The Financial Times last week reported the UK government is pushing for new restrictions on software – in particular, on tools that would prevent surveillance by the state. This was the focus of negotiations…
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Science + Tech – Articles, Analysis, Comment
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Organic, cage-free or home-grown? We think about our purchasing ethics in many areas of daily life, but not often about technology. As with any product, though, we should think about the effects of our…
Prime Minister Tony Abbott recently declared that he wanted to be known as the “infrastructure prime minister”. But what of Australia’s iciest infrastructure – that located in Antarctica? A 20-year strategic…
Eating DNA sounds scary but it’s completely safe. I do it every day. Let me explain. DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid. The words “acid” and “nucleic” are in the name so it is hardly surprising that…
On September 18 this year, far above the Arctic Circle at Norway’s Andoya Rocket Range, the SCRAMSPACE hypersonic scramjet flight experiment was about to launch. Three and a half years of intense effort…
India’s recent launch of a mission to Mars should cause us to contemplate Australia’s potential role, or lack of one, in such ventures. We presume India mounted this project at amazing speed to give China…
In a more perfect world, the big policy challenges of our time would be informed by timely, relevant academic research. There would be a close and effective dialogue between academia and policy. Alas…
What do the façades of the National Gallery in London’s Trafalgar Square and the Sydney Opera House in Australia have in common? Most people would suggest the two buildings have few similarities – the…
Under Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s watch, the way we engage with government agencies is set to go digital by default. Speaking via prerecorded video at the GovInnovate conference in Canberra…
I received the same email five times in as many weeks informing me of an A$18.60 refund following a “billing error” with a “mobile phone provider”. Not a huge sum, but believable. I don’t have a mobile…
Last week, the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, showed evidence for the first time that a Higgs boson decays into a pair of tau particles. It is one of the crucial results…
For his precocity, newly crowned World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen was named “The Mozart of chess”. For his tenacity and comfort with long games he was dubbed “The Nadal of chess”. More prosaically…
This week a dozen protesters travelled from Malaysia to Australia to protest outside the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Lynas Corporation, an Australian rare earth mining company, for the third year running…
With India and China planning lunar surface missions, privately-funded space entrepreneurs competing for the US$40 million Google Lunar X Prize and discussions around lunar mining intensifying, working…
Intelligence is a very difficult concept and, until recently, no one has succeeded in giving it a satisfactory formal definition. Most researchers have given up grappling with the notion of intelligence…
Ex-National Security Agency (NSA) employee Edward Snowden’s various leaks – the most recent being a slide showing that the NSA infected 50,000 of computer networks with remote-controlled spyware – confirm…
Every now and again you might read about gene therapy and efforts to correct serious genetic diseases. But I’m betting that very few readers have had gene therapy, nor have they ever met anyone who has…
Striking new evidence indicates that the gut microbiome, the ecological community of microorganisms that share our body, has a huge effect on brain function – much larger than we thought. It has long been…
Most remote Australian Indigenous communities have little or no access to digital technology. Last year, three internet-enabled terminals were installed as a trial in the remote communities of Burraluba…
Following India’s maiden Mars probe launch earlier in the month, last week saw the successful launch of the Martian Atmospheres and Volatiles Evolution mission, or MAVEN for short. With the second spacecraft…
You may have seen yesterday that Iran has agreed to scale back its nuclear program for six months after two years of economic sanctions in an effort to halt, or at least alter the course of, its nuclear…
Reintroduction programs are key initiatives for re-establishing or re-stocking animal populations, and while some are successful, many, unfortunately, are not. Endangered and critically endangered animals…
Our interest in our near-neighbour Mars – the hope of finding life there, or of possibly colonising it in the future – has driven several orbiting missions to the planet. These produced very detailed maps…
Cosmic rays are subatomic particles of astrophysical origin that crash into our atmosphere, triggering a cascade of lower energy particles we can observe at the ground. And while astronomers have known…
There isn’t a radio-control handset in sight as a nimble robot briskly weaves itself in and out of the confined tunnels of an underground mine. Powered by ultra-intelligent sensors, the robot intuitively…