Guest Work

Body mass and evolution: why the BMI is a limited measure of public health

Guest Work • Jun 28, 2017

• Biomarkers,
• BMI,
• body mass index,
• public health,
• weight

By Andrew Dickson, Massey University Charles Darwin died in 1882 at the age of 73, likely of a heart attack. At the time, the average life span in England was about 44 years. Darwin, by any stretch of the imagination, was a long-lived man, despite suffering some significant health issues throughout his life. Mapped to New Zealand in … Read More

Sludge, snags, and surreal animals: life aboard a voyage to study the abyss

Guest Work • Jun 26, 2017

• abyss,
• Biodiversity,
• CSIRO,
• fish,
• marine,
• survey

By Tim O’Hara, Museum Victoria Over the past five weeks I led a “voyage of discovery”. That sounds rather pretentious in the 21st century, but it’s still true. My team, aboard the CSIRO managed research vessel, the Investigator, has mapped and sampled an area of the planet that has never been surveyed before. The RV … Read More

The Lark Descending: are non-native birds undervalued in New Zealand?

Guest Work • Jun 23, 2017

• birds Garden Bird Survey,
• blackbird,
• chaffinch,
• dunnock,
• extinction,
• goldfinch,
• non-native,
• Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment,
• red list,
• song thrush,
• tarling

By Stephen D Wratten, Lincoln University, New Zealand New Zealand has an audacious plan to protect its native birds. The country has pledged to rid itself of introduced mammalian predators by 2050 and, this year, will spend $20 million on the Battle for the Birds, one of the largest predator control programmes in the country’s history, across … Read More

Ancient DNA reveals how cats conquered the world

Guest Work • Jun 22, 2017

• cats,
• DNA,
• feline,
• genetics,
• trade

By Janet Hoole, Keele University Humans may have had pet cats for as long as 9,500 years. In 2004, archaeologists in Cyprus found a complete cat skeleton buried in a Stone Age village. Given that Cyprus has no native wildcats, the animal (or perhaps its ancestors) must have been brought to the island by humans all those … Read More

Volcanoes under the ice: melting Antarctic ice could fight climate change

Guest Work • Jun 16, 2017

• Antarctica,
• iron,
• phytoplankton,
• Southern Ocean,
• Volcanoes

By Silvia Frisia, University of Newcastle  Iron is not commonly famous for its role as a micronutrient for tiny organisms dwelling in the cold waters of polar oceans. But iron feeds plankton, which in turn hold carbon dioxide in their bodies. When they die, the creatures sink to the bottom of the sea, safely storing that carbon. How exactly … Read More

When do we stop vaccinating against an infectious disease?

Guest Work • Jun 13, 2017

• disease eradication,
• polio,
• poliovirus,
• public health,
• smallpox,
• tuberculosis,
• vaccination,
• vaccines

By Rebecca Chisholm, University of Melbourne and Nicholas Geard, University of Melbourne Australia was declared measles-free in 2014. However, the recent importation of a case of measles into Australia from Indonesia illustrates the threat this disease still poses to Australians. It also underscores the importance of maintaining high vaccination rates against rare diseases to … Read More

No more playing games: AlphaGo AI to tackle some real world challenges

Guest Work • Jun 10, 2017

• AI,
• artificial intelligence,
• computers,
• Go,
• machine learning

By Geoff Goodhill, The University of Queensland Humankind lost another important battle with artificial intelligence (AI) last month, when AlphaGo beat the world’s leading Go player Ke Jie by three games to zero. AlphaGo is an AI program developed by DeepMind, part of Google’s parent company Alphabet. Last year it beat another leading player, … Read More

Will the Paris Agreement still be able to deliver after the US withdrawal?

Guest Work • Jun 03, 2017

• Climate,
• climate change,
• paris accord,
• Paris Agreement,
• trump

By Bill Hare, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research In the short term, the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will certainly have ripple effects globally. But rather than fatally undermine the Paris Agreement, it will likely cause other countries to reaffirm their firm commitment to the full implementation of the climate deal. We are already … Read More

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A 3D-printed rocket engine just launched a new era of space exploration

Guest Work • Jun 01, 2017

• 3d printing,
• Mars,
• NASA,
• rocketlab,
• rockets,
• space

By Candice Majewski, University of Sheffield The rocket that blasted into space from New Zealand on May 25 was special. Not only was it the first to launch from a private site, it was also the first to be powered by an engine made almost entirely using 3D printing. This might not make it the “first … Read More

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New homes for our native birds?

Guest Work • May 31, 2017

• birds,
• conservation,
• IUCN,
• native species,
• Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment,
• PCE,
• urban habitats

By Prof Phil Seddon, University of Otago. The newly released report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (Taonga of an island nation) highlights the precarious state of our native avifauna, with one in five of our 168 native bird species at risk of extinction. Birds are highly visible but also highly vulnerable indicators of habitat change, not just … Read More