Qld

Add fertiliser to fight weeds

Feeding weeds fertiliser sounds like exactly the wrong thing, if you want to get rid of them, but Jennifer Firn of CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems has been doing just that—to control African lovegrass, an invasive species of rangelands in every Australian state.

Her method works by making the weed tastier to grazing animals. It illustrates that we need to be smarter in dealing with weeds, not just reaching for the Round Up, Jennifer says. Her work was published in the Journal of Applied Ecology earlier this year and is being presented for the first time in public through Fresh Science, a communication boot camp for early career scientists held at the Melbourne Museum last week. She was one of 16 winners from across Australia.

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L’Oréal Australia Fellowships in 2010

Applications for the 2010 L’Oréal Australia For Women In Science Fellowships have now closed. Below is the April bulletin for 2010. We’re pleased to include progress reports on our 2009 Fellows. As you will read, their work spans the full extent of space and time—from Marnie’s studies on how genes are controlled, through Tamara’s exploration […]

On the hunt for dark energy

Tamara Davis

University of Queensland / University of Copenhagen

In 1998 astronomers made an astonishing discovery-the expansion of the Universe is not happening at a steady rate, nor is it slowing down toward eventual collapse. Instead, it is accelerating. The discovery required a complete rethink of the standard model used to explain how the Universe works. [continue reading…]