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University of Southern Queensland

The University of Southern Queensland is dedicated to providing quality programs and degrees in a flexible and supportive environment. In just over 50 years, it has become a prominent teaching and research institution providing education worldwide from three regional locations – Toowoomba, Springfield and Ipswich.

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Displaying 221 - 240 of 416 articles

Your tongue has special parts, bundled together as taste buds, that pick up flavour. But your other senses also help your brain work out how something tastes. Flickr/Jessica Lucia

Curious Kids: how do tongues taste food?

Your tongue, saliva and nose work together to help you taste your food.
An artist’s impression of Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It is the first planet that NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star’s habitable zone - the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist. NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

Curious Kids: why has nobody found any life outside of Earth?

Life could exist in another solar system in a different part our galaxy. Or in another galaxy far away. We don’t have the perfect technology yet to study such far away places but we’re still trying.
The 2018 Geminids meteor shower recorded over two very cold hours on the slope of Mount Lütispitz, Switzerland. Flickr/Lukas Schlagenhauf

Look up! Your guide to some of the best meteor showers for 2019

Moonlight will spoil some of the big meteor showers this year, but still plenty of others to see. So here’s your guide on when and where to look to catch nature’s fireworks.
Comet 46P/Wirtanen captured on November 15 this year using the remote iTelescope (Siding Springs Observatory, Australia). Flickr/Victor R Ruiz

We have a Christmas comet: how to spot 2018’s interplanetary bauble

The comet 46P/Wirtanen is just 1.2km in size but it should be visible in the night sky this Saturday as it makes a close approach to Earth this year. And don’t forget the Geminids meteor shower.
Uluru-Kata Tjuta: of 19 Australian World Heritage sites this is one of only two that recognise the values of ‘living’ Aboriginal culture. Shutterstock

Australia’s problem with Aboriginal World Heritage

Of 19 World Heritage sites across the country, only two, Kakadu and Uluru-Kata Tjuta, recognise the values of “living” Aboriginal culture. None of Australia’s three sites inscribed purely for cultural values recognises Aboriginal people.
The South Pole Telescope and BICEP telescopes (pictured above) may discover clues that could teach us if there was something else ‘before’ the Big Bang. Dr. Keith Vanderlinde/NSF

Curious Kids: What existed before the Big Bang? Did something have to be there to go boom?

Long ago in the distant past, our entire Universe was microscopic – just like an atom – and obeyed completely different rules of cause and effect.
How many times have you heard “get out of the way!” when someone is trying to change the channel? Willemvdk/flickr

Curious Kids: How do remote controls work?

Even the Voyager spacecraft are controlled remotely, 20 billion kilometres away. It takes 20 hours for instructions to travel from Earth to the spacecraft but we can do it – using a remote.
An artist’s impression of the surface of the planet orbiting Barnard’s Star. ESO - M. Kornmesser

A super-Earth found in our stellar back yard

The new planet is believed to be orbiting Barnard’s Star, a red dwarf that’s not visible to the naked eye but one of the closest stars to our Solar System.
Nobody knows for sure - but it’s possible. Shutterstock

Curious Kids: Are there living things on different galaxies?

There are probably more than a million planets in the universe for every single grain of sand on Earth. That’s a lot of planets. My guess is that there probably is life elsewhere in the Universe.
The Sun is a star – but it’s not the only one. NASA/GSFC/Solar Dynamics Observatory

Curious Kids: Is there anything hotter than the Sun?

There are lots of places where it’s much, much hotter than the Sun. And the amazing thing is that this heat also makes new atoms - tiny particles that have made their way long ago from stars to us.
The TV drama SeaChange had a huge public impact, which made the town where it was filmed, Barwon Heads on Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula, a highly desirable destination. Diana Plater/AAP

Imagining your own SeaChange – how media inspire our great escapes

We read about and watch other people moving to the coast or country and, in doing so, sometimes we’re persuaded to join the seachangers and treechangers ourselves.
The community environment clearly has a large influence on child development, but exactly which factors are most important? Tracey Nearmy/AAP

Working out what makes a good community where young children can thrive

Research has started to identify the key factors in creating communities that promote good early childhood development.
Pluto’s ghoulish cousin, 2015 TG387, lurks in the distant reaches of our own Solar System. Illustration by Roberto Molar Candanosa and Scott Sheppard, courtesy of Carnegie Institution for Science.

A Goblin could guide us to a mystery planet thought to exist in the Solar system

Whether you call it Planet X or Planet Nine, talk of another planet lurking in our Solar system won’t go away. So what does the discovery of a new object – nicknamed “The Goblin” – add to the debate?
Ammunition found at a mounted police camp at Eyre Creek. Lynley Wallis

How unearthing Queensland’s ‘native police’ camps gives us a window onto colonial violence

For 60 years, native police were deployed in Queensland to ‘disperse’ Aboriginal communities (a euphemism for systematic killing). Unearthing their camps is a key part of reckoning with the violence of those times.
El casquete polar sur de Marte, visto desde el Mars Global Surveyor. Ahora sabemos que debajo hay un lago de agua líquida. NASA/JPL/MSSS

En Marte hay agua. ¿Y ahora qué?

Los investigadores han encontrado un gran lago de agua salada enterrado a 1,5 kilómetros bajo el casquete polar sur de Marte. ¿Qué significa eso para la vida en el planeta rojo?
Mars’ south polar cap, as seen from Mars Global Surveyor. Buried beneath, we now know, is a lake of liquid water. NASA/JPL/MSSS

Discovered: a huge liquid water lake beneath the southern pole of Mars

Researchers have found evidence of a large lake of salty water, buried 1.5 kilometres beneath the southern polar ice cap on Mars. So what does that mean for life on the red planet?
People take shelter during the floods in Mozambique. Antonio Silva/EPA

More people in Africa need to be insured against natural disasters

While disaster insurance would go a long way in averting losses, demand for cover is still lower than expected.

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