Summer is coming! Here's why you need to protect your children's eyes

By Langis Michaud

Should we buy sunglasses for children? And if so, how do we choose a quality product? Its a question that I get a lot in clinics. I reply that it is good to remember what the suns effects on eye health are, and how they...

Colonial genocide is a composite act: A human rights analysis

By Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann

Canada is currently embroiled in a debate about whether the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls should have used the word genocide to describe our federal, provincial and municipal...

Cannabis quality involves careful science and carefree highs

By Michael J. Armstrong

Canadas legal cannabis industry continues to make progress. Product shortages are decreasing. Store numbers are increasing. And edible cannabis regulations have just been finalized. With these basics falling into place,...

Mohamed Morsi: death of Egypt's former president shows deep state was always going to triumph

By Dina Rezk

Mohamed Morsi, Egypts first democratically elected president, died on June 17 in court in Cairo where he was on trial facing charges of espionage. He will be remembered for a short and divisive presidency and his failure...

Four laws that need urgent reform to protect both national security and press freedom

By Denis Muller

In a perfect world, Australia would introduce constitutional protections for freedom of the press. But since the chances of that are next to zero, it might be more productive to look instead at what might be done to make...

Playing games? It's a serious way to win community backing for change

By Anthony Duckworth

How would you and your neighbours triple the number of households in your street block in order to keep your cherished suburb thriving and do your bit to tackle urban sprawl? You have a number of choices to make. Where do...

Netflix is opening its first Australian HQ. What does this mean for the local screen industry?

By Ramon Lobato Et Al

Netflix officially entered the Australian market in 2015, and now reaches 50% of Australias adult population. Despite its remarkable success, Netflix has been a purely virtual operation with no local staff, office, or...

The three things universities must do to survive disruption

By John Fischetti

This essay is part of a series of articles on the future of education. The nature of global communication (for better and worse) has changed. Virtually all young people in Australia spend an average of nine hours a...

Sport is full of conspiracy theories – Chris Froome’s horrific cycling crash is just the latest example

By Mathew Marques

The recent crash of four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome put his attempt for a record-equalling 5th title on hold. (The 2019 Tour de France starts on July 6.) But the spectacular, career-limiting smash also...

Nuclear weapons and Iran's uranium enrichment program: 4 questions answered

By Miles A. Pomper

Editors note: Iranian leaders have threatened to withdraw from a 2015 agreement that limits their nations nuclear activities. Under the deal, the United States and five other world powers lifted economic sanctions they had...

France and Britain in a race for carbon neutrality by 2050

By Céline Guivarch Et Al

The long-running rivalry between France and Britain has entered a new era: who will decarbonise the fastest. As the UK government announced on June 11 that it had committed to a net zero emissions target for 2050, the...

American giving lost some ground in 2018 amid tax changes and stock market losses

By Una Osili Et Al

The sweeping tax reforms that took effect in 2018 meant fewer Americans could itemize their taxes and benefit from the charitable deduction. Has that brought about any dramatic changes in charitable giving? We are...

Want to be healthy and happy? Choose a ⁠c⁠o⁠n⁠s⁠c⁠i⁠e⁠n⁠t⁠i⁠o⁠u⁠s⁠ ⁠p⁠a⁠r⁠t⁠n⁠e⁠r⁠

By Lynn Williams

Y⁠o⁠u⁠r⁠ ⁠p⁠a⁠r⁠t⁠n⁠e⁠r⁠⁠s⁠ ⁠p⁠e⁠r⁠s⁠o⁠n⁠a⁠l⁠i⁠t⁠y⁠ ⁠c⁠a⁠n⁠ ⁠i⁠n⁠f⁠l⁠u⁠e⁠n⁠c⁠e⁠ ⁠y⁠o⁠u⁠r⁠ ⁠l⁠i⁠f⁠e⁠ ⁠i⁠n⁠ ⁠a⁠l⁠l⁠ ⁠s⁠o⁠r⁠t⁠s⁠ ⁠o⁠f⁠ ⁠w⁠a⁠y⁠s⁠. For example, studies have shown that a conscientious partner i⁠s⁠ ⁠g⁠o⁠o⁠d⁠...

Meat is masculine: how food advertising perpetuates harmful gender stereotypes

By Kate Stewart Et Al

The UK Advertising Standards Authority has introduced a new rule in its advertising code which bans adverts which feature gender stereotypes that are likely to cause harm, or serious or widespread offence. This is a...

The victories -- and continuing struggles -- of women in Sudan

By Nada Mustafa Ali

One of the most popular images from Sudans protests that led to the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir is that of Alaa Salah a young, female university student. The image of her speaking to a crowd highlighted the presence and...

South Africa should learn from Brazil about how to tackle 'hidden hunger'

By Brittany Kesselman

South Africa faces a double burden of hunger and malnutrition, on the one hand, and obesity with associated non-communicable diseases (NCDs), on the other. In many countries, in both the global North and South,...

Three times citizens mobilised to put affordable housing on the political agenda

By Jenny McArthur

From Amsterdam to Manila, Ljubljana to Wellington, the rapid growth of property prices in cities is shutting many people out of home ownership and driving up inequality. There are plenty of ways for governments to deliver...

Pinchgut's The Return of Ulysses: a stylish, enjoyable, historically informed opera premiere

By Zoltan Szabo

Review: The return of Ulysses, Pinchgut Opera, Sydney. Claudio Monteverdi entered the 73rd year of his life when he composed his opera, Il ritorno dUlisse in patria, or The Return of Ulysses. (He wrote yet another opera...

Why the Australasian Health Star Rating needs major changes to make it work

By Jessica C Lai Et Al

Unhealthy diets cause multiple physical and mental health problems. To help consumers make healthier choices, Australia and New Zealand introduced the voluntary Health Star Rating (HSR) system in 2014. The system is...

Below zero is "reverse". How the Reserve Bank would make quantitative easing work

By Stephen Kirchner

With its official cash rate now expected to fall below 1% to a new extraordinarily low close to zero, all sorts of people are saying that the Reserve Bank is in danger of running out of ammunition. Ammunition might be...

How advertising can repurpose itself to serve cities in more sustainable ways

By Sergio Brodsky

Noisy, ugly and dirty. Advertising has polluted cities, annoyed consumers, and jeopardised its own existence. Beyond a mass-media cacophony, brand communications significant carbon footprint and runaway consumption are...

Explainer: what is fibromyalgia, the condition Lady Gaga lives with?

By Michael Musker Et Al

At least one in ten of us suffer some sort of troublesome, long-term (chronic) pain. But not all have fibromyalgia. People with fibromyalgia have chronic widespread pain including musculoskeletal aches, pain and...

Mass protests protect Hong Kong's legal autonomy from China – for now

By Kelly Chernin

Protesters in Hong Kong have achieved a major victory in their fight to protect their legal system from Chinese interference. On June 15, in response to massive popular resistance, Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced...

Final 2019 election results: education divide explains the Coalition's upset victory

By Adrian Beaumont

At the May 18 election, the size of the lower house was expanded from 150 to 151 seats. The Coalition parties won 77 seats (up one since the 2016 election), Labor 68 (down one) and the crossbench six (up one). The...

How many humans tomorrow? The United Nations revises its projections

By Gilles Pison

In 2019 the planet has 7.7 billion inhabitants, which is likely to rise to 8.5 billion in 2030 and nearly 10 billion in 2050. These figures are taken from the world population projections just released by the United...

Social media can threaten medical experiments

By Niccolò Tempini Et Al

Testing new pharmaceutical treatments is a complicated process. Very often, participants have preferences or hopes, either about what the test should measure or about what the outcome should be. Patients often enrol in the...

Meet the naked mole-rat: impervious to pain and cancer, and lives ten times longer than it should

By Ewan St. John Smith

The naked mole-rat is perhaps one of the most bizarre beasts on the planet. At first glance, it looks like little more than a cocktail sausage with legs and teeth. But beneath its wrinkly pink skin, this creatures strange...

Teenage sexting linked to increased sexual behaviour, drug use and poor mental health

By Camille Mori Et Al

You glance at your teens smartphone and see a text message light up the screen. Was that a sext you just saw? Questions flood your mind. Is this what kids are doing nowadays? Does this mean my child is having sex...

CAR: a society without authority, where children's schooling suffers

By Marieke Hopman

The news from the Central African Republic (CAR) is rarely good. The country has been involved in an on-and-off war for at least 20 years. It has been rated as having the lowest human development in the world. It is also...

How Twitter has been used in Cameroon's Anglophone crisis

By Julius T. Nganji Et Al

Over the past two years conflict has escalated in North West and South West Cameroon. Cameroon is a bilingual country (English and French) and these two regions are the countrys English-speaking areas. The conflict started...

Fitness trackers and personalised training programmes – the way to get healthier at work

By Richard Metcalfe Et Al

On average, people spend over 3,500 days (or 84,000 hours) at work over a lifetime. This makes work the ideal place to encourage and support physical activity and exercise. And a new study from Germany shows that doing so...

Black plastic can't be recycled – but we've just found a way to use the carbon in renewable energy

By Alvin Orbaek White

The big problem with plastics is that though they last for a very long time, most are thrown away after only one use. Since plastics were invented in the 1950s, about 8,300m metric tonnes (Mt) have been made, but over half...

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...

Inflation is healthy for the economy – but too much can trigger a recession, while too little means one may be on its way

By Richard S. Warr

In a healthy economy, prices tend to go up a process called inflation. While you might not like that as a consumer, moderate price growth is a sign of a healthy, growing economy. And, historically at least, wages tend...

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...