Archived News for Research Sector Professionals

The University of Western Australia has joined the global supercomputing ranks after the purchase of the new Fornax supercomputer.

The Victorian Government has announced $500,000 in funding for the creation of the new centre for Geological Carbon Storage in a bid to support the emerging Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) industry.

The Western Australian Government has opened a grain research facility aimed at better understanding genetic modification.

A new integrated field and laboratory complex at Merredin in Western Australia has been launched as part of the WA Government’s $9 million contribution to the New Genes for New Environments project.

The Victorian Government has announced a new $15 million program to promote demand-driven innovation in Victoria's healthcare system.

The Health Market Validation Program (Health MVP) is a competitive grants program that will leverage the power of government-as-customer to support the development of innovative health technology solutions to identified problems facing Victoria's health sector.

Minister for Technology Gordon Rich-Phillips said the program aimed to support the growth of innovative small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in order to deliver economic benefits for Victoria including job creation, export and investment opportunities, and increased productivity.

"We are seeking innovative solutions to identified healthcare challenges to achieve better health outcomes, improve healthcare service delivery and provide economic benefits for Victoria," Mr Rich-Phillips said.

The Health MVP will follow a three stage process. In the first stage, health-focused public sector agencies will be the 'customers' who can specify their needs and the benefits expected to be achieved from addressing the problem. In the second stage, SMEs (and collaborating partners) will be invited to submit technology solutions to selected healthcare problems.

Successful projects will receive funding of up to $100,000 for feasibility studies to investigate the viability of the proposed solution. Projects will then be assessed for further funding of up to $1.5 million to develop the technology and undertake validation activities.

"This is the first time in the world that this model will be piloted targeting the use of innovative technology to improve healthcare and productivity in healthcare service delivery," Mr Rich-Phillips said.

For further information and to register for updates, visit www.business.vic.gov.au/hmvp 

The University of Melbourne has launched its new Centre for Neural Engineering, aimed at building a more complete understanding of the human brain and the diseases that affect the central nervous system. 

Australian National University astronomer Professor Brian Schmidt has received the Nobel Prize for Physics, sharing the prestigious award with two US scientists for their studies of exploding stars that revealed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

A team of US, Dutch and Australian scientists have published a paper that estimates the global rate of photosynthesis, the chemical process that governs how ocean and land plants absorb and release carbon dioxide. 

The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has conducted research into government grant funding mechanisms in the medical and health fields of research, finding that the selection of research projects is significantly affected by chance.

Researchers at Melbourne’s Murdoch Children’s Research Institute have announced a research breakthrough that could lead to a new approach to the treatment of arthritis.

The Technology Transfer Offices of the three South Australian universities - University of Adelaide, Flinders University and the University of South Australia  - are jointly presenting research achievements at the first OpportUNIty S.A. Innovation Showcase.

The Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute (APHCRI) at the Australian National University has been awarded $5 million in Commonwealth funding for the establishment of two new Centres of Research Excellence (CRE) in primary health care.

The Northern Territory Government has announced $1.5 million in funding for the establishment of Australia’s first child development research centre.

The Federal Government has released the 2011 Strategic Roadmap for Australian Research Infrastructure which sets out the Government’s priority areas for national, collaborative research infrastructure over the next five to ten years.

The Victorian State Government has announced a new laboratory which will act as a test-bed for businesses to explore and develop new applications for the use of new high-speed broadband which will be delivered through the National Broadband Network (NBN)

Deakin University will invest $5 million over the next five years in an initiative set to place its Warrnambool Campus in the international spotlight for marine and aquaculture research and teaching.

The Federal Government has announced Australian of the Year Simon McKeon will chair a new independent review of health and medical research in Australia and recommend a 10-year strategic health and medical research plan for the nation. 

NASA's new Aquarius instrument has produced its first global map of the salinity of the ocean surface, providing an early glimpse of the mission's anticipated discoveries.

Aquarius, which is aboard the Aquarius/SAC-D (Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas) observatory, is making NASA's first space observations of ocean surface salinity variations -- a key component of Earth's climate. Salinity changes are linked to the cycling of freshwater around the planet and influence ocean circulation.

"Aquarius' salinity data are showing much higher quality than we expected to see this early in the mission," said Aquarius Principal Investigator Gary Lagerloef of Earth & Space Research in Seattle. "Aquarius soon will allow scientists to explore the connections between global rainfall, ocean currents and climate variations."

The new map, which shows a tapestry of salinity patterns, demonstrates Aquarius' ability to detect large-scale salinity distribution features clearly and with sharp contrast. The map is a composite of the data since Aquarius became operational on Aug. 25. The mission was launched June 10 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Aquarius/SAC-D is a collaboration between NASA and Argentina's space agency, Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE).

"Aquarius/SAC-D already is advancing our understanding of ocean surface salinity and Earth's water cycle," said Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division at agency headquarters in Washington. "Aquarius is making continuous, consistent, global measurements of ocean salinity, including measurements from places we have never sampled before."

To produce the map, Aquarius scientists compared the early data with ocean surface salinity reference data. Although the early data contain some uncertainties, and months of additional calibration and validation work remain, scientists are impressed by the data's quality.

"Aquarius has exposed a pattern of ocean surface salinity that is rich in variability across a wide range of scales," said Aquarius science team member Arnold Gordon, professor of oceanography at Columbia University in Palisades, N.Y., and at the university's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "This is a great moment in the history of oceanography. The first image raises many questions that oceanographers will be challenged to explain." 

The map shows several well-known ocean salinity features such as higher salinity in the subtropics; higher average salinity in the Atlantic Ocean compared to the Pacific and Indian oceans; and lower salinity in rainy belts near the equator, in the northernmost Pacific Ocean and elsewhere. These features are related to large-scale patterns of rainfall and evaporation over the ocean, river outflow and ocean circulation. Aquarius will monitor how these features change and study their link to climate and weather variations.

Other important regional features are evident, including a sharp contrast between the arid, high-salinity Arabian Sea west of the Indian subcontinent, and the low-salinity Bay of Bengal to the east, which is dominated by the Ganges River and south Asia monsoon rains. The data also show important smaller details, such as a larger-than-expected extent of low-salinity water associated with outflow from the Amazon River. 

Aquarius was built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., for NASA's Earth Systems Science Pathfinder Program. JPL is managing Aquarius through its commissioning phase and will archive mission data. Goddard will manage Aquarius mission operations and process science data. CONAE provided the SAC-D spacecraft and the mission operations center.

The new map is available at: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14786 .

The Federal Government has announced the appointment and re-appointment of directors of the Cotton Research and Development Corporation.

The Federal Government has announced the successful completion of a $10 million key research milestone at the Otway Project, with the Federal Minister for Innovation Senator Kim Carr saying the completion will accelerate the development of the carbon capture and storage (CSS) industry around the world.