The Conversation

Although we know influenza viruses circulate in temperate, populated parts of Australia every winter, predicting the precise timing and relative intensity of flu seasons is a fraught undertaking.

Many animals – including seals, dolphins and bats – are able to communicate vocally. However, parrots are among a select few that can spontaneously imitate members of another species. A study has now pinpointed the region in the brain that may be allowing this to happen – the region that is also involved in controlling movement. The finding could perhaps also explain the fact that parrots, just like humans, can talk and dance.

Imagine a classroom where children are unable to wait their turn or stay focused on their work. They are easily distracted, cannot remember basic instructions or hold enough information in their head to solve problems – skills teachers rely on in order to teach successfully.These behavioral issues are all examples of problems that can arise from attachment issues – based on the relationship between children and their main caregiver.

Now that most colleges and universities have completed their spring semesters, course instructors are opening up sealed manila envelopes, all over the country, to read their teaching evaluations.And, like each year, what they’ll find has been pervasively slanted by gender bias.

I’ve come to believe that mathematics, as an investigative science, as a practical discipline and as a creative art, shares many characteristics with cookery. It’s not just spaghetti alla carbonara, it’s the whole business of inventing dishes and preparing them. It’s an analogy with many parts, and it has consequences.To introduce myself: I’m a professional mathematician, an amateur cook and an enthusiastic eater. The ideas in this essay are distilled from years of formal reasoning, mad culinary experiments and adventurous meals. In short, I’ve found that:
I do mathematics for much the same reasons that I cook.

In the late winter of 1976, the world famous fossil collector James Kitching was doing a survey near South Africa’s border with Lesotho. To his surprise he found a tiny clutch of six fossilized eggs along the side of the road at a place known as Rooidraai.It took five years for skilled palentologists to remove enough rock matrix from the eggs so that they could be preliminarily identified as the first dinosaur embryos from South Africa and the oldest dinosaur embryos in the world.

You no longer have to look to science fiction to find the cyborg. We are all cyborgs now. Mobile phones, activity trackers, pacemakers, breast implants and even aspirins all act as biological, cognitive or social extensions and enhancements of our bodies and minds. Some have even predicted that human beings as we know them will be replaced by technically enhanced, god-like immortal beings within 200 years. Or at least rich people will.

A company in the Netherlands is building a bridge across a canal in Amsterdam using 3D-printing robots. It seems that such attention-grabbing headlines appear regularly to declare how 3D-printing is destined to revolutionize manufacturing of all kinds. If the idea that key manufacturing products such as cars, aircraft – or indeed bridges – built by 3D printing sounds like hype, you’re mistaken.

The sex lives of older people have received a lot of attention recently. From the Netflix sitcom Grace and Frankie, which stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin (both in their 70s) and does not shy away from the issue of sex, to the Channel 4 series that focused on “love and sex when we’re over 60”, it seems there is no escaping the message that older adults have and enjoy sex.

Every president for more than 30 years has required executive branch agencies to analyze regulatory impacts before issuing new requirements. They’ve relied on the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the Office of Management and Budget to review significant new rules to ensure the quality of such regulatory analysis.

The recent commitments by the leaders of G7 nations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide to 40-70% below current levels by 2050, and to eliminate the use of fossil fuels altogether by 2100, have raised several questions.

Are these objectives feasible? Are they consistent with national commitments? Are they sufficient to stabilize the global climate without dangerous rates of warming? And are they anything new?

Media are important. Especially the media we trust. One might express the effect of a piece of journalism (J) about, say, a particular drug or food, as a factor of media authority (A), multiplied by the size of audience (D), divided by the availability of credible alternative sources (S).

The more of the latter which are accessible to the audience, and thus the greater the challenge to the “truthiness” of (J), the lesser the impact on individual and collective behavior. Where people trust the news source, and the issue is complex, and alternative analyses are not easily sourced, the effect is greater.