Feb
28
2024
Seven months after her long-term career unexpectedly ended, Melbourne professional Carmel Murphy is coming to terms with retirement. “It’s very different,” she says. “You don’t get the thousand emails. You don’t get the calls. You don’t get the staff who require your assistance. It’s taking me quite a while to get used to that.” Now 65 and …read more
Nov
29
2023
Almost eliminating the labour costs of on-site construction, Wild Modular has burst on to the accommodation scene in recent years with a range of speedy pre-fabricated accommodation. Taking just weeks to manufacture in a western Sydney factory, these pods can be erected and completed on site in a few days. Used in remote resorts and retreats, …read more
Nov
22
2023
Australia’s oldest and most prestigious universities, mostly sandstone and clad in ivy, have topped the global reputation category in The Australian Financial Review’s Best Universities Ranking, despite faring poorly in measures of student satisfaction. The University of Melbourne ranked first for global reputation, followed by equal second for the University of Sydney, the University of Queensland …read more
Nov
8
2023
The day will come when comfortable augmented reality headsets will replace mobile phones and be worn nearly all the time, says Tim Dwyer, leader of Monash University’s data visualisation and immersive analytics lab. Gardeners wearing one of these headsets might gaze into a garden and see a variety of plants with an overlay of Latin botanical …read more
Nov
8
2023
Richard Ryan has spent a lot of time researching motivation: understanding why people do what they do, why they choose certain courses of action and why they reject others. A clinical psychologist, Ryan jointly developed the self-determination theory of motivation which he says is applicable in the workplace, in education, in healthcare systems and even in …read more
Nov
8
2023
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) for marketing and in commercial enterprises like hotels and restaurants has become the focus of Catherine Prentice’s current research. She plans to further explore how AI can improve the consumer experience and foster consumer loyalty to a brand or an organisation as well as how it can improve employee efficiency. …read more
Nov
8
2023
A physical oceanographer, Jessica Benthuysen monitors real-time data on the temperature, salinity and currents of oceans thousands of kilometres from her desk in Perth. She has worked with the Australian Institute of Marine Science for the last decade, first in Townsville and now in Western Australia, using ocean observations and ocean models to understand more about …read more
Nov
8
2023
Naomi Hammond’s research collaborations have focused on the care of critically ill patients who are often unconscious. She has taken part in research that has found an intravenous fluid widely used in much of the world increases acute kidney injury and has other adverse reactions. A sister clinical trials group in Scandinavia found this IV fluid …read more
Nov
8
2023
David Moss and his colleagues set a world record in 2020: the fastest data transmission down an optical fibre from a single chip. Published in Nature Communications, the paper on this record-setting research almost immediately attracted huge world-wide attention. Moss first saw an article about it on the BBC website and it took a few seconds …read more
Nov
8
2023
Laura Panza looks to the past to understand the growth of economic development in various nations, largely in the near East: Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and Palestine, with a particular focus on Palestine. It’s difficult work because usable data is hard to come by in the Near East, she says. “There are very few sources; it’s …read more