3D-printed brains and digital twins: Gold Coast’s trailblazing medical research

Queensland’s Gold Coast usually brings to mind images of beaches and luxury high-rise apartments rather than cutting-edge medical research and innovation, but since 2021 is the site of world-first work that could change the lives of us all in the future.

When the newly-repurposed Peninsula and Oriental mail delivery ship set out from Southampton on the world’s first dedicated leisure cruise in 1844, its passengers could not have imagined that such cruises would one day be taken in ships twenty stories high and boast “neighbourhoods” and a “Central Park”.

Australian farmers are facing rising costs of fuel, fertiliser, and labour. Meanwhile, with over fifty-seven years experience in agricultural engineerin Peter Burgess, of Liquid Systems SA has developed systems and solutions that provide precise, accurate, and reliable in-furrow delivery of liquid fertilisers at sowing, to save on time and money.

I’ve always made friends with my neighbours. Some have become lifelong friends. We’ve cooked each other meals, minded animals, played music together. Recently I met some new, unusual neighbours.

After 28 years as a nurse working in the NHS in the UK, Sarah Chapman decided it was time to put her feet up, so she retired to Bali. Meanwhile, Robert Epstone, after a career in the UK fashion industry, had done the same. But when Chapman came across an eight-year-old girl named Ani, everything changed. 

Medicinal cannabis is now legal in Queensland, as long as it is prescribed by a medical practitioner. However, it is not legal to drive with any amount of THC (the active ingredient in cannabis) in your system, regardless of whether it’s been prescribed.

It is the coming of irreversible change that is part of what Robbie James, guitarist with GANGgajang, seeks to evoke with his new composition Dreaming in the Sands, performed for the first time at the Metro Arts Centre, Restrung Festival on Friday night, by the Bentley String Quintet.

On Easter Monday night, Bryan Law, a tall, portly taxi driver from Cairns and committed peace activist, was found dead in his Rockhampton home. The 57-year-old had once again been preparing to defend himself in court after he attacked a military helicopter at the Rockhampton airport in July last year. I met Bryan in an Alice Springs court in 2007 where he and three other people were defending charges of trespass after arguably the most daring protest of his career: a break-in at Pine Gap.