The Royal Society of Tasmania

The advancement of knowledge

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April at QVMAG – Prof. Barry Brook

In the next instalment of the northern lecture series, Prof. Brook considers existential environmental threats facing humanity during the 21st century and speculates on the long-term future of ‘humanity’ (or our descendants) should we progresses beyond this zone of immediate global risk.

Barry lives on a bush property in the Huon Valley. He has published three books, over 350 refereed papers, and many popular articles. His research focuses on the impacts of global change on biodiversity, ecological dynamics, paleoenvironments, energy, and simulation models.

 

 

Dr Costan Magnussen – March at QVMAG

The 2019 Launceston lecture series continues on 24 March at QVMAG. The speaker is Dr Costan Magnussen, a Fellow at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research in Hobart. His topic goes straight to the heart.

Costan has a joint appointment as adjunct professor of cardiovascular epidemiology at the University of Turku, Finland. He completed his undergraduate training and PhD at the University of Tasmania, before taking postdoctoral positions at the Research Centre of Applied and Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Turku, Finland and Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne.

25 Nov. – Tasmania’s Forgotten Emus – David Maynard, at QVMAG

The November lecture for the Northern Branch of the Royal Society will take place on Sunday the 25th of November at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Inveresk, at 1.15 pm. The lecture by David Maynard entitled Tasmania’s Lost Emus will be preceeded by the northern launch of the latest Royal Society publication Poles Apart: Fascination, fame and folly.

 

The Royal Society of Tasmania – 2018 Launceston Lecture Series

Admission: $6 general public

$4 QVMAG Friends, members of Launceston Historical Society and students

Free for members of The Royal Society of Tasmania

 

Tasmania’s Lost Emus

David Maynard

Tasmania’s extinct emu is less well known than the iconic thylacine, yet just as deserving of recognition. Recent research has aged skeletal material, and DNA work has shed light on the relationships between populations. There are many theories as to why the emu became extinct so soon after European arrival in Tasmania. David Maynard will review the Tasmanian emu and current research results, and discuss the drivers for extinction.

 

David has been the curator of Natural Sciences at QVMAG for six years, and in that role he works to preserve a record of Northern Tasmania’s biodiversity. Prior to taking this position he was an academic at the Australian Maritime College and University of Tasmania where he specialized in fishing gear technology, by-catch reduction and marine biodiversity. The role of curator has allowed David to do something he enjoys – continuing to learn. He has a growing understanding of terrestrial rather than marine fauna, and is focusing on Northern Tasmania’s insect and spider diversity. He also looks into Tasmania’s past, trying to understand how Tasmania has changed over the last 50,000 years.

 

The presentation of this lecture is generously supported by

 

 

 

 

 

Dr Patsy Cameron AO – Voices from the Other Side of the Colonial Sea Frontier – 23 September 2018 – QVMAG Inveresk

Tasmania – 2018 Launceston Lecture Series

 

Dr Patsy Cameron AO

Voices from the Other Side of

the Colonial Sea Frontier

in the Meeting Room, QVMAG at Inveresk I

1.30 pm Sunday 23rd September 2018

Admission: $6 General Public,

$4 QVMAG Friends, members of Launceston Historical Society and Students

Free for members of The Royal Society of Tasmania

 

Patsy Cameron grew up on Flinders Island and traces her Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage through her mother’s line to the northeast Coastal Plains Nation and the east coast Oyster Bay Nation. For over forty years Patsy has been a passionate champion for Aboriginal education and the promotion of cultural heritage and traditional practice.  Patsy has a Bachelor of Arts with major studies in Archaeologyand Geography and a Master of Arts in Aboriginal History. Her MA thesis Grease and Ochre: The blending of two cultures at the colonial sea frontierwas published by Fuller’s Bookshop in 2011. She was inducted into the Tasmanian Women’s Honour Roll in 2006 and received a prestigious honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Tasmania in August 2016 for her outstanding contribution to the Tasmanian community. In June 2017 Patsy was awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) on the Queen’s birthday honour list.

Most accounts of early contact relations between the Straitsmen and their Aboriginal wives, with whom they made homes on the small islands of Bass Strait during the first decades of the 1800s, are permeated with characterisations of slavery and savagery. Much of the colonial record was written from afar, and many who did observe the sea frontier at close quarters had reasons to present biased viewpoints. This presentation, at stark counterpoint to those white masculine colonial narratives that pervade understandings of Tasmanian Aboriginal history, allows the voices of Islanders from the other side of the sea frontier to finally be heard.

 

GENEROUSLY SUPPORTS THE PRESENTATION OF THIS LECTURE

 

Rise of the Drones: how Unmanned Aircraft Systems create new opportunities for environmental remote sensing and geosciences

Tuesday 4th September 2018, 8:00 pm – The Royal Society Room, TMAG, Hobart

In recent years, the increased use of ‘drones’ in civilian applications has received both positive and negative coverage in the media. Many find the thought of flying robots that ‘invade’ people’s lives or pose risks to passenger airplanes too intimidating and unacceptable. However, this presentation will show that drones (preferably termed Unmanned Aircraft Systems or UAS) fill a novel and exciting niche when it comes to observing, mapping, and monitoring the environment at unprecedented levels of detail.

The TerraLuma research project at the University of Tasmania has developed novel tools and algorithms for environmental remote sensing applications and aerial surveys using UAS. We have worked on a range of applications, including precision agriculture and viticulture; mapping and monitoring vegetation in remote locations such as Antarctica; deriving 3D tree structure for forest inventories; landslide deformation monitoring; 3D stock pile and quarry surveys and volume estimations; assessment of coastal erosion; mapping of geological structures; better understanding functions of natural vegetation communities such as saltmarshes; transforming images into knowledge.

Associate Professor Lucieer will give an overview of the technology and exciting applications of UAS remote sensing. I will share our practical field experiences, our ups and downs, dos and don’ts from the last nine years of operating UAS for remote sensing research.

Arko Lucieer is an Associate Professor in Remote Sensing at The University of Tasmania, Australia. He leads the TerraLumaresearch group, focusing on the development and application of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), sensor integration, and image processing techniques for environmental, agricultural, and high-precision aerial mapping applications. Arko teaches remote sensing and GIS at the undergraduate and graduate levels. He obtained his PhD degree in 2004 from the International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) and Utrecht University in The Netherlands. His current focus is on quantitative remote sensing of vegetation with the use of sophisticated UAS sensors to better understand the structure, distribution, and functioning of vegetation, and to bridge the observational scale gap between field samples and satellite observations.

Associate Professor Arko Lucieer
Geography and Spatial Sciences, School of Technology, Environments and Design
College of Sciences and Engineering, UTAS

https://terraluma.net

Associate Professor Jonathan Binns – Why does an Engineer need a PhD? – Sunday 26 August 2018, 1.15 pm, Meeting Room, QVMAG Inveresk, Launceston

The program will commence with reports by Rose Donnelly (Year 12) and Dominic Grosewill (Year 10) on their experiences at the 2018 London International Youth ScienceForum and the YouthConference of the Australian & New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science.

This will be followed by Professor Binns’ lecture on the role of research in the diverse and complex disciplines in engineering.

Engineering is an inherently applied set of disciplines. As such research and development often involves little “r” and big “D”. However, the definition of engineering from Engineers Australia is stated as “Engineers arescientists, inventors, designers, builders and great thinkers. They improve the state of the world, amplify human capability and make people’s lives safer and easier.” Improving human capability requires research, research requires research training. To fulfil the expectations of engineering we need to have R&D Engineers qualified with PhDs. Jonathan will explain high level R&D from engineers in fast ferry design, submarine analysis and America’s Cup technology.

America’s Cup Series, 2017, Bermuda, J. Binns

Jonathan has trained and worked as a design and research engineer. His primary expertise is in a variety of model and full scale experiments as well as numerical flow predictions. He has experience in hydrodynamic and structural design, research, development and simulation of marine craft.

America’s Cup Series, 2017, Bermuda, J. Binns

Jonathan has taken a leading role in research across the whole of the Australian Maritime College in his roles as Associate Dean of Research and Director of the ARC Research Training Centre for Naval Design and Manufacturing (RTCNDM).  The RTCNDM is a training centre whose mission is to create a new cohort of PhD trained engineers for the naval design, manufacturing and sustainment of a global supply chain.

 

 

 

GENEROUSLY SUPPORTS THE PRESENTATION OF THIS LECTURE

 

 

 

Dr Karin Orth – Mega Volcanic Eruptions and the Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time – 1.30 pm Sunday 24th June 2018 – Meeting Room, QVMAG at Inveresk

GENEROUSLY SUPPORTS THE PRESENTATION OF THIS LECTURE

Five near extinguishments of life on Earth have been related to changes in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. Extra-terrestrial meteorites are often blamed, but Earth’s own forces may be suspect. Heat within the Earth builds volcanoes. Even small volcanic eruptions have local, regional and global climate effects. Giant lava fields coincide with the three most recent mass extinction events. Scaling up impacts from small eruptions to such voluminous eruptions indicates that volcanism is a major contributor to climatic disruption, with dire consequences for life.
Dr Karin Orth lectures in Earth Sciences at the University of Tasmania. After a primary degree at Monash University and working for the Victorian Geological Survey, she gained her PhD in Tasmania. She has worked on ancient volcanic rocks in various regions across Australia, most recently on a very large field of ancient volcanic rocks that stretch across the Kimberley of northern Western Australia.

Lynette Ross – Science and nature: Government Cottage and the Franklins – Meeting Room, QVMAG Inveresk @1.30 pm Sunday May 27 2018

The primary function of Launceston’s Government Cottage was accommodation for the Lieutenant-Governor and other high-ranking officials either visiting or living in the town. However during the years the Franklins were resident in Van Diemen’s Land their penchant for the sciences added another facet to the complexity of its story. Lynette will reveal how the building was utilised to promote the study of the natural world that gave impetus to scientific endeavours in the north including the establishment of the Launceston Horticultural Society and the consolidation of the Royal Society.
Lynette Ross has worked in the fields of history and archaeology since the late 1980s. Her career includes positions at UTAS, at Port Arthur as Heritage Officer and working as a private contractor.  In the late 1990s she was engaged by the Launceston City Council to compile a history of the Government Cottage that used to lie in the north eastern part of what is now City Park. The book on the subject is being readied for publication and this lecture is based on one of its chapters.

 

GENEROUSLY SUPPORTS THE PRESENTATION OF THIS LECTURE

Prof Hamish Maxwell Stuart – Health, Height and History in Victoria and Tasmania 1850 – 1920 – Sun April 22 @1.30 pm Meeting Room, Inveresk QVMAG

We can tell a lot from the way that people grow. The extent to which we are able to attain our genetically programmed height depends upon the conditions we encounter in utero, early childhood and adolescence. Poor sanitation, insufficient diets and other environmental insults can all impact on the timing of growth and the stature we attain in adulthood. In recent years, historians have started using records that provide details of height to explore variations in the conditions encountered by children born in different places. This presentation uses information about soldiers and prisoners recruited or discharged from gaol in the period 1865-1920 to explore variations in growth patterns in Victoria and Tasmania for men born in the period 1850-1899.
Hamish Maxwell-Stewart is a professor of social history at the University of Tasmania. He was born in Nigeria but brought up in the UK. He is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh (MA in History, PhD in Economic and Social History). He worked for the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Glasgow before migrating to Tasmania in 1997. Since then he has worked on both the Launceston and Hobart campuses of the University of Tasmania as well as spending extended periods of time at the University of Texas, Austin, and University College, Dublin (where he held the Keith Cameron Chair in Australian History). In recent years he has worked closely with the Tasmanian Archive to build cradle to grave population datasets in order to explore the long-term impacts of convict transportation and the pathways responsible for the intergenerational transmission of inequality.

 

GENEROUSLY SUPPORTS THE PRESENTATION OF THIS LECTURE