Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Inga Lass, Senior research fellow, The University of Melbourne

Every year, one of Australia’s biggest longitudinal surveys provides a range of insights on how the nation is changing.

The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, released today, reveals trends on a wide range of aspects of life in Australia, including household relationships, income, health and wellbeing.

HILDA has been following the same people every year since 2001, with about 16,000 respondents in the latest survey. This makes it possible to examine how the lives of Australians have changed across several aspects. Funded by the Australian government and managed by the Melbourne Institute, the survey is one of Australia’s most valuable social research tools.

So, what are the highlights from the 2025 report?

Friendships are declining

Friendships are clearly important, providing both emotional and practical support to people. However, agreement with the statement “I seem to have a lot of friends” has fallen noticeably from 2010 to 2023. This long-term decline accelerated during the COVID-19 period, when social distancing measures often prevented face-to-face interactions with friends.

The decline in friendships has repercussions for people’s wellbeing. The report shows a low perceived number of friends is associated fewer social activities, greater feelings of loneliness and poorer mental health. This is all the more concerning because it often gets harder to make friends as life goes on.

Time stress is rising again

Time stress – feeling rushed often or almost always – is common for many Australians, especially women. In 2023, 38% of women reported frequent time stress, while only 29% of men did. This gap has persisted over the past two decades. Rates fell sharply in 2020 during the pandemic’s first year but have since returned to pre-pandemic levels for both groups.

Retirement age has seen a big shift

Australia has seen a dramatic transformation of retirement over the past 20 years, retiring later than they used to. In 2003, nearly 70% of women and almost half of men aged 60–64 were fully retired. By 2023, this dropped to 41% for women and 27% for men.

Retirement rates have also declined among those aged 65-69. Over the same period, the Age Pension eligibility age was equalised for men and women at 65 by 2013, then gradually increased to 67 between 2017 and 2023.

The decision to retire is no longer driven purely by personal preference or age alone. It’s increasingly shaped by policy, housing wealth, super balances and whether someone can afford to stop working.

We’re paying more in income tax

Australians are now paying the highest average rate of income tax since the turn of the millennium. But the trend over this period hasn’t always been upwards. Between 2006 and 2011, the average tax rate for full-time workers actually fell, from 19.4% to 15.7%. Since 2011, however, the trend has overwhelmingly been upwards.

Across the population as a whole aged 15 and over, the average share of income paid as income tax rose to 11.7% in the 2022-23 financial year. For full-time workers, the average rate was higher, at 20.3%.

Bodily pain

Pain can severely affect people’s ability to take part in day-to-day activities, work, and lead happy and satisfying lives.

The new data shows the extent of bodily pain Australians report has risen over the last two decades – and it’s not just due to an ageing population.
We asked respondents about whether they experienced pain and how much it affected their day-to-day life, then calculated a score from 0 (no bodily pain) to 100 (severe pain).

The average levels of pain that women reported increased by 5.6% between 2001 and 2003 (from 27 points to 28.5 points). For men, pain increased by 4.8% (27 points to 28.3 points).

Pain scores were slightly higher for women than for men across all years.

We adjusted these scores for age, suggesting the reported rise is not due to ageing but instead other factors, such as an increase in chronic conditions, obesity, and people being more likely to report their pain.

Ferdi Botha receives funding from the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (CE200100025).

Roger Wilkins receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Inga Lass and Kyle Peyton do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Fewer friends, more time stress: the essential charts from this year’s HILDA survey – https://theconversation.com/fewer-friends-more-time-stress-the-essential-charts-from-this-years-hilda-survey-265475

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Garritt C. Van Dyk, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Waikato

Food prices remain high even as inflation eases, and instant noodles are at the top of the list of cheap options.

More than 100 billion servings of instant ramen are consumed each year, making it one of the world’s most popular convenience foods.

Instant noodles are a global commodity. But when were they invented, and has ramen always been a “struggle meal”?

Read more:
Can I eat instant noodles every day? What does it do to my health?

Early origins

Most people attribute ramen’s global popularity to its low price and easy preparation, but a look at the origin story behind the noodles reveals working-class roots and innovative cooking techniques.

In 1910, Ozaki Kan’ichi, a former Japanese customs official, abandoned his career to open a Chinese restaurant in Asakusa, a working-class district in Tokyo. Rai-Rai Ken was the first Chinese restaurant owned by a Japanese national.

Before it was called ramen, thin Chinese wheat noodles in soup were called chūka soba (literally, Chinese noodles). Kan’ichi’s menu featured a soy-flavoured soup with noodles, roast pork, dried seaweed and fish cake. The broth and toppings were new additions to previous versions of Chinese noodle soups served in Japan, making a more substantial meal.

An ancient Chinese technique using alkaline water, kansui, made the noodles curly, chewy and a light yellow colour.

Timing for the new food was perfect, as workers moved away from agriculture in rural areas to urban centres for work, education and training.

Chūka soba became a popular and affordable choice, served from cafes, pushcarts and informal Chinese and Western-style restaurants catering to students and industrial workers at all hours.

Postwar Japan

During World War II, restaurants and food carts (yatai) were prohibited in Japan, in an effort to preserve scarce food resources.

After the war, US forces in Japan enforced rationing and continued the wartime ban on restaurants. To make up for rice shortages, large quantities of US wheat were imported to prevent famine. The food-distribution system, however, was inefficient, insecure and prone to corruption.

Wheat made its way onto the black market, where it was turned into noodles and sold from illegal carts in bombed-out cities.

A Taiwanese immigrant, Momofuku Ando, saw the long lines of hungry people patiently waiting for noodles and was inspired to find a way to invent noodles that would be quick and easy to make at home.

In his autobiography, Ando shared his vision for the future after witnessing postwar hunger:

Peace will come to the world when all its people have enough to eat.

By the 1950s, restrictions on wheat rationing eased and led to a boom in noodles sold from yatai. In the home, rice shortages continued and bread consumption increased out of necessity, although many hoped this was a short-term trend.

There was a gap in the market for a more familiar product that was made from wheat but was as convenient as bread.

Invented in the garden shed

Ando worked in a shed in his back yard, experimenting with an old noodle machine and a wok. After watching his wife make tempura, he saw that deep frying not only cooked the food, it also made water vaporise. He realised this was the key to creating noodles that could cook in only two minutes, but would not get soggy or stale on the shelf.

On August 25 1958, Momofoku Ando launched “Instant Cook Chikin Ramen” – referred to as magic ramen in Japan. The noodles were already seasoned and cooked, cutting down on time and labour, but delivering the protein content of bread flour. Ando chose “chikin” as the flagship flavour, as it didn’t raise dietary issues for any religion.

Ando popularised the term “ramen”, another name used in Japan for chuku soba, borrowed from the Chinese word lāmiàn for a type of hand-pulled noodles from the north. Japanese ramen are actually rolled and cut, not pulled, and are modelled after noodles from Guangdong in the south – but the name stuck.

The first instant noodles cost six times more than regular ramen, which took ten minutes to cook and were not flavoured. Prices fell quickly as the instant noodles became popular, and Ando’s Nissin corporation went into large-scale production.

In 1971, instant ramen was packaged in polystyrene cups, making it even more convenient – just add hot water.

Noodles, noodles, everywhere

The cultural importance of instant ramen in Japan cannot be overstated. It was named the most important invention of the 20th century in a poll at the end of 1999.

While there are two museums in Japan dedicated to instant ramen, the appeal is also global. Vietnam has the highest per capita consumption, followed by Korea and Thailand.

Instant noodles are ubiquitous, even behind bars. Ramen packets became a de facto currency in US prisons, replacing cigarettes after smoking bans were introduced in 2004. Budgets cuts at correctional facilities reduced spending on food, making ramen an essential supplement for inmates and a frequent purchase at the prison commissary.

Instant ramen really is available everywhere, even in outer space. “Space Ram” accompanied Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi on his 2005 expedition. Naturally, these were a special edition, designed for eating in a zero-gravity environment.

In Thailand, Mama Noodles launched a noodle index in 2005 as an economic barometer, showing how sales increased during tough economic times.

Food prices are still high and the global economy remains uncertain, but at least we can rely on instant ramen remaining an affordable option around the world.

Garritt C. Van Dyk has received funding from the Getty Research Institute.

– ref. Instant ramen: a short history of a long noodle – https://theconversation.com/instant-ramen-a-short-history-of-a-long-noodle-263271

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Evans, Adjunct Researcher, English and Writing, University of Tasmania

In the 1990s, I was a rock journalist striving to assert myself as a young woman, working at the heart of the United Kingdom’s male-dominated music press. I loved my job. I met and interviewed all my favourite bands, and spent my twenties and early thirties in a whirl of parties, clubs, gigs and all-expenses trips to America and Europe.

I began my career through a combination of ignorance, bloody-mindedness, and good timing. With no idea about the protocol of editorial commissions, I was annoyed when a music paper failed to publish my unsolicited live review of a friend’s band. Determined to succeed, I followed a tipoff from an artist who lived in a squat with a media contact (this was London in the 1980s), and soon found myself writing for a bi-monthly heavy metal magazine.

Review: Men Of A Certain Age: My Encounters with Rock Royalty – Kate Mossman; Maybe I’m Amazed: A Story of Love and Connection in Ten Songs – John Harris (John Murray)

The editor, Chris Welch, was a softly spoken, conservatively dressed man in his late forties whose office walls were lined with photos of himself hanging out with Marc Bolan, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, in his days as a young reporter. I rarely saw him during my year at the magazine, but I’ve never forgotten his gentle demeanour and the trust he placed in my inexperienced, 22-year-old self. Without his support, my life may have taken a very different turn.

Chris was one of a kind. Other than him, respectful, benevolent older men did not figure in my work for the music press.

By contrast, Kate Mossman is a British arts and music writer whose debut book is presented as “a meditation on the powerful archetype of the ageing rock star”. Her fixation with rock’s fading old guard provides a compelling premise for Men Of A Certain Age: My Encounters with Rock Royalty, but the blurb is a little misleading. This is essentially a collection of republished interviews and personal reflections, rather than an in-depth analysis.

That said, Mossman has produced a thoughtful and entertaining retrospective. Her conversations with the likes of Wilko Johnson, Terence Trent D’Arby, Ray Davies (The Kinks), Jeff Beck and Kevin Ayers are humorous, perceptive and beautifully composed.

She describes the Happy Mondays’ and Black Grape’s Shaun Ryder as resembling “a Russian Mafia boss in the corner, whisky in hand, arms elevated by the pressure of a thick leather jacket”. She chats with Paul Stanley of KISS while he applies his makeup before a show.

“Here is my clown white,” he says softly, picking up a pot of the thick, sweat-resistant foundation he discovered in the ‘70s. “And here are my puffs.”

These encounters afford the reader a certain insight into Mossman’s idiosyncratic predilection for wrinkly rock stars twice her age. Yet while the book affectionately probes her strange, decidedly gendered interest, it avoids the glaring issue of structural misogyny that contaminates the music industry.

It’s not as if Mossman is unaware of the sexual politics at play. She positively delights in the “exciting father-daughter energy” of the older man-younger woman dynamic, intentionally exaggerating her youth and assumed innocence in the presence of ageing rockers. She knows men like Tom Jones and Gene Simmons will respond openly to her coltish, unthreatening persona, because what could be safer than “just a pretty lady”? It’s a clever and effective strategy.

I fully appreciate the quality of Mossman’s profiles, but her attempts to lean into the patronising attitudes of rock’s elders land uncomfortably with me. And having once had my own tender skin in the game, I can’t help seeing the book’s negation of sexism as a missed opportunity.

When I was a rock journalist, I never felt advantaged by my gender or energised by the older male rocker’s entrenched misogyny. Quite the opposite.

At Jarvis Cocker’s house party

Twenty or so years before Mossman began pursuing her beloved senior rockers across the US, I was being reprimanded by my editor for my “unprofessional” rejection of the creepy advances of a famous middle-aged musician.

In 1989, I was a staff writer for a fortnightly rock magazine based in London’s Carnaby Street. We smoked and drank at our desks, played loud metal on the stereo, took half-day lunches on record company money and hosted a constant stream of visiting rock stars in all manner of altered states throughout the working day.

One of my regular jobs was to review the singles with a handful of guest musicians, depending on who was in town. This was often a riotous affair that occasionally descended into chaos. One time, a German drummer, old enough to be my dad, asked me to sit on his lap while we listened to the records. When I didn’t see the funny side, he sniggered at my rebuttal and asked if I was having my period. So I walked out, leaving him with his embarrassed band mate in a room shocked into silence.

A year or so later, the editor who scolded me would help bring about my eventual redundancy after I started to retaliate against a toxic male colleague. This man, previously a friend who’d tried to date me, bullied and ostracised me for the entire duration of my employment. I put on a brave face, cried in the toilets and still managed to enjoy my work. But when I eventually reacted, I was blamed for aggravating the situation, and the magazine let me go.

I spent the next eight years escalating my freelance career and writing books. I waded in the ocean with The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft, toasted a Chicago sunrise on tour with Alice in Chains, went snowboarding with a young British band in California, tripped over Jarvis Cocker at his own house party, and gratefully received a pair of secondhand John Fluevog sandals from the closet of Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon in New York. But my confidence remained dented until I published my first academic article in the early 2000s.

Forgive me then, for baulking when Mossman describes herself as “a small girl sitting on the knee of Father Rock” at her first job for the now-defunct UK music monthly, The Word.

While I’m sure she’s attempting to describe a more supportive, paternalistic workplace environment than the one I endured, she is nevertheless referring to a situation in which she, too, was the only woman in a small team of men. In her case, a generational divide reinforced the sense of male authority which left her wondering “who I was without these men, and who I would be”.

Years before Mossman met him, one of the men she mentions reportedly claimed women were unable to write effectively about music. I once encountered him too, and found him to be smooth, charming and arrogant, with the ruthless attitude of a tabloid journalist.

Working with men like this produced some of the worst experiences of my career. Luckily, such occasions were rare, but could be significant. Bands never saw the bigger picture, of manipulated stories and doctored headlines, but their lives were directly affected by decisions made by people they’d often never met.

I remember once having a conversation with Kurt Cobain about power and the media, and telling him journalists like me could only do so much. Ultimately, we were at the mercy of our editors, which is why I tried to pick mine wisely. Musicians don’t have the choice. Under contract with record labels, they are legally obliged to engage with the media and must take what’s on offer. I’d known Nirvana before they were famous, and watching Kurt develop from a shy, goofy kid into a cynical megastar persecuted by the press was heartbreaking.

Part of the reason Mossman’s book sits uneasily with me is because it appears to ignore the hard-won heritage of female music journalists, and the struggles women like me had in the workplace. Deferring to big daddy editors and accommodating the fragile egos of doddery rock gods feels too much like turning the clock back.

More interested in her

Interestingly, at the back of her book, an intriguing detail lies almost buried in the acknowledgments. Here, Mossman says she recently learned her mother was responsible for introducing a bunch of records she thought had belonged to her dad into the family home.

This untold chapter of Mossman’s story speaks volumes about women and rock culture. Swinging like a loose thread, it threatens to unravel so much of what we have come to accept about the world of rock and the stories of its appointed gods.

Hence my other frustration with the book. While Mossman is a critically acclaimed journalist and former Mercury prize judge, nothing can fire my interest in men such as former Journey singer Steve Perry, or the insufferable Sting. I simply don’t care about them. I’m much more interested in her.

Had Mossman developed the snippets of memoir she uses to contextualise her interviews, and foregrounded herself instead of her tired old giants, I believe her book would have been much more powerful. The strongest, most illuminating passages are when she interrogates her past and mines her personal experiences for clues to her adult obsession with the old guys.

Her teenage infatuation with Queen, her discomfort with the irreverence of 1990s pop culture, her desperate need for parental approval, the peculiar sense of shame she feels in writing about people she loves. The way she listens to music through her father’s “imaginary ears”, the energy writing affords her. All of this outshines the perpetually recycled male rock-star myths, no matter how well Mossman interprets them.

Perhaps in trying to convince the reader to share her love for middle-of-the-road musicians, Bruce Hornsby and Glen Campbell, both of whom had their heyday before she was born, Mossman is still trapped in her teenage cycle of needing her parents to approve of Queen. If so, I hope she manages to shake this off and step more fully into her own story with conviction and faith. With her talent, a full-blown memoir would be a runaway bestseller.

In many ways, Mossman’s book highlights the limits of music journalism as a genre. Her long-form profiles are detailed sketches rather than complex studies, reflecting the fleeting nature of the interview format. Ultimately, even with a fascinating subject, this type of interaction will always be a superficial exercise and therefore something of a game.

For Mossman, with her obsessive fan tendencies, this may be hard to accept, but faced with Sting’s smooth professionalism, she has no choice. “There is a desire for connection that drives every interview,” she writes, “and with Sting, it was a connection I never got.”

For me, ten years of music journalism was enough. By 1998, I’d met everyone I wanted to meet and there were only five or six bands I still wanted to hang out with. I was ready to expand my writing skills and deepen my understanding of the human psyche. Funnily enough, given Mossman’s interest in Jungian theory, I retrained as a Jungian psychotherapist.

An elitist boys’ club

I wasn’t the only one to quit music journalism after the 1990s. With magazines folding left, right and centre, many writers moved onto other careers. One of them was John Harris, now a political and arts columnist for The Guardian. We met briefly at the NME during my six-month stint as its rock correspondent, and occasionally ran into each other at Britpop gigs with mutual friends.

Now, NME is an online platform full of celebrity gossip and brimming with ads. But in the early 1990s it still held currency, for emerging bands and music fans alike. So when the editor invited me to interview Alice in Chains and Screaming Trees on tour in America, I was excited.

I arrived at the NME office fresh from the friendly clamour of Kerrang! magazine, and the first thing that struck me was the silence. Everywhere I looked, studious-looking guys with neat haircuts sat typing furiously away at their desks. There was no music, no talking – and, apart from the secretary, no women.

I soon discovered the few female writers who managed to find a way in were either resented (like me), or given “special dispensation”, whatever that meant.

It all seemed so weirdly petty, like an elitist boys’ club. I hated it.

On one occasion, I refused to disclose the location of a secret Hole gig – at the band’s request. I was punished for my disloyalty to the paper by not being allowed to review it. Another time, a couple of journalists offered to “help” me with a two-part feature on the Riot Grrrl movement, even though I’d single-handedly managed to gain the trust of some of the key women on the scene, all of whom despised the male-dominated music press.

The final straw came in the form of a commission to interview Aerosmith. Asked to “get the drug stories”, I argued for a more original angle: by then, the band was clean. But I was shut down and told to be “more humble”.

Needless to say, after spending a lovely afternoon laughing about outlandish but predictable druggy adventures with Aerosmith band members Joe Perry and Steven Tyler (who tried to steal my fake fur coat), I filed my copy and walked away from the NME with my head held as high as it would go.

Autistic and thriving with music

After freelancing for the NME, Harris went on to work for monthly music titles Q and Select. Now, he’s an award-winning journalist with a string of books to his name. His latest one, Maybe I’m Amazed: A Story of Love and Connection in Ten Songs, is his fifth, and arguably his most important work to date.

Harris’ memoir is a beautiful, heartwarming, enlightening and uplifting book that chronicles the profound impact of music on the life of an autistic child. It captures the grief and frustration of two loving parents as they struggle with the UK’s broken education system and underfunded health services, on behalf of their son. And it details the individual nature of autism and the multiple, miraculous ways an autistic person can flourish when given the right support.

As first-time parents, Harris and his partner Ginny, a former press officer with Parlophone Records, are not aware of any issues with their baby, James. He’s a little slow to speak and has some cute, characterful quirks, but nothing seems out of the ordinary until their daughter Rosa is born and the family moves from Wales to Somerset.

Slow to adapt to the new changes in his life, James begins to exhibit ritualistic behaviours that concern Harris. Three weeks after James starts attending his new nursery, Ginny is told her son might be autistic. Suddenly, she and Harris are plunged into a brutal spin of fear, anxiety, guilt, denial and fundamental uncertainty.

Together, the family embarks on a punitive round of tests and assessments as the tyranny of diagnosis takes hold. At first, supportive frameworks carry the weight of a heavy sentence. But Harris and Ginny immerse themselves in research and fact-finding missions to educate themselves about autism. After investing a significant amount of time and money, they manage to establish a viable routine to help James thrive.

It’s not an easy journey. Setbacks, personnel changes and bureaucratic complications are ever-present, but with a small team of specially trained, caring individuals, James makes progress. Meanwhile, as a lifelong music lover, Harris becomes increasingly aware of the profound relationships his son is developing with certain songs by particular bands. Kraftwerk, The Beatles and Mott the Hoople all exert a steadying influence on James, enabling him to communicate in ways he cannot through verbal language.

A visit from musician Billy Bragg, with whom Harris organises an annual talks tent for Glastonbury Festival, results in James actually making music himself. This leads to keyboard lessons and a slot at the school concert. By the time he enters his teens, James is playing bass, and looking every inch the rock star.

Structurally, Harris has produced a masterclass in memoir, seamlessly blending the past with the present. Cleverly shifting between his own life in music and his son’s, he charts his teenage years as a mod, his ill-fated band’s only performance and his forays into music journalism – all of which he now values anew in the context of parenting James.

He describes how the pair share their joy in gigs and experience the deep bond of making music together, sometimes with Rosa on drums. Watching his child come alive through rhythm and melody, Harris finds himself re-enchanted by music and uncovers the wonder of parenting through unexpected and creative channels.

The book delivers a wealth of information about the vast and complicated spectrum of autism, taking a deep dive into medical theories and the world of neurology. By weaving this complex material into his personal experience of huge emotional and practical challenges, Harris keeps it relatable. In many ways, he has forged a map, complete with a beacon of hope: albeit an individualised one. Informative, enriching and engaging, his story of love, persistence and hard-won daily miracles is music writing at its absolute best.

Wildly disparate in content, both Harris’ and Mossman’s books show how music can define us. In this way, their narratives speak to us all.

They remind me of a time when I couldn’t leave home without a Walkman and a spare set of batteries. They take me back to when I was a teenager, when music shaped my social life, determined my image and gave me the courage to withstand an emotionally abusive upbringing. And they return me to my twenties, when music powered my glamorous first career and launched me into a lifelong creative practice.

Ultimately, they remind me the pulse beneath my writing still belongs to music. And who knows? Maybe I’ll expand on that one day.

Liz Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Friday essay: I loved being a ‘90s rock journalist, but sometimes it was a boys’ club nightmare – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-i-loved-being-a-90s-rock-journalist-but-sometimes-it-was-a-boys-club-nightmare-256474

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ferdi Botha, Senior Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne

The degree of bodily pain reported by Australians has grown over the last two decades, and this increase cannot be attributed only to an ageing population.

Pain is a serious public health issue and can have devastating consequences for individuals, affecting their ability to have fulfilling relationships, work or look after kids.

The new findings come from the latest Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey Statistical Report, released today. I am part of the team that collects and analyses the data – here’s what we found.

How we measured pain

The HILDA survey has been following the same people every year since 2001, which makes it possible to examine how the lives of Australians have changed across several aspects.

Each year, we survey roughly 16,000 individuals aged 15 and older on various topics, including how often they experience bodily pain, and to what degree it affects their day-to-day life.

In the survey, we used two questions to construct a measure of overall bodily pain.

First, we ask respondents to report how much bodily pain they have had during the past four weeks: no bodily pain, very mild, mild, moderate, severe or very severe.

The second question asks all respondents how much pain interfered with their normal work (including both outside the home and housework) during the same period: not at all, slightly, moderately, quite a bit or extremely.

We then combined the scores from these two questions to form
an overall bodily pain measure ranging from 0 (no bodily pain) to 100 (severe bodily pain). This was the “bodily pain score”.

Gender makes a difference

The new data shows almost 79% of women and 74% of men had experienced at least some physical pain in the previous four weeks.

Women reported more pain than men – and it was more likely to affect their day-to-day activities.

For example, one in four men (26.2%) said they had no pain, compared to one in five women (21.5%).

The proportion of women who rated their pain as “severe” or “very severe” (8%) was also higher than men (5.1%).

The more extreme the pain, the more it restricted general home or work duties. About 2.4% of women and 1.3% of men reported that pain interfered “extremely” with their day-to-day activities.

Age, health and wealth also play a role

As expected, older age groups report more pain than younger people.

Whereas just 3.4% of people aged 25–34 reported that pain interferes “quite a bit” in daily duties, among those aged 65 and older this jumped to 14.6%.

We also found that higher levels of education and income are associated with less pain.

In terms of occupation, bodily pain tended to be most severe among labourers, followed by machinery operators and drivers.

The least pain was reported by those who worked as managers or professionals.

Pain is also much worse among people with a chronic health condition, including diabetes, arthritis and any type of cancer.

Health behaviours matter as well. For example, smokers report greater pain than non-smokers.

Pain is increasing

Most striking is the rising trend in average bodily pain over the past two decades. This increase is consistent with a rising prevalence of pain globally.

Age is strongly linked to the development of chronic conditions. So, one main reason why pain increases over time is due to population ageing.

But even after adjusting for population ageing, we found reported bodily pain increased by about 5.6% among women and 4.8% among men between 2001 and 2023. This suggests other factors may be behind the rise in pain.

So, what are some of these factors?

Evidence suggests people have become more likely to report that they have pain.

But there is also a growing prevalence of chronic conditions in Australia, which are strongly linked to pain. Obesity rates have also increased, and we know obesity can increase physical pain, for example by putting more stress on joints.

However, we still need more research to understand what is driving the increase in pain, and how it affects different groups.

The impact of pain

Pain can have a devastating effect on wellbeing and quality of life, with serious flow-on effects. For example, people who experience significant pain are more likely to lose their jobs.

Our analysis can’t establish causal relationships. But it does reveal that those who experience severe bodily pain also report substantially worse mental health and lower life satisfaction.

Given these debilitating personal impacts of severe bodily pain – and the costs it puts on our health-care system and economy – reversing the rising trend in pain is imperative.

Ferdi Botha receives funding from the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (CE200100025).

– ref. Australians are in more pain – and our new data shows it’s not just due to ageing – https://theconversation.com/australians-are-in-more-pain-and-our-new-data-shows-its-not-just-due-to-ageing-265294

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Pickles, Professor of History, University of Canterbury

Political and social reformer Kate Sheppard is famous for leading the campaign that saw New Zealand women become first in the world to gain the right to vote on September 19 1893. We don’t normally think of her as a cook.

But while she far preferred reading and writing, she did consider women’s domestic labour as essential. She was also interested in the possibility of communal kitchens and laundries as ways to increase efficiency.

I’m researching and writing a new biography of Sheppard. And it was while building a more complex understanding of her that I discovered a recipe she contributed to a small book titled Everybody’s Cookery Book of Tested Recipes.

Published in 1928, it was assembled by the “Ladies of Trinity Congregational Church Christchurch, New Zealand” as a fundraiser. Sheppard’s recipe is for Spanish cream – what I’d now call “fancy custard”.

I found the recipe in the records relating to Trinity Congregational Church held at Tūranga, Christchurch’s public library. I was looking for evidence of Kate’s involvement in the church.

Along with more traditional historical sources, such as minute books and official church history, this little discovery is a reminder of the importance of food history. Fundraiser cookery books like this give us fresh perspectives on our social and cultural history.

Church and state

Sheppard had been remarried for three years and was 80 years old when she contributed her Spanish cream recipe under the name Mrs K. W. Lovell-Smith.

Having been living apart from her her first husband Walter (who died in England in 1915), in 1905 Kate had moved in with William and Jennie Lovell-Smith and their large family.

In 1920, they moved to Midway, a large house on Riccarton Road (Kate paid for her share). Jennie died shortly after the Lovell-Smith’s golden wedding anniversary and a year later, in 1925, after “a lifelong friendship based on common interests and sympathies”, Kate and William married.

Kate had by this stage begun attending the Upper Riccarton Methodist Church with other household members, suggesting she might have become a Methodist herself. That church was much closer to home, and she was also involved in Methodist fundraisers, hosting garden fetes at Midway.

But while the Lovell-Smith family were Methodist stalwarts, featured on the church roll, Kate’s involvement in the cookery book suggests she was still a Congregationalist (along with her nieces, whose recipes are also included).

In fact, the cookery book is evidence of Sheppard’s enduring association with Trinity Congregational Church, which she had first attended on arrival in Christchurch from Britain in 1869. And it was within those church walls during the 1870s and 1880s that she came into her own as a colonial feminist.

As was typical for many in the women’s movement at that time, church work served as an apprenticeship and incubator for later political activity. In Sheppard’s case, she was secretary of the Ladies’ Association Committee. She successfully raised funds for the church and was a “lady visitor” – a kind of social worker or lay preacher, helping members of the congregation.

Sheppard also taught Sunday school and a young women’s Bible class, nurturing a generation of “new women”. Writer and feminist Jessie Mackay later recalled Sheppard as “a gracious and beautiful young matron” leading her Bible class. It is in church records that Sheppard’s clear, capable and increasingly confident voice emerges.

A catalyst moment in the history of women’s suffrage occurred on May 14 1885, at Trinity Church, when Sheppard heard American Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) missionary Mary Clement Leavitt speak at one of her many meetings around New Zealand.

This led to the formation of national WCTU branches and Sheppard becoming head of its franchise department. From then until success in 1893, Kate led the campaign for women’s suffrage, coordinating the largest petition yet assembled in New Zealand.

Spanish cream and Esperanto

So what of the recipe itself? New Zealand food historian Duncan Galletly has studied the complex evolution of the dessert, from its hazy centuries-old European cream origins to its place as a gelatine-set custard. It was by then becoming popular in colonial New Zealand.

Without crediting Sheppard, Galletly captures the recipe in his research, noting it is actually the same as one in the first edition of a 1901 book, Colonial Everyday Cookery. As is often the case with fundraiser cookery books, Sheppard appears to have directly copied it years later.

Sheppard liked a bit of luxury and serving creamy treat foods. A great niece recalled visiting her “lovely home” in the 1920s and

sitting in the luxurious drawing room, having afternoon tea, terrified of dropping a cup or spilling cream cake – Aunt Kate was so elegant, wore lovely gowns and jewellery, and moved about like a queen. She was beautiful.

Sheppard was also interested in vegetarianism and wholefoods, although the presence of gelatine in her recipe reveals she was not a strict vegetarian. Especially interesting was her pursuit of the connection between a healthy mind and healthy body, and what she suspected was a “close connection between meat eating and the craving for alcohol”.

In 1901, she cycled to Sanitarium Health Foods to interview Seventh-day Adventist and American doctor, feminist, prohibitionist and early vegan Dr Florence Keller. Sheppard was impressed that Keller advocated a healthy, plant-based diet rich in whole grains, fruits and vegetables. And she was fascinated with Keller’s opinion that

Flesh is a highly stimulating form of diet, and produces a desire for stimulants of various kinds. A meat diet predisposes to a love of condiments; as well as to the different forms of alcoholic liquor.

Keller also impressed Sheppard with her belief that tobacco was “highly injurious” and in the same class as “alcoholic and morphine habits”.

Despite these somewhat stringent ideas, I’d like to think Sheppard chose Spanish cream as a cosmopolitan nod to 1920s internationalism. She advocated for Esperanto, the linguistic model invented in 1887 to break down language barriers, on which Spanish was a prominent influence. As Sheppard wrote, “If the nations understood each other better – they would not be so ready to go to war.”

Ironically, Sheppard’s beloved and staunch temperance church, where history was made, is now a popular Christchurch pub. Called The Church, it is now host to much eating, drinking and merry making. Past congregations could not have predicted this in their worst nightmares and are likely turning in their graves.

Katie Pickles receives funding from a Tessa Malcolm Bequest.

– ref. Kate Sheppard’s kitchen: an old recipe sheds new light on the feminist pioneer’s life – https://theconversation.com/kate-sheppards-kitchen-an-old-recipe-sheds-new-light-on-the-feminist-pioneers-life-265463

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

The Albanese government is hoping it can successfully juggle multiple audiences with its 2035 emissions reduction target.

With a specific number, no single set of stakeholders could have been fully satisfied without alienating another. In opting for a range, and a big one at that – a 62%-70% cut in emissions from 2005 levels – the government, taking a pragmatic course, has given itself maximum wriggle room. This is also reasonable, considering a future of economic uncertainty and rapidly changing technology.

Business can focus on the 62%; those wanting more ambition can hope the 70% might be reached. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared, “we think we’ve got the sweet spot”. They haven’t of course – because there is no “sweet spot”. In policy terms, dealing with climate change is one of those “wicked problems”. Often, it is a choice between least-worst courses, or a stab in the dark, given the long timelines.

The government’s unveiling of its 2035 target has been a highly choreographed exercise.

A decision, certain to be controversial, was stalled until after the election. The Climate Change Authority – which earlier had announced it was consulting on a target between 65%-75% – did not formally hand its advice in until Friday, advice the government followed precisely.

On Monday the government released its National Climate Risk Assessment, that painted a dire and dramatic picture of the dangers presented by the changing weather. Thursday’s target announcement was backed up by a package of measures, worth more than $8 billion, to support the energy transition, and accompanied by Treasury modelling documenting the advantages of an orderly path forward.

The 2035 target should go down quite well with most voters. It sounds like a credible commitment to action, which people want. This week’s Newspoll found 25% of people thought Australia should stick to its current action on climate change, while 37% believed Australia should increase it.

The government legislated its 2030 target (for a 43% reduction in emissions) with much fanfare. But it has already accepted it mightn’t be able to put the 2035 target into law. That would require support in the Senate from either the Greens or the opposition, and both have denounced it.

The Greens will try to use what they describe as a “capitulation to coal and gas corporations” to lever off some votes from Labor, especially in inner city areas.

With her party in an existential battle over the future of its commitment to net zero by 2050, Sussan Ley has navigated the opposition’s reaction to the government’s 2035 target by arguing it won’t reach the 2030 one. While the government insists that target is still achievable, some experts are very sceptical. Ley also said there was nothing in the announcement “that demonstrates to Australians how much it will cost”.

Whatever 2035 number the government produced, the opposition was always set to reject it, so it was just a matter of preparing the attack lines. But

Ley was careful to get shadow cabinet backing before stating a position.

As she seeks to shore up her leadership, she is looking for a way to qualify the net zero commitment without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Asked on Thursday about the future of the commitment, she said, “we have to play our part in reducing emissions but not at any cost”.

Ley is caught between the importance of the net zero symbol to many voters, especially younger ones, and the pull of those in her party wanting to ditch or at least water down the commitment. Leadership aspirant Angus Taylor told Sky on Thursday, “I’m dead against targets that hurt Australians and hurt the Australian economy and I always have been”.

Albanese has emphasised the government’s 2035 target is in line with those of comparable countries. The prime minister will have a keen eye on how the announcement goes down internationally.

Australia is sweating on a decision about whether it will obtain hosting rights (together with Pacific countries) for next year’s United Nations climate conference (the COP). Australia has the necessary support, but Turkey, the other country in contention, so far has declined to pull out. The conference, which would be held in Adelaide, is a huge event requiring much preparation. The government is extremely frustrated at the delay.

Albanese will be at the United Nations’ leaders week in New York next week, where he will meet other countries for climate discussions. He’ll hope this will encourage more pressure on Turkey to withdraw.

Apart from addressing the General Assembly, and Australia making good its commitment to recognise the state of Palestine, Albanese will take part in discussions with a range of like-minded countries about the future of Gaza.

But the centrepiece of the US trip (followed by a visit to Britain) is the anticipated meeting with President Donald Trump. AUKUS and tariffs will be high on the agenda.

Diplomacy is a tricky business, as we saw this week when what seemed a done deal for signing a major defence treaty with Papua New Guinea didn’t come off.

The meeting with Trump (assuming this time it happens) is quite difficult for Albanese to prepare for. He won’t be talking to your usual run of leader.

Fickle and unpredictable, Trump demands flattery while exercising power ruthlessly, whether over individuals, parts of his own government, organisations or other countries.

This week we have seen how the United Kingdom has tried to cement a relationship by according him a lavish, unprecedented second state visit. Trump would relish the pomp and glitter, but also the fact the British have felt the need to go to such lengths to get on his good side.

Meanwhile Trump has recently flexed extraordinary military muscle with lethal American attacks on Venezuelan boats in international waters.

As time’s gone on it has become increasingly obvious that Trump is not the sort of person Australia would have ever expected to be dealing with as leader of its most important ally. It is not just his politics that differ from those of Albanese, but his values as well.

Managing the diplomacy of the encounter will be delicate. They will have plenty to talk about, and their phone conversations have laid a positive basis for the meeting. But probably some topics will be best avoided. Climate policy, for example.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Albanese government’s 2035 target range is aimed at multiple audiences – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-albanese-governments-2035-target-range-is-aimed-at-multiple-audiences-265380

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margarita Vladimirova, PhD in Privacy Law and Facial Recognition Technology, Deakin University

Today the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner found retail giant Kmart breached Australians’ privacy.

The company had collected personal and sensitive information through a facial recognition technology system designed to tackle refund fraud – where people try to obtain refunds to which they are not entitled, for example by returning stolen goods.

Between June 2020 and July 2022, Kmart used the system to capture the faces of every person who entered 28 of its retail stores, as well as people who presented at a returns counter.

Kmart’s response

In a statement to the ABC, a Kmart spokeperson said the company was disappointed with the decision and considering an appeal.

Like most other retailers, Kmart is experiencing escalating incidents of theft in stores which are often accompanied by anti-social behaviour or acts of violence against team members and customers.

The spokesperson also said images were only retained

if they matched an image of a person of interest reasonably suspected or known to have engaged in refund fraud. All other images were deleted, and the data was never used for marketing or any other purposes.

A disproportionate application of facial recognition tech

Kmart argued the fact they were attempting to prevent refund fraud meant the consent of the people whose faces they captured was not required.

However, Privacy Commissioner Carly Kind concluded that the use of facial recognition technology to prevent fraud is out of proportion, for several reasons.

First, there are other, less privacy-intrusive methods available to Kmart to address refund fraud. (For example, it could instruct staff to check documents more thoroughly.)

Second, the system was not very useful in preventing fraud. The amount of fraud detected was insignificant, and disproportionate when weighed against the serious privacy risks posed by the collection and management of facial information.

Third, every individual (customer) who entered the store was included in the facial recognition database, regardless of their intent and without their consent.

For these reasons, and as the system affected the privacy of many thousands of individuals not suspected of refund fraud, the collection of biometric information was a disproportionate interference with privacy.

A lack of transparency

Under the Privacy Act, the collection and use of personal information must be both proportionate and transparent. Like the proportionality requirement, the transparency requirement was not satisfied in this case. Customers were neither made aware of the process nor asked for their consent for their facial information to be collected.

Consent is one of the cornerstones in information collection. The Privacy Act provides a limited definition of consent that includes two types of consent: express and implied. Given its unique and sensitive nature, facial information should only be collected under conditions of express consent.

Express consent is when an individual, fully informed, voluntarily and explicitly, agrees to the collection of their information. The agreement may be given in writing, verbally, or through a clear affirmative action.

Simply walking into a store where you usually buy groceries and goods cannot be considered as giving consent.

Appeals to safety

As surveillance technologies expand, the collection of facial information is becoming increasingly normalised in daily life. It is often promoted through carefully crafted nudges such as claims that it is “for safety” or “to prevent fraud”.

My research for my PhD (not yet published, though some preliminary results are available here) has found these nudges change our perception of the ever-increasing presence of facial recognition technology in our lives.

We come to consider security cameras with embedded facial recognition technology to be a norm, rather than interference with our lives. And the justification of “safety” makes it sound reasonable.

The limits of facial recognition

However, the determination against Kmart shows these justifications are weak against thorough tests of reasonability and proportionality.

Facial recognition technology does little to protect against real risks. Only a human security guard can stop an aggressive customer, for example. And as the commissioner note in the Kmart case, the technology may not actually prevent much fraud.

This raises an important consideration for anyone planning to use facial recognition technology for security.

Facial information is unique and valuable. The use of facial recognition technology should be carefully crafted and adjusted.

Less privacy-intrusive measures must be considered first. This will ensure the protection of the privacy rights of individuals – and a balanced approach for society as a whole.

Margarita Vladimirova worked at the OAIC from February to June 2025.

– ref. Kmart broke privacy laws by scanning customers’ faces. What did it do wrong, and why? – https://theconversation.com/kmart-broke-privacy-laws-by-scanning-customers-faces-what-did-it-do-wrong-and-why-265576

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Neale, Professor and Senior Group Leader, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute

What does wearing SPF50+ sunscreen every day do to your vitamin D levels? Our study, recently published in the British Journal of Dermatology, provides some answers.

We found using SPF50+ every day, on all days when the ultraviolet index is forecast to reach three or more, can increase the risk of being vitamin D deficient.

The benefits of sunscreen are well known, so our findings do not mean we should abandon SPF50+.

Rather, it means people who use SPF50+ every day might need to start taking vitamin D supplements.

Why did we run our trial?

Sunscreen is designed to reduce the amount of ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaching the skin’s cells. However, exposing the skin to UV rays from the sun produces vitamin D, so it is reasonable to think that sunscreen would block vitamin D production.

Previous studies found using low SPF sunscreen daily did not cause vitamin D deficiency.

However, nobody had assessed the effect of routinely using high SPF sunscreens in everyday life, so in the Sun-D Trial we tested the effect of using SPF50+ every day.

What did we do?

We recruited 639 adults living in one of the four eastern states of Australia (and the Australian Capital Territory) who were not using sunscreen as part of their daily routine.

We put them randomly into one of two groups. We gave the “sunscreen” group SPF50+ sunscreen and asked them to apply it every day (to all areas of the skin not covered by clothes) when the UV index was forecast to reach three or more for a year.

We asked the “control” group to continue with their usual sun protection.

We measured vitamin D levels at the beginning (late winter/early spring), middle (late summer), and end (late winter) of the study in both groups.

What did we find?

The average vitamin D level increased in both groups from late winter to late summer. However, the increase was significantly lower in the sunscreen group than in the control group.

At the end of the study, vitamin D deficiency was more common in the sunscreen group than in the control group (46% versus 37%).

This is the first study worldwide to test the effect of daily SPF50+ sunscreen use in people as they go about their everyday lives.

What does this mean?

1. Keep using sunscreen

Using sunscreen daily reduces the risk of skin cancer and sunspots. Therefore it is very important Australians continue to use sunscreen every day when the UV index is forecast to reach three or more as part of their daily routine.

For people with deeply pigmented skin, daily sunscreen is not needed because the risk of skin cancers caused by the sun is very low. It is still important, though, to protect the skin if outdoors when the UV index is high.

Using sunscreen should be as routine as brushing your teeth. Continue to use sunscreen with a high SPF (ideally 50+, but 30+ is also OK if you can’t find a 50+ that you like). Don’t rely on sunscreen in makeup, which doesn’t offer enough protection.

If you spend time outdoors for recreation or work when the UV index is three or more, you should cover as much skin as you can with clothing, wear a hat and sunglasses, stay in the shade if you can, and reapply sunscreen every two hours.

2. Consider taking vitamin D

People who use sunscreen daily should consider taking a vitamin D supplement. These are relatively cheap (as little as 5c per day), safe (if used as directed), and effective for preventing vitamin D deficiency.

It is more important to take supplements over winter, as that is when vitamin D deficiency becomes more common.

Vitamin D deficiency is also more common in southern states. In Australia’s National Health Measures Survey, 26% of people in Tasmania were vitamin D deficient (46% in winter) compared to 12% in Queensland (16% in winter).

Is regular sunscreen use the only cause of vitamin D deficiency?

A total of 30% of participants were vitamin D deficient at the start of the study, even though they were not regular sunscreen users. And 37% of the control group (who did not use sunscreen every day) were vitamin D deficient at the end of the study.

This shows regular sunscreen use is not the only reason for being vitamin D deficient. People who rarely go outdoors between 8am and 4pm, or who always cover most of their skin with clothing when they are outside, are at increased risk of being vitamin D deficient.

Should I have my vitamin D levels tested first?

The Australian government only funds vitamin D tests in people where there is a specific clinical reason for testing. Also, it is not always easy for everybody to see a doctor, and not everybody can see a doctor for free.

If you think you might be at risk of being vitamin D deficient because you are careful to protect your skin from the sun – or have other reasons you don’t expose your skin to the sun – you can start taking vitamin D supplements without having your vitamin D tested first. Perhaps discuss this with your doctor when you get a chance.

This is safe, so long as you follow the instructions on the label.

Rachel Neale received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council for the Sun-D Trial and other studies related to skin cancer and vitamin D.

I have received PhD sholarships from the University of Queensland and the QIMR Berghofer.

Briony Duarte Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. If I use SPF50+ sunscreen every day do I need to take vitamin D? – https://theconversation.com/if-i-use-spf50-sunscreen-every-day-do-i-need-to-take-vitamin-d-265479

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ritu Trivedi, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Health Sciences, University of Sydney

Apple has announced a package of health features, alongside the launch of the new Apple Watch Series 11, including an alert that the wearer may have high blood pressure, also known as hypertension.

Around 1.3 billion people worldwide have high blood pressure. But almost half are unaware of their diagnosis.

This lack of awareness is often due to limited access to regular medical care, the absence of noticeable symptoms or warning signs, and because a single blood pressure reading could miss the condition.

Better detection of high blood pressure could help prevent heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease and dementia.

But can the Apple Watch really tell if you have high blood pressure?

How does it work?

Limited details are available so far.

But we know the Apple Watch’s high blood pressure indicator is based on analysis of changes in blood volume as your heart beats. These are detected using the light sensor on the back of the watch.

This is not new technology; a number of other companies, such as Samsung and Aktiia, use similar approaches.

When the sensor and underlying algorithm identifies a significant change in blood flow, the user will get an alert that they may have high blood pressure. This is done without a conventional blood pressure cuff that tightens around the arm.

However, if a user receives a “possible hypertension” notification, this is not a diagnosis, as their blood pressure has not yet been measured and confirmed by a health-care professional.

From what we know so far, it seems users won’t be given blood pressure numbers straight from the Apple Watch.

What does the evidence say?

Cuffless blood pressure monitoring devices can be more comfortable and convenient than using arm cuffs. Without a cuff, they can also more easily monitor blood pressure continuously during daily activities.

However, the evidence to show whether these technologies accurately estimate blood pressure remains scarce and with many limitations.

Unlike traditional cuff-based blood pressure devices, there is no standard protocol for manufacturers to test cuffless devices for accuracy, and to ensure they live up to their claims. Without such a protocol, it’s difficult to evaluate and compare their performance.

This is particularly important for cuffless devices, because accuracy depends on how well the signal picks up changes in blood flow – which can vary across different skin tones – and how well it performs in everyday settings, such as when a person is awake or asleep, sitting or standing, active or resting.

Nevertheless, some companies have received clearance from government regulatory agencies to market and sell these technologies as medical devices. Apple has received such clearance for its hypertension technology.

However, cuffless devices for measuring blood pressure are not currently recommended by any clinical guidelines based on the uncertainty about their accuracy. So it’s important to have your blood pressure checked regularly by a health-care professional and potentially also at home using a validated cuff-based device.

There is no evidence yet of how well these technologies would work when used clinically and with real patients. Studies are underway.

What are the challenges?

While these devices hold promise for improving individual and population health, they also pose some challenges.

Alerts for “possible hypertension” are just that: a sign for a potential health concern that needs to be evaluated and confirmed in a health-care setting.

Knowing the breadth of Apple’s market share and the prevalence of undiagnosed hypertension, these alerts have the potential to overburden existing health-care systems and cause patient anxiety.

As these devices become more mainstream, health-care systems may need to adapt to accommodate the growing number of patients seeking care.

What if you want to use it?

If you start using the new Apple Watch and receive the hypertension notification, you should check your blood pressure with a cuff-based monitor over three to seven days and take these readings to your doctor.

The fine print on Apple’s website notes this “possible hypertension” feature should not be used by people under 22 years old, those who are pregnant or those previously diagnosed with hypertension.

Cuffless devices have the potential to improve detection of high blood pressure – an urgent need – and these devices may be the future of optimal heart health. But this potential must be matched by rigorous efforts to confirm their accuracy and relevance for patients and clinicians.

Ritu Trivedi is a member of the Australian National Hypertension Taskforce working groups for patient activation and engagement, and awareness and screening of high blood pressure.

Dean Picone receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, NSW Government Office of Health and Medical Research and is an investigator on a current MRFF grant. He a member of the Hypertension Australia Clinical Council, member of American Heart Association Hypertension Professional/Public Education & Publications Committee and Chair of International Society of Hypertension New Investigator Committee. He has previously received funding from the National Heart Foundation of Australia and acted as a consultant on blood pressure monitoring to the Pan American Health Organisation and United States Centers for Disease Control.

Tammy Brady is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation sphygmomanometer committee and is a member of the International Organization for Standardization.

– ref. Could an Apple watch really tell you if you have high blood pressure? – https://theconversation.com/could-an-apple-watch-really-tell-you-if-you-have-high-blood-pressure-264987

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Reid Boyd, Senior Lecturer School of Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University

Lady Godiva – an icon of protest, myth and sensual defiance – has galloped through centuries of our cultural imagination. She is most widely known for the legend of her naked horse ride, in which she supposedly rode through the city of Coventry, England, in nothing but her cascading hair.

According to the popular tale, Godiva pleaded with her husband, Lord Leofric of Mercia, to lift an oppressive tax that threatened to impoverish the people of Coventry.

Leofric issued a provocative challenge: he would only revoke the tax if she rode unclothed through the town. In a gesture of defiance and compassion, she undertook the ride.

The townspeople, in respect, shuttered their windows, except for one man named Tom, who was struck blind. This is where we get the phrase “peeping Tom”. Moved by her courage, Leofric kept his word and abolished the tax – or so the story goes.

While many historians believe this naked ride never actually took place, Godiva, the 11th century noblewoman, was real – as is her enduring influence.

Godiva has been endlessly remixed, from appearances in literature, to art, to music, to comics, and even chocolate.

Although Godiva has historically been objectified, her legacy is ever-evolving. Through parades and processions, political protest, and philanthropic campaigns, fans and activists alike have transformed Godiva into a symbol of resistance.

The lady behind the legend

Countess Godgyfu (meaning “God’s gift” in Old English) was born around 990 CE and died sometime after 1066. She was the only female Anglo-Saxon landowner listed as “tenant-in-chief” in the Domesday book.

According to historian Daniel Donoghue, this implies an exceptionally high noble status and independent authority, suggesting Godiva held her estate by birth, rather than through marriage.

She married Lord Leofric of Mercia, a powerful Saxon military leader. Her Christian piety and philanthropic influence are credited with inspiring the foundation of the monastic site of Coventry’s original cathedral.

Her will included a string of prayer beads – an early reference to the rosary.

Fanning herstory

The legend of the naked horse ride draws from older mythological traditions.

In his book The White Goddess (1948), English writer Robert Graves interprets Godiva as a medieval manifestation of a pagan goddess. Her symbolic nudity and ritualistic ride echo fertility rites and goddess worship.

Like many medieval legends of pagan or folkloric origin, it was transformed into a Christian narrative over time, intertwined with the real history of the philanthropic Countess Godgyfu.

Fandom offers a compelling lens through which to view Godiva, and the ways her story continues to resonate in contemporary culture.

In the 2016 book I’m Buffy and You’re History, author Patricia Pender explores how fandom enables playful and subversive representations of femininity. For instance, Buffy – a female character who nonchalantly slayed vampires, rather than running screaming – subverted expectations. By riding naked, Godiva, too, subverts expectations.

At the same time, feminist scholars have critiqued representations of nude women in culture and the arts as catering to the male gaze, rather than being subversive. Researcher Melisa Yilmaz argues Godiva has been moulded into a passive symbol of erotic spectacle, rather than female empowerment.

Godiva’s image is also commodified globally, most notably by the Godiva chocolatier.

Yet, reinterpretations of her legend through centuries of fandom offer a counter-narrative.

Women who refuse to be shamed

Godiva became very popular in the 19th century. She is featured in a poem by Alfred Tennyson, in pre-Raphaelite paintings, in works by Salvador Dali, and even in a statuette gifted to Prince Albert by Queen Victoria.

She gained renewed popularity through women writers, activists and suffragists. For instance, in the 1870s, British political activist Harriet Martineau told women who feared exposure and condemnation for taking up controversial causes to “think of the Lady Godiva”.

Once such cause at the time was the campaign against the Contagious Diseases Act. This act, which applied only to women, meant police could arrest women assumed to be prostitutes and have them medically examined.

Similarly, social reformist Josephine Butler entitled her 1888 political play The New Godiva. In it, she wrote about the need for a female campaigner to

compare her[self] to Godiva, stripping herself bare of the very vesture of her soul […] exposing herself to something worse than physical torture.

Radical reclamation

Lady Godiva is widely referenced in film and TV. She was the subject of the historical 1955 film Lady Godiva of Coventry, starring Hollywood starlet Maureen O’Hara, and has appeared as a character in shows such as Charmed (1998–2006) and Fantasy Island (1977–84).

Contemporary women authors have also offered up various twists of Godiva’s tale.
In Judith Halberstam’s young adult novel Blue Sky Freedom (1990), for example, Godiva is the name given to an anti-apartheid resistance leader.

In the DC Comics, the character Godiva is a beautiful woman with powerful hair she can control to her advantage.

She shows up in music, too. The cover of Beyonce’s 2022 album, Renaissance, shows the singer astride a holographic horse in a seemingly Godiva-inspired pose – boldly facing the camera.

In Queen’s song Don’t Stop Me Now, Lady Godiva is likened to a racing car:

I’m a racing car, passing by like Lady Godiva
I’m gonna go, go, go, there’s no stopping me.

Coventry city has had an official Lady Godiva, Pru Porretta, for more than three decades. Porretta’s role involves a range of community and philanthropic work.

Godiva’s legacy in Coventry continues through archaeological sites such as the Coventry Cathedral, guided Godiva-themed walks, and public celebrations including the annual three-day Godiva Festival.

Elizabeth Reid Boyd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. From a naked rider to icon of resistance, the legend of Lady Godiva lives on – https://theconversation.com/from-a-naked-rider-to-icon-of-resistance-the-legend-of-lady-godiva-lives-on-264347

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vincent Hurley, Lecturer in Criminology (police & policing). School of International Studies, Macquarie University

Dezi Freeman has been on the run for four weeks, and police have been very careful to keep secret where and how they have been searching for him.

This is standard policing practice in any criminal investigation.

A conclusion from this lack of information is the police are not making any headway into finding him. This is not necessarily so.

However, as time progresses, police will have to weigh up changes of tactics and at some point may have to consider scaling back or even giving up.

Outlaws in modern Australian history

The word “outlaw” has its origin in old England, when someone committed a crime and was banished to the countryside by the King or Queen. Once they left the protection of the castle they were then outside the protection of the law of the land.

Outlaw now has a different meaning. It’s a person who is a habitual criminal or wanted by police for a serious crime. They are also called a fugitive.

Australia has only had four significant outlaws or fugitives in the past 40 years:

• John Bobak, who police believe was responsible for a double murder on the Gold Coast in 1991. He has been on the run since then
• Brenden Abbott, nicknamed the “postcard bandit”, escaped from Fremantle Prison in 1989. He evaded police for six years until he was captured in 1995
• New South Wales prison escapee Darko Desic evaded police for 30 years, living in sand dunes in Sydney’s Northern Beaches until he voluntarily handed himself into Dee Why Police in 2022
• Malcolm Naden hid and lived in rugged bushland around Gloucester and Scone for seven years after murdering two girls in 2005. NSW Police established Strike Force Durkin and heavily armed tactical operations police eventually found and arrested him in 2012.

Freeman allegedly shot and killed Detective Senior Constable Neal Thompson and Senior Constable Vadim de Waart-Hottart at Porepunkah in country Victoria on August 26.

Given the remarkable similarities to Naden’s investigation and eventual arrest, it begs the question: how long can Freeman evade police for? Both men were skilled in bush craft and knew their respective areas well.

Read more:
Treacherous terrain: the search for alleged police killer Dezi Freeman

Australia’s largest manhunt

The hunt for Freeman is already the largest tactical police operation in Australian history.

Victoria Police have already called on support from state and territory police forces, as well as the Australian Federal Police and army.

New Zealand specialists have also flown over to assist in the hunt after successfully tracking down fugitive Tom Phillips who lived off the land for five years before he was shot by police.

As the search continues, Victorian police will at some point consider “where to from here”?

Given the rarity of similar fugitives hunts in Australia, that decision will be a complex and difficult one. Police will be loathe to put a time frame on “how long”.

However, police will constantly reflect on their tactics and searching methods from the air and on foot. They will have been using police dogs and possibly advanced military equipment (normally reserved for use in the battlefield) supplied by the Australian Defence Force.

Police will want to ensure they’ve exhausted all possible hiding places and escape routes.

Only once they are satisfied with the degree of their thoroughness, along with analysing all the accompanying information from public appeals, will police consider when and how to downgrade the search.

What happens if police can’t find him?

Police will be drawing on experience from the Naden hunt as a yardstick to determine when the search might need to be downgraded, as this is the only similar manhunt.

The immediate search may last up to six months with more favourable weather, but the criminal investigation will remain open and active until Freeman is found – even if it takes years.

Police will be mindful of a host of factors in making a decision to call off the hunt.

Before making any decision, they will consult with the victims’ families, explaining the reasons.

I was a police officer for nearly three decades and was involved with former police and their families who suffered the pain and trauma of an officer’s death.

In the Freeman case, any decision to change tactics will be thoroughly explained to the victims’ families.

While this will not make the process of accepting a possible decision easier, the families will likely understand the reasons more than others in the community.

As the victims were police, their families will understand the operational practicalities of a protracted search and the resources that have been dedicated to it.

There are limits to the number of times an area can be searched and searched again before police are satisfied its been completed.

There are also limits to the use of aerial support and the number of police dogs used before they are all fatigued. All these resources have limitations.

Public perception will be another issue police will consider.

If the manhunt is downgraded, police will be mindful of the message it sends to the community.

Vincent Hurley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The timelines and tough decisions police will be weighing up in the Dezi Freeman hunt – https://theconversation.com/the-timelines-and-tough-decisions-police-will-be-weighing-up-in-the-dezi-freeman-hunt-265382

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Johnson, Lecturer, College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University

In the past few weeks, the United States military has been involved in multiple fatal strikes on boats in international waters off the coast of Venezuela.

The first airstrike was on September 5 and killed 11 people. The second occurred this week, killing three people. No efforts were made to apprehend the vessels or identify the people before the strikes.

President Donald Trump has claimed the boats and the people on them were trafficking illegal drugs bound for the US, dubbing them “narcoterrorists”.

The White House has provided little detail about the attacks in general, and no evidence the boats were trafficking drugs. It’s possible they weren’t.

Here’s what’s going on in the region and what might happen next.

Why is this happening now?

During the 2024 presidential election campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to crack down on immigration from Latin America.

He often drew a connection between crime and immigration, especially from Haiti and Venezuela (though some of the cases of gang crime he cited have since been questioned or debunked).

Once in office, Trump declared a number of gangs as terrorist organisations, including one Venezuelan group, Tren de Aragua.

The Trump government has claimed that Venezuelans deported from the US were members of Tren de Aragua, often without much substantial evidence.

Trump has also entertained the idea of using the US military to target criminal groups.

This is now reality, through a large military buildup deploying multiple warships, submarines and fighter jets to the Caribbean.

A tumultuous history

This is the latest chapter in a long and sometimes hostile relationship between Venezuela and the US.

Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves, affording the country political and economic influence within the region. This has made Venezuela a valued ally, and sometimes a competitor, to the United States.

But for the past two decades or so, relations have been more antagonistic.

When left-wing populist President Hugo Chavez was in power in Venezuela in 2002, the US was accused of giving tacit approval to a coup attempt against him.

America has also imposed economic sanctions against the country since 2005. These particularly ramped up under Trump’s first administration against Chavez’s successor and current president, Nicolas Maduro.

While less popular than his predecessor, Maduro remains extremely powerful. US attempts to destabilise his government, including one in 2019, have been unsuccessful.

Although many in Venezuela would welcome a change of government, any US intervention in the region is likely to be immensely unpopular. It provides a nationalist rallying point for Maduro: a way to boost his local support.

What do we know about the gang?

Trump claims both boats were operated by the Tren de Aragua gang.

The group started in Venezuelan prisons before spreading across other Latin American countries, primarily through people fleeing Maduro’s authoritarian regime.

Estimates of the size of the gang are contested and hard to measure, but best guesses put it at around 5,000 members.

Tren de Aragua members have been identified in 16 US states, but there has been little conclusive evidence of large-scale criminal or terrorist activity. In New York, Tren de Aragua has primarily been associated with retail theft.

Why is the US bombing boats?

Destroying individual boats is unlikely to have an impact on drug trafficking into the US. Most fentanyl, for example, is trafficked into the US over land borders by US citizens.

However, bombing the boats does reinforce the idea of an existential threat to the United States that can only be defeated with violence. The same sense of threat is used to justify the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans to brutal prisons in El Salvador.

The Venezuelan government is of less concern to Trump. Indeed, the White House has authorised increased imports of Venezuelan oil in recent weeks.

Others within the US government are more committed to regime change in Venezuela. For Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the military operations are a direct effort to destabilise what he sees as an illegitimate Venezuelan regime.

Is it legal?

These airstrikes are the first unilateral US military action in Latin America since the invasion of Panama in 1989.

However, the military operations fit within a much longer history of overt and covert intervention in the region.

Scholars have said the decision to attack the boats was likely illegal under the law of the sea.

The US government justifies the attack in the broadest terms: Venezuelan gangs traffic drugs that can kill American citizens, therefore any violence is warranted to prevent this. This is an argument not about legality, but urgent security.

Impunity is the larger point, a display of power in itself. After the first strike, Vice President JD Vance declared “I don’t give a shit what you call it”.

Trump and Rubio have both asserted the strikes will continue, without concern for the possibility that they could be considered war crimes.

Without a clear prospect of legal jeopardy, the strikes will remain available as a way to project US power. The strikes will likely stop, or pause, when the government wants to claim that it has achieved some victory.

Philip Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. US strikes on Venezuelan ‘drug boats’ have killed 14 people. What is Trump trying to do? – https://theconversation.com/us-strikes-on-venezuelan-drug-boats-have-killed-14-people-what-is-trump-trying-to-do-265481

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Debjani Ganguly, Professor of Literature, Australian Catholic University

“She was my shelter and my storm.” With these words in the opening pages of her memoir, Arundhati Roy unfurls a narrative of extraordinary filial bonds that renders trite those therapeutic memoirs of family dysfunction scattered across the publishing world.

Even Philip Larkin’s memorable poem beginning with, “They f..k you up, your mum and dad,” does not come close, though Roy’s anger is recognisable in these lines with which Larkin’s poem ends: “Get out as early as you can / And don’t have any kids yourself.”

Review: Mother Mary Comes to Me – Arundhati Roy (Penguin Random House)

Roy walked away from her abusive maternal home in Kerala at the age of 17. While training as an architect in Delhi she did not see her mother for the next seven years. She also never had children. When her lover’s young daughters ask her if she is their new mother, she quickly disavows her role and requests they call her “Noonie,” a word from a folk song in Massey Sahib, the film in which Roy acted in her early twenties.

Roy’s memoir is a powerful rendition of her mother, Mary Roy, who terrifies her children and compels them to find their place in the world bereft of the push and pull of natal intimacy. Yet when Mary dies, Roy feels orphaned at the loss of her novelistic subject, that “unpredictable, irreplaceable spark of mad genius”.

Mary remains a formal “Mrs Roy” to her daughter except when she is terminally ill. Arundhati Roy calls her “Kochamma” then. Little Mother.

The work captures in its early pages the terror of living with a formidable parent who rages against motherhood, and who makes it very clear Arundhati was an unwanted second child, the one who barely escaped being aborted by a wire hanger.

But Mrs Roy, the divorcee with an alcoholic ex, and a single mother shunned even by her own family, was also a pioneering educator and feminist icon. Mary Roy established an experimental coeducational school in Kottayam in the southern Indian state of Kerala at a time when such women-led enterprises were unheard of. Her life revolved around the school and her office was her home.

Arundhati and her brother Lalith lived in the dorms with other pupils. Mrs Roy, who suffered from debilitating asthma attacks, revelled in the veneration of her pupils and devoted staff even as she showed no mercy when they erred or failed to meet her needs.

A few comic scenes in the memoir revolve around these acolytes. One is described as a “frightened minion carrying her asthma inhaler as though it were a crown or a sceptre”.

As a child, Arundhati was so afraid she would be held responsible for Mrs Roy’s death if she suffered a fatal asthma attack she found herself breathing for her mother, becoming a “valiant organ-child”.

School and home merged in the early years of the children’s upbringing. They had no sanctuary against hard discipline and no privacy in which to cry in shame. For Arundhati, living with Mrs Roy was like picking her way through a

minefield without a map. My feet and fingers and sometimes even my head were often blown off, but after floating around untethered for a while, they would magically reattach themselves.

Before their life within the confines of the school, the children had roamed wild in their ancestral village of Ayemenem, memories of which Roy celebrates vividly in her Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things.

Blowing up the gilded cage

The memoir alternates between vignettes of Mrs Roy’s excruciating cruelty towards Arundhati and her brother, and her astonishing courage in challenging the norms of the patriarchal Syrian Christian community that chewed her up and threw her out like roughage.

Mary Roy’s own childhood in an abusive home where her entomologist father beat her and her mother – routinely throwing them out of the house in the dark of the night – sharpened her determination to take on the entire legal establishment decades later. She challenged the Travancore Christian Succession Act of 1916 that denied daughters from the Syrian Christian community their rightful share of inheritances.

In 1986 she won a landmark case in the Supreme Court of India that gave Mary and countless other women in Kerala their inheritance rights. Mary’s brother and her widowed mother, who had once threatened to evict her from their family cottage when she was a young, single mother, experienced Mrs Roy’s delayed wrath when they were forced into penury by her action.

The memoir also cuts a swathe through the Arundhati Roy’s dual authorial self: screenplay writer and renowned novelist and activist-writer of narrative non-fiction. We get a fascinating backstage tour of her evolution as a writer, a lover, a friend, and a political conscience-keeper on the global stage – currently the bête noire of India’s right-wing government.

Roy famously shunned her bird-in-a-golden-cage celebrity status after The God of Small Things won the Booker in 1997. At the turn of the millennium, she observed with dread the rise of the Hindu Right in her beloved country, especially the euphoria around India’s creation of the nuclear bomb in 1998. In 2001 she published her soul-stirring essay on 9/11, The Algebra of Infinite Justice.

What followed was an intimate and often precarious engagement with some of the iconic grassroots movements in contemporary India: the Narmada Bachao Andolan movement (Save the Narmada River), which opposed the building of a huge dam that would inundate the Narmada valley and destroy the habitation of millions across four Indian states and the Maoist Naxalites in India’s heartland, who engaged in guerrilla warfare to protect tribal lands from vast mining conglomerates.

In 2024, due to her advocacy on behalf of the Kashmiri people caught in the crossfire between India and Pakistan, the Modi government threatened to prosecute Roy under a draconian law reserved for anti-national activities.

Read more:
The prosecution of Arundhati Roy is business as usual for the Modi government – and bad news for freedom of expression in India

We begin to understand Roy’s intrepid embrace of danger, her shunning of domestic security and career comforts when she, at her most disarming, reveals to the reader that she cannot seem to help it.

With a childhood that felt like living on the edge of a ledge from which a fall was inevitable at any moment, she has grown accustomed to precarity. For years after The God of Small Things, she writes,

I wandered through forests and river valleys, villages and border towns, to try to better understand my country. As I travelled, I wrote. That was the beginning of my restless, unruly life as a seditious, traitor-writer. Free woman. Free Writing. Like Mother Mary taught me. I hadn’t just avoided the gilded age. I had blown it to smithereens.

Mary Roy’s volatility also helped incubate Arundhati’s novelistic self, a self that could stand apart and assess the turbulence around her. Towards the end of her memoir, she confesses that while she could never quite anticipate her mother’s changeable moods, she had learned “to stand outside the range of their clawing, lashing fury”.

‘Read this as you would a novel’

Some of the most compelling passages in the memoir are about Arundhati Roy’s quest for what she calls her prey, a grazing language-animal she struggled to find for ages.

Language, she claims, was rarely her friend, rarely amenable to taming. When she arrives at the realisation that she is ready to devote herself to The God of Small Things, she writes, “I knew then that I had hunted down my language-animal. I had disembowelled it and drunk its inky blood.”

Her language-animal has surrendered yet again to the power of her claw-pen. In Mother Mary Comes to Me, Roy’s novelistic self appears in full command as she steers the flow of rage, outrage, wonder, sorrow and joy with just the right touch, and at just the right moment, each time it threatens to overwhelm the narrative.

In her wry, inimitable style she writes,

most of us are a living, breathing soup of memory and imagination [..] so read this book as you would a novel. It makes no larger claim.

Not surprisingly, the magical alchemy of The God of Small Things reemerges at startling moments in this work. Unforgettable characters, images, turn of phrase, and the coruscating rhythm of the prose, remind us why Roy remains an indubitable literary force almost three decades after her blockbuster first novel.

Debjani Ganguly has received funding from the ARC and the Mellon and Chiang Ching Kuo Foundations.

– ref. Magical alchemy: Arundhati Roy’s compelling memoir illuminates a ‘restless, unruly’ life – https://theconversation.com/magical-alchemy-arundhati-roys-compelling-memoir-illuminates-a-restless-unruly-life-262506

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ang Li, ARC DECRA and Senior Research Fellow, NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne

This year, ten days of extreme heat in Europe killed roughly 2,300 people, severe flooding on the New South Wales coast left more than 48,000 stranded, and wildfires in Los Angeles destroyed at least 16,000 homes and other buildings.

Events such as these signal what climate scientists have long warned: climate-related extremes are becoming more frequent and intense.

Poor housing can leave us more vulnerable to the effects of climate change. So in today’s warming world, it’s increasingly important our homes and our housing system are climate resilient. This means they must protect us from heatwaves, floods and bushfires, and keep out air pollutants. And the housing system must function to provide affordable and secure housing.

Location is important too. Australia’s first National Climate Risk Assessment, released this week, estimates 8.7% of residential buildings are in very high-risk areas (prone to hazards). This proportion is projected to increase to 13.5% by 2090 in a scenario with a high global warming level.

Housing and health are inextricably linked. In a new paper published in the Lancet Public Health, my colleagues and I identify several ways climate change affects our homes, and in turn, our health.

On a basic level, housing shields us from the elements. But when we look at the bigger picture, resilient housing and housing systems have a key role to play in helping us face the challenges of climate change.

How does climate change affect our homes and our health?

Climate change can lead to deterioration in the indoor conditions in our homes.

For example, extreme temperatures can compromise air quality by making building materials more likely to degrade and generate pollutants. Particulate matter and other hazardous air pollutants from bushfire smoke can infiltrate indoor environments. Both of these processes can contribute to poor indoor air quality. This is not to mention that extreme heat outside can lead to unbearable temperatures indoors.

Meanwhile, floods, storms and cyclones can cause structural and water damage to homes. This can expose occupants to toxins, for example from contaminated water, and increase the risk of allergic reactions, respiratory problems, and infectious diseases (such as water-borne and mosquito-borne diseases).

Read more:
Eradicating mould would save millions in health-care costs: how our homes affect our health

Climate change and housing security

The risks associated with climate change can also influence housing security and affordability.

Both housing insecurity and unaffordability are significant predictors of poor mental health and wellbeing, and both are already significant problems independent of climate change.

But a changing climate exacerbates these problems. Equally, the housing crisis leaves us more vulnerable to climate change.

Climate-related disasters put a strain on housing costs and general cost-of-living pressures. Residents may need to pay for maintenance and repairs alongside their mortgages and rental payments. Meanwhile, increasing extreme weather events push insurance premiums higher. All this puts pressure on housing affordability.

Extreme temperatures also increase the risk of energy poverty. Not being able to adequately heat or cool a home can negatively affect both physical and mental health for its occupants.

What’s more, climate-related disasters can drive forced relocation, with flow-on effects to health and wellbeing through disruption to family life, loss of income, gender-based violence, social disconnection, and reduced access to services.

Notably, the effects of climate change reduce the supply of affordable housing, especially affordable rentals, which are more likely to be damaged or lost from hazards, for example due to lower structural quality. Lower-income renters as a result find it harder to compete for the remaining stock.

There are also other examples showing the effects of climate change on housing are inequitable, with the consequences flowing disproportionately to less advantaged groups.

When areas with low climate risk become more desirable, this can drive up housing and other costs in an area. Climate “gentrification” can displace low-income households to higher risk and less protected areas. We’ve seen this happen in countries including the United States and Denmark.

What does climate-resilient housing look like?

Housing needs to protect people from the growing risks posed by climate change. In a physical sense, this means it must be robust enough to bear more intense weather conditions, be energy efficient, and have good thermal performance that allows for both ventilation and climate control.

To achieve this, climate-resilient housing should include features such as:

• well-constructed foundations, walls and roofs
• ventilation and insulation
• energy-efficient cooling and heating
• exterior shading and roof reflectivity
• building materials that are fire- and heat-resistant.

Building codes need to be cognisant of the changing climate, while existing housing may need to be upgraded.

We’ve seen some signs of progress. For example, updates to the National Construction Code in recent years have accounted for the increasing impact of climate change, by raising energy efficiency and thermal performance standards, among other measures.

There is also a need for stronger tenant protection policies. Rental housing is disproportionately of poor quality, yet it houses a large portion of the more vulnerable people in the population. Minimum standards for rental housing must be climate resilient.

But housing people well isn’t just a question of the physical construction of homes.

Climate-resilient housing should be affordable, secure and provide residents the chance to access opportunities for work, education and social connection that sustain wellbeing.

So much public discussion has focused on the need to meet housing supply targets, but we can’t forget that people need to be housed well to flourish.

This article is part of a series, Healthy Homes.

Ang Li receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Heat, air quality, insurance costs: how climate change is affecting our homes – and our health – https://theconversation.com/heat-air-quality-insurance-costs-how-climate-change-is-affecting-our-homes-and-our-health-263278

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton

After the Sept. 10, 2025, assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump claimed that radical leftist groups foment political violence in the U.S., and “they should be put in jail.”

“The radical left causes tremendous violence,” he said, asserting that “they seem to do it in a bigger way” than groups on the right.

Top presidential adviser Stephen Miller also weighed in after Kirk’s killing, saying that left-wing political organizations constitute “a vast domestic terror movement.”

“We are going to use every resource we have … throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again,” Miller said.

But policymakers and the public need reliable evidence and actual data to understand the reality of politically motivated violence. From our research on extremism, it’s clear that the president’s and Miller’s assertions about political violence from the left are not based on actual facts.

Based on our own research and a review of related work, we can confidently say that most domestic terrorists in the U.S. are politically on the right, and right-wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism.

Political violence rising

The understanding of political violence is complicated by differences in definitions and the recent Department of Justice removal of an important government-sponsored study of domestic terrorists.

Political violence in the U.S. has risen in recent months and takes forms that go unrecognized. During the 2024 election cycle, nearly half of all states reported threats against election workers, including social media death threats, intimidation and doxing.

Kirk’s assassination illustrates the growing threat. The man charged with the murder, Tyler Robinson, allegedly planned the attack in writing and online.

This follows other politically motivated killings, including the June assassination of Democratic Minnesota state Rep. and former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband.

These incidents reflect a normalization of political violence. Threats and violence are increasingly treated as acceptable for achieving political goals, posing serious risks to democracy and society.

Defining ‘political violence’

This article relies on some of our research on extremism, other academic research, federal reports, academic datasets and other monitoring to assess what is known about political violence.

Support for political violence in the U.S. is spreading from extremist fringes into the mainstream, making violent actions seem normal. Threats can move from online rhetoric to actual violence, posing serious risks to democratic practices.

But different agencies and researchers use different definitions of political violence, making comparisons difficult.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security define domestic violent extremism as threats involving actual violence. They do not investigate people in the U.S. for constitutionally protected speech, activism or ideological beliefs.

Domestic violent extremism is defined by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security as violence or credible threats of violence intended to influence government policy or intimidate civilians for political or ideological purposes. This general framing, which includes diverse activities under a single category, guides investigations and prosecutions.

Datasets compiled by academic researchers use narrower and more operational definitions. The Global Terrorism Database counts incidents that involve intentional violence with political, social or religious motivation.

These differences mean that the same incident may or may not appear in a dataset, depending on the rules applied.

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security emphasize that these distinctions are not merely academic. Labeling an event “terrorism” rather than a “hate crime” can change who is responsible for investigating an incident and how many resources they have to investigate it.

For example, a politically motivated shooting might be coded as terrorism in federal reporting, cataloged as political violence by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, and prosecuted as homicide or a hate crime at the state level.

Patterns in incidents and fatalities

Despite differences in definitions, several consistent patterns emerge from available evidence.

Politically motivated violence is a small fraction of total violent crime, but its impact is magnified by symbolic targets, timing and media coverage.

In the first half of 2025, 35% of violent events tracked by University of Maryland researchers targeted U.S. government personnel or facilities – more than twice the rate in 2024.

Right-wing extremist violence has been deadlier than left-wing violence in recent years.

Based on government and independent analyses, right-wing extremist violence has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of fatalities, amounting to approximately 75% to 80% of U.S. domestic terrorism deaths since 2001.

Illustrative cases include the 2015 Charleston church shooting, when white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine Black parishioners; the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue attack in Pittsburgh, where 11 worshippers were murdered; the 2019 El Paso Walmart massacre, in which an anti-immigrant gunman killed 23 people. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, an earlier but still notable example, killed 168 in the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history.

By contrast, left-wing extremist incidents, including those tied to anarchist or environmental movements, have made up about 10& to 15% of incidents and less than 5% of fatalities.

Examples include the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front arson and vandalism campaigns in the 1990s and 2000s, which were more likely to target property rather than people.

Violence occurred during Seattle May Day protests in 2016, with anarchist groups and other demonstrators clashing with police. The clashes resulted in multiple injuries and arrests. In 2016, five Dallas police officers were murdered by a heavily armed sniper who was targeting white police officers.

Hard to count

There’s another reason it’s hard to account for and characterize certain kinds of political violence and those who perpetrate it.

The U.S. focuses on prosecuting criminal acts rather than formally designating organizations as terrorist, relying on existing statutes such as conspiracy, weapons violations, RICO provisions and hate crime laws to pursue individuals for specific acts of violence.

Unlike foreign terrorism, the federal government does not have a mechanism to formally charge an individual with domestic terrorism. That makes it difficult to characterize someone as a domestic terrorist.

The State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list applies only to groups outside of the United States. By contrast, U.S. law bars the government from labeling domestic political organizations as terrorist entities because of First Amendment free speech protections.

Rhetoric is not evidence

Without harmonized reporting and uniform definitions, the data will not provide an accurate overview of political violence in the U.S.

But we can make some important conclusions.

Politically motivated violence in the U.S. is rare compared with overall violent crime. Political violence has a disproportionate impact because even rare incidents can amplify fear, influence policy and deepen societal polarization.

Right-wing extremist violence has been more frequent and more lethal than left-wing violence. The number of extremist groups is substantial and skewed toward the right, although a count of organizations does not necessarily reflect incidents of violence.

High-profile political violence often brings heightened rhetoric and pressure for sweeping responses. Yet the empirical record shows that political violence remains concentrated within specific movements and networks rather than spread evenly across the ideological spectrum. Distinguishing between rhetoric and evidence is essential for democracy.

Trump and members of his administration are threatening to target whole organizations and movements and the people who work in them with aggressive legal measures – to jail them or scrutinize their favorable tax status. But research shows that the majority of political violence comes from people following right-wing ideologies.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Right-wing extremist violence is more frequent and more deadly than left-wing violence − what the data shows – https://theconversation.com/right-wing-extremist-violence-is-more-frequent-and-more-deadly-than-left-wing-violence-what-the-data-shows-265367

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Cornell, PhD Candidate in Public Health & Community Medicine, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney

If you could, would you pay to live forever? Some Silicon Valley billionaires aren’t just making tech products – they’ve set their sights on immortality.

Social media is flooded with influencers promoting peptides, “functional” mushroom powders and other (often non-evidence-based) hacks said to maximise your lifespan. Some even claim to reverse your “biological age”.

The quest to live longer, look younger or just live one’s “best life” has become a booming industry, encompassing treatments as diverse as ice baths, saunas, cryotherapy chambers and even red light therapy.

But behind much of the marketing and social media posts are commercial interests willing to cater to a population fearful of ageing and dying.

Nobody lives forever

The key reason humans aren’t immortal hinges on evolution. This process favours genetic traits promoting successful reproduction and adaptation over those promoting unlimited lifespan for individuals.

The ancient Greeks told cautionary tales about life extension. Those who reached for immortality mostly found this came at a terrible cost. The mythical Tithonus, for example, was doomed to endless ageing and decline after being granted eternal life without eternal youth.

Fast forward to today, the longevity industry has the backing of venture capital funds, celebrity investors and pharmaceutical companies.

But much of this money is being funnelled into products and services with little or no evidence for how they actually improve health or lengthen lifespan.

In his well-publicised quest for life extension, US venture capitalist Bryan Johnson reportedly spends millions and undergoes constant medical testing with the impossible aim of never dying.

Johnson’s longevity regimen includes a hyper-controlled diet, hundreds of daily supplements and strict sleep and exercise routines. He has even received transfusions of his own son’s blood plasma.

We see three major problems with the longevity industry that are a cause for concern.

Profit before evidence

Innovation is central to the longevity industry, attracting an influx of Silicon Valley investors seeking to “hack” the ageing process. Yet, these innovations are infrequently backed by high-quality evidence.

For example, full-body MRI is marketed as a way to identify cancer and other abnormalities early before they are harder to treat. Yet, there is no evidence these scans improve health outcomes. Medical colleges around the world do not recommend full-body MRI in healthy individuals.

Tests like these can lead to “incidentalomas” – unexpected findings that may prompt unnecessary follow-up procedures, costs and anxiety.

The longevity industry pitches itself as a disruptive alternative to mainstream health care. But it still depends on that system to function. Scans, blood tests and experimental treatments inevitably flow back into hospitals and clinics for follow-up, specialist consultations and interventions.

This puts added strain on already stretched services – both financially and in terms of workforce – while arguably delivering little benefit to population health.

Test and you shall find

Despite widespread public enthusiasm for screening tests, experts have long warned more testing does not always lead to better health.

One of the clearest risks is overdiagnosis – when an abnormality or disease is diagnosed that will never impact a person’s health during their lifetime. The more you test, the more you’ll find – much of it clinically irrelevant. This creates a self-affirming cycle.

Unnecessary investigations can result in overdiagnosis, incidental findings and potentially cascades of further unnecessary procedures or tests.

Read more:
We analysed almost 1,000 social media posts about 5 popular medical tests. Most were utterly misleading

Longevity isn’t the same as prevention

Marketers of longevity claim their services and products are part of “preventive” medicine: spotting disease before it strikes and keeping people healthier for longer.

But the longevity movement differs drastically from the public health principle of prevention.

Prevention, in mainstream medicine, is about simple, evidence-based measures. This includes immunisations and screening for cancer at the right ages.

But there’s no clear evidence many of the exhaustive tests and treatments the longevity industry promotes improve long-term outcomes for otherwise healthy people.

They simply cost a lot of money, are resource intensive and may lead to further unnecessary testing.

Why this matters

By medicalising ageing, the longevity movement is a classic example of disease mongering. It also risks embedding ageism into everyday commerce – pathologising normal ageing rather than accepting it as part of life.

It also risks diverting attention and resources away from important and basic public health system functions that can improve quality of life for millions as we all gracefully age.

The hype around many unfounded longevity claims distracts us from what we already know works: regular exercise, healthy food, sound sleep, meaningful relationships and fair access to evidence-based medical treatment.

Samuel Cornell receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.

Brooke Nickel receives fellowship funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). She is on the Executive Committee for Wiser Healthcare and the Scientific Committee of the Preventing Overdiagnosis Conference.

Sean Docking does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. A booming longevity industry wants to sell us ‘immortality’. There could be hidden costs – https://theconversation.com/a-booming-longevity-industry-wants-to-sell-us-immortality-there-could-be-hidden-costs-264879

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Rudge, Lecturer in Law, Sydney Law School, University of Sydney

Cosmetic injectables are more popular and socially accepted than ever. In 2024, the Australian market was estimated to be worth US$3.1 billion (A$4.6 billion) and growing fast.

But these aren’t simple beauty treatments. They use serious prescription medicines such as botulinum toxin (Botox) – the most potent neurotoxin ever discovered – and can cause severe complications including botulism, tissue death and hair loss.

New national guidelines for practitioners and advertising came into effect this month to improve safety.

Yet a confusing patchwork of state laws still governs how these “poisons” are prescribed, administered and supplied across the country. Is it time they were made consistent nationally?

A long push

Scholars have long made the case for uniform legislation in this area.

Some 25 years ago, a national review found variation in state poisons laws created “a major cost for industry and, in turn for consumers”.

More recently, the Queensland Minister for Health has advocated for uniform injectables laws across Australia.

This fragmentation might also conflict with Australia’s National Medicines Policy, which states patients should have uniform access to medicines across all jurisdictions.

What do the laws actually say?

In New South Wales, prescriptions for cosmetic injectables are valid for just six months. But in Victoria, Queensland and other states, they last 12 months.

This means patients can legally receive the treatment for twice as long based on a single consultation.

The laws also govern who can buy and keep injectables. Queensland uniquely allows nurses to purchase and hold stocks of Botox, but only under strict conditions requiring special authority from Queensland Health. Nurses can’t buy Botox in other states.

Most other states, such as Victoria and South Australia, follow a traditional doctor-prescribe, nurse-administer model under general prescription drug laws, without the special cosmetic injectable regulations found in Queensland or NSW.

Victoria requires doctors to take “all reasonable steps to ensure a therapeutic need exists” before prescribing cosmetic injectables. In Queensland, treatments must be “reasonably necessary for therapeutic treatment”.

This may create ambiguity for some cosmetic uses that may not qualify as “therapeutic”. These could be considered “off-label” uses (those not approved by the regulator), such as facial asymmetry correction.

But other jurisdictions have no such explicit “therapeutic need” provisions in their legislation.

Why do the laws differ?

Inconsistent state laws in health are the norm in Australia.

When the Constitution was framed in 1901, the federal government wasn’t given a specific power to make laws about health care.

Instead, states retained that authority as an “undefined residue” from their colonial days.

Today, the federal Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) classifies substances like Botox as prescription-only through the Poisons Standard. It’s a system dating back to an 1862 “poisons book”.

But due to the states’ authority, this federal classification only becomes law once the states adopt it. While all states have adopted the federal standard, they have also added their own rules.

Significant differences between jurisdictions can create uncertainty, confusion and put both patients and practitioners at risk.

Is uniformity the answer?

While uniform laws sound appealing, the real problems might lie elsewhere.

Media investigations have revealed an alleged “black market” for prescription medicines.

There are reports of some telehealth consultations being dangerously short, lasting under a minute.

Crucially, both practices already violate existing professional standards. The regulator, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), promotes obligations for “good and safe clinical care”. It says it receives regular reports of “inappropriate consultations”.

State laws also prohibit unauthorised supply. NSW’s Medicines, Poisons and Therapeutic Goods Act prohibits direct-to-consumer supply without authorisation.

Victoria’s and Queensland’s laws contain similar prohibitions.

The issue isn’t missing rules. It’s failure to enforce existing professional standards.

One exception involves unregistered people administering injectables at parties, as occurred in New South Wales this year, causing life-threatening botulism.

But even here, the solution isn’t necessarily harmonising state laws.

Poisons legislation already makes unauthorised administration illegal. This is the case for NSW, Victoria, and Queensland, and in other states.

And as some practitioners warn, making legitimate channels harder to access may only drive more people underground.

A better path forward

Rather than harmonising state laws – a constitutionally difficult task – Australia has chosen a different approach: strengthened professional standards.

The new practitioner guidelines directly tackle the telehealth “rubber-stamping” problem by requiring doctors to conduct real-time consultations with detailed informed consent for every patient.

Read more:
New rules for cosmetic injectables aim to make the industry safer. Will they work?

Combined with the TGA’s stricter approach to the ban on cosmetics advertising, adopted in March 2024, and advertising restrictions from the regulator, this creates uniform conduct expectations across Australia, even with different state laws.

Even with perfectly harmonised laws, enforcement would still depend on different state regulators with varying resources and priorities.

By contrast, there is already a high level of consistency in the way AHPRA and the national boards address complaints.

The Health Practitioner National Law already provides largely consistent standards nationwide, including on how guidelines can be used to discipline practitioners.

Recommendations from an independent review of health practitioner regulations released just this week also call for more national coordination across the country.

So while the cosmetic injectable industry needs better regulation, uniform state poisons legislation may not be the priority in this instance.

Christopher Rudge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Thinking of getting botox or filler? These are the laws for cosmetic injectables – https://theconversation.com/thinking-of-getting-botox-or-filler-these-are-the-laws-for-cosmetic-injectables-265196

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Cooney, Lecturer in Lifestyle Journalism, Monash University

When Robert Redford launched the Utah-based Sundance Institute in 1981, providing an independent support system for filmmakers named after his role in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), it would transform Hollywood and become his biggest legacy.

Redford, who has passed away age 89, was already a huge movie icon when he bought land and created a non-profit space with a mission statement “to foster independent voices, champion risky, original stories, and cultivate a community for artists to create and thrive globally”.

Starting with labs, fellowships, grants and mentoring programs for independent filmmakers, he finally decided to launch his own film festival in nearby Park City, Utah in 1985.

“The labs were absolutely the most important part of Sundance and that is still the core of what we are and what we do today,” Redford reflected during my last sit-down with him in 2013 at the Toronto International Film Festival, while promoting his own indie, All is Lost.

After the program had been running for five years, he told me

I realised we had succeeded in doing that much, but now there was nowhere for them to go. So, I thought, ‘well, what if we created a festival, where at least we can bring the filmmakers together to look at each other’s work and then we could create a community for them?’ And then, to my happy surprise, it grew beyond my imagination.

That’s putting it mildly. An astonishing list of filmmakers can all thank Redford for their career breakthroughs. Alumni of the Sundance Institute include Bong Joon-ho (who workshopped early scripts at Sundance labs before Parasite), Chloé Zhao and Taika Waititi, who often returns as a mentor.

First films that debuted at the festival include Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992), Steve Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), Richard Linklater’s Slackers (2002), Paul Thomas Anderson’s Cigarettes and Coffee (1993), Nicole Holofcener’s short film Angry (1991), Darren Aronofsky’s Pi (1998) and Damian Chazelle’s Whiplash (2014).

Australian films which recently made their Sundance debut include Noora Niasari’s Shayda (2023), Daina Reid’s Run, Rabbit, Run (2023) and Sophie Hyde’s Jimpa (2025).

Read more:
A pretty face helped make Robert Redford a star. Talent and dedication kept him one

Creating a haven

For anyone lucky enough to have attended Sundance in the early days, it was a haven for indie filmmakers. It was not uncommon to see “Bob”, as he was always known in person, walking down the main street on his way to a movie premiere or a dinner with young filmmakers eager for his advice.

Watching Redford portray Bob Woodward in the Watergate thriller All the President’s Men (1976) was one of my earliest inspirations for pursuing a career in journalism. Also, nurturing a crush since The Sting (1973) and The Way We Were (1973) made it hard not to be intimidated crossing paths with him in Park City.

Bob, however, quickly made you forget the icon status. Soon, you’d just be chatting about a new filmmaker he was excited to support, or his environmental work (he served as a trustee for five decades on the non-profit organisation, Natural Resources Defense Council).

Everyone felt equal in that indie film world, and Redford was responsible for that atmosphere.

In 1994, I waited in a Main Street coffee shop for Elle MacPherson to ski off a mountain and do an interview promoting her acting role in the Australian film Sirens. Later that day, I commiserated over a hot chocolate with Hugh Grant as he complained about frostbitten toes from wearing the wrong shoes and finding himself trekking through a snowstorm to the first screening of Four Weddings and a Funeral.

In the early days, Sundance was a destination for film lovers, not hair and makeup people, inappropriately glamorous designer gowns or swag lounges.

The arrival of Hollywood

But eventually, there was no denying the clout of any film making it to Sundance, and Hollywood came knocking.

“In 1985, we only had one theatre and maybe there were four or five restaurants in town, so it was a much quieter, smaller place and over time it grew so incredibly the atmosphere changed,” Redford reflected during our interview.

Suddenly all these people came in to leverage off our festival and because we are a non-profit, we couldn’t do anything about it. We had what we called ‘ambush mongers’ coming in to sell their wares and give out swag and I’m sure there will always be those people, but we are strong enough to resist being overtaken by it.

The festival resisted but the infrastructure gave in. In 2027, the Sundance Film Festival will finally relocate to Boulder, Colorado after a careful selection process aimed at ensuring the spirit of Sundance remains.

Redford stepped back from being the public face of the festival in 2019, dedicating himself instead to spend more time with filmmakers and their projects. But he supported the move to Colorado, and said in his statement of the announcement

Words cannot express the sincere gratitude I have for Park City, the state of Utah, and all those in the Utah community that have helped to build the organization.

The spirit of Sundance lives on, but it just won’t be the same without Bob on the streets or in the movie theatres.

Jenny Cooney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘To my happy surprise, it grew beyond my imagination’: Robert Redford’s Sundance legacy – https://theconversation.com/to-my-happy-surprise-it-grew-beyond-my-imagination-robert-redfords-sundance-legacy-265478

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

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese put the best face on the situation after his plan to sign a major defence treaty with Papua New Guinea while in Port Moresby fell through.

Albanese said he expected the signing of the treaty – of which the wording was approved – to be finalised “in coming weeks”.

The government hopes the coming regular annual minister meeting between the two countries, on a date to be fixed, would provide the opportunity to finally land the treaty. Australia is hosting the meeting this year.

Instead of the treaty signing, Albanese and PNG Prime Minister James Marape issued a joint communique saying the two countries had agreed on a text of a Mutual Defence Treaty “which will be signed following Cabinet processes in both countries”.

The treaty would “elevate the defence relationship between Papua New Guinea and Austrlia. to an Alliance”, it said.

This is the second time within weeks Albanese’s plans for finalising a treaty with a regional country have been dashed. Last week he was unable to land a $500 million agreement with Vanuatu.

Albanese has been in PNG this week for the 50th anniversary of the country’s independence. Earlier in the week, he said the signing had been delayed because a PNG cabinet quorum could not be summoned after cabinet members had returned to their home areas for the celebrations.

Albanese told a joint Wednesday news conference with Marape: “We respect the processes of the Papua New Guinea government. What this is about is the processes of their cabinet.”

Both leaders made the point that the treaty had been sought by PNG.

Asked whether the signing delay could open a window for China to try to scuttle the deal, Marape said there was “no way, shape or form” that China could have any hand in telling PNG not to have the treaty.

While it had been a friend of PNG for the last 50 years, China knew that PNG had “security partners of choice,” Marape said.

But he said that in the next couple of days he would send the PNG defence minister first to China and then to other countries, including the United States, France, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines “to inform them all exactly what this is all about”.

The joint communique said the proposed Pukpuk treaty would include “a mutual defence Alliance which recognises that an armed attack on Australia or Papua New Guinea would be a danger to the peace and security of both countries”.

In other provisions the treaty also covers the recruitment of PNG citizens into the Australian Defence Force.

It would also ensure “any activities, agreements or arrangements with third parties would not compromise the ability” of PNG or Australia to implement the treaty.

Albanese said the treaty would “”be Australia’s first new alliance in more than 70 years and only the third in our entire history, along with the ANZUS treaty with new Zealand and the United States”.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Albanese leaves PNG with major defence treaty still a work in progress – https://theconversation.com/albanese-leaves-png-with-major-defence-treaty-still-a-work-in-progress-265377

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Kirkland, Professor of Geochronology, Curtin University

When most of us think about what shaped our planet, we probably picture volcanoes, earthquakes, and huge continents slowly drifting apart (or back together again) over millions or billions of years. We also know meteorite impacts were important; our crater-packed Moon is clear evidence of that.

But what if Earth’s geological story was also written further afield in the stars – specifically, in the spiral arms of our home galaxy, the Milky Way?

That’s the bold idea that has been resonating behind some recent research that links astrophysics with geology. So far, these controversial ideas have been based on models, limited by gaps in Earth’s geological record and the uncertainties in our Solar System’s galactic path.

But our new study, published this week in Physical Review Research, takes a different approach by comparing maps of hydrogen gas in the Milky Way with chemical fingerprints in ancient crystals on Earth. The findings support the view that Earth’s crust may have been influenced by the Solar System’s journey around the galaxy.

Reading the galaxy through hydrogen

Astronomers often use neutral hydrogen, the simplest atom of one proton and one electron, as a cosmic marker.

This atomic hydrogen emits radio waves at a wavelength of 21 centimetres, which cut through the dust and gas that obscure much of the Milky Way from our view. These emissions, from higher density regions of hydrogen, reveal the sweeping spiral arms of the galaxy, even when visible-light telescopes cannot.

The spiral arms aren’t solid structures. Instead, they’re density waves – like traffic jams of stars, gas and dust that move around the galactic disc more slowly than individual stars themselves.

As the Solar System orbits the galactic centre faster than the arms, it periodically overtakes them, roughly every 180–200 million years. Passing through a spiral arm could increase the number of comets and asteroids striking Earth.

Zircon crystals: tiny time capsules

How can we know if Earth really felt the consequences of these galactic encounters?
The answer may lie in zircon, a hardy mineral commonly found in Earth’s crust, that can survive for billions of years.

Zircon crystals form in magmas and are like tiny time capsules. Not only can they be dated, but they also carry chemical clues about what Earth was like at the moment they grew.

Inside these crystals, the oxygen atoms occur in slightly different forms, called isotopes, that have the same chemistry but different masses. These isotopes act as tracers, showing whether the magma came from deep inside Earth or had contact with surface water.

As the Solar System travels around the galaxy, it passes through spiral arms where hydrogen gas is more concentrated. If there is unusual variability in zircon oxygen isotopes at the times of high atomic hydrogen density, then this suggests something disrupted the normal balance of crust formation on Earth.

Matching Earth’s rocks with galactic maps

The new study directly compared this zircon isotope record with radio frequency-measured hydrogen density along the Solar System’s galactic orbit. The result? Striking correlations.

Periods when the Solar System passed through spiral arms – regions with denser hydrogen – line up with spikes in zircon oxygen variability.

In other words, Earth’s crust seemed more “chaotic” at the same times the Solar System was embedded in star-forming arms of the Milky Way.

A galactic fingerprint on Earth’s crust

What could explain this connection?

One idea is that when the Solar System moves through a spiral arm, it can shake up the distant icy region of space known as the Oort Cloud, a giant reservoir of comets far beyond Pluto.

Some of these comets may then hurtle toward Earth.

Each impact delivers enormous energy – enough to melt rock, trigger geological upheaval and leave lasting marks in the planet’s crust.

Crucially, this record is preserved over billions of years, much longer than the impact craters we can still see on Earth, which are often erased by erosion or plate tectonics.

Zircons may therefore offer a deep-time archive of galactic influences that we can’t observe directly through astronomy.

A cosmic connection

If Earth’s geology really responds to the rhythms of the galaxy, it expands our view of what drives planetary evolution. It suggests that to fully understand Earth, we must look beyond it, to the vast structures of the Milky Way that periodically reshaped our Solar System’s environment.

Recognising astrophysical fingerprints in planetary geology could provide new clues about crustal growth, habitability, and even the emergence of life.

Of course, caution is warranted. Correlation doesn’t always mean causation, and disentangling the effects of galactic arm crossings from Earth’s internal processes is tricky. But the emerging evidence is compelling enough to take seriously.

For now, zircon crystals, tiny grains often smaller than a sand particle, are helping us glimpse a connection between Earth and the cosmos.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Tiny crystals in Earth’s crust have captured the movement of the Milky Way’s spiral arms – https://theconversation.com/tiny-crystals-in-earths-crust-have-captured-the-movement-of-the-milky-ways-spiral-arms-265396

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Zietsch, Associate Professor, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland

Sex is important. Romantic, typically sexual, partnerships are often among the most central relationships in individuals’ lives, providing a host of personal, health, social and economic benefits.

But what about people who don’t have sex?

In a new study, my colleagues and I looked at the differences between mature adults who had never had sex and those who had. We found sexlessness is associated with a range of genetic, environmental, physical and mental factors – but much still remains unclear.

Life without sex

Some people – often described as “asexual” – simply don’t desire sex.

However, those who do but are unable to find suitable and willing partners may be vulnerable to poor mental health and loneliness, social embarrassment, and economic disadvantages (for example due to not cohabiting with a partner). People involved in online “incel” (involuntary celibate) cultures may even be at risk of radicalisation.

So it is important to understand more about people who don’t have sex.

Knowing the characteristics associated with sexlessness would help to understand its causes and consequences. It may even inform strategies to remove barriers to people finding fulfilling partnerships.

To find out more, we studied about 400,000 UK residents aged between 39 and 73, and a further 13,500 Australian residents aged between 18 and 89. Around 1% of both men and women had not had sex.

Our team – led by Laura Wesseldijk, Abdel Abdellaoui and Karin Verweij from Amsterdam UMC, and me – examined associations between sexlessness and genes, the social environment, and various physical, cognitive, personality and mental health traits.

Sex ratios and income inequality

We found sexless men tended to live in regions of the UK with relatively fewer women.

In both men and women, sexlessness was more common in regions with higher income inequality.

These new findings align with those of an earlier study of “incel” posts on social media. It found they were more likely to originate from regions of the United States with relatively fewer women and higher income inequality.

Wellbeing and other factors

We also looked for characteristics that were more common among people who had never had sex.

Sexless individuals tended to feel more nervous and lonely and less happy, and had fewer visits from friends and family. They were also less likely to have someone to confide in or to believe that life is meaningful.

These findings confirm the entanglement of sex and wellbeing.

People who had never had sex tended to use drugs and alcohol less, be more educated, and to have started wearing glasses from a younger age.

Men with lower grip strength and arm muscle mass (proxies for general upper body strength) were less likely to have had sex. There were no such correlations among women.

Familiar stereotypes

The overall pattern we observe among sexless people – intelligent, academically successful, with less physical strength and more social isolation – aligns with existing stereotypes of lower romantic success, especially in adolescence.

Our participants were middle-aged adults, or older.

However, wearing glasses at an early age, and other stereotypically “nerdy” features, may disrupt adolescent dating experiences. This in turn may affect one’s romantic confidence into adulthood.

No gene for sexlessness

We also had genetic data about all participants. This meant we were able to analyse whether genetic differences were associated with having had or not had sex.

Using what’s called a genome-wide association analysis, we found genes accounted for 15% of the variation in whether or not individuals had had sex.

However, there were no individual genes with large effects. Rather, there were many genes, each with tiny effects.

Links to intelligence, introversion and other traits

Our genetic analyses also let us detect genetic correlations with any other traits that have been genetically analysed, even if in separate studies. A genetic correlation indicates the genes associated with one trait are also associated with another trait.

In this way, we found an array of interesting links between sexlessness and other traits.

In particular, there was a strong genetic correlation not only with education but also measured intelligence. There were also correlations with higher income and socioeconomic status.

Sexlessness was also positively genetically correlated with introversion, autism spectrum disorder and anorexia. However, it was negatively genetically correlated with drug and alcohol disorders and also depression, anxiety and ADHD.

Cause and effect is hard to discern

Our results paint a complex picture. One major aspect of uncertainty is what causes underlie the pattern of associations we found.

For example, not having had sex may cause unhappiness. But unhappiness may also make it more difficult to find a partner, or a third factor could cause both unhappiness and difficulty finding a partner.

Another aspect of uncertainty is that the participants only reported whether or not they had had sex, not whether they had ever desired sex. Many sexless individuals in the sample may be asexual.

However, some of our results are difficult to explain via asexuality – for example, the link with the local ratio of men to women, and the negative association with male strength. Our results likely reflect a mixture of voluntary and involuntary sexlessness.

A step forward

Our study represents a large step forward in understanding sexlessness. However, more nuanced assessment of desire and sexuality will be key to better characterising how sexlessness relates to the interplay between genes, local environments, sexuality and culture.

Studies of more people using more advanced methods may also be able to tease apart cause and consequence.

There should be no value judgement on individuals who do not have sex, whether voluntarily or otherwise. By studying this trait, we only aim for a deeper understanding, which generally benefits all concerned.

Brendan Zietsch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. 1% of people don’t have sex. New research shows it may be partly genetic – https://theconversation.com/1-of-people-dont-have-sex-new-research-shows-it-may-be-partly-genetic-265391

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

It doesn’t take much for a journalist to get under Donald Trump’s skin. When the ABC’s United States correspondent John Lyons started questioning the president during a Washington “doorstop” about his business dealings while in office, the response was both full-on and petty.

Lyons was trying to get answers for a coming ABC Four Corners program.

He asked how much wealthier Trump was now than when he re-entered office and “Is it appropriate, President Trump, that a president in office should be engaged in so much business activity?”

Trump said that “my kids are running the business”, and mostly the deals were done before he took office.

Turning on Lyons, he asked where he was from.

When Lyons replied he was from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation – Four Corners, the president let loose.

“In my opinion, you are hurting Australia very much right now. And they want to get along with me.

“You know, your leader is coming over to see me very soon. I’m going to tell him about you. You set a very bad tone”.

When Lyons tried to continue, Trump said “Quiet”.

The White House followed up with a post on its official response account. “POTUS smacks down a rude foreign Fake News loser (many such cases): ‘Quiet.’”

Albanese is set to have his long-sought first meeting with Trump next week on the sidelines of the United Nations leaders week. Trump’s reference to it is the first time it has been officially confirmed.

The Albanese government has been trying to clear obstacles ahead of the meeting. With the Americans pressing Australia to increase its defence spending from about 2% of GDP at present to 3.5%, defence announcements have preceded the meeting.

At the weekend the government announced $12 billion in investment over a decade in a naval facility in Western Australia.

Defence Minister Richard Marles also argues Australia is spending more than 2% on defence according to a different measure.

“There are different measures around the world of percentages of GDP. I mean, if you look at the way in which NATO accounts for its own spending in terms of percentage of GDP, based on that metric, our spending on GDP today in terms of defence is around 2.8%,” he said at the weekend.

Given how some other leaders have been treated when meeting Trump, there has been some nervousness in the Prime Minister’s Office about the initial face-to-face encounter between the president and the prime minister.

The planned Four Corners’ program adds a fresh potential irritant.

The ABC said: “John Lyons is a highly awarded journalist and one of the most experienced and respected reporters in Australia. His job is to ask questions. He has the ABC’s full support.”

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Trump accuses ABC journalist of ‘hurting Australia’ and says he’ll report him to Albanese – https://theconversation.com/trump-accuses-abc-journalist-of-hurting-australia-and-says-hell-report-him-to-albanese-265378

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yaqoot Fatima, Professor of Sleep Health, University of the Sunshine Coast

You’re gently drifting off to sleep when suddenly your arms and legs convulse and you jolt yourself awake. Or, perhaps you’re relaxing in bed when, out of the blue, your dozing partner does an almighty twitch, scaring you half to death.

This is called a hypnic jerk or sleep start. It is often accompanied by a sensation of falling or tripping over.

An estimated 70% of people will experience this at some point.

So, what causes the hypnic jerk? And can certain factors make it more likely to happen?

A minor misinterpretation

The truth is we don’t know exactly why it happens, but sleep researchers have some theories.

As we transition from wakefulness to sleep, the nervous system winds down and muscles relax.

Sometimes, the brain misreads this relaxation as a sensation of falling or tripping. The brain sends a quick but powerful signal to the body. The hypnic jerk is the result.

Hypnic jerks usually affect one side of the body and are painless. Some people, however, may experience a tingling or painful sensation.

For most people, hypnic jerks are not associated with any health or other sleep problems. When hypnic jerks occur frequently over prolonged period, however, people may come to anxiously anticipate them. This can lead to insomnia.

Are they linked to certain health conditions or medications?

Some research has shown hypnic jerks can be more common among people with certain conditions, such as Parkinson’s disease. One 2016 study suggests hypnic jerks may be a symptom that can occur in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease.

However, it’s very unlikely they would happen in the absence of other common symptoms, such as changes to movement and mobility or REM sleep behaviour disorder (where people start acting out dreams). These are much more reliable potential indicators of Parkinson’s disease.

Frequent hypnic jerks that disrupt sleep can be a side effect of some prescription medications, particularly antidepressants such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). This includes medications such as escitalopram, sertraline and fluoxetine.

Although considered a rare side effect and the exact cause is still unknown, researchers have reported various cases in which people using these medications experience hypnic jerks, often resolving quickly after stopping the medication.

If you’re on these medications, experiencing hypnic jerks and feel worried about it, chat to your prescribing doctor.

Other medications that contain caffeine, and non-prescribed substances that have stimulating effects, such as cocaine, have also been linked with hypnic jerks.

Good sleep hygiene

Hypnic jerks are normal and generally no cause for concern.

However, certain lifestyle factors can make them more likely. These include:

• sleep deprivation
• stress and anxiety
• excessive intake of stimulants, such as nicotine or caffeinated drinks
• strenuous exercise before bed.

Keeping these factors under control is all part of good sleep hygiene anyway – whether or not you’re worried by hypnic jerks.

Yaqoot Fatima receives funding from NHMRC, MRFF, Beyond Blue and in-kind support from ResMed.

Alexandra Metse has received funding from the Australian Prevention Partnership Centre, the Waterloo Foundation, and the NSW Department of Education.

Daniel Sullivan has previously received funding from the NHMRC/MRFF and Queensland Health. He is a member of the Australasian Sleep Association.

– ref. A big, convulsive twitch while dozing off? Sleep experts explain the ‘hypnic jerk’ – https://theconversation.com/a-big-convulsive-twitch-while-dozing-off-sleep-experts-explain-the-hypnic-jerk-264197