Tasmanian native pepper is a native plant of Tasmania and SE Australia whose fruit and leaves are harvested as “bushfoods”, famous for their rich aroma typical of the Australian bush. Its leaves can also be extracted for their plant extract components, and this extract is noted for its antifungal and antimicrobial properties which impart a crisp, spicy taste when used in food production. Native pepper is currently harvested almost exclusively from the wild, but the local industry believes that plantation production will generate both the yields and the consistency of quality necessary to significantly expand the industry. As native foods and flavours gain more attention and wider acceptance, new methods of production will be needed to meet greater demand, as well as quality and sustainability standards. Research to understand the growth of native pepper, and its potential for commercialisation in plantations, is vital for this ongoing success.
Dr Matthew Wilson has a PhD in Agricultural Science from UTAS where he studied the commercialisation of Tasmanian native pepper as a commercial crop species. He is now working for the ARC Training Centre for Innovative Horticultural Products, also at UTAS, investigating the effects of packaging on improving product freshness, shelf-life and food integrity. Matthew’s research has led to a better understanding of the science behind establishing plantations of local
Winter Lecture Series: “Living in an uncertain world: data and decisions”
The Royal Society of Tasmania
Winter Lecture Series 2016
Presented in conjunction with the University of Tasmania
All lectures will be held in the Stanley Burbury Theatre, UTAS, Sandy Bay
Living in an uncertain world: data and decisions
Wednesday July 13 7 for 7:30 pm
Chair: Professor Brigid Heywood, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), UTAS
- Where is the South Pole? Uncertainty, place and imagination presented by Associate Professor Elizabeth Leane
The Geographic South Pole is a place of paradox. An invisible spot on a high, featureless ice plateau, it has little obvious material value, but is nonetheless a much sought-after location. In addressing the question “Where is the South Pole?” this presentation explores not only the physical ambiguities that surround this strange place, but also the cultural meanings that have been attached to it over the centuries. It looks at the ways in which, in the absence of empirical data, humanity has speculated about the Pole – sometimes very wildly – in mythology, mapping and literature.
Associate Professor Elizabeth Leane is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Associate Professor of English at the University of Tasmania. She holds a research position split between the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies and the School of Humanities. Her research currently focuses on literature and place, particularly textual engagements with the Antarctic region. She is the author of Reading Popular Physics (2007), Antarctica in Fiction (2012) and South Pole: Nature and Culture (2016).
- Science at the environmental policy interface presented by Professor Marcus Haward, UTAS
There is broad agreement between spheres of science, management, politics and business that good evidence and analysis should be central to addressing complex environmental problems. There is less agreement on how this should be achieved. There are substantial barriers, mostly imposed by time and human capacity, to incorporating even the most appropriate and well-targeted science into policy development, planning and management decisions. There are also science ‘supply-side’ constraints in targeting the specific or very broad problems decision-makers face, including recognising differing interests and organizational goals. A major challenge in addressing the ‘science-policy gap’ – the level of confidence over a scientific finding between the scientific community and by society – is simultaneously managing stakeholder relevance, institutional legitimacy and the methodological rigor of knowledge production. This presentation explores the nature of problem structuring as a key to boundary work between science and decision-making. It then considers boundary work as processes, institutions and objects that first mediate how good science is defined and second how this science can inform policy processes and decision-making.
Professor Marcus Haward is a political scientist specialising in oceans and Antarctic governance and marine resources management at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), University of Tasmania. He has held visiting or adjunct appointments at the Australian Maritime College, Australian Antarctic Division, the Australian National University and Dalhousie University, Canada. Marcus has over 150 research publications, and his books include Australia and the Antarctic Treaty System, (co-editor with Tom Griffiths) UNSW Press 2011, Global Commodity Governance: State Responses to Sustainable Forest and Fisheries Certification (with Fred Gale) Palgrave Macmillan, 2011; and Oceans Governance in the Twenty-first Century: Managing the Blue Planet (with Joanna Vince) Edward Elgar 2008.
Marcus is currently working on science-policy integration, knowledge systems in coastal management, Australia’s regional fisheries interests, and current challenges with emerging tracking technologies in oceans governance.
Wednesday July 20 7 for 7:30 pm
Chair: Hon Michael Ferguson MP, Minister for Information Technology and Innovation
- Probing the Earth with sparse data Associate Professor Anya Reading, UTAS
The continents, ocean floor and the Earth’s mantle beneath provide the dynamic foundation for all life on Earth. This foundation is surprisingly variable but it is difficult to study for the simple reason that it is buried – and deeply buried. We have strong motivations for better understanding the 3D deep architecture of the Earth, and how the tectonic plates move in dramatic or subtle ways, because this underpins many global studies including ice-sheet and sea-level changes. On a more local scale, 3D deep Earth images help us identify likely locations for buried resources such as minerals and geothermal power. We can only drill a few kilometres of the nearly 6,400 kilometres from the Earth’s surface to the centre of the Earth’s core so we need to use a combination of geophysics data collection and innovative computing to find out more. Using uncertainty is a key part of the process. In some cases mapping uncertainty has an upside which we can use to our advantage. This talk explains how we collect data from remote places, and make best use of this sparse information to improve our knowledge of the least accessible, yet very relevant, parts of our planet.
Anya Reading founded the ‘Compute Earth’ research group in the School of Physical Sciences, University of Tasmania. Originally from the north of England, her PhD research at The University of Leeds focused on New Zealand seismology and began a journey of discovery of the southern hemisphere continents, their tectonic origins and evolution. Through research positions at British Antarctic Survey and Australian National University, she has led numerous field deployments and expeditions to remote and challenging places in outback Australia and the Antarctic interior.
Anya’s fascination for computing comes from wanting to extract the most value from hard-won field data. She lectures in geophysics, computational methods for science, and data visualisation: inspiring the next cohort of curious Earth Scientists. She is Director of Australia’s National Facilities for Earth Sounding, a multi-institute partnership, and in 2016 was awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholarship to research the deep 3D structure of the Antarctic continent.
- Embracing uncertainty in molecular evolution Associate Professor Barbara Holland, UTAS
We are used to thinking of DNA as an instruction set that carries the genetic information for making living things. However, we can also think of it as an historical “document” that keeps a surprisingly useful record of who’s related to who in the Tree of Life. By looking at patterns of similarity in the DNA of different species, scientists have been able to develop an accurate picture of the evolutionary tree that links present day species. (Amongst other things, we can give a definitive answer to the age-old question – What came first, the chicken or the egg?). We can also use DNA as a “clock’’ – the ticking of this molecular clock is random rather than regular but in combination with fossil evidence it allows us to put dates on when particular species diverged. For instance, does the molecular clock suggest that mammals and birds arose 65 million years ago in the dust of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, or does it suggest that they were around for a lot longer, potential contributors to the dinosaurs’ demise?
Reading the evolutionary story in DNA has required a long-standing collaboration between biologists and mathematicians. In this talk Barbara hopes to share a little piece of this story.
Barbara Holland is an associate professor in the Mathematics Discipline within the School of Physical Sciences at the University of Tasmania. She completed a PhD in Mathematical Biology at Massey University in New Zealand followed by postdoctoral studies at the Ruhr Universität Bochum (Germany) and in the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution (New Zealand). She moved to the University of Tasmania in 2010. From 2011 she held an Australian Research Council funded Future Fellowship. Since beginning her PhD she has enjoyed the challenge of working with biologists in trying to translate the problems they face into the language of mathematics. Biology is awash with data since the development of DNA sequencing technology and this has opened up a range of fascinating research questions that require a combination of skills from mathematics, biology and computer science.
Wednesday July 27 7 for 7:30 pm
Chair: Her Excellency Professor the Honourable Kate Warner, AM, Governor of Tasmania
- The psychology of climate science denial Dr John Cook, UQ
Around 7% of Australians believe climate change isn’t happening. What drives this rejection of climate science? The biggest driver of climate science denial isn’t education, science literacy, age or income: it’s who you vote for. Political ideology is a key factor, with people who oppose regulation of the fossil fuel industry denying there’s a problem needing solving in the first place. This matters because misinformation generated by this small group confuses the public, decreasing public support for climate action. How do we respond to climate science denial? Presenting evidence about climate change to those who reject climate science is not only ineffective, it can even backfire and harden their views. Instead, psychological research into inoculation theory points to another approach. Just as a vaccination stops a virus from spreading by exposing people to a weak form of the virus, we build resistance to science denial by explaining the techniques and fallacies of misinformation. Rather than try to change the minds of a small minority immune to evidence, we communicate to the majority who are still open to evidence. And not only do we need to communicate the science, we also need to explain how that science can get distorted.
John Cook is the Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at The University of Queensland. He created and runs the website SkepticalScience.com, which won the 2011 Australian Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge and the 2016 National Center for Science Education Friend of the Planet Award. John has co-authored several university textbooks on climate change as well as the book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand. In 2013, he published a paper on the scientific consensus on climate change that has been highlighted by President Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron. He also developed the MOOC (Massive Online Open Course), Making Sense of Climate Science Denial, released in April 2015. He is currently completing a PhD in cognitive psychology, researching the psychology of climate science denial.
- Smart grids, messy society Associate Professor Heather Lovell, UTAS
How we produce and consume electricity is changing: more of us have rooftop solar, there is greater opportunity to purchase household battery storage, and detailed energy data is more widely available. A growing concern of utilities and governments is that large numbers of people will opt to leave the electricity grid (i.e. centralised electricity provision), as it becomes increasingly technically feasible and cost-effective to do so. In this short talk Associate Professor Lovell will explore the nature of the changes already underway in the Australian electricity sector, and consider what past experience tells us about ‘megashifts’. She will also explore how change in an uncertain world can be effectively governed.
Associate Professor Heather Lovell is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Tasmania. Her ARC research is about the learning that is taking place from smart grid experiments. Over the last ten years, her research at Cambridge, Edinburgh and Oxford universities in the UK has focused on how and why technology and policy change occurs, investigating topics ranging from low energy housing to carbon markets.
Dr Dan Gregory presents The accumulation of trace elements in diagenetic pyrite, an example from the metal rich Derwent Estuary and metal poor Huon Estuary — Tuesday May 3 2016, 8 pm Royal Society Room, Customs House building, TMAG, Hobart (enter from Dunn Place).
Talk summary:
The Derwent River is known to contain significant zinc (Zn) and other metals due to historic smelting operations. In this study detailed analysis of sediment cores, from the Derwent and Huon estuaries, coupled with different chemical extraction techniques were used to determine where this metal enrichment is and how strongly the metals are held in the sediment. These data were further utilized to examine how trace elements are contained within pyrite forming in sediments.
Speaker, Dr Dan Gregory:
Daniel Gregory graduated with an honours degree in geology from the University of British Columbia in 2007. After this he engaged in greenfield geological exploration in the Yukon Territory, Canada until 2010, when he started his PhD in pyrite geochemistry at the University of Tasmania. He finished his dissertation in 2013 and worked as a post-doctoral researcher at CODES in pyrite chemistry and ore deposit vectoring until October 2015 when he started a post-doc at the University of California Riverside with Tim Lyons.
All welcome to this free lecture. Tuesday May 3 2016, 8 pm Royal Society Room, Customs House building, TMAG, Hobart (enter from Dunn Place).
John K. Davidson presents The Upstream Petroleum Industry; Tasmania’s Position — Tuesday 5 April 2016, 8.00 pm Royal Society Room, Customs House Building, TMAG, Hobart (enter from Dunn Place).
The Upstream Petroleum Industry; Tasmania’s Position
The global petroleum industry is divided into the ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ components. Tasmania has a small intermittent upstream exploration and ‘invisible’ production industry via two offshore pipelines from Bass Strait to Victoria. The downstream transportation, refining and marketing is supported by the shipment of refined products to Tasmanian ports.
Oil, condensate and gas is produced from the Yolla field 100 km north of Burnie in central Bass Basin and is piped to Lang Lang southeast of Melbourne. Gas is also produced from the Thylacine field in Otway Basin northwest of King Island and is piped to Port Campbell in eastern Victoria. The Trefoil gas discovery 40 km west of Yolla is planned for development.
While the export of petroleum products is modest, the ‘export’ of geological and engineering knowledge to the global upstream industry has been significant. The history of Tasmanian’s contributions is best taken from the late Prof S. W. Carey in the 1930’s, via the Yolla discovery in 1985 to the present, with insights into the future both locally and globally.
John K Davidson:
John graduated from the University of Tasmania in 1969 with a BSc (Hons) degree in Geology.
He worked for Exxon from 1970 to 1980 in Sydney, Exxon’s research centre in Houston , and Esso UK in London before returning to Sydney as exploration project leader of the Esso/BHP Exmouth Plateau deepwater drilling programme.
He has been a worldwide consultant since 1980 and farmed out two wells to Amoco in the Bass Basin which resulted in the Yolla oil and gas discovery in 1985.
In 2000 he patented a method for determining Earth stresses from interpreted seismic surveys. The method provides solutions to many technical challenges in the oil exploration and production industries such as planning horizontal well trajectories to avoid wellbore collapse.
Professor Matt King presents Antarctica: Frozen not Frigid — Tuesday 1 March 2016, 8.00 pm — Venue: TMAG Central Gallery enter via Main entrance through the courtyard from Dunn Place
Antarctica: Frozen not Frigid
The common perception of the Antarctica continent is that is frozen and unmovable. Over the last two decades, remote fieldwork and technological advances have yielded geodetic datasets that show that much of Antarctica may be frozen but it far from unmovable. Rather, the ice sheet and the bedrock it sits upon are highly dynamic. GPS measurements of ice sheet motion show changes on timescales of minutes to hours to decades, while even more precise measurements of bedrock motion shows rapid and prolonged response to Earthquakes and glacier thinning. This presentation will highlight how measuring Antarctica’s response to a series of great natural experiments has given new insights into fundamental processes that are active within the ice sheet and solid Earth. They allow us to be better prepared to predict the future of the great ice sheet as it becomes increasingly unfrozen.
Professor Matt King:
Matt started focusing on Antarctica during his PhD at the University of Tasmania, where he quantified multi-decadal changes in the motion of a large floating Antarctic ice shelf using surveying data. He then moved to the UK where he researched the application of GPS positioning to understanding subsidence of offshore platforms, glacial dynamics, Earth deformation and Antarctica’s contribution to recent sea-level change. He has travelled to both Antarctica and Greenland and published over 80 peer-reviewed journal articles, including several in the leading journals Science and Nature. In late 2012 he returned to the University of Tasmania as Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Professor of Polar Geodesy. In 2015 the Royal Society (London) awarded him the Kavli Medal and Lecture.
2016 Presidents Address, The Royal Society of Tasmania — Ocean Acidification and Atmosphere Oxygenation in Deep Time: A Multi-Proxy Approach to Tracking Past Ocean Chemistry — Tuesday 2 February, 8.00 pm Royal Society Room, Customs House Building, TMAG, Hobart (enter from Dunn Place).
Prof. Ross R. Large is the outgoing President of the Royal Society of Tasmania, a UTAS Distinguished Professor and Professor of Economic Geology.
First order trace element (TE) concentrations in the past oceans are controlled by several factors including; composition of eroded source rocks, oxygen and carbon dioxide contents of the atmosphere, ocean pH, temperature, salinity, organic productivity and trace element adsorption capacity. Our recent studies at the University of Tasmania investigating the Laser Ablation-ICPMS trace element chemistry of marine pyrite have tracked TE variations in the oceans, through the Proterozoic and Palaeozoic, and related these to cycles of bio-essential nutrient concentrations, atmosphere oxygen content and mass extinction events (Large et al., 2014; 2015; Long et al., 2015). Certain TE are essential for life (eg, Ni, Cu, Co, Mn, Zn, Se) and have controlled evolutionary pathways (Williams and Rickarby, 2012), other TE are redox sensitive (eg, Se, Mo, Au), and have been used as proxies for oxygen content of the atmosphere, several TE are sensitive to variations in atmosphere/ocean carbon dioxide content (e.g. Cu and U), whereas still others are sensitive to ocean acidity (eg, Ag, Zn, Pb, Bi, Cd, Sb).
![RRLarge4](https://rst.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/RRLarge4-300x228.jpg)
Close-up of black shales showing the mineral pyrite (FeS2) silver-yellow that when analysed with a laser gives the clues to ancient ocean chemistry and mass extinctions.
In this talk I outline a multi-proxy approach, using a variety of trace elements and their ratios, from our extensive marine pyrite database. The data indicate broad first orders cycles of concentrations of ocean trace elements that form an internally consistent pattern that can be related to major geological events over the last 1000 Ma. These cycles suggest there have been basically two end member ocean conditions. Warm, nutrient-rich oceans, with relatively low pH (7 to 7.8) and elevated pCO2, are evident in Early to Mid Cambrian, Silurian to Mid Devonian, Carboniferous, Mid-Late Permian and the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary. The other end member is cool nutrient-poor oceans, with a more alkaline pH (7.8 to 8.4), formed during periods of low pCO2, which dominated the Neoproterozoic, Ordovician, Late Devonian to Early Carboniferous, Early Permian, much of the Mesozoic and the Neogene. The nutrient poor oceans broadly correlate with periods of maximum carbonate reef development, include all the global glaciation events, and three of the five mass extinction events.
This example of a multi-proxy approach, that draws on an extensive marine pyrite database, and considers inter-relationships between key long-term ocean drivers, provides a new integrated interpretation of ocean chemistry over the last 1000 million years.
References
Large RR., Halpin, JA., Danyushevsky. LV., Maslennikov. VV., Bull SW., Long, JA., Gregory, DD., Lounejeva, E, Lyons, TW., Sack, PJ., McGoldrick, PJ. and Calver, CR., 2014, Trace element content of sedimentary pyrite as a new proxy for deep-time ocean-atmosphere evolution: Earth and Planetary Science Letters, v. 389, p. 209-220.
Large R.R., Halpin, J.A., Lounjeva, E., Danyushevsky, L.D., Maslennikov, V.V., Gregory, D., Sack, P.J., Haines, P.W., Long, J.A., Makoundi, C. and Stepanov, A.S., 2015, Cycles of nutrient trace elements in the Phanerozoic ocean: Gondwana Research, v. 28, p. 1282-1293
Long, J.A., Large, R.R., Lee, M.S.Y., Benton, M.J., Danyushevsky, L.V., Chiappe, L.M., Halpin, J.A., Cantrill, D. and Lottermoser, B., 2015, Severe selenium depletion in the Phanerozoic oceans as a factor in three global mass extinctions: Gondwana Research, v. 28, (available online)
Williams, R.J.P. and Rickarby, R.E.M., 2012, Evolution’s Destiny: Co-evolving chemistry of the Environment and Life: Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, UK, 319 pp.
Tuesday 2 February, 8.00 pm Royal Society Room, Customs House Building, TMAG, 19 Davey St. Hobart (entry from Dunn Place)
All interested people are welcome. Free admission.
Seeking the Master Cave – Tasmania’s Junee-Florentine Karst System – Talk – Tuesday, January 19 2016, 8.00 pm Royal Society Room, Customs House building, TMAG, Hobart. Entrance via Dunn Place. Excursion – Saturday, 23 January 2016
Tasmania’s Junee-Florentine karst system at Mt Field has provided cavers and speleologists with new and exciting discoveries for decades. The area contains Australia’s deepest caves and many of its longest. Alan Jackson will be discussing the history of the area’s exploration including the tools and techniques employed to systematically discover, explore and document its caves.
Alan Jackson will deliver a talk on the Junee Florentine karst area to be followed by an excursion.
Alan Jackson is an avid cave explorer based in Hobart. As a member of the Hobart club Southern Tasmanian Caverneers since 2001, he has dedicated his spare time to exploring and documenting the deep, sporting caves of the Junee-Florentine.
The dates are:
Talk – Tuesday 19 January 2016, 8.00 pm Royal Society Room, Customs House building, TMAG, Hobart. Entrance via Dunn Place.
Excursion – Saturday 23 January 2016
Members will need to provide their own transport, lunch and refreshments.
The excursion is intended to show the physical side of the talk on the Tuesday but each event is a stand-alone item.
The Junee Florentine has a magnificent example of stream capture, where streams running down the northern sides of Mt Field West do not reach the Florentine River, but go under the ridge and emerge at the Junee resurgence, near Maydena.
Please register your interest in the karst talk and, or, excursion using the contact us link.
JOINT LECTURE WITH AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF TECHNOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING – Professor James Vickers and Professor Alison Venn – Wednesday 11 November, 6.30 pm Sir Stanley Burbury Theatre
The two speakers who will be presenting lectures are:
Professor James Vickers, Wicking Dementia Centre:
Disease modification and risk reduction: new approaches to tackling dementia and
Professor Alison Venn, Deputy Director of the Menzies Institute for Medical Research:
Investigating the childhood origins of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes
Professor James Vickers: Disease modification and risk reduction: new approaches to tackling dementia.
With the ageing of the world-wide population and the lack of effective therapeutic interventions, the numbers of people with dementia will increase dramatically over the next few decades. There are a number of diseases that cause dementia, the majority of which are degenerative and progressive, involving specific pathological changes in the brain on the background of ageing. Once substantial neuronal degeneration has occurred, it is not likely that this pathology can be reversed. Hence, there is substantial research interest currently in slowing or eliminating pathology at the very earliest stages of disease, potentially before overt symptoms, or targeting modifiable risk factors throughout life to delay dementia. The Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre is working at identifying the earliest brain changes that lead to dementia as well as new approaches to inhibit such pathology. The Centre also has a major interventional project, the Tasmanian Healthy Brain Project, investigating whether complex mental stimulation in mid to later life may help reduce ageing-related cognitive decline and risk of dementia. In addition, we are undertaking laboratory studies on how cognitive enrichment may boost brain plasticity.
James Vickers holds the positions of Chair of Pathology, Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Health and Co-Director of the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre at the University of Tasmania. His qualifications include a Bachelor of Science, PhD and Doctor of Science. He is also currently a board member of the Royal Hobart Hospital Research Foundation, Chair of the Scientific Panel for the Alzheimer’s Australia Dementia Research Foundation and President of the Australasian Neuroscience Society.
Professor Alison Venn: Investigating the childhood origins of (adult) cardiovascular disease and diabetes
Professor Alison Venn is an epidemiologist and Deputy Director of the Menzies Institute for Medical Research. Her interests are in the epidemiology of chronic disease with a particular focus on obesity and lifestyle risk factors. She leads the Childhood Determinants of Adult Health Study – a national follow-up of 8,500 Australian children investigating childhood influences on cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk in adulthood, and is an investigator on a major US-funded collaboration pooling similar data from 40,000 children across three countries.
Wednesday 11 November, 6.30 pm Sir Stanley Burbury Theatre, UTAS, Churchill Avenue, Sandy Bay (entry from Churchill Avenue)
All interested people are welcome. Free admission.
Dr Rachel Popelka-Filcoff presents Tracing the Past: Characterisation of Indigenous Australian Pigments to Understand Technology and Exchange: Wednesday 4 November, 8.00 pm
Natural mineral pigments are significant in Aboriginal Australian culture, and applied to a variety of natural matrices such as wood and bark to create objects such as boomerangs and shields and bark paintings. Ochre (Fe-oxide pigment), is used for a variety of red, brown, orange and yellow colours and other natural mineral pigments such as kaolinite are used for white colours. Mixtures and applications of pigments present a challenging analytical problem, especially towards the non-destructive elemental analysis of mixed pigments on objects with a variety of shapes and sizes.
This presentation will describe our recent research into methods to characterize the complexity of Indigenous Australian ochre pigments. We have studied ochre from several known ochre sources around Australia by several techniques, including neutron activation analysis (NAA), X-ray fluorescence microscopy and near-IR spectroscopy. The combination of these techniques offers insight into the complex mineralogy and elemental composition of these natural materials.
Our results demonstrate the advantages of non-destructive analysis and sensitive methods towards the analysis of Aboriginal Australian objects. This presentation will cover some of our recent work including the first non-destructive study of natural pigments on Aboriginal Australian objects directly at a synchrotron, micro-characterisation of mineral pigments and provenance studies with Australian ochre.
Rachel Popelka-Filcoff is an Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering (AINSE) Senior Research Fellow in the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences at Flinders University.
Her research program uses radio-analytical and spectroscopic methods for the application to cultural, environmental and forensic questions. Her work is to the first comprehensive characterisation of Australian Aboriginal natural mineral pigments on cultural heritage materials, including ochre, by several advanced analytical methods. She also analyses uranium materials by a variety of methods for international nuclear forensics projects.
A significant portion of her research is based at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), as well as collaborations with other forensic and cultural heritage institutes and universities. Rachel holds a BA in Archaeology and Classics from Washington University in St Louis (USA), a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Missouri (USA), and completed a National Research Council postdoc at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST, USA).
She has received awards for her research including the South Australian Tall Poppy of the Year in 2012, which recognises to top early career researcher in the state. She has also had her research profiled in several scientific and general media outlets such as Cosmos Magazine, Chemistry in Australia, and Chemistry World, and several radio interviews.
Rachel is the Vice President/President Elect of the Society for Archaeological Sciences, and is on the editorial board of Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. She is on the executive committee for the Early and Mid Career Research Forum for the Australian Academy of Science.
Wednesday 4 November, 8.00 pm Royal Society Room, Customs House Building, TMAG,
19 Davey St. Hobart (entry from Dunn Place)
All interested people are welcome. Free admission.
Challenges for hydro development in Papua New Guinea – presentation by David Wilson – Tuesday 1 September 8.00 pm
Challenges for hydro development in Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea is a resource rich country with great reserves of gas, oil and fertile agricultural land as well as an abundance of hydro power potential. However, most regions of Papua New Guinea are still considered remote with access to some of the basic services that we take for granted here in Australia like clean water, transport and electricity still lacking. Little of the riches derived from these resources come to benefit the majority of Papuans. Increasing the availability of affordable electricity to remote communities as well as the swelling populations for urban Port Moresby is one way in which productivity and family livelihood can be advanced. The challenges both technical and social are many. Often the technical challenges relate to geological factors such as earthquake, landslide and foundations conditions, including karstic limestone. Over a period of work in PNG I have encountered such problems, some of which I would like to share in this talk.
David Wilson grew up in Burnie before moving to Hobart in 1973 to undertake tertiary studies at the University of Tasmania. After graduating in 1977 with a Batchelor of Science Honours Degree in Geology/Geophysics David joined Hydro Tasmania as Geophysicist and undertook geophysical and geological studies for potential hydropower projects throughout Tasmania. Much of his work was in remote locations on Tasmania’s West Coast and he spent several years based at Tullah. He returned to Hobart in the early 90’s to pursue a change of career in hydrology, becoming Principal Hydrologist and Business Development Manager, working on many overseas assignments in the Asia-Pacific region as well as other parts of the globe.
Since 2011 David has worked as an independent consultant and has spent time living in Papua New Guinea and Borneo as well as assignments in other countries working on the investigation of various small to medium size hydropower projects.
Tuesday 1 September, 8.00 pm Royal Society Room, Customs House Building, TMAG,
19 Davey St. Hobart (entry from Dunn Place)
All interested people are welcome
Admission is free
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