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2009-11-22 A Gunn and two Hookers - Part two Last week Dr Jim Endersby, from the University of Sussex in the UK, told the tale of how Joseph Dalton Hooker met Tasmanian Ronald Gunn who, over the years, sent hundreds of carefully dried and preserved specimens of unknown flora to Kew, where Hooker named and classified his finds. Today Europe's museums and botanic gardens are full of dried plants, stuffed animals etc, as a result of the dedication of these men.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-11-15 A Gunn and two Hookers - Part one Dr Jim Endersby is a lecturer in British History at the University of Sussex in the UK and he's the author of a book called Imperial Nature - Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science. Joseph Hooker was an internationally renowned botanist and a close friend and early supporter of Charles Darwin and he was one of the first British men of science to become a full-time professional. Dr Jim Endersby talks about Hooker's career and offers interesting insights into the 19th century na ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-11-08 The role of undergraduate education in Australia Michael Bradley is in his 4th year studying engineering at the University of Sydney. In this talk he discusses some interesting thoughts about the role of university education.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-11-01 The evolution of world peace In recent history we've seen numerous acts of global terrorism, invasions, genocides, wars and the growing threat of nuclear proliferation. Dr Scott Field is a lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of International Studies at the University of California Berkeley and he argues that we are on the path to eventual world peace.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-10-25 Women, science and politics Politics used to be known as 'a man's business'. However, the situation seems to be changing globally to some extent. Emeritus Professor Sol Encel from the University of New South Wales looks at female politicians, past and present, and found that a large number of them have a scientific background.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-10-18 Professor Ian Plimer replies to his critics In June this year Professor Kurt Lambeck, President of the Australian Academy of Science, discussed Professor Ian Plimer's book Heaven and Earth. Professor Plimer has been criticised in some circles about his views on climate change and in this talk he answers his critics.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-10-11 How T.H. Huxley helped me teach my students how to write Dr Susan Lawler is a teacher of evolution and genetics at the Albury/Wodonga campus of La Trobe University. The lack of writing skills in her students gave her the idea to correspond with her students as T.H. Huxley.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-10-04 Is our sustainability science racist? Dr Ariel Salleh is a sociologist in political economy at the University of Sydney and today she focuses on the ecological debt notched up by affluent societies as main contributors to global warming.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-09-27 The Coolibah story Paediatrican Dr John Boulton retired from the University of Newcastle in 2005 and now works part-time in Aboriginal Child Health in the Kimberley region in Western Australia. Recently he had an opportunity to glimpse the life of an Aboriginal man called Coolibah who was looking after his sick 3-year-old grandson, who was suffering with severe nephritis. So, what will it take for an Aboriginal child to have the same life chances for health as a white child?Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-09-20 Dr Samuel Johnson's illnesses Medical historian Dr Jim Leavesley from Western Australia remembers Dr Samuel Johnson's illnesses on the 300th anniversary of his birth on September 18, 1709. Dr Johnson is famous for his dictionary which was published in 1755 and he was plagued from birth by many illnesses.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-09-06 Science and religion revisited Author Larry Buttrose has just published a book called Tales of the Popes: From Eden to El Dorado which looks at the lives of the popes from the inception of the papacy up to the burning at the stake of the humanist philosopher Giordano Bruno in Rome in 1600.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-03-08 The Waddi treeOn the fringes of the Simpson Desert, separated by hundreds of kilometres, are three stands of Waddi trees which are a miracle of arid zone botany. Today PhD candidate Jacqueline Hodder from the University of Melbourne tells the story of this remarkable tree which grows up to 18 metres.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-08-30 Fuel saving follies Author Gerard Ryle, while doing research for his book Firepower, discovered that Australian investors have long had a weakness for fuel saving devices. There have been many famous names involved in this endeavour, such as Peter Brock and Pro Hart. As it turns out, no one so far has come up with a genuine fuel-saving device and fortunes have been won and lost in this attempt to revolutionise the car industry.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-08-16 Water wars Will there be wars about water? Some people think so. Wendy Barnaby, who's a journalist and author from London, used to think so, but has changed her mind. In this talk she explains why.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-08-09 Language and prehistory Professor Claire Bowern from the Linguistics Department at Yale University in Connecticut, US, tells us of her research into the languages and history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-08-02 Preventing osteoporosis Professor Christopher Nordin from the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science in Adelaide has grave concerns that there is no primary prevention program for osteoporosis in Australia.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-07-26 Zen, the science of clean engines and bureaucracy Marcus Clayton from Melbourne outlines some of the bureaucratic obstacles he and his business partner have experienced in trying to get alternative technologies accepted.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-07-19 Dealing with complex health problems Emeritus Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales, Ian Webster, talks about the inadequacies of the health care system to deal properly with health problems of the homeless and mentally ill people.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-07-12 Fructose Author of Sweet Poison, David Gillespie,discusses the effect of fructose on our bodies.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-07-05 The Chamberlen family - barber/surgeons 440 years ago Williams Chamberlen and his wife fled from religious persecution in France to Southampton in England.The Chamberlen family made history by using obstetrical forceps, which they managed to keep a secret within the family for about 125 years. Medical historian Dr Jim Leavesley has the story.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-06-28 Body integrity identity disorder Earlier this year the ABC TV Science program Catalyst featured the amazing story of Robert Vickers who, by the age of ten, felt that his left leg didn't belong to him. For 30 years he tried to damage his leg to force an amputation, without success. At 41 he froze the leg with dry ice which resulted in the desired amputation. This is his personal story.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-06-21 Group A streptococcus - the bacterium that links the heart and the throat Dr Melina Georgousakis from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research focuses her attention on Group A streptococcus, which is also responsible for rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-06-14 Thinking about memes, minds and cultural evolution Educationalist and commentator on educational issues, Don Tinkler from Melbourne pondered the question: Did culture determine learning or could learning determine culture? This led him to the need for research into the science of memetics and how this might be applied to educational theory and practice.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-06-07 Comments on Heaven and Earth: Global Warming: The Missing Science Today Professor Kurt Lambeck, president of the Australian Academy of Science, discusses Professor Ian Plimer's book Heaven and Earth.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-05-31 Science and Christianity: hand in glove Today we hear from Bill Hall, who has contributed many talks over the years. Bill died recently and in this talk, which he recorded not so long ago, he discusses how science and Christianity can complement each other.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-05-24 The trigger for the clathrate gun Melbourne computer specialist Geoff Hudson explains what clathrates are and the danger they pose to climate change.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-05-17 Corruption in our world - part two of two talks Last week Professor Adam Graycar, Head of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers State University in New Jersey, talked about how corruption affects everybody. Today he suggests ways of controlling and combating corruption.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-05-10 Corruption in our world - part one of two talks Today Professor Adam Graycar, Head of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers State University in New Jersey, discusses how corruption in our world affects everybody.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-05-03 Smallpox in Sydney: 1789 Historian Craig Mear from Coledale in New South Wales tells us about the appearance of smallpox in the Indigenous population living around Sydney Harbour in 1789.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-04-26 Pelican stories for the future Dr Libby Robin from the National Museum of Australia in Canberra is Senior Editor of a recently released book called Boom and Bust: Bird Stories for a Dry Country and today she ponders why pelicans fly inland after rain, even though they never saw it falling. How do they know there's water available in usually dry desert areas?Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-04-19 Welcome to gravitational astronomy 101 Today's Ockham's Razor is set 50 years into the future with Professor David Blair from the School of Physics at the University of Western Australia welcoming students to a new course in astronomy. The threat of a cosmic bullet threatening life on earth is very real and a sound knowledge of graviational astronomy in 2059 will be crucial to our survival.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-03-22 A Darwin tourist, Shrewsbury, England, February 12, 2009 Charles Darwin had his 200th birthday on February 12th, 2009 and Professor Karl Flessa from the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arizona, made the pilgrimage to Shrewsbury, the village where Darwin was born.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-03-15 The Manhattan Project for climate change The Manhattan Project was established to develop nuclear bombs and today computer programmer Geoff Hudson from Melbourne suggests that a similar program should be introduced to combat climate change.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-03-01 A noun in your auricle Dr Rob Morrison from Flinders University in Adelaide discusses how errors of grammar, punctuation and inaccurate scientific terminology can be misleading and complicate important social issues.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-02-22 Tramlines Retired chemist Dr Trevor McAllister looks at the history of the tram, from the first horse-drawn service to the technology that has created the electric trams.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-02-15 Mirror neurons and empathy for pain Professor John Bradshaw from Monash University in Melbourne discusses how some people when observing distress and pain in others experience it themselves. Or why, when we see people yawn we are compelled to do the same thing.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-02-08 Economic fiction - how Homo Sapiens could stop climate change Melbourne author Valerie Yule looks at the problem of waste, which is anything that becomes useless rubbish before it need be.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-02-08 Economic fiction - how Homo Sapiens could stop climate change Melbourne author Valerie Yule looks at the problem of waste, which is anything that becomes useless rubbish before it need be.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-02-01 Clocks and watches Bill Hall from Adelaide, who writes about collectables with his wife Dorothy, tells us about collectable clocks and watches and how much that antique clock or watch in your bottom drawer or on the mantlepiece might be worth.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2009-01-25 A piece of my mind Professor Alan Baxter, an immunologist at James Cook University in Townsville, talks about the history of neurological complications of viral diseases that could affect the brain and spinal cord and the history of rabies vaccination. Louis Pasteur's vaccine for rabies was first used clinically in 1885 and, while there were no reported complications in the first two years of treatment, problems with the vaccine appeared after that time.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2008-12-28 William of Ockham and the black death William of Ockham died of plague during the black death epidemic in a convent in Munich either in 1347 or 1349, the exact date is unknown. However, as the disease did not reach Munich until late 1348, the year of his death is more likely to have been 1349. Medical historian Dr Jim Leavesley from Margaret River in Western Australia, talks about this period and has set the time for this tribute half way between, to make this year the 660th anniversary of William of Ockham's death.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2008-12-21 Resilient cities and the crash The financial crash has an enormous impact on the global situation and Australia is no exception. Our cities are places where the crash hurts deeply. Many cities with their urban sprawl, poorly designed buildings and inefficient transport systems consume enormous quantities of fossil fuels and emit high levels of greenhouse gases. Professor Peter Newman from Curtin University in Perth, has some suggestions for the future of our cities.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2008-12-14 An innovator for the ages Professor Mark Dodgson, director of the Technology and Innovation Management Centre at the University of Queensland, nominates Josiah Wedgwood, founder of the Wedgwood Company, as one of the greatest innovators of all time.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2008-11-30 Innovation today, not tomorrow Professor Kurt Lambeck, President of the Australian Academy of Science, assesses the Cutler Report and the Green Paper, an outcome of the Review of the National Innovation System. He suggests ways in which Australia must increase its investment in science and technology.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2008-11-23 The meaning of life Dr Jack Carmody, who coordinates a postgraduate course in Medicine and Music at the University of Sydney, tells us amongst other things how hormones influence the brain, the march of DNA down generations and reproduction.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2008-11-16 The return of the Osprey Ospreys are a bird of prey and are found in costal regions worldwide. Unfortunately, in the UK at the start of the 1800s these birds were high on the list of species to be destroyed. Today Bob Holderness-Roddam, Project Officer with Volunteering Tasmania, tells of his experiences as a volunteer in Scotland in the 1960s, protecting the nests of the few remaining breeding birds.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2008-05-11 Secrets of the immune system To mark World Day of Immunology, which is held on April 29 each year, Professor Alan Baxter, President of the Australasian Society for Immunology, explains how our immune system works.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2008-05-04 A challenge to global warming orthodoxies - part two In part two of his talk about global warming Professor Don Aitkin explores why the issue of global warming is such a difficult one.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website
2008-04-06 The plea of the Great Barrier Reef Former Chief Scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science and author of A Reef in Time, Dr J.E.N. (Charlie) Veron, draws urgent attention to the devastation waiting in the wings for our beautiful Great Barrier Reef.Listen | Listen in your iPhone | |
