freelance science journalist and author
From The Saturday Paper, 9 July 2022: Today, James is feeling about a two out of five. The young lawyer is reasonably articulate on the phone. He might be able to read a single news article today, maybe even go for a short walk. On a “five out of five” day, he can do four … Continue reading Long Covid: After-effect hits up to 400,000 Australians
With Dr Karl Kruszelnicki gallivanting around the wilds of Tasmania, I stepped in to answer Australia’s science questions. And, as always, there was a question about bodily functions; this time, it was about asparagus wee.
From Nature, 6 April 2022: When Melody Smith began her fellowship in haematology and oncology at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, she had no idea that she would soon be writing her own code, working with computational biologists and analysing faecal samples to understand the microbial composition — or microbiome — … Continue reading How gut reactions are shaping cancer treatment
From Australian Geographic, May 2022: “Never has a bodily organ been so adored as the brain – not since Narcissus looked at his face reflected in water and fell in love with it,” Professor George Paxinos says. “And never was there so little justification for it.” It’s a surprising comment from a man who’s spent … Continue reading Making sense of the brain
From The Saturday Paper, 9 July 2022: Today, James is feeling about a two out of five. The young lawyer is reasonably articulate on the phone. He might be able to read a single news article today, maybe even go for a short walk. On a “five out of five” day, he can do four … Continue reading Long Covid: After-effect hits up to 400,000 Australians
From the Guardian, 25 June 2022: Ben wants to quit vaping. He has a few times already. It’s easy, he says, despite the tremors and headaches, feeling hot then cold, the irritability. But then he says vapes – also known as e-cigarettes – containing nicotine are so easy to get despite being illegal to sell … Continue reading Teens and vaping: ‘We would have had a nicotine-free generation’
From WIRED, 14 June 2022: First came the drought. Then the bushfires. Then the floods. And then, on May 21, 2022, came the federal election. After nearly four years as Australian prime minister—a term in office marked by repeated and record-breaking natural disasters—the conservative Scott Morrison was ousted following a contest that hinged on climate … Continue reading Australia has finally woken up to climate change
From Nature Middle East, 6 April 2022: Lewy body disease, or dementia with Lewy bodies, is characterised by a brain build-up of a particular form of the protein alpha-synuclein, forming clumps called aggregates. These aggregates are mostly made up of the phosphorylated form of alpha-synuclein, in which a single amino acid – serine 129 – … Continue reading Rethinking Lewy body dementia
From Nature News, 10 March 2022: Researchers in Australia have endorsed a proposal to remove government ministers’ power to veto grant-funding decisions made by expert science committees. They say this veto ability is just one example of Australia’s political overreach in research, and is a threat to academic freedom. Legislators in Australia are considering whether … Continue reading Australian researchers push to end politicians’ power to veto grants
From The Medical Republic, 21 March 2022: There was a time before covid, which seems a distant memory now, when the concepts of “immune” and “immunised” seemed relatively straightforward to anyone outside the field of immunology. Either by virtue of childhood infection or vaccination, a person believed that they were now protected from further assault … Continue reading What do we mean by Covid immunity?
Bianca Nogrady 