The Conversation

Here are some surprising facts about humans’ effect on planet Earth. We have made enough concrete to create an exact replica of Earth 2mm thick. We have produced enough plastic to wrap Earth in clingfilm. We are creating “technofossils”, a new term for congealed human-made materials – plastics and concretes – that will be around for tens of millions of years.
But it is the scale that humans have altered Earth’s life support system that is the most concerning.

American chestnut trees were once among the most majestic hardwood trees in the eastern deciduous forests, many reaching 80 to 120 feet in height and eight feet or more in diameter.   The “then boundless chestnut woods” Thoreau wrote about in Walden once grew throughout the Appalachian mountains. They provided habitat and a mast crop for wildlife, a nutritious nut crop for humans and a source of valuable timber. Because of their rapid growth rate and rot-resistant wood, they also have significant potential for carbon sequestration, important in these days of climate change.

Sitting has been branded the “new smoking” for its supposed public health risks, especially for people with sit-down office jobs.Over the past 15 years or so sitting has been linked with cancer, heart disease and diabetes and even

Fictional metaphors matter, and in the battle to safeguard our civil liberties few metaphors matter more than George Orwell’s 1984. Although first published almost 70 years ago, the lasting salience of this most archetypal dystopia is undeniable.

The latest performance tables for secondary and primary schools in England have been released – with parents and educators alike looking to the tables to understand and compare schools in their area. Schools will also be keen to see if they have met a new set of national standards set by the government. These new standards now include “progress” measures, which are a type of “value-added measure”. These compare pupils’ results with other pupils who got the same exam scores as them at the end of primary school.

The number of Australians who run for exercise has doubled since the mid-2000s. Preventing and managing injuries are common concerns, and can present an ongoing health burden and high cost if not addressed appropriately. But what if listening to the sound of running could help prevent injuries?We recently conducted the first study to relate running technique with the sound of feet hitting the ground. Listening could prove a simple and effective feedback mechanism for runners, coaches and clinicians to understand how runners land their feet and the potential for certain injuries.

There’s a widespread belief that actually existing democracies are in the grip of a fast-paced world dominated by breaking news and all things instant. The following contribution sets out to question this belief. It takes readers on a time journey. It sets out to probe the meaning of time, and explains why time has a malleable quality. It asks why time is a political matter and why, when they function well, democracies do intriguing things to people’s shared sense of time.

We know that there is sound on planets and moons in the solar system – places where there’s a medium through which sound waves can be transmitted, such as an atmosphere or an ocean. But what about empty space? You may have been told definitively that space is silent, maybe by your teacher or through the marketing of the movie Alien – “In space no one can hear you scream”. The common explanation for this is that space is a vacuum and so there’s no medium for sound to travel through.But that isn’t exactly right. Space is never completely empty – there are a few particles and sound waves floating around. In fact, sound waves in the space around the Earth are very important to our continued technological existence. They also they sound pretty weird!

After one of the most divisive presidential elections in American history, many of us may be anxious about dinner-table dialogue with family and friends this Thanksgiving. There is no denying that the way we communicate about politics has fundamentally changed with the proliferation of technology and social media. Twitter bots, fake news and echo chambers are just a few of the highlights from this election season. Much of how we’re conversing online can’t – and shouldn’t – be replicated around the family table. We are getting out of practice at conducting meaningful, respectful conversation.

Stereoscopes entertained every Victorian home with their ability to produce three-dimensional pictures. Typewriters and later fax machines were once essential for business practices. Photo printers and video rentals came and went from high streets.

It is still true that far more men than women have leading roles in many organizations. If you ask women to explain this, as many researchers have, they point to workplace culture as a prime culprit.

A false history of science was used to initiate colonial education, in support of colonialism. This false history persists. In a recent article about decolonizing mathematics, for instance, Professor Karen Brodie asserts that, “Much, though certainly not all, of mathematics was created by dead white men.”This is not true.