COVID's mental health fallout will last a long time. Here's how we're targeting pandemic depression and anxiety
By Richard Bryant
Although Australia is now largely COVID-free, the repercussions of the pandemic are ongoing.
As the pandemic enters its second year, many people will be continuing to suffer with poor mental health, or facing new mental...
Fake news was a thing long before Donald Trump — just ask the ancient Greeks
By Peter S. Field
The idea of news is a pretty new thing. So is the concept of fake news, as in false or misleading information presented as news. Accordingly, we dont expect to understand the term outside of our own epoch.
Most people...
After Disney closed one of its major studios, animation is under pressure in pandemic Hollywood
By Christopher Holliday
Last years computer-animated feature Trolls World Tour served as an early test case for movie releases during the pandemic. The film appeared on video-on-demand streaming services the same day as its limited theatrical run...
Texas was a warning. Australia needs to rethink the design of its electricity market
By Bruce Mountain
Australias electricity market is unsustainable. Texas shows us why.
A week ago Texas experienced a bout of severe weather as arctic air reached deep into the state, driving temperature down to levels that had not been...
8 ways business managers can use fiction to prepare for the uncertain reality of coronavirus
By Nada Elnahla Et Al
Reading fiction has always been, for many, a source of pleasure and a means to be transported to other worlds. But thats not all. Businesses can use novels to consider possible future scenarios, study sensitive workplace...
Three ways to encourage companies to keep our data safe
By Ruslan Momot
With online shopping, loyalty programs, smart devices and many other aspects of our daily lives, the companies that make it all possible can collect vast amounts of our personal data. Sometimes its just common sense, like...
Local government in South Africa is broken: but giving the job to residents carries risks
By Marius Pieterse
In December 2020, the High Court in Mahikeng, the capital of South Africas North West Province, made a controversial order after finding that the Kgetlengrivier Local Municipality was in breach of its legal obligations....
A new advance in the search for substances to replace fat in food
By Joyce Agyei-Amponsah
Its well known that obesity is developing into a growing global health problem. In Africa alone, the number of overweight children under five has increased by nearly 50% since 2000. Obesity is a risk factor in diseases...
Artemis: how ever changing US space policy may push back the next Moon landing
By Gareth Dorrian
Harrison Schmitt and Eugene Cernan blasted off from the Taurus-Littrow valley on the Moon in their lunar module Challenger on December 14 1972. Five days later, they splashed down safely in the Pacific, closing the Apollo...
How universities can support local businesses and communities
By Zahir Irani
The pandemic has provided an urgent lesson in the value of cooperation and partnership. The state, the private sector and voluntary groups all rely on the success of the others to prosper.
Collaboration will be more...
Facebook's news blockade in Australia shows how tech giants are swallowing the web
By Jennifer Grygiel
When Facebook disabled Australians access to news articles on its platform, and blocked sharing of articles from Australian news organizations, the company moved a step closer to killing the World Wide Web the...
A COVID 'vaccine passport' may further disadvantage refugees and asylum seekers
By Claire Loughnan Et Al
With great fanfare, the COVID-19 vaccine rollout began in Australia this week. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said the government will give all Australians the opportunity to be vaccinated by October 2021. The...
Tiger Woods' car crash injuries explained, according to a trauma surgeon
By Ian Harris
Tiger Woods medical team has released a statement on Twitter to explain the injuries he sustained in his car crash earlier this week.
The statement was from the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a trauma centre, where golfer...
Why Canada should invest in 'macrogrids' for greener more reliable electricity
By Brett Dolter Et Al
As the recent disaster in Texas showed, climate change requires electricity utilities to prepare for extreme events. This global weirding leads to more intense storms, higher wind speeds, heatwaves and droughts that can...
Facebook versus News: Advertising is the real problem
By John Quiggin
The fight between Facebook and the Morrison government is over almost before it began. Having drastically overplayed its hand by banning a vast range of content, Facebook has been forced to settle for what appear to be...
The future of transport: how local people are helping to design new metro trains
By Simon Bowen Et Al
The Tyne and Wear Metro train fleet has served the UKs busiest light rail network outside London for over 40 years. Now, these trains are at the end of their working life and people across the region have been...
What's behind $15,000 electricity bills in Texas?
By Seth Blumsack
Texans who made it through Februarys extreme cold weather without losing power or natural gas must have felt lucky.
But for some, keeping their electricity through the blackout may turn out to be more traumatic than...
Daft Punk: how the mystery music masterminds used their robot disguise to take over the world
By Daniel Cookney
While Daft Punks break-up may have been unexpected, the enigmatic nature in how the public were notified was predictable. Announced via the electronic duos YouTube channel, an upload titled Epilogue turned out to be a...
How TikTok can be the new platform for political activism: lessons from Southeast Asia
By Nuurrianti Jalli
In Southeast Asia, TikTok has shown its potential as the next platform for political activism.
In Indonesia, young users strategically used TikTok to protest the controversial amendment of the labour law.
One viral...
Australia, fighting Facebook, is the latest country to struggle against foreign influence on journalism
By Vanessa Freije
Facebook has barred Australians from finding or sharing news on its platform, in response to an Australian government proposal to require social media networks to pay journalism organizations for their content. The move is...
The WeChat model: how Facebook's ban could change the business of news
By Fan Yang Et Al
Facebooks news ban in response to Australias proposed media bargaining code, has been hard to miss if youve spent any time on social networks in the past day or so. The social media platform has effectively halted all...
Facebook versus Australia: the government hands Facebook a competition free pass
By Joshua Gans
The Conversation is a great news site. But, for the most part, people dont read it like a newspaper. Instead, articles on specialised topics are shared with other people. One way is via Facebook.
Yesterday, almost none...
Myanmar's coup might discourage international aid, but donors should adapt, not leave
By Anne Décobert
In recent years, international donors have poured large amounts of aid into development and peacebuilding programs in Myanmar. But when military forces seized power in a coup earlier this month, the international aid...
'Rape-revenge' films are changing: they now focus on the women, instead of their dads
By Isobella Austin
Narratives around sexual assault in Hollywood are changing on screen and off.
There is a longstanding genre of film dedicated to depicting the crime of rape as it affects the fathers of the victims, showing fathers...
Tourism desperately wants a return to the 'old normal' but that would be a disaster
By Susanne Becken
With each passing day, the grave future of Earth becomes more stark. The disruption of COVID-19 has not been enough to shift the trajectory, nor has it prompted polluting sectors of the economy to reconsider the harms they...
As the Perseverance rover lands on Mars, there's a lot we already know about Mars from meteorites found on Earth
By James Scott
NASAs Perseverance rover successfully touched down on Mars this morning, and has already begun beaming back images.
But people might be surprised to learn there have been another 48 missions to the red planet so far. Of...
What the rise of telemedicine means for Canada’s legal system
By Marco Laverdière
The current pandemic is a tremendous boost for telemedicine, as many health-care professionals are strongly encouraged to offer online consultations or have no choice but to do so. But even before the pandemic, there was...
How the Texas electricity system produced low-cost power but left residents out in the cold
By Theodore J. Kury
Americans often take electricity for granted until the lights go out. The recent cold wave and storm in Texas have placed considerable focus on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, the nonprofit...
After Trump, what is the future of the Republican Party?
By David Smith
In the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, seven out of 50 Republican senators voted to convict the former president of inciting insurrection. This has raised more questions than it has answered about where the...
COVID vaccine consent for aged-care residents: it's ethically tricky, but there are ways to get it right
By Xavier Symons
The much anticipated rollout of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine will begin in Australia on Monday.
The first groups to receive the jab will be quarantine and border workers, frontline health-care workers, aged-care...
3 technologies poised to change food and the planet
By Lenore Newman Et Al
Agricultures impact on the planet is massive and relentless. Roughly 40 per cent of the Earths surface is used for cropland and grazing. The number of domestic animals far outweighs remaining wild populations. Every day,...
Tech giants need to step up to help close Canada's digital divide
By Catherine Rosenberg Et Al
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the extent to which we all rely on the internet in our day-to-day lives. Its also highlighted the unfortunate fact that many Canadians in remote northern communities cannot depend on...
I interviewed 48 bankrupt Americans – here's who they blame for their financial troubles
By Tess Wise
The people arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection had an 18% bankruptcy rate twice as high as the national average according to a Washington Post investigation. A quarter of the rioters had been sued...
A new online safety bill could allow censorship of anyone who engages with sexual content on the internet
By Zahra Zsuzsanna Stardust
Under new draft laws, the eSafety Commissioner could order your nude selfies, sex education or slash fiction to be taken down from the internet with just 24 hours notice.
Officially, the Morrison governments new bill...
Why Google is now funnelling millions into media outlets, as Facebook pulls news for Australia
By James Meese
Over the past few days, Google has been inking multimillion-dollar deals to pay media companies for news content that will appear on Google News Showcase.
Rupert Murdochs News Corp is the latest beneficiary of a...
Can Fox News survive without Trump in the White House?
By Rodney Tiffen
Sadly, history has largely forgotten the Rector Thomas Beverley. In 1695, he wrote a book predicting the world would end in 1697. In 1698 he wrote another book, complaining the world had ended but no-one had noticed. If he...
Quantum leap: how we discovered a new way to create a hologram
By Hugo Defienne
Once, holograms were just a scientific curiosity. But thanks to the rapid development of lasers, they have gradually moved centre stage, appearing on the security imagery for credit cards and bank notes, in science fiction...
Bitcoin isn't getting greener: four environmental myths about cryptocurrency debunked
By Peter Howson
The price of bitcoin has reached US$50,000 (36,095) another all-time high. Its hard to believe that 10,000 bitcoin would only buy a couple of pizzas ten years ago. Its even stranger to think that bitcoins are completely...
Mario Draghi: is Italy’s addiction to technocratic leaders a cause for concern?
By Filippo Tronconi Et Al
Italy loves technocrats. The latest proof is the decision to install Mario Draghi, former governor of the Bank of Italy and former president of the European Central Bank, as prime minister. This followed the resignation of...
Psychology carries a dark past: how the discipline can be Africanised
By Puleng Segalo Et Al
Its well documented by many scholars that psychological warfare took place for a long time as part of the colonial conquest. The colonialists laboured to ensure that black peoples minds were colonised. And to this end,...
Why being endowed with oil is not always a boon: the case of Nigeria and Angola
By Ross Harvey
In countries with weak governance institutions, natural resource wealth tends to be a curse instead of a blessing. Where citizens are relatively powerless to hold ruling elites to account, resource wealth undermines...
Trust in government soars in Australia and New Zealand during pandemic
By Shaun Goldfinch Et Al
It has become accepted wisdom that the COVID-19 pandemic has seen trust in government rise across countries. But by how much? And why should it matter?
To answer these questions, we conducted a representative online...
Arab Spring: when the US needed to step up, it stood back – now, all eyes are on Biden
By Michelle Bentley
The tenth anniversary of the Arab Spring has been an opportunity for some to declare the protests a failure not least in the face of ongoing conflict in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Looking back on those turbulent events, its...
The science behind why hobbies can improve our mental health
By Ciara McCabe
The pandemic has taken its toll on many peoples mental health. Given the fear of the virus and the government restrictions on movement many may understandably be feeling more lonely, anxious, and depressed than usual. The...
Investors swoon over Bumble's IPO – but what exactly is an initial public offering?
By Jonathan T. Fluharty-Jaidee
Bumble raised US$2.15 billion in an initial public offering, or IPO, late on Feb. 10, just in time for Valentines Day. Investors swooned over the women-go-first dating app, buying more shares and at a higher price than...
What if Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus plan is too big?
By Richard Holden
Its not often centre-left economists disagree with each other let alone get into a stoush. But its what happened over the last week.
On February 5 former US Treasury Secretary and National Economic Council Chair Larry...
What's the difference between mutations, variants and strains? A guide to COVID terminology
By Lara Herrero Et Al
Living through a global pandemic over the past year has seen all of us expanding our vocabularies. We now understand terms like PPE, social distancing and contact tracing.
But just when perhaps we thought we had a...
Why is there water on Earth?
By Laurette Piani Et Al
Water is essential to life as we know it and it seems completely normal to have water all around us. Yet Earth is the only known planet to be covered by oceans. Do we know exactly where its water came from?
This is not...
Bitcoin: why a wave of huge companies like Tesla rushing in could derail the stock market
By Gavin Brown
After Tesla announced it has invested US$1.5 billion in bitcoin and expects to start accepting the cryptocurrency as a payment for its electric vehicles in the near future, the bitcoin price went soaring. It went from...
Why African countries must invest more in earth sciences
By Michelle A. North Et Al
The African continent contains some of the worlds richest mineral resources. For instance, the Democratic Republic of Congo produces most of the worlds cobalt; Rwanda, Ethiopia and Mozambique are major contributors to...
