“A catastrophe on multiple levels.” That’s how New York Times columnist Paul Krugman characterised the US debt deal brokered this week between Democrats and Republicans. President Obama on Tuesday signed…
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In mid-July, as Prime Minister Gillard began to stump the countryside selling her carbon package, a conference at the University of Melbourne considered the prospect of climate policy failure. Climate…
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s reassurance to his parliamentary colleagues during a speech on Wednesday did little allay about fears of a crisis in Eurozone’s third-biggest economy. The Italian…
Over the previous two decades, a plethora of advocacy organisations have emerged seeking to engage and inform the public on political issues. Some of these entities, such as Get-Up, are self-funded bodies…
Since the 1960s, the number of hospital beds for treating people with mental illnesses has declined dramatically in most OECD countries. Australia has been among the most assiduous in implementing reform…
Project: To develop better batteries for renewable energy Cost: Around $1.2 million per year (for a team of eight people across several disciplines) Timeframe: First generation technology within three…
The Commonwealth Government is considering a proposal from Kidney Health Australia to reimburse living kidney donors for reasonable expenses incurred during the donation process, such as loss of income…
The Conversation asked Professor James Jupp to read through the infamous 1,500 page manifesto of Anders Breivik. This is his analysis of the document, giving an insight into the mind of the mass murderer…
The deal’s been done and health reform is in the bag. It may not be quite as bold as originally planned by then prime minister Rudd – there’s even been a fair amount of watering down on Julia Gillard’s…
The Australian Government has released an “implementation” study for high speed rail (or HSR) on the east coast with a further study to follow. The proposal looks at corridors between Melbourne, Sydney…
It’s official: we have entered a brave new world. On Tuesday (US time), IT Security company McAfee announced the discovery of the most extensive hack-attacks ever seen, which the company referred to as…
As of today, we have a cataclysmic new explanation for one of solar system astronomy’s most long-standing questions: why do the near- and far-sides of the Moon look so different? This new theory, published…
Although the US debt ceiling crisis has been resolved for now, the saga has obvious implications for developing countries. Yet, as is often the case, political conflict is obscuring the persistent and…
Steven Schwartz, vice-chancellor of Macquarie University, recently claimed that universities should break from being treated as businesses and recapture their moral purpose. He used the example of Jonas…
Antibiotics cure many diseases, but also lead to resistant bacteria. The rise of computers, far from inaugurating the paperless office, increased office paper use. The unintended consequences of our actions…
The two reports on child dental health and toothbrushing behaviour, released yesterday by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, raise concerns for both the community and the dental profession…
Health professionals and patients alike breathed a sigh of relief yesterday when Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced she had struck a final deal with the states to reform the nation’s hospital system…
Have you ever wondered why you need to get an influenza vaccination each year to protect yourself? Or even why it seems like another pandemic threat is announced before every flu season? Well, it’s all…
A qualification of how much I love Morrissey’s music needs to be made. Merely thinking about There is a Light cuts me raw; I adopted It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore as a power anthem the second I heard…
To outsiders looking in, the recent crisis in governance in the United States surrounding the debt ceiling might appear to be a farce, if the stakes were not actually so serious. Until Tuesday (EST), the…
The mobile patent wars, it seems, have reached Australian shores. On Monday, representatives of Apple and Samsung were in the Australian Federal Court, fighting it out over Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablet…
Population policy discussions in Australia fall well short of confronting the core questions. We cannot even ask “what is a sustainable population?” until we look at our unsustainable lifestyles and the…
Something does not add up. About two weeks ago, a scientist working for the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Enforcement and Regulation (BOEMRE), Dr Charles Monnett, was placed on administrative leave…
Providing equitable access to the findings of scholarly research is an expensive and vexed business, as many recent stories here on The Conversation have highlighted. Open access offers a way to freely…
The “future” is something which manifests nowhere more potently than in our cities. Yet a substantial transformation over the past twenty years in the way cities are being made – both in terms of their…