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ANU Reporter

September 2003

Contents

ANU projects to cut pesticide deaths and boost Thai health

New course to tackle Asia-Pacific security

In a New Light

Impressions

Science Reporter

Philatelic fame for ANU Geneticist

Riding a wave

Post-mortem of Hawke years uncovers the recession we didn’t have to have

TerraWulf to unravel secrets of the earth

The Last Word

ANU projects to cut pesticide deaths and boost Thai health

By Tim Winkler

Each year, hundreds of thousands of people die from acute pesticide poisoning in the Asia-Pacific region, according to World Health Organisation estimates.

At the same time, disease patterns are changing in Thailand — with diabetes, heart disease and injuries emerging as new health problems as a result of development.

ANU researchers have been awarded a total of more than A$5.8 million to establish projects to deal with these two problems in grants funded by the Wellcome Trust and the National Health and Medical Research Council.
ANU Professor Nicholas Buckley will work with Professor Nimal Senanayake from Peradeniya University in Sri Lanka to lead a A$3.08 million project to reduce deaths from pesticide poisoning.

The Sri Lankan project, administered by ANU, will be the first attempt to systematically test whether a range of strategies can reduce long-term neurological damage and deaths from pesticides over the next five years.
“We are working to develop a model for the region to combat the rate of deaths and serious illnesses from pesticide use — which is a problem which has remained largely hidden for decades,” Professor Buckley said.

“By promoting improved treatment techniques, developing new antidotes and regulating the availability of pesticides, we hope to make a significant impact in reducing deaths and injuries in Sri Lanka — and ultimately, in the region.”

ANU Dr Adrian Sleigh (left) and Dr Sam-ang Seubsman from the Sukothai Thammathirat Open University in Thailand will establish an innovative project assessing changing disease patterns in Thailand.

The A$2.73 million study will aim to reduce risk of illness and analyse economic, cultural and environmental influences which are causing a shift in disease patterns as Thailand becomes more affluent.

“As per capita income increases in Thailand, the types of diseases which afflict the population have changed,” Dr Sleigh said.

“To help Thais reduce the impact of emerging diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, we will study the health-risk transition in the whole Thai population over the past 50 years, then will spend four years studying health trends among 100,000 Sukothai Thammathirat Open University students who are living all over Thailand.

“This program is going to create a new regional partnership and aims to make a big difference to Thai health.”

The Thai project will establish six International PhD scholarships at ANU — two for Australians and four for Thais — to work on the project — providing excellent cross-cultural and scientific exchange opportunities.

Contents

New course to tackle Asia-Pacific security

By Tim Winkler

The critical shortage of military and governmental strategists across the Asia-Pacific region is to be addressed with a new Master’s Degree program to be offered in a partnership between the United Nations University and The Australian National University.

The innovative program, to operate in both Tokyo and Canberra, has received the personal endorsement of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, who has said graduates of the program will make an important contribution to the ongoing quest for global peace, security and development.

“The Graduate Studies in Strategy and Defence (GSSD) program is an exciting new partnership between the United Nations University and The Australian National University that will prepare students to meet the challenges of the new security agenda in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond,” Secretary-General Annan said.

The Vice-Rector of the United Nations University, Professor Ramesh Thakur, said the new program would help address the region-wide shortage of quality security and defence analysts.

“Our aim is to educate and network the next generation of defence and security leaders across the Asia-Pacific-Indian Ocean region,” Professor Thakur said.

Students will be able to undertake up to half of this prestigious program at the United Nations University in Tokyo and will also complete a minimum of five months of full-time study in Canberra.

The Vice-Chancellor of The Australian National University, Professor Ian Chubb, said the Tokyo-based course would complement the prestigious courses already offered in Canberra.

“We currently have 90 students from across the region enrolled in The Australian National University’s GSSD program and this new partnership with the United Nations University underlines our commitment to serve as a vital resource in strategic studies for the Asia-Pacific region and beyond,” Professor Chubb said.

The Tokyo-based program is currently enrolling its first intake of students. It has been designed from scratch to provide an intensive education program of the highest quality, focusing on issues important to the region.

The program will be attractive to many students based in Japan, because it allows them to complete up to half of the coursework requirements in Tokyo, or at a number of leading universities across the region also in partnership with The Australian National University.

“Students will be trained not only to analyse key defence and strategic issues, but also in many of the practical skills required to write cabinet submissions, deliver policy presentations and so on. Students will form close bonds with their peers and it is expected that alumni from the program will form a strong network of influential strategic thinkers across the region,” the Head of the ANU Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Professor Ross Babbage, said.

Contents

In a New Light

By Tim Winkler

Leaf through the average roll of holiday snaps and you will see 36 or maybe 72 images — and by the end you can expect to have paper-weary thumbs and a memory of only a few standout pictures.

Picture, then, the life of Helen Ennis, a Senior Lecturer at the ANU School of Art, who was commissioned to curate an exhibition of Australian photography from the enormous holdings of the National Library of Australia. She was presented with a desk and a pass that gave her free reign to the Library’s storerooms.

One woman, 600,000 images.

Many months later, with tired thumbs and a head crammed with thousands of glimpses of early Australian history, Ms Ennis has produced an intriguing collection of 300 photographs which will be displayed at the Library for the next few months.

In a New Light: Australian Photography 1850s—1930s offers a rare opportunity to peer behind popular debates about colonialism and Federation and beyond.

In choosing works for the exhibition, Ms Ennis decided to concentrate on photographic prints — on the basis that negatives offered many pictures, but no certainty as to which the photographer would have thought worthy of printing.

“I’ve looked at tens of thousands of photos. What I do is look at images in the morning for a few hours, and make decisions that I review the next day. I don’t try to make instantaneous decisions,” Ms Ennis said.

“When you first look, you are immediately drawn towards images that are most perfect technically and most resolved aesthetically — but when you go back there are other pictures which may not be as immediately arresting, but take a bit longer to work on you, and can offer a bit more. Pictures that tell a story that is unresolved.

“My big interest here is history and narrative history — what kind of stories do these photographs have to tell?

“It would have been very easy to come in and do a very jingoistic exhibition which essentially said this is Australia and this is what photography is all about, but I didn’t want to do that.

“For example, I have chosen multiple pictures of Henry Parkes, of Truganini and Dame Nellie Melba to offer different perspectives.

“If the exhibition was just about art, or just about photography, I suppose you could have presented a single picture of each.

“But this exhibition provides insights into what Australian photographs tell us about our collective history.

“We can’t just say, ‘This single picture of Henry Parkes tells you everything you need to know about Henry Parkes’ — so we have included images of him as a politician, him with his wife, him in the bush. These different takes offer extra dimensions on him and his place in history.”

While no single person could ever work through the entire collection, Ms Ennis, who worked as curator of photography for the National Gallery of Australia until the early 1990s, says she has gained a strong overview of the nation’s impressive photographic collection.

“Australian photography is a bit of misnomer. Good local-born photographers were not working until the 1890s, so prior to then, our photographic history was produced by people who were often itinerant or worked here for brief periods — and the unevenness of the national photographic collection reflects that,” Ms Ennis said.

“There were good early photographs from Hobart and Sydney, then good photographs started coming from Melbourne after gold was discovered. In the second half of the Nineteenth Century, photographers came out from England and travelled to where there was development and wealth.

After the Box Brownie became popular around 1910, there were far more photographs taken by amateurs. This made selection of photographs of World War One especially interesting — looking at the work of official war photographers and also the very clinical aerial photography and then, by contrast, the pictures taken by soldiers themselves in the field.”

Ms Ennis is already at work on the second part of the exhibition, Australian photography from the 1930s to 2000 — which will be displayed at the Library in August next year. A book is also being prepared and a travelling exhibition including photographs from both eras is planned for 2005.

In the meantime, Ms Ennis can be found most days in the archives of the National Library, pulling out pictures of a thousand half-forgotten lifetimes to capture a taste of the past.

In a New Light:
Australian Photography 1850s—1930s
On display at the National Library of Australia from 9 October 2003 to 26 January 2004

Come in, Old Sydney 1906, above
Harold Cazneaux (1878–1953)
chloro-bromide print; 28.2 x 21.1 cm
National Library of Australia Pictures Collection
Harold Cazneaux is recognised as one of Australia’s leading early art photographers. “Taken in 1906, this image indicates Cazneaux has a lot of anxieties about the modernisation of Sydney. The work is gentle and reflective and it tells a story without an answer.”

A Miner’s Hut, Lithgow Valley, NSW, above
Unknown photographer [between 1880 and 1899]albumen photograph; 27.1 x 35.2 cm
National Library of Australia Pictures Collection
“Photography at this stage was not casual or spontaneous. The photographer has positioned himself carefully in relation to the house and the subjects – it is not like a snapshot. It says so much about the construction of nationalist imagery in the 1890s, when people are thinking about ‘will we federate or will we not.’”

Unknown photographer
Above, Portrait of (Prime Minister Billy) Hughes being carried along George Street, Sydney, 20 September 1919 gelatin silver photograph; 19.5 x 24.4 cm National Library of Australia Pictures Collection
“This picture of the victory parade down George Street in Sydney was taken for a newspaper and published the next day. I found it arresting, the mass of people, the way Hughes is coming towards us in the frame.”

Above are Curator Helen Ennis’s notes on a selection of pictures from the exhibition. Many of the pictures from the exhibition will also be displayed on the Internet at: www.nia.gov.au/exhibitions/newlight

Contents

Impressions

Stories behind important ANU photographs

Mixing it up … Barry Humphries reinvents the humble household Mixmaster and electric frypan at the ANU Sculpture Workshop.

Humphries came to the School of Art to create the “homage to domesticity” during Dame Edna Everage’s Back to my Roots and Other Suckers Canberra tour in June.

Using kitchen items from the 1960s and 1970s, Humphries called the sculpture Barry Humphries’ Proposal for the Redevelopment for Federation Square: Mixmaster Tower. The sculpture was unveiled in full at the Victorian Arts Centre in August.

Primarily renowned for his witty stage performances as the housewife from Moonee Ponds Dame Edna and the spitting, inebriated Sir Les Patterson, among others, Humphries is also an accomplished landscape artist and Dada-inspired sculptor.

Contents

Science Reporter

The latest news from Science ANU
Combining the University’s science related National Institutes

The rise and fall of the Great Melbourne Telescope

The Great Melbourne Telescope:1869—2003, R.I.P.

The January wildfire that severely damaged Mt Stromlo Observatory brought to an end the quixotic career of one of the world’s most historic telescopes: the Great Melbourne Telescope. When it was built in the 1860s, the Great Melbourne Telescope was expected to unlock some of astronomy’s biggest mysteries but it began its life as a spectacular failure. It was only when pieces of it were transferred to Mt Stromlo at the end of the Second World War that it started producing significant results. In its final years it was central to one of the biggest astronomical discoveries of all time: the detection of dark matter. Its next triumph was to have been the five-year Southern Sky Survey. Unfortunately, the fire hit first.

Originally based in Melbourne, the GMT, as it was often referred to, came into operation in September 1869. It was designed and built in the United Kingdom by the well-known instrument maker Thomas Grubb for the princely sum of £5,000. The GMT was supposed to throw light on one of the burning issues of astronomy — were those fuzzy patches of light (known as nebulae) gaseous clouds or unresolved clusters of stars?

The GMT’s main claim to fame was that it was the biggest telescope with an equatorial mount in the world. Unfortunately, being big didn’t make up for a long line of poor design decisions. Looming large among these was the choice of a 48-inch mirror made of speculum, an alloy of copper and tin. The alloy tarnished over time and needed repolishing by a skilled optician.

Unfortunately, back then Australia didn’t have anyone with the appropriate skills. In addition to this, the mirror was coated in shellac to protect its surface during the four month sea journey to Australia. Upon arrival the shellac was removed using methylated spirit and water rather than pure alcohol. It’s believed this damaged the surface and diminished the quality of images the telescope could produce.

Cloudy Melbourne skies only added to the problems with visibility being limited on most nights. It was also found that the telescope’s drive wasn’t up to tracking and photographing nebulae. While the telescope did provide good views of the Moon, it was next to useless for studying nebulae.

Seventy years later, having failed miserably on its primary task, the Great Melbourne Telescope was sold as scrap for a mere £500 (10 per cent of its original cost). It was transported to Mt Stromlo and overhauled in 1959. The 48-inch speculum mirror was replaced with a new 50-inch Pyrex glass mirror and both mount axes were fully motorised. Although few of its original components remained, it still carried the Grubb nameplate identifying it as the Great Melbourne Telescope.

Since then it’s been used by many of the University’s doctoral students working at the Observatory. However, its real claim to fame came about when it was equipped with a state-of-the-art CCD camera in the 1990s. The GMT was then used for the world-first detection of Massive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs), a form of dark matter that was believed to lie in a halo surrounding our Milky Way Galaxy. The GMT demonstrated that MACHOs could be detected when they pass between the Earth and light from a star in a distant galaxy.

The Great Melbourne Telescope is no more, but at least it was given the chance to go out with some of its dignity restored. Plans are now being developed for the next phase of Mt Stromlo’s continuing exploration of the universe, including a new “Skymapper” telescope for the University’s Siding Spring Observatory that will be able to robotically survey the skies 10 times faster than its predecessor.

When is enough enough?

Ever tried to survive on gum leaves? It’s no easy task because they’re extremely low in nutrition. To extract your daily food requirements you’d have to eat a substantial quantity of leaves. The catch is, besides being difficult to break down, the nutrition in gum leaves is bound up with a wide range of plant toxins. The more you eat, the more poison your system has to deal with.

All in all, gum leaves are a diet from hell, and yet a range of Australian animals do quite nicely on them. By understanding how they manage this feat, researchers are learning a lot about the fundamentals of food selection and tolerance.

“There are few plants that will kill you outright,” says Dr Bill Foley, the nutritional ecologist leading the research. “It’s more a matter that we learn we can only handle so much of any given food. If we eat more than that amount we get sick or, in the worst case, we die.”

Dr Foley’s team at the School of Botany and Zoology has been investigating the various mechanisms by which native animals ‘learn’ to recognise what’s appropriate to eat and how much of any type of food can be eaten.

“Koalas and possums are excellent candidates for this type of investigation,” says Dr Foley. “They have to eat a lot of leaves to get by, but, at the same time, they also have to cope with the toxins they ingest with their food. What’s more, we’re talking about a rich cocktail of plant toxins that varies from eucalypt species to species, from tree to tree and even from branch to branch. The critical question is how do these animals select leaves with a mix of toxins that they can cope with? And, how do they know when enough is enough, and to stop eating from any particular tree?

“We’ve shown that some possums have the ability to pick a good food tree by smell, but this is only the first step,” he says. “All gum leaves carry some toxin so the animal needs to know when to stop eating and move on to a different tree with a different mix of toxins. We’ve demonstrated that in some instances the cue to stop eating is a rising nausea but the full mechanism is yet to be unravelled.

“Taste may be a part of the equation but things like bitter flavours don’t put off koalas and possums, though they might slow them down. This applies to humans as well. A hot curry, for example, might slow down the rate at which we consume the curry but it won’t stop us eating it. Indeed, with experience we often seek out this flavour. But if you get nauseous (or worse!) after eating a food you usually won’t eat it again.”

Figuring out what to eat and when to stop is not just about how the animal reacts to a particular tree, it also involves observing what other animals are doing and copying this behaviour (especially that of their mothers).

Living off gum leaves isn’t easy but understanding how it’s done is giving researchers important insights on a wide range of issues. Lessons from their work can be applied to forest conservation, animal physiology and behaviour and the care of wild animals in captivity.

Clean and comparatively green

If you were responsible for implementing environmental management and pollution prevention strategies on campus, where would you start? How would you prioritise different jobs? What would you be measuring? How would your efforts compare with what other people are doing at other campuses?

These are far from academic questions because campuses, shopping malls, industrial parks and many other enterprises are increasingly being asked to demonstrate that they are meeting environmental  protection legislation and implementing appropriate environmental management. Dr Su Wild River at the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies was faced with these issues when she was asked to assess how effective the Queensland Environmental Protection Act was at getting business operators to change their practice. To meet this challenge she developed an innovative new methodology that works by comparing environmental risks. It’s called Comparative Environmental Risk Assessment Method or CERAM.

“The problem with traditional approaches to assessing environmental management is that they rely on extensive and precise data collection,” says Dr Wild River. “This includes measuring levels of contaminants in the water, soil and air, and health impacts over time. Not only does this take time, money and expertise, it’s quite difficult to make meaningful comparisons from site to site where different management approaches are being applied.

“This is a big issue,” she says. “If you can’t make a rapid and relatively simple risk assessment of a site’s environmental management performance then there’s little chance of achieving widespread compliance or working with operators to come up with improved management procedures.

“It’s a bit like self-assessing your tax. You know many of the rules but if you believe the government won’t or can’t check up on you (because they don’t know how) you’re more liable to ignore those rules.”

Dr Wild River’s approach involves inspecting a site and locating any areas where there is the potential to cause environmental harm through the release of contaminants into the environment. Then the likelihood and seriousness of environmental contamination is estimated and recorded against a matrix of risk scores. By comparing the risk ratings between hazards, and from previous years, the ratings can be used to describe the magnitudes and changes to environmental risk in a meaningful, efficient and effective way.

CERAM allows you to estimate and distinguish between inherent environmental risk and residual environmental risk. Inherent risk is the risk to environmental values if an activity is carried out without environmental management. They tend to be consistent over time as they relate to the fundamental nature of a hazard. Residual risk is the environmental risk of an activity after environmental management has been applied. Residual risk should decrease with time if management is constantly reviewing and improving their performance.

“Using CERAM I was able to provide an accurate analysis of a chemical manufacturer’s risk in just 20 minutes,” Dr Wild River says. “The operator said it cost him several days and $40,000 for a consultant to supply the same answers.”

Brisbane City Council and ANU have now both adopted CERAM to assist with their environmental management. The ANU is also offering a two-day graduate course award in preventing pollution using CERAM. 

“The hope is that CERAM might provide a framework for assessing environmental management across the nation,” says Dr Wild River. “With wide-scale adoption I’m confident we could lift the environmental bar to new heights.”

Conquering that ‘last mile’

Pioneering work by physicists and engineers at ANU to build a cheap, simple and robust wireless communication system may soon see regional Australia getting a workable connection to the Internet. The system is called BushLAN, and it’s all about bridging that ‘last mile’.

Regional Australia has never had adequate access to the Internet. It’s either not available, too expensive or unreliable. A major part of the problem is the ‘last mile’ of access. This ‘last mile’ is the connection between the central communications hub in a local town to individual residences and businesses. Unfortunately, the ‘last mile’ is usually much more than just a mile. In rural areas such as Cowra, for example, the last mile has been measured to be anywhere from three to 100 kilometres from the town centre. In more isolated areas it can be much greater.

The cost of cabling to only a few customers over these distances is prohibitive and current wireless solutions aren’t practical. Satellite connections are expensive and usually require a cable connection for a user to send information out (ie they receive downloads from a satellite but send information out via the telephone). There are ground-based wireless connections commercially available but these operate in microwave frequencies using directional antennas that require a clear line of sight to function. Given Australia’s sparse population and frequently hilly terrain this would require a large number of repeater stations.

Dr Gerard Borg is a plasma physicist at the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering. His work with radio transmission has convinced him that the last mile could be effectively bridged using the low-VHF radio spectrum. This part of the radio spectrum has much longer wavelengths than the microwave frequencies used by other wireless systems and this allows signals to be transmitted further without the need for expensive repeaters or satellites. What’s more, it doesn’t depend on line of sight as the signal has the ability to go around mountains and other large obstacles in the landscape. At the moment the low VHF radio spectrum is used to transmit TV signals but with the decommissioning of some analogue TV bands in 2008 (digital TV uses higher frequency radio) there’s an opportunity to switch this unused spectrum over to data connections for regional Australia.

BushLAN (Bush – Local Area Network), as the system is called, has the potential to provide remote users in regional Australia with a permanent, high-quality Internet connection (at more than 100 kb/sec) at an affordable price. However, to get BushLAN up and running, many technical and marketing aspects of this multi-faceted system have to be developed first. To achieve his goal, Dr Borg has enlisted the assistance of a wide range of students from the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology who have taken on the various jobs associated with the system as part of their Honours, Masters or Doctoral projects.

“The practical nature of BushLAN and its relevance to regional Australia really attracts the students,” says Dr Borg. “Once they’re involved, they become highly motivated about what we’re trying to achieve. Quite often they finish the formal part of their work for their thesis, but then they stay on working on the project through the Christmas vacation.”

The next step for BushLAN is to set up local trials to test transmissions, and then work with interested Internet service providers to see how BushLAN can be integrated into existing information systems. The hope is that with BushLAN as part of the system, the ‘final mile’ will no longer be an unbeatable hurdle.

Science Reporter is brought to you by the National Institute of Bioscience, the National Institute of Engineering and Information Sciences, the National Institute for the Environment, the National Institute of  Health and Human Sciences and the National Institute of Physical Sciences. Written by David Salt.

For more information on any of the stories presented here please visit http://ni.anu.edu.au/

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Philatelic fame for ANU Geneticist

By Maciej Wasilewicz

As part of a celebration of 50 years of genetic research, Professor Jenny Graves of the ANU is being featured on the first-day issue of an Australian stamp.

Professor Graves’ stamp (left) displays kangaroo chromosomes which are the subject of her research. The joey pictured on the first-day issue is Dennis, an orphaned kangaroo that is being hand-reared.

The first-day issue is attached to the stamp on the day that it is issued. Sought after by philatelists, it helps bring out the meaning behind the stamp’s design.

The picture captures a rare moment — in reality, Professor Graves gets to spend little time with kangaroos, and receives their genetic material from other sources. A small piece of skin from a kangaroo’s ear is enough for her and her team to grow in bottles to provide material to perform any number of genetic experiments.

Professor Graves is better known as the leader of a new research centre that will be established at The Australian National University to research the kangaroo genome under the latest round of funding by the Australian Research Council.

“The new Centre will make significant contributions to the community and to the nation, with direct implications for our environment and economy,” ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Chubb said. The ARC Centre for the Kangaroo Genome will receive more than $3.3 million over the next five years to take part in international efforts to produce the entire DNA sequence of the kangaroo genome.

“There is huge international interest in sequencing a marsupial genome,” Professor Graves said.

“Marsupials are particularly valuable because they are so different from humans. Humans and kangaroos last shared a common ancestor about 180 million years ago, so there has been plenty of time for unimportant sequences to become different.

“This means that sequences that are the same in kangaroos and in man are likely to be important.

“This is one of the very best ways to identify new human genes and the signals that switch them on and off, and discover what they do.

“In Australia, we have a huge natural advantage in this powerful comparative genomics approach because of the uniqueness of Australian animals, but we do not have a monopoly on marsupials and we had been worried that sequencing a marsupial genome might be done in the USA without any Australian involvement.”

With this in mind, a consortium of top Australian geneticists led by Professor Graves and including Professor Marilyn Renfree (The University of Melbourne), Professor Des Cooper (Macquarie University) and Professor Terry Speed (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute) are setting up  the Australian-led Centre for Kangaroo Genomics funded by the ARC.

“Australia does not have the funding or genomics infrastructure to be able to complete the kangaroo genome sequence on its own, so the consortium will collaborate with a very large USA-based genomics centre to generate the huge amount of DNA sequence.

“However, Australia can still lead the project by producing the all-important genetic and physical maps, which provide the vital framework on which to hang the sequence, and a complete collection of sequence tags that mark active genes.

“The sequence will be of immediate use to the Human Genome Project — and immediate interest to the pharmaceutical industry - in identifying new human genes and discovering their functions.

“The project will also produce high-technology methods and products that will be of immediate use to the Australian research community.”
In announcing the grant, Federal Education Minister Dr Brendan Nelson said the new centres would have significant environmental and economic benefits for the Australian community.

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Riding a wave

By Edward O’Daly

Tracking matter millions of kilometres away which you can’t see, using theories still being perfected and technology at the brink of invention is hardly a task for the faint-hearted.

But for one of the nation’s leading experts in General Relativity, Dr Susan Scott (left), flying a computer cluster through a maze of equations and data in pursuit of black holes is all in a day’s work. Or a decade’s work. Or perhaps a lifetime’s work.

The biggest problem occupying the minds of physics experts across the world right now is the gravitational wave spectrum.

Dr Scott, who has been appointed to the prestigious European Academy of Sciences in recognition of her contribution to this field, spends her working life tackling theories of General Relativity and the Universe — the theory behind the formation of black holes, the beginnings of the Universe and associated issues of consequence.

General Relativity theory predicts that a new spectrum of physics called the gravitational wave spectrum can be used to track down matter such as binary black hole systems which are otherwise invisible to current technology.

Black holes cannot be viewed by conventional instruments – or by the human eye – because they do not give off light or electromagnetic waves. However, coalescing binary black hole systems are strong sources of gravitational waves — so it is hoped that General Relativity theory and extremely sensitive measuring devices built on three continents, called interferometers, will enable researchers to make the first direct detection of gravitational waves and to use them as a tool to probe the secrets of these mysterious places in space.

The interferometers have been constructed at Washington and Louisiana States in the USA, Pisa, Italy, Hannover, Germany and Tokyo, Japan and consist of two huge arms built at right angles, each up to four kilometres in length. They are fitted with highly sensitive measuring devices which monitor minute changes in the length of an interferometer arm with the passage of a gravitational wave through the instrument.

When a gravitational wave is emitted by a binary black hole system or a supernova, it will ultimately be able to be detected by the interferometers and probed by data analysts such as Dr Scott — providing a new future for astronomy and an expanded understanding of our Universe.

Dr Scott leads the data analysis arm of the international interferometer project for Australia, crunching data on a powerful computer cluster at ANU and developing techniques to analyse signals of gravitational radiation from space emitted by “cataclysmic astrophysical events” such as supernovae.
Her election to the European Academy of Sciences was in recognition of her “outstanding contribution to physical sciences and fundamental developments in the field of gravity”.

Dr Scott achieved three firsts at once in her election to the European Academy — becoming the first Australian woman, the first Australian physicist and the first ANU researcher to be elected.

Only three other Australian academics have been honoured with election to the Academy.

The Academy aims to bring the world’s leading minds together to share information and solve problems, highlighting the significance of science and technology and boosting the role of scientists in the world economy.

Dr Scott plans to seize the opportunities presented by her membership of the Academy to forge even stronger links between Europe and ANU.

“I think there will be many opportunities in the coming years for networking and projects with the EU. There is much potential for growth in the number of European students studying in Australia and vice-versa.”

“Also many of our leading research projects could benefit from forming direct links with European companies and institutions. For instance, our Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy (ACIGA) is currently becoming involved in research towards a future major space mission involving the European Space Agency, as well as NASA.”

Dr Scott, a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Science, was one of only eleven people worldwide to be chosen in the Academy’s 2002 intake, joining 518 other high-profile scholars.

“I was elected in 2002 but only received my official membership documentation and certificate in May this year,” Dr Scott said.

“I was on study leave and overseas at that time and have waited until my return for the announcement of this wonderful news,” she said.

“To have one’s scientific work recognised internationally by such a prestigious body of fellow scientists and engineers is truly uplifting and exciting. It’s not what drives me as a scientist, of course, but I can’t deny that when this honour came along, it was tremendously encouraging.”

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Post-mortem of Hawke years uncovers the recession we didn’t have to have

By Maciej Wasilewicz

It was 1991. The Hawke Government was in its twilight period, the boom-times of the ‘80s were washing back like an unpleasant aftertaste in the economic figures of the new decade.

A raft of economic deregulation had set the Australian economy free of artificial constraint — with some arguing that the economy had in fact been cast adrift.

The early 1990s were characterised by a sharp recession — remembered most commonly by its description by then Treasurer Paul Keating as “the recession we had to have.”

But did we?

A critical retrospective of the Hawke Government’s years in office, organised by the ANU National Institute of Social Sciences and Law has been told that the downturn may have been avoided if the Government had deviated more from the public service advice of the day.

Dr Michael Keating, the former Secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet and now an ANU Research Fellow, said that the economists in charge were too optimistic about a soft landing and the subsequent recovery.

“As Reserve Bank Governor, Ian Macfarlane said shortly after the recession, ‘if anyone is to blame, blame the Bank’.  But forecasting is an uncertain business, and the Hawke and Keating Government reforms have paved the way for the long expansion of the Australian economy since that recession.”

The conference, Revisiting the Hawke Government, attracted journalists, former public servants and leading figures from the Hawke Government including former Defence Minister Kim Beazley, former Education Minister Susan Ryan, and, of course, former Prime Minister Bob Hawke (left).

More than 200 people attended the conference, which dissected the legacy of the Hawke Government and marked the 20th anniversary of its election.

Economic deregulation was just one focus of the conference. Richard Denniss, from the Australia Institute, said that the major issue in 1991 was that the public did not realise that the government had “traded its navigational control of the economy for a faster and stronger boat”.

He noted that back in the ‘80s people were obsessed with economic indicators in a way that is unheard of today. People are now used to the effects of deregulation, but fail to appreciate how the Hawke reforms have continued to contribute to Australia’s success today.

On Foreign Policy, ANU Professor Desmond Ball said the Hawke years were a ‘golden period’ of Australian foreign policy. He argued that their policies were more independent of the US than today and more in line with harnessing Asia’s support rather than protecting Australia against their potential aggression.

Mr Beazley maintained that Australia could follow its own course while maintaining a strong alliance with the US. He said that as Defence Minister in 1984 he had to convince the US constantly of the value of Australia’s involvement. He recalled that the joint US-Australian facilities in Australia were virtually unknown to the Reagan officials with which he dealt and he therefore made it a point to talk about them at the start of meetings.

Mr Hawke was undoubtedly the star on the day, presenting a discussion of leadership and the Hawke Government’s characteristic consensus style of politics.

Mr Hawke emphasised that his leadership was strengthened by the availability of talent in his cabinet. He stated that he thought that a leader had never had such a talented cabinet before or after his leadership and that it is unlikely that a better one would assemble in the near future.

ANU Professor John Warhurst, one of the organisers of the conference, said that “Bob Hawke’s presence and the energy and magnetism he displayed in his own performance meant that the audience could see for themselves how Hawke must have interacted with his Cabinet colleagues, the public and the media”.

The full audio transcript of the conference will be available online at http://ni.anu.edu.au/nissl

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TerraWulf to unravel secrets of the earth

By Amanda Morgan

It is powerful, frighteningly fast and called TerraWulf – but it is not a fearsome species of Siberian wolverine.

TerraWulf is in fact a new parallel computing facility at the Research School of Earth Sciences capable of extremely rapid data analysis of the earth’s structure.

Developed by staff of the new Centre for Advanced Data Inference (CADI), TerraWulf combines state-of-the-art computational and mathematical techniques to address fundamental questions of the geosciences.

A linked cluster of 128 high-powered PCs harnessing the fastest available RDRAM (memory) available on the market, TerraWulf is the only computer facility of its kind in the world dedicated to complex data calculations and problems in the earth sciences.

“Already this facility has been used to solve problems relating to rock cooling and geological processes, as well as modeling the evolution of landforms through geological time,” CADI co-director, Dr Jean Braun, said.

TerraWulf’s size and power means it is housed in a specially air-conditioned room designed to cool and redistribute the heat, equivalent to 40 heaters, generated by the computers.

TerraWulf was designed and built by Dr Braun and his colleague Dr Malcolm Sambridge in consultation with a local company, Cougar Computers, which supplied the hardware.

The computing system will be primarily used to unravel the complex processes that shaped the Earth, like the interactions between the Earth’s solid crust and the atmosphere responsible for the formation of mountain belts, or the patterns of flow in the Earth’s mantle.

“Since the numerical techniques we use are highly suited to a parallel architecture we have been able to concentrate the full power of TerraWulf on a single problem. Work that would have taken a year on one high performance PC has been completed in three days,” Dr Sambridge said.

Dr Braun and Dr Sambridge initiated the TerraWulf project two years ago. They realised the potential to combine the current explosion in geological data with their expertise in computer simulation to make unprecedented advances in our understanding of how the Earth works. They needed a dedicated, multi-processor computer. A year and a half later, TerraWulf was born.

TerraWulf will be used for internal and joint staff and student research projects, supported by a visitor program where international and national partners can spend time using it, consult with staff and access hardware and software facilities.

It was jointly funded through grants from the Australian Research Council, the ANU and partner universities within Australia and overseas. It is hoped that as a unique international resource, TerraWulf will attract further sponsors and partners from around the world.

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The Last Word

Will there be water wars?

Political instability and conflict over water will become a defining security issue in the first half of this century as pressure on the world’s dwindling reserves of fresh water intensifies.

The link between fresh water and security is the result of water’s central importance to human life and economic development. We depend upon continuous access to it, not only for drinking and food production, but also for industry, transport and energy. Yet this most precious of natural resources is beginning to run dry. The Food and Agricultural Organisation has warned that human demands are about to collide with the ability of the hydrological cycle to supply water. Already one-third of the world’s population lives in countries with moderate to high water stress — where water consumption is more than ten per cent of renewable freshwater supply (UN Environment Programme, 2000). By 2025, according to the UN, ‘as much as two-thirds of the world’s population could be under [water] stress conditions’ and water shortages and pollution could place global food supplies in jeopardy, possibly leading to ‘a series of local and regional water crises with global implications’.

This is so because water and food are inseparably linked. The current global water deficit is equivalent to the loss of 160 million tonnes of grain, equivalent to 80 per cent of annual grain exports (it takes about 1,000 tonnes of water to produce one tonne of grain). Moreover, water-borne diseases in the developing world are becoming more prevalent and are responsible for 5–10 million deaths annually, while around half the world’s population is without adequate sanitation or drinking water, two of the fundamental prerequisites of civilised society and human security (Gleick 1998).

Water scarcity is destined to become a major security issue for the Asia–Pacific region even though wars are unlikely to be fought purely over water. The extent of the problem will vary significantly within and between states. China, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand suffer endemic water shortages and others may soon be affected. Long-term trends in use and supply point towards an accelerating deterioration in the region’s reserves of fresh water. Water disputes in Southeast Asia have the capacity to widen tensions between Malaysia and Singapore, and eventually reawaken animosities between states along the Mekong River. Aside from its importance for industry, the declining availability of fresh water will heighten regional insecurity because of irrigation’s critical role in hydroelectricity generation and rice growing. Indeed, water’s central importance to food production may well prove to be the most fundamental security linkage of all.

Whether conservation and technological improvements will allow governments to manage future water shortages without conflict is an open question. There are ways of developing alternative sources of water — water recycling is one, reclaiming waste water another. Desalinisation plants, which remove salt from water, can go some way to reducing dependence on natural rainfall and ground water, but they are not a panacea. Other mooted solutions, such as towing icebergs from polar regions or redistributing water via pipelines, aqueducts, tankers and even floating nylon bags face significant political, technical and financial obstacles, and are unlikely to solve the region’s water problems in the foreseeable future.

The key to making more water available is to reduce consumption. Significant savings have already been made in the US and Europe by better planning, reallocating water and the introduction of efficient, cost effective technology. Fixing leaking pipes and lining aqueducts could recoup some of the 60 per cent of water lost because of inefficiencies in agriculture. Rudimentary conservation measures and charging for water would place a higher premium on the value of water. Partly as a result of applying new technologies and better management, US withdrawals of water have significantly decreased over the past two decades, despite a rising population and standard of living (Gleick 1998).

Nevertheless, while technology and conservation could do much to stabilise water withdrawals, government short-sightedness,  competing economic priorities and political instability will almost certainly prevent recent US experience being replicated in this region. Asia–Pacific nations need to cooperate more closely in finding solutions to a problem which affects them all. Rather than establish new bodies to assist national governments in this task, better use could be made of existing organisations such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum. Australia can play an important role by improving awareness of water security issues at home and abroad, developing strategies for ameliorating the consequences of water insecurity, making available our expertise in water management, and exploring innovative approaches to reducing water usage and loss, especially in food production.

Dr Alan Dupont is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Asia–Pacific Security Program at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at ANU
This is an extract of a paper he presented to the Water, Governance and The Political Economy Symposium at ANU in August.

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