Category: Australia

A highly educated and highly skilled workforce is a valuable resource for any country. Having top-level professionals in several key fields – be they engineers, medical doctors, physicists or programmers – is as important to a country’s development as its natural resources. Sadly, a lot of countries can’t offer a tangible incentive for either professors…

The legendary Dodo bird was lost to the world in the 1600’s, when it was hunted to extinction on the island of Mauritius, but few Australians would realise that a flightless island bird here has narrowly avoided the same fate – thanks to an amazing story of dedication, skill and cooperation. The Woodhen: A Flightless…

By Heinz Schandl, Senior Science Leader and Thomas Wiedmann, Associate Professor at University of New South Wales For some time Australians have been considered among the biggest consumers of natural resources in the world. According to previous studies, we each get through 70 tonnes of materials every year. This is way higher than other developed nations. But could something be influencing…

Kevin Rudd’s plan to scrap the carbon tax in the name of an emissions trading scheme has spurred debates over which carbon reduction system is better. I use the term ‘better,’ as discussions seem to be focusing on costs to Australian families rather than which system is more effective at actually reducing carbon emissions. The…

It is always a bad sign when crowds gather. On the morning of Wednesday March 21 in the year 1900, a crowd began to gather in Sydney. A thousand people had gathered outside the offices of the Board of Health in Macquarie Street. They had gathered because bubonic plague had broken out. People had already…

This year we saw Australia put into force a new patent law. An intellectual property system that was Australia’s most comprehensive in over two decades. It came into effect on 15 April 2013 and no one knew exactly what to expect from it. We have seen with cases like India, how one country’s patent laws…

Scientists from Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, are applying their knowledge in transboundary river basin management to improve the livelihoods of people living in some of the poorest parts of Asia. CSIRO and its partners have begun work in the Koshi River Basin which stretches from China, across the Himalayas through Nepal and discharges into…

A CSIRO radio telescope has detected the raw material for making the first stars in galaxies that formed when the Universe was just three billion years old — less than a quarter of its current age. This opens the way to studying how these early galaxies make their first stars. The telescope is CSIRO’s Australia…

Scientists have produced the largest flexible, plastic solar cells in Australia – 10 times the size of what they were previously able to – thanks to a new solar cell printer that has been installed at CSIRO. The printer has allowed researchers from the Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium to print organic photovoltaic cells the…

As science-fiction fans around the world gear up to celebrate some of the most popular robots ever created on global Star Wars Day (otherwise known as May-the-fourth-be-with-you Day), last week CSIRO has released details about its latest crop of robots which indicate advances in ICT research will see closer collaboration between people and robots in…