What elephants' unique brain structures suggest about their mental abilities
Aug 13, 2018 15:29 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
Conservationists have designated August 12 as World Elephant Day to raise awareness about conserving these majestic animals. Elephants have many engaging features, from their incredibly dexterous trunks to their memory...
Evolution is getting a rethink after scientists take a closer look at Earth's first animals
Aug 13, 2018 15:27 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
When did animals originate? In research published in the journal Palaeontology, we show that this question is answered by Cambrian period fossils of a frond-like sea creature called Stromatoveris psygmoglena. The...
How 'Big History' can save the world
Aug 13, 2018 15:15 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
The term Big History was coined in the early 1990s by the historian David Christian of Macquarie University. It is nothing if not ambitious, aiming to integrate human history with the deeper history of the universe. The...
Sapphire secrets: they aren't all blue, and mining them requires luck plus labour
Aug 13, 2018 15:13 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
My favourite gem is an occasional series where we ask a scientist to share the fascinating geological and social features of a beautiful rock. Part 1 is here. I first remember seeing sapphires as a teenager in a...
To help drought-affected farmers, we need to support them in good times as well as bad
Aug 13, 2018 15:12 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
With the New South Wales government announcing that drought is now affecting the entire state, the federal governments crisis assistance payments have been described by some as too little, too late. The National Farmers...
Fighting historic wildfires amid bad ideas and no funding
Aug 13, 2018 15:10 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
Shortly after my book Firestorm, How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future was published in late 2017, I received a flurry of invitations to speak about the challenges of dealing with fires that are burning bigger, hotter, more...
Trees are made of human breath
Aug 13, 2018 15:06 pm UTC| Insights & Views Nature
Outside my office window, two skilled workers complete a hard and dirty job. Theyre cutting the felled trunk of a tree into small enough pieces to be thrown into the back of a truck with the rest of the chipped remains. I...
Electricity from farm waste: how biogas could help Malawians with no power
What the Supreme Court is doing right in considering Trump’s immunity case
US student Gaza protests: five things that have been missed
Will Solomon Islands’ new leader stay close to China?
IceCube researchers detect a rare type of energetic neutrino sent from powerful astronomical objects