ANU was established, in 1946, to advance the cause of learning and research for the nation. It is consistently ranked among the world’s best universities and many ANU graduates go on to become leaders in government, industry, research and academia.
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. TS Eliot, The Hollow Men The Labor government’s attack on universities to fund…
Like many others, I was pleasantly surprised by the government’s announcement last month of A$54 million in funding for Indigenous languages as part of the national cultural policy – Creative Australia…
Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States held oral hearings in a landmark case on patent law and cancer. The question before the court was whether human genes are patentable. The American Civil…
Jon Altman, Australian National University and Seán Kerins, Australian National University
In the 1990s some international animal rights and environment organisations instigated a concerted campaign to stop the hunting of pilot whales by Faroese people living in the northeast Atlantic. The thousand-year-old…
Fron Jackson-Webb, The Conversation and Odile Gotts, The Conversation
Scientists have found a way to control the reward centre of the brain, using a miniature wireless device that emits light and causes the brain to release dopamine, the chemical associated with pleasure…
A couple of days ago on The Conversation, I set myself up with a task: to defend the usefulness of so-called “useless” maths. Today, that defence continues, with a look at the RSA algorithm. I finished…
China’s political commitment and ambition on climate change allow it to take global leadership. Australia is well placed to provide guidance on suitable policy approaches, sharing its experiences with…
I once made the mistake of asking a mathematician why he devoted his whole life to maths. “Because it’s fun!” he replied wildly, his flabby cheeks beaming with childlike excitement. “Ah, of course,” I…
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) recently released a new round of data based on the 2011 census. One part of this latest release that has caught the eye of the media is the 2011 Socio-Economic…
Extreme weather caused by global warming poses a growing risk to Australia’s crop lands, cities and iconic sites like Kakadu National Park, according to a new report that calls for global emissions to…
In the US, extraction of non-conventional fossil fuels is booming. Investment in extra-heavy and heavy oils, oil shales and sands, tight oil and gas, shale gas and coal seam gas is taking off as companies…
The consensus of the nine members of the Shadow Board is that the Reserve Bank of Australia should leave interest rates unchanged from March at 3.00%. But the balance of risks implies rates should rise…
Australian experts are urging caution over a new study that suggests a link between insufficient vitamin D and pregnancy complications like gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, and lower birth weight in…
The entire editorial board of a US academic journal has resigned in protest over restrictions that would require scholars to wait up to 18 months before making their published research more widely available…
There are two main types of solar energy technology: photovoltaics (PV) and solar thermal. Solar PV is the rooftop solar you see on homes and businesses - it produces electricity from solar energy directly…
Australian public interest regulators usually have a very imperfect picture of how much anti-competitive or fraudulent activity is occurring in areas such as health care. But there’s a better approach…
We received news yesterday of the latest fatal capsize of a boat carrying asylum seekers towards Australia – the 20th reported sinking event in four years. The two deaths yesterday brought the confirmed…
Today, an Australian parliamentary committee grilled the IT titans - Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft - on price discrimination against Australian consumers. The IT companies were evasive under questioning…
It’s long been known that massive increases in emission of CO2 from volcanoes, associated with the opening of the Atlantic Ocean in the end-Triassic Period, set off a shift in state of the climate which…
The last few years provided plenty of data to help us reform our approach to floods. With devastating flooding in Queensland and Victoria in 2011 and 2013, we should have learned a great deal about which…