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Griffith University’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution has once again made the Science list of top 10 stories for the year.
It is the second time in three years the centre, officially launched last year,  has made the impressive international Science Magazine list.
Making the sixth spot was the world-first Aboriginal genome research conducted by Professor David Lambert’s group. Among the team recognised is author Sankar Subramanian, who was responsible for a lot of the analysis, PhD student Joanne Wright and Dr Michael Westaway, who all contributed to the Nature paper when it was published last year.
The research showed how DNA studies put new twists on the timing of human migrations out of Africa – but genetics alone were not enough to tell the full story. The internationally collaborative work received global recognition.

 
In 2014 Adam Brumm and Max Abert were also listed in the magazine’s top stories.
View the list here https://www.sciencenews.org/article/top-science-stories-2016

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While terror and conflict have made cities like Cairo, Istanbul, Tehran, Kabul and Baghdad no-go zones for holidaymakers, tourists still retain a crucial role in fostering peace and preventing bloodshed.
This is one of the key messages of the Global Sustainable Tourism Dashboard published online today to mark 2017 as the United Nations International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development.
The interactive dashboard, created by tourism researchers at Griffith University and the University of Surrey, monitors and analyses data on the aspects of tourism that most influence and affect sustainable development around the world.

EXPLORE: Global Sustainable Tourism Dashboard

The seven areas are poverty alleviation, equality of travel, carbon emissions, resource efficiency, gender equity, protected areas and security.
“The dashboard is telling us that there are conflict zones and we should not go there,” Professor Susanne Becken, (pictured), Director of the Griffith Institute for Tourism, said. “But it is also telling us it is safe to

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Professional sportspeople have a narrow window of opportunity to excel in their chosen field while they’re at peak fitness. But when that window closes, they need to have a plan for a second career. And that’s exactly what Queensland Reds player Caleb Timu is counting on.
Caleb grew up watching rugby every weekend and knew without doubt that he wanted to play sport professionally. But he also always wanted to study, to ensure his career after sport was as successful as his time on the field.
Now, the Griffith University student is enrolled in a Bachelor of Commerce, and is determined to get a quality education and set an example for his family.
“I was the first one to graduate from high school out of my parents and siblings,” he explains. “I’ve always seen education as an important pathway for me in the future as I knew that rugby wouldn’t last forever.”
Caleb made

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Alan Mackay-Sim is a world-renowned trailblazer in cell transplantation, paving the way for innovative research on repairing damaged spinal cords to return the gift of movement to paralysed people.
The Professor Emeritus from Griffith University is now 2017 Queensland Australian of the Year and a nominee for the national honour. More importantly, he’s a man with an unquenchable desire to make a difference and change lives.
In 2014 when paraplegic Darek Fidyk stood upright and tentatively put one foot in front of the other, the world was captivated. An astonishing achievement of science was hailed by experts as being “more impressive than man walking on the moon”. Four years earlier, Darek had been paralysed from the chest down after having his spinal cord completely severed in a knife attack.
The Polish firefighter may have been operated on by specialists in Europe but the heart of this amazing story began in Brisbane with this

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As the government begins to put more focus on research impact when it comes to funding, it’s important that universities can demonstrate the ways in which their work can be more meaningful beyond the pages of journals.
With this in mind, Griffith Business School joined forces with the Department of International Business and Asian Studies, and the Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing to present a workshop geared at discovering how to create research with impact.
Professor Paul Hibbert, University of St Andrews
Featuring speakers such as , Vice Principal of the University of Dundee; Griffith University’s Associate Professor Tim Butcher, from the Department of International Business and Asian Studies; and Professor Paul Hibbert, the Dean of Arts and Divinity at University of St Andrews, the workshop aimed to explore how to create and communicate the meaningful outcomes of Griffith University’s research in a ways that resonate with and impact the economy,

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In 2005, Bundaberg Base Hospital (BBH) made world news after Surgeon Jayant Patel was arrested over the deaths of patients on whom he operated as Director of Surgery at the Hospital. Patel was alleged to have caused at least 18 deaths through negligence.  While medical staff making mistakes is not a new phenomena this was a rare case where employees attempted to voice concerns but a substantial system failure led to very public and extended legal proceedings that laid bare processes normally dealt with ‘in house’.
Giving staff a say in what happens in their workplace in the hope that it will influence their employer’s operations and business affairs for the better is what employers want. Equally, employees wish to put forward views both for this reason as well as asserting their own interests. These are both what researchers refer to as ‘employee voice’.
The assumption cannot be made however, that formalised

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Griffith University continues to cement its place at the forefront of the financial planning sector, with three students taking out the major categories at the 2016 FPA Awards.
Masters student Cody Harmon was named the FPA Financial Planner of the Year, undergraduate Bradley Aleckson was crowned University Student of the Year, and Griffith Business School alumnus Cynthia Sercombe was announced as Paraplanner of the Year.
The victory is particularly sweet for Tupicoffs paraplanner Cynthia, as it’s the first time the awards have recognised paraplanning as its own profession in the awards. “As a paraplanner you just learn to accept that you’re not going to be rewarded, it’s the financial planner that wins awards usually,” she explains. “So it was just really nice to be able to have some recognition for the back office work that gets done. And I was stoked to hear that I won!”
She says one thing

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Emeritus Professor Alan Mackay-Sim has been honoured as this year’s Australian of the Year recipient.
The retired biomedical scientist accepted the prestigious award during a live announcement at Parliament House in Canberra on Australia Day eve.
Professor Mackay-Sim’s ‘personal object’ on display at the Australian National Museum in an exhibition for the Australian of the Year awards.
Professor Mackay-Sim has spent his career researching how nerve cells in the nose regenerate and pioneered a way to safely apply that same regenerative process to damaged spinal cords.
Recognised as the 2003 Queenslander of the Year and the 2017 Queensland Australian of the Year, Professor Mackay-Sim will now spend the next year fulfilling his duties for the Australian title while still overseeing several research projects at the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery.
Those projects include stem cell research into treatments for conditions such as schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease and Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia.
“This is a wonderful opportunity to

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While Queensland sweltered in a heat wave, Griffith University disaster expert Dr Hamish McLean tackled minus 30 degree temperatures in remote Mongolia to help the country’s health services.
Dr McLean, a senior lecturer in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, joined Mongolian medics near the frozen Siberian border to see first-hand how the country was dealing with a declared winter disaster.
“The winter is particularly harsh this year which means local communities, and their livestock, can face extremely difficult freezing conditions – the reverse of Australia,” he said.

“While ambulance services in Australia were warning about dehydration, their counterparts in Mongolia were dealing with frostbite and hypothermia.”
Near the Siberian border, Dr McLean joined specialist medical teams transported to the ger (tent) homes of several nomadic families by old Russian ambulances (pictured below).

“Providing in-home specialist medical care helped overcome the lack of resources to get people in rural areas into hospitals,” he

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