Summer Vacation Scholarship at CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics

Currently studying science communication? Gain communications experience in a professional environment! Applications close 11 November 2010!

CSIRO is advertising a position for a talented Science Communication student to join the Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics Division over the Summer Holidays from Dec 2010 – Feb 2011.

Location: North Ryde, NSW Salary: stipend $650 gross per week

Working in a small communications team you will assist with the daily communications support activities for CSIRO Mathematics, Informatics and Statistics. As the mathematical and statistical backbone of CSIRO, our scientists work within multidisciplinary science teams on projects as diverse as finding genetic markers for Alzheimer’s, analysing environmental data from river catchments and catch counts from fisheries, simulating dam breaks and industrial fluid flows, optimising supply chains, detecting disease outbreaks from emergency room data, improving the Australian welfare system and developing software for imaging biological cells and grading opals. You will also be working on some projects to support the Computational and Simulation Sciences (CSS) Platform, an essential group within CSIRO who provide scientists with the cutting edge computing facilities and training to speed up their scientific applications. This includes Australia’s first CPU-GPU supercomputer and a range of other activities that utilise the power of GPU computing, visualisation and other leading computing technologies.

For more details visit the job ad here: https://recruitment.csiro.au/asp/job_details.asp?RefNo=2010%2F812

Any questions about the position, please contact Sarah Wood sarah.wood@csiro.au on 02 9325 3227

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Wonder what science communication researchers do? Come to this informal round table and find out. And enjoy some good company as we celebrate another successful semester.

End of Year Wrap

UWA Science Communication is made up of people from different science backgrounds. From physical sciences, environmental sciences, neurosciences just to name a few. It makes for a rich and talented group with immense depth.

Come hear about the following:

Caris Allen is seeking answers to questions like: ‘Do farmers read blogs? Are podcasts popular with farmers? Do farmers text?’ as part of her literature review as part of Science Communication Specialist Research Topics (COMM7402).

PhD Candidate Miriam Sullivan is working on framing messages about animal welfare.

PhD candidate Muza Gondwe is preparing her research proposal on the use of digital story telling in connecting cultural knowledge and western science.

PhD candidate Sophia Bickford is sending out a survey to high school science teachers asking them about their experiences and expectations of excursions and incursions.

Honours student Jessie Roxby is preparing her online survey for citizen scientists.

Research Assistant Professor Colin Hanbury is interviewing scientists about factors that affected their career decisions.

Other activities: There are students in UWA Science Communication planning trips during the summer break to practice what they have learned in the real world. There are even whispers of a science film being made!

At this session, we’ll decide on a science book to read over the summer for our first semester book club. Got a suggestion?

Where: Centre for Learning Technology

http://www.clt.uwa.edu.au/contact

When: 29th, October 2010, 4:00PM – 5:00PM

Drinks and nibbles provided

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For ASC members in Adelaide- come along to the fifth instalment of the Thinking Critically About Sustainable Energy series- Demand side management and energy storage

Free, but booking essential http://www.riaus.org.au/events/2010/11/03/thinking_critically_about_sustainable_energy_demand_side_management_and_energy_storage.jsp

If you can’t make it or are somewhere else in the world, you can now view the entire TCASE series at the new RiAus On Demand Site http://riausondemand.org.au/feature_series/thinking-critically-about-sustainable-energy/

Thinking critically about sustainable energy: Demand side management and energy storage Barry Brook, Andrew Dicks, Craig Oakeshott, Glenn Platt Wednesday 3 November 6.00-7.30pm The Science Exchange

Consumer demand for electricity is highly variable and power generation must constantly be balanced with demand. Demand side management (DSM) aims to improve the efficiency of energy consumption by reducing demand and using supplementary energy sources at peak times.

Emerging systems can store excess energy produced during low demand periods and return it to the grid during peak periods. Also, Smartgrids, which can monitor and control domestic usage instantly, are just around the corner. Will these systems really be able to improve the efficiency of the grid? Will they play a significant role in reducing our power consumption?

Join Professor Barry Brook and his expert panel as they explain the role of these technologies will play in power grids of the future.

This event is the fifth of six public forums aimed at providing a comprehensive examination of sustainable energy technologies and critical evaluation of their potential for reducing carbon emissions. Presented in association with the Centre for Energy Technology, University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute and the Institute for Mineral and Energy Resources.

[cid:image001.jpg@01CB7689.E60A6870] Steve Kern Senior Programs Co-ordinator

Ri Australia PO Box 3652 RUNDLE MALL SA 5000 Ph: (08) 7120 8604 | Fax: (08) 8221 6563 | skern@riaus.org.au| www.riaus.org.au The Royal Institution of Australia Inc is a Charitable Institution and is a Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) ABN: 98638459658

Think B4U Print 1 ream of paper = 6% of a tree and 5.4kg CO2 in the atmosphere 3 sheets of A4 paper = 1 litre of water

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Radio Netherlands are looking for a radio journalist in South Australia, can anyone help?

“We’re looking for a reporter to do a piece about the Seawater Greenhouse project in Port Augusta in southern Australia for a programme about the future of farming. Here is a link to the projecthttp://www.seawatergreenhouse.com/australia.html

We would probably want the reporter to go to the site, get some sound and interview one of the 2 people in charge, extract some clips and then do a 2-way (donut) with them using those clips. They would need to have access to a studio, or we’d do it as a tape synch.

Deadline is Tuesday November 9th so it needs to be set up soon. Please contact.Marijke.peters@rnw.nl

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A bit of science communicating blackboard fun in the New York Times…

http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/unpopular-science/?src=tptw

Enjoy!

Michael Van Tiel

Producer, Mascot (Zoe & Cogs) and Holiday Programs

Family and Community Experiences

Powerhouse Museum

Phone: +61 2 9217 0314

Fax: +61 2 9217 0441

Street Address: 500 Harris Street, ULTIMO, New South Wales, 2007

Postal Address: PO Box K346, HAYMARKET, New South Wales, 1238

Email: michael.vantiel@phm.gov.au

Web: http://www.powerhousemuseum.com http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/

Hello all, The contents of the blog copied below may be of interest. Please feel free to follow the link provided to add any comments you may have. Best wishes, Sarah

*scicommunity*: sharing Australian science engagement activities with peers and public

Web 2.0 offers many opportunities for networking and creating a sense of community amongst like-minded, geographically-distant peoples. At Bridge8 we used wordpress, slideshare, twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr to share what we do, learn from like-minded (and not so like-minded) people near and far, and to scan our horizons for faint signals of emerging trends. With the support of DIISR’s Inspiring Australia strategy, we’ve recentlybeen working with James Hutson to create a new kind of community, one we’ve dubbed scicommunity to reflect an onus on community and communication in all things scientific. In a nutshell, scicommunity is an online, editable platform for the collection of Australian science communication and engagement activities. It will be open and shared, free and unlimited for appropriate groups and individuals. We hope it will generate a sense of community amongst Australian science communicators.

As well as being a useful, single site to view and search for science communication events in your area, at defined times of the year, and targeted to specific types of audiences, what might we expect to come from scicommunity in a community sense? No car-pooling or ‘bring-a-plate’ dinners of course, but perhaps the generation of some exciting new ideas, such as the identification of opportunities to leverage existing initiatives, an encouragement of partnering and complementary activities, and perhaps even new investment in science communication. You know: shared, community stuff.

While we’re excited to launch scicommunity, we’re very keen first-up to make sure it’s of an appropriate design and layout to capture the key elements of the activities listed; hence we’re commencing a pilot phase next week to iron out any last kinks and wrinkles. If you’re interested in scicommunity, please use the comments space below to let us know what YOU think is important to know about a science communication/engagement event, what sort of information we should be trying to capture and how we can best generate a sense of community amongst communicators of science in Australia.

Comment here: http://bridge8.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/community-and-communication-in-science/

Apologies for short notice!

Short Film Festival

Today UWA Science Communication returns back to its regular seminar schedule with a short film festival.

Students enrolled in COMM3321/COMM7703 Science and the Media interviewed research scientists at UWA and produced short films.

Come join us and experience the depth the of talent of our science communication students while exploring the world of science at UWA.

Where: Centre for Learning Technology Link: http://www.clt.uwa.edu.au/contact

When: 22nd, October 2010, 4:00PM – 5:00PM Next Week: End of Semester, (Year) Wind-Up

Drinks, nibbles and sociable folk on hand

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I’m passionate about physics and chemistry … maybe you or someone you know would like to share that passion. I’ll be presenting two one day courses, “Physics all around us” and “Chemistry all around us” at the WEA Bathurst Street, Sydney. The Physics one is on Saturday-week. See :

http://weasydney.nsw.edu.au/index.php?action=course&course_action=detail&code=04WK051

http://weasydney.nsw.edu.au/index.php?action=course&course_action=detail&code=04WK052

Regards,

John August _______________________________________________ ASC-list mailing list list@asc.asn.au http://www.asc.asn.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=97&Itemid=115