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Peter has worked as a marine consultant on a variety of projects. As a photographer he specializes in deep-sea life. His 'Deep New Zealand: Blue Water, Black Abyss' won the Environment prize at the 2004 Montana Book Awards. Lucky to have experienced the wonders of the abyss firsthand in deep-diving submersibles, Peter feels a responsibility to promote this vast wilderness to a wider audience. He does this via various writing and teaching projects, and through his website (ExploreTheAbyss.Com). An excellent a science communicator, Peter is helping Deep Ocean Expeditions to fulfill one of its key objectives: 'to educate people about the world's deep oceans'.
Emil Fischer's studies of peptides and sugars led to chiral molecules (D-sugars and L-amino acids) and to the confirmation of Pasteur's conjecture that the universe is disymmetric. It is well known that D-sugars and L-aminoacids dominate the biochemistry of living organisms. But what is the preference for this single handedness in nature? This biomolecular homochirality at the microscopic level is supposed to be responsible for most of the symmetry breaking effects at the macroscopic level. Weinberg-Salam-Glashow theory is that our Universe is left handed due to electro-weak interaction (parity-odd) giving rise to primarily left-spinning electrons during beta decay. While it is accepted that parity violation can lead to a small energy difference between enantiomers of chiral molecules, although there is no experimental verification yet of this symmetry breaking effect. Is this tiny effect responsible for biomolecular homochirality in nature?
Kevin will talk about thyroid metabolism, one or two genetic causes of non hyperthyroid goitre, then lead into the history of understanding the role of iodine, NZ's iodine deficient soils, what was done about it 70 years ago, and where the "wheels came off" in terms of iodine supplementation in the NZ diet over the past 10 15 years.
The Manawatu Philosophical Society (MPS) was founded on 29 June 1904 in the Palmerston North Borough Council’s Chambers. The newly formed society entered a network of similar associations throughout New Zealand and bound together under the umbrella of the New Zealand Institute. Using archival sources to piece together the membership and activities of the MPS the paper examines the mundane work of science that was practiced within the society; and the networks that embedded a provincial meeting hall in the bustling world of the Edwardian Manawatu and in the world of scientific work prior to the First World War.
Contrast the 2007 Council meets twice to manage the Branch but uses numerous e-mails with the situation when not even telephone communication was frequent!
Fossilized pollen grains from stratified, dated
deposits of peat and lake mud may be used to reconstruct past
vegetation. The types of disturbance to vegetation caused by
people may usually be distinguished
from natural changes, and in this way past movements of people
may be discovered and dated. Thus in the Pacific it is possible
to date the colonization of different islands. In general, there
is good agreement
between palynology and archaeology, but in New Zealand the palynology
does not support the widely accepted date for arrival of people.
The reasons for this will be discussed.
The native birds of New Zealand are highly unusual in several respects. They have dominated terrestrial ecosystems for millions of years in the near absence of mammals, and have evolved some extraordinary life history features. Furthermore, the magnitude of post settlement extinctions amongst native birds (about half of all terrestrial bird species) has drastically changed the character of the entire New Zealand biota. We now have a reasonable understanding of the range of species and life history traits of indigenous birds, along with the factors that caused their extinction or decline. The reasons for the success of a subset of introduced bird species are also becoming clear. The lecture will examine the interaction between birds and the environment during the history of New Zealand, and discuss the role of birds in ecosystem processes, their effect on plant and vegetation development, and on other animals. It will also look at the magnitude of the ecological functions undertaken by birds, and the extent to which introduced species can ecologically compensate for those that have recently become extinct. Finally, it will be argued that birds have a special role to play in ensuring the functioning of New Zealand ecosystems, and that all species should be welcomed.
The year 2007 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) whose lasting contribution to the biological sciences was the creation of a practical and simple system of identifying organisms, living or extinct, using a two-word or binomial system of naming. This fundamental tool created a system for organising information about plants and animals, whose numbers were rapidly increasing as a result of exploration and discovery. Linnaeus is also recognised as ‘creating order out of chaos’ through his system of classification whereby he organised nature into three kingdoms: mineral, vegetable and animal, each of which was then subdivided into various classes. The Linnaean system rapidly spread worldwide through his students who undertook extensive voyages, such as that of Daniel Solander (1733–1782) who sailed with the Cook voyage to the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand in 1768–1771. As the foundation of modern taxonomy, the legacy of Linnaeus continues to be recognised today; presently, his extensive collection of specimens held at the Linnean Society in London is being digitised to allow universal access.
The tercentenary of the birth of Linnaeus is being marked worldwide by various events ranging from a special display at the Chelsea Flower Show in London to a poetry reading session at the Botanic Gardens in Sydney. Significant among these celebratory events was a symposium: Unlocking the Past: Linnaean Collections - Past, Present and Future held in June 2007 and jointly sponsored by the Linnean Society of London, the Swedish Linnean Society and the University of Uppsala; part of this symposium was held in London and part in Sweden. Following the symposium, an excursion was organised to Gotland that retraced some of Linnaeus’s path when he visited that island off the eastern coast of Sweden in 1841. Consistent with his own writing in which he urged people to ‘pay heed to everything’, Linnaeus explored aspects of the botany, the geology and the local culture of this island.
The presenter was privileged to participate in this symposium and the Gotland excursion and her talk will provide an outline of Linnaeus - naturalist, medico, scientist, teacher, traveller and writer - and will illustrate aspects of his travels on the island of Gotland. Writing about himself, Linnaeus commented that ‘in his lectures, he used to make his audience laugh and to delight them’, a laudable goal that the presenter will keep in mind!
'Downunder' is both the underground (stalagmites etc) and the Southern Hemisphere.
The first part explains how evidence for environmental change can be obtained from caves. The emphasis will be on the interpretation of the climatic archive contained in speleothems (stalagmites etc.) and will be illustrated by examples drawn from studies around the world. A case will be made that speleothem archives are on track to supersede ice cores and marine cores in their importance, because they can be much better dated, are of much higher resolution, and contain more information. They are also available from every continent that is free of ice cover. The U/Th dating limit of ~0.5Ma has recently been extended by U/Pb and so dated speleothem records are now potentially obtainable for many millions of years.
The second part presents the evidence for climatic change obtained from New Zealand speleothems (stalagmites etc.). It compares our palaeoclimate records with those obtained from elsewhere, and concludes that at the multi-millenial scale we appear to be in step with climate change on the planet, but at the millennial scale we show a marked independence with climate change in New Zealand sometimes leading that observed in the Northern Hemisphere by centuries and sometimes even thousands of years. Finally, a possible view of the future is offered by projecting forwards in time the climate cycles identified in speleothems – but would human-induced changes exacerbate or suppress the natural swings of climate?
Beginning with a study of placebo response twenty years ago, our speaker has been concerned with the loose use of term 'placebo'. In this talk he will discuss how patients' response to medical explanation, prescriptions and surgery can best be communicated. Medical practitioners probably use placebo effect subconsciously. Only with clear understanding of placebo effect can light be shed
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