Adventure Ausrama Blog

You may think humans are changing to adapt to city life. However, animals living in cities are evolving faster. Metabolisms of the little creatures are running hot. In Puerto Rico, anole lizards can travel across concrete due to changes in their feet structure. Charles Darwin did get things wrong. Evolution does not just happen over tens of thousands of years. It is dynamic. Alterations are rapid. PCB (Polychlorinated Biphenyls) levels rise in cities and it will kill some animals. The mummichog fish has quickly evolved to survive the poisonous chemical. The shorter the lifespan of living organisms the faster they evolve. A long-time resident of cities is the European blackbird. It has developed more practical beaks and songs. Moreover, their digestive system can digest food scraps discarded by people. Urban blackbirds no longer migrate. Mosquitoes in the London Underground have changed dramatically. They breed one-on-one, not in the clouds of mozzies in a sexual frenzy like their...

It seems the only way to impact on climate change and reduce pollution is regulation. Such ideas as banning petrol and diesel cars by 2030 will not work, however. People have to learn to live without the luxury of jumping in the car and driving down the road. There must be some form of "punishment" for driving your car. Sure using a bicycle is virtually free. Obviously, punishment is not high enough yet to make you use the bike There is no doubt that the cost of motoring will rise dramatically in the future as countries accept the human cause of an unhealthy planet. This is obvious because even now governments are addicted to taxation. The only real answer to change people's life habits is to make it financially painful to do things that damage the environment. It costs less than $1,000 a year now to register a car. In coming years this will rise to a realistic level of $5,000. It will hurt. Prices in the shops will increase, but the standard of living has to ...

Arriving Europeans plundered Australia for human bones to show in their museums. They took skeletal remains of thousands of Aboriginals. Not surprising the descendants of the deceased Australians want to bury them in this country. Because most "specimens" were taken over recent centuries, the DNA in them is still detectable. Tests are being done to compare DNA from bones with Aboriginals living today in order to find matches. The work is being done by Griffith University in Queensland. Though only a few matchups have been done in the world - remains were returned to North American Indians using the method - native people are interested in doing it. Tapij Wales an elder of the Thanynakwith people in Cape York requested tests be done. The main problem is that many claiming Aboriginality today have a mix of European and Aboriginal genes. Moreover, many natives were removed by European settlers to other regions. The arrival of new settlers was a violent period in Australia...

All children are taught in history class about the Eureka Stockade but they do not learn about the Darwin Rebellion. The Northern Territory was annexed by South Australia in 1863. In 1911 the federal government took control of the NT. Dr John Gilruth was appointed administrator. He had great plans to develop the territory, but he was aloof and would not listen to the community. The administrator was involved in opening a meat works and would not negotiate pay. Consequently Vesteys Meatworks failed. On December 16, 1918 Dr Gilruth refused to allow two bartenders working at the Victoria Hotel the night off to go to a party celebrating the end of WWI. The union leader Harold Nelson went to the police station and got a permit for a protest. A month after the hotel incident a group of men marched from Vesteys Meatworks to Government House. The small group of protesters grew into a crowd of thousands. Things got out of control. People demanded the resignation of the administrator. Dr Giru...

The Australian government is in trouble over its planned introduction of My Health Record, a centralized storage of personal medical history. Closure of the opt-out date has been pushed forward several times. There is no way the government can continue to claim that the system will be secure. This is impossible. The weak link in the chain is human. Doctors, nurses and general hospital staff will have access. They will be able to print out any one's record and take a copy home. International criticism revolves around the outdated methods to be used. The main storage medium will be PDF. Searching these for significant insights into a patient's history will be problematic. Ease of searching is paramount. Systems to be adopted in the US and China have separate computer codes for different medication, test results and diseases. This improves searching by clinicians. The FHIR system was developed in Australia but it is the only country not adopting it. As always, Australian ...

Why do people put up with their sugar craving when there is something that can stop it in its tracks? Sweetness is one of the things that the tongue detects very well indeed. We love to consume sugary food and the enjoyment is never satiated. Two thousand years ago Gymnema Sylvestre,  a woody vine, was used to treat "honey urine" (diabetes). It is bitter to taste but it is very effective. Once taken, no sweetness is tasted anymore. it disappears. The craving stops. The gymnema is potent. Acids numb the sweet receptors on the tongue. Molecules in the acids are similar to receptors that register sweetness. They block sweet detecting taste buds. A lot of research has been done and it really works. The product has been put into lozenges sold in the United States. They are called Sweet Defeat. Plans are in train to export the supplement to other countries. It is not dangerous in any way so it does not have to pass tests done for drugs by the FDA. ◆  ANTHROPOLOGY   ◆ Tys ...

When humans first arrived in Australia, sea level was much lower than it is now. People could have taken the Northern route through Sulawesi, island hopping across the sea, then reaching Papua New Guinea which was joined to Australia. It is the most logical path because land could always be seen in the distance in times of good weather. The southern route is much more difficult in terms of resources and energy. It involves travel across large islands of the Indonesian archipelago from Sumatra to Timor then a considerably long sea journey to the northern part of Australia. Early arrivals obviously did not plan their journey, so using the easiest and most effective route was not an issue. They just moved east to new pastures as resources were depleted with new people moving into inhabited regions. It is possible that Australia was reached by travel along both routes. Artifacts in the rock shelter at Madjedbebe in Australia have been dated at 65,000 years before the present. Not much ar...