Estimating And Alleviating The Impacts Of Age-Related Sensory Decline
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$323,767.00
Summary
Sensory loss and dementia disproportionately affect older adults, often co-occur, and are the two leading contributors to disability burden among older Australians. This research will investigate the consequences that hearing and vision loss have for older adult health and wellbeing, informing strategies to reduce the disability burden of age-related sensory loss. These impacts include cognitive decline and dementia, mental health, quality of life, disability and independent living.
TELEPHONE COUNSELLING FOR MAINTENANCE OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY, WEIGHT LOSS And GLYCAEMIC CONTROL IN TYPE 2 DIABETES
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$1,285,894.00
Summary
Regular exercise, a healthy diet and weight loss are key to managing type 2 diabetes, yet these are major challenges for most people with diabetes. This study will evaluate the impact of a telephone counselling program to assist people with type 2 diabetes to exercise, eat a healthy diet and lose weight, with the goal of helping them to sustain these changes over the long-term. It is expected that these lifestyle changes will also result in improved blood glucose control and quality of life.
The vision we rely on every day to read and recognise faces depends upon the health of the central portion of our retina, the macula. Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness in Australia and the western world. Researchers at the Australian National University are collaborating to bring a new test for AMD severity to the market within 3 years. The objective is to provide doctors with a rapid, cost-effective tool to help them manage treatment.
Learning clique potentials for high-order graphical models. This project aims to develop algorithms for computers to automatically learn about visual scenes and objects from images. Using our algorithms, computers will be able to find objects and describe scenes in single images or large image collections such as online photo albums.
Foundations of Vision Based Control of Robotic Vehicles. Automated and partially automated robotic vehicles are an emerging technology in society. The safety and performance of such systems depends crucially on their sensing and control algorithms. Vision sensing is one of the few sensor modalities that has the potential to adequately represent the complexity of a real world environment. By providing simple and effective vision based control algorithms this project develops Frontier Technologi ....Foundations of Vision Based Control of Robotic Vehicles. Automated and partially automated robotic vehicles are an emerging technology in society. The safety and performance of such systems depends crucially on their sensing and control algorithms. Vision sensing is one of the few sensor modalities that has the potential to adequately represent the complexity of a real world environment. By providing simple and effective vision based control algorithms this project develops Frontier Technologies for Building and Transforming Australian Industries by enabling a wide range of robotic vehicle applications, including aerial, submersible, and wheeled vehicles.Read moreRead less
Autonomous Functions for Smart Cars. The aim of this project is to develop autonomous functions for smart cars, such as lane departure warning, driver fatigue warning, and automatic lane following. Every year 70,000 people are killed in road accidents, 95% of which can be attributed to driver error. The potential outcomes of this project therefore significant. Many of the theoretical methods required for this project have been developed by our group. However, further theoretical refinements fo ....Autonomous Functions for Smart Cars. The aim of this project is to develop autonomous functions for smart cars, such as lane departure warning, driver fatigue warning, and automatic lane following. Every year 70,000 people are killed in road accidents, 95% of which can be attributed to driver error. The potential outcomes of this project therefore significant. Many of the theoretical methods required for this project have been developed by our group. However, further theoretical refinements followed by experimental verification is necessary. For smart cars to be accepted, the systems must be demonstrated to be reliable and to operate in a wide range of conditions.Read moreRead less
Suction pipette measurements of mammalian rod photoreceptor recovery following intense bleaching exposures. The aim of this project is to discover the events and processes that prevent retinal photoreceptors from recovering instantaneously following the cessation of exposure to extremely bright illumination. Recordings will be made from single rod photoreceptors cells isolated from the mammalian retina. The work will uncover the relative roles of the 'photoproducts' created when rhodopsin abso ....Suction pipette measurements of mammalian rod photoreceptor recovery following intense bleaching exposures. The aim of this project is to discover the events and processes that prevent retinal photoreceptors from recovering instantaneously following the cessation of exposure to extremely bright illumination. Recordings will be made from single rod photoreceptors cells isolated from the mammalian retina. The work will uncover the relative roles of the 'photoproducts' created when rhodopsin absorbs light: e.g. intermediates such as metarhodopsin and opsin. The molecular knowledge obtained will help us to understand why it is that the visual system recovers so slowly after the eye has experienced very intense light.Read moreRead less
The first stage of vision: transduction and adaptation in retinal photoreceptors. The project aims to provide a detailed understanding of the molecular steps involved in the first stage of vision - the conversion of light into a neural signal in the rod and cone photoreceptors of the retina. The significance of this is that it will explain the initial events that enable us to see, and will help explain the deficits that occur when the process fails. The outcome will be a comprehensive understand ....The first stage of vision: transduction and adaptation in retinal photoreceptors. The project aims to provide a detailed understanding of the molecular steps involved in the first stage of vision - the conversion of light into a neural signal in the rod and cone photoreceptors of the retina. The significance of this is that it will explain the initial events that enable us to see, and will help explain the deficits that occur when the process fails. The outcome will be a comprehensive understanding of how our photoreceptors respond with extreme sensitivity, yet great rapidity, and over an enormous range of light intensities, thus endowing us with our remarkable sense of vision.Read moreRead less
Added depth: automated high level image interpretation. Humans are very good at understanding the world through imagery, but computers lack this fundamental capacity because they lack experience of what they might see. This project will provide this experience by combining the large volumes of imagery on the Internet with three dimensional information generated by humans for other purposes.