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Our Changing World

with Alison Ballance & Ruth Beran

Thursdays 9 - 10pm

On This Programme

JOIDES Resolution Drilling Ship

Drill rig and different drill tips on the JOIDES Resolution (images: A. Ballance)

The JOIDES Resolution is a deep-sea drilling ship operated by the Integrated Ocean Drilling Programme (IODP), which New Zealand joined in 2009. The name JOIDES stand for Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling, while the name Resolution is in honour of Captain Cook’s ship The Resolution.

The JOIDES Resolution was in Wellington in early January reprovisioning at the end of a drilling expedition off the Canterbury Coast. The ship is currently drilling and collecting sediment cores from the sea floor off Wilkes Land in Antarctica. Expedition 318 is a two-month expedition lasting two months from 4 January – 9 March - it left from Wellington and returns to Hobart, Tasmania.

According to the online ship’s log, the first drill site was unsafe due to icebergs. The first attempt to collect a core at the next site was unsuccessful, but the next site has been more successful and the first core has been brought on board.

Sediment cores and machinery for slicing cores in the sediment lab on board the JOIDES Resolution (images: A. Ballance)

Short-haired Bumblebee Project

Short-haired bumblebees, Bombus subterraneus (above. Image: N. Gammans) became extinct in the UK in 2000, but descendants of ones that were sent to New Zealand on some of the first refrigerated ships are thriving in the Mackenzie Basin and Central Otago. They are a long-tongued bumblebee that pollinates red clover, and are one of four species of introduced bumblebees in New Zealand. The attempt to rear short-haired bumblebees in New Zealand and reintroduce them back to Kent in the UK is being project managed by Nikki Gammans from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, in conjunction with Rosemary Read, who is a Christchurch-based bumblebee breeder, and one of the few people who has successfully reared long-tongued bees.

The SubT project is a joint project between the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, Natural England and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Nikki Gammans is keeping a blog of progress – to date about half the queens have died, but the remainder are nesting. All going well, pregnant queens will be shipped to the UK in about May 2010.

Cell Membranes

The fully assembled sample cell with a model membrane on a silicon wafer, ready for neutron measurements; Duncan McGillivray; The Australian Research Reactor - Opal - in Sydney

The University of Auckland’s Duncan McGillivray is using neutron beams and reflection to determine how toxins affect the membranes of biological cells. Some of the toxins he is looking at include a component of bee venom, anthrax, and the toxin produced by hospital superbug Staphylococcus. His work also has implications for Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes.

While many of the neutron beam measurements are made in Sydney at the Australian Research Reactor, Opal, test membranes are first created on silicon wafers in the lab. Duncan McGillivray explains the processes he uses to make these test membranes, the complexity of cell membranes and the difficulties in trying to replicate them.

Forensics Science

(image: ESR)

At Environmental Science & Research in Auckland, the next generation of forensic scientists are trying to answer some pretty tricky questions. For example, Rachel Fleming (left) is developing techniques to determine how old stains are.  These aren’t your typical household stains though. They’re ones you’d find at crime scenes – so bodily fluids, like blood or saliva.

Currently, an individual can be identified from a biological sample using DNA, but the specific bodily fluid or tissue source can’t be determined. Rachel has developed a technique which uses messenger RNA (or mRNA) to identify blood, saliva, semen and menstrual blood in individual stains or in mixtures of body fluids.

Ruth Beran goes into the forensics laboratory to find out more, but first she has to give SallyAnn Harbison (right) a sample of her own saliva in case she contaminates some of the delicate DNA work going on there.

This is the first in a series of three stories on the forensic lab at ESR. The next two stories will focus on the work of young forensic scientists who are trying to identify illegal wildlife imports, and trace plants like cannabis back to the source.

Next Week

The second episode in our forensic science series, a geology summer school, Project River Recovery in the Mackenzie Basin, and imaging the heart.

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