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When it comes to solar energy, Australia has a huge natural advantage with an abundance of sun and vast, flat expanses of land. This makes it relatively easy to build solar farms across the continent.

In recent years, the Victoria and New South Wales governments have both unveiled strategies to move more freight across the country by rail and ease the increasing pressure of goods moving through the two largest container ports.

Tapering refers to the Federal Reserve policy of unwinding the massive purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities it’s been making to shore up the economy during the pandemic.

Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, it was common for Amazon to require its employees to leave phones at home or in vehicles before setting foot on the factory floor.

Images of what appeared to be US warships emerged from China last month, but they were not anywhere near an ocean. In fact, they were thousands of kilometres away, in a desert in western China.

Shaming people for their health-related choices disregards the complexities about whether people are individually responsible for their own decisions.

Over the past two years, we’ve learned COVID-19 survivors can develop a range of longer-term symptoms we now call “long COVID”. This includes people who did not have severe illness initially.

Central banks are being tested by the recent resurgence in inflation, with the US recently reporting an annual rate of inflation of 6.8%, the highest in nearly 40 years. The question they are all asking is whether this inflation is temporary (“transitory”) or persistent.

From record-breaking heat waves to massive wildfires, floods and long-running drought, the impacts of climate change across the U.S. have been impossible to ignore in 2021. While conditions vary from one region to another, it is clear that no part of the nation will be unaffected.

One success from this year’s United Nations climate conference in Glasgow was an agreement to halt forest loss by 2030. The Morrison government signed the agreement, and this commitment is now being put to the test as it reviews Australia’s rules on illegal logging imports.

Many Australians have never heard of the Pension Loans Scheme, and many more assume it’s just for pensioners, which is understandable given its name.

Last week, it was announced police in South Wales and Gwent would be the first in the UK to deploy real-time facial recognition technology (FRT) in a mobile app.

Last month was Australia’s wettest November on record, and summer in Queensland and parts of New South Wales is also expected to be soggy for the second consecutive year. So why is our summer parade being rained on yet again?

South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s visit to Australia this week comes at a critical point in the relationship between the countries.

A vaccine manufacturing facility will be built in Victoria to produce mRNA vaccines for future possible pandemics under an in-principle agreement between the federal government, the state government and global mRNA company Moderna.

Think of the inhabitants of a coral reef, and chances are you’ll think of a giant clam, the largest aquatic mollusc on Earth at up to 250 kilograms and a metre long.

A 2020 global survey of mothers found more than 70% of mothers play games daily on consoles, smartphones and computers. The report highlighted the commercial benefits of marketing games to mothers – but did little to address the social factors that influence mothers’ gaming behaviours.

Finance studies show investor attention may temporarily pump up stock values, but prices will revert to fundamental levels in the longer term. This looks like the case with BNPL stocks.

New Zealanders, like many of their developed country counterparts, have built up significant debts in recent decades. There are differing views, however, on whether this constitutes a problem.

Some will recall it as 2021. For more, it will be Year 2 of COVID. Either way, it will have been a time of disappointment for many. And the nation’s politicians need to bear a large share of the responsibility for that feeling.

The result will no doubt be a huge headache for French President Emmanuel Macron, just months away from the French presidential elections next April. Critics are suggesting his insistence on pressing ahead with the referendum in defiance of the wide-ranging opposition could damage him politically.

Despite the federal government allocating significant extra funds to home care in the last budget, there is still a raft of problems with current home-care arrangements.

Deep sea hydrothermal vents harbour some of the most extraordinary species on our planet. Lying at two to three kilometres below the surface, these extreme, insular ecosystems are powered, not by the sunlight-driven photosynthesis that we’re used to, but by energy from superheated mineral-rich seawater jetting from cracks in the...

Soil is one of the world’s most precious resources, but is often overlooked. The soil does many important tasks. It provides food and energy, keeps water clean, acts as a place to store carbon in the fight against climate change, and maintains biodiversity.

Nissan recently announced a new £13 billion investment to help transition its business to being focused around electric vehicles (EVs). The investment is centred around its Sunderland plant in the north east of England, which already makes the popular Nissan Leaf, and a plan to build 23 new electric models...

Brainwaves are the rhythmic firing, or oscillation, of neurons in your brain. These oscillations may be one factor that helps make conversation effortless. Several researchers have proposed that a neural oscillatory mechanism automatically synchronizes the firing rate of a group of neurons to the speech rate of your conversation partner.

Communities across the U.S. Southeast and Midwest will be assessing damage from the deadly and widespread tornado outbreak on Dec. 10-11, 2021 for some time. But it’s clear that the cleanups will take months, and possibly years.

Whether it’s athletes on a sporting field or celebrities in the jungle, nothing holds our attention like the drama of vying for a single prize. And when it comes to the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), some of the most captivating moments have also been delivered in nailbiting finishes.

The Sun hasn’t set in Antarctica since October. Earth’s southernmost continent is currently experiencing a long summer’s day, one that stretches from mid-October until early April.

Australia is going through another supply chain crisis. Stocks of AdBlue, an exhaust fluid used in newer diesel cars and trucks to reduce pollution, is getting dangerously low.

If at some stage during the COVID pandemic you’ve had a face mask mysteriously disappear from your pocket, you’re not alone. From March 2020 countless discarded blue and white masks started appearing around the world.

Almost a third of Australia’s estimated ten million households now have solar on the roof.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been touted, again and again, as one of the critical technologies that could help Australia reach its climate targets, and features heavily in the federal government’s plan for net-zero emissions by 2050.

Tropical forests are among the world’s best tools for fighting climate change and the loss of wild species. They store huge quantities of carbon, shelter thousands of plants and animals and are home to Indigenous peoples who sustain them.

As New Zealand gets ready for the festive season under the new traffic light system, the emergence of the Omicron variant is a reminder this pandemic is far from over.

The People’s Bank of China is encouraging Chinese banks to lend more to businesses and consumers by cutting the proportion of deposits that they have to hold as reserves by 0.5 percentage points to an average of 8.4% from December 15.

Former President Donald Trump has lost his latest legal battle over documents relating to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, in a case that tests the power of a former president to withhold his records from Congressional scrutiny.

The goal is to see how well antibodies from real people who have had COVID-19 or have been vaccinated against it can hold off omicron in petri dishes in the lab.

When life gives you oranges, leave them to go rotten as we finally have a new orange discovery!

On the frosty morning of Dec. 9, 1921, in Dayton, Ohio, researchers at a General Motors lab poured a new fuel blend into one of their test engines. Immediately, the engine began running more quietly and putting out more power.

The new xenobots are a bit like Pac-Man – as they swim around they can gobble up other frog stem cells and assemble new xenobots just like themselves. They can sustain this process for several generations.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics in Beijing in February. This means that while athletes will still compete in the games, no officials will represent Australia at the event.

Eucalypt forests are well known for bouncing back after fire, and the green shoots that emerge from eucalypts stems as they begin their first steps to recovery provide some of the most iconic images of the Australian bush.

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While small businesses can plod along for years using basic, manual systems, the need to automate sales and other activities rapidly increases once they begin to scale.

During last month’s COP26 summit, climate change was a ubiquitous story. News hooks abounded, from unpacking the flurry of non-binding pledges to reporting on the failure of rich nations to honour demands of countries at the frontline, criticising the summit as the “most exclusionary COP ever”.

As new exposure sites were announced, a positive coronavirus case has been confirmed as a false positive and unrelated to to these exposure sites.

Shell has scrapped plans to invest in Cambo, a proposed oilfield off the Shetland Islands. The fossil fuel supermajor has been shedding UK assets for a while. It sold a large refinery complex in Cheshire in 2011 and US$3.8 billion (£2.64 billion) of North Sea assets in 2017.

The Soviet anthem hailed the socialist union that it celebrated as “indestructible”. Yet 30 years ago this week, the then Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, together with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus, signed the agreement that created the Commonwealth of Independent States. It was the end for the Union of...

The recent Glasgow climate pact committed 197 countries to “phas down unabated coal”. Unabated coal refers to when power stations or factories burn coal without capturing and storing the carbon dioxide (CO₂) generated.