Blogs

Dr Paul Willis is a respected leader in the science community, and takes up his appointment at RiAus as the next step in an impressive career in science. Dr Willis' early interest in dinosaurs and fossils lead him to Sydney University to study zoology and geology, then on to further studies ... Continue Reading »

I love Autumn, watching the leaves change colour is a beautifully orchestrated spectacle. Within the temperate zone, autumn is marked by some very striking colour changes in leaves, prior to shedding (in biology we call this ‘abscission’). The reason for this visual exhibition, however, is still ... Continue Reading »

Continent lost beneath the ocean Article from BBC Creating perfect virtual humans Baby brains develop speech processes in the womb Article from Daily Mail Bendy batteries Article from NBC News Producing hydrogen from methane Article ... Continue Reading »

Recently I was taken to task by some of my Twitter followers for the seemingly outrageous claim that, because birds descended from dinosaurs, we ought to think of birds as still being dinosaurs. While this might be hard to take from a lay taxonomy where groups of animals and plants ... Continue Reading »

Last month I ventured into regional Victoria with our Free Range Science crew: Deb Shaw and Kiran Shettigara, to explore and explain the dinosaur delights around Inverloch. So this week I thought I’d compile a photo blog post of what we got ... Continue Reading »

When we look a little closer, nature can be breathtaking. Some spectacular examples of the microscopic world are on view as part of the Incredible Inner Space exhibition at RiAus, which runs until 22 November 2012. These images are more than just pretty pictures of the microscopic world. Amongst ... Continue Reading »

Mark Tester is Professor of Plant Physiology in the School of Agriculture, Food & Wine, University of Adelaide, based in the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics and is Director of the Australian Plant Phenomics Facility. Mark led the establishment of the APPF, a $55m organisation that ... Continue Reading »

With my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, I’ll proceed with this blog post where I intend to invert the pyramid of the sciences, establish the supremacy of palaeontology over all other sciences before removing my tongue to make a really important point: relativity applies to the disciplines of science ... Continue Reading »

"We fancy ourselves at the very apogeè of civilisation, yet we are sure we eat too much." These words, written by the French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in 1825 in his seminal text The physiology of taste echo our predicament some 200 years later as westerners in ... Continue Reading »

As part of the Great Big Science Read, prominent Australian scientists told us about their favourite science books. Then you could have voted for the next book club title in our People's Choice poll. The winning book was the best-selling and prize-winning book by Bill Bryson A Short History ... Continue Reading »

An interesting read in The Conversation last week about the language of science philosophy. What is a theory, what is a law and what is an hypothesis? These ought to be elementary definitions for anyone who studies science but I certainly learnt something during my read and on ... Continue Reading »

How long do you spend watching TV, reading stories in books or newspapers, listening to your friends spin everyday experiences into an entertaining tale? We are all natural storytellers, and we all like listening to them. Since ancient times we have used stories to teach lessons and record ... Continue Reading »

From marine biologist to filmmaker, Dr Randy Olson is the self-proclaimed antidote to “narcoleptic nature documentaries”. In anticipation of his May visit to Adelaide, RiAus invites you to join us for a special screening of Dr Olson’s clever and humorous documentary that asks the question, “Who are the real dodos?” ... Continue Reading »

Seafaring scientists are swept up in a global effort to rebuild and sail the HMS Beagle, the ship that ... Continue Reading »

A couple of weeks ago came news of the definitive evidence that overturns the pivotal dogma of North American archaeology; incontrovertible evidence that there were people in that continent before 13,000 years ago. Let’s start with the dogma. It has long been recognised that the first people in North America were ... Continue Reading »

I’ve long thought that, if the label ‘Science’ were trademarked, we would have a much clearer path to follow with respect to who gets to refer to their product or ideas as ‘scientific’. Of course that is an impossibility. The problem remains that anyone can claim that they are backed ... Continue Reading »

Ask an expert - Dr Paul Willis  Q:If evolution is real why are there still monkeys? How can we be descended from monkeys if they are around today? A: With all the 'monkeying around' that can go on in the playground or even in the office it seems we could easily be directly ... Continue Reading »

Last month the discovery of a new fossil mammal rocketed around the world making quite a splash in the media. At 160 million years old, the Chinese fossil indicates that the group we belong to, the placental mammals, dates back further in the fossil record than previously thought. The press ... Continue Reading »

Michael is an archaeologist and biological anthropologist. He undertook his undergraduate training at the Australian National University (1992) and Honours year at the University of Sydney (1994) investigating the question of megafauna extinctions. Michael’s career has covered many diverse roles: consultant archaeologist in Queensland; state archaeologist with the Heritage Services Branch ... Continue Reading »

Natural instincts important for survival can be harmful in modern societies, driving poor choices that are bad for our health and happiness, a visiting psychologist and author says In her book, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose, Harvard University psychologist Dr Deirdre Barrett links basic instincts to obesity, ... Continue Reading »

Among the many interesting comments I received on my blog a couple of weeks ago about the difference between acceptance and belief in science was the following tweet from Flinders University Science Society (tweeting as @FlindersNerds) “@Ri_Aus @Fossilcrox I accept evolution. But it's hard to ... Continue Reading »

Recently this graph came through my twitter feed. It was presented at a recent conference in the USA and it plots the proportion of a nation’s population that accept evolution against national wealth. http://www.calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=559 A startling correlation emerges; the greater the acceptance of evolution in ... Continue Reading »

A new book graphically illustrates the life of dinosaurs in Australia for the first time. Palaeontologist Ben Kear and taxonomist Robert Hamilton-Bruce at the South Australian Museum worked with Adelaide artist Josh Lee to show what these ancient animals looked like in Dinosaurs in Australia. "Most people have no idea that there ... Continue Reading »

Ancient crocodiles stalked their prey on land and even climbed trees, palaeontologist Dr Paul Willis says. Dr Willis has unearthed many new species of crocodiles, including strange beasts from South Australia. "There are some that evolved features very similar to meat-eating dinosaurs," he said. "These guys were probably on land, hunting animals on ... Continue Reading »

Last post talked about the effects that the sex hormones oestrogen (females) and testosterone (males) have on attractiveness to the opposite sex. While they do have a major role in assisting our search for appropriate mates, there are other factors. Physical features The effects of sex hormones on facial features has already ... Continue Reading »

Finding a mate is one of the most important tasks for every organism which reproduces sexually. While people say they have different ‘tastes’ in an ideal mate, in fact there is a large amount of commonality between what humans define as attractive, and at the risk of taking the ‘fun’ ... Continue Reading »

With the climate changing, where will the environment and society be in the future? American climatologist and author Curt Stager’s (University of Maine) book “Deep Future: The next 100,000 years of life on earth” not only examines the planet’s climate history, but projects how Earth may change beyond the next ... Continue Reading »

Biology is generally thought of as the study of living things and their interactions. But what if scientists had the power to actually alter living things in order to have them do new things? This is the basic idea behind synthetic biology – the alteration and creation of things that ... Continue Reading »

The RiAus hosts a bi-monthly Book Club for those keen to explore, rediscover and get excited about science-themed books, new and old. In March 2010 we saw our first foray into non-fiction with Richard Dawkins' new work The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. With the literary skill ... Continue Reading »

Stephen Wroe is a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences, the University of NSW. His research aims to identify and understand the forces that drive the evolution of morphology in a wide range of living and fossil species. Central to his approach is the ... Continue Reading »

Born: 1941, Nairobi, Kenya Richard Dawkins is one of Britain's best-known academics. He studied zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was tutored by Nobel Prize-winning ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen (a pioneer in the study of animal behaviour, particularly the questions of instinct, learning and choice) and graduated ... Continue Reading »

Professor Bradshaw received his PhD in zoology in 1999 from the University of Otago and a Masters degree in zoology from the University of Alberta, Canada. He has a joint appointment with the South Australian Research and Development Institute (via Marine Innovation South Australia) the ... Continue Reading »

Professor Andrew Lowe is a Chair in Plant Conservation Biology at the University of Adelaide. He is also Head of Science within the South Australian Department of Environment and Natural Resources and Director of the Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity within the Environment Institute. The Institute integrates ... Continue Reading »

He's the King of All the Atheists, and now Richard Dawkins is hammering home what he sees as his key argument against the existence of God. In his book, The Greatest Show on Earth, Dawkins aims to put the theory of evolution in a factually unassailable position. Here, at Adelaide ... Continue Reading »

An interactive science/art experience at the Royal Institution of Australia is a strange trip through time. It covers 500 million years of evolution in just five minutes, complete with sound effects. Full article from Adelaide Now: Experience 500 million years in five minutes (16 February 2010)

Scientists have found evidence in Australia that animals had sex, became pregnant and gave birth to live young 200 million years earlier than previously thought. The revelation pushes the time of the "oldest mother" back to 375 million years. News of the Australian discovery -- in the form of an extinct ... Continue Reading »