The death of a three-year-old child caused by drinking unpasteurized milk late last year invited much commentary about food safety and regulation. But little has been said about the man who gave his name to the process that makes dairy products, and many other foods, safe for mass production: Louis Pasteur (1822-1895).

By Dan Hunter, Swinburne University of Technology

Imagine you were asked to write a law that encouraged creativity.

What would it look like? Whatever your answer, it’s pretty clear that it wouldn’t look like copyright.

Which is weird, right? Because copyright is supposed to be the law that spurs creativity. The problem, it turns out, is that the central features of copyright are directly opposed to the things that support creativity.

By Lee Hamilton, University of Stirling

By Robert S. Colter, University of Wyoming

By Jayashri Kulkarni, Monash University

“I will definitely give up smoking – that’s my New Year’s resolution,” she stated emphatically as she thumped her fist on the table to underline her determination. “All very well”, I thought, as I sat opposite her in my medical consulting room in October.

What is it about New Year’s resolutions that we find so compelling?

By David Glance, University of Western Australia

One of the characteristic features of Massive Open Online Courses is the observation that no matter how many students enroll in a course, only between 5 to 10% of them will ever complete it.

Setting aside the argument of whether this actually means that MOOCs are considerably less “massive” than the name suggests, the interesting question is what is behind this high level of drop-outs and why does it seem so consistent?