A healthy future? Let’s put medical science under the microscope
The past is prologue, or so we should hope for biomedical research. Australia has a proud history with four Nobel Prizes for Physiology or Medicine given for work done here
Gene therapy – personalised medicine in action
We all begin life as a single cell that divides and develops until we are a fully grown human being. Inside this cell, our DNA carries the complete set of instructions for this to happen. However, if your DNA sequence harbours an alteration — even a small, seemingly insignificant single-base sequence change — it can have detrimental consequences: inherited genetic disease
Best of the old and the new: a way forward for the food security dilemma?
The challenge of assuring global food security for the world’s increasing population — estimated to reach 9 billion by 2050 — has been much discussed. Many solutions have been proffered, but most are from limited perspectives and often represent vested interests of some sort — economic, political, or academic
The contrasting need for food and biofuel: Can we afford biofuel?
Our world in the second decade of the 21st century is characterised by extensive growth of the human population (7.2 billion humans in 2014, with one billion extra expected in the next 12 years), and a parallel increase in the use of fossil fuels such as crude oil, natural gas and coal. These present trends cannot continue without resulting in grave implications affecting the global quality of life. Numerous speculations exist regarding future scenarios
Marine science: Challenges for a growing ‘blue economy’
Why are our oceans important to us? How is our health, the health of the environment, the strength of our economy and indeed, our future, dependent on the seas? How can marine science help us, collectively, to sustainably develop our marine- based industries and at the same time protect our unique marine ecosystems so that they can be appreciated and enjoyed by future generations?
The simple case for germline gene editing
For over three decades, scientists have had the ability to alter the genomes of other species of animals. Using viruses to alter DNA sequences, scientists were able to create a range of transgenic animals — with altered physical, cognitive and social characteristics. In 2007, scientists at Case Western Reserve University used viruses to alter a gene called PEPCK-A in mice. The resulting transgenic mice could run for six kilometres without a break — 30 times longer than a normal mouse’s limit of 200 metres (Hakemi et al., 2007)
Proteins to plastics: chemistry as a dynamic discipline
Chemistry is the most central of scientific disciplines and under- pins the physical, material and biological world. Opportunities are abundant in the field of chemistry, as most major advances take place at the interface of two or more disciplines and chemistry sits at the core of trans-disciplinary research
Agriculture in Australia: Growing more than our farming future
Food and agriculture are fundamental to human survival and it was the birth of agriculture and farming that laid down the basis for human civilisation. Since the first crops were domesticated around 10,000 years ago, advances in agriculture have been intimately linked with human development and the growing world population
AI for better or for worse, or AI at all?
When I was a little girl, I was taught a song about a ball of white string, in which the white string could fix everything — tie a bow on a gift, fly a kite, mend things. The second verse of the song was about all the things that string cannot fix — broken hearts, mend friendships — the list goes on. In all of the research I have been doing about Artificial Intelligence (AI), its governance and what it can do, this song has frequently come to mind
Science, technology and wellbeing
Scientific understanding of the world has enabled us to improve material wellbeing on a scale that previous generations would find difficult to believe. For all but the last few decades, most humans have struggled to obtain the basic necessities for a civilised life: clean water, sanitation, adequate nutrition, shelter and health care