Listen to: Gold, Galahs and the Milky Way: unlocking the universe, on ABC Big Ideas

Additional menu

Science In Public

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

Operations

Interpretative dance coaxes bees into quick decisions on nest sites

14171849136_6a20a4805e_oWednesday 9 July 2014

Video and photos of bees available
Scientist available for interview

Dr James Makinson evicts bees from their homes for a good reason—to figure out how they collectively decide on the next place to live. His research on bee communication and consensus-building has been published in this month’s issue of Animal Behaviour.

James and his colleagues at the University of Sydney in partnership with two universities in Thailand have found that not all honeybee species think like the common Western hive bee when it comes to deciding on a place to nest.

Two little-known species—the giant Asian honeybee and the tiny red dwarf honeybee—use a more  rapid collective decision-making process that enables them to choose a new home quickly. But they aren’t as fussy when it comes to the quality of their new home.

It’s work that could help with understanding and managing honeybees for pollination services, ecological health, and pest control. [Read more…] about Interpretative dance coaxes bees into quick decisions on nest sites

Do you look infected? Should I kill you? No, I’m fine, move along, nothing to see

How viruses use ‘fake’ proteins to hide in our cells

Some viruses can hide in our bodies for decades. They make ‘fake’ human proteins that trick our immune cells into thinking ‘everything is awesome’, there’s nothing to see here.

Now researchers at the Imaging Centre of Excellence at Monash and Melbourne Universities have determined the basic structure of one of the two known families of these deceptive proteins.

Using synchrotron light and working with a common virus that lives in people happily and for the most part harmlessly, they worked out the structure of the fake proteins. This is an important first step towards producing better vaccines and drugs to fight viral disease.

The research was posted online this week by the Journal of Biological Chemistry. It will appear in the September issue of the journal.  [Read more…] about Do you look infected? Should I kill you? No, I’m fine, move along, nothing to see

Cannibalistic cancer eats itself to survive treatment

But SAHMRI researchers are making it starve by eating itself to death

Lisa Schafranek at the national final of FameLab Australia, held at the WA Museum in May. Credit: OK-White Lane © International FameLab

Scientist available for interview, Tuesday 1 July 2014

Stubborn cancer cells play a cunning trick when faced with treatments designed to kill them — they eat themselves to survive. But SAHMRI researchers have found a way to starve the cancer cells, making them more susceptible to cancer therapy.

As researchers develop more personalised cancer therapies that target cancer cells, they are also seeing an increase in resistance to treatment, where patients relapse or no longer respond to treatment.

One way that cancer resists treatment is by undergoing a process where the cancer cells eat themselves to maintain energy levels during times of stress — a process that helps them survive cancer treatments that would otherwise starve them.

Lisa Schafranek, a University of Adelaide PhD student working a SAHMRI, and her colleagues have used a clinically available drug to stop leukaemia cells from eating themselves to survive cancer therapy. [Read more…] about Cannibalistic cancer eats itself to survive treatment

Putting X-rays to work – June news from the Imaging Centre of Excellence

Posted on behalf of James Whisstock, Director Imaging CoE

Welcome to the June newsletter of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Advanced Molecular Imaging.

Another month down the track and the Centre is really coming together.

In terms of facilities and equipment, I’m excited because construction of Australia’s most advanced cryo-electron microscope unit is well underway and should be finished in early September. It will be housed in a bespoke facility at Monash University and enable us to view bio-macromolecules down to atomic resolution. You can read more about the new facility below.

On the administrative front, we are moving towards completion of sign-off with the Australian Research Council and will be announcing a date for our launch in the coming days. And we have also appointed a Centre Administrator, Chantelle Linnett, who will be responsible for project management. You can meet her below.

Meanwhile, our research forges on, and our chief investigators continue to be showered with awards. Several of them have made important presentations all around the world. [Read more…] about Putting X-rays to work – June news from the Imaging Centre of Excellence

Prostate cancer survivors can improve their sex life at the gym

And researchers need Perth men for a study to find out why

Monday 23 June 2014

Media call 9-10am AWST at Edith Cowan University Mount Lawley Campus with researchers and patients.

Perth researchers have shown that twice-weekly exercise can improve sexual function in prostate cancer patients by 50 per cent.

Now, they’re calling on Perth men to participate in a new study to find out why exercise works, and how effective it can be on a broader range of patients.

One in six Australian men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, and 90 per cent of them will report some form of sexual dysfunction during or after their treatment.

“Men think about sex a lot – on average, every 45 minutes which is more often than they think about food or sleep,” says Dr Prue Cormie, a senior research fellow at Edith Cowan University. “So it’s not surprising that sexual dysfunction is the most frequently identified issue of importance among prostate cancer survivors.”

Last year, Prue and her colleagues at the Edith Cowan University Health and Wellness Institute put a group of men with prostate cancer through a supervised exercise program involving twice-weekly group-based sessions of resistance exercise such as weight lifting, and aerobic exercises including walking and cycling.

[Read more…] about Prostate cancer survivors can improve their sex life at the gym

Life-changing bionics start with Dalek voices and flashes of light

The first 30 years of bionics in Melbourne; transforming lives, creating jobs

  • A Dalek talking inside your head proves the worth of the bionic ear
  • And a little flash at first, then cloud-like images are just the start of the potential of the bionic eye.

Two people whose lives have been changed by the work of Melbourne’s Bionics Institute are available for interview ahead of the Bionics Institute lecture on 17 June. The lecture marks the beginning of celebrations of 30 years of the Bionics Institute and of the development of the Institute’s 30/30 vision.

[Read more…] about Life-changing bionics start with Dalek voices and flashes of light

Cars can be lighter, faster, stronger – but they need more arms

Linden Servinis. Credit: OK-White LaneScientist available for interview, Tuesday 17 June 2014

Lighter-weight, fuel-efficient cars may be closer to reality thanks to Geelong researchers who are giving carbon fibre the gripping power it needs to be able to stand up to impacts from motorists.

High-performance vehicles already use carbon fibre – a high-strength lightweight material that can be moulded into complex shapes – to make cars lighter, more fuel-efficient and faster.

But although strong, carbon fibre is prone to damage from sudden impact. And unlike metal, it can’t be repaired – only replaced.

This factor has limited the material’s uptake by the wider automotive industry, as the common bingle would end up costing motorists a lot more to fix.

Ms Linden Servinis, a PhD student at Deakin University, and her colleagues have developed a treatment for carbon fibre that makes it 16% stronger by forming extra chemical ‘arms’ that grip onto its surroundings, allowing the material to withstand greater impacts. [Read more…] about Cars can be lighter, faster, stronger – but they need more arms

How viruses can overwhelm the liver’s defences

And how the liver’s troops might be revivedCentenary Logo

Tuesday 17 June 2014

The liver is the only organ in the body that can modify our immune response. This, paradoxically, leaves it open to violent immune attack.

Researchers at Sydney’s Centenary Institute and the University of Sydney have now discovered the means by which this happens. In the process they may have opened a pathway towards improving treatment of chronic hepatitis.

The key is in the way the immune system’s T cells operate in the liver.

The researchers found that when the liver T cells encounter a small number of cells making a foreign protein, they function in the normal way—stimulating the production of cells to kill off the source of the protein.

But when they encounter large amounts of foreign protein beyond a certain threshold, the T cells are overwhelmed and fail. This weakening of the defence system is the Achilles heel of the liver, making it more susceptible to invasion by viruses that replicate rapidly and produce large amounts of protein.

[Read more…] about How viruses can overwhelm the liver’s defences

The EMBL model – 40 years young and still supporting early career researchers and students

Posted on behalf of Nadia Rosenthal, Scientific Head, EMBL Australia

This month I’m visiting Heidelberg for the 40th anniversary celebrations for EMBL. It’s a time for celebration and excitement about things to come, but it’s also a time for reflecting on the values that have made EMBL a success, and the importance of those values for Australian science.

EMBL (the European Molecular Biology Laboratory) was created in 1974 to internationalise molecular biology. At its core was a vision to nurture and develop the talents of the best and brightest minds in Europe – students and young researchers, who remain the lifeblood of all the EMBL campuses today.

At EMBL Australia, we offer students the chance to connect back with EMBL through our travel grants program, which sends off Aussie researchers to spend time at EMBL labs, attend courses and conferences, or even undertake their PhD at EMBL. We’ve just awarded another round of travel grants, and applications are now open for Australian students to attend the EMBL PhD Symposium in Germany. [Read more…] about The EMBL model – 40 years young and still supporting early career researchers and students

Welcome to the Imaging Centre of Excellence

Posted on behalf of James Whisstock, Director Imaging CoE

Welcome to my first bulletin as director of the Imaging CoE—the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Advanced Molecular Imaging.

The Centre was announced by the ARC in December last year and we’re moving towards launch later this year.

Our chief investigators – at Monash, Melbourne, La Trobe, UNSW, UQ and our partner organisations are pulling their research plans together. We’ve got a chief operating officer and a website ready to roll, and we’ll be advertising for new students and post docs shortly.

The ARC has provided us with our core budget of $28 million over seven years, and the contributing organisations and partners have pledged more than $10 million.

The Centre is all about understanding how our immune systems function at the molecular level by developing and using new microscopy and imaging techniques. Our work will underpin the development of new drugs and therapies to control our immune response and treat infection and disease.

We’ve already got some results on the board with important papers on gut immunity and on the molecular trigger of coeliac disease. Much more on the way. [Read more…] about Welcome to the Imaging Centre of Excellence