Sep
6
2019
Children from Hong Kong and China are not immune to the global epidemic of obesity. About one in five Hong Kong schoolchildren are now classed as overweight or worse, according to the Hong Kong Department of Health’s latest survey, released last year. They were not eating enough fruit and vegetables, but eating too much salt …read more
Jan
16
2019
Flatly denying the Ramsay Centre deal for a Western civilisation course at Wollongong University has been kept a secret, the university’s executive dean of law, humanities and the arts, Theo Farrell, insists he had been discussing the idea with colleagues since 2017. “Some colleagues have gone public saying there has been no consultation,” Professor Farrell …read more
Dec
28
2018
All tight black leather trousers, a black leather vest and multiple loops of swinging gold chain, Gary Glitter was rocking on. The 1973 concert at Sydney’s endearingly shabby (even then) Hordern Pavilion was so awful it was almost good, in a stand back and marvel at the spectacle sort of way. And of course the …read more
Nov
21
2018
Tiny sensors that stick to crop leaves and transmit health data. Robot buggies that trundle up and down orchard rows. Hyperspectral scanners to assess tree health. Smartphone-operated virtual cattle fences. Gene manipulation to transform crops so they’re a different colour or last longer, or bear fruit in a more convenient way.
Sep
21
2018
In a breakthrough discovery, scientists from the Australian National University have found molecules of animal fat in a fossil more than 558 million years old, making the “Dickinsonia” the world’s first confirmed animal.
Sep
12
2018
At the right time every season, Australians gather at whale-watching points along the east and west coasts, or take to the water in boats and canoes in the hopes of seeing the giants of the deep, mostly humpback whales, making their way up and down the coast, travelling to and from their breeding grounds.
Jul
25
2018
A spiritual leader’s criticism of a Griffith University academic in a parliamentary hearing was one of the few public skirmishes in a hard-fought battle behind the scenes, now set to culminate in an official misconduct hearing at the university next month.
Jul
18
2018
A new battle in the world’s mosquito wars is being fought around Innisfail in far north Queensland, where an international research team released three million male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. This species can transmit a range of potentially lethal diseases including dengue, yellow fever and Zika, which can cause birth defects.
Jul
16
2018
How about saving the Great Barrier Reef with a one-molecule-thick layer of natural calcium carbonate that floats on the sea surface and reduces the damaging heat of the sun on corals? Maybe the answer is cloud-brightening — spraying microscopic droplets of seawater into the atmosphere to form clouds and provide more shade for the heat-battered …read more
Jun
25
2018
Somebody familiar with the tiny red-dirt town of Marree is good at keeping a giant secret. Marree, population 150, sits at the junction of the Oodnadatta and Birdsville tracks in the remote upper north of South Australia, east of one of Australia’s great mysteries: the “Marree Man”, a 4.2km-long reproduction of a giant Aboriginal figure …read more