By Cyril Grueter, Adjunct Associate Professor, The University of Western Australia; University of Oxford
The first time I saw it, I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at. A northern white-cheeked gibbon at Shanghai Zoo was holding and caressing a mouse that had wandered into its enclosure. It wasn’t trying to eat it or chase it away. Instead, the gibbon treated the tiny rodent with remarkable gentleness. I couldn’t stop wondering why.
Years later, while studying wild black-and-white snub-nosed monkeys in the mountains of south-west China, I watched playful juveniles repeatedly trying to climb onto the backs of domestic pigs. Again, these weren’t the kinds of interactions I expected…
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By Sharad Gupta, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Cardiff Metropolitan University
You search online for a pair of trainers. Minutes later, similar shoes appear on social media feeds. A shopping site offers a limited-time discount and suggests a matching jacket. This is no longer just an advert shown to millions of people. Increasingly, artificial intelligence is helping decide not only what you see, but which sales pitch is most likely to persuade you.
As AI becomes more deeply embedded in online shopping, researchers like me are asking whether these systems are merely making shopping…
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By Raven Cretney, Senior Lecturer, Department of Tourism, Sport and Society, Lincoln University, New Zealand
New research shows disabled people remain overlooked in climate policy, despite lived experience that could help build more resilient communities.
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By Jane Younger, Senior Lecturer in Southern Ocean Vertebrate Ecology, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania
Australia has confirmed deadly H5N1 bird flu has been found in 102 wild seabirds across five states at the time of writing, including the country’s first mass death of birds.
The question is no longer if this virus can harm Australian wildlife, but whether we should use every available tool to protect species most at risk.
Vaccination cannot stop H5N1 spreading…
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By Katherine Belov, Professor of Comparative Genomics, University of Sydney
Carolyn Hogg, Professor of Biodiversity & Conservation and Co-Lead, Australasian Wildlife Genomics Group, University of Sydney
Lethal bird flu is now spreading in Australia. This is bad news for many native species.
New federal government analysis suggests close to one in five Australian bird and mammal species is at high, very high or extreme risk. But this risk assessment omits something vital – how…
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By Yuting Zhang, Professor of Health Economics, The University of Melbourne
Kevin Staub, Associate Professor in Economics, The University of Melbourne
Nathan Kettlewell, Associate Professor, School of Economics and Marketing, University of Technology Sydney
New research shows what happens if the extra health insurance rebate for over-65s is scrapped, as planned. Here’s why the sky won’t fall in.
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By Blair Williams, Lecturer in Australian Politics, UNSW
As consistent as her beliefs on race and immigration, Hanson has been championing men’s rights causes for 30 years – at the expense of women.
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By Claire Wright, Senior Lecturer and Business Historian, School of Management, University of Technology Sydney
If we are serious about equality, appointing more women to leadership roles should be accompanied by questioning the model of leadership itself.
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By Bronwyn Reid O'Connor, Senior Lecturer in Mathematics Education, University of Sydney
Katherin Cartwright, Senior Lecturer Primary Education, University of Sydney
Yes, there appears to be a downward trend in Year 3 numeracy. But the decline is small and not statistically significant.
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By Hannah Schunker, ARC Future Fellow, Physics, University of Newcastle
The Sun doesn’t just fuel almost all life on Earth. It’s also our astrophysical laboratory, the only star close enough to observe in sufficient detail.
This enormous ball of hydrogen and helium is made of plasma – extremely hot, electrically charged gas. The churning of plasma within the Sun produces an invisible magnetic field that envelops our entire Solar System.
Up close, at the Sun’s surface, the plasma is turbulent, dragging the magnetic field with it. It roils and bubbles and occasionally bursts out…
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