BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT MATTERS | February 3, 2017

Dear all,

I hope you all survived the heat over the past week! The department is getting busier now with most people back at work, preparations for session 1 and workload and PDRs underway. Next Tuesday is the regular department meeting – everyone should be there to discuss the plans for the coming year! We will start off with lunch for everyone (we will provide!) in the tearoom at 12.30 followed by the meeting at 1pm.

see you there!

Michelle

Save the Date

This coming week 6th – 10th February

Tue 7th: Department Meeting; 1 – 2 pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Wed 8th: Department Morning Tea; 10:30 am – 11 am; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room)

Following week 13th – 17th February

Wed 15th: Department Morning Tea ; 10:30 am – 11 am; W19F The Hill

Thu 16th: New Student Inductions; 11 am – 12 noon; E8C-212.

Coming up

Feb 21st: E8A Digital Teaching Lab Induction; 9am – 12:30pm; E8A-120 (Red Lab).

Feb 22nd: Weekly Seminar – Emeritus Professor Dick Frankham of MQU; 1pm – 2pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Feb 23rd: E8C Digital Teaching Lab Induction; 9am – 12:00pm; E8C-106.

Feb 24th: F7B Digital Teaching Lab Induction; 9:30am – 11:00am; F7B-108 (and 105).

Department seminar schedule

Mar 1st: Weekly Seminar – Professor Lourens Poorter & Associate Professor Marielos Pena-Claros of Wageningen University, The Netherlands; 1pm – 2pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Mar 8th: Weekly Seminar – Dr Antoine Wystrach of University of Edinburgh, UK; 1pm – 2pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Mar 15th: Weekly Seminar – Dr Geertje van der Heijden of University of Nottingham, UK; 1pm – 2pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Mar 22th: Weekly Seminar – Dr Marko Miliša of University of Zagreb, Croatia; 1pm – 2pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Mar 29th: Weekly Seminar – Professor David Warton of University of NSW; 1pm – 2pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Apr 5th: Weekly Seminar – Associate Professor Clare McArthur of University of Sydney; 1pm – 2pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

General News and Announcements

Do you ever purchase chemicals for your research? If so, you need to read this

The Faculty of Science and Engineering is in the process of rolling out software that will be used for the purchasing, inventory and full life cycle management of chemicals – SciQuest ERM. The software provides researchers and teaching staff with all safety related information for all chemicals as well as the ability to view chemical and consumable supplier catalogues with negotiated pricing, with ability to easily submit purchase requisitions through the software by filling an electronic shopping cart. SciQuest will also host the Faculty Store on this software so end users are able to browse, fill a shopping cart and purchase through SciQuest.

As part of this project and for the benefit of all users we will be holding two seminar style training sessions on Friday 10th February. One will be held from 10am-12pm and the other from 1pm-3pm. End users will only need to attend one of the two sessions as they will be the same. The sessions are limited to 150 people each and to register you must do so through one of the links below:

10am-12pm – https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sciquest-end-user-training-tickets-31406167693

1pm-3pm – https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sciquest-end-user-training-tickets-31406439506

All end users who intend to purchase chemicals from external suppliers or make purchases from the Faculty Store are encouraged to attend one of these workshops. Additional training on how to use the software for both inventory management and purchasing within individual labs will be provided at a later date.

CALL OUT: WE NEED FANTASTIC FEMALE SCIENTISTS FOR OUR SEMINAR SERIES

Do you know a wonderful scientist with a great research program, who is also a woman? We are trying to achieve gender parity in our seminar series this year, but we need YOUR help. Please send us your suggestions of fantastic female scientists, who you would like to see speak as part of our seminar series. ECR and MCRs welcome. We have a limited budget so Sydney-based is ideal, but flying them in from elsewhere in Australia may be possible. Overseas visitors would be fantastic, but they’d need to be passing through Sydney for other reasons.

Please send suggestions to: alexandra.carthey@mq.edu.au OR rachael.gallagher@mq.edu.au

Looking for Inspiration for Your Unit Delivery?

The library subscribes to The Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection. The library is updated and expanded monthly and contains over 2,100 specially prepared, seminar-style, animated talks by many of the world’s leading experts, including Nobel, Breakthrough and Lasker Prize winners.a huge collection of seminar-style animated talks by world experts.  Extracts as well as complete talks can easily be embedded in units to enrich the learning & teaching experience for students.

If you would like to sign up to receive a monthly update of new releases please register here.

All Macquarie University members can view the complete collection at https://hstalks.com/biosci/

Authentication should be automatic. If needed, you may use the login credentials:
Username: MACQUARIE Password: MEMBER

Teaching in iLearn for Tutors

March 1 @ 10:30 am – 11:30 pm
This session is designed for Tutors or Teaching Assistants who will be teaching with iLearn. Learn how to navigate iLearn, access student work and give feedback online. Read more and register… (link: http://teche.ltc.mq.edu.au/event/teaching-ilearn-tutors-3/)

BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards Now Open 

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards, whose tenth edition is now open, seek to recognise and encourage world-class research and artistic creation, prizing contributions of broad impact for their originality and theoretical significance. The Award categories are as follows:

1. Basic Sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics)
2. Biomedicine
3. Ecology and Conservation Biology
4. Information and Communication Technologies
5. Economics, Finance and Management
6. Contemporary Music
7. Climate Change
8. Development Cooperation

Nominations close on the 30^th June 2017

For more information and to submit applications : www.fbbva.es/awards

Plant of the Week is back for 2017!

This week – Lepidozamia peroffskyana – not a palm, in fact a cycad from rainforests of eastern Australia.

Visiting Scholar

Dr. Martyna Kotowska is a Visiting Fellow from Germany who is collaborating with Ian Wright.  Please make her feel welcome if you see her in the corridors.

Research info:

I’m a German researcher of Polish ancestry and did my PhD on carbon sequestration in Indonesian rainforest transformation systems. I was working at the University of Göttingen and Ulm University on plant hydraulics. Currently I am a Visiting Associate at Macquarie holding a German Research Foundation (DFG) fellowship from 2017-2018. I will be working on plant nutrient budgets and functional traits. I’m interested in how soil phosphorus status affects wood anatomical traits and nutrient translocation in woody plants. The research aims to identify the costs of different adaptive strategies to economize nutrient demand on a whole-plant basis.”

QUT PhD Scholarship in Pollen Allergen Aerobiology

There is a PhD position available with Associate Professor Janet Davies group to investigate regional and temporal variation in grass pollen allergen aerobiology.

Could you please circulate the link with the advertisement and relevant information via your networks or directly to any potential candidates who may want to study in Brisbane.

https://www.seek.com.au/Job/32725632?_ga=1.73240464.2006700296.1476654770

Need a New Monitor?

David Nipperess has a Samsung LED 21” computer monitor which he will sell to a student for a very small amount of cash (or more than that if you are not a poor student). Price is clearly negotiable. Contact David by email <david.nipperess@mq.edu.au> if you are interested.

From Andy Beattie

My latest blog for the Stanford MAHB site – on battles between conservationists and farmers:
http://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/conservation-production-biodiversity/

A retrospective in the SMH on what was going on in 1989 – Ants in Antibiotics
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/in-the-herald-january-27-1989-20170119-gtupf2.html

Department of Environmental Sciences Seminar

Date/Time/Place: 7th February, 11am, DES tea room.

Title: Remote Sensing of EBVs for global change monitoring

Speaker: Andrew Skidmore, ITC, University Twente

Abstract: Many of the key challenges that face humanity are due to the impacts of global change on biodiversity and the stability of ecosystems and natural services that they provide. In this presentation, I will discuss the process and progress in using remote sensing for monitoring of essential biodiversity variables to predict the consequences of changes in the global drivers of biodiversity. Essential Biodiversity Variable (EBVs) are defined as the key variables required to observe, understand, and report on change in the state of biodiversity. They sit as a layer between raw biodiversity observations and the biodiversity indicators used in policy, such as the indicators measuring progress towards the CBD Aichi Targets. EBVs provide key guidance to the observation system in terms of what it should measure, and their intermediate position between observations and indicators isolates those indicators from changes in observation technology. Satellite remote sensing can play a crucial role in the measurement of EBVs, particularly for a subset of EBVs which we denote by RS-EBVs. Largely, this is because the global and periodic nature of satellite remote sensing greatly simplifies the acquisition of the needed observations, making RS an ideal method for understanding change at national as well as other scales. Using the EBV framework as a baseline (Pereira et al. 2013) two GEO BON workshops were held to discuss current and future satellite missions and their ability to provide observations useful for generating EBVs. The goal was to create a list of candidate RS-EBVs by carefully considering, amongst others, factors such as an ability to meet policy needs, priority, feasibility, implementation status, spatial resolution and temporal frequency. The list published in Skidmore et al. (2015) contains RS-EBVs that are continuous and biophysical such as leaf area index and species traits, as well as others that use somewhat arbitrary class boundaries, such as land cover and disturbed areas. Also, like some ECVs, a number of RS-EBVs are actually groups of related variables that describe a phenomenon of interest (e.g, plant traits, phenology,  disturbance). I will explore progress and challenges in using state-of-the-art remote sensing to retrieve EBVs from remote sensing. With this list as a starting point, the next steps in the process can begin, with the ultimate goal of putting a plan in place to acquire the needed RS observations to generate the related EBVs. The current approach for this process is described. The key organizations for this are the CBD, IPBES, CEOS, and GEO BON, with GEO playing a facilitative role, however the broader biodiversity community is also very important. A key goal is to meet as many as possible of the reporting needs that CBD signatory countries have for the Aichi targets.

2016 short cv Skidmore

New Publications

In the Media

Recent Completions

Benjamin Ofori submitted his PhD thesis entitled “Impacts of climate change on Cunningham’s skink (Egernia cunninghami).”

Supervised by Dr Linda Beaumont

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