As a kid heading north out of Auckland on holiday road trips I used to love going past the big satellite earth station near Warkworth. For decades, the earth station, which was built by the New Zealand Post Office in 1971 and is owned by Telecom, formed a major link for voice and data communications […]
MoreUPDATED: At least seven New Zealand scientists have featured in a list including the top 1 per cent most-cited researchers in science worldwide. They include (I missed a couple of expat Kiwis out so have updated the list): A couple of ex-pat Kiwis also make it into the 1% club. Professor Rob Knight, University of […]
MoreUPDATED: We all know that our Crown Research Institutes carry out a lot of commercial work for clients, in fact they are encouraged to do so in the interests of returning a dividend to the Crown which funds them. But are those commercial relationships influencing the scientific advice that scientists give? Back in April, Massey […]
MoreMystery still surrounds exactly how a group of renegade farmers imported the calicivirus into New Zealand in 1997 and spread it around the South Island in a bid to kill the rabbits that were destroying their land. But 17 years later, scientists have been able to give some indication of the impact the illicit introduction […]
MoreThe national budget announced today contained a raft of announcements on research, science and innovation funding. The only big surprise is the news that additional centres of research excellence will be funded from 2016, bringing to ten the total numbers of CoREs that will exist. That’s a clear endorsement by the Government of the CoRE […]
MoreNews on and reaction to Budget 2014 will be featured here this afternoon, as our Sciblogs and Science Media Centre experts and contributors offer their take on the state of the Government’s finances and its funding priorities. Follow the Storify our feed to get the latest updates in one place… Live updates on Storify below… […]
MoreThe Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment has just released the last of its Sectors Report Series, a very useful snapshot of the New Zealand economy and which sectors contribute what economic output. Many Sciblogs readers, according to the demographic info a computer algorithm throws up for you, are involved in the knowledge intensive services […]
MoreI’ve recently been re-reading The Geek Manifesto: Why Science Matters, the book by former Times science editor Mark Henderson, which examines the often flagrant disregard for scientific evidence shown by politicians around the world. New Zealand politicians of all persuasions are as guilty of evidence abuse as their overseas counterparts. Examples of this abound, most famously, […]
MoreSciblogs readers may remember the kerfuffle in December when Otaki’s Damon Wyman led a campaign to have Wifi hotspots removed from classes at Te Horo School. I wrote about it at the time here on Sciblogs, taking issue with Wyman’s misguided campaign, which was ultimately successful when the Te Horo Board of Trustees surveyed parents […]
MoreThe reviews are in for Neil de Grasse Tyson’s reboot of the classic Carl Sagan TV series Cosmos and the reception has been overwhelmingly positive. The first episode of the series, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey debuted on Sunday night in the US with an estimated 8.5 million people tuning in to watch it across Fox […]
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PETER GRIFFIN 
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