Publications

Adkinson, NF, Bochner, BS, Burks, AW, Busse, WW, Holgate, ST, Lemanske, RF & O'Hehir, RE 2013, Middleton's Allergy: Principles and Practice: Eighth Edition.
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Boasting a worldwide reputation as the leading text in allergy and immunology, Middletons Allergy continues its steadfast tradition of providing comprehensive coverage of state-of-the-art basic science, as well as authoritative guidance on the clinical concepts of day-to-day diagnosis and management of allergic disorders. Offering timely information that's suited for clinicians and researchers alike, Middleton's is a user-friendly and versatile source for the knowledge you need to provide optimal care to your patients!. 'A valuable source of reference and pre-sifted information ...the editors are to be commending in keeping the book up-to-date and clinically valuable.' Reviewed by: Imnunology News Date: March 2015.

Howlett, RJ & Gabrys, B 2013, InnovationKT-2012 Preface.

Ben-Menachem, E 2013, 'Introduction' in Buhalis, D, Darcy, S & Ambrose, I (eds), Best Practice in Accessible Tourism: Inclusion, Disability, Ageing Population and Tourism, Hindawi Limited, United Kingdom, pp. 1-2.
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Accessible tourism is gaining momentum across many different areas and activities within the tourism sector for both its inherent sensibility as a human rights issue and for its growing recognition as an important contribution to the economics of triple bottom line sustainability amid the general recession. This collection of accessible tourism best practice chapters is the companion volume to the first book, Accessible Tourism: Concepts and Issues (Buhalis & Darcy, 2011). While Accessible Tourism: Concepts and Issues sets out to explore and document the current theoretical approaches, foundations and issues in the study of accessible tourism, the focus of this book is on policy and best practice, reflecting the 'state-of -the-art' as expressed in a selection of international study chapters.

Chen, H & Morris, MJ 2013, 'Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR): Structure, signaling pathways and biological effects' in Berhardt, LV (ed), Advances in Medicine and Biology Volume 68, Nova Science Publishers, New York, pp. 145-158.
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The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) is a highly conserved member of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) related kinase protien family and functions as a cellular sensor of changes in ambient glucose and amino acid levels; critical for cellular proliferation and differentiation. There are two multiprotein complexes of mTOR signalling components, as mTOR complex 1 (mTORC1) and mTORC2. Only mTORC1 appears to be nutrient dependent. In response to low intracellular energy availability, mTORC1 stabilizes and reduces the activity of mTOR. On the other hand, conditions of nutrient abundance promote its activity. However, such mechanisms have only been reported in either cell line models or lean animals; and hence their application to human states is yet to be determined.

Choi, AH, Matinlinna, JP, Heness, G & Ben-Nissan, B 2013, 'Nanocomposites for biomedical and dental applications' in Handbook of Functional Nanomaterials, Nova Publishing, New York, pp. 149-172.
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During the last decade, there has been a major increase in the interest of nanostructured materials in advanced technologies such as biomedical and dental technology. Nanostructured materials are associated with a variety of uses within the bio-medical field, for example, nanoparticles in drug-delivery system, in biomaterial science and diagnostic systems and in regenerative medicine. By definition, a biomaterial is a nondrug substance that is ideal for inclusion in systems that replace or extend the function of bodily tissues or organs. The key factors in the clinical success of any biomaterial are its biocompatibility and biofunctionality, both of which are related directly to tissue/implant interface interactions. Nanocomposites can be described as a heterogeneous combination of two or more materials, in which at least one of those materials should be on a nanometer-scale. By using the composite approach, it is possible to manipulate the mechanical properties such as strength and modulus of the composites closer to those of natural bone, with the help of secondary substitution phases. Currently, the most common composite materials used for clinical applications are those selected from a handful of available and well-characterized biocompatible ceramics and the combination with metals and polymers as composites and hybrids. This approach is currently being explored in the development of a new generation of nanocomposites with a widened range of biomedical and dental applications. The aim of this chapter is to provide information relating to the use of nanocomposites for biomedical and dental applications. An overview on the basis of biomaterials will be followed by some of past and present research into the use of nanocomposites in biomedical and dental applications.

Cranfield, CG 2013, 'Techniques for investigating the mechanosensitivity of ion channels' in Encyclopedia of Biophysics, Springer, USA, pp. 1-4.

Cranfield, CG, Kloda, A, Petrov, E, Battle, A, Nomura, T, Rohde, PR, Cox, C & Martinac, B 2013, 'Mechanosensitivity of Ion Channels' in Encyclopedia of Biophysics, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 1433-1440.
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Darcy, SA 2013, 'Sydney for All' in Cooper, I (ed), The World Leisure International Innovation Prize-Winning Projects 2006-2012, World Leisure Organisation, USA, pp. 97-103.
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Sydney for All is the outcome of a visitor accessibility and destination managen1ent project that sought to create accessible destination experiences for those with access needs, People with access needs arc part of all tourism markets including seniors and people with disabilities who have been defined as the 'accessible tourism market.' It is recognized in the literature that signiflcant barriers constrain the tourism experiences of this group. 'l1,e overall approach to developing accessible destination experiences was based on the experience economy and a geographic hierarchy of accessible attractions that sought to provide the market with a 'sense of place:' For the accessible destination experiences, a template was developed to address these conceptual ideas, Although the project's basis can be found in the relevant building codes and Australian standards for access and mobility, this project sets itself apart by focusing on accessible destination experiences rather than the individual facilitators of access, Quite simply, what arc the accessible destination experiences that are quintessentially Sydney? The methodology was informed by universal deSign, the experience economy, and the geographies of disability, which sought to understand how people experienced space and place, 'Ille preliminary work involved access/management information systen1 reviews of stakeholders within the precinct area) in-depth interviews with key informants, review of other potential experience providers discovered by the interviews, and further snowballed interviews, Upon completion, a list of possible experiences was identified that haclthe potential to provide tourists with disabilities a sense of the Sydney experience, '1l1C experiences were then access audited and ohserved, and participants were observed to validate their selection,

Darcy, SA & Dominguez Vila, T 2013, 'Australia and Spain as accessible tourism destinations' in Jutila, S & Ilola, H (eds), Matkailua kaikille? Näkökulmia matkailun ennakointiin, osa ii (Tourism for all? Insights to tourism, Finnish Network of Tourism Foresight, Finland, pp. 19-25.
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Tourism is an activity very important socially and financially for many countries; it has a high priority within governments for economic management (Hall & Wall 1994; Veal 2011). Tourism has become an important sector where nations compete against each other for market share. Many countries are seeking a competitive advantage in international marketing of destinations through the development of specific customer service segments. These new segments are based on a series of socio-demographic and psychographic considerations to differentiate market needs of groups.

De Abreu Lourenco, R 2013, 'Insurance' in The Law Handbook: your practical guide to the law in NSW. Brocherie (ed), pp. 1029-1052.

Kempton, T & Coutts, AJ 2013, 'Science and Football VII' in Nunome, H, Drust, B & Dawson, B (eds), Science and Football VII: The Proceedings of the Seventh World Congress on Science and Football, Routledge, USA, pp. 261-266.
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To date only one study has examined whether skill-related performance is affected by match-related fatigue in a similar manner as physical performance during professional soccer match play (Carling and Dupont, 2011). Carling and colleagues reported that while HIR distance declined between halves and during the final third of matches, it was not associated with a reduction in technical skill performance. However, the assessment of the influence of fatigue on technical performance during competition is problematic due to the possible impact of psychological, tactical and situational factors. To overcome this, recent studies have examined the influence of physical fatigue on skill tests in controlled matchsimulations (Lyons et al., 2006; Rampinini et al., 2008; Royal et al., 2006; Sunderland, 2005; Young et al., 2010). Most (Lyons et al., 2006; Rampinini et al., 2008; Sunderland, 2005) of these studies have reported that skilled performance is impaired by match-related fatigue. At present it is not known if acute physical fatigue influences skill performance in SSGs.

Le, M, Nauck, D, Gabrys, B & Martin, T 2013, 'KNNs and Sequence Alignment for Churn Prediction' in Research and Development in Intelligent Systems XXX, Springer International Publishing, pp. 279-285.
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Liu, Q & Li, J 2013, 'Protein Binding Interfaces and Their Binding Hot Spot Prediction: A Survey' in Shen, B (ed), Translational Bioinformatics, Springer Netherlands, German, pp. 79-106.
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In living organisms, genes are the blueprints or library, specifying instructions for building proteins. Proteins constitute the bulk of cells. Proteins mutual binding and interactions play a vital role in numerous functions and activities, such as signal transduction, enzymatic reactions, immunoreactions and inter-cellular communications. This survey provides basic knowledge of proteins and protein binding. First, we describe proteins fundamental elements, structures and functions. In Sect. 5.2, we present concepts related to protein binding and interactions. In Sect. 5.3, we explain why protein binding interfaces have a uneven distribution of binding free energy. In the Sects. 5.4 and 5.5, we explain why protein interfaces are complicated and how the current studies deal with this difficult problem. In Sect. 5.6, we present an overview on methods to model and predict binding free energy of protein interactions. Section 5.7 concludes this survey with a summary.

M., A, Anne, M, Jun, G, Tao, C, A, B, Chng, E, M., L, Ting, J, Elgundi, Z, An, T, Lutherborrow, M, Torpy, F, K., D, E., B & M., G 2013, 'Insulin Trafficking in a Glucose Responsive Engineered Human Liver Cell Line is Regulated by the Interaction of ATP-Sensitive Potassium Channels and Voltage-Gated Calcium Channels' in Molina, FM (ed), Gene Therapy - Tools and Potential Applications, InTech, Rijeka, Croatia, pp. 703-726.
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Type I diabetes is caused by the autoimmune destruction of pancreatic beta (â) cells [1]. Current treatment requires multiple daily injections of insulin to control blood glucose levels. Tight glucose control lowers, but does not eliminate, the onset of diabetic complications, which greatly reduce the quality and longevity of life for patients. Transplantation of pancreatic tissue as a treatment is restricted by the scarcity of donors and the requirement for lifelong immunosuppression to preserve the graft, which carries adverse side-effects. This is of particular concern as Type 1 diabetes predominantly affects children. Lack of glucose control could be overcome by genetically engineering 'an artificial â-cell' that is capable of synthesising, storing and secreting insulin in response to metabolic signals. The donor cell type must be readily accessible and capable of being engineered to synthesise, process, store and secrete insulin under physiological conditions.

Martinac, B, Rohde, PR, Cranfield, CG & Nomura, T 2013, 'Patch Clamp Electrophysiology for the Study of Bacterial Ion Channels in Giant Spheroplasts of E. coli' in Methods in Molecular Biology, Humana Press, pp. 367-380.
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Martinac, B, Rohde, PR, Cranfield, CG & Nomura, T 2013, 'Patch clamp electrophysiology for the study of bacterial ion channels in giant spheroplasts of E. coli.' in Anne Delcour (ed), Methods in Molecular Biology - Bacterial Cell Surfaces, Springer, USA, pp. 367-380.
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Ion channel studies have been focused on ion channels from animal and human cells over many years. Based on the knowledge acquired, predominantly over the last 20 years, a large diversity of ion channels exists in cellular membranes of prokaryotes as well. Paradoxically, most of what is known about the structure of eukaryotic ion channels is based on the structure of bacterial channels. This is largely due to the suitability of bacterial cells for functional and structural studies of biological macromolecules in a laboratory environment. Development of the 'giant spheroplast' preparation from E. coli cells was instrumental for functional studies of ion channels in the bacterial cell membrane. Here we describe detailed protocols used for the preparation of giant spheroplasts as well as protocols used for the patch-clamp recording of native or heterologously expressed ion channels in E. coli spheroplast membrane.

Nguyen, TV & Eisman, JA 2013, 'Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomics of Osteoporosis' in Genetics of Bone Biology and Skeletal Disease, Elsevier, pp. 151-167.
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Tran, BH, Center, JR & Nguyen, TV 2013, 'Translational Genetics of Osteoporosis: From Population Association to Individualized Prognosis' in Primer on the Metabolic Bone Diseases and Disorders of Mineral Metabolism, Wiley, pp. 376-388.
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© 2013 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. All rights reserved. Genetic factors play an important role in osteoporosis and fracture risk. The genetic studies performed over the past few decades have provided valuable insights into the pathophysiology of osteoporosis. With the decreasing costs of genome-wide scanning, consortia have been able to pool much larger populations in genome-wide association (GWA) studies for complex diseases that overcome some of the statistical problems that have plagued reproducibility from earlier studies in osteoporosis. A major priority in osteoporosis research at present is to develop prognostic models for identifying individuals who have a high risk of fracture. Research into the genetic background of osteoporosis and identification of osteoporosis-related genes can advance our understanding of pathophysiologic mechanisms of fracture. With a rapid improvement in genotyping technology, the next generation of GWA studies will be adding more variants at a low frequency to cover as many single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) as possible.

Ahmed, LA, Center, JR, Bjørnerem, Å, Bluic, D, Joakimsen, RM, Jørgensen, L, Meyer, HE, Nguyen, ND, Nguyen, TV, Omsland, TK, Størmer, J, Tell, GS, van Geel, TACM, Eisman, JA & Emaus, N 2013, 'Progressively increasing fracture risk with advancing age after initial incident fragility fracture: The Tromsø Study', Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, vol. 28, no. 10, pp. 2214-2221.
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ABSTRACT   The risk of subsequent fracture is increased after initial fractures; however, proper understanding of its magnitude is lacking. This population-based study examines the subsequent fracture risk in women and men by age and type of initial incident fracture. All incident nonvertebral fractures between 1994 and 2009 were registered in 27,158 participants in the Tromsø Study, Norway. The analysis included 3108 subjects with an initial incident fracture after the age of 49 years. Subsequent fracture (n = 664) risk was expressed as rate ratios (RR) and absolute proportions irrespective of death. The rates of both initial and subsequent fractures increased with age, the latter with the steepest curve. Compared with initial incident fracture rate of 30.8 per 1000 in women and 12.9 per 1000 in men, the overall age-adjusted RR of subsequent fracture was 1.3 (95% CI, 1.2–1.5) in women, and 2.0 (95% CI, 1.6–2.4) in men. Although the RRs decreased with age, the absolute proportions of those with initial fracture who suffered a subsequent fracture increased with age; from 9% to 30% in women and from 10% to 26% in men, between the age groups 50–59 to 80+ years. The type of subsequent fracture varied by age from mostly minor fractures in the youngest to hip or other major fractures in the oldest age groups, irrespective of type and severity of initial fracture. In women and men, 45% and 38% of the subsequent hip or other major fractures, respectively, were preceded by initial minor fractures. The risk of subsequent fracture is high in all age groups. At older age, severe subsequent fracture types follow both clinically severe and minor initial incident fractures. Any fragility fracture in the elderly reflects the need for specific osteoporosis management to reduce further fracture risk. © 2013 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research...

Al‐Hajjar, M, Fisher, J, Williams, S, Tipper, JL & Jennings, LM 2013, 'Effect of femoral head size on the wear of metal on metal bearings in total hip replacements under adverse edge‐loading conditions', Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part B: Applied Biomaterials, vol. 101B, no. 2, pp. 213-222.
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AbstractMetal‐on‐metal (MoM) bearings have shown low‐wear rates under standard hip simulator conditions; however, retrieval studies have shown large variations in wear rates and mechanisms. High‐wear in vivo has caused catastrophic complications and has been associated with steep cup‐inclination angle (rotational malpositioning). However, increasing the cup‐inclination angle in vitro has not replicated the increases in wear to the same extent as those observed in retrievals. Clinically relevant wear rates, patterns, and particles were observed in vitro for ceramic‐on‐ceramic bearings when microseparation (translational malpositioning) conditions were introduced into the gait cycle. In the present study, 28 and 36‐mm MoM bearings were investigated under adverse conditions. Increasing the cup angle from 45° to 65° resulted in a significant increase in the wear rate of the 28 mm bearings. However, for the 36 mm bearings, head‐rim contact did not occur under the steep cup‐angle condition, and the wear rate did not increase. The introduction of microseparation to the gait cycle significantly increased the wear rate of the MoM bearings. Cup angle and head size did not influence the wear rate under microseparation conditions. This study indicated that high‐in vivo wear rates were associated with edge loading due to rotational malpositioning such as high‐cup‐inclination angle and translational malpositioning that could occur due to several surgical factors. Translational malpositioning had a more dominant effect on the wear rate. Preclinical simulation testing should be undertaken with translational and rotational malpositioning conditions as well as standard walking cycle conditions defined by the ISO standard. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater, 2013.

Ammit, AJ 2013, 'Glucocorticoid insensitivity as a source of drug targets for respiratory disease', Current Opinion in Pharmacology, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 370-376.
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Anaissi, A, Kennedy, PJ, Goyal, M & Catchpoole, DR 2013, 'A balanced iterative random forest for gene selection from microarray data', BMC BIOINFORMATICS, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 1-10.
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Background: The wealth of gene expression values being generated by high throughput microarray technologies leads to complex high dimensional datasets. Moreover, many cohorts have the problem of imbalanced classes where the number of patients belonging to each class is not the same. With this kind of dataset, biologists need to identify a small number of informative genes that can be used as biomarkers for a disease.Results: This paper introduces a Balanced Iterative Random Forest (BIRF) algorithm to select the most relevant genes for a disease from imbalanced high-throughput gene expression microarray data. Balanced iterative random forest is applied on four cancer microarray datasets: a childhood leukaemia dataset, which represents the main target of this paper, collected from The Children's Hospital at Westmead, NCI 60, a Colon dataset and a Lung cancer dataset. The results obtained by BIRF are compared to those of Support Vector Machine-Recursive Feature Elimination (SVM-RFE), Multi-class SVM-RFE (MSVM-RFE), Random Forest (RF) and Naive Bayes (NB) classifiers. The results of the BIRF approach outperform these state-of-the-art methods, especially in the case of imbalanced datasets. Experiments on the childhood leukaemia dataset show that a 7% ∼ 12% better accuracy is achieved by BIRF over MSVM-RFE with the ability to predict patients in the minor class. The informative biomarkers selected by the BIRF algorithm were validated by repeating training experiments three times to see whether they are globally informative, or just selected by chance. The results show that 64% of the top genes consistently appear in the three lists, and the top 20 genes remain near the top in the other three lists.Conclusion: The designed BIRF algorithm is an appropriate choice to select genes from imbalanced high-throughput gene expression microarray data. BIRF outperforms the state-of-the-art methods, especially the ability to handle the class-imbalanced data. Moreover, the...

Apeh, E & Gabrys, B 2013, 'Detecting and Visualizing the Change in Classification of Customer Profiles based on Transactional Data', Evolving Systems, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 27-42.
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Customer transactions tend to change over time with changing customer behaviour patterns. Classifier models, however, are often designed to perform prediction on data which is assumed to be static. These classifier models thus deteriorate in performance over time when predicting in the context of evolving data. Robust adaptive classification models are therefore needed to detect and adjust to the kind of changes that are common in transactional data. This paper presents an investigation into using change mining to monitor the adaptive classification of customers based on their transactions through moving time windows. The classification performance of two-class decision tree ensembles built using the data binning process based on the number of items purchased was monitored over varying 3, 6, 9 and 12 months time windows. The changing class values of the customer profiles were analysed and described. Results from our experiments show that the proposed approach can be used for learning and adapting to changing customer profiles. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

Aquilina, P, Chamoli, U, Parr, WCH, Clausen, PD & Wroe, S 2013, 'Finite element analysis of three patterns of internal fixation of fractures of the mandibular condyle', British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 326-331.
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Arruda, AFS, Aoki, MS, Freitas, CG, Coutts, A & Moreira, A 2013, 'Planejamento e monitoramento da carga de treinamento durante o período competitivo no basquetebol', Revista Andaluza de Medicina del Deporte, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 85-89.
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This study aimed to examine the relationships between the difficulty of the matches (difficulty scheduled at the beginning of the season [DBS] and the in-season match difficulty [DIS]) and the weekly internal training load (ITL) in twelve professional male basketball players (25.3 ± 4.8 years, 97.6 ± 14.9 kg, and 195.8 ± 10.2 cm) during a in-season period. DBS was determined before the commencement of the competitive season, and DIS due to reassessing DBS on a weekly basis. ITL was determined by means of session-RPE method. Significant correlations (p < 0.05) were verified between DBS and DIS (r = 0.86), DBS and ITL (- 0.59), and DIS and ITL (- 0.65). The greater coefficient of relationship between DIS and ITL suggest a key role of reassessing the difficulty of the matches on a weekly basis to provide appropriate information to coaches regard planning and monitoring in-season training loads. © 2013 Revista Andaluza de Medicina del Deporte.

Arsene, CTC & Gabrys, B 2013, 'Probabilistic finite element predictions of the human lower limb model in total knee replacement', Medical Engineering & Physics, vol. 35, no. 8, pp. 1116-1132.
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Beck, D, Thoms, JAI, Perera, D, Schütte, J, Unnikrishnan, A, Knezevic, K, Kinston, SJ, Wilson, NK, O’Brien, TA, Göttgens, B, Wong, JWH & Pimanda, JE 2013, 'Genome-wide analysis of transcriptional regulators in human HSPCs reveals a densely interconnected network of coding and noncoding genes', Blood, vol. 122, no. 14, pp. e12-e22.
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Key Points Genome-wide binding profiles of FLI1, ERG, GATA2, RUNX1, SCL, LMO2, and LYL1 in human HSPCs reveals patterns of combinatorial TF binding. Integrative analysis of transcription factor binding reveals a densely interconnected network of coding and noncoding genes in human HSPCs.

Beckett, EL, Stevens, RL, Jarnicki, AG, Kim, RY, Hanish, I, Hansbro, NG, Deane, A, Keely, S, Horvat, JC, Yang, M, Oliver, BG, van Rooijen, N, Inman, MD, Adachi, R, Soberman, RJ, Hamadi, S, Wark, PA, Foster, PS & Hansbro, PM 2013, 'A new short-term mouse model of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease identifies a role for mast cell tryptase in pathogenesis', Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, vol. 131, no. 3, pp. 752-762.e7.
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Background: Cigarette smoke-induced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a life-threatening inflammatory disorder of the lung. The development of effective therapies for COPD has been hampered by the lack of an animal model that mimics the human disease in a short timeframe. Objectives: We sought to create an early-onset mouse model of cigarette smoke-induced COPD that develops the hallmark features of the human condition in a short time-frame. We also sought to use this model to better understand pathogenesis and the roles of macrophages and mast cells (MCs) in patients with COPD. Methods: Tightly controlled amounts of cigarette smoke were delivered to the airways of mice, and the development of the pathologic features of COPD was assessed. The roles of macrophages and MC tryptase in pathogenesis were evaluated by using depletion and in vitro studies and MC protease 6-deficient mice. Results: After just 8 weeks of smoke exposure, wild-type mice had chronic inflammation, mucus hypersecretion, airway remodeling, emphysema, and reduced lung function. These characteristic features of COPD were glucocorticoid resistant and did not spontaneously resolve. Systemic effects on skeletal muscle and the heart and increased susceptibility to respiratory tract infections also were observed. Macrophages and tryptase-expressing MCs were required for the development of COPD. Recombinant MC tryptase induced proinflammatory responses from cultured macrophages. Conclusion: A short-term mouse model of cigarette smoke-induced COPD was developed in which the characteristic features of the disease were induced more rapidly than in existing models. The model can be used to better understand COPD pathogenesis, and we show a requirement for macrophages and tryptase-expressing MCs. © 2013 American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.

Behl, B, Papageorgiou, I, Brown, C, Hall, R, Tipper, JL, Fisher, J & Ingham, E 2013, 'Biological effects of cobalt-chromium nanoparticles and ions on dural fibroblasts and dural epithelial cells', Biomaterials, vol. 34, no. 14, pp. 3547-3558.
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Ben-Nissan, B, Choi, AH & Bendavid, A 2013, 'Mechanical properties of inorganic biomedical thin films and their corresponding testing methods', Surface and Coatings Technology, vol. 233, no. 1, pp. 39-48.
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Coatings on implants are aimed to achieve some or all of the improvements in abrasion, corrosion resistance, metal ion release protection, increased bioactivity, biocompatibility, and ultimately an improved environment and structure for new bone attachme

Borges, TO, Bullock, N & Coutts, AJ 2013, 'Pacing characteristics of international Sprint Kayak athletes', INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS IN SPORT, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 353-364.
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This study aimed to profile pacing strategies and pacing profile of world-class kayakers during world championships. Data were from publically available websites of eight international competitive seasons (2004 - 2011). Data represent percentage average race pace. Mixed ANOVA was used to compare pacing (250 m splits) and race level (A and B-finals) and crew boats. Effect size was calculated converting F-values into r-values (P < 0.05). There were significant interactions between splits and season (F7.99, 255.7=13.08, P <0.001, r=0.05), splits and boat crew (F5.33, 255.7=4.82, P <0.001, r=0.02), race level, the split speed and the competitive season (F8.49, 271.5=2.07, P =0.035, r=0.01) and the race level, the split speed and the boat crews (F5.66, 271.5=2.28, P =0.04, r=0.01) for the 1000 m. There was a significant interaction between race level, split speed and boat crew (F1, 80=4.35, P =0.004, r=0.05) in the 500 m. Performances of A and B-finals were significantly different. In conclusion, pacing of sprint kayakers can vary according to race level (A or B-finals, elite or sub-elite respectively), crew (K1, K2 and K4), split distances (250 m splits) and competitive seasons. Additionally, our data suggests there may exist specific crew boat dynamics and, therefore, specific race demands

Breaden, K, Phillips, J, Agar, M, Grbich, C, Abernethy, AP & Currow, DC 2013, 'The Clinical and Social Dimensions of Prescribing Palliative Home Oxygen for Refractory Dyspnea', JOURNAL OF PALLIATIVE MEDICINE, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 268-273.
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Background: Chronic breathlessness is a significant problem in palliative care and oxygen is often prescribed in an attempt to ameliorate it. Often, this prescription falls outside the current funding guidelines for long-term home oxygen use. The aim of this qualitative study was to understand the factors that most influence Australian specialist palliative care nurses' initiation of home oxygen for their patients. Methods: A series of focus groups were held across three states in Australia in 2011 involving specialist palliative care nurses. The invitation to the nurses was sent by e-mail through their national association. Recorded and transcribed data were coded for themes and subthemes. A summary, which included quotes, was provided to participants to confirm. Results: Fifty-one experienced palliative care nurses participated in seven focus groups held in three capital cities. Two major themes were identified: 1) logistic/health service issues (not reported in this paper as specific to the Australian context) involving the local context of prescribing and, 2) clinical care issues that involved assessing the patient's need for home oxygen and ongoing monitoring concerns. Palliative care nurses involved in initiating or prescribing oxygen often reported using oxygen as a second-line treatment after other interventions had been trialed and these had not provided sufficient symptomatic benefit. Safety issues were a universal concern and a person living alone did not emerge as a specific issue among the nurses interviewed. Conclusion: The role of oxygen is currently seen as a second-line therapy in refractory dyspnea by specialist palliative care nurses.

Bryant, C, Suen, H, Brown, R, Yang, S, Favaloro, J, Aklilu, E, Gibson, J, Ho, PJ, Iland, H, Fromm, P, Woodland, N, Nassif, N, Hart, D & Joshua, DE 2013, 'Long-term survival in multiple myeloma is associated with a distinct immunological profile, which includes proliferative cytotoxic T-cell clones and a favourable Treg/Th17 balance', BLOOD CANCER JOURNAL, vol. 3, no. 9, pp. 1-7.
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Despite improved outcomes in multiple myeloma (MM), a cure remains elusive. However, even before the current therapeutic era, 5% of patients survived 410 years and we propose that immune factors contribute to this longer survival. We identified patients attending our clinic, who had survived 410 years (n>20) and analysed their blood for the presence of T-cell clones, T-regulatory cells (Tregs) and T helper 17 (Th17) cells. These results were compared with MM patients with shorter follow-up and age-matched healthy control donors. The frequency of cytotoxic T-cell clonal expansions in patients with o10 years follow-up (MM patients) was 54% (n>144), whereas it was 100% (n>19/19) in the long-survivors (LTS-MM). T-cell clones from MM patients proliferated poorly in vitro, whereas those from LTS-MM patients proliferated readily (median proliferations 6.1% and 61.5%, respectively (Po0.0001)). In addition, we found significantly higher Th17 cells and lower Tregs in the LTS-MM group when compared with the MM group. These results indicate that long-term survival in MM is associated with a distinct immunological profile, which is consistent with decreased immune suppression. © 2013 Macmillan Publishers Limited.

Buchheit, M, Racinais, S, Bilsborough, J, Hocking, J, Mendez-Villanueva, A, Bourdon, PC, Voss, S, Livingston, S, Christian, R, Periard, J, Cordy, J & Coutts, AJ 2013, 'Adding heat to the live-high train-low altitude model: a practical insight from professional football', BRITISH JOURNAL OF SPORTS MEDICINE, vol. 47, no. S1, pp. 59-69.
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Objectives To examine with a parallel group study design the performance and physiological responses to a 14-day off-season `live high-train low in the heat training camp in elite football players. Methods Seventeen professional Australian Rules Football players participated in outdoor football-speci?c skills (32±1°C, 11.5 h) and indoor strength (23±1°C, 9.3 h) sessions and slept (12 nights) and cycled indoors (4.3 h) in either normal air (NORM, n=8) or normobaric hypoxia (14±1 h/day, FiO2 15.214.3%, corresponding to a simulated altitude of 25003000 m, hypoxic (HYP), n=9). They completed the Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery level 2 (Yo-YoIR2) in temperate conditions (23±1°C, normal air) precamp (Pre) and postcamp (Post). Plasma volume (PV) and haemoglobin mass (Hbmass) were measured at similar times and 4 weeks postcamp (4WPost). Sweat sodium concentration ((Na+ )sweat) was measured Pre and Post during a heat-response test (44°C).

Buchheit, M, Racinais, S, Bilsborough, JC, Bourdon, PC, Voss, SC, Hocking, J, Cordy, J, Mendez-Villanueva, A & Coutts, AJ 2013, 'Monitoring fitness, fatigue and running performance during a pre-season training camp in elite football players', JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND MEDICINE IN SPORT, vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 550-555.
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Objectives To examine the usefulness of selected physiological and perceptual measures to monitor fitness, fatigue and running performance during a pre-season, 2-week training camp in eighteen professional Australian Rules Football players (21.9 ± 2.0 years). Design Observational. Methods Training load, perceived ratings of wellness (e.g. fatigue, sleep quality) and salivary cortisol were collected daily. Submaximal exercise heart rate (HRex) and a vagal-related heart rate variability index (LnSD1) were also collected at the start of each training session. Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery level 2 test (Yo-YoIR2, assessed pre-, mid- and post-camp, temperate conditions) and high-speed running distance during standardized drills (HSR, >14.4 km h-1, 4 times throughout, outdoor) were used as performance measures.

Budka, M & Gabrys, B 2013, 'Density-Preserving Sampling: Robust and Efficient Alternative to Cross-Validation for Error Estimation', IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 22-34.
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Chan, KY, Dillon, T, Lam, HK, Ling, SSH & Nguyen, HT 2013, 'Special issue on hybrid evolutionary systems for manufacturing processes', APPLIED SOFT COMPUTING, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 1329-1331.
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Chan, MY, Nguyen, ND, Center, JR, Eisman, JA & Nguyen, TV 2013, 'Quantitative ultrasound and fracture risk prediction in non-osteoporotic men and women as defined by WHO criteria', Osteoporosis International, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 1015-1022.
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Chen, H, Dorrigan, A, Saad, S, Hare, DJ, Cortie, MB & Valenzuela, SM 2013, 'In Vivo Study of Spherical Gold Nanoparticles: Inflammatory Effects and Distribution in Mice', PLOS ONE, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 1-8.
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Objectives: Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) of 21 nm have been previously well characterized in vitro for their capacity to target macrophages via active uptake. However, the short-term impact of such AuNPs on physiological systems, in particular resident macrophages located in fat tissue in vivo, is largely unknown. This project investigated the distribution, organ toxicity and changes in inflammatory cytokines within the adipose tissue after mice were exposed to AuNPs. Methods: Male C57BL/6 mice were injected intraperitoneally (IP) with a single dose of AuNPs (7.85 μg AuNPs/g). Body weight and energy intake were recorded daily. Tissues were collected at 1 h, 24 h and 72 h post-injection to test for organ toxicity. AuNP distribution was examined using electron microscopy. Proinflammatory cytokine expression and macrophage number within the abdominal fat pad were determined using real-time PCR. Results: At 72 hours post AuNP injection, daily energy intake and body weight were found to be similar between Control and AuNP treated mice. However, fat mass was significantly smaller in AuNP-treated mice. Following IP injection, AuNPs rapidly accumulated within the abdominal fat tissue and some were seen in the liver. A reduction in TNFα and IL-6 mRNA levels in the fat were observed from 1 h to 72 h post AuNP injection, with no observable changes in macrophage number. There was no detectable toxicity to vital organs (liver and kidney). Conclusion: Our 21 nm spherical AuNPs caused no measurable organ or cell toxicity in mice, but were correlated with significant fat loss and inhibition of inflammatory effects. With the growing incidence of obesity and obesity-related diseases, our findings offer a new avenue for the potential development of gold nanoparticles as a therapeutic agent in the treatment of such disorders. © 2013 Chen et al.

Chen, L, Ge, Q, Black, JL, Deng, L, Burgess, JK & Oliver, BGG 2013, 'Differential Regulation of Extracellular Matrix and Soluble Fibulin-1 Levels by TGF-β1 in Airway Smooth Muscle Cells', PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 6, pp. e65544-e65544.
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Fibulin-1 (FBLN-1) is a secreted glycoprotein that is associated with extracellular matrix (ECM) formation and rebuilding. Abnormal and exaggerated deposition of ECM proteins is a hallmark of many fibrotic diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) where small airway fibrosis occurs. The aim of this study was to investigate the regulation of FBLN-1 by transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-β1) (a pro-fibrotic stimulus) in primary human airway smooth muscle (ASM) cells from volunteers with and without COPD. Human ASM cells were seeded at a density of 1×104 cells/cm2, and stimulated with or without TGF-β1 (10 ng/ml) for 72 hours before FBLN-1 deposition and soluble FBLN-1 were measured. Fold change in FBLN-1 mRNA was measured at 4, 8, 24, 48, 72 hours. In some experiments, cycloheximide (0.5 μg/ml) was used to assess the regulation of FBLN-1 production. TGF-β1 decreased the amount of soluble FBLN-1 both from COPD and non-COPD ASM cells. In contrast, the deposition of FBLN-1 into the ECM was increased in ASM cells obtained from both groups. TGF-β1 did not increase FBLN-1 gene expression at any of the time points. There were no differences in the TGF-β1 induced FBLN-1 levels between cells from people with or without COPD. Cycloheximide treatment, which inhibits protein synthesis, decreased both the constitutive release of soluble FBLN-1, and TGF-β1 induced ECM FBLN-1 deposition. Furthermore, in cycloheximide treated cells addition of soluble FBLN-1 resulted in incorporation of FBLN-1 into the ECM. Therefore the increased deposition of FBLN-1 by ASM cells into the ECM following treatment with TGF-β1 is likely due to incorporation of soluble FBLN-1 rather than de-novo synthesis. © 2013 Chen et al.

Chen, P, Li, J, Wong, L, Kuwahara, H, Huang, JZ & Gao, X 2013, 'Accurate prediction of hot spot residues through physicochemical characteristics of amino acid sequences', PROTEINS-STRUCTURE FUNCTION AND BIOINFORMATICS, vol. 81, no. 8, pp. 1351-1362.
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Hot spot residues of proteins are fundamental interface residues that help proteins perform their functions. Detecting hot spots by experimental methods is costly and time-consuming. Sequential and structural information has been widely used in the compu

Choi, AH, Ben-Nissan, B, Matinlinna, JP & Conway, RC 2013, 'Current Perspectives: Calcium Phosphate Nanocoatings and Nanocomposite Coatings in Dentistry', JOURNAL OF DENTAL RESEARCH, vol. 92, no. 10, pp. 853-859.
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The purpose of coatings on implants is to achieve some or all of the improvements in biocompatibility, bioactivity, and increased protection from the release of harmful or unnecessary metal ions. During the last decade, there has been substantially incre

Choi, AH, Matinlinna, J & Ben-Nissan, B 2013, 'Effects of micromovement on the changes in stress distribution of partially stabilized zirconia (PS-ZrO₂) dental implants and bridge during clenching: A three-dimensional finite element analysis', Acta Odontologica Scandinavica, vol. 71, no. 1, pp. 72-81.
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Objective. This investigation aims to evaluate the changes in stress magnitudes and distributions on Partially Stabilized Zirconia (PS-ZrO2) dental implants and bridges and on the mandible caused by fibrous encapsulations during clenching. Materials and methods. Four 3.26 mm diameter PS-ZrO2 dental implants with lengths of 12 mm were modelled and placed in the second premolar and first molar region on both sides of the mandible model. A rigid zirconia bridge with a thickness of 0.5 mm connects the PS-ZrO2 dental implants placed in the second premolar and first molar. Four periodontal ligament (PDL) case studies were examined: PDL in the second premolars; PDL in the first molars; PDL in both the second premolars and first molars; and no PDL present. Results. The results reveal the magnitudes and distributions of stresses on the dental implants and connecting bridges were governed by the PDLs. A significant drop in stress levels were recorded when the PDL encapsulates the roots of the dental implants. Of the four PDL case studies, it was found that when the PDLs are present in both the second premolars and first molars the lowest stress magnitudes are generated. The analysis also revealed that, during the healing process after implant insertion and the result of fibrous encapsulation, the dental implant system will experience a varying amount of stress levels. Conclusion. This study was intended to produce more insight into the influence of the PDL on the changes in stress distribution on the dental implant system during clenching.

Chou, J, Green, DW, Singh, K, Hao, J, Ben-Nissan, B & Milthorpe, B 2013, 'Adipose Stem Cell Coating of Biomimetic β-TCP Macrospheres by Use of Laboratory Centrifuge', BioResearch Open Access, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 67-71.
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Biomimetic materials such as coral exoskeletons possess unique architectural structures with a uniform and interconnected porous network that can be beneficial as a scaffold material. In addition, these marine structures can be hydrothermally converted to calcium phosphates, while retaining the original structural properties. The ability of biomaterials to stimulate the local microenvironment is one of the main focuses in tissue engineering, and directly coating the scaffold with stem cells facilitates future potential applications in therapeutics and regenerative medicine. In this article we describe a new and simple method that uses a laboratory centrifuge to coat hydrothermally derived beta-tricalcium phosphate macrospheres from coral exoskeleton with stem cells. In this research the optimal seeding duration and speed were determined to be 1 min and 700 g. Scanning electron micrographs showed complete surface coverage by stem cells within 7 days of seeding. This study constitutes an important step toward achieving functional tissue-engineered implants by increasing our understanding of the influence of dynamic parameters on the efficiency and distribution of stem cell attachment to biomimetic materials and how stem cells interact with biomimetic materials. © Copyright 2013, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. 2013.

Chou, J, Hao, J, Ben-Nissan, B, Milthorpe, B & Otsuka, M 2013, 'Coral Exoskeletons as a Precursor Material for the Development of a Calcium Phosphate Drug Delivery System for Bone Tissue Engineering', Biological and Pharmaceutical Bulletin, vol. 36, no. 11, pp. 1662-1665.
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With the global rise in aging of populations, the occurrence of osteoporosis will continue to increase. Biomaterial and pharmaceutical scientists continue to develop innovative strategies and materials to address this disease. In this article, we describe a new perspective and approach into the use of coral exoskeletons as a precursor material to synthesize a calcium phosphate-based drug delivery system. Studies detailing the methodology of the conversion methods and the strategies and approach for the development of these novel drug delivery systems are described. Furthermore, in vivo studies in osteoporotic mice using a drug loaded and chemically modified version of the biomimetic delivery system showed significant cortical and cancellous bone increases. These studies support the notion and the rationale for future research and development of the use of coral exoskeletons as materials for drug delivery applications. © 2013 The Pharmaceutical Society of Japan.

Chou, J, Hao, J, Hatoyama, H, Ben-Nissan, B, Milthorpe, B & Otsuka, M 2013, 'The Therapeutic Effect on Bone Mineral Formation from Biomimetic Zinc Containing Tricalcium Phosphate (ZnTCP) in Zinc-Deficient Osteoporotic Mice', PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 8, pp. e71821-e71821.
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The aim of this study was to evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of biomimetic zinc-containing tricalcium phosphate (ZnTCP) produced by hydrothermally converting calcium carbonate exoskeletons from foraminifera, in the treatment of osteoporotic mice. X-Ray powder diffraction showed crystallographic structures matching JCPDS profile for tricalcium phosphate. Mass spectroscopy used to calculate total composition amount showed similar amount of calcium (5×104 μg/g) and phosphate (4×104ppm) after conversion and the presence of zinc (5.18×103 μg/g). In vitro zinc release showed no release in PBS buffer and <1% zinc release in 7 days. In vivo evaluation was done in ovariectomized mice by implanting the ZnTCP samples in the soft tissues near the right femur bone for four weeks. Thirty ddY mice (5 weeks old, average weight of 21 g) were divided into six experimental groups (normal, sham, OVX, β-TCP, ZnTCP and direct injection of zinc). CT images were taken every two weeks where the bone mineral density (BMD) and bone mineral content (BMC) were calculated by software based on CT images. The ZnTCP group exhibits cortical and cancellous bone growth of 45% and 20% respectively. While sham, OVX and β-TCP suffered from bone loss. A correlation was made between the significant body weight increase in ZnTCP with the significant increase in plasma zinc level compared with OVX. The presented results indicate that biomimetic ZnTCP were effective in preventing and treating bone loss in osteoporotic mice model. © 2013 Chou et al.

Chou, J, Hao, J, Kuroda, S, Bishop, D, Ben-Nissan, B, Milthorpe, B & Otsuka, M 2013, 'Bone Regeneration of Rat Tibial Defect by Zinc-Tricalcium Phosphate (Zn-TCP) Synthesized from Porous Foraminifera Carbonate Macrospheres', Marine Drugs, vol. 11, no. 12, pp. 5148-5158.
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Foraminifera carbonate exoskeleton was hydrothermally converted to biocompatible and biodegradable zinc-tricalcium phosphate (Zn-TCP) as an alternative biomimetic material for bone fracture repair. Zn-TCP samples implanted in a rat tibial defect model for eight weeks were compared with unfilled defect and beta-tricalcium phosphate showing accelerated bone regeneration compared with the control groups, with statistically significant bone mineral density and bone mineral content growth. CT images of the defect showed restoration of cancellous bone in Zn-TCP and only minimal growth in control group. Histological slices reveal bone in-growth within the pores and porous chamber of the material detailing good bone-material integration with the presence of blood vessels. These results exhibit the future potential of biomimetic Zn-TCP as bone grafts for bone fracture repair. © 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI.

Chou, J, Ito, T, Bishop, D, Otsuka, M, Ben-Nissan, B & Milthorpe, B 2013, 'Controlled Release of Simvastatin from Biomimetic β-TCP Drug Delivery System', PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. e54676-e54676.
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Simvastatin have been shown to induce bone formation and there is currently a urgent need to develop an appropriate delivery system to sustain the release of the drug to increase therapeutic efficacy whilst reducing side effects. In this study, a novel drug delivery system for simvastatin by means of hydrothermally converting marine exoskeletons to biocompatible beta-tricalcium phosphate was investigated. Furthermore, the release of simvastatin was controlled by the addition of an outer apatite coating layer. The samples were characterized by x-ray diffraction analysis, fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and mass spectroscopy confirming the conversion process. The in-vitro dissolution of key chemical compositional elements and the release of simvastatin were measured in simulated body fluid solution showing controlled release with reduction of approximately 25% compared with un-coated samples. This study shows the potential applications of marine structures as a drug delivery system for simvastatin. © 2013 Chou et al.

Chou, J, Ito, T, Otsuka, M, Ben-Nissan, B & Milthorpe, B 2013, 'Simvastatin-Loaded beta-TCP Drug Delivery System Induces Bone Formation and Prevents Rhabdomyolysis in OVX Mice', ADVANCED HEALTHCARE MATERIALS, vol. 2, no. 5, pp. 678-681.
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Bone formation and regeneration is a prolonged process that requires a slow drug release system to assist in the long-term recovery. A drug-delivery system is developed that allows for the controlled release of simvastin, without exhibiting the side effects associated with high concentrations of simvastatin, and is still capable of inducing constant bone formation.

Chou, J, Ito, T, Otsuka, M, Ben-Nissan, B & Milthorpe, B 2013, 'The Controlled Release of Simvastatin from Biomimetic Macrospheres', BIOCERAMICS 24, vol. 529-530, no. 1, pp. 461-464.
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Simvastatin has been shown to succesfully stimulate bone regeneration and attention has being focussed on developing appropriate delivery carriers for its release. The challenge of deliverying therapeutic concentration of pharmaceutical compunds has being the centre of focus in drug delivery developments. This study examines the in-vivo effects of simvastatin released from β-TCP macrospheres derived from coral exoxskeletons. The results indicates that the controlled release of simvastatin can promote bone formation comparable with direct injection. Furthermore the results showed that the release of simvastatin delivery rates can be controlled by additional coating of an apatite coating. Analysis by CT scans, SEM, amount of new bone formed and mechanical strength tests, showed that by controlling the release of simvastatin bone formation can be stimulated to a therapeutic level. © (2013) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland.

Cooper, ER, McGrath, KCY & Heather, AK 2013, 'In Vitro Androgen Bioassays as a Detection Method for Designer Androgens', SENSORS, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 2148-2163.
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Androgens are the class of sex steroids responsible for male sexual characteristics, including increased muscle mass and decreased fat mass. Illicit use of androgen doping can be an attractive option for those looking to enhance sporting performance and/or physical appearance. The use of in vitro bioassays to detect androgens, especially designer or proandrogens, is becoming increasingly important in combating androgen doping associated with nutritional supplements. The nutritional sports supplement market has grown rapidly throughout the past decade. Many of these supplements contain androgens, designer androgens or proandrogens. Many designer or proandrogens cannot be detected by the standard highly-sensitive screening methods such as gas chromatography-mass spectrometry because their chemical structure is unknown. However, in vitro androgen bioassays can detect designer and proandrogens as these assays are not reliant on knowing the chemical structure but instead are based on androgen receptor activation. For these reasons, it may be advantageous to use routine androgen bioassay screening of nutraceutical samples to help curb the increasing problem of androgen doping. © 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Cortie, MB, Nafea, EH, Chen, H, Valenzuela, SM, Ting, SRS, Sonvico, F & Milthorpe, B 2013, 'Nanomedical research in Australia and New Zealand', NANOMEDICINE, vol. 8, no. 12, pp. 1999-2006.
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Although Australia and New Zealand have a combined population of less than 30 million, they have an active and interlinked community of nanomedical researchers. This report provides a synopsis and update on this network with a view to identifying the main topics of interest and their likely future trajectories. In addition, our report may also serve to alert others to opportunities for joint projects. Australian and New Zealand researchers are engaged in most of the possible nanomedical topics, but the majority of interest is focused on drug and nucleic acid delivery using nanoparticles or nanoporous constructs. There are, however, smaller programs directed at hyperthermal therapy and radiotherapy, various kinds of diagnostic tests and regenerative technologies. © 2013 Future Medicine Ltd.

Crawford, GB, Agar M, M, Quinn, SJ, Phillips, J, Litster, C, Michael, N, Doogue, M, Rowett, D & Currow, DC 2013, 'Pharmacovigilance in Hospice/Palliative Care: Net Effect of Haloperidol for Delirium', Journal of Palliative Medicine, vol. 16, no. 11, pp. 1335-1341.
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Introduction: Prescribing practice in hospice/palliative care is largely extrapolated from other areas of clinical practice, with few studies of net medication effects (benefits and harms) in hospice/palliative care to guide prescribing decisions. Hospice/palliative care patients differ in multiple ways from better studied participant groups, hence the applicability of studies in other participant groups is uncertain. Haloperidol, a butyrophenone derivative and dopamine antagonist, is commonly prescribed for nausea, vomiting, and delirium in hospice/palliative care. Its frequent use in delirium occurs despite little evidence of the effect of antipsychotics on the untreated course of delirium. The aim of this study was to examine the immediate and short-term clinical benefits and harms of haloperidol for delirium in hospice/palliative care patients. Method: A consecutive cohort of participants from 14 centers across four countries who had haloperidol commenced for delirium were recruited. Data were collected at three time points: baseline, 48 hours (clinical benefits), and day 10 (clinical harms). Investigators were also able to report clinical harms at any time up to 14 days after it was commenced. Results: Of the 119 participants included, the average dose was 2.1 mg per 24 hours; 42 of 106 (35.2%) reported benefit at 48 hours. Harm was reported in 14 of 119 (12%) at 10 days, the most frequent being somnolence (n=11) and urinary retention (n=6). Seven participants had their medication ceased due to harms (2 for somnolence and 2 for rigidity). Approximately half (55/119) were still being treated with haloperidol after 10 days. Conclusion: Overall, 1 in 3 participants gained net clinical benefit at 10 days. © Copyright 2013, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. 2013.

Currow, DC & Phillips, J 2013, 'Evolution of palliative care in Australia 1973-2013', Cancer Forum, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 38-42.
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In parallel with the rapid development of oncology in Australia, palliative and supportive care has evolved rapidly. The sponsorship for such development was largely generated by oncology services in response to unmet needs that were encountered daily. Development of state, territory and national strategies has mirrored the professional development in service delivery, education (of existing practitioners and tomorrow's clinicians) and research. More recently, national programs are delivering better outcomes for palliative care patients and their families, world-leading clinical research, improved access to essential medications in the community and the ability to access quality evidence to inform practice and policy. These initiatives provide a valuable foundation for continuing to improve access to high quality clinical care wherever people live.

Darcy, S & Dowse, L 2013, 'In search of a level playing field – the constraints and benefits of sport participation for people with intellectual disability', Disability & Society, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 393-407.
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This paper presents the results of a study seeking to examine the experiences of people with intellectual disability in a sporting context. The research design employed an online, interviewer-completed questionnaire in both a standard and an easy English version designed for administration by a third party for those requiring assistance to respond. Questions sought both quantitative responses about levels of participation and qualitative responses about constraints experienced and benefits received from participation. The results of the study show high levels of participation reported by people who are independent or have lower to moderate support needs, whereas people with high to very high support needs had substantially lower levels of participation. Constraints are examined for both those who participate in sport and those who do not. For those who do participate, the benefits were identified as overwhelmingly social in nature, including belonging, companionship and achievement. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Davidson, PL, Wilson, SJ, Chalmers, DJ, Wilson, BD, Eager, D & McIntosh, AS 2013, 'Analysis of Energy Flow During Playground Surface Impacts', Journal of Applied Biomechanics, vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 628-633.
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The amount of energy dissipated away from or returned to a child falling onto a surface will influence fracture risk but is not considered in current standards for playground impact-attenuating surfaces. A two-mass rheological computer simulation was used to model energy flow within the wrist and surface during hand impact with playground surfaces, and the potential of this approach to provide insights into such impacts and predict injury risk examined. Acceleration data collected on-site from typical playground surfaces and previously obtained data from children performing an exercise involving freefalling with a fully extended arm provided input. The model identified differences in energy flow properties between playground surfaces and two potentially harmful surface characteristics: more energy was absorbed by (work done on) the wrist during both impact and rebound on rubber surfaces than on bark, and rubber surfaces started to rebound (return energy to the wrist) while the upper limb was still moving downward. Energy flow analysis thus provides information on playground surface characteristics and the impact process, and has the potential to identify fracture risks, inform the development of safer impact-attenuating surfaces, and contribute to development of new energy-based arm fracture injury criteria and tests for use in conjunction with current methods.

de Sterke, CM, Kabakova, IV, Uddin, I, Jeyaratnam, J & Malomed, BA 2013, 'Spontaneous symmetry breaking in a double-defect nonlinear grating', Physical Review A, vol. 88, no. 3.
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Deprez, D, Coutts, AJ, Fransen, J, Deconinck, F, Lenoir, M, Vaeyens, R & Philippaerts, R 2013, 'Relative Age, Biological Maturation and Anaerobic Characteristics in Elite Youth Soccer Players', INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORTS MEDICINE, vol. 34, no. 10, pp. 897-903.
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Being relatively older and having an advanced biological maturation status have been associated with increased likelihood of selection in young elite soccer players. The aims of the study were to investigate the presence of a relative age effect (RAE) and the influence of birth quarter on anthropometry, biological maturity and anaerobic parameters in 374 elite Belgian youth soccer players. The sample was divided into 3 age groups, each subdivided into 4 birth quarters (BQ). Players had their APHV estimated and height, weight, SBJ, CMJ, sprint 5 and 30 m were assessed. Overall, more players were born in BQ1 (42.3%) compared with players born in BQ4 (13.7%). Further, MANCOVA revealed no differences in all parameters between the 4 BQ's, controlled for age and APHV. These results suggest that relatively youngest players can offset the RAE if they enter puberty earlier. Furthermore, the results demonstrated possible differences between BQ1 and BQ4, suggesting that caution is necessary when estimating differences between players because of large discrepancies between statistical and practical significance. These findings also show that coaches should develop realistic expectations of the physical abilities of younger players and these expectations should be made in the context of biological characteristics rather than chronological age-based standards

Diffner, E, Beck, D, Gudgin, E, Thoms, JAI, Knezevic, K, Pridans, C, Foster, S, Goode, D, Lim, WK, Boelen, L, Metzeler, KH, Micklem, G, Bohlander, SK, Buske, C, Burnett, A, Ottersbach, K, Vassiliou, GS, Olivier, J, Wong, JWH, Göttgens, B, Huntly, BJ & Pimanda, JE 2013, 'Activity of a heptad of transcription factors is associated with stem cell programs and clinical outcome in acute myeloid leukemia', Blood, vol. 121, no. 12, pp. 2289-2300.
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Key Points The ERG stem cell enhancer is active in acute myeloid leukemia and is regulated by a heptad of transcription factors. Expression signatures derived from ERG promoter–enhancer activity and heptad expression are associated with clinical outcome.

DiGiacomo, M, Lewis, J, Nolan, MT, Phillips, J & Davidson, PM 2013, 'Health transitions in recently widowed older women: a mixed methods study', BMC HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH, vol. 13, no. 1.
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Background: Older recently widowed women are faced with increased health risks and chronic conditions associated not only with bereavement, but also, older age. Loss and grief, adjusting to living alone, decreased income, and managing multiple chronic conditions can impact on older women's ability to transition following recent spousal bereavement. Providing appropriate, timely, and effective services to foster this life transition is of critical importance, yet few services directed towards these women exist in Australia, and there is little data describing the experiences of women and their support needs at this time. Methods. We conducted a longitudinal mixed method study using in-depth semi-structured interviews and questionnaires that were administered three times over a twelve month period to understand the experiences and needs of older women in the period following their husbands' deaths. Descriptive statistics and Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis were used to analyse quantitative and qualitative data, respectively, prior to data integration. Results: Participants were twenty-one community-dwelling recently widowed older women who were an average age of 71 (SD 6.13) years. The majority of participants scored within normal ranges of depression, anxiety, and stress, yet a subset of participants had elevated levels of each of these constructs (37%, 27%, and 19%, respectively) throughout the study period. Positive self-reports of general health predominated, yet 86% of participants were living with one or more chronic condition and taking an average of 4 medications per day. The majority (76%) experienced exacerbations of existing conditions or were diagnosed with a new illness in the early bereavement period, leading to planned and unplanned hospitalisations and other health service use. Qualitative data provided insight into these experiences, the meanings women ascribed to them, and their reasons for enacting certain health risk behaviours....

DiGiacomo, M, Lewis, J, Nolan, MT, Phillips, J & Davidson, PM 2013, 'Transitioning From Caregiving to Widowhood', JOURNAL OF PAIN AND SYMPTOM MANAGEMENT, vol. 46, no. 6, pp. 817-825.
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Context: Older women commonly assume a caregiving role for their husbands at the end of life and are more vulnerable to poorer health, well-being, and social and economic challenges. Objectives: The aim of this study was to ascertain older women's experiences of spousal caregiving at the end of life and the ways in which this experience impacts on the transition to widowhood. Methods: Longitudinal, in-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with older women three times over a one-year period after the death of their husbands. This report focuses on the initial interviews that examined the transition from caregiving to widowhood. Transcripts were analyzed using interpretive phenomenological analysis methods. Participants were community-dwelling women older than 65 years who had recently been caregivers for their husbands who died within the past two years. Results: Older women caregivers described their caregiver role as taxing, particularly in light of their own chronic conditions that they failed to prioritize and address. They did not ask for help in managing their roles and health problems, but quietly endured. Hence, they did not communicate their needs or strains explicitly. The degree of perceived adequacy of communication and interaction with health professionals were important factors impacting on their bereavement. Conclusion: It is imperative for health professionals to appreciate that older women caregivers may need more supportive interaction and information during the end-of-life caregiving, they may have expectations of communication, and they may deny or fail to focus on their own health issues. A patient/family/carer- centered approach could negate this oversight and improve the outcomes for these women as they transition into widowhood. © 2013 U.S. Cancer Pain Relief Committee. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Du, ZS & Watterson, PA 2013, 'Design and implementation of a radial magnetic bearing with permanent magnet bias', Australian Journal of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 167-174.
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A new yoke winding for a radial magnetic bearing with permanent magnet bias fl ux is investigated and shown to reduce the copper loss and copper cost, by 32% in the prototype built. Magnetic circuit analysis neglecting fringing was found to give a poor estimate of the permanent magnet bias fl ux and 3D fi nite element analysis (FEA) would be needed to model it. However, 2D FEA was suffi cient to model the magnetic fi eld and force in the plane of the stator laminations, providing that the correct bias fl ux was imposed as a boundary condition. Solutions for the axial magnetic vector potential component Az were obtained, with a discontinuity prescribed across a cut from the inner to outer domain boundary. A small prototype was built and tested on a shaft whose other end was supported by a ball bearing race with free angular movement. For each of the horizontal and vertical directions, closed loop control was applied with Hall elements providing the shaft position signal. A lead-lag controller, designed using Matlab Simulink and implemented in Turbo Pascal 6, levitated the rotor

Duffield, R, Coutts, A, McCall, A & Burgess, D 2013, 'Pre-cooling for football training and competition in hot and humid conditions', EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SPORT SCIENCE, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 58-67.
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Pre-cooling studies report positive physiological and performance benefits in laboratory conditions, although research studies have not investigated these reported benefits in ecologically valid team-sport training and competition settings.

Dunlop, RA, Cox, PA, Banack, SA & Rodgers, KJ 2013, 'The Non-Protein Amino Acid BMAA Is Misincorporated into Human Proteins in Place of L-Serine Causing Protein Misfolding and Aggregation', PLOS ONE, vol. 8, no. 9, pp. 1-8.
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Mechanisms of protein misfolding are of increasing interest in the aetiology of neurodegenerative diseases characterized by protein aggregation and tangles including Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), Lewy Body Dementia (LBD), and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP). Some forms of neurodegenerative illness are associated with mutations in genes which control assembly of disease related proteins. For example, the mouse sticky mutation sti, which results in undetected mischarging of tRNAAla with serine resulting in the substitution of serine for alanine in proteins causes cerebellar Purkinje cell loss and ataxia in laboratory animals. Replacement of serine 422 with glutamic acid in tau increases the propensity of tau aggregation associated with neurodegeneration. However, the possibility that environmental factors can trigger abnormal folding in proteins remains relatively unexplored. We here report that a non-protein amino acid, β-N-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA), can be misincorporated in place of l-serine into human proteins. We also report that this misincorporation can be inhibited by l-serine. Misincorporation of BMAA into human neuroproteins may shed light on putative associations between human exposure to BMAA produced by cyanobacteria and an increased incidence of ALS. © 2013 Dunlop et al.

Eager, DB, Scarrott, C, Nixon, J & Alexander, K 2013, 'Injury survey of a non-traditional 'soft-edged' trampoline designed to lower equipment hazards', INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INJURY CONTROL AND SAFETY PROMOTION, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 42-49.
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In Australia trampolines contribute one quarter of all childhood play equipment injuries. The objective of this study was to gather and evaluate injury data from a non-traditional, 'soft-edged', consumer trampoline, where the design aimed to minimise injuries from the equipment and from falling off. The manufacturer of the non-traditional trampoline provided the University of Technology Sydney with their Australian customer database. The study involved surveys in Queensland and New South Wales, between May 2007 and March 2010. Initially injury data was gathered by a phone interview pilot study, then in the full study, through an email survey. The 3817 respondents were the carers of child users of the 'soft-edge' trampolines. Responses were compared with Australian and US emergency department data. In both countries the proportion of injuries caused by the equipment and falling off was compared with the proportion caused by the jumpers to themselves or each other. The comparisons showed a significantly lower proportion resulted from falling-off or hitting the equipment for this design when compared to traditional trampolines, both in Australia and the US. This research concludes that equipment-induced and falling-off injuries, the more severe injuries on traditional trampolines, can be significantly reduced with appropriate trampoline design. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Eilenberger, F, Kabakova, IV, de Sterke, CM, Eggleton, BJ & Pertsch, T 2013, 'Cavity Optical Pulse Extraction: ultra-short pulse generation as seeded Hawking radiation', Scientific Reports, vol. 3, no. 1.
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Emaus, N, Nguyen, ND, Almaas, B, Berntsen, GK, Center, JR, Christensen, M, Gjesdal, CG, Grimsgaard, AS, Nguyen, TV, Salomonsen, L, Eisman, JA & Fønnebø, VM 2013, 'Serum level of under-carboxylated osteocalcin and bone mineral density in early menopausal Norwegian women', European Journal of Nutrition, vol. 52, no. 1, pp. 49-55.
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Serum level of under-carboxylated osteocalcin (ucOC) is considered a sensitive measure of vitamin K status, and ucOC levels are associated with bone mineral density (BMD) and fracture risk in elderly persons. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between ucOC and BMD in early menopausal women. The data reported here come from the enrolment in a double-blinded placebo-controlled randomized trial comprising 334 healthy Norwegian women between 50 and 60 years, 1-5 years after menopause, not using warfarin or medication known to affect bone metabolism. Total hip, femoral neck, lumbar spine, and total body BMD and serum level of ucOC and total osteocalcin were measured, and information of lifestyle was collected through questionnaires. The association between ucOC and BMD at all measurement sites was assessed by multiple regression analyses adjusting for possible confounding variables. The absolute serum level of ucOC was significantly and negatively associated with BMD at all measurements sites, both in univariate analyses (p < 0.01) and in multivariate analyses adjusting for years since menopause, smoking status and weight (p < 0.01). However, serum ucOC, expressed as percentage of the total osteocalcin level, was not associated with BMD at any site. Achievement of adequate vitamin K nutritional intake is important, but ucOC expressed as percentage of total osteocalcin levels as reflection of vitamin K status does not seem to play a central role in determining BMD levels in early menopausal women.

Faiz, A, Tjin, G, Harkness, L, Weckmann, M, Bao, S, Black, JL, Oliver, BGG & Burgess, JK 2013, 'The Expression and Activity of Cathepsins D, H and K in Asthmatic Airways', PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. e57245-e57245.
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Tumstatin is an anti-angiogenic collagen IV α3 fragment, levels of which are reduced in the airways of asthmatics. Its reduction may be due to the degradation by extracellular matrix (ECM) proteases. Cathepsins play a role in ECM remodelling, with cathepsin D, H and K (CTSD, CTSH and CTSK) being associated with lung diseases. CTSD modulates the NC1 domains of collagen molecules including tumstatin, while CTSH and CTSK are involved in ECM degradation. The role of these cathepsins in the regulation of tumstatin in the lung has not previously been examined. We demonstrated that CTSB, D, F, H, K, L and S mRNA was expressed in the airways. Quantification of immunohistochemistry showed that there is no difference in the global expression of CTSD, CTSH and CTSK between asthmatics and non-asthmatics. CTSD and CTSK, but not CTSH had the capacity to degrade tumstatin. No difference was observed in the activity of CTSD and H in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of asthmatic and non-asthmatics, while CTSK was undetectable. This indicates that while CTSD possesses the potential to directly regulate tumstatin, and thus angiogenesis through this mechanism however, it is not likely to be involved in the dysregulation of tumstatin found in asthmatic airways. © 2013 Faiz et al.

Frost, SA, Nguyen, ND, Center, JR, Eisman, JA & Nguyen, TV 2013, 'Excess mortality attributable to hip-fracture: A relative survival analysis', Bone, vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 23-29.
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Introduction: Individuals with hip fracture are at substantially increased risk of mortality. The aim of this study was to estimate the excess mortality attributable to hip fracture in elderly men and women. Methods: The Dubbo Osteoporosis Epidemiology Study was designed as a prospective epidemiologic investigation, in which more than 2000 men and women aged 60+ as of 1989 had been followed for 21 years. During the follow-up period, the incidence of atraumatic hip fractures was ascertained by X-ray reports, and mortality was ascertained by the New South Wales Birth, Death and Marriage Registry. Relative survival ratios were estimated by taking into account the age-and-sex specific expected survival in the general Australian population from 1989 to 2010. Results: During the follow-up period 151 women and 55 men sustained a hip fracture. Death occurred in 86 (57%) women and 36 (66%) men. In women, the cumulative relative survival post hip-fracture at 1, 5 and 10 years was 0.83 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.76-0.89), 0.59 (95% CI 0.48-0.68), and 0.31 (95% Cl 0.20-0.43), respectively; in men, the corresponding estimates of relative survival were: 0.63 (95% CI 0.48-0.75), 0.48 (95% CI 0.32-0.63), and 0.36 (95% CI 0.18-0.56). On average post hip-fracture women died 4 years earlier (median: 4.1, inter-quartile range (IQR) 1.7-7.8) and men died 5 years earlier (median = 4.8, IQR 2.4-7.0) than expected. For every six women and for every three men with hip fracture one extra death occurred above that expected in the background population. Conclusion: Hip fracture is associated with reduced life expectancy, with men having a greater reduction than women, even after accounting for time-related changes in background mortality in the population. These data underscore that hip fracture is an independent clinical risk factor for mortality.

Gentile, C, Muise-Helmericks, RC & Drake, CJ 2013, 'VEGF-mediated phosphorylation of eNOS regulates angioblast and embryonic endothelial cell proliferation', Developmental Biology, vol. 373, no. 1, pp. 163-175.
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George, AM & Jones, PM 2013, 'An Asymmetric Post-Hydrolysis State of the ABC Transporter ATPase Dimer', PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. e59854-e59854.
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ABC transporters are a superfamily of enzyme pumps that hydrolyse ATP in exchange for translocation of substrates across cellular membranes. Architecturally, ABC transporters are a dimer of transmembrane domains coupled to a dimer of nucleotide binding domains (NBDs): the NBD dimer contains two ATP-binding sites at the intersubunit interface. A current controversy is whether the protomers of the NBD dimer separate during ATP hydrolysis cycling, or remain in constant contact. In order to investigate the ABC ATPase catalytic mechanism, MD simulations using the recent structure of the ADP+Pi-bound MJ0796 isolated NBD dimer were performed. In three independent simulations of the ADP+Pi/apo state, comprising a total of .0.5 ms, significant opening of the apo (empty) active site was observed; occurring by way of intrasubunit rotations between the core and helical subdomains within both NBD monomers. In contrast, in three equivalent simulations of the ATP/apo state, the NBD dimer remained close to the crystal structure, and no opening of either active site occurred. The results thus showed allosteric coupling between the active sites, mediated by intrasubunit conformational changes. Opening of the apo site is exquisitely tuned to the nature of the ligand, and thus to the stage of the reaction cycle, in the opposite site. In addition to this, in also showing how one active site can open, sufficient to bind nucleotide, while the opposite site remains occluded and bound to the hydrolysis products ADP+Pi, the results are consistent with a Constant Contact Model. Conversely, they show how there may be no requirement for the NBD protomers to separate to complete the catalytic cycle.

Gerace, D, Ren, B, Hawthorne, WJ, Byrne, MR, Phillips, PM, O'Brien, BA, Nassif, N, Alexander, IE & Simpson, AM 2013, 'Pancreatic Transdifferentiation in Porcine Liver Following Lentiviral Delivery of Human Furin-Cleavable Insulin', TRANSPLANTATION PROCEEDINGS, vol. 45, no. 5, pp. 1869-1874.
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Type I diabetes mellitus (TID) results from the autoimmune destruction of the insulin-producing pancreatic β-cells. Gene therapy is one strategy being actively explored to cure TID by affording non-β-cells the ability to secrete insulin in response to physiologic stimuli. In previous studies, we used a novel surgical technique to express furin-cleavable human insulin (INS-FUR) in the livers of streptozotocin (STZ)-diabetic Wistar rats and nonobese diabetic (NOD) mice with the use of the HMD lentiviral vector. Normoglycemia was observed for 500 and 150 days, respectively (experimental end points). Additionally, some endocrine transdifferentiation of the liver, with storage of insulin in granules, and expression of some β-cell transcription factors (eg, Pdx1, Neurod1, Neurog3, Nkx2-2, Pax4) and pancreatic hormones in both studies. The aim of this study was to determine if this novel approach could induce liver to pancreatic transdifferentiation to reverse diabetes in pancreatectomized Westran pigs. Nine pigs were used in the study, however only one pig maintained normal fasting blood glucose levels for the period from 10 to 44 days (experimental end point). This animal was given 2.8 × 10 9 transducing units/kg of the lentiviral vector expressing INS-FUR. A normal intravenous glucose tolerance test was achieved at 30 days. Reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction analysis of the liver tissue revealed expression of several β-cell transcription factors, including the key factors, Pdx-1 and Neurod1, pancreatic hormones, glucagon, and somatostatin; however, endogenous pig insulin was not expressed. Triple immunofluorescence showed extensive insulin expression, as was previously observed in our studies with rodents. Additionally, a small amount of glucagon and somatostatin protein expression was seen. Collectively, these data indicate that pancreatic transdifferentiation of the liver tissue had occurred. Our data suggest that this regimen may ultimately ...

Goldberg, L, Tijssen, MR, Birger, Y, Hannah, RL, Kinston, SJ, Schütte, J, Beck, D, Knezevic, K, Schiby, G, Jacob-Hirsch, J, Biran, A, Kloog, Y, Marcucci, G, Bloomfield, CD, Aplan, PD, Pimanda, JE, Göttgens, B & Izraeli, S 2013, 'Genome-scale expression and transcription factor binding profiles reveal therapeutic targets in transgenic ERG myeloid leukemia', Blood, vol. 122, no. 15, pp. 2694-2703.
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Key PointsERG overexpression in transgenic mice induces a transcriptional leukemia stem cell program characteristic of human AML. PIM1 and RAS are relevant ERG therapeutic targets.

Gomes, RV, Moreira, A, Lodo, L, Nosaka, K, Coutts, AJ & Aoki, MS 2013, 'MONITORING TRAINING LOADS, STRESS, IMMUNE-ENDOCRINE RESPONSES AND PERFORMANCE IN TENNIS PLAYERS', BIOLOGY OF SPORT, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 173-180.
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ABSTRACT: The study aim was to investigate the effect of a periodised pre-season training plan on internal training load and subsequent stress tolerance, immune-endocrine responses and physical performance in tennis players.

Gong, J, Luk, F, Jaiswal, R, George, AM, Grau, GER & Bebawy, M 2013, 'Microparticle drug sequestration provides a parallel pathway in the acquisition of cancer drug resistance', EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACOLOGY, vol. 721, no. 1-3, pp. 116-125.
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Expanding on our previous findings demonstrating that microparticles (MPs) spread cancer multidrug resistance, we now show that MPs sequester drugs, reducing the free drug concentration available to cells. MPs were isolated from drug-sensitive and drug-resistant sub-clones of a human breast adenocarcinoma cell line and from human acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells. MPs were assessed for size, mitochondria, RNA and phospholipid content, P-glycoprotein (P-gp) expression and orientation and ATPase activity relative to drug sequestration capacity. Of the drug classes examined, MPs sequestered the anthracycline class to a significant degree. The degree of sequestration was likely due to the size of MPs and thus the amount of cargo they contain, to which the anthracyclines bind. Moreover, a proportion of the P-gp present on MPs was inside-out in orientation, enabling it to influx drugs rather than its typical efflux function. This was confirmed by surface immunofluorescence and by assessment of drug-stimulated ATPase activity following MP permeabilization. Thus we determined that breast cancer MPs carried a proportion of their P-gp oriented inside-out, providing active sequestration within the microvesicular compartment. These results demonstrate a capacity for MPs to sequester chemotherapeutic drugs, which has a predominantly active sequestration component for MPs derived from drug-resistant cells and a predominantly passive component for MPs derived from drug-sensitive cells. This reduction in available drug concentration has potential to contribute to a parallel pathway and complements that of the intercellular transfer of P-gp. These findings lend further support to the role of MPs in limiting the successful management of cancer.© 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Goodswen, SJ, Kennedy, PJ & Ellis, JT 2013, 'A guide to in silico vaccine discovery for eukaryotic pathogens', BRIEFINGS IN BIOINFORMATICS, vol. 14, no. 6, pp. 753-774.
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In this article, a framework for an in silico pipeline is presented as a guide to high-throughput vaccine candidate discovery for eukaryotic pathogens, such as helminths and protozoa. Eukaryotic pathogens are mostly parasitic and cause some of the most damaging and difficult to treat diseases in humans and livestock. Consequently, these parasitic pathogens have a significant impact on economy and human health. The pipeline is based on the principle of reverse vaccinology and is constructed from freely available bioinformatics programs. There are several successful applications of reverse vaccinology to the discovery of subunit vaccines against prokaryotic pathogens but not yet against eukaryotic pathogens. The overriding aim of the pipeline, which focuses on eukaryotic pathogens, is to generate through computational processes of elimination and evidence gathering a ranked list of proteins based on a scoring system. These proteins are either surface components of the target pathogen or are secreted by the pathogen and are of a type known to be antigenic. No perfect predictive method is yet available; therefore, the highest-scoring proteins from the list require laboratory validation.

Goodswen, SJ, Kennedy, PJ & Ellis, JT 2013, 'A novel strategy for classifying the output from an in silico vaccine discovery pipeline for eukaryotic pathogens using machine learning algorithms', BMC BIOINFORMATICS, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 315-327.
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An in silico vaccine discovery pipeline for eukaryotic pathogens typically consists of several computational tools to predict protein characteristics. The aim of the in silico approach to discovering subunit vaccines is to use predicted characteristics to identify proteins which are worthy of laboratory investigation. A major challenge is that these predictions are inherent with hidden inaccuracies and contradictions. This study focuses on how to reduce the number of false candidates using machine learning algorithms rather than relying on expensive laboratory validation. Proteins from Toxoplasma gondii, Plasmodium sp., and Caenorhabditis elegans were used as training and test datasets.

Goodswen, SJ, Kennedy, PJ & Ellis, JT 2013, 'A review of the infection, genetics, and evolution of Neospora caninum: From the past to the present', INFECTION GENETICS AND EVOLUTION, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 133-150.
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This paper is a review of current knowledge on Neospora caninum in the context of other apicomplexan parasites and with an emphasis on: life cycle, disease, epidemiology, immunity, control and treatment, evolution, genomes, and biological databases and web resources. N. caninum is an obligate, intracellular, coccidian, protozoan parasite of the phylum Apicomplexa. Infection can cause the clinical disease neosporosis, which most notably is associated with abortion in cattle. These abortions are a major root cause of economic loss to both the dairy and beef industries worldwide. N. caninum has been detected in every country in which a study has been specifically conducted to detect this parasite in cattle. The major mode of transmission in cattle is transplacental (or vertical) transmission and several elements of the N. caninum life cycle are yet to be studied in detail. The outcome of an infection is inextricably linked to the precise timing of the infection coupled with the status of the immune system of the dam and foetus. There is no community consensus as to whether it is the dams pro-inflammatory cytotoxic response to tachyzoites that kills the foetus or the tachyzoites themselves. From economic analysis the most cost-effective approach to control neosporosis is a vaccine. The perfect vaccine would protect against both infection and the clinical disease, and this implies a vaccine is needed that can induce a non-foetopathic cell mediated immunity response. Researchers are beginning to capitalise on the vast potential of -omics data (e.g. genomes, transcriptomes, and proteomes) to further our understanding of pathogens but especially to identify vaccine and drug targets. The recent publication of a genome for N. caninum offers vast opportunities in these areas.

Gorrie, CA, Larsen, LG & Waite, PME 2013, 'Age and gender differences in perceptions of traffic risk and safety for older pedestrians in metropolitan Sydney', JOURNAL OF THE AUSTRALASIAN COLLEGE OF ROAD SAFETY, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 28-36.
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Older pedestrians are over represented in serious injury and fatality statistics compared to younger age groups and are considered to be at fault in over 72% of pedestrianmotor vehicle crashes. This study sought to investigate the perceptions of risk and safety in the local traffic environment as reported by older people in the course of everyday pedestrian journeys by asking them to complete a kerb-side survey. The majority of the older pedestrians interviewed (475 women: 265 men) considered that they engaged in safe pedestrian activity and that their own behaviour did not make them vulnerable road users. Perceptions of risk were predominantly associated with external factors such as motorist behaviour and traffic speed. Men tended to be more confident of their own abilities in traffic situations, reported less difficulty crossing roads and paid less attention to route selection than women. Increasing age (65 to 95 years) did not appear to change these perceptions. This is an important consideration for caregivers and medical practitioners when discussing road safety issues with older people, and a critical concern for professionals involved in the planning and implementation of traffic awareness and road safety campaigns for older people.

Grayson, TH, Chadha, PS, Bertrand, PP, Chen, H, Morris, MJ, Senadheera, S, Murphy, TV & Sandow, SL 2013, 'Increased caveolae density and caveolin-1 expression accompany impaired NO-mediated vasorelaxation in diet-induced obesity', Histochemistry and Cell Biology, vol. 139, no. 2, pp. 309-321.
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Diet-induced obesity induces changes in mechanisms that are essential for the regulation of normal artery function, and in particular the function of the vascular endothelium. Using a rodent model that reflects the characteristics of human dietary obesity, in the rat saphenous artery we have previously demonstrated that endothelium-dependent vasodilation shifts from an entirely nitric oxide (NO)-mediated mechanism to one involving upregulation of myoendothelial gap junctions and intermediate conductance calcium-activated potassium channel activity and expression. This study investigates the changes in NO-mediated mechanisms that accompany this shift. In saphenous arteries from controls fed a normal chow diet, acetylcholine-mediated endothelium-dependent vasodilation was blocked by NO synthase and soluble guanylyl cyclase inhibitors, but in equivalent arteries from obese animals sensitivity to these agents was reduced. The expression of endothelial NO synthase (eNOS) and caveolin-3 in rat saphenous arteries was unaffected by obesity, whilst that of caveolin-1 monomer and large oligomeric complexes of caveolins-1 and -2 were increased in membrane-enriched samples. The density of caveolae was increased at the membrane and cytoplasm of endothelial and smooth muscle cells of saphenous arteries from obese rats. Dissociation of eNOS from caveolin-1, as a prerequisite for activation of the enzyme, may be compromised and thereby impair NO-mediated vasodilation in the saphenous artery from diet-induced obese rats. Such altered signaling mechanisms in obesity-related vascular disease represent significant potential targets for therapeutic intervention. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.

Green, D, Padula, M, Santos, J, Chou, J, Milthorpe, B & Ben-Nissan, B 2013, 'A Therapeutic Potential for Marine Skeletal Proteins in Bone Regeneration', Marine Drugs, vol. 11, no. 12, pp. 1203-1220.
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A vital ingredient for engineering bone tissue, in the culture dish, is the use of recombinant matrix and growth proteins to help accelerate the growth of cultivated tissues into clinically acceptable quantities. The skeletal organic matrices of calcifying marine invertebrates are an untouched potential source of such growth inducing proteins. They have the advantage of being ready-made and retain the native state of the original protein. Striking evidence shows that skeleton building bone morphogenic protein-2/4 (BMP) and transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) exist within various marine invertebrates such as, corals. Best practice mariculture and the latest innovations in long-term marine invertebrate cell cultivation can be implemented to ensure that these proteins are produced sustainably and supplied continuously. This also guarantees that coral reef habitats are not damaged during the collection of specimens. Potential proteins for bone repair, either extracted from the skeleton or derived from cultivated tissues, can be identified, evaluated and retrieved using chromatography, cell assays and proteomic methods. Due to the current evidence for bone matrix protein analogues in marine invertebrates, together with the methods established for their production and retrieval there is a genuine prospect that they can be used to regenerate living bone for potential clinical use. © 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI.

Hansen, MJ, Chen, H, Jones, JE, Langenbach, SY, Vlahos, R, Gualano, RC, Morris, MJ & Anderson, GP 2013, 'The Lung Inflammation and Skeletal Muscle Wasting Induced by Subchronic Cigarette Smoke Exposure Are Not Altered by a High-Fat Diet in Mice', PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 11, pp. e80471-e80471.
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Obesity and cigarette smoking independently constitute major preventable causes of morbidity and mortality and obesity is known to worsen lung inflammation in asthma. Paradoxically, higher body mass index (BMI) is associated with reduced mortality in smoking induced COPD whereas low BMI increases mortality risk. To date, no study has investigated the effect of a dietary-induced obesity and cigarette smoke exposure on the lung inflammation and loss of skeletal muscle mass in mice. Male BALB/c mice were exposed to 4 cigarettes/day, 6 days/week for 7 weeks, or sham handled. Mice consumed either standard laboratory chow (3.5 kcal/g, 12% fat) or a high fat diet (HFD, 4.3 kcal/g, 32% fat). Mice exposed to cigarette smoke for 7 weeks had significantly more inflammatory cells in the BALF (P<0.05) and the mRNA expression of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines was significantly increased (P<0.05); HFD had no effect on these parameters. Sham- and smoke-exposed mice consuming the HFD were significantly heavier than chow fed animals (12 and 13%, respectively; P<0.05). Conversely, chow and HFD fed mice exposed to cigarette smoke weighed 16 and 15% less, respectively, compared to sham animals (P<0.05). The skeletal muscles (soleus, tibialis anterior and gastrocnemius) of cigarette smoke-exposed mice weighed significantly less than sham-exposed mice (P<0.05) and the HFD had no protective effect. For the first time we report that cigarette smoke exposure significantly decreased insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) mRNA expression in the gastrocnemius and tibialis anterior and IGF-1 protein in the gastrocnemius (P<0.05). We have also shown that cigarette smoke exposure reduced circulating IGF-1 levels. IL-6 mRNA expression was significantly elevated in all three skeletal muscles of chow fed smoke-exposed mice (P<0.05). In conclusion, these findings suggest that a downregulation in local IGF-1 may be responsible for the loss of skeletal muscle mass following cigarett...

Heneka, N & Phillips, JL 2013, 'Spaced Education', The Hive, vol. 1, pp. 32-33.

Hirota, JA, Im, H, Rahman, MM, Rumzhum, NN, Manetsch, M, Pascoe, CD, Bunge, K, Alkhouri, H, Oliver, BG & Ammit, AJ 2013, 'The Nucleotide-Binding Domain and Leucine-Rich Repeat Protein-3 Inflammasome Is Not Activated in Airway Smooth Muscle Upon Toll-Like Receptor-2 Ligation', AMERICAN JOURNAL OF RESPIRATORY CELL AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 517-524.
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Inflammasomes have emerged as playing key roles in inflammation and innate immunity. A growing body of evidence has suggested that the nucleotide-binding domain and leucine-rich repeat protein-3 (NLRP3) inflammasomeisimportant inchronic airwaydiseases suchas asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Inflammasome activation results, in part, in pro-IL-1β processing and the secretion of the proinflammatory cytokine IL-1β. Because asthma exacerbations are associated with elevated concentrations of secreted IL-1β, we addressed whether the NLRP3 inflammasome is activated under in vitro conditions that mimic infectious exacerbations in asthma. Primary cultures of airway smoothmuscle (ASM) cells were treated with infectious stimuli (mimicked using the Toll-like receptor-2 agonist Pam3CSK4, a synthetic bacterial lipopeptide).Whereas Pam3CSK4 robustlyup-regulatedASMcytokineexpressionin response toTNF-αand significantly enhanced IL-1β mRNA expression, we were unable to detect IL-1β in the cell supernatants. Thus, IL-1β was not secreted and therefore was unable to act in an autocrine manner to promote the amplification of ASMinflammatory responses.Moreover, Toll-like receptor-2 ligation did not enhanceNLRP3 or caspase-1 expression in ASM cells, and NLRP3 and caspase-1 protein were not present in the ASM layer of tracheal sections from human donors. In conclusion, these data demonstrate that the enhanced synthetic function of ASM cells, induced by infectious exacerbations of airway inflammation, is NLRP3 inflammasome-independent and IL-1β-independent. Activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome by invading pathogens may prove cell type-specific in exacerbations of airway inflammation in asthma. Copyright © 2013 by the American Thoracic Society.

Ho-Pham, LT, Nguyen, ND & Nguyen, TV 2013, 'Quantification of the relative contribution of estrogen to bone mineral density in men and women', BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, vol. 14, no. 1.
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Background: The study quantified the relative contributions of estrogen (E2) and total testosterone (TT) to variation in bone mineral density in men and women. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study which involved 200 men and 415 women aged 18 to 89 years. BMD at the lumbar spine (LS) and femoral neck (FN) was measured by DXA. Serum levels of E2 and TT were measured by electrochemiluminescence immunoassays. The association between E2, TT, and BMD was analyzed by the multiple linear regression model, adjusting for age and BMI. The contribution of each hormone to the variation in BMD was quantified by the bootstrap method. Results: In women, higher serum levels of E2, but not TT, were significantly associated with greater BMD at the FN (P = 0.001) and LS (P < 0.0001). In men, higher serum levels of E2 were independently associated with greater FNBMD (P = 0.008) and LSBMD (P = 0.086). In the multiple linear regression model, age, body weight and E2 accounted for 50-55% variance in FNBMD, and 25% (in men) and 48% (in women) variance in LSBMD. Variation in E2 accounted for 2.5% (95% CI 0.4 - 7.8%) and 11.3% (95% CI 8.1 - 15.3%) variation in FNBMD in men and women, respectively. Moreover, E2 contributed 1.2% (95% CI 0.1 - 5.8%) and 11.7% (95% CI 8.5 - 15.9%) variation in LSBMD in men and women, respectively. Conclusions: Estrogen is more important than testosterone in the determination of age-related bone mineral density men and women of Vietnamese background. However, the relative contributions of estrogen to bone mineral density in men are likely modest

Hosie, A, Davidson, PM, Agar, M, Sanderson, CR & Phillips, J 2013, 'Delirium prevalence, incidence, and implications for screening in specialist palliative care inpatient settings: A systematic review', PALLIATIVE MEDICINE, vol. 27, no. 6, pp. 486-498.
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Background: Delirium is a serious neuropsychiatric syndrome frequently experienced by palliative care inpatients. This syndrome is under-recognized by clinicians. While screening increases recognition, it is not a routine practice. Aim and design: This systematic review aims to examine methods, quality, and results of delirium prevalence and incidence studies in palliative care inpatient populations and discuss implications for delirium screening. Data sources: A systematic search of the literature identified prospective studies reporting on delirium prevalence and/or incidence in inpatient palliative care adult populations from 1980 to 2012. Papers not in English or those reporting the occurrence of symptoms not specifically identified as delirium were excluded. Results: Of the eight included studies, the majority (98.9%) involved participants (1079) with advanced cancer. Eight different screening and assessment tools were used. Delirium incidence ranged from 3% to 45%, while delirium prevalence varied, with a range of: 13.3%-42.3% at admission, 26%-62% during admission, and increasing to 58.8%-88% in the weeks or hours preceding death. Studies that used the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-Fourth Edition reported higher prevalence (42%-88%) and incidence (40.2%- 45%), while incidence rates were higher in studies that screened participants at least daily (32.8%-45%). Hypoactive delirium was the most prevalent delirium subtype (68%-86% of cases). Conclusion: The prevalence and incidence of delirium in palliative care inpatient settings supports the need for screening. However, there is limited consensus on assessment measures or knowledge of implications of delirium screening for inpatients and families. Further research is required to develop standardized methods of delirium screening, assessment, and management that are acceptable to inpatients and families. © 2012 The Author.

Hou, HW, Warkiani, ME, Khoo, BL, Li, ZR, Soo, RA, Tan, DS-W, Lim, W-T, Han, J, Bhagat, AAS & Lim, CT 2013, 'Isolation and retrieval of circulating tumor cells using centrifugal forces', Scientific Reports, vol. 3, no. 1, p. 1259.
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Presence and frequency of rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in bloodstreams of cancer patients are pivotal to early cancer detection and treatment monitoring. Here, we use a spiral microchannel with inherent centrifugal forces for continuous, size-based separation of CTCs from blood (Dean Flow Fractionation (DFF)) which facilitates easy coupling with conventional downstream biological assays. Device performance was optimized using cancer cell lines (> 85% recovery), followed by clinical validation with positive CTCs enumeration in all samples from patients with metastatic lung cancer (n = 20; 5-88 CTCs per mL). The presence of CD133⁺ cells, a phenotypic marker characteristic of stem-like behavior in lung cancer cells was also identified in the isolated subpopulation of CTCs. The spiral biochip identifies and addresses key challenges of the next generation CTCs isolation assay including antibody independent isolation, high sensitivity and throughput (3 mL/hr); and single-step retrieval of viable CTCs.

Im, H, Hirota, J, Rahman, M, Rumzhum, N, Manetsch, M, Pascoe, C, Oliver, B & Ammit, A 2013, 'The NLRP3 inflammasome is not activated in airway smooth muscle upon TLR2 ligation', EUROPEAN RESPIRATORY JOURNAL, vol. 42, no. S57, pp. 559-559.
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Inflammasomes have emerged as playing key roles in inflammation and innate immunity. A growing body of evidence has suggested that the nucleotide-binding domain and leucine-rich repeat protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome is important in chronic airway diseases such as asthma and COPD. Inflammasome activation results, in part, in pro-IL-1ß processing and secretion of the pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-1ß. Because asthma exacerbations are associated with elevated levels of secreted IL-1ß we addressed whether the NLRP3 inflammasome is activated under in vitro conditions that mimic infectious exacerbation in asthma. Primary cultures of airway smooth muscle (ASM) cells were treated with infectious stimuli (mimicked using the TLR2 agonist Pam3CSK4, a synthetic bacterial lipopeptide). While Pam3CSK4 robustly upregulated ASM cytokine expression in response to TNFa and significantly enhanced IL-1ß mRNA expression, we were unable to detect IL-1ß in the cell supernatants. Thus, IL-1ß was not secreted and therefore unable to act in an autocrine manner to promote amplification of ASM inflammatory responses. Moreover, TLR2 ligation did not enhance NLRP3 mRNA expression in ASM cells, nor was NLRP3 protein detected in the airway smooth muscle layer of tracheal sections from human donors. In conclusion, these data demonstrate that enhanced synthetic function of ASM cells, induced by infectious exacerbation of airway inflammation, is NLRP3 inflammasome and IL-1ß-independent. Activation of NLRP3 inflammasome by invading pathogens may prove cell-type specific in exacerbation of airway inflammation in asthma.

Jones, PM & George, AM 2013, 'Mechanism of the ABC transporter ATPase domains: catalytic models and the biochemical and biophysical record', Critical Reviews in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 39-50.
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ABC transporters comprise a large, diverse, and ubiquitous superfamily of membrane active transporters. Their core architecture is a dimer of dimers, comprising two transmembrane domains that bind substrate and form the channel, and two ATP-binding cassettes, which bind and hydrolyze ATP to energize the translocase function. The prevailing paradigm for the ABC transport mechanism is the Switch Model, in which the nucleotide binding domains are proposed to dimerise upon binding of two ATP molecules, and thence dissociate upon sequential hydrolysis of the ATP. This idea appears consistent with crystal structures of both isolated subunits and whole transporters, as well as with a significant body of biochemical data. Nonetheless, an alternative Constant Contact Model has been proposed, in which the nucleotide binding domains do not fully dissociate, and ATP hydrolysis occurs alternately at each of the two active sites. Here, we review the biochemical and biophysical data relating to the ABC catalytic mechanism, to show how they may be construed as consistent with a Constant Contact Model, and to assess to what extent they support the Switch Model.

Jones, PM, Curmi, PMG, Valenzuela, SM & George, AM 2013, 'Computational Analysis of the Soluble Form of the Intracellular Chloride Ion Channel Protein CLIC1', BioMed Research International, vol. 2013, pp. 1-14.
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The chloride intracellular channel (CLIC) family of proteins has the remarkable property of maintaining both a soluble form and an integral membrane form acting as an ion channel. The soluble form is structurally related to the glutathione-S-transferase family, and CLIC can covalently bind glutathione via an active site cysteine. We report approximately 0.6 μs of molecular dynamics simulations, encompassing the three possible ligand-bound states of CLIC1, using the structure of GSH-bound human CLIC1. Noncovalently bound GSH was rapidly released from the protein, whereas the covalently ligand-bound protein remained close to the starting structure over 0.25 μs of simulation. In the unliganded state, conformational changes in the vicinity of the glutathione-binding site resulted in reduced reactivity of the active site thiol. Elastic network analysis indicated that the changes in the unliganded state are intrinsic to the protein architecture and likely represent functional transitions. Overall, our results are consistent with a model of CLIC function in which covalent binding of glutathione does not occur spontaneously but requires interaction with another protein to stabilise the GSH binding site and/or transfer of the ligand. The results do not indicate how CLIC1 undergoes a radical conformational change to form a transmembrane chloride channel but further elucidate the mechanism by which CLICs are redox controlled.

Kabakova, IV, Pant, R, Choi, D-Y, Debbarma, S, Luther-Davies, B, Madden, SJ & Eggleton, BJ 2013, 'Narrow linewidth Brillouin laser based on chalcogenide photonic chip', OPTICS LETTERS, vol. 38, no. 17, pp. 3208-3211.
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We present the first demonstration of a narrow linewidth, waveguide-basedBrillouin laser which is enabled by large Brillouin gain of a chalcogenidechip. The waveguides are equipped with vertical tapers for low loss coupling.Due to optical feedback for the Stokes wave, the lasing threshold is reduced to360 mW, which is 5 times lower than the calculated single-pass Brillouinthreshold for the same waveguide. The slope efficiency of the laser is found tobe 30% and the linewidth of 100 kHz is measured using a self-heterodyne method.

Keglowich, L, Roth, M, Philippova, M, Resink, T, Tjin, G, Oliver, B, Lardinois, D, Dessus-Babus, S, Gosens, R, Hostettler Haack, K, Tamm, M & Borger, P 2013, 'Bronchial Smooth Muscle Cells of Asthmatics Promote Angiogenesis through Elevated Secretion of CXC-Chemokines (ENA-78, GRO-α, and IL-8)', PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 12, pp. e81494-e81494.
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Background: Airway wall remodelling is a key pathology of asthma. It includes thickening of the airway wall, hypertrophy and hyperplasia of bronchial smooth muscle cells (BSMC), as well as an increased vascularity of the sub-epithelial cell layer BSMC are known to be the effector cells of bronchoconstriction, but they are increasingly recognized as an important source of inflammatory mediators and angiogenic factors. Objective: To compare the angiogenic potential of BSMC of asthmatic and non-asthmatic patients and to identify asthma-specific angiogenic factors Methods: Primary BSMC were isolated from human airway tissue of asthmatic and non-asthmatic patients. Conditioned medium (CM) collected from BSMC isolates was tested for angiogenic capacity using the endothelial cell (EC)-spheroid in vitro angiogenesis assay. Angiogenic factors in CM were quantified using a human angiogenesis antibody array and enzyme linked immunosorbent assay. Results: Induction of sprout outgrowth from EC-spheroids by CM of BSMC obtained from asthma patients was increased compared with CM of control BSMC (twofold, p < 0.001). Levels of ENA-78, GRO-α and IL-8 were significantly elevated in CM of BSMC from asthma patients (p < 0.05 vs. non-asthmatic patients). SB 265610, a competitive antagonist of chemokine (CXC-motif) receptor 2 CXCR2), attenuated the increased sprout outgrowth induced by CM of asthma patient-derived BSMC. Conclusions: BSMC isolated from asthma patients exhibit increased angiogenic potential. This effect is mediated through the CXCR2 ligands (ENA78, GRO-α and IL-8) produced by BSMC Implications: CXCR2 ligands may play a decisive role in directing the neovascularization in the sub-epithelial cell layers of the lungs of asthma patients Counteracting the CXCR2 mediated neovascularization by pharmaceutical compounds may represent a novel strategy to reduce airway remodelling in asthma. © 2013 Keglowich et al.

Kempton, T, Sirotic, AC, Cameron, M & Coutts, AJ 2013, 'Match-related fatigue reduces physical and technical performance during elite rugby league match-play: a case study', JOURNAL OF SPORTS SCIENCES, vol. 31, no. 16, pp. 1770-1780.
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This study examined the influence of match-related fatigue on physical and technical skill performance in ball playing positions at two different levels of rugby league competition. Time-motion analyses were performed using global positioning systems from 6 elite National Rugby League (NRL) and 11 junior elite National Youth Competition (NYC) players from 45 matches. A standardised 5-point technical coding criteria was used to qualitatively assess skill involvements during match-play. The distance travelled in the 0-5 and 40-45 min period were significantly higher compared to the 30-35, 35-40, 70-75 and 75-80 min periods (P < 0.001). Skill rating and involvements were higher in the 0-5 and 40-45 min compared to 70-75 and 75-80 min periods (P < 0.001 and P < 0.001, respectively).There was no significant difference in the number of physical collisions between the 5-min periods (P = 0.051). Following the peak 5-min bout of exercise intensity there were reductions in distance (P < 0.001), quality of skill involvements (P < 0.001), number of involvements (P < 0.001) and collisions (P < 0.001). Elite NRL and NYC 'ball players' exhibit reductions in physical performance towards the end of matches and following brief periods of intense exercise. There also appears to be a reduction in technical performance for NRL and NYC ball players, which may be attributable to match-related fatigue. © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

Kim, JJY, Tan, Y, Xiao, L, Sun, Y-L & Qu, X 2013, 'Green Tea Polyphenol Epigallocatechin-3-Gallate Enhance Glycogen Synthesis and Inhibit Lipogenesis in Hepatocytes', BioMed Research International, vol. 2013, pp. 1-8.
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The beneficial effects of green tea polyphenols (GTP) against metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes by suppressing appetite and nutrient absorption have been well reported. However the direct effects and mechanisms of GTP on glucose and lipid metabolism remain to be elucidated. Since the liver is an important organ involved in glucose and lipid metabolism, we examined the effects and mechanisms of GTP on glycogen synthesis and lipogenesis in HepG2 cells. Concentrations of GTP containing 68% naturally occurring (−)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) were incubated in HepG2 cells with high glucose (30 mM) under 100 nM of insulin stimulation for 24 h. GTP enhanced glycogen synthesis in a dose-dependent manner. 10 μM of EGCG significantly increased glycogen synthesis by 2fold (P<0.05) compared with insulin alone. Western blotting revealed that phosphorylation of Ser9 glycogen synthase kinase 3βand Ser641 glycogen synthase was significantly increased in GTP-treated HepG2 cells compared with nontreated cells. 10 μM of EGCG also significantly inhibited lipogenesis (P<0.01). We further demonstrated that this mechanism involves enhanced expression of phosphorylated AMP-activated protein kinaseαand acetyl-CoA carboxylase in HepG2 cells. Our results showed that GTP is capable of enhancing insulin-mediated glucose and lipid metabolism by regulating enzymes involved in glycogen synthesis and lipogenesis.

Lai, JCY, Leung, FHF, Ling, SH & Nguyen, HT 2013, 'Hypoglycaemia detection using fuzzy inference system with multi-objective double wavelet mutation Differential Evolution', APPLIED SOFT COMPUTING, vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 2803-2811.
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In this paper, a fuzzy inference system (FIS) is developed to recognize hypoglycaemic episodes. Hypoglycaemia (low blood glucose level) is a common and serious side effect of insulin therapy for patients with diabetes. We measure some physiological parameters continuously to provide hypoglycaemia detection for Type 1 diabetes mellitus (TIDM) patients. The FIS captures the relationship between the inputs of heart rate (HR), corrected QT interval of the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal (QTc), change of HR, change of QTc and the output of hypoglycaemic episodes to perform the classification. An algorithm called Differential Evolution with Double Wavelet Mutation (DWM-DE) is introduced to optimize the FIS parameters that govern the membership functions and fuzzy rules. DWM-DE is an improved Differential Evolution algorithm that incorporates two wavelet-based operations to enhance the optimization performance. To prevent the phenomenon of overtraining (over-fitting), a validation approach is proposed. Moreover, in this problem, two targets of sensitivity and specificity should be met in order to achieve good performance. As a result, a multi-objective optimization using DWM-DE is introduced to perform the training of the FIS. Experiments using the data of 15 children with TIDM (569 data points) are studied. The data are randomly organized into a training set with 5 patients (l99 data points), a validation set with 5 patients (177 data points) and a testing set with 5 patients (193 data points). The result shows that the proposed FIS tuned by the multi-objective DWM-DE can offer good performance of doing classification.

Lau, N-SS, Gorrie, CA, Chia, JY, Bilston, LE & Clarke, EC 2013, 'Severity of Spinal Cord Injury in Adult and Infant Rats after Vertebral Dislocation Depends upon Displacement but not Speed', JOURNAL OF NEUROTRAUMA, vol. 30, no. 15, pp. 1361-1373.
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Spinal cord injury (SCI) is less common in children than in adults, but in children it is generally more severe. Spinal loading conditions (speed and displacement) are also thought to affect SCI severity, but the relationship between these parameters is not well understood. This study aimed to investigate the effects of vertebral speed and displacement on the severity of SCI in infants and adults using a rodent model of vertebral dislocation. Thoracolumbar vertebral dislocation was induced in anaesthetized infant rats (~30 g, 13-15 days postnatal, n=40) and adult rats (~250 g, n=57). The 12th thoracic vertebra was secured, whereas the first lumbar vertebra was dislocated laterally. Dislocation speed and magnitude were varied independently and scaled between adults and infants (Adults: 100-250mm/s, 4-10mm; Infants: 40-100mm/s, 1.6-4mm). At 5 h post-injury, rats were euthanized and spinal cords harvested. Spinal cord sections were stained to detect hemorrhage (hematoxylin and eosin) and axonal injury (β-amyloid precursor protein). For each millimeter increase in vertebral displacement, normalized hemorrhage volume increased by 1.9×10-3 mm3 (p=0.028) and normalized area of axonal injury increased by 2.2×10-1mm2 (p<0.001). Normalized hemorrhage volume was 3.3×10-3 mm3 greater for infants than for adults (p<0.001). Magnitude of dislocation was found to have a different effect on the normalized area of axonal injury in adults than in infants (p=0.003). Speed of dislocation was not found to have a significant effect on normalized hemorrhage volume (p=0.427) or normalized area of axonal injury (p=0.726) independent of displacement for the range of speeds tested. The findings of this study suggest that both age and amount of spinal motion are key factors in the severity of acute SCI. © Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Leijdekkers, P & Gay, V 2013, 'Mobile apps for chronic disease management: lessons learned from myFitnessCompanion®', Health and Technology, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 111-118.
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Nowadays, many health and fitness applications (apps) can be downloaded from app stores, changing the way people manage their health and chronic diseases. This paper reflects on 7 years of experience in mobile health and fitness app development. It analyzes the uptake of a health and fitness app, myFitnessCompanion®, by the healthcare industry and end-users dealing with chronic disease management. The use of myFitnessCompanion® is analyzed from an end-user perspective. The app is available via Google Play since February 2011 and the research presented is based on data collected from 5500+ users over a period of 7 months. The paper also discusses how mHealth apps could be distributed in the near future, as well as, the use of Personal Health Record (PHR) systems such as Microsoft HealthVault, and the impact of regulations on the future of mHealth apps. The conclusion highlights the challenges and opportunities for app developers in the mHealth industry

Lemke, C, Riedel, S & Gabrys, B 2013, 'Evolving forecast combination structures for airline revenue management', Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 221-234.
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Forecasting is at the heart of every revenue management system, providing necessary input to capacity control, pricing and overbooking functionalities. For airlines, the key to efficient capacity control is determining the time of when to restrict bookings in a lower-fare class to leave space for later booking high-fare customers. This work presents findings of a collaboration project between Bournemouth University and Lufthansa Systems AG, a company providing revenue management software for airline carriers. The main aim is to increase net booking forecast accuracy by modifying one of its components, the cancellation forecast. Complementing an available set of three traditional individual algorithms, an additional method is presented and added to the method pool. Furthermore, diversification of model parameters and level of learning is discussed to increase the number of individual forecasts even further. Finally, the evolution of forecast combination structures is investigated and shown to be beneficial on an airline data set. © 2013 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

Li, X-H, McGrath, KCY, Tran, VH, Li, Y-M, Duke, CC, Roufogalis, BD & Heather, AK 2013, 'Attenuation of Proinflammatory Responses byS-[6]-Gingerol via Inhibition of ROS/NF-Kappa B/COX2 Activation in HuH7 Cells', Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, vol. 2013, pp. 1-8.
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Introduction. Hepatic inflammation underlies the pathogenesis of chronic diseases such as insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes mellitus.S-[6]-Gingerol has been shown to have anti-inflammatory properties. Important inflammatory mediators of interleukins include nuclear factorκB (NFκB) and cyclooxygenase 2 (COX2). We now explore the mechanism of anti-inflammatory effects ofS-[6]-gingerol in liver cells.Methods. HuH7 cells were stimulated with IL1βto establish anin vitrohepatic inflammatory model.Results.S-[6]-Gingerol attenuated IL1β-induced inflammation and oxidative stress in HuH7 cells, as evidenced by decreasing mRNA levels of inflammatory factor IL6, IL8, and SAA1, suppression of ROS generation, and increasing mRNA levels of DHCR24. In addition,S-[6]-gingerol reduced IL1β-induced COX2 upregulation as well as NFκB activity. Similar to the protective effects ofS-[6]-gingerol, both NS-398 (a selective COX2 inhibitor) and PDTC (a selective NFκB inhibitor) suppressed mRNA levels of IL6, IL8, and SAA1. Importantly, PDTC attenuated IL1β-induced overexpression of COX2. Of particular note, the protective effect ofS-[6]-gingerol against the IL1β-induced inflammatory response was similar to that of BHT, an ROS scavenger.Conclusions. The findings of this study demonstrate thatS-[6]-gingerol protects HuH7 cells against IL1β-induced inflammatory insults through inhibition...

Li, X-H, McGrath, KCY, Tran, VH, Li, Y-M, Mandadi, S, Duke, CC, Heather, AK & Roufogalis, BD 2013, 'Identification of a Calcium Signalling Pathway ofS-[6]-Gingerol in HuH-7 Cells', Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, vol. 2013, pp. 1-7.
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Calcium signals in hepatocytes control cell growth, proliferation, and death. Members of the transient receptor potential (TRP) cation channel superfamily are candidate calcium influx channels. NFκB activation strictly depends on calcium influx and often induces antiapoptotic genes favouring cell survival. Previously, we reported thatS-[6]-gingerol is an efficacious agonist of the transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily V member 1 (TRPV1) in neurones. In this study, we tested the effect ofS-[6]-gingerol on HuH-7 cells using the Fluo-4 calcium assay, RT-qPCR, transient cell transfection, and luciferase measurements. We found thatS-[6]-gingerol induced a transient rise in[Ca2+]iin HuH-7 cells. The increase in[Ca2+]iinduced byS-[6]-gingerol was abolished by preincubation with EGTA and was also inhibited by the TRPV1 channel antagonist capsazepine. Expression of TRPV1 in HuH-7 cells was confirmed by mRNA analysis as well as a test for increase of

Li, Z, He, Y, Liu, Q, Zhao, L, Wong, L, Kwoh, CK, Nguyen, H & Li, J 2013, 'Structural analysis on mutation residues and interfacial water molecules for human TIM disease understanding', BMC BIOINFORMATICS, vol. 14, no. SUPPL16, pp. 1-15.
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Background: Human triosephosphate isomerase (HsTIM) deficiency is a genetic disease caused often by the pathogenic mutation E104D. This mutation, located at the side of an abnormally large cluster of water in the inter-subunit interface, reduces the thermostability of the enzyme. Why and how these water molecules are directly related to the excessive thermolability of the mutant have not been investigated in structural biology.Results: This work compares the structure of the E104D mutant with its wild type counterparts. It is found that the water topology in the dimer interface of HsTIM is atypical, having a 'wet-core-dry-rim' distribution with 16 water molecules tightly packed in a small deep region surrounded by 22 residues including GLU104. These water molecules are co-conserved with their surrounding residues in non-archaeal TIMs (dimers) but not conserved across archaeal TIMs (tetramers), indicating their importance in preserving the overall quaternary structure. As the structural permutation induced by the mutation is not significant, we hypothesize that the excessive thermolability of the E104D mutant is attributed to the easy propagation of atoms' flexibility from the surface into the core via the large cluster of water. It is indeed found that the B factor increment in the wet region is higher than other regions, and, more importantly, the B factor increment in the wet region is maintained in the deeply buried core. Molecular dynamics simulations revealed that for the mutant structure at normal temperature, a clear increase of the root-mean-square deviation is observed for the wet region contacting with the large cluster of interfacial water. Such increase is not observed for other interfacial regions or the whole protein. This clearly suggests that, in the E104D mutant, the large water cluster is responsible for the subunit interface flexibility and overall thermolability, and it ultimately leads to the deficiency of this enzyme.Conclusions: O...

Liew, D, De Abreu Lourenço, R, Adena, M, Chim, L & Aylward, P 2013, 'Cost-Effectiveness of 12-Month Treatment With Ticagrelor Compared With Clopidogrel in the Management of Acute Coronary Syndromes', Clinical Therapeutics, vol. 35, no. 8, pp. 1110-1117.e9.
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Background: The PLATO (Platelet Inhibition and Patient Outcomes) randomized trial (NCT00391872) in patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS) reported that ticagrelor (in addition to aspirin) reduced the rate of the composite end point of myocardial infarction (MI), stroke, or cardiovascular death compared with clopidogrel (in addition to aspirin) by 16% over 12 months (P o 0.001). No significant difference in the incidence of major bleeding was noted, but ticagrelor was associated with a higher rate of major bleeding not related to coronary artery bypass grafting. Objective: By extrapolating the key findings of PLATO, we sought to assess the cost-effectiveness of ticagrelor compared with clopidogrel in the management of ACS in a contemporary Australian setting. Methods: A Markov model with 4 health states (free from further ACS events, MI, stroke, and death) was developed to simulate the long-term costs and outcomes associated with ACS. Event risks were based on data derived directly from PLATO, and costs and utilities were drawn from published sources. A 10- year time horizon was simulated, and future costs and benefits were discounted at a 5% annual rate. However, treatment with ticagrelor and clopidogrel was only assumed for the first 12 months, with no benefits applied beyond drug cessation. Sensitivity analyses were undertaken based on variations to key data inputs. All costs for resource use applied in the analysis were based on published Australian prices (in 2010/2011 dollars [A$]). Results: Over 10 years, the estimated qualityadjusted life-years lived per-patient were 5.74 and 5.68 for ticagrelor and clopidogrel, respectively. Net costs were A$19,132 for ticagrelor and A$18,428 for clopidogrel. These equated to an incremental costeffectiveness ratio of A$9031 per quality-adjusted lifeyear gained for ticagrelor compared with clopidogrel. Sensitivity analyses indicated the result to be robust. Conclusions: When assessed from the perspective of the Austr...

Lim, HY, Thiam, CH, Yeo, KP, Bisoendial, R, Hii, CS, McGrath, KCY, Tan, KW, Heather, A, Alexander, JSJ & Angeli, V 2013, 'Lymphatic Vessels Are Essential for the Removal of Cholesterol from Peripheral Tissues by SR-BI-Mediated Transport of HDL', Cell Metabolism, vol. 17, no. 5, pp. 671-684.
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Removal of cholesterol from peripheral tissues to the bloodstream via reverse cholesterol transport (RCT) is a process of major biological importance. Here we demonstrate that lymphatic drainage is required for RCT. We have previously shown that hypercholesterolemia in mice is associated with impaired lymphatic drainage and increased lipid accumulation in peripheral tissues. We now show that restoration of lymphatic drainage in these mice significantly improves cholesterol clearance. Conversely, obstruction of lymphatic vessels in wild-type mice significantly impairs RCT. Finally, we demonstrate using silencing RNA interference, neutralizing antibody, and transgenic mice that removal of cholesterol by lymphatic vessels is dependent on the uptake and transcytosis of HDL by scavenger receptor class B type I expressed on lymphatic endothelium. Collectively, this study challenges the current view that lymphatic endothelium is a passive exchange barrier for cholesterol transport and provides further evidence for its interplay with lipid biology in health and disease. © 2013 Elsevier Inc.

Liu, Q, Kwoh, CK & Li, J 2013, 'Binding Affinity Prediction for Protein–Ligand Complexes Based on β Contacts and B Factor', Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, vol. 53, no. 11, pp. 3076-3085.
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Accurate determination of proteinligand binding affinity is a fundamental problem in biochemistry useful for many applications including drug design and proteinligand docking. A number of scoring functions have been proposed for the prediction of proteinligand binding affinity. However, accurate prediction is still a challenging problem because poor performance is often seen in the evaluation under the leave-one-cluster-out cross-validation (LCOCV). We introduce a new scoring function named B2BScore to improve the prediction performance. B2BScore integrates two physicochemical properties for proteinligand binding affinity prediction. One is the property of ß contacts. A ß contact between two atoms requires no other atoms to interrupt the atomic contact and assumes that the two atoms should have enough direct contact area. The other is the property of B factor to capture the atomic mobility in the dynamic proteinligand binding process.

Liu, Z, Yang, L, Dai, N, Chu, Y, Chen, Q & Li, J 2013, 'Intense ultra-broadband down-conversion in co-doped oxide glass by multipolar interaction process', Optics Express, vol. 21, no. 10, pp. 12635-12635.
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Lovell, TWJ, Sirotic, AC, Impellizzeri, FM & Coutts, AJ 2013, 'Factors Affecting Perception of Effort (Session Rating of Perceived Exertion) During Rugby League Training', INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORTS PHYSIOLOGY AND PERFORMANCE, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 62-69.
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Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of session rating of perceived exertion (sRPE) for monitoring training intensity in rugby league. Methods: Thirty-two professional rugby league players participated in this study. Training-load (TL) data were collected during an entire season and assessed via microtechnology (heart-rate [HR] monitors, global positioning systems [GPS], and accelerometers) and sRPE. Within-individual correlation analysis was used to determine relationships between sRPE and various other measures of training intensity and load. Stepwise multiple regressions were used to determine a predictive equation to estimate sRPE during rugby league training. Results: There were significant within-individual correlations between sRPE and various other internal and external measures of intensity and load. The stepwise multiple-regression analysis also revealed that 62.4% of the adjusted variance in sRPE-TL could be explained by TL measures of distance, impacts, body load, and training impulse (y = 37.21 + 0.93 distance - 0.39 impacts + 0.18 body load + 0.03 training impulse). Furthermore, 35.2% of the adjusted variance in sRPE could be explained by exercise-intensity measures of percentage of peak HR (%HRpeak), impacts/min, m/min, and body load/min (y = -0.01 + 0.37%HRpeak + 0.10 impacts/min + 0.17 m/min + 0.09 body load/min). Conclusion: A combination of internal and external TL factors predicts sRPE in rugby league training better than any individual measures alone. These findings provide new evidence to support the use of sRPE as a global measure of exercise intensity in rugby league training. © 2013 Human Kinetics, Inc.

Luckett, T, Davidson, PM, Lam, L, Phillips, J, Currow, DC & Agar, M 2013, 'Do Community Specialist Palliative Care Services That Provide Home Nursing Increase Rates of Home Death for People With Life-Limiting Illnesses? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Comparative Studies', JOURNAL OF PAIN AND SYMPTOM MANAGEMENT, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 279-297.
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Context: Systematic reviews and meta-analyses suggest that community specialist palliative care services (SPCSs) can avoid hospitalizations and enable home deaths. But more information is needed regarding the relative efficacies of different models. Family caregivers highlight home nursing as the most important service, but it is also likely the most costly. Objectives: To establish whether community SPCSs offering home nursing increase rates of home death compared with other models. Methods: We searched MEDLINE, AMED, Embase, CINAHL, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and CENTRAL on March 2 and 3, 2011. To be eligible, articles had to be published in English-language peer-reviewed journals and report original research comparing the effect on home deaths of SPCSs providing home nursing vs. any alternative. Study quality was independently rated using Cochrane grades. Maximum likelihood estimation of heterogeneity was used to establish the method for meta-analysis (fixed or random effects). Potential biases were assessed. Results: Of 1492 articles screened, 10 articles were found eligible, reporting nine studies that yielded data for 10 comparisons. Study quality was high in two cases, moderate in three and low in four. Meta-analysis indicated a significant effect for SPCSs with home nursing (odds ratio 4.45, 95% CI 3.24-6.11; P < 0.001). However, the high-quality studies found no effect (odds ratio 1.40, 95% CI 0.97-2.02; P = 0.071). Bias was minimal. Conclusion: A meta-analysis found evidence to be inconclusive that community SPCSs that offer home nursing increase home deaths without compromising symptoms or increasing costs. But a compelling trend warrants further confirmatory studies. Future trials should compare the relative efficacy of different models and intensities of SPCSs. © 2013 U.S. Cancer Pain Relief Committee.

Macha, IJ, Ozyegin, LS, Chou, J, Samur, R, Oktar, FN & Ben-Nissan, B 2013, 'An Alternative Synthesis Method for Di Calcium Phosphate (Monetite) Powders from Mediterranean Mussel (Mytilus galloprovincialis) Shells', JOURNAL OF THE AUSTRALIAN CERAMIC SOCIETY, vol. 49, no. 2, pp. 122-128.
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Marine species, such as corals, sea shells and nacres, attract special interest in bioceramics field for bone graft, bone cements and drug delivery applications. Most of the marine structures are made up of pure calcium carbonate (calcite or aragonite) with a very small amount of an organic matrix. In the past the most common way to transform these structures to hydroxyapatite was hydrothermal transformation method. This current work introduces a new approach for producing fine powders of calcium phosphates from Mediterranean mussel (Mytilus galloprovincialis) shells. A comparative study was carried out to investigate the differences of these powders under only hot plate heating and hot plate heating together with ultrasonic agitation while H3PO4 was added. The temperature of the hotplate was kept constant at 80 degrees C and then, H3PO4 was added drop wise into the solution for 2 hrs. The mixture was then placed into an oven at 100 degrees C for 24 hrs. They were further calcined at 800 degrees C for 3 hrs. XRD, FTIR. and ICP-MS were used to identify the structure and composition. It was found that the final powders were predominantly monetite, with some tricalcium phosphate as a secondary phase. This relatively simple and efficient method can be easily applied to produce calcium phosphate precursor powders for a range of biomedical applications.

Mahendru, AA & Morris, E 2013, 'Cardiovascular disease in menopause: Does the obstetric history have any bearing?', Menopause International, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 115-120.
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Cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in menopausal women in spite of the overall reduction in age-adjusted mortality from the disease in the last few years. It is now clear that mechanisms of cardiovascular disease in menopausal women are similar to men and rather than midlife acceleration of cardiovascular disease in women, the final impact of cardiovascular disease in later life may be a reflection of cardiovascular changes during reproductive years as a result of woman’s obstetric history. A decade after the Women’s Health Initiative trial, there is upcoming evidence to suggest that hormone replacement therapy in young recently menopausal women has a cardioprotective effect. Cardiovascular changes during normal pregnancy or pregnancy complications such as preeclampsia may affect a woman’s long-term cardiovascular health. Therefore, it is plausible that the cardioprotective benefit of hormone replacement therapy depends on occult pre-existing cardiovascular risks in women in relation to their previous obstetric history. In this review, we describe the cardiovascular changes during and after pregnancy in obstetric complications such as recurrent miscarriage, preeclampsia, intrauterine growth restriction, preterm labour and gestational diabetes; existing evidence regarding their association with cardiovascular disease later in life, and hypothesize possible mechanisms. Our aim is to improve the understanding and highlight the importance of including obstetric history in risk assessment in menopausal women and individualizing their risks before prescribing hormone replacement therapy. Future research in risk benefit assessment of hormone replacement therapy should also account for a woman’s background cardiovascular risk in the light of her obstetric history.

Manetsch, M, Rahman, MM, Patel, BS, Ramsay, EE, Rumzhum, NN, Alkhouri, H, Ge, Q & Ammit, AJ 2013, 'Long-Acting β2-Agonists Increase Fluticasone Propionate-Induced Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase Phosphatase 1 (MKP-1) in Airway Smooth Muscle Cells', PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. e59635-e59635.
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Mitogen-activated protein kinase phosphatase 1 (MKP-1) represses MAPK-driven signalling and plays an important anti-inflammatory role in asthma and airway remodelling. Although MKP-1 is corticosteroid-responsive and increased by cAMP-mediated signalling, the upregulation of this critical anti-inflammatory protein by long-acting β2-agonists and clinically-used corticosteroids has been incompletely examined to date. To address this, we investigated MKP-1 gene expression and protein upregulation induced by two long-acting β2-agonists (salmeterol and formoterol), alone or in combination with the corticosteroid fluticasone propionate (abbreviated as fluticasone) in primary human airway smooth muscle (ASM) cells in vitro. β2-agonists increased MKP-1 protein in a rapid but transient manner, while fluticasone induced sustained upregulation. Together, long-acting β2-agonists increased fluticasone-induced MKP-1 and modulated ASM synthetic function (measured by interleukin 6 (IL-6) and interleukin 8 (IL-8) secretion). As IL-6 expression (like MKP-1) is cAMP/adenylate cyclase-mediated, the long-acting β2-agonist formoterol increased IL-6 mRNA expression and secretion. Nevertheless, when added in combination with fluticasone, β2-agonists significantly repressed IL-6 secretion induced by tumour necrosis factor α (TNFα). Conversely, as IL-8 is not cAMP-responsive, β2-agonists significantly inhibited TNFα-induced IL-8 in combination with fluticasone, where fluticasone alone was without repressive effect. In summary, long-acting β2-agonists increase fluticasone-induced MKP-1 in ASM cells and repress synthetic function of this immunomodulatory airway cell type.

Misener, L, Darcy, S, Legg, D & Gilbert, K 2013, 'Beyond Olympic Legacy: Understanding Paralympic Legacy Through a Thematic Analysis', Journal of Sport Management, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 329-341.
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Over the last decade a great deal of work has examined major sport event legacies and event leverage. Much of this work has involved Olympic studies and this paper seeks to add to the body of knowledge surrounding major sport event legacies by examining the largely overlooked area of the Paralympic Games. The Paralympic Games are the second largest multisport event after the Olympic Games depending upon which parameters are used and since Sydney 2000 there has been an ‘operational partnership’ where bid cities are required to host both Games. Yet, few studies have evaluated the comparative outcomes, legacies and event leverage that Paralympic games have generated. This paper addresses this absence by conducting a thematic analysis of Paralympic legacy research. The thematic analysis used a combination of keywords involving event legacy across 13 major academic databases. Of the 43 articles identified as having Paralympic legacy related content only 13 articles empirically investigated Paralympic legacy. In reviewing the research, it is noted that the bulk of the research has focused on Summer Paralympic Games with little interest in the Winter Paralympic Games. The major findings for legacy-based research include: infrastructure; sport; information education, and awareness; human capital; and managerial changes. However, while these findings may seem congruent with major event legacies frameworks conceptually, an examination of the detailed findings shows that Paralympic legacy research is isomorphic and adds a new component to existing legacy dimensions.

Mooney, M, Cormack, S, O'Brien, B & Coutts, AJ 2013, 'Do Physical Capacity and Interchange Rest Periods Influence Match Exercise-Intensity Profile in Australian Football?', INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORTS PHYSIOLOGY AND PERFORMANCE, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 165-172.
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Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine if Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery level 2 (Yo-Yo IR2) and the number of interchange rotations affected the match activity profile of elite Australian footballers. Method: Fifteen elite Australian footballe

Moreira, A, de Moura, NR, Coutts, A, Costa, EC, Kempton, T & Aoki, MS 2013, 'MONITORING INTERNAL TRAINING LOAD AND MUCOSAL IMMUNE RESPONSES IN FUTSAL ATHLETES', JOURNAL OF STRENGTH AND CONDITIONING RESEARCH, vol. 27, no. 5, pp. 1253-1259.
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The purpose of this study was to examine the changes in salivary immunoglobulin A (SIgA), cortisol, and upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) and their relationships with training loads (TLs) during a 4-week period of intensive training during the competitive season in elite Brazilian futsal players.

Newton-John, TRO 2013, 'How significant is the Significant Other in patient coping in chronic pain?', Pain Management, vol. 3, no. 6, pp. 485-493.
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SUMMARY While healthcare is most commonly focused at the individual level, considerable research has demonstrated that the presence and nature of the relationship with a significant other can play an important role in both mortality and morbidity. In the case of chronic pain, studies have shown that patient disability, mood and overall adjustment can be strongly influenced by the partner. The partner’s responses to patient overt communications of pain have been examined in detail, with support for operant behavioral models of chronic pain generally found. However, more recent studies have extended the behavioral paradigm by exploring issues such as empathy, relationship intimacy and the cognitive patterns of patients and their partners, to better understand dyadic adjustment to chronic pain. Future work will broaden the investigation of the determinants of partner helping behaviors, by looking at pre-illness variables and their expression in a chronic pain relationship.

Nguyen, TV & Eisman, JA 2013, 'Genetic profiling and individualized assessment of fracture risk', Nature Reviews Endocrinology, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 153-161.
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Osteoporosis and its consequence of fragility fracture impose a considerable demand on health-care services because fracture is associated with a series of adverse events, including re-fracture and mortality. One of the major priorities in osteoporosis care is the development of predictive models to identify individuals at high risk of fracture for early intervention and management. Existing predictive models include clinical factors and anthropometric characteristics but have not considered genetic variants in the prediction. Genome-wide association studies conducted in the past decade have identified several genetic variants relevant to fracture risk. These genetic variants are common in frequency but have very modest effect sizes. A remaining challenge is to use these genetic data to individualize fracture risk assessment on the basis of an individual's genetic risk profile. Empirical and simulation studies have shown that the usefulness of a single genetic variant for fracture risk assessment is very limited, but a profile of 50 genetic variants, each with odds ratio ranging from 1.02 to 1.15, could improve the accuracy of fracture prediction beyond that obtained by use of existing clinical risk factors. Thus, genetic profiling when integrated with existing risk assessment models could inform a more accurate prediction of fracture risk in an individual.

O'Carroll, SJ, Gorrie, CA, Velamoor, S, Green, CR & Nicholson, LFB 2013, 'Connexin43 mimetic peptide is neuroprotective and improves function following spinal cord injury', NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH, vol. 75, no. 3, pp. 256-267.
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Connexin43 (Cx43) is a gap junction protein up-regulated after spinal cord injury and is involved in the on-going spread of secondary tissue damage. To test whether a connexin43 mimetic peptide (Peptide5) reduces inflammation and tissue damage and improves function in an in vivo model of spinal cord injury, rats were subjected to a 10 g, 12.5 mm weight drop injury at the vertebral level T10 using a MASCIS impactor. Vehicle or connexin43 mimetic peptide was delivered directly to the lesion via intrathecal catheter and osmotic mini-pump for up to 24 h after injury. Treatment with Peptide5 led to significant improvements in hindlimb function as assessed using the BassoBeattieBresnahan scale. Peptide5 caused a reduction in Cx43 protein, increased Cx43 phosphorylation and decreased levels of TNF-a and IL-1ß as assessed by Western blotting. Immunohistochemistry of tissue sections 5 weeks after injury showed reductions in astrocytosis and activated microglia as well as an increase in motor neuron survival. These results show that administration of a connexin mimetic peptide reduces secondary tissue damage after spinal cord injury by reducing gliosis and cytokine release and indicate the clinical potential for mimetic peptides in the treatment of spinal cord patients.

Oktar, FN, Agathopoulos, S, Ozyegin, LS, Turner, IG, Gunduz, O, Demirkol, N, Brück, S, Ben-Nissan, B, Samur, R, Kayali, ES & Aktas, C 2013, 'Nano-Bioceramic Production via Mechano-Chemical Conversion (Ultrasonication)', Key Engineering Materials, vol. 529-530, no. 1, pp. 609-614.
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The production of nano-calcium phosphate powders, such as HA (hydroxyapatite), from synthetic chemicals can be expensive and time consuming. The skeleton or shells of sea creatures (e.g. sea urchins, shells, corals) could be an alternative source of materials to produce very fine and even nano-structured calcium phosphate biomaterial powders. Ηydrothermal conversion under very high pressures or methods such as hot-plating (chemical) or ultrasonication (mechano-chemical), have been proposed to transform naturally derived CaCO3, e.g. aragonite, into apatite based materials. The aim of the present work was to prepare inexpensive nano-sized HA and TCP bioceramics powders from a local sea snail shells as a possible raw material for HA/TCP bioceramics. Empty shells of a local sea snail (Nassarius hinia reticulatus) from Marmara Sea, Turkey were collected from a beach near Istanbul. The collected shells were ground to a particle size <75µm. Thermal analyses (DTA/TGA) were performed to determine the exact CaCO3 content and thermal behavior. The raw powder was suspended in an aqueous media which was placed in an ultrasonic bath. The temperature was set at 80°C for 15min. Then, an equivalent (to CaO content) amount of H3PO4 was added drop by drop very gently into the solution. The reaction continued for 8h, following which the liquid component was evaporated off in an incubator at 100°C for 24h. The dried sediment was collected and heat treated at two different temperatures, 400 and 800°C. The morphology of the powders produced was examined using SEM. The crystalline phases were indentified using X-ray analysis. X-ray diffractograms indicated the presence of two calcium phosphate phases, namely HA and whitlockite. SEM observations showed that the powder produced comprised nano-sized particles. FTIR results also indicated the presence of HA and...

Parker, D 2013, 'Illuminating Botticelli’s Chart of Hell', MLN, vol. 128, no. 1, pp. 84-102.
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This essay explores Botticelli’s Chart of Hell which represents an ingenious interpolation of the first canticle. The chart is one of ninety illustrations which the artist (1445–1510) executed for a lavish codex of the Commedia commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici. Parker argues that one can read the map as one does the poem albeit in a distinctly different way. The essay seeks to provide a different perspective on the chart, one that explores Botticelli’s visual remediation of a complex poetic narrative and how the artist literalizes that which is allusive.

Parr, WCH, Chamoli, U, Jones, A, Walsh, WR & Wroe, S 2013, 'Finite element micro-modelling of a human ankle bone reveals the importance of the trabecular network to mechanical performance: New methods for the generation and comparison of 3D models', Journal of Biomechanics, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 200-205.
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Paul, JS, Prasad, M, Venkatesan, R & Braun, M 2013, 'Magnetic resonance scan‐time reduction using echo prediction', International Journal of Imaging Systems and Technology, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 1-8.
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AbstractA linear prediction (LP) filter derived from a complete echo with zero‐phase encoding amplitude is used for recovering anatomical details from a partially acquired echo sequence. The LP filter is shown to reconstruct missing k‐space phase and amplitude information, with errors sufficiently low so as to provide image reconstruction with a contrast‐to‐noise ratio (CNR) ≥ 3. For volume imaging using multislice acquisition, the partial‐echo sequence enables more number of slices to be acquired for a given repetition time period TR. For such sequences, separate predictors are used for reconstruction of missing k‐space data corresponding to each individual slice in the volume. The proposed filtering scheme is shown to achieve results comparable to other partial k‐space approaches such as singularity function analysis (SFA), when the noise content is less than about 0.4%. For higher noise levels, this technique is recommended as a preprocessing step for SFA to track the singularity locations more accurately. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 23, 1–8, 2013

Petriwskyj, A, Parker, D, Robinson, A, Gibson, A, Andrews, S & Banks, S 2013, 'Family involvement in decision making for people with dementia in residential aged care: a systematic review of quantitative and qualitative evidence', JBI Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports, vol. 11, no. 7, pp. 131-282.
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Background The involvement of people in decisions about their care is recognized as both good practice and important in ensuring optimal outcomes. However, despite a considerable history of research attention to aspects of this issue, in practice family involvement in decision making can be challenging for care staff and families alike. Objectives The qualitative and quantitative objective of this review was to scope the extant knowledge about family involvement in decision making for people with dementia living in residential aged care. Inclusion criteria Types of participants This review considered studies that included people with dementia who were living in residential aged care, their families and care staff. Types of intervention(s)/phenomena of interest This review considered studies that investigated involvement of family members in decision making for people with dementia in a residential aged care setting. Types of studies The quantitative component of the review considered both experimental and descriptive study designs. The qualitative component considered studies that focused on qualitative data including designs such as phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, action research and feminist research. Types of outcomes This review considered studies that investigated or discussed who the decision makers were in care for people with dementia and how decisions were made, what processes assisted families in decision making and what were the barriers or facilitators to collaborative decision making by families, as well as the impact of decision making processes on family members and the impact of collaborative decision making with family members on the person with dementia. Search strategy A comprehensive search of research studies that were published in English was conducted in 15 electronic databases. The search strategy was limited to papers published in or after 1990. Methodological quality Quantitative and qualitative studies selected for retrieva...

Phillips, J 2013, 'What will it take to put talking about death on our agenda?', Collegian, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 205-206.
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Phillips, JL, West, PA, Davidson, PM & Agar, M 2013, 'Does case conferencing for people with advanced dementia living in nursing homes improve care outcomes: Evidence from an integrative review?', INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NURSING STUDIES, vol. 50, no. 8, pp. 1122-1135.
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Objective: This integrative review aimed to appraise the evidence for case conferencing as an intervention to improve palliative care outcomes for older people living with advanced dementia in nursing homes.

Prouse, J & Phillips, J 2013, 'Care of older people living with cancer: The role of the specialist nurse and alied health profesionals', Cancer Forum, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 226-229.
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Older people with cancer have unique physiological, psychological and social needs. This article has identified several key actions that can readily be integrated into existing cancer care services to improve care outcomes for older people referred for cancer treatment, namely: embedding an integrated assessment into the initial visit to ensure early identification of symptoms and unmet needs; monitoring the effectiveness of cancer treatment and changing needs; optimising function through early and appropriate referral; maintaining GP contact; ensuring the provision of well-coordinated care; addressing psychosocial, emotional and financial needs; and minimising caregiver burden.

Rajia, S, Chen, H & Morris, MJ 2013, 'Voluntary post weaning exercise restores metabolic homeostasis in offspring of obese rats', Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases, vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 574-581.
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Aim Physical exercise reduces obesity, insulin resistance and dyslipidemia. We previously found that maternal obesity alters central appetite circuits and contributes to increased adiposity, glucose intolerance and metabolic disease in offspring. Here we hypothesized that voluntary exercise would ameliorate the adverse metabolic effects of maternal obesity on offspring. Methods and Results SpragueDawley females fed chow (C) or high-fat diet HFD (H) were mated. Female offspring from C dams were weaned onto chow (CC); those from H dams recieved chow (HC) or HFD (HH). Half of each group was provided with running wheels (CCEX, HCEX, HHEX; n = 1012). Maternal obesity increased body weight (12%), adiposity, plasma lipids and induced glucose intolerance (HC vs CC; P < 0.05). These were exaggerated by postweaning HFD (HH vs HC; P < 0.01), showed doubled energy intake, a 37% increase in body weight, insulin resistance and glucose intolerance (HH vs HC; P < 0.01). Exercise reduced fat mass, plasma lipids, HOMA and fasting glucose in HCEX (vs HC; P < 0.05) and HHEX (vs HH; P < 0.01). Values in HCEX were indistinguishable from CC, however in HHEX these metabolic parameters remained higher than the sedentary HC and CC rats (P < 0.01). mRNA expression of hypothalamic pro-opiomelanocortin, and adipose tumour necrosis factor a and 11ß-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 were reduced by exercise in HHEX (vs HH; P < 0.05).

Reitinger, E, Froggatt, K, Brazil, K, Heimerl, K, Hockley, J, Kunz, R, Morbey, H, Parker, D & Husebo, BS 2013, 'Palliative care in long-term care settings for older people: Findings from an EAPC Taskforce', European Journal of Palliative Care, vol. 20, no. 5, pp. 251-253.

Remenyi, J, van den Bosch, MWM, Palygin, O, Mistry, RB, McKenzie, C, Macdonald, A, Hutvagner, G, Arthur, JSC, Frenguelli, BG & Pankratov, Y 2013, 'miR-132/212 Knockout Mice Reveal Roles for These miRNAs in Regulating Cortical Synaptic Transmission and Plasticity', PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. e62509-e62509.
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miR-132 and miR-212 are two closely related miRNAs encoded in the same intron of a small non-coding gene, which have been suggested to play roles in both immune and neuronal function. We describe here the generation and initial characterisation of a miR-132/212 double knockout mouse. These mice were viable and fertile with no overt adverse phenotype. Analysis of innate immune responses, including TLR-induced cytokine production and IFNβ induction in response to viral infection of primary fibroblasts did not reveal any phenotype in the knockouts. In contrast, the loss of miR-132 and miR-212, while not overtly affecting neuronal morphology, did affect synaptic function. In both hippocampal and neocortical slices miR-132/212 knockout reduced basal synaptic transmission, without affecting paired-pulse facilitation. Hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP) induced by tetanic stimulation was not affected by miR-132/212 deletion, whilst theta burst LTP was enhanced. In contrast, neocortical theta burst-induced LTP was inhibited by loss of miR-132/212. Together these results indicate that miR-132 and/or miR-212 play a significant role in synaptic function, possibly by regulating the number of postsynaptic AMPA receptors under basal conditions and during activity-dependent synaptic plasticity. © 2013 Remenyi et al.

Ren, B, O'Brien, BA, Byrne, MR, Ch'ng, E, Gatt, PN, Swan, MA, Nassif, NT, Wei, MQ, Gijsbers, R, Debyser, Z & Simpson, AM 2013, 'Long‐term reversal of diabetes in non‐obese diabetic mice by liver‐directed gene therapy', The Journal of Gene Medicine, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 28-41.
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AbstractBackgroundType 1 diabetes (T1D) results from an autoimmune attack against the insulin‐producing β‐cells of the pancreas. The present study aimed to reverse T1D by gene therapy.MethodsWe used a novel surgical technique, which involves isolating the liver from the circulation before the delivery of a lentiviral vector carrying furin‐cleavable human insulin (INS‐FUR) or empty vector to the livers of diabetic non‐obese diabetic mice (NOD). This was compared with the direct injection of the vector into the portal circulation. Mice were monitored for body weight and blood glucose. Intravenous glucose tolerance tests were performed. Expression of insulin and pancreatic transcription factors was determined by the reverse transcriptase‐polymerase chain reaction and immunohistochemistry and immunoelectron microscopy was used to localise insulin.ResultsUsing the novel surgical technique, we achieved long‐term transduction (42% efficiency) of hepatocytes, restored normoglycaemia for 150 days (experimental endpoint) and re‐established normal glucose tolerance. We showed the expression of β‐cell transcription factors, murine insulin, glucagon and somatostatin, and hepatic storage of insulin in granules. The expression of hepatic markers, C/EBP‐β, G6PC, AAT and GLUI was down‐regulated in INS‐FUR‐treated livers. Liver function tests remained normal, with no evidence of intrahepatic inflammation or autoimmune destruction of the insulin‐secreting liver tissue. By comparison, direct injection of INS‐FUR reduced blood glucose levels, and no pancreatic transdifferentiation or normal glucose tolerance was observed.Conclusions

Robinson, MW, Dalton, JP, O'Brien, BA & Donnelly, S 2013, 'Fasciola hepatica: The therapeutic potential of a worm secretome', INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR PARASITOLOGY, vol. 43, no. 3-4, pp. 283-291.
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The success of helminth parasites is partly related to their ability to modulate host immune responses towards an anti-inflammatory/regulatory phenotype. This ability resides with the molecules contained in the secretome of various helminths that have been shown to interact with host immune cells and influence their function. Consequently, there exists a unique opportunity to exploit these molecules for the prophylactic and therapeutic treatment of human pro- and auto-inflammatory disorders (for example septic shock, transplant rejection and autoimmune disease). In this review, we describe the mechanisms used by the trematode parasite, Fasciola hepatica, to modulate the immune responses of its host and discuss the potent immune-modulatory effects of three individual molecules within the secretome; namely cathepsin L1, peroxiredoxin and helminth defence molecule. With a focus on the requirements from industry, we discuss the strategies by which these molecules may be clinically developed to control human immune responses in a way that is conducive to the prevention of immune-mediated diseases. © 2012.

San, PP, Ling, SH & Nguyen, HT 2013, 'Hybrid PSO-based variable translation wavelet neural network and its application to hypoglycemia detection system', NEURAL COMPUTING & APPLICATIONS, vol. 23, no. 7-8, pp. 2177-2184.
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To provide the detection of hypoglycemic episodes in Type 1 diabetes mellitus, hypoglycemia detection system is developed by the use of variable translation wavelet neural network (VTWNN) in this paper. A wavelet neural network with variable translation

San, PP, Ling, SH & Nguyen, HT 2013, 'Industrial Application of Evolvable Block-Based Neural Network to Hypoglycemia Monitoring System', IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, vol. 60, no. 12, pp. 5892-5901.
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Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus is classified as type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), and it can be further classified as immune-mediated or idiopathic. It is dangerous and can result in unconsciousness, seizures, and even sudden death. The most common physiological parameters to be effected from a hypoglycemic reaction are heart rate and corrected QT interval of the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal. Considering the correlation between physiological parameters of an ECG signal and the status of hypoglycemia, a noninvasive hypoglycemia monitoring system is tested and introduced by proposing a hybrid particle-swarm-optimization-based block-based neural network (BBNN) algorithm. The proposed BBNN model offers advantages over conventional neural networks by performing the simultaneous optimization of both structure and weights. The hybrid particle swarm optimization with wavelet mutation searches for optimized structure and network parameters through particle information over a search space. All the actual data sets of 15 T1DM children were collected at the Department of Health, Government of Western Australia. Several experiments showed that the proposed BBNN performed well in terms of better sensitivity and specificity.

Scott, TJ, Black, CR, Quinn, J & Coutts, AJ 2013, 'VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY OF THE SESSION-RPE METHOD FOR QUANTIFYING TRAINING IN AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL: A COMPARISON OF THE CR10 AND CR100 SCALES', JOURNAL OF STRENGTH AND CONDITIONING RESEARCH, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 270-276.
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The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the criterion validity and test-retest reliability of the CR10 and CR100 rating of perceived exertion (RPE) scales for team sport athletes that undertake high-intensity, intermittent exercise. Twenty-one male Australian football (AF) players (age: 19.0 ± 1.8 years, body mass: 83.92 ± 7.88 kg) participated the first part (part A) of this study, which examined the construct validity of the session-RPE (sRPE) method for quantifying training load in AF. Ten male athletes (age: 16.1 ± 0.5 years) participated in the second part of the study (part B), which compared the test-retest reliability of the CR10 and CR100 RPE scales. In part A, the validity of the sRPE method was assessed by examining the relationships between sRPE, and objective measures of internal (i.e., heart rate) and external training load (i.e., distance traveled), collected from AF training sessions. Part B of the study assessed the reliability of sRPE through examining the test-retest reliability of sRPE during 3 different intensities of controlled intermittent running (10, 11.5, and 13 km·h-1).

Shephard, RJ 2013, 'Ramadan and sport: minimizing effects upon the observant athlete.', Sports Med, vol. 43, no. 12, pp. 1217-1241.
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The intermittent fasting of Ramadan could affect various aspects of body physiology and biochemistry important to athletic success. Much of the available information on this subject has been collected from sedentary subjects or low-level competitors, often without well matched controls. Other issues requiring clearer definition include the duration of fasting, the local environment, the timing of observations, and changes in training, diet and sleep patterns. Sleep may be shortened or made good with daytime naps. Circadian rhythms of temperature, metabolism, hormonal secretions and physical performance may be disrupted and incidental activities curtailed. Disturbances of psychomotor performance include daytime sleepiness, impaired vigilance and slower reactions. Food intake is limited to night-time meals. Sedentary individuals sometimes exploit Ramadan to reduce body fat stores. Well disciplined athletes usually maintain energy balance unless daily energy expenditures are very high. Protein intake must allow for gluconeogenesis, and provide quality protein ingested around training times. Blood sugar levels are likely to fall over a long and active day, even if morning glycogen reserves are maximized. Metabolism of fat should be encouraged, beginning prior to Ramadan; inclusion of fat in the pre-dawn meal also slows gastric emptying. Daytime fluid depletion is inevitable if athletes exercise in the heat, but the immediate deficit can usually be made good at night. Some studies show an initial fluid depletion, with recovery as Ramadan continues, possibly reflecting changes in urine and sweat production. Top athletes can maintain training throughout Ramadan, although coaches sometimes reduce demands through a pre-competitive tapering of effort. Late night or early morning training requires negotiation with players who are not observing Ramadan, and dietary adjustments to maintain optimal plasma amino acid levels when training. Performance of repeated anaer...

Simpson, AM, Ren, B, O'Brien, BA & Nassif, NT 2013, 'Response to the letter to the editor by M. Elsner et al: “Comment on Binhai Ren et al (2013;15:28–41). Long term reversal of diabetes in non‐obese diabetic mice by liver‐directed gene therapy”', The Journal of Gene Medicine, vol. 15, no. 8-9, pp. 309-310.
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Singleton, J & Darcy, S 2013, '‘Cultural life’, disability, inclusion and citizenship: moving beyond leisure in isolation', Annals of Leisure Research, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 183-192.
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We reside within a global village, with approximately 10% of the worlds population or 650 million people (including about 200 million children) living with some form of disability (United Nations 2011). This has been estimated to rise to 1.2 billion by 2050 (United Nations 2011). The World Health Organization and the United Nations have recognized that people with disability have a right to access services from all areas of citizenship. The purpose of this special issue of Annals of Leisure Research was to seek contributions examining the inclusion and citizenship of people with disability in `cultural life, defined by the United Nations (2006) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (CRPWD) to include recreation, leisure, the arts, sport and tourism. In particular, the issue aimed to: (1) clarify what the terms inclusion and citizenship mean in different cultures; (2) place inclusion to and citizenship of `cultural life across discourses relating to economic, social and environmental contexts that affect people with disabilities participation; and (3) discuss the terms inclusion and citizenship from the ideological frameworks of government, researchers, providers of service or disability advocacy groups

Singleton, J & Darcy, S 2013, 'Corrigendum', Annals of Leisure Research, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. ebi-ebi.
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Sobala, A & Hutvagner, G 2013, 'Small RNAs derived from the 5′ end of tRNA can inhibit protein translation in human cells', RNA Biology, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 553-563.
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Recently, it has been shown that tRNA molecules can be processed into small RNAs that are derived from both the 5′ and 3′ termini. To date, the function of these tRNA fragments (tRFs) derived from the 5′ end of tRNAs has not been investigated in depth. We present evidence that conserved residues in tRNAs, present in all 5′ tRFs, can inhibit the process of protein translation without the need for complementary target sites in the mRNA. These results implicate 5′ tRFs in a new mechanism of gene regulation by small RNAs in human cells. © 2013 Landes Bioscience.

Stahl, F, Gabrys, B, Gaber, MM & Berendsen, M 2013, 'An overview of interactive visual data mining techniques for knowledge discovery', WIREs Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 239-256.
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In the past decade, the analysis of data has faced the challenge of dealing with very large and complex datasets and the real‐time generation of data. Technologies to store and access these complex and large datasets are in place. However, robust and scalable analysis technologies are needed to extract meaningful information from these datasets. The research field of Information Visualization and Visual Data Analytics addresses this need. Information visualization and data mining are often used complementary to each other. Their common goal is the extraction of meaningful information from complex and possibly large data. However, though data mining focuses on the usage of silicon hardware, visualization techniques also aim to access the powerful image‐processing capabilities of the human brain. This article highlights the research on data visualization and visual analytics techniques. Furthermore, we highlight existing visual analytics techniques, systems, and applications including a perspective on the field from the chemical process industry.This article is categorized under:Application Areas > Data Mining Software ToolsFundamental Concepts of Data and Knowledge > Knowledge RepresentationTechnologies > Visualization

Steer, C & Phillips, J 2013, 'Geriatric oncology: Curent state of the science', Cancer Forum, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 199-200.

Styrkarsdottir, U, Thorleifsson, G, Sulem, P, Gudbjartsson, DF, Sigurdsson, A, Jonasdottir, A, Jonasdottir, A, Oddsson, A, Helgason, A, Magnusson, OT, Walters, GB, Frigge, ML, Helgadottir, HT, Johannsdottir, H, Bergsteinsdottir, K, Ogmundsdottir, MH, Center, JR, Nguyen, TV, Eisman, JA, Christiansen, C, Steingrimsson, E, Jonasson, JG, Tryggvadottir, L, Eyjolfsson, GI, Theodors, A, Jonsson, T, Ingvarsson, T, Olafsson, I, Rafnar, T, Kong, A, Sigurdsson, G, Masson, G, Thorsteinsdottir, U & Stefansson, K 2013, 'Nonsense mutation in the LGR4 gene is associated with several human diseases and other traits', Nature, vol. 497, no. 7450, pp. 517-520.
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Tafavogh, S, Navarro, KF, Catchpoole, DR & Kennedy, PJ 2013, 'Non-parametric and integrated framework for segmenting and counting neuroblastic cells within neuroblastoma tumor images', MEDICAL & BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING & COMPUTING, vol. 51, no. 6, pp. 645-655.
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Neuroblastoma is a malignant tumor and a cancer in childhood that derives from the neural crest. The number of neuroblastic cells within the tumor provides significant prognostic information for pathologists. An enormous number of neuroblastic cells makes the process of counting tedious and error-prone. We propose a user interaction-independent framework that segments cellular regions, splits the overlapping cells and counts the total number of single neuroblastic cells. Our novel segmentation algorithm regards an image as a feature space constructed by joint spatial-intensity features of color pixels. It clusters the pixels within the feature space using mean-shift and then partitions the image into multiple tiles. We propose a novel color analysis approach to select the tiles with similar intensity to the cellular regions. The selected tiles contain a mixture of single and overlapping cells. We therefore also propose a cell counting method to analyse morphology of the cells and discriminate between overlapping and single cells. Ultimately, we apply watershed to split overlapping cells. The results have been evaluated by a pathologist. Our segmentation algorithm was compared against adaptive thresholding. Our cell counting algorithm was compared with two state of the art algorithms. The overall cell counting accuracy of the system is 87.65 %. © 2013 International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Tan, X, Alrashdan, YA, Alkhouri, H, Oliver, BGG, Armour, CL & Hughes, JM 2013, 'Airway smooth muscle CXCR3 ligand production: regulation by JAK-STAT1 and intracellular Ca2+', AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSIOLOGY-LUNG CELLULAR AND MOLECULAR PHYSIOLOGY, vol. 304, no. 11, pp. L790-L802.
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In asthma, airway smooth muscle (ASM) chemokine (C-X-C motif) receptor 3 (CXCR3) ligand production may attract mast cells or T lymphocytes to the ASM, where they can modulate ASM functions. In ASM cells (ASMCs) from people with or without asthma, we aimed to investigate JAK-STAT1, JNK, and Ca2+ involvement in chemokine (C-X-C motif) ligand (CXCL)10 and CXCL11 production stimulated by interferon-γ, IL-1β, and TNF-α combined (cytomix). Confluent, growth-arrested ASMC were treated with inhibitors for pan-JAK (pyridone-6), JAK2 (AG-490), JNK (SP-600125), or the sarco(endo)plasmic reticulum Ca2+ATPase (SERCA) pump (thapsigargin), Ca2+ chelator (BAPTA-AM), or vehicle before and during cytomix stimulation for up to 24 h. Signaling protein activation as well as CXCL10/CXCL11 mRNA and protein production were examined using immunoblot analysis, real-time PCR, and ELISA, respectively. Cytomix-induced STAT1 activation was lower and CXCR3 ligand mRNA production was more sensitive to pyridone-6 and AG-490 in asthmatic than nonasthmatic ASMCs, but CXCL10/CXCL11 release was inhibited by the same proportion. Neither agent caused additional inhibition of release when used in combination with the JNK inhibitor SP-600125. Conversely, p65 NF-κB activation was higher in asthmatic than nonasthmatic ASMCs. BAPTA-AM abolished early CXCL10/CXCL11 mRNA production, whereas thapsigargin reduced it in asthmatic cells and inhibited CXCL10/CXCL11 release by both ASMC types. Despite these inhibitory effects, neither Ca2+ agent affected early activation of STAT1, JNK, or p65 NF-κB. In conclusion, intracellular Ca2+ regulated CXCL10/CXCL11 production but not early activation of the signaling molecules involved. In asthma, reduced ASM STAT1-JNK activation, increased NF-κB activation, and altered Ca2+ handling may contribute to rapid CXCR3 ligand production and enhanced inflammatory cell recruitment. © 2013 the American Physiological Society.

Tan, Y, Lao, W, Xiao, L, Wang, Z, Xiao, W, Kamal, MA, Seale, JP & Qu, X 2013, 'Managing the Combination of Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease and Metabolic Syndrome with Chinese Herbal Extracts in High-Fat-Diet Fed Rats', Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, vol. 2013, no. 1, pp. 1-10.
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Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the hepatic manifestation of metabolic syndrome (MetS). The aim of the study was to evaluate the effects of Chinese herbal extracts fromSalvia miltiorrhizaandGardenia jasminoides(SGE) on the combination of NAFLD and MetS induced by a high-fat diet (HFD) in rats. After 6 weeks of HFD feeding, rats (n=10each group) were treated with saline, rosiglitazone (RSG), and SGE for 4 weeks. HFD rats were obese, hyperinsulinemic, hyperlipidemic and increased hepatic enzymes with the histological images of NAFLD. Treatment with SGE significantly reduced serum triglycerides (TG), nonesterified fatty acids and enhanced insulin sensitivity, and ameliorated the elevated serum hepatic enzymes compared with HFD-saline group. SGE treatment also attenuated hepatic TG by 18.5% (P<0.05). Histological stains showed SGE decreased lipids droplets in hepatocytes (P<0.05) and normalized macrovesicular steatosis in HFD rats. Significant reduction of TNF-αand IL6 in adipose tissue was detected in SGE treated rats. The anti-inflammatory action may be, at least in part, the mechanism of SGE on MetS associated with NAFLD. This study discovered that SGE is capable of managing metabolic and histological abnormalities of NAFLD and MetS. SGE may be an optimal treatment for the combination of NAFLD and MetS.

Tran, N & Hutvagner, G 2013, 'Biogenesis and the regulation of the maturation of miRNAs', Essays in Biochemistry, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 17-28.
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Regulation of gene expression is a fundamental process in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms. Multiple regulatory mechanisms are in place to control gene expression at the level of transcription, post-transcription and post-translation to maintain optimal RNA and protein expressions in cells. miRNAs (microRNAs) are abundant short 21–23 nt non-coding RNAs that are key regulators of virtually all eukaryotic biological processes. The levels of miRNAs in an organism are crucial for proper development and sustaining optimal cell functions. Therefore the processing and regulation of the processing of these miRNAs are critical. In the present chapter we highlight the most important steps of miRNA processing, describe the functions of key proteins involved in the maturation of miRNAs, and discuss how the generation and the stability of miRNAs are regulated.

Tsakonas, A & Gabrys, B 2013, 'A fuzzy evolutionary framework for combining ensembles', Applied Soft Computing, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 1800-1812.
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Van Ly, D, De Pedro, M, James, P, Morgan, L, Black, JL, Burgess, JK & Oliver, BGG 2013, 'Inhibition of phosphodiesterase 4 modulates cytokine induction from toll like receptor activated, but not rhinovirus infected, primary human airway smooth muscle', RESPIRATORY RESEARCH, vol. 14, no. 1.
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Background: Virus-induced exacerbations of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) are a significant health burden and occur even in those receiving the best current therapies. Rhinovirus (RV) infections are responsible for half of all COPD exacerbations. The mechanism by which exacerbations occur remains undefined, however it is likely to be due to virus-induced inflammation. Given that phophodiesterase 4 (PDE4) inhibitors have an anti-inflammatory effect in patients with COPD they present a potential therapy prior to, and during, these exacerbations.Methods: In the present study we investigated whether the PDE4 inhibitor piclamilast (10-6 M) could alter RV or viral mimetic (5 μg/mL of imiquimod or poly I:C) induced inflammation and RV replication in primary human airway smooth muscle cells (ASMC) and bronchial epithelial cells (HBEC). The mediators IL-6, IL-8, prostaglandin E2 and cAMP production were assayed by ELISA and RV replication was assayed by viral titration.Results: We found that in ASMCs the TLR3 agonist poly I:C induced IL-8 release was reduced while induced IL-6 release by the TLR7/8 agonist imiquimod was further increased by the presence of piclamilast. However, in RV infected ASMCs, virus replication and induced mediator release were unaltered by piclamilast, as was also found in HBECs. The novel findings of this study reveal that although PDE inhibitors may not influence RV-induced cytokine production in ASMCs and replication in either ASMCs or HBECs, they have the capacity to be anti-inflammatory during TLR activation by modulating the induction of these chemotactic cytokines.Conclusion: By extrapolating our in vitro findings to exacerbations of COPD in vivo this suggests that PDE4 inhibitors may have beneficial anti-inflammatory properties when patients are infected with bacteria or viruses other than RV. © 2013 Van Ly et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

Van Ly, D, Faiz, A, Jenkins, C, Crossett, B, Black, JL, McParland, B, Burgess, JK & Oliver, BGG 2013, 'Characterising the Mechanism of Airway Smooth Muscle β2 Adrenoceptor Desensitization by Rhinovirus Infected Bronchial Epithelial Cells', PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. e56058-e56058.
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Rhinovirus (RV) infections account for approximately two thirds of all virus-induced asthma exacerbations and often result in an impaired response to beta 2 agonist therapy. Using an in vitro model of RV infection, we investigated the mechanisms underlyi

Wang, Z, Chen, S, Mo, H, Huang, Y, Li, J, Sun, J, Liu, L & Zhao, S 2013, 'A simple and economical method in purifying dairy goat luteal cells', Tissue and Cell, vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 269-274.
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Warkiani, ME, Bhagat, AAS, Khoo, BL, Han, J, Lim, CT, Gong, HQ & Fane, AG 2013, 'Isoporous Micro/Nanoengineered Membranes', ACS Nano, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 1882-1904.
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Watts, AL, Singh, N, Poulton, CG, Magi, EC, Kabakova, IV, Hudson, DD & Eggleton, BJ 2013, 'Photoinduced axial quantization in chalcogenide microfiber resonators', Journal of the Optical Society of America B, vol. 30, no. 12, pp. 3249-3249.
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We investigate axial quantization in chalcogenide (As2S3) whispering gallery mode microfiber resonators. A microcavity is fabricated using a positive photoinduced index perturbation in the microfiber, and the modes are excited through evanescent field coupling with a tapered silica fiber. We show that the modes of the unperturbed fiber split into ladders of modes due to the confinement along the axial direction of the fiber. The axial quantization of the modes is reproduced with a combination of numerical models. Due to the high nonlinearity and photosensitive properties of chalcogenide glasses, microcavities in these materials offer unique potential in nonlinear optics and sensing applications. © 2013 Optical Society of America.

Wei, HF, Chen, HW, Chen, SP, Yan, PG, Liu, T, Guo, L, Lei, Y, Chen, ZL, Li, J, Zhang, XB, Zhang, GL, Hou, J, Tong, WJ, Luo, J, Li, JY & Chen, KK 2013, 'A compact seven-core photonic crystal fiber supercontinuum source with 42.3 W output power', Laser Physics Letters, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 045101-045101.
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Winful, HG, Kabakova, IV & Eggleton, BJ 2013, 'Model for distributed feedback Brillouin lasers', Optics Express, vol. 21, no. 13, pp. 16191-16191.
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Wong, GY, Leung, FHF & Ling, SH 2013, 'Predicting Protein-Ligand Binding Site Using Support Vector Machine with Protein Properties', IEEE-ACM TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY AND BIOINFORMATICS, vol. 10, no. 6, pp. 1517-1529.
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Identification of protein-ligand binding site is an important task in structure-based drug design and docking algorithms. In the past two decades, different approaches have been developed to predict the binding site, such as the geometric, energetic, and sequence-based methods. When scores are calculated from these methods, the algorithm for doing classification becomes very important and can affect the prediction results greatly. In this paper, the support vector machine (SVM) is used to cluster the pockets that are most likely to bind ligands with the attributes of geometric characteristics, interaction potential, offset from protein, conservation score, and properties surrounding the pockets. Our approach is compared to LIGSITE, LIGSITEcsc, SURFNET, Fpocket, PocketFinder, Q-SiteFinder, ConCavity, and MetaPocket on the data set LigASite and 198 drug-target protein complexes. The results show that our approach improves the success rate from 60 to 80 percent at AUC measure and from 61 to 66 percent at top 1 prediction. Our method also provides more comprehensive results than the others.

Wroe, S, Chamoli, U, Parr, WCH, Clausen, P, Ridgely, R & Witmer, L 2013, 'Comparative Biomechanical Modeling of Metatherian and Placental Saber-Tooths: A Different Kind of Bite for an Extreme Pouched Predator', PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 6, pp. e66888-e66888.
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Wu, J, Peng, Z & Tipper, J 2013, 'Investigation of three-dimensional surface topographies and mechanical properties of hypothesized biological active wear particles from artificial joints', Wear, vol. 301, no. 1-2, pp. 182-187.
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Wu, J, Peng, Z & Tipper, J 2013, 'Mechanical Properties and Three-Dimensional Topological Characterisation of Micron, Submicron and Nanoparticles from Artificial Joints', Tribology Letters, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 449-460.
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Xia, YC, Redhu, NS, Moir, LM, Koziol-White, C, Ammit, AJ, Al-Alwan, L, Camoretti-Mercado, B & Clifford, RL 2013, 'Pro-inflammatory and immunomodulatory functions of airway smooth muscle: Emerging concepts', Pulmonary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 64-74.
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Yee, J, Davis, GM, Beith, JM, Wilcken, N, Hui, R, Harrison, ML, Currow, D, Emery, J, Phillips, J, Martin, A, Segelov, E & Kilbreath, SL 2013, 'Physical activity and fitness in women with metastatic breast cancer.', Journal of Clinical Oncology, vol. 31, no. 26_suppl, pp. 136-136.
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136 Background: Women with metastatic breast cancer may survive for many years after disease onset, and there is little published evidence on their habitual levels of physical activity. The aim of this study was to investigate differences in physical activity levels and physical fitness between women with and without metastatic breast cancer. Methods: Seventy-one women with metastatic breast cancer (METS) aged 57.7 ± 9.5 y and 2.9 ± 3.1 y after disease onset, and 71 healthy controls (CONTROLS) aged 55.0 ± 9.4 y participated. Of those with metastatic disease, 27% had metastases in bone only, 35% in viscera only and 38% in both bone and viscera. Strength was measured using hand and leg dynamometry, aerobic fitness using the Modified Canadian Aerobic Fitness Test, and fatigue with the FACT-Fatigue questionnaire. Participants wore a SenseWear physical activity armband over 6 days, and the average steps taken per day over 5 of these days, where there was a minimum wear time of 8 hours per day, was derived. Results: METS possessed lower aerobic fitness than CONTROLS (25.3 ± 5.4 versus 31.9 ± 6.1 ml·kg·min-1 respectively; p<0.01). METS were significantly weaker than CONTROLS. Lower limb strength for the METS and CONTROLS was 53.8 ± 23.7 versus 76.0 ± 27.4 kg and handgrip strength was 26.6 ± 6.0 versus 30.2 ± 6.4 kg. METS were also significantly less active, attaining only 57% of the daily step counts of CONTROLS. Fatigue was significantly higher in women with metastatic cancer compared to their healthy counterparts (38.0 ± 9.8 versus 46.3 ± 4.6; p<0.01). Correlation between fatigue with average steps per day (r=0.46), handgrip strength (r=0.29) and leg strength (r=0.26) was low in the METS group. Conclusions: Women living in the community with metastatic breast cancer are weaker, have lower aerobic fitness, and are relatively inactive compared to their healthy counterparts. Increased fatigue in these women ...

Yeganeh, B, Xia, C, Movassagh, H, Koziol-White, C, Chang, Y, Al-Alwan, L, Bourke, JE & Oliver, BGG 2013, 'Emerging mediators of airway smooth muscle dysfunction in asthma', Pulmonary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 105-111.
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Phenotypic changes in airway smooth muscle are integral to the pathophysiological changes that constitute asthma - namely inflammation, airway wall remodelling and bronchial hyperresponsiveness. In vitro and in vivo studies have shown that the proliferative, secretory and contractile functions of airway smooth muscle are dysfunctional in asthma. These functions can be modulated by various mediators whose levels are altered in asthma, derived from inflammatory cells or produced by airway smooth muscle itself. In this review, we describe the emerging roles of the CXC chemokines (GROs, IP-10), Th17-derived cytokines (IL-17, IL-22) and semaphorins, as well as the influence of viral infection on airway smooth muscle function, with a view to identifying new opportunities for therapeutic intervention in asthma. © 2012.

Zhang, J, Huang, ML & Hoang, D 2013, 'Visual analytics for intrusion detection in spam emails', International Journal of Grid and Utility Computing, vol. 4, no. 2/3, pp. 178-178.
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Spam email attacks are increasing at an alarming rate and have become more and more cunning in nature. This has necessitated the need for visual spam email analysis within an intrusion detection system to identify these attacks. The challenges are how to increase the accuracy of detection and how to visualise large volumes of spam email to better understand the analysis results and identify email attacks. This paper proposes a Density-Weight model that is to strengthen and extend the system capacity for analysis of network attacks in spam emails, including DDoS attacks. An interactive visual clustering method DA-TU is introduced to classify and display spam emails. The experimental results have shown that the proposed new model has improved the accuracy of intrusion detection and provides a better understanding of the nature of spam email attacks on though the network. Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Zhang, X, Zhu, X, Xing, R, Yang, X, Jiang, F, Li, H, Peng, J, Dai, N & Li, J 2013, 'Microstructure core photonic crystal fiber for blue extension of supercontinuum generation', Optics Communications, vol. 298-299, pp. 191-195.
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Zou, LE, Kabakova, IV, Mägi, EC, Li, E, Florea, C, Aggarwal, ID, Shaw, B, Sanghera, JS & Eggleton, BJ 2013, 'Efficient inscription of Bragg gratings in As_2S_3 fibers using near bandgap light', Optics Letters, vol. 38, no. 19, pp. 3850-3850.
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Ahad, MT, Dyson, LE & Gay, V 1970, 'Exploring m-banking for rural SMES from the bank's perspective: A focus group study in Bangladesh', Proceedings - Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems, PACIS 2013, Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems, The Association for Information Systems (AIS), Jeju Island, South Korea, pp. 1-14.
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There is relatively little known about the m-banking use by the rural small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Bangladesh. This research fills the gap by presenting the Key advantages of using m-banking by the rural SMEs that a bank can offer in Bangladesh. The research also reports on the critical country level-factors, organizational success factors and obstacles in m-banking adoption for rural SMEs. A focus group was interviewed and the data were analysed using NVivo9.The findings indicate that improved banking facility, an opportunity to create employment in rural area, easy settlement of trade between SMEs, better cash management are some important advantages of m-banking for the rural SMEs. Technology and human resource capabilities of the banks together with the development of mobile infrastructure are some influential factors in m-banking development in Bangladesh. This paper also identifies engagement with the SMEs as an important organizational factor in m-banking diffusion for rural SME that have been rarely identified in prior literature. However, the major constraints are the operational constraints such as cash management, policy and regulation and administrative obstacles. Recommendation for a business version m-banking, joint advertisement by the banks and mobile telecom organisations and a regional m-banking platform are also new knowledge in m-banking research. This is one of the few papers from the perspective of a bank, since most of the literature approaches the matter from the consumer standpoint. The outcomes and results of this research will be of potential value to the government, banks and mobile telecommunications in accelerating the development of m-banking in Bangladesh and in other developing countries.

Andon, P, Free, C & Sivabalan, P 1970, 'Seeking and sustaining auditor credibility in new assurance spaces', EAA 2013 36th Annual Congress, European Accounting Association, Paris, France.

Argha, A, Li, L, Su, SW & IEEE 1970, 'A New Approach to Applying Discrete Sliding Mode Control to 2D Systems', 2013 IEEE 52ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON DECISION AND CONTROL (CDC), IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, IEEE, Florence, Italy, pp. 3584-3589.
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Sliding mode control has been applied previously to a specific form of 2D systems (Roesser model). In this paper a new approach (ID vectorial form) is introduced for this problem. Using ID form to represent 2D systems can be used as an alternative strategy to reduce the inherent complexity of 2D systems and their applications. Unlike Wave Advanced Model (WAM) form (proposed by Porter and Aravena), the suggested ID vectorial form, in this paper, has invariable dimension and consequently can be converted to regular form for sliding mode control (SMC). In this paper, the first Fornasini and Marchesini (FM) model of 2D systems which is a second order recursive form is considered. Meantime, the suggested method can be simply deployed to other first or second order 2D models. ©2013 IEEE.

Argha, A, Li, L, Su, SW, Nguyen, H & Australia, E 1970, 'The Application of Discrete Sliding Mode Control in Parabolic PDE Dynamics', 2013 3RD AUSTRALIAN CONTROL CONFERENCE (AUCC), Australian Control Conference, IEEE, Perth, Australia, pp. 152-157.
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In this paper, the problem of applying Discrete Sliding Mode Control (DSMC) on spatially finite-dimensional systems arising from discretization of bi-variate Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) describing spatio-temporal systems is studied. To this end, heat transfer PDE is discretized to create 2D discrete dynamics and eventually this 2D spatiotemporal discrete form is represented in 1D vectorial form. In order to study the effect of discrepancy between original PDE dynamics and their discrete schemes, an uncertainty term is also considered for the obtained discrete dynamics. According to the notion of strong stability and, in addition, using scaling matrices (similarity transformation), a new method for considering the stability of discrete-time systems in the presence of general uncertainty term (matched and unmatched) is developed. It is also shown that the proposed method in this paper can be used for the case with spatial constraints on the actuation. Consequently, as special cases, the problem of spatially piece-wise constant, sparse and also boundary control input are studied. © 2013 Engineers Australia.

Bakirov, R & Gabrys, B 1970, 'Investigation of Expert Addition Criteria for Dynamically Changing Online Ensemble Classifiers with Multiple Adaptive Mechanisms', ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE APPLICATIONS AND INNOVATIONS, AIAI 2013, 9th IFIP WG 12.5 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations (AIAI), Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Paphos, CYPRUS, pp. 646-656.
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Bladen, CL, Teramura, S, Russell, SL, Fujiwara, K, Fisher, J, Ingham, E, Tomita, N & Tipper, JL 1970, 'Analysis of wear, wear particles, and reduced inflammatory potential of vitamin E ultrahigh‐molecular‐weight polyethylene for use in total joint replacement', Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part B: Applied Biomaterials, Wiley, pp. 458-466.
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AbstractVitamin E (VE) has been added to ultrahigh‐molecular‐weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) acetabular cups and tibial trays primarily to reduce oxidative damage to the polymer. The aim of this study was to investigate the relative wear rates of UHMWPE‐containing VE compared with virgin UHMWPE. The ability of VE to reduce the amount of inflammatory cytokines produced from stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMNCs) was also investigated. Stimulation was achieved by exposure of PBMNCs to either lipoplysaccharide (LPS) or VE‐containing UHMWPE (VE‐UHMWPE). In the present study, results showed that the wear rates of UHMWPE with or without VE were not significantly different. Particles generated by UHMWPE with and without VE were not significantly different in size distribution. The production of osteolytic mediators, tumor necrosis factor‐alpha, interleukin 1β (IL‐β), IL‐6, and IL‐8 were significantly reduced in (PBMNCs) stimulated with either LPS + VE compared with LPS or VE‐UHMWPE particles compared to virgin UHMWPE particles. This trend was also observed when VE was added as a liquid to UHMWPE wear particle‐stimulated PBMNCs. The exact mechanism of how VE affects the release of inflammatory mediators from particle‐stimulated macrophages is not yet understood. It is likely to involve the anti‐inflammatory and/or antioxidant effects of VE. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater 101B: 458–466, 2013.

Bladen, CL, Tzu‐Yin, L, Fisher, J & Tipper, JL 1970, 'In vitro analysis of the cytotoxic and anti‐inflammatory effects of antioxidant compounds used as additives in ultra high‐molecular weight polyethylene in total joint replacement components', Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part B: Applied Biomaterials, Wiley, pp. 407-413.
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AbstractUltra high‐molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) remains the most commonly used material in modern joint replacement prostheses. However, UHMWPE wear particles, formed as the bearing articulates, are one of the main factors leading to joint replacement failure via the induction of osteolysis and subsequent aseptic loosening. Previous studies have shown that the addition of antioxidants such as vitamin E to UHMWPE can improve wear resistance of the polymer and reduce oxidative fatigue. However, little is known regarding the biological consequences of such antioxidant chemicals. This study investigated the cytotoxic and anti‐inflammatory effects of a variety of antioxidant compounds currently being tested experimentally for use in hip and knee prostheses, including nitroxides, hindered phenols, and lanthanides on U937 human histocyte cells and human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMNCs) in vitro. After addition of the compounds, cell viability was determined by dose response cytotoxicity studies. Anti‐inflammatory effects were determined by quantitation of TNF‐α release in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)‐stimulated cells. This study has shown that many of these compounds were cytotoxic to U937 cells and PBMNCs, at relatively low concentrations (micromolar), specifically the hindered phenol 3,5‐di‐tert‐butyl‐4‐hydroxyhydrocinnamate (HPAO1), and the nitroxide 2,2,6,6‐Tetramethylpiperidine 1‐oxyl (TEMPO). Lanthanides were only cytotoxic at very high concentrations and were well tolerated by the cells at lower concentrations. Cytotoxic compounds also showed reduced anti‐inflammatory effects, particularly in PBMNCs. Careful consideration should therefore be given to the use of any of these compounds as potential additives to UHMWPE. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part B: Appl Biomater, 101B: 407–413, 2013.

Bonney, M, Rose, J, De Abreu Lourenco, R, Taylor, C & Frenzel, C 1970, 'A preference study investigating choices for different forms of an inhaled antibiotic in patients with cystic fibrosis or their carergivers', 10th Australasian Cystic Fibrosis Conference, Auckland, New Zealand.

Burgess, J, Jaffar, J, Unger, S, Keller, M, Corte, T, Wolters, P, Richeldi, L, Cerri, S, Argraves, WS, Black, J & Oliver, B 1970, 'Fibulin-1 is a novel biomarker of disease severity in pulmonary fibrosis', EUROPEAN RESPIRATORY JOURNAL, EUROPEAN RESPIRATORY SOC JOURNALS LTD.

Buttner, TFS, Kabakova, IV, Hudson, DD & Eggleton, BJ 1970, 'Picosecond pulse burst generation using cascaded Stimulated Brillouin Scattering in a chalcogenide As<inf>2</inf>Se<inf>3</inf> fiber cavity', 2013 Conference on Lasers & Electro-Optics Europe & International Quantum Electronics Conference CLEO EUROPE/IQEC, 2013 Conference on Lasers & Electro-Optics Europe & International Quantum Electronics Conference CLEO EUROPE/IQEC, IEEE.
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Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) is an inelastic scattering process that has been exploited for applications ranging from tunable delay, microwave generation to sensing and lasers. The recent demonstration [1] of a frequency comb laser based on cascaded SBS in silica fiber has renewed interest in using SBS to generate ultra-high frequency picosecond pulses [2]. In [1] a broad SBS frequency comb is generated in a long (e.g. kilometres) ring cavity using an erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) as gain medium. © 2013 IEEE.

Büttner, TFS, Kabakova, IV, Hudson, DD & Eggleton, BJ 1970, 'Picosecond pulse burst generation using cascaded Stimulated Brillouin Scattering in a chalcogenide As2Se3 fiber cavity', Optics InfoBase Conference Papers.

Chai, R, Ling, SH, Hunter, GP, Tran, Y, Nguyen, HT & IEEE 1970, 'Classification of Wheelchair Commands using Brain Computer Interface: Comparison between Able-Bodied Persons and Patients with Tetraplegia', 2013 35TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY (EMBC), International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 989-992.
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This paper presents a three-class mental task classification for an electroencephalography based brain computer interface. Experiments were conducted with patients with tetraplegia and able bodied controls. In addition, comparisons with different time-windows of data were examined to find the time window with the highest classification accuracy. The three mental tasks used were letter composing, arithmetic and imagery of a Rubiks cube rolling forward; these tasks were associated with three wheelchair commands: left, right and forward, respectively. An eyes closed task was also recorded for the algorithms testing and used as an additional on/off command. The features extraction method was based on the spectrum from a Hilbert-Huang transform and the classification algorithm was based on an artificial neural network with a fuzzy particle swarm optimization with cross-mutated operation. The results show a strong eyes closed detection for both groups with average accuracy at above 90%. The overall result for the combined groups shows an improved average accuracy of 70.6% at 1s, 74.8% at 2s, 77.8% at 3s, 79.6% at 4s and 81.4% at 5s. The accuracy for individual groups were lower for patients with tetraplegia compared to the able-bodied group, however, does improve with increased duration of the time-window.

Chan, MY, Frost, SA, Center, JR, Eisman, JA & Nguyen, TV 1970, 'BODYMASS INDEX AND FRACTURE RISK: A BONE MINERAL DENSITY-DRIVEN ASSOCIATION', OSTEOPOROSIS INTERNATIONAL, IOF Regionals - 4th Asia-Pacific Osteoporosis Meeting, SPRINGER LONDON LTD, PEOPLES R CHINA, Hong Kong, pp. S532-S533.

Chen, L & Hoang, DB 1970, 'Adaptive Data Replicas Management Based on Active Data-centric Framework in Cloud Environment', 2013 IEEE 10th International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communications & 2013 IEEE International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing, 2013 IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) & 2013 IEEE International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing (EUC), IEEE, Zhangjiajie, China.
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Cloud data protection is increasingly attracting researchers attention. Cryptographic-based schemes, trust third party technologies, policy-driven frameworks, and data-policy binding mechanisms have been proposed to address data security and privacy issues from many aspects of data protection requirement. However, due to the inevitability of bugs, crashes, operator errors, hardware failure, or server misconfiguration, data availability and reliability might be still compromised. To avoid data loss and access failure when the unpredictable incidents occur, data replication technology is essential to guarantee the availability and reliability. This paper introduces the adaptive data replicas management based on the novel data structure created by the active data-centric framework in the cloud scenario. The simulated result shows the effectiveness and flexibility of the proposed adaptive data replicas scheme.

Chen, L, Ge, Q, Black, J, Burgess, J & Oliver, B 1970, 'Cigarette smoke extract and TGF-beta(1) induce distinctive expression of extracellular matrix protein genes in human airway smooth muscle cells', EUROPEAN RESPIRATORY JOURNAL, EUROPEAN RESPIRATORY SOC JOURNALS LTD.

Chen, L, Ge, Q, Black, JL, Burgess, JK & Oliver, BG 1970, 'Difference Between Matrix And Soluble Fibulin-1 In Airway Smooth Muscle Cells', AMERICAN JOURNAL OF RESPIRATORY AND CRITICAL CARE MEDICINE, AMER THORACIC SOC.

Chen, L, Ge, Q, Black, JL, Burgess, JK & Oliver, BGG 1970, 'DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DEPOSITED AND SOLUBLE FIBULIN-1 IN AIRWAY SMOOTH MUSCLE CELLS', RESPIROLOGY, WILEY-BLACKWELL, pp. 47-47.

Chen, L, Ge, Q, Faiz, A, Black, JL, Burgess, JK & Oliver, BG 1970, 'Cigarette Smoke Extract And Tgf-beta 1 Induce Distinctive Expression Of Extracellular Matrix And Adhesion Molecule Genes In COPD And Non-COPD Airway Smooth Muscle Cells', AMERICAN JOURNAL OF RESPIRATORY AND CRITICAL CARE MEDICINE, AMER THORACIC SOC.

Chen, L, Hoang, DB & IEEE 1970, 'Addressing data and user mobility challenges in the cloud', 2013 IEEE SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CLOUD COMPUTING (CLOUD 2013), IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing, IEEE, Santa Clara, CA, pp. 549-556.
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Recently cloud computing has been increasingly gaining attention and spreading in various industries. This novel paradigm also has received significant research focus on the data security and privacy issues due to its outsourced nature. However, few of the research efforts have been focused on data mobility issues which existed intrinsically in highly complex and dynamic cloud services. To address this challenge, this paper discusses full mobility management of cloud data from two aspects: data mobility management and user mobility management. The work is based on our previously proposed active data-centric framework. Taking advantage of this framework, the active data can establish an active binding relationship with its user. Any data mobility-related behavior could inform to its bundled user instantly and safely. The paper also discusses user mobility management via the self-adaptable heterogeneous network handoff mechanism to ensure the ubiquitous informing service in the mobile cloud environment. The experimental outcomes demonstrate the feasibility, proactivity, and efficiency by the full mobility management scheme.

Colvin, EK, Fuller, E, Cheng, J, Gill, A, Marsh, DJ & Howell, VM 1970, 'Abstract 330: Utilization of Sleeping Beauty mutagenesis for the identification of potential driver genes of ovarian cancer.', Cancer Research, Proceedings: AACR 104th Annual Meeting 2013; Apr 6-10, 2013; Washington, DC, American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), pp. 330-330.
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Abstract Background: The goal of this project is to increase our understanding of the molecular aetiology of ovarian cancer by developing a mouse model of this tumor. Inherited mutation of BRCA1 is the best known risk factor for the most common subtype of ovarian cancer, i.e. serous epithelial ovarian cancer (SEOC); however, loss of Brca1 alone is insufficient for SEOC development in the mouse. Somatic mutation of TP53 is the most common molecular change in SEOC, but does not result in SEOC in the mouse, either alone or in combination with loss of Brca1. These findings suggest that additional currently unknown genetic factors are required for ovarian carcinogenesis. We hypothesized that random mutagenesis would activate these genetic factors and utilized Sleeping Beauty (SB) insertional mutagenesis to initiate ovarian tumors in mice that we have sequenced to determine potential genetic drivers of these tumors. Methods: Breeding colonies of the following genetically engineered mice were established and cross bred: homozygous floxed SB (STOCK Rosa26-LsL-D-SB11;T2/Onc2,TG6113), homozygous floxed Brca1 knock-out (C57BL/6.Brca1tm2Brn) and Tp53 mutant (C57BL/6-Trp53tm1Tyj/J). CRE recombinase packaged into an adenoviral vector (AdCreM2, MicroBix Biosystems Inc, CA) was surgically injected under the ovarian bursal membrane of mature female mice to delete Brca1 and activate SB mutagenesis in the ovarian surface epithelium. Mice were monitored and sacrificed at ethically defined endpoints or a maximum of 15 months post-surgery. Tumors were assessed for SB transposase activity by immunohistochemical staining. DNA was extracted from paraffin embedded sections of ovarian tumors and underwent high-throughput sequencing for T2/Onc2 insertion sites (Illumina, University of Iowa). Results: Ovarian tumors were observed at low penetrance starting at 30 weeks pos...

Colvin, EK, Fuller, E, Cheng, J, Gill, A, Marsh, DJ & Howell, VM 1970, 'Abstract A10: A mutagenesis screen identifies tumor suppressors and kinases as potential driver genes of ovarian cancer', Clinical Cancer Research, Abstracts: AACR Special Conference on Advances in Ovarian Cancer Research: From Concept to Clinic; September 18-21, 2013; Miami, FL, American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), pp. A10-A10.
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Abstract Background: The goal of this project is to increase our understanding of the molecular aetiology of ovarian cancer by utilizing Sleeping Beauty (SB) insertional mutagenesis. Methods: Breeding colonies of the following genetically engineered mice were established and cross bred: homozygous floxed SB (STOCK Rosa26-LsL-D-SB11;T2/Onc2,TG6113), homozygous floxed Brca1 knock-out (C57BL/6.Brca1tm2Brn) and Tp53 mutant (C57BL/6-Trp53tm1Tyj/J). CRE recombinase packaged into an adenoviral vector (AdCreM2, MicroBix Biosystems Inc, CA) was surgically injected under the ovarian bursal membrane of mature female mice to delete Brca1 and activate SB mutagenesis in the ovarian surface epithelium. Mice were monitored and sacrificed at ethically defined endpoints or a maximum of 15 months post-surgery. Tumors were assessed for SB transposase activity by immunohistochemical staining. DNA was extracted from paraffin embedded sections of ovarian tumors and underwent high-throughput sequencing for T2/Onc2 insertion sites (Illumina, University of Iowa). Genes with insertion sites were interrogated against SEOC data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) to identify genes also altered in the human malignancy. Functional annotation clustering was performed using DAVID (Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery, v6.7). Results: Ovarian tumors were observed at low penetrance starting at 30 weeks post-surgery in SBflox/+Tp53mut/+ mice (6%, 3/48) and SBflox/+Brca1flox/flox p53mut/+ mice (8%, 4/50). No ovarian tumors were observed in SBflox/+Brca1flox/flox mice (n=38) or in SBflox/+Brca1flox/+ mice (n=26). Sequencing of the insertion sites identified a number of genes of which 67 were altered in 10 - 30% of cases in the TCGA SEOC dataset (N = 316). This gene-set was enriched for kinases (P = 0.003, False discovery rate (FDR) = 3%) including Fgfr2,...

Cranfield, CG, Cornell, B, Grage, SL, Duckworth, P, Carne, S, Ulrich, AS & Martinac, B 1970, 'Characterization of Antimicrobial Peptide Insertion in Tethered Bilayer Lipid Membranes by Pulse Amperometry and Linear Sweep Voltammetry Methods', BIOPHYSICAL JOURNAL, 57th Annual Meeting of the Biophysical-Society, CELL PRESS, Philadelphia, PA, pp. 600A-600A.
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De Abreu Lourenco, R 1970, 'Paying primary care providers [invited speaker]', National Primary Health Care Conference 2013.

De Abreu Lourenco, R, Kenny, PM & Hall, JP 1970, 'Factors linked to patient GP payments: results of a survey of Australian patients', 8th Health Services and Policy Research Conference, Wellington, New Zealand.

Dehestani, D, Su, S, Nguyen, H & Guo, Y 1970, 'Robust fault tolerant application for HVAC system based on combination of online SVM and ANN black box model', 2013 European Control Conference (ECC), 2013 European Control Conference (ECC), IEEE, Zurich, Switzerland, pp. 2976-2981.
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Efficient heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems are one of the big challenges today around the world. The fault detection and isolation (FDI) play a significant role in the monitoring, repairing and maintaining of technical systems for the final destination of cost reduction. FDI makes it possible to reduce total cost effective of maintenance and thus increase the capacity utilization rates of equipment. Reduction of energy wasting in the system by on time fault detection is another goal. Therefore, this work proposes a new fault detector based on a black box Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model and online support vector machines (SVM) classifier which integrates a dimension reduction scheme to analyze the failure of air fan supply and dampers fault. The key advantage of this algorithm is to make robustness for SVM to recognize a faulty condition with unexpected sensors values. The ANN generates a high accurate model which is based reference for SVM classifier. Now by using this black box model we make possibility of robustness for SVM to increase detection probability. Finally, a series of faulty experimental data are applied to evaluate the effectiveness of the robust classifier. Final results show that online SVM can detect accurately the air supply fan fault and damper fault of a HVAC system with minimum usage data. It is also outperforms offline SVM on such energy systems for classification.

Donovan, C, Faiz, A, Oliver, BG, Black, JL, McParland, BE, Burgess, JK & Bourke, JE 1970, 'Black widow spider toxin, alpha-latrotoxin, contracts large and small airways in different species', EUROPEAN RESPIRATORY JOURNAL, EUROPEAN RESPIRATORY SOC JOURNALS LTD.

Dunlop, RA, Cox, PA, Banack, SA & Rodgers, KJ 1970, 'The non-protein amino acid BMAA is misincorporated into human proteins in place of L-serine causing protein misfolding and aggregation.', PLoS One, MND Australia Research Meeting, United States, p. e75376.
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Mechanisms of protein misfolding are of increasing interest in the aetiology of neurodegenerative diseases characterized by protein aggregation and tangles including Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), Lewy Body Dementia (LBD), and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP). Some forms of neurodegenerative illness are associated with mutations in genes which control assembly of disease related proteins. For example, the mouse sticky mutation sti, which results in undetected mischarging of tRNA(Ala) with serine resulting in the substitution of serine for alanine in proteins causes cerebellar Purkinje cell loss and ataxia in laboratory animals. Replacement of serine 422 with glutamic acid in tau increases the propensity of tau aggregation associated with neurodegeneration. However, the possibility that environmental factors can trigger abnormal folding in proteins remains relatively unexplored. We here report that a non-protein amino acid, β-N-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA), can be misincorporated in place of L-serine into human proteins. We also report that this misincorporation can be inhibited by L-serine. Misincorporation of BMAA into human neuroproteins may shed light on putative associations between human exposure to BMAA produced by cyanobacteria and an increased incidence of ALS.

Eggleton, BJ, Poulton, CG, Marpaung, D, Morrison, B, Kabakova, IV, Choi, D-Y, Madden, SJ, Luther-Davies, B & Pant, R 1970, 'On-chip stimulated Brillouin scattering and its applications', SPIE Proceedings, SPIE NanoScience + Engineering, SPIE, San Diego, California, United States.
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We review recent demonstration of stimulated Brillouin scattering in a chalcogenide photonic chip and its application to optical and microwave signal processing tasks. The interaction between light and sound via stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) was exploited in chalcogenide photonic circuits to achieve on-chip SBS slow and fast light, microwave photonic filters, and dynamic gratings using travelling-wave geometry. Using a ring-resonator geometry, photonic-chip based Brillouin laser was demonstrated. © 2013 SPIE.

Eilenberger, F, Kabakova, I, Martin De Sterke, C, Eggleton, BJ & Pertsch, T 1970, 'Cavity optical pulse extraction: A novel, ultrashort light source based on nonlinearly seeded hawking radiation', Optics InfoBase Conference Papers.
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We show that light trapped in a linear cavity can be efficiently released into an ultrashort coherent pulse, using a non-resonant trigger pulse. We derive a simplified analytic description of the process and confirm its complex behavior by numerical simulation. This 'Cavity Optical Pulse Extraction' (COPE) process is shown to be analogous to classical Hawking radiation emitted from an optical event horizon with extremely high Hawking temperature. Nonlinear Optics Technical Digest. © OSA 2013.

Eilenberger, F, Kabakova, I, Martin de Sterke, C, Eggleton, BJ & Pertsch, T 1970, 'Cavity Optical Pulse Extraction: a novel, ultrashort light source based on nonlinearly seeded Hawking radiation', Nonlinear Optics, Nonlinear Optics, OSA.
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Faiz, A, Donovan, C, Halayko, AJ, Detillieux, K, Ward, JPT, Lee, T, Oliver, BG, Black, JL, McParland, B, Bourke, JE & Burgess, JK 1970, 'Abnormal Expression Of Latrophilin's Contributes To Increased Airway Smooth Muscle Mass And Contraction In Asthmatic Airways', AMERICAN JOURNAL OF RESPIRATORY AND CRITICAL CARE MEDICINE, AMER THORACIC SOC.

Faiz, A, Oliver, BGG, Black, JL & Burgess, JK 1970, 'ABNORMAL EXPRESSION OF LATROPHILINS IN ASTHMATIC AIRWAYS CONTRIBUTES TO INCREASED AIRWAY SMOOTH MUSCLE MASS', RESPIROLOGY, WILEY-BLACKWELL, pp. 23-23.

Faiz, A, Oliver, BGG, Black, JL & Burgess, JK 1970, 'CCL20 PRODUCTION BY AIRWAY SMOOTH MUSCLE CELLS CONTRIBUTES TO MUCUS HYPERSCRETION AND INCREASE MUSCLE MASS IN ASTHMATIC AIRWAYS', RESPIROLOGY, WILEY-BLACKWELL, pp. 47-47.

Fathollahipour, S, Maziarfar, S & Tavakoli, J 1970, 'Characterization and evaluation of acacia gum loaded PVA hybrid wound dressing', 2013 20th Iranian Conference on Biomedical Engineering (ICBME), 2013 20th Iranian Conference on Biomedical Engineering (ICBME), IEEE, pp. 149-154.
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Hydrogels based on natural polysaccharides are found to be so appealing for wound healing applications. The present study deals with the synthesis and characterization of PVA/acacia gum hybrid hydrogels where Arabic gum was evaluated as network properties improvement factor in hybrid hydrogel with the capability of antimicrobial agent (erythromycin) delivery in wound site. The comparison of drug release from mentioned hydrogel wound dressing with pure PVA hydrogel in stimulated wound fluid, swelling studies as a function of additive type, pH and temperature has been discussed. Eventually, the hybrid film was characterized by SEM. All of the observed results indicate that the hybrid hydrogel could easily be used as functional wound dressing to control the rate of antibiotic drug release to the wound site. © 2013 IEEE.

Fong, S, Zhuang, Y, Li, J & Khoury, R 1970, 'Sentiment Analysis of Online News Using MALLET', 2013 International Symposium on Computational and Business Intelligence, 2013 International Symposium on Computational and Business Intelligence (ISCBI), IEEE, New Delhi, INDIA, pp. 301-304.
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Furqan, F & Hoang, DB 1970, 'Wireless Fair Intelligent Admission Control - WFIAC', 2013 IEEE 27TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ADVANCED INFORMATION NETWORKING AND APPLICATIONS (AINA), International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (was ICOIN), IEEE, Barcelona, Spain, pp. 1001-1008.
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In next generation wireless networks like WiMAX, a dynamic Call Admission Control (CAC) plays an important role to ensure Quality of Service (QoS) of existing users and to efficiently utilize network resources. We propose a predictive CAC namely Wireless Fair Intelligent Admission Control (WFIAC) that admits or rejects a new incoming connection base on resource availability and load in the network. The proposed CAC works in conjunction to a load control module namely WiMAX Fair Intelligent Congestion Control (WFICC) to determine load in network. The proposed CAC is based on bandwidth borrowing and degradation of over provisioned connections in order to minimize blocking probability and to maximize resource utilization in the network. Once the network load reduces, WFICC upgrades the bandwidth allocated to connections that have data to send. So, WFIAC along with WFICC ensures the network operates around a target operating point to guarantee QoS to end users. A detailed and comprehensive simulation is performed in ns-2 to show the efficiency of the proposed CAC scheme in terms of blocking probability of different service classes and QoS provisioning to existing connections when the network is in congested and non congested state.

Furqan, F, Hoang, DB & IEEE 1970, 'WFICC: A New Mechanism for Provision of QoS and Congestion Control in WiMAX', 2013 IEEE CONSUMER COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING CONFERENCE (CCNC), IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference, IEEE, Las Vegas, USA, pp. 552-558.
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In WiMAX architecture the base station lacks the mechanisms to avoid it from being overloaded, which can lead to degradation in the Quality of service (QoS) experienced by the users in the cell, as the large queue at buffer risk high delays and buffer ov

Gay, V, Leijdekkers, P & Wong, F 1970, 'Using sensors and facial expression recognition to personalize emotion learning for autistic children.', Stud Health Technol Inform, International Conference on Wearable Micro and Nano Technologies for Personalized Health, New IOS Press Publication, Netherlands, pp. 71-76.
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This paper describes CaptureMyEmotion, an app for smartphones and tablets which uses wireless sensors to capture physiological data together with facial expression recognition to provide a very personalized way to help autistic children identify and understand their emotions. Many apps are targeting autistic children and their carer, but none of the existing apps uses the full potential offered by mobile technology and sensors to overcome one of autistic children's main difficulty: the identification and expression of emotions. CaptureMyEmotion enables autistic children to capture photos, videos or sounds, and identify the emotion they felt while taking the picture. Simultaneously, a self-portrait of the child is taken, and the app measures the arousal and stress levels using wireless sensors. The app uses the self-portrait to provide a better estimate of the emotion felt by the child. The app has the potential to help autistic children understand their emotions and it gives the carer insight into the child's emotions and offers a means to discuss the child's feelings.

Gay, V, Leijdekkers, P, Agcanas, J, Wong, F & Wu, Q 1970, 'CaptureMyEmotion: Helping autistic children understand their emotions using facial expression recognition and mobile technologies', 26th Bled eConference - eInnovations: Challenges and Impacts for Individuals, Organizations and Society, Proceedings, Bled eConference - eInnovations: Challenges and Impacts for Individuals, Organizations and Society, Proceedings, AIS Electronic Library (AISeL), Bled, Slovenia, pp. 409-420.
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One of the main challenges for autistic children is to identify and express emotions. Many emotion-learning apps are available for smartphones and tablets to assist autistic children and their carers. However, they do not use the full potential offered by mobile technology, such as using facial expression recognition and wireless biosensors to recognise and sense emotions. To fill this gap we developed CaptureMyEmotion, an Android App that uses wireless sensors to capture physiological data together with facial expression recognition to provide a very personalised way to help autistic children learn about their emotions. The App enables children to capture photos, videos or sounds, and simultaneously attach emotion data and a self-portrait photo. The material can then be reviewed and discussed together with a carer at a later stage. CaptureMyEmotion has the potential to help autistic children integrate better in the society by providing a new way for them to understand their emotions.

Gay, VC, Leijdekkers, P & Wu, Q 1970, 'Helping Autistic Children Understand Their Emotions Using Facial Expression Recognition and Mobile Technologies', Proceedings of the 26th Bled eConference eInnovations, Bled eConference, AISeL, Bled, Slovenia, pp. 409-420.
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One of the main challenges for autistic children is to identify and express emotions. Many emotion-learning apps are available for smartphones and tablets to assist autistic children and their carers. However, they do not use the full potential offered by mobile technology, such as using facial expression recognition and wireless biosensors to recognise and sense emotions. To fill this gap we developed CaptureMyEmotion, an Android App that uses wireless sensors to capture physiological data together with facial expression recognition to provide a very personalised way to help autistic children learn about their emotions. The App enables children to capture photos, videos or sounds, and simultaneously attach emotion data and a self-portrait photo. The material can then be reviewed and discussed together with a carer at a later stage. CaptureMyEmotion has the potential to help autistic children integrate better in the society by providing a new way for them to understand their emotions.

Ge, Q, Jaffar, J, Chen, L, Black, JL, Burgess, JK & Oliver, B 1970, 'THE ROLE OF FIBULIN-1 PEPTIDES IN LUNG FIBROBLAST ASSOCIATED REMODELLING AND INFLAMMATION', RESPIROLOGY, WILEY-BLACKWELL, pp. 47-47.

Ge, Q, Jaffar, J, Chen, L, Black, JL, Burgess, JK & Oliver, BG 1970, 'Identification Of The Active Region Of Fibulin1 In Remodelling And Inflammation In Lung Fibroblasts', AMERICAN JOURNAL OF RESPIRATORY AND CRITICAL CARE MEDICINE, AMER THORACIC SOC.

Ghaffari Jadidi, M, Valls Miro, J, Valencia, R, Andrade-Cetto, J & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Exploration in Information Distribution Maps', Robotics Science and Systems - Workshop on Robotic Exploration, Monitoring and Information Collection, Workshop of Robotics: Systems and Science, Technische Universitat Berlin, Berlin, Germany, pp. 1-8.
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In this paper, a novel solution for autonomous robotic exploration is proposed. The distribution of information in an unknown environment is modeled as an unsteady diffusion process, which can be an appropriate mathematical formulation and analogy for expanding, time-varying, and dynamic environments. This information distribution map is the solution of the diffusion process partial differential equation, and is regressed from sensor data as a Gaussian Process. Optimization of the process parameters leads to an optimal frontier map which describes regions of interest for further exploration. Since the presented approach considers a continuous model of the environment, it can be used to plan smooth exploration paths exploiting the structural dependencies of the environment whilst handling sparse sensors measurements. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated through simulation results in the well-known Freiburg and Cave maps.

Golzan, M, Morgan, W & Graham, S 1970, 'Retinal venous pulsatility is reduced in regions of nerve fibre layer loss in glaucoma', INVESTIGATIVE OPHTHALMOLOGY & VISUAL SCIENCE, ASSOC RESEARCH VISION OPHTHALMOLOGY INC.

Goodall, S, Kenny, PM, De Abreu Lourenco, R & Haas, MR 1970, 'Understanding patients' preferences for primary care services: Have Discrete Choice Experiments helped?', 8th Health Services and Policy Research Conference, Wellington, New Zealand.

Green, DW, Padula, M, Santos, J, Chou, J, Milthorpe, B & Ben-Nissan, B 1970, 'A new role for marine skeletal proteins in regenerative orthopaedics', BIOCERAMICS 24, Bioceramics, Scientific.net, Fukuoka, Japan, pp. 654-659.
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Use of ready-made marine skeletons is one of the simplest possible remedies to major problems hindering the future development of regenerative orthopaedics- such as, providing a richness of framework designs and now a potentially rich, accessible source

Guan, G, Warkiani, ME, Luan, KB, Lim, CT, Chen, PCY & Han, J 1970, 'High throughput circulating tumor cell isolation using trapezoidal inertial microfluidics', 17th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences, MicroTAS 2013, pp. 23-25.
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A novel Dean coupled inertial microfluidic device with trapezoidal cross-section spiral channel for ultra-fast, label- free enrichment of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from clinically relevant blood volumes is reported in this work. Using this single spiral microchannel with one inlet and two outlets, we have successfully isolated and recovered more than 80% of cancer cell line cells spiked in 7.5 mL of blood within 8 min with high purity. Putative CTCs were detected and isolated from 100% patient samples with advanced stage metastatic breast and lung cancer using standard biomarkers. DNA fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH) was also carried out to evaluate HER2 status in CTCs isolated from patient samples. Copyright © (2013) by the Chemical and Biological Microsystems Society All rights reserved.

Guo, Y, Naik, GR & Nguyen, HT 1970, 'Single channel blind source separation based local mean decomposition for Biomedical applications.', EMBC, International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 6812-6815.
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Single Channel Blind Source Separation (SCBSS) is an extreme case of underdetermined (more sources and fewer sensors) Blind Source Separation (BSS) problem. In this paper, we propose a novel technique using Local Mean Decomposition (LMD) and Independent Component Analysis (ICA) combined with single channel BSS (LMD_ICA). First, the LMD was used to decompose the single channel source into a series of data sequences, which are called as Product Functions (PF), then, ICA algorithm was used to process PFs to get similar independent components and extract the original signals. A comparison was made between LMD_ICA and previously proposed single channel ICA method (EEMD_ICA). The real time experimental results demonstrated the advantage of the proposed single channel source separation method for artifact removal and in biomedical source separation applications.

Haas, MR, Goodall, S & De Abreu Lourenco, R 1970, 'Awareness and uptake among Australians of innovations in the delivery of primary care', 8th Health Services and Policy Research Conference, Wellington, New Zealand.

Hall, JP & De Abreu Lourenco, R 1970, 'A (rural) health system for the 21st century: Financing our health care system - the place and pace of reform', 12th National Rural Health Conference, Adelaide.

Handojoseno, AMA, Shine, JM, Nguyen, TN, Tran, Y, Lewis, SJG & Nguyen, HT 1970, 'Using EEG spatial correlation, cross frequency energy, and wavelet coefficients for the prediction of Freezing of Gait in Parkinson's Disease patients', 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 4263-4266.
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Parkinson's Disease (PD) patients with Freezing of Gait (FOG) often experience sudden and unpredictable failure in their ability to start or continue walking, making it potentially a dangerous symptom. Emerging knowledge about brain connectivity is leading to new insights into the pathophysiology of FOG and has suggested that electroencephalogram (EEG) may offer a novel technique for understanding and predicting FOG. In this study we have integrated spatial, spectral, and temporal features of the EEG signals utilizing wavelet coefficients as our input for the Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network and k-Nearest Neighbor classifier. This approach allowed us to predict transition from walking to freezing with 87 % sensitivity and 73 % accuracy. This preliminary data affirms the functional breakdown between areas in the brain during FOG and suggests that EEG offers potential as a therapeutic strategy in advanced PD. © 2013 IEEE.

Hansbro, P, Beckett, E, Stevens, R, Jarnicki, A, Kim, R, Hanish, I, Hansbro, N, Deane, A, Keely, S, Horvat, J, Yang, M, Oliver, B, van Rooijen, N, Inman, M, Adachi, R, Soberman, R, Hamadi, S, Wark, P & Foster, P 1970, 'A short-term model of COPD identifies a role for mast cell tryptase', JOURNAL OF IMMUNOLOGY, 100th Annual Meeting of the American-Association-of-Immunologists, AMER ASSOC IMMUNOLOGISTS, Honolulu, HI.

Hansbro, P, Beckett, E, Stevens, R, Jarnicki, A, Kim, R, Hanish, I, Hansbro, N, Deane, A, Keely, S, Horvat, J, Yang, M, Oliver, B, van Rooijen, N, Inman, M, Adachi, R, Soberman, R, Hamadi, S, Wark, P & Foster, P 1970, 'A short-term model of COPD identifies a role for mast cell tryptase (P3242)', The Journal of Immunology, The American Association of Immunologists, pp. 136.3-136.3.
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Abstract Cigarette smoke-induced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a life-threatening inflammatory disorder of the lung. The development of effective therapies for COPD has been hampered by the lack of an animal model that mimics the human disease in a short time-frame.We have created a mouse model of cigarette smoke-induced COPD that develops the hallmark features of the human condition in a short amount of time. Tightly controlled amounts of cigarette smoke were delivered to the airways of mice, and the development of the pathological features of COPD were assessed. The roles of macrophages and mast cell (MC) tryptase in pathogenesis were evaluated using depletion and in vitro studies and MC protease-6 deficient mice. After 8 weeks of smoke exposure, wild-type mice developed chronic inflammation, mucus hypersecretion, airway remodeling, emphysema, and reduced lung function. These characteristic features of COPD were glucocorticoid-resistant and did not spontaneously resolve. Systemic effects on skeletal muscle and the heart, and increased susceptibility to respiratory infections also were observed. We demonstrate here that macrophages and tryptase-expressing MCs were required for the development of COPD. Recombinant MC tryptase induced pro-inflammatory responses from cultured macrophages. This model can be used to better understand multiple aspects of COPD pathogenesis.

Hoang, DB & Kamyabpour, N 1970, 'Energy-constrained paths for optimization of energy consumption in Wireless Sensor Networks', 2013 FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NETWORKING AND DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING (ICNDC), International Conference on Networking and Distributed Computing, IEEE, Los Angeles, CA, pp. 9-13.
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A sensor spends a large part of its energy in transmitting its data and relay its neighbours' data. The overall lifetime of a wireless sensor network depends strongly on how a sensor selects its relaying neighbours and the data path to the destination. One critical problem is that if a sensor has to support too many neighbours, its energy is exhausted rapidly and may bring down the whole network. This paper suggests algorithms for assigning weights to links between neighbours taking into account the number of neighbours who rely on them to relay traffic to the destination. In order to do so, the paper also proposes an algorithm for constructing node connectivity based on sensors position within the broadcast range of another sensor, and a shortest energy-constrained path from a sensor to the destination.

Hoang, DB, Phung, MH & Lawrence, E 1970, 'A collaborative task planning and development environment on the Cloud/Grid', 2013 19th IEEE International Conference on Networks (ICON), 2013 19th IEEE International Conference on Networks (ICON), IEEE, Singapore, pp. 1-6.
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A Grid system is a promising solution for sharing distributed resources of registered participants to perform tasks whose demands may exceed the capacity of individual participating organization. However, the collaborative aspect of Grids is still underdeveloped as they lack features and mechanisms for human interaction and collaboration. This paper presents a prototype system for collaborative task planning and workflow development over a Grid implemented as a Rich Internet Application. It allows the participants to design their joint workflow interactively and collaboratively in a high level graphical notation. The resulting workflow can be automatically translated into Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) for testing and execution with a few clicks and forms the basis for further refinement and collaboration. This collaborative workflow design application is part of our larger Active Assistive Cloud/Grid infrastructure. © 2013 IEEE.

Hoang, DB, Phung, MH, Lawrence, E & IEEE 1970, 'A Collaborative Task Planning and Development Environment on the Cloud/Grid', 2013 19TH IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NETWORKS (ICON), IEEE International Workshop on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructures for Collaborative Enterprises, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., Larissa, Greece, pp. 266-271.
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Grid system is a promising solution for sharing distributed resources of registered participants to perform tasks whose demands may exceed the capacity of individual participating organization. However, the collaborative aspect of Grids is still underdeveloped as they lack features and mechanisms for human interaction and collaboration. This paper presents the design and development of a prototype integrated environment for collaborative task planning and workflow development over a Grid. It allows the participants to design their joint workplan interactively and collaboratively in a high level graphical notation. The resulting workplan can be translated into Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) for testing and execution in the Grid and forms the basis for further refinement and collaboration. This collaborative Grid environment is a part of our larger Active Assistive Grid infrastructure. © 2010 IEEE.

Homayounfard, H, Kennedy, PJ & Braun, R 1970, 'NARGES: Prediction Model for Informed Routing in a Communications Network', Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Gold Coast, Australia, pp. 327-338.
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There is a dependency between packet-loss and the delay and jitter time-series derived from a telecommunication link. Multimedia applications such as Voice over IP (VoIP) are sensitive to loss and packet recovery is not a merely efficient solution with the increasing number of Internet users. Predicting packet-loss from network dynamics of past transmissions is crucial to inform the next generation of routers in making smart decisions. This paper proposes a hybrid data mining model for routing management in a communications network, called NARGES. The proposed model is designed and implemented for predicting packet-loss based on the forecasted delays and jitters. The model consists of two parts: a historical symbolic time-series approximation module, called HDAX, and a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP). It is validated with heterogeneous quality of service (QoS) datasets, namely delay, jitter and packet-loss time-series. The results show improved precision and quality of prediction compared to autoregressive moving average, ARMA.

Hughes, JM, Wai-Shing, M, Krimmer, D, Oliver, BGG, Armour, CL & Alkhouri, H 1970, 'DIFFERENTIAL RESPONSES OF CENTRAL AND PERIPHERAL LUNG FIBROBLASTS TO ACTIVATED MAST CELL PRODUCTS', RESPIROLOGY, WILEY-BLACKWELL, pp. 41-41.

Huy Hoang Nguyen, Tuan Nghia Nguyen, Clout, R, Gibson, A & Nguyen, HT 1970, 'Development of an assistive patient mobile system for hospital environments', 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 2491-2494.
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This paper presents an assistive patient mobile system for hospital environments, which focuses on transferring the patient without nursing help. The system is a combination of an advanced hospital bed and an autonomous navigating robot. This intelligent bed can track the robot and routinely navigates and communicates with the bed. The work centralizes in building a structure, hardware design and robot detection and tracking algorithms by using laser range finder. The assistive patient mobile system has been tested and the real experiments are shown with a high performance of reliability and practicality. The accuracy of the method proposed in this paper is 91% for the targeted testing object with the error rate of classification by 6%. Additionally, a comparison between our method and a related one is also described including the comparison of results.

Jadidi, MG, Miró, JV, Valencia, R, Andrade-Cetto, J & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Exploration using an information-based reaction-diffusion process', Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ACRA, Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, Australian Robtocis and Automation Association, Sydney, Australia, pp. 1-10.
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In this paper, a novel solution for autonomous robotic exploration is proposed. We model the distribution of information in an unknown environment as an unsteady diffiusion process, which can be an appropriate mathematical for- mulation and analogy for expanding, time- varying, and dynamic environments. This in- formation distribution map is the solution of the diffusion process partial diffierential equa- tion, and is regressed from sensor data as a Gaussian Process. Optimization of the pro- cess parameters leads to an optimal frontier map which describes regions of interest for fur- ther exploration. Since the presented approach considers a continuous model of the environ- ment, it can be used to plan smooth exploration paths exploiting the structural dependencies of the environment whilst handling sparse sensor measurements. The performance of the ap- proach is evaluated through simulation results in the well-known Freiburg and Cave maps.

Jaffar, J, Jin, GT, Unger, S, Black, JL, Oliver, BG & Burgess, JK 1970, 'THE EXTRACELLULAR MATRIX PROTEIN FIBULIN-1 IS INCREASED IN PATIENTS WITH IPF', RESPIROLOGY, WILEY-BLACKWELL, pp. 27-27.

Jaffar, J, Unger, S, Corte, T, Wolters, PJ, Richeldi, L, Cerri, S, Argraves, W, Oliver, BG, Black, JL & Burgess, JK 1970, 'Levels Of Fibulin-1 In The Lung And Serum Are Increased In Fibrotic Interstitial Lung Disease', AMERICAN JOURNAL OF RESPIRATORY AND CRITICAL CARE MEDICINE, AMER THORACIC SOC.

Jing Zhou, Aihuang Guo, Juan Xu, Celler, B & Su, S 1970, 'A reliable medium access mechanism based on priorities for wireless body sensor networks', 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 1855-1858.
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Wireless body sensor networks (WBSN) provide health related information for monitoring or professional analysis by collecting various signals of human body or environment information with sensors. But different data acquired in many applications have different transmission requirements. The dropping of life-critical messages could possibly create life threatening results if the network is not reliable. To improve the reliability this paper proposes a novel reliable medium access mechanism (RMAM) which guarantees transmission of data with different priorities in less delay and energy consumption. The mechanism is designed and evaluated by Castalia. The improved performances of latency, packets breakdown and energy consumption are analyzed and depicted with comparison.

Jing, T, Ramji, R, Warkiani, ME, Lim, CT, Han, J & Chen, CH 1970, 'High throughput single cancer cell encapsulation and self sorting for protease assay by using jetting microfluidics', 17th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences, MicroTAS 2013, pp. 1373-1375.
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In this work, a droplet microfluidic device integrated with droplet sorting function was presented for single cancer cell encapsulations and protease activity measurements. Individual cells were encapsulated into aqueous droplets at flow focusing junction under jetting conditions. Droplets with cells encapsulated inside are larger than other empty droplets, enabling effective droplet sorting through a deterministic lateral displacement micro-pillar design. All droplets with cells are therefore collected by an observation chamber for enzymatic activity monitoring. Here we focused on measuring matrix metalloproteinase (MMPs) secretion intensities at the individual cell level to obtain further insights into the malignant characteristics of these cells.

Kabakova, IV, Büttner, TFS & Eggleton, BJ 1970, 'Frequency combs formed via stimulated brillouin scattering in chalcogenide', Optics InfoBase Conference Papers.
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We exploit the strong Brillouin gain of chalcogenide glasses to generate frequency combs in a centimeter scale fiber devices. These can be applied to generation of ultra-high frequency picosecond pulse trains or complex reflection filters. © OSA 2013.

Kabakova, IV, Büttner, TFS & Eggleton, BJ 1970, 'Frequency Combs Formed via Stimulated Brillouin Scattering in Chalcogenide', Workshop on Specialty Optical Fibers and their Applications, Workshop on Specialty Optical Fibers and their Applications, OSA.
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Kabakova, IV, Pant, R, Luther-Davies, B, Choi, D-Y, Madden, SJ, Eggleton, BJ & Debbarma, S 1970, 'Narrow linewidth Brillouin laser based on chalcogenide chip', 39th European Conference and Exhibition on Optical Communication (ECOC 2013), 39th European Conference and Exhibition on Optical Communication (ECOC 2013), Institution of Engineering and Technology, pp. 411-413.
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We demonstrate a narrow linewidth Brillouin ring-cavity laser based on chalcogenide photonic chip. The gain medium is a 7 cm-long As2S 3 waveguide with a cross-section of 4μm x 850nm and the Brillouin gain coefficient of 0.7 10-9 m/W. The waveguides are equipped with vertical tapers so that the coupling loss is reduced. The lasing threshold is approximately PL=360 mW, almost 5 times lower than the calculated single-pass threshold P0=1.73 W in the same waveguide. The slope efficiency is found to be 30% and the linewidth of 100 kHz is measured using a self-heterodyne method.

Kalff, A, Kennedy, N, Smiley, A, Prince, HM, Roberts, AW, Bradstock, KF, De Abreu Lourenco, R & Spencer, A 1970, 'Thalidomide Consolidation Post Autologous Stem Cell Transplant (ASCT) For Multiple Myeloma (MM) Is Cost-Effective With Durable Survival Benefit At 5 Years Post Randomisation: Final Analysis Of The ALLG MM6 Study', Blood, American Society of Hematology, pp. 537-537.
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Abstract Background Studies investigating thalidomide consolidation/maintenance strategies post ASCT in patients with MM have consistently demonstrated improvement in duration of myeloma control, however not consistently shown improvements in overall survival. Cost effectiveness of thalidomide in the post-ASCT consolidation/maintenance setting in Australian clinical practice has not been previously established Aim To determine whether progression free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) advantages for thalidomide consolidation post ASCT at 3 years post randomisation in the ALLG MM6 study are durable at later follow-up. To compare overall response rate (ORR) to salvage therapy and incidence of second primary malignancy (SPM). To investigate the cost-effectiveness of thalidomide in the post-ASCT consolidation setting. Methods Phase III, randomised, multi-centre, open label study. 243 newly diagnosed MM patients 6 weeks following a single MEL200 ASCT as part of their first-line therapy were randomly assigned to receive indefinite prednisolone maintenance (50mg alternate days) alone (CA = 129 patients, 1 patient withdrew consent) or in combination with 12 months of thalidomide consolidation (100mg/d increasing to 200mg/d after 2/52) (TA = 114 patients). This was a post hoc analysis, PFS and OS were measured from date of randomization; these endpoints were compared using intention-to-treat analyses. Data for ORR to salvage therapy was collected retrospectively for 96 of 187 relapsed/progressed patients only (TA = 42/81 relapsed, CA = 54/109 relapsed), as was data for SPM (207/23...

Kitoko, V, Nguyen, TN & Nguyen, HT 1970, 'An Electro-Mechanical Contact Formulation for Dry/Wet Electrode-Scalp Interfaces in an EEG Headset', Biomedical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, ACTAPRESS, Innsbruck, Austria, pp. 199-206.
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The process of generating an initial prototype for a new dry electrode wearable EEG headset system design can be time and resource intensive. The ability to predict the mechanical and electrical characteristics of this recording device could lead to major cost savings in this process. Since the skin surface roughness has a deep impact on the decrease of brain electric contact conductance (or the increase of the contact impedance) when electrode with bristles contact scalp skin, the estimation of electric conductance across rough dry and wet boundaries is a challenging task in the designing optimization of the wearable EEG headset system. In this contribution, the contact mechanism to predict the electrical impedance of scalp skin pressed against the electrode is considered as the electrical connection by the mechanical contact. With this, we have extended the Pohrt and Popov model by including the effects of conductive gel. An experiment is developed and carried-out to validate the interfacial contact impedance model.

Leijdekkers, P, Gay, V & Wong, F 1970, 'CaptureMyEmotion: a Mobile App to Improve Emotion Learning for Autistic Children Using Sensors', 2013 IEEE 26TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON COMPUTER-BASED MEDICAL SYSTEMS (CBMS), IEEE International Symposium on Computer Based Medical Systems (CBMS), IEEE Computer Society, Porto, Portugal, pp. 381-384.
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Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is estimated to affect one in eighty-eight children and many mobile apps are available from Google Play or Apple store to help these children and their carer. Our research into apps for autistic children identified that none of the apps use the full potential offered by mobile technology and sensors to overcome one of autisticc children's main difficulty: the identification and expression of emotions. This paper describes a mobile apps called CaptureMyEmotion that enables autistic childrens to take photo, videos or sounds, and at the same time senses their arousal level using a wireless sensor. It also allows the child to comment on their emotion at the time of capture. The app has the potential to help autistic children improve their emotions lerating based on their own pictures, videos or sounds. It gives the carer a means to discuss the identification and expressionn of emotions.

Marsh, DJ, deFazio, A, Clarkson, A, Kennedy, C, Gard, GG & Gill, AJ 1970, 'Abstract A29: Loss of histone H2B monoubiquitination in ovarian cancer – new therapeutic targeting opportunities based on chromatin relaxation', Clinical Cancer Research, Abstracts: AACR Special Conference on Advances in Ovarian Cancer Research: From Concept to Clinic; September 18-21, 2013; Miami, FL, American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), pp. A29-A29.
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Abstract Post-translational modifications of histones are involved in diverse functions, including gene transcription and the DNA damage response. Targeting elements of the DNA damage response pathway is of increasing interest for the treatment of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). Monoubiquitination of histone H2B at lysine 120 (H2Bub1) is present at the coding region of highly expressed genes such as the gene encoding p21, CDKN1A, under conditions of DNA damage. Addition of this histone mark relies on the E3 ubiquitin ligase ring finger protein complex RNF20-RNF40 that we, and others, have previously shown interacts with members of the PAF1 complex necessary for RNA polymerase II-based transcriptional elongation. At 8.5 kDa, ubiquitin constitutes a bulky addition likely sufficient to interfere with condensed chromatin fibres, leading to a more open fibre conformation with greater accessibility for transcription factors and DNA repair proteins. H2Bub1 has been described as a master switch for mammalian gene regulation, with roles in histone cross-talk. Furthermore, H2Bub1 has recently been linked to the cellular DNA damage response, with the protein kinase ATM phosphorylating RNF20-RNF40 to induce H2Bub1 at sites of double strand breaks, leading to a more open chromatin structure for optimal repair. Global H2Bub1 loss has been reported in breast, colon, lung and parathyroid tumors1, and in some of these tumor types has been associated with advancing stage. We have undertaken immunohistochemical analyses of global H2Bub1 and total histone H2B using tissue microarrays of EOC sourced from the Australian Ovarian Cancer Study and the Gynaecological Oncology Biobank at Westmead. Expression of total histone H2B was high and consistent across all tumors, whereas over 70% of tumors showed total loss of global H2Bub1. Contrary to reports that global H2Bub1 levels decreased with advanced stage in breast cancer, we did...

Meng, Q & Kennedy, PJ 1970, 'Discovering influential authors in heterogeneous academic networks by a co-ranking method', Proceedings of the 22nd ACM international conference on Conference on information & knowledge management - CIKM '13, the 22nd ACM international conference, ACM Press, San Francisco, California, USA, pp. 1029-1036.
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Research in ranking networked entities is widely applicable to many problems such as optimizing search engines, building recommendation systems and discovering influential nodes in social networks. However, many famous ranking approaches like PageRank are limited to solving this problem in homogeneous networks and are not applicable to heterogeneous networks. Faced with this problem, we propose a co--ranking method to evaluate scientific publications and authors. This novel approach is a flexible framework based on a set of customized rules taking into account both topological features of networks and the included citations. The approach ranks authors and publications iteratively and uses the results of each round to reinforce the ranks of authors and publications. Unlike traditional approaches to assessing publication, which require a great number of citations, our method lowers this requirement. This co--ranking approach has been validated using data collected from DBLP and CiteSeer, and the results suggest that it is effective and efficient in ranking authors and publications based on limited numbers of citations in heterogeneous networks and that it has fast convergence.

Miro, JV, Black, R, Andonovski, B & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Development of a novel evidence-based automated powered mobility device competency assessment', 2013 IEEE 13th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), 2013 IEEE 13th International Conference on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR 2013), IEEE, Seattle, WA, USA, pp. 1-8.
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This paper describes the outcomes of a clinical study to assess the validity of a stand-alone sensor package and algorithms to aid the assessment by an occupational therapist (OT) whether a person has the capacity to safely and effectively operate a powered mobility device such as a wheelchair in their daily activities. The proposed solution consists of a suite of sensors capable of inferring navigational characteristics from the platform it is attached to (e.g. trajectories, map of surroundings, speeds, distance to doors, etc). Such information presents occupational therapists with the ability to augment their own observations and assessments with correlated, quantitative, evidence-based data acquired with the sensor array. Furthermore, OT reviews can take place at the therapist's discretion as the data from the trials is logged. Results from a clinical evaluation of the proposed approach, taking as reference the commonly-used Power-Mobility Indoor Driving Assessment (PIDA) assessment, were conducted at the premises of the Prince of Wales (PoW) Hospital in Sydney by four users, showing consistency with the OT scores, and setting the scene to a larger study with wider targeted participation. © 2013 IEEE.

Moir, L, Ng, HY, Oliver, B, Burgess, J, Krymskaya, V & Black, J 1970, 'Combination therapy may be beneficial for the treatment of lymphangioleiomyomatosis', EUROPEAN RESPIRATORY JOURNAL, EUROPEAN RESPIRATORY SOC JOURNALS LTD.

Musial, K, Gabrys, B & Buczko, M 1970, 'What kind of network are you?', Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, ASONAM '13: Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining 2013, ACM, Niagara Falls, CANADA, pp. 1366-1373.
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Naik, GR, Guo, Y & Nguyen, HT 1970, 'A new approach to improve the quality of biosensor signals using Fast Independent Component Analysis: Feasibility study using EMG recordings.', EMBC, International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 1927-1929.
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The proposed signal processing technique uses Fast Independent Component Analysis (ICA) algorithm to improve the quality of the original biosensors recordings, which can be used as valuable pre-processing technique such as cross talk removal, artefact reduction etc. Initially, the ill conditioned original surface Electromyography (sEMG) recordings were separated using ICA methods and later they were reconstructed using modified un-mixing matrix. The simulation results showed huge improvement of the original recorded signal after reconstruction. The proposed method has potential applications in various biomedical signal processing techniques.

Navarro, KF, Gay, V, Golliard, L, Johnston, B, Leijdekkers, P, Vaughan, E, Wang, X & Williams, M-A 1970, 'SocialCycle What Can a Mobile App Do To Encourage Cycling?', PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2013 38TH ANNUAL IEEE CONFERENCE ON LOCAL COMPUTER NETWORKS WORKSHOPS (LCN WORKSHOPS), IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks, IEEE Computer Society, Sydney Australia, pp. 24-30.
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Traffic congestion presents significant environmental, social and economic costs. Encouraging people to cycle and use other forms of alternate transportation is one important aspect of addressing these problems. However, many city councils face significant difficulties in educating citizens and encouraging them to form new habits around these alternate forms of transport. Mobile devices present a great opportunity to effect such positive behavior change. In this paper we discuss the results of a survey aimed at understanding how mobile devices can be used to encourage cycling and/or improve the cycling experience. We use the results of the survey to design and develop a mobile app called SocialCycle, which purpose is to encourage users to start cycling and to increase the number of trips that existing riders take by bicycle. © 2013 IEEE.

Neville, C, Mittelman, MS, Beattie, E, Scott, T, Hobday, J & Parker, D 1970, 'SUPPORTING CARERS OF PEOPLE WITH DEMENTIA: AN INNOVATIVE LEARNING PLATFORM FOR HEALTH WORKERS', GERONTOLOGIST, OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC, pp. 72-72.

Ng, H, Oliver, BG, Burgess, JK, Krymskaya, VP, Black, JL & Moir, LM 1970, 'Enhanced Migration Of Tsc2-Null Mouse Embryonic Fibroblasts Is Inhibited By Doxycycline Through A Rhoa-Gtpase Dependant Pathway', AMERICAN JOURNAL OF RESPIRATORY AND CRITICAL CARE MEDICINE, AMER THORACIC SOC.

Ng, HY, Oliver, BGG, Burgess, JK, Krymskaya, VP, Black, JL & Moir, LM 1970, 'DOXYCYCLINE INHIBITS RHOA-GTPASE ACTIVITY IN MOUSE EMBRYONIC FIBROBLASTS', RESPIROLOGY, WILEY-BLACKWELL, pp. 49-49.

Nguyen, AV, Nguyen, LB, Su, S & Nguyen, HT 1970, 'Shared control strategies for human - Machine interface in an intelligent wheelchair', 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 3638-3641.
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In this paper, we introduce a shared control mechanism for an intelligent wheelchair designed to support people with mobility impairments, who also have visual, upper limb, or cognitive impairment. The method is designed to allow users to be involved in the movement as much as possible, while still providing the assistance needed to achieve the goal safely. The data collected through URG-04LX and user interface are analyzed to determine whether the desired action is safe to perform. The system then decides to provide assistance or to allow the user input to control the wheelchair. The experiment results indicate that the method performs effectively with high satisfaction.

Nguyen, AV, Nguyen, LB, Su, S & Nguyen, HT 1970, 'The advancement of an obstacle avoidance bayesian neural network for an intelligent wheelchair', 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 3642-3645.
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In this paper, an advanced obstacle avoidance system is developed for an intelligent wheelchair designed to support people with mobility impairments who also have visual, upper limb, or cognitive impairment. To avoid obstacles, immediate environment information is continuously updated with range data sampled by an on-board laser range finder URG-04LX. Then, the data is transformed to find the relevant information to the navigating process before being presented to a trained obstacle avoidance neural network which is optimized under the supervision of a Bayesian framework to find its structure and weight values. The experiment results showed that this method allows the wheelchair to avoid collisions while simultaneously navigating through an unknown environment in real-time. More importantly, this new approach significantly enhances the performance of the system to pass narrow openings such as door passing.

Nguyen, JS, Su, SW, Nguyen, HT & IEEE 1970, 'Experimental Study on a Smart Wheelchair System Using a Combination of Stereoscopic and Spherical Vision', 2013 35TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY (EMBC), International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 4597-4600.
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This paper is concerned with the experimental study performance of a smart wheelchair system named TIM (Thought-controlled Intelligent Machine), which uses a unique camera configuration for vision. Included in this configuration are stereoscopic cameras for 3-Dimensional (3D) depth perception and mapping ahead of the wheelchair, and a spherical camera system for 360-degrees of monocular vision. The camera combination provides obstacle detection and mapping in unknown environments during real-time autonomous navigation of the wheelchair. With the integration of hands-free wheelchair control technology, designed as control methods for people with severe physical disability, the smart wheelchair system can assist the user with automated guidance during navigation. An experimental study on this system was conducted with a total of 10 participants, consisting of 8 able-bodied subjects and 2 tetraplegic (C-6 to C-7) subjects. The hands-free control technologies utilized for this testing were a head-movement controller (HMC) and a brain-computer interface (BCI). The results showed the assistance of TIM's automated guidance system had a statistically significant reduction effect (p-value = 0.000533) on the completion times of the obstacle course presented in the experimental study, as compared to the test runs conducted without the assistance of TIM. © 2013 IEEE.

Nguyen, L, Su, S & Nguyen, HT 1970, 'Effects of hyperglycemia on variability of RR, QT and corrected QT intervals in Type 1 diabetic patients', 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 1819-1822.
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In this study, we evaluated the effects of hyperglycemia on the variability of RR (HRV), QT interval variability (QTV) and corrected QT interval variability (QTcV) during hyperglycemic and non-hyperglycemic conditions in six Type 1 diabetic patients at nights. The aim of this study was to investigate the association of high blood glucose levels with autonomic modulation of heart rate and variation in ventricular repolarization. Blood glucose level (BGL) threshold for defining hyperglycemia state was set at 8.33 mmol/l. Variability of RR, QT and corrected QT intervals during hyperglycemic and non-hyperglycemic were quantified using time and frequency domain measures. Hypomon® device was used to monitor ECG signals and acquire RR and QT intervals in Type 1 diabetic patients overnight. The results indicated that time and frequency domain HRV variables were significantly decreased under hyperglycemic condition and inversely correlated with BGL. QTV parameters also reduced when BGL increased and time domain measures of QTV were inversely associated with BGL. Variability in QTc interval was much less than in the QT interval and demonstrated a lower SDNN and LF power. We concluded that certain components of HRV, time-domain measures of QTV and QTc but not QTcV are strongly correlated to high blood glucose levels and can be good markers to identify hyperglycemic events in T1DM.

Nguyen, LB, Nguyen, AV, Ling, SH, Nguyen, HT & IEEE 1970, 'Analyzing EEG Signals under Insulin-induced Hypoglycemia in Type 1 Diabetes Patients', 2013 35TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY (EMBC), International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 1980-1983.
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Hypoglycemia is dangerous and considered as a limiting factor of the glycemic control therapy for patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). Nocturnal hypoglycemia is especially feared because early warning symptoms are unclear during sleep so an episode of hypoglycemia may lead to a fatal effect on patients. The main objective of this paper is to explore the correlation between hypoglycemia and electroencephalography (EEG) signals. To do this, the EEG of five T1DM adolescents from an overnight insulin-induced study is analyzed by spectral analysis to extract four different parameters. We aim to explore the response of these parameters during the clamp study which includes three main phases of normal, hypoglycemia and recovery. We also look at data at the blood glucose level (BGL) of 3.3-3.9 mmol/l to find a threshold to distinguish between non-hypoglycemia and hypoglycemia states. The results show that extracted EEG parameters are highly correlated with patients' conditions during the study. It is also shown that at the BGL of 3.3 mmol/l, responses to hypoglycemia in EEG signals start to significantly occur.

Nguyen, LB, Nguyen, AV, Ling, SH, Nguyen, HT & IEEE 1970, 'Combining Genetic Algorithm and Levenberg-Marquardt Algorithm in Training Neural Network for Hypoglycemia Detection using EEG Signals', 2013 35TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY (EMBC), International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 5386-5389.
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Hypoglycemia is the most common but highly feared complication induced by the intensive insulin therapy in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). Nocturnal hypoglycemia is dangerous because sleep obscures early symptoms and potentially leads to severe episodes which can cause seizure, coma, or even death. It is shown that the hypoglycemia onset induces early changes in electroencephalography (EEG) signals which can be detected non-invasively. In our research, EEG signals from five T1DM patients during an overnight clamp study were measured and analyzed. By applying a method of feature extraction using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and classification using neural networks, we establish that hypoglycemia can be detected efficiently using EEG signals from only two channels. This paper demonstrates that by implementing a training process of combining genetic algorithm and Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm, the classification results are improved markedly up to 75% sensitivity and 60% specificity on a separate testing set.

Nield, BS, Martiniello-Wilks, R, Guzowski, R, Simpson, A & Nassif, N 1970, 'First use of Re:view – a tool to combine assessment tasks, marking criteria and graduate attributes', Australian Conference on Science and Mathematics Education, Canberra, ACT.

Norouzi, M, Miro, JV, Dissanayake, G & IEEE 1970, 'A Statistical Approach for Uncertain Stability Analysis of Mobile Robots', 2013 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION (ICRA), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, IEEE, Germany, pp. 191-196.
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Stability prediction is an important concern for mobile robots operating in rough environments. Having the capacity to predict areas of instability means pro-actively being able to plan safer traversable paths. The most influential tip-over stability measures are based on two criteria, the robot's center of mass (CM) and the supporting polygon (SP) defined by the convex area spanned between the ground contact-points. However, there is significant uncertainty associated with many parameters in the planning pipe-line: the actual robot kino-dynamic model, its localisation in the ground, and the terrain models, particularly in uneven terrain. This article proposes a statistical analysis of stability prediction to account for some of the uncertainties. This is accomplished using the force angle (FA) stability measure for a reconfigurable multi-tracked vehicle fitted with flippers, a manipulator arm and a sensor head. Probability density function (PDF) of contact-points, CM and the FA stability measure are numerically estimated, with simulation results performed on the open dynamics engine (ODE) simulator based on uncertain parameters. Two techniques are presented: a conventional Monte Carlo scheme, and a structured unscented transform (UT) which results in significant improvement in computational efficiency. Experimental results on maps obtained from a range camera fitted on the sensor head while the robot traverses over a ramp and a series of steps are presented that confirms the validity of the proposed probabilistic stability prediction method. © 2013 IEEE.

Norouzi, M, Valls Miro, J & Dissanayake, G 1970, 'Planning stable and efficient paths for articulated mobile robots on challenging terrains', Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ACRA, Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, Australasian Robotics and Automation Association, Sydney, Australia, pp. 1-10.
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An analytical strategy to generate stable paths for a reconfigurable vehicle while also meeting additional navigational objectives is herein proposed. The work is motivated by robots traversing over challenging terrains during search and rescue operations, such as those equipped with manipulator arms and/or flippers. The proposed solution looks at minimizing the length of the traversed path and the energy expenditure in changing postures, yet also accounts for additional constraints in terms of sensor visibility (i.e arm configurations close to those orthogonal to the horizontal global plane which can afford a wider sensor view) and traction (i.e. flipper angles that provide the largest trackterrain interaction area). The validity of the proposed planning approach is evaluated with a multitracked robot fitted with flippers and a range camera at the end of a manipulator arm while navigating over two challenging 3D terrain data sets: one in a mock-up urban search and rescue arena (USAR), and a second one from a publicly available quasi-outdoor rover testing facility (UTIAS).

Patel, M, Ek, CH, Kyriazis, N, Argyros, A, Miro, JV & Kragic, D 1970, 'Language for learning complex human-object interactions', 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), IEEE, Karlsruhe, Germany, pp. 4997-5002.
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In this paper we use a Hierarchical Hidden Markov Model (HHMM) to represent and learn complex activities/task performed by humans/robots in everyday life. Action primitives are used as a grammar to represent complex human behaviour and learn the interactions and behaviour of human/robots with different objects. The main contribution is the use of a probabilistic model capable of representing behaviours at multiple levels of abstraction to support the proposed hypothesis. The hierarchical nature of the model allows decomposition of the complex task into simple action primitives. The framework is evaluated with data collected for tasks of everyday importance performed by a human user. © 2013 IEEE.

Phillips, J, Heneka, N & Shaw, T 1970, 'EXPLORING OPIATE ERRORS IN THE SPECIALIST CANCER AND PALLIATIVE CARE SETTING: PERCEPTIONS OF KEY STAKEHOLDERS', ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF CLINICAL ONCOLOGY, WILEY-BLACKWELL, pp. 127-127.

Phillips, J, Heneka, N & Shaw, T 1970, 'MAPPING CANCER PAIN SCREENING, ASSESSMENT AND REASSESSMENT PRACTICES WITHIN ONE AUSTRALIAN HEALTH DISTRICT: RESULTS FROM A BASELINE CHART AUDIT', ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF CLINICAL ONCOLOGY, WILEY-BLACKWELL, pp. 126-127.

Phillips, J, Heneka, N, Hickman, L, Lam, L & Shaw, T 1970, 'IMPACT OF A QSTREAM ONLINE LEARNING MODULE ON PALLIATIVE CARE NURSES' PAIN ASSESSMENT COMPETENCIES AND PATIENTS' REPORTS OF PAIN: RESULTS FROM A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL PILOT STUDY', ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF CLINICAL ONCOLOGY, Wiley: 12 months, pp. 84-84.

Phillips, JL, Heneka, N, Hickman, L, Lam, L & Shaw, T 1970, 'Can a novel on-line pain assessment learning module improve specialist palliative care nurse’s pain assessment knowledge?: Results from a pilot Spaced Education initiative', 16th CNSA Winter Congress, Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, Queensland.

Phillips, JL, Heneka, N, Hickman, L, Lam, L & Shaw, T 1970, 'Spaced Education in the Specialist Palliative Care Setting: exploring it’s potential to improve pain management', 4th Biennial Palliative Care Nurses Australia Conference, Melbourne.

Phillips, JL, Heneka, N, Hickman, L, Lam, L & Shaw, T 1970, 'The impact of a novel, online learning module on specialist palliative care nurses’ pain assessment knowledge and practices', European Journal of Palliative Care, European Palliative Care Association Conference, Prague.

Pradhan, S & Gay, VC 1970, 'Towards a New Trust Model for Health Social Networks', The 8th International Conference on Internet and Web Application adn Services, International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services, IARIA, Rome, Italy, pp. 52-57.
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More specifid purpose driven social networking sites have emerged since social networking sites have gained popularity by bringing people with shared interests together to interact. In health care, they are referred as Health Social Networks (HSNs). Given the sensitive nature of health information, trust ist he fundamental for them. The emergence of pervasive and ubiquitous computing environment and overwhelming information available online is helping the health social sites gain popularityat a fast pace. Health social networkers aare willing to create, share or retrieve trustworthy health or lifestyle related information. Therefore, it is essential that trust is stipulated and scrutinised to understand how the users perceive healthcare, how they decide to interact with HSNs. This paper analyses external factors such as perceived information quality, perceived system quality, perceived reputation and perceived trust signs which impact the trust model for HSNs. In particular, 'perceived reputation' based on the factor 'who has recommended the site' is given an emphasis on this paper. It hightlights that popularity of social networking sites is changing the way trust models have been devined in the past. This is because social relationship created via social networking sites are also impacting on choosing the HSNs and how users are sharing health information on these platforms

Pradhan, S, Gay, V & Nepal, S 1970, 'Social networking and dental care: State of the art and analysis of the impact on dentists, dental practices and their patients', 26th Bled eConference - eInnovations: Challenges and Impacts for Individuals, Organizations and Society, Proceedings, Bled eConference, University of Maribor, Bled, Slovenia, pp. 178-189.
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Health Social networking sites offering search, reviews and recommendation are gaining popularity. This paper reviews the most popular social networking sites related to dental care. Social networks such as DrOogle and Yelp enable their users to review and rate their dentists and dental practices. Such information is then used to rank and recommend dentists or dental practices to new users/patients. This paper compares the dental care social networking sites in terms of their features and criteria supported for search, reviews and recommendations of dentists or dental practices. Mismatches between features and criteria among different dental care reviews sites are identified, which may cause inconsistency in the recommendations in the dental care. Therefore, this paper proposes a new framework for dynamic dental care recommendation system which takes both local (personalised) and global (crowdsourced) trust into account. It analyses the impact of current social networks on dentists, dental practices and their patients. Finally, it identifies the open issues and challenges that need to be addressed to design a trustworthy recommendation system for both the dental professionals and their patients.

RaNKin, NM, Shaw, T, Mcgregor, D, Butow, P, Young, J, White, K, Phillips, J, Pearson, S, Simes, J, O'Connell, R, Stone, E & Barnes, D 1970, 'IDENTIFYING EVIDENCE-PRACTICE GAPS IN LUNG CANCER AND PRIORITY SETTING WITH CLINICIANS IN NSW, AUSTRALIA', JOURNAL OF THORACIC ONCOLOGY, LIPPINCOTT WILLIAMS & WILKINS, pp. S699-S700.

San, PP, Ling, SH, Nguyen, HT & IEEE 1970, 'Combinational Neural Logic System and Its Industrial Application on Hypoglycemia Monitoring System', PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2013 IEEE 8TH CONFERENCE ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS AND APPLICATIONS (ICIEA), IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications, IEEE, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 947-952.
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In this paper, a combinational neural logic network (NLN) with the neural-Logic-AND, -OR and -NOT gates is applied on the development of non-invasive hypoglycemia monitoring system. It is an alarm system which measured physiological parameters of electrocardiogram (ECG) signal and determine the onset of hypoglycemia by use of proposed NLN. Due to different nature of application, conventional neural networks (NNs) with common structure may not always guarantee the optimal solution. Based on knowledge of application, the proposed NLN is designed systematically in order to incorporate the characteristics of application into the structure of proposed network. The parameter of the proposed NLN will be trained by hybrid particle swarm optimization with wavelet mutation (HPSOWM). The proposed NLN will be practically analyzed using real data sets collected from 15 children (569 data sets) with Type 1 diabetes at the Department of Health, Government of Western Australia. By using the proposed method, the detection performance is enhanced. Compared with other conventional NNs, the proposed NLN gives better performance in terms of sensitivity and specificity.

Savkin, AV, Wang, C, Baranzadeh, A, Xi, Z & Nguyen, HT 1970, 'A method for decentralized formation building for unicycle-like mobile robots', 2013 9th Asian Control Conference (ASCC), 2013 9th Asian Control Conference (ASCC), IEEE, Istanbul, Turkey.
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The paper presents a method for decentralized flocking and global formation building for a network of unicy-cles described by the standard kinematics equations with hard constraints on the vehicles linear and angular velocities. We propose decentralized motion coordination control algorithms for the robots so that they collectively move in a desired geometric pattern from any initial position. There are no predefined leaders in the group and only local information is required for the control. The effectiveness of the proposed control algorithms is illustrated via computer simulations. © 2013 IEEE.

Savkin, AV, Xi, Z & Nguyen, HT 1970, 'An algorithm of decentralized encircling coverage and termination of a moving deformable region by mobile robotic sensor/actuator networks', 2013 9th Asian Control Conference (ASCC), 2013 9th Asian Control Conference (ASCC), IEEE, Istanbul, Turkey.
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The paper introduces the problems of encircling coverage and termination of a moving a deformable planar region by a mobile sensor/actuator network. We propose a decentralized randomized algorithm for self-deployment of a network of mobile robotic sensors/actuators for these problems. In the encircling coverage problem, the aim is to deploy sensors around a bounded connected region so that any point of a certain neighbourhood of the region is sensed by at least one mobile robotic sensor. In the termination problem, the aim is to terminate a moving region that may represent an oil spill or a hazardous chemical field. In this case, the moving robots are equipped with not only sensors but with actuators releasing neutralizing chemical so that the shape of the polluted region is controlled. The proposed algorithm is based only on information about the closest neighbours of each sensor. The moving region is of an arbitrary shape and not known to the sensors a priori. We give mathematically rigorous proofs of asymptotic optimality and convergence with probability 1 of the proposed randomized algorithm. © 2013 IEEE.

Su, SW, Savkin, A, Celler, BG & Nguyen, HT 1970, 'A new unconditional stability criterion and its application on decentralized integral controllability analysis', Chinese Control Conference, CCC, Chinese Control Conference, IEEE, Xi'an, China, pp. 119-122.
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Decentralized integral control, such as multi-loop PI/PID control, is one of the most popular control strategies used in practice. An important issue associated with this strategy is the analysis of Decentralized Integral Controllability (DIC). Campo and Morari showed that for a process, if its steady state gain matrix is not critically D-stable, its DIC can be determined by using its steady state gain matrix only. This paper investigates decentralized integral control with a special focus on the DIC analysis of processes whose steady state gain matrices are critically D-stable. Firstly, this paper proposes a new unconditional stability criterion by using singular perturbation theory and eigenvalue sensitivity analysis, and shows that DIC analysis of such processes can be simplified by using unconditional stability analysis. Then, we presented a multi-loop PI control design method, which gives an explicit low bound of the proportional coefficient to achieve decentralized unconditional stability for 3 × 3 processes. © 2013 TCCT, CAA.

Tafavogh, S, Navarro, KF, Catchpoole, DR & Kennedy, PJ 1970, 'Segmenting Neuroblastoma Tumor Images and Splitting Overlapping Cells Using Shortest Paths between Cell Contour Convex Regions.', AIME, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine in Europe, Springer, Murcia, Spain, pp. 171-175.
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Neuroblastoma is one of the most fatal paediatric cancers. One of the major prognostic factors for neuroblastoma tumour is the total number of neuroblastic cells. In this paper, we develop a fully automated system for counting the total number of neuroblastic cells within the images derived from Hematoxylin and Eosin stained histological slides by considering the overlapping cells. We finally propose a novel multi-stage cell counting algorithm, in which cellular regions are extracted using an adaptive thresholding technique. Overlapping and single cells are discriminated using morphological differences. We propose a novel cell splitting algorithm to split overlapping cells into single cells using the shortest path between contours of convex regions. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.

Truong, BCQ, Tuan, HD & Nguyen, HT 1970, 'Near-infrared parameters extraction: A potential method to detect skin cancer', 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), IEEE, Osaka, Japan, pp. 33-36.
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The wavelength-dependent absorption coefficients can be used to analyse optical properties of human skin. Existing absorption models for narrow ranges in the visible and near infrared are insufficient to simultaneously incorporate the spectral contrast produced by differences in chromophores, water and lipid content of skin tissue into skin cancer detection. In the broad range up to 1600 nm, recent analysis approaches for absorption spectra do not consistently provide significant differences between healthy and cancerous skins. We propose an absorption model to fit the absorption coefficient spectra of skin samples over the range from 400 nm to 1600 nm and an advanced algorithm to find the optimal estimation. The extracted parameters of this model are analysed by a statistical t-test. The test results demonstrate the significant differences between all pairs of tumour-normal skin. Therefore, our approach has strong potential for early skin cancer detection using near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS).

Wang, C, Matveev, AS, Savkin, AV, Clout, R & Nguyen, HT 1970, 'A real-time obstacle avoidance strategy for safe autonomous navigation of intelligent hospital beds in dynamic uncertain environments', Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ACRA, Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, ARAA, Sydney, Australia.
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We present a reactive navigation algorithm for safe operation of hospital beds in dynamic environments. The proposed navigation is implementation efficient in the sense that it does not require any measurements from the velocities, shapes, dimensions or orientations of the obstacles. Furthermore, it is applicable for a variety of real world scenario where the natures and the motions of the obstacles are not known, and the shapes of the obstacles may be time-varying and deforming. The only information available for computation of control signals is the minimum distance from the hospital bed to the closest obstacle. The mathematically rigorous analysis of the proposed navigation algorithm is presented and its performance is demonstrated by the computer simulations and real world experiments with a hospital bed control system (Flexbed).

Wang, C, Matveev, AS, Savkin, AV, Nguyen, TN & Nguyen, HT 1970, 'A collision avoidance strategy for safe autonomous navigation of an intelligent electric-powered wheelchair in dynamic uncertain environments with moving obstacles', 2013 European Control Conference (ECC), 2013 European Control Conference (ECC), IEEE, Zurich Switzerland, pp. 4382-4387.
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We present a reactive navigation algorithm that guarantees the safety of automated intelligent wheelchairs for people with mobility impairments in dynamic uncertain environments. The proposed navigation algorithm restricts neither the natures nor the motions of the obstacles, the shapes of the obstacles can be time-varying (deforming obstacles). Furthermore, the proposed navigation algorithm does not require prior information about the positions and velocities of the obstacles to accomplish obstacle avoidance. Simulation and experimental results show that intelligent electric-powered wheelchairs are able to successfully avoid collisions with moving obstacles such as pedestrians or vehicles under the guidance of the proposed algorithm and reach the target. © 2013 EUCA.

Warkiani, ME, Khoo, BL, Tan, DSW, Bhagat, AAS, Lim, WT, Han, J & Lim, CT 1970, 'Circulating tumor cell (CTC) enrichment: Ultra high throughput processing of clinically relevant blood volumes using a multiplexed spiral biochip', 17th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences, MicroTAS 2013, pp. 1156-1158.
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Detection and characterization of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from minimally invasive 'liquid biopsy' provides critical insights into tumor biology and is critical for companion diagnostics and care. Here, we present a multiplexed spiral biochip for ultra-high throughput isolation of CTCs using inertial microfluidics to realize a single step label-free enrichment process. This device is capable of efficient cell separation of clinically relevant blood volumes in a short period of time (7.5 mL blood in 35 min). CTCs were successfully detected and isolated from 100% (50/50) blood samples collected from patients with advanced stage metastatic breast and lung cancer. They were identified under immunofluorescence assays (cytokeratin positive), as well as molecular probes (EGFR or HER2 positive). CTC recovery rate ranges from 3-1535 CTCs/mL and obtained under high purity (1 CTC for every 30-100 white blood cells detected). Retrieved cells are unlabelled and hence more viable for propagation, drug development and other downstream analysis.

Watts, AL, Singh, N, Poulton, CG, Magi, E, Kabakova, IV, Hudson, D & Eggleton, BJ 1970, 'Characterization of axial quantization in WGM chalcogenide microfiber resonators', Optics InfoBase Conference Papers.
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We experimentally and numerically characterize the axial quantization in whispering gallery mode (WGM) microfiber resonators exploiting a positive photoinduced index perturbation. Experimental results are in good agreement with numerical calculations. © OSA 2013.

Watts, AL, Singh, N, Poulton, CG, Magi, E, Kabakova, IV, Hudson, D & Eggleton, BJ 1970, 'Characterization of axial quantization in WGM chalcogenide microfiber resonators', Frontiers in Optics 2013, Frontiers in Optics, OSA.
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We experimentally and numerically characterize the axial quantization in whispering gallery mode (WGM) microfiber resonators exploiting a positive photoinduced index perturbation. Experimental results are in good agreement with numerical calculations. © OSA 2013.

Wei, W, Li, J, Cao, L, Sun, J, Liu, C & Li, M 1970, 'Optimal Allocation of High Dimensional Assets through Canonical Vines', Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Gold Coast, Australia, pp. 366-377.
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Abstract. The widely used mean-variance criteria is actually not the optimal solution for asset allocation as the joint distribution of asset returns are distributed in asymmetric ways rather than in the assumed normal distribution. It is a computationally challenging task to model the asymmetries and skewness of joint distributions of returns in high dimensional space due to their own complicated structural complexities. This paper proposes to use a new form of canonical vine to produce the complex joint distribution of asset returns. Then, we use the utility function of Constant Relative Risk Aversion to determine the optimal allocation of the assets. The importance of using the asymmetries information is assessed by comparing the performance of a portfolio based on the mean-variance criteria and that of a portfolio based on the new canonical vine. The results show that the investors using the forecasts of these asymmetries can make better portfolio decisions than those who ignore the asymmetries information. © Springer-Verlag 2013.

Wijerathna, B, Vidal-Calleja, T, Kodagoda, S, Zhang, Q & Valls Miro, J 1970, 'Multiple defect interpretation based on Gaussian processes for MFL technology', SPIE Proceedings, SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring, SPIE, San Diego, USA, pp. 1-12.
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Magnetic Flux Leakage (MFL) technology has been used in non-destructive testing for more than three decades. There have been several publications in detecting and sizing defects on metal pipes using machine learning techniques. Most of these literature focus on isolated defects, which is far from the real scenario. This study is towards the generalization of interpretation of the leakage flux in the presence of multiple defects based on simulation models, together with data-driven inference methodologies, such as Gaussian Process (GP) models. A MFL device has been simulated using both COMSOL Multiphysics and ANSYS software followed by prototyping the same device for experimental validations. Multiple defects with different geometrical configurations were introduced on a cast iron pipe sample and both radial and axial components of the leakage field have been measured. It was observed that both axial and radial components differ with different defect configurations. We propose to use GP to solve the inverse model problem by capturing such behaviors, i.e. to recover the profille of a cluster of defects from the measurements of a MFL device. The data was used to learn the non-parametric GP model with squared exponential covariance function and automatic relevance determination to solve this regression problem. Extensive quantitative and qualitative evaluations are presented using simulated and experimental data that validate the success of the proposed non-parametric methodology for interpreting the profiling of clusters of defects with MFL technology. © 2013 SPIE.

Wong, GY, Leung, FHF, Ling, S-H & IEEE 1970, 'A Novel Evolutionary Preprocessing Method Based on Over-sampling and Under-sampling for Imbalanced Datasets', 39TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE IEEE INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS SOCIETY (IECON 2013), Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, IEEE, Vienna, Austria, pp. 2354-2359.
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Imbalanced datasets are commonly encountered in real-world classification problems. However, many machine learning algorithms are originally designed for well-balanced datasets. Re-sampling has become an important step to preprocess imbalanced dataset. It aims at balancing the datasets by increasing the sample size of the smaller class or decreasing the sample size of the larger class, which are known as over-sampling and under-sampling respectively. In this paper, a novel sampling strategy based on both over-sampling and under-sampling is proposed, in which the new samples of the smaller class are created by the Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE). The improvement of the datasets is done by the evolutionary computational method of CHC that works on both the minority class and majority class samples. The result is a hybrid data preprocessing method that combines both over-sampling and under-sampling techniques to re-sample datasets. The evaluation is done by applying the learning algorithm C4.5 to obtain a classification model from the re-sampled datasets. Experimental results reported that the proposed approach can decrease the over-sampling rate about 50% with only around 3% discrepancy on the accuracy. © 2013 IEEE.

Yee, J, Davis, GM, Beith, JM, Wilcken, N, Hui, R, Harrison, ML, Currow, D, Emery, J, Phillips, J, Martin, A, Segelov, E & Kilbreath, SL 1970, 'Physical activity and fitness in women with metastatic breast cancer.', JOURNAL OF CLINICAL ONCOLOGY, Breast Cancer Symposium, AMER SOC CLINICAL ONCOLOGY, San Francisco, CA.
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Yu, Z, Kabakova, IV, Fonjallaz, PY, Tarasenko, O, Margulis, W & De Sterke, CM 1970, 'Dynamic frequency tuning in a fiber grating cavity', Bragg Gratings, Photosensitivity, and Poling in Glass Waveguides, BGPP 2012.
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Dynamic frequency tuning of trapped light in a phase-shifted fiber grating cavity is demonstrated by high-voltage electrical pulses. Y-polarization light is found to be sensitive to refractive index changes caused by a transverse pressure-wave. © 2012 OCA.

Yu, Z, Rugeland, P, Kabakova, IV, Fonjallaz, PY, Tarasenko, O, De Sterke, CM & Margulis, W 1970, 'Dynamic wavelength switching in a fiber grating cavity', CLEO: Science and Innovations, CLEO_SI 2013.
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Dynamic wavelength switching of a phase-shifted fiber grating cavity with electrical pulses is studied experimentally and numerically. Simulations accurately describe observations. The effect of acoustic oscillations and fiber Bragg grating cavity refilling explains the results. © 2013 Optical Society of America.

Yu, Z, Rugeland, P, Kabakova, IV, Fonjallaz, P-Y, Tarasenko, O, de Sterke, CM & Margulis, W 1970, 'Dynamic Wavelength Switching in a Fiber Grating Cavity', CLEO: 2013, CLEO: Science and Innovations, OSA, San Jose, CA.
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Yuwono, M, Su, SW, Guo, Y, Li, J, West, S & Wall, J 1970, 'Automatic Feature Selection using Multiobjective Cluster Optimization for Fault Detection in a Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning System', 2013 FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, MODELLING AND SIMULATION (AIMS 2013), International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Modelling and Simulation, IEEE, Kota Kinibalu, Malaysia, pp. 171-176.
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The performance of Automatic Fault Detection and Diagnostics (AFDD) algorithms to identify faults in complex building Heating Ventilation and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) systems depend on the appropriateness of features. This paper proposes a knowledge-discovery approach for discovering characteristic features using Multi-Objective Clustering Rapid Centroid Estimation (MOC-RCE). The proposed method has been tested on experimental fault data from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and AirConditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) research project 1312-RP Winter 2008 dataset. An experiment involving 100 clustering trials shows that using the proposed method, on average 15 characteristic features have been selected from the original 320 features. Sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, precision, and F-score values of greater than 95% are achieved with the provided features.

Yuwono, M, Su, SW, Moulton, BD, Nguyen, HT & IEEE 1970, 'Unsupervised segmentation of heel-strike IMU data using rapid cluster estimation of wavelet features', 2013 35TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY (EMBC), International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, IEEE, OSaka, Japan, pp. 953-956.
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When undertaking gait-analysis, one of the most important factors to consider is heel-strike (HS). Signals from a waist worn Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) provides sufficient accelerometric and gyroscopic information for estimating gait parameter and identifying HS events. In this paper we propose a novel adaptive, unsupervised, and parameter-free identification method for detection of HS events during gait episodes. Our proposed method allows the device to learn and adapt to the profile of the user without the need of supervision. The algorithm is completely parameter-free and requires no prior fine tuning. Autocorrelation features (ACF) of both anteroposterior acceleration (aAP) and medio-lateral acceleration (aML) are used to determine cadence episodes. The Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) features of signal peaks during cadence are extracted and clustered using Swarm Rapid Centroid Estimation (Swarm RCE). Left HS (LHS), Right HS (RHS), and movement artifacts are clustered based on intra-cluster correlation. Initial pilot testing of the system on 8 subjects show promising results up to 84.3%9.2% and 86.7%6.9% average accuracy with 86.8%9.2% and 88.9%7.1% average precision for the segmentation of LHS and RHS respectively.

Ajuyah, PA, Hutvagner, GH & Tran, NT 2013, 'miRNAs promote migration in oral cancer by targeting PDCD4'.

Howlett, RJ, Gabrys, B, Musial-Gabrys, K & Roach, J 2013, 'Innovation through Knowledge Transfer 2012', Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
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Kandasamy, J, Sounthararajah, D, Sivabalan, P, Chanan, A, Vigneswaran, S & Sivapalan, M 2013, 'Socio-hydrologic drivers of the Pendulum Swing between agriculture development and environmental health: a case study from Murrumbidgee River Basin, Australia', Copernicus GmbH.
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Phillips, JL, Shaw, T, Heneka, N, Hickman, L & Lam, L 2013, 'Specialist palliative care nurses pain assessment capabilities: results from a baseline survey'.