Back to School

During his first visit to the Bedford Park campus, Senator Evans met Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Andrew Parkin and senior staff, and also talked with staff of the LOGOS Centre about its activities, which are focused on teaching and research on Greek language and culture. Federal MP for Hindmarsh Mr Steve Georganas also attended the briefing.

In an informal session, the Minister met three students from lower socio-economic backgrounds who are now involved in the University’s mentoring programs for students in the local region.

He also talked to a group of seven students who have been involved in Work Integrated Learning programs run by Flinders. Three of the students were recently returned from the Washington Intern Program run by American Studies, while the other students had recently completed work placements in business, education and tourism. WIL staff gave a demonstration of the newly developed online program aimed at preparing students for their WIL placements.

Senator Evans is pictured with students Joanne Young and Shaun Donnelly .

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. –The GRAMMY Foundation has named Douglas Anderson School of the Arts a National GRAMMY Signature School.

The honor was presented to the school Monday evening by Neil Crilly, Senior Executive Director of the Florida Chapter of The Recording Academy.

As part of the honor, Douglas Anderson will receive $15,000 monetary grant to benefit its program and a custom award.

The GRAMMY Foundation Signature Schools program was started to recognized the top public high schools nationwide for their commitment to music education.

The organization named 18 schools GRAMMY Signature Schools for 2012. Of these schools they selected the top six, naming them Gold recipients. The top Gold school was then named the National GRAMMY Signature School.

The main types of naturopathy treatment are nutrition, movements, food additives, herbs and contact therapy. The method always depends on the specialist. Some naturopaths such as Dr. Eric Bakker prefer to integrate natural remedies and conventional methods.

Nutrition is an important and fundamental tool of any naturopath who is skilled in understanding the influence of nutrition on human health. Naturopathy sees nutrition as an essential treatment tool, not only to prevent disease, lose weight or maintain health and vitality, but to cure serious diseases.

Naturopathy gives enormous importance to physical activity and movements. They contribute to our health in many ways. Exercise is a huge treatment instrument for disease prevention, rehabilitation and strengthening of the body, improving cardiopulmonary endurance, blood flow and cardiac output, cooling sensation, mood, and so on. The naturopath will check the types of patient’s activity and guide the appropriate physical activity for him or her.

Vitamins and minerals are involved in many important processes in the body. Creating energy from food, assistance with the process of digestion, growth and development, metabolism, function of the nervous system, hormonal system, blood system. The body can not produce some vitamins and therefore it should receive these nutrition supplements, because lack in these supplements can affect and disrupt certain processes.

Plants are a gift of nature, for thousands of years plants have been used in different ways in order to treat disease and maintain health. Medicinal plants have important therapeutic values ​​that have been studied over the years. They contain important active ingredients to heal the body, they can be classified according to their activity, for example, natural antibiotics or hormonal substances. Actually, herbs are used by most famous naturopaths and herbalists such as:

• Robert J. Thiel,
• Eric Bakker
• James A. Duke,
• Dorothy Hall,
• Henry Lindlahr.

Enid Blyton’s books, such as popular ‘50s series The Secret Seven, and Malory Towers, which Blyton started writing in the ‘40s, are about to get a language overhaul. Publisher Hachette UK has obtained the rights to Blyton’s entire body of work, excluding Noddy, and plans to bring the language used in the books up to date in a bid to boost sales and to attract new readers.

The stories themselves will remain unchanged, but the language will be updated. The intention is to make the text timeless and will not contain any modern slang or references to modern culture.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of The Famous Five, which was modernised last year, to some controversy. Phrases such as “its all very peculiar were amended to its all very strange, and “mercy me!” to “oh no!”

The books will also be republished with new artwork from illustrators such as Quentin Blake, who is best known for his work with Roald Dahl.

What do you think of this? Should classic children’s books be updated or can children appreciate that the books were written in another time? Or is there value in keeping the original language in books as a historical marker?

An autoimmune disease, type 1 diabetes occurs when the beta cells of the pancreas stop making insulin because the bodys own immune system has attacked and destroyed them, causing glucose to build up in the blood.

Researchers in Australia and across the world are now experimenting with pancreatic islet transplantation – a process whereby islets containing the insulin-producing beta cells are transplanted from the pancreas of a deceased organ donor to the diabetic patient.

It is hoped the procedure will help those suffering from type 1 diabetes to live without daily insulin injections.

Clinical trials began in Australia in 2005 following a Federal Government grant to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, however Dr Jessup said more research was needed to find a way to improve the procedure given that 70 per cent of the cells die upon transfer.

“Islet transplantation certainly has its benefits for people with a severe and debilitating form of diabetes but we really need to find a way to improve the health of beta cells so they live longer once they’re transplanted,” Dr Jessup said.

“These cells only make up one per cent of the pancreas so it’s very difficult to isolate them without causing damage and the other problem is that patients need two to three transplants, all from different donors, because the cells can’t multiply,” she said.

Assisted by a team of researchers from various institutions across Adelaide, Dr Jessup will investigate the role of a particular gene called RCAN1 in islet function, as well as how to increase the blood supply to the pancreas following a transplant.

“One reason they die is due to a lack of oxygen so we believe that if we co-deliver endothelial progenitor cells, which are the building blocks of blood vessels in the body, then we might be able to increase blood supply and therefore improve the overall health of the cells,” she said.

“The good thing is that no matter what we’re still going to discover a lot more about diabetes itself because if we understand how beta cells work then we may be able to stop them from being killed in the first place, which removes the need for treatment.”

In addition to her fellowship, Dr Jessup has received one of 10 Vice-Chancellor’s Early Career Research Awards, an annual program to acknowledge individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to research since finishing their PhD.