Eight months after handing out iPads to students enrolling in a science degree at the University of Adelaide, the Faculty of Science executive Dean, Bob Hill, said the project has improved communications and driven down student costs.

Australian National University (ANU) astronomer Brian Schmidt has been named a joint winner of the 2011 Nobel physics prize for research that discovered the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace.

Catchy tunes have a scientific "X-factor" that make them singalong hits, British experts have revealed.

An Axis network camera has set the world record for the highest wireless network camera delivering high quality images to Earth. The camera was sent into the atmosphere by a stratospheric balloon from the Esrange Space Center in the north of Sweden.

The University of Adelaide is ditching paper-based textbooks in favour of iPads and will hand out free devices to students enrolling in a science degree in 2011, claiming the new Apple tablets will revolutionise the way science is taught at the institution.