Science & Health
What will AI really mean for science?
Artificial intelligence (AI) has taken centre stage in basic science. The five winners of the 2024 Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and ...
Continue reading →
Understanding the evolution of tipping points
Dying coral reefs, rainforests transforming into savannas, grasslands turning into deserts – these are ecosystem “tipping points”, boundary lines we’re ...
Continue reading →
The American diet: Serving up sickness
Most of you will be aware of the acronym ‘SAD’, standing for the Standard American Diet. Yes? That diet, since ...
Continue reading →
How science really works
This article is part of our ‘Celebrate Science’ feature series to mark National Science Week, 10-18 August 2024. A man ...
Continue reading →
Why ‘science communication’ needs to harness human curiosity
This article is part of our ‘Celebrate Science’ feature series to mark National Science Week, 10-18 August 2024. Science communication ...
Continue reading →
From my brush with breast cancer, I know the value of science – and the need to defend it – more than ever
This article is part of our ‘Celebrate Science’ feature series to mark National Science Week, 10-18 August 2024. Many people ...
Continue reading →
Timing of embryo split may explain sexual orientation in twins
Same-gender sexual attraction is a feature of human sexuality. Estimates of same-gender proclivity vary from the original Kinsey reports of ...
Continue reading →
Will AI help or hinder trust in science?
In the past year, generative artificial intelligence tools — such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and OpenAI’s video generation tool Sora — have captured the public’s ...
Continue reading →
Human culture is changing too fast for evolution to catch up
Research is showing that many of our contemporary problems, such as the rising prevalence of mental health issues, are emerging from rapid technological ...
Continue reading →
Unravelling life’s origin
There is still so much we don’t understand about the origin of life on Earth. The definition of life itself ...
Continue reading →
Biology by the book
Back in 1987, around the beginnings of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Australia, as a Senior Medical Officer I had volunteered ...
Continue reading →
To restore trust in science, we need great storytellers
All good scientists are sceptics. Scepticism is central to the scientific method, which is basically designed to prevent the most ...
Continue reading →