The University of Tasmania generates powerful and unique ideas and knowledge for the benefit of our island and the world. Through excellent research and teaching, we strive to stimulate economic growth, lift literacy, improve health outcomes for Tasmania and nurture our environment as it nurtures us.
If you believe the hype, the end of the world has finally come. The Mayan calendar’s “long count” began on 13 August 3114 BCE and will end today on 21 December 2012. Why do people believe the world will…
Conservationists should take heart that Australia is finally waking up to the biodiversity crisis in Australia’s north. It is an urgent problem: right now, a diverse assortment of our small mammals – bandicoots…
There are two ways of responding to deadly violence such as the school shooting in Connecticut. We can respond violently, as a way of protecting ourselves from the fear and anxiety we feel. Or, we can…
Environmental protest was once a gritty, combative affair, mediated through an often-hostile press. But these days, even a tree-sitter in the most far-flung wilderness can control her own media image and…
In Australia, we ride on the open cut mine’s back. In the island state of Tasmania, there is a medium size-class open cut mine (928 hectares) with 210 hectares of settling ponds, from which iron nodules…
Climate change predictions made 20 years ago have so far proved accurate, suggesting that the world is indeed on track to a radical climate shift, according to a new paper published today. In 1990, the…
After weeks of speculation about the contents of her uterus, it was revealed overnight that Catherine Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, is indeed pregnant. However, Catherine is in the early weeks of her…
As Australia prepares for a season of heatwaves, bush fires and other extreme weather events, experts have urged disaster-hit communities to learn from past mistakes and resist the rush to rebuild things…
The signatories to the Tasmanian Forests Agreement (TFA) have spent more than two years trying to square the circle of forest conflict in Tasmania. The deal they brokered deserves prima facie respect…
Last week, after nearly two years of negotiations, loggers and environmentalists shook hands on a Tasmanian forestry peace deal. The deal represents a landmark in more than 30 years of animosity between…
Tim Flannery’s recent Quarterly Essay, After the Future, questions whether Australian national parks will become “marsupial ghost towns” despite the tens of millions of dollars governments spend on them…
A study released today in Nature shines some light on why bats produce high frequency calls – and why some squeak far higher than others. Over the last four years I have been researching bats by monitoring…
Global warming has caused nearly 200 billion tons of Greenland’s mass to disappear annually in the last decade but its icy centre actually grew, a new study has found. The melting of the Greenland ice…
We’re in a state of moral decline in the West – or so we’re told. From sky-rocketing divorce rates and the shrinking of life-long commitments to an excessive concern with self and consumerism. Morality…
Alcohol continues to account for nearly half of government-funded substance abuse treatment in Australia. A report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) shows 47% of drug treatments…
What is the oldest debate in Australian science? Probably, the argument over what caused extinction of our Pleistocene megafauna – the diprotodons, giant kangaroos, marsupial tapirs, über-echidnas and…
Women are generally born with about a million eggs. Yet, women with reproductive problems or “older” women (over the age of 40) often cannot conceive with their own eggs. The solution is to use donor eggs…
The annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) wound up in Hobart on Thursday last week without declaring a system of marine protected areas (MPAs…
A British Columbian fishing community has drawn almost universal condemnation after dumping 100 tonnes of iron rich dust into the ocean to stimulate a plankton bloom, in an effort to restore salmon numbers…
One of the most misleading myths of modern medicine is that conventional cancer doctors reject “natural” therapies in favour of artificial or “unnatural” cancer treatments. This myth has contributed to…