I missed an edition of the Sunday Mail whilst I went away for a few days in October, but I didn’t have to look too far for inspiration when I managed to catch up the following week. I found several items of concern or scientific interest in the latest edition of the Mail.
There was an item about a growing trend of dumping supermarket trolleys, a.k.a. shopping trolleys. Needless to say, with more trolleys being dumped, more of them are going into our creeks, beaches and oceans.
Then there was an item about the still developing SA algal bloom situation, with changes being found occurring still. Scientists suggest that these changes are Mother Nature fighting back against the algal bloom.
(There are, however, suggestions that recent heavy rains will help to prolong the algal bloom situation.)
Problems also occur interstate as reported in an item about “mysterious, sticky and stinking grease balls (aka ‘fatbergs’) washing up on Sydney beaches. Environmental authorities suggested that the Malabar Wastewater Treatment System was the likely source of the grease balls. Filtered water from the wastewater treatment plant at Malabar goes down a tunnel into the sea, several kilometres offshore. It seems that these greaseballs have ‘reformed inside the tunnel.
There was an item about recreating ocean waves on a silicon chip. Researchers at the University of Queensland have “miniaturised the study of wave dynamics” by making a microscopic “ocean” on a silicon chip. A “layer of superfluid helium only a few millionths of a millimetre thick on a chip smaller than a grain of rice” is used to provide the “world’s smallest wave tank.” The “quantum properties of the superfluid helium allowing it to flow without resistance”. Dr Christopher Baker from the University said that the researchers “saw waves that leant backwards instead of forwards.”
There was an item about scientists having detected a deadly strain of bird flu on sub-Antarctic Heard Island. The flu seems to have caused unusually high levels of mortality in the island’s seal population.
The final item that caught my eye concerned the feeding of a coral ;baby food’ to coral larvae to “increase their chances of survival. “Researchers from the University of Technology Sydney have discovered that coral larvae fed with tailored lipid supplements …. Are stronger, faster, and more likely to survive and settle on to reefs. It is suggested that this offers “a new avenue for reef restoration as climate change continues to threaten coral ecosystems.”