Vaccines to change the world – Australia’s role in a critical global health mission – immunising against deadly diseases
This forum marks the launch of Australia’s Role in the World, a partnership initiative between The Australian Institute of International Affairs, The University of Melbourne and UN Youth Australia to engage young people, academia and the wider public in debate about major global issues.
6:30-8:00pm, Thursday 22 March 2012 in the Spot Basement Lecture Theatre, 198 Berkeley St.
A $1.2 million high-containment laboratory opening today in Sydney will allow researchers to double their efforts to understand and fight back against TB, a bacterium that lives inside two billion people worldwide and kills three people every minute.Images available here of the high-biosecurity lab before we lock up and start work with TB.
Please help us identify the unsung achievers of Australian science for the Prime Ministers, and welcome to my occasional email to the science community on prizes and other activities.
See a $1.2 million high-containment laboratory opening tomorrow at 11 am in Sydney before they lock it up forever and start work with live TB.
The lab will speed up efforts to understand and fight back against tuberculosis (TB), a bacterium that lives inside two billion people worldwide and kills three people every minute. More below.
Also this week
The cellular-wide impact of cancer; how pests interact with wheat plants; what characteristics of yeast give wine its taste.
These are the sorts of complicated questions scientists from around the world will come to Melbourne in 2014 to discuss at the 15th International Conference on Systems Biology (ICSB 2014). Systems biology uses all the tools of the biological and computer science revolutions to look at whole plants and animals. Over the next decade it is set to transform biology.
Read the full article →
Australia-Japan collaborative agreement signed on Tuesday 13 March in MelbourneThe US government is investing $2.5 million in a Sydney-based study to determine the role of genetics in alcoholic liver disease.
The study, announced today, should lead to better diagnosis and treatment of the condition – a silent epidemic that costs $3.8 billion a year in Australia alone.
A Melbourne invention is brightening the lives of hundreds of thousands of flood refugees in Pakistan by bringing them sustainable solar light.
The governments of Britain, the USA, Japan and the EU have all bought the new lights and supplied them to refugees via the International Organisation for Migration.
Welcome to my bulletin for people around the country with an interest in physics.
In March, I’ll be presenting Ben Eggleton with the 2011 AIP Boas Medal in Melbourne and he’ll talk about his linear photonic circuits research. You can also also explore quantum electronic transport in Sydney, hear about space biology in Melbourne, string theory in Adelaide and ancient Greek technology in Brisbane, and observe the night sky at Astrofest in Perth. Read the full article →
Welcome back – this is my first 2012 bulletin for journalists interested in science.
And yet the latest research reported in Perth this week suggests they have little to fear from ‘nano-sunscreens’.More than three in five Australians are concerned enough about the health implications of nanoparticles in sunscreens to want to know more about their impact. And while the initial scientific information released suggests little cause for alarm, it does justify the community’s confusion.
That’s the message that emerges from a survey and three research papers on nanoparticles in sunscreens presented at the 2012 International Conference on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICONN) in Perth this week. Read the full article →
In his Australia Day address, noted brain surgeon Charlie Teo said he was ashamed to admit to an American friend, who had received a US$50 million grant in the US to study brain cancer, that he works with just AU$150,000 over three years from the Australian government.
Teo says we need another AIS – one for sport, one for science.
Find below discoveries on IQ, epilepsy, energy drinks and more.
Read the full article →
Issued for the Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland.
Researchers from Brisbane, Edinburgh and Aberdeen have revisited about 2,000 people who had intelligence tests in 1932 or1947, and shown that genetic factors may account for about a quarter of the changes in intelligence over their lives.
Read the full article →
A fly named in honour of Beyoncé; plum extracts as food preservatives; and the crucial role of social media during the 2011 Queensland floods are just some of the interesting stories that emerged from Australian research published in the last week. Find over a dozen other stories below.
