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National Carbon Counter project proves a hit as individuals, families and schools pledge to lower emissions.

Media release: 25 August, 2020

More than 11,000 people have signed up to Carbon Counter, the countrywide challenge produced by the ABC Science Unit for National Science Week.

The challenge shows families, individuals and schools how to reduce their contributions to global warming by making simple and easy changes to everyday routines.

[Read more…] about Thousands pledge to tackle global warming through individual actions

Saturday 22 August 2020

Highlights from day eight of National Science Week

115 events, 235 competitions and online activities, and dozens of great stories and talent.

Researchers, experts, and other interesting people available for interview around the country.

• National: Discover storms on Jupiter in a virtual reality tour of the solar system
• National: Discover new species, map wildlife, track the effects of climate change
• NSW: Fit or fat? How your postcode affects your health
• NSW: ID a frog and meet a radioecologist on the Sydney Science Trail
• VIC: How is nature good for your health and wellbeing?
• VIC: Phasmid of the opera: performances featuring music, dance and a stick insect
• TAS: What microbes are growing in your sourdough?
• TAS: Make a canoe and hear about local Aboriginal engineering and navigation

Read on for more on these, including event contact details.

Also today:

• QLD: Create your avatar and see Rainbow Beach turtles hatching, meet the Mary River cod, find out Gympie’s frogs and more at the STEAMzone Science Festival in 3D
• WA: Astronomy meets word-smithery—who will win the inaugural ICRAR Monologue Competition?
• SA: The fight for the Great Australian Bight
• NT: A two-headed shark and other behind-the-scenes secrets of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory

Coming up:

Fossil fight, wildlife under fire, and the astro-origins of your smartphone – see a preview of Sunday’s highlights.

National Science Week 2020 runs from 15 to 23 August. Media kit at www.scienceinpublic.com.au. Or visit the National Science Week website for more events and activities: www.scienceweek.net.au.

[Read more…] about Dancing with stick insects, healing nature, and what’s in your sourdough?

Friday 21 August 2020

Highlights from day seven of National Science Week

171 events, 325 competitions and online activities, and dozens of great stories and talent.

Researchers, experts, and other interesting people available for interview around the country.

• National: Take a virtual reality trip around the solar system
• VIC: Taste tomorrow: want to try some fake meat, sautéed spider and lobster lollies?
• VIC: What will beer taste like in the future?
• ACT: Who are the Indigenous STEM leaders, from maths to medicine?
• NSW: Stones, bones, irrigation, and eel farming: hear about Australia’s first engineers
• SA: What can you learn about gravitational wave detection via Minecraft?
• NT: STEMfit: Can sport kick off a love for science and technology?
• WA: Shrink your plastic footprint with a sea shepherdess

Read on for more on these, including event contact details.

Also today:

• NSW: How Eden lost its little penguins, and got them back again
• WA: Allergies, asthma, autoimmune diseases and COVID-19: Q&A with an immunologist
• QLD: How to keep the Great Barrier Reef great

Coming up:

Dancing with stick insects, healing nature, and what’s in your sourdough? – see a preview of Saturday’s highlights

National Science Week 2020 runs from 15 to 23 August. Media kit at www.scienceinpublic.com.au. Or visit the National Science Week website for more events and activities: www.scienceweek.net.au.

[Read more…] about Storms on Jupiter, swim with sea dragons, and Australia’s first scientists

Thursday 20 August 2020

Highlights from day six of National Science Week

209 events, 401 competitions and online activities, and dozens of great stories and talent.

Researchers, experts, and other interesting people available for interview around the country.

• NSW: When artificial light becomes pollution
• NSW: How do you take climate change action that works?
• NSW: What do algae have to do with beer making?
• QLD: Finding Nemo—and checking the water quality of his home
• QLD: Cover coming eco-anxiety to survive and thrive: Generation Z to the rescue
• SA: What’s good and bad behaviour in space?
• SA: How can you tell good science from bad? Ask the experts (if you trust them!)
• SA: Discover the love-hate relationship between butterflies and ants
• TAS: Beauty from the ashes: recovery after bushfires
• WA: A visit to the (ancient) beach – Kalgoorlie-Boulder style
• NT: Water, desalination and sugary drinks—water is life in Arnhem Land
• National: Lifehacks to cut your carbon and your fuel bills

Read on for more on these, including event contact details.

Also today:

• ACT: Science experiments and games for people with disabilities
• VIC: Take a ‘Dungeons & Doctorates’ podcast journey to the fantasy world of Firamustus
• VIC: How to grow an urban woody meadows

Coming up:

Storms on Jupiter, swim with sea dragons, and Australia’s first scientists – see a preview of Friday’s highlights

National Science Week 2020 runs from 15 to 23 August. Media kit at www.scienceinpublic.com.au. Or visit the National Science Week website for more events and activities: www.scienceweek.net.au.

[Read more…] about Herding caterpillars, good science, and bad behaviour in space

Wednesday 19 August 2020

Highlights from day five of National Science Week

342 events, 588 competitions and online activities, and dozens of great stories and talent.

Researchers, experts, and other interesting people available for interview around the country.

• ACT:  In court, is scientific evidence the same as legal proof?
• NSW: Holy bat-poop! What bugs are spread by flying faeces?
• NSW: Talking climate change like your life depends on it, with Tim Flannery and Rebecca Huntley
• NSW: From supermassive black holes to Australia’s Women in STEM Ambassador—meet Lisa Harvey-Smith
• QLD: Pandemic proofing the future
• QLD: Humpback whales—the biggest tourists regularly visiting the Gold Coast
• SA: Help SA’s endangered bandicoots find prickly new homes
• TAS: What can four different brews teach you about the science of beer?
• WA: Tiny food for huge whale sharks
• WA: How much sunlight is good for your health?
• WA: Can big data help save the quokka, koala and wallaby?
• WA: Curtin University Big Watermelon Experiment
• WA: Oceans vs space: the battle of the final frontiers
• VIC: Science and technology saving lives in natural disasters

Read on for more on these, including event contact details.

Coming up:

Herding caterpillars, good science, and bad behaviour in space – see a preview of Thursday’s highlights.

National Science Week 2020 runs from 15 to 23 August. Media kit at www.scienceinpublic.com.au. Or visit the National Science Week website for more events and activities: www.scienceweek.net.au.

[Read more…] about Beer, bandicoots, bat-poop, black holes, and science in the courtroom

Tuesday 18 August 2020

Highlights from day four of National Science Week

289 events, 536 competitions and online activities, and dozens of great stories and talent.

Researchers, experts, and other interesting people available for interview around the country.

• NSW: Should the Moon have legal rights?
• NSW: Is your diet good for the planet?
• WA: Calling all innovators: ideas wanted to change the future of our oceans-for the better
• NT: Will the Territory be the centre of Australia’s new space race?
• TAS:  Are bushfires good for plankton?
• VIC: Vaccines, coronavirus, criminal trials, and climate change: trusting science in a time of crisis
• QLD:  Lasers, robots, 3D-printing: what will the factory of the future look like?
• NSW: Why can’t some people get the essential medicines they need?
• TAS: Celebrate International Pinot Noir Day by finding out where your pinot get its flavour and aroma from
• VIC: What’s wrong with ultra-processed food

Read on for more on these, including event contact details.

Also today:

• Darwin: Build your own solar powerbank workshop
• Darwin: Meet the sea turtles and the barramundi at the Turtle Rehabilitation Centre
• Adelaide: It’s 2050: meet seven siblings from the future  
• Adelaide: How do you explore archaeology underwater?

Coming up:

Beer, bandicoots, bat-poop, black holes, and science in the courtroom – see a preview of Wednesday’s highlights.

National Science Week 2020 runs from 15 to 23 August. Media kit at www.scienceinpublic.com.au. Or visit the National Science Week website for more events and activities: www.scienceweek.net.au.

[Read more…] about Essential meds, future factories, and the science of your pinot noir

Great National Science Week stories featuring top women in STEM up for grabs now around Australia.

• Career advice from astrophysicist Professor Lisa Harvey-Smith
• Learn why maggots are our new best friends
• Find out what robot makers, illustrators and Indigenous storytellers have in common
• Catch up with Ili Baré’s Australian compelling documentary, The Leadership
• Why is geotechnical engineering the best job in the world?
• Explore the reality of women in STEM, and ways to address gender inequality in the industry

These are just a few of the events and activities happening across Australia during National Science Week (August 15 to 23).

If you’re after more great ideas for highly visual stories, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at www.scienceinpublic.com.au/science-week, and on Twitter at @SciWKMedia.

[Read more…] about Fitbits for sharks, studying the brains of the dead, and why maggots are our new best friends

Great INDIGENOUS stories up for grabs now around Australia.

• Meet Indigenous STEM leaders from maths to medicine—Canberra
• Learn from 60,000 years of Aboriginal astronomy and Indigenous knowledge—Sydney
• Water, desalination and sugary drinks—Arnhem Land
• Bull kelp, bush foods and resin chemistry at TMAG—Tasmania
• Make a canoe and hear about local Aboriginal engineering and navigation—Tasmania

These are just a few of the Indigenous science events and activities happening across Australia during National Science Week (August 15 to 23).

If you’re after more great ideas for highly visual stories, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at www.scienceinpublic.com.au/science-week, and on Twitter at @SciWKMedia.

[Read more…] about Deadly science, canoe engineering, bush pharma, and more

Monday 17 August 2020

Highlights from day three of National Science Week

332 events, 578 competitions and online activities, and dozens of great stories and talent.

Researchers, experts, and other interesting people available for interview around the country.

• Sydney: Radiation and the human body: will it turn you into the Incredible Hulk?
• Launceston: The Tassie tiger’s secrets revealed by its hair
• Melbourne: Real whodunnits: what’s fact and fiction on crime TV shows and disaster movies?
• Sydney: Is there life on other planets, and how did life on Earth begin?
• ACT and NT: Your selfie from space
• Perth: Flying doctors: how do you save lives while flying thousands of metres above sea level?
• Melbourne: Black holes, dark matter, tipping points and new horizons: art collides with astrophysics
• Adelaide: How do superbugs get super-villain powers?
• Gold Coast:  What do warming waters and weird weather mean for whale sharks?

Plus, it’s the first school day of Science Week 2020

National: The secrets of whale snot, and other mysteries of the depths – schools go Deep Blue.

Read on for more on these, including event contact details.

Also today:

• Albany, WA: See the wonders of the night sky at the Astrofest 2020 astrophotography exhibition
• Forde, ACT: Meet Canberra’s nocturnal wildlife on the Mulligan’s Flat night walk
• Perth: Kids dress up as scientists at Telethon Kids Discovery Centre, Perth Children’s Hospital

[Read more…] about Art meets astrophysics, Tassie tigers, superbugs, and mythbusting the Hulk

Sunday 16 August 2020

Highlights from day two of National Science Week

145 events and exhibitions, 559 online activities, and dozens of great stories and talent.

Researchers, experts, and other interesting people available for interview around the country.

• Melbourne: Fancy a fake meat burger in a bug-flour bun?
• Darwin: Can you save a cartoon character from being plunged into a vat of acid?
• Gold Coast: Discover the marine science of Sea World without leaving your couch
• Melbourne: The Leadership: meet three of the 76 women who journeyed to the Antarctic
• Perth: Sign me up for science: meet six researchers with an Auslan interpreter
• Sydney: Girls just wanna have fun—with aquatic robotics, drones, paramedicine and more.
• Read on for more on these, including event contact details.

Also today:

• New South Wales: Learn the art and science of botanical illustration from a master, Angus Fisher
• Canberra: Dung beetle research in Sweden; astronomy in Copenhagen; epidemiology in PNG—when science takes you overseas
• National: Can you live without the ocean? Take the CSIRO Science Week Challenge

[Read more…] about Fake meat, cartoon conundrums, and Sea World science in your home