Posts Tagged ‘pests’

nerd nite 30: of lures and names

We’ve hit number 30, ladies and gentlenerds! This very special edition will be taking place at:

  • Hotel Bristol
  • 6pm (speakers to start at 6:30pm)
  • Monday 21 September 2015

As always, seating may run out, so don’t rock up at 6:30pm expecting to get a decent seat – or one at all.

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LINEUP

nerd nite 30 poster

Poster! Click to enlarge and print out for your school/workplace/laboratory/lair.

Pied Piper Wanted: Better Lures for Pest Mammals
Robert Keyzers

Pest mammals (rats, stoats, possums, etc) are a scourge for NZ’s native fauna, as well as a significant economic risk for our export food industry.  Traditional poisoning and trapping methods for control have a limited ability to keep pest levels in check, especially at low population densities.  It is therefore imperative to develop more advanced technologies to attract shy pest mammals into traps to effect complete eradication in significant bush or pastoral areas.  This talk will describe some of our recent attempts to assist in this endeavour.

Rob is a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at Victoria University and leads the Natural Products Chemistry research group which studies metabolites from food and wine, and isolates and characterises novel bioactive compounds from marine organisms collected in NZ and the Pacific region.

Naming the un-named
Kate Bazeley

The Antarctic Peninsula was first sighted over 200 years ago, with the first people stepping onto land 80 years later, in around 1900. Now, there are approximately 35,000 tourists visiting the Antarctic Peninsula per year, as well as numerous scientific research stations being operated by several nations, both year-round and seasonally.

On a continent with no native population, how do you go about imposing names on such a vast blank canvas? If you are interested in Antarctic history, geography, science and culture, come along and learn about the Antarctic Peninsula region.

Kate studied geography at Newcastle University in the UK and is particularly interested in how glacial rivers influence their surrounding landscape. During her degrees she undertook fieldwork in Greenland and Iceland. Kate went on to work in the Mapping and Geographic Information Centre at the British Antarctic Survey for 4 years, where her main role was Secretary of the Antarctic Place-names Committee. She spent 3 months at Rothera, the main UK Antarctic base, in summer 2014. Her interests include polar regions and maps!

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As always, NNW is free and open to everyone*. Bring your friends and family – someone to share a meal with, definitely, as there are some great 2 for 1 specials on the menu.

* Who behaves themselves, of course. Naughtiness will be stamped on. Hard.

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