Tag: SB001

Aotearoa New Zealand likes to think it punches above its weight internationally, but there is one area where we are conspicuously falling behind — the number of sites recognised by the UNESCO World Heritage Convention.

Australia built a number of coastal defences to help protect the country from any enemy attack during the second world war. Now, almost 80 years later, some of the physical remnants of those historic facilities lie forgotten and decaying.

The notes you record will expand humanity’s scientific knowledge of the natural world, and the specimens of plants and animals you collect are destined to be used for centuries to describe past and present biodiversity and make new discoveries in biomedicine and beyond.

It was a reminder that, despite the vaunted podcast boom, 70% of Australians surveyed last year still hadn’t listened to one.

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.

Dickens thanked the doctor for alerting him to an outbreak of diphtheria in Boulogne-sur-Mer on the coast of northern France while he was on holiday there. Three of the writer’s sons were actually in school there at the time and were getting ready for the new term.

Space exploration achieved several notable firsts in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, including commercial human spaceflight and returning samples of an asteroid to Earth.

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.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine has been authorised for use in the UK, meaning that millions more vaccine doses can now be delivered in the country. This will speed up progress towards achieving widespread immunity to the coronavirus.

This plodding time course seems to be an innate human defect that existed long before the current-day pandemic mask and social distancing conundrums. Historically, people aren’t fond of being told what to do.

Recent research has revealed a number of expressions that have entered everyday use since Brexit started. Terms like “Article 50”, “no deal”, “hard border” may now seem just part of life but they were seldom, if ever, used before Brexit.

A pandemic planning committee had been scrapped six months before coronavirus hit the UK – despite the fact that the threat from a pandemic had been known for some time. Similarly, an early warning programme to alert the government in the United States to pandemics was ended three months before ...

There’s no doubt that 2020 was difficult for everyone and tragic for many. But now vaccines against COVID-19 are finally being administered – giving a much needed hope of a return to normality and a happy 2021.

Australian Cabinet papers from 2000, released today, reflect a relatively quiescent Australia where Islamic militancy and offshore detention were barely glimpses on the horizon, and climate science denialism was not a factor in cabinet considerations at all.

Throughout the world architects are designing green buildings, whether it’s in their sustainable construction, environmentally friendly operation or actually green by style.

The recovery provides a rare opportunity to do things differently; to rebuild a better economy that can support living standards without irretrievably damaging the environment.

The UK has become the first country to authorise the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for public use, with roll-out to start in the first week of 2021. This vaccine is the second to be authorised in the UK – following the Pfizer vaccine.

The year 2020 will no doubt go down in history for other reasons, but it is also on target to be one of the warmest on record. And as the climate warms, natural hazards will happen more frequently – and be ever more lethal.

Malekula, the second-largest island in the Vanuatu archipelago, has a linguistic connection to Aotearoa. All of its many languages are distantly related to te reo Māori and the island is the site of a long-term project to document them.

Walking and cycling gained a higher profile than ever in 2020 as a result of the pandemic. Governments around the world encouraged individuals to go on foot or take their bikes where possible instead of using crowded public transport, and invested in widescale cycling infrastructure to help them do so.

Plenty of political spin has already been applied to the post-Brexit UK-EU trade and cooperation agreement. This not only glosses over much of the detail, but it can also be decidedly misleading. For example, Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, has claimed that “there will be no non-tariff barriers to ...

So much remains unknown about what is now being called the Sunburst hack, the cyberattack against U.S. government agencies and corporations. U.S. officials widely believe that Russian state-sponsored hackers are responsible.

On December 10, it finally happened. Instead of demanding an interest payment from the government in return for lending it money, a group of investors offered to pay the government in order to lend it money.

While these are sometimes deliberate attempts to obfuscate, it is more frequently the well-intentioned who fall victim to these often appealing fallacies. The only antidote is a large dose of scepticism, mixed with some understanding of where our reasoning frequently goes wrong.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the global tourism industry to a screeching halt in 2020. With vaccines starting to be rolled out, there is hope international travel can resume soon, but exactly when — and how — is the million-dollar question.

Rock orchids, fairy orchids, butterfly orchids, leek orchids and even onion orchids all look more or less the same. But would you recognise a clump of grass-like roots clinging to a tree trunk as an orchid?

Objectively, time passes at a constant, linear rate. Subjectively, however, time waxes and wanes with our activities and emotions. Sometimes, it flies by, other times it drags so slowly that it almost stands still.

Features like Instagram’s Shop tab facilitate surveillance capitalism, so it’s important to look at their consequences. Many people use Instagram to share their lives with other people, but the redesign is shifting the nature of the social media platform toward online commerce. This shift opens people to highly targeted advertising ...

Scientists around the world frequently feel governments do not pay enough attention to scientific advice. That was the view of some half of the 25,307 researchers surveyed by Frontiers, a Swiss publisher of scientific journals, in May and June.

The final report of the COVID-19 Hotel Quarantine Inquiry, issued by former judge Jennifer Coate, outlines monumental errors made by the Victorian government and its public servants.

New Year’s Eve presents a higher risk, because it often involves different household groups gathering indoors, talking face-to-face for extended periods, without masks. These are the conditions the coronavirus likes best.

A few years ago I had the pleasure of listening to the highly-influential legal scholar Cass Sunstein speak in the flesh. Cass wrote the best-selling book Nudge, along with his long-time collaborator Richard Thaler.

A year ago, who could have even imagined 2020 would turn out the way it did? A pandemic, closed borders, lockdowns, economic crisis, a delayed election … but here we are at the end of a year like no other.

When, in the midst of the pandemic, the Economic Society of Australia invited 150 of Australia’s keenest young thinkers to come up with “brief, specific and actionable” proposals to improve the economy, amid scores of ideas about improving job matching, changing the tax system, providing non-repayable loans to businesses and ...

These days almost everyone has either flown a drone or listened to the nasty whining sound they produce. Although small drones (up to 20kg) are about 40 decibels quieter than conventional civil aircraft, they produce a high pitched noise – which people tend to find very annoying.

The mass testing of asymptomatic people for COVID-19 in the UK was thrown into question by a recent study. In a pilot in Liverpool, over half the cases weren’t picked up, leading some to question whether using tests that perform poorly is the best use of resources.

The government is planning to change the law so that social media companies like Facebook and Twitter will have no choice but to take responsibility for the safety of their users.

The seeds of the 2020 UK recession were sown on March 23 when the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, put England into its first coronavirus lockdown. Over the following month, UK GDP fell by 19.5%. In comparison, during the last financial crisis GDP shrank by just over 6% between January ...

Snow in summer (Melaleuca linariifolia) is an Australian paperbark, and is endemic to parts of Queensland and New South Wales. It has spikes of creamy white flowers that grow in dense clusters at the ends of branches and twigs. When in profusion, they look very much like snow-capped foliage.

Refusal of vaccines, climate change denial, the spread of coronavirus, dangerous drug use – all can be linked to the rapid spread of misinformation over the internet.

It’s a complete record of the administrative history of the park. Sequoia was the second-oldest national park in the U.S., established in 1890. So there are records related to its founding and through to the 20th century. In letters written by the park directors to the U.S. president and the ...

To curb climate change, many experts have called for a massive shift from fossil fuels to electricity. The goal is to electrify processes like heating homes and powering cars, and then generate the increased electrical power needs using low- or zero-carbon sources like wind, solar and hydropower.

Earlier this fall, many of the nation’s restaurants opened their doors to patrons to eat inside, especially as the weather turned cold in places. Now, as COVID-19 cases surge across the country, some cities and towns have banned indoor dining while others have permitted it with restrictions.

A traditional British meal of roast turkey and plum pudding may have once dominated Australia’s Christmas tables. But as our population has become more diverse, so has our menu.

Working out the basic nature of reality according to quantum mechanics is a little bit like an impossible Sudoku. No matter where we start with quantum theory, we always end up at a conundrum that forces us to rethink the way the world fundamentally works.

The Caspian is actually a lake, the largest in the world, and it is experiencing a devastating decline in its water level that is about to accelerate. By the end of the century the Caspian Sea will be nine metres to 18 metres lower.

The UK was adamant throughout the negotiations that it be treated as a sovereign equal of the EU and have its independence respected. This was particularly important when it came to fishing rights – one of the last issues to be resolved.

A remote outback station about 800km north of Perth in Western Australia is one of the best places in the world to operate telescopes that listen for radio signals from space.

If you look at 2020 election data, you’ll find both the Trump and Biden camps contained diverse points of view, interests and concerns.

Yet another deadline in the negotiations for a post-Brexit trade deal has been missed. This one had been set by the European Parliament, which claimed that if its members didn’t have eyes on a deal by December 20, they would not have time to scrutinise and ratify it before the ...