Scientists can’t be everything, everywhere all at once, but there is one important resource scientists can utilise that is everywhere: you! Get involved in a citizen science project in 2024 and have your observations contribute to important scientific research. Here is a list of ten...
Throughout human history, the unusual has always caught the attention and captured the imagination. This has been especially true of strangely coloured animals. Black panthers, leopards or jaguars with a genetic trait called melanism, appear often in stories when their spotted kin are not as...
The UNE Discovery team would like to say a great big thanks for sticking with another challenging year of uncertainty, steep learning curves about lockdowns, travel and virus transmission, and the enduring human spirit of curiosity....
I visited a local school the other day and had an adventure! Through the classroom window we spied a swarm of bees and gingerly made our way outside to wonder at their activity. The busy bees were boldly making a nest just metres from where...
We had a bumper crop of strawberries this season. Our small patch of herbs and strawberries has suffered in previous years and not being the green thumb family, we don’t tend to give them much love and attention. This year, though, left to their own...
You may have noticed at your feet, as you trudged through sandy moist ground, small flower like plants glistening in the sunlight, with what look like dew drops on their tiny rounded leaves. They are carnivorous plants in the genus Drosera; a large and diverse...
Have you heard about nature journalling? My daughter and I recently discovered this lovely practice of wandering out in nature and taking notes and making sketches of the things we see. For us, this was something that we could do in our backyard...
In our UNE Discovery Voyager activity Plants, Poop and Pollinators, we play a role-playing game where students become busy dung beetles, rolling away balls of manure and ‘burying’ them in their underground dung beetle nests. The dung beetles (students) must roll away as many balls...
For many people, 3D printing is a fantastic, almost science fiction type of futuristic technology hidden out of reach in engineering labs and TV prop studios. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was available to you, right now? 3D printing is becoming increasingly...
Many people would have seen a case moth case at some time or another, but fewer people may know what they actually are. So, before we look at the exact species I have (and how I found that out), let’s have a look at case...
