Sydney Ideas

Approaching death is an opportunity for individuals and those who care for them to reduce unnecessary suffering and achieve something more human and humane. Sadly, few dying people or their carers achieve these ends. What can we do differently ?

In this exclusive Sydney Ideas event, Dr Bruce (BJ) Miller, a TED speaker and hospice and palliative medicine physician, reveals how The Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco is redesigning palliative care to bring compassion and imagination to the care of the dying.

His presentation was followed by an expert panel discussion and opportunities to ask questions.

The twentieth century saw the emergence of a number of authoritarian regimes – China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, the USSR – that have both challenged the global order and persisted in the face of massive external pressure and catastrophic economic downturns.

Drawing on in-depth case studies and statistical analysis, Lucan Way (University of Toronto) argues that the threat and resilience of such regimes can be traced to their origins in violent revolutionary conflict. A history of violent revolutionary struggle encourages external aggression but also inoculates regimes against major causes of authoritarian breakdown such as military coups and mass protest.

More info: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2016/professor_lucan_way.shtml

Humans are superorganisms with two genomes that dictate phenotype, the genetically inherited human genome (25,000 genes) and the environmentally acquired human microbiome (over 1 million genes). The two genomes must work in harmonious integration as a hologenome to maintain health. Nutrition plays a crucial role in directly modulating our microbiomes and health phenotypes. Poorly balanced diets can turn the gut microbiome from a partner for health to a “pathogen” in chronic diseases, e.g. accumulating evidence supports the new hypothesis that obesity and related metabolic diseases develop because of low-grade, systemic and chronic inflammation induced by diet-disrupted gut microbiota. Due to the tight integration of gut microbiota into human global metabolism, molecular profiling of urine metabolites can provide a new window for reflecting physiological functions of gut microbiomes.

Changes of gut microbiota and urine metabolites can thus be employed as new systems approaches for quantitative assessment and monitoring of health at the whole-body level with the advantage of measuring human health based on the results of interactions between the two genomes and the environment rather than just host genomic information. Large-scale population-based studies in conjunction with these whole-body level systems methods will generate pre-disease biomarkers with predictive power, thus making preventive health management of populations with rapidly changing disease spectrums possible through re-engineering of the imbalanced gut microbiomes with specially designed foods/diets.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Professor Liping Zhao is a distinguished Professor of microbiology at School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. He is a senior editor of the ISME Journal and a fellow of American Academy of Microbiology.

A Sydney Ideas event on 4 October, 2016 http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2016/professor_liping_zhao.shtml

Indonesia has struggled with corruption in its natural resource sector, with unchecked environmental destruction the result . Laode M Syarif, the newly elected Commissioner for Indonesia Anti-Corruption Commission (KPK) presents recent progress in the prevention and prosecution of corruption.

Legal academic Professor Annalise Acorn argues that criminal punishment, devoid of all emotions of blame, is inhuman in relation to the offender and contrary to a morally robust justification for the criminal law.

More info about this lecture and the speaker: tinyurl.com/zfya9qc

Lecture by Professor Fran Bagenal, Co-investigator and Leader of the Plasma Teams for NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and Juno mission to Jupiter, and Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado.

A Sydney Ideas talk co-presented with Sydney SpaceNet at the University of Sydney, 22 September 2016. http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2016/professor_fran_bagenal.shtml

What happens in China today – from economic to political and cultural events – already has an impact on the rest of the world. As its global influence increases, what does the future hold?

Working closely with China Studies Centre and University of Sydney researchers, Sydney Ideas has provided a platform for local and international China experts to share their insights into this fascinating country over the last 10 years.

Professor Richard Salomon from Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington presents an overview of his experiences in studying the oldest manuscripts of Buddhism. These manuscripts, written on birch bark scrolls in the Gāndhārī language which was once spoken in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan, date back as far as the first century BC. Salomon has been leading their study since they first came to light in 1995 and is now preparing an anthology of translations from them intended for a broad audience. In this lecture, he explains how the discovery and interpretation of these unique documents has transformed the study of ancient Buddhism.

Following its military successes in Iraq and Syria, and especially after the terrorist attacks in Paris and Belgium, the Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has become a focus of media attention as the Western world attempts to understand its intentions.

But is the international media capable of representing the complexity of the jihadist phenomenon without simplifying the Islamic State as a terrorist organisation only? Does political exploitation of the fear of terrorism blur the nature of the caliphate of al-Baghdadi, heightening an already ambiguous understanding of Islam (or 'true' Islam) and suspicion of Muslims living in the West?

Barbara De Poli aims to provide an accessible interpretation of the IS phenomenon, restoring its complexity and explaining its basic traits. She discusses the ideological roots of IS, highlighting the gap between the Islamic doctrinal tradition and the religious principles widespread by the extremists.

Secondly, she examines the political roots of the same movement, since the Afghan war of '79, until the second Gulf War (2003) and the Syrian crisis of 2011, considering the strategic outlook of IS and the regional/international dynamics.

Retiring from the city to the country is a popular Australia dream. But what are these retirees’ lives like, and what should we know to help improve them?

Speaker: Professor Catherine Driscoll, Department of Gender and Cultural Studies

THIS LECTURE WAS HELD ON 8 September, 2016 at the University of Sydney as part of the Sydney Ideas and the Insights Lectures series.

For more about Insights lecture series see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2016/Insights2016.shtml