Florence Sperring Research Officer, Faculty of Science, School of Biological Sciences, Clarke Lab, Monash University Rohan Clarke Senior Lecturer, School of Biological Sciences When pest rats and mice decimate populations of native species, pest control is a no-brainer. But what if baiting rats protects threatened songbirds, while poisoning critically endangered
Toby Rogers Toby Rogers has a PhD in political economy from the University of Sydney in Australia and a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley. I would like to start a conversation on the relationship between science and power. By “science” I mean the field
The widespread adoption of DNA testing from genealogy websites has had some intriguing outcomes. Law enforcement have used family trees to trace down suspects in cold cases, most famously the Golden State Killer. On a more personal level, DNA tests have rattled skeletons in family closets, unearthing unexpected siblings, secret
In 1900, sponge divers found a submerged wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera. The wreck was a treasure trove, yielding bronze and marble statues, pottery, glassware, jewellery and coins. And a strange lump of corroded bronze and wood. When the finds were sent to the National Museum of Archaeology
Rebekah Barnett Rebekah Barnett is a Brownstone Institute fellow, independent journalist and advocate for Australians injured by the Covid vaccines. She holds a BA in Communications from the University of Western Australia, and writes for her Substack, Dystopian Down Under. Two years after the Covid mandates ended, the West Australian
Tanya Hill, Museums Victoria Research Institute and Amanda Karakas, Monash University Any night now, a “new star” or nova will appear in the night sky. While it won’t set the sky ablaze, it’s a special opportunity to see a rare event that’s usually difficult to predict in
Duggan Flanakin Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. Six years ago, the World Economic Forum reported that insects are “good grub,” citing a Meticulous Research study predicting that the global market for edible insects could grow to $1.18 billion by 2023
Down here in Tasmania, we’re used to cold winters, but this last week has been a doozy. For the first time in my 20+ years here, the pipes froze. The frost didn’t lift all day in the shade. The ice we broke off the fish pond one morning
It’s become drearily commonplace for an over-excited media to proclaim that every moderately interesting scientific discovery “turns science on its head”. For once, though, they’re onto something. Perhaps the most exciting development in paleontology since the Ediacara discovery in South Australia in 1946 has taken place in Morocco.
Bruce W Davidson Bruce Davidson is professor of humanities at Hokusei Gakuen University in Sapporo, Japan. Even those who already know a lot about the recent man-made medical disaster may be shocked by the raw, firsthand accounts in this book of the horrors perpetrated at many American, British, and Canadian
George Ford Smith George Ford Smith is a former mainframe and PC programmer and technology instructor, the author of eight books including a novel about a renegade Fed chairman (Flight of the Barbarous Relic) and a nonfiction book on how money became an instrument of theft (The Jolly Roger Dollar)
Bridgette Semple Bridgette has an established national and international reputation for excellence in neurotrauma research. Based in the Department of Neuroscience at Monash University’s School of Translational Medicine, she led the productive Paediatric Neurotrauma Group between 2018 and 2024, before scaling back the experimental work to allow for other
Gary Moller Summary for busy people * The news that there’s been a disturbing rise in cancer fatalities among young people in the United States should be of great concern for New Zealand. * Is this connected to a widely used and contentious substance? Although New Zealand’s experts appear not
Adam Andrzejewski Topline: EcoHealth Alliance — the nonprofit that sent taxpayer funds to the Wuhan lab researching bat coronaviruses before the pandemic — has received $94.3 million from the U.S. government since 2008, according to Fox News. The Department of Health and Human Services suspended funding to EcoHealth this May.
Hamish Wilson, University of Otago and John Douglas Dunbar, University of Otago The emergence of Long Covid as a mysterious new illness has refocused attention on the incapacitating nature of persistent fatigue. Around the world, this unexpected outcome of the pandemic is now a significant health issue causing considerable personal
