Category: News

A new report by Deloitte Access Economics, commissioned by The Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Canberra (UC), found the two leading institutions contributed more than $1.7 billion of activity to the ACT economy. The report underlines Canberra’s strength as a university town and demonstrates the importance of the higher education sector to…

America embarks on a long-lasting trip to Mars this Thursday. Orion’s maiden flight, Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), slated to test spacecraft’s crucial systems is a critical first step on our journey to destinations beyond Earth never before visited by humans, like asteroids and Mars. “Everyone is very excited about this mission,” Stephanie Schierholz, NASA spokesperson…

Australia’s vast and complex land surface has been exposed in new ways thanks to the most comprehensive nation-wide digital maps of our soils and landscapes yet produced. The entire country is now represented as a digital grid with two billion ‘pixels’ that are about 90 by 90 metres, down to a depth of two metres…

Scientists have confirmed a new bird species found in the tropical rainforests on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The Sulawesi Streaked Flycatcher (Muscicapa sodhii) lives in the forest canopy of the rugged hills of Sulawesi, and has heavily streaked underparts and relatively short wings. Ding Li Yong, a PhD student at the Fenner School of…

It’s Sunday… Hurray! It’s our time to review what have happened during the last 7 days. This time we bring you the most exciting stories from biology, nature and wildlife. So, let’s start our tour! Grey seals identified as killers behind mystery harbour porpoise deaths Using DNA analysis of the the bite wounds, a Dutch…

A human disease pandemic, European honey bee colonies wiped out and an invasion of a devastating wheat disease are just three potential biosecurity threats facing Australia, according to a report released this week. These three events alone could devastate Australia’s agricultural industries, economy and environment, and could severely alter our way of life. But, how…

A new national research centre based at ANU will investigate how language works and how it makes us who we are. Based at the University, the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language draws together the nation’s top linguists, philosophers, psychologists and roboticists to puzzle out the complex mechanisms of human communication. The…

Current efforts to prevent violence against women and girls are inadequate, according to a new Series published in The Lancet. Estimates suggest that globally, 1 in 3 women has experienced either physical or sexual violence from their partner, and that 7% of women will experience sexual assault by a non-partner at some point in their…

Here we are at the end of one more exciting and fascinating week. It’s our time to summarise what have happened during the previous 7 days. The focus of today’s editor’s selection would be on psychology, neuropsychological and medical research. So, let’s start our journey! Psychology: How many senses do we have? We often talk…

Chemists have developed a revolutionary new way to manufacture natural chemicals and used it to assemble a scarce anti-inflammatory drug with potential to treat cancer and malaria. The breakthrough could lead to new and cheaper ways to produce rare drugs in large quantities. “We took small molecules and clipped them together like Lego,” said lead…

You might think that a movie about information from 1953 couldn’t possibly be relevant in the age of iPhone apps and the Internet but you’d be wrong. A Communications Primer, directed by that power couple of design Charles and Ray Eames, might refer to some hopelessly quaint technology – computer punch cards, for instance –…

Physicists at ANU have engineered a spiral laser beam and used it to create a whirlpool of hybrid light-matter particles called polaritons. “Creating circulating currents of polaritons – vortices – and controlling them has been a long-standing challenge,” said leader of the team, theoretician Dr Elena Ostrovskaya, from the Research School of Physics and Engineering…

WHO warned recently that progress towards the elimination of measles has stalled. The number of deaths from measles increased from an estimated 122 000 in 2012 to 145 700 in 2013, according to new data published in the WHO Weekly Epidemiological Report and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly…

The ocean is warming steadily and setting up the conditions for stronger El Niño weather events, a new study has shown. A team of US, Australian, and Canadian researchers sampled corals from a remote island in Kiribati to build a 60-year record of ocean surface temperature and salinity. “The trend is unmistakeable, the ocean’s primed…