What's On at UWA

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Speaker: John Sheekey (University College Dublin)

Title: Subspaces of Matrices over Finite Fields with Restricted Rank

Time and place: 4pm Friday 20 Jul 2018, Weatherburn LT

Abstract: Rank-metric codes are codes consisting of matrices over a finite field, with the distance between two matrices defined as the rank of their difference. Delsarte showed that if U is a subspace of m x n matrices in which the rank of every nonzero element is at least k, then the dimension of U is at most n(m-k+1). Linear maximum rank-distance (MRD) codes are subspaces obtaining this bound. They are the rank-metric analogue of MDS codes. Delsarte showed the existence of examples for all parameters. Interest in the topic has increased in recent years due to potential applications, for example in random network coding, and in cryptography.

Finite semifields are division algebras over a finite field, where multiplication is not assumed to be associative. Some constructions are known, but classification remains a difficult open problem. They have been studied in part due to their connections to objects in finite geometry such as projective planes, spreads, ovoids, and flocks. Semifields also correspond to n-dimensional subspaces of n x n matrices where every nonzero element is invertible; i.e. MRD codes with minimum distance n.

In this talk we will give an overview of the known constructions and classifications of semifields and MRD codes. We will present recent algebraic constructions using linearized polynomials and skew-polynomial rings, which constitutes the largest known family.

Past and future seminars may be found at http://www.maths.uwa.edu.au/~glasby/GroupsAndCombinatoricsSeminar/S18.html

MMoB's 2018 WA Migration and Mobilities Update Conference will focus on Modern Slavery and Migration, with keynote speakers Professor Jennifer Burn, Anti-Slavery Australia, and Assoc. Professor Marie Segrave, Border Crossing Observatory, plus a range of panellists from community, academia and government. A half day workshop to develop a set of indicators of modern slavery will follow the Conference. Come along, learn from the experts, and have your say. Watch the registration site for more details.

The outreach program will cover the requirements companies and organisations must meet when exporting controlled goods and technologies or supplying related information by intangible means. These include military or commercial items that may have potential military end use or could be used in developing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons system.

Regulated assembly and horizontal transfer of tripartite mobile DNA elements

Speaker: Phill Schultz (University of Western Australia)

Title: The curious incident of the Leningrad mathematicians

Time and place: 4pm Friday 27 Jul 2018, Weatherburn LT

Abstract: The solution of a famous Sherlock Holmes mystery hinges on the fact that none of the characters noticed a dog howling in the nighttime.

Something similar occurred in Leningrad in the 1980s: two issues of the Proceedings of the Steklov Institute contained incompatible theorems about direct decompositions of finite rank torsion-free abelian groups, and no-one seems to have noticed.

I will describe the theorems and try to resolve the mystery.

Past and future seminars may be found at http://www.maths.uwa.edu.au/~glasby/GroupsAndCombinatoricsSeminar/S18.html

At the UWA Conservatorium of Music, we know that performance enhances your brain, your social skills and helps you reach your full potential.

We also know that exams and auditions can be a daunting experience for young musicians!

Join us for the annual Keyed Up! Day of Piano where you can learn tips and tricks of piano performance from some of Perth’s most experienced teachers and examiners. Why not ensure that every performance you give is one that you are proud of, whether that be for your University or School assessment, WACE practical or AMEB or other grade exams!

The skills that you learn at the Keyed Up! Day of Piano will give you the confidence to excel in all your performance endeavours!

Led by UWA Head of Keyboard and Performance Studies, Graeme Gilling and supported by Perth’s finest pianists, teachers and performance specialists and ideally timed for those students undertaking ATAR Music and AMEB or other grade exams the Keyed Up! Day of Piano is an event not to be missed!

Register to perform and receive feedback from one of our expert panel in an informal workshop setting or just come along and observe students at your own level.

You’ll also have the opportunity to:

- Hear performances by UWA Conservatorium of Music students - Explore the Conservatorium’s Historical Instrument collection with a guided session led by Dr Cecilia Sun - Discover the range of AMEB piano options with Valerie Lang

Treated wastewater (TWW) is infiltrated into aquifers via infiltration ponds for disposal and non-potable reuse at many wastewater treatment plants across WA. Infiltration, a form of Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR), provides water quality improvement of TWW associated with natural processes during infiltration and within the aquifer. A collaborative research project between the CSIRO and Water Corporation analysed decades of historical groundwater and TWW quality data using a probabilistic modelling approach to evaluate TWW contaminant removal efficiency via aquifer treatment.

The analysis of TWW infiltration sites with long-term operational data will be presented providing evidence that with appropriate wastewater treatment, recharge volume and aquifer characteristics, contaminants may be substantially attenuated via aquifers.

Dr Mike Donn is a Research Scientist with CSIRO. Since joining CSIRO in 2006 his research has been focused on understanding biogeochemical transformations in shallow groundwater systems in urban and peri-urban settings. His current research interests lie in the application of environmental chemistry to understanding the impacts of using treated wastewater for Managed Aquifer Recharge, in particular the natural attenuation in shallow groundwater and the potential benefits for non-potable reuse and the environment.

Debbie Reed and Arron Lethorn from the Water Corporation will also be available for questions

The 2018 George Seddon Memorial Lecture by David Blair, Emeritus Professor, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery.

Over less than two human lifetimes, discoveries in physics transformed the world and our sense of place in the universe. We harnessed electromagnetic waves, thereby shrinking our planet to a village; an infinitesimal speck in a vast and inflating universe. After a long struggle, we learnt how to detect waves of space, gravitational waves, which allow us to hear the universe, thereby changing our sense of the universe once again. Each wave of discovery re-emphasises our transient and improbable existence in an equally transient universe. Our treasure, which is our life and our planet, grows in value as each successive discovery uncovers more and more threads on which our existence depends.

Gravitational science has linked Western Australia to the world and to the whole universe. Einstein’s revolutionary theory of gravity was created while Western Australians were fighting in the first world war. In 1920 while Western Australia was still mourning those killed and wounded, Professor Alexander Ross, Foundation Professor of Physics at UWA campaigned for an international expedition to test Einstein’s extraordinary new theory during an eclipse of the Sun, best seen at Wallal Downs in the Kimberley. Two years later under instructions from Prime Minister Billy Hughes, a Trans Australian steam train carried a team of US astronomers and huge telescopes through Kalgoorlie and Guildford, en route to Wallal Downs. They provided the first indisputable proof of Einstein’s prediction that space is warped by matter.

On 15th September 2015, a vast explosion of gravitational waves was detected by an International team that included more than 20 West Australians. They shared in the world’s richest science prize. The gold that enriched Western Australia was itself a mystery: where is gold created? In 2017 the same team heard a long drawn out siren sound of rippling space - the signature of colliding neutron stars. In their final crash, they slung out blobs of neutrons that exploded like a vast atomic bomb. The Zadko telescope at UWA’s Gingin Centre and many other telescopes observed this explosion and the tell-tale signature of gold.

The annual George Seddon Lecture is sponsored by the UWA Institute of Advanced Studies and UWA’s Friends of the Grounds.

Exploring the evolution of artefacts and related behaviours (e.g., artefact production) spatio-temporally is a long-standing issue for both archaeologists and cultural historians. In the modern world, the survival of traditional craftsmanship and corresponding craft production are significantly challenged by urbanization, industrialization, and globalization. Examining traditional contexts of change allows a comparison of past and present transformations in craftsmanship. It helps reveal change at the social, cultural, economic, and ideological levels, and further helps our understanding of the significance of contemporary developments and changes in craft manufacturing. This discussion foregrounds my thesis, which aims to identify how Chinese craft production is changing and whether this poses a threat to any aspect of Chinese intangible cultural heritage. The presentation is based on a completed historical review of the craft production and transmission of craftsmanship in traditional China (from prehistory to 1959). It will discuss production processes of two crafts (porcelain and textile) in traditional China based on a structural Marxist model of society. It will examine how in different periods craftsmanship was transmitted, in which mode, and what affected the craftsmanship transmission.

Be transported from the everyday by our free lunchtime concert series, featuring the best musical talent from within the UWA Conservatorium of Music and around the country.

The lunchtime concert series resumes this week with a special performance by Head of the Conservatorium, Professor Alan Lourens. Alan will perform some virtuosic works for Euphonium accompanied by Gaby Gunders on piano.

PROGRAM

'Beautiful Colorado' - Joseph De Luca

'Zanette' - Percy Code

'A Cold Mist Over the Cypress Tree' for unaccompanied Euphonium - Philip Wilby

'Variations on a Neapolitan Song' - Herman Bellstedt

Entry is free - no bookings required

Social, cultural and archival knowledge frameworks have historically made sense of sexually-diverse youth through a concept of mobility in order to achieve community belonging. Specifically, the conceptual stories of queer youth coming out, transitions to adulthood, social engagement and identity stability are stories marked by narratives of movement from rural to urban areas, from small town to larger town and from mid-size city to large city as a so-called ‘gay mecca’. Although the story of “queer youth mobility into adulthoods of belonging” continues to be circulated in popular culture, personal accounts of coming out shared online and in self-help guidance and community-sponsored suicide prevention sites such as the It Gets Better videos, recent empirical work reveals some of the ways in which young people have a more complex, nuanced understanding of mobility, migration, rural/urban relations and expectations related to minority community. This paper examines a range of instances of queer youth mobility related in participant interviews and focus groups undertaken for the ARC Discovery Queer Generations project. Examining two generations (those born in the 1970s and those in the 1990s) from three small Australian towns and three Australian state capital cities, the veracity of the message of queer youth mobility is interrogated. The paper will discuss some of the ways in which young people think about mobility and belonging, and the relationship between geographic mobility and social mobility.

Speaker: Gordon Royle (University of Western Australia)

Title: Online Collaborative LaTeX Authoring with Overleaf

Time and place: 4pm Friday 03 Aug 2018, Weatherburn LT

Abstract: This seminar is in the (very) occasional CMSC Technical Seminar Series covering useful computational tools for mathematicians.

All of us have extensive collaborations both locally and internationally, and face the logistical challenge of coordinating the efforts of multiple authors in different time zones, on different operating systems and with differing levels of technical interest and acumen.

For many of us, the emergence of Dropbox was the first technical development since the advent of email that changed our collaboration habits, pushing us from “revise-and-reply” to the “shared folder” paradigm.

Over the last 5 or so years, web technologies have advanced greatly, and a number of fully online LaTeX editing platforms (using a web browser as the GUI) have been developed. After a half-decade of launches, name-changes and mergers, one platform, namely Overleaf, is now clearly dominant, both in total numbers of users and range of services offered.

In this seminar, I will briefly describe various collaboration paradigms, give their pros and cons, before giving a fairly extensive introduction to / demonstration of Overleaf.

As with Dropbox, there is always some concern about entrusting one’s work to some initially-unknown remote server, and as with Dropbox, Overleaf’s free service provides something useful enough to engage your attention, but with key limitations that only a paid subscription will remove.

The 2018 Tom Stannage Memorial Lecture by Ann McGrath AM, the Kathleen Fitzpatrick ARC Laureate Fellow and Distinguished Professor, School of History, Australian National University

In this memorial lecture, Professor McGrath will focus upon the story of how ‘Terra Australis’ or ‘Sydneia’ - Linnaean classifications for Sydney’s ‘primitive earth’ – became an agent in the importation of Anglo-Hellenic antiquity. What might such clay stories, replete with alluring female figures, reveal about plans to transform a strange earth? How could a fantastically storied antiquity, with it super-corporeal characters, co-exist with the Enlightenment’s fascination with science? Do Indigenous songlines provides clues? And how might such questions relate to the more recent articulations of deep human pasts associated with ancient places like Lake Mungo and the many sites currently being researched in Western Australia?

The 2018 Tom Stannage Memorial Lecture - This memorial lecture commemorates the exceptional contribution made by Professor Tom Stannage (1944-2012) to the Western Australian community. Professor Stannage was a prominent Australian historian who worked hard to foster a wider understanding of Western Australian history and heritage. He is remembered as an inspiring teacher and a passionate advocate for the study of history.

A panel discussion presented by the UWA School of Human Sciences (Exercise and Sport Science) and the UWA Institute of Advanced Studies.

Why Tamper? Understanding the aerodynamics of a cricket ball - Professor Andrew Cresswell, Head, School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences and Professor of Biomechanics/Neurophysiology at The University of Queensland and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Professor Cresswell will present an overview of how a cricket ball behaves in flight. Particular focus will be on the material properties and characteristics of the ball. This will lead to a description of the aerodynamics of a stationary and rotating cricket ball. The aerodynamic effects of the ball’s surface properties and speed will be discussed.

The Law: caught and bowled - Dr Tony Buti, Member for Armadale, WA State Parliament and Honorary Fellow, Law School, The University of Western Australia.

In this talk Dr Buti will provide a commentary on the law of cricket and the process leading to the sanctions imposed on Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft, then move on to discussing issues of sporting contracts, sports tribunals and behavioural misconduct by athletes.

Caught out: a perspective on ethical behaviour in sport - Associate Professor Sandy Gordon, The University of Western Australia, Registered Sport Psychologist.

Dr Gordon will present a critical perspective on the topic, which explains behaviour in professional sport from a rarely considered ideological viewpoint, and comment on social psychological factors such as apparent misuse of power, group think and risky shift phenomena. Suggestions for sport organisations on value-proofing will be offered and also his personal opinion on the ‘character-building and sport’ relationship.

A public lecture by Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience, Senior Fellow Brasenose College, University of Oxford and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Our internal 24 hour biological clock (circadian clock) and daily sleep processes interact to play an essential, yet poorly recognised, role in our lives. Sleep is not just the simple suspension of physical movement but is an active state when the brain coordinates indispensable activities that define our ability to function whilst awake. The quality of our sleep profoundly influences our cognition, levels of social interaction, empathy, alertness, mood, memory, physical strength, susceptibility to infection, and every other aspect of our waking biology. We are beginning to understand how these critical processes are generated and regulated and many surprising findings have surfaced. For example, until recently it seemed inconceivable to most vision researchers and ophthalmologists that there could be an unrecognised type of light sensor within the eye. Yet we now know that there exists a “3rd class” of photoreceptor in the eye that detects the dawn/dusk cycle and which sets the internal clock to the solar day. The past decade has witnessed remarkable progress in understanding how the brain generates and regulates our daily patterns of sleep and wake. In parallel with this understanding, there has been a growing realisation that our sleep and circadian rhythms cannot be ignored in our headlong dash to generate a 24/7 society. This presentation will review the biology of sleep and circadian rhythms, what happens when these systems go wrong and how recent discoveries are allowing new therapeutics to be developed that will help correct abnormal patterns of sleep and wake.