Guest Author • Apr 05, 2018 •
Jane Tiller, Monash University and Paul Lacaze, Monash University This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. You might be intrigued by what your genes could tell you about your ancestry or the health risks hidden in your DNA. If so, you’re not alone. Fascination with personal genetics … Read More
Eric Crampton • Mar 12, 2018 •
Suppose for a moment that addicts are rational and that we’re really in a Becker-Murphy world. What happens in that world if a new technology makes it safer to consume an addictive product? If you’re overdosing on opioids, Naloxone can save your life. The easier is access to Naloxone, the less likely addicts are to die if they have an … Read More
Guest Author • Mar 09, 2018 •
Babak Abedin, University of Technology Sydney This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took to the social platform last week to announce a call-out for ideas about how to measure the health of online conversations. The initiative follows recent demands for government to regulate the … Read More
Jean Balchin • Mar 08, 2018 •
When I was a child, I vividly remember a very funny episode with my Grandpa. He couldn’t find his glasses – yet there they were, perched on the top of his head. I thought he was just playing along, but I gradually realised that he was being serious. It still makes me chuckle to this day, although memory loss isn’t … Read More
Guest Author • Feb 23, 2018 •
Noortje Uphoff, University of York This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Poverty remains a widespread problem. In the UK, 30% of children are growing up in poverty. More than half of these children are in working households, and poverty is on the rise even for children whose parents … Read More
Jean Balchin • Feb 07, 2018 •
FineSTRUCTURE analysis demonstrates that haplotypes mirror geography across the British Isles as illustrated in A.) FineSTRUCTURE clustering dendrogram B.) Principle Component space. Administrative boundaries in map sourced from GADM (https://gadm.org). A recent study in PLOS Genetics has revealed a previously hidden genetic landscape of Ireland, shaped through geography and historical migrations. The genome-wide study, led by Ross Byrne and … Read More
Jean Balchin • Feb 01, 2018 •
An antibiotic virtually forgotten since its discovery 40 years ago could help develop new drugs against life-threatening infections caused by some of the world’s most dangerous superbugs. What are Superbugs? So-called “superbugs” possess antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the ability of a microbe to resist the effects of the medication used previously to treat them. These resistant microbes are difficult to treat, … Read More
Alison Campbell • Jan 09, 2018 •
‘Raw water’ – the latest foolish fad to hit people’s screens, pockets, & in some instances I’d guess their toilet paper expenditure as well. I first heard of this particular litre of woo when I read an article in the New York Times with the headline: Unfiltered Fervor: the rush to get off the water grid. Apparently getting ‘off … Read More
Guest Author • Dec 13, 2017 •
Nicholas Wood, University of Sydney As a medical researcher and parent of two teenagers there is one bug, Neisseria meningitidis, that really scares me. This is mainly because of the speed and severity of the infection it causes, called meningococcal disease, and its predilection for infecting healthy adolescents and younger children. Meningococcal is a rare but very … Read More
Lynley Hargreaves • Nov 02, 2017 •
It’s a familiar New Zealand story, the havoc wrecked by all the pest species we’ve brought in. But in the case of mosquitoes, the worst might be yet to come. There were 12 mostly bird-nibbling mosquito species in pre-European times. Since our arrival, three new species have become permanently established here. We’ve stopped dozens more at our … Read More