Guest Author
No animal required, but would people eat artificial meat?
Futurists tell us that we will be eating in vitro meat (IVM) – meat grown in a laboratory rather than on a farm – within five to ten years.
IVM was first investigated in the early years of this century and since then criticisms of...
Bystanders often don’t intervene in sexual harassment – but should they?
Women are more likely to intervene than men
As the summer music festival season winds down, there has been much reflection on the spate of sexual harassment and assaults at festivals this year. In one such piece, published in The Guardian, the author lamented...
Which supplements work? New labels may help separate the wheat from the chaff
How do you really know if vitamin and mineral supplements really “help your heart” or “boost your mood”?
New proposals from Australia’s drug regulator should give you a better idea if your complementary medicines do what they say on the packet.
One change proposed by...
New study shows more time walking means less time in hospital
If all the over-55s got walking, we could save almost $2 billion in health care costs each year
In my practice as a GP, I have been impressed by a few energetic and active 80 year olds who remain in good health while many...
Australia’s electricity market is not agile and innovative enough to keep up
The rules were written at a time when coal and gas were the only major options
On the early evening of Wednesday, February 8, electricity supply to some 90,000 households and businesses in South Australia was cut off for up to an hour. Two...
Alcohol leads to more violence than other drugs, but you’d never know from the headlines
Drinking alcohol, not taking illicit drugs like ecstasy or LSD, is more closely linked with violence. Yet, media reports tend to say the opposite
Mainstream media tend to report more stories about illicit drugs than alcohol.
Stories about illicit drugs are also more negative. The...
Increased private health insurance premiums don’t mean increased value
New health minister Greg Hunt has approved a 4.8% rise in health
insurance premiums
A topic of discussion at many barbecues this summer will inevitably be private health insurance. Is it worth it? Do we need it? Every year it gets more expensive. The average...
Black holes are even stranger than you can imagine
An artist’s impression of a Sun-like star close to a rapidly spinning supermassive black hole, with a mass of about 100 million times the mass of our Sun
Our love of black holes continues to grow as our knowledge of these celestial bodies expands....
Droughts and flooding rains already more likely as climate change plays havoc with Pacific weather
Climate change is already delivering more extremes of wet and dry to the Pacific region
Global warming has already increased the risk of major disruptions to Pacific rainfall, according to our research published today in Nature Communications. The risk will continue to rise over...
Crisis, what crisis? How smart solar can protect our vulnerable power grids
Solar panels can be both a headache and an opportunity for network companies
Some commentators seem to be worried that our electricity networks are facing an impending voltage crisis, citing fears that renewables (rooftop solar panels in particular) will threaten the quality of our...
