Scientists have identified a link between a particular gene and depression, marking a potential breakthrough in ways to treat the condition in future. In a study of 15,000 people, researchers from Germany’s…
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Displaying 6476 - 6500 of 6544 articles
The ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has caused some to question the impact of various power generation sources on our environment and lifestyles. So is there any such thing as “free…
Getting research money, especially the no-strings-attached kind that government agencies give out, is difficult. Researchers spend months on each proposal with only a small chance of getting funded. Winning…
Quantum teleportation has been in the news before but last week Japanese and Australian scientists went one better, managing to teleport every physicist’s favourite feline: Schrödinger’s cat. Before you…
Another attack on Fraser Island - the flashpoint for dingo management issues - has highlighted our complex relationship with these animals once again. But when we shoot and trap dingos, do we really know…
Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, hit back at reports yesterday that the company’s iPhones track the movements of its 100 million users. The charge was that Apple was storing a database of this information, to which…
Fraser Island dingoes, a population facing extinction, are back in the news again, but for all the wrong reasons. The latest? Australian rangers have killed two dingoes believed to have mauled a three-year-old…
You may have heard that a male black swan was widowed by rock-throwing children in Melbourne recently. The event caused ripples of public concern, but also revealed how little we know about these iconic…
We may not know it, but psychometrics has shaped the way we understand intelligence. We’re all familiar with the idea of an IQ test, and we might know where we stand on the IQ scale - but what about the…
One thing most of us know about time is that there isn’t enough of the stuff, and that the problem is getting worse. “Too swiftly now the Hours take flight,” as the English poet Austin Dobson (1840-1921…
Science and religion are often cast as opponents in a battle for human hearts and minds. But far from the silo of strict creationism and the fundamentalist view that evolution simply didn’t happen lies…
Do scientists have a language problem? Do policy makers have hearing issues? It would certainly seem so. Of late there have been frequent lamentations about scientists’ failure to make their case to the…
A few days ago, Jonathan Latham of The Guardian newspaper decried the failure of modern genetics to make inroads on common diseases. I think he got things very wrong. Latham claimed that: Despite more…
So here it is, another morning. Another day of yawns. Another day of … oh … what was I saying? We all know that if you don’t get a good night’s sleep, you don’t function properly during the day. It could…
Medical researchers breathed a sigh of relief this morning after seeing the News Limited report that cuts to health and medical research were no longer on the table. Although the signs from senior government…
If you are in any way exposed to computer games on a regular basis, it won’t have escaped your attention that Australia does not have an R18+ classification for video games. This is particularly strange…
Long before men asked themselves “What’s the meaning of life?”, they were scratching their heads and wondering “How do I get the girl?” And it’s not just humans who have been consumed with this question…
When you think of evolution, you no doubt imagine a process that takes millions of years to produce any notable results. In other words, evolution doesn’t happen overnight. Or does it? While the most significant…
We’ve all seen the TV cop shows where a wonderful bit of technology allows the police to analyse a criminal’s voice and solve the case. And while the technology doesn’t allow us to do that just yet, serious…
Australian science institutions and scientists must retain the confidence of the public and Australian governments. By blurring facts, disrespecting other institutions’ research processes and turning their…
Dark matter has worked its way back into the news in the last few days with the completion of a detection experiment in a tunnel deep under the Italian Alps. Researchers from Columbia University used a…
Many people rule out the seemingly extraordinary claims of climate scientists. Are the sceptics fools or is there reason in their madness? The history of science gives grounds for scepticism but not for…
Quantum mechanics (the theory of atoms, quarks and photons) is definitely weird and, thanks to the work I’m doing, it might be getting weirder. Allow me to throw a quantum spanner in the works. In the…
PRIVACY – Who are hackers and what do they want from you? Pop culture would have us believe they live in dank basements, wear black leather from head to toe and have pseudonyms such as Warlock or Neo…
Theoretical physics is full of mysteries and unknowns. In the case of some particles, we can predict their existence even if we can’t find them. Such is the status of the Higgs boson. And yet detecting…