We assist the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Macquarie University with their research communication, helping them to raise the profile of their science and researchers.
A collection of their media releases is included below.
You can also read all the news from the Faculty on their website.
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.
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.
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.
Analysis of reef damage in the Indo-Pacific during the 2016 El Nino reveals that several different stressors influence bleaching.
Coral responses to temperature depend on a range of local inputs. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Scientists in the Indian and Pacific Oceans used the El Nino of 2016 – the warmest year on record – to evaluate the role of excess heat as the leading driver of coral bleaching and discovered the picture was more nuanced than existing models showed.
The findings were, in a word, complicated, according to marine researchers led by the US based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). The international cohort included scientists from Macquarie University in NSW, the University of Queensland, University of WA and two western Australian state government departments.
Macquarie astronomers find a well of serenity in deep space.
Masters student Lachlan Marnoch has been credited as co-author in a paper in Science before even submitting his thesis. Credit Macquarie University
A massive galaxy four billion light-years from Earth is surrounded by a halo of tranquil gas.
The finding, which reveals a galactic halo much less dense and less magnetised than expected, was made by a team of astronomers that included two researchers from Macquarie University.
The shape of immune cells plays key role in recognising invaders.
The ruffled surface of a T cell means only very small areas make close contact with potential enemy cells. CREDIT: Blausen Medical
The way immune cells pick friends from foes can be described by a classic maths puzzle known as the “narrow escape problem”.
That’s a key finding arising from an international
collaboration between biologists, immunologists and mathematicians, published
in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The narrow escape problem is a framework often applied in cellular
biology. It posits randomly moving particles trapped in a space with only a
tiny exit, and calculates the average time required for each one to escape.
Members of at least one species choose mates and egg sites based on where they were born, research reveals
Two American passionfruit butterflies, Heliconius charithonia, part of Dr Darrell Kemp’s research cohort. Credit: Darrell Kemp.
Birthplace exerts
a lifelong influence on butterflies as well as humans, new research reveals.
In a paper
published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological
Sciences, Macquarie University ARC Future Fellow Associate Professor
Darrell Kemp reveals that the American passionfruit butterfly, Heliconius
charithonia, selects its mate and egg-laying site based on the species of
plant that hosted its own egg.
Carbon dioxide capture by coastal ecosystems operates in direct relation
to the speed of sea level rise.
That was the conclusion of extensive research conducted by a team of
scientists from Macquarie
University, University of Wollongong and ANSTO – work that has now won the
scientists the NSW
Environment, Energy and Science (DPIE) Eureka Prize for Environmental Research.
The National Indigenous Science
Education Program (NISEP),
based at the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Sydney’s Macquarie
University, won the inaugural the Eureka Prize for STEM Inclusion at the 2019 Australian Museum Eureka
Prizes.
The awards were
held in Sydney on Wednesday, August 28.
Scientists urge priority action on hundreds of surviving reefs.
Image credit: Jeremy Bishop
The majority of 2500 reefs surveyed in a major international exercise retain the coral species that give them their distinctive structure.
More than 80 marine scientists, including several from Australia, contributed to the study, which is published in the journal, Nature Ecology and Evolution.
