New Science
Better living through science and innovation ideas.
Invitation
"We are proud to announce the release of NewScience website and hope our project will grow into a dynamic and vibrant community and act as a bridge between the young generations and the scientific and academic communities"
Dejan Petrovic
NewScience team invites all science and technology enthusiasts to submit their ideas and throughs on how science and technology can be used to improve our world.
We hope to attract interest among Australian educational institutions (both staff and students) in primary, secondary and tertiary education sector.
In Spotlight
 There are many reasons to celebrate science. With the many seminal anniversaries that are on the horizon in 2009, it seemed only logical that we should celebrate them as a community! From astronomy to zoology we are all here - ready to support public understanding of the process and nature of science in an exploration of "how we know what we know." Visit: http://www.yearofscience2009.org
Giant prehistoric elephant uncovered
Via CSIRO / 19 June 2009
The skeleton of a giant prehistoric elephant has been uncovered by an Australian and Indonesian research team.
The skeleton was found in Indonesia after a sand quarry collapsed, revealing the bones. It then took the researchers four weeks to dig up the skeleton.
The bones are thought to be 200 000 years old, from an extinct species much bigger than today’s Asian elephants.
This is one of the most complete elephant skeletons ever recovered in Indonesia. It may be well preserved because it died in an unusual way.
“Normally, such dead animals would have been ripped apart and eaten by carnivores. But it appears that the elephant became bogged in the river shallows, perished and was quickly covered by sands,” says Dr Gert van den Bergh, a participating palaeontologist from the University of Wollongong.
Once the skeleton is properly conserved and assembled, it will be put on display at the Geology Museum in Bandung, West Java.
News: Magnetic sensors found in ant antennae
via Science by Email 5 June 2009
Tiny magnetic sensors have been found in the antennae of ants. Ants may use these magnetic sensors to find their way from one place to another, similar to an in-built compass.
The ant being studied is a species called Pachycondyla marginata, which is found in the rainforests of South America. These ants migrate, moving from place to place depending on the season. This particular ant species migrates in a direction 13 degrees from the north-south axis of the Earth on average.
“Behavioral experiments suggest that ants can use the Earth’s magnetic field and the Pachycondyla marginata ants seem to take into account such information for migration,” says Jandira de Oliveira, a PhD student working on the study.
Jandira travelled from Brazil to Germany with the ants to work with researchers specialising in electron microscopy. They used beams of electrons on ultra-thin samples of the ants to observe the magnetic sensors.
The scientists found the magnetic sensors to be nano-sized iron oxide particles in the antennae, particularly next to an area called Johnson’s organ. Johnson’s organ is a bit of a mystery to scientists, but they have already discovered links between the organ and gravity and sound perception.
It seems that the magnetic particles are not produced by the ants in a biological process. Instead, it is likely that the magnetic particles come from dirt. "The ants we studied dwell in tropical soils that are full of very fine-grained iron minerals, so there is plenty of material available," says Jandira.
The magnetic sensors in the antennae work by detecting the Earth’s magnetic field. Then, the sensors send the information via a signal from the nervous system to the brain.
It is important to note that not all ants navigate in the same way. For example, desert ants have evolved eyes that use sunlight patterns to navigate. “There are many different ant species, each one adapted to their habitat,” says Jandira.
They're still breeding like rabbits
Via:
csiro
Rabbits may seem awfully cute, but they're a dreadful pest in Australia and wreak severe environmental damage. They also cost Australia's agricultural industry about 200 million dollars a year. Now rabbit numbers are on the rise again.
Rabbits were introduced to Australia 150 years ago. Just 24 introduced rabbits multiplied into a population of about 600 million by 1950. They have been able to adapt to most Australian habitats.
Rabbits graze upon and destroy agricultural and native grasses, shrubs and trees. This includes vegetation that would otherwise provide food and shelter for native animals or farm animals. Rabbits can also cause soil erosion by removing vegetation and by burrowing.
Scientists have introduced rabbit viruses, such as myxomatosis and calicivirus, in an attempt to control rabbit numbers in Australia.
CSIRO's predecessor, CSIR, carried out trials that lead to the release of myxomatosis in 1950. It is estimated that myxomatosis wiped out up to 99 per cent of the rabbit population at the time. Just a few rabbits had a resistance to the virus and these rabbits were able to continue to breed with some of their offspring also surviving. By the 1990s, the virus was not keeping rabbit levels low enough.
CSIRO released calicivirus in 1996 and it reduced rabbit populations by more than 50 per cent in some dry areas of Australia. Calicivirus has not been so effective in cool, high rainfall areas.
Dr Tanja Strive, from CSIRO Entomology and the Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre, has found that some rabbits in these cool, high rainfall areas carry a non-lethal virus that gives them immunity to calicivirus.
“This new virus does not cause disease in rabbits and we fear that it functions as a natural vaccine, protecting rabbits from the lethal calicivirus,” says Tanja.
Hopefully this knowledge can help manage rabbit populations in the future. In the meantime, this may encourage land managers to use other rabbit control methods such as the destruction of rabbit warrens and baiting where viral control is not enough.
Scientific Method
Despite the many branches of science, they all gather information in similar ways. The scientific method is a way to organize and standardize the method of data gathering during experiments. This makes it easier to replicate experiments which adds credence to the initial results.
Steps in the scientific method are:
- naming the problem to be addressed
- making a hypothesis or educated guess about the problem
- testing the hypothesis through an experiment or observed correlation
- gathering the data
- organizing the data in a graph or other form for examination
- examining the results
- checking the results
- drawing a conclusion
- publishing the data
By following the scientific method, scientists allow others to verify their results and add to the increasing wealth of knowledge about the world.
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