Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is causing ocean acidification, leading to adverse impacts on shell-forming organisms such as sea urchins, cold water corals and plankton.
Bacteria: The mining powerhouse of the future
BHP Billiton, the world’s largest diversified resources company, is focused on developing bioleaching technology to recover metals from difficult-to-treat concentrates or low-grade ores.
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Quenching our thirst for water
CSIRO is spearheading a $9 million-a-year project to help ease Australia’s current water management crisis.
A new national Water Resources Observation Network (WRON), set up by CSIRO through the Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, is aiming to improve water management, and make a 20 per cent cost saving in the process.
The Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) Programme
The CRC Programme has contributed funding towards the most comprehensive pilot project in the world to commercially test the storage and monitoring of concentrated carbon dioxide deep underground in geological formations, undertaken by the CRC for Greenhouse Gas Technologies.
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Researcher to fight insects with spider venom
An Australian researcher is working on environmentally friendly insect control methods based on spider venom compounds.
Professor Glenn King recently joined The University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience, where he will further develop his pioneering approach to insecticide discovery.
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Language – nature or nurture?
Why can children learn any language – is it nature or nurture? Using the world’s first magnetoencephalography (MEG) system designed to study cognitive processing in children, Macquarie University Federation Fellow Professor Stephen Crain will investigate whether or not children have innate language ability.
Some secrets of breast milk revealed?
Most mothers are aware that breast milk helps boost their baby’s immune levels, but up to now it has been thought that it is mainly because of the mother’s antibodies found in human milk.
Measuring the nano world
Nanotechnology is the revolution that promises wrinkle-resistant clothing, invisible sunscreens and drug delivery direct to the cellular level.
Materials behave differently at the nano-level. They may have physical and chemical properties that can render them beneficial or harmful.
Coral records thousands of years of climate change
Thermometer-based climate records started in 1850, so scientists have gone “back to nature” for sources of long-term climatic information to help them better understand climate change and rising sea levels.
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Animals contribute to greenhouse gases
Smoke-belching coal-fired power stations and factories and fossil fuel-guzzling motor vehicles may be seen as the big villains of the global climate change debate, but they aren’t the only ones contributing to the greenhouse effect.
Australia’s hundreds of millions of cattle, sheep, pigs and other agricultural animals – not to mention our native fauna – also release significant amounts of methane and other gases into the atmosphere.