Author: Editorial Board

Neanderthal groups lived alongside modern humans for several thousand years, an international team of scientists has found, overturning previous theories about the extinction of Neanderthals. The team applied a new radiocarbon dating method which revealed that Neanderthals across Europe did not all die out at one time as modern humans appeared. “The two groups lived…

Medical researchers have used DNA sequencing to identify a gene variant responsible for causing lupus in a young patient. The development shows that for the first time, it is feasible for researchers to identify the individual causes of lupus in patients by using DNA sequencing, allowing doctors to target specific treatments to individual patients. Lupus…

We know that depression affects people from all walks of life. Rich. Poor. Celebs. Ordinary Joes. Young. Old. But, somehow after the death of Robin Williams, there’s a renewed focus on depression, and my mind turned immediately to a lecture we featured on the site way back in 2009. The lecture is by Robert Sapolsky,…

The latest chapter in a long history of mapping technology innovation at Jenolan Caves will see students from around Australia explore the caves in virtual reality as part of Australia’s biggest school excursion. From classrooms around the country, students will embark on a digital journey exploring the iconic Jenolan Caves, an important scientific environment full…

Laser physicists have found a way to make atomic-force microscope probes 20 times more sensitive and capable of detecting forces as small as the weight of an individual virus. The technique, developed by researchers in the Quantum Optics Group of the Research School of Physics and Engineering, hinges on using laser beams to cool a…

So much more than just a tree, the river red gum has been central to the tensions between economic, social and environmental values of rivers and floodplain landscapes in Australia – perhaps more so than any other Australian plant or animal. Flooded Forest and Desert Creek: Ecology and History of the River Red Gum, a…

Australian native cuckoos are engaged in an arms race, competing with each other to take over other species’ nests. The finding by Research School of Biology scientists gives new insights into the deceptive habits of cuckoos, which lay their eggs in other birds’ nests to dupe other mums into raising cuckoo chicks. “Previous research has…

Michel Foucault’s time in the United States in the last years of his life, particularly his time as a lecturer at UC Berkeley, proved to be extraordinarily productive in the development of his theoretical understanding of what he saw as the central question facing the contemporary West: the question of the self. In his 1983…

“Mental recreation is a thing that we all of us need for our mental health.” Long before he met the real-life little girl who inspired him to write Alice in Wonderland under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was a prominent mathematician and logician. In addition to his scientific bend and his love of…

Physicists at The Australian National University have created a tractor beam on water, providing a radical new technique that could confine oil spills, manipulate floating objects or explain rips at the beach. The group, led by Professor Michael Shats, discovered they can control water flow patterns with simple wave generators, enabling them to move floating…

Why why all creative culture is built on “plagiarism, literary debt, appropriation, incorporation, retelling, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, reprise…” When Helen Keller was accused of plagiarism, her dear friend Mark Twain wrote her a heartfelt and lively letter of support, in which he asserted that “all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million…

Working with his colleagues, Maximilian Schich, an art historian at the University of Texas at Dallas, took Freebase (Google’s “community-curated database of well-known people, places, and things”) and gathered data on 150,000 important artists and cultural figures who lived during the long arc of Western history (6oo BCE to 2012). The scholars then mapped these…

Many of Australia’s leading animal and human infectious disease experts are joining forces this week to identify challenges that might benefit from greater collaboration across Australia’s research institutions. The Forum will be held at the Geelong high-containment facility and is a joint initiative between CSIRO’s Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) and the National Health and…

We developed our 6 steps pedagogy of blended learning as a way to support the integration of social media and apps in lessons. The integration of social media and apps often happens nowadays though the use of tablets. The last few years we co-created with our customers a way of working with tablets using the…