FEAST OR FAMINE

Sudan and South Sudan’s tensions regarding the oil-rich land of Abyei are escalating. Abyei is one of the “three areas” (Abyei, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile) within the disputed border regions between Sudan (in the North) and South Sudan. These three areas are yet to determine by referendum or personal consultations whether they join Sudan or whether they join South Sudan. The tensions revolve primarily around the distribution of oil wealth. South Sudan accused the North of launching airstrikes on or near major oilfields on Tuesday (between the towns of Bentiu and Rubkona), which the North denied. However, the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, a consortium led by China’s Nile Petroleum Company, confirmed that its facilities had been hit. South Sudan is now assessing the damage. South Sudan has crude oil, but no refineries. It is dependent on this oil to fuel generators so that the nation has power. Currently electricity is erratic leading to freque...

Conflict is continuing in Sudan and the main cause is the oil rich region between the North and South. On July 9, 2011, after a referendum in southern Sudan, the country split into two – the Republic of Sudan (the “North” with Khartoum as the capital) and the newest nation in the world, the Republic of South Sudan (the “South” with Juba as the capital). The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) of the south and the National Congress Party of the north signed a Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005 that ended decades of civil war. The SPLA became the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). The agreement decreed that after six years a referendum would determine whether the south should remain with Sudan or become independent. The referendum was held on January 9, 2011. They chose independence with an overwhelming 99% of votes. However, there were three states that did not vote in the election in July 2011 – South Kordofan, Blue Nile, and Abyei. These areas...

The Telegraph published an article on the Grattan Institute’s new report, Social Cities , in which it states that Australian cities are becoming lonelier places to live and the way they are planned contributes to people’s loneliness. The Grattan Institute is a Melbourne-based public policy think tank. Grattan Institute maintains that isolation and loneliness are increasing amongst Australian residents due to a lack of face-to-face contact. In addition, it states that loneliness is putting people’s health at risk. The report found evidence that Australian city-dwellers have fewer friendships now than 20 years ago and 24% of households are occupied by a single person. One-person households are the fastest growing household type in Australia, and are expected to grow from 24% in 2006 to 28% by 2030. This, coupled with an ageing society and an increasing population growth, is increasing the risk of isolation. While the report is not indicating that all people who liv...

March 23 is Pakistan National Day which commemorates the day in 1940 when the idea of a separate nation was conceived. Seven years later, the nation gained independence as a sovereign state, and as a moderate Islamic country whose philosophies are based on peaceful ideals. Pakistan-Australia relationships have, historically, always been positive and progressive in a diverse range of economic, social, and sporting ties. I was fortunate to be in Pakistan for its National Day in 2002, six months after 9/11 and the evacuation of aid workers in the region. Below is an edited extract from “Kashmir on a Knife-Edge” (2011) detailing Pakistan’s rise to independence. *** Awoken to a twenty-one-gun salute, Jorja experienced Pakistan Day for the first time, celebrating the founding father of Pakistan, Mr. Muhammad Ali Jinnah. It was a public holiday as Pakistanis rejoiced in their freedom from India. During lunch, hotel staff educated Jorja on the meaning of their national day. ...

Earth Hour, an annual event since it was first launched in Sydney in 2007, occurs on March 31 from 8:30 to 9:30 pm in each country’s local time zone. Now a global event organized by WWF (previously World Wildlife Fund and now called World Wide Fund for Nature), people and organizations are asked to switch off their lights for an hour. The aim is to be the biggest environmental event of 2012. Hundreds of millions of people will be switching off their lights for one hour, on the same night, all around the world to signal their care and support for planet Earth. Iconic structures around the world – such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge, and the Australian War Memorial in Canberra have turned off their lights for an hour in previous years. Even Arctic stations turned off their lights. Last year in the Australian capital, Canberra, 52% of people participated in the campaign, a greater proportion of people than any other state. This yea...

Many students in Australia don’t view science and mathematics as cool subjects, primarily because they think they are boring. In 1995, 14% of Year 12 secondary school mathematics students studied advanced mathematics, while 37% studied elementary mathematics. Fifteen years later, in 2010, 10% were studying advanced mathematics and 50% took the easier option of elementary mathematics. The Canberra Times reported that the Australian Mathematical Science Institute revealed that basic mathematics was growing in popularity among secondary students to the detriment of intermediate or advanced studies. This has resulted in fewer universities offering higher mathematics courses, and subsequently there are reduced graduates in mathematics. There have also been reduced teacher intakes in mathematics, which has resulted in many low-income or remote secondary schools without higher level mathematics and science teachers (and therefore courses), producing a continuous cycle of low supp...

Canberra Times (March 19) contains an article on gender differences in workplace communications. Documenting the views of several communication and career experts, the article presents specific examples of communication differences and common misunderstandings. The root of the problem, the article states, is that women express themselves indirectly, often using the conjunctive [serving to connect elements of meaning within sentences] which men misunderstand. The aim of women is to create closeness and a good work environment. The article uses the example when women hear the sentence, “The printer ink has to be changed,” they connect it to an outcome, such as that someone has to change the ink. The article states that men hear the communication only as a statement that is either true or false, and not necessarily with an outcome attached to it. Another example is that women say, “Shouldn’t we call a meeting?” in order for the majority to be involved in the decision or outco...

Summer in Australia’s capital city has been a mild one. Temperatures failed to reach 35 degrees Celsius during the whole summer season, and only 12 days reached or exceeded 30 degrees. The Bureau of Meteorology said this was the coolest first summer since 2001-2002 with the hottest day reaching 34.7C on January 3. The average summer temperature was only 25.4C which was 1.7 degrees below the historical average. The cool conditions were attributed to cloud cover and above average rainfall. Canberra had seven consecutive days of cloud cover from February 27 to March 4, 2012, a 62-year record. During that week, unprecedented rains fell on the capital – the biggest wet since July 31 to August 6, 1950, in which it received 193.6mm of rainfall (four times the average March monthly rainfall). During the whole summer, Canberra recorded 202.4mm of rain, above the average of 168.7mm.

From little things big things grow, composed Australian songwriters Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody in 1991. It’s not about an acorn growing into an enormous oak tree. It’s a rock protest song, based on indigenous land rights and reconciliation. From bad things good things grow. That’s the premise of Michael White’s The Fruits of War: How Military Conflict Accelerates Technology (2005). Michael White, once a member of the group, The Thompson Twins in the 1980s, is now a prolific international best-selling and prize-winning science writer. In Fruits of War, White presents the argument to support his contention that many of our everyday items and inventions have been greatly influenced and inspired by conflicts, military needs, and weapons development. He is not advocating conflict, but argues that, from time immemorial, aggression has been a natural part of the human psyche—socially, geographically, ecologically, and physically—and that from progressions in conflict have come ad...

A meteorite crashed through the roof of a family’s shed in Oslo, Norway, on March 12. It weighed 585 grams, which split into two pieces, and probably originated from a meteorite seen over Norway on March 1. Although not rare, it is unusual for a fragment to land on people’s property. The fragment is called a ‘breccia’ which is a rock composed of broken pieces or cemented together. The last time a major piece of a meteorite landed in Norway was on June 9, 2006, when one crashed into the side of a mountain near Troms and Finnmark, believed to be of a considerable mass. Its impact could be heard and felt. NORSAR, the geophysics and seismology research foundation at Karasjok, registered its seismic tremor. Previously in Norway, a large meteorite impacted Alta in 1904, weighing 90 kilograms (198 pounds). In south-eastern Australia, a meteorite landed through the roof of farmer’s hay shed on September 28, 1969 in the town of Murchison in the state of Victoria. A disintegrating...

An extra set of female genes appears to make males more masculine (New Scientist, 10 March 2012). This suggests that sex chromosomes, rather than hormones, have a role in directing behaviour, says Emilie Rissman of the University of Virginia in America. Rissman suggests that it commences soon after birth. Male foetuses are exposed to testosterone from four weeks of age, while females are not. To determine whether sex chromosomes affected sex-specific behaviours beyond dictating the presence of hormones, Rissman took advantage of a mutation in mice that causes the sex-determining region of the male Y chromosome to jump to a non-sex chromosome. The mice are male, but have two X chromosomes (typically female chromosomes). [Genetically, if an animal or human has XX chromosomes, it is female; if it has XY chromosomes, it is male.] While the XX male mice had the same level of testosterone as normal XY male mice, they displayed more masculine sexual behaviours, such as ...