• Link to HD sawfish footage, courtesy of Biopixel (the watermark must be retained).
• Background information
• Further videos, photos and captions

Hundreds of citizen science sightings reveal opportunities to protect Australia’s four iconic sawfish species

• New hotspots for green sawfish in Weipa and Karratha.
• A sawfish nursery in the Brisbane River until about 1950.
• Evidence that sawfish have not completely disappeared from NSW waters, with a Newcastle sighting.
• Juvenile sawfish reported down the WA coast.
• More action needed in Queensland as only one species reported south of Cooktown.
• A new call to action to step up conservation and assess the impact of net-free zones in Weipa and Queensland’s east coast.
• And keep reporting your sightings. Together we can save sawfish.

Australian researchers unlock the key to cheaper high-tech telecom and medical diagnostic devices.

Scientists and engineers will soon have a much cheaper way of stabilising, blocking and steering light – potentially lowering the costs of high-tech equipment used in telecommunications, medical diagnostics and consumer electronics.

Researchers led by Dr Girish Lakhwani, a chief investigator for the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science (ACEx), have found a way to manipulate light produced by lasers at a fraction of the cost of existing methods.

Nanotech technique could revolutionise neurological treatments.

Light could replace invasive techniques to measure brain temperature– eliminating the need to place a thermometer in the brain when treating a range of neurological disorders.

Researchers from Victoria’ Swinburne University have teamed up with Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in Spain and Stanford University in the US to develop a technique for measuring sub-degree brain temperature changes using near-infrared light. 

Written by Akila Rekima and the University of Western Australia. For the full UWA press release, click here.

A research team at UWA is investigating the complex interactions of breast milk with allergens and baby’s gut immune system.

They’ve found that food-derived but also airborne allergens are present in breast milk. Some do give protection and reduce allergies later in life.

Animals play critical roles in ecosystems, but they are broadly overlooked in assessments of mine site restoration success says Sophie Cross, an ecologist at Curtin University.

She tracked Australia’s largest lizard species, the perentie, using VHF radio and GPS tracking, and walked hundreds of kilometres through unmined and restoration bushland on a mine site in the mid-west region of Western Australia for her study published in the Australian Journal of Zoology.

Scarring and major lacerations due to vessel collisions becoming more common, study finds.

Almost one-fifth of the whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) in Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef Marine Park show major scarring or fin amputations, with the number of injured animals increasing in recent years, new research reveals.

Distinctive scar patterns strongly suggest many of the injuries are caused by boat collisions, says whale shark scientist Emily Lester from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS).

Lisa Kewley has transformed our understanding of the early years of the Universe, the development of galaxies, and what happens when they collide.  

For her pioneering investigations across theory, modelling and observation, she will receive the US National Academy of Science’s biennial James Craig Watson Medal in Washington DC.

“At school I thought physics would be too hard.  But I had a wonderful physics teacher whose love for astronomy was contagious!” says Lisa.

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.

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

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.