ANSTO's scientists and engineers do some fascinating research and go to some amazing places. Discover more stories highlight the rich diversity of scientific exploration at ANSTO and beyond.
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24 Apr 2012 ‘Bomb spikes’ found in the shoots of Antarctic moss, one of the smallest and last untouched species on the planet, are providing startling revelations of the impacts of future climate change for Earth’s biodiversity.
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13 Apr 2012It's the Shakespeare question of science, but experts believe we are close to finding one of the universe’s best kept secrets - the ‘Higgs Boson’, if it actually exists.
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22 Mar 2012Celebrate Australia’s proud scientific past and be one of a limited number of people to see inside Australia’s first nuclear research reactor, HIFAR.
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16 Feb 2012The recent Super Bowl final may owe some kudos to polymer science and neutron scattering, which one of the world’s leading experts was on hand to explain why at a lecture hosted by ANSTO.
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10 Feb 2012Join with us as ANSTO’s Senior Principal Research Scientist, Dr Andrew Smith and his team race the sun across Antarctica in search of by-products of cosmic rays.
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02 Feb 2012A gathering of international experts in Australia is helping to improve the science that explains why things break.
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18 Jan 2012 Global polymer science expert, Emeritus Professor Dame Julia Higgins, will visit ANSTO to explain how neutron scattering is helping us understand the behaviours of a molecule essential to everyday life.
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15 Dec 2011Ever asked yourself why some animals can regenerate lost body parts, yet we can't grow back a limb? A new Australian research collaboration is offering a chance to solve this puzzle in the fight to cure degenerative diseases.
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01 Dec 2011Studying elements archived within ice cores offers scientists valuable information on climate change.
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10 Nov 2011An Australian invention could revolutionise food manufacturing processes.
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08 Nov 2011 Skin secretions found in Australian frogs may hold the key to designing powerful new antibiotics that are not prone to bacterial resistance in humans, say researchers.
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17 Oct 2011The amazing research of ANSTO scientists is helping to unlock the history of our solar system.
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02 Sep 2011ANSTO scientists are making their data public in the interests of open science.
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21 Jun 2011An international team of researchers headed by ANSTO has discovered clean fresh underground water ‘lenses’ near Cooper Creek in outback Queensland that could provide insights into how ecosystems along our dry-land rivers are sustained.
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06 Jun 2011ANSTO’s material engineers have been recognised for their expertise and innovation in welding technology with a prestigious award from the Welding Technology Institute of Australia (WTIA).
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01 Feb 2011New studies of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet have shown that climate change is having a more considerable impact than first thought.
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23 Dec 2010It’s not every day you get to include your favourite superhero in your work, but Sydney University masters student, Liam Wells has been given that opportunity with his thesis study: Seeing Like Superman, which takes a theoretical look at using new x-ray techniques in security applications.
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01 Nov 2010The pristine tropical waters off Raine Island in the Great Barrier Reef are inviting in the warmer months. John Dawson, of James Cook University, and Dr Quan Hua, from ANSTO's Institute for Environmental Research, will be there, collecting reef island sediments for accelerator analysis.
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22 Sep 2010ANSTO's expertise is providing a scientific basis for good environmental management in the Northern Territory's Darwin Harbour.
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19 Aug 2010 A Flinders University Research Associate using ANSTO's unique Neutron Activation Analysis techniques to study ochre on Indigenous Australian artefacts has been awarded a prestigious AINSE Fellowship.
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07 Jun 2010 There's nothing like dropping a line into the ocean and enjoying a spot of recreational fishing on the weekend. However, the popularity of the sport, combined with the thrill of catching fish that put up a strong fight, is depleting stocks of many species at the top of the food chain. |
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08 Apr 2010What comes out of dirt and is found in mobile phones, Mp3 players, cameras, cordless power tools, wind turbines, hybrid vehicle batteries and even the powders that polish our television screens? |
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28 Jan 2010Nuclear techniques are providing valuable insights into the mechanisms of abrupt climate change, particularly for one of the most important and controversial periods during the last deglaciation, the Younger Dryas (YD) cold reversal, which occurred around 11,600-13,000 years ago. |
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17 Sep 2009Scientists may be trained to think laterally and experiment with different substances, but chemistry graduate, Jessica Veliscek Carolan, was still surprised to find herself covered in flour making pasta for yabbies in a controlled study at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). |
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11 Sep 2009When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle began the trend in 1887 he probably had no idea just how forensic science would explode or predict the avalanche of crime stories that would follow alongside. Now there's a relative newcomer to the forensics scene - nuclear forensics. |
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21 Jun 2009Research conducted on ice from the margin of Greenland's ice sheet revealed that a vast, potential source of the potent greenhouse gas, methane, is more stable in a warming world than previously thought. The ground breaking research, published in the journal Science, involved a team of scientists from Denmark, New Zealand, United States and Australia's CSIRO and ANSTO. |
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15 Jun 2009Day to day we take water for granted. We drink it, wash in it, cook with it and generally can't live without it. But for science, water is a vital tool in helping to further understand complex molecular structures, with the potential to provide new information to assist future medical and industrial breakthroughs.
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23 Mar 2009The word 'nuclear' conjures up thoughts of cold war, radioactive fall-out and threats to health and peace. In fact, our world is surrounded by radioactive materials and measuring these with sensitive instruments reveals much about Earth's building blocks, its biological systems and how they function. At ANSTO, nuclear technology is used to address a plethora of environmental issues including climate change, water resource sustainability and air pollution. |
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01 Mar 2009Between 90-95 per cent of fires are caused by lightning strikes and until recently it was assumed the long-term effects contributed to global warming. First time research involving ANSTO scientist Scott Chambers, explained a surprising result which reveals that during forest regrowth, there is in fact a cooling effect on climate, counteracting any warming that occurred during the burn.
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03 Dec 2008An agreement recently signed between the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) and the Brindle Laboratory at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, heralds the start of a three year project aimed at developing sophisticated imaging methods for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) based radiopharmaceuticals for the early detection of tumour responses to therapy. |
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02 Dec 2008Mongolia's uniqueness lies in the surrounding regions that influence it and the westerly winds which bring it moisture. The dynamics of this major wind system also affect the growth and shrinkage of glaciers which, for the first time, are providing unique new data about regional and global climate change. |
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27 Sep 2008The business of building custom-made nuclear research reactors is not straightforward. A reactor is a complex and unique piece of engineering but these complexities can turn the apple cart over. Australias only nuclear reactor, OPAL, is no exception. |
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10 Sep 2008It may just look like plain old mud to the average Joe, but to Arafura Resources the glories of the soil they own in central Australia is almost pure gold and potentially worth millions.
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30 Jun 2008A serendipitous corridor chat, during a visit to ANSTO in 2004, led to two Australian soil experts to join forces in the battle to keep toxic nasties out of our veggies and wheats. The two established a common goal to develop a better way to map the concentration in soil of a common heavy metal called cadmium and ultimately decrease absorption by agricultural produce, which could potentially damage human health if ingested at high levels. |
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18 Jun 2008At ANSTO, scientists are using cosmic clues in the Antarctic ice sheet to learn more about the variability of our local star, the Sun. These clues involve subtle changes in the concentration of the element, beryllium, produced by cosmic processes in the atmosphere. ANSTO scientists are reading beryllium signals using a 10 million volt particle accelerator and hope to use the results to distinguish historical changes in solar activity and whether they are related to climate change. |
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24 Mar 2008ANSTO has acquired a leading diagnostic tool - a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imager - to allow scientists to study the functional activity in key organs of the body. This will enable them to develop new diagnostics and treatments for diseases such as cancer and heart disease.
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03 Mar 2008In a world first, Australian scientists have designed and developed a miniature radiation detector the size of a human cell nucleus. The revolutionary device called a micro-dosimeter can accurately measure how much energy is deposited by radiation in the cell nucleus which greatly assists in the understanding of the effect of the radiation on the cell.
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