Operations

Growing bones; inside Chernobyl; Obama green chemistry adviser; Trump’s Aussie mate; from frog venom to TV screens

It’s a week of discovering how chemistry is changing our world—international and national speakers are in Melbourne and ready to talk. Here are some highlights and we’ll have daily alerts for you with more people and ideas through the week. Media are welcome.

This Sunday, 5pm

Meet Trump’s ‘Aussie mate’ Andrew Liveris—Australian-born, US-based chairman and CEO of Dow Chemical Company, who Trump has appointed to lead his American Manufacturing Council. Liveris is not doing any media interviews but you can see and report his talk at 5pm
Opening of the RACI Centennial Chemistry Congress: 2,500 chemists, three Nobel Prize winners.

Monday 24 July

How seaweed and frog venom led to today’s OLED phone and TV screens. Andrew Holmes discusses what’s next for plastic electronics and solar energy
Molly Stevens grows bones—Molly is a tissue engineer growing bones, cartilage, nerve and heart tissue for regenerative medicine and bio-sensing. Last December she announced a patch that could fix a broken heart
Obama White House insider, and father of green chemistry, Paul Anastas on how we need to design smarter to create a sustainable society. For example, we need non-toxic solar cells, and biofuels that don’t compete with food production
New solvents from wood—invented in York, made in Tassie. The world needs good solvents for everything from cleaning the house, to making drugs, and miracle materials like graphene. York University’s James Clark has invented a new solvent that’s now being made in Tasmania.

What have we achieved in 100 years of chemistry? And what’s next?

9 conferences and 2,500+ chemists under one roof

What’s the role of chemistry in shaping the economy, now and in the future?
What is e-drug discovery and what will it offer medicine?
Can chemistry help save the planet through energy storage or cleaner production?
How will chemistry address the challenges of the 21st Century?

In two weeks, Melbourne will host the RACI Centenary Chemistry Congress, celebrating the 100th birthday of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI) and bringing nine national, regional and international conferences under one congress roof.

Visiting speakers include:

‘Trump’s Aussie mate’ Andrew Liveris – Australian-born, US-based chairman and CEO Dow Chemical Company, who Trump has appointed to lead his American Manufacturing Council.
Nobel Prize for Chemistry (2005) winner Robert Grubbs (Caltech), who won for his work on a multistep reaction process and catalysts to help it. The benefits can be cleaner, cheaper and faster reactions.
His Excellency Mr Ahmet Üzümcü – Director-General, Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (2013 Nobel Peace Prize winner)
Frances Arnold (Caltech) – American scientist and engineer, and a pioneer of ‘directed evolution’, which uses chemical engineering to create useful biological systems such as highly reactive enzymes or microorganisms that convert biomass to alternatives fuels.
Martyn Poliakoff (University of Nottingham) – a green chemistry research leader working with supercritical fluids – gases compressed under so much pressure that they have properties of both gases and liquids. Martyn is also a star of the YouTube series The Periodic Table of Videos.

If you’d like to attend the conference, media passes are available—contact Suzannah Lyons on suzannah@scienceinpublic.com.au to register.

We’ll be tweeting news and interesting content from the Congress from @RACI_HQ and using #RACI100.

For more information about the Congress itself, visit the website: www.racicongress.com.

Radar-in-a-suitcase makes bridges safer

Assessing ageing bridges just got safer and easier, thanks to a high-tech radar device that fits inside a suitcase.

Developed by Dr Lihai Zhang of The University of Melbourne as part of a collaborative research project supported by The Australia-Indonesia Centre, the IBIS-S radar technology can scan a bridge in 15 minutes from a kilometre away with an accuracy of 0.01mm, quickly assessing its condition and stability.

Meet the publisher who believes science should be social and research should be read

Steven Inchcoombe, Chief Publishing Officer for Springer Nature, is visiting Australia.

Steven Inchcoombe is the Chief Publishing Officer for Springer Nature, overseeing the publication of over 2,900 journals including influential titles like Nature and Scientific Reports.

Steven was responsible for the Nature Publishing Group’s move into open access publishing, resulting in 60 per cent of their 2015 research articles being open access. Following the merger of the parent company in the same year, Springer Nature became the world’s largest open access publisher.

He was also behind the SharedIt content-sharing initiative which allows authors, subscribers and media partners to share links to the Springer Nature’s peer-reviewed research articles on social network and websites. A 15-month trial of this idea on nature.com led to 1.3 million additional article views.

Visiting Australia from the UK, Steven is speaking about big data, open data and open access publishing, and their value for academic research at a series of half-day symposia and networking events being held this week in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Naturejobs celebrates Melbourne

The extraordinary diversity of scientific research and collaboration found in Melbourne is celebrated in a Naturejobs supplement which publishes alongside Nature today. It includes an interactive map – based on data from the Nature Index – that reveals the extensive local, national and international links that make the city Australia’s life science capital, and number three in the world for biomedical research after Boston and London. “Our map shows Melbourne’s top 44 research institutions and charts the links between them,” says David Swinbanks, the founder of the Nature Index, the high-quality research publications database behind the map. “It allows users to dive in, explore the networks, and see the impact of each institution’s research.”

Saving billions of teeth from a blood-eating mouth bug, Pg

You’ll want to brush your teeth after reading this media release

Melbourne is hosting a global conference this week of experts in the fight against a blood-eating bug that’s destroying bone and causing tooth loss in nearly one billion people, including nearly three million Australians.

“Most of us will get a bit of mild gum disease or gingivitis from time to time when ‘bad’ bacteria in our mouths get out of balance with ‘good’ bacteria,” says Professor Eric Reynolds, the Conference Chair. “Bacteria get between our gums and our teeth and an inflammation kicks off. If we’re unlucky then Pg moves in.”

“As this blood-eating bacterium grows in a biofilm (plaque) next to the gums it creates an environment that protects it and other similar bacteria in the plaque. It also changes the ecology of the mouth, setting off a cycle of inflammation and disease leading to the loss of bone from your jaw. Then your teeth fall out,” says Reynolds who is also Director of the Oral Health CRC based at The University of Melbourne. Quarterly scraping of the plaque helps, but doesn’t eliminate the infection in some individuals.

Media highlights from the 15th World Congress on Public Health

Science in Public was engaged to amplify the World Congress on Public Health: to build the buzz and reach the broader community.

The World Congress on Public Health reached a broad local and international audience, through hundreds of stories in mainstream and niche media—from BBC to Buzzfeed. Highlights included over three hours of national radio, and a feature interview with Leigh Sales on 7.30.

Media coverage

Highlights included:
• Television interviews with Congress speakers on ABC 7.30, Sky News and ABC News 24’s The World.
• A Fairfax media feature on the influence of celebrity on public health.
• ABC Radio National Life Matters opened the show with Congress guests every day for the full five weekdays of the Congress, with further interviews recorded at the Congress for future broadcast.
[Read more…] about Media highlights from the 15th World Congress on Public Health

Find out how to future-proof cities

Speakers announced for the Ecocity World Summit, Melbourne, July

· Cooling urban heat islands: in Australia, India and Spain

· Urban transport politics: how did Canadian cities get through it?

· Australian housing: we’re (sadly) getting what we paid for

· Women leading sustainable and resilient cities

· How will India’s coastal megacities cope with climate change?

100 sessions with 300 speakers from 30 different countries will explore these and many other topics.

How do cities become resilient, and how do you measure it? What are the hidden costs of cheap buildings? Can we increase density without losing green space? Can we grow food on rooftops? And what can cities and sub-national governments do when national governments don’t want a piece of the climate action? All this and more are on the agenda of the Ecocity World Summit in Melbourne this July.

“In Australia, we’ve just come through Cyclone Debbie, and seen severe storms and flooding across the Eastern states,” says Brendan Gleeson, Director of Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and Summit co-convenor.

“We urgently need to safeguard our cities, towns and their people, in Australia and across the planet. The Ecocity World Summit program is designed to bring leading thinkers, researchers and practitioners together to share the evidence, strategies and tools we need to keep our cities liveable and sustainable in the face of global challenges.”

Smashing the road toll: Easter and beyond

World Congress on Public Health points towards safer roads

Australia has been a leader in road safety policy but we’re still losing more than 1,200 lives on our roads each year
First year of driving critical for keeping adolescent drivers awake, alert and alive
Paving the way for autonomous vehicles
Aboriginal Australians three times more likely to die on roads: can we close the gap?

Road deaths in Australia peaked in 1970, when 3,798 people died. A long-term downwards trend in road deaths means our road toll is now less than a third of that peak figure, but the road toll and the burden of injuries from road accidents remain a public health challenge.

Globally, the road toll has plateaued at 1.25 million per year, but there are still high fatality rates in low income countries and it’s the number one cause of death among people aged 15 to 29 years. [Read more…] about Smashing the road toll: Easter and beyond

International spotlight on Indigenous public health equity

Media release from the World Federation of Public Health Associations

Monday 10 April 2017

The World Federation of Public Health Associations has formed its first Indigenous Working Group on its 50th Anniversary.

At the 15th World Congress of Public Health Melbourne conference, 40 Indigenous and non-Indigenous conference delegates of the yarning circle unanimously supported in principle the establishment of the World Federation of Public Health Associations Indigenous Working Group.

The Public Health Association of Australia, on Tuesday 4th April 2017, hosted a yarning circle to talk about establishing an Indigenous Working Group. The yarning circle was led by Adrian Te Patu, the inaugural Indigenous representative on the World Federation of Public Health Association (WFPHA) Governing Council.

Once supported by the delegates, the formation of the Indigenous Working Group was accepted by acclimation by the world assembly of Public Health Associations. Under Mr. Te Patu’s leadership, the next steps are to formalise the Indigenous Working Group and develop its vision. [Read more…] about International spotlight on Indigenous public health equity

Additional menu