude 6.3 earthquake. In the aftermath of the event, 309 people were killed, 1,600 were injured and thousands were made homeless. Six days before the earthquake and after several days of tremors in the region, six scientists and a government official, all members of a major risks committee, met to discuss the possibility of a major earthquake happening. All seven officials were later convicted of manslaughter. The prosecutors said the officials gave falsely reassuring statements and inaccurate, incomplete and contradictory information before the quake. The defence maintained there was no accurate way to predict the earthquake. The press called it a miscommunication of science. Join the UWA Science Communication group for an evening of discussion and debate about the case. Our panel of experts will explore the following topics:

• Associate Professor Geoff Batt, School of Earth and Environment - Can the risk and severity of an earthquake be predicted? • Professor Nancy Longnecker, Science Communication Program - How do we communicate the risks and the science? • Assistant Professor Kate Offer, Law School - What are the legal implications of the case, and could the same thing happen in Australia? This is a FREE event. Food and drinks will be available for purchase on the evening.

R is a free and extremely powerful language and software environment for statistical computing, data analysis, and graphics. The course is designed for those who have no experience with R, but have a basic understanding of statistics. The course will include: Introduction to R: How to install R on your computer; basic R commands, how to use and understand the R help pages. Data: Reading in data and data manipulation; summarising data; basic statistical analysis and fitting linear models. Graphics and output: Basic plotting commands and how to customise your plots; how to export your plots and output in a user-friendly format. Functions: Writing simple functions and flow control structures.

Raine Visiting Professor Lecture

The Seminar: Sarcopenia is the loss of skeletal muscle mass and function with age. There has been exciting recent progress in the development of a consensus approach to defining sarcopenia which is enabling the prevalence to be compared in different settings. It is clear that it is common in older men and women, and that its components have serious health consequences in terms of disability, morbidity and mortality as well as significant healthcare costs.

Important influences on sarcopenia such as resistance exercise and nutritional intake in later life are well described. However there remains considerable unexplained variation between older people which might be partly explained by the observation that muscle mass and strength in later life reflect not only the rate of loss but also the peak attained earlier in life. This has led to an innovative lifecourse approach to understanding sarcopenia utilising unique UK birth cohorts such as the Hertfordshire Cohort Study.

The Speaker: Avan Aihie Sayer graduated in medicine from the University of London and following general medical training, won a 4 year Wellcome Clinical Training Fellowship including an MSc in Epidemiology in London and a PhD on the developmental origins of ageing at the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit in Southampton. She became a Consultant in Geriatric Medicine in Southampton in 1998, returned to the MRC as a Clinical Scientist in 2000 and was appointed to a Chair in Geriatric Medicine at the University of Southampton in 2007. She is Principal Investigator of an MRC programme grant studying sarcopenia, frailty and clinical practice in older people and leads an interdisciplinary ageing research group including a flourishing NIHR funded academic geriatric medicine training programme. She is involved in a wide range of national and international collaborations.

A world recognised specialist in the field of ecology and evolution of host-parasite interactions, Paul’s research interests focus on the coevolution and ecology of host-parasite interactions.

As head of the Experimental Ecology research group at ETH, his pioneering works on host-parasite interactions paved the way for innovative research worldwide.

The trypanosome Crithidia bombi infects several species of Bombus (bumblebees); here, we focus on B. terrestris. The parasite is spread by contacts on flowers and evidence shows that the infecting populations in the hosts are very prevalent and highly variable. At the same time, the presumably relevant genetic complements of the hosts are highly conserved. One alternative defence strategy is by variable gene expression and the synergistic actions of effector molecules. The concept and evidence for such a process are discussed.

The course 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 emphasis throughout will be placed on applications rather than theory. The statistical package R and R Commander will be used and some familiarity with this will be assumed.

The Seminar: In this seminar, Juliana will present her current work on novel approach to specifically target chronic inflammatory diseases including cancer and atherosclerotic lesions in vivo. She will discuss how this approach can be used to specifically deliver diagnostic reagents and therapeutics in mouse models of solid tumours and atherosclerosis

The Speaker: Juliana Hamzah is a NHMRC-National Heart Foundation R.D. Wright research fellow with expertise on targeted delivery for imaging and therapy. She is currently a Research Assistant Professor at Western Australian Institute for Medical Research (WAIMR), UWA. Previously she was an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Nanomedicine, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, California (2009-2012). Juliana obtained her PhD at UWA and did her first postdoctoral training in Prof. Ruth Ganss’s laboratory at WAIMR (2006-2009).

Her research focused on developing strategies to specifically target pathological lesions including cancer and atherosclerosis for local therapeutic intervention and in vivo imaging. Specifically, she designed cell-specific delivery systems that target abnormal vasculature and other abnormal stromal cells such as macrophages and extracellular matrix in the diseased tissues. Her work was published in journals including Nature, Journal of Clinical Investigation and PNAS.

Three correlational studies investigated implications associated with explicit-implicit sexual orientation ambivalence for information processing and psychological well-being in samples of straight and gay individuals.

Across the studies, 243 straight participants completed explicit and implicit measures of sexual orientation; in one of these studies, 48 gay participants completed the same measures. Within individual studies, participants also completed measures of self-esteem.

When considering the effects of ambivalence between self-reported and indirectly measured sexual orientation (SO), among straight participants explicit-implicit SO ambivalence was positively associated with time spent deliberating questions on sexual preferences; an effect moderated by the direction of ambivalence. In an attempt to explain this effect, in our third study, straight participants read ambivalence-relevant arguments that were either strong or weak in quality. In line with the effect found previously, the amount of explicit-implicit SO ambivalence positively related to post-message cognitive responses after reading strong but not weak arguments. This effect was also found to be moderated by the direction of ambivalence.

For gay participants, individual differences in explicit-implicit SO ambivalence tended to influence time deliberating sexuality. In addition, explicit-implicit ambivalence in sexual orientation attitudes among gay individuals, but not straight individuals, was related to self-esteem in addition to defensive self-esteem.

Our findings demonstrate the information processing consequences of explicit-implicit ambivalence in both straight and gay individuals when considering an attitude object that has considerable personal relevance. Furthermore, our results highlight that explicit-implicit ambivalence in sexual orientation attitudes may be an important antecedence of psychological well-being in gay-individuals.

The Seminar: Chris will present an overview from a biomedical and agricultural perspective of studies done in his lab on the growth hormone, insulin-like growth factor 1 and myostatin, which form part of a common axis (GH/IGF-1/Mstn) that regulates growth, maintenance and aging of the body. Knowing that IGF-1 stimulates, while myostatin inhibits growth, Chris and colleagues crossed Mstn-/- mice with a transgenic line in which IGF-1 is overexpressed in skeletal muscle to generate offspring differing in copy number for both genes. Mice that had no myostatin and additional IGF-1 were twice the size and had 3.5 times the amount of muscle mass to that of wild-type controls. In a second cohort, those with additional IGF-1 died at a younger age. While the causative factors mediating the actions of IGF-1 of aging remain unclear, the recent discovery that the deacetylase sirtuin 6 (Sirt6) and Klotho regulate aging in mammals was a breakthrough in the search for a mechanism. Chris will show that IGF-1 regulates the expression of Klotho and Sirt6 in skeletal muscle. Finally, Chris will present the discovery of a novel splice-variant of myostatin that stimulates myogenesis and that may have an additional role to play in the development of double-muscling in breeds like Belgian Blue cattle.

The Speaker: Chris is a growth physiologist at AgResearch Ruakura. He completed a PhD at Agresearch Invermay studying the seasonal growth of red deer, then completed two postdoctoral positions in the United States. The first at Auburn University (Alabama) addressed the mechanisms underlying how illness and disease reduces appetite and growth of sheep and cattle. The second at Michigan State University addressed the role of factors that regulate the growth axis in cattle. Chris is a senior scientist and, until recently, led the Growth and Lactation research team. His current research focuses on the role of growth hormone, IGF-1 and myostatin in regulating the post-natal growth of livestock, the development of marbling and the eating quality of meat. A further interest is in the regulation of antler growth. He is the current president of the NZ Society of Endocrinology.

The low molecular weight thiol antioxidant, reduced glutathione (GSH) is a multifunctional metabolite in plants. GSH is an important redox gatekeeper that maintains redox homeostasis. It also participates in oxidative signalling pathways that regulate gene expression and determine the outcome of plant responses to stress. GSH is synthesised in chloroplasts, from thence is transported to all the compartments of the cell including the nucleus. Mutants lacking the chloroplast GSH transporters have a low cytosolic GSH poor and have impaired responses to pathogens. Inhibition of glutathione synthesis leads to decreases the redox potential of the cytosol and the nuclei and to marked changes in gene expression. Low GSH availability leads to failure of the apical root meristem because of an arrest of the cell cycle at G1. GSH is recruited and sequestered in the nucleus early in the cell cycle by mechanisms that remain to be identified. Interestingly, mutants in candidates for GSH binding on the nuclear pore complex show very strong repression of photosynthesis, especially under high light. This talk will consider the functions of glutathione in cellular redox homeostasis and possible roles in signalling between the chloroplast and nucleus.

In February, iVEC will offer the following short courses on supercomputing topics:

Introduction to iVEC: 11:00am - 12:00 Tues 4th February

Introduction to Linux: 1:00 - 2:00pm Tues 4th February

Introduction to NeCTAR Cloud Computing: 3:00 - 4:00pm Tues 4th February

Introduction to Supercomputing: 10:00am - 4pm Wed 5th February

Developing with MPI and OpenMP: 10am - 4pm Thurs 6th February

Epic to Magnus Migration: 10am - 4pm Fri 7th February

Further details of the courses are available at http://ivec.org/services/training

Courses are delivered in a face to face classroom style. Attendees are encouraged to bring and work on their own laptops. Staff from the Supercomputing Team will be facilitating so you can meet and chat with them.

Courses are free of charge and open to all, however places are limited. Light refreshments and lunch will be provided on each day. Any queries, please contact Dr Valerie Maxville – [email protected]. Please complete the form to register for this training. Note that places are limited. If you are needing additional training before the end of the year, please contact Valerie to organise a small group session.

The AgLTAS project aims to develop a National Academic Standards Statement for agriculture – representing what a student in Agriculture and related disciplines should know, understand and be able to do on graduation.

You are invited to attend an upcoming workshop, led by Dr Tina Acuna from the University of Tasmania, to provide your valuable input on the Statement.

LATE RSVPs will be accepted (until the day prior to the workshop)

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 statistical package SPSS will be used to illustrate the ideas demonstrated. The course will be held in a computer laboratory allowing participants to immediately apply the material covered through a series of practical examples.

The Seminar: Reprogramming adult somatic cells to different cell types has opened a whole new window of possibilities for cell therapy in degenerative diseases. In our lab we are designing strategies to create clinical grade myoblasts precursors to be used in clinical cell therapy and as disease models, following two different strategies: differentiating induced pluripotent stem cells or by direct transdifferentiation from adult somatic cells.

The Speaker: Dr. Belen Alvarez-Palomo is senior scientist at the group of Dr. Michael edel, at the Department of Physiological Science, at the Univerisity of Barcelona in Spain. Dr. Alvarez-Palomo got her PhD by the University of Barcelona in the year 2000 working on skeletal muscle turnover in cancer cachexia, and later she performed a postdoctoral stay in The Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, working on cell migration, and a second postdoc in Instituto Municipal de Investigacion Medica in Barcelona, working with the regulation of Mesenchymal to Epithelial transition.