Royal Society of NSW News & Events

“Aboriginal astronomy and the clash of cultures”

  Dr Ragbir Bhathal

Tuesday 18 August 2015
University of Sydney Business School CBD campus, Level 17, 133 Castlereagh St., Sydney

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been observing the night sky for thousands of years. In that period of time they named the celestial objects and created fascinating stories about them. Their astronomy was social-cultural astronomy and as such some aspects of it clashed with the dominant culture in Australia with significant consequences for Australian society.

Ragbir Bhathal was awarded the CJ Dennis Award for excellence in natural history writing and the prestigious Nancy Keesing Fellowship by the State Library of NSW.  He has written 15 books including two on Aboriginal astronomy. His latest book with Professor Harvey Butcher and Dr Ralph Sutherland is Mount Stromlo Observatory: From Bush Observatory to the Nobel Prize. He teaches engineering physics at the University of Western Sydney and is a Visiting Fellow at the Research School for Astronomy & Astrophysics at the Australian National University. He has served as the President of the Royal Society of NSW and was awarded the 1988 Royal Society of NSW Medal.

“Failing to learn: using artificial worlds to teach science in a new way”

  Professor Michael Jacobson

  Professor of Education
  University of Sydney

Friday 14 August 2015
University of Sydney Business School CBD campus
Level 17, 133 Castlereagh Street, Sydney

We are going through a major transition in our ability to understand the complexity of our world, one that rivals the move from Roman numerals to the Hindu-Arabic system we use today. Before this move multiplication and division and algebra were nearly impossible for mere mortals. Afterwards it became easy – well, for most! The move today is from algebra to computer-based visualization and experimentation, which enables us to re-see and understand the behaviour of complex systems in new and exciting ways, which is technically called restructuration. It opens up new opportunities to teach and learn science and actually draws on what kids these days naturally do – play computer games. Before, only super math geniuses had any chance of understanding them, now we all can. A great example is the publicly available NetLogo platform, maintained by Northwestern University in the USA, that was originally designed to teach programming skills to primary school kids – are you smarter than a 5 year old?

Professor Jacobson explained how we can introduce these methods into the classroom, how it will transform the way we teach science and produce future generations that are more scientifically literate and enthused. He illustrated some of the ways he is doing this with high school students. One part of this is what we call Productive Failure, which reverses the normal order of teaching. Instead of teach first and then apply, we apply first, fail and learn better. Students confront challenging problems up front which opens up their minds in new ways that lead to a deeper understanding of the how and why things work. It is also fun for students and teachers and can transform the learning of scientific knowledge and skills in Australian schools.

Michael J. Jacobson is a Professor and Chair of Education at The University of Sydney. He is also the Founder and CEO of Pallas Advanced Learning Systems Pty Ltd, an Australia edtech startup company. His research has focused on the design of learning technologies to foster deep conceptual understanding, conceptual change, and knowledge transfer in challenging conceptual domains. Most recently, his work has explored learning with immersive virtual worlds and agent-based modeling and visualization tools, as well as cognitive and learning issues related to understanding new scientific perspectives emerging from the study of complex systems. Professor Jacobson has published extensively in areas related to the learning sciences and technology, including numerous scientific papers, book chapters, and two books. He chaired the 10th International Conference of the Learning Sciences, on “the future of learning.” And he is a member of the Global Access Partners (GAP) Taskforce on Leadership in Education - public policy think-tank and research house.

"From the Solar Nebula to the Deep Earth – a Geological Journey"

  Professor Bill Griffin

  Distinguished Professor of Geochemistry,
  Macquarie University

Date: Thursday 6 August 2015

Venue: Building Y3A, Theatre 1, Macquarie University

Bill will tell the story of the journey to the surface of the remarkable rocks of Southern Tibet.  These are large fragments of the Earth’s mantle that originate from very great depths (>500 km down) under extreme conditions not ordinarily expected within the mantle and which play an important role in the evolution of igneous systems. To learn the story of these remarkable rocks, we have to understand both the mechanisms that have brought them up to the surface, and the origins of these super-reducing conditions in the mantle. This has involved field studies, geodynamic modeling, a range of techniques for micron-scale chemical, microstructural and isotopic analysis, and a bit of good luck.  One of the keys to the Tibetan riddles lies near the Sea of Galilee in Israel, and involves a remarkable, still poorly-understood type of volcanic activity.  Bill will lead you through this story, which is still evolving by the day; it illustrates the diversity of approaches required in modern geological research, and some of the excitement of that research work.

Bill Griffin is Distinguished Professor of Geochemistry at Macquarie University and Program Director at the RC Centre of Excellence for Core to Crust Fluid Systems. Before that he spent 20 years at the University of Oslo, mainly in the Geological Museum, which is the centre of geochemical research in Scandinavia. He moved to Australia in 1985, to be with his Aussie wife and to help develop geological applications for the CSIRO’s new proton microprobe.  In 2006 he left the CSIRO and moved to Macquarie University.

"Cultural transitions over the last 100,000 years and the future"

  Professor Roland Fletcher

  Professor of Theoretical and World Archaeology

  University of Sydney

Date: Wednesday 5 August 2015

Venue: Union, University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street Sydney

Professor Fletcher described and explained the major cultural transitions that have shaped mankind and discussed what they mean for the future.

Over the past hundred thousand years four major cultural transitions have occurred in human settlement patterns, of which the first is only partially known and the other three are the development of sedentary communities, from about 10,000 years ago; the formation agrarian-based urbanism from 5000 years ago;  and the formation of industrial-based urbanism in the past two hundred years.

The pattern of these great transitions has been logically organised by a progressivist Stage Theory model since the 19^th century in which each stage is characterised by cultural type fossils e.g. writing and initial urbanism. This model still dominates the large-scale, long-term perspective we use to comprehend cultural behaviour. But conventional definitions of sedentism and urbanism have become increasingly vague. The cultural-type fossils are known from context other than the ones for which they are supposed to be stage-diagnostic.

What is required is to replace the progressive model with a model of transitions for which the ‘type Fossils’ are actually antecedent prerequisites - operational requirements that must come together to enable major transitions in settlement size to occur. Critically, economic transformations are also required but do not seem to occur just because cultural, material prerequisites come together. The ‘Industrial Revolution’ is a singular case. Crucially, changes in the material assemblage are essential; the characteristic social organisation of each ‘stage’ derives from the material changes and social and material conditions, which can be at odds with each other. The path to these large, long-term emerging patterns is not deterministic and has implication for comprehending the characteristics of future transitions.

Roland Fletcher is Professor of Theoretical and World Archaeology at the University of Sydney. He attended St. John’s College at Cambridge University completing his undergraduate degree in 1970 and his PhD in 1975. He has worked at the University of Sydney since 1976 where he is Director of the University’s Angkor Research Program. By implementing a global, multi-scalar, interdisciplinary approach to Archaeology he has initiated extensive cross disciplinary collaboration within the University and worldwide. The Greater Angkor Project - funded primarily by the Australian Research Council - is an international collaboration with the French agency, EFEO, and with APSARA the Cambodian government agency that manages Angkor. As a result of his international collaborative research he has been an invited speaker and academic guest all over the world. He was a Distinguished Fellow of Durban University’s Institute of Advanced Study in 2007 and invited speaker at the Falling Walls Conference in Berlin in November 2014.

“Science in literature”

  Dr James Ley

  Editor, Sydney Review of Books

Wednesday 1 July 2015
Union University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney

Literature and science have historically been seen as competing and sometimes opposed disciplines, confined to their own discrete modes of comprehension. James Ley will consider some of the ways in which contemporary literature has sought to embrace and naturalise scientific understanding, while grappling with the moral implications of advances in scientific knowledge. It will argue that the language of literature has the potential to humanise complex scientific views and thus render them comprehensible, and in doing so play a role in disseminating scientific truths.

James Ley is the Editor of the Sydney Review of Books and the author of The Critic in the Modern World: Public Criticism from Samuel Johnson to James Wood (2014). In 2014, he was awarded the Geraldine Pascall Prize for Australian Critic of the Year. According to the judges’ report, “He operates at the point where scholarly precision and essayistic liberty intersect. ... In a Ley review, you may be sure that an independent opinion informed by wide reading and sharp thinking is being stated.” See http://www.sydneyreviewofbooks.com/

“The science of spontaneity: Fred Astaire as consummate craftsman”

  Dr Kathleen Riley

Wednesday 3 June 2015
Union, University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney

This talk focused on the science behind Fred Astaire's apparent effortlessness, his ability to make something that was technically complex and endlessly rehearsed look easy and spontaneous. The lighter-than-air grace, the pluperfect precision and the sheer joyfulness of his dancing were the products of a dogged perfectionism, an astonishing musicianship and an imagination at once whimsical and methodical. Using numerous film clips Dr Riley illustrated how, in the more technical aspects of his artistry, Astaire was part of an ancient tradition (that of Roman pantomime) and, at the same time, revolutionary. The first half of the talk concentrated on Astaire the eloquent dance stylist and specifically, the perfect commensurability of all parts of his body to one another and to the whole, and his interpretive games with the shape and logic of music, his inventive use of the off-beat and experiments with broken rhythm, and his syncopated language, which impressed Bertolt Brecht as the sound of the modern environment. The second half considered Astaire the cinematic craftsman, his instinctive understanding of how best to present dance on film, his pioneering use of special effects (e.g. slow motion and split screens), and his role in improving sound synchronization.

Dr Kathleen Riley is a former British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and now a freelance writer, theatre historian and critic. She is the author of Nigel Hawthorne on Stage (University of Hertfordshire Press, 2004); The Reception and Performance of Euripides: Reasoning Madness (Oxford University Press, 2008); and The Astaires: Fred and Adele (Oxford University Press, US, 2012). The last was included in the Wall Street Journal's Best Non-Fiction for 2012 and described by legendary singer Tony Bennett as “a magnificent book about the trials and tribulations of show business”. In 2008, she convened at Oriel College, Oxford the first international conference on the art and legacy of Fred Astaire. She was Script Consultant on the critically acclaimed stage production My Perfect Mind, which had its London premiere at the Young Vic in 2013. Her current projects include a monograph on the ancient Greek concept of Nostos (homecoming) and an edited volume of essays on Oscar Wilde and Classical Antiquity. She continues to have an association with the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD) in Oxford.

  Guest of Honour Dame Marie Bashir AD CVO

  Vice Regal Patron of the Society
  and Governor of NSW

Tuesday 5 May 2015
Union, University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney

Dame Marie Bashir was made a Distinguished Fellow of the Royal Society, was presented with the 2014 Royal Society of NSW Medal, and gave the Distinguished Fellow's Address.  She reflected on the origins of the Society and on the contributions of Lachlan Macquarie, 5th Governor of NSW.

Other awards presented at the dinner were:

L to R: Prof. Bill Griffin, A/Prof. Richard Payne, Prof. Robert Park, Dr. Ann Moyal, Dame Marie Bashir, Ms. Judith Wheeldon (Vice President), Prof. Brynn Hibbert (Vice President), Donald Hector (President)

“Is the brain the right size?”

  Scientia Professor George Paxinos AO

  School of Medical Sciences, UNSW

Wednesday 1 April 2015
Union, University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney

Scientia Professor George Paxinos described the outstanding body of research that he has conducted over many years on mapping the structure of the brain. His work is some of the most cited research in the scientific literature. Virtually every map of the human brain found in hospital operating theatres, doctors’ surgeries and medical practices is based on his work.

Descartes famously made the distinction between mind and brain but, Professor Paxinos argues, there is no ghost in the brain. The mind is a function of brain activity, nothing more. One of the primary differences between the brain and other organs is the extraordinary number of neurones that it contains. The human brain has many more neurones than the size of its body suggests.

Professor Paxinos described the approach taken to understand the structure of the brain. Mostly this revolves around looking at other animals, such as rats and research monkeys to determine the difference in brain structure and, from the differences conclude the function of various aspects of the human brain. One of the main techniques in studying brain tissue is histology. In this approach, tissue is cut it into very fine slices that are then stained to be observed under a microscope. About 40 years ago, a major breakthrough was made when it was realised that staining brain tissue using a variety of stains gave a much richer understanding of neurones structure – the stains were able to differentiate between different types of tissue.

More recently, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been used to map brains, in particular mouse brains. This enables construction of three-dimensional images with different stains revealing different details. These can be then synthesised into many different types of image. Combining the histological approach with MRI has enabled highly detailed maps of brain structure to be synthesised using data from many sources.

Professor Paxinos’s group is now looking at the “ontology” of the brain (borrowing the term from philosophy) to better understand the way in which the structure of the brain relates to human thought. Of particular interest is the nature of thought processes, such as belief. All human belief derives from brain function.

So is the brain right size? If it was smaller it would not have allowed us to have achieved the quite extraordinary advances in human thought over the last several thousand years. We would not have been able to go to the moon or puzzle over challenges of quantum mechanics. But the brain is by no means infallible and indeed it may be the wrong size to enable us to come to terms with some of the highly complex issues such as climate change that challenge the very future of humanity.  

“Super-resolution microscopy: understanding how T-cells make decisions”

  Scientia Professor Katharina Gaus

  ARC Centre of Excellence in Advanced
  Molecular Imaging
  Program in Membrane Interface Biology, UNSW​

Wednesday 4 March 2015
Union, University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney

Professor Gaus described her ground-breaking work on understanding the structure of T-cells, one of the major components of the immune system. Professor Gaus is a cell biologist who uses super-resolution microscopy to explore the structure of cell membranes. Hopefully, this will lead to improved treatments for infectious, cancer and autoimmune diseases.

The adaptive immune system is the body’s first line of defence against infection. It is acquired over the life of the organism, developing a ‘memory’ for antigens (antigens are the invading agent). This highly sophisticated system is antigen-specific and must be able to distinguish between foreign antigens and substances made by the host. It is mediated by T-lymphocytes – a type of white blood cell that plays a central role in cell-mediated immunity. T-lymphocytes are characterised by the presence of a T-cell receptor (TCR) on the cell-surface. Antigens bind to T-cells through major histocompatibility complex (MHC), a set of cell-surface molecules that controls a major part of the immune system in all vertebrates. Humans can make up to 25,000,000 different TCRs, representing an enormous variety of substances against which the body can mount an immune response.

The role of T-cells is to hunt for antigens. Over the last 50 years or so, the way in which T-cells identify antigens has been characterised: TCRs can only recognise peptides on MHC, T-cells do not recognise self-peptides on self-MHC, and T-cells that react to self-peptides on self-MHC result in autoimmunity. T-cells are responsible for life-and-death decisions – they have to distinguish between self-peptides and foreign peptides. This is like looking for a needle in a haystack; there are many more self-peptides and foreign peptides. Gaining a better understanding of the structure and function of T-cells is important in developing treatments for autoimmune diseases and cancer. For example, it is known that T-cells play a role in the body's resistance to various types of cancer. However, one of the problems in cancer immunotherapy is to determine why some cancers escape T-cells and whether or not they can be retrained.

Professor Gaus’s work is focused on using microscopy to identify the structure of T-cell membranes. There are two major problems that need to be solved to investigate this. T-cells are very mobile – they move rapidly through the blood and it is difficult to capture images of them. Fortunately, once they bind to an antigen, they become almost stationary. The second problem is one of resolution. The molecules being investigated are 10–20 nm in size. The diffraction limit for a visible light microscope is about 250 nm which means that they cannot resolve these molecules. This requires super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, form of light microscopy that allows capture of images that at a much higher resolution than the diffraction limit. Super-resolution fluorescence microscopy enables investigation down to the to the size range of the T-cell molecules of interest.

By acquiring very large samples of data (20,000 frames), x-y coordinates can be determined and statistical methods can be used to analyse structure of specific molecules. Professor Gaus’s research has identified a number of interesting observations about the function of T-cells. It seems that only some T-cells trigger on exposure to an antigen and receptors seem to be triggered in dense clusters. TCR clustering appears to a key element in antigen recognition and some antigens appear to induce TCR clustering. This raises interesting questions such as, can we use nanoparticles to induce clustering?

Recently, Professor Gaus has been investigating ways in which the z-axis can be explored so that molecules can be investigated in all three spatial dimensions as her earlier work suggests that the dynamics of the molecules (such as oscillating like a yo-yo) may be important in their function.

"Latest developments in small modular reactors"

Dr Adrian (Adi) Paterson

Chief Executive Officer,
Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation

Held in conjunction with the Nuclear Engineering Panel of the Sydney Branch of Engineers Australia, the Australian Nuclear Association and the Australian Institute of Energy

Date: Monday 16 February 2015

The largest source of energy today is fossil fuel which we know has significant CO₂issues. The second largest source is nuclear, using uranium. Dr Paterson began his talk by showing that the country generating the most energy per capita is France with its successful harnessing of nuclear technology, but interestingly Brazil is also successful with its use of ethanol from sugar cane. Australia was shown to be in the worst sector with almost the highest cost per capita of electric power generation, more than twice as expensive as France and similar to the high cost in Denmark which relies heavily on wind energy.

Dr Paterson is a world authority on Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). In his talk he stated that this new type of nuclear reactor is given too little prominence against the backdrop of the very large power reactors, such as China's new 1750 MWe power plant in Taishan, which have captured our attention until now.

Dr Paterson touched on Australia's recent shifts politically in which the nuclear component of an optimal energy mix is growing in acceptance, as seen from the recent announcement of a Royal Commission in South Australia, in view also of its rich resources of uranium. The lecture showed how SMRs are ready to fill the vacuum in countries like Australia.

Once again, the Four Societies Lecture was an outstanding success with a full house attending. The Society thanks the Australian Institute of Energy for organizing this year's event and Clayton Utz for supporting it.

Royal Society of NSW scholarship winners 2015

Wednesday 4 February 2015
Union, University and Schools Club, 25 Bent Street, Sydney

Melanie Laird
School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney

Melanie is a University Medallist in her second year of a PhD under the supervision of Professor Michael Thompson, studying reproduction in marsupials.

Ruth Wells
School of Psychology, University of Sydney

Ruth is enrolled in a doctorate of clinical psychology and Master of Science programme. With an exceptional display of initiative, Ruth built relationships with psychologists, psychiatrists, academics and health workers in Jordan over the internet; crowd-funded her travel costs, and then completed the research project in Jordan where she explored barriers to mental health care for Syrian refugees living in Jordan.

Stephen Parker
School of Chemistry, University of NSW

Stephen Parker is in his final year of a PhD in the Nanomaterials group in the School of Chemistry at UNSW where he is making surfaces that can capture cells from a blood sample and then release a single targeted cell that has a particular characteristic.

L to R: Brynn Hibbert, Stephen Parker, Melanie Laird, Ruth Wells, Donald Hector

2014 Jak Kelly Award presentation, followed by the Society’s Christmas Party

Wednesday 3 December 2014

Union, University & Schools Club, 25 Bent St, Sydney

The 2014 Royal Society of NSW Jak Kelly Award was presented to Ms Linh Tran of the School of Physics at University of Wollongong (here seen at the AIP Awards Day on 18 November), for her work on development of 3D semiconductor microdosimetric sensors for RBE determination in ¹²C heavy ion therapy.

The Jak Kelly Award was created in honour of Professor Jak Kelly (1928 - 2012), who was Head of Physics at University of NSW from 1985 to 1989, was made an Honorary Professor of University of Sydney in 2004, and was President of the Royal Society of NSW in 2005 and 2006.  Its purpose is to encourage excellence in postgraduate research in physics.  It is supported by the Royal Society of NSW and the Australian Institute of Physics, NSW branch.  The winner is selected from a short list of candidates who made presentations at the most recent Australian Institute of Physics, NSW branch postgraduate awards.

"Recent studies on the total synthesis of natural products and related systems"

 Professor Martin Banwell

 Research School of Chemistry
 Institute of Advanced Studies
 Australian National University
 Canberra

Thursday 20 November 2014

Lecture Theatre 4, School of Chemistry, University of Sydney

Professor Banwell is an organic chemist and is one of Australia's most accomplished researchers into the synthesis of complex organic compounds. In this year's Liversidge Research Lecture, he described work that has been done in his group over a number of years to synthesise materials that have wide-ranging applications, especially as pharmaceuticals. The starting point for his work is a family organic chemicals called arenes. These are substances based on a structure of six carbon atoms arranged in a ring, with each carbon atom having a hydrogen atom attached – this substance is known as benzene. Some of the hydrogen atoms can be replaced by other substituents, for example, instead of one of the hydrogen atoms, methyl, bromine, chlorine, trifluorocarbon, hydroxyl, carboxyl etc groups can be substituted. These can then be used as building blocks, using a variety of synthetic pathways, to make much more complex substances.

Until quite recently, many of these syntheses were done using a variety of chemical reactions that have been developed by organic chemists over the last 150 years. One of the problems that arises with this approach is that substances with the same chemical formula can have different shapes. For example, substances that have the same chemical formula but be mirror images of each another, in much the same way as the right-hand is the mirror image of the left-hand – these are called enantiomers. Often, one enantiomer will have little physiological effect in comparison to the other. In the last 15 years or so, genetically-modified organisms have been developed that allows synthesis of these substances that favours production of the biologically-active enantiomer.

Professor Banwell described his work to develop synthetic pathways, starting with the simple substances described above and reacting these with genetically modified e. coli to produce an arene with two adjacent hydroxyl groups, in addition to the other reactive site. This results in an intermediate that allows a great variety of subsequent synthetic pathways, allowing synthesis of a very large number of biologically active substances. Two examples of these are vitamin C and the influenza drug Tamiflu. Professor Banwell went on to describe a complex sequence of reactions that has enabled his group to synthesise a substance called Ribisin C, the substance that, at very low concentrations, appears to have a marked effect on the stimulating neurite growth in PC12 cells. (Neurites are projections that growth from neurons [nerve cells] as they develop and PC12 cells are particular type of rat neuron that is used in medical research.) It is hoped that this research work may lead to new treatments for neurological diseases and damage to the nervous system. Professor Banwell's group is also working on novel pathways for making codeine, an opioid that is currently derived from opium poppy production. A synthetic pathway could, potentially, lead to a much less expensive production process for opiates.