Science Media Centre

An editorial in the Nelson Mail talks about the importance of science to New Zealand, the challenges being faced by scientists working in the system, and the imminent results of the CRI taskforce review.
An excerpt: (read in full here)
“Yet the scientific community is frustrated and demoralised by the existing framework, set up in 1992 to [...]

‘No’, say more than half of Crown Research Institute (CRI) scientists and nearly a third of university scientists, according to results of the just-released 2008 NZAS Survey of New Zealand Scientists and Technologists.
The survey canvassed the opinions of a sample of 361 scientists and technologists randomly selected from a pool of nearly 6000. Previous [...]

Dr Shaun Hendy, of VUW, IRL and the MacDiarmid Institute, talks with Bryan Crump about the Large Hadron Collider and its primary function: seeing if it can create, and capture data for, the elusive Higgs boson.
Otherwise known as the ‘God particle’ the Higgs boson is a theoretical particle which confers mass.  Scientists are hoping that, [...]

Click on the link below to download the SMC Top 10 science stories of 2009 report:
SMC – Top 10 science stories of 2009

Click here to download the 2009 SMC Annual Review…

The Science Media Centre, in conjunction with Meltwater News, has been tracking the coverage of science-related issues in the media, and introduces here the first of what will be monthly reports.
The SMC Media Tracker is aimed at identifying not only the incidence of science-related coverage in the media, but also the events which might contribute [...]

On Tuesday night, respected architect Ian Athfield spoke on the subject of sustainable urban cities.
His talk centred around how small towns and suburbia affect urban design, and showed some archival NZ footage from the last 100 years on the same theme.
His talk can be listened to below:
Part I
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Part II
[Audio [...]

As part of the Copenhagen 2009: Issues, Options, Outlook and Outcomes series of lectures, Judy Lawrence presents her take on the lessons learnt over the last 20 years in terms of emissions reductions and global agreements.
Judy Lawrence is a Senior Associate in the NZ Climate Change Research Institute at VUW, and also the Directors of [...]

Last Friday, Professor John Hamilton, from the University of Melbourne, gave a great talk entitled “Colony stimulating factors, macrophages and inflammatory/auto-immune disease” at the Malaghan Institue in Wellington.
Professor Hamilton is Director of the Arthritis & Inflammation Research Centre at the University of Melbourne, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Victoria, Melbourne (Australia).
Recent research has suggested that reducing/depleting a [...]

Switzerland’s ambassador to New Zealand, Dr Beat Nobs, gave a lecture as part of Victoria University’s Climate Change Research Institute lecture series on climate change and Copenhagen.
About to finish up a four year term here as ambassador, Dr Nobs reflects on prospects for a deal being hammered out in Copenhagen. Previously he served as the [...]

The science behind the catch
As we head into Sea Week and New Zealanders digest the message of the hard-hitting documentary The End of the Line which suggests we may be heading towards a “world without fish”, the SMC is gathering fisheries experts to look at New Zealand’s fisheries and their sustainability.
Every year, the country faces [...]