Something Else

What is it about fungi that make them an exciting conversation piece in today’s media, movies, and video games? In this episode Anastasia chats Vanessa McPherson all about the natural history of fungi. Vanessa McPherson is a Research Assistant in the Environmental Microbiology and Molecular Analysis Laboratory in the School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University. [...]

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Over the past decade the face of jazz in Australia has been changing, slowly but surely. While we are used to seeing women singers fronting bands, there have been few women playing the instruments we associate with jazz-trumpets, saxophones, pianos, basses. There have been even fewer women leading jazz ensembles. That is now changing. This [...]

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The Eclectic Comedy Music Show Featuring Comedy Records (Stand Up/Skit/Novelty – i.e Monty Python – Australia You’re Standing In It – Tom Lehler etc) Instructional Records ( Everything You Need To Know To Operate A CB RADIO – Shape Up & Dance with Felicity Kendal – etc) Odd / Left of Centre Music – The [...]

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They’re small, they’re blue, and they’re stingy, but they’re not a jelly fish! What are they? They’re bluebottles of course. They’re a prominent feature of summers spent by the beach, but what brings them to Australian beaches remains a bit of a mystery. Join us in this episode as we chat to two ECRs, Kim [...]

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Hailstorms are some of the costliest natural disasters that occur in Australia. One of the most infamous examples is the Sydney hailstorm of 1999 which dumped hailstones over 11cm in diameter and caused $1.7 billion in insurance damages. It’s quite surprising therefore, that we don’t have great observations or understanding of hailstorm probability. In this [...]

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Some words we hear these days are “machine learning” and “automation”, but what do they actually mean, and where do they come from? In this episode, we take a closer look at the history of machine learning in automation. The origins of automation date back to the industrial revolution, and machine learning has played an [...]

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Dreams of visiting Mars have been part of human imagination for centuries. But now that these dreams are closer to realization than ever before, so are the concerns of how we will treat the planets we will visit. Join us, as we chat to Clare Fletcher. Clare studies the exciting and new field of the [...]

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Ecosystems are under threat of collapse from human stresses and climate change. Is your favourite ecosystem at risk? In this episode of Boiling Point, Sammy and Liz speak with Dr. Aniko Toth, a research fellow at UNSW Sydney who works in ecosystem conservation. Aniko uses modeling to combine satellite data with local species data to [...]

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Plants are signaling and communicating with their environment in unique and remarkable ways, we just don’t always know how to interpret their signals. But observing flowers and pollination is the easiest way to tap into their secret language. In this episode Inna and Hannah chat to Ruby E. Stephens about the weird and wonderful world [...]

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A risk-taking pilot sounds like the last thing anyone would want on their flight. However, if we ever want the plane to take off, some risk taking is necessary and even crucial. In this episode of Boiling Point, Griff and Inna chat to Yassmin Ebrahim. Yassmin studies the risk behavior of pilots and how it [...]

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