In the Summer Issue:

The Art of Patricia Piccinini by Elizabeth Finkel

Some scientists viewed her work as dystopian and fanciful. But with the “editing” of human embryos now a reality, Piccinini’s work is a compelling statement of the Brave New World we are entering.

Hiroshi Ishiguro: Android Maker by Elizabeth Finkel

A portrait of the world’s most infamous android maker.  His creations are already being put to work to nurse elderly Japanese, and connect with autistic children. But Ishiguro’s real mission is to discover what it means to be human.

Gallery of Art Inspired by Science. Artists include: Margaret Wertheim, Mira Gojak, Jon Lomberg, Luke Jerram

Four artists discuss how science has inspired one of their works.

Retrieving Memories by Fiona McMillan

While much is known about how new memories are inscribed into the circuitry of the brain, the retrieval mechanism has long been a mystery.  New research is providing clues.

Broome’s Jurassic Park by John Pickrell

For millennia,  the tracks left by dinosaurs were a part of the indigenous dreaming. But a new generation of scientifically-minded custodians, have opened up the trackways to palaeontologists. It has unveiled a rich new chapter in Australia’s dinosaur History.

The Search for Cosmic Strings: Cracks in the Cosmos by Cathal O’Connell

If you freeze a glass of water, it will never form one continuous perfect crystal – there are always defects, tiny cracks invisible to the eye that separate adjacent regions of ice.  Physicists think the same thing happened during the creation of the universe, forming cracks, called “cosmic strings” running through the cosmos. Gravitational wave observatories, like LIGO, have recently transformed the once hypothetical notion of gravitational waves into a reality. They promise to do the same for cosmic strings, by listening out for the universe- quaking crack when two of them collide.