Le mystère des portes d Arabie - Sciences et Avenir sciencesetavenir.fr - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from sciencesetavenir.fr Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Date Time
Black swan DNA could help us understand human response to bird flu
In a world-first, scientists from The University of Western Australia have assembled the entire DNA of the black swan, which could offer insight into how the bird, and even humans, respond to bird flu and other pandemics in the same family of viruses.
The black swan, a species native to Western Australia and the State’s official bird emblem, is particularly vulnerable to bird flu compared to other birds. Similarly, humans who contract the virus are also very vulnerable, with high fatality rates.
“Because viruses such as bird flu can spill over into humans, and pandemics are only predicted to increase in the future, research into animal and human responses to them has never been more important.”
Date Time
No more digging – a new environmentally friendly way of mining
Researchers from The University of Western Australia, Australia’s national science agency CSIRO, the Technical University of Denmark and the University of Exeter have developed a new mining technique that uses electric fields to extract metals from hard rock ore.
The technique could replace the traditional method of digging which results in significant costs to the environment.
Digging methods are currently used in 99 per cent of mining activity, often resulting in significant environmental degradation and huge quantities of solid waste.
Global estimates of waste are of the order of 100 gigatonnes per year, significantly larger than any other form of waste generated by humans.
Researchers map Australians who âsailedâ into the deserts
30 Apr 2021 | 4 mins
‘Superhighways’ used by a population of up to 6.5 million Indigenous Australians to navigate the continent tens of thousands of years ago have provided new insights into how people thrived in harsh environments.
The international team of researchers, including from The University of Western Australia, used sophisticated modelling of past people and landscapes to reveal the routes that led to the early and rapid settlement of Australia by the First Australians.
The study, published today in
, provides further evidence of the capacity and resilience of the ancestors of Indigenous people, and paints a picture of large, well-organised groups navigating tough terrain.