Tea-leaves, entrails, cockatoos: we all want to forecast the future. Weather forecasts have become so commonplace we rarely think about the technology, research, computing power and millions of observations…
Climate change is creating warmer growing conditions in parts of the Earth’s northern regions, a new study has found, but experts warn that drought and heat wil soon cancel out the agricultural benefits…
Planning for our future can be a heated topic, as the many people affected may have competing or conflicting objectives. The tension, frustration and bewilderment that can accompany such an exercise can…
Just as 40 years ago Australia was a very different place from the Australia of today, the Australia of 2050 will be different again. If there are aspects of Australian life that we’d like to hang on to…
When asked to name an Australian lizard, most Australians would probably pick the familiar blue-tongue, stumpy lizard or bearded dragon, or perhaps the iconic thorny devil, frill-neck lizard or a goanna…
Australians want a future of sustainable self-sufficiency and a healthy environment supporting a robust democracy – free of poverty and inequity. That was one of our projections, as part of the Australia…
The concept of a ‘social licence to operate’ (SLO) is not new. It has been used widely in the mining and minerals industry for some 15 years where it has generally described the informal acceptance or…
The last 30 years have seen a rise in emerging infectious diseases in humans, of which more than 70% are zoonotic. Zoonoses are diseases that normally exist in animals but have the potential to transmit…
Approximately 140 vaccines are registered for use in livestock and companion animals in Australia. Many more animals are vaccinated each year than humans. Vaccines are used in farm animals: to protect…
While the rest of Australia has had a reprieve from the Millennium Drought, and floods have recently affected many areas along the north eastern Australian coast, the extended dry period that has affected…
The ability to track wildlife in natural environments while remaining undetected poses many technological challenges. The goal of CSIRO’s “robotic stealthy tracking” project, however, is to directly address…
Woolworths has announced it will conduct DNA tests on its home-brand meals in response to horse meat contamination in Europe. The uproar follows revelations by Irish food inspectors in mid-January that…
There is a long-standing myth that Australia doesn’t get tornadoes. This simply isn’t true. Just ask residents of Burnett Heads and Bargara, on Queensland’s southeast coast, or the Melburnians who were…
Amid the gloom about the prospects for manufacturing in Australia — and the difficulties facing an economy dominated by small businesses (nearly 90% of Australian manufacturing capacity) — there is some…
Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation and Charis Palmer, The Conversation
Solar thermal energy will halve in cost by 2020, the new director of the CSIRO’s Australian Solar Thermal Research Initiative said today. Solar thermal energy uses the concentrated heat of the sun to create…
If you’ve ever watched a professional bike race such as the Tour de France on TV, you might have thought to yourself: “Just how good are the professionals?” And if you do a bit of cycling yourself, you…
It’s not every day that you discover a huge structure that stretches more than half way across the sky. But this exact thing happened to the international team of astronomers I was leading, as we pored…
Each year around 640,000 tonnes of fishing gear is lost or thrown overboard by the fisheries around the world. These “ghostnets” drift through the oceans and can continue fishing for many years. They kill…
The Lord Howe Island stick insect (Dryococelus australis) or “land lobster” is a large, flightless stick insect that was, until recently, thought to be extinct. It has a glossy brownish-black exoskeleton…
Note: Southern Bluefin Tuna is listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN, but only as conservation dependent under Australian legislation. Southern Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) are majestic, temperate…