Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, Lecturer in Digital Media at the School of Communication, Queensland University of Technology

In the aftermath of the fatal stabbing in Melbourne’s Bourke Street on Friday, Facebook and other social media platforms were flooded with hateful messages towards Muslims and Islam.

Over the weekend, I browsed several Islamophobic Facebook pages, such as “No sharia law – Never ever give up Australia” and “Reclaim Australia”. These groups were using the incident to dehumanise Muslims by sharing mocking memes, GIFs, decontextualised information, and blatantly racist comments.

I noted the “angry” reaction button being widely used in response to posts, while comments on posts were often accompanied by other emoji that emphasised states of rage towards Muslims: angry face, pouting face, swearing face.

This kind of emoji use involves overt racist language and practices, but emoji can also be used to cloak everyday microaggressions in humour and play. For example, previous research has found how online harassers often use cues such as smiley emoticons to mitigate their abuse.

Racism on social media is structural too. A larger body of evidence shows that it can be built into, and normalised by, social media platforms, which also have the power to curb it by instituting responsible policies and processes.

Using emoji to amplify Islamophobia

Facebook introduced “reactions” in early 2016. Beyond just a simple “like”, this function allowed users to interact with posts and comments by clicking on emoji-like buttons to signify emotions: love, laughter, surprise, sadness and anger.

Since then, hate groups and other users have appropriated this technical feature to spread anger towards specific targets. One way of doing this involves overlaying a question on an image or video and encouraging users to respond by choosing between two reactions, with the “angry” reaction typically being one of the options.

In the below example, taken from a Belgian far-right political party’s Facebook page, users are asked to respond to the question of whether the school year should be adapted to accommodate Islamic traditions.

In this way, “reactions” facilitate the performance of rage and antagonism towards other groups by allowing users to click on an angry-faced emoji.

The way Facebook uses this information can have problematic consequences. According to a 2016 blog post, Facebook’s algorithms interpret the clicking of the “angry” reaction on a post as an indication that users want to see more content related to those posts. Islamophobic content that attracts high numbers of “angry” reactions therefore has the potential to become even more visible and shareable.

Facebook also uses these emotional responses to posts to create user profiles to sell to advertisers. The creation of automated categories based on user behaviour has involved Facebook in several public scandals. For example, in the past, Facebook has reportedly allowed advertisers to target “jew haters” and people interested in “white genocide conspiracy theory” – a useful tool for people who wish to spread hate.

How emoji can reproduce cultural stereotypes

In general, emoji are benign and funny digital images. But their design and use can reproduce long-running racist stereotypes.

The US body responsible for the emoji set, the Unicode Consortium, decides what ends up being represented as emoji. At times, these decisions have caused controversies around cultural diversity and race. For example, Apple’s family emojis originally excluded depictions of same-sex couples.

Racist stereotypes can be further entrenched by the way emoji are used. In my study of the use of Facebook reactions by Belgian far-right political party, Vlaams Belang, I examined how emoji were used to spread anger. I found that users often responded to posts by posting more emoji and Meep stickers.

The vomit sticker surfaced as a popular and recurrent choice to express disgust towards Muslims.

This aligns with other exploitations of the act of vomiting as a cultural trope to convey xenophobia.

For example, the British television series Little Britain used hyperbolic humour to ridicule the racism of Maggie Blackamoor, one of its characters, by having her vomit every time she ate food made by a non-white person, or met people from different ethnicities.

People also used pig emoji, and various stickers, to show opposition to Muslims. According to Islamic law, eating pork is forbidden, and, historically, Western Islamophobia has used pork to attack Muslims.

The practice of posting pig emoji on the comments of Islamophobic posts draws on this long tradition, contributing to the weaponising of pork to antagonise Muslims.

The challenge of moderating social media content

The fact that racist discourse proliferates through emoji and stickers on Facebook suggests a need for new ways to moderate content.

It is not currently possible to switch off the use of emoji and stickers in comments. That means that people can flood Facebook public pages with problematic emoji, without the platform having an easy solution to it. While Facebook has automated filters to moderate certain words and textual expressions, there isn’t yet a filter to ban emoji, even though they are standardised characters.

Reporting emoji and other stickers as hate speech can be difficult, if not impossible. Whether a cute pig emoji signifies Islamophobia depends on the context in which it was posted, and Facebook’s flagging mechanism doesn’t allow users to explain why certain content might be hateful.

As a result, the practice of weaponising emoji to spread racist discourse is likely to continue.

Failing to provide options to report or minimise certain uses of emoji reflects an assumption that emoji and stickers can’t be used for hateful purposes. But it’s clear that user practices on social media, and the way platforms mediate that use, can contribute to structural racism and other forms of oppression, and make them appear normal, mundane and acceptable.

We all have an interest in ensuring that social media companies take proper responsibility to prevent the content that appears on their platforms from being used to spread hate.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation; Co-Director, Australian Intervention Support Hub, Deakin University

With the simple statement “more needs to happen”, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was emphatic. In the wake of the terror attack on the crowded streets of Melbourne’s CBD last Friday, it is difficult to argue against any plan to do more to fight terrorism in Australia.

The question is what can be done and what should be done. Morrison, in part, put the onus on religious leaders by urging them not to “look the other way”:

If you’re an imam or a leader in one of those communities, you need to know who those people are in your community that might be doing that.

But exactly what it is they should be doing to help prevent similar terror attacks is not spelt out.

Read more: Out of the ashes of Afghanistan and Iraq: the rise and rise of Islamic State

Lone-actor attacks hard to anticipate

Leaving aside the politically charged nature of comments from government ministers – campaigning ahead of the fast-approaching elections in Victoria and imminent federal elections in the new year – it is important to take an objective look at what reasonably can be done.

Friday’s attack was the sort of terrorist attack that police have identified as being their primary concern.

Clearly Australian authorities, along with counter-terrorism forces around the world, have been very effective in preventing large-scale, ambitious terrorist plots. A lot of hard work and enormous resources have gone into ensuring that the sort of massive attacks that jihadi terrorists carried out in New York, Bali, Madrid and London at the beginning of the century have not being repeated.

Read more: How the Australian government is failing on countering violent extremism

But lone-actor attacks continue to worry police precisely because they are so very hard to anticipate and disrupt. When one or two people decide to launch an attack with little planning and no communications across a larger terrorist network, the methods of intelligence that are so successful in preventing large-scale attacks have little utility.

One of the problems with suggesting that Muslim leaders need to “do more” is that it implies they have information they are not sharing, or that they’re failing to take action when they see a problem.

The reality is that Islamic leaders generally have little to do with the troubled young people most likely to be involved in lone-actor attacks like the one in Melbourne. Muslim communities, like many others in multicultural Australia, face a challenge in closing the gap between young people and the older generation recognised as the community’s formal leaders or religious teachers. They live in two separate worlds.

It is not the actively religious young people who are generally the source of problems. Rather, it is the alienated and the angry who turn their backs on community leaders – they are the real concern.

Among those attackers who do become religious, they generally reject mainstream religious leadership, making it difficult for those imams, for instance, to spot troubled youth and intervene.

Community-based outreach can have an impact

More than 250 passports have been cancelled or suspended by the Australian government over the last six years and many more people have had their travel plans stopped on the grounds of reasonable suspicion that they intended to travel to the Middle East and join a terrorist group like Islamic State.

They have not been found guilty of any crime and are under no legal obligation, generally speaking, to participate in rehabilitation programs.

Nevertheless, state and federal police are quietly having considerable success in working with these young people, on a voluntary basis, to reengage them with their families and communities. Some members of the Australian National Imams Council (ANIC) play a key role in this low-key work. Mental health professionals, counsellors and social workers work alongside religious teachers in attempting to turn troubled young lives around.

Can anything more be done? Almost certainly. While dozens of youths at risk of radicalisation currently receive help in this manner, there are hundreds of others who are not benefiting from structured interventions.

The lack of any legal compulsion for them to participate in one of these community-based programs is certainly one of the problems. But so, too, is the lack of resources. In comparison with the many tens of millions of dollars spent at the hard end of countering terrorism, the resources provided to youth workers and community intervention programs remain pitifully small.

Read more: Security gets $1.2b, community programs to counter violent extremism $40m – that’s a foolish imbalance

If anything more can be done, it is in this area. Simply finding the resources to employ a hundred properly trained and equipped youth workers to engage with at-risk youths would likely yield considerable dividends.

But this will only be achieved with trust and confidence built on mutual respect. The last thing that is needed is to publicly call out Islamic leaders, and Muslims in general, and lay the problem at their feet. This is not fair. We don’t do this with other communities.

And doing this threatens to undermine so much of the good work that is being done away from the spotlight of public attention.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ray Markey, Emeritus Professor, Macquarie University

The Conversation fact-checks claims made on Q&A, broadcast Mondays on the ABC at 9.35pm. Thank you to everyone who sent us quotes for checking via Twitter using the hashtags #FactCheck and #QandA, on Facebook or by email.

It’s nice for Amanda to say you need to reflect society, but you can’t reflect society if 90% of your members of parliament were chosen from trade unions and worked in trade unions and that’s the background they bring to the table.

– Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Simon Birmingham, speaking on Q&A, October 2, 2018

On an episode of Q&A, panellists discussed the extent to which the composition of the Australian parliament reflects the demographic make up of society.

Labor MP Amanda Rishworth said in addition to having women account for 50% of parliamentarians, there needed to be more diversity of skills and experience.

“So we need to move further than just looking at men and women. We need people from a whole range of backgrounds,” Rishworth said.

Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Simon Birmingham later suggested to Rishworth that “you can’t reflect society if 90% of your members of parliament were chosen from trade unions and worked in trade unions, and that’s the background they bring to the table”.

Let’s check the records.

Response from a spokesperson for Simon Birmingham

In response to The Conversation’s request for sources and comment, a spokesperson for Simon Birmingham provided a 2015-16 membership application form for the South Australian branch of the Australian Labor Party and said:

Based on this application, and the disclaimer that a person applying for membership must be a member of a union, it would seem the Minister may have underestimated the percentage.

Verdict

On Q&A, Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Simon Birmingham said “90% of [Labor’s] members of parliament were chosen from trade unions and worked in trade unions”. In terms of federal parliamentarians, this is a gross exaggeration.

According to parliamentary members’ biographies, taken from the 45th Parliamentary Handbook of the Commonwealth of Australia, 2017, about one third (33.7%) of Labor’s currently serving federal MPs have worked in trade unions, or 32 of Labor’s 95 members of federal parliament (the total comprising 69 members of the House of Representatives and 26 Senators).

Regarding the source provided by the Minister’s office

The source provided by Minister Birmingham’s office doesn’t support the statement; it refers to a discounted fee offered for South Australian Labor party membership if the applicant is also a union member. Having been a member of a union isn’t the same as having worked for one, and being a union member isn’t a requirement of becoming a member of the Labor party.

How many Labor MPs have worked in trade unions?

A trade union is a member-based organisation that represents the interests of workers in particular industries, or groups of industries, to employers. The Australian Labor Party grew out of the union movement in the 1890s. Affiliated unions play a significant role in the Labor party today; in its internal structures and forums, and influence in choice of parliamentary candidates.

The proportion of former union officials entering parliament as Labor members peaked in 1901, at 79% of Labor representatives. The proportion has been declining steadily since then.

Minister Birmingham referred to members of parliament (MPs) who had been “chosen from” and “worked in trade unions” and who bring that background to the table. In this FactCheck, we’ll look at members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate who have worked in trade unions.

To see how things stand today, we can look to the Parliamentary Handbook of the Commonwealth of Australia 2017, which includes the biographies of the 76 Senators and 150 members of the House of Representatives in the current (45th) federal parliament. (Four of the Labor MPs listed in the handbook, which was published in July 2017, are no longer in parliament: Sam Dastyari, David Feeney, Katy Gallagher and Tim Hammond.)

Included in these biographies are MPs’ qualifications and occupations before entering federal Parliament.

According to those biographies, the proportion of Labor MPs who have worked in trade unions is about a third (33.7%). That’s 32 of Labor’s 95 members of parliament (the total comprising 69 members of the House of Representatives and 26 Senators).

The proportion has declined since the previous parliament, elected in 2013. In that, the 44th parliament, the proportion of Labor representatives with a union background was 45%.

The number of Labor MPs and Senators with a union background dropped slightly between the 44th and 45th parliaments, from 36 to 32, but the total number of Labor representatives also increased substantially, from 80 to 95.

In terms of how these figures compare to union representation in the broader community: around 15% of the Australian workforce are union members.

Total union membership is now around 1.5 million, however, unions collectively represent 59.5% of the workforce in bargaining for conditions through enterprise agreements or awards.

From which unions have the MPs come?

The three unions with the largest contingents of employees-turned-MPs are the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Union, with six former employees now MPs, the Transport Workers’ Union with three (this was originally four after the 2016 election, but reduced when David Feeney resigned from the seat of Batman and was replaced by Ged Kearney in the March 2018 by-election), and United Voice.

Other unions with two former employees each are the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, the Australian Workers’ Union, and the Community and Public Sector Union.

Another 11 unions each have one representative, and a couple of MPs did not specify their union background.

Many of those with a union background were university graduates appointed to union positions as political operatives before or after becoming a political staffer. Few came up through the ranks of a union, as their predecessors more commonly did.

What other types of backgrounds do Labor MPs have?

More than half (51.6%) of Labor MPs in the current government were party officials, or staffers for Labor Ministers or back-benchers before being elected.

Some have experience as public servants (18%), lawyers (16%), employees of non-governmental organisations (12%), and small business owners (8%). Small numbers have a background in business, consultancy, journalism, the military and State legislatures. Many have moved between a number of these categories during their careers.

What about the Liberal Party?

The Liberal Party also has a high proportion of MPs who were political staffers or party officials before entering parliament, at 45%. Of those 38 representatives, 14 appear to have entered the Commonwealth parliament directly from political staffer positions, and a further three from State legislatures.

The main difference between the Liberal and Labor parties is that whereas Labor has former union employees, the Liberal Party has many parliamentary members with a background in business (36 MPs), especially in banking and finance (7), and large consulting firms (6).

Some Liberal Party MPs have backgrounds in employers’ associations (9 MPs) and think tanks (6 MPs). – Raymond Markey

Blind review

I agree with the conclusion that about one-third of Labor MPs in the current federal parliament have worked in trade unions. I counted 30 Labor MPs with union backgrounds. The extra two the lead author found could be because a wider definition of union official was used. – Adrian Beaumont

The Conversation’s FactCheck unit was the first fact-checking team in Australia and one of the first worldwide to be accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network, an alliance of fact-checkers hosted at the Poynter Institute in the US. Read more here.

Have you seen a “fact” worth checking? The Conversation’s FactCheck asks academic experts to test claims and see how true they are. We then ask a second academic to review an anonymous copy of the article. You can request a check at checkit@theconversation.edu.au. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Linda J. Graham, Professor in the School of Early Childhood & Inclusive Education, Queensland University of Technology

New research released today reveals extraordinary increases in suspensions and exclusions in Queensland state schools. But these increases don’t necessarily mean student behaviour is getting worse.

Education reform and changes in school policy can also contribute to rising rates of school exclusions and suspensions. Some groups of students can be more adversely affected by these changes than others. It is important to examine policy effects because suspensions and exclusions are more harmful than helpful and tend not to resolve the behaviour in question.

This research is relevant to all education sectors and states as rising school suspension rates are not unique to Queensland. Other states are implementing reforms that could lead to similar problems.

Why were changes to legislation made?

In 2014, the Queensland government introduced legislation to grant school principals greater disciplinary powers. Among these new powers were options to impose community service and Saturday detentions.

Read more: Why suspending or expelling students often does more harm than good

The Queensland government also changed the maximum length of short suspensions from five to ten days and axed the appeals process. Parents are now unable to appeal short suspensions and, in the case of a long suspension (11 to 20 days), must apply to the Director-General of the Education Department.

One rationale provided for the Queensland government’s change to legislation was school exclusions were increasing and the government wanted to give principals more flexible options to respond to problem behaviour. In response to early community concern about emerging effects, the Education Minister promised schools would adjust and these changes would soon lead to a reduction in suspensions and exclusions.

They didn’t.

Which students were most affected and why?

Expanding principals’ disciplinary powers adversely affected students in all year levels in Queensland state schools but, particularly, high school students and those entering primary or secondary school for the first time.

In this study, exclusions and suspensions were examined as a proportion of enrolments. This takes into account increases or decreases in student numbers which may affect the number of suspensions reported each year.

Between 2013 and 2014, suspensions in the first or Preparatory year of primary school rose by 51.28% (as a proportion of enrolments) and have continued to increase each year since. Suspensions in year seven increased by 19.92% in 2014 and again, by a whopping 82.54%, in 2015. These rates show no sign of slowing.

Although some of the increases may appear moderate, if suspensions were keeping pace with enrolment growth, there should be no proportional increase. In other words, suspension growth outstripped enrolment growth in the Queensland state school system, which suggests something other than student numbers is driving suspension increases.

Two other education reforms occurred in Queensland around the same time as the expansion of principals’ powers. The first involved a reduction in the school starting age which meant children entering Prep in 2015 can be as young as four and a half years old when they first begin formal schooling. The second reform, also in 2015, involved moving year seven from the primary to secondary schooling phase.

Read more: Help disruptive students, don’t just suspend them

The most powerful indication something other than student behaviour is driving suspension increases is the doubling of the suspension rate for year sevens in 2015. The only observable difference between the year sevens in that year and those every year before them is the school environment.

Why do increases in suspension matter?

Research shows suspension is associated with an increase in anti-social behaviour and contact with the criminal justice system, due to a lack of adult supervision and greater freedom to associate with deviant peers. Contrary to popular belief, suspension does not promote behavioural change.

This is because inappropriate behaviours need to be replaced, and replacement behaviours need to be explicitly taught. Sending kids home doesn’t give them the skills they need to do better next time or help solve the problem that led to the suspension.

There is conclusive evidence suspension leads to academic failure and school dropout, even after controlling for prior achievement. This is because suspension weakens students’ sense of school belonging and makes gaps in achievement worse by taking vulnerable children away from teaching and learning, rather than providing them with the support and positive guidance they need.

Disadvantaged children, children with a disability, Indigenous children and children in out-of-home care are all significantly overrepresented in school suspension statistics. These are the children who most need to be at school and for whom suspension is most likely to have serious and long-term negative impact.

Suspension is also known to reinforce problem behaviours. For example, if a student is persistently engaging in task avoidance, disruption or truanting, suspension will reward that behaviour. Rather than decrease the behaviour, suspension will increase it.

In short, there is no evidence to support the increased use of suspension and ample evidence governments should try to limit or even eradicate its use.

When is suspension appropriate and when is it not?

There are times when suspension is appropriate, such as when a student brings drugs or a weapon to school, or engages in physical violence resulting in injury. Hitting a teacher is never OK. But even here, it’s important to make sure a frightened five-year-old accidentally connecting with a teacher mid-meltdown is not construed as a deliberate act of violence.

Sustained bullying (cyber or otherwise) is another example where suspension may be appropriate. But in-school suspension, where students are removed from their regular classes and required to complete their work in a supervised setting, is a better option than out-of-school suspension.

Read more: Excluding Indigenous youth from schools may severely increase their risk of incarceration

Extreme behaviours are not the only reasons principals suspend and there are instances where it’s done for the wrong reason. Suspending a student to appease teachers or other parents, or to “send a message” to other students are inappropriate uses of suspension.

What are better ideas?

Knowing the source of behaviour is the most important key to solving it. This is because similar behaviours can have very different antecedents and responses that don’t address the root problem will fail.

For example, a common frustration for teachers is when students appear not to listen in class and continually ask for further explanation or don’t follow instructions. Careful observation and clarification with students will provide clues as to why some appear not to be listening.

Some may have a language disorder and may be experiencing difficulty understanding what was said. Others may have attention difficulties or poor working memory and may miss key information.

Such difficulties are common among students receiving suspensions. Without consistent, high-quality responsive teaching, these students will experience failure and frustration, leading to classroom disruption and conflict with teachers.

For students who have language disorders or attention difficulties, teachers can adopt proactive strategies that benefit all students. These strategies include:

• clear and consistent routines

• well-designed seating plans

• variations in verbal tone and pace with frequent pauses to allow students to process information

• clear and simple verbal instructions delivered in logical sequence

• visual aids to enhance students’ comprehension of verbally described concepts and/or complementary written instructions

• regular reiteration of learning objectives, instructions, and classroom expectations

• positive reinforcement of good behaviour and recognition of effort

• providing one-to-one clarification and feedback to students who experience learning and behavioural difficulties

• in-class pairing with another student who is a friendly and academically supportive role model.

For some students these strategies will not be enough on their own and these students will need more intensive supports, such as targeted interventions to enhance academic skills, counselling, mentoring/monitoring, and skills training for teachers.

Using proactive supports to address underlying issues, de-escalating conflict when it occurs, and using in-school suspension as a last resort will help address rising suspension rates. Governments should be acting in the best interests of everyone by backing approaches that have positive evidence and backing away from those for which there is none.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anusch Yazdani, Associate Professor, The University of Queensland

Adenomyosis is a condition of the uterus (womb), where the tissue that grows on the lining of the uterus (also known as the endometrium) is also present on the inside muscular wall of the uterus. Adenomyosis can cause symptoms such as heavy bleeding during your period, bleeding when you are not due for your period, period pain (dysmenorrhea), pain during or after sex (dyspareunia) and infertility.

Although women with adenomyosis often also have endometriosis, they are different conditions. With endometriosis, cells similar to those that line the uterus are found in other parts of the body such as the fallopian tubes, the ovaries or the tissue lining the pelvis (the peritoneum).

Read more: Considering surgery for endometriosis? Here’s what you need to know

The area of the uterus affected by adenomyosis is known as the endometrial-myometrial junction, which is where the endometrium and the myometrium (the muscular part of the uterus) meet.

Disruption in the endometrial-myometrial junction is now considered an important contributor to reproductive problems such as recurrent implantation failure, a condition that can prevent women falling pregnant. Adenomyosis can either be quite spread out, known as generalised adenomyosis or localised in one place, also known as an adenomyoma.

Adenomyosis can have a number of causes though none have been definitively identified. There is an association between the presence of adenomyosis and the number of times a women has given birth: the more pregnancies, the more likely you are to have adenomyosis. Women with adenomyosis have also often had a trauma to the uterus such as surgery in the uterus, like during a caesarean section.

How common is adenomyosis?

Like endometriosis, we don’t know exactly how many women may be affected by the condition. What makes the impact of adenomyosis so tricky to determine is that it is quite commonly found during regular screening tests, even when women are not complaining of any symptoms, which means many women may have it and not know about it.

Because it’s often found in women with other conditions like endometriosis, it’s difficult to determine which condition caused the symptoms. We don’t currently know why some women with adenomyosis have symptoms and others don’t.

Read more: Vulvas, periods and leaks: women need the right words to seek help for conditions ‘down there’

There are also a number of different criteria for diagnosing adenomyosis, which can differ in important factors. For instance, the number of sections of adenomyosis that need to be affected for a diagosis when looking at tissue samples under a microscope. This makes it a problem when we try to work out how common adenomyosis is.

There can also be differences of opinion among the experts who look at these tissue samples. Experts can look at the same slides and come to very different conclusions.

How is it diagnosed?

Unlike endometriosis, which can only be definitively diagnosed through a key-hole surgery, a diagnosis of adenomyosis can be done through both invasive and non-invasive methods. The most common invasive method is a uterine biopsy (tissue sampling). A biopsy of the uterus can also be performed to make the diagnosis by an abdominal key-hole surgical procedure (laparoscopy) but this remains limited to clinical trials.

Biopsies going through the vagina up to the uterus may have a role in the diagnosis of adenomyosis, but can potentially damage the uterus and therefore are avoided in women wishing to fall pregnant. The ultimate biopsy is a hysterectomy (the removal of the uterus). This is the most accurate method but is obviously a significant surgical procedure and will prevent women having children. A diagnosis of adenomyosis has been made in between 10-88% of hysterectomy specimens showing how common this condition is.

Non-invasive diagnosis can be made by different types of imaging. Ultrasound is commonly available and can be done either using the probe on the abdomen or, preferably, placing the probe in the vagina.

However, ultrasound isn’t always the best choice as it only detects adenomyosis about 50-87% of the time. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a better choice as there are a number of typical features seen during MRI. These vary throughout the cycle and in response to hormonal therapy but can reliably predict adenomyosis.

What are the treatments?

Management options for adenomyosis include hormonal therapy and surgery. These are mainly targeted at reducing symptoms such as pain. There isn’t much research into whether these increase the chance of getting pregnant.

Read more: What happens to endometriosis when you’re on the pill?

Hormonal treatments focus on suppressing menstruation. This can be achieved by combined oestrogen and progesterone therapy (such as the combined oral contraceptive pill), progestogen-only treatment (such as a Mirena) or placing women into an “induced” menopause (through GnRH analogs).

Surgical treatment is most effective when the adenomyosis is localised to a smaller area and can be removed, and this type of surgery doesn’t prevent women falling pregnant in the future. If the adenomyosis is spread throughout a larger area then treatments include destroying the lining of the uterus (endometrial ablation) provided adenomyosis is not too deep, and hysterectomy, both of which will prevent further pregnancy.

Other treatment options are interventional radiology such as uterine artery embolisation, where the blood supply to the uterus is cut off and magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound where the adenomyosis is destroyed with ultrasound energy.

Does it affect fertility?

There is some evidence adenomyosis can reduce fertility, but this is still controversial. Clinical studies are limited by difficulties and differences in diagnosis and their study designs have problems.

Some MRI studies show changes consistent with infertility, but because patients presenting with infertility in their 30s and 40s are more likely to be diagnosed with adenomyosis, it’s difficult to say if adenomyosis is the cause of their fertility issues.

When couples are undergoing assisted reproduction (such as IVF) there is limited evidence to support a negative impact on oocyte and embryo quality, implantation and pregnancy rates. Overall, there appears to be limited negative impact of adenomyosis on allowing the embryos to implant or overall pregnancy rates.

Read more: Women now have clearer statistics on whether IVF is likely to work

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan F.D. Barrett, Specially Appointed Professor, Center for the Study of Co*Design, Osaka University

Against the backdrop of climate scientists warning that we have 12 years to cut carbon emissions to avoid disastrous climate change, Kyoto is searching for an alternative, sustainable future. The Japanese city is moving away from heavy reliance on cars and towards getting around by public transport, cycling and walking. Already, more than three-quarters of personal trips in the city are not by car.

With the 2010 Walkable Kyoto Declaration, the city aimed to stop being a car-dominated society. Kyoto has an ambitious list of 94 projects promoting walkability.

The results so far are impressive, according to municipal government data. Use of public transport has increased significantly. Car traffic entering the city is declining year on year, as is use of car parking. Only 9.3% of tourist movements in the city were by car compared to 21% in 2011.

As a result of this, emissions from transportation in 2015 were 20% lower than 1990 levels.

A city made for cycling

Kyoto is determined to improve on this. The next target is to enhance opportunities for cycling.

Cycling is the best way to see the city. Whether you are a resident or a tourist, cycling is the secret to unlocking Kyoto’s beauty and experiencing its heritage sites. An increasing number of the 50 million tourists a year are choosing to rent a bike.

Kyoto is a compact, flat city with a grid structure. This makes it easy to cycle and navigate. Kyoto has been described as one of the ten best cities to explore by bike.

Navigating the city by bicycle is both convenient and efficient. Bicycles provide mobility that’s accessible for a wide range of demographics, from school kids to parents with their toddlers on board to over-65s taking a short trip to the local shops.

In June 2018 one of Japan’s first shared cycle schemes, Pippa, popped up in Kyoto with 100 bikes in 22 locations. There are plans to increase to 500 bikes in 50 locations by the end of the year. Proposals for shared electric bicycles would broaden the variety of users able to navigate the city by bike.

Mobility policy innovation

While we both have cycled extensively around Kyoto and appreciate the many wonders and delights, we are fascinated by the mobility experience for regular people living in Kyoto.

That is one reason we are impressed by the March 2015 New Kyoto City Bicycle Plan, which replaced a 2010 plan.

This new plan identifies the promotion of cycling as healthy across various realms — for the society, economy and sustainability of the city overall.

Cycling trends in Kyoto provide cause for optimism. It now has close to 45km of official cycleways. While not as big as European cycling cities like Copenhagen (which boasts 416km of cycleways), Kyoto’s network is relatively large for an Asian city.

On-street discarding of bicycles has declined 27-fold since 2001. Bicycle parking space has increased by 65% in the same period.

Two in every three Kyotoites own a bicycle, compared to one in every three owning a car. Car ownership is dropping year by year.

More kids cycle to school in Kyoto than almost any other city in Japan (only Osaka is higher). Cycling is on the increase for people between the ages of 20 and 34, as well as those between 65 and 69.

Need to educate cyclists and drivers

A few obstacles still stand in the way of Kyoto achieving its sustainable mobility goals.

First of all, only 33% of cyclists cycle on the road. Everyone else uses the pavement, meaning neither pedestrians nor cyclists feel safe.

Second, cyclists across Japan are notorious for not following rules. They ignore signals, ride the opposite direction to traffic, listen to music or use their phone while cycling, cycle with a passenger on the back, cycle with an umbrella in the rain, don’t wear helmets and rarely cycle with lights at night.

In other words, Japanese cyclists are perceived to be, at times, reckless. This explains why a third of Kyoto’s cycling policies focus on improving cyclists’ manners. It also explains why the municipality introduced a mandatory bicycle insurance scheme from April 2018. That’s something other cities could copy.

The Kyoto bicycle plan focuses on measures to enhance the visibility of cyclists with road markings as well as extensive educational programmes for car drivers and cyclists on road etiquette.

The good news is that the number of accidents involving cyclists in the city has declined by 40% since 2004 and represents 20% of all accidents. This is close to what we find in Copenhagen.

What else can Kyoto do?

A continued focus on social design and innovation is the answer to Kyoto’s mobility challenges. The city’s population is projected to shrink by 13% between 2010 and 2040 (reaching around 1.28 million). At the same time, the proportion of over-65s will increase significantly.

This suggests private car ownership will continue to decline, by an estimated 6-10% a year. The bicycle ownership rate is likely to increase by 7% or more each year.

In this context, the focus on public transport, cycling and walking makes a great deal of sense.

But Kyoto could still do a lot more to reduce car traffic, especially in the city centre. Manchester in the UK provides a useful example. It recently announced plans to invest £1.5 billion (A$2.7 billion) in a 1,600km cycle network.

Another model for Kyoto to follow is that of the world’s most bicycle-friendly city – Copenhagen.

Today many cities across the world are seeking to “Copenhagenize”. In the future, we want them to be able to follow Kyoto as a model of best practice for Asian city sustainability.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Triggs, Research fellow, Australian National University

2018 marks the 40 year anniversary of the first Superman film. Starring as Superman, Christopher Reeve fought foes and vanquished villains in an action-packed battle between good and evil.

Four decades on, Superman continues to feature in films, but often not alone.

He now stars alongside Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Aquaman and other superheroes. For the fans of DC Comics, it is a delightful coming together of childhood favourites.

But for economists, it symbolises a worrying decline in productivity.

Superman needs help

Where once a single superhero was able to save the world, now two or more are required to complete the same task.

As Oscar Wilde once said, life often imitates art.

Back when the first Superman film was released, average annual total factor productivity growth among advanced economies was almost 10 times what it fell to in 2016.

In Australia, it was three times higher in 1995-96 than in 2016-17.

Read more: Australia’s productivity problem: why it matters

Real wage growth has been close to zero in the past two years, in line with close to zero productivity growth.

But what is most striking about what has happened is when it has happened. The past 25 years have seen extraordinary advances in technology.

We ought to be much more productive

An extra 3.5 billion people have gained access to the internet, the processing power of computers has skyrocketed, and we now have smartphones, with almost everything on them, and factories and warehouses that are automated in ways that would have once only been dreamt of.

The sharing economy promises to unlock the full potential of our idle cars, our unused bicycles and empty rooms and houses. The accumulated history of human knowledge is at our fingertips.

So where’s the resulting increase in productivity?

US economist Robert Solow once famously remarked that “you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics”.

Read more: The internet has done a lot, but so far little for economic growth

Economists have since put forward a variety of explanations for this paradox, but with little agreement.

There’s little agreement about why we’re not

Some, like 2018 Nobel Laureate William Nordhaus, point to historical data showing long lag-times between technological advances and increases in productivity.

For them, a surge in productivity is just around the corner – 10 years away, according to some estimates.

Others, like Harvard’s Martin Feldstein, argue the paradox is driven by measurement failures.

Read more: Budget explainer: the problem with measuring productivity

Others argue that the productivity improvements from technology have been crowded out by other factors, like the aftershocks of the global financial crisis, weak demand and investment, slowing trade, stalling growth in global value chains, ageing populations, reduced investment in education, the impacts of automation on demand and inequality, weakening competition and reduced business dynamism.

Harvard’s Marc Melitz suggests that an explanation for the paradox may lie at the firm-level.

Productivity growth might be hidden

While some firms have been highly productive, their effects have been offset by laggard firms. The OECD found that “frontier firms” have consistently achieved productivity growth six times that of laggard firms which have dragged down the average.

Some attribute this to the increased prevalence of “zombie firms” – unproductive firms kept alive by cheap money, low interest rates and nervous investors.

It’s possible to see this at the industry level. John Fernald, from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, finds that productivity gains from information and communications technology have been concentrated in specific industries, the benefits from which have been netted-out by industries that have failed to adopt new technologies.

Northwestern University’s Robert Gordon, however, sees no paradox at all.

Or technology might be holding it back

He says, as much as we might like them, the technological advances in recent decades have been no match for the really big advances between 1870 and 1970, such as electricity and the automobile.

Harvard’s Jeff Frankel goes further.

He points to evidence suggesting the latest advances in technology might be actually cutting productivity by distracting us and reducing our attention spans.

Read more: Why we should approach claims of a productivity crisis with caution

Others are less pessimistic, but still conclude that as firms adopt more and more new technology, the extra returns from those extra investments shrink.

With all this uncertainty, what’s the best approach for an incoming or reelected government?

So what should we do?

It sounds trite, but the best approach is “flexibility”.

More precisely it is well functioning mechanisms that allow us to adjust things such as exchange rates, interest rates, government spending and industry settings.

On the whole we have these mechanisms. We will also need strong laws that encourage competition; that will enable new or suddenly productive firms to displace old ones that have grown used to large market shares.

If we do turn out to be on the cusp of a new productivity surge, a flexible, competitive economy will enable us to spread the benefits quickly.

Allow good firms to grow, bad ones to die

If instead we turn out to be on track for a low productivity future, or if the productivity gains from new technology are crowded out by other effects, then flexibility can also help, redirecting resources away from inefficient firms to more efficient ones.

If it turns out the productivity paradox is no paradox at all but merely a measurement failure, then it is yet another reason to properly fund organisations such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The new government will need to watch, and to some extent it will need to wait. But it will need to be ready.

As American economist Paul Krugman observed a generation ago when productivity growth was much higher than it is today, “productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything”.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ted Snell, Professor, Chief Cultural Officer, Cultural Precinct, University of Western Australia

The extraordinary sculpture of Mary Magdalene by the 15th century Bavarian carver Tilman Riemenschneider focuses our attention on her hair, which twists, curls and cascades down and around her body. This is the hair that caressed Jesus’ feet, and that grew to cover her modesty in the years after his crucifixion when she lived her reclusive life in the desert.

While historians now believe this later life is a conflation of Magdalene with that of Saint Mary of Egypt, a 4th-century prostitute turned hermit, the focus on hair serves to identify her as someone outside acceptable society.

Women 2000 years ago in Jerusalem would have covered their head and never shown their hair in public. Yet Magdalene had long hair, and in many depictions of her in art, literature and theology, she has been portrayed as revealing this hair and using it to anoint Jesus’ feet. These acts of devotion identified her as a woman of ill-repute.

Although this intepretation was recently comprehensively debunked by theologian Dorothy Ann Lee, it was orthodoxy in the 15th century. The narrative unfolded through the metaphor of her hair is crucial to Reimenschneider’s depiction of Magdalene as she ascends to heaven to be reunited with her saviour.

Read more: Friday essay: who was Mary Magdalene? Debunking the myth of the penitent prostitute

Hair is also a defining feature of George Baldessin’s portrait of Mary Magdelene on the Rue St Denis: MM of Rue St Denis, 1976. She stands awkwardly, her arms and legs crossed, one hand protecting her modesty, the other cradling a skull wrapped in her long tresses.

Rue St Denis was a street notorious for prostitution. When Baldessin was working at the Lacourière printworks in Paris in 1975, he and his wife Tess had direct experience of the street and its inhabitants. The girls and their pimps meshed with his newfound interest in medieval images of Magdalene.

The resulting series of drawings and etchings depict a very contemporary Magdalene, either locked into angular architecture or hovering in the open void of the page. She is often alone, in one image spread-eagled on a table, in others in shimmering silver but mostly in prickly black.

Read more: An ape in anguish: Brett Whiteley’s Sacred baboon

The images of Magdalene made in the last years of his life – before his sudden death in a car accident in 1977 – are some of Baldessin’s most powerful works. The ambition of his draughtsmanship fully realises the profound intent of his subject matter. In the best of these works, his penchant for mannerist gestures is restrained, and Magdalene’s figure is rendered emotively, without compromising anatomical accuracy. His elegant line is rooted in its descriptive trajectory around the body.

Peering out from the spiky tangle of her hair, the MM on the Rue St Denis seems to be entreating us to empathise with her plight. Unlike Reimenschnieder’s Magdelene, already on her way to heaven, Baldessin’s is plying her trade and enduring the vicissitudes of life. She is aware of her impending death if salvation doesn’t come, evidenced by the skull in her left hand. She has been found guilty by society, and her pleading gaze is unlikely to assuage that judgement.

Many artists have brought the scriptures to life by re-siting them in familiar territory. Arthur Boyd’s relocation of biblical narratives to the streets of Melbourne, Salvatore Zofrea’s resetting of the Psalms in Sydney, and English artist Stanley Spencer, who chose his village of Cookham as the mise en scène for his transcriptions, all contemporise the Bible in this way. Yet Baldessin’s relocation is more literary than factual.

There are no visual indications of Paris, nothing to identify the street or any buildings or landmarks. The yawning gulf of the blank page, with minor geometric intrusions, is the space MM inhabits. The Rue St Denis is a title, a textual frame within which to locate this person. It relies on the viewer providing context to interpret MM’s predicament.

To this drawing, we bring our knowledge of the street as both a route of pilgrimage leading to the medieval Basilica of St Denis and a site of sexual exploitation, which adds poignancy and pathos to our reading.

This drawing and others in the series construct a moral tale. The contemporary Magdalene is vulnerable and at risk, yet she is judged and found wanting like so many others who are ostracised for their beliefs or their situation.

When asked what he was trying to express, Baldessin explained: “I think human weakness through the vulnerable figure, without extracting its dignity, no matter how uncertain.”

It is something he achieved in this image of MM, searching for salvation while confronting her mortality.

Baldessin/Whiteley Parallel Visions is at NGV Australia, Melbourne, until 28 Jan, 2019.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lito Papanicolas, Infectious diseases specialist and PhD candidate, South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute

If you take antibiotics, there’s a good chance you’ll also get diarrhoea.

Antibiotics kill harmful bacteria that cause disease. But they also cause collateral damage to the microbiome, the complex community of bacteria that live in our gut. This results in a profound, though usually temporary, depletion of the beneficial bacteria.

One popular strategy to mitigate the disruption is to take a probiotic supplement containing live bacteria during, or following, a course of antibiotics.

Read more: Healthy guts are swarming with bugs, so what do they do?

The logic is simple: beneficial bacterial in the gut are damaged by antibiotics. So why not replace them with the “beneficial” bacterial strains in probiotics to assist gut bacteria returning to a “balanced” state?

But the answer is more complicated.

There is currently some evidence that taking probiotics can prevent antibiotic-associated diarrhoea. This effect is relatively small, with 13 people needing to take probiotics for one episode of diarrhoea to be averted.

But these studies have often neglected to evaluate potential harms of probiotic use and haven’t looked at their impact on the wider gut microbiome.

Pros and cons of probiotics

The assumption that there is little downside to taking probiotics was challenged in a recent Israeli study.

The participants were given antibiotics and split into two groups: the first group was given an 11-strain probiotic preparation for four weeks; the second was given a placebo, or dummy pill.

The researchers found the antibiotic damage to the gut bacteria of those in the first group allowed the probiotic strains to effectively colonise the gut. But this colonisation delayed the normal recovery of the microbiota, which remained perturbed for the entire six month study period.

In contrast, the microbiota of the second group returned to normal within three weeks of finishing antibiotics.

Read more: Health Check: should healthy people take probiotic supplements?

This research exposes a perhaps unexpected truth: we still don’t know what types of bacteria are truly beneficial or even what constitutes a healthy microbiome.

The answer is unlikely to be that individual bacterial strains are particularly helpful.

It’s more likely a diverse community of thousands of different types of microbes working together can provide health benefits. This microbial community is as individual as each one of us, meaning there is not just one configuration that will result in health or illness.

So, it’s unlikely that the addition of one or even 11 strains of bacteria in a probiotic could somehow balance this complex system.

A more effective (but less palatable) alternative?

The Israeli study also explored an alternative approach to microbiome restoration.

One group of participants had their own stool collected and frozen prior to antibiotic treatment. It was then re-instilled into their gut at the end of the antibiotic therapy.

This treatment, known as autologous faecal transplantation, was able to restore the microbiome to original levels after just eight days. The other group took 21 days to recover.

Read more: Poo transplants and probiotics – does anything work to improve the health of our gut?

This approach has also been shown to effectively restore the gut microbiome following combined antibiotic and chemotherapy treatment. These patients are predictably at risk of serious complications, such as bloodstream infection, as a result of microbiome disruption.

Research currently underway will help us understand whether microbiome restoration with autologous faecal transplantation will translate into tangible benefits for these patients.

But such an approach would not be a realistic option for most people.

Feed the good bacteria

A more practical strategy to aid recovery is to provide the good bacteria in your gut with their preferred source of nutrition: fibre. Fibrous compounds pass undigested through the small intestine and into the colon, where they act as fuel for bacterial fermentation.

So if you’re taking antibiotics or have recently finished a course, make sure you eat plenty of vegetables, fruit and wholegrains. Your gut bacteria will thank you for it.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic O’Sullivan, Associate Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University

Fiji faces a general election on Wednesday, just as Australia’s main political parties devote more attention to the western Pacific, driven by worries about China’s growing influence in the region.

For most Australians, the nation is a handy holiday destination – closer than Bali or Thailand. Last month, its palm-fringed beaches were in the global spotlight when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex took a trip to the former British colony.

Anyone with a longer memory will perhaps associate Fiji with coups – two in 1987 and one in 2006. There was also a putsch – a civilian overthrow of the government – in 2000.

This week’s general election is only the second since Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama, who often goes by the name Frank, appointed himself prime minister after the 2006 coup. He was eventually elected in 2014 and is expected to be re-elected this week.

Read more: Fiji coup leader gets the democratic approval he wanted

For Australia, the strategic importance of the western Pacific is coming into sharp focus.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced $3 billion in infrastructural spending in the region. He has committed the Australian Defence Force to military training in Pacific nations.

Australia has an abiding interest in a south-west Pacific that is secure strategically, stable economically and sovereign politically.

In a speech to the Lowy Institute last month, Bill Shorten committed a future Labor government to an independent foreign policy with a strong Pacific focus. It would support Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Tonga to develop their military capabilities.

Read more: Labor is making big promises for a Pacific development bank, but questions remain

On Fiji, he said:

We want to mend the relationship with the RFMF [Republic of Fiji Military Forces], to ensure that the ADF [Australian Defence Force] is best-placed to develop the Fiji military’s professional capabilities and to ensure Fiji’s security needs.

For Fijian voters, the military is never far from politics.

Bainimarama insists the election will be free and fair . However, the electoral system is unnecessarily complicated. Critics argue this is a deliberate strategy to disenfranchise voters.

However, as he disliked the Constitution put to him by an independent review in 2009, Bainimarama decreed his own in 2013. Section 131 (2) of that Constitution gives ultimate political authority to the military:

It shall be the overall responsibility of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces to ensure at all times the security, defence and well-being of Fiji and all Fijians.

Read more: Fiji’s media still struggling to regain ‘free and fair’ space

The military has tended to be the arbiter in national affairs since the first coup in 1987.

As Bainimarama put it before the 2006 coup:

[Prime Minister Laisenia] Qarase is trying to weaken the army by trying to remove me … if he succeeds there will be no one to monitor them, and imagine how corrupt it is going to be.

The coups and the putsch were ostensibly statements of indigenous nationalism – indigenous Fijians asserting their rights over the generally wealthier and better educated descendants of Indian indentured labourers brought to Fiji by British colonial authorities between 1879 and 1916.

However, Fijian politics is vastly more complicated than an indigenous non-indigenous binary. The contentious point, according to Professor Brij V. Lal of the Australian National University’s College of Asia and the Pacific, “is not really about having a Fijian head of government,” but rather which Fijian leader would be acceptable to a particular group of Fijians at any given time”.

The prime minister’s main rival clears legal hurdle

Bainimarama’s main opponent is an indigenous former prime minister and coup leader, Sitiveni Rabuka. Bainimarama is also an indigenous Fijian.

Rabuka faced electoral fraud charges that could have seen him declared him ineligible to stand at the election. Rabuka’s acquittal in the Magistrate’s Court was appealed by the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption, and dismissed by the High Court only on Monday afternoon. At his campaign launch in 2018, Rabuka ominously remarked:

I am here to do what I can for as long as I ever can for the good of the country.

However, indigenous nationalism and how the right to self-determination might be played out is important. It is interwoven with class, religion and an urban/rural divide to add to the fragility and complexity of Fiji’s conditional democracy.

Just as it did in 2014, Bainimarama’s Fiji First is campaigning on a range of issues including the building of a multiracial society. Practical measures to improve access to education and healthcare are also important to Fiji First.

Land ownership and rental returns are key political issues

Rabuka’s Social Democratic Liberal Party (SODELPA) argues for the restoration of distinctive indigenous voice in public life. It seeks the restoration of the Great Council of Chiefs and of chiefly influence over the distribution of rental incomes.

SODELPA will also begin extensive public consultation on the drafting of a new Constitution.

Ultimately, indigenous prosperity depends on the strength of the national economy. This, in turn, depends on political stability. Contemporary Fiji enjoys neither. While there are signs of improving economic growth, the Fijian people face two obstacles in ensuring that the outcome of Wednesday’s election reflects their collective will.

Firstly, registering to vote then casting a valid and informed vote is difficult. Secondly, as Fiji’s history since 1987 shows, and as the 2013 Constitution confirms, the election’s outcome is ultimately subject to military approval. It may not, then, be in Australia’s best interests to support a stronger Fijian military.

Democratic stability serves Australia’s interests. In Fiji, democracy can be strong only when the military is weak.