This week we’ve got a host of opportunities for rising stars in science including our own Fresh Science competition and the $50,000 Metcalf Prizes for stem cell research.

In my experience, most award winners were encouraged to nominate by a trusted supervisor or peer. So do Australian science a favour – and push the rising stars you know into the limelight.

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From Marc Duldig, President of the Australian Institute of Physics Welcome to my bulletin covering physics news and events for September 2012 and beyond. In a busy September we have gravitational waves in Adelaide, ultra-cold atom optics in Victoria, a…

A working prototype of a wheelchair steered by thoughts, rather than hands, will be demonstrated live to the public in Sydney next week.

About 700,000 Australians live with severe disability—many entirely dependent on someone else to move.

They may soon be more mobile thanks to the Thought-controlled Intelligent Machine (TIM), developed at the University of Technology Sydney.   Read more here.

Also read about:

• Healthcare that works for the Facebook and Skype era – launch in Melbourne with Vic Health Minister at 10.30 am
• L’Oréal For Women in Science Fellowships next Tuesday
• Are you a binge listener? Test your hearing with Soundcheck Australia
  

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Kicking off in Sydney this Thursday 16 August, it’s 11 days of serious science fun, with 50 events running day and night around the Powerhouse Museum, the ABC Ultimo Centre, Ultimo TAFE and the University of Technology, Sydney.

So far, we’ve blogged about:

• Chemistry and creativity in the kitchen: Making tiny edible spheres of flavour is just one of the secrets of molecular gastronomy that food scientist and award-winning pastry chef Galit Segev will share at the Ultimo Science Festival.
• Animating mating krill: from Antarctic ocean floor to online music video – A video of tiny crustaceans mating was taken at the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Antarctica. Now it’s been transformed into an animation and remixed online into a music video.
• Iron-ageing: trace elements and their role in Parkinson’s disease: If all the iron in the human brain was put into one lump, it would amount to about the size of a grain of rice. But the metal plays a vital role in brain cells and their function.
• The life and inventions of Alan Turing: Turing expert Professor Jack Copeland and;
• ABC RN Forum – The Beast Within: dissecting the ethics of animal experimentation. [continue reading…]

Alan Turing, the father of modern computing, would have turned 100 this year.

Celebrate the life and work of the code-breaking genius at the Ultimo Science Festival’s Big Night of Science. There will be drinks, jazz and a talk from the world’s leading authority on Alan Turing, Prof Jack Copeland. [continue reading…]