Catalyst

8:00pm – Thursday, June 18 on ABC1

Tasmanian Devil The Tasmanian Devil is afflicted by a unique type of contagious cancer that’s never been seen in nature before. In just ten years, the Devil Facial Tumour Disease has spread to more than 60 percent of Tasmania and wiped out three-quarters of the Devil population. The Devil is Tasmania’s top predator and the largest carnivorous marsupial left on the planet. It rears its young in a pouch that faces backwards, climbs trees, and can eat nearly half its body weight in less than an hour. But the future of this unique creature faces an unprecedented threat and unless the spread of the cancer can be stopped the devils could be wiped out with devastating effect to Tasmania’s ecosystems. Mark Horstman reveals new research from an unexpected source: human cancer geneticist, Dr Vanessa Hayes, offers a ray of hope in the fight to save the devil from extinction.

The Royal Botanic Gardens The Royal Botanic Gardens is the oldest scientific research organisation in Australia. Established in 1816, the gardens were designed to fulfil the vision of the newly arrived Governor Macquarie who wished to create an English parkland setting complete with a grand country house. Formerly an important site for Aboriginal initiation ceremonies, and at one time a small farm, the gardens are now home to almost 9,000 different species of plants. But while visitors enjoy the formal views and huge range of plants and trees, research continues behind the scenes in the spirit of discovery and preservation that has today created the largest botanical gardens in the southern hemisphere.

Paul Willis takes a guided tour with the Director of the Gardens, Tim Entwisle, to find out how their work continues to make a contribution to our scientific heritage.

Squeaky Sand Surfing scientist, Ruben Meerman, loves the beach, the surf and the sand.

He’s mastered the surf and intimately studied the physics of waves, but there’s one thing about the sand that has puzzled him for years. Why does some sand squeak, and some sand doesn’t? To discover how the squeak got into the sand, Ruben sets foot on the whitest beach in the world and meets Dr Tim Senden, who attempts to shed some light on this mystery.

Catalyst will be repeated on ABC2 – Friday, June 19 at 5:30pm

8:00pm – Thursday, June 11 on ABC1

Gravity Probe On April 20, 2004, a small spacecraft set out on a giant quest … to answer one of the fundamental questions of our universe. This is the extraordinary Gravity Probe B mission – 50 years in the making, boasting the most perfectly formed gyroscopic spheres ever created by human beings, beset by setbacks and cancellations, fire and failure … it’s the longest, most expensive experiment ever conducted by NASA. Dr Jonica Newby discovers that they are finally on the verge of delivering the answer to the question – was Einstein right about gravity.

Eco-Markets Farmers in Victoria, planning to find new ways to manage their land, can now maximise its environmental benefit by turning to a scheme being trialled by the Victorian Government. Current economic theory puts no value on the environment, but this scheme allows farmers to make a financial bid for the land works they may wish to introduce. This can then be assessed against a modelling tool called the Catchment Management Framework (CMF).This tool was developed by the Victorian Government to combine different scientific models of environmental characteristics, such as soil type, vegetation and water in order to predict the impact of land management.

Graham Phillips meets a farmer who is already seeing benefits from this ‘Eco-Market’.

Uranium Minerals Ever since the first nuclear power station was commissioned, the storage of radioactive waste has been a contentious issue. But, deep beneath the sands of the Murray basin in North Western Victoria granite deposits may offer a solution to safer storage of radioactive waste. Radioactive materials can remain dangerous for thousands of years but Mother Nature has her own method of stabilising nuclear materials. Dr Paul Willis investigates a unique mineral deposit that may help solve a problem that refuses to go away.

Catalyst will be repeated on ABC2 – Friday, June 12 at 5:30pm

8:00pm – Thursday, June 4 on ABC1

Inca Trails At the height of its power the Inca Empire embraced a large portion of western South America from the Andes to the Pacific Ocean. This huge region would represent an administrative challenge to the most organised government. The Incas knew how to meet this challenge.

Their Empire was created through a combination of force and persuasive assimilation but could not have succeeded without good communications and good roads. Today a proposal for World Heritage Listing of the entire network has to be backed up by archaeological research. Dr Paul Willis sets out on the Inca Trail with a group of Australian anthropologists whose mission is to uncover the lost Inca roads which paved the way for the empire to achieve its power and glory.

Dingos Dingos are a creature of mystery to most Australians. We know of them, but what do we really know about them? Often despised, barely understood, this top of the chain predator has been pushed into a corner by the ultimate top end predator – man. But not far from Sydney, hidden away in the Blue Mountains a family of multicoloured dingos has been tagged with GPS satellite equipment. Jonica Newby ventures out bush to discover the truth about the secret life of our dingo.

Gouldian Finches It’s been said that gentlemen prefer blondes, but what colour do the ladies prefer? For one Australian bird it’s a choice between life and death. For the female Gouldian Finch, mating with a male of the wrong head colour is disastrous for her offspring – very few will reach sexual maturity. But scientists from Macquarie University have discovered an extraordinary defence. If forced into a mismatch, female Gouldians can ‘decide’ the sex of their offspring, resulting in a higher survival rate. This unprecedented insight into colour and genetics is aiding the management of the endangered Gouldian Finch.

Catalyst will be repeated on ABC2 – Friday, June 05 at 5:30pm Page | 16

8:00pm – Thursday, May 28 on ABC1

Drought Culprit Australia – land of extreme weather, of droughts and flooding rains. For nearly fifteen years, Victoria has been locked in a drought that has defied all expectations and been made worse by record heat-waves. The result, the deadly bushfires that caused such loss earlier this year.

For some time meteorologists have looked to the Pacific and the Southern Ocean to predict the cycle of rain and drought. Over the past sixty years Australian rainfall has dwindled. In the same period there have been more drought-causing El Niños and fewer rain-making La Niñas from the Pacific. Meanwhile global warming has pushed the Southern Ocean cold fronts that deliver winter rain further away from the continent. But even these well studied weather patterns don’t completely explain the Big Dry. Now climate scientists have a different explanation. As the impact of global warming bites, they urgently need to re-think weather forecasting to understand the future climate. Mark Horstman investigates the Indian Ocean as the culprit for our most severe drought on record.

CMT Disease Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, is thought to help ward off colds. It also protects against scurvy, a disease common among sailors before the mid eighteenth century. If current trials in Australia prove successful it may also be used to treat one of the most common neurological diseases called Charcot Marie Tooth Disease. This is a genetically inherited disease and affects the functioning of the motor and sensory nerves in the arms and legs. In 2004 a landmark French study on mice with Charcot Marie Tooth Disease, showed that Vitamin C not only improved nerve function but it could also reverse the condition. Dr Maryanne Demasi meets a family who are taking part in the Vitamin C trials.

Fingerprints What has Dr Paul Willis got in common with the most famous detective duo, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson? All three of them know that even the smartest criminal may leave his fingerprints at the scene of a crime. Forensic science has made vast progress since Sherlock Holmes first looked through his magnifying glass, but until recently lifting fingerprints off some materials like paper has been time consuming and expensive. Our trusty sleuth, Dr Willis, meets two students who have come up with a very simple solution which could help finger the felons.

Catalyst will be repeated on ABC2 – Friday, May 29 at 5:30pm

Body Identity

Why would anybody freeze off their own perfectly healthy leg? For most of us, losing a limb would be disastrous. But some rare individuals actually want amputation – and will go to extreme lengths to get it. Jonica Newby meets Robert Vickers, a man who froze his left leg with dry ice, in order to force doctors to amputate it. What was once considered to be the act of the psychologically disturbed has now been recognised as a very rare condition called Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID). To enter this strange world Jonica takes part in an experiment that tricks her into thinking she has swapped her body with Robert’s. She also discovers just how fragile the awareness of her own body really is.

Robot Biomimicry

The robot revolution hasn’t happened yet. But scientists at the University of California Berkeley are convinced their new way of designing and building robots will offer a world breakthrough in robot design. Their study of living organisms has offered a simple insight into structure, form and movement – which they’ve adapted to the world’s first robotic cockroach. They hope that what they’ve learnt might make robots ubiquitous and part of our everyday lives. Graham Phillips discovers how the ingenuity of nature may help develop technology that in a few years may make that robot revolution truly arrive.

Sports Motion

Today the difference between competitors can be measured in fractions of a second, and slight tweaks to technique could mean winning gold over silver. Sports engineers at Griffith University in Queensland have developed a matchbox-sized device which measures an athlete’s expenditure of power, direction of movement and efficiency of performance – while they’re training – so that they can adjust their performance. Maryanne Demasi heads to Queensland to put herself and the device through their paces.

Catalyst will be repeated on ABC2 – Friday, May 22 at 5:30pm

Space Storms

In 1859 a massive explosion on the sun launched a barrage of charged particles at earth, temporarily shutting down telegraph networks in Europe and the United States. If the same thing happened today computer and power networks as well as satellite communications around the globe could be devastated. Space storms occur when the Sun erupts, sending out a ball of plasma. Graham Phillips heads to the University of California Berkeley and Big Bear Solar Observatory to meet the extra terrestrial weathermen who show us how a space superstorm could occur and what effect it would have on our communication and energy networks.

Happy Locusts

Plagues of swarming locusts are estimated to affect the livelihood of one in ten people on the planet. Swarms are a constant blight in northern Africa and can cause millions of dollars worth of damage in Australia. Until today nobody has known what causes the locusts to swarm. But now, a team of entomologists from Britain and Australia have found the key to the locusts’ marauding activity. First, increased food brings the locusts together, then as they rub up against each other, the locusts’ neural system releases serotonin, a compound known to induce happiness in humans. (The party drug ecstasy actually increases the level of serotonin in the brain giving a feeling of euphoria.) However, for these insects the effect of increased serotonin turns the normally shy locust into a party animal. But, once the party gets going and the locusts are on the march, it soon turns nasty. Scientists hope that this knowledge will help in controlling the locust pest. Jonica Newby discovers the truth about locusts and the grim demise for those of them that don’t really get into the swing of it.

Rabbit Immunity

Rabbits are one of Australia’s worst feral pests, wreaking havoc with agricultural land and destroying natural habitats for native animals. By the 1920’s there were estimated to be 10 billion rabbits munching away in Australia. The introduction of Myxomatosis in 1950 reduced the population by over 80%, but genetic resistance saw the rabbit fight back. When another virus, Calicivirus was accidentally released on to the Australian mainland in 1995 it seemed to be the answer, subsequently causing dramatic reductions in the rabbit population. Later, when scientists deliberately introduced the virus, they noticed that in some areas, especially the colder, wetter parts of Australia, rabbit numbers were not falling as fast as in the drier regions. Dr Maryanne Demasi discovers how rabbits are gaining immunity to Calicivirus from a kind of natural vaccination process and once more they’re on the increase.

Catalyst will be repeated on ABC2 – Friday, May 08 at 5:30pm

Eggs on ice – new freezing technique aiding women who want to wait; insects helping to keep an eye out for terrorists – face recognition in bees; footprints in the ash – where the megafauna roamed.

Eggs on Ice

More and more women are choosing to put off childbirth until later in life. Whether for social or medical reasons, one in ten women are now having their first babies at the age of 35 or older. But as women age so do their eggs and there are fewer and fewer of them. As a result, a woman entering her thirties has an ever decreasing chance of conceiving and an ever increasing risk of a problematic pregnancy resulting in an unhealthy child. As women’s biological clocks tick, medical researchers are developing a new technique to freeze their eggs. The hope is that the technique will improve the odds of a successful birth and a healthy child. Dr Maryanne Demasi finds out what’s involved for a woman wanting to put her eggs on ice.

Brainy Bees

Reacting quickly in an emergency depends increasingly on security cameras to recognise faces. We have special regions of the brain dedicated to the task of face recognition and constantly do it without effort or a second thought. But for computers and security systems it’s more difficult. In a bid to improve surveillance, the technology that could one day save lives by recognising a known terrorist for instance, scientists are studying how bees see the world. Dr Graham Philips investigates how new research shows that bees, despite their tiny brains, can be trained to recognise faces, even as we can, from different points of view.

Footprint in Ash

120,000 years ago humans were yet to set foot in Australia. A volcanic landscape existed in what is today the state of Victoria, where now extinct megafauna once roamed. As lakes dried out a whole new world has revealed a vivid snapshot of life in those distant times. Dr Paul Willis travels across the country and back in time to test his skills in animal tracking and reveal the largest collection of mega faunal footprints yet discovered in Australia.

Catalyst will be repeated on ABC2 – Friday, May 01 at 5:30pm

Very Large Telescope

High up in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile is a complex of some of the largest telescopes in the world at the cutting edge of optical technology. When Dr Paul Willis travelled there for Catalyst he discovered there was not just one very large telescope, but four, which could be linked to make a super telescope whose dish has a virtual diameter of 150 metres. These highly sophisticated telescopes are so powerful that they can see light from ten billion year old galaxies. The observatory is located at over 2,000 metres above sea level, where the clean dry air offers near perfect visibility for studying the outer reaches of the universe. Last year the very large telescope was the first to provide direct images of planets orbiting other stars. While there Paul met Australian astrophysicist Christopher Lidman, whose chosen subject, Dark Energy, is a force that may help answer why the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate.

Heart Valves

Heart disease comes in a variety of forms. One of the most common in the elderly,is ‘aortic stenosis’ when the main outflow valve from the heart thickens and does not open fully. For the elderly patient this means less blood reaches the body and even the simplest task becomes hard work. Normally patients undergo open heart surgery to replace a faulty heart valve. But this is a costly and risky operation that involves a long recovery period. For ‘aortic stenosis’ sufferers, open heart surgery may soon be a thing of the past.Dr Maryann Demasi meets surgeon, Dr Ajay Sinhal, who’s leading a pioneering trial into a non-invasive technique for replacing heart valves.

Solar Prints

What do plastic bank notes have to do with solar energy? Quite a lot actually. Australian scientists, developing solar cells made with the same polymer technology, have already found a way of printing solar cells just like Australia’s revolutionary bank notes. Currently, most solar cells are made from silicon, but its high cost, coupled with a complex production process has meant the take up of this technology has been slow. Printing solar cells offers a potential breakthrough for the solar energy market. Mark Horstman meets scientists who hope one day to print solar cells by the kilometre at the same factory that produces polymer banknotes.

Catalyst will be repeated on ABC2 – Friday April 24 at 5:30pm

Thursday, 16 April 2009 8:00pm

Virtual Reality – helping soldiers overcome PTSD; Is mankind the greatest enemy of sea turtles? And genetically modified bananas; could they prevent third world malnutrition?

Blast Trauma

Virtual Reality treatment has achieved a remarkable 85% success rate for soldiers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s now hoped it may also help with more mild brain injury – the signature injury of the Iraq War. Combat soldiers suffering from PTSD experience a variety of symptoms including high anxiety, depression, memory loss and heightened aggression. Unable to resume normal life after their return from war, many of them cannot shake off the memories of their horrific experiences. In the First World War, traumatised soldiers were said to be suffering from Shell Shock. For some, Court Martial and even execution were the punishment. Today, no such punishment ensues. Graham Phillips went to California to meet scientists who can now see how mild brain injury caused by explosions may be an additional underlying cause of PTSD and an additional burden for the soldiers to bear.

Turtles

Protecting the future of turtle populations on the Queensland coast has been the life’s work of Col Limpus for the past 40 years. His conservation efforts at Mon Repos beach near Bundaberg have been so successful that this area is now a huge tourist attraction. Although tourists are enlisted to help save the turtles, light pollution from increased coastal urbanisation is threatening their nesting beaches. Predatory foxes have been kept at bay, but rising temperatures due to climate change may have a devastating long term impact. Surfing scientist, Ruben Meerman, meets Col Limpus and fellow scientist David Booth, working with turtles on Heron Island, to find out what hope there is for turtles’ survival.

Genetically Modified Bananas

Genetically Modified bananas could be the answer to malnutrition in developing countries. They could also be the means of combating potentially devastating diseases such as Fusarium Oxysporum which wiped out the bananas in South America in the 1940′s. Botanists in Queensland are developing genetically modified bananas that can boost vitamin and mineral content and are creating disease resistant varieties. For Uganda, where bananas are a staple food this could help eradicate Vitamin A and iron deficiency. With banana production virtually untenable in the Northern Territories due to fungal disease, Maryann Demasi finds out how close scientists are to creating new strains of disease resistant and nutritious bananas.

Catalyst will be repeated on ABC2 – Friday, April 17 at 5:30pm

Thursday, 09 April 2009 8:00pm

Missing Link

Charles Darwin visited Australia in 1836 towards the end of a five year voyage on HMS Beagle. His observations of flora and fauna and his collection of fossils radicalised his thinking and sowed the seeds of his theory of evolution by natural selection. When eventually he published The Origin of Species in 1859 he apologised for the lack of evidence in the fossil record to support his theory. He did however predict that such evidence would ultimately emerge. In China and Melbourne’s Victoria Museum, Mark Horstman examines some of the key transitional fossils between species – the so called ‘missing links’.

Ancient Resurrection

Is it really possible to recreate a dinosaur from the DNA of bones that are hundreds of million of years old? Was the film Jurassic Park a true reflection of the capabilities of modern science? The recreation of a dinosaur by cloning its DNA may be far fetched, but Paul Willis meets a scientist who thinks it will one day be possible to bring the Tasmanian Tiger, or Thylacine, back from the dead. Ten or fifteen years ago such an idea was pure science fiction, but breakthroughs in gene research throughout the world are bringing the future rapidly closer.

What has Darwin done for us?

What do three Professors – a palaeontologist, a geneticist and an astronomer – have in common? They all believe that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection provides the bedrock to their understanding of the natural world.Three Australian scientists, Tim Flannery, John Shine and Fred Watson are all leaders in their chosen fields. They celebrate Darwin’s achievements and how the great naturalist’s work has affected their own paths to scientific discovery.

Catalyst will be repeated on ABC2 – Friday, April 10 at 5:30pm