If there was a Nobel silver medal, I'd award it to Jeffrey Gordon and our gut microbes

Oct 05, 2016 12:29 pm UTC| Insights & Views Science

A hot tip for this years Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was Jeffrey Gordon. (In case you missed it, the prize went to Yoshinori Ohsumi.) Over the past 15 years, Gordon has progressed an obscure study of boring gut...

Before Nobels: Gifts to and from rich patrons were early science's currency

Oct 05, 2016 11:35 am UTC| Insights & Views Science

While the Nobel Prizes are 115 years old, rewards for scientific achievement have been around much longer. As early as the 17th century, at the very origins of modern experimental science, promoters of science realized the...

US Election Series

Science is key to U.S. standing, but presidential candidates largely ignore it

Oct 04, 2016 14:14 pm UTC| Science Politics

Aside from Hillary Clintons brief mentions of the need to focus on developing technology and clean energy jobs and addressing climate change, science issues were absent from the first presidential debate. Unfortunately,...

Animalcules, antibiotics and the bacteria that hold clues to the origins of life

Oct 04, 2016 13:13 pm UTC| Science

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the 18th-century Dutch scientist, was the first person to see single-celled organisms through a microscope and describe what he called animalcules. Three centuries later weve learned a great deal...

The science, drugs and tech pushing our brains to new limits

Oct 04, 2016 12:57 pm UTC| Science

A recent explosion of neuroscience techniques is driving substantial advances in our understanding of the brain. Combined with developments in engineering, machine learning and computing this flowering has helped us...

Protecting biodiversity: people's buy-in is as important as the science

Oct 04, 2016 08:08 am UTC| Science

Biodiversity, the variety of life on earth (plants, animals and the ecosystems in which they live), underpins the planets life support systems and consequently human well-being. Unprecedented, large-scale biodiversity loss...

20 years on, what impact has the Nobel Prize for medicine had on our immune systems?

Oct 04, 2016 08:00 am UTC| Science Health

This time of year, Australians obsess over an annual spectacle that celebrates the achievements of our most gifted citizens though usually, theyre fixating on their respective football codes. But an even bigger prize...