DNA analyses, combined with morphological studies, are revealing the phylogeny of groups within the Australian flora. Discovery of phylogenetic relationships is both improving taxonomy and our understanding of Australia?s biogeographic and evolutionary history. By analysing the phylogeny of several genera that have overlapping distributions, evidence is emerging for a number of general historic patterns. There is, however, debate surrounding the interpretation of general patterns ? whether they result from vicariance events or long-distance dispersal and how old they are.

Examples of the phylogeny of Australia flora are presented, including the tribe Pomaderreae (family Rhamnaceae), the bloodwood eucalypts (Corymbia), the eudesmid eucalypts (Eucalyptus subgenus Eudesmia) and Acacia. Their historical biogeographic patterns are generally congruent, which suggests that they largely reflect historical vicariance patterns (range splitting of ancestral biota) rather than independent long distance dispersal events, although the case of Pomaderris in New Zealand cannot be determined with confidence. South-west/eastern disjunctions, relictual taxa, and ages of known fossils may be used to indicate the age of some lineages, a number of which were probably well differentiated in the Palaeogene, prior to mid-Miocene aridity. Molecular dating is seen as problematic.

After nearly twenty years of reporting science on Australian television, Karina Kelly has some insights to share. Times have changed and the public's attitude to science has changed also. It might be easy to say that the crystal gazers and astrologers have taken over, but perhaps there's more to the story that this.

He who pays the piper might well call the tune. But what can 'he who pays the scientist' do? How important is independence and a guaranteed livelihood to the great thinkers of our time? Is the modern market-based economy on which we have all come to depend strangling the brilliant ideas of the future? If all research must pay a dividend or serve the interests of a company, will we be able to blame the palm-readers or the Intelligent Design advocates when we enter the next dark age?

KARINA KELLY was educated in Australia and Britain and graduated from the University of Sydney in 1980 with an Honours degree in Arts. She joined the newly formed television channel 0/28 (now SBS) in 1981 working in the news department and has been working in the industry ever since.

She spent two years presenting Channel 7's late news program, Newsworld.

Between 1986-1996, Karina worked at the ABC reporting for and presenting the science program, Quantum.

In 2001 after a spell at home with her children, Karina re-joined the ABC to report for and present Catalyst, it's new science program.

In January 2003, a Catalyst half hour program DNA - A Shadow of Doubt reported by Karina, produced by Paul Faint, researched by Robyn Smith and edited by Lile Judickas won a World Gold Medal at the New York Film and Television Festivals.

But despite nearly 20 years of work in science broadcasting, Karina's real claim to international fame is as the narrator of more than 300 episodes of the ABC's children's program Bananas in Pyjamas which is seen in 70 countries around the world and has 100 Million viewers.

Despite being the most common habitat on earth, we know very little about life in our deep seas. This environment could not be more different than our own: it is dark, cold, high pressure and for the creatures that live there it may be months between meals.

Deep-sea animals come in many shapes and sizes and all have fascinating behaviours. This talk will examine the lives, loves, fears and strategies of some of the main animal groups such as swimming sea cucumbers, congo-drumming rattail fishes, see-through octopuses, ugly fangtooths and slimeheads, the almost mythical giant squids and many other wonderful creatures.

Energy

We now live in a society that has an almost total 'disconnect' between the production of goods and services and their value and use. Energy provides perhaps the most dramatic example of this. We frown at paying $1.10 for a litre of highly refined petrol and think nothing of paying $2.50 for a 750 ml bottle of water. And as an aside, a litre of petrol contains more energy than that required by three people carrying heavy loads, or a horse working the fields, for a whole day.

In reality, energy has never been more affordable than today with energy costs being a small and a declining fraction of disposable income.

Australia's energy production is vast, some 15 690 Petajoules (PJ) in 2003-04, the latest year of official statistics. This is equivalent to approximately 460 billion litres of petrol or enough energy to drive 300 million family cars for a year.

Some 74 percent of Australia?s energy production (11 614 PJ) is exported, mainly in the form of black coal, uranium and some oil and gas. Oil imports amount to some 1270 PJ of the 5346 PJ of domestic primary energy consumption. Final domestic energy consumption is around 3742 PJ, with the difference between primary and final domestic consumption being almost totally due to energy used to produce electricity.

Electricity generation is one of the most energy intensive activities in the world, and in particular in Australia, with its heavy reliance on cheap and abundant black and brown coal. Some 1604 PJ of waste heat are lost in the overall consumption of 785 PJ (or 218 000 Gigawatt-hours (GWh)) of electricity or 70 percent of the input energy.

In 2003, energy related emissions of greenhouse gases amounted to 374 million tonnes (Mt) or 68.1 percent of total emissions of 550 Mt. Electricity generation related emissions amounted to 190 Mt or 34.6 percent of total emissions.

Electricity is a premium energy source so essential to a modern society. Not only does it provide an essential service as well as increased comfort and amenity, electricity provides huge opportunities for increased productivity (e.g. computers) and value-adding (e.g. aluminium and other refined metals).

It is electricity's premium quality and production related high greenhouse gas emissions that have made electricity supply the focus of greenhouse and energy response policy, often at the expense of more effective, but less glamorous, greenhouse abatement and energy efficiency alternatives.

Renewables and Low Emission Technologies

Industry, commerce and households have different energy services requirements that can be met in a variety of ways. Solar energy can often provide the bulk of stationary energy needs and can be used directly and most effectively for a range of applications, such as space and water heating, clothe drying and day-lighting. Coupled with energy efficiency, the direct use of solar energy holds the key to a more secure, lower fossil fuel future. Far greater focus is needed on these simple, efficient and effective energy and greenhouse response measures.

However, the focus today is on the use of 'new' renewables for electricity generation because of their minimal greenhouse gas emissions, their perceived glamour, and the attractiveness of tax-payer or consumer funded subsidies.

Together with low emissions coal and gas based generation technologies, including carbon dioxide capture and disposal, new renewables can reduce the carbon intensity of electricity supply, and ultimately, in a carbon constrained world, renewables will have to provide part or all of the sustainable energy solution. But that is likely to be many decades away with the need to overcome formidable obstacles, including cost-reduction and energy (electricity) production and storage requirements.

Today, new renewables-based electricity generation costs about twice or more the current cost of coal-based generation. Cost reductions will occur as technologies mature and deployment increases but these are unlikely to be sufficient to match the (still declining) cost of coal-based generation.

The diffuse nature of renewable energy implies the need for extensive equipment deployment and large collection areas. For instance, to meet Australia's electricity needs would require some 28 400 large wind generators (2.5 MW capacity) with a 35 percent capacity factor. Suitable windy sites close to the electricity transmission system or population centres are already becoming difficult to find.

The challenges for 'new' coal-based technologies are equally daunting, although they do have the advantage of energy scale and centrally dispatched output. The new coal-based technologies include coal gasification combined cycle and oxy-fuel combustion. These technologies can provide concentrated streams of carbon dioxide for treatment and geological disposal, but at significant cost. They are likely to stack up well in cost terms against renewables but at present can only be considered a medium-term interim measure in a carbon constrained world because of disposal uncertainties.

Finally, nuclear electricity generation sits well in terms of volume electricity production and zero greenhouse gas emissions, but will be competing with renewables and low emission coal-based technologies in cost terms. Like coal, Australia has a very large supply of uranium, but unlike coal, it has to overcome security, safety and disposal issues, perceived or real.

In 1744 a porcelain patent was filed in London by Edward Heylyn and Thomas Frye detailing their method of making porcelain. For over the last 100 years considerable skepticism has been attached to this patent on the basis that the recipe was unworkable, a sea of troubles, experimental, lacking in precision, hesitant, and uncertain.

Within the patent was the claim that the clay used was a produce of the Chirokee (sic) nation and imported from the Americas.

Using geological reports, mineralogy, chemistry, kiln-firing of analogue wares, and contemporary documents, the source of the clay has been identified and an hitherto enigmatic, small group of porcelains has been identified as the products of the 1744 patent.

Research to date now indicates that the 1744 patent is a landmark document in the history of English ceramics and that the porcelains made from that patent are the earliest porcelains made in the English-speaking world.

On-going research has now pointed to the role played by the 'Philadelphia ceramic tradition' in the development of these porcelains.

The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed 2005 to be the International Year of Physics. This celebrates the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's "Miraculous Year" of 1905 when the 26 year old Einstein published four revolutionary ideas that forever changed the way we see the world. These ideas were: (1) the idea of the light quantum that explained the photoelectric effect which won a Nobel prize in 1921, (2) the idea that atoms and molecules were real and could be used to explain Brownian motion and the industrially important diffusion relation (a result first obtained by a Melbourne physicist William Sutherland), (3) the idea that the speed of light is the same for all observers which introduced the special theory of relativity and (4) the energy equivalent of inertial mass leading to E=mc2.

In this talk, I introduce these four revolutionary ideas and how they overturned 19th century physics (the past). Then I describe some of the remarkable advances that came from these ideas including the explanation for the magnetic force, the laser, solar cells, the global positioning system, the Sun?s energy source and the equivalence principle of general relativity. Finally I turn to a discussion of where these revolutionary ideas will take us in the future through my research work in the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence in Quantum Computer Technology. We are attempting to apply quantum mechanics on the atomic scale to build a revolutionary new type of quantum computer with unprecedented processing power. I will review our progress on this major research program.

Our world is getting warmer; and average global surface temperature has increased about 0.60C since 1860. But two-thirds of the warming had taken place by 1950, thus largely anticipating the fossil-fuel use said to be its cause. Absence of correlation contradicts the mainstream hypothesis of a stable pre-industrial climate - only now destabilised by humans burning carbon-based fuels. Something else drives climate.

It’s the Sun. Calculated solar eruptive activity matches climate-change over the past millennium of Mediaeval Maximum and subsequent series of Little Ice Age minima; and from 1940, the Sun has been more active than since 6,000BC. Future solar activity can also be calculated. Don’t be fooled by the 300-year warming trend since the ‘Quiet Sun’ of the Maunder Minimum (roughly 1650-1700AD). If the Sun plays by the rules, the next (Landscheidt) minimum should be fully developed by about 2030. Be prepared.