Australasian Science Magazine - the only monthly magazine dedicated to Australian and New Zealand science

APRIL 2007

FEATURES

What Makes Us Human?
Vanessa Woods compares the violence of chimpanzees with the peaceful communities of our other close relatives, the bonobos.

Xenophobia
Bob Elliott questions whether the current ban on xenotransplantation in Australia should be overturned.

A Queen Is Made, Not Born
Ryszard Maleszka explains how the bees took an ancient gene and, via multiple duplications, created a specialised family of proteins that serve their most important social need: raising a queen.

Sex, Drugs and... Parasites
David Jenkins discovers some bizarre behaviours that aid the transmission of parasites among people.

Global Warming: Worse than Forecast
While the release of the IPCC’s report on global climate change triggered cries that “something must be done urgently to save the planet”, Peter Pockley reports that the figures published were conservative and already need updating.

Groundwater Dreaming
Brad Moggridge says we can learn to manage our precious water reserves from Australian aboriginal people, who survived on the driest inhabited continent on Earth, accessing the world’s oldest living culture to find and manage groundwater.

Science, Politics and the State of the Environment
Ian Lowe questions why scientific consensus on the state of the environment fails to stimulate political action.

Once Upon a Time There Were Megafauna
Judith Field and Stephen Wroe dissect the evidence behind claims that humans were responsible for the extinction of Australia’s megafauna.

conSCIENCE

Weed Science a Victim of the “Commercialisation Axe”
Apart from drought, weeds are the major threat to agriculture and the environment in Australia. But with research support being withdrawn next year, Rachel McFadyen argues for “public good” funding to be revived.