Fresh Science is a national competition helping early-career researchers find, and then share, their stories of discovery.
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Researchers have been able to pick a water leak within 1 percent of its location within seconds.
Artificial intelligence combined with pressure waves has been used to find faults in major water pipelines faster and more cheaply than existing methods.
Continue reading Leaky water pipes found at high speed using AIUsing a face mask, Adelaide researchers have a new way to detect a major hidden equine health issue.
Up to 80 percent of horses – including racehorses and showjumpers – suffer from a form of asthma that affects their performance and wellbeing.
Researchers led by veterinarian Surita Du Preez from the University of Adelaide are designing a way to detect the condition – which often produces no obvious symptoms – without adding further stress to the affected animals.
“Currently the methods that are available to diagnose the mild to moderate form of horse asthma are invasive,” says Surita.
Continue reading Detecting asthma in horsesA new type of concrete that is made out of waste materials and can bend under load has been developed by researchers from Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia.
This material, which incorporates industrial waste products such as fly ash produced by coal-fired power stations, is especially suited for construction in earthquake zones – in which the brittle nature of conventional concrete often leads to disastrous building collapses.
Continue reading Bendable, safe, long-lasting and green cement-free concretePhoto by Pixabay
Using zircon crystals, researchers have discovered the route of a massive ancient river that could help find new reservoirs of fossil fuels and suggest how modern rivers might change over time.
More than two thirds of the worlds’ major cities are located in coastal deltas. How they change over time can impact communities that live around them.
Continue reading Ghostly traces of massive ancient river revealedPhoto by Pixabay
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.
Continue reading Brain temperature can now be measured using lightPhoto by Pixabay
The iconic Australian tea tree (Melaleuca decora) is more vulnerable than native eucalypt species to extreme temperature and moisture stress, Western Sydney University researcher Anne Griebel has discovered.
To make the finding, Anne and colleagues fitted instruments that measure the exchange of carbon, water and heat at 10 times a second to an extendable mast on a trailer deployed in a critically endangered woodland in Western Sydney.
Continue reading Tea trees crave water during hot and dry summer daysPhoto by Laura Garcia .
Written by Akila Rekima and the University of Western Australia – UWA press release.
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.
Their preclinical data and human birth cohorts analysis strongly suggest that egg-derived allergen protect against egg allergy. But they’ve also found that other allergens in breast milk such as house dust mite derived allergens may interfere with protection from allergies.
Continue reading New clues for allergy prevention by breast milkPhoto by Pixabay
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.
Continue reading Goannas return to mine site
Personalised treatment of cancers has moved one step closer, thanks to University of Melbourne researcher Dr Susan Christo.
Increasingly, cancers are being treated using an approach called immunotherapy – which uses a patient’s own immune cells to fight the disease.
Continue reading One step closer to understanding cancer-fighting immune cellsImage credit: Pixabay
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.
Continue reading Whooping cough is fighting back.
