What's On at UWA

Carbon nanostructures have been the topic of two Nobel prizes to date, Chemistry in 1996 (fullerenes) and Physics in 2010 (graphene), but carbon’s versatile bonding has resulted in the discovery of a wide range of other exotic nanoforms. We will take a quick safari through this jungle of bamboos, peapods, nanohorns, scrolls, nanobuds, etc. To help make sense of this bewildering array of forms I will propose a nomenclature based on their structure.

The underlying structural differences of each carbon nanoform can fundamentally alter their reaction chemistry and mechanical and electronic properties. Using first principles calculations I will examine specific examples where these effects modify the underlying chemistry and physical properties of these materials, such as their oxidation behaviour and mutual interaction. As well as giving unique insight into experimental results, such calculations can predict fascinating new behaviour and open up undiscovered pathways for synthesis and post-processing.

As the world population grows and we are facing a 70% increase of food demand over the next four decades,the need to retain versatile and productive soils for food production and to maximise the output from the land is one of the most important issues of our time. This symposium will bring together world leading soil scientists to highlight the importance of soil health, from a national and global food security perspective. They will examine the role which science, technology and innovation can play in supporting Australian farmers in maintaining and developing healthy soils to achieve productivity gains and sustainable agricultural production. To participate in this workshop register online via www.soilhealthwa.eventbrite.com.au

The Seminar: With ageing, the progressive loss of skeletal muscle mass and function (sarcopenia) results in frailty, loss of independence and is a major cause of increased falls and fractures. Surprisingly little is known about the mechanisms of sarcopenia and these will prove to be complex. We have established a mouse model of sarcopenia and described the time course of age-related muscle wasting in C57Bl/6J mice. This model is currently used to investigate mechanisms of age-related muscle wasting. The talk will focus on three aspects of sarcopenia: 1) understanding molecular changes in ageing muscle with the aim to identify sarcopenia markers and develop therapies; 2) loss of myofibre innervation; 3) use of exercise as an intervention to prevent sarcopenia.

The Speaker: Tea Shavlakadze is a Research Associate Professor at the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, the University of Western Australia. The research of TS has targeted factors controlling growth and maintenance of skeletal muscle mass and potential therapies for muscle disorders with a focus on in vivo studies using mouse models. Major areas of research include the role of Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1) in regulating skeletal muscle mass, and analyses of signalling pathways and other factors involved in many situations of skeletal muscle wasting.

Skin is the largest organ of human body. One of the major traumas to the skin is caused by burn injuries. Over a 170,000 people sustain burn injuries each year in Australia alone, of which majority are children. There are a number of possible treatments available clinically and their applicability depends on the extent of the injury. Current treatments are not only expensive but also have major limitations. Extensive work has been carried out to promote the healing process in such injuries however; the ever-arching problem of scar formation post healing is greatly overlooked. In this presentation a new tissue engineering approach will be discussed towards reduced scar wound healing. Different hybrid hydrogels and anti-scarring agents will be demonstrated as potential scaffold systems. Importance of cell motility will be highlighted along with cell proliferation to promote wound healing.

The Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis (CMCA) provides local researchers and students in biology and biomaterials with access to infrastructure and expertise across imaging (small animal, optical, confocal, 3-D and electron microscopies), analytical (elemental, isotopic, and compound analysis) and flow cytometry (population analysis, phenotyping and sorting) platforms. With the ongoing acquisition of new bio-focussed key facilities and staff, this seminar will aim to present an overview of CMCA’s current capabilities in the biological and biomaterials space. In particular, new capabilities, research applications, plus current and future opportunities for local researchers working with bio-related samples to engage with CMCA will be presented.

The Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis (CMCA) provides local researchers and students in biology and biomaterials with access to infrastructure and expertise across imaging (small animal, optical, confocal, 3-D and electron microscopies), analytical (elemental, isotopic, and compound analysis) and flow cytometry (population analysis, phenotyping and sorting) platforms.

With the ongoing acquisition of new bio-focussed key facilities and staff, this seminar will aim to present an overview of CMCA’s current capabilities in the biological and biomaterials space. In particular, new capabilities, research applications, plus current and future opportunities for local researchers working with bio-related samples to engage with CMCA will be presented. For more information on CMCA see: www.cmca.uwa.edu.au/facilities

About the speaker: Peta Clode has been at the CMCA for almost 10 years. Currently she is head of CMCA’s biological and biomedical applications area. Peta’s main interests lie in metals in biology and cell structure-function relationships, with particular expertise in sample preparation, imaging and analytical techniques in the biosciences. Through her position at CMCA, Peta has experience working with plants, animals, cell cultures, bacteria, algae, polymers, liquid suspensions, biominerals, soils, parasites and various other sample types.

Dr Melonek completed her PhD in 2010 in Plant Cell Biology at University of Kiel, Germany. She continued her work in Kiel for the next 1.5 years but recently moved to Perth to join the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology at UWA. Her research will focus on characterization of proteins implicated in regulation of chloroplast gene expression in Arabidopsis. MORE INFO AT http://www.plantenergy.uwa.edu.au/aboutus/seminars/seminars.shtml or email [email protected]

LIWA invites you to a free seminar on: "Improving lung health by preventing prematurity" by W/Prof John Newnham, Head of School, School of Women's and Infants' Health, University of Western Australia. A light lunch will be served from 12.00pm with a 12.30pm – 1.30pm presentation.

This course will take you through the basics you need to do statistical analyses in R, a powerful freeware statistical package.

The course will cover basic statistics such as t-tests, regression and ANOVA as well as producing high quality graphics.

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 http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

The Seminar: Respiratory loads have long been used to stress the respiratory muscles. When these loads cause failure, however, this has been attributed to inadequate pressure generation by the respiratory muscles, especially the diaphragm. Recently, we discovered that in a rat model of load-induced failure, inspiratory drive to the diaphragm was still elevated at the time of failure, indicating that the origin of failure was not central. However, blood pressure decreased and we observed that cardiac troponin, a marker specific for myocardial necrosis, was present. Troponin was released regardless of the type of respiratory load (inspiratory resistive, repeated inspiratory occlusions, and expiratory threshold). Thus, respiratory loads, by causing arterial hypoxemia, reduce O2 delivery to the heart and respiratory muscles. Inadequate O2 delivery, in the face of increased O2 demands, leads therefore to cardiorespiratory, not respiratory, failure. These results may be relevant to acute exacerbations of respiratory diseases, particularly when supplementary O2 is not available.

The Speaker: Prof Iscoe completed his undergraduate and Doctoral studies at McGill University and his post-doc at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He now holds a cross-appointment with the Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences and Department of Medicine at Queen’s University. Prof Iscoe is a respiratory physiologist with a research interests in the control of the diaphragm; skeletal muscle fatigue and injury; cardiorespiratory failure; treatment of carbon monoxide poisoning; and hypercoagulability in obstructive sleep apnoea.

The course is designed for people with knowledge of basic statistics who want to learn more about designing and analysing experiments.

It will cover material ranging from a review of simple one-way ANOVA, to more complex designs and analyses including crossed and nested factors with fixed and random effects.

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 http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

SEM is used widely by researchers to test complex relationships among observed (measured) and latent (unobserved) variables. This course will introduce you to SEM and also covers issues relating to model specification, identification and estimation, assessing model fit (goodness-of-fit criteria), and dealing with problem data.

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 http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

The course is designed as a comprehensive coverage of applied SEM techniques using the Mplus statistical software package. Mplus offers a general modelling framework that allows both the modelling of cross-sectional and longitudinal data using observed variables that are a combination of continuous and categorical variables.

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 http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

*Advanced methods in exposure assessment and epidemiology *Methods for combining exposure assessments and epidemiological models for use in risk assessment and risk prediction *Use of molecular markers in the identification of occupational and environmental risk factors *Heat stress and acclimatisation of workers, development of a biomarker of acclimatisation status *Risk assessment in environmental health decision making *Lessons learned from the Western Australian experience of mesothelioma

This presentation will consider the use of MRI techniques to explore some of the following topics: Flow in porous media (reactors and rock cores), flow in rheometers, fouling of desalination membranes, crystallisation/freezing processes and moisture adsorption by foodstuffs. It will conclude with an overview of robust and mobile MRI (and related technique) capabilities that have been established in the School of Mechanical and Chemical Engineering at UWA

The Speaker:

Professor Susan Shore from the Department of Otolaryngology, University of Michigan has been working in the field of Neuroanatomy and Neurophysiology of the auditory system for more than two decades. Much of her work has focused on the role of neural connections from other parts of the brain to the cochlear nucleus. A strong emphasis has been on two major projection systems: the somatosensory innervation to the external regions of the cochlear nucleus, and descending connections from other auditory structures to core regions of the cochlear nucleus. In addition to the normal innervation, her laboratory also study changes in these pathways after various forms of hearing loss, and their possible roles in tinnitus, loudness recruitment and central auditory processing.

Marc Diederich was awarded his PhD in molecular pharmacology in 1994 by the University Henri Poincaré Nancy 1, France. After training at the University of Cincinnati, USA, he focused his research on cancer and leukemia cell signaling pathways and gene expression mechanisms triggered by natural compounds with epigenetic-, anti-inflammatory- and cell death-inducing potential. Professor Diederich directs the Laboratory for molecular and cellular biology of cancer (LBMCC) at Kirchberg Hospital in Luxemburg. In 2012 he was appointed Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the College of Pharmacy of Seoul National University. Since 1998, he has been the organizer of the “Signal Transduction” meetings in Luxembourg. Professor Diederich’s research focuses on the development of novel anti-cancer drugs,for example, natural marine compounds which represent an interesting source of novel leads with potent chemotherapeutic or chemo-preventive activities. In the last decades, structure-activity-relationship studies have led to the development of naturally-derived or semi-synthetic analogues with improved bioactivity, a simplified synthetic target or less toxicity. Professor Diederich and his collaborators investigated for example chalcones that are aromatic ketones, known to exhibit anti-microbial, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer activities. Organic sulfur compounds (OSCs) derived from plants, fungi or bacteria can also serve as chemopreventive and/or chemotherapeutic agents and attracted Professor Diederich’s interest as a promising source for novel anti-cancer agents.

Inaugural Meeting of the WA Flow Group. Presentations by: Dr Senta Walton (Pathology & Laboratory Medicine UWA) "CD4+ T cells during MCMV infections'; Fiona Robins (Pathwest, Haematology) "CS&T application settings in diagnostic flow"; Dr Matt Linden (CMCA, UWA) "Flourish for panel design" Please RSVP for catering purposes.

This free symposium, open to all, has been organised by the microbiome working group of the DOHaD Consortium. A total of 16 speakers from throughout the University will cover a range aspects relating to metagenomics/metabolomics and early life origins of health and disease. Please RSVP for catering purposes.

The aim of this course is to introduce you to basic statistics. It will cover descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations); data exploration; basic categorical data analysis; simple linear regression and basic analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Subsidised rates are available for UWA Graduate Research Students.

Please register online.