Fresh Science is a national competition that has been helping early-career researchers find, and then share their stories of discovery for the past 18 years.
Taking young researchers with no media experience and turning them into spokespeople for science, Fresh Science gives its finalists a taste of life in the limelight, with a day of media training and a public event in their home state.
In 2015 Fresh Science ran in every mainland state, with 61 Fresh Scientists in six state events, and seven public events bringing Fresh Science to around 1000 members of the public.
Read some of the fresh science we discovered in 2015 here.
Researchers discover how whooping cough is evolving paving the way to a new
vaccine.
Whooping cough strains are adapting to better infect
humans, a team of Sydney researchers has found.
The scientists, led by microbiologist Dr Laurence Luu of the University
of New South Wales, may have solved the mystery of why, despite
widespread vaccinations, the respiratory disease has been resurgent in
Australia across the past decade. There have been more than 200,000 cases
recorded during the period.
We can’t easily monitor the health
of plants, by the time we see that they’re sick it’s usually too late to save
that. That’s an issue for your house plants, a field of wheat, orchards and
plantations.
Karina Khambatta has developed a
way to use the waxy surface of leaves to monitor their health.
Currently the technique uses
infrared spectroscopy to study changes seen throughout leaf senescence. Karina
has had the opportunity to utilise the infrared microscopy lab located at the
Australian Synchrotron to help correlate her infrared studies undertaken at
Curtin University, but Karina believes it can be turned into a handheld device
that could be used on-farm, like reading a barcode.
Climbing trees reveals a housing shortage for tree-rats and other endangered animals.
Estimates of tree hollows – which form the houses of
several endangered species in northern Australia – are much too high,
researchers at Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory have found.
And the discovery could be bad news for several of
Australia’s most vulnerable species, including the Black-Footed Tree-Rat (Mesembriomys gouldii) and Brush Tailed Rabbit-Rat (Conilurus penicillatus).
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.
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.
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.
Filtering out social bots can help critical response teams see what’s
happening in real time
Network visualisation of genuine users (at the right side) and social bots (in purple on the left side). Bots form a densely connected graph by tweeting similar messages at the same time. Two users in this network are connected if they repeatedly tweeted similar messages about the same topics in a given time duration. Bots are very loosely connected to rest of the users.
Researchers have created an algorithm that distinguishes
between misinformation and genuine conversations on Twitter, by detecting
messages churned out by social bots.
Dr Mehwish Nasim and colleagues at the School of Mathematical
Sciences at the University of Adelaide say the algorithm will make it easier
for emergency services to detect major events such as civil unrest, natural
disasters, and influenza epidemics in real time.
“When something really big is going on, people tweet a
huge amount of useful information,” says Mehwish.
Cognition is influenced by siblings, researchers find.
Autistic children with autistic siblings have better
cognition than those who are the only family member with the condition, researchers
have found.
Importantly, the outcome does not depend on birth order.
Although previous studies have identified that having
autistic siblings leads to better cognition for individual children with the
condition, it was assumed that the order in which the children were born was a
significant factor.
Adelaide researchers find how a bacteria digests a sugar can be key to new treatments
The severity of a common and often lethal type of bacteria
depends on its ability to process a type of sugar, research from the University
of Adelaide reveals.
Streptococcus pneumoniae causes diseases of the
lungs, blood, ear and brain, killing an estimated one million people every
year. Moreover S. pneumoniae causes
otitis media (infection of the middle ear), which devastates Aboriginal
populations. It also rapidly develops resistance to antibiotics, making it
challenging to treat.
A technique adapted from telecommunications promises more effective cancer treatments.
Dr Shwathy Ramesan from RMIT
Drugs can be delivered into individual cells by using
soundwaves, Melbourne researchers have discovered.
Adapting a technique used in the telecommunications
industry for decades, Dr Shwathy Ramesan from RMIT, and colleagues, used the
mechanical force of sound to push against cell walls and deliver drugs more
effectively than treatments currently in use.
The new technique aids in silencing genes responsible for
some diseases, including cancer, by switching them on or off.
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Practice interviews. Key messages. Tricky questions. How to ensure your research is reported accurately.
Sarah's structure of the course, specific insight and understanding of science, her contacts and common mistakes made in communication were great and furthered my skills in this area.
Anonymous - Sydney Jan 2020
Science In Public
2020-01-28T15:04:28+11:00
Anonymous - Sydney Jan 2020
Sarah's structure of the course, specific insight and understanding of science, her contacts and common mistakes made in communication were great and furthered my skills in this area.
This is one of the best science communication courses I have ever encountered. It teaches all research to think out of box and really simplify their research in lay man's language. I will highly recommend this to anyone looking to learn more about science communication.
Shwathy Ramesh
Science In Public
2020-02-24T09:29:55+11:00
Shwathy Ramesh
This is one of the best science communication courses I have ever encountered. It teaches all research to think out of box and really simplify their research in lay man's language. I will highly recommend this to anyone looking to learn more about science communication.