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  • Rights: The University of Waikato
    Published 21 June 2007 Referencing Hub media
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    Collaboration1 does not just occur between scientists of the same institution or the same country. Research is often conducted by international teams, where each team brings specialist knowledge to the project. For example the research project that Dr Megan Balk is part of involved Italian drilling specialists to drill deep holes. Without their expertise2 and input Megan would not have been able to measure the same variety of data3 that she did.

    Points of interest for the teachers:

    • Why is international collaboration good?

    Transcript

    DR MEGAN BALKS
    By bringing in international collaboration we bring in real strength. For instance the work we did with the Italians, they came in with a whole lot of drilling equipment that we don’t have access to and so allowed us to get some bore holes in that we can measure temperatures into the permafrost much deeper than we would have been able to within our resources. The opportunities to work with people from other parts of the world and for them to work with us, brings huge increases in, in understanding and that’s, that’s good for the planet4 – that’s good for the population5 of the world. With my Antarctic work it’s not only the people I work with in the field but you also need to be talking to other researchers in the same area and for me that’s people who are studying permafrost’s and cold soils and they are people, often, from the Northern hemisphere who are doing work in the Arctic. So I have a number of people that I communicate with very regularly in Russia, in Scandinavia, Northern Canada. You know there’s, there’s a whole range of people all around the world and so you have these wonderful opportunities to be travelling to meet with some of those people to work with and so on.

    1. collaboration: Working together with a common purpose.
    2. expertise: Having excellent knowledge or skills in a particular area.
    3. data: The unprocessed information we analyse to gain knowledge.
    4. planet: In our Solar System, a planet is defined as an object that orbits the Sun, is big enough for its own gravity to make it ball-shaped and keeps space around it clear of smaller objects.
    5. population: In biology, a population is a group of organisms of a species that live in the same place at a same time and that can interbreed.
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      collaboration

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    2. Working together with a common purpose.

      planet

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    4. In our Solar System, a planet is defined as an object that orbits the Sun, is big enough for its own gravity to make it ball-shaped and keeps space around it clear of smaller objects.

      expertise

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    6. Having excellent knowledge or skills in a particular area.

      population

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    8. In biology, a population is a group of organisms of a species that live in the same place at a same time and that can interbreed.

      data

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    10. The unprocessed information we analyse to gain knowledge.