Planet of the Bugs
Professor Ian Paulsen is on the trail of ‘superbugs’, the drug-resistant bacteria that don’t respond to typical antibiotic treatments, and which pose a growing, world wide health threat. But Paulsen’s discovery of Acel which makes the bacteria resistant by pumping antiseptics out of its cells may change the picture. The recent development of next-generation sequencing techniques ...
Transforming surgical innovation
Operating theatres can be hotbeds of innovation – witness the giant forward leaps in health care that arose from inventive techniques like organ transplants and laparoscopic surgery, and from the development of devices like pacemakers and stents, which have all saved and improved millions of lives. But an operating theatre can also be a very risky place to try something new. One slip of t...
Creating a kinder world
Macquarie alumnus Professor Joseph Pugliese (BA/DipEd 1985) has spent his career focusing on social justice issues, exploring deep themes like the relationship between knowledge and power, the way discrimination and injustice are meted out in today’s world, the concept of state violence and institutional racism, and ideas around regimes of colonialism and empire. Today, Pugliese is the Pr...
Shocking film
In the famous Milgram experiments in social psychology, performed over 50 years ago, subjects were instructed to give electric shocks of increasing intensity to another person (an actor pretending to be another subject) each time the person failed an experimental task. Prompted by the defence of Nazis who claimed they were just following orders, the experiments were designed by Yale Univers...
The year of light
Light is fundamental to our lives, powering everything from photosynthesis to the internet. As light-based technologies are poised to take on an ever-greater role in our lives, Macquarie’s alumni are at the forefront of the field of photonics. “Where electronics moves electrical particles (electrons) in wires to convey information, photonics transfers packets of light (photons) along op...
The great garden gnome hunt
While there aren’t many garden gnomes around Macquarie today, there was a day back in 1970 when they took over the campus, following what became widely known as the Great Garden Gnome Hunt. According to Dr Brian Spencer (BA (Hons) 1972, DUniv (Honoris Causa) 2004), former Registrar and Vice-Principal of Macquarie University, events unfolded on the eve of the second Conception Day celebrat...