Established in 1850, the University of Sydney was Australia’s first tertiary education institution. It is committed to maximising the potential of its students, teachers and researchers for the benefit of Australia and the wider world.
It’s quite a romantic notion that the sweetness of our blood attracts mosquitoes. But in reality, it’s probably the cocktail of stinky microbes on our skin that really draws them in. It’s hard to know…
Researchers have finally caught up with the wisdom of mothers, who, for decades have been coaxing their children to eat spinach. We know this leafy green is a good source of folate, a very important B…
The federal government is likely to introduce a star system for food packages next year to help consumers make healthier food choices, ABC’s Lateline reported last week. Much like the energy star rating…
A few days ago, the Prime Minister Julia Gillard foreshadowed a “plan to make sure that families pay $250 less per year for electricity” to be discussed at this Friday’s meeting of the Council of Australian…
Fiscal cliff. Grand bargain. Shared sacrifice. The buzzwords on Capitol Hill this December tell a dramatic story. The United States, hurtling toward an unavoidable economic disaster, can be saved only…
If the latest spate of news stories coming out of Serbia are anything to go by, the tiny and otherwise unassuming village of Zarožje has something of a vampire problem. Local legend tells of Sava Savanovi…
Supermassive black holes weighing millions or billions of times as much as our sun appear to be ubiquitous in large galaxies. We don’t fully understand how these supermassive black holes form and grow…
Late last year, two oncologists went public with a theory that cancer survivor Ian Gawler’s secondary cancer may not have been cancer at all but tuberculosis instead. At the time, the story made front…
Bliss was it in that spring to be alive, and to be young, on the streets, was very heaven. Or so it seemed to millions of women and men in early 2011, shortly after the first protests in Tunisia rocked…
As a cosmologist, I often carry around a universe or two in my pocket. Not entire, infinitely large universes, but maybe a few billion light years or so across. Enough to be interesting. Of course, these…
At the beginning of the 20th century, around one in three children in countries such as Australia and the United States died of infection before the age of five. But since Howard Florey first described…
Sophie Riley, University of Technology Sydney and Ben Boer, University of Sydney
In Greek mythology the Hydra was a reptilian guardian, a multi-headed creature defending one of the entrances to the underworld. If a would-be killer removed one of its heads, two more would grow in its…
Lord Justice Leveson has released the recommendations of the Inquiry into the Culture, Practices and Ethics of the Press, which was prompted by the Murdoch press phone hacking scandal that erupted last…
Astronomers have discovered a new, enormous black hole that could change our understanding of how galaxies evolve. Holding the mass of 17 billion suns, the black hole at the centre of the NGC 1277 galaxy…
The spirit and institutions of Greek democracy are dying, but who really cares? Kostas Vaxevanis does. His name merits global attention because during the past year Hot Doc, the weekly magazine he owns…
There are many ways to prevent mosquito-borne diseases – insecticides to kill mosquitoes, vaccines to prevent infection and healthy doses of insect repellent before heading off for fishing trips. But while…
The Australian government should provide enough mental health facilities to allow 12% of the population to access help per year, up from the current 6-8%, a government report has found. The report, A Contributing…
Dr Seuss’ book Green Eggs and Ham is built around the urgings of a weird creature, Sam I Am, who insists the narrator eat the food of its title. When the narrator refuses, Sam issues an ever-widening range…
The irony of the world’s climate change negotiators meeting in Doha this week cannot be lost on anyone taking an interest in climate change. Qatar is hardly a model of the low carbon economy. With annual…
Most Australians hear only periodic news items about outbreaks of tuberculosis, but globally the disease remains a top killer. And the emergence of drug-resistant strains pose a major challenge to tuberculosis…