the conversation
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Ships Moved More Than 11 Billion Tonnes of Our Stuff Last Year and It’s Killing the Climate
The shipping of goods around the world keeps economies going. But it comes at an enormous environmental cost – producing more CO₂ than the aviation industry. This problem should be getting urgent international attention and action, but it’s not. This week, all 174 member states of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) will discuss a plan…
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A Queensland Sea Sponge is Helping Scientists Unravel a 700-Million-Year-Old Mystery of Evolution
Many human traits, such as height and disease susceptibility, depend on genes that are encoded in our DNA. These genes are switched on and off and further fine-tuned by important but hard-to-find regions in the genome. A particularly important class of these regions are known as enhancers, which boost the likelihood that a particular gene…
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COVID-19 Vaccines Are Coming – How Will We Know They Work And Are Safe?
Pfizer and BioNTech have just released interim results of their COVID-19 vaccine trial. Although it is not the only vaccine in the late stages of testing, the large size and careful design of the trial, not to mention the promising results, have caused understandable enthusiasm around the world. As we get nearer the long-awaited start…
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Pfizer’s Ultra-Cold Vaccine Could Be Difficult To Distribute
The excitement that greeted the news of a vaccine candidate that may be highly effective against COVID-19 was indeed something to behold. If the final results show anything like the numbers quoted in the press release, then the world can indeed be pleased and the scientists behind the scenes very proud of themselves. One complicating…