It has been reported that Osama bin Laden’s hard drives have been seized, hard drives that could conceivably contain information regarding the membership, funding and future plans of al-Qaeda. Information…
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When the AFL has a weekend of inaccurate goal-kicking, media attention invariably turns to why set-shot goal-kicking hasn’t improved while other areas of footy have. As a footy fan, I have an interest…
Some people have argued that Pi’s days are numbered and that other tools, such as tau, could do its job more efficiently. As someone who has studied Pi throughout his entire working life, my response to…
I’d like to respond to a recent article for The Conversation by Martin Sevior, an active scientist and church leader. Sevior argues that – apart from fundamentalism – science and religion are complementary…
As an environmental scientist, I am a: Biologist Geologist Ecologist Physicist Chemist Soil Scientist Sociologist Psychologist Anthropologist Economist Political Scientist Teacher Communicator and nature…
Scientists have pinpointed a new link between a particular gene and a rare form of dwarfism, opening the door to prenatal testing and paving the way for new approaches to treating common diseases such…
It has been a lousy few weeks for technology companies when it comes to maintaining both the privacy and confidence of their customers. In the last few days, Sony had admitted a recent security breach…
The Space Shuttle Endeavour, one of the most complex machines ever created, is about to take its last trip into space. But not just yet. The countdown to Endeavour’s final flight began a few days ago…
Where were you when you heard about Osama bin Laden’s death? Increasingly, the answer to this and similar questions may be, “I was on Twitter.” From the “inland tsunami” washing down Queensland’s Lockyer…
You know, it’s odd being a rocket scientist. The people you meet assume you’re not just smart, but some super-colossal paragon of intelligence with the wits of an atomic lovechild of Albert Einstein and…
Infertility plagues one in six Australian couples, and in approximately half of these cases the problem lies in poor semen quality. The discovery that a man has poor semen quality can be emotionally challenging…
With global warming, carbon trading and record-high petrol prices in the news, not to mention the ever-looming spectre of peak oil, we need to find an environmentally sustainable and socially acceptable…
Economists and physicists may seem like unlikely bedfellows, but then opposites often attract. Their union has recently produced a peculiar baby, a field of research known as “econophysics”. Physicists…
When art and science come together, the relationship tends to be uneven, and too often art becomes the unintended junior partner. As researchers working at the interface between art and science, we have…
Scientists have identified a link between a particular gene and depression, marking a potential breakthrough in ways to treat the condition in future. In a study of 15,000 people, researchers from Germany’s…
The ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has caused some to question the impact of various power generation sources on our environment and lifestyles. So is there any such thing as “free…
Getting research money, especially the no-strings-attached kind that government agencies give out, is difficult. Researchers spend months on each proposal with only a small chance of getting funded. Winning…
Quantum teleportation has been in the news before but last week Japanese and Australian scientists went one better, managing to teleport every physicist’s favourite feline: Schrödinger’s cat. Before you…
Another attack on Fraser Island - the flashpoint for dingo management issues - has highlighted our complex relationship with these animals once again. But when we shoot and trap dingos, do we really know…
Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, hit back at reports yesterday that the company’s iPhones track the movements of its 100 million users. The charge was that Apple was storing a database of this information, to which…
Fraser Island dingoes, a population facing extinction, are back in the news again, but for all the wrong reasons. The latest? Australian rangers have killed two dingoes believed to have mauled a three-year-old…
You may have heard that a male black swan was widowed by rock-throwing children in Melbourne recently. The event caused ripples of public concern, but also revealed how little we know about these iconic…
We may not know it, but psychometrics has shaped the way we understand intelligence. We’re all familiar with the idea of an IQ test, and we might know where we stand on the IQ scale - but what about the…
One thing most of us know about time is that there isn’t enough of the stuff, and that the problem is getting worse. “Too swiftly now the Hours take flight,” as the English poet Austin Dobson (1840-1921…
Science and religion are often cast as opponents in a battle for human hearts and minds. But far from the silo of strict creationism and the fundamentalist view that evolution simply didn’t happen lies…