Research News
New two-tone lizard named after Sir David Attenborough
A research team led by Dr Martin Whiting from the Department of Biological Sciences recently discovered a colourful new species of flat lizard, which they have named Platysaurus attenboroughi, after Sir David Attenborough. This African species is appropriately named Platysaurus (flat lizard) because they are incredibly flat – designed to fit into the narrowest of crevices where they refug...
Innovation districts: Pioneering a new approach to university-corporate engagement in Australia
The 2013 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard shows Australia lags when it comes to active collaboration between universities and business. Only 3.5 per cent of large and 4.1 per cent of small and medium sized firms in Australia were reported to be collaborating with higher education or public research institutions. In com...
Can sex hormones save us from dementia?
Even though we know that a lot of diseases affect men and women differently, traditionally a disproportionate amount of research has been done in males (either in male animals or on male cells/human subjects), which means that often women are medically treated as if they were men. Macquarie University PhD student Josien de Bie is working to understand the interactions of sex hormones with o...
Creating resilient societies
In the midst of ongoing global turmoil, communities are coming under pressure from social, economic, environmental, and religious pressures. Building resilient societies is one of the key focus areas of our Strategic Research Framework 2015 – 2024: World-Leading Research; World-Changing Impact, as Macquarie seeks to understand cultures in our changing world and building ethical, just and inc...
Healthy reefs
The world’s largest coral reef system is made up of around 3000 individual reefs spread across more than 34 million hectares, and it is greatly under threat from various forms of environmental degradation. Monitoring the health of the Great Barrier Reef, as well as the many thousands of other reefs world wide that are threatened by various forms of environmental degradation, is a gargantu...
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 ...