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Australia has a love–hate relationship with sunlight. We know too much can give us skin cancer and too little can leave us lacking vitamin D. But the effect of sunlight (or artificial light) on our bodies and minds is much more wide-ranging.
In a new six-part series, launched today, we explore how light affects our immune system, our mental health and our gut. Light tells us the best time of day to work, sleep, eat, and even poo. We also harness light to diagnose and treat disease.
Light even helped shape how we evolved – particularly our skin, hair and eyes, as evolutionary biologist Mike Lee explains.
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Anna Evangeli
Health Editor
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Mike Lee, Flinders University
Light helps explains the evolution of our skin colour, why some of us have curly hair, and the size of our eyes. And light still shapes us today.
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Geoff Hanmer, University of Technology Sydney
Most schools are only ventilated using windows, which are often closed. Installing high-filtration air conditioning would cut the spread of airborne viruses and save more than $1 billion per year.
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Rebecca Houlihan, Monash University
Australia’s proposal to bar young people from social media faces similar issues to the ‘clean feed’ internet filter abandoned in 2012.
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Adrian Beaumont, The University of Melbourne
The ACT election has yielded yet another Labor win, with the party holding office in the ACT since 2001.
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Robin Smit, University of Technology Sydney
Simplistic comparisons are misleading. Calculations based on the mix of electric and fossil-fuelled cars actually on our roads show any difference in mass is too small to be significant.
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Kayla Mildren, Griffith University
A Queensland tribunal has ruled it is not discriminatory for a school to require girls to wear a skirt at formal events.
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Tim Lindsey, The University of Melbourne
Prabowo’s party wants to revert to Indonesia’s original authoritarian Constitution. Are there enough guardrails in place to protect the country’s fledgling democracy?
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Adam Guastella, University of Sydney; Kelsie Boulton, University of Sydney
Executive function delays affect skills such as as paying attention, switching attention, controlling impulses and problem-solving. They’re common in a range of conditions but are treated as separate.
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Rhys Thomas White, ESR; David Winter, ESR; Suzanne Manning, ESR
Infectious disease control in neonatal units is often reactive, only after several babies fall ill at the same time. Proactive genome sequencing provides an early-warning system to prevent outbreaks.
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Jane Turner Goldsmith, University of Adelaide
Kylie Mirmohamadi’s immersive post-marriage novel follows a woman’s midlife reawakening in the wake of her dominating artist husband’s death.
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Michelle O'Shea, Western Sydney University; Christopher Yorke, Western Sydney University; Jeremy Sleiman, Western Sydney University
The drama comes at an important time in the debate raging over the harms posed by concussion sports.
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Politics + Society
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Stephanie Wescott, Monash University
Several AFL players dressed as alleged sex offenders during an end-of-season celebration. It shows much more needs to be done to change old-fashioned attitudes.
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Ian Parmeter, Australian National University
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing pressure on multiple fronts, but he is likely to continue the war to appease the right-wing members of his cabinet.
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Daniel Casey, Australian National University; Maria Maley, Australian National University
We researched what public service leaders said in the immediate aftermath of the Robodebt Royal Commission. What we found doesn’t bode well for learning from failure.
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Health + Medicine
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Christine Carson, The University of Western Australia
A new survey also found women were more likely than men to wash their hands before touching food – and after using the toilet.
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Brett Montgomery, The University of Western Australia
A new study has found a link between hormonal intrauterine devices (IUDs) and breast cancer. But media reports of a large increase in risk may cause unnecessary worry.
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Science + Technology
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Megan Prictor, The University of Melbourne
There are some simple steps customers of 23andMe can take to protect their highly personal genetic data.
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Environment + Energy
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Jens O. Zinn, The University of Melbourne; Julia Plass, Bayreuth University
Low-income households are attracted to more affordable housing in areas at higher risk of floods and other extreme events. But many then find they cannot afford soaring insurance premiums.
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Education
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Jessica Amy Sears, Charles Sturt University; Rachel Wilson, University of Technology Sydney
Our research shows some New South Wales public school students are being asked to pay for their health and physical education lessons. And those who cannot are missing out.
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Arts + Culture
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Chris Thompson, Australian Catholic University
The Western Australian director’s new film, inspired in part by his own life experiences, offers a raw look at addiction, sacrifice and the limits of familial love.
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Books + Ideas
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Joanna Mendelssohn, The University of Melbourne
About 65,000 years ago, people started making art in the country we now call Australia. This is their story.
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Business + Economy
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Jeannie Marie Paterson, The University of Melbourne; Nicola Howell, Queensland University of Technology
There’s a push for reforms to make banks more responsible for detecting, deterring and responding to scams, rather than just asking consumers to be ‘more careful’.
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Julia Fehrer, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau; Christina Stringer, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau; Sunny Kareem, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau; Timofey Shalpegin, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
COVID-19 and recent geopolitical crises have shown just how vulnerable New Zealand’s supply chain is. Resilience and sustainability will require businesses to find new ways of working,
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