For more than 50 years, La Trobe University has been transforming people and societies and has earned a global reputation for research that addresses the major issues of our time. With a dual emphasis on excellence and diversity, La Trobe has seven campuses across Victoria and New South Wales. Through innovations in teaching and learning, strong graduate employment outcomes and leading research, La Trobe consistently rates among the world’s best.
It’s been decades since electroshock therapy or other psychiatric interventions were routinely employed to “treat” homosexuality. These days, reparative therapy is more popular. It involves a combination…
In my first year biology lectures I have a ritual that my students seem to enjoy. I put a quote of the day up on the overhead projector; something for the students to reflect on while they find their seats…
UPDATE: The Reserve Bank of Australia has cut Australia’s official cash rate by a larger-than-expected 50 basis points, to 3.75%. In the likely event that the Reserve Bank Board chooses to ease the target…
The proposed Murray-Darling Basin Plan has been one of the most controversial pieces of public policy in Australia’s recent history. There has been the predictable divide between irrigators calling for…
Like Geoff Gallop I would like to believe the woes of the Gillard government are not also the death throes of the Labor Party, even after the debacle this weekend that saw Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper…
As good news stories goes, this is one of the best. Mountain pygmy possums are one of the most critically endangered species in Australia, and possibly the cutest. The recent genetic rescue of the Mt…
With only inverted commas signalling the spin, the news media have happily re-cycled the term “green tape”, the latest rhetorical gambit by those decrying environmental protections as unnecessarily delaying…
The Gillard government will make a huge mistake if it follows through with plans to overturn freedom of information reforms and introduce an increase to the cost of applications. The expected change comes…
The technical aspects of North Korea’s failed rocket launch last week are less interesting than the political undercurrents swirling around this event. Yesterday, the UN announced increased sanctions for…
Swisse Vitamins Pty Ltd has been in the news recently over their Federal Court action to suppress a determination of the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Complaint Resolution Panel (CRP) about a number of…
Australian farmers take pride in their efficient and productive farming systems, competing in the global economy and without many of the large subsidies given to their counterparts in Europe and North…
“Most patients using the new analgesia reported significantly reduced pain.” Such research findings sound exciting because the word significant suggests important and large. But researchers often use the…
TRANSPARENCY AND MEDICINE – A series examining issues from ethics to the evidence in evidence-based medicine, the influence of medical journals to the role of Big Pharma in our present and future health…
“No one laughs at God in a hospital”, chants popular Russian-American songwriter Regina Spektor. Her words come to mind as I preview the first episode of Hospital Chaplains, a new ABC series broadcasting…
In a recent post, I was hopeful that a meeting in Guam would take steps to protect the tuna fishery in the Pacific. Unfortunately, the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission ignored the advice…
Linda Brennan, RMIT University and Ken Harvey, La Trobe University
TRANSPARENCY AND MEDICINE – A series examining issues from ethics to the evidence in evidence-based medicine, the influence of medical journals to the role of Big Pharma in our present and future health…
In March, North Korea’s external propaganda mouthpiece Korean Central News Agency announced the impending launch of a satellite, the Kwangmyongsong-3, during a four-day launch window timed to correspond…
Over the past century life expectancy has increased dramatically and older citizens around the globe will soon outnumber children. By 2050, nearly one out of every four people will be older than 60 years…
The ACTU yesterday voted to suspend the Health Servives Union from affiliation until they can prove that issues of governance have been dealt with appropriately. Although it does seem to have been a slow…
I recently wrote about virgin birth in hammerhead sharks where I tried to explain parthenogenesis, a process at the level of the sex cells which allows females to produce offspring without the benefit…