Inducing consumer paralysis: how retailers bury customers in an avalanche of choice

By Robert Slonim

Do you think you are paying more than you should for energy, banking, insurance, internet and phone services? You are not alone, and you are probably right. Companies offer a growing number of deals that supposedly...

The New York Times ends daily political cartoons, but it's not the death of the art form

By Richard Scully

The New York Times has announced it will no longer be running daily political cartoons in its international edition, amid a continuing controversy over anti-Semitism in its pages. This brings the international paper in...

Young Australians champion 'democracy' and 'freedom' in designing constitutional change

By Benjamin T. Jones Et Al

When the Australian constitution was written in the 1890s, the authors did not envision an independent nation, but a self-governing dominion of the British empire. As such, the preamble does not contain flowery language...

Major corporate failures have more in common than you'd think, and can be avoided

By Christoph Seckler

Well-known firms such as AIG, American Airlines, Arthur Andersen, Blockbuster, Chrysler, Citigroup, Delta Airlines, Dunlop, Enron, General Motors, Kodak, Marks Spencer, Nokia, Parmalat, Polaroid and Woolworth have one...

Food label nutrition facts matter to you, but don't tell you much about your gut microbes

By Abigail Johnson

It seems like every day a new study is published that links the bacteria in the gut to a specific disease or health condition. The allure of research like ours and that of other groups is that it might eventually be...

The neuroscience of terrorism: how we convinced a group of radicals to let us scan their brains

By Nafees Hamid Et Al

The young man sitting in the waiting room of our neuroimaging facility wearing skinny jeans and trainers looked like a typical Spanish 20-year-old of Moroccan origin. Yassine* was bouncy, chatting up the research...

Uber in the air: flying taxi trials may lead to passenger service by 2023

By Matthew Marino

Uber Air will start test flights of its aerial taxi service in 2020, and move to commercial operations by 2023, the ABC reported today. Melbourne, Dallas and Los Angels have been named as three test cities for the...

The Section 44 soap opera: why more MPs could be in danger of being forced out

By H. K. Colebatch

One thing we learned from the recent election campaign is that the political crisis over Section 44 of the Constitution has not gone away. Many candidates in the election had their eligibility to stand for parliament...

Australia doesn't protect free speech, but it could

By Misha Ketchell

Because we are so saturated in American culture, very few Australians realise that free speech in this country isnt really a thing. It is not merely not protected its far worse than that. If you read any of the vast array...

How your phone can interrupt the good vibes of a summer music festival

By Christine Van Winkle

For many communities, summertime is festival season. Festivals allow us to escape our everyday lives. Whether it is time spent listening to music outside with our friends or trying out food trucks on date night, community...

Language matters when the Earth is in the midst of a climate crisis

By Madhur Anand

In a 2015 essay, poet and novelist Margaret Atwood wrote, Its not climate change, its everything change. Atwood asked us back then to reconsider the term climate change because there is not a system human or non-human ...

If we fall into a recession (and we might) we'll have ourselves to blame

By Richard Holden

The facts are not in dispute. Annual GDP growth has fallen to 1.8%. On a per-capita basis we have had three consecutive quarters of negative growth. The last time that happened was during the drought and recession of...

Man's stressed friend: how your mental health can affect your dog

By Bronwyn Orr

If you think your dog looks stressed out, it might be your own stress levels that are affecting your pet pooch. A study published on Thursday in Natures Scientific Reports shows pet dogs may synchronise their stress...

Can a $12 pill test for ecstasy save lives? Well, it's complicated

By Ross Hollett Et Al

Can a A$12 pill test prevent deaths from ecstasy? Our research, published today, finds pill testing provides no magic answer. We found not everyone acts on the result of a pill test in the same way. It depends on the...

Why there's more greenhouse gas in the atmosphere than you may have realised

By Zoe Loh Et Al

Zoe Loh, Research Scientist, CSIRO This week brought news that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels at the Mauna Loa atmospheric observatory in Hawaii have risen steeply for the seventh year in a row, reaching a May...

If it's voluntary for developers to make affordable housing deals with councils, what can you expect?

By Katrina Raynor Et Al

Housing in Australia is broken. Across the country, only 2% of private rentals are affordable for a person on the minimum wage. Less than 1% are affordable for a single person on the pension. There are 650,000 households...

Does hitting the snooze button really help you feel better?

By Steven Bender

To sleep or to snooze? You probably know the answer, but you dont prefer it. Most of us probably use the snooze function on our alarm clocks at some point in our lives. Just a few more minutes under the covers, a time...

Solar panels all over the Sahara desert? – Imagine newsletter #2

By Will de Freitas

You may have seen a variant of this meme before. A map of North Africa is shown, with a surprisingly small box somewhere in Libya or Algeria shaded in. An area of the Sahara this size, the caption will say, could power the...

Employed but still poor: the state of low-wage working poverty in South Africa

By Derek Yu

Paid employment is generally considered the predominant and most sustainable way of pulling people out of poverty. But the past two decades have seen a global rise in the complex phenomenon of the working poor. South...

African universities need structures to assess and measure the impact of grants

By Harris Andoh

Since Africas earliest modern public universities were established on the continent in the 1940s, these institutions have struggled to generate adequate and sustainable funding. For the most part, universities on the...

What would happen to Congress if Washington, DC became the 51st state?

By Dudley Poston

For years, the official motto of the District of Columbia has been Taxation without representation. The residents of Washington, D.C. do not have representation in the U.S. House or in the Senate. People who live in the...

Dogs may reflect their owners' stress levels, finds research

By Jan Hoole

Stress is an unavoidable component of modern life. Many people worry about the effect of a stressful lifestyle on their long-term health, but how many of us think about how our lifestyle, and our own stress levels, affect...

Tech companies collect our data every day, but even the biggest datasets can't solve social issues

By Doug Specht

At almost every point in our day, we interact with digital technologies which collect our data. From the moment our smart phones wake us up, to our watch tracking our morning run, every time we use public transport, every...

Spiritual science: how a new perspective on consciousness could help us understand ourselves

By Steve Taylor

Scientists have long been trying to understand human consciousness the subjective stuff of thoughts and sensations inside our minds. There used to be an assumption that consciousness is produced by our brains, and that in...

What the US could learn about vaccination from Nigeria

By Shobana Shankar

To consider that Nigeria, infamous for anti-vaxx campaigns leading to polio outbreaks, has any lessons for Americans may be shocking. But as measles cases in the U.S. climb to an all-time high after the disease was...

No, Americans shouldn't fear traveling abroad

By Jay L. Zagorsky

As summer travel season begins, friends and relatives have asked me if its safe to travel outside the U.S. I understand their fears. The news is filled with scary stories, like a tourist bus being bombed near Egypts...

Women have been the heart of the Christian right for decades

By Emily Suzanne Johnson

Alabamas new abortion restrictions were signed into law by Gov. Kay Ivey. But more has been said recently about the fact that the bill was passed by 25 white men in the state Senate. Media reports have pointed to how this...

How to build a business that lasts more than 200 years – lessons from Japan's shinise companies

By Innan Sasaki

Japan is home to a number of the worlds oldest companies. There is even a specific Japanese term for companies that have survived for more than a century, retained ownership within the same family and continued plying the...

Vegans and vegetarians: the history of how plant-based diets grew out of left-wing ideology

By Sky Duthie

The rise of the vegetarian and, more recently, the vegan diet is generally perceived to be a new phenomenon. So, too, is their association with contemporary progressive ideas, politics and lifestyles. But plant-based diets...

Social care crisis is letting down professional carers too

By Elyse Couch

I started as a care worker in August 2012, a year after a BBC Panorama documentary exposing abuse at Winterbourne View sent shock waves through the social care system. During my time care working, between 2012 to 2014,...

A urinal in a Scottish pub reveals why toilets matter in international politics

By Rhys Crilley Et Al

If you wanted to see international politics in action, where would you go? Maybe the UN headquarters in New York to see diplomats debating resolutions of global import? Or drop in on one of the worlds many financial hubs,...

Grattan on Friday: Media freedom joins the current 'freedoms' agenda

By Michelle Grattan

Scott Morrison is very concerned to protect freedom of religion, and many Liberals tell us we dont have enough safeguards for freedom of speech. Now the prime minister has on his hands a massive, unexpected and, for him,...

Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday attacks were meant for international audience, but have local consequences

By Alena Drieschova

I was in Sri Lanka, near the city of Matale, when the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks happened. The last time I was in the country was in 2008, when the war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers) and...

To tackle our mental health crisis, career guidance could be surprisingly important

By Pete Robertson

Being unemployed tends to be bad for your mental heath. We know this from long-term studies which show that peoples mental health often deteriorates when they become unemployed and can improve when they get a new job. It...

Driverless cars: once they're on the road, human drivers should be banned

By Jonathan Webber

Self-driving cars could revolutionise peoples lives. By the end of the next decade, or perhaps even sooner, they could radically transform public spaces and liberate us from the many problems of mass car ownership. Theyll...

The end is nigh for Apple's iTunes as the tech giant targets separate audio and video markets

By Marc C-Scott

Apple says its replacing iTunes with three dedicated entertainment applications as part of its new Mac operating system, Catalina, for desktop and laptop computers. A key reason for the change is based around the way we...

Expect weak economic growth for quite some time. What Wednesday's national accounts tell us

By Tim Robinson

The Australian economy grew by just 0.4% in the March quarter. It was a pick up from 0.2% in the December quarter, but over the year the four quarters taken together amounted to only 1.8%. Its the first time Australias...

Equity in health care improves people's health

By Annette J. Browne

Promoting equity in health care improves peoples health. Doing so can be low cost and have high impact. Based on more than 15 years of research, we provide concrete examples of actions that can be taken by people working...

From the penalty box to the ballot box, our brains are wired for tribalism

By Veena D. Dwivedi

Ive been living in southern Ontario for more than a decade, having also lived in various parts of the United States and India. But Im a Montrealer, born and raised. It was a bit of an adjustment moving to my neighbouring...

Is my child being too clingy and how can I help?

By Elizabeth Westrupp

Many parents complain of difficulties in managing clingy children whether its a baby who cries every time the parent is out of sight, a toddler who clings to their parents legs at social events, or a primary school kid...

The debate over what ails philanthropy heats up

By David Campbell

The Binghamton University students taking a philanthropy class Ive been teaching for years have made more than US$150,000 in grants to local charities since 2009. Because giving away money is a rewarding experience, the...

Financial incentives could spur cities and land owners to protect wetlands

By Alanna Rebelo

New York City processes about 1 billion gallons of water every day. To do so, it doesnt rely on water filtration plants alone. It also depends on the natural filtration capacity of the upstream Catskill Catchment. The...

Antibiotic resistance is not new – it existed long before people used drugs to kill bacteria

By Ivan Erill

Imagine a world where your odds of surviving minor surgery were one to three. A world in which a visit to the dentist could spell disaster. This is the world into which your great-grandmother was born. And if humanity...

Chinese brides wear as many as five dresses – yet provide inspiration for a sustainable fashion future

By Sara Sterling

Across the Northern hemisphere flowers are blooming, days are warmer and birds are singing. In China, where I live, there is another highly visible indicator of the season: couples dressed in their wedding day finest are...

Narcissism – and the various ways it can lead to domestically abusive relationships

By Ava Valashjardi

Narcissism is a topic that is increasingly spoken about in todays Instagram obsessed age of self-promotion and vanity. There has also been a significant increase in studies and investigations into narcissism, and that too...

What do 11-year-olds think about Brexit? I asked – and they didn't hold back

By Katrina Lloyd

Brexit has been a seismic event in UK politics, but its real implications will be felt most by future generations of children. Once the immediate political drama is over, it is todays young people who will live in the new...

Press, platforms and power: mapping out a stronger Australian media landscape

By Tim Dwyer Et Al

In his first address to the caucus after Labors shock election loss, Bill Shorten pointed to conservative interests spending unprecedented hundreds of millions of dollars advertising, telling lies, spreading fear...

It's perfectly legal for doctors to charge huge amounts for surgery, but should it be allowed?

By Louisa Gordon

Australias Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy will investigate how to better protect patients from doctors charging really unjustifiable, excessive fees of up to A$10,000 or more for medical procedures. Murphy said it...

Menopause? Start estrogen replacement therapy sooner, to reduce heart disease

By Glen Pyle

Hormone replacement therapy for post-menopausal women was once seen as a fountain of youth. Studies showed regular estrogen supplementation decreased the risk of cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in...

Trump's Mexico tariffs don't make sense, but Americans will pay a steep price anyway if they go into effect

By Christina Fattore

The Trump administration says it intends to slap a 5% tariff on every medium-sized car, avocado and other Mexican import beginning June 10 all almost US$1 billion worth that crosses the border into the U.S. each day on...