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Security systems are everywhere. Your home probably has locks on the doors. These protect you and your home, preventing people from entering and stealing items or causing damage. Biosecurity works in a similar way, except it involves protecting an area from the damage caused by pests and diseases.

1. Pi (or π) is a number that helps describe circles. It links the width of a circle with its perimeter, or the radius of a circle with its area, or the width of a ball and its volume. It’s the same number no matter how big your circle is – about 3.14159265.

The idea there are living organisms, as yet undiscovered by humans, living on other planets, has fascinated people for years. The search for alien life is not just a science fiction topic – it’s part of a scientific field called astrobiology.

Giant wombats, short-faced kangaroos and the largest land lizard to ever have lived are just some of Australia’s megafauna. These large animals have mostly gone extinct. However, the cause of their extinction is still a matter of debate.

Three and five. Five and seven. Eleven and thirteen. Prime numbers often appear as twins, only two apart. For hundreds of years, mathematicians have wondered – is there a biggest pair of twin primes, or does the list of twins keep going forever?

These BHP Foundation Science and Engineering Awards students have done practical research projects, with innovative approaches, using scientific procedures. See what they’ve achieved in the video below. Video transcript available here. Are you up for the challenge? Enter the BHP Science and Engineering Awards!

In the last decade, services such as Facebook have provided scientists with lots of information about current friendship links. However, they tell us little about historical friendships. So what might be the structure of an Ancient Greek social network?

A fridge or freezer can preserve food for weeks, months or years. But that’s nothing compared to glaciers, with layers of ice preserving information about Earth’s climate for thousands of years.

DVDs are a useful, reliable and relatively cheap way of storing information. Australian researchers have recently developed a technique to massively increase a DVD’s storage capacity.