Ecology – Australian Science

The Highlights of 2013

Danica Radovanovic — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 10:04:12 +0000

This year our writers churned out a host of fantastic articles, including a series of posts dedicated to women in space, written by Sharon Harnett. One of the most notable of the series was all about Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman astronaut. This year was the 50th anniversary of her historic spaceflight. We also had a few great interviews, including one with Henry Reich, creator of the YouTube series Minute Physics. We’ve managed a number of achievements. We’ve helped several science writers gain exposure and reputation world wide, we’ve appeared on ABC’s Newsline, and we’ve been listed in TED’s top 10 science and technology websites.

So, in no particular order, here are ten of our favourite articles from 2013. We hope you’ll enjoy these stories. Stay curious and scientifically passionate!

A Tale of Two STEM Women by Buddhini Samarasinghe

When I first read this story, I was struck by how often we focus on happy stories like Marie Curie’s, and how the story of someone like Clara Immerwahr remains largely forgotten. She had a tremendous amount of potential, as evidenced by her being the first female to receive a Ph.D at the University of Breslau, an endeavor that is certainly not for the faint-hearted even now. One can only wonder at the ‘might-have-beens’ if she had had the same support and encouragement that Marie Curie did, if she had not married Haber, or if Haber had been a different kind of person. These examples highlight that talent alone is not enough; we need to encourage that talent by promoting equality and recognizing our own biases when it comes to women in STEM. Read more>>

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman (in science) by Amy Reichelt

Obtaining a senior academic position for any aspiring young academic is one of those uphill struggles with roads lined with self doubt, setbacks and sacrifice. Some call it the way to tenure-track, in my mind it’s one of those ill-defined paths through a potentially haunted forest inhabited with monsters, gigantic poisonous spiders and creepy people who communicate by screaming. It can be harder still to even reach that point, particularly for young women. While the number of women professors in Europe, N. America and Australia has increased over the last decade, universities still have a disproportionately small number of women in senior professorial positions. Read more>>

Spiders on Mars? No, An Australian Radio Telescope! by Elizabeth Howell

The MWA is a powerful telescope in its own right, but what is even more exciting is it will form part of a larger project in the coming years. The Square Kilometre Array will link radio telescopes on two continents — Australia and Africa — to get a fine look at the sky in radio wavelengths. MWA is just one part of this array. There will also be dish receptors in eight countries in Africa, with the core and some mid-frequency aperture arrays in South Africa’s Karoo desert. Read more>>

Hopeful results in latest HIV vaccine trial, but many hurdles to overcome yet by David Borradale

A HIV vaccine, known as SAV001-H has shown promising results in an early clinical trial, with no adverse effects reported and importantly, a significant increase reported in HIV specific antibodies in participants who received the vaccine. In this trial, 33 HIV positive participants were randomly allocated to one of two groups: half into a treatment group receiving the vaccine and half into a placebo group who did not receive the vaccine. The participants were followed up at regular periods, testing safety of the vaccine and antibody response over a one year period. Read more>>

Are Australians Really Getting Dumber? by Magdeline Lum

The Australian Academy of Science has found that when it comes to science Australians are getting dumber in its latest report on science literacy. Compared to three years ago, less people in Australia know that the Earth’s orbit of the sun takes one year. Among 18-24 year olds 62% surveyed knew the correct answer, a fall from 74% three years ago. Other results would also send scientists into a tail spin of despair, with 27% of respondents saying that the earliest humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs, though an improvement from 30% of respondents in 2010 who thought this. What does this all say? If you take the face value of the press release and the ensuing media coverage, Australians are getting dumber. Read more>>

From fables to Facebook: Why do we tell stories? by Lauren Fuge

Storytelling is one of our most fundamental communication methods, for an obvious reason: narrative helps us cognise information. Telling intelligible, coherent stories to both ourselves and others helps our brains to organise data about our lives and our world. But when we askwhy stories are so effective at helping us cognise information, the answers are surprising: it seems that somewhere in the otherwise ruthless process of natural selection, evolution has wired our brains to prefer storytelling over other forms of communication. Read more>>

Plastic’s Reach by Kelly Burnes

Plastic. Seems it has extended its reach into the farthest corners of the universe. An earliest post described how plastic has changed our lives, for better…and for worse. ADD link to earlier post. That post largely reflected on the growing problem of plastic in the oceans and the effect on plant and animal life. Now, it seems that plastic threatens our freshwater lakes now too. Read more>>

Postcard from Spitzer: weather on 2M2228 is hot and cloudy by Kevin Orrman-Rossiter

Long distance weather reports are now a commonality. The report for 2MASSJ22282889-431026 is somewhat unusual. It forecasts wind-driven, planet-sized clouds, with the light varying in time, brightening and dimming about every 90 minutes. The clouds on 2MASSJ22282889-431026 are composed of hot grains of sand, liquid drops of iron, and other exotic compounds. Definitely not the first place to spend a summer holiday. Not that 2MASSJ22282889-431026 (or 2M2228 as it is known in The Astrophysical Journal Letters) will appear on a travel itinerary anytime soon. For 2M2228 is a brown dwarf, 39.1 light years from earth. Read more>>

The bacteria that live inside hurricanes by Charles Ebikeme

Seven miles above the Earth’s surface, where the weather is born, lies the troposphere – the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere. Up there, where the clouds dance around, are bacteria that can make it rain, and are important for the formation of clouds. The atmospheric microbiome is a concept and field of study that is gaining importance. As we come to grips with a changing climate and environment, understanding more and more our Earth ecosystem remains vital. With hurricane damage in the US and elsewhere seemingly on an exponential increase in recent decades, it is important to mitigate for the worst. Read more>>

Quantum computing: Australian researchers store data on a single atom! by Markus Hammonds

Computing is also an incredibly fast moving field of technology, and research is finally taking us towards the exciting world of quantum computing! Quantum computers will work using quantum bits, or qubits for short, which are analogous to the digital bits used in computers like the one which you’re using to read this article. Recently, a team of engineers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has successfully demonstrated, for the first time ever, how a single atom can be act as a qubit, effectively showing the first step in building an ultra fast quantum computer. And they might just have created the best qubit ever made. Read more>>

Happy 2014 from Markus, Charles, Kevin, Kelly, and Danica!

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Unknown Corals of the Deep

Markus — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 01:48:10 +0000

Corals are some of the most beautiful things to be found under the sea, blossoming in clusters like gardens off tropical coasts worldwide. Easily the grandest display is to be found in Australia with the Great Barrier Reef, and it seems that the reef may contain even more diversity than was once thought. The latest surveys have found Australian corals thriving at depths far greater than was ever before thought possible.

The Ribbon Reef lies near the Torres Strait at the edge of the Australian continental shelf, and certain parts of it are normally very difficult to get to. The University of Queensland’s Seaview Survey has been fastidiously charting the waters off the Australian coast with a diving robot, and were extremely fortunate to be able to use an unusually calm day to explore the windward side of the reef – normally a perilous exercise due to huge waves and cyclones. Exploring the depths of the reef, they found a huge surprise.

While deepwater corals are known in other parts of the world, their appearance in the waters here was a surprise. At a depth of 125 metres, in dark waters where very little sunlight ever reaches, they found corals. Corals which had only been recorded at depths of 70 metres previously, giving Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the chief scientist of the team, reason to suspect that the finding may be able to give a deeper understanding of how coral reefs spawn and grow.

Hoegh-Guldberg is also quoted as saying, “What’s really cool is that these corals still have photosynthetic symbionts that supposedly still harvest the light,” which is especially remarkable because the waters in which these corals have been found are so inky and dark that human divers would have trouble seeing without artificial illumination. As well as photosynthesis, shallow water corals have reproductive cycles which are synchronised by the phases of the moon. With so little moonlight being able to penetrate to the depths at which these corals live, their spawning patterns are presently a complete mystery. It could be that these corals lead a lifestyle very different to their shallow water brethren.

The deepwater corals have also fared far better in the storms which have caused massive damage to the shallower parts of the reef. The team are now investigating how conditions such as ocean acidification and global warming are affecting these deeper reef dwellers.

The Seavew Survey has proven to be extremely successful so far, with a number of specimens which they’re currently investigating. Some species they’ve found are thought to be previously unknown in Australia, and others may even be newly discovered species. Hoegh-Guldberg summed up the team’s discoveries quite succinctly with the statement, “We are yet to discover many corners of the Earth.” Indeed we are. It’s exciting to know that there’s still more for us to discover about our planet!

Image credit: InvaderXan/flickr

Cite this article:
Hammonds M (2013-01-10 01:48:10). Unknown Corals of the Deep. Australian Science. Retrieved: Apr 27, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/environmental-science/the-unknown-corals-of-the-deep/

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The rise in representation of non-human entities

Charles Ebikeme — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 05:38:37 +0000

It happened over ten years ago. Jimmy was incarcerated against his will, held in a cage, isolated, and denied the basic freedom he deserved. A Habeas Corpus request was put in on his behalf. A long ordeal involving lawyers and various international organisations.

It happened again last year, in San Diego USA, Tilikum, Katina, Kasatka, Ulises and Corky were all held captive. A lawsuit was filed at a federal court, declaring that they were being held as slaves in violation of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution (the amendment that abolished slavery and involuntary servitude after the American Civil War).

One simple fact made these two cases unique — none of the subjects were human. Jimmy was a Great Ape. Tilikum, Katina, Kasatka, Ulises and Corky were all orcas. Those were not the first, and certainly not the last.

In 2005, a public prosecutor, Dr. Heron Santana, was involved in the landmark, bench-setting case that would provide the framework for all those that came after. As was the case with Jimmy, a Habeas Corpus was demanded for a female chimpanzee — Suíça, 23 years old, who had lived in a zoo for four years. What transpired made Suiça the first animal to be recognized as a subject in a court of law. In the end, the Habeas Corpus was approved — unfortunately, it was on the day after she was found dead in her cage.

Animal activism had always existed before then. But perhaps that was the spark the trend needed. Indeed, numerous examples now exist, including perhaps the most well known — the World Declaration on Great Primates, that proposes the extension of rights allowance in an equal way to all great primates: human beings, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans, and identifying the three basic conditions to the relationship between humans and great primates — the right to life, individual freedom, and prohibition of torture.

With chimps and other great apes the difference is clear — “the only difference is that they do not talk

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The Devil’s Technology

Ross Chapman — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 00:44:57 +0000

Biotechnology is rarely considered to be good for the environment. In fact, environmental campaigners frequently claim that genetically modified organisms represent a major threat to biodiversity and ecosystems. However, the study of the Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumour disease (DFTD) using genetic technologies is an example where biotechnology has been used to create a definite environmental benefit.

The Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilius harrisi) is Australia’s largest surviving carnivore and endemic to the island of Tasmania. DFTD induces cancerous tumours on the face and inside the mouth of affected animals which die within months. The condition was first observed in north-eastern Tasmania in 1996. DFTD, like other cancers, is caused when mutations within a cell prompt it to switch from normal function into tumorous growth. Cancers are considered non-contagious as the tumour is contained within the body and is unable to spread to alternative hosts. Furthermore, the immune system of any alternative host would normally recognise any foreign tumour cells that managed to invade the body, and quickly kill them before the disease becomes established. However, the DFTD is exceptional in that it is readily transmitted between individuals of the same species, and this has resulted in the disease rapidly sweeping across the island and threatening the entire species with extinction.

In order to better understand the DFTD, an international team of scientists has sequenced the entire genome of the Tasmanian Devil and identified mutations underlying DFTD. The results were recently published in the scientific journal Cell. This biotechnological research surprisingly identified that none of the tumours originated in any of the hosts examined. Instead, they were able to trace them all back to one cancerous cell from within a female devil, possibly in the early 1990s. This radical and unusual tumour had developed the ability to jump from individual to individual in a uniquely contagious manner, so spreading the disease across the species.

The Tasmanina devil facial tumour.

Using the genetic sequence information, the researchers were able to discount the involvement of a virus in the transmission of DFTD. Instead they were able to identify a new and radical form of transmission. Devils often bite each other in the face during eating and feeding behaviours. During biting, fragments of tumour from an affected individual become implanted in an almost vampiric manner in a new and healthy individual.

The scientists also discovered that the DFTD tumour carries a mutation in a gene that plays a critical role in regulating the host’s immune reaction. From this, they concluded that the tumour cells are able to interfere with the host’s immune system immediately after implantation, The disrupted immune system is unable to kill the tumour, thereby ensuring the survival of the disease in the new individual.

The results of this study have provided valuable insight into the management of the DFTD and the conservation of the Tasmanian Devil. Because the condition is only transmitted through the bite from a diseased individual, the disease can be effectively controlled by quarantining healthy populations from diseased. The condition will then be naturally eliminated as diseased individuals die off from within the affected population. Such a policy has already been implemented with the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment who have been identifying and quarantining disease free populations within the island. Individuals from the protected population may then be re-introduced into the Tasmanian Devil’s former habitat once the disease threat has passed.

Despite the frequently cited threats that biotechnology poses to the environment, the application of gene sequencing technologies to the DFTD is an example of how biotechnology might be adopted to solve major environmental problems. In fact, the outcome of this gene sequencing project has contributed to a management plan that might yet save the Tasmanian Devil from extinction and conserve an important component of Australia’s unique biodiversity.

Image source

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Applying MacGyver Principles to Recycling Policy

Kelly Burnes — Tue, 08 May 2012 06:55:13 +0000

23 cm of string. 1 tyre iron. 3 broken shards of glass. 18 rolls of fiber insulation. 1 match. 2 cardboard boxes. 4 paperclips. Because you always need a paperclip.

There was a fantastic TV show that aired in the United States when my brother and I were growing up in the late 1980s…MacGyver. No doubt many of you are aware of it as well as it aired across the globe – Australia, Europe, Taiwan, etc. It was my brother’s favourite show and I think it actually played quite a role in his ability to fix anything. Anything. If my computer breaks down I call him first.

The articles mentioned above, the tire iron, broken glass and paperclips, cardboard boxes, may all sound like rubbish cast aside, items you’d find lying in the gutter on the streets of Manhattan or in a landfill. Should we simply leave these items lie there? Or, should we try to reclaim them? Putting them to some use to help us find a way out of our trash/recycling problem? How do we get to sustainability? Is it a farce? Does sustainability actually exist?

We just had Earth Day. And remember World Water Day was not that long ago. Has the world changed? How many people drastically altered their consumption habits because of some message they read or heard on either of those days? Or were the same cheerleaders leading the chant for the home team that never quite seems to be able to score?

How many people work in offices in the US – around the world? Let me tell you a story about my office. We have black colored trash bins for trash and blue colored bins for recyclables – paper, plastic, aluminum. I dutifully sort the refuse of my consumption day in and day out, as I do at home. Even though I know for a fact that the janitor combines both bins into his large trash can as he makes his way through the offices and workstations collecting those daily discarded items. On Earth Day, all the employees in my 36-story office building received a paper postcard informing us of how we could “redeem

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