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Ancient clues, in the shape of fossils and archaeological evidence of varying quality scattered across Australia, have formed the basis of several hypotheses about the fate of megafauna that vanished about 42,000 years ago from the ancient continent of Sahul, comprising mainland Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea and neighbouring islands.
There is a growing consensus that multiple factors were at play, including climate change, the impact of people on the environment, and access to freshwater sources.
Now, research led by Professor Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence of Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) has used sophisticated mathematical modelling to assess how susceptible different species were to extinction – and what it means for the survival of creatures today.
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Australiaâs foremost coral reef scientist Professor Terry Hughes says government plans to restore the Great Barrier Reef are doomed to failure because theyâre too small and expensive, while the rate of catastrophic bleaching events are already recurring faster than corals can recover.
A recent Australian Academy of Sciences report said that if the world warmed by 2 degrees Celsius just one per cent of corals would survive. The earth has already warmed by 1.1 degrees and medium-range estimates forecast 1.5 degrees of warming by 2045 to 2050.
Coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef.
Credit:Tom Bridge / www.tethys-images.com
Professor Hughes of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies said coral bleaching events, which are driven by hot weather and clear sunny days, now occur on average every six years and their frequency is set to rise.
Australia’s foremost coral reef scientist Professor Terry Hughes says government plans to restore the Great Barrier Reef are doomed to failure because they’re too small and expensive, while the rate of catastrophic bleaching events are already recurring faster than corals can recover. A recent Australian Academy of Sciences report said that if the world warmed by 2 degrees Celsius just one per cent of corals would survive. The earth has already warmed by 1.1 degrees and medium-range estimates forecast 1.5 degrees of warming by 2045 to 2050.
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The Australian government has committed NZ$108 million for reef restoration projects which include cooling the water, sun shields and ‘coral gardening’.
Qubits Comprised Of Holes Could Be The Trick To Build Faster, Larger Quantum Computers
A new study indicates holes the solution to operational speed/coherence trade-off, potential scaling up of qubits to a mini-quantum computer.
Quantum computers are predicted to be much more powerful and functional than today’s ‘classical’ computers.
One way to make a quantum bit is to use the ‘spin’ of an electron, which can point either up or down. To make quantum computers as fast and power-efficient as possible we would like to operate them using only electric fields, which are applied using ordinary electrodes.
Although spin does not ordinarily ‘talk’ to electric fields, in some materials spins can interact with electric fields indirectly, and these are some of the hottest materials currently studied in quantum computing.