Ep 164: The Pod - Flesh eating sea lice
The Mr Science Show
I have started a new podcast called - I'd love you to have a listen and tell me what you think! Mr Science Show is not gone though, it will continue to exist and I will continue to put up material. The Pod is about ocean swimming - there is more to ocean swimming than swimming in the ocean - and will cover a whole spectrum of topics. It is likely to be a very sciencey show! So here's episode one, which is a science-based episode on flesh-eating sea lice! For more information, check out the .
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Birthday maths
The Mr Science Show
A few weeks back, I had a great chat about birthday mathematics with Glynn Greensmith on the show on ABC Radio. It was great! We discussed how when you are born in the year influences your latter life, some counter-intuitive probabilities regarding shared birthdays, a bit of astrology and whatever else popped into our heads. Audio courtesy of the ABC.
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Ep 162: Pulsating Pulses
The Mr Science Show
2016 is the , which aims to heighten public awareness of the nutritional benefits of pulses as part of sustainable food production aimed towards food security and nutrition. I spoke to from the about his research into pulses, including genetic resistance to heat waves and climate change, plant physiology and genetics, crop modelling and why he is known throughout the University as "The Hot Scientist". Songs in this episode (all Creative Commons ): by Future Boy; by George_Ellinas; by AudioLogic; by Pitx; by Psychadelik Pedestrian; by Wired Ant
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Ep 161: 2016 Pulses and Pulsars
The Mr Science Show
Happy 2016! This week, I spoke on about some of the science we can expect in 2016: ...
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Ep 160: 2015 The year of light
The Mr Science Show
2015 was a magnificent year for physics. Not only was it the , it was an outstanding year of astronomical achievement, culminating with the magnificent . It was also 100 years since the was published, and 50 years since the was discovered. Australia also broke a couple of astronomical world records: , and in a . One of the organisers of this world record was Tom Gordon, a science communicator at who runs (), which are physics workshops aimed at year 12 science students and teachers. Tom, along with Christie McMonigal and Shane Hengst, runs the , chatting about science communication and...
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Ep 159: Wedding cost, marriage success and cats
The Mr Science Show
From a recent chat with , this week we talk:
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Ep 157: Food science with ABC Radio
The Mr Science Show
Every month I chat with and the science topics of the day, and this week we chatted food, in particular:
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Ep 157: Where to now for Cold Fusion?
The Mr Science Show
Do you remember ? Remember when electrochemists and claimed to have achieved on a table in their lab in Utah? That was so 80s! Cold Fusion was quickly debunked and, apart from its appearance in a 1997 Val Kilmer Movie (), most people forgot about it. So it may surprise you to hear that Cold Fusion research continues to this day, with some “interesting” participants and some extraordinary and surprisingly persistent claims. The most recent (ICCF-19) was the largest yet reflecting a climate of renewed interest. ...
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Ep 156: Science for kids - home-made lava-lamp
The Mr Science Show
This Christmas break, I have been mucking around with science experiments for my kids. Here is the first of a few easy experiments you can try at home. The following video shows you how to make a home-made lava lamp. It is very simple - grab a cup (or bottle or vase or flask), fill it about a third full of water and two thirds full of oil. The oil floats on the water as it has a lower density. Add some food colouring (you can do this at the start directly to the water, or after you have added the oil - this has the added benefit of showing you that the food colouring does not dissolve in the...
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Ep 155: Fact or Fiction with ANSTO
The Mr Science Show
The undertakes research and development in nuclear science and technology. This has wide application including nuclear medicine, atmospheric monitoring, materials engineering, neutron scattering and climate change research....
info_outlineComplex network analysis is an area of network science and part of graph theory that can be used to rank things, one of the most famous examples of which is the Google PageRank algorithm. But it can also be applied to sport. Cricket is a sport in which it is difficult to rank teams (there are three forms of the game, the various countries do not play each other very often etc.), whilst it is notoriously difficult to rank individual players (for how the ICC do it, see Ep 107: Ranking Cricketers).
Satyam Mukherjee at Northwestern University became a little bit famous when The economist picked up his work (more famous than when we picked it up!) and he has published extensively on complex network analysis as applied to cricket rankings. I had a very interesting chat with Satyam about his various works concerning the evaluation of strategy, leadership, team and individual performance, and the papers we discuss in the podcast are listed below. One of the more interesting findings was that left-handed captains and batsmen are generally ranked higher than their right-handed counterparts, whilst this is not true for left-handed bowlers.