What's On at UWA

Dr. Susan Peters is a postdoctoral research associate at the Epidemiology Group of the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research. Her research activities focus on exposure assessment methods to apply in (occupational) cancer epidemiology.

Want to go on exchange to Asia? Come along to the info session to hear specific details on studying in Asia. Meet UWA students who have studied there as well as students studying at UWA from Asia.

The Seminar: Promotion of lung volume recruitment in atelectatic lung and maintenance of existing recruited lung are vital goals of contemporary ventilatory support. In the mature lung, the recruitment of terminal airspaces are governed by power-law distributions, arising from avalanches associated with threshold pressure phenomena propagating down a branching tree structure. There is increasing evidence that the superimposition of noise on the pressure waveform during conventional can promote recruitment of collapsed lung zones when the peak inspiratory pressure is at or around the lower inflexure and that this approach may also promote production of endogenous surfactant. The mechanism likely involves the phenomenon of stochastic resonance. Stochastic resonance is most simply described as the addition of noise to a weak input signal to enhance output in a nonlinear system. It is a widespread, naturally occurring phenomenon that can be seen reflected in the patterns of world weather, fluctuations on the stock market, population biology, and optimal functioning of neural networks, to name but a few. The essential ingredients for stochastic resonance are a nonlinear dynamic system, a weak biologic signal, and superimposed noise. Recent studies comparing variable to constant volume and rhythm ventilation patterns in newborn lambs demonstrate a physiological advantage of variable input for lung volume recruitment, and upregulation of surfactant protein and developmental genes, suggesting that the newborn lung is programmed to respond to variability, and that variability may confer survival advantage. The Speaker: Professor Jane Pillow is a clinical academic neonatologist at the University of Western Australia and Co-Director of the newly formed UWA Centre for Neonatal Research and Education. She is acknowledged internationally as an expert in the area of neonatal respiratory physiology and mechanical ventilation. Prof Pillow is internationally renowned for her particular expertise in high-frequency ventilation, having undertaken completed her PhD thesis in 2000 on “Optimising High-Frequency Oscillatory Ventilation in Neonates”. Since completing her PhD with Distinction in 2000, Prof Pillow’s research interests have expanded to include high-frequency jet ventilation, variable ventilation, bubble CPAP, patient triggered ventilation and minimising lung and diaphragmatic injury during resuscitation. Her research group in Perth undertakes animal studies using the preterm lamb as a model of neonatal respiratory distress syndrome, many of which are performed in collaboration with interstate and international colleagues in medical, physiological, anatomical and biomedical engineering departments. Future plans for the lamb work include the development of a preterm lamb intensive care unit for long term ventilation of preterm lambs. At KEMH, Professor Pillow also runs a neonatal lung function laboratory, and is involved in clinical trials and follow-up functional studies of children born prematurely in addition to involvement in clinical trials. Jane has obtained over $4.5 million AUD in research funding, including 4 grants from the NHMRC (3 as CIA) and 3 grants from the NIH and has had continuous scholarship and fellowship funding from the NHMRC and Viertel Foundation since 1997. She has extensive involvement in peer-review activities relevant to neonatal research, mechanical ventilation and respiratory physiology. In addition to her academic responsibilities, Prof Pillow is a Consultant Neonatologist in the Women’s and Newborn’s Health Service. She is currently based within the UWA Centre of Neonatal Research and Education and the Neonatal Clinical Care Unit at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth, which has 100 neonatal beds including 30 bed NICU, but which caters frequently for up to 40 infants on mechanical ventilation or CPAP.

Find out why your bike makes noises, is hard to ride, or why the gears and brakes aren't that great.

Doctor Bike will fix minor mechanical problems and give advice on what's wrong and how to fix it.

Whilst trade and enterprise have led Australia's bilateral relations with China, education promotes mutual understanding and long lasting links. This year's forum will focus on developing Chinese language and cultural competency in schools, universities and industry. His Excellency Mr Chen Yuming, Chinese Ambassador to Australia, will provide the keynote address and a panel of business leaders and education representatives will share their experiences.

Want to go on exchange to Scandinavia? Come along to the info session to hear specific details on studying in Scandinavia. Meet UWA students who have studied there as well as students studying at UWA from Scandinavia.

Ross completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Western Australia and joined WAIMR in 2008 where he undertook an honours project in the Laboratory of Synthetic Biology and Drug Discovery supervised by Dr Aleksandra Filipovska and Dr Oliver Rackham. In 2009 he began a PhD (also in the Rackham/Filipovska lab) and has investigated the role of rRNA in controlling the efficiency of selenocysteine incorporation.

The ribosome is a 2.5 MDa molecular machine that converts the information encoded in mRNA into protein, following the rules defined by the genetic code. In all organisms protein composition is limited to 20 amino acids, with the rare exceptions of pyrrolysine and selenocysteine. Although rarely used in the proteome, the incorporation of selenocysteine into proteins is essential for life in many organisms, including humans. The mRNA encoding a selenoprotein has a stem loop known as a SECIS following a UGA stop codon that facilitates the ribosome to introduce selenocysteine at the stop codon. This requires a unique set of factors used only for the synthesis and insertion of selenocysteine (SelA, SelB, SelC and SelD).

The human proteome includes 25 selenoproteins that are mostly uncharacterised because of the inability to express them in bacteria. This is due to the divergence of RNA and protein factors as well as the inherently low efficiency of selenocysteine incorporation in bacteria. We have developed a reporter gene that provides a life/death selection for selenocysteine incorporation and identified mutations in the 16S rRNA which affect the efficiency of the process. This was validated using the endogenous E. coli selenoprotein formate dehydrogenase H. This opens the door for high efficiency site-specific incorporation of selenocysteine and the study of recombinant human selenoproteins. Furthermore the identification of sequences that alter ribosome function provides information on the fundamental biology of protein synthesis.

Macroecological theory predicts that along direct physiological gradients there will be unimodal abundance distributions of species and consistent rates of assemblage turnover. However, the majority of marine studies that have investigated the realised distribution of species along latitudinal or temperature gradients have generally found unimodal distributions to be rare.

We asses fish distributions along a temperature gradient in a stable oligotrophic seascape and suggest that unimodal distributions will be more common. The high diversity and percentage of endemic species in terrestrial and marine habitats of southwestern Australia is likely due to the stable geological and oceanographic history of the region.

In comparison, studies of abundance distribution in other marine systems have been conducted in relatively heterogeneous and productive environments. The old, climatically buffered, oligotrophic seascape of southwestern Australia has provided a simple system in which the consistent influence of physiological gradients on the abundance distribution of fish species can be observed.

short Bio,

Timothy Langlois is a research fellow in the School of Plant Biology and Oceans Institute at the University Western Australia, Perth.

His research examines continental-scale changes in macroecological patterns as revealed by analyses of non-destructive video surveys of fish assemblages and concurrent physical and biological time series. Tim also works within the West Australian Marine Science Institute to develop monitoring programmes to investigate changes in fish assemblages associated with environmental variation and human pressure.

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

****All Welcome****

Be transported away from the everyday with our exciting line-up of Thursday 1.10pm, free lunchtime concerts. This year's revamped Lunchtime Concert series features the best of our students in solo and small ensemble performance.

Throughout the globe, beaches are underlain and fronted seaward by rock and coral landforms. In Western Australia, many of our beaches are perched on coral, limestone and granite reefs and platforms. These hardlandforms have a strong influence on cross-shore and longshore sediment transport. However, there is no definition nor classification that distinguishes these beaches as a distinct beach-type. Also, mechanisms through which coastal sediment transport interacts with these reefs are poorly understood.

In this research a classification of cross-shore and longshore rocky landforms supporting perched beaches was developed as a framework to examine the beach morphodynamics. This classification resulted in 15 cross-shore and 7 longshore morphotypes and its application was demonstrated in the UK and Western Australia at a range of scales. The second part of this research involved investigating the morphodynamics of a perched beach complex at Yanchep Lagoon in southwestern Australia. Theeffect of rock topography on small-scale/short-term and large-scale/long-term morphodynamics was quantified. Reefs with higher elevations appeared to protect the beach during erosive events, but also inhibited landward sediment transport. Overall this resulted in more erosion and slower beach recovery during low-energy conditions. Inter-annual and seasonal variability in beach volumes was greater on sections perched on reef above mean sea level, compared to sections perched on submerged reefs. The reefs also strongly influenced longshore sediment transport by trapping the littoral drift; and by generating current jets that transported eroded sediments to downdrift areas.

The Great Barrier Reef is a valuable natural asset that provides $6 billion per annum to the Australian economy and supports more than 50,000 jobs, primarily in tourism. It’s an irreplaceable resource, a national and international icon, and it is slowly declining. In the past 50years more than half of the corals have disappeared, and the number of sharks, dugongs and turtles today is a small fraction of only a few decades ago. Increasing fishing pressure has made it harder to catch a decent-sized fish. Three major outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish have swept along the GBR since the 1960s, and a fourth is underway. In 1998 and again in 2002, global warming caused coral bleaching along the length of the Reef leading to further loss of corals. Since 2000, more than half of the individual reefs comprising the Great Barrier Reef have less than 10% coral cover, compared to an average of close to 40% in the 1960s. Many people assume that the decline is caused primarily by cyclones and crown-of-thorns starfish, but it’s not that simple. In this talk, I investigate the impact of recruitment failure on the abundance and species composition of corals across the GreatBarrier Reef. I’ll conclude with an overview of how management of the Great Barrier Reef could be improved.

As Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Catherine Morris has organized several exhibitions that explored issues related to feminism and its impact as a social, political, and intellectual construct on the development of visual culture. In this lecture she will focus on her most recent project, 'Materializing Six Years: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of the Conceptual Art Movement'.

This lecture is co-presented by the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery and the Institute of Advanced Studies.

Every year, the outstanding ability and youthful passion of the emerging artists and their mentors combine to celebrate the culmination of a yearlong collaboration. In this special concert, three young artists perform a movement of their chosen concerto onstage with orchestra in the finals of the prestigious VOSE competition. In the interval, vote in the people’s choice award for your favourite performance before immersing in the magnificence of Rachmaninov.

Program includes: Vose Concerto Competition: Sibelius- Violin Concerto, Korngold - Violin Concerto and Elgar - Cello Concerto, Berlioz - Le Carnival Romaine, Rachmaninov - Second Symphony

As part of the School of Music Outreach Program, we are pleased to extend an invitation for you and a guest to join us at this culmination concert. To claim your complimentary tickets email: [email protected]

Full registration: $250 Concession: $150

SPECIAL DISCOUNT FOR UWA STAFF AND STUDENTS ONLY – REGISTER FOR $30. NUMBERS ARE LIMITED. ENTER DISCOUNT CODE 'CSYMPUWASS' WHEN REGISTERING.

LIWA invites you to a free seminar on: "Tumour suppressor activity of microRNA-7 and microRNA-331-3p" by Dr Keith Giles, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Western Australian Institute for Medical Research (WAIMR). Time: 12 noon for light lunch with 12.30pm – 1.30pm presentation.

Want to go on exchange to the UK? Come along to the info session to hear specific details on studying in the UK. Meet UWA students who have studied there as well as students studying at UWA from the UK.

You are invited to join us at the first national melanoma conference hosted by the Scott Kirkbride Melonoma Research Centre.

This is an exciting time for research discoveries and treatment advances. The conference program brings together the world’s leading melanoma researchers to talk about the very latest in; • Melanoma clinical trials and outcomes • Molecular signalling pathways • Radiology therapy breakthroughs and palliative treatments • Biomarker discovery and , • Pathology and epidemiology studies

Distinguished guest speakers include:

Professor Charles Balch (Johns Hopkins Clinical Research Network) Professor Boris Bastian (UCSF)

Professor John Thompson (Melanoma Institute Australia) Professor Grant McArthur (Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre) Professor Graham Mann (MIA, University of Sydney) Professor Nick Hayward (Queensland Institute for Medical Research)

The Seminar: It is generally thought that lung growth follows a trajectory such that an early life deficit in lung function is maintained throughout life. This has important implications for the development of chronic lung disease whereby early life impairments in lung growth may decrease the threshold for the development of respiratory symptoms, while increasing the susceptibility to insults that exacerbate disease. As such it is critical that we understand the environmental factors that impair (or promote) lung growth in early life in order to inform public health initiatives that will improve long term lung health in the community. This presentation will discuss the importance of in utero and early life environmental exposures in modulating lung development and the susceptibility to chronic lung disease using two case studies: 1) arsenic exposure via drinking water in utero and 2) vitamin D. While arsenic and vitamin D work in opposing directions, with arsenic having a negative impact on lung development and vitamin D having a positive impact, they are both associated with chronic lung disease in later life and can be modified through public health interventions. The impact of these exposures on lung development will be discussed in light of our recent studies using mouse models.

The Speaker: Associate Professor Graeme Zosky is a Principal Investigator and Head of the Lung Growth and Environmental Health Group at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. He has a PhD in Zoology from U.W.A. (2003) and a Masters in Biostatistics from the University of Sydney (2010). His research focuses on the role of early life exposures in the development of chronic lung disease later in life. He is also an international leader in the design and application of novel techniques for assessing lung mechanics in laboratory animals.

Want to go on exchange to Europe? Come along to the info session to hear specific details on studying in Europe. Meet UWA students who have studied there as well as students studying at UWA from Europe.

The branch of limnology often referred to as ‘Tropical’ limnology is represented by lake studies as diverse as those from alpine, high elevation lakes in Papua New Guinea to athallasic saline lakes located in tropical desert climes.

Thus it can be argued that the internal variability in the limnological characteristics of tropical lakes may well be as great as that found between tropical lakes and temperate and sub-temperate lakes. We will discuss the properties that are assumed when we discuss ‘tropical’ limnology and whether the assumption of their jurisprudence or ‘special’ characteristics is sound. These will include:

- Water Temperature and Density

- Gas solubilities and their implications

- Nutrient cycling and primary production

- Metabolic rates

Bio:

Kevin Boland obtained his Ph.D. from James Cook University. He spent many years as Principal Scientist (Water Quality) with the Northern Territory Government and for the past 17 years has been the Managing Director of Tropical Water Solutions Pty. Ltd., a small, specialist company working in the field of tropical limnology and water quality management.

He has studied tropical limnology for 35 years and is internationally recognised as a leader in this field. He has been involved in studies that encompass most of the lakes located in tropical North Australia and many in South-east Asia and further abroad. His insight into tropical lakes includes both the technical and social issues that affect contemporary attitudes to lakes of the tropical belt.

In recent years Kevin has observed a renewal of respect for the value of tropical lakes not only as resources but also as a source for social cohesion within indigenous and non-indigenous communities. In his words paraphrased from Ivan Illyich ‘ We now talk about H2O and water as separate entities and are starting to understand their interactions and future roles for communities and social well-being’.

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

****All Welcome****