Category: Griffith University Feed

Griffith University scientists hope to encourage more students into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) through the creation of engaging children’s books.
Griffith’s That’s Rad! Science project was among 28 new ‘diverse and exciting’ Advance Queensland Engaging Science Grants recipients, sharing in almost $270,000 to increase STEM skills and engagement.
The project will support the creation of a series of illustrated children’s books for children aged five to nine that showcase Queensland women in STEM and their exciting fields and careers.
The three books, developed in collaboration with Queensland women in STEM, will be distributed free to 250 Queensland schools and will focus on these themes:

parasites
amazing nanoparticles including why butterfly wing have such vivid colours and nanoparticle ‘robots’ used for environmental sensing
science detective (forensics) or engineering

Professor Kathy Andrews, of the Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery, is leading the That’s RAD! Science project. She and Associate Professor Qin Li, of the Griffith School of Engineering, are the

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Queensland Conservatorium graduate Kang Wang will show the world his tenor talents when he represents Australia at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition next month.
A remarkable achievement
“I was very happy to be selected,” he says.
“I have applied many times over the past seven years and finally I’m in.
“This is one of the most important singing competitions in the world and it will be great exposure for me – many of the people I’ll be auditioning for from around Europe will be watching.”
Dubbed the Olympics of the opera world, the international showcase features just 20 young singers from around the world.
Held every two years, it has launched the careers of major opera stars, including fellow Queensland Conservatorium alumnus and faculty member Professor Lisa Gasteen AO – the only Australian to have ever won the competition.
Kang is preparing a series of blockbuster arias from famous works including Roméo et Juliette, La Bohème and La

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Recent Queensland College of Art (QCA) graduate Eliah Lillis is living the dream, working as a photographer at Cambodia’s only international award-winning newspaper, The Phnom Penh Post.
Eliah graduated from QCA in 2016 with a Photography degree majoring in Photojournalism and Photographic Artistic Practice. This latest opportunity at The Phnom Penh Post arose after travelling internationally and practising his craft.
The newspaper has a long-standing connection with QCA, having employed several other graduates in the past.
“I secured the role through a perfect mix of networking, being in the right place at the right time, and hard work,” said Eliah.
Eliah captures stories for the PostWeekend, a weekly insert that covers art, culture and longer in-depth features. In this environment there’s no such thing as a ‘typical day at the office’.
“The work is so diverse. I could be attending an exclusive rooftop performance by the nation’s most regarded traditional dance troupe, or photographing food

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2017 has begun extraordinarily well. It’s a pleasure to recognise and celebrate the successes of our QCA students, graduates and staff in the May 2017 edition of the QCA newsletter.
documenta 14
Well-known emerging artist and current QCA PhD candidate, Dale Harding, and nationally acclaimed painter and QCA alumnus Gordon Hookey, have both had large-scale artistic projects featured within the world’s most prestigious art event, documenta 14. Dale and Gordon’s projects are currently displayed in documenta 14’s Athens exhibition, and both will have works featuring in documenta 14’s Kassel exhibition from June.
Griffith University Art Museum, QCA and Griffith’s Arts, Education, Law Group (AEL) have collaborated with the organisers of documenta 14 on the publication of two high-quality publications to support each artist’s project. The publications will be available from early June and distributed at documenta 14 and throughout Europe. They will appeal to anyone with an interest in contemporary Australian Indigenous art.
A

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​In the age of Trump and ‘fake’ news, amid the relentless 24/7 news cycle how do contemporary journalists navigate their way in a chaotic world?
Griffith University’s Associate Professor Susan Forde will address this question in the 2017 Arts, Education & Law Professorial Lecture tomorrow (Tuesday, May 16) at South Bank.
“Websites and social media off-shoots provide a limitless capacity for news content but the number of journalists reporting on an ever-more complex political scene is plummeting,’’ she said.
“Decreasing revenues have led to an urgent need to build audiences by whatever means necessary.
“For many news organisations, this means giving Donald Trump three times as much coverage as Hillary Clinton during the US election campaign because readers are far more likely to ‘click’ on a Trump story; or reporting a Paris robbery involving reality TV celebrity Kim Kardashian as the top news item of the day.”
Assoc Prof Susan Forde
While acknowledging the many challenges facing

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Associate Professor Ian Glendon from the Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing will be presenting a special seminar Tuesday regarding organisational identification (OID) and its relationship with antecedent and criterion variables.
“I think if people identify with the organisation that they are in then it has a sort of iterative context. People feel more comfortable working there or being there,” Glendon said.
“From an organisations point of view, if most of the people working for you identify with you, you are more likely to have a happier and productive workforce. Although having said that, when we looked at productivity as an outcome we have not found an association, but that is not to say there isn’t one, it is just difficult to find.”
Associate Professor Glendon’s seminar will break down the OID theory and explain how analysing some key variables such as job satisfaction, longevity and job prestige may help organisations make predictions

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Cycling 1600kms from Townsville to Brisbane is all in the name of charity for Professor Scott Baum from Griffith University’s School of Environment and the Cities Research Institute as he gears up for the Smiling for Smiddy Challenge Ride.
Professor Baum will be joined by 50 other like-minded men and women on the route from Townsville to Brisbane, as he aims to raise his target goal of $5000 for the Mater Foundation.
Riders will travel through Queensland’s scenic countryside from August 26 to September 2, 2017, with the funds raised from this epic event contributing to support breakthrough cancer research at The Mater.
“With one in two Australians diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime I hope that my participation in the ride and more importantly the associated fundraising will give hope to current sufferers and to those who might be diagnosed in the future,” Professor Baum said.
Professor Baum said the event had personal

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Griffith Business School experts have had their say on the 2017 Federal Budget and have been left underwhelmed by Treasurer Scott Morrison’s second economic blueprint.
In a special Griffith Business School presentation, five key academics reviewed the budget’s impact on the economy, superannuation, regional Australia, energy policy, defence and on the political landscape.
Head of Department for Accounting, Finance and Economics Professor Fabrizio Carmignani said the Treasurer fell short of what Australia needs to sustain long term growth. Professor Carmignani also argues that this budget does not do nearly enough to avoid the growing disparity between the rich and poor.
“I would have liked to see some specific intervention to ensure that growth is inclusive. Instead, most of the spending that is indeed instrumental to reducing inequality is classified as so-called ‘bad debt’ and, this spending can only be financed through taxes.”
Housing affordability was one of the key pillars of the 2017 Budget

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Fit and healthy Tasmanian devils are being taken down by deadly facial tumours that are attacking the “best” animals in the population, according to novel research led by Griffith University.
The research, published in the scientific journal Ecology Letters, shows that devils that catch devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) have higher survival and reproductive rates prior to disease-induced death than individuals that do not become infected.
Typically infectious diseases affect mostly older, younger, or less healthy individuals. However, the team of scientists from Australia and the US, led by Dr Konstans Wells of Griffith’s Environmental Futures Research Institute (EFRI), found that devils with higher fitness are at highest risk of infection and death from facial tumours.
Dr Wells said this was probably because of the disease’s mode of transmission among socially dominant individuals.
“It’s an important finding, as it indicates that the fittest devils, which are the ones typically engaging in mating or aggressive

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Scientists from Griffith’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution (ARCHE) have helped discover Homo naledi’s surprisingly young age, opening up more questions on where we come from.
Findings published this week in journal eLife show that Homo naledi, the hominin that was discovered by a large team of international researchers in 2013, was alive sometime between 335 and 236 thousand years ago.
ARCHE was among a large team of international researchers led by James Cook University who have presented the long-awaited age of the naledi fossils from the Dinaledi Chamber and announced the new discovery of a second chamber in the Rising Star cave system, containing additional specimens of Homo naledi, including a child and a partial skeleton of an adult male with a remarkably well-preserved skull.
Dr Duval in the lab.
Among all the dating methods used, direct dating of the Homo naledi fossil teeth was performed using Electron Spin Resonance in two different laboratories. Part of this work

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