The poor old placenta. It really doesn’t get much public attention. And yet it does a crucially important job – acting as the interface between the mother’s blood supply and that of her developing foetus. Every molecule of glucose, oxygen…
How important is penis size? Authors from the Australian National University, Monash and La Trobe provide the most complete answer yet: the size of a flaccid penis can significantly affect how attractive a man’s body is to women. Writing in…
Grant-writing season is finally over for Australian academics. Actually, grant writing season is never over, but with the deadlines now having passed for the ARC Discovery grants and Discovery Early Career Research Awards and the NH&MRC Project Grants, most academics…
What do you know? The creative force behind science’s favourite Facebook site is … a woman. Holy mother of Christ. Just over a year ago, Elise Andrew, then a biology student at the University of Sheffield, created a Facebook page,…
Some aspects of the natural world are so commonplace that we mistake them for essential truths. This is especially true of the fact that the animals we know best, including our own species, usually give birth to near-indistinguishable numbers of…
Sometimes I think I can hear the internet as it relentlessly changes everything. This week’s tabloidisation of Fairfax is merely a symptom of the way the net has already changed the news media. So, too, is the pending extinction of…
As technology changes, irreversibly altering the ways in which people experience and enjoy music, it also alters the economics of how music is made, distributed and sold. And that changes the incentives for artists, the livings musicians can lead, and…
Australia’s eight-month election campaign is apparently underway. It’s a prospect that excites only those shady consultants, pollsters and party power-brokers whose livelihoods depend on running focus groups, devising strategies and pulling political strings. Instead of ignoring the whole show, I…
St Valentine’s day caught our household by surprise this morning. My daughter, the only family member who shows even a flicker of interest, loves what we call “Balance-time day” because it comes with free license to generate and dispense cards.…
The most erotic thing a man can do for a woman is…. the dishes. You’ve no doubt encountered this oft-repeated claim, or one like it, before. In this case it comes from a source no less authoritative than Naomi Wolf,…