Rosemary Rangitauira • Dec 16, 2020
The allure of the white lab coat and inventing new treatments for people’s health inspired Dr Kimiora Henare of Te Aupōuri and Te Rarawa to become a cancer biologist and biomedical scientist. Kimiora resides in Tāmaki Makaurau – working at the University of Auckland as a research fellow in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences. Read More
Guest Author • Dec 15, 2020 •
Anaise Irvine The internet usually doesn’t pay too much attention to doctoral degrees and the people who hold them. Oh sure, we have our own corners of the web, but seldom does mainstream social media erupt with discussions about academic issues. This past weekend, that all changed. The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece* by a Mr. Joseph Epstein … Read More
Guest Author • Dec 15, 2020 •
Jim Missen Jiangcungou is home to a 700,00 square metre landfill, with the ability to hold 49 million cubic metres of municipal waste. Of China’s 1.4 billion populace it serves a mere 8 million and has reached its capacity 25 years early. The landfill in question is located in Shaanxi province and its sole user is the city of … Read More
Alison Campbell • Dec 13, 2020 •
Today I was told that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (now approved for use in the US, UK, & Canada) is a virus (screencap at the bottom of this thread). It really isn’t, but I’ve seen this one several times & so I think it’s worth unpacking a little further. (You can also read about mRNA vaccines here, here, & … Read More
Alison Campbell • Dec 11, 2020 •
A year ago I posted an explanation on vaccine “ingredients”, in relation to some wild claims made about the measles vaccine in the context of Samoa’s measles epidemic. From what I’ve seen on recent RNZ comments threads, an update for the time of SARS-Cov-2 is required. So, here’s purple making a statement about the Pfizer covid-19 vaccine that – … Read More
Guest Author • Dec 10, 2020 •
Krishna Chandrasekar Colbert, Oliver, Meyers, Kimmel… The low profile that we were expected to keep, courtesy COVID-19 lockdown, had me paying more attention to the Late-Night Shows hosts, who have all been “working from their homes”. Oh yes, Fallon and Noah figure in there somewhere too. But what struck me as interesting was how all of them derided Trump mercilessly … Read More
Guest Author • Dec 04, 2020 •
Philip Steer, Massey University Just as writers and artists today are responding to the Anthropocene through climate fiction and eco art, earlier generations chronicled an environmental crisis that presaged humanity’s global impact. The Anthropocene is a proposed geological epoch that powerfully expresses the planetary scale of the environmental changes wrought by human activity. Yet almost a … Read More
Caroline Lord • Dec 03, 2020 •
Glass ceilings are a reality for Māori and Pacific academics at New Zealand universities, according to new research. This group is already in the minority, making up just 5% and 2% respectively of the academic workforce, with less than 4% and 1% employed at professor level positions. These employment levels remained static between 2012 and 2017. The new study, … Read More
Robert McLachlan • Dec 02, 2020 •
Following this week’s climate emergency declaration, New Zealand will have to face up to the fact it has one of the worst climate records of industrialised nations. Of 43 industrialised countries — known as Annex 1 countries — 31 are experiencing a drop in emissions. But 12 have seen net emissions increase between 1990 and 2018, and New … Read More
Guest Author • Dec 02, 2020 •
Bradley Allf Back in April, I received a strange email from a pair of academic journals inviting me to submit my research to one of their latest issues. The email was written in a jarring mix of fonts, and riddled with formatting mistakes and bungled idioms. The editor who sent it to me had, inexplicably, attached a … Read More