What's On at UWA

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.

LMS for New Users will provide participants with an introductory overview of the Moodle powered LMS (Learning Management System) used as our online learning environment here at UWA. You will need to complete this workshop before being eligible to take part in any intermediate or advanced Moodle/LMS training. Moodle is an online learning environment that provides a variety of tools, features and interactions that can support your teaching (and students' learning) experiences at UWA.

The Humanist Society of WA is excited to invite you to a special lecture event from humanist and author Sean Faircloth on the Perth leg of his Australian book tour.

Sean Faircloth is author of the book 'Attack of the Theocrats: How the Religious Right Harms Us All - And What We Can Do About It.' (2012) ‘Reclaiming a Secular Australia’ will be an important engagement for any citizen, particularly educators and public thinkers concerned to keep Australia’s diverse multicultural society inclusive of all religions as well as non-believers.

“Religious groups are engaging in a coordinated effort,” Faircloth says, “to influence government, schools, and to spread an extremist agenda in the developing world,” “This is a wake up call. I challenge atheists and liberal-minded religious people to think beyond symbolic issues, smell the coffee and agree on a challenging and coordinated response.”

As an advocate for maintaining a separation of church and state, Faircloth's ‘Reclaiming a Secular Australia’ discusses the growing connection between religion and politics in the Australian context. He will draw on his global experiences to explain how citizens may regain and preserve Australia’s distinctive secular culture.

“Faircloth paints a sobering picture, but fortunately, as anyone who has heard his speeches knows, he also has an inspiring and invigorating vision to offer...a much needed plan for action.” Richard Dawkins

Tickets: 6448 2440 ($27 Adults/ $17 Students/Seniors)

Enquiries: Jaye Christie 0405 517 059/ Stevie Modern 0401 084 242

Expression of Interest for the first “Speed Networking” session in 2013 on

Gender Research

Greet new researchers Engage with others and share your gender research Network with researchers across UWA Diversify your research collaborations Enhance your profile in this field and Revitalise your research ideas

Date: Wednesday 3rd April, Time: 10 am to 12 pm (morning tea included) Venue: Monodelphous Integrated Learning Centre, Lycopodium Room 151 http://lostoncampus.com.au/4844

Format of the meeting may vary depending on the numbers These events have been very popular, so be sure to RSVP to your Faculty Research Development Adviser.

Expression of Interest

Name:

School:

Research interest:

Years since PhD:

RSVP to your Faculty Research Development Adviser: Science – [email protected] MDHS – [email protected] FECM – [email protected] FA – [email protected] FE – [email protected] FL – [email protected] Bus – [email protected]

Participants will explore the functionality of the Grades area (from both a staff and student perspective) and learn how to use it effectively for grade administration.

Quiet Day for UWA Staff – Friday 5th April 2013 Set on a lovely bush block these Quiet Day provides some space to 'be alone' in the company of other UWA academics and professional staff with the intention of marking out some good quality thinking/reflection time.

There is no formal 'content' to the day – no presentations or butcher's paper! Rather we seek to create an environment of quiet, trust and collegiality in which things become clearer and creative new ideas can emerge. This involves a combination of small group reflections on poetry (which helps slow down the pace and takes us into a deeper level of contemplation) and an extended period of silence, in which participants can rest and reflect. ‘We do less in order to achieve more’. This is not a ‘religious’ event.

The principles underpinning the Quiet Day are based on the work of Parker J Palmer (The Courage to Teach; The Heart of Higher Education), more of which can be found at: www.couragerenewal.org

Cost: $50 including lunch, morning and afternoon teas ($35 for PhD students)

A registration form can be obtained by emailing [email protected] or phone Michael for more information on 0435 065326

Registration and payment is needed by Wednesday 27th March 2013.

Previous participants have commented:

"this retreat provided a rare opportunity to quietly reflect on what's going on for me internally as a teacher, helped by excellent facilitators and a wonderful peaceful location"

"the benefits of this retreat to my personal and professional life have been immense"

“Thank you for the retreat - I found it really useful, have a sense of focus, realised I was missing an important work goal and came home and wrote a research paper that has been bugging me for some time” (from unsolicited email)

“it is good because it forces you to disengage in order to more fully engage – well done and many thanks”

“useful, health-giving and creative time”

“definitely go!”

“The best thing about the day was the space to think (but the whole deal was great) – yes, go. Important opportunity to reflect. Thank you to the organisers. I feel positively that UWA supported this”.

Abstract:

L. Redei has studied in a detailed way so-called "lacunary" polynomials over finite fields. One of the applications described is to investigate the number of values the difference quotient of a polynomial over a finite field can have. This result has a direct implication in the theory of blocking sets of finite Desarguesian projective planes, and this connection is the start of the use of "Redei-polynomials" in finite geometry. We will discuss some cases to explain the principle of using Redei-polynomials finite projective spaces and some particular generalized quadrangle. Then we discuss a problem on maximal partial ovoids, that has been partially solved using Redei-polynomials, but that can be expressed in terms of transitive subsets of the group SL(2,q).

Group work is continually being touted as a beneficial and necessary process for student learning and yet students often complain about it both from the point of view of distribution of work and fairness of assessment. How do you ensure students actually learn all that is intended and don't merely divide the content and work between them? How do you ensure even contribution by students towards their group task? International best practice in group work, that students enjoy and that enhances their learning, will be demonstrated. Case studies of methods being employed at UWA will be discussed.

Abstract:

For any class of graphs, the growth function h(n) of the class is defined to be the maximum number of edges in a graph in the class on n vertices. The Erdos-Stone Theorem remarkably states that, for any class of graphs that is closed under taking subgraphs, the asymptotic behaviour of h(n) can (almost) be precisely determined just by the minimum chromatic number of a graph not in the class. I will present a surprising version of this theorem for finite geometries, obtained in joint work with Jim Geelen. This result is a corollary of the famous Density Hales-Jewett Theorem of Furstenberg and Katznelson.