Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rona Macniven, Research Fellow, University of Sydney

Indigenous Australians have a long and proud heritage in both traditional sports and games, and in modern sport through the achievements of people like Johnathan Thurston and Ashleigh Barty.

There’s also long been the belief that sport can be used as a lever for improvement in outcomes for Indigenous communities. The 1987 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, for instance, found that sport and recreation can play a role in the reduction of offending behaviour among Indigenous peoples.

Read more: In both schooling and sport, Australia has slowly come to recognise its Aboriginal talent pool

And while there are a number of physical activity and sports programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today, a parliamentary inquiry in 2013 recommended that much more comprehensive evaluation of sports programs should be conducted to gauge their impact.

The report said some government sports programs

are being rolled out with very little understanding of how the Close the Gap outcomes are being achieved.

Another study noted that sport has often been seen as a “panacea” for myriad problems in Indigenous communities, and this belief has led to

ambitious, ill-defined and, in terms of evaluation, often elusive social outcome goals.

What could sport achieve?

To better understand the impact sport can have on Indigenous communities and how government investment could be better targeted, we undertook a review of 20 Australian studies published in peer-reviewed journals between 2003 and 2018.

The research looked at how sport and physical activity programs for Indigenous adults or children improved outcomes in six different areas:

1) education 2) employment 3) culture 4) social and emotional well-being 5) life skills 6) crime reduction

Because of the low level of evidence in this area so far, we included all relevant studies. The 20 studies involved over 2,500 individual participants located in urban, rural and remote areas across Australia.

Our review, which was published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, found some evidence that sport and physical activity increases Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander school attendance, improves self-esteem and can enhance cultural connectedness, values and identity.

But the studies were inconclusive on whether sport and physical activity can have longer-term benefits, such as improving educational or employment outcomes or reducing crime.

Read more: The long and complicated history of Aboriginal involvement in football

Education

Eleven of the studies we reviewed examined education. Overall, most showed positive outcomes for young people involved in sport.

A number of programs were shown to improve school attendance, such as two AFL youth programs in Cape York and the Northern Territory aimed at encouraging school attendance and improving behaviour through Australian rules football.

Other programs showed improvements in school retention and achievement rates, while two helped Indigenous youth prepare for higher education and success beyond school.

Employment

Only one study examined the impact of sport on employment: the AFL youth program in the NT. Almost all of the participants and stakeholders felt the program helped players to secure paid work or training, but the study didn’t link to employment data specifically.

Culture

Nine studies examined culture. And like education, most programs showed positive outcomes for participants when it came to cultural connections, values and identity.

For example, in Victoria, the Fitzroy Stars community sports club study found that social and community connection was an important way for participants to strengthen and maintain their cultural values and identity.

And the study on the impact of the Swan Nyungar sports education program for young people in Perth found the success of participants depended on incorporating their families and culture in the instruction.

Social and emotional well-being

Twelve studies examined social and emotional well-being. Improved self-esteem and confidence were found in the participants of several programs, such as the WA Girls Academy and Indigenous surfing programs in several states.

A study of Queensland’s Deadly Choices program, which aims to help Indigenous people make healthier lifestyle choices, found that participants had increased confidence and were more proactive about preventing chronic disease.

Life skills

Five studies examined “life skills.” The positive outcomes ranged from improved attitudes and lifestyle choices ([the AFL Cape York program]) to hygiene and health, self-reliance and fundraising skills (the WA Girls Academy).

Crime

Only five studies examined the impact of sport on crime prevention and prison inmate management, and the findings were limited.

The Aboriginal Power Cup, another youth football program in South Australia, was found to have positive impacts when it came to school achievement, but the study didn’t directly examine aspects of crime.

A study into a prison sport program in central Australia found that it was an effective diversion for inmates, but there were only six participants in the study, which is not a very robust sample size.

Meanwhile, the impact of the NT AFL program on community safety and violence was unclear, as was the impact of a sports program in Arnhem Land that aimed to steer Indigenous youth away from substance abuse.

This is a key challenge for researchers in this area – identifying the specific impacts of sport and physical activity programs on societal problems such as crime in which many factors come into play.

Read more: Radical rethink of Closing the Gap required, despite some progress

More evidence is needed

Substantial challenges remain in accurately measuring how sports programs like these can lead to better outcomes for Indigenous communities. Scoping reviews, for instance, do not include an assessment of study quality and therefore may overestimate the findings.

More studies are needed to track the impact of sport through a range of indicators. We also still need to know more about how programs can improve employment and crime outcomes.

With more robust evidence, a more targeted plan can be made for future programs that are better suited to the needs of individual communities.

– ref. Are sports programs closing the gap in Indigenous communities? The evidence is limited. – http://theconversation.com/are-sports-programs-closing-the-gap-in-indigenous-communities-the-evidence-is-limited-120413

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alice Gorman, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University

It’s 50 years since the two Apollo 11 astronauts – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin – spent 22 hours collecting samples, deploying experiments and sometimes just playing in the Sea of Tranquillity on the Moon.

In doing so, they created an archaeological site unique in human history.

Now, with what’s been called the New Space Race and plans to return to the Moon, the Apollo 11 and other lunar sites are under threat. We need to protect this heritage for future generations.

Read more: How big is the Moon? Let me compare …

Apollo 11’s archaeological site

The archaeological site of Tranquillity Base consists of the hardware left behind, as well as the marks made in the lunar surface by the astronauts and instruments.

The hardware component includes the landing module, the famous flag (no longer standing), experiment packages, cameras, antennas, commemorative objects, space boots and many other discarded objects – more than 106 in total.

Around these objects are the first human footprints on the Moon as well as the tracks the astronauts made walking around, and the places where they dug out samples of rock and dust to take back to Earth for scientific analysis.

The artefacts, traces and the landscape constitute an archaeological site. The relationships between them can be used by archaeologists to study human behaviour in this environment so different to Earth, with one-sixth terrestrial gravity and no atmosphere.

Assessing the heritage value

Not only this, but the site has heritage value for people on Earth. To assess this, we can look at a number of categories of cultural significance. Those in the Burra Charter are widely used across the world for heritage assessment.

Historic: There is no doubt that, as the first place where humans set foot on another celestial body, this is a very important place in global history. It also represents the ideologies of the Cold War (1947-1992) between the US and the USSR.

Scientific: What can we learn from the site? More particularly, what questions would we no longer be able to answer if Tranquillity Base was damaged or destroyed?

This is not just about archaeological research into human behaviour on the Moon. Apollo 11 has been exposed to the harsh lunar environment for 50 years. The surfaces of the hardware are accidental experiments in themseves: they carry the record of 50 years of micrometeorite and cosmic ray bombardment. Finding out how well the materials have survived can also provide information about how to design future missions.

Aesthetic: This type of cultural significance is about how we experience a place. While we can’t assess it in person, there are films and photographs that give us a feeling for the place. This includes the light, shadows and colours of the lunar surface from the perspective of the human senses. The aesthetic qualities have inspired many artists and musicians, including astronaut Alan Bean who devoted his post-Apollo 12 life to painting the Moon.

Social: This is about the value that contemporary communities place on the site. For the 600 million-plus people who watched the television broadcast of the landing, it was a life-changing moment representing the ingenuity of human technology and visions of a space-age future.

But the mission did not mean the same for everyone. Some African-Americans protested against Apollo 11, seeing it as a waste of resources when there was such great economic and social disparity between white and black communities in the US. For them, it was a sign of human failure rather than a triumph.

The larger the community that has an interest in a heritage place, the higher its level of social significance. It could be argued that Apollo 11 has outstanding universal significance, like places on the World Heritage List (unfortunately the World Heritage Convention cannot be applied to space).

What are the threats?

In the past few years we have seen an increase in proposed missions to return to the Moon. Some have stated their intention to revisit the Apollo sites, by human crew or robot – and this could lead to the removal of material, for souvenirs or science.

But the sites are both fragile and unprotected. The two primary risks to their survival are uncontrolled looting, and damage from abrasive and sticky lunar dust.

Removing material from the sites damages the integrity of the artefacts and the relationships between them. A casual visit could erase the original footprints and astronaut traverses. The corrosive dust disturbed by surface activities could wear away the materials.

Dust was a problem for all the crewed lunar missions. Apollo 16 commander John Young said: “Dust is the number one concern in returning to the Moon.”

The dust can be stirred up by plumes from landing or ascending vehicles, driving vehicles, walking on the surface, or, in the next phase of lunar settlement, by construction and industrial activities, such as mining.

Attempts at protection

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 forbids making territorial claims in space. Applying any national heritage legislation to a place on the Moon could be interpreted as a territorial claim.

The US states of California and New Mexico have placed the Apollo 11 artefacts left on the Moon on a heritage list. They can do this because, under the treaty, the US legally owns the artefacts. But this does not protect the site itself.

NASA has established a set of heritage guidelines for its sites on the Moon. The guidelines propose buffer zones around these areas, inside which no-one should enter. They make recommendations for approaching the sites to minimise dust disturbance.

In May 2019, a bill called the One Small Step to Protect Human Heritage in Space Act was introduced to the US Congress. Its purpose is:

To require any Federal agency that issues licences to conduct activities in outer space to include in the requirements for such licences an agreement relating to the preservation and protection of the Apollo 11 landing site, and for other purposes.

But the bill applies only to Apollo 11 and does not have similar requirements for the five other Apollo landing sites. It also applies only to US missions. It’s a step in the right direction, but there is still much more to be done.

Only in the last decade has the idea of space archaeology gained legitimacy. Until recently, there was no urgency to establish an international framework to manage the cultural values of lunar heritage.

Read more: Why the Moon is such a cratered place

Now we’re in a new situation. On Earth, it’s common for industrial or urban activities that disturb the environment to be subject to an environmental impact assessment, which includes heritage.

Even when there are no laws to force companies to pay attention to heritage, many consider it important to seek a Social Licence to Operate – support from stakeholder communities to continue their activities.

Everyone on Earth is a stakeholder in the heritage of the Moon. Fifty years from now, what will remain of the Apollo 11 and other sites? What new meanings will people draw from it?

– ref. We need to protect the heritage of the Apollo missions – http://theconversation.com/we-need-to-protect-the-heritage-of-the-apollo-missions-117007

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neal Hughes, Senior Economist, Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES)

Water prices in the southern Murray-Darling Basin have reached their highest levels since the worst of the Millennium drought more than a decade ago. These high water prices are causing much anxiety in the region, and have led the federal government to call on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to hold an inquiry into the water market.

Inevitably, whenever an important good becomes more expensive – be it housing, electricity or water – there is a rush to identify potential causes and culprits. In the past few years high water prices have been blamed on foreign investors, corporate speculators, state government water-sharing rules, new almond plantings and the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

Read more: The Murray-Darling Basin scandal: economists have seen it coming for decades

While some of these factors have had an effect on the market, they are in many ways a distraction from the simpler truth: that high water prices have mostly been caused by a lack of rain.

Supply drives the market

Market reforms in the 1980s and 1990s enabled water trading in many parts of Australia. By far the most active market exists in the southern Murray-Darling basin, which covers the Murray River and its tributaries in northern Victoria, southern New South Wales and eastern South Australia.

The market allows users – mostly irrigation farmers – to trade their water allocations (effectively shares of water in the rivers’ major dams). This trading helps ensure limited water supplies go to the farmers who value them the most, which can be crucial in times of drought.

Historical data shows the main driver of water market prices in the southern basin is change in water supply.

The following chart shows storage volumes (in orange) and water prices (in red) in the southern basin since 2006. Prices peaked at the height of the Millennium drought in 2007. During the floods of 2011, they fell near zero. Prices have increased again during the latest drought, and are now at their highest levels in a decade.

Lower rainfall, higher temperatures

While water prices have always been higher in dry years and lower in wet, we’ve been getting a lot more dry years in recent decades.

Over the past 20 years, rainfall, run-off and stream flow in the southern basin has been far less than historical conditions.

The below chart shows modelled flow data for the Murray River, assuming historical weather conditions and no water extraction, over the past century. It shows that average water flows this century are about 40% below the average of the 20th century.

We know these reductions are at least partly related to climate change, driven by both reduced winter rainfall and higher temperatures.

Lower rainfall and higher temperatures also make crops thirstier, increasing demand for irrigation water. This was evident in January, when temperatures exceeded 35℃ for 14 days and irrigators’ demand for water spiked from about 4.5 gigalitres to 7 gigalitres a day.

Read more: Droughts, extreme weather and empowered consumers mean tough choices for farmers

The basin plan in perspective

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan seeks to improve the environmental health of the river system by recovering water rights from irrigation farmers. To date, more than 1,700 gigalitres of water rights – about 20% of annual water supply – have been recovered in the southern basin.

By reducing supply, water recovery was always expected to increase water prices. However, the effects of water recovery on supply – while significant – are still small relative to the effects of climate over the same period, as shown in the below chart.

Measuring the precise effect of water recovery on prices is difficult. Water buybacks are straightforward and have been modelled by ABARES and others. But the effects of infrastructure programs – where farmers return a portion of their water rights in exchange for funding to upgrade infrastructure – are harder to estimate.

Read more: Billions spent on Murray-Darling water infrastructure: here’s the result

‘Carryover’ rule changes

Historically farmers had to use water allocations within a 12-month window. The introduction of “carryover” – most recently in Victoria in 2008 – means users can now hold their unused water in dams. This rule change was a good thing, as it encourages farmers to conserve water and build up a buffer against drought.

But it might also have contributed to anxiety about the water market’s operations.

Since water allocations can be bought and held for multiple years, information about future conditions can have a big effect on prices now. For example, we see large jumps in price following news of worse-than-expected supply forecasts. This may have helped fuel concern about “speculators”.

Over the longer-term, the ability to store water helps to “smooth” water prices, with slightly higher prices in most years offset by much lower prices in drought years. Again this is a good thing, but it may have added to the perception of higher prices in the market.

Water demand is rising

When a profitable new irrigation activity is willing to pay more for water – as is the case with almond farms in the southern basin – competition for limited supplies can potentially drive up prices.

ABARES’ research shows that between 2003 and 2016 there was little change in irrigation demand (aside from that linked to rainfall). Growth in demand from expanding activities such as almonds and cotton was offset by reductions in others including dairy, rice and wine grapes. However, there is evidence since 2016 that demand for water has started to increase, contributing to higher water prices. Longer-term projections suggest this trend may continue.

With drought and climate change reducing water supply, and demand for both environmental and irrigation water increasing, high water prices are only likely to become more common in the basin in future.

– ref. Drought and climate change are driving high water prices in the Murray-Darling Basin – http://theconversation.com/drought-and-climate-change-are-driving-high-water-prices-in-the-murray-darling-basin-119993

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

Even though we can see the Moon shining brightly in the night sky – and sometimes in daylight – it’s hard to put into perspective just how large, and just how distant, our nearest neighbour actually is.

So just how big is the Moon?

That answer isn’t quite as straightforward as you might think. Like Earth, the Moon isn’t a perfect sphere. Instead, it’s slightly squashed (what we call an oblate sphereoid). This means the Moon’s diameter from pole to pole is less than the diameter measured at the equator.

Read more: Why the Moon is such a cratered place

But the difference is small, just four kilometres. The equatorial diameter of the Moon is about 3,476km, while the polar diameter is 3,472km.

To see how big that is we need to compare it to something of a similar size, such as Australia.

From coast to coast

The distance from Perth to Brisbane, as the crow flies, is 3,606km. If you put Australia and the Moon side by side, they look to be roughly the same size.

But that’s just one way of looking at things. Although the Moon is about as wide as Australia, it is actually much bigger when you think in terms of surface area. It turns out the surface of the Moon is much larger than that of Australia.

The land area of Australia is some 7.69 million square kilometers. By contrast, the surface area of the Moon is 37.94 million square kilometres, close to five times the area of Australia.

How far is the Moon?

Asking how far away is the Moon is another of those questions whose answer is more complicated than you might expect.

The Moon moves in an elliptical orbit around the Earth, which means its distance from our planet is constantly changing. That distance can vary by up to 50,000km during a single orbit, which is why the size of the Moon in our sky varies slightly from week to week.

The Moon’s orbit is also influenced by every other object in the Solar System. Even when all of that is taken into account, the distance answer is still always changing, because the Moon is gradually receding from the Earth as a result of the tidal interaction between the two.

That last point is something we’ve been able to better study as a result of the Apollo missions. The astronauts who visited the Moon placed an array of mirror reflectors on its surface. Those reflectors are the continual target of lasers from the Earth.

By timing how long it takes for that laser light to travel to the Moon and back, scientists are able to measure the distance to the Moon with incredible precision, and to track the Moon’s recession from Earth. The result? The Moon is receding at a speed of 38mm per year – or just under 4 metres per century.

Drive me to the Moon

Having said all that, the average distance between the Moon and Earth is 384,402km. So let’s put that into context.

If I were to drive from Brisbane to Perth, following the fastest route suggested by Google, I would cover 4,310km on my road trip. That journey, driving across the breadth of our country, would take around 46 hours.

If I wanted to clock up enough kilometres to say that I’d covered the distance between the Earth and the Moon, I’d have to make that trip more than 89 times. It would take five-and-a-half months of driving, non-stop, assuming I didn’t run into any traffic jams on the way.

Fortunately, the Apollo 11 astronauts weren’t restricted to Australian speed limits. The command module Columbia took just three days and four hours to reach lunar orbit following its launch on July 16 1969.

An eclipse coincidence

The equatorial diameter of the Sun is almost 1.4 million kilometres, which is almost exactly 400 times the diameter of the Moon.

That ratio leads to one of astronomy’s most spectacular quirks – because the distance between the Earth and the Sun (149.6 million kilometres) is almost (but not quite) 400 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

Read more: Explainer: what is a solar eclipse?

The result? The Moon and the Sun appear almost exactly the same size in Earth’s sky. As a result, when the Moon and the Sun line up perfectly, as seen from Earth, something wonderful happens – a total eclipse of the Sun.

Sadly, such spectacular eclipses will eventually come to an end on Earth. Thanks to the Moon’s recession, it will one day be too distant to perfectly obscure the Sun. But that day will be a long time coming, with most estimates suggesting it will occur in something like 600 million years’ time.

The moonwalkers

While we’ve dispatched out robot envoys to the icy depths of the Solar System, the Moon remains the only other world on which humanity has walked.

Fifty years after that first adventure, the number of people to have walked on the Moon who are still alive is in sharp decline. Twelve people have had that experience but, as of today, just four remain.

Read more: Five ethical questions for how we choose to use the Moon

Vast as the Moon is, those 12 moonwalkers barely scratched the surface. Hopefully, in the coming years, we will return, to inspire a whole new generation and to continue humanity’s in-person exploration of our nearest celestial neighbour.

– ref. How big is the Moon? Let me compare … – http://theconversation.com/how-big-is-the-moon-let-me-compare-118840

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Monica Barratt, Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University

A NSW Coronial Inquest investigating a series of drug-related deaths at Australian music festivals has heard evidence of festival goers taking multiple concurrent doses of MDMA to avoid police detection and not receiving adequate medical attention.

But a lack of knowledge about the drug use patterns and demographic profile of festival goers has stymied capacity to develop evidence-informed policy responses.

Yesterday we published two data reports to inform the inquest and shed light on these patterns. Both reports are based on data from more than 5,000 Australian festival goers who completed the Global Drug Survey from late 2018.

It suggests common assumptions about Australian festival goers and the risks they take may be wrong.

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

Who goes to music festivals and what drugs do festival goers take?

Most Australian music festival attendees we sampled were young (with a mean age of 22.4), male (55%), heterosexual (76%) and white (87%).

They were well-educated and most were employed (85.6%). Very few reported having a criminal conviction (6%).

And while it’s often assumed that people going to festivals are “hardcore” or regular attendees, almost half (49.6%) reported going to only one or two festivals a year.

The most common drug they took, unsurprisingly, was alcohol. Of the illicit substances, the most commonly used were MDMA, cannabis and cocaine.

We asked about drug use in all settings, not just festivals, and not just on the day of the festival.

While nearly half (44%) reported drinking alcohol weekly or more often, 64% typically drank at least five standard drinks.

Festival goers who used MDMA typically reported use ten times in the last 12 months. Those who used cocaine typically did so five times in the last 12 months.

Although MDMA use is the focus of the NSW Coronial Inquest, and public debates about festival safety, our data show that alcohol remains the biggest contributor to drug-related harm among festival goers.

Festival goers’ experiences with policing

Our analysis showed most festival goers (75%) reported they encountered police in relation to their drug use in the last 12 months. Some 69% reported drug dog encounters at festivals.

This is a concern because encounters with drug detection dogs are often traumatic and can lead to more harmful practices, such as taking multiple doses to avoid detection.

Read more: Why drug-detection dogs are sniffing up the wrong tree

NSW festival goers were 1.3 times more likely to report encounters with drug detection dogs than those from other states (79% versus 62%). This is notable, given our earlier analysis showed encounters with drug detection dogs are already seven times higher in Australia than in New Zealand.

Who seeks medical treatment?

Few festival goers we sampled sought medical attention. Just 280 respondents (6%) reported seeking medical help after alcohol or other drug use at least once in the last 12 months. We cannot tell from these data where these young people were located when they sought medical help, whether at a festival or in the community.

Young women aged 16 to 20 years were the most likely to report seeking medical help after drinking alcohol or taking other drugs (8.7%), followed by young men in the same age group (7.3%). Just 4.9% of men aged 21 and over and 5.2% of women in the same age group reported seeking help.

Festival goers who had problems with alcohol were more likely to seek help (4.3% of users) than those who were struggling after using other drugs including MDMA (2.5%), LSD (1.48%), cannabis (0.96%) and cocaine (0.67%).

Read more: How does MDMA kill?

Festival goers seeking help for alcohol consumption typically drank 15 standard alcoholic drinks.

The most commonly mentioned symptoms here were nausea or vomiting (45%), accident or trauma (40%) or passing out (37%). Some 65% reported being admitted to hospital.

Those seeking help after taking MDMA typically consumed three pills or 0.4g during the session. The majority (56%) reported taking a larger than usual dose of MDMA on that occasion.

Just 28% reported starting the session with a smaller “test dose” of MDMA.

Most (81%) reported combining MDMA with alcohol and or other illegal drugs. And most of those who drank alcohol with MDMA said they were “already drunk” before taking the MDMA.

The most common symptoms they experienced were confusion (40%), anxiety and panic (40%) and very low mood in the days afterwards (40%). Almost half (48%) reported being admitted to hospital.

What does this data tell us?

Despite the understandable focus on the harms from illicit drugs, most illicit drug use among Australian festival attendees appears to be occasional and isn’t problematic.

Nevertheless, there is a small but notable group of young people who experience higher rates of drug-related harms.

To reduce these harms, we should expand access to peer education services, such as those provided by the DanceWize team. DanceWize provides credible information about safer partying. It delivers harm-reduction services, including crowd care services (water, sunscreen and information). It also hosts a safe space for festival goers.

We should also expand trials of on-site drug checking services at festivals and outside these settings (for example, drop-in services at urban centres). Drug checking (or pill testing) services invite members of the public to anonymously submit drug samples for forensic analysis and then provide individualised feedback of results and counselling as appropriate.

Read more: Here’s why doctors are backing pill testing at music festivals across Australia

Given their high rates of policing, particularly with drug detection dogs, Australian festival goers may be reluctant to seek medical advice or support if they are afraid of being detected in possession of drugs.

Reducing the use of drug detection dogs at festivals, as well as expanding non-criminal alternatives for personal use and possession offences, should be prioritised to reset the balance between public health and public safety.

– ref. The profile of festival drug takers might be different to what you expect – http://theconversation.com/the-profile-of-festival-drug-takers-might-be-different-to-what-you-expect-120161

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neil R Jordan, Lecturer, UNSW

Humans and dogs go way back. From wolf totems to the big bad wolf of fact and fairy tale, through sheepdogs, lap dogs, and labradoodles, our relationships with these animals are complex, emotionally charged and sometimes contradictory.

The split between humanity’s lavishing of affection on domestic dogs and our contrasting animosity towards their wild relatives is well-documented. But what of domestic dogs and dingoes?

Our research, published today, found similarly contrasting relationships in Australia, where the dingo, Australia’s native dog, is frequently killed for management. We suggest that an inexpensive “dingo conservation levy” on domestic dog costs could fund more ethical management of dingoes. In this way our affection for domestic dogs could be harnessed to improve conservation outcomes for their wild relatives.

Canine economics

Australians collectively spend over A$10 billion each year on their domestic dogs – housing, feeding, and sometimes even giving them the status of honorary family members. Meanwhile, government and landowners jointly spend at least A$30 million on large-scale exclusion fencing and lethal control of dingoes.

Industry funded research suggests that dingoes killing livestock, especially sheep, and efforts to control dingoes, cost at least A$145 million annually. What’s more, such losses also come with psychological stress, which you can’t always put a price on.

Other research suggests dingoes, as top predators, provide considerable economic benefits. For example, dingoes prey upon kangaroos and other herbivores that may compete with livestock for food and water. In fact, some estimates suggest dingoes improve gross margins by $0.83 per hectare in this context.

They also help biodiversity by suppressing feral cats and foxes, and dingoes have considerable ecotourism appeal in locations like K’gari (Fraser Island) and Kakadu National Park.

Managing dingoes

Australia’s current approach to dingo management highlights the paradox of an animal viewed both as a valuable native predator that should be conserved, and as a pest to be destroyed. And this makes it a nightmare to manage.

Current dingo management relies heavily on exclusion fencing and lethal control, and around 200kg of 1080 powder (poison) is administered to baits and peppered across the continent annually.

Countless bullets are also fired, and traps set, as the lion’s share of management budgets is allocated to business as usual. To break this deadly cycle, there is a clear need to provide farmers and governments with good evidence that different approaches could work. This can only be done through substantial parallel investment in robust, independent experimental tests of alternative approaches.

Despite broad support in society for non-lethal management, accessing sufficient funds to support such a transition remains challenging.

A modest dingo conservation levy could fund this. With a levy on the A$10 billion domestic dog industry, we could harness humanity’s affinity for domestic dogs to improve conservation and welfare outcomes for their wild counterparts.

It wouldn’t need to be prohibitively expensive either.

A levy on the sale of pet dogs, dog food, or both, of only about 0.3% of the amount that pet owners spend on this annually – or A$7.36 per dog – would generate A$30 million each year.

That is similar to the lowest estimates of current national spending on dingo control, which means we would potentially see the current spending doubled.

Why should dog owners pick up the tab?

Applying a levy to all dog owners may seem unfair, and perhaps it is. But as Australia’s “dingo problem” is, arguably, at least in part caused by domestic dogs gone feral, such a levy would seem no more unfair on conscientious dog owners than third-party insurance is on careful drivers.

Given that pet owners tend to view wild animals more positively and show more concern for their welfare, such a levy might actually be well received by dog-owners anyway.

An alternative approach might be to seek the voluntary involvement of pet-food manufacturers in such a scheme, giving consumers choice over whether to support it.

A dingo conservation levy – perhaps supplemented by a voluntary fund for donors without dogs – might also be more acceptable and attractive if it were clear the funds would be specifically channelled towards research and uptake of non-lethal tools.

Generally, we are broadly in favour of any techniques designed to reduce the animosity towards dingoes, reduce the costs and negative impacts of living alongside them, and boost the positive effects dingoes have on ecosystems.

As some have already argued, they are all dogs at the end of the day. Perhaps then it is time that we treated them as such.

We would like to gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Mike Letnic, Henry Brink, Brad Purcell and Hugh Webster to this article.

– ref. Dog owners could take the lead on dingo conservation with a ‘Fido fund’ – http://theconversation.com/dog-owners-could-take-the-lead-on-dingo-conservation-with-a-fido-fund-118124

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Blaskovich, Senior Research Officer, The University of Queensland

Artistic depictions of several chemical elements feature in a new exhibition from today as part of Australia’s celebrations for the International Year of the Periodic Table.

They are the work of artists Damon Kowarsky and Hyunju Kim, who worked together since December 2018 on the renditions that will be on display at Quantum Victoria, a specialist science and mathematics centre in the northern suburbs of Melbourne.

The project followed a chance meeting between Damon and Soula Bennett, the director of Quantum Victoria. Soula believes Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) naturally extend to incorporate art.

Read more: The periodic table: from its classic design to use in popular culture

So Damon and Kim were commissioned to produce a series of 51 artistic interpretations illustrating elements of significance in the story of the birth of the universe from the Periodic Table.

While Kowarsky was responsible for creating the drawings of the panels, the colours are by Kim.

As scientists who work with many elements from a scientific point of view, we were curious as to how Kowarsky chose some of the representations he did, so we asked him to describe the artistic process for some of his favourite elements.

Helium (He)

Popular view: Used for balloons and to make your voice sound funny as it’s lighter and less dense than air.

Chemist’s view: An unreactive (noble) gas that is particularly useful in cooling applications – liquid helium at -269℃ is used to keep magnets at a superconducting temperature. Element with the lowest boiling point.

Artist’s view (Damon): Helium is colourless, odourless, tasteless, almost completely inert, not commonly found on Earth, and named after the Sun, whose image dominated the design I completed for hydrogen.

Not a promising start in terms of visualisation!

In many ways it’s the most abstract of elements, and this ultimately was the clue that unlocked the design. The background composition is structured around a chart showing the passage of the Sun through the sky at the latitude and longitude of Charles La Trobe College (in Melbourne, the site of the installation) on January 1.

Overlaid onto this is the sequence of helium formation in stellar nucleosynthesis, a graph showing the rates of production and consumption of helium (despite its prevalence in the universe it’s a finite resource on Earth) and the bars of the absorption spectrum that allowed this, the first ever extraterrestrial element, to be discovered.

Iron (Fe)

Popular view: Used to make steel. Iron ore is the source of much of Australia’s wealth. Found in blood.

Chemist’s view: The most common element on Earth, making up around 35% of the its mass. Iron is used to catalyse a very important chemical reaction, the combination of nitrogen and hydrogen into ammonia, an essential component of fertiliser.

Artist’s view: Iron is a pivotal element in the Periodic Table in terms of how the elements are created.

Showing a cross section of Earth allowed me to talk about its prevalence, maintain design coherence through the repetition of circles, and introduce bold and saturated colours. The smaller circle represents a red blood cell (iron is found in haemoglobin) and the pie charts show the relative distribution of iron isotopes.

In the bottom left corner the alchemical symbol for iron (Mars, the masculine attribute) breaks into the form of Earth. Alchemy is important as one of the foundations of modern chemistry and its symbols are historically and visually interesting. I didn’t want it to dominate though, so using a negative shape seemed a good way to balance all these concerns.

Copper (Cu)

Popular view: For the older generation, copper pipes and 1 and 2 cent coins.

Chemist’s view: Metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Very useful for catalysing some chemical reactions, especially a so-called click reaction where two molecules can be quickly linked together under mild conditions.

Artist’s view: With copper there’s the amazing colour and its history as one of the oldest metals known to humans.

I relied on the element’s utility and familiarity, and wanted to step away from symmetry and the geometric prevalence of circles. Even though copper is inorganic, its malleability and ductility lends an almost lifelike quality to its forms.

A map of Cyprus (copper is named for the place it was first discovered and mined) contributes to the overall balanced asymmetry of the design.

Calcium (Ca)

Popular view: Found in limestone, chalk and coral, and bones and teeth.

Chemist’s view: Highly reactive and the most abundant metal in the human body. As calcium chloride, used as a desiccant to remove water from air and solvents so reactions can be done anhydrously (without the presence of water, which can interfere with some reactions).

Artist’s view: Calcium is common in bones, shells and teeth. The challenge was finding images that were visually interesting and fitted the hexagonal shape.

Happily, this collection of human bones found on the web was neither articulated nor hopelessly jumbled. I was pleased how the curved bones (rib and collar) echo other design elements.

Shells of course follow the Fibonacci Curve, whose elegant spiral can be seen in the another panel of the exhibit (“Energy”), where it represents a timeline of the universe.

Nitrogen (N)

Popular view: Forms about 78% of Earth’s atmosphere, found in proteins and nucleic acids (DNA, RNA), and a key component of fertilisers.

Chemist’s view: The triple bond (N≡N) form of nitrogen found in the atmosphere, is the second strongest bond in any diatomic molecule (composed of two elements). Although problematic for chemistry, it is useful as it releases large amounts of energy when broken. This is used both for fertilisers and explosives, and remains an essential process in the chemical industry.

Artist’s view: Nitrogen compounds are essential for life. There are two main ways atmospheric nitrogen is converted to forms that are usable by plants and animals.

The first is lightning.

The second, and much less dramatic, is the symbiotic relationship between bacteria and the roots of certain plants. Typically these are beans and legumes but Australian wattles and acacias also contain nitrogen-fixing nodules.

Other artistic elements

Of course, Damon Kowarsky and Hyunju Kim are not the first to take an artistic look at the elements.

Other examples include a graphic artist’s version by Julie Hu to convey to non-scientists the richness of what these substances bring to our world.

Read more: Silver makes beautiful bling but it’s also good for keeping the bacterial bugs away

Another is a periodic table printmaking project by Jennifer Schmitt, the daughter of a chemistry teacher mother and an artistic father, she grew up seeing beauty in science.

There is also a depiction of the elements as characters by Kaycie Dunlap, who was inspired by a desire make science more interesting by imagining what the elements would look like in our regular life.

Multiple quilting projects have drawn inspiration from sources such as the elements’ names, unique characteristics, and purposes (curated by artist Jill Rumoshosky Werner in 2015) or the wonderful stories about people, cultures, history, art, politics and science associated with them (curated by Kim Baird).

The artworks are on display from July 18, 2019, at Quantum Victoria, 235 Kingsbury Drive, Macleod, Victoria (they’re also available online).

If you’d like to see them please call (03) 9223 1460 or email at admin@quantumvictoria.vic.edu.au to arrange a visit, as this is a school site (co-located with Charles La Trobe P-12 College).

– ref. When an artist looks at a chemical element, what do they see? – http://theconversation.com/when-an-artist-looks-at-a-chemical-element-what-do-they-see-117906

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Hopkins, Senior Lecturer, Australian National University

In 2017, a small group of male prisoners participated in an eight-week yoga program at the Alexander Maconochie Centre(AMC), which houses all adult prisoners in Canberra. While prison yoga programs have been evaluated in other countries, this yoga program was the first in Australia to be the subject of academic research.

In line with international research, our results published in the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology showed that participants received significant mental and physical health benefits from the program.

Specifically, prisoners showed improvements in their levels of depression, anxiety and stress. They also reported an increase in self-esteem and an improved ability to accept their emotional responses and engage in goal-directed behaviour.

These are important outcomes because they are all crucial for the healthy functioning of the prison, and prisoners’ ability to build strong relationships after release.

Read more: Yoga isn’t timeless: it’s changing to meet contemporary needs

The ACT pilot yoga program

In addition to evaluating the results of the program for participants, another aim of the pilot was to identify the challenges involved in establishing a yoga program in a prison. The pilot was made possible through a partnership between our research team (made up of a clinical psychologist, criminal defence barrister and criminologist), ACT Corrective Services and the Yoga Foundation.

On a hot afternoon in late January 2017, ten male prisoners, with security classifications ranging from minimum to maximum, met their yoga teacher for the first time at the AMC prison.

None had any experience with yoga. In fact, they thought the program was an unconventional and “weird” offering.

For the next eight weeks, the prisoners were taught basic yoga postures (from downward dog to the triangle pose), various movement sequences and breath awareness. For participating prisoners, the challenges of learning the discipline were both physical and mental, as were the benefits.

Nine prisoners completed the program. Their efforts were acknowledged in a graduation ceremony, where they were presented with a yoga mat supplied by a local studio.

Our findings

The prisoners were assessed before the program to determine their existing levels of depression, anxiety and stress, their capacity to regulate their emotions and their self-esteem. They completed the same assessments again at the end of the program.

The results showed that the participants achieved statistically and clinically significant benefits from the program, as assessed by the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21), the Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) and the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (RSES).

The participants reported improved flexibility, sleep and pain reduction. They also identified improvements in their mental well-being. All said the program had relaxed them.

One participant reflected that

it was something I looked forward to each week, towards feeling relaxed and calm. I would just feel really relaxed and at peace.

Another said that, after starting the yoga, he had fewer negative thoughts. Yet another reported that the program had an impact on how he approached people.

More calm. More relaxed.

The health of Australia’s prisoners

A 2018 report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare on the health of Australia’s prisoners presented a picture of compromised well-being.

Four out of every ten people entering prison had been diagnosed with a mental health condition, while 30% had a chronic physical health condition and 21% had a history of self-harm.

Read more: Give prisoners internet access for a safer and more humane community

Recent data presents a similarly grim picture in the ACT, with 30% of prisoners reporting depression, 32% reporting anxiety and 35% having attempted suicide.

Physically, 33% of prisoners in the ACT survey experienced chronic pain of some sort and 34% reported back problems.

What studies in other countries have found

A randomised controlled study was conducted in nine Swedish prisons in 2017 to assess the effects of yoga on prisoners. After the participants took part in a 10-week program, the researchers found significant improvements on 13 of 19 measures relating to well-being, leading them to conclude that

yoga practice can play an important part in the rehabilitation of prison inmates.

This is consistent with other studies on the rehabilitative benefits of yoga practices in countries where it has been introduced to prisons, such as India, the US and UK. The findings across various studies demonstrate statistically significant decreases in stress, depression, anxiety and aggression among prisoners who practised yoga, as well as improvements in impulse control.

The future for prison yoga in Australia

International research indicates that yoga programs can be a “cost-effective supplementary treatment” for prisoners with compromised mental and physical health, alongside professional medial care. Beyond this, yoga programs offer the potential to promote well-being even for those not experiencing any identified mental or physical health challenges.

All the participants in the Canberra program were enthusiastic about the potential for yoga programs to be offered more widely and regularly at the AMC. One, reflecting on his own experience of the benefits of participation, was adamant that priority should be given to “people who were really depressed”.

One of the challenges identified by the participants was the difficulty in maintaining their own practice without a structured class, pointing to the need for regular yoga programs.

Read more: Good mental health care in prisons must begin and end in the community

For a prison to offer ongoing classes, it would require funding for qualified yoga teachers. (We had the benefit of an experienced yoga teacher volunteering his time for our study.) In the UK and Ireland, funding for yoga and meditation enables classes to be offered in over a third of their prisons.

Ongoing classes also requires a commitment to meeting operational requirements, such as providing a space and arranging for the movement of prisoners.

We hope the ACT pilot program will lead to more yoga programs in Australian prisons that can be subject to larger-scale evaluations to test their benefits.

The last word on the potential for yoga programs to support prisoner well-being is best left to one of our participants.

You would have a negative day and then come there and after you had done it, it was nice, it was calming … the effects lasted, they were ongoing.

– ref. First-ever Australian study shows how yoga can improve the lives of prisoners – http://theconversation.com/first-ever-australian-study-shows-how-yoga-can-improve-the-lives-of-prisoners-120226

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ramon Zenel Shaban, Clinical Chair and Professor of Infection Prevention and Disease Control at the University of Sydney, University of Sydney

“Travel safe, travel far, travel wide, and travel often,” says Nomadic Matt, the American who quit his job to travel the world, write about it and coach others to do the same.

But there’s a downside to all this travel, with its unprecedented volume of passengers moving from one side of the world to the other, largely by plane.

There’s the risk of those passengers spreading infectious diseases and microorganisms resistant to multiple drugs (superbugs) around the world.

Yet, our recently published research into health advice provided by inflight magazines shows plane passengers are given practically no advice on how to limit the spread of infectious diseases.

Should we be worried about the part air travel plays in spreading infectious diseases? And what can we do about it?

Read more: Remote village to metropolis: how globalisation spreads infectious diseases

How big is the risk?

Low airfares and a series of social and economic factors have made global air travel more common than ever. According to the Australian government department of infrastructure, transport, cities and regional development the number of passengers taking international scheduled flights in 2018 was 41.575 million. But the International Air Transport Association projects passenger demand will reach 8.2 billion by 2037.

There are many examples of infectious diseases spread via international flying. The World Health Organization documented transmission of tuberculosis (TB) on board commercial aircraft during long-haul flights during the 1980s.

Research published in 2011 documents the transmission of influenza on two transcontinental international flights in May 2009.

Read more: Health Check: are you up to date with your vaccinations?

More recently, the current global outbreak of measles in many countries, including the Philippines and the Unites States, gave rise to the risk of transmission during international travel. In a recent case a baby too young to be vaccinated who had measles returned from Manilla in the Philippines to Sydney, exposing travellers on that flight to infection.

Then there is the risk of transmitting antimicrobial-resistant organisms that cause disease, such as multi-drug resistant TB.

Recently, patients in Victoria and New South Wales were identified as carrying the drug-resistant fungus Candida auris, which they acquired overseas.

Read more: Explainer: what is Candida auris and who is at risk?

One study estimates that over 300 million travellers visit high-risk areas, such as the western Pacific, Southeast Asia and Eastern Mediterranean, each year worldwide, and more than 20% return as new carriers of resistant organisms.

These popular destinations, as well as the Middle East, have high rates of drug resistant organisms.

How is this happening?

Aircraft move large volumes of people around the world swiftly. But what sets them apart from buses and trains is that passengers are close together, in confined spaces, for a long time. This increases the risk of transmitting infections.

Passengers interact with high-touch surfaces, such as tray tables, headsets, seats and handles. We cough, sneeze and touch multiple surfaces multiple times during a flight, with limited opportunities to clean our hands with soap and water.

Many infections, such as gastroenteritis and diarrhoea, are spread and contracted by touch and contact.

Read more: Flu lasts for more than an hour in air and on surfaces – why cleaning can really help

What can we do about it?

Providing plane travellers with relevant health advice is one way to limit the spread of infectious diseases via air travel.

This would include information and advice on routine hand washing with soap and water, or using alcohol-based hand rubs, and other basic measures including cough etiquette, such as coughing into your elbow and covering your nose and face.

Researchers have looked at the role commercial websites and travel agencies might play in providing that advice. And since the 1990s, airline magazines have been highlighted as an underused source of traveller health advice. More than 20 years on, we discovered little has changed.

In our recent study, published in the journal Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease, we looked at the content of inflight magazines from 103 airlines issued during January 2019.

Of the 47 available online, only a quarter (11) included an official section on passengers’ general health and well-being, of which only two contained information related to infection control and the preventing infectious diseases.

The first magazine, from a UAE-based airline, had an official section on passenger health and well-being that included very limited relevant content. It advised passengers “with blood diseases or ear, nose and sinus infections should seek medical advice before flying”.

There was no further explanation or information, nor were there any strategies to prevent these or other infections.

The second magazine, from a USA-based airline, contained general travel health advice, but none specifically about infectious diseases.

However there was a full-page, colour advertisement next to the health section. This contained images of many disease causing microorganisms on passengers’ tray tables and advocated the use of a disinfectant wipe for hands and other inflight surfaces.

The slogan “because germs are frequent fliers” was displayed across the tray table. This was accompanied by information about the use and effectiveness of disinfectant wipes for hand hygiene and disinfecting surfaces during air travel, public transport use, and in hotels and restaurants.

Read more: Going travelling? Don’t forget insurance (and to read the fine print)

Inflight magazines are valuable assets for airlines and are the source of considerable advertising revenue. They are read by potentially billions of passengers every year. The results of this study show that they are a greatly underused source of information about infection control and measures to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

Airlines should also provide health advice to passengers in other media, in particular video screens, about infection prevention and basic control measures such as hand hygiene, cough etiquette and personal hygiene.

Such advice should be provided before, during and after the flight. It could also include destination-related advice for particularly risky travel routes and destinations.

More information for passengers

Airlines providing health advice to passengers is just one way to limit the spread of infectious diseases and antimicrobial-resistant organisms around the world via air travel.

This would need to sit alongside other measures, such as information and guidelines provided to those who travel via the sea.

The simple, low-cost measures highlighted in our research could go a long way to help passengers stay healthy and avoid illness from infectious diseases. At the same time, these measures could reduce the impact of outbreaks of infectious diseases for airlines and society as a whole.

Read more: When the drugs don’t work: how we can turn the tide of antimicrobial resistance

– ref. Air travel spreads infections globally, but health advice from inflight magazines can limit that – http://theconversation.com/air-travel-spreads-infections-globally-but-health-advice-from-inflight-magazines-can-limit-that-120283

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Con Doolan, Professor, School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, UNSW

Former Australian Greens leader Bob Brown made headlines this week after he objected to a proposed wind farm on Tasmania’s Robbins Island. The development would see 200 towers built, each standing 270 metres from base to the tip of their blades.

Leaving aside the question of the Robbins Island development, these will be extraordinarily tall towers. However, they fit right in with the current trend for wind turbines.

Read more: Wind and solar cut rather than boost Australia’s wholesale electricity prices

Wind turbines come in many designs, but the most common is the so-called “horizontal axis” kind, which look like giant fans on poles. This type of turbine is highly efficient at turning the energy in the wind into electrical energy.

Keen observers will have noticed that these turbines have been gaining in size over the years. In the 1990s, wind turbines typically had hub heights and rotor diameters of the order of 30m. Today, hub heights and rotor diameters are pushing well past 100m.

Bigger is better

When it comes to wind turbines, bigger is definitely better. The bigger the radius of the rotor blades (or diameter of the “rotor disc”), the more wind the blades can use to turn into torque that drives the electrical generators in the hub. More torque means more power. Increasing the diameter means that not only more power can be extracted, but it can be done so more efficiently.

Larger and longer turbine blades mean greater aerodynamic efficiency. Creating more power in one turbine means less energy is lost as it is moved into the transmission system, and from there into the electrical generator. The economies of scale provide an overwhelming push for wind energy companies to develop larger rotor blades.

Read more: Are public objections to wind farms overblown?

Wind turbines are also growing taller because of the way wind travels around the world. Because air is viscous (like very thin honey) and “sticks” to the ground, the wind velocity at higher altitudes can be many times higher than at ground level.

Hence it is advantageous to put the turbine high in the sky where there is more energy to extract. Hilly terrain (like a mountain ridge) may also distort the wind, requiring engineers to design the wind turbines to be even taller to catch the wind. Wind turbines used offshore are generally larger and taller because of the higher levels of wind energy available at sea.

Typically, onshore turbines (most common in Australia) have blades between 40m and 90m long. Tower heights are usually in the range of 150m. Offshore turbines (those situated at sea and common in Europe) are much larger.

One of the largest wind turbine designs in the world, General Electric’s offshore 12-megawatt Haliade-X, has 107m blades and a total height of 260m. As a comparison, Sydney’s Centrepoint tower is 309m tall.

If the Robbins Island turbines are indeed built to 270m, as reported in the media, they would eclipse General Electric’s behemoths. I cannot speak to the likelihood of this, but I would assume engineers will have to select the best turbine for the prevailing wind conditions and existing infrastructure.

Challenging heights

The quest for bigger and taller turbines comes with its fair share of engineering challenges.

Longer blades are more flexible than shorter ones, which can create vibration. If not controlled, this vibration affects performance and reduces the life of the blades and anything they are attached to, such as the gearbox or generator.

Materials and manufacturing techniques are constantly being refined to create longer, and longer-lasting, turbine blades.

Taller turbines generate more power, which puts greater loads on the gearbox and transmission system, requiring mechanical engineers to develop new ways of converting the ever-increasing torque into electrical power. Taller wind turbines also need stronger support towers and foundations. The list of challenges is long.

As turbines grow, so too does the noise they make. The dominant source of noise occurs at the outer edge of the blades. Here, turbulence caused by the blade itself creates a “hissing” sound as it passes over the trailing edge. More noise is created when the blade chops through atmospheric turbulence in the wind as it blows into the tower.

Noise isn’t just a matter of size. If one turbine is placed in the wake of another, the sound of its blades passing through the highly turbulent air created by the upstream turbine will be very loud.

Keeping noise under control requires inventive solutions, such as borrowing ideas from nature: the silent-flying owl uses serrated feathers to control noise and these are now being used to make noisy turbines quieter.

Read more: Wind turbines aren’t quite ‘apex predators’, but the truth is far more interesting

Of course, engineering challenges are not the only considerations for creating wind farms. Environmental effects, noise, visual impacts and other community concerns all need to be considered, as with any large infrastructure project. But wind turbines are one of the most cost-effective and technologically sophisticated forms of renewable energy, and as the developed world comes to grips with climate change we will only see more of them.

– ref. Taller, faster, better, stronger: wind towers are only getting bigger – http://theconversation.com/taller-faster-better-stronger-wind-towers-are-only-getting-bigger-120492

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Bone, Lecturer, Massey University

A majority of academic staff at some of Australia’s top universities work in casual or fixed-term positions. This reflects a trend towards casualisation in academia, and other industries, in Australia and New Zealand.

Fixed-term employment is also a form of precarious employment. This is usually when the university employs research staff working on externally funded projects only for the extent of the project. So, in effect, the research funds the academic’s employment (from a research grant) while enhancing the reputation of the university.

Precarious employment particularly affects young academics. In some Australian universities, more than 80% of staff under the age of 30 are insecurely employed. This insecurity significantly restrains their lifestyle options.

Read more: Casual academics aren’t going anywhere, so what can universities do to ensure learning isn’t affected?

For my PhD, submitted in 2017, I explored the experiences and well-being of young academics in precarious work. I interviewed ten young academics employed at Monash University in Melbourne on three occasions over a year.

Participants had been employed by Monash for between five weeks and six years at the time of the first interview (the average was two years). The average age of participants was 27.

My research found participants on casual contracts felt vulnerable and of lower status than “permanent” staff members. They sometimes minimised instances of exploitation as part of an authentic academic experience.

You’re on your own

Formal induction programs, professional mentoring or performance review processes were often reserved for “permanent” staff. Academics in precarious employment made sense of what it means to be an academic, as well as gained knowledge about workplace norms and expectations, informally.

Participants said they gleaned information from chats with colleagues and supervisors, listening to presentations, reading emails, seeing media coverage of academic employment issues, as well as observing normative social practices in the workplace.

Positioned as early career researchers (ECRs), participants often sought solace from others like them. One ECR told me:

[…] talking to my friends and people in the ECR group, it is that communal moaning kind of thing, which is cathartic and helpful in that respect. But it is not going anywhere, we are all complaining about the same things we face, we just complain about it because we have got to tell it to someone who can understand […]

Tenured academics may be sympathetic to their precarious position but, according to the stories I heard, they weren’t necessarily helpful.

Will* described when tenured staff members would compare their position to his in a way that highlighted his situation.

Well my position’s secure and thank goodness I’m not on a fixed-term contract because that’d worry me […] you’re new so you have to get good evaluations because your probation is in a year and a half and you need to achieve that to be able to stay here.

Will found this type of interaction distressing as the communication style distanced himself (an insecure worker) from others (tenured workers).

Research participants were constantly reminded they did not have the status or privileges of permanent employment.

Read more: Higher education cuts will be felt in the classroom, not the lab

For instance, Logan described how, despite having his PhD and being employed full-time by the university, he still spent most of his time “hanging out with the PhD students” because his desk was positioned in an open-plan space with them.

Defending exploitation

There was a sense among participants of constantly trying to impress their supervisors. This came from knowing their future employment depended on the approval of the university and people in it.

Participants had a somewhat defensive attitude towards their exploitation. For instance, Mike said he worked on average an extra one unpaid day per week, which caused him stress and pressure. But, straight after saying this, he added:

I don’t feel like the organisation is a demanding environment. Like I don’t know what would happen if I did start working less […]

Mike also minimised the issues associated with feeling insecure and working unpaid hours by saying:

[…] there are a couple of funny things about how they (the university) handle contracts and staff and stuff.

Mike’s comment painted questionable employment practices, and working without pay, as part of the authentic academic experience.

It was difficult for many of the participants to be critical of their working context and the people in it, even if they were working unpaid hours. This was because, as Jasmine said, “I can’t escape work because that is my entire world, basically.”

Although casual academics are on temporary contracts, some have been working for universities longer than their colleagues on continuing contracts.

Max told me he felt emotionally attached to the university:

I have just been here a long time. I studied here, I lived on campus here for two years, I was involved in a lot of student things when I was a student. I have seen the campus physically change a lot […] I can definitely see how much I have changed since I got to Monash. So it feels like I am a part of Monash or Monash is a part of me […]

Others felt more pragmatically tied to the institution, noting it was arduous changing employment. Ruby said:

If I went to another institution I have to learn it (the systems and policies) all over again.

Constantly anxious

My research found the insecure nature of the participants’ work interfered with their sense of identity, personal security, feelings of trust and self-confidence. Such feelings, which come from a constant state of flux, are encompassed in a term coined by British sociologist Anthony Giddens in 1991: “ontological security”.

In his book exploring the effects of modernity on social psychology, he referred to ontological security as:

the confidence that most human beings have in the continuity of their self-identity and in the constancy of the surrounding social and material environments of action.

Ontological security is linked to identity as it refers to feelings of security, trust, sense of familiarity, and the reliability of interactions across time and space.

The participants in my research had a threatened sense of well-being. As precarious workers, they felt vulnerable, dependent and of a lower status. Feeling continually at risk of being excluded from the university made them anxious and caused high levels of stress.

Read more: The three things universities must do to survive disruption

Will mentioned the word “probation” 25 times during his first interview. And Mike said the university could “get rid of people” by simply not offering them another contract.

But the participants also felt their precarious employment could help increase their sense of identity because it could lead to more (possibly permanent) employment.

In many instances, participants wanted information on how to develop their careers, forge ongoing working relationships, contribute to the academic community and gain the respect of their colleagues and supervisors.

Universities must consider the well-being of their workers, particularly those on precarious contracts, as well as the influence of tenured staff on their experience.

• Participant names are pseudonyms.

– ref. Dependent and vulnerable: the experiences of academics on casual and insecure contracts – http://theconversation.com/dependent-and-vulnerable-the-experiences-of-academics-on-casual-and-insecure-contracts-118608

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Smith, Professor of Archaeology, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University

The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape in south-west Victoria is the first Indigenous Australian landscape to be gazetted on the World Heritage List purely for its cultural values.

This listing breaks an invisible barrier: even the most iconic Indigenous Australian cultural sites, such as Uluru-Kata Tjuta and Kakadu National Parks, were listed for both natural and cultural values.

Read more: The detective work behind the Budj Bim eel traps World Heritage bid

Could the Budj Bim listing open the door to other Australian Indigenous sites obtaining a World Heritage listing? Here are five that certainly deserve greater attention.

When considering them it’s important to understand how ancestral beings inhabit living Indigenous landscapes, which they created during the era known as the Dreaming.

Today, these beings continue to live in the land. They are seen by Indigenous people as powerful and intelligent, with the capacity to hurt those who don’t act in the right way. They can be in different places at the same time. And they see everything.

Read more: Australia’s problem with Aboriginal World Heritage

The Dampier Archipelago (including the Burrup Peninsula)

The Dampier Archipelago, 1,550 kilometres north of Perth, has one of the most spectacular rock art landscapes in Australia. The richness and diversity of this art is extraordinary, ranging from small shelters to complexes with thousands of engravings. Some images are similar to those found hundreds of kilometres away in Depuch Island, the Calvert Ranges and Port Hedland, revealing ancient social connections spanning vast distances.

The Ngarda-Ngarlie people believe this area of land was created by the ancestral beings Ngkurr, Bardi and Gardi, who left their marks in its physical features. For instance, the blood of creative beings turned into stains that are now the Marntawarrura, or “black hills”.

Baiame’s Ngunnhu (Brewarrina Fishtraps)

The Brewarrina fishtraps, located in the Darling River near Brewarrina in New South Wales, are a clear example of Indigenous science. They offer material evidence of the Ngemba people’s advanced knowledge of dry-stone wall technology, river hydrology and fish ecology.

The Ngemba people believe the ancestral being Baiame revealed the innovative design of the traps by throwing his net over the river. With the help of his two sons, Baiame built the fishtraps in the shape of this net.

Nearly half a kilometre long, the fishtraps’ design and complexity is extraordinary. Dry-stone weirs and ponds were designed to take advantage of the specific configuration of the landscape and seasonal changes in river flows. The pond gates are strategically located to trap fish as they migrate both upstream and downstream. For thousands of years, these distinctive traps have been used to catch fresh water fish.

Ngarrabullgan

Ngarrabullgan, a sacred and dangerous place in north Queensland, is an important example of congruence between Aboriginal traditions and archaeologically recorded changes in behaviours. Excavations show that Aboriginal people began living on Ngarrabullgan more than 37,000 years ago. They stopped camping there about 600 years ago.

There is no evidence of climate or environmental change at this time. Nor is there evidence of depopulation, which could have caused changes in site use. However, the Djungan people believe that a spiritual being called Eekoo lives on Ngarrabullgan (also known as Mt Mulligan). He can cause sickness by throwing stones, hooks or pieces of wood into a person’s body. This does not leave a mark.

Djungan people avoid going near the top of Ngarrabullgan where Eekoo lives to avoid disturbing him. They attribute any sickness when on the mountain to Eekoo.

Quinkan country

The distinctive feature of Quinkan Country in the Cape York Peninsula in North Queensland is the richness, size and density of its Aboriginal paintings and engravings. This country is best known for its depictions of Quinkan spirit beings, tall, slender Timaras and fat-bodied Imjims (or Anurra).

The rock art of Quinkan Country provides insights into Aboriginal occupation of the north-east region of Australia. The cultural traditions, laws, and stories told there were developed over at least 37,000 years.

Western Tasmania Aboriginal Cultural Landscape

The Western Tasmania Aboriginal Cultural Landscape provides evidence of a specialised and more sedentary way of life based on seals, shellfish and land mammals. This unusual Aboriginal way of life began around 2,000 years ago. It continued until the 1830s.

Shell middens in this landscape do not contain the remains of bony fish. However, they do contain “hut depressions”. Sometimes, these are formed into the shape of villages. Circular pits in cobble beaches are near some of these depressions. It is likely that they are hides that were used when hunting seals.

Other candidates

These places already appear on our national heritage list. There is a plethora of other important ones, both on and off the list, including Mutawintji National Park, Gundabooka National Park and State Conservation area, and Koonalda Cave, on the Nullarbor Plain.

But Aboriginal owners and custodians must be the decision-makers when it comes to proposing a World Heritage listing. They have an inherited right to benefit from a listing – and they hold cultural responsibility for the consequences of it. Protecting these living landscapes is their responsibility. Increased tourist activity could be a new source of income for them but it could also place cultural landscapes at risk.

– ref. Budj Bim’s world heritage listing is an Australian first – what other Indigenous cultural sites could be next? – http://theconversation.com/budj-bims-world-heritage-listing-is-an-australian-first-what-other-indigenous-cultural-sites-could-be-next-120097

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darren Paul Fisher, Head of Directing, Department of Film, Screen and Creative Media, Bond University

Something incredible might be happening to James Bond: a separation, a personal Brexit of sorts. According to the Daily Mail, while Daniel Craig will return as Bond in the next film, Bond may not return as 007. There will, reportedly, be a new 007 in town, and she’ll be black. And a woman.

At this stage, the rumour that 007 will be played by British actress Lashana Lynch is unconfirmed, sourced from tabloid “insiders”. But if this claim is true (and it does have more than a hint of authenticity to it) what does it mean? A dangerous fragmentation of the franchise? Or a necessary evolution?

As a lifelong Bond aficionado, I hope the news is true for the simple reason that it’s about bloody time. I love Bond, but he has only ever moved with the times on the most surface of levels – like a cool uncle who continues to buy the latest tech, but no longer quite understands how to use it. For the entirety of its life, the franchise has been the epitome of conservatism.

The first Bond film I saw was The Spy Who Loved Me. The action, adventure, humour, gadgets and “coolness” of the alpha-male in action was intoxicating, and I burned voraciously through the movies, novels and short stories.

It should be said that there are two distinct Bonds: one of the page and one of the screen. The book Bond, created by Ian Fleming in 1953, actually worked in an office. The novels were a fulfilment fantasy of the (male) office clerk, one who was still experiencing the effects of rationing from WWII and had no opportunity for international travel.

Bond had a (female) secretary and did mundane paperwork until he got the call from M, who would send him on impossibly glamorous and global secret missions. The books were unashamedly equal parts thriller and travelogue. Written in the pulp tradition, the symbolism of the stories was deliberately obvious; heroes had names like “Trueblood”, with the villains usually foreign and most often “half-breeds”.

Even now, the racism of the books tends to be classified as what critic and cultural commentator Umberto Eco once indulgently called just “a cautious, middle-class chauvinism”, with Fleming guilty of nothing more than portraying attitudes prevalent and unexamined at the time. However you label the variety of racism, it dated the books badly, sealing them in a time capsule of the 1950s.

Bond himself was never given racist attitudes, instead the equally “of their time” sexist ones. Whereas the racism of the books did not translate directly to the screen, the misogyny carried over wholesale.

The movie Bond is an always-active spy: a dashing, tough, charismatic man’s man (yes, even Roger Moore) who knew how to both charm and manipulate women. And this, apart from some cosmetic updating, is still essentially the Bond we have today.

Read more: Time’s up Mister Bond: why new ideas of identity mean the next 007 should be black, bisexual – or even a woman

Deceiving the zeitgeist

The clearest example of Bond attempting to deceive the zeitgeist comes from GoldenEye. It was 1995, and Bond was back after a six-year gap, with Pierce Brosnan in the lead. Much was made of the film series keeping up with current attitudes: there was now not only a female “M” (played by Judi Dench), but she got to call Bond a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur,” to much publicity (and in the trailer too).

But this was merely lip-service: Bond was proven to be misunderstood (it seemed “M” mistakenly thought him a playboy dilettante), and the film simply carried on with its normal value system, including having a character called Xenia Onatopp who killed men during sex with her thighs. This was not just a missed opportunity, it completely missed the point.

Read more: James Bond needs a new attitude, not a new actor

The old 20th century Bond films have become like the original books – dated cultural products that need context. However, the new Craig-era films are far more problematic.

Full disclosure: I hate this Bond. Notwithstanding that this iteration has been rewritten not just as proto-Bond (Casino Royale), but also dumb-Bond (Skyfall) and eventually just inept-Bond (Spectre), the series started as a reactionary scramble to copy the success of the Bourne franchise. This Bond might have had a vulnerable side, but he has been moulded not as a man-of-his-time, but a man-out-of-time.

The problem is that he is still paraded as a figure to be idolised, a heroic role model for the new generation. This extends to one of the most questionable scenes of any Bond era: his sexually exploiting a sex slave who has come to him for help in Skyfall. Don’t get me wrong, sex scenes are completely welcome, a core genre convention, but the moment is barely consensual yet depicted simply as impressive sexual conquest.

No-one wants a Bond rewritten as an asexual pacifist, but neither should he be defined by misogyny. The brilliant Phoebe Waller-Bridge, only the second woman since 1962 to be brought in to work on a Bond script, believes rightly that it is important the films evolve and treat women better, even if Bond doesn’t. I hold a slightly different view – if Bond always exists in the always-present “now”, and his attitudes are simply indicative of the time, then there is no need to cling to outdated worldviews.

This is why the prospect of a potential radical new era is so thrilling. If Lynch becomes 007, it will be a brilliant, yet still somewhat conservative move, as the makers are very late to the now market-tested “woke” table, but we may finally get a truly authentic contemporary Bond. One that still has plenty of gratuitous sex and violence, whether or not those engaging in it are black, female or 007.

– ref. A black, female 007? As a lifelong James Bond fan, I say bring it on – http://theconversation.com/a-black-female-007-as-a-lifelong-james-bond-fan-i-say-bring-it-on-120419

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Hepburn, Director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University

A freedom of information request has revealed Adani sought the names of CSIRO and Geoscience Australia scientists involved in reviewing groundwater management plans related to its proposed Carmichael mine.

Adani argued it required a list of people involved in the review so as to have “peace of mind” that it was being treated fairly and impartially on a scientific rather than a political basis.

Ten days before Adani’s request, Geoscience Australia’s acting director of groundwater advice and data reportedly raised concerns that Adani had “actively searched/viewed” his LinkedIn profile and that of a colleague.

Read more: Interactive: Everything you need to know about Adani – from cost, environmental impact and jobs to its possible future

Significantly, Adani’s request to the government was made before CSIRO and Geoscience Australia had reported their review findings back to the Queensland government.

While the federal Department of the Environment and Energy reportedly declined to hand over the names, the fact the letter was sent in the first place is concerning. It fundamentally interferes with the capacity of individual scientists to provide clear and informed evaluation.

Was Adani denied procedural fairness?

In the absence of clear legislation to the contrary, government decision-makers have a general duty to accord “procedural fairness” to those affected by their decisions. While procedural fairness is protected by common law, Commonwealth legislation also provides some protection, and a breach of procedural fairness is a ground for judicial review.

What exactly constitutes procedural fairness varies from case to case. Fundamentally, the principles of procedural fairness acknowledge the power imbalance that can arise between an administrative decision-maker and an individual citizen. Traditionally, procedural fairness has two elements: the fair hearing rule and the rule against bias.

The fair hearing rule requires a person – or company, in this case – to have an opportunity to be heard before a decision is made affecting their interest.

The rule against bias ensures the decision-maker can be objectively considered to be impartial and not to have prejudged a decision. This rule is flexible, and must be determined by reference to a hypothetical observer who is fair minded and informed of the circumstances.

There is no indication of any breach of procedural fairness in the environmental assessment process. The review of the groundwater management plan was conducted rigorously, according to the public interest.

The letter sent by Adani requesting the names of scientists was allegedly grounded in concerns about the possibility of anti-Adani activism by expert reviewers. Despite this, Adani made it clear that it was not explicitly alleging bias. Its objective, the letter said, was a desire to be “treated fairly and in a manner consistent with other industry participants”.

The real purpose of the letter

If Adani was seriously concerned about a breach of procedural fairness in the review of their groundwater management plan, it would have sought a judicial review. It did not – because there was no breach.

The scientists working at CSIRO and Geoscience Australia are all experts in their disciplines. They were engaged in the important process of determining whether Adani’s plan for managing groundwater around their mine would meet the environmental conditions of their mining licence. In other words, the scientists were doing their job.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack has said he “understands” Adani’s actions because of the delays associated with the review, but this is not how the system works.
The delays occurred because the original plan submitted by Adani had to be revised following expert review, and the updated plan required detailed evaluation. The mine could potentially have a serious impact on groundwater, the communities and ecosystems dependent on the water, and the nationally significant Doongmabulla Springs; this deserves careful scrutiny.

Read more: Unpacking the flaws in Adani’s water management plan

As Adani has not brought an action for judicial review, the substantive purpose of the letter appears to be, as suggested by CSIRO representatives, to pressure scientists and potentially seek to discredit their work. The potentially chilling effect is clear.

Concern about climate change is not bias

The profound concerns raised by climate change and fossil fuel emissions are shared by many scientists around the world. The reports prepared for the International Panel on Climate Change make it clear that coal fired electricity must drop to nearly zero by 2050 to keep warming within 1.5℃.

This shared concern does not make scientists political activists. Nor does it prevent scientists from acting fairly and impartially when reviewing a groundwater management plan.

Read more: The UN’s 1.5°C special climate report at a glance

An acceptance of climate science and even a belief that coal-fired energy should be decommissioned does not constitute bias. A reasonable bystander would expect most environmental scientists to be concerned about climate change.

It is crucial the environmental assessment process for large coal mines remains rigorously independent and absolutely free from any direct or indirect pressure from the coal industry. This is even more important when dealing with groundwater assessments, given their economic, social and ecological significance.

The letter, sent before the review was handed down, sets a dangerous precedent. Not because it suggests the scientists were impartial or there was any procedural unfairness involved in the process. But rather, because it jeopardises the independence of our scientists who, in seeking to ensure the longevity of our water, food and energy resources, carry a heavy responsibility to the public interest.

– ref. Adani has set a dangerous precedent in requesting scientists’ names – http://theconversation.com/adani-has-set-a-dangerous-precedent-in-requesting-scientists-names-120487

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Kang, Associate professor, University of Technology Sydney

I Need to Know is an ongoing series for teens in search of reliable, confidential advice about life’s tricky questions. If you’re a teen, send us your questions about sex, drugs, health and relationships and we’ll ask an expert to answer it for you.

Hi I’ve been in a relationship for nearly 4 years now and have gone from having a high libido to a very low one, is there ways that I can change this? – Anonymous

Key Points

• Our libidos fluctuate. Changes are normal
• Most relationships start on a high, then libidos can decrease
• Communication is key to working through these types of issues.

Changes in libido are common throughout life, and affect all genders. This can cause worry, especially when you notice what seems like a dramatic drop. But there are plenty of ways to help!

Read more: ‘Do I need to shave my pubic hair before having sex?’

Your libido isn’t a switch

Libido is your sexual desire or drive and it’s affected by a combination of physical, emotional, psychological and relationship circumstances.

Going through puberty often leads to the first experiences of libido, which helps us understand the importance of certain hormones in triggering the sex drive. In women, oestrogen is responsible for a lot of the sex drive, while in men it’s testosterone.

Some medical conditions and medications as well as commonly used drugs like alcohol can affect hormones and brain chemicals which lower the sex drive – in other words, there is a physical component to a person’s libido.

For example, depression can cause the sex drive to take a dive, and yet so can medication to treat depression.

Similarly, some people experience lower libido on some hormonal contraceptives, while others find it helps. Everyone is different and things can change over time.

Read more: ‘Are Kegel exercises actually good for you?’

Crazy in ‘limerence’

Most importantly, libido is hugely influenced by circumstances and experiences around us, from the past or present. A common scenario is like your own – where libido drops as a relationship gets older.

The early part of a relationship can be full of sex drive and something called limerence. Limerence is an emotional reaction to a new partner or relationship that is intensely romantic – plenty of love songs are written during this phase of a relationship! It’s due to the activation of certain brain chemicals and for some people feels like an addiction or obsession, the feeling of being “madly in love”.

As the relationship continues, limerence declines and sometimes sex drive does too. For some couples, this is fine and doesn’t cause too much concern. For others, having a lower libido creates distress for one or both people.

Communicate, communicate, communicate!

Sometimes simply knowing that a drop in libido can be normal is reassuring. Other times it’s not and it’s worth checking out a few things. Do a quick scan of your general health, including stress and lifestyle (alcohol, drugs, sleep habits, exercise).

Alternatively chat with your partner and look at what’s happening inside and outside the bedroom. Here’s some good questions to ask them (and remember, talk through them honestly with each other):

• do you have different levels of libido or body clocks (one falls asleep at 9pm the other at 1am)?

• does your partner want sex much more (or much less) than you do? This can create tension or anxiety which will affect your sex drive

• over the four years you’ve been together, have you been able to communicate with each other about what gives you pleasure and does that feel mutual?

• what sort of variety do you like in bed?

• could there be issues going on outside the relationship, such as financial stress, worry about parents/family or study or work?

• could there be issues from the past that have been weighing on your mind?

If you’re worried about a medical issue, see your GP to start with. If it’s more likely to be related to stress or your relationship, then you could see a counsellor on your own or as a couple.

You might not need professional intervention – many couples can figure out this stuff with good communication, but don’t hesitate to reach out for help if you want to.

If you’re a teenager and have a question you’d like answered by an expert, you can:

Please tell us your name age and which city you live in. Send as many questions as you like! We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

– ref. ‘How do I increase my libido?’ – http://theconversation.com/how-do-i-increase-my-libido-118341

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katarina Miljkovic, ARC DECRA fellow, Curtin University

Look up on a clear night and you can see some circular formations on the face of our lunar neighbour. These are impact craters, circular depressions found on planetary surfaces.

About a century ago, they were suspected to exist on Earth but the cosmic origin was often met with suspicion and most geologists believed that craters were of volcanic origin.

Around 1960, the American astrogeologist Gene Shoemaker, one of the founders of planetary science, studied the dynamics of crater formation on Earth and planetary surfaces. He investigated why they – including our Moon – are so cratered.

Read more: Five ethical questions for how we choose to use the Moon

Images from Apollo

By 1970, there were more than 50 craters discovered on Earth but that work was still considered controversial, until pictures of the lunar surface brought by the Apollo missions confirmed that impact cratering is a common geological process outside Earth.

Unlike Earth’s surface, the lunar surface is covered with craters. This is because Earth is a dynamic planet, and tectonics, volcanism, seismicity, wind and oceans all play against the preservation of impact craters on Earth.

It does not mean Earth – even Australia – has not been battered. We should have been hit by more rocks from space than the Moon has, simply because our planet is larger.

In contrast to Earth, our Moon has been inactive over long geological timescales and has no atmosphere, which has allowed the persistent impact cratering to remain over eons. The lunar cratering record spans its entire bombardment history – from the Moon’s very origins to today.

The big ones

The largest and oldest impact crater in the Solar system is believed to be on the Moon, and it is called the South Pole-Aitken basin, but we cannot see it from Earth because it is on the far side of the Moon. The Moon is tidally locked to Earth’s rotation and the same side always faces toward us.

But this crater, more than 2,000km across, is thought to predate any other large impact bombardment that occurred during lunar evolution. Impact simulations suggested it was formed by a 150-250km asteroid hurtling into the Moon at 15-20km per second!

From Earth, the human eye can observe areas of different shades of grey on the surface of the Moon facing us. The dark areas are called maria, and can be up to more than 1,000km across.

They are volcanic deposits that flooded depressions created by the formation of the large impact basins on the Moon. These volcanic eruptions were active for millions of years after these impacts occurred.

My favourite is the Orientale impact basin, the youngest of the large impact craters on the Moon, but still estimated to have formed “only” about 3.7 billion years ago.

No other large impact event has occurred on the Moon since then. This is a good sign, because it implies there were no very large impacts occurring on Earth either after this time in evolutionary history. (The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth 66 million years ago was only about 10-15km in size and left a crater larger than 150km in size, which was substantial enough to cause a mass extinction.)

As seen from Earth

With a small telescope, or fancy binoculars, you can check out some of the best-preserved complex craters on the Moon, such as the Tycho or Copernicus craters.

They are called complex craters because they are not entirely bowl-shaped, but are a bit shallower and include a peak in the centre of the crater as a consequence of the material collapsing into the hole made during impact. Tycho and Copernicus are both 80-100km across but have spectacular central peaks and prominent “ejecta rays” – areas where material was ejected across the lunar surface after an impact.

The formation of these craters excavated underlying material that was brighter than the actual surface. This is because lunar surface is subjected to space weathering, which causes surface rocks to darken.

Still a target for impacts

The Apollo 12, 14, 15, and 16 missions placed several seismic stations on the Moon between 1969 and 1972, creating the first extraterrestrial seismic network (ALSEP). During one year of operations, more than 1,000 seismic events were recorded, of which 10% were associated with meteoroids impacts.

So the Moon is still being hit by objects, albeit mostly tiny ones. But as there is no atmosphere on the Moon, there is no gas to help burn up these rocks from space and stop them smashing into the Moon.

Read more: Target Earth: how asteroids made an impact on Australia

The seismic network was functional until it was switched off in 1977, in preparation for new space missions. No one expected that the next fully operational extraterrestrial seismometer would not be placed on a planetary surface (Mars) until 40 years later.

Nowadays, from Earth, using a small telescope (and armed with a little patience), you can see so-called “impact flashes”, which are small meteorite impacts on the lunar surface that is facing us.

Thanks to the atmosphere on Earth, similar-sized rocks from space cannot make an impact here because they tend to predominantly burn up, but on the Moon they crash into the soil and release its kinetic energy of the impact via bright thermal emission.

– ref. Why the Moon is such a cratered place – http://theconversation.com/why-the-moon-is-such-a-cratered-place-118842

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Wolpe, Non-resident senior fellow, United States Study Centre, University of Sydney

The past three days in US politics have been very difficult – and ugly.

President Donald Trump chosen to exploit divisions inside the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives – generational and ideological – by attacking four new women members of Congress, denying their status as Americans and their legitimacy to serve in Congress. They are women of colour and, yes, they are from the far left of the Democratic Party. They have pushed hard against their leaders.

But Trump’s vicious, racist attacks on them have in fact solved the unity problem among the Democrats: they are today (re)united against Trump.

Read more: Two dozen candidates, one big target: in a crowded Democratic field, who can beat Trump?

You can draw a straight line from Trump’s birther attacks on Obama, to his “Mexican rapists” attack when he announced his run for the presidency, to his Muslim immigration ban, to equivocating over Nazis marching in Charlottesville, to sending troops to the US-Mexico border, to shutting down the government, to declaring a national emergency, to what he is doing today.

And his attacks on these lawmakers is based on a lie: three of the congresswomen were born in America. One is an immigrant, now a citizen, and as American as any citizen – just like Trump’s wife.

I worked in the House of Representatives for ten years. I learned early that you do not impugn – you have no right to impugn – the legitimacy of an elected member of Congress. Only the voters can do that.

Other presidents have been racist. Lyndon Johnson worked with the southern segregationists. Nixon railed in private against Jews. But none have spoken so openly, so publicly, without shame or remorse for these sentiments. So this is new territory.

And this is unlike Charlottesville, where there was vocal and visible pushback from Republicans on Trump giving an amber light to the Nazis in the streets. This is how much the political culture and norms have corroded over the past two years.

The Democrats chose to fight back by bringing a resolution condemning Trump for his remarks to the House of Representatives floor. Historians are still scurrying, but it appears this is unprecedented – the house has never in its history, which dates to the 1790s, voted to condemn a president’s remarks. (The Senate censured President Andrew Jackson over banking issues in 1834.)

The house passed the measure almost along party lines, with only four Republicans out of 197 – just 2% – voting for the resolution.

The concluding words in the resolution are these:

Whereas President Donald Trump’s racist comments have legitimised fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color: Now, therefore, be it resolved, That the House of Representatives […] condemns President Donald Trump’s racist comments that have legitimised and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of colour by saying that our fellow Americans who are immigrants, and those who may look to the President like immigrants, should “go back” to other countries, by referring to immigrants and asylum seekers as “invaders”, and by saying that Members of Congress who are immigrants (or those of our colleagues who are wrongly assumed to be immigrants) do not belong in Congress or in the United States of America.

So Trump is secure within his party – and he believes he has nothing to fear from the testimony of the special counsel, Robert Mueller, next week before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.

Much attention will be paid to the examination of obstruction-of-justice issues when Mueller testifies. But the more meaningful discussion will occur in the assessment by the intelligence committee examining Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the persistence of a Russian threat in 2020.

Mueller ended his Garbo-like appearance before the media in May with these words:

The central allegation of our indictments [is] that there were multiple, systematic efforts to interference in our election. That allegation deserves the attention of every American.

The US presidential election remains vulnerable and it is not clear that sufficient safeguards are being put in place to protect the country’s democracy.

But it is the unresolved drama over impeachment that will colour Mueller’s appearance on Wednesday.

Read more: Explainer: what is a special counsel and what will he investigate in the Trump administration?

Mueller concluded he could not indict a sitting president. However, he forensically detailed ten instances of possible obstruction of justice. Mueller said that if he believed Trump had not committed a crime he would have said so and that, as a result, he could not “exonerate” Trump.

The key question that will be asked of Mueller is: “If the record you developed on obstruction of justice was applied to any individual who was not president of the United States, would you have sought an indictment?”

And on the answer to that question turns the issue of whether there will be critical mass among House of Representatives Democrats, and perhaps supported by the American people, to vote for a bill of impeachment against Donald J. Trump.

– ref. US House of Representatives condemns racist tweets in another heady week under President Donald Trump – http://theconversation.com/us-house-of-representatives-condemns-racist-tweets-in-another-heady-week-under-president-donald-trump-120425

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Sydney

Debates about constitutional change in Australia inevitably raise the poor success rate of referendums. Only eight out of 44 attempts have ever succeeded and there has not been a successful constitutional change since 1977.

So why was the referendum chosen as the means of amending our federal constitution, and was it really intended to be so hard to succeed?

In the 1890s, adopting a referendum as the means of amending the constitution was quite radical. None of the countries from which the framers of the constitution drew precedents and inspiration – the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States – used a referendum.

Why then did Australia take a different path and entrust the people with the final decision on constitutional change?

Read more: Grattan on Friday: When it comes to Indigenous recognition, Ken Wyatt will have to close multiple gaps

The UK supported flexible constitutions and easy change

In the United Kingdom, the view was taken that every generation had the right to change the constitution to suit its own needs. Accordingly, it did not have a formal constitution with restrictions on how it could be amended. Instead, the UK had a range of legislation dealing with constitutional matters that could be changed by the vote of an ordinary majority in parliament.

In the 1850s, when the New South Wales Constitution was being enacted, NSW politicians wanted to:

frame a Constitution in perpetuity for the colony – not a Constitution which could be set aside, altered and shattered to pieces by every blast of popular opinion.

But the British government inserted an overriding provision in the statute that approved the NSW Constitution, which allowed the constitution to be amended by ordinary legislation passed by the NSW parliament. They sought to ensure that the people, through their parliamentary representatives, were free to change their constitution as and when it suited them.

Federal systems need rigid constitutions and more difficult change

When it came to making a constitution for an Australian federation, such flexibility was not possible.

A federal constitution confers different powers at the federal and state level. If the federal parliament had the power to change it by passing ordinary legislation, then all powers and protections of the states could be easily removed, destroying the federal system. That meant that a “rigid” or “entrenched” constitution was needed – one that could not be amended simply at the behest of one level of government.

The two obvious federal examples to draw on were Canada and the United States. The Constitution of Canada was set out in a British statute of 1867. Because it did not contain an internal mechanism to amend the constitution, only the British parliament could amend it.

The framers of the Australian Constitution did not want to go begging to Westminster whenever they wanted to amend their constitution. They wanted control over the constitution to rest in Australian hands. So they rejected the Canadian approach.

The other well-known federal example was the United States. Despite all the constitutional rhetoric of “we, the people”, the US Constitution has never been amended by a direct vote of the people. Instead, it requires a constitutional amendment to be initiated and ratified by a combination of special majorities of votes in Congress, the state legislatures or especially established conventions. The people do not get a direct say.

How the referendum was seen in the 1890s

In the 1890s, the referendum became the subject of much study and interest outside its existing use in Switzerland and in parts of the United States at state and local level.

One strong and influential supporter of the referendum in the United Kingdom was A. V. Dicey. This was surprising, as he is best known for his support of parliamentary sovereignty. But Dicey saw the referendum as both democratic and conservative. In 1890 he said:

It is democratic, for it appeals to and protects the sovereignty of the people; it is conservative, for it balances the weight of the nation’s common sense or inertia against the violence of partisanship and the fanaticism of reformers.

Dicey was opposed to Home Rule for Ireland and saw the referendum as a means of allowing the people to veto constitutional change that would otherwise be imposed on the country due to party-political considerations.

In 1894, he described the referendum as “the People’s Veto”. In words that might well resonate today, he expressed concern that

the art of Party warfare is turning into the art of bribing and confusing voters.

To him, the referendum was a means of defeating change by relying on the general reluctance of people to risk the unknown. It is as if he had foreseen the history of federal referendums in Australia.

Why Australia chose the referendum

The idea of adopting the referendum, both as a means of approving a federal constitution and later amending it, was raised by Alfred Deakin in 1890 and Charles Kingston in 1891. They approached the issue as one of democracy, rather than conservatism.

Nonetheless, the 1891 Constitutional Convention rejected the proposal for a referendum. Sir Samuel Griffith argued that constitutional change was complex and it was not practicable for voters to be familiar with every detail. He considered an elected convention of political experts was better suited to dealing with such issues.

The convention ultimately approved a model similar to that in the United States, involving passage of an amendment by an absolute majority of both houses of the federal parliament, then approval by special conventions in a majority of states.

By the time of the 1897 Constitutional Convention, however, Griffith was gone and those supporting a form of more direct democracy prevailed. The referendum was chosen, but it was still to be subject to several hurdles.

There was no intention that the constitution be easy to change. Tasmanian Premier Sir Edward Braddon observed that the feeling of the convention was:

… that it should be made as difficult as possible to amend the Constitution.

While it was not to be made “absolutely impossible”, the constitution should not be easily capable of change upon “any fluctuation of public opinion” or in response to a crisis of a temporary character.

What is needed for a referendum to pass?

So what hurdles must be overcome for the Australian Constitution to be amended?

First, the amendment must be approved by an absolute majority of each house of parliament, or it must be passed twice by an absolute majority of one house, with an interval of three months in between. This effectively gives the federal government control over what goes to a referendum, because even if the Senate alone approves a referendum, it still requires the governor-general to put it to the referendum. On the only occasion this occurred, in 1914, the governor-general acted on the advice of the government not to hold the referendum.

Secondly, once a constitutional amendment is put to a referendum, it has to be passed by a majority of all the electors who vote. Since 1977, this has included electors in the territories.

Thirdly, a referendum must also be approved by a majority of voters in a majority of the states. That means that there has to be majority “yes” vote in four of the six states.

Read more: The Indigenous community deserves a voice in the constitution. Will the nation finally listen?

There are also special requirements if the constitutional change would diminish the proportionate or minimum parliamentary representation of a state or affect the borders of a state, in which case the approval of a majority of electors in the affected state is required.

The political hurdles to referendum success

These are the legal and constitutional hurdles. But as Dicey noted in the 1890s, and many others have since, there are numerous political reasons why referendums fail. These include poor proposals, fear of change, political opportunism by governments or oppositions, a low level of public understanding of constitutional matters, poor campaigning and sheer inertia or public disinterest.

Constitutional change in Australia is always an uphill battle, but that is no reason to shirk it. Instead, it should be a spur to produce better proposals for constitutional change, develop strong and clear arguments for reform, cultivate widespread public support and undertake vigorous, but honest, campaigns.

– ref. Changing the Australian Constitution was always meant to be difficult – here’s why – http://theconversation.com/changing-the-australian-constitution-was-always-meant-to-be-difficult-heres-why-119162

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Whitehouse, Bennett Chair of Autism, Telethon Kids Institute, Univeristy of Western Australia, University of Western Australia

Therapies given to infants before they receive a diagnosis of autism may lead to important improvements in their language abilities, according to our new research published today in the journal Lancet Child and Adolescent Health.

Children with autism typically begin therapy after receiving a diagnosis, which usually doesn’t occur until at least two years of age.

However, our new study suggests that starting therapy with 12-month-old infants who show early behavioural signs of autism may provide additional benefit.

Parents of toddlers who received six months of early therapy reported that their child understood an average of 37 more words, and spoke an average of 15 more words, than those who didn’t receive the therapy.

Read more: What causes autism? What we know, don’t know and suspect

How is autism diagnosed?

Autism is diagnosed on the basis of behavioural differences. These include difficulties in social communication and interaction, and the presence of restricted and repetitive behaviours or interests.

A diagnosis based on behaviour is an inherently subjective task. The dividing line between “typical” and “atypical” is often blurry and can lead to considerable debate.

These challenges led to the development in 2018 of new Australian guidelines for autism assessment and diagnosis, with the hope of addressing inconsistencies in autism diagnosis across Australia.

Read more: New autism guidelines aim to improve diagnostics and access to services

We don’t tend to diagnose autism until two years of age at the very earliest. Two is the earliest age at which a diagnosis is relatively stable. In other words, when a child receives a diagnosis of autism at age two, they’re also very likely to have that diagnosis if they’re reassessed in later childhood. This is not necessarily the case for children younger than two.

In most health systems around the world, including in Australia, therapy for children with autism typically begins after receiving a diagnosis. This is often a straight economic decision for a finite disability funding pool: the limited funding for therapies goes to children who need it most. And we can guarantee that children with a diagnosis of autism need these therapies.

But this model doesn’t allow therapies to take advantage of the first two years of life. These are crucial years for brain development, and early therapies may be more effective in reducing child disability.

The theory is that if therapies are started early enough, particularly when the brain is so young, it might be possible to alter the trajectory of autism, or even prevent the development of the condition in some infants.

Our study

Our study is one of the first rigorous tests of this theory.

We recruited 103 infants from Perth and Melbourne, aged between 9 and 14 months, who were showing early behavioural signs of autism, such as not responding to their names, poor eye contact, and few social smiles.

Half the children were randomly assigned to receive an intervention that helps parents understand their infant’s communication cues, and helps them respond in a way that promotes back-and-forth interactions.

By creating a socially rich environment around the infant that is tailored to their specific needs, we may help support the development of the neural pathways involved in language and social development.

The therapy is considered “low intensity” in the number of contact hours with a therapist (one hour per fortnight). This contrasts with “high intensity” therapies for older children with a diagnosis of autism, which often require at least ten contact hours per week.

The other half of the group was randomly assigned to receive standard community care. This is often restricted to a parent information session, a few sessions with allied health professionals, or no intervention at all. This group served as the control group.

We then assessed the infants’ development either side of a six-month therapy period.

What did we find?

The intervention group did not show a significant reduction in early autism behaviours compared with the control group. This finding is consistent with a previous study that found it’s not easy to change the symptoms of autism.

However, after treatment, parents in the treatment group rated their infants as having better communication skills than those in the control group.

In the six-month therapy period, the treatment group improved in understanding an average of 37 more words and saying an average of 15 more words compared with the control group. Most children were not saying any words at the start of the therapy period, and so these language gains reported by parents are an important improvement.

This finding has an important caveat: parents could not be “blinded” to the therapy. It’s therefore possible the finding reflects “rater bias”, whereby parents whose children received the intervention hoped there was a developmental improvement, and rated their infants accordingly.

What does this mean for the NDIS?

This study is an important milestone in our understanding of how (and whether) to provide therapy to young infants who show early signs of autism.

Our findings suggest that these therapies do not reduce the core autism symptoms, but may improve language skills. These gains may be especially important for reducing long-term disability and helping each child reach their full potential.

The long-term test will be whether these improvements are still evident when the infants are older.

Few studies have found long-term developmental changes as a result of infant therapies, and we are currently in the process of reassessing the children in our study when they turn three.

If we find that pre-diagnostic therapy leads to longer-term developmental changes, this has important implications for health and disability services.

Read more: Young children with autism can thrive in mainstream childcare

People on the autism spectrum currently represent 29% of all participants enrolling in Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

A key plank of the NDIS is the Early Childhood Early Intervention pathway, which provides resources to support intervention for children up to seven years of age.

The pathway is very well conceived, but there are currently long wait lists.

The federal government recently announced a plan to resolve these delays, which indicates a recognition of the importance of early intervention for children with a confirmed diagnosis in reducing long-term disability in these children.

The follow-up of the children in the current study to three years of age will provide a litmus test as to whether very early intervention for infants should be an even higher priority.

– ref. Treating suspected autism at 12 months of age improves children’s language skills – http://theconversation.com/treating-suspected-autism-at-12-months-of-age-improves-childrens-language-skills-120331

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Fobert, Research Associate, Flinders University

Clownfish achieved worldwide fame following Finding Nemo, but it turns out these fish don’t do so well in the spotlight.

Our research, published in Biology Letters, found when clownfish eggs were exposed to low levels of light at night – as they would be if laid near a coastal town – not a single egg hatched.

This finding adds to the growing body of research on the health affects of light pollution, a rapidly spreading ecological problem.

Read more: Light pollution: the dark side of keeping the lights on

What is light pollution?

Light pollution occurs when artificial light interferes with ecological systems or processes, usually at night.

Natural light at night, produced by the moon, stars, and other celestial bodies, is minimal. A full moon creates only 0.05-0.1 lux, which pales in comparison to the artificial light produced by humans, which can range from around 10 lux from an LED or low-pressure sodium streetlight, up to 2,000 lux from something like stadium lighting.

Because nearly all organisms on Earth have evolved with a stable day-night, light and dark cycle, many biological events are now highly attuned to the daily, lunar, and seasonal changes in light produced by the reliable movements of the Earth and Moon around the Sun.

But artificial light can mask these natural light rhythms and interfere with the behaviour and physiology of individual creatures, and ecosystems as a whole.

The ocean is not exempt from these problems. Light pollution is spreading to marine habitats through urbanised coastlines and increasing marine infrastructure such as piers, harbours, cruise ships, and tropical island resorts where bungalows extend out into the lagoon, directly above coral reefs.

Why are clownfish at risk?

Clownfish, like many reef fish, are particularly vulnerable to light pollution because they don’t move around much in their adult stage. Clownfish can travel long distances in the first 2 weeks after hatching, but at the end of this period the young fish will settle in a suitable sea anemone that becomes their forever-home.

This means that if a fish chooses an anemone on a shallow reef in an area that is heavily lit at night, they will experience chronic exposure to light pollution throughout their life; they won’t just move away.

Clownfish also lay their eggs attached to rock or other hard surfaces, so in areas exposed to light pollution the eggs will experience continuous artificial light (as opposed to many fish that lay and fertilise eggs in open water, so they are immediately carried away by ocean currents).

What we found

To test how artificial light affects clownfish reproduction, we examined the common clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris) in a lab experiment.

Five breeding pairs of fish experienced a normal 12-hour daylight, 12-hour dark cycle, while another five pairs of fish had their “night” period replaced with 12 hours of light at 26.5 lux, mimicking light pollution from an average coastal town.

For 60 days, we monitored how often the fish spawned, how many eggs were fertilised, and how many eggs hatched. While we saw no difference in spawning frequency or fertilisation rates between the two groups of fish, the impact of the artificial light treatment on hatch rate was staggering. None of the eggs hatched, compared with an average of 86% in the control group.

Read more: Why does Nemo the clownfish have three white stripes? The riddle solved at last

At the end of the experiment we removed the artificial light and monitored the fish for another 60 days to see how they would recover. As soon as the light at night was removed, eggs resumed hatching at normal rates.

Clownfish, like many reef fish, have evolved to hatch after dusk to avoid the threat of being eaten. Newly hatched baby clownfish, like most coral reef fish, are small (about 5mm long) and transparent. Hatching in darkness likely means they are less visible to predators as they emerge from their eggs.

Our findings show that the presence of artificial light, even at relatively low levels, can disrupt this crucial process, by masking the environmental cue – darkness – that triggers hatching. As many reef fish share similar reproductive behaviours to clownfish, it is likely artificial light will similarly interfere with the ability of other fish species to produce viable offspring.

The larger problem

Light pollution is one of the most pervasive forms of environmental change. An estimated 23% of land surface (excluding the poles) and 22% of coastal regions are exposed to light pollution.

And the problem is only growing. The reach of light pollution across all land and sea is expanding at an estimated rate of 2.2% per year, and this will only increase with the rising global human population.

Read more: Saving Nemo: how climate change threatens anemonefish and their homes

Although research on the ecological impacts of light pollution is arguably only in its infancy, the evidence for negative consequences for a range of insects, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, including humans, is stacking up.

Our new research adds another species to the list, and highlights the importance of finding ways to manage or reduce artificial light, on land and below the waves.

– ref. Lights out! Clownfish can only hatch in the dark – which light pollution is taking away – http://theconversation.com/lights-out-clownfish-can-only-hatch-in-the-dark-which-light-pollution-is-taking-away-120409

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

Someone we know recently told us about a team-building event that proved anything but.

The chief executive who arranged it loved mountain biking. So he chose a venue to share his passion with his team. On the day, he shot around the track. Others with less experience took up to three hours longer. He settled in at the bar with a small entourage. Other staff trudged in much later, tired and bloody, not feeling at all like a team.

Many of us can recall team-building exercises that seemed like a waste of time. One problem is overcoming the natural human tendency to hang out with those people we already feel comfortable with, just as that chief executive did.

We suggest there is a better team-building approach. It doesn’t involve bicycles or obstacle courses or whitewater rafting. It doesn’t even necessarily involve your whole team.

It’s about understanding that teams are social networks built on connections between individuals. It involves deep one-on-one conversations, designed to get people out of their comfort zones.

Psychological safety

In any situation, be it at a party or at work, most of us naturally tend to gravitate towards those we know. In doing so we strengthen already strong relationships. Familiarity creates psychological safety – the feeling of trust that you are free to be you.

Read more: Meet me at the bar! How uni students interact on a campus, and why chocolate can help

Research suggests psychological safety is crucial in the work environment. There is much more to team success than simply focusing on the task at hand. Team members need to talk regularly, and be comfortable raising difficult issues. Feeling able to make a mistake and express oneself freely improves team performance and the ability to innovate.

Building psychological safety takes time, however, and normal workplace interactions may not be conducive to developing trust naturally. Which is why managers often turn to team-building exercises.

Analysing the social network

But what exercises work the best?

Well-designed team-building should target and strengthen relationships that are for some reason too weak. Such weaknesses can disrupt communication networks by stopping critical information from getting to the people who need it.

We have used what is called social network analysis to map relationships in project teams.

Social network analysis is used in economics, marketing and management to study the structures of relationships between people and organisations. The focus is on the structural patterns of relationships within the entire team. These patterns can be systemically visualised using network graphs, such as those below.

As researchers we gauged the strength of connections by asking questions such as: “How often or how comfortable are you talking to each member of your team?”

The above two diagrams are the same group three months apart. In scenario (a) the group was split into two subgroups that were relatively comfortable communicating with each other. The group had, in fact, been two teams, brought together under a single manager. They were co-located but still largely working as two separate groups.

The company’s management thought team-building might help bring the subgroups together, and asked us to help. Scenario (b) shows the team three months later. There were more connections within the group, with one individual particularly pivotal in unifying the team.

What caused this change? Not traditional team-building exercises but “targeted self-disclosure exercises”.

Read more: Celebrities and politicians tell us their deepest, darkest secrets. Why?

The 36 questions

We began with social network analysis to identify pairs of colleagues whose relationships were critical for the cohesion of the network, and would benefit the group by being stronger. We then paired people across the group divide and let those pairs do an exercise involving a structured conversation over one hour, working through a series of 36 increasingly personal questions.

The questions start with relatively safe topics, like:

“Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?”

Near the end of the session, they’re like this:

“When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?”

You may have heard of this before, as the “36 questions that lead to love”.

The questions were first published in 1997 as part of research by psychologist Arthur Aron and colleagues about how feelings of interpersonal closeness are cultivated by disclosing personal details.

They became an internet sensation in 2015, after an article in The New York Times by Mandy Len Caltron pitched them as a technique “to fall in love with anyone”. But their applicability is by no means limited to romantic contexts, as our workplace experiments have demonstrated.

Changing communication patterns

The last question involves you sharing a personal problem with your discussion partner and asking their advice on how to handle it.

This is not the sort of thing most people would normally chose to do at work, but our results show its worth. We measured significantly changed patterns of communication over three months. Participating pairs felt more comfortable talking to each other, and talked more often – the most common change being from “not in the last month” to “once a week”.

The participants who got to know each other better also started to talk about work a bit more, as shown in the chart below. The change – about half a point increase on a six-point frequency scale – was relatively small compared to the dramatic increase in the personal comfort the participants felt towards each other, but even a small change can make a big difference.

Importantly, as already shown in the first diagram, the divide between the two cliques decreased by more bridging links being created.

Risks and rewards

For some, there is a clear line between work life and personal life. Not everyone feels comfortable with talking about personal issues, let alone with colleagues to whom they’re not close. It’s true that rapid personal disclosure can be risky.

In any such exercise you need to proceed at a pace at which you and your colleague are willing to reciprocate. Though the gradually increasing sensitivity of questions in the facilitated self-disclosure exercise are meant to help achieve this, even then it may not suit everyone – and management shouldn’t compel anyone to feel uncomfortable.

Read more: Why too many fearless people on a team make collaboration less likely

But if you are willing to accept a little discomfort, our findings suggest that sharing a bit more in the workplace can be both personally rewarding and beneficial to the group.

– ref. Team-building exercises can be a waste of time. You achieve more by getting personal – http://theconversation.com/team-building-exercises-can-be-a-waste-of-time-you-achieve-more-by-getting-personal-119601

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Harry Hobbs, Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney

Queensland Deputy Premier Jackie Trad has announced that the state will begin a conversation about a pathway to treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

In doing so, Queensland joined Victoria and the Northern Territory in formally commencing treaty processes.

This is a significant development. While the Commonwealth government embarks on another round of important yet time-consuming consultations over a potential First Nations Voice to Parliament, the states and territories are taking the lead on treaties.

Queensland’s ‘track to treaty’

Queensland’s announcement reflects a shift in debate on Indigenous constitutional recognition at the state and territory level. Only a few year ago, the states and territories debated whether to include a reference to Indigenous Australians in their constitutions. Now, they are contemplating negotiating treaties.

Treaties have been accepted globally as the means of reaching a settlement between Indigenous peoples and those who have colonised their lands. They are formal agreements, reached via respectful negotiation in which both sides accept a series of responsibilities.

Treaties acknowledge Indigenous peoples were prior owners and occupiers of the land and, as such, retain a right to self-government. At a minimum, they recognise or establish structures of culturally appropriate governance and means of decision-making and control.

The Queensland treaty process is still in its early stages and negotiations will not begin for several years. This is sensible, because it is important that both the state and First Nations are ready to start negotiations.

For First Nations, this means having a clear sense of what a treaty might mean for their communities, as well as a broad consensus on their negotiating position. Preparing for treaty negotiations can also enable First Nations to engage in nation-(re)building, consistent with their values and aspirations, which is valuable regardless of the content, or even the completion, of a treaty.

For the state, it is equally important that non-Indigenous Queenslanders understand what a treaty is and what it might result in.

Read more: Will treaties with Indigenous Australians overtake constitutional recognition?

Reflecting these preliminary steps, the government has established a bipartisan eminent panel of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Queenslanders, with Indigenous academic Jackie Huggins and former Attorney-General Michael Lavarch serving as co-chairs.

Their responsibility is to provide leadership and engage with key stakeholders across the state. A treaty working group will also be established soon to lead consultations with First Nations, allowing them to discuss and reach agreement on what a treaty might contain.

Others leading the way

These steps follow similar processes in two other states and territories with Labor governments – Victoria and the Northern Territory.

In Victoria, the Andrews government committed to entering treaty negotiations in 2016. An Aboriginal Treaty Working Group was established to lead two rounds of community consultations, which resulted in the creation of a First Peoples’ Assembly. The assembly will not negotiate treaties itself, but will work with the state to develop a treaty framework through which the state and First Nations can negotiate.

At the same time, Victoria also established a Treaty Advancement Commission to maintain momentum for a treaty and keep all Victorians informed.

The process in the Northern Territory is following this pattern. In June 2018, the government signed a memorandum of understanding with representatives of the four Indigenous land councils, committing to exploring a treaty.

Earlier this year, Mick Dodson, the former director of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies at the Australian National University, was appointed NT treaty commissioner. He is currently leading consultations with Aboriginal Territorians.

Why a lack of federal involvement is a problem

These are promising developments, but there are several challenges ahead.

First, treaties are political agreements. As such, they are vulnerable to political fluctuations.

In Queensland, the Liberal National Party opposition wants to look at the government’s announcement in more detail, but has already suggested it would adopt different priorities. If the LNP wins the 2020 state election, it could abandon the process before negotiations even commence.

We have already seen this play out in South Australia. In 2017, the state Labor government formally started treaty negotiations. But within a year, a newly-elected Coalition government stepped away from this commitment.

Second, the federal government’s position is problematic. Ken Wyatt, the new minister for Indigenous Australians, has said the federal government will leave treaty processes to the states and territories.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Ken Wyatt on constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians

Federal government involvement is not legally necessary. Queensland has the legal authority to sign and implement a treaty with Indigenous peoples.

However, the Commonwealth parliament has the power to overrule any state or territory treaty. For this reason, it is preferable that the Commonwealth play a role in these processes. The Uluru Statement from the Heart offers an avenue to do so.

.

In this light, the federal government’s response to the Uluru Statement adds a further complication. The statement calls for

• A constitutionally enshrined national representative body to advise the federal parliament (known as a “Voice” to parliament); and

• A Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about Australia’s history.

As constitutional lawyer Megan Davis has explained, these reforms are “deliberately sequenced.” The value of starting with a First Nations Voice and Makarrata Commission is that they can oversee developments across the country. Without these bodies, state and territory treaty processes may diverge and result in wildly different settlement terms.

Finally, the support of Indigenous peoples is not assured.

Increasingly, First Nations are resisting agreement-making with governments that act inconsistently with their values and aspirations.

For instance, the Djab Wurrung Embassy, a group of traditional owners protesting VicRoads’ plan to cut down sacred trees, has launched a “No Trees, No Treaty” campaign to highlight the state government’s refusal to listen to their views.

Just last month, the Yorta Yorta Elders Council also rejected a Victorian treaty

as a trip wire and only a pathway to assimilation.

Consensus cannot be assumed, and will become more complex as First Nations articulate their objectives and objections to possible treaties.

What’s next?

Notwithstanding these challenges, Queensland’s announcement is historic.

It confirms that progress on Indigenous constitutional recognition is being led by the states and territories. It also directs more attention to the federal government’s approach to this issue.

It is hoped that the Commonwealth reflects on Queensland’s announcement and commits to establishing a Makarrata Commission. And that commission should be designed by Indigenous representatives serving on a constitutionally enshrined First Nations Voice.

– ref. As the federal government debates an Indigenous Voice, state and territories are pressing ahead – http://theconversation.com/as-the-federal-government-debates-an-indigenous-voice-state-and-territories-are-pressing-ahead-120411

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mair Underwood, Lecturer in Anthropology and Sociology, The University of Queensland

Months after a public breakup with her husband, the politician Barnaby Joyce, Natalie Joyce made news when she displayed her “new” body in a bodybuilding competition. Joyce’s muscular appearance was described by some news organisations as a “revenge body”.

Two years earlier, after taking “revenge” on ex-husband Lamar Odom with her body transformation, Khloe Kardashian launched a reality TV show, Revenge Body. The show, in which she teams up with celebrity trainers, nutritionists, and stylists to help people build these bodies, began its third season this month.

For the uninitiated, a “revenge body” is an improved body (reduced fat and/or increased muscle) built in order to demonstrate to someone who hurt you how well you are doing without them.

Typically such bodies are built in order to make your ex-lover (who has cheated, or otherwise ruined or ended the relationship) want you back. But you’re too good for them now. You reject them and hurt them through the weapon of your body.

There are over 100,000 posts on Instagram tagged “#revengebody”. Online, people come together to support each other in their quests to build one.

Revenge bodies are about gaining power, particularly the power to attract sexual interest. Perhaps more importantly they are about having the power to reject certain sexual advances, typically those of the ex.

Who builds revenge bodies?

In the past, “revenge body” was a term used only by the tabloid media who imposed it on (largely female) celebrities. For instance, Katie Holmes was dubbed “best revenge body of the year” in 2012 after splitting up with Tom Cruise. More recently, Jennifer Aniston was described as having a “revenge body” after her split with Justin Theroux.

What’s new is the phenomenon of individuals, particularly women, describing themselves as creating a “revenge body” online.

As part of my research into the phenomenon, I am gathering data on social media use of the term. While most people will merely post an image of their body with the hashtag #revengebody, some post comments asking for someone to hurt or reject them so that they can have the motivation to transform their bodies. In online groups, women share diet and exercise tips to help others build what they describe as “revenge bodies”.

I became interested in revenge bodies through my research on the Australian recreational bodybuilder “Zyzz” (online persona of Aziz Shavershian) and his fandom.

Zyzz fans tell the story of an avid computer gamer, frequently rejected by women, who at the age of 17, sold his World of Warcraft profile to buy a gym membership. In just a few years he transformed himself from skinny geek to muscular Adonis.

Many Zyzz fans transform their bodies to take revenge – as their idol is said to have done. They frequently quote Zyzz as saying:

i had a girlfriend at 17, who was pretty but slightly chubby, when i was a skinny nerd. She kept pointing out how skinny i was and always looked at other guys with good bodies which was one of the reasons i wanted to start going to the gym. Needless to say when i saw her 2 years later and her jaw dropped, brushing her off at that moment was probably the best feeling i have experienced in my life.

Indeed, Zyzz’s philosophy to “disregard females” (i.e. play hard to get) and his rejection of women online was a major factor in his popularity. Through online forums and social media Zyzz developed a fanbase of approximately 80,000 people.

But Zyzz didn’t get to enjoy the power afforded by his body for long. In 2011, while holidaying in Thailand, he collapsed and died from a heart attack, aged just 22, reportedly due to an undiagnosed congenital heart defect. Zyzz fans liken him to Narcissus as they suggest it was his love for his own beauty, in particular his steroid and fat burner use, that contributed to his death.

Zyzz’s popularity has only increased since his death. Eight years later his fans (numbering in the hundreds of thousands) still discuss Zyzz every day online. Zyzz rode the first wave of photo and video centered social media, now used by people around the world to display their bodies for revenge purposes.

Why now?

The rise of the “revenge body” online reflects our relatively new ability to display our bodies through smartphones, social media and high-speed internet. These technological advances have allowed us all to have public bodies – not just celebrities.

Western culture also increasingly emphasises the body as a project that reflects your worth. The condition of one’s body is often seen as a choice: everyone can have an ideal body if they just put in the work.

The rise of the revenge body can also be attributed to the fact that in recent years, we have seen muscularity become part of the feminine ideal. The ideal body for women is no longer just thin, it is thin and toned. This means women can’t just diet to achieve the ideal body, they must also actively shape their bodies through resistance training.

The evolution of the revenge body

Women have had more practice using their bodies as weapons of power. But, as Zyzz attests, a new generation of men are also embracing these bodies.

Recently the term “revenge body” has been used more broadly – in Kardashian’s TV show and some online groups – to describe any bodily transformation, not just those aimed at whoever has hurt you.

But perhaps in a society where body shaming has become rife, and body change is seen as a way of fixing anything and everything, it would be more appropriate to take revenge against the whole culture.

– ref. Your body as a weapon: the rise of the ‘revenge body’ online – http://theconversation.com/your-body-as-a-weapon-the-rise-of-the-revenge-body-online-118332

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brittany Huber, Postdoctoral researcher, Swinburne University of Technology

Most (80%) Australian parents worry children spend too much time with screens.

But what children are doing on and off screen matters more than how much time they’re exposed to screen media.

Too much time?

There was a time when society was concerned about children reading. If kids are reading, how will they complete their chores or homework?

The fear that time spent with media replaces other “acceptable” activities of childhood is often referred to as the displacement hypothesis. One such concern is that screen time occupies time spent in physical activity.

Read more: What is physical activity in early childhood, and is it really that important?

Because screen time is often sedentary, researchers have investigated whether it displaces the time children spend being physically active. But the relationship between screen time and physical activity is not straightforward.

Low levels of screen time do not always equate to higher levels of physical activity. And when there is a relationship between more screen time and less physical activity, it’s often a result of excessive daily screen time.

The Australian guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour advise children under two avoid screen time entirely. But a nationally representative poll conducted by the Royal Children’s Hospital found 63% of children aged two and under had screen exposure.

For children aged two to five, the Australian guidelines encourage parents to limit the time children spend with screens to no more than one hour a day. The child health poll found around 72% of children in this age group exceeded this recommendation.

Read more: Look up north. Here’s how Aussie kids can move more at school, Nordic style

So, most Australian families are exceeding the guidelines, which are essentially built on a premise that isn’t clear-cut. Not all screen time is “bad”.

Is screen time bad?

A 2004 study from the United States explored the average time children spent watching television per day when they were aged one and three, and whether this affected their attention span in later years.

They found watching TV in the early years was associated with a higher risk of attention problems when these children were seven. But the research didn’t test the types of programs the children were watching.

In 2007, the same researchers looked at the effects of the content children watched. They found an association between watching violent or entertaining television such as Scooby Doo and Rugrats before the age of three and an increased risk of attention problems five years later. __

But there was no such association when it came to educational content such as Sesame Street.

So, content plays a role, but the child’s age also matters. In this same study, the type of content viewed by four- and five-year-olds did not affect their attention five years later.

The above studies describe changes over time. But other studies looked at the immediate effects of different screen content on children’s executive functioning – the thinking required to problem solve and stay on task.

Read more: Two-hour screen limit for kids is virtually impossible to enforce

These studies found exposure to educational content didn’t hinder children’s subsequent executive functioning. But these abilities were depleted in four- and six-year-olds who had just watched fast and fantastical shows that played with the bounds of physics and reality.

What if you use screens with your children?

Decades of television research has shown children under three years old learn better from live interactions than from two-dimensional sources. So, these young children have little to gain from screens in the absence of a parent or peer.

Television meant for adult audiences, as well as television on in the background, disrupts the quality of children’s play and parent-child interactions that are critical for early language and social development.

The adverse effects of this type of screen exposure are due to limiting both the frequency and quality of interactions between child and caregiver. In the presence of background television, parents are less attentive and responsive to their child.

Read more: Let them play! Kids need freedom from play restrictions to develop

Parents’ own device use can be detrimental to the interactions they have with their children. Smartphone use can cause parents to be less attentive and responsive to their children.

All this is important to be mindful of, especially during the early years when these interactions directly contribute to language learning and social skills.

But what about if a parent uses a screen together with their child?

A 2014 study found preschoolers’ storybook comprehension and parent-child interactions did not significantly differ between a traditional book and an electronic book.

However, the quality of play and parent-child interactions are reduced with electronic toys as compared to traditional toys.

So, what screen time is OK?

To have healthy, positive, quality screen media experiences, parents could ask the following questions:

Is the screen content

• optimally challenging (meaning not too difficult or too easy)?

• engaging (does it have age-appropriate features that maintain attention and invite participation)?

• meaningful (can children relate the content to their lives)?

• interactive, in the physical or social sense. Young children can actually form relationships with screen characters, which improves their learning. Older children can engage virtually in worlds such Minecraft, then talk about it in school.

Sharing the screen experience with an adult has benefits too. These include helping children understand the content and having an adult direct learning and ask questions.

The best way to engage in screen time with your children is to talk about it, ask questions and create opportunities to take the screen into the 3D world.

And, importantly, model the media use behaviour you want your children to adopt.

By occasionally employing the “digital babysitter”, you are not dooming your children’s success. What children are doing matters just as much, if not more, than how long they’re doing it for.

Parents can find more information about creating positive screen media experiences at:

– ref. Stop worrying about screen ‘time’. It’s your child’s screen experience that matters – http://theconversation.com/stop-worrying-about-screen-time-its-your-childs-screen-experience-that-matters-118610

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Yau, Adjunct professor, College of Healthcare Sciences, James Cook University

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal recently granted a woman with multiple sclerosis the right to have a sex therapist paid for under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

After her initial application for sex therapy to be covered under her NDIS package was rejected, she appealed the decision. The tribunal ruled in the applicant’s favour, arguing sex therapy is a “reasonable and necessary support” for this woman and for other people with disability.

This is a significant milestone in the advancement of sexual rights of people with disability. It represents a recognition that people with disability have sexual needs, and that they experience sexual challenges that require attention and assistance.

Read more: Why the NDIS should cover the services of sex workers

To further recognise this, people with disability should also be able to access sex workers under the NDIS.

The difference between a sex therapist and a sex worker is in the provision of physical contact. While a sex therapist will offer verbal coaching, a sex worker has a specified role in providing a paid sexual service.

Like everyone else, people with disability have sexual needs

Sexual expression is a fundamental part of being human, and disability does not dampen a peson’s sexual desire, nor their need for intimacy.

Decades of research have shown the many benefits of sex, which include improved physical health, quality of life, and psychological well-being.

People with disability – whether physical or intellectual – may face challenges in achieving sexual pleasure. Professional sex therapy can provide sex education, guidance and counselling to couples and individuals with a disability.

Sex therapists generally come from a professional background of health care, psychology or counselling, with specialised training in sex therapy. Treatment for clients with disability may focus on how to enjoy or resume sexual and intimate activities after an injury, or how to adapt sexual activities as the client’s disability progresses.

Sex workers should be covered, too

While we can choose our sexual partners and the ways we express and satisfy our own sexual needs, these things can be more challenging for people with disability. This is due in a large part to social prejudices and discrimination.

In this sense, the tribunal decision did not go far enough. It should have recognised not only sex therapy, but also that the service of sex workers may be required by some people with disability.

Sex workers may engage in sexual intercourse with a person with disability, or physically assist a couple with disability to have sex.

For those who don’t have potential partners or the physical and/or intellectual capacity for sexual expression, access to sex worker services to satisfy their sexual needs should be seen as a legitimate option.

Read more: The NDIS is delivering ‘reasonable and necessary’ supports for some, but others are missing out

Opposition to the decision

The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), the agency charged with implementing the NDIS, has previously stressed it doesn’t cover sexual services.

Following the tribunal hearing, NDIS minister Stuart Robert reiterated this position, and noted the NDIA would appeal the ruling to the federal court.

Many people question why we should use taxpayers’ money to subsidise a person with disability pursuing sexual pleasure, when this may also be a challenge for couples and individuals not affected by disability.

Looking to the future

If we believe our Australian welfare system is equitable and respectful of individual rights, whether the NDIS service user is using the money for a hobby class on entomology (the study of insects), a sex worker’s intimate service, or something else, this is an individual choice which we need to support for his/her quality of life and independence.

With the tribunal decision, people with disability can now legitimately request sex therapy in their care plan and access professional assistance to address their sexual challenges.

Sexual expression and intimacy are basic human needs, and should be equally recognised among people with and without disability as facilitating improved quality of life.

Read more: Sex, technology and disability – it’s complicated

– ref. Finally, the NDIS will fund sex therapy. But it should cover sex workers too – http://theconversation.com/finally-the-ndis-will-fund-sex-therapy-but-it-should-cover-sex-workers-too-120284

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

Last week on this podcast we talked to Ken Wyatt about the government’s plan for a referendum – hopefully this parliamentary term – to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution.

This week, we continue the conversation on Indigenous recognition with Megan Davis, a law professor and expert member of a key United Nations Indigenous rights body on the debate about an Indigenous ‘Voice’ which has followed Ken Wyatt’s announcement.

“At this point the only viable option for constitutional reform is this proposal for a Voice to parliament,” says Megan Davis.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart is significant because it’s the first time an Australian government has gone out to community and said to them what does recognition mean to you in the Australian Constitution? And their answer was we want a better say in the laws and policies that affect our lives.

[…]

The very key point here is the symbolic elements of recognition were completely unanimously rejected. So there was a very strong view that this needed to be practical reconciliation – that Aboriginal people were over symbolism.

Megan Davis is currently in Geneva for a meeting of the UN body she sits on, where she says this issue will be raised among other issues which Australian Indigenous people face.

Australia’s reputation on the international stage has had a number of issues such as “incarceration[…]the conditions of young people in youth detention[…][and] the numbers of child removals”.

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Additional audio

A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.

Image:

RICHARD WAINWRIGHT/AAP

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Megan Davis on a First Nations Voice in the Constitution – http://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-megan-davis-on-a-first-nations-voice-in-the-constitution-120349

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Senior research fellow, Southern Cross University

Humans’ distant ancestor Australopithecus africanus had a unique approach to raising their young, as shown in our new research published today in Nature.

Geochemical analysis of four teeth shows they exclusively breastfed infants for about 6-9 months, before supplementing breast milk with varying amounts of solid food until they were 5-6 years old. The balance between milk and solid food in this period varied cyclically, probably in response to seasonal changes in food availability.

Read more: How we calculated the age of caves in the Cradle of Humankind — and why it matters

This knowledge is useful on several fronts. From an evolutionary point of view, it helps us understand the particular biological and behavioural adaptations of Australopithecus africanus compared to other extinct human ancestors and modern humans.

However, breastfeeding for up to 5-6 years is metabolically expensive – it requires a certain input of calories for the lactating mother. Using milk as a supplemental food for older offspring may have hampered the ability of the A. africanus species to successfully survive during a period of substantially changing climate.

Perhaps this way of life hastened the extinction of A. africanus around 2 million years ago.

A puzzling hominin

A. africanus was first discovered in 1924 by Australian-born scientist Raymond Dart at Taung in South Africa, and represented the first early human ancestor identified from Africa.

A century of excavation and research later, Taung and other sites across South Africa produced a rich record of early human ancestors. This region is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as “The Cradle of Humankind”.

This hominin species, a member of the human evolutionary lineage, had a mixture of ape-like characteristics and more specialised ones. It has only been recovered from fossil sites in South Africa that date to between 3 million and 2 million years ago.

Because only a few specimens exist, we have little information about how A. africanus lived and its relationship to other fossil hominin species such as the eastern African species of Australopithecus, the robust Paranthropus, and our own genus, Homo.

Zapping teeth

Our research takes advantage of cutting-edge analytical techniques. We used a laser to zap tiny pieces off fossil teeth, and then used an instrument called a mass spectrometer to determine their chemical composition.

This is much less destructive than traditional methods that require the sample to be crushed and dissolved before analysis. This makes it a crucial technique for rare specimens such as those of A. africanus.

Our laser method also allowed us to map the composition of a specimen across the entire surface of a tooth – illuminating changes in diet, mobility or climate through time. This is an important advance, as it can reveal information that has been impossible to establish using conventional palaeontological methods.

In this study, we mapped changes in the concentration of barium, strontium and lithium in fossil teeth of two individuals. The amounts of these elements in our bodies can change significantly depending on our diet, and these changes are reflected in the composition of our bones and teeth.

While our bones continue to change composition as they remodel during our lives, our teeth don’t change after they form during childhood. Teeth are thus a perfect chemical time capsule of our childhood diet.

Read more: What teeth can tell about the lives and environments of ancient humans and Neanderthals

Mapping a varied diet

The concentration of barium in breast milk is very high, so infant teeth that form during breastfeeding will also have a high concentration of this element. This concentration gradually drops as other sources of food are introduced.

The samples we analysed from A. africanus show a different pattern, with cyclical fluctuations in barium concentration. This suggests mothers would increase or reduce the amount of additional food, probably depending on the availability of other resources. This is an adaptation to food stress also used by modern orangutans.

The concentration of lithium in these teeth also varies cyclically, although not always at the same time as barium. The precise cause of lithium variations is still unclear but it seems to be linked to variations in body fat reserves or how much protein is eaten.

This suggests A. africanus regularly faced food stress, causing their diet and/or fat reserves to change with the seasons.

We compared the results from A. africanus to modern animals from similar savannah biome regions, which supported our results by showing cyclical signal linked to seasonal variations mix with another signal interpreted as cyclical breastfeeding also seen in mdoern orangutans.

Close to home

We also investigated the strontium isotope composition of these teeth to help understand where A. africanus was moving through the landscape. Isotopes of the same element can be distinguished by their mass.

Strontium isotopes are often used for this purpose in palaeontology, as different regions have characteristic isotope values that are taken up through food and drink.

The two A. africanus individuals in our study seemed to have lived most of their lives near the Sterkfontein cave where their remains were found.

Living in a region with limited food resources meant these early hominins would have eaten lots of different kinds of foods collected from varying habitats in order to survive.

Our research provides the first understanding of the nursing behaviour of A. africanus. We now know this hominin had an extended period of breastfeeding supplemented by varying amounts of solid food that caused their fat reserves to fluctuate significantly.

This was likely part of a largely successful survival strategy for the species.

But as ecosystems changed with climate around 2 million years ago, the metabolic stress on mothers may have contributed to the eventual extinction of this species.

– ref. Teeth ‘time capsule’ reveals that 2 million years ago, early humans breastfed for up to 6 years – http://theconversation.com/teeth-time-capsule-reveals-that-2-million-years-ago-early-humans-breastfed-for-up-to-6-years-117894