Tue Apr 17, 2012
The Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency has today released the latest National Greenhouse Accounts which compare Australia’s emissions to our Kyoto Protocol obligations. The Accounts show Australia’s carbon pollution is currently tracking at 104 per cent of 1990 levels. Australia’s Kyoto Protocol target is to limit emissions to108 per cent of 1990 levels, [...]
Wed Apr 11, 2012
According to the US Geological Survey, a magnitude 8.6 earthquake has struck off the coast of Sumatra in Indonesia at 6:38pm tonight AEST. For more information see the US Geological Survey website. Below seismologists and tsunami experts from Australia, America and the UK respond. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre has a warning in place.
Thu Apr 5, 2012
EMBARGO LIFTED at 7am AEST Fri 6 Apr 2012 US researchers have used mathematical models to show how worries over vaccine risks affect vaccine uptake within the community. The study shows how to predict ways in which population vaccinating behaviour might unfold during a vaccine scare, testing the model against real data from two infamous [...]
Tue Apr 3, 2012
The think-tank Australia 21 has today released a report urging Australia to reopen the national debate about drug use, its regulation and control. Here an Australian drug expert comments.
Mon Apr 2, 2012
The Minister for Science and Research, Senator Chris Evans, today announced CSIRO had successfully settled litigation in the United States to licence the wireless local area network (WLAN) technology, invented in Australia in the 1990s. The technology, which came out of CSIRO’s work on radioastronomy, is today used in more than three billion devices worldwide [...]
Wed Mar 28, 2012
EMBARGO LIFTED AT 8 am AEDT, Thursday March 29, 2012 Two studies to publish in PLoS One suggest that a sudden increase in narcolepsy in Finnish children at the beginning of 2010 was likely to be related to the Pandemrix vaccine used in response to the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic in 2009. As mentioned below [...]
Mon Mar 26, 2012
Australian research provides evidence for the theory that human hunters were primarily responsible for the disappearance of Australia’s giant vertebrates about 40,000 years ago. The research also concludes that the extinction caused changes to the Australian landscape. A Perspectives piece by a New Zealand author accompanies the research paper. Scientists involved in the research are [...]
Fri Mar 16, 2012
U.S. scientists have been investigating whether prenatal exposure to mobile phone radiation has any impact on mice, though the authors caution that their findings may be difficult to translate to human risks. Female mice were exposed to an active mobile phone call throughout their pregnancy. The authors found that fetal exposure to mobile phone radiation [...]