What's On at UWA

The Seminar: Jeremy’s work represents an exciting new field of neuroendocrinology. The recent discovery of mice and humans lacking the kisspeptin receptor (Kiss1R) and their subsequent infertility has sparked scientists to explore the actions of kisspeptin. Kisspeptin is a neuropeptide and regulates reproduction by signalling directly to GnRH neurons. In addition to being expressed in GnRH neurons, Kiss1R is also expressed in other brain areas, suggesting that kisspeptin may have additional functions outside of governing reproduction. New research has now uncovered that this peptide plays an equally exciting role in the control of adiposity.

The Speaker: Jeremy Smith began his research career at The University of Western Australia, where he completed his PhD with Distinction in 2004. In 2003, Jeremy was awarded a NICHD Fellowship (US) and began post-doctoral research at the University of Washington. Here, Jeremy worked extensively on kisspeptin, a novel neuropeptide, vital in the neuroendocrine control of GnRH secretion and reproductive function. In 2006, Dr Smith was awarded a NHMRC Biomedical Fellowship and returned to Australia to work at the Department of Physiology, Monash University. Jeremy has now returned to UWA and the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology to continue his work and is funded by the NHMRC, ARC and is a recipient of an ARC Future Fellowship.

Alexander Jensen: Different ways of dealing with death: the relation between music and theology.

Different ways of dealing with death: the relation between music and theology Western music has always been a way of expressing that what is most important to men and women. In the past, this has been (and for many people still is) religious faith. This paper explores the relation between music and religion as well as the importance of theology for the interpretation of musical works. We will look at two pieces dealing with death, namely Bach’s Actus tragicus (BWV 106) and Brahm’s Ein deutsches Requiem, as case studies for the ways in which different theologies can be expressed in music.

Georg Corall: DMA Lecture-Recital

The Eloquent Hautboy

Scholars have investigated ‘music as speech’ and the ‘weapons of rhetoric’ in musical execution in order to understand the importance of text in historically-informed performance practice (HIP). This has led to the current vocal practice of declamation in, for example, the cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach, who communicated his emotional messages to the congregation in part through the careful selection of a suitable instrumental soundscape. His contemporary Johann Mattheson (1681-1764) referred to the oboe as ‘der gleichsam redende Hautbois’ (the eloquent hautboy) and reckoned it to be one of the instruments that most closely resembles the human voice. The investigation of contemporary treatises that provide commentary on articulation and rhetoric, as well as documents dealing with the balance of the forces available for Bach’s own performances, allows conclusions to be drawn on sound balance and transparency in the performance of Early Music on period instruments; however, it appears that many present-day habits in HIP may not withstand scrutiny. Currently, much attention is given to the close focus on articulation and text delivery required by historically-informed singers, whereas Early Music instrumentalists are deemed to merely support the vocalist’s words. Decades of personal experience in aiming to reconstruct historical hautboy reeds, together with a thorough analysis of wind instrument treatises dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, reveals that ‘articulation’ referred to the attack of notes as means to imitate text rather than merely defining the beginning and ending of a ‘vocal’ sound on an instrument.

This workshop not only provides grounding in the Graduate Research School's guidelines, policies and procedures for the effective supervision of research students, but also addresses issues related to managing the personal relationship between supervisor and student.

This workshop additionally touches on aspects of supervising international students, and provides a context for exploring these in further detail in the subsequent half-day workshop: supervising international students.

A water resource in the future is a great concern around the world. In 2009 the research area of "Innovative Technology and System for Sustainable Water Use" was launched by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). One of the projects is "Development of Well-Balanced Urban Water Use System Adapted for Climate Change", which is leaded by Prof. Furumai at the University of Tokyo.

In this project, we are discussing the availability of “rainwater”, “groundwater”, and “reclaimed water” as well as “surface water” including rivers and reservoirs in highly populated metropolitan areas to assure the safe and stable urban water supply under climate change. One of the sub-groups of "watershed water resources group" conducts advanced hydrological simulations in watersheds to evaluate the influences of climate change on the availability (quantity and quality) of surface water and reservoir water, which includes GCMs downscaling by mesoscale numerical weather prediction model of WRF.

In this group, I am in charge of the future projection of water quantity and quality in a reservoir. The results so far implicates that algal blooms may decrease in the future due to the unfavorable air temperature conditions for the phytoplankton growth and the increase of flood events, even though some researchers says we will have more chance to have algal blooms due to the air temperature increase by the global warming. I also talk about the great uncertainties in the research.

PS* This seminar is free and open to the public & no RSVP required.

****All Welcome****

A public lecture by Jonathan Rigg, Geography Department, Durham University.

This public lecture emerges from a puzzle: why are our explanations for the patterns of the world so often incomplete and far from universal in their application? Look across the development experience of Southeast Asia over the last half century and it is tempting to see a pattern of change and a set of developmental paths that can be ‘explained’ by reference to unifying conceptual models and policy frameworks. This lecture will direct attention to the unplanned, unseen and unexpected and, therefore, to the gaps between planning designs and planning experiences, between what is seen and measured and what ultimately proves to be important, and between expectations and outcomes.

Cost: Free, but RSVP essential. Bookings: www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/rigg or RSVP to [email protected] or 6488 1340

It is a truth universally acknowledged that eating people is wrong. Arens (1979) thinks it is so wrong that no-one every really did it. When we consider the historical, ethnographic and archaeological records, it is clear that people did indeed do it. Again despite Arens, who argues that since there’s really no such thing as cannibalism there’s no point in categorising it, there are different forms of cannibalism, some perhaps considered more benign, or any way less malign, than others. Examples might be survival cannibalism and mortuary cannibalism. In this paper I want to consider problems of definition and categorisation, glance at the ethnographic and historical sources, then survey the archaeological record in particular to look at the human history of this activity in deep time. I am interested not in whether cannibalism ever existed, when it is quite clear to me and many others that it did, but if there were ever societies in which it was not considered out and out “bad”, but was indeed a normative practice, and whether such cases have discernible similar cultural parameters. I will also consider some possible evolutionary implications of eating people.

A lecture by Dr Jacquie Hutchinson, UWA Business School.

It’s 2013 and Australian women workers are still being significantly under-recognised and under-valued for their skills, knowledge and contribution to the nation’s economic and social well-being. In response to this ongoing employment inequity, governments, business and social justice advocates have more recently turned to the 'business case' argument. Currently, we have ‘the good for business’ idea being used to increase the numbers of women board directors and CEOs. In addition, the business case is motivating increased employment of women in traditionally male dominated occupations and industries that are experiencing skills shortages.

Clearly, the business case argument has a compelling logic but does it work? What are the implications of linking employment fairness and equality with market forces and a company balance sheet?

This lively presentation will explore these challenging questions and their potential effects on women, other diversity groups and the broader Australian society.

Cost: Free, but RSVP required. Phone 1800 199 174 or send an email to [email protected]

ECONOMIC RESEARCH SEMINAR: TOPIC TITLE: An Experimental Design for Analyzing Risky and Safe Choices in Constant-Sum Games PRESENTER: Professor Thomas E. Merz, Michigan Technological University DATE: Friday 22 March 2013, VENUE: BUSN:Business School Case Study Room 12pm-1pm.

The average age of first marriage in Japan has steadily increased over the last century, as has the likelihood of never marrying for both women and men. In conjunction with the decline in average length of marriage – a result of greater divorce and later marriage – these patterns suggest that Japanese people are spending more of their lives outside marriage. In the context of these demographic shifts, friendships, romantic relationships outside marriage, and work relationships represent possible support structures in a period of economic uncertainty. And what of the emotional benefits of extra-familial relationships? What do these relationships offer women, when marriage is no longer inevitable or enduring? Feminist literature in other societies suggests that relationships outside the nuclear reproductive family may constitute a “set of counter-heteronormative relationship practices...in which sexual/love relationships are decentred, and friendship is prioritized” (Roseneil 2010: 79-80). Does this suggestion also hold in the Japanese context? In this paper I use recent fieldwork to explore the affective and practical implications of intimate relationships outside the family for women. In particular, I examine the ways that extra-familial relationships of intimacy support or challenge the reproductive family, and the meaning attributed to these relationships by Japanese women.

Abstract:

Let G be a group, let H be a subgroup of G and let V be an irreducible KG-module over a field K. We say that (G,H,V) is an irreducible triple if V is an irreducible KH-module. Classifying the irreducible triples of a group is a fundamental problem in representation theory, with a long history and several applications.

The case where G is a simple algebraic group over an algebraically closed field can be traced back to work of Dynkin in the 1950s (H connected, char(K) = 0). Through work of Seitz and Testerman in the 1980s, and more recent work of Ghandour, the problem of determining the irreducible triples (G,H,V) for simple algebraic groups has essentially been reduced to the case where G is a classical group and H is disconnected.

In this talk I will report on recent work that determines all the irreducible triples (G,H,V) when G is classical and H is a disconnected, infinite, maximal subgroup. This is an important step towards a complete classification of the irreducible triples for simple algebraic groups. I will briefly recall some of the basic results on algebraic groups and representation theory that we will need, and I will describe some of the main ideas that are used in the proofs.

This is joint work with Soumaia Ghandour, Claude Marion and Donna Testerman.

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.

Professor Bruce Elliott was the senior biomechanist and the former Head of the School of Sport Science, Exercise and Health at The University of Western Australia. He was the inaugural chair of the Western Australian Institute of Sport (1984-1994) and served as the Scientific Chair for the 5th IOC World Congress on Sport Sciences and supervised the research projects at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. In 1999 he was honoured with the Award of Merit by the Western Australian Sports Federation and in 2003 the Professional Tennis Registry gave him the Stanley Palgenhoef Sport Science Award for "his lifetime contribution to tennis" and the Australian Government awarded him their Centenary Medal for "service to sport policy and research development for sport." In 2006 the University of Western Australia presented him with an Excellence in Research Supervision Award, for his supervision of Honours students, which was followed in 2008 with an Excellence in Teaching Award.

In his seminar, Professor Elliott will discuss and reflect upon his many years of research in biomechanics and exercise science at UWA.

Music as the ‘missing link’: the evolutionary pathway from animal communication to language.

A growing consensus drawing on research in a wide variety of disciplines has over the last fifteen years or so argued the need to revisit Darwin’s conjecture of 1871 that language may be descended from an existing, musical medium of communication that developed from animal calls. This paper focuses especially on the aspects of human musical behaviour and language that have evolved in our species in relation to perceptual and productive capacities that respond to the properties of the Harmonic Series.

Done well, teaching with technology has the potential to enhance learning. This can be achieved by the ways we present information, communicate with students, create communities, provide engaging learning experiences, and provide authentic learning and assessment tasks. This workshop will introduce the integration of technology into practice, demonstrate and explore practically a range of technology tools available for learning with technology, and consider curriculum design for effective practice.

Wastewaters treatment is an issue of increased interest during the last twenty five last years in Greece, particular considering the need to comply with the requirements of the European Union directive 91/271.

Although all participants in the decision making process generally agree on the necessity of interventions, a systematic opposition frequently emerges when the interventions are concretised and touch upon citizens everyday life in their local societies. At the same time various approaches on centralized or decentralized wastewater management and the available treatment processes form a complex environment for sound decisions from the authorities at municipal and regional level. In this context, a rationalization of the decision-making process is required in order to deal with conflicting objectives.

In the seminar will focus on the following topics:

- current legislation on wastewater treatment and reuse in Greece,

- current trends in the wastewater management (advantages - disadvantages)

- which method of processing is more suitable according the equivalent population

- Cost, energy consumption and efficiency of wastewater treatment systems appropriate for small-scale wastewater treatment plants (WTP).

- the possibility of reuse

- A generic multicriteria approach, based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for the evaluation of alternative scenarios on wastewater treatment processes at municipality level.

Evaluation scenarios are developed with respect to the size of WTP, treatment method, and location of WTP. Multicriteria process selection is a part of the decision support system where location algorithms and GIS tools are combining in order to define the number of the alternatives and the location of the WTP. The application of this approach will be presented through a case study. The results obtained show that this approach is a viable tool and offers good communication with the decision-maker.

Short bio.

Maria has 35 years of experience in surveying and civil engineering as a supervisor of construction sites and design engineer, teacher, researcher, and consultant.

She graduated from the School of Engine¬ering of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), and is post graduated of the Department of Sanitary Engineer from the National School of Health (Greece). She has attended many seminars on methods and applications of multicriteria ana¬lysis, wastewater treatment processes, GIS, remote sensing, etc.

Maria started her career as a designer and site supervisor engineer of road and airport projects in Libya. She continued to work for 20 years on the same field as well as in the field of environ¬men¬tal engineering, conducting environmental impact studies, in Greece, for public project’s studies at prefecture level, running her private firm. She has drafted more than fifty project studies and technical reports.

Maria holds a PhD in Technical and Economic Analysis of Waste Water Treatment Plants from the Department of Civil Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace (Greece). After obtaining her doctorate she was elected Lecturer in the same Department. Currently, she is an Associate Professor. She has taught: Wastewater Treatment Plant Design, Environmental Management, Water Resources Management, and Site Management. She was a key member of twelve research programs and the scientific coordinator of four. She has also authored three books and about 80 papers in journals and conference proceedings.

Maria has worked as a consultant for a Greek Municipality and for some military projects. She was also chairman of the Rhodope National Park Board in Greece.She has administrative, teaching and research experience and wide social activity. She is currently on

PS* This seminar is free and open to the public & no RSVP required.

****All Welcome****

The WAPC and planning academia agree furiously that we need increased density in our city. The planning profession agrees that we need to shift the balance from the suburban towards the urban in order to contain the economic and ecological hazards of sprawl in our rapidly growing city. Socially, we also need to provide the diversity of lifestyles demanded by our rapidly changing population. However very little work seems to have done into how we practically manage that transition so we can bring the community with us on the journey.

We need better planning tools to manage the interface issues and to conserve the history of our city. We need to work out how we co-mingle the cool small bars and nightclubs with residential living. We cannot do European city densities without European standard public transport. How do we compensate for the loss of trees and its impact on intensifying the heat island effect? How do we find and fund expansions of public open space to deal with a dramatic drop in private open space? We need strategic planners to get their hands dirty with a bit of statutory planning so the blue-sky visioning in master plans can be turned into a real life sustainable and bustling city that captures the heart and mind of our community.

Ian packer is the deputy director of ETHOS and a frequent contributor to publications on critical issues. Ethos is a national network of outstanding Christian thinkers and activists drawn together into a series of standing think-tanks. ETHOS is committed to ongoing, in-depth analysis of critical issues. In doing so ETHOS demonstrates the relevance and distinctiveness of the public life of the Christian community. Debate is sought in a spirit of reconciliation and robust respect. This event is an opportunity to re-establish a collective for this kind of intellectual engagement in Perth.

Andrew Francis (University of Western Sydney)

will speak on

Bacterial genome evolution with algebra

at 2pm Thursday 28th of March in Blakers Lecture Theatre

NOTE CHANGE OF DAY, TIME AND VENUE

Abstract:

The genome of a bacterial organism consists of a single circular chromosome that can undergo changes at several different levels. There is the very local level of errors that are introduced through the replication process, giving rise to changes in the nucleotide sequence (A,C,G,T); there are larger scale sequence changes occurring during the lifetime of the cell that are able to insert whole segments of foreign DNA, delete segments, or invert segments (among other things); and there are even topological changes that give rise to knotting in DNA.

Algebra might be defined as the study of ``sets with structure", and has been used over the past century to describe the symmetries of nature, most especially in areas like physics and crystallography, but it also plays a role in technological problems such a cryptography. In this talk I will describe how algebraic ideas can be used to model some bacterial evolutionary processes. In particular I will give an example in which modelling the inversion process gives rise to new algebraic questions, and show how algebraic results about the affine symmetric group can be used to calculate the ``inversion distance" between bacterial genomes. This has applications to phylogeny reconstruction.

All welcome.

On Sunday 31 March we will have the pleasure of a lecture by one of the best-known experts on Roman Britain РGuy de la B̩doy̬re, well known for his appearences on the popular television show Time Team. All welcome, but please RSVP as venue capacity is limited. You will be issued with a ticket.