Understanding meta-population trends of the Australian fur seal, with insights for adaptive monitoring
By: McIntosh, Rebecca R., Steve P. Kirkman, Sam Thalmann, Duncan R. Sutherland, Anthony Mitchell, John PY Arnould, Marcus Salton, David J. Slip, Peter Dann, and Roger Kirkwood. PloS one 13, no. 9 (2018): e0200253. | Find with Google Scholar »
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Hi all,
We’ve had a great week including the ECR Showcase (thanks to all presenters!), graduation (send in any pictures for next week’s edition) where our Adjunct Prof David Mabberley was awarded an Honorary Doctorate, and the 40th birthday party for the biology garden. Next week – MRes seminars. Please come along to support our fabulous MRes students on Monday!
cheers,
Michelle
Save the Date
This coming week 24th – 28th September
Mon 24th: MRes final seminars; 9.00pm – 5.00pm; 14EAR (E8A) 280 Biology Tea Room.
Wed 26th: Department Morning Tea; 10.30am; The Hill.
Thu 27th: Digital Literacy Meetup at Macquarie; 10.00am – 12.30pm; Collaborative Learning Forum (17 Wally’s Walk).
Thu 27th: R Users Group; 3.00pm – 4.00pm; 14EAR (E8A) 280 Biology Tea Room.
Thu 27th: Femme in STEM; 6.00pm – 8.30pm; IBM iX Studio, Level 16, 55 Market St, Sydney.
Following week 2nd – 5th October
Tue 2nd: REP Workshop ‘Conservation Conversations: Saving Our Smallest Species’; 9.00am – 11.00am; 14EAR (E8A) 280 Biology Tea Room.
Tue 2nd: Department Meeting; NO MEETING THIS MONTH – DUE TO SCHOOL HOLIDAYS AND OTHER BUSY THINGS!
Wed 3rd: Department Morning Tea; 10.30am; 14EAR (E8A) 280 Biology Tea Room.
Wed 3rd: Department Seminar – Michael Rampe,CEO Pedestal 3D Pty Ltd and Senior Learning Designer, Faculty of Human Science, MQU; 1.00pm – 2.00pm; 14EAR (E8A) 280 Biology Tea Room.
Future Events
Oct 10th: Faculty Safety Day; 10.00am – 2.00pm; Biology Courtyard.
Oct 11th: Darwinian Medicine; 10.00am – 3.00pm; Continuum room, level 3, 75 Talavera Road.
Nov 5th – 7th: Supplementary HDR Conference; exact date and times TBA; Location TBA.
Want to know what Department seminars are coming up? You can check out the Dept webpage at any time!
General News and Announcements
New Fauna Park Building is almost ready – check out the photos of this great addition to our new biology facilities!
Congratulations to Alexander Carthey for winning the Milthorpe Memorial Award for Plant Sciences!
Femme in STEM – Interested in pursuing a career in STEM? See the attached poster. Femme in STEM_Poster_27September18
Supplementary HDR Conference: 5th-7th Nov 2018 (exact date TBC) – PhD students who started before May 2018 and who did not present at the June conference are required to attend. Any students who cannot be there on those dates due to already-booked fieldwork or other commitments must let the HDR co-ordinator know so an alternative date for HDR panel interviews can be arranged. Contact <fse.bio-adm@mq.edu.au>
Have Your Say on Open Day 2018 – If you were a contributor on Open Day this year please provide feedback on what worked and didn’t work so well on the day at this survey
Train Station Closure 30th September 2018 With the Macquarie University train station closure from 30 September 2018 for 6-7 months, this website offers information about bus options from your closest train station. http://www.mysydney.nsw.gov.au/stationlink It will be the first place to look for information and will be continually updated. https://staff.mq.edu.au/work/travel/station-upgrade
SEMINARS AND WORKSHOPS
Biological Sciences Weekly Seminar – returning after the mid-semester break on 3 October 2018 – more info ON OUR WEBPAGE HERE
Thursday 27th September 3pm-4pm: Biology Tea Room. The R User Group is hosting a beginner session for this month’s R workshop. Don’t be afraid. come along and learn some great tips and tricks to help you get started with R. The workshop will be aimed at beginners, but it’s a great opportunity for those with a bit more experience to brush up on your skills too. Please arrive with the latest version of R and R Studio installed on your laptop. If you’re having trouble with this, arrive 10 mins early. There will be time for general R related questions/problem solving after the workshop.
Digital Literacy Meetup at Macquarie – presented by ‘Data Science and eResearch’
WHEN: Thursday, 27 September 2018, 10am – 12:30pm WHERE: Collaborative Learning Forum (17 Wally’s Walk). This meet-up will consist of two parts:
Part 1 – Cloud 101 and Cloud Made Easy
Zoe Pelbart, Public Sector Account Executive at Amazon Web Services, will give a brief overview of cloud technology and the infrastructure, services and partner ecosystems available through the AWS platform. Nathan Albrighton, CEO of RONIN, will demonstrate an easy-to-use web application that allows users to provision, scale and manage AWS resources at the click of a button. The presentations will give you a glimpse into the power of cloud and why it has been caleld a game changer, a disruptor of old ways of doing things, and an enabler of new business models – all at the same time. Discussions will get you thinking how cloud technology, coupled with a tool like RONIN, can help you launch and accelerate your research.
Part 2 – Digital Technologies and Research Support Groups at Macquarie – Facilitator: Gustavo Thomas, PhD Candidate in Statistics
TeX Users Group – Brian Ballsun-Stanton – Frustrated at Word suddenly adding 5 pages to your document? Would you like to have your figures number themselves and not worry about fixing cross-references, and not to have to worry about the Macquarie branding when producing slides? The TeX Users Group is looking at tools and techniques to use the TeX typesetting languages to produce beautiful documents so you don’t have to fight with word processors. Folk of all skill levels are warmly invited.
R Users Group – Aniko Toth – Do you need a hand with data analysis, statistical modelling or graphics – or have a data problem that’s been bugging you and could do with some tips from seasoned problem solvers? Then bring your data, code, a biscuit and tea and talk to the friendly folks in the R Users Group. Hang out and you’ll see why R has such a devoted following among researchers and a strong community of developers world-wide.
Please register for the Digital Literacy Meetup here.
RESEARCH ENRICHMENT PROGRAM: Conservation Conversations: Saving Our Smallest Species
Date/Time/Venue: Tuesday, 2 October 2018, 9 am – 11 am, 14EAR (E8A) 280 Biology Tea Room.
Almost all animals are invertebrates, yet their vital role in maintaining the health of our environments and providing essential ecosystem services is systematically undervalued. These “other 99%” are under threat from a range of human activities but the need for their conservation is virtually ignored. In order to save our smallest species, we need increased public engagement, new ideas and improved collaboration between interest groups. Click here to register to attend.
Darwinian Medicine – Thursday 11th October (10am – 3pm) Continuum room, level 3, 75 Talavera Road. Organised by Steve Simpson, Helen Rizos and Marie Herberstein.
Evolutionary theory is a powerful approach to many phenomena encountered by practicing medicine, including antibiotic resistance, personalised medicine, tumour cell evolution. This half-day workshop will explore how an evolutionary approach and medical practice can be mutually informative by pairing evolutionary biologists with medical practitioners from the fields [tentatively]:
- Nutrition and the gut biome
- Virus/human interactions
- Cancer treatment
- Neuro degenerative disorders
- Infectious diseases
This workshop aims to:
- Explore research connections and collaborations between biological and medical researchers (with the possibility of further workshops to develop and foster collaborations around ‘wicked problems’)
- Increase opportunity to meet researchers working on similar topics across faculties
- Identify opportunities to embed Darwinian medicine principles into curriculum
- Build collegial and collaborative relationships across Faculties and with external groups.
Click here to register for ‘Darwinian Medicine’
Weekly Writing Workshops for HDR Students and Early Career Researchers – Convened by Ken Cheng – Running weekly for most of the year: Fridays 2-4pm in room E8B 111
If you are interested in attending a session email Ken Cheng <ken.cheng@mq.edu.au> by Wednesday 12:00-noon, preferably with a draft attached of what you are working on and some indication of what you especially need help with.
Molecular Sciences Seminar #1
Date/Time/Venue: Tuesday, 2nd October 2018, 1 – 2pm, 4WW (F7B) 322 Seminar Room.
Speaker: Prof Bostjan Kobe, The School of Chemistry and Biosciences, UQ. Title: Signalling by cooperative assembly formation (SCAF) by TIR domains in innate immunity and cell death pathways. More information on this and all department seminars at https://goto.mq/6q
Molecular Sciences Seminar #2
Date/Time/Venue: Tuesday, 9th October 2018, 12 – 1pm, 4WW (F7B) 322 Seminar Room.
Speaker: Dr Andrew Piggott, the Molecular Sciences, Macquarie University. Title: Adventures with Natural Products. More information on this and all department seminars at https://goto.mq/7l
ADMIN THINGS
Pure Training Registration – Date changed to 15 October 2018 – 1.00 pm to 3.30 pm
The PURE system is used to manage researcher profiles, outputs including publications, funding applications, awards, projects and reports. Do you feel like you could use some more PURE training? Please register for this session via an email to jenny.ghabache@mq.edu.au.
Outreach Activities – Have You Participated in an Activity for Biology Recently? Don’t forget to fill in the super-quick form here – ACCESS OUTREACH FORM HERE
Building Name Changes – Cheat Sheet – If you are trying to identify buildings on campus with new names or old names, please use this link to convert them from old to new or vice versa.
Photo Competition – SEPTEMBER 2018 – go into the draw to win a $100 Gift Card this month! This month’s theme is Man Made! Your images could be used on our Department website, this newsletter, on our social media and in other biology publications. A lucky person’s name will be drawn each month, and they will receive a $100 Gift Card! Criteria: you must provide caption information including details of what/where/who(names of people)/date & you must have taken all photos & the image must have been taken in the last five years. Please follow the dropbox file request link to submit your images.
Submission close: 30 SEPTEMBER 2018. You can enter as many photos as you like – one entry to the draw per photo with caption info, good luck!
Congratulions to Alison Downing, our draw winner for last month’s category – Landscape!
RESEARCH FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
Ecological Society of Australia Student Research Awards – closing date 31st October – Ten student research awards of up to $1,500 will be available to Australian postgraduate and honours students conducting ecological research. The award can be used to cover expenses such as field travel, research assistance, equipment or consumables. Applicants must be a member of the ESA and not have previously won a research award from the Society. Info here
Are You an Early-Career Researcher Who Loves Sharing Your Research? The NSW Office of Environment & Heritage (OEH) and the Ecological Society of Australia (ESA) have joined forces to establish a new prize for early-career researchers who are doing an exceptional job of communicating ecological research to the public. The OEH/ESA Prize for Outstanding Outreach is a $400 cash prize which will provide much-deserved recognition, and additional experience, for up to six early-career researchers who are doing an excellent job of communicating their research.
Applications are now open, closing at midnight Saturday 13 October. Details here
OPPORTUNITIES
SUPERSTARS OF STEM – Applications Open NOW!
The search is on for the next 60 Superstars of STEM! Applications are already open! Science & Technology Australia are particularly keen for articulate and passionate women to apply: the aim is to make sure as many STEM disciplines as possible are represented on the program. Each of the participants will be equipped with the skills, contacts and opportunities to become confident public spokespeople for their work, their discipline, and their sector. They will meet decision makers at all levels of government, media, business and academia, and we will provide them with opportunities to connect with thousands of students across Australia. Applications due 23 September 2018.
Mental Health support: Upcoming Workshops – One of the hardest parts of doing a research degree is giving your attention to the thesis each day. While students may face many kinds of obstacles, it is the ordinary experience of being with one’s work and oneself that often presents the greatest challenge.
This four-part workshop series focuses on the role that awareness and our states of mind play in the experience of being a researcher. It looks closely at the mind states – both positive and challenging – that students commonly report, and explores how these relate to experiences of self, research practice and the wider university culture.
The first workshop offers a basic introduction to mindfulness principles and their relevance to research. It discusses the importance of awareness for both our understanding the research experience, and how we face the challenges it presents.
24/09/2018 The Mindful Researcher, Part 1: Mindfulness and Research
02/10/2018 The Mindful Researcher, Part 2: The Research Environment: Busyness and Slowness in the Academy
08/10/2018 The Mindful Researcher, Part 3: Attention and Distraction in the Research Process
15/10/2018 The Mindful Researcher, Part 4: Cultivating Balance
Register by clicking on the course names here: https://myrdc.mq.edu.au/
First Aid Training Course – The Provide First Aid Course will be held on the following dates from 9 am – 4 pm here at Macquarie University on Monday, 8 October and again on
Tuesday, 11 December 2018. If you are able to attend one of the above dates, please complete the application form seeking your manager’s approval and send back to <ohs@mq.edu.au>. If you have a current First Aid certificate and are attending to complete as a ‘refresher’ please indicate this on your form and bring a copy of your current certificate to the training day. The refresher will only take 2 hours commencing 9 am on the day. As there is a maximum of 25 participants per course places will be allocated upon receipt of your application. For those of you who do not have a current First Aid certificate there will be some pre-work to be completed. A confirmation will be sent confirming your place.
BLOGS AND OTHER THINGS OF INTEREST
Plant of the Week – click on thumbnail to enlarge the image
This week – Tradescantia pallida
The deep crimson-purple leaves of Tradescantia pallida are so colourful and eye-catching, you would wonder why the specific name is pallida, and not something more suitable, such as purpurea. However, it seems that the name pallida refers to the delicate, pale pink flowers, not the richly coloured leaves.
Emotional Granularity can help help stop you from becoming overwhelmed: https://ideas.ted.com/try-these-two-smart-techniques-to-help-you-master-your-emotions/
To the Academics: Laziness Does Not Exist https://medium.com/@dr_eprice/laziness-does-not-exist-3af27e312d01
How To Make A Big Decision: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/opinion/sunday/how-make-big-decision.html
Correct Method for Submitting to Department Matters
Department Matters submissions now have their own email address. Please send all your news items for the newsletter to <fse.bionewsletter@mq.edu.au>
Also, please see the following to correctly format your additions, and keep them rolling in!
You may have noticed that we try to keep all the articles to the same format for the Department Matters, however, rest assured, they do NOT all turn up in this format! To help keep your Department Matters looking as good as possible, when sending in additions to the Newsletter, please try to keep these formatting guidelines in mind.
- Please write in third person. The information is coming from the Newsletter, not directly from you.
- Do not use fancy text formatting. Bold heading, normal text, and only italics or bold to highlight. No font size changes will make it through, sorry.
- If sending via email, set your email output to basic. HTML output will add all sort of formatting that will have to be removed before your article can go into the newsletter.
Keeping to these guidelines will streamline your article’s addition to the newsletter. Thank you.
Have You Missed Out on an Issue of Department Matters? Back issues can be found at this newsletter archive link for your reading pleasure.
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New Publications
The choreography of learning walks in the Australian jack jumper ant Myrmecia croslandi
By: Jayatilaka, Piyankarie, Trevor Murray, Ajay Narendra, and Jochen Zeil. Journal of Experimental Biology (2018): jeb-185306. | Find with Google Scholar »Principles of insect path integration
By: Heinze, Stanley, Ajay Narendra, and Allen Cheung. Current Biology 28, no. 17 (2018): R1043-R1058. | Find with Google Scholar »Benchmarks and predictors of coarse woody debris in native forests of eastern Australia
By: Threlfall, Caragh G., Bradley S. Law, and Ross J. Peacock. Austral Ecology (2018). | Find with Google Scholar »In the Media
Lesley Hughes provided comment to Nature
Distinguished Professor Lesley Hughes from the Department of Biological Sciences provided comment to Nature regarding the Australian Government’s climate change policy.
Recent Completions
Laura Fernandez Winzer submitted her thesis entitled The impacts of myrtle rust on Australian plants and vegetation.
Supervised by Distinguished Professor Michelle Leishman