Jan
23
2019
Elanor Huntington is readying herself for the imminent arrival of the next world-changing engineering discipline, one she believes will overlap the realms of the built and digital worlds.“Engineering is not a static thing,” she says. “There have been new disciplines emerging over time for centuries, and I think there’s a new one coming.”
Jan
16
2019
Flatly denying the Ramsay Centre deal for a Western civilisation course at Wollongong University has been kept a secret, the university’s executive dean of law, humanities and the arts, Theo Farrell, insists he had been discussing the idea with colleagues since 2017. “Some colleagues have gone public saying there has been no consultation,” Professor Farrell …read more
Jan
16
2019
Daniel Hutto will start to sell the curriculum he has designed for the University of Wollongong’s contentious new Western civilisation bachelor of arts course in on-campus town hall meetings over the next few weeks. For the privately funded Ramsay Centre, it will be the culmination of a tortured series of negotiations with universities across Australia …read more
Jan
16
2019
Murdoch University has been through some contentious times recently, seeing its enterprise agreement terminated in 2017 after protracted and occasionally bitter negotiations, and late last year jousting with the National Tertiary Education Union in the Federal Court and the West Australian Supreme Court.
Dec
28
2018
All tight black leather trousers, a black leather vest and multiple loops of swinging gold chain, Gary Glitter was rocking on. The 1973 concert at Sydney’s endearingly shabby (even then) Hordern Pavilion was so awful it was almost good, in a stand back and marvel at the spectacle sort of way. And of course the …read more
Dec
12
2018
As a kid in Sydney, Mohamad Dawoud loved playing football. An athletic boy, he started kicking the ball around when he was three years old and it became the passion of his life.
Dec
12
2018
A groundbreaking Australian clinical trial has halted the progression of multiple sclerosis in early-stage patients by using chemotherapy and stem cell transplants, with some of the patients showing marked physical improvement and even abandoning their walking sticks. Published in the prestigious Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, the results of the trial offer hope to …read more
Nov
21
2018
Tiny sensors that stick to crop leaves and transmit health data. Robot buggies that trundle up and down orchard rows. Hyperspectral scanners to assess tree health. Smartphone-operated virtual cattle fences. Gene manipulation to transform crops so they’re a different colour or last longer, or bear fruit in a more convenient way.
Nov
20
2018
Just a few weeks off the shop floor, Alison Barnes is settling into her new role as president of the National Tertiary Education Union. The shop floor — also known as Macquarie University — had been Barnes’s employer since 2010. She worked there as a full-time senior lecturer in the department of marketing and management …read more
Nov
14
2018
University of Western Australia vice-chancellor Dawn Freshwater is looking north. Perth’s universities have a distinct educational advantage in attracting Asian students: they are closer to important Asian centres than Australia’s eastern cities and they are in the same time zone as a substantial part of Asia.