Division of Environmental and Life Sciences

News From the Dean
The weekly update from the Dean of Division, Prof Liz Deane

Congratulations to all successfully funded ELS ARC and NHRMC grants
Check out our successful recipients

Opportunities
-Scientists in Schools Outreach Opportunity
-National Science Week Grants Now Open
- Australian Respiratory Council Harry Windsor Research Grants

Events
- Andy Beattie appearing on the New Inventors
- Biological Sciences Seminar this Wednesday
- Chemistry & Biomolecular Sciences Seminar this Thursday
- ELS Seminar Series

News from the Dean

Dear Colleagues

A good week for staff in ELS. Three promotions to Associate Professor - Mariella Herberstein, Mark Taylor and Henry Pollard; a 34% success rate in ARC Discovery compared to the University-wide success rate of 26% and three-quarters of Macquarie Linkage grants from ELS. Congratulations to all!

In addition to these grants led by Macquarie research we were also successful in collaborations led by other institutions.

1. Em/Prof PL Bergquist; Prof IW Dawes; Prof RJ Trent; Prof RJ Scott; Prof PJ Hogg; Prof MR Wilkins; Prof JK Reichardt; Prof NH Hunt; Prof MS Baker; Prof PR Dunkley; "Advanced high throughput functional genomics and gene mapping" $400,000 LIEF with The University of New South Wales; The University of Sydney; and The University of Newcastle.

2. Dr BE Medlyn; Prof DS Ellsworth; Prof GG Katul; Prof Dr RJ Ceulemans; "How will Eucalypt tree architecture and growth adapt to future atmospheric CO2 and drought?" $360,000 over three years, funded through UWS

3. A/Prof J Forrest ; A/Prof KM Dunn; Dr A Pedersen; Dr YC Paradies; A/Prof DF Ip; Prof H Babacan; "Constructing regionally appropriate anti-racism strategies for Australia." $189,000 over three years with Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission; Equal Opportunity Commission of South Australia; Victorian Equal Opportunity & Human Rights Commission; and The University of New South Wales.

You can have a look at all our successful Macquarie led recipients below.

Some opportunities for this week:-

Till next week

Liz

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ELS Celebrates ARC Success

Congratulations to all recently announced successful ARC and NHMRC grants in ELS and best of luck with the subsequent research.

Successful ARC Linkage

LP0882453: A/Prof R De Dear; Dr SD White; Dr T Marker; Dr AE Delsante

Residential Air Conditioning, Comfort and Demand Response in Australia

2008 : $ 170,000
2009 : $ 39,323
2010 : $ 25,627

Collaborating/Partner Organisations
Australian Greenhouse Office
Integral Energy
Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Equipment Manufacturers Association of Australia Inc.

LP0882152: Dr RM Spencer; Dr AY Wise; A/Prof MD Fine; Prof RH Fagan; A/Prof K McCracken; Dr R Dowling; A/Prof RL Howitt; Dr K Tannous; A/Prof KH Millard; Ms LM Giacomelli; Mr J McInerney; Ms JT McNeill

Community spirit, social transformation, sustainable partnerships: community capacity building in Parramatta

2008 : $ 126,000
2009 : $ 114,000
2010 : $ 118,275
2011 : $ 215,000

Collaborating/Partner Organisation: Parramatta City Council

LP0882722 Dr V Strezov; Prof PF Nelson; Prof BL Gulson; Dr TJ Evans

Thermal and environmental investigation of particle degradation during high temperature processing of iron ores

2008 : $ 120,000
2009 : $ 120,000
2010 : $ 120,000

Collaborating/Partner Organisation(s) : Hamersley Iron

Successful ARC Discovery grants

A/Prof JA Bailey; Prof J Hough
Modelling the atmospheres of extrasolar planets

Prof AJ Beattie; A/Prof DA Briscoe; A/Prof MR Gillings; Dr A Stow
Microbial Pathogens as Selective Agents in the Evolution of Arthropod Sociality

Mrs LJ Beaumont; Prof AJ Pitman; Dr W Thuiller; Dr SE Williams
Where will species go? Revolutionising projections of species distributions with climate change

A/Prof R De Dear; Dr S Drake
Occupant comfort in naturally ventilated and mixed mode spaces within air conditioned offices

Dr D Dominey Howes; Prof JF Nott; Dr J Goff
Testing the Australian Megatsunami Hypothesis

Dr JL Hudson; A/Prof JA Donald; Prof RM Rapee; Dr TC Eley
Environmental and genetic risk factors for anxiety disorders in children

Dr MR Leishman; Dr BR Murray; Dr AT Moles; A/Prof DM Richardson; Prof J Klironomos
Naturalisation to invasion: how do naturalised plants become successful invaders?

Dr C Lusk; Prof U Niinemets; Prof P Reich
The physiological ecology of forest succession: explaining shade tolerance variation in evergreen and deciduous trees

Dr D Moran; A/Prof PH Karuso
First Principles Design of Second Generation Protein Stains

Dr CJ O'Neill
The role of supercontinents in Earth's dynamic evolution

Dr IT Paulsen
A functional genomic approach for understanding metal ion adaptation in marine cyanobacteria

A/Prof MF Poulsen; A/Prof J Forrest; Prof RJ Johnston
The Residential Segregation/Desegregation Behaviour of Immigrant Minority Groups in Sydney, Australia's Largest Ethnicity

Prof HW Stokes; Dr AJ Holmes; A/Prof MR Gillings; Dr IT Paulsen
The biology of integrons and their role in bacterial adaptation

Prof M Westoby; Prof U Dieckmann; Prof IC Prentice; Prof P Reich
Plant ecological strategies across species and an evolutionary ecology vegetation model

Dr D Moran
Approved Persistent Triplet Carbenes. Viable or Not?

A/Prof KM Dunn; Dr A Pedersen; A/Prof J Forrest; Dr YC Paradies; A/Prof DF Ip; Prof H
Babacan
Constructing regionally appropriate anti-racism strategies for Australia
(through UNSW)

Successful NHMRC

Prof Harold Stokes, Prof Paul Curmi, Prof Ian Paulsen, Dr Maurizzio Labbate, A/Pr Rob Willows and A/Pr Bridget Mabbutt for their successful NHMRC project grant: "Integrons, mobile gene cassettes and pathogencity in Vibrio cholerae"

Prof Peter Schofield, A/Pr Jennifer Donald and Prof Philip Mitchell: "Cloning and characterisation of a bipolar disorder susceptibility gene on chromosome 15q"

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Opportunities

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National Science Week Grants Now Open

Applications for the 2008 National Science Week grants are open, closing on 19 October 2007. Between $2,000 and $40,000 of funding is available and further details can be found at: - www.dest.gov.au/scienceweek .

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Scientists in Schools

The Scientists in Schools programme allows scientists to work with one or more schools in a style that suits you and the school involved.

You will provide valuable ideas and inspiration for teachers and students; in turn, you will receive a fresh perspective on science from your contact with the classroom environment.

The programme is open to research scientists and engineers as well as people involved in applied sciences, such as doctors, vets, park rangers and so on.

For more information see http://www.scientistsinschools.edu.au/scientists/index.htm

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Australian Respiratory Council Research Grants

The Australian Respiratory Council is a charity organisation supporting prevention, treatment and research into respiratory disease at a national and international level.

In 2008 the Respiratory Council if offering: the ARC Harry Windsor Research Grants

These awards are being offered nationally to support research in:

Tuberculosis
Respiratory diseases related to other infections
Smoking-related respiratory diseases
Projects which also address community issues or the health of disadvantaged groups are particularly encouraged.

Several grants of approximately $50,000 are being offered in 2008. Grants are available for projects submitted to the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) which are considered fundable but which do not reach the cut-off mark for funding in any one year.

Applications to be submitted to the Research Office by Friday the 19th of October. See http://www.thearc.org.au/2008research.htm for further information.

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Events

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Andy Beattie Appearing on New Inventors

Keep an eye out for Professor Andy Beattie appearing on the New Inventors this Wednesday 3rd October. he was recently tied up for an entire morning of filming just for a two minute interview and, in his words "I don't know what they will do to me as the backdrop was giant spiders moving through the undergrowth".

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Biological Science Seminar this Wednesday

"Co-operation in bell miners: a case of sexy signalling"
Paul McDonald, Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University
E8A290 13:00:00

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Chemistry & Biomolecular Sciences Seminar this Thursday

12 noon, Thursday Oct. 4, 2007 in F7B Room 322
Dr Lars S Jermiin, School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney
“New methods of detecting violated phylogenetic assumptions: Implications of comparative genomics”

Abstract
Most phylogenetic methods assume that the sequences of nucleotides or amino acids have evolved under stationary, reversible and homogeneous conditions. When these assumptions are violated by the data, as would be the case if there is compositional heterogeneity across the sequences, the phylogenetic estimates are obtained under an incorrect model and thus subject to error. Methods to examine aligned sequences for violation of these assumptions have been available for years, but they are rarely used, presumably because they are not widely known or because they are poorly understood. Here we describe and compare matched-pairs tests for symmetry of two-dimensional contingency tables from homologous sequences and show that the tests of symmetry, marginal symmetry and internal symmetry can be used not only to detect violation of the assumption of stationarity, reversibility and homogeneity, but also to identify what may underpin this violation. Under the assumption that the sequences evolved under stationary, reversible and homogeneous conditions, the tests are unaffected by invariant sites and divergence between the pairs of sequences, implying that they may be used to identify suitable substitution models for estimation of evolutionary relationships under a Markovian model.

About the Speaker
Graduated from Århus University (1989; Denmark) with a cand. scient. (in population genetics) and from La Trobe University (1994; Australia) with a PhD (in molecular evolution). Postdoctoral Research Associate, La Trobe University (1994-5); Canadian International Fellow, University of Ottawa (1995); Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Research Fellow, Australian National University (1995-8); Research Fellow, University of Sydney (1998-2001); Lecturer, University of Sydney (2001-3); Deputy Director of SUBIT, University of Sydney (2002); Director of SUBIT, University of Sydney (2003-7); Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney (2004-7).

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ELS Seminar Series

Departments in ELS host seminars covering a wide range of topics associated with ongoing research projects and other areas of interest. The seminars are delivered by academics, research staff, and students from within the Division, as well as guest speakers from other institutions and industry. Details of times, dates, locations and topics of seminars to be held over the next few weeks are listed here.

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Snippets

Transport shortage impairs minorities
New research has shown that in Australia  marginalised social groups are excluded because they have poor access to transport.

Drink spiking rampant in youths
A staggering new study has found that a quarter of Australians aged between 18 and 35 claim to have been victims of drink spiking.

NZ vulnerable to computer crime
New Zealand organisations are ill-equipped to fight computer hackers and fraudulent employees, according to a new study.

Crocs swim the long way home
Saltwater crocodiles are making marathon ocean swims to reach home even if they are airlifted hundreds of kilometres away, new research has shown.

Personalised medicine battles cancer
Results of a new study have highlighted personalised medicine as an extremely promising therapy for cancer patients, including those with untreatable leukemia.

Spray-on dam cover saves water
Preliminary findings have shown that a new compound that 'seals' the surface of large dams can save millions in water being lost annually by evaporation.

Boys' biology causes hyperactivity
An Australian study has shown that young boys' brains develop in a unique way, making them more susceptible to attention-deficit disorder.

Obese mums raise heavier kids
An overweight mother, watching TV and being a girl increase your odds of being an obese child, according to a New Zealand study.

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