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June 2009 - Issue #6

  • Cloud riders to be the envy of web surfers

    A quick scan of the daily newspaper shows just how much data-driven information is being produced these days and how everyone, from decision-makers in business and government to scientists and researchers, is drawing on ever-increasing volumes of data to try to solve problems.

  • Collaboration is the currency in our knowledge-based economy

    Australia’s economic prosperity rests on the important contributions made by Australian universities – a point highlighted in recent reviews of the Australian Innovation System and higher education. Without creating knowledge and developing innovative minds we will not thrive in the 21st century.

  • From the minds of babes a key to understanding … us

    Australia’s first cognitive neuroscience ‘baby laboratory’ is hoping to learn how infantile thoughts and gestures mature into deliberate action; how the human brain develops and sometimes fails.

  • Diabetes hope on the wings of silver cicadas

    The wings of a familiar noisy insect, the cicada, were the starting point for a device that will be able to continuously monitor blood glucose levels.

  • Alloy research cuts through the fighter cost barrier

    Defence is an expensive business. Strike aircraft weapons systems, for example, don’t come cheap. But their necessity, and these strained economic times, means more research is being put into reducing their cost of production.

  • All power to the sun and the light team

    Affordable solar power may soon be just a flick of the switch away.

  • Companies find a competitive green edge

    A business environmental mentoring program is showing that ‘going green’ can win customers and profits.

  • No joke when it’s survival of the funniest

    In uncertain economic times when many people are worried about keeping their jobs, it’s understandable that some workplaces may be losing the jocular banter that otherwise relieves the working day.

  • New environment to debug global-scale I.T. upgrades

    Testing new computer systems before they go live is usually standard procedure for introducing new software across a business. But when it comes to large, distributed systems such as those used by global companies, this is not an easy exercise.

  • Dark mysteries lure cosmic surveyors

    A massive survey of the universe is under way in Australia to detect the faintest of echoes: an acoustic ‘wiggle’ from the Big Bang. A wiggle that may hold the key to understanding a mysterious new force – dark energy – that is causing the universe to fly apart.

  • Digital dust-off for history’s watch-houses

    One of society’s most cherished and once unchanging of institutions, the museum, is embarking on a vast transformation: glass cabinets are being replaced by photons, static displays by lively memories and experiences from the public itself, the locked-away vaults of knowledge by a new openness and a vivid discourse with society.

  • Will the ferryman come for climate refugees?

    Tufitu Lotee has experienced the terror of huge ocean waves flooding her home. Tufitu and her family live on the islet of Fongafale on Funafuti atoll, the capital of Tuvalu, midway between Hawaii and Australia. Their house is on a 100-metre-wide strip of land between the Pacific Ocean on one side and a lagoon on the other.

  • A modern-day oracle on the ocean waves

    Like gypsies read tea leaves to foresee the future, researchers can read something of our future in the winds and waves. However, this modern soothsaying relies on masses of information, data that Swinburne is collating to build the world’s first complete picture of ocean wave activity.

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