freelance science journalist and author
From ABC Health and Wellbeing, 4 August 2015: Countless lives have been saved in the hundreds of years that people have been receiving blood transfusions. Transfusions replenish blood lost through trauma, illness or surgery. They are a medical safety net; there for when surgery doesn’t quite go according to plan, and patients need a little … Continue reading Why experts are rethinking blood transfusions
From ABC Science, 29 July 2015: Stress during childhood can affect the make-up of our gut bacteria and this, in turn, could influence our mental health as adults, a new mouse study suggests. The research found transplanting gut bacteria from mice stressed when they were young could encourage anxiety-like behaviour in some recipients. The researchers … Continue reading Could gut bacteria help make you more anxious?
From ABC Science, 23 July 2015: Jeff Buckley or Rage Against The Machine? Your music preferences reveal a lot about how you think. There is a clear link between people’s cognitive styles and the type and depth of emotion they prefer in music, say researchers. Their work, published today in PLOS ONE, shows people who … Continue reading Music preferences reveal your inner thoughts
From ABC News in Science, 17 July 2015: Does the sound of a human scream make your hair stand on end? Now scientists say they can explain why. They’ve found the sound of human screaming is acoustically designed to plug directly into your brain’s fear and alarm circuit. A study, published today in Current Biology … Continue reading Human screams target brain’s fear centre
From ABC Science, 9 July 2015: Tracking technology has finally lifted the lid off the secretive love life of Australia’s favourite marsupial, the koala. Researchers have discovered that while males rarely interact with other males during the mating season, females seem to become a lot more sociable with each other. In a paper published today … Continue reading Secret sex life of koalas revealed
From ABC News in Science, 8 July 2015: The greater the cost of a raising a cuckoo chick, the more likely a host bird is to kick cuckoo eggs out of the nest before they hatch, Australian researchers have found. Brood parasitism — the practice of laying eggs in another species’ nest and leaving them … Continue reading Birds more likely to reject costly cuckoo eggs
From ABC Health and Wellbeing, 8 July 2015: Australia has long been called the lucky country. We have a life expectancy of 82 years, which places us in the top 10 countries in the world when it comes to lifespan. But this isn’t the case for all of us. Indigenous Australians have a ten-year lower … Continue reading The Indigenous health gap: social factors hit hard
I recently took part in a panel discussion looking at traditional publishing versus e-/independent/self-publishing, as part of the Blue Lab Creative Industries Symposium. It was a useful exercise, in that it made me look at exactly why I have chosen – and intend to keep choosing – the traditional publishing route for my books. My … Continue reading The pros and cons of traditional publishing
From Monash Magazine, February 2015: Look at any landscape painting and there is a good chance that clouds will have a prominent presence. But the dazzling diversity of shapes and hues that captures the imaginations of artists is also what makes clouds so perplexing for meteorologists and climatologists. Clouds are still one of the least … Continue reading Climate science is in the clouds
From ABC Health and Wellbeing, 17 March 2015: How many times have you been told that if you’re prescribed antibiotics, you must always finish the full course, even if you’re feeling better? The popular notion has always been that if you don’t complete the full course, you’re encouraging the development of antibiotic resistance. But in … Continue reading Antibiotics – when is enough enough?
Bianca Nogrady 