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Science In Public

Science writers, communicators, media, training, and public relations

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A rare glimpse of our first ancestors in mainland Southeast Asia

  • Tam Pà Ling, a cave in northern Laos, reveals new secrets about our earliest human journeys from Africa through to Australia
  • Between 86,000 and 68,000 years ago, modern humans passed by a cave in mainland Southeast Asia on their way through Asia to become Australia’s First People
  • Evidence for a human presence in this region lasting at least 56,000 years was found in approximately seven metres of cave sediment
  • This evidence demonstrates our abilities to move through forested areas and along inland river systems, and could represent a previously used migration path among our ancestors

Photos, video and visualisations available in Dropbox at https://bit.ly/3oSUd4L.  

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How good or evil are you when gaming?

Researchers have built their own computer game to test the impact of meters that show players the morality of their decisions.

Two papers published by Macquarie University researchers reveal that most of us ignore the meter when a moral choice is clear, but we use it when the choice is more morally ambiguous. And some of us, about ten per cent, will do anything to win.

You are playing The Great Fire, a narrative computer game. It’s all about Frankie, an usher in a cinema in regional Australia in the 1940s, who is confronted by a murderous psychopath.

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Media stories from the World Mining Congress 2023

We are planning an active media program for the Congress. If you would like to receive our media releases and/or interview delegates, please contact Niall Byrne, World Mining Congress Media Manager on +61-417-131-977 or email media@wmc2023.org.

In your request please let us know who you’re reporting for, and your deadline.

Visit www.scienceinpublic.com.au/mining to see the latest media releases and other media information.

Accreditation

Media are also welcome to attend the Congress.

Attendance is complimentary to journalists from print, TV, radio and other organisations, who are attending the event as part of their professional duties.

We also offer complimentary registration to freelance journalists who can demonstrate that that they have been assigned by a media organisation to report on the Congress.

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The future for our planet

Resourcing Tomorrow – Creating Value for Society

Media welcome at 26th World Mining Congress

Where will we find the lithium, cobalt, copper, sand and other minerals needed for a sustainable net-zero world?

How can we create and operate zero-impact mines?

AI, EV and autonomous machines are already making mines cleaner and safer. What are the lessons across society?

How can we transform mining’s relationship with First Nations people around the world?

Can we/should we mine with plants? In space?

How can we build infrastructure sustainably in the Global South?

Find the answers to these any many other questions, with over 3,500 of the world’s mining leaders, technologists, and researchers from 70 countries who are meeting at the World Mining Congress in Brisbane from 26 to 29 June 2023.

Accredited media are invited to attend the Congress

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The world’s fastest industry standard optical fibre

Equal to more than 10 million home broadband connections

Invented in Japan with Macquarie University support

Images available for media use

An optical fibre about the thickness of a human hair can now carry the equivalent of more than 10 million fast home internet connections running at full capacity.

Visualisation of the 19-core fibre.

A team of Japanese, Australian, Dutch, and Italian researchers has set a new speed record for an industry standard optical fibre, achieving 1.7 Petabits over a 67km length of fibre. The fibre, which contains 19 cores that can each carry a signal, meets the global standards for fibre size, ensuring that it can be adopted without massive infrastructure change. And it uses less digital processing, greatly reducing the power required per bit transmitted.

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Support for National Science Week celebrations

Media release from The Hon Ed Husic MP, Minister for Industry and Science

24 May 2023

A Dark Matter Road trip, sharing First Nations science and drone coding are just some of the projects receiving a share of close to $500,000 in grants to support National Science Week.

With Australia’s national celebration of science and technology just around the corner, thirty-two grant recipients are gearing up to deliver a diverse range of events right across the country.

The National Science Week Grants provide funding of between $2,000 and $20,000 to support individuals and organisations to deliver community science events.

Many of the projects funded this year will support diversity and inclusion in science, with several grants supporting events featuring First Nations science and scientists, and a range of activities in remote and regional communities.

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How superbug A. baumannii survives metal stress and resists antibiotics

Work is underway into how science can stop the superbug A. baumanniii after research exposes a weak link in the deadly but poorly understood pathogen.

Images for download

Inside the Galleria Facility at Macquarie University’s Applied Biosciences Laboratories

The deadly hospital pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii can live for a year on a hospital wall without food and water. Then, when it infects a vulnerable patient, it resists antibiotics as well as the body’s built-in infection-fighting response. The World Health Organization (WHO) recognises it as one of the three top pathogens in critical need of new antibiotic therapies.

Now, an international team, led by Macquarie University researchers Dr. Ram Maharjan and Associate Professor Amy Cain, have discovered how the superbug can survive harsh environments and then rebound, causing deadly infections. They have found a single protein that acts as a master regulator. When the protein is damaged, the bug loses its superpowers allowing it to be controlled, in a lab setting. The research is published in Nucleic Acids Research.

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Indigenous communities creating a new approach to STEM skills

An innovative chemistry, soap-making and hygiene engagement project is launching in partnership with young Indigenous scientists.

MERCK’s Giorgia Todesco will travel to the Northern Territory with the DeadlyScience team to pilot the first DeadlyLabs kit. It’s a project led by Elders in the Robinson River region to share their knowledge, their ideas, and their care for the community.

Learners in rural Northern Territory are set to road-test a new science kit exploring the chemistry of soap-making and hygiene with experiments based in Indigenous science.

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April’s total solar eclipse over Ningaloo: the first of five for Australia

Scientists and eclipse enthusiasts available for interviews: contact Tanya Ha at Science in Public on 0404 083 863 or tanya@scienceinpublic.com.au

Images below

At 11.29 am AWST on Thursday 20 April 2023 the sun will disappear over Ningaloo. It will reappear a minute later.

The rest of Australia will experience a partial eclipse, and a chance to prepare for the big one, a total eclipse over Sydney in 2028.

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The largest cosmic blast ever, pinpointed with Macquarie researcher help

The location of the brightest cosmic explosion ever recorded was pinpointed at 2.4 billion light years from Earth by a team of astronomers, which included a Macquarie University researcher.

The blast, known as a gamma-ray burst (GRB), was first picked up by sensors on veteran spacecraft Voyager 1 last October, only arriving at Earth 19 hours later.

It was then detected by several gamma-ray space telescopes, such as NASA’s Swift and Fermi, and the European Space Agency’s INTEGRAL.

But two papers published this week show it was spectroscopic data collected by the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope that finally helped locate the origin of the blast in a previously unknown galaxy.

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