Search Result for 'tier 1'

Victoria’s current COVID outbreak took another turn last week when a new variant was discovered by health authorities. It’s not clear whether this new “Delta” variant emerged from Victoria, New South Wales or elsewhere, and it hasn’t yet been matched to any cases in hotel quarantine.

As attempts to curb illegal fishing continue, the Border Force says it has intercepted 19 Indonesian vessels and destroyed three of them.

Huge concrete data centres, permanently plugged into power plants and telephone exchanges, maintain much of online life. But the infrastructure behind internet-based cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, dogecoin and ethereum is more like a rusty travelling circus. And right now, that circus is on the road.

Australia is unquestionably in the midst of an extinction crisis. Some 34 native mammal species have been driven to extinction since European invasion, and threatened species and ecological communities now number more than 1,900.

The Gulf of California – a sea near the western border of the U.S. and Mexico – is home to some of the world’s most incredible underwater landscapes. It generates 60% of Mexico’s fish catch, but overfishing is threatening its marine ecosystems and the people who make a living off ...

The report of the Senate committee inquiry into the ousting of Australia Post boss Christine Holgate over Cartier watches, published yesterday, pulls no punches. Some of its 25 recommendations are blistering (with the inquiry’s Coalition members dissenting).

The much-larger industry at risk from a switch to electric vehicles is car maintenance. The Bureau of Statistics counts 352,200 automotive and engineering trades workers, almost all of them male and full time.

Country’s new space defence capability begins operating next year and will cost taxpayers around $7-billion over the following decade.

London Irish declares intention to launch top-flight women’s team

It’s only May, and states are already considering water use restrictions to make the supply last longer. California’s governor declared a drought emergency in 41 of 58 counties.

Microfluidic systems are any device that process minuscule amounts of liquids. The fluids travel through channels thinner than a hair, and tiny valves can turn the flow on and off. These channels are made of materials such as glass, polymers, paper or gels.

Capturing audiences worldwide with its no-holds-barred indictment of the fishing industry, Netflix’s Seaspiracy is the latest documentary to draw attention to the plight of our oceans.

Yesterday the news dropped that Christine Holgate, the Australia Post chief executive pushed so roughly from her job by the Morrison government, has a new job with a rival delivery company.

Cities throughout the world, across a range of scales and locales, exemplify this. Brasilia (Brasil), Detroit (USA), Milton Keynes (England), Norilsk (Russia) – the list goes on – were designed as modernist visions of a single, finite solution. However, this vision quickly unravelled. Overpopulation, climate change, diminishing resources, rampant commercialisation ...

The UK government recently announced an £800 million, taxpayer-funded Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria). The brainchild of the British prime minister’s former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings and modelled on the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Darpa, the organisation will focus partly on genomic research.

Plants absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere, transforming it into leaves, wood and roots. This everyday miracle has spurred hopes that plants – particularly fast growing tropical trees – can act as a natural brake on climate change, capturing much of the CO₂ emitted by fossil fuel burning.

When the pandemic forced office employees into lockdown and cut them off from spending in-person time with their colleagues, they almost immediately realized that they favor remote work over their traditional office routines and norms.

Australia introduced its policy of mandatory hotel quarantine for returning travellers. In the past year, some 211,000 travellers have been confined for two weeks in hotel rooms, in conditions many have found difficult to endure.

Like Bitcoin, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are cryptocurrencies. But whereas individual bitcoins all have the same value, NFTs are more like baseball cards.

To boost the nation’s coffers, taxes are also being raised to 39 percent for top earners on more than NZ$180,000 a year.

The inequities in access to vaccines are stark. By November, wealthy nations accounting for just 14% of the global population had locked in premarket agreements to buy 51% of the first 7.48 billion doses of candidate COVID-19 vaccines.

Looking around, it sometimes seems like COVID-19 restrictions aren’t being adhered to like they were a year ago. In the UK, for example, there have been frequent reports of people not following lockdown rules, with sharp rises in the number of penalties issued to rule-breakers in recent months. But is ...

Subsidence can threaten flooding in low-lying coastal areas, much more so than rising sea levels, yet scientists are only just realising the global implications of the threat with respect to coastal cities.

Easy copying and imitation discourage innovation, because why make the effort if someone else will profit from it? The patent system works by enabling inventors to block unauthorized use of patented technology.

Young people were the first in Myanmar to peacefully protest the country’s new military regime. Then came labor unions. In the weeks since a Feb. 1 military coup, Mynamar’s resistance movement has expanded dramatically to include some perhaps unlikely activists: doctors, nurses, bankers, grocers, railway workers and other working professionals ...

Even a short walk, an ocean view or a picnic by a river can leave us feeling invigorated and restored. There is now a growing body of evidence establishing the link between such nature encounters and our mental and physical well-being.

Seagrass is a flowering plant that forms rippling underwater meadows in shallow coastal seas. Our study is the first to analyse all published data on this habitat in the UK, gathered from newspapers, diaries and other sources throughout history.

Scientists in Brazil recently reported that two people were simultaneously infected with two different variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This co-infection seemed to have no effect on the severity of patients’ illness, and both recovered without needing to be hospitalised.

Last year Gudinski developed Music From the Home Front, a COVID-era celebration that brought together artists and audiences in isolation, staged across a socially distanced ANZAC day.

News suggests the default is truth or a commitment to truth. If they are true to their profession, journalists demonstrate a higher commitment or calling, to get stories right, or at least not to fake it. Intentional falsification results in professional suicide.

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 inflict on the planet.

Australia continued to experience rapid growth in incomes for another decade, until 2013, this time driven by extraordinarily high export prices for metals and energy and the resources industries investment booms that followed.

Unsurprisingly, many companies choose to quietly pay the ransom, opting never to report the breach to the authorities. This means successful prosecutions of ransomware gangs are exceedingly rare.

But at 14,000 years old, the records from these lakes are much younger than the Laschamp excursion. Four decades later, our work at Lake Selina with modern techniques has revealed the exciting potential for similar research at other Australian lakes.

Seeing or hearing Greta Thunberg once doesn’t instantly turn someone into a climate activist. Nonetheless, we discovered a potentially important pattern of associations. Those more familiar with Thunberg were more likely to think their actions were effective and meaningful and were more intent on doing something about climate change.

North Korean hackers have staged an audacious attack targeting cybersecurity researchers, many of whom work to counter hackers from places like North Korea, Russia, China and Iran.

Just before the newly elected members of Myanmar’s parliament were due to be sworn in today, the military detained the country’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi; the president, Win Myint; and other key figures from the elected ruling party, the National League for Democracy.

In May 2020, the international mining giant Rio Tinto made a calculated and informed decision to drill 382 blast holes in an area of its Brockman 4 mining lease that encompassed the ancient rock shelter formations at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.

For almost 20 years, Australia ranked in the top 10 (least corrupt) countries. In 2012, Australia ranked 7th with a score of 85. By 2018, it had fallen to 13th with a score of 77. In the latest 2020 rankings, it has also scored 77.

Across the globe, women’s sports are gaining popularity by building passionate fanbases. Historically, sports like tennis’s WTA and golf’s LPGA have provided strong examples of the top tier of female athleticism, from competitors like Serena Williams to Hyo Joo Kim.

Pandemic measures reduced the overall amount of electricity used by 6% in 2020, to the lowest level since 1983. When you look at usage per person the fall in recent years is even more extreme.

The challenge of bringing the world’s best tennis players and support staff, about 1,200 people in all, from COVID-ravaged parts of the world to our almost pandemic-free shores was always going to be a big ask.

In the past 25 years of the record, six of the years were cooler than normal and 19 were warmer than normal. That’s a ratio just over three to one in favour of warm years.

The giant radio galaxies were spotted in new radio maps of the sky created by one of the most advanced surveys of distant galaxies. The team working on it has included astronomers from around the world including South Africa, the UK, Italy and Australia.

Health workers are at higher risk of COVID infection and illness. They can also act as extremely efficient transmitters of viruses to others in medical and aged care facilities.

The research published today reviews more than 150 studies to produce a stark summary of the state of the natural world. We outline the likely future trends in biodiversity decline, mass extinction, climate disruption and planetary toxification.

Colourful mining magnate Clive Palmer’s political ambitions appear to be in tatters. But what of his multibillion-dollar legal ambitions?

Two Democrats were announced the winners of the run-off elections for Georgia’s two Senate seats, allowing the Democrats to take back control of the chamber from the Republicans.

Maths anxiety is the feeling of tension and fear that many people experience when called on to work out a sum. For children, it can lead to behavioural problems in class, as well as physical symptoms such as butterflies in the stomach and a racing heart.

South Georgia saw around 3,000 blue whales killed each year at the hunt’s peak in the early 20th century. The waters surrounding the island are rich in the krill these whales eat, and scientists believe their return heralds a “rediscovery” of this oceanic larder by new generations.