Italian and Australian researchers are figuring out how bones and joints fail.
Almost five million Australians over 50 suffer from osteoporosis, and the number is rising.
Continue reading Bone mechanicsArchives
Slipped discs: robot shows it’s not all bending and twisting
High res photos available below.
Video of Dhara and the bending robot available here.
Some slipped disc injuries might be caused by movements other than the commonly blamed bending and twisting, according to new research by South Australian engineers.
It’s a finding that will lead to a better understanding of the motions that put people at greatest risk of a slipped disc and help develop more robust guidelines for safe lifting.
Continue reading Slipped discs: robot shows it’s not all bending and twisting
Australian Science Prizes 2016
Clunies Ross Awards
Dr Elaine Saunders has made premium hearing aids more affordable and easier to use. She and her team have built on Australia’s bionic ear technologies to create a system where you can: test your hearing online; buy your hearing aid online and receive it set up ready for you; and adjust the hearing aid with your smartphone while you’re at the pub, dancing, or watching TV.
Seeing medical devices from concept to commercialisation
It’s difficult to get medical devices out of academia and industry and into end-users’ hands. But a South Australian researcher developed a way to do it—and the program is now set to expand nationally, thanks to funding from the Medical Technologies and Pharmaceuticals Industry Growth Centre.
Devices the program has supported include the U-stand Frame—which helps hospital patients or the elderly stand from a bed with minimal assistance—and a device placed in urinals that gives instant feedback on hydration, to address the impact of heat stress on worker safety. Continue reading Seeing medical devices from concept to commercialisation
The sweet side of sulphur: cheap mercury clean-up
A cheap and simple material, using sulphur from petroleum industry waste and plant oils from the food industry, is being tested to clean up mercury pollution from soil and water.
The rubbery material will undergo field tests in 2017 in Australian mining and sugarcane sites, the latter of which use fungicides that contain mercury. The work is supported by funding from the National Environmental Science Programme’s emerging priorities funding.
“Our technology is about as simple as it can get: mix sulphur with plant oils and heat, then add the resulting material into the contaminated area,” says lead researcher Dr Justin Chalker, of Flinders University. Continue reading The sweet side of sulphur: cheap mercury clean-up
Unboiling an egg
Scientists in Australia and California have worked out how to unboil an egg. It may sound like an odd discovery, but it’s changed the way scientists think about manipulating proteins, an industry worth AU$160 billion per year.
Flinders University Professor Colin Raston and his team have developed Vortex Fluid Technology – using mechanical energy, or spinning, to reverse the effects of thermal energy, or boiling.
Australian Academy of Science Early-career Awards
Julie Arblaster’s climate research is helping to explain the climate of the Australian region, particularly the ozone hole, El Niño, the monsoon, and Australian rainfall variability.
David Warton is driving data analysis in ecology, making it a more predictive science. His tools are influencing statistics across science and industry.
Christian Turney has pioneered new ways of combining climate models with records of past climate change spanning from hundreds to thousands of years.
Maria Seton has redefined the way we reconstruct the movement of continental plates and contributed to studies on the effect ocean basin changes have had on global long-term sea level and ocean chemistry. Continue reading Australian Academy of Science Early-career Awards
Turning groundwater into wine
An investigation into groundwater underneath South Australia’s McLaren Vale wine region will help to ensure the local hydrologic cycle and world-famous wines keep flowing freely, and contribute to better groundwater management across Australia. About a third of Australia’s water comes from underground sources.
Fresh water bounty under the sea
Future global water shortages could be alleviated by huge freshwater reserves discovered beneath the ocean floor, according to a team of Australian and international scientists.
The scientists from Adelaide, the Netherlands, USA and the UK have found half a million cubic kilometres of fresh water in undersea aquifers located off Australia, China, North America and South Africa.
These aquifers are similar to the groundwater used in much of Australia and the rest of the world for drinking water and irrigation, and so could come in handy as existing supplies dwindle.
Starch to save young lives
A fibre may help save millions of children in developing countries who die or who are left malnourished from diarrhoea each year.
Graeme Young, AM, of Flinders University, is leading a global project that will test his theory that resistant starch increases zinc absorption in the body.