Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dustin Marshall, Professor, Marine Evolutionary Ecology, Monash University

Apart from mammals and birds, most animals develop as eggs exposed to the vagaries of the outside world. This development is energetically “costly”. Going from a tiny egg to a fully functioning organism can deplete up to 60% of the energy reserves provided by a parent.

In cold-blooded animals such as marine invertebrates (including sea stars and corals), fish and reptiles, and even insects, embryonic development is very sensitive to changes in the temperature of the environment.

Thus, in a warming world, many cold-blooded species face a new challenge: developing successfully despite rising temperatures.

Read more: Curious Kids: why do eggs have a yolk?

For our research, published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution, we mined existing literature for data on how temperature impacts the metabolic and developmental rates of 71 different species, ranging from tropical crocodiles to Antarctic krill.

We found that over time, species tend to fine-tune their physiology so that the temperature of the place they inhabit is the temperature needed to minimise the “costs” of their embryonic development.

Temperature increases associated with global warming could substantially impact many of these species.

The perfect weather to grow an embryo

The energy costs of embryonic development are determined by two key rates. The “metabolic” rate refers to the rate at which energy is used by the embryo, and the “development” rate determines how long it takes the embryo to fully develop, and become an independent organism.

Both of these rates are heavily impacted by environmental temperature. Any change in temperature affecting them is therefore costly to an embryo’s development.

Generally, a 10°C increase in temperature will cause an embryo’s development and metabolic rate to more than triple.

These effects partially cancel each other out. Higher temperatures increase the rate at which energy is used (metabolic), but shorten the developmental time.

But do they balance out effectively?

What are the costs?

For any species, there is one temperature that achieves the perfect energetic balance between relatively rapid development and low metabolism. This optimal temperature, also called the “Goldilocks” temperature, is neither too hot, nor too cold.

When the temperature is too cold for a certain species, development takes a long time. When it’s too hot, development time decreases while the metabolic rate continues to rise. An imbalance on either side of this scale can negatively impact a natural population’s resilience and ability to replenish.

As an embryo’s developmental costs increase past the optimum, mothers must invest more resources into each offspring to offset these costs.

When offspring become more costly to make, mothers make fewer, larger offspring. These offspring start life with fewer energy reserves, reducing their chances of successfully reproducing as adults themselves.

Thus, when it comes to embryonic development, higher-than ideal temperatures pack a nasty punch for natural populations.

Since the temperature dependencies of metabolic rate and development rate are fairly similar, the slight differences between them had gone unnoticed until recently.

Read more: Why cold-blooded animals don’t need to wrap up to keep warm

Embryos at risk

For each species in our study, we found a narrow band of temperatures that minimised developmental cost. Temperatures that were too high or too low caused massive blow-outs in the energy budget of developing embryos.

This means temperature increases associated with global warming are likely to have bigger impacts than previously predicted.

Predictions of how future temperature changes will affect organisms are often based on estimates of how temperature affects embryo survival. These measures suggest small temperature increases (1°C-2°C) do not reduce embryo survival by much.

But our study found the developmental costs are about twice as high, and we had underestimated the impacts of subtle temperature changes on embryo development.

In the warming animal kingdom, there are winners and losers

Some good news is that our research suggests not all species are facing rising costs with rising temperatures, at least initially.

We’ve created a mathematical framework called the Developmental Cost Theory, which predicts some species will actually experience slightly lower developmental costs with minor increases in temperature.

Read more: Flipping the genetic ‘switch’ that makes many animals look alike as embryos

In particular, aquatic species (fish and invertebrates) in cool temperate waters seem likely to experience lower costs in the near future. In contrast, certain tropical aquatic species (including coral reef organisms) are already experiencing temperatures that exceed their optimum. This is likely to get worse.

It’s important to note that for all species, increasing environmental temperature will eventually come with costs.

Even if a slight temperature increase reduces costs for one species, too much of an increase will still have a negative impact. This is true for all the organisms we studied.

A key question now is: how quickly can species evolve to adapt to our warming climate?

– ref. From crocodiles to krill, a warming world raises the ‘costs’ paid by developing embryos – https://theconversation.com/from-crocodiles-to-krill-a-warming-world-raises-the-costs-paid-by-developing-embryos-132673

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elena Campbell, Associate Director – Research, Advocacy and Policy, Centre for Innovative Justice, RMIT University

Adolescents are consistently identified as perpetrators of violence against family members. We know this from a decade of Victorian court and police data. Victoria’s Royal Commission into Family Violence also highlighted the growing recognition that adolescent perpetration is a serious concern.

Further, findings by the Australian Institute of Criminology indicate that adolescents in contact with police for violence often have further contact soon after, including for breaches of protection orders. Victorian Crime Statistics Agency figures also recently confirmed what we’ve known for some time: adolescent perpetrators often experienced violence as a child.

Read more: Long ignored, adolescent family violence needs our attention

But what we have known little about is how effectively the civil justice response – the predominant response in some jurisdictions – deals with this issue. The Positive Interventions for Perpetrators of Adolescent violence in the home (PIPA) project, released this week, finds the civil response in Victoria is often ineffective and sometimes damaging in dealing with adolescents.

This is because police and court mechanisms are failing to account for perpetrators’ age, the relationship of trauma to their behaviour, and their capacity to understand orders or avoid breaching. It is also because there is sometimes more concern the system will come under scrutiny for not doing enough than for the risk to vulnerable families.

In our research, we reviewed 385 court and legal files and spoke to over 150 practitioners across three Australian states. Victorian files revealed cases involving serious risk, but also matters where an adolescent’s behaviour did not appear to meet the legal definition of family violence but an interim order was imposed nonetheless.

Around 25% of court files involved adolescents identified as on the autism spectrum. These families were highly distressed by system intervention. Some feared their other children might be removed. This fear overtook their hope for much-needed support for the child causing harm.

At the other end of the scale were cases involving violence by adults as well as children, but it was the children who were targeted for intervention.

In some files, lawyers detected parental misuse of the system and referred matters to the Children’s Court Clinic for assessment. This confirmed these children had been brought to court as perpetrators, but were in fact the victims of current abuse. The system inadvertently colluded in this abuse instead of addressing it.

One-third of cases involved adolescents excluded from home, but with no legal requirement to consider safety in relation to where they were placed. Similarly, despite orders against children under 14 being imposed regularly, legislation does not require that their capacity to understand these orders be considered. This contrasts with a criminal law principle that the capacity of children under 14 to understand the nature of an offence must be considered.

Further, high rates of trauma and disability among children identified as perpetrators make it even less likely they will comply with orders or regulate their behaviour. At its simplest, this means our system is sometimes imposing intervention orders on 13-year-olds who are on the autism spectrum, or who have histories of profound trauma, and then wondering why they return to court for failing to comply.

Our findings are not critical of police or courts. Most are desperate for more options. Rather, the settings of the current civil response are not equipped to deal with the complexity that adolescent family violence involves.

Read more: ‘Silent victims’: royal commission recommends better protections for child victims of family violence

Criminal mechanisms are not the alternative, either. This is because criminal justice system involvement is a known predictor of future involvement, despite the additional support that diversionary measures sometimes afford.

Nor is the answer to exclude certain forms of perpetration from legislative definitions. While this may mean children are not inadvertently captured in a one-size-fits-all response, it also means the behaviour is not recognised or tracked by the system at all. As a result, families are left to struggle in even greater isolation.

Rather, our research shows that more nuance and discretion, legislative checks and balances, and whole-of-family risk assessment are needed. We should track the rate of adolescent perpetration, but also respond to what sits behind it. This is to ensure children do not suffer from responses designed to deal with adult perpetrators.

If families are deterred from seeking help because they know the system’s intervention may make things worse, we will never have reliable figures on adolescent perpetration. Addressing this is a crucial step towards helping affected families feel supported and safe.

– ref. Adolescent family violence is a growing problem – and the legal system is making it worse – https://theconversation.com/adolescent-family-violence-is-a-growing-problem-and-the-legal-system-is-making-it-worse-132663

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Blyth, Paediatrician, Infectious Diseases Physician and Clinical Microbiologist, University of Western Australia

The new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease COVID-19, has infected nearly 90,000 people and caused more than 3,000 deaths so far.

Parents are understandably concerned. But it’s important to keep in mind that comparatively few children have tested positive for the virus, and deaths in children are very rare.

Here’s what we know so far about how children are affected.

Read more: It’s now a matter of when, not if, for Australia. This is how we’re preparing for a jump in coronavirus cases

Remind me, what is COVID-19?

COVID-19 is caused by a new strain of a family of viruses discovered in the 1960s. Coronaviruses get their name from a distinctive corona or “crown” of sugary proteins surrounding the virus when seen under a powerful microscope.

Coronaviruses circulate in humans, usually causing a mild illness with cough and a runny nose. Coronaviruses are also frequently found in animals with speculation COVID-19 emerged from animals, most likely bats.

Three novel coronaviruses have emerged this century.

In 2002-03, SARS-CoV (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus) emerged in China spreading to North America, South America and Europe. More than 8,000 cases were identified and around 10% of those infected died.

MERS-CoV (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus), emerged from camels in Saudi Arabia in 2012. A large outbreak followed in South Korea in 2015. Nearly 2,500 cases have been reported and 34% of those infected died.

Read more: Explainer: what is the MERS outbreak in South Korea?

SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV infection in children is less commonly reported than would be expected. For example, 3.4% of cases of MERS coronavirus in Saudi Arabia were in children, where around 15% of the population is under 19 years of age.

A similar pattern was seen in SARS, where the rate of reported infection in children under 14 years of age was much lower than in older age groups.

COVID-19 was first detected in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and has already caused more deaths than SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV combined.

So what about children?

The number of reported COVID-19 cases in children remains low: of more than 44,000 confirmed cases from China, only 416 (less than 1%) were aged nine years or younger. No deaths were reported in this age group.

In Australia, only one child has so far had confirmed COVID-19 infection.

It remains unclear whether the low numbers of child infections recorded is due to:

• low numbers of children being exposed to the virus
• low numbers of children being infected, or
• low numbers of infected children developing symptoms severe enough to present for care.

If large numbers of children are not getting sick, why does it matter?

If children are infected yet have milder symptoms, they may still play a critical role in COVID-19 transmission. Children are mobile, shed large volume of virus, congregate in groups and are at lower risk of severe disease so often maintain their daily activities.

Preventing school-age children getting infected with influenza has been shown to be an effective community prevention strategy. In the absence of a COVID-19 vaccine, school closures may need to be considered when looking at ways to decrease community spread, if children are found to be key transmitters of infection.

What symptoms do children get?

Chinese doctors report infected children often have a cough, nasal congestion, runny nose, diarrhoea and a headache. Less than half of the children have a fever. Many have no symptoms.

The majority of children and adolescents with COVID-19 in China had mild infections and recovered within one to two weeks.

Even infants, who are traditionally more susceptible to severe respiratory infections, had relatively mild infections.

How can you tell if it’s COVID-19?

Most children with COVID-19 present with respiratory symptoms and/or a cough, which is indistinguishable from other common viruses including influenza and rhinovirus.

But so far, all children with confirmed COVID-19 have had family members or close contacts with confirmed infection.

Read more: Kids are more vulnerable to the flu – here’s what to look out for this winter

In the early part of an Australian epidemic, confirming COVID-19 infections will be important to guide our public health response. However if COVID-19 cases continue to climb, this testing approach may change to only test patients who are hospitalised as the only benefit of confirming COVID-19 infection will be to inform treatment and infection control practices in hospitalised patients.

At this stage, it’s unclear if antiviral therapies are useful in the treatment of COVID-19. Many older drugs, such as lopinavir used to treat HIV, have been used to treat some severe cases but need to be formally evaluated. Clinical trials have been registered and some results from Chinese researchers are expected soon.

However, as children have such mild symptoms, it would be hard to justify exposing them to potential side effects of antiviral medication, such as nausea, vomiting and allergic reactions, for little benefit.

How do I prevent my family from being infected?

COVID-19 is spread by droplets generated when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Infection can be transmitted if a person touches objects or surfaces that an infected person has coughed and sneezed on and then touches their mouth, nose or face.

The best way to avoid COVID-19 infection (and infection with any other respiratory virus) is by washing your hands with soap and water, using a tissue or the crook of your elbow to cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze and by avoiding close contact with others who are unwell.

Masks in the community are only helpful in preventing people who have COVID-19 disease from spreading it to others. There is little evidence supporting the widespread use of surgical masks in healthy people to prevent transmission in public – and it’s almost impossible to get small kids to consistently wear these.

A vaccine for COVID-19 is still some way off. But it’s worthwhile getting your child vaccinated against influenza. This is not only to protect your child against influenza, but also to reduce the chance your child might be considered to have COVID-19, and to minimise other illnesses in the community that would use health resources.

Read more: Here’s why the WHO says a coronavirus vaccine is 18 months away

– ref. Worried about your child getting coronavirus? Here’s what you need to know – https://theconversation.com/worried-about-your-child-getting-coronavirus-heres-what-you-need-to-know-131909

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Church, Chair Professor, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW

For many coastal regions, sea-level rise is a looming crisis threatening our coastal society, livelihoods and coastal ecosystems. A new study, published in Nature Climate Change, has reported the world will lose almost half of its valuable sandy beaches by 2100 as the ocean moves landward with rising sea levels.

Sandy beaches comprise about a third of the world’s coastline. And Australia, with nearly 12,000 kilometres at risk, could be hit hard.

Read more: Ancient Antarctic ice melt caused extreme sea level rise 129,000 years ago – and it could happen again

This is the first truly global study to attempt to quantify beach erosion. The results for the highest greenhouse gas emission scenario are alarming, but reducing emissions lead to lower rates of coastal erosion.

Our best hope for the future of the world’s coastlines and for Australia’s iconic beaches is to keep global warming as low as possible by urgently reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Losing sand in coastal erosion

Two of the largest problems resulting from rising sea levels are coastal erosion and an already-observed increase in the frequency of coastal flooding events.

Erosion during storms can have dramatic consequences, particularly for coastal infrastructure. We saw this in 2016, when wild storms removed sand from beaches and damaged houses in Sydney.

After storms like this, beaches often gradually recover, because sand from deeper waters washes back to the shore over months to years and in some cases decades. These dramatic storms and the long-term sand supply make it difficult to identify any beach movement in the recent past from sea-level rise.

What we do know is that the rate of sea-level rise has accelerated. It has increased by half since 1993, and is continuing to accelerate from ongoing greenhouse gas emissions.

If we continue to emit high levels of greenhouse gases, this acceleration will continue through the 21st century and beyond. As a result, the supply of sand may not be able to keep pace with rapidly rising sea levels.

Projections for the worst-case scenario

In the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released last year, the highest greenhouse gas emissions scenario resulted in global warming of more than 4°C (relative to pre-industrial temperatures) and a likely range of sea-level rise between 0.6 and 1.1 metres by 2100.

For this scenario, this new study projects a global average landward movement of the coastline in the range of 40 to 250 metres if there were no physical limits to shoreline movement, such as those imposed by sea walls or other coastal infrastructure.

Read more: What does the science really say about sea-level rise?

Sea-level rise is responsible for the vast majority of this beach loss, with faster loss during the latter decades of the 21st century when the rate of rise is larger. And sea levels will continue to rise for centuries, so beach erosion would continue well after 2100.

For southern Australia, the landward movement of the shoreline is projected to be more than 100 metres. This would damage many of Australia’s iconic tourist beaches such as Bondi, Manly and the Gold Coast. The movement in northern Australia is projected to be even larger, but more uncertain because of ongoing historical shoreline trends.

What happens if we mitigate our emissions

The above results are from a worst-case scenario. If greenhouse gas emissions were reduced such that the 2100 global temperature rose by about 2.5°C, instead of more than 4°C, then we’d reduce beach erosion by about a third of what’s projected in this worst-case scenario.

Current global policies would result in about 3°C of global warming. That’s between the 4°C and the 2.5°C scenarios considered in this beach erosion study, implying our current policies will lead to significant beach erosion, including in Australia.

Mitigating our emissions even further to achieving the Paris goal of keeping temperature rise to well below 2°C would be a major step in reducing beach loss.

Why coastal erosion is hard to predict

Projecting sea-level rise and resulting beach erosion are particularly difficult as both depend on many factors.

For sea level, the major problems are estimating the contribution of melting Antarctic ice flowing into the ocean, how sea level will change on a regional scale, and the amount of global warming.

The beach erosion calculated in this new study depends on several new databases. The databases of recent shoreline movement used to project ongoing natural factors might already be influenced by rising sea levels, possibly leading to an overestimate in the final calculations.

Read more: Sea level rise is inevitable – but what we do today can still prevent catastrophe for coastal regions

The implications

Regardless of the exact numbers reported in this study, it’s clear we will have to adapt to the beach erosion that we can no longer prevent, if we are to continue enjoying our beaches.

This means we need appropriate planning, such as beach nourishment (adding sand to beaches to combat erosion) and other soft and hard engineering solutions. In some cases, we’ll even need to retreat from the coast to allow the beach to migrate landward.

And if we are to continue to enjoy our sandy beaches into the future, we cannot allow ongoing and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. The world needs urgent, significant and sustained global mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.

– ref. The world may lose half its sandy beaches by 2100. It’s not too late to save most of them – https://theconversation.com/the-world-may-lose-half-its-sandy-beaches-by-2100-its-not-too-late-to-save-most-of-them-132586

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carolyn MacCann, Associate Professor, University of Sydney

The ability to understand emotions contributes almost as much to students’ grades as their IQ.

Past studies show two personal qualities are important for student academic success – intelligence and conscientiousness.

IQ scores explain about 15% of the differences between students’ grades. Conscientiousness, such as having the diligence to do enough study, explains about 5%.

Our recent research has found emotional intelligence explains 4% of differences between students’ achievement. But the ability to understand emotions, a component of emotional intelligence, explains about 12% of differences in students’ grades.

What is emotional intelligence?

Different researchers use slightly different definitions of emotional intelligence.

Some define emotional intelligence as the ability to perceive, use, understand and manage your own and other people’s emotions. This is called “ability emotional intelligence”.

Others also include character traits such as optimism, impulse control and the ability to motivate yourself. This is called “mixed emotional intelligence” because it is a mix of abilities and character traits.

We examined the findings of more than 150 studies on the link between emotional intelligence and academic performance. These studies included more than 42,000 students and 1,246 different estimations of the size of the relationship between emotional intelligence and academic performance.

Read more: Children benefit when taught social and emotional skills – but some methods are better than others

Some of the studies in our analysis used rating scales to assess emotional intelligence. Here, test-takers might rate their emotional abilities with items like “I am aware of the non-verbal messages other people send” or rate their mixed emotional intelligence with items like “I am motivated to succeed”.

Others tested emotional intelligence directly by measuring participants’ emotional abilities with skill-based tasks. For example, test takers might be asked to identify which emotion is expressed in a face.

We found that, overall, emotional intelligence explained about 4% of differences in students’ academic achievement. But some emotional intelligence types were more important than others.

Skill-based emotional intelligence, such as reading people’s faces, explained 6% of differences in academic achievement, but self-ratings of emotional abilities explained 1% of differences. So, emotional skills assessed from the outside are more important for students’ academic performance than students’ self-ratings (or self-beliefs) about their emotional skills.

But some emotional skills were more important than others. The two most important emotional skills for academic success were understanding emotions and managing emotions.

Students who can understand emotions can accurately label their own and others’ emotions. They know what causes emotions, how emotions change and how they combine. Students who can manage emotions know how to regulate their emotions in a stressful situation. They also know what to do to maintain good social relationships with others.

Emotion management skills accounted for 7% of differences in academic performance . Emotion understanding skills accounted for 12%. That is, understanding emotions is more important for student success than conscientiousness (5%) and almost as important as students’ IQ (15%).

Read more: Understanding others’ feelings: what is empathy and why do we need it?

Emotionally intelligent students tend to be more intelligent as well as more conscientious. But our study found it wasn’t just that emotionally intelligent students were also more likely to be intelligent and conscientious.

We applied a statistical technique called meta-regression to examine what the effect of emotional intelligence would be if everyone had the same level of conscientiousness and intelligence.

For students who had the same levels of conscientiousness and intelligence, emotional intelligence was still linked with higher academic performance.

For students with the same levels of intelligence and conscientiousness:

• self-ratings of mixed emotional intelligence (the one involving both skills and character traits) explained 2.3% of differences in performance

• emotion understanding skills explained 3.9% of differences in performance

• emotion management skills explained 3.6% of differences in performance.

Why is emotional intelligence linked to good grades?

There are at least three reasons why we believe emotional intelligence relates to higher academic performance.

First, students with higher emotional intelligence can regulate their “academic emotions”. Students may feel anxious about tests and performance. They may feel bored when learning required but dull material. And they may feel frustrated or disappointed when they try their hardest but still can’t quite get the hang of a task.

Students who can regulate these tough emotions will achieve more. Anxiety will not impair the test performance. They can push through the boredom and frustration to master dull or difficult material. They can learn from negative feedback or failure rather than be derailed by disappointment.

Read more: Here’s what teachers look for when kids start school

Second, students with higher emotional intelligence can form better social relationships with their classmates and teachers. They can get help with schoolwork or with social and emotional needs when they need it.

Third, many non-technical academic subjects require an understanding of human emotions and social relations as an inherent part of the subject matter. Analysing universal themes of love and betrayal in Shakespeare plays requires not just verbal skills but emotional knowledge and skill. Analysing the role of charismatic leaders in the rise of fascist regimes likewise requires social knowledge and analysis.

Our results show that teachers, parents and students should focus on student’s emotional skills not just for student’s well-being, but for their ability to succeed academically.

– ref. Understanding emotions is nearly as important as IQ for students’ academic success – https://theconversation.com/understanding-emotions-is-nearly-as-important-as-iq-for-students-academic-success-131212

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Arthure, PhD Candidate, Archaeology, Flinders University, Flinders University

Archaeological research has uncovered the remains of a 19th-century Irish community beneath an otherwise ordinary paddock in rural South Australia. Fitting the clustered form of settlement known as a “clachan”, it’s the first to be identified in Australia. Even more remarkably, this community thrived many years after this traditional way of living died out in Ireland.

The story of this discovery began in November 2012 when I walked for the first time on Baker’s Flat near Kapunda, about an hour’s drive north of Adelaide. I was an Irish-Australian archaeologist in search of an Irish colonial settlement.

In 1842, the discovery of copper at Kapunda led to the development of Australia’s first successful metal mine. The Irish arrived in 1854, seeking work as mine workers. They settled on an unused section of land close to the mine known as Baker’s Flat.

Read more: Why archaeology is so much more than just digging

The Irish of Baker’s Flat

The histories are not kind to the Irish of Baker’s Flat. A 1929 collection of Kapunda stories established a narrative about the settlement as haphazard and chaotic, full of squalid hovels and unrestrained animals, and which essentially operated as a closed Irish community set apart from the rest of the town. Along with newspaper accounts of fights, public drunkenness and land disputes, the scene was set for these Irish to be perceived in stereotypical fashion as dirty, drunk, rebellious and lawless.

Years later, in the 1950s, the remains of any houses were demolished so the land could be farmed. Baker’s Flat was effectively erased from the landscape. The Irish were forgotten.

When I began researching the archives, trawling through the records of court cases and land disputes, I was really just trying to understand that community better.

The Irish had occupied Baker’s Flat from 1854 until at least the 1920s. At its peak in the 1860s and 1870s, 500 people were living there. Surely they couldn’t all be drunk and rebellious, or as one-dimensional as the dominant narrative implied.

Read more: Aussie slang is as diverse as Australia itself

Following the clachan trail

I was looking for more depth and balance, but what I found turned out to be even more interesting. A surveyor’s plan from 1893 is the only historic map of the site. It shows a cluster of buildings in the north-west quadrant.

A series of photographs from 1906 depicts Irish-style cottages nestled into the landscape.

Affidavits from a court case disputing ownership and control of the land describe shared decisions, collective action and communal animal management. These facts hinted that this community might have operated as a clachan.

This traditional Irish way of living was characterised by clusters of farm dwellings and outbuildings built in the Irish style. In a clachan, the inhabitants managed the farming land communally. Unlike a classic village, clachans did not have services like shops or pubs.

Until the mid-19th century, clachans were widespread in Ireland. They died out, however, in the social upheaval following the Great Famine of 1845–1850. My research at this point indicated that, while the clachan was vanishing in Ireland, a vibrant one was flourishing in the heart of South Australia. Significantly, the only other clachan outside of Ireland to be hinted at so far is a cluster of houses built by 19th-century Irish migrants on Beaver Island, Lake Michigan.

Bringing in the archaeology

The next step was to test my theory using archaeological methods. First was a surface survey in 2013. Teams of archaeology students walked along a set route, observing and recording what they could see on the surface.

This survey identified the remains of 13 buildings (now just small heaps of rubble) and scattered broken glass and ceramics, mainly in the north-west quadrant.

Based on these findings, we carried out a geophysical survey in 2016. Using ground-penetrating radar and a magnetic gradiometer, we found several large sub-surface features.

These were clustered together and fit the pattern of rectangular structures about 10m long and 5m wide. There were also indications of paths and enclosures.

We tested these findings by excavation over two summer field seasons in 2016 and 2017. The excavations uncovered the walls of a long rectangular house, dug into the bedrock. It was one room deep, shaped like a traditional Irish dwelling, and matched the design of the photographed houses from 1906.

There was a cobbled path to the east. A small rubbish dump contained many 19th-century glass and ceramic fragments and butchered bones.

Read more: Googling the past: how I uncovered prehistoric remains from my office

Here lies a clachan

When all the evidence is combined, it confirms the presence of a clachan, the first to be identified in Australia. Analysis of the glass, ceramic and bone artefacts is ongoing but indicates so far that the Irish were generally drinking, eating and using the same things as other members of the broader colonial Australian community.

What is different here is the way they chose to live, building houses in the Irish tradition, living close together and making decisions jointly.

We do not know if the Baker’s Flat Irish deliberately set out to establish a clachan in a small corner of South Australia. It was such a common style of living at the time they left Ireland it may well be they just continued doing what they had always done and that it emerged organically. But they left enough behind to build a picture that challenges the stereotypes.

The archaeology is revealing that it wasn’t all chaos and lawlessness at Baker’s Flat. There was order. And this order took the particular form of the clachan.

As well as looking at the ancient past, archaeology is also about the recent past and what might lie beneath an unassuming paddock. It focuses on people and the things they discard or leave behind. For me, it’s about ordinary people, whose stories get forgotten as time goes by, but who leave traces in the landscape and the archives for archaeologists to uncover.

– ref. Unearthing a traditional Irish village that lingered in a South Australian field – https://theconversation.com/unearthing-a-traditional-irish-village-that-lingered-in-a-south-australian-field-132344

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Stevenson, Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient History, UQ, The University of Queensland

The Satyricon by Petronius is an unusual surviving text from the ancient world. It is not a work of history, nor a work of soaring epic poetry like Homer’s Iliad or Virgil’s Aeneid, and for various reasons it is hard to get a handle on.

Its contents are pretty grubby because it is about lowlifes and lowlife behaviour. It depicts petty theft, casual violence, opportunistic sex, prostitution, vulgar gluttony, crass displays of wealth by the most ridiculous social climber and gross disrespect for a range of gods, goddesses and hallowed religious rituals, like funerals and proper treatment of the dead. All the good sleazy stuff for when you’re in the mood for that sort of thing.

Rather than a work about heroes or kings or queens or uplifting examples of how to live a virtuous life, the Satyricon is almost a how-to manual for the opposite.

It is the earliest surviving novel in Latin literature, but it is not even close to being intact. We appear to have bits of three books out of an original 16 or possibly more. So we run into problems trying to understand what the plot of the whole work might have been and whether the bits that survive are representative of it.

As far as we can tell, it’s a tale about the misadventures and love triangle of three young men – the narrator Encolpius, Ascyltus and the younger Gitōn.

They all behave disreputably, all know hunger and poverty, all hurt people, and all get hurt in return.

Encolpius arguably suffers the most when he upsets Priapus, a god of fertility, who renders him impotent. Priapus is normally represented in Roman art sporting an enormous, erect phallus – even weighing it in one famous example. He is a minor deity in comparison to Jupiter or Hercules, but he has one outstanding trait, which means a great deal to the “heroes” of this novel.

When Priapus deprives Encolpius of his virility, he strikes at the core of Encolpius’s identity, causing him much distress and forcing him in panic to seek a succession of absurd remedies.

The main characters are not good boys. They are jealous, perpetually randy, violent, unfaithful and capricious. They separate and come back together. They lack depth. And they meet a series of characters who complement their deficiencies with flaws of their own.

They look for food, shelter, sex and sexual restoration. Charlatans abound. Everyone is selfish and untrustworthy. Religion is flouted and abused, even though it plainly has power.

The attitude to religion seems to be “whatever works”, but no one is exactly sure what works, so they indulge themselves in equal amounts of devotion and derision – with predictable results.

Read more: Friday essay: the erotic art of Ancient Greece and Rome

Our youths seem to be travelling between locations around the Bay of Naples – a notorious region of excess and extravagance, heavily influenced by Greek culture and less constrained by traditional Roman discipline than other parts of Italy.

There is little certainty about this, as with so many features of the tale, but the easy movement between city dives and country villas makes sense in this region.

The banquet of Trimalchio

The most outrageous character they run across is the nouveau-riche pretender Trimalchio, whom they meet through an acquaintance, Eumolpus, who is said to be a poet but is more like a sleaze with intellectual pretensions.

Together they end up at a sumptuous feast at Trimalchio’s villa – the famous Cena Trimalchionis or “Banquet of Trimalchio”.

The feast is a riot of nonsense. Trimalchio, an ex-slave who has bought his freedom, tries to prove he is a man of culture as well as wealth like his free-born counterparts in neighbouring villas and regions. In doing so, of course, he proves only that he completely lacks class or sophistication of any kind and emerges as a self-loving ignoramus.

There is way too much food, especially the meats and sweets. The dishes are too exotic and difficult, especially the tiny birds. They are served in ostentatiously absurd ways by a bizarre collection of slaves and other functionaries. The guests grab greedily and unappreciatively, upsetting plates, cups and each other. The talk is gross and unedifying.

Trimalchio ends up inviting his cronies to a rehearsal of his funeral, which he has planned meticulously on the model of a noble’s or emperor’s funeral. He fails to see how far he falls short. Clothes, and other props, do not make the man.

But there is more to the feast than meets the eye. The vulgarity of the subject matter is especially memorable because it is conveyed by a master satirist or comic genius.

Trimalchio is described with great attention to detail and inventiveness, and with a certain sympathy rather than vindictiveness. Trimalchio and his hangers-on are acquainted with high literature, though they mangle it terribly, sometimes speaking in vulgar Latin and in language rendered comic by its malapropisms and other features. The writer is a virtuoso for pulling off these effects so cleverly.

A comic approach

The key to interpretation is that the text is a satire, as its name implies. It is inspired by the deeds of satyrs: lecherous, half-human creatures of myth, obsessed with sex. They were symbols of the outrageous, the destabilising and the violent.

The youths of our tale are plainly modelled on them. And the text is comic in approach, designed for a festival atmosphere, when it’s okay to release the irrational, the absurd and the bottled-up frustrations that go along with daily commitment to civilised straightness.

The comic silliness of it all is important to consider when pondering the author and purpose of the work. The author, according to the name that has survived with the text, was Titus Petronius Arbiter.

He is generally identified with the prominent courtier of Nero, the senator Gaius Petronius, who was forced to commit suicide in AD 66 for his part in a conspiracy against the emperor. In a famous passage (Annals 16.17-20), Tacitus says Nero looked to this man as his “arbiter of elegance”, as though his judgment of culture and pleasure was admired.

Read more: Mythbusting Ancient Rome – the emperor Nero

This identification between the author of the Satyricon and the Petronius of Tacitus might be right. Roman nobles were highly educated in literature and philosophy. Intellectual attainment was one of the myriad ways they competed with one another for social pre-eminence. Such a man might well have been capable of the literary virtuosity and wit that is on display in the text as we have it.

What is slightly worrying about this identification, however, is that Tacitus gives an appreciative portrayal of a man who sends up and resists a tyrant. Nero was certainly this, as the paranoia and murders of his reign indicate. Yet he was also a great sponsor of culture, especially literature and drama.

Even if the identifications with Tacitus’s Petronius and the reign of Nero are correct, we don’t need to adopt Tacitus’s tone and perspective. The Satyricon does not have to be a work with subversive intent against Nero, and Nero does not have to be read into the story in place of Trimalchio. Petronius does not have to be a social critic who was appalled by the corruption and depravity of Nero’s court.

It’s much more fun if he wasn’t any of these things in this work, but was instead a man who was excellent at satire in a spirit that was fundamentally light and frivolous.

Suggested translations: J.P. Sullivan, The Satyricon and the Fragments, translated with an introduction by J.P. Sullivan, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965. P.G. Walsh, Petronius: The Satyricon, translated with an introduction and explanatory notes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

– ref. Guide to the classics: Petronius’s Satyricon – sex, satire and naughty boys – https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-petroniuss-satyricon-sex-satire-and-naughty-boys-129351

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

The coronavirus has moved to a new stage in Australia, with the first two cases of local transmission of the disease.

The NSW government announced a 53-year-old Sydney health worker – who had not recently travelled abroad – had been diagnosed. The other case is the 41-year-old sister of an Iranian man who had arrived in Australia on Saturday. The woman had not travelled to Iran.

Other cases in Australia – now more than 30 – have been people who have come from abroad. There has been one death, a 78-year-old man who had been evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

Health authorities have anticipated the spread of the virus locally, with plans being ramped up to deal with that.

Efforts were being made on Monday to track down passengers who sat near travellers from Iran who have been diagnosed with the virus. There is now a ban on the entry of foreigners coming from Iran.

News of the local transmission comes amid the expectation the Reserve Bank will cut interest rates on Tuesday as the virus scare hits the economy, and panic buying of items such as toilet paper.

Hand sanitisers have been a runaway sales item. The share price of Zoono, a company that makes them, has jumped 70% in under a week.

On Friday the futures market rated the probably of a Tuesday rate cut at just 18%. On Monday it was rating the probability at 100%, with some economists even speculating about the possibility of the cut being double the usual 0.25%.

The Australian share market fell by 0.77%, after a 10% fall in what was the worst week since the global financial financial crisis.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said it was time for people to “give each other a pat on the back” rather than shaking hands. He also suggested a degree of caution when kissing.

In parliament, the government took a series of questions on the virus and its fallout. Attorney-General Christian Porter said it was important for Australians to understand the use of certain powers may become necessary in the months ahead.

Notably among these were changes made in 2015 to the Biosecurity Act, which replaced the Quarantine Act.

COVID-19 had been listed as a human disease for the purposes of this act in January.

“That has a number of very important consequences for Australia and Australians in what will no doubt be challenging months going ahead,” Porter said.

“There are two broad ranges of powers that people may well experience for the first time.

“There is the ability of the government to impose – always based on medical advice, but nevertheless impose – a human biosecurity control order on person or persons who have been exposed to the disease.

“It could require any Australian to give information about people that they’ve contacted or had contact with so that we can trace transmission pathways. It will also mean that Australians could be directed to remain at a particular place or indeed undergo decontamination.”

“Secondly, a very important power that may be experienced for the first time—and that we will be monitoring very carefully—is the declaration of a human health response zone, ” he said.

This was done with the Diamond Princess.

“But it’s very important to understand, going forward, that that is a power that can be used for either localised disease outbreaks in Australia or indeed to restrict individuals from attending places where a large number of people may otherwise choose to gather, such as shopping centres, schools or work.

“These are challenging times going forward, and these will be some of the first times that these important powers may be used,” Porter said.

– ref. First locally-transmitted COVID-19 cases in Australia, as Attorney-General warns drastic legal powers could be used – https://theconversation.com/first-locally-transmitted-covid-19-cases-in-australia-as-attorney-general-warns-drastic-legal-powers-could-be-used-132771

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

The coronavirus has moved to a new stage in Australia, with the first two cases of local transmission of the disease.

The NSW government announced a 53-year-old Sydney health worker – who had not recently travelled abroad – had been diagnosed. The other case is the 41-year-old sister of an Iranian man who had arrived in Australia on Saturday. The woman had not travelled to Iran.

Other cases in Australia – now more than 30 – have been people who have come from abroad. There has been one death, a 78-year-old man who had been evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship.

Health authorities have anticipated the spread of the virus locally, with plans being ramped up to deal with that.

Efforts were being made on Monday to track down passengers who sat near travellers from Iran who have been diagnosed with the virus. There is now a ban on the entry of foreigners coming from Iran.

News of the local transmission comes amid the expectation the Reserve Bank will cut interest rates on Tuesday as the virus scare hits the economy, and panic buying of items such as toilet paper.

Hand sanitisers have been a runaway sales item. The share price of Zoono, a company that makes them, has jumped 70% in under a week.

On Friday the futures market rated the probably of a Tuesday rate cut at just 18%. On Monday it was rating the probability at 100%, with some economists even speculating about the possibility of the cut being double the usual 0.25%.

The Australian share market fell by 0.77%, after a 10% fall in what was the worst week since the global financial financial crisis.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said it was time for people to “give each other a pat on the back” rather than shaking hands. He also suggested a degree of caution when kissing.

In parliament, the government took a series of questions on the virus and its fallout. Attorney-General Christian Porter said it was important for Australians to understand the use of certain powers may become necessary in the months ahead.

Notably among these were changes made in 2015 to the Biosecurity Act, which replaced the Quarantine Act.

COVID-19 had been listed as a human disease for the purposes of this act in January.

“That has a number of very important consequences for Australia and Australians in what will no doubt be challenging months going ahead,” Porter said.

“There are two broad ranges of powers that people may well experience for the first time.

“There is the ability of the government to impose – always based on medical advice, but nevertheless impose – a human biosecurity control order on person or persons who have been exposed to the disease.

“It could require any Australian to give information about people that they’ve contacted or had contact with so that we can trace transmission pathways. It will also mean that Australians could be directed to remain at a particular place or indeed undergo decontamination.”

“Secondly, a very important power that may be experienced for the first time—and that we will be monitoring very carefully—is the declaration of a human health response zone, ” he said.

This was done with the Diamond Princess.

“But it’s very important to understand, going forward, that that is a power that can be used for either localised disease outbreaks in Australia or indeed to restrict individuals from attending places where a large number of people may otherwise choose to gather, such as shopping centres, schools or work.

“These are challenging times going forward, and these will be some of the first times that these important powers may be used,” Porter said.

– ref. First locally-transmitted COV-19 cases in Australia, as Attorney-General warns drastic legal powers could be used – https://theconversation.com/first-locally-transmitted-cov-19-cases-in-australia-as-attorney-general-warns-drastic-legal-powers-could-be-used-132771

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julaine Allan, Senior research fellow, Charles Sturt University

On February 21 NSW Health issued a warning about methamphetamine and cocaine being contaminated with the dangerous opioid fentanyl.

Several people who had taken these illicit stimulant drugs presented to Sydney hospitals with symptoms of opioid overdose, raising the alarm. Drug tests found fentanyl and acetyl-fentanyl had caused the overdoses.

It’s believed to be the first time fentanyl has been found in stimulant drugs in Australia.

People using stimulants like methamphetamine and cocaine are not looking for the depressant effects of opioids. They would not have expected their drugs to contain fentanyl.

While you never know for sure what you’re getting when you buy illicit drugs, this is an extreme case.

Read more: Prince’s death from fentanyl is only the tip of the global overdose iceberg

What is fentanyl?

Fentanyl is a strong synthetic opioid prescribed for severe pain, for example to cancer patients or after surgery. It was first developed in the 1950s as a fast acting anaesthetic and pain reliever, but its availability has been restricted in recent years because of a high rate of misuse.

Today it’s usually applied in skin patches where the pain is. It’s also used in epidurals in combination with other drugs to relieve pain during childbirth.

Fentanyl is much stronger than other opioid drugs like heroin, morphine and codeine.

Opioids are depressants, which means they depress the central nervous system, slowing breathing and heart rate. Other effects include reduced pain, euphoria, constipation, vomiting, slurred speech and loss of appetite.

People who use fentanyl for non-medical reasons inject it. They find a tolerance to the drug builds quickly, the effects diminish quickly and physical dependence is rapid.

Symptoms of fentanyl overdose include difficult or shallow breathing, fainting, cold and clammy skin and blueish lips and skin around the mouth. People can die quickly so seeking emergency help is critical.

Read more: Weekly Dose: fentanyl, the anaesthetic that may have been used as a chemical weapon on Chechen rebels

Acetyl-fentanyl has a slightly different chemical structure to fentanyl but similar effects. It has not been approved for human use.

A prime culprit in America’s opioid crisis

Fentanyl has been responsible for many of the overdose deaths reported globally in recent years, including in Australia.

Fentanyl and related substances like acetyl-fentanyl are manufactured illegally in some countries. They’re mixed with other drugs to produce powerful effects at a lower production cost. Fentanyl may also be found in other drugs because of cross contamination through careless practices in drug labs.

In the United States more than 700,000 people died from a drug overdose between 1999 and 2017. Illicit fentanyl caused around half of the overdose deaths reported each year since 2013.

While a portion of these people would have knowingly been using fentanyl, many people who overdosed on fentanyl in the US had been using stimulants such as methamphetamine and cocaine.

A study in Canada found 73% of people who tested positive for fentanyl did not know they had taken it.

Read more: Opioid dependence treatment saves lives. So why don’t more people use it?

Risk in Australia

Illicitly manufactured fentanyl has not been reported in Australia previously. Nine overdose deaths that occurred in Melbourne in 2015 were found to include fentanyl and heroin, however the source of the fentanyl was unknown.

An Australian study published in 2019 found illicitly produced fentanyl was readily available on the dark web and suggested a high risk of the drug being imported to Australia.

The Australian Crime Commission identified China as a likely source of illicit fentanyl and related substances, highlighting ease of access to Australian markets.

Doctors working in the area of drug dependence have been expecting to see illicit fentanyl in Australia at some point. The fear is Australia could face an overdose epidemic similar to the US and Canada.

How can we reduce harm?

Harm reduction strategies include training people who take illicit drugs in the use of naloxone, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses, and providing rapid fentanyl test strips so drugs can be tested prior to use.

The test strips are reliable and easy to use. A small amount of the drug is dissolved in water and the test strip is dipped into the liquid for 15 seconds.

The test strips are highly sensitive and only a tiny amount of fentanyl is needed for it to be detected. It takes five minutes for the test result to appear.

While the strips have been found to be accurate at detecting the presence of fentanyl, they don’t identify the strength or quantity of the drug in the sample.

Read more: Testing festival goers’ pills isn’t the only way to reduce overdoses. Here’s what else works

Most people who use illicit drugs do so occasionally. It’s likely people using stimulant drugs will not have fentanyl testing kits or naloxone with them. This increases the risk of harm.

Naloxone, testing kits and drug checking availability in general are the best ways to reduce harm from fentanyl. These will need greater promotion if we continue to see cases like we’ve seen in Sydney in the past month.

– ref. The deadly opioid fentanyl is turning up in disguise on Sydney streets, making illicit drug use even riskier – https://theconversation.com/the-deadly-opioid-fentanyl-is-turning-up-in-disguise-on-sydney-streets-making-illicit-drug-use-even-riskier-132598

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Speck, Professor, Art History;, University of Adelaide

Review: 2020 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Monster Theatres

The Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art – now in its 30th year – has a tradition of measuring the pulse of contemporary art practice. This iteration is no different.

Art Gallery of South Australia curator Leigh Robb approaches contemporary anxieties, the challenges of technology, the unfolding anthropogenic tragedies and the continuing fallout from empire colonialism in this exhibition. She wrangles these fears under the compelling umbrella of Monster Theatres. In a sense, Robb picks up where Nick Mitzevich left off in his 2014 biennial Dark Heart, probing the guilt and grief of the national psyche. Six years on, the anxieties feel greater and more urgent.

Monsters have always been a cultural trope; in an accompanying display, Julie Robinson explores this phenomenon with a look at historical monster prints. Once, monstrous imagery by Durer, Goltzius and Goya depicted hybrid creatures with an assortment of limbs, bodies and heads and catered for societal follies and fears; their message was understood then as a moralistic warning or omen. The visual language of today differs greatly.

Humans, machines, monsters

The 24 solo projects in the biennial by Australian artists include two major performance artists, Stelarc and Mike Parr.

Each day for six days, Parr reads a 100-page script based on a Roland Barthes text in Reading for The End of Time. He has modified the text to stress repetitious words and phrases and synonyms, so the audience hears the same phrases coming up again and again. His only props are a glass of water and a reading lamp. As each day progresses, Parr reads this text against the video playback of the previous day. His monster is the cognitive dissonance this causes. At the time of writing, his voice was still holding out.

In Reclining StickMan, Stelarc placed himself on a large nine-metre robot made for the exhibition space. Over two five-hour performances on the opening weekend, he choreographed its movements and sounds. Audience members contributed via a touch screen, as did remote users. The robot’s movements and sounds stem from a mathematical algorithm and human interaction. This is the most recent and perhaps most spectacular of Stelarc’s work in which his own body facilitates complex interactive systems between the human and the machine.

There are some deeply psychological works on show, including Brent Harris’s grotesque paintings exposing the trauma and menace of his abusive father. Judith Wright’s haunting Tales of Enchantment are a memorial to a lost child she imagines in a shadowy surreal underworld.

Muslim artist Abdul Abdullah’s Understudy sits alone in a picture theatre. Viewers can, if they wish, take a seat next to this slightly hunched-over figure dressed in faux designer human clothing, but they will soon notice the hood he is wearing partly conceals his monkey face – he is one of the rare and endangered Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys. The monkey, also a familiar figure in monster films such as Godzilla and King Kong, reflects the artist’s outsider experience in post-September 11 Australia.

Karla Dickens’ Dickensian Country Show feels like a sideshow with its lights and glitter, but its imagery is a dark exposé of Aboriginal members of the country circus and boxing troupe whose blackness was the attraction, the oddity, the “other”.

What fear sounds like

Monster Theatres lends itself to the idea that the exhibition space is a site for speculation and wonder. In Transmission, experimental sound artist Julian Day’s found organ pipes emit a monstrous and resonating timbre that echoes through the gallery’s atrium, on the hour. On the opening weekend of the biennial, Day orchestrated a moving performance called A Civic Space in the nearby Freemasons Lodge with a group of singers and brass musicians improvising abstract sounds, augmented by the organ.

Ecological threat is imminent and urgent in Monsters Theatre. Quandamooka artist Megan Cope’s sound installation Untitled, Death Song replicates the ghostly warning sound of the bush stone curlew, an endangered nocturnal bird. The “instruments” are re-purposed remnants from mining and deforestation projects. The auger drill, oil drums and rocks, along with a piano, ring through gallery space. Their haunting sounds are arresting enough to make viewers sit and listen.

The biennial extends to the nearby Adelaide Botanical Gardens with sculptures by Mark Valenzuela and Michael Candy in the Palm House and the Bicentennial Conservatory. Candy’s slowly moving and mesmerising Big Dipper hangs high above Conservatory’s entrance while Mark Valenzuela’s Once Bitten, Twice Shy pops up in a lily pond.

In his purpose-built bee house Anthrocomb, Mark Bianco counters the collapse of bee colonies by literally sleeping with them in the structure. He invites audience members to do the same.

Julia Robinson’s Beatrice, an ill-fated toxic creature – part-human, part-flower – sits in the Museum of Economic Botany. Her writhing soft sculpture tentacles in beautiful purples and mustards point to a creature trying to avoid a monstrous fate.

Glass artist Yhonnie Scarce, of the Kokotha and Nukuna peoples, reclaims the Deadhouse in the Gardens, once used to house Aboriginal body parts for “medical purposes”, by filling it symbolically with healing glass-fabricated bush bananas.

This biennial brings a refreshing psychological depth, reflective gaze and energy to our fears. Robb has imaginatively added a new ingredient to the cultural mix: the monster. The exhibition underscores how in colonial, post-colonial and decolonial times, and now the anthropegenic era, the monsters are not only within us, they have always been us.

Monster Theatres is on show at the Art Gallery of South Australia until 8 June.

– ref. A meeting of monsters at the Adelaide Biennial brings us closer to our fears – https://theconversation.com/a-meeting-of-monsters-at-the-adelaide-biennial-brings-us-closer-to-our-fears-132753

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Warren Hogan, Industry Professor, University of Technology Sydney

This week marks a new phase in the coronavirus crisis with the case count outside China accelerating sharply.

China’s containment strategy bought global health authorities time to prepare, but failed to confine the outbreak to North-East Asia.

In the past week both President Trump and Prime Minister Morrison have prepared citizens for a rise in the onshore case count in recognition of the likelihood the virus will spread to most of the world.

Because it isn’t possible to shut down the global trade and transport system without causing a global recession, their strategy has shifted from containment to preparation.

It’ll be important to manage panic

Critical to the process is managing panic. If consumers around the world substantially reduce their spending either as a precautionary measure or in response to public health fears, the impact on businesses will be substantial.

The key economic challenge will be to stop a vicious cycle of weaker spending and job losses taking hold. Targeted government spending can help businesses at risk, although some will use it as an excuse to reset their cost base and scale down in an economic environment that was challenging even before the coronavirus.

Global share markets have fallen 10% in a week as this new phase has begun to unfold, adding to uncertainty and fear.

Rate cuts are all but certain

Countries that have the capacity to cut interest rates will do it. In the US, markets are expecting a cut at or before the next meeting of the US Fed on March 17.

In Australia, markets are expecting a cut of 0.25 points at the Reserve Bank’s board meeting on Tuesday. There is some talk of a double cut, of 0.50 points, which would bring the Reserve Bank cash rate down from 0.75% to 0.25%.

The cuts would be aimed at shoring up confidence in the economy and financial markets as much as anything else. Global rates are already low enough to provide economic stimulus. It will be up to politicians to provide the targeted measures that will be needed to help keep businesses afloat and people in jobs.

We’re facing a Chinese recession

The trade and travel restrictions in place in and around China will have major ramifications. Estimates of the impact of the containment policies on Chinese growth in the first quarter of the year range from minus 2% to minus 10%, enough to obliterate growth in the world’s fastest-growing big economy.

A shocking Chinese purchasing managers’ index reading on the weekend showed a fall to a new low not reached during the global financial crisis.

Few countries are as exposed to Chinese purchasing as Australia.

Read more: World economy flashes red over coronavirus – with strange echoes of 1880s Yellow Peril hysteria

Australia gets GDP figures on Wednesday for the final three months of 2019. These are likely to show the economy grew by less than 0.5% in the quarter.

Most of the impact of the bushfires and the initial impact of the coronavirus will show up in the data for the first quarter of this year. Many analysts have pencilled in a negative number.

And possibly an Australian recession

It will leave Australia exposed to what is known as a technical recession – two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, in the three months to March and the three months to June.

This possibility, Australia’s first recession in 29 years, will depend on how we react to the emergence of coronavirus onshore.

The initial reaction might paradoxically support measured economic growth as people stockpile supplies. The next phase would be a reduction in spending as people avoid leaving their homes. As we are seeing in China, and more recently in Korea and Italy, shopping districts can become ghost towns.

Read more: 3 ways coronavirus will affect the US economy – and 1 silver lining

It would be akin to a nationwide rise in saving, which drains consumer spending and business activity. Beyond efforts to maintain perspective and keep calm, little can be done to prevent people from willingly choosing to remain at home.

We’ll need targeted, clever, government support

It is in this phase that government policy actions will be critical. A mild technical recession caused by an external shock would be undesirable but need not be a disaster for the community if the employment ramifications can be minimised.

Government efforts need to be directed at stopping a negative shock evolving into a self-reinforcing spiral of declining spending and lower employment.

Lower interest rates will be of very little use to start with. Governments will need to target support to those parts of the economy most under stress with the greatest risk of job losses.

The challenge will be to identify those businesses at the greatest risk of insolvency.

Read more: The growing impact of coronavirus on the global economy

The Reserve Bank board will need to follow the lead of the US Federal Reserve and at least issue a soothing statement to financial markets that it is ready to act if needed.

If it is too early to gauge the impact of this new phase of contagion of the coronavirus, it is really too early for rate cuts. And there is a risk that a rate cut this week might generate more panic and amplify the effects of any consumer and business panic already upon us.

At most, the bank can support the government. It is our leaders who will bear the biggest responsibility for steering us through what’s to come.

Read more: 2020 survey: no lift in wage growth, no lift in economic growth and no progress on unemployment in year of low expectations

– ref. We’re staring down the barrel of a technical recession as the coronavirus enters a new and dangerous phase – https://theconversation.com/were-staring-down-the-barrel-of-a-technical-recession-as-the-coronavirus-enters-a-new-and-dangerous-phase-132752

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenni Downes, Research Fellow, BehaviourWorks Australia (Monash Sustainable Development Institute), Monash University

Australia is still grappling with what to do with the glut of recyclable material after China closed most of its market to our recycling in 2018.

Now the Victorian government has released the first major change to state recycling policy: a consistent kerbside four bin system by 2030, and a container deposit scheme.

So what’s the proposed new kerbside bin system, and will it help alleviate Australia’s recycling crisis? Here’s what you need to know about the extra bin coming your way.

Read more: China’s recycling ‘ban’ throws Australia into a very messy waste crisis

The problems with our recycling system

There are two big problems – particularly since the China ban.

One is about supply. The quality of materials we have for recycling is quite poor, partly from the design of the products, and partly how we collect and sort waste items.

The other is demand. There’s not enough demand for recycled materials in new products or infrastructure, and so the commodity value of the materials, even high quality, is low.

And even though many of us think we’re good at recycling, many households aren’t getting recycling exactly right because they put things that don’t belong in the recycling bin, such as soft plastics.

One reason is because of the confusion about what can be recycled, where and when. A standardised system of collection (no matter how many bins) will go a long way to improving this, and the most exciting aspect of the Victorian announcement is the strong leadership towards consistency across the state.

Read more: Don’t just blame government and business for the recycling crisis – it begins with us

This means by 2030, no matter where Victorians live or visit, they’ll have a consistent kerbside bin system.

But to boost our recycling capacity, we need consistency across the country. New South Wales, South Australian and Western Australian governments are already supporting combined food and garden organics bins, and other states are likely to follow as the evidence of the benefits continues to accumulate.

What will change?

Details are still being ironed out, but essentially, the new system expands the current two or three bins most Victorian houses have to four bins.

While paper, cardboard and plastic or metal containers will still go in the yellow bin, glass containers will now have their own separate purple bin (or crate). A green bin, which some Victorians already have for garden vegetation, will expand to collect food scraps.

The purple bin will come first, with the gradual roll-out starting next year as some Victorian councils’ existing collection contracts come to a close. The service is expected to be fully in place by 2027 (some remote areas may be exempt).

And the expanded green bin service accepting food scraps for composting will be rolled out by 2030, unless councils choose to move earlier (some are already doing so).

How extra bins will make a difference

A 2015 report on managing household waste in Europe showed separating our waste increases the quality of material collected. Some countries even have up to six bins (or crates, or sacks).

That’s because it’s easier for people to sort out the different materials than for machines, particularly food and the complex packaging we have today.

A separate bin for food (plus garden organics) will help recover Victoria’s share of the 2.5 million tonnes of food and scraps Australian households chuck out each year.

Read more: Melbourne wastes 200 kg of food per person a year: it’s time to get serious

And a separate bin for glass will help with glass breaking in the yellow bin or collection truck, contaminating surrounding paper and cardboard with tiny glass shards that renders them unrecyclable. It should also boost how much glass gets recycled, according to Australia’s largest glass reprocesser.

What do they need to get right?

To make sure the transition to the new system is smooth, councils and the Victorian government must consider:

• the space needed for four bins

Not everyone has enough space (inside or outside). This may require creative council and household solutions like those already found overseas (stackable crates and segregated bins).

• the collection schedule

Does the new purple bin mean we’ll see a another truck, or perhaps a special multi-compartment recycling truck? And once councils have food waste in a weekly green bin, will the red bin collection go fortnightly? This actually makes sense because 35–60% of the red bin is food scraps, which will be gone.

• correct disposal of food waste

Many councils that have already added food waste to the green bin report contamination issues as people get their head around the transition, such as putting food wrappers in with the food scraps.

• correct sorting of recycling

Putting the wrong thing in the recycling bin is a problem across the country, and taking glass out of the yellow bin won’t solve this issue. While this is already being tackled in government campaigns and council trials, we’ll likely need more government effort at both a systems and household level.

Better collection won’t mean much without demand

Collection is only one piece of the puzzle. Government support is needed to make sure all this recycling actually ends up somewhere. Efforts to improve the “supply-side” aspects of recycling can go to waste if there’s no demand for the recycled materials.

Environmental economists have long pointed out that without government intervention, free markets in most countries will not pay enough or use enough recycled material when new, or “virgin”, materials are so cheap.

Read more: Only half of packaging waste is recycled – here’s how to do better

What’s great for Victoria is the new four bin system is only one pillar of the state’s new recycling policy.

It also includes many demand-side initiatives, from market development grants and infrastructure funding, to developing a Circular Economy Business Innovation Centre. The policy also deems waste management to be an “essential service” and has left space for strong procurement commitments. Today, Prime Minister Scott Morrison acknowledged the importance of procurement when he announced an overhaul of the Commonwealth Procurement Guidelines at the National Plastics Summit, to boost demand for recycled products.

Stepping up to the challenge

But to effectively combat Australia’s recycling crisis, more must be done. This includes reinvestment of landfill levies; standards for recycled materials, and at a federal level; clear strategies to improve product design ; and funding to support the waste and recycling industry to meet the export ban.

Read more: A crisis too big to waste: China’s recycling ban calls for a long-term rethink in Australia

We also need regulation on the use of recycled material in products. For example, through mandated targets or fiscal policies like a tax on products made from virgin materials.

Since 2018 when China stopped taking most of our recycling, the level of industry, community and media interest has created a strong platform for policy change. It’s exciting to see Victoria responding to the challenge.

– ref. Four bins might help, but to solve our waste crisis we need a strong market for recycled products – https://theconversation.com/four-bins-might-help-but-to-solve-our-waste-crisis-we-need-a-strong-market-for-recycled-products-132440

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Warren Hogan, Industry Professor, University of Technology Sydney

This week marks a new phase in the coronavirus crisis with the case count outside China accelerating sharply.

China’s containment strategy bought global health authorities time to prepare, but failed to confine the outbreak to North-East Asia.

In the past week both President Trump and Prime Minister Morrison have prepared citizens for a rise in the onshore case count in recognition of the likelihood the virus will spread to most of the world.

Because it isn’t possible to shut down the global trade and transport system without causing a global recession, their strategy has shifted from containment to preparation.

It’ll be important to manage panic

Critical to the process is managing panic. If consumers around the world substantially reduce their spending either as a precautionary measure or in response to public health fears, the impact on businesses will be substantial.

The key economic challenge will be to stop a vicious cycle of weaker spending and job losses taking hold. Targeted government spending can help businesses at risk, although some will use it as an excuse to reset their cost base and scale down in an economic environment that was challenging even before the coronavirus.

Global share markets have fallen 10% in a week as this new phase has begun to unfold, adding to uncertainty and fear.

Rate cuts are all but certain

Countries that have the capacity to cut interest rates will do it. In the US, markets are expecting a cut at or before the next meeting of the US Fed on March 17.

In Australia, markets are expecting a cut of 0.25 points at the Reserve Bank’s board meeting on Tuesday. There is some talk of a double cut, of 0.50 points, which would bring the Reserve Bank cash rate down from 0.75% to 0.25%.

The cuts would be aimed at shoring up confidence in the economy and financial markets as much as anything else. Global rates are already low enough to provide economic stimulus. It will be up to politicians to provide the targeted measures that will be needed to help keep businesses afloat and people in jobs.

We’re facing a Chinese recession

The trade and travel restrictions in place in and around China will have major ramifications. Estimates of the impact of the containment policies on Chinese growth in the first quarter of the year range from minus 2% to minus 10%, enough to obliterate growth in the world’s fastest-growing big economy.

A shocking Chinese purchasing managers’ index reading on the weekend showed a fall to a new low not reached during the global financial crisis.

Few countries are as exposed to purchasing from China as Australia.

Read more: World economy flashes red over coronavirus – with strange echoes of 1880s Yellow Peril hysteria

Australia gets GDP figures on Wednesday for the final three months of 2019. These are likely to show the economy grew by less than 0.5% in the quarter.

Most of the impact of the bushfires and the initial impact of the coronavirus will show up in the data for the first quarter of this year. Many analysts have pencilled in a negative number.

And possibly an Australian recession

It will leave Australia exposed to what is known as a technical recession – two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, in the three months to March and the three months to June.

This possibility, Australia’s first recession in 29 years, will depend on how we react to the emergence of coronavirus onshore.

The initial reaction might paradoxically support measured economic growth as people stockpile supplies. The next phase would be a reduction in spending as people avoid leaving their homes. As we are seeing in China, and more recently in Korea and Italy, shopping districts can become ghost towns.

Read more: 3 ways coronavirus will affect the US economy – and 1 silver lining

It would be akin to a nationwide rise in saving, which drains consumer spending and business activity. Beyond efforts to maintain perspective and keep calm, little can be done to prevent people from willingly choosing to remain at home.

We’ll need targeted, clever, government support

It is in this phase that government policy actions will be critical. A mild technical recession caused by an external shock would be undesirable but need not be a disaster for the community if the employment ramifications can be minimised.

Government efforts need to be directed at stopping a negative shock evolving into a self-reinforcing spiral of declining spending and lower employment.

Lower interest rates will be of very little use to start with. Governments will need to target support to those parts of the economy most under stress with the greatest risk of job losses.

The challenge will be to identify those businesses at the greatest risk of insolvency.

Read more: The growing impact of coronavirus on the global economy

The Reserve Bank board will need to follow the lead of the US Federal Reserve and at least issue a soothing statement to financial markets that it is ready to act if needed.

If it is too early to gauge the impact of this new phase of contagion of the coronavirus, it is really too early for rate cuts. And there is a risk that a rate cut this week might generate more panic and amplify the effects of any consumer and business panic already upon us.

At most, the bank can support the government. It is our leaders who will bear the biggest responsibility for steering us through what’s to come.

Read more: 2020 survey: no lift in wage growth, no lift in economic growth and no progress on unemployment in year of low expectations

– ref. We’re staring down the barrel of a technical recession as the COVID-19 coronavirus enters a new and dangerous phase – https://theconversation.com/were-staring-down-the-barrel-of-a-technical-recession-as-the-covid-19-coronavirus-enters-a-new-and-dangerous-phase-132752

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Peterie, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

Between July 2018 and August 2019, the Home Affairs Department spent A$6.1m flying refugees, asylum seekers and other immigration detainees around Australia.

This figure includes $5.7 million for charter flights and $400,000 for commercial flights with airlines like Qantas. It does not include the cost of keeping planes on standby and transporting staff who accompany detainees. Neither does it include the cost of transporting detainees by road.

Details of these and other expenses have led Labor to ask why minister Peter Dutton’s departmental costs continue to rise. Given revelations the government spent $26.8 million reopening Christmas Island detention centre to hold a single family last year, this is a pressing question.

Read more: How the Biloela Tamil family deportation case highlights the failures of our refugee system

Yet deeper questions about what these relocations involve and how they affect detainees and their supporters have been largely ignored. As a researcher studying immigration detention, I can attest forced relocations impose profound human costs.

Over the past five years, I have conducted over 70 interviews with regular visitors to Australia’s onshore immigration detention centres. Speaking with volunteers and advocates, as well as detainees’ friends and family members, I have collected witness accounts of conditions and practices within the system. A constant theme in these interviews has been the harm caused by involuntary transfers.

How many forced transfers are occurring

When we think of immigration detention centres, we often imagine places of confinement. This is accurate, but it is not the full picture.

Refugees and asylum seekers in Australia’s onshore detention system are held in prison-like facilities on the outskirts of our capital cities or – in the case of Christmas Island and Yongah Hill in Western Australia – in remote parts of the country.

In December 2019, there were at least 504 refugees and asylum seekers within the system, as well as hundreds of other immigration detainees, including those about to be deported. Detention can last months or even years.

Read more: How people in immigration detention try to cope with life in limbo

As monotonous as detention can be, detainees are not allowed to become comfortable. Between July 2017 and May 2019, there were 8,000 involuntary movements within the system. Some of these were deportations, but others were forced transfers between facilities.

Detainees are rarely given an explanation when they are moved. The opacity of the practice is undoubtedly one of its concerning aspects, and has been criticised by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC). In a report last year, the commission recommended that when a relocation occurs

the department and facility staff should ensure as far as possible that the person […] receives a clear explanation of the reasons for the transfer.

‘Sheer, random cruelty’

Participants in my study stressed the secrecy of relocations. Detainees were typically moved with minimal warning or explanation. At times they knew a transfer was pending, but they were often moved with just a few hours’ notice.

In some instances, the staff woke detainees up and gave them minutes to collect their belongings. As one regular visitor to Yongah Hill Detention Centre described it,

It was always early in the morning – you’ve got 10 minutes to pack your bags. And they would lose things. They were always in such a hurry. It was made to be traumatic for them.

Confronted with what a visitor to the Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation described as “the sheer, random cruelty of it”, detainees felt their vulnerability. So, too, did those left behind.

There’s constantly distressing scenes as one family or another is being dragged away to be put on a plane with very little notice. And it’s so upsetting for all the other refugees […] that they’re seeing people get hauled off and people are crying and begging […] You never know if it’s going to be you tomorrow morning.

The AHRC has documented the “excessive” use of restraints during transfers. Just in the last fortnight, the Commonwealth Ombudsman observed that handcuffs had become “accepted transfer practice” during transport operations.

In his recommendations, the ombudsman advised

the Aviation Transport Security Regulations [to] restrict the use of mechanical restraints to circumstances where there is a genuine risk to the safety of the aircraft that cannot be mitigated by any other option.

The human costs of forced relocations

Beyond the stress of the transfer process, relocations separate detainees from support networks within the facilities, as well as friends, advocates, doctors and lawyers in the community. As a regular visitor to Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation explained, the relocation experience is one of loss.

They might put down roots and get a few mates where they are, but when they move they lose those bonds that they’ve developed. If they’re getting any medical help they lose that contact with that medical care, their ability to learn English gets less.

Interstate transfers are particularly devastating for people with families in the community. Partners and children without social or financial resources in Australia can rarely travel to visit loved ones.

Read more: Explainer: how Australia decides who is a genuine refugee

The despair caused by relocations is perhaps best exemplified by stories I heard of detainees self-harming immediately before or after a transfer.

These testimonies accord with previous research at Victoria University that has found a link between forced relocations and self-harm in immigration detention facilities. Forced transfers, this researcher found, are among a number of “precipitating factors or triggers for self-harm” in both immigration detention and prison settings.

An unconscionable practice

The practice of moving detainees around Australia’s immigration detention network is doubly unjustifiable on economic and humanitarian grounds. A consistent finding from my research is that forced relocations cause harm. They harm detainees, and they harm the people who love and support them.

As a country, we can find better ways to spend taxpayer money.

– ref. ‘People are crying and begging’: the human cost of forced relocations in immigration detention – https://theconversation.com/people-are-crying-and-begging-the-human-cost-of-forced-relocations-in-immigration-detention-132193

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Monique Mann, Senior lecturer, Deakin University

You’d thinking flying in a plane would be more dangerous than driving a car. In reality it’s much safer, partly because the aviation industry is heavily regulated.

Airlines must stick to strict standards for safety, testing, training, policies and procedures, auditing and oversight. And when things do go wrong, we investigate and attempt to rectify the issue to improve safety in the future.

It’s not just airlines, either. Other industries where things can go very badly wrong, such as pharmaceuticals and medical devices, are also heavily regulated.

Artificial intelligence is a relatively new industry, but it’s growing fast and has great capacity to do harm. Like aviation and pharmaceuticals, it needs to be regulated.

AI can do great harm

A wide range of technologies and applications that fit under the rubric of “artificial intelligence” have begun to play a significant role in our lives and social institutions. But they can be used in ways that are harmful, which we are already starting to see.

In the “robodebt” affair, for example, the Australian government welfare agency Centrelink used data-matching and automated decision-making to issue (often incorrect) debt notices to welfare recipients. What’s more, the burden of proof was reversed: individuals were required to prove they did not owe the claimed debt.

The New South Wales government has also started using AI to spot drivers with mobile phones. This involves expanded public surveillance via mobile phone detection cameras that use AI to automatically detect a rectangular object in the driver’s hands and classify it as a phone.

Read more: Caught red-handed: automatic cameras will spot mobile-using motorists, but at what cost?

Facial recognition is another AI application under intense scrutiny around the world. This is due to its potential to undermine human rights: it can be used for widespread surveillance and suppression of public protest, and programmed bias can lead to inaccuracy and racial discrimination. Some have even called for a moratorium or outright ban because it is so dangerous.

In several countries, including Australia, AI is being used to predict how likely a person is to commit a crime. Such predictive methods have been shown to impact Indigenous youth disproportionately and lead to oppressive policing practices.

AI that assists train drivers is also coming into use, and in future we can expect to see self-driving cars and other autonomous vehicles on our roads. Lives will depend on this software.

The European approach

Once we’ve decided that AI needs to be regulated, there is still the question of how to do it. Authorities in the European Union have recently made a set of proposals for how to regulate AI.

The first step, they argue, is to assess the risks AI poses in different sectors such as transport, healthcare, and government applications such as migration, criminal justice and social security. They also look at AI applications that pose a risk of death or injury, or have an impact on human rights such as the rights to privacy, equality, liberty and security, freedom of movement and assembly, social security and standard of living, and the presumption of innocence.

The greater the risk an AI application was deemed to pose, the more regulation it would face. The regulations would cover everything from the data used to train the AI and how records are kept, to how transparent the creators and operators of the system must be, testing for robustness and accuracy, and requirements for human oversight. This would include certification and assurances that the use of AI systems is safe, and does not lead to discriminatory or dangerous outcomes.

While the EU’s approach has strong points, even apparently “low-risk” AI applications can do real harm. For example, recommendation algorithms in search engines are discriminatory too. The EU proposal has also been criticised for seeking to regulate facial recognition technology rather than banning it outright.

The EU has led the world on data protection regulation. If the same happens with AI, these proposals are likely to serve as a model for other countries and apply to anyone doing business with the EU or even EU citizens.

What’s happening in Australia?

In Australia there are some applicable laws and regulations, but there are numerous gaps, and they are not always enforced. The situation is made more difficult by the lack of human rights protections at the federal level.

One prominent attempt at drawing up some rules for AI came last year from Data61, the data and digital arm of CSIRO. They developed an AI ethics framework built around eight ethical principles for AI.

These ethical principles aren’t entirely irrelevant (number two is “do no harm”, for example), but they are unenforceable and therefore largely meaningless. Ethics frameworks like this one for AI have been criticised as “ethics washing”, and a ploy for industry to avoid hard law and regulation.

Read more: How big tech designs its own rules of ethics to avoid scrutiny and accountability

Another attempt is the Human Rights and Technology project of the Australian Human Rights Commission. It aims to protect and promote human rights in the face of new technology.

We are likely to see some changes following the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s recent inquiry into digital platforms. And a long overdue review of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) is slated for later this year.

These initiatives will hopefully strengthen Australian protections in the digital age, but there is still much work to be done. Stronger human rights protections would be an important step in this direction, to provide a foundation for regulation.

Before AI is adopted even more widely, we need to understand its impacts and put protections in place. To realise the potential benefits of AI, we must ensure that it is governed appropriately. Otherwise, we risk paying a heavy price as individuals and as a society.

– ref. Airlines take no chances with our safety. And neither should artificial intelligence – https://theconversation.com/airlines-take-no-chances-with-our-safety-and-neither-should-artificial-intelligence-132580

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mehmet Ozalp, Associate Professor in Islamic Studies, Director of The Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation and Executive Member of Public and Contextual Theology, Charles Sturt University

As the nine-year Syrian civil war enters its final turn, Turkey and Russia, long-time allies in Syria, are on the brink of war over the Syrian province of Idlib.

Both sides are sending stern messages of warning as diplomacy to end the conflict has so far failed to de-escalate the situation.

What has led to the stand-off?

In September 2018, Turkey, Russia and Iran signed an agreement (also called the Sochi accord) to create a de-escalation zone in Idlib, where violent hostilities were prohibited.

Under the agreement, opposition forces were classified as jihadist and mainstream. Mainstream forces were to pull heavy weapons out of the zone and jihadist groups to vacate it completely. All sides, including Turkey, set up military observation posts.

Claiming that jihadist groups did not leave the zone after more than a year, Syrian government forces launched an offensive in December 2019. The offensive displaced more than 900,000 civilians.

This was followed by the Syrian government forces attacking a Turkish observation post and killing 13 Turkish soldiers.

Read more: The ‘ceasefire’ in Syria is ending – here’s what’s likely to happen now

Outraged, Turkey retaliated on February 2 with a counter-attack that killed Syrian soldiers and four members of Russian special forces. Turkey also intensified its military build-up in Idlib’s north.

On February 3, Turkish President Recep Tayyib Erdogan openly defied Russia with a visit to Ukraine, where he pledged US$200 million in military aid.

On February 15, Erdogan warned:

The solution in Idlib is the (Syrian) regime withdrawing to the borders in the agreements. Otherwise, we will handle this before the end of February.

Russia blamed Turkey for failing to meet its obligations and continued to allege Turkey was supplying weapons to what Russia considers terrorist groups.

Erdogan countered these claims by saying Russian and Syrian government forces were “constantly attacking the civilian people, carrying out massacres, spilling blood”.

The greatest fear is an all-out war in Idlib and the inevitable civilian suffering. With more than a million civilians trying to survive in makeshift camps, a United Nations representative has warned of “a real bloodbath”.

Why is Idlib so important?

Capturing Idlib has immense strategic significance for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as it is the last opposition stronghold in Syria.

Backed by Russia, Assad has been conducting a successful military offensive against jihadist opposition forces throughout the country to regain and consolidate his power since 2015. He has allowed remnants of these groups to escape to Idlib as a deliberate strategy to gather all opposition forces in one location.

So far, Idlib has been controlled by a range of opposition groups. The most powerful is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which was formed by a large faction that split from the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda in 2017.

Capturing Idlib with the help of Russia and clearing the province of all armed opposition would allow Assad to declare victory and end the civil war.

Turkish and Russian clash of interests in Syria

Erdogan had three main goals in his Syrian involvement. First, prevent the establishment of a Kurdish autonomous region in northern Syria. The Turkish fear such a development could inspire the large Kurdish-populated southeast regions of Turkey to pursue similar ambitions.

The second is to fight a proxy war in Syria through jihadist groups to topple the Assad regime and establish an Islamist government. Erdogan hoped this would extend his political influence in the Middle East and his ambitions to make political Islam dominant would be achieved.

A third aim is to do with maintaining his 18-year rule in Turkey amid political and economic problems. A war in Syria serves to silence critics.

Erdogan calculated he could achieve his goals if he was to have forces in Syria and collaborate with Russia and Iran. The cost was distancing Turkey from the Western block and increasing its international alienation.

Read more: As Turkish troops move in to Syria, the risks are great – including for Turkey itself

Turkey, Russia, Iran and the Syrian government wanted to balance Western and particularly US power in Syria, and if possible to push US out of Syria. Even though their relationships were fragile from the start, these four countries were extremely careful on the diplomatic table and presented a powerful bloc against US involvement in Syria.

The Russian strategy in Syria has been clear from the start – support the Assad government until it regains control over all Syrian territory and defeats all opposition forces. Then Russia can control Turkey so it does not cause serious armed conflict with the Assad regime, while protecting Russian interests in Syria and the greater Middle East.

Russia has invested enormous funds in support of the Assad government. The only way to recoup its costs and have return on investment is if Assad achieves a full victory. Nothing short of capturing Idlib will suffice, even if it means open conflict with Turkey.

What is likely to happen next?

Erdogan is caught in a dilemma. He is unable to influence the Syrian opposition parties in Idlib, but he is also not prepared to forsake them. If he withdraws support, they may possibly retaliate with terrorist attacks in Turkey.

Another flood of Syrian refugees is a serious problem for Erdogan. He lost local government elections in 2019 largely due to the Syrian refugee crisis in Turkey.

It is hard to predict what Erdogan will do in Syria. He is either bluffing or is determined to stay the course, even if it means war. He has shown he is not afraid to make bold moves, as demonstrated with his October 2019 military operation in northern Syria and recent military involvement in the Libya conflict.

Bluffing or not, Putin is not backing down and will not hesitate to take on Turkey in Syria. In doing so, Putin will continue to support the Assad forces with equipment, military intelligence, air power and military expertise, rather than being involved in open military conflict. This strategy allows Russia to claim Syria is exercising its legitimate right to defend its sovereign territory against a foreign Turkish military presence.

It is likely Erdogan will avert the risk of war at the last moment. He has involved the US, which has expressed its support for Turkey and hopes to see Assad gone. He has used his NATO membership card and the European fear of another Syrian refugee flood to bring European powers onside at the diplomatic table.

Erdogan will be happy and claim victory if he manages to enlarge the safety zone with a continued Turkish presence there. Russia would only accept this on the condition that all jihadist opposition groups leave Idlib. On these terms, both sides could claim a win from the present dangerous tension.

The likely Russian response is to go all the way in Idlib, regardless of what Turkey does. Any Turkish military success in Syria is highly unlikely. Russia completely controls the airspace and could inflict serious damage on Turkish ground troops.

It is in Russia’s interests to finish this costly civil war once and for all. It is only a matter of time before the Assad government captures Idlib diplomatically or by force.

– ref. Turkey and Russia lock horns in Syria as fear of outright war escalates – https://theconversation.com/turkey-and-russia-lock-horns-in-syria-as-fear-of-outright-war-escalates-131830

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, La Trobe University

The coronovirus outbreak has reminded us of the importance of public health responses in managing the spread of disease.

But what actually is public health? And why are we so often hearing from public health experts about the coronavirus and other health threats?

In broad terms, whereas medicine primarily focuses on treating disease in individuals, public health focuses on preventing disease and improving health in communities.

Public health activities are far-reaching and varied. They include health promotion campaigns, infectious disease surveillance and control (as in the response to coronavirus), ensuring access to clean air, water and safe food, screening for disease, community health interventions and policy and planning activities.

Here are three examples which show the important role public health plays.

Read more: It’s now a matter of when, not if, for Australia. This is how we’re preparing for a jump in coronavirus cases

The reduction of vaccine-preventable diseases

The development of vaccines to protect against infectious diseases is one of the most significant achievements in both medicine and public health. Vaccines have prevented literally millions of deaths – the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates at least ten million globally between 2010 and 2015 – and spared countless others from getting sick.

We now rarely see diseases such as polio, measles and mumps in the developed world thanks to the effectiveness of vaccines. The fact we can protect individuals and communities against some of the deadliest diseases by a simple and safe injection is one of the miracles of modern medicine.

The delivery of vaccines to communities throughout the world and the reduction in disease as a result of this is a testament to public health and its power.

Perhaps the greatest example of the effect vaccines have had on the health of populations globally is the eradication of smallpox. A viral disease characterised by fever and a pustular rash, smallpox was one of the most devastating infectious diseases we’ve ever seen. It killed around 300 million people in the 20th century alone.

To eradicate smallpox, public health physicians sought to identify new cases swiftly. Then people the cases had come into contact with were vaccinated as quickly as possible to prevent the disease spreading further, a public health measure called “ring vaccination”. This campaign began in earnest in 1967, with the WHO declaring smallpox eradicated in 1980, in what’s regarded as one of the greatest public health achievements of modern times.

Read more: Health Check: which vaccinations should I get as an adult?

Tobacco control

Although there’s still a lot of work to do, smoking rates have declined over recent decades, with great benefits to our health.

When science established a clear link between smoking and poor health outcomes, the role of public health was to get this message out to the public and implement measures to minimise smoking rates.

We’ve managed to reduce deaths due to tobacco through interventions such as health promotion campaigns providing information to the public about the dangers of smoking, restrictions on cigarette advertising, plain packaging, restrictions on smoking in public places, increased taxes on cigarettes, as well as increased access to cessation programs.

Tobacco control is one of the major achievements of public health. This is especially true as we’ve often had to fight against the industry, or “big tobacco”, to get these initiatives off the ground.

Read more: Can we trust Big Tobacco to promote public health?

Tobacco control is also a great example of how coordinated actions from a number of different government sectors can be targeted to address a major public health challenge.

Australia has been recognised as a world leader in this area.

Motor vehicle safety

Motor vehicles have been a great advancement in modern society, but have also been a major cause of injury and death.

Road deaths in industrialised countries have declined significantly in the last few decades. This reduction has occurred despite the increased number of drivers and distances travelled on the roads in this period.

We’ve been able to achieve these safety improvements and therefore reductions in deaths with the help of a wide variety of interventions.

For example, increased regulation in motor vehicle design standards, improved roads, seatbelt regulation, speed limits, drink driving deterrents and the education of drivers.

Despite the gains made, road traffic accidents remain a leading cause of death worldwide, and are a particular problem for developing countries. So there’s still much work to be done in this area.

Read more: A new approach to cut death toll of young people in road accidents

Public health has played a major role in the increased health and longevity we take for granted in the modern world. But it’s perhaps an area we don’t give much thought to.

One of the reasons public health gains may be under-appreciated is that they are marked by the absence of disease, which can often go unrecognised. For example, while it’s clear when a life has been saved by a medical intervention, it’s much less obvious when disease has been prevented.

– ref. Smallpox, seatbelts and smoking: 3 ways public health has saved lives from history to the modern day – https://theconversation.com/smallpox-seatbelts-and-smoking-3-ways-public-health-has-saved-lives-from-history-to-the-modern-day-128300

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lindenmayer, Professor, The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University

New South Wales’ Forestry Corporation will this week start “selective timber harvesting” from two state forests ravaged by bushfire on the state’s south coast.

The state-owned company says the operations will be “strictly managed” and produce timber for power poles, bridges, flooring and decking.

Similarly, the Victorian government’s logging company VicForests recently celebrated the removal of sawlogs from burnt forests in East Gippsland.

VicForests says it did not cut down the trees – they were cut or pushed over by the army, firefighters or road crews because they blocked the rood or were dangerous. The company said it simply removed the logs to put them “to good use”.

However the science on the impacts of post-fire logging is clear: it can significantly impair the recovery of burned ecosystems, badly affect wildlife and, for some animal species, prevent recovery.

We acknowledge that for safety reasons, some standing and fallen burnt trees must be removed after a fire. But wherever possible, they should remain in place.

Damaging effects

Hollows in fire-damaged trees and logs provide critical habitat for animal species trying to survive in, or recolonise, burned forests.

Detailed studies around the world over the past 20 years, including in Australia, have demonstrated the damage caused by post-fire logging.

Indeed, the research shows post-fire logging is the most damaging form of logging. Logging large old trees after a fire may make the forests unsuitable habitat for many wildlife species for up to 200 years.

Read more: Buzz off honey industry, our national parks shouldn’t be milked for money

Long-term monitoring data from extensive field surveys shows hollow-dependent mammals, such as the vulnerable greater glider, generally do not survive in areas burned and then logged. Research by the lead author, soon to be published, shows populations are declining rapidly in landscapes dominated by wood production.

Forests logged after a fire have the lowest bird biodiversity relative to other forests, including those that burned at high severity (but which remain unlogged). Critical plants such as tree ferns are all but eradicated from forests that have been burned and then logged.

Soils remain extensively altered for many decades after post-fire logging. This is a major concern because runoff into rivers and streams damages aquatic ecosystems and kills organisms such as fish.

A double disturbance

Fire badly disrupts forest ecosystems. Animals and plants then begin recovering, but most forests and the biota they support simply cannot deal with the second intense disturbance of logging so soon after a first one.

For example, young germinating plants are highly vulnerable to being flattened and destroyed by heavy logging machinery. And in an Australian context, post-fire logging makes no sense in the majority of eucalypt-dominated ecosystems where many tree species naturally resprout. This is an essential part of forest recovery.

Logs provide shade, moisture and shelter for plants, and rotting timber is food for insects – which in turn provide food for mammals and birds.

Read more: Logged native forests mostly end up in landfill, not in buildings and furniture

Living and dead trees are also important for fungi — a food source for many animals, including bandicoots and potoroos which have been heavily impacted by the fires.

Similarly on burnt private land, removing damaged and fallen trees will only hinder natural recovery by removing important animal habitat and disturbing the soil. If left, fallen trees will provide refuge for surviving wildlife and enable the natural recovery of forests.

While the sight of burnt timber can be disheartening, landholders should resist the urge to “clean up”.

It doesn’t add up

Research in North America suggests debris such as tree heads, branches and other vegetation left by post-fire logging not only hinders forest regeneration, but can make forests more prone to fire.

And the economics of logging, particular after a fire, is dubious at best. Many native forest logging operations, such as in Victoria’s East Gippsland, are unprofitable, losing millions of taxpayer dollars annually.

Read more: Yes, the Australian bush is recovering from bushfires – but it may never be the same

Timber is predominantly sold cheaply for use as woodchips and paper pulp and fire-damaged timber is of particularly poor quality. Even before the fires, 87% of all native forest logged in Victoria was for woodchips and paper pulp.

Post-fire logging certainly has no place in national parks. But for the reasons we’ve outlined, it should be avoided even in state forests and on private land. Million hectares of vegetation in Australia was damaged or destroyed this fire season. The last thing our forests need is yet more disturbance.

VicForests response: VicForests told The Conversation that timber currently being removed by VicForests, at the direction of the Chief Fire Officer, is from hazardous trees that were cut or knocked over to enable the Princes Highway to be re-opened.

It said the timber would be used for fence restoration, firewood and to support local mills “protecting jobs, incomes and families. It would otherwise be left in piles on the side of the highway”.

“Any further post-fire recovery harvesting will occur in consultation with government including biodiversity specialists and the conservation regulator, following careful assessment and protection of high conservation values,” VicForests said.

The company said post-fire recovery harvesting, particularly of fire-killed trees, does not increase fire risk.

“Sensitive harvesting including the retention of habitat trees and active re-seeding is more likely to result in a successfully regenerated forest and a supportive environment for threatened species. This regenerating forest will have the same fire risk as natural regeneration following bushfire.”

Forestry Corporation of NSW response: Forestry Corporation of NSW said in a statement that small-scale selective timber harvesting operation will begin on the south coast this week.

The company’s senior planning manager Dean Kearney said the Environment Protection Authority, with the input of scientific experts “has provided Forestry Corporation with site-specific conditions for selective timber harvesting operations in designated parts of Mogo and South Brooman State Forests. These areas were previously set aside for timber production this year but have now been impacted by fire.”

“Strictly-managed selective timber harvesting will help prevent the loss of some high-quality timber damaged by fire, including material that will be in high demand for rebuilding, while ensuring the right protections are in place for key environmental values, particularly wildlife habitat, as these forests begin regenerating,” he said.

“The harvesting conditions augment the already strict rule set in place for forest operations and include requirements to leave all unburnt forest untouched and establish even more stringent conditions to protect water quality, hollow-bearing trees and wildlife habitat.”

– ref. Logging is due to start in fire-ravaged forests this week. It’s the last thing our wildlife needs – https://theconversation.com/logging-is-due-to-start-in-fire-ravaged-forests-this-week-its-the-last-thing-our-wildlife-needs-132347

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Program Director, Household Finances, Grattan Institute

This morning the Grattan Institute releases its submission to the government’s retirement incomes review, a review called in anticipation of five annual increases in compulsory superannuation contributions, scheduled to begin in July 2021.

Our research shows the super increases aren’t necessary. For most Australians, retirement incomes are already adequate. Since higher super contributions will come at the expense of wages, the scheduled increases should be abandoned.

But there are big problems the review will need to confront.

Here are five changes that would tackle them.

1. Boost rent assistance

While most Australians are comfortable in retirement, the system is failing too many poorer Australians, especially low-income women and retirees who rent.

Senior Australians who rent privately are more likely to suffer financial stress than homeowners or renters in public housing. And it will get worse because young Australians on lower incomes are less likely to own homes than in the past.

The government’s priority should be boosting rent assistance, which has not kept pace with rent increases. Raising rent assistance by 40%, or roughly A$1,400 a year for singles, would cost just $300 million a year if it applied to pensioners, and another $1 billion a year if extended to other renters.

A common concern is that boosting rent assistance would lead to higher rents. But that’s unlikely: households would not be required to spend any of the extra income on rent, and most would not.

2. Ease the age pension asset test

While retirement incomes are adequate for most retirees, the age pension assets test excessively penalises people who save more for their retirement.

Before January 1, 2017 retirees with assets above the threshold lost $1.50 of pension per fortnight for every $1,000 of assets above the threshold. In 2017 the Coalition lifted the threshold but also lifted the withdrawal rate to $3 of pension per fortnight for each $1,000 of assets.

The changes resulted in very high effective marginal tax rates on retirement savings, so much so that a typical worker who saves an extra $1000 at age 40 increases their retirement income by only $25 each year, or $658 over 26 years of retirement, which is a negative return on money saved for decades.

Read more: Why pensioners are cruising their way around budget changes

The age pension withdrawal rate should be cut to $2.25 per fortnight for each $1,000 of assets above the threshold. This would cost the budget about $750 million a year.

For middle and high-income workers, this change would have a bigger impact on retirement incomes per government dollar expended than boosting compulsory super.

3. Boost Newstart

Newstart, together with the disability support pension, provides an important safety net for Australians who are unable to work right through to retirement age.

Yet while the age pension and disability support pension are indexed to wages, Newstart is not. It only climbs in line with inflation. It should be increased by $75 a week and then indexed to wages going forward.

This would cost a lot but it would help the growing legions of older Australians, many of them women, who find themselves among the long-term unemployed in the years leading up to retirement, or are forced to retire early. And it would lift many more younger Australians out of poverty.

4. Include the home in the pension assets test

Falling rates of home ownership mean we are at risk of creating an underclass of retirees who rent.

And our retirement incomes system makes this worse by favouring homeowners over renters. Once a person is retired, their home is treated differently to their other assets. Which is why $6 billion in pension payments go to people with homes worth more than $1 million.

It’s time for more of the value of the family home to be included in the pension assets test. Counting more of the home above some threshold (such as $500,000) would be fairer and would save the budget up to $2 billion a year.

No pensioner would be forced to leave their home. Pensioners with valuable homes could continue to stay at home and receive the pension under the Government’s pension loans scheme, which recovers debts only when homes are eventually sold.

5. Fix super tax breaks

Superannuation tax breaks cost a lot – tens of billions each year in foregone revenue, with half the benefits flowing to the top one fifth of income earners, who already have enough resources to fund their retirements.

And the costs are set to climb further as super balances climb. The cost of the earnings concessions alone is set to climb from $17.4 billion to $20.8 billion over the next four years.

Three reforms would keep them in check.

• Voluntary contributions from pretax income should be limited to $11,000 a year. This would save the budget about $1.7 billion a year.

• Contributions from post-tax income should be limited to $250,000 over a lifetime, or to $50,000 a year. It won’t save the budget much in the short term, but in the longer term it will plug a large hole in the tax system.

• Earnings in retirement – currently untaxed for people with superannuation balances less than $1.6 million – should be taxed at 15%, the same as super earnings before retirement. Doing so would save the budget about $2 billion per year at first, and much more in future.

These changes to super taxes free up money to help Australians who need help without hurting the retirement prospects of middle Australians.

Australia’s retirement incomes system works well, but there are things that need fixing.

The reforms we propose would make retirement fairer, save taxpayers’ money, and ensure that all Australians can enjoy a comfortable retirement free from poverty.

Read more: Think superannuation comes from employers’ pockets? It comes from yours

– ref. Forget more compulsory super: here are 5 ways to actually boost retirement incomes – https://theconversation.com/forget-more-compulsory-super-here-are-5-ways-to-actually-boost-retirement-incomes-132655

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

The Morrison government will use its procurement policy to encourage the recycling of plastics, as well as committing financial assistance for upgrading infrastructure to boost the capacity for this waste to be reused.

Scott Morrison will announce the initiatives to a national conference in Canberra on Monday that is looking at the challenge of dealing with this escalating and environmentally destructive problem. The meeting is attended by industry, government and community representatives.

The prime minister, who has previously highlighted better management of plastics waste as a priority for his government, will emphasise that for major change “the only way forward is in partnership – working with our neighbours; state, territory and local governments; industry, our manufacturing sector and supermarkets; waste operators, and with consumers and communities”.

In a speech circulated ahead of delivery he proposes “three pillars” for tackling the problem: taking responsibility for the waste; encouraging demand for recycled products; and expanding industry capability.

Plastics “are choking our oceans. Scientists estimate that in just 30 years’ time the weight of plastics in our oceans will exceed the weight of fish in our oceans. That’s appalling.

“Taking responsibility means recognising the problems we are contributing to – and it also means keeping faith with the Australian people who recycle,” Morrison says.

“Only 12% of plastic put out in the yellow bin for recycling is actually recycled. Australians don’t expect their waste to be exported to someone’s village or waterway.”

Morrison will meet state and territory leaders at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) next month to finalise a ban on the export of waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres.

He stresses this isn’t to ban the export of value-added recyclable materials.

Morrison says more investment is much needed in the recycling industry; this and collection systems are under “severe strain”. Investment is needed in “technological innovation that maximises the value of the recycled product and minimises the costs as well”. Only 8% of the $2.6 billion states and territories collected in waste levies over 2018-19 has been reinvested in infrastructure and technology.

“The Commonwealth stands ready to co-invest in these critical facilities with state and territory governments, and with industry”, he says. “We will invest with governments and with industry on a 1 to 1 to 1 basis.” Details will come closer to the May budget, Morrison said.

The waste sector employs 50,000 and generates more than $15 billion annually, Morrison says.

“For every 10,000 tonnes of waste sent to landfill, 2.8 direct jobs are created. But if we recycle the same waste, 9.2 direct jobs are created.

“According to the Australian Council of Recycling, recycling more domestically could create more than 5,000 new jobs.”

With a ban on waste plastic being exported, there will be more in Australia to reuse – which means finding ways of encouraging demand for recycled products. Both industry and government need to do this, Morrison says.

As the first of a number of measures the government will take, its procurement guidelines will be rewritten “to make sure every procurement undertaken by a Commonwealth agency considers environmental sustainability and use of recycled content as a factor in determining value for money”.

He instanced a number of examples of innovative recycling, These included “recycled plastic into asphalt … a one kilometre, two-lane stretch [of road] uses up to half a million plastic bags”, as well as into picnic tables, bollards and gardening products.

– ref. Morrison government will use purchasing power to encourage plastics recycling – https://theconversation.com/morrison-government-will-use-purchasing-power-to-encourage-plastics-recycling-132742

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Anderson, Professor of Sports Law, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne

With the announcement that China’s Sun Yang has been banned from swimming for eight years, FINA, the world governing swimming body, must take stock of how it oversees one of the most popular and high-profile of the Olympic sports ahead of this year’s Tokyo games.

It would now seem obvious that, taking the lead from athletics and tennis, FINA should establish an independent integrity unit to investigate and prosecute doping and similar offences.

In a decision announced Friday, the Court of Arbitration (CAS), sport’s self-styled world supreme court, confirmed that Sun would be banned from competitive swimming for eight years. His swimming future now rests largely on one final avenue of appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal.

Read more: Why drug cheats are still being caught seven years after the 2012 London Olympics

This has always been a big global story: Sun is one of the most successful swimmers of all time, and one of China’s most beloved sports stars. A three-time Olympic gold medallist, he has 11 world championship golds, and is second only to the legendary US swimmer Michael Phelps in men’s individual events.

It was at last year’s world championships in Korea that silver medallist, Australia’s Mack Horton, famously protested against Sun, during the podium ceremony for the 400 meters freestyle.

Horton’s protest related to the fact that Sun, having previously served a three-month ban for a doping infraction in 2014, had been involved in an incident with doping control officers in September 2018.

Having given a sample to the testers at his home, Sun became concerned about their conduct and accreditation. This concern eventually led to the vial containing Sun sample being smashed by one of the swimmer’s entourage.

Initially, Sun’s behaviour in this case merely attracted a reprimand. An investigation carried out by FINA concluded that, although Sun’s actions were incautious, they could be justified given the testers’ grave procedural errors and misconduct.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the global body for anti-doping standards, later took the view that FINA’s approach was overly lenient. WADA appealed to CAS and a public hearing was held in Switzerland in November.

Having deliberated on what they heard at that eleventh-hour hearing, which was initially marred by poor translation, the three arbitrators delivered a summary of their verdict last week.

Basically, CAS held that the procedural concerns Sun had about the testing process in September 2018 either did not occur or were not sufficiently compelling to justify tampering with the sample container. Given this was his second anti-doping infraction, an eight-year sanction applied.

It must be remembered the charge against Sun is that of tampering with a sample – it is not a charge or “conviction” relating to doping. Sun’s sample taken in September 2018 was never tested, and this seems to be the reason why the arbitrators have not decided to strip him of the medals he obtained at the world championships in 2019. In this, as with other aspects of the Sun decision, we must await the publication of the arbitrators’ full, reasoned award.

Sun now has until the end of March to lodge an appeal at the Swiss Federal Tribunal (SFT) and has already indicated that he will take that option. As it happens, on various technical grounds – one relating to an unsubstantiated claim of bias against WADA’s chief lawyer – Sun’s lawyers have already been to the SFT on three separate occasions. They will now likely go for a fourth time, and it is likely to end in disappointment.

He will not get a full re-hearing at the SFT, and the grounds of appeal will be limited to narrow procedural issues only. An example would be whether the CAS hearing in some way unfair – ironically, the fact that it was held in public at Sun’s request may tell against him here. Another consideration may be whether the sanction was disproportionate – given the eight-year ban is mandated in the World Anti-Doping Code, this ground would likely not succeed. One final consideration may be whether the poor translation service at the CAS hearing might be a ground of appeal – again, unlikely, given that it was Sun’s legal team that hired the translator.

Read more: Snubbing Chinese swimmer Sun Yang ignores the flaws in the anti-doping system

Arguably, Sun’s strongest point has always been the general one, outlined in the seminal CAS case of Quigley v UIT. It is that, while the principle of strict liability applies to athletes in anti-doping control, it should equally apply to testers to strictly comply with all administrative aspects of the anti-doping process. Whether the SFT would entertain an argument that goes right to heart of the current anti-doping policy globally is unlikely.

While Sun grapples with an effective end to his career and WADA, unsurprisingly, feels vindicated, FINA must now reflect on its governance of its sport.

Lately, it has had a fractious relationship with some of its leading participants who sought successfully, on threat of litigation, to compete in a privately funded international swimming league. An integrity commission would seem a vital next step.

The reaction to the Sun ban on social media from China has been predictably ferocious. One knock-on effect of the Sun decision may be a greater focus from countries such as China and Russia on the fact that, in terms of the nationality of those appointed to hear cases, CAS, sport’s supreme court, appears to be systemically Eurocentric in nature.

It seems almost certain that Sun will not compete at Tokyo 2020. Attention now moves at CAS and on doping in sport to the case against Russia and its athletes.

The reaction to the Sun verdict will be a mere ripple in a pool compared to that which will greet a similar verdict against Russia.

– ref. Sun Yang ban shows world swimming body must establish an integrity commission – https://theconversation.com/sun-yang-ban-shows-world-swimming-body-must-establish-an-integrity-commission-132738

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland

Happy February 29! It doesn’t come round very often, so make sure you enjoy it.

But why do we have these extra days? Well, if we didn’t, the seasons would gradually move around the calendar. Rather than midsummer in the southern hemisphere falling around December 21, it would arrive in January, then February, and so on. After a few centuries, the Australian summer would end up be in July!

But what exactly is a year? The simplest answer is the amount of time it takes for Earth to orbit the Sun. At school, we all learn that that is 365 days. Nice and simple, right?

There’s just one problem: there are several different definitions of a year.

Read more: It’s going to be a long summer’s day today, seriously

The sidereal year

The “sidereal year” is the classic classroom definition. It’s the time it takes Earth to complete one lap of the Sun and return to exactly the same place in its orbit, judged by the position of the Sun relative to the background stars.

But one sidereal year doesn’t take 365 days. Rather, it takes 365.256 days.

Then there’s another problem. In addition to spinning on its axis (which gives us day and night), our planet also wobbles. More accurately, Earth’s axis “precesses”, spinning around once every 26,000 years or so, like a wobbling spinning top.

This is important because the direction in which Earth’s axis points is what controls the seasons. When the southern hemisphere points away from the Sun, we experience our southern winter while the northern hemisphere sees summer, and then vice versa.

But the precession (wobbling) of Earth’s axis means that in 13,000 years’ time, the directions would be the opposite of today. Today, the South Pole is angled towards the Sun during the southern midsummer, but in 13,000 years it would be tilted away (midwinter) at the same place in Earth’s orbit.

This means that, over thousands of years, the location at which we would experience midwinter or midsummer in Earth’s orbit would change. In other words, if we tied our calendar to the sidereal year, the seasons would still shift through the calendar!

The tropical year

Fortunately, we have another way to define a year that can fix this problem. Instead of measuring the exact time it takes to orbit the Sun, we can instead measure the time between the vernal equinox of one year and the next.

The vernal equinox is the point in Earth’s orbit where the Sun moves from the southern hemisphere of our sky to the northern one. Each year it falls on or around March 21.

The time between one equinox and the next is called the “tropical year”, and is slightly shorter than the sidereal year. It comes in at 365.24219 days.

This difference is pretty small (about 20 minutes), but it equates to the amount that Earth’s axis has precessed in that time – just under 1/26,000 of a full lap.

Leaping into the future

But what does all this have to do with leap years? Well, because the tropical year is not exactly 365 days long, the date of the vernal equinox (and midsummer, midwinter, and any other seasonal event you care to name) will gradually drift through the calendar. If every year had 365 days, those events would gradually fall later and later in the calendar – by 0.24219 days per year.

That doesn’t sound like much, but it would mount up. After 100 years, the dates of those events would be 24 days later. The calendar would fall out of alignment with the seasons.

To remedy this, we have leap years, in which we add a single day to the length of the year. If we take a single four-year period, and work out the average length of the year, we get 365.25 days, which is pretty close to the real thing. But it still isn’t close enough.

The Julian calendar

This approximation worked well enough for a long time. In 45BC, the predecessor to the modern calendar began. Known as the Julian calendar, it was introduced by Julius Caesar.

The Julian calendar implemented a process of leap years: every fourth year, without fail, there would be an extra day at the end of February.

There were some problems implementing this new calendar – and for a few decades, leap years were incorrectly added every three years. Things were sorted out by 12AD, and from then on, every fourth year had a leap year.

But by the mid-1500s, errors were again beginning to mount. Remember that this approach gives an average year length of 365.25 days, whereas the true tropical year is 365.24219 days.

After one and a half millennia, this small difference had resulted in the dates for the solstices drifting by ten days through the calendar.

The Gregorian calendar

To fix this very slow drift, a new calendar was devised in the second half of the 16th century. Named after Pope Gregory XIII, the Gregorian calendar was released in 1582.

It shifted the dates of the year, moving the solstices back to their intended place. It then tweaked the way leap years were handled, to ensure those dates didn’t drift again in the future.

The small change was that leap years that were ‘“century years” (years ending in 00) had to be divisible by both 100 and 400. If the year can be divided by 100, but not by 400, it’s not a leap year.

Let’s take the century years 1900 and 2000 as examples. 1900 is divisible by 100, but not by 400. So 1900 wasn’t a leap year.

By contrast, 2000 can be divided by both 100 and 400, so it remained a leap year, and is called a “century leap year”.

So at the end of the 19th century, the sequence of leap years went: 1892, 1896, 1904, 1908. But at the end of the 20th century, leap years continued without a break (1992, 1996, 2000, 2004).

Read more: Wait a moment: 2016 goes a little longer thanks to a leap second

What does this mean? In the old Julian calendar, there were 100 leap years in every 400 years. But in the Gregorian calendar, we have just 97 for every 400 years.

This gives a remarkably good fit to the length of the tropical year. The average length of one year in the 400-year Gregorian cycle is 365.2425 days. That is almost (but not quite) exactly one tropical year – in fact, the two differ by just 26.8 seconds.

That’s close enough that we don’t have to worry about our seasons shifting in the calendar for thousands of years to come.

– ref. How a seasonal snarl-up in the mid-1500s gave us our strange rules for leap years – https://theconversation.com/how-a-seasonal-snarl-up-in-the-mid-1500s-gave-us-our-strange-rules-for-leap-years-132659

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Mercer, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, Curtin University

Review: Leviathan, directed by Yaron Lifschitz. Circa in collaboration with Co:3 Australia, MAXIMA Circus and CircusWA for Perth Festival.

As the audience takes their seats, two feet poke out from beneath the curtain.

In hindsight, it’s the first trick they play on us, lulling us with this image of a human body involved in the ordinary business of lying down.

Things get complicated fast. The single figure is joined by a cast of about 40 on a vast stage filled with discarded party streamers. It’s as if we’ve arrived too late for a fancy dress party. There’s an astronaut, a king, an assortment of other costumes.

Just as quickly as it appears, the party is replaced by a stunning feat of physical derring-do: a body standing on top of a body, standing on top of another body.

A great height, and a stomach-dropping fall.

For the next 80 minutes, Leviathan progresses through a melange of bodies moving through space. Transforming shapes, they morph from humans to totems to mythical creatures (perhaps the leviathans of the title) back to humans. From extraordinary to ordinary and back again.

Each sequence stands on its own while also seeming to build on what came before. At its most basic level, Leviathan is a series of bodies climbing up and climbing down, falling and getting up again, but the work’s cumulative effect evokes an almost contemplative, trance-like reverie in the viewer.

Playing with scale

Directed by Yaron Lifschitz for Brisbane’s Circa Ensemble in collaboration with three West Australian companies – Co:3 Australia, MAXIMA Circus and CircusWA – Leviathan is a highly accomplished work and a one-of-a-kind collaboration.

Casts of this size are a rare treat and a great outcome for any festival. Leviathan – in process, form and content – speaks directly to Perth Festival’s celebration of “our town, our place and our Festival”. Bringing together four companies means the cast members range from children to young adults to adults, and the sense of on-stage community is palpable.

Dressed in an eclectic array of contemporary streetwear they could have been any of the (mostly) young audience members. I could have sworn I’d seen one of them leaning against a street sign on my way into the theatre.

Community underpins Lifschitz’s vision for the piece. In the program he refers to the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’ book Leviathan as inspiration:

A monster king rising up out of the sea whose body is constituted by these tiny little people – the populace.

Taking Hobbes’ exploration of power, the individual and society, Lifschitz explores individual freedom and the responsibility each of us has to be part of a community by acknowledging our interdependence. He does so by creating a performance that moves between extraordinary individual feats and startling images of the mass at work.

It is a repeated motif, but one that stays vivid and fresh in the hands of this extraordinary creative team and cast.

Somewhere between contemporary circus and dance, Leviathan moves between exquisitely precise choreography and kinaesthetic improvisation, between union and seeming chaos.

When the party space transforms, it is possible to imagine a human chessboard that becomes a school playground that becomes a prison. The associations flow free and fast. At points throughout, an overhead perspective of the performers is provided via a live-feed projection at the top of the stage: the kaleidoscope of possibilities expands further.

Read more: Sequins and symphonies: how opera ran away with the circus

In a show full of many extraordinary physical feats of strength and dexterity there is an astonishing duet between a young woman in a fluoro-green tank top and a young man in fluoro-pink shoes.

Performed with physical and emotional intensity, he seems to lift and manipulate her with just his hands placed on her face. Just when our eyes tell us he’s lifting her it becomes apparent that her strength is doing just as much of the work. It is one of many tricks of light, time, space and physical ability that cause a literal gasp in the audience as it comes to a momentarily terrifying then stunning conclusion. The work of both performers here is truly mesmerising.

The cast is characterised by a compelling seriousness of purpose. For the majority of the performance they are an anonymous mass, as the lighting celebrates the imprint of their bodies in space, rather than their faces.

However, towards the end, there is a moment of direct eye-to-eye connection with the audience as each of them gives a final straight-to-camera curtain call.

It beautifully serves the work’s higher purpose.

Leviathan plays at the Regal Theatre until March 1.

– ref. Leviathan review: Circa’s new production explores the ordinary, extraordinary mass of humanity – https://theconversation.com/leviathan-review-circas-new-production-explores-the-ordinary-extraordinary-mass-of-humanity-132270

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Bailey, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland

If you’re hot and sticky even before your daily commute, you might ask why you sweat so much.

Sweating is usually the body’s way of stopping you overheating. But for some people, sweating becomes a problem. Either they sweat for no obvious reason or (as Prince Andrew admitted last year) not at all.

So why do some people sweat more than others? And what can you do about excess sweating?

Read more: Anhidrosis: why some people – apparently like Prince Andrew – just can’t sweat

Remind me again, why do we sweat?

Humans need to regulate their internal body temperature to keep it constant, even when the environmental temperature rises, perhaps on a hot day, sitting in a hot-tub or running for the bus.

That’s because a rise in internal body temperature can lead to our organs overheating, fatigue, heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

Preventing severe heat gain requires a careful balance between the heat our body produces (from everyday metabolism), heat from the environment and the heat our body loses.

Read more: The skin is a very important (and our largest) organ: what does it do?

Our bodies are well-designed for this. We have special temperature sensors in our skin and central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) that send signals to the body’s thermostat in the brain to alert it to increases in body temperature.

The body’s largest organ, the skin, is also designed to remove heat from the body. The most noticeable way is losing heat via evaporating sweat.

Read more: Curious Kids: What happens in the body when we sweat?

How does sweating cool us down?

When our skin or core body temperature rises sufficiently, the thermostat in the brain sends impulses via our central nervous system to increase blood flow to the skin. The thermostat also activates the sweat glands.

Our sweat glands release droplets onto our skin that become vapour when the blood flowing through the skin passes underneath.

As the sweat vaporises, energy (in the form of heat) passes into the environment, cooling the blood. This cooled blood gets circulated back to the heart and brain, and cools our core body temperature.

This is why a day in the sun can feel so draining. Your body is working much harder and using much more energy to keep you cool.

By preventing our organs from overheating, sweat not only keeps us healthy, it also allows us to enjoy (or tolerate) the hot Australian summer.

So it’s important to stay hydrated on a hot day so your body can produce and replace the volume of sweat necessary to keep you cool.

OK, but why do I sweat so much?

You might find yourself sweating more or less than usual for a number of reasons, other than it being a hot day.

Exercise

Exercise improves our ability to produce sweat and keep cool. People who exercise regularly (particularly in the heat) can produce more sweat during exercise. This helps our bodies perform longer, with less physiological strain.

So many of the Australian Olympic athletes will undergo a period of heat acclimatisation in the lead up to Tokyo 2020.

Read more: Why is Japan’s Olympic marathon shifting cities to avoid the heat? A sports physiologist explains

Stress

Ever notice you become sweaty when you are stressed? A different type of sweat gland, the apocrine sweat glands, are associated with hair follicles and often respond to emotional stress.

This type of sweat combines with bacteria on your skin and causes body odour.

Menopause

Up to 75% of women experience acute bouts of excessive sweating during menopause, called a hot flush.

The amount of sweat produced during a two to three minute hot flush can be similar to the amount produced during exercise.

Most people think hot flushes are caused by increases in core body temperature. But our research suggests this might not be the case.

Drinking alcohol

Having a couple of drinks with friends may also increase the sweat response. Alcohol raises your heart rate and causes the blood vessels in your skin to relax and widen. This increases skin redness and your sweat rate, which can actually lead to decreases in body temperature.

So, what can I do about it?

Excessive sweating (hyperhidrosis) can happen in unusual situations such as in a cooler climate or with seemingly no cause.

Although it can be embarrassing and uncomfortable, there are ways to treat it, which you can discuss with your doctor.

One option is to use an antiperspirant with aluminium or topical aluminium salts, which blocks the sweat glands from releasing sweat onto the skin.

Read more: Health Check: do men really sweat more than women?

A longer-term option may be injecting Botulinum toxin (commonly known as Botox) into the skin. This paralyses the injected area (such as the armpits, hands and feet) and prevents the activation of sweat glands.

Other options include using low frequency electrical stimulation (iontophoresis), prescription drugs and although controversial, surgery.

For menopausal women, we have shown closely supervised exercise training can improve temperature regulation, leading to fewer and less severe hot flushes.

This training involved 16 weeks of supervised, progressive moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, such as treadmill and cycling exercise, for up to one hour for three to five days a week.

In a nutshell

In the end, sweating is usually our body’s natural way to protect us from overheating. But if excess sweating is a problem, see your doctor who will outline which treatment options are best for you.

– ref. Why do I sweat so much? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-i-sweat-so-much-131135

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maggie Tonkin, Senior Lecturer, English and Creative Writing, University of Adelaide

Review: Dance Nation, directed by Imara Savage. State Theatre Company South Australia and Belvoir for the Adelaide Festival

Dance is at the heart of playwright Clare Barron’s Dance Nation, from the resolutely upbeat ensemble number that opens the show to the poignant solo that ends it.

We are in the hyper-competitive, vapid and vulgar pre-pubescent dance culture of the TV series Dance Moms, thankfully mostly absent from the Australian dance scene.

Larissa McGowan’s choreography mercilessly recreates the cut-throat world of American competition dance and is as pivotal in conveying the narrative arcs of its characters as Barron’s script and Imara Savage’s ebullient direction.

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2019, Dance Nation reveals Barron’s fearlessness in tackling the under-explored dramatic territory of young girls entering puberty, but is not without flaws.

Dance teacher Pat’s dance troupe is launching a campaign to win a national dance competition, and Pat’s claim to glory is a dance routine of jaw-dropping cheesiness: a jazz ballet paean to Mahatma Gandhi. The dancers, decked out in metallic pastel unitards, disport themselves around Gandhi seated on a glittery disco version of a golden lotus, to With Arms Wide Open.

Apart from bringing the house down with its conceptual incongruity, this hilarious number reveals Pat, with his delusions of artistic profundity, to be oblivious to the damage he is doing to his charges.

Pat urges his dancers to channel their inner Gandhi and meditate on the suffering of the world, while utterly blind to the suffering under his own nose. Played with a tense doggedness by Mitchell Butel in his first role since taking on the directorship of the State Theatre Company, Pat is the embodiment of the cliché-spouting coach who vicariously realises his own ambitions by pushing his students to win no matter what the cost.

It is the cost of this competitiveness that propels the action.

Only one dancer can be selected for the solo. When Pat unexpectedly bestows the role on Zuzu (always second to her bestie Amina), he opens up a repressed rivalry. Both girls dream of becoming dancers, but Amina is more gifted and more ambitious. When the opportunity arises, she usurps Zuzu’s place and wins the prize that will launch her professional career.

The secret lives of girls

One of the conceits of the play is the preteen girls are played by grown women. Chika Ikogwe owns the role of Zuzu, ably conveying her vulnerability and insightfulness.

Although she makes the most of the part, Yvette Lee’s Amina has to work with the weakest aspect of the script. According to Barron’s program notes, the play’s feminist intention is to validate female ambition, but the unlikeability of the only “successful” character undermines this.

While the other girls profess they “love” Amina, they obviously don’t like her much. In the flash-forward at the end it’s clear the one truly ambitious girl, the one who goes on “winning and winning”, is destined for a lonely life.

Barron’s writing of character is generally underdeveloped, and Amina’s success undercuts the play’s message. But this flaw is balanced by the play’s outrageous depiction of girls grappling with emerging sexuality and power.

Read more: Friday essay: scarlet ribbons – the huge history of big hair bows

In true adolescent fashion, the six girls and one dorky boy, Luke (nicely played by Tim Overton), are fixated on sex.

Verbal gags on menstrual blood are interspersed with earnest discussions of masturbation and circumcision. The language is defiantly crude. As Ashlee, Amber McMahon delivers a monologue about her own sexual power (and mathematical brilliance), morphing into an almost demonic possession. It’s a scene-stealer, in which McMahon is absolutely terrific, and the culmination of the play’s powerful celebration of girl power.

There is an undercutting of the real in several shifts from present to future, the girls carrying the victories and traumas of their pubescence into adulthood. This transition is nicely encapsulated as Connie (Emma Harvie) and Sofia (Tara Morice) admit their lifelong struggles with depression.

Jonathon Oxlade’s set comprises a dance studio with mirrored walls where daily reality merges with fantasy sequences. The mirrors become windows: revealing mother figures (all played by Elena Carapetis) urging on their progeny; revealing the trophies and triumphs of past teams.

Dance Nation is unsubtle and flawed, but the uniformly terrific cast and the exuberant energy of this production make it well worth seeing.

Dance Nation is at the Scott Theatre, Adelaide, until March 7. Then Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, March 14 – April 12.

– ref. Dance Nation review: an outrageous depiction of girls grasping their emerging sexuality and power – https://theconversation.com/dance-nation-review-an-outrageous-depiction-of-girls-grasping-their-emerging-sexuality-and-power-132350