Technorati tags: Science, Education, Community, Radio, Canberra, Australia
Sunday 29 October 2006
Monday 23 October 2006
Friday 20 October 2006
ANU Bee guru wins Prime Minister's award for Science
OK, I admit a little bias here because it involves one of my PhD supervisors, but I think it's worth a mention. Professor Mandyam Srinivasan, a world expert on honeybees and pioneer of a field of robotics that takes its inspiration from insect vision, was awarded the Prime Minister's award for science on Monday night during a ceremony at Parliament House.
Professor Srinivasan's work has contributed significantly to our knowledge of how insects solve complex navigation problems with such apparent ease, despite possessing a brain the size of a pin head. He has concentrated mostly on the vision system of the honeybee, which is known to be highly specialised to the tasks it performs. Perhaps the most significant lessons learnt from this work are that you can achieve a lot with a small amount of computing power, which is why robotics researchers are so keen on insects. Srinivasan was one of the first to implement insect-inspired navigation strategies on robots equipped with cameras. This is now a well established field of robotics research, and has helped bring robotics research forward many years, after a long time spent getting seemingly no where.
Professor Srinivasan's work has contributed significantly to our knowledge of how insects solve complex navigation problems with such apparent ease, despite possessing a brain the size of a pin head. He has concentrated mostly on the vision system of the honeybee, which is known to be highly specialised to the tasks it performs. Perhaps the most significant lessons learnt from this work are that you can achieve a lot with a small amount of computing power, which is why robotics researchers are so keen on insects. Srinivasan was one of the first to implement insect-inspired navigation strategies on robots equipped with cameras. This is now a well established field of robotics research, and has helped bring robotics research forward many years, after a long time spent getting seemingly no where.
Technorati tags: Science, Education, Community, Radio, Canberra, Australia
Wednesday 11 October 2006
Science careers, as mentioned in 13 August show
On the 13 August show, Rebecca, Jacinta and I had a bit of a chat about science careers, and mentioned a panel discussion being hosted by Robyn Williams as part of the Australian Science Festival.
The audio of that discussion is now available from the Science Show web site and featured:
The audio of that discussion is now available from the Science Show web site and featured:
- James Bradfield Moody (CSIRO Land and Water and ABC TV's The New Inventors)
- Jenny Graves (Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University)
- Barry Marshall (University of Western Australia and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2005)
- Penny Sackett (Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics Mt Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories, Australian National University)
Technorati tags: Science, Education, Community, Radio, Canberra, Australia
Tuesday 10 October 2006
New Audio Available
A couple of (mostly) complete shows are now available:
Fuzzy Logic 13 August 2006 (a tad fuzzy in parts)
Fuzzy Logic 24 September 2006
Fuzzy Logic 13 August 2006 (a tad fuzzy in parts)
Fuzzy Logic 24 September 2006
Technorati tags: Science, Education, Community, Radio, Podcast, Canberra, Australia
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