Guest Author • May 14, 2018 •
Felix Georg Marx, Monash University and Robert Ewan Fordyce The largest living whales – including the gigantic 30-metre blue whale – are fast predatory hunters that support their massive bodies by filtering large volumes of tiny prey from cool near-polar waters. They do this using baleen: plates of a tough substance hanging from their upper jaw. Evidence … Read More
Guest Author • Jul 20, 2017 •
Marianne Nyegaard, Murdoch University Sunfish are famous for looking odd. They are the largest bony fish in the world, can grow to over 3 metres in length and weigh up to 2 tonnes, and look a little bit like a suitcase with wings. But when I began my PhD doing population studies on sunfish off Bali in … Read More
John Pickering • Mar 09, 2017 •
This International Women’s Day I read a re-post of a wonderful article about Otago University women in science. I thought I’d add another one, my Aunt Cecily, or to the rest of the world Dame Cecily Pickerill. Dame Cecily Pickerill. Aunty Cecily was clever, determined, and, yes, a tough woman. It was those qualities that helped her … Read More
Erica Mather • Jun 10, 2016 •
Three iconic South Island lakes – Wanaka, Coleridge and Wakatipu, are being clogged with a particular type of algae that produces floating mucous or ‘lake snot’. The alga called Cyclotella, or recently renamed by algologists as Lindavia intermedia, is related to the ‘rock snot’ alga didymo. The recent appearance of lake snot is associated with the emergence and dominance … Read More
Lynley Hargreaves • Nov 12, 2015 •
Professor Jon Waters New Zealand has often been pictured as a kind of ‘ark’ of ancient species, isolated and unchanging since our land broke away from Gondwana 80 million years ago. But new Royal Society of New Zealand Fellow Professor Jon Waters, over multiple Marsden Fund grants, has explored the idea that geology is both more and less … Read More
John Pickering • Jun 09, 2015 •
Guest post by: Kim Thomas, Communications Manager at the University of Otago, Christchurch A team of specialist cancer researchers have joined forces to focus on the impact of obesity on breast cancer. The researchers all work at the University of Otago, Christchurch’s Mackenzie Cancer Research Group. The Group is headed by Canterbury District Health Board […] … Read More
John Pickering • Jun 09, 2014 •
The Health Research Council announced Programme and Project grant recipients. Here’s the list from the Christchurch campus of the University of Otago in which I get a brief mention :). If others have abstracts of successful grants they’d like posted on this blog, then please let me know. *****Update: It’s come to my attention that this … Continue reading → … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Feb 14, 2014 •
If you’re interested in science communication and are in the Dunedin area, mark these in your diary for Monday 24th and Tuesday 25th of this month: The Science Writer’s Muse: The (Empirically) Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living. Dr Jesse Bering, 12pm Monday 24 February 2014. Science Communication – Why do people engage, what are the impacts and how can … Read More
John Pickering • Nov 18, 2013 •
Some recent successes of University of Otago Christchurch researchers: Chlorine bleach key in disease? Professor Tony Kettle from the Centre for Free Radical Research has won a prestigious Marsden Fund grant to better understand a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ chemical with a role in heart disease, cancer, cystic fibrosis, and rheumatoid arthritis. Professor Kettle will investigate … Continue reading → … Read More
John Pickering • Nov 11, 2013 •
Infectious diseases expert Professor David Murdoch is passionate about his work in better understanding legionnaires’ disease and its causes. “If I ever have the opportunity in my career to help eradicate a disease it would likely be legionnaires’ disease. It’s the most common cause of pneumonia for much of the year in Christchurch and it … Continue reading → … Read More