Australasian Science: Australia's authority on science since 1938
Cover Story
Cover Story
How You Can Weigh Black Holes
Messier 81 (also known as NGC 3031 or Bode’s Galaxy) is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major 11.4 million light years away. The pitch angle of its spiral arms is 13.4°, which correlates with the black hole at its centre being 67.6 million times more massive than our Sun. Credit: © Ken Crawford http://www.imagingdeepsky.com/Galaxies/ M81/M81.htm
By Ben Davis
The largest invisible monsters in our universe are hidden at the centres of galaxies, and we can predict how massive they are by the shape of spiral arms in their host galaxies. Here’s how you can take part in a global “citizen science” census of black holes.
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Oz Mammal Genomics
The fat-tailed dunnart (Sminthopsis crassicaudata) is a model marsupial species that’s frequently used in laboratory studies, and has the ancestral marsupial arrangement of chromosomes.
By Sally Potter & Mark Eldridge
A large project to sequence the genomes of Australia’s mammals will provide the first complete picture of their interrelationships and evolutionary history – and aid their conservation.
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Alchemists of Catastrophe: How Disasters Deliver Data
Scientists could never have justified dumping more than 500,000 tonnes of methane into the ocean to study the effects of climate change on deep-sea habitats, but they didn’t have to – Deepwater Horizon did it for them.
By Shanta Barley & Jessica Meeuwig
Ecologists are treating oil spills, species invasions and other environmental calamities as natural experiments on a scale that could never be attained by normal laboratory or field studies.
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Ancient Australia’s Super-Eruptions
Credit: Microstocker/Adobe
By Milo Barham
Sediments beneath the Nullarbor Plain have revealed that super-eruptions in eastern Australia more than 100 million years ago were powerful enough to blast crystals right across the country.
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Skeletons Come out of the Closet to Fight Cancer
Cancer cells divide rapidly and uncontrollably. Anticancer drugs that target the microtubule cytoskeleton work by preventing cancer cells from dividing correctly, but they also affect other rapidly dividing healthy cells and some aggressive cancers are resistant to their effects. New insights are revealing how specific features of the microtubule cytoskeleton are making cancer cells more aggressive and difficult to treat, paving the way for new anticancer therapies. Credit: Mopic/adobe
By Amelia Parker
Cells have skeletons that hold their shape and help them move around. Recent discoveries have revealed that a protein in some cytoskeletons is making cancer cells more deadly, fundamentally challenging our understanding of the function of the cell’s skeleton and offering new hope for the development of targeted and effective cancer therapies.
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Predicting Pandemics
Credit: Gino Santa Maria
By Jemma Geoghegan
Which factors determine whether an emerging virus is likely to burn out or spread like wildfire between people?
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The Emerging Potential of Video Games
Credit: hobbymb/ http://tinyurl.com/hd3u2pp
By Aaron Kandola
A growing body of research is finding that video games stimulate the brain, but are the skills acquired transferable and is violence in games really an issue?
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The Dark Web Dilemma
Credit: adimas/adobe
By Eric Jardine
The dark web can hide the activities of organised crime and child abusers but it can also enable people in repressive regimes to communicate with the wider world.
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A Diet that Calms the Schizophrenic Mind
The ketogenic diet is preferred by bodybuilders who need a high energy intake that doesn’t promote the conversion of fat from excess carbohydrates. Credit: tankist276/adobe
By Zoltán Sarnyai
The ketogenic diet favoured by bodybuilders also normalises schizophrenia-like behaviours.
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Creationism Evolves
Credit: enterlinedesign/adobe
By Nick Matzke
It’s 10 years since US legislation drafted to stop the teaching of “intelligent design” was ruled unconstitutional, yet anti-evolution legislation continues to replicate and “evolve” across the USA.
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