Research On Australia’s Migrants Planned

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27832, 3 December 1955, Page 9

Research On Australia’s Migrants Planned

(Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, December 1

The Nuffield Foundation has disclosed in its tenth annual report—for 1954-55—released in London today, that it has granted £6BOO to the Australian National University to cover the cost of finding the answers to. questions about Australia’s migrants during the next three years. The research will inquire into where Australia’s migrants come from, and why, how they have affected Australian investment, labour demand and economy, how post-war migrants are making out. The report said that the research, directed by the head of the university’s department of demography (Mr W. D. Borrie), would also pay particular attention to “the causes and the nature of re-migration from Australia.” It said that "special attention” would be paid to the “balance of payments crisis of 1952 and its relation to migrathe cost of immigration.” Under the grant, the department will be able to obtain the services and pay the expenses of a senior research worker for three years, and cover the salary of a part-time research assistant for two years. In addition, the money will pay the salary and expenses of a senior research worker in Britain for one year. The Nuffield Foundation has aided with its grants a total of 18 new projects, including the migrant analysis, during 1955. Five of the projects are in Australia, and four are in New Zealand. South Africa has five. India has one, and the colonial territories have one. Numerous travelling fellowships have

also been granted to Australian and New Zealand students of science and agriculture. The foundation this year spent over £680.000 on grants—over a quarter of this being devoted to research and students overseas in the British Commonwealth. A total of £1.000,000 has so far been contributed to Commonwealth projects and research overseas. A grant of £5200 to the University Of Adelaide will cover the costs of research in the department of physical and inorganic chemistry. A grant of £BOO for each of three years will enable Melbourne University research botanists to gain more exact knowledge about the reactions of plants to temperature. lightintensity. and day length—all essential for the most efficient strains of pasture, crop and forest plants for particular regions. The report pointed out that similar work had assisted in the production of improved tobacco varieties in Germany and of cottons in America. A £3200 grant to Sydney University will assist in financing a small medical and anthropological expedition to high country in New Guinea for studying little-known natives. The report said that practically nothing was known of the diseases of these natives, or of their physique in relations to food and environment, or of their relation to lowland natives. Another grant of £l4OO to Sydney University will support the research of Professor Le Fevre and his wife into the depolarization factors of scattered light in the field of chemistry. A grant of £3700 over three years has been made to the Cawthron Institute at Nelson. New Zealand, to support research by Dr. Grete Stevenson Cone into plant life in New Zealand—-

particularly concerning nutrition and the successful growth of native plants on soils poor in certain nutrients. A grant of £3OOO a year for three years has been made to the University of Otago to support a combined investigation at the university, and at Canterbury Agricultural College, Lincoln, of ttie rate of wool growth and the reproductive cycle in sheep. Research so far has led scientists to believe that the higher proportion of lambs in Southland, New Zealand, as compared with the north of the North Island. New Zealand, may be a result of greater stimulation of the pituitary gland produced by the greater variation in daylight in the south. The grant will cover the salaries of a biologist, graduate research officer, part-time animal technician—as well as animals and materials. Two other grants to New Zealand were to the University of Otago Medical School—£l4sl over two years for research into Hie constituents of milk —and to Dr. L. E. Richdale—£l494 to enable the writing of his second book on penguins as a result of field studies.

Other Commonwealth grants have financed research into possible uses of tropical swamps as food producing areas, lodgings for coloured students in Liverpool, problem families, automatic translation from one text to another by machine, and food from microscopic plants.