To celebrate Recycling Week, Vanessa Young explains the essential role of nano-recycling in making the most of the tiny-scale but potentially harmful waste from batteries, circuit boards and more For most of us recycling means jars, bottles, tins (and the sprint to get the bin out as the truck comes up the street). If we … Read more
The MacDiarmid Institute DiscoveryCamp gives Māori and Pasifika high school students a taste of life as a scientist. Teuila Fuatai finds the experience often leads to much more. Eden Skipper loves eeling. “It is a family tradition,” he says proudly. The 22-year-old of Ngāi Tahu descent grew up on the east coast of Canterbury, near … Read more
The tech sector is well-placed to lead New Zealand’s recovery from Covid-19. Deep tech provides a chance for that recovery to be sustainable and values-led – an approach already bringing success to the Māori economy. Aotearoa is currently a pretty good place to be, if you can get here. The $50bn of pandemic-related borrowing is … Read more
Vanessa Young visited Dr Nathaniel Davis’s lab to witness the concentrated capture of the sun’s energy. In just one hour the earth receives more energy from the sun than humanity can use in a year. But capturing the sun’s energy has been famously hard – and expensive – because it is spread out of a … Read more
DiscoveryCamp gives Māori and Pacific high school students the chance to experience science at a tertiary level. Alice Webb-Liddall finds out why it’s important to get these young people interested. Māori and Pacific people have been experts in science for thousands of years. They navigated the earth using astronomy, grown food with biology and created … Read more
Climate treaties, sustainability goals and energy commitments are proliferating around the world. The answers to these targets must involve new materials and research in this area is happening in New Zealand, writes Dr Geoff Willmott. Last Friday, students across the country walked out of school for the second time this year in protest against climate … Read more
Sam Brooke is a Ph.D student at Massey, who is working with the MacDiarmid Institute. He talked to Alex Braae about his research, why it matters, and how it became possible to do it in New Zealand. To be on the leading edge of science, young New Zealand students would have once had to go … Read more
New Zealand researchers are developing alternative batteries from common material to go beyond lithium, skipping the solar cell and downsizing monster redox-flows. In today’s tech-hungry world, lithium batteries are ubiquitous. Everything from your mobile phone to the neighbour’s electric car rely on the metal, and it’s easy to see why. Lithium-ion batteries pack a serious … Read more
With global angst mounting about the buildup of plastic ending up in landfills and the environment, chemists and materials scientists are considering pyrolysis as an option. But how does it work? And is it really a solution? For decades, putting used plastic into recycling bins was considered a convenient way to get rid of rubbish, … Read more
Harvard professor Dan Nocera has long been electrifying the scientific world with his work on harnessing the untapped potential of solar energy. But his research into the creation of a new type of fertiliser, shared at the MacDiarmid Institute’s AMN9 conference, could have dramatic implications for New Zealand. Alex Braae reports. It’s always an interesting … Read more
Does the way science gets passed down through generations make it harder for girls to get into? And what can help change that? Alex Braae reports from the first day of the 9th International Conference on Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. Science has long been a bit of a boy’s club. That’s not a figure of … Read more