What makes someone help a stranger? Like me, a lot of people are likely to believe it’s an innate personality trait, a sense of altruism that runs through someone, something some individuals possess but others neither practice nor understand. But ...
More »Is AI the future for mental health assistance?
Thankfully we’ve come a long way since people with mental health issues – such as depression, bipolar disorder or psychosis – were locked up in large, austere institutions or subjected to barbaric treatments, including crudely performed lobotomies. With the introduction of ...
More »How avatars could help with the battle of the bulge
Severe diets, fasting, diet pills and gastric bands. These are some of the lengths people with obesity have gone to in order to lose weight and regain their health. But now there may be more effective treatments on the way, ...
More »The award-winning Charles Sturt paper that ‘broke’ the internet
Speech and language acquisition researchers at Charles Sturt University have received The Editor’s Award for the best paper published in a prestigious US journal in 2018. The award recognises the most “impactful” works that also feature both outstanding research design ...
More »News of the week: Australia becoming a science and social science heavyweight – Podcast
Education editor Wade Zaglas here, focusing on the top stories of the week. You can either listen to the podcast or read the summary below. One story that struck me as particularly impressive was Australia being ranked fifth in the ...
More »Australian climate change initiatives stalling amid growing health fears: Report
A new report is calling for urgent action to tackle the risks to human health posed by climate change. The report, written by Australian researchers and partner institutions of the 2019 MJA–Lancet Countdown report, was published today in the Medical Journal ...
More »It’s all in the walk: Researchers identify hope for dementia patients
Researchers at Monash University have discovered a potential link between the way individuals walk and their likelihood of developing dementia. To put it more scientifically, the researchers were investigating “whether variability from one step to the next during walking, and ...
More »RMIT event showcases potentially world-changing engineering technology
Without engineering, nothing improves in the world. Through creativity, collaboration and determination, engineers design solutions to problems and even anticipate the problems of the future. That's why annual events such as RMIT's EnGenius are so important: they showcase what humanity can ...
More »Podcast: News of the week – women dominate the PM’s science awards
Last week we celebrated the Prime Minister’s Award for Science, an important time to acknowledge Australian scientific work that has promising applications or has changed the world. And this year, women took out the majority of the awards. This year’s ...
More »Australian researcher named world’s best
Very few people can say they’re ‘the best in the world’ at anything, but for Charles Sturt University Professor of Speech and Language Acquisition Sharynne McLeod, that’s exactly the case. A year after being named Australia’s leading researcher in her ...
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