BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT MATTERS | June 16, 2017

Dear all,

The annual HDR conference went extremely well this week – thanks to all the students who gave such great talks about their research, the panels for their guidance and advice for students, the student prize judges for their diligence, and finally to Julian May for his excellent organisation – well done all! Details of our well-deserved student prize winners are below.

Best wishes to all S1 teaching staff who are tackling final marking and grading. Please get grades in as quickly as possible to Sharyon  – it will be all hands on deck across the Faculty to get grades entered into the system due to the disruption to our admin teams – please be patient & considerate!

cheers

Michelle

Save the Date

This coming week 19th – 23rd June

Wed 21st: Special Department Morning Tea Farewell to our admin staff; 10:30am – 11:00am;  E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Wed 21st: Professor Bill Ballard, The University of NSW; 1pm – 2pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Thu 22nd: Writing Workshop; 2:30-4:30pm, E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Fri 23rd: REP workshop – ‘Non-research skills in job applications’

Following week 26th – 30th June

Tue 27th: Reproducible Research Using R and Related Tools; 3:00 – 4:30pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Wed 28th: Department Morning Tea; 10:30am – 11:00am; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Wed 21st: Professor Madeleine Beekman, The University of Sydney; 1pm – 2pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Thu 22nd: Writing Workshop; 2:30-4:30pm, E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Coming up

Every Thursday for the next few months: Writing Workshop; 2:30-4:00pm, E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

July 4th: Formal Department meeting for grading; 1-2pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

July 12th: REP workshop – ‘Making Lectures Interactive’ 

July 19th: E8C Digital Teaching Lab Induction; 9am – 11:30am; E8C-106.

July 21st: F7B Digital Teaching Lab Induction; 9:30am – 11:30am; F7B-108.

July 24th: E8A Digital Teaching Lab Induction; 9am to 12 noon; E8A-120.

July 25 & 26th: REP Outlook conference 2017

Sept 19th: ECR Showcase, E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Nov 13-14: Department retreat for academic staff, venue TBD

Department seminar schedule

July 5th: Professor David Haig, Harvard University; 1pm – 2pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

August 2nd: Professor Rick Shine, The University of Sydney; 1pm – 2pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

General News and Announcements

Welcome to Dr Vanessa Adams

Vanessa is joining the department as a fixed-term Lecturer for 3 years and will be teaching in the Master of Conservation Biology. She did her PhD at JCU and has been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UQ for the past few years. Her work focuses on decision-making in conservation planning and action, using economic concepts and consideration of social values. She is also a qualified actuary! She will be located in E8B Level 3 along with the Green Cities and Biodiversity Node researchers. Please make her welcome!

HDR Conference 2017 is Over!

Thanks to everyone who helped, particularly the prizes committee and ECR judges (Rachael Dudaniec, John Baumgartner, Ajay Narendra, and many others). In case you missed it, the awards for best student talks in each category were as follows.

Fieldwork:

Rene Heim (1st place, receiving the Barbara Rice award) for “Detection and monitoring of plant pathogens: Myrtle Rust in Australia”

Maria Vozzo (runner-up, equally placed) for “Wave energy alters biodiversity by shaping intraspecific variation of a habitat-forming species”

James Baxter-Gilbert (runner-up, equally placed) for “The Responses of Eastern Water Dragons (Intellagama lesueurii) to Urbanisation”

Labwork: 

Louise Chow (1st place) for “Antibiotics and Bacterial Evolution”

Catarina Vila Pouca (runner-up) for “Spatial and social behaviour in the Port Jackson shark, Heterodontus portusjacksoni”

Modelling:

Daisy Englert Duursma (1st place) for “Determining the effects of climate and the physical environment on behavior and morphological traits of Australia’s birds.”

We also had a very well-attended MRes poster session (possibly in part thanks to the offer of free drinks!).

The people’s choice award for best poster went to:

Kiara L’Herpiniere for her poster entitled “Eggstreme Variation in Australian Magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen) Eggs”

Congratulations to all of our students, and thanks to all who attended.

– Julian May

MRes Poster Presentations

The MRes Poster Displays (as part of the annual Biological Sciences HDR conference) were interesting and well attended this year.  Here are a few quick snaps from the event.

Baby Boy!

Please join us in congratulating Amanda and Ivan on the birth of their son, Marcel Boris Michel Crozier. Amanda says she is doing fine and Zazie was very excited to have her little baby brother with her.

Marcel was born on the 13th Jun, weighing in at 3.8kg and looking super cute. Amanda had to put up with a small matter of a 32 hour labour.

Macquarie Lecture by Dr Jane Goodall
Dr Jane Goodall will be visiting Macquarie on the 21^st of June to give a university lecture.  Macquarie University is the last stop on Dr Goodall’s national tour and she will be giving us a lecture different from any other on her Australian tour.  She is very excited to spend time with our staff and students and it will be an innovative and inspiring evening.  Macquarie is the only University in Australia to host Dr Goodall for a private lecture and tickets for this event are selling quickly.  Get yours now!

DEPARTMENTAL SEMINAR SERIES

Day/Date/Time/Place: Wednesday, 21st June, 1-2pm, E8A-280 (Tea Room).

Speaker: Professor Bill Ballard, The University of NSW.

Title: Myths and fantasies: What really influences the evolution of mitochondrial DNA.

Abstract: The factors that maintain genetic and phenotypic variation within natural populations have long interested evolutionary biologists. We test the oft-made presumption that mitochondrial DNA evolves in a manner consistent with a strictly neutral equilibrium model and employ Drosophila population cages to assay the frequency of mitotypes fed a range of diets. Females harboring Alstonville mtDNA have advantageous mitochondrial functions when fed a 1:2 Protein: Carbohydrate (P:C) diet enabling them to reach the highest frequency in cages. In contrast, Dahomey larvae harboring an L161V mutation in NADH dehydrogenase subunit 4 that inhibits Complex I function, eat more and move less when fed the 1:16 P:C food. These physiological changes increase flux through the polyol pathway and rates of ß-oxidation resulting in an evolutionary benefit via partial by-pass of Complex I. These data argue for a crucial role of metabolic flexibility as a selective force shaping the evolution of mtDNA and the processes of energy metabolism.

Hot Times at the PGF

We have a new muffle furnace installed in Plant Growth Facility which can maintain up to 1200 C temperature. If you wish to use this furnace to process your samples please contact Muhammad Masood <muhammad.masood@mq.edu.au> (PGF Manager).

Reproducible Research Using R and Related Tools

In the upcoming MQ R users meeting, we will welcome Dr. Ben Marwick from the University of Washington, Seattle. He is an archaeologist, and an expert in reproducibility in research broadly. For the next meeting, Ben will show how to enhance the reproducibility of your research using R and related tools such as Git, Travis, and Docker. He will illustrate with examples from his published articles. We start from how to make a basic research compendium and look at some more advanced tooling.  As always, everybody is welcome to join us on Tuesday, the 27^th of June 2017 in the Biology Tearoom at 3 pm. Ben will talk for roughly 30-60 min and there will be plenty of time for questions and answers.

For everyone who is new to R and would like to get started or just needs a refresher, we are offering our second R introduction on the same day, 27th of June, 1:30 pm in the Biology Tearoom.

(We will use Ina’s talk about the visualization of ordination analysis to compensate for unexpected speaker cancellations.)

No Department Drinks Next Thursday, 22nd June

Due to fieldwork obligations, the Department Drinks Team won’t be around to put on the usual Thursday afternoon shindig.  They say they will be back the following week, however!

Plant of the Week

Alphitonia excelsa – Red Ash, Soap Tree. An attractive small tree from rainforests of eastern Australia. Saponin from crushed leaves produces a soapy foam which breaks water tension and deoxygenates water. Saponins are a class of chemical compounds found in some plant species; most are poisonous to fish.

New Faces in Microscopy

Dr. Arthur Chien

Arthur completed his study as Master of Applied Science in microscopy and microanalysis in University of Sydney, 2010. He then received his PhD in 2014 from the University of Sydney. Arthur has imaging experience in brightfield and mullti-channel fluorescence microscopy, laser scanning confocal microscopy, rapid spinning disk confocal imaging in tissue and cells, 2-photon confocal imaging for tissue imaging, slide scanners for automated large scale tissue imaging, super-resolution imaging (SIM) and single molecule tracking (TIRF). He works with users to design optimal experiments for their research questions using the light and optical microscopes available at the Microscopy unit. He also trains and supports these users on the light and optical microscopes and post image analysis at the Microscopy unit.

Dr. Chao Shen 

Chao a Senior Scientific Officer in Microscopy Unit, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Macquaire University. He obtained his Bachelor of Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2011 and his PhD from National University of Singapore in 2015, respectively. After two years of postdoctoral work at Nanyang Technological University, he joined Macquaire University in 2017 as a professional staff. His background is in material science and engineering, and he is skilled at material synthesis and characterisation. In the role of senior scientific officer, he provides advice and specialist support to a diverse range of Microscopy Unit users in microscopy techniques as they relate to research projects, including specimen preparation, equipment operation, troubleshooting assistance.

You’ll have to visit them in Microscopy @ level 0 in Building E8A, as no pictures were supplied.

From the Desk of Andy Beattie

Research into the kinds of misdirection generated by bibliometrics and altmetrics has focused on a Nature paper which peer review  ranked highly but post-publication review (Publons) ranked significantly lower. However, this made no difference to the high altmetric score. This kind of disparity has been discussed in the general media such as The Economist which notes how it makes science look bad.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/12/09/how-weak-science-slipped-past-through-review-and-landed-in-a-top-journal-a1535637

New/Refresher Lab Inductions for Demonstrators

Staff/HDR students intending to demonstrate in teaching units (S2, 2017) run in E8A/E8C/F7B are requested to please contact Prasanth Subramani <prasanth.subramani@mq.edu.au> to sign up for lab inductions. These include new inductions as well as refreshers.

Become a Board Member of Sydney Society for Conservation Biology!

This is Peri here, your Macquarie University representative for Sydney SCB. We are having an AGM next week, where all board positions are open for nominations. Also, I am leaving Macquarie very soon, so we are looking for a replacement Representative at Macquarie University. This job doesn’t involve a lot of work, just selling any of the keep cups (not many) and keeping Macquarie apprised of SCB events etc. See below for more details about the AGM, or email me directly for more information <peri.bolton@mq.edu.au>.

Sydney SCB has an AGM coming up on Wednesday, 21^st of June at UNSW at 6pm (room TBA). This is the perfect opportunity to learn more about our society, our team and to get involved!

We will elect people for all board positions, which are:

• President – coordinates Sydney SCB and organises/leads meetings
• Vice-president – supports the president and steps in whenever needed
• Treasurer – handles Sydney SCB’s finances
• Secretary – handles membership and mailing lists and takes meeting minutes
• Communications officer – ensures Sydney SCB’s presence in social media and coordinates our newsletter
• Event manager – coordinates event organisation

Even though some “jobs” are inherent to the board position, we are a dynamic group that shares the responsibilities for all tasks and support each other wherever necessary. Everyone can contribute to ideas and event organisation/social media posting.
If you are interested in becoming a member, please email us on <info@sydneyscb.org> and send us a short blurb about yourself (ideally with a photo) and what position you are interested in. Then come join us at our AGM on the 21^st to get to meet us and to get voted in J

Please RSVP on Eventbrite (https://sydneyscb-agm2017.eventbrite.com.au) for catering purposes.

Outreach Opportunities and Requests – We Need Your Help

Outreach

The department has an unprecedented representation in this year’s upcoming Science Festival. The festival runs from 8^th-20^th of August. Effectively the department will have representation for every day of the festival. The events will include: Wild Science Race (16^th/17^th) in conjunction with Taronga Zoo, Night of Illusions (18^th/19^th) in conjunction with Department of Cognitive Sciences from MQ and USyd; The Great Evolutionary Arms Race: Emerging Pathogens and Rise of Superbugs (20th); and the Future of Human Evolution – these latter two are multi-department events; and lastly the Australian Museum Booth from 8^th-17^th which will involve PhD and Postdocs interacting with Primary, Secondary schools and the general Public. As a result we have a base level of around 20 individuals from academics to postdocs and postgrads representing 12+ labs. On behalf of the Outreach team I want to thank all those that have put their hand up for these events.

In the middle of all this is Open Day, which is the 19^th.  More will be made of this day in the next coming weeks. Some labs have already taken up the challenge of creating a new activity! Lastly please continue to enter details into the Outreach form. Our approach here has also been recognised at the Faculty level so all your efforts are hitting the desired mark! If you have any questions regarding outreach events or want to know how to get more involved or wish to propose an idea please contact any of the outreach team which includes Matthew Bulbert, Kath McClellan, Jemma Geoghegan, Chris Reid, Kerstin Bilgmann, Alex Carthey, Julian May, Ken Cheng and Ajay Narendra. – ACCESS OUTREACH FORM HERE

Science Festival Gigs for August – We Need You!

1. Excite schools and public at the Australian Museum

For this year’s science festival the faculty will have a booth/space at the Australian Museum. The museum is the central hub of the festival and hence has high flow through traffic including both public and high schools. This is a great opportunity for Macquarie and a great one for those of you wanting to increase your outreach profile as well as broaden the knowledge of the public.

We need volunteers for:

Primary school days: 8^th (AM) and 11^th (Anytime)

Super Public day: 12^th (Anytime)

High School days: 15^th (anytime), 16^th (AM), 17^th (Anytime), 18^th (AM)

Your commitment:

At minimum, a couple of hours with whatever display/activity of your choosing

Have fun telling passer-by’s about the cool stuff you do

I particularly encourage participation on the high school days.

2. National Indigenous Science Education Program (NISEP)

The National Indigenous Science Education Program (NISEP), Redfern Community Centre and City of Sydney are once again running the Indigenous Science Experience at Redfern – 16-18^th and 20^th August. If you would like to contribute an activity to this, please contact the biology outreach team or Joanne Jamie directly for more information. It’s a wonderful opportunity to showcase our disciplines. I highly recommend (for those who have not contributed previously) checking out the YouTube channel to see previous years’ events:www.youtube.com/user/NISEPmq

Annual Report Anecdotes

Did you do an outreach activity last year that you were particularly proud of?

We need some nice examples for the 2016 Annual report.  So, if you do please send through a few lines about what it was and a picture or two (if you have one – if not please send details anyway).

For any of these items please contact: <matthew.bulbert@mq.edu.au> or talk to any member of the outreach team which include Kath McCellan, Chris Reid, Ken Cheng, Jemma Geoghegan, Alexandra Carthey, Kerstin Bilgmann and Julian May. It is important you talk to us about any activities. Thanks.

New Publications

In the Media

Recent Completions