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UQNEWS, FEBRUARY 2010 ➔ 4shortcutsinsect pilots land safelyHoney bees undergo a sudden transition fromspeeding aircraft to hovering helicopter as theyperform the delicate art of landing on a flower, UQresearch has found.Scientists have devoted decades to studyingSam fraser-Smithhow honeybees navigate but now a teamfrom the Queensland Brain Institute and LundUniversity has revealed for the first time how theyperform the tricky art of landing.“As any trainee pilot knows, landing isone of the hardest things to do, as everythingaround you is changing so quickly,” ProfessorMandyam Srinivasan said.“It requires excellent co-ordination to get thespeed, angle, distance and touchdown pointexactly right – especially if the landing surface issloping or even upside down.”The team used a special tiltable platformand a high-speed camera to film the bees in thefinal moments of touchdown, and identify eachof their separate actions.On approach to their target the bees use“optic flow” – the stream of visual signalsprovided by their eyes as the landscapespeeds past – to slow down and move fromforward-flight to stable hover mode about16mm from the platform, where they came to adead stop.They hovered for a few thousandths of asecond until their hind legs contacted the landingground, and then lowered themselves gently ontoit – regardless of the angle at which it was tilted.However, when the bees landed on surfacesranging from vertical to upside down, theirantennae came closest to the surface during thehover phase.“We hadn’t expected the antennae to playa role and it adds a further dimension to theinstrumentation the bee is using in order toachieve the perfect landing,” said ProfessorSrinivasan, who has been studying honey beesfor more than 20 years.More subtly still, the bee appears to use itsvisual system to position its antennae in order to“read” the actual slope of the landing surface.The research appears in the latest issue ofThe Journal of Experimental Biology.biofuels in bloomMaking their markA UQ researcher has won a top internationalfellowship that saw him meet with political andbusiness leaders in an effort to fast-track algalbiofuel development.Associate Professor Ben Hankamer from theInstitute for Molecular Bioscience was awarded a2009 Eisenhower Fellowship, one of 25 worldwide.These prestigious fellowships have beenawarded to people identified as internationalleaders in areas of energy, technology and supply,with only two fellowships assigned to Australia.Dr Hankamer (pictured) is a founding Directorof the Solar Biofuels Consortium, a group workingto maximise the speed of development of highefficiencymicroalgal biofuel production systems.“The development of clean fuels for thefuture is one of the most urgent challenges facingsociety,” Dr Hankamer said.“Using microalgae has several advantagesover traditional biofuel sources, as the productionsystems can be located on non-arable land,eliminating competition with food production.They also have the potential to store carbon,which would help in reducing CO2 levels.”The Eisenhower Fellowship allowed DrHankamer to tailor a six-week program ofmeetings with up to 80 researchers, Senatorsand Members of Congress from both sides ofthe biofuel debate, and top CEOs from industryorganisations including microalgae producers,biofuel producers and the transport industry.courtesy IMBQueensland women are playing a growingrole in the mining engineering sector with arecord number graduating from UQ last year.Almost a quarter of the 37 studentswho graduated from mining engineering inDecember were women.“This result is all the more impressive asit is above the current female participationrate of 16.4 percent across all engineeringdisciplines at UQ,” Queensland ResourcesCouncil (QRC) Chief Executive MichaelRoche said.“This milestone comes in the year whenUQ’s first ever female mining engineeringgraduate Sandra Collins won the QRCResources Award for Women.”stock.xchngParenting made simpleParents can now access an “online instructionmanual” when the task of raising and caring forchildren seems overwhelming.Researchers from The University ofQueensland’s Parenting and Family SupportCentre have developed an online version of theaward-winning Triple P – Positive ParentingProgram, a proven success around theworld.They are now seekingparents concerned aboutthe behaviour of theirthree to eight-year-oldchildren for an evaluationof the program’s effectivenesswith access for the first 100 parentsto enrol free of charge.“We believe that if parents have aclearer sense of what it is they could bedoing differently, it makes the world of difference,”Triple P founder Professor Matt Sanders said.But inconvenience and a lack of time areoften obstacles to completing a group programor seeking advice from a practitioner.Triple P Online contains proven positiveparenting principles and easy-to-use strategiesderived from almost 30 years of internationalresearch.“Parents are looking for practicalsolutions to parenting problems thatwork,” Professor Sanders said.“The simplest way to reduceparental distress and behavioralproblems in children isto give parents betterinformation and support.“Triple P Onlineteaches parents howto prevent and managecommon problems such as tantrums andwhining and how to give children new skills andbecome more independent.”INFO ➔ www.triplep.net/stock.xchngMs Collins was the only female to havegraduated from UQ with a Bachelor ofEngineering (Mining) in 1979 and has pavedthe way for other women.“Sandra is certainly a great ambassadorfor the industry and a great role model toyoung women,” Mr Roche said.“It’s also pleasing to see that all thegraduates have been snapped up by theresources sector.”In 2006 QRC launched its Womenin Resources Action Plan, which aims toincrease the proportion of women in nontraditionalroles in the resources sector to atleast 12 percent by 2020.“The record number of femalegraduates from the UQ mining engineeringdegree adds to our confidence that thisgoal will be surpassed,” Mr Roche said.