By Phil Wiseman, Ernest Rutherford Fellow, University of Southampton
Mark Sullivan, Professor, University of Southampton
A 2025 study by South Korean researchers caught the attention of the astronomy community when it suggested that the evidence behind dark energy could be wrong. Dark energy makes up about 70% of the universe but nobody knows what it is. This makes it a frequent target for scepticism.
Scientists had long known that the universe was expanding. But in the late 1990s, researchers discovered that this expansion was accelerating. Astrophysicists concluded that something must be driving the acceleration. They named this unknown quantity “dark energy”.
The…
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By Mona Nikidehaghani, Senior Lecturer in Accounting, University of Wollongong
The government wants to cut $37.8 billion from the NDIS over 4 years. Much of this will come from tightening access to the scheme and reducing participants’ plans.
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By Ghazaal Habibyar, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Social Sciences, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
The author was banned from school by the Taliban as a girl in 1996. Years after the Taliban returned to power in 2021, she asks why the international community’s response has fallen so short.
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By Stephen Coleman, Emeritus Professor of Political Communication, University of Leeds
The people of Clacton have spoken. Well, 44% of them have, with the majority of eligible voters staying at home rather than cast their ballot in the byelection. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, the winning candidate, also stayed away – snubbing the count at Clacton leisure centre after claiming police had warned him of an organised campaign to disrupt proceedings.
In the end, Farage received 63% of the vote, amounting to an endorsement…
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By Jean-Michel Fustin, Senior Research Fellow, University of Manchester
I teach a university course called Hormones and Behaviour. What surprises students is that biological sex is not produced by a single switch. What surprises me is that many students have never been taught this before. It is basic biology, but it helps explain life.
Sex emerges through a sequence of events before birth and continues at puberty. Chromosomes help direct the formation of gonads, the body parts that usually become ovaries or testes. Gonads make hormones. The body then has to respond to those hormones. In most people, these steps flow in the same direction. But in rare cases,…
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By Kev Stone, Associate Dean - Partnerships and Business Development (Health and Social Care), Faculty of Life Sciences and Education, University of South Wales
David Dearlove, Principal Researcher, Healthy Life Mission, Nesta
Ian Hamilton, Honorary Fellow, Department of Health Sciences, University of York
Jurin Katayama-Flores, Analyst, Health Life Mission, Nesta
Lydia Leon, Director, Healthy Life Team, Nesta
Michael Murphy, Emeritus Professor of Demography, London School of Economics and Political Science
Sarah Vicary, Professor of Social Work and Mental Health
Soazig Clifton, Academic Director for the National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal), UCL
In this fourth part in our series on how the UK has changed in the past 25 years, we look at health.
Life expectancy and illness
Michael Murphy, Emeritus Professor of Demography, London School of Economics
A good way to follow the health of a nation is to glance at what is known as period life-expectancy. This calculates how long a person born today would live if the current death rates remained exactly the same for the rest of their life.…
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By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made a fresh plea for Australia to be given relief from US President Donald Trump’s tariffs during a phone call between the two leaders overnight Thursday.
Trump agreed to “consider” the request.
Albanese described the wide-ranging conversation as productive, constructive and “very warm”.
He told a Friday news conference he asked Trump to “consider a full exemption” from the recently imposed 12.5% tariff, “or at the very least no increase” from the earlier 10% tariff. Australia makes repeated representations against Trump’s…
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By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor, The Conversation
Some ominous news out of Ukraine this week in the form of an air defence assessment from Ukrainian intelligence official, Major-General Vadym Skibitsky. Skibitsky reported that Russia is rejigging its defence industry to prioritise the production of ballistic missiles. This, he said, would mean a concerted campaign of strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure ahead of the coming winter.
Ukraine has already depleted its stocks of air defence systems. It was getting most of these systems from the US, initially directly in the form of military aid and more recently via its other…
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By David Nichols, Professor of Urban Planning, The University of Melbourne
Johnny Young has died at 79 from pancreatic cancer, and Australian pop music has lost another of its multifaceted creatives of the ‘60s and '70s.
While there may be different assessments of Young’s legacy, it’s undeniable he made a major impact on this country’s musical and television landscape.
John de Jong was Dutch-born and raised in Kalamanda, in the hills of Perth. As a pop singer he was an early beneficiary of the generosity of the first wave of Australia’s international pop sensations: the Easybeats’ George Young and Stevie Wright wrote him a hit single, Step Back.…
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By Robert Breunig, Professor of Economics and Director, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
The Productivity Commission has recommended undoing the controversial 2018 changes to the distribution of goods and services tax (GST) revenue between the states that has cost taxpayers A$23 billion.
It has proposed reinstating the system that existed before the Morrison government’s deal that gave billions of dollars in extra funds to Western Australia, at the expense of the other states.
The commission’s 124-page interim report finds the reforms were “a costly mistake” and “have not…
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