AFTER 200 YEARS of European farming practices, Australian soils are in poor shape — depleted of nutrients and organic matter, including carbon. This is bad news for both soil health and efforts to address global warming. The native Australian echidna may hold part of the solution. Echidnas dig pits, furrows and
Science
Why care about ALL native species? Ecosystem collapses now
Australia has adopted a comfortable view that only already ‘endangered’ wildlife or plants need our stewardship. Think koalas versus kangaroos. Even koalas are political footballs in NSW while their vital habitat disappears. Since 1788 almost no research has been done on the environmental roles of diverse wildlife that evolved with natural
Navigation relies on memory, improves brain — indigenous societies did it so well
“NAVIGATION DEVICES MAKE vast reserves of distributed knowledge available to us in an instant. But, crucially, they never require us to possess information in our own memory in the way that successful navigators have been required to do till now.” M.R. O’Connor’s new book Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans
I’ve always wondered: how do cyclones get their names?
How did life form after Big Bang?
New evidence. THE BIG BANG theory and the question of how life on Earth began has fascinated scientists for decades, but new research from The University of Western Australia suggests the conditions that resulted from the Big Bang are different to what we thought. The Big Bang theory, developed in 1927 is
Bees get stressed at work too (and it might be causing colony collapse)
By Amélie Cabirol, University of Trento and Andrew Barron, Macquarie. EVER BEEN OVERWORKED, tired and felt muddle-headed? Research now shows honey bees suffer from the same thing – and we understand why. A honey bee’s life is hardly relaxing. Every day forager bees make many trips, travelling long distances, to gather vital
Video-of-the-Week: Cuttlefish – tentacles in disguise
Aboriginal Australians co-existed with the megafauna for at least 17,000 years
What it could have looked like when humans and megafauna lived together: a giant macropod Procoptodon goliah in the foreground, while Thylacinus cynocephalus hunts for prey nearby. A herd of Zygomaturus can be see on the lake edge of the ancient Willandra system. Illustration by Laurie Beirne, Author provided. AUSTRALIA WAS
Global ocean dead zones and hot greenhouse climate during age of dinosaurs
CSIRO media report. AN INTERNATIONAL TEAM of scientists aboard research vessel JOIDES Resolution have arrived in Fremantle after an eight-week voyage studying Australia’s climate and tectonics during the Cretaceous Period (the last age of the dinosaurs). Of particular interest are the global ocean dead zones, known as Oceanic Anoxic Events (OAEs). They
Here’s why the 2017 flu season was so bad
Vaccines for the flu offer mediocre coverage compared with those for other diseases. PLRANG ART/Shutterstock Ian M. Mackay, The University of Queensland and Katherine Arden, The University of Queensland Australia has recorded 221,853 flu infections so far in 2017, more than any other year. As the flu season comes to an end, we’re