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Hurricanes John and Helene have made international headlines this week for the destruction wrought on Mexico and the southeastern US. Climate experts and meteorologists warn that such extreme weather events are going to be more frequent due to global climate change. Storms are getting stronger, lasting longer and causing more damage to infrastructure and lives. […]

It’s not the famous Star Trek tricorder but it’s close: researchers have developed a hand-held scanner that can generate highly detailed 3D images of body parts in almost real time. The technology can accurately image blood vessels up to 15mm deep in human tissue, which the researchers say could help to diagnose conditions such as […]

Engineers inspired by marine creatures have made a fabric that adjusts to your body heat and keeps you at a temperature of your choosing. Better yet, it is breathable and washable. The US-based team say their fabric could be used in athletic apparel, food packaging, infrared camouflage, soft robotics and biomedical sensing. Their research is […]

An international collaboration is trying to solve the world’s energy crisis by building a unique kind of fusion reactor. SMART (SMall Aspect Ratio Tokamak) is a fusion device being put together at the University of Seville in Spain. Over the past month, the team behind its construction has published several papers outlining the fusion technology […]

The discussion over whether to call the mildest form of prostate cancer “cancer” has returned, with a new paper suggesting that patients may benefit from avoiding the term. Prostate cancer is one of the world’s most common cancers. But it’s also one of the most treatable: caught early, patients’ chance of surviving more than 5 […]

Mount Everest is tall. In other news, the sky is blue. But Everest (also called Chomolungma and Sagarmāthā) is taller than it logically should be – towering 238m above the world’s next highest peak, K2, and more than 250m higher than any of its counterparts in the relatively uniform Himalaya range. Plus, it’s growing at […]

Astronomers have overturned long-held beliefs about the composition of dwarf planet Ceres. Ceres was the first asteroid to be discovered, when in 1801 it was spotted by Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi. It is the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system and is the largest object in the main asteroid belt between the orbits […]

A team at Monash University in Victoria developing a hormone-free, reversible male contraceptive has now figured out the 3D structure of one of their primary therapeutic targets – the P2X1-purinergic receptor (P2X1). According to Dr Sab Ventura from the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS), this has been the main stumbling block that has so […]

Record breaking hurricanes have killed at least 16 in Mexico and nearly 100 in the southeastern US in the past week. Last Tuesday, Category 3 Hurricane John made landfall on Mexico’s Pacific coast. The hurricane then moved along the coast before striking land again as a tropical storm. Most of the deaths have come in […]

A new study warns that sloths living in high-altitude rainforests of South and Central America could face extinction if temperatures there continue to rise according to climatic predictions. The research, published in PeerJ Life & Environment, suggests that some sloths’ restricted ability to migrate to cooler regions and limited metabolic flexibility make them particularly vulnerable […]

Scientists inspired by marine sponges have developed a new antimalarial drug that is effective against drug-resistant strains of the deadly disease. The American-led research team published details of their new drug and how it works in the prestigious journal Science this past week. Malaria is spread by mosquitos carrying single-celled Plasmodium parasites. After a period […]

Chemists have made an extremely energy-dense, environmentally friendly fuel out of nitrogen. They’ve done it by employing one of chemistry’s favourite hobbies, bullying nitrogen n (N2) into weird structures. An explosion occurred, but it was a small one. The Chinese team has successfully made the element adopt a diamond-like structure, called cubic gauche nitrogen (cg-N) […]

Lupus is thought to affect at least five million people worldwide, but treatments for the severe autoimmune disease have changed little in 60 years. While the commonly used medications glucocorticoids, also called corticosteroids or “steroids”, are effective at treating the symptoms of the disease, they also cause toxic side effects. But a leap forward has been made […]

Researchers have made an edible transistor out of a toothpaste ingredient. They say their transistor could one day be used in edible electronics which help to monitor and treat diseases. The Italian and Serbian research team has published its findings in Advanced Science. The transistor is made from copper phthalocyanine, a whitening agent commonly used […]

Fossils found in Brazil are leading palaeontologists to re-write the evolution of mammals. CT scans of mammal-precursor species Brasilodon quadrangularis and Riograndia guaibensis reveal that uniquely mammalian features in jaws and inner ears developed millions of years earlier than previously thought. The findings are detailed in a paper published in Nature. Mammals’ jaw structure and […]

A US-based team of chemists has found a more efficient way to extract precious metals from electronics, making e-waste cheaper to recycle. The study is published in Nature Chemical Engineering. Traditionally, metals in waste are recycled with hydrometallurgy, which involves soaking in corrosive substances to leach metals out, or pyrometallurgy, which involves heating things to […]

Zebras aren’t the only animal using black and white stripes to dazzle predators on the hunt for a tasty meal. According to new research, the humbug damselfish – a species of fish that lives in coral reefs throughout the tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific region – also uses motion dazzle as a defence strategy. The clever coral-dwelling fish might […]

Knitted wool caps are a good way to give cats brain scans, according to a new study. Cats tend to chew off wires and electrodes in electroencephalograms (EEGs), which means that they need to be sedated to get a scan. This hinders vets’ abilities to assess chronic pain from conditions like osteoarthritis. But a Canadian research […]

A map of our galactic home – the Milky Way – has been produced containing more than 1.5 billion objects. This means it is 10 times more detailed than the previous most comprehensive Milky Way map. More than 13 years of observations and 500 terabytes of data went into the map which is described in […]

The mechanisms that allow some mammals to pause the development of their young inside the womb also seem work in human cells, according to a fascinating new study published in the journal Cell. Biologists discovered they could induce a dormant state in human cells by decreasing the activity of the mTOR signaling pathway, which they […]

The tiny aliens were first spotted in February 2001 in the Port of Brisbane, but it’s suspected they may have been hiding out for years after making the long journey from their native South America, likely hitching a ride aboard shipping containers. In the two decades since, south-east Queensland has waged war with the highly […]

Andrew Baker is Professor in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the UNSW. He is combining the analysis of cave stalagmites, underground hydrological monitoring, and climate hydrological modelling to identify the replenishment of groundwater. Groundwater supports so much of the Australian economy. In rural and remote areas, most of the water supply […]

As the Australian rules football seasons draws to a close with tomorrow’s grand final between Sydney Swans and the Brisbane Lions, questions are being asked about what managing concussions “conservatively“ should look like at an elite level. The sport – among the most popular in Australia – is run by the Australian Football League (AFL). […]

A family of fishes that evolved “legs” to walk along the seafloor have another use for their strange appendages – tasting prey buried beneath the sand. “This is a fish that grew legs using the same genes that contribute to the development of our limbs, and then repurposed these legs to find prey using the […]