Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Marie Quigley, DECRA Research Fellow in molecular ecology, James Cook University

Lord Howe Island lies in the middle of the ocean, about 700 kilometres northeast of Sydney. It’s covered in lush forest and fringed by the world’s most southerly coral reef ecosystem.

This reef system isn’t as famous as its northern neighbour, the Great Barrier Reef. Our new research in the Journal of Applied Ecology, shows it plays an outsized role in keeping vast coral regions across the Pacific connected – and alive.

A small number of other reefs in the region serve a similar function. Knowing which reefs matter most for recovery and adaptation to ocean warming – and protecting them now – could make the difference between regional reef collapse and long-term resilience.

Tiny coral babies in a vast ocean

Coral reefs are in global decline, but this loss is not just about dying corals – it’s about breaking the natural connections that allow reefs to recover after marine heatwaves, cyclones and other threats.

Right now, climate change is rapidly reducing the ability of coral larvae to travel between reefs, shrinking their chances of survival by undercutting recovery.

These tiny coral babies can sometimes spend many weeks in the surface waters of the open ocean, carried by currents across hundreds or even thousands of kilometres before settling and beginning to grow.

The movement of larvae provides a constant source of replenishment for reefs, both near and far away, which is especially important when reefs are damaged.

Without this constant replenishment, some damaged reefs simply cannot recover. Connectivity isn’t a nice-to-have for coral reefs. It’s their lifeline.

Tracking dispersal across 850 reefs

Our study used ocean circulation models to simulate the trajectories of coral larvae across the southwestern Pacific Ocean from 2011 to 2024, tracking the movement of larvae across 850 reefs.

These reefs spanned the Great Barrier Reef, New Caledonia, the Coral Sea and Lord Howe Island.

We traced how two key coral growth forms (fast-growing branching corals and slower-growing massive corals) move between reefs under current conditions and under projected global climate warming scenarios of 1°C, 2.5°C and 4°C above pre-industrial temperatures.

We then examined how corals moved between different types of reef, including reefs that were naturally resistant to heat stress, those that recover quickly after disturbance, and those that stay cooler because of local water currents and upwelling that naturally reduce water temperature around the reef.

This allowed us to ask not just which reefs are connected, but which kinds of reefs are sending and receiving different types of larvae.

A fragile network

We found that only a handful of reefs act as genuine hubs — places where larvae both arrive from distant sources and depart to “seed” reefs far away. Lose these stepping stones, and the entire network begins to fragment.

The Coral Sea reefs emerged as crucial bridges in this network, linking the southern Great Barrier Reef with New Caledonia and beyond. But perhaps the most striking finding involves Lord Howe Island.

Our modelling identified Lord Howe as a potential refugium: a place where corals may be able to persist even as warming intensifies, potentially owing to its more temperate, southerly position.

Yet its very isolation – what makes it a likely survivor – also means it has limited natural connectivity with surrounding reefs.

This situation therefore cuts both ways: while isolation helps protect its coral from extreme heat stress, it also means the reef relies less on new larvae that others could need for recovery. It therefore also means Lord Howe needs protection – not just for itself, but for the entire regional reef system that may one day depend on it.

Another important finding is that the reefs most resistant to heat stress (those classified as naturally resistant) tended to export larvae to a relatively smaller number of reefs within the wider network.

But there are techniques that enable the intentional movement of larvae from heat-tolerant reefs to more vulnerable locations. These include assisted gene flow, in which scientists deliberately move warm-adapted adult corals or their offspring to reefs that are more vulnerable to heat stress, helping to spread heat-tolerant genes more quickly across reef networks.

Protecting our marine superhighways

Our results make clear that marine protected areas should not be managed as isolated reserves but as an interconnected network, with transboundary cooperation between Australia and Pacific Island nations.

The larval corridors linking the southern Great Barrier Reef, New Caledonia and Lord Howe Island do not fall within national boundaries. Neither can our conservation response.

Reefs are already fighting against warming oceans. The waters of the Lord Howe Rise and South Tasman Sea, the vast oceanic region between Australia and New Zealand through which these larval corridors flow, are under threat from industrial fishing.

Industrial fishing, pollution and climate change are pushing these ecosystems to the brink, with longlines intersecting surface waters. This cumulative pressure across these newly identified larval transport superhighways adds yet another layer of pressure onto these already stressed ecosystems.

Our research adds a new and crucial dimension to high seas protection. Our region sits directly across the larval corridors that connect and sustain coral reef systems. Protecting this ocean is not just about what lives here. It is about what passes through – fundamental for migratory and connected populations.

The least we can do is protect the superhighways through which their future flows – invisibly, at the ocean surface, some larvae no bigger than a grain of rice, carrying the genetic potential to rebuild what we stand to lose.

– ref. Coral reefs are secretly connected across vast oceans – and that’s crucial for their survival – https://theconversation.com/coral-reefs-are-secretly-connected-across-vast-oceans-and-thats-crucial-for-their-survival-278424

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Munt, Associate Professor, Media Arts & Production, University of Technology Sydney

In the opening moments of Vladimir, Netflix’s new erotic drama series, the protagonist M (Rachel Weisz) is sprawled on a couch in her negligee, writing in her notepad. She leans towards the camera, then stares into the lens to address you, the viewer, on your couch.

In film and television, this is called “breaking the fourth wall”. It is a ploy of metafiction: a kind of self-aware mode of storytelling.

The fourth wall is the invisible plane through which the camera observes the action. To break the fourth wall is to play with – or sever – audiences’ suspension of disbelief, and abandon the norms of screen narration.

The history of breaking the fourth wall is almost as long as the history of cinema itself. Edwin S. Porter’s film The Great Train Robbery ends with an outlaw firing his gun directly towards the camera. Back in 1903, audiences ducked for cover.

Nearly a century later, director Martin Scorsese paid homage to Porter in Goodfellas (1990) in a scene where Mobster Tommy DeVito (Jo Pesci) fires his gun directly at the screen. Here, the fourth wall break is used in an existential moment for Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) – rather than for pure shock.

In fact, the shock value of the technique has depleted over time, as audiences have become more media literate.

Making the invisible visible

The fourth wall breaks from early cinema fast disappeared with the industrialisation of the medium. The rise of the American studio system privileged some film techniques over others.

The “Classical Hollywood” style – think Casablanca (1942) – was built on a premise of invisibility, from the carefully directed eye-lines of actors, to “continuity” editing that stitched together different camera angles.

In Breathless (À bout de souffle, 1959) Jean-Luc Godard opted for jump-cuts and “direct address”. This is when a character speaks to, or looks directly at, the viewer.

Today, direct address is used widely across genres, from Barbie (2023), to Marvel’s Deadpool films (2016, 2018, 2024), and Jane Austen adaptations such as Persuasion (2022).

On television, we’ve seen women creators and characters explore the power of direct address in a re-calibration of the “male gaze”.

One example is Phoebe Waller-Bridges’ confessions to the camera in Fleabag (2016–19). Cinematographer Tony Miller notes how creative camera choices work in conjunction with direct address to make viewers “complicit in her [character’s] journey”.

The direct gaze

A fourth wall break is not always dialogue-driven. In Persona (1966) film auteur Ingmar Bergman directed his actors to stare deep into the abyss of the camera lens, delivering existential malaise.

This direct gaze has been remediated for streaming programs, including in the intense close-up shots of Carmy (Jeremy Allen-White) in the final season of The Bear (2025), and knowing glances from the troubled Rue (Zendaya) in Euphoria (2019–26).

Fourth wall breaks can also be graphic. In Pulp Fiction, Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) traces a square of light on the screen with her finger instead of calling Vincent Vega (John Travolta) a “square”.

And in Michael Haneke’s films Funny Games (1997, 2007) a home invader literally “rewinds” the story when a victim kills his accomplice. These kind of wall breaks call attention to the invisible membrane of the screen.

As filmmaker Mark Cousins attests in The Story of Film: An Odyssey, the medium has advanced over time through innovation and the recycling of techniques such as fourth wall breaks.

Is breaking the fourth wall back in vogue?

With the dominance of literary adaptations for the screen (and IP-driven screen stories in general) we’re likely to see more cases of direct address, as screenwriters seek to creatively refashion texts for the screen. Vladimir, for instance, is an adaptation of Julia May Jonas’ 2022 novel of the same name.

While breaking the fourth wall may have lost its shock value, it remains a bold storytelling device which, if done well, can set apart one screen production from another.

Actor Matt Damon recently pointed out how streamers such as Netflix are discussing the potential to reiterate “the plot three or four times in the dialogue” of a film, to account for people who scroll on their phone while listening to “background TV”.

Having a character speak directly to a distracted audience may be one way to return their gaze to the bigger screen.

Hyper-reality in unscripted TV

Breaking the fourth wall sits within a wider envelope of “metafictional” storytelling.

As screen culture becomes increasingly aware of its own machinery, unscripted genres such as reality TV are not merely breaking the fourth wall, but abandoning the conceit of separation entirely. The boundaries between cast, camera, story producers and audience have become increasingly porous.

Alex Baskin, executive producer of the long-running series Vanderpump Rules (2013–25), describes this as “hyperreality”. In the wake of Scandoval, the cheating scandal of Tom Sandoval, the reality TV cast started to intervene in the producers’ narrative arcs by speaking on camera about audience feedback, and providing meta commentary on their own “edits”.

When Ariana Madix (Sandoval’s ex) refused to film with him, it disrupted plans for a neat season finale based on his apology. Madix left the set, effectively ending the entire show. Fellow cast member Tom Schwartz called it a “plot twist”. Unsurprisingly, Scorsese is a fan of the show.

Meta and hyperreal storytelling will continue to be on the rise as screen creators seek to imbue a point-of-difference in a congested market – serving an ever-distracted audience.

– ref. From Fleabag to Vladimir: why has breaking the fourth wall become so common? – https://theconversation.com/from-fleabag-to-vladimir-why-has-breaking-the-fourth-wall-become-so-common-280716

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karen Stockin, Professor of Marine Ecology, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa – Massey University

A humpback whale repeatedly restranding in shallow waters in the Baltic Sea for more than three weeks has become the focus of a complex debate about reconciling compassion for animals with ethical, evidence-based decision making.

Affectionately known as Timmy, the whale restranded several times and has been growing weaker, failing to recover despite multiple rescue attempts.

Its struggle attracted global attention and triggered debates between experts and the public regarding intervention versus allowing a natural end.

Marine biologists and veterinarians observing the whale made a clear and evidence-based assessment earlier this month: further intervention was unlikely to succeed and would risk prolonging the animal’s suffering.

Yet public pressure – driven by empathy amplified by social media and sharpened into outrage – led German state authorities to permit renewed rescue efforts this week, framed as a “last ditch” effort.

At first glance, it seems an act of compassion. But beneath the surface lies a more difficult truth. As our research shows, when scientific advice is sidelined in favour of public sentiment, outcomes for the very animals we aim to protect can worsen.

The emotional pull of “doing something”

Large, charismatic animals like whales evoke powerful emotional responses. They are intelligent, expressive and visibly vulnerable when stranded.

For many people, choosing not to intervene feels morally unacceptable, with inaction often perceived as neglect.

Wildlife medicine, however, does not operate on instinct or optics. It relies on probabilities, welfare assessments and the recognition that intervention is not always beneficial.

In Timmy’s case, experts from the German Oceanographic Museum and the Institute for Terrestrial and Aquatic Wildlife Research, as well as international organisations, reached a consistent conclusion that the whale was unlikely to survive.

After repeated failed rescues, the environment minister for Germany’s state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania determined that continued intervention would likely worsen the whale’s condition. By then, Timmy was showing clear signs of trauma and exhaustion.

The decision was not made in isolation. In early April, the International Whaling Commission’s stranding expert panel publicly supported the German authorities. It outlined that further rescue attempts would likely increase suffering without improving survival chances.

Euthanasia, frequently suggested as an alternative, was deemed impractical, however. The whale’s partial buoyancy, combined with logistical, safety and personnel challenges meant this was not a viable option.

New Zealand’s experience

In 2021, New Zealand experienced a similar situation with Toa, a stranded orca calf.

The response was extraordinary, mobilising national and international expertise. Veterinarians, marine mammal scientists and stranding specialists contributed to an unprecedented rescue effort.

The scientific consensus, however, was sobering. Given Toa’s young age (unweaned), prolonged separation from his pod, and the challenges of reintegration, his chances of survival were extremely low.

Over time, his welfare declined during extended human care. Many experts ultimately supported euthanasia as the most humane option.

That path was not taken. Driven by public hope and attention, efforts continued. Toa died after weeks in care. In retrospect, the case raised a difficult but necessary question: when expert consensus and public sentiment diverge, which should guide decisions?

When perception overrides expertise

This tension is not anecdotal; it is well documented. Research shows that human perceptions and emotional investment can significantly shape responses to cetacean strandings, sometimes directly conflicting with recommendations based on the animal’s wefare.

In high-profile cases, decision making can shift from expert-led processes to outcomes shaped by public pressure. The patterns observed in Germany – repeated strandings, declining condition and cumulative stress – are strong predictors of poor outcomes, regardless of continued intervention.

The disconnect is clear. Experts assess welfare through measurable physiological, behavioural and environmental markers to infer the mental state of an animal. The public often evaluates it through effort, visibility and intent. The result is a compelling but flawed assumption: that doing more means doing better.

A common principle in veterinary ethics is that the ability to intervene does not justify doing so. Every rescue attempt carries risks: handling stress, injury, prolonged suffering and the diversion of limited resources.

While financial cost is often highlighted, the more critical issue is animal welfare. In repeated stranding cases, the ethical balance becomes increasingly stark.

When recovery is highly unlikely, continued intervention can shift from care to harm. In repeated stranding cases, the ethical calculus becomes sharper. Yet this is precisely the moment when public pressure tends to intensify.

A more difficult kind of care

Compassion is not the problem; it is fundamental to conservation. But compassion without evidence can mislead.

What’s at stake is trust in scientific expertise, veterinary judgement and the difficult reality that the most humane decision is not always the most emotionally satisfying one.

If every high-profile stranding becomes a referendum driven by public pressure, we risk creating a system where decisions are shaped less by animal welfare and more by public visibility.

The instinct to rally around a stranded whale reflects the best of human empathy. But real care in wildlife conservation is not always about action. Sometimes, it requires restraint.

In Toa’s case, official documents later revealed most experts had recommended euthanasia to prevent prolonged suffering.

Timmy’s situation raises a similar question. Not whether people care enough, but whether we are willing to accept that caring also means listening to science, to experience and to the difficult truths they bring.

– ref. Whale strandings draw emotional responses. But repeated rescues can cause more harm – https://theconversation.com/whale-strandings-draw-emotional-responses-but-repeated-rescues-can-cause-more-harm-281137

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anja Shortland, Professor in Political Economy, King’s College London

When evolutionary biologist Joseph Popp coded the first documented piece of ransomware in 1989, he had little idea it would become a major criminal business model capable of bringing economies to their knees.

Popp, who worked for the World Health Organization at the time, wanted to warn people about the dangers of ignoring health warnings, poor sexual hygiene and (human) virus transmission.

He sent out 20,0000 floppy discs that, when loaded, flashed up a demand for money to regain files that had supposedly been encrypted (in fact, it was just their file names). He was later arrested and charged with 11 counts of blackmail, but declared mentally unfit to stand trial.

In 1996, two Columbia University computer scientists published a paper explaining how criminals could use more sophisticated versions of Popp’s scheme to mount large-scale extortion operations. At the heart of this was malicious software that could be used to encrypt, block access to or steal a person or organisation’s files and data.

However, two preconditions still had to be met for ransomware to become a feasible criminal business: communication channels that were difficult to monitor, and a payments process outside financial regulation.

The Tor protocol, released by US intelligence services to protect their covert communications, solved the first problem in 2004. Cryptocurrencies solved the second – in particular, when bitcoin cash machines started appearing in North American cities from 2013.

Today, artifical intelligence makes malware coding and crafting convincing phishing-emails in any language simple. And the latest model in Anthropic’s AI system, Claude Mythos, recently proved more effective at hacking into computer systems than humans.

As an expert in extortive crime, I am increasingly concerned about public and political apathy to the threats posed by ransomware. To better understand these, it’s worth tracing its evolution over the past two decades – and how improvements in computer security and law enforcement, plus changes in data regulation, have led to new criminal strategies each time.

Cut out the middlemen

The first generation, which came to global attention in the mid-2010s, was known as “commodity ransomware”. A pioneering example, Cryptolocker, was developed by Russia-based hackers who infiltrated hundreds of thousands of computers, seeking to cut out the middlemen previously needed to commit financial fraud. They proved that a large majority of their victims would happily pay a small ransom to restore data that had been locked by their malware.

As both competent and incompetent hackers piled into this new market, victims shared information about rogue operators and put them out of business. This led to the second generation of ransomware such as Ryuk, which emerged in 2018.

In this phase, criminals abandoned the indiscriminate “spray-and-pray” approach in favour of targeting individual cash-rich businesses. They would set an individual ransom, negotiate with the company, and even offer to help with decryption if paid. Fast-rising ransoms more than compensated for this increased administrative effort.

In response, many companies began investing in multi-factor authentication, better threat monitoring, advance warning systems and software patches for known vulnerabilities.

However, these security benefits were soon offset by the impact of COVID on work practices across the world. The pandemic led to widespread remote working, with many people using unsecured devices and connections that were vulnerable to cyber-attack.

A multibillion-dollar industry

The next ransomware innovation was driven by the emergence of back-up systems that enabled companies to restore encrypted files without the criminals’ help. This was coupled with the emergence of tighter data privacy regulation such as GDPR in Europe and the UK.

Invented in 2019, third-generation ransomware weaponised these regulations, which threatened firms with massive fines if confidential data about clients or staff was revealed. The criminal gangs now sought out and exfiltrated an organisation’s most sensitive files, then threatened to publicise them through dedicated dark web leak sites.

This so-called double-extortion model – encrypting an organisation’s data while threatening to make it public – brought many businesses back to the negotiation table.

Ransomware had become a multibillion-dollar industry – with the Conti gang, sheltered by Russia and employing hundreds of people, among the key players setting new records for ransomware demands. Its attacks on critical infrastructure and hospitals saw it sanctioned by the UK government in 2023.

This new approach forced many governments to row back on imposing hefty fines for data breaches, since many were the result of criminal attacks. Meanwhile, new initiatives by law enforcement – supported by the private sector – targeted and broke up the largest and most egregious ransomware gangs.

Today’s fourth generation of ransomware, building on the latest AI technology, looks nimbler and slimmed-down in comparison. Anyone who gains access to a network can lease weapons-grade malware on the dark web without forming long-term ties with a particular gang.

Advanced AI-based hacking tools make ransomware accessible to many more criminals and politically motivated hacktivists. And around one-quarter of breaches still result in ransom payments. For criminals sheltered by their governments, only the digital infrastructure is at risk of being taken down by western law enforcement.

Lessons not learned

While coverage of Claude Mythos suggests even the most sophisticated cyber defences could now be vulnerable, the troubling reality is that many individuals and organisations are still using out-of date, unpatched or only partially upgraded software. This means even early-generation ransomware techniques are still lucrative.

While Popp sent out his floppy discs to promote better sexual hygiene, today’s poor cyberhygiene is leaving many public and private networks open to malware attacks. The intended lesson of his original ransomware caper – be vigilant and properly heed health warnings – has still only been partially learnt in the digital world.

Many western societies appear to have grown accepting of criminals leaching on business conducted on the internet. Not even a steady stream of human fatalities, caused by attacks on hospitals and medical providers, has generated the level of response required to stamp out this dangerous threat.

The hope that governments sheltering cybercriminals can be encouraged (or forced) to stop them targeting critical national infrastructure appears increasingly fragile amid current geopolitical tensions. At all levels of society, we need to get smarter about cyber defence.

– ref. From floppy discs to Claude Mythos, how ransomware grew into a multibillion-dollar industry – https://theconversation.com/from-floppy-discs-to-claude-mythos-how-ransomware-grew-into-a-multibillion-dollar-industry-281000

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert James Nicholls, Professor of Climate Adaptation, University of East Anglia

Venice has co-existed with the sea throughout its 1,500-year history, perhaps better than any other city on earth. Yet over the past century it has flooded increasingly often, as the sea rises and the city itself sinks under its own weight.

We recently published an academic analysis of the various options Venice has to ensure its long-term survival.

Our study compares a range of possible strategies against different degrees of sea-level rise. These include maintaining the current system of mobile barriers, building ring dykes to separate the city from the lagoon in which it sits, enclosing the whole lagoon within a much larger defence system, or – in the most extreme case – relocating much of the city and its population inland.

Each option becomes relevant at different points as sea levels rise. The city’s flood defences have already been upgraded substantially, at a cost of €6 billion (£5.2 billion). This involves a series of huge steel gates attached to the seafloor, known as the Mose barriers. When raised, these barriers effectively seal off the Venetian Lagoon from the wider Mediterranean Sea.

The Mose barriers mean the flood risks are currently manageable, but the frequency of their use is rising. In the first five years of use (between 2020 and 2025) the system was closed for 108 high waters, while in the first two months of 2026 it was activated 30 times. And as sea levels continue to climb, it would need to be closed more and more often – potentially for weeks at a time each year.

This creates a series of problems. Frequent closures would disrupt shipping and tourism, alter the lagoon’s ecology, and would require major new systems for sewage treatment and huge pumps to maintain lagoon water levels. A system designed for occasional protection risks becoming a semi-permanent barrier – something it was never intended to be.

With additional measures, such as raising the city by injecting sea water into the rocks deep underground, reversing the subsidence to some degree, these barriers could remain effective for some time – perhaps even after a metre of sea-level rise.

But even under relatively low levels of warming, the sea is projected to keep rising for centuries, eventually pushing beyond what the barriers can handle.

At that point, more radical measures may be necessary. Building a ring of dykes around the city would physically separate Venice from the lagoon, but may be necessary by the end of this century.

A fully enclosed lagoon – protected by a much larger “super levee” and supported by continuous pumping – could protect the city from up to 10m of sea level rise, but at severe cost to the living lagoon.

The only other option is to relocate the city to safer ground. This may be necessary beyond about 5m of sea-level rise, which is projected to occur after 2300.

Difficult choices ahead

The financial costs of these choices are substantial. We used the costs of Mose and other previous engineering projects (adjusted for inflation to 2024 prices) to estimate the cost of each adaptation strategy.

The dykes could cost between €500 million and €4.5 billion. Closing the lagoon with a super levee could initially cost more than €30 billion, and relocating the city could cost up to €100 billion.

But costs aren’t the only issue. How do you even put a price on the cultural value of Venice? Especially as none of these measures will be able to sustain the Venice we see today in the long-term. Adaptation can manage change up to a certain point – beyond that, we are no longer preserving the present. Rather, we are designing a fundamentally different future.

Our analysis shows there is no optimal adaptation strategy. Any approach involves trade-offs between the wellbeing and safety of Venice’s residents, economic prosperity, the future of the lagoon’s ecosystems, heritage preservation, and the region’s traditions and culture. In addition, many of these measures can take decades to fully implement, so early planning is essential.

At least Venice is thinking about these things in a long-term way. Most vulnerable coastal areas are not. In fact, many continue to attract businesses and people, even as rising seas gradually narrow the range of viable long-term options.

With its long and unique history, Venice has particular challenges, but all low-lying coastal areas should recognise the danger of long-term sea-level rise and start preparing now.

– ref. Venice is sinking – we analysed every plan to save it, and none would preserve the city as we know it – https://theconversation.com/venice-is-sinking-we-analysed-every-plan-to-save-it-and-none-would-preserve-the-city-as-we-know-it-280891

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John N. Trey Rogers, Professor of Turfgrass Research, Michigan State University

With 104 matches in 16 stadiums across Canada, the United States and Mexico, the 2026 FIFA World Cup will be soccer’s biggest event ever.

It’s our job as turfgrass researchers hired by FIFA, the game’s governing body, to make sure those pitches feel the same for players and that the grass thrives.

That’s not so simple. In fact, it seemed like an impossible challenge at first.

Picking the right turf

The scale of this job was unprecedented: three distinct climatic zones, over 3,100 miles between the farthest stadiums, and venues ranging from stadiums open to the heat of Mexico City and Miami to enclosed NFL stadiums in Dallas and Atlanta, to the cooler climates of Boston and Toronto.

Despite the unique situations of each stadium, FIFA has a long list of rules for how the fields must be built. The grass has to be real but reinforced so it can handle a lot of games and ceremonies. Each field needs an automatic irrigation system, good drainage, built-in vacuum and vents to keep the grass and soil aerated, and artificial grow lights to keep the grass healthy.

Each host city is responsible for figuring out how to meet these requirements.

Right now, eight of the 2026 host stadiums normally use artificial turf – how will they temporarily switch to real grass for the World Cup?

Even trickier, five of the stadiums have domes, which means the grass gets less sunlight. How can they keep the grass alive for eight weeks?

How can we make sure that a player competing in Philadelphia has the same on‑field experience as a player competing in Guadalajara or Seattle?

Our team at the University of Tennessee and Michigan State University has spent the past five years researching these questions to provide guidance to the host cities. Here, we’ll explore some of the most important questions we faced: which grass to grow, how it’s grown, how we plan to make it even stronger, and how to move it safely to each stadium.

Growing the grass

Typically, sod is grown on native soil. When harvested, the roots are cut, which shocks the plant and can delay root reestablishment for several weeks.

That wouldn’t work for the World Cup because games may take place within just 10 days of installation. If the roots can’t become established fast enough, the grass will be weaker and more prone to damage.

To address this, we decided to use sod grown on plastic with sand as a base.

Think of it like growing grass in a plastic tray, but on a much larger scale. When the roots reach the plastic, they spread sideways and intertwine, forming a dense rooting system. Because the roots stay intact during harvest, the sod experiences minimal stress and can be ready to play almost immediately after installation.

Sod for sports fields is typically grown in a base of sand to provide quick drainage and prevent the grass from getting compacted as the roots become established.

The problem is that growing grass in 2 inches of sand on a plastic sheet comes with risks. Because of the plastic, a single heavy rainfall while the grass is becoming established can wash the exposed sand away.

For warm‑season sod farmers – those that grow grass that thrives in high temperatures – sand washing away is less of a concern because the Bermudagrass they grow establishes quickly. On the other hand, cool‑season sod farmers usually grow Kentucky bluegrass, which germinates slowly compared to other turfgrass species, increasing the risk of washouts.

We decided to mix a faster‑germinating species – perennial ryegrass – with Kentucky bluegrass grown on plastic and then tested various seeding ratios. We found that an 84% Kentucky bluegrass and 16% perennial ryegrass mixture produced a stronger sod than pure Kentucky bluegrass alone four months after seeding. Since 2025, these findings have been used on sod farms across North America, beyond those growing grass for the World Cup.

Stabilizing the surface

“One World Cup game is equal to a Super Bowl,” FIFA officials like to remind us. Since each field will host a lot of games and ceremonies, including up to nine games over six weeks, the fields need to be extremely strong.

To make them tougher, we mix plastic fibers into the natural grass, which creates a hybrid turfgrass system. As the grass grows, its roots wrap around these plastic fibers, which helps to keep the surface stable and firm. These fibers are also colored to match the natural grass, so even if the real grass wears down, they help the field stay green.

Hybrid turfgrass systems can be created in two ways: by stitching plastic fibers into an existing grass field or by laying down a carpet of plastic fibers that is then filled with sand and seeded to grow new grass.

Stitched systems have been used in World Cup games for a long time, but carpet systems are still fairly new to the tournament – they have been used only in the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

We tested eight carpet systems to see how they performed and found that all could be successfully grown on plastic. All the surface performance tests – ball bounce, rotational resistance and surface hardness – on these eight carpets also met FIFA standards.

One type of carpet was chosen by three host cities for their stadiums: Vancouver, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.

Getting the sod from farm to stadium

Most of the stadiums – 14 of them – will have sod that is grown on plastic, then rolled up and shipped to the venue during spring 2026. Some of the grasses won’t have to travel far, but some will be shipped in refrigerated trucks across the country. Since the sod remains fully intact after harvest, it can withstand long travel times.

Five of those stadiums don’t get enough sunlight, so they will use cool-season grasses that require less light than warm-season grasses.

While the open-air stadium in Miami will use Bermudagrass, the domed stadium in Houston, despite being at a similar latitude, will use the Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass mix. That means cross-country trips from cool-season sod farms in Denver and Washington to domed stadiums in the southern regions is essential.

It’s wild to think that this is all necessary, but the length of the tournament and unique stadium environments call for innovation.

– ref. We designed the turf for soccer’s biggest World Cup ever – here’s how we created the same playing experience across 3 countries – https://theconversation.com/we-designed-the-turf-for-soccers-biggest-world-cup-ever-heres-how-we-created-the-same-playing-experience-across-3-countries-279536

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Pace, Researcher and Lecturer at the Thompson Institute, University of the Sunshine Coast

Your brain is currently expending about a fifth of your body’s energy, and almost none of that is being used for what you’re doing right now. Reading these words, feeling the weight of your body in a chair – all of this together barely changes the rate at which your brain consumes energy, perhaps by as little as 1%.

The other 99% is used on the activity the brain generates on its own: neurons (nerve cells) firing and signalling to each other regardless of whether you’re thinking hard, watching television, dreaming, or simply closing your eyes.

Even in the brain areas dedicated to vision, the visuals coming in through your eyes shape the activity of your neurons less than this internal ongoing action.

In a paper just published in Psychological Review, we argue that our imagination sculpts the images we see in our mind’s eye by carving into this background brain activity. In fact, imagination may have more to do with the brain activity it silences than with the activity it creates.

Imagining as seeing in reverse

Consider how “seeing” is understood to work. Light enters the eyes and sparks neural signals. These travel through a sequence of brain regions dedicated to vision, each building on the work of the last.

The earliest regions pick out simple features such as edges and lines. The next combine those into shapes. The ones after that recognise objects, and those at the top of the sequence assemble whole faces and scenes.

Neuroscientists call this “feedforward activity” – the gradual transformation of raw light into something you can name, whether it’s a dog, a friend, or both.

In brain science, the standard view is that visual imagination is this original seeing process run in reverse, from within your mind rather than from light entering your eyes.

So, when you hold the face of a friend in mind, you start with an abstract idea of them – a memory or a name, pulled from the filing cabinet of regions that sit beyond the visual system itself.

That idea travels back down through the visual sequence into the early visual areas, which serve as your brain’s workshop where a face would normally be reconstructed from its parts – the curve of a jawline, the specific shade of an eye. These downward signals are called “feedback activity”.

A signal through the static

However, prior research shows this feedback activity doesn’t drive visual neurons to fire in the same way as when you actually see something.

At least in the brain regions early in the vision process, feedback instead modulates brain activity. This means it increases or decreases the activity of the brain cells, reshaping what those neurons are already doing.

Even behind closed eyes, early visual brain areas keep producing shifting patterns of neural activity resembling those the brain uses to process real vision.

Imagination doesn’t need to build a face from scratch. The raw material is already there. In the internal rumblings of your visual areas, fragments of every face you know are drifting through at low volume. Your friend’s face, even now, is passing through in pieces, scattered and unrecognised. What imagining does is hold still the currents that would otherwise carry those pieces away.

All that’s needed is a small, targeted suppression of neurons that are pulled by brain activity in a different direction, and your friend’s face settles out of the noise, like a signal carving its way through static.

Steering the brain

In mice, artificially switching on as few as 14 neurons in a sensory brain region is enough for the animal to notice it and lick a sugar-water spout in response. This shows how small an intervention in the brain can be while still steering behaviour.

While we don’t know how many neurons are needed to steer internal activity into a conscious experience of imagination in humans, growing evidence shows the importance of dampening neural activity.

In our earlier experiments, when people imagined something, the fingerprint it left on their behaviour matched suppression of neuronal activity – not firing. Other researchers have since found the same pattern.

Other lines of evidence strengthen our theory, too. About one in 100 people have aphantasia, which means they can’t form mental images at all. One in 30 form these images so vividly they approach the intensity of images we actually see, known as hyperphantasia.

Research has found that people with weaker mental imagery have more excitable early visual areas, where neurons fire more readily on their own. This is consistent with a visual system whose spontaneous patterns are harder to hold in shape.

Taking all this together, the spontaneous activity reshaping hypothesis – our new theory that imagination carves images out of the steady stream of ongoing brain activity – explains why imagination usually feels weaker than sight. It also explains why we rarely lose track of which is which.

Visual perception arrives with a strength and regularity the brain’s own internal patterns don’t match. Imagination works with those patterns rather than against them, reshaping what is already there into something we can almost see.

– ref. How does imagination really work in the brain? New theory upends what we knew – https://theconversation.com/how-does-imagination-really-work-in-the-brain-new-theory-upends-what-we-knew-280803

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gwenda Tavan, Adjunct Associate Professor of Politics, La Trobe University

Multiculturalism first made its way into Australian political dialogue in the 1970s, with the idea that the country could, and should, be home to people from all over the world.

Inevitably, there was backlash against the idea, with opponents arguing it was the creation of political elites, such as academics, bureaucrats, the “ethnic lobby” and left-wing politicians.

Critics have been particularly vocal in recent times, arguing those in favour of multiculturalism champion an “ethnic rights” agenda at the expense of national cohesion.

But this perspective ignores the important role that politicians of the right played in its development. In Australia, one stands taller than most: Malcolm Fraser.

As Liberal prime minister from 1975 to 1983, Fraser made a series of decisions that would forever change Australia’s social fabric. His multicultural agenda would also become a defining feature of his political legacy.

Politics and policy share a love-hate relationship, but we can’t have one without the other. In this six-part series, we’re chronicling how policies have shaped Australia’s prime ministers, for better or worse, and what it means for how politicians tackle today’s big challenges.

Anglo assimilation

When mass European immigration began in 1947, the Labor government under Ben Chifley pledged migrants would be quickly assimilated. Welcomed as equals, they would cast off their old ethnic loyalties and be absorbed into a homogeneous and cohesive (Anglo) Australian culture.

To facilitate this, migrants were given moderately easy access to Australian citizenship. Community-based groups were tasked with educating newcomers into the privileges of the “Australian way of life”.

By the mid-1960s, assimilation’s failures were obvious. Not all migrants embraced citizenship. Most refused to abandon their original ethnic identities. Growing social and economic disadvantage among low-skilled, non-English speakers resulted in adverse employment rates, health outcomes, income and English language capabilities.

Migrants also demanded more input into the policies affecting them. Concerned about threats to social cohesion, the immigration department discarded assimilation in favour of “integration”. This acknowledged that migrants’ ability to maintain their cultural heritage, and the adequate provision of social services, were crucial to successful settlement.

Ending ‘White Australia’

The evolution of multiculturalism is often associated with the Whitlam Labor government.

By the early 1970s, Australia had accepted almost three million new settlers. Whitlam cut immigration drastically on economic grounds, but advocated policies to enhance social equity for all Australians.

Importantly, his government abandoned the White Australia Policy, which disallowed non-white immigration. It implemented a universal admissions system instead.

A speech by Immigration Minister Al Grassby, called “A multi-cultural society for the future”, is often viewed as a defining early statement on multiculturalism. Several important initiatives emerged: the national Telephone Interpreter Service, English-language education centres, some state-based ethnic community councils and a fledgling ethnic broadcasting service.

The Racial Discrimination Act was introduced in 1975, making it unlawful for a person to discriminate on the grounds of race, colour, descent or national and ethnic origins.

Diversity, not division

Liberal Malcolm Fraser had been extremely supportive of multiculturalism from opposition. As opposition spokesperson for labour and immigration, Fraser released a paper in 1974 that referenced multiculturalism. He was among the first politicians to adopt the term.

As prime minister, he championed the policy fiercely. Fraser was an economic dry and a social liberal who supported mass immigration. He shared Whitlam’s belief that cultural pluralism was an asset to be fostered in the pursuit of social cohesion and equity.

His government supported the recommendations of the 1978 Galbally Report. This acknowledged the “extensive cultural and racial diversity existing in Australia”, advocated for welfare and social services to be significantly expanded, and advised:

ethnic groups themselves must take on the task of advising government of the need and priorities of migrants and ensuring that ethnic cultures are fostered and preserved.

If Whitlam dismantled White Australia in theory, the Fraser government did it in practice. It accepted some 200,000 migrants from Asian countries, including nearly 56,000 Vietnamese people who applied as refugees.

After decades of government-mandated European migration, this was a monumental change to Australian society.

Multicultural programs also expanded significantly during the Fraser years. The Immigration Department became the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. Translator and Interpreter Services and language education services expanded.

The research-oriented Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs was established. Ethnic broadcasting evolved into a permanent service, SBS. Migrant resource centres assisted refugees and migrants with all aspects of settlement.

The Federation of Ethnic Communities Council was founded, a publicly-funded umbrella organisation for the state-based Ethnic Communities Councils that mediated relations between governments and ethnic groups.

Together, these programs constituted a uniquely Australian “ethnic rights” model of multiculturalism.

Yet, as Fraser emphasised, there were limits to how much cultural pluralism a cohesive society could tolerate:

multiculturalism is about diversity, not division […] It is about cultural and ethnic differences set within a framework of shared fundamental values which enables them to co-exist on a complementary rather than competitive basis.

Lasting change

In the years that followed Fraser’s prime ministership, multiculturalism changed shape.

Public criticism mounted during the 1980s, with a report at the time referring to the policy as “social engineering which […] invites injustice, inequality and divisiveness”.

The Hawke Labor government moved the emphasis from ethnic rights to citizenship. People could express their cultural identity, but only if they had an “overriding and unifying commitment to Australia” first.

Political attacks increased after the 1996 election of the socially-conservative Howard Liberal government. John Howard later admitted he wanted to “end the divisive features of multiculturalism and place […] greater emphasis on those things which united us as Australians”.

But decades on, Australia remains a highly multicultural nation, even as the politics around the policy shift.

The key multicultural institutions set in motion by Whitlam and cemented by Fraser still remain, such as the Racial Discrimination Act and SBS. Successive Labor governments since 2007 have pledged their continuing support for multiculturalism, including the Albanese government.

Five years before he died, Fraser named multiculturalism as one of his biggest achievements. The 2015 obituaries show how synonymous Fraser became with the diverse Australia we have today.

As it reckons with a resurgent One Nation and attempts to formulate a new immigration policy, the current Liberal Party could do to remember its multicultural history, championed by one of its most successful leaders.

– ref. Multicultural Australia was built under a Liberal prime minister. The current party should take heed – https://theconversation.com/multicultural-australia-was-built-under-a-liberal-prime-minister-the-current-party-should-take-heed-277732

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Davy, Senior Lecturer, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Every welfare program negotiates a fundamental tension: between fiscal responsibility and consistency on one hand, and care for real people with complex needs and situations on the other.

Over the past decade or so, one Australian program after another has tried to absolve itself of that tension by handing off part of its decision-making to a computer.

Robodebt automated welfare debt recovery, with devastating results.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is moving towards computer-guided planning tools to generate budgets after participants’ support needs are assessed. Many worry this amounts to a form of “robo-planning”.

Since November, the new Support at Home program has used a rules-based algorithm called the Integrated Assessment Tool to decide how much home-care funding older Australians receive.

Each of these systems promises to replace fallible human judgement with something more consistent, efficient and fair.

Now, the Commonwealth Ombudsman is investigating complaints about the aged care assessment tool.

This is just the latest moment to ask: what do we lose when we automate decisions that really should be difficult and made case by case?

What’s the controversial aged care algorithm?

The Integrated Assessment Tool is a structured digital assessment used during a home interview with an older person seeking government-subsidised care. Assessors enter information about mobility, cognition, daily living and the person’s broader circumstances.

The tool converts these inputs into scores. It then applies rules to sort the person into one of eight funding classifications.

Assessors are barred from overriding the tool’s classification except in a small set of pre-defined circumstances.

Despite requests for the technical specifications, and for the identity of the team that designed the classification logic, details have not been released.

Is this really the new Robodebt?

Some commentators have drawn parallels between the Integrated Assessment Tool and Robodebt, but the comparison doesn’t quite work.

Robodebt was implemented at arm’s length from both welfare recipients and compliance officers. Debt notices were sent without human involvement in individual cases.

However, the Integrated Assessment Tool still involves an assessor sitting down to interview an older person in their home.

The closer parallel is with NDIS assessment reforms. These appear to be moving in the same direction with scoring tools that convert disability into numerical metrics, and opaque algorithms with weighting that has not been made public.

The health department insists the Integrated Assessment Tool for aged care is not artificial intelligence (AI). It says it is a rules-based classification algorithm, not a machine-learning model. But whether a system involves AI or not is beside the point.

Deeper issues sit underneath the technology.

There are deeper issues

The key ethical problems in algorithmic decision-making relate to opacity, discretion and accountability. In other words, problems relate to whether the people affected can see how the system works, whether the professionals using it can exercise judgement, and whether anyone can be held to answer for its decisions.

A standardised tool does deliver consistency: everyone is processed the same way. But consistency is not fairness, especially when the standard is hidden and applied to people whose needs do not fit standard categories.

US public policy researcher Michael Lipsky made the case in his classic 1980 study Street-Level Bureaucracy – discretion is a defining feature in frontline public service work.

Teachers, social workers, nurses and aged-care assessors exercise judgement precisely because rules are always incomplete, resources are constrained, and every client is unique. Strip discretion out of these encounters, and the assessment can no longer respond to what it finds, only to what the tool allows.

The appeal of the algorithm is partly a belief that machine thinking is less biased than human thinking. One review calls this the “perceived mechanistic objectivity” of computer-generated analytics. In other words, people defer to algorithmic outputs because they appear neutral, and may even override human judgement.

This is partly what aged-care assessors mean when they describe feeling “handcuffed” by the new system. The algorithm’s apparent objectivity makes their professional judgement look like bias, even when they know better how to respond to the person in front of them.

This appearance of objectivity also does political work some have called “agency laundering” – distancing oneself from morally consequential decisions by attributing them to an algorithm. Responsibility is diffused, and it becomes hard to say exactly who decided that a particular older person should receive less support this year than last.

None of this is abstract

By late March this year, some 800 people had formally requested reviews of their Support at Home assessments.

Media reports describe older people being reassessed under the new system at lower funding levels than they received previously, even where their needs had increased.

Minister for Aged Care Sam Rae has defended the reforms by pointing out that A$4 billion was incorrectly allocated under the previous system.

This may well be true. But fixing allocation errors is not the same as building a system that older Australians can understand, question and contest where necessary.

What happens next?

The Commonwealth Ombudsman has rightly said it cannot comment on the substance of its investigation while the investigation is underway.

So the government should pause using the classification algorithm until the investigation concludes.

Failing that, the minimum owed to older Australians and the public is transparency: publish the algorithm itself and its classification logic, reveal who designed it and how, and open all of it to scrutiny by sector experts, advocates and the people it affects.

Eligibility criteria and funding rules are public documents. A scoring system that determines whether someone can safely stay in their own home should be held to at least the same standard.

– ref. First Robodebt, now NDIS and aged care: how computers still decide who gets care – https://theconversation.com/first-robodebt-now-ndis-and-aged-care-how-computers-still-decide-who-gets-care-280711

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Aikhenvald, Professor and Australian Laureate Fellow, Jawun Research Institute, CQUniversity Australia

When the Crusaders descended upon the eastern shores of the Mediterranean at the end of the 11th century, they had to communicate with each other, with traders and with locals.

Many of them spoke different Romance languages: Italian (especially from the then powerful city-states of Venice and Genoa), Provençal, French or their forerunner, Latin.

Most Westerners in southern Europe were French, especially from between Marseilles and Genoa, from where ships and traders sailed towards the Middle East. These Westerners, as a whole, came to be called Franci (Franks, or French) by Arabs and Greeks.

Around the time of the Fourth Crusade (1202–04) – and perhaps earlier – a mixed language gradually emerged in the eastern Mediterranean, and later spread to the west.

This common language used by the “Franks” and those who traded and fought with them was also known as Sabir, Bastard Italian and Bastard Spanish. But you might be most familiar with the term Lingua Franca: literally, Franks’ language.

The Frankish language was a mixture of simplified Italian, French and Spanish, with a smattering of Arabic and Turkish, and was in use across the Mediterranean shores in the Middle East until the late 19th century, before it faded away.

Written with lower case, lingua franca refers to any language used between people who have no other language in common.

An ancient tradition

Lingua francas go back to antiquity.

Sanskrit was a lingua franca throughout Southeast Asia and Central Asia in the first millennium CE, via trade and religion.

Around the Mediterranean, Greek was a lingua franca from about 300 BCE until about 500 CE, used in trade, literature and education, and in spreading early Christianity.

Between the second and the fourth centuries, standard Latin replaced Greek as the lingua franca of the expanding Catholic Church. Latin took over as the pan-European language of religion, culture and scholarship, and continued well into the 19th century.

From the 17th century, Arabic has been a lingua franca across the Islamic world, connecting communities across Africa and Asia.

That same century, with the rise of France as an economic power, French gradually replaced Latin in many areas as the first “global” lingua franca in politics, diplomacy, trade and education. French was the language of royal courts; scholars, aristocrats, merchants, and diplomats would use French to talk and to write to each other.

French continued to be the main language of international relations up until the end of the second world war.

After the 1940s, partly due to the growing influence of the United States, English has become the main lingua franca across the world.

Crafting a new language

With the colonial expansion of imperialistic powers and their languages Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, German and Dutch, since about 15th century, the name lingua franca came to be used as a common noun.

Throughout European colonisation, people from different language groups were forced to work together as slaves or indentured workers. They would communicate with each other, and with their masters, using a simplified language, for limited purposes – simple commands, questions and statements using a mixture of what each of them knew.

Such makeshift means of communication is known as pidgin language (from the English word business).

Pidgins can be used as lingua francas. Once speakers of a pidgin start marrying each other, a pidgin may become the sole language spoken by the next generation of children. It then expands into a fully-fledged language – a Creole – used for all purposes.

Creoles such as Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea, Sranan in Suriname, Kristang in Malaysia, and Haitian Creole in Haiti are lingua francas used across these countries.

A global language can also be of artificial origin.

The end of the 19th century saw an explosion of interest in constructing global languages. The most prominent of these was Esperanto, “the language of hope”, created by Ludwik Zamenhof in 1887 as “the international language”, or a general lingua franca. Esperanto still boasts a couple of thousand native speakers, and many more enthusiasts, but is gradually on the wane.

Today’s global lingua franca

Lingua francas arise when required, and fade when replaced by others.

German faded as a lingua franca with the loss of German colonies after the first world war. Portuguese remains a lingua franca across Brazil, and Spanish across other South American countries.

And the global use of French is still there: we send a letter par avion, or to poste restante.

But there is one winner, well ahead of the rest. English has now grown to be the global language, spreading well beyond native speakers and the former colonies of English-speaking powers. English is the language of world-wide diplomacy, scholarship, and especially technological advances, social media and artificial intelligence.

Does the aggressive spread of English threaten to put an end to all other languages, minority languages and other lingua franca alike, and language diversity across the world? The jury is still out.

The growing importance of Mandarin Chinese as a main lingua franca across China, of Arabic across Africa and the Middle East, and people’s resilience to keep their languages going – and with them their cultures and histories – may well keep English at bay.

– ref. What is a lingua franca? A brief history, from the Crusades to today – https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-lingua-franca-a-brief-history-from-the-crusades-to-today-275807