News 2017

December 2017: The BBHTC National Science Challenge is a collaboration hosted by BRANZ and involving researchers from more than 20 research organisations and companies. It brings together a team that includes expertise in design, architecture, construction, planning, geography, behavioural sciences, economics and technology. Research is structured around six themes or strategic research areas (SRAs). One of these SRAs is Transforming the Building Industry - a research collaboration between the University of Auckland, Auckland University of Technology, Victoria University of Wellington and BRANZ. Working with industry, it aims to transform a conservative, constrained and fragmented building industry into one that is productive, innovative and fit for purpose to address 21st century challenges and opportunities.

December 2017: CRL Energy and O’Kane Consultants researchers are gaining an international reputation for innovation in mine site environmental management, with collaboration or uptake of their processes now in the UK, Canada, and the USA. Waste mussel shell-based biogeochemical reactors are of particular interest, “We have been optimising and studying waste mussel shell bioreactors over the last few years in collaboration with the microbial genetics laboratory at the University of Windsor in Canada. These systems have been installed at full scale at two mine sites in New Zealand with a third system under construction and two more planned,” says CRL Energy’s South Island Group Manager, Dr James Pope.

December 2017: New Zealand’s 2017 election renewed debate about how emissions trading can support New Zealand’s transition to a successful low-emission economy. To help explain how the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS) works, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research is releasing seven short videos answering questions asked by students relating to climate change and the NZ ETS.

December 2017: Scientists are set to research the application of transformational tech for the aquaculture industry, following funding approval for a two-year Precision Farming Technology for Aquaculture project. "The aquaculture industry aims to reach $1 billion in sales by 2025. Technology that promotes sustainability, efficiency, and the ability to farm further offshore will play a significant role in achieving this target," says project leader Dr Cornelisen, Cawthron Institute Coastal and Freshwater Group Manager.

December 2017: Since 2014, Opus Research has been developing a remote infrastructure monitoring system for the purpose of monitoring the structural integrity of assets anywhere. Initially, we were interested in aging, reinforced-concrete bridges that were past their design lifespans and were carrying traffic volumes and loads far in excess of what they were originally designed for. Monitoring would provide actual data on how a bridge responded to dynamic loading from maximum-weight trucks that could be fed into Finite Element Models which the engineers use in decision-making about bridge structural performance.

December 2017: IRANZ welcomes the Hon Dr Megan Woods as the new Minister for Research, Science and Innovation. In August, Dr Woods met with IRANZ members at a meeting held at Lincoln Agritech Ltd, where she foreshadowed R&D Tax Credits. A plan which she saw as likely to engender cultural shifts towards R&D in businesses and that would get a good uptake with SMEs.

December 2017: IRANZ welcomes Dr Troy Coyle as the new CEO of New Zealand’s Heavy Engineering Research Association(HERA), and says farewell to Dr Wolfgang Scholz who is retiring.

December 2017: Two related OECD-ITF (International Transport Forum) Working Groups are currently keeping Dr John de Pont of TERNZ busy. John is a corresponding member of the Working Group on Intelligent Transport System (ITS) Applications for Heavy Goods Vehicles. This working group, which was initiated in February 2016, is reviewing the potential role of larger and heavier vehicles for coping with the projected growth in freight demand and how the impacts of these vehicles can be managed through ITSs. John says their focus is on tools for monitoring, ensuring compliance, improving safety and minimising the impact on the infrastructure. 

October 2017: Two scientists from Independent Research Organisations (IROs), Professor Charles Eason from the Cawthron Institute and  Professor Ian Woodhead from Lincoln Agritech, were medal recipients at this year’s New Zealand Research Honours, hosted by the Royal Society Te Aparangi and held at the Viaduct Events Centre in Auckland in October.

October 2017: A number of Independent Research Organisations (IROs), offering research from the impact of household products on New Zealand’s aquatic ecosystems to developing nitrogen-fixing trees and grasses for our forestry and pastoral industries, have come out as winners in the recent Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) 2017 Endeavour Round, with their proposals seen as world-leading science.

Two of Cawthron Institute’s research programmes were awarded funding of more than $20 million over five years. Two Lincoln Agritech research programmes will receive $8.2 million, and The New Zealand Winegrowers Research Centre based in Marlborough, has been awarded $9.3 million.

Photo: Louise Thomas

August 2017: New Zealand pounamu or greenstone is a rare and precious resource that is highly valued for its strength and beauty. Pounamu has been the basis of extractive and manufacturing industries and trade for over 700 years and now creates export value through the tourism sector. The sector however suffers from theft, fake pounamu, and poor utilisation rates.

Photo: Louise Thomas

August 2017: Our knowledge of leather tanning is currently flawed according to LASRA scientist Dr Sujay Prabakar. Dr Prabaker has been researching the tanning process in leather. In a first-of-its-kind in-situ experiment, Dr Prabakar used the Australian Synchrotron to measure the effect of tanning on the structure of leather in real time to improve our understanding of how chrome and other tanning agents interact with the leather’s collagen network during processing.

August 2017: A new technology with the ability to revolutionise the detection of invasive marine pests in New Zealand waters is now being trialled at 14 laboratories around the world.

The global experiment follows an international workshop attended by 30 experts from 16 research organisations, keen to work out how to apply the technology which will speed up identifying invasive marine species.

August 2017: Lincoln Agritech and AquaLinc Research are currently working with ESR on a three year science project in the Hauraki Plains. The project, as part of the larger “Enhanced Mitigation of Nitrate in Groundwater” programme, is investigating using a woodchip denitrifying bioreactor to reduce nitrate loads from pastoral lands.

August 2017: It's been a year of accolades for Cawthron Senior Scientist Dr Lesley Rhodes. Dr Rhodes received a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) for services to science and marine farming in the Queen's Birthday honours in June, followed by the inaugural Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) Award for Significant Contribution to Food Safety in July.

August 2017: New Zealand has abundant freshwater, on an average annual basis.  However, water demand has grown, in many areas, to the point where shortages occur because the spatial and temporal patterns of supply do not match demand patterns.

Aqualinc Research is developing a new framework for sustainable water allocation management that combines statutory planning with market-based mechanisms.  The core paradigm shift is moving from effects-based management of an unlimited resource to value-based management of a capacity constrained resource.

Photo: Louise Thomas

July 2017: Following the successful recruitment of patients through a pharmacy network for a Medical Research Institute of New Zealand (MRINZ) cold-sore study, the institute is now set to formally launch its Pharmacy Research Network (PRN) towards the end of the year.

Recognising the need for cost effective, but robust randomised controlled trials in the New Zealand biotech sector, MRINZ has spent the last two years evolving its novel methodology within a 950-person study of cold sores in collaboration with the Bay of Plenty’s Honeylab.

July 2017: This year’s bill for climate-related disasters in New Zealand has already climbed to $174.7 million, according to the insurance industry. The Whakatane District Council is currently applying to purchase 34 properties in Matata, because it says they are at risk of debris flows in heavy downpours. When it comes to communities exposed to climate-related risk where does responsibility lie?

July 2017: As part of the National Science Challenge spearheaded by BRANZ, Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities, several IRANZ members have recently published research to help make our living environments a better place.

In the wake of the devastating Christchurch earthquakes, Opus Research has been investigating how to rebuild great neighbourhoods. Meanwhile, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research have worked out how to place a value on sunshine.

July 2017: “Production, protection and adding value” was the theme for April’s Speaker’s Science Forum. Presenters included Lincoln Agritech’s Group Manager of Precision Agriculture, Dr Armin Werner, and Lincoln University Bio-Protection Research Centre’s Director, Prof Travis Glare. 

July 2017: The media has been rife with stories of non-compliant steel, where it has either performed poorly or been utilised despite its inability to meet New Zealand standards.

Not surprisingly, this has become a key concern for many local structural engineers who are sourcing structural components from overseas. There is not only the safety issue in regards to the component’s performance, but also the negative association for a business if it’s found to be anything but right.

June 2017: Cawthron's Dr Lesley Rhodes received a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) for services to science and marine farming in the weekend's Queen's Birthday honours.

On receiving the honour, Dr Lesley Rhodes CNZM said, "This was completely unexpected and is definitely a tribute to the Cawthron team. The research I'm involved in brings together scientists with expertise in many different fields so any successes for our 'Seafood Safety' programme are a joint effort."

March 2017: If we want our cities to be the best we need to make some bold choices and genuinely take into account how people want to work, live, and play - not just today, but into the future. Auckland is currently ranked as the eighth best city in the world in terms of liveability, but it would be ranked third if it were not for our overburdened transport and housing infrastructure. Even though public transport has been widely established as a more efficient solution to congestion, we keep adding grey space, with a focus on roads and car parks. Is this really what we want for our cities?

March 2017: Serious effort is needed if we are to reverse the steady decline in walking and cycling for transport in New Zealand. For example, over the past 30 years, active travel to school has decreased significantly. According to the New Zealand Household travel survey, in the 1980s typically one fifth (20%) of secondary school students cycled to school, whereas today typical numbers are less than three percent.

March 2017: In an 1861 US court case considering the rights to groundwater use (Frazier vs Brown), the judge ruled that “the existence, origin, movement and course of such waters, and the causes which govern and direct their movements, are so secret, occult and concealed, that an attempt to administer any set of legal rules in respect to them would be involved in hopeless uncertainty, and would be, therefore, practically impossible”. However, in the years since, we have developed ways of understanding this mysterious resource, such that, though uncertainties remain, we can predict cause and effect with much greater confidence.

March 2017: Cawthron Aquaculture Park at Tasman Bay's Boulder Bank in Nelson was the host for last month’s IRANZ members meeting. The fabulous facility is a world-class research and technology centre for the New Zealand aquaculture sector and its stakeholders, with the site purpose-built for aquaculture research, education, and commercial development.

March 2017: Are firms in large cities more productive? And if they are, what is the productivity premium of our largest city, Auckland, and how does it compare to our other urban centres? These questions were the focus of a recently released working paper from Motu Economic and Public Policy Research, Urban Productivity Estimation with Heterogeneous Prices and Labour.

March 2017: Developing a geothermal spa and bathing facility in Rotorua and aiding Top Energy at Ngawha Springs to make better use of their brine discharge are two exciting geothermal projects that Heavy Engineering Research Association (HERA) engineers and various HERA member organisations are currently involved in.

Construction on the spa project is expected to begin later this year and the HERA team have been busy assessing the geothermal heat resources and preparing models of heating network arrangements and heat resource application potentials.

Photo: Louise Thomas

March 2017: A chance meeting many years ago with a New Zealand marine biologist working in Nova Scotia saw a change in career plans for Cawthron’s newly appointed Aquaculture Group Manager, Dr Serean Adams. The talented scientist at one time planned to become a doctor of medicine, but was lured by the call of, well, shellfish.

March 2017: The Centre for Space Science Technology (CSST) will soon be braving the final frontier with a newly signed contract with MBIE, following the funding announcement for the $14.7 million project in November last year. CSST plans to establish an international satellite data exchange to provide space-based measurements and satellite imagery to meet the needs of New Zealand's regional industries. They also plan to manage partnerships to design, build, launch and operate CubeSats (small low cost satellites) that will provide imagery.