Nearly three years ago a 10-year-old Queensland primary school student beat the rush of entries in a national competition to find a name for Australia’s new Marine National Facility research vessel.
The current Marine National Facility research vessel, Southern Surveyor.
The Federal Minister for Science deemed Clare Cameron’s entry, The Flinders Investigator, the joint winner as it linked the planned A$120 million research vessel to Australia’s maritime history – Matthew Flinders first circumnavigated the continent in His Majesty’s sloop Investigator.
The new state-of-the-art 93.9 metre vessel has been named Investigator and is under construction. The vessel will herald a new era in marine and atmospheric research for Australian scientists when it arrives in late 2013.
The new Investigator provides a huge leap forward in capability, being equipped to accommodate 40 scientists and travel for up to 60 days at sea compared with the current research vessel’s, Southern Surveyor, capacity of 15 scientists and 28 days at sea.
Clare Cameron and her family, who live in Runaway Bay, have been invited to tour theSouthern Surveyor while the vessel is in Brisbane for a short port period prior to its next research voyage. Clare will meet the team of Australian and international scientists who will have returned from their research voyage in the Coral Sea.
The Chief Scientist onboard, Dr Maria Seton from the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney, and her team have been working in a little explored region between the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia taking rock samples from the ridges and plateaus at depths of up to 3.5 km. They also have mapped about 8000 kilometres of seafloor under their voyage track and taken gravity and magnetic data.
“These data will help us to better understand the type of crust that underlies the region and the age of these basins and will give us a more complete geologic and tectonic history of the area during the last one hundred million years,” Dr Maria Seton said.
“We are trying to understand what’s going on with the Earth’s crust in this part of the world by mapping what we call hotspots, which are a series of extinct underwater volcanoes and this fundamental research helps us to determine how the Australian continent has moved.”
“We believe on this voyage we may have found remnants of the Australian continent which would have splintered from mainland Australia when eastern Gondwana starting breaking apart. It will be at least a year before our hypotheses can be confirmed.”
Dr Seton and her team will explain some of their findings to Clare and her family and show them rock samples taken from the deep seafloor, kilometres below the surface.
Last week, I dissected a chicken leg and while many may believe such a thing is not extraordinary having done it so many times, the ordinary became the extraordinary when I saw it through the eyes of a child in our recently established science club.
The research on extra-curricular clubs is growing and with it there is mounting evidence of the benefit to students. In 2010 Blomfield and Barber from Murdoch University published an article which asserted that “Extracurricular participation was positively associated with higher academic track enrolment, university aspirations, and school belonging, and negatively associated with skipping school
Girls are just not as good at science as boys. Men do hard sciences, women do soft sciences. Gender stereotypes have existed long-term throughout the spectrum of sciences. Most people have witnessed it first-hand. Patients question expert female doctors, yet implicitly trust their male counterparts. Laboratories are full of female scientists with male leads. Why do we trust the judgement of men in science before females? Just where do these gender stereotypes come from and when do children start believing in them?
SC@M (Science Club at Mitchelton State School) began mid-2012, attracting 45 students from Grades 4-7. Of the applicants, 21 were girls, 24 were boys with their ages ranging from 9-12 years. Included in the SC@M application process, students were asked a series of gender and science related questions to elicit their current opinions. Not surprisingly, some of our SC@M applicants did indeed hold some gender stereotypical views, which were compelling to examine. Unexpectedly, it was a minority of applicants that held these views.
Question 1: Boys understand science easier than girls. Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?
Agree n = 15
Disagree n =30
Boys like it moreBoys listen more, girls talk too muchAll the famous scientists seem to be maleMost scientists on TV are male
Boys and girls learn the sameGirls listen better so they understand moreBoth girls and boys can be good at scienceYou just have to work hard
Question 2: Men are better at science jobs than women. Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?
Agree n = 12
Disagree n = 33
Women are not as good at maths Most scientists are men Men are braver Men think it’s more fun
Men can deal with more energy correlations and stuff
Boys do technology stuff
They are equal, we have equal rights It just depends on how hard you push yourself Men may be stronger but science doesn’t require strength I have only ever been taught science by ladies
Notably, of the children who agreed with these statements, several described the dominance of male scientists portrayed by the media. Doesn’t every Australian know of Dr. Karl? He hosts radio talk-back science shows and Sleek Geeks on ABC TV, is the science-guru guest on numerous morning shows and the author of over 30 books. Many would consider Dr Karl as the face of Australian science. This misrepresentation of science and gender subtly endorses the view that boys are simply better at science.
It was pleasing to note that the majority of our applicants disagreed with these statements and most suggested that science was accessible to both genders. Given current research suggests girl’s interest in science diminishes towards late high school, it would be worthwhile to re-examine this same cohort of children at a later stage to determine any change.
Question 3: Currently there are more men in some science jobs (like engineering) than women. Why do you think this is so?
Typical responses
Men like it more. Women don’t want to get dirty.Men are stronger.Boys just like building things.
Women have a family.
It’s too hard for girls.
Girls like dancing and other jobs.
Women are more suited to caring and developing jobs like childcare and nursing.
There has always been more men in engineering.
Although 75% of applicants thought that science was accessible for them, the majority of children responded with gender-biased statements when responding to Question 3. Sadly, none of the applicants provided an opposing side. Women are under-represented in engineering fields and other physical sciences. We need strategies to encourage girls to enter these fields, not allow them to simply accept that “it is just too hard for girls
It seems the rate of everything has increased exponentially. A very bold, vague, yet intriguing statement, you might say.
During the course of the past 2 weeks, Hurricane Sandy devastated the East Coast of America, followed closely by a nor’easter. So my science picks for this week center on the themes of natural disasters, planning, global warming and Space, and the rate of which we have to increase our thinking and innovation in order to get ahead of these issues, before they become serious problems.
So let’s get started.
I was out of town when Hurricane Sandy struck. My neighborhood in Brooklyn was pretty much untouched. While I heard reports from friends not having power, and subways and airports being closed, it wasn’t until watching the hurricane relief telethon that I realized the magnitude of destruction. And I chose the following article by our very own Charles Ebikeme because it is important to remember that Haiti has yet to recover from several rounds of natural disasters. The U.S. will rebuild. Considering a large portion of the Haitian population still remains housed in tents from the earthquake, will they be able to rebuild? Before the next natural disaster strikes?
While most of the focus of western media centred on the damage Sandy caused in America, especially this close to a Presidential election; there were few news outlets that reported what had passed in the Caribbean — outside the death tolls and damaged infrastructure. Indeed, as it is becoming more and more apparent, it is always the blogosphere that provides an adequate source of information. Hurricane Sandy’s progression was followed by bloggers on the ground, giving another side of the story we don’t often get to see.
But it is in Haiti, a country that has yet to recover from tropical storm Isaac that hit in August of this year, as well as the earthquake of 2010, that felt the worst of Sandy’s wrath. 1.8 million people in Haiti are affected by the storm, according to the United Nations relief agency.
This next story appears in the current issue of Scientific American and drives home the point why immediate action on climate change, energy and planning (community planning) is necessary to attempt to prevent incidences such as Sandy, or at least lessen the amount of destruction as much as possible. Obama won re-election this week. And while there is no shortage of issues to tackle, the President needs to implement an energy policy for this country. And it’s called global warming, so I hope the world can come together within the next four years and knock out a sound plan.
The potential for faster feedbacks has turned some scientists into vocal Cassandras. Those experts are saying that even if nations do suddenly get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions enough to stay under the 450-ppm limit, which seems increasingly unlikely, that could be too little, too late. Unless the world slashes CO2 levels back to 350 ppm, “we will have started a process that is out of humanity’s control,
The phylogenetic relationships between two orders of marsupials have been intesively debated. Authors benefited from recent sequencing projects which provided two marsupial genomes: this of the South American opossum (Monodelphis domestica) and the one of a kangaroo, the Australian tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii). Retroposons are suitable and homoplasy-free markers: their insertion sites are random; parallel insertions or exact excisions are very rare.
Thus, if one finds a retroposon in the homologous genomic loci of both species this indicates a common ancestry; on the contrary: if the marker is missing in one of the species, it means prior divergence. Moreover, one retroposon can insert into another: this situation is called transposition into transposition. These nested mobile elements insertions provide precious information about the relative times during which given retroposon families integrated into genomes: young elements can insert into older ones, but the reciprocal is impossible.
After complete screening of the opposum and kangaroo genomes, authors found ~8,000 and ~4,000 nested retroposon insertions, respectively. Then, the frequencies and time scales of SINEs (Short INterspersed Elements) were calculated (using TinT software) and 3 groups identified:
SINEs specific to the lineage leading to opossum => phylogenetically informative markers present in the opossum lineage;
SINEs specific to the lineage leading to kangaroo => phylogenetically informative markers present in the kangaroo lineage;
SINEs active in both species => phylogenetically informative markers present in both lineages .
Also, ~220,000 genomic loci containing retroposons were detected using three different strategies. After screening and experimental confirmation, a total of ~440 marsupial sequences were aligned and analyzed to reveal 53 informative markers. Ten of those confirmed again the monophyly of marsupials. The other 43 phylogenetically informative retroposon markers provide significant support for most of the basal splits within marsupials.
Phylogenetic tree of marsupials derived from retroposon data.
Authors did not find any loci containing elements present in opossum plus Paucituberculata but absent in kangaroo, which would have supported the alternative of a close relationship between Didelphimorphia and Paucituberculata. They screened for markers that would support the alternative hypothesis of Paucituberculata being the sister to all marsupials: experimental verification showed that all of the putative elements were also present in the order Paucituberculata (Rhyncholestes), thus supporting the monophyly of marsupials, but not the basal divergence.
Furthermore, 13 of the original 53 markers were present in the South American Microbiotheria and the 4 Australasian orders but not in either Didelphimorphia or Paucituberculata: this significantly supports the monophyly of Australidelphia. The branch separating Australidelphia from Didelphimorphia and Paucituberculata is one of the strongest supported as well. Nevertheless, poor fossil record from South America, Antarctica, and Australia does not allow to assess Australidelphian early realtionships and biogeography.
Two competing hypotheses exist regarding Microbiotheria: the latter are either excluded from the Australasian order (based on nuclear protein-coding genes) or embeded into it (completely or partially based on mitochondrial data). No reliable marsupial phylogeny is established up to now. In the present study, authors provide evidence for 4 independent diagnostic retroposon insertions which allow to place Microbiotheria within South America marsupials. Thus, authors propose the new name Euaustralidelphia for the monophyletic grouping of the four Australasian orders Notoryctemorphia, Dasyuromorphia, Peramelemorphia, and Diprotodontia. In total, 18 out of the initial 53 retroposon markers provide significant support for the monophyly of each of the five multi-species marsupial orders.
Authors conclude: “the retroposon marker system identified a clear separation between the South American and Australasian marsupials. Thus, the current findings support a simple paleobiogeographic hypothesis, indicating only a single effective migration from South America to Australia, which is remarkable given that South America, Antarctica, and Australia were connected in the South Gondwanan continent for a considerable time.”
Nilsson MA, Churakov G, Sommer M, Tran NV, Zemann A, Brosius J, & Schmitz J (2010). Tracking marsupial evolution using archaic genomic retroposon insertions. PLoS biology, 8 (7) PMID: 20668664
BioGrid Australia has won the hotly contested People¹s Choice Excellence in Business Intelligence Award for 2012 for its application of information technology in e-health.
The Excellence in Business Intelligence Award, sponsored by BusinessMinds, was won by Telstra for a customer centric solution using nearreal time BI.
In the People’s Choice Award, the delegates at the Big Data Summit in Sydney held 29-30 October, voted BioGrid Australia as a clear winner. The award recognises how the BI solutions BioGrid Australia provides researchers helps to save lives.
Maureen Turner, CEO of BioGrid Australia, said This award recognises the value and importance of BioGrids collaborative technology which connects data from multiple institutions to enable research projects with sample sizes of thousands of patients allowing Australian research to compete on an international scale.
She said the award was a clear demonstration of the not for profit organisation¹s skills and ability in establishing, maintaining and using business intelligence to drive results.
In essence, BioGrid Australia is paving the direction for the future of how e-health in Australia will operate in the future, enabling a more comprehensive view of a patient, their history and how they have been treated.
The organisation links 26 health services and research organisations across Australia using a web based platform. Data is physically located across jurisdictions and dynamically queried and analysed using SAS statistical analysis software.
BioGrid was initially set up by clinical researchers who were trying to find more effective solutions to clinical problems. Their aim was to use a federated platform to connect individual data and enable researchers to use it effectively.
Recent research using BioGrid showed the significant impact of the national bowel screening program as researchers were able to analyse data from more than 1200 bowel cancer patients from 19 sites around Australia.
The analysis produced showed the government the importance of the bowel screening program. It indicated that early diagnosis of bowel cancer not only significantly improves the chances of patient survival but it also reduces the cost of treatment per patient as advanced bowel cancer requires expensive drugs to treat. The 2012 federal budget included $50 million to extend the program for another four years.
The People Choice Award highlights the recognition within the business world as well as IT and medical research of the role that BioGrid is playing: it is enabling research that will inform and change the way patients are viewed and treated, she said.
The other finalists in the BI Awards were Commonwealth Bank, NRMA and Open Universities Australia.
More info on BioGrid Australia (www.biogrid.org.au).
The Open Knowledge Foundation is dedicated to promoting the creation, sharing and application of Open Knowledge in the Digital Age.
Yesterday, a working group at OKFN Australia gathered data geeks from around the country. The opening the Australian chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation happened via a Google hang-out. The group includes internet public servants, data scientists, data visualisation specialists, data journalists, and others dedicated to the idea that, when it comes to knowledge and information, open is better.
OKFN Au is a community initiative to create a bridge between the many and varied open knowledge communities in Australia, including hackers, data journalists, scientists, Gov 2.0 and open data peeps, knowledge and change management enthusiasts and civil society.
OKFN Au is part of the global OKFN community, established originally in the UK. It brings together people interested and active in opening up and using data to create and share knowledge.
The goal of OKFN Au is to support, promote and bring together the active and diverse open knowledge communities in Australia. Member communities come from a variety of backgrounds where open knowledge is already being practically applied. Australia has some well established tech communities, research groups, open government communities, emerging data journo communities and loads more that could all benefit through being connected to each other, even if just peripherally. It makes it easier to understand the breadth and skills of our community which, in turn, makes it easier to connect with each other and collaborate on common goals or projects.
The Great Barrier Reef is easily among the world’s great natural wonders. A world heritage site since 1981, it’s known everywhere as a showcase for the beauty which Earth’s oceans are capable of producing. The world’s largest system of coral reefs, it’s actually composed of over 2900 smaller reefs, stretching along Australia’s coastline for 2600 kilometres. In modern times, it’s a major tourist attraction, and for a lot longer, it’s been part of the culture of Aboriginal Australian people. Unfortunately, the modern world hasn’t been kind to the Great Barrier Reef. A variety of environmental factors are conspiring to make the future for these Australian corals look rather bleak.
Alarmingly, in a study run by the US National Academy of Science earlier this year, it was found that over the past 27 years, the Great Barrier Reef has lost 50% of its corals. Half of the corals in the sites surveyed have disappeared since 1985, and it’s unlikely to be any better in any other locations. Alarmingly, two thirds of the corals lost, have been lost since 1998. Instead of slowing down, it seems that the damage is becoming more rapid over time.
The Great Barrier Reef is, in effect, the Amazon Basin of the Ocean. It’s a huge and bustling hub of biodiversity, rich with all manner of aquatic plant and animal species. Like a land-based rainforest, a vast number of self-contained ecosystems can be found within the reef, and many vulnerable and endangered species make their homes there. Species known to depend on the reef include turtles, crocodiles, dugongs, and sharks, as well as thousands of species of fish and invertebrate – including, of course, the corals themselves.
Climate conditions have been increasingly harrowing for the denizens of the reef, however. Inclement weather, including tropical cyclones, can cause severe damage to coral growths. Global warming is having a lethal effect on corals living near the edge of the reef, which are already at the high end of their temperature tolerance. The warm waters cause corals to expel their zooxanthellae (the symbiotic organisms with live with the coral, photosynthesising and providing around 90% of the coral’s energy requirements) resulting in coral bleaching and, eventually, death as the corals die of starvation. And then there’s the crown of thorns starfish, a natural predator of corals which has seen a sharp increase in numbers in recent years. While the starfish is actually in indigenous inhabitant of the reef, some suspect that overfishing of the starfish’s natural predators has contributed to their recent population explosion.
In light of the troubling findings, Australia’s Environment Minister, Tony Burke, said in an interview to ABC news that “We’ve all heard about damage to the reef over the years, but that 50 per cent figure, I think, rang a warning bell loud and clear for many people.” He also admitted that “there’s no doubt that there’s been a level of neglect for decades which, if it had been dealt with otherwise, we’d be in a much better situation now,” which is at least a sign that the problem is being given the recognition it deserves.
Australia has, in fact, put together its Reef Rescue programme over the past 5 years, spending millions of dollars on protecting the reef from human activities such as run off from land. While there’s not much which can be done about the cyclones which have done the most damage, work is also underway to cull the starfish which are currently the reef’s second biggest threat. Unfortunately, this is painstaking work, as each starfish has to be individually removed by hand. There’s simply no other suitable method.
The question then is how to safeguard the reef in the long term and hopefully help it to recover to its former glory? With one of the biggest future threats to the reef is global warming and the warmer waters which it causes, the method to be used to protect the reef is still under debate. Natalie Ban, who works for the ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies, is reported as saying, “In some areas summer is coming earlier and lasting longer; in others, both summers and winters are warmer than in the past.” Currently, there are two schools of thought on how to go about this – some argue that the most protection should be given to the areas which have suffered least, so that they can act as a haven for reef animals to help repopulate the area; while others would prefer the most vulnerable reef areas to receive the most protection.
Whatever means is chosen, it’s safe to say that Ban speaks for many of us in saying that she hopes for the best way of managing and protecting the reef during “what will undoubtedly be momentous environmental change.”
Images:
Top – Eric Johnson/NOAA
Middle – NASA
Bottom – Toby Hudson/Wikimedia Commons
What do Australia and India have in common? The answer is that they both share one of Earth’s tectonic plates – the drifting eggshell-like pieces of Earth’s crust, on which all of our planet’s continents sit. However, the Indo-Australian Plate is a slightly unusual one, and the two countries may not share it for much longer. Recent Earthquakes beneath the Indian Ocean suggest that this plate may be in the process of breaking in two.
We generally think of the surface of our planet as being fixed and unchanging. The reality though, is that this isn’t true. Earth’s continents and the tectonic plates which make them up are not fixed at all, drifting slowly across the planet’s surface. For instance, as you’re reading this, most of Africa is moving slowly to the North West and quietly tearing the beginnings of a new ocean into Earth’s surface. Meanwhile, Hawaii is moving at a speed of about 7cm per year which is about as fast as your fingernails are growing.
Of course, these movements are tiny, compared to the size of the Earth and its continents, but they still cause pressure to build up in Earth’s surface. Sometimes, seemingly without warning, that pressure continues to build up and– SNAP! Something in Earth’s crust cracks or ruptures. This jostles the plates and can cause earthquakes which rattle entire countries. Any places situated at the edges of tectonic plates are particularly prone to earthquake activity, with California and Japan being high profile examples. With enough quakes, however, dramatic changes can happen in Earth’s crust. On rare occasions, larger tectonic plates can sometimes break apart into smaller ones – and that’s exactly what’s happening somewhere beneath the Indian Ocean right now.
Breaking point – where the Indo-Australian plate is starting to rupture and split
April 11 this year saw two massive earthquakes strike west of Indonesia in quick succession, measuring 8.7 and 8.2 on the Richter scale. The result was a dramatic quadruple fault rupture in Earth’s crust (a rare event which is more or less exactly what it sounds like!) which caused shockwaves to reverberate around the whole planet. Around a week later quakes occurred across the world as the whole planet shivered in response.
Geologists, alarmed by what could have caused such a major event, took to analysing the quake. What they found was remarkable. Within roughly 160 seconds, four fault lines (existing fractures in the rock) tore apart under pressure. Remarkably though, this wasn’t at a plate boundary where this kind of activity is expected. It was right in the middle of the Indo-Australian plate. To the geologists looking at this data, this was like a smoking gun. A telltale sign that, as many had suspected, this particular tectonic plate is starting to fracture and split into two.
The Indo-Australian tectonic plate is already a bit of an oddity, being a rather thin and unusual shape compared with the others. The reason being that it was formed some 43 million years ago when two smaller plates (carrying the landmasses which would eventually become India and Australia) fused together. Since then though, it’s collided with the much more massive Eurasian plate. That collision has already caused enough pressure in Earth’s crust to create the Himalayas, one of the world’s most impressively tall mountain ranges. However, the Indo-Australian plate is still trying to move northwards. The western part of the plate is still pushing against the Himalayas, moving at about 3.7 centimetres per year, but the eastern part, including the entire continent of Australia, is moving at a much faster speed of around 5.6 centimetres per year. This is causing the whole tectonic plate to quite literally buckle, which is the root cause behind all of the quakes in the region over the past decade.
So what does this mean for anyone who happens to be living on that plate? Well, there are not going to be any sudden apocalyptic changes. After all, according to theories, this is not actually a new event – the Indo-Australian plate began to deform around 10 million years ago! Over millions of years, a new tectonic plate boundary will start to form under what is currently the Indian Ocean. This will cause thousands of similarly large earthquakes, but over such a length of time that they won’t be much more regular than they already are for those living around South-East Asia. All the same, planetary scientists are likely to continue watching this region with interest over the coming years.
Satellite view of the Himalayan mountain range – perhaps the most dramatic example of the force with which the Indo-Australian plate is pushing into the Eurasian plate!
This may not be the usual topic for a blog post normally displayed on Australian Science, but when our editor Danica mentioned she saw this great Aussie short and asked if one of us writers wanted to do a narrative, I jumped at it. The next 17:55 of my lunch break left me in awe.
A movie doesn’t have to be a full length feature to have an impact or drive home a message. And Payload really packs a punch. There were so many messages; messages of a society that travelled down a drainpipe. Clarke’s Town is a place that would have just about every council of the United Nations mired in details and confusion and working round the clock. The issues raised in this fictional setting being human trafficking, prostitution, the sale of human organs or body parts, smuggling, security, poverty, gender, food, clothing, education… corruption is everywhere. You get a sense of normalcy among the Carter clan, but that normalcy is faced against the outside operations of a world that does not make sense,which is far bigger than the Carters. Sacrifice is the only way for survival.
Clarke’s Town is a functioning spaceport, which is a character in and of itself in this story. This spaceport, this crawler, is painted as an escape to freedom and perhaps to normalcy – from dystopia to utopia. Is that why the mother never came back? Is Davinia “Dave” Carter now saved from what one can only suspect was to be a dreadful and despairing existence? Simon Carter may have been doing what he had to do, but he is Davinia’s hero. The main characters – Simon, Adam Carter (the father) and Kate Henshaw – each went through a visible transformation, almost a metamorphosis of sorts. They took what little there was of a moral high ground when it came to the reasoning of right and wrong (no matter how wrong). With Davinia, as she says goodbye to Simon at the spaceport, she leaves you with the thought that her transformation, her payload, is yet to come. I find it rather apropos the meaning of the name Davinia/David is “beloved”.
I’m having a hard recalling when exactly was the last time a movie moved me as much as this little motion picture has. From the setting, to the haunting yet soothing tones of the music, it makes you think what society, our world, would be like without some of the resources we take for granted every day. More so, I think it makes you think about some of the countries, or communities, in this world just struggling to gain access to basic resources.
Writer and director Stuart Willis mentioned extending Payload into a feature – set 10 years later when Earth is being evacuated. Will answers be given to the questions raised in the short? My synapses are already firing up hypothetical synopses. If there were a motion picture category for the Nobel Prize, I would say award it to Mr. Willis straight away.
I’m a big fan of carnivorous plants. Seriously, they’re plants which eat animals, placing them oddly higher up the food chain than other plants – That always fascinated me. But a recent study on one Australian sundew has shown it to be even more fascinating than was previously thought.
This sundew, with the rather poetic latin name of drosera glanduligera, has an edge over other sundew species. Most sundews wait patiently for insects to be lured to their sticky doom on those drops of “dew” on the plant’s glue tentacles. In the meantime though, they don’t have much other choice than to sit and wait for their meals to arrive. D. glanduligera here, has an added bonus to its traps – dubbed snap tentacles, which serve to keep this plant particularly well fed by helping to ensnare prey.
Fast motion in plants is an exceptionally rare trait. Most people will be familiar with venus flytraps, or the “sensitive plant” mimosa pudica. With sundews, only the tropical species move particularly fast – sundews in colder climates are in no hurry to digest their doomed prey. But for a long time, d. glanduligera was something of a mystery. The exact purpose of the long tentacles, with their curious jerking motions, growing on the undersides of the traps was difficult to fully fathom. Difficult, that is, until a recent study showed that these snap tentacles are extremely efficient catapults which help this hungry little plant survive by flinging the plant’s prey directly into the gaping maws of those traps.
The reason for d. glanduligera’s unusual traps are because this plant needs to be active to survive. It grows fast and lives for only a year, so it needs a good supply of nutrients and can’t afford for its food to get away. Thomas Speck, a co-author on the paper, pointed out how this plant’s catapult system is so effective that the insect virtually never escapes, joking that were the plant a hundred times larger he’d rather not walk around South Australia! What’s more, its environment is steady and unchanging, allowing this plant to become such a specialist without the fear of any surprises. It’s a rather fantastic little example of the sort of things evolution can come up with when it has the chance.
Image: Poppinga et al (2012)/PLOS One
Snap tentacles make this sundew much more deadly than most other carnivorous plant species. They’re highly sensitive and have a response time of around 400 milliseconds making them among the fastest traps known – faster than our beloved venus flytraps. Before an insect knows what’s happening, it’s already too late. Once catapulted into the glue tentacles on the upper side of the plant’s leaves, the insect’s fate is sealed. Those glue tentacles, also remarkably fast for a sundew, rapidly move the insect to the centre of the trap, where it is digested by the plant. If you’re curious, you can even watch a video of the plant in action!
It’s amazing what plants can be capable of, given the right opportunities. The full study is published for all to see, through PLOS One, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0045735.g001
Here’s the talk by our own Nobel Prize winner Brian Schmidt at the recent TEDx Canberra. He talks about the certainty in uncertainty, showing how credible statistical analysis can reveal unexpected results.
Botanist Todd McLay has won the 2012 prestigious Australian Conservation Taxonomy Award to delve further into the mysteries of the iconic Xanthorrhoea genus or, Australia¹s native grass trees.
The Nature Conservancy and The Thomas Foundation launched the award last year to foster research by young scientists into important taxonomic works with significant implications for conservation in Australia.
Dr James Fitzsimons, director of conservation with The Nature Conservancy, said the $10,000 award would be used to ³interpret the evolutionary history of the grass tree with a view to underpinning conservation in the global biodiversity hotspot of Western Australia.²
³The last major look at the Xanthorrhoea family was in 1986 for the Flora of Australia, and it showed a level of uncertainty about some aspects of the grass tree. We urgently need to learn more about its biological make-up in order to better protect it.²
Mr McLay, a postgraduate student at the University of Melbourne, will assess and revise the species-level taxonomy of Xanthorrhoea in Western Australia, including the identification of potentially undescribed species.
Two species of Xanthorrhoea thortonii and nana are found in the Great Western Woodlands, the world¹s largest intact temperate woodland. These species are biogeographically distinct from other recognised species of grass trees that grow in the subregions of western Australia.
³Knowing what species exist and their ecological requirements are essential elements of conservation and we are confident that Mr McLay, with his passion for plants, will help provide more answers,² Dr Fitzsimons said.
The Australian Conservation Taxonomy Award was presented to Mr McLay at the Australasian Systematic Botany Society conference. The award is administered by the Australasian Systematic Botany Society.
The Thomas Foundation was established in 1998 by David Thomas and his wife, Barbara. The conservation of biodiversity has always been part of the Foundation¹s focus. The Foundation adopts a strategic planning approach to its grant making and considers its grants to be investments in forming social capital. The Foundation¹s mission is ³Arresting the decline of biodiversity in Australia and encouraging others to do likewise.²
About The Nature Conservancy One of the world¹s largest science-based conservation organisations, The Nature Conservancy delivers large-scale conservation projects across Australia. The NGO is currently influencing conservation over nearly 30
million hectares of Indigenous lands across northern Australia¹s vast savannas from the Kimberley to Cape York and Central Australia¹s arid lands. The Nature Conservancy is working with Indigenous groups and other key partners and has helped to protect more than 6 million hectares of lands and waters in Australia since 2000. This includes securing 29 high priority additions to the National Reserve System, including some of the largest private protected areas in Australia.
Media inquiries: John Myers 03 9818 8540 or mediawise@mediawise.net.au
A young scientist on the brink of discovery during National Science Week
In my last post, I talked about the role of imagination in science and early childhood education and the U.S. efforts on encouraging students to pursue careers focused on STEM (Science, Technology, Education and Mathematics). I also mentioned that I would be featuring a primary school in Brisbane, Australia to gain an understanding of their science curriculum. If Australia was worried about their place in the global rankings of science and math test scores and working to get kids interested in science at an early age, they only need look at the example being set by Mitchelton State School. It starts with passionate and committed teachers.
SC@M
The Science Club at Mitchelton (SC@M) came about as an initiative of teacher Ms. Danielle Spencer. After completing an Education Queensland scholarship-funded Graduate Certificate in Primary Science, she wanted to start a club at Mitchelton dedicated to promoting students’ interest and involvement in science, and particularly to encourage girls to participate. With the support of Principal Roger Sheehan, Ms. Spencer worked collaboratively with Ms. Katie McIntyre, Head of Curriculum, and the two educators laid out the objectives for the new science club:
1) Promote science and a love of scientific enquiry within Mitchelton State School.
2) To provide opportunities and facilities that support scientific interest.
3) To liaise with external groups with similar objectives and aims.
4) To encourage girls interest in science.
To join SC@M, students were asked to submit an application containing a series of questions about their views on science, why they wanted to join and what they wanted to do in the science club. For some of the questions they were asked whether they agreed with a statement and why or why not. For example, ‘Science has too much math in it’ and ‘Men are better at science jobs than women’. I find it fascinating the children were questioned about their views on the gender imbalances in science. This area is a personal research interest for Ms. Spencer. Once the application portion was complete, students agreed to commit, with the support and consent of their parents, to attend each week for one lunch break and participate fully (and safely) in all activities.
Each term would be dedicated to a different area of scientific knowledge including physics, biology, chemistry and earth science driven by the children’s interests. To ensure that student activities are developmentally appropriate for the students, Mitchelton established SC@M to focus on Years 4 to 7. However, they are finding the younger kids want to join the science club too; so discussions are underway to assess the feasibility of adding a second period to the week allowing them to participate in activities geared toward their age and comprehension level. Less than two months old, I’m not sure the school was prepared for the level of enthusiasm displayed by the students to participate in SC@M once National Science Week came around and more children applied for the club. Thirty-nine children are now participating in the science club, and if numbers keep increasing they may have to initiate a cut off and place children on a waiting list.
National Science Week
National Science Week started 15 years ago, but this was Mitchelton’s first year participating in the nationwide event (August 11-19th) and to really shine the spotlight on it, they organised a Science Expo at the school to run for the whole week. The event included hands-on activities allowing the students to investigate the properties of slime, rocks and sound; exploring world‘s not seen by the naked eye with microscopes; and discovering natural events such as tornadoes in a bottle and exploding volcanoes. The entire school took part in the Science Expo with a poster design contest, a competition to name the school’s new skeleton, and a scientist dress-up day. The kids listened to a brief presentation from one of the SC@M coordinators and then were free to explore and interact with the exhibits for 45 minutes. Many of the children were having so much fun they did not want to leave when their time was up.
Mitchelton opened up the Science Expo to the public for two afternoons so parents and members of the community could engage in scientific exploration with their children and others. Here the SC@M members chaired the different science stations and provided their expertise and scientific rationale to the public. In addition, the school invited members of the high school community to share the experience by presenting a Science Show to the students and hosted a representative of the Young Scientists Association. On the final day of Science Week, a group of visiting scientists presented science demonstrations at a school-wide event. These activities involving the high school students and the visiting scientists clearly demonstrate Mitchelton’s holistic thinking on identifying and building the scaffolding necessary to show students that a pathway to continue their pursuit of science does exist.
The science club is the highlight of my week, just love it! – Danielle Spencer, Teacher at Mitchelton State School
Teachers' commitment to science: Ms. Katie McIntyre (left) and Ms. Danielle Spencer
Australia Places National Emphasis on Early Childhood and Science
I wanted to know if the same emphasis on early childhood instruction is placed on teachers, kids and schools in Australia, as in the U.S. Ms. McIntyre stated, “There is certainly a huge emphasis placed on early childhood development, and in more recent times, Queensland education has focused on increasing students participation in a pre-prep program similar to other states.” This has resulted in the establishment of a large number of independently run pre-prep centres housed in primary schools. She went on to say teachers are finding that the Australian Curriculum is expecting more of students at a younger age and they are adapting their teaching practice to this requirement. While the prep curriculum remains play-based, there is a growing emphasis on explicit instruction in literacy and numeracy. This is similar to what is happening with the early childhood curriculum in the U.S., though I will have to leave my compare/contrast analysis for another posting and get back to science.
Both Ms. Spencer and Ms. McIntyre agree the Australian Curriculum endorses and provides a hands-on approach to engage children in science and develop that passion for it. Ms. McIntyre indicated that in addition to exposing children to science, it’s also essential “to develop the attributes of curiosity that are necessary to the investigations around science.” One way Mitchelton incorporates this active learning involves activities from CSIRO – The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. Ms. Spencer has used numerous activities from CSIRO, (e.g. The Helixand Scientriffic magazines) in her classroom and feels CSIRO provides a valuable resource for science teachers in Australia. She appreciates that the activities are enquiry-based and directly linked to the different strands of the Australian Curriculum. Having that link between CSIRO and the national curriculum is vital. I believe this level of collaboration demonstrates a complete feedback loop where the local level works with the state and national levels to influence and advance the science curriculum and grow the interest and passion for careers in science.
It’s inspiring to hear and see the students at Mitchelton wanting to be involved and, in fact, demanding more science in their school day. In addition to joining SC@M, several students who displayed an increased aptitude for scientific enquiry were encouraged to enter national science competitions such as the 60Second Science Video Competition (organised by Brendan O’Brien and sponsored by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development in Melbourne, Victoria), and the NATA Young Scientist of the Year Award. At this writing, I am pleased to report that Mitchelton swept the primary school award category for the entire state of Queensland. The winners and notable mentions are:
1st Place: Xanthe Czerniawski
Runner-Up: Jessamy Bryant, Jacob Schofield & Hunter Griffiths
Highly Commended: Amelia Czerniawski
Highly Commended: Amelia & Claudia Czerniawski
Well done, kids!
How Australia Must Inspire its Young Scientists
The Australian Curriculum has identified science and math as two of the core priorities to prepare students for further study in science and technology careers, though Ms. Spencer worries the problem Australia faces “is the declining involvement in math and science carers.” She states this is particularly notable with girls and has been the basis for numerous national studies and strategic reports. Both Ms. McIntyre and Ms. Spencer feel that the primary school setting could use more resources and funding as they are limited to the types of scientific experiments they can instruct children in. We all understand budgets are tight, but earlier exposure to quality science activities could raise the interest level of children, providing long-term benefits. Where do you put the money for the greatest return on long-term investment?
The other investment that must be made is in teachers. Teachers who continue their professional development, who pass their love of learning for exploration and discovery in the pursuit of science, (and any discipline, really) is how kids will continue on with careers in science and technology. It’s not a guarantee of course, but teachers are that spark to the kindling that starts the fire of learning in students. It’s up to the students to carry the torch. It would be interesting to follow up later and see how many of this inaugural group of SC@M members are working to cure diseases, attempting to solve our energy problems and tackling our food security issues. Or maybe they go on to design buildings, work in government to protect our natural resources with laws and regulations, or use their social media gadgets to communicate the stories of science to others. But we’ll have to wait a few years for that. In the meantime, let’s hope their curiosity in learning continues and prepares them well for the avenues they choose to travel. They have a head start at Mitchelton.
Special thanks to Mitchelton State School staff – Roger Sheehan, Danielle Spencer, and Katie McIntyre – for their gracious participation in the Q&A and photos for this article and the commitment they demonstrate in providing an enriched, quality education for the children in the community they serve.
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