News

December 2018: IRANZ members have received a plethora of awards and honours in the past two months, both in-house and in the wider community.

At Motu, Suzi Kerr has been appointed as Chief Economist at Environmental Defense Fund in New York and will start there in April 2019, but will continue her connection with Motu in an advisory role.

At CRL Energy, Troy Dougherty was a finalist for Wellingtonian of the Year in the Science and Technology Category.

Franca Ronchese, head of the immune cell biology team at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research gave the prestigious Burnet Oration at the 47th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australasian Society for Immunology.

There are many more. . .

December 2018: The Malaghan Institute’s ground-breaking CAR T-cell therapy programme to treat cancer has hardly been out of the news in the last two months, with coverage on radio, tv, and in print. The increase in media interest is in part due to cancer survivor and self-declared ‘genetically modified organism’ David Downs, who received a similar treatment in the United States, launching the "Down with Cancer" fundraising campaign in September as part of the effort to bring the treatment here.

Malaghan's version of CAR T-cell therapy, a revolutionary new cancer treatment which redirects a patient’s own immune cells to fight the disease, involves modifying a patient’s immune cells (T-cells) in the laboratory. The modified T-cells are then returned to the patient, where they can attack and destroy cancer cells.

Clinical director Dr Rob Weinkove says they hope to run a clinical trial to test safety and efficacy in 2019.

December 2018: A landmark study by the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand and published in the international journal BMC Pulmonary Medicine shows, for the first time, that nebulisation using oxygen as the driving gas to deliver drugs is potentially dangerous for acutely unwell Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients compared with room air.

An estimated 200,000 New Zealanders suffer from COPD - the clinical term for both emphysema and chronic bronchitis.

“Until now it has been thought that oxygen as a means of delivering vital nebuliser therapy has been safe for patients hospitalised with acute flare-ups” says MRINZ Director Professor Richard Beasley. “This study, however, shows that high flow oxygen to nebulise the medication can actually cause harm. Our results show excessive oxygen actually reduces ventilation, and, in some patients, causes a substantial build-up of carbon dioxide to risky levels,” he says.

Watch Dr Beasley's interview about the research on TV3's NewsHub.

December 2018: Research led by Dr Roland Stenger at Lincoln Agritech is examining how to better manage freshwater pollution. He says we need to understand the pathways by which nitrogen travels from land to waterways - how fast it travels and how much nitrogen is naturally removed by microorganisms as it moves from the soil through the groundwater into a waterway.

At present, there is little understanding of nitrogen pathways and removal processes at the sub-catchment scale (10’s of km2), i.e. the scale dominated by streams which feed into our rivers. However, it is at this scale that we have the best management and mitigation options available to reduce nitrogen delivery to waterways.

December 2018: Mining is an important economic activity in New Zealand, and it has a long history that is often linked with important cultural developments. However, the process of mineral extraction inevitably affects the surrounding environment, and there have been few tools available to help mining companies and regulators assess and predict the environmental impacts of mining operations for New Zealand’s geology and environmental conditions.

The Centre for Minerals Environmental Research (CMER), led by Dr James Pope of CRL Energy, has recently published comprehensive Mine Environment Life-cycle Guides for coal mines, mesothermal gold mines, and epithermal gold mines.

December 2018: King salmon make up only around 0.4 percent of the worldwide salmon industry. As a result, most salmon farming related research has been carried out on Atlantic salmon, a species that sits within a different genus to king salmon. King salmon are a significant aquaculture species in New Zealand, representing around 32 percent of the industry’s total revenue. Researchers at Cawthron say there is opportunity to increase this further by helping industry to better understand this species.

In other news from the briny deep, it seems that kina are not just a tasty seafood delicacy. Cawthron Institute’s Dr Matt Miller was on Maori Television in October, where he talked about his research into the potential medicinal benefits of wild-harvested kina.

December 2018: Christchurch is underlain by a series of confined aquifers ranging in depths from five metres to greater than 200 metres. These aquifers are highly productive, with yields in excess of 100 litres per second possible from single wells, and the aquifers flow freely under artesian pressure in many areas. This abundant source of water makes the Christchurch aquifers ideal for supporting ground source heat pump (GSHP) systems.

Aqualinc's Dr Helen Rutter and Julian Weir have been researching making these systems an efficient and sustainable option for large-scale heating and cooling.

December 2018: Among the flurry of activity by the Centre for Space Science Technology in the past couple of months, the Regional Research Institute has developed several significant partnerships. The first is with NASA on a mission to measure the temperature of plants and use that information to better understand how much water plants need and how they respond to stress. The second is with Australia’s CSIRO to jointly solve the complex challenges that arise from the demands and impacts of human activities on the environment, specifically in the South Pacific. Third, CSST also announced a deal with Airbus to provide access to Airbus’s products in New Zealand and the Pacific.

November 2018: To improve human rights conditions, we first need to be able to measure them. Until now, the world hasn’t had a simple, transparent way to monitor how countries treat their people. This was a problem. When something is not measured, it is easily overlooked and undervalued.

The Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI), hosted by Motu Economic and Public Policy, is filling this gap. They are working to produce a free easy-to-access database of metrics, summarising human rights performance in countries around the world. With a good set of measures, it will be easier to improve human rights.

November 2018: A new report commissioned from BERL by HERA shows that the New Zealand metals industry is a strong contributor to both the economy and the living standards of New Zealanders.

The report measures the industry’s performance using Treasury’s Living Standards Framework (LSF), making the metals industry the first to review their performance against the LSF inter-generational wellbeing assessment.

The assessment reveals that the metals industry is a strong contributor to New Zealand’s economic performance, with the manufacturing component of the industry alone currently providing almost 30,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs and generating around $3.3 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) each year.

November 2018: An unexpected find by the Malaghan Institute’s parasitic disease team might make some instinctively squeamish – it seems that certain gut parasites might actually be doing their human hosts a favour. Certain species of parasitic worm provide long-lasting protection against infection from other species of parasites in other organs, contradicting our traditional understanding of parasitic worms as acting to dampen the immune system, which would predict weaker protection from later infections.

Dr Kara Filbey also talked to RadioNZ about the team’s findings and the implications for treating allergic diseases such as eczema and coeliac disease.

November 2018: The New Zealand Construction Industry has the highest percentage of suicide for employed men of any industry in this country. Most of those interviewed as part of a recent BRANZ study, while surprised at the high suicide rate, agreed there was a key driver to the high rates - the poor culture. Described as "macho" and "bullying" and including intolerance of diversity, the culture was seen to significantly contribute to poor mental health of construction industry workers.

The impact on worksite safety of poor mental health is high, with presenteeism being seen as a major health and safety risk for those working on site.

November 2018: Who you fall in love with and partner with is helping drive wealth inequality according to new research by Motu Economic and Public Policy Research. Their recently released report, "Who partners up?", says educational assortative matching among couples, i.e., the phenomenon whereby the high-educated have partners who are also high-educated, is a not insignificant driver of recent changes in the distribution of household income in New Zealand.

November 2018: Dr John de Pont from TERNZ (Transport Engineering Research New Zealand) has been appointed by Australia's National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) to lead a review of their Performance-Based Standards (PBS) tyre standards and operations.

The review will identify the best practice approach for the management of tyres within the PBS scheme.

John is also currently working with the NZTA on formalising the New Zealand PBS system.

Photo: Prime Mover Magazine

November 2018: Alexandra's Centre for Space Science Technology (CSST) has partnered with NASA in a scientific mission stakeholders say will have valuable agricultural spinoffs. The "Ecostress" mission is the CSST’s first international space mission partnership, and could eventually help increase agricultural yield, optimise forestry management and protect the world’s vulnerable ecosystems. The mission will measure the temperature of plants and use that information to better understand how much water plants need and how they respond to stress.

The ECOSTRESS instrument on board the ISS captures images such as the one of Mount Taranaki, which shows the temperature of the land surface. Photo: CSST/NASA

October 2018: Lincoln Agritech Ltd, has developed a new breakthrough technology. An new automated biosensor, known as Milk-Guard, can detect processing losses in dairy plants and could save the industry millions of dollars a year and help prevent pollutants from entering waterways.

The device is currently being commercialised by Christchurch-based start-up company, CertusBio.

A Milk-Guard device in action at a dairy processing plant, operated by Dr Matthew Jones (CEO, CertusBio). Photo credit: Lincoln Agritech.

October 2018: Urban growth and demand for housing have resulted in a move towards high-density and medium-density housing (MDH) such as townhouses, terraced units or apartments, but is the industry up to spec when it comes to acoustic privacy? Research by BRANZ on acoustical design of medium-density housing has found industry knowledge level, regulations, lack of information, integration, and understanding end-user needs as biggest issues.

A key issue for medium-density housing is the need to design and construct walls and floors/ceilings between individual dwelling units to ensure acoustic privacy.

October 2018: Cawthron Institute’s Matt Miller was on Maori Television in September, where he talked about his research into the medicinal benefits of wild harvested kina – in particular, the shell. This research is part of a collaboration between Hikurangi Enterprises, East Coast hapū, Massey University and the Sustainable Seas National Science Challenge.

Wild seabed kina. Photo: Hirurangi Enterprises.

September 2018: WSP Opus have several exciting projects on the go, everything from developing roading materials using waste streams such as tyre rubber and plastics with bitumen, modifying chip seals and other road surfaces with non-bituminous materials that are less prone to water damage, to creating roads that will last for 40 years before needing replacing.

Dr Jeremy Wu gave IRANZ members and the Prime Minister's Chief Science Advisor, Prof Juliet Gerrard, a run-down on the research being conducted at the WSP Opus Research facility in Petone. Photo: Louise Thomas.

September 2018: The Prime Minister's Chief Science Advisor, Juliet Gerrard, attended the IRANZ meeting at WSP Opus Research in Petone on 13 September. Prof. Gerrard was very positive about the role of independent research organisations in New Zealand, especially their work in engaging the community with science, their practical focus, and the research work and research centres in the many regional areas of New Zealand.

IRANZ Chairman, Dr John Bright of Aqualinc (left), Prof. Juliet Gerrard, and IRANZ Executive Officer, Dr Rob Whitney. Photo: Louise Thomas.

September 2018: Motu's Catherine Leining writes about New Zealand's Emissions Trading Scheme at Sciblogs. Sciblogs brings together the best science bloggers in the country on one website, creating a hub for scientific analysis and discussion and facilitating reader interaction.

Researchers from Motu Economic and Public Policy Research have published a new Guide to the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme. This guide covers the basics of how emissions trading works and discusses the core design features in operation today and how and why they have evolved over time. The release of this guide coincides with the start of a new round of government consultation on amending the NZ ETS.

Catherine's work at Motu focuses on shaping a low-emission future for New Zealand and the evolution of emissions trading in New Zealand and internationally. Photo: Motu.

September 2018: The Medical Research Institute (MRINZ) has teamed up with Auckland and Middlemore hospitals in a HRC-funded PIPPA Tamariki project to assess whether the use of paracetamol or ibuprofen for fever or pain in infancy affects the rates of asthma in children. They aim to recruit 4,000 newborn babies in the next four years.

"Illnesses with a fever can increase the risk of developing asthma in young children. Conversely, using fever medicines, such as paracetamol or ibuprofen, may also increase asthma risk, but this is not known for sure," says MRINZ Principle Investigator Dr Irene Braithwaite.

To help crack the case, PIPPA's team are currently recruiting babies in Wellington, Auckland, and Middlemore hospitals.

The PIPPA Tamariki project involves collaborations between the Auckland, Counties Manukau, and Capital & Coast District Health Boards as well as Auckland University, Otago University, Massey University, the University of Calgary, and MRINZ.

August 2018: New Zealand tertiary students will be offered the chance to participate in NASA’s International Internships Programme, under an agreement between the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and NASA.

August 2018: The latest issue of BRANZ's build magazine explains how a life cycle assessment tool, LCAQuick, developed by BRANZ calculates the climate change and environmental impact of a building design, showing hotspots and causes. It’s an easy way for designers to work out how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a building.

August 2018: Malaghan Institute's Professor Franca Ronchese spoke to Noelle McCarthy on RNZ about the science behind developing an allergy, and what we can do to try and interrupt it.

August 2018: The Cawthron Institute, Christchurch Clinical Studies Trust (CCST), and Sanford Limited have joined forces to identify and validate the health benefits of Greenshell mussels, in particular looking at potential anti-inflammatory qualities, improved joint and bone health, and increased mobility.

August 2018: New road layouts in a South Auckland suburb are slowing cars and getting more people pounding the pavement says a recent NZ Herald article by Vaimoana Tapaleao.

August 2018: Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities (BBHTC) - Ko ngā wā kāinga hei whakamāhorahora - has announced the key themes of their research in the year ahead. Continuing to address New Zealand’s housing needs, the National Science Challenge is digging deeper into housing for our ageing population and how we can build spaces for generations. It is also investigating the delivery of more affordable, healthy homes and the development of attractive urban environments with smart, safe, walkable streets. Thriving regions are also at the forefront of upcoming research, identifying how we can plan and build homes, towns and cities that create strong communities.

Photo: Louise Thomas

August 2018: The Centre for Space Science Technology has announced an exciting new venture with Planet, an integrated aerospace and data analytics company, to help drive regional economic growth in New Zealand by distributing Planet’s daily, global Earth observation data and analytics.

Signs of water pooling on glaciers in Tibet (left) preceded a pair of avalanches (right). Image: Planet Labs Inc.

August 2018: HERA has helped their member Steel & Tube create a new product range for flooring in New Zealand. The new composite slab product, ComFlor SR, will give confidence to specifiers due to the rigorous testing and evaluation it was put under, and assist engineers in designing building floors more efficiently and easily. The new design, using steel, has enhanced fire resistance, vibration and acoustic properties – making it an attractive option in the important multi-storey residential sector. The Structural Systems R&D team at HERA say they look forward to its uptake in the market.

August 2018: Lincoln Agritech has recently been awarded two three-year Ministry of Primary Industries Sustainable Farming Fund (SFF) contracts to investigate the use of catch crops to reduce nitrate leaching; and assess the feasibility of using optical sensors for nitrogen fertilised dairy pastures. The first project builds on research by Dr Peter Carey at Lincoln University and aims to upscale this applied research into working winter crop rotations in Canterbury and Southland. The second project will assess using optical sensors for biomass and N-status monitoring in pastures. Both projects will ultimately lead to improved N-use efficiency on dairy farms and reduced nitrate leaching.

August 2018: In December 2017, Opus International Consultants was acquired by a leading global infrastructure consultancy firm WSP and has recently been rebranded as WSP Opus, with the research division becoming WSP Opus Research.

In their latest InTouch newsletter, Wendy Turvey WSP Opus Research Business Manager said the move has greatly broadened the research division’s capacity to become involved with exciting and innovative projects. “As part of an organisation of 43,000 minds operating across 40 countries, we are now better placed than ever to benefit our clients through increased ease of access to international best-practice skills, technologies and innovations across the spectrum of professional infrastructure expertise.

August 2018: The Malaghan Institute of Medical Research’s cancer immunotherapy team has been given the green light to investigate new potential vaccines for breast cancer thanks to a Health Research Council (HRC), Breast Cancer Cure and Breast Cancer Foundation NZ grant.

The research, led by Dr Robert Weinkove, Clinical Director at the Malaghan Institute, will focus on new classes of cancer vaccines, which aim to target the disease.

July 2018: New six-year strategic science platforms have been established at the  Cawthron Institute to support research to improve the performance of New Zealand's seafood safety  and shellfish aquaculture, and at the Leather and Shoe Research Association (LASRA) to support hide and skin processing industries. These science platforms are part of the Strategic Science Investment Fund (SSIF), supporting programmes and infrastructure of enduring importance to New Zealand. In June, the Health Research Council also announced similar strategic research support for the Malaghan Institute and the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand 

July 2018: Significant reductions to nitrogen (N) leaching can be achieved by changing irrigation management practices, and new research has demonstrated just how big those benefits can be.

A study led by Dr John Bright, Director Research and Development at Aqualinc Research Ltd, and funded by the Fertiliser Association of New Zealand, has shown that it is possible to achieve an average of 27% reduction in N loss. The researchers experimented with a different approach than the current practice of irrigating if the soil moisture content drops below 50% of its ‘plant available’ water.

June 2018: BRANZ has an extensive library of building research videos on YouTube. The latest offerings are The Building Envelope and WUFI. Stephen McNeil, BRANZ Materials Scientist, explains the complexities of the building envelope and different ways in which modelling software WUFI can be used; and Reference Buildings for Life Cycle Analysis. Dave Dowdell, BRANZ Principal Scientist Sustainability, outlines the environmental impacts of buildings and how reference buildings can be used via a simple App.

June 2018: MRINZ intensive care specialist, Dr Paul Young, has featured in several newspaper and television stories this month, after a paper he co-authored said that liberal administration of oxygen increased the risk of in-hospital patient death by 21 per cent - an estimated one additional death for every 71 patients.

It has long been believed there is no such thing as too much oxygen for very ill patients, but the study, published in prestigious medical journal The Lancet, says otherwise. Dr Young said the Medical Research Institute's findings proved, for the first time, there was such a thing as too much oxygen. 

June 2018: IRANZ welcomes the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research. The Malaghan Institute has an international reputation as a leading independent biomedical research and training facility, contributing new scientific discoveries and innovative research to be applied for a whole range of human diseases. Their researchers believe the key to fighting disease lies in harnessing the immune system, the body’s own natural defence. Their pioneering research programmes focus on immunotherapy, gut immunology and cell biology to seek better treatments for diseases affecting people worldwide – including cancer, asthma and allergy, multiple sclerosis and infectious diseases.

Image: In a New Zealand first, Hugh Green Flow Cytometry Fellow and head of research technology at the Malaghan Institute, Kylie Price, has become the first Kiwi to be elected to the International Society for the Advancement of Cytometry council.

June 2018: A robust review of independent research organisations (IROs) receiving funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) has driven home the benefits of long-term stable investment in health research. The mid-term review that’s just taken place was part of a seven-year agreement between the HRC and four IROs. These are organisations that are recognised by the government for doing work that’s nationally significant and deserving of more stable backing. The IROs include IRANZ members the Malaghan Institute and the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand.

June 2018: Cawthron Analytical Services are leading the way in the freshwater testing space by developing methods that deliver more accurate results with faster turnaround times.

“Environmental data is hugely important to local government and we’re seeing ever-greater demand for our laboratory services” says Catherine Moisan, Cawthron’s Natural Toxins Section Head. Because toxic algae present a public health risk and testing for freshwater toxins is complex, innovations that deliver results more quickly are well received.

June 2018: Dr Helen Rutter, Aqualinc’s South Island groundwater expert, says her team’s current research project has huge potential value in understanding liquefaction potential. The Christchurch Earthquake sequence of 2010-2011 saw severe liquefaction - the process where sand and silt grains are rearranged and the water in the spaces between the grains is squeezed. The pressure causes silt and sand grains to float in the water, and the soil behaves more like a liquid than a solid. Research by Aqualinc and GNS Science is seeking to understand why relatively small earthquakes and aftershocks (e.g. M4.8 of 19 Oct 2010) liquefied the ground.

June 2018: The ActInSpace NZ competition to reimagine existing space technology and data into new applications was deemed a tremendous success by organisers, Centre for Space Science Technology (CSST). Nine teams made up of 42 people presented new space technology ideas after 24 hours of furious coding, planning, and pitching.

June 2018: The new Chief Executive of the New Zealand Institute for Minerals to Materials Research (NZIMMR), Tony Hogg, takes up the role this month after returning to his home in Greymouth. He will be working from Tai Poutini Polytechnic’s Greymouth campus, where the NZIMMR is based.

He says his first job will be visiting mines and discussing their research needs. He wants to find out what problems mining operators have and how NZIMMR can help fix them.

June 2018: The global metal additive manufacturing (AM) market is developing at a furious pace, as costs come down and production speed increases. Metal 3D printing in the prototyping and ramp-up phases of product development is becoming increasingly common, and the transition from prototype through niche and into low volume production has become substantially easier. As AM technologies develop and proliferate it has become suited to the needs of a wider range of small-to-medium-enterprise companies in New Zealand.

As well as continuing research into titanium alloys and powder metallurgy, including high-end Selective Laser Melting (SLM) 3D printing, TiDA is supporting New Zealand industry’s understanding and appetite for new low-cost metal 3D printing AM technologies. The company recently partnered with Massey University in a project to modify a low-cost polymer-pellet printer to make prototype metal parts.

June 2018: Robots that work alongside people in factories and unforgiving outdoors environments are an increasingly likely scenario. Lincoln Agritech is helping to create this reality and is taking part in Robotic Spearhead, a $2 million project funded by the Science for Technological Innovation National Science Challenge examining how next-generation robots can work with humans in a safe and flexible manner.

“We will advance the science required for a new generation of industrial robotic solutions,” says Lincoln Agritech Group Manager in Precision Agriculture, Dr Armin Werner.

June 2018: If you’re a user of HERA’s New Zealand Welding Centre (NZWC) you’ll have a good idea of the value of this service. HERA has done the sums and calculated that the industry levy from welding consumables gives a conservative return of investment of more than 24 times what is invested. In other words, for every industry levy dollar, $24 in value is created.

May 2018: Testing the effect of caffeine on shellfish isn't a typical science lesson for most Year 13 students. But for 150 Nelson secondary biology students, experiments on mussels have been on the menu at workshops at the Cawthron Aquaculture Park.

April 2018: April has seen a new focus on health and safety for HERA. With a new CEO, Dr Troy Coyle, at the helm, the philosophy has become that health and safety should be seen as ‘the way things are done’, not ‘a task on a list’.

Comms manager Kim Nugent writes that a good safety culture in a business often dictates how engaged an employee is. It also works to attract, motivate and retain good workers as well. "Steps taken to embed safety into the culture of any business is varied – but what is clear, is that it must be led from the top."

April 2018: Motu Senior Fellow, Dr Suzi Kerr has been appointed to the Interim Climate Change Committee. The Committee's goal is getting New Zealand down to net-zero emissions by 2050, with 100 per cent renewable electricity generation by 2035. 

Dr Kerr is currently a Senior Fellow at Motu, a Principal Investigator in Te Punaha Matatini, a centre of research excellence focused on networks and complex systems, and an Adjunct Professor at Victoria University.

April 2018: A report released by the Deep South National Science Challenge, Communities and climate change: Vulnerability to rising seas and more frequent flooding, highlights key gaps in our collective understanding about how climate change will impact New Zealand’s diverse communities. In the coming decades, more and more communities will be exposed to flooding and coastal erosion made worse by climate change.

Dr Suzi Kerr, Senior Fellow at Motu Economic and Public Policy Research and the leader of the Deep South Challenge’s Impacts and Implications programme said the report emerged out of a Deep South Challenge Dialogue. “The dialogue process creates conditions in which participants learn from one another, come to a common understanding, and innovate together . . . the issues are discussed honestly and in depth. Group discussion and thinking can progress and converge, rather than be subject to a polarised debate that solidifies existing views and positions.”

Image: Dave Allen, NIWA

March 2018: "We want to create a better New Zealand where we are looking after our people, looking after our environment and we are planning for our future," says the Science Minister the Hon Dr Megan Woods.

The Minister met with a packed room of Independent Research Organisation representatives in Wellington on 21 March. She took the opportunity to outline the Government’s broad R&D strategy.

"The big thing in the science portfolio is the coalition agreement to lift R&D to 2% of GDP over a period of ten years. This won’t be all government investment in R&D; it obviously requires a substantial uplift in business investment in R&D as well."

March 2018: In 1993, New Zealand’s export-focused shellfish industry suffered a three-month nationwide shutdown. The enforced closure and ban on exports was in response to a toxic algal bloom that posed a public health threat. Twenty-five years on from this event, New Zealand boasts a half billion dollar aquaculture sector; backed by a strong partnership between industry, science, and regulators.

Cawthron Research Scientist Dr Lincoln Mackenzie recognised in the early 1980’s that algal blooms and their associated biotoxins were an issue around the world and specialised in marine harmful algal blooms in the New Zealand environment. He was heavily involved in the scientific response to the 1993 bloom and said, “There was a lot of pressure at the time. People’s livelihoods were on the line and the media attention was huge - there was something people found very fascinating about this unknown thing from the ocean affecting their food supply.”

March 2018: Following hard on the heels of the news that award-winning NASA scientist Dr Delwyn Moller has been appointed as CSST’s Director of Research, the Centre for Space Science Technology has announced a partnership with Spire Global Inc., a leading space-to-cloud data analytics company, to help both organisations further extend their impact in the South Pacific region.

CSST is planning to use Spire’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) data, collected from its ever increasing constellation of satellites, to improve maritime situational awareness throughout the South Pacific Ocean and beyond.

See also Award-winning NASA scientist appointed as Director of Research.

March 2018: BRANZ Principal Structural Engineer Graeme Beattie recently published an article in Build magazine on "Learnings from Canterbury". He said that recent major earthquakes have provided much information on how our buildings perform in seismic events and helped reshape some details of how buildings are constructed. Although timber-framed housing performed as expected, with no collapses due to shaking, it was a different story in flat areas affected by ground liquefaction, with some houses becoming so distorted it made them impossible to repair. Graeme outlines the recommendations and changes for building requirements.

March 2018: Two young New Zealand researchers have recently made an impact on the world stage. The Selection Committee of the IULTCS Research Commission (IUR) has announced that Yi (Ethan) Zhang from LASRA (Leather and Shoe Research Association) in Palmerston North is to receive a Euro 1500 IUR Research Grant, while Jacqueline Paul, a member of the BRANZ-led Building Better Homes, Towns & Cities Shaping Places: Future Neighbourhoods Māori Research team, was selected as a delegate for New Zealand at the UN 2018 Winter Youth Assembly in New York in February.

Ethan’s award-winning research topic is an area of great practical interest for the leather industry: “What makes leather stronger? A mechanistic study on the effect of natural/artificial cross-links on tensile strength using small-angle neutron scattering (SANS)”.  From this research project, mechanisms which directly contribute to the production of strong leather will be established. Also, as important as the strength of leather, the project will help the leather industry understand the role of mineral tannages on physical properties and so help to find environment-friendly alternatives with equivalent effects.

March 2018: LASRA leather researchers have developed a novel method to quantify ‘collagen crosslinks’ using mass spectrometry and have established a super-sensitive method for amino acid analysis. They have found that collagen crosslinks have a strong correlation to skin and leather strength and that amino acids are excellent indicators for the monitoring and optimisation of established leather processing protocols.

March 2018: "Doing field work in Antarctica required a lot of training, endurance and tolerance, as well as the ability to operate calmly when things go wrong," says Lincoln Agritech scientist, Dr Adrian Tan.

Lincoln Agritech’s Sensing Technologies team has been assisting the University of Canterbury with a subcontract delivering to the Deep South National Science Challenge. The project aims to enhance our understanding of weather systems and processes underlying climate change using 4D drones to monitor cloud and snow formation.

March 2018: The magnitude 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake struck the North-Eastern region of the South Island on 14 November 2016. It was the largest earthquake in New Zealand since 1855, involving the rupture of over six faults with a rupture zone extending 200km – the closest point to Wellington was only 60km away.

The ground shaking resulted in between 80,000 and 100,000 landslides which blocked the coastal road and rail route to Kaikoura. There were also two fatalities attributed to this event.

Post-Kaikoura earthquake, little was mentioned about systemic failures in steel construction. HERA’s General Manager Structural Systems Dr Stephen Hicks said that while this gave them confidence that most structures performed well, they wanted to make sure, so took the opportunity to commission research to pinpoint any weaknesses in New Zealand’s steel constructions.

The recently published research confirmed there were no serious problems; however, several recommendations in the report will further improve steel construction performance in severe earthquake events.

March 2018: King salmon is a premium quality salmon with superior levels of healthy Omega-3s. It’s no surprise it’s in demand. Our King salmon industry exports to over 30 countries, employs hundreds of Kiwis, and in 2016 earned nearly $130 million in revenue. Working closely with the industry, scientists at Nelson’s Cawthron Institute have set out to increase our understanding of king salmon biology to optimise production. With three sizable research projects looking at various elements of king salmon production, as well as extensive infrastructure investment in a purpose-built multi-million-dollar salmon research facility.

January 2018: Steve Cotter, CSST CEO, has announced the appointment of Delwyn Moller, PhD, as CSST’s Director of Research.  Dr Moller was born and raised in the Waikato and studied at the University of Auckland before undertaking her PhD at the University of Massachusetts. She went on to design and implement technology for NASA space missions. 

Throughout her career, Dr Moller has developed innovative state-of-the-art remote sensing systems for measuring critical aspects of the Earth’s surface to support science, research and applied sciences with applications ranging from mapping ocean currents, ice-surface topography, surface water hydrology, snow depth mapping and soil moisture retrieval.

She will be moving to Central Otago from Los Angeles, CA with her husband and two children.

January 2018: IRANZ would like to congratulate Dr Garth Carnaby on his Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit award in the New Year’s Honours List. A former President of the Royal Society of New Zealand and Chairman of the Marsden Fund, Dr Carnaby was Managing Director of the Wool Research Organisation of New Zealand from 1992 which became Canesis Network Limited  and then merged into AgResearch in 2006. Dr Carnaby is now based at Lincoln University as its "entrepreneur in residence" as he attempts to find new industrial uses for wool. See NY honouree Garth Carnaby aims to save the wool industry | Stuff.co.nz.

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.