Welcome to Peer Review, a series in which we ask leading academics to review books written by people working in the same field. Here Geraint Lewis, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sydney…
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“We are fortunate to be alive at this moment in history. Never before has our nation enjoyed, at once, so much prosperity and social progress with so little internal crisis and so few external threats…
The issue of firewood management has recently attracted renewed attention in Victoria, where the State Government has changed the regulations on collecting firewood from State Forests. Firewood is cheap…
A growing body of evidence is focusing attention on the dangers posed by the myriad chemicals in our food. Although certainty around the precise impact of these chemicals is some way off, what we do know…
Ten years ago today, on September 11th 2001, al-Qaida terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. Passengers on a fourth jet overpowered hijackers, bringing…
RUGBY WORLD CUP – In the latest of The Conversation’s series on the Rugby World Cup, former Wallabies player, James Holbeck and Professor of Sport Science at Victoria University, Damian Farrow, discuss…
Barack Obama has laid out a US$447 billion (A$421 billion) plan to cut payroll taxes and boost government spending to create jobs, in a bid to “jolt” the stalled US economy back to life. Obama told a joint…
Papua New Guinea (PNG) is currently in a battle with potentially preventable and treatable tuberculosis, as reported in today’s Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers. The disease has increased in the…
So, we have to feed an extra 2.5 billion people by 2050. For those of us interested in the future of biodiversity on this planet, this poses an uncomfortable challenge. It is also the topic of a recent…
Our planet is on the precipice of a sixth mass extinction event. But unlike the five previous mass extinctions, this one is man-made: a global biodiversity crisis in which species are disappearing three…
In the euphoria following the downfall of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, Wael Ghonim, the so-called “hero” of the revolution proclaimed: “Technology played a great role here. You know, it helped keeping…
Would an increase in the number of asylum seekers being processed on the Australian mainland lead to London and Paris style rioting on the streets? According to press reports this week, that is what the…
Since its discovery in August 2008, the site of Malapa in Johannesburg has yielded more than 220 bones of early hominins representing at least six individuals, including the remains of babies, juveniles…
Ten years ago, nineteen young Muslims commandeered passenger jets and killed themselves, taking with them 2973 people to the inferno of fire. Since the 9/11 attacks, suicide bombings have become a staple…
What is to be done about Australia’s deteriorating productivity performance? It’s by no means inconceivable that the answer to this question could be “nothing”. Historical precedent strongly suggests Australians…
The Conversation asked CSIRO scientist, Richard Richards, to look at the top five myths about genetic modification (GM), and correct the public record. Myth one: GM is just haphazard, imprecise cross-breeding…
There’s no doubt that caesarean sections are an essential procedure that can save the lives of women and babies. But around one in three Australian women will give birth by caesarean section – and that’s…
Business leaders are insisting changes be made to the Fair Work Act to boost productivity. Retailers apparently face a crisis because of penalty rates, and an MP agrees that penalty rates stymie productivity…
You might have heard about athletes and other sportspeople absconding to high-altitude locations for training. Indeed altitude training has become the training-method-du-jour for sporting codes around…
RUGBY WORLD CUP – In the latest of The Conversation’s series on the Rugby World Cup, Massey University’s Sam Richardson looks at the costs and benefits to the host country New Zealand. New Zealand has…
Take a moment to think about your next meal. It will contain phosphorus. You contain phosphorus. In fact, you can’t survive without phosphorus: it’s in our DNA and our cell membranes. Nothing can survive…
Imagine for a moment that you could gain everyone’s trust in an instant – you could sell more, love more and accomplish more than you ever imagined. Or so says the online marketing spiel for the drug oxytocin…
Official explanations of the deterioration in Australia’s productivity growth have tended to emphasise the especially sharp declines in three sectors – agriculture, mining, and utilities (such as electricity…
Around the western world, political parties have lost their appeal. Membership of major parties has declined dramatically, while our willingness to vote for one party throughout our adult lives has collapsed…
In 1990 there were about 400 international environmental groups. Today, this number is more like 1.4 million. So why is the world apparently in a worse state now? Have environmental groups paid too much…