By Paul Pettitt, Professor in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University
The ability to make art has often been considered a hallmark of our species. Over a century ago, prehistorians even had trouble believing that modern humans from the Upper Palaeolithic (between 45,000 and 12,000 years ago) were capable of artistic flair.
Discoveries of uncontrovertibly old artworks from the caves and rockshelters of Europe soon dispelled their doubts. But what of the Neanderthals; an ancient, large-brained sister group to our own species? We now know that they were capable of making…
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By Lydia Begoña Horndler Gil, Profesor en inmunología y biología del cáncer, Universidad San Jorge
If you’re reading this there’s a good chance that you, like me, are a millennial. If so, you’ve probably noticed more and more cases of friends or acquaintances with diseases that you would normally associate with later adulthood – hypertension, type 2 diabetes or perhaps even the one that we’re all scared to name: cancer.
Millennials – people born between 1981 and 1995 – are the first generation at greater risk of developing tumours than their parents. Between 1990 and 2019, cases of early-onset…
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By Garritt C. Van Dyk, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Waikato
A pragmatic form of socialism based on improving ordinary people’s lives is winning votes – and making powerful enemies – in equal measure.
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By Ben Phillips, Associate Professor, POLIS@ANU Centre for Social Policy Research, Australian National University
With fertility rates at a record low, many say young people aren’t having kids because they’re too expensive. Turns out, it’s not that simple.
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By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne
A key commitment at May’s federal election was an A$8.5 billion promise to increase incentives for GPs to bulk bill patients. The government moved quickly after the election, with new arrangements to start on November 1.
When a patient is bulk billed they don’t have any out-of-pocket payment to see a GP. If a patient isn’t bulk billed, the GP can charge an out-of-pocket…
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By Jane Melville, Senior Curator, Terrestrial Vertebrates, Museums Victoria Research Institute
Till Ramm, Research Associate, Sciences Department, Museums Victoria Research Institute
In pockets of highlands across Australia’s east lives a shy and secretive lizard. It’s usually reddish grey in colour, with two pale strips running the length of its spiky back. Growing to a maximum of 20 centimetres, it could easily fit in the palm of an adult’s hand.
But although the mountain dragon (Rankinia diemensis) is small, it can teach us big lessons about the influence of climate change on Australian biodiversity, as our new research, published today in Current Biology, demonstrates.
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By Vijay Mishra, Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Murdoch University
Kiran Desai’s surname was familiar to the world of literature when her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss, won the Man Booker Prize in 2006. Her mother, Anita Desai, was already an accomplished novelist, who had been nominated for the Booker three times. The Inheritance of Loss was hailed as a defining example of both the postcolonial novel and the realist novel of the Indian diaspora: Indians living elsewhere, around the world.
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By Matthew Thompson, Lecturer in History and Communications, University of Southern Queensland
With its mixture of bloody costumes and scary themes, it can often feel like Halloween is luring kids into topics they are not ready to grapple with.
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By Alasdair Macintyre, Associate lecturer visual arts, artist, PhD, Australian Catholic University
On a crisp winter evening in 1985, a documentary went to air whose advance advertising promised to scare viewers out of their wits. It didn’t disappoint.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the broadcast of Haunted on Australian television.
Following the success of the 1984 Ghostbusters movie, there was a public appetite for all things spooky.
Over the course of 97 minutes, Haunted documents 14 cases of alleged hauntings across Australia, from Fremantle in the west, to the convict settlements of…
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By Tony Silva, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of British Columbia
Emily Huddart, Professor of Sociology, University of British Columbia
What would you say if you were told that paranormal activity exists? Well, nearly half of Canadians would agree.
What is the paranormal, exactly? It refers to phenomena that science cannot explain and are not part of a major religion in a particular society. In contrast, religious phenomena are part of an established doctrine. For example, in Canada, psychic abilities and Bigfoot or Sasquatch are considered paranormal,…
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