Welcome to our Stories of Australian Science 2011 collection.

Among the 50 stories presented here, you’ll catch up with past winners of the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science, as well as the brilliant young scientists of the L’Oréal Australia For Women in Science Fellowships and of Fresh Science.

This is our third collection of Australian science stories. The first was put together in 2007 when journalists met in Melbourne for the 5^th World Conference of Science Journalists. The second was when Melbourne hosted the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers in December 2009.

Please feel free to use the stories for your own social media, website, or publications. Everything is available for reuse under a Creative Commons licence.

Browse the collection

You can browse this year’s collection at stories.scienceinpublic.com.au/2011

Or use the menus on the left to search all our stories by field or science, organisation or State.

The full publication is also available as a PDF and in print. If you’d like us to send you some copies please email niall@scienceinpublic.com.au

Contents

The land beneath

• Parkinson answers deep in the brain
• Mapping the seafloor from space

Preparing for the worst

• OPAL reactor fingerprints Aboriginal ochre
• Preparing for the worst
• A step towards an everlasting battery

Recognising science leaders since 2000

• Back to the future for father of biotechnology
• Seeing fish through rocks
• The life and death of blood cells
• Saving our skins
• Virtual management of the world’s oceans
• How a molecular assassin operates

• Computing with a single electron
• Take control of your hearing
• Could we grow drugs using sunflowers?

• Unmasking melanoma early
• Curing cancer with radiation – safely
• Two steps forward for cancer detection

• Helping eyes to help themselves
• Life’s work closer to saving lives
• Milk could soothe the savage gum

The right forecast

• Stopping parasite means more, safer meat
• Giving farmers more timely weather and climate forecasts
• Australian farmers bring climate research to the paddock

Science stories

• Plastic not fantastic for seabirds
• Saving koalas by vaccination
• Rapid identity check for border security pests

• Diamonds for extreme electronics
• Body’s power plants offer clues to Parkinson’s disease
• Cementing a greener future

• Skin deep discovery reveals immune mysteries
• Improved myopia treatment in sight
• Pain relief from the sea

• Faster flash flood warnings
• Parasites betrayed by their genome
• Putting a cap on fatigue

• Crashing helicopters for safety
• Silicon solves helicopter corrosion
• Australian scientists elected to Royal Society

• Is that you in the video?
• Building a better banana
• Dirt solves murder mysteries

• Spot the nutrients
• Yeast to make jet fuels
• Slide back in time and see the Himalayas form

• Fresh Science 2010