freelance science journalist and author
From ABC News in Science, 24 April 2014: Citizen science has proven its worth by delivering better quality data on shark populations than conventional acoustic tagging methods, and at lower cost. Researchers from Australia and Palau compared data collected by professional dive guides in Palau with acoustic telemetry data from tagged sharks at the same … Continue reading Citizen science a winner for shark conservation
Remember Roladexes? In this era of iPhones and Google, I was surprised to discover that they still exist. My memories of Roladexes tend to be of them appearing in movies, when a character was trying to look someone up, they would spin their Roladex like a roulette wheel and voila! The perfect name would be … Continue reading Your little black book
From ABC News in Science, 11 April 2014: Countless theories on how to beat jet lag abound, but now two mathematicians have crunched the numbers to come up with what they believe is the quickest, most fool-proof method. They have developed a free mobile app based on their calculations and are hoping to use it … Continue reading Phone app trains you to beat jet lag
From ABC News in Science, 1 April 2014: Shoes two blue or shoes blue two: which phrase makes more sense? Certain grammatical rules may be hardwired into our brains so we have an instinctive sense of how certain types of words should be grouped together, no matter what language we speak, a new study suggests. … Continue reading Grammar hardwired into our brains
It’s a pretty hackneyed thing to write about how you’ve not written a blog post in ages, but I’m going to do it anyway. I’ve been busy. Not the kind of busy where you’re contentedly working through a list of things, but the kind of busy where you white-knuckle it from one deadline to the … Continue reading Love Sexy Money
From ABC Health and Wellbeing, 24 March 2o14: With an increasing number of children being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it’s no surprise that we’re also seeing more children being treated for the condition. But concerns are also increasing about ADHD treatments – especially medications. Last year the Therapeutic Goods Administration issued a … Continue reading ADHD treatments: are they meeting children’s needs?
From Australian Doctor newspaper, 21 March 2014: In December last year, Melbourne hosted 11,000 diabetes experts for the International Diabetes Federation world congress. Amid the usual hand-wringing about rising rates of the disease and its complications, there was considerable buzz about obesity surgery. Much of the interest revolved around a study that showed nearly three-quarters … Continue reading Surgery for diabetes?
From ABC News in Science, 25 March 2014: A study of major league baseball players’ pitching arms has shown that bone strength in later life is decided by the quality of exercises we do in our youth. The research by US and Australian scientists is published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences … Continue reading Exercise during youth builds strong bones for life
This is the story of The End. I’m sharing it because before I had a book published, I had no idea how the whole process worked and I learned quite a few things the hard way (such as the fact that nothing happens quickly in publishing unless you’re the biographer of a prematurely dead celebrity). … Continue reading Diary of a (non-fiction) book
From ABC News in Science, 10 March 2014: Elephants are able to distinguish between friendly humans and those more likely to pose a threat, based solely on vocal cues, new research shows. The study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examines the extent to which African elephants use human voice … Continue reading Elephants tell human friend from foe by voice
Bianca Nogrady 