A fly named in honour of Beyoncé; plum extracts as food preservatives; and the crucial role of social media during the 2011 Queensland floods are just some of the interesting stories that emerged from Australian research published in the last week. Find over a dozen other stories below.
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researchers, with the help of NICTA’s Victoria ICT Laboratory, are a step closer to being able to model the complexity of our immune system in a computer thanks to research published in Science today. This will be a critical tool in developing new vaccines and better therapies for autoimmune diseases.
Tools once used just to diagnose human diseases are being used to save coral reefs; depression patients will be able to monitor their mental health using a computer and a bodybuilder’s health supplement could be the key to treating a life-threatening muscular dystrophy affecting hundreds of Australian children.
These are just some of the interesting stories that emerged from Australian research published in the last week. Find over a dozen other stories below.
Prostate cancers are made up of hungry, growing cells. Now we’ve discovered how to cut off their food supply thanks to a study published in Cancer Research and supported by Movember. More below.
Also Australian science discoveries you may have missed from the past week.
This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about dolphin friends; guns around the house; laundry lint; mosquitoes in the rain; and more… Read the full article →
This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about killer volcanoes; rogue satellites; robot gardeners; the anti-waggle song; and more… Read the full article →
Our livers can fight back against the immune system – reducing organ rejection but also making us more susceptible to liver disease. Read the full article →
This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about lizard venom; fatherhood and testosterone; kamikaze ants; the voodoo virus; and more… Read the full article →
This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about intelligent microbes; ganging up underwater; boarding planes; how frogs drink; and more… Read the full article →
This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about sex at sea; asteroid dust; breathless caterpillars; seeds as pills; and more…
Read the full article →
This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about electronic tattoos, bacterial wires, symbiotic threesomes, sensing date-rape drugs, and more… Read the full article →
This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about Australia’s big twist; slipped discs; poisonous rats; hungry bats; and more… Read the full article →
photo: Leo Berzins
“The beginning of wisdom is to call a thing by its right name.” Chinese proverb
IdentifyLife is being launched at 1.00pm on Thursday 28th July at the International Botanical Congress in Melbourne. Read the full article →
This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about personal helicopters; pruney fingers; screwed up beetles; rig recycling; and more… Read the full article →
This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about protecting medical implants from hacking; restoring memories; rocking adults to sleep; preventing heart attacks; and more Read the full article →
This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about living lasers; scuba diving spiders; magnetic blood flow; genes that make you unfaithful; and more Read the full article →
What sawfish really do with their saw
Scientists thought that sawfish used their saw to probe the sea bottom for food. But a Cairns researcher has found that these large (5 metres or more) and endangered fish actually use the saw to locate and dismember free-swimming fish – using a sixth sense that detects electric fields. She’s in Melbourne this week as a winner of Fresh Science. Read the full article → This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about mobile drug labs; the corpse flower; Easter Island; dolphin gangs; and more Read the full article →
This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about deadly cucumbers; pre-crime detection; ailing frogs; distracting pain; and more
