Robots are coming to the kitchen

By Patrick Lin

Automating food is unlike automating anything else. Food is fundamental to life nourishing body and soul so how its accessed, prepared and consumed can change societies fundamentally. Automated kitchens arent sci-fi...

Who says boys don’t cry? Why we must encourage men and boys to express their emotions

By Michael Kehler

The Democratic National Convention recently wrapped up in Chicago, where Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz were officially nominated as the partys ticket for the 2024 presidential election. One...

How low can we go? To cut the carbon that goes into buildings to net zero, we need radical change

By Philip Oldfield Et Al

Philip Oldfield, Head of School and Professor of Architecture, UNSW Built Environment, UNSW Sydney Buildings are one of our biggest contributors to global heating. They produce 37% of all greenhouse gas emissions from...

Yes, you can borrow money to invest in shares

By Sean Pinder

In their scramble to secure a foothold on an increasingly unaffordable housing ladder, some young investors might be looking for new ways to boost their returns on savings. One such approach albeit highly risky is...

Why Americans do political speeches so well (and debates so badly)

By David Smith

The recent Democratic National Convention in Chicago was a showcase of impressive speeches. Presidential nominee Kamala Harris justified the newfound enthusiasm of Democrats with a strong acceptance speech, but even she...

How the Republicans are trying to use Trump’s revised court charges to energise the campaign

By Natasha Lindstaedt

US special counsel Jack Smith has issued revised charges against former president Donald Trump for allegedly attempting to interfere in the 2020 election. This follows last months historic and widely criticised Supreme...

Jackson Hole: how a meeting of bankers in a remote Wyoming valley could have consequences for us all

By Amr Saber Algarhi Et Al

The economic world recently turned its attention to the resort of Jackson Hole, in a remote Wyoming valley. The annual economic policy symposium of central bankers, policymakers, academics and financial gurus took place in...

Ukraine war: US military support for Kyiv has been very cautious – here’s how a Harris presidency could change that

By David Hastings Dunn

Russias recent military advances and ferocious bombardment of Ukraine have led the country to renew calls for western allies to lift their ban on the use of their long-range missiles to hit military targets in Russia. But...

NT election: the Country Liberals claim a landslide victory in a contest decided in suburbia

By Rolf Gerritsen

The Northern Territory is a different place. On the day prior to this election, Speckles the Adelaide River crocodile was asked to predict the result of the election. He had replaced the previous crocodile, a spiv who got...

Mpox: African countries have beaten disease outbreaks before – here’s what it takes

By Oyewale Tomori

Barely over a year after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that mpox was no longer a public health issue of international concern, it is back in the news. This time with a diversity of variants, new modes of...

‘Humanity is failing’: official report warns our chance to save the Great Barrier Reef is fast closing

By Ove Hoegh-Guldberg

The Great Barrier Reef will continue to deteriorate, largely to climate change, and the window to secure its future is rapidly closing. That is the sobering conclusion of a major new report into the state of the...

Rail shutdown: What the dispute tells us about labour relations and politics in Canada

By Gerard Di Trolio

The situation surrounding the nation-wide rail shutdown is evolving quickly as the Canadian government rushes to get workers back on the job and trains running again. Canadas two largest freight railroads came to a...

Not even the boss of Starbucks needs to be doing a 1,000-mile commute if they can do the job from home

By Heejung Chung

New Starbucks boss Brian Niccol caused many to spit out their coffee with the news he will commute around 1,000 miles from his home in California to the companys HQ in Seattle. Its true that hell have the luxury of the...

Kamala Harris and her fellow Democrats used ancient Greek rhetorical tricks to keep their audiences spellbound

By Richard Toye

The Democratic Party has had a good week. Ill start that again the Democratic Party has had an amazingly good week. Not so long ago, the Democrats seemed down, if not actually out. Now, theyre not merely pulling ahead...

How Web3 and Blockchain Are Shaping the Future of Digital News

By Sonny Kwon

The digital media industry is at a crossroads, facing ongoing challenges in delivering trustworthy news in an era of information overload. Web3 and blockchain technology are emerging as potential game-changers, offering a...

Irish hip-hop, British K-pop and the best end-of-summer novels – what you should watch and read this week

By Anna Walker

This article was first published in our email newsletter Something Good, which every fortnight brings you a summary of the best things to watch, visit and read, as recommended and analysed by academic experts. Click here...

How we’re using ‘chaos engineering’ to make cloud computing less vulnerable to cyber attacks

By Amro Al-Said Ahmad

Cloud computing has emerged as a crucial element in todays technology, serving as the backbone for global connectivity. It empowers businesses, governments, and individuals to employ and construct cloud-based services and...

Can a new access scheme get more working-class people into the TV industry?

By Paul Tucker

TV was everything to me, said British playwright James Graham at this years Edinburgh TV Festivals MacTaggart lecture on August 20. The dramatist used his recollections of the television he watched in his youth together...

Tory leadership contenders would be wise to become the ‘heir to Keir’

By Stephen Barber

The Conservative leadership contest is something of a sideshow to the meaningful politics of government. Whoever wins will inherit a depleted party reeling from arguably its worst ever election defeat. It comprises only...

Kamala Harris: here’s what we’ve found out so far about the presidential nominee

By Thomas Gift

Who is Kamala Harris? Thats the question the Democratic nominee for president tried to answer in her highly anticipated acceptance speech at the partys national convention in Chicago. Although she has been...

Rwanda: Paul Kagame’s fourth term as president – what his agenda will need to cover

By Jonathan Beloff

Paul Kagame started his fourth term as Rwandas president in August 2024. He first became president in April 2000. However, as the leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, he has been the countrys de facto head since his...

Project 2025: what is it and why does Trump say he knows nothing about it?

By David Hastings Dunn

Think-tank policy proposals rarely make the headlines, but 2024 is no ordinary year and Project 2025 is no usual set of plans for government. This is a not-very-secret set of plans that Republicans have put together in...

These colourful diagrams show how air quality has changed in over 100 countries around the world since 1850

By Jim McQuaid Et Al

Air pollution is an unseen menace that poses a major threat to human health and the climate. We have created the air quality stripes, a visual tool that captures global air pollution trends, to bring this hidden threat...

Should brands take a stance on social and political issues?

By Geetanjali Saluja Et Al

In the immediate aftermath of last months shocking assassination attempt on US presidential candidate Donald Trump, search engine giant Google found itself in hot water. The reason? A technical issue with its auto-complete...

In Myanmar’s brutal war, the military is weaponising sexual violence against women, children and LGBTQI+ people

By Phyu Phyu Oo

The United Nations verified 3,688 cases of conflict-related sexual violence around the world last year, a significant increase of 50% from 2022. This is certainly a vast underestimate of the true number of cases. A...

Investigation reveals global fisheries are in far worse shape than we thought – and many have already collapsed

By Graham Edgar

When fish are taken from our oceans faster than they can reproduce, their population numbers decline. This over-fishing upsets marine ecosystems. Its also bad for human populations that rely on fish for protein in their...

Dua Lipa is a poet too – on National Poetry Day, let’s celebrate the power of words to move us

By Siobhan Harvey

The significance and solace of poetry is closer than you think, I tell budding authors as they arrive at class with headphones on, glued to TikTok trends, or scrolling through Instagram feeds. Given their youth, they...

US is unlikely to stop giving military aid to Israel

By Dov Waxman

The Democratic National Convention has been packed with prominent speakers and musical interludes that all focus on unity and moving forward into a more hopeful future. But this cheerfulness is shadowed by a split...

Gaza update: US politics and the fate of Palestinians increasingly bound up together

By Jonathan Este

It would be a brave or foolhardy analyst who presumes to predict the outcomes of the talks which continue in Doha. But the fate of Gaza and its 2 million inhabitants as well as the 109 remaining Israeli hostages being...

Disney wrongful death legal case exposes potential pitfalls of automatically clicking ‘I agree’

By Stergios Aidinlis

Disney has U-turned on a bid to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit in the US by relying on the terms of service for a simple streaming trial. The suit was filed by a man whose wife allegedly died after experiencing an...

How your festival wee could disrupt soil health and water quality

By Jess Davies

Festival season is in full flow, and like any self-respecting plant-soil biogeochemist attending a local music festival, Im curious about how these outdoor events might modify important nutrient cycles. With crowds...

Bayesian yacht disaster: how specialist search and rescue teams work underwater

By Jamie Pringle Et Al

Search and rescue for missing persons is always challenging for the specialist recovery teams involved, regardless of the environment theyre working in. But the teams looking for the missing aboard the Bayesian yacht...

The truth about Tasers: what the statistics and research tell us

By Sophie Chambers

Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently urged the police to take all necessary action in response to unrest across cities and towns in England and Northern Ireland. One of the most contentious tools at the polices disposal...

How Twitter — now X — helps us understand Canadian values and attitudes toward asylum seekers

By Laura French Bourgeois Et Al

The treatment of asylum seekers is an important issue for many countries as they grapple with polarized public views on the issue. Some policymakers focus on the need for border security to keep asylum-seekers out and...

Why eating seaweed might help prevent Parkinson’s disease

By Marine Krzisch

Eating the seaweed Ecklonia cava may be able to slow down or prevent Parkinsons disease, according to a 2024 study. Researchers found that antioxidants in the seaweed which is often used in soups and salads in Asian...

How debt and taxes conspired to rob Nairobi’s slum-dwelling youth of the promise of a better life

By Angela R. Pashayan

Throughout the summer of 2024, young Kenyans have taken to the streets of the capital, Nairobi, in a series of anti-government demonstrations. Dubbed the Gen Z protests, the unrest was sparked by the introduction of an...

How Israel-Gaza will affect the US election campaign

By Scott Lucas

As delegates assembled in Chicago for the start of the Democratic National Convention on August 19, something surreal was happening 6,000 miles away in Israel. In Tel Aviv, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken,...

Solar above, batteries below: here’s how warehouses and shopping centres could produce 25% of Australia’s power

By Bruce Mountain

Imagine if Australian cities became major producers of clean energy, rather than relying on far-flung solar and wind farms. Far fetched? Hardly. Our cities and towns are full of warehouses, commercial areas, shopping...

Study shows video games can improve mental wellbeing – but you can have too much of a good thing

By Katarina Fritzon Et Al

A study of almost 100,000 people in Japan aged 10 to 69 found playing video games or even owning a console can be good for mental health. But playing too much each day can harm wellbeing. Video games and other forms...

New ABC show The Assembly highlights how neurodivergence can enhance jobs or study

By Sandra Thom-Jones

The Assembly, a new ABC documentary series, introduces us to a diverse group of autistic people who are interested in pursuing journalism careers. The first episode strikes a nice balance between introducing the...

A city at the crossroads: how Gaza became one of the great intellectual hubs of the Roman Empire

By Christopher Mallan

The years 2023 and 2024 will certainly be remembered as some of the darkest in the long and often violent history of Gaza. The recent destruction of schools and universities in the Gaza strip has attracted the attention...

NZ’s white-collar crime gap: just 1% of serious fraud complaints result in prosecution

By Lisa Marriott

Despite long being considered one of the least corrupt countries ranked third in the world by Transparency International New Zealand is lagging behind when it comes to handling white-collar crime. This can be loosely...

‘Gig workers’ get minimum standards from Monday. Here’s what will change

By Juan Diaz-Granados Et Al

Monday August 26 is when the governments updated Fair Work legislation comes into force. The new laws will offer new rights to so-called gig workers who take on jobs through platforms such as Uber, Menulog and...

Concerned about your early reader? Why ‘wait and see’ isn’t advised for reading struggles

By Katelyn Bryant

At Western Universitys Mary J. Wright Child and Youth Development Clinic, I work on a team training future school psychologists. In our work, we encounter parents concerned about their childrens learning on an almost daily...

Five things that can help autistic students settle into university

By Harriet Axbey

As the summer draws to a close, the start of your very first term looms if you are starting university. You will hopefully be looking forward to going, although you may be feeling a little apprehensive and may even be very...

A more varied diet would help the world’s economy as well as its health

By Shonil Bhagwat Et Al

More than 75% of the food consumed in the world today comes from just 12 plant and five animal species. The over-dependence on this small selection, which includes rice, maize and wheat, damages the environment and human...

How fly fishing strengthens our connection with wildlife and fosters conservation efforts

By Avi Shankar Et Al

Whether its to reset our mental health or simply to take time out from the hurly-burly of work and urban life, many of us head for oceans and rivers to enjoy their restorative capacities. Encountering wild animals in...

What your nose can tell you about your health

By Dan Baumgardt

Thanks to a quirk known as unconscious selective attention, your brain has learned to ignore your nose. A prominent feature thats positioned closely to the eyes, the schnoz could get in the way of our vision but the...

Learn how to budget with the help of psychology

By Amr Saber Algarhi Et Al

Developing an understanding of how to manage personal finances can be even more crucial in the early stages of your career when your salary may be relatively low. But traditional financial advice often falls short of...

Bali gives a snapshot of what ‘overtourism’ looks like in the developing world

By Rama Permana

Barcelona residents marched against tourists in July after similar protests in Venice earlier in 2024. Recently, residents of Santorini in Greece were in uproar after a Facebook post reportedly asked them to stay home and...