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Scientists have discovered “tree rings” in coral-reef building algae that could show signs of impacts of climate change.
The Griffith University team made the find using state-of-the-art techniques in laboratories at the Griffith University Nathan campus, the Australian National University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
Similar to tree rings, skeletal banding can provide information on growth rate, age, and longevity, as well as records of past environmental conditions and the coralline algae’s growth responses to such changes.
Published in the journal PLOS One today (Thursday), the researchers show the rings for the first time in tropical reef building species from the Great Barrier Reef. The bands are created by changes in skeletal mineralogy and density, and reproductive structures.
“Variations in the spacing in between the bands may reflect a change in the environment. Understanding this could help us understand past or future climate change events and their impacts on the reef,” said

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Digital artist and writer, Dr Jason Nelson, has won the inaugural Digital Literature Award at the 2017 Queensland Literary Awards.
A senior lecturer at Griffith University’s Queensland College of Art, Dr Nelson won the accolade for his digital poem Nine Million Branches.
Upon landing on the poem’s home page, the piece begins:
“The world, its politics and environments, conflicts and economies, is in peril, in disarray.
“We are flooded with tragic tales and the shameful deeds of others. And because of this we have lost sight of the beauty, the story and narrative hidden in the local, in the landscapes around us.”
The audience is then invited to read, play and explore through the interactive landscape.
The Digital Literature Award, worth $10,000, is awarded to an exceptional work of transmedia or digital literature showcasing innovation in storytelling. It’s the largest of its kind internationally and sponsored by the Queensland Government and the Queensland University of

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Griffith University researchers are using humpback whales as “canaries in the coalmine” to tell them what’s happening in Antarctica.
A team lead by Associate Professor Susan Bengtson Nash, of Griffith’s Southern Ocean Persistent Organic Pollutants Program (SOPOPP), has been monitoring the East coast of Australia migrating population for the past 10 years.
Professor Bengston Nash said they used the whales as a sentinel species to indicate what is happening in the Antarctic sea ice system.
“In Moreton Bay we’ve been working for 10 years now looking at the diet, the hormones, the enzyme activation in the animals, the contaminant burdens and also the relative fat reserves of the animals,” she said.
“We have also developed the first humpback whale cell line as a tool for toxicological investigations. We essentially we have a little whale in a petrie dish.
“We’ve discovered that by monitoring the whales’ fatness and diet we can tell whether it’s a good year or a poor year in Antarctica.”
SOPOPP also has a project in Moreton

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Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk officially handed the Parklands Development to the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games Corporation (GOLDOC) during the weekend for its transformation into the Commonwealth Games Village.
The occasion was also marked by the unveiling of the Games Village emblem fittingly designed by Griffith University graphic design student, Janet Turner.
The Village 2018 emblem represents the coming together of 6,600 athletes and team officials from all over the Commonwealth and the Games Village as the meeting place.
“The emblem design was inspired by the Gold Coast’s natural beauty, promoting a fun and relaxed environment for athletes,” Premier Palaszczuk said.
“The emblem is also inspired by the Village itself with the central water feature drawing together the six residential zones, represented as a meeting place.”
Griffith sport development student Domonic Bedgood, who won gold in diving at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, also attended and addressed the formal handover event.
Premier Palaszczuk said the fact

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More than a century since a Brisbane doctor found that lead in paint destroyed children’s lives, new research from Griffith University concludes that it is a major risk factor for pre-eclampsia.
Pre-eclampsia is a disease which kills over 75,000 women internationally each year and is responsible for 9% of all fetal deaths.
Published in Environmental Research, the study reviewed the results of 11 previous international studies that measured blood lead levels of pregnant women who experienced pre-eclampsia and control groups of women who did not experience pre-eclampsia.
“We combined the data from a number of clinical trials to conduct a powerful analysis of pre-eclampsia research,” says Dr Arthur Poropat from Griffith Health.
Along with Dr Mark Laidlaw from RMIT University, the team found that blood lead levels are the strongest predictor of whether a pregnant woman will develop pre-eclampsia.
“We found that the link between high blood lead levels and pre-eclampsia is twice as strong

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A unique insight into what athletes can anticipate on arrival at the Commonwealth Games Village next year will be presented to a Gold Coast audience by Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games Corporation (GOLDOC) Village Operations Assistant, Emily Biviano, on Wednesday (Oct 4).
“I am hoping to take the audience on a journey as if they were an athlete or someone working in the Commonwealth Games Village,” Emily says.
“It will be an exclusive event with information that we don’t generally get to tell the public – fun facts, videos, photos. This is an opportunity for the Gold Coast community to get excited about GC2018 and also to inform them about the Village and the awesome legacy it will leave behind.”
FIND OUT MORE – 2018 INSIDE SCOOP
Emily will deliver the first of seven exclusive events hosted by City of Gold Coast Libraries taking a public audience behind the scenes of the Gold Coast

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