Politics, Journalism and 24/7 News Cycle
Thirty-three years ago, when I joined the news room of the London Sunday Times, its editor, Harry Evans, gave me ‘Editing and Design’ a five-volume manual of English typography and layout
The Changing Brain
There is a saying that you can never dip your toe into the same river twice. The same applies to the brain because at a quite fundamental level it is continuously changing. Indeed, it is somewhat incredible that throughout our lives we are able to maintain a more-or-less unified concept of who we are given there is little constancy of substance to anchor this most basic of notions
Women at midlife
It is important that we look after ourselves throughout life to live the healthiest life we can. Yet the reality is life demands often mean we cannot prioritise our own health enough. Between work and family we often don’t have the time to think much about our health until around midlife, which is the life stage when most of us have a few key realisations
Prenatal testing
In the course of a generation, the information available to families regarding the health and future of their unborn children has been transformed. In the era of our parents and grandparents, even the number of babies to be born was a mystery. Following delivery of the first baby, careful checking for the appearance of another head or foot was routine. The arrival of the second twin made for a crowded bassinet in the back seat of the car on the way home, as well as hasty modifications to the cot, sleeping arrangements and siblings’ expectations
Fragrantly Here All Day
And then, that must be space. Because we call it space, or landscape, or terrain. Or at the weedy worst a plain potential for development: right-angles on an undulant soft ground
We must ban killer robots
How will Artificial Intelligence change war? Hollywood has it wrong. It won’t be Terminator, robots with sentience, that transform warfare. It will be much simpler technologies that are, depending on your perspective, at best or at worst less than a decade away. Indeed, it is stupid AI that I fear. We will soon be giving machines that are not sufficiently capable the right to make life or death decisions
Balancing the curriculum: teaching gratitude, hope and resilience
Today's youth face many challenges, including pressures from school, peer groups, parents, marketing, and incessant ‘digital connectedness’ promoted by social media. Current research shows that many Australian adolescents suffer from sleep deprivation, drug and alcohol abuse, insecurity, poor diets, insufficient exercise and family upheaval
Complexity is not new: how our own technological history can teach us about AI
What do the words “artificial intelligence” evoke for you? Hopes? Fears? A shiny, personalised future with a place for everyone? A dystopian landscape, peppered with fallen drones and unemployed masses? Or perhaps the term evokes nothing more than the world we already live in
The Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities
Debate about human rights in Australia is often polarised. One view commonly expressed is that by Sir Robert Menzies in 1967, just retired as Prime Minister, that ‘the rights of individuals in Australia are as adequately protected as they are in any other country in the world’
Common medical conditions in which genes play a role
Genes influence every aspect of a person’s health, from the ability to resist infection with a pathogen, to how medication is metabolised, to mental health and behaviour. Diseases have historically been defined by what a clinician sees, rather than the root cause of the pathology. In rare diseases, we know that genetic defects affecting different components of the same biological pathway can produce very similar clinical problems. However, understanding the factors contributing to common disorders is considerably more complex