Can AI talk us out of conspiracy theory rabbit holes?

By Dana McKay Et Al

New research published in Science shows that for some people who believe in conspiracy theories, a fact-based conversation with an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot can pull them out of the rabbit hole. Better yet, it...

$84bn lost to housing tax lurks? That would go a long way towards ending the housing crisis

By Alan Morris

Australias deep housing crisis is causing enduring and widespread harm. A key impact is that it is increasing inequality. The children of parents who have paid off their mortgage and have disposal income are far more...

Cosmology is at a tipping point – we may be on the verge of discovering new physics

By Andreea Font

For the past few years, a series of controversies have rocked the well-established field of cosmology. In a nutshell, the predictions of the standard model of the universe appear to be at odds with some recent...

Central banks should be independent of government. But our research shows they are under political pressure

By Igor Goncharov Et Al

In 2023, central banks, which manage the monetary policy of a country, faced unprecedented financial losses the US Federal Reserve alone reported a record US$114.3 billion (86 billion) operating loss. Losses like this...

Ukraine recap: big challenges ahead of winter for Zelensky as European far-right push Russian agenda

By Rachael Jolley

Its not long to winter, and this is going to be another tough one for Ukrainians. The war continues, but allied support is fraying. This week Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, and British foreign secretary David Lammy...

Kamala Harris is riding another wave of support following her debate with Donald Trump

By Ronald W. Pruessen

Political commentators and flash polls are close to unanimous in declaring Vice President Kamala Harris the victor in her first presidential debate against Donald Trump. Those wondering if she could sustain the...

Why Canada needs a national disability strategy

By Olaf Kraus de Camargo

At some point in our lives, many of us will experience disability, whether through illness, injury or the natural process of aging. Advances in medical science have allowed us to live longer lives, but this often means...

YouTuber Nikocado Avocado’s extreme weight-loss hoax isn’t admirable – it’s fatness being exploited for engagement

By Emma Beckett

US internet personality Nikocado Avocado (Nicholas Perry) recently shocked the internet when he revealed his weight loss of 250 pounds (110kg). Perry had been posting mukbang content, which involves eating large amounts...

Making fuels from plastics in Newaygo, Michigan, would be controversial – here’s why

By Anne McNeil Et Al

Humans generate a lot of plastic waste more than 400 million metric tons a year. To bring this fact a bit closer to home, the U.S. produced an average of 0.75 pounds (0.34 kilograms) of plastic waste per person each...

With China seeking AI dominance, Taiwan’s efforts to slow neighbor’s access to advanced chips needs support from the West

By Min-Yen Chiang Et Al

Tensions between China, Taiwan and the U.S. arent limited to aerial military maneuvers and drills on the high seas. The shadow conflict is also playing out in the technological arena. One of the central drivers of the...

Slow mining could be a solution to overconsumption in an increasingly fast-paced world

By Deborah Johnson Et Al

A fast approach to business characterized by overconsumption across supply chains has become almost ubiqutous in recent years. Fast fashion is one of the most polluting industries globally, often relying on synthetic...

From runways to film: the untold story of trailblazing First Nations fashion designer Stephen FitzGerald

By Treena Clark

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and/or images of deceased people. In August, I attended the Darwin Aboriginal Arts Fair to witness First Nations designers and...

Has AI hacked the operating system of human civilisation? Yuval Noah Harari sounds a warning

By Darius von Guttner Sporzyns

Just as artificial intelligence (AI) models are trained on vast data sets to learn and predict, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow have trained us to expect disruptive ideas...

Local papers are central to our democracy. We must do more to bring them out of crisis

By Kristy Hess

This is the second piece in a series on the Future of Australian media. You can read the first piece in the series here. Australians who are unaware of stories about social disorder and crime gripping Alice Springs must...

Apple’s iPhone 16 launch shows AI is shaking up the tech giant’s core market

By Lewis Endlar

As someone who helped set up one of the first iPhones back in late 2007 on live TV, I found the launch of the first iteration of Apples smartphone an exciting time. At the launch in June of that year, a grinning Steve Jobs...

What remains of ‘Operation Car Wash’, Brazil’s historic anti-corruption probe?

By Manoel Gehrke Et Al

Ten years ago, in March 2014, prosecutors in the Brazilian city of Curitiba transformed a money laundering investigation into a historic anti-corruption probe known as Operação Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash)....

Is America ready to elect a Black woman president?

By Emma Shortis

Its the big question that has loomed over Kamala Harris presidential campaign from the start: is the United States ready for a Black woman president? I get asked this almost every time I speak about American politics....

91% of Australian teens have a phone – but many are not keeping their identity and location secure

By Yeslam Al-Saggaf Et Al

Most Australian teenagers have their own smartphone. According to a 2023 survey, 91% of young people between 14 and 17 owned a phone. At the same time, there is huge community concern about young people being exposed to...

Murdoch to Musk: how global media power has shifted from the moguls to the big tech bros

By Matthew Ricketson Et Al

Until recently, Elon Musk was just a wildly successful electric car tycoon and space pioneer. Sure, he was erratic and outspoken, but his global influence was contained and seemingly under control. But add the ownership...

How the oil and gas industry influences higher education

By Emily Eaton Et Al

As the climate crisis gets worse, global fossil fuel production is growing and oil and gas companies are making record profits. While the powerful influence of the fossil fuel industrys lobbying on climate policy is...

Treasurer distances himself from his former boss’ Reserve Bank attack

By Michelle Grattan

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has distanced himself from the strident attack his one-time boss Wayne Swan launched on the Reserve Bank, which the former treasurer accused of putting economic dogma over rational...

The Boeing Starliner has returned to Earth without its crew – a former astronaut details what that means for NASA, Boeing and the astronauts still up in space

By Michael E. Fossum

Boeings crew transport space capsule, the Starliner, returned to Earth without its two-person crew right after midnight Eastern time on Sept. 7, 2024. Its remotely piloted return marked the end of a fraught test flight to...

Five disinformation tactics Russia is using to try to influence the US election

By Precious Chatterje-Doody

The White Houses recent exposure of Russian attempts to influence this years US presidential election will come as little surprise to anyone who followed disinformation tactics during the last US election. During the...

How much does aging affect mental acuity? It’s debatable

By Donald Jurivich

I cringed recently while driving to the clinic where I specialize in geriatric medicine when I heard a young radio announcer refer to old people as wiggy, a pejorative for wacky. As a doctor who has extensively...

Meteorite strike in South Africa: scientists offer clues about what it is and where it came from

By Roger Lawrence Gibson Et Al

On a Sunday morning in late August 2024 a nine-year-old girl named Eli-zé du Toit was sitting on her grandparents porch near a small town in South Africas Eastern Cape province, when she heard a long rumble, then...

The emotional toll of dating apps and why they’re no longer about finding love – podcast

By Gemma Ware1

Dating apps are having a rocky moment. In February, Bumble said it would lay off 30% of its workforce after disappointing results in 2023. Match Group, which has struggled to maintain paying subscribers for its most...

Could Bangladesh’s former prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, be extradited to the country to stand trial?

By Raisul Islam Sourav

Former Bangladeshi prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, fled to India in early August after a mass uprising forced her to step down. Her resignation followed weeks of unrest in which nearly 650 people were killed and many more...

Think you’re better at driving than most? How psychological biases are keeping our roads unsafe

By Gemma Briggs

You never have to look hard to find recent reports of fatal vehicle crashes on UK roads. After devastating events such as a crash in West Yorkshire in July 2024, where four adults and two children were killed, media...

The Earth’s inner core is a total mystery – here’s how we’re starting to solve it

By Alfred Wilson-Spencer

Deep beneath our feet, at a staggering depth of over 5,100km, lies Earths inner core a solid ball of iron and nickel that plays a crucial role in shaping the conditions we experience on the surface. In fact, without it...

How Sigmund Freud attempted to solve the ‘riddle’ of Leonardo da Vinci’s genius

By Luke Thurston

The idea that prowess in activities like playing chess or writing poetry might be fuelled by frustrated, unconscious sexual desire is fairly well known today. But writing more than a century ago, Sigmund Freud was...

How Australia’s new AI ‘guardrails’ can clean up the messy market for artificial intelligence

By Nicholas Davis

Australias federal government has today launched a proposed set of mandatory guardrails for high-risk AI alongside a voluntary safety standard for organisations using AI. Each of these documents offer ten mutually...

If robots could lie, would we be okay with it? A new study throws up intriguing results

By Stine S. Johansen

Do you think a robot should be allowed to lie? A new study published in Frontiers in Robotics and AI investigates what people think of robots that deceive their users. Their research uses examples of robots lying to...

How to get the housing we need: healthy, affordable and resilient to climate change

By Lyrian Daniel Et Al

Imagine coming home after a long day at work. It is winter. You step inside your home. It is warm, quiet and dry. A storm is forecast to blow in tonight. Unprecedented rainfall, they are saying. But you are not worried....

GPS tracking is everywhere in pro sports but many AFLW players are uncomfortable with it

By Dr Paul Bowell Et Al

The 2024 AFLW season kicked off last week, continuing the growth of a variety of sports that were once considered only for men. This growth has resulted in more women athletes entering elite sporting structures for the...

Are the far-left and far-right merging together?

By Shannon Brincat

When most of us think about politics, we think of different views as sitting on a spectrum. Left wing is at one end, right wing at the other. We all, therefore, sit somewhere on this straight line in the way we view the...

Meta has a new plan to keep kids safe online. Will it work?

By Toby Murray

Meta, which owns social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, has revealed its plans for keeping kids safe online. It wants companies like Apple and Google, who run mobile phone app stores, to force parents to...

National debt explained: What you should know about Canada’s deficit

By Sorin Rizeanu

By the end of the 2024-25 fiscal year, Canadas total market debt is expected to surpass $1.4 trillion. Every day, this debt grows by more than $100 million, and every second, Canada pays more than $1,200 in...

드론 공격이 우크라이나 전쟁의 규칙과 비용을 어떻게 바꾸고 있는가

By Marcel Plichta

우크라이나가 새롭게 공개한 장거리 무기는 드론과 미사일 기술이 결합된 형태로, 키이우는 이를 통해 러시아군의 공격에 대처하는 능력을 크게 강화할 것으로 기대하고 있다. 우크라이나 홍보 자료에 따르면 이 로켓 드론은...

India’s new mega-dam will roil lives downstream with wild swings in water flow every day

By Parag Jyoti Saikia

Hey Rupam, open the door. Take this fish, a woman yelled from outside. I was sitting in the kitchen at my friend Rupams house in rural northeast India. It was the heart of monsoon season, and rain had been falling since...

Newspoll remains tied at 50–50, but Albanese’s net approval slumps

By Adrian Beaumont

A national Newspoll, conducted August 2630 from a sample of 1,263, had a 5050 two-party tie between Labor and the Coalition, unchanged from the previous Newspoll three weeks ago. This is the first time this term there have...

We found teenage girls don’t know vulvas from vaginas or when their menstrual cycle starts

By Felicity Roux Et Al

It is important for everyone but especially girls, women and people who menstruate to understand how ovulation and menstruation work. The menstrual cycle is a key indicator of overall health and sadly, issues such as...

‘It’s time to give up on normal’: what winter’s weird weather means for the warm months ahead

By David Bowman

Heavy winds struck south-east Australia over the weekend as a series of cold fronts moved across the continent. It followed a high fire danger in Sydney and other parts of New South Wales last week, and a fire in...

Military veterans with PTSD face an agonising choice: the stigma of declaring it to employers or being denied support

By Richard O'Quinn Et Al

Australia is home to almost half a million military veterans, most of whom are in the workforce. But most around 60% live with long-term health problems. About half of these face enduring mental health challenges,...

Without sanctions, making companies disclose their environmental and social impacts has limited effect

By Charl de Villiers

As of last year, New Zealands largest companies and financial institutions have been required to disclose their climate-related risks and opportunities in their annual reports and regulatory filings. This follows a...

Aluminium foil that can clean water: we’ve developed a coating which attracts and traps dangerous microbes

By Taufiq Ihsan

More than 2 billion people around the world do not have access to safe, uncontaminated drinking water. Around 418 million of them live in African countries. The problem is most acute in rural communities, where peoples...

Is Iran’s anti-Israel and American rhetoric all bark and no bite?

By Shahram Akbarzadeh

On August 27, Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, told the newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, and his cabinet that talking to the enemy may be useful. In a thinly veiled reference...

What is space made of? An astrophysics expert explains all the components – from radiation to dark matter – found in the vacuum of space

By Nilakshi Veerabathina

What is space made of what does gravity actually bend? Phil, age 12, Birmingham What comes to mind when you think of space? Imagine a friend boasting about a spacious building, stadium or museum they recently...

Healthy soils are good for your gut, brain and wellbeing – here’s why

By Jose David Henao Casas

Often overlooked, soil is one of our planets largest living ecosystems and the foundation of our lives. It provides 95% of our food, supports global biodiversity and helps balance the climate by storing atmospheric...

Five notorious cyberattacks that targeted governments

By Rachael Medhurst

Warfare is no longer confined to physical battlefields. In the digital age, a new front has emerged cyberspace. Here, countries clash not with bullets and bombs, but with lines of code and sophisticated malware. One of...

Home education: why are so many parents choosing it over mainstream school?

By Lucie Wheeler

There has been a notable rise in parents choosing to home educate their children over recent years, and particularly since the COVID pandemic. Elective home education carrying out a childs education at home, outside...