Regulation Of Cortical Excitability By GABAB Receptors
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$340,976.00
Summary
In the brain electrical activity either excites or inhibits nerve cells. Excitation is balanced by inhibition. If these two processes become unbalanced we can become unconscious or go into seizure. These extreme conditions emphasize the importance of the balance between excitation and inhibition in the brain. While there has been much work on the role of excitation, less is known about inhibition. In this project proposal we will investigate how inhibition regulates excitation in the cortex.
M-Health: Efficacy And Cost-effectiveness Of A Smartphone App To Reduce Unmet Needs And Distress In People With Cancer (ACE): A Randomized Controlled Trial
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$394,294.00
Summary
Patients experience significant levels of both psychological distress and unmet needs during cancer treatment. This study will trial an innovative approach to streamlining best practice in cancer management through the use of Smartphone technology. Given the reach of Smartphones, should this trial prove successful, it will provide the basis for additional modules supporting specific areas of care such as management of chemotherapy side effects and treatment compliance.
Brain Plasticity Following Changes In Sensory Input
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$312,576.00
Summary
The research proposed here will investigate the mechanisms our brains use to adapt to changes in sensory input, as occurs following blindness, deafness, nerve damage or loss of a limb. The information gathered will help develop treatments for diseases associated with sensory loss, as well as those associated with deficits in our ability to learn and remember, such as Alzheimer's disease.
Making Meta-learning Generalised . This project aims to develop novel machine learning techniques, termed generalised meta-learning, to make machines better utilise past experience to solve new tasks with few data. It expects to reduce the undesirable dependence of current machine learning on labelled data and significantly expand its application scope. Expected outcomes of the project consist of new theoretical results on meta-learning and a set of innovative algorithms that can support the bui ....Making Meta-learning Generalised . This project aims to develop novel machine learning techniques, termed generalised meta-learning, to make machines better utilise past experience to solve new tasks with few data. It expects to reduce the undesirable dependence of current machine learning on labelled data and significantly expand its application scope. Expected outcomes of the project consist of new theoretical results on meta-learning and a set of innovative algorithms that can support the building of next generation of computer vision systems to work in open and dynamic environments. This should be able to produce solid benefits to the science, society, and economy of Australian via the application of these advanced intelligent systems.Read moreRead less
Exploring Scientific Information with Advanced New Search Tools. The rapidly growth of scientific literature in many fields makes finding information a challenge. For example, biologists produce over 1 million articles each year. Existing search tools have only limited success satisfying the demands of scientists' queries. This project will deliver intelligent e-research assistants capable of answering scientists' questions directly rather than returning a list of documents. This will allow scie ....Exploring Scientific Information with Advanced New Search Tools. The rapidly growth of scientific literature in many fields makes finding information a challenge. For example, biologists produce over 1 million articles each year. Existing search tools have only limited success satisfying the demands of scientists' queries. This project will deliver intelligent e-research assistants capable of answering scientists' questions directly rather than returning a list of documents. This will allow scientists to more efficiently exploit the literature enabling them to be more innovative and productive. This technology is applicable where ever finding facts in large volumes of text is critical, e.g. analysing surveillance material. Advanced search tools will have considerable academic and industrial impact.Read moreRead less
Parsing the web: Exploiting redundancy to understand language. This project will automatically learn the grammatical structure of language by exploiting redundancy of facts, like 'Mozart was born in 1756', from a trillion words of web text. These facts will be used to understand more complex sentences. This will enable smart information use of text with grammatical information for large-scale information access for the first time. This project will strengthen Australia's world-class expertise, ....Parsing the web: Exploiting redundancy to understand language. This project will automatically learn the grammatical structure of language by exploiting redundancy of facts, like 'Mozart was born in 1756', from a trillion words of web text. These facts will be used to understand more complex sentences. This will enable smart information use of text with grammatical information for large-scale information access for the first time. This project will strengthen Australia's world-class expertise, providing opportunities for future researchers in this area. Our expanded C&C tools and trillion word corpus will be used by academics, companies and governments, in Australia and internationally, aiding applications including financial surveillance and fraud detection.
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Network Intrusion Detection via Machine Learning. Computer security is an increasingly important, yet complex task. It
takes significant skills to configure systems properly such that they
are safe from malicious attacks.
The proposed project aims at designing automatic systems which are
able to adapt to an existing network configuration and which detect
novel and unusual events. For this purpose we will use modern machine
learning techniques, mainly based on kernels. In particular, rec ....Network Intrusion Detection via Machine Learning. Computer security is an increasingly important, yet complex task. It
takes significant skills to configure systems properly such that they
are safe from malicious attacks.
The proposed project aims at designing automatic systems which are
able to adapt to an existing network configuration and which detect
novel and unusual events. For this purpose we will use modern machine
learning techniques, mainly based on kernels. In particular, recently
developed algorithms to estimate the support of a distribution and
detect rare events will be employed in this context.
The project is in cooperation with Dr. Ralf Herbrich (Microsoft
Research, Cambridge).
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Ask the Net: Intelligent Natural Language Learning. Natural Language Processing (NLP) has progressed rapidly using corpus-based machine learning techniques. However, corpus development costs cause a ?data bottleneck? which prevents systems from reaching human competence. This project overcomes the difficulties of creating huge corpora by employing the innate language ability of untrained contributors. We will show how to automatically select and present examples, containing informative lingui ....Ask the Net: Intelligent Natural Language Learning. Natural Language Processing (NLP) has progressed rapidly using corpus-based machine learning techniques. However, corpus development costs cause a ?data bottleneck? which prevents systems from reaching human competence. This project overcomes the difficulties of creating huge corpora by employing the innate language ability of untrained contributors. We will show how to automatically select and present examples, containing informative linguistic structures, which are most beneficial for training NLP systems. These examples will be analysed by many contributors whose responses will be automatically collated into corpora. Huge corpora are vital to emerging language technologies for managing textual information in the global economy.
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Computer Vision Optimization Problems Using Machine Learning. Computer Vision concerns itself with understanding the world through the analysis of images obtained by a video or still camera. An important application is tracking of people in video and modelling their movements. This has evident applications in security, sport and entertainment. By enabling the computer to capture the motion of a subject in a video, we may detect suspicious activity in security, analyze the motion (golf-swing, ....Computer Vision Optimization Problems Using Machine Learning. Computer Vision concerns itself with understanding the world through the analysis of images obtained by a video or still camera. An important application is tracking of people in video and modelling their movements. This has evident applications in security, sport and entertainment. By enabling the computer to capture the motion of a subject in a video, we may detect suspicious activity in security, analyze the motion (golf-swing, diving style) of a sports-person, or capture the motion of an actor for animation or game applications. Development of a reliable technology requires new optimization techniques, which will place Australia at the forefront of the application of such research, commercially and for the public benefit.Read moreRead less
The DietAdvice Website A New Innovation For Dietitians In Clinical Practice.
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$140,975.00
Summary
Due to the growing incidence of obesity within Australia, use of computer technology may be a method of targeting these people by increasing access to dietary services. Currently available dietary software in the Australian context only allows analysis of nutrient information. Thus when a dietitian sees a patient they must manually translate food intake to nutrient information, a largely time consuming exercise. DietAdvice is a website that was developed for people to enter in their own food int ....Due to the growing incidence of obesity within Australia, use of computer technology may be a method of targeting these people by increasing access to dietary services. Currently available dietary software in the Australian context only allows analysis of nutrient information. Thus when a dietitian sees a patient they must manually translate food intake to nutrient information, a largely time consuming exercise. DietAdvice is a website that was developed for people to enter in their own food intakes. The food information is sent to a dietitian who develops individualised dietary advice for them. A pilot study of the website has already found it to be feasible in the primary healthcare setting. Tested for 12 months the website was used by 224 patients from GP practices in the Illawarra region of NSW. Approximately 73% of patients were overweight and patients with a high BMI were 1.88 times more likely to use the website in the comfort of their home. Further research about the website however was needed. The research to follow on from the pilot study will aim to refine the DietAdvice website, leading towards its commercialisation for dietitians in clinical practice. The research will be broken into 3 phases. Phase 1 will involve a usability test of the website, assessing the underlying algorithms and testing it with dietitians in private practice. Phase 2 will see volunteers using the website on multiple occasions after being given pre-weighed amounts of food to eat. This will determine how reliable and accurate the information is; and phase 3 will evaluate whether the website is cost effective and if it increases accessibility of health services especially in rural areas. By confirming these attributes there will be a sound basis to commercialise the product.Read moreRead less