Campfires and Science is a new and growing community of people who head outdoors, light a campfire, and share knowledge. We lead regular, free events in wild places to support scientific fieldwork and provide hands-on training in the research methods that help us to best protect the environment. Welcome to citizen science! Join us at our very first environmental DNA sampling event, where we’ll be teaching people how to gather samples and look for a critically endangered species of fish. We’ll also be inviting speakers around the campfire to share their knowledge.
This special event at Plenty Gorge, hosted by the new Banyule-Nillumbik and Whittlesea Tech Schools, will feature experts talking about how to monitor wildlife numbers using a range of methods, including collecting DNA samples from the environment that can tell us the range of animals that live there. We’ll also be hearing about their work and sharing the special knowledge they’ve attained through years of study and exploration.
Opening in 2007 at its site in Clayton, Victoria, the Australian Synchrotron is Australia’s largest and arguably most successful scientific user facility, benefiting over 3000 researchers from academia, medical research institutes, government and other research organisations, and industry. In simple terms, a synchrotron is a very large, circular, megavoltage machine about the size of a football field. From outside, the Australian Synchrotron, for example, looks very much like a roofed football stadium. But on the inside, it’s very different. Instead of grass and seating, there is a vast, circular network of interconnecting tunnels and high tech apparatus.
Since 1970 a majority of structures in Australia and some in New Zealand, Asia, Europe and North America have had their wind engineering studies carried out by MEL Consultants Pty Ltd. Much of the advice given is by the way of preliminary desktop studies of environmental wind conditions or estimates of wind loadings on structures and cladding and building response. Each year a number of these studies progress to the stage of conducting wind-tunnel studies using physical models and the provision of design wind load or velocity data. Their list of major projects in Australia and the World includes over 100 tall buildings (some “supertall” at 300+ m or “megatall” at 600+ m), 12 large stadium buildings (including fully operable roof systems), 6 tall freestanding towers, 7 bridges, 2 offshore platforms and many other major industrial and smaller buildings, and some unusual structures such as ships, photovoltaic arrays, and full-scale facade components.
A wonderful opportunity to explore the beautiful Brisbane Ranges National Park to the west of Melbourne with botanist, geologist and author of the iconic “Native Trees and Shrubs of South-Eastern Australia,” Leon Costermans.
