Shaking up Australia’s ‘state vs state’ innovation

Australian states need to cooperate, rather than compete, to develop new technologies and applications, expand the national economy, and build the resilience the nation will need in the future.

Force of habit

Habits are the mind’s shortcuts, allowing us to successfully engage in our daily life while reserving our reasoning and executive functioning capacities for novel thoughts and important actions.

The wreck of the Blythe Star discovered

The wreck of the MV Blythe Star, a 44-metre coastal freighter that disappeared off Tasmania nearly 50 years ago with the loss of three crew, has been found by ocean researchers.

What next for Australian science and innovation?

Australia needs a comprehensive and well funded plan to drive national progress and prosperity through research and development.

Our quantum future

The release of its first National Quantum Strategy this week committed the Australian government to building the world’s first error-corrected quantum computer.

Sustaining women in STEM

Women pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and maths are still fighting an uphill battle in Australian workplaces, despite a spike in girls studying STEM subjects in schools and universities.

Extraordinary enzymes

Enzymes are proteins which act as biological catalysts in the cells of living things and accelerate the chemical reactions required to sustain life. Discovered and defined in the 19th century, they are now being harnessed by 21st century scientists in a host of ways in industry and the environment.

Rethinking research funding

Education Minister Jason Clare has just released a highly anticipated review into the federal legislation underpinning the Australian Research Council (ARC) and its funding of non-medical research in this country.

Most of us can’t see the stars

Oscar Wilde’s Lord Darlington once quipped that “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”, but even his Lordship would be hard put to glimpse many stars in today’s light polluted urban skies.

Machine dreams

Researchers from the University of Technology Sydney have developed biosensor technology that will allow people to operate devices, such as robots and machines, solely through thought control.

Uncertain premises

Science is a process, rather than a body of knowledge, and the progress of knowledge means that many ideas which were once taught as facts have proven incomplete or entirely fallacious.

The other Hendrix

The third part of Mike Barraclough’s memoir remembers the radical changes new technology brought to newspaper production.