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.
Nov
7
2018
Barney Glover has embraced the manifest and multifold challenges of running a huge university, split into several geographically separate campuses, in the poorer half of Australia’s largest metropolis.
Oct
31
2018
As a lesbian and gay studies scholar internationally known for her work in queer theory and the author of a recent work on the “cultural theory of orgasm”, the University of Sydney’s dean of arts and social sciences is widely seen as a socially progressive academic.
Oct
31
2018
The respected art historian and University of Sydney academic was startled to see his research featuring in an unflattering tweet from Simon Birmingham. Professor Roger Benjamin, regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on art inspired by Orientalist or Arabic influence in southern Spain and northern Africa, including the work of renowned artists such …read more
Oct
9
2018
Fifty years ago, Madeline Ward’s grandfather demonstrated against the Vietnam War on the front lawns of the University of Sydney’s famous quadrangle.
Sep
21
2018
In a breakthrough discovery, scientists from the Australian National University have found molecules of animal fat in a fossil more than 558 million years old, making the “Dickinsonia” the world’s first confirmed animal.
Sep
20
2018
A scientific breakthrough could finally curb the explosive numbers of Australia’s cane toads, the feral pest that has spread across the continent.
Sep
14
2018
Extreme hunger is big business these days. Water fasting? A week or so of semi-starvation? A specialist diet that mimics fasting? Alternate day extreme dieting? The world-famous 5:2 diet? A fortnight of dieting followed by a fortnight of normal eating?