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Posts Tagged science communication

Scibloggers clean out science communication awards cupboard Peter Griffin Nov 29

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I spent an enjoyable morning at the Prime Minister’s Science Prizes where the glow of last night’s premiere of The Hobbit was obviously still buoying attendees – particularly the Prime Minister, who at one stage suggested there were “cauldrons of opportunity” in science.

Professor Shaun Hendy

The PM’s Science Prizes spell the end of the science awards season, following the New Zealand Association of Scientists awards and last week’s Royal Society of New Zealand Research Honours awards. They also represent the most lucrative of the prizes, with one million bucks going to the recipients collectively.

Full details about the award-winning scientists, science teacher and remarkable student winner Helen Ng are here.

But it was particularly pleasing to see Sciblogger Professor Shaun Hendy pick up the PM’s Science Media Communication Prize. Professor Hendy divides his time between Industrial Research and Victoria University and until recently was Deputy Director of the MacDiarmid Institute. This is Shaun’s second win – he picked up the Callaghan Medal for science communication at the RSNZ awards last week.

Aside from his blogging at A Measure of Science, Shaun has been prolific in the media. He is a regular contributor on Radio New Zealand and is often quoted in science-related news articles, TV and radio pieces. I learnt this morning that the book he is publishing next year will be called Get off the Grass, (great title!) and will carry on some of the ideas first explored in Sir Paul Callaghan’s well-received and through-provoking book Wool to Weta.

Both awards are well deserved and hard-earned. Like Sir Paul, Shaun is able to relate science to the big picture issues facing the country. He understands the needs of journalists. And he isn’t reticent about standing up for what he believes in. Amid the controversy this week over Dr Mike Joy’s comments in the New York Times about the state of our environment, Shaun, in his capacity as President of the Association of Scientists issued a statement defending Joy and attacking a heavy-handed Herald editorial about Joy.

Standing up for science

“The clear statement is that the potential damage to New Zealand’s reputation, and economic benefit of ‘big-spending American tourists’ outweighs the need for truth in  public debate,” the NZAS release stated. “This is an issue that the Association takes very seriously, and emphatically refutes criticism of Dr Joy on this basis.”

I had a chat with Industrial Research Ltd. CEO Shaun Coffey at the PM’s prizes this morning, a man who has been instrumental in giving Shaun the time and freedom to engage with the media. Coffey is running a very successful experiment in science communication himself, having amassed nearly 130,000 followers on Twitter. His updates and links to interesting articles on R&D, science, economics and agriculture are addictive reading for me.

Dr Siouxsie Wiles

Picking up the NZAS Science Communicator’s Award was another Sciblogger, Dr Siouxsie Wiles who blogs at Infectious Thoughts. Currently you can see Siouxsie fronting a national TV ad campaign for the National Science Challenges. She is also active on the media front and has been successfully testing out crowd funding of scientific research through the Rockethub platform.

What is great to see is that we have a growing number of scientists who are skilled communicators, willing to engage with the media, conscious of the news agenda and the interplay between science and the issues of the day and proactive about getting the science out to the public. Others such as Dr Mark Quigley, last year’s PM’s Science Media Communicator’s Prize winner, and Professor Chris Battershill have quickly had to hone their media skills when demand for their expertise put them in the media spotlight. In the case of Quigley, it was the Canterbury earthquakes, for Battershill it was the Rena oil spill.

The better scientists are at communicating their science, at relating its value to society the better the public’s understanding of the importance of science will be. And those who recognise that science communication is an ongoing endeavour, an investment, rather than an obligation tied to the need to promote research findings or secure funding, will ultimately better serve the people who are indirectly paying for their science.

When science writing is King Peter Griffin Jul 09

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If you are a blogger writer or science communicator, you should seriously consider checking out the upcoming Writing Science event being held at the Michael King Writers’ Centre in Auckland in October.

I’ll be there and the programme looks pretty impressive.

What’s the workshop about? The following quote from the workshop promotional material pretty much sums it up:

“..There is increasing concern about the conflation of water security, food security and energy security against the backdrop of global population increase to at least 9 billion by 2050, climate change and rising incidences of non-communicable disease… Science is essential to addressing these components of the ‘perfect storm’…The issue of public engagement and understanding is already a challenge and will grow.”

Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, Chief Science Advisor, Transition To Sustainability Conference, University of Auckland, 2010.

Sir Peter was tapping the same vein at the recent Transit of Venus forum in Gisborne where he called for better science communication to address that exact “perfect storm” he mentions above.

When it comes to science writing there are few short workshops that let busy professionals drop in to get some guidance on science writing – Dave Armstrong leads an excellent course at Victoria University that’s spread over three weekends – I’ve been a guest speaker the last couple of years and love watching Dave lead the class.

The Michael King Writer’s Centre course is more conference than workshop. It will really appeal to people working in and around science who want to take their writing to the next level, get ideas from established science writers like Rebecca Priestley, michael Corbalis and Geoff Chapple and figure out the lay of the land in terms of outlets and opportunities for science writing.

The centre is calling for applications with places limited to 24:

The workshop is limited to 24 applicants.  Writers applying to attend the workshop should have some publishing record or be specialists in their field. Participants will have published articles in journals, magazines or websites, and some will have published chapters in books or have books published or in progress. Those attending may be scientists, historians of science and medicine, natural history and technical writers, science journalists, Te Ara/Encyclopedia writers, writers covering public health and environmental issues, those currently writing in the science field and crossover published writers who have recently started writing about science.

Applications should be made to the address below by 15th July 2012 and include a writing CV.  Registration forms will be sent to those accepted by 30th July 2012  Payment is due following acceptance and may be made in two installments.

Is this a Conversation worth having? Peter Griffin Mar 30

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There’s a new player in science communication that has emerged across the Tasman, in the form of The Conversation, a website backed by numerous Australian universities and overseen by a highly experienced team of journalists and scientists.

I’ve known The Conversation was coming for some time – our colleagues at the Australian Science Media Centre are a supporting partner. It is an interesting and promising concept – one that has emerged as people seek out a proliferation of alternative sources to mainstream media coverage of science.

So what’s the deal? The Conversation is a Melbourne-based web start-up featuring content written by scientists, finessed by trained journalists and presented directly to the public.

It is essentially a reaction to the media’s lessening ability to do coverage of science-related issues justice. It has the financial backing of ANU, Monash, Melbourne, UTS, UWA and the CSIRO to the tune of millions of dollars per year and counts those organisations plus a hardful of others among its content partners.

The idea is that The Conversation‘s journalists set the editorial agenda and seek out experts at the scientific institutions to come up with articles and opinion pieces. This graphic nicely sums up how The Conversation differs from the mainstream media.

Source: The COnversation

Source: The Conversation

That could be a recipe for dry, highly-technical pieces from academics, but out of the gates The Conversation is generating interesting, well-written and even controversial material. The hidden hand of seasoned journos shines through in the writing, which so far has covered subjects as varied as the Google Books court reversal and a neuroscientist’s view on “chiropractic quackery“.

The experts featured so far form an eclectic group. There are disclosure statements to cover off potential conflicts of interest and discussion is encouraged with comments open on each article and Creative Commons repurposing of the content endorsed.

The editorial team at The Conversation is headed by Andrew Jaspan, former editor of The Age, The Observer (London), The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday. That amounts to some serious journalism experience in Jaspan alone. A team of around 18 makes up The Conversation, though a number of them seem to be part-time assistant editors. As such however, The Conversation represents probably more resourcing in science journalism and communication than any media organisation in Australasia is committing – barring possibly the ABC.

Is it sustainable?

But will it work longterm? The public still gets 90 per cent of its information about science from the mainstream media – newspapers and magazines, TV and radio broadcasts and the online portals of those organisations. The Conversation is a new player that seems to be committed to high-quality content. What it doesn’t have however, is a large audience to put that content in front of. Its readsership will increase over time, but The Conversation will likely need to forge content-sharing partnerships with media organisations for its content to gain traction with the wider public.

This isn’t as hard as it sounds, and The Conversation already has AAP as a strategic partner, suggesting some content sharing with the newswire service is in the pipeline. At  Sciblogs, we’ve found that articles written here can quickly catch the media’s attention. Today alone, nutritionist Amanda Johnson was on radio and TV on the back of her piece about the influence of marketing on children’s perceptions of food.

Since late last year, Sciblogs content has been syndicated via the New Zealand Herald website and occasionally Stuff and NBR. Coverage by our bloggers of the Ken “Moon man” Ring affair pushed Sciblogs traffic last month above the 100,000 visitor per month mark for the first time. So there is mainstream media appetite for good quality content and increasingly, editors are deciding to reach out to bloggers and op-ed writers to supplement their own coverage. This is a good thing and something The Conversation will, I think, find it easy to exploit. The problem is the media are rarely willing to pay for such content, which is leading to a preculiar thing – where some specialist areas of journalism, such as science journalism and investigative journalism, are starting to be funded by groups outside the mainstream media.

The Conversation is a prime example of this. Sciblogs, which was intially funded by the New Zealand Science Media Centre to some extent is also an example of that. In the area of investigative journalism, US not for profits, the Center for Public Integrity and ProPublica are examples of this. All of the above area funded by Government, public institutions, philanthropists or a mix of all three.

So we are starting to see a shift in the media landscape where resource-intensive journalism of complex issues is being taken up and funded by third parties. That reflects the commercial reality of the state the media is in at the moment, but isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As long as the quality and independence of content can be maintained, who cares where it comes from?

But the issue of independence shouldn’t be underestimated and The Conversation, like Sciblogs and any other organisation seeking to put out credible information should never the importance of independence – both real and perceived. Editorial decisions need to be made independently of the organisation’s financial backers.

So far so good for The Conversation. The content is making me stop and read, the site looks pretty good. It arrives at a time when major science-related issues of public concern (the tsunami and nuclear situation in Japan, extreme weather events in Australia etc) require effective explanation on the part of experts. This venture facilitates that and therefore shows a lot of promise. So yes, a conversation that is indeed worth having.

Good science presentations – don’t forget to chunk Peter Griffin Feb 13

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Listen to past and present world leaders like Barack Obama, Tony Blair and even George W. Bush and you’ll hear a particular speech-making tool in action – chunking.

I was introduced to chunking today at a presentation at the Foo Camp “unconference” held at Mahurangi College just out of Warkworth by Olivia Mitchell, a speech expert with Effective Speaking.

She had a room full of scientists and technologists who had similar hang-ups when it came to getting across often highly-technical concepts in speeches to laypeople.

Many in the room talked of getting tongue-tied, using fillers like “um” and “ah” to fill awkward silences and talking too fast due to nerves. For myself, I’m definitely familiar with the latter, particularly in front of large crowds, when the presentation can feel like a hurtling train ride to the final slide. The only time things seem to slow down is when there’s a glitch with the presentation or your computer crashes – in which case a few seconds can feel like a minute.

Enter the method of chunking, which is designed to slow down your speech, give you time to think and your audience time to absorb what you are saying.

The key to chunking is to think about how you want to break up your sentences to deliver aspects of the concept you are explaining. Talking for a few seconds followed by a pause of a second, then another burst of speech and so on, is an effective way to deliver an impactful speech without becoming flustered and adding in those clunky and noticeable fillers.

It takes a bit of getting used to, but after a few tries in the session today, I was talking fairly smoothly in chunks about a fairly complex science-related topic. The regular pausing means you can collect your thoughts to find the right words to start your next sentence and means you are lest likely to ramble on just to fill dead air, which the public speaker naturally dreads.

Chunking teaches you to make good use of regular pauses, which also allows you to pause for impact as you let your audience absorb your words.

Tony Blair is apparently the master of chunking, as numerous Youtube clips illustrate. Blair earns in the region of $600,000 per public speaking engagement, such is the effectiveness and impact of his speeches. He had extensive training in the art of chunking early in his political career.

Mitchell touched on an aspect of speech delivery that is particularly distracting and unfortunately, fairly common among public speakers in New Zealand – the high rising change in tone at the end of a sentence. It’s particularly common among females apparently. Here’s Mitchell’s tip to avoid doing it – think about the end of the sentence – where you want to end up with this particular chunk of speech. If you know the final words you are going to deliver in the sentence, you will have more confidence in the style in which you delivering, eliminating the uncertain, questioning tone that the rise in tone suggests.

We only had a short workshop with Mitchell, but I’ll be working on my chunking ahead of my next presentation!

More on chunking: http://speakingaboutpresenting.com/delivery/dont-slow-down-effective-presenter/

Describing your research – soundbites from Wellington Peter Griffin Jul 13

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The Wellington workshops of the Emerging Researchers roadshow featured the highest number of social scientists of all the main centres.  Here’s how they summed up their research in a couple of sentences…

My colleague Dacia Herbulock stepped in to run these sessions while I was down in Dunedin for the science festival.

Here are her top 10 favourites…

Does moving in time with other people, like dancing, bond them together and make them behave more cooperatively? I am testing this with controlled experiments, manipulating synchrony and measuring pro-social behaviour.

I am a translator of geology, I can read the landforms and landscape and tell you the story of past climate.

Trying to find out the cellular targets of a potential drug is like bumping into osmeone in the street and tracking the next thousand people that they meet.

All smokers know how badly they need a cigarette when they can’t have one. I’m trying to figure out how our brain chemistry tricks us into thinking we need this.

Getting your message communicated clearly in the media is like trying to tame a tiger. You can use a whip and a hoop, but as soon as your back’s turned, it will bite your head off.

Can colour make your food crop appear distasteful to insects? Using experiments and evolutionary theory to reduce the ise of insecticides.

I am looking at why there is no “I” in team. I examine the language that rugby players use with one another to create a team identity.

I study invasive yellow crazy ants. If we find out what makes them crazy, we might be able to stop their invasions.

Electrons spinning in harmony help us save space and energy.

Same as Stephen Hawkins’ quote but replace “universe” with “human wellbeing”.

And a cross-section of the rest…

* Talking about sex with your friends and keeping a straight face, can be a harrowing experience. Place this conversation in a typical secondary school classroom and it becomes a social minefield. THis is why I am interested in the use of language in sexual education classrooms.

* Fly fishermen catch rainbow trout as they migrate upstream. I study how trout that migrate up different rivers and streams are related and how we can manage trout to keep them running upstream all season long.

*Planets zoom around the sun without slowing down, but down here on earth, electrons have a much harder time moving through materials. How then do they move with no resistence in these new superconductors and why at such high temperatures?

* Tuatara are one of the most primitive vertebrate forms of life on th eplanet. Yet they have a very complex immune system and are free of a wide range of diseases that affect people and other animals. Why?

* Apparently water flowa through rocks, but how does it really flow? That is what I am trying to measure.

* Like a paint blob spinning on a turntable, my research screams in and out of focus as each new layer gets squirted into the mix. Can I summon the courage to turn off the turntable and see what it really looks like?

* To discover new medical treatments, it makes sense to get help from someone that has been in trhe game for millions of years – nature.

* Moving to a new country can sometimes feel like a move to a different planet. People act differently, speak differently and look differently. I do research that looks at how these newcomers make their strange new worlds feel like home.

* Growing up with more than one culture is confusing. My research asks what does it really mean for a young person to be multicultural in New Zealand and do some young people manage this better than others?

* Churches are organisations which have a large influence on people, so I’m looking at how the architecture of churches influences and organises our behaviour and relationships.

* You can tell who they are by the viruses they carry, developing a method to distinguish salmonella isolates based on pro phaqe content.

* Sexual offending affects a majority of New Zealanders. My research focuses on how to rehabilitate and reintegrate sex offenders so future sexual offences are prevented.

* Are charity appeals insulting to both the viewers and the subjects? I’m studying the reaction of young people in New Zealand to charity appeals. Do they motivate or turn people off aid? Plus, what do the subjects of these appeals think?

* We make artificial sea shells.

* Effective teams need diversity to be effective. This is especially true for the teams that create computer software that we now rely on in our daily lives.

* Gas escapes from us all and we know where it comes from too. The production requires an absence of O2. What about the oxygenated ocean? Where does the methane come from and how is it generated in the presence of O2? This is the oceanic methane paradox.

* What first aid is provided in the New Zealand workplace today and how did we get to this place?

* The aim of my research is to examine socio-culturally diverse workforce perception of workplace diversity practice. Just simply look at people’s perception towards diversity at the workplace in multicultural society.

* A needs analysis of polytechnic business students in writing business correspondence in English.

* To study the expression of human qualities in art and science.

* Former breast cancer patients preconceptions, experiences and evaluations of public and private healthcare systems in New Zealand.

* Information and communication technology is a popular tool of the 21st century. Improving Pasifika tertiary students achievement can be enhanced through upskilling their ICT skills.

* Science investigation becomes a norm in science classrooms at the lower secondary school in Malaysia. However, how effective this approach ti promote student learning is remains unknown.

* I go diving and take photographs to create a flicker book through time of how sponge assemblages change through space and relate the pattern worldwide.

* Drugs of abuse rewire the circuits in your brain. We want to know how so we can flick the switch off to stop the change.

* Just as how we organise a party determines who is going to ocme, how we manage cities determines what kind of space we get.

* Sensible beliefs structure creates practical teaching practices that identifies learners’ diverse needs.

* Young women get a hard time for getting sexy in public. Just because its blah for the audience, doesn’t mean its not good for young women doing it.

* Two people are paddling in opposite directions in a canoe. The canoe doesn’t move as there is no change in direction.

* I work with bacteria that shields itself from the human immune system to cause disease. I am trying t find a way to break that shield.

*What is it about being online that is so compelling for individuals that it drives them to connect with others even when they don’t know who they are?

Describing your research – soundbites from Palmy Peter Griffin Jul 09

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Slightly belated, but here are the results of the Palmerston North workshops on the Emerging Researchers roadshow, where scientists had five minutes to sum up their research in one or two sentences only.

My top 10 favourites from Palmy…

Imagine if we could have the FIFA World Cup stadium surface area condensed into a one gram material. What could be done with this kind of material?

It’s like the Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – finding clues tohow microbes are stuck to each other in the rumen of the cow.

How to make chickens lay one egg per day or 365 eggs in 365 days. I want to increase the amount of protein for human consumption.

I pretty much know how much water I drink, cook with, use to take a shower and flush the toilet. But water footprinting can also tell me how much water it takes to make my cup of coffee, my shirt and my shoes.

A glass of milk or a pieceof cheese. Have you wondered how the proteins interact differently in order to change from one state to another?

Like layers of paint on an old fence our floodplain sediments preserve a record of river behaviour over time. By peeling back the  layers we may better understand how river systems have responded to environmental changes and how they may respond in the future.

Our Earth’s future could be resting in the mouths of cows. Reducing methane emissions could save our precious planet from overheating.

Searching for a falcon in a pine forest is like searching for a needle in a haystack. Using the broadcast of a falcon’s call is like using a magnet to attract the needle.

Will a child affected with Duchenne and Beckens muscular dystrophin be able to walk, run and do all the sorts of things a normal child would? Yes, if scientists crack the code and solve the structure of missing proteins.

And a sample of the rest

* Malnutrition among infants in developing countries continues to rage like a hurricane. A replacement in cereal given to them with sweet potato holds the key to this storm.

* Find where the bacterium come from and where theywill go. Oh, the bacterium is campylobacter and it causes diseases in the human gut.

* Good  manners for cows!

* Can we save people from misleading truths of science by clearly emphasizing the ‘truth’ behind the crucial research connected to the welfare of humankind?

* Thousands of hectares of trees are cut down each year that are home to New Zealand’s only land mammals – bats. What happens to these bats and can we protect them?

* Environmental pollution is pushing us to a point of no return. Resources need re-investment, otherwise volcanic ash and oil spills will take our breath. This bank is closed for cash-out.

* Surprisingly you will find solar energy will improve your diet with  more nutrition and less microbes.

* Greenhouse gases cause global warming and climate change. We mitigate them by putting  less fertilizer on your farm.

* Icebergs are created the same way as breaking off a piece of chocolate. The only question is what happens when we run out of chocolate?

* Plants differ in the way they recycle their nitrogen. This research is about finding those plants that are really good at it so that we can use less fertiliser and have a cleaner environment.

* How do we feed the world tomorrow? Design plants for sustainable agriculture.

* Pine infecting fungus slows growth of New Zealand’s  pine plantations. We are testing other fungi for their ability to wage war against the pine pathogen and encourage growth ofour forest pine.

* Are you drowning in a huge amount of data but staring at information? If so,  you really need data mining to help  you out.

Describing your research – soundbites from Auckland part 1 Peter Griffin Jul 06

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The Emerging Researchers roadshow trucks on and more researchers who participated in my Communicating your Research workshop have come up with succinct ways of describing their science or research.

Apologies to those in Palmerston North, I left your workshop exercises in Wellington while I was home briefly so will post them on my return. See below for the presentation slides from the workshop.

My favourite 10 from the session at AUT North Shore campus:

When Jaws screened, people viewed the sea in a different way. I’m exploring the Jaws effect of outdoor accidents on outdoor education.

Don’t you just wish you could always enjoy healthy food with none of the dryness or yuck flavour? We work on getting just the good stuff out of the fruit and vegetables to put into good-tasting food.

If my job defines me and I earn 10 times less than my expatriate colleague, am I 10 times less valuable than them? If so, how can we ever be friends?

Boundaries of flesh, boundaries of cloth, boundaries of space. We are what we wear, or are we?

I think, so I am existing! So, think how you are going to think!

Space is always political.

Marine reserves are not zoos, so why do tourists  get free passes?

A simple evacuation plan can be ‘run like heck!’. But how do we deal with half a million people running out of Auckland if one of its 49  volcanoes erupts?

A fish living in a rockpool is exposed to a 1 in 100 year hot day at low tide. How much heat can it take before it has to evolve or die?

Yeast is important for beer. It also helps solving beer-induced problems.

And a sample of the rest…

* If a person suffers a stroke and loses function in their arm, what is the best way to restore some of that function? We are developing a system to investigate this with the aid of robotics.

* With respect to the prevalence of chronic disease in children, we need to encourage them to be more active not by focusing on physical activity only, but also by interrupting sedentary behaviours.

* Using clinical tests to diagnose shoulder pain is like trying to fit hundreds of jigsaw pieces into a picture. These results will reduce the number of pieces, improving chances of completing the picture in a shorter time.

* Like our preference for ice cream flavours, our preference and tolerance for different sounds and loudness levels is unique to individuals. Some sounds, like ice cream can be restorative, but it is certain that both affect our physiology and not necessarily for the good.

* If a human is working closely with a robotic system, you need to make sure that his arm doesn’t get ripped off. This research project is about developing new motor systems that provide the safety features necessary.

* What is a university if you can still get a degree via online learning from the comfort of your home?

* Food is something we eat to survive. Functional food research gives you healthy, nutritious and tasty foods for all to enjoy!

* Making the most of the goodness of fruits and vegetables without the ‘yuck’ factor.

* New Zealand history talks about an egalitarian ‘better Britain’. But how does this founding ideology affect modern service delivery in hospitality?

* Pacific Islanders are often disadvantaged in terms of health outcomes and social services. Our study finds evidence to support positive changes for these people.

* Crystals are exquisite, but the most beautiful thing about a  protein crystal is that it gives us the opportunity to see in minute detail how it works, and how a drug might help or hinder it.

* Fish are great sources of food. But how are neurotoxins within them causing harm to humans?

* Can you be a vegetarian,  live in cold waters and be just like any other fish in the neighbourhood?



Describing your research – soundbites from Christchurch Peter Griffin Jul 01

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Another city and another few dozen emerging researchers attempting to describe their research goals in a couple of sentences after just five minutes of thought.

One interesting thing, Dunedin-based scientists are certainly a lot more legible than their colleagues in Christchurch! I’ve had to leave out several samples of the latter group as I couldn’t decipher the handwriting.

Nevertheless, some imaginative ways of describing research. Here’s my top 10 favourites from Canterbury…

My sheep’s foot has gone gooey and fallen off. I’m finding out what bugs make this happen.

The heart of a tumour is like the heart of Auckland City, impossible to get in and out of. Angiogenesis is the process by which the tumour relieves the pressure on its core. So if we can stop the traffic, we can kill the tumour.

To predict the next invader, all we need to do is look at human nature.

Do dams damn our landscapes?

As a social anthropologist I conduct fieldwork with people, learning from them by living with them. But in the elephant stables of Nepal, I learnt that elephants are people too.

If all the world’s a stage, how do you design for small town tourism?

It’s like having a nice conversation with E.T.

The bigger you are, the bigger your poos. The bigger the poo, the more things you can find in it.

Imagine being stuck in a sauna or having cramp or muscle spasms so bad you collapsed. Sheep and cattle can get this from eating grass. So we are trying to change the grass.

Sometimes technology solves our problems and sometimes it is the problem. What makes the difference?

And some more examples from the Christchurch workshop on Communicating your Research… thanks to everyone who participated, it was a lot of fun.

* When grape genes change, you get a different wine. Are unstable genes behind some of the best Kiwi vintages?

* Altitude training for inactive folk – can periods of exposure to CO2 mimic the benefits of exercise?

* We think we know everything, but we don’t even know ourselves, the human body. I want to find out what’s hoing on in red blood cells, to shed a bit oflight into the darkness.

* Every manuscript, by definition, is a unique example of human labour. They all deserve to be studied and I’m doing what I can about that.

* How do you  know if the building that you are living in is safe or not after a huge environmental event like an earthquake? Structural Health Monitoring gives you the answer.

* We work on conserving the species we’ve accidentally almost killed off. We use genetic data to minimise extinction riskof threatened species.

* A victim of sexual abuse forgives the offender during a conference. What is the story behind it and how can other victims get there?

* I’m trying to find out how possums infect each other with bovine tuberculosis and how they give this disease to livestock.

* Not being able to stand up because your body can’t support you is a nightmare. Using robotics to overcome this is a sci-fi dream.

* Everyone is jumping onto the social media bandwagonthese days. But is it really worth it?

* Interaction between soil and structure in an earthquake event, is it going to make the damage more catastrophic?

* There’s no point in saving a building from an earthquake if all of its clothing and insides get ripped to pieces.

* People with anorexia are fighting against their body’s biological signals that are screaming at them to eat. If we can understand these signals better we may be able to devise a new treatment for this debilitating illness.

* There are strains of tuberculosis bacteria out there resistant to all known antibiotics. My research involves finding new drugs so that we can more effectively treat tuberculosis.

* Every living cell on the planet makes electricity. It’s now possible to fabricate electrodes that make capture and use of that electricity possible.

* Fish grow by eating smaller fish, but they also have a taste preference. I change these approaches to model the population dynamics in marine ecosystems.

* Minority languages are more threatened than endangered species. The race is on to document and preserve these unique vessels of human culture, history and experience.

* When the Alpine Fault ruptures every 250 – 400 years, millions of cubic metres of rock are shaken from the thousand metre plus high cliffs of Milford Sound. The result – tsunami waves up  to tens of metres.

* Changing land-use degrades stream communities in tropical highland streams in Nigeria!

* To feed a burgeoning global population, agriculture is becoming more intensive and expansive at the expense of the natural environment and the biological communities it supports. I am researching how landuse intensification via agriculture is leading to excessive sediment washing into our streams and rivers, and what effect this has on the food webs of these habitats.

* The person next to you collapses to the floor, so you move to help her. Did you have reason to do that if she was faking?

* How long can you hold your head underwater? We are trying to understand how a fish can tolerate a few hours without water.

* Children of drug-dependent parents have a bleak future. We want to understand why that happens.

* People live longer than they expect to. How can we stop them running out of money?

* By the end of this century, the ozone hole will have recovered, but ozone-depleting greenhouse gases are on the rise. What will bethe next major driver of ozone destruction?

* The Tonle Sap floodplain is a place that remains up to six months a year under 10 metres of water. Yet an entire forest that supports the largest freshwater fisheryin the world lives here. I am studying how the water in the Tonle Sap affects its flooding forest.

* Research into the ability and willingness of older workers to pass  on their knowledge may ensure that a career’s worth of experience won’t just walk out the door.

* The way you design the bridge is influenced by the way the water moves underneath it. What noone considers is that the animals that live in the water change the way the water moves and hence, how you design the bridge.

* If a possum eats a leaf, does the tree die? I’m using mathematical models to seehow leaf browse affects largescale forest die back.

* Ten clinicians may describe different treatments. Building clinicians research knowledge can help.

* A better understanding of grapevine death will  help keep wine flowing into your glass for many years.

Describing your research – scientific soundbites from Dunedin Peter Griffin Jun 29

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I’ve been travelling around the country talking to emerging researchers about the interesting projects they are working on for their PhD theses or as part of their post-doc research.

In particular, I’ve been giving them tips on how to effectively communicate their science and in an exercise during the workshop, I ask the researchers to sum up an aspect of their research in a maximum of two sentences – they have five minutes to do it.

The idea is that these researchers whittle away the complexity of their science or research so that it is easy for a layperson to relate to it quickly. Why would a scientist want to do this?

Well, Einstein has a good reason: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough,” he once said.

But there’s another reason. The more engaging scientists are and the better they are at communicating their science, the more engaged society will be in what they are doing. Lots of benefits flow back to scientists when the public which is funding the science actually “get it”.

I was aiming in their answers for the type of quotes Stephen Hawking gives in summing up what drives his research interest, such gems as:

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

And…

Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?

I ended up with an eclectic grab-bag of answers, some great ones, some very much in need of refinement.

Dunedinites – my research in two sentences

Here’s my top 10 favourites from the Dunedin workshops:

A human foot washes up on the shore. How long has it been in the water? a marine bacterial molecular clock provides the answer.

Rejection hurts but why are some people more resilient than others?

It’s not just getting the bimbos off the beach when a tsunami comes but looking at ways of informing people about ways of reducing community vulnerability and increasing resilience to disaster.

I don’t want to kill humans, I don’t want to kill animals either. Hence I am killing yeast to save humans.

The wind blows sand into your face like needles and at the end of the day, you feel like you’ve gone 10 round in a boxing ring. (doing fieldwork on a braided river in a norwest gale).

I build houses on a molecular scale. By designing the size of the door, the furnishings and who lives there, you can control who wants to be inside. Then you know where the bastards live.

Driving our athletes to eat well so they can play harder, longer and smarter. Fuelling those Ferrari engines as well as possible.

I can force a fly to live longer, just by changing what she eats for dinner. I want to find the genetic mechanisms underlying this change.

Improve, sleep, improve weight. Sleep is an additional weight-management tool for youth.

How can we label food so that people can actually understand what is in it?

And a sample of the rest… (I’ll post all of them when I’ve more time)

* Take nothing at face value, question the scientist that plays ‘God’. Are we simply the product of our biology and genetic impulses?

* The calf muscle (the big one at the back of your leg): how does it ‘really’ work when you go up and down on your toes.

* Losing your memory = losing your mind. My research is to find molecular mechanisms that contribute to memory and this is altered with aging and potential memory loss.

* Can people learn better in areas they already know?

* Glaciers are shrinking  as the climate is warming, but is the relationship between the two so simple?

* Shining lights at babies. How to detect ultrasound using lasers.

* Small differences now can lead to new species later on.

* How can we label food so that people can actually understand what is in it?

* Don’t feed your baby,  let them feed themselves.

* It is obviously not possible to dissect a leukemic child to understand what’s going wrong with it. That’s why we need animal models, its not to be cruel to animals, it is to help human beings.

* On inter-generational transmission of tribal knowledge: How did our ancesters know what to do when communicating tribal knowledge of customs and practices and how did they ensure this continued to be handed down to the following generations? On participant said ‘I looked, I listened, I did and that’s how I learnt’.

* Bull kelp make great floating rafts that were exploited by Maori fir their seafaring. I’m trying to find out if other native New Zealanders, like snails, travel on kelp rafts too.

* Does quad bike vibration influence balance in New Zealand farmers? Apotential pathway for injury, rollover and falls.

* What we are and what we do is a big mix of our genes and the environment together.

* Illuminating the pathways and fine-tuning the components of a natural process in cyanebacteria to produce renewable hydrogen, one of the best fuels we have.

* What effect did improving playgrounds have on children’s physical activity? No discernable effect when comparing total activity, but for some children, the improved playgrounds had an effect.

* Lifestyle choices and environmental factors of parents may be remembered transgenetically, affecting the health and appearance of multiple generations.

Next post… Christichurch researchers…

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