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The future for our planet

Resourcing Tomorrow – Creating Value for Society

Media welcome at 26^th World Mining Congress

Where will we find the lithium, cobalt, copper, sand and other minerals needed for a sustainable net-zero world?

How can we create and operate zero-impact mines?

AI, EV and autonomous machines are already making mines cleaner and safer. What are the lessons across society?

How can we transform mining’s relationship with First Nations people around the world?

Can we/should we mine with plants? In space?

How can we build infrastructure sustainably in the Global South?

Find the answers to these any many other questions, with over 3,500 of the world’s mining leaders, technologists, and researchers from 70 countries who are meeting at the World Mining Congress in Brisbane from 26 to 29 June 2023.

Accredited media are invited to attend the Congress

[Read more…]

The world’s fastest industry standard optical fibre

Equal to more than 10 million home broadband connections

Invented in Japan with Macquarie University support

Images available for media use

An optical fibre about the thickness of a human hair can now carry the equivalent of more than 10 million fast home internet connections running at full capacity.

A team of Japanese, Australian, Dutch, and Italian researchers has set a new speed record for an industry standard optical fibre, achieving 1.7 Petabits over a 67km length of fibre. The fibre, which contains 19 cores that can each carry a signal, meets the global standards for fibre size, ensuring that it can be adopted without massive infrastructure change. And it uses less digital processing, greatly reducing the power required per bit transmitted.

[Read more…]

Support for National Science Week celebrations

Media release from The Hon Ed Husic MP, Minister for Industry and Science

24 May 2023

A Dark Matter Road trip, sharing First Nations science and drone coding are just some of the projects receiving a share of close to $500,000 in grants to support National Science Week.

With Australia’s national celebration of science and technology just around the corner, thirty-two grant recipients are gearing up to deliver a diverse range of events right across the country.

The National Science Week Grants provide funding of between $2,000 and $20,000 to support individuals and organisations to deliver community science events.

Many of the projects funded this year will support diversity and inclusion in science, with several grants supporting events featuring First Nations science and scientists, and a range of activities in remote and regional communities.

[Read more…]

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.

Images for download

**Inside the Galleria Facility at Macquarie University’s Applied Biosciences Laboratories**

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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Indigenous communities creating a new approach to STEM skills

An innovative chemistry, soap-making and hygiene engagement project is launching in partnership with young Indigenous scientists.

MERCK’s Giorgia Todesco will travel to the Northern Territory with the DeadlyScience team to pilot the first DeadlyLabs kit. It’s a project led by Elders in the Robinson River region to share their knowledge, their ideas, and their care for the community.

Learners in rural Northern Territory are set to road-test a new science kit exploring the chemistry of soap-making and hygiene with experiments based in Indigenous science.

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April’s total solar eclipse over Ningaloo: the first of five for Australia

Scientists and eclipse enthusiasts available for interviews: contact Tanya Ha at Science in Public on 0404 083 863 or tanya@scienceinpublic.com.au

Images below

At 11.29 am AWST on Thursday 20 April 2023 the sun will disappear over Ningaloo. It will reappear a minute later.

The rest of Australia will experience a partial eclipse, and a chance to prepare for the big one, a total eclipse over Sydney in 2028.

[Read more…]

The largest cosmic blast ever, pinpointed with Macquarie researcher help

The location of the brightest cosmic explosion ever recorded was pinpointed at 2.4 billion light years from Earth by a team of astronomers, which included a Macquarie University researcher.

The blast, known as a gamma-ray burst (GRB), was first picked up by sensors on veteran spacecraft Voyager 1 last October, only arriving at Earth 19 hours later.

It was then detected by several gamma-ray space telescopes, such as NASA’s Swift and Fermi, and the European Space Agency’s INTEGRAL.

But two papers published this week show it was spectroscopic data collected by the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope that finally helped locate the origin of the blast in a previously unknown galaxy.

[Read more…]

Prizes, awards and opportunities

Nominate your top scientists, science communicators, and research leaders for one of 18 Eureka Prizes. Nominations open until 14 April.
ATSE awards are open until 29 May, for excellence in technology, applied science and engineering.
Look out for the ABC Top 5 Media Residency Program, opening soon. For early-career researchers across science, arts and humanities with a flair and passion for communicating their work.

Tracing 13 billion years of history by the light of ancient quasars

New evidence for rapid heating in the early universe

Astrophysicists in Australia have shed new light on the state of the universe 13 billion years ago by measuring the density of carbon in the gases surrounding ancient galaxies.

The study adds another piece to the puzzle of the history of the universe.

“We found that the fraction of carbon in warm gas increased rapidly about 13 billion years ago, which may be linked to large-scale heating of gas associated with the phenomenon known as the ‘Epoch of Reionisation’,” says Dr Rebecca Davies, ASTRO 3D Postdoctoral Research Associate at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia and lead author of the paper describing the discovery.

[Read more…]

Skin samples reveal where southern right whales feed

And how their shifting use of Antarctic waters shows effects of climate change.

Scientists have analysed chemicals in the skin of southern right whales to give new insights into the animals’ distribution, as well as long-term environmental changes in the Southern Ocean.

The research was published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

[Read more…]

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Operations

Resourcing Tomorrow – Creating Value for Society

Media welcome at 26th World Mining Congress

Equal to more than 10 million home broadband connections

Invented in Japan with Macquarie University support

An innovative chemistry, soap-making and hygiene engagement project is launching in partnership with young Indigenous scientists.

New evidence for rapid heating in the early universe

And how their shifting use of Antarctic waters shows effects of climate change.

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Media welcome at 26^th World Mining Congress