Gizmodo International
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What Groundhog Day (and My Time in a Monastery) Taught Me About Lockdown
Stage 4 lockdown is upon Melbourne for the next six weeks. How do we cope with the new normal of staying in our houses for 23 hours a day? One popular solution is to immerse ourselves in stories. Topical films, such as Contagion (2011), have found a new life in the pandemic. But a more…
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Why are Melbourne’s COVID-19 Numbers so Stubbornly High?
Melburnians have now been wearing mandatory face coverings in public for two weeks. Yet Premier Daniel Andrews announced another grim milestone in Victoria’s second wave of COVID-19 infections on Wednesday: 725 new cases, a record daily tally for any Australian state since the pandemic began. Four weeks after Melbourne reintroduced stage 3 restrictions, logic suggests…
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From Superheroes to the Clitoris: 5 Scientists Tell the Stories Behind These Species Names
Weaving creative, heartfelt or even risqué words into the formal Latin names for new species has long been common in taxonomy — the science of classifying flora and fauna. An 18th century botanist, for example, named a genus of flower “Clitoria” after the human clitoris, and some scientists have named species after celebrities, or their…
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Biodiversity Loss Could Be Making us Sick
By 2050, 70 per cent of the world’s population is expected to live in towns and cities. Urban living brings many benefits, but city dwellers worldwide are seeing a rapid increase in noncommunicable health problems, such as asthma and inflammatory bowel disease. Some scientists now think this is linked to biodiversity loss – the ongoing…