Friday 22 FEBRUARY 2008

Professor Derek Russell

Agriculture, Health and Environment Group, Natural Resources Institute,
University of Greenwich,UK
Adjunct Professor, CESAR, Department of Genetics

'GM cabbage for the 3rd World - the End of the Hungry Caterpillar?'

Derek Russell has been working on insecticide use reduction in the developing world for many years and in various ways.  His current big project is as leader of a consortium developing and commercialising transgenic cabbage and cauliflower which are resistant to the caterpillar pests which cause such huge yield reduction and are responsible for such massive insecticide spray and residue problems, especially in the developing world.  He has developed the plants and they are currently under testing in India.  Of course 'GM crops and the third world' raises all sorts of ethical and economic issues and dilemmas, which he will be willing to discuss.

Friday 28 MARCH 2008

Rae Moran, DNRE

Australia's Water Resources - we are now experiencing severe drought, and predictions are for this to get worse with global warming. How should we manage our resources?

Monday 7th APRIL 2008

Dr Andrew Melatos

Einstein's Astronomy:
  Latest News on the Search for Gravitational Waves

Monday 12th MAY 2008

Lawrence Cavedon, RMIT

Artificial Intelligence.

This talk will take a tour through a range of topics related to
Artificial Intelligence: the philosophical underpinnings, the early
history, the major achievements, important research initiatives, an
outline of some of the techniques developed, and current developments.

Bio Sketch
Dr. Lawrence Cavedon is a Senior Researcher at NICTA (National ICT
Australia) and a Senior Lecturer at RMIT University. He has performed
research in AI and Cognitive Science for almost 20 years, in academia
and industry, in Australia, the UK and the USA.

Monday 2nd JUNE 2008

Ary Hoffman

re-scheduled

Monday 14th JULY 2008

Linden Gillbank

The History of Australian Plants

Linden will present something historical - on a beautiful aspect of the history of science.
She is a historian of botany, with a passionate interest in plants, especially Australian plants - their beauty, their names, their ecology and their uses.

She has prepared (for a course on the history of nature) a power point presentation on the history of the naming of Australian plants, using beautiful botanical art to tell the story.

Monday 4th AUGUST 2008

Prof. Geoff McFadden PhD FAA
ARC Federation Fellow, Howard Hughes International Scholar
Botany School, University of Melbourne 3010, Australia

The origins and evolution of life on Earth.

Monday 18th AUGUST 2008 SCIENCE WEEK SPECIAL MEETING

Peter Green, who has previously spoken to us about the Big Bang and the history of the universe up until the emergence of life on Earth, will continue the story and talk about:

The history and evolution of animals

Monday 1st SEPTEMBER 2008

Rick Bailey, Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Australia's Tsunami Warning System -

Monday 6th OCTOBER 2008

Dr Michelle Critchley
Manager, Delivery and Sensing Development
Nanotechnology Victoria Ltd

Nanotechnology

Monday 10th November

Tom Biegler

Hydrogen and Fuel Cells - some inconvenient truths.

 

Dr Tom Biegler FTSE has had an involvement in two waves of global fuel cell activity separated by over 30 years, first as a research scientist when he joined CSIRO in the mid-1960s to work on methanol and platinum electrochemistry and later, after serving as Chief of CSIRO Division of Mineral Products, as a consultant for parties involved in fuel cell development. In semi-retirement, he continues to speak and write on energy matters

For a summary of Dr Biegler's talk, click here.

Monday 1st December

Ary Hoffman

Using the concept of "environmental stress" Ary will talk about whether animals will be able to adapt to climate change.