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2011 Stories of Australian Science STORIES OF AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE 2011…STORIES OF AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE 2011…STORIES OF AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE 2011…STORIES OF AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE 2011 science stories Parkinson’s answers deep in the brain 3 Plastic not fantastic for seabirds 15 Mapping the seafloor from space 3 Saving koalas by vaccination 15 Fish food and green power Rapid identity check for from pig waste 3 border security pests 15 OPAL reactor fingerprints Diamonds for extreme electronics 17 Aboriginal ochre 5 Body’s power plants offer clues to Preparing for the worst 5 Parkinson’s disease 17 A step towards an everlasting battery 5 Cementing a greener future 17 Prime Minister’s Prizes 6 Skin deep discovery reveals immune mysteries 18 Back to the future for father of biotechnology 7 Improved myopia treatment in sight 18 Seeing fish through rocks 7 Pain relief from the sea 18 The life and death of blood cells 7 Faster flash flood warnings 19 Saving our skins 8 Parasites betrayed by their genome 19 Virtual management of Putting a cap on fatigue 19 the world’s oceans 8 L’Oréal Fellows 20 How a molecular assassin operates 8 Preventing breast cancer relapse 21 Computing with a single electron 9 Soaking up gases with Take control of your hearing 9 molecular sponges 21 contents Could we grow drugs using sunflowers? 9 Fighting back against malaria 21 Unmasking melanoma early 10 Crashing helicopters for safety 23 Curing cancer with radiation—safely 10 Silicon solves helicopter corrosion 23 Two steps forward for cancer detection 10 Australian scientists elected to Royal Society 23 Helping eyes to help themselves 11 Is that you in the video? 25 Life’s work closer to saving lives 11 Building a better banana 25 Milk could soothe the savage gum 11 Dirt solves murder mysteries 25 Stopping parasites means more and safer meat 13 Spot the nutrients 27 Giving farmers more timely Yeast to make jet fuels 27 weather and climate forecasts 13 NCE 2011…STORIES OF AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE 2011…STORIE Slide back in time and Australian farmers bring see the Himalayas form 27 climate research to the paddock 13 Fresh Science 2010 28 Stories of Australian Astronomy 14 COVER (FROM LEFT): FARMER SIMON WALLWORK IS TURNING CLIMATE SCIENCE INTO PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS, PAGE 13, CREDIT: GRDC; FRESH SCIENTIST NATALIA GALIN IS MEASURING ANTARCTIC SNOW COVER BY HELICOPTER, PAGE 29, CREDIT: JAN LIESER. INSIDE FRONT COVER: L’ORÉAL FELLOW ROWENA MARTIN IS FIGHTING MALARIA RESISTANCE, PAGE 21, CREDIT: L’ORÉAL AUSTRALIA. WELCOME PAGE (FROM LEFT): ANDREW WARD IS TURNING PIG WASTE INTO FISH FOOD, PAGE 3, CREDIT: ANDREW WARD; BETH FULTON’S COMPUTER MODELS ARE HELPING PROTECT FISHERIES WORLDWIDE, PAGE 8, CREDIT: ISLAND EFFECTS; USING PIEZOELECTRICS TO GENERATE ELECTRICITY, PAGE 5, CREDIT: DANIEL WHITE. BACK COVER (FROM LEFT): HOW BLACK HOLES EAT—AN ARTIST’S IMPRESSION, PAGE 29, CREDIT: APRIL HOPART; A MOLECULAR ASSASIN AT WORK, PAGE 8, CREDIT: MIKE KUIPER. welcome Welcome to Stories of Australian Science 2011. We’ve put together this collection of Australian This is our third collection of Australian science stories to give journalists and others science stories. The first was put together in around the world a taste of the breadth and 2007 when journalists met in Melbourne for depth of Australian science and to introduce the 5th World Conference of Science Journalists. some interesting people and potential stories. The second was when Melbourne hosted the World Congress of Science and Factual We think science is the major driver of social, Producers in December 2009. economic and environmental change around the world. And yet, at a time when the world needs We welcome your feedback on the stories by strong scientific leadership to help us create email and online at www.scienceinpublic.com.au/ a sustainable future on this small blue planet, stories where you can also see our collections of scientists and the scientific method are under astronomy stories, Australia-China collaborations, unprecedented attack. and how Australian science has changed America. Sarah Brooker Niall Byrne It’s more important than ever to highlight the To the friends we made in Montreal in 2004, Managing Director Creative Director people whose discoveries are transforming society Melbourne in 2007, London in 2009, and Doha and in particular the early career researchers who in 2011, we look forward to seeing you in PS Just hours before going to press we heard do most of the heavy lifting in our laboratories. Helsinki for the 8th World Conference of that an Australian, Brian Schmidt, will receive Science Journalists in 2013. Among the 50 stories presented here, you’ll catch this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics together with up with past winners of the Prime Minister’s Prizes And we look forward to catching up with Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess. Their discovery for Science, as well as the brilliant young scientists US and Canadian journalists at the AAAS of the accelerating expansion of the Universe is of the L’Oréal Australia For Women in Science in Vancouver in 2012. featured in Stories of Australian Astronomy— Fellowships and of Fresh Science. available online and in print. ORIES OF AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE 2011…STORIES OF AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE 2011…STORIES OF AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE 2011…STORIES OF AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE 2011… Science in Public Pty Ltd Concept/editor in chief Design 82 Hudsons Road Niall Byrne saltcreative.com.au (PO Box 2076) Project coordination/editor Print Spotswood Victoria 3015 Australia Andrew Wight immij Editing and writing Tel: +61 (3) 9398 1416 Tim Thwaites Science in Public Science in Public is based in Melbourne, Australia. [email protected] Margie Beilharz We help scientists present their work in public space. www.scienceinpublic.com.au Andrew Wight @scienceinpublic, #ozscistories 1 science stories The land beneath CREDIT: KARA MATTHEWS Satellite imagery and new software have been used to create a complete digital map of our planet’s seafloor. 2 Parkinson’s answers Mapping the Fish food and green power deep in the brain seafloor from space from pig waste A Parkinson patient who can walk again, and We know more about the topography of Mars The concept of using “everything but the pig’s improved life for people with the behavioural than that of Earth because 70 per cent of our squeal” is being taken to new lengths by a disorder known as Tourette syndrome. planet is covered by water. Now, University of researcher in South Australia. These are two of the results of a partnership Sydney PhD student Kara Matthews has used Andrew Ward, a South Australian between University of Queensland neurologist satellite data and GPlates, a computer package biotechnologist, has developed a way to Prof Peter Silburn and neurosurgeon Dr Terry developed at the University, to create a complete break down pig waste that produces feed Coyne who have ventured deeper into the digital map of the many geological features of for aquaculture, water for irrigation, and human brain than anyone else in the world. the seafloor. methane for energy. Peter treats patients at St. Andrew’s Hospital Fracture zones—the lines in the image The pig effluent is initially fed into an airtight, in Brisbane with deep brain stimulation, a on the opposite page—are deep linear scars two-stage digester. This degrades smelly technique that uses electrodes to stimulate a on the seafloor that extend perpendicular to chemical compounds and kills potentially region some 12 centimetres under the surface the boundaries where tectonic plates are moving dangerous bacteria, while at the same time of the brain. apart, revealing up to 150 million years of plate producing methane bio-gas and nutrients for movement. They are accompanied by huge ridges “There are 100 billion neurons in the brain and the tiny seaweeds known as microalgae. on the seafloor, rising up to 2 km above the we can’t restore all of them. But the deep brain “Once we had the algae growing, we knew we abyssal plains, and valleys as deep as 8 km is like a telephone exchange—by stimulating could recreate the ocean food chain from algae below sea level. this one section of the brain, you can unblock to zooplankton to fish,” Andrew says. Through her work, Kara has discovered ancient the flow of messages,” Peter says. Andrew was able to get the Australian waterflea tectonic microplates—tiny plates rotating like For example, Peter’s group recently helped a Daphnia carinata, a kind of zooplankton, to eat spinning tops over geological time—as well as patient with Parkinson’s disease to walk again the seaweed. These small animals not only form kinks in fracture zones which record sudden because the stimulation unblocked the flow of the basis of commercial fishmeal, but also help shakeups of the global tectonic plate network. messages from the deep brain to the leg nerves. to clean up the water in which they grow, by “The forces driving these changes are still largely reducing the levels of nutrients and bacteria. “Our patients are awake for part of the surgery, unknown,” says Kara, “so I am exploring different They do such a good job, that the water can so we can actually ask them how they are mechanisms using supercomputer simulations of subsequently be used for irrigation. feeling, give them thinking tasks and actually the slow convective churning of the Earth’s observe their movement or mood being restored mantle, where rocks flow like warm toffee.” The same ‘waste food chain’ can be used to in a matter of seconds in real time.” recycle waste from intensive livestock farming Kara’s map is freely available to the community, systems, abattoirs or any other organic source.

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