Although we know influenza viruses circulate in temperate, populated parts of Australia every winter, predicting the precise timing and relative intensity of flu seasons is a fraught undertaking.

Many animals – including seals, dolphins and bats – are able to communicate vocally.

However, parrots are among a select few that can spontaneously imitate members of another species.

A study has now pinpointed the region in the brain that may be allowing this to happen – the region that is also involved in controlling movement. The finding could perhaps also explain the fact that parrots, just like humans, can talk and dance.

Imagine a classroom where children are unable to wait their turn or stay focused on their work. They are easily distracted, cannot remember basic instructions or hold enough information in their head to solve problems – skills teachers rely on in order to teach successfully.

These behavioral issues are all examples of problems that can arise from attachment issues – based on the relationship between children and their main caregiver.

Now that most colleges and universities have completed their spring semesters, course instructors are opening up sealed manila envelopes, all over the country, to read their teaching evaluations.

And, like each year, what they’ll find has been pervasively slanted by gender bias.

I’ve come to believe that mathematics, as an investigative science, as a practical discipline and as a creative art, shares many characteristics with cookery.

It’s not just spaghetti alla carbonara, it’s the whole business of inventing dishes and preparing them. It’s an analogy with many parts, and it has consequences.

To introduce myself: I’m a professional mathematician, an amateur cook and an enthusiastic eater. The ideas in this essay are distilled from years of formal reasoning, mad culinary experiments and adventurous meals. In short, I’ve found that:

1. I do mathematics for much the same reasons that I cook.

In the late winter of 1976, the world famous fossil collector James Kitching was doing a survey near South Africa’s border with Lesotho.

To his surprise he found a tiny clutch of six fossilized eggs along the side of the road at a place known as Rooidraai.

It took five years for skilled palentologists to remove enough rock matrix from the eggs so that they could be preliminarily identified as the first dinosaur embryos from South Africa and the oldest dinosaur embryos in the world.