What's On at UWA

Paint, cosmetics, ink. All of these can be forms of forensic evidence that can help detectives to make links between individuals, objects and locations – a critically important part of a criminal investigation. But how to get the most useful information from these types of evidence? This is where chemistry plays an essential role. Join Dr Georgina Sauzier as she explores a key tool of analytical chemistry and how it can be used for analysis of forensic evidence.

Tickets are free but you must register at https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/raci-bayliss-lecture-2020-shining-a-light-on-crime-uwa-tickets-86459128581

Unfortunately this event has been cancelled.

Speaker is unable to attend on this date due to travel restrictions.

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Genomics with AGRF

Unfortunately this event has been cancelled.

Speaker is unable to attend on this date due to travel restrictions.

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The seminar will provide information on reliable chemical transformations using Science of Synthesis

Unfortunately this event has been cancelled.

Speaker is unable to attend on this date due to travel restrictions.

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Finite geometry involves the study of finitely many objects -- points, lines, planes, etc -- in analogy with classical geometric language and concepts. The exciting aspect of finite geometry is that it often shares properties of the usual Euclidean geometry, yet the finite-ness of the geometry enables us to exchange information with cognate disciplines such as coding theory, design theory, and finite group theory. This talk is an introduction to the world of finite geometry.

Did you know over 7 billion tonnes of tailings and 56 billion tonnes of waste rock are produced worldwide each year during mining and extractive processes.

Dr Talitha Santini will take you on a visual journey to explain the generation of tailings and waste rock, explore the challenges for remediation and closure of mine sites, and present the promising pathways being explored by researchers at UWA for improved remediation and reuse of these materials.

Everyone Googles... but do you really know how to get the best out of Google for your research? This hands-on workshop will demonstrate the best tips and tricks to use Google to find scholarly material.

This event will be run in Zoom.

Poetry and science might be seen by many people to be rather odd bedfellows. However, poetry offers a powerful tool through which to bring together different audiences, and to give voice to those audiences that are often underserved and underheard by science.

Dr Sam Illingworth will introduce you to how poetry can be used to develop dialogue between scientists and non-scientists, leading to creative solutions to developing inclusive research governance for all.

Drone use has grown faster than a global pandemic! As a society we have come to appreciate drones and remote sensors as affordable tools that enable high resolution and on-demand data collection.

Join Dr Nik Callow (Senior Lecturer and UWA Chief Remote Pilot) as he explores the purpose of drones as useful remote sensing tools in research, teaching and industry. He will explore the strengths and weaknesses of both drones and sensors (RGB, multispectral, thermal) and walk through the simple steps, critical to those involved in drone work.

When dealing with the strange nanoscopic world that is simply too small to see, experiments and data visualisation approaches are vitally important to our understanding of life on this scale.

Brady Johnston is a PhD student in structural biology at UWA. Brady will introduce you to how data is collected and presented, leading to famous images of insulin and viruses alike. He will also cover some of the new and exciting technology that can help to communicate the Sciences and research to broader audiences.

Our local beaches have had a rough start to winter with many looking narrower than they have been in some years as a result of recent storms. Many of us who visit our local WA beaches may wonder how and why our coastlines change shape so dramatically throughout the seasons.

Join Dr Jeff Hansen, as he provides an overview of the processes that dictate the balance between erosion and accretion along our coastline. He will also explain how we monitor and measure our coastline, as well as highlight some unique aspects of WA’s oceanography that are important in shaping our beaches.

Don’t judge a book by its cover. Appearances can be deceiving. Despite these warnings, evidence shows that people can’t help but make rapid judgements of character based on a mere glimpse of a stranger’s face. These impressions really matter because they predict all sorts of social outcomes. For instance, children who look attractive are assumed to be smart by teachers, and are less likely to receive harsh discipline.

Dr Jemma Collova will discuss how psychology research can help us understand how we form first impressions from children’s faces, whether these impressions are at all accurate, and how children learn to form these impressions too.

Waste minimisation and byproduct reuse is a growing challenge for the global mining industry, driven by investor, regulatory, and community pressures as well as internal corporate and industry-wide goals. Responding to this challenge requires mining companies to develop strategies and technology to reduce waste generation, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions, and increase byproduct reuse. These strategies are being developed within a context of depleting, lower grade, and more complex reserves, and a volatile market, with social license to operate positioned as one of the biggest operational risks given recent tailings dam failures.

This online panel discussion will examine the step changes required for zero waste mining to become an affordable industry reality.

Panellists include representatives from mining companies, not-for profit organisations, regulators, consultants, and research and training providers to explore zero waste mining from multiple angles.

From Geraldton to Esperance, the South-West of WA has experienced increasingly variable climate conditions for over a century. With increasingly drier winters and warmer, wetter summers affecting our state’s cropping industry; we need to gather and integrate knowledge from across Science to understand how best to respond to the challenges ahead.

Join three UWA experts: Frances Hoyle (Soil), Nicolas Taylor (Plant) and Don McFarlane (Climate effects on water) as they explore how research has helped address previous and current challenges facing growers; and help them anticipate how we ‘gear up’ and identify areas of future knowledge needed for the sustainability of the industry.

The recovery of the ‘Vienna Dexippus’ has been one of the most significant discoveries in recent Classical palaeography. The text, recovered from the reused leaves of an 11th century manuscript, later bound into a 13th century Greek codex, now in the Austrian National Library, sheds considerable light on the otherwise poorly documented history of the Gothic invasions of the Roman Empire during the 250s and 260s C.E. The recovery of the text is due to the innovative use of multi-spectral imaging, a technique which has already revolutionised the study of palimpsests and which has the potential to expand our knowledge of classical literature. Ivan Lozic will give an introduction to multi-spectral imaging technology, and Chris Mallan will consider some of the major outcomes of this project from the perspective of an historian who has worked with this particular text, as well as some thoughts on the uses of digitised texts in the study of Classics and Ancient History more generally.

Why do we have earthquakes in WA? Why do they happen more in some areas and not at all in others? WA is a long way from a tectonic plate boundary, so our earthquakes are different in nature to those in places like California, Indonesia or Japan.

Join Prof Myra Keep and PhD candidate Sean Standen as they explain the underlying geology of WA (using cake) and how it controls earthquake locations. They will then describe an example of an earthquake from the Wheatbelt, which occurred in Lake Muir in 2018, and see how the cake explains reality! Did we mention cake?

Conflicts between groups are deeply rooted in our society, but we also have the capacity to get along with our neighbours and ally for a common goal.

Using evolutionary theory as a navigational guide, Dr Cyril C. Grueter draws on his research on the social organisation of our primate relatives to explore the origins of tolerance in human sociality.

Sleep is a vital biological need. It is crucial for good health, mood stability, and high performance. Despite this, sleep loss and sleep disorder are now global health epidemics. Sleep is a vital state within which your brain ‘cleans house’ and replenishes needed energy. Sleep of poor quality or quantity is linked to health and social problems now: and in a person’s future, can be linked to the development of dementia.

Join Dr Michelle Olaithe as she will discuss how psychology research can help us understand what sleep is, why we need it, what good sleep looks like, and how much is enough.

Science investigates the world in highly methodical ways: and our scientists use different chemical markers to record and observe changes in our environment. This knowledge helps to better understand the past, observe what is happening in our present and aid in the maintenance of our future.

UWA scientsits Dr Greg Skrzypek & Dr Aleksy Sadekov will be joined by Angela Rossen, Artist and Biodiversity Educator, to discuss how scientific enquiry informs our understanding of the world. Greg will walk you through the use of stable and radio isotopes to assess changes to flora, fauna and the atmosphere. Whilst Aleksy will explain how his work with marine calcifiers can trace chemical pollutants in the ocean.