Oct 28, 2021 | Science & Technology
By Harriet Edmund An international collaboration has developed a new drug candidate that stops the malaria parasite from breaking down waste, resulting in fatal ‘molecular constipation’ and hope for new treatments. Diseases caused by infectious organisms pose an...
Jul 20, 2021 | Science & Technology
By Tony Blakely, Tim Wilson & Vijaya Sundararajan As Australia looks toward opening its international borders, new virus modelling provides scenarios that can help us decide what’s the right risk to tolerate. As Australia inches up its vaccine rollout, the...
May 20, 2021 | Science & Technology
By Paul Panckhurst New Zealand has one of the world’s worst rates of a fatal brain disease. Now, scientists hunting rogue genes hope to unravel the 150-year-old mystery of what triggers the disease and how to find a cure. Motor neuron disease is absurdly cruel and...
Feb 24, 2021 | Science & Technology
By Judith Littleton, Heather Battles & Evelyn Marsters How is it that an infection can be worse or different depending on whether someone has another disease? Why does it matter where someone lives? Why does history make disease progression different in different...
May 25, 2020 | Science & Technology
By Philip Hill One of the interesting features of the COVID-19 pandemic is the different incidence rates of the disease and the different mortality percentages, across countries. There are several possible reasons for this. Firstly, the capacity and policies around...
Mar 30, 2020 | Science & Technology
By Lotti Tajouri Viruses are the most common biological entities on Earth. Experts estimate there are around 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them, and if they were all lined up they would stretch from one side of the galaxy to the other. You can think of...
Mar 18, 2020 | Science & Technology
By Beth Linas The virus apparently emerged in Wuhan, China. How does a virus that starts in one place spread around the world? The short answer is that we live in a global economy that includes frequent domestic and international travel, and viruses often hitch rides...
Mar 2, 2020 | Science & Technology
Global alarm is increasing around the growing spread of COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus. How did it begin? How dangerous is it? What needs to be done now to protect public health? Maria Armoudian speaks with Paul R. Hunter. Paul R. Hunter is a Professor of...
Feb 4, 2020 | Science & Technology
By Helen Petousis-Harris How serious is the new coronavirus pandemic? Are we set for a global pandemic? Helen Petousis-Harris investigates. Just over a month ago the emergence of a previously unseen disease-causing virus was announced. It is officially called 2019...
Jan 23, 2020 | Science & Technology
China is experiencing an outbreak of coronavirus which has so far killed seventeen people and infected a further four hundred and forty. The outbreak began in the city of Wuhan, with most of those infected having visited a fish market. Despite authorities initially...