Latest University of Otago Stories

First radiocarbon dates for unusual jar and log coffin interments on exposed ledges Researchers from the University of Otago in New Zealand working in remote Cambodian mountains are shedding new light on the lost history of an unidentified people by studying their enigmatic burial rituals. The Otago researchers have now provided the first radiocarbon dates for unusual jar and log coffin interments on exposed ledges high in southern Cambodia's rugged Cardamom Mountains. Since 2003, they...

Scientists on Tuesday published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology their work on a completely reconstructed fossil of a giant penguin that lived in New Zealand some 25 million years ago, work that will give researchers insight into prehistoric penguin diversity. The fossil of the Kairuku -- Maori for “diver that returns with food” -- penguin, a bird that stood 4 feet 2 inches tall, was discovered embedded in a cliff at Waimate in the South Island in 1977 by Dr. Ewan Fordyce, a...

Researchers at University of Otago in New Zealand have found that pigeons are able to learn abstract rules about numbers, an ability that until now had been demonstrated only in primates. Scientists had trained rhesus monkeys in the 1990s to look at groups of items on a screen and rank them from lowest number of items to highest. It has already been known that pigeons know how to count, just like many other animals, including bees and other species of birds. In a study, published in the...

MESQUITE, Texas, Nov. 22, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Carrington College® is proud to announce the opening of its newest campus in Mesquite, located at 3733 West Emporium. The college is now accepting applications for classes in medical assisting and dental assisting, which are expected to begin on Feb. 23. This is the first Carrington College location in Texas. "Carrington College prides itself on the hands-on classroom training and SimLink(TM) Experience lab that...

PHOENIX, Aug. 29, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- On Sept. 15, Carrington Colleges Group, which is comprised of Carrington College® and Carrington College® California, will host open house events at 19 campuses for prospective students to explore in-demand careers in health care fields. Although U.S. unemployment numbers continue to hover just above 9 percent, many career experts point to above-average growth projections by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for fields such as dental assisting,...

A study released on Friday stated that alcohol is cheaper than bottled water in New Zealand. Researchers at the Otago University found that wine cost as little as 62 cents per standard drink, compared to 67 cents for 250ml of bottle water and 43 cents for the equivalent amount of milk. The study found that the relative price of alcohol plummeted over the past decade as average wages increased. "Our analysis suggests alcohol is now probably the cheapest recreational drug in New Zealand...

Prohibited from using television, radio, and newspapers for advertising their products, tobacco companies may have taken their marketing to YouTube and other popular online media outlets, according to a study published in the online journal Tobacco Control on Wednesday.Authors Lucy Elkin, George Thomson, and Nick Wilson, all members of the Department of Public Health from the University of Otago in Wellington, New Zealand, conducted their research at YouTube, and conducted searches featuring...

A new paper by researchers at George Mason University and the University of Otago in New Zealand shows a strong link between the diversity of organisms at the bottom of the food chain and the diversity of mammals at the top.Mark D. Uhen, a geologist at Mason, says that throughout the last 30 million years, changes in the diversity of whale species living at any given time period correlates with the evolution and diversification of diatoms, tiny, abundant algae that live in the ocean. In the...

A New Zealand research team has produced data that could improve predictions of climate change, after discovering sea ice extended further north in the Southern Ocean during the last Ice Age than scientists previously thought, Reuters reported. Researchers from the University of Otago examined the genetic code of modern-day bull kelp from samples taken from many sub-Antarctic islands, as well as New Zealand and Chile.They found that southern bull kelp, Durvillaea antarctica, had only...

A treasure trove of information about pre-human New Zealand has been found in feces from giant extinct birds, buried beneath the floor of caves and rock shelters for thousands of years.A team of ancient DNA and palaeontology researchers from the University of Adelaide, University of Otago and the NZ Department of Conservation have published their analyses of plant seeds, leaf fragments and DNA from the dried feces (coprolites) to start building the first detailed picture of an ecosystem...