Latest Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation Stories

ST. LOUIS, March 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sigma-Aldrich (Nasdaq: SIAL) announced today that it has entered into a worldwide licensing agreement with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) to manufacture and sell Reversible Addition-Fragmentation chain Transfer (RAFT) agents - organic molecules that can be added to polymerization reactions to precisely control molecular weights and structures of polymers. Under the terms of the agreement,...

Australians can learn much from their deserts and from desert people about how to cope with climate change and scarce resources.That's the message of a new book released today by the Desert Knowledge CRC and CSIRO Publishing."Dry Times: Blueprint for a Red Land" argues that desert plants, animals and people have been surviving and thriving for thousands of years on scarce resources and uncertain climates "“ and they have the systems to cope with uncertainty which urban society lacks.Written...

The first Marine Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Report Card for Australia was released Nov. 27The first-ever Australian benchmark of climate change impacts on marine ecosystems and options for adaptation is being released in Brisbane today.The Marine Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Report Card for Australia, and an accompanying website, will provide a biennial guide for scientists, government and the community on observed and projected impacts of climate change on marine...

Technology designed to blast aliens in computer games is part of a new GPU (Graphics Processing Units) computer cluster that will process CSIRO research data thousands of times faster and more efficiently than a desktop PC.The new GPU cluster will complement the supercomputing resources available to CSIRO researchers such as the recently installed NCI facility at the Australian National University.The cluster will allow CSIRO scientists to explore what may well be the next generation approach...

Researchers are building the environmental equivalent of the ASX200 as a means of monitoring the health of Australian marine ecosystems.The state of an ecosystem can be understood by measuring the right ecological characteristics, just as the ASX200 index shows the state of the Australian stock market by following 200 selected stocks.CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship scientist Dr Keith Hayes, one of the leaders of the project, says the difficult part is selecting which characteristics to...

CSIRO scientists have produced the first preliminary predictions of the potential impact of climate change on the Australian seabed.The results of the five-year study predict potential high-risk areas due to seabed movement, erosion and changes in reef growth.According to CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship project leader Dr Cedric Griffiths, the interaction between the ocean and the seabed is poorly understood."We have more information about the surfaces of the Moon and Mars than we do...

Machine-mounted sensors, being developed through CSIRO Minerals Down Under Flagship, could help locate ore deposits, characterize the mining environment, and differentiate ore grades.Scientists are working on a new range of materials characterization analyzers and techniques that could help unlock the value contained in Australia's mineral deposits and improve processing performance, according to the October issue of Process.Machine-mounted sensors, being developed through CSIRO Minerals Down...

Australia has been stripped bare of vegetation to expose the surface that lies beneath.Scientists from CSIRO's Water for a Healthy Country Flagship have removed approximately 90 percent of Australia's vegetation cover from satellite images of the continent to produce the most detailed available Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of its topography."The DEM will revolutionize geological applications, land-use studies, soil science, and much more," CSIRO's Dr John Gallant said in an address today to...

Both species eat sound dry wood and can co-exist in the same tree but, while drywood termite colonies contain only about 200 individuals and are confined to one tree, colonies of Coptotermes "“ Australia's dominant wood-eating termite "“ contain around a million individuals, including thousands of aggressive soldiers, and can forage on up to 20 trees simultaneously."We already knew that chewing termites generate vibrations which they use to determine wood size and quality, so it seemed...

"Although e-noses already have many uses "“ such as detecting spoilage in the food industry and monitoring air quality "“ they are not as discriminating as biological noses," according to CSIRO scientist, Dr Stephen Trowell."Our efforts to improve e-noses recently received a boost following our development of a new system which enables us to compare technical sensors with biological sensors."We looked at how the most common type of e-nose sensors "“ metal oxide or "˜MOx' receptors...