ARC Research Network for Understanding and Managing Australian Biodiversity. Biodiversity research is strong in Australia but is highly uncoordinated and, along with recent major breakthroughs in both theory and techniques, has highlighted the need for a Network to properly integrate research and focus it on the most appropriate scale. This Network aims to bring together a diverse spectrum of highly experienced and early career researchers to pool their ideas and expertise to allow them to deter ....ARC Research Network for Understanding and Managing Australian Biodiversity. Biodiversity research is strong in Australia but is highly uncoordinated and, along with recent major breakthroughs in both theory and techniques, has highlighted the need for a Network to properly integrate research and focus it on the most appropriate scale. This Network aims to bring together a diverse spectrum of highly experienced and early career researchers to pool their ideas and expertise to allow them to determine how best to describe Australia's current biodiversity and the biological and environmental history leading up to the present. A major outcome will be the ability to predict the impacts of environmental change on biodiversity to assist management decisions across Australia, with lessons of global importance.Read moreRead less
Estimating per capita use and release of chemicals by wastewater analysis. This project aims to systematically collect and analyse wastewater to assess human exposure to chemicals including drugs, pharmaceuticals, lifestyle chemicals and environmental pollutants. By combining temporal sampling from key sewage treatment plants with comprehensive nationwide sampling over the week of the 2016 census day, the project expects to estimate the per-capita human exposure to chemicals in the Australian po ....Estimating per capita use and release of chemicals by wastewater analysis. This project aims to systematically collect and analyse wastewater to assess human exposure to chemicals including drugs, pharmaceuticals, lifestyle chemicals and environmental pollutants. By combining temporal sampling from key sewage treatment plants with comprehensive nationwide sampling over the week of the 2016 census day, the project expects to estimate the per-capita human exposure to chemicals in the Australian population. Accurate and objective per-capita based consumption and release estimates for a wide range of chemicals is intended to provide a baseline against which to measure changes in our chemosphere.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE100100211
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$650,000.00
Summary
The Big Australian Speech Corpus: An audio-visual speech corpus of Australian English. Contemporary speech science and technology are driven by the availability of large speech corpora. While audio databases exist for languages spoken in America, Europe and Japan, there is currently no large auditory-visual database of spoken language, and certainly not one for Australian English. Here we will establish the Big Australian Speech Corpus, which will support a speech science research and developmen ....The Big Australian Speech Corpus: An audio-visual speech corpus of Australian English. Contemporary speech science and technology are driven by the availability of large speech corpora. While audio databases exist for languages spoken in America, Europe and Japan, there is currently no large auditory-visual database of spoken language, and certainly not one for Australian English. Here we will establish the Big Australian Speech Corpus, which will support a speech science research and development using Australian English and facilitate the development of Australian speech technology applications from automatic speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis used in taxi and other ordering services, to hearing prostheses and talking head aids for learning-impaired children, and a range of security and forensic applications.Read moreRead less
Utilising innovative fishing technology to address key questions on the biology of Antarctic krill. Antarctic krill are an important species in the Southern Ocean supporting most of the Antarctic birds and mammals. A sustainable krill fishery is developing with krill products used in aquaculture and increasingly for human consumption. A new omega 3 krill oil industry has emerged and is rapidly expanding. The aim of the project is to predict the factors governing oil levels and the biochemical co ....Utilising innovative fishing technology to address key questions on the biology of Antarctic krill. Antarctic krill are an important species in the Southern Ocean supporting most of the Antarctic birds and mammals. A sustainable krill fishery is developing with krill products used in aquaculture and increasingly for human consumption. A new omega 3 krill oil industry has emerged and is rapidly expanding. The aim of the project is to predict the factors governing oil levels and the biochemical composition in krill which will help us understand growth, reproduction and recruitment. The research aims to also assess the possible effects of climate change on krill. Outcomes of this research aim to be used to manage the expanding krill fishery.Read moreRead less
Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment And Facilities - Grant ID: LE100100141
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$420,000.00
Summary
High-resolution ITRAX XRF core scanning facility for global change research. This facility will enable researchers to obtain high-resolution geochemical profiles in the study of environmental change and climate variability. It will provide archive data on the variation of density and chemical element composition along sediment and soil cores, rock cores, wood samples, speleothems and corals. These archives contain important information such as human activity, climate variability, water quality c ....High-resolution ITRAX XRF core scanning facility for global change research. This facility will enable researchers to obtain high-resolution geochemical profiles in the study of environmental change and climate variability. It will provide archive data on the variation of density and chemical element composition along sediment and soil cores, rock cores, wood samples, speleothems and corals. These archives contain important information such as human activity, climate variability, water quality changes, pollution histories, recent geomorphological change, land-use change, introduction of invasive species and the occurrence of bushfires. A better understanding of the occurrence and timing of these major environmental issues is of national and regional importance.Read moreRead less