freelance science journalist and author
From BBC Future, 11 October 2016: Antibiotic resistance was around long before we started using antibiotics with a frequency and enthusiasm that borders on addiction. The same genes that modern bacteria are currently loading up on to protect themselves against antibiotics have been found in ancient bacteria frozen in Arctic permafrost for over 30,000 years. … Continue reading All you need to know about the ‘antibiotic apocalypse’
From BBC Future, 4 October 2016: Science fiction writers and moviemakers have shown us countless visions of humanity spread out across the Universe, so you might be forgiven for thinking that we’ve already got this in the bag. Unfortunately, we still have more than a few technical limitations to overcome – like the laws of … Continue reading The myths and reality of interstellar travel
From BBC Future, 18 October 2016: A diamond-encrusted iPhone can set you back $95m – but if this piece of i-bling is a little out of your price range, don’t feel despondent. Every smartphone contains precious metals including gold, silver, copper, platinum and palladium. This is more than just an amusing detail about the device … Continue reading Your old phone is full of untapped precious metals
(An edited version of this was delivered as a speech at the 2016 Rose Scott Women Writers’ Festival) So I’m a huge nerd, both in the writing sense and the science sense. In highschool, I used to write essays … for fun. I used to read books about science, purely for the delight I took in learning … Continue reading The privilege and responsibility of being a science journalist
From ABC News in Science, 1 September 2016: The oldest fossils known to date have been discovered in 3.7 billion-year-old rocks in Greenland by an Australian-led team of researchers. The discovery of the fossilised bacterial communities, known as stromatolites, could be the first clear biological evidence of the earliest known life on Earth, according to … Continue reading World’s oldest known fossils found in Greenland push evidence for life back by 220 million years
From ABC Health and Wellbeing, 19 August 2016: There’s an uncomfortable truth to modern medicine. That drug you take for your high blood pressure, the vaccine to prevent infectious disease, the pill to avoid pregnancy, the medical ointment for your skin condition, or even the pacemaker keeping your arrhythmia in check — all of those … Continue reading Could animal testing ever be phased out?
From Nature Outlook, 1 September 2016: If there is one buzzword dominating the political airwaves in Australia at the moment, it’s ‘innovation’. Since the launch of the government’s National Innovation and Science Agenda in December 2015, the idea that Australia needs innovation to drive the economy has been hammered into the public consciousness with all … Continue reading Australian research funding: a balancing act
From ABC News in Science, 31 May 2016: Ancient charred grains of rice and mung beans excavated from Madagascar provide the first archaeological evidence that ancestors of people living on the East African island known as Malagasy came from South-East Asia, scientists say. The findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of … Continue reading Ancient rice ‘first evidence’ Madagascan ancestors crossed Indian Ocean from South-East Asia
From ABC News in Science, 27 May 2016: Mars is at the tail-end of an ice age that would have seen large swathes of the dusty red planet covered with ice. Radar data from an instrument on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has given scientists an unprecedented glimpse into Mars’ recent climatic history, etched into … Continue reading Mars at tail-end of ice age that would have seen red planet covered in ice
From ABC Science, 12 May 2016: The oldest fossils of cosmic dust ever discovered provide a glimpse into atmospheric conditions above the Earth more than 2.7 billion years ago and could do the same on other planets. A group of Australian and British researchers uncovered the micrometeorites — which are barely the width of a … Continue reading World’s oldest fossil micrometeorites ever found contain hints of oxygen in early Earth’s atmosphere
Bianca Nogrady 