Learning and the internet are two things that seem to be made for each other. More and more people are using the internet to learn and teach. These days you can learn to cook online, learn to sew, learn to tie a tie, and you can even get a college degree. With all these exciting […] … learn more→

Randomness and chaos in nature, as it turns out, can be a good thing – especially if you are trying to harvest energy from the movements of everyday activities like walking. Duke University engineers believe they have come up with the theoretical underpinning that could lead to the development of energy harvesting devices that are […] … learn more→

Eating food can be a sterile, hurried act, offering little cause for joy – or a creative, spiritual act of connecting people, the earth and all of Creation. … learn more→

Smoking and drinking often go hand in hand. Therefore extending the smoking ban outside bars could help curb “social smoking”, a qualitative study published online in the journal Tobacco Control suggests. The international evidence indicates that, while the prevalence of smoking per se has decreased, social smoking— smoking intermittently or only in given situations—has increased […] … learn more→

The Arab Spring, now entering its second year, was no random event. Rather, it was a synthesis of many interconnected failings within the post-colonial Arab state system ranging from endemic political corruption, to dire economic stagnation and associated social marginalisation of the masses to list just the obvious ones. But revolutions, as idealistic and romantic […] … learn more→

Could Australia end up with little to show for its mining boom — as an echo of what happened to Nauru once its considerable phosphate wealth was exhausted? Close examination of the proposed Minerals Resource Rent Tax (MRRT) reveals serious flaws that could leave the federal government well short of the forecast revenue. It is […] … learn more→

When I think about climate change, the images that come quickly to mind are of melting polar ice caps, heat waves, droughts, and severe flooding. This kind of climate change, or global warming, is one of the biggest problems UCS is trying to help slow and ultimately stop. But, recently I was in Los Angeles […] … learn more→

Archaeologists working in eastern Jordan have announced the discovery of 20,000-year-old hut structures, the earliest yet found in the Kingdom. The finding suggests that the area was once intensively occupied and that the origins of architecture in the region date back twenty millennia, before the emergence of agriculture. The research, published 15 February, 2012 in […] … learn more→

The classic novel, “Ulysses,” by Irish author James Joyce, was published as a serial between 1918-1920, and then as a single volume in 1922 in France.  It celebrated its 90th birthday on February 2. Widely-regarded as one of the greatest novels of all time, it even initiated the creation of an international holiday, Bloomsday, celebrated […] … learn more→

Scientists from the Department of Engineering and the Institute for Manufacturing have developed a method for predicting whether a filament of fluid will condense along its length into a single droplet, or collapse into multiple droplets. The research, published today in the journal Physical Review Letters, could aid in designing processes for paint-spraying, ink-jet printing […] … learn more→