freelance science journalist and author
From Nature, 27 February 2023: The existence of the Higgs boson was first posited in a trio of papers in 1964. Two of those were authored solely by UK theoretical physicist Peter Higgs and the other was co-authored by his US and Belgian counterparts Robert Brout and François Englert. Nearly half a century later, the … Continue reading Hyperauthorship: the publishing challenges for ‘big team’ science
From The Saturday Paper, 18 February 2023: In historical accounts of the 1918 influenza pandemic, references can be found to people experiencing exhaustion, nervous complications, apathy and depression for weeks, even months, after they recovered from infection. And reports of persistent, chronic fatigue-like symptoms have emerged following the major respiratory disease outbreaks of the past … Continue reading Lack of data hinders long Covid response
From WIRED, 17 February 2023: New Zealand is grappling with two consecutive extreme weather events—massive flooding followed by a cyclone—that have claimed at least 12 lives and left hundreds of thousands of people without power. The high winds and waters of Cyclone Gabrielle have washed away coastal roads on the north island and left bridges … Continue reading New Zealand faces a future of flood and fire
From The Lancet Infectious Diseases, June 2022: Mosquito-borne Japanese encephalitis is spreading across Australia in the wake of record rainfall. Read more (subscription required).
From Nature, 17 October 2022: In an attempt to achieve gender equity, Australia’s leading health and medical research funding organization plans to award half of its research grants for its largest funding programme to women and non-binary applicants, starting next year. The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) announced the move last week. It … Continue reading ‘Game-changing’ gender quotas introduced by Australian research agency
From Nature, 12 October 2022: The COVID-19 pandemic has stretched health-care workforces around the world to their limits, as illness and burnout extract a toll from clinicians, nurses and staff. The need for innovations that can reduce workloads is pressing and has intensified interest in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics as potential technologies to help … Continue reading Pandemic’s cancer backlogs receive treatment from AI innovation
From Nature, 30 August 2022: The United States Marine Corps could hardly be described as ‘cowards’. Yet that’s exactly the accusation that was levelled at the force last year, when its training facility in San Diego, California, announced on Twitter that it was accepting its first cohort of women — and then immediately switched off … Continue reading Online harassment: a toolkit for protecting yourself from abuse
Nature, 24 August 2022: When Torbjörn Bäckström was a medical student in the 1970s, he didn’t understand why a woman who seemed to be in good mental health was being held at a psychiatric facility. Then, Bäckström and his colleagues learnt that once a month, the woman would be admitted because she had been violent … Continue reading The hormonal keys to depression
From The Guardian, 5 November 2022: When studying disease outbreaks, think like a microbe. That’s the lesson that was drummed into Prof Catherine Bennett, chair of epidemiology at Deakin University, when she was undergoing her scientific training, and she’s never forgotten it. “In moving through a community, where are your opportunities as a microbe?” she … Continue reading Welcome to the ‘Pandemicene’: is Australia ready for the next pandemic?
From The Saturday Paper, 17 December 2022: “I’ve always thought astronaut would be the coolest job in the world.” Dr Meganne Christian looks pretty relaxed for someone who has just achieved that childhood dream. But speaking via Zoom from Paris, barely 48 hours after she was announced as one of the European Space Agency’s new … Continue reading The woman who could represent Australia in space
Bianca Nogrady 