For the first time, a team of international scientists have successfully used a specific technology to edit human DNA, to prevent disease. Their study, published in Nature, showed that, through the use of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, a gene mutation causing hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) could ...
More »Unis respond strongly, yet differently, to sexual assault report
It’s 2017, and institutions are rightly taking sexual assault and harassment seriously. All of the 39 member-universities of Universities Australia responded swiftly and comprehensively to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s report on sexual harassment and sexual assault on campus, released ...
More »Over one in four students sexually harassed in 2016: human rights report
A woman who was kissed on the cheek by a teacher on the bus on the way to uni. A woman from a residential college who went out partying and was encouraged to drink by a male friend and fellow ...
More »Trump’s tweets decoded to reveal his persona
Nothing currently drives the international news and the US policy agenda more than Donald Trump's prolific, often controversial tweets. So, it makes sense that a team of international researchers, led by QUT, would examine them to determine his personality. By analysing his ...
More »Education leader praises Asia’s VET sector
In the 1990s, Peter Noonan says, our VET sector was the envy of the rest of the Asia-Pacific. Now, the professor of tertiary education policy at Victoria University's Mitchell Institute thinks it might be the other way round. At a recent Hong Kong-based ...
More »Skilled migrants not poaching local jobs: ACER
Everyone has probably heard something akin to the following from a taxi/Uber driver: ‘I worked as an engineer in India and now, here in Australia, the only job I can get is as a driver.’ A newly-released ACER research briefing ...
More »UTS to fight fake news with new research centre
UTS hired a suitably zeitgeisty ‘thinkfluencer’ to launch its Centre for Media Transition: Jeff Jarvis, a podcast host with a parody Twitter account. Though he is many other things, too: not least, the director of the Tow-Knight Centre for Entrepreneurial ...
More »More than robo-markers: the possibilities of AI in education
To some, artificial intelligence (AI) sounds like a futuristic possibility. But it’s already here, and it’s prolific. Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa are just two examples of advanced AI embedding themselves into our lives. Education, too, is not immune to AI’s creep. When it ...
More »A ‘sky university’ update, one year on
Learning in the clouds isn't as fantastical as it sounds. Passengers on Virgin Australia flights have been doing courses for just over a year via Open2Study. Now, 50,000 enrolments later, Open Universities Australia's free online course provider has taken stock of students' ...
More »Journals prey on Star Wars paper
Do or do not. There is no try. Neuroskeptic did, and the results were just as bemusing as Yoda’s famous line. The blogger for Discovery Magazine and the PLOS Neuroscience Community submitted a Star Wars-themed paper to nine journals known ...
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