The April/May issue of Australian Geographic features a couple of articles written by me (but sadly not bylined). Check out the pdfs of my pieces below to see how Queensland wildlife is coping with the floods and a ditty about the high-pressure world of rating tropical cyclones.
Category Archives: Portfolio
Australian Geographic issue 102 now on sale // 23 March 2011
Read my latest Australian Geographic articles in the journal’s April-May edition, out now. I write about wildlife following Queensland’s devastating 2010/11 floods and take a look at how scientists measure cyclones.
Pics and pdfs coming soon…
Silk worms made to spin coloured silk, Australian Geographic // 10 March 2011
SILK WORMS THAT PRODUCE vibrantly coloured and luminescent silks have been created by scientists in Singapore. The resulting fibre offers a cheap way to circumvent the dying process and may even have medical applications.
“The new, more environmentally friendly method allows us to integrate colours into the very fabric of silk and does away with the need for manual dyeing,” says Dr Natalia Tansil, lead researcher behind the technology at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) in Singapore.
By feeding silkworms a mulberry mixture containing fluorescent dye, Natalia’s team was able to harvest brightly coloured silk that is structurally unaffected, but which also has luminescent, or glowing, properties. The dye molecules are ingrained within the silk filaments to create permanent colour.
Read the rest of my piece in the Australian Geographic here.
Visit the Lebanon – no visa required, Agenda Sydney // 11 March 2011
Cooking, like languages, is one of those things best learnt in situ: total cultural immersion means total cultural absorption, we think. Want to cook great Lebanese? Jump on a plane and get chopping.
All very well and good, you say, but it’s not that easy to long-haul from Sydney.
Now help is at hand in the form of new Middle-Eastern themed cooking tours – or ‘progressive brunches’ as they like to be known – in our very own backyard. ‘I Ate My Way Through Granville’ is a guided feast through the bustling Lebanese hub of Granville, 22km west of Sydney. No visa needed and a short trip away by train. The once-monthly gastronomic tours kick off tomorrow, so yalla, get going.
daisydumas.com 