We’re moving, so update your address book. Come and visit us! From 25 July 2011 our new office will be:

Coretext, 43 O’Connell Street, North Melbourne VIC 3051

All other contact details remain the same:

Coretext, PO Box 12542, Melbourne VIC 8006

Telephone 03 9670 1168

Facsimile 03 9670 1127

Email enquiries@coretext.com.au

The magazine embraces Melbourne’s vibrant cycling scene – the people, the tradition, the rides, the fashion and, naturally, the coffee and camaraderie. It captures the spirit of cycling in all its guises, from gritty competition, to bunch rides, cafe mateship, the lycra regalia of the corporates, and the never-to-be-forgotten hardy, passionate, two-wheel commuter.

Listen to our interview with ABC radio host and funnyman Richard Stubbs or visit the blog for the ride of your life

Farmers abandoned properties to flee Indonesian invasion in 1999, and by mid-2002 agricultural productivity had diminished, seed had been eaten to avert hunger and some traditional crop varieties had vanished. Irrigation schemes and agricultural research stations were also destroyed in the withdrawal.

Anticipating the food security crisis, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) established Seeds of Life (SoL) – a targeted research, seed production and distribution program that has recently entered its third phase.

SoL’s success will ultimately be determined by East Timor’s ability to feed itself, but ACIAR personnel at the frontline are confident SoL will deliver on its mission.

Among its major achievements to date, the program has released nine new varieties of five staple crops, recording yield advantages of between 23 and 80 per cent over traditional maize, rice, peanut and sweet potato cultivars.

The $25 million third stage, substantially funded by AusAID, will target 130,000 households – about 90 per cent of the rural population. A formal seed production program will feed into a community-based system of more than 1000 producer groups who will distribute seed locally and sell the surplus at market.

See ACIAR scientists in action on ABC Television’s Landline

CSIRO scientist Beth Fulton, an ecosystem modeller with CSIRO’s Wealth from Oceans Flagship program in Hobart, transformed the unique Atlantis marine ecosystem modelling program to a “scientific version” of popular city-creation computer game, SimCity.

The objective is to feed in all the real-world factors that influence the sustainability of marine ecosystems and their fisheries to better predict the long-term impacts – before any unintended damage is done – of proposed regulatory, policy or climatic changes.

“It is based on real people, real data and real life interactions; but in our make-believe ‘real’ world we can make mistakes about the future without affecting a fishery,” says Beth Fulton.

Known in medical jargon as ‘intra-operative awareness’, wakening is one of the most common complications of anaesthesia. An estimated 2000 patients a year have some form of awareness during surgeries performed in Australian hospitals; accounting for 45 per cent of insurance claims against anaesthesiologists.

The problem has been the lack of technology to accurately monitor the state of the brain during anaesthesia.

Current anaesthetic methods involve monitoring a patient’s status with electroencephalogram (EEG)-based monitors. The downfall of these is that in most cases they can only tell if the patient is awake or asleep; not if he or she is in pain.

The Swinburne/Cortical Dynamics research has developed a new technology called the Brain Anaesthesia Response (BAR) monitoring system.

This defines the patient’s hypnotic and analgesic states separately, meaning doctors will be able to tell if the patient needs more hypnotic drugs or sedative agents. Conventional EEG monitors can’t separate these two states, making optimal drug delivery more difficult.

Clinical trials have now started, with the first monitors expected to be on the market in two years.