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Expression of Interest for Participants in the RACI Skilled Migration - Assessment criteria/review panel

By Jenny Pham posted 10 days ago
Expression of Interest for Participants in the RACI Skilled Migration - Assessment criteria/review panel RACI | Australia Overview VETASSESS , authorised by the Australian Government, is Australia's largest skills assessment authority. It plays a critical role in the migration process by evaluating trade, professional, and other occupations to attract skilled migrants and meet Australia's labour demands, thereby supporting economic growth. To enhance its assessment criteria, VETASSESS partners with governments, educators, and key industry leaders. These collaborations help to refine skills assessment standards, test capabilities, and ...

ABC News - Seeking Interviewee

By Samantha Telepe posted 10 days ago
Good afternoon Members, The RACI is seeking someone to speak to an ABC News journalist either tomorrow 26/9/24 or Friday 27/9/24 regarding the chemical paraquat and its possible impacts on the environment and particularly birds and mammals. If you are available to be interviewed either of these days, please send through your email and best contact number to info@raci.org.au and I will pass this on to ABC News for them to contact you directly. Thanks Samantha

The chemistry that underpins the integrity of the Melbourne Cup

By Jenny Pham posted 11 days ago
This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine: Issue September 2024 Author: Adam Cawley and David Batty Image:Without A Fight, ridden by Mark Zahra (yellow with black spots), charges down the Flemington straight on his way to winning the 2023 Lexus Melbourne Cup. | Photo by Jay Town/Racing Photos Each year approximately 60,000 samples are screened for 10,000 substances that can influence a racehorse’s performance. The Melbourne Cup is Australia’s greatest horse race. It evokes a sense of pride and passion, feelings of euphoria and despair, together with the enjoyment of food and social gatherings. The Melbourne Cup highlights that ...

LSD derivatives change minds without breaking hearts

By Jenny Pham posted 11 days ago
This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine: Issue September 2024 Author: Dennis Power MRACI Image: Dr Mike Nutt at his fume hood | Photo: Jack Annear The use of psychedelics for therapeutic treatment could be one step closer with the discovery of potentially safer lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) derivatives. Researchers at the University of Western Australia (UWA), in collaboration with Sydney start-up Woke Pharmaceuticals, are accelerating better mental health treatments via their library of novel LSD analogues. These derivatives exhibit more hallucinogenic potency than psilocin (the active component in magic mushrooms) while virtually ...

Autism: A Personal Story: Professor Colin Raston AO FAA, FRSC, FRACI CChem

By Jenny Pham posted 16 days ago
I am a professor in clean technology, working full time as a teacher and researcher at Flinders University, and currently I lead a large research team working on green chemistry which is important for getting the planet towards a sustainable future. I shared an Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2015 for ‘partially unboiling an egg’- this was for a discovery that makes you laugh but also makes you think – a discovery which is very important for the pharmaceutical industry, and other fields of scientific endeavour. I led the debate on green chemistry in Australia starting over 25 years ago and I was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia ...

Green and Sustainable Chemistry Group Achieves Full Division Status: A Milestone in Advancing Innovation and Industry Engagement

By Panduka Jayasooriya posted 18 days ago
We are excited to announce that the Green and Sustainable Chemistry National Group has officially advanced to the status of a Full Division. This achievement stands as a testament to their unwavering commitment to advancing green and sustainable practices while advocating for progress in chemistry education, research, and innovation, as well as fostering strong industry engagement. Their efforts are leaving a significant mark on the field, and the RACI community is proud to support their continued impact and growth.

The plastic paradox in coastal ecosystems

By Jenny Pham posted 18 days ago
This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine: Issue September 2024 Author: MD Abu Noman, Tanveer Adyel, Stacey Trevathantackett and Peter Macreadie Image: G.Go/Adobe Is there an upside to plastic waste accumulating in coastal wetlands? The invention of the polymer in 1907 has had many socioeconomic benefits. Due to its outstanding plasticity, thermal and acoustic properties, durability and low-cost of production, plastic became central to the packaging and construction industries. The production of plastic material has increased from 1.5 million tonnes in 1950 to 400 million tonnes in 2022. During this time, plastics have ...

A new class of antibiotics

By Jenny Pham posted 03-09-2024
This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine: Issue June 2024 Author: William Lumb Image: Nobeastsofierce/Adobe Stock Queensland researchers are testing compounds that inhibit bacterial resistance to two-thirds of antibiotics prescribed. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared antibiotic resistance “one of the biggest threats to global health, food security and development today … Without urgent action we are heading for a post-antibiotic era in which common infections and minor injuries can once again kill”. As part of its 2015 global action plan, WHO recommended “basic research and translational studies to support … new ...

How AI is joining the fight against superbugs

By Jenny Pham posted 03-09-2024
This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine: Issue June 2024 Author: Katharina Richter Image: Bacteria that live in biofilms are 1000 times harder to treat with antibiotics. | Animate Your Science (https://animateyour.science) CC BY 4.0 Scientists are exploring new strategies to win the war against superbugs. Over the years, the misuse and overuse of antibiotics have inadvertently fuelled the rise of antibioticresistant bacteria. In 2019, 1.27 million people died from antibiotic-resistant infections globally. Imagine antibiotics as soldiers fighting bacteria on the battlefield. Over time, some bacteria manage to survive the attack, ...

International science collaborations in a contested world

By Jenny Pham posted 03-09-2024
This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine: Issue March 2024 Author: Chennupati Jagadish Image: Some of the flags representing collaborating nations at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Despite individual national interests and international challenges, collaboration has kept the Antarctic free from military conflict and nuclear proliferation. | National Science Foundation/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain The Defence Trade Controls Amendment Bill 2023 limits international scientific collaboration for security reasons, but its implications for research are much broader. The global science system is at its most valuable, and ...

Meet “Coscientist”: your AI lab partner

By Jenny Pham posted 03-09-2024
This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine: Issue March 2024 Author: Jason Stoughton Image: US National Science Foundation An AI-based system succeeds in planning and carrying out real-world chemistry experiments, showing the potential to help human scientists make more discoveries, faster. In less time than it will take you to read this article, an artificial intelligence-driven system was able to autonomously learn about certain Nobel Prize-winning chemical reactions and design a successful laboratory procedure to make them. The AI did all that in just a few minutes – and nailed it on the first try. “This is the first time ...

Machine learning - A shortcut in fluorescent polymer selection

By Jenny Pham posted 03-09-2024
This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine: Issue March 202 3 Author: Nastaran Meftahi, Dave Winkler, Salvy Russo and Andrew J. Christofferson Image: Artificial neural networks have been compared to the human brain in how they process and transfer information. The first commercial LED lights came out in the 1960s, but it wasn’t until the colour could be fully tuned, nearly 40 years later, that their full utility was realised. Recent work aims to do the same thing for fluorescent polymers and other novel materials, but in a fraction of the time, using machine learning. Machine learning is a hot topic, but like so many hot topics ...

The role of reverse osmosis in securing Australia’s water supply

By Jenny Pham posted 03-09-2024
This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine: Issue March 202 3 Author: Kate Simpson Image: A worker inspects the reverse osmosis room at the Gold Coast Desalination Plant, where approximately 2100 pressure vessels collectively contain almost 17 000 reverse osmosis elements. The availability of clean water for drinking and other uses has been a hot-button issue in Australia for at least two decades. The Millennium Drought, which ravaged Australia between 1996 and 2010, made water supply front-page news across the country and led to the construction of Australia’s first large-scale municipal desalination plant, in Perth, followed by similar ...

Construction and deconstruction: Materials and substances from 'waste'

By Jenny Pham posted 03-09-2024
This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine: Issue June 202 3 Author: Paulomi (Polly) Burey, Jessica Feldman, Hannah Seligmann, Eric Song, Matthew Flynn, Andreas Helwig Zahra Gharineiat, Dinuki Seneviratne, Eliza Whiteside, Tristan Shelley, Nils Priesler, Allan Manalo, Ali Mirzaghorbanali, Hadi Nourizadeh, Michael Roberts, Rose Nicol, Petrea Redmond, Mark Lynch, John Dearnaley, Kiyah De-Arne and Geoff Germon (Talon Technology) Image: T4L dual-ring robotic braiding cell for making advanced fibre composite shapes. | Centre for Future Materials, University of Southern Queensland Transitioning to ‘no waste’ can be a complex task, so University ...

Advancing our transition to a greener plastics future

By Jenny Pham posted 03-09-2024
This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine: Issue June 2023 Author: Steven Pratt Image: Tracey Read with her field trial rig containing a range of bioplastics processed in various ways. At the ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centre for Bioplastics and Biocomposites, PhD candidates and early career researchers are addressing the wicked problem of plastics waste. Plastics are everywhere. They are strong, durable, lightweight, easily formable – and cheap. Modern society could not function without them. However, our success at engineering such useful materials has created a systemic problem, with more than 10 megatonnes of plastic ...

Gin production: art and science

By Jenny Pham posted 03-09-2024
This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine: Issue September 2023 Author: Graham P. Jones and Michael R. Hickinbotham Image: Daria Ustiugova/iStockphoto From medicinal uses to a craft explosion, gin’s history – and its list of ingredients – is long and varied. ‘A gin and tonic, please.’ The bartender looks around at approximately 150 gins in the bar: ‘Which one? And which tonic would you like, from our choice of around 12?’ This is a huge shift from 20 years ago, when Australian bars would perhaps have three or four gins and one or two tonic waters. The changes in Australia, and in North America and the UK, are a result of ...

Safety and science: Partners in innovation

By Jenny Pham posted 02-09-2024
This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine: Issue December 2023 Author: Lisa J. Stevens Image: COMiCA/iStockphoto Chemical safety at work has its frustrations – for workers and regulators alike – but neglecting it in the name of innovation can cost lives. In a 2018 email exchange between the late entrepreneur and engineer Stockton Rush and divemaster/explorer Rob McCallum, as reported by the BBC (bit.ly/3RLqbvQ), Rush stated: I have grown tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation and new entrants from entering their small existing market. McCallum’s response was illuminating: ...

The pink lagoon: More than meets the eye

By Jenny Pham posted 02-09-2024
This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine: Issue December 2023 Author: Alf Larcher Image: Aerial view of Hutt Lagoon, Western Australia | Jennifer Martin/iStockphoto The stunning pink of Western Australia’s Hutt Lagoon has caught the eye of many tourists, and the algal carotenes that cause it are of great interest to industrial chemists. This story begins with a chance meeting with three Japanese tourists in Geraldton, in my home state of Western Australia. We met on a family holiday to the north-west of WA, and they had something quite specific on their itinerary. These three young women were determined to see a natural marvel ...

A chemical-free way to control flystrike in sheep

By Jenny Pham posted 01-09-2024
This article is in Chemistry in Australia magazine - Issue September 2024 Author: University of Queensland Image: Dr Karishma Mody and Yunjia Yang checking a sample | © Megan Pope, University of Queensland A chemical-free method of controlling flystrike in sheep is a step closer, with research published in Pest Management Science (https://doi.org/10.1002/ps.819) describing the use of RNA interference technology. “When introduced to the sheep blowfly diet, the sustainable double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) molecules we’ve designed affect the way the insect grows,” said Dr Karishma Mody of the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation. ...

From our friends at AusIMM – for students and early career professionals

By Ashley Townsend posted 31-07-2024
The local AusIMM student chapter extends a warm invitation to local RACI members as its next networking event may be of interest to students and professionals looking to work for mining related-companies and laboratories. Industry sponsors will be present, with a presentation on women in the mining industry from WIMnet. When: Thursday 31 August 2024, 5:45 - 9pm Where: Shambles, 222 Elizabeth St, Hobart TAS Cost: $10 for AusIMM members and non-members; $5 for AusIMM students and New Professional members. First drink supplied, with some platters and finger food served! Registration: https://www.ausimm.com/conferences-and-events/communit ...