Stamp duty is an economic drag. Here's how to move to a better system

By Richard Holden

For all the things we dont know about COVID-19 one thing is certain: our economic recovery will depend on boosting productivity. Everyone from the Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe to Prime Minister Scott...

Why some Americans seem more 'American' than others

By Katherine Kinzler

In the United States and many other countries, nationality is defined by a set of legal parameters. It may involve birthplace, parental citizenship or a circumscribed set of procedures for naturalization. Yet, in many...

Don't expect Biden's VP pick to make or break the 2020 election

By Christopher Devine

As presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden gets set to pick his vice presidential candidate, heres a reality check: Running mates have very little direct effect on voters. When people go to the polls, they...

A green stimulus to boost the energy transition?

By Sébastien Houde Et Al

Beyond its catastrophic impacts on health, the Covid-19 virus is wreaking havoc on the world economy and governments public finances. The length and depth of the economic crisis are unknown, but it is certain that few...

Paid for digital streaming has a place in theatre's return

By Sarah Price

From classic Andrew Lloyd Webber plays to the release of a recording of the original cast of Hamilton, theatre lovers have been able to stream the best of the stage at home during lockdown. Digital streaming has been a...

The wild decade: how the 1990s laid the foundations for Vladimir Putin's Russia

By Adrian Campbell

By securing victory in a national vote on constitutional changes, Vladimir Putin could now remain president of Russia until 2036 if he chooses to stand again. After 20 years in power, the narrative of Russias chaotic 1990s...

Coronavirus: BBC emerges as the UK's clear favourite information source in new audience survey

By Richard Thomas1 Et Al

News media have been especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic, as good quality information has literally become a matter of life and death. New Ofcom data confirms that we are increasingly reliant on the...

Which drugs and therapies are proven to work, and which ones don't, for COVID-19?

By William Petri

I am a physician and a scientist at the University of Virginia. I care for patients and conduct research to find better ways to diagnose and treat infectious diseases, including COVID-19. Here Im sharing what is known...

Retirement age is increasing – but our new study reveals most only work ten years in good health after 50

By Marty Parker Et Al

In 1800, the global average life expectancy was only 29 years. Today, life expectancy continues to rise, with babies born in the UK in 2018 expected to live to 87.6 years for men and 90.2 years for women on average. But as...

The mental health impact on ambulance staff of responding to suicide calls

By Carolyn Chew-Graham Et Al

Being ambulance staff can be a high-stress job. They encounter many situations in their daily line of work that can have a lasting impact on their mental health. According to MIND, around nine in ten emergency services...

Our laws failed these endangered flying-foxes at every turn. On Saturday, Cairns council will put another nail in the coffin

By Justin A. Welbergen Et Al

On Saturday, Cairns Regional Council will disperse up to 8,000 endangered spectacled flying-foxes from their nationally important camp in central Cairns. The camp is one of the last major strongholds of the species,...

Punchdrunk: new venture with Pokemon Go designer offers hope for post-pandemic theatre

By Helen W. Kennedy Et Al

Pubs and cinemas may be opening in the UK, but the performing arts sector remains languishing under lockdown and live performance continues to be prohibited. The governments roadmap, published at the end of June, has...

Gold mining leaves deforested Amazon land barren for years, find scientists

By Michelle Kalamandeen Et Al

Travel through the rainforest in Guyana, in northern South America, and youll often hear the indigenous adage: a forest has no end and no beginning to explain their natural cycle of disturbance and recovery. For the people...

The US isn't in a second wave of coronavirus – the first wave never ended

By Melissa Hawkins

After sustained declines in the number of COVID-19 cases over recent months, restrictions are starting to ease across the United States. Numbers of new cases are falling or stable at low numbers in some states, but they...

Recession will hit job-poor parts of Western Sydney very hard

By Phillip O'Neill

This is the second of three articles based on newly released research on the impacts of a lack of local jobs on the rapidly growing Western Sydney region. After 2016 but before COVID-19, it should be said Western...

China has a new way to exert political pressure: weaponising its courts against foreigners

By John Garrick

The death penalty is not uncommon in China. Authorities continue to execute thousands of people each year, more than all other nations combined. However, for Australian Karm Gilespie, convicted for drug-smuggling...

Developing resilience is an important tool to help you deal with coronavirus and the surge in cases

By Keith M. Bellizzi

Were all exhausted and pushed to the limit by months of social distancing, and the recent news that cases are climbing in many states is especially scary. While you may feel like ripping off your mask and heading for a...

How deforestation helps deadly viruses jump from animals to humans

By Amy Y. Vittor Et Al

The coronavirus pandemic, suspected of originating in bats and pangolins, has brought the risk of viruses that jump from wildlife to humans into stark focus. These leaps often happens at the edges of the worlds tropical...

Gene therapy and CRISPR strategies for curing blindness (Yes, you read that right)

By Hemant Khanna

In recent months, even as our attention has been focused on the coronavirus outbreak, there have been a slew of scientific breakthroughs in treating diseases that cause blindness. Researchers at U.S.-based Editas...

Days with both extreme heat and extreme air pollution are becoming more common – which can't be a good thing for global health

By Yangyang Xu Et Al

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work. The big idea Days of extreme high heat and extreme air pollution are both increasing worldwide. Last November, New Delhi experienced a week of the...

New York opens traffic-clogged streets to people during pandemic, the city's latest redesign in times of dramatic change

By Amy D. Finstein

On some normally congested New York City streets, cars are gone, replaced by diners tentatively returning to restaurants though only outside after months of lockdown. On June 22, the city entered phase two of reopening...

Coronavirus responses highlight how humans are hardwired to dismiss facts that don't fit their worldview

By Adrian Bardon

Bemoaning uneven individual and state compliance with public health recommendations, top U.S. COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci recently blamed the countrys ineffective pandemic response on an American anti-science bias. He...

A selective retreat from trade with China makes sense for the United States

By Amitrajeet A. Batabyal

Trade tensions and mistrust are escalating between the U.S. and China. Soon after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that China recommitted to its January trade deal obligations after a face-to-face meeting with...

Economic policies can induce people to quarantine safely during the pandemic

By Roberto Chang1 Et Al

Recent economic proposals to deal with COVID-19, like those summarized by UC Berkeley economist Pierre Olivier Gourinchas, have focused on compensating households and businesses for income losses due to lockdowns and other...

Nepal is caught in the middle of India-China border tensions

By Promod Tandan

A tense military standoff between China and India over a disputed border area in the Himalayas has put much of the region on edge. Not least in Nepal, which has its own ongoing land dispute with India and where concern is...

Thousands of women have run out of tampons and pads under lockdown – time to talk about sustainable period products

By Supriya Garikipati

The coronavirus pandemic has triggered what has been described as a sanitary pad crisis in India. Priya, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, considers herself lucky: her parents can still afford pads. But several of her friends will...

Apple is trying to reclaim its major innovator status (by making you wash your hands)

By Margarietha de Villiers Scheeper Et Al

Market commentators view Apples announcements at this weeks Worldwide Developers Conference 2020 (WWDC) as one of the companys most important strategic moves of the past decade. Among the key announcements were details...

The law is a man's world. Unless the culture changes, women will continue to be talked over, marginalised and harassed

By Kate Galloway

For many, the allegations of sexual harassment against Dyson Heydon came as a shock. It seems difficult to imagine a senior member of the legal profession, a justice of the High Court, would engage in inappropriate or...

Government unveils $250 million for 'creative economy'

By Michelle Grattan

he Morrison government has announced a $250 million package for the entertainment, arts and screen sectors, which have been particularly hard hit by the COVID-19 crisis. The grants and loans will be rolled out over the...

Journalists believe news and opinion are separate, but readers can't tell the difference

By Kevin M. Lerner

The New York Times opinion editor James Bennet resigned recently after the paper published a controversial opinion essay by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton that advocated using the military to put down protests. The essay...

A field guide to Trump's dangerous rhetoric

By Jennifer Mercieca

All leaders are demagogues. You may not realize this, because weve come to associate the word demagogue with only dangerous populist leaders. But in Greek, the word just means leader of the people (dēmos the people +...

Facebook vs news: Australia wants to level the playing field, Facebook politely disagrees

By Tim Dwyer

The Australian government is setting out to develop a bargaining code to address power imbalances between news media publishers and digital platforms such as Facebook and Google. The creation of this code was recommended...

Vital Signs: COVID-19 recession is different – and we need more stimulus to deal with it.

By Richard Holden

Australia has done well on the public health front during the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to decisive action by the National Cabinet in March. Australia has done better than most countries on the economic front, too, thanks...

Supreme Court ruling on Dreamers sends a clear message to the White House: You have to tell the truth

By Morgan Marietta

When it came down to it, the fate of 700,000 immigrants brought to U.S. as children hung on a simple question: Does the White House have to tell the whole truth in justifying its move to deport them? On June 8, the...

Algorithms are designing better buildings

By Silvio Carta

When giant blobs began appearing on city skylines around the world in the late 1980s and 1990s, it marked not an alien invasion but the impact of computers on the practice of building design. Thanks to computer-aided...

One metre or two? The science behind social distancing

By Lena Ciric

What constitutes a safe distance when it comes to the spread of COVID-19? The answer depends on where you live. China, Denmark and France recommend social distancing of one metre; Australia, Germany and Italy recommend...

5 reasons police officers should have college degrees

By Leana Bouffard Et Al

Following several deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police, President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order on June 16 that calls for increased training and credentialing to reduce the use of excessive force...

Rural America is more vulnerable to COVID-19 than cities are, and it's starting to show

By David J. Peters

Rural areas seemed immune as the coronavirus spread through cities earlier this year. Few rural cases were reported, and attention focused on the surge of illnesses and deaths in the big metro areas. But that false sense...

Tracing homophobia in South Korea's coronavirus surveillance program

By Timothy Gitzen

Many people around the world have looked to South Koreas so-called democratic response to the coronavirus pandemic as a template for other nations to follow. That response is often contrasted with Chinas draconian measures...

How tourist destinations can rebuild after coronavirus

By Anna Leask

Tourism has virtually stopped thanks to the COVID-19 lockdowns. This is hitting many cities hard see this report about New York galleries and museums losing millions of dollars, for example. Many tourist businesses are...

Don't blame social media for conspiracy theories – they would still flourish without it

By Joseph E Uscinski Et Al

COVID-19 conspiracy theories have encouraged people to engage in some dangerous activities in the past few months. There is no simple explanation for why people believe conspiracy theories like these, and the best...

Retail won't snap back. 3 reasons why COVID has changed the way we shop, perhaps forever

By John Daley

Its wrong to expect a snap-back at shopping centres, food courts, cinemas and other places where people used to gather to spend money. Weve identified three reasons why spending in physical stores on goods like clothes...

The law is clear – border testing is enforceable. So why did New Zealand's quarantine system break down?

By Alexander Gillespie

The anger and frustration at New Zealands border quarantine failure have been palpable. Two women, recently arrived in New Zealand, were granted compassionate leave from quarantine to be with grieving family after a...

Beyond the black hole of global university rankings: rediscovering the true value of knowledge and ideas

By Stephen Dobson Et Al

The recent release of global university rankings and the way these are reported raises important questions about the role and reputation of our tertiary institutions. Are universities measured and ranked according to...

100 days of coronavirus has sent shock waves through the food system

By Evan Fraser

The COVID-19 lockdown has exposed a large number of problems in the food system. Whether it was the panic buying or workers in meat-packing plants testing positive for the virus, serious concerns have been raised about...

Expensive, dirty and dangerous: why we must fight miners' push to fast-track uranium mines

By Gavin Mudd

Of all the elements on Earth, none is more strictly controlled under law than uranium. A plethora of international agreements govern its sale and use in energy, research and nuclear weapons. Australian environmental law...

Huge locust swarms are threatening food security, but drones could help stop them

By Leisa Armstrong

In recent months, food security concerns have emerged for nations across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, as swarms of desert locusts wreak havoc on crops. While the same level of damage isnt currently being felt in...

Does wearing contact lenses put you at greater risk of getting COVID-19?

By Langis Michaud

Can the SARS-CoV-2 virus, responsible for COVID-19, be transmitted by tears or by touching the eyes? Are contact lens wearers therefore more at risk? As these questions arise, heres what you need to know. A Chinese...

Cancer treatment: personalised blood tests can better detect DNA from tumours in the body – new research

By Jonathan C. M. Wan Et Al

Many cancers, especially in earlier stage disease, are treated by removing the tumour. But even after the tumour has been removed, theres still a chance that cancer cells remain in the body and the cancer can come back....

Dexamethasone: what is the breakthrough treatment for COVID-19?

By David C Gaze

Six months and eight million positive cases since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in Wuhan, scientists have announced the first major breakthrough in the search for a drug to fight the disease. A research team at Oxford...