Category: The Conversation

from www.shutterstock.comAn expensive IVF technique, routinely offered in fertility clinics around the world, offers no extra benefits to standard IVF in the vast majority of cases, our new research shows. The technique, known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection or ICSI, was developed to help couples where the man has

SuppliedOn Anzac Day each year, Australians remember those who served and died in wars and conflicts. We may attend a dawn service, go to a march or lay a wreath at a war memorial. But across Australia lie living war commemorations you may pass every day, without realising

An unusually sturdy and comfortable CCS during the first world war. Australian War MemorialThe revival of interest in Anzac since the 1980s has depended in part on the repositioning of soldiers as victims. We rarely celebrate their martial virtues, and instead note their resilience, fortitude and suffering. This shift in

Australian War MemorialModern warfare produces both trauma and boredom in equal measure. During the first world war, one way troops found solace was by writing and reading magazines created by soldiers, for soldiers. Throughout the war, these magazines were produced in trenches, on troopships, in camps and in

Perutskyi Petro/ShutterstockThe European Union has committed to very significant emission cuts — 55% on 1990 levels by 2030, and zero net emissions by 2050. To help it get there without too much disruption, the president of the European Commission proposed a carbon tariff – known as the

Rawpixel.com/ShutterstockBreaking down the old boys’ club in business, government and other organisations is intrinsically important. Ensuring greater diversity in organisations – on gender, racial, ethnic and other lines – is, simply put, the right thing to do. But some advocates of greater diversity make an extra claim: that

The number of people allowed to return from India is to be reduced, as new restrictions are imposed on Australian citizens and permanent residents seeking to come from COVID “high risk” countries. With COVID surging in India, the cases in quarantine among people arriving from India have risen significantly. On

We shouldn’t be surprised at the Kevin Rudd-Malcolm Turnbull bromance. After all, we saw the same with Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam. The stronger the earlier political antipathy, it seems, the closer the later collaboration. Rudd’s fury over Turnbull’s refusal to back him for United Nations secretary-general might never have

Rick Rycroft/APThe Morrison government’s decision to scrap Victoria’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) agreement with China was based on Australia’s new Foreign Relations Act, which says the foreign minister may ensure that arrangements entered by state or territory governments, and associated entities, are not negotiated,

From time to time, generally when there’s a public case of a hunger strike, people ask me how long a person can survive without food. The hunger strike generating attention at the moment is that of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Navalny, who was arrested in January after returning to

ShutterstockAlmost half of all Australians live with a chronic disease, which contribute to some 90% of deaths. It’s no secret our diet can have a major impact on our health. But our new umbrella review, published this week in Advances in Nutrition, provides compelling evidence that pro-inflammatory diets

In this picture taken June 14, 2013, Henna Begum holds a picture of her daughter Akhi Akhter, a garment worker in the Rana Plaza building in Savar when it collapsed. Kevin Frayer/APThe 2013 Dhaka garment factory collapse, killing more than 1,100 workers and injuring 2,600 more, is the clothing