After eleven years and over $2 million in research funding, the Ken and Yasuko Myer Plant Science Research Fund will be wound up at the CSIRO Discovery Centre in Canberra today.
Over its life, the Fund has supported eight scientists at CSIRO Plant Industry to undertake research to advance Australian agriculture, food processing industries and natural resource management.
The three latest projects included research into plant flowering processes, fusarium infection of pl
Discovery that termites use vibrations to choose the wood they eat may provide opportunities to new methods of reducing infestations in homes and also may provide insights into the “cocktail party effect” of signal processing – how to ignore most noise but have some signals that trigger attention – that may prove useful in artificial intelligence.
CSIRO entomologist Theo Evans says laboratory experiments have found that termites use their ability to detect vibrations to determine
A few in the know can lead the many, according to new research into travelling animal groups carried out by the universities of Leeds and Oxford. Crowds of Leeds biology undergraduates will be observed to test their theory later this year.
Large groups of animals such as bees, fish, sheep and birds have to make collective decisions about which direction to take, although only a few individuals know the route. Some animals use signals to communicate, such as the honeybee’s famous
The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) invites entries for its fourth Award for Communication in the Life Sciences.
The EMBO Award for Communication in the Life Sciences is presented annually to a practising life scientist in Europe who has made significant contributions to public understanding of science. Launched in 2002, the award highlights the exceptional efforts made by many scientists to combine science communication activities with a full-time research career.
In a few days, a three-man scientific expedition called Pole Track is to embark upon a gruelling 1000 km trek across the frozen Arctic to collect valuable data for climate-change research. Throughout the demanding two-month expedition, the team will also take thousands of snow depth measurements in support of ESA’s CryoSat mission.
The international Pole Track team is led by the Dutch professional explorer Marc Cornelissen who is passionate about the polar environment and de
Loops of small diameter polyethylene-coated copper tube are buried between 50cm and 60cm below the surface of the garden of the house to form a captor through which refrigerant fluid is pumped, typically R407c blend. A scroll compressor and a stainless steel plate heat exchanger within the generator unit complete the circuit to transfer the energy captured from the soil into the house.
The energy taken from the soil is quickly and continually replaced by sunlight, wind and rainfall
Just a month after a call for a European-wide ban of the swastika, scientists have found that the symbol has new applications in optical communications and could have a role in quantum cryptography.
Dr Darren Bagnall from the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton has found that he can arrange tens of thousands of gold swastikas on a square millimetre to form new optical metamaterials that act to artificially change the polarisation of lig
A British-led team of astronomers have discovered an object that appears to be an invisible galaxy made almost entirely of dark matter – the first ever detected. A dark galaxy is an area in the universe containing a large amount of mass that rotates like a galaxy, but contains no stars. Without any stars to give light, it could only be found using radio telescopes. It was first seen with the University of Manchester’s Lovell Telescope in Cheshire, and the sighting was confirmed with the Areci
British company Instrumentel has developed a revolutionary communications technology that enables two-way command and control for battery-less remote sensing and actuation.
The company originated from the University of Leeds, where ground-breaking research by Dr Greg Horler of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering has produced an inductively coupled wireless telemetry system based on miniaturised electronics that can both sense and actuate.
It is bel
Chronic inflammation comprises a vast array of diseases that affect millions of people worldwide. Chronic inflammatory diseases include asthma, arthritis, atherosclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, autoimmune diseases and allergies, to name but a few.
A common theme to all of the above diseases is that the inflammatory response, originally aimed at recognizing and eliminating foreign “pathogens” or damaging agents, overreacts to them and causes tissue damage that can be detriment
The retreat of Antarctic ice shelves is not new according to research published this week (24 Feb) in the journal Geology by scientists from Universities of Durham, Edinburgh and British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
A study of George VI Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula is the first to show that this currently ‘healthy’ ice shelf experienced an extensive retreat about 9500 years ago, more than anything seen in recent years. The retreat coincided with a shift in ocean currents t
A daisy-like plant known as Feverfew or Bachelor’s Button, found in gardens across North America, is the source of an agent that kills human leukemia stem cells like no other single therapy, scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center’s James P. Wilmot Cancer Center have discovered. Their investigation is reported in the online edition of the journal, Blood.
It will take months before a useable, pharmaceutical compound can be made from parthenolide, the main componen
Two soil-dwelling strangers – a friend and a foe – approach a plant and communicate with it in order to enter a partnership. The friend wants to trade nitrogen for food. The foe is a parasite that wants to burrow in and harm the plant.
In a new finding published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at North Carolina State University have found that the two strangers communicate with the plant in very similar ways. The plant’s responses to both friend and f
Hypnosis can serve as a valuable adjunct to certain kinds of psychotherapy, says Steven Lynn, professor of psychology at Binghamton University, State University of New York. But not everyone responds to it equally well.
In the popular imagination, a person who submits to hypnosis falls into a trance. The subject slavishly follows the hypnotist’s commands, perhaps to squawk like a chicken, re-enact events from childhood or develop a lasting aversion to cigarettes. When the su
New in vitro model system will allow study of therapeutics and virus life cycle
For the first time, scientists have replicated hepatitis C virus (HCV) in the laboratory. The ability to replicate HCV in cell culture will allow researchers to better study the life cycle and biology of this virus and to test potential antiviral compounds, which may lead to new therapies for the liver disease that results from infection with HCV. Scientists at the National Institute of Diabetes an
Flawed Hardware Can Function Well in Many Applications, USC Researchers Find
Computer chip manufacturers traditionally have had a single, simple standard for their product: perfection. But a USC engineer who has spent his career devising ways to have chips test themselves has found that less than perfect is sometimes good enough — possibly good enough to save billions of dollars. “Chips with any flaws at all have always been discarded,” said Melvin A. Breuer, a professor in the
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