A group of Charles Sturt University (CSU) staff and students will be out to highlight the importance of healthy feet for children and their parents during the Children’s Fair in Wodonga on Sunday 14 October. With the start of national Foot Health Week also on Sunday, the CSU group is keen to focus of children’s feet, highlighting the first steps to good foot health. “Childrens’ feet are still forming – undue pressure can cause deformities that children can carry through life,” says CSU podiatry lecturer Ms Caroline Robinson. She said the CSU group is keen to show children and parents about the best ways to care for feet during the Fair, using fun activities such as footprint painting, foot measuring and shoe matching. The Children’s Fair will be held between 10am and 3pm, Sunday 14 October at the Wodonga racecourse.

Morwell's La Trobe Regional Art Gallery is hosting the Charles Sturt University (CSU) exhibition of major works selected from its extensive collection which has grown from four hundred works in 1993 to almost two thousand. Exhibition curator Thomas Middlemost says, “This is the first full and considered viewing of the artwork, which normally hangs in public spaces on CSU’s four main campuses in Albury-Wodonga, Bathurst, Dubbo and Wagga Wagga. Contrasts is an exhibition about the nature of institutional collecting as much as Australian art history. It examines the birth and expansion of CSU through the artwork collected by its predecessor institutions". Mr Middlemost says, "This is not a collection formed with a single vision but a compilation of a number of contrasting personalities, artistic styles and defunct collections. Setting artworks against each other to do battle or to make love makes for interesting viewing," he said.

With increasing links being identified between occupational organophosphate-based pesticide exposure and cancers, the need for a more sensitive screening test than the existing test has become apparent. Charles Sturt University (CSU) lecturer in biomedical sciences, Dr Helen Moriarty will present a seminar entitled A novel screening test to detect low level occupational exposure to organophosphate-based pesticides on Thursday 27 September 2007 that suggests a solution. Dr Moriarty has identified a simple test that uses blood from a finger prick sample. Since many users unknowingly expose themselves to pesticides, a successful screening test will enable safe handling practices to be monitored and adjusted as necessary. This application is anticipated to make a major impact on the prevention of many environmentally induced cancers.

Charles Sturt University will be represented in the new system to assess where Federal Government research dollars should be spent in 2008. Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President (Research) at CSU, Professor Paul Burnett will chair one of the 13 assessment panels for the Research Quality Framework. The panels will assess the research applications submitted by higher education providers and will award a rating for quality and impact. As Head of the University's Centre for Research and Graduate Training and being responsible for the administration of research and research training at CSU, Professor Burnett will head the Psychology, Psychiatry, Neurological, Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences panel. With five degrees, Professor Burnett is a counsellor, counselling psychologist and educational and developmental psychologist.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) 2006 television production graduates Luke Heywood and Tim Pass are ecstatic with the news that their production Chance Your Hand will be screened at the 2007 New York Television Festival Independent Pilot Competition. Chance Your Hand, a situation comedy showing the behind the scenes drama of a television game show, was a major project during the students’ third year studies. Produced at the CSU School of Visual and Performing Arts studios at the Wagga Wagga Campus in inland NSW, Chance Your Hand is one of only three productions selected from outside the United States. CSU Associate Lecturer Patrick Sproule says, “this is a major accolade for the both the course and the students, showcasing just how capable, creative and talented our television, acting and theatre design graduates are”. Luke and Tim will travel to New York to attend the festival from 5 – 9 September and hope to meet network executives to further their television careers.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) is reaching out to students in distant and remote locations through the growing education resource of podcasting, the broadcast of audio files across the internet. CSU School of Computing and Mathematics lecturer Anthony Chan says: “Podcasting is now happening in CSU biomedical sciences, accounting, information technology, food and wine sciences and commercial radio and management courses. Podcasts are provided to students before and after classes and include interviews with experts from around the world”. An international collaborative project between CSU and USA’s Bentley College allows students in a first year computing subject to learn from each other and another lecturer half way round the world. The School of Computing and Mathematics also uses podcasting with a local Wagga Wagga high school, with their work in Japanese learning and teaching featured on Japanese television. Studies within CSU have shown that podcasting reduces the effects of isolation and promotes inclusiveness. Surveys with CSU undergraduate students also show podcasting reduces their stress levels, especially students who are coming into a higher education environment for the first time.

Charles Sturt University ( CSU ) winery has enhanced its reputation as an innovative producer of fine wines. The CSU Winery, based at the Wagga Wagga Campus, was awarded one silver medal and four bronze medals at the recent Royal Melbourne Wine Show. The 2004 Shiraz was awarded a silver medal, with this wine also earning four Bronze Medals at other major Australian wine shows. Bronze medals were awarded to CSU ’s 2005 Shiraz , the follow up vintage to the silver medal winning 2004 Shiraz , the 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot, the 2005 Limited Release Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot and the 2004 Limited Release Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot. The Melbourne Wine Show is one of the major wine shows in and is very highly regarded worldwide. CSU Winery Mark eting Manager Richard Lawson says “there were over 3 600 entries from around , so it is a great achievement”.

A Charles Sturt University (CSU) researcher is off on a trip offering “excitement of a life-time”. The trip to a remote Alaskan island is to gather an inventory of guns left behind by Japanese military forces after World War II. Archaeologist and principal researcher with CSU’s Institute for Land, Water and Society (ILWS), Associate Professor Dirk Spennemann has been contracted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to inspect and document the guns on Kiska Island in the Bering Strait and to assess their state of conservation. He is one of a party of five who will spend five days on the island. Professor Spenneman says “This research fits into my interest in modern heritage and the planning problems. We can’t plan for the island’s volcano erupting but at least if we can document what we have now, then we can plan for future management and how we might stop these guns rusting away or being stolen.”

Medical researchers at Charles Sturt University are receiving overseas assistance to develop an early-warning system for detecting diabetes and heart disease in regional Australians. “Over 1 900 Australians are diagnosed each week with diabetes. We are looking to find the risk factors to help calculate the chance of a patient developing this debilitating disease, using common medical tests and computer software,” said research group leader, Dr Herbert Jelinek. For the past five years, around 800 participants from Albury-Wodonga and surrounding areas have provided heart rhythm readings, inner eye photographs, blood samples and feet tests, which are being analysed to find trends that will help detect the disease in its early stages. All this data is now part of comprehensive database developed over three months for the CSU research group by Emilien Pecoul, a postgraduate student from the University of Poitiers in France. “We are looking to prevent diabetes rather than deal with it after it happens. This software will enable us to search more efficiently and effectively for simple tests and factors that could signal early signs and help patients and medical professionals deal with it before it develops further,” Dr Jelinek said.