Whereas most species of bears hibernate, Australians indulge in estivation instead, preferring slightly cooler beaches to their offices, especially when university air conditioning is turned down or off.

We at Shaping Tomorrows World have therefore not posted anything for about 3 weeks, having instead focused on an upgrade of the site, which is now ready for 2012.

Here is the list of new features:

• The login field on the left has been moved up to facilitate leaving comments.
• Authors’ names now link to their bio pages.
• All posts by the same author are now accessible from their bio page.
• The Our Authors button at the top (in the yellow ribbon) now allows instant access to a data base of all our contributors, and from there to each author’s posts. We find this new feature particularly useful.

We look forward to resuming regular posts shortly. For overseas visitors, January 26 is Australia Day and it marks the end of the semi-official estivation period. After that the air condiotioning is back on and academics gradually ramp up to their ~60-hour work weeks.

We wish all our readers a happy 2012.