Kind regards,

Niall Byrne
Creative Director, Science In Public

Train your brain to overcome tinnitus. An international research team has shown that the debilitating impact of tinnitus can be effectively reduced in just weeks by a training course and sound therapy delivered via a smartphone app. The research team from Australia, New Zealand, France and Belgium reported these findings this month in Frontiers in Audiology and Otology. More.

An 8-billion-year-old burst of energy offers a path to weigh the Universe. The fast radio burst was discovered by an international team led by Macquarie University and Swinburne University of Technology scientists, with coauthors in The Netherlands, USA, UK, and Chile. The study demonstrates that we can detect and measure matter between galaxies. More.

Does a brain in a dish have moral rights? Inventors of ‘DishBrain’ – 800,000 human neurons in a petri dish playing Pong – worked with ethicists from Australia, Singapore, Japan, and UK to explore the ethical applications of bio-computing. More.

Bees make decisions better and faster than we do. Researchers from Macquarie University and the University of Sheffield (UK) found that honeybees have to balance effort, risk and reward, making rapid and accurate assessments of which flowers are mostly likely to offer food for their hive. The study enhances our understanding of insect brains, how our own brains evolved, and how to design better robots. More.

Gas-rich baby galaxies set the early universe alight. New images from the James Webb Space Telescope have helped Australian astronomers unlock secrets of how infant galaxies started an explosion of star formation in the very early Universe. The research team includes collaborators in USA, Slovenia, Switzerland, and Italy. More.

On the path to a liver cancer vaccine: how cancer’s similarities to embryonic cell development could lead to a life-saving vaccine. 2024 CSL Centenary Fellow Dr Ankur Sharma has discovered how liver cancer cells work together in a similar way to the rapidly dividing cells in a human embryo. He is now trialling ways to identify which liver cancers may respond to immunotherapy. Ankur has conducted research in India and Singapore and in now based in Perth, Australia. More.

Gender parity in astronomy in just five years … all while discovering how the Universe evolved, how galaxies form and where the elements come from. A paper published in Nature Astronomy reported how the national Australian astronomy centre ASTRO 3D achieved equal numbers of women and men using science. Lead author and founding director of ASTRO 3D Prof Lisa Kewley is now director of the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian in USA. More.

Mining on the moon. “What are mines and mining going to be like 50 or 100 years from now?” CSIRO’s Jonathon Ralston asked at the World Mining Congress in Brisbane.

Jonathon is leading a team to develop technologies such as In-Situ Resource Utilisation, which NASA will need when they return to the Moon.

“We’ll explore emerging and longer-term mining opportunities for space resources, ultradeep operations, undersea exploration and rediscovery back on Earth,” he says. More.

The secret to long lived leaves. How long will a leaf live?

It’s an economic decision made by every tree, says a paper in Science Advances by an international team of researchers from China, the UK, Japan, Norway, USA, and Australia. Monkey puzzle tree leaves can live for over two decades. And Picea growing in the Gongga Mountains in China can thrive for thousands of years, with leaves that last twenty years on average. Maple leaves last a season, while blueberry leaves may last just three months.  More.

Finding the exact location of a power fault in minutes. New technology from Monash Energy Institute researchers could help restore power quickly even on high bushfire risk days. Australian innovation drawing on trials in China and Switzerland. More.

Soap made using ingredients from Country. Tested using Merck technology.

Merck travelled to the Northern Territory with the DeadlyScience team to pilot the first DeadlyLabs kit. It’s a project led by Indigenous Elders in the Robinson River region to share their knowledge, their ideas, and their care for the community. Merck is a German multinational science and technology company that has had a base in Australia since 1967. More.

The world’s fastest industry standard optical fibre – invented in Japan with Macquarie University support. An optical fibre about the thickness of a human hair can now carry the equivalent of more than 10 million fast home internet connections running at full capacity.

A team of Japanese, Australian, Dutch, and Italian researchers has set a new speed record for an industry standard optical fibre, achieving 1.7 Petabits over a 67km length of fibre. More.

Skin samples reveal where southern right whales feed. Scientists have analysed chemicals in the skin of southern right whales to give new insights into the animals’ distribution, as well as long-term environmental changes in the Southern Ocean.

The scientists from the US, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Europe, UK, and Aotearoa New Zealand describe how the whales’ shifting use of Antarctic waters shows the effects of climate change. More.