BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT MATTERS | JULY 3 2015

Dear all,

Thank you all for attending the formal Department meeting on Wednesday…..there are afternoon drinks today at 4:30 in the courtyard to celebrate Nola Hancock’s book!

cheerio

Mariella

General News and Announcements

Welcome new staff

Welcome to Ajay Narendra who joins us from the ANU with a future fellowship. Ajay works on ant vision, navigation and behaviour and will be located up the Hill.

Plant of the week

Styphelia tubiflora – Red Five Corners

New First Aid  & breastfeeding Room – W19E Middle Office

If anyone uses the room for a medical problem, please notify Maria – in the righthand office of W19E; or Robby – soon to be located in the old First Aid room – so we can keep an eye on you.  Culum and Maria are the official Occupational First Aiders but Andy, Jane, Ken and Robby all have First Aid Certificates as well.  There is a sign next to the phone with everyone’s contact numbers including Security’s in case of emergency

Online Nomination of Examiners form for PhD

We are moving to an online process, paper forms will no longer be accepted after August 1. Jump online and check it out!

https://noe.mq.edu.au/noe/

Special seminar session – Wildlife Health in Antarctica  3rd of August 9.30-1.30 pm E8 tearoom

You are invited to attend a series of 15 minute seminars in the field of Wildlife Health in Antarctica which will kick off a G2G supported working group addressing disease risks posed to Antarctic wildlife via the introduction of human deceived micro-organisms. Speakers cover broad disciplines and include several international speakers and Antarctic scientists in the area of marine mammal disease, penguin disease and ecology, microbiology / parasitology and also Antarctic science policy. 

G2G will also fund a light lunch for those who would like to attend the seminar series. For catering purposes please RSVP to Michelle Power (michelle.power@mq.edu.au) by 17th of July. 

Royal Society Publishing Photography competition

The competition is open to all from now until the 30^th September, and the winners will be chosen by our panel of judges; Alex Badyaev (University of Arizona), Innes Cuthill (University of Bristol), and Claire Spottiswoode (University of Cambridge). Entries can be submitted via our online form here. 

Our categories are split into three areas – Behaviour, Ecology and Environmental Science, and Evolutionary Biology. The winners will be notified in November at a specially organised event, and shortlisted entries will be exhibited online and here at the Royal Society. The overall winner will receive £500 and winners of the categories not chosen as the overall winner will receive £250.

Micromorphology: Archaeological Stratigraphy at the Micro-Scale

 A 1-week intensive, hands-on short course focussing on the application of micromorphology to the interpretation of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental sequences

16–20th November 2015

VENUE

University of Wollongong, Science Teaching Facility, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

TEACHING STAFF

The course will be run by Professor Paul Goldberg & Dr Mike Morley (UOW), with invited guest speaker and instructor Professor Chris Miller (Tubingen, Germany). This is a course aimed at students, academics and professionals, for those wishing to explore the basics of micromorphology or to build on their existing skills and experience.

COURSE CONTENT

The course will include:

•   Use of a brand new digital science teaching facility located on the main campus
• Both thematic lectures and practical microscope work
• Guided sessions with attendees invited to bring their own thin sections
• Recording and reporting
• Optional introduction to FTIR and Raman spectroscopy

COST

The cost of the course is $600 (10% student reduction)

• Includes breakfast, lunch and tea/coffee
•  Does not include accommodation (full list of options will be available)

FURTHER DETAILS

If you are interested in participating in this course, or need further information, please contact:

Mike Morley (mmorley@uow.edu.au<mailto:mmorley@uow.edu.au>)

Intern in Behaviour looking for placement

My name is Joan Nazzaro and I am currently on my 4th Biology degree year at Univeristat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya (Catalonia, Spain). 

I have recently come across your work on animal behaviour with great interest.

I am addressing to you since I would be very interested in applying for a position as an intern at your institution from February to June. I consider myself a very hardworking and fast learning person with good laboratory skills and already with professional working experience in technological companies. 

I think it would be a great opportunity for both of us if I could get involved in any of your projects, thus I would appreciate if you could contact me. You will find attached my CV, a letter of recommendation from the head of my university studies and my Letter of Motivation.

joanmiquel.nazzaro@uvic.cat

Bar fridge looking for a home

I am hoping to find a home for a second hand, but in good working condition, small bar fridge

If anyone in the department might like/could use these, I have them downstairs in E8C 150.

Many thanks,

Alison  x 8197

Toddler car seat needed

Thank you everyone for your kind thoughts and wishes and hopes for Angela Moncrieff’s speedy recovery.  She is doing well, given the situation, but it will be many months before she might be back at Macquarie.

In the interim, I am looking for a second hand toddler car seat, suitable for a 2 year old of 90cm tall (he’s a big lad!).  If you have one you are not using any more, that is is decent condition (must not be damaged in any way – clean is optional), would you consider a loan/gift/small sum of money for it?  We need it for the grandparents’ car, so I can stop walking 3.5km to the station every morning at 6am in winter!

Please catch me or leave a message on 9850 8184 if you can help.

Thank you.

Ray Duell

Gordon Research Conference

Announcing the 2015 GRC on Molecular Mechanisms in Evolution
Using Evolutionary Perspectives to Inform Molecular Biology and Medicine, and Molecular Biology to Elucidate Evolutionary History and Mechanisms
June 28 – July 3, 2015 Stonehill College Easton, MA
Our goal is to use evolutionary perspectives to inform molecular biology and medicine, and molecular biology to elucidate evolutionary history and mechanisms. We hope to unite what have been disparate fields, population genetics and mechanistic molecular genetics, genomics and molecular biology, focusing on the impacts of the latter to our understanding of evolutionary processes. The meeting sessions will address a wide range of topics, including discussions of the constraints that cell biology and stochasticity pose for evolutionary processes, non-traditional mechanisms of inheritance, insights garnered from evolution experiments in the laboratory, mechanisms of coding and regulatory evolution highlighting the unexpected plasticity of genomes. We will discuss how our mechanistic knowledge could be used to predict and arrest evolutionary processes in infectious diseases and cancer.

A list of session topics and speakers is displayed below (discussion leaders are noted in italics). Click here for the full program with talk titles and complete conference schedule.

Global Leadership Program

We are excited to announce that Dr Irina Pollard will be facilitating a workshop on Bioscience Ethics for Global Leadership Program (GLP) Undergraduate students! Dr Pollard, an Honorary Associate for the department, is a biologist with special expertise in stress physiology, reproduction, developmental toxicology, bioscience ethics and bioethics.

Bioscience ethics is a transdisciplinary, dynamic, exciting and rapidly evolving discipline that involves an understanding of biological systems and responsible use of changing technology. The workshop will reflect upon the heritability of ethics and its socio-biological implications and investigate lifestyle and reproductive health, fertility and the assisted reproductive technologies (ART) from a cross-cultural perspective.

Do you want to attend Dr Pollard’s workshop and further your international skills and knowledge? Then join the GLP today and become part of a 2800 strong cohort of students, who want to become global citizens and future leaders.

With the GLP you don’t just learn global skills and understanding – you put them into practice by studying, interning, volunteering and participating in conferences, both in Australia and overseas. Fill out an application form and book into one of the Welcome Sessions, which will be running from MacFest to Week 3, to hear more about the opportunities available through the program and to get started!

Software to generate fossil databases from research papers

An interesting paper in Nature, mentioning John Alroy!

523115a

IMOS newsletter for June

Including a piece by Rob Harcourt!

Marine_Matters_Issue_21-June-2015_WEB

Looking for Accommodation

The Griffith Lab have a student arriving from Germany that needs 2-3 weeks accommodation from July 8. Her name is Hanja Brandl (hanja.brandl@gmail.com). Could you distribute this to sci-bio all? We would be very grateful if anyone can help out.

Vehicle housekeeping

We are always pretty busy terms of fieldwork activities and general use and I am conscious of the fact that our vehicle use is usually, at capacity.

Having said that, please could I ask everyone to keep in mind the following vehicle (house) keeping measures:

– The vehicle compound gate must never remain open unless you are in the immediate vicinity. Sadly, we regularly have general parking permit holders parking their vehicles (incorrectly), causing angst to people returning cars or trying to remove cars from the compound. – it is everyone’s responsibility to keep this area secure.

– Fuel up the vehicle on the completion of your trip before you return the car to the vehicle compound –  This aspect of the vehicle use policy is declining alarmingly despite being mentioned in inductions and department newsletters (http://bio.mq.edu.au/february-20-2015/). You do not want to end up in a situation where you are about to leave on a field trip and find your car near empty. If you are unsure on how to use the fuel cards, come see me and I will gladly show you 🙂

– Vehicles must be returned clean inside and out at the end of the trip  (esp after a marine trip) It is every user’s responsibility to clean up after their use and take care of the vehicle. 

– Fill out the log books correctly at the end of every trip – The admin team and I will not be held responsible if you are charged incorrectly for your vehicle use, if you haven’t filled it out correctly. If you do not know the account details to charge your use, find out what it is and then take the car.

– Turn off all the lights in the car before you close your gates – Again it is the vehicle users responsibility to ensure that the car can be started before the next user leaves on their trip. You don’t want to end up in a situation at 0700 where your car doesn’t start and you have to jump start a car. 

We now have a pretty good system that is working well. Just need to ensure that it continues to be a good system for everyone. As always, if there are any concerns, please report them to me ASAP, so I can fix them for you.

Thanks in advance everyone for keeping our vehicle fleet running well & functional. We only need to ensure that is the above guidelines are followed  all times! Don’t hesitate to come and see me if you need any help with any of this.

These measures apply to all the vehicles in Biology’s fleet – CVK98J, BQ61HI, BL45UU, BL44MV, BS25ZN, BS58ZN, BU26FG)

Regards

Tarun Rajan

New Publications

In the Media

Recent Completions