Category: News

A couple weeks back, we mentioned that Brian Knappenberger had released his new documentary about Aaron Swartz, The Internet’s Own Boy, under a Creative Commons license, making it free to watch online. He now returns with a short op-doc for The New York Times. It’s called A Threat to Internet Freedom, and it explains why…

Oh, dear! Can you imagine just few moments ago we were writing the last week’s review and right now we are at the beginning of one more exciting and fascinating editor’s selection? Time passes so quickly, does not it? We can not explain how suddenly we appeared into this Sunday. Well, it’s strange, but let’s…

The search for star power – fusion – has received a major boost with the launch of the Australian Plasma Fusion Research Facility (APFRF) at The Australian National University. The facility includes Australia’s largest fusion experiment, the newly upgraded H1, which will now be able to heat fusion experiments to temperatures hotter than the core…

Quick note: Earlier this year, J. K. Rowling began writing new stories about the 2014 Quidditch World Cup Finals for Pottermore, the website for all things Harry Potter. Today, she followed up with a story that takes the form of an article published in The Daily Prophet: “Dumbledore’s Army Reunites at Quidditch World Cup Final”…

In 2000, I saw someone using screen capture software for the first time. Screen capture allows you to record the screen of your computer as if you had a camera pointing at the screen. It also records your voice. So you can open up your student’s work onto the screen, mark and highlight their work,…

WHO nowadays, together with the European Respiratory Society (ERS), presented a new framework to eliminate tuberculosis (TB) in countries with low levels of the disease. Today there are 33* countries and territories where there are fewer than 100 TB cases per million population. The framework outlines an initial “pre-elimination” phase, aiming to have fewer than…

With regard to writing, Ernest Hemingway was a man of simple tastes. Were I to employ a metaphor, I’d describe Hem as the kind of guy who’d prefer an unadorned plum from William Carlos Williams’ icebox to Makini Howell’s Pesto Plum Pizza with Balsamic Arugula. Don’t mistake that metaphor for real life, however. Judging by…

Why cynicism is, above all, a disservice to our own happiness. “As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman,” E.B. White wrote in a letter to a man who had lost faith in humanity, “the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate.” A beautiful and…

It seems we come to the end of this week before we left the previous one. Time has passed so quickly, has not it? We just turned around ourselves and we are at the end of one more week of such an amazing month of July. Let us see what this fascinating week brought to…

Scientists from the Research School of Biology have opened the door to a new world of pain treatments with their discovery of the exact way that pain relief drugs, such as anaesthetics, work on the body. Dr Ben Corry and Lewis Martin developed a detailed computer model that revealed for the first time how benzocaine,…

Sticky snakeroot, Mexican devil or Crofton weed – call it what you want – since the early 1900s this weed has been causing grief in Australia. But now the release of a new biological control agent brings some hope. The tenacious and troublesome Crofton weed (Ageratina adenophora), as it is commonly known, has been running…

Over the years, I’ve met with several foreign speaking partners. Through conversation, I learn their language — Spanish, Korean, Japanese — and they learn mine — English. Many of them first got serious about their study of that more-or-less-international tongue with the goal of completely eliminating their native accent which, while demonstrably possible, takes so…

“To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing.” “Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work,” painter Chuck Close memorably scoffed. “Show up, show up, show up,” novelist Isabelle Allende echoed in her advice to aspiring writers, “and after a while the muse…

In a 2013 blog post, the great Ursula K. Le Guin quotes a London Times Literary Supplement column by a “J.C.,” who satirically proposes the “Jean-Paul Sartre Prize for Prize Refusal.” “Writers all over Europe and American are turning down awards in the hope of being nominated for a Sartre,” writes J.C., “The Sartre Prize…