Guest Author • Jul 31, 2018 •
Bianca Nogrady Experts are calling for a substantial cull of the wild horses living in New South Wales’ Kosciuszko National Park. The government isn’t having it. The peatlands that drape the high, treeless slopes surrounding Australia’s tallest peak form a natural archive. “They are unusual bits of landscape in that they actually record their own history,” says Geoffrey … Read More
Guest Author • May 02, 2018 •
Nathan Scudder, University of Canberra and Dennis McNevin, University of Technology Sydney This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Technologies for amplifying, sequencing and matching DNA have created new opportunities in genomic science. In this series When DNA Talks we look at the ethical and social implications. When Joseph … Read More
Guest Author • Apr 24, 2018 •
Gita Mishra, The University of Queensland and Judith Stephenson, UCL This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Maternal and child health in Australia, like most countries, has traditionally focused on health during pregnancy and in the early years of life. But this approach may be missing a key opportunity … Read More
Guest Author • Apr 20, 2018 •
Sandeep Gopalan, Deakin University This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Up to 400 Australian organisations may have been snared in a massive hacking incident detailed today. The attack, allegedly engineered by the Russian government, targeted millions of government and private sector machines globally via devices such as routers, … Read More
Guest Author • Apr 19, 2018 •
Aurelien Forget, Queensland University of Technology; Darling Rojas-Canales, University of Adelaide, and Tim Dargaville, Queensland University of Technology This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. We have developed “smart egg-carton” packages for transporting live human pancreas cells for transplantation to diabetic patients. The egg-cartons provide oxygen and … Read More
Guest Author • Apr 16, 2018 •
Richard Lewis, The University of Queensland This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Bites or stings from venomous animals or insects can be dangerous; they lead to numerous fatalities globally each year despite the development of antivenoms that can neutralise many of their worst effects. But research into their molecular components … Read More
Michael Reddell • Apr 12, 2018 •
Just yesterday I wrote, in response to a comment that My point simply was that there is no obvious correlation, in the cross section, between population size and GDP per capita (or productivity). I’m not aware of any serious observer arguing otherwise At the level of very simple correlations, I’d illustrated this lack of relationship – whether for all … Read More
Guest Author • Apr 10, 2018 •
Christine Eriksen, University of Wollongong; Avianto Amri, Macquarie University; Briony Towers, RMIT University; Emma Calgaro, University of Sydney; John Richardson, University of Melbourne; Katharine Haynes, Macquarie University, and Scott McKinnon, University of Wollongong This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original … Read More
Michael Reddell • Apr 09, 2018 •
I noticed a few comments to another of my posts about possible links between population size and economic performance. My working assumption is that, on average, across all countries, there isn’t any such relationship. Apart from anything else, if there were a positive relationship – that was more than chance – it would suggest that two countries … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Apr 09, 2018 •
New Zealanders and Australians might like to contribute (last-minute!*) submissions to revise Food Standards Australia and New Zealand’s code for controlling new food varieties, FSANZ is seeking input from the community on whether food derived using new breeding techniques (NBTs) should be captured for pre-market approval under the Code, and whether the definitions for ‘food produced using gene technology’ … Read More