When cane toads were released in Australia in 1935, they were the latest innovation in pest control, backed by a level of consensus support that a scientist could only dream of. So what went wrong? Research…
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A Swiss forensic report of the exhumed remains of ex-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat today suggests polonium poisoning may have been the cause of death – but what is polonium, and why is it so deadly…
An admirable feature of the national security bureaucracy is its persistence. If you don’t get it right (or what you think is right) try, try, try again. On Tuesday, the New Zealand Parliament passed the…
Coles and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia declared last month their intention to make use of near field communication (NFC) technology, allowing users to transfer their personal and other banking details…
Rapid developments in tools to study complex interactions are transforming biology and biomedical research. A series of powerful analytical methods coined “omics” is driving us away from reductionist approaches…
Teaching a robot to walk – even poorly – requires huge investment into computational resources. How is it that even the simplest animals are able to achieve far more sophisticated feats of manoeuvrability…
A new study by Rebecca Pian, Mike Archer and Sue Hand, published today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, describes the tooth of a new, giant species of extinct platypus. The fossil history of…
Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. If we look up at the sky at night, we see millions of tiny diamond-like stars. These are actually balls of plasma (very hot gas) consisting of…
The winners and losers of the 2013 National Health and Medical Research (NHMRC) Project Grants were announced in October. A record low success rate of just 16.9% (down from last year’s 20.5%) meant the…
Two papers were published today in Nature, each independently revealing that a planet discovered by the Kepler mission is the closest thing we’ve found yet to another Earth. But don’t pack your bags just…
Alongside Tyrannosaurus rex, the basic sauropod dinosaur is one of the most iconic and instantly recognisable of prehistoric animals. Not only is their elegant shape with four columnar limbs, a long muscular…
The Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science recognise excellence in science and science teaching. This year, we asked three prizewinners to reflect on their work and factors that influenced their careers…
The Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science recognise excellence in science and science teaching. This year, we asked three prizewinners to reflect on their work and factors that influenced their careers…
The Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science recognise excellence in science and science teaching. This year, we asked three prizewinners to reflect on their work and factors that influenced their careers…
The United Nations (UN) has adopted several recommendations of a new asteroid defence plan, the first steps in preventing Earth from being struck by an asteroid. The recommendations were a response to…
Cyberbullying is a form of technology misuse that is a problem not only in schools, but in the wider community. A serious case in point is that of the two Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) cadets…
Landing is arguably the most nerve-racking element of any flight. To execute a safe landing, a pilot needs to know the plane’s speed and its distance from the landing surface. The pilot’s challenge is…
Does my dog only think of eating, sleeping and chasing squirrels? Does my girlfriend’s cat really have the capacity to plot my accidental death? Are cows just walking hamburgers and pigeons intent on world…
Over the past year or so, surveillance issues have become more visible to the public, especially forms of what Australian computer scientist Roger Clarke calls “dataveillance”, or the systematic collection…
Bushfire management is one of Australia’s most prominent and important environmental challenges, affecting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Just this week, Google launched a Google Crisis…
A valid argument about a scientific issue requires support using robust, objective, peer-reviewed scientific evidence. This notion is drilled into university students from the beginning of their tertiary…
These days, social media and online apps have become a major source of disaster information and warnings. But how much can we trust them? Today, more than 82% of Australians use the internet and 76% can…
In the past few days, Facebook has gone full circle on its policy around censoring violent material. After much back-and-forth on whether a graphic video showing the beheading of a woman should be banned…
A glass ceiling remains in place for female medical research scientists in Australia. Although approximately 50% of PhD students and postdoctoral scientists are female, males run the majority of research…
High-speed photography in still images and cinema seems to be the latest rage. And while modern technology has made much of the equipment easily accessible, the basic techniques have been used since the…