The University’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics senior research associate Alex Brooks, together with research fellows Alex Makarenko, and Tobias Kaupp, worked on the project for eight years through their company Marathon Robotics, which is based at the Australian Technology Park at Eveleigh.

The Rover, or the Autonomous Robots Networked for Live Fire Training (ARNLT) system, will be trialled by the US Marine Corps Systems Command in Orlando, Florida. The Marathon Robotics system uses free-ranging robots protected by armour plating to train marksmen.

The robots are programmed to mimic human behaviour to provide a realistic, challenging and interactive training scenario for marksmen. The Rover is human-sized and weighs 150kg. It has been designed to be a mobile target system that can move freely and can execute complex pre-planned scenarios.

The Rover works in teams and when one is shot, the rest of the robots respond by scattering and running for cover. The robots use a combination of technologies including GPS, high-speed wireless Ethernet and COTS technology. This unique system was designed in conjunction with the Australian Department of Defence to facilitate challenging, realistic training.

The NSW Government helped the development of the robotics technology through its support of the consortium of research groups, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems, and in May hosted a visit by the US Marine Corps to assess the technology. The NSW Government is helping Marathon Robotics target its technology to a range of international export markets including Europe. 

“Nutritional genomics is an emerging area of science that is making a significant difference in our approach to enhancing health outcomes by improving our understanding of how to prevent harmful genetic changes that cause developmental defects and degenerative diseases,” says Professor Michael Fenech from CSIRO Food and Nutritional Sciences.

“In recent years, this research is probably best recognised for identifying how folate assists in reducing neural tube defects during pregnancy.”

Professor Fenech is internationally renowned for developing quick and reliable techniques for detecting damage in DNA, then applying them to define nutritional requirements for preventing diseases caused by genetic abnormalities such as cancer.

To be held at the Adelaide Convention Centre, The Nutritional Genomics (“A Healthy Start to Life”) Symposium is the second in a series of annual events initiated by Professor Fenech and his research team at CSIRO.

“Each year we examine a specific health challenge,” he said. “The 2009 conference focussed on nutritional genomics and the ageing brain. This year, we are exploring the link between nutrition, its genetic effects and the quality of development during conception and early childhood.

“We know that it is important for mothers to eat well during pregnancy and we should feed our children healthy, nutritious food. What foods are best and how much of these foods we need is still unclear. This symposium will shed some light on these important questions.”

One of the speakers, Professor Jill James from the Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute, is the world’s leading expert on applying nutritional genomics to identify and correct the metabolic disorders associated with autism.

“Bringing these top researchers together will enhance our understanding of how nutrients interact with our genes and the resulting health outcomes in early life. It will also help to identify any knowledge gaps for future research and demonstrate new scientific approaches to these challenges,” Professor Fenech said.

“Ultimately, we hope to establish a national collaborative network on nutritional genomics, which will enhance the current breadth and quality of research in this important field.”

The research, by Dr Julie Smith and Dr Peta Harvey of the Australian Centre for Economic Research on Health at ANU, looked at the public health impact of infants being prematurely weaned during the past five decades in Australia. Using evidence that breastfeeding reduces the risk of chronic disease later in life, and that 90 per cent of current 35-45 year olds were weaned off breastfeeding before six months of age during the 1960s, the researchers measured the legacy for our chronic disease burden.

Dr Smith said that inappropriate and unsupportive health policies, practices and attitudes had undermined breastfeeding in the postwar decades, and led to an unnecessary and avoidable public health burden from chronic disease.

“Many Australians have higher chronic disease risk because they missed out on breastfeeding when they were babies. From what we now know about the effects of premature weaning on chronic disease risk, a significant proportion of the current burden of chronic disease might have been avoided,” she said.

“We still don’t fully understand the long term implications of breastfeeding in infancy. But depending on how we measure exposures for different types of chronic disease, more than one in ten Australians will face heightened risk in later life because they were not breastfed, many from disadvantaged families.

“Not being breastfed has modest effects on increasing later chronic disease risk, but the importance for public health lies in the fact that so few Australian babies are breastfed to six months.”

Despite the unhealthy legacy, the researchers say that understanding the impact of past practices offers an opportunity to act against the problem for the future.

“Many public health measures to prevent chronic disease are ineffective or expensive to sustain. But being breastfed for a time in infancy reduces the long-term risk of chronic disease. Few other one-off preventative health interventions show consistent, long term effects in reducing chronic disease.”

Dr Smith said paid maternity leave has an important role to play as it acknowledges that breastfeeding takes time and effort, but further changes are needed in the health system and the community.

“It is crucial that the new National Breastfeeding Strategy redresses historical hangovers and translates into real change, so that breastfeeding is a practical choice for all mothers,” she said. The researchers’ paper – ‘Chronic disease and infant nutrition: Is it significant to public health?’ – is published in the international
journal Public Health Nutrition.

The students, from Aquinas College, will be performing hands-on activities in the lab as they learn the chemistry behind art conservation.

The art conservation activity forms part of an overall four week program where 24 Aquinas College students work closely with researchers from the University’s Free Radical Centre learning about free radicals and their
impact on health and the environment and filming their experience to make an educational video for the broader community.

The program is designed to enhance community education about free radicals in light of increasing advertising related to free radicals and antioxidants, and to inspire the next generation of young scientists.

What: Free Radicals and Health Education Initiative, art conservation session

When: 2pm-3:30pm Tuesday 27 July 2010

Where: Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute, The University of Melbourne, 30 Flemington Road, Parkville 3010

For more information contact:
Renee Beale
Community Awareness Program Manager
ARC Centre of Excellence for Free Radical Chemistry and Biotechnology
School of Chemistry
The University of Melbourne
Mobile: 0404 804 384
Email: renee@freeradical.org.au

Two opinion pieces offer alternate views: formal inspection or peer pressure?

A confidential survey done by Gerald Koocher and Patricia Keith-Spiegel highlights the benefits of the informal approach.

Meanwhile Sandra Titus and Xavier Bosch advocate something more drastic: rewarding responsible institutional behaviour with access to additional competitive funds.

Their discovery opens the way for a new generation of diagnostics, treatments, prevention strategies and food tests for the 200,000 Australians with coeliac disease.

When people with coeliac disease eat products containing gluten their body’s immune response is switched on and the lining of the small intestine is damaged, hampering their ability to absorb nutrients. The disease is currently treated by permanently removing gluten from the patient’s diet.

Dr Bob Anderson, head of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute’s coeliac disease research laboratory, said it had been 60 years since gluten was discovered to be the environmental cause of coeliac disease.

“In the years since, the holy grail in coeliac disease research has been to identify the toxic peptide components of gluten; and that’s what we’ve done,” Dr Anderson said.

The research, done in collaboration with Dr Jason Tye-Din, Dr James Dromey, Dr Stuart Mannering, Dr Jessica Stewart and Dr Tim Beissbarth from the institute as well as Professor Jamie Rossjohn at Monash University and Professor Jim McCluskey at the University of Melbourne, is published in today’s issue of the international journal Science Translational Medicine.

The study was started by Professor Anderson nine years ago and has involved researchers in Australia and the UK as well as more than 200 coeliac disease patients.

The patients, recruited through the Coeliac Society of Victoria and the Coeliac Clinic at John Radcliffe Hospital, UK, ate bread, rye muffins or boiled barley. Six days later, blood samples were taken to
measure the strength of the patients’ immune responses to 2700 different gluten fragments. The responses identified 90 fragments as causing some level of immune reaction, but three gluten fragments (peptides) were revealed as being particularly toxic.

“These three components account for the majority of the immune response to gluten that is observed in people with coeliac disease,” Dr Anderson said.

This knowledge has already been used by Melbourne-based biotech company, Nexpep Pty Ltd, to develop a ‘peptide-based’ immunotherapy that aims to desensitise people with coeliac disease to the toxic effects of gluten. Nexpep’s Phase 1 trials of the therapy were completed in June and final results are expected in coming months.

The immunotherapy works by exposing people with coeliac disease to small amounts of the three toxic peptides and is based upon the same principles as desensitisation for allergies.

Dr Anderson said although coeliac disease could be managed with a gluten-free diet, compliance with the diet is often challenging and nearly half the people on the diet still have residual damage to their
small intestine. “Consequently, the immunotherapy and three other drugs are under development to help people with coeliac disease.”

The research was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council, Coeliac UK, the Coeliac Research Fund, Nexpep Pty Ltd, BTG International and the Victorian Government.

Researchers at the University of Sydney have found the combined intake of iron-folic acid supplements with World Health Organisation (WHO)-endorsed anti-malarial drugs during pregnancy could reduce early infant mortality in sub-Saharan Africa by a quarter.

Worldwide, approximately 247 million cases of malaria each year result in almost a million deaths, mostly among African children. There has been some suggestion the use of antenatal iron-folic acid supplement – generally recommended during all pregnancies – increases malaria among women and children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Researchers at the Sydney School of Public Health, led by Dr Christiana Titaley, analysed data from 19 malaria-endemic African countries to investigate the effect of combining iron-folic acid supplements with malarial prophylaxis during pregnancy. Specifically, they looked at the relationship between the use of these medications and neonatal death (during the first 30 days of life).

“Only about one sixth of the 185,000-plus women investigated took a combination of folic/iron supplements and WHO-recommended sulfadoxine-pyramethamine anti-malarial drugs during pregnancy,” Dr Titaley says. “These women’s children were 24 percent less likely to die in the first month of life than infants whose mothers used neither.

“The prevalence of malaria in many parts of Africa muddies the advice given to most expecting mothers to take iron/folic acid supplements to reduce the risk of anaemia and birth defects,” says Dr Titaley.

“Combining these with effective anti-malarial medication can significantly reduce neonatal mortality in at-risk regions of the world. This is especially true in regions with limited health care resources.

“We hope these findings will help clarify the message to expecting mothers in such areas.”

The paper Combined iron/folic acid supplements and malaria prophylaxis reduce neonatal mortality in 19 sub-Saharan African countries has been published in the latest edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The new theory has implications for how scientists explain the geological evolution of western North America, including parts of Canada, the USA and Mexico.

The research is published today in the prestigious journal Science. (please note embargo: 4 am AEST)

“The Earth’s surface is covered with tectonic plates that move with respect to one another at centimetres per year. These plates converge at deep-sea trenches, plate boundaries where one plate sinks (subducts) below the other at so-called subduction zones. The velocities of these plates and the velocities of the boundaries between these plates vary significantly on Earth,” Dr Schellart said.

The research team included Assistant Professor Dave Stegman from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, Professor Louis Moresi from Monash University’s Schools of Geology and Mathematical Sciences, and also from Monash University’s School of Mathematical Sciences, Ms Rebecca Farrington. They used observational data and advanced computer models to develop a new mathematical scaling theory, which demonstrates that the velocities of the plates and the plate boundaries depend on the size of subduction zones and the presence of subduction zone edges.

The discovery explains why the Australian, Nazca and Pacific plates move up to four times faster than the African, Eurasian and Juan de Fuca plates.

“It also provides explanations for the motions of the ancient Farallon plate that sank into the mantle below North and South America. This plate slowed down during eastward motion from about 10 centimetres per year some 50 million years ago to only 2 centimetres per year at present.”

The decrease in plate velocity resulted form the decrease in subduction zone size, which decreased from 14000 km to only 1400 km.

“This had a dramatic effect on the topography and the structure of the North American continent. Until approximately 50 million years ago, the west coast of North America was characterized by a massive mountain chain similar to the present day Andes in South America, and ran from Canada in the north to southern Mexico in the south,” Dr Schellart said.

As the subduction zone decreased in size, the compressive stresses along the west coast of North America decreased, resulting in destruction of the mountain range and formation of the Basin and Range province,
approximately a 2 million square km area of elongated basins and ridges that characterizes the present-day western North American landscape.

“The new theory provides scientists a dynamic framework in which to interpret the velocities of the tectonic plates in the geological past. It also provides new understanding as to why some subduction zones create
massive mountain ranges, such as the Andes in South America, and why others might subsequently destroy their mountain ranges, replacing them with basins and ridges such as in North America, or deep ocean basins such as in the Tasman Sea region to the east of Australia.”

For more information, a copy of the paper or to arrange an interview with Dr Wouter Schellart, contact Samantha Blair, Media and Communications + 61 3 9903 4841 or 0439 013 951.

Cost-benefit approaches to environmental issues attribute infinite value to nature, giving absolute priority to conservation issues such as protecting biodiversity, saving endangered species and guarding against oil spill disasters.

The study argues invoking infinite values to the environment cripples balanced decision-making.

“Invoking infinite values is very common,” said Professor Mark Colyvan, the Applied Environmental Decision Analysis researcher leading the investigation and professor in the Department of Philosophy. “It arises from a sense of duty to conserve nature that is not negotiable and not overridden by economic concerns.”

But he says assigning infinite values to the natural environment is not the best way to conserve the environment and preserve natural habitats. He argues that if all habitats are assigned infinite value then no habitats are prioritised over others, and none will be preserved.

“This indiscriminate approach would imply indifference about actively protecting the environment but passively doing nothing,” said Professor Colyvan. “This is patently the wrong result.”

Invoking infinite values to the natural environment in this way makes it hard to differentially value and motivate conservation management decisions which are more targeted and have a greater probability of success.

“The key to valuing nature lies in greater interaction across disciplines that have traditionally been viewed as irrelevant to the practice of conservation biology,” said Professor Colyvan. “Only after comprehensive evaluations are in place, can we implement sound conservation policy.”

The Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities Research Hub: Applied Environmental Decision Analysis funded the research project, Environmental Ethics and Decision Theory.

Media enquiries: Stephanie Whitelock, 9351 2261, 0401 711 361, stephanie.whitelock@sydney.edu.au



Even as societies become more cosmopolitan, there is an increasing constituency appealing to parochialism. As the scale and intensity of international interactions increase, so does the potential for frictions and resentments.

This is often accompanied by a profession of one’s own country’s virtues compared with others, a belief that typically owes more to patriotism than evidence.

An international competition in self-righteousness would be closely fought. But Australia must be a strong contender.

The debate about Australia’s role in global warming is an urgent case in point. The domestic debate is often conducted with a blithe ignorance about international developments and perspectives. The statistic frequently quoted is that Australia doesn’t matter because it contributes ”only” 1.4 per cent of global greenhouse gases.

At one level it is true that unless the two biggest contributors – China and the United States – take effective action, any global response will be inadequate. But it should be remembered there are about 200 countries in the world.

At 1.4 per cent of the world total, Australia is the 15th biggest emitter. If the 15th biggest country has an excuse for inaction, then at least 185 other countries have even more excuse than Australia to delay action on climate change.

Total emissions are one way of viewing the problem, but an equally important view is to examine it on a per population basis. Australia emits 1.4 per cent of emissions, but has only 0.3 per cent of the world’s population, so it emits more than four times the global average.

While 1 billion Chinese produce a lot more greenhouse gases than 22 million Australians, each individual Australian generates more than four times as many as each individual Chinese, and about 16 times as much as each individual Indian.

If we restrict the analysis to the most populous 130 countries, those with a population of 3.5 million or more, Australia is the world leader. Only a handful of small countries, especially oil producers such as Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait, have higher per person emissions.

Equally misleading is the argument that no other countries are doing anything to address global warming. In December, the Climate Action Network, an international non-government organisation, ranked 57 countries according to their anti-pollution efforts. Australia ranked equal worst along with Canada, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia.

The European Environment Agency reports all but one of its 29 member countries are on track to achieve their Kyoto targets. Five have already reduced their greenhouse gas emissions to below the required 8 per cent reduction from 1990 totals. These include Britain, Germany and France.

Similarly Australia’s diplomatic efforts would surely have aroused the indignation of others. At Kyoto in 1997, the other countries were keen to achieve a unanimous agreement, and the Howard government exploited this to bargain for a relatively generous target for Australia. The government then boasted about its bargaining prowess, only to abandon the treaty altogether when George Bush withdrew the United States from Kyoto. How to win one friend and lose many others.

With great fanfare, Kevin Rudd signed the Kyoto agreement in 2007. But there has been little attention since – by government, opposition or media – as to whether Australia will achieve the 2012 targets it signed up to.

Rudd and Australia played an active and constructive role at the Copenhagen summit, but when the prime minister decided to abandon an emissions trading scheme in April, he also renounced Australia’s unconditional commitment to achieve a 5 per cent reduction. The unconditional became retrospectively conditional. According to the World Resources Institute, an environmental think-tank, Australia thus became the first country to abandon commitments it had made at Copenhagen.

Both Rudd and John Howard have given other countries cause to doubt the value of Australia’s word.

In the lead-up to Copenhagen, Tony Abbott said it threatened ”some latter-day environmental Munich agreement kind of thing”. He was comparing this inclusive international gathering on climate change to the infamous meeting between Adolf Hitler and Neville Chamberlain in 1938 after which the hapless British prime minister proclaimed ”peace in our time”, the high point of appeasement folly. But relating Munich to the Copenhagen summit must rank as the most absurd historical analogy ever drawn by an Australian politician.

If Abbott, with his view that anthropogenic climate change is ”crap”, had led Australia’s delegation to Copenhagen, he would have sat with Saudi Arabia, alone in a duumvirate of denial, isolated from all other democracies, from all Australia’s allies and trading partners. Despite their disagreements about what commitments they would make, other governments were unanimous that man-made global warming was a real and urgent problem.

The myth of Australia’s irrelevance and innocence both ring hollow. By what we do, and fail to do, we are an important part of the international equation. Sadly both in political hypocrisy and in greenhouse gases, Australia contributes well beyond our global share to hot air.

Professor Rod Tiffen is from the Department of Government and International Relations of the Faculty of Arts.