Anti-LGBTQ+ policies harm the health of not only LGBTQ+ people, but all Americans
Courts across the nation are debating whether LGBTQ+ people should be protected from discrimination. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images In 2024, state legislatures introduced an all-time record of 533 bills targeting LGBTQ+...
Long COVID: women at greater risk compared to men – could immune system differences be the cause?
Women had a 1.3 times higher chance of developing long COVID than men. Daisy Daisy/ Shutterstock About 5% of people who catch COVID have long-lasting symptoms. In these people, loss of smell, dizziness, fatigue and other...
Reading Whistler’s Nocturne in Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge as a piece of music
Nocturne in Blue and Gold Old Battersea Bridge by James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1872-5). Tate/Canva, CC BY-SA In 1877 the American artist James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) achieved notoriety when he exhibited his recent...
Choking during sex: many young people mistakenly believe it can be done safely, our study shows
Lysenko Andrii/Shutterstock Around 50% of Australian young people have engaged in choking, or strangulation, during sex. This practice involves one person putting pressure on the neck of another, restricting breathing or...
Whalesong patterns follow a universal law of human language, new research finds
A humpback whale mother and calf on the New Caledonian breeding grounds. Mark Quintin All known human languages display a surprising pattern: the most frequent word in a language is twice as frequent as the second most...
Friday essay: a reinvention of self – the pleasure of literary journeys
Penguin In the hiatus that was COVID lockdown, the novelty of staying put had a peculiar grace and delight. To limit ones trajectory to five kilometres meant homing in on the small and the local: the seasonal repetitions...
‘A relentlessly dull world’ – the case for adding more colour to NZ’s grey prisons
Prisons are not colourful places. Typically, they are grey or some variation of a monochrome colour scheme. But increasingly, such a limited palette is being questioned for its impact on health and rehabilitation. As the...