2015

Where did the antimatter go?

Antimatter has been disappearing and Melbourne researcher Phillip Urquijo wants to know why.

Phillip Urquijo—looking for missing antimatter. Credit: Casamento photography
Phillip Urquijo—looking for missing antimatter. Credit: Casamento photography

He’s hoping that the Belle II experiment, commencing in Japan in 2017, will give him an answer—and if he’s lucky it will answer many other questions about the beginning of the Universe too.

“What I hope we’ll discover is clear evidence of new quarks, leptons or other force-carrying particles,” says Phillip. “And I’d be really excited if we found a new kind of Higgs particle using this indirect approach.”

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2015, Australia-Japan Collaboration

Finding new drugs for malaria

New drugs may be on the way for malaria, a disease that helps push millions of people into extreme poverty, thanks to an Australian team working with a remarkable new Japanese organisation.

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2015

Could your lab have the next antibiotic?

Could your newly synthesised molecule kill a superbug? Matt Cooper can tell you.

His team is offering a free screening service for the world’s chemists to test their compounds against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, helping them to potentially find a new antibiotic that will fight the rise of these ‘superbugs’.

“We’re helping the community unlock the hidden value of these chemicals,” says Matt, whose team is from the Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery (CO-ADD), a not-for-profit, global initiative of The University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience. The screening began in February 2015, and Matt has already received thousands of samples from locations including India, Singapore, New Zealand, France, Israel, UK and the USA.

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