UWS SMH Research News Supplement 2011

ADVERTISING FEATURE

UWS RESeARCH Addressing Climate Change Australia’s Ageing Population Engaging Partnerships

2

ADVERTISING FEATURE

Research that has a global impact Research undertaken by the University of Western Sydney (UWS) is making a difference in our local communities, our nation and our world. Whether it is climate change, the ageing population or partnerships with business and the community, UWS research is having an impact.

In this supplement you will read of the critical issues being tackled, the latest breakthroughs, and remarkable achievements of UWS researchers.

For more information on research at UWS contact www.uws.edu.au/research UWS Research Services Locked Bag 1797 Penrith NSW 2751 +61 2 9852 5222

UWS Research tackling Climate Change

As a society, we are facing unprecedented challenges in relation to climate change.

The planet’s resource-hungry habits mean that we are consuming the resources that underpin ecosystems faster than they can be replenished. According to the WWF’s Living Planet report, our global ecological footprint now exceeds the world’s capacity to regenerate by 30 per cent.

Scientific research also indicates that more extreme weather events and natural disasters are expected in the future across the globe, and the CSIRO predicts that in Australia, during the course of this century, the nature of disasters we experience and their impact may shift significantly, posing new threats to communities and food security.

These changes not only require responses and policy solutions by governments and business, but we must also meet the personal and psychological challenges caused by such radical shifts, particularly as people struggle both with uncertainty about sustainability, and in some cases, the repercussions of disasters.

Photo front cover: Tree Chambers, Hawkesbury Forest Experiment.

Photo this page: Rain-out Shelters at Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, UWS Hawkesbury.

With a commitment to finding researchdriven practical solutions to tackle these critically important issues, the University of Western Sydney has a growing reputation as a centre of innovative and cross-disciplinary research focused on climate change impacts on the environment, society and business.

4

ADVERTISING FEATURE

WORLD STAGE FOR UWS RESEARCH

The Federal Government’s 2010 review of research quality across Australian universities has shown the University of Western Sydney is performing well above world standard in two of its key research areas – cultural studies and plant biology – receiving a score of five, the highest ranking possible.

The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) report, undertaken by the Australian Research Council (ARC), also showed UWS’s research performance was at or above world standard in a wide range of disciplines, including agricultural and veterinary sciences, civil engineering, performing arts and creative writing, literary studies, pure mathematics, physical chemistry, microbiology, nursing, urban and regional planning, education systems, cognitive sciences, and film, television and digital media.

Professor Andrew Cheetham, pro-vice chancellor (research) at UWS, says the ERA results supported the University’s strategy of selectivity and concentration in research, particularly through the establishment of dedicated research centres.

“It was very pleasing to see that our strongest performances are concentrated in those areas where we have been focusing our research efforts and resources,” Professor Cheetham says.

Across the ERA review, in the area of plant biology, the average score was 4.3, indicating a very high standard across the board, but the University’s work through the newly established Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment saw it leading in this area.

In cultural studies, by contrast, UWS was one of only three institutions in Australia to receive the top score of five. This standout performance can be attributed to the work of the University’s Centre for Cultural Research as well as other cultural studies researchers across the University.

Distinguished Professor Ien Ang, professor of Cultural Studies and the founding director of the Centre for Cultural Research, says what makes their work stand out is the type of cultural research they undertake.

“We consider cultural research as somewhat broader than cultural studies. We also

have sociologists, cultural geographers, anthropologists and so on. So what makes our work innovative is that it pursues interdisciplinary research in a very serious and collaborative way,” Professor Ang says.

A 2010 grant of $2.5 million by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) for the establishment of a Centre of Research Excellence, the Centre for Informing Policy in Health with Evidence from Research (CIPHER), will see the emergence of a new area of research strength for UWS. The grant to UWS was one of 15 awarded to universities across Australia, and researchers from the UWS School of Medicine and the Sax Institute, Professors Sally Redman and Louisa Jorm, are the Centre’s lead investigators, working alongside researchers from institutions including the Australasian Cochrane Centre, the University of Newcastle, the University of New South Wales, the University of Technology, Sydney, and the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

Professor Jorm says the fiveyear program of work will focus on increasing the use of research in health policy, by developing a tool to measure the use of evidence in policymaking, undertaking interventions with government departments by providing brokered services and web-based information portals, and providing training to staff working in policy agencies on the assessment and use of research evidence.

“The size and nature of this program is quite unique in Australia and internationally, and as it will be the first intervention study of its type, its findings will be high profile,” Professor Jorm says. “We will be exploring the organisational factors that influence how well the intervention works in some agencies, and not in others, which will potentially help in a larger-scale roll-out in the future.”

A new multi-million dollar research institute at UWS, the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, is dedicated to answering crucial questions about the impact of environmental change on land-based ecosystems.

The research is exploring how the components of these ecosystems, from the smallest soil microbes and insects to the tallest trees, respond to current and predicted changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, climate, biotic invasions, and land use. This multi-scale approach is made possible by the availability of some of Australia’s most comprehensive research facilities that have been developed as a result of a $40 million grant to UWS, an initiative of the Australian Government as part of the Nation-building Stimulus Package in 2009.

The centrepiece of the climate change infrastructure will be the Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) experiment located in natural woodland on the University’s Hawkesbury campus in Sydney’s northwest. The leader of the FACE experiment, Professor David Ellsworth, says, “This experiment is the first of its kind in the southern hemisphere and coupled with the existing, 10 metre-tall whole tree chamber facility, will generate critical new information for the management of Australia’s unique woodlands and forests under a changing climate.”

According to the Institute’s Director of Research, Associate Professor Ian Anderson, “The research will provide answers to questions that are not only of relevance to the natural Australian environment but also to natural and managed ecosystems across the globe, and in fact to the role that forests may or may not play in slowing down climate change.”

This unique set of field facilities is underpinned by sophisticated research

laboratories including a NextGeneration sequencing facility that will allow investigations across the scale, from genes to ecosystems. Associate Professor Anderson says that “environmental change has a profound effect on the growth and population diversity of soil microbes, leaf-feeding insects and larger animals.

The big question is the extent to which these population shifts affect the amount of carbon stored in terrestrial ecosystems.” This question is being addressed using the latest genetic techniques.

The Hawkesbury Institute is also bringing together an integrated team of talented academics, research students and technical and professional staff to form an international research hub that, together with the Institute’s research facilities, is attracting collaborators from around the world.

The Institute’s Foundation Director, Professor Peter Reich, is internationally recognised for his outstanding contributions to interdisciplinary research aimed at providing solutions to Earth’s most pressing environmental problems.

Professor Reich is jointly affiliated with UWS and the University of Minnesota, and will work to build bridges between the two universities, as well as link UWS to other leading institutions worldwide.

Professor Reich says, “The HIE is an exciting initiative scientifically and will be of great value to society in providing answers to critical questions about the fate of our ecosystems and our climate system.”

For more information visit www.uws.edu.au/hie

Photos L–R: Professor Peter Reich, Associate Professor Ian Anderson.

6

ADVERTISING FEATURE

Hot Topics Engage People

FOOD SECURITY IN A CHANGING CLIMATE As global populations grow, food production must increase by 70 per cent by 2050 to meet demand, according to statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

However, against the backdrop of this increased need, with climate change beginning to alter weather patterns, our crops and food security could come under threat.

Dr Fiona Cameron, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Cultural Research (CCR) at the University of Western Sydney is interested in hot topics.

Later this week Dr Cameron will chair the Hot Science Global Citizens Symposium at the Turner Hall, Ultimo TAFE and the Australian Museum in Sydney where Professor Mike Hulme, from the University of East Anglia, UK, is scheduled to deliver the keynote address entitled “Why we disagree about climate change.

A problem to be solved or a creative opportunity?’’ followed by a free public lecture in the evening. Professor Hulme argues that governing climate change is controversial because the idea means different things to different people in different locations. He says that current approaches are deficient because they operate as a universalising, global project in which everyone must agree.

The Symposium is part of a project based at the CCR and led by Dr Cameron, called “Hot Science, Global Citizens: the agency of the museum sector in climate change interventions”.

According to Dr Fiona Cameron the project has been examining the potential roles of museums and other science organisations in climate change governance, as places to communicate the complexities of climate change, their potential roles in debates and decisionmaking processes and as creative agencies in helping to devise plural governing projects, and as part of transnational networks.

UWS has been working with five institutions from around Australia and the Liberty Science

Centre in Jersey City in New York, using a demographic survey as part of the methodology.

“We tested how people felt about the decisionmaking process, and how museums can facilitate that as well,” Dr Cameron says.

“In Australia 91 per cent of those surveyed felt disempowered and excluded from the decisionmaking process around climate change. They felt that voting was their only option to have a say.

There was also confusion and frustration at not being able to access clear information about what is happening and what to do.” Importantly, the research has found that museums and science centres are regarded as trusted, reliable information sources – second only to science organisations, and way ahead of government and corporations.

The Hot Science Global Citizens Symposium will be on Thursday, May 5 at Turner Hall, ULTIMO TAFE and Friday May 6 at the Australian Museum.

For more information on this project and others at the CCR visit www.uws.edu.au/ centre_for_cultural_research/ccr

Photos: Dr Fiona Cameron (above left), Dr Adam Komarak, UWS agricultural economist discusses the food security project with Professor Bill Bellotti (at right).

Associate Professor Samsul Huda, from the UWS School of Natural Sciences, is leading an international research team – including the South Australian Research and Development Institute, the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture (China) and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (India) – to investigate likely shifts in rain and water availability across the Asia Pacific, and to match these to crop development.

While most crops in Australia, India and China are still rain-fed, Huda says the project, which is supported by the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research, examines longterm climate data and future projections, as well as the plant life cycles for crops such as chickpeas, wheat, soybean, sorghum and maize, to match their duration to rain distribution.

The research also seeks to understand where soil and crop management practices used in one area could be employed in another as weather and climate patterns change, helping farmers, community workers and government agencies to adapt.

“This is the key for agricultural practices – we can learn which practices we can continue with, and which ones we need to

improve to lift crop performance,” Professor Huda says. “We are looking to promote practices which would help farmers not only to increase production, but improve sustainable resource use and maximise opportunities.”

Food security is also a challenge for urban areas, and Professor Bill Bellotti, Vincent Fairfax Chair in Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development, says Sydney, with its large population and arable land, provides a great opportunity for exploring how to feed a city sustainably.

Given the high value of land around Sydney, any agriculture or horticulture must also be high value, and Professor Bellotti has been looking to the Netherlands for models of efficient food production close to metropolitan demand. Modern, high-tech greenhouses for vegetable crops using solar technology and water recycling may be the answer.

“What we are looking at is a technology package that will produce very high amounts of fresh food, generate its own energy requirements and be self-sufficient for water,” Professor Bellotti says. “I think it could be a really good match for the Sydney basin.”

For more information visit www.uws.edu.au/ research/success

From carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes, to corporate social responsibility and technological innovation the global business environment is set to transform under the impact of climate change.

Professor Bobby Banerjee, Associate Dean (Research) in the UWS College of Business and Law, together with colleagues Professor David Levy, from the University of Massachusetts and Dr Bettina Wittneben and Dr Chukwumerjie Okereke from the University of Oxford, is conducting an international comparative analysis of corporate and institutional strategies to cope with climate change in Australia, the US, the UK and Germany, funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant.

The research involves examining the role of market, state and civil society actors in shaping climate change policies. The researchers will conduct a series of in-depth interviews and case studies and identify corporate best practice in climate change in selected industrial sectors in each country.

The project commenced in 2010, and while it is still in the data collection stage, some patterns have already emerged.

“Of all the four countries, Australia is probably the worst in terms of not having any national level policy at all, followed by the US, which at least has some state level regulation,” Professor Banerjee says.

“Our premise is that depending on the policy regimes in each country or region, corporations will act differently. So it is possible, for example, for an automobile company, to have a very different approach to climate change in Australia than they would in the UK or the US.” There are also cultural factors – for example, the US corporate sector tends to take a very oppositional stance to legislation, while in Europe, the same companies take a much more participatory and cooperative approach with the government.

“We would argue that certain configurations of market, state and civil society interactions produce particular policy regimes, that influence corporate actions on climate change,” Professor Banerjee says.

Given the difficulties in reaching any binding international agreement on limiting emissions, this research is even more relevant.

“It becomes very important to study what countries are doing at the regional and national level, because I think that kind of information exchange is really important for other countries to figure out their responses.”

For more information visit www.uws.edu.au/business/ cob/research

Driving corporate change on climate

Helping small business change

Group targets crisis response

As small and medium enterprises (SMEs) account for 97 per cent of Australian businesses and contribute 40 per cent of GDP in Sydney alone, their performance in the increasingly important area of environment and social responsibility should not be ignored.

Recent months have seen a string of severe natural disasters in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and elsewhere, leaving behind them a trail of physical destruction and often traumatised people dealing with loss and grief in the aftermath.

Now, a study by Professor Bobby Banerjee, Associate Dean (Research), and Dr Fernanda Duarte, senior lecturer, organisational studies from the School of Management in the UWS College of Business and Law, is examining the strategic importance of environmental and social responsibility for SMEs, how they build these principles into their business plans and the barriers they face in doing so.

Particularly in the area of environmental performance, the focus has always been the big polluters with regulation aimed at changing behaviour.

“What we don’t realise is collectively SMEs pollute a lot more than individual large corporations, and SMEs tend to be much less regulated because of their size. Therefore, it becomes important to make them realise there could be some benefits to becoming greener and more sustainable in their operations, because there are very few external regulatory forces that are going to make them act,” Professor Banerjee says.

Funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage grant in partnership with Nitro9Coach, the study focuses on the western Sydney area as a hub for SMEs. Through a series of in-depth interviews with business owners, case

The researchers of the UWS Disaster Response and Resilience Research Group are studying how people perceive, prepare for and respond to these and other diverse threats, and how impacts may affect their mental health and wellbeing. It’s not just natural disasters that are the focus of the group’s work – the effects of terrorism, pandemic influenza, and broader ‘slow’ disasters such as drought and climate change are also being investigated.

Professor Beverley Raphael, Professor of Population Mental Health and Disasters at UWS, says some interesting developments are currently emerging from analysis of data collected in a 2010 survey on key changes over time in risk perception and behaviour of certain populations relating to disasters and terrorism.

This adds further to work started in 2007, and Professor Raphael says the research has uncovered some important findings in relation to perceptions of risk associated with climate change, and on how individuals and communities build resilience during tough times. “Populations can be traumatised in different ways following a disaster, depending on the circumstances. For example, a terrorist attack is likely to have more profound effects than a natural disaster,” Professor Raphael says.

The Group is also concerned about the mental health and wellbeing of children in terms of the impacts of trauma and

studies with selected SMEs and a quantitative survey of 1000 SMEs, researchers will develop a framework for integrating social and environmental issues in SME business strategies.

“We would like to establish an empirically tested model to help these companies move to a more formalised phase of sustainability,” Dr Duarte says, particularly as many SMEs have quite an informal approach to environmental performance.

Already the study has shown that even though SMEs are often engaged in what would be regarded as socially responsible activities, such as generating social capital with their employees and communities and being very aware of work and family balance, they often do not define it in this way. Where large corporations see social responsibility as providing a competitive advantage, SMEs are much more likely to view it as a moral issue because “it’s the right thing to do.”

“This research will help to create more sustainable SMEs in the long run, making a shift from the primary focus on bottom line, to the triple bottom line, which is people, planet and profit,” Dr Duarte says.

For more information visit www.uws.edu.au/business/ cob/research

Photos L–R: Professor Bobby Banerjee. Dr Fernanda Duarte.

Mr Garry Stevens, Professor Beverley Raphael and Dr Melanie Taylor.

loss in childhood through a range of adverse experiences, which may add to their level of vulnerability to mental health problems in childhood, adolescence and adult life.

Importantly, the Group is also focused on translating this research and expertise into practical strategies, informing policy and influencing national and regional emergency response systems.

They have worked with government departments across Australia, such as NSW Health Mental Health staff involved in emergency response. Professor Raphael also chairs the National Mental Health Disaster Response Committee and Taskforce to assist collaboration in mental health planning and response to major disaster.

With social media use becoming increasingly prevalent, a study by the group is now exploring how people affected by recent emergencies, such as the Queensland floods, Cyclone Yasi, the Western Australian bushfires, the New Zealand earthquake and the Japanese disasters, use channels such as Facebook and Twitter to access vital information and emergency assistance from authorities and the local community.

The study is supported by the Emergency Media and Public Affairs Organisation and the Federal Attorney-General’s Department.

For more information visit www.uws.edu.au/disaster_ response_resilience/disaster_ response_and_resilience

Practical solutions for AGED CARE By 2050, the proportion of the population aged 65 and over will jump from around 14 per cent to around 23 per cent. While there are currently five working-age Australians for every citizen over 65, by 2050 there will be just 2.7.

This obviously presents many different economic and social challenges, but nowhere will they be felt more than in the healthcare sector, as our desire to not only extend but to improve the quality of life for our elderly creates ever-higher expectations for treatment and care. But with those higher expectations also comes greater cost – which with the demographic bubble, may become harder and harder to meet.

Recognising the difficulties ahead, Australian governments are now focusing attention on research into some of the most pressing health problems facing the aged, such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and models of aged care provision. According to statistics from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, dementia affects 24 per cent of people aged over 85, with the annual healthcare costs for people with dementia estimated to be $1.4 billion (2003 figures).

New research underway at the College of Health and Science at UWS hopes to contribute to practical solutions through applied research in the prevention and treatment of dementia and other age-related cognitive decline, and how life can be made more comfortable for sufferers.

Photo: Namaste Care program at Minchinbury.

Slowing the effects of ageing on the brain

ADVERTISING FEATURE

The brain of an Alzheimer’s disease patient is “starving and stressed,” says Associate Professor Gerald Muench from the UWS School of Medicine, with inflammation and energy depletion the major markers of the disease.

While it may seem like a strange leap, these conditions are very similar to those experienced by Australian native tropical rainforest plants in North Queensland during the dry season, Associate Professor Muench says, with low water and high UV levels.

“Those plants have to make chemicals to protect themselves from the harsh environment. We can then use these chemicals, which are mostly antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, to protect our brains from a stressed environment,” Associate Professor Muench says.

In a study started through James Cook University’s ‘Enhancing life in the tropics’, Associate Professor Muench is identifying and testing compounds from these plants which may help to treat a variety of age-related diseases characterised by inflammation and oxidative stress, including Alzheimer’s.

These findings may contribute to the development of evidencebased healthcare products.

Another project, by UWS PhD student Megan Steele and Associate Professor Gerald Muench, seeks to further understand how Alzheimer’s progresses by investigating the role of certain nervous system cells in protecting against dementia.

In the brain, neurons are involved in messaging and making memories, while astrocytes provide nutrition and other structural support for the neurons. In patients with Alzheimer’s disease, the neurons die.

“So far I have been able to prove that the inflammation involved in Alzheimer’s disease changes the function of the astrocytes, stopping them from providing the neurons with enough glutathione,

a vital antioxidant, making the neurons very vulnerable to inflammation and other stressors,” Ms Steele says.

This important finding means that by identifying a compound to reduce inflammation and allow astrocytes to regain their normal function, the neurons could be made stronger – thereby slowing the progression of dementia.

A herbal formula that may help to slow the effects of ageing in both dementia patients and healthy adults is also the focus of research underway at the Centre for Complementary Medicine Research (CompleMED).

Led by Associate Professor Dennis Chang, head of the CompleMED neurocognitive laboratory, and postdoctoral research fellow Dr Ben Colagiuri, the clinical trial builds on an earlier trial with vascular dementia patients.

“We found that it was helpful in relieving their symptoms, mainly in the area of neurocognitive functional impairment. Then we thought that it might be helpful in the broader population as well in terms of slowing down age-related cognitive function decline,” Associate Professor Chang says.

The pilot study has tested two groups of healthy participants of various ages, with the aim of launching a larger-scale trial in the future. A further clinical trial with vascular dementia patients is also planned.

If the formula proves to be effective, Associate Professor Chang says it could be a “groundbreaking solution” for patients with vascular dementia, for whom there are currently no effective pharmaceuticals, but it could also have an important preventative role.

For more information on these projects and others related to aged care visit www.uws.edu.au/ research/success

Photos L–R: Associate Professor Gerald Muench’s PhD researcher Megan Steele at the School of Medicine, UWS Campbelltown.

Dr Daniel Nicholls, Professor Esther Chang, Dr Amanda Johnson and Dr Michel Edenborough, Namaste Care program at UWS.

11

Bringing dignity to end stage dementia For people in the terminal stages of dementia or other illnesses, being in a residential aged care facility can be a lonely experience. But UWS researchers are investigating whether an end-of-life care protocol developed in the USA could bring comfort and support during this time.

The Namaste Care program, created in 2004 by Associate Professor Joyce Simard, is based on loving touch and meaningful activities for residents of aged care facilities with dementia and other terminal illnesses.

UWS is undertaking the world’s first clinical evaluation of the program, which avoids ‘high tech’ treatment in favour of ‘high touch’ care, through a trial at three Sydney aged care facilities.

Professor Esther Chang, director of research at the UWS School of Nursing and Midwifery, says the program appears to bring terminally ill people dignity.

“The high-touch protocol honours and respects the person dying from dementia while maintaining them comfortably in a residential facility,” she says.

An important component of the program is restructuring the workload in the aged care facility, so that people in the end stages of dementia are cared for together, enabling staff to

implement the ‘high touch’ approach required more easily.

The project will continue to the end of 2011, and is funded through the Department of Health and Ageing Local Palliative Care Grants Program, Round 5.

“If successful, we’re hoping the findings will improve the level of care while avoiding medically futile ‘high tech’ treatments that occur when palliative care patients with dementia are transferred to acute care,” Professor Chang says.

UWS researchers are not only working on evaluating Namaste Care, but have also produced a DVD for residential aged care staff, showing how the program can be implemented.

This reflects the applied nature of research at UWS, according to Professor Chang.

“With aged care research, we are trying to implement practical programs to address issues facing these residential facilities, so that residents will receive better quality care.”

Research engaging Western Sydney

ADVERTISING FEATURE

As a thriving area of development, Western Sydney in some ways acts as a microcosm for the social, demographic and environmental issues facing cities all over the world. It is the fastest growing region of metropolitan Sydney, and the third largest producer of Australia’s GDP. As such, it provides the perfect context to ask the big questions: how do we want a culturally diverse society to operate? As our cities get bigger, how will we manage the resources we have most effectively?

What is the impact of broad financial and economic trends on Australian households?

And how should our businesses be responding to climate change?

Being located in this dynamic and diverse region of Sydney means that UWS is wellplaced to respond to these issues. Its commitment to a high-impact research culture has resulted in the University undertaking a wide range of partnership projects for collaborative problem-solving with government, industry and the community.

In this way, UWS makes its mark not only on the region, but provides solutions and models which can be implemented nationally and internationally.

Photo: Mr Uthpala Pinto, Dr Bruce Simmons and Associate Professor Basant Maheshwari, testing water in the Hawkesbury River near North Richmond.

13

Using water wisely Water has always been regarded as an important commodity in Australia, and its availability is not just the concern of farmers struggling through years of drought.

With plans to convert farming areas in Western Sydney into suburbs to meet the housing needs of an expanding metropolitan population, the WISER (Water and Irrigation Strategy Enhancement through Regional Partnership in Peri-urban Landscapes) project began in 2006 to identify options for sustainable use of potable water, stormwater, effluent and groundwater in the region.

Associate Professor Basant Maheshwari, of the UWS School of Natural Sciences, has led the investigation of how the transformation of this area will impact on its hydrology, and the economic consequences of these changes.

“We have developed models so we can examine what will happen to the water balance of the area if we change land use. For example, if we keep the situation as it is, by 2030 we will have just enough water to supply households, but we may not have water to maintain gardens, to support parks and sporting ovals, for farming and growing produce, and the water in the river may not be adequate to keep it to a healthy balance,” Professor Maheshwari says.

This is critical as the Hawkesbury-Nepean river system supplies most of Sydney’s drinking

water, as well as water for agriculture and industry.

Further development of the area, on the other hand, will mean there is more stormwater, wastewater and effluents, so by taking a regionally integrated water resources planning approach, the region’s water needs could be met through options such as effluent reuse or stormwater harvesting.

Funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Irrigation Futures, the project has been supported by four Western Sydney Councils – Blacktown, Hawkesbury, Liverpool and Penrith – and has resulted in a commitment between the councils, UWS and other partners to come up with solutions to manage the water challenges ahead.

UWS research also contributed to the bid by Penrith and Blacktown councils to seek investment for harvesting stormwater and storing it underground in acquifers to use for irrigating sporting ovals, parks and industries.

“Water is something that can’t be managed within council boundaries. You have to work with others and this project provided that opportunity to address the practical issues,” Professor Maheshwari says.

For more information visit www.uws.edu.au/urban

Study questions mortgage views Following the global financial crisis, ratings agencies observed higher than average levels of mortgage arrears in Western Sydney, although mortgage default rates did not lift significantly.

However, according to a recent study by the University of Western Sydney’s Urban Research Centre, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Sydney, this was not necessarily cause for celebration – with households under financial strain going to extraordinary measures to meet their loan repayments rather than giving up their dream of home ownership.

Professor Phillip O’Neill, director of the Urban Research Centre and lead investigator on the project, says the findings of the study question the prevailing view that Australia emerged from the global financial crisis unscathed.

The study found that for households that were already overextended in terms of the proportion of income required to service the mortgage, only an unexpected life event – such as loss of an income, sickness, the birth of a child or family breakdown – was needed to trigger mortgage distress.

Receiving little support or advice from financial institutions when under financial stress, households made desperate efforts to manage their mortgages, such as minimising essential household expenditure, using credit cards, taking on additional casual work,

or seeking assistance from non-government, community sector support agencies.

“Participants in the study revealed how they have cut back their weekly outgoings, even on the most basic items – for a diet of basic rice in one instance,” Professor O’Neill says. “In one case, a distressed borrower reported being encouraged by her bank to build her credit card debt to extraordinary levels rather than default on the mortgage contract.”

These measures, often exercised over long periods, had an intense negative impact on the quality of life of mortgage-holders and their families, with feelings of shame, failure, loneliness, sadness and depression common amongst those experiencing mortgage distress.

To tackle the issue of mortgage distress, the study recommended better assistance to mortgage borrowers including third party advice both at the time of signing a mortgage contract and when they begin to show financial strain.

The project was supported by the Reserve Bank of Australia.

For more information visit www.uws.edu.au/ urban_research_centre/urc

Photos L–R: Steve Fazio and Lei Jing programming software for the AusTalk black box at MARCS Auditory Laboratories, UWS Bankstown.

Accent on our language Could you pick someone from Adelaide or Brisbane, just by their accent?

The ground-breaking national AusTalk project will assemble, for the very first time, a collection of recordings of 1,000 Australian English speakers (including Australian Aboriginal English speakers), providing a representation of the differences in dialect between people of different ages, cultural backgrounds and locations.

Led by UWS, the project brings together 30 chief investigators from 11 institutions across Australia, and is funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities Grant.

As well as providing a permanent record of Australian English to support speech science research and development, AusTalk will also assist in the development of a range of speech technology applications such as speech recognition and synthesis, in developing communication aids for people requiring speech therapy or with a hearing impairment, and even in forensic investigations.

Professor Denis Burnham, Director of MARCS Auditory Laboratories at UWS, is one of the main researchers on the project, alongside Dr Felicity Cox and Professor Robert Dale from Macquarie University. The project is also backed financially and in-kind by the Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association, the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and 11 Australian universities.

He says the aim of AusTalk is to provide a publicly available corpus of Australian English speech, which can be used both for research purposes, and for forensic and commercial applications. Up until now, the only collections of Australian speech have been small

or subject to proprietary conditions, and improvements in computing power and storage mean that this project is much more ambitious in the size of the collection than previous efforts have been.

“It will be unique in the world, because firstly, it is audio-visual.

It will be comprehensive in that we are recording a total of 1,000 people from 17 different locations around Australia, and also in the sense that it captures the speakers doing a number of different types of tasks, on several different occasions, so you capture variations of their speech,” Professor Burnham says.

A special ‘black box’ of recording equipment will be used in all 17 recording locations, ensuring that all the audio and visual material collected is standardised.

Each speaker will be recorded in three sessions of one hour each, and the video component will capture their facial expressions and gestures, to collect more valuable data about the nonverbal components of speech.

Project officer Dr Dominique Estival says, “There is a lot of information we get visually even when we are having a conversation with speech. From the technology point of view, we would also like to be able to use the recordings to do lip reading, for example,” Estival says.

Speakers are currently being selected for the project. While participants will be anonymous, they will be asked to provide details of their family background, their history and where they went to school, to provide researchers with information about the influences that have shaped their accent.

To find out how you can be involved in the AusTalk project, visit http://austalk.edu.au.

Research to close the gap

Safer, smarter structures

Indigenous researcher Dr Gawaian Bodkin-Andrews, a postdoctoral fellow in the Education Excellence (E3) Research Program in the UWS Centre for Educational Research, was recently honoured by the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) with both the Betty Watts Indigenous Researcher Award and the Early Career Researcher Award.

Two major grants in the area of structural performance and design will allow the UWS Civionics Research Centre, recently established as the first of its kind in Australia, to break new ground.

and non-Indigenous school students in New South Wales.

Dr Bodkin-Andrews found racism can have a strong effect on student engagement and performance, and that traditional constructive interventions, which were found to be highly effective for student engagement and achievement, may not protect Indigenous students from the negative impact of racism.

“In some instances, they make the effects even worse, or they make students more vulnerable,” Dr Bodkin-Andrews says.

By interviewing highly successful Indigenous Australians about their education experiences, and their experiences of racism and how they coped with it, Dr BodkinAndrews has sought to create foundations for intervention.

“The major outcome of the project is to increase resiliency for Indigenous and non-Indigenous students across secondary schools, regardless of their culture, against the effects of racism,” Dr Bodkin-Andrew says.

Professor Craven says helping all Australians to understand, appreciate and value Aboriginal Australia is the only way to address racism and discrimination.

For more information visit www.uws.edu.au/centre_for_ educational_research/cer

a demountable ‘blind bolting’ system to be used in both new and existing concrete and steel structures.

“One of the big issues with steel and concrete structures is demolition of buildings at the end of their lifetime, because of the safety issues. In some cases in the past, there have been fatalities through the controlled demolition of buildings, such as with the Royal Canberra Hospital,” Professor Uy says.

By using a composite system such as blind bolting when creating new structures, it would allow for the steel frames and concrete slabs to be simply ‘unbolted’ safely at the end of its life.

The system has also been used successfully in the USA to rehabilitate steel bridges, which were suffering from fatigue and cracking through repetitive loading.

“This technology can also assist in Australian infrastructure, which is potentially suffering from similar effects,” Professor Uy says.

For more information visit www.uws.edu.au/ civionics/civionicscentre

Photos L–R: Dr Gawaian Bodkin-Andrews, Professor Brian Uy.

STR2483 3/5/2011

Professor Rhonda Craven from the Centre for Educational Research says it is the first time the AARE has presented both awards to a researcher, and that the University is “thrilled” with the result.

“As a national award, it acknowledges Dr BodkinAndrews as an up-and-coming Indigenous researcher. The support that he has received from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the University is helping him to become one of very few Indigenous researchers who are experts in quantitative research methodology, although he also does multi-method research,” Professor Craven says.

“One of the goals of E3 is to build the research capabilities of our Indigenous researchers, because we see it as a way to build the capability of Indigenous people to contribute to closing the gap and to help build a more socially just Australia,” she adds.

The awards were in recognition of Dr Bodkin-Andrews’ paper, ‘Looking Past Positivity for Indigenous Australian Students: A preliminary investigation of racial discrimination and the illusion of resiliency in academia’. This article focuses on his current research project for the UWS College of Arts, ‘Healing the Wounds of the Spirit/Heart’, which focuses on the impact of racism on Indigenous

Professor Brian Uy, head of the UWS School of Engineering and director of the Civionics Research Centre, and Professor Yang Xiang, senior associate head of school, Engineering, were part of a major national bid under the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Linkage, Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) scheme to establish a new hybrid testing facility for structures under extreme loads.

Based at Swinburne University, the Smart Structure Laboratory will allow researchers from UWS and 11 other universities to conduct remote testing of structural systems and materials. Professor Uy says the facility will have the first three-dimensional shaking table in Australia, providing an opportunity for vibration and dynamic testing of structures, as well as high-capacity actuators.

The Centre also recently secured a three-year ARC Discovery Grant for a project on composite construction.

Professor Uy, along with researchers Dr Xinqun Zhu and Dr Olivia Mirza, will investigate the development of

16

ADVERTISING FEATURE

Research in motion People prone to motion sickness might well be cautious about taking a boat ride or jumping on a roller-coaster.

But would they think twice about working in a high-rise?

Professor Kenny Kwok, from the UWS School of Engineering, is leading a multi-disciplinary team of researchers to investigate the effects of wind-induced vibration on occupants of tall buildings.

The four-year project, which is supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, goes beyond simple perceptions of motion to examine how the slow swaying of a highrise building could affect the performance and comfort of those living and working inside.

The team, which includes Professor Vaughan Macefield from the UWS School of Medicine, Dr Peter Hitchcock from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Dr Darren Walton of The Health Sponsorship Council, Wellington, NZ, will use a range of research methods to investigate how people are affected by wind ‘excitations’, including a motion simulator experiment,

recording physiological reactions to displacements at frequencies and magnitudes similar to those induced in tall buildings. This draws on Professor Macefield’s work with a technique called galvanic vestibular stimulation, which has been used to study posture and locomotion but is now being used to study the control of blood pressure.

“When we are stimulating the vestibular system at very low frequencies, some people will report nausea and motion sickness,” Professor Macefield says. “We are particularly interested in understanding what type of movement can induce this motion sickness, how the sympathetic nervous system – which controls blood pressure, skin blood flow and sweat release – responds, and if there is a way to train the body to overcome these signals.”

For more information visit www.uws.edu.au/research/success

Photo left to right: Professor Vaughan Macefield, Professor Kenny Kwok

For more information contact www.uws.edu.au/research UWS Research Services Locked Bag 1797 Penrith NSW 2751 +61 2 9852 5222 Published 2 May 2011 © University of Western Sydney