What's On at UWA

On behalf of the Organizing Committee, we invite you to participate in the inaugural Liver Down Under Conference, being held from Monday 28th November to Friday 2nd December 2011 in Perth, WA. This conference will be a major international meeting on Liver Research to be held in Australia and has attracted many of the top international liver, cancer, stem cell and tissue regeneration researchers, who have already indicated they will attend. This meeting will be similar in format to the FASEB Summer Conferences, specifically the liver disease meeting which is held biannually at Snowmass, Colorado, USA. The meeting will have strong international and national scientific content. Prof Andras Nagy, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, CA, is the plenary speaker (see http://www.lunenfeld.ca/researchers/nagy) and he will speak on “Potential applications utilising embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells in treating liver disease”. We have an additional 15 international and 7 national invited speakers who are attending the meeting. Please go to the following website (http://liver.asnevents.com.au/) for further detail, list of invited speakers and to register for a day or for the entire meeting.

This is an intensive five-day unit on the theory and practice of analysis of large sets of linked administrative health data at an introductory to intermediate level.

Rapid growth in data linkage projects has led to a shortfall in analyst skills.

Some researchers understand epidemiological principles, but are unfamiliar with the specialised computing skills needed to analyse linked data files.

Others have a strong grasp of computing concepts, but lack an adequate theoretical base to design high quality applications to answer research questions. This endeavours to fill a gap in research training opportunities to cater to these two areas of need.

Unit outline: Professor Holman provides a theoretical grounding in the classroom on each topic, followed by a training session on the corresponding computing solutions. Students use fictitious but realistic linked data files in the hands-on exercises. A lecturer will be available in the computing laboratory session each afternoon and conducts an end-of-day tutorial for those who need additional assistance.

In preparation for the teaching week you will be sent pre-reading on 25 November 2011.

Learning objectives: The unit acquaints health researchers, clinical practitioners and managers with the theory and skills needed to analyse linked health data at the introductory to intermediate level. Upon completion the participant will: * possess an overview of the theory of data linkage methods and features of comprehensive data linkage systems, sufficient to understand the sources and limitations of linked health data sets * understand the principles of epidemiologic measurement and research methods for the conceptualisation and construction of numerators and denominators used in the analysis of disease trends and health care utilisation and outcomes * understand sources of error in epidemiologic measurement, the difference between confounding and effect modification, and use of regression models in risk adjustment in health services research * be able to perform statistical analyses on linked longitudinal health data * be able to conceptualise and perform the manipulation of large linked data files * be able to write syntax to prepare linked data files for analysis, derive exposure and outcome variables, relate numerators and denominators and produce results from statistical procedures

Unit prerequisites: Basic familiarity with computing syntax used in programs such as SPSS, SAS or Stata and methods of basic statistical analysis of fixed-format data files.

There are no formal prerequisites in epidemiology for the course. However, it is recommend that participants who have not previously completed an introductory course in epidemiology, familiarise themselves with the basic principles and terms used in that discipline. A working knowledge of statistical concepts, including regression models, used in data analysis in the medical and social sciences is assumed.

Please note that this is a full 5 day unit with associated enrolment and fee requirements. Please visit our website for details.

Come along to the School of Population Health Postgraduate Course information sessions. We'll present information about the degrees below and will have course experts on hand to answer all your questions.

- Master of Health Professional Education (4.30pm) - Empower yourself as an educator in the health professions by developing and enhancing your teaching and research skills.

- Master of Public Health (5.30pm) - Gain a leadership role and an understanding of public health and the latest research methods.

- Master of Nursing Science (5.30pm) - build on your undergraduate degree in any field and become eligible to qualify as a Registered Nurse.

- Master of Social Work (5.30pm) - build on your undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline and become an accredited Social Worker.

- Master of Nursing Research (5.30pm) - A degree for Registered Nurses to gain a solid grounding in clinical research methods and develop skills to design, conduct and lead clinical research.

- Master of Public Health (by Research) and PhD (5.30pm) - World-class research training is available with top researchers in a wide range of health-related fields. Conduct research on a topic you're passionate about.

Health informatics is a relatively new scientific discipline that incorporates knowledge from biomedicine, computer science, information science, psychology, business and other fields.

It deals with the systematic processing of data, information and knowledge in health in order to improve decision making. It is both multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary.

With ever-increasing complexity of health care and pressures on health professionals to do more with less, health informatics principles and information technologies are becoming more important. Moreover, the storage, processing and communication of health information directly affect the quality of delivered health care.

Course outline This course provides an overview of this broad field with an emphasis on fundamental principles as well as health information technologies. It teaches important concepts in health informatics and computing, including: modelling of health, communication theory, information retrieval, medical decision making, terminology and standards, evaluation, ethics, computer hardware and software.

It also examines applications of health informatics such as electronic medical records, clinical decision support systems and telemedicine.

This is a five-day course consisting of lectures, small group tutorials and computer lab work. In preparation for the teaching week, you will be sent pre-reading on 2 December 2011.

Who should attend? Health informatics is short of specifically trained individuals nationally and globally. This course provides the foundation for those who wish to begin a career in health informatics. It will also appeal to health care and information technology people who wish to cross over into health informatics. It will be informative to anyone who has a curiosity about this emerging and diverse field.

Please note: this is a five day unit with associated enrolment and fee requirements. Please visit our website for full information.

All welcome to attend the School of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine 2012 Seminar Series (RPH). On a weekly basis we have local/guest speakers presenting to a wide audience typically in the fields of immunology, molecular biology and cancer related research. This week we are privileged to have Professor Arunasalam Dharmarajan from the School of Anatomy and Human Biology, UWA present on "“Secreted Frizzled Related Protein 4 (sFRP4), Wnt signalling and Angiogenesis”. Series are sponsored by Life Technologies and light refreshments are provided. For further inquiries please contact using the provided email. Look forward to seeing you there!

The Centre for Research Excellence in Aboriginal Health and Wellbeing is hosting a Seminar presented by Professor Alan Rosen, Research Psychiatrist, Centre for Rural & Remote Mental Health, University of Newcastle.

Over many years, psychiatric professionals have dominated the lives of people with mental illnesses. We have been responsible for their forced separation and disconnection from their families; incarceration in remote regions; their being humiliated, stigmatised and sequestered as moral lepers; the loss of their identities as people, denying them their human rights, their dignity and entitlement to full membership as citizens. Mental health professionals have become the officially anointed custodians of people with mental illnesses – “for their own good”. We have inadvertently broken their spirits, disempowered them, alienated them from their kin, and in many instances de-skilled them and depleted community knowledge of how to look after their own. The case for regret and apology for the past suffering of Aboriginal Australians with a mental illness is pressing.

LIWA invites you to a free seminar on: "Thoracic Cancer Medicine" by Professor Anna Nowak from School of Medicine and Pharmacology, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. Time: 12 noon for light lunch with 12.30pm – 1.30pm presentation

RNA-protein complexes play essential roles in the regulation of gene expression, by orchestrating the basic growth and maintenance of the cell as well as the complex developmental programs of multicellular eukaryotes. The modes by which proteins bind RNA are diverse and often difficult to predict, limiting our ability to engineer RNA-binding proteins for practical applications. Engineering RNA-binding proteins is attractive because they could be fused to any desired effector domain, enabling selective binding of a specific RNA target to investigate or manipulate any aspect of its metabolism. We have used directed evolution to expand the recognition of Pumilio and FBF homology (PUF) repeats beyond adenine, guanine and uracil and evolved them to specifically bind cytosine. These repeat sequences can be used to create PUF domains capable of binding RNA targets of diverse sequence and structure enabling many potential biological and medical applications.

INTERNATIONAL VISITING SPEAKER

Professor John Frank MD, CCFP, MSc, FRCPC, FCAHS, FFPH

Director of the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy (SCPHRP) in Edinburgh

Tuesday 24 April, 2012 Hosted by the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research

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Best Practice Guidelines for Monitoring Socioeconomic Inequalities in Health Status: Lessons from Scotland 10:00am, Seminar Room

A narrative account of the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy model of knowledge transfer to policies, programs and practice in public health 1:00pm, Bibbulung Room

All welcome, RSVP required Melanie Hansen [email protected]

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Professor John Frank is Director of the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy in Edinburgh, which seeks to develop and robustly test novel public health policies and programs to equitably improve health status in Scotland, through the convening and ongoing support of researcher/research-user consortia. Prof. Frank trained in Medicine and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto, in Family Medicine at McMaster University, and in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, after serving in Mbeya, Tanzania as a Medical Officer and Instructor of Medical Assistants from 1976 to 1979. He has been Professor (now Professor Emeritus) at the University of Toronto, in the Department of Public Health Sciences (now the Dalla Lana School of Public Health), since 1983. He was the founding Director of Research at the Institute for Work & Health in Toronto from 1991 to 1997. In 2000, Prof. Frank was appointed inaugural Scientific Director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research - Institute of Population and Public Health and in July 2008, he became Director of the SCPHRP. Prof. Frank also holds a Chair at the University of Edinburgh in Public Health Research and Policy. His broad research and professional interests concern the determinants of population and individual health status, especially the causes, remediation and prevention of socio-economic gradients in health. His scientific publications include 25 books, monographs and book chapters, over 140 peer-reviewed journal articles and 65 other scientific publications. He has been principle or co-investigator for $CDN14 million in direct research grants and has overseen over $50 million in flow-through grants in the last decade.

For all members of the health care team including physicians, GPs, pharmacists, nurses, physiotherapists and other allied health professionals.

LIWA invites you to a free seminar on: "Pleural Fluid Biomarkers" by Professor Jose Porcel from Department of Internal Medicine, Arnau de Vilanova University Hospital, Spain. Time: 12 noon for light lunch with 12.30pm – 1.30pm presentation.

Come along and hear special guest speaker Winthrop Professor Christobel Saunders-Breast Cancer Surgeon, Family of Survivor-Emily Hanson student from Murdoch University and Peta McClausland from Cancer Council WA talk about Breast Cancer. Winthrop Professor Christobel Saunders will share the latest clinical research developments and more, Emily Hanson will share her inspirng journey of her circumstance and Peta McClausland will provide updated information on available resources and contacts about breast cancer.

Don't miss your chance to win great prizes for the raffle draw. Raffle draw tickets can be purchased prior to the event. Raffle tickets are 1 for $3.00 or 3 for $5.00. Contact Rani Varathan - 6488 2807. Sponsors include Co-Op Bookstore, IGA, Myer and more!!

Only $5.00 for entry all proceeds are donated to National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Although the risk of developing dementia increases with age – in most people with dementia, symptoms first appear after age 60. Dementia is not a part of normal aging. It is caused by a fatal disease that affects the brain. Dementia is an irreversible, progressive brain disease that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills. International Health and dementia expert Professor Passmore will reveal the causes of brain degeneration in dementia.

The Lung Institute of WA invites you to a free seminar on: "Lung function – going global in 2012" by Professor Graham Hall from the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. Time: 12 noon for light lunch with 12.30pm – 1.30pm presentation.

Get your Quiz on to help raise money to fight sex trafficking in Nepal!

Tickets are $20 each, or a table of 8 for $145 and include some finger food. 18+ ID required, as the venue services alcohol. Children are welcome but need to be accompanied by at least one of their parents/legal guardians. Arrive at 7:30pm for a 7:45pm start.

All proceeds will be going towards Maiti Nepal, a group that provides prevention, rehabilitation, education, health services and more for Nepalese women and children who are victims of sex trafficking.

Step Right Up as The 2012 HSS Ball & Awards Night Carnival is coming soon! This spectacular wonder will be in town for one night only; Saturday 2nd June - Everyone is welcome.

Brought to you by- HSS, HSA, PHPS & SPH, this will be a night full of magic and fun not to be missed!

LIWA invites you to a free seminar on: "eResearch and the opportunities of applying digital technology in healthcare research" by Professor Jennifer Harrison from iVEC@UWA. Time: 12 noon for light lunch with 12.30pm – 1.30pm presentation

The 2nd Annual "A Life Worth Hearing" Symposium on hearing research presents the latest findings from a range of international, national and local speakers. Session themes are: tissue engineering, hearing loss in the community, and tinnitus. Registration: $85 ($35 for students) - email for Rob Eikelboom for further information.

The course is designed for people with knowledge of basic statistics who want to learn more about regression and analysis of variance (ANOVA).

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 cas.maths.uwa.edu.au. Please register online.

The Annual Lecture is the highlight of the year for the UWA Historical Society and Convocation and we are delighted to welcome Winthrop Professor Cheryl Praeger to the podium to reflect upon her years on Campus and subsequent experiences and achievements.

Mathematician Cheryl Praeger has served the University of Western Australia as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Professor since 1976. She leads a flourishing research group in pure mathematics and is in the top one per cent of highly cited mathematicians in the world.

Attendance is free.