Dozens of Science Week stories around New South Wales

• Dr Karl, dinosaurs, furry friends, and a T-Rex autopsy show: all on the Sydney Science Trail – Mt Annan and Sydney
• Fighting superbugs, big bad tech, caring for sky country, and microfactories making new materials from old – Sydney Science Festival is back
• Saving the planet by gardening underwater – Lake Macquarie and Sydney
• Unstable internet connection: why we’re addicted to dopamine – online
• The future of the Antarctic envisaged by artists and scientists – Wollongong
• The Indigenous night sky, bush food, and technology – Redfern
• Step inside the Poo Palace – Newcastle
• Wattle vs woollybutt: what is Australia’s favourite tree? – online

More on these highlights below.

Scientists, experts and event organisers are available for interview throughout National Science Week.

Images available for media use.

Blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon) — a long-lived wattle with cream ball-shaped flowers. Native to eastern states and SA, it’s now also found in WA, often as a feature or shade tree. Blackwood is used for furniture and guitars; and by Indigenous people for food, medicine and weapons.

Boab (Adansonia gregorii) — found in the Kimberly, WA and western NT, Australia’s boab has a huge bottle-shaped trunk that stores water: just one of the reasons this is an important tree for the local Indigenous people. The boab is deciduous during the dry season.

Bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii) — a large, symmetrical ancient conifer native to Qld. It has huge cones containing large, delicious seeds traditionally roasted and eaten by Indigenous people. Weighing up to 10kg, these cones can be a hazard when they fall.

Images and media kit download

Planetary scientist Katarina Miljkovic is discussing how she uses “space rocks” to understand how planets form. She’s available for interview and is giving free public talks this week in North Sydney, Wollongong, and Canberra.

The planets in our solar system are vastly different although they all formed from the same cloud of gas and dust around a star – our sun. Why is this?

Associate Professor Katarina Miljkovic works at Curtin University’s Space Science and Technology Centre and School of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

She thinks the answers lie in studying how asteroids, comets and meteors bombarded the planets in the past, changing the surface conditions.

Most autoimmune diseases are easy to diagnose but hard to treat. A paper published in Science proposes using your unique immune cell fingerprint to rapidly identify which treatments will work for your autoimmune disease.

‘We analysed the genomic profile of over one million cells from 1,000 people to identify a fingerprint linking genetic markers to diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, type 1 diabetes, spondylitis, inflammatory bowel disease, and Crohn’s disease,’ says Professor Joseph Powell, joint lead author at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. ‘We were able to do this using single cell sequencing, a new technology that allows us to detect subtle changes in individual cells,’ he says.

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.”

RMIT researcher calls for reducing ‘microplastics’ in bathroom products

Mussels in Port Phillip Bay near Melbourne are ingesting microscopic pieces of plastic used in cosmetics. And it’s affecting their ability to grow and reproduce, an RMIT University eco-toxicologist has found.

The microplastics travel from our bathroom sinks to the ocean, where they are easily confused with algae or seaweeds. Because they cannot tell the difference, the mussels take in the plastic along with their normal diet of algae.

But, says researcher Dr Charlene Trestrail, the plastics affect the action of four of their key digestive enzymes which means the mussels then struggle to break down starch into the simple sugars they need to survive.

“We don’t think the plastic affects mussels directly, but it does reduce their ability to digest the real food in their gut, which means they miss out on energy and nutrients,” says Dr Trestrail.

A glove is being trialled at Liverpool Hospital that gives surgical trainees instant and accurate feedback. Researchers say the gloves could also be used by musicians and artists.

Engineers at Western Sydney University have invented a new surgical glove built around low-cost sensors which can record hand movements in fine detail, giving trainee surgeons and their mentors actionable data to evaluate and improve on intricate surgical procedures.

The research team are working closely with surgeons and students at Liverpool Hospital to develop the technology, which will augment rather than replace traditional surgical training.

Work, housing and friendships are core factors to feeling included.

A new tool developed by researchers at Orygen to measure and monitor social inclusion was tested with more than 500 young people.

By identifying the early signs of isolation and loneliness, support can be provided to prevent more serious mental ill-health.

In mental healthcare, simple screening tools for common conditions like depression and anxiety make it possible to diagnose people quickly and get help sooner.

A new tool developed at Orygen does the same, but for social inclusion: the F-SIM (Filia Social Inclusion Measure), developed by Dr Kate Filia and being presented in Hobart this week at the Society for Mental Health Research conference, could help to pinpoint the causes of isolation and social exclusion,

A private public partnership to strengthen Australia’s position at the forefront of the cancer treatment revolution.

The Precision Oncology Screening Platform Enabling Clinical Trials (PrOSPeCT) will establish Australia is a medical manufacturing hub: building links from research through to the clinic; creating jobs; changing lives.

Announced by the Australian Government at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research today.

Over the past decade, immunotherapy and other new treatments have transformed outcomes for thousands of Australians diagnosed with cancer. However, 46,000 Australians a year are diagnosed with cancers with limited treatment options.