Guest Author • Jun 11, 2020 •
Alert level 1! Like you no doubt, I am breathing a sigh of relief. But no one can guarantee that New Zealand has seen its last case of COVID-19. Canberra has just seen its first new case after more than a month without one. A diplomat returning from overseas drove (as he was allowed to) from … Read More
Guest Author • May 21, 2020
Mahmoud Elkhodr, CQUniversity Australia New Zealanders finally have access to the government’s new tracing app to help people monitor their movements as lockdown continues to ease. As businesses can now open, the NZ COVID Tracer app allows people to keep a register of the places they visit. This “digital diary” can be used to contact people if it finds … Read More
Michael Corballis • May 06, 2020
There is a call in many parts of the world for indigenous knowledge and values to be incorporated alongside more universal understandings. In New Zealand, this has come under the umbrella of Mātauranga Māori, a body of knowledge encompassing the traditional Māori way of viewing the world. This raises two important questions: How should Mātauranga Māori be integrated with “western” … Read More
Duncan Steel • May 01, 2020 •
Did you know that the top of Mount Cook is by no means New Zealand’s furthest point from the centre of the Earth? And that Samoa’s tallest mountain is seven kilometres further from our planet’s core than anywhere in NZ? The highest point anywhere, in terms of separation from Earth’s centre? — It’s not Mount Everest. It’s the sort of … Read More
Public Health Expert • Apr 15, 2020 •
Dr Tim Chambers, Prof Nick Wilson, Prof Michael Baker In this blog, we discuss some of the emerging technologies New Zealand could adopt to support the country’s COVID-19 elimination strategy. We argue for the prioritisation of technologies to assist with contact tracing, border controls, early diagnosis and surveillance. These technologies present major benefits for the collective effort against COVID-19 … Read More
Guest Author • Mar 19, 2020 •
Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology; Daniel Angus, Queensland University of Technology; Timothy Graham, Queensland University of Technology, and Tobias R. Keller, Queensland University of Technology News and views about coronavirus has spread via social media in a way that no health emergency has done before. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Tik Tok and Instagram have played critical roles in sharing … Read More
Robert Hickson • Mar 08, 2020 •
Many people think that the speed of change today is unprecedented. That’s just because we have short memories. Historians focused on Western civilisation, like Vaclav Smil, point back to the late 19th and early 20th Century when electricity, radio, the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, cars, planes, anaesthetics, and (a bit later) antibiotics emerged. Smil … Read More
Guest Author • Feb 25, 2020 •
John MacCormick To succeed in an unpredictable and changing world, adaptability is the key. Let’s be chameleons. Technology continues to change people’s jobs and work environments. But change so far is not as fast and extensive as some pundits claim. Nor is it as fast and extensive as it needs to be if New Zealand is to realise the opportunities … Read More
Duncan Steel • Feb 22, 2020 •
Last Monday SpaceX launched another clutch of Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit, bringing up to 300 the number of these units intended to bring 5G internet to the whole globe. In this post I present a movie showing how all 300 such satellites will be zipping around our planet over the next eight days (until the end of the month), … Read More
Duncan Steel • Feb 08, 2020 •
In a previous post I described briefly when and how the Starlink satellite chains – recent launches by Space-X in a scheme to bring 5G internet connectivity to the whole globe – could be seen from New Zealand with the naked eye. Here I provide an update and predictions for the next several days. My preceding post included … Read More