Students who stick with maths score ‘brain plasticity’ and enjoy other advantages. More than 140,000 students in NSW and Victoria will sit HSC or VCE exams next month. But while English is compulsory, about 25 per cent of students ditch studying maths in years 11 and 12. In fact, maths has steadily dropped among Australian senior students overall. According to…
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Message from Dr Swan
Hello there! Dr Norman Swan here and back again for another edition of ABC Yours. With vaccine rates increasing, it looks as though the light at the end of the NSW & VIC lockdown tunnel is in sight. Questions are still circulating about the risks of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines and there’s still some fear of the unknown. To put…
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In 2019, carbon dioxide concentrations were higher than at any time in the past 2 million years
Article by Nick O’Malley and Peter Hannam of the Melbourne Age 10 August 2021 The world is likely to heat to 1.5 degrees or more above preindustrial levels by 2040, exposing it to the sort of extreme weather now ravaging Europe and North America, the most comprehensive analysis yet undertaken of climate change shows. The latest report by the United…
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Australian stories – culture, identity and the importance of our cultural industries
Address by ABC Managing Director David AndersonLa Trobe University15 March 2021 INTRODUCTION Good afternoon everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here. I would like to acknowledge that wherever we are today, we are on Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander land. I acknowledge the Elders of those lands past and present and also pay my respects to any Indigenous people listening…
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We marched fuelled by anger and sickened by grief – by Jo Dyer
Published in the the Guardian 17 March 2021 Last month’s strong words from political leaders about tackling the power imbalance at the heart of our democracy between men and women, bosses and staffers, have long since been drowned out by the brutal echoes of “lying cow” and “mob rule”. The initial pledge of action for women, the commitment to change…
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Thinking economists are grappling with why their profession has made our lives worse by Ross Gittins
Most economists are great believers in the need for “reform” – for other people, not themselves. Over the past 30 or 40 years, no profession has had more influence over the policies governments have pursued, but the results have hardly been flash. Even the lightning speed at which an epidemic in part of China became a pandemic reaching every corner…
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USA – Republican security officials back Biden
An article by David Sanger of the New York Times 20 August 2020 Four years after 50 of the nation’s most senior Republican national security officials warned that Donald Trump “would be the most reckless president in American history,” they are back with a new letter, declaring his presidency worse than they had imagined and urging voters to support former…
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Rio Tinto admits it ‘missed opportunities’ to save heritage site
By Nick Toscano, The Age An article by Nick Toscano, The Age 4 August 2020 Miner Rio Tinto has acknowledged it missed a series of opportunities to better communicate with traditional landowners or pause to rethink a proposed mine expansion that might have prevented the destruction of a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal site in Western Australia. Rio Tinto, Australia’s second-largest miner, has faced a storm…
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Rio Tinto looks to shelter from self-detonation
An article by Elizabeth Knight Business Columnist of The Age 4 August 2020 As the adage goes: “when you are in a hole stop digging”. Amended for Rio Tinto it would read “when you are in a cave stop blasting”. For the past few months the pressure has been mounting on Rio’s management and board. But on Friday, when a…
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Benefit the Poor
It’s good that the great human race Has sent a spacecraft into space It’s said that that technology Will benefit both you and me That may be true but I’m not sure Whether it benefits the poor If foreign powers us attack We need resources to fight back Hence the expenditure extreme On many a French submarine Modern defence technology …