In this edition:
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News From the Deane |
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On Poster Design |
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Emotions, Stress and Health |
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Opportunities |
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Events |
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Snippets | |
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Science News Archive | |
News from the Dean |
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Thank you to all those who turned-up for our "mini" Graduation on Saturday. Special congratulations to all our graduates and to Mark Taylor who was presented with his Excellence in Education Award at the Ceremony. A number of opportunities have come across the desk this past week:-
Finally, a very big congratulations to Irina Pollard on being appointed to the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics. Strong recognition of Irina's long term commitment, hard work and achievements in this area - well deserved. Till next week, Liz |
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How to Design the Perfect Poster
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Dinesh Rao recently received the best student poster prize at the Australasian Society for the Study of Animal Behaviour Conference held in ANU, Canberra. He writes the following tips on Scientific Poster Design.. "On scientific poster design" By Dinesh Rao The Australasian Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour's (ASSAB) annual conference was coming up, and I decided to present a poster. At around the same time, I'd been reading a few websites devoted to design, and a few websites that talked often about design constraints etc and it was hard not to get influenced by these sites. I decided to approach the poster as a purely design problem. The main issue was the question of how to fit all that information into a A0 size sheet and still make it readable and approachable enough so that people would actually read it. I had to tell a story, support the experiments with graphs and still have enough space to explain the salient facts of the experiments. I thought this problem would be relatively easy in a small conference such as the ASSAB, I felt free to include more information, and yet have a greater chance of getting some attention to my work. I especially wanted to try out some new techniques that I had just come across. The first and foremost was the Grid Navigation design proposed and beautifully demonstrated by Kioh Vinh. He used a grid based approach to show how even a reasonably cluttered web page such as Yahoo's could be rendered more easy to comprehend by placing every bit of information according to a backing grid. Since I essentially had the same problem, I decided to follow a grid based approach. I divided my poster into three panels, and each panel contained boxes. Here's a low resolution image of how the poster looked, as if from a distance.
The assumption was due to the symmetry of the poster, it would invariably grab attention. Also, my boxes were placed against a background of a spider web and this contrast between the boxes and the background really made it stand out. There had to be some images, and I used a couple of photos in the first section. Most posters are fairly linear from top to bottom, but I decided to go across, similar to a comic strip. The boxes were all of similar size, except for the title and the conclusion boxes which were larger and stretched across the top and the bottom, thus implying that even the most uninterested of readers could easily get what I was trying to tell. My final innovation, if I can call it that, was to use arrows as 'hyperlinks' to connect certain words to the pictures of my study species and parts of the spiderweb that I was focusing on. This save me the trouble of introducing these features formally and saved space. I also avoided the typical presentation of headings, and instead placed them perpendicular to the text at the side. All in all, I had a substantial amount of information to deliver, and I was quite pleased with the final result. I did the entire layout in Microsoft PowerPoint, exported to pdf for printing. The resulting file was so big that I ended up with lots of trouble. I gave the file on a CD to KwikCopy for printing and since the file was large they decided to send the file by regular mail to their factory for printing. Next day, i.e., the day before I was supposed to leave for the conference, they told me that the CD had been lost in the mail, and that they were very upset etc etc. It was already too late for them to print it even if they had another copy, so I gave up on them and rushed to Kinkos in Parramatta, where they sensibly resized the pdf and printed out a fantastic output. A note on the fonts- the text was in Century, the title was in Gill Sans Light and the headings were in Andale Mono. Note that the text was a serif font, and the headings and Title were sans serif. All the boxes were semi transparent in order to let the background web show through. I was slightly dismayed to realize that even at a conference this small, people tend to skim through posters. The next time I do a poster, I have to take this into consideration. Since the statistical approach in the poster required that people read the text, it was hard to reduce the amount of words in it. This is a problem in the sense that the poster (minus the explanations) was unlikely to make sense to 'skimmers'. I sought to remedy this by making sure that I got feedback on my work by approaching the people who were working in similar fields of research and asking them what they thought of my results. The poster was nevertheless received well, and I was pleased beyond all expectations to learn that I had been awarded the Best Student Poster Prize. The design approach rules!
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_________________________________________________________ Emotions, Stress, and Health |
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You are invited to participate in a study of the relationship between discrete emotion experience and the physiological impact of stress. The purpose of the study is to identify patterns of discrete positive emotions that may moderate the physiological impact of accumulated stress. The study is being conducted by Vicki Parker Williams to meet the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Psychology), under the supervision of Dr. Julie Fitness, Department of Psychology, telephone 9850 8015 and Dr. Judi Homewood, Department of Psychology, telephone 9850 8652. If you decide to participate, you will be asked to answer online questionnaires about your emotion, temperament, and relationship experience, health behaviours, stress, and stress-related health symptoms. At a later date, you will also be asked to give a blood and urine sample, have your waist-hip ratio measured, have your blood pressure measured, and complete a health history questionnaire. The expected time to complete the online questionnaires is 30 minutes, and the biological collections will take place on Macquarie University campus and will take approximately 30 minutes. Participation is voluntary and open to all staff that do not currently suffer hypertension or take medication for other conditions. You will receive your individual results of the physical assessment by post as soon as they are returned from the pathologists. Please contact me directly on 0414 801 093 or vwilliam@psy.mq.edu.au if you would like to participate or would like further information.
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Opportunities |
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New Australian Volunteers International Assignments Australian Volunteers International has started its latest recruitment drive and has several science related communications/media positions in countries including Vietnam, Jordan and Indonesia. To see the latest positions visit the website www.australianvolunteers.com and follow the links to new assignments.
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Calling all Woodheater Users! Here is a chance to get $100 worth of free firewood by assisting with a survey of woodheater users. The survey is being run by Dr John Todd with assistance from two postgraduate students at Macquarie. We are looking for 20 households in Sydney who use a woodheater (not open fire) for heating the main living area. The households will be asked to keep a diary for two weeks recording times of lighting, adding fuel and adjusting controls on the woodheater. Each volunteer household will receive the free firewood after completing the two week diary. If you think you can help (or have a friend or relative who might) please contact John directly on 0419 307 084 or email him at John.Todd@utas.edu.au He can provide you with more details about the research and what is required of volunteers.
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Events |
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_________________________________________________________ "Catching it, storing it and moving it: an outline of water technologies in Australia from 1788 to 1950" Free lunchtime talk at the Powerhouse Museum Target Theatre, Level 3 Sunday 17 June 2-3.00pm Speaker: Graham Clegg, conservator, rural collections adviser The current drought has increased our awareness of the importance of water in a dry continent. This illustrated talk will look at some of the ways in which water was managed before the widespread access to reliable water supplies that many Australians now take for granted. _________________________________________________________
Forum on Reporting Science - How much balance upsets the message? We ask how editors and reporters deal with science stories; what are the ethics in presenting both sides of a science story, does one provide proper balance, who are the 'experts' and who hold the minority views - do both share equal weighting? Our panel of special guests are: - Wilson da Silva (Editor-in-Chief Cosmos magazine), Hear from each panellist and then join in with you own experiences, questions and comments. DATE: Wednesday 30th May
_________________________________________________________ "Eucalypts and Rice - a tale of two diverse and adaptable genera" by Prof. Brian Atwell, Macquarie University Wednesday 30 May, 1:00-2:00 pm, in E8A, rm 290 Abstract: This seminar will be split into two twenty-minute presentations. The first will talk about eucalypts and the diversity in their physiological and structural make-up, even across a narrow spectrum of species. The vulnerability of snow gums to abiotic stresses in carbon dioxide enriched atmospheres will be discussed, demonstrating that rising CO2 affects plant hydraulics and survival. The second will deal with the tolerance of rice to heat and flooding and the profound contrasts in tolerance among rice genotypes. A study of the molecular basis of plant adaptation is described using these common cultivars. Possibilities are presented for genetic improvement of rice through introduction of wild germplasm. _________________________________________________________ ELS Seminar Series Departments in ELS host seminars covering a wide range of topics associated with ongoing research projects and other areas of interest. The seminars are delivered by academics, research staff, and students from within the Division, as well as guest speakers from other institutions and industry. Details of times, dates, locations and topics of seminars to be held over the next few weeks are listed here.
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SnippetsIncomplete medication a heart stopper Path to healthier suburbs Weevil bio-control a success Climate change: running rivers dry CO2 emissions exceed expectations Passengers cause car crashes Bigger babies not always better Explosive voyage discovers new volcanoes Parenting style generation gap Poor nation's in need of care services Aussies slow to hold the salt Rainforest attracts millions in tourism Australia unaware of green technology
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