The politics of medievalism: persuasive narratives. This project aims to understand how narratives about the medieval past help form identities and spread ideologies in the present, across the political spectrum, time and national borders. It aims to generate new knowledge about medievalism and its persuasive power. It will shed new light on extremist exploitation of popular culture using an innovative interdisciplinary approach, digital analysis, and engaged partnerships. It will enhance capaci ....The politics of medievalism: persuasive narratives. This project aims to understand how narratives about the medieval past help form identities and spread ideologies in the present, across the political spectrum, time and national borders. It aims to generate new knowledge about medievalism and its persuasive power. It will shed new light on extremist exploitation of popular culture using an innovative interdisciplinary approach, digital analysis, and engaged partnerships. It will enhance capacity to identify extremist messaging and create new grassroots programs promoting political tolerance and resilience to extremist propaganda and far-Right ideology, generating social and cultural benefit by strengthening Australian security, social cohesion and national values. Read moreRead less
Stochastic Assessment of Terrorist Blast and Fragmentation Casualty Risks. The project will develop probabilistic models to predict the likelihood and extent of casualties and other losses from terrorist car bombing threats. Car bombs comprise a large quantity of explosives, and produce primary fragments such as wheels, engine block, parts of door panels and other shrapnel that pose a serious safety hazard to people exposed in a street or other mass gatherings. An improved understanding of safet ....Stochastic Assessment of Terrorist Blast and Fragmentation Casualty Risks. The project will develop probabilistic models to predict the likelihood and extent of casualties and other losses from terrorist car bombing threats. Car bombs comprise a large quantity of explosives, and produce primary fragments such as wheels, engine block, parts of door panels and other shrapnel that pose a serious safety hazard to people exposed in a street or other mass gatherings. An improved understanding of safety risks will assist in setting safe evacuation distances. A quantitative assessment of terrorism risks will also allow the effectiveness of security measures to be assessed to provide cost-effective levels of protection that are acceptable to society.Read moreRead less
Establishing an accurate chemical volatile profile of decomposition for use in victim recovery in mass disaster and forensic investigations. This project will advance forensic science by identifying a complete chemical profile of human decomposition scent. It will result in the development of a more accurate training scent aid to enhance the response of cadaver detection dogs deployed to scenes of mass disasters involving human remains.
Electro-Optical Primers for Safe Use and Clean Manufacturing. Conventional primers contain a mechanically-sensitive primary explosive that is used to detonate the more stable propellant in a bullet. This project aims to address the health and environmental impacts of heavy metals in current primers by replacing them with benign, electrically or optically activated silicon-based materials. Modern semiconductor fabrication techniques will be used to develop safe and clean primers through cost-effe ....Electro-Optical Primers for Safe Use and Clean Manufacturing. Conventional primers contain a mechanically-sensitive primary explosive that is used to detonate the more stable propellant in a bullet. This project aims to address the health and environmental impacts of heavy metals in current primers by replacing them with benign, electrically or optically activated silicon-based materials. Modern semiconductor fabrication techniques will be used to develop safe and clean primers through cost-effective doping and deposition protocols. The expected outcomes of the project include a sovereign primer manufacturing capability for Australia. This will provide a significant strategic advantage and health benefits for law enforcement and defence personnel during live fire training and firing range exercises.Read moreRead less
Foundations for Physically Unclonable nano-Security on Silicon. This project aims to develop an on-chip physical unclonable function (PUF) based on recent progress in nanotechnology to generate unprecedented number of unique signatures. This is significant because these signatures can be used for preventing fraud and counterfeiting, protecting sensitive data and securing communications. PUFs will play an extremely vital role in future security systems. The PUF in the proposed project will be sim ....Foundations for Physically Unclonable nano-Security on Silicon. This project aims to develop an on-chip physical unclonable function (PUF) based on recent progress in nanotechnology to generate unprecedented number of unique signatures. This is significant because these signatures can be used for preventing fraud and counterfeiting, protecting sensitive data and securing communications. PUFs will play an extremely vital role in future security systems. The PUF in the proposed project will be simple, fast, tiny, energy efficient and highly secure as a result of the abundant nano-fabrication variations. The outcome of this project will be a prototype of a super high secure nanoelectronic-based PUF that will be tested to evaluate the technology and its security against malicious attacks.Read moreRead less
Semantic change detection through large-scale learning. This project aims to develop technologies which understand the content of images before higher-level analysis is performed. This approach is intended to allow more accurate and reliable decisions to be made using automated image analysis than has previously been possible. The project will particularly investigate the detection of change in the contents of an image.
Visualisation of latent DNA. This project aims to deliver a proof-of-concept that allows visualisation of invisible DNA (latent DNA) into a quick, inexpensive and practical DNA collection method that will lead to DNA evidence being available in more cases. It will build upon a proof-of-concept method ready for transferal to forensic casework. This will allow DNA evidence recovery technicians to improve their hit rate in recovering latent DNA from real crime items, leading to more informative DNA ....Visualisation of latent DNA. This project aims to deliver a proof-of-concept that allows visualisation of invisible DNA (latent DNA) into a quick, inexpensive and practical DNA collection method that will lead to DNA evidence being available in more cases. It will build upon a proof-of-concept method ready for transferal to forensic casework. This will allow DNA evidence recovery technicians to improve their hit rate in recovering latent DNA from real crime items, leading to more informative DNA profiles. Crime items that currently yield no genetic information will now be informative, assisting investigations of serious crimes or terrorist incidents.Read moreRead less
The Proscription of Terrorist Organisations in Illiberal States . This project aims to investigate the use of anti-terrorism proscription powers in illiberal democracies after 2002. Although promulgated by the archetypal liberal institution – the United Nations – proscription powers are increasingly recognised as important tools of illiberal regimes in legitimising human rights abuses and suppressing political dissent. Using studies of Cameroon, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the project expl ....The Proscription of Terrorist Organisations in Illiberal States . This project aims to investigate the use of anti-terrorism proscription powers in illiberal democracies after 2002. Although promulgated by the archetypal liberal institution – the United Nations – proscription powers are increasingly recognised as important tools of illiberal regimes in legitimising human rights abuses and suppressing political dissent. Using studies of Cameroon, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, the project explores the intersections of colonial proscription, UN anti–terrorism norms and illiberal regimes' security. The project will generate new comparative knowledge on the deployment of colonial instruments of control in the ‘war on terror’ and innovate conceptual insights into the global security politics of exclusion. Read moreRead less
Uncovering the organisational dynamics of pirates and maritime terrorists. This project will develop a novel framework to assess the organisational dynamics of two major maritime threats: piracy syndicates and maritime-capable terrorist groups. The results will allow analysts and policymakers to understand the behaviour of violent maritime organisations, and to maximise the effectiveness of policies designed to stop them.
Drug targets in the relict plastid of malaria parasites. Malaria is a major world health problem and new drugs are needed urgently. Essential genes are potentially excellent targets for anti-malarial drugs. This project will use a novel strategy to identify genes that the parasite cannot exist without. Function and drug potential of these genes will be explored.