Research impact tag: Culture
Over the last hundred years there have been huge advances in medical care for pregnancy and childbirth such as: assisted reproductive technologies, blood tests for hormone levels, ultrasound assessments of pregnancy and neonatal intensive care units. However, we are not seeing similar advances to treat issues relating to lactation.
Water is a key driver for all our activities; transporting life giving solutions into the environment and into our bodies. It plays a critical role in making our cities and towns more liveable and our industries viable. Staggeringly, we have access to only 3% of the world’s total water. Of that, 1% falls in the wrong place, 1% falls at the wrong time and only the remaining 1% is accessible for use. By using a multidisciplinary approach, Professor Anas Ghadouani and his team have been dedicated to helping communities close the loop on the water cycle at a local level.
Using ultrasound, Dr Donna Geddes, Senior Research Fellow at the School of Molecular Sciences, UWA is producing new knowledge on human lactation. Innovative products which, have been developed as a result of her research, have already empowered mothers as well as clinicians with tools to provide babies more breast milk and enhance breastfeeding and ultimately improving the long term health of babies worldwide.
Food security in Timor-Leste became a major issue following its independence in 2002. Having poor farming practices and increasing concerns over food security, by 2015 Timor-Leste was ranked fourth on the Global Hunger Index. During the hungry season which spans 3 – 4 months per year, farmers and their families experience severe food shortages, poverty and chronic hunger, leading to malnutrition and stunted growth in children. The UWA Seeds of Life program has impacted the lives of East Timorese by reducing the hungry season and improving food and nutrition.
Despite hardships endured, the Australian Aboriginal community remain one of the oldest surviving cultures on the planet. From the mid-19th century, photographs of Aboriginal people were taken for scientific purposes and were eventually archived in museums around the world. This culturally significant research reconnects families and country by bringing these lost ancestors home.
This team from UWA are exploring the Dampier Archipelago (Murujuga). What they have uncovered so far is astounding, and pushes back the known occupation of this place to before the Last Ice Age. It also contains an estimated one million engraved motifs of great scientific and cultural significance, an important part of understanding the human journey in Australia’s north-west. The Dampier Archipelago (Murujuga) is a National Heritage Listed place, contains heavy industry and is the traditional home of several Aboriginal groups.
Led by Dr Julian Bolleter, Landscape Architect and Urban Designer at the Australian Urban Design Research Centre (AUDRC), UWA, ‘Take Me to the River’ has attracted national interest. The research aims to provide the people of Perth with a historical record of the ideas around Perth Water by exhuming old schemes and changing ideas of what Perth is, was, and could become.
Led by Peter Veth, Professor of Archaeology, the UWA team (the first to be granted permission to conduct a long-term heritage research project on Barrow Island) set out to establish how Australia was settled by Aboriginal people and what life was like. Celebrated amongst their findings was some of the earliest evidence of Aboriginal occupation of Australia (dating to approximately 50,000 years ago) anunique climatic records of Northern Australia and the discovery of some of the earliest human use of maritime resources east of Wallacea.