The Molecular Basis For Target Selection In The Central Nervous System By Sensory Axons
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$251,325.00
Summary
The normal function of the brain depends upon the specific connections that nerve cells make with each other. These connections are set up in the developing embryo when nerve cells send out long processes - axons - which grow towards their synaptic targets. How axons select their correct targets from amongst the millions of alternatives in the developing brain is unknown. A better understanding of this problem will help us develop therapies to assist regenerating axons re-establish correct conne ....The normal function of the brain depends upon the specific connections that nerve cells make with each other. These connections are set up in the developing embryo when nerve cells send out long processes - axons - which grow towards their synaptic targets. How axons select their correct targets from amongst the millions of alternatives in the developing brain is unknown. A better understanding of this problem will help us develop therapies to assist regenerating axons re-establish correct connections following injury to the brain or spinal cord. We propose to use a simple model system, the embryo of the fruitfly Drosophila, to find molecules that are involved in this process of neuron target recognition - ' axon targeting' molecules - and to study how they work. Drosophila can be genetically manipulated in ways not possible in higher animals. Furthermore the simplicity of its nervous system means that we can determine the connections of individual nerve cells with a high degree of precision. In the first part of our project, we will examine Drosophila embryos that carry mutations in genes suspected to code for targeting molecules. We will stain individual sensory nerve cells in these embryos with dyes to reveal the anatomy of their axons in the brain. If sensory axons terminate abnormally in the brain of a given mutant, the affected gene is likely to code for an axon targeting molecule. In the second part of the study, we will investigate the functions of candidate axon targeting molecules using two approaches. Firstly, we will seek to determine whether the molecule acts in the sensory axons or in their target cells. Secondly, we will use time-lapse microscopy to study how the homing behaviour of the sensory axons is affected in mutant embryos. The results of these studies will lead us closer to an answer to the question: How do axons recognise their specific target cells in the brain?Read moreRead less
Physical, Lifestyle And Psychosocial Determinants Of Spinal Pain Development In Adolescents
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$682,800.00
Summary
This project aims to understand the development of back and neck pain in adolescence. By the age of 16 around half of all adolescents have suffered back pain and one third have suffered neck pain. For many adolescents this pain is disabling and over a third of sufferers miss school, miss recreation and seek medical help. The current understanding of back and neck pain in adolescence is quite limited - restricting the effectiveness of initiatives to prevent adolescents having to suffer spinal pai ....This project aims to understand the development of back and neck pain in adolescence. By the age of 16 around half of all adolescents have suffered back pain and one third have suffered neck pain. For many adolescents this pain is disabling and over a third of sufferers miss school, miss recreation and seek medical help. The current understanding of back and neck pain in adolescence is quite limited - restricting the effectiveness of initiatives to prevent adolescents having to suffer spinal pain and of treatment of those adolescents unlucky enough to have an episode. Better understanding and interventions for adolescent spinal pain will also have longer term implications by reducing adult spinal pain. Four out of 5 adults will experience spinal pain. In the USA treating adult back pain is the 4th largest health care cost. Many adults with chronic back pain had their first episode during adolescence. A better understanding of spinal pain in adolescence may help prevent it developing into a lifelong disability. We will collect information from 2,000 adolescents on their experience of back and neck pain and on potential physical, lifestyle and psychosocial risk factors. We believe factors such as their posture, muscle capacity, TV and computer use, mental health and social situation all combine to influence whether a person develops back or neck pain. The project is unique as it will not only collect a broad range of information during adolescence, but will also make use of a large database of health, developmental and psychosocial information already collected from these children since birth. With a better understanding of the development of spinal pain we will be able to develop guidelines to help prevent these problems. We will also be able to develop better treatment plans for sub-groups of adolescents with a particular combination of risk factors. Together these initiatives will assist in understanding and breaking the pathway to chronic spinal pain.Read moreRead less
Surviving the data deluge: Scalable feature extraction, discrimination and analysis for computer vision tasks using compressed sensed data. Strategically, our pioneering solutions besides being technically and socially significant, open fresh options for sensor-agnostic data analysis. The technical significance lies through the creation of new technologies for the critical national and global security markets, currently overwhelmed by data. The social significance arises from our solutions being ....Surviving the data deluge: Scalable feature extraction, discrimination and analysis for computer vision tasks using compressed sensed data. Strategically, our pioneering solutions besides being technically and socially significant, open fresh options for sensor-agnostic data analysis. The technical significance lies through the creation of new technologies for the critical national and global security markets, currently overwhelmed by data. The social significance arises from our solutions being privacy preserving, providing new avenues for the production of novel, socially acceptable products for aged care monitoring. Our methods spearhead future advancement in diverse disciplines due to the wide applicability of the methods to other sensor networks (Square Kilometre Array) and data types, providing new frameworks for addressing crucial problems of data management. Read moreRead less
Robust speech recognition in realistic hostile environments. Australia leads the world in the adoption of speech recognition technology but sadly lags in the development of the fundamental advances in the area. This research will help propel Australia to the forefront of new innovations in speech recognition technology and contributions to fundamental science. Our project will provide an excellent training ground for graduate students and researchers, with the real possibility of significant com ....Robust speech recognition in realistic hostile environments. Australia leads the world in the adoption of speech recognition technology but sadly lags in the development of the fundamental advances in the area. This research will help propel Australia to the forefront of new innovations in speech recognition technology and contributions to fundamental science. Our project will provide an excellent training ground for graduate students and researchers, with the real possibility of significant commercial benefit to the nation. The deployment of our system in the community will greatly enhance the defence and police forces ability for surveillance and security, and will provide new assistive aids to improve the quality of life and safety for the elderly and disabled.Read moreRead less
Smart technologies for people with vision impairment and blindness. Our technological solutions for early detection of disease provide the best opportunity for effective treatment, and provision of strategies capable of assisting individuals. It aims to empower primary care providers and will lead to more effective screening methods and improved efficiencies in redirecting resources towards those whose eye disease is treatable. It will further improve and enable access to specialist eye care fo ....Smart technologies for people with vision impairment and blindness. Our technological solutions for early detection of disease provide the best opportunity for effective treatment, and provision of strategies capable of assisting individuals. It aims to empower primary care providers and will lead to more effective screening methods and improved efficiencies in redirecting resources towards those whose eye disease is treatable. It will further improve and enable access to specialist eye care for those living in rural, regional and remote locations. The assistive technologies for the blind will greatly enhance the quality of life of the visually impaired, enhancing their quality of life and removing several risk factors. The net annual savings to the Government from these projects would be considerable.Read moreRead less
Learning to Pinpoint Emerging Software Vulnerabilities. This project aims to develop learning-based software vulnerability detection techniques to improve the reliability and security of modern software systems. The existing techniques relying on conventional yet rigid software analysis and testing techniques are ineffective and/or inefficient when detecting a wide variety of emerging software vulnerabilities. The outcomes of this project will be a deep-learning-based detection approach and an ....Learning to Pinpoint Emerging Software Vulnerabilities. This project aims to develop learning-based software vulnerability detection techniques to improve the reliability and security of modern software systems. The existing techniques relying on conventional yet rigid software analysis and testing techniques are ineffective and/or inefficient when detecting a wide variety of emerging software vulnerabilities. The outcomes of this project will be a deep-learning-based detection approach and an open-source tool that can capture precision correlations between deep code features and diverse vulnerabilities to pinpoint emerging vulnerabilities without the need for bug specifications. Significant benefits include greatly improved quality, reliability and security for modern software systems.Read moreRead less
INTELLIGENT SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS FOR THE TRANSPORT INDUSTRY. Addressing core issues in Research Priority 4, Safeguarding Australia, we will develop frontier technologies for intelligent surveillance of public spaces, particularly in the transportation sector. The key outcomes of this project will be the use of a variety of novel sensors, in combination with new algorithms for analysing and responding to critical patterns of sensor data. Our collaboration with two high-profile industrial partners ....INTELLIGENT SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS FOR THE TRANSPORT INDUSTRY. Addressing core issues in Research Priority 4, Safeguarding Australia, we will develop frontier technologies for intelligent surveillance of public spaces, particularly in the transportation sector. The key outcomes of this project will be the use of a variety of novel sensors, in combination with new algorithms for analysing and responding to critical patterns of sensor data. Our collaboration with two high-profile industrial partners with complementary capabilities, (DTI (specialising in public transport), and iOmniscient (specialising in surveillance technologies)), will ensure a high probability of success in the development of these technologies, and accelerate their introduction into the Australian and global markets.Read moreRead less
Intelligent Security in Urban Spaces. Successful completion of this work will contribute greatly to Safeguarding Australia, Priority Area 4, and lead to further commercial exploitation on the national and international stages. In particular, we are responding to increasing demand from our partners for sophisticated surveillance systems for infrastructure and public transport. The adoption of these technologies by DTI, with international contracts for video surveillance, positions Australia to ga ....Intelligent Security in Urban Spaces. Successful completion of this work will contribute greatly to Safeguarding Australia, Priority Area 4, and lead to further commercial exploitation on the national and international stages. In particular, we are responding to increasing demand from our partners for sophisticated surveillance systems for infrastructure and public transport. The adoption of these technologies by DTI, with international contracts for video surveillance, positions Australia to gain the leading edge in this niche industry. Additionally we deliver solutions to our end user partners, PTA and WA Police, to facilitate enhanced community security. We will also build research capacity for surveillance technologies through advanced training of research staff.Read moreRead less
Taming media for the masses: Computational frameworks for intelligent digital media capture, management, and sharing. The core issues tackled in this project are learning, recognition and application of semantics in multimedia data and the context of its creation and use - a foundational issue in pattern recognition with many applications. The project is part of the Institute for Multi-sensor Processing and Content Analysis whose aim is to tackle technical issues in large scale pattern recogniti ....Taming media for the masses: Computational frameworks for intelligent digital media capture, management, and sharing. The core issues tackled in this project are learning, recognition and application of semantics in multimedia data and the context of its creation and use - a foundational issue in pattern recognition with many applications. The project is part of the Institute for Multi-sensor Processing and Content Analysis whose aim is to tackle technical issues in large scale pattern recognition. By developing scalable and robust techniques to extract information from large scale multi-modal data, the applications include large scale surveillance systems from multi-modal data (e.g. airport security, smart homes for the aged), context-aware devices, and the next generation of media creation and repurposing tools - a fast-growing sector of the economy.Read moreRead less
Automated texture selection and classification methods for detection of osteoarthritis in knee radiographs. In Australia there are 1-2 million OA sufferers, a condition that costs approximately $9 billion annually. This project will address an important problem of early detection and monitoring of OA and this remains in line with the National Research Priority 2. Potential outcomes of the project will result in better diagnosis and treatment of OA, reduced discomfort to the individual and saving ....Automated texture selection and classification methods for detection of osteoarthritis in knee radiographs. In Australia there are 1-2 million OA sufferers, a condition that costs approximately $9 billion annually. This project will address an important problem of early detection and monitoring of OA and this remains in line with the National Research Priority 2. Potential outcomes of the project will result in better diagnosis and treatment of OA, reduced discomfort to the individual and saving to the national economy. This project will improve existing activity and rehabilitation programs such as exercise of lower limbs and it will help in developing diets for healthy people and OA sufferers.Read moreRead less