Author: Editorial Board

In 1874, Stepan Andreevich Bers published The Cookbook and gave it as a gift to his sister, countess Sophia Andreevna Tolstaya, the wife of the great Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy.

The book contained a collection of Tolstoy family recipes, the dishes they served to their family and friends, those fortunate souls who belonged to the aristocratic ruling class of late czarist Russia. Almost 150 years later, this cookbook has been translated and republished by Sergei Beltyukov. Available in an inexpensive Kindle format ($3.99), Leo Tolstoy’s family recipe book features dozens of recipes, everything from Tartar Sauce and Spiced Mushrooms (what’s a Russian kitchen without mushrooms?), to Stuffed Dumplings and Green Beans à la Maître d’Hôtel, to Coffee Cake and Viennese Pie. The text comes with a translation, too, of Russian weights and measures used during the period. One recipe Mr. Beltyukov provided to us (which I didn’t see in the book) is for the Tolstoy’s good ole Mac ‘N’ Cheese dish. It goes something like this:

Bring water to a boil, add salt, then add macaroni and leave boiling on light fire until half tender; drain water through a colander, add butter and start putting macaroni back into the pot in layers – layer of macaroni, some grated Parmesan and some vegetable sauce, macaroni again and so on until you run out of macaroni. Put the pot on the edge of the stove, cover with a lid and let it rest in light fire until the macaroni are soft and tender. Shake the pot occasionally to prevent them from burning.

We’ll leave you with bon appétit! — an expression almost certainly heard in the homes of those French-speaking Russian aristocrats.

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Quantum optics specialist and ANU alumna Professor Elanor Huntington has been appointed Dean of the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science (CECS).

Professor Huntington is the current Head of the School of Engineering and Information Technology at UNSW Canberra, located at the Australian Defence Force Academy. She completed her PhD in experimental quantum optics at ANU in 2000.

“I’m delighted to be joining ANU as Dean. It’s an exciting time to be joining the team,

The bush capital is losing its large old native trees so fast it may have none left within 120 years, an ANU study has found.

Researchers have surveyed trees in green spaces across Canberra and projected their future numbers.

“We predict there will be a considerable decline in the number of large old trees in the next few centuries under current tree management practices,

Bugs Bunny, that carrot-chomping, cross-dressing rascal, might have been created by Tex Avery in the 1940 cartoon A Wild Hare, but he really came into his own under the direction of Chuck Jones.

In cartoons like What’s Opera, Doc and Rabbit Season, Jones refined Bugs’ character, turning him into someone who was witty, resourceful and, most of all, cool. Whether or not he was going up against Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam or Marvin the Martian, Bugs always seemed to have the upper hand. Jones once compared Bugs with his vain, self-aggrandizing rival Daffy Duck by saying, “Bugs is who we want to be. Daffy is who we are.

The Great Barrier Reef grew during the last ice age, even though the water temperatures were four to five degrees colder than today, a team of international scientists has found.

“It was right at the colder limit of what corals can take, but the reef grew and developed from there,

Feelings about James Joyce’s Ulysses tend to fall roughly into one of two camps: the religiously reverent or the exasperated/bored/overwhelmed. As popular examples of the former, we have the many thousand celebrants of Bloomsday—June 16th, the date on which the novel is set in 1904.

These revelries approach the level of saints’ days, with re-enactments and pilgrimages to important Dublin sites. On the other side, we have the reactions of Virginia Woolf, say, or certain friends of mine who left wry comments on Bloomsday posts about picking up something more “readable

A flying squad of public health specialists has been officially launched in Melbourne, bringing together Australia’s best experts who can rush to emergencies and disasters around the country and the world to stop the spread of infectious disease.

The group of specialist epidemiologists has already shown its value, with several experts sent to respond to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013, where they played a key role monitoring community’s health and stopping epidemic-prone disease from spreading and killing more people.

“The aftermath of a major disaster can often be a dangerous time,

By new regulations, all teaching students in NSW will have to pass a ”tough” literacy and numeracy test before they can graduate, because there are concerns some new teachers struggle to explain maths and grammar concepts to their students.

The new online test will be introduced by 2016. Students who fail it will not be allowed to complete their final practical assessment in the classroom, which would stop them graduating.

Education Minister Adrian Piccoli said he expected high standards of teaching graduates and the new test would ensure every student graduating from a teaching course in NSW had adequate literacy and numeracy skills.

NSW would be the first state to set such a test, with a complete introduction planned for 2016 after trials this year and next. Students would be able to sit the test as many times as they wish – a little bit like your driver’s test. If students are failing because they don’t have the requisite knowledge, that would not be a reason to change the test.

As part of improving teacher quality, students starting a teaching degree from school will also need three Band 5 Higher School Certificate results, one of which must be English.

How to melt “the frozen sea within us.

Scientists have sequenced the genetic code of the eucalypt for the first time, revealing how the Australian icon became the world’s favourite hardwood.

The work also gives insights into the formation of the complex essential oils produced by eucalypts, which can help koala preservation efforts, minimise pest damage to plantations and could one day lead to eucalypt oils being a base for jet fuel.

“The genetic code will help us understand a foundation species for the Australian eco-system and how it affects other species, from fungi through to the koala,

ASKAP is developing and proving technologies for the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, which will start construction in Australia and South Africa in 2018. The image shows that ASKAP is now working as a fully fledged radio telescope after just a few months of commissioning.

Chief of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science Dr Lewis Ball is leading a delegation of scientists and engineers presenting the results in Europe.

“These ASKAP results are generating great excitement in the office of the SKA Organisation in Manchester, UK, and at an SKA science meeting currently taking place in Italy, because they clearly demonstrate the revolutionary potential of CSIRO’s new phased array feed technology,” Dr Ball said.

Initial commissioning of ASKAP is being done with six of the telescope’s 36 antennas.

“ASKAP is now functioning properly as an aperture-synthesis telescope,” CSIRO’s Dr David McConnell, who leads the ASKAP Commissioning and Early Science team, ACES, said.

“We’ve never had a telescope like this before. We can see that the novel aspects of its design really do work, and that it will outperform a conventional telescope.”

Dr McConnell said when the ASKAP commissioning team saw the new image, they “practically fell off their chairs”.

The image, of a region of sky near the south celestial pole, is the equivalent of a black and white photo, but made from radio waves.

This image covers 10 square degrees on the sky — 50 times larger than the full Moon — and was made from nine overlapping regions (‘beams’) captured simultaneously.

The quality of the image vindicates ASKAP’s two novel features: ‘phased array feeds’ — new technology developed by CSIRO — and a special axis of rotation on each antenna.

The phased array feeds act as ‘radio cameras’, allowing the telescope to see large areas of sky at once.

“This image shows that the phased array feeds are stable over the 12 hours it takes to make an observation like this,” Dr McConnell said.

“Now we can start to use the other advantages of phased array feeds, such as changing the beam size and shape for particular kinds of observations.”

As the telescope tracks radio sources, the phased array feed is kept in a fixed orientation to the sky, thanks to a special axis of rotation built into each ASKAP antenna.

“With a conventional telescope we would have expected artefacts from bright sources at the edges of each beam,” Dr McConnell said.

“With ASKAP we don’t get that, because the phased array feed is held at a constant angle to the stars.”

The dynamic range of the image was 50,000:1, which would be a good result from a mature telescope, let alone one in commissioning.

Even at this early stage, ASKAP was able to make the new image twice as fast as any comparable telescope in the Southern Hemisphere.

When completed, ASKAP will be able to survey the sky 25 times faster still, and will be the world’s premier survey telescope for centimetre-wavelength radio astronomy.

ASKAP has also made a ‘snapshot’ of a single galaxy, NGC 253, from radio waves emitted by neutral atomic hydrogen gas (HI), the fuel for making stars. This is the telescope’s first image of the HI in a galaxy.

The image captures both the intensity of the radio waves — how much HI is present in each region — and how the galaxy is rotating — which parts are approaching us, and which receding.

“If the first image was like a black-and-white photo, this one could be compared to a colour photo,” Dr McConnell said.

“What we’re looking for here is the equivalent of ‘colour balance’ — if there’s a proper balance of the radio waves at all the different frequencies used in the image.

“Happily, that balance is good. The image compares very well with one made by our established Compact Array telescope.”

Acknowledging CSIRO’s achievement with ASKAP, Australian SKA Project Director Professor Brian Boyle said “the future of radio astronomy has arrived”.

The phased array feeds (PAFs) used for these commissioning tests are of the so-called ‘first generation’ design. Procurement is now under way for even better ‘second generation’ PAFs, which tests have shown will meet their ambitious performance targets. The PAF design last year won awards for innovation from Engineers Australia and the technology is expected to find applications outside radio astronomy.

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