Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philippa Martyr, Lecturer, Pharmacology, Women’s Health, School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Western Australia

You might remember how Gwyneth Paltrow’s health and well-being website Goop was selling “medical” products with no proven measurable health benefits.

Decluttering expert Marie Kondo may be going down the same path.

Kondo now has a tuning fork and rose quartz crystal for sale in her online shop for US$75 (around A$110).

Striking the fork against the crystal creates pure tones that help to restore a sense of balance […] The rose quartz crystal in this set is associated with purification, connection and comfort.

Kondo’s decluttering approach draws on her personal blend of Zen Buddhist and traditional Shinto beliefs. Traditional Buddhism sees sound and vibration as building blocks of the universe. Buddhists believe chanting creates a healing resonance and reverberation that benefits the universe.

Much media discussion has focused on how Kondo’s decluttering seems at odds with running an online store. But her tuning fork does appear to reflect the philosophy that underpins her decluttering.

Her tuning fork is also part of a long history of humans using vibrations to understand our world, to treat illness, and to improve well-being. So why are we so fascinated with using vibrations to heal? And is there any evidence to back it?

Read more: Time for a Kondo clean-out? Here’s what clutter does to your brain and body

From vibrations in the womb

Human beings have always been instinctively drawn to vibration. It may go back to our experiences in the womb, where we live daily with our mother’s heartbeat and vibrating breathing.

The idea of the music of the spheres — that the universe produces vibrations that are harmonic and hold everything in place — goes back to the ancient Greek thinker Pythagoras.

But it wasn’t until the 1960s that English osteopath Sir Peter Guy Manners developed tuning fork therapy. He believed sound vibrations could provide comfort and healing for a range of conditions: chronic inflammation, arthritis, and even bacterial infections. This was based on ideas that were common to Western alternative practitioners and traditional Eastern practitioners.

These practitioners argued all created things, including the body, are a network of living energies. These energies could be disrupted and restored by different interventions into this force field.

You will find this idea today in acupuncture (qi), Ayurvedic medicine (prana), and reiki energy healing.

Read more: From Ayurveda to biomedicine: understanding the human body

Certainly, energy is real and used in modern medicine all the time. Lasers, electricity and radiation are all forms of energy. Magnetic energy and sound vibrations also appear to have some therapeutic properties. However, we don’t fully understand these yet.

The existence of other forms of physical energy like qi or prana or “biofield energy” is unverifiable. We can’t prove scientifically they exist, even though many schools of healing believe in them and build their practice around them.

Back to the tuning fork

Kondo’s tuning fork is tuned to a frequency of 4,096 hertz. The idea is that you strike the crystal with the fork, and this sets up a reverberation of 4,096Hz in the crystal.

Quartz is an unusual mineral. It acts like a tuning fork all by itself: it transforms energy applied to it into mechanical energy, which keeps the quartz vibrating almost indefinitely.

This is very useful if you are making watches. A watch battery can run a charge through the quartz and keep it oscillating. This is why quartz movement watches are incredibly accurate until the quartz begins to deteriorate.

The Kondo tuning fork also comes with a choice of three types of quartz: clear, rose, and smoky quartz, each with different apparent effects.

However, there’s no scientific evidence to suggest crystals are associated with anything other than different structures and colours. There is also no scientific evidence connecting particular quartz frequencies with health or psychological effects. Crystals can’t really do anything by themselves except refract light.

But if you believe strongly enough that crystals are healing you — or are bringing you confidence and joy or peace or stability — then there may be a placebo effect. If you culturally associate healing or peace with a particular type of crystal, then it may help you — but again only because you believe in it. Crystals are also comparatively harmless.

Vibrators, weight loss and massage devices

With the industrial revolution, more doctors in the United Kingdom and Europe began to integrate electricity — known then as “medical galvanism” — into their treatments. This included using electricity to stimulate wasted muscles, which actually works, as does shocking a stopped heart back into action. So it’s not surprising doctors also tried to use vibration as a therapy.

In the late 19th century, it’s alleged doctors used vibrators to treat women with “hysteria”. However, this may be a myth, and a salacious one at that. There’s no real evidence to suggest this was normal practice, or even experimental practice.

Read more: Vibrators and hysteria: how a cure became a female sexual icon

Today, vibrators have moved into the sexual entertainment industry (and the home). But “massage devices” are still sold by mainstream retailers.

Then there’s the long history of why your hairdresser gives you a scalp massage while shampooing and conditioning. At the beginning of the 20th century, Australian hair salons used very popular vibrating devices to provide customers with “vibro-massage”. This was believed to keep away grey hair and stop hair loss.

Vibrating pads and belts were also popular for decades because they promised easy weight loss with no effort. However, it’s not possible to lose weight unless you are actually doing the moving, rather than the machine — that’s what burns the kilojoules.

This hasn’t stopped “fitness” vibrating devices and belts still being marketed enthusiastically today.

There’s also the idea about vibrating your whole body to lose weight at the gym. But again this hasn’t been fully tested and verified.

Read more: Whole body vibration: a genuine therapy or just another ‘weight loss’ fad?

As you read about these products, it’s possible to see the same appeal to unverifiable energies. These can’t be proven to exist. But this also means they cannot be proven not to exist.

Practitioners of this so-called “energy medicine” like to appeal to quantum theory to explain and legitimise their therapies.

The idea of “quantum healing” is that electrical and electromagnetic activity takes place at a subatomic and molecular level to bring about healing in individual cells in the body.

We have no equipment specialised enough to detect these changes in individual cells in the human body, or to measure it over time. So it can’t be proven. It also can’t be distinguished from the placebo effect.

We also need to remember there’s a difference between energy and vibrations we can’t perceive naturally (such as from oscillating crystals), and those we can perceive. Most people can tolerate or even enjoy a small amount of vibration, but too much can induce discomfort, nausea, or even injury.

Ultimately, if you want to buy Marie Kondo’s crystals and tuning forks, feel free, but buyer beware. Or you can choose to use healing techniques that have been shown to make a real difference in people’s health at a much lower cost. Some of these, like walking and singing, are free.

– ref. From Marie Kondo’s tuning fork to vibrators for ‘hysteria’: a short, shaky history of curing with vibrations – http://theconversation.com/from-marie-kondos-tuning-fork-to-vibrators-for-hysteria-a-short-shaky-history-of-curing-with-vibrations-127443

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Linda Newman, Associate Professor, University of Newcastle

Many parents and educators agree children need to take risks. In one US study, 82% of the 1,400 parents surveyed agreed the benefits of tree-climbing outweighed the potential risk of injury.

Parents cited benefits including perseverance, sharing, empowerment and self-awareness. One parent thought it allowed her son to learn what his whole body was capable of.

Read more: Should I let my kid climb trees? We asked five experts

Taking risks and succeeding can motivate children to seek further achievements. Failing can lead to testing new ideas, and finding personal capabilities and limits. In this way, children can overcome fears and build new skills.

We mentored a group of educators in a research project trialling how to best introduce kids to risk.

Parents can use some of the lessons these educators learnt to help their own children take more risks and challenge themselves.

What was the research?

Adamstown Community Early Learning and Preschool (NSW) wanted to conduct research around risky play. “Risky play” is a term which has evolved from a trend to get more children out into nature to experience challenging environments.

Adamstown wanted to find out whether adult intervention to promote safe risk-taking would play a significant role in developing children’s risk competence.

Educators engaged children in conversations about risk, asked prompting questions and helped them assess potential consequences.

The Adamstown research built on 2007 Norwegian research that identified six categories of risky play:

• play at great heights, where children climb trees or high structures such as climbing frames in a playground

• play at high speed, such as riding a bike or skateboarding down a steep hill or swinging fast

• play with harmful tools, like knives or highly supervised power tools to create woodwork

• play with dangerous elements, such as fire or bodies of water

• rough and tumble play, where children wrestle or play with impact, such as slamming bodies into large crash mats

• play where you can “disappear”, where children can feel they’re not being watched by doing things like enclosing themselves in cubbies built of sheets or hiding in bushes (while actually being surreptitiously supervised by an adult).

The educators examined their practices in these areas to see how and whether they were engaging children in risky play, and how children were responding.

Here are five lessons educators learnt that parents can apply at home.

1. Have real conversations with children (don’t just give them instructions)

Adamstown educators found children were more likely to attempt risky play when adults talked to them about planning for, and taking, risks.

Parents can use similar strategies with their children, helping them question what they are doing and why.

Phrases like “be careful” don’t tell children what to do. Instead, say things like

That knife is very sharp. It could cut you and you might bleed. Only hold it by the handle and cut down towards the chopping board.

Equally, praise with meaning, using phrases like

You cut the cake, thinking about how you held the knife and didn’t slip or cut yourself. Well done!

It is important for children to provide insight into their own problem solving. You could ask their thoughts on what might happen if they used the knife incorrectly or what safety measures they could put in place. This will help develop their risk competence.

2. Introduce risk gradually

Allow your children to try new things by slowly increasing the levels of difficulty.

At Adamstown, a process of introducing children to fire spanned nine months. First – on the advice of an early childhood education consultant – they introduced tea-light candles at meal times. This then moved to a small fire bowl in the sandpit, before children were introduced to a large open fire pit.

Read more: Ensuring children get enough physical activity while being safe is a delicate balancing act

The fire pit is now used for many reasons. In winter, children sit around it in a circle and tell stories. Educators show them cooking skills, referencing the ways Australia’s First Nations People cook. The fire pit is also used to create charcoal for art.

Children have been made aware of the safe distance they need to keep and about the potential hazard of smoke inhalation.

During the research process, as children were introduced to more risk, there were no more injuries than before and all were minor. There were also no serious incidents such as broken bones, or events requiring immediate medical attention.

3. Assume all your children are competent – regardless of gender

Adamstown educators were surprised to discover that, although they weren’t excluding girls from risky play, the data indicated they challenged and invited participation more often with boys.

Parents may hold intrinsic biases they are not necessarily aware of. So, check yourself to see if you are:

• allowing boys to be more independent

• assuming boys are more competent or girls don’t really want to take as many risks

• dressing girls in clothes that limit their freedom to climb

• saying different things to boys and girls.

4. Be close-by but allow children to have a sense of autonomy

Children don’t always want to be supervised. Search for opportunities to allow them to feel as if they are alone, or out of sight. Be close-by, but allow them to think they are playing independently.

5. Discuss risk at times that don’t directly involve it

When walking together to the shops, talk about the risks involved in crossing roads, such as fast cars. You can note safe and unsafe situations as well as encouraging your child to notice these as you go about your daily life. This can also be done in relaxed situations like in the bath.

This way, when the time comes for your child to learn a new skill like crossing the road alone, they have already had some opportunity to consider measures to keep themselves safe in a non-stressful situation.

If your child has a fall or other mishap, when everything is settled again, ask your child about why it happened and how they might suggest it could be prevented next time.

Read more: Kids learn valuable life skills through rough-and-tumble play with their dads

This article was written with Kate Higginbottom, Service Director and Nominated Supervisor at Adamstown Community Early Learning and Preschool Centre.

The Adamstown centre was part of a larger research project, in which four Australian early childhood centres in Newcastle took part as practitioner researchers.

– ref. Five ways parents can help their kids take risks – and why it’s good for them – http://theconversation.com/five-ways-parents-can-help-their-kids-take-risks-and-why-its-good-for-them-120576

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Lawson, Honorary Associate Professor, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

In the year since the Australian government created the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC), its bond aggregator, AHBA, has raised funds for affordable housing providers, allowing them to refinance loans under better conditions. Its first, A$315 million bond issue was in March. The second A$315 million bond issue this week offers providers 2.07% for ten-year interest-only loans.

The NHFIC has released its first annual report. So what progress has been made? And what could be done better?

Read more: Australia’s social housing policy needs stronger leadership and an investment overhaul

Providers get better loans

Community housing providers are certainly getting finance through the NHFIC on much better terms than their previous short-term bank loans. An example is BlueCHP’s $A70 million ten-year loan.

Borrowers’ terms should improve further as the market for quality, government-guaranteed bonds grows. This has been the experience of Swiss government-backed intermediary EGW. This month, its 62nd bond issue of CHF195 million (A$289 million) had all-in borrowing costs of 0.32% p.a. (only slightly more than the government bond) over 20 years.

Read more: Government guarantee opens investment highway to affordable housing

A good time to invest directly in new housing

To be even more effective the NHFIC needs to go beyond refinancing loans to support long-term investment in building much-needed affordable and green housing. With construction in the doldrums, experts are calling for a second Social Housing Initiative to meet critical housing needs and provide jobs. The first initiative stimulated the construction sector and the wider economy, secured 14,000 skilled jobs and inspired innovative design.

With interest rates for government borrowing near zero, the NHFIC’s impact could be maximised if coupled with long-term public investment – tied to performance targets – as exemplified by Scotland.

Many countries – including Finland, the UK, Austria and France – have long-term programs that bridge the funding gap to make green social housing a reality. Clear guidelines and responsible oversight guide direct equity investment.

AHURI has helped develop the Affordable Housing Assessment Tool to estimate the number and location of dwellings required, as well as the most effective ways of funding affordable housing.

Read more: Australia needs to triple its social housing by 2036. This is the best way to do it

The approach taken by the Housing Finance and Development Centre of Finland is widely considered Europe’s most effective. It’s an “expert partner, developer and moderniser of housing and promotes ecologically sustainable, high-quality and reasonably priced housing”.

Finland has a clear national strategy in response to well-researched market challenges. The Finnish model provides tailored grants and interest rate subsidies and selectively applies a government guarantee to drive long-term investment in affordable housing. This ranges from homelessness prevention, student housing and shared ownership for young starters to affordable home ownership and supported accommodation for the aged.

Not all social landlords qualify

Only registered not-for-profit providers that comply with the National Regulatory System for Community Housing can get a loan through the NHFIC. A review of the system is under way.

In Europe, social bonds are open to providers that satisfy basic criteria: be not-for-profit and for a social purpose, meet local needs, promote social inclusion and apply affordable rent-to-income ratios.

Despite the obvious need in Australia, NHFIC funding excludes public housing, which is also constrained by caps on public investment.

In the UK, public investment has been lifted after decades of constraint. This has generated a flurry of social house building, particularly in Scotland.

Good regulation is vital

Scotland, Finland, Switzerland and Austria are particularly careful to ensure only not-for-profit organisations with a social purpose can use special purpose funds. Australia’s regulatory system also needs to ensure social bonds serve a social purpose. For instance, the Water Bank Affordable Housing Bond has very specific guidelines on the type of provider, rent regime, household eligibility and income allocation.

Most importantly, regulation protects funds from extraction by shareholders – public or private.

Revolving funds are the lifeblood of well-maintained and growing social housing. Operating surpluses (such as savings from NHIFC refinancing or sales of social dwellings) are used for maintaining and renovating housing, or building more of it, as in Scotland and the Netherlands. They also ensure rent increases are manageable for tenants following renovations and improvements, as in Denmark and Austria.

Governments can also revolve public loan repayments to sustain supply programs, as in Austria and Finland. Even in Slovakia, the scene of mass housing privatisation in the 1990s, far-sighted policymakers established a revolving fund to ensure owners and tenants live in the best-maintained former Soviet housing today.

Board expertise matters too

The Hayne Royal Commission stressed the vital role of boards in ensuring the good conduct of their organisations and quality outcomes for stakeholders. In the case of the NHFIC, its board must have a range of relevant skills.

Land development, infrastructure and real estate experts dominate the relatively small NHFIC board. It lacks capabilities in the corporation’s core tasks of banking (credit risk assessment), treasury management, housing policy, not-for-profit regulation and development finance. The term of the only member experienced in social housing expires in 2021.

The boards of similar bodies overseas, such as Switzerland, Ireland and the UK, have capabilities in affordable housing policy, not-for-profit housing provision, public banking and treasury management.

Most boards also include representatives of governments and regulators. Both are missing from the NHFIC board.

Missing pieces of the puzzle

AHURI and the Affordable Housing Working Group have long argued that, beyond efficient financing, social housing requires other key conditions for growth. The working group recommended:

… the Commonwealth and State and Territory governments progress initiatives aimed at closing the funding gap, including through examining the levels of direct subsidy needed for affordable low-income rental housing, along with the use of affordable housing targets, planning mechanisms, tax settings, value-adding contributions from affordable housing providers and innovative developments to create and retain stock.

AHURI research has found the most effective policy levers are pro-social land policy (involving purposeful land banking and regulatory planning), needs-based direct equity investment (nuanced to match needs, land and construction costs), efficient revolving loans and not-for-profit management.

Without these features, the government will miss its own targets and underinvest in this much-needed social infrastructure. Both the precariously housed and productivity growth in the wider economy will suffer.

Read more: Is social housing essential infrastructure? How we think about it does matter

3 recommendations

We suggest the following:

1. Develop key indicators focused on the number of additional affordable dwellings and the discount to market rents achieved across different submarkets. Targets should be derived from a national housing strategy to guide the NHFIC, its corporate plan and the board’s KPIs.

2. Design a nuanced capital investment program to drive construction of green, social housing together with NHFIC loans that deliver more than refinancing.

3. Benchmark NHFIC performance against similar guaranteed bond issues, all-in loan costs and intermediary running costs and governance expertise. This would reassure government and the affordable housing sector about its cost-effectiveness.

The NHFIC is an innovative and promising initiative. It is one bright light in an otherwise bleak policy landscape. It could shine even more brightly when combined with complementary funding and land policies to end homelessness and ensure access to affordable housing for all.

– ref. How 1 bright light in a bleak social housing policy landscape could shine more brightly – http://theconversation.com/how-1-bright-light-in-a-bleak-social-housing-policy-landscape-could-shine-more-brightly-126922

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

Australia’s system of childcare support is pretty good.

It ensures high-quality care is provided to a large number of children, it is targeted through income-based subsidies, and it is attentive to the needs of disadvantaged children and families.

But it has significant weaknesses.

It is extremely complex, with four different rates of subsidy based on the type of care involved, six different income thresholds plus a sliding scale for how household income affects the subsidy, an annual cap of $10,373 per child for households earning more than $188,163, and an activity test to determine eligibility.

Worse, many families find it hard to get good childcare. Children are added to waiting lists from birth.

Read more: New childcare policy still leaves vulnerable families behind

And, as the Productivity Commission and others have pointed out, the sliding income scale and caps can mean that a parents looking to expand their working hours from 3 days to 4 days a week can face effective marginal tax rates approaching 100%.

This is not a good way to give parents choice about whether to work inside or outside of the home. By restricting (mainly female) choice it restricts the potential size of the workforce.

And that, in turn, contributes to the gender pay gap. On average, women earn only 86% of what men do.

Time out of the workforce is one of the key reasons.

How to do it

This week the New Economic Policy Initiative at the University of NSW launched a report coauthored by Rosalind Dixon, Melissa Vogt and myself entitled (Un)Taxing Childcare .

Our proposal would allow households who want to to continue to use the current arrangements without modification. Household twho wanted to forego the current arrangements could instead receive a tax deduction for childcare expenses of up to A$60,000 per year.

The money could be spent on centre-based childcare, home-based care, or a nanny.

In two-parent households that took advantage of it, each parent would be able to deduct 50% of the cost at their marginal rate up to the limit.

High earners would gain a lot…

Modelling of the plan by Ben Phillips of the Australian National University finds our policy would leave more than 205,000 households better off – one in five households with children. The ability to pick systems means none would be worse off.

The average couple with children would be $618 per year better off. Highest-earning households would benefit the most, with an average benefit for the top fifth of $1,080 per year.

But the benefit for the second bottom fifth would also be high, at $626 per year, adding 1.9% to their disposable incomes.

Objections will include the skew of benefits toward higher earners, an initial hit to budget of $608 million per year, and the possibility that the deduction will allow private providers to push up prices.

…but the economy would gain the most

Against them needs to be set the boost in the size of the potential workforce big enough to make the budget cost pay for itself, and an increase in the options available to parents considering returning to work.

We estimate that if half of all eligible households took up the tax deduction option the economic benefit from additional work would amount to $3.9 billion per year, which is about the output of the entire Australian dairy industry.

Read more: Election FactCheck Q&A: does the government spend more on negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts than on child care or higher education?

The hybrid nature of our proposal means that low earners who stayed on the existing scheme would be no worse off.

But the economy would be more vibrant, skills that have been built up would be retained and enhanced, and the gender pay gap could narrow.

– ref. Vital Signs. Untaxing childcare is a bold idea that seems unfair, but might benefit us all – http://theconversation.com/vital-signs-untaxing-childcare-is-a-bold-idea-that-seems-unfair-but-might-benefit-us-all-127430

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

Mary Ann Evans took the pseudonym “George Eliot” because she wanted to be taken seriously as a writer.

Other female authors – Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, for example – had penned work under their own names, but Evans feared that if her identity was discovered her books would be dismissed as “light” and “sentimental”.

Astonishingly, in an age of patriarchy, this was not the case.

Eliot’s reputation has grown steadily in the 200 years since her birth. And her Middlemarch (1871-2) is often claimed to be the greatest novel in the English language.

Eliot’s “incognito” was shattered shortly after her first bestselling novel, Adam Bede, was published in 1859. Critics were left marvelling not only that the author they collectively imagined to be a kindly country clergyman was a woman, but also that she was an atheist living openly with another woman’s husband.

In an age in which few women were educated or owned property, and few middle class women engaged in paid employment, Eliot overcame every obstacle.

She lived a scandalous life by Victorian standards. But she was one of Queen Victoria’s favourite writers.

And in the thousands of words that were to spill across the pages of the literary quarterlies about Eliot’s books, there was far less interest in salacious gossip than in the question of whether she had drawn a picture of the world as it “really” was.

No matter how much these 19th century – mostly male – critics attacked Eliot’s novels for their political and cultural heresies, it was obvious – indeed, astonishing – that they took them seriously as fundamentally important works.

A ‘great, horse-faced bluestocking’

Born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, on November 22, 1819, the third daughter of Robert and Christiana Evans, Eliot was afforded the sort of education not usually granted to women in this period. She was not considered physically attractive, and her father believed this would severely limit her prospects of marriage.

In 1850, Eliot – then calling herself Marian Evans – moved from Coventry to London, determined to become a writer.

Just a few years before, she had published her English translation of David Strauss’s The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined. Notoriously, Strauss argued that the “miracles” of the New Testament were myths and fabrications. The Earl of Shaftesbury promptly castigated Eliot’s translation as “the most pestilential book ever vomited out of the jaws of hell”.

Eliot took up residence in the house of the radical publisher John Chapman, who appointed her assistant editor of the Westminster Review. She was deeply influenced by John Stuart Mill, particularly his groundbreaking essay on gender equality, Subjection of Women.

She sympathised with the 1848 revolutions on the continent. She held great hopes for women’s education. She supported female suffrage.

At this time, Eliot formed a series of attachments to married men, including Chapman and Herbert Spencer, before meeting the critic George Henry Lewes, with whom she shared a committed, life-long relationship.

Lewes was married to Agnes Jervis, with whom he had three children. Unlike other unconventional literary liaisons of the period, Lewes and Eliot did not keep their relationship a secret.

Like so many other men, Lewes was drawn to the luminosity of Eliot’s intelligence. She had an awesome curiosity, an endless appetite for ideas.

Henry James famously characterised her as “magnificently ugly, deliciously hideous”.

And yet in his snarky, entitled way he also marvelled at his reaction to the force of Eliot’s personality. “Behold me, literally in love with this great horse-faced bluestocking!”

Her practical humanism

In 1854, Eliot translated Ludwig Feurerbach’s The Essence of Christianity, in which he declared God to be a figment of the human imagination. Instead, he wanted to think about what he called “species being” – that is, to consider what it means to think from the standpoint of being human, of being part of the wider social fabric.

Feurerbach’s ideas were fundamental in shaping the practical humanism that forms the beating heart of Eliot’s novels.

Eliot’s social consciousness, her vivid critiques of capitalism, are keenly displayed in her 1861 novel about a linen weaver, Silas Marner, and her 1876 masterpiece Daniel Deronda – a sprawling tale about a fatally self-absorbed heroine, Gwendolen Harleth, and the easy, ingrained prejudice of British society against the Jews.

But it is their capaciousness – perhaps – that is the real theme of Eliot’s books. Her novels are held together by elaborate patterns of imagery, threads of gossip, networks of feeling and connection, linking character to character.

Background scenes of the social world are interwoven with the deeper dimensions of private life and even the fabric of human consciousness, so the novelistic structure reflects the fragile, web-like ties that hold society together.

Her characters’ motivations may be ego-satisfying, self-deceiving, or concealed, even from themselves, or all of these at once. And the tangled paradoxes they encounter as they journey through their novelistic worlds force readers to reassess themselves and their perspectives.

Nobody, in short, does honesty or frailty quite like Eliot. If you read her work, and really pay attention, you will likely find out things about yourself you didn’t know, and maybe would rather not.

As Virginia Woolf famously declared of Middlemarch, it is “one of the few English novels written for grown up people”.

Middlemarch – the greatest novel in the English language

Middlemarch was published serially in eight parts at two monthly intervals from December 1871. It went on sale in December 1872 as four volumes for two guineas, selling 8,500 copies. But it was only when the cheap edition went on sale in 1874 that the novel found its real audience, selling another 31,000 copies by 1878.

The story – like those found in all Eliot’s novels – is multifaceted. It revolves mostly around Dorothea Brooke, an heiress who makes a terrible marriage to Edward Casaubon, a dusty clergyman, and the character of Tertius Lydgate, a London-trained doctor who wants to bring modern medicine to the Midlands, but chooses an unsuitable wife.

But the deeper theme of Middlemarch is the moral drama around the interaction between character and social environment that is fundamental to contemporary appreciations of 19th century realism – but was often merely puzzling to Victorian critics.

They loved the scale of the novel’s social panorama, “like a portrait gallery” that has been “photographed from the life”; they even came to see that it had, as the Times put it, a “philosophical power”. But they did not immediately grasp that it was Eliot’s most important book. They bemoaned it was not as “delightful” as Adam Bede, her earlier bucolic tale about – among other things – seduction, infanticide, class and education.

In Middlemarch, Dorothea has money; unlike in Austen, there is no threat of penury hanging over her head. Indeed, there is no need for her to marry at all. And yet she does.

She has freedom, up to a point. But her largeness of soul is circumscribed by narrowness of opportunity. Nor is provincial society entirely to blame. Dorothea yearns to do something; to achieve something; but she knows not what. This is her – and our own – tragedy.

When Dorothea, in all her married misery, is confronted by an extraordinary vision of a suffering human society, we encounter one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful passages in Eliot’s ouevre. She writes,

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.

This is the anguish that lurks in dark corners of Eliot’s novels – it is the measure of her greatness, and of our struggle to read her.

Dorothea’s quest for a substantial and meaningful life has resonated with the sensibilities of successive generations of feminists. How is she to achieve something? Where should she put her energies? How can she affect the lives of others?

We are all of us “Dorotheas”; all tragically yearning for something. As Virginia Woolf put it, Dorothea and the rest of Eliot’s heroines feel “a demand for something — they scarcely know what — for something that is perhaps incompatible with the facts of human existence.”

– ref. Friday essay: George Eliot 200 years on – a scandalous life, a brilliant mind and a huge literary legacy – http://theconversation.com/friday-essay-george-eliot-200-years-on-a-scandalous-life-a-brilliant-mind-and-a-huge-literary-legacy-127438

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

Scott Morrison’s government is heading to the end of 2019 amid a debate about its economic judgement and with a number of substantial policy moves started but not completed.

Morrison this week delivered to an audience from big business what was described as his most important speech for the rest of the year. He wanted the voters to know the government is not – underscore NOT – panicking about the economy.

Even so, it is putting in a little extra stimulus by fast tracking some infrastructure.

Whether the government should be panicking is the question – we’ll be able to better answer that when the September quarter national accounts are released next month.

Morrison points out that since the election the Coalition has injected an additional $9.5 billion for 2019-20 and 2021-22 – through tax relief, the infrastructure bring-forwards and extra funding, and drought assistance to communities.

This week’s modest infrastructure initiative will amount to little in itself in terms of economic activity – it is a holding message as the government waits to see whether it will have to do more in the near term while firming up plans for its preferred timetable of some action in the budget.

Next week begins the year’s final parliamentary fortnight, with the main attention on the fate of two bills.

The ensuring integrity legislation, to crack down on bad behaviour in the union movement, seemed set to pass the Senate last week. After amendments had been promised to Centre Alliance, the government needed just one extra vote out of the combined three votes of One Nation and Jacqui Lambie.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Courting ‘quiet Australians’ from ‘bubble central’, it’s been a remarkable first year for Scott Morrison

Lambie had earlier declared she’d support the legislation if maverick construction union official John Setka didn’t quit his post (which he has no intention of doing).

Then Lambie baulked, worried about the danger of some unions being caught on technical breaches. Pauline Hanson’s attention, meanwhile, was on other things. Hanson has now engaged with amendments; the government has done more tweaking; the legislation again seems set to pass.

The other bill in the spotlight would repeal medevac. The government’s determination on this is driven by its desire to look tough (and reverse the humiliation the passage of medevac inflicted on it) rather than by need. Medevac applies only to the dwindling number of people still in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, not to any future arrivals; the people smuggling trade hasn’t restarted.

Lambie is the swing vote on the repeal bill and, for reasons unclear, she has been refusing to disclose her position. The bill is on the Senate notice paper for Wednesday.

Beyond immediate legislation, and despite the conventional commentary about it lacking an “agenda”, the government in fact has set itself quite a lot of work.

Much of it falls under Christian Porter, who as attorney-general and industrial relations minister is one of the busiest people in the Morrison ministry.

The issues he’s dealing with bring fierce battles. As he lamented at the National Press Club on Wednesday: “Every new task I am allotted does seem to inevitably support the observation that rights in practice collide with each other rather than neatly contouring into each other.”

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Jackie Lambie should not horse trade on medevac repeal bill

Religious freedom is an obvious case, as he’s found in consultations with more than 90 different stakeholders. He announced this week the draft bill will be changed so religious groups running hospitals and aged care facilities would be able to discriminate in favour of employing people on faith grounds, in the same way religious schools can.

Originally it had been hoped the legislation would be done and dusted this year, but this proved impossible. Indeed its eventual fate remains in question; the government will engage with Labor to try for a unity ticket.

Also in Porter’s bailiwick is press freedom, which became a hot issue after the raids on the ABC and a News Corp journalist.

A report on some aspects by the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence on security has been delayed until near Christmas. Chairman Andrew Hastie explained the committee is “endeavouring to achieve a bipartisan report, which delivers tangible areas for reform and consideration”.

One crucial area is whistle blower protection. Porter said the government would soon respond to an earlier review of this to ensure “the act is easily and readily understandable to the people who need to use it”.

How much ground the government is willing to give on media freedom is yet to be seen. It would prefer to yield as little as possible; its default position is secrecy. Porter is open to some reforms, including on problems in the freedom of information system and on whistle blowers, but it’s a matter of their degree.

Also still to come is legislation for an integrity commission. This was a reluctant pre-election commitment, essentially forced by the politics.

The body would be heavily circumscribed; as Porter reaffirmed this week, it wouldn’t be able to make “corrupt conduct findings” against politicians or public servants. Rather, in such cases it would investigate and send evidence to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.

Porter is also following up Morrison’s concern – which has sparked a sharp reaction – about resource companies being targeted by environmental activists.

As well as all this, Porter is running the government’s industrial relations reform process, which is taking a softly-softly-catchee- monkey approach, gradually moving through specified issues.

Read more: The Coalition’s approach to religious discrimination risks being an inconclusive, wasteful exercise

This week Morrison flagged another priority area – reducing the “administrative clutter” around awards as well as in other parts of the system.

“While the number of awards has reduced, it appears that they have not become simpler – indeed many believe that they have become more complex,” he told his business audience, again exhorting them to make the case for reform (meaning, not to leave the jawboning to him and his colleagues).

In his speech, Morrison gave the government’s plans to deregulate procedures for the approval of major projects a push along, saying environmental approval processes were “overly complex, duplicative and they take too long”.

Simplifying them seems a no brainer. The issue will always be, however, whether that goes further and cuts into proper scrutiny and environmental protections.

Among the initiatives the government has put on its plate since the election is the pursuit of indigenous recognition in the constitution.

Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt again asserted this week: “I am committed to delivering constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians in this term of parliament.” It is a desirable but very ambitious aspiration that will be extremely hard, if not impossible, to land.

In sum, the government will finish 2019 with a cluster of loose ends. The challenges ahead in managing the politics of trying to tie them up should not be under-estimated.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Scott Morrison will go into 2020 with a challenging cluster of policy loose ends – http://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-scott-morrison-will-go-into-2020-with-a-challenging-cluster-of-policy-loose-ends-127527

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Christoff, Associate Professor, School of Geography, University of Melbourne

A new United Nations report shows the world’s major fossil fuel producing countries, including Australia, plan to dig up far more coal, oil and gas than can be burned if the world is to prevent serious harm from climate change.

The report found fossil fuel production in 2030 is on track to be 50% more than is consistent with the 2℃ warming limit agreed under the Paris climate agreement. Production is set to be 120% more than is consistent with holding warming to 1.5℃ – the ambitious end of the Paris goals.

Australia is strongly implicated in these findings. In the same decade we are supposed to be cutting emissions under the Paris goals, our coal production is set to increase by 34%. This trend is undercutting our success in renewables deployment and mitigation elsewhere.

Mind the production gap

The United Nations Environment Program’s Production Gap report, to which I contributed, is the first to assess whether current and projected fossil fuel extraction is consistent with meeting the Paris goals.

It reviewed seven top fossil fuel producers (China, the United States, Russia, India, Australia, Indonesia, and Canada) and three significant producers with strong climate ambitions (Germany, Norway, and the UK).

Read more: Drought and climate change were the kindling, and now the east coast is ablaze

The production gap is largest for coal, of which Australia is the world’s biggest exporter. By 2030, countries plan to produce 150% more coal than is consistent with a 2℃ pathway, and 280% more than is consistent with a 1.5℃ pathway.

The gap is also substantial for oil and gas. Countries are projected to produce 43% more oil and 47% more gas by 2040 than is consistent with a 2℃ pathway.

Keeping bad company

Nine countries, including Australia, are responsible for more than two-thirds of fossil fuel carbon emissions – a calculation based on how much fuel nations extract, regardless of where it is burned.

China is the world’s largest coal producer, accounting for nearly half of global production in 2017. The US produces more oil and gas than any other country and is the second-largest producer of coal.

Australia is the sixth-largest extractor of fossil fuels , the world’s leading exporter of coal, and the second-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.

Read more: The good, the bad and the ugly: the nations leading and failing on climate action

Prospects for improvement are poor. As countries continue to invest in fossil fuel infrastructure, this “locks in” future coal, oil and gas use.

US oil and gas production are each projected to increase by 30% to 2030, as is Canada’s oil production.

Australia’s coal production is projected to jump by 34%, the report says. Proposed large coal mines and ports, if completed, would represent one of the world’s largest fossil fuel expansions – around 300 megatonnes of extra coal capacity each year.

The expansion is underpinned by a combination of ambitious national plans, government subsidies to producers and other public finance.

In Australia, tax-based fossil fuel subsidies total more than A$12 billion each year. Governments also encourage coal production by fast-tracking approvals, constructing roads and reducing royalty requirements, such as for Adani’s recently approved Carmichael coal mine in the Galilee Basin.

Ongoing global production loads the energy market with cheap fossil fuels – often artificially cheapened by government subsidies. This greatly slows the transition to renewables by distorting markets, locking in investment and deepening community dependency on related employment.

In Australia, this policy failure is driven by deliberate political avoidance of our national responsibilities for the harm caused by our exports. There are good grounds for arguing this breaches our moral and legal obligations under the United Nations climate treaty.

Cutting off supply

So what to do about it? As our report states, governments frequently recognise that simultaneously tackling supply and demand for a product is the best way to limit its use.

For decades, efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have focused almost solely on decreasing demand for fossil fuels, and their consumption – through energy efficiency, deployment of renewable technologies and carbon pricing – rather than slowing supply.

While the emphasis on demand is important, policies and actions to reduce fossil fuels use have not been sufficient.

It is now essential we address supply, by introducing measures to avoid carbon lock-in, limit financial risks to lenders and governments, promote policy coherence and end government dependency on fossil fuel-related revenues.

Policy options include ending fossil fuel subsidies and taxing production and export. Government can use regulation to limit extraction and set goals to wind it down, while offering support for workers and communities in the transition.

Read more: Australia could fall apart under climate change. But there’s a way to avoid it

Several governments have already restricted fossil fuel production. France, Denmark and New Zealand have partially or totally banned or suspended oil and gas exploration and extraction, and Germany and Spain are phasing out coal mining.

Australia is clearly a major contributor in the world’s fossil fuel supply problem. We must urgently set targets, and take actions, that align our future fossil fuel production with global climate goals.

– ref. New report shows the world is awash with fossil fuels. It’s time to cut off supply – http://theconversation.com/new-report-shows-the-world-is-awash-with-fossil-fuels-its-time-to-cut-off-supply-126605

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Scott Hamilton, Strategic Advisory Panel Member, Australian-German Energy Transition Hub, University of Melbourne

The possibilities presented by hydrogen are the subject of excited discussion across the world – and across Australia’s political divide, notoriously at war over energy policy.

Read more: Hydrogen fuels rockets, but what about power for daily life? We’re getting closer

On Friday Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel will present a national strategy on hydrogen to state, territory and federal energy ministers. Finkel is expected to outline a plan that prioritises hydrogen exports as a profitable way to reduce emissions.

It is to be hoped the strategy is aggressive, rather than timid. Ambition is key in lowering the cost of energy. Australia would do better aiming for 200% renewable energy or more.

It’s likely the national strategy will feature demonstration projects to test the feasibility of new technology, reduce costs, and find ways to share the risk of infrastructure investment between government and industry.

There are still a number of barriers. Existing gas pipelines could be used to transport hydrogen to end-users but current laws are prohibitive, mechanisms like “certificates of origin” are required, and there are still key technology issues, particularly the cost of electrolysis.

These issues raise questions of what a major hydrogen economy really looks like. It may prompt suspicions this is just the a latest energy pipe dream. But our research at the Australian-German Energy Transition Hub argues that an ambitious approach is better than a cautious one.

Aggressively pursing hydrogen exports will reduce costs of domestic energy supply and provide a basis for new export industries, such as greens steel, in a carbon constrained world.

Read more: Making Australia a renewable energy exporting superpower

Optimal systems cost less

We used optimisation modelling to examine how a major hydrogen industry might roll out in Australia. We wanted to identify where major plants for electrolysis could be built, asked whether the existing national electricity market should supply the power, and looked at the effect on the cost of the system and, ultimately, energy affordability.

Our results show the locations for future hydrogen infrastructure investment will be mainly determined by their capital costs, the share of wind and solar generation and the capacity of electrolysers to responsively provide energy to the system, and the magnitude of hydrogen production.

Read more: How hydrogen power can help us cut emissions, boost exports, and even drive further between refills

We also identified potential demonstration projects across Australia, such as:

• large-scale production of liquid hydrogen and export from the Pilbara in Western Australia
• hydrogen to support steel manufacturing in South Australia
• injecting hydrogen into the gas networks in Victoria and support industry and electricity generation
• hydrogen to supply transport fuel for major users such as trucks, buses and ferries in New South Wales, and
• hydrogen to produce ammonia at an existing plant in Queensland.

An export-oriented economy

If we assume electrolysers remain expensive, around A$1,800 per kilowatt, and need to run at close to full-load capacity all the time, the result is large hydrogen exporting hubs across the country, built near high quality solar and wind power resources. Ideal locations tend to be remote from the national energy grid, such as in Western Australia and Northern Territory, or at relatively small-scale in South Australia or Tasmania.

There is much debate around the current cost of electrolysis, but consensus holds that economies of scale will substantially reduce these costs – by as much as an order of magnitude. This is akin to the cost reductions we have seen in solar power and batteries.

This infrastructure requires some major investment. However, our modelling shows that if Australia produces 200% of our energy needs by 2050, exporting the surplus, we see major drops in system costs and lower costs of energy for all Australia. If Australia can produce 400 Terrawatt-hours of hydrogen energy for export, modelling results show the average energy cost could be reduced by more than 30%.

The driving factor is our level of ambition. The more we lean into decarbonising our economy with green energy, the further the costs fall. The savings from the integrated and optimised use of electrolysers in a renewable-heavy national electricity market outweigh the cost of building large renewable resources in remote locations.

A large hydrogen export industry could generate both substantial export revenue and substantial benefits to the domestic economy.

To sum up, the picture above shows two possible hydrogen futures for Australia.

In the first, Australia lacks climate actions and electrolyser costs remain high with limited economies of scale, and we export from key remote hubs such as the Pilbara.

Read more: We need a national renewables approach, or some states – like NSW – will miss out

In the other, ambition increases and costs drop, and the hydrogen export industry connects to the national grid, providing both renewable exports and benefits to the grid. This also promotes the use of hydrogen in the domestic market. Australia embraces a true renewable economy and a new chapter of major energy exports begins.

Either way, Australia is primed to become a hydrogen exporting superpower.

– ref. Enough ambition (and hydrogen) could get Australia to 200% renewable energy – http://theconversation.com/enough-ambition-and-hydrogen-could-get-australia-to-200-renewable-energy-127117

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Heidi Norman, Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images and names of deceased people.

Review: Linear, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney

The value of Australian First Peoples’ scientific knowledge is now being more widely acknowledged.

New exhibition Linear brings artworks into this conversation about the use and adaptation of this knowledge, the impact of industrial technology and the ways new technology can foster our appreciation of place.

The exhibition features the work of more than 16 Indigenous artists and material from the Powerhouse collection, including David Unaipon’s journal and designs.

Country

The most striking feature of this ambitious and disruptive exhibition is a map of Australia, titled Corpus Australis by artist Ngarinyin Elder David Mowaljarlai. The map is a sensationally transformative view of “country”.

The conventional vision of the nation is often marked by the borders of the states and territories. Another familiar map of country is the Aboriginal map of languages and nation groups with borders of rivers, creeks, grasslands and ranges that rivals any map of Europe.

The idea of a nationwide Aboriginal political identity was forged in part through the 1967 referendum campaign and the land and liberation politics of the 1970s; where red, black and yellow captured the people, land and sky.

Mowaljarlai‘s map depicts our shared nation as a body. The gulf country in the north is the lungs. To the south, the Great Australian Bite is the pubic region and Uluru the bellybutton. The rib cage extends from the west to east.

Corpus Australis represents our country as connected through Indigenous and non-Indigenous sites and the sharing of resources and technology over millennia. This is a profound elevation of country to the fore of political debates and discussions.

Scholar Benedict Anderson explained that the modern nation is “imagined”, yet Mowaljarlai reveals its deep connections and patterns interwoven across vast landscapes.

Old ways, new technology

The work of well known figures flanks the entry to the main exhibition space.

Born in 1872, Unaipon – a celebrated inventor who was Australia’s first published Aboriginal author – appears on our $50 note.

In the exhibition, Unaipon’s work shows how he applied classical knowledge and immense intellectual curiosity to a comparison of the design features that create upward lift for both the boomerang and rotary helicopter blades.

His drawings introduce the viewer to the complexity of Indigenous knowledge: the design of the boomerang, hunting clubs and rituals depicted in bark paintings, and the wap (harpoon) used by activist Murrandoo Yanner whose right to hunt crocodile under Native Title was upheld by the High Court in 1999. Weaving, in the form of three cloaks, stands in for the powerful presence of women welcoming visitors to country.

The works range from photography to weaving, sculpture, digital technology, design and installation art. Artists include Wayne Quilliam, Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Maree Clarke, Mikaela Jade, Nicole Monks, Glenda Nicholls, Lucy Simpson, Bernard Singleton, and Vicki West. They all comment on Indigenous science.

If the map foregrounds the work, the exhibition finds closure in a 17-minute virtual reality film. Collisions by artist and filmmaker Lynette Wallworth, immerses the viewer in the land and pace of Nyarri Nyarri Morgan and the Martu people of the Western Australian desert. The film won the 2017 Emmy Award for Outstanding New Approaches to Documentary.

Wearing Virtual Reality googles, the viewer might be just off Harris Street in Ultimo, but their body sails to the desert country to sit in the back of a Toyota, complete with bumps, muffled sounds and gentle breeze. They can turn around to see the convoy of cars and cloud of red dust that followed behind.

As grass fires ignite, a view from high in the sky shows the mosaic pattern of gentle burning. The fire crackles as it moves along the grass.

On fire

The technology of burning that so shaped this ancient country has returned in some parts of Australia where Aboriginal land has been repossessed. In other parts of the country, fires are raging wild and threaten everything in their path.

Back in the VR world, we sit around the campfire and in front of a big screen that is hitched to the side of the ubiquitous Toyota (bonnet up). We watch footage of the Maralinga bombings. It starts as a mushroom cloud explosion and builds to a fierce storm front that blackens the sky as it races towards us; the bodies of dead kangaroo carcasses hurtle through the air ahead of the blast. All is dead and forlorn. What an unimaginable atrocity to inflict on Martu country.

Read more: Virtual reality film Collisions is part disaster movie, part travelogue and completely immersive

This is a dramatic and engaging exhibition. As Mowaljarlai’s map announces, it provides a new way of seeing this country: as a body and landscape not of separate nations and language groups – although that is true – but a land with shared rituals, customs and technologies.

There has long been a call for all Australians to embrace this ancient country, rather than fight against it. The Indigenous science and technology in Linear offer us new ways of thinking about the past and future of our now shared land.

Linear in showing at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney until June 30

– ref. Dramatic and engaging, new exhibition Linear celebrates the art in Indigenous science – http://theconversation.com/dramatic-and-engaging-new-exhibition-linear-celebrates-the-art-in-indigenous-science-127023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Dickinson, Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW

National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Minister Stuart Robert this month announced a number of “practical changes” to the scheme.

Acknowledging the NDIS is not consistently living up to expectations, he said these improvements will put it “onto a business as usual even keel for the long term”.

While the proposed changes have promise, there remain some fundamental challenges plaguing the scheme that these reforms are unlikely to address.

Read more: Here’s what needs to happen to get the NDIS back on track

A scheme under pressure

The NDIS represents a massive policy reform process, so it’s unsurprising it should face teething problems and challenges during implementation.

Official figures show more than 310,000 people now have plans in place, with the scheme intended to reach around 460,000 by full roll out next year. This has all been achieved at significant pace.

Yet in recent months, we’ve seen continued criticism of the scheme and the agency that administers it (the National Disability Insurance Agency, or the NDIA).

Grievances relate to issues including failure to pay service providers enough to cover costs; provider fraud allegations; the inability of people with disability to access services; and the remuneration level of the NDIA’s new CEO.

Added to these are concerning accounts of abuse and neglect beginning to emerge from the disability royal commission.

Delivering the last 20%

Minister Robert described the NDIS as “about 80% there, with 20% left to go”. He acknowledged the last 20% is often the hardest.

The government’s plan for the NDIS focuses on six key aims including quicker access and quality decision making, equitable and consistent decisions and better long-term outcomes for participants.

While critical of the “jargon and gobbledegook” in the recent announcements, consumer groups have welcomed a number of the minister’s plans, identifying these as areas they have been advocating for over the last few years.

Read more: Understanding the NDIS: how does the scheme work and am I eligible for funding?

Some positive changes

Among the promises that should have a positive impact is the announcement people will be able to use their funding more flexibly. Currently funds are locked into particular categories of supports and activities and it’s not easy to move resources between these.

The reality is people’s lives do not fit neatly into administrative categories and the flexibility to use funds differently should make a big difference.

Further, from April next year people will be able to see a draft of their plan before it’s approved. At present most participants see their plan for the first time when they formally receive it after the planning process. Any mistakes made typically require a full review, causing delays in getting services in place and adding to the planning workload.

Participants will also be able to make small changes to their plan without it undergoing a full review, which will be a relief to those who have become mired in endless plan reviews due to changes in their situation.

Soon people will also be able to request longer plan durations, of up to three years. Currently most plans last one year. For people who have relatively stable disability – that is, their health and capacity isn’t getting any worse or any better – this will be a relief. The move also cuts some unnecessary red tape and will reduce planners’ workloads.

But it does require people to have a clear sense of their priorities and needs. It may be detrimental to people whose circumstances are more changeable – they could become locked into a plan that no longer suits their needs.

Read more: Women, rural and disadvantaged Australians may be missing out on care in the NDIS

We will also see the roll out of independent assessments to be paid for by the NDIS. This should have a positive impact as people currently either have to pay for their own assessments or wait for a significant length of time on a public waiting list. In terms of equitable access this is a significant improvement.

Finally, plans will be made accessible in additional formats including large font, audio, e-text and braille. For many outside the system it will come as a surprise this is not standard practice.

The devil is in the detail

There’s no doubt we’ve seen some real improvements in the scheme in recent months. The wait time for children to receive a plan halved over the last quarter (to 48 days). The number of people waiting for assistive technologies (like wheelchairs or communication devices) has reduced by nearly two-thirds. This is good but around 5,000 people are still waiting.

So progress can be made, but these new promises come with little detail about how they will be delivered.

Meanwhile, the system is already creaking at the seams with little spare capacity.

In 2014, a staffing cap was placed on the NDIA, restricting the numbers employed to 3,000, though the government has committed to increasing the cap gradually to 3,400 in 2020-21. Although reducing the number and frequency of full plan reviews will reduce demand for planners, it’s difficult to envision how this will free up sufficient spare capacity to support all these changes.

A number of organisations have also criticised the quality of planners, who often have limited training and experience in disability services. There seems to be little in these announcements to tackle this.

Read more: The NDIS costs are on track, but that doesn’t mean all participants are getting the support they need

It’s also important to note having a plan doesn’t guarantee being able to access services. In many parts of the country we’re seeing significant waiting lists for even the most common supports (for example, occupational therapy).

A new report found nearly one-third of disability providers reported a loss of income in the last financial year and several were concerned for their long term viability. There is an urgent need to address issues of supply within the system before we see even greater gaps emerge.

While these recent promises edge the NDIS in the right direction, the scheme is still facing some fundamental challenges. These will need to be addressed if the NDIS is to live up to the aspirations of those accessing it.

– ref. The NDIS is changing. Here’s what you need to know – and what problems remain – http://theconversation.com/the-ndis-is-changing-heres-what-you-need-to-know-and-what-problems-remain-127223

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Billingsley, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, UNSW

The small number of Australians being held in prison camps in northern Syria has been an ongoing, albeit low-level, challenge for the Australian government. There are believed to be eight Australian fighters for the Islamic State in captivity, along with around 60 Australian women and children.

Despite its reluctance, the Australian government may eventually feel obliged to bring many or all these people home.

So far, the Australian public seems to have accepted the government’s line that it’s too dangerous to extract them from Syria. As Prime Minister Scott Morrison succinctly put it:

I’m not going to put any Australians in harm’s way.

An increasingly untenable position

The government believes there are valid security concerns in bringing these people back to Australia. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has claimed some of the women are “hardcore” and “have the potential and capacity to come back here and cause a mass casualty event”.

Identifying these people, gathering evidence about their crimes and managing domestic fears would be a big challenge.

However, the government’s position on extracting them from Syria has become less tenable after the Turkish invasion of northern Syria in October. This followed US President Donald Trump’s announced withdrawal of the American military buffer in the region.

The invasion added uncertainty to an already fraught situation. The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces, who were central to the defeat of the Islamic State, were compelled to reinforce their forces on the border with Turkey.

Read more: Western states must repatriate IS fighters and their families before more break free from Syrian camps

Many of their forces have been engaged in controlling prison camps in northern Syria, where about 12,000 men and boys suspected of Islamic State ties, including 2,000 to 4,000 foreigners from almost 50 countries, are held. Some camps also hold about 100,000 Syrian and foreign family members of IS suspects.

The invasion focused attention on the state of the camps, which are overcrowded, unsanitary and experiencing considerable unrest. There have been some escapes from the camps, and many fear they are close to collapse.

The situation increases the possibility that young people in the camps will be radicalised.

Last week, the US government, which has repatriated some of its nationals, offered to help allies, including Australia, rescue their citizens from northern Syria. On the same day, Turkey called on Australia to repatriate its IS fighters and their families in Turkish custody.

Groups like Save the Children and Human Rights Watch have also called for the repatriation of women and children in the prison camps.

In Canberra, shadow home affairs minister Kristina Keneally has also argued Australia has a moral obligation to repatriate the women and children who were taken to Syria against their will.

Barriers to bringing detainees back

While Australia has not joined the Dutch in outright rejecting the US offer, the Morrison government has shown no enthusiasm for the idea.

Its position has been further undermined by the actions of other nations with citizens in the camps. Kosovo, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, for example, have already repatriated hundreds of prisoners.

And Britain is considering options for repatriating its citizens. A government document reported on last month said,

While difficult, the practical challenges in arranging and implementing an extraction (of IS suspects) are likely to have solutions.

Australia, by contrast, has continued to focus on the difficulties of extracting its citizens from the area, rather than tackling the legal challenges associated with bringing them home. Our legislative framework is still not sufficiently robust to deal with returnees.

The government has had many years to figure this out. In 2014, the UN passed a resolution obliging all countries to adopt measures to deal with the issue of foreign fighters.

Read more: Why is it so difficult to prosecute returning fighters?

There are ways to try those suspected of crimes committed in another country. The principle of universal jurisdiction, for example, would allow Australia to interrogate and prosecute those currently held in Syria.

Lower-level suspects who are desperate to escape from Syria could also be required to accept certain conditions, such as restrictions on movement and contacts and participation in re-education programmes. The Australian women in the camp have already indicated they are open to this.

But instead of looking at these options, Australia has endeavoured to keep out returning fighters and their families. Laws have been passed to strip some of their citizenship, running counter to several international conventions, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

And the temporary exclusion orders bill passed in July gives Dutton the power to bar Australian citizens from returning home for up to two years if they are suspected of supporting a terror organisation.

There are few other options

Some governments have suggested that IS captives in Syria should be transferred to Iraq, where trials of suspected IS members have already been held. The problem with this idea is that Iraq’s justice system is deeply flawed and has imposed the death penalty after some highly dubious trials.

For example, France sent some suspects there only for them to be summarily sentenced to be hanged.

Read more: Preventing foreign fighters from returning home could be dangerous to national security

Equally unacceptable would be to allow the Australian prisoners to fall into the hands of the Syrian regime.

In coming months, as conditions in the camps deteriorate and Syrian government forces expand their control of the area, we can expect mounting pressure on governments like Australia’s to repatriate their citizens.

In the long run, these are Australian citizens who should be entitled to the benefits that come from that, including due process of law. It is hard to see how the government can continue to deny their rights.

– ref. Why Australia can no longer avoid responsibility for its citizens held in Syria – http://theconversation.com/why-australia-can-no-longer-avoid-responsibility-for-its-citizens-held-in-syria-127439

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dennis McNevin, Professor of Forensic Genetics, University of Technology Sydney

Designer baby, anyone? A New Jersey startup company, Genomic Prediction, might be able to help you.

Genomic Prediction claims to be able to use DNA testing to predict disease risk in an embryo. The idea is to study hundreds or thousands of small variations in DNA, known as genetic markers, and use sophisticated computer algorithms to correlate these with diseases such as type 1 and type 2 diabetes, breast cancer and “intellectual disability”.

If the company’s recent research is any guide, it may move on to predicting other traits such as height and even educational attainment.

But the connections between genetic variations and differences in real human beings are far from straightforward. And even if we can make these connections, should we?

Lessons from forensics

In my own field, forensic genetics, we have a similar goal: to produce a “molecular photofit” or “DNA mugshot” of the perpetrator of a crime, using DNA left at a crime scene. At first, there was great optimism.

Only six genetic markers were required to predict blue or brown eye colour with reasonable accuracy. However, prediction of intermediate eye colours (green, hazel, light brown) was less accurate. Testing for hair colour soon followed (24 markers) and, most recently, skin colour (41 markers).

Eye, hair and skin colour are all largely controlled by a small number of genes related to the pigment melanin. There are two types of melanin, a dark and a light form, and between them they give rise to the spectrum of eye, hair and skin colours.

Read more: World’s first genetically modified human embryo raises ethical concerns

High doses of the light pigment are found only in individuals with European ancestry, particularly northern European. Prediction systems have really only been developed and tested rigorously on Europeans and North Americans.

This is the case with many large “genome-wide association studies” (GWAS) and data sets, including some of those used by Genomic Prediction. Individuals without European ancestry are poorly represented, and the associations between genetic markers and traits don’t always replicate in populations that don’t have European ancestry.

Slow progress

Since these first few pigmentation prediction systems, progress has been slow in forensic genetics. This is because most traits – even ones that are strongly influenced by genetics – are very “polygenic”, which means they are influenced by many different genes.

For example, height and educational attainment are both highly heritable. But they are under the influence of hundreds, if not thousands, of genetic markers, each with a very small effect on the trait.

Further, the marker variants with the largest influence are generally the rarest ones. For example, the variants with the largest influence on height each account for only one or two centimetres and are present in no more than 0.2% of the population. More common variants each account for height differences of mere millimetres or even less.

Polygenic scores add up all the tiny effects of these multiple marker variants to give an overall prediction. But there are several caveats.

First, they don’t take account of genetic synergies (epistasis). The effects of two (or more) different markers may not add up in any simple way.

Second, they completely ignore environmental effects: the “nurture” part of “nature versus nurture”. For example, although both are highly heritable, height is affected by nutrition, and educational attainment is influenced by educational expectations and parental education. So, really, what is being predicted is the genetic potential for a particular trait.

A practical and ethical minefield

Assuming Genomic Prediction can predict these potentials accurately, will they all be found in one embryo?

Let’s say you want a tall, brown-eyed, high educational achiever with a low risk of breast cancer. The odds of finding all of these potentials in one embryo is very low, like throwing dozens of dice and having them all come up with sixes.

Even if you are lucky with your roll of the genetic dice, are you sure your designer baby will thank you when they grow up? Your idea of the perfect trait might not be theirs. You are, in effect, choosing their DNA without their consent.

Read more: 3-parent IVF could prevent illness in many children (but it’s really more like 2.002-parent IVF)

Are you ready to see a prediction of what your baby might look like as an adult, or a photo-board from which to choose your future offspring? Companies are already offering to produce molecular photofits of unknown donors of crime-scene DNA. It’s not a giant leap to designer babies.

At US$1,000 per case and an additional US$400 per screened embryo for expanded pre-implantation genomic testing (EPGT is Genomic Prediction’s “flagship product”), designer babies will inevitably be more available to wealthier parents. There are valid concerns that this could lead to genetic advantage and disadvantage along socio-economic lines.

Genetic screening is already common practice, especially for chromosomal disorders. Like many others, my own daughter received a nuchal fold thickness assessment as a standard ultrasound screen for Down syndrome.

Screening for genetic risks is just one more step along this continuum. But how many steps should we take? Once we start selecting for “desirable” characteristics, it’s easy to see the moral slope becoming very slippery.

– ref. An American company will test your embryos for genetic defects. But designer babies aren’t here just yet – http://theconversation.com/an-american-company-will-test-your-embryos-for-genetic-defects-but-designer-babies-arent-here-just-yet-126833

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gavin Rowell, Associate Professor in High Energy Astrophyics, University of Adelaide

The brightest fireworks in the universe are called gamma-ray bursts and are created by the death throes of certain kinds of stars. These intense blasts release as much energy in one second as the Sun will over its whole lifetime, but we still don’t understand exactly how they do it.

We are getting closer, however. We recently had the best ever look at the incredibly high-energy gamma rays emitted by these bursts. Gamma rays are like particles of visible light, but each of these high-energy rays carries as much as 100 billion times more energy.

New research published this week in Nature by two teams of scientists from around the world (I am a member of one of them) reveals the gamma rays are more energetic than we knew and that the afterglow of the burst lasts much longer.

What are gamma-ray bursts?

In the late 1960s, secret spy satellites designed to look for gamma-ray flashes from nuclear explosions began to detect mysterious bursts of gamma rays coming from outer space. It was not until the 1990s that scientists began to unravel the mystery with data from new satellites.

We now believe at least some of these gamma-ray bursts are caused by the collapse of super-massive stars. Many stars end their lives in an enormous explosion called a supernova, but very heavy stars can create an even bigger blast called a hypernova.

Read more: Flash, aah-aah! Could a gamma ray burst eradicate all life on Earth?

In this process, the star’s core collapses and becomes a rapidly rotating black hole. The surrounding gas forms a spinning disk around the black hole, which then creates a narrow, intense jet of radiation. If this jet is pointing towards Earth, we can see it as a bright gamma-ray burst, which typically lasts no more than a minute or two.

The very high-energy gamma rays are given off by matter that is accelerated to very close to the speed of light as it whirls around the black hole.

Because the bursts are rare and don’t last long, it can be difficult to get a good look at one with a telescope.

The afterglow

On July 20 2018, gamma-ray and X-ray satellites alerted the world to a new gamma-ray burst, named GRB 180720B. It was a very strong burst and lasted for about 50 seconds – a relatively long duration, indicating the death of a massive star.

Following the alert, several observatories around the world immediately began observing the spot in the sky that the burst came from. About 10 hours later, that spot came into view for the High-Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) gamma-ray telescopes in Namibia.

Even though 10 hours had passed, HESS was able to observe the afterglow of the burst, which still included extremely energetic gamma rays.

At HESS we have been looking at other gamma-ray bursts in this way for more than a decade. This was the first time it detected gamma rays from the high-energy afterglow at energies never seen before.

While we had anticipated the detection of gamma-ray bursts at these high energies, the discovery that they were still around many hours after the initial burst came as a great surprise.

This result suggests the accelerated particles creating the gamma rays still exist or are created a long time after the explosion, which is hard to explain with our existing theories of what happens in gamma-ray bursts.

Read more: An extragalactic mystery: where do high-energy cosmic rays come from?

Even more energy

Also just published are observations of a different gamma-ray burst (GRB 190114C) made using the Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescopes in the Canary Islands.

The MAGIC astronomers caught the “prompt” early stages of the burst, detecting gamma rays with even more energy – some of the most energetic ever seen.

These detections show we still have much to learn about gamma-ray bursts. But they also give us confidence that our methods to detect them are improving. We will be able to study plenty more in the future with the much more sensitive Cherenkov Telescope Array, which is now under construction.

– ref. A collapsing star in a distant galaxy fired out some of the most energetic gamma rays ever seen – http://theconversation.com/a-collapsing-star-in-a-distant-galaxy-fired-out-some-of-the-most-energetic-gamma-rays-ever-seen-127114

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter McPhee, Emeritus professor, University of Melbourne

We live in a world of violent challenges to the status quo, from Chile and Iraq to Hong Kong, Catalonia and the Extinction Rebellion. These protests are usually presented in the media simply as expressions of rage at “the system” and are eminently suitable for TV news coverage, where they flash across our screens in 15-second splashes of colour, smoke and sometimes blood.

These are huge rebellions. In Chile, for example, an estimated one million people demonstrated last month. By the next day, 19 people had died, nearly 2,500 had been injured and more than 2,800 arrested.

How might we make sense of these upheavals? Are they revolutionary or just a series of spectacular eruptions of anger? And are they doomed to fail?

Key characteristics of a revolution

As an historian of the French Revolution of 1789-99, I often ponder the similarities between the five great revolutions of the modern world – the English Revolution (1649), American Revolution (1776), French Revolution (1789), Russian Revolution (1917) and Chinese Revolution (1949).

A key question today is whether the rebellions we are currently witnessing are also revolutionary.

A model of revolution drawn from the five great revolutions can tell us much about why they occur and take particular trajectories. The key characteristics are:

• long-term causes and the popularity of a socio-political ideology at odds with the regime in power

• short-term triggers of widespread protest

• moments of violent confrontation the power-holders are unable to contain as sections of the armed forces defect to rebels

• the consolidation of a broad and victorious alliance against the existing regime

• a subsequent fracturing of the revolutionary alliance as competing factions vie for power

• the re-establishment of a new order when a revolutionary leader succeeds in consolidating power.

Why today’s protests are not revolutionary

This model indicates the upheavals in our contemporary world are not revolutionary – or not yet.

The most likely to become revolutionary is in Iraq, where the regime has shown a willingness to kill its own citizens (more than 300 in October alone). This indicates that any concessions to demonstrators will inevitably be regarded as inadequate.

We do not know how the extraordinary rebellion in Hong Kong will end, but it may be very telling there does not seem to have been significant defection from the police or army to the protest movement.

Read more: Is there hope for a Hong Kong revolution?

People grow angry far more often than they rebel. And rebellions rarely become revolutions.

So, we need to distinguish between major revolutions that transform social and political structures, coups by armed elites and common forms of protest over particular issues. An example of this is the massive, violent and ultimately successful protests in Ecuador last month that forced the government to cancel an austerity package.

The protests in Hong Kong and Catalonia fall into yet another category: they have limited aims for political sovereignty rather than more general objectives.

All successful revolutions are characterised by broad alliances at the outset as the deep-seated grievances of a range of social groups coalesce around opposition to the existing regime.

They begin with mass support. For that reason, the Extinction Rebellion will likely only succeed with modest goals of pushing reluctant governments to do more about climate change, rather than its far more ambitious aspirations of

a national Citizen Assembly, populated by ordinary people chosen at random, to come up with a programme for change.

Mass protests also fail when they are unable to create unity around core objectives. The Arab Spring, for instance, held so much promise after blossoming in 2010, but with the possible exception of Tunisia, failed to lead to meaningful change.

Revolutionary alliances collapsed rapidly into civil war (as in Libya) or failed to neutralise the armed forces (as in Egypt and Syria).

Why is there so much anger?

Fundamental to an understanding of the rage so evident today is the “democratic deficit”. This refers to public anger at the way the high-water mark of democratic reform around the globe in the 1990s – accompanied by the siren song of economic globalisation – has had such uneven social outcomes.

One expression of this anger has been the rise of fearful xenophobia expertly captured by populist politicians, most famously in the case of Donald Trump, but including many others from Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and Victor Orbán in Hungary.

Read more: The Joker to Guy Fawkes: why protesters around the world are wearing the same masks

Indeed, there are some who claim that western liberalism has now failed).

Elsewhere, the anger is popular rather than populist. In upheavals from Lebanon and Iraq to Zimbabwe and Chile, resentment is particularly focused on the evidence of widespread corruption as elites flout the basic norms of transparency and equity in siphoning government money into their pockets and those of their cronies.

The broader context of today’s upheavals also includes the uneven withdrawal of the US from international engagement, providing new opportunities for two authoritarian superpowers (Russia and China) driven by dreams of new empires.

The United Nations, meanwhile, is floundering in its attempt to provide alternative leadership through a rules-based international system.

The state of the world economy also plays a role. In places where economic growth is stagnant, minor price increases are more than just irritants. They explode into rebellions, such as the recent tax on WhatsApp in Lebanon and the metro fare rise in Chile.

There was already deep-seated anger in both places. Chile, for example, is one of Latin America’s wealthiest countries, but has one of the worst levels of income equality among the 36 nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Rebellions with new characteristics

Of course, we do not know how these protest movements will end. While it is unlikely any of the rebellions will result in revolutionary change, we are witnessing distinctly 21st century upheavals with new characteristics.

One of the most influential approaches to understanding the long-term history and nature of protest and insurrection has come from the American sociologist Charles Tilly.

Read more: Animal rights activists in Melbourne: green-collar criminals or civil ‘disobedients’?

Tilly’s studies of European history have identified two key characteristics.

First, forms of protest change across time as a function of wider changes in economic and political structures. The food riots of pre-industrial society, for instance, gave way to the strikes and political demonstrations of the modern world.

And today, the transnational reach of Extinction Rebellion is symptomatic of a new global age. There are also new protest tactics emerging, such as the flashmobs and Lennon walls in Hong Kong.

Tilly’s second theory was that collective protest, both peaceful and violent, is endemic rather than confined to years of spectacular revolutionary upheaval, such as 1789 or 1917. It is a continuing expression of conflict between “contenders” for power, including the state. It is part of the historical fabric of all societies.

Even in a stable and prosperous country like Australia in 2019, there is a deep cynicism around a commitment to the common good. This has been created by a lack of clear leadership on climate change and energy policy, self-serving corporate governance and fortress politics.

All this suggests that Prime Minister Scott Morrison is not only whistling in the wind if he thinks that he can dictate the nature of and even reduce protest in contemporary Australia – he is also ignorant of its history.

– ref. We live in a world of upheaval. So why aren’t today’s protests leading to revolutions? – http://theconversation.com/we-live-in-a-world-of-upheaval-so-why-arent-todays-protests-leading-to-revolutions-126505

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Sadler, Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne

A career in the Australian Defence Force (ADF), or the armed forces in any country, can be rewarding, but also demanding. Challenges include the rigorous training, frequent moves, and maintaining social connections.

Beyond this, military personnel may be exposed to trauma during combat, peace-keeping missions, border protection, disaster and humanitarian relief, and training accidents.

They may be confronted not only with threats to their own lives or safety, but also with the suffering or death of others, which can have a significant emotional and psychological impact.

So it’s not surprising we see higher rates of mental illness among veterans compared to the overall Australian population.

The rates of suicide are also concerning, particularly among younger veterans. Between 2001 and 2016, 373 Australian veterans took their lives. Male veterans under 30 had a suicide rate more than twice the national average for men the same age. These figures have led to considerable community concern, including calls for a royal commission into veteran suicide.

Whether or not this eventuates, we should be targeting veterans with a high level of care that better reflects their unique set of needs.

Transitioning back into civilian life

Recent research has highlighted one of the most challenging periods for military personnel can be transitioning back to civilian life.

Major lifestyle changes can be stressful for anyone, but leaving the ADF can feel like more than leaving a job. It will likely represent a change in a person’s way of life across the board.

While many transitioning personnel may initially experience some uncertainty and a sense of losing some part of themselves, most make the adjustment successfully. For others, the problems may not go away and for some, may become worse, unless they receive help.

Read more: From shell shock to PTSD: proof of war’s traumatic history

A comprehensive study commissioned by the Departments of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA) and Defence in 2015 found ADF members who had discharged or transitioned to the Reserves were at greater risk of experiencing mental health issues compared to both those who were still serving and the broader Australian community.

For example, in the previous 12 months, 17.7% of transitioned ADF personnel had experienced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) compared to 8.7% still serving in the ADF full-time, and 5.2% in the Australian community.

Other common mental health conditions in transitioned ADF personnel include depression (11.2%), and anxiety disorders such as panic disorder (5.4%), agoraphobia (11.9%) and social phobia (11%), all estimated to be higher than rates in the general population.

Rates of suicidality (thinking about, planning or attempting suicide) were more than double for those who had transitioned out of full-time ADF service compared to those still serving in the ADF full-time (21.7% versus 8.8%), and ten times greater than the Australian community.

Read more: Mindfulness therapy alleviates soldiers’ PTSD, but only in the short term

Seeking and receiving help

About 75% of veterans who reported they had mental health concerns in the DVA study had sought and received assistance at some point from a GP or mental health professional. These rates are much higher than in the general community and auger well for the preparedness of veterans to seek care.

However, as is the case in the Australian community and internationally, there is an under-engagement with evidence-based treatment and practice. Only about 25% of help-seeking veterans were estimated to be receiving evidence-based care, such as cognitive behavioural therapy. This may be because veterans don’t stay engaged in health services for long enough to receive evidence-based treatments.

So while the help-seeking and care delivery for veterans is on par with, and in some ways exceeds, that of the general community, there’s room for improvement to ensure veterans remain engaged with services and receive the treatment they need.

What could we be doing better?

Coming from a health system in the armed forces where health care is organised for them, veterans may have heightened expectations about the level of coordinated and integrated practice.

So first, we need improved integration and coordination of services, including development of outreach capabilities which more proactively engage with veterans and their families and connect them to appropriate services. Outreach can be led by health professionals or intersect with existing peer support networks.

Second, we need to enhance the knowledge and skills among health professionals in the various services to which veterans are reaching out. Importantly, services and treatments should be delivered with appropriate “military cultural awareness”.

This means practitioners demonstrating they understand the types of experiences veterans may have been exposed to, and the potential lasting impacts of these experiences. Veterans are likely to be more engaged in services if they feel well understood.

Read more: Why some veterans feel alienated on campus and how universities can help

Parallel to this, we need to be aware of the needs of, and actively support, the families who often bear the brunt of the mental health problems experienced by the veterans. Open Arms – Veterans & Families Counselling, a free national counselling service, plays a large role in provision of this support.

Ultimately we need to continue to focus on innovations in the prevention of and early interventions for mental health problems among veterans, including suicidality. In doing so we must maintain a focus on well-being outcomes more broadly and not just on symptoms and conditions, ensuring our goal remains assisting veterans in living a meaningful and satisfying life in all its domains.

If this article has raised issues for you or you’re concerned about someone you know, call Open Arms on 1800 011 046 or Lifeline on 13 11 14.

– ref. Veterans have poorer mental health than Australians overall. We could be serving them better – http://theconversation.com/veterans-have-poorer-mental-health-than-australians-overall-we-could-be-serving-them-better-119525

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aniko Blanka Toth, Postdoctoral Fellow, Macquarie University

As the world grapples with an extinction crisis, our large mammals are among the most endangered. These threatened species – rhinos, pandas, tigers, polar bears and the like – greatly influence their ecosystems. So what will happen to the smaller animals left behind?

Clues from a past megafaunal extinction could give us the answer. Thousands of years ago, many large mammals went extinct including mammoths, saber-toothed cats and Australia’s giant wombat. The extinctions happened at different times, shortly after human colonisation on each continent.

A study I led, published in the journal Science, has found after the megafauna disappeared, many surviving mammal species went their separate ways. This weakened connections between species and may have made ecosystems more vulnerable.

As human activity drives modern megafauna towards extinction, our study gives valuable insights into the potential repercussions for smaller survivors.

Surprise results

Our team analysed the fossil records of 93 mammal species at hundreds of sites in North America, dating back up to 21,000 years, before the extinctions began.

We then determined the extent to which a particular species lived alongside others at each site. We found that after the extinction of large mammals, smaller mammals often distanced themselves from neighbouring species and were found together much less often than expected.

Surprisingly, this separation occurred while many survivors were claiming new habitats after the extinctions – which meant the potential space for co-habitation had actually aincreased.

The below diagrams show how animal species may have lived alongside each other before and after the megafauna extinctions. In the first, two species occupied the same area while co-habiting (orange sites). In the second, animals occupied the same area but were more segregated (red and yellow sites).

Such segregation suggests a change in interactions between species after the extinction event. Survivors may have rapidly become more abundant as large mammals disappeared, causing more competitive interactions. This could have prompted them to exclude each another from individual sites.

Our analysis suggests the repercussions of megafauna extinctions are still being felt today – leading to species increasingly segregated across continents, and interacting more opportunistically.

Hover over an animal silhouette to learn more about it. Notice the size difference between the largest North American fauna 12,000 years ago and today

Animals need each other

Connections between species large and small are the lifeblood of a functioning ecosystem, making it stable and resilient. Today’s large mammals are comparatively smaller than the megafauna of the last ice age. However, they still play a vital role in shaping ecosystems.

Just like in the past, modern large mammals may carry out pest control, aid seed dispersal and spread nutrients (by walking long distances and pooping out digested vegetation). This benefits humans and other species.

Read more: Why we need to protect the extinct woolly mammoth

Some large animals also shape and create homes for others. For example, elephants in Africa push over trees to create open grasslands, much like their Pleistocene-era cousin, the Columbian mammoth. This enables other species adapted to grasslands, such as gazelles and zebras, to share the habitat.

If elephants became extinct and no longer pushed over trees, grasslands would change and remaining animals may die or move away. In this way, the loss of interactions may make the ecosystem less stable and more vulnerable.

And animal extinctions have a snowball effect when it comes to species interactions. If half the species in a community go extinct, at least three quarters of the possible interactions in the system die with them.

Lessons for Australian conservation

Although our study was restricted to North America, its findings have the potential to inform conservation efforts in Australia and shine a light into the past.

Australia’s fossil record and historical accounts document many species of large mammals which have become extinct. For example, more than 40,000 years ago humans wiped out large carnivores such as the marsupial lion and more recently, the Tasmanian tiger.

People also introduced invasive medium-sized carnivores such as foxes and feral cats, the spread of which went unchecked for years. This devastated the unique and diverse suite of smaller Australian marsupials.

Read more: An end to endings: how to stop more Australian species going extinct

Today, the extermination of feral cats is a major conservation problem in Australia. Had the marsupial lion still been around, feral cats may have been killed and marginalised by these larger animals, slowing their spread.

When planning animal conservation and management, it may be just as important to protect interactions as it is to save individual species. When introducing or eliminating species as part of environmental initiatives, it’s crucial to consider all possible interactions we are adding, as well as those we are taking away.

– ref. Extinction of ice age giants likely drove surviving animals apart – http://theconversation.com/extinction-of-ice-age-giants-likely-drove-surviving-animals-apart-125132

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Nickl, Lecturer in International Comparative Literature and Translation Studies, University of Sydney

In September, the Fair Work commission rejected an unfair dismissal claim by a BP worker who made a Downfall video meme about his boss. Fair Work called it “inappropriate and offensive”.

Last week, the worker appealed Fair Work’s decision, saying the commission did not understand “the broader genre of Downfall video”.

Downfall video memes are online parodies of a bunker scene from a 2004 German film where a furious Hitler learns that his generals have let him down and the war is lost. Hitler loses it. He calls his soldiers “cowards, traitors and failures”, his veins popping with rage and spittle flying.

In the 15 years since the film’s release, the scene has taken on a life of its own. Downfall memes show “Hitler” raging about everything from cancelled exams to Twitter outages to election results, thanks to doctored subtitles.

In a robust online video culture that always hungers for the next Star Wars Kid how did an angry Hitler and this scene go viral – and stay viral – for so long?

The bunker

The original Downfall (2004; Der Untergang in German) is a historical war film about Hitler’s final days, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.

When it was released, a good number of German film critics and reviewers thought the humanising of Hitler’s sieg-heiling rants in a bunker filled with SS rank-and-file goons was tasteless.

Some dismissed the bunker scene in particular as unnecessary in a film premiering 60 years after WWII ended. After all, they said: we already knew Hitler was a madman and that humans can be monsters.

This is where the internet went to work. A legion of keyboard warriors around the globe lifted the scene from the original film at the time studios and film festivals were using it widely to promote Downfall.

The parodies – and our reactions – show what happens when cultural items move from one context to another. It’s a tricky leap when it comes to a figure like Hitler. When you add the move from drama to comedy , it gets a whole lot trickier.

Read more: Explainer: what are memes?

Generation phenomenon

Creative minds adapted Hitler’s German outrage. They copied and pasted, cut and inserted, and most importantly, they re-subtitled.

This readaptation is what makes video memes such a generative phenomenon.

A YouTube search for “Hitler Finds Out” or “Hitler Reacts To” yields thousands of videos. You’ll see how Hitler freaks out over global warming. He erupts when he hears about Donald Trump’s presidential bid and complains about the popularity of Pokemon Go. In one favourite he expresses fury that Christians are sending solar-powered bibles to Haiti.

The Downfall video meme has turned into a productive avenue for sociocultural commentary in each country and language it appears in, whether Chinese, Japanese or Spanish. Mostly, it gives voice to youth trends and blue-collar issues such as industrial action.

In the Fair Work unfair dismissal case, the scene was the medium via which an employee and his wife vented about his BP bosses during a drawn-out pay dispute.

Some international versions have packed political bite. One Malaysian parody refers to Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who served as the Malaysian prime minister from 2003-2009. It has Hitler question Badawi’s turn to martial law and suppression of press freedom.

All this goes straight to the heart of the genre of Downfall video memes. Some are highly political while the vast majority turn on regional events, local slang and very limited in-group jokes. Taken together, they make a larger point about pop culture fads and stick-it-to-the-man sentiments.

A meme that stuck

Some might argue that because the Downfall video memes appropriate a representation of a filmmaker’s Hitler instead of authentic archival footage, it’s acceptable to reuse the scene for comedy.

Others feel it is highly problematic to hide the real Nazi monster who orchestrated the systematic death of millions under layers of pixels and captions for laughs.

We need to have more conversations about what happens when cultures get adapted and sensitive topics in a nation’s history go viral.

The Downfall parodies have maintained cultural relevance for more than a decade, enduring far longer than most fleeting memes like Hey Girl or Dog Shaming posts. This is because they have become a fill-in form of sorts – an empty vessel for rageful rants. One may also argue that the original film was a dark-humoured parody of Hitler to begin with.

Lawyers for the sacked BP worker are not just arguing his bosses didn’t get the joke. They are saying Downfall memes do more than simply equate someone with Hitler. Rather, they connect to the hundreds of memes which came before to poke fun at something or to vent.

Whether it was appropriate for him to share the joke with colleagues will be up to the full bench that hears his appeal.

The original film’s director approves of the meme by the way. Hirschbiegel said in a 2010 interview:

I think I’ve seen about 145 of them! Of course, I have to put the sound down when I watch. Many times the lines are so funny, I laugh out loud, and I’m laughing about the scene that I staged myself! You couldn’t get a better compliment as a director.

– ref. How Hitler memes made their way around the world and into the Fair Work Commission courtroom – http://theconversation.com/how-hitler-memes-made-their-way-around-the-world-and-into-the-fair-work-commission-courtroom-127314

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne

Two and a half months before the February 3 Iowa Democratic caucus, the highly regarded Selzer poll for CNN and the Des Moines Register gave Pete Buttigieg 25% in Iowa (up a huge 16 points since the mid-September Selzer poll).

Elizabeth Warren was second with 16% (down six), followed by Joe Biden at 15% (down five), Bernie Sanders at 15% (up four) and Amy Klobuchar at 6% (up three). No other candidate received more than 3%.

The proposed candidacy of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was not well received. He had just 2% support, and his favourable ratings among Democratic likely caucus attendees were 58% unfavourable, 19% favourable. Democrats are very unlikely to back a billionaire.

I believe Buttigieg’s relative youth (he’s only 37) is an asset, compared with Warren, who will be 71 by the November 2020 general election. Donald Trump will be 74 then, Biden almost 78 and Sanders 79.

Read more: US Democratic presidential primaries: Biden leading, followed by Sanders, Warren, Harris; and will Trump be beaten?

Over the last few months, Buttigieg has put many resources into Iowa, allowing him to take advantage of Warren’s stumbles over Medicare for All. He has taken votes from Biden with an appeal to more moderate voters.

However, there is a catch for Buttigieg. The two earliest states to vote in the Democratic contest, Iowa and New Hampshire (February 11), are almost all white. The overall Democratic primary electorate is far more diverse. Black voters made up 61% of the 2016 South Carolina Democratic primary electorate.

Read more: Warren placed second after Biden, as Trump’s ratings rise. But could the impeachment scandal make a difference?

The latest Quinnipiac poll of South Carolina (February 29) gave Buttigieg less than 1% among black voters. Buttigieg’s net favourable rating was +6 with black voters compared to +36 with white voters.

Buttigieg’s problems with black voters may be caused by him being gay. While blacks vote overwhelmingly Democrat at general elections, this is attributable to the Republicans’ perceived racism, and black Democrats are far more socially conservative than other Democrats, as this chart from analyst Nate Silver shows.

The question is, if Buttigieg wins Iowa, will his ratings with black voters improve? As far as winning Iowa goes, there are still two and a half months to go, and Buttigieg’s surge could deflate.

Biden continues to lead in national Democratic polls

In the RealClearPolitics average of national Democratic polls, Biden has 27.0%, Warren 20.3%, Sanders 18.8%, Buttigieg 8.3% and Kamala Harris 4.8%. Nobody else has more than 3% support. Since my previous US politics article last fortnight, Biden is down slightly and Sanders and Buttigieg up.

Read more: Trump could win again despite losing popular vote, as Biden retakes lead in Democratic polls

In the average of the five most recent Iowa polls, Buttigieg has 21.0%, Warren 18.8%, Biden 17.6% and Sanders 17.2%. In New Hampshire, Warren leads with 20.0%, followed by Biden at 18.0%, Buttigieg 16.5% and Sanders 16.0%. However, the most recent New Hampshire poll gave Buttigieg 25%, and a ten-point lead over both Warren and Biden.

In Nevada (February 22), Biden had 29.0%, Warren 20.0%, Sanders 19.8% and Buttigieg just 7.3%. Biden maintained a 19-point lead over Warren in South Carolina.

The next Democratic presidential debate is Thursday (in Australia); this debate will feature ten candidates. Six candidates have qualified so far for the December 19 debate, which has higher thresholds.

Democrats win four of five highest offices at US state elections

Most US state elections are held concurrently with federal elections, but there were elections this November in New Jersey, Virginia, Mississippi and Kentucky (all on November 5) and Louisiana (November 16). Virginia and New Jersey held legislative elections, while Mississippi, Kentucky and Louisiana held gubernatorial elections.

At the November 5 elections, Democrats gained the Kentucky governorship by a 49.2-48.8 margin. Kentucky is a very white, rural state that voted for Trump in 2016 by 30 points. Republicans held the Mississippi governorship by a 52.1-46.6 margin (Trump by 18 in 2016).

In Virginia (Hillary Clinton by five), Democrats gained control of both chambers of the state legislature, the House by 55-45 and the Senate by 21-19. Democrats easily held the New Jersey legislature (Clinton by 14). Also of note: a New York City referendum introduced Australian-style preferential voting by 73.5-26.5.

At the November 16 Louisiana state election (Trump by 20), the Democrats held the governorship by a 51.3-48.7 margin.

Thus, Democrats won the highest office in four of five state elections this November, including in two states – Kentucky and Louisiana – that voted for Trump by landslide margins in 2016. A year before the presidential general election, Democrats performed strongly in these state elections.

Trump’s ratings and general election polls

In the FiveThirtyEight aggregate, Trump’s ratings with all polls are currently 41.3% approve, 54.0% disapprove, a net approval of -12.7%, up 0.5% since last fortnight. With polls of registered or likely voters, Trump’s ratings are 42.6% approve, 53.6% disapprove, a net approval of -11.0%, up 1.2% since last fortnight.

In the FiveThirtyEight impeachment tracker, 46.8% support removing Trump from office and 45.2% are opposed (47.5-45.7 support last fortnight).

RealClearPolitics has no new national general election polls since my last update. Trump trails Biden by 10.2%, Warren by 7.3%, Sanders by 7.9% and Buttigieg by 4.5%. Buttigieg currently has far lower name recognition than the other leading Democrats, and is likely to improve his head-to-head polling against Trump if he makes a positive impression.

UK and Spanish elections

In Tuesday’s Poll Bludger article, I wrote that the Conservatives have extended their large lead, and are likely to win a landslide at the December 12 UK election.

I believe the Conservatives are being assisted by voter fatigue with the politics of the current hung parliament. This could also apply to the US: if the Democrats nominate a candidate who is not seen as extreme, they could benefit from fatigue with Trump’s Twitter behaviour.

On November 12, I covered the results of the second 2019 Spanish election for The Poll Bludger. The combined left parties won 158 of the 350 lower house seats, to 150 for the combined right, with the other 42 seats going to mostly leftist regional parties. On November 12, a tentative agreement was reached between the two largest left parties.

Australian Newspoll: 50-50 tie

In the latest Australian Newspoll, conducted November 7-10 from a sample of 1,680, there was a 50-50 tie between the major parties, a one-point gain for Labor since late October. Primary votes were 40% Coalition (down two), 35% Labor (up two), 12% Greens (down one) and 7% One Nation (up one).

Scott Morrison’s net approval was up one point to +3. Anthony Albanese had a huge 12-point jump in net approval to +5. Morrison led by 46-32 as better PM (47-32 previously). Figures from The Poll Bludger.

An Essential poll, also conducted November 7-10, failed to match Newspoll’s exuberance on Albanese’s ratings. Albanese’s net approval in Essential fell eight points from October to +3, while Morrison was also down five points to +4.

– ref. Buttigieg surges to clear lead in Iowa poll, as Democrats win four of five US state elections – http://theconversation.com/buttigieg-surges-to-clear-lead-in-iowa-poll-as-democrats-win-four-of-five-us-state-elections-127210

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Every, Senior Research Fellow in social vulnerability and disasters, CQUniversity Australia

If you live in a bushfire-prone area, you’ll likely have considered what you will do in the event of a bushfire.

The decision, which should be made well in advance of bushfire season, is whether to stay and actively defend a well-prepared property or to leave the area while it’s safe to do so.

The emphasis in bushfire safety is on leaving early. This is the safest option.

In “catastrophic” fire conditions, the message from NSW Rural Fire Service is that for your survival, leaving early is the only option.

Read more: How a bushfire can destroy a home

In other fire conditions, staying and defending requires accurately assessing the safety of your house and the surrounding environment, preparing your property in line with current best practice and understanding fire conditions.

It also requires a realistic assessment of not just your personal physical capacity to stay and defend but also your psychological capacity.

Why do people stay and defend?

Our survey of people who experienced the 2017 NSW bushfires asked what they would do next summer if there were catastrophic conditions. Some 27% would get ready to stay and defend, and 24% said they would wait to see if there was a fire before deciding whether to stay and defend or leave.

Animal ownership, a lack of insurance, and valuable assets such as agricultural sheds and equipment, are motivators for decisions to stay and defend.

Read more: How we plan for animals in emergencies

If animal owners aren’t home they will often return to their properties when bushfire warnings are issued, contrary to official advice, to retrieve or protect their animals and physical assets.

Although these decisions are understandable they can also lead people who aren’t physically or psychologically suited to staying and defending to do so.

What if you’re not psychologically up to it?

The reality is that a bushfire is a threatening, high-risk situation. It’s hard to see, hard to breathe, noisy and hot.

These conditions can overwhelm our ability to think clearly and act calmly. People in the Sampson Flat Fire in South Australia in 2015, for example, experienced high levels of stress which caused them to:

• change their plan at the last minute, including leaving late which is the most dangerous response to a fire
• drive unsafely, especially speeding
• forget to take important items (such as medication)
• leave their animals behind
• engage in unrelated tasks that took up precious time
• ignore the threat (by going to sleep, for example).

This is one person’s account of how they responded as the fire approached:

[I] grabbed my son […] saw the smoke and […] went and got the boxes that I’d prepared which I packed when he was a baby. So I had stupid things in the boxes, like baby outfits. But I can’t freak him out […]

[I]n the back of my mind I’m thinking about what do I need to do […] I’ve quarter a tank of diesel, I’d better go get diesel. I also had a back seat full of books that I’d been tidying up [from] his room, so I thought op shop, better do that because I’ll clear the back seat. […]

Came in the house like a mad woman screaming for cats, nowhere in sight. I’ve got four cats and not one of them [is there]. Grabbed a bag and then started putting stupid amounts of clothes in like 20 pair of socks, and then basically I threw the dog in the car. […] So flat panic.

Read more: Bushfires can make kids scared and anxious: here are 5 steps to help them cope

What’s going on with our thinking?

The spectrum of actions from frenzy and flight to freezing reflects the model of “affective tolerance”. When stress exceeds what we can tolerate, we can become hyper-aroused and may have racing thoughts and act impulsively.

Or we may experience hypo-arousal, where we shut down and feel numb and passive.

Our brains consist of three basic parts: the brain stem, limbic system and cortex. These are sometimes described as the primitive, emotional and thinking brains.

In most situations, our thinking brain mediates physical responses to the world around us.

But under high amounts of stress, this connecting loop between the more reactive emotional and physical parts of our brain and our thinking cortex becomes separated. University of California, Los Angeles, professor of psychiatry Dan Siegel describes this as flipping our lid.

Flipping our lid is an automatic response and, from an evolutionary perspective, it’s a highly useful one – we don’t have time to think about whether or not to run when our lives are threatened.

But in a bushfire, these automatic responses are often not the best way to respond and can prompt us to make unsafe decisions.

To survive a bushfire, we need to make complex and often highly emotional decisions in rapidly changing conditions.

How do you control the fear?

In an analysis of 33 people who survived extreme conditions in the Black Saturday bushfires, researchers tentatively concluded that the major contributor to their survival was their ability to maintain their mental focus. They could control their fear and keep their attention on the threat and how to respond.

In order to stay and defend safely, it’s vital to have the skills to re-connect the loop between the thinking and the automatic and feeling parts of the brain.

The AIM model, based on stress inoculation theory, suggests preparing before bushfire by anticipating, identifying and developing strategies for coping with stress:

• anticipate: know how the brain and body responds in an emergency (and that these are normal)

• identify: be aware that this response is occurring (what is happening in your mind/body that tells you that you are acting from the “basement brain”)

• manage: have practised strategies for switching mindsets and re-establishing the brain loop.

A large Australian study shows people who are better psychologically prepared for a bushfire:

• have accessed information on what it means to be mentally prepared
• have previous experience of bushfires
• are mindful (have the ability to stay present)
• use an active coping style such as the AIM model (anticipate, identify, manage)
• have low levels of stress and depression.

Currently, the most accessible resource on developing mental preparedness is the Australian Red Cross RediPlan guide which includes preparing your mind based on the AIM (anticipate, identify, manage) model.

Read more: Our land is burning, and western science does not have all the answers

– ref. It’s hard to breathe and you can’t think clearly – if you defend your home against a bushfire, be mentally prepared – http://theconversation.com/its-hard-to-breathe-and-you-cant-think-clearly-if-you-defend-your-home-against-a-bushfire-be-mentally-prepared-127019

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giovanni Di Virgilio, Research associate, UNSW

Temperatures across many regions of Australia are set to exceed 40℃ this week, including heatwaves forecast throughout parts of eastern Australia, raising the spectre of more devastating bushfires.

We have already heard warnings this fire season of the possibility of firestorms, created when extreme fires in the right conditions form their own weather systems.

Read more: Firestorms and flaming tornadoes: how bushfires create their own ferocious weather systems

Firestorms are the common term for pyrocumulonimbus bushfires – fires so intense they create their own thunderstorms, extreme winds, black hail, and lightning.

While they are very rare, our research published earlier this year, found climate change is making it likely they will become more common in parts of southeast Australia.

We also identified certain regions in southern and eastern Australia, including near Melbourne’s fringe, that in the second half of this century will be far more vulnerable to these events than others.

How firestorms happen

The 2003 Canberra bushfires, devastating on a grand scale, saw a Canberra resident film a fire tornado for the first time ever. Six years later, the ferocious Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria created three separate pyrocumulonimbus events.

More recently, fire storms devastated California in November 2018.

Pyrocumulonimbus events begin with the intense heat of a very big and fast-burning wildfire, which causes a large and rapidly rising smoke plume. As the plume rises, low atmospheric pressure causes it to expand and cool. Moisture can condense into a type of cloud known as a pyrocumulus – not pyrocumulonimbus, yet. This type of cloud can be common in large fires.

However, with the right environmental conditions the plume goes much higher and pyrocumulonimbus clouds can form, towering up to 15km in some cases. As it rises, the plume cools, and the upper part of the clouds form ice particles that collide and can produce lightning.

These thunderstorms can create erratic and dangerously strong wind gusts. These can drive blizzards of embers that ignite spot fires beyond the fire font.

Lightning from the plume can start new fires, well ahead of the main fire. In one case, lightning generated in a pyrocumulonimbus cloud has been recorded starting new fires up to 100km ahead of the main fire.

How climate change makes firestorms more likely

One of the key elements to a firestorm forming is the precondition of the atmosphere above it. We wanted to investigate how a changing climate might affect the likelihood of firestorms happening.

Previous research has found there is more dynamic interaction between a large fire and the atmosphere when the air about 1.5km above the surface is relatively dry, and when there are larger temperature differences across increasing altitudes.

The larger the temperature difference, the more unstable the atmosphere may become. When higher altitudes get cold more quickly than normal, and are also very dry at low levels, it can become more likely that a pyrocumulonimbus event will develop during a large fire.

We used high-resolution climate modelling of projected lower atmospheric instability and dryness conditions to assess the risk of pyrocumulonimbus in southeastern Australia between 2060 and 2079, compared with 1990-2009. We then overlaid this information with the forest fire danger index to identify particularly dangerous fire days.

We were then able to identify how often dangerous fire weather days occurred at the same time as a dry and unstable atmosphere. Verifying our models against past observations, we then examined how often these two characteristics coincided in the future under climate change, should our greenhouse gas emissions remain on their current trajectory.

The results were startling. From 2060 onwards, we saw sharp increases in dangerous fire days across southeast Australia that coincided with atmospheric conditions primed to generate firestorms.

These extremely dangerous days also shifted across seasons, starting to appear in late spring, whereas historically Australian pyrocumulonimbus wildfires have typically been summer phenomena.

Across large areas of Victoria and South Australia, on average, we saw four or five more days every spring that were conducive to pyrocumulonimbus events.

Read more: A surprising answer to a hot question: controlled burns often fail to slow a bushfire

These were sobering findings, even in a land of extremes like Australia. Our research suggests human-caused climate change has already resulted in more dangerous weather conditions for bushfires in recent decades for many regions of Australia. These trends are very likely to increase due to rising greenhouse gas emissions.

– ref. Climate change will make fire storms more likely in southeastern Australia – http://theconversation.com/climate-change-will-make-fire-storms-more-likely-in-southeastern-australia-127225

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giovanni Di Virgilio, Research associate, UNSW

Temperatures across many regions of Australia are set to exceed 40℃ this week, including heatwaves forecast throughout parts of eastern Australia, raising the spectre of more devastating bushfires.

We have already heard warnings this fire season of the possibility of firestorms, created when extreme fires in the right conditions form their own weather systems.

Read more: Firestorms and flaming tornadoes: how bushfires create their own ferocious weather systems

Firestorms are the common term for pyrocumulonimbus bushfires – fires so intense they create their own thunderstorms, extreme winds, black hail, and lightning.

While they are very rare, our research published earlier this year, found climate change is making it likely they will become more common in parts of southeast Australia.

We also identified certain regions in southern and eastern Australia, including near Melbourne’s fringe, that in the second half of this century will be far more vulnerable to these events than others.

How firestorms happen

The 2003 Canberra bushfires, devastating on a grand scale, saw a Canberra resident film a fire tornado for the first time ever. Six years later, the ferocious Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria created three separate pyrocumulonimbus events.

More recently, fire storms devastated California in November 2018.

Pyrocumulonimbus events begin with the intense heat of a very big and fast-burning wildfire, which causes a large and rapidly rising smoke plume. As the plume rises, low atmospheric pressure causes it to expand and cool. Moisture can condense into a type of cloud known as a pyrocumulus – not pyrocumulonimbus, yet. This type of cloud can be common in large fires.

However, with the right environmental conditions the plume goes much higher and pyrocumulonimbus clouds can form, towering up to 15km in some cases. As it rises, the plume cools, and the upper part of the clouds form ice particles that collide and can produce lightning.

These thunderstorms can create erratic and dangerously strong wind gusts. These can drive blizzards of embers that ignite spot fires beyond the fire font.

Lightning from the plume can start new fires, well ahead of the main fire. In one case, lightning generated in a pyrocumulonimbus cloud has been recorded starting new fires up to 100km ahead of the main fire.

How climate change makes firestorms more likely

One of the key elements to a firestorm forming is the precondition of the atmosphere above it. We wanted to investigate how a changing climate might affect the likelihood of firestorms happening.

Previous research has found there is more dynamic interaction between a large fire and the atmosphere when the air about 1.5km above the surface is relatively dry, and when there are larger temperature differences across increasing altitudes.

The larger the temperature difference, the more unstable the atmosphere may become. When higher altitudes get cold more quickly than normal, and are also very dry at low levels, it can become more likely that a pyrocumulonimbus event will develop during a large fire.

We used high-resolution climate modelling of projected lower atmospheric instability and dryness conditions to assess the risk of pyrocumulonimbus in southeastern Australia between 2060 and 2079, compared with 1990-2009. We then overlaid this information with the forest fire danger index to identify particularly dangerous fire days.

We were then able to identify how often dangerous fire weather days occurred at the same time as a dry and unstable atmosphere. Verifying our models against past observations, we then examined how often these two characteristics coincided in the future under climate change, should our greenhouse gas emissions remain on their current trajectory.

The results were startling. From 2060 onwards, we saw sharp increases in dangerous fire days across southeast Australia that coincided with atmospheric conditions primed to generate firestorms.

These extremely dangerous days also shifted across seasons, starting to appear in late spring, whereas historically Australian pyrocumulonimbus wildfires have typically been summer phenomena.

Across large areas of Victoria and South Australia, on average, we saw four or five more days every spring that were conducive to pyrocumulonimbus events.

Read more: A surprising answer to a hot question: controlled burns often fail to slow a bushfire

These were sobering findings, even in a land of extremes like Australia. Our research suggests human-caused climate change has already resulted in more dangerous weather conditions for bushfires in recent decades for many regions of Australia. These trends are very likely to increase due to rising greenhouse gas emissions.

– ref. Climate change will make fire storms more likely in south eastern Australia – http://theconversation.com/climate-change-will-make-fire-storms-more-likely-in-south-eastern-australia-127225

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claudia Vickers, Director, Synthetic Biology Future Science Platform, CSIRO

We need to revolutionise agriculture in the next 30 years. In 2050 we may have almost 10 billion people to feed. Farmland is already degraded by existing agriculture, and climate change is putting new pressure on crops and livestock.

With the tools we have now we can’t create new breeds and cultivars fast enough to cope with the rapidly changing conditions. How will we get strong yields in uncertain environments and make more food without using more land?

Part of the answer is synthetic biology: using cutting-edge genetic technology to build organisms that evolution never did. Synthetic biology has already had some successes, such as turning yeasts into tiny chemical factories and giving cotton the qualities of synthetic fibres.

At CSIRO, we have already used synthetic biology to produce energy-rich feed for livestock. Our scientists have “switched on” high oil production in the stems and leaves of plants, which could potentially triple the amount of oil they produce.

But these examples are just the beginning.

What is synthetic biology?

Synthetic biology applies engineering theory to biological systems. It relies on a standard kit of biological “parts” such as genes that can be combined to generate complex subcellular machines, circuitry, devices and even whole cells and complex engineered organisms.

This means cells and other biological systems can be designed like electrical circuit boards. Methods that have been successful in other areas of engineering – such as design-build-test-learn cycles, robotic assembly systems and using artificial intelligence algorithms to extract meaning from large data sets – can now be used on life itself to rapidly improve engineered organisms.

Read more: The synthetic biology revolution is now – here’s what that means

Beyond evolution

Evolution allows plants and animals to explore various different solutions to problems they encounter via random mutations and natural selection.

For example, breathing can work in several different ways, and some of these are much more efficient than our lungs. Evolution doesn’t necessarily deliver the best solution to a problem – it just delivers one that lets an organism survive in a given niche.

So, for any given problem, better solutions may exist than the ones already available in biology. Synthetic biology lets us explore this untested “solution space” much more quickly than evolution – on a timescale of weeks or months, rather than years or millennia.

Synthetic biology therefore allows us to explore places where evolution has never gone – and in some cases, probably never would go. It means we can reach outcomes chosen to meet human needs, instead of evolutionary pressures.

Changing the system

To make the most of synthetic biology, there are several systemic challenges that need to be addressed.

I recently met with colleagues from around the world to explore these challenges for agricultural synthetic biology and we have just published our conclusions in Nature Plants.

We agreed that synthetic biology is changing not just what we deliver but how we do this kind of science.

Designing high-throughput bioengineering experiments is quite different from the bespoke, master-craftsperson approach we have used previously. It requires a conceptual and cultural shift that has to happen in a relatively short time frame. Universities will need to modernise their teaching programs to keep pace.

Read more: A fresh opportunity to get regulation and engagement right – the case of synthetic biology

We also need to build robotic infrastructure (known as “biofoundries”), create faster analytical systems to handle testing, and develop new data-analysis methods and machine-learning algorithms. A global alliance of biofoundries was recently established to help push this science forward rapidly.

Basic research into the fundamental principles of the systems that we aim to engineer must also be supported. We cannot engineer effectively unless we understand the system we are modifying. Engineering a system effectively in turn aids our understanding of that system.

Finally, we must ensure the social, legal, ethical, regulatory and institutional issues surrounding synthetic biology are addressed in parallel with development and deployment of these technologies.

An opportunity for Australia

Australia has recognised the importance of synthetic biology. CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, established the Synthetic Biology Future Science Platform in 2016 to build our synthetic biology capability. This is now a A$60 million research and development program with 45 partners nationally and internationally.

It includes a strong investment in social sciences and responsible innovation. The Australian Council of Learned Academies published a roadmapping report for synthetic biology in 2018, and the Australian Research Council has just invested A$35 million into an ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology.

At CSIRO, synthetic biology is being used to create cotton with the properties of synthetic fibres, such as being stretchy, non-creasing and even waterproof. This avoids the use of petrochemicals, and the cotton remains biodegradable.

And at The University of Queensland we are engineering yeast – the same yeast used to make beer, wine and bread – to make sustainable agricultural chemicals. The chemicals can alter crops and their associations with microbes in the roots so they take up nutrients more efficiently. The aim is to increase the yield of crop plants.

We have much to do and a relatively short time to do it in. We need to explore uncharted territory beyond evolution to solve the existential problems that agriculture faces. The synthetic biology tools and techniques we are developing will be critical to deliver the agriculture we need in a challenging future.

– ref. To feed the world in 2050 we need to build the plants that evolution didn’t – http://theconversation.com/to-feed-the-world-in-2050-we-need-to-build-the-plants-that-evolution-didnt-127316

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olga Kokshagina, Researcher – Innovation & Entrepreneurship, RMIT University

For centuries, human beings have relied on patents to encourage and protect innovation.

The electric light was patented, the phonograph, television, WiFi and Nespresso capsules.

But many inventions were not: matches, vaccination, computers and the internet.

Patents work by granting inventors an exclusive licence to make money out of their inventions for a set period of time. They are a reward for coming up with ideas and they promote disclosure of the ideas.

But, paradoxically, even if patents raise the number of innovations, they can also slow progress by imposing barriers to market entry on non-patent holders and decreasing the number of follow up innovations.

The rise of the prize

Increasingly, prizes are used as an alternative to patents: among them the Longitude Prize for an accurate and fast test for bacterial infections, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Prize for innovation in vaccine delivery.

Competitions are said to be worth US$1.25 billion, and US$2 billion by 2024.

Among the platforms is MIT solve, which is running competitions to develop systems to help children under five develop learning and cognitive skills and help businesses eliminate waste and reuse resources.

Another is Xprize which has developed a US$20 million prize for converting carbon dioxide emissions into valuable products.

No guarantees

As we speak, teams of innovators are competing for the US$5 million IBM Watson AI Xprize to demonstrate how humans can collaborate with artificial intelligence.

Other teams are competing for the US$1 million women safety prize.

Using competitions isn’t new.

A contest in France in the late 1700s to develop a method of preserving food that wouldn’t spoil while soldiers were away fighting wars led to the development of canned food.

Another in Britain produced a method for finding longitude at sea.

But it is easy to get substandard results.

Together with researchers in Europe, US and Australia, I have identified eight key ingredients for unleashing their full power.

Tip 1: define the right problem

Overly complex or specific challenges attract fewer participants. Yet so do overly abstract or general challenges.

So it’s important to be both specific and universal. Innovation often comes from outsiders in the field, so it can help to reframe the problem to be applied in many places.

For example, a contest that deals with computational problems in biology can be formulated in a way that it can be generalised to any life sciences problem involving computation.

Tip 2: reach the right people

Crowdsourcing is about tapping into unexpected ideas, often from unexpected places.

Partnering with recognised institutions or high-profile individuals can help.

For example, a competition on the use of big data for cancer epidemiology managed to create a community of more than 1,000 members partly by forming scientific and ethical committees of acknowledged experts.

Tip 3: keep participants active

Participation in competitions drops off rapidly over time, especially for innovators with lower levels of expertise.

A proven method of maintaining interest is to allow participants to comment on each other’s ideas and even join forces.

Another is to break a challenge into smaller parts to enable participants to engage with each other about their progress.

Tip 4: get informed ambassadors

It helps to find online ambassadors, who are knowledgeable enough to make great connections and provide feedback.

The best of them are open to the unexpected and connect people in ways that find truly new ground.

Tip 5: challenge their solutions

Sometimes the proposed solutions aren’t bold enough.

It is possible to challenge participants to make them more ambitious by asking “what if” questions or using techniques like SCAMPER (substitute, combine, adapt, modify, eliminate, reverse ideas), ASIT (advanced systematic inventive thinking) and reverse brainstorming.

Tip 6: set the right incentives

Monetary prizes can work, but often it’s not the amount that matters. Participants spend more money competing than the prize is worth.

Sometimes the best financial prize isn’t money but recognition, employment opportunities, funding to develop ideas, or even patents.

In the late 1700s during a butter shortage the French Emperor Napoleon III offered a prize for anyone who could produce a cheap alternative. The winner was offered a patent, for margarine.

Tip 7: be prepared to redefine the problem

Sometimes competitors need to refine the problem as well as find the solution. They need to be encouraged to think broadly.

One tool is the C-K method that links knowledge to concepts. It has been used in this case to create a common understanding among cancer patients, oncologists and data scientists leading to new lines of cancer inquiry.

Tip 8: evaluate with an open mind

Evaluators are often confronted with novelty bias. Where ideas seem too radical or too far from traditional business models, they struggle to understand their potential. Even if a firm adopts them, bold ideas can be extremely hard to implement.

Companies can be encouraged to move beyond their traditional way of doing things by open innovation intermediaries.

Done right, competitions can be powerful. But getting the most out of them isn’t easy.

Prizes and patents are complementary: competitions allow us to test radically new ideas and patents ensure their protection.

Read more: Do patents promote innovation?

– ref. Innovation competitions are the next big thing. Here are 8 ways to make them work – http://theconversation.com/innovation-competitions-are-the-next-big-thing-here-are-8-ways-to-make-them-work-124898

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Parry, Senior Lecturer in Sport Management, University of Winchester

Rising Australian cricket star Will Pucovski has recently taken the surprising step of asking not to be considered for selection for the national men’s team ahead of the First Test against Pakistan, which starts on Thursday. Pucovski cited a need to focus on his mental well-being.

For a player to turn down potential selection for the national team may at first glance be surprising, or even scandalous. But Pucovski is one of a recent trio of professional Australian cricketers to take a break from playing to boost their mental well-being, alongside Glenn Maxwell and Nic Maddinson.

Read more: Myles Garrett, Don Cherry and the changing nature of the sports boys club

Internationally, other high profile male athletes have spoken out about problems with mental health, including English Premier League footballer, Danny Rose, Wales rugby player, Dafydd James, and NBA basketball player, DeMar DeRozan.

Negative stereotypes associated with mental health issues were once a matter of shame and embarrassment, only to be discussed quietly in fear of being branded as “weak”. This is particularly true for traditionally “manly” sportsmen who have come under fire in the past for opening up.

But as the contemporary definition of masculinity becomes less rigid, more athletes are able to speak out about their mental health issues while, at the same time, paving the way for their fans to say it’s okay to not be okay.

Opening up wasn’t always well-received

For elite athletes, training and performance demands can lead to high psychological stress. This is on top of facing media and public scrutiny, threats of sudden and enduring injuries, and retirement. Despite these pressures, elite athletes don’t often seek help for, or even recognise, poor mental health.

Read more: ‘Australian’ enough to be a hero?

In fact, a raft of ex-England cricketers (Marcus Trescothick, Mike Yardy, Jonathan Trott and Steve Harmison), have written about experiencing mental health issues in their autobiographies. In all cases, their off-field battles halted their international careers, but their struggles were poorly understood at the time.

When Mike Yardy left the 2011 World Cup, one outspoken pundit proclaimed:

he must have been reading my comments about his bowling. That must have upset him because it’s obviously too much for him at this level.

One of Jonathan Trott’s critics said he felt “conned” by the player reporting a “stress-related illness” when he left an Ashes series. He suggested Trott “did a runner. He did not fight and got on a plane and went home”.

Steve Harmison never openly disclosed mental health problems until the end of his career, due to his belief that if fans and “… people in the England set-up knew how bad it was I’d never play for my country again”. His struggles were written off as “homesickness”.

When Marcus Trescothick returned home in the middle of a tour in 2006, he battled with how to report this, eventually saying:

Having picked up a virus and also some personal issues to resolve, I decided to return home.

He was hounded by the press, who were eager to uncover the real reason.

Today, mental health is more readily accepted in the wider community to be an illness, making it easier for male athletes to disclose mental ill health as a reason for not being fit to play.

For Will Pucovski, the response from the media and the public has, for the most part, been to applaud his bravery at speaking out, demonstrating care and understanding of his situation.

Cricket Australia general manager of national teams Ben Oliver said everyone in the “Australian cricket family” support’s Pucovski’s decision.

And Virat Kohli, the Indian cricket captain, and one of the most prominent and influential players in the sport, described the moves as “remarkable” and having “set the right example”.

Sport and masculinity

Historically, men were taught that being “masculine” meant to revere violence and stoicism and to hyper-sexualise women, in an attempt to distance themselves from associations of weakness and homosexuality.

Sport has been a key avenue for developing and displaying masculinity from early childhood; for developing “real men”.

Australia, in particular, has a history of celebrating “manly” sporting displays and sports such as rugby league and Australian rules football are valued, in part, because they are tough, physical games.

Read more: Rugby league may finally have reached its tipping point on player behaviour and violence

Athletes are often labelled heroes and role models because they uphold national archetypes and images of a “typical” person. In Australia, they are prime examples of the typical masculine “matey” hero, and true Australians.

But in recent years, the definition of masculinity has softened to become more inclusive. Behaviours like talking about feelings, recognising mental well-being and playing more active roles in family life (particularly around childbirth) are now more acceptable than they used to in our recent past.

This means it has become easier for male athletes to admit when they’re not okay. And their position as role models in turn triggers more discussion, including among sports fans, who are often a hard to reach group when it comes to mental health awareness.

If athletes, as masculine heroes, can admit to experiencing poor mental health, then so too can those that look up to them. Cricket Australia’s Ben Oliver said:

By Will bravely taking this position, he will undoubtedly inspire others facing similar challenges to speak up and take positive steps towards improving their mental well-being.

Read more: Sporting dads: male athletes need family-friendly policies too

Rather than honouring athletes who endure both physical and mental pain in silence, it’s time to recognise that those who can admit they’re struggling and seek help are the real heroes and real men.

If this article has raised issues for you or you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

– ref. Big men do cry: cricketers are leading the charge for inclusive masculinity – http://theconversation.com/big-men-do-cry-cricketers-are-leading-the-charge-for-inclusive-masculinity-127108

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

Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen, who has previously been shadow treasurer and before that treasurer, wants the study of economics made “more sexy” to attract more students, especially women, to study it.

And he thinks young people’s concerns about climate change might be a way to encourage them into a discipline which has seen falling numbers.

In his Warren Hogan memorial lecture, Bowen highlights the rise of business courses and the decline of those in economics. The lecture, to be delivered on Wednesday night, has been released beforehand.

The number studying economics in their HSC or equivalent qualification has gone from about 40,000 in 1993, to about 11,000 today, Bowen points out.

Since the early 1990s, which is when the subject of business studies was added to the curriculum the study of economics in high schools has collapsed by 70% across Australia, and 75% here in NSW.

Economics is now taught in just one third of government schools and half of non-government schools.

And while the number of university undergraduates studying economics at university has remained static at around 10,000 over this time, this is of course against the background of a big increase in the numbers of university students in total, meaning economics has shrunk has a proportion of university study generally.

In fact between 2001 and 2016, the number of economics undergraduates fell slightly, while the numbers undertaking banking and finance, management and commerce and business studies degrees grew strongly.

Bowen says that in the decade to 2016, the number of Australian universities offering economic degrees fell from 21 to 17.

Read more: Women are dropping out of economics, which means men are running our economy

Meanwhile the gender gap in economics students has been rising.

In the early 1990s when I was a young economics student at school, the breakdown of males and females in the economics classrooms of Australia was 50-50. … The ratio of boys to girls is now two to one. That’s worse than we do in the STEM subjects.

While saying he has nothing against business studies, Bowen says he is “concerned that the nation will lose out, our society will lose out, if fewer young people are trained in the fundamentals of good economic decision making and more and more are trained in the more commercial skills sets of banking and business studies”.

Bowen says young people are passionate about big issues, notably climate change and inequality.

They want solutions. And if we want solutions that are effective, enduring and efficient, only economics can supply them.

A rigorous economic training can equip young people to challenge the issues of their age. And explaining the value of economic training to young people in dealing with things like climate change and inequality might just make it a more attractive option for study.

Passion to tackle climate change might be one selling point for young people and the study of economics.

Bowen says the government should add climate change to the list of National Health Priority Areas.

Current areas are cancer control, cardiovascular health, injury prevention, mental health, diabetes mellitus, arthritis and musculoskeletal conditions, obesity and dementia. The government recently proposed the addition of medicines safety.

Bowen says severe climate change, of the type the world is on track for, threatens health. Adding climate change to the priority list would raise awareness of the health challenge it presents “and set out a road map for dealing with it”.

– ref. Make the study of economics “more sexy”: Chris Bowen – http://theconversation.com/make-the-study-of-economics-more-sexy-chris-bowen-127360

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Cook, Lecturer, Computer and Security Science,Edith Cowan University, Edith Cowan University

Fake videos and doctored photographs, often based on events such as the Moon landing and supposed UFO appearances, have been the subject of fascination for decades.

Such imagery is often deep fake content, called so because it uses deep learning associated with neural networks and digital image processing.

Last week, Twitter revealed plans to introduce a new policy governing deep fake videos on its platform.

The company proposed it would warn users about deep fake content by flagging tweets with “synthetic or manipulated media”. Twitter says media may be removed in cases where it could lead to serious harm, but has stopped short of enforcing a strict removal stance. Users have until November 27 to provide feedback.

In adopting this warning-only approach towards deep fakes, the social media giant has shown poor judgement.

Why deep fakes are dangerous

With advances in computer science, deep fakes are becoming an increasingly powerful tool to deceive people using social media.

Deep fake clips of celebrities and politicians are realistic enough to trick users into making financial, political and personal decisions based on the fake testimony of others.

Whether it’s a David Koch erectile dysfunction cream scam, an announcement by Donald Trump that AIDs has been eradicated, or a fake interview with Andrew Forrest leading to a finance scam, deep fakes present a serious risk to our ability to trust what we view online.

Read more: People who spread deepfakes think their lies reveal a deeper truth

Social media companies have so far taken a sloppy approach to this threat. They have even promoted the use of photo algorithms letting users experiment with animated face masks, and provided tutorials on how to use editing programs.

Deep fake production is the professional version of this practice. At its worst, it can even threaten democracy.

Twitter’s latest draft policy on deep fakes sets a dangerous precedent. It allows social media platforms to handball away their responsibility to protect customers from manipulated videos and imagery.

Twitter should be just as accountable as television

It’s time social media giants such as Twitter started seeing themselves as the 21st century version of free-to-air television. With TV, there are clear guidelines about what cannot be broadcast.

Since 1992, Australians have been protected by the 1992 Broadcasting Services Act, ensuring what is shows in “fair and accurate coverage”. The act protects viewers in regards to the origin and authenticity of television content.

The same principles should apply to social media. Americans now spend more time on social media than they do watching television, and Australia isn’t far behind.

By suggesting they only need to flag tweets with deep fake content, Twitter’s proposed policy downplays the seriousness of the threat.

Sending the wrong message

Twitter’s draft policy is dangerous on two fronts.

Firstly, it suggests the company is somehow doing its part in protecting its users. In reality, Twitter’s decision is akin to watching a child struggle to swim in heavy surf, while nearby authorities wave a sign saying: “some waves may be hard to judge” – instead of actually helping.

Read more: Lies, ‘fake news’ and cover-ups: how has it come to this in Western democracies?

Senior citizens and inexperienced social media users are particularly vulnerable to deep fakes. This is because they’re predisposed to trust online content that looks authentic.

The second reason Twitter’s proposition is dangerous is because social media trolls and sock puppet armies enjoy surprising online audiences. Sock puppets are specialists in deceiving users into believing they’re a single fake person (or multiple fake perople) by means of false posts and online identities.

Basically, content that has been signposted as deep fake will be exploited by people wanting to amplify its spread. It’s unrealistic to suppose this won’t happen.

If Twitter flags posts that are fake, yet leaves them up, the likely outcome will be a popularity surge in this content. As per social media algorithms, this means a greater number of fake videos and images will be “promoted” rather than retracted.

Twitter has an opportunity to take a leadership role in preventing the spread of deep fake content, by identifying and removing deep fakes from its platform. All major social media platforms have the responsibility to present a unified approach to the prevention and removal of manipulated and fake imagery.

The circulation of a Nancy Pelosi deep fake video earlier this year revealed social media’s inconsistency in the handling of deceitful imagery. YouTube removed the clip from its platform, Facebook flagged it as false, and Twitter let it remain.

Read more: AI can now create fake porn, making revenge porn even more complicated

Twitter is in the business of helping users repost links and content as many times as possible. It creates profit by generating repeated referrals, commentary, and the acceptance of its content through promoted trends.

If deep fakes aren’t removed from Twitter, their growth will be exponential.

A looming threat

Early versions of such spurious content were relatively easy to spot. People in the first deep fake clips appeared unrealistic. Their eyes would’t blink and their facial gestures wouldn’t sync with the words being spoken.

There are also examples of harmless image manipulation. These include web apps on Snapchat and Facebook that let users alter their photos (usually selfies) to add backgrounds, or resemble characters such as cute animals.

However, this new generation of altered imagery is often hard to distinguish from reality. And as criminals and pranksters improve their production of deep fakes, the other side of this double-edged sword could swing at any time.

– ref. Instead of showing leadership, Twitter pays lip service to the dangers of deep fakes – http://theconversation.com/instead-of-showing-leadership-twitter-pays-lip-service-to-the-dangers-of-deep-fakes-127027

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evelyn Parr, Research Fellow in Exercise Metabolism and Nutrition, Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research, Australian Catholic University

As an aesthetic society, we often demonise body fat and stigmatise people with lots of it. There’s often an assumption that people carrying excess weight don’t exercise and must be unhealthy.

But that’s not true: you can be fat and fit. In fact, as we age, low levels of fitness can be more harmful to our health than high amounts of fat.

Read more: Interactive body map: physical inactivity and the risks to your health

For those considering starting exercise, try looking beyond weight loss for motivation. No matter how much you weigh, there are always benefits to exercise.

Exercise actually does a pretty poor job of getting us to expend enough excess energy to lose weight. This is partly due to a compensatory effect of our appetite, which increases after we exercise.

Exercise changes our body composition – how much fat we have as a ratio to how much lean (muscle) tissue we have – but this doesn’t always cause big changes on the scales.

Here are just five ways exercise improves our health, no matter how much we weigh.

1. Better cardiorespiratory fitness

Cardiorespiratory fitness is a measure of how far and hard you can run without needing to stop, or how many stairs you can climb without being out of breath. Running for longer, or climbing more stairs, means you have a higher absolute cardiorespiratory fitness which cannot be improved with weight loss alone.

Having a high body mass index (BMI) may reduce the absolute intensity you can exercise but it doesn’t mean it is less effective.

You may be able to jog between every third lamppost, for example, but not run consistently for 1 km. While it may seem the periodic jogging is not as impressive, it’s all relative to your baseline and any exercise is better than none.

If you’re carrying a lot of excess weight, you might prefer non-weight bearing exercise such as swimming or cycling indoors to minimise stress on your joints – but this will depend on you and what you like doing. After all, you’re more likely to continue exercising if you enjoy it.

If you’re thinking “but I hate running/swimming/cycling/dancing and I’d rather lift weights”, then lift weights! Although lifting weights doesn’t have the same effects as cardio training, the benefits are still as important for mobility, joint function and maintaining muscle mass as we age.

Read more: Don’t have time to exercise? Here’s a regimen everyone can squeeze in

2. Lowered risk of heart disease and stroke

Exercise reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke, even in those with a chronic disease such as diabetes, irrespective of body fatness.

Regular exercise helps lower blood pressure, improves delivery of blood throughout the body, and reduces inflammation, even in those with a high body mass index.

3. Reducing the ‘bad’ fat

Exercise improves our body’s ability to use energy. We store large amounts of energy as fat, which is quite hard to break down, as it costs a lot of oxygen compared to “cheaper” fuels for the body to use like glucose.

But when we exercise regularly, we increase our body’s ability to use fat as a fuel source as well as requiring more energy at rest.

This doesn’t necessarily mean more exercise equals more fat loss, but it does mean more fat turnover, and typically less fat stored in and around the organs (the “bad” visceral fat).

Read more: Belly fat is the most dangerous, but losing it from anywhere helps

4. Mental health benefits

Research has consistently shown that people who exercise (regardless of body size and shape) have better mental health and lower levels of stress, depression and emotional problems.

It does this via blood flow to the brain, increased release of endorphins that make us feel happy, and by helping to moderate the brain’s response to stress.

Often, the hardest part is getting started with exercise or going to perform the exercise, but once you are moving the mental health benefits begin.

5. Preventing weight gain

While exercise may not help us lose a lot of weight on the scales, it’s a good way to keep weight off and prevent weight regain.

Regular exercise continues to encourage the body to use stored fuels and remodel tissues (such as muscle) to grow healthier and stronger.

But preventing weight regain is tough. People who have lost weight may need greater amounts of exercise to counteract the physiological drive to return to the heavier body weight.

Read more: Genes, joules or gut bugs: which one is most to blame when it comes to weight gain?

If you need some extra help getting started or finding a routine that suits you, talk to your GP or consider seeing an accredited exercise physiologist.

– ref. If weight loss is your only goal for exercise, it’s time to rethink your priorities – http://theconversation.com/if-weight-loss-is-your-only-goal-for-exercise-its-time-to-rethink-your-priorities-120083

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Renwick, Professor, Physical Geography (climate science), Victoria University of Wellington

Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz

I saw an article claiming that “king tides” will increase in frequency as sea level rises. I am sceptical. What is the physics behind such a claim and how is it related to climate change? My understanding is that a king tide is a purely tidal effect, related to Moon, Sun and Earth axis tilt, and is quite different from a storm surge.

This is a good question, and you are right about the tides themselves. The twice-daily tides are caused by the gravitational forces of the Moon and the Sun, and the rotation of the Earth, none of which is changing.

A “king” tide occurs around the time when the Moon is at its closest to the Earth and Earth is at its closest to the Sun, and the combined gravitational effects are strongest. They are the highest of the high tides we experience.

But the article you refer to was not really talking about king tides. It was discussing coastal inundation events.

Read more: King tides and rising seas are predictable, and we’re not doing enough about it

When tides, storms and sea levels combine

During a king tide, houses and roads close to the coast can be flooded. The article referred to the effects of coastal flooding generally, using “king tide” as a shorthand expression. We know that king tides are not increasing in frequency, but we also know that coastal flooding and coastal erosion events are happening more frequently.

As sea levels rise, it becomes easier for ocean waves to penetrate on to the shore. The biggest problem arises when storms combine with a high tide, and ride on top of higher sea levels.

The low air pressure near the centre of a storm pulls up the sea surface below. Then, onshore winds can pile water up against the coast, allowing waves to run further inshore. Add a high or king tide and the waves can come yet further inshore. Add a bit of sea level rise and the waves penetrate even further.

The background sea level rise has been only 20cm around New Zealand’s coasts so far, but even that makes a noticeable difference. An apparently small rise in overall sea level allows waves generated by a storm to come on shore much more easily. Coastal engineers use the rule of thumb that every 10cm of sea level rise increases the frequency of a given coastal flood by a factor of three.

This means that 10cm of sea level rise will turn a one-in-100-year coastal flood into a one-in-33-year event. With another 10cm of sea level rise, it becomes a one-in-11-year event, and so on.

Retreating from the coast

The occurrence rates change so quickly because in most places, beaches are fairly flat. A 10cm rise in sea levels might translate to 30 or 40 metres of inland movement of the high tide line, depending on the slope of the beach. So when the tide is high and the waves are rolling in, the sea can come inland tens of metres further than it used to, unless something like a coastal cliff or a sea wall blocks its way.

The worry is that beaches are likely to remain fairly flat, so anything within 40 metres of the current high tide mark is likely to be eroded away as storms occur and we experience another 10cm of sea level rise. If a road or a house is on an erodible coast (such as a line of sand dunes), it is not the height above sea level that matters but the distance from the high tide mark.

Another 30cm of sea level rise is already “baked in”, guaranteed over the next 40 years, regardless of what happens with greenhouse gas emissions and action on climate change. By the end of the century, at least another 20cm on top of that is virtually certain.

Read more: Our shameful legacy: just 15 years’ worth of emissions will raise sea level in 2300

The 30cm rise multiplies the chances of coastal flooding by a factor of around 27 (3x3x3) and 50cm by the end of the century increases coastal flooding frequency by a factor of around 250. That would make the one-in-100-year coastal flood likely every few months, and roads, properties and all kinds of built infrastructure within 200 metres of the current coastline would be vulnerable to inundation and damage.

These are round numbers, and local changes depend on coastal shape and composition, but they give the sense of how quickly things can change. Already, key roads in Auckland (such as Tamaki Drive) are inundated when storms combine with high tides. Such events are set to become much more common as sea levels continue to rise, to the point where they will become part of the background state of the coastal zone.

To ensure cities such as Auckland (and others around the world) are resilient to such challenges, we’ll need to retreat from the coast where possible (move dwellings and roads inland) and to build coastal defences where that makes sense. The coast is coming inland, and we need to move with it.

– ref. Climate explained: why coastal floods are becoming more frequent as seas rise – http://theconversation.com/climate-explained-why-coastal-floods-are-becoming-more-frequent-as-seas-rise-127202

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Larissa McLean Davies, Associate Professor Language and Literacy Education, University of Melbourne

In recent weeks, Australian universities’ commitment to teaching Australian literature has come under scrutiny. This came amid revelations Sydney University has withdrawn funding from its Chair of Australian Literature – the nation’s first.

Later news of the possible closure of UWA Publishing compounded anxiety about the future of Australian literary studies. An article in The Australian newspaper noted there is no local university in which an undergraduate student can specialise in Australian literature.

Read more: The open access shift at UWA Publishing is an experiment doomed to fail

The concern goes beyond tertiary studies. We conducted a project exploring secondary school teachers’ engagement with Australian texts. We found Australian books are not consistently taught in classrooms and, when they are, they more often than not marginalise female, refugee and Indigenous authors.

The demographic of Australian classrooms has changed significantly in the past fifty years. But the texts studied in English have remained remarkably stable.

In our multi-cultural society, where compulsory schooling is intended to help develop critically informed and empathetic citizens, this situation requires serious attention.

Why teachers don’t teach Aussie books

Studying English and literature in settler societies was historically intended to support students to value “Englishness”. As a result, Australian literature, if it was acknowledged at all, was systematically marginalised and maligned in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

In the 1940s – in a precursor to what we now call the “cultural cringe” – an English professor famously renounced Australian literature. He said that, in the absence of appropriate books by Australians, he would lecture on DH Lawrence’s novel, Kangaroo.

Read more: ‘Australia has no culture’: changing the mindset of the cringe

Australia’s first national curriculum, in 2008, attempted to respond to this enduring imperial literary legacy. It mandated teaching Australian literature, placing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature at the heart of this commitment.

Most states and territories have mandated text lists for school senior years, which generally include titles by Indigenous authors. But recent research in Victoria has shown school uptake of these texts is limited.

Our research shows teachers are often reluctant to select books by Australian authors. Reasons for this include a limited knowledge of diverse Australian texts, often due to a lack of exposure to Australian literature at school and university.*

There are fewer teaching resources for Australian literature too and teachers are concerned about inaccurately representing the stories of Indigenous Australians.

Some teachers we spoke to also raised questions about the quality of Australian literature, as compared with more established canonical texts. One teacher said:

While I appreciate that it is important to have Australian literature in the curriculum […] I find that Australian texts are often very similar and this limits the number of themes and ideas the students are exposed to over the course of their education.

We also conducted a national survey of more than 700 English teachers, asking them what books they taught in class. The following top 15 texts were most referenced:

This should not be seen as a definitive list of texts most used in Australian classrooms. But it does offer insight into the relative status of Australian literature in the curriculum.

Most works on this list are written in the past, by male British or American writers. Most of these have formed part of the school literary canon for generations. There are only two texts by women, Hinton and Lee, and no texts by Australian women, migrant Australians or Aboriginal writers.

Read more: Diversity, the Stella Count and the whiteness of Australian publishing

The only texts by Australians cited here are Marsden’s 1990s dystopian invasion series and Silvey’s 2009 coming of age novel.

How do we change it?

Our research showed teachers need more time, knowledge, resources and confidence to include more Australian literature in the classroom. This is not surprising given teachers we surveyed and interviewed often completed both secondary and tertiary studies in English without significant experiences of Australian literature.

In response, colleagues and I have partnered with the Stella Prize (a literary award for Australian women writers) to develop the teacher-researchers project.

Teachers select a text from the Stella long-list. They then work intensively with the project team – which includes teacher-educators and Australian literary studies experts – and university archives or other cultural collections, to develop resources to teach their chosen texts that can be shared.

Texts in this pilot project have included Heat and Light by Ellen Van Neervan, Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman and The Hate Race by Maxine Beneba Clarke.

This project will expand the literary knowledge and experiences of teachers, students and school communities involved. But a concerted, bipartisan and enduring commitment to resourcing scholarship and teaching of Australian writing across universities and schools is imperative.

If we are to ensure all students experience Australian stories from the past and the present, Australian writing, in all its rich diversity, must be a central part of a literary education.

– ref. Old white men dominate school English booklists. It’s time more Australian schools taught Australian books – http://theconversation.com/old-white-men-dominate-school-english-booklists-its-time-more-australian-schools-taught-australian-books-127110

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Maund, PhD Candidate, School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle

The impacts of the bushfires that are overwhelming emergency services in New South Wales and Queensland suggest houses are being built in areas where the risks are high. We rely heavily on emergency services to protect people and property, but strategic land-use planning can improve resilience and so help reduce the risk in the first place. This would mean giving more weight to considering bushfire hazards at the earliest stages of planning housing supply.

The outstanding dedication of emergency agencies such as the NSW Rural Fire Service and Queensland Fire and Emergency Service is obvious in their efforts to save lives and properties despite the increasing intensity of fires. However, strategic land-use planning could help reduce the risks by being more responsive to such changes in hazards.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: When the firies call him out on climate change, Scott Morrison should listen

Comprehensive management of bushfire risk should include a strategic planning focus on reducing the pressures on emergency services and communities. We may have to rethink land-use planning approaches that prove inadequate to deal with the increasing intensity and unpredictability of natural hazards.

Strategic planning policies and practices provide the opportunity to be more attentive to changes in bushfire hazards in particular. Planning decisions that fail to do this may leave communities exposed and heavily reliant on emergency services during a disaster.

Planning to build resilience

The Australian government has identified land-use planning as a key step in managing natural hazards. In 2011, the Council of Australian Governments declared:

Locating new or expanding existing settlements and infrastructure in areas exposed to unreasonable risk is irresponsible.

The increasing intensity of hazards associated with climate change makes strategic planning even more relevant. Land-use planners could help greatly with building resilience by placing natural hazards at the top of their assessment criteria.

Read more: Drought and climate change were the kindling, and now the east coast is ablaze

Coordinating land-use planning reforms is itself a challenge. Planning in Australia involves many policies, institutions, professions and decision-makers. Policies and processes differ depending on the state or territory.

Furthermore, planners must reconcile the demand for residential land from population growth and the need to protect the environment. Deciding where to locate housing is often fraught with complexity, so the process needs expert early input from relevant scientific communities and emergency services.

Anticipate risk to reduce it

Land-use planning offers an opportunity in the earliest phase of development to manage the combined pressures of population growth, urban expansion, increasing density and risks of natural hazards.

When rezoning land for residential development, many issues have to be considered. These include environmental sustainability, demand for housing and the location of existing buildings and infrastructure, as well as natural hazards. It’s a complex and intricate process, but clearly the strategic planning stage is the first opportunity to minimise exposure to bushfire risk.

Existing policy and processes may defer the detailed review of bushfire risk and other natural hazards to development stages after land has been rezoned. There’s a case for policy to increase the importance attached to bushfire hazards at this early stage.

Ultimately, strategic planners aim to locate settlements away from risk of natural hazards. However, bushfires continue to have disastrous impacts on people and properties. Ongoing demand for housing may add pressure to build in areas exposed to risk.

Settlements are pushing into undeveloped areas that are more likely to be exposed to bushfire risk. The role of strategic land-use planning then becomes even more critical. The devastation we have seen this month shows why this risk must be given the highest priority in land-use planning, particularly when zoning land as residential.

Read more: Natural hazard risk: is it just going to get worse or can we do something about it?

Key steps to reform planning

The increasing intensity of bushfires points to a need to rethink planning processes and mitigation strategies to reduce exposure to such hazards before they arise. This will help ease the burden on emergency services of managing a disaster when it happens. We can’t ignore the opportunities to minimise the risks at the early stages of land-use planning. Key steps include:

• a policy review to mandate natural hazards, including bushfire risk, as one of the highest priorities in policy, with an objective framework for making land-use decisions
• mandatory consultation with relevant science disciplines to model natural hazard risks when land is considered for rezoning
• involve emergency services in the strategic planning phase to help minimise future risk.

– ref. Putting homes in high-risk areas is asking too much of firefighters – http://theconversation.com/putting-homes-in-high-risk-areas-is-asking-too-much-of-firefighters-127126

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreas Cebulla, Senior Research Fellow, South Australian Centre for Economic Studies, University of Adelaide

In the past decade a 30-year trend to earlier retirement has been reversed. In OECD countries the average age at which people retire has risen by about one to two years. In Australia the average age has risen from 64 to 65.6 for men, and from 61.8 to 64.2 for women.

For the Australian government, though, this isn’t enough.

In a speech last night, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg called Australia’s ageing population an “economic time bomb”.

Over the next four decades the number of Australians working and paying income tax for every person over the age of 65 would fall from 4.5 to 2.7, he said. The proportion of people over 65 in the workforce would therefore have to grow substantially.

The government needs people to keep working and paying income tax to offset spending on age pensions, health care and the like.

Its most obvious policy stick is to raise the eligibility age for the pension, which is now 66 but will be 67 in 2023. Raising it further, however, is something the government has rejected as not on the cards. Instead Frydenberg is talking about more training for older workers to keep their skills relevant.

Read more: How we could make the retirement system more sustainable

But my research with Mikkel Barslund, Jürgen Bauknecht, Nathan Hudson-Sharp, Lucy Stokes and David Wilkinson suggests this is a very small and unappealing carrot.

Our findings suggest there’s a limit to retirement ages rising organically. Because there comes a point where work, especially full-time work, just isn’t something most people want to – or indeed can – do.

The reason has to do with getting tired at and through work, how that tiredness affects partners and families, and the limit to which workplaces have shown themselves capable of accommodating the needs and preferences of older workers.

This is something that can only be addressed by dramatically reconfiguring work options.

The limits of job satisfaction

These conclusions are based on two studies into the experiences of older workers.

These studies have been based on data gleaned from two large European surveys, the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the European Social Survey (ESS). SHARE is a database of information on the health, socio-economic status and family networks of about 140,000 individuals aged 50 or older in 28 countries. ESS measures the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour of people in more than 30 nations. The demographics of these surveys means the results are relevant to the Australian population.

The first study used data from SHARE to model the link between the step into retirement, job satisfaction and the factors that shape job satisfaction.

The results found people happy in their jobs retired later than those who were less satisfied with their job and its working conditions.

That’s perhaps not a surprising finding. But what is interesting is that our modelling showed that, if every mature age workers’ job satisfaction was raised to its highest level, the effect on retirement would still be small.

It would add, on average, about three months to current retirement ages.

The effect was stronger for women and those with tertiary qualifications. If working conditions made them more satisfied with their job, they would spend an extra 9 to 12 months in work before retiring.

Read more: Keeping mature-age workers on the job

Job satisfaction is only part of the story, though. The second study, using data from ESS, highlights the obstacle of increasing tiredness to longer working lives. This is so because tiredness after work can adversely affect relationships with partners and families.

Interestingly, the significant factor in the perceptions of partner or family is not the number of hours worked but ability to determine a daily work schedule.

Those with greater influence over their working day were much less likely to find their partner or family “fed up” with their working beyond the time they could have retired. This greater control did not eliminate tiredness, but it appeared to help non-retirees better balance work with home life.

Tangible measures

Our studies do point to a few tangible things that can be done do to make working in later life more bearable.

Improved job satisfaction could come from reducing time pressures, minimising physically demanding work, better pay, skill development opportunities and more autonomy. In particular, greater flexibility over working hours would help.

These are things, of course, that might improve job satisfaction for any worker, regardless of age. But they are within the control of the employer, not the government.

So perhaps what Josh Frydenberg and the federal government now need to talk about is not just a narrow focus on education or training to help older Australians remain in the workforce for longer, but how to encourage better working environments for everyone, regardless of age, gender or occupation.

– ref. There’s a yawning gap in the plan to keep older Australians working – http://theconversation.com/theres-a-yawning-gap-in-the-plan-to-keep-older-australians-working-119013

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gay Hawkins, Professor, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

Most of us will never see a platypus or a lyrebird in the wild, but it’s likely we’ve encountered them on television.

Our new research looks at the vital role early ABC television played in making Australian animals accessible to audiences.

In the early years of ABC TV, there was very little locally produced animal content. When animals were on the small screen, they were usually imported from the BBC.

Foremost among the imports was David Attenborough’s Zoo Quest (1954–1964), following the young naturalist’s exploits in Guyana, Borneo and Paraguay collecting live animals for London Zoo.

Zoo Quest was formative in the development of natural history television. It launched Attenborough’s career and established many of the cultural conventions of the format: the authoritative and intrepid male narrator venturing to exotic places in search of animals being their wild selves.

For Attenborough, the thrill of showing animals in their natural states gave the show “the spice of unpredictability”.

From the farm to the bush

The initial strategy for local animal content by ABC TV was to use familiar radio techniques – panel talks and natural sounds – and just add pictures.

Junior Farmer Competition, for instance, was a successful radio show. When it moved to television in 1958, live cattle, sheep and poultry were brought into the studio and competitors were asked to handle them before the cameras.

This show was a remarkable experiment in visualising a radio format – but it didn’t last. The logistics of wrangling livestock in a TV studio proved too difficult.

During the 1960s, the ABC began screening locally made wildlife shows. Wild animals were no longer somewhere else, in Africa or South America: they were all around us.

Wildlife Australia (1962-1964) was written by ornithologist and radio broadcaster, Graham Pizzey and produced with the CSIRO. The series took viewers into unique Australian environments, and explored the native wildlife in these habitats.

Other shows offered variations on this theme of an emerging environmental nationalism. Around the Bush (1964) starred naturalist and educator Vincent Serventy out in the field; Wild Life Paradise: Australian Fauna (1967), was filmed at the Sir Colin Mackenzie Sanctuary (later Healesville Sanctuary) and offered content about what made Australian animals unique.

As recurring references to Australia in these titles suggest, these shows were determinedly national. They often represented animals as living in “the bush” or “the environment”.

This early reference to “the environment” framed it as a zone where nature and culture interacted – usually with bad outcomes for nature. As early as 1962, audiences were invited to look at animals as both fascinating and vulnerable.

Animals and their habitats were framed as in need of public attention and concern in order to limit human intrusion and impact.

Read more: Hidden women of history: Kathleen McArthur, the wildflower woman who took on Joh Bjelke-Petersen

While nature conservation movements had been around since the post WWII period, they often focused on preservation of scenic sites for human pleasure. This early environmentalism gave conservation a more political edge. It valued nature in its own right and questioned development at all costs.

Dancing Orpheus

Probably the most groundbreaking early natural history show made by the ABC was Dancing Orpheus (1962).

Celebrated for its visual and technical prowess in capturing the secretive superb lyrebird, the most powerful scene showed a cock bird performing its elaborate courting display. The narration by John West offered scientific explanation, but the focus was on the extraordinary aesthetics of this pure natural expression.

Read more: Let me see you shake your tailfeathers: why lyrebirds really can dance

Dancing Orpheus was celebrated not just because it captured a rare and beautiful lyrebird performance, but because it also showed the emerging power of television to make remarkable Australian animals visible to audiences.

Dancing Orpheus was one of the catalysts for the development of natural history television at the ABC, which really took off with the watershed series Bush Quest with Robin Hill (1970).

Bush Quest featured the artist and naturalist Hill observing and sketching the wildlife of central and coastal Victoria. It established a new audience for Australian wildlife, breaking with earlier presentations of the remote bush or outback.

Bush Quest cultivated a new environmental ethos in viewers increasingly aware of nature’s fragility.

An ongoing legacy

The ABC’s Natural History Unit was created in 1973. This small unit produced a suite of top rating programs that publicised a huge variety of Australian animals, way beyond the usual kangaroos and koalas.

Its watershed moment was the internationally acclaimed series Nature of Australia (1988). Nature of Australia offered audiences an experience of national identification and pride based on our remarkable natural – rather than cultural or military – history. It put nature at the heart of definitions of national uniqueness.

Early natural history television on the ABC showed audiences animals and places they didn’t even know existed, and explained natural processes in ways that were accessible and engaging. It also showed audiences how vulnerable these animals and habitats were to human actions and intervention.

Natural history television on the ABC didn’t just make animals entertaining: it implicated audiences in their lives and survival, a significant factor in building environmental awareness.

– ref. Natural history on TV: how the ABC took Australian animals to the people – http://theconversation.com/natural-history-on-tv-how-the-abc-took-australian-animals-to-the-people-125221

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

The government is responding to increasing concern about the faltering economy by bringing forward A$3.8 billion of infrastructure investment into the next four years, including $1.8 billion for the current and next financial years.

Scott Morrison will outline the infrastructure move in a speech to the Business Council of Australia on Wednesday night, while insisting the government is not panicking about Australia’s economic conditions.

The government’s action follows increasing calls for some stimulus, with concern the tax cuts have not flowed through strongly enough to spending.

The just-released minutes of the last Reserve Bank meeting show the bank seriously considered another rate cut at its November meeting but held off, partly because it thought that might not have the desired effect. Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has previously urged more spending on infrastructure.

Morrison is making appearances in various states to publicise the government’s infrastructure plans.

The infrastructure bring-forward over the coming 18 months is $1.27 billion plus $510 million in extra funding. Over the forward estimates, the bring-forward is $2.72 billion plus $1.06 billion in additional funding.

The government’s latest action means since the election it will have injected an extra $9.5 billion into the economy for 2019-20 and 2020-21. This comprises $7.2 billion in tax relief, $1.8 billion in infrastructure bring-forwards and additional projects, and $550 million in drought assistance to communities.

In his BCA speech, draft extracts of which have been released, Morrison is expected to say that “a panicked reaction to contemporary challenges would amount to a serious misdiagnosis of our economic situation”.

“A responsible and sensible government does not run the country as if it is constantly at DEFCON1 the whole time, whether on the economy or any other issue. It deals with issues practically and soberly.”

Read more: If you want to boost the economy, big infrastructure projects won’t cut it: new Treasury boss

He will say that notwithstanding the headwinds, including the drought which has cut farm production, the economy has continued to grow, and is forecast to “gradually pick up from here” with jobs growth remaining solid.

“Against this backdrop, it would be reckless to discard the disciplined policy framework that has steered us through many difficult periods, most recently and most significantly the end of the mining investment boom, which posed an even greater threat to our economy than the GFC.”

The projected return to surplus this financial year would be a “significant achievement”.

Lauding the government’s legislated tax relief, Morrison will say. “Our response to the economic challenges our nation faces has been a structural investment in Australian aspiration, backed by responsible economic management.”

Read more: Why we’ve the weakest economy since the global financial crisis, with few clear ways out

Morrison’s infrastructure bring-forwards follow his post election approach to the states asking for projects that could be accelerated.

As a result of this process we have been able to bring forward $3.8 billion of investment into the next four years, including $1.8 billion to be spent this year and next year alone.

This will support the economy in two ways – by accelerating construction activity and supporting jobs in the near term and by reaping longer run productivity gains sooner.

Every state and territory will benefit, with significant transport projects to be accelerated in all jurisdictions – all within the context of our $100 billion ten-year infrastructure investment plan.

This bring forward of investment is in addition to the new infrastructure commitments we have made in drought-affected rural communities since the election.

In his address Morrison is also expected to announce the first stages of the government’s latest deregulation agenda, aimed at enabling business investment projects to begin faster.

– ref. Government to inject economic stimulus by accelerating infrastructure spend – http://theconversation.com/government-to-inject-economic-stimulus-by-accelerating-infrastructure-spend-127358

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

The government has overhauled its much-criticised robo-debt scheme which has seen many welfare recipients asked to repay money they do not owe.

A Tuesday email to staff in the Human Services department’s customer compliance division said “additional proof” would now be required when using income averaging to identify overpayment and raise a debt.

“This means the department will no longer raise a debt where the only information we are relying on is our own averaging of ATO [Australian Taxation Office] income data,” the email said.

“In the past we have asked people to explain discrepancies to us. In the future, even if someone does not respond to these requests, we will seek more information to help us determine if there is a debt.”

There will also be a freeze on some existing debts while they are re-examined.

The email said the department would focus on those where the person had not replied to requests for clarification.

Read more: Robo-debt is only one way government stigmatises claimants. There’s only so much a class action can do

An assessment would then be made about whether further information was available to clarify what debt there was.

The Minister for Government Services Stuart Robert played down the changes and did not apologise for past errors under the system.

“The government makes no apologies for fulfilling our legal obligation to collect debts with income from clients and of course, with wider debt collection.”

He said the present income averaging system would continue to be used in assessing debt. The key “refinement” would be the addition of “proof points”.

Robert said he had asked for the review of the “small” cohort “who have a debt raised solely on the basis of income averaging so we can commence discussions with them and seek further points of proof”.

People did not need to contact the department – it would contact them.

A robo-debt class action lawsuit is investigating whether the more than 400,000 debt notices issued since mid 2016 were lawful. The claim is that “averaging” an individual’s fortnightly earnings based on a “simplistic application of an imperfect computer algorithm”, does not appear to be lawful.

Read more: Danger! Election 2016 delivered us Robodebt. Promises can have consequences

Opposition spokesman Bill Shorten said for years the government claimed there was “nothing wrong with its revenue raising monster.”

“But now under immense pressure from Labor and with a looming class action [Robert] has hit the emergency brakes on this scheme.

“They’re junking the reverse onus of proof where victims have to prove they don’t owe the debts. That means robo-debt is being taken to the wreckers yard.

“Other changes signify the regime going forward will not be robo-debt as we know it.”

But Shorten said questions remained, particularly what happened to those who had been wrongly assessed and to the money wrongly collected.

– ref. Government makes changes to error-prone robo-debt collection – http://theconversation.com/government-makes-changes-to-error-prone-robo-debt-collection-127324