I have something of a reputation as a crazy cat lady, but to be truthful I like dogs as much as I like cats. Dogs play a very important function beyond being pets. Dogs have been trained to herd animals; track lost people and animals; act as guards; detect drugs, bombs and bodies; assist the [...]

I always enjoy researching the Science Page for April. This year, instead of a ‘prank’ article, I thought I’d share history of one of the more bizarre inventions … the train merged with an airplane. I think this might be the grain of truth in the JATO urban myth. The First Attempt: The Aerowagon Now [...]

What triggers the ‘squee’ response? What makes an image or physical entity so sweet that you automatically want to hug them?  What is the evolutionary advantage in finding some things ‘cute’? The famous ethologist, Konrad Lorenz,  created the theory of baby schema, known as Kindchenschema, in which he defines a set of facial and body [...]

Australians have always delighted in a wealth of resources; we even sing about them in our national anthem: “Our land abounds in nature’s gifts”. However, because Australians tend to think of our resources as boundless, we forget or overlook that not everything come in infinite supply. Fossil fuels are finite resources, and – as the [...]

For Parents: Semi-autonomous robotic arms Every mother and father longs for a second pair of hands, particularly when washing a slippery, wriggling newborn; Federico Parietti and Harry Asada of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with the prototype that just might work: semi-autonomous robotic arms. Now, you might ask how these arms are [...]