Stories by Alison Ballance

Each year Jo Bonner and the team at Coastlands Plant Nursery in Whakatane grow 300,000 spinifex and pingao plants for dune replanting at beaches around the North Island.

Discover the hidden world of arboreal plants, which get a leg-up in the world by living on trees.

Low-damage buildings don't just save lives in an earthquake - they are designed to be resilient so they can stay in use.

When it comes to having a 'good life', there are several key elements - strong intimate relationships and time to relax.

Information from past earthquakes can be used to prepare a more resilient society that will be better able to cope with future shakes.

Two self-driving underwater robots are making surprising discoveries about where river water ends up at sea, far from land.

Cancer epidemiologist Brian Cox, from the University of Otago, talks about studying the causes of cancer and new research on diet and bowel cancer.

NIWA's Richard Querel talks about the ozone hole, including this year's large one, and Ben Liley explains why NZ has such high UV levels.

Iwi representatives & conservationists journey to Zealandia sanctuary to plant seeds of the mysterious parasitic flowering plant Dactylanthus or flower of the underworld.

The 2020 Tahunui-A-Rangi Award goes to David Tipene Leach for the wahakura, a woven bassinet to address the problem of sudden unexpected death in infancy.

Geneticist Neil Gemmell has won the 2020 Hutton Medal for using DNA & new genomic technologies to better understant plants & animals.

NZ's top research award, the Rutherford Medal, has gone to Brian Boyd, whose work spans Shakespeare to Nabokov to Popper, & weaves arts and sciences together.

Maria Bargh's work on political economies and the environment is focused on Māori communities and has won her the 2020 Te Puāwaitanga Award.

Unravelling how genes control colour in petunias has won Nick Albert the 2020 Hamilton Award and could help breed more nutritious fruit.

Researchers from the sciences and the humanities have had their achievements recognised with awards from the Royal Society Te Apārangi.

Deep sea corals are being put to the test at NIWA to find out how they cope with sediment.

Jocelyn Turnbull from GNS Science is measuring how much CO2 we're producing in NZ towns - and she's doing it by cutting the grass.

Dave Lowe on measuring CO₂ in New Zealand for 50 years, and how Carbon Watch NZ is a bird's eye view on our carbon balance.

Emily Parker and her team at Victoria University of Wellington are identifying the genes that allow fungi to create natural medicinal compounds.

An ecologist and a mathematician discover that teaching a computer to recognise bird calls from acoustic recorders is an interesting challenge.

Ten years after the Darfield earthquake, three seismologists from GeoNet reflect on a decade of big earthquakes and what we've learnt from them.

Dead corals cast up the shore of Aitutaki, in the Cook Islands, provide a window into the Pacific Ocean's marine climate hundreds of years ago.

From safer solvents to make better batteries, to catalysts that can clean up wastewater, green chemists are developing better ways of making stuff.

Food scientist Nazimah Hamid from AUT says that the sound of the space we eat in can have surprising effects on the taste of food.

'Covid-19 unmasked: understanding the outbreak' is a panel discussion from the 2020 New Zealand International Science Festival.