Search Result for 'Generation X'

What do we do when times get tough? We reach for that escapism. And with more time to ourselves than ever before, Covid showed us some new - and old - avenues to pursue with our escapism.

Green hydrogen is being touted as an alternative to fossil fuels in New Zealand. The government has invested NZ$8.4 million to explore its potential and $19.9 million in a hydrogen energy facility.

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 ...

On March 11, Beeple, a computer science graduate whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, auctioned a piece of crypto art at Christie’s for US$69 million.

Contract to supply up to 450 new vehicles could be worth around $27-billion. They will replace the current Vietnam-era personnel carrier.

The 2011 disaster delivered a devastating one-two punch to the Fukushima plant. First, the magnitude 9.0 earthquake knocked out off-site electric power. Next, the tsunami breached the plant’s protective sea wall and swamped portions of the site.

Despite living in dynamic environments and facing an uncertain future due to climate change, New Zealanders generally expect their land and property rights will endure indefinitely.

The oil industry’s lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute, suggested in a new draft statement that it might support Congress putting a price on carbon emissions to combat climate change, even though oil and gas are major sources of those greenhouse gas emissions.

Regulations brought in following the UK’s departure from the EU have delayed the export of live shellfish to Europe, causing entire lorry loads of lobsters and langoustines to expire in Scotland’s ports.

There’s a global shortage in semiconductors, and it’s becoming increasingly serious. The US is currently reviewing of its supply of the technology, following a landmark executive order from President Joe Biden.

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.

Many renewable energy technologies need extensive land area. Wind turbines, for instance, cannot be located too close together, or they won’t work efficiently.

The army of millions of investors from Reddit’s WallStreetBets community pushed GameStop shares from US$20 to US$480 during the January “short squeeze”, in which they drove hedge funds like Melvin Capital into heavy losses, after forcing them to liquidate massive bets against the stock.

Succeeding in this ‘exceptionally challenging project’ could give Australia a greater share of the international space launch market.

In sum, the sky-high electric bills in Texas are partly due to a deregulated electricity system that allowed volatile wholesale costs to be passed directly to some consumers. If prices in the Texas retail market had remained regulated, utilities and their regulators would likely have figured out some way to ...

Scientists use new technique of dating the mud wasp nests around the WA painting to determine it is approximately 17,300 years old.

Christchurch can be stereotyped as a formal, conventional city. But there is another, alternative past whose ways of living have much to offer the present. From the late 19th century the city had been a hotbed of early feminism, as well as home to movements promoting health and fitness, scenic ...

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.

The pandemic’s impact has been widespread. Ski resorts, hotels, bars and tourism operators have all been affected, as have a whole range of suppliers who depend on demand from these organisations.

It seems that widespread television coverage is not that important. When Sky TV generously shared coverage of the 2019 Men’s cricket world cup final with free-to-air channels, the viewing figures were just 100,000 less than the peak of 2005. So not much had changed in the intervening 14 years.

The recent cold wave and storm in Texas have placed considerable focus on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, the nonprofit corporation that manages the flow of electricity to more than 26 million Texans.

About 60% of homes in Texas have electric heat, and most of the rest use natural gas or propane. Normally our peak electric demand is on summer afternoons for air conditioning.

By 2030, humans will once again walk on the surface of the Moon, travel to Mars and potentially enjoy sub-orbital holidays. The new space era will provide enormous benefits to all of us.

Victoria’s lockdown is the latest in a string of recent shutdowns, following similar circuit-breakers in South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia.

Faced with a COVID-19 pandemic of unknown severity and duration, governments around the world are looking for effective and sustainable ways to maintain economic confidence and employment.

As fossil fuels are phased out over the coming decades, the Climate Change Commission (CCC) suggests electricity will take up much of the slack, powering our vehicle fleet and replacing coal and gas in industrial processes.

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.

In the UK, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has similarly warned that “temperature screening products, some of which make direct claims to screen for COVID-19, are not a reliable way to detect if people have the virus”. The Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health also noted ...

Anthony Albanese will risk a backlash from employers when he releases an industrial relations policy promising a Labor government would substantially increase the legal rights and protections for Australians in insecure work.

A university could not close a language program involving a nationally strategic language without government approval. This condition was important symbolically as well as practically. It emphasised to universities the importance of commitment to Asian languages.

The Morrison government on Friday released a plan to reduce carbon emissions from Australia’s road transport sector. Controversially, it ruled out consumer incentives to encourage electric vehicle uptake.

South Africa will pause its rollout of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine after a small study suggested it offers minimal protection against mild and moderate infection from the South African coronavirus strain known as B.1.351.

As Australians try to put the upheavals of past year behind them and warily look ahead into 2021, probably one of the last things they want to contemplate is the prospect of a pugilistic election campaign.

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.

In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping officially announced China’s aspiration to recreate this network. The 21st century Silk Road, also called the Belt and Road Initiative, is the world’s largest infrastructure project in decades, with conservative estimates suggesting that its cost will exceed US$1 trillion.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Monday acknowledged what many Australian businesses, investors and others have long known: the global economy is transitioning to net-zero emissions, and so too must Australia.

Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny was today sentenced to two years, eight months in a prison colony for violating the probation terms of a suspended sentence on a 2014 conviction, which he claims was politically motivated.

Robots have come a long way since our first clumsy forays into artificial movement many decades ago. Today, companies such as Boston Dynamics produce ultra-efficient robots which load trucks, build pallets, and move boxes around factories, undertaking tasks you might think only humans could perform.

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.

Israeli company StoreDot recently announced it can now mass produce electric vehicle batteries that can be fully charged in just five minutes.

The new variant, called 501Y.V2, has acquired 23 mutations, when compared with the original SARS-CoV-2 virus. Importantly, 20 of the mutations cause amino acids changes and eight are located in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.

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.

Neonicotinoids, the most commonly used pesticides in the world, were banned in the EU in 2018. More than 99,000 people petitioned the UK government to support the ban amid a wealth of scientific evidence linking this group of chemicals to poor health in bees, from the reduced production of bumblebee ...

Whereas GM crops typically contain the DNA of two different species, gene editing is more precise and allows scientists to tweak the DNA of a single species by itself. Today, many plant scientists see a clear difference between first-generation genetic modifications and the “new plant breeding techniques” of gene editing.

Recovery of America’s damaged standing will come from success in putting out the fires that are not just in the US: saving lives and vanquishing a virus, committing to a secure environment, tackling the inequities and divisions in the way of justice for all.

As cases climbed in Australian cities in 2020, many students did their schoolwork from home. Australia, including Victoria, came out of lockdowns at the end of last year. But due to outbreaks in New South Wales and Queensland over Christmas and New Year, that impacted on Victoria, restrictions remain in ...

The dissident politician was jailed for 30 days by a Moscow court within 24 hours of stepping off the flight, on the grounds that he had violated the terms of his suspended sentence for embezzlement issued in 2017, a conviction he has always dismissed as being trumped up in order ...

Saluting Their Service grants program provides more than $1-million to community groups that commemorate wartime service of Australians.

The UK is connected to France, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and the Netherlands by large power cables that allow electricity to flow between them. But the UK cannot rely on importing energy, as the cold and still conditions created during these atmospheric events also tend to affect neighbouring ...