OK – names aren’t our forte but….

The new CSIROpedia (I did warn you) is good at showing what we have been up to for the past 85 or so years.

You can search either A to Z , by decade or by research area.

Take A for example – Aerogard. We knocked that up for troops during WWII to ward of malaria carrying mossies and the like.  The Queen did the most to lift its profile when she visited Australia in 1963 and was sprayed with Aerogard before a stroll  around a golf course.

And Z – Zirconian powders process. High purity zirconian is needed for making partially stabilised zirconian ceramics which…. anyway, you can read more about it HERE if you like.

In between there is bitter-pit control (I’m not brave enough to look at that one), dung beetle program, extended wear contact lenses, measuring the absolute ohm (not to be confused with the mantra), road crack system (not to be confused with the plumber’s variety)  and wireless LANs.

Counting up to 7 billion people

According to the United Nations (and they should know) – the world’s population is going to hit 7 billion on October 31. There is a report about the challenges and opportunities released recently.

You can watch a world population clock and other ‘counters’ HERE. Worldmapper has some pretty cool maps on population and other stuff.

CSIRO Chief Executive Megan Clark has given some speeches about how we are working on the challenges of more people and also more people living in urban areas than rural and regional areas. There is more about our work in the area HERE.

World Solar Challenge winners roll in to (wet and cloudy) Adelaide

The World Solar Challenge arrived in Adelaide this afternoon after leaving Darwin about 3000km ago.

The winners were Tokai University from Japan.

The first Australian team, Aurora Solar Car which is co-sponsored by CSIRO, is 6th and is due in tomorrow. Top effort.

Here are the winners

Photo: Huw Morgan.

Photo: Huw Morgan.

We help Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and Kate Winslet to save the world

Released in Australian cinemas today, Contagion paints a horrifying scenario of a deadly virus spreading around the globe in a matter of days. The fictitious virus is based on the very real Nipah virus, a relative of Hendra virus.

WARNING: Spoiler at end of story

A reference to research undertaken by CSIRO’s “bat pack” team highlights the role CSIRO’s Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong, Victoria, would play in a real-world version of Hollywood’s latest disaster flick.

As the name suggests, the “bat pack” undertakes research to better understand bat immunology and how bats co-exist with the viruses they carry to identify strategies to control viruses, such as Hendra virus, from spreading to other animals and people.

According to CSIRO’s Gary Crameri one of the key areas the team is looking at is establishing and characterising bat cell lines to assist in developing faster, more sensitive surveillance tools to help identify new and emerging bat-borne viruses.

“Although our research has the potential to radically change the risk management of emerging infectious diseases within Australia and worldwide, we never imagined it would appear in a Hollywood blockbuster,” Mr Crameri said.

WARNING SPOILER – How CSIRO science played a decisive role in Hollywood’s Contagion

To understand the virus killing millions of people in Contagion, scientists needed to be able to grow the virus in a laboratory setting.  A virus requires a living cell to reproduce, however the virus was so lethal it killed every cell the scientists attempted to put it into.

The decisive breakthrough comes when Dr Ian Sussman is able to grow the virus in bat cells provided by CSIRO’s “bat pack” – a team of researchers located at AAHL in Geelong, Victoria.

This real world research into bat diseases provided the first step towards developing a vaccine for the virus that was killing millions of people world-wide.

So this is what is getting up your nose

Microscope images of daisy pollen (family Asteraceae). Daisies are mainly insect pollinated as suggested by the pollen grains' spiky shape. Spikes help pollen stick to insects' bodies. Image credit – Australasian Pollen and Spore Atlas.

Pollen may annoy allergy sufferers in springtime but, viewed under the microscope, a pollen grain is a thing of beauty.

Some of the smallest images come from the new microscope technology, the ‘Pollen Classifynder’ system, developed by Massey University in New Zealand.

CSIRO and the Atlas of Living Australia purchased the microscope and automated image detection system to rapidly identify pollen – the tiny DNA-carrying grains so vital to agriculture and biodiversity.

See more images HERE.

More information HERE.

Snakes in space

The violent swirling of the gas between the stars has been captured for the first time with a CSIRO telescope.

A pit of writhing snakes – that’s what the first picture of turbulent gas in our Milky Way looks like.

Professor Bryan Gaensler of the University of Sydney, Australia, and his team used a CSIRO radio telescope in eastern Australia to make the ground-breaking image, published in the journal Nature.

“This is the first time anyone has been able to make a picture of this interstellar turbulence,” said Professor Gaensler. “People have been trying to do this for 30 years.”

Turbulence makes the Universe magnetic, helps stars form, and spreads the heat from supernova explosions through the Galaxy.

“We now plan to study turbulence throughout the Milky Way. Ultimately this will help us understand why some parts of the Galaxy are hotter than others, and why stars form at particular times in particular places,” Professor Gaensler said.

Gaensler and his team studied a region of our Galaxy about 10 000 light-years away in the constellation Norma. They used CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array because “it is one of the world’s best telescopes for this kind of work,” as Dr Robert Braun, Chief Scientist at CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science explained.

The radio telescope was tuned to receive radio waves that come from the Milky Way. As these waves travel through the swirling interstellar gas, one of their properties – polarisation – is very slightly altered, and the radio telescope can detect this.

Polarisation is the direction the waves ‘vibrate’. Light can be polarised: some sunglasses filter out light polarised in one direction while letting through other light.

The researchers measured the polarisation changes over an area of sky and used them to make a spectacular image of overlapping entangled tendrils, resembling writhing snakes.

More HERE

‘The Dish’ finds a ‘diamond planet’

An artist's visualisation of the pulsar and its orbiting planet. Credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions

Astronomers using ‘The Dish’ – CSIRO’s radio telescope near Parkes, NSW – believe they’ve found a small planet made of diamond, orbiting an unusual star.

The discovery was made by an international research team, led by Professor Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, and is reported today in the journal Science.

New energy in search for future wind

Some recent international studies have shown a decrease in wind speeds in several parts of the globe,

Improving estimates of long-term wind speed changes for the fast-growing wind energy sector will help reduce risk for generators in a changing climate. (Gregory Heath, CSIRO)

Scientists at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research have analysed wind speed observations to understand the causes of variations in near-surface wind and explore long-term wind speed trends over Australia.

“We have a good picture of wind energy availability across Australia from previous CSIRO wind mapping and, with the growth of wind farms, there is an emerging need to understand how climate change can affect the wind resource,” says Dr Alberto Troccoli, lead author of the paper published in the Journal of Climate.

A new leaf turns in carbon science

Understanding the exchange of gases, including CO2 and water vapour is especially significant to science because of its relevance to global management of carbon emissions.

A new insight into global photosynthesis, the chemical process governing how ocean and landplants absorb and release carbon dioxide, has been revealed in research that will assist scientists to more accurately assess future climate change.

In a paper published today in Nature, a team of US, Dutch and Australian scientists have estimated that the global rate of photosynthesis, the chemical process governing the way ocean and land plants absorb and release CO2, occurs 25% faster than previously thought.