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Foods high in saturated fat and refined sugar reduce the human brain’s capacity to store memories, say Australian researchers. It’s established that too much saturated fat and refined sugar causes obesity, heart disease and some cancers, but thinking ability also declines and brain disorders increase in people on high fat-high sugar diets, says Dr Dominic […]

New research suggests that prescribed burns in South Australia’s Mount Lofty Ranges might be threatening the survival of local reptile species with potential cascading effects for the wider ecosystem. Such health risks for local wildlife in the region and beyond are likely to become more pronounced as climate change worsens, the authors warn. The study, […]

Earlier this year farmers in western Victoria vowed to lock their gates to stop a major energy link to New South Wales even as the developers said they didn’t need permission to access the land and in Wollongong, 1,000 people gathered to protest against renewables – a proposed offshore wind farm. It’s become a familiar scene in regional areas […]

The Pacific is one of the world’s most disaster-prone regions, facing intensifying cyclones, droughts, and rising tides — and now, a growing threat to its freshwater supplies. Hydrology experts at Flinders University are calling for an urgent investigation into how bore fields extract fresh groundwater in the region. The new study, published in the Journal […]

One day soon, we may have permanent human dwellings on the Moon. These structures will need to withstand extreme conditions to protect the vulnerable astronauts and essential equipment inside. And, when things inevitably do go wrong, there won’t be lunar tradies around to repair them. “One of the things we’ve got very used to here […]

When precious relics are unearthed by archaeologists, it’s the job of conservators to ensure they’re passed on to future generations by protecting them from further degradation. But a new study has cast into doubt a common technique used in the conservation of ancient metal artefacts. The “significant and alarming” findings indicate that some clear resin […]

The world’s biggest solar telescope has delivered its first images with a new instrument, showing the Sun’s explosive surface in exceptional detail. The Daniel K Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii – with a primary mirror diameter of 4m – took the images with its Visible Tunable Filtergraph (VTF) spectro-polarimeter. The telescope has been taking scientific […]

When we think about intelligent animals, farm species aren’t usually the first to spring to mind. We may picture tool-using primates or puzzle-solving crows. But my recent research suggests that sheep, goats and alpacas – staples of the barnyard – deserve more credit. In two separate studies, I tested how these animals learn, remember and […]

Small, hungry crabs may be unsung heroes in the fight to save the Great Barrier Reef, playing a critical role in controlling populations of the destructive crown-of-thorns starfish. New research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America reveals compelling evidence of crab predation on juvenile crown-of-thorns, offering […]

Knowing how much methane is leaking into the atmosphere from anthropogenic sources like oil, gas, coal and cows is critical as humans heat up the planet. Now UNSW researchers are trialling  a new plane-mounted hyperspectral camera to make detection of local sources easier.  “Methane is a stronger blanketing effect than CO2, but doesn’t last as […]

Cultured or lab-grown meats have been touted as next great alternative to animal products since the first artificial burger patty was grown in 2013. Though lab-grown meat products have been commercially available in some countries since 2020, they remain expensive, novelty foods with many challenges to address to become widely available. One major obstacle is […]

Deep in the tree hollows, logs, and rock cavities on a mountain on the Hawaiian island of Oʻahu, there dwells a macabre caterpillar – with a penchant for body parts. This rare carnivorous caterpillar skulks about on cobwebs and feasts upon any weakened or recently deceased insects trapped there. It employs a morbid kind of […]

By Richard Musgrove An invasion by ugly but tasty sea creatures might save Tasmania’s kelp forests. But first there has to be some over-fishing. Tasting salty and fishy, and looking like orange-yellow mandarin slices, sea urchin roe is a delicacy, driving a billion dollar global market, with 80% consumed in Japan. Rising sea temperatures are […]

Ocean eddies fed by deepwater upwellings contain essential fats and oils for marine food webs, say German researchers Eddies form in the ocean, when nutrient-rich water welling up from the depths, collides with coastlines — similar to those roiling, swirling currents of water seen in rivers, downstream of rocks. Same idea, bigger scale. Typically, 10-100 […]

Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet 140 light-years from Earth which is disintegrating, leaving a 9-million-km-long comet-like tail. For now, the disintegrating world is about the same size as Mercury. It orbits its host star every 30.5 hours at about 3 million km – about 20 times closer than Mercury is to our Sun. The planet’s […]

The universe has been growing since the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. But cosmologists can’t agree on how fast it is expanding. A new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society suggests a radical new idea that might resolve this astronomical problem – perhaps the universe is spinning very slowly. For […]

An 1800-year old human skeleton unearthed from a Roman cemetery has revealed bite marks consistent with a large cat, like a lion, and is being called the first hard evidence of human-animal combat in England during the Roman Empire. Archaeologists say the man may have died as part of a gladiator show or execution, and […]

Water is critical to life on our planet, but the conventional theory of how it ended up being so abundant on Earth might be completely wrong. The most popular theory is that water made its way to Earth from asteroids bombarding the surface of our planet for about 100 million years when it was very […]

Giant kangaroos should have giant home ranges, but researchers were shocked to find that the largest of them all, Protemnodon, was a real homebody. Habitat, not body size was the key says lead researcher, Dr Chris Laurikainen Gaete, from the University of Wollongong. Protemnodon was a genus of the giant forest kangaroos that lived until […]

The fascinating behaviour of origami has inspired engineers to design a structure that twists when compressed and shrinks when twisted. The structure is a “metamaterial”; a class of engineered materials that exhibit behaviour not seen in nature and whose properties depend on their structure rather than chemical composition. These materials can have applications ranging from […]

In the 11th century in Cairo, the foundations for modern science were laid through the detention of an innocent man. The mathematician Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham had been tasked with regulating the flow of the Nile, but when he saw the river that had shaped 4,000 years of human civilization, the hubris of the […]

A new study of Australian birds examines how for some species their personality shines through in the songs. The research, published in Royal Society Open Science, is based on observations of wild superb-fairy wrens (Malurus cyaneus), a common, small bird in southeastern Australia. Very few previous studies have sought to understand the relationship between the […]

A new nickel-based super-metal alloy that maintains strength and flexibility over an 800oC temperature range has been developed in Korea. A team at researchers at the Republic of Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) called its high entropy allow (HEA) the first of the ‘hyperadaptors’. “Our HEA breaks through the limitations of existing […]

El Niño, a climate troublemaker, has long been one of the largest drivers of variability in the global climate. Every few years, the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean seesaws between warm (El Niño) and cold (La Niña) phases. This reshuffles rainfall patterns, unleashing floods, droughts and storms thousands of miles from the Pacific origin. The 1997-98 […]