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Our Changing World headlines with summaries.
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Unwelcome visitors
23 Dec 2021How to deal with unwelcome visitors. Katy Gosset learns about a native fungus that might help in the battle against wilding pines. And two national research programmes combine on an expedition to…
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Using chemistry to uncover the past
Chemical isotope analysis is a powerful technique - Dr. Charlotte King explains to Claire how she uses it to reconstruct past lives of forgotten people from the Otago gold rush.
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Introducing Sci Fi Sci Fact
10 Dec 2021Sci Fi / Sci Fact is a new podcast series in which scientists from New Zealand's MacDiarmid Institute talk to RNZ host Bryan Crump about whether some of science-fiction's most popular concepts could…
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Keeping an eye on river flow
9 Dec 2021Two stories on keeping an eye on river flow - helping fish to migrate back upstream, and development of a national river flow forecasting tool.
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Listening to the hum of the Alpine Fault
2 Dec 2021A team of scientists are installing an array of seismic sensors along the South Island's Alpine Fault. Claire Concannon joins them to find out how and why.
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Restoration - battling predators and planting trees
25 Nov 2021Katy Gosset speaks to a PhD student designing new tech to catch predators and Claire Concannon meets the team who are working to restore a unique landscape on the South Island's West Coast.
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100 years of radio and the spectrum of light
18 Nov 2021On the 100th anniversary of radio in Aotearoa, Claire Concannon learns about the very first broadcast, explores how radio works, and finds out about current research into communicating using light.
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Sniffing out cancer
Claire visits the team at K9 Medical Detection Charitable Trust to learn how their dogs are being trained to detect bowel and prostate cancer.
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Totara treasure hunt
4 Nov 2021Claire Concannon hits the Central Otago hills with Botany PhD student Ben Teele to imagine the landscape as it use to be, and to follow the clues to find leftover pockets of tōtara trees.
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Favourite plants
28 Oct 2021Claire Concannon hears how the the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network's favourite plant competition is shaping up, while Katy Gosset learns about research to improve the quality and growth…
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The details behind the data
21 Oct 2021This week on Our Changing World, Aotearoa Science Agency's Damian Christie speaks to three scientists about the world of data.
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Using bioengineering to enhance healthcare
7 Oct 2021Stories about the potential of bioengineering to transform health care. A new tracheostomy kit design that has halved the time for emergency operations and 3D bioprinting of tissues to help healing.
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Physics on ice
30 Sep 2021Stories of physics research in Antarctica - into, under, and from within the ice. Claire finds out about measuring sea ice thickness and supercooling. Katy Gosset learns how scientists detect…
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Brain stories - Parkinsons disease & perceiving masked emotions
23 Sep 2021Claire Concannon learns about experiments aimed at slowing Parkinson's Disease progression. Sonia Yee explores research into our perception of emotions in a mask-filled world.
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The kaka's return
16 Sep 2021The return of South Island kākā to the the Ōtepoti Dunedin area has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride. Claire Concannon hears about the tragedies and the triumphs, and the plans for what comes next.
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Wading into mangrove research
9 Sep 2021Native mangroves in Aotearoa are expanding, putting them in conflict with some local communities & councils. A wade into the research about the value of mangroves & how they are managed.
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Caring for the forest
2 Sep 2021Katy Gosset finds out how researchers investigate the plant penetration powers of myrtle rust. Claire Concannon speaks with the caretaker of a tropical forest and hundreds of butterflies.
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Surveying the skies
26 Aug 2021Two stories of looking to the skies. Claire Concannon joins a hunt for planets outside of our solar system. Katy Gosset reveals the results of the annual New Zealand Garden Birds Survey.
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A new way to make vaccines
This week, how information flows in the cell from DNA to proteins, and how scientists have tapped into this to enable a new way to make vaccines using messenger RNA.
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Forty feathered needles in a forest haystack
12 Aug 2021How do you find a tiny robin in a whole lot of forest? Researchers have been tracking the movements of forty North Island robins, or toutouwai, that have been reintroduced to a large reserve area near…
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Mind Games
How do you get in the zone to achieve your very best in an activity? And does a cheering crowd help? This week, two stories about the psychology of performance - the advantages of being at home, and…
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Running low on energy
Researchers from the University of Waikato talk about Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) – a condition in which athletes don't take in the right amount of calories to do the exercise they are…
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The spectrum of research
22 Jul 2021Scientific research can be thought as on a spectrum from blue sky to applied - this week, two stories that span this. Claire Concannon learns about a blue-sky research project on bacterial evolution…
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Breaking down bird song
15 Jul 2021On this week's Our Changing World – how songbirds learn their song, and how researchers in the Southern Hemisphere are trying to correct a long-standing male bias in the songbird world.
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Top News stories
- Exoplanet discovery is exciting, but too early to say aliens - NZ physicist
- Rubio warns if it's not possible to end the war in Ukraine, US needs to 'move on'
- Super Rugby Pacific: Last play penalty clinches thrilling Crusaders win over Blues
- 'Shame' on Health NZ for years of unpaid nurses' work - union as strike looms
- Dengue fever kills 12-year-old boy in Auckland's Starship Children's Hospital
