IN his final days as Perth’s lord mayor last week, Dr Peter Nattrass demonstrated the city’s commitment to offsetting carbon emissions by sending council staff out to count trees. The "Tree Audit" is expected to result in the planting of as many as 2,000

TECHNOLOGY Park-based Scanalyse Pty Ltd has won WA’s Inventor of the Year award for its 3D laser scanning technology, MillMapper. The technology, which also won the ‘ready for market’ category, measures internal wear in grinding mills used by the mining industry. MillMapper uses a laser scanner to obtain data on the wear rate of liners used inside mills, reducing machinery downtime. Scanalyse is in the process of signing partners in Chile and Brazil, and is currently looking to raise $1 million for further product development. The MillMapper technology was originally developed at Curtin University, with financial assistance from its research and development office and the Melbourne-based Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information. Edith Cowan University’s WA Centre of Excellence for MicroPhotonic Systems won the ‘early stage’ category for its high-speed inter-chip optical interconnect, which may be used in the proposed $1.8 billion Square Kilometre Array radio astronomy project in the Mid West. The technology allows computer speeds to exceed 10 gigabytes per second. Emily Piesse