freelance science journalist and author
From The Guardian, 16 October 2022: The story of long Covid is just beginning, and no one – not even the experts – knows how it will play out. The “known knowns” are that few, if any, health systems around the world are equipped to cope with the parallel pandemic of long Covid. It will … Continue reading How will long Covid play out over the coming years? Eight experts weigh in
From The Guardian, 8 October 2022: When Zoë Rose found out she had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder – also known as ADHD – four years ago, at the age of 38, it was like the moment at the end of the Bruce Willis film The Sixth Sense when (spoiler alert!) it’s revealed that the main character was … Continue reading Adult ADHD diagnosis: ‘You’ve got to relook at your entire life’
From The Guardian, 6 August 2020: Laurie Brosnan is frustrated. “We pay a tax to produce clean energy,” says the pig farmer from Biloela in central Queensland. In the past five years, his company, Bettafield Piggery, has invested millions of dollars in an advanced biogas system that not only meets all its own electricity needs, … Continue reading “We pay a tax to produce clean energy”
From The Guardian, 14 November 2018: It’s a rainy Wednesday morning and Dr Andrew Affleck is driving more carefully than usual on his way to the Neuroscience Research Australia building in Randwick. It’s not just the slick, crowded roads putting the edge on his caution; in the boot of his car, cocooned in several layers … Continue reading ‘We need their brains’: donating to the brain bank in search of a dementia cure
From The Guardian, 26 June 2018: “Did you put the recycling out?” It’s a phrase regularly recited in millions of households across Australia, followed by a hollow rumble as the yellow-lidded wheelie bin is hauled to the kerb. It’s a ritual that, in one form or another, takes place in more than 90% of Australian … Continue reading Waste crisis: where’s your recycling going now?
From The Guardian, 4 October 2017: For a brief and shining moment in 2012, Australia was at the global forefront of climate change action, as one of the first countries to implement a carbon pricing mechanism. It lasted only two years, and was repealed amid much fanfare by the Abbott government in July 2014. During … Continue reading China’s emissions trading scheme puts Australian companies on notice
From The Guardian, 30 June 2017: When the US president, Donald Trump, announced his intention to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, one might have anticipated a hearty cheer from industry around the world relieved that business as usual could continue. Instead the opposite has happened. Across the United States, the business community is taking … Continue reading No more business as usual: the corporates stepping up to save the planet
From The Guardian, 19 June 2017: Traffic congestion and social isolation are two concepts that don’t immediately appear to be connected. But in 2012, the Grattan Institute’s Social Cities report drew a direct line between inefficient urban transport and less time spent with friends and family. One estimate suggested every 10 minutes of commuting equates … Continue reading Smart city: using technology to tackle traffic and social isolation in Melbourne
From The Guardian, 13 June 2017: To illustrate the impact of battery storage on the electricity network in Australia, Prof Guoxiu Wang likes to compare it to the invention of refrigeration. “Before people invented the fridge, we produced food, we consumed food immediately,” says Wang, director of the Centre for Clean Energy Technology at the … Continue reading Battery storage and rooftop solar could mean new life post-grid for consumers
From The Guardian, 19 May 2017: Nearly a century ago, British scientist JB Haldane saw an energy future in which wind power would be used to generate hydrogen; a fuel he described as, weight-for-weight, the most efficient known method of storing energy. He thought this future was four hundred years away, but the so-called “hydrogen … Continue reading How Australia can use hydrogen to export its solar power around the world
Bianca Nogrady 