Early Career Research Showcase

The field of musicians' medicine has only relatively recently evolved as a response to the extremely high injury rates reported across the age range of those that play an instrument at a highly skilled level. Many of the injuries that occur are in response to a multitude of risk factors, but it has never been established prospectively which risk factors may have most impact on injury causation.

The current national orchestras of Australia Occupational Health initiative, Sound Practice, is a 5 year prospective study which aims to identify the most relevant risk factors and the most useful preventative interventions with the 8 largest orchestras of Australia. This is the first study of its type internationally and the baseline testing stages are currently being completed. Some of the unique challenges and aspects of such a project will be presented.

Access to the best available evidence, is critical in enabling people to make reliable and well informed decisions about their health care. Systematic reviews are an excellent way of summarising all the available evidence. However there is still potential for biased results if all the available studies cannot not be located and used in the review; if the review is retrospective in nature, or if the information included is aggregated data, collected only from the published trial reports.

My current research seeks to overcome these problems via prospective trial registration, and prospective and individual patient data meta-analyses. The aim is to improve the quality of evidence available to those making health care decisions by developing the most reliable and least biased methods of research synthesis available, thus increasing research transparency.

Newly developed technology has allowed, for the first time, predictable, repeatable and reliable sorting of mammalian sperm into X- and Y-chromosome-bearing populations. We can then incorporate this sperm into assisted reproductive technologies to be able to preselect the sex of offspring. Our work aims to develop this technology to be applicable to a wide variety of species, for both improved production efficiency and conservation efforts.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is the most common cause of neurological disability in young adults and adolescents. MS is due to the patient's own immune system attacking the brain. Paediatric patients are important as they offer the opportunity to investigate the earliest possible inflammatory reaction against the brain, and therefore, to understand MS causation.

The goal of this project is to understand the role of humoral immunity (B cells and antibodies) during a first episode of demyelination in children. Among brain antigens, myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG) is thought to be one of the main targets. We have used a novel cell-based assay, and we detected high titers of anti-MOG Ab in the serum of 40% of children. The detection of these Ab in children will help us to define a subgroup of patients that may benefit from therapy targeting humoral immunity with the aim of preventing progression to MS.

Since the 1970s, greater numbers of immigrants of Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist faiths have led to increased planning requests to Australian local governments for worship and educational facilities. However the development of religious facilities by new and second-generation immigrant groups in Australia has often met with resistance, particularly in the case of the country's Muslim population.

My research focuses on tensions around the development of Islamic schools in Sydney's peri-urban fringe, a space which holds high environmental value, both in terms of amenity and natural resources. I am interested in the ways in which government policy discourse on sustainable development is constructed to foreground environmental and economic concerns, while minimising or erasing issues of social equity.

What do a soap bubble in the shape of a doughnut and a solitary wave of light travelling along an optical fibre have to do with the Higgs Boson, sought in the Large Hadron Collider experiment? One beauty of mathematics is that it helps us to see commonalities: the same mathematical structure may underlie hundreds if not thousands of practical problems. All of the above have some properties which are "unreasonably pleasant", and I shall briefly describe the pleasures of working with such amenable systems.

Monooxygenases (MOs) are important enzymes for the global carbon cycle (biogeochemistry), for cleaning up pollution (bioremediation), and for making useful chemicals (biocatalysis). Our lab is studying a hydrocarbon-degrading Mycobacterium strain (NBB4) isolated from Sydney Harbour sediment that contains diverse monooxygenase enzymes. NBB4 cells inoculated into contaminated site sediment microcosms removed >95% of the pollutants dichloroethane and dichloroethene. Cells grown on ethene oxidize many aliphatic and cyclic alkenes to epoxides. NBB4 contains genes that are distantly related to particulate (copper-containing) methane MO, but which have a novel physiological role in oxidation of C2-C4 alkanes.

Autoimmune movement and psychiatric disorders in children are acquired brain disorders that result in abnormal movements and behaviour. Recent advances have noted serum and spinal fluid auto-antibodies that bind to neuronal channels and receptors involved in brain function, including the glutamate receptor, NMDA-R. These disorders are autoimmune models of common neuropsychiatric disorders such as Parkinsonism, dystonia, depression and anxiety. Investigation will improve treatment of these potentially disabling disorders, but also improve understanding of the neurochemistry of common psychiatric disease.

The structure of crystalline solids is characterised by both local and long-range ordering. In contrast, disordered solids contain only local order and the structure of a liquid. However, they can be defined as solids due to their mechanical properties. Disordered solids display many interesting properties but as their structure is difficult to characterise, full understanding of these properties remains elusive.

Using computer simulations, my work involves methods of characterising individual disordered structures and exploring the connections between different structures.

I work in a field called "optofluidics"; this is controlling really small bits of fluid and really small bits of light and bringing them very close to each other. When I say "small" I mean micrometers, a fraction of the size of a human hair. The light and fluid influence each other since they're so close and controlled.

On one hand, this lets me manipulate light with the fluid and, on the other, detect the fluid using light. This kind of optofluidic technology lets me make devices to manipulate light and sensors, with applications in medicine, environmental sensing and various aspects of optical communications.

My research has focused on indigenous travellers from the New World to Britain during the eighteenth century. When Native Americans and then Pacific Islanders and Australian Aboriginals journeyed to Britain in this crucial period they were invariably seen as archetypal savages. What is less well-known is how flexible and complex that appellation of savagery was in popular political discourse and how little it restrained the agency of the travellers themselves.

My study discovers a more ambivalent British attitude to imperial expansion than usually assumed as well as a wealth of stories of individual indigenous enterprise.

My research looks at the changing role and relevance of political parties in the 21st century, and in particular, how parties operate as vehicles for encouraging popular participation in politics. My work is driven by three main questions: is there a point to joining political parties today? Can members actually have a say in their respective parties and do they have the opportunity to influence party policy? Given the changing nature of political communication and the professionalization of politics, how can citizens effectively participate in these institutions?

Comparing Australian, New Zealand and UK parties through the use of in-depth interviews with party members, activists and parliamentarians, I explain the evolving roles and expectations of modern party members and their implications for representative democracy.

My recent research has been in the area of 'Cracked Media' and sound. Cracked media is the deliberate cracking of media objects that are then utalised to produce new works. My book Cracked Media: The sound of malfunction (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2009) focuses on the use of the phonograph and CD technology in music and art during the 20th century.

The research is part of an emerging interest in 'sound studies' within academia. A major question my research addresses is "what happens to our perception of the arts when we listen closely to it?"

How do individuals make decisions, especially when comparing two items that have conflicting attributes? A common example is choosing between two restaurants: should we choose the higher priced, but higher quality restaurant or the lower quality but cheaper restaurant? Understanding how individuals make decisions has been a major focus of research in economics, psychology and animal behaviour. However, we know virtually nothing about decision making in brainless organisms, despite these organisms representing the majority of Earth's species. Can organisms that lack brains make complex decisions?

I answer this question using a single-celled, amoeboid organism: the slime mould, Physarum polucephalum. Amazingly, P.polycephalum is capable of making coherent, rational decisions and can adjust its behaviour according to the options available to it. The remarkable flexibility of P.polyceph alum’s behaviour reminds us that having a brain is not necessary for complex behaviour, and gives us insight into the evolution of information processing.

Back pain is a major contributor to disability and health spending in Australia and abroad. While many treatments are available, most have limited or no evidence of effectiveness. Information on the cost-effectiveness of treatments is even more scarce. My research investigates the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of treatments in back pain using systematic reviews and large randomised controlled trials.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in Australian men and is the second most common cause of cancer deaths in men. One promising treatment option is the so called iron chelators, which remove iron and induce cell death specifically in tumor cells.

These iron chelators induce expression of the metastasis suppressor protein NDRG1, suggesting that NDRG1 is involved in the inhibition of cell growth observed after treatment with these agents. High expression of NDRG1 is associated with greater survival and less aggressive tumors in prostate cancer patients.

My research is focused on understanding the function of NDRG1, since this is important to determine to understand the tumor growth inhibitory mechanism of the iron chelators.

Evidence-based decision making is a complex process that involves the successful combination of clinical experience, patient preference, available resources and the best available evidence. While the use of research in supporting clinical practice is highly valued, it is common for nurses to rely on the verbal testimony of colleagues when seeking information to support clinical decisions.

It might be that the complexity of clinical decisions and the immediate and context-specific nature of information required for clinical practice is more aptly accommodated when information is obtained through a process of social interaction. Such collaborative decision making also provides affirmational support for complex decisions that require the rapid resolution of uncertainty. The privileging of verbal testimony highlights the importance of this source of information in clinical practice and emphasizes the need for a systematic strategy for assessing the credibility of information obtained through social processes.

Electrical Impedance Tomography is a relatively new imaging method that traditionally uses a ring of external electrodes to image impedance changes in 2D within the body. The technology has recently been described as being on the verge of clinical application for pulmonary monitoring with medical device manufactures offering 2D imaging systems for trial (Bodenstein et al, Critical Care Medicine, 2009). I am interested in other clinical needs such as stroke, cardiac function and tumour detection where EIT may offer unique advantages.

Verbalising sound quality presents a challenge to musicians and pedagogues in describing a complex sensory phenomenon. Verbal descriptions may only be effective when a performer's sound translates easily and completely into words. A verbal overshadowing (VO) effect may occur when a verbal description distorts the recall of the original aural memory.

My research examines the impact of VO in a music performance context. This exploratory project will build on VO research in other fields to assess the value and limitations of language in describing performers' sound quality. Outcomes will have implications for musicians and pedagogues in the use of language in music teaching and learning.

Focussing on inter-personal relations , I present a brief overview of my research into everyday life at Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal settlement in central Australia. I sketch and analyse some of the daily predicaments Warlpiri people find themselves in to elaborate on the nature of lives lived in a remote settlement in a First World nation state.

Is the world exactly as we perceive? Visual illusions show us that our experience and reality can be at odds. We experience one particular visual illusion approximately three times every second- each time we make an eye movement. Considering the speed with which our eyes move when looking around, the stable, stationary world we perceive can be considered an exquisite illusion. How the visual brain generates this illusion is only beginning to be understood. Solving this problem will bring us significantly closer to understanding the relationship between processes in the brain and our subjective experience.

My major area of interest as a linguist is electronic discourse, in particular language and social networking sites. My current work has involved looking at how language is used to enact relationships and build community on Twitter. Posting 'updates' to Twitter is frequently parodied in the media as a juvenile tendency to share the inane details of daily life moment by moment.

In this presentation I will suggest a more interpersonal function for this form of microblogging and introduce a theory of ambient affiliation that I have been developing. This will include a brief analysis of the hashtag, #fail.