The prestigious R M Johnston Memorial Medal, established in 1920 and awarded to a scholar of great distinction, has been won by Prof David Green AM, FAA, FRS. Born and educated in Tasmania, David Green is internationally recognised as a leader in experimental igneous petrology. It is an honour for The Royal Society of Tasmania to offer acknowledgment to David Green’s scholarship with this medal. He will deliver the R M Johnston Memorial Lecture on Tuesday 2 May in the Royal Society of Tasmania Room, TMAG Hobart, at 8 p.m. All interested people are warmly invited to attend.
“Height, Health and History” Professor Hamish Maxwell-Stuart, University of Tasmania – 4th April 8 pm Royal Society Room TMAG
Adult height and juvenile growth patterns are now widely used as indicators of health. The extent to which any individual will reach their biologically programmed height depends upon the conditions that they encounter in utero and early childhood. As the genetic determinants of height change little between one generation and another, fluctuations in stature between different birth cohorts can reveal much about past childhood circumstance. Over the last forty years historians have turned to historical height records in order to construct data series that can measure the biological standard of living. These have revealed some sobering insights into the impact of industrialisation and other societal transformations on the health of past populations. Settler Tasmania is blessed with particularly abundant historical height data. This paper will outline the ways in which this information can be used to explore the impact of changing conditions on Tasmanian living standards in the 19th and early 20th century.
Hamish has a PhD from the University of Edinburgh and worked for the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Glasgow, before migrating to Tasmania in 1997. He is currently writing a history of collective action in convict Australia as well editing a special issue of Social Science History on identifying and controlling for selection bias in historical work. He has contributed to a number of historical interpretation projects, the latest of which is Pandemonium launched in the Penitentiary Chapel, Campbell Street, Hobart in November 2016.
Annual General Meeting 7 March 7.30 pm Central Gallery TMAG followed by free lecture 8 pm
There will be a special meeting to consider important changes to our Rules followed by the AGM to consider Reports and the election of officers. A short break when drinks will be available then our guest lecturer Kathryn Medlock will present “Where did all the tigers go?”
Kathryn Medlock is Senior Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG).
The TMAG collection contains 94 registered thylacine specimens, making it one of the largest and most diverse collections of this extinct marsupial carnivore in the world’s museums.
All interested people are welcome
No admission charge
More information: www.rst.org.au
Where did all the tigers go? The Tasmanian Museum thylacine collection 7 March 8 pm @Central Gallery TMAG Hobart
Where did all the tigers go? The Tasmanian Museum thylacine collection 7 March 8 pm @Central Gallery TMAG Hobart
The Royal Society of Tasmania invites you to attend a lecture by Kathryn Medlock:
Kathryn Medlock is Senior Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG).
The TMAG collection contains 94 registered thylacine specimens, making it one of the largest and most diverse collections of this extinct marsupial carnivore in the world’s museums.
All interested people are welcome
No admission charge
More information: www.rst.org.au
AGU Chapman Conference on Submarine Volcanism: New Approaches and Research Frontiers
Exploration of volcanoes in our oceans is frontier science. It is the focus of an AGU Chapman Conference on Submarine Volcanism: New Approaches and Research Frontiers. The conference will be held here in Hobart between the 29th of January and the 3rd of February 2017, gathering many of the world’s experts in this field.
The conference organising committee invite The Royal Society of Tasmania members to a series of exciting evening public lectures. Bring along your family and friends! All will be held in the Menzies Centre, Lecture Theatre 2.
LECTURE 1: Monday 30th of January 6-7 PM (Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time)
Professor Deborah Kelley (University of Washington, USA).
Title: Bringing Underwater Volcanoes, Hot Springs, and the Life That They Host Directly Into Your Living Rooms Live 24/7
Professor Kelley’s research is on active submarine volcanoes, hydrothermal vents and associated life. She is director of the National Science Foundation Oceans Observatories Initiative where cables have been laid out across key sites in the northwest Pacific Ocean. Live, direct streaming of these sites is now accessible to anyone. Now we can observe the secrets of some oceanic volcanoes, just as we observe the stars. This is an exciting real-time experiment on large scale and allows scientists and educators to view some of the features of Axial Seamount Volcano, a volcano which is more than 400 km offshore and in water up to 5 km deep. Her talk will include videos of some of the amazing features of this very active volcano.
LECTURE 2: Tuesday 31st of January 6-7 PM (Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time)
Dr. Adam Soule (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA).
Title: Deep-Sea Synergy: Humans, Robots, and the Most Active Volcanic Systems on Earth
Dr Adam Soule investigates the dynamic interactions of heat and rocks in the deep earth with the crust and hydrosphere. He is involved in projects on mid-ocean ridges and young rifted margins with a special view to understanding submarine explosive eruptions. He is a veteran of many cruises exploring the floor of the oceans in a variety of tectonic settings including the East Pacific Rise, Mid-Atlantic Ridge as well as the Guaymas Basin near California. He is experienced in the use of robotic submersibles and his presentation will summarize the intersection of engineering and science that has led to the current use of underwater vehicles to study deep-sea volcanic processes. Through a discussion of some of the important discoveries in volcano science they enabled, he will explore how near- and long-term technological advances may shape the future volcanic research in the deep sea.
LECTURE 3: Thursday 2nd February 6-7 PM (Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time)
Dr. Cornel de Ronde (GNS New Zealand)
Title: Exploration of Intraoceanic Arc Seafloor Hydrothermal Systems: What do we Know?
Dr. Cornel de Ronde’s exploration of hydrothermal vents has revealed a world of remarkable spectacle, including ‘lakes’ of molten sulfur, chimneys expelling liquid CO2, spectacular eruptions on the seafloor and never before seen animals. The 6,900 km of intraoceanic arcs in the world equates to hydrothermal emissions equal to ~10% of that from the 60,000 km of mid-ocean ridges with a similar incidence of venting. Arc volcanos can host hot gas venting on top of cones, or in calderas, from near surface to water depths of 2 km. After expeditions to many volcanoes, including the long chain of underwater volcanoes that stretches from New Zealand north to Tonga, Dr. de Ronde has compiled information from over 50 volcanic systems, to recognize three main vent types. 5% of hydrothermal vent systems are volcanic and are in various stages of eruption. The second, most common type (75%) expel magmatic gasses that have interacted with seawater near the seafloor and the third type forming 20% of hydrothermal vents expel less gas, but emit plumes of metal complexes rich in copper, zinc and gold.
For more information please visit the website
http://chapman.agu.org/submarinevolcanism/
Any enquiries contact Dr. Karin Orth
(03)6226 1921
Dr Steve Rintoul ‘Hunting for Climate Clues in the Southern Ocean’
November 9, 6.30 pm @ UTAS’ Stanley Burbury Theatre
The Royal Society of Tasmania is very pleased to invite members and friends to a special lecture co-hosted with the Academy of Technology and Engineering. Dr Stephen Rintoul, Interim Director of the CSIRO Climate Science Centre, will present the lecture titled ‘Hunting for Climate Clues in the Southern Ocean’. The lecture will be held on 9 November 2016 in the Stanley Burbury Theatre, University of Tasmania, Churchill Avenue, Hobart.
Welcome drinks will be served at 6 pm, followed by the lecture at 6.30 pm.
Global warming is ocean warming: more than 90% of the extra heat stored by the planet in the last fifty years is found in the ocean. The Southern Ocean is particularly important to the transfer of heat (and carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere into the ocean. The lecture will discuss the role of the ocean in the climate system, with a particular focus on the Southern Ocean and the potential vulnerability of the Antarctic ice sheet to warming of the surrounding ocean.
Dr Stephen Rintoul AAM FAA is a physical oceanographer and climate scientist. He is the Interim Director of the newly established CSIRO Climate Science Centre. His research has contributed to a deeper appreciation of the influence of the Southern Ocean on regional and global climate, biogeochemical cycles and biological productivity. Born in the USA, he did his graduate studies at the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program and postdoctoral work at Princeton before moving to Australia to take up a position at the CSIRO. He has led 15 expeditions to the Southern, Indian and Pacific Oceans. He was a Coordinating Lead Author of the Oceans chapter in the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His scientific achievements have been recognised by many national and international awards including the Royal Society of Tasmania MR Banks Medal (2003).
Tuesday November 1 8 pm Royal Society Room TMAG Associate Professor Gretta Pecl
Global and local implications of ‘species on the move’ as a function of a changing climate
Distributions of the Earth’s species are changing at unprecedented rates, largely driven by human-mediated climate change. Such changes are already altering the composition of ecological communities, but beyond conservation of natural values, how and why does this matter? Dr Pecl will highlight how species redistribution at regional to global scales is having major impacts on ecosystem functioning, human well-being and the dynamics of climate change itself, before providing detail of local changes in marine species distribution here in Tasmania. She will finish by describing how the public can get involved in research and assist in documenting and understanding these important changes.
Associate Professor Gretta Pecl is a Tasmanian local, hailing from Glenorchy with convict stock origins. She started her undergraduate degree at UTAS before transferring to James Cook University for Honours and then to undertake a PhD. Most of her early worked focused on biology and ecology of squid, cuttlefish and octopus. Gretta’s early field work at UTAS concentrated on the waters off the east coast of Tasmania – a region experiencing a high rate of ocean warming, almost four times the global average. She subsequently became very interested in the impacts of marine climate change, and in communicating this with the public, and this is where most of her work now lies. Gretta has been awarded several prestigious fellowships including a Fulbright Fellowship in Alaska where she worked on red king crab of ‘World’s Deadliest Catch’ fame, and the Australian Research Council Future Fellowship she currently holds. She leads several large National and international projects, including the citizen science project Redmap Australia and The Global Marine Hotspots Network.
Tuesday October 4, 8 – 9.30 pm TMAG Central Gallery Royal Society Postgrad Evening
Sam Cook – School of Biological Sciences
The Master Hormone: Auxin
Sam is originally from Melbourne but has been at the University of Tasmania for 8 years. He loves Tasmania for its proximity to magnificent forests, spectacular beaches and phenomenal mountains. Sam studies the phytohormone auxin and how it is made in plants and uses molecular, physiological, biochemical and genetic tools to provide a multi-faceted approach to explore auxin biosynthesis in pea and across the green lineage involved in regulating plant growth. Sam would ultimately like to work with GMOs or Forestry in the future, perhaps at the same time.
Sam Cook
Kirstin Proft– School of Biological Sciences
Bettongs on the brink: a Tasmanian ghost story
Kirstin’s PhD aims to help with the conservation of eastern bettongs, these unique marsupials are extinct everywhere except Tasmania. She is studying the genetics of bettongs in the Tasmanian Midlands, an area where lots of bushland has been cleared for agriculture and trying to understand what effects land clearing is having on the movement of animals across the landscape, hence on the genetic relationships between populations. Kirstin’s work is part of a larger effort to direct habitat restoration and replanting in the Tasmanian Midlands by researching how different animals use the landscape and what types of habitat are important for them.
Kristin Proft. IMAGE: Kay Weltz
Daniel Hoyle– School of Medicine
Impact of Sedative Reduction
Effective methods to reduce sedative use in aged care facilities have been developed however review of the resident-related and economic outcomes are lacking in previous studies. Daniel’s research fills this gap by investigating the effect that sedative reduction has on residents involved in the national expansion of a project aimed to improve the review and use of sedatives in aged care, called the Reducing the Use of Sedatives Project.
Daniel Hoyle
Bruce Duncan– Faculty of Education
Grasping the slippery slope: The construction of understanding in mathematics classrooms.
Bruce is looking at the relationship between teaching approach and learning outcomes in mathematics. Research claims that students need to be engaged cognitively in their learning in order to develop useful understanding of mathematical concepts. His project is testing this claim in a secondary maths classroom by implementing a problem-based approach to teaching. When learners have to think about how a problem can be solved, they are expected to develop more flexible understandings and remember the concepts better than with a more teacher centred teaching approach.
Bruce Duncan
Dr Amy Edwards– School of Biological Sciences
Captive Breeding for Conservation
Australia has the world’s highest rate of mammal extinctions, and breeding in captivity has become commonplace for many of our endangered and threatened species. However, unfortunately some breeding programs are experiencing sex ratio biases in their offspring. Amy’s work looks at both the mother’s and the father’s side of the story to investigate why these biases may be occurring and whether we can safely correct them to ensure the success of our breeding programs.
Amy Edwards
Phillipa McCormack– Faculty of Law
Biodiversity conservation law and climate change: can we do better?’
There are a range of adaptation strategies that have been identified by ecologists and evolutionary biologists as critical for biodiversity conservation under climate change. Phillipa’s work considers the extent to which these strategies are already represented in Australian conservation law and policy. It then investigates the ways in which we might improve strategy implementation through law reform, to ensure that plants, animals, ecosystems and landscapes have the greatest opportunity to adapt and persist as the climate changes.
Phillipa McCormack
Hoang Phan– Menzies Institute for Medical Research
Sex Differences in Long-term Mortality and Disability of Stroke in the INternational STroke oUtComes sTudy (INSTRUCT).
Women appear to have worse outcomes of stroke including mortality, disability and poorer quality of life but it remains unclear why it is the case. Hoang’s aim is to examine the cause of the differences between men and women using data from high quality and generalizable studies around the world including 16,000 strokes.
Hoang Phan
Pearse Buchanan– Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies
Ocean deoxygenation and nitrous oxide, otherwise known as laughing gas
Unlike the atmosphere, the ocean has experienced variations in the concentration of oxygen that are present in the surface during past instances of climate change. Strong variations were felt in the lower latitudes, specifically in the oxygen depleted zones of the eastern tropical Pacific and the Northern Indian Ocean. Today, these same deoxygenated zones are important because they produce nitrous oxide, one of three major greenhouse gases in the atmosphere directly influencing the climate. Variations in the oxygen content of the ocean affect the degree to which these zones produce or consume nitrous oxide and variations in oxygen play an important role in determining the trajectory of climate change. Pearse’s research seeks to improve our mechanistic understanding of the cyclic interplay between climate, oxygen, nitrous oxide and climate.
Pearse Buchanan
Lavenia Ratnarajah – Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies
Effects of natural iron fertilisation by Antarctic krill and baleen whales on the Southern Ocean carbon cycle
Phytoplankton plays a really important role in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, the growth of phytoplankton in large areas of the Southern Ocean is limited by the availability of a key micronutrient- iron. Lavy’s PhD investigates the role of the biology, in particular Antarctic krill and baleen whales as a source of recycled iron in the Southern Ocean, and the impacts of historical whaling practices on the global carbon cycle.
Lavenia Ratnarajah
Lynda Kidd – Faculty of Education
Teacher education graduates: What are they doing now?
Initial teacher education courses are designed to prepare graduates for teaching in the K-12 school system. Research, however, shows that many of these graduates do not end up in the classroom. Lynda’s study explored the different occupations that these graduates obtained and which skills developed during their teacher education studies were being utilised in their chosen careers
Lynda Kidd
Macarena Pavez – Faculty of Health
The interaction of calcium signaling and the cytoskeleton in navigating growth cones
In order to develop effective therapies to treat neurological disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, we need to understand how our brain is wired during normal development. Neurons send out long processes, called axons, to connect with their correct target in a process known as axon guidance. The axon is guided to that target by a structure at the axon tip called a growth cone, which responds to guidance cues in the environment. How the growth cone navigates is not well understood. We do know that calcium is critical. Changes in calcium levels within growth cones dictate their motility. Macarena’s work aims to understand how calcium is controlled to regulate growth cone motility. She hypothesises that the calcium-sensing protein STIM1 is vital for controlling when and where calcium rises within the growth cone. It is likely that this regulation of calcium by STIM1 is crucial during axon guidance and ultimately brain connectivity.
Macarena Pavez
Kerryn Brent – Faculty of Law
The Role of the No-Harm Rule in Governing Solar Radiation Management Geoengineering
Proposals to geoengineer the Earth’s atmosphere to offset the effects of climate change pose a new challenge for international law. They risk having widespread detrimental impacts on the global environment, but most proposals are not specifically governed by an international agreement. States have a general obligation under the customary international law ‘no-harm’ rule to prevent their activities from causing significant harm to other states and the global commons, including the high seas and the atmosphere. Kerryn’s project considers the potential of the no-harm rule to respond to the risks of proposed geoengineering technologies and recommends how it can be developed to bolster the capacity of international law to govern geoengineering.
Kerryn Brent
Indi Hodgson-Johnston– Faculty of Law
Who owns Antarctic territory?
The laws of territorial sovereignty and Australia’s claim to the Australian Antarctic Territory.
Indi Hodgson-Johnston
Emily Rudling– Asian Studies, School of Humanities
Knowing Tasmania and learning Asia
The Asian economic boom is an opportunity for Tasmania to turnaround persistent socio-economic problems. In 2013 the Giddings State Government releases the Tasmania’s Place in the Asian Century white paper as a roadmap for engaging Asia. A key aspect is committing to Asia related language and cultural education through the policy of Asia literacy. What does this mean for Tasmania? Is Tasmania capable of becoming Asia literate and will this help the state?
Emily Rudling
Extinction Matters: Could Citizen Science Help?
Tuesday September 6, 8 pm Royal Society Lecture presenting Dr Clare Hawkins, Honorary Research Associate at the University of Tasmania in Royal Society Room, TMAG
In recent times, 27 Tasmanian species are listed as having gone extinct. Threatened Species Day – 7th September 2016 – marks the 80th year since the last known thylacine died. It’s a time to reflect on why extinction matters to us, and how we might reduce our negative impacts on species survival. My own response, as a threatened species zoologist, is to take up a Churchill Fellowship on citizen science, to engage the wider community in better understanding the needs of the plants and animals in their own backyards. In this talk, I share my findings on how this might work most effectively.
Clare Hawkins carried out her PhD on the fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox), a semi-arboreal mammalian carnivore endemic to the forests of Madagascar. Its ecological similarities to the spotted-tailed quoll (Dasyurus maculatus) brought her to Tasmania in 2001 to study the latter species’ habitat requirements. She subsequently joined the State Government, initially with the Save the Tasmanian Devil Program, and spent four years monitoring the impact and distribution of Devil Facial Tumour Disease. She is now Senior Zoologist for the Threatened Species section. She is also the IUCN Australasian Marsupial and Monotreme Specialist Group Red List coordinator and author of the Naturetrackers blog. For the Bookend Trust, she is currently co-organising two ‘Extinction Matters’ BioBlitzes, to be held on either side of Threatened Species Day (7th September 2016). Her current focus is on novel approaches to better monitor and manage Tasmania’s diverse threatened fauna (from quolls and eagles to skinks, butterflies and burrowing crayfish). In 2015, she was awarded a Gallaugher Bequest Churchill Fellowship to develop citizen science study designs for long term monitoring.
“Living in an uncertain world: data and decisions”: The psychology of Climate Science Denial
July 27, 7.30 pm Stanley Burbury Theatre, Sandy Bay campus, UTAS
Chair: Her Excellency Professor the Honourable Kate Warner, AM, Governor of Tasmania
Speaker: 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.
