Author: Editorial Board

“We see with the eyes, but we see with the brain as well.” While our delusions may keep us sane, hallucinations — defined as perceptions that arise independently of external reality, as when we see, hear, or sense things that aren’t really there — are an entirely different beast, a cognitive phenomenon that mimics mysticism…

By far the most enjoyable part of our recent family trip to London was the afternoon my young son and I spent in Shoreditch, groping our way to No Brow, a comics shop I had noticed on an early morning stroll with our hostess. Our route was evidence that I had forgotten the coordinates, the…

Australian space scientists will no longer need to go offshore to build satellites, following the completion of the Advanced Instrumentation and Technology Centre (AITC) at The Australian National University. The Minister for Industry, Ian Macfarlane officially opened the Centre. “Australia is doubly blessed because Mt Stromlo also has a long heritage of combining scientific and…

A new theory of how cancer works could lead to the next generation of treatments of the disease. The theory suggests that cancer forms when recently evolved genes are damaged, and cells have to revert to using older, inappropriate genetic pathways. Astrobiologists Dr Charley Lineweaver from The Australian National University and Professor Paul Davies from…

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…

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…

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…