The Royal Society of Tasmania

The advancement of knowledge

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The Library at the end of the World: Natural Science and its Illustrators – An upcoming new Royal Society publication – Editors and Authors whet your appetite! Tuesday 2nd September 2014 8.00 pm

Dr Margaret Davies, Dr Stephen Harris and Dr Anita Hansen, editors and authors of  The library at the end of the world, The Royal Society of Tasmania’s latest publication, will discuss the creation of this fascinating new book.

 

Margaret Davies retired in 2002 from the University of Adelaide after 30 years where she spent 28 years researching the Australo/Papuan frog fauna. She has discovered and named 35 species of frog and authored/co-authored/edited or coedited over 120 publications. She gained her PhD for a study on Uperoleia, a genus of small burrowing frogs that was poorly known (three recognised species when she began working on them – 27 currently named and still increasing!). She is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of South Australia and a Life Member of the Australian Society of Herpetologists. She received a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2014 for her contribution to science in the field of herpetology.

Anita Hansen has been an artist all her life, working in Tasmania, interstate and overseas. She holds a Master of Fine Arts, a Graduate Diploma in Plant and Wildlife Illustration and a Bachelor of Fine Art degree. She recently completed her PhD at the University of Tasmania, School of Art, examining the significance of nineteenth century natural history art and belonging. Examination of the collections of major museums, libraries and galleries in Tasmania provided the basis of the study. She is now concentrating on her art practice that is based on natural history and the environment.

Stephen Harris is currently the Principal Research Advisor in the Invasive Species Branch of the Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment. He was previously the department’s Senior Botanist for over twenty years. He has a Master of Science for ecological studies of Callitris tree species and was awarded a PhD in environmental policy. He has contributed to many national committees and working groups over the years. Dr Harris is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Queensland and has published many scientific papers and books, especially on island ecology. He has a long-standing interest in early scientific exploration and is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London.

Tuesday 2nd September 2014, 8.00 pm
Royal Society Room, Customs House Building, TMAG,
19 Davey St. Hobart

All welcome and admission is free

 

 

 

 

Bookending Tasmanian Education from Antarctica to Thailand – Presentation by Niall Doran Tuesday 5 August 2014

The Royal Society of Tasmania invites you to celebrate National Science Week with a special lecture by Dr Niall Doran:

Bookending Tasmanian Education from Antarctica to Thailand

Tuesday 5 August 2014, 8.00 pm
Royal Society Room, Customs House Building, TMAG,
19 Davey St. Hobart

Dr Niall Doran will explain the work of the Bookend Trust, a
philanthropic education initiative that uses multimedia and film to
inspire students and assist them to build their own careers.
Dr Doran is a zoologist with an extensive background in
environmental management in both government and the private
sector.

All welcome and admission is free

Exercise Hypertension: Physiology and Clinical Consequences – Tuesday 1 July – Martin Schultz – Doctoral Award Winner 2013

All are warmly invited to the lecture on Tuesday 1 July at  8 pm in the Royal Society Room, TMAG (entry from Dunn Place off Davey Street).

Dr Martin Schultz is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Menzies Research Institute Tasmania. Martin began PhD studies at the Menzies Research Institute Tasmania in 2009, joining the blood pressure research group. He completed undergraduate study at the University of Ballarat, Victoria in exercise science and has a Master of applied science (exercise rehabilitation). Martin is also a full member and accredited exercise physiologist (AEP) with Exercise and Sports Science Australia (ESSA). His research interests include cardiovascular physiology, hypertension and exercise haemodynamics. In 2014, he was awarded a prestigious Heart Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to continue his research into clinical and physiological aspects of exercise hypertension.

Dr Schultz’s PhD thesis (awarded in 2013) focused on physiological and clinical aspects of high blood pressure (BP) or ‘hypertension’. Hypertension is a leading risk factor for premature death relating to cardiovascular (CV) disease. Traditionally, CV risk associated with high BP is assessed via measurement of BP at rest in the clinic. However, although some individuals may have normal BP at rest, they may experience excessive elevation in BP with exercise; a condition termed ‘Exercise Hypertension’. This presentation will outline the primary findings of Dr Schultz’s thesis, which highlighted the prognostic importance and underlying CV risk associated with exercise hypertension, as well as its fundamental physiological determinants.

WINTER SERIES LECTURE – TUESDAY 15 JULY – POWER OPTIONS FOR THE FUTURE

Session Two: Solar, Hydro and Shale Gas Energy Futures

Tuesday, 15 July, 7.30 – 9.30 pm Sir Stanley Burbury Theatre, University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay
Solar Power – Bruce Godfrey – ATSE

Hydro Power & the Tasmanian Power Scene – Marian Piekutowski – Chief Engineer System Integration, Hydro Tasmania

Shale Gas – Vaughan Beck – ATSE

 

Forum: Q&A

WINTER SERIES LECTURES – TUESDAY 17 JUNE – POWER OPTIONS FOR THE FUTURE

Session One:  Wind, Coal and Nuclear Energy Futures

Tuesday,17 June, 7.30 – 9.30 pm – Sir Stanley Burbury Theatre,  University of  Tasmania, Sandy Bay

Chair: Alan Finkell, President of Australian Academy  of  Technology, Sciences and Engineering (ATSE)

Coal Power – Barry Waining

Wind Generation – Andrew  Halley –  Transend, Tasmania

Nuclear Power –  John Soderbaum – Australian Academy of Technology,  Sciences  and Engineering (ATSE)

Forum: Q&A

 

COAL-RST-ATSE Presentation   Slides from Barry Waining

Nuclear Power for Australia Final  Slides from John Soderbaum

Power Options Lecture Series 2014 – Wind_Final  Slides from Andrew Halley

What is special about Australian Caves and Karst? – Andy Spate -Tuesday June 3 – 8.00pm

 

What is special about Australian Caves and Karst?  Presented by Andy Spate in The Royal Society Room -Tuesday June 3 – 8.00pm

 

Andy Spate has been involved in cave and karst science and management for more than 50 years. His professional career started in the CSIRO Division of Land Research and then moved on to the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service where he was a Senior Project Officer specialising in earth sciences as well as firefighting and other national park activities.

He retired in 2001 to set up his own consulting company, Optimal Karst Management, which has been retained in all Australian states, and in New Zealand, South Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, South Africa and elsewhere to provide cave and karst management advice. Some of these consultancies have involved the nomination of World Heritage sites and UNESCO Global Geoparks or the review of nomination documents and management plans for such sites.

He is the author, or co-author of more than 140 published papers, conference presentations, book chapters and substantive consultancy reports.

 

Australia has 19 World Heritage Properties – many of these have karst-associated values. We had one UNESCO Global Geopark until it was torpedoed by stupid political ideologies. Australia has a program of recognising significant ‘national’ landscapes – again many of these have karst values and provide some recognition of karst.

There are other areas such as the Nullarbor limestone karst and wonderful sandstone karst and pseudokarst landscapes of northern Australia which are worthy of World Heritage or similar status which are again precluded from proper recognition by Australia’s political and cultural systems.

This talk reviews the karst areas of Australia in regard to their international and national significance and comments on what Australia’s karst resources
offer the nation.

Vaccination: its Benefits, Risks and Problems of Community Acceptance – Dr Katie Flanagan – 25 May 2014

Dr Katie Flanagan,Head of Infectious Diseases Services, LGH, Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Immunology, Monash University will present

Vaccination, its Benefits, Risks and Problems of Community Acceptance

in the Meeting Room, QVMAG at Inveresk
2.00 pm Sunday 25th May 2014
Admission: $5 General Public, $3 Friends of the Museum, $2 Students
Free for members of The Royal Society of Tasmania

To assist us with the organization of this event
RSVP by Thursday 22nd May 2014:
Email bookings@qvmag.tas.gov.au or telephone 6323 3798

Dr Flanagan will briefly discuss the history of vaccination and describe how vaccines work. She will go on to describe epidemiological and scientific evidence for the benefits of vaccination, including their effects on immunity to other infections. She will describe risk in terms of adverse reactions to vaccines, including some of the more controversial issues that have been widely advertised in the media, some leading to a decrease in vaccine uptake. This will lead to a discussion regarding community acceptance of vaccination, some of the reasons for vaccine refusal, and the effects this is having on disease incidence throughout the world. Hopefully this talk will dispel some of the myths held by the general public, and provide the evidence base for modern day vaccination practices.

Dr Katie Flanagan, BA(Hons) MBBS DTM&H MA PhD CCST FRCP FRACP, leads the Infectious Diseases Service at Launceston General Hospital in Tasmania, and is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the Dept of Immunology at Monash University in Melbourne. She obtained a degree in Physiological Sciences from Oxford University in 1988, and her MBBS from the University of London in 1992. She is a UK and Australia accredited Infectious Diseases Physician. She did a PhD in malaria immunology based at Oxford University (1997 – 2000). She was previously Head of Infant Immunology Research at the MRC Laboratories in The Gambia from 2005-11 where she conducted multiple

“Volcanoes on the seafloor” presented by Professor Jocelyn McPhie Tuesday May 6th 2014

 

Tuesday 6 May 8.00 pm Royal Society Room

Professor Jocelyn McPhie is a geologist specialising in volcanology. She completed undergraduate and post-graduate degrees at Macquarie University and the University of New England, followed by a Fulbright Fellowship in the USA, a von Humboldt Fellowship in Germany, and a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship in Canberra. She then joined the University of Tasmania where she is currently the Head of Earth Sciences. She teaches in the undergraduate program, and conducts research in physical volcanology and links between volcanic and ore-forming hydrothermal processes. Her expertise in unravelling complicated volcanic successions has led to numerous consultancies conducted for companies exploring for ore deposits in volcanic regions.
Volcanoes on land regularly capture our attention, usually because they have produced spectacular or destructive eruptions. Land volcanoes have also been the focus of conventional volcanological research. However, volcanoes on the modern seafloor are more abundant than those on land, and submarine volcanic successions dominate the rocks that form the continents. Submarine volcanoes are also closely associated with important metal ore deposits. Research on underwater eruptions uses data from a combination of field work, modelling, and experiments. Of particular importance for eruption dynamics are the different physical properties of water versus air as the medium in which eruptions operate. Research underway at UTas has demonstrated that these physical properties have a major impact on subaqueous explosive eruptions, leading to the definition of a new eruption style. Our current research is focussed on devising a practical, intensity-based classification of submarine eruptions that will streamline how we communicate and allow identification of key research questions going forward.

 

MR Banks Lecture – Prof. Emily Hilder – Taking separations from the laboratory to the sample to the individual – April 1 2014

Taking separations from the laboratory to the sample to the individual – Prof. Emily Hilder

 

The fundamental physical processes of separation science were identified over a century ago, with progress in the field since driven by the demands of biological, pharmaceutical, environmental and forensic science and realised through developments in technology. With these developments has come the demand for faster separations of more complex samples, using smaller, ideally portable devices. This presentation will introduce examples of how technology for separation science is being made smaller, faster and ‘smarter’ with a focus on new developments in materials science that are making this possible.

Emily Hilder is Professor of Chemistry in the School of Physical Sciences and Australian Centre for Research on Separation Science (ACROSS) and Director of the ARC Training Centre for Portable Analytical Separation Technologies at the University of Tasmania. Her research focuses on the design and application of new polymeric materials to improve analytical separations and on ways to make analytical systems smaller and more portable. She has over 100 peer-reviewed publications and is an Editor of the Journal of Separation Science.

All are warmly invited to the lecture on Tuesday 1 April at 8 pm in the Royal Society Room, TMAG (entry from Dunn Place off Davey Street).

 

The Tasmanian Aborigines and the Constitution of Modern Human Behaviour – Associate Professor Richard Cosgrove – 27 April 2014

Assoc. Prof. Richard Cosgrove will present  ‘The Tasmanian Aborigines and the Constitution of Modern Human Behaviour.’

in the Meeting Room, QVMAG at Inveresk – 2.00 pm Sunday 27th April 2014
Admission: $5 General Public, $3 Friends of the Museum, $2 Students
Free for members of the Royal Society of Tasmania

To assist us with the organization of this event
please RSVP by Thursday 24th April 2014:
Email bookings@qvmag.tas.gov.au or telephone 6323 3798

Research has shown that for the past 40,000 years, the Tasmanian Aborigines used a flaked stone technology similar to European Neanderthals, who lived between c.300,000 to 30,000 years ago. Paradoxically, the people who first crossed by boat from South East Asia to Sahul, the early land mass of New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania, were anatomically and behaviourally modern. They possessed a hafted stone axe technology, ocean going watercraft, practised art, caught deep sea fish, and had ceremonial burials. In this regard, Australia and Tasmania are unique, as there is no correlation between the appearance of these modern behaviours, and the material cultural ‘package’ used in Europe to identify the point at which such behaviours emerged. The purpose of this presentation it to briefly discuss the archaeological variability from Sahul in a global context, and to discuss the Tasmanian Aboriginal people’s response to the changing ice age environments.

Assoc. Prof. Richard Cosgrove gained a BA from the Australian National University, followed by a PhD. on Tasmanian Aboriginal archaeology in 1992, focusing on the comparative palaeoecology and ice age landscapes occupied by Aboriginal people and their habitation sites of Southwest and Southeast Tasmania. He has research and teaching experience in human behavioural ecology, rock art studies, palaeoecology, zooarchaeology, stone artefact analysis and hunter-gatherer archaeology. His field work and research has included both national and international sites in England, China, Jordan and France. He has advised the Tasmanian forest industry, ICOMOS, the World Heritage Centre, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Lands and Sea Council, and has worked closely with both Aboriginal communities and Environmental Protection agencies on indigenous cultural heritage management.