News outlets recently reported a new paper in Nature Geoscience from a Japanese team documenting very large amounts of Rare Earth Elements (REE) in the mud at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. REE are essential…
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Social media sites are at war for your opinion. Why? Targeted advertising. The weapons in this war are the “share, "Like”, and “+1” buttons beside searches, video, news articles and blog posts. They seem…
For the first time ever, the number of overweight people on Earth outweighs the number that are undernourished. From the obesity crisis flows a cascade of health and social problems: it burdens healthcare…
Early yesterday morning Greenpeace Activists broke into a CSIRO research farm and destroyed a field trial of genetically-modified wheat. I was appalled. “But it was only a field trial,” I can hear some…
Welcome to the third instalment of If I had a blank cheque … a series in which leading researchers reveal what they could (and would) do in their discipline if money were no object. Today we hear from…
This is the second in a two-part series about the science of Le Tour de France. Part one is here. After 1,916 kilometres of the 2011 Tour de France we’re starting to see some of the favourites make their…
Ever tried to stream a movie on your phone and given up because of an unreliable connection or slow data speeds? Well, with 4G networking for mobile phones predicted to be in place by the end of this year…
On July 4, a hacker took control of one of the Twitter accounts of US broadcaster FoxNews.com and sent out several tweets announcing President Obama had been shot. Because it was a national holiday and…
The “good old days” of psychopharmacology involved only a few major suspects: alcohol, cannabis, opiates, uppers (amphetamines), downers (barbiturates) and the occasional serendipitous curiosity such as…
Last week, Facebook introduced one-to-one video calling. With a claimed userbase of 750 million accounts, the potential for ubiquitous video calling seems obvious. But, will it work? Of all post-industrial…
When you look at a train or university timetable you don’t think about how the timetable was made – you’re thinking about your trip or where your next class is. In that moment, you couldn’t care less about…
The theory of evolution encompasses the well established scientific view that organic life on our planet has changed over long periods of time and continues to change by a process known as natural selection…
Can you imagine a world where millions of interconnected wireless sensors provide early warning of natural disasters? Well, imagination might soon not be necessary. Our perception depends on a complex…
The Australian government announced on Sunday it would introduce a carbon tax at $23 a tonne next July, rising 2.5% annually plus inflation and moving to a market-based emissions trading scheme in 2015…
Welcome to the second instalment of If I had a blank cheque … a series in which leading researchers reveal what they could (and would) do in their discipline if money were no object. Today we hear from…
Tomorrow morning (AEST), weather depending, the Space Shuttle Atlantis will blast off from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, marking the end of NASA’s 30-year-old Space Transportation System. But as the…
It seems the popular Aussie cultural outlook is not compatible with the rigorous nature of science. In fact, it would seem “tall poppies” need to be taller, and that “no worries” is actually a worry, because…
All going well, the final Space Shuttle mission will be launched from the Kennedy Space Centre early on Saturday morning (AEST). This flight, being made by the Space Shuttle Atlantis, will be the 135th…
Why should male genitalia be so variable? This problem has puzzled evolutionary biologists for decades. Even to the experts, it can be difficult to tell closely-related species apart just by looking at…
Since the launch of the first artificial satellite in 1957 – the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1 – countries around the world have been putting satellites and spacecraft into Earth orbit. While the majority of…
When it comes to obtaining research data, Canadian academic Steve Easterbrook said it best: “Any fool knows you don’t get data from a scientist by using FOI requests, you do it by stroking their ego a…
Imagine taking a thousand copies of a phone book, shredding them all together, then trying to use the overlapping pieces to reconstruct a copy. This is a simple problem compared to assembling the human…
A vital part of professional astronomy is collecting data using large telescopes. In many cases, these telescopes are national or international facilities, with time available to all through a competitive…
Ever heard the one about the morbidly obese (and probably mentally unbalanced and somehow dangerous) teenage “gamers” locked in their bedrooms playing online computer games? Turns out, they’re really wealthy…
GAMBLING IN AUSTRALIA – Addiction to gaming machines (or “pokies”) is of growing concern in Australian society. In Victoria alone there are 30,000 of these hi-tech poker machines with many in suburban…