The review's key recommendation is for a median target of 3,800 gigalitres (GL) a year  - about 600 GL more than at present  -  to be measured at the tidal barrages built 60 years ago near the river mouth.

This is the first time a volume of water has been identified to provide for the long-term health of the wetlands, which were declared a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance in 1985. 

As well, the scientists recommend shelving proposed engineering solutions to the crisis: building a weir to separate the Murray from the Lower Lakes, allowing the lakes to fill with seawater and building a channel between the Coorong and Lake Albert.

Professor Richard Kingsford from the University of NSW, who led the team, says: "History is unfortunately finally catching up and we are seeing one of Australia's iconic wetlands moving rapidly towards a state of ecological collapse as a result of building dams and over-allocating this river."

Another author, Associate Professor Keith Walker of The University of Adelaide, says: "We support some of the South Australian government's initiatives. We believe that new weirs are not a solution, and will hinder rather than help the prospects for recovery. The last thing we need is to repeat past mistakes, dis­­connecting parts of the system with weirs, levees and other structures. It is one of the reasons why the ecological health of the Murray has declined."

The report, Engineering a crisis in a Ramsar wetland: the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth Australia, is critical of the long-term management of the wetlands. It was prepared as an independent assessment of the best available scientific evidence. The team of six scientists from the UNSW Australian Wetlands and Rivers Centre, the University of Adelaide and Flinders University includes leading researchers on the river and its ecology and the report was reviewed in draft stage by other experts in the field.

The report recognises important contributions made by current initiatives, particularly the Australian Government, including the buyback of irrigation water and the new Murray-Darling Basin Authority, and recognises also that current governments have largely inherited the problem.   It finds that declining river flows from upstream diversions, caused by drought and over-allocation, and seawater incursions have combined to bring the ecosystem to a state of crisis.

For the first time in 7,000 years, Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert are below sea level and drying fast, and the habitats of many plants and animals are affected. Waterbirds are in sharp decline, including migratory shorebirds for which Australia has international responsibilities.

"All our modelling of the system shows that increased flows are really the only hope.  None of the engineering solutions proposed to date have anywhere near the same ecological benefits" says Dr Rebecca Lester of Flinders University, another of the report's authors.

The survival of at least three freshwater fish species is threatened, and one is possibly locally extinct. Marine and estuarine organisms are invading the lakes as they become more saline. Tubeworms have colonised hard surfaces in Lake Alexandrina, producing heavy, coral-like growths that weigh down and kill freshwater turtles and other animals.

The salinity of the Coorong has increased to such high levels that it can no longer support the plants and fish that were part of the food chain for the spectacular bird populations that have been the hallmark of the region. One proposal that might improve this is to pump hypersaline water to the ocean.

As well, the team questions what it calls a "reactive focus" on acid sulphate soils and its risk management to the exclusion of other ecological issues.  The report notes that weirs have been  constructed, or are proposed, across some freshwater creeks to avoid potential problems of acidification.  It recognizes that the threat of acidification is real, but may be overstated compared to the impacts of weirs and seawater on the natural freshwater system.

"We believe from our analysis of the data available that a transparent scientific review process needs to assess the confidence with which governments are making decisions based primarily on the potential problem of acid sulfate soils" says Professor Kingsford.

Associate Professor Walker says:  "Warnings by scientists over the past 25 years that this crisis was inevitable have gone largely unheeded and we are now all being held to account. It is not a matter for blame, but a call to action. If we are to keep what was once one of the world's most magnificent wetlands, we need to move very quickly. Quite simply, wetlands need water."

For full report: Wet Rivers web site

Media contacts:
Professor Richard Kingsford - mobile 0419 634 215
UNSW Faculty of Science: Bob Beale 0411 705 435

That lineage ended only about 600 years ago after a journey through time that most likely began about 80 million years earlier on the prehistoric supercontinent of Gondwana, according to the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by an international team of researchers.

Found on the south and north islands of New Zealand, the evolutionary history and relationships between the moa species has long been subject to scientific debate, with past studies suggesting that up to 64 species existed with as many as 20 generic groups.

The new study found that moas should be grouped into only three families, six genera and it reduced the number of species to nine. The most recent species were relatively modern, evolving in the South Island only after the uplift of the Southern Alps between 5 and 8.5 million years ago.

Periodical land bridges, created by geological events and sea-level changes, allowed some of these species to cross over to the North Island.

The many species of moa are thought to have descended from a common ancestor of other large living flightless birds that evolved on separate southern landmasses when Gondwana broke up: the ostrich in Africa; the emu and cassowary in Australia; the rhea in South America; and New Zealand's kiwi. Another presumed relative was the extinct giant elephant bird in Madagascar.

New Zealand broke away from Gondwana at least 60 million years ago and a wide variety of moas subsequently evolved there, ranging in size from a large turkey to the three-metre tall Dinornis, which weighed up to 300 kg.

Maori people are known to have killed large numbers of birds for their meat, eggs and feathers - moa is a Polynesian word for chicken - after they arrived on the islands about 1,000 years ago. All the nine living species were gone within a few centuries.

The study also presents an important new geological/paleogeographical model, which suggests that land-dwelling animals on the North and South Island landmasses were isolated for most of the past 20-30 million years.

"The prolonged geographic isolation of New Zealand and the paucity of terrestrial mammals created a unique ecosystem dominated by an estimated 245 species of birds, providing an unparalleled opportunity to observe evolutionary processes," says Dr Trevor Worthy, a palaeontologist from the UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, who was one of the 11 members of study team.

"Our study reveals that the patterns of genetic diversity within and between different moa groups reflect a complex history following a major drowning of the New Zealand landmass in the Oligocene [23 to 34 million years ago]. Their history was then affected by a series of marine barriers, tectonic activity and glacial cycles.

"We were surprised to discover just how recently many of the moa species - and probably many of the iconic New Zealand animals and plants - evolved in the South Island after the uplift of the Alps. The Alps brought rain and allowed wet rainforests to develop in the west and generated a drier, warmer climate to the east, creating a mix of upland and lowland environments, wet and dry habitats and a variety of forest, shrubland, and grasslands."

Media contacts:
Dr Trevor Worthy 02 9385 2125  t.worthy@unsw.edu.au
UNSW Faculty of Science media: Bob Beale 0411 705 435 bbeale@unsw.edu.au

Protocol

Introduction

The UNSW Faculty of Science Staff Excellence Awards have been established to recognise, reward and encourage exceptional and outstanding service or work performance by professional, technical, teaching and research staff in the Faculty of Science.

The Award

The Faculty of Science will each year provide:

• one Professional Staff Excellence Award
• one Technical Staff Excellence Award
• one Teaching Excellence Award
• one Research Excellence Award
• one Teaching and Research Excellence Award

Each Award consists of a certificate and a $1,500 payment. The Awardee may request that the monetary component be paid into a School/Unit account for use in a project within the area for which the Award was granted (as agreed to by the Awardee); or paid into their personal bank account (which is subject to taxation).

Eligibility

Professional and Technical Staff Excellence Awards

All members of professional & technical staff (full or part time), except members of the Faculty Executive, with at least two years service to, and currently employed by, the UNSW Faculty of Science in a professional or technical position (Levels 1 to 9), are eligible for consideration for the Award. 

Teaching and Research Excellence Awards

All members of academic staff (full or part time), except members of the Faculty Executive, with at least two years service to, and currently employed within the UNSW Faculty of Science are eligible for consideration for the Award.

Previous Awards

Recipients of a UNSW or Faculty of Science Staff Excellence Award are not eligible for nomination for the same award for at least 3 years. For example, the recipient of a 2009 Award may not be nominated until nominations open for a 2013 Award.

Criteria

The Awards will be for an exceptional and outstanding achievement or success, achieved during the three years prior to application for the Award, in the course of performing normal duties. The Awards will not reward satisfactory or good performance only.

Professional Staff Excellence Award

Selection will take into account some or all of the following:

• An exceptional and outstanding achievement or success
• Outstanding service to the clients of the Unit/School/Faculty
• An outstanding or novel initiative which has been implemented
• Significant improvements to work procedures or operational systems that are of benefit to the Unit/School/Faculty
• Participation in working groups for the improvement of UNSW administrative procedures and support.

Technical Staff Excellence Award

Selection will take into account some or all of the following:

• Significant contribution to major projects resulting in (for example):
  • development of new laboratory facilities;
  • development of new equipment for teaching and research, and/or;
  • development of infrastructure for the School or Faculty.
• Significant support for:
  • research projects;
  • undergraduate projects (teaching and/or research), and/or;
  • conduct of experiments for research or teaching.
• Development and support of initiatives for technical work involving:
  • collaboration with outside groups or organisations;
  • commissioning of equipment or conduct of experimental work away from the campus and/or;
  • any work significantly promoting collaborative work with outside organisations.
• Significant contribution to technical management in Schools, the Faculty or the University
• Outstanding contribution to design within a major project or by sustained activity over a prolonged period.

Teaching Excellence Award

Selection will take into account the same criteria as the UNSW Vice-Chancellor's Awards for Teaching Excellence. For examples related to each criterion, please refer to the guidelines at http://www.hr.unsw.edu.au/forms/hr101.pdf.

Selection will take into account some or all of the following criteria: 

• Approaches to teaching that influence, motivate and inspire students to learn
• Development of curriculum and resources that reflect a command of the field
• Approaches to assessment and feedback that foster independent learning
• Respect and support for the development of students as individuals
• Scholarly activities that have influenced and enhanced learning and teaching
• Approaches to teaching that challenge orthodoxy in the applicant's discipline

Research Excellence Award

This award recognizes the impact of research carried out by early career researchers as defined by the Australian Research Council, i.e. those who have been awarded their PhD within the last 5 years and who are in the early stages of developing their research careers. It is expected that awardees will have produced high quality research and can demonstrate potential to achieve international and world-class standing in the future.

Selection will take into account some or all of the following:

• Publication output
• Grants received
• Supervision of Honours and higher degree research students
• Quality of research
• Recognition by outside bodies, including prizes and awards

Teaching and Research Excellence Award

This award recognises exceptional performance by an individual in the areas of both undergraduate teaching and research. The award acknowledges that teaching and research are both fundamental to the role of academic staff and that excellence in teaching and research go hand in hand.

Selection will take into account some or all of the criteria for the individual teaching award as well as some or all of the below criteria:

• Outstanding contribution to research, for example as indicated by an extensive list of publications in high impact journals
• Outstanding record of research grant success in peer reviewed grants including ARC, NHMRC, Linkage and Discovery grants
• Outstanding service/contribution to the wider community
• Successful commercialisation of research
• Research collaboration with industry and/or local and international institutions
• An outstanding or novel initiative which has been implemented and/or has high impact potential
• Active participation/leadership in working groups for the improvement of UNSW research procedures and support
• Major research recognition, eg. a prize or award
• Exceptional record of success in research leadership and supervision

Nominations

• Self-nominations will not be accepted.
• A nomination requires two nominators, who may be supervisors or colleagues from amongst the staff of the University, students, or other persons. It is recommended that at least one nominator be from outside the nominee's work group.
• The nomination must be endorsed by the Head of School/Unit.
• The consent of the nominee is required.
• The nomination will be made on the relevant Nomination Form, setting out the reasons for the nomination and providing supporting evidence of the achievement/s and an abbreviated CV for the nominated staff member.

Lodgement

Two copies of all documentation and nomination forms should be submitted to the relevant Head of School/Unit by Friday 4 December 2009 for endorsement and to the Dean by Wednesday 9 December 2009.

Selection and Award Presentation

The nominations for the Award will be considered by a Selection Committee, convened by the Dean or his nominee. An Award will only be offered where there is a nomination of sufficient merit.

The Award certificate will be presented at the UNSW Faculty of Science end of year staff function in mid-December. Payment of the monetary component of the award will be arranged through the Human Resources Department (unless the Awardee requests that the monetary component be paid into a School/Unit account for use in a project within the area for which the Award was granted).

Guidance for Preparing an Application for a Staff Excellence Award

1. Expect each reviewer to spend up to half an hour on what you have written, so make sure what you write has maximum impact.

2. Number your pages so the reviewers can refer to them.

3. Reviewers will look for:

      a) Nominators' comments that show knowledge of your activities, and enthusiasm for what you have achieved;

      b) an abbreviated CV that concisely outlines your professional journey;

      c) text that clearly addresses one or more of the criteria, so that the reviewer can check off your achievements against the listed criteria - this will be the main basis of assessment, and;

      d) any further information provided in the documentation that sets the application apart (e.g. does the application reflect the nominee's enthusiasm or quantity and scope of their work? What makes this nominee an outstanding Faculty of Science staff member)?

Submission Checklist

• Nomination form (no more than 6 pages)
  • signed by two nominators
  • signed by Head of School
  • addressing relevant selection criteria
• Abbreviated CV for nominated staff member (no more than 6 pages)
• Any additional supporting material (optional)

As you brace yourself to head back out into the weather, a young woman approaches you. She introduces herself as a psychologist, explains that she's conducting research on memory and poses a surprise question: how many of the unusual objects on the checkout counter can you remember?

Our research team conducted just such a study recently: we did so under carefully controlled conditions, repeatedly going to the same store at the same time of day, with the same checkout operator and the same objects placed in the same order on the counter. Customers were chosen at random.

You might expect that, on average, you'd get pretty much the same result each day. Yet our surprise question yielded a surprise answer: people performed much better on the memory test when the weather was unpleasant and they were in a slightly negative mood. On bright sunny days, when they were more likely to be happy and carefree, they flunked it.

So why should we be better at remembering everyday details when we are in a bad mood than when we are in a good mood? This is not a trivial question and it has important ramifications.  A happy eyewitness, for example, may be less reliable in court than a sad one. Or would you perform better in an exam if you were feeling a little down?

Surprisingly, we still know relatively little about the subtle ways that feelings and moods influence how people think. Yet the fascinating interplay between thought and feeling - the rational and emotional ways of dealing with the world around us - has intrigued philosophers, writers, artists and ordinary people since the dawn of civilisation.

Fleeting moods can have profound influences

Now a growing body of research is revealing that mild, fleeting moods can have profound influences on many everyday judgments.

Here's another example. We asked 120 university students to judge the truth or falsity of general knowledge trivia statements. Afterwards we revealed to them whether each item was true or not. Two weeks later, we got them back to the lab, divided them into three groups and showed them short videos designed to induce either a happy, neutral or sad mood. Then we asked them to judge the truth of some of the trivia statements they'd seen earlier, plus some completely new ones.

Strangely, the group that had just watched the sad video performed better than the group who felt happy. Students in a bad mood were also markedly better at remembering whether the statements were true, based on the answers we'd given them just a fortnight earlier. Those in a happier mood had difficulty remembering and tended to think that any statement they'd seen previously was likely to be true. Worse still, happy students were also unreasonably confident - much more so than the sad group - that they were right.

How could this be? A simple downbeat shift in mood had improved memories and judgments, whereas a small upbeat shift had made them perform less well but, curiously, resulted in an unreasonable increase in confidence.

It is strange indeed that the one emotion we all seem to want to avoid - sadness - can be so beneficial and useful. Equally odd, perhaps, is that the pursuit of happiness - one of the "inalienable rights" famously set down by Thomas Jefferson in the United States Declaration of Independence - can sometimes lead our clever brains so astray.

Since Plato's time, many theorists have seen emotion as a potentially dangerous, invasive force that subverts rational judgment and action. This idea gained its most powerful expression in Freud's psychodynamic theories early last century. In this view, emotions can "take over" thinking and behaviour unless psychological resources are deployed to control them. When logic and reason deliver so many tangible benefits, why are we humans so prone to succumb to our feelings, throw caution to the wind, fall head over heels in love or get overwhelmed by despair? In short, what good are these seemingly irrational states of mind, and why did our evolutionary heritage bestow them on us?

What is the point of sadness?

More to the point, if being happy is such a universal goal why is the human emotional repertoire so heavily skewed towards negative feelings? Apart from happiness and surprise, four of the six deeply ingrained basic emotions identified in humans are negative ones: fear, anger, disgust and sadness. Fear, and anger and disgust have obvious evolutionary benefits, triggering a fight, flight or avoiding response. But what is the point of sadness?

We are only just beginning to understand how sadness often calls for a more careful, adaptive and ultimately effective thinking style.

Despite the undoubted power and ubiquity of feelings, moods and emotions were long neglected as a subject of scientific research. Three basic faculties of the trilogy of the human mind have dominated philosophy and empirical psychology in recent centuries: cognition (how we process information); conation (motivation and will); and affect (feeling and emotion).  Affect remains the least understood.

Recent decades, however, have seen a kind of "affective revolution" in psychology, neuro-anatomy and physiology. A radically different view is emerging. Rather than being a dangerous force, the evidence suggests that emotion is a useful and even essential component of our capacity to respond to social situations.

In itself, that may seem self-evident but sadness remains a puzzle. Even though it is clearly bothersome and provides no obvious pleasurable benefit, it remains one of the most enduring and common emotional states. Throughout human history much effort has been expended in controlling sadness and dysphoria - the unpleasant, uncomfortable moods. Indeed, helping us to manage negative feelings is the bread and butter of much of contemporary applied and clinical psychology.

But as we have seen, sadness is not without its uses. Many researchers now believe that evolutionary pressures probably shaped the development of all emotional responses, including sadness, in a way that is highly sensitive to situational demands. What is more surprising, as our research shows, is that moods such as sadness seem to operate by spontaneously triggering information-processing strategies that best suit the needs of different social situations.

Much recent research on the functions of mood and emotion has focused on the benefits of positive states of mind. It has been variously suggested that feeling good promotes creativity, flexibility, co-operation, integrative thinking, successful negotiation, work motivation, relationship satisfaction and a host of other desirable outcomes. In contrast, most experimental and clinical psychology has emphasized the need to limit, control and avoid negative states of mind. Yet if feeling sad is so universally undesirable, why is it so surprisingly ubiquitous?

Sadness may promote a more attentive, accommodating thinking style

Mounting evidence suggests that negative moods, such as sadness, may promote a more attentive, accommodating thinking style that produces superior outcomes whenever a cognitive or social task requires detailed, externally oriented, inductive thinking.

So it is not too far-fetched to suggest that in our early evolutionary history such wired-in emotional reactions were likely to provide distinct survival advantages. Individuals who detected and responded most rapidly and effectively to social and environmental challenges, for example, would be more likely to fare better those who did not. Negative emotions such as fear, disgust or anger were obviously useful in the precarious ancestral environment, preparing individuals for flight, fight or avoidance in the face of danger. Sadness, as we have found, has a more subtle effect: it triggers a more attentive, cautious thinking style that focuses attention on the outside world.

Feelings and moods can also profoundly influence the content of thinking and memory, by making it easier to remember related thoughts and ideas. People in a happy mood are more likely to selectively remember happy, cheerful episodes from their past and those in a sad mood remember more bad experiences. We have also found that couples who are in a good mood see their relationship conflicts in far more lenient, optimistic terms. Temporary sad mood has the opposite effect - problems are interpreted in a more pessimistic manner.

More importantly, moods can influence not only what we think but also the process of cognition, that is, how we think.

Early studies suggested that positive moods simply lead to lazier, more superficial processing strategies whereas negative moods trigger a more effortful, systematic, analytic and vigilant processing style. These differences were originally explained in terms of differences in motivation and effort between happy and sad individuals. In effect, if you were happy and wanted to stay that way you'd be more likely to avoid effortful thinking, but if you were sad you'd put more effort into feeling better.

More recent theories, however, suggest a more complex pattern. Feelings not only influence how much effort you put into thinking but also the style of processing you use. Positive and negative moods seem to prepare us to adopt thinking strategies that best fit the situation.

Happy mood seems to lead to a greater reliance on pre-existing knowledge and ideas - applying what we already know. Happy people often adopt a more open, creative and inclusive thinking style, use broader categories, show greater mental flexibility and can perform just as effectively on secondary tasks.

In contrast, sadness produces the opposite pattern of paying greater attention to new, external information. Sad people use a more accommodative, bottom-up and externally-focused processing strategy where attention to situational information drives thinking. These contrasting processing styles can be equally vigilant and effortful, yet produce very different outcomes. Thus, both positive and negative emotions can provide advantages in the right circumstances.

Let's look closer at the experimental evidence for the subtle cognitive advantages of feeling bad.

Happy people tend to make snap judgements

One early clue came from a study looking at how mood influences our perceptions of other people. It found that people in happy moods tend to make snap judgements based on first impressions. Those in a sad mood, however, paid balanced attention to both positive and negative signals from other people. In short, sadness tends to improve the accuracy of your person perception.

Another intriguing finding was that happy people selectively chose to read sad rather than happy articles before carrying out a demanding or difficult social task, such as meeting a stranger. Thus, we seem to adopt subconscious strategies to reduce euphoria to fit the requirements of the situation.

Much of what we know about the world is second-hand knowledge. Deciding whether to accept or reject social information is critical in everyday life. Accepting invalid information as true (false positives or excessive gullibility) can be just as dangerous as rejecting information that is valid (false negatives or excessive scepticism). Many factors can sway our credibility judgements - the quality of the information, prior knowledge of it and cues we take from our informants, such as whether we find them attractive. But in recent experiments my colleagues and I have found that moods also have a significant influence on accepting or rejecting information.

Factual scepticism involves evaluating claims against objective evidence: some claims, of course, are plainly open to checking but in practice others are difficult to test (that power lines cause leukaemia, for example, or that the CIA murdered President Kennedy).

We asked people to judge the probable truth of urban legends

To test how mood influences the way ambiguous claims are assessed, we asked participants who were induced into positive, neutral and negative moods to judge the probable truth of a number of urban legends and rumours. Mood did have a significant influence on their scepticism, but only for claims that were new to them, suggesting that familiarity is an important factor.  So a follow-up experiment explicitly manipulated the familiarity of a variety of factual claims taken from trivia games. Some were familiar to the participants and some were entirely new. Participants induced into a positive mood by watching suitably emotive videos simply rated familiar items as more credible. Negative mood in turn produced greater overall scepticism.

A second kind of scepticism, interpersonal scepticism, concerns the acceptance or rejection of messages and signals we get from other people that are by their very nature ambiguous and not open to objective validation. Deciding whether a smile or a denial is genuine, for example, involves this kind of credibility judgment.

Negative moods might produce more critical and sceptical judgments, while happy people may accept interpersonal messages at "face value", as genuine and trustworthy. In one experiment we asked participants to assess photographs of positive and negative facial displays: as predicted, we found that people in a sad mood were significantly less likely than those in the neutral or happy condition to accept facial expressions as genuine. Curiously, happy participants were more confident in their judgment. In another study the six basic emotions - anger, fear, disgust, happiness, surprise and sadness - were used as targets. Once again, negative mood reduced and positive mood increased people's tendency to accept the facial displays as genuine.

But does bad mood also improve people's ability to detect deception? To explore this, we staged a theft: students were instructed to either steal or leave in place a movie ticket in an empty room, unobserved by anyone. Next, they were all told to deny the theft, regardless of their guilt. We then interrogated them and asked happy or sad participants to accept or reject the targets' videotaped statements. Those in a positive mood were more likely to accept denials as truthful. Sad participants not only made significantly more guilty judgments but were significantly better at correctly detecting the guilty targets. Again, this is rich material for the legal profession when the potential influence of mood on a jury, for example, might conceivably sway its assessment of a key witness.

People who are sad by nature may be better at detecting some types of lies

These findings are also consistent with some earlier claims about so-called "depressive realism" and more recent findings that people who are sad by nature - known as dispositionally dysphoric - might have an advantage at detecting specific types of lies, such as false reassurances.

Interpreting the behaviour of others is a critical and demanding cognitive task in everyday life, yet people tend to be pretty poor at it: they pay disproportionate attention to the most conspicuous information in the focus of their attention - the actor - and fail to adequately process information about the situation that often determines what people do. So, do good or bad moods influence our accuracy in such interpersonal judgements?

We would expect that sad people show greater accuracy in their judgement of others' behaviour. Several laboratory and real-life experiments have examined this issue. In one study we asked people to read an essay written by a student advocating a popular or unpopular position (for or against nuclear weapons testing). They were told either that the writer had freely chosen the topic or had been assigned to write it. Happy people were more likely to believe that the essay represented the writer's real attitude, even when the topic was assigned. Sad mood reduced this bias:  unhappy people were more accurate and  were less likely  to make incorrect judgements about the writers of the assigned essays.

Similar results have also been obtained in real-life field studies, showing that a sad mood produces more accurate judgments and a better recall of details.

Happy people are more confident, despite being less accurate

Paradoxically, it is happy people who are more confident in their judgments despite them being less accurate. We clearly underestimate the effect of mood on our performance when dealing with complex social information. Taken together, the experimental results add weight to a positive evolutionary explanation for sadness.    

Whatever the reason for the pervasiveness of sadness, its impact on our lives and on our life performance is significant. A key issue is its effect on memory, as the introductory example hinted.

Memory is notoriously fallible and many a stray detail gets incorporated into recall of events, and one can be convinced of its accuracy even when it is plainly false. In a series of experiments we found that happiness promoted and sadness inhibited the incorporation of false details into eyewitness memories. We found that mood may influence eyewitness memory in several ways: when the event is first witnessed; when misleading information is encountered later on; and when the information is retrieved.

In one study we showed participants pictures of two scenes - a car crash and a wedding party. An hour later, allegedly as part of an unrelated study, the same participants were induced to feel happy or sad (by recalling happy or sad events from their past). They then completed a short questionnaire about the scenes they saw earlier. Some questions contained planted, misleading information, such as: "Did you see the overturned car next to the broken guard rail?" (there was no guard rail) or, "Did you see the fireman holding a fire hose?" (there was no fire hose). After a further interval, the accuracy of their eyewitness memory for the scenes was tested. Receiving misleading information reduced eyewitness accuracy, especially in a positive mood. Surprisingly, negative mood almost completely eliminated this common "misinformation effect". The memories of happy people were far more likely to be contaminated while negative mood seemed to provide a defence against such contamination - sad people thought more carefully about what they had seen.

Sad people had better recall of a tense scene

Looking at pictures is one thing, but what about when you are directly involved in witnessing a tense scene? In another experiment, students in a lecture theatre witnessed a staged five-minute aggressive encounter between a lecturer and a female intruder. A week later these eyewitnesses received a mood induction, and were given a similarly loaded questionnaire, with planted false information (italicised, as follows): "Did you see the lecturer removing his microphone, as the woman wearing a light jacket moved towards him?" and "Can you remember the young woman fiddling with her scarf as the lecturer gave her something from his wallet?". A final test of eyewitness memory showed that those in a happy mood while receiving the misleading information were far more likely to report it as true, while sadness all but eliminated this source of memory error. It seems that sadness improved memory by promoting the ability to discriminate between correct and misleading details. Happiness, on the other hand, had a detrimental effect.

We also wondered whether people can suppress the impact of their moods when instructed to do so, something that is very important in legal situations where jurors and witness are often "warned" about various distortions.

In a third study, we showed participants short videotapes of a robbery in a convenience store and a wedding scene. After the usual wait and mood induction, some were instructed to disregard and control their emotional state before doing the questionnaire. Overall, those who were told to suppress their emotions fared no better or worse than the others (although some individuals seemed better able to do this).

We predicted that sadness could also have other benefits in interpersonal communication, for example when it comes to trying to influence others, due to the more concrete, factual and systematic thinking style that goes with negative moods. As far back as Aristotle, theorists have contended that concrete arguments tend to be interesting and well recalled. Can negative mood, directing attention to concrete, external information, also have a beneficial effect?

We tested this by inducing participants to feel good or bad after viewing short happy or sad films, and then asking them to produce persuasive arguments for or against an increase in student fees and Aboriginal land rights. They came up with an average of seven arguments and the quality and persuasiveness of each argument was rated by two trained raters blind to the manipulations. Those in a negative mood created arguments that were of significantly higher quality and more persuasive - mainly because they contained more specific, concrete details.  We repeated the experiment with different participants, and different issues - with the same result.

But the ultimate significance of these findings depends on whether the arguments produced by happy and sad participants indeed differ in actual persuasive power. To test that, we exposed a naive audience of 256 undergraduate students to the arguments produced by our happy or sad participants. We found that, indeed, the arguments produced by sad people were actually more successful in producing a real change in attitudes, and especially so when they advocated a popular position over an unpopular one.

Sad people made better arguments and were more persuasive

Can bad mood also help when we try to persuade somebody directly? In one study, happy or sad participants had the task of persuading another student through a series of emails to volunteer for a boring experiment. Sad people had again done much better, and produced more effective messages.

So, we have learned that sadness has some surprising benefits for thinking. By producing a more careful, concrete and externally oriented thinking style, it can improve memory, guard us against confusing true with misleading details and can also reduce errors of judgement. Negative mood also makes us less gullible: it helps us to be more sceptical about accepting ambiguous factual claims; and it improves communication by helping to create well-reasoned and persuasive arguments.

Of course, the upside of sadness is a matter of degree: intensive or prolonged sadness and grief - such as depression - can cause us to lose our grip on rational thought and on our judgement for hours, days and even months on end. Depression is plainly a very different state, but temporary and mild sadness does seem to result in some unexpected benefits in how we think and process complex information.

Are memories and judgements biased by how you feel at the time?

We clearly have strong evidence that mild sadness can improve thinking on some tasks. But do we really know why this occurs? Evolutionary explanations offer a promising answer to this question. We have learned a lot in recent years about the way feelings influence memory, thinking and judgments.  Our findings are broadly consistent with the notion that over evolutionary time, feelings work as adaptive, functional triggers to elicit information processing patterns that are appropriate in a given situation.

Of course, any phenomenon claiming to be evolutionary in origin needs to be culturally universal. Although few explicitly cross-cultural studies have so far been carried out there is reason to believe that these effects, like most fundamental cognitive phenomena, are not culture dependent. The fact that the same pattern emerges in a variety of different cognitive tasks, using a variety of mood-induction procedures, and in different subject populations suggests that the effect is robust and universal.

This new knowledge about the cognitive consequences of not being too happy may have interesting applications. Mood and feelings are a critical factor in industrial and organisational settings. Are memories, thinking, judgments and persuasive messages subtly biased by how employees feel at the time? Managing successful relationships and resolving personal conflicts also involves a great deal of feeling and emotion. Does the thinking of couples depend on how they happen to feel at the time? The legal system is also heavily based on memories, judgments and interpretations.

There is now solid evidence that moods and feelings do indeed play an important role in many everyday situations. It is an intriguing possibility that the key to successful work performance or rewarding intimate relationships may sometimes require us not to be too happy.

* The author is Scientia Professor, School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. His personal homepage is here.

"The impossible issue here is that the earthquake that caused the tsunami occurred so close to the south coast of Samoa that there was simply not enough time to process the seismic data and issue a warning," says Associate Professor Dale Dominey-Howes, of UNSW's Australian Tsunami Research Centre, who led more than 80 scientists from 20 organisations in the landmark study.

"Samoa's Disaster Management Office (DMO) has worked hard in recent years to partner with communities to raise awareness of tsunamis, develop evacuation procedures and test those procedures with drills.

"It is clear these efforts of the DMO saved lives on 29 September because many Samoan people reacted as hoped when the earthquake occurred. That is, they moved inland without waiting for an official warning. The tsunami reportedly arrived at the coast in less than 10 minutes.

"The sad fact, however, that more than 100 lives were still lost in Samoa shows us that we must - scientists and governments alike - continue to work to improve disaster risk-reduction efforts."

The UNESCO-International Oceanographic Commission International Tsunami Survey Team joined forces with local researchers to carry out fieldwork on Samoa's two main islands - Upolu and Savai'i - two weeks after the disaster.

The main purpose was to explore the nature of the tsunami and its impacts in Samoa in order to help the national government enhance its tsunami disaster risk management strategies.

It was the first time a post-tsunami survey was undertaken in Samoa and the first time a UNESCO-IOC ITST assessment team had attempted to use multidisciplinary experts - including social scientists, engineers, ecologists, geologists and modellers - in a single group to investigate the tsunami.

The team recorded substantial inundation from the coast and a surprisingly high maximum run-up. Flow depths of the tsunami in some locations were also extremely high. The tsunami had widespread impacts on the natural environment, including erosion and deposition of sediments, damage to coastal plants and trees. Damage to agricultural gardens affected households' capacity to provide food. Building damage was extensive. 

The team also collected survivor accounts of the tsunami and noted that people are experiencing severe trauma.

"In spite of historical accounts of some 40 or more tsunamis since 1837 - and evidence for a similarly large event back in 1917 - there is no social or cultural memory/oral traditions of tsunami," says Associate Professor Dominey-Howes.

"We find this very puzzling. The DMO faces a significant challenge in convincing the people of Samoa that tsunamis are a real threat to coastal communities.

"The take-home message is that if you feel an earthquake in the coastal zone move inland to higher ground."

Media contact:

UNSW Faculty of Science- Bob Beale 0411 705 435 bbeale@unsw.edu.au  

See also:

http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/news/killer-tsunami-unsw-spearheads-research-in-samoa/

Latest opinion piece:
The sum of Australia's future

03 November 2009 Anthony Dooley School of Mathematics and Statistics As teachers and professors, we need to do more to help the community understand the creative techniques which lie within the modern mathematician's toolkit, and the infinite possibilities which await those who can grasp numbers. But we can't do it alone.. Read more...

Previous opinion pieces

Drivers have no right to speed
23 July 2009
Raphael Grzebieta
Injury Risk Management Research Centre

No time for climate change furphies
17 June 2009
Matt England
Climate Change Research Centre

Low carbon the only way to go
13 May 2009
Ben McNeil
Climate Change Research Centre

Science communication - the importance of evidence
24 March 2009 
Carol Oliver
Australian Centre for Astrobiology

Where did all the women go?
10 December 2008 
Tracey Rogers
School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Dead in the water: beach safety stalled by ignorance
14 November 2008 
Rob Brander
School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences

How I learned to stop worrying and love YouTube
22 September 2008 
Adam Micolich
School of Physics

Workplace bullying must be tackled
18 July 2008
Carlo Caponecchia
School of Risk and Safety Sciences

Bali or bust
15 May 2008
Matthew England
Climate and Environmental Dynamics Laboratory (CEDL)

If trees could speak
11 April 2008
Bob Beale
Faculty of Science

Road safety gains may have stalled
3 April 2008
Raphael Grzebieta
Australasian College of Road Safety and UNSW Injury Risk Management Research Centre

Out of sight out of mind - floodplains
10 March 2008
Richard Kingsford
School of Biological Earch and Environmental Sciences (BEES)

Greenhouse solution myth, fallacy & spin 
21 February 2008
Mark Diesendorf
Institute of Environmental Studies (IES)

Green challenge for government 
12 December 2007
Richard Kingsford
School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES)

Australian Heritage Rivers: a major new policy proposal
9 July 2007
Richard Kingsford
School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES)

An addiction that fouls the air
16 January 2007
Ben McNeil
Climate and Environmental Dynamics Laboratory (CEDL)

A team of Sydney researchers is conducting the three-year experiment to test whether native rats can mount a counter-offensive against the black rats, which were targeted during the epidemic because they bore disease-carrying fleas that spread easily to people living in poor housing and unsanitary conditions around Darling Harbour and The Rocks areas.

The Sydney epidemic of 1900-1905 claimed more than 163 lives and was part of a plague pandemic affecting dozens of countries between 1850 and 1912.

In a bid to limit panic and the mounting death toll, the NSW Government offered six pence - four dollars in today's economy - as bounty for the body of every rat delivered to a purpose- built city furnace established in Bathurst Street.

The eradication campaign was highly successful: more than 100,000 rats were culled during the first six months of the program, although the unofficial death toll was probably much higher.

But it also led to the indiscriminate killing of harmless native rodents, according to UNSW biologists Dr Peter Banks and Dr Grainne Cleary.

"Historical records and photographs suggest that harmless rodents such as water rats and the native bush rats were caught up in the culling of black rats," says Dr Banks. "Land-clearing for the suburbs of Mosman, Cremorne and Manly then isolated bush patches on harbour foreshores, depriving the native rodents to recolonise bushland habitats. As a consequence, native bush rats have been a rarity in Sydney ever since - the last confirmed sighting in the city was in 1901."

Despite the black rat's fearsome reputation, Dr Banks says early experiments at Taronga Zoo showed that it is "easily bullied" by native bush rats. The team believes that they are likely to "evict" the invaders from bushland when they are reintroduced, with resulting benefits to many other species preyed on by black rats - notably native birds whose eggs are taken.

Beginning next year, the campaign aims to trap 70 per cent of the vermin rats in four Mosman and Cremorne areas before releasing bush rats in these areas from 2011.

If successful, the trial could be expanded to drive the pests out of suburbs across the city.

The Australian Research Council has awarded the team Linkage Grant funding of $365,000 over the next three years to protect rare and endangered wildlife by using reintroductions of common native species as a block to reinvasion following pest control.

The initiative is led by UNSW and Sydney University scientists supported by the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, Taronga Conservation Society Australia, Mosman Municipal Council, Australian Wildlife Conservancy, Landcare Research and Rentokil Initial Pty Ltd.

Media contacts:
UNSW Faculty of Science: Bob Beale  0411 705 435

Thousands of people at risk of developing eye diseases are expected to attend the Centre for Eye Health (CFEH) every year at the Kensington campus of the University of New South Wales, a joint initiative between the university and Guide Dogs NSW/ACT.

The centre was opened officially on Wednesday 4 November by the Governor of NSW, Professor Marie Bashir AC, CVO. It aims to reduce preventable blindness and vision impairment by early detection of eye diseases such as macular degeneration, glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy. 

Guide Dogs plans to spend $40 million over 10 years to provide a comprehensive range of world-class eye imaging and vision diagnosis services at no charge to anyone referred there by a general practitioner, ophthalmologist or optometrist.

Most irreversible vision loss due to eye disease can be managed and treated if detected early, says CFEH director Professor Michael Kalloniatis. Half of all vision impairment is correctable and one quarter is preventable if diagnosed and managed early.

"For the first time in Australia, the best diagnostic equipment will be readily available under one roof and at no cost to anyone at risk of developing eye disease," says Professor Kalloniatis.

"Waiting lists are up to two years at many public hospitals, so people will now be able to access vision assessments much sooner. As well, they won't have to visit different centres for different tests - we have everything that's needed here."

Among the $2.5 million worth of equipment is Australia's first Optomap wide-field fundus photographic instrument, which quickly and painlessly takes multi-dimensional images of the back of the eye and optic nerve - without the need for eye-drops or invasive procedures.

The centre also serves as a teaching facility for UNSW's School of Optometry and Vision Science and helps support a wide range of vision research and education at the university.

Full details online at:http://www.cfeh.com.au/.

The services provided by CFEH are free of charge to residents of NSW and the ACT and their referring practitioner. All individuals seen at CFEH must be referred by their health-care practitioner, such as an optometrist, ophthalmologist or GP, using the Centre's referral system.

The CFEH telephone number is: 1300 421 960

Media contacts:
Guide Dogs NSW/ACT - Siobhan McMahon 0407 944 297 smcmahon@guidedogs.com.au
Bob Beale 0411 705 435 bbeale@unsw.edu.au

Each year the Melbourne Cup encourages us all to take a chance on the "race that stops a nation". However in 2009, with many punters feeling the pinch, risk-taking probably seems like a bad idea - until you look back through time.

"For many, horseracing seems an extremely risky way to multiply their money," says Professor Anthony Dooley, head of the School of Mathematics and Statistics at UNSW.

However, as many horse-racing experts already know, the mathematical principles behind predicting outcomes in racing are very similar to those used for devising successful stock market investment schemes.

For both gamblers and investors, a successful approach involves working out how to maximise financial reward while minimising financial risk. 

According to Professor Dooley, the best strategy for financial success at the track relies less on trying to pick the winner and more on identifying the group of competitors that is most likely to include the winner.

To find out how this theory applies on the turf, UNSW mathematicians analysed Melbourne Cup race results since 1989. From this historical data they devised a winning strategy called the Melbourne Cup Trifecta 50, or MCT50.

The formula has two simple rules. First, eliminate all horses from the line-up that have odds longer than 50-1. Second, place $1 on all the possible Box Trifecta combinations for the remaining starters.

According to this study, had a punter used this strategy every year since 1989, by now they would have realised a profit of $40,885 - a return of 154%.

After an initial investment of $4896 in the first year, profits from the winnings would then have been sufficient to fund all subsequent bets.

In terms of conventional financial products, this outcome is equivalent to having invested that initial layout in 1989 in an account with a compound interest rate of 11.23% for twenty years, or at today's interest rates until about 2045.

 "Like any strategy, this formula is not fool-proof," cautions Professor Dooley. "However, historically it seems to be every bit as safe as investing in the share market, and it certainly provided a greater return than traditional bank account investments."

Punters considering using the MCT50 should be warned. In any given year, this formula will only have a one in three chance of actually returning a profit. Furthermore, to realise the profit calculated in the analysis, an individual would have had to stick it out for the whole 20 years since 1989 to reap the full rewards (or exit after fewer years for a less fruitful profit). 

"Superannuation funds have already familiarised Australians with thinking about investing and saving for the long term - so a two-decade wait could well seem acceptable for many - and a lot more fun," Professor Dooley says.

Even so, Professor Dooley urges a strong note of caution for anyone considering this exact strategy on Tuesday.

"For the MCT50 approach to work in the future a scenario statistically similar to the past is required," he advises. "If everyone starts to use the same cut-off approach the odds worsen, and pay-outs fall dramatically."

"This kind of formula is a fairly straightforward calculation and it's an approach used by many of our leading racing experts in their own work," Professor Dooley says.

"Gamblers would tell you that if you're on to a good thing you need to keep your winning formula secret. However, part of our role as mathematicians is to understand and communicate the patterns that help explain and predict everyday activities - including the Australian love for a 'flutter'.

"If you really want to back a winner, invest in your own long-term learning so you can accumulate practical information that will help inform your own daily decisions - in both banking and betting."

Media contact:
UNSW Faculty of Science - Bob Beale - 0411 705 435 - bbeale@unsw.edu.au

The Tall Poppies recognise young scientists who excel at research, leadership and communication. The program aims to inspire young people and the broader community about the possibilities of science and to encourage a culture of innovation alongside the promotion of scientific literacy.

UNSW's other Tall Poppy winners were Dr Michael Valenzuela (Medicine), Dr Mary Kavurma (Medicine), Dr Penny Martens (Biomedical Engineering), and Dr Matthew McCabe (Civil and Environmental Engineering). This year's crop of winners from universities across NSW and the ACT will spend 12 months travelling and talking to teachers, school students, parents and the broader community to help sustain science awareness and communication.

Dr Cole's main research interests concern methods for storing and using hydrogen for energy, and novel applications of heavy metals such as uranium for biological imaging, medicine and radiotherapy. A University Medal winner educated at Cardiff University in the UK, he has won $1m in independent competitive research funding. Asked why he pursues science as a career, Dr Cole said he loves the challenge: "Science makes the difference! How could you fail to be inspired by working on some of the biggest problems of our time?"

Dr Donna Green is researching climate change-impacts on remote Indigenous communities living in northern Australia. She says there has been little research about the likely effects of climate change impacts such as storm surges and sea-level rise upon Indigenous people in the Top End region. "My research is crucial to inform anticipatory adaptation strategies to reduce some of the most severe impacts of climate change for communities living in these regions," she says. Dr Green and journalist Liz Minchin are co-authors of a forthcoming book titled Screw Light Bulbs: smarter solutions to Australia's climate change challenge.

Dr David Warton develops novel data analysis methods for understanding aspects of the biological world, including primate evolution and plant physiology. He is currently developing new ways for predicting how ecological communities will respond to climate change, which he describes as "an important and relatively new problem which cannot be addressed using current data analysis methods in ecology." Dr Warton has been awarded $1.32m in research funding in the last five years. He speaks regularly to the media about applied science and career opportunities in mathematics and statistics.

The Tall Poppy Campaign is funded nationally by the Department of Health and Ageing.

Media contacts, Dan Gaffney, 0411 156 015, Bob Beale, 0411 705 435