Rare, tiny find in West Australian waters
A miniscule marine creature caught during a recent Indian Ocean research voyage is believed to be the first of its kind identified in the Southern Hemisphere....... The single celled organism, supporting what looks like 6 legs is a phaeodaria from the family coelodendridae, also known as a radiolarian. Measuring only 1.4 mm, the organism was found during an investigation of ocean eddies by the Na...Australian overturns 15 years of nano-science doctrine
An Australian mathematician has thrown 15 years of accepted scientific practice out the window by discovering a design flaw in a key component of the Atomic Force Microscope....... His finding will force a rethink into the design and use of an instrument that has become a cornerstone of scientific measurement and analysis. ...... Dr John Sader, at University of Melbourne's Department of Mathemati...World-first Australian truffle find
An Australian scientist has made a discovery which is electrifying world fungal biology a new truffle genus related to the famous Amanita family, or fairy toadstools.... The Amanita family is famed worldwide for the red and white-spotted toadstools beloved of children's fairy tales, the lethal Death Cap beloved of tabloid media, and a range of delicious edible fungi beloved of gourmets.... The...Australian researchers locate heart attack genes
University of Melbourne researchers, along with doctors and scientists from eight Melbourne hospitals, have located three genes that make heart attack more likely.... ...Team leader Professor Stephen Harrap, Department of Physiology, says this is the first genetic study in the world to focus exclusively on heart attack and it will pave the way for new means of prevention and treatment.... ..."We...Australian frog is first to make its own chemical weapons
Researchers have identified an Australian poison frog that makes its own toxin rather than getting it from food sources. It is the first documented case of a vertebrate that generates its own poison alkaloids, complex chemicals that are usually associated with plants, the researchers said....... Poison frogs release alkaloids from their skin to defend against predators. Until now, the researcher...New grain variety opens up possibilities for Australian farmers
...Plants that are the staple food of some animals can be deadly to others. Many plants have properties that lie somewhere between the extremes of toxic and safe. Vetch is one of these.... ...Common vetch is useful to farmers as a versatile nitrogen-fixing crop in cereal crop rotations. The plant grows particularly well in southern Australia and has also been used as feed for cattle and other r...Changes in Australian ecosystems tied to arrival of exotic animals
. A study of old and new emu eggshells collected from central Australia indicates a dramatic loss of grasslands beginning roughly 300 years ago was due to the arrival of Europeans and the introduction of exotic grazing animals, according to a new study.. . The eggshells of the large, flightless bird are unique in that they can be dated by traditional radiocarbon methods and by a process known a...Reefs and atolls of the Australian outback
. . . .When the Australian explorer Charles Sturt went looking for an inland sea, he wasn't wrong; just a few million years too late. Oceans once covered great areas of what is now inland Australia. Their traces remain in fossils, minerals and geological formations that reveal much about how Earth has changed over time.. .Dr Nicholas Lemon from Adelaide University's National Centre for Petroleu.... . . . Kansas City, MO, April 6, 2000 -- AVAX Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVXT) today announced that its Australian joint venture, AVAX Australia Pty. Ltd. has received an additional $3.0 million (AUD) investment from Neptunus International Holdings Limited (NIHL), which was recently renamed Australian Vaccine Technologies Ltd. (AVT). AVAX Australia holds the rights to manufacture and mark....For more than 30 years, scientists have suggested that the first human.immigrants into Australia dramatically changed the continent's vegetation with.the use of fire. However, few vegetation records from the vast Australian.interior exist, and none extend beyond the last 18,000 years. The traditional.tools for reconstructing vegetation - such as imprints and remnants of plants.and the accumul.... A team of Australian scientists from CSIRO and the Biomolecular. Research Institute has achieved a world-first advance by describing. the structure of a vital receptor found on the surface of the. body cells of all animals including humans. . The discovery, reported in this week's issue of the international. scientific journal Nature, has major implications for our understanding. of th.... . Evidence is mounting that Australia's native sea lion population has. levelled off and may be declining, prompting a leading CSIRO scientist. to call for more intensive research into the species. . The call, by Dr. Peter Shaughnessy, principal research scientist with. the Division of Wildlife and Ecology, follows a joint study between CSIRO. and National Parks and Wildlife South Austra...