The Latest Breaking News from Australian Research Council

Australia’s education ministers have just announced changes to NAPLAN that will start right away. These include bringing the testing date forward and changing the way results are reported. According to the ministers:

There are more than a billion bacteria in just one litre of seawater. How do all of these organisms find the energy and nutrients they need to survive?

For years, the term “junk food” has been used to refer to foods considered bad for you, and not very nutritious. But junk can mean different things to different people.

The Pilbara region of Western Australia is home to one of the most ancient surviving pieces of Earth’s crust, which has been geologically unchanged since its creation some 3.5 billion years ago.

As the climate heats up rapidly, many species will struggle to avoid extinction. If they had time, they could evolve to the new environmental conditions. But they don’t. That’s where hybridisation could help. When related species interbreed, the flow of new genetic diversity could help them adapt to warmer environments.

Almost 2,000 native species are officially listed as “threatened” in Australia – but how many have you actually heard of?

By the end of 2023, eligible people in all Australian states will be able to apply for voluntary assisted dying as the final three states’ laws will become operational this year.

A vast amount of rocks and other material are hurtling around our Solar System as asteroids and comets. If one of these came towards us, could we successfully prevent the collision between an asteroid and Earth?

University of Queensland researchers have pioneered a technique to remove per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) chemicals from water.

When we think of evolution, we tend to picture slow changes occurring over very long periods of time, typically millions of years. However, evolution can actually happen much faster, over only a few generations: think COVID-19 strains, for example. And this fast evolution isn’t just restricted to viruses and microbes.

Last Saturday night, a young woman out on the town in Brisbane saw a dog-shaped robot trotting towards her and did what many of us might have felt an urge to do: she gave it a solid kick in the head.