Their foot’s in the door

While The Last of Us remains a work of fiction, real-life scientists are worried about rising rates and severity of fungal infections worldwide.

Rush hour

State governments could look to a new road pricing strategy to help ease traffic gridlock in our increasingly congested cities.

A park in your pocket

Population pressures and higher density housing are consuming the private gardens which once greened our cities and suburbs, increasing the importance of ‘pocket parks’ to offer wildlife and residents a welcome home.

Renewable backup power can boost disaster resilience

Households need more support to implement alternative energy solutions to help manage outages during bushfires and extreme weather events.

Using farm dams for pumped hydro storage

Tens of thousands of small-scale hydro energy storage sites could be built from Australia’s farm dams, supporting the uptake of reliable, low-carbon power systems in rural communities.

Fire down below

The recent devastation caused by wildfires across Europe and Hawaii has sparked concerns about the return of catastrophic bushfires in Australia, but despite the forecast of a hotter, drier summer, a repeat of recent ‘black summers’ appears unlikely.

Judgement day

A lot of people would welcome the widespread replacement of lawyers by AI, but the legal profession – like every group of workers threatened by mechanisation or automation before it – is gearing up to argue for its indispensability.

Planning for regional housing

Successive governments have encouraged mass immigration to artificially bouy economic growth in the absence of real productivity rises, but this has created housing shortages and resulting price rises in Australia’s urban centres, increasing the need for better planning for housing in regional areas.

Transport free-for-all?

Fares only cover a quarter of the cost of public transport, so would removing fares for everyone make sense in terms of cutting traffic jams and improving social, as well as physical, mobility?

Help the kelp

Marine ecologists from UNSW Sydney are calling on the public to participate in a global challenge to restore a million hectares of lost underwater kelp forest by 2040.

On-demand bus services could shake up public transport

Uber-style disruption could make urban public transport more flexible and responsive for travellers.

Bye, bye bowling

Lawn bowling clubs were once common around Sydney, but changing demographics and soaring land values mean that many have been redeveloped, and more vanish every year.