Trending on Twitter this week has been Gen Y shock and awe that Titanic isn’t just the name of a film. Apparently someone has accidentally stumbled onto the fact that the Titanic story was a tad more than…
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The “equal pay for equal work” dream is yet to become a reality. Not only do women earn, on average, 17.6% less than men, there are worrying signs that this wage gap may be starting to increase. What this…
Researchers at Baylor University in the US have conducted a study that reportedly shows players get more pleasure from videogames that use motion and gesture controllers (such as the Nintendo Wiimote…
Welcome to In Conversation, our series of discussions between leading academics and major public figures in Australian life. In this instalment, Mark Scott, managing director of the Australian Broadcasting…
The misconception of Australian agriculture being inefficient and unsustainable is deeply concerning for me. Images of dusty ploughed fields and dying sheep and trees are misleading. On the contrary, if…
TRANSPARENCY AND MEDICINE – A series examining issues from ethics to the evidence in evidence-based medicine, the influence of medical journals to the role of Big Pharma in our present and future health…
Modern-day Africa was the keystone of Gondwana, the aggregated mass of southern continents that co-existed for nearly 400m years. That supercontinent has since split apart, creating the land masses we…
The Federal Government’s quest to return the budget to surplus raises many questions and not just about what immediate rationale there is on economic grounds for this strategy. It also raises deeper questions…
The Planet Under Pressure 2012 Conference was held in London a fortnight back and released the first State of the Planet Declaration. The conference aim was to set out the science (in a broad sense) in…
With one in five Australian preschool-age children now overweight or obese, it’s no wonder kids’ weight is so often in the media spotlight. While the causes of obesity are complex and multifactorial, it’s…
The Health Services Union’s scandal continues with calls for its national president to resign and moves to remove Kathy Jackson, the whistleblower who first revealed claims of credit card misuse, from…
Australians have always loved their drugs – more so than any other nation in which those same drugs are proscribed and used under threat of native, criminal penalties. Drug taking is a national trait…
You might have heard that bike lanes are a waste of money. The Australian National Audit Office recently investigated the $40 million bike path scheme, announced in 2009 as part of the Federal Government’s…
At a time when unprecedented levels of investment are being made in university infrastructure in nations such as China and India, it is worth reflecting on how Australia has built its notable areas of…
People often ask me whether natural selection continues to operate on modern humans in industrialised societies, even though technology has liberated so many from hunger and early death. My answer is always…
TRANSPARENCY AND MEDICINE – A series examining issues from ethics to the evidence in evidence-based medicine, the influence of medical journals to the role of Big Pharma in our present and future health…
Fundamentally, there are two big motives for research. On the on hand there is intellectual ambition: the desire to know and understand the word, to appreciate the best that has been said and thought on…
Some people worry that we are, collectively, indifferent to politics. I am beginning to worry that I have not been indifferent enough. It’s a frightening idea: maybe politics matters far less than I thought…
As a food microbiologist, I have always been amazed at people’s belief in the three- or five-second rule. It goes something like this: if you retrieve food dropped on the floor or another surface within…
2012 is the United Nation’s International Year of the Co-operative. This is a once in 25 year opportunity to acknowledge these important but often misunderstood businesses. What is a co-operative or mutual…
Plants have long been known as the lungs of the earth. They play a major role in the exchange of moisture, carbon dioxide and oxygen with the atmosphere. However, no link has ever been found between trees…
This week’s temporary suspension of comments on China’s two largest micro-blogging services Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo highlight the ruling party’s discomfort with social media’s growing popularity…
Over the past century life expectancy has increased dramatically and older citizens around the globe will soon outnumber children. By 2050, nearly one out of every four people will be older than 60 years…
The demographic profile of the world is changing. Ageing is a global phenomenon, an unprecedented, pervasive, profound and an enduring process for humanity. The current and future burden and opportunities…
The ACTU yesterday voted to suspend the Health Servives Union from affiliation until they can prove that issues of governance have been dealt with appropriately. Although it does seem to have been a slow…