Professor Len Harrison wins JDRF Australia Lifetime Achievement Award

Professor Len Harrison wins JDRF Australia 

Lifetime Achievement Award

Diabetes researcher Professor Len Harrison has been awarded the 2013 JDRF Australia Lifetime Research Achievement Award for his research to improve treatments for people with diabetes, or prevent its development.

Professor Len Harrison wins JDRF Australia Lifetime Achievement Award

The JDRF Australia Lifetime Research Achievement Award recognises the long-standing nature and high quality of contributions of the very best Australian researchers who have steered global directions of type 1 diabetes research.

Professor Harrison, who is a researcher at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and clinician at The Royal Melbourne Hospital, was presented with the award last night at the International Congress of the Immunology of Diabetes Society in Lorne, Victoria, Australia. Professor Harrison said he felt very privileged to be recognised in this way.

"As we know type 1 diabetes is increasing in Australia, and I'm grateful for community support, and the support of the JDRF, to continue to find new and better treatments for people with diabetes, and develop ways of preventing or delaying the onset of diabetes," he said. "Medical research is a team effort and I would like to acknowledge everyone involved in the research that has earned this generous award."

Head of JDRF Australia's Research Development Dr Dorota Pawlak said Professor Harrison's leadership and guidance has played a vital role in recognising Australia as a major global hub for type 1 diabetes research.

"Professor Harrison's career has spanned exceptional achievements in understanding the mechanisms of immune tolerance, advancing antigen specific therapies and defining paradigms for factors that contribute towards the development of type 1 diabetes," Dr Pawlak said.

"His lifelong work to understand autoimmunity in type 1 diabetes and pioneering work in the prevention of the disease has significantly accelerated research progress towards JDRF's mission to cure type 1 diabetes and its complications. It has provided great hope for better therapies and treatments for people living with type 1 diabetes every day."

Professor Harrison's major research interests are immune regulation and immune therapies, applied to type 1 diabetes. His achievements are documented in 500 clinical and basic research publications and several patents. His awards for research include C.J. Martin Fellowship, Wellcome Australia (Glaxo) Medal, Susman Prize (Royal Australian College of Physicians), Kellion Medal (Australian Diabetes Society) and Rumbough Award for Scientific Excellence (JDRF).

News Release Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-12/waeh-plh121113.php

Australian Competitions Website Launches in New Zealand

Australian Competitions Website Launches in New Zealand

Australian & NZ Businesses Choose Online Marketing Over Traditional Advertising

(PRWEB) December 05, 2013

Successful Australian competitions website,http://www.Competitions.com.au , has launched a New Zealand platform, http://www.Competitions.co.nz . The move into the New Zealand market comes off the back of the website’s major success in Australia after launching there just last year.

Australian Competitions Website Launches in New Zealand

In Australia, the site has grown rapidly with brands and businesses of all sizes embracing the online marketing concept, with many choosing to assign advertising spend to strategic web-based competitions as a way to boost audience engagement and traffic to their respective websites. Competitions.com.au and now, Competitions.co.nz, catalogue a range of companies who are offering competitions and interactive online activities open to the general public, making it easy for users to peruse the offerings of a wide number of companies on one platform. These companies promote their competitions on the platform to reach the broad, captive audience of new and regular visitors to the Competitions.com.au site.

Competitions.com.au staff work with their clients to develop strategic campaigns based around competitions which they run throughout the year. Co-Founder, Alessandro Chisari, says the website offers new businesses insights into various niche demographics’ online behaviours, which helps these businesses move into untapped markets and target new audiences.

Competitions.com.au had previously purchased the NZ domain name planning to launch there when the time was right. Chisari said their success in Australia convinced them to push ahead. “Having established strong relationships with suppliers and partners here that also deal in the NZ space,” he says, “the timing is now ideal to enter the market.”

Australia leads the world in internet usage per capita, and the local business community have embraced the online competition model as more cost effective and measurable than traditional advertising. Australian companies are working with Competitions.com.au to use technology to leverage or establish their brand awareness, and harness the power of the internet. The benefits range from generating leads, to driving large numbers of traffic online and offline, engage and delight customers, generate a fan base, subscribers or collect consumer generated content. The ROI has proven to be enormous for some, and Chisari believes this trend will continue in New Zealand.

Breaking new ground, Competitions.co.nz will offer existing clients access to audiences across the Tasman. Alessandro hopes this launch will not only build on what they can offer their existing clients, but establish its own success in NZ. "Australia has proven such a successful market for us that we would really like to offer New Zealand an easy and fun platform to enter competitions and win prizes,” he says. “Many companies discount expansion into New Zealand, as it is seen in the business community as a small portion of their overall business but we disagree. In the online space, New Zealanders are equally progressive in their use of technology as Australians. We hope to replicate the same success we have achieved here."

Chisari and his business partners will also launch sister-website http://www.Freestuff.com.au at the same time ashttp://www.Competitions.co.nz. The group plan to continue their expansion with the launch of more websites in Singapore and the UK in 2014.

News Release Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/12/prweb11390994.htm

Evidence of 3.5 billion-year-old bacterial ecosystems found in Australia

Evidence of 3.5 billion-year-old bacterial 

Ecosystems found in Australia

Washington, D.C.— Reconstructing the rise of life during the period of Earth's history when it first evolved is challenging. Earth's oldest sedimentary rocks are not only rare, but also almost always altered by hydrothermal and tectonic activity. A new study from a team including Carnegie's Nora Noffke, a visiting investigator, and Robert Hazen revealed the well-preserved remnants of a complex ecosystem in a nearly 3.5 billion-year-old sedimentary rock sequence in Australia. Their work is published in Astrobiology.

Evidence of 3.5 billion-year-old bacterial ecosystems found in Australia

The Pilbara district of Western Australia constitutes one of the famous geological regions that allow insight into the early evolution of life. Mound-like deposits created by ancient photosynthetic bacteria, called stromatolites, and microfossils of bacteria have been described by scientists in detail. However, a phenomenon called microbially induced sedimentary structures, or MISS, had not previously been seen in this region. These structures are formed from mats of microbial material, much like mats seen today on stagnant waters or in coastal flats.

The team included Noffke, Hazen, Daniel Christian of Old Dominion University, and David Wacey of the University of Western Australia. They described various MISS preserved in the region's Dresser Formation. Advanced chemical analyses point toward a biological origin of the material.

The Dresser MISS fossils resemble strongly in form and preservation the MISS from several other younger rock samples, such as a 2.9 billion-year-old ecosystem Noffke and her colleagues found in South Africa.

"This work extends the geological record of MISS by almost 300 million years," said Noffke, who is also a professor at ODU. "Complex mat-forming microbial communities likely existed almost 3.5 billion years ago."

The team proposes that the sedimentary structures arose from the interactions of bacterial films with shoreline sediments from the region.

"The structures give a very clear signal on what the ancient conditions were, and what the bacteria composing the biofilms were able to do," Noffke said.

MISS are among the targets of Mars rovers, which search for similar formations on that planet's surface. Thus, the team's findings could have relevance for studies of our larger Solar System as well.

###

This work was supported by the NSF Paleobiology and Sedimentary Geology program, NASA Astrobiology Institute, NASA Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Programs, and the Deep Carbon Observatory and the Carnegie Institution for Science.

The Carnegie Institution for Science is a private, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with six research departments throughout the U.S. Since its founding in 1902, the Carnegie Institution has been a pioneering force in basic scientific research. Carnegie scientists are leaders in plant biology, developmental biology, astronomy, materials science, global ecology, and Earth and planetary science.

Old Dominion University is a forward-focused public, research university with its main campus in Norfolk, Va. Research specialties of the university's College of Sciences include those in geobiology, geochemistry, geophysics and oceanography.

News Release Source : http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-11/ci-eo3111213.php

Enjoy Cloud Smoking with Electronic Cigarettes without Smokers Stigma

Enjoy Cloud Smoking with Electronic Cigarettes without Smokers Stigma

Author:Cloud9 Smoking

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Cloud Smoking with Electronic Cigarettes

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Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/quit-smoking-articles/enjoy-cloud-smoking-with-electronic-cigarettes-without-smokers-stigma-6573818.html

About the Author
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Digital Australia : Bushfires Survival Guide Animation Infographics

Bushfires Survival Guide 

Animation Infographics

Click on the image to view Animation Infographics on  Bushfires Survival Guides

Source: www.heraldsun.com.au