Category: News

A new agreement between the ANU and the National University of Malaysia (UKM) will deepen links between Australia and Malaysia, and boost the studies of Malaysia in both Australia and around the globe.

Witnessed by Malaysia Deputy Prime Minister YAB Tan Sri Dato’ Haji Muhyiddin Bin Haji Mohd Yassin, the Memorandum of Understanding was signed by ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Young AO in a ceremony on Wednesday.

The MOU will increase educational links and collaboration between Australia and Malaysia, as well as pave the way for a new Global Malaysian Studies Network at the University.

While acting as a Malaysian studies base in Australia, the network will also provide a coordination point for other universities across the globe.

“Australia has more long-standing institutional and people-to-people ties with Malaysia than with any other Asian neighbour,

Using genetic analysis, scientists have for the first time been able to conclusively establish that insects originated approximately 480 million years ago, and that they developed the ability to fly approximately 80 million years later.

Published last week in Science, the study, which involved more than 100 researchers from 16 countries including five from Australia’s CSIRO, answers long-held questions about the evolution of the world’s largest and most diverse group of living things – insects.

“Our research shows that insects originated at the same time as the earliest land-based plants, about 480 million years ago. These first insects were probably similar to today’s silverfish,

A major new Series on health and ageing, published in “The Lancet”, warns that unless health systems find effective strategies to address the problems faced by an ageing world population, the growing burden of chronic disease will greatly affect the quality of life of older people. As people across the world live longer, soaring levels of chronic illness and diminished wellbeing are poised to become a major global public health challenge.

Effective health interventions increasing life expectancy

Worldwide, life expectancy of older people continues to rise. By 2020, for the first time in history, the number of people aged 60 years and older will outnumber children younger than 5 years. By 2050, the world’s population aged 60 years and older is expected to total 2 billion, up from 841 million today. Eighty per cent of these older people will be living in low-income and middle-income countries.

The increase in longevity, especially in high-income countries (HICs), has been largely due to the decline in deaths from cardiovascular disease (stroke and ischaemic heart disease), mainly because of simple, cost-effective strategies to reduce tobacco use and high blood pressure, and improved coverage and effectiveness of health interventions.

Challenge of ageing healthily

However, although people are living longer, they are not necessarily healthier than before – nearly a quarter (23%) of the overall global burden of death and illness is in people aged over 60, and much of this burden is attributable to long-term illness caused by diseases such as cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, heart disease, musculoskeletal diseases (such as arthritis and osteoporosis), and mental and neurological disorders.

This long-term burden of illness and diminished wellbeing affects patients, their families, health systems, and economies, and is forecast to accelerate. For example, latest estimates indicate that the number of people with dementia is expected to rise from 44 million now, to 135 million by 2050.

“Deep and fundamental reforms of health and social care systems will be required,

It’s Sunday! Maybe some of you are not that happy for that, because it’s the end of the weekend, but for us it’s our time to provide you with a new editor’s selection for this week. The task was very interesting and exciting. We got an opportunity to present at once amazing stories from biology, space industry, neuroscience and much more. So, let’s review this week’s choice.

The solar explorer built with dead animal bones

When I meet him in his office at Airbus Defence and Space in Stevenage, a non-descript industrial town some an hour’s drive north of London, Chris Draper is sitting at his desk idly flicking a long narrow strip of what looks like cooking foil. Smooth burnished metal on one side, ridged matt black on the other, the thin material makes a crinkly noise as he twists it back and forth.

Prehistoric ‘groundhog’ identified by scientists

US lead scientist Dr David Krause, from Stony Brook University in New York, said: “We know next to nothing about early mammalian evolution on the southern continents. This discovery, from a time and an area of the world that are very poorly sampled, underscores how very little we know. No paleontologist could have come close to predicting the odd mix of anatomical features that this cranium exhibits.