Professor Felicity Baker has seen music carve through the thick fog of an elderly person’s dementia and bring them back to reality, to a world where they can again recognise their children and, in the best cases, even communicate with them.

Professor Adam Slipinski is passionate about beetles. Now immersed in the massive task of identifying and classifying thousands of Australian species for the definitive CSIRO catalogue on these insects, he says a proper understanding of beetles is crucial. Although they can be serious pests, he says, beetles also provide essential environmental services – they are pollinators, …read more

When she was a kid in the Mallee in Victoria, Dr Julie Arblaster spent a lot of time outside, swimming in the Murray and roaming in the bush. Weather has always been an important part of her life, and these days it has become central to her profession.

Australian shipping has an emerging crisis. Ninety-eight per cent of tangible Australian imports and exports arrive and depart by sea, yet the nation’s marine workforce is both ageing and dwindling in numbers to an alarming extent, experts say.

An innovative Western Australian biosecurity warning system based on DNA “soup” has piqued the interest of ports in NSW, Victoria and particularly Queensland, where a trial is planned for later this year.

Brisbane’s new cruise terminal is scheduled to begin operations with a flourish in 2020, changing the shape of Australian cruising and setting the scene for further expansion in the lucrative market. The cruise industry contributes an estimated $5 billion to the Australian economy annually. And, according to advocates, cruising has brought an economic lifeline to …read more

Sustainability is the new watchword for the ports sector in Australia with an array of new sustainability initiatives under way across the nation. Projects range from shorebird habitat rehabilitation at the Port of Newcastle to refurbishment of historic wharves in Cairns to the Port Lincoln wharf recycling project (using redundant wharf timbers to construct public …read more

From a working-class family living in the hard-scrabble, tiny coastal town of Umina in NSW, Phil Honeywood soared through study abroad and university. He wound up becoming one of the youngest Liberal government ministers in Victoria and deputy leader of the party in opposition before retiring from politics and taking the helm of the large …read more

The University of Sydney has launched a wholesale revamp of arts and social sciences research that may presage a change in the focus of humanities studies across Australia, focusing humanities research on the important questions of the modern world.