The sun is our nearest star and the source of all our light and heat on Earth but recent reports have highlighted an ongoing steep decline in solar activity. This story is a reminder that our sun is a…
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There is probably not one of us reading this who has not lost themselves in time and space as they surf the web. So much engaging content, so many interesting lines of enquiry – and so much rubbish too…
Two of Australia’s biggest international sporting events kicked off last week – the Australian Open in Melbourne and the Tour Down Under in Adelaide – coinciding with a heatwave over southeast Australia…
The future of 3D printing is firming up as it moves from do-it-yourself tinkerers to key players selling complete consumer solutions. This shift brings important ecological and socio-economic implications…
At the beginning of each year an array of awards are given in numerous industries to the top performers of the prior year. In the arts, Cate Blanchett won a Golden Globe last week for her performance in…
The discovery of a Portuguese manuscript purporting to include an illustration of a kangaroo has been used to question which European power was first to “discover” Australia. The drawing is included in…
Australia’s south east is currently sweltering under an intense heatwave, one that is likely to become the second longest heatwave on record in the region. So what have we learnt from the heatwave of 2009…
Much like people, insect colonies like to know if her majesty is at home. In the ants, bees, wasps and termites (the “big four” of the social insect world), the queen has long been suspected of using special…
We may not spend a lot of time thinking about the emoticons we insert into our emails and text messages, but it turns out that they reveal something interesting about the way we perceive facial expressions…
We like to think that we reach conclusions by reviewing facts, weighing evidence and analysing arguments. But this is not how humans usually operate, particularly when decisions are important or need to…
Many people are surprised to find that insects, jellyfish and sea urchins are animals. Animals are generally thought of as medium-sized four-legged creatures with two sets of eyes and ears — those with…
Sport at the elite level has always adopted new technologies to capture data from players during play to better understand their performance and their team’s result. Closely aligned with this is the practice…
Many of us have had this experience: you’re sure that something has changed, but unable to say what it is. Perhaps a colleague has new glasses, or has grown a beard. For all of your trying to identify…
Over the next two weeks, Melbourne Park will host the world’s best tennis players for the Australian Open. We expect the best to perform under the watchful gaze of millions of fans around the world, so…
A spate of internet hacking during the New Year period – including an attack on Skype by hacker group the Syrian Electronic Army, and another on social media photo sharing app Snapchat by website SnapchatDB…
It’s a time of year when many of us have made resolutions. The New Year feels like an ideal time to kick those old habits and replace them with habits that we hope will make us thinner/richer/younger-looking/insert-desirable-state-of-your-own-here…
Lleyton Hewitt won the Brisbane International last weekend at the age of 32. Roger Federer and David Ferrer, two of the world’s top ten players, are over 30. And 35-year-old crowd favourite Tommy Haas…
Google recently acquired eight high profile start-up robotics companies, providing strong evidence of a strategy to create breakthrough applications for robotics over the next decade. This strategy is…
The massive Consumer Electronics Show (CES), hosted annually in Las Vegas, showcases the latest discoveries and innovations, including audiovisual, gaming, smartphones, computing, household appliances…
The giant Large Hadron Collider at CERN’s lab in Europe may be closed until 2015 but experiments will still be run there in the second half of this year on much smaller synchrotrons that examined the decay…
As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and by now you might have seen dramatic images of passengers on stranded icebreaker Akademik Shokalskiy being rescued by helicopter last Friday…
There are many who lament the poor state of affairs of science communication in Australia. Some commentators wonder why there is still so much controversy about climate change, genetically modified crops…
On average 21 people drown each year in rip currents on Australian surf beaches. This value exceeds the long-term annual average of fatalities caused by bush fires, floods, cyclones and sharks combined…
Ciphers, conspiracies, secret societies, the dark web - intrigued yet? Of course you are! As curious animals, there is nothing we love more than a mystery, especially one with a hint of the secret underground…
In 2014, we will see more intelligent, less expensive versions of autonomous vacuum cleaners, pool cleaners, lawnmowers and gutter cleaners. We will hear more about gadgets that track eyes, customers…