According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose History of the Kings of Britain was written in 1136, the mysterious monoliths at Stonehenge were first spirited there by the wizard Merlin, whose army stole them from a mythical Irish stone circle called the Giants’ Dance. Centuries before the development of rudimentary geology,…
Life during the pandemic has been difficult for most of us. But there’s no doubt some occupational groups have had a particularly tough time, especially NHS workers. Many NHS staff have dealt with inordinate numbers of critically ill patients. Some have been trying to provide care in a far from…
About 41,000 years ago, something remarkable happened: Earth’s magnetic field flipped and, for a temporary period, magnetic north was south and magnetic south was north. Palaeomagnetists refer to this as a geomagnetic excursion. This event, which is different to a complete magnetic pole reversal, occurs irregularly through time and reflects…
New Zealand’s latest community cases, the first to be infected with the more infectious B.1.1.7 variant of COVID-19, have a plausible link to the border through one person’s workplace at LSG Sky Chefs, a business that deals with laundry and catering from international flights. But it is not a definitive…
The actions of the Myanmar military in arresting members of the government in dawn raids on February 1, the day parliament was set to convene, have been met with shock and dismay both within the country and around the world. Why would the military stage a coup to depose a…
One of the big contributors to climate change is right beneath your feet, and transforming it could be a powerful solution for keeping greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. The production of cement, the binding element in concrete, accounted for 7% of total global carbon dioxide emissions in 2018. Concrete…
As JobKeeper enters its final weeks, the government has released the latest Tax Office breakdown of the numbers coming off the program, amid concerns its end in late March will see a rise in unemployment. With attention currently on Victoria, in a five day lockdown due to a COVID outbreak…
Amsterdam has usurped London to become Europe’s biggest hub for trading shares. It is quite a shift for a city that was fifth behind Paris, Frankfurt and Milan only two months ago, while for the UK this is one of numerous recent developments that highlight the downsides of leaving the…
Do you remember the excitement and anticipation of your first day at school? Perhaps you were looking forward to making new friends. Or maybe you were shy and anxious. Research shows that such excitement and stress are the two most common reactions to starting school. It is telling that a…
Virginia has enabled app-less COVID-19 exposure notification services for iPhone users, joining California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia. This means iPhone users in those states won’t need to install exposure notification apps and can instead turn on notifications in the phone’s settings.…
CC BY-ND Rolling out a vaccine to stop the spread of a global pandemic doesn’t come cheap. Billions of dollars have been spent developing drugs and putting in place a program to get those drugs into people’s arms. But amid an uneven distribution of vaccines – with poorer countries lagging…
The New Moon this month marks the start of the Lunar New Year and reminds us of how important our orbiting neighbour is to us. It’s a relationship long described by many cultures across the globe, particularly with its links to tides and weather. In the Torres Strait it was…
The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI) is a distributed resource and decentralized network committed to accelerating public participation in research, policymaking, and development programs.
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license CC BY 4.0
