The Conversation

Climate change and the loss of biodiversity are two of the greatest environmental issues of our time. Is it possible to address both of those problems at once?In Australia, farmers and landholders will this week be able to apply for payments through the Federal government’s A$2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund. Bidders can request funding for projects that reduce emissions using agreed methods, which include approaches relevant to the transport, waste and mining sectors, as well as the land sector: for example, by managing or restoring forests.

Shaved heads have come in and out of fashion over the past few decades, but some people don’t have the option of allowing their locks to grow. Thankfully, for those who do suffer from hair loss, or alopecia, help may be at hand. Somewhat counter-intuitively an effective treatment for baldness may come from plucking a certain number of hairs – in a specific formation – from the scalp.

The tragic death recently of a young Queensland boxer raised the question of safety in the sport and whether boxing should be banned.Claims that boxing is safer than a number of very popular and well-accepted sports warrant careful scrutiny as they often derive from overly simplistic analyses.The risks associated with boxing should never be trivialized, but science and technology could possibly help to mitigate them.

The cost of batteries is one of the major hurdles standing in the way of widespread use of electric cars and household solar batteries. By storing surplus energy, batteries allow households to reduce power bought from the electricity grid. Unfortunately, batteries have so far been prohibitively expensive.But research published recently in Nature Climate Change Letters shows battery pack costs may in some cases be as low as US$300 per kilowatt-hour today, and could reach US$200 by 2020. This cost development is notably cheaper and faster decreasing than I and many others expected.

New details of a nightmare period on Earth with surface conditions as frigid as present-day central Antarctica at the equator have been revealed thanks to the publication of a study of ancient glacier water.The research, by an international team led by Daniel Herwartz, is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and shows that even tropical regions were once covered in snow and ice.

The roles played by autonomous weapons will be discussed at a meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, this week which could have far reaching ramifications for the future of war.The second Expert Meeting on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) will discuss issues surrounding what have been dubbed by some as “killer robots”, and whether they ought to be permitted in some capacity or perhaps banned altogether.

As a society we believe that our political allegiance depends on which party best marries up with our needs and values – and that these are shaped by our life experiences. But research with twins suggests picking who to vote for in an election might have more to do with your genes than the policies of the parties.

There’s real pressure on the aviation industry to introduce faster, cheaper and greener aircraft, while maintaining the high safety standards demanded of airlines worldwide.

In December 2011, when the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and Texas Rangers signed away their local television rights for about $3 billion apiece, the sport media heralded a new record for local television rights fees. Accounting for roughly 43 percent of MLB’s $8 billion haul in 2014, media revenues have made the players rich and the owners even richer.Today, the idea that a team would ban its games from being broadcast is unthinkable, so ingrained are TV and radio contracts in the marketing and business practices of the sport.

A common, humble field bug is spreading a disease that has already infected millions of olive trees in Italy. Olive and citrus fruit crops throughout the Mediterranean are threatened, yet there has been a collective failure to recognize the danger and take decisive action.

Rolling Stone’s retraction of an incendiary article about an alleged gang rape on the campus of the University of Virginia certainly deserves a place in the pantheon of legendary journalism screw-ups. It is highly unusual – although not unprecedented – for a news organization to air its dirty laundry so publicly.

It’s not often that medievalists get as excited as they have been over the revival of a medieval remedy for eye conditions involving garlic, onions, wine and ox gall, prepared in a bronze vessel. The concoction, mixed up by a team from Nottingham University, appeared to show promising results in the battle against MRSA. It didn’t kill it all, but it apparently killed 90%. This has revived enthusiasm for trawling ancient texts for the solutions to modern problems.