Autistic children given voice
Larah van der Meer, a PhD student at Victoria University of Wellington, talks about her work with Professor Jeff Sigafoos, studying the best communication tools for children with autism. They have been testing three alternative communication strategies, including the use of electronic speech-generating devices such as iPads loaded with special applications. Watch
Related to Marsden Fund grant: “Enhancing communication intervention for children with autism’
Bees and postoperative recovery
What can honeybees teach us about recovering from the effects of a general anaesthetic? Following surgery under a general, patients are often confused about time of day and can experience sleep disruption and fatigue. Auckland University senior lecturer Dr Guy Warman and his team are using bees to learn about circadian rhythms and time sense, and how to avoid disrupting these through surgery. Listen
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘Does anaesthesia steal time?’
Coprolites and extinct moa
Scientists call them coprolites, you and I would call them fossil dung. And it turns out these dried droppings can give remarkable insights into the life and times of extinct animals, such as the giant flightless moa. Dr Jamie Wood of Landcare Research talks about the surprising things he’s learning about these mysterious birds from the poo they left behind. Listen
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘New Zealand’s megaherbivores: resolving their ecological role and the impact of their extinction on the flora’
Victoria University Coastal Ecology Lab summer field work footage
Many species produce excess offspring, and most individuals will be reproductive ‘losers’, that is, they will die before they can reproduce. Most evolutionary work focuses on the ‘winners’, but Associate Professor Jeff Shima of Victoria University of Wellington is interested in looking at the consequences of the losers, which can compete for resources, attract predators, and alter the fates of the winners. He and his students have been doing field work on this project in the Cook Strait over summer 2012-13. Watch
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘Winners and losers: effects of demographic heterogeneity on individual fitness and the dynamics of marine metapopulations’
Endogenous antioxidants
We’ve all heard that eating food containing antioxidants is good for you, but there are also antioxidant systems within our own cells. Associate Professor Mark Hampton of the University of Canterbury is trying to determine how the body’s own antioxidants work and how they could be used to treat human diseases like cancer. Listen
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘Deciphering the role of peroxiredoxins in the cellular response to oxidative stress’
Giant kauri trees and climate change
In a warming world it is predicted that northern New Zealand will experience rising temperatures and more frequent extreme events such as severe drought, so what will that mean for our native trees, and how will they cope? Dr Cate Macinnis-Ng of the University of Auckland is using a Marsden Fast-Start grant to investigate how giant kauri trees might respond to climate change. Listen
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘Ready for climate change? The ecophysiology of New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis) forests’
Pathogen mimics
Sand filtration systems for drinking water are meant to purify and remove any pathogens, no matter how small, but how do you know if these filters are working, when adding the actual pathogen is not an option? Dr Liping Pang and her collaborators at ESR have developed pathogen mimics made from beads with the help of a Marsden Fund grant, with the aim of using them to test water filtration systems. Listen
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘Virus hitchhikers – do colloids facilitate the rapid transport of viruses to our drinking water wells?’
The culture of intoxication
Associate Professor Antonia Lyons of Massey University, Wellington, is interested in identity, gender, embodiment and the social and cultural contexts of health behaviour, particularly alcohol consumption. She is the lead investigator on a three-year Marsden funded research project on the use of digital technologies in drinking cultures in Aotearoa New Zealand, and presents some of the team’s findings at a recent conference. Watch
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘Young adults, drinking stories and the cult of celebrity’
Mental health and the environment
The idea that the environment has an impact on our physical health is indisputable – but what impact is environmental degradation having on our mental health? Can psychology offer insights into how to improve our environment? Ideas talks to Thomas Doherty, editor of the Ecopsychology journal; University of Auckland associate professor of psychology Niki Harre; and Victoria University senior lecturer in psychology Taciano Milfont (Marsden-funded segment starts at 40min 35s). Listen
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘One eye on the past and one eye on the future: the role of psychological time in tackling environmental issues’
China’s involvement in the Pacific
Radio New Zealand’s Pacific correspondent Mike Field discusses a Marsden funded project headed by Dr Steven Ratuva of The University of Auckland. The project is concerned with strategic issues in the Pacific, and will in part look at the battle for influence and control in the region as China offers support to Pacific island nations, in particular Fiji (segment starts at 3min 1s). Listen
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘Rethinking future security: exploring the nexus between state-based and indigenous security systems in the Pacific’
Memory: the thread of life
Memory – it’s the thread that runs through our lives, but how are our early memories formed? Associate Professor Elaine Reese of the University of Otago is finding that the way we talk with our young children and tell them family stories affects their early memories and their sense of themselves when they become teenagers. (segment starts at 10min 25s). Listen
Related to Marsden Fund grants: ‘Learning to tell life’s tales: the development of narrative identity and well-being in adolescence’ and ‘Do you remember this? Age-related changes in the effect of verbal reminders’
NZ agribusinesses in China
Dr Jason Young at Victoria University says the rise of the hapu and iwi business and their move into international investment needs a lot more study (segment starts at 55s). Listen
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘Investing in rural China: New Zealand agribusiness and the local global nexus’
Invisibility cloak research funded
A project that could lead to the real-life equivalent of Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak has just been granted public funding. Robert Thompson of the University of Otago is the poster boy to inspire every student who’s ever suffered their way through a maths lesson. Equations and formula that leave many cold are leading the mathematician closer to every child’s dream: an invisibility cloak. Watch
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘Transformation optics: the science of cloaking’
Probing galaxy clusters
Victoria University astronomer Melanie Johnston-Hollitt received a Marsden grant this week to survey the southern skies for galaxy clusters (large structures in the universe that consist of hundreds of galaxies bound by gravity) and the spectrum of radio waves they emit. She will use two telescopes at a remote site in Western Australia to catalogue the characteristics of these diffuse radio emissions, which are thought to be the remnants of shockwaves created by colliding galaxies or radio haloes caused by turbulence. Listen
Related to Marsden Fund grant: Tracing the Evolution of Radio Halos and Relics with Next Generation Radio Telescopes’
Invisibility cloaking and transformation optics
Invisibility cloaks are no longer just magical objects or science fiction, they are science fact. While it’s unlikely there’s going to be an invisibility cloak that can make a human vanish in the visible spectrum anytime soon, the first cloaking device was created in the lab at Duke University in 2006. A rigid structure, it was made from metamaterials which rendered the object invisible to microwaves.
The University of Otago’s Robert Thompson is working on the theoretical aspects of cloaking, and as he tells Ruth Beran, the mathematics of transformation optics is similar to that of general relativity. Listen
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘Transformation optics: the science of cloaking’
Kauris and climate change
How will New Zealand’s native giants, the kauri, survive as our climate gets warmer? They’re already under threat from a virulent disease, and Dr Cate Macinnis-Ng of The University of Auckland worries that drier weather will only make things worse. Watch
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘Ready for climate change? The ecophysiology of New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis) forests’
Invisibility cloaks, godwit migration, and cancer treatments
Craig McCulloch interviews three recipients of 2012 Marsden Fund grants. Dr Robert Thompson discusses the possibility of invisible cars, Dr Phil Battley talks about the differences in godwit migration timing, and Dr Anita Dunbier describes possible changes to improve anti-hormone breast cancer treatments. Listen
Related to Marsden Fund grants: ‘Transformation optics: the science of cloaking’, ‘The genetics and epigenetics of bird migration timing’, and ‘Hormonal regulation of immune cells: does anti-hormone therapy inadvertently fuel cancer?’
Toi Te Mana: a history of indigenous art
A project looking at Maori understandings of Maori art has been awarded more than six-hundred-thousand-dollars of research funding (segment starts at 1.58 minutes). Listen
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘Toi te Mana: A history of indigenous art from Aotearoa New Zealand’
Marsden Fund aims to keep Kiwi scientists in NZ
Millions of dollars of funding has been awarded to 86 of the country’s best researchers. 3News interviews Professor Juliet Gerrard, the Chair of the Marsden Fund Council. Watch
Related to the Marsden Fund 2012 awards
Alison Jones, Conversations on Paper
Professor in the faculty of education at the University of Auckland, and the author, with Kuni Jenkins, of He Korero – Words Between Us: First Maori-Pakeha Conversations on Paper. Listen
Related to the Marsden Fund grant: ‘Aitanga: Maori desire for schooling’
The Impact of Violence in Video Games
In 2009, Venezuela became the first country in the world to ban any and all video games that involved shooting people. To date New Zealand has banned seven games. Jeremy Rose talks to his 13-year old son, Edi Rose, about the attraction of shooting people on screen; deputy chief censor Nic McCully and classification officer Hamish McCormick talk us through the process of rating a video game; and academics professor Brad Bushman of Ohio State University and Waikato University’s Dr Gareth Schott discuss the evidence for the widely held belief that violent video games have a desensitising effect. Listen
Related to the Marsden Fund grant: ‘Videogame classification: Assessing the experience of play’
Child Witnesses may not be Credible Witnesses
New research by Dr Rachel Zajac shows the way courts work invites children to make things up. Listen
Related to the Marsden Fund grant: ‘Cross-examination on trial: Facilitating accurate testimony from child witnesses’
Major Earthquakes Occur Regularly on the Alpine Fault
A team of GNS scientists lead by Dr Kelvin Berryman has been studying the Alpine Fault, producing a major earthquake record spanning 8000 years. Their work suggests that the fault ruptured to the surface 24 times over these years, giving an average time between ruptures of around 330 years. This work has been reported in the highly prestigious journal Science (read the abstract here) and covered on Campbell Live. Watch
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘Are large plate boundary faults well behaved? Variability of rupture recurrence on the Alpine Fault’
Auditing prehistoric New Zealand
Professor Jonathan Waters talks to Kathryn Ryan on his audit of prehistoric New Zealand and what it tells us about the immediate and severe impact of human arrival. Listen
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘The biogeographic importance of historical contingency: extinction and recolonisation in coastal New Zealand’
Creeping Quakes Found Beneath Alpine Fault
Professor Tim Stern and his colleagues at Victoria University have discovered slow moving earthquakes, that can last up to half an hour, are taking place beneath the South Island alpine fault. Listen
Related to Marsden Fund grant: ‘Putting a stethoscope on the Alpine Fault’
