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In early August, ten fearless University of Waikato PhD researchers faced off in the final of the University’s 3 Minute Thesis (3MT) Doctoral competition. Each took on the challenge of distilling years of research into a 3 minute talk with a single illustrative slide.

But there can be only one, and it was Te Aka Mātuatua School of Science animal behaviour researcher Rebecca Connor who took out the Professor John D. McCraw Memorial Trophy and $1000 cash prize.

Ms Connor gave a lively presentation on her research into the captive management of the famously shy kiwi. In taking on the challenge of a three minute presentation, Ms Connor said:

“I would never turn down the chance to talk about kiwi! I love this amazing bird, and hope through communicating my research in an effective manner I can inspire others to care about this bird as well. I think it’s really important that scientists can communicate their research so non-experts can understand it, and make better informed decisions as a result.”

Ms Connor’s work is focused on the welfare of captive kiwi, this is birds kept in enclosures at zoos or aquariums.

“Animals in captivity simply don’t thrive if we don’t get it right. And even when we’re getting it right, we can always find ways to improve.”

She pointed to the recent example of Paora, a North Island brown kiwi hatched at Miami Zoo. A national furore erupted when New Zealanders saw footage of $40 tourist encounters with him in a brightly lit room. Ms Connor credited the Zoo with their quick action, and their work with Save the Kiwi and the Department of Conservation (DOC) to improve kiwi welfare. DOC has sent out the Kiwi Husbandry Manual to all American zoos holding kiwi.

The plight of Paora has underlined the urgency of her work.

“When it comes to kiwi, our national icon and much loved taonga, there’s a lot that we simply don’t know. My research focuses on trying to fill in some of the knowledge gaps in the DOC manual.”

She also cautions, “While the plight of Paora needed to be addressed, I’d also like to see the same level of outrage and action around what is happening for these unique birds in the wild at home. 14 kiwi have been killed by dogs in the last few months and there’s been little response.”

The first part of Ms Connor’s PhD study was a survey of facilities in New Zealand and around the world, to assess how they looked after their kiwi.

“I found huge variations. For example kiwi were fed anywhere from once, to three times a day; temperature ranged from 12 to 24°; and enclosure size varied between 25 to 500m².”

Ms Connor is now looking at what works best for kiwi, and what environmental and husbandry variables they prefer. She explains, “I’m now measuring the behaviour of kiwi in nocturnal houses. For example exactly where in the enclosure they spend their time as well as their responses to things like lighting and sound levels, feeding frequency, and visitor behaviour.”

Ms Connor said her 3MT win was a surprise, “All of the finalists did such a great job of communicating important research. I feel very fortunate to have been the winner on the night.”

The runner-up was Larissa Kopf, a PhD candidate with the School of Engineering. She also received the People’s Choice Award for her presentation on developing new thermography techniques for assessing large structures like bridges for internal faults.

The 3MT competition has been run through the Te Mata Kairangi School of Graduate Research since 2009. Dean of Graduate Research, Professor Karin Bryan said:

“It celebrates the exciting research happening at Waikato, and importantly it develops research communication skills, while building a candidates’ ability to effectively explain their work to a non-specialist audience.”

On the finals this year, Professor Bryan added, “It was an usually tight competition that left us all guessing until the moment the winner was announced. It was fabulous seeing so many keen students rising to the challenges and giving it a go”.

Ms Connor will represent the University of Waikato at the 2023 Virtual Asia-Pacific 3MT Competition, hosted by the University of Queensland, where she’ll line up with around 600 university representatives from across 59 countries in late September.

The ten University of Waikato 3MT Doctoral finalist presentations can be viewed here.

Earth is warming and the signs of climate change are everywhere. We’ve seen it in the past few weeks as temperatures hit record highs around the world – both in the Northern Hemisphere and the warm Australian winter.

Global warming is caused by humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions, which continue at near-record pace. These emissions are predominantly generated by people in the world’s wealthiest regions.

Our world-first analysis, published today, examines the experience of global warming over the lifetimes of people around the world: young and old, rich and poor. We sought to identify who has perceived warmer temperatures most keenly.

We found middle-aged people in equatorial regions have lived through the most perceptible warming in their lifetimes. But many young people in lower-income countries could experience unrecognisable changes in their local climate later in life, unless the world rapidly tackles climate change.

Measuring the climate change experience

We examined temperature data and population demographics information from around the world.

Key to our analysis was the fact that not all warming is due to human activity. Some of it is caused by natural, year-to-year variations in Earth’s climate.

These natural ups and downs are due to a number of factors. They include variations in the energy Earth receives from the sun, the effects of volcanic eruptions, and transfers of heat between the atmosphere and the ocean.

This variability is stronger in mid-to-high-latitude parts of the world (those further from the equator) than in low-latitude areas (in equatorial regions). That’s because the weather systems further away from the equator draw in hot or cold air from neighbouring areas, but equatorial areas don’t receive cold air at all.

That’s why, for example, the annual average temperature in New York is naturally more variable than in the city of Kinshasa (in the Democratic Republic of Congo).

To account for this, we applied what’s known as the “signal-to-noise ratio” at each location we studied. That allowed us to separate the strength of the climate change “signal” from the “noise” of natural variability.

Making this distinction is important. The less naturally variable the temperature, the clearer the effects of warming. So warming in Kinshasa over the past 50 years has been much more perceptible than in New York.

Our study examined two central questions. First, we wanted to know, for every location in the world, how clearly global warming could be perceived, relative to natural temperature variability.

Second, we wanted to know where this perceived change was most clear over human lifetimes.

So what did we find? As expected, the most perceptible warming is found in tropical regions – those near the equator. This includes developing parts of the world that constitute the Global South – such as Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia.

Household incomes in the Global South are typically lower than in industrialised nations (known as the Global North). We might, then, conclude people in the poorest parts of the world have experienced the most perceptible global warming over their lifetimes. But that’s not always the case.

Why? Because most parts of the Global South have younger populations than wealthier regions. And some people under the age of 20, including in northern India and parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, haven’t experienced warming over their lifetimes.

In these places, the lack of recent warming is likely down to a few factors: natural climate variability, and the local cooling effect of particles released into the atmosphere from pollution and changes in land use.

There’s another complication. Some populated regions of the world also experienced slight cooling in the mid-20th century, primarily driven by human-caused aerosol emissions.

So, many people born earlier than the 1950s have experienced less perceptible warming in their local area than those born in the 1960s and 1970s. This may seem counter-intuitive. But a cooling trend in the first few decades of one’s life means the warming experienced over an entire lifespan (from birth until today) is smaller and less detectable.

So what does all this mean? People in equatorial areas born in the 1960s and 1970s – now aged between about 45 and 65 – have experienced more perceptible warming than anyone else on Earth.

Rich countries must act

Our findings are important, for several reasons.

Identifying who has experienced significant global warming in their lives may help explain attitudes to tackling climate change.

Our findings also raise significant issues of fairness and equity.

Humanity will continue to warm the planet until we reach global net-zero emissions. This means many young people in lower-income countries may, later in life, experience a local climate that is unrecognisable to that of their youth.

Of course, warming temperatures are not the only way people experience climate change. Others include sea-level rise, more intense drought and rainfall extremes. We know many of these impacts are felt most acutely by the most vulnerable populations.

Cumulative greenhouse gas emissions are much higher in the Global North, due to economic development. To address this inequality, rich industrialised nations must take a leading role in reducing emissions to net-zero, and helping vulnerable countries adapt to climate change.

Andrew King, Senior Lecturer in Climate Science, The University of Melbourne; Ed Hawkins, Professor of Climate Science, University of Reading; Hunter Douglas, PhD Candidate, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington, and Luke Harrington, Senior Lecturer in Climate Change, University of Waikato

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Professor Chris Battershill has discovered new sea sponge species, led environmental recovery research around major ocean oil spills, spearheaded international initiatives for marine drug discovery, and taught hundreds of students, amongst many other achievements.

He now has another feather for his cap – the world-renowned marine scientist has been honoured for his significant contributions to marine science with a prestigious New Zealand Marine Science Society Life Achievement Award.

The University of Waikato Professor and BOPRC Chair of Coastal Science says, “This honour was totally unexpected, I mean totally. I am humbled, to say the least, and yet there is still so much more to achieve, especially as our coasts and oceans are under unprecedented stress.”

Professor Battershill’s biodiscovery work to find new and useful biological compounds for medicines has provided new hope in the fight against many devastating diseases. The work has also brought attention to the urgent need to conserve the very marine biodiversity that is the source of these novel compounds.

He discovered a rare sponge Lissodendoryx, which led to the creation of the late-phase breast cancer drug Halaven®. With funding from the United States National Cancer Institute, he led discovery and supply-side teams that contributed multiple antitumor drug leads and the identification of a protein from a New Zealand species of red algae, Griffithsia. The protein has proved to be a highly effective antiviral for HIV/AIDS and SARS-CoV treatment.

“Being part of an international collective to progress drug leads is an absolute high, as is having one of the sponges named after me by Dame Professor Pat Bergquist (Tedania battershilli), well, that is until I learnt its common name was ‘red slimy’.”

In 2011 Professor Battershill became the public face of the Maritime Response Team responding to the Rena Oil spill off the coast of Tauranga. He coordinated the response and environmental recovery monitoring, notably preventing the large-scale use of dispersants which he knew to be disastrous for marine ecosystems, especially along shorelines. He said of the experience:

“A positive result was the close relationship that developed with Moana a Toi hapu and iwi. It has opened up so many opportunities, including stepping stones for rangatahi into higher education and, importantly, marine science.”

Professor Battershill has worked tirelessly with iwi to understand and support their aspirations around coastal management in the Bay of Plenty.

“Personally, the growth experience from being nurtured by mana whenua in mātauranga Māori has added depth to my understanding of marine systems and how they work; I can only be profoundly grateful.”

Recently, alongside mana whenua, he set up a seawater system and algal culturing facility in Raukokore near East Cape. The centre is working with iwi to generate knowledge and jobs in an often-neglected region and will become an important research hub for the region.

He also currently co-leads the MBIE-funded programme Toka Ākau Toitū Kaitiakitanga – Building a sustainable future for coastal reef ecosystems. The programme has a Mātauranga-Science focus on coastal impacts and sustainable management.

Beyond research, Professor Battershill remains at heart an educator who has had a positive influence on hundreds of students, many who speak of him fondly. He supervises post graduate students and continues to teach at undergraduate level.

He established the  Coastal Marine Research Station in Tauranga, and now, as Director, he continues to shape its evolution. Today the Research Station is host to many postgraduate students from across the world.

Over 50 of the early post graduate students were engaged through the 10-year INTERCOAST programme led by Professor Battershill. The programme was established by the University of Waikato and Bremen University in Germany to create a major centre of marine research excellence in the Bay of Plenty.

With Professor Rocky de Nys in Australia, he led the establishment of the Entrepreneurial University Algal Platform and is a foundation leader of the Tauranga Moana Biosecurity Capital.

University of Waikato Dean of Science, Professor Margaret Barbour, says, “This award is wonderful recognition of the stellar contributions by Professor Battershill to marine science research, teaching, and community engagement over many years.  His development of new courses, teaching in lectures, labs and field courses, and understanding of the values of Mātauranga and science are a model of what a top scientist, teacher and scholar should be. Te Aka Mātuatua – School of Science warmly congratulates Chris on the award.”