Author: Editorial Board

New research report reveals the impact of next generation broadband for Australian households and businesses. Despite living in the ‘Digital Age’, Australia is currently not prepared to fully take advantage of the services afforded by next generation broadband according to a new groundbreaking research report released today. Developed by the Australian Centre for Broadband Innovation…

Australia’s electricity landscape could change significantly in the future and consumers will be deciding just what that future will look like. A new report from the Future Grid Forum, Change and choice: The Future Grid Forum’s analysis of Australia’s potential electricity pathways to 2050, looks at a range of opportunities and presents four scenarios, not predictions,…

The coal mining industry will be better equipped to manage water and deal with extreme weather events, thanks to a new model developed by CSIRO. The model, to be unveiled at the 20th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation (MODSIM2013), aims to forecast future mine water needs and will help the industry address the challenges…

Ever wondered how vaccines work, why whales strand themselves or if luck really exists? The Explainer: From Déjà Vu to Why the Sky is Blue and Other Conundrums is a collection of straightforward, accessible, and engaging explanations from those in the know on those everyday concepts that may have made you stop and wonder. Written…

A phenomenon in the Indian Ocean that affects events in southeast Australia is helping to predict extreme weather up to six months in advance. The phenomenon, the Indian Ocean Dipole, is the difference in sea-surface temperatures between the western and eastern part of the Indian Ocean, and until recently has been one of the most…

Australia’s key disaster management agencies have joined forces to tackle the problem of how to access and interpret information gathered during bushfires, and other natural disasters to help emergency services save lives and property. “Currently, there are many ways emergency services and the community accesses official, crowd sourced and social media information during natural disasters,”…

On November 19, the Oxford Dictionaries announced that “selfie” had been deemed their Word of The Year. The term, whose first recorded use as an Instagram hashtag occurred on January 27, 2011. It was actually invented in 2002, when an Australian chap posted a picture of himself on an internet forum and called it a “selfie”. Devices for taking photos…

Over 28,000 students will descend on the Gold Coast for the start of schoolies this week, and while the party may be chaos, emergency departments on the Gold Coast already know how many patients will be coming through the door. Thanks to CSIRO technology hospitals will also know how serious the cases will be and…

High-speed ‘jets’ spat out by black holes pack a lot of power because they contain heavy atoms, astronomers have found. Black-hole jets recycle matter and energy into space and can affect when and where a galaxy forms stars. “Jets from supermassive black holes help determine a galaxy’s fate — how it evolves,” said CSIRO’s Dr…

CSIRO will play a lead role in the next stage of the development of the world’s largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), to be located in Australia and in Africa. This follows the SKA Organisation (SKAO) announcement that it has allocated R&D ‘work packages’ to consortia from around the world. The consortia, involving…

Today we provide a brief review of top CSIRO news published in the previous period. There was everything – from gum leaves to bushfires.  Hope you will enjoy this journey. Spotlight – gum leaves rich in gold While money doesn’t grow on trees per se, we’ve found that precious gold does. We have revealed that…

Six students from De Montfort University have created a stellar 3D representation of 17th century London, as it existed before The Great Fire of 1666. The three-minute video provides a realistic animation of Tudor London, and particularly a section called Pudding Lane where the fire started. As Londonist notes, “Although most of the buildings are conjectural, the students used a realistic street pattern [taken…

This spherical container has been engineered to house the most scientifically valuable cargo imaginable: samples brought back from the Red Planet. Still probably many years in the future and most likely international in nature, a Mars sample-return mission is one of the most challenging space ventures possible for robotic exploration. A robust, multifunctional sample container…