Feature
Remote Housing Need Not Cost the Earth
Example of a modern rammed earth house in Western Australia. Photo: Stephen Dobson
By Daniela Ciancio
Building and maintaining houses in remote Aboriginal communities is difficult and expensive, but engineering improvements to rammed earth constructions offer a viable alternative.
Daniela Ciancio is Assistant Professor of Structural Engineering at the University of Western Australia.
This article is available exclusively to Australasian Science Magazine subscription holders. Subscribe here.
Tequila Sunrise
Blue agave at Kalamia Estate, Queensland, in March 2010 during the crop’s first wet season. Photo: Don Chambers
By Daniel Tan
Agave is most popularly known for its use in tequila, but it could also usher in the dawn of a sustainable biofuel industry that does not compete with food crops for arable land.
Daniel Tan is a Senior Lecturer in Agronomy at the University of Sydney and President of the NSW Division of the Australian Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology.
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The Missing Matter
These frames simulate the evolution of large-scale structures in the universe, including galaxy clusters and cosmic filaments. The frames show the evolution of structures from 140 million light years ago (left) to the present day (right). Simulations performed at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications by Andrey Kravtsov (University of Chicago) and Anatoly Klypin (New Mexico State University). Visualisations by Andrey Kravtsov
By Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway
Cosmic filaments are the largest structures in the universe, and are the most likely places where the universe’s missing matter resides.
Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway is Margaret Clayton Research Fellow at the School of Physics, Monash University.
This article is available exclusively to Australasian Science Magazine subscription holders. Subscribe here.
A Taste for Fat
There is evidence for a direct role of the taste system in the consumption and preference of high-fat foods. Image: iStockphoto
By Russell Keast
Desensitisation to the taste of fat may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic.
Russell Keast is Associate Professor in the Sensory Science Group at Deakin University.
This article is available exclusively to Australasian Science Magazine subscription holders. Subscribe here.
The Bionic Eye Is In Sight
The Hatpack simulator. Image: Monash Vision Group
By Namita Bhojani
After conquering the bionic ear more than 30 years ago, Australian scientists have set their sights on the bionic eye.
Namita Bhojani is a freelance science writer, and an Education Officer with the CSIRO and Monash Science Centre.
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How Jumping Genes Drove Primate Evolution
Image: iStockphoto
By Keith Oliver & Wayne Greene
Jumping genes have been important in the evolution of higher primates, leading to faster brain function, improved foetal nourishment, useful red-green colour discrimination and greater resistance to disease-causing microbes – and even the loss of fat storage genes in gibbons.
Keith Oliver is a biologist and philosopher in the School of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology and Wayne Greene is Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics in the School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences at Murdoch University.
This article is available exclusively to Australasian Science Magazine subscription holders. Subscribe here.
A Nobel Week
Image: Belinda Pratten
By Stephen Luntz
Brian Schmidt’s world was turned upside down when he was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics for research that has turned our understanding of the universe inside out.
This article is available exclusively to Australasian Science Magazine subscription holders. Subscribe here.
Fish in Hot Water
Banded morwong on the extreme warm edge of their range are starting to experience negative effects from increased temperatures.
By Anna Neuheimer
Warming waters in the Tasman Sea may have exceeded the tolerance limits for fish growth. Image: Hugh Pederson
Anna Neuheimer completed this work during an Endeavour Research Fellowship at CSIRO in Hobart, and is now a postdoctoral fellow at Aarhus University in Denmark.
This article is available exclusively to Australasian Science Magazine subscription holders. Subscribe here.
How Toxic Is Traditional Bush Tucker in the Alps?
Popcorn with Bogong moths (pop-moth) is hardly a “traditional” bush tucker recipe, but is it contaminated with arsenic?
By Susan Lawler & Pettina Love
Bogong moths are not only traditional bush tucker for indigenous people, but they are also important food for many alpine species. But does the discovery that they contain elevated levels of arsenic pose any real dangers to indigenous people or the high country ecosystem?
Susan Lawler is Head of the Department of Environmental Management and Ecology at La Trobe University’s Wodonga campus, and supervised PhD student Pettina Love, a member of the Bundjalung Nation, in this research.
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Rapid Evolution? The Eyes Have It
A fossil compound eye, around 515 million years old, from the Emu Bay Shale on Kangaroo Island, South Australia. The individual lenses would have numbered over 3000, with the largest in the centre forming a light-sensitive “bright zone”. Image credit: John Paterson
By Michael Lee & John Paterson
The discovery of exquisite fossils on Kangaroo Island reveal that complex eyes evolved very rapidly during evolution’s Big Bang, the Cambrian explosion, half a billion years ago.
Michael Lee is senior research scientist at the South Australian Museum and University of Adelaide. John Paterson is senior lecturer at the University of New England in Armidale, NSW.
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