Early Career Research Showcase

Legalised gambling poses significant challenges to public policy makers. Voluntary self-exclusion programs have been legislated to help curb irresponsible gambling behaviour but self-exclusion programs are cumbersome and fallible. Gamblers also need strategies that do not rely on the cooperation of others to help them avoid irresponsible behaviour.

Our research focuses on understanding how counterfactual thinking − thoughts of what could have been − can motivate decisions to persist with an activity in the face of adversity. In a series of experiments we demonstrate that frequent gamblers use downward counterfactual thinking “it could have been worse” and the positive affect it evokes for motivational energy to fuel the pursuit of future better outcomes. Strategies for curbing irresponsible gambling behaviour may benefit by incorporating counterfactual tools aimed at encouraging gamblers to reflect on the real possibility that something worse could have happened.

Ménière’s Disease is a hearing and balance disorder characterized by random attacks of severe vertigo fluctuating hearing loss tinnitus the feeling of pressure in the ear and head and the gradual decline of hearing and balance sensitivity. It’s currently thought that an abnormal volume of fluid in the inner ear obvious in MRI scans causes a displacement of the inner ear hair cells that sense sound and orientation leading to the symptoms of Ménière’s Disease. By performing simultaneous measurements of mechanical and electrophysiological responses to sounds and movements from the cochlea and vestibular system during experimental manipulations of inner ear fluids my research aims to determine the effects of abnormal inner ear fluids and eventually to understand the mechanisms that normally regulate inner ear fluids.

In this presentation we give an overview of the field of experimental economics as applied to the study of the behaviour in markets. We begin with a brief description of experimental economics methods and then present highlights from our own research using experimental markets to study respectively the formation of price bubbles in financial markets and the design of emissions trading schemes. We conclude by highlighting the range of other applications of experimental economics methods.

Hydrogen gas could be a great fuel. It contains a lot of energy for its mass and when burned it produces only water. Among the barriers to its widespread use as a fuel is the need for an abundant renewable source of hydrogen. We can obtain it from non-food plants (trees grasses etc.) but challenges in this process remain. Our group works to design catalysts that help increase the amount of hydrogen we can get from a resource and sorbents that catch the CO2 that we get at the same time. We build porous supported materials to make the catalysts more efficient and the sorbents longer-lasting.

Wojciech primary research is centered around biointerface and biomaterials. He has also a keen interest in drug delivery systems. His current studies are focused on the surface modifications of shape memory alloys for spinal implants phosphate glass-polymer composite materials for scaffolds and externally activated drug delivery systems. The primary reason for conducting this type of research i Future research aim: Wojciech research aim is to combine biomaterials with drug delivery system and activation technology to: (i) incorporate and then control drug release from implants using external or internal signals (ii) trigger and control the degradation of implants using external signals (iii) mechanically stimulate tissue formation/regeneration as a result of material deformation that is externally controlled (e.g. by electric field).

What I do: I study adolescent sexual health: adolescent knowledge and attitudes related to HPV HPV vaccination and sex; best practices for delivering interventions to adolescents; predictors (and prevention) of risky sexual behaviours based on longitudinal research; and adolescent involvement and autonomy in both their lives and in research. Why I do it: Because when I say that I study "sexual health " everyone is interested! Every person is a sexual being and can relate to what I do in some way. But the real importance is helping adolescents develop into healthy adults. How I do it: Qualitative research and large surveys and longitudinal research. My favorite is qualitative research: adolescents are so much fun to talk to!

In order to adapt to its environment an animal must be sensitive to the consequences of its actions and be able to modify its behavior in order to gain access to desired commodities while avoiding events that are harmful or aversive. It is the flexibility of the instrumental or goal-directed components of human behaviour that allows us to develop new behavioural strategies to control events in our environment and satisfy our needs. The adaptive quality of this flexibility becomes most clear when these processes break down as they do in a number of psychiatric disorders including addiction. The goal of research in my lab is to provide fundamental information about the behavioural and neural determinants of goal-directed action and the transition to automatic/habitual performance.

I study Shakespeare’s plays because they are an effective living conduit for the study of much else besides. They are unique in having been being in performance circulation over a span of 400 years and as drama they are a cultural product unusually permeable to their contexts. Studying Shakespeare is for me a lens for examining intersections between the immediate present of the classroom or the stage and the pasts—historical imaginative cultural—at play amidst that present.

In this paper I discuss a collaborative project in development about how health care users negotiate the public and private health care systems in Australia and the UK. Increased choice is at the centre of political and marketing discourses about private health insurance in both Australia and the UK. However there is some evidence that realising this choice might be difficult in practice. This project seeks to explore the social experience of healthcare for individuals in contexts within which the boundaries between public and private health care are becoming increasingly blurred.

My research interests have always included sociological understandings of the dead body in different contexts. Although this might seem an unusual research focus I have long been fascintaed by the discrepancy between the popular rhetoric that death is a 'taboo' subject and the fact that it is present in so many aspects of everyday life. In order to investigate this broad topic I began (my MSc dissertation) by considering representations of corpses within popular culture. For my PhD I focused on how the dead body is included as part of the mortuary ritual with particular emphasis on the time between the moments of death and of final disposal. I elected to undertake a comparative project conducting short periods of ethnographic research in a funeral home in the United States and a funeral directors' in England in order to draw attention to variation in what is often homogenised as 'the West'. I am now working on a project that investigates understandings and expectations of participants in the organ donation process with particular focus on deceased donor transplant recipients. This project currently uses policy and public discourse as its data but is being developed to include interviews with transplant recipients.

Every 22 minutes an Australian dies from heart disease and related conditions. Finding new targets for therapy is vitally important for the thousands of people affected by heart disease each year. Our laboratory is working on an enzyme called Heme oxygenase-1 which acts as an antioxidant helping to prevent damage to cells caused by an increase in oxidative-stress. It appears that this enzyme plays a very important role in preventing the type of damage that occurs in cardiovascular illness. My research is focussed on trying to understand how this enzyme prevents damage in the blood vessels and how we can use it as a new therapeutic target for treatment.

Currently my research seeks to reframe our understandings of the so-called decorative arts by collating links between traditional jewellery practices and both ancient and modern understandings of physical emotional and social well-being. Jewellery is perhaps the oldest form of art and the role that personal decoration plays in ancient societies and in indigenous cultures offers an alternative view of objects where the celebration of our materiality enhances our relationships with our self with our communities and with our environment. My present research will lead to the development of wearable technology that moves beyond our current obsession about the transmission of information by utilising both the traditional functions of jewellery and advances in bio-technology to enhance the well-being of the wearer.

Around the turn of the nineteenth century many of the ideas that still inform our understanding of serious music crystallised: the composer as original genius the concert as para-religious occasion music as elevating experience rather than just entertainment. Germanic composers after Beethoven responded to these new demands by focussing not on audience expectations but on a perceived duty towards the tradition. The desire to be 'progressive' came to trump any expectation of immediate success and this gradually hardened into the belief that success itself was somehow compromised indicating a selling-out to popular tastes. Such attitudes have dominated the production and the historiography of music in the twentieth century leading to classical music being increasingly marginalised in Western cultures.

Recent discoveries about intrinsic function of cells within the sinoatrial node (SAN) the heart’s pacemaker indicate that intracellular signaling and their modulation of Ca2+ cycling are crucial to their normal pacemaking function. Here we show that the intrinsic pacemaking function in SAN is greatly reduced with age. While the reduced intrinsic function of the old SAN is rescued by enhancing PKA-dependent modulation of Ca2+ cycling proteins the sensitivity to this modulation has greatly lost in the old group. At cellular level this is consistent with an age-associated impairment in protein modification and ca2+ cycling. In conclusion PKA-dependent signaling within pacemaker cells of the old SAN is one novel mechanism of the age-associated deficit in cardiac pacemaking.

“Fingerprinting” the chemical profile of plants is the key to unravelling their therapeutic value and improving the quality control of herbal medicines. My quality evaluation model consists of “fingerprinting” the herb using analytical techniques (chromatography). Prominent compounds can then be quantified using marker compounds. Statistical analysis (chemometrics) of the fingerprint patterns identifies which sources of the herb give similar profiles. This is subsequently related to its biological activity via assays. It is anticipated that the model will encourage new guidelines for administering safe and effective herbal medicines.

The literature has clearly noted that physical activity is important for young people’s health. Youth who participate in higher levels of physical activity are less likely to display risk factors for cardiovascular disease Type II diabetes and more able to regulate weight. Despite these positive health benefits engagement in physical activity at a moderate-to-vigorous intensity especially among particular population groups (such as children and adolescents) are lower than the Australian recommended guidelines of a minimum of 60 minutes per day (Commonwealth of Australia 2008). For those youth not involved in organised sport and physical activity the only opportunities for being physically active are in the school setting with the World Health Organization (2004)highlighting this setting as having the greatest potential and being the most cost effective avenue for making valuable contributions to the promotion of education and health simultaneously. However the latest developments with the Australian curriculum and other research findings suggest that schools may not be capable of making a difference. Therefore are schools responsible for producing healthy active and informed citizens?

The iconic Coolibah trees are common in arid tropical savannas of north-western Australia where groundwater is close to the surface all year round. Community and industrial development is increasingly altering these groundwater levels. Our research on water use and physiology of the riparian Coolibah trees provides knowledge to water authorities allowing development of strategies that meet demands on this water source from both humans and trees.

Effective disease management after an acute coronary event is essential, but infrequently implemented. There is a clear need to develop innovative ways of delivering ongoing preventative care to this increasing population. However, knowledge translation is becoming increasingly difficult as the volume of trial evidence of disparate models of delivery expands. My research utilises an iterative approach comprising clinical trials, systematic reviews and taxonomy development. The overall goal is to synthesise existing evidence into an integrated model that can be offered to diverse populations across an array of settings. Importantly, the setting, communication technologies and components of each patient's care are governed and woven into continuing care provided by the family physician in concert with a cardiac care facilitator.

My research is broadly focused on evaluation and reform of legal processes particularly vis-à-vis victims of crime and children’s interaction with the law. My research combines doctrinal work in evidence and procedure with interdisciplinary analysis drawing particularly on psychological theories and empirical findings and methodologies. Currently I am undertaking a number of research projects including: an analysis of child sexual assault case files from the DPP (research funded by the NSW Law & Justice Foundation) and measuring the costs of access to justice for victims of crime (in collaboration with Tilburg University).

Greed: it’s one of the seven deadly sins. And one of the most cited reasons for regulating executive remuneration. Accountability is surprisingly not one of the seven virtues but it is the other most cited reason for regulating executive remuneration. My research into executive remuneration touches upon greed and accountability. But more particularly it is about how law fails to achieve any effective constraint on greed and cannot ensure that accountability exists. It’s a political story as much as it is a legal story. And a story about greed.

We are interested in using existing and novel techniques to study patients with rare genetic disorders such as Fabry disease and Pompe disease. Genetic disease usually affects multiple body systems and the underlying pathogenesis of the various clinical manifestations is often poorly understood. Our investigations using cardiac MRI neurophysiology studies and muscle MRI are providing novel information on the clinical status and progress of these patients. We are also pursuing laboratory investigations such as gene expression studies in these rare disorders.

Falling in old age is a major public health issue which can result in enormous social health and economic consequences. People aged over 65 years represent a high proportion of hospital emergency department (ED) attendees in Australia and around 18% of attendances by older people are as a direct consequence of a fall. These people often have their fall-related injuries treated followed by discharge from the ED without consideration of the probability of future falls or provision of prevention strategies. My research has developed a falls prediction tool for use in the ED which can be used to identify people in need of further assessment and intervention to prevent future falls.