Climate Change: bridging scientific knowledge and public policy

Thursday 18 March 2010

The Mural Hall, Parliament House, Canberra, 8.30am – 12.30pm

Universities Australia is the peak body of all Australia’s universities and is committed to engaging with Parliament on issues of great national significance, and to informing social, political and commercial responses to those issues.

The UA Forum on Climate Change will focus both on the scientific evidence, and the certainties and uncertainties of that evidence, as well as the challenges of communicating the science and of bridging scientific knowledge and public policy.

The program will comprise three sessions each with a series of brief presentations covering:

Session 1:   Climate change in Australia today – the evidence

Session 2:   Australian research that reveals the future of climate change – certainties and uncertainties

Session 3:   Responding to climate change: the social and economic impact

The speakers will include research leaders in climate science and the impacts of climate change including: Nathan Bindoff, Roger Jones, Amanda Lynch, Roger Stone, Snow Barlow, Marie Keatley, Janette Lindesay, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, and John Quiggin

Some of the issues that will be covered are:

• What are the signs of climate change in Australia today? What are the predictions?
• How are cities, agriculture and the environment responding?
• How well placed are we to adapt to our changing climate.
• What are the jobs and opportunities in responding effectively to climate change?

For more information visit www.scienceinpublic.com.au/blog/ua

For more information and to register please contact Niall Byrne, Science in Public Ph: 03 9398 1416, Mobile: 0417 131 977
Email: niall@scienceinpublic.com.au

Scientists have been able to kill an infectious parasite using non-toxic gold nanoparticles and laser beams.

“Our first target is Toxoplamosis gondii, a parasite that infects one in three people and causes problems especially in the young and old, and people with a compromised immune system says Michael Cortie from the University of Technology Sydney, speaking on behalf of his team at ICONN 2010 the international nanotechnology conference in Sydney.

“We chose a parasite because no one’s succeeded in using this technology on parasites before,” says Cortie, “And if we can kill toxoplasmosis, we could probably also take out malaria and all the other kinds of infectious parasites.”

Changing the shape and size of gold nanoparticles changes the wavelength of light they absorb. So by matching a nanoparticle and a laser of the same wavelength, nanoparticles are obliterated when you shine a laser beam at them.

In pre-clinical trials, Cortie engineered gold nanoparticles with several hundred parasitic antibodies on the surface so they stuck to the parasite. “Within 2 to 3 minutes of exposure, the toxoplasmosis was covered with gold particles. Then we shone a low-powered laser which targeted the gold nanoparticles and we killed the parasite.”

“This is great because healthy cells won’t be killed because the gold particles never stuck to them. With this, we can localise disease treatment,” says Cortie.

They have now started targeting multi-drug resistant bacteria like Staphylococcus which is a common cause of food poisoning and infected over 6,000 Australians last year.

Another plus: because the particles are so small, the treatment only uses about $4 worth of gold.

Two outstanding female scientists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have been awarded research fellowships worth $1.75 million to continue their cancer research.

The inaugural five-year Cory Fellowship, sponsored by the institute, has been awarded to Dr Clare Scott and the inaugural five-year Dyson Fellowship, sponsored by the Dyson Bequest, has been awarded to Dr Marnie Blewitt.

At a ceremony on 25 February, Nobel Prize winner for medicine Professor Elizabeth Blackburn announced Dr Scott and Dr Blewitt as the successful fellowship recipients.

Institute director Professor Doug Hilton said Clare and Marnie were worthy fellowship recipients, being stellar examples of researchers who were making important scientific discoveries and had the ability and drive to lead a research team.

“The Cory and Dyson Fellowships have made it possible for Marnie and Clare to spend more of the next five years concentrating on their science and less on applying annually for research funding,” Professor Hilton said. “They are both outstanding research scientists and their appointments go some way to redressing the imbalance that exists in Australian science where there is a gross under-representation of women at senior levels.”

The Cory Fellowship, named after Professor Suzanne Cory, the institute’s first female director, was established last year by the institute to encourage outstanding female scientists to take up leadership positions in medical research. It is a five-year fellowship open to Australian women wanting their first opportunity to lead a laboratory at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.

Cory Fellow Dr Scott, who became a laboratory head at the institute on 1 January and is also a medical oncologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, is trying to identify the genes and biological pathways that stop the body from efficiently killing lymphoma and cancer cells, including breast and ovarian cancer cells.

“Many new cancer drugs designed to target the biology of the cancer in question cause cancer cells to stop growing but do not kill them well enough, allowing the tumours to recur,” Dr Scott said. ”I hope to harness the built-in killing machinery that exists within cells to improve outcomes for cancer patients.”

Dr Scott has a particular interest in ovarian cancer and, through the fellowship, will design a program of epithelial ovarian cancer research that will be undertaken over the next five years.

Dyson Fellow Dr Blewitt, who also became a laboratory head at the institute on 1 January, studies epigenetics, a relatively new field of research that seeks to reveal how a cell knows which of its genes should be active at any given time.

Mr John Dyson, who co-manages the Dyson Bequest with Ms Rose Gilder, said the Dyson Fellowship was awarded to Dr Blewitt because of the enormous potential for her research to overhaul our understanding of the human genome.

“When we heard about the ideas Marnie was pursuing in epigenetics we were excited by their potential,” Mr Dyson said. “This is research that could help explain how cancer develops in some people and could ultimately lead to the development of new treatments. If our support goes some way towards Marnie reaching that goal then it is money well spent.”

Dr Blewitt said the Dyson Fellowship would allow her to finish establishing a viral shRNA (short hairpin RNA) library that she will use to identify new epigenetic modifiers in the mammalian genome.

“Epigenetics refers to the modifications or the ‘tags’ that are present on the DNA and which help to tell cells when to switch something on and use it, and when to turn something off,” Dr Blewitt said.

”One thing that happens in cancer is genes that control cell growth are switched on such that too much of the protein that promotes cell growth is produced, and the cells keep multiplying and don’t die, which can lead to a tumour.

“Sometimes that over-production of protein is due to epigenetics; the normal gene is still there but the epigenetic modifications have changed and so the gene is on or off when it shouldn’t be. If we find some epigenetic modifiers that have a role in cancer that information could help develop new treatments for cancer.”

For further information contact Penny Fannin, Strategic Communications Manager, on +61 3 9345 2345, 0417 125 700 or fannin@wehi.edu.au.

About Clare Scott

Clare Scott is a clinician scientist. She has a medical degree from the University of Melbourne and was awarded a PhD in medical biology in 2000, also by the University of Melbourne.

Dr Scott leads a laboratory that operates across the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute’s Molecular Genetics of Cancer and Stem Cells and Cancer divisions; she is also a medical oncologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Dr Scott’s clinical focus is on ovarian cancer although her research focus has been leukaemia and other blood cancers. She is a leader in Australian clinical trials of novel parp inhibitor therapy in ovarian cancer and is responsible for the design of a new program of epithelial ovarian cancer research to be undertaken in the institute’s Stem Cells and Cancer Division over the next five years.

About Marnie Blewitt

Marnie Blewitt is a geneticist who was awarded her PhD in molecular and microbial biosciences by the University of Sydney in 2004.

Dr Blewitt leads a laboratory in the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute’s Molecular Medicine division and focuses her research on epigenetics.

She has identified some of the genes that are involved in inactivating the X chromosome and has developed a method of screening for epigenetic modifiers in mice. In 2009 Dr Blewitt was awarded the Australian Academy of Science’s Ruth Stephens Gani Medal, for human genetics.

About the Cory Fellowship

The five-year Cory Fellowship was established in 2009 by Professor Doug Hilton, director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, to encourage outstanding female scientists to take up leadership positions in medical research. It is awarded to women who are looking for their first opportunity to lead a research laboratory at the institute.

It is named after Professor Suzanne Cory, director of the institute from 1996-2009, and acknowledges her achievements in scientific leadership and research.

The Cory fellowship brings to four the number of Leadership Fellowships offered by the institute. The fellowships are named after some of the institute’s most distinguished scientists: Professor Sir Gustav Nossal, Professor Donald Metcalf, Professor Jacques Miller and Professor Suzanne Cory.

About the Dyson Fellowship

The Dyson Fellowship was established in 2010 following a distribution to the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute from the Dyson Bequest. The five-year fellowship is awarded to a scientist about to take up an institute position as a laboratory head.

The Dyson Bequest was established by Jane and Bruce Dyson in 2000 and is managed by Bruce’s nephew, John Dyson, and Jane’s daughter, Rose Gilder.

Historically, the bequest has supported a range of Victorian charities, including those focusing on disadvantaged children, mental health, medical research, hospitals, the environment and people with special needs.

Welcome to my monthly email to people around the country with an interest in physics. It contains news and events for March 2010 and beyond.

At AIP branch meetings this month we will discuss particle astronomy and living at the speed of light in Sydney, optics and lasers in Hobart, and nanoscale modelling in Melbourne.

The AGM, held at Melbourne University, on Monday 8 February was well attended and was followed by a well-received talk on the Golden Jubilee of the Laser by Peter Hannaford of Swinburne University. The AIP council meeting the next day considered priorities for 2010, which will include a membership campaign and a redevelopment of our website as a gateway for physics in Australia.

Science meets Parliament, organised by FASTS, takes place on 8-9 March. The AIP can nominate two participants, and this year nominated Svetlana Petelina (La Trobe University) and Manju Sharma (University of Sydney).

The AIP was a technical sponsor of ICONN, the International Conference on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, in Sydney last week. It was by all accounts a big success – my congratulations to the co-chairs Cathy Foley, Andrew Dzurack and Callum Drummond.

And the global survey of physicists is still open. I would encourage you to respond if you haven’t already.

Planning ahead – this is a Congress year for the AIP. Planning is underway for the 2010 AIP Congress in Melbourne in December this year. The conference website is now up, and more information will be added over time. Go to www.aip2010.org.au/.

Details of all of these, and more, below.

If you want to contact me regarding AIP or other physics matters please email aip_president@aip.org.au.

Please note that replies to this email go to Niall Byrne, Science in Public, whose team compiles and manages the bulletin on my behalf and handles corrections, updates and bounces. If you have news or other information for the bulletin please email Niall by the 23^rd of each month.

Kind regards,

Brian James,

AIP President

In this bulletin:

1. AIP events across the country

2. AIP 2010 Congress

3. Australia’s International Conference on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICONN)

4. The Global Survey of Physicists is still open and collecting responses!

5. Science prizes

6. AIP Victorian Branch Education activities

7. Physics activities across the country – general

8. Physics activities across the country – seminars

9. Physics conferences

10. Submission deadlines for the bulletin and journal

AIP events across the country

New South Wales

NSW: Tuesday 23 March, 5.30pm

NSW AIP branch meeting – two talks, Jesse Shore at 5.30pm and Marc Duldig at 7pm

TITLE: Living at the speed of light

SPEAKER: Jesse Shore, Prismatic Sciences

TITLE: Particle astronomy – the second window

SPEAKER: Marc Duldig, Australian Antarctic Division

VENUE: Slade Lecture Theatre, University of Sydney

For more information about the events please contact Frederick Osman on fred_osman@exemail.com.au

NSW: Tuesday 27 April, 5.30pm

NSW AIP branch meeting – two talks, Donald Lang at 5.30pm and Chris Stewart at 7pm

TITLE: Mr Tompkins goes to the races

SPEAKER: Donald Lang, Macquarie University

TITLE: “That’ll never work in my classroom”: Web 2.0 in physics education

SPEAKER: Chris Stewart, University of Sydney

VENUE: Slade Lecture Theatre, University of Sydney

For more information about the events please contact Frederick Osman on fred_osman@exemail.com.au

Tasmania

TAS: Thursday 4 March, 8pm, University of Tasmania and Tas AIP

TITLE: 100 years of optics, 50 years of lasers and much more in the future

SPEAKER: Hans A. Bachor

VENUE: Physics Lecture Theatre 1, University of Tasmania

Lasers and light are one of the key components of modern technology. Hans presents a brief history of how we came to the present situation.

Victoria

VIC: Thursday 18 March, 6.30pm (refreshments from 6pm), Vic AIP

Vic AIP branch meeting

TITLE: Multiplicity at the nanoscale: challenges of multi-scale modelling of multi-functional nanoparticles for multiple applications

SPEAKER: Amanda Barnard, CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering

VENUE: Monash Centre for Synchrotron Science, CSIRO, Clayton

Amanda received the 2010 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physicist of the Year.

Members are encouraged to join the speaker and members of the Branch Committee for dinner following the talk at a local restaurant. In order to assist with table reservations please contact Scott Wade (Honorary Secretary) on swade@swin.edu.au.

AIP 2010 Congress

Preparations are well underway for the 19th AIP Congress, incorporating the 35th Australian Conference on Optical Fibre Technology and the associated Australian Optical Society Conference.

The conference will open on Sunday 5 December with welcome drinks and continue through to Thursday 9 December.

Plenary speakers include Professor Bruce Allen (Director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics) and Dr Barbara Terhal (IBM Research).

Stay tuned for the call for papers in April and further updates on plenary and keynote speakers. More info at www.aip2010.org.au/

Australia’s International Conference on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICONN)

The AIP was a technical supporter of ICONN, which was held in Sydney last week and attracted 780 delegates from over 30 countries. The majority of Australian delegates were from NSW (256) with VIC (156), ACT (54), QLD (45), WA (15), SA (45) and TAS (2) also being represented. The conference focused on attracting young researchers with 363 students attending.

Highlights of the week included:

• Stuart Parkin, an experimental physicist at IBM, with “racetrack memory” that will be a million times faster and more reliable than today’s computer hard disks
• David Awschalom, University of California, looking at replacing silicon chips with diamonds – using the diamond atoms to store data
• Michal Lipson, Cornell University, bending light to communicate in computer chips, and create an invisibility cloak
• Michael Roukes, CalTech, on silicon chips bearing several tiny nanotechnology devices that can measure each of the proteins in a single cell
• Mark Wiesner, Duke University, on tracking where nanoparticles go in the environment
• a free public forum hosted by James O’Loghlin from the ABC’s New Inventors, on how nanotechnology products are developed and reach the consumer
• the opening of NSW Node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF) at the University of New South Wales
• the release of a survey conducted for the Federal Government showing that most Australians feel positive that science and technology are improving society, and exploring our views of nanotechnology.
• a series of school videoconferences in which Scott Watkins, CSIRO; Linda Nielsen, Uni of Copenhagen; Hans Hilgenkamp, Universite of Twente; Richard Blaikie, Uni of Canterbury; and Philip Whitten, Uni of Wollongong; spoke on a range of topics including organic electronics, nanomedicine, superconductivity, optics and artificial muscles.
  Over 35 schools participated in the videoconference which translates to 600-700 students. You can download the videos online at http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/secondary/science/downloads/index.htm and click on the ICONN graphic.

After each evening’s poster session, two posters were awarded “best in show”. There were seven poster winners in total, the final one being a Australian Microscopy & Microanalysis Research Facility (ANFF) prize for the best micrograph on a poster. The winners were:

• Lee Hubble, CSIRO, Diameter selective solubilization of single-walled carbon nanotubes in water by way of supramolecular interactions
• Stuart Thickett, The University of Sydney, Hydrophilic/Hydrophobic Patterned Surfaces by Dewetting and Their Use in Atmospheric Water Capture
• Jos Campbell, RMIT University, Enhanced MRI Contrast using DMSA and silica coated magnetite nanoparticles
• James Cooper, CSIRO, Detecting and identifying aqueous solutions of hydrocarbons with a gold nanoparticle chemiresistor sensor array
• Siti Noorjannah, University Of Canterbury, Simulations and Design of Quadrupole Biochip Platform
• Bakul Gupta, University of New South Wales, Oxygen assisted synthesis of Silver Nanocubes
• Shailesh Kumar, CSIRO Material Science, winner of the Australian Microscopy & Microanalysis Research Facility Prize for the best micrograph on a poster

For more news from ICONN visit www.scienceinpublic.com.au/blog/iconn

The Global Survey of Physicists is still open and collecting responses!

The Global Survey of Physicists have sent the following message:

We are very grateful for all of the enthusiasm we have encountered and the many thoughtful responses we have so far, and we still welcome more responses. Here is the link to the survey. Please distribute it among your colleagues again, for those who haven’t responded yet.

http://www.aipsurveys.org/global

The large volume of responses we are collecting will enable us to do some very interesting and relevant analysis. If you haven’t already, you can sign up for updates about the project here:

http://www.aip.org/statistics/e_updates.html

We will write again to let you know when the survey is closed and the analysis begins.

This is the third in a series of studies of physicists across the globe, and the first in the series to be available in a choice of languages. It is also the first to target both male and female physicists. In order to develop a broader picture of the status of physicists across the globe, this survey will provide the international physics community with data about the situation of physicists worldwide, as well as focused information about women in physics. It has been developed by staff at the American Institute of Physics in conjunction with International Union of Pure and Applied Physics conferences on women in physics, partially funded by a grant from the Luce Foundation.

Science prizes

Please consider if you know people who would be appropriate candidates for the following science prizes.

Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science

John O’Sullivan freed the computer from its chains using his skills as an astronomer and engineer. He received the $300,000 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science in 2009.

The two $50,000 early career prizes went to Michael Cowley for his work breaking the link between obesity and diabetes; and to Amanda Barnard for her virtual investigations of the properties of nanoparticles.

Nominations for the 2010 prizes close on 21 May. More information at https://grants.innovation.gov.au/SciencePrize

L’Oréal Australia For Women in Science Fellowships

Hundreds of women apply each year for one of three $20,000 L’Oréal Australia Fellowships For Women in Science, perhaps because the Fellowship can be spent on any research-related expense, including child care.

In 2009 the recipients were exploring our roots in Africa, looking for dark energy and revealing what really controls our genes.

Nominations will open in April 2010. More information at http://www.scienceinpublic.com/loreal

Fresh Science – nominations now open

For 12 years Fresh Science has selected the cream of early career scientists for a boot camp in media and communication. The 2009 crop generated dozens of media stories and discovered that good communication had many unexpected dividends. They were contacted by potential collaborators, commercial partners and others.

Nominations are now open and close on Thursday 25 March. We’ll be looking for 16 early-career scientists (honours, PhDs, and up to five years postdoc) with a recent peer-reviewed discovery that’s received little or no publicity.

The chosen 16 scientists will be flown to Melbourne for a day of media training after which they present their work to the media, school students, the general public, scientists, government and industry over the course of the four day boot camp in science communication.

More information and the online application form are at www.freshscience.org.au

World Metrology Day Awards – Barry Inglis Award and NMI Prize

In recognition of World Metrology Day, which occurs on 20 May each year, Australia’s National Measurement Institute (NMI) is presenting two awards for outstanding achievement in measurement:

• The Barry Inglis Medal will be awarded for major contributions to measurement science and technology through leadership or outstanding innovation.
• The NMI Prize will be awarded to young Australians who have shown originality or excellence in the application of measurement techniques.

The recipients of the awards will be announced on World Metrology Day 2010, with the awards ceremony held in the second half of 2010.

Applications close on 31 March 2010.

For further information, contact communications@measurement.gov.au. Intending applicants should refer to the information package available from NMI’s website at www.measurement.gov.au/worldmetrologyday.

Eureka Prizes

The annual Australian Museum Eureka Prizes reward excellence in the fields of scientific research & innovation, science leadership, school science and science journalism & communication.

There are 19 awards across these categories. You can enter yourself or nominate someone else.

Entries close on Friday 7 May and the winners will be announced on Tuesday 17 August.

For more information, go to the Eureka Prize website.

AIP Victorian Branch Education activities

Dan O’Keeffe of the AIP Vic Education Branch circulates a regular newsletter for physics teachers – contact him on danok@bigpond.com.

Vic AIP Education Committee

The Victorian AIP Education Committee usually meets on the second Tuesday of the month at 5-7pm. The next meeting is on Tuesday 9 March. All teachers are welcome to attend.

VENUE: Kew High School

If you would like to attend, contact the Chair, Sue Grant, at susanmgrant@optushome.com.au.

Melbourne University talks for VCE physics students

The topics are relevant to the VCE Study Design, and practising physicists have agreed to deliver them. The lectures, of about 1 hour duration, will be held on Thursdays at 6 pm in the Laby Theatre of the School of Physics. Some light refreshments will be available.

Semester 1 talks are:

More information at the University of Melbourne’s Physics outreach website.

AIP Travelling Scholarship for 2010 – closing soon

The AIP Education Committee is offering a scholarship to support one teacher to attend an international Physics Teachers Conference during 2010.  The scholarship is worth up to $2000.

The successful teacher is expected to actively participate in the event, if possible by offering a workshop, and to also present a session about the experience at a following Physics Teachers Conference.

Applications for the scholarship should show evidence of innovative teaching and activity in professional development and be supported by a letter of recommendation from the applicant’s school.  The applications should state the chosen international conference and indicate how the applicant might participate.

Scholarship applications should reach the AIP at PO Box 304, Glen Waverley VIC 3150 by 5th March to enable the Committee to make a quick decision, so that the successful applicant can begin planning.

More info here.

Physics activities across the country – general

Victoria

VIC: Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University, public lectures

The Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing holds regular free public lectures on the Hawthorn campus (Room EN313) at 6.30pm. Bookings are essential. More info here or contact Elizabeth Thackray at ethackray@swin.edu.au or phone (03) 9214 5569.

Western Australia

WA: Gingin Observatory, Gingin

Gingin Observatory runs a variety of public events, many suitable for families, as well as regular stargazing tours. More info is available at the Observatory website or by contacting Carol Redford or Donna Vanzetti on (08) 9575 7740 or stars@ginginobservatory.com. Contact Carol or Donna to book into events.

The Gravity Discovery Centre is open every day of the school holidays, except Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. Special events include the following:

Physics activities across the country – seminars

Check the institution websites for any updates.

New South Wales

NSW: School of Physics, University of NSW

The School of Physics holds regular colloquia on Tuesdays at 4-5pm in the School of Physics Common Room, Room 64, Old Main Building, University of NSW. More info here or contact Peter Reece on p.reece@unsw.edu.au.

Check the website for details.

NSW: School of Physics, University of Sydney

The School of Physics holds regular colloquia on Mondays at 3.15pm (refreshments from 3pm) in the Slade Lecture Theatre, School of Physics A28, University of Sydney. More info here or contact Bruce Yabsley (02) 9351 5970 or colloquium_chair@physics.usyd.edu.au.

NSW: Australian Telescope National Facility

The Australian Telescope National Facility holds regular colloquia on Wednesdays at 3.30pm (coffee at 3.15pm) in the ATNF Marsfield Lecture Theatre. More info here or contact Bjorn Emonts on Bjorn.Emonts@csiro.au or (02) 9372 4368.

Victoria

VIC: Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University

The Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing holds regular colloquia, usually on Thursdays at 11.30am, in the Swinburne Virtual Reality Theatre (AR Building, Room 104). More info here or Jonathon Kocz on colloquium@astro.swin.edu.au.

Queensland

QLD: Physics Department, University of Queensland

The Physics Department holds regular colloquia on Fridays at 4pm (refreshments from 3.30pm) in the Parnell Building Room 222, University of Queensland. More info here or coll_sched@physics.uq.edu.au.

Western Australia

WA: School of Physics, University of Western Australia

The School of Physics holds regular seminars on Tuesdays at 3.30-4.30pm in the Physics Lecture Room 2.15, Physics Building, University of WA. More info here or (08) 6488 2738.

Physics conferences

3^rd Chaotic Modeling and Simulation International Conference (CHAOS2010)

Chania, Crete, Greece

01/06/2010 – 04/06/2010

Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting

Taipei, Taiwan

22/06/2010 – 25/06/2010

Royal Australian Chemical Institute’s National Convention (RACI 2010) and the 12^th International Congress of Pesticide Chemistry (IUPAC 2010)

Melbourne, Victoria

04/07/1010 – 08/07/2010

Deadline for abstract submission is 19 March 2010

NEW Astronomical Society of Australia Annual Science Meeting

Hobart, Tasmania

05/07/2010 – 08/07/2010

Early bird registration until 2 May, final registration 1 June

52^nd International Field Emission Symposium (IFES2010)

Crowne Plaza, Coogee Beach, Sydney, NSW

05/08/2010 – 08/08/2010

Abstract submission deadline is 5 March 2010. Early bird registration by 10 May 2010.

9th International Conference on Excitonic and Photonic Processes in Condensed and Nano Materials (EXCON’10)

Brisbane, Queensland

11/07/2010 – 16/07/2010

Abstract submission deadline has been extended to 15 March 2010.

Statphys 24

Cairns, Queensland

19/07/2010 – 23/07/2010

Registration now open.

20th International Congress on Acoustics (ICA 2010)

Sydney, Australia

23/08/2010 – 27/08/2010

Early registration before 28 May 2010

2010 AIP Congress

Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre, Vic

06/12/2010 – 10/12/2010

NEW XXV International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) General Assembly

Earth on the Edge: Science for a Sustainable Planet

Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre, Vic

28/06/2011 – 07/07/2011

Register your expression of interest on the website to receive updates

Submission deadlines for the bulletin and journal

Our next bulletin, to be sent out at the end of March, will cover events in April 2010. We welcome contributions about activities, conferences and announcements. Our next submission deadline is Wednesday 24 March. Please send your submissions to Niall or Margie Beilharz from Science in Public on margie@scienceinpublic.com.au or call (03) 9398 1416.

And the AIP’s journal, Australian Physics, welcomes your articles. The deadline for the next issue is 15 April. Email your articles and ideas to the new editor, Paulo De Souza on Paulo.Desouza@csiro.au.

_________________________

For more information on physics events visit http://www.aip.org.au and click on ‘physics events’ or on your state branch.

If you know of anyone who would like to receive these updates, please feel free to forward this to them.

Kind regards,

Brian

——————————————————————-

Assoc. Prof. Brian James

President of the Australian Institute of Physics

Phone: +61 (2) 9351-2471

Email: aip_president@aip.org.au

(Sent by Niall Byrne, Science in Public on behalf of the Australian Institute of Physics, www.aip.org.au)

Most Australians (84%) feel positive that science and technology are improving society. These positive perceptions have been strongly held over the last five years.

That’s a big relief for scientists worried about recent attacks on the science of climate change and on immunisation.

It’s the key result from a national survey into community attitudes to science and nanotechnology.

The poll of 1,100 Australians, conducted in October last year, pointed to medical advances including the recent development of swine flu and cervical cancer vaccines, along with internet technologies, as key reasons for recipients’ positive views of science.

The survey, conducted for the Federal Government, was presented in Sydney at ICONN 2010 – Australia’s International Conference on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.

“The survey shows that people’s attitudes to nanotechnology are complex,” said Dr Craig Cormick, manager of public affairs and community engagement at the federal government’s Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research.

“At the big picture scale, people are very positive, but that view fragments when you look at different applications.”

The report revealed that Australians are excited about the potential of nanotechnology in areas such as solar energy, and environmental protection but cautious about the use of nanotechnology for use in food, cosmetics or for military applications.

“These different attitudes really align with people’s values,” Dr Cormick said. “You could almost say that the technology itself is irrelevant.”

The positive view most people have about nanotechnology is also balanced by concern about unknowns, the survey showed. “It’s not worries about nano-stuff in their computers,” Dr Cormick said. “It’s worries about what people are putting in their mouths or on their skin.”

“They want to know that it works, and that someone is making it safe.”

The poll also showed that the general public really want to hear both sides of the story when it comes to new technology. “They want to hear the benefits and the risks, and be in a position to make their own mind up,” Dr Cormick said.

“The public does want a lot more information on nanotechnology and they want it from sources they put trust in.” Exactly who those sources might be vary widely, he said. For some people it is NGOs, others want to hear from the government, and other groups rely on the advice of friends. “A few want to hear it from the media,” he added.

The message for scientists, governments and universities is to involve the public at a much earlier stage, Dr Cormick said. “The scientific community needs to have a better understanding of what the public are concerned about and make sure that they take the public along with them.”

The results of the survey can be downloaded here.

Bionic eyes, quantum computers and more efficient solar cells are among the many research projects set to benefit from a new facility due to be officially opened in Sydney on Friday.

The NSW Node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) will provide state of the art nano-scale fabrication facilities to Australian researchers. The Facility links seven university-based centres that provide researchers and industry with access to state-of-the-art fabrication facilities.

“The ANFF is all about providing world class facilities for Australian research and development,” said Dr Andrew Dzurak, director of the ANFF NSW Node. “The NSW Node of ANFF is the leading laboratory in Australia for semiconductor device fabrication on the nanoscale, and one of the most advanced world-wide.”

“There’s a whole range of applications in medicine, bionics, quantum computing and other areas that will be enabled by these fabrication facilities,” Dr Dzurak said. Specific projects include new types of radiation detectors for cancer treatment and research, fabrication of new types of bionics for application in bionic eyes, and new types of solar cells.

“The applications are very diverse. The goal is to enable all these technologies to flourish.”

The NSW Node of ANFF based at UNSW was established with $3m of Federal funding, $2m NSW State funding and $1m UNSW matching funds. The centre will also receive more than $4m of funding from the Federal Education Investment Fund (EIF) through the “Super Science – Future Industries” scheme.

The UNSW facilities are currently used by 120 researchers, and the goal is to more than double that to 250 in the next 4 years.

For more information about the NSW Node of ANFF click here.

Media contact: Andrew Dzurak 0432 405 434, A.Dzurak@unsw.edu.au

Move aside bronze, iron, silicon

We’re moving into the Diamond Age according to Professor David Awschalom from the University of California.

He and his team have already built experimental diamond chips by punching atom-sized flaws into the diamond’s molecular structure.

The bling era of everyday computing may still be some years away but Awschalom says the glittering gems may soon replace standard silicon chips in computers, helping usher in an era of more secure communication and immensely more powerful computing.

“The idea is literally to jump ahead of silicon technology and move into the diamond age,” he said at ICONN in Sydney.

Using electromagnetic waves, they can manipulate individual electrons trapped within those flaws. Crucially, they can perform these manipulations within billionths of a second.

Researchers have long dreamed of making incredibly powerful quantum computers, which use the fundamental properties of matter to compute and store information.

Awschalom’s work brings that dream a lot closer to reality by providing engineers with a robust material for building new technologies. And now that it is possible to grow diamonds in reactors, they’re becoming cheap enough, too.

“There are no obvious scientific show-stoppers,” he says. “It works, it’s fast, it’s efficient, and it works at room temperature. I think this will help accelerate the movement of quantum technology from the scientific communities to the world of real-life technology, because these schemes can exploit modern nanofabrication techniques.”

Diamonds are attractive materials for use in real-life quantum computers, or for secure communication based on pulses of light, because their atomic structure locks electrons into place incredibly firmly while allowing them to be manipulated.

The atoms in the diamond chips could also be used to store data, he adds. Each individual atom could store perhaps a million data elements, making memory storage a billion times more dense than is currently possible.

“If we’d have thought about doing this five or six years ago, it would have been extremely challenging with other materials,” Awschalom says. “Nature has been very kind to us.”

Never before have scientists made such a proactive effort to study the safety of an emerging technology as they are currently doing with nanotechnology, says Dr Mark Wiesner from Duke University.

Wiesner’s contribution includes the creation of a series of ‘ponds’ to track nano-silver particles. Nano-silver is a good antibacterial agent and being used in medical plasters, socks, and clothes.

“Unlike previous situations where technology has been rolled out and we only later discovered the harms they caused, in the case of nanotechnology the scientific community is being proactive.”

“Public concern in nanotechnology has generally followed the concerns raised by the scientific community,” he said.

But he notes that no technology is completely safe. “Electricity for is essential to modern life. But it’s also a killer. We accept and manage the risk.”

At the conference, Wiesner described a multidisciplinary effort established by the US Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation to study the environmental impact of nanomaterials.

Wiesner is the director of the Center for the Environmental Implications of NanoTechnology, established in late 2008, which receives $3.5 million in funding each year.

Its staff includes nanochemists, eco-toxicologists, ecologists, environmental engineers and biological and medical scientists. It is one of several such centres around the world.

“Our goal is to understand what are the sources of nanoparticles; where they go to in the environment; and what they will do when they get there,” Wiesner said.

In one set of experiments that are currently underway, researchers are studying nano-size silver particles in mini ecosystems designed to mimic freshwater wetlands.

These ‘mini-wetlands’ are four-metre-square boxes containing water and soil, which are open to the air and so to bacteria, insects and other animals. From April, the general public will be able to view the progress of the project via a webcam.

Measuring the contents of a single cell: the nano-machinery of life

Scientists are developing a tiny set of scales that will be capable of weighing each of the 100 million or so different proteins in a human cell.

Dr Michael Roukes from the California Institute of Technology told the ICONN nanotechnology conference in Sydney that his group has designed and made silicon chips bearing several tiny nanotechnology devices that can measure the weight of individual proteins.

“Within the next few years, we can envisage making a chip that can measure millions of individual proteins,” he says.

“It would take roughly ten milliseconds to weigh each molecule,” he says, “meaning it would take just two minutes to measure all of the roughly 100 million proteins in a cell”.

One of the principal goals of Roukes’ work is to use nanotechnology to understand the complete “wiring diagram” of interactions between molecules in individual cells.

Roukes’ dream is that one laboratory could, in a reasonable time, begin to capture multiple snapshots of what these diagrams look like.

Current techniques for doing this combine the contents of many cells, obscuring all but their most obvious inner workings and making today’s efforts to understand biological circuits very labour-intensive.

“A faster technique with single-molecule resolution could have an immense pay-off in terms of allowing scientists to see what is really going on in an individual’s cells, for example, whether they are healthy or diseased,” he says.

“We really are on the cusp of an era in which, instead of understanding the complexity of biochemistry through monumental feats of deductive reasoning, we’ll be able to just go and look at the machinery of life using these nanotech devices.”

This is in keeping with the original vision of Caltech physicist and Nobel Laureate, Richard Feynman, who 50 years ago first envisaged many of the far-reaching implications of nanotechnology.

A radical new kind of computer memory will be a million times faster than existing hard-drives, a leading expert in the field of nanotechnology announced today in Sydney.

It will use nanotechnology to manipulate data like cars on tiny racetracks.

Many IT researchers have predicted the end of Moore’s Law – which essentially says that computers will double in speed every two years. They’ve told us we’ll need light or quantum computers.

But Dr Stuart Parkin, an experimental physicist at IBM in San Jose, California, is performing miracles with more conventional electronics. He told the ICONN conference that the “racetrack memory” chips he and his team are developing will be dramatically faster, more powerful and more reliable than today’s hard disks.

“We want to replace the entire disk drive with a chip that is solid state,” Dr Parkin says. “Basically it’s a disk drive on a chip. It would be entirely reliable, a million times faster and use a lot less energy.”

To make the new racetrack memory, Dr Parkin’s team uses nanotechnology to build a forest of tiny metal wires that stand up from a silicon wafer.  “You store the data in the magnetic nanowires,” he says, “and you bring the data up and down the tracks like race-cars.”

The data itself is encoded using a new form of technology called “spintronics”, which uses one of the fundamental properties of electrons, known as spin.

Dr Parkin’s team has already transformed computing once before with a combination of spintronics and nanotechnology. About a decade ago they developed a new kind of hard disk reader called a “spin-valve” or magnetic tunnelling junction.

These readers, made up of metallic sandwiches built from layers of single atoms, increased the storage capacity of hard drives 1000-fold.

Most digital data today, such as the information that makes up the internet, is stored in these magnetic hard disk drives. But their rotating disks and moving read/write heads make these drives unreliable and slow. Crashes happen relatively often, sometimes resulting in the catastrophe of lost data.

It can also take these drives up to 10 milliseconds to read the first bit of requested data. “In computers, 10 milliseconds is an eon,” Dr Parkin says. “A modern processor can perform 20 million operations in that time.”

That’s why computers also use a second type of storage, solid-state memory, for actually doing their computational operations. Solid-state memories read and write data with great speed, but they have their own problems, losing data when the computer powers down or crashes.

A third kind of memory can retain data when the power is off. This is used in smart phones and other handheld devices, but there is a trade-off between cost and performance. The cheapest of this kind of memory is a kind called flash memory, which is the basis of flash drives. But there are problems with this kind of memory, too, as it is slow and unreliable in comparison with other memory chips, and becomes unusable relatively quickly.

Racetrack memory could overcome all these problems and, in doing so, transform the computing world, Dr Parkin says. “It will put a greater richness of information at your fingertips.” It could also make computers themselves cheaper and more robust, he says.

Over the past three or four years, Dr Parkin’s group have shown in principle that their nanotech racetrack chips work. He estimates that it could take another five to eight years before a product will be ready for manufacturing.

Looking even further ahead, Dr Parkin will tell the conference about a more futuristic idea he has for using spintronics to build what he calls a “brain in a box” that uses spintronics to mimic the way human brain cells are connected.

“It’s possible that we could build computers that might think like the brain,” he said. “But that’s a very long way off.”

“Stuart Parkin and his team’s remarkable work is a great demonstration of nanotechnology in action,” says Prof. Andrew Dzurak, ICONN co-chair and director of the Semiconductor Nanofabrication Facility at UNSW.

Background: about Stuart Parkin

Stuart Parkin, Ph.D., is an experimental physicist, IBM Fellow and manager of the magnetoelectronics group at IBM Research – Almaden in San Jose, California. He is also a consulting professor in the Department of Applied Physics at Stanford University and director of the IBM-Stanford Spintronic Science and Applications Center, which was formed in 2004.

Dr Parkin, a pioneer in the science and application of spintronic materials, made discoveries into the behavior of thin-film magnetic structures that were critical in enabling recent increases in the data density and capacity of computer hard-disk drives. His discovery of oscillatory interlayer coupling in magnetic multilayers and giant magnetoresistance in sputter deposited magnetic metallic heterostructures in 1989 led to IBM’s development of the spin-valve read head, which enabled a more than 1,000-fold increase in magnetic hard disk drive data density.

Dr Parkin also proposed using magnetic tunneling junction storage elements to create a high performance magnetic random access memory in 1995. MRAM promises unique attributes of high speed, high density and non-volatility. The development by Dr Parkin in 2001 of giant tunneling magnetoresistance in magnetic tunnel junctions using highly textured MgO tunnel barriers has made MRAM even more promising. IBM developed the first MRAM prototype in 1999 and is currently developing a 16 Mbit chip.

Most recently, Dr Parkin has proposed and is working on a novel storage class memory device, The Magnetic Racetrack, which could replace both hard disk drives and many forms of conventional solid state memory. His research interests also include spin transistors and spin-logic devices that may enable a new generation of low-power electronics.

A native of Watford, England, Dr Parkin received his B.A. (1977) and was elected a Research Fellow (1979) at Trinity College, Cambridge, England, and was awarded his Ph.D. (1980) at the Cavendish Laboratory, also in Cambridge. He joined IBM in 1982 as a World Trade Post-doctoral Fellow, becoming a permanent member of the staff the following year. In 1999 he was named an IBM Fellow, IBM’s highest technical honor.

Dr Parkin’s research interests include organic superconductors, high-temperature superconductors, and, most recently, magnetic thin film structures and spintronic materials and devices for advanced sensor, memory, and logic applications. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society, the Institute of Physics (London), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Parkin is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Johannes Gutenberg Researcher Award (2008), Humboldt Research Award (2004), the 1999-2000 American Institute of Physics Prize for Industrial Applications of Physics, the European Physical Society’s Hewlett- Packard Europhysics Prize (1997), the American Physical Society’s International New Materials Prize (1994), the MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award (1991) and the Charles Vernon Boys Prize from the Institute of Physics, London (1991). In 2001, he was named R&D Magazine’s first Innovator of the Year and in October 2007 was awarded the Economist Magazine’s “No Boundaries” Award for Innovation.

In 2007 Dr Parkin was named a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore, a Visiting Chair Professor at the National Taiwan University, an Honorary Visiting Professor at University College London, The United Kingdom and the first Distinguished Research Chair Professor, Graduate School of Materials Science, National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Douliou, Taiwan. In 2008 Dr Parkin was appointed a Visiting Professor, KAIST, Korea under the Korean Government’s WCU (World Class University) Program and the first Distinguished Visiting Professor, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. In 2008, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and received the IEEE Daniel E. Noble Award for his work on MRAM as well as the IEEE Distinguished Lecturer Award. In July 2009 he received the IUPAP Magnetism Prize and Neel Medal for outstanding contributions to the science of magnetism, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In January 2010, Dr Parkin received the 2009 Dresden Barkhausen Award. Dr Parkin has been awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Aachen, Germany and the Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. Parkin has authored more than 375 papers and has more than 82 issued patents.