Category: News

Australian soils are losing about 1.6 million tonnes of carbon per year from wind erosion and dust storms affecting agricultural productivity, our economy and carbon accounts, according to new research.

Top soil is rich in nutrients and carbon but is increasingly being blown away by events such as the ‘Red Dawn’ in Sydney in 2009.

When wind lifts carbon dust into the atmosphere it changes the amount and location of soil carbon.

Some carbon falls back to the ground while some leaves Australia or ends up in the ocean.

CSIRO research scientist Dr Adrian Chappell and an international team of experts in wind erosion and dust emission recently calculated the extent of these carbon dust emissions.

“Carbon stored in our soils helps sustain plant growth. Our modelling shows that millions of tonnes of dust and carbon are blowing away, and it is uncertain where all that ends up,

CSIRO has announced the appointment of Dr Bronwyn Harch as chief of its newest research division with a focus on data-driven computational and information sciences.

The new research division, CSIRO Computational Informatics (CCI), will work in partnership with the organisation’s National Research Flagship program to address key national challenges across the information and decision making value chain. It will also work closely with a range of external partners and collaborators to create a capability hub in key research areas including next generation data analytics, autonomous robotics, complex systems modelling, and decision making under uncertainty.

“From pioneering the development of digital image analysis for agriculture in the 1980s to securing the landmark patent to Wireless LAN technology in the 1990s, CSIRO has always been at the forefront of technology-related research which tackles the nation’s toughest challenges,” said Dr Harch.

“The proliferation of smart devices and increasing access to next generation broadband has caused an explosion in the volume, velocity and variety of data and information. With predictions, that by 2020 the average person will own six different smart devices[1] connecting us to over 37 billion ‘things’, from cows in the field to our car to our fridge door through the Internet[2], it is clear the amount of data we produce will continue to grow at an exponential rate,” said Dr Harch.

“We have responded to the information and data challenges facing Australia with the formation of this new CSIRO Computational Informatics (CCI) Division. Our integrated and strengthened capabilities in this division will enable us to remain at the forefront of global developments in key research areas that transform the information and decision making workflows of industry, government and the innovation sectors.”

A recent McKinsey Institute report[3] on the future of ‘disruptive technologies’ shows a reduced focus on new gadgets and gizmos and an increased emphasis on the impact of technologies which require advanced data analytics. The same report predicts that by 2025 the potential economic contribution of new disruptive technologies such as mobile Internet, advanced robotics and 3D printing are expected to return between $14 trillion and $33 trillion globally each year.

Dr Harch believes the new Division’s focus on data-driven science will help CSIRO to increase the economic and social well-being of the nation by tackling some of the biggest challenges facing Australia including our declining productivity and ageing population.

“Through our Preventative Health Flagship, we are already leading the way in transforming advanced data analytics to pinpoint the genes that could lead to a simple blood screening test for Alzheimer’s disease before it takes hold. We’re also working on another project, with our Digital Productivity and Services Flagship and Australian Centre for Broadband Innovation (ACBI), which leverages next generation broadband networks to monitor health data and help older Australians to live in their own homes longer, independently and safely.”

However, it’s not just the healthcare industry reaping the rewards from this explosion of data. In an impressive debut, research from the CSIRO Computational Informatics Division has earned a staggering 13 nominations across multiple categories from environmental science to the services industries at this year’s iAwards, Australia’s premier technology accolades.

These projects include:

• Zebedee: a handheld 3D mapping device which doesn’t rely on GPS and can be used underground or inside buildings.
• ReMoTe: allows a remote expert to guide in real-time an onsite technician using gestures and voice to increase productivity and assist in up-skilling the workforce.
• Smarter, Safer Homes: a platform which uses home sensors and video conferencing to support older Australians to live in their own homes safely and independently.
• Environmental Linked Data: which produced Australia’s first set of open-linked long-term climate data.
• Sense-T Aquaculture Decision Support System: a platform which helps to ensure public food safety by supplying the Tasmanian Shellfish Quality Assurance Program with real-time environmental awareness to simplify decisions regarding when to close shellfish farms.
• Patient Flow Research: analytics to predict requirements and optimise configurations for hospital beds.
• Automated Disease Grading and Clinical Decision Support: an automatic disease grading and clinical decision support system for diabetic retinopathy level grading.
• Computer-aided Ocular Biomarker Suite: an eye test for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease 15-20 years before diagnosis is usually possible.
• SensorDB Virtual Laboratory: used for storing, analysing and looking for patterns in distributed sensor data for plant phenomics in the field. This work received two Australian Capital Territory categories iAwards.
• Medtex: a software platform that unifies the language across narrative medical reports and extracts clinically relevant information to aid decision support.
• Lung Anatomy Trainer (eLAnT): a web-based program that uses an online lung anatomy and nomenclature training tool for teaching the complex and variable human lung anatomy seen from a fibre-optic inspection tool.
• Starbug: Jeremy Breen, a University of Tasmania and CSIRO student, won a postgraduate tertiary award for autonomous analysis of marine sediment chemistry using an underwater robot.

The winners of this year’s iAwards will be announced during a ceremony in Melbourne on 8^th August 2013.

For more information about the CSIRO Computational Informatics Division please visit www.csiro.au/cci.

Source and image.

Warming oceans are impacting the breeding patterns and habitat of marine life, effectively re-arranging the broader marine landscape as species adjust to a changing climate, according to a three-year international study published today in Nature Climate Change.

The international team led by CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship and University of Queensland marine ecologists Elvira Poloczanska and Anthony Richardson, based their findings on a review of peer-reviewed literature from around the world, identifying more than 1 700 changes, including 222 in Australia.

CSIRO’s Dr Poloczanska said marine species are shifting their geographic distribution towards cooler regions and doing so much faster than their land-based counterparts.

Despite the ocean having absorbed 80 per cent of the heat added to the global climate system, the ocean’s thermal capacity has led to surface waters warming three times slower than air temperatures over land.

“The leading edge or ‘front line’ of a marine species’ distribution is moving towards the poles at the average rate of 72 kilometres per decade, which is considerably faster than terrestrial species moving poleward at an average of six kilometres per decade,” said Dr Poloczanska.

“This is despite sea surface temperatures warming three times slower than land temperatures.”

Dr Poloczanska said winter and spring temperatures, over both the ocean and land, are warming fastest, which might advance phenological events such as the start of growing seasons and the timing of reproduction. In addition, anthropogenic carbon dioxide uptake by the oceans is altering seawater carbonate chemistry, which can impact some marine organisms.

“Given these findings, we expect marine organisms to have responded to recent climate change, with magnitudes similar to or greater than those found for terrestrial species,” she said.

The research team also considered changes in species’ life cycle, such as breeding times, to find these are also changing as seas warm.

Associate Professor Richardson explained that the timing of breeding and migration are, on average, occurring much earlier in the sea with marine species advancing by 4.4 days each decade which is also much faster than land based species which are breeding around 2.3 – 2.8 days earlier each decade.

Although the study reported global impacts, there is strong evidence of change in the Australian marine environment.

Dr Poloczanska said that in Australia’s south-east tropical and subtropical species of fish, molluscs and plankton are shifting much further south through the Tasman Sea. In the Indian Ocean, there is a southward distribution of sea birds as well as loss of cool-water seaweeds from regions north of Perth.

“Essentially, these findings indicate that changes in life events and distribution of species indicates we are seeing widespread reorganisation of marine ecosystems, with likely significant repercussions for the services these ecosystems provide to humans.

“For example, some of the favourite catches of recreational and commercial fishers are likely to decline, while other species, not previously in the area, could provide new fishing opportunities,” Dr Poloczanska said.

The international team included 19 researchers from Australia, USA, Canada, UK, Europe and South Africa.

Source and image: http://www.csiro.au/en/Portals/Media/Marine-life-spawns-sooner-as-oceans-warm.aspx

Science Sunday… our weekly guide and collection of some of the amazing science stories that have caught our eye over the past seven days.

Twelve Months in Two Minutes; Curiosity’s First Year on Mars

Hard to believe Curiosity has been on Mars for twelve short months. Here at Australian Science we’ve covered the tiny rover that could since the start. Now, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab have given us a rover’s eye view of driving, scooping and drilling during Curiosity’s first year on Mars, from August 2012 through July 2013.

Researcher Charged in Wife’s Cyanide Death

Sad and shocking news coming out of the University of Pittsburg where a professor of neurological surgery at the School of Medicine was charged on with criminal homicide in connection with the death of his wife.

“Authorities say that Ferrante poisoned Klein by mixing cyanide with creatine, CBSNews reports. According to Ferrante’s online biography, his work “has provided the basis for human trials” using creatine. Klein consumed the drink because Ferrante told her it would help them conceive a child. Police said that Ferrante had purchased cyanide with a university credit card days before and had it shipped to his lab overnight, and that he had enlisted the assistance of a lab member in buying the cyanide.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is intertwined with the Australian identity since the 1920s. For Australians living in regional and remote locations away from the bright city lights of capital cities the ABC had been the only constant media and information source until recently when commercial media stations invested on capturing this audience. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s in regional Western Australia, the ABC was the go to media outlet for information about the world outside of the town I was in. Sometimes there was no other media outlet.

It was the ABC that taught me about story telling with the broadcast of Sesame Street and Play School. It was also through these mediums that I got my first tastes of science. I did not know what it was at the time but I enjoyed finding out why things worked the way they did and how things could be categorised. All this during the formative years of my education and especially helpful when I was having to learn English at school on top of writing, reading, and mathematics. I don’t think I’m alone in growing up with the ABC.

Now the ABC is wanting our opinions on their science coverage. I don’t know of any other media outlet in Australia who wants to listen to the opinion of their audiences, let alone their audience’s opinion on science coverage. They are also asking for honest feedback. A few weeks ago I was invited to an ABC Community Science Forum in Perth to talk about just this in a room that included the ABC Advisory Council.

It was honest. People talked about the things that they liked and what they did not like about the ABC’s Science Coverage. We did not get much of a description of the event before the forum and I admit to being hesitant in attending. I was concerned about the process being more of a marketing ploy than a feedback session. By the end of the session I felt that it had been well worth attending and that I shared some of the concerns raised in the discussion. What I especially liked was that no member of the ABC staff came on the defensive when criticisms were aired by participants.

I turn to the ABC for so many things today, interviews with notable people of their field, documentaries, investigative journalism, and of course the latest news. What I adore is the coverage of science. It percolates through many things that the ABC programmes and I think this is unique and should be applauded. No other media outlet in Australia comes close to this. This is the only Australian media outlet that does not make a special case out of science except in the case of specialised science shows. The most notable example that I cannot get enough of at the moment is Conversations with Richard Fidler which brings a variety of people for interviewing. These people are all part of our community no matter what their day job may be.

There is dedicated science content on radio, television, and online and with this has come the invitation for the public to interact with the ABC. It has especially grown with the explosion of social media. With the Australian Curriculum being implemented across the nation, ABC has created ABC Splash which is a collection of multimedia resources for use in the classroom and also for young people to explore. It is in its infancy and still being fully fleshed out but yet again it is another example of how ABC is the only media outlet going it alone working to provide science content to the Australian public.

After 30 years of consuming products from the ABC, the act of inviting me to a feedback forum in an area I am passionate about has cemented the love I have for Australia’s public broadcaster. It demonstrates commitment in my pet area of interest and that they are not going to let their science coverage fall by the wayside. This is why I am also working on a written submission to the ABC Advisory Council, not because I want to see more science content but because they really are taking all opinions into consideration.

If you have an opinion about the ABC’s science coverage, let them know. They want to know about it.