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All Ages Lung Function in Australia's First Nations Peoples (Old ID 27534)
Chronic respiratory diseases (CRD) are over-represented in Australian Indigenous Peoples. CRD cause structural changes that compromise lung function. These functional changes are measured using Spirometry. Ethnic specific reference values should be used when performing spirometry, however, these are missing for Australian Indigenous Peoples. This lack limits the ability to diagnose CRD, especially in the early-stages, and to accurately assess disease severity and response to treatment. This project will measure lung function in apparently healthy Indigenous Australians and determine spirometry reference values for these groups. Ethnic specific reference values will improve the accuracy of CRD diagnosis and assessment using spirometry.
OPTIMISATION OF THE PROCESSING PLANT FOR GOLD EXTRACTION. (Old ID 27575)
This project with Minjar Gold involves thesis students solving industry related problems. Therefore, the funding provided by Minjar Gold in mainly to cover analysis that will be performed at the AAC. The main objective is to optimise the production of gold covering 3 main aspects: (1) exploring alternatives to slurry dewatering; (2) investigating pump capacity within Processing Plant and suggest alternatives; (3) investigating and modelling the average slurry residence time in the adsorption tanks in different scenarios.
Mapping South East Arnhem Land Sea Country - Intertidal (Old ID 27885)
Understanding the location and extent of ecological and cultural values in Sea Country is necessary to support the aspirations of South East Arnhem Land (SEAL) people and further their connection with Sea Country through sustainable resource management. The proposed SEAL Sea Country IPA has high biodiversity values, including extensive habitat for large foraging populations of dugong and turtles which depend on healthy seagrass. Historical seagrass data, dugong aerial surveys (2019), recent surveys in adjacent Marra Sea Country (2021) and the Yanyuwa IPA (2021-22) indicate that extensive areas of seagrass habitat also occur in the SEAL IPA. However, there are no recent maps of seagrass habitat in the IPA. This project will assist the Aboriginal Traditional Owners to protect, maintain and sustainably manage Aboriginal land/ and sea country within the proposed SEAL Marine Indigenous Protected Area by providing base line bilingual maps, GIS and report of seagrass and other benthic habitats.
Seagrass surveys in the lower Gulf of Carpentaria, Queensland (Old ID 29024)
The proposed work is for marine habitat mapping in the in the Thuwathu/Bujimulla Indigenous Protected Area (TBIPA). Benthic habitats for this area have not been surveyed for more than 15 years and so it is considered a high priority for a comprehensive survey. This will expand the scope (i.e. coverage) of planned benthic habitat surveys currently funded by Parks Australia for the Gulf of Carpentaria Marine Park (GOCMP) into the adjacent IPA. Therefore, the proposed project is supported by Parks Australia who have confirmed that this work is outside the scope of their funded work, but complements and enhances their work program given the importance of this area for marine turtle and dugong foraging and to the Lardil, Yangkaal, Kaiadilt and Gangalida Peoples. Funding will be used to procure a helicopter for surveying intertidal areas, and for staff time to undertake the surveys, process the data and deliver the outcomes including a ‘baseline’ map on which rangers can continue to monitor benthic habitat condition and to improve their negotiation on resource condition and use with other stakeholders in the region.
Investigating the pitfalls of bee hotels (Old ID 30046)
Concern for bees among the public has led to the augmentation of habitat for bees including the addition of bee hotels. Bee hotels are often claimed to increase bee diversity and abundance. However, they artificially aggregate nesting sites above densities naturally available for bees, which could lead to increased prevalence of pathogens, viruses and parasitism, and higher predation rates. Properly controlled experiments to investigate these threats are limited, and none have been conducted in the tropics. This project investigates whether the density of nesting spaces in bee hotels affects predation rates and pathogen and parasite prevalence in cavity nesting bees.
Situation analysis and vulnerability and adaptation assessments for all municipalities of Timor Leste including development of climate and health risk profiles of each municipality and publication of scientific papers (Old ID 31141)
The objective is to develop the national and subnational vulnerability and adaptation assessments for Timor Leste including the development of Climate and Health risk profiles. These will inform the government on approaches and strategies to reduce the impact of climate change on the health of its people, and contribute towards the body of knowledge of approaches to address climate change and health in small island developing states globally.
Geological characteristics, genesis and ore controlling factors of the Tick Hill Au deposit, Dajarra District, NW Queensland, Australia (Old ID 24727)
The project aims to: 1. investigate and document the geological and geochemical features of the Tick Hill gold deposit, including understanding the structural evolution lmagmaticl history, alteration style andl mineralisation; 2. classify the deposit and improve the understanding of the genesis; 3. identify the factors controlling the locationh and formation of the deposits such as structural architecture, controls of host rocks and intrusions; and 4. discover lmineralogical, textural and geochemical zoning patterns that could gbe used as vectors to ore. A geological model will be developedfor use in exploration targeting.
Evaluating Next Generation Live Attenuated TB Vaccine Candidates (Old ID 27396)
A key strategic goal of the BMGF Global Heatlh TB team is to prevent M. tuberculosis infection and/or TB disease through vaccination to decrease the morbidity public health burden of this epidemic. One pillar of this strategy is to accelerate development of a robust pipeline of 'next generation' candidates. This investment will evaluate novel vaccine candidates that belong to the important platform of live, attenuated mycobacterial strains. Using a head-to-head comparison ion a standardized mouse model of TB, this invesment aims to contribute to that pipeline by identifying a lead live, attenuated mycobacterial candidate(s) for further evaluation and potential development. This head-to-head comparison includes our own vaccine candidate covered by JCU IP.
A machine-learning training library of intertidal seagrass ecosystems to support Australia's National Ocean Accounts. (Old ID 27414)
The Australian Government, as a member of the High Level Panel for Sustainable Ocean Economy (Ocean Panel), has committed to a range of priority actions, including the development of a complete sequence of national ocean accounts. Seagrass extent and annual change is an integral part of the accounts. Training data on intertidal seagrass extent is needed to support the development of a national intertidal seagrass extent map, which will be a key deliverable of the National Ocean Accounts. This project will therefore conduct the necessary image interpretation tasks to deliver a machine-learning ready training set of Australia’s intertidal seagrass ecosystems.
The ecological and evolutionary legacy of extreme climatic events for food web resilience (Old ID 27891)
There is growing evidence that extreme events such as heatwaves will have the most immediate and harmful effects on plants and animals as the climate changes. This is particularly true for species-rich tropical ecosystems, where recent heatwaves have already caused severe population crashes for some species. We therefore need to understand what happens when whole communities of interacting species are subjected to a heatwave or other extreme climatic event. To understand fully how and why ecological communities are altered by extreme events, we need to carry out experiments simulating extreme conditions and follow the consequences over multiple generations. In most contexts such experiments would be practically or ethically impossible. However, we can design experiments that do exactly this by focusing on a special study system: food webs of Drosophila fruit flies and the parasitic wasps that consume them in the rainforests of tropical Queensland.