Category: News

With the explosive success of The Force Awakens, interest in all things Jedi has come to fever pitch. And perhaps no item is more evocative of the film’s fascinating world as the Jedi lightsaber. It’s no surprise that many of us wonder: how far are we from holding one of our own? According to this…

Behind USA, Australia is the largest waste producer, per person, in the world. The average Australian citizen produces over 650 kg of waste per year, making a family of 4 produce enough waste to fill a three – bedroom house, from the floor to the ceiling! Annually, we contribute to over 18 million tonnes of…

“Watch therefore, for ye know not the day nor the hour,” could be still an actual description of our ability to predict asteroid threats to Earth. The sentence from the Bible (Matthew 25:13) sound like a reminder of a vast number of more than 1,500 currently potentially hazardous objects, floating in space, meandering around in…

Large numbers of kangaroos are threatening an endangered species and are eating some lizards out of house and home, new research has found. Australian National University (ANU) researcher Brett Howland has found large kangaroo numbers destroy the grassland habitats of reptiles. “When there are too many kangaroos, they over-graze grasslands until they are like a…

It’s Sunday! It’s a perfect day for your holiday, relaxation and joy. The good thing about every Sunday is nothing will force you to get up that early in the morning as you do during the working week. Well, that’s why this day is our opportunity to summarise what have happened over the last 7…

The number of people dying from malaria has fallen dramatically since 2000 and malaria cases are also steadily declining, according to the World malaria report 2014. Between 2000 and 2013, the malaria mortality rate decreased by 47% worldwide and by 54% in the WHO African Region – where about 90% of malaria deaths occur. New…

International scientists have carried out the most detailed study of how specialised body cells can be reprogrammed to be like cells from the early embryo. The findings are a major advance in stem cell science and could help usher in a new era of regenerative medicine, where a small sample of a patient’s cells could…

The ANU and CSIRO have joined forces in a new collaborative precinct to help build a sustainable future for the environment, agriculture and global food supplies. The National Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Precinct (NAESP) was launched by the Minister for Industry the Hon Ian Macfarlane MP. The NAESP will bring together the best research brains…

Nature announced that it will make all of its articles free to view, read, and annotate online. That applies to the historic science journal (launched in 1869) and to 48 other scientific journals in Macmillan’s Nature Publishing Group (NPG). Other titles include Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine and Nature Physics. But there are a whole lot…

An international team of scientists has discovered the earliest known engravings from human ancestors on a 400,000 year-old fossilised shell from Java. The discovery is the earliest known example of ancient humans deliberately creating pattern. “It rewrites human history,” said Dr Stephen Munro from the School of Archaeology and Anthropology. “This is the first time…

It’s the end of one more amazing week, so it’s our time to recapitulate what have happened during the last 7 days. This Sunday, we bring you the best stories from space industry, psychology, medicine and physics, environmental science and much more. So, let’s begin our tour! Astronomers solve mystery of the universe’s missing stars…

Swedish animator Erik Wernquist calls his short science fiction film, Wanderers, a speculative look at “humanity’s future expansion into the Solar System,” a “glimpse of the fantastic and beautiful nature that surrounds us on our neighboring worlds,” and “how it might appear to us if we were there.” The locations shown in Wanderers are all…