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Our Changing World headlines with summaries.
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To Catch a Trapdoor Spider
20 Aug 2015Trapdoor spiders live on mud banks in long silk-lined tunnels with a camouflaged trapdoor, and Vikki Smith has developed a cunning way of luring them out
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Muesli and sea ice - an unexpected maths tale
13 Oct 2016Industrial mathematician Mark McGuinness has applied maths to problems as varied as crispy cereal and the freezing of Antarctic sea ice.
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In the footsteps of dinosaurs
13 Oct 2016Collingwood Area School students join GNS scientists in a search for dinosaur footprints on the shore of a Golden Bay estuary
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Citizen science: giving ruru a helping hand
21 Jan 2016The ruru, or morepork, is our only surviving native owl and locals living on Banks Peninsula are giving them a helping hand by providing luxury accommodation.
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Defining the Anthropocene
21 Jan 2016Geologists will decide later this year whether to add a new human created epoch - the Anthropocene - to the geological time scale
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New Zealand's super diversity
Auckland's Dalmatian community has contributed to a genetic survey of New Zealand, which shows that just about all of the world's genetic lineages are represented in New Zealand.
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Scott's last journey - part 1
26 Jan 2012A hundred years after Captain Robert Scott and his team died in Antarctica, Veronika Meduna retraces their journey in words.
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Kākāpō - what genes can tell us
6 Oct 2016A new genetic study shows that a once abundant kākāpō population declined in numbers and genetic diversity soon after stoats were introduced in the late 1800s.
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When it comes to average, what does 'mean' mean?
Statistician Thomas Lumley explains different ways of calculating an average, and the difference between median and mean.
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Nothing but the truth: can children be reliable eyewitnesses
Psychologist Deirdre Brown has been researching whether children are reliable eyewitnesses.
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Takahē - back from the brink
29 Sep 2016Joan Watson was there when takahē were rediscoverd in 1948, and DOC ranger Glen Greaves says the population of the giant flightless bird has just reached 300.
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Bad air is bad for health
Air pollution is the world's leading environmental risk factor for disease, and it causes early deaths even in clean countries such as New Zealand.
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How is the air up there?
Households in Rangiora are being wired up, inside and out, with small devices that measure wood smoke.
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Community conservation on the Kapiti Coast
15 Sep 2016Residents on the Kapiti coast north of Wellington are working together to improve biodiversity and create thriving ecosystems in their local neighbourhoods.
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Copying nature to find new drugs
Margaret Brimble has been awarded the Marsden Medal for developing new drugs from natural bioactive substances. One of her new drugs is being fast-tracked in clinical trials.
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Science communication - the art of listening
8 Sep 2016Geneticist Jean Fleming has won the NZAS Science Communicator Award, and she says that good science communication is about listening as well as talking.
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The chemistry of disease
Guy Jameson has been awarded the Beatrice Hill Tinsley Medal for his work understanding the chemical structure of proteins that are important in diseases such as Parkinson's.
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Beatrice Hill Tinsley Medal
8 Sep 2016The New Zealand Association of Scientists has renamed their Research Medal to the Beatrice Hill Tinsley Medal, the first New Zealand science award named after a woman.
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P53: the gene that causes - and cures - cancer
P53 is a cancer gene with a Jekyll and Hyde personality. It stops cancer tumours growing, but mutant versions of the gene actually cause cancer.
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Restoring the trees above and the fungi below
1 Sep 2016Ecologists are investigating the best ways to replant native plants to restore lost forests and wetlands, and are finding out if underground fungi play a role.
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Fish-friendly city streams
1 Sep 2016Environment Waikato is helping native fish commute up urban streams by providing aids such as ropes running through culverts and pipes.
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'Dimorphism' - a poem by Janis Freegard
25 Aug 2016Poet Janis Freegard reads 'Dimorphism', from her poetry book The Glass Rooster, comparing divaricating plants to cushion plants.
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Glow in the dark - firefly squid and bioluminescence
25 Aug 2016Miriam Sharpe and Kurt Krause are investigating the proteins that glow worms and firefly squid use to glow in the dark.
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