China and Australia can dramatically boost wheat yields and improve food security by unlocking the genetic potential within the hundreds of wheat varieties grown in the two countries. That’s the promise of the latest collaboration between wheat researchers in the two countries.
Chinese farmers have been growing wheat for at least 4,000 years. Crop yields per hectare are now nearly 10 times higher than in 1960 and China is now the largest wheat producer in the world. But wheat researchers say we can do more.
Working together to create advanced manufacturing industries
The maiden flight of the COMAC C919 airliner in May 2017 illustrated China’s ambition in advanced manufacturing.
Many of the airliner’s parts are made using 3D printing, and Australian engineers are working with their Chinese colleagues to develop the technology further.
Australian-led astronomers find the most iron-poor star in the Galaxy, hinting at the nature of the first stars in the Universe.
A visualisation of the formation of the first stars. Credit: Wise, Abel, Kaehler (KIPAC/SLAC)
A newly discovered ancient star containing a record-low amount of iron carries evidence of a class of even older stars, long hypothesised but assumed to have vanished.
In a paper published in the journal Monthly Notices of
the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, researchers led by Dr Thomas
Nordlander of the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3
Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) confirm the existence of an ultra-metal-poor red
giant star, located in the halo of the Milky Way, on the other side of the
Galaxy about 35,000 light-years from Earth.
Macquarie University’s Professor Rob Harcourt urges Oceania-wide action to safeguard several species.
Sharks in Australian waters are well protected but
are at risk as soon as they leave them, a new international study reveals.
The North Atlantic blue shark shares much of its territory with longline fishing fleets. Credit: Neil Hammerschlag
The study compiled by 150 scientists around the
world – including 26 with ties to Australia – has found thateven in the most remote parts of the world’s oceans migratory
sharks are in severe danger from commercial fishing fleets, new research
reveals.
In a paper published in the journal Nature,
more than 150 scientists, including Professor Rob Harcourt from the Department
of Biological Sciences at Australia’s Macquarie University, report that the
sharks – which include iconic species such as the shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus) and the great white (Carcharodon
carcharias) –
congregate in food-rich areas that are also prime hunting grounds for
commercial longline fishing fleets.
Dr Stuart Ryder is venturing into the stratosphere on a NASA jet to study the birthplace of massive stars.
Macquarie University astronomer Dr Stuart Ryder is in New Zealand to hitch a ride on a NASA jet and take a closer look at how stars are born in one of the most active stellar nurseries ever seen.
“We’re looking at a molecular cloud called BYF73, which is collapsing in on itself at extremely high speeds and forming massive stars,” says Stuart, who is an Adjunct Fellow with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Macquarie University.
German and Australian researchers are seeking opportunities in transition.
Moving away from fossil fuels is challenging, but it also
presents huge opportunities. At the Energy Transition Hub, more than 140
Australian and German researchers are working together to tackle the social and
technical challenges and take advantage of the trade and export opportunities.
To hear tiny vibrations from half a galaxy away, first you need to filter
out the Earth’s constant rumbling.
At gravitational wave observatories such as the European
Advanced Virgo in Italy, scientists try to detect ripples in spacetime caused
by colliding black holes and other stellar cataclysms.
Australian universities joined a European fleet of CubeSats to explore a
little-known layer of the atmosphere.
In May 2017, the European Union led a mission called QB50 to
launch a constellation of 50 mini-satellites from the International Space
Station. The pocket-sized CubeSats set out to study the thermosphere, the layer
of Earth’s atmosphere between 90 and 600 kilometres above the ground that
carries signals from GPS and other satellites.
