Poor sleep may make your brain age faster – new study
Abigail Dove, Karolinska Institutet We spend nearly a third of our lives asleep, yet sleep is anything but wasted time. Far from being passive downtime, it is an active and…
Taylor Swift’s Father Figure isn’t a cover, but an ‘interpolation’. What that means – and why it matters
Timothy McKenry, Australian Catholic University On Taylor Swift’s highly-anticipated new album The Life of a Showgirl, track four, Father Figure, includes the late George Michael as one of the credited…
Heat, air quality, insurance costs: how climate change is affecting our homes – and our health
Ang Li, The University of Melbourne This year, ten days of extreme heat in Europe killed roughly 2,300 people, severe flooding on the New South Wales coast left more than…
Palm trees in Africa are in decline: these botanists made a plan to do something about it
Fred Stauffer, Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de Genève (CJBG); Doudjo Noufou Ouattara, Nangui Abrogoua University, and Kifouli Adéoti, University d’Abomey-Calavi de Bénin Palm trees grace the landscape across Africa, thriving…
The Ganges River is drying faster than ever – here’s what it means for the region and the world
Mehebub Sahana, University of Manchester The Ganges, a lifeline for hundreds of millions across South Asia, is drying at a rate scientists say is unprecedented in recorded history. Climate change,…
Birds all over the world use the same sound to warn of threats
An angry Australian Superb Fairy-wren confronting a Horsfield’s bronze-cuckoo. David Ongley William Feeney, Griffith University; Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD-CSIC); James Kennerley, Cornell University, and Niki Teunissen, Monash University Language…
Who are the worst fathers in literature?
Penguin Books, Goodreads, Harper Collins, Text Publishing Suzy Freeman-Greene, The Conversation Literature has long portrayed messed-up families. As poet Philip Larkin famously wrote, “They fuck you up, your mum and…
Taylor Swift has branded herself a showgirl. These hardworking women have a long and bejewelled history
Taylor Swift/Instagram Emily Brayshaw, University of Technology Sydney The iconic feathered showgirl was born amid the chaos of the first world war, when the wealthy, global French superstar Gaby Deslys…
These 4 aeroplane failures are more common than you think – and not as scary as they sound
Guido Carim Junior, Griffith University “It is the closest all of us passengers ever want to come to a plane crash,” a Qantas flight QF1889’s passenger said after the plane…
A US startup plans to deliver ‘sunlight on demand’ after dark. Can it work – and would we want it to?
Michael J. I. Brown, Monash University and Matthew Kenworthy, Leiden University A proposed constellation of satellites has astronomers very worried. Unlike satellites that reflect sunlight and produce light pollution as…