LATEST ARTICLES

Chemical weapons remain a concern

Chemical weapons remain a concern

With an Oscar for best feature documentary now linked to his name, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is one of the world’s better-known victims of a chemical weapons attack. Poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020 by Russian operatives, Navalny was airlifted in a coma from Russia to Germany where he spent months recovering.

Social media platforms are the new battlefields

Social media platforms are the new battlefields

Ballooning suspicion has pushed TikTok onto the back foot across much of the western world with increasing concerns the popular video-sharing app could double as a platform for disinformation as well as data gathering tool for China. Social media disinformation campaigns have been favoured by certain nations for years; deployed to push a range of agendas: …read more

Biting back

Biting back

Mick Humphreys says one bite from a mosquito left him with permanent brain damage. Ten months after that bite he gets monster headaches, he has to use a walking stick and his short-term memory is shot. The 71-year-old retiree lives near the Murray River in far north Victoria and a mosquito infected him with the Japanese …read more

Visitors in search of a road less trampled

Visitors in search of a road less trampled

As the world takes action to confront the looming threat of climate change, the Australian tourism industry is gearing up for a paradigm shift to greener travel options. With regenerative and sustainable tourism increasingly on the industry agenda, experts foresee a mix of government regulation and incentivisation is on the cards to shepherd the green transformation …read more

Medical services take a leap into remote areas

Medical services take a leap into remote areas

The worldwide convulsions of the Covid pandemic focused attention on health management and health logistics – particularly on the knotty problems of providing for those unable or unwilling to visit health professionals in person. Expanding fast into this field is Glenn McKay’s Medical Rescue Group, which provides a range of medical and evacuation services to Australians …read more

Hiring more women is one answer to the employment crunch

Hiring more women is one answer to the employment crunch

Australia’s male-dominated supply chain and logistics industry is currently dealing with a workforce crunch exacerbated by limited range of a large proportion of the workers: mostly aging men. Hermione Parsons, appointed Australian Logistics Council chief executive officer four months ago, is working hard to drag the industry into the modern age. She is gathering a team …read more

Cuie Wen of RMIT moved from aeronautics to biomedical technology

Cuie Wen of RMIT moved from aeronautics to biomedical technology

A much-awarded bio-materials scientist and a leader in the field of bio-medical technology, Cuie Wen began her academic career at the institution then called the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, but she long ago shifted her gaze from aeroplanes to the human body. Now a professor of bio-materials engineering at RMIT, she says that as …read more

UNSW’s Evatt Hawkes is using new technology to decarbonise our world

UNSW’s Evatt Hawkes is using new technology to decarbonise our world

Evatt Hawkes has turned his childhood pyromania to good account – investigating fire and combustion at an elevated level of science. Now a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of NSW, he uses computational modelling to further the global understanding of combustion in renewable energy technology.

Sydney Uni’s Edward Holmes made the critical move as Covid hit

Sydney Uni’s Edward Holmes made the critical move as Covid hit

With the world’s first public post of the Covid-19 genome sequence in January 2020, Eddie Holmes launched a global avalanche of scientific endeavour and cooperation as nations everywhere rushed to come to grips with a pandemic that has so far killed at least 6.5 million people. The Sydney University biologist had been working on a project …read more

ECU’s Luke Hopper learns how to reduce injuries suffered by dancers

ECU’s Luke Hopper learns how to reduce injuries suffered by dancers

Luke Hopper uses sophisticated motion capture technology to better understand the biomechanics of dance and to tailor advice to dancers in order to help them limit their injuries. Originally developed for clinically analysing the way US children with cerebral palsy walk, and later perfected for use in films such as Titanic and Lord of the Rings, …read more