BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT MATTERS |May 15, 2015

Dear all,

Eurovision is barely a week away…prepare, everyone prepare! From Monday there will be sweepstake tickets available from the HOD office. On the 25th, join me in the E8 tearoom for the annual Eurovision morning tea!

Read up on the entries here: https://thescienceofeurovision.wordpress.com/

cheerio

Mariella

General News and Announcements

Promotion success

Congratulations to Simon Griffith on his promotion to Professor!

Weekly seminar

This week we will hear from two internal speakers, increasing our knowledge of what our peers are working on! (YAY!)

Vivian Cumbo will be presenting on: Responses of coral larvae and recruits to changing climates

Tropical coral reefs are threatened by global climate change and ocean acidification. Following disturbances causing widespread coral mortality, the primary means of recovery for coral populations is sexual reproduction involving pelagic larvae that recruit to benthic surfaces. For this reason, it is of great interest to know how the early life stages of corals respond to environmental challenges. This presentation will provide a brief overview of my previous research projects involving corals and climate change. Using coral larvae from broadcast-spawning corals, I explore initial patterns of association between the host and their symbiont algae (Symbiodinium spp), and determine how elevated temperatures and competition between Symbiodinium types affect the establishment and development of symbiosis. Then, using newly settled recruits from brooding corals, I demonstrate that recruits exposed to a natural diurnal cycle of pCO₂ are fitter than their counterparts exposed to constant conditions of either current-day or elevated pCO₂.

Brian Atwell will be presenting on: Unravelling mechanisms of stress tolerance in plants

Plants deploy a vast range of phenotypic responses to mitigate the effects of adverse environments, including the abiotic stresses caused by water or oxygen shortage, heat and salinity. Humans have selected the handful of plants that sustain civilizations from a vast palette of wild species, and in doing so eliminated much of the genetic diversity that resides in wild populations. This talk will discuss our attempt to identify and understand the contribution that wild relatives can make to our knowledge of abiotic stress tolerance.

Media and communication training dates

Our full-day media and communication training course will help you with all your non-scientific communication with stakeholders, customers and the media. It will help you feel comfortable with the media and give your media advisors confidence that you will be a good performer when media opportunities arise.

Upcoming courses are:
Melbourne: Wednesday 3 June
Sydney: Tuesday 7 July
Melbourne: mid-July (date TBC)
Canberra: Tuesday 1 September
Melbourne: Tuesday 15 September
Perth: Friday 2 October
For more dates: www.scienceinpublic.com/training

Summary of the federal budget

Here is a first assessment of the budget (thanks Mark & Michael Strack)

2015-16 Federal budget – Summary of major science and research announcements

Speed dating with BIOL114 students 

From the 1^st-4^th of June, Biol114 will be hosting a little event we like to call academic speed dating. Essentially, we’re asking for volunteers from around the department to come and give a short (4-5 min) presentation explaining their research to our first-year students. This is a great opportunity to both promote your work and to encourage undergraduates to pursue careers in the sciences. The entire process should only take 30-40 minutes and everybody is welcome to participate (particularly PhD candidates and Masters students). If you’d like to be involved, I’ve included a list of session times below. Just contact me (matthew.lott@mq.edu.au) with your availability and we’ll take it from there.

• 1^st June (Monday)
•             9am-9.40am
•             12pm-12.40pm
•             3pm-3.40pm
• 2^nd June (Tuesday)
•             9am-9.40am
•             2pm-2.40pm
• 3^rd June (Wednesday)
•             9am-9.40am
•             12pm-12.40pm
•             3pm-3.40pm
• 4^th June (Thursday)
•             9am-9.40am

Jobs

The School of Biological Sciences, Auckland University,  invites applications for 3 tenure-track positions  for  Lecturer/Senior lecturer in the areas of Vertebrate Biology, Genetics and Biochemistry.

Attached are the position descriptions for  each of the roles currently being advertised together with a URL link  below to the careers page for more detailed information.

Please feel free to distribute as appropriate to your  networks so we get the largest pool of candidates for each position.

• Lecturer/Senior lecturer-Vertebrate biology
• Lecturer/Senior lecturer-Genetics
• Lecturer Biochemistry

All Applications close: Wednesday, 10 June 2015

ECR Network: Beyond Competitive Grants

The amount of funding the government spends on research every year far outweighs the amount of money administers through the ARC and NHMRC competitive grants schemes. Find out how to access this hidden research funding at this special event moderated by Tanya Monro (Deputy Vice Chancellor Research and Innovation, University of South Australia).

Date: Tuesday 2 June 2015

Time: 8:50am to 12:00pm

See: http://riaus.org.au/events/beyond-competitive-grants/

Security Alert

Several credit cards were stolen from bags in offices of another Department in the Faculty. Please be vigilant and lock your doors when the office is unattended.

1st Year Master Student Presentations BIOL711: Topics in Evolution

NEXT Monday May 18th 1pm – 3.00pm in the Biology Tearoom

Bring your lunch and come and meet this year’s intake of MRes students as they present 10 min talks on recent developments across a range of fields, investigated in the light of Evolution. 

Looking forward to seeing you on Monday,

Tory Clarke (Convenor BIOL711)

Earthcare Month – June

June 5^th is World Environment Day, but Macquarie Sustainability is going further and celebrating Earthcare Month. There are events and activities happening around campus all month to celebrate, encourage awareness and promote positive action to care for our beautiful earth. The Arboretum will be a central feature – for tree planting, working bee and guided walk.

See attached poster for more information.

sustainability_documents_earthcaremonthposter

Society for Conservation Biology

The Sydney chapter for Society for Conservation Biology are selling 2015/2016 Entertainment books again this year!

All funds raised will go towards the organisation of our Conservation Café, a new and successful outreach event. Read about our past and future events here: www.sydneyscb.org

You can buy both the hard copy or the online versions HERE

The June Sydney-SCB Conservation Cafe welcomes James Brazill-Boast, the Senior Project Officer for Ecosystems & Threatened Species at the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage. His primary role is in the development and implementation of the Saving our Species program, in particular, the design of management prescriptions for each of the 900+ threatened species in NSW and the development of operation policy for better prioritisation, monitoring and evaluation of threatened species management projects in NSW. Conservation Cafe June 2015

Most downloaded TREE paper

Top downloaded TREE article for last 2 years: Dan Warren et al. on Mistaking Geography for Biology http://bit.ly/1H1a662

Merit Scholars in the Department

We are hosting a number of high achieving students doing short research projects.

Mel Bishop:

• Alan Baldry: ‘EFFECTIVE DUNE RESTORATION TO CREATE DIVERSE, FUNCTIONAL ECOSYSTEMS’
• Peta Vine, Victoria Harwood: ‘GENETIC SOLUTION OR DILUTION: CAN SELECTIVE BREEDING FUTURE-PROOF OYSTERS?’

Leanne Armand

• Alyssa Weirman and Benson Koschinsky who will be working jointly on the project: Impact of a warmer climate on Southern Ocean circulation and bioproductivity: the early Holocene

Michael Gillings

• Timothy Ghaly, Michael O’Sullivan and Gregory Evernden

Lights on or off?

Hi!

Some people say that more energy is used in switching on and off fluorescent light, because the bulb needs a lot of energy to start. This is not true. According to a few sources, the amount of energy needed by a fluorescent bulb to start working is equivalent to a few seconds of normal working. http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/when-turn-your-lights

Quoting the national energy service: “A general rule-of-thumb is this:

• If you will be out of a room for 15 minutes or less, leave it on.
• If you will be out of a room for more than 15 minutes, turn it off.”

So please, can we switch lights off when we are not using them?

S2 text book ordering for Co-op book shop

2^nd Semester Text ordering – Urgent

Please be advised all Session 2, 2015 Text lists are due by 17 May.

Please take in consideration that books can take up to 8-10 weeks to arrive if the supplier here in Australia is out of stock.

Please consider carefully whether the Textbook will be:

• Prescribed: used extensively throughout the unit and needed for assessment.
• Recommended: a helpful additional resource.
• Alternative: equal but different choice or individual components of a main package.

It will also be much appreciated if you could provide information regarding:

• Estimated enrolments (internal or external students)
• Course readers ordered from the printery
• If the book may be used for an open book exam

Please place your orders via:

http://www.coop.com.au/bookshop/action_so/TextListsManager  

or  Directly email me on mmanoukian@coop.com.au or feel free to call me on 02 8986 4000 and confirm your order by phone

Society of Australian Systematic Biologists – 2015 conference

see flyer!

SASB2015_advert

Volunteers

See attached list and make contact with these students who want to help you!

Volunteers 2015 MAY 12

Out at Sea

Dr Leanne Armand (Dept. Biological Sciences) and A/Prof. Kelsie Dadd (Dept. Earth and Planetary Sciences) have just returned from the East Coast of Tasmania where they participated on a 5 day “Geosciences” trial voyage on the new Marine National Facility, RV Investigator. The ~94m long,  $120 million, ocean-going research vessel replaced the RV Southern Surveyor as Australia’s premier research vessel for all marine sciences. On this trial mission both Macquarie researchers assisted in the trialling and testing of new geoscience equipment for the new vessel, including the use of gravity corers, Smith-MacIntyre sediment grabs and sea-floor dredges. Associate Prof. Dadd and Dr Leanne Armand were impressed with the ship’s new laboratory spaces spanning the majority of the working deck level and the silence of the ship. Dr Leanne Armand was successful with a bid for ship-time on the RV Investigator to the Southern Ocean with a team from Macquarie University, International and National Scientists. The ship will be visiting Sydney this week where Dr Armand will tour the ship with Prof. Sakkie Pretorius (DVC-R), Prof. John Simons (DVC-A), Prof. Peter Nelson (PVC-RP&I) and Prof. Barbara Messerle (Dean Fac. S&E).

Scientists in Schools

Leanne Armand connected with Mr Daniel Sandral and Yr 5 students at Wenona Junior School in Sydney from Hobart’s Port; bringing marine science into the classroom as a part of the Scientist in Schools programme with CSIRO.

Rebecca Thompson – Work Experience

Please contact Rebecca if you have a project for her

To whom it may concern,

My name is Rebecca Thompson and I am a year 10 student at Manly Selective Campus looking to do work experience later this year (Monday 23 November – Friday 27 November). I am very interested in all areas of science and I believe that I would benefit greatly from completing my work experience week at the scientific research facility at Macquarie University. I am aware that you do not hold a formal work experience program, however I would greatly appreciate your consideration. My father completed his undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications at Macquarie University and I have visited on multiple occasions myself. Currently, I am considering doing a degree in the science faculty once I finish high school and I would love to do this at Macquarie University. My results in science at my school are of a high standard, I achieved an outstanding report last year and I have been completing my work to an equally high standard this year. At the moment I am planning to take Chemistry and Physics in year 11 and 12, but I also enjoy biology.

I look forward to hearing from you soon,

Rebecca Thompson

<thompsonbec@optusnet.com.au>

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