Events

Events

• Research Colloquia
• Dean's Lecture Series
  
• New Directions in Membrane Trafficking Research - 4 February 2010 

Past Events

• International Society for Autonomic Nervous System - Satelitte Event - 5&6 September 2009
• Multilevel modelling master class with Professor Alastair Leyland - 21 October 2009

Dean's Lecture Series

The Dean's Lecture Series is an opportunity for interaction between School of Medicine staff and the wider UWS and GWS community to explore together medical and scientific issues.

Next Lecture - Tuesday 24 November

Professor Vaughan Macefield

"Master and Commander: the brain and its control of blood pressure"

Campbelltown Campus
Building 30 Lecture Theatres
Tea and Coffee from 4.30pm

All welcome

The inaugural lecture was presented by Professor Neville Yeomans, Foundation Dean on Tuesday 28 April 2009. 

Professor Yeomans spoke about Aspirin.

Aspirin is one of the oldest agents that we know to have been taken (for its pain and fever-relieving properties) for at least thousands of years. Derived from the bark of the willow tree, it was one of the first drugs to be made synthetically by chemists.

Its Jekyll and Hyde nature began to be realised, though, about the middle of the last century. Each dose causes some damage to the stomach and, although this normally heals very rapidly, Australian researchers were the first to show that aspirin causes stomach ulcers in some people. Occasionally this leads to dangerous episodes of bleeding.

More recently, because of its effects on the blood clotting processes, aspirin has become one of the mainstays of treatment to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes. There is also evidence that it protects against the development of several cancers.

This lecture will trace the history of this cheap and fascinating drug, examine some measures that can be taken to minimize its side effects, and look at the balance between risk and benefit from its use. Should we put aspirin in the drinking water? This lecture aims to equip you enter that debate.

Listen to Professor Yeoman's lecture.

28 July 2009 - Professor John Morley, Development of a Bionic Eye: New Hope in Sight

There are many causes of adult blindness, including age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, retinitis pigmentosa, optic nerve and cortical ischaemia, facial and head trauma. Once damage has occurred to neural tissue, through injury or pathology, it is permanent due to the poor capacity of neural tissue in the CNS to regenerate. The only experimental method that has successfully restored visual sensation to otherwise irreversibly blind patients is electrical stimulation of the retina, optic nerve or brain with a prosthetic device, with the site of electrical stimulation in the visual pathway determined by the cause of blindness. A visual prosthesis using current technologies aims to produce visual sensations that consist of a matrix of discrete spots of light (phosphenes) to encode object features in the visual environment. In this presentation I will provide an account of previous and current work on the development of a Bionic Eye.

Future Dates:
Tuesday 24 November - Professor Vaughan Macefield