Some actual science may feature at some point.

GPs' Job Satisfaction varies according to their Location

Keywords: general practitioners job satisfaction

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Locomotion in the Brush-tailed Bettong

Keywords: locomotion oxygen treadmill bettong kangaroo

It has been known for over 20 years that red kangaroos and tammar wallabies can hop at high speeds without using any more oxygen than at lower speeds. There has been some debate about whether this phenomenon can be found in smaller hopping mammals, especially the rat-kangaroos.

I have been studying various aspects of locomotion in a species of rat-kangaroo, the brush-tailed bettong. Experiments involve exercising the animals on a motorised treadmill and measuring various physiological parameters. I will present my findings in the areas of oxygen consumption, gait patterns and body temperature during locomotion.

Control and Automaticity: Why free will is hurting psychology.

Keywords: psychology free will

No Abstract

Steroids and Hypertension

Keywords: steroids hypertension ACTH cortisol parathyroid

There is large literature describing the physiology of steroid excess in experimental models in rat, sheep and man in ACTH-induced hypertension, dating back to work which commenced in the 1970s at the Howard Florey Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. A key feature of this body of research is the dissociation of sodium and water retention from the blood pressure raising effects of ACTH and cortisol in man.

Since the 1970s, significant discoveries have occurred which have further increased our understanding of cardiovascular pathophysiology. These include; the understanding of endothelial function - the Nobel prize winning discovery of the endothelial derived relaxing factor in 1980 and the subsequent description of nitric oxide accounting for this factor in 1987, the discovery of endothelin, the description of the various natriuretic peptides, the introduction of new classes of antihypertensive agents such as the angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors and more recently the angiotensin II receptor antagonists and the description of new vasoactive hormones such as parathyroid hypertensive factor and the dilator adrenomedullin.

I have examined some of the mechanisms by which ACTH and steroid hormones raise blood pressure. In man, I have examined the role of endothelial dilator function in cortisol-induced hypertension and whether the endothelial dysfunction observed in this model of hypertension can be attributed to GR- or MR-mediated effects. In the rat, I have examined whether ACTH-induced hypertension is explicable in terms of ACTH-induced glucocorticoid production (corticosterone) as it is in man (cortisol). Further, I have examined the role of the parathyroid glands (and the putative parathyroid hypertensive factor) in ACTH-induced hypertension in the rat.

Gender Aware Design

Keywords: architecture design gender sociology psychology safety

The concept of gender recognises that men and women play different roles in society and often have different needs because of ideological, religious, economic and cultural factors. Although these roles are undergoing gradual transformations, women remain underprivileged due to unequal power relationship granting men political & economic dominance within the household and public spheres. Women have not been acknowledged as individuals, in the physical environment, having different perceptions, needs and constraints.

Planning which takes account of gender relations, roles & needs aiming for emancipation and empowerment of women is GENDER PLANNING. It is achievable by crossectoral infrastructure planning and a built environment design that takes into account women's socio- psychological responses to spatial/ land use planning. Gender planning is also political in nature & focuses on redistribution of power through women's participation in guiding the development process and its benefits.

The case study of housing projects indicated insensitivity not only in terms of facility provision but also in terms of scale of spaces, configuration of built form, facility placement, safety of areas that was tackled by the author and will be demonstrated during the presentation.

Keywords: classification searching indexing querying databases

Assume that there is an abstract space containing "n" points. If we create a new point, a query point, and proceed to identify the "k" old points closest to this query point we are performing what is known as a "k nearest neighbour search". This is a useful technique which has a wide range of applications. I will describe a few approaches to performing k nearest neighbour searching quickly, including a technique of my own called "sub-vector indexing".

The Trials and Triumphs of Installing and Operating a Continuous GPS-Based Volcano Deformation Monitoring System in Indonesia

Keywords: volcano deformation GPS earthquake warning Indonesia

In the past decade or so there has been increasing interest in the use of permanent, continuously-operating GPS networks. A small number of such GPS networks have been deployed in the USA, Japan, Canada, and several other countries, for large- scale, crustal motion studies. However, only in Japan has it been possible to establish a dense, country-wide continuous GPS network to support seismic research, and ultimately contribute to hazard mitigation through the implementation of an earthquake warning system. Even with such a dense network of high quality, dual-frequency GPS receivers as established by Japan's Geographical Survey Institute, the station separation is of the order of 15km or more. There are, however, applications of GPS deformation systems which require receiver densities of the order of just a few kilometres.

Furthermore, the high cost of such conventional GPS systems means that most countries cannot possibly afford to establish such systems. Applications of permanent GPS arrays include monitoring of volcano flanks, micro-faults, ground subsidence due to underground mining or fluid extraction, slope stability, and even engineering structures such as dams, etc. This paper describes the design of an automatic, GPS-based, volcano deformation system that will be deployed on an Indonesian volcano in early 1999. The basis of the design is the use of a number of low-cost GPS receivers across the area of interest, each costing less than $3000. The critical technical (and non-technical) problems that had to be overcome will be discussed.

Opiates and Sickness: Tolerance and Withdrawal.

Keywords: immune system central nervous system opioids hyperalgesia

Recent research has made it increasingly clear that the immune system and the central nervous system (CNS) in mammals are interdependent; the CNS can modulate the activity of the immune system, and the immune system can alter the function of the CNS, which is reflected in behavioural changes when the animal is sick. The endogenous opioid system is an important component of this bidirectional communication pathway and chronic use or abuse of exogenous opiates induces a range of behaviours that are characteristic of sickness.

In particular, sickness leads to increased pain sensitivity (hyperalgesia) and depressive-like symptoms (amongst other more characteristic symptons like fever etc.). Interestingly, treatments which block sickness hyperalgesia also block the formation of tolerance to morphine. This and other evidence suggests that tolerance to morphine and withdrawal may, in part at least, be a function of activity in this 'sickness system'.

Improving Radiotherapy: More dose for less work

Keywords: radiation radiotherapy cancer treatment minimising dosage

Radiation therapy (or radiotherapy) has been used for approximately 100 years now, with the aim of killing malignant cells while minimising the damage to normal tissues.

Until recently standard clinical accelerators could only practically deliver radiation using fairly standard shapes. However multileaf collimators have now been introduced which allow the possibility of easily delivering oddly shaped radiation fields. If these collimators are used dynamically, or a series of static fields are delivered one after another, the intensity delivered across the field can also be effectively modulated.

In terms of practical delivery for cancer therapy centres this impacts on two fronts. Firstly this new equipment must be made available and secondly there needs to be a method for determining the best field positions and intensity modulations.

Currently almost all radiotherapy centres 'forward plan'. This involves using past experience to decide on beam positions and weights and then using a trial and error approach to determine the best plan. To be able to deliver effective intensity modulated radiation, however, an 'inverse planning' technique is required. This relies on mathematically specifying the required dose distribution and then optimising beam positions and weights to ensure the highest possible dose to the tumour and minimal dose to the surrounding normal tissues. The aim of this study was to develop a practical algorithm to optimise beam weights achieving maximum dose to the tumour and minimum dose to the surrounding normal tissues.

The Dilemma Posed by Dispositional Concepts

Keywords: science technology explanations dispositional concepts

Often, in academic and every-day life, we give explanations for phenomena that employ dispositional concepts. Some typical examples from every-day life include saying such things as "The glass broke because it was brittle", "The woman died because the chemical she drank was poisonous", or "The rubber band conformed to its original shape after stretching because it is elastic". 'Elasticity', being 'poisonous' and 'brittleness' are all dispositional concepts. Statements involving them express a tendency to be or to do something.

It can be shown that explanations of this type, that are used in every-day speech and the hard and softer sciences, are problematic for a number of reasons (These reasons will be outlined in the seminar). However, the problem doesn't stop there. It appears that when one searches for what might be called a better, causal explanation of events, one finds dispositional concepts sneaking back into the explanation under the guise of scientific laws, forces and other similar terms. This presents us with the dilemma of rejecting our strongly intuitive criteria for legitimate explanation and acceptance of dispositional explanations; or retaining those criteria and hoping that our endeavours to understand phenomena will one day lead to explanations that fulfil these criteria.

Using stress models to look at job design and change in the Australian workplace

Keywords: stress, work, satisfaction, local government

This longitudinal study of Australian local government organisations tests two models of occupational stress. The three-factor model of occupational stress predicts that job demands, job control and social support influence levels of strain. The person-environment fit model predicts that strain results from misfit between one's work preferences and the actual work. These models make direct predictions about occupational stress, but they may also be used to predict other workplace factors.

This presentation will cover a questionnaire study conducted in several local government organisations in New South Wales. Preliminary results suggest that both models are useful for predicting health and satisfaction, and in particular the variable of job control seems to be of great importance. The implications of these results will be discussed with respect to interventions for improving jobs and working environments as well as managing workplace change.

Issue arising from the Postgraduate Forum.

"That the Government should fund PhDs according to how useful they are."

• Bosco Ho
• Joe Thurbon
• Ben Searle

• Craig Roberts
• Bill Cruikshank
• Charles Willock

Part of University of New South Wales 50th Anniversary Celebrations.

21st May 1999.

The Shopping Mall as a Public Space

Keywords: shopping mall public space

Is the shopping mall a public space (in the sense of citizens' democratic freedoms) or private property? While many may think it is a public space - where they can do what they like - (within reason) it is not a fact because it is private property. So, in what sense can it be both? For the sake of brevity, I will here rely not on my theoretical conception but on that - and the planning and constructions - of the "founding fathers" of shopping centre/mall retailing: Victor Gruen and James Rouse. For these two, and others there was a very real need for a combination of both the values of communal public space and of shopping and consumerism in respectful and practical combination. It's not that the shopping mall is alien to 'public space' or to the combination of opposites such as dreary shopping and fun and leisure. On the contrary.

Variable Constants

Keywords: Physics, Astrophysics, fundamentals, fine-structure constant

Variation or no variation, that is the question. And it has been a question since 1937. Do the fundamental constants of nature vary in space-time? What does that mean? I'll explain. Physicists (and their superior versions, Astrophysicists) usually think of the simplest possible case. They usually say that the speed of light is constant, that the electric charge is constant. Combine the two (and another, called Planks constant) and you get, well ... a constant. But is it the same everywhere and everywhen? One of the best ways to dig deeper into this question is to look at objects that are so far away that you see them as they were shortly after the universe started. You look for a signature of what your favorite constant might be that long ago and compare it to what it is today. The trouble is that it is very hard and, when you get a result, maybe you yourself don't believe it!

Testing the 3-Factor Model of Occupational Stress: The Impact of Demands, Control and Social Support on a Mail Sorting Task.

Keywords: occupational stress, mail sorting

My talk will focus on an experiment in which a computer simulation of mail sorting was used to test a model of occupational stress. The theory predicts that job demands, job control and social support should directly influence stress as well as indirectly influencing performance.

Self- reported stress was indeed found to be higher in conditions of high demand, and it was also higher in conditions of low social support. Actual and perceived performance were both poorer in conditions of high demand and perceived performance was poorer in conditions of low social support. Level of control had no effect on stress or arousal, although subjects in conditions of high control were more accurate.

The 3 factors did not interact to produce elevated levels of stress or arousal, although interactions were observed for performance measures. Measures of work preference indicated that arousal, performance and perceived performance were influenced by the level of fit between ideal and actual task conditions. Possible interpretations of these results will be discussed.

Women's Nature, Nature's Women - Ecofeminist Activism at Jabiluka

Keywords: ecofeminism, activism, environmental protest, Aboriginal land rights, Jabiluka uranium mine

Contemporary Australian debates concerning the reservation of nature and Aboriginal land rights are located at the nexus between environmentalism and Aboriginal land rights activism. They encompass questions of environmental values, natural resource management, Aboriginal control of land / native title rights and the social construction of nature.

Ecofeminist theory argues that there is a link between the struggles of women, indigenous people and nature in that they are oppressed by the same forces. Such an argument suggests that the respective social movements which have been formed by these groups could be strengthened by their union.

At Jabiluka, these groups have come together. In this paper I will briefly outline the protest against the proposed uranium mine at Jabiluka in the light of ecofeminist theory and practise.

Sydney suburban houses and the Prairie Houses of Frank Lloyd Wright: a comparative study of key ordering ideas

Keywords: Frank Lloyd Wright, order, opposites, comparison (Chicago and Sydney)

One of the most important concepts in architecture is that of "order". In this talk, the creative potential of the following three aspects of order will be discussed: (1) things existing in relationships with other things; (2) the co-existence and play of multiple orders/systems; (3) the co-existence and play of opposites. These characteristics are highly significant ones in architecture. They are also significant in relation to ways of thinking and ways of living.

These aspects of order will be used to compare the spatial orders of two groups of houses: a detached house type commonly found in the suburbs of Sydney and the Prairie Houses built in and around Chicago between 1900 and 1910 by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The aim is to critique the spatial order of a common Sydney house type in relation to a number of basic environmental needs.

The spatial orders/systems that will be studied are two sets of opposites: public front / private back and inside / outside.

Islam and Scientific Research

Keywords: islam, science, religion, Quran

The purpose of talk is to discuss why science actually got alienated from religion and then try to remove some of misconceptions that true religion and true science can be in disagreement. As a case study the Muslim's holy book the Quran has been selected that is 14 centuries old and that had many revelations on embriology, astronomy, oceanography, mountains, time zones and many other interesting information on science and technology. After addressing these issues briefly some other issues regarding islam and scientfic research will be briefly discussed.

Measure Theory and Ergodic Theory

Keywords: measure theory, ergodicity, understanding mathspeak

The highly abstract world of pure mathematics often seems to the outsider to be an irrelevant and unmotivated field spoken in a foreign language. This talk hopes to break down some of these barriers, explaining the developement of these two fields, from their original motivation.

Briefly, measure theory works out some of the properties that a notion of size should have, and the relationship between size and probabilty. Ergodic theory is a way of understanding the way probability and time interact, and the general structure of such interactions.

By the end of my talk, you might well be able to understand the following:

Roklins Lemma.

Given (X,mu,A,T) an ergodic, non singular, invertible transformation on a Lebesgue space, N (a natural number) and epsilon between 0 and 1 (but bigger than zero), there is a set A contained in X such that A and T^i(A) are disjoint for i between 0 and N-1 inclusively, and such that all these images of A have a combined size bigger than 1-epsilon.

Making Machines Make Guesses

Keywords: machine learning, reasoning by computer, induction

Induction is the process in which general rules or principles are formed from the observation of particular instances. For example, suppose you notice that the last six postgrad seminar talks you attended have been great, it would be reasonable then to expect talks in the future to be great as well. Although not always perfect, this ability to make hypotheses from examples is useful for prediction and understanding and is considered to be an important facet of intelligence. Recently, certain enterprises have been able to collect overwhelming amounts of data and there has been a need to use computers to aid in hypotheses generation and testing. The study of algorithms that attempt this kind of induction falls into a field called "Machine Learning". In this talk I hope to provide a brief introduction to some of the formalisms used in Machine Learning to study induction algorithms and a discussion of one that I find particularly compelling.

Hyde Park and Residential Neighbourhood 'Protection' in Chicago, 1890-1920

Keywords: Chicago, history, protection, urban

This paper will focus on the development of middle class 'Neighbourhood Protection' in Chicago during the period from 1890 to 1920. Using the village of Hyde Park as an example, the paper will demonstrate that middle class 'Neighbourhood Protection' in Chicago was commonly characterised by a two-stage process. Initially, new middle class suburbanites sought to identify phenomena which represented a moral and financial threat to their communities. There was a diverse set of threats singled out by Hyde Park's middle class, including public saloons, apartment houses, transportation lines, and African Americans. Following from this, Hyde Park residents developed a variety of methods to prevent such 'undesirable' phenomena from entering their communities. These informal campaigns of exclusion were a precursor to modern zoning regulations, and provide an important insight into the social concerns which underpinned the institutionalisation of landuse regulation.

Tolerance to High Concentrations of Benzene by Rhodococcus Sp. 33

Keywords: benzene, pollution, bacteria, tolerance, Rhodococcus

Rhodococcus sp. 33 is a bacterium which was isolated from a contaminated site in Sydney for its ability to tolerate and degrade high concentrations of benzene (>1800 mg/L). Benzene is present in crude oil and petroleum and is a prevalent toxic pollutant. The aim of our study was to understand how Rhodococcus sp. 33 is able to tolerate high concentrations of benzene.

We examined the fatty acid profiles of the organism when grown in the presence and absence of benzene to identify fatty acids which may play a role in this tolerance. For this the organism was grown in the presence and absence of benzene and the total cellular lipids were then extracted with hexane/MTBE before being analysed by capillary gas chromatography. We observed a significant increase in the saturated:unsaturated ratio of fatty acids when the organism was grown under conditions where benzene was present compared to growth without benzene. Interestingly, the value of this ratio was higher when the concentration of benzene in the growth medium was also higher. This shows that this benzene-induced increase in the abundance of saturated fatty acids may play an important role in providing Rhodococcus sp. 33 with tolerance to benzene.

We also isolated highly purified cell wall and cell membrane fractions from cells grown in the presence and absence of benzene and observed the protein profiles of these fractions using 1-dimensional acrylamide gels. Benzene induced proteins were found to be expressed in only the cell membrane fractions.

Benzene sensitive mutations were generated from Rhodococcus sp. 33 using methane-sulfonic acid ethyl ester. A detailed characterization of mutated strains will provide important information concerning the mechanism of benzene tolerance in Rhodococcus sp. 33.

Chinese Women's Experience of Health Care Services in Australia: Exploring Issues of Identity

Keywords: chinese women, identity, health care services, marginalisation

This research is to explore issues of identity through the analysis of Chinese women's experience of health care services in Australia since this is the area where most often conflicts of cultural beliefs and practices occur. It takes a qualitative research methodology and data were collected from in-depth interviews with women from mainland China and other Asian countries.

The results show that Chinese women heavily rely on Western medicine with only occasional use of Chinese medicine. A practitioner of Western medicine who is able to communicate in a Chinese language(s) is much preferred. It also shows that, contrary to the suggestions of some researchers, Chinese health beliefs and practices are not the reason to prevent them from using the mainstream health care services. Family care, social support and healthy lifestyle are found to contribute greatly to their health. Chinese women experience an ambivalence of identity and they are doubly disadvantaged in the health system. On the one hand, language plays a key role in their access to the mainstream health services but most often interpreting service is not available in time of need. This greatly reduces their actual use of the mainstream health services. On the other hand, although they share the same language, health beliefs and practices are found only indirectly related to their identity with Chinese medicine. This indirect relationship is largely due to their exclusion from the mainstream health care services. This even further reinforces their marginalization in the system.

The Foundations of Higher Education: Do Students Make the Grade?

Keywords: foundation studies, higher education, performance

As preparation for tertiary education, Foundation Studies Programs exist in many nations, with the majority of these designed for mature aged entry students. Foundation Studies Programs have also been designed for students intent upon studying in another country. This latter category serves a variety of functions, such as increasing equity access for international students, providing alternative entry streams to higher education and augmenting university revenue.

Foundation Programs are believed to provide solid pre-undergraduate preparations, enhancing a student's academic success in their degree program. This paper reports on the findings of a case study (N=513) assessing the undergraduate results of Foundation graduates and two control groups: directly entering international students (non-Foundation) and students who gained entry to university via domestic secondary schooling. The overall results suggest that prior experience with a Foundation Program does not lead to academic out-performance of the control groups. High achievement, however, is not necessarily the expectation. Results are broken down by faculty and the findings discussed.

A Survey of Contemporary Genetics

Keywords: genetics, review, genetic engineering

The field of genetics incorporating aspects of biochemistry, structural biology and evolutionary biology have blossomed in the last 50 years. The guiding tenets of genetics of the 50's and 60's which were formulated in the light of remarkable discoveries, such as the molecular structure of DNA, have in the last 30 years undergone a systematic upheaveal.

Exciting breakthroughs, such as the discovery of introns, over the last 30 years have questioned every one of the tenets of classical genetics. I will be making a brief survey of these tenets and presenting some of the breakthrough experiments and discoveries. I would like to present a model of the genome which various researchers are tentatively proposing, which synthesizes some of these discoveries and which hopefully will point towards a genetic theory of the future.

Finally, I would like to describe some of the, perhaps a little frightening, consequences of the misapplication of the tenets of classical genetics. This is most prevalent in the field of genetic engineering.

Investigating Occupational Stress in the Lab and Workplace

Keywords: stress, workplace, theory, predictions, demands, control, support

Occupational stress is a growing problem. It is the subject of a great deal of study, despite (or perhaps because of) disagreements about what the term means, disagreements about how it can be measured, and the problem of distinguishing it from social, cultural, political and personality factors.

My research involves testing a theoretical model which predicts that the three factors of job demands, job control and social support will influence occupational stress. I will be testing this model using computer simulations (where the factors of interest can be controlled and manipulated) and using field studies on samples of the Australian workforce.

A laboratory study will be described in which subjects performed a computer simulated mail sorting task. Contrary to our predictions, the three factors did not interact to produce elevated strain levels, although several main effects were observed. Measures of work preference indicated levels of arousal were highest when the fit between ideal and actual task conditions was greatest.

The preliminary findings of the current field study will also be described. If there is sufficient time, I will outline some proposed future studies.

What Makes It True That You Continue To Exist Over Time?

Keywords: teleportation existence truth

Suppose Star Trek-style teleporters exist, and they work by recording the exact state of your body, sending this information to a receiver while destroying your old body, while the receiver constructs an exact replica of your old body. Is it you at the receiving end? Or have you been killed and a copy of you created?

What is it for you to continue existing? Is it the continued existence of your body. Or of your brain? Or is it enough that your psychological states (memories, beliefs, intentions, personality traits, etc) give rise to appropriate successors?

Geochemical Exploration for Gold and Base Metals in the Mighty Karakuruam and Himalaya Mountains, Pakistan

Keywords: gold geochemical analysis exploration himalaya

Much of the northern part of Pakistan is covered by the mighty mountain ranges of Karakuram and Himalayas where they form a knott with Koh Hindu Kush from the west and Altai mountains from the north (China side).Rocks altitude ranges from about 1000m to more than 8000 meters within a narrow strip of land producing a very high degree of grade. Himalayan rocks are younger, mostly Tertiary but overall older rocks are noted reaching upto Cretaceous.

Small nuggets of gold and dust particles are historically reported and extracted on a limited scale since time immomorial. Families of such gold washers are traditionally still working. In 1995, regional scale gold and base metal geochemical exploration survey was launched along with the technical asistance of Australian government which has so for covered 80 000 sq.km area. As a result more than 100 gold anomalies were identified besides 600 other anomalies of different metals. Based on such data, the present studies were taken in hand to substantiate the ongoing project and to find out new exploration techniques to be applied further for detailed chemical exploration.

Gold is a highly tricky element, both in terms of its occurence and chemical analysis. Weathering conditions, stream bed morphology and hydraulic regimes leave an impact on gold particles. After much improvement in traditional random sampling, we are still bewildered to cope with the situation. Different grain size fractions and pan-concentrates have been tested to conclude refinement. Our results have indicated that very fine fractions, less than 63 micron, and pan-concentrate analytical data is more useful than the prevailing practices. Gold values range from less than 1ppb to 4.8ppm in stream sediments but, in pan-concentrates, these values range from 54ppb to 33.4ppm.

A general view of other important elements will also be presented.

Professionalism of Amateur Athletics in New South Wales, 1956-1986

Keywords: history, sports, athletics, organisational theory

To establish where my research fits into the general scheme of things, this presentation will commence with an overview of the sports history movement in Australia. In "fleshing-out" the necessary background, the following questions will be addressed: Why study sport? What aspects are being studied in this discipline and why? What methods and theories need to be considered by sports historians?

The presentation will then turn to an examination of athletics in New South Wales, articulating why the sport's administration and ideology has undergone such swift development and change since 1956, and why it necessitates enquiry. It will explicate how the complex and transitional nature of the administration of athletics in NSW can be effectively understood through the economic paradigm of organisational theory; this constitutes the theoretical framework of my thesis.

Music Perception by Cochlear Implants Users

Keywords:

A Cochlear Implant (CI) is a device implanted inside the cochlea for the transmission of sound by profoundly deaf individuals. These have primarily been designed for the transmission of speech and have achieved moderate success (~80% open set word recognition).

The most common complaint by implant users is that music sound terrible. This thesis attempts to find out why music sounds so bad by looking at the difference in speech and music. It also investigates how music perception can be improved and discovers some fundamental properties of the ear and neural coding mechanisms.

Developing an Aesthetics of Humility: Bringing Myth to an End in Christoph Ransmayr's Novels.

Keywords:

For those who have had the heady experience of sharing conversation with an ex-SS officer in a Viennese cafe, you'll realise the past still retains its grip in the cultural and tourist mecca of Austria. Yes, there is such a thing as Austrian literature, though the Germans have claimed it for their own for quite a period.

The contemporary Austrian writer Christoph Ransmayr addresses issues relevant not only in his homeland but in wider Western society. His "Zivilisationkritik" can be understood with the aid of a mythmodel developed using the work on myth by German academic and philosopher Hans Blumenberg; his being one of many responses to the reemergence of myth as an aesthetic and cultural force in modern/postmodern times This presentation will be an overview of Ransmayr's work, Hans Blumenberg's work on myth and the final myth developed in Ransmayr's novels.

Counting "Bullets" on your "Fingers"

Keywords:

How stars are formed and evolve is one of the main questions in astronomy. Astronomers have a fairly good understanding of stellar evolution, but not star formation. The Orion Molecular Cloud-1 (OMC-1) is the nearest (~1500 light years away) stellar nursery where massive stars are being formed. Due to its proximity, this region has been extensively studied as a laboratory for the study of star formation.

Outflows are often associated with massive young stars. The interaction of outflowing gas with the ambient medium gives rise to interesting shock phenomena such as "bullets" and "fingers" found at infrared wavelengths in OMC-1. This talk will describe these features which will improve our understanding of the outflow mechanism, and thus that of star formation.

Why Are Computers So Flaky?

After fifty years of building computers and writing software for them, it is enormously disappointing to find that they are still so unreliable. Every year mind-boggling amounts of money and human effort go into computer system development, yet the bugs just won't go away. In fact, there are some areas of computing where the systems are not even showing an incremental improvement.

The answer to this problem is not object orientation, Windows 98, nano-technology based on quantum effects, or any other so called technological innovation. It seems that a bit of good old-fashioned logic is required. In this talk I will introduce the idea that programs can be treated as pieces of structured mathematics. This means we should be able to prove software correct.

Did you know that none of the software controlling passenger aircraft, nuclear power stations or heart pacemakers has been proved bug free?

Scary!

Implicit Learning: What is Being Learned?

Over the last 30 years there has been a growing interest in the cognitive unconscious. A large part of this interest has been in the field of implicit learning. The term 'implicit learning' is typically used to characterise a situation in which a person learns about the structure of a complex stimulus environment, without necessarily intending to do so, and in such a way that the resulting knowledge is difficult to express (Berry & Dienes 1993). Despite a wide range of experimental demonstrations there is still much debate about the existence of implicit learning as a distinct psychological phenomenon.

In my talk I provide a brief overview of some the experimental paradigms that claim to demonstrate implicit learning. I then focus on two questions that impact on the implicit learning debate: 1) Is the acquired knowledge conscious or unconscious? 2) How is the acquired knowledge represented by the brain? It is proposed that the solution of these questions will allow us to determine what is being learned in implicit learning.

Agony or Ecstasy?

What killed Anna Wood? Was it Ecstasy laced with heroin? Was it a bizarre cocktail of Marijuana, Alcohol and Ecstasy? Would she be alive today had her friends taken her to the hospital? These questions were posed by the media back in 1995 at the time of her death, but the answers did not receive the same publicity as the event itself.

Ecstasy is a popular recreational drug in today's society, but plenty of myth surrounds the effects. It is placed in schedule 1 of controlled drugs, the strictest possible category, due to its possible neurotoxic effects in humans. But is it truly neurotoxic?

My talk will examine the history of Ecstasy, and its proposed toxic neurochemical, neuroanatomical, behavioural and clinical effects. The aim of the talk is to assess whether Ecstasy truly deserves the tag "Drug of Death", and to also discover "What killed Anna Wood?"

Sydney Beaches: Lessons in Complexity and Ambiguity in Urban Design

The beaches are arguably the most successful public spaces in Sydney. While this does not mean that every Sydneysider wants to use them, many of the lessons that can be learnt from them are applicable to other types of public spaces in Sydney.

These lessons relate to ideas such as the breadth and depth of meanings and experiences that a public space can accommodate, the necessity for ambiguous spatial structures and metaphors in public spaces, the play of opposites (community/individual, immensity/intimacy, etc.) , the possibilites for greater maleability in the making of public environments.

What Happens to Native Forest Patches Surrounded by Farmland?

Since European settlement Australian native forests have been extensively cleared to provide land for other land uses. This has left native forest 'islands' in a 'sea' of agricultural land. Small forest patches are vulnerable to change over time, particularly at the forest edge, which are more exposed to weed invasion from surrounding farmland. This project is investigating how deep into the forest these changes in vegetation penetrate. This information will be used by landowners to better manage remnants of native vegetation as part of private landholdings or as part of the conservation estate.

Molecular Biology : Micro-machines and their Rules of Construction

If you start looking at biochemical systems from a physical perspective, then you begin to realise that nature has already preempted the mechanical engineering principles of man. How proteins, DNA and organic molecules interact on a molecular level is literally the interaction of motors, pop-out containers, propellors, levers and other mechanical paraphenalia.

When you heat up or cool down a protein then you get a long amorphous piece of spagetti which is made up of a sequence of amino acids all bonded together. There about 20 known amino acids and it is believed that a unique sequence of amino acids will automatically fold into a unique rigid structure which will then proceed to act mechanically with other proteins around it.

For this one-to-one correspondence between sequence and structure, there must be specific rules on the folding of this spaghetti. These rules should be based on the underlying physics of the molecule. My thesis is involved in studying one of these rules and hopefully improving the rule so that it both describes known molecules correctly and predicts new ones with more fidelity.

Tolerance to Benzene by Rhodococcus sp. 33

Benzene is a potent carcinogen and shown to be a cause of leukemia in humans. Its presence in petroleum, and its products, and the nature of our highly industrialised society makes it a pollutant of ubiquitous proportions. A few years ago our laboratory isolated a bacterium, Rhodococcus sp. 33, from a contaminated site in Sydney. It was found to tolerate and degrade benzene as a sole carbon source at concentrations as high as 1800 mg/l (benzene's maximal solubility in aqeous media).

My research aims at identifying the physiological characteristics which enable this Rhodococcus to tolerate benzene. At this stage the results point to interesting proteins and fatty acids in the cell membrane of the organism. Morphological comparisons between the wild-type organism and benzene-sensitive mutants (derived from the wild-type) have shown interesting anatomical features which may be involved in the organism's tolerance benzene. This field of study is not only a line of basic research to further our understanding of something which is poorly understood. It is anticipated that the knowledge gained could be applied towards improving bioremediation processes for the removal of otherwise recalcitrant pollutants.

Professionalism of Amateur Athletics in New South Wales, 1956-1986

To establish where my research fits into the general scheme of things, this presentation will commence with an overview of the sports history movement in Australia. In "fleshing-out" the necessary background, the following questions will be addressed: Why study sport? What aspects are being studied in this discipline and why? What methods and theories need to be considered by sports historians? The presentation will then turn to an examination of athletics in New South Wales, articulating why the sport's administration and ideology has undergone such swift development and change since 1956, and why it is necessitates enquiry. It will explicate how the complex and transitional nature of the administration of athletics in NSW can be effectively understood through the economic paradigm of organisational theory; this constitutes the theoretical framework of my thesis.

Recent Results In the Search for the Origins of Gamma-Ray Bursts

Within the last few hours, more energy than the sun will emit in its 10 billion years of life struck our solar system. It happens all the time. For thirty years these high energy "gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)" have confounded scientists as to their origins. Recently, through the use of satellites, new instrumentation and international teamwork the sources of these massive energy pulses are becoming clearer. The most recent data obtained from multiple sources seems to indicate that GRBs come from huge fireballs in other galaxies, and are therefore cosmological in nature.

Gamma-ray bursts are brief flashes of high-energy radiation that appear on average about once a day at an unpredictable time from unpredictable directions in the sky. Since their discovery (by accident) in the late 1960's, several thousand bursts have been detected, most of them with BATSE, the Burst and Transient Source Experiment, on board the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. Their distribution on the sky is completely uniform. In particular, they do not appear to come from the Milky Way. So where do they come from? This is the question that had kept astronomers busy for several decades, with no apparent resolution in sight.

Observing the effect of massive stars in the Carina Nebula using different telescopes

For my Phd thesis, I am making observations at infrared, millimetre and radio wavelengths of the Carina Nebula - one of the most massive star forming regions in our Galaxy. In this talk, I will discuss the observations I have made and explain how they reveal important information about the interaction between the massive stars and the surrouding giant molecular cloud from which they were formed.

Professionalism of amateur athletics in New South Wales, 1956-1986

To establish where my research fits into the general scheme of things, this presentation will commence with an overview of the sports history movement in Australia. In "fleshing-out" the necessary background, the following questions will be addressed: Why study sport? What aspects are being studied in this discipline and why? What methods and theories need to be considered by sports historians? The presentation will then turn to an examination of athletics in New Suth Wales, articulating why the sport's administration and ideology has undergone such swift development and change since 1956, and why it necessitates enquiry. It will explicate how the complex and transitional nature of the administration of athletics in NSW can be effectively understood through the economic paradigm of organisational theory; this constitutes the theoretical framework of my thesis.

A Permanent Automatic Low-Cost GPS Deformation Monitoring System for Volcanoes

Volcanoes present a real hazard to many communities across the world particularly in developing countries. Many organisations monitor the activity of volcanoes and seek to predict their behaviour. Such organisations include the USGS in the USA and the VSI in Indonesia.

Prior to the eruption of a volcano, the flanks and summit of the volcano swell indicating an impending explosion. If this deformation can be measured, scientists can then be better prepared to predict both when and where the volcano will erupt. Measurement of surface deformation is not a new strategy in volcanic studies. EDM measurements, levelling and even GPS have already been, and indeed still are, utilised on many volcanoes, however only in a campaign style approach with large periods of time between re-measurement.

Continuous measurements would eliminate these "time gaps" and provide near-real-time information. Such systems have also been deployed on volcanoes such as Popocatepetl (Mexico), Augustine (Alaska), Rabaul (PNG) but all of these systems use expensive GPS technology thereby limiting the number of points which can be monitored. The UNSW in collaboration with the GFZ (Germany) and ITB (Indonesia) propose to develop a permanent automatic low-cost GPS deformation monitoring system on Mt. Guntur (Indonesia). It is hoped that the system by virtue of its' affordability will be an attractive early warning system for developing countries, providing higher density networks and an accuracy similar to that of its more expensive counterparts. The system will be developed in 3 generations. The first generation is presently operating in Indonesia.

Locating Culture: English Literature, Cultural Studies and Ethnography

The last 20 years of english literary studies has been marked by a theoretical paradigm shift. The study of literature, as the embodiment culture, has been widely replaced by the study of culture in general.

Cultural studies, as a dissenting intellectual tradition, began its life outside or on the fringes of academia. Within its parameters literature became just one of a myriad cultural practices that could be investigated. At the core of a disparate practice was an intention to expose power in all its forms. However, as the practice of cultural studies has become an established discipline, part of the academic establishment, it has lost its edge. At worst, cultural studies is in danger of degenerating into an opaque and hegemonic 'discourse of culture': something needs to change.

In this light, a turn to a much maligned ethnographically based practice offers the possibility for the reconnection of cultural studies to the cultural practices of the people it claims to represent.

The Architecture of Alvar Aalto: the Play between Opposites

The Finnish architect Alvar Aalto is one of the most significant architects of this century. The talk will focus on the play between "opposites" in his work.

Out of this play Aalto derives a rich range of human/built environmental possibilities. These opposites include community and the individual, the natural and the artificial, space and material, building and context.

The potential for this play is established in the broadest spatial ideas that underly his designs and are rigorously worked through at all levels of detail . His architecture provides insights into the complexities and contradictions to be found in human dwelling and points towards ways of interpreting and making the environments around us.

EDGES OF IDENTITY: Migrant Literature in Contemporary Germany

The concept of 'edges' has become a compelling aspect of research in many academic disciplines over the past decade, particularly in terms of linking the formation of identity with place. Debate about edges can also be found in many elements of daily lived life, from dealing with coastal pollution, to property line disputes, to uses of edges in landscape gardening. The Mandelbrot Set also appears fixated with edges.

What are the reasons for this ?

I will consider edges as part of a literary analysis. My purpose is to form an understanding of edges in terms of identity; ie, how our sense of belonging or where we place ourselves is influenced by various competing and complementary interests, eg., belonging to an ethnic community or to a group of choice or displaying some form of religious affiliation.

Evolution of Galaxies and Large-Scale Structure

Rich clusters of galaxies are among the largest structures in the universe. We can learn a lot about the growth of large-scale structure and galaxy evolution by studying large numbers of clusters at different epochs. My PhD involves a detailed analysis of a sample of rich clusters at low redshift. I am looking at the morphologies and distribution of galaxies throughout the clusters to see how environment affects their evolution. My results will act as a comparison to similar studies of rich clusters at high redshift to see how the large-scale structure in the universe evolves from the early universe to the present.

The Signalling Code: A Strategy for Starvation-Survival in Vibrio sp. S14

Sujatha Srinivasan* and Staffan Kjelleberg - Microbiology and Immunology
S.Srinivasan dot unsw.edu.au

Bacteria are constantly challenged by conditions of nutrient limitation and starvation in their natural environment. As bacteria cannot escape or alter the environment, they undergo changes in their phenotypic and genetic repertoire in order to adapt to adverse conditions. The adaptation to nutrient depletion by Gram-negative bacteria like Escherichia coli and Vibrio spp. involves a highly organised series of intracellular events that enable them to adapt to starvation conditions. Although many studies have focused on understanding the regulation of gene expression and the phenotypic consequences, there is little known as to how bacteria sense environmental changes and thereby produce signal molecules for the genetic machinery to respond appropriately.

This presentation explores the role of exogenous metabolites as putative signal molecules that mediate and/or regulate the carbon starvation adaptation programme in a marine Vibrio. Evidence for the production of extracellular signalling molecules during carbon and energy starvation by Vibrio sp. S14 will be presented. The important role played by the signal molecules in the expression of proteins crucial to the development of starvation - and stress-resistant phenotypes will be discussed.

Pop Culture, Mass Media and the White Supremacy

Matthew Cleveland - English Literature
z2100932 dot student.unsw.edu.au

It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the macroscopic effects of the growth and development of theoretical and fictional texts produced within Western culture that address problematic issues concerning the reductive nature of dominant modes of categorization. From aesthetic standards, cartography, linear historical narratives and ethical principles to race and gender binarisms; hitherto unquestioned categories are becoming problematized, as more and more marginal voices become salient.

This paper investigates subtle manifestations of structures of white supremacy within contemporary society. In particular, I investigate the relationship between 'popular' and 'mass' culture - or the difference between vernacular modes of cultural production and how cultural products of race, class and gender minority groups are appropriated by the mass media that invariably homogenizes cultural syncretism and fosters structures of white supremacy. The underlying thesis of this paper posits that existing categories are largely based upon reductive binarisms that are inadequate for articulating and describing many of the positions that occur in contemporary (Western) culture. This paper calls for the development of more encompassing models of reading and interpretation, which, drawing from various theories of hybridity, supplement those perspectives which occur in terms of simple binarisms.

(Meeting Room 1 on the Ground Floor of the Samuels Building)

This, the last seminar for the year, is special seminar based around the theme of:

Guest Speakers:

• Dr. Rob Hall (PhD in Marketing)
  "Marketing Oneself to the World at Large"

• Dr Cintina Blaney (PhD in Biological Sciences)
  "Personal Experience: Using my Phd in a Non-academic Environment"

• Dr Daniella Goldberg (PhD in Molecular Biology & Genetics)
  "Personal Experience as a Science Journalist"

• Dr Isabelle Meyer-Carrive (PhD in Pharmacology & Toxicology)
  "Personal Experience as a Pharmacologist/Toxicologist in Private Industry"

In his talk Dr Hall will focus on the general skills one obtains during a PhD and how to "sell" those skills. The next three speakers: Dr Cintina Blaney (Biological Sciences), Dr Daniella Goldberg and Dr Isabelle Meyer-Carrive (Pharmacology & Toxicology) will demonstrate how they applied the skills obtained during their PhD and moved from research in an academic setting to working in a non-academic environment.

At the end of the talks there will be a general question time.

Marketing Oneself to the World at Large

Rob Hall, Director of The Centre for Visitor Studies, holds a PhD in psychology from Macquarie University. He has an active involvement in a number of Professional Societies including the Australian Psychological Society, Market Research Society of Australia, the Environmental Design Research Society, Museums Australia and the Visitor Studies Association.

He has held teaching positions in psychology and marketing at a number of Australian universities including Macquarie University and The University of New South Wales. Currently, he is an Honorary Visiting Fellow in both the Schools of Psychology and Marketing at the University of New South Wales.

Rob was a co-founder of Environmetrics Pty limited, a social research organisation of which he is a director.

In his talk Dr Hall will focus on the general skills one obtains during a PhD and how to "sell" those skills.

Personal Experience: Using my PhD in a Non-academic Environment

Dr Cintina Blaney
C.Blaney dot unsw.edu.au

Personal Experience as a Science Journalist

Dr Daniella Goldberg
daniella dot mpx.com.au

Daniella Goldberg obtained her undergraduate degree at the University of New South Wales and then went on to complete her PhD at the Garvan Institute in the area of Molecular Biology and Genetics. On completion of her PhD she decided to pursue an interest in journalism and completed a postgraduate degree in journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney where she majored in television journalism.

Since completing that degree she has worked as a researcher for Beyond 2000 and Quantum.

Daniella is currently working as a freelance feature writer for publications including New Scientist and The Australian. She thinks of herself as a Science Journalist.

Personal Experience as a Pharmacologist/Toxicologist in Private Industry

Isabelle Meyer-Carrive obtained her PhD at Royal North Shore Hospital in the department of surgery with a thesis sponsored by Roussel-Uclaf (France and Australia), graduating in 1994. The topic of her thesis was the investigation of new compound in an animal model of osteo-arthritis.

During and after her studies she worked as a pharmacologist / toxicologist as a consultant in a toxicology research lab.

In October 1995, she founded her own company: ICP Firefly, established at Workcover Australia, Camperdown, which performs preclinical and clinical toxicology.

Seminars on Thursday 13th November 1997 at 5:30 pm

Cancer Immunology

The treatment of cancer includes approaches such as surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and more recently immunotherapy. Surgery is not always possible and radio and chemotherapies are not entirely specific for cancer cells and can cause side effects such as immunosuppression, bone marrow injury and digestive system dysfunction. Immunotherapies however, specifically target cancer cells by way of tumour associated antigens. These tumour associated antigens are specific to the tumour cells and in some cases they have been reported to induce an immune response in patients. The specificity of these antigens to cancer cells has lead to their use in immune, specifically antibody therapies. Antibodies specific to the antigen can be coupled to a drug for a more controlled administration or the antibodies can be used to elicit an immune response against the tumour cell antigen in a patient. My PhD is concerned with the second of these immunotherapeutic approaches. I am trying to determine whether colorectal cancer patients who exhibit the tumour associated antigen, erbB-2, are mounting a specific humoral immune response, ultimately to determine the suitability of this antigen as a target for immune therapies.

Looking inside Australian Solar Water Heaters

In Sydney, the power used in heating water for domestic use constitutes about 40% of our electricity demand. A solar water heater has the capability of delivering about 83% (95% if you live in Alice Springs) of that power, with a resultant 5 tonnes per year reduction of carbon dioxide emissions from coal fired power stations. With this fact in mind I will talk about what I'm doing to improve the - somewhat empirically designed - heat-exchanging/storage components of the solar water heating system that dominates the Australian and some European markets.

Far-infrared Studies of Semiconductors in Large Magnetic Fields

Far-infrared radiation is a very powerful probe of condensed matter as many important physical phenomena have energies in this region. A far-infrared facility has been set up at UNSW with the aim of studying low dimensional semiconductor systems.

The far-infrared radiation is provided by an optically pumped far-infrared laser which we use in conjuction with the low temperature cryostats and pulsed magnets at the National Pulsed Magnet Laboratory. This is part of the School of Physics. With this facility we can perform measurements at temperatures as low as 0.3 K, in fields of up to 60 T, and with light of wavelength between 40 and 1000 microns.

In proving this new far-infrared facility, bulk n-GaAs has been studied as a well-characterised reference material. Excellent agreement is found between overlapping present data and previously reported magneto-spectroscopy of this material. New results include the observation of transitions between impurity bound states at fields as high as 36 T. Cyclotron resonance transitions were also observed in this material. In my talk I will give a description of the facilities available in the laboratory and discuss the results that we have obtained so far.

Seminars on Thursday 16th October 1997 at 5:30 pm

Oil Production in Deep Waters: An Oceanographic Challenge

Since the begining of its offshore activities, the oil industry has been involved in the acquisition and analysis of oceanographic data for selection of design parameters and planning of maritime operations. The use of oceanographic data is included in all the development phases of an oil field such as geophysical survey, drilling operations, environmental impact studies, design and construction of offshore platforms and others. In the initial years, production was mainly restricted to the continental shelf with maximum water depths about 200 m. Nowdays, the oil exploitation frontier is going further offshore to the continental slope with water depths greater than 1000 m. This talk will address some topics related to the use of oceanographic data by oil industries and the particular case of my research studies in the Brazilian continental shelf and slope.

Occupational Stress in the 90's: Where Do We Start Looking?

It is common knowledge that stress is a major problem. But what does the word "stress" actually mean? And how can it be studied? Although a great deal of research has been performed in this area, very little is known about the relationships between variables associated with stress. One of the most influential papers in this field has been Robert Karasek's (1979) model of occupational stress, which makes predictions about levels of stress on the basis of certain job characteristics (work demands and decision latitude). In my research, I will be investigating the current stress situation in Australia, particularly the role played by Karasek's work factors. Don't expect to be shown complex graphs of data, because I haven't got any.

Modern Architecture and National Expression: Interpreting and Redesigning Sarajevo, 1930-1950

(Abstract to be supplied)

Seminars on Thursday 25th September 1997 at 5:30 pm

Task Failure During Different Inspiratory Resistive Loading Tasks In Human Subjects

Ventilatory failure in patient groups may occur as a result of critical airway narrowing, such as during an acute exacerbation of asthma. Inspiratory resistive loading can simulate the increased load on the inspiratory muscles caused by airway narrowing. The task failure that occurs when breathing through large inspiratory resistive loads has been attributed to inspiratory muscle fatigue, or more recently the accumulation of CO2 caused by hypoventilation. In this study fatigue was measured by changes in the maximal voluntary inspiratory pressure (MIP). Six subjects breathed through an inspiratory load in 3 experiments: 1) "Standard" to a target mouth pressure (80% MIP); 2) "Driven" (verbal encouragement to maximise rate and duty cycle) to the same target pressure; and 3) "Unconstrained" rate and duty cycle, with no target pressure.

All subjects maintained the target pressure, so task failure occurred when breathing discomfort was too great to continue. There was no significant change in MIP in any protocol, but there was a significant increase in end-tidal CO2. The results suggest that accumulation of CO2 (rather than diaphragm fatigue) caused the task failure. Endurance time was reduced in the driven compared with the standard protocol. The increase in work in the driven protocol may have increased CO2 production such that the increased ventilation could not compensate. Endurance time was dramatically increased in the unconstrained compared with the standard protocol. The subjects chose an optimal strategy to maximise endurance time, by reducing work done to reduce production of CO2 and by reducing discomfort associated with generation of large pressures.

Task failure in all protocols was largely caused by breathing discomfort as a result of increased CO2, but subjects were able to maximise endurance time by optimising their breathing strategy within the constraints of the experiment.

A Short History of Leptin

The obese gene was recently identified and sequenced in C57 Bl/6 mice. These provided an important clue for understanding the molecular pathology of obesity. Leptin is a protein product of the obese gene. It is produced by fat cells and circulates proportionally to the fat tissue mass. So far, it is clear that Leptin can alter the mouse feeding behaviour and energy balance acting directly on the neuronal network that contrrols feeding and energy balance.

Identifying the target of leptin in the brain is a key to understanding the relationship between the peripheral fat stores and central neuronal regulation of food intake and energy ballance. I investigated the distribution of leptin receptor in the brain of C57 mice using a non-radioactive in sity hybridisation technique. Leptin receptor mRNA expression was the highest in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus, dentate gyrus and CA1 in hippocampus, piriform cortex and medial habenular nucleus. These findings suggest the possibility that leptin acts on neuropeptide Y neurons.

Life in The Great White Hell - at UNSW's Coolest Field Station.

The UNSW's most remote field station is located 6200km due south of Sydney, at the South Geographic Pole. The South Pole is at an elevation of 2830m (9300') and right now (September) temperatures are in the range -50...-80C. For the last 3 winters the UNSW's Department of Astrophysics and Optics has operated astronomical observing instruments at the Pole, culminating in last year's establishment of the AASTO, a robotic infrared observatory.

Access to the South Pole is during the summertime by ski-equipped Hercules aircraft only, and travelling to and living at the Pole Station is a unique and memorable personal experience. Hear about UNSW's current Antarctic operations, some scientific results and future plans.

Seminars on Thursday 21st August 1997 at 5:30 pm

Post Cold-War War and Conflict

The end of the Cold War has sadly not seen an end to War, Conflict and political repression in the 1990s. A distinguishing feature of Post-Cold War war and conflict is that it now rarely takes place between states, (although there are still a few exceptions), but most wars are civil wars, internal conflicts taking place between governments and armed opposition groups. Most of these wars are in poor countries with authoritarian forms of government, but being a formal democracy is no guarantee either that a state will be spared civil war or some form of political violence. Wherever a group within society feels that they have no peaceful recourse within the political process to address their grievances, conflict will result. Combined with poverty and repression of human rights by governments, this creates the conditions for war.

What's Your Poison? Pavlovian Conditioning and Drug Taking.

The conditions of drug taking normally involve contingent relationships between certain stimuli and the effects of a drug. The effects of nicotine, for example, are consistently preceded by the sight and smell of a burning cigarette, and the effects of ethanol by the taste of an alcoholic beverage. Importantly, the effects of these drugs are rarely, if ever, experienced in the absence of these stimuli. Psychologists have thus accorded drug-predictive stimuli an important role in controlling drug-taking and have expressed this role in the language of Pavlovian conditioning - that process by which organisms construct representations about the causal relations existing their world. In this talk I will outline two different applications of a Pavlovian analysis to understanding persistent drug taking.

Robot Lights, Moving Cameras, and Human Action

How do we make machines understand what is going on around them? Traditional AI concentrated on disembodied abstract cognitive processes governed by logic. It was less concerned with the problem of quickly extracting just the right information from the flood of data that bombards us all. More recent robotics research looks at ways of combining perception and action directly so that, for example, a machine, based on what it has already seen, can interactively move its cameras to change what it sees next.

I shall talk about the challenge of making a machine understand human activities through visual observation. This involves thinking about multiple levels of understanding, ranging from the very simple to the highly sophisticated, not all of which are within reach of robotics at this stage. However, as each level is addressed, we appear to find ways of separating the interesting from the uninteresting, and use this to make predictions about what will happen next. Getting robots to do this too is an immensely difficult but fascinating goal.

Previous Seminars

Seminars on Thursday 17th July 1997 at 5.30pm

Considering Renaissance Anatomy in Context

In recent years, cultural historians have turned their attention towards historical studies of medicine. These cultural history approaches (which will be characterised in the paper) run into problems in their conception of medical practices, which on the whole could often be characterised as ahistorical, and in their structuring of historical accounts of past discourses in general. This is because cultural historians attempt to personally engage with the texts produced by, say, Renaissance anatomists, instead of historically locating such texts in a contextually sensitive way. This paper aims to redress some of the problems of this somewhat endemic cultural history approach by analysing alternatives to how Renaissance anatomy operated. As a case study, I will pay attention to the gendering of genitalia by Renaissance anatomists.

The Engineering of Regional Networks of Economic Development (RENED)

The process of economic globalisation and technological change is producing synergies that impact the way of doing business. Small and large enterprises are crossing the boundaries of their organisations and benefiting from strategic alliances between them. There is a new business environment, where networking is considered a competitive advantage. This Network Scenario also has an impact on planning regional development. Regional networks may close the gap between centrality decision-making, the community and economic agents such as business enterprises. I will look in this research for the impact that regional networks of economic development have on the economy of declining regions of industrialised countries. In order to match the factor of globalisation and declining regions, two case studies have been selected: the Hunter Valley in Australia and The Bierzo Valley in Spain. These two regions in opposite poles of the world are involved in a process of economic restructuring due to the closure of nineteenth century industry: BHP steel in Newcastle (Hunter Valley) and coal extraction and processing firms in The Bierzo Valley. A quantitative and qualitative analysis will be conducted, including the topological implications of these regional networks.

Testing of hydroxyapatite/poly-L-lactic acid (HA/PLLA) composite for a role as a new bone replacement material.

Defects in bone are a frequent problem in Orthopaedic Surgical practice, resulting from injury, tumour, infection, congenital defects and previous surgery. Existing methods of treatment all have significant limitations. Development of an effective bone substitute would significantly improve the outcome of treatment for a large number of people.

We are investigating the safety and efficacy of a mixture of hydroxyapatite (HA) and poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA) as a bone substitute. Hydroxyapatite is the mineral component of normal bone and PLLA is a rigid polymer that is biologically compatible and resorbable. We are using three animal models in our study, culminating in the use of a bone-defect model in rabbits to determine whether the mixture is able to support healing of bone gaps. Investigations of tissues from the animal models will be radiographic, histologic, morphometric and mechanical.

The presentation will cover the development phase of a two year project which has now progressed six months.

If you would like to give a seminar to the Post-Grad Group please see the seminar information request page and send the requested information to ben.searle dot unsw.edu.au Ben Searle, Seminars Co-ordinator.

For web issues please e-mail charlesw dot cse.unsw.edu.au or visit Charles Willock.

Back to Post-Grad Group Page

Created 10th June 1997.
Last updated 28th February 1999