We know more about the topography of Mars than that of Earth because 70 per cent of our planet is covered by water.
Kara Matthews has mapped the seafloor using satellite data and software. Credit: Kara Matthews
Now University of Sydney PhD student Kara Matthews has used satellite data and GPlates, a computer package developed at the University, to create a complete digital map of the many geological features of the seafloor.
Fracture zones—the orange lines in the accompanying image—are deep linear scars on the seafloor that extend perpendicular to the boundaries where tectonic plates are moving apart, revealing up to 150 million years of plate movement. They are accompanied by huge ridges on the seafloor, rising up to 2 km above the abyssal plains, and valleys as deep as 8 km below sea level. Continue reading Mapping the seafloor from space→
Researchers in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney have developed a computer package that lets scientists record and study the Earth over geological time.
GPlates image showing topography (left) and predicted temperature 300 km below surface (right) as India moves towards the Eurasian continent 60mya. Credit: Sabin Zahirovic, EarthByte
Their GPlates software, which they describe as “Google Earth with a time-slider,” contains powerful tools for modelling geological processes. Yet it is simple enough to use in schools or at home, and is freely available. By combining data on continental motion, fossils and sediments, for example, scientists can analyse changes in geography, ocean currents and climate over geological time. Continue reading Slide back in time and see the Himalayas form→
Four of Australia’s most accomplished scientists have been elected to the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, the Royal Society of London.
PROF IAN FRAZER LAUNCHES THE CERVICAL CANCER VACCINE GARDASIL. CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND
Prof Ian Frazer, Prof Alan Cowman, Prof Mark Randolph and Dr Patrick Tam join 40 other scientists to be elected to the Royal Society in 2011, which celebrated its 350th anniversary last year.
Australian engineers and physicists have developed a ‘single electron reader’, one of the key building blocks needed to make a quantum computer.
Andrew Dzurak (left), Andrea Morello and their colleagues have read the spin of a single electron. Credit: UNSWQuantum computers will use the spin, or magnetic orientation, of individual electrons for their calculations. And, because of the quantum nature of electrons, quantum computers could be exponentially faster at certain tasks than traditional computers.
In order to employ electron spin, a quantum computer needs both a way of changing the spin state (writing information) and of measuring that change (reading information). Together these two form a quantum bit or qubit – the equivalent of the bit in a conventional computer. Continue reading Computing with a single electron→
Absorbing carbon emissions from power stations and creating a new generation of hydrogen fuel tanks in future vehicles are just some of the potential applications of Dr Deanna D’Alessandro’s discoveries in basic chemistry.
She has created new, incredibly absorbent chemicals that can capture, store and release large volumes of gas.
It’s all to do with surface area, says Deanna, a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Chemistry at The University of Sydney.
She has constructed crystals that are full of minute holes.
One teaspoon of the most effective of these compounds has the surface area of a rugby field.
What’s more, the size and shape of the pores can be customised and changed using light. So she believes she can generate molecular sponges that will mop up carbon dioxide, hydrogen, or in theory almost any gas—and then release it on cue.
In 2010, her achievements won her a $20,000 L’Oréal Australia For Women in Science Fellowship which provided equipment, travel support and a student to assist her.
Deanna’s compounds have similar molecular structures to those in seashells and the microscopic marine plants called diatoms.
These naturally-occurring materials are commonly used in toothpaste, laundry detergents, kitty litter and other industrial applications.
But her high tech equivalents are crystals known as metal-organic frameworks—clusters of charged metal atoms linked by carbon-based groups.
While she didn’t invent these frameworks, Deanna has developed new kinds of them which are more robust and possess the molecular pores that can be shaped by light.
Photo: Deanna D’Alessandro, The University of Sydney. Credit: L’Oréal Australia/SDP media
School of Chemistry, The University of Sydney, Deanna D’Alessandro, Tel: +61 2 9351 7392, deanna@chem.usyd.edu.au, scienceinpublic.com.au/loreal
Australian researchers have invented a small, smart, self-managed hearing aid that outperforms most conventional hearing aids for less than half the price.
SARAH BELLHOUSE MODELLING THE IHEARYOU HEARING AID. CREDIT: MARK COULSON
It uses technology first developed for Australia’s bionic ear, and is so simple to set up that most users can buy one over the internet and fit it themselves.
That brings the cost down to between $1,000 and $1,500, or less than $3,000 for a pair.
Some of the biochemical tricks the malaria parasite uses to become resistant have been unravelled thanks to a series of discoveries by Dr Rowena Martin and her colleagues at the Australian National University.
She is using those insights to give a new lease of life to chloroquine, the wonder drug against malaria first discovered in the 1950s.
For more than half a century chloroquine saved hundreds of millions of lives, but now chloroquine-resistant malaria strains have become common in developing countries.
Rowena is working to understand what happened. The single-celled malaria parasite enters our bodies when we are bitten by an infected mosquito.
It eventually invades and plunders our red blood cells, consuming the haemoglobin contained within.
The digestion of haemoglobin, which takes place in the parasite’s stomach compartment, releases the iron-containing, nonprotein component, haem.
Free haem is toxic to the parasite, which responds by converting it to a harmless crystal. Chloroquine works by blocking the formation of these crystals.
Ten years ago researchers discovered that just a few small changes in a protein PfCRT were enough to give the parasite resistance to chloroquine. But they did not know what the changes did.
Rowena developed a system to study PfCRT in frog eggs—allowing her to examine it in isolation and in detail.
“We found that it moves chloroquine out of the parasite’s stomach compartment so that the drug can’t accumulate at its site of action.” For her achievements to date, in 2010 Rowena won a $20,000 L’Oréal Australia For Women in Science Fellowship.
Photo: Rowena Martin, the Australian National University, Canberra/The University of Melbourne. Credit: L’oréal Australia/SDP media.
Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Rowena Martin, Tel: +61 2 6125 8589, Rowena.Martin@anu.edu.au, www.scienceinpublic.com.au/loreal
Each year we identify early-career scientists with a discovery and bring them to Melbourne for a communication boot camp. Here are some of their stories.
Jacek Jasieniak sprinkling quantum dots. Credit: Jacek Jasieniak
Imagine printing your own room lighting, lasers, or solar cells from inks you buy at the local newsagent. Jacek Jasieniak and colleagues at CSIRO, the University of Melbourne and the University of Padua in Italy, have developed liquid inks based on quantum dots that can be used to print such devices and in the first demonstration of their technology have produced tiny lasers. Quantum dots are made of semiconductor material grown as nanometre-sized crystals, around a millionth of a millimetre in diameter. The laser colour they produce can be selectively tuned by varying their size.
Colin Scholes operates a test rig for his carbon capture membrane. Credit: CO2 CRC
High tech cling wraps that ‘sieve out’ carbon dioxide from waste gases can help save the world, says Melbourne University chemical engineer, Colin Scholes who developed the technology. The membranes can be fitted to existing chimneys where they capture CO2 for removal and storage. Not only are the new membranes efficient, they are also relatively cheap to produce. They are already being tested on brown coal power stations in Victoria’s La Trobe Valley, Colin says. “We are hoping these membranes will cut emissions from power stations by up to 90 per cent.”
Queensland researchers believe future cancer drugs could be grown in sunflowers and ultimately delivered as a seed ‘pill’.
PHOTO: DRUGS COULD BE GROWN IN SUNFLOWERS. CREDIT: CDANNA2003They’re a long way from that outcome. But, as they reported to the XVIII International Botanical Congress in Melbourne earlier this year, they have already shown that sunflowers make a precursor to cancer drugs as part of their defence against insect attack.
The precursor, a small ring-like protein fragment known as SFTI, has already shown potential as a cancer treatment. Until now, however, it has been considered too expensive to produce by conventional means. Continue reading Could we grow drugs using sunflowers?→
Mystery still surrounds why women who recover from breast cancer often relapse years later —Dr Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat is hoping to use her knowledge of breast tissue stem cells to unravel it.
In 2006, she was part of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute team that discovered breast stem cells.
She then built on this finding with a series of studies exploring how these cells develop and are influenced by oestrogen and other steroids.
Her achievements won her a $20,000 L’Oréal Australia For Women in Science Fellowship in 2010. Breast stem cells are critical to normal breast development, but if the breast becomes cancerous they are also likely to be at heart of the problem.
And that’s been the focus of Marie- Liesse’s work. In a series of high impact papers working with mice, she has explored how these breast stem cells develop into the wide range of cells found in a normal breast and how some of them become aggressive cancer cells.
In 2010 she was lead author of a Nature paper revealing that oestrogen and other steroids can control the function of breast stem cells. “It’s via an indirect mechanism important in understanding how stem cells proliferate, and it could lead to new treatments and new drugs,” she says. “But there are basic questions we still need to answer about breast cancer—such as, ‘What is the cell of origin?’ and ‘What causes a cell to go wrong and turn to cancer?’”
