What's On at UWA

Tourist movement is a complex process. It can be modelled from a number of different perspectives; for example, Tourism, Geography, Economics, Mathematics, Computer Sciences and Psychology. This talk aims to discuss a sound methodology, using Markov and Semi-Markov processes to model the spatial and temporal movement of tourists.

The objective is to understand, predict, control for, and optimise the decisions made by tourists in their choice of attractions.

Bioeroding sponges are the most important internal bioeroders on many coral reefs, but are often overlooked because of their cryptic habit. In comparison with extensive research into reef calcification, bioerosion in general is critically understudied, and the mechanisms of reef degradation by sponges are still not fully understood. While calcifying organisms are routinely surveyed in monitoring programs, the distribution and abundance of bioeroding sponges is rarely assessed. We do not have comprehensive data on the rate of bioerosion by sponges through time or on sponge bioerosion rates before and after disturbance events. However, it does appear that environmental changes will critically shift the natural balance between reef accretion and bioerosion. This presentation will summarise what is known about the biology of bioeroding sponges and address questions regarding their likely impacts on coral reef health. It will examine the effects they are currently having on reefs and whether these effects are expected to change through time. A special focus will be provided on recent results on effects of ocean acidification. The talk will also discuss how we can control and monitor sponge bioerosion and what research is needed to help us protect our reefs. It will further address important knowledge gaps, create greater awareness, provide useful tools for future studies and encourage research into this ecologically significant group.

A public lecture by Professor Chris Rapley CBE, Professor of Climate Science, University College London.

In this public lecture Professor Chris Rapley CBE will present a brief overview of the Earth system, and the evidence that human activities, especially our use of fossil fuel energy, are forcing change in the climate system at the global level. He will discuss the risks that this presents to humanity and the current mismatch between the nature and scale of actions that would mitigate climate change and those actually being taken. He will discuss the prospects for adaptation and remediation and also say a few words about communicating climate science, using the London Science Museum’s new “atmosphere” exhibition as an example.

Professor Rapley is visiting Australia as a guest of the UCL School of Energy and Resources, Australia, the university’s graduate school in Adelaide. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/australia/

This lecture is an Inspiring Australia initiative presented by the Institute of Advanced Studies at The University of Western Australia and Scitech.

Cost: Free, but seats are limited. RSVP to [email protected].

This paper explores the confluence of cultural heritage, economic development, and regional identity around the discourse and multifarious representations that are associated with the ‘Ancient Tea Horse Road’ (chama gudao 茶马古道) (ATHR) of Yunnan Province. It argues that the ATHR as a loose conceptual totality is a salient example of how one particular ‘object’ can serve multifarious purposes. Firstly, the ATHR is an assemblage of tangible and intangible cultural heritage and cultural landscapes that has become the increasing focus of efforts at preservation and revitalisation. Secondly, the ATHR is also a cultural resource used as a marketing tool to promote tourism development. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the ATHR is a narrative of national and ethnic unity that attempts to reimagine the importance of the periphery vis-à-vis the centre. The background for all of this is the profound cultural, social and economic transformation taking place in Yunnan that is contributing to an overall anxiety concerning the loss of the past and the possibilities for the future. In teasing out these three different yet interrelated uses of the ATHR this paper also argues that the ATHR is representative of the new confluences of governmentality in contemporary China which are fashioning artefacts at the intersection of the state, the market, and what I will term the ‘cultural purveyors’. In this sense I understand culture as ‘a set of institutionally embedded relations of government in which forms of thought and conduct of extended populations are targeted for transformation’ (Bennett 1992: 26). By ‘cultural purveyors’ I refer to those forms of experts who work with both state and the market in shaping ‘culture’ in specific ways. This includes both the scholars dedicated to researching the cultures and peoples associated with the ATHR and also the entrepreneurs (e.g. tourism developers) seeking to maximise opportunities for financial gain (and we should note that in this day and age of the ‘cultural market’ in China there is often a cross-over between ‘the scholar’ and ‘the entrepreneur’). The relationship between the three (that is, the state, the market and the cultural purveyors) is by no means straight-forward and at moments is marked as much by tensions between different interests as it is by a collective consensus. The paper therefore also considers the anxieties around notions of Yunnanese identity that provide insights into the ruptures on the surface of what seems to be a unified ideology of cultural/national development.

Percussion Purity! presents the first ever Marimba Orchestra assembled in Perth. WA’s most outstanding percussionists will perform a program of premieres by Nigel Westlake, Christopher Deane and Emmanuel Sejourne, followed by a massed Marimba Orchestra of 40 players. An exciting and unique event not to be missed!

Tickets available from BOCS: http://www.bocsticketing.com.au / 08 9484 1133

Unfortunately this event has been cancelled!

Professor Adrian North, Head of Psychology from Curtin University, will explore the role of music in our western consumer culture.

A public lecture by Lawrence Torcello, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York.

“It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.” -Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

With its catastrophic effects on the planet’s vulnerable populations, climate change is a plausible candidate for the most serious moral issue of our time. The scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic climate change is firmly established, yet climate change denialism—a species the speaker refers to as ‘pseudoskepticism’—is on the rise in the industrial nations most responsible for climate change. Along with other forms of pseudoskepticism, the denial of anthropogenic global warming is encouraged by corporate sponsored public relations firms, by ideologically driven politicians, hack journalists, pundits, and ill-informed private citizens.

Established science, on the other hand, typically is promoted within professional journals and textbooks that have relatively fewer readers. Consequently, the advantage that nonsense has over the factual information critical to informed public policy is significant.

The case of global warming denialism or pseudoskepticism presents a good example of how careless or irresponsible speech in the public sphere of a few wealthy nations can have a profound, morally consequential impact on vulnerable populations around the globe. The growing pervasiveness and danger of climate change denial and other pseudoskepticisms suggests the need for a robust ethics of inquiry and public discourse, for which this lecture will argue.

This lecture is a part of the Institute of Advanced Studies 2012 lecture series ‘Global Transformation and Public Ethics’.

Cost: Free, RSVP to [email protected].

The Speaker: Dr Albertine graduated magna cum laude in biology from Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1975. He graduated with a doctoral degree in human anatomy from Loyola University of Chicago, Stritch School of Medicine, in 1979. He received postdoctoral training at the Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of California, San Francisco (1980-83).

He held faculty appointments at the University of South Florida, the University of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Jefferson University before joining the faculty at the University of Utah, in 1993. The same year he established the Pediatric Fellowship Core Curriculum and continues to lead this training program for all first-year fellows in pediatrics.

Dr Albertine’s research topic is acute and chronic lung disease, with emphasis on neonatal chronic lung disease. His research group created the preterm lamb model of bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD). BPD is the second most prominent pediatric disease in the United States, eclipsed only by pediatric asthma. His large-animal, physiological model is the only such model of BPD. His laboratory has been supported by NIH grants for over 30 years.

He has authored almost 150 peer-reviewed papers and nearly 100 non-peer-reviewed papers, editorials, chapters, and textbooks. He is a reviewer for more than two dozen basic science or clinical journals and is Editor-in-Chief of The Anatomical Record, the flagship journal of the American Association of Anatomists.

Dr Albertine also participates in the Federation of Pediatric Organizations (FOPO), as a member of the Child Health Working Group. The charge of this group is to provide national guidance on approaches to attract physicians-in-training to become academic pediatricians (pediatric scientists).

I have been working in cytogenetics since I was 16. With a mother in cytogenetics and a father as a management consultant I was mentored and studied in both business and cytogenetics. The laboratory was originally located at Curtin University with involvement not only in pathology but research and education. My research has been focused mainly on early miscarriage but over the last 3 years we became involved in collaborative research with Professor George Yeoh’s group. A research project that collated years of data presented chromosomal rearrangements stimulated by nutrient stress in vitro with human peripheral blood lymphocyte cultures. Our work with George Yeoh has shown similar occurrences with their mouse cell lines. So I am now working with different stress models to characterise chromosomal and molecular changes and uncover their relevant mechanisms.

Aleksandra Filipovska received her PhD in 2002 from the University of Otago, New Zealand. From 2003-2005 she was a NZ Foundation for Research, Science and Technology Fellow at the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit in Cambridge, the United Kingdom. In 2006 she relocated to Australia as a NHMRC Howard Florey Fellow and established her research group at the Centre for Medical Research at the University of Western Australia in Perth. She is currently an Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the Centre for Medical Research at the University of Western Australia. Her work has been focused on identifying mammalian mitochondrial RNA-binding proteins and investigating their role in RNA metabolism in health and models of disease. She has published a number of high profile papers in this area of research recently.

“There’s just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history, and Steve Reich is one of them.” Andrew Clements, The Guardian.

Loved by audiences the world over, Reich’s mesmeric compositions embrace aspects of Western Classical music, traditional African rhythms and American jazz to create a unique minimalist sound world. Fresh from time working with Reich in the US, Louise Devenish returns to Perth to direct a collection of his works for keyboard percussion instruments.

Tickets available from BOCS: www.bocsticketing.com.au / 08 9484 1133

Please register your attendance by emailing your name and number of guests to [email protected].

In this one off very special event for Perth, Nobel Laureate Professor Brian Schmidt will describe the discovery that won him and his team the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, and explain how astronomers have used observations to trace the Universe's history back more than 13 billion years, leading them to ponder the ultimate fate of the cosmos.

Where: Octagon Theatre, UWA When: Wednesday September 5th, 7pm (doors open 6:45pm) Cost: Free! Tickets: www.expandinguniverse.eventbrite.com

In 1998 two teams traced back the expansion of the Universe over billions of years and discovered that it was accelerating, a startling discovery that suggests that more than 70% of the cosmos is contained in a previously unknown form of matter, called Dark Energy. In 2011 Professor Brian Schmidt, leader of the High-Redshift Supernova Search Team, was named joint winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics. Brian and his team’s work on the expansion of the Universe fundamentally changed astrophysics – it opened up a whole new area of science and introduced the world to the concept of Dark Energy.

Intended Audience:

This workshop is for all academic and sessional teaching staff at UWA.

Workshop Description:

Effective teaching is a central aspect of an academic career at UWA. This workshop will focus on the criteria and evidence that can be included in a teaching portfolio and used for PDR and promotion. You will leave this session confident and eager to make a start on your own portfolio. This workshop is a good follow-up to the 'What Counts as Evidence of Good Teaching' workshop.

A free lunchtime concert showcasing percussion works for small ensemble. Works of this size are rarely performed in Western Australia. Join artists in an exploration of this facet of the genre.

Among other things, in recent years I have investigated infinite divisibility properties of some new probability laws: generalized Planck, Lambert, and generalized stable. Although infinite divisibility is now important in physics and quantitative finance, it has dropped out of the undergraduate curriculum.

So the first of two talks is aimed at introducing the elements of the subject. I will cover concepts and examples, with a few intuitive proofs to give a feel for why things are as they are.

Savitri Goswami was only a child when she wrote her first play. It was so good that she was advised to take it to the local radio station, in her city Gorahkpur, Inspired by her first broadcast, the young Savitri took to her pen with great vigour, churning out many dramas, to the delight of her family and friends.

"Disraeli, Catholics and Ireland"

Professor Oliver Rafferty SJ, the 2012 St Thomas More College Chair of Jesuit Studies, will present the fourth in a series of six lectures on nineteenth century Irish history.

The Chair of Jesuit Studies is jointly recognised by the the University of Western Australia and the University of Notre Dame Australia, and aims to bring a leading academic from the worldwide Jesuit community to Perth each year.

Professor Rafferty is visiting from Heythrop College, University of London, where he specialises in Irish and Ecclesiastical history. He will present the remaining two seminars in the same locations, and at the same time, on Fridays 14th and 21st September.

In a festival extravaganza, the 90th birthday and 10th anniversary of Xenakis’ death is celebrated in one magnificent event. This unique composer wrote music of extraordinary power and originality, and the imposing stone and space of Winthrop Hall provides the perfect architectural counterpart to this monumental music. Inspired and directed by celebrated Artist Paul Tanner, this extraordinary event promises to amaze and enthuse all ages. Joined by a host of professional percussionists on stage and around the hall, works to be performed include Xenakis’ Pleiades (movement 1) Menages, and Pleiades (movement 2) Metaux.

Tickets available from BOCS: www.bocsticketing.com.au / 08 9484 1133

The Seminar: The field of tissue engineering has seen significant advances in materials and cell biology research over the last twenty years, but most development has been through ‘in vitro’ technologies. Translation of these methods to the clinic will require ‘in vivo’ methods to be advanced and this talk will consider recent progress in two applications: engineering beating heart muscle from stem cells and tissue engineering for rapid repair of tympanic membrane perforations.

The Speaker: Rod Dilley is Head of Molecular and Cellular Otolaryngology at Ear Science Institute Australia and Adjunct Associate Professor in School of Surgery at UWA. In 1986 he completed his PhD in Department of Anatomy and Human Biology at UWA on vascular biology of vein graft arterialisation, with John McGeachie as supervisor. Rod did postdoctoral research training at University of Washington in Seattle USA then at Baker Institute in Melbourne, working on cardiovascular growth in hypertension, diabetes and atherosclerosis. Since then his research on cardiovascular disease has come to include tissue engineering and applications for adult stem cells. At Melbourne University since 2004 he was Head of the Cardiac Tissue Engineering group at O’Brien Institute and Principal Scientist for the biotechnology company Australian Tissue Engineering Centre. In 2011 he returned to Perth where his new position also takes in regeneration and tissue engineering in the ear.