More than a dozen mental health-related and volunteer agencies are taking part in Flinders Mental Health Week activities. Mr Andrew Wood (pictured, centre), Head of Health, Counselling and Disability Services encouraged students to get involved in volunteering. “There is good evidence that doing some sort of volunteering – even for two hours a week – is good for your mental health.”

A new Student Mental Health Action Plan is to be developed at Flinders University in response to last year’s National Summit on the Mental Health of Tertiary Students.

The initiative will be announced today by Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), Professor Andrew Parkin at a function marking the University’s annual Mental Health Week.

Head of Health, Counselling and Disability Services, Mr Andrew Wood (pictured, centre) said the University was seeking the input of students and staff, as well as mental health practitioners, to develop the Plan.

“There has been a growing recognition, particularly in the past five years, in universities all around Australia that mental illness is a significant issue for university students,” Mr Wood said.

“It affects not only the student’s quality of life: it affects their ability to study, their ability to do well – and it can also play a part in whether students finish degrees at all,” he said.

Following the Summit, a set of guidelines was released covering areas such as mental health awareness and promotion, staff training, accessibility to support services and communication.

“It’s a comprehensive set of ‘best practices’ which encourages universities to see student mental health as everyone’s business – not just the business of counsellors and doctors,” Mr Wood said.

“It’s something that affects students but also impacts on staff in various ways.”

Mr Wood said that in addition to providing student mental health awareness training for general and academic staff, an important focus of the Plan would be to help students become more resilient.

“That’s part of mental health promotion: how to help students cope with life’s often complex pressures and to help them build their own resourcefulness to deal with life.”

As part of its strategy to increase awareness of and support for mental health, Flinders will add a new online mental health resource to the University website.

Developed by the University of Queensland, The Desk is a self-help website that offers information on topics such as procrastination, study skills and improving your mood. It will appear on the Current Students homepage in a version that is specific to Flinders resources and support.

Flinders students or staff wishing to contribute to the Student Mental Health Action Plan can contact Health, Counselling and Disability Services by email or by phoning 8201 2118.

Visiting Flinders today, Senator Chris Evans, Federal Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research, was briefed on the University’s initiatives in promoting entry and providing support for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and on the expanding Work Integrated Learning (WIL) programs for students.

During his first visit to the Bedford Park campus, Senator Evans met Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Professor Andrew Parkin and senior staff, and also talked with staff of the LOGOS Centre about its activities, which are focused on teaching and research on Greek language and culture. Federal MP for Hindmarsh Mr Steve Georganas also attended the briefing.

In an informal session, the Minister met three students from lower socio-economic backgrounds who are now involved in the University’s mentoring programs for students in the local region.

He also talked to a group of seven students who have been involved in Work Integrated Learning programs run by Flinders. Three of the students were recently returned from the Washington Intern Program run by American Studies, while the other students had recently completed work placements in business, education and tourism. WIL staff gave a demonstration of the newly developed online program aimed at preparing students for their WIL placements.

Senator Evans is pictured with students Joanne Young (Education) and Shaun Donnelly (Tourism).

Sea lions ©SATC

Like whales, sea lions are contributing to marine ecosystems in the most fundamental way possible, research by a Flinders graduate has found.

Dr Trish Lavery, who established that Southern Ocean sperm whales offset their carbon emissions by defecating iron on phytoplankton, has found that the digestive mechanisms of Australian sea lions mean that they too are making vital nutrients available to the first tier of the marine food chain.

Her research, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE, found that the sea lion gut has a characteristic microbiome, or bacterial profile, that is high in types of bacteria able to metabolise iron and phosphorus.

“While bacteria are net consumers of nutrients in energy-poor environments, in nutrient-rich environments like the surface of a faecal particle, bacteria can make soluble more vital nutrient elements from faecal matter than they require for their own growth,” Dr Lavery said.

“This leads to leaching of these nutrients into the surrounding waters where they can become available for free living phytoplankton microbes.”

Dr Lavery said the sea lions may therefore help to keep nutrients where they can be incorporated into the food chain.

“The bacteria in Australian sea lion faeces may limit nutrient sinkage to depth and enhance the persistence of nutrients in the photic zone where they are available to support primary production by phytoplankton.”

And for creatures whose cold marine environment makes a layer of protective fat a valuable asset, Dr Lavery also found evidence that the metabolism of sea lions is actually geared towards obesity.

Her study found a ratio of crucial bacteria similar to that in previous studies of obese humans and obese mice.

“This suggests that the gut microbiome may confer a predisposition towards the excess body fat that is needed for thermoregulation within the cold oceanic habitats foraged by Australian sea lions,” she said.

Salt water from the Indian Ocean about to meet fresh water from Moore River, Western Australia. © iStockphoto

A team of Flinders University researchers has developed a new method for predicting how much seawater will intrude into underground water storage systems in the future.

Led by Associate Professor Adrian Werner, from the School of the Environment, the team has devised a new maths-based approach to estimate the vulnerability of coastal aquifers to seawater intrusion, with the research recently published in the international journal Ground Water.

Seawater intrusion is a major problem that occurs in coastal areas as a result of salt water encroaching from the ocean into freshwater storage systems below the earth’s surface, known as aquifers, contaminating the water stores.

“Seawater is denser than freshwater so it pushes into the aquifer in a wedge-like shape,” PhD candidate Leanne Morgan, who helped develop the new method, said.

“When you stress the system, predominately by removing too much water, the wedge moves inland and contaminates the freshwater, meaning, for example, bores go salty – it can often be very sudden and unexpected, and sometimes virtually irreversible.”

Unlike the existing, subjective methods for rapidly assessing seawater intrusion vulnerability, Ms Morgan said the Flinders approach was theoretically based, employing both maths and physics to estimate the sensitivity of aquifers to different stresses, for example climate change.

“We took an existing mathematical model for estimating the extent of seawater intrusion and extended it using calculus to develop equations that describe the propensity for seawater to move into aquifers under different stresses, including sea level rise, pumping and recharge change.”

Meanwhile, Ms Morgan is working on a wider study, funded through the National Water Commission, to identity high-risk aquifers along Australia’s coastline.

Results of the National Scale Vulnerability Assessment of Seawater Intrusion study – a collaboration between the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training and Geoscience Australia – are expected to be released next month.

“More than 85 per cent of Australians live within 50km of the coast and with the population increasing and climate change pressures, it’s important to assess the threats to coastal aquifers because they are a major water resource,” Ms Morgan said.

“The concern is that with increased extraction, rising sea levels and reduced recharge due to reduced rainfall, our coastal aquifers will become more at risk from seawater intrusion.”

The $8 million Biology Discovery Centre under construction at Flinders is to have its own population of penguins.

As well as contributing to research into reasons for the decline of Little Penguin numbers in the wild, having penguins on-site will play a major role in the University’s teaching programs in animal behaviour.

Biologist Professor Sonia Kleindorfer said it is expected that 10 penguins will live in a specially designed enclosure in the Animal Compound, adjacent to the new building.

Pairs of Little Penguins from the Granite Island Penguin Conservation group and the Adelaide Zoo will be lent to Flinders, and it is hoped that the School of Biological Sciences will eventually be able to breed up its own colony.

A number of the Flinders penguin colony will join lizards and songbirds in the Centre’s three-storey ecosystem or “eco-dome”, which will be connected to the first-floor animal behaviour laboratory.

The animal burrows in the ecosystem will be wired for sound and visuals and the live feeds transmitted to the laboratory, while built-in scales will allow animals to be weighed without being handled.

“Students will be able to learn how to do statistical analysis and data presentation non-invasively, and while they’re doing it they get to watch the animals, which will complement their field trips,” Professor Kleindorfer said.

“We’ll be combining teaching principles about animal welfare, best practice and non-invasive observation.”

Teaching in the new building will begin at the start of Semester 2 in July, while the dome is due to be ready for its animal occupants in October.

Other parts of the Centre will be dedicated to teaching in molecular biology and microbiology. Professor Kleindorfer said the top floor of the Centre, which will offer training for postgraduate research students, will house other experimental animals, such as insect colonies.

The design and landscaping of the larger penguin pond in the Animal Compound will have input from Flinders biology student Simon Brown, who also happens to be an architect and the designer of Melbourne Zoo’s award-winning penguin enclosure.

The refurbishment of the Animal Compound will include a new walkway that will allow school groups to tour the facility, which also houses aviaries, aquaculture fish tanks, a native plant garden, and a glass house dedicated to sustainable food production and plant pathology research.

Professor Kleindorfer said most of the species that will occupy the ecosystem are endangered.

“A big part of the reason for having the penguins here is to enhance our collective awareness of the plight of creatures we generally don’t see.”

Ranger Uranium Mine, Northern Territory

Dealing with groundwater at mine sites – from the conceptual phase of mine planning through to operations and closure – is the focus of a new course being run by the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT), based at Flinders University.

The three-day course, to be held in Perth in July and Brisbane in August, will explore the various issues relating to mining and groundwater, from the early stages of extracting groundwater to build a mine, known as mine dewatering, to the management of waste rock and potential contamination.

Dr Lloyd Townley, Director of NTEC Environmental Technology and co-convener of the NCGRT course, said dewatering was often assumed to be the single most important groundwater-related issue for the mining industry, although there were many other aspects for engineers, groundwater scientists and other specialists to consider.

“Mine dewatering is certainly important for access and safety reasons but it’s also important to decide how to best use that water,” Dr Townley said.

“Sometimes it’s evaporated, sometimes it’s used in the process of extracting minerals from the rocks and sometimes it’s injected back into the ground so there are a lot of issues with how you manage the water that’s taken from the ground,” he said.

“It’s also essential to consider issues relating to contamination caused by waste rock – with mining you target particular rock types that contain minerals but in the process you need to bring other rock to the surface which is placed in waste rock dumps or in tailings storage facilities.

“When exposed to air and water, the sulphides in waste rock and tailings can produce sulphuric acid and lead to metals being transported off the mine site by rainwater or surface drainage, potentially contaminating nearby streams, rivers, lakes and groundwater resources.”

Dr Townley said the course will cover the full spectrum of mining activities, including iron ore, coal, gold and copper, and will explore issues at all stages of mine development – from the early conceptual stage to feasibility studies, construction, operation and finally rehabilitation and closure.

John Waterhouse, a Principal Hydrogeologist with Golder Associates and co-convener of the NCGRT course, said it was crucial for both mining personnel and groundwater specialists to be well-trained and to communicate across the various aspects of groundwater and mining.

“In the future, Australia and the world will have a number of ongoing challenges at some sites long after mining has finished,” Mr Waterhouse said.

“For mining companies and the community, mining presents benefits and challenges.

“It’s also an opportunity for people in the workforce to forge careers in the management of groundwater at mine sites from early investigation phases and, at some sites, long after they’ve closed.”

Groundwater in Mining will be held in Perth from 25-27 July and in Brisbane from 1-3 August. For more information or to book call (08) 8201 5632 or email industrytraining@groundwater.com.au

Restricting the amount of time a child spends in bed could lower levels of sleep-related stress and anxiety, a Flinders University researcher believes.

Dr Michael Gradisar, a senior lecturer in clinical child psychology, is about to begin a new study to determine whether childhood insomnia and separation anxiety can be treated by controlling the time a child spends in bed, and the amount of sleep they have.

Behavioural sleep problems, including bedtime refusal or resistance, delayed sleep onset and prolonged night awakenings, affect one in every two children at some stage of their lives, and are usually induced by the fear of a threat to themselves or their families, such as a break-in.

Dr Gradisar said his past research had shown sleep-anxious children experienced a better quality of sleep and less night-time worry if they went to bed later.

“In a study last year we asked parents to put their child to bed at the time they actually fall asleep, so if their usual bedtime is 7pm but they lay awake worrying for two hours we asked them to put them down at 9pm,” Dr Gradisar said.

“Not only did the children experience better quality of sleep, at the end of the two week study there was a significant reduction in their anxiety, particularly separation anxiety, which meant they could fall asleep without their parents nearby.”

In the next phase of his project, funded through a $10,000 Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences grant, Dr Gradisar will explore the benefits of “sleep restriction therapy”.

Parents will keep a sleep diary recording their child’s sleep patterns before, during and after treatment, totalling 21 days of data, to determine whether the restriction of sleep, or the restriction of time in bed, or a combination of the two, leads to reduced levels of anxiety.

“If the child falls asleep at 9pm we’ll be asking the parents to put them to bed at 9.30pm,” he said.

“Our first study showed that if you reduce the amount of time they spend in bed the anxiety gets better, and we were hypothesising that sleep restriction was the driver for that, so now we’re trying to see what happens when you induce sleepiness.

“The idea is that by delaying sleep you make them sleepier and therefore reduce the anxiety associated with going to bed.”

Dr Gradisar said he hoped the technique could also be used alongside traditional cognitive behavioural therapies for childhood anxiety disorders.

“We’ll have to find a balance as to how much sleepiness will impact their schoolwork and other activities versus the benefit to reduced anxiety,” he said.

“We’ve always focused on trying to improve sleep quality and the by-product has been reduced anxiety but the main goal for parents is that their children can sleep by themselves, so the idea of the study is to see what techniques lead to that goal.”

Having spent the past five years researching the endangered pygmy bluetongue lizard, Dr Melissa Pettigrew felt it was time to “mix things up”.

In April 2011 the then Flinders University student submitted her thesis on the conservation of Australia’s pygmy population – and in that same week boarded a plane to China on a nine-month stint to save the Siberian tiger from human impacts.

“My PhD was in conservation biology so I thought it would be a good opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge that I gained through my research of lizards to the conservation of Siberian tigers,” Dr Pettigrew (pictured, at the Chinese/Russian border) said of her volunteer efforts.

“I also work with koalas so I guess it was a good chance to mix things up a bit,” she said.

During her stay in China, as part of the Australian Youth Ambassador program, she worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society to tackle the growing issue of human wildlife conflict.

“In China there are a lot of poor rural communities which rely on cattle farming as their source of income but snares are set in the reserve and surrounding area to catch and kill deer so they can be sold primarily on the black market,” she said.

“Unfortunately the snares reduce the ungulate (hoofed animal) population which is the primary food source for the tiger population.

“Tigers are therefore now preying upon cattle to substitute their diet and this unfortunately creates human-tiger conflict.”

Her main work in China involved snare removal campaigns and improving a scheme which provides compensation to farmers whose cows have been eaten by tigers.

“I spent a lot of time physically removing the snares from the reserves and surrounding areas – it was partly to conserve the deer population but about one tiger a year gets killed by a snare and that’s a lot considering there’s only 18 to 25 Siberian tigers left in China,” she said.

Despite working on the conservation of two very different animals, Dr Pettigrew said there were several skills she learnt throughout her thesis which she was able to apply in China.

“During my PhD I learnt a lot about how to get funding so that really helped when I was over there, and I also learnt how to write for publications so hopefully one of the articles I wrote on human wildlife conflict in China will be published in an international journal later this year.

“My background in conservation definitely helped but it was still a huge learning curve to work on the other side of conservation, where you have to weigh up the livelihood of farmers and their families versus the protection of an endangered animal.”

Dr Pettigrew, who officially graduated with her PhD from Flinders last month, says she is unsure whether she will pursue her work with lizards or tigers, but for now she is happy to continue her much-loved job as a koala keeper at Cleland Wildlife Park.

“Sometimes I get asked what my favourite animal is but I don’t have a favourite – to me it’s more about the conservation of the species rather than the species itself.”

Professor Charles Spence (pictured), a world-leading expert in manipulating the human experience by playing with the senses, is joining forces with Flinders University to find out how people influence our ability to pay attention to the world around us.

The Professor of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University has spent the past two weeks at Flinders planning a new project to determine whether the presence of people impacts performance, such as the ability to drive a car in a straight line or monitor a security screen.

Working with Professor Mike Nicholls in the School of Psychology, the research could help lead to better designs for human/machine interfaces, including the development of special coatings for car steering wheels that help bring a driver’s attention back to the middle of the road.

“When people are trying to pay attention to a stimulus, having someone sitting next to them can have a repulsion effect so their attention gets shifted away from where it’s supposed to be,” Professor Spence, who came to Flinders under the Visiting International Research Fellowship program, said.

“This could lead to significant attention biases, for example a person driving a car might start leaning towards the right-hand side of the road because of the passenger sitting next to them, or an air-traffic controller might have difficulty paying attention to all parts of a radar screen,” he said.

During his two-week stay at Flinders, Professor Spence gave a public lecture on his main area of expertise – “cross-modal correspondence” – or how the classic sensors of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell interact with each other.

His research, which spans 20 years, has led to some interesting theories on the “sounds” of food.

“People associate sweet-tasting foods with a high pitched sound whereas bitter foods are associated with low notes, so what I try to do is match a food to its sound to enhance the experience of diners in restaurants and coffee shops,” he said.

“For example, if a wine has predominant blackcurrant or lime flavours, I try to find what noises go with that flavour then design a piece of music that might enhance the tastes of the wine.”

Professor Spence – who won the 2008 lg Nobel Prize for modifying the sounds of a potato chip to make it taste crispier and fresher than it really is – has also, for the past 10 years, worked alongside the master of food manipulation Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck restaurant in Berkshire.

The pair collaborated to produce the restaurant’s signature “Sound of the Sea” dish, a culinary feast for the senses complete with sea foam, seaweed and a set of headphones popping out of a clamshell which play the sound of seagulls and waves crashing on the shore.

“Most chefs think the taste of food, and how your source and prepare it, is all that matters but we’re trying to convince chefs that you can actually design the gastronomic experience to enhance certain flavours and make the dish taste more enjoyable.”

Aside from The Fat Duck, Professor Spence has worked with dozens of big-name companies including Starbucks where he has matched in-store music with the coffee, as well as Nestlé and Kraft to design TV advertisements representing the taste and smell of their products.

Professor Nicholls said he was delighted to have the Visiting International Professor at Flinders, particularly to survey a number of PhD student projects on the cognitive structures that control spatial attention.

“It’s a great honour to have someone of Charles’ experience and standing here at Flinders, and we are looking forward to working with him on future projects,” Professor Nicholls said.

“There is no such thing as a good idea.”

It may seem an unorthodox message coming from the head of one of Australia’s most successful technology transfer offices (TTO) but Anthony Francis (pictured) is adamant.

“I’ve never seen a born ‘good idea’. It doesn’t exist. Most ideas are bad ones that become good ideas because the researcher behind them is willing to learn,” Mr Francis, Managing Director of Flinders Partners, Flinders University’s commercialisation arm, told Flinders Indaily.

He was speaking ahead of today’s Research to Outcome Workshop, a no-charge, full-day program held in collaboration with the University’s Research Services Office that has been offered regularly over the past three years to researchers and administrators from public, private and university sectors.

“We try to encourage researchers to bring along a project to the workshop. We look at it from a use or an outcome perspective and try to enhance the project to make it viable – not necessarily in a commercial sense but in an ‘end-use’ sense,” Mr Francis said.

“Researchers, typically, are initially more concerned about the academic content of their work. But in the marketplace, now, there is a requirement in most grant applications to answer the question: how is this research going to be used in the community?” he said.

It is an approach that is reflected in government attitudes to research funding, and increasingly in universities and TTOs in many parts of the world.

“Until a few years ago, academic merit was the most important criterion for judging a research application. Today, I’d say it’s 50 per cent; the other 50 per cent being ‘what are we going to get out of this’.

“This puts researchers in a tough spot because they’ve been taught how to do the research but not to think about its outcomes.”

The workshop is designed to get researchers thinking not only about the usability of their research but about the process of partnering.

“The purpose of the workshop is not to judge ideas. If we profile all of Flinders Partners’ projects, the key success factor is whether the researcher has been able to interact with a commercial firm or partner,” Mr Francis said, citing as an example the recent success of spin-out company, Thereitis.

“Technology plays a part but it’s whether the researcher can adapt to this way of thinking and working that’s the key.

“The earlier a researcher can think about the question – ‘What can I do to enhance the usability of this research?’ – the greater the chance of success.”

Details of future workshops can be found at the Flinders Partners website.

After a four-year stint at the University of Wollongong, criminologist Professor Andrew Goldsmith (pictured) will return to Flinders Law School in July to take up one of the Vice-Chancellor’s Strategic Professorships.

Professor Goldsmith – who was instrumental in the development of criminal justice studies at Flinders over 12 years, an area which performed well in last year’s Excellence in Research for Australia rankings – spoke about his ambitious research and teaching agenda with Flinders Indaily.

“The role is intended to build further the research profile of criminal justice at Flinders,” Professor Goldsmith said.

“One of the key vehicles for that will be working to establish a new centre in criminology, as well as to bring in international linkages and to run appropriate shorts courses and workshops in special areas,” he said.

The successful Illicit Networks Workshop, a collaboration with the University of Montreal which regularly draws together international academics and practitioners interested the analysis of terrorism and transnational and organised crime networks, will move to Flinders.

Professor Goldsmith also hopes to advance a program in integrity studies, which explores the fields of anti-corruption and public sector governance, and a project which examines the impact of organised crime on post-conflict situations.

“I’m particularly interested in looking at police peace-keeping operations,” he said.

“That’s a conversation I’m having with other academic partners around the world and with the Australian Federal Police.”

He said the move back to Flinders was an opportunity “to rejoin a unit that has been quite successful, to which I’d made a contribution previously, and to which I hope I can continue to make a contribution”.

As Executive Director of the Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention at the University of Wollongong, Professor Goldsmith had been invited by Major-General Yem of the People’s Police Academy to visit Vietnam in 2010.

A computer game designed by staff from Flinders University to help student nurses avoid potentially life-threatening drug mix-ups has made it to the finals of the 2012 HESTA Australian Nursing Awards.

“Medicina” – an online game created by Flinders School of Nursing and Midwifery staff members Dr Amanda Muller, Gregory Mathews and Didy Button to boost student nurses’ knowledge of medication names – is one of five projects in the running for the national Innovation in Nursing prize.

The trio will be up against five other nominees for the Innovation in Nursing prize, including fellow Flinders Nursing and Midwifery lecturer Wendy Abigail, who has been nominated for her various work to promote contraception for middle-aged women, and Flinders nursing graduate David Copley.

Mr Copley is the first Aboriginal person to complete a Graduate Diploma in Mental Health Nursing in South Australia – is also a finalist in the Nurse of the Year category for his work to help reduce smoking rates in Indigenous communities.

A cancer survivor, Aboriginal Elder and Quitline liaison officer, Mr Copley has helped double the number of Aboriginal clients calling the Quitline in just 12 months through his training and support to Aboriginal health providers and their clients, including providing cultural training to Quitline staff to help them better understand Aboriginal communities and the causes of their smoking.

The online game Medicina, which simulates the distractions and urgency of a real hospital environment, targets listening and reading skills to improve the accuracy of drug orders taken over the phone, help students to identify the right drug on the medicine shelf and to use good communication skills in handover.

Dr Muller, an associate lecturer from the School of Nursing and Midwifery, said Medicina was developed to reduce instances of medication confusion that could potentially leave lives at risk.

“There are many reasons why medications get confused, sometimes it’s because the nurse has misheard a drug name or they can’t read someone else’s handwriting, and other times it’s because they have trouble with pronunciation,” Dr Muller said.

“Some medications are uncommon and while students are likely to see the word written during their degrees, they rarely get to hear the word spoken aloud so this may cause confusion when they are in a clinical setting,” she said.

“But Medicina uses a number of different animated features to replicate a real clinical setting, including time limitations, to best prepare students for the real deal.”

Originally released in 2011 to support nursing students with English as a second language, Dr Muller said native English speakers often also needed help to familiarise themselves with drug names.

“Our research has shown that Medicina not only boosts a nurse’s knowledge of uncommon words but also teaches them new listening skills and improves their overall ability to retain specific information in hard listening environments,” she said.

“These, of course, are skills that anyone can benefit from, no matter how good their communication skills might be.”

Ms Button, a lecturer in Nursing, said the team eventually hoped to turn Medicina into a phone application and include additional stages with varying levels of difficulty so students, new nurses and established nursing professionals could hone their skills.

“The idea is to promote patient safety and increase the fluency of drug pronunciation in a way that’s engaging, entertaining and informative,” Ms Button, who provided clinical and audio support to the project, said.

“It’s designed to be easy to use and easy to use casually, so people can play it when they have spare time,” added Mr Mathews, media designer from the school and the game’s co-designer.”

The top entry in the 2012 HESTA Australian Nursing Awards will receive a $10,000 grant to develop their service or program, with winners announced at a ceremony in Melbourne on May 10.

(l to r) Mr Lewis Pounentis, Professor Michael Barber, Associate Professor Robyn Young and Mr George Diakomichalis

The work of Flinders University’s Autism Early Intervention Research Program (EIRP) has been given a boost with a $50,000 donation from the GoTo Foundation.

Mr Lewis Pounentis (Co-Founder and Trustee of GoTo) and Mr George Diakomichalis (Director) today presented a cheque on behalf of the charity and Co-Director Mr Nick Apostolou to EIRP leader Associate Professor Robyn Young from the School of Psychology and Vice-Chancellor Professor Michael Barber.

Associate Professor Young described the gift as “overwhelming” and paid tribute the efforts of the GoTo Foundation members – which included a Ball, Quiz Night and 950km bike ride from Melbourne to Adelaide – in raising the funds.

“We’re very thrilled that the Foundation chose us to donate their money to,” Associate Professor Young said.

“The program gets some limited support from the State Government but it really only pays for one salary. We pretty much rely on who we can get donations from, to try and encourage some level of sustainability,” she said.

“About 20 per cent of the children who have gone through EIRP no longer meet diagnostic criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder. That’s a significant number of children for whom, we think, we’ve made a huge difference in their lives.

“We’ve also been able to educate parents about how to manage the children better and we think that also enhances the support network the families get and the relationship between the parents as well.”

The program employs a 10-day intervention and then trains parents to apply the curriculum in the home.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Michael Barber said the donation was “a wonderful testament to Robyn’s and the program’s engagement with the community”.

“These projects don’t come about without outsiders believing the program delivers some particular value. That’s a very tangible assessment of the impact the program’s having,” Professor Barber said.

“Clearly it has a fundamental underpinning of activity inside the University and high quality research. But that’s only part of the story. It’s got to matter for communities; it’s got to matter for people outside,” he said.

“This is a program that’s delivering on both fronts: high quality academic outputs and high quality outputs for the community. It’s a great outcome.”

Mr Diakomichalis said the Foundation aimed to raise a total of $100,000 for the EIRP.

Optometrists from Flinders University will soon be able to diagnose and manage eye diseases in rural and remote communities – all from the comfort of their computer chair.

Under the plan, people with a suspected diabetes-related eye problem can visit a partnering health care clinic in remote regions of the state where a special retinal camera takes a picture of the back of the eye, sending the digital images electronically to Flinders optometrists for assessment.

Indigenous Australians are particularly susceptible to diabetes-related eye disease, a common complication of diabetes that affects the small blood vessels in the back of the retina and causes them to leak, break down or become blocked, impairing vision.

Professor Konrad Pesudovs (pictured, right), Head of Optometry and Vision Science at Flinders, said the project would be based on a similar model of “telemedicine” used by the world’s best optometry school – the University of California, Berkeley.

Since launching in 2005, the Berkeley program has grown from just a few hundred eye examinations a month to more than 30,000 a year throughout California’s Central Valley.

Professor Pesudovs met with his Californian counterpart, Professor Tony Adams (pictured, left), in April to discuss the program and future plans for the expansion of Optometry and Vision Science at Flinders.

“We’ve been doing it at Berkeley for a few years now and we’re quite excited that Flinders is also interested in running this kind of model of care, especially in remote areas,” Dr Adams, an Emeritus Professor of Optometry and Vision Science at the University of California, said.

“A whole bunch of people with diabetes in Alice Springs, for example, could get tested in their own town and the trained clinicians in a big city such as Adelaide can give feedback, almost instantly, on how to treat these patients,” he said.

“And from what I’ve heard about the needs in remote parts of South Australia I can’t think of a better place to bring this in.”

Professor Pesudovs said the project was now being trialled in partnership with an Aboriginal health centre in Port Pirie, with plans in place to create a wider network of clinics linked to a central Flinders “telemedicine eye centre”.

“We’re hoping the program will reach people who don’t have access to an ophthalmologist or an optometrist and we also see it as a great benefit to our students because they will be able to diagnose and manage treatment plans firsthand,” Professor Pesudovs said.

As part of his Australian visit, Professor Adams toured Flinders optometry school, describing its close proximity to the medical centre as a great benefit for students, staff and patients.

“Having a hospital, medical school and a university all on the same site is not very typical but it gets you immersed in patient care and issues much quicker,” he said.

“I’ve also had a chance to hear about some of the future developments for the discipline and I think they’re quite innovative and exciting.”

Born in Melbourne, Professor Adams studied optometry at Melbourne University before moving to the US to complete his PhD at the University of Indiana.

In 1968 he moved to Berkeley where he managed the PhD program for several years and spent a decade in the 1990s as Dean of the School of Optometry and Vision Science.

Robert Simms (pictured), a former adviser to Greens Senators Sarah Hanson-Young and Scott Ludlam and now undertaking a Masters by Research at Flinders University, analyses the Greens leadership change.

The Democrats may be dead but they continue to haunt national politics, with many commentators warning the Greens are doomed to the same fate without the charismatic leadership of Bob Brown.

Much of this is based on the assumption that Christine Milne will fail to unify her party or appeal to the public.

However, commentators are overlooking significant differences between the Democrats and the Greens and the ability of the latter to better manage this leadership transition, along with Milne’s own leadership credentials.

Brown is a giant of the environmental movement and Green politics - his remarkable contribution to public life has been rightly celebrated in recent days.

While Christine Milne may not have Brown’s public profile, she does possess many similar qualities. Like Brown, Milne was at the forefront of environmental activism in the 1980s. She also has considerable experience in balance of power politics and in 1993 she assumed the leadership of the Greens after Brown in Tasmania.

Like Brown, Milne is held in high regard within the party; she is someone of conviction who is well positioned to continue the stability and unity of purpose enjoyed under his leadership.

Some have already branded Milne “hard-line” and “extreme.” Here she is in good company and Brown was also regularly painted as “extreme” by his opponents in the parliament (and often the media) during his 16 years in the senate.

Those arguing that the Greens will follow the Democrats and decline in the absence of their founding leader are forgetting that the Democrats survived 9 leadership changes after Chipp’s retirement in 1986 and went on to achieve their best ever election result under the leadership of his successor, Janine Haines.

Rather than Chipp’s retirement precipitating a crisis, it was the lethal combination of disunity and policy confusion that ultimately saw the Democrats come undone. In their final days they were a house divided – split across all sections of the party. By contrast, the Greens have shown great discipline in maintaining a consistent and unified message.

There is no reason to assume this will change. Further, the ability of party members to spill and elect the Democrats’ leadership and the tensions between the membership and the parliamentary party this exposed, did potentially have a destabilising effect on that party. By contrast, the Green MPs are able to elect their own parliamentary leader and the transition from Brown to Milne was seamless.
Further, without the benefit of a strong electoral base, the Democrats were always susceptible to big shifts in support from election to election and in this context, leadership proved pivotal in holding up the vote. By contrast, the Greens have experienced a long-term upward trajectory and their vote has proved much more durable.

The only party to achieve swings in their favour at every federal election of the last decade, the party continues to enjoy the support of 10-12 per cent of the electorate in published polls. It is in a much stronger position to withstand the retirement of a popular leader.

The leadership change does also present the Greens with an opportunity the Democrats never had - a leader in both houses of parliament.

As deputy leader, Adam Bandt is uniquely positioned to continue the Greens’ assault on Labor-held inner-city electorates. His own campaign will also surely be given a boost by the enhanced profile and additional resources he will enjoy as deputy. Further, the leadership team of Milne and Bandt represents an opportunity to better reflect the diversity of the Greens’; with Milne’s regional focus and Bandt’s emphasis on the inner city.

History does have a habit of repeating itself, but the Greens are well positioned to shake-off the ghost of the Australian Democrats and continue to enjoy electoral success under their new leader.

Self-compassion could be the next best weapon in the battle against eating disorders, Flinders University psychologist Tracey Wade says.

Professor Wade, (pictured) from the School of Psychology, is about to begin a year-long study to determine whether people with anorexia, bulimia or abnormal eating behaviours, known as “disordered eating”, can overcome their problem by learning to silence their inner critic and be more self-accepting.

The study, funded through an $11,000 University research grant, will initially explore how the combined effect of three risk factors – perfectionism, negative moods and weight control, including dieting, – can lead to unhealthy eating habits and eating disorders.

The final part of the project will involve a short online exercise where participants will learn self-compassion and mindfulness techniques, with the overall aim to determine if an increase in self-compassion reduces the three risk factors and, therefore, disordered eating.

Recruiting up to 100 female Flinders students for the study, Professor Wade will examine the impact of self-compassion on body image in the hope that it leads to new treatments.

“Self-compassion is forgiving yourself for things you’ve done wrong but also recognising that it’s only human to make mistakes, and that it’s OK to have frailties and imperfections,” Professor Wade said.

“Although there’s been a lot of research on the relationship between self-esteem and eating disorders, the idea of self-compassion hasn’t been documented in the same, scientifically rigorous way.

“So what we’re trying to do is see if self-compassion can alleviate negative aspects of mood, such as anxiety and depression, and also curb critical thoughts about weight and shape.”

While there have also been various studies on the link between disorder eating and perfectionism, dieting and depression as separate risk factors, Professor Wade said research was yet to expose the combined effect of all three variables.

“We know about the single risk factors involved in disordered eating but we don’t know how they work together,” she said.

“So we’ll be exploring the relationship between those three variables and seeing whether you can help someone overcome disordered eating by eliminating just one of those risk factors.”

Depending on the results of her research, Professor Wade said she hoped to develop a new model of self-intervention based on self-compassion.

To assist in future research, she has just applied for a $347,150 Australian Research Council Discovery Grant.

“At the moment we’re using the self-compassion intervention to help people move away from the risk factors but in the future we would like to try it with people who actually have an eating disorder,” she said.

They were willing to face bullets for Australia, but they weren’t allowed to vote.

The extraordinary, and ironic, history of Australia’s Indigenous ANZACs will be the subject of a seminar at Flinders University Victoria Square today (Tuesday 24 April 2012).

The seminar will be given by Flinders archaeology and screen production student, Michael Bonner, a Yanyuwa man from the Northern Territory who grew up in Goolwa.

His six-part television production Soldiers not Citizens, which will also incorporate a travelling exhibition, is in development and is likely to screen on the ABC.

Associate Professor Tracey Bunda of the Yunggorendi First Nations Centre at Flinders, whose own father was an Aboriginal veteran of the Middle East and Pacific campaigns of the Second World War, will chair the seminar.

“It’s a hidden story,” said Associate Professor Bunda.

She said that while complete records of the Indigenous soldiers were not available, Mr Bonner has been gathering material from archives and the Australian War Memorial, and interviewing family members of the veterans.

It is believed that around 500-600 Indigenous volunteers served in the First World War, and some 5,000 in the Second World War.

Some, but not all, Indigenous veterans received land grants as part of soldier-settlement schemes.

“Indigenous people volunteered at a greater rate per head than the general population, yet when Indigenous veterans returned home they found themselves subjected to racism,” Associate Professor Bunda said.

“After fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with white Australians, Indigenous people came back to inequality, living in a country that did not recognise them as citizens.”

At the same time, Associate Professor Bunda said, military service was an experience that helped to put Indigenous people “in touch with the world,” and would eventually play into the post-war global movements that saw colonised peoples work to reclaim sovereignty and the international movement for black rights.

She said that for her father, his army service led to a post-war career in the RAAF.

“Constant employment was very important for someone who was part of an extended family, and it also gave him free access to training and education,” Associate Professor Bunda said.

Students from Flinders University believe they have discovered the exact location of a Scottish sailing ship which sank in waters off Kangaroo Island more than 100 years ago.

A group of four archaeology students searched the sea and land on Kangaroo Island’s west coast earlier this month in a bid to find the historic Loch Sloy and the burial sites of 11 bodies recovered from the sea when the barque, en-route from Glasgow to Port Adelaide, sank on April 24, 1899.

Records show 30 people, including the captain, six passengers and most crewmen, died when the ship ran into rocky waters while heading towards the Cape Borda lighthouse.

There were four survivors, one of whom died after reaching land, but the exact location of the shipwreck and the bodies recovered from the waters, except for one, has remained a mystery.

During the week-long field trip – led by Department of Environment and Natural Resources Maritime Archaeologist and Flinders graduate Amer Khan – the team excavated an area between Cape Borda and Cape du Couedic in the hope of finding any remnants from the tragic incident.

Flinders archaeology masters student Lynda Bignell said the researchers believed they had found the exact position of the wreck, using a magnetometer.

“Historically the whereabouts of the ship has been roughly documented but we used a special maritime metal detector at that location and it came up with a high reading, indicating that something is definitely down there,” Ms Bignell said.

“It’s quite exciting because we originally went out there to look mainly for the graves, the search for the shipwreck was just one part of our extensive research into the incident.

“We’ve been researching the Loch Sloy and the graves since last October, and we staged a preliminary trip in December, so it’s great to see that work is paying off.”

While the expedition primarily hoped to unearth the graves of those who died in the sinking, Ms Bignell said the team had no luck finding any burial sites.

“The site we thought had a good chance of being a grave actually wasn’t,” she said.

“Excavation of the site went down to the bedrock and didn’t find anything but it was a good experience for the students involved.”

Ms Bignell said the team hoped to return to Kangaroo Island later this year to find the shipwreck, although no definite plans had been made yet.

She said the ship was an important part of South Australia’s maritime history.

“The Loch Sloy is one of four historic shipwrecks on the west coast of Kangaroo Island and between those four ships 82 people lost their lives, making the stretch of coast one of the most treacherous in SA,” she said.

“Yet the Loch Sloy was particularly important because public opinion after the incident resulted in the construction of another lighthouse at Cape de Couedic.”

Ms Bignell also thanked the Kangaroo Island community for their enthusiasm and participation.

Indigenous student Jessica Beinke has just graduated and collected an academic prize, but she has plenty of study ahead.

Ms Beinke accepted her Health Sciences degree at this week’s graduation ceremonies where she also received the Ken Wanganeen Medal for 2012.

The Medal, which honours Flinders University’s second Indigenous graduate, the late Ken Wanganeen, is awarded to the Flinders Indigenous student with the highest Grade Point Average in the final two years of an undergraduate degree.

Ms Beinke is now in the first year of a postgraduate medical degree at Flinders.

Ms Simone Ulalka Tur, Director of Yunggorendi First Nations Centre at Flinders (pictured, left, with Ms Beinke), congratulated Jessica as one of a record 25 Indigenous people to graduate this week from 19 courses that include Cultural Heritage Management, Public Policy and Speech Pathology as well as the areas of Arts and Education.

“We are proud of the role Yunggorendi, together with staff and students across the University, has played in supporting Indigenous education since 1990. It is particularly gratifying to note that several students have chosen to return to Flinders to complete a second degree,” Ms Tur said.

Flinders now has over 260 Indigenous alumni.

Ms Beinke came to Flinders part-time three years after leaving high school: she and her twin sister, now a paramedic, are the first people in her family to undertake university education. Her father, a Ngadjuri man, grew up near Mundoora in the mid-North of SA; Ms Beinke, though, describes herself as a “city kid”.

While initially nervous about study, Jessica said she found that there was plenty of support available.

“I had ITAS [Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme] tutoring in the first and second year of my undergraduate degree, and I’m getting it now, and it’s been really, really helpful.”

The idea of going on to study medicine came in Jessica’s second year of nutrition and dietetics, when a strong interest in the basic medical topics took hold.

“I wanted to know more,” she said.

After completing her degree she expects to work as a GP, although ideally she would like to specialise in dermatology.

Based on her own experience, Ms Beinke’s advice to other Indigenous people considering university study is unequivocal: “Do it!”

In South Australia’s arid landscape, rivers, creeks and streams are vital sources of groundwater.

But National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT) researcher Dr Jordi Batlle-Aguilar (pictured) says there is virtually no accurate way of knowing how much water seeps from river beds into the ground because traditional testing methods are largely unreliable.

Streams in arid and semi-arid areas only flow after heavy rain and storms, and their water rapidly infiltrates through to underground permeable rocks, such as sandstone, or unconsolidated materials including gravel and sand.

These permeable rocks and unconsolidated materials form a natural underground water storage system – known as an aquifer – which saturates and holds the water, similarly to a sponge, so that it can be extracted in the summer months when water is scarce and replenished in winter.

Dr Batlle-Aguilar said the standard method to measure infiltration did not give reliable estimates at the scale of interest because it simply provided an average for the whole river, even though infiltration “varies greatly” from site to site depending on soil type, gravel content and root presence.

“The conventional way to test infiltration is to put a cylinder filled with water, known as infiltrometer, 5- 10cm under the streambed and measure how much water sinks down over a period of time,” Dr Batlle-Aguilar, based at the NCGRT at Flinders University, said.

“But the results can be completely different at different points because the soil is highly heterogeneous, so if there were big bits of gravel in one part of the river the water would infiltrate faster than another area, so it’s not representative of the true infiltration rate,” he said.

“One value can be very different from another just a metre away, therefore it’s not appropriate to extrapolate one measured value, at the centimeter scale, to a total value for a whole stream.”

As part of his ongoing research, Dr Batlle-Aguilar took his team to Pedler Creek, an intermittent stream in the Willunga Basin, in 2011 to find a better way of measuring river infiltration that would provide more reliable and representative values.

The team isolated an area of the creek using two steel panels placed 7m apart and pumped water continuously into the dammed section of the creek, maintaining three constant water levels over five days. This allowed the team to measure infiltration over a much larger area of the river bed than the standard approaches would normally permit.

By knowing the pumping rate required to maintain a constant level of water in the stream, the researchers could deduce how much water infiltrated from the stream and potentially recharged the aquifer.

“The water must be going somewhere if it’s staying at the same level so we recorded how much water we were pumping into the isolated stream to maintain that constant level, which gave us an accurate value of infiltration,” Dr Batlle-Aguilar said.

He said it was crucial to understand the infiltration rate from rivers to prevent “overexploitation” of aquifers.

“South Australia in particular has lots of dry streams which only flow after storms but it’s really important to know how much water infiltrates from them.

“Knowing how much recharge occurs from rivers to aquifers helps us to determine how much we ‘earn’ and this in turn can guide how much we should be ‘spending’ from our ‘water budget’.”

The research, which has been spearheaded by Professor Peter Cook, Deputy Director of the NCGRT, is expected to be published in a scientific journal later this year.