It is safe to say that 2020 has been a year of significant challenges for the entire Australian and New Zealand STEM community, in light of the ongoing disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite these challenges, 2020 has also been a year of many successes for AINSE scholars and their supervisors, and as the …
Rhenium is the key to new radiotracers for disease imaging Former AINSE Postgraduate Research Award (PGRA) Scholar Dr. Mitch Klenner, alongside a team of international collaborators including researchers from ANSTO, Curtin University and Monash University, has found a new way to synthesise large quantities of nuclear medicine to assist in the diagnosis of cancer and …
What sediments can tell us about climate change In order to understand recent and future climate change, we need to be able to understand the climate of the past. The continuous cycle of sedimentation in volcanic maar lakes can provide the perfect record of climate history – provided you know where to look! Auckland City, …
Boosting battery performance with a new composite electrode Our developing technology is highly-reliant on efficient, powerful batteries – from your mobile phone and computer through to electric and hybrid vehicles. Most portable electronics and electric cars today use lithium-ion (Li-ion) rechargeable batteries. While Li-ion batteries have served us well, they are not without their drawbacks. …
Unveiling the complex chemistry of Titan’s atmosphere If you’re searching for other places in our solar system that might be hospitable for some form of life, there may be no better place to look than Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. The Cassini-Huygens space probe, which visited Titan from 2005-2006, demonstrated that Titan has a dense atmosphere …
How do low doses of radiation affect the brain? In medicine, ionizing radiation is used both diagnostically and therapeutically – that is, to both detect and treat diseases, such as cancer, in the brain. Calina Betlazar collaborated with ANSTO Human Health and Biosciences to understand the effects of both high and low doses of radiation …
Going back in time to understand the South American climate The Andean Puna-Altiplano plateau is the nexus between two extreme regions. On one side resides the arid Atacama Desert, and on the other sits the humid Amazon Basin. The plateau acts as a climatic barrier, where cool mid-latitude winds from the Pacific Ocean meet warm, moist …
New insights into a useful killer protein The cells that make up all complex life have evolved a variety of ways to undergo programmed cell death when necessary. There are many instances when one cell dying can benefit the entire organism – for example, a cell infected with a virus can sacrifice itself to hamper …
A new method for determining seafood provenance Fraud in the global food industry is an ongoing and costly global problem, estimated to cause losses of over $50 billion USD to the food industry each year. These losses are especially problematic to the seafood industry, one of the fastest-growing global food sectors today. At present, there …
Intelligent coatings: creating surfaces that respond to their surroundings Stimuli-responsive surface coatings are becoming increasingly popular due to their wide range of possible applications. These are materials that can reversibly change their properties, such as thickness, in response to signals from the outside world, such as temperature or light. These seemingly-intelligent materials can be used …
