Macquarie University

Bees make decisions better and faster than we do

Research reveals how we could design robots to think like bees

Bees available to film at Macquarie and Sheffield, video overlay and graphics available.

Image Credit Théotime Colin.

Honey bees have to balance effort, risk and reward, making rapid and accurate assessments of which flowers are mostly likely to offer food for their hive. Research published in the journal eLife today reveals how millions of years of evolution has engineered honey bees to make fast decisions and reduce risk.

The study enhances our understanding of insect brains, how our own brains evolved, and how to design better robots.

The paper presents a model of decision-making in bees and outlines the paths in their brains that enable fast decision-making. The study was led by Professor Andrew Barron from Macquarie University in Sydney, and Dr HaDi MaBouDi, Neville Dearden and Professor James Marshall from the University of Sheffield.

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How superbug A. baumannii survives metal stress and resists antibiotics

Work is underway into how science can stop the superbug A. baumanniii after research exposes a weak link in the deadly but poorly understood pathogen.

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The deadly hospital pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii can live for a year on a hospital wall without food and water. Then, when it infects a vulnerable patient, it resists antibiotics as well as the body’s built-in infection-fighting response. The World Health Organization (WHO) recognises it as one of the three top pathogens in critical need of new antibiotic therapies.

Now, an international team, led by Macquarie University researchers Dr. Ram Maharjan and Associate Professor Amy Cain, have discovered how the superbug can survive harsh environments and then rebound, causing deadly infections. They have found a single protein that acts as a master regulator. When the protein is damaged, the bug loses its superpowers allowing it to be controlled, in a lab setting. The research is published in Nucleic Acids Research.

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Music teaches deaf and hard-of-hearing children to listen

Group music therapy helps hearing-impaired kids understand complex sounds

The improved listening skills boost educational and emotional growth

A 12-week music program is helping deaf and hard-of-hearing children learn to optimise their hearing aids and cochlear implants, by teaching them to better understand the sounds they detect.

The program, developed by Dr Chi Yhun Lo from Macquarie University, helps the children to extract meaningful information, such as separating noise from what they want to hear, a skill that is critical to their education and emotional development.

“Deafness is often seen as a barrier to engagement with music,” says Chi. “On the contrary, music actually is an excellent way to improve the problems associated with hearing loss.”

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Astronomers see ‘cosmic ring of fire’, 11 billion years ago

Unusual galaxy set to prompt rethink on how structures in the Universe form

Full paper, Full video, and images available. Details below.

Astronomers have captured an image of a super-rare type of galaxy – described as a “cosmic ring of fire” – as it existed 11 billion years ago.

The galaxy, which has roughly the mass of the Milky Way, is circular with a hole in the middle, rather like a titanic doughnut. Its discovery, announced in the journal Nature Astronomy, is set to shake up theories about the earliest formation of galactic structures and how they evolve.

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Stopping poaching by the numbers

Maths model helps rangers protect national parks, despite tight budgets.

Math could be used to prevent elephant poaching.
Image credit: Pixabay

Mathematics can help reduce poaching and illegal logging in national parks, researchers have found.

A team of applied mathematicians including Macquarie University’s David Arnold has developed an algorithm that predicts which areas inside park boundaries offer the greatest possibilities for criminals – and how rangers can most efficiently combat them.

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Hunting molecules that signal pain

Researchers close in on an objective measure for physical distress.

Pain self-assessments are naturally subjective. An independent pain measure will help treatment.
Image credit: Jim De Ramos

A new microscope-based method for detecting a particular molecule in the spinal cord could help lead to an accurate and independent universal pain scale, research from Australia’s Macquarie University suggests.

An accurate way of measuring pain is of critical importance because at present degrees of discomfort are generally assessed by asking a patient to estimate pain on a one-to-10 scale. The situation is even more acute in the treatment of babies, the very old and animals, where speech is absent.

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Device makes electric vehicle charging a two-way street

New tech means cars can power houses, as well as the other way round.

A new device turns electric vehicles into chargers for houses and stranded cars.

Researchers led by Seyedfoad Taghizadeh from Australia’s Macquarie University are looking to commercialise the technology, which may significantly increase the appeal of the vehicles.

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Citizen scientists deserve more credit, researchers argue

Academic journal rules are penalising citizen scientists and indigenous knowledge, say US and Australian scientists.

Listing indigenous citizen scientists as co-authors on a cane toad paper proved challenging.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Citizen scientists should be included as authors on journal papers, researchers say.

In a paper published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, a team led by biologist Dr Georgia Ward-Fear from Macquarie University in Australia and Dr Greg Pauly from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles argues that newfound respect for indigenous knowledge and changes in technology mean that non-professionals are taking greater roles in science work.

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Underwater grandmothers reveal big population of lethal sea snakes

A novel citizen science project in New Caledonia finds an ‘astonishing’ number of venomous reptiles in a popular swimming spot.

Fantastic grandmother Monique Mazière photographing sea snake number 79, nicknamed Déborah. Credit: Claire Goiran/UNC

A group of snorkelling grandmothers is helping scientists better understand marine ecology by photographing venomous sea snakes in waters off the city of Noumea, New Caledonia.

Two years ago the seven women, all in their 60s and 70s, who call themselves “the fantastic grandmothers”, offered to help scientists Dr Claire Goiran from the University of New Caledonia and Professor Rick Shine from Australia’s Macquarie University in their quest to document the sea snake population in a popular swimming spot known as Baie des citrons.

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Lonesome no more: white sharks hang with buddies

Apex marine predators choose who they hang with, researchers reveal.

A white shark (Carcharodon Carcharias). Credit: Wikimedia Commons

White sharks form communities, researchers have revealed.

Although normally solitary predators, white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) gather in large numbers at certain times of year in order to feast on baby seals.

These groupings, scientists had assumed, were essentially random – the result of individual sharks all happening to turn up in the same area, attracted by abundant food.

Now, however, a group of researchers including behavioural ecologist Stephan Leu from Macquarie University in New South Wales, Australia, have used photo-identification and network analysis to show that many of the apex predators hang out in groups which persist for years.

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