Chimpanzees are able to understand the objectives of their companions, but will only help them when asked to do so, a study into the cognitive behaviour of the primates has found. Some studies have shown…
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Displaying 251 - 275 of 394 articles
The proportion of people with desirable physical traits could rapidly accelerate over a few generations with the aid of a diet that tweaks particular genes, a study suggests. Research by a team at Sydney’s…
The monologues in our minds could one day be converted into language, according to researchers who have succeeded in decoding electrical activity in the area of the brain that recognises sounds. The development…
The largest-ever cyber attack by hacker collective Anonymous has brought down the websites of several large organisations, including the US Department of Justice and the FBI. The attacks started early…
A US study released this week linking animal health problems with gas drilling provides further argument for more stringent environmental monitoring of the effects of the practice, but should be viewed…
A heavy variant of a particle first observed 25 years ago has been found in the debris of close-to-the-speed-of-light proton collisions in the Large Hadron Collider at Geneva. The particle Chi-b(3P) is…
The Federal Department of Education says it advised the Australian Academy of Science’s authors of a break in the series of student-numbers when it supplied the data. The lead author, Professor Denis Goodrum…
The first terrestrial planets have been discovered by NASA’s Kepler Mission, which searches for planets between one half and twice Earth’s size in a relatively close region of the Milky Way. The two planets…
Two teams of virologists preparing to publish their research into mutations of avian influenza virus H5N1 are censoring their manuscripts after a US biosecurity agency said that publication of the studies…
Scientists working at the CERN laboratory’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva announced last night that two independent experiments have shown signs that the hypothesised Higgs boson, AKA the “god…
The Nobel Lecture of physics laureate Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University has been placed online. A video of Professor Schmidt’s lecture, “The Path to Measuring an Accelerating Universe…
The notebooks of Sir Isaac Newton, who was famously reported to have suffered a (scientifically) earth-shaking blow to the head from an apple, are being scanned and published online by the University of…
Kim Carr has lost the research portfolio to Chris Evans in today’s cabinet shuffle announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Evans will now be the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and…
Nobel-prize winning astronomer Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University’s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics speaks here about the revolutionary power of basic research. Professor…
NASA has released new images and footage of the giant, iron-cored asteroid, Vesta, taken by the agency’s unmanned spacecraft, Dawn. The probe was launched in December 2007 but just only the arrived at…
A planet where the years flash by in under three days has been discovered circling the brightest star in the Kepler star field of the Milky Way. A team of 65 astronomers and mutiple telescopes led by Steve…
Australian freshwater turtle embryos can sense how developed other babies are in their eggs and then speed up their own growth to hatch with the most advanced of their siblings, according to new research…
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will tonight release from its meeting in Kampala, Uganda, a summary for policy makers of a forthcoming report titled Managing the Risks of Extreme Events…
NASA has released time-lapse footage of flying over Earth taken from the International Space Station. Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream (but don’t forget to click the bottom right corner…
One of the four co-founders of the privacy-friendly online social network, Diaspora, has been reported dead. Ilya Zhitomirskiy, 22, was one of four students at New York University’s Courant Institute of…
The 400-metre-long lump of carbon, magnesium, oxygen and “a whole bunch of other stuff” whizzing by, closer to the Earth than the moon, could have been nudged out of our path had it needed to be, says…
China has for the first time successfully docked two orbiting spacecraft, with Thursday’s locking together of the Shenzhou 8 (“Divine Vessel”) capsule and Tiangong 1 (“Heavenly Palace”) module broadcast…
Honey bees are trapped in a Catch 22 where antibiotics used to protect them from bacterial illnesses ravaging hives are making them die from commonly used pesticides, some of which are used to ward-off…
When a race is as prominent as the Melbourne Cup, betting is far from the preserve of wizened, semi-alcoholic, rollie-smoking, form guide-reading wager junkies. But do the relatively uninformed bets of…
The harsh, flat, ancient, vastness of Australia is an unforgiving place for palaentologists. The pickings can be much richer in more mountainous and rocky regions of the world, a difference highlighted…