By Antonia Goetz, Research Fellow Infant Studies, Western Sydney University
Zhen (Jenny) Zeng, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Western Sydney University
You walk in a park. Children are playing, people are walking their dogs, and then you hear someone: “Who’s my little sweetie?” You turn around expecting to see a pram. But someone is sitting beside a dog, speaking in the same voice they would use with a baby.
It’s not in your head. The way we speak to babies is very similar to the way we speak to our pets – and research confirms this.
So why do we do this? And do pets even care?
The useful features of baby-talk
For pets and babies,…
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By Magnus Söderberg, Professor and Director, Centre for Applied Energy Economics and Policy Research, Griffith University
Home batteries and rooftop solar have become enormously popular. But while powerful, these technologies won’t let us get rid of the grid.
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By Bill Sullivan, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Indiana University
Warmer ocean waters are fueling the spread of the bacteria Vibrio vulnificus. Infections can lead to a rare but fatal condition called necrotizing fasciitis.
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By Human Rights Watch
Click to expand Image US soldiers firing a M110 howitzer during Operation Desert Storm, December 29, 1990. The howitzer fired the type of artillery projectiles Turkey has requested permission to retransfer to Ukraine, until it was retired from US service in the mid-1990s. © 1990 Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images (Washington, DC, August 11, 2026) – Türkiye has requested permission from the United States to “retransfer” to Ukraine tens of thousands of cluster munition rockets, missiles, and artillery projectiles that have been in Türkiye’s stockpiles for decades, Human Rights…
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By Kevin Rennie
"From coast to coast across our lands, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are being criminalised and imprisoned at alarming rates because of political point-scoring rather than evidence-based reforms."
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By Ryan M. Katz-Rosene, Associate Professor, School of Political Studies, with Cross-Appointment to Geography, Environment and Geomatics, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa
James Jackson, Lecturer and Research Fellow, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester
Fossil-fuel dependence, the costs of adapting to a changing climate and the transition to cleaner energy are all driving up costs.
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By Leslie Lenkowsky, Professor Emeritus of Public affairs and Philanthropic Studies, Indiana University
HIs achievements as a philanthropist are not widely known today because he did not create a grantmaking foundation that outlasted him.
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By Laurence Grondin-Robillard, Professeure associée à l'École des médias et doctorante en communication, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)
Like many other countries, Canada wants to restrict young people’s access to social media. Can Bill C-34 achieve its intended goals?
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Tuesday, August 11, 2026
Myanmar's military has carried out a sustained campaign of deliberate attacks on civilians – including airstrikes on homes, schools and camps for displaced people, alongside arbitrary detention, torture and sexual violence – according to Human Rights Council-appointed investigators.
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By Chloe James, Professor of Microbiology, University of Salford
Martha Clokie, Professor of Microbiology, University of Leicester
Artificial intelligence has designed viruses that can infect bacteria and reproduce – a first that shows AI is beginning to do more than analyse the genetic code of living things. It can write new versions of it, too.
The viruses in question are bacteriophages, or phages – viruses that infect bacteria rather than people, animals or plants. Researchers used AI to design hundreds of new versions of a well-studied phage, then built the viruses from scratch in the laboratory.
Of 285 AI-designed…
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