Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milad Haghani, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow in Urban Risk and Resilience, The University of Melbourne

Petrol prices in Australia have risen sharply over the past six weeks. In early February, prices in major cities were around 160–180 cents per litre. By mid-March, they had increased to approximately 230–240 cents per litre.

More recent reports indicate prices have risen further, exceeding $2.50 per litre on average, with some locations approaching $3 per litre. Despite the government cutting fuel excise and prices dropping slightly, petrol is still well above 200 cents a litre.

In response to rising prices , some states have introduced free public transport. From March 31 to April 30, travelling around Victoria will be free. Tasmania has similarly introduced free bus and ferry travel.

Queensland already operates heavily subsidised fares, with a flat 50-cent fare across its network introduced in 2024.

Other states, including New South Wales, have not introduced fare relief measures. NSW Premier Chris Minns has ruled it out, arguing the fiscal cost would be substantial if fuel prices remain elevated for an extended period, and that short-term fare relief is difficult to sustain.

But, to what extent do free or heavily discounted public transport fares change travel behaviour during this time? Do they reduce petrol demand? And how evenly are the cost-of-travel benefits distributed across the population?

Who’s getting on board?

The free public transport measures introduced by Victoria and Tasmania aim to achieve two outcomes.

The first is to reduce the cost of travel. The second is to reduce reliance on car travel and, in turn, demand for petrol during this period. The success of both depends on whether these measures lead to a shift away from driving.

Evidence consistently shows fare reductions increase public transport use. And larger fare reductions and longer periods produce larger increases in patronage.

Since the introduction of the 50-cent flat fare, public transport patronage in Queensland has increased by around 18% in the first six months and over 20% over first year.

But the source of that increase matters.

In Queensland, beyond anecdotal evidence, there is limited evidence on how much of this reflects a shift away from car travel.

Existing empirical evidence from overseas suggests additional demand does not come entirely from car users. A substantial share comes from existing public transport users travelling more often, as well as from shifts away from walking or cycling, with only a modest share coming from car users.

All about access

Free or heavily discounted public transport does not benefit all travellers equally. The ability to use the system depends on access to the network and the nature of the trip.

Those who live within walking distance of public transport, or who can reliably access park-and-ride facilities (car parks with connections to public transport), are best placed to benefit.

This is particularly the case for trips to central business districts, where services are more frequent and direct.

By contrast, travel between suburbs is often less well served, with lower frequencies, indirect routes, and longer travel times. In outer suburban and regional areas, public transport options may be limited.

Household travel patterns can further constrain switching. Trips that involve school drop-offs, childcare, or coordinating multiple destinations are often less compatible with public transport, particularly where timing and flexibility are critical.

Where public transport is not a viable option, travellers face fewer choices. They may reduce or cancel trips where possible, including working from home, or continue to rely on private cars despite higher fuel costs.

Lasting change?

Most of the existing evidence on fare-free or heavily subsidised public transport comes from periods when fuel prices were relatively stable. This limits how directly those findings can be applied to the current situation.

Even so, these measures are likely to reduce some pressure on petrol demand in the short term. The extent of that effect remains uncertain and will depend on how many travellers are able, and willing, to switch away from cars.

What makes the current setting different and unique is the combination of a sharp increase in the cost of driving and a temporary removal of public transport fares. This creates a stronger incentive to reconsider travel choices than price changes on either side alone.

This means there is also a potential for longer-term effects. Exposure to public transport among otherwise car users may reduce perceived barriers, improve familiarity with the system and lead to habit formation.

Behavioural evidence shows exposure can lead to habit formation, where behaviours persist even after the initial incentive is removed.

Evidence shows behaviour change is more likely when people alter their daily travel routines. Such habit disruptions can weaken car dependency and increase openness to alternatives.

Evidence from the London 2012 Olympic Games provides a clear example. A notable share of travellers altered their usual behaviour during the event, and some of these changes are understood to have persisted beyond the Games.

Similar patterns were also observed during the COVID period, where forced shifts to remote work resulted in some lingering changes in behaviour.

This suggests the current measures in Victoria and Tasmania may function as a unique natural experiment, with outcomes that could differ meaningfully from those observed in previous settings.

While past evidence points to modest shifts away from car travel, the present conditions create a stronger basis for behavioural change, at least for some segments of the population. The longer these schemes remain in place, and fuel prices remain elevated, the stronger these effects are likely to be.

– ref. Is free public transport a good idea? It depends on who gets on board – https://theconversation.com/is-free-public-transport-a-good-idea-it-depends-on-who-gets-on-board-279666

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

It took less than three minutes for an organised crime gang to steal a Renoir, Matisse and a Cezanne painting collectively worth around €9 million (£7.8m) from a private museum near Parma, Italy in March 2026. This is the second high profile art heist in recent months, after the theft of jewellery worth €9.5 million (£8.25m) from Paris’s Louvre in October 2025.

The items stolen are clearly valuable. But, as an expert in the governance of criminal markets, I can tell you acquiring the goods is only the first step. Turning this loot into cash is fraught with risk .

The Italian government takes the protection of its cultural heritage seriously, with a whole department of the Carabinieri (Italian police) devoted to the theft of arts and antiquities. This department scans the global art trade for forged, stolen and illegally exported treasures, demanding their return.

There is little chance of selling the stolen masterpieces on the international art market – even at a knockdown price. Whereas in the past dealers and auction houses might have turned a blind eye to the fishy origins of an outstanding artwork, over the past two decades the norms and procedures of the market have tightened considerably.

Anyone who buys art without checking whether a former owner has registered their interest in the object fails the bona fide (good faith) test. This means that they cannot obtain a good title and so the legal property right remains with the person or institution the artwork was stolen from. Also sales of stolen art where the seller sidestepped due diligence can be voided, meaning the money must be returned.

So reputable dealers and auction houses take their duty of care very seriously. At the very least they check the freely accessible Interpol database of stolen art before the sale. However, private databases – like that of the Art Loss Register – provide greater peace of mind, listing many more lost and stolen objects and limit searching to those with a legitimate interest in an object. When a register finds that someone is trying to bring a stolen artwork into the open market, they collect and pass on all information that could lead the police to its location or the people involved in its sale or storage.

Anything fresh from a museum wall is therefore unsaleable – unless it is jewellery that can be broken up and sold as (expensive) scrap. So, what might be the financial motivation behind this theft?

A Bond-style villain ordering favourite paintings to adorn their lair is an unlikely explanation. Yes, paintings could be stolen to order, but buying art on the open market to launder money is less risky. With high rewards for information or the return of stolen artworks, security and omerta (the code of silence) would have to be completely watertight when displaying stolen treasures.

On the other hand, “rewards for information” could be a motivation for theft in itself. In the middle of the last century, insurers regularly paid “finders” with so little scrutiny that high-value art theft became a profitable low-risk occupation. Institutions like the Art Loss Register broke that cosy coexistence and instead used any leads to help the police conduct recoveries and sting operations.

Nowadays, it is only safe to negotiate a deal over a “finder’s fee” when a stolen object has changed hands so many times that the line to the original thieves is lost in the mist of time. Even so, the ultimate “finder” would be lucky to realise more than 10% of the painting’s value, which they would also likely have to share with the thieves and various shady underworld owners along the way.

However, there is a third reason to steal artworks. Organised crime groups sometimes use stolen artworks as bargaining chips to negotiate more lenient punishment. For example, the Dresden jewellery thieves kept a few pieces of their haul aside to use their recovery to negotiate shorter sentences. Penitentos (“repentant ones”) who want to leave mafia organisations also sometimes provide information on the whereabouts of missing treasures. If there is a perception that stolen artworks can used to reduce a prison sentence or financial compensation package, their underworld value can grow far beyond the finder’s fee.

While it is difficult to verify the assertion that stolen artworks are used as collateral in drug deals, several unique treasures have indeed been retrieved from properties owned by senior mafiosi. These works have not been found in temperature controlled galleries, but rolled up in dank places that make museum curators weep with despair. Let us hope that the beautiful artworks from Parma are treated with respect until we see them again.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

– ref. Selling stolen art is tricky, so why even bother heisting it? An expert explains – https://theconversation.com/selling-stolen-art-is-tricky-so-why-even-bother-heisting-it-an-expert-explains-279700

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Muhammad Fikri Sigid, Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Science, University of Waikato

In the aftermath of the latest bout of extreme rainfall across New Zealand’s upper North Island, there were some familar scenes.

Submerged pastures. Silt carried by swollen rivers and piled against bridges. Floodwaters surrounding homes whose owners were forced to flee.

As we count the toll of these events, which have wrought billions of dollars in damage over the past few years alone, there are inevitably questions about the hidden hand of climate change.

But just as pressing is another question: just how much worse might they become in a potentially much warmer world, decades from now?

Our newly published research, exploring a range of warming scenarios and drawing on the Ministry for the Environment’s latest climate projections, provides some useful answers.

The results point to a future where extreme rainfall is both more intense and more frequent across much of the country – with some simulated storms bearing the hallmarks of weather disasters from Aotearoa’s past.

Why and where future storms get wetter

It has long been understood that, as global temperatures rise, the atmosphere can hold more water vapour, increasing the likelihood of heavier rainfall during storms.

This broad pattern is borne out in the climate model simulations we examined, which show the most extreme rainfall events are likely to intensify over the coming decades.

But our analysis also enabled us to tease out some finer insights about what may lie ahead.

By the second half of the century, we found the most intense one-day and three-day rainfall events in a typical year – often involving totals of hundreds of millimetres of rain – are projected to increase by around 10% to 20% across much of New Zealand.

The extent of these increases depends on future emissions, with larger shifts under higher greenhouse gas scenarios. Impacts also vary region-by-region.

Some of the largest increases are projected in the central North Island and parts of the South Island’s west coast – regions already prone to some of the country’s most intense rainfall. In contrast, some eastern regions, such as Hawke’s Bay and parts of Canterbury, are expected to see smaller or more variable changes.

Even so, the overall trend is toward more frequent extremes.

We examined changes under a middle-of-the-road emissions scenario, in which global greenhouse gas emissions peak around mid-century before gradually declining, while global warming reaches about 2.7C above pre-industrial levels by century’s end.

By that point, about half of the locations we analysed could have experienced at least a 50% increase in impactful rainfall events – which we define as events that historically occurred about once a decade – relative to New Zealand’s recent climate (1985–2014).

Around 30% of places could see a doubling, and roughly 10% could experience three times as many events. In some places, however, the largest events may still fall within threshold of events in the historical record.

The regional differences we observed reflect a mix of local geography, weather patterns and natural climate variability – meaning chance still plays an important role in how extreme rainfall is experienced in any one place.

When history repeats

In May 1923, days of intense rainfall inundated North Canterbury. In what was one of the most statistically extreme rainfall events recorded in New Zealand’s history, towns were swamped, roads were cut off and hundreds of families were forced to evacuate.

One century later, Cyclone Gabrielle left in its wake flooded communities, thousands of landslides and a national damage bill estimated at between NZ$9–14 billion.

In each of these cases, large-scale weather systems transported vast amounts of moisture across the ocean toward New Zealand before dumping it in torrential downpours.

These major storms also bore patterns that closely resembled those in several of the most extreme simulated rainfall events that we examined.

Naturally-driven rain-makers – be they low pressure systems, ex-tropical cyclones or moisture-packed “atmospheric rivers” – will always remain part of New Zealand’s weather mix.

But, while future extremes are likely to stem from same types of storm systems, the consequences will be more severe.

This carries important implications for how Aotearoa prepares for flood risk today and how it adapts to a warmer, wilder future. More than 750,000 New Zealanders already live in areas exposed to 1-in-100-year rainfall flood events.

If tomorrow’s extreme events exceed historic records more often, infrastructure designed for those past conditions may no longer be enough to protect people and property.

– ref. Bigger storms, more often: new study projects likely future rainfall impacts on NZ – https://theconversation.com/bigger-storms-more-often-new-study-projects-likely-future-rainfall-impacts-on-nz-279653

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Walldorf, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Wake Forest University

Little has seemingly gone as Washington planned in the war against Iran.

The Iranian people have not risen up, one hard-line leader has been replaced by another, Iranian missiles and drones keep hitting targets across the Middle East, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, driving oil and gas prices up worldwide, and in sharp contrast to Trump’s demand for “unconditional surrender,” Tehran has rejected a 15-point U.S. plan for a ceasefire.

So how did things go so wrong?

As a scholar who researches U.S. forever wars, I believe the answer is simple: Trump, like other U.S. presidents before him, has fallen into what I call the trap of asymmetric resolve. In short, this occurs when a stronger power with less determination to fight starts a military conflict with a far weaker state that has near boundless determination to prevail. Victory for the strong becomes tough, even close to impossible.

When it comes to Iran, the Islamic Republic wants – and needs – victory more than the United States. Unlike the U.S., the Iranian government’s very existence is on the line. And that gives Tehran many more incentives – and in many cases very effective countermeasures – through which to fight on.

The trap of asymmetric resolve

Typically, in asymmetric wars the stronger side does not face the same potential for regime death as the weaker side. In short, it has less on the line. And this can lead to lesser resolve, making it hard to sustain the costs of war required to defeat the weaker, more determined rival.

Such dynamics have played out in conflicts dating back to at least the sixth century B.C., when a massive Persian army under Darius I was checked by a much smaller, determined Scythian military, leading in the end to a humiliating Persian retreat.

For the U.S. in the modern era, wars of asymmetric resolve have likewise not been kind.

In the Vietnam War, an estimated 1.1 million North Vietnamese civilians and Viet Cong fighters died compared to 58,000 U.S. troops. Yet, the U.S. proved no match for the North’s resolve. After eight years of brutal war, the U.S. gave up, cut a deal, withdrew and watched North Vietnam roll to victory over the South.

In 2001, the U.S. unseated the Taliban in Afghanistan, set up a new government and built a large Afghan army supported by U.S. firepower. Over the next 20 years, the remnants of the Taliban lost about 84,000 fighters compared to around 2,400 U.S. troops, yet the U.S. ultimately sued for peace, cut a deal and left. The Taliban immediately returned to power.

Many other great powers have fallen into this same trap – and at times in the same countries. Despite far fewer casualties than the Afghan resistance, the mighty Soviet Union suffered a humiliating defeat in its nine-year war in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The same happened to the French in Vietnam and Algeria after World War II.

Asymmetric resolve in the Iran war

A similar asymmetry is now playing out in Iran.

Unlike 2025’s 12-day war that largely targeted Iranian military installations, including its nuclear sites, Trump and the Israelis are now directly threatening the survival of the Iranian government. Killing the supreme leader, a slew of other powerful figures, and encouraging a popular uprising made this crystal clear.

Tehran is responding as it said it would were its survival to be at stake. Prior to the current war, Iran warned it would retaliate against Israel, Arab Gulf nations and U.S. bases across the region, as well as largely close the Straight of Hormuz to commercial traffic.

In short, it is going all-in to cause as much pain as it can to the U.S. and its interests.

Iran has suffered the disproportionate number of loses in the current war, both in terms of human casualties and depleted weaponry. As of mid-March, there have been upward of 5,000 Iranian military casualties and more than 1,500 Iranian civilian deaths, compared to 13 dead U.S. service members.

Yet, Tehran isn’t backing down, saying on March 10, “We will determine when the war ends.”

Such Iranian resolve seemingly confounds Trump. Before the war, he wondered why Iran wouldn’t cave to his demands, and he has since conceded that regime change – seemingly a major U.S. goal at the war’s onset – is now a “very big hurdle.”

This conflicts with how Iran was being presented to the American public prior to the war. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in January that “Iran is probably weaker than it’s ever been.” It has no ballistic missiles capable of hitting the U.S. homeland, a decimated nuclear program and fewer allies than ever across the Middle East.

No wonder a Marist poll from March 6 found that 55% of Americans viewed Iran as a minor threat or no threat at all.

With Iran proving resilient, American public opinion on the war has been definitively negative. This aspect of war resolve can be especially challenging for democracies, where a disgruntled public can vote leaders out of power.

Fading or low U.S. public support for war was likewise a primary driver in past U.S. asymmetric quagmires.

Indeed, the Iran war is more unpopular than just about any other U.S. war since World War II, with polling consistently finding around 60% of Americans in opposition.

For Iran, as a nondemocracy there are far less reliable figures to compare this to on its side. Before the war, the government faced a major public crisis with widespread protests, but for many reasons – including its brutal crackdown and a potential “rally around the flag” effect – Iranian public opinion has proved far less salient.

What’s next?

The Trump administration is attempting to mitigate the impact that asymmetrical resolve has by saying the length and scope of the operation will remain limited.

To reassure the public and calm financial markets, Trump keeps promising a short war and delaying bigger strikes to give space for negotiations that he, not the Iranians, says are ongoing.

History suggests that once faced with a smaller military power showing greater resolve, the larger power has two trajectories. It can succumb to the hubris of power and escalate, such as was the case in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Or it can wind down the conflict in an attempt to save face.

Often in the past, leaders of a stronger side opt for the first option of escalation. They just can’t escape thinking that a little more force here or there wins the conflict. President Barack Obama wrongly thought a surge of 30,000 additional U.S. troops into Afghanistan would bring the Taliban to their knees.

Despite signs that he wants out of the Iran war, Trump could still fall to the hubris of power. More U.S. troops are on the way to the Gulf, and B-52 bombers have been flying over Iran for the first time.

As Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan show, following hubris into escalation against a determined foe like Iran will probably come at great cost to the U.S.

The other option – that of winding down the war – is still available to Trump.

And Trump has gone down this route before. He signed a deal in 2020 with the Taliban to end the war in Afghanistan rather than surge more troops in. And just last year, Trump declared victory and walked away from an air war in Yemen when he realized ground forces would be required to overcome the resolve of the Houthis.

The U.S. president could try the same with Iran – saying the job is done then walking away, or entering real, sustained negotiations to end the war. Either way, he’ll need to give something up, such as unfettered access through Hormuz or sanctions relief.

Trump likely won’t like that. But polling suggests Americans will take it. After all, who wants another Vietnam?

– ref. Trump risks falling in to the ‘asymmetric resolve’ trap in Iran − just as presidents before him did elsewhere – https://theconversation.com/trump-risks-falling-in-to-the-asymmetric-resolve-trap-in-iran-just-as-presidents-before-him-did-elsewhere-279374

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bec Kavanagh, Senior Tutor in Publishing & Creative Writing, The University of Melbourne

An author and freelance journalist has admitted to using AI to help him write a book review for the New York Times.

Alex Preston’s review of Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s novel Watching Over Her, published by the New York Times in January 2026, draws phrases and full paragraphs from Christobel Kent’s Guardian review. The “error” was brought to light by a reader, who alerted the New York Times to the similarities.

Preston told the Guardian he is “hugely embarassed” and “made a huge mistake”.

The Times promptly dropped Preston, calling his “reliance on A.I. and his use of unattributed work by another writer” a “clear violation of the Times’s standards”. An editor’s note now precedes the review online, advising readers of the issue and providing a link to the Guardian review.

Preston’s apology to the Guardian raises more questions than it resolves. The portion quoted online seems to speak more to the issue of unattributed work than his use of AI. It reads: “I made a serious mistake in using an AI tool on a draft review I had written, and I failed to identify and remove overlapping language from another review that the AI dropped in.” This implies that if he had removed the “overlapping” language, the issue would have been avoided.

As a literary critic and scholar, I believe the deeper question isn’t whether or not critics should do more to hide their use of AI – but the ethics of using it at all.

Why AI can’t do criticism

The role of the critic isn’t to summarise or repackage art, but to actively participate in a conversation about it. “Good criticism thrives in the complexity of its environment,” writes critic Jane Howard, who is also The Conversation’s Arts + Culture editor. “Each review sits in conversation with every other review of a piece of art, with every other review the critic has written.”

In other words, the critic is in conversation with both the artist and the audience. The critic’s emotional and intellectual engagement with art – and their translation and communication of meaning – is intrinsic to their role as mediator. That role is deeply human.

Perhaps information can be outsourced, but emotional engagement can’t. Nor can an individual perspective, filtered through one human’s reading, viewing, listening and experiences.

Art and AI controversies

There are valid arguments outlining the functional uses of AI, and warning against significant climate repercussions. But there is also an escalating concern around the intrusion of AI into creative expression.

Last month, author Mia Ballard was accused of using AI to write her horror novel, Shy Girl. It was withdrawn from publication in the UK and cancelled from scheduled publication in the US, after “readers on platforms such as Goodreads and Reddit had questioned whether sections of the text bore hallmarks of AI-generated prose”, according to the Guardian.

In 2023, German artist Boris Eldagsen sparked controversy when he revealed that his prize-winning photograph The Electrician was AI generated. In 2025, Tilly Norwood, the first fully AI-generated “actress” ignited debate around whether so-called synthetic actors were a tool for creative expression, or a threat to human creators.

In 2025, writers were “horrified” to discover that their work had been pirated by Meta to train AI systems.

If the question that underlies these examples is “what is the role of art”, this latest debacle adds “and what is the responsibility of the critic”?

Breaking a pact

Art criticism in Australia is what Howard describes as a “niche within a niche”. The sector is unbearably small, so most critics have an additional day job and are in close professional and personal proximity to the artists whose work they review.

Some critics of the critics, such as writer Gideon Haigh, have suggested this has led to a culture of what literary academic Emmett Stinson called “too-nice” criticism.

But I would argue generosity is fundamental to public-facing criticism – and that the critic reviewing in the public sphere has a responsibility to writers and readers.

The writer might safely assume that when we’re publishing a review that surmises their book’s successes and failings against its ambition, we have, at the very least, taken the time to read and carefully consider their work, and our own response to it.

This unspoken pact is broken when the writer begins to use AI – particularly when a professional reviewer like Preston seems to outsource his assessment to it.

Such fiascos point to a disturbing future where readers’ opportunities to build community and develop empathy through engagement with literature is outsourced entirely to AI.

Australian literature academic Julieanne Lamond has said “when we write reviews we have to do it ‘naked’ – as individual readers, with a public to judge our judgements”. In other words, we sit at the middle of a pact between the writer of a book and their potential readers.

Criticism can be literature

Done well, criticism is literature. As Australian author, playwright and critic Leslie Rees argued in 1946, good literary criticism is a “real and creative service to literature”.

Popular criticism, written for the general public and published as journalism, might sit on a different playing field from scholarly criticism. But its obligation to readers – to convey real and honest opinions about books and bring readers into a conversation about literature – is no less significant. There is a shared obligation to be honest, and surely this honesty extends to a transparency about AI use.

French professor and essayist Phillipe Lejeune, best known for his work on autobiography, used the term the “autobiographical pact” to describe the relationship between the writer of a memoir and the reader. That is, the reader accepts what the memoirist says as truth, based on the writer’s acknowledgements of their own biases and subjectivity.

We might transfer a similar pact to the reviewer and their reader. Should the reader not be able to trust that the review they’re reading is the critic’s own?

Hannah Bowman, a literary agent from Liza Dawson Associates, recently described mistrust as the book industry’s greatest peril: “it’s essential for all parties in the publishing process to have transparency and clarity in conversations about how AI tools are being used by any party, especially in the creative process”.

In failing to disclose his use of AI, Preston has not only embarrassed himself, but broken the trust of his readers.

– ref. A New York Times critic used AI to write his review – but criticism is deeply human – https://theconversation.com/a-new-york-times-critic-used-ai-to-write-his-review-but-criticism-is-deeply-human-279742

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Moss, Senior Lecturer in History, UNSW Sydney

On April 1 2026, NASA is sending astronauts back around the Moon. And Australia will play a critical role in helping them get there.

Four astronauts will launch from Florida, bound for the Moon aboard the Orion spacecraft. Similar to the 1968 Apollo 8 spaceflight, the Artemis II mission will orbit the Moon without landing, to test the spacecraft and the systems that support it. It paves the way for the next Artemis missions, with an eventual crewed Moon landing slated for early 2028.

Today’s mission will also mark the first time a Black astronaut, a female astronaut and a non-American (a Canadian) will travel to the Moon system.

Throughout the journey, ground stations in Australia will track the spacecraft and maintain communications. This vital support not only underscores Australia’s space strengths, but also encourages us to consider Australia’s own direction in space.

A long history of support

Australia’s support of NASA space exploration has a long history. A series of tracking stations around Australia were essential to US President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a person on the Moon by the end of the 1960s.

As part of NASA’s mammoth human spaceflight efforts, facilities were established around Australia – in Western Australia, Queensland, and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).

Indeed, Australia hosted more tracking stations than any other country outside the United States, a contribution memorably celebrated in the 2001 film The Dish.

While much celebrated, even after 60 years there’s still much to learn about Australia’s role in putting the first person on the Moon. Much of the archival record of Australian tracking stations during the Apollo era remains inaccessible in Department of Defence storage, rather than having been transferred to the National Archives.

Australia’s contribution to NASA’s space efforts continued past the Apollo program through the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex at Tidbinbilla, now managed by CSIRO.

This station has operated continuously since the 1970s as part of NASA’s Deep Space Network, which consists of three stations in the ACT, Spain and California. Combined, these stations have supported all NASA’s deep space exploration missions.

Through it, Australia has played a role in well-known missions such as the Voyager exploration of the outer Solar System and the more recent New Horizons mission to Pluto.

How Australia is helping Artemis

Today, Australia’s role as host to tracking stations makes it vital for all communications with the Artemis II mission.

Mission controllers in Houston, Texas talk to the astronauts; data about the spacecraft (telemetry) and science data are returned to Earth in huge quantities; and video is beamed back to millions.

Two networks enable this communication. First, the Near Space Network handles communication with the spacecraft during launch and low Earth orbit.

Second, the Deep Space Network takes over when the spacecraft is in high Earth orbit and for the voyage to and from the Moon.

At the Canberra station, huge dishes between 34 and 64 metres across are capable of transmitting and receiving the huge quantities of data from Orion. These dishes are particularly important given the ten day mission is expected be the farthest crewed mission from Earth in history.

Even when the Moon and Artemis II are on the other side of Earth relative to Canberra, the system’s global integration means Australian staff remotely operate other facilities when staff there are asleep, or vice versa.

In preparation for this mission, Australian staff at the tracking station outside Canberra have been training for years. Significant upgrades were also completed before the 2022 uncrewed mission, Artemis I.

Further afield, Australians are also involved in developing new methods of communication with far-flung spacecraft. During this mission, the Australian National University will also assist in the mission’s objectives. Scientists will test laser communications with the spacecraft from the Mount Stromlo Observatory outside Canberra.

An upward trajectory for Australia

Australia’s contribution to Artemis II comes at a moment of sustained public interest in space. The prominence of figures such as astronaut Katherine Bennell-Pegg, recently awarded Australian of the Year, has ensured space activity remains in the national spotlight.

The Australian Space Agency has sought to grow Australia’s space efforts in a variety of ways, including through the Artemis Accords. Signed by Australia in 2020, this US-led agreement establishes shared principles for civil space exploration that will return the US and partners to the Moon.

Part of Australia’s contribution will be the development of an A$42 million lunar rover, named Roo-ver. This will launch on a future NASA mission.

All this shows Australia has been gradually moving upward in space for a long time. Where the space efforts go from here will depend on a range of factors, including government policy and the capabilities of local industry and research institutions.

Public opinion is vital, given the cost of space exploration. A recent public opinion survey shows Australians are supportive of space activities, if unsure about the country’s direction.

As the four NASA astronauts travel around the Moon, Australia is also presented with an opportunity to talk about its own important role in space, and the future direction the country might take.

– ref. As NASA launches a crewed Moon mission, Australia is once again playing a critical role – https://theconversation.com/as-nasa-launches-a-crewed-moon-mission-australia-is-once-again-playing-a-critical-role-274981

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lyndall Bryant, Senior lecturer, QUT Centre for Justice, School of Econmics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology

For Australia’s building industry, higher fuel costs since the start of the Middle East war have been just the start of the pain.

Countless construction products are made with petroleum-based products. From bitumen for our roads to plastic pipes, prices are rising, with some supplies already facing delays.

This shock hits an industry still recovering from COVID, while also trying to meet surging demand for new homes and major infrastructure across Australia.

Even before the war, there was fierce competition for tradespeople and materials from big infrastructure projects across Australia. These include the A$3.6 billion Brisbane Olympics stadium, Queensland’s $9 billion Bruce Highway upgrade and Victoria’s $8 billion Big Build for new housing. Meanwhile, governments across Australia have fallen behind on a national target to build 1.2 million new homes by mid-2029

Whether you’re in the market for a new home, or you’re a builder, here’s how the Middle East war could impact your project – and its cost.

Price rises and tighter supplies

Builders need diesel to run heavy machinery and deliver materials to site. Diesel prices have been rising even faster than petrol since the war disrupted global supply routes.

Other price rises affecting building products announced since the Middle East war began include:

Most of Australia’s bitumen for sealing roads – from new subdivisions to highways – is imported from Asia and made from crude oil products from the Middle East.

Last month, industry body the Australian Flexible Pavements Association warned road authorities “bitumen prices are anticipated to rise by more than 50% […] and there is a real risk of stock depletion and stock outs in the near term”.

Last week, the Urban Development Institute of Australia’s Queensland branch shared a members-only alert about “new and rapidly escalating challenges with materials shortages”. This includes longer delays for concrete pipes, needed to connect water to new housing estates.

Now, with plastic pipes also becoming more expensive and harder to source because of the global oil crisis, the institute says:

Industry is now experiencing shortages in concrete pipes and [plastic] pipes with no viable alternatives. This is severely compromising the industry’s ability to provide housing at the rate needed to address the current housing crisis.

The result is price escalation at every stage of the supply chain, including for Australian-made products.

History offers little comfort: house construction prices soared more than 40% between 2020 and 2024. While price increases have slowed since, prices remain elevated from pre-COVID levels.

Read more: Australia has plenty of diesel for now. But running out could upend our economy

Building is already a higher-risk business

Current conditions echo the COVID period, when sudden and unpredictable cost spikes put intense pressure on construction businesses’ viability.

Home builders working under fixed price contracts can only absorb so much cost pressure before they go bust.

Even before this Middle East war, construction already had more insolvencies than any other industry – more than doubling since COVID.

Despite huge demand for new housing, the 2024-25 financial year saw a record 3,490 construction firms enter insolvency – meaning they couldn’t pay their debts as they fell due.

When builders collapse, the contagion spreads quickly: tradies lose jobs, subcontractors go under, projects stall and consumers face financial and emotional devastation.

For the tradies and subcontractors caught in the middle, the fallout can be overwhelming. Male construction workers are nearly twice as likely to take their own lives as other employed Australian men of the same age.

Small builders face the toughest conditions

Our 2025 report looked into the root causes behind the high rate of builders going bust.

We found that as of 2024, two-thirds (63%) of building company collapses were concentrated among small builders with fewer than five full-time employees. Typically, they’re operating on thin margins, with unsecured debt and limited financial buffers. These conditions leave even experienced directors vulnerable when supply chains are disrupted and costs surge.

But large builders aren’t exempt. During COVID, large home builder Porter Davis collapsed, leaving 1,700 homes unfinished in Victoria and Queensland. Even Australia’s largest home builder, Metricon, teetered on the brink before recovering.

If this oil crisis lingers, more builders are likely to go bust, slowing down housing supply.

Looking ahead

To support the industry, Queensland and New South Wales have both announced a 12-month deferral to the adoption of the National Construction Code 2025, due to start on May 1 this year. At a difficult time, this gives builders more time to adjust to pending changes. It’s unclear if other states will follow.

Longer term, our research recommended a number of reforms, from setting up low-cost independent resolution services to help builders avoid financial disputes with banks or customers, through to strengthening business training for tradies.

For builders, the priority is to be proactive. Spend time identifying high risk areas, looking for lower risk work and keeping financial records current to avoid trading when insolvent.

Stay in close contact with clients, subcontractors, suppliers and – if necessary – your bank about short-term overdraft support. Don’t wait until it’s too late to seek help.

For home buyers, open communication with your builder is essential.

If legitimate cost pressures arise under a fixed price contract, negotiating a fair adjustment may be the best outcome. Working with your builder to negotiate a mutually beneficial solution might cost you more. But that may still be preferable to a builder gone broke and a half-built home.

– ref. Housing construction costs are already rising, increasing risks of builders going bust – https://theconversation.com/housing-construction-costs-are-already-rising-increasing-risks-of-builders-going-bust-279329

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Niusha Shafiabady, Professor in Computational Intelligence, Australian Catholic University

If you’ve spent much time on TikTok recently, you may have noticed a strange new type of AI brain rot taking over: fruit dramas.

These AI-generated short dramas feature odd-looking anthropomorphic fruit characters engaging in a range of ethically problematic behaviours. Many storylines, for instance, are based around affairs, racist attitudes, and the sexual assault of women characters.

At face value, the videos come across as so bizarre and grotesque they can be hard to take seriously. That is until you realise they’re amassing hundreds of millions of views. One account called ai.cinema021, which has launched a parody series called Fruit Love Island, has more than 3 million followers.

This content is, at best, a water-guzzling affront to the art of animation and, at worst, actively helping to normalise racism and misogyny. So why does it have so many fans?

Tapping into the brain’s reward system

These videos exploit core features of human psychology. Combined with addictive platform features (such as infinite scroll), the result is an endless stream of content that keeps us engaged – even if the message is immoral, or simply ridiculous.

Short-form video feeds such as TikTok and Instagram reels operate on similar principles to those used in gambling systems. The human brain is highly sensitive to novelty and unpredictability, both of which are linked to dopamine signalling in reward learning.

When rewards are delivered unpredictably, behaviour becomes more persistent. This pattern, known as “variable reinforcement”, has long been shown to sustain repeated actions, even when rewards are inconsistent.

AI slop videos offer rapid visual novelty and unexpected emotional turns. You don’t know whether the next one will be absurd, funny, tragic, or strangely compelling.

The videos also compress big emotional experiences. A single clip may move from betrayal, to sadness, to revenge, to humour in seconds. This creates emotional volatility, which increases arousal and sustains attention.

Research shows emotionally charged content, especially when it is negative or surprising, is more likely than neutral material to get our attention.

The pull of things that feel ‘kinda wrong’

Many viewers describe a sense that these videos feel “off”. The characters are expressive, but often not fully coherent. The narratives resemble human drama, but lack internal logic.

This relates to the idea of the uncanny valley, where near-human representations produce discomfort. Importantly, these videos rarely become disturbing enough to trigger avoidance. Instead they sit in a middle zone. They are strange enough to provoke curiosity, but not uncomfortable enough to make you stop watching.

This creates cognitive tension. According to cognitive dissonance theory, people are motivated to resolve such inconsistencies. And the way to resolve tension in this case is to keep watching, in search of closure. The mind keeps asking: what is this and where is it going?

We’re also more likely to ignore the unethical messaging because of the format. The characters are highly synthetic. This makes the scenarios feel fictional – even when they reflect real social behaviours.

Research on moral disengagement shows people are more likely to relax ethical judgement when the harm appears abstract or indirect. Fruit videos with themes of betrayal, humiliation or assault can be consumed without the discomfort that would arise if real people were involved.

Influence through many minor interactions

Much like AI slop, social media algorithms don’t prioritise meaning or quality. They prioritise content that captures our attention.

Recommendation systems are driven by metrics such as “watch time”, “completion rate” and “interaction”. High engagement leads to greater visibility, which encourages the production of more similar content, creating a feedback loop.

From an AI governance perspective, these videos highlight an often overlooked risk. That is: generative systems don’t just produce content; they can gradually shape our behaviours – often without us realising. This aligns with broader concerns in AI ethics about behavioural influence and manipulative design working on a large scale.

Reclaiming your time and attention

Avoiding social media entirely is not realistic for many people. But small changes can reduce the pull of AI-generated brain rot.

One approach is to introduce a pause before scrolling to the next video. Even a brief interruption will weaken the reward loop in your brain, and make it easier to put your phone down. When you notice yourself thinking “this feels pointless” or “this is strange”, that’s the best time to stop. In some cases a digital detox might be helpful.

You can also retrain your algorithm. Quickly skip or select “not interested” on videos you don’t want to see – and replace passive scrolling with intentional viewing by seeking out specific content.

Finally, create friction. This might involve disabling automatic playback, or limiting your access to a feed, by disabling the app notification, or removing the app from your home screen.

AI fruit videos may seem trivial and absurd, but they reveal something important about the digital environment. As generative systems scale up, they will only get better at capturing and directing our attention. Understanding the psychology behind this is the first step to resisting it.

– ref. Unethical brain rot: why are millions watching AI fruits have affairs on TikTok? – https://theconversation.com/unethical-brain-rot-why-are-millions-watching-ai-fruits-have-affairs-on-tiktok-279569

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca McKetin, Associate Professor, National Drug & Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW Sydney

Methamphetamine – more commonly known as meth, crystal or ice – is a highly addictive, stimulant drug.

An estimated 7.4 million people in the world are dependent on it or “addicted” to it. They face multiple health risks including paranoia, feeling suicidal, heart problems, strokes, injuries from accidents, and a higher risk of early death.

But there are no medications approved anywhere in the world to treat meth dependence.

Now, a cheap, safe and readily available medicine that has been used to treat depression for years is showing promise. Our trial of mirtazapine, just published in JAMA Psychiatry, shows people who take it cut back their meth use.

Few other options

Australia has one of the highest number of people dependent on meth per capita worldwide.

As there are no medications approved for meth dependence anywhere in the world, we have few treatment options.

Currently available treatment options include counselling, detox or withdrawal and long-stay residential rehabilitation. However, access can be difficult and treatment dropout rates are high. Most people who go to rehab relapse.

More sophisticated treatments offered within the community such as contingency management, which involves setting targets and rewards for meeting them, are more effective but aren’t widely available.

Even though there are no approved medications for methamphetamine use, doctors sometimes prescribe existing medications that have shown promise in clinical trials.

Medications that are prescribed off label include prescription stimulants (methylphenidate, lisdexamfetamine, modafinil), the anti-smoking treatment bupropion, the opioid-blocking drug naltrexone (including in combination with bupropion) and antidepressants.

However, these drugs may not work and may cause unnecessary side effects or safety risks.

How about mirtazapine?

Studies in recent years suggest the antidepressant mirtazapine may provide some hope.

Two studies were conducted in the United States in an outpatient research clinic in San Francisco, California. Both trials found mirtazapine reduced meth use.

These initial trials were conducted a research clinic with a small group of patients (60 and 120 respectively) who were monitored closely. Patients were at risk of HIV: men and transgender women who had sex with men. Women and people with people with depression were excluded.

So our Australian team wanted to know if mirtazapine would have the same benefit if it was used by doctors in community clinics to treat a larger and more diverse group of patients.

What we did and what we found

The Tina Trial recruited a larger and more diverse sample of 339 people dependent on meth from six outpatient clinics in Australia.

At the start of the trial, participants had used meth an average of 22 days out of the previous 28.

Half were randomly assigned to either take home mirtazapine (a 30 milligram tablet daily), or a placebo, for 12 weeks. The researchers then tracked days when participants used meth across the 12-week period.

People who received mirtazapine reduced their meth use by more than people who received the placebo (an average reduction of seven out of 28 days compared with 4.8).

So the comparative advantage of mirtazapine was modest: 2.2 days in use out of 28 days.

This benefit was apparent regardless of whether people had depression at the start of the study.

Although this reduction is small, in the absence of any alternative medication this is an important step forward.

Our research team believes mirtazapine has a direct effect on meth dependence, distinct from its ability to reduce depression.

This implies mirtazapine is acting directly on brain systems involved in drug reward, and might restore function to pathways that long-term meth use can disrupt.

Our study found no unexpected safety issues when using mirtazapine to treat meth dependence. The most common side effects were drowsiness and weight gain.

This isn’t a ‘cure’

Mirtazapine is not an instant “cure” for meth dependence. But in the absence of any approved medications for methamphetamine use worldwide, it is a critical first step in providing a medications to reduce harms from methamphetamine.

Mirtazapine is cheap, safe and readily available. Many doctors are familiar with its use to treat depression.

It is a take-home medication, making it convenient for people to use. So there is no need for daily clinic visits or close medical monitoring.

It is also “off patent”, meaning there are inexpensive generic versions.

In order for mirtazapine to be routinely prescribed for meth dependence outside a clinical trial, regulators would need to approve it for this purpose. This requires research evidence, like that provided by the Tina Trial.

In the meantime, doctors can prescribe mirtazapine off label. Guidelines on the off label prescribing of medications are available from the Royal Australian New Zealand College of Psychiatrists.

Further information on the Tina Trial is available here.

If you have concerns about your own or someone else’s drug or alcohol use, call the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline on 1800 250 015. This 24/7 hotline provides free and confidential information and support.

– ref. This common antidepressant helps people cut back on methamphetamine – new study – https://theconversation.com/this-common-antidepressant-helps-people-cut-back-on-methamphetamine-new-study-272994

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Hartland, Adjunct Associate Professor in Freshwater Biogeochemistry, Lincoln University, New Zealand

The Waikato is New Zealand’s longest river, central to the identity and practices of Waikato River iwi and a source of drinking water for nearly half of the country’s population.

It is also becoming a case study in what happens when very different environmental pressures hit the same system faster than authorities can respond.

A recent RNZ investigation documented worsening toxic algal blooms in hydro lakes in the upper Waikato. Communities around Lake Ohakuri describe water so green it resembles the “Incredible Hulk”, dogs becoming violently ill and mats of toxic slime covering the surface.

These conditions are a long way from Te Ture Whaimana o te Awa o Waikato, the legislated vision for a river safe for swimming and gathering food.

The reporting captured genuine community frustration and institutional fragmentation. But to turn concern into effective action, we need to understand why blooms keep forming where they do.

Otherwise, interventions risk missing the mark. The Waikato cannot afford misdirected effort.

The location of the worst blooms is a clue. Lake Ohakuri sits right next to the Ohaaki-Broadlands geothermal field, where decades of extracting hot fluids for power generation have caused the ground to sink by nearly seven metres.

That geothermal activity releases heat, carbon dioxide (CO₂) and mineral-rich fluids into the water, all of which promote the growth of cyanobacteria. This includes iron, a nutrient toxic algae need to thrive.

Whether decades of fluid extraction have altered the rate of influx of CO₂ and iron remains untested, but the proximity to geothermal fields is striking.

Tracking downstream effects

Until now, no one has measured how much of the geothermal CO₂ actually dissolves in the river or how far downstream it travels.

During our recent field campaign, we deployed a mobile sensor along the upper Waikato and a technique known as stable isotope analysis to fingerprint the carbon and start filling this gap.

The results are stark.

Carbon dioxide concentrations in the geothermal zone reach ten times the background level and the isotopic signature confirms the source as volcanic, not biological.

Huge quantities of dissolved CO₂ escape into the atmosphere as the river passes through the hydro lake chain. The water does not return to background levels even by the time it reaches Lake Karāpiro more than a hundred kilometres away.

That lingering excess CO₂ could be feeding algal growth well beyond the volcanic zone.

The gold clam factor

The geothermal zone is not the only pressure point. The invasive gold clam (Corbicula fluminea) has rapidly colonised the Waikato since its detection in 2023.

The clams have now been confirmed as far upstream as Lake Maraetai, directly downstream of Ohakuri.

Our research, currently under review, shows the clams are stripping roughly 14 tonnes of calcium carbonate from the river every day, disrupting the water chemistry treatment plants rely on and releasing arsenic in forms that could slip through conventional treatment processes.

As the clams breathe, they pump carbon dioxide into the water and consume oxygen, tipping the river’s balance away from a system driven by plant-like photosynthesis (which produces oxygen) and toward one dominated by respiration (which releases CO₂).

Multiple pressures, compounding risk

In January 2026, our monitoring buoy in Lake Karāpiro recorded oxygen near the lake bed dropping rapidly toward levels that would suffocate aquatic life.

What prevented a crisis was not management action but weather. Severe storms physically overturned the water column and mixed oxygen back in.

This near miss, averted by luck, is a warning, not a reassurance.

Two very different stressors are now converging on the same river. Geothermal CO₂ enriches the water from below, sustaining conditions that help toxic algae grow far downstream.

The clams, spreading upstream into the geothermal reaches, add a second source of CO₂ through their breathing, while depleting oxygen and stripping calcium.

What this double pressure will mean for algal blooms – when they form, how long they last and how severe they become – as clam populations continue to expand, is an open and urgent question.

Current monitoring cannot answer it. Toxic algae are sampled monthly at four hydro lakes, with results taking days to return. This is not a criticism of any single agency; national monitoring protocols now predate the compound pressures the river faces.

The gap between knowing and acting

The local community called for ultrasonic algae-killing buoys, webcams and flushing the lakes. This reflects an understandable desire for visible action, but without understanding the underlying drivers of blooms at these specific locations, we risk treating symptoms rather than causes.

Two million people drink water from the Waikato. Thousands swim in it, fish from it and gather mahinga kai (traditional food gathering) along its length. Iwi have obligations to it that stretch across generations.

The science is telling us, in real-time sensor data, that the system is moving toward thresholds we do not want to cross. The monitoring and governance architecture we have inherited was not designed for the compound pressures now acting on the river.

The question is whether we can build the governance and data-led operational protocols to match the pace of change, before the next bloom or near miss becomes the event we failed to prevent.

– ref. Toxic blooms and invasive clams are forcing a rethink on the Waikato River – https://theconversation.com/toxic-blooms-and-invasive-clams-are-forcing-a-rethink-on-the-waikato-river-279560

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, University of Tasmania

In 1967, catastrophic bushfires in Tasmania killed dozens of people – and very nearly destroyed Hobart.

A year later, W.D. Jackson, Professor of Botany at the University of Tasmania, published a short but very influential article on why the fires were so bad. He suggested that after Tasmania’s wet eucalypt forests were burned by severe bushfires, there would be a high-risk period during their regrowth when they are at risk of severely burning again.

This, Jackson theorised, was because regrowing saplings form a very dense canopy, with little distance between living leaves and the leaf litter and understorey plants able to ignite canopy fires. If a second fire sweeps through, he predicted the forests could be replaced with more fire-tolerant scrub.

Was Jackson correct? Is regrowth truly more flammable? It’s very difficult to prove regrowth burns more intensely and accelerates bushfire spread, as it’s not practical to undertake neat, perfectly controlled experiments involving severe bushfires.

But sometimes, scientists get lucky. We took advantage of a natural experiment in 2019, when a severe bushfire burned through a research site spanning old growth wet Tasmanian forests and logged areas of regrowth, giving us access to data before and after the fires.

In our new research, we show Jackson was right. Regrowth does indeed burn more intensely than mature forests.

Why does this matter?

Jackson’s theory has resonated with generations of fire ecologists and fire managers in Australia and internationally, due to how it focuses on the interplay between the age of forests and the risk of bushfires.

Worldwide, vast areas of regrowth forest are recovering from clear-fell forestry and wildfires. In Tasmania alone, remote sensing data suggests a fifth of all tall wet forests are in a regrowth stage younger than 40 years old.

After an old forest is clear-felled, it is regenerated using fire to remove logging debris and then sown with seeds native to the area. This puts it in Jackson’s 30-year danger zone, which begins about 20 years after a fire, when eucalypts begin bearing gumnuts. It ends about 50 years after the fire, when trees are tall enough and moist dense understoreys have developed to lower the risk of devastating fires able to kill mature trees.

If regrowing forests make it through centuries without more fires, they could potentially become temperate rainforests, whose deeply shaded, moist understoreys put them at very low risk of fire.

If another severe fire starts before forests reach this safer period, experts have suggested the flammable regrowth could threaten entire landscapes by making fires more intense.

Some experts suggested forests regrowing from logging were a key factor in the huge area burned during the notorious 2019–20 fire season, though others have disputed this.

This is why Jackson’s theory still matters, almost 60 years after he proposed it.

Hard to test

Testing this theory has long proved difficult.

Forest ecologists have instead typically relied on indirect approaches, such as analysing how severe the fire was using satellite data, or estimating likely fire behaviour based on field measurements of the amount of fuel and how much moisture was present.

These inferential approaches can be scientifically fraught, as they are vulnerable to many assumptions that are hard to test or control for.

A previous attempt to resolve this question by experts, including the renowned Tasmanian ecologist J.B. Kirkpatrick had to be withdrawn due to technical issues. In retracting the paper, the authors noted their results had proven “highly sensitive” to variation in a small number of sites.

A natural experiment

In 2019, a lightning strike ignited a fire in Tasmania’s southwest forests. Known as the Riveaux Road fire, it burned through an area of regrowing forest used for research.

This offered a rare chance of a natural experiment. We had pre-fire data on fuel loads, canopy structure and microclimates (areas where local conditions make climate different from surrounding areas) in both mature forests and adjacent areas logged around 40 years earlier.

After the fire passed, we collected more data so we could compare the fire damage (measured by damage to tree canopy) and the effects on the microclimates in both regrowth and mature, unlogged forests.

This natural experiment was conclusive. The areas of post-logging regrowth burned more severely, due to their hotter, drier microclimates and the fact their canopies were closer to the ground.

Interestingly, we found fires in the regrowth didn’t cause the fires to spread further. This was because the damp understorey of the surrounding mature forests could contain the fires.

That’s not to say this would always be the case. The 2019 fire took place in moderate fire weather conditions, meaning it wasn’t especially hot, dry or windy. If severe fire weather was present, this dampening effect would likely have been overwhelmed.

Lots of regrowth, lots more fire

Proving Jackson’s theory isn’t good news for forests.

Climate change means fire weather will arrive more often and be more extreme. Combined with the large areas of forest regrowth, this means we will have to be ready for more fires.

In North American conifer forests, thinning out regrowth and burning off leaf litter and other fuel have proven effective in reducing the risks of fire-prone regrowth. Eucalypts have fundamentally different fire ecologies, so we can’t directly apply that research to Australia. Local research is limited, meaning we don’t know yet if this will work here.

Recent research has shown commercial thinning of regrowth in Tasmania doesn’t reduce the risk of fire, because bark, limbs and smashed trunks left after logging act as fuel.

This means we urgently need to find an effective way to reduce the risk of fires in regrowth in wet eucalypt forests in Tasmania and elsewhere in Australia.

Since the lethal fires of 1967, many Tasmanian communities – including large areas of Hobart – are now surrounded by forests still in the dangerous period of regrowth after logging or fires.

Read more: In 1939, a Royal Commission found burning forests leads to more bushfires. But this cycle of destruction can be stopped

– ref. We have the proof that logging makes Tasmania’s forests more flammable – https://theconversation.com/we-have-the-proof-that-logging-makes-tasmanias-forests-more-flammable-279103

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Guy Curtis, Associate professor, The University of Western Australia

People using other peoples’ ideas, words and creations without acknowledgement is a widespread problem. Plagiarism occurs everywhere from restaurant menus to political speeches and music.

Within academia, plagiarism is seen as a serious breach of integrity for scholars and students.

It’s easy to find media articles claiming plagiarism is increasing among university students. These claims have intensified with the rise of generative AI – which can quickly produce large amounts of text that students can copy and paste into their assignments.

But while AI certainly poses a range of challenges for academic integrity, is plagiarism increasing as much as we think it is?

My team’s new research, which has tracked students at one university over 20 years, suggests it may even be falling.

What are we comparing?

Precise rates of plagiarism can be difficult to determine. Pre-AI, many claims about increasing plagiarism among students came from cherry picking results of different surveys from different student groups. So they were not comparing apples with apples.

Since AI, we have have a lot of anecdotal reporting of cheating. But we do not have a lot of robust evidence of whether cheating has increased over time.

In a new journal article, my colleagues and I have used a rare longitudinal study of plagiarism to overcome this problem.

My research

Every five years since 2004, our study carried out the same survey on plagiarism with students at Western Sydney University (WSU). This means we have been able to track the same phenomena in the same environment over time.

In our survey students are presented with scenarios representing different forms of plagiarism. For example, a student copying text from a book without citing the book. Students were asked whether the behaviour is plagiarism, to test their understanding of it, and how often, if ever, they have done a similar thing. In 2024, we also also asked students if they used text generated by AI in their university work, without acknowledging it.

We conducted an anonymous survey of mostly undergraduate students, studying in a range of disciplines. The survey started in 2004 on paper and has been fully online since 2014.

The survey was done in the second half of the academic year to ensure students had the opportunity to both learn about and engage in plagiarism.

In 2024, as well as WSU, we included students from five other Australian universities for additional comparison. This gave us sample of more than 2,100 students in total for the latest round.

Plagiarism isn’t increasing

Over 20 years, the survey has found the percentage of students who engage in any form of plagiarism at least once has fallen every five years, from more than 80% in 2004 to 57% in 2024.

This decline corresponds with various measures, such as the use of text-matching software, which can help detect plagiarism. There has also been more training in referencing and citation rules – this reduces unintentional plagiarism.

AI is not turning all students into plagiarists

Although 14% of students in 2024 indicated they had copied from AI without acknowledgement, most of them also engaged in at least one other form of plagiarism. For example, copying from another student’s assignment.

Copying from AI was the sole form of plagiarism for only 2% of students.

Most students don’t plagiarise accidentally

Combining students’ answers to whether they understand plagiarism and whether they engaged in it showed most did so knowingly. For example when it came to verbatim copying from AI, 88% of WSU students who engaged in this knew it was plagiarism.

Interestingly, most plagiarism was accidental 20 years ago when education about academic integrity was less thorough. However, the recent results show students have a better understanding of plagiarism and still do it anyway.

AI detectors don’t stop copying

In the survey, two universities used AI detectors (which aim to assess whether a piece of written work has used AI, with mixed results and four did not.

Rates of plagiarism from AI were similar between the universities with and without detectors.

What does this mean?

Our survey largely looked at only one Australian university. But despite this limitation, we can interpret the results in optimistic and pessimistic ways.

Optimistically, plagiarism has fallen over 20 years. This suggests measures to detect plagiarism and teach students about proper referencing can help.

On top of this, AI has not turned all students into plagiarists – at least not yet. What our study suggests is students who have plagiarised in some other way may now plagiarise from AI as well.

Pessimistically, over half of all students still plagiarise at some time in their university studies. And, because these surveys rely on self-reports, it is likely these figures represent the minimum number of students who plagiarise. Even when surveys, like ours, are anonymous and online, students may still be hesitant to admit to breaking rules.

This means educating students and policing academic conduct remains an ongoing battle.

– ref. Does AI mean more uni students are plagiarising their work? – https://theconversation.com/does-ai-mean-more-uni-students-are-plagiarising-their-work-279565