What's On at UWA

Infrared spectroscopic assays for body fluid analysis are of great interest, because these are reagentless and allow the simultaneous analysis of several analytes. Different measurement techniques have been routinely utilized for blood and derived fluids such as plasma, serum and dialysates. Samples can be fluids or dry-films prepared by water evaporation, and high-throughput applications have been reported recently by us for cancer screening applications.

Continuous measurement technology for patient monitoring has been realized in combination with micro-dialysis. The performance of our infrared spectrometer-based system was tested in several clinical measurement campaigns, using the sensor also in combination with a programmed insulin pump for testing our «artificial pancreas system« for type 1 diabetic subjects and critically ill patients. For safeguarding the spectroscopic multivariate calibration models, the influence of various drugs, when administered in amounts to reach therapeutic concentration levels, has been investigated for glucose cross-sensitivities.

Another promising spectroscopic application is non-invasive blood glucose assay technology based on either near-infrared spectroscopy using the diffuse reflection technique or mid-infrared photoacoustic spectroscopy. An outlook will be given, whether novel photonic technology based on quantum cascade lasers can replace currently favoured electrochemical enzymatic biosensors for continuous metabolite monitoring.

The Centre for Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine is holding its Annual Research Symposium on Tuesday 15 April 2014 at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research from 8.45 am – 4.30 pm. The theme for the meeting is “At the cutting edge: New Developments in Regenerative Medicine” Professor Ed Stanley from Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne will deliver the keynote presentation entitled: "Pluripotent stem cell models of human development and disease.” For a copy of the programme and to RSVP please contact Barbara Telfer at [email protected] Please RSVP by 5pm on Tuesday the 1 April 2014.

The Art of Zhen Shan Ren (Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance) takes viewers through the story of Falun Dafa - from its introduction to the public in 1992, through the beauty and enlightenment of the practice, to the unjust and unrelenting persecution, moving forward through the peaceful resistance of Falun Dafa practitioners worldwide who seek to bring an end to the persecution, then through themes of karmic retribution, salvation and grace, and finishing with a moment of choice.

Storytelling has long been one of fine art's greatest joys, and this Exhibition's ability to cross cultural, lingual and ethnic barriers is highlighted each time it is shown.

Inspired by tradition and divinity, the artists paint - often collaboratively - stories either experienced by themselves or shared by fellow Falun Dafa practitioners worldwide. Realist oil painting, or Neo-Renaissance, was chosen as the style for its narrative capabilities, accessibility and, above all, its purity.

The Exhibition aims to educate and draw focus to an unjust persecution - to record a moment in time when the universal principles of Truth, Compassion, Forbearance are openly opposed. It also highlights the danger of becoming involved in the persecution through state-run ventures such as forced labour and forced organ harvesting of Falun Dafa practitioners. Outlasting these sombre themes, however, is a steady message of hope and fulfilment, as the enduring courage and belief of practitioners bring positive change in numerous dark settings.

A central hope of founding artist Professor Zhang's mission is to promote, through fine art, the understanding that freedom of belief is a fundamental human right, and to raise awareness.

Machine &/or mat based clinical Pilates classes focusing on efficient and effective movement patterns. Classes are designed to strengthen the body whilst enhancing mobility over the colder winter months! Classes may incorporate elements of myofascial and muscle release, contemporary Pilates and a variety of props.

'Group' (max 8 ppl) and 'Studio' (max 3 ppl) sessions available at various times throughout the day (incl. before or after work and lunch time sessions).

All sessions are conducted by an Accredited Exercise Physiologist and private health rebates may apply depending on your level of cover.

For a schedule and prices email [email protected] or call 6488 3333.

Professor David Thomas is Head of the Kinghorn Cancer Centre and Head of the Cancer Division of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney. His research interests include quantitative evolutionary genetics in cancer cell populations, mapping a cancer neochromosome at single nucleotide resolution, and understanding the role of the immune system in development of osteosarcoma. Professor Thomas has played a key role in establishing several large-scale cancer cohorts, including the International Sarcoma Kindred Study and Cancer 2015, a 10,000 strong Framingham-style cohort of newly diagnosed cancer patients in Victoria. In addition to leading several pivotal clinical studies, he was the founding chair of the Australasian Sarcoma Study Group and Director of the state-wide adolescent and young adult cancer service, ONTrac at Peter Mac (2005-10).

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). The statistical package SPSS will be used to illustrate the ideas demonstrated. The course will be held in a computer laboratory allowing participants to immediately apply the material covered through a series of practical examples.

Fourth annual A Life Worth Hearing Symposium on Ear and Hearing Research. The keynote speaker will be James Hall. Jay is one of the world’s most well known audiologists. Many know him through his popular audiology textbooks. He has authored over 150 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. His was one of the 34 founders of the American Academy of Audiology, and in 2012 received Distinguished Achievement Award from the Academy. His clinical and research interests include electrophysiology, tinnitus/ hyperacusis and auditory processing disorders. Jay's address will be titled The Future of Audiology. Other keynotes will be from Prof Romola Bucks, UWA, Prof Leon Straker, Curtin University, Prof Fred Chen, Lions Eye Institute, and Heather McLaren, Telehealth Unit, Western Australia Country Health Service. These and other speakers will address various current topics in ear and hearing research, including cognition, epidemiology, audiology, tissue engineering, and telehealth. Registration fees apply, with special rates for researchers and students.

R is a free and extremely powerful language and software environment for statistical computing, data analysis, and graphics. The course is designed for those who have no experience with R, but have a basic understanding of statistics. The course will include: Introduction to R: How to install R on your computer; basic R commands, how to use and understand the R help pages. Data: Reading in data and data manipulation; summarising data; basic statistical analysis and fitting linear models. Graphics and output: Basic plotting commands and how to customise your plots; how to export your plots and output in a user-friendly format. Functions: Writing simple functions and flow control structures.

Dates are 7 - 11 and 14 - 18 July 2014, 7.45 am - 5.00 pm. The holiday program provides for exciting educational days in and around the College's historic buildings and beautiful gardens. This year's entry will be expanded to cover school years 3 - 7.

The schedule starts at 7.45 each morning with breakfast in the College's Dining Hall then the day begins with a variety of activities that include the Amazing Race and Team Games, African Drumming, Cooking Lessons, Chemistry Madness, Zumba, Crime Scene at St George's and much more.

The cost is $80 per child per day casual visit or $75 per child per day for more than one child or if three or more days are booked in one week. For a booking of one week the cost is $60 per child per day. The daily price includes a high ratio of mentors to children, breakfast, lunch and tea breaks.

The course is designed as an applied course in Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) using the Mplus software package. SEM is used widely by researchers to test complex relationships among observed (measured) and latent (unobserved) variables and subsumes other analytical techniques such as regression, path analysis, factor analysis, and canonical correlation. Mplus is rapidly becoming the program of choice for the analysis of SEMs. 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. In addition, Mplus analyses multilevel modelling structures.

The first three days of the course will be an introduction to SEM and the Mplus program. The focus of the last two days of the course is on the analysis of more advanced SEM models.

If you are familiar with the Mplus program and have an understanding of material typically covered in an introduction to SEM course, you may choose to attend only the last two days of the course.

If you have completed an introductory course in SEM using another program (e.g., Amos, Lisrel, EQS) but have not previously used the Mplus program, you may choose to attend the first day and then the last two days of the course.

This course aims to provide you with an introduction to the facilities available in MS Excel from a statistical point of view. As well as an introduction to Excel, spreadsheet functions and graphics, it concentrates on performing basic statistical methods, producing charts and tables, and discusses the limitations of Excel when it comes to more complex statistical analysis.

Professor Knight has published over 110 papers and 4300+ citations and a H-index = 36, and is focused on his research interests of pulmonary pharmacology and pathology and how they impact on airway and lung function.

The School of Population Health are running a ‘community conversation’ for people who have had, or care for someone, with heart disease, heart failure or atrial fibrillation. We are really interested in people coming along to tell us how they manage their heart disease and medicines.

Heart disease is still the number one killer of Australians. However there is strong evidence that certain medications are successful in preventing a second heart attack and improving survival. The problem is that we do not know if people continue to take their medicines for a long time after being discharged from hospital.

For practice to be evidence based, researchers need to understand what is happening with medications and heart disease. To do this it is important to hear about your experiences. We want to hear about any issues you may be experiencing as well as what you think needs to be researched in the area.

Our community conversation will take place on Wednesday 6 August 2014 between 12pm and 2.30pm in the Niche at the Queen Elizabeth Medical Centre in Nedlands. RSVP Essential.

Payment of out-of-pocket expenses and light lunch are provided. For more information or to RSVP for this event, please e-mail [email protected] or call 6488 8176 Mon – Wed or 9489 7742 Thur – Fri.

We reserve the right to make changes to the events and the right to determine the confirmed registration list.

Come and find out about UWA’s undergraduate and postgraduate courses, scholarship opportunities, outstanding career options and explore our community programs and facilities.

This year there will be campus tram tours, hands-on activities, live music and entertainment, as well as plenty of fun activities for the whole family to enjoy.

Join us for Open Day 2014 from 10.00am to 4.00pm on Sunday 10 August.

Prof Singh has acted as principal investigator on numerous clinical trials of novel therapies in asthma and COPD, and has over 100 publications in peer reviewed journals. He is a member of the GOLD science committee.

Beethoven: A Tale of Triumph Concert - to be held at St George's College as part of their Spring Concert Series. The concert will see a selection from Beethoven's piano sonatas including the famous Moonlight Sonata performed by Perth's mightiest pianists! Performing: Mark Coughlan, Caroline Badnall, Raymond Yong, Anastasia Buettner-Moore, Rachel Chan, Stephen Armstrong. Free admission, bookings required.

Professor John Fingert is a US Board-certified ophthalmologist with fellowship training in glaucoma and a PhD in ophthalmic genetics. He is a clinician-scientist internationally recognised for his research work investigating the genetic basis of optic nerve disease.

Glaucoma is a disease of the optic nerve that is a common cause of vision loss and blindness, however, relatively little is known about the basic mechanisms by which the optic nerve is damaged. Glaucoma has been shown to have a strong genetic basis and identifying the genes that cause this eye disease has provided powerful insights into its pathophysiology. Professor Fingert will present recent genetic studies of normal tension glaucoma (a type of glaucoma that occurs without elevated pressure in the eye). Investigations of large families with glaucoma, transgenic mice, and stem cell derived optic nerve cells and their role in generating a new model for the causes of normal tension glaucoma will also be discussed.

Professor Alward is primarily a glaucoma clinician. His areas of research interest include pigmentary glaucoma, combined glaucoma and cataract surgery, normal tension glaucoma, and gonioscopy. The major focus of his research over more than two decades has been the molecular genetics of glaucoma. Professor Alward was part of the team that in 1993 described the first genetic linkage for open angle glaucoma (GLC1A). Subsequently, in a 1997 Science paper, they reported that mutations in the myocilin gene at the GLC1A locus caused juvenile glaucoma and 3 – 5% of adult onset open angle glaucoma.

Professor Alward will discuss the discovery of the myocilin gene and how this finding might influence the clinical management of glaucoma patients. It is a story that travels from an individual patient to treatments that might be used for his children and grandchildren. He will touch on presymptomatic molecular diagnosis, gene replacement therapy and stem cells, but will focus on “small molecule therapy” - developing drugs to treat a specific underlying molecular defect. The hope is that this will lead to treatments that are more effective, more specific and longer lasting.

Unfortunately this event has been cancelled.

Professor Mingguang He is unable to visit The University of Western Australia in September, owing to circumstances beyond his control.

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Professor Mingguang He is an ophthalmologist and Deputy Director of the Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center at Sun-yat Sen University in Guangzhou, which is China’s Key National Laboratory in Ophthalmology. He is head of the Department of Preventive Ophthalmology and has been involved in Chinese studies on prevalence and prevention of myopia; the use of self-correction using adjustable lenses for the diagnosis of refractive error in children; and leads a trial on the prevention of myopia based on increasing time outdoors in schools in Guangzhou. Professor He is also extensively involved in the World Health Organization’s Refractive Error Study in Children, looking at the prevalence of visual impairment from uncorrected refractive errors.

Although Professor He’s work focuses on epidemiological and clinical trials in China, he is also involved in many international collaborations that contribute to a better understanding of the genetic and epidemiological influences on the structure and diseases of the eye. He is recognised as a senior researcher leading outstanding work in the translation of research into clinical practice.

This workshop is for research students who would like to be more effective in their studies.