Science Media Centre

As New Zealand’s Olympic athletes return with the most successful medal haul to date, AUT’s Professor Mark Orams writes in the NZ Herald about what it would take to improve for the next Games. An excerpt (read in full): Interestingly New Zealand’s most successful sporting code at the Rio Olympics, in medals won, was sailing. […]

With the Rio Olympics kicking off, the SMC gathered background information on the Zika virus to aid in any reporting during the Games. Here is a Q&A with local experts, please feel free to use any of these comments in your reporting. Professor Michael Baker, Professor of Public Health, University of Otago What are the […]

Keeping tabs on competitive advantage in sport is crucial to making sure competition is fair, writes AUT’s Professor Mark Orams in the New Zealand Herald. An excerpt (read in full): These issues evoke anger at the injustice involved, but is this response justified? In its essence, sport is a contrived human activity involving the invention of […]

An open letter signed by almost 200 health researchers calls on the International Olympic Committee and World Health Organization (WHO) to postpone the 2016 Rio Olympic Games on account of the risk posed by the Zika virus. The authors write: “WHO’s declaration of Zika as a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” coupled with new […]