Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Ziegler, Collection Manager, Vertebrate Palaeontology, Museums Victoria Research Institute

Pitch-black darkness. Crushing squeezes, muddy passages, icy waterfalls. Bats and spiders. Abseiling over ledges into the unknown. How far would you go for a fossil?

On a two-year retrieval mission of nearly 60 hours in an underground cave, we met our limits – and went beyond.

The limestone slope of Potholes Cave Reserve is found in Gunaikurnai Country, north of the township of Buchan in eastern Victoria.

Here, the river valley is peppered with shadowy entrances to underground caves. Portals barely large enough to permit a willing caver open into kilometres of subterranean passages encrusted with delicate crystals twinkling in torchlight.

In one of them, Nightshade Cave, the Museums Victoria Research Institute led a team of recreational cavers and Parks Victoria rangers to excavate an extraordinary fossil: a near-complete skeleton of the extinct short-faced kangaroo Simosthenurus occidentalis. In June this year, it will appear on display at Melbourne Museum.

It started with an unusual skull

As is so often the case in palaeontology, the discovery began with engaged citizens out in nature. In 2011, a local caving group first entered Nightshade Cave through an opening previously blocked by soil. One of the group, Joshua Van Dyk, sighted an unusual animal skull.

Recognising its potential significance, he reported the find to Melbourne Museum. However, Van Dyk reckoned it was irretrievable, appearing to be crushed under boulders in a narrow vertical collapse. The cave was gated shut to protect its contents, and a decade passed quietly.

In 2021, I took an interest in the intriguing find. Members of the Victorian Speleological Association were only too happy to assist a return to the cave.

Rigging a ropeline, we abseiled down a tight ten-metre rift, emptying our lungs to pass tight points in midair. We corkscrewed into a narrow passage and wormed, single-file, through low-domed chambers hung with dripping stalactites and plastered by popcorn-like calcite formations.

Descending deeper, the cave transformed into tall, narrow, clean-walled rifts, full of dark recesses. Hours passed as we circuited the passages, until a shout echoed around: found again! We scrambled to a chimney-like chute stacked with pinned boulders, to come eye to eye with an ancient.

On reaching it, I felt sudden grief: the beautiful fossilised skull had in the intervening years begun to collapse. It seemed that, despite its long survival, the fossil was newly vulnerable – from little more than the altered air currents and changing humidity caused by the new cave entrance.

We strengthened the exposed bones with protective resins, but exited the cave having left them in place: more time would be needed to plan their retrieval.

A painstaking retrieval

On our return trips, I carefully brushed away fine layers of mud and we photographed and packed the newly freed fossils. The skull had a deep muzzle, with robust jaws and teeth that marked it as a short-faced (sthenurine) kangaroo.

Behind it were more bones. It was a marvel to see vertebrae, shoulders and hips, limbs and a narrow ribcage: many of the bones were wholly undisturbed and still in their original positions. This was a single animal, not a random scattering of bones. It felt like a fossil holy grail.

A detailed comparison to fossils in the Museums Victoria State Collection gave our skeleton its identification as Simosthenurus occidentalis. Comprising 150 preserved bones, it is the most complete fossil skeleton found in a Victorian cave to date.

That it is a juvenile rather than adult kangaroo further distinguishes it from other examples of the species. Its teeth show little wear, its skull bones are still unfused, and its limb ends had not yet joined, suggesting it was still young at its time of death.

From the size of its limbs, we estimate it weighed around 80 kilograms – as much as an average person – but might have grown half as large again had it reached adulthood.

Australia’s extinct megafauna

Short-faced kangaroos appear in Australia’s fossil record from 10 to 15 million years ago, as widespread rainforests began to give way to drier habitats. They became particularly diverse during the shift toward our current arid climate in the later part of the Pleistocene Epoch, from around 500,000 years ago.

But in a pulse of extinction around 45,000 years ago, they vanished across the continent, along with up to 85% of Australia’s megafauna. Radiocarbon dating by the Australian Nuclear Science & Technology Organisation dated the skeleton’s burial to 49,400 years ago. This means our S. occidentalis was among the very last of its kind.

Today, the hills of eastern Gippsland host a precious population of the brush-tailed rock-wallaby, a vulnerable species. Once, they shared the country with larger kin.

A key idea under investigation is whether sthenurine kangaroos walked with a striding gait, rather than hopped. The skeleton we found has a uniquely complete vertebral column, providing new insights we couldn’t get from isolated bones. With the benefit of detailed 3D models, this near-complete skeleton can also be studied from anywhere in the world.

This fossil, along with others from Nightshade Cave, is now housed and cared for in perpetuity at Melbourne Museum. Through Museums Victoria Research Institute, we can preserve a link to its once home of East Gippsland, while opening a door to global research.

Tim Ziegler received funding from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) for radiocarbon dating analysis. He is affiliated with the Victorian Speleological Association.

– ref. We spent 2 years in deep underground caves to bring this extraordinary fossil to light – https://theconversation.com/we-spent-2-years-in-deep-underground-caves-to-bring-this-extraordinary-fossil-to-light-226629

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nalini Joshi, Professor of Mathematics, University of Sydney

Imagine the tap of a card that bought you a cup of coffee this morning also let a hacker halfway across the world access your bank account and buy themselves whatever they liked. Now imagine it wasn’t a one-off glitch, but it happened all the time: imagine the locks that secure our electronic data suddenly stopped working.

This is not a science fiction scenario. It may well become a reality when sufficiently powerful quantum computers come online. These devices will use the strange properties of the quantum world to untangle secrets that would take ordinary computers more than a lifetime to decipher.

We don’t know when this will happen. However, many people and organisations are already concerned about so-called “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks, in which cybercriminals or other adversaries steal encrypted data now and store it away for the day when they can decrypt it with a quantum computer.

As the advent of quantum computers grows closer, cryptographers are trying to devise new mathematical schemes to secure data against their hypothetical attacks. The mathematics involved is highly complex – but the survival of our digital world may depend on it.

‘Quantum-proof’ encryption

The task of cracking much current online security boils down to the mathematical problem of finding two numbers that, when multiplied together, produce a third number. You can think of this third number as a key that unlocks the secret information. As this number gets bigger, the amount of time it takes an ordinary computer to solve the problem becomes longer than our lifetimes.

Future quantum computers, however, should be able to crack these codes much more quickly. So the race is on to find new encryption algorithms that can stand up to a quantum attack.

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology has been calling for proposed “quantum-proof” encryption algorithms for years, but so far few have withstood scrutiny. (One proposed algorithm, called Supersingular Isogeny Key Encapsulation, was dramatically broken in 2022 with the aid of Australian mathematical software called Magma, developed at the University of Sydney.)

The race has been hotting up this year. In February, Apple updated the security system for the iMessage platform to protect data that may be harvested for a post-quantum future.

Two weeks ago, scientists in China announced they had installed a new “encryption shield” to protect the Origin Wukong quantum computer from quantum attacks.

Around the same time, cryptographer Yilei Chen announced he had found a way quantum computers could attack an important class of algorithms based on the mathematics of lattices, which were considered some of the hardest to break. Lattice-based methods are part of Apple’s new iMessage security, as well as two of the three frontrunners for a standard post-quantum encryption algorithm.

What is a lattice-based algorithm?

A lattice is an arrangement of points in a repeating structure, like the corners of tiles in a bathroom or the atoms in a diamond crystal. The tiles are two dimensional and the atoms in diamond are three dimensional, but mathematically we can make lattices with many more dimensions.

Most lattice-based cryptography is based on a seemingly simple question: if you hide a secret point in such a lattice, how long will it take someone else to find the secret location starting from some other point? This game of hide and seek can underpin many ways to make data more secure.

A variant of the lattice problem called “learning with errors” is considered to be too hard to break even on a quantum computer. As the size of the lattice grows, the amount of time it takes to solve is believed to increase exponentially, even for a quantum computer.

Read more:
Has a mathematician solved the ‘invariant subspace problem’? And what does that even mean?

The lattice problem – like the problem of finding the factors of a large number on which so much current encryption depends – is closely related to a deep open problem in mathematics called the “hidden subgroup problem”.

Yilei Chen’s approach suggested quantum computers may be able to solve lattice-based problems more quickly under certain conditions. Experts scrambled to check his results – and rapidly found an error. After the error was discovered, Chen published an updated version of his paper describing the flaw.

Despite this discovery, Chen’s paper has made many cryptographers less confident in the security of lattice-based methods. Some are still assessing whether Chen’s ideas can be extended to new pathways for attacking these methods.

More mathematics required

Chen’s paper set off a storm in the small community of cryptographers who are equipped to understand it. However, it received almost no attention in the wider world – perhaps because so few people understand this kind of work or its implications.

Last year, when the Australian government published a national quantum strategy to make the country “a leader of the global quantum industry” where “quantum technologies are integral to a prosperous, fair and inclusive Australia”, there was an important omission: it didn’t mention mathematics at all.

Read more:
What is quantum advantage? A quantum computing scientist explains an approaching milestone marking the arrival of extremely powerful computers

Australia does have many leading experts in quantum computing and quantum information science. However, making the most of quantum computers – and defending against them – will require deep mathematical training to produce new knowledge and research.

Nalini Joshi 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. Mind-bending maths could stop quantum hackers, but few understand it – https://theconversation.com/mind-bending-maths-could-stop-quantum-hackers-but-few-understand-it-228191

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brigid McCarthy, Lecturer in Journalism, La Trobe University

Sports media misogyny was alive and well this month.

In just the few short weeks it took for star United States basketball players Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese to shoot their way from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Sweet 16 to the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) draft, two different sport reporters found themselves publicly apologising for their coverage of the women.

First, Los Angeles Times reporter Ben Bolch sparked criticism for describing Reese’s Louisiana State University (LSU) team as “dirty debutantes” in a since-redacted NCAA championships match-up preview.

LSU coach Kim Mulkey lambasted the article and those who failed to criticise it. “If you don’t think that’s sexism, then you’re in denial,” she said.

The Times quickly retracted the comments and Bolch posted an apology with a promise to “do better”.

This didn’t stop Indianapolis Star columnist Gregg Doyel from learning a similar lesson after he engaged in an inappropriate exchange with WNBA number 1 draft pick Clarke at a press conference, prompting yet another apology.

An issue closer to home, too

Australia is no stranger to these moments. It’s still hard to believe it was in this century that The Age columnist Greg Baum wrote “women’s soccer is a joke … women’s cricket is not much better”.

We also saw Kim Clijsters calling out Todd Woodbridge about an inappropriate text about her body, and an Australian Open commentator asking Canadian tennis player Eugenie Bouchard to give him “a twirl”.

Just last year, Australian cricketer Maitlin Brown endured a sidelines reporter labelling her a “little Barbie”.

And it’s not just female athletes who cop it, either. In 2022, AFL journalist Tom Morris was sacked over leaked sexist and homophobic comments he made about a female colleague.

Read more:
From forced kisses to power imbalances, violence against women in sport is endemic

Problems in a male-dominated industry

The issue is glaringly obvious. Contemporary sports media is overwhelmingly male.

Only 10% of Australian sports reporters are women (and the United States and Canadian stats are not much better).

Women are consistently reminded that sport is the territory of men, and that those who enter it are subject primarily to men’s perspectives and, too often, ridicule.

While the overt sexualisation and trivialisation that once routinely shaped women’s sport coverage is less common, some subtle but no less harmful forms of marginalisation remain.

Women’s sports are significantly less likely to receive deep analysis than men’s. Coverage tends to emphasise effort over performance and men are significantly more likely to be characterised as “well-liked”.

Sometimes it’s even unintended, and veiled by praise. For example, my study of media coverage of girl skateboarding “prodigies” at the Tokyo Olympics found that while the media celebrated the teen medallists as evidence of “girl power” at work, the coverage largely ignored the structural issues that still impact many women’s progress in skating and beyond.

Read more:
Is this the dawn of a new era in women’s sports?

What is the solution?

Women researchers and journalists have been offering the solution for years: we need more women’s voices in sports coverage.

Diverse perspectives can create better outcomes for women – just ask the medical research sector. Sport media need the voices of women who are not just experts in their sport, but know what it’s like to be a woman playing that sport.

We’ve already been given glimpses of the magic that can happen when women are moved from the sidelines to the desk.

During the same NCAA competition that saw two reporters apologise, ESPN assembled an all-women panel of former players and sports journalists to analyse the tournament.

The trio received considerable praise for coverage of an event that would culminate in ESPN’s most-viewed match (men’s or women’s) on record.

What was so illustrative of the power of women’s perspectives was the panel’s preview of Clark and Reese’s face-off in the Sweet 16, which would also set viewership records.

Moments before the game began, the trio took a moment to nod to the sport’s past players, telling them that because they built the game, this was their night, too.

This could only come from women who know what it is like to play and report a sport that has historically struggled for attention and respect.

Australia got its own peek at the possibilities in March when an all-woman commentary team covered an A-League round – a first for any Australian professional league.

Still, commentator Kate Allman said she was unsurprised it had taken until 2024 to get there, given the “labyrinth of glass ceilings” she’d encountered during her career.

Now, we storm towards yet another Olympics, one likely to result in success for Aussie women on the soccer field, basketball court, in the pool and more.

We need to see more women covering their efforts. And we need more mentoring initiatives to demonstrate to young women the possibilities of a sport media career.

It’s an opportunity to show that sports media can belong to women, too. And that they can play a part in improving coverage for the athletes who deserve better.

Brigid McCarthy 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. Women’s sport is soaring, and old-school male sports journalists need to lift their game – https://theconversation.com/womens-sport-is-soaring-and-old-school-male-sports-journalists-need-to-lift-their-game-228404

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacob Crouse, Research Fellow in Youth Mental Health, Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney

The core experiences of depression – changes in energy, activity, thinking and mood – have been described for more than 10,000 years. The word “depression” has been used for about 350 years.

Given this long history, it may surprise you that experts don’t agree about what depression is, how to define it or what causes it.

But many experts do agree that depression is not one thing. It’s a large family of illnesses with different causes and mechanisms. This makes choosing the best treatment for each person challenging.

Read more:
Families including someone with mental illness can experience deep despair. They need support

Reactive vs endogenous depression

One strategy is to search for sub-types of depression and see whether they might do better with different kinds of treatments. One example is contrasting “reactive” depression with “endogenous” depression.

Reactive depression (also thought of as social or psychological depression) is presented as being triggered by exposure to stressful life events. These might be being assaulted or losing a loved one – an understandable reaction to an outside trigger.

Endogenous depression (also thought of as biological or genetic depression) is proposed to be caused by something inside, such as genes or brain chemistry.

Many people working clinically in mental health accept this sub-typing. You might have read about this online.

But we think this approach is way too simple.

While stressful life events and genes may, individually, contribute to causing depression, they also interact to increase the risk of someone developing depression. And evidence shows that there is a genetic component to being exposed to stressors. Some genes affect things such as personality. Some affect how we interact with our environments.

What we did and what we found

Our team set out to look at the role of genes and stressors to see if classifying depression as reactive or endogenous was valid.

In the Australian Genetics of Depression Study, people with depression answered surveys about exposure to stressful life events. We analysed DNA from their saliva samples to calculate their genetic risk for mental disorders.

Our question was simple. Does genetic risk for depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, ADHD, anxiety and neuroticism (a personality trait) influence people’s reported exposure to stressful life events?

You may be wondering why we bothered calculating the genetic risk for mental disorders in people who already have depression. Every person has genetic variants linked to mental disorders. Some people have more, some less. Even people who already have depression might have a low genetic risk for it. These people may have developed their particular depression from some other constellation of causes.

We looked at the genetic risk of conditions other than depression for a couple of reasons. First, genetic variants linked to depression overlap with those linked to other mental disorders. Second, two people with depression may have completely different genetic variants. So we wanted to cast a wide net to look at a wider spectrum of genetic variants linked to mental disorders.

If reactive and endogenous depression sub-types are valid, we’d expect people with a lower genetic component to their depression (the reactive group) would report more stressful life events. And we’d expect those with a higher genetic component (the endogenous group) would report fewer stressful life events.

But after studying more than 14,000 people with depression we found the opposite.

We found people at higher genetic risk for depression, anxiety, ADHD or schizophrenia say they’ve been exposed to more stressors.

Assault with a weapon, sexual assault, accidents, legal and financial troubles, and childhood abuse and neglect, were all more common in people with a higher genetic risk of depression, anxiety, ADHD or schizophrenia.

These associations were not strongly influenced by people’s age, sex or relationships with family. We didn’t look at other factors that may influence these associations, such as socioeconomic status. We also relied on people’s memory of past events, which may not be accurate.

Read more:
Do kids grow out of ADHD as they get older?

How do genes play a role?

Genetic risk for mental disorders changes people’s sensitivity to the environment.

Imagine two people, one with a high genetic risk for depression, one with a low risk. They both lose their jobs. The genetically vulnerable person experiences the job loss as a threat to their self-worth and social status. There is a sense of shame and despair. They can’t bring themselves to look for another job for fear of losing it too. For the other, the job loss feels less about them and more about the company. These two people internalise the event differently and remember it differently.

Genetic risk for mental disorders also might make it more likely people find themselves in environments where bad things happen. For example, a higher genetic risk for depression might affect self-worth, making people more likely to get into dysfunctional relationships which then go badly.

Read more:
Many suicides are related to gambling. How can we tackle this problem?

What does our study mean for depression?

First, it confirms genes and environments are not independent. Genes influence the environments we end up in, and what then happens. Genes also influence how we react to those events.

Second, our study doesn’t support a distinction between reactive and endogenous depression. Genes and environments have a complex interplay. Most cases of depression are a mix of genetics, biology and stressors.

Third, people with depression who appear to have a stronger genetic component to their depression report their lives are punctuated by more serious stressors.

So clinically, people with higher genetic vulnerability might benefit from learning specific techniques to manage their stress. This might help some people reduce their chance of developing depression in the first place. It might also help some people with depression reduce their ongoing exposure to stressors.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Ian Hickie is the co-director of Health and Policy at the Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney, which operates early-intervention youth services at Camperdown under contract to Headspace; has previously led community-based and projects supported by the pharmaceutical industry (Wyeth, Eli Lily, Servier, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Janssen, Cilag), focused on the identification and better management of anxiety and depression; and is the Chief Scientific Advisor to, and a 3·2% equity shareholder in, InnoWell, which aims to transform mental health services through the use of innovative technologies.

Jacob Crouse 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. We looked at genetic clues to depression in more than 14,000 people. What we found may surprise you – https://theconversation.com/we-looked-at-genetic-clues-to-depression-in-more-than-14-000-people-what-we-found-may-surprise-you-227779

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Wilson, PhD Candidate in Quantum Technology & Innovation Governance, Institue for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

A landmark legal settlement has once again focused our attention on the dangers of “forever chemicals”.

This class of chemicals, technically known as per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are widely used to make nonstick or waterproof products. The problem is, the chemicals move easily around the environment, pollute groundwater and rivers, are often carcinogenic – and they don’t degrade.

This month, one of the largest makers of these chemicals, 3M, had its offer of A$16 billion to clean up PFAS-contaminated waterways approved by a US court. It’s just the latest in a series of PFAS lawsuits across the United States.

While increased attention is welcome, there’s no guarantee of success. Removing and destroying PFAS from wastewater streams across a single US state, Minnesota, would cost a minimum of $21 billion over 20 years. Globally, a recent report by the chemical safety nonprofit ChemSec found the costs of PFAS remediation alone amount to around $26 trillion per year – not including rising healthcare costs from exposure to PFAS, or damage to the environment. The 3M settlement is just the tip of the iceberg.

The problem now is how to actually clean up these chemicals – and prevent further pollution.

Remediation is expensive – and uncertain

In Australia, contamination is worst in firefighter training grounds and on defence force bases, due to the long-term use of firefighting foams full of PFAS. The discovery of this contamination triggered a wave of lawsuits. The Department of Defence has since paid out more than $366 million in class action lawsuits.

Defence has also assumed responsibility for managing, remediating and monitoring PFAS contamination on and around its bases. In 2021, the department began to actively set about remediation.

Read more:
Removing PFAS from public water systems will cost billions and take time – here are ways you can filter out harmful ‘forever chemicals’ at home

That sounds promising – find the pollution and fix the problem. But the reality is much more complicated.

A 2022 parliamentary inquiry described PFAS remediation as an emerging and experimental industry.

This is correct. There’s a great deal of basic scientific research we have to do. This is not a simple problem. These chemicals seep into the soil and groundwater – and stay there. It’s hard to get them out.

As a result, most remediation work at defence bases to date has been part of research and development, rather than a wide-scale permanent cleanup.

To help, the defence department has brought in three major industry partners, including Emerging Compounds Treatment Technologies. We don’t know how they are doing the cleanup or if their methods work, as this information is not publicly accessible. The three companies have sought intellectual property protection to support their technological advantage in the growing PFAS remediation market.

One of the companies, Venetia, told the parliamentary inquiry:

[there] are still significant gaps in knowledge in keys areas such as human health toxicology, PFAS behaviour in the environment and remediation of PFAS in soil and water

PFAS is a much bigger problem

Significant PFAS contamination has now been reported in:

– Melbourne’s West Gate Tunnel construction site. Soil contamination at the most polluted site is hundreds of times worse than a threshold set by the state’s environmental protection agency

– Western Australian mines

– WA waste management facilities

– Southeast Queensland water reclamation plants

– Perth’s public and private airports

– Operating and closed landfills.

The full extent of PFAS contamination in Australia is still emerging. Recent research has found Australia is one of several toxic hotspots for PFAS, relative to the rest of the world.

Worse, current monitoring practices are likely to be underestimating how much PFAS is lingering in the environment, given we usually only track a handful of these chemicals – out of more than 16,000.

Experts have called for:

improved understanding of the range of PFAS embodied in consumer and industrial products […] to assess the environmental burden and develop mitigation measures

The more we look, the more alarming the picture appears. Emerging research has found PFAS in consumer products such as cosmetics, packaging, waterproofing, inks, pesticides, medical articles, polishes and paints, metal plating, pipes and cables, mechanical components, electronics, solar cells, textiles and carpets.

The size and complexity of PFAS contamination suggests we are in for a very long and expensive process to begin cleaning it up – especially given we are still making and using these chemicals.

Read more:
Controversial ‘forever chemicals’ could be phased out in Australia under new restrictions. Here’s what you need to know

How should we respond?

To start addressing the problem, here are three important steps.

1. Introduce a “polluter pays” principle.

The introduction of this concept is what forced 3M to pay up in the US. Australia has yet to follow suit, which is why the public has been footing the bill. If we introduce this legal principle, manufacturers will have to take responsibility. This would make it much less attractive for companies to make polluting products – and shift the burden from taxpayers to the companies responsible. Australia’s government is considering pursuing similar legal action against 3M.

2. Set PFAS contamination standards in line with other OECD countries, or better.

Earlier this month, the US implemented the first legally enforceable national drinking water standards for five PFAS compounds and two PFAS mixtures. Australia’s current acceptable drinking water guidelines allow up to 140 times more PFAS in our water than these strict new US standards. In the US, these new standards are drawing new investment in remediation.

3. Take it seriously.

For years, many of us thought all you had to do to avoid PFAS was not to buy nonstick pans. But these chemicals are now everywhere. They’re highly persistent and don’t leave our bodies easily. Every single person on the planet is now likely to have detectable levels of PFAS in their blood. Reducing this dangerous chemical load is going to take a lot of work to clean up existing hotspots, stop further production, and prevent recirculation of PFAS in recycled products or in our food.

The 3M settlement is a good start. But it’s only a start. Tackling this problem is going to be hard, but necessary.

Read more:
PFAS: how research is uncovering damaging effects of ‘forever chemicals’

Rachael Wakefield-Rann receives research funding from various government and non-government organisations. She does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would financially benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond her academic appointment.

Sarah Wilson 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. Chemicals, forever: how do you fix a problem like PFAS? – https://theconversation.com/chemicals-forever-how-do-you-fix-a-problem-like-pfas-227771

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Davies, Professor and Head of School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia

Australians are having fewer babies, so many fewer that without international migration our population would be on track to decline in just over a decade.

In most circumstances, the number of babies per woman that a population needs to sustain itself – the so-called total fertility rate – is 2.1.

Australia’s total fertility rate dipped below 2.1 in the late 1970s, moved back up towards it in the late 2000s (assisted in part by an improving economy, better access to childcare and the introduction of the Commonwealth Baby Bonus), and then plunged again, hitting a low of 1.59 during the first year of COVID.

The latest population projections from the Australian Bureau of Statistics assume the rate remains near its present 1.6% for the next 50 years.

An alternative, lower, set of assumptions has the rate falling to 1.45 over the next five years and staying there. A higher set of assumptions has it rebounding to 1.75 and staying there.

A comprehensive study of global fertility trends published in March in the medical journal The Lancet has Australia’s central case at 1.45, followed by a fall to 1.33 by the end of the century.

Significantly, none of these assumptions envisages a return to replacement rate.

The bureau’s central projection has Australia’s population turning down from 2037 in the absence of a boost from migration.

It’s easy to make guesses about reasons. Reliable contraception has been widely available for 50 years. Rents, mortgages and the other costs facing Australians of child-bearing age appear to be climbing. It’s still difficult to have a career if you have a child, and data show women still carry the substantive burden of unpaid work around the home.

The US fertility rate has fallen much in line with Australia’s.

Reporting on research into the reasons, Forbes Magazine succinctly
said a broken economy had “screwed over” Americans considering having children.

More diplomatically, it said Americans saw parenthood as “harder to manage” than they might have in the past.

Half the world is unable to replace itself

But this trend is widespread. The Lancet study finds more than half of the world’s countries have a fertility rate below replacement level.

China, which is important for the global fertility rate because it makes up such a large share of the world’s population, had a fertility rate as high as 7.5 in the early 1960s. It fell to 2.5 before the start of China’s one-child policy in the early 1990s, and then slid further from 1.8 to 1 after the policy was abandoned in 2016.

South Korea’s fertility rate has dived further, to the world’s lowest: 0.72.

The fertility rate in India, which is now more populous than China, has also fallen below replacement level.

Most of the 94 nations that continue to have above-replacement fertility rates are in North Africa, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa. Some, including Samoa
and Papua New Guinea, are in the Pacific.

Most of Asia, Europe and Oceania is already below replacement rate.

A changing world order

The largest high-fertility African nation, Nigeria, is expected to overtake China to become the world’s second-most-populous nation by the end of the century.

But even Nigeria’s fertility rate will sink. The Lancet projections have it sliding from 4.7 to 1.87 by the end of the century.

The differences mean the world’s population growth will increasingly take place in countries that are among the most vulnerable to environmental and economic hardship.

Already economically disadvantaged, these nations will need to provide jobs, housing, healthcare and services for rapidly growing populations at a time when the rest of the world does not.

On the other hand, those nations will be blessed with young people. They will be an increasingly valuable resource as other nations face the challenges of an ageing population and declining workforce.

An older world, then a smaller world

Global fertility halved between 1950 and 2021, shrinking from 4.84 to 2.23.

The latest projections have it sinking below the replacement rate to somewhere between 1.59 and 2.08 by 2050, and then to between 1.25 and 1.96 by 2100.

The world has already seen peak births and peak primary-school-aged children.

In 2016, the world welcomed about 142 million live babies, and since then the number born each year has fallen. By 2021, it was about 129 million.

The global school-age population aged 6 to 11 years peaked at around 820 million in 2023.

The United Nations expects the world’s population to peak at 10.6 billion in 2086, after which it will begin to fall.

Another forecast, produced as part of the impressive Global Burden of Disease study, has the peak occurring two decades earlier in 2064, with the world’s population peaking at 9.73 billion.

Fewer babies are a sign of success

In many ways, a smaller world is to be welcomed.

The concern common in the 1960s and 1970s that the world’s population was growing faster and faster and the world would soon be unable to feed itself has turned out to be misplaced.

Aside from occasional blips (China’s birth rate in the Year of the Dragon) the fertility trend in just about every nation on Earth is downwards.

The world’s population hasn’t been growing rapidly for long. Before 1700 it grew by only about 0.4% per year. By 2100 it will have stabilised and started to fall, limiting the period of unusually rapid growth to four centuries.

In an important way, lower birth rates can be seen as a sign of success. The richer a society becomes and the more it is able to look after its seniors, the less important it becomes for each couple to have children to care for them in old age. This is a long-established theory with a name: the demographic transition.

Read more:
With one exception, the Intergenerational Report is far less scary than you’ve heard

For Australia, even with forecast immigration, lower fertility will mean changes.

The government’s 2023 Intergenerational Report says that whereas there are now 3.7 Australians of traditional working age for each Australian aged 65 and over, by 2063 there will only be 2.6.

It will mean those 2.6 people will have to work smarter, perhaps with greater assistance from artificial intelligence.

Unless they decide to have more babies, which history suggests they won’t.

Amanda Davies currently receives funding from the Australian Research Council and CRC Transformation in Mining Economies

– ref. Australians are having fewer babies and our local-born population is about to shrink: here’s why it’s not that scary – https://theconversation.com/australians-are-having-fewer-babies-and-our-local-born-population-is-about-to-shrink-heres-why-its-not-that-scary-228273

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Oscar, Senior Lecturer, Visual Communication, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney

Since last year, I have been working on a project with my Thai mother who migrated to Australia in 1974 while pregnant with me. There are no photographs of this significant event. As a reparative act to fill in the gaps of our family archive, I used a generative AI platform to create photographs of my mother’s migration story, a project I called Counterfactual Departures.

To conjure photographs in MidJourney, I collected information to engineer a range of prompts. I noted details of my mother’s departure from Thailand – her age, the location, her clothing and the trimester of her pregnancy. I also included my own interpretation of how she would have felt as a 30-year-old woman travelling alone to white Australia in the 1970s. She spoke little English and had no family or friends of her own to begin life with my father, who she barely knew.

My attempts to piece together the past using data sets scraped from the collective archive of the internet have led me to question the role photography and memory might play in this new era of generative AI.

MidJourney and the ‘mean image’

MidJourney, like other AI image-generating platforms, creates images based on aggregates of data trawled from millions of online source photographs.

While they are not strictly photographs, AI-generated images read like photographs, look like photographs, are compared to photographs and challenge our philosophical understanding of photographs.

As relatives of photography, they are associated with qualities like pastness and memory, or even, as photographic theorist Joanna Zylinska suggests, as perceptual devices that can show us the future.

The problem that emerges out of generating images from photographic data sets is the way information is aggregated to form an image as a statistical average. As artist Hito Steyerl has observed:

They represent the norm by signalling the mean. They replace likenesses with likelinesses […] in style and substance they are: mean images.

By sampling from a range of information sources and creating composites, MidJourney accentuates the most prominent features of a dataset, this mean.

The first photographs produced of my mother illustrated this tendency. In the image, my mother and I (in utero) stand in an oversized grey suit, looking out of the frame in a parking lot among suitcases and a wasteland of plastic bags. We appear to be somewhere in Los Angeles, rendered in the style of staged photography. Generated from the statistical mean of data sets, they could also be described adjectivally as mean.

Looking back on these early photographs, part of the project’s problem was my over-emphasis on how the past should have looked. To shift the way this event was represented as a statistical mean of racial stereotypes, I had to place less emphasis on the generated image and turn image generation into a generative process of dialogue and discussion.

Read more:
Education should look to the way artists are embracing AI, instead of turning its back on the technology

Memory-work as a generative method

The conversations we have about a photograph, whether real or not, can constitute a form of memory-work. Memory-work refers to how we process memories through the social relations we build around artefacts, such as photographs, text, objects or family albums. It is a valuable method for artists who deal with events outside of history because the process of art making serves a reparative function.

For cultural historian Annette Kuhn this cultivates dialogue about the past. She writes, memory-work means we can look at photographs as:

material for interpretation, to be interrogated, mined, for its meanings and its possibilities.

By shifting my emphasis from the generative image to the dialogue it generated, I began performing the act of memory-work. Images were used to generate conversations about this significant event. This created space to identify a gap between my imaginative recreation of events, my mother’s memories and the mean image generated by AI.

This collaborative process between my mother, AI and me has been revelatory. It has allowed me to fill the gaps in our family biography playfully. It has given my mother an opportunity to say, “no, it wasn’t like that, I came to Australia with dignity” and to recognise racial stereotypes of representation.

AI has the potential to create proxy representations of us and to create a dialogue around significant events and life experiences.

From moral panic to collaboration

Much moral panic around generated images has been fuelled in the media by an inability to discern between the real and the fake.

Mimicry, whether contributing to false memory, fake news, breaches of copyright, or the replacement of humans with machine labour, is at the centre of this debate.

But what if generative AI were able to be put to use as a tool of memory-work, to facilitate dialogue and interaction? This approach reconnects AI-generated images with earlier social and cultural practices of photography. It offers a more intimate example of what AI can do.

Read more:
Synthetic futures: my journey into the emotional, poetic world of AI art making

Sara Oscar 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. I had no photos of my mother’s pregnancy and migration, so I found a way for AI to help fill in the gaps – https://theconversation.com/i-had-no-photos-of-my-mothers-pregnancy-and-migration-so-i-found-a-way-for-ai-to-help-fill-in-the-gaps-225559

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

Tackling violence against women will be the sole agenda item for a national cabinet meeting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has convened for Wednesday.

The meeting, held remotely, follows thousands of Australians attending rallies across the country, as community anger surges over the horrific number of women killed so far this year.

One topic is expected to be bail laws. NSW already has an inquiry, after a man charged with crimes against a woman was granted bail and then allegedly killed her.

Albanese was at the Canberra rally on Sunday, where he received some heckling. He was accompanied by the Minister for Woman Katy Gallagher and the Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth.

“We are here today to demand that governments of all levels must do better, including my own, including every state and territory government,” the Prime Minister told the crowd.

“We’re here as well to say that society, and Australia, must do better.

“We need to change the culture. We need to change attitudes. We need to change the legal system. We need to change the approach by all governments – because it’s not enough to support victims.

“We need to focus on the perpetrators and focus on prevention.”

National cabinet would “talk about what we can do, including as part of the national plan to end violence against women and children, where in the first two budgets, we’ve added $2.3 billion,” Albanese said.

He said, “I know that we all must do better,” but “it’s not just governments’ problem. It’s a problem of our entire society” and a “a national crisis”.

“We need to make sure that this isn’t just up to women. It’s up to men to change men’s behaviour as well.”

The federal government has rejected calls for a royal commission into the issue, saying it already has a plan.

Rishworth told Sky on Sunday that victim survivors and many experts had had input into that plan. “So we believe we need to get on with the job.

“We have a Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner and Commission that our government stood up. That role is incredibly important in monitoring. We believe we just need to continue to have this sustained effort. We believe that is what will make the difference,” she said.

In the latest incident, in Perth a 35-year-old man was charged with murdering a 30-year-old mother late last week.

A police statement said: “It will be alleged […] the accused physically assaulted the victim at their shared home on Currie Street [in Perth]”.

“It will be further alleged the accused set the property alight while the victim was still inside.” The woman was later found dead.

So far this year 27 women have died in gender-based violence in Australia.

eSafety review opens public consultations

Meanwhile, amid growing concern about the negative effects of social media (including its contribution to gender-based violence) and the government’s fight with Elon Musk over the post of the Assyrian church stabbing, public consultations are opening on strengthening eSafety laws. An issues paper is being released on Monday.

A review by Delia Rickard, a former deputy chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, is underway. She has already been consulting academics, civil society and government departments and agencies to determine issues, the review’s are scope and the public consultation processes.

“The Review is considering the effectiveness of the current framework, including whether more powers are needed to address new and emerging harms,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said.

It is also looking at “options to reduce harms caused by online hate, as well as new harms raised by emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence”.

Among the matters the issues paper raises are

• further steps to ensure the industry acts in children’s best interests

• adequacy of existing penalties and enforcement powers

• accessibility of laws and regulations dealing with online content and harms, and

• international developments in online safety regulation, including whether a new duty of care should be imposed on digital platforms.

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. National cabinet to meet on violence against women, with Albanese saying everyone ‘must do better’ – https://theconversation.com/national-cabinet-to-meet-on-violence-against-women-with-albanese-saying-everyone-must-do-better-228873

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University

It has been a particularly distressing start to the year. There is little that can ease the current grief of individuals, families and communities who have needlessly lost a loved one to men’s violence in recent weeks.

A spate of cases involving women dying, allegedly at the hands of men, in the Ballarat region. The shocking case of Molly Ticehurst, allegedly murdered by her ex-boyfriend in central west New South Wales. The fact so many of the victims of the violence at Bondi Junction were women.

It is clear there is a collective grief across our nation. The headlines express our shared hurt and disbelief that women continue to lose their lives to men’s violence against them. This weekend, a National Rally Against Violence will urge governments to take more assertive action to end gender-based violence in our communities.

So what’s being done – and are we making any progress?

Read more:
How ‘closing the gap’ may close doors for First Nations women in new plan to end violence

What is being done?

At this time, it is appropriate we seek to ease our individual and collective grief.

It is a time for expressing our respect for the women who have lost their lives, and for renewing our commitments that we will not stand by and do nothing while women continue to be harmed.

We have not been standing in silence.

Australians have been – and will continue – taking action to end gender-based violence.

Every Australian government has committed to policy action to address violence against women. The second National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children (2022 to 2032), is building on the progress made over the past ten years.

This plan emphasises prevention and early intervention, as well as improving support for victim-survivors and justice responses. There is also a focus on recovery and healing.

For the first time, there is a specific Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Action Plan to address violence against women and children in First Nations communities.

The Commonwealth government has also committed to centring Aboriginal women’s leadership in the development of a standalone National Plan for First Nations women.

Across our communities, workplaces are implementing new policies and programs to prevent sexual harassment and to promote equity and respect at work.

The media, too, are reporting with greater sensitivity and respect for victim-survivors of violence.

Universities are embarking on a program of policy, services and cultural change to address sexual violence and harassment.

More and more schools are delivering on respectful relationships education with children and young people.

From sports clubs to faith communities, to licensed venues and public spaces, there is a heightened awareness of family and sexual violence, and the role we all have to play in responding to and preventing it.

Is it working?

Our national data is telling us that these shared efforts are starting to show impact in our communities. Of course, zero preventable deaths should be our goal.

But the data from the Australian Institute of Criminology’s National Homicide Monitoring Program does show a continuing decline in rates of intimate partner homicide, in particular.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Personal Safety Survey, the most accurate measure of self-reported experiences of all forms of personal violence in Australia, also shows some promising trends. It shows the 12-month rate of family violence may have reduced in some states, while remaining the same in others.

Read more:
49 women have been killed in Australia so far in 2023 as a result of violence. Are we actually making any progress?

What more needs to be done?

There is so much policy and program work that Australia has committed to – but much is still in its infancy of implementation.

Police and justice systems in several states have been reviewing policies and practices that have too often failed to protect women’s lives.

Accountability of men who choose to use violence is critical – but there is also a need for more work with men who want to change their behaviour, and for early intervention programs to prevent men’s violence from escalating.

We also urgently need funding for recovery and healing services for victim-survivors.

It is unacceptable that many of those experiencing lasting trauma and other impacts of family and sexual violence face a lack of affordable, accessible, trauma-informed support beyond a situation of dangerous crisis.

It has been less than ten years since we have had a national framework to guide evidence-based strategies to prevent the violence before it occurs. Addressing the underlying drivers of gender-based violence goes hand-in-hand with our response efforts, if we want to see lasting change.

Impact on survivors

The recent headlines on gender-based violence have also undoubtedly affected remaining victim-survivors.

For some, hearing about these recent cases may add to existing trauma. It can prompt an unnerving sense of unsafety; a feeling of endless risk that too often women are left to navigate largely on their own.

Others may feel the time is right to disclose their own experience of violence to a friend or family member, or contact a helpline like 1800 RESPECT.

If you find yourself responding to a disclosure of violence, remember your initial response can have a lasting impact.

Now, more than ever, she will need to be listened to without blame or judgement. She will need to be believed, and she may need some support to connect with specialist support services.

Many men too, will no doubt be reflecting on what needs to be done to end this violence. There is a particularly important role for non-violent men to play in speaking out against gender-based violence and helping break these patterns.

We must not lose heart, but rather accelerate the progress we have begun to make.

We must continue to take action if we are to fulfil our shared commitment to an Australia where women – and indeed, all of us – live free from all forms of violence.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732. In immediate danger, call 000.

Anastasia Powell receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Criminology Research Council, Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS), and Family Safety Victoria. Anastasia is also a director of Our Watch (Australia’s national organisation for the prevention of violence against women), and a member of the National Women’s Safety Alliance (NWSA).

Asher Flynn receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Criminology Research Council and Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS). Asher is also a Chief Investigator and Deputy Lead of Research Ethics & Training for the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence, the Centre for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW).

– ref. We’re all feeling the collective grief and trauma of violence against women – but this is the progress we have made so far – https://theconversation.com/were-all-feeling-the-collective-grief-and-trauma-of-violence-against-women-but-this-is-the-progress-we-have-made-so-far-228781

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne

Once known only to those studying biology, the word symbiosis is now widely used. Symbiosis is the intimate relationship of different species living together. It’s much more common and older than many of us might realise.

One of the most common symbiotic relationships is between various species of algae and fungi, or between cyanobacteria (commonly known as blue-green algae though it’s not algae) and fungi. These paired species take the form of lichens.

The term symbiosis was first used in the 19th century to describe the lichen relationship, which was thought to be highly unusual. Since then, we’ve discovered symbiosis is the norm, rather than the exception. In fact, it has shaped the evolution of most life on Earth.

Read more:
More than coral: the unseen casualties of record-breaking heat on the Great Barrier Reef

Symbiosis is almost everywhere we look

Lichens are diverse. They grow on tree trunks, on roof tiles and on ancient rocks.

The symbiosis of two different species allows both to survive in environments they might not be able to colonise otherwise. The fungus provides a suitable environment for its partnering species of algae or cyanbacteria to grow – it might otherwise be too exposed or dry, for example. In return, the fungus gets to share some of the carbohydrates produced by photosynthesis.

This is an example where both partners benefit from their relationship. It’s called mutualistic symbiosis.

Lichens are often very good indicators of air quality and more general ecosystem health. Their absence can indicate poor air quality. Because they absorb air pollutants such as heavy metals they can be used as biomonitors.

Read more:
Mosses and lichens come to the rescue in battle against air pollution

In another very common example of mutualistic symbiosis, most plant species live in a close relationship with fungi in the soil. It’s known as a mycorrhizal association.

The plants harness the energy in sunlight to make sugar from water and carbon dioxide in the process called photosynthesis. The plants share this food with the fungus, which relies on them for survival. In return, the fine threads of the fungus greatly increase the surface area of the plant roots for absorbing water and nutrients.

Read more:
The ancient, intimate relationship between trees and fungi, from fairy toadstools to technicolour mushrooms

Not all partners benefit

Not all symbiotic relationships benefit both partners.

In parasitic symbiosis, one partner benefits at the expense of the other. Examples include the fungi Phytophthora, Fusarium and Armilleria, which often kill their plant hosts.

In cases of commensalism, one organism benefits and the other neither gains nor loses. Small birds, for example, sometimes perch on large herbivores, eating insects disturbed by the larger animals.

As in any relationship, it’s possible things can change over time. For example, a mutualistic symbiosis between a tree and its mycorrhizal fungus might change to parasitism as the tree ages and declines, or if environmental conditions change.

Read more:
At a time of giving and receiving, our many Australian mistletoes do it too

Symbiosis has driven evolution

Symbiosis has played a huge role in the evolution of life. The cells that make up the bodies of animals and plants are the result of symbiotic relationships.

Cells are complex. They contain structures called organelles, such as the nucleus (the control centre of the cell) and mitochondrion (involved in cellular respiration, which uses oxygen to break down food molecules to make energy available). Plant cells also contain chloroplasts, the sites of photosynthesis.

These complex cells evolved from much simpler, ancient forms of life that came together symbiotically.

The organelles of complex cells were once single-celled life forms that survived being engulfed by other simple cells. They formed a more complex and efficient cell, which has become the basic cell type for large multicellular life forms.

All large multi-cellular organisms living on Earth – animal and plant – possess this type of cell. It’s proof of how successful this evolutionary symbiotic strategy has been.

Cell respiration in both plant and animal cells involves mitochondria, which indicates they were engulfed early in evolutionary history. Later a cell type already containing mitochondria engulfed the chloroplast. This led to the evolution of complex plants.

Read more:
Explainer: why can’t humans photosynthesise?

When two become one

The incorporation of one cell type into another is called endosymbiosis. It allowed cells and parts of cells to become highly specialised. This specialisation improved their efficiency and capacity to survive under a wider range of conditions.

When I was a postgraduate botany student in the late ’70s, colleagues one day brought samples of common sea lettuce, Ulva latuca, to the laboratory, where I was studying photosynthetic physiology. Sea lettuce is a seaweed found in many shallow waters around the Australian coast.

We noticed a little marine slug grazing on the plant, so we popped it into our system for studying photosynthesis. To our surprise the slug was photosynthesising! We discovered the slug partly digested the sea lettuce cells, but some chloroplasts passed through the lining of the slug’s gut and continued to photosynthesise.

We thought we had made an important discovery, only to learn others had published similar work. After that I never doubted the validity of endosymbiosis, which was still a controversial theory at the time.

Symbiosis turns out to be the norm

We now know symbiosis is the norm for most organisms, including humans.

Our gut flora represent symbiosis on a massive scale. The diversity and huge numbers of bacteria living happily in our gut can have a huge impact on our general health and wellbeing. In the case of a healthy gut, both the person and the bacteria do well out of the relationship: a nice example of mutualistic symbiosis.

COVID focused public attention on viruses. But not all viruses are harmful; many actually benefit the organisms they infect. Some viruses even protect us from disease-causing viruses. For example, in people who are HIV-positive the disease progresses more slowly in those who are also infected with GB virus C (GBV-C).

Of course, the full range of symbiotic relationships with viruses is possible, from mutual benefit to an infected host suffering great harm. And, as with bacteria, there is accumulating evidence viruses have helped many species evolve, including our own.

An organism must live within a complex set of relationships to survive and thrive in any environment. Some relationships will be more positive than others, but it should not surprise that mutualistic symbiosis is so often the key to success.

Gregory Moore 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. Species living closely together in symbiosis is far older and way more common than you might think – https://theconversation.com/species-living-closely-together-in-symbiosis-is-far-older-and-way-more-common-than-you-might-think-227217

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Hemsley, Head, Childhood Dementia Research Group, Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University

“Childhood” and “dementia” are two words we wish we didn’t have to use together. But sadly, around 1,400 Australian children and young people live with currently untreatable childhood dementia.

Broadly speaking, childhood dementia is caused by any one of more than 100 rare genetic disorders. Although the causes differ from dementia acquired later in life, the progressive nature of the illness is the same.

Half of infants and children diagnosed with childhood dementia will not reach their tenth birthday, and most will die before turning 18.

Yet this devastating condition has lacked awareness, and importantly, the research attention needed to work towards treatments and a cure.

Read more:
Playing a musical instrument or singing in a choir may boost your brain – new study

More about the causes

Most types of childhood dementia are caused by mutations (or mistakes) in our DNA. These mistakes lead to a range of rare genetic disorders, which in turn cause childhood dementia.

Two-thirds of childhood dementia disorders are caused by “inborn errors of metabolism”. This means the metabolic pathways involved in the breakdown of carbohydrates, lipids, fatty acids and proteins in the body fail.

As a result, nerve pathways fail to function, neurons (nerve cells that send messages around the body) die, and progressive cognitive decline occurs.

What happens to children with childhood dementia?

Most children initially appear unaffected. But after a period of apparently normal development, children with childhood dementia progressively lose all previously acquired skills and abilities, such as talking, walking, learning, remembering and reasoning.

Childhood dementia also leads to significant changes in behaviour, such as aggression and hyperactivity. Severe sleep disturbance is common and vision and hearing can also be affected. Many children have seizures.

The age when symptoms start can vary, depending partly on the particular genetic disorder causing the dementia, but the average is around two years old. The symptoms are caused by significant, progressive brain damage.

Are there any treatments available?

Childhood dementia treatments currently under evaluation or approved are for a very limited number of disorders, and are only available in some parts of the world. These include gene replacement, gene-modified cell therapy and protein or enzyme replacement therapy. Enzyme replacement therapy is available in Australia for one form of childhood dementia. These therapies attempt to “fix” the problems causing the disease, and have shown promising results.

Other experimental therapies include ones that target faulty protein production or reduce inflammation in the brain.

Read more:
20% of children have developmental delay. What does this mean for them, their families and the NDIS?

Research attention is lacking

Death rates for Australian children with cancer nearly halved between 1997 and 2017 thanks to research that has enabled the development of multiple treatments. But over recent decades, nothing has changed for children with dementia.

In 2017–2023, research for childhood cancer received over four times more funding per patient compared to funding for childhood dementia. This is despite childhood dementia causing a similar number of deaths each year as childhood cancer.

The success for childhood cancer sufferers in recent decades demonstrates how adequately funding medical research can lead to improvements in patient outcomes.

Another bottleneck for childhood dementia patients in Australia is the lack of access to clinical trials. An analysis published in March this year showed that in December 2023, only two clinical trials were recruiting patients with childhood dementia in Australia.

Worldwide however, 54 trials were recruiting, meaning Australian patients and their families are left watching patients in other parts of the world receive potentially lifesaving treatments, with no recourse themselves.

That said, we’ve seen a slowing in the establishment of clinical trials for childhood dementia across the world in recent years.

Read more:
Dementia can be predicted more than a decade before diagnosis with these blood proteins

In addition, we know from consultation with families that current care and support systems are not meeting the needs of children with dementia and their families.

New research

Recently, we were awarded new funding for our research on childhood dementia. This will help us continue and expand studies that seek to develop lifesaving treatments.

More broadly, we need to see increased funding in Australia and around the world for research to develop and translate treatments for the broad spectrum of childhood dementia conditions.

Dr Kristina Elvidge, head of research at the Childhood Dementia Initiative, and Megan Maack, director and CEO, contributed to this article.

Kim Hemsley has previously received research funding from Lysogene and Shire Human Genetic Therapies, companies seeking to develop treatments for childhood dementia.

Kim is a Childhood Dementia Initiative Scientific and Medical Advisory Committee member, a Sanfilippo Children’s Foundation (Australia) Scientific Advisory Board member and is currently Chair, Scientific Advisory Board to the National MPS Society (USA). All roles are voluntary.

Nicholas Smith receives institutional research funding from BlueBird Bio, Ultragenyx and Cyclo Therapeutics. He receives consulting fees (under academic institutional contract) from Forge Biologics. All listed companies are biotechnology companies developing therapies including for diseases within the childhood dementia spectrum. He has received funding from the Medical Research Future Fund, Sanfilippo Children’s Foundation and the Women and Children’s Hospital Foundation for research developing therapies for childhood dementia. He is a member of the Scientific and Medical Advisory Board, Childhood Dementia Initiative; Scientific Advisory Board, Sanfilippo Children’s Foundation; Scientific Advisory Board, Batten’s Disease Support and Research Foundation; Rare Finds Foundation Board, and a committee member of the Australian Mitochondrial Disease Medical Network. All are voluntary with no pecuniary interest. He is a consultant neurologist involved in the care of patients with childhood dementia and Chief / Primary Investigator on multiple national / international trials across disorders within the childhood dementia spectrum.

Siti Mubarokah receives funding from Sanfilippo Children’s Foundation, The Little Heroes Foundation and SA Government.

– ref. What is childhood dementia? And how could new research help? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-childhood-dementia-and-how-could-new-research-help-228508

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

The government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has just published its second report. It was set up by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth in 2022 to provide:

non-binding advice on boosting economic inclusion and tackling disadvantage, including policy settings, systems and structures, and the adequacy, effectiveness and sustainability of income support payments.

I am one of the members.

This year, the report tackled a burning question: why has the gap between unemployment payments and age pensions widened?

Unemployment and related payments for working-age people were given a welcome increase in the 2023–24 budget. But they remain well below pensions, and far from adequate on all measures.

Way below the pension

After the latest regular indexation increase in March, a single jobseeker gets about A$258 per fortnight less than a pensioner in basic payments, and $345 per fortnight less than a pensioner on payments including supplements.

It’s important to understand what’s led us to this point.

The committee’s first report last year noted that the amounts paid are set through a complex historical process that has involved “long periods of inaction” interspersed with “bursts of activity” to address the previous inaction.

The amounts paid out are regularly increased, typically via “indexation” to either wages growth or inflation (prices growth).

Indexation of pensions and benefits was enshrined in legislation in 1976, but at times of high inflation was suspended.

By 1982, unemployment payments were about 80% of the single pension.

From 1983 onwards, the Hawke government increased unemployment payments relative to pensions so that by the time Paul Keating left office as prime minister in March 1996 the rate for a single adult facing unemployment had climbed to 92% of the basic pension.

What widened the gap?

The gap began to widen increasingly quickly from 1997, when the Howard government “benchmarked” pensions to 25% of “male total average weekly earnings”.

This means that although pensions increased in line with the consumer price index, as did unemployment payments, they had to be lifted further to ensure they couldn’t fall below 25% of male total average earnings, whereas unemployment payments did not.

By the early 2000s, the single unemployment payment was worth around 87% of the support for a pensioner, including supplements.

Read more:
Boosting JobSeeker is the most effective way to tackle poverty: what the treasurer’s committee told him

As real wages grew strongly during the mining boom of the early 2000s, the gap widened further to $142 per fortnight ($179 including supplements) by 2009.

And then, although wages were growing less strongly as a result of the global financial crisis, the gap widened again.

The Rudd government lifted single pensions substantially following the recommendations of the 2009 Harmer Review.

Support for unemployed singles fell from 79% of the single pension to just 68% – the biggest gap so far. For couples, the gap fell from 83% to 81%.

The pandemic sparked a brief reprieve

The gap continued to widen until early 2020, when the temporary $550 a fortnight Coronavirus Supplement almost doubled the effective JobSeeker payment, lifting it above the age pension for a short period.

In April 2021, after the gap returned, the Morrison government helped narrow it by lifting JobSeeker by $50 per fortnight, and in 2023 Treasurer Jim Chalmers lifted it a further $40 per fortnight.

But over the past 30 years, the gap has still widened significantly, mainly as an effect of deliberate policy choices to lift support for pensioners.

But from here on, things are set to get worse

Under current indexation and benchmarking arrangements, it is inevitable this gap will continue to widen.

This can be seen in all of the projections of the Intergenerational Reports prepared for the government since 2002.

The latest 2023 report assumes average earnings will increase by 3.7% per year and prices by 2.5% per year over the next 40 years. If this happens, the single rate of JobSeeker will fall to less than half of the pension by 2063.

The improvements achieved through payment increases in 2022 and 2023 would be undone by 2035.

This would lead to much higher rates of relative poverty among working-age benefit recipients in the future. Child poverty would also increase substantially.

What needs to change

The committee has recommended the government commit to a substantial increase in the base rates of JobSeeker and related working-age payments as a first priority, and spell out the time frame in which it will happen.

To ensure this doesn’t need to keep happening, we have also recommended the government improve the indexation arrangements to make sure payments for the unemployed don’t fall behind.

It would still need to regularly review and monitor the relationship between working-age payments and widely accepted measures of community living standards, including wages, but not nearly as often.

Peter Whiteford receives funding from the Australian Research council. He is a member of the Interom Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee. Any views expressed are personal.

– ref. Jobseekers get about $345 less than pensioners each fortnight. This gap is hurting, and is set to widen without change – https://theconversation.com/jobseekers-get-about-345-less-than-pensioners-each-fortnight-this-gap-is-hurting-and-is-set-to-widen-without-change-228401

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

The Queensland state election will be held in October. A YouGov poll for The Courier Mail, conducted April 9–17 from a sample of 1,092 people, gave the Liberal National Party a 56–44% lead over Labor, a four-point gain for the LNP since the early October 2023 YouGov poll.

Primary votes were 44% LNP (up three points), 27% Labor (down six), 15% Greens (up two), 10% One Nation (up two) and 4% for all others (down one).

Labor Premier Steven Miles had a -22 net approval rating, compared with former Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s -20 rating in the October poll, with 47% of those polled dissatisfied with his performance and 25% satisfied.

This is the worst net approval for a Queensland premier in YouGov polls for The Courier Mail.

LNP leader David Crisafulli’s net approval was +14, up three points from October. Crisafulli led Miles as better premier by 40–27% (he was 37–35% against Palaszczuk in the October poll).

Asked who they would prefer as premier between Miles and Palaszczuk, voters backed Miles by 53–47%. Labor voters supported Palaszczuk by 51–49%, while LNP voters favoured Miles by 57–43%.

In March, a Newspoll gave the LNP a 54–46% lead over Labor, and there were massive swings to the LNP at two Queensland state byelections.

Labor has governed in Queensland since an upset victory at the January 2015 election. But the party is now facing a heavy defeat at the October election after almost ten years in power.

Labor extends lead in federal YouGov poll

A national YouGov poll, conducted April 19–23 from a sample of 1,514 people, gave Labor a 52–48% lead over the Coalition, a one-point gain since March. Primary votes were 36% Coalition (down two points), 33% Labor (up one), 13% Greens (steady), 8% One Nation (up one) and 10% for all others (steady).

Respondents were given two statements regarding Australian military commitments:

Australians have died for Australia, and we should also be prepared to fight for our country’s values if called upon.

We should be sceptical of politicians who want to commit troops to wars not necessary to the direct defence of Australia.

Overall, voters favoured the prepared to fight statement by 46–42%. However, younger age groups were far more inclined to be sceptical than older people. Those aged 25–34 favoured the sceptical statement by 50–34%, while those 65 and older favoured the prepared to fight statement by 60–34%.

On Monday, I covered drops for Labor in the Resolve, Freshwater and Morgan polls. Polls released since then have been better for Labor – the party improved in YouGov and regained the lead in Morgan.

In economic data, the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the March quarter inflation report on Wednesday. While the 12-month inflation rate slowed from 4.1% in December to 3.6% in March, the quarterly inflation was 1.0% in March, up from 0.6% in December. Persistent inflation probably explains Labor’s mediocre poll ratings.

Essential poll: Coalition regains lead as One Nation surges

A national Essential poll, conducted April 17–21 from a sample of 1,145 people, gave the Coalition a 49–47% lead over Labor (including undecided voters) – a reversal of Labor’s 48–46% lead in early April.

Primary votes were 35% Coalition (up one point), 31% Labor (up two), 11% Greens (down three), 9% One Nation (up three), 1% UAP (down one), 9% for all others (up one) and 4% undecided (down two). Analyst Kevin Bonham said this is the highest One Nation
primary vote from any pollster this term.

Albanese’s net approval was steady since February at -5, with 48% disapproving of his performance and 43% approving. Dutton’s net approval jumped seven points to +3, with Bonham saying this is Dutton’s first positive net approval from any pollster this term. However, Newspoll gave Dutton a net approval of -15.

On Israel’s military action in Gaza, 32% said Israel should permanently withdraw (down five points since March), 19% favoured a temporary ceasefire (down one), and 19% said Israel’s action was justified (up one). By 29–24%, voters supported recognising Palestine as an independent state.

By a 49–26% margin, voters thought the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy would have a positive impact on Australia as a whole, but were less positive about the personal impact (36–23% positive). And by a 52–31% margin, voters supported Australia developing nuclear energy (compared to 50–33% in October).

Asked which type of energy was most expensive, 40% said renewables (up two points since October), 36% nuclear (up two) and 24% fossil fuels (down four).

By 50–38%, voters thought it unlikely Australia would reach net-zero emissions by 2050 (compared to 57–31% in October).

Morgan poll: Labor regains lead

A national Morgan poll, conducted April 15–21 from a sample of 1,617 people, gave Labor a 52–48% lead over the Coalition, a reversal of a 51–49% Coalition lead from the previous week.

Primary votes were 35.5% Coalition (down three points), 30.5% Labor (up 0.5), 16% Greens (up 2.5), 5.5% One Nation (steady), 7.5% independents (steady) and 5% others (steady).

Additional questions from Newspoll and Resolve

I previously covered the last Newspoll and Resolve poll for Nine newspapers. Recently, Albanese announced a plan to have taxpayer money used for loans and subsidies for projects to help Australia transition to clean energy. Voters backed this plan in Newspoll by 56–38%.

When asked about the Israel-Gaza conflict in the Resolve poll, 46% of voters agreed it had made Australia less safe, compared to 40% in March. By a 61–12% margin, voters thought there had been a rise in racism and religious intolerance in Australia as a result of the conflict (compared to 57–15% in March).

On who Australia should support, 57% (up 12 points since November) said we should take no action, 17% support Israel (down 14) and 9% support Gaza (up two).

Adrian Beaumont 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. Labor facing heavy defeat in Queensland, but faring better in federal polls – https://theconversation.com/labor-facing-heavy-defeat-in-queensland-but-faring-better-in-federal-polls-228395

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Naeni, PhD candidate at Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University

There’s been much talk in recent months about what a possible second Donald Trump presidency in the United States could mean for Europe, Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Israel-Palestinian conflict and China. But there’s one more country closely watching the race: Iran.

Another Trump presidency could pose immense risks for the Iranian leadership, especially given the recent tit-for-tat strikes with Israel, the looming threat of a wider Middle East war, and other significant internal challenges.

Under such conditions, there are three ways a new Trump administration might pose a threat to the clerical establishment: a potential economic shock, bolder military action against the regime and increased protest movements.

Read more:
Should world leaders worry about another Trump presidency?

Renewed economic pressure

In 2018, Trump withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama, and imposed crippling sanctions on the country as part of his “maximum pressure” campaign on the Iranian government.

Iran’s then-vice president, Eshagh Jahangiri, described the subsequent year as the “toughest” since the Islamic Republic’s inception. Trump’s campaign reduced Iran’s oil exports to a historic low of under 400,000 barrels per day, significantly slashing the country’s petrodollars, which represent about 70% of government revenues. Moreover, between 2018 and 2020, Iran’s national currency depreciated by more than 600%.

After Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, Iran has managed to increase its oil exports. It was recently reported that Iran’s oil exports have reached a six-year high of around 1.56 million barrels per day in the first three month of 2024. Republicans in the US blame the Biden administration for not enforcing sanctions against Iran, while the White House insists they are.

With Iran’s economy still weakened, Trump’s potential return could bring a new wave of pressure. Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture has noted, for instance, that a Trump return will cause Iran’s oil exports to “suffer again”.

The head of Iran’s Parliament Research Centre has also highlighted the country’s current budget deficit of US$3.7 billion, warning a Trump return would necessitate being ready for “increased sanctions pressure and an economic shock”.

Another economics expert, Morteza Afghe, struck a more dire note when he warned of a potential “collapse of Iran’s economy”. Due to Iran’s more strident anti-Western policies under President Ebrahim Raisi and the dominance of radical factions in parliament, Afghe believes Trump would be even more determined to escalate his “maximum pressure” campaign on the country.

There are concrete signs of this nervousness already – Trump’s sweep of the Republican nominating contests earlier this year coincided with a 20% fall in the value of the Iranian rial.

Read more:
Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel was a strategic miscalculation. Can all-out war now be averted?

Security implications

On the security front, Trump’s possible return is reminding the Iranian leadership of a significant loss under his presidency: the 2020 killing of General Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, in a US airstrike.

When he was killed, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, described Soleimani as the architect behind the Iran-backed militia networks in the Middle East, known as the “axis of resistance”. Khamenei also said he “bows to Soleimani” for his achievements with the Quds Force. This illustrates the profound impact the US strike had on Iran’s security interests.

A recent Israeli airstrike on the Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria’s capital this month also killed seven members of the Quds force, including two generals. This led to Iran’s unprecedented retaliatory attack against Israel, which Trump responded to by reposting a threatening tweet from 2018.

He also said at a rally:

[Israel is] under attack right now. That’s because we show great weakness. […] It would not have happened if we were in office.

Given this rhetoric and the heightened tensions with Israel, a potential Trump return could make the Iranian leadership feel even more vulnerable. It could, for instance, lead to increased US or Israeli military action against Iranian proxy militias in Iraq and Syria, or potentially bolder strikes against Iran itself.

Even before the recent Israel-Iran tensions, Mehdi Mohammadi, an advisor to Iran’s parliament speaker on strategic affairs, said Iran’s national security could face “very difficult” years under another Trump presidency, reintroducing the prospect of “maximum threats” against Tehran.

Increasing unrest at home

Elections were held earlier this year for Iran’s parliament and the Assembly of Experts, the body that appoints the supreme leader. The official voter turnout was reported at just 41%. In the capital of Tehran, turnout was only 24%, the lowest in the history of the Islamic Republic.

This marks the third time in four years — including two parliamentary elections and one presidential election — in which voter turnout was below 50%. Prior to 2020, voter turnout typically exceeded 60% or even 70%.

Given these declining rates of voter participation and three major, nationwide protest movements since 2017, Iran’s leadership is in the midst of the most serious legitimacy crisis in the Islamic Republic’s history.

This has coincided with the 2021 election of the hardliner Raisi as president and this year’s election, in which radical factions strengthened their position by winning many seats in the new parliament. These lawmakers want Iran to more forcefully challenge the US and its allies and implement even harsher restrictions on domestic life, including stronger internet censorship and enforcement of Sharia law.

Within the country, media outlets have suggested the rise of unpopular, ultraconservative political figures could further deepen public dissatisfaction with the regime. In such conditions, possible economic repercussions from a second Trump presidency could fuel a new wave of nationwide protests in the country.

And if Trump is elected, Iran’s supreme leader would be about 86 years old when he took office. A transfer of power in Iran during a Trump presidency could bring even more uncertainty at a very critical time in Iranian politics.

Amin Naeni 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. Why the potential for another Donald Trump presidency is making Iran very nervous – https://theconversation.com/why-the-potential-for-another-donald-trump-presidency-is-making-iran-very-nervous-225571

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Salles, Associate professor, University of Sydney

Seventy thousand years ago, the sea level was much lower than today. Australia, along with New Guinea and Tasmania, formed a connected landmass known as Sahul. Around this time – approximately 65,000 years ago – the first humans arrived in Sahul, a place previously devoid of any hominin species.

Due to the patchy nature of the archaeological record, researchers still don’t have a full picture of the routes and speed of human migration across the region.

In research published in Nature Communications, our team has reconstructed the evolution of the landscape during this time. This allowed us to better understand the migration strategies of the first peoples in what is now Australia, along with the places they lived.

Read more:
Fifty years ago, at Lake Mungo, the true scale of Aboriginal Australians’ epic story was revealed

Walking over a changing landscape

When trying to understand the dispersion of first humans in Sahul, one overlooked aspect has been the impact of the changing landscape itself.

Our planet’s surface is constantly shifted by various physical, climatic and biological processes, changing on a grand scale over geological time – a process known as landscape evolution.

We used a landscape evolution model that details climatic evolution from 75,000 to 35,000 years ago.

The model allows for a more realistic description of the terrains and environments inhabited by the first hunter-gatherer communities as they traversed Sahul.

Read more:
Scientists just revealed the most detailed geological model of Earth’s past 100 million years

On top of the evolving landscape, we then ran thousands of simulations, each describing a possible migration route.

We considered two entry points into Sahul: a northern route through West Papua (entry time: 73,000 years) and a southern one from the Timor Sea shelf (entry time: ~75,000 years).

From these simulations, we calculated the speeds of migration based on available archaeological sites. Estimated speeds range between 0.36 and 1.15 kilometres per year. This is similar to previous estimates, suggesting people spread across the continent quite rapidly.

For both scenarios, our simulations also predicted a high likelihood of human occupation at many of the iconic Australian archaeological sites.

Following rivers and coastlines

From the predicted migration routes, we produced a map of most likely visited regions, with probability of human presence as shown above.

We found that human settlers would have dispersed across the continental interior along rivers on both sides of Lake Carpentaria (the modern Gulf of Carpentaria). The first communities would have mainly been foraging along the way, following water streams. They also travelled along the receding coastlines as sea levels rose once more.

Based on our model, we didn’t identify well-defined migration routes. Instead, we saw a “radiating wave” of migrations.

However, our model did indicate a high likelihood of human presence near several already-proposed most likely pathways of Indigenous movement (called super-highways), including those to the east of Lake Carpentaria, along the southern corridors south of Lake Eyre, and traversing the Australian interior.

Read more:
We mapped the ‘super-highways’ the First Australians used to cross the ancient land

We could predict archaeological sites

There’s one particularly interesting outcome from our map that shows the probability of human presence in Sahul. In a cost-effective way (without needing to travel across the entire continent), it could potentially pinpoint areas of archaeological significance.

Our approach can’t tell us how well a given location might be preserved for archaeological finds. However, our simulations do give an indication of how much specific sites may have eroded or received extra sediment.

We could use this to estimate if artefacts at a potential archaeological site have moved or been buried over time.

Our study is the first to show the impact of landscape changes on the initial migration on Sahul, providing a new perspective on its archaeology. If we used such an approach in other regions as well, we could improve our understanding of humanity’s extraordinary journey out of Africa.

Tristan Salles receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Ian Moffat receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Flinders University and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation.

Laurent Husson receives funding from CNRS, Université Grenoble-Alpes, Agence Nationale de la Recherche.

Manon Lorcery receives funding from Université Grenoble-Alpes (UGA).

Renaud Joannes-Boyau receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Leakey Foundation and Google Arts & Culture.

– ref. We reconstructed landscapes that greeted the first humans in Australia around 65,000 years ago – https://theconversation.com/we-reconstructed-landscapes-that-greeted-the-first-humans-in-australia-around-65-000-years-ago-228274

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Castagna, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Western Sydney University

I live on the edge of Parramatta, Australia’s fastest-growing city, on the kind of old-fashioned suburban street that has 1950s fibros constructed in the post-war housing boom, double-storey brick homes with Greek columns that aspirational migrants built in the 1970s and half-crumbling, Federation-era mansions once occupied by people whose names still appear in history textbooks.

Parramatta’s population is predicted to almost double in the next 20 years. My street, like so many others, has recently been rezoned for high-density living. Many of these houses are being sold to developers.

It’s a local story but it’s also a national one: suburbs near our cities are disappearing everywhere along with the crucial histories of Australian life they represent.

Australia is still a suburban nation: 70% of us live in the suburbs and this figure is increasing with the rapid growth of “McMansion” areas in the far outskirts of our cities.

Suburbia looms large in our imagining of ourselves, so what happens when we lose those suburban streets whose houses are too young to be heritage-listed but still old enough to tell an important story of our social and economic history? As urban researcher Larry Bourne argued, we have yet to really write the history of suburban life because we haven’t paid enough attention to recording the private everyday experiences of people and their homes there.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the past several months, walking the street with suburban photographer Garry Trinh and talking to my neighbours about their relationships with their homes before they are lost.

Read more:
Reimagining Parramatta: a place to discover Australia’s many stories

‘A different attitude to life’

A few houses down from me, Craig lives in a cottage that he believes “shows a different attitude towards life”. He spends his weekends restoring parts of his home.

It takes a lot of time to maintain. People took longer to do things. They had a different sense of time – they did things one time so they didn’t have to do it again.

He enjoys the idea that living in a house like this “you grow old together”. He shows me the places where the tiles on the floor don’t fit perfectly. The “walls and roofs are never even”, but that’s part of the place’s charm – you can see where others have added a living room or tried to fix a leak.

These homes have layers of history that don’t exist anywhere else.

To Craig, these houses represent why other generations felt more of the kind of safety and security that allowed them to build a greater sense of community.

You used to buy one house and you never changed it, one car […] people stayed in the same place […] people feel so restless now because we are no longer safe. Everything changes. Our houses are rezoned. There’s no certainty.

Read more:
A city that forgets about human connections has lost its way

‘Edible things in people’s yards’

Jenny’s parents bought the largest block on the end of the street because the previous owners refused to sell to developers. She recently moved back home to care for her mother.

It’s a sprawling Federation-era home called “Coo-Wong” and it feels like big history must have happened there, despite its absence from any local history archives. There are clues, though, about the kind of people who might have lived here before: Chinese coins found on the property, a shed full of bric-a-brac.

Mostly, the whole family lives in the kitchen or the light-filled corner at the back of the house where Jenny’s mother grows flowers. Her father’s family lost everything during the Cultural Revolution and he moved here to find a better life. He’s in the building industry and their home is filled with the spare parts from other houses, doors, drawers and other supplies that might go into extending or renovating their home one day.

Jenny remembers when they moved into the neighbourhood there was an older generation of people who embraced them. There were fruit trees and “all of these edible things in people’s yards”. In their backyard, a giant satellite dish, which her parents bought to watch their shows from China, still looms big even if it isn’t needed anymore.

It’s these small details in Jenny’s home that tell the larger story of how various generations of migrants sewed themselves into the fabric of our suburbs.

Read more:
Chinese-Australians have a sense of dual ‘belonging’: Lowy poll

Different versions of one house

George, his wife, Jennifer, and their two adult children live in the house George’s father built in 1973 when the street was filled with vacant blocks. His family was the first to move here from their village in Lebanon, so their house became a kind of community hub – there were always people there.

George’s family passed the plans he used to build the house onto other Lebanese families that moved in. It means there are slightly different versions of this house in many other places on the street.

George’s dad and his uncles built many houses in this area together. Sometimes they didn’t quite get it right though: only one door in their house is hung straight – all the rest are hung backwards. The family has been trying to restore parts of the house for a long time, including the Art Deco railings and Victorian lights.

As an expert in post-war housing, Mirjana Lozanovska says this layering of architectural details found in these post-war suburban homes “expanded the image and aesthetic spectrum of what it is to be Australian”.

Read more:
City planners love infill development. So why are cities struggling with it, and how can they do better?

A long row of houses for sale

Carol lives in a long row of houses at the end of the street that are all for sale. She has, to put it lightly, a lot of stuff. Her odd collection of tents and furniture and well-loved succulents spill from her house to its immense lawns.

The quest for affordable housing has pushed Carol further and further west over time. When the landlord sells the house she’ll head further away, looking for some other suburban street where the houses are still intact and maybe there’ll still be lemon trees.

Felicity Castagna and Garry Trinh were able to undertake the research and photography for this article with support and funding provided by Parramatta Artists’ Studios’ Next Project.

– ref. What do we lose when our old suburbs disappear? – https://theconversation.com/what-do-we-lose-when-our-old-suburbs-disappear-222990

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Ryan, Teaching Fellow in Economics, University of Waikato

There is an ongoing global debate over whether the high inflation seen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic can be lowered without a recession.

New Zealand is not immune to this issue. Reserve Bank governor Adrian Orr has said a recession is needed to tame inflation – described as a “hard landing”. Others have disagreed, arguing New Zealand could and should aim for a soft landing (a reduction of inflation with no recession).

But are reductions in inflation inextricably linked to recessions?

New Zealand’s own economic history, it turns out, can give some guidance on this, and point to the risk factors within the country’s economic outlook.

Are we in recession yet?

There is no hard and fast definition of a recession. The term “technical recession” is widely used to refer to a period with two consecutive quarters of negative real growth in gross domestic product. By this measure, New Zealand entered a recession at the end of last year.

But many economists prefer the alternative definition from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the United States: a recession is “the period between a peak of economic activity and its subsequent trough, or lowest point”.

Technical recessions and recessions meeting the NBER criteria do not always coincide.

Read more:
Central banks say interest rates will stay high but it’s unclear if this will be enough to curb inflation

In 2014, two researchers used the Bry-Boschan algorithm, which is based on the NBER definition, to identify New Zealand’s recessions between 1947 and 2012.

The question is whether we can identify these recessions in real time rather than in hindsight. The so-called Sahm rule stipulates a recession is likely when the unemployment rate starts to increase after recent lows, which can help with timely analysis of the economic conditions.

The dashed line in the graph below shows a recession indicator based on unemployment, dating back to 1986 when quarterly unemployment data was first published. The indicator usually coincides (within one quarter) with the start of a recession based on the Bry-Boschan algorithm.

According to this indicator, we were not in recession in the fourth quarter of 2023. However, if the rise in online job applications and fall in job ads continues, this indicator might flash red soon.

The highs and lows of NZ inflation

Since 1961, New Zealand has experienced eight falls in inflation (disinflations) of four percentage points or more. (Disinflation refers to when inflation drops but remains positive, while “deflation” occurs when the inflation rate falls below zero).

This four percentage point drop is required for New Zealand’s inflation to reach the Reserve Bank’s target of 1-3%, down from the 7.3% recorded in the third quarter of 2022.

Each letter in the graph above identifies the inflation peak before historical disinflation episodes. The shaded area identifies recessions up to 2012.

Read more:
Degrowth isn’t the same as a recession – it’s an alternative to growing the economy forever

The graph shows four drops in inflation – B, E, F and C – seem to be associated with recessions, while drops A, D and G were not. Disinflation G does have a recession quite late in the piece, the Asian Financial Crisis, but approximately half the inflation fall had already occurred before the crisis took hold.

The message is a positive one: a fall in inflation does not necessarily have to be associated with a recession.

But are any of the historical disinflation episodes more instructive than others about what might happen in the current situation?

Disinflations D and G, which were associated with soft landings, followed increases in short-term interest rates (such as New Zealand has recently experienced). Disinflation D was also helped by a halving in oil prices between November 1985 and March 1986.

Disinflation H is a bit of an anomaly. The inflation peak in 2011 was an artificial high as it came on the back of an increase in the goods and services tax in 2010.

A common theme with hard landings

Turning to the hard landings in the sample, early 1974 saw a large increase in oil prices after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The resulting global recession, coupled with restrictive domestic fiscal policy to quell oil price-induced inflation, contributed to disinflation between the second quarter of 1976 and the fourth quarter of 1978 (marked B on the graph).

Disinflation F, between the second quarter of 1990 and the first quarter of 1992, again occurred against the backdrop of a slowdown in the world economy. This reflected, in part, the increase in oil prices in 1990 due the first Gulf War, and tight domestic monetary and fiscal policies.

Read more:
Interest rates: if central banks don’t start cutting them soon, it could actually increase inflation

Disinflations B and F share similarities with New Zealand’s current situation, including restrictive (monetary) policy and unrest in the Middle East. Oil prices are up more than 15% this year, although they are yet to reach their mid-2022 highs.

Disinflations C and E were also associated with recessions reflecting global events. During deflation C, events in Iran led to an oil price increase, which both directly and through policy actions sent the US into recession in the early 1980s.

Disinflation E coincided with the October 1987 sharemarket crash which set off instability in New Zealand’s newly-liberalised financial system.

So if New Zealand is not currently in a recession, what are the country’s chances of avoiding one while trying to reduce inflation?

History suggests it is possible. But favourable global conditions are needed and, in particular, favourable geopolitics. Recent events in the Middle East, coupled with the ongoing war in Ukraine, are not positive signs.

Michael Ryan 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. Does fighting inflation always lead to recession? What 60 years of NZ data can tell us – https://theconversation.com/does-fighting-inflation-always-lead-to-recession-what-60-years-of-nz-data-can-tell-us-227894

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland

There can be no more powerful symbol of the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea than the prime ministers of these neighbouring countries walking together on the gruelling Kokoda Track towards Isurava, high in PNG’s rugged Owen Stanley mountains.

The place where Anthony Albanese and James Marape chose to commemorate ANZAC Day was the scene of one of the toughest battles in the Pacific war, the Battle of Isurava. This is where raw Australian conscripts and militiamen fought back against an invading Japanese force in August 1942 until veteran reinforcements arrived. Their combined efforts inflicted heavy losses on the Japanese and, crucially, slowed their advance.

The Australians were supported throughout this and many other battles on the track by Papua New Guineans – the stretcher bearers who carried the wounded back to safety and the soldiers of the Papuan Infantry Battalion.

This moving collaboration has become the reference point for generations of leaders from both sides of the Torres Strait when speaking of the special relationship between the two countries. It has also inspired many Australian individuals and organisations to “give back” to PNG through financial donations and other support.

How history informs Australia’s view of PNG

The events of 1942 had a lasting impact on Australian strategic thinking about its neighbourhood.

During the war, Australia’s lifeline to the United States across the Pacific was under direct threat from Japan’s sweep across the region. The military objective of the Japanese forces on the Kokoda Track was the capital, Port Moresby, because of its utility as a base for ongoing attacks against Australian ships and cities. For a while, an invasion of Australia itself seemed to be imminent.

The protection of Australian lines of supply and communication across the Pacific remains a central consideration in contemporary strategic thinking.

Australia’s deep sensitivity to any suggestion a potentially hostile power may be seeking to establish a naval base in the region actually predates the second world war. However, the very real threat that materialised on the Kokoda Track entrenched this view.

PNG still looms large in Australian deliberations about regional security – given its size, this wartime history and its proximity to Australia and pivotal location where Asia meets the Pacific.

Of course, it is no longer Japan that Western strategists see as the principal strategic adversary and potential threat to stability in the Pacific. That mantle has been assumed by China, which in recent years has displayed an active interest in expanding its military links and presence in the region.

Japan has now become an important strategic ally for Australia and the United States in working to counter China’s growing influence in the Pacific, including PNG. It has made important contributions to the region’s development through aid and other economic support.

Papua New Guineans naturally have their own understanding of history, as well as today’s security environment. As Marape said last week in response to a gaffe by US President Joe Biden about his uncle having possibly been eaten by cannibals after being shot down during the second world war,

World War II was not the doing of my people. However, they were needlessly dragged into a conflict that was not their doing.

Read more:
Australia has long viewed the Pacific as a place of threats that must be contained. It’s time for this mindset to change

China’s ambitions in the region

As in other parts of the Pacific, there is no enthusiasm at all in PNG about the re-emergence of geo-strategic competition in the region. PNG leaders have joined their Pacific counterparts in emphasising climate change as the key regional security challenge and criticising their international partners for stoking tensions with China.

At the same time, there is an underlying lack of enthusiasm in PNG about expanding the country’s ties with China to include defence or policing ties.

The Marape government came under real pressure from Beijing to sign agreements covering police training and other security co-operation in the lead-up to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to Port Moresby last week. Ultimately, it did not do so.

Marape and his ministers have made it clear they look to Australia – not China – as their country’s key security partner.

China may have ambitions to establish a security partnership with PNG similar to the one it has signed with Solomon Islands, but it clearly has no interest in matching Australia as a development partner for the country.

Its aid spending in PNG – as in the rest of the Pacific – is very minor in comparison to Australia and may be in decline. Beijing has shown in Solomon Islands, at least, that it prefers to focus its money on nurturing relationships with members of the ruling elite.

However, China has made significant inroads as a commercial partner for PNG. Its construction firms now dominate the work taking place across the country to develop roads, bridges, public buildings and other infrastructure.

But China cannot match the breadth of the PNG relationship with Australia. This relationship encompasses social, cultural and sporting ties, as well as longstanding investment, aid and defence co-operation links.

Read more:
What do people in the Pacific really think of China? It’s more nuanced than you may imagine

‘History holds all the details’

Kokoda may have become a kind of public talisman for the Australia-PNG relationship, but there is much more to the two countries’ shared history than the wartime experience, as Marape made clear in his speech to the Australian parliament in February.

To make this point, he highlighted the presence in the parliamentary gallery of elderly former Australian patrol officers and their families who had dedicated their lives to the early development and administration of his country. He spoke with gratitude about the period during which Australia administered PNG – and with pride about the years since independence.

History holds all the details, for the greatest and most profound impact of the Australian administration is the democracy you left with us.

It was clear from this speech he believes Australians underestimate the depth of their own historical ties with PNG. Australians should take some comfort, in these uncertain strategic times, from the ballast these shared experiences provide for the relationship today.

Ian Kemish is a former Australian High Commissioner to PNG and is the voluntary chair of the Kokoda Track Foundation, which receives some funding from the Australian Government. In addition to his UQ role, he is affiliated with the Griffith Asia Institute and the ANU National Security College.

– ref. China’s money only goes so far – Kokoda shows why history binds PNG and Australia in a far deeper way – https://theconversation.com/chinas-money-only-goes-so-far-kokoda-shows-why-history-binds-png-and-australia-in-a-far-deeper-way-228501

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Waling, ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow in Sex & Sexuality, La Trobe University

Sexual consent has been a major focus in Australia for the past few years.

In early 2022 the federal government mandated consent education in schools. This includes information about what consent is, and how to ensure consensual relationships.

Across Australia, four states (Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania) and the Australian Capital Territory have now passed affirmative consent laws. While the precise wording of the laws differs between jurisdictions, affirmative consent can be defined as the need for “each individual person participating in a sexual act to take steps to say or do something to check that the other person(s) involved are consenting to a sexual activity”.

There have also been important campaigns, such as the Make No Doubt campaign in NSW, to educate about safe, pleasurable and consensual sex.

One challenge with sexual consent education is determining how it translates to real-life situations. As part of broader research seeking to answer this question, we wanted to understand how young heterosexual men and women understand and practice consent.

Our new study found that while participants mostly understood the concept of affirmative consent, they didn’t always put it into practice in the heat of the moment.

Read more:
Most states now have affirmative sexual consent laws, but not enough people know what they mean

Understanding sexual consent

Our research included a mixed group of 44 men and women aged 18 to 35, who were in relationships, dating or single. We spoke to them in focus groups and presented a variety of heterosexual sexual consent vignettes (scenarios) to discuss.

We wanted to understand how participants thought the characters should handle these situations, and how they would deal with these scenarios themselves. Scenarios were designed to be somewhat ambiguous, with no clear right answer.

An example of a vignette we used was Julia and Mark. They meet for drinks on their first date, and the chemistry is strong. They end up at Julia’s place, where she tells him she wants to take things slow and won’t be having sex that night. They start making out, and both begin to shed layers of clothing. Mark hesitates, unsure whether to continue, and Julia is uncertain how to signal her interest in other types of intimacy after setting a boundary.

Alongside the vignettes, we asked participants to share their understandings of consent, and their reflections on gender expectations around dating and sex, among other issues.

Participants demonstrated a clear understanding of consent practices in line with the affirmative consent framework. This included understanding that consent was the responsibility of all parties involved. Danny, a 23-year-old man, said:

It’s like equal responsibility in my eyes.

Participants also noted that straightforward, open communication alongside consistent verbal check-ins was important. As Abigail, a 26-year-old woman, said:

Both parties need to be actively engaging and checking boundaries as you go.

In theory versus reality

Despite appearing to understand the principles of affirmative consent, participants reacted differently when presented with varying scenarios. Instead of noting equal responsibility, most participants believed men in the scenarios were responsible for getting consent, and women providing it.

In discussing the scenarios participants highlighted the need to avoid assumptions and to encourage open communication. But this perspective shifted when discussing personal experiences and sexual consent. Here, participants expected partners to understand typical boundaries during sexual encounters, suggesting a shared sense of what’s “normal”.

In fact, participants felt following good sexual communication practices could dampen the enjoyment of sexual encounters. Some admitted that even though they knew the ideal approach, they didn’t always stick to it. As Alice, a 25-year-old woman, said:

Everything’s going well and we’re hitting it off, and then it moves into the bedroom and things just seem to flow, and I feel comfortable not having to necessarily overtly have that conversation then and there.

Lenore, a 28-year-old woman, said:

Sometimes, like, a conversation can almost kill the vibe, like if that moment is […] really hot and passionate and you’re giving them all the signals and they’re giving you all the signals, and then he was like, ‘So I want to just check in with you for a second’, I would be like, ‘Dude, come on, like, let’s just do the thing.’

Jeremy, a 34-year-old man, said:

I’ve regularly asked someone are they having a good time, you know, ‘is this okay’, ‘is this okay’, and be told, ‘No, you’ve ruined the moment’, which I found quite perplexing as someone who believes strongly in making sure there’s always consent.

Participants also indicated affirmative consent was more important in some sexual situations over others. In discussing one of the vignettes, Lenore said:

It would really depend on what he [scenario character] tried, to be honest, like if he’s flipped me around and chucked me into a new position, like, yeah, go for it. If he’s slapped me across the face in the middle of sex without clearing that first, no. It would completely depend on what it was and the way that he goes about doing it.

Implications

Our study is relatively small and cannot be generalised to the broader Australian population. We also focused only on consent in heterosexual relationships.

Nonetheless, our research provides some insight into how young men and women may be navigating consent during sex. The results don’t imply education on sexual consent is ineffective. Rather, they highlight a significant gap between knowing and applying that knowledge.

Our findings also point to a broader and more complex issue: the need for a whole-of-society approach to rethink sexual communication and consent. One in five women have experienced sexual violence, suggesting deeper problems of masculine entitlement and societal attitudes toward women. Focusing on consent between sexual partners is one way of shifting attitudes.

Read more:
How to get consent for sex (and no, it doesn’t have to spoil the mood)

Sexual encounters often involve intricate layers of emotion and experience, influenced by culture, religion, and other factors, with elements like shame, pleasure, joy, uncertainty, fear and anxiety.

Understanding the complex variables that inform decision-making in these contexts is crucial for creating educational resources that help people navigate sexual consent in different situations.

Andrea Waling receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Commonwealth Department of Health, and the Medical Research Future Fund.

Alexandra James receives funding from the Commonwealth Department of Health and Lifestyles Australia.

Lily Moor 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. We spoke to young people about sexual consent. They understand the concept, but don’t always ask in the moment – https://theconversation.com/we-spoke-to-young-people-about-sexual-consent-they-understand-the-concept-but-dont-always-ask-in-the-moment-228293

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon Robinson, Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director of ARC Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong

Over the last 25 years, the ozone hole which forming over Antarctica each spring has started to shrink.

But over the last four years, even as the hole has shrunk it has persisted for an unusually long time. Our new research found that instead of closing up during November it has stayed open well into December. This is early summer – the crucial period of new plant growth in coastal Antarctica and the peak breeding season for penguins and seals.

That’s a worry. When the ozone hole forms, more ultraviolet rays get through the atmosphere. And while penguins and seals have protective covering, their young may be more vulnerable.

Why does ozone matter?

Over the past half century, we damaged the earth’s protective ozone layer by using chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and related chemicals. Thanks to coordinated global action these chemicals are now banned.

Because CFCs have long lifetimes, it will be decades before they are completely removed from the atmosphere. As a result, we still see the ozone hole forming each year.

The lion’s share of ozone damage happens over Antarctica. When the hole forms, the UV index doubles, reaching extreme levels. We might expect to see UV days over 14 in summers in Australia or California, but not in polar regions.

Luckily, on land most species are dormant and protected under snow when the ozone hole opens in early spring (September to November). Marine life is protected by sea ice cover and Antarctica’s moss forests are under snow. These protective icy covers have helped to protect most life in Antarctica from ozone depletion – until now.

Read more:
Photos from the field: spying on Antarctic moss using drones, MossCam, smart sensors and AI

Unusually long-lived ozone holes

A series of unusual events between 2020 and 2023 saw the ozone hole persist into December. The record-breaking 2019–2020 Australian bushfires, the huge underwater volcanic eruption off Tonga, and three consecutive years of La Niña. Volcanoes and bushfires can inject ash and smoke into the stratosphere. Chemical reactions occurring on the surface of these tiny particulates can destroy ozone.

Read more:
La Niña is finishing an extremely unusual three-year cycle – here’s how it affected weather around the world

These longer-lasting ozone holes coincided with significant loss of sea ice, which meant many animals and plants would have had fewer places to hide.

What does stronger UV radiation do to ecosystems?

If ozone holes last longer, summer-breeding animals around Antarctica’s vast coastline will be exposed to high levels of reflected UV radiation. More UV can get through, and ice and snow is highly reflective, bouncing these rays around.

In humans, high UV exposure increases our risk of skin cancer and cataracts. But we don’t have fur or feathers. While penguins and seals have skin protection, their eyes aren’t protected.

Is it doing damage? We don’t know for sure. Very few studies report on what UV radiation does to animals in Antarctica. Most are done in zoos, where researchers study what happens when animals are kept under artificial light.

Even so, it is a concern. More UV radiation in early summer could be particularly damaging to young animals, such as penguin chicks and seal pups who hatch or are born in late spring.

As plants such as Antarctic hairgrass, Deschampsia antarctica, the cushion plant, Colobanthus quitensis and lots of mosses emerge from under snow in late spring, they will be exposed to maximum UV levels.

Antarctic mosses actually produce their own sunscreen to protect themselves from UV radiation, but this comes at the cost of reduced growth.

Trillions of tiny phytoplankton live under the sea ice. These microscopic floating algae also make sunscreen compounds, called microsporine amino acids.

What about marine creatures? Krill will dive deeper into the water column if the UV radiation is too high, while fish eggs usually have melanin, the same protective compound as humans, though not all fish life stages are as well protected.

Four of the past five years have seen sea ice extent reduce, a direct consequence of climate change.

Less sea ice means more UV light can penetrate the ocean, where it makes it harder for Antarctic phytoplankton and krill to survive. Much relies on these tiny creatures, who form the base of the food web. If they find it harder to survive, hunger will ripple up the food chain. Antarctica’s waters are also getting warmer and more acidic due to climate change.

An uncertain outlook for Antarctica

We should, by rights, be celebrating the success of banning CFCS – a rare example of fixing an environmental problem. But that might be premature. Climate change may be delaying the recovery of our ozone layer by, for example, making bushfires more common and more severe.

Ozone could also suffer from geoengineering proposals such as spraying sulphates into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, as well as more frequent rocket launches.

If the recent trend continues, and the ozone hole lingers into the summer, we can expect to see more damage done to plants and animals – compounded by other threats.

We don’t know if the longer-lasting ozone hole will continue. But we do know climate change is causing the atmosphere to behave in unprecedented ways. To keep ozone recovery on track, we need to take immediate action to reduce the carbon we emit into the atmosphere.

Read more:
Antarctica’s sea ice hit another low this year – understanding how ocean warming is driving the loss is key

Sharon Robinson receives funding from the Australian Research Council and is a Deputy Director within the Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future program. She is Dean Researcher Development at the University of Wollongong and is a member of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Environmental Effects Assessment Panel (EEAP) which assesses how ozone depletion impacts life on Earth.

Laura Revell receives New Zealand government funding from the Royal Society Te Apārangi (Marsden fund and Rutherford Discovery Fellowships), Deep South National Science Challenge and Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment. She is a member of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Environmental Effects Assessment Panel (EEAP) which assesses how ozone depletion impacts life on Earth.

Rachele Ossola receives funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation. She is a member of the UN Environmental Program (UNEP) Environmental Effects Assessment Panel (EEAP), which assesses how ozone depletion affects life on Earth.

– ref. Longer-lasting ozone holes over Antarctica expose seal pups and penguin chicks to much more UV – https://theconversation.com/longer-lasting-ozone-holes-over-antarctica-expose-seal-pups-and-penguin-chicks-to-much-more-uv-227218

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Viktoria Kahui, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Economics, University of Otago

Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing.

One emerging concept focuses on giving legal rights to nature.

Many Indigenous peoples have long emphasised the intrinsic value of nature. In 1972, the late University of Southern California law professor Christopher Stone proposed what then seemed like a whimsical idea: to vest legal rights in natural objects to allow a shift from an anthropocentric to an intrinsic worldview.

Ecuador was the first country to enshrine rights of nature in its 2008 constitution. Since then, a growing number of countries have followed in awarding rights of nature.

This includes Aotearoa New Zealand, where legal personhood was granted to the Whanganui River, the former national park Te Urewera and soon the Taranaki maunga.

At its core, the rights-of-nature movement allows persons to take legal action on behalf of natural ecosystems, as opposed to on behalf of people affected by environmental degradation.

Ecosystems can become separate entities with their own agency, in the same way other non-human entities such as charitable trusts and organisations can exist as separate entities in law.

Read more:
What if whales took us to court? A move to grant them legal personhood would include the right to sue

But can the movement help stem the loss of biodiversity? There is no easy answer. Our new research shows that many rights-of-nature examples have emerged because current systems were not enough to protect nature from continued economic pressure from development.

We find one of the key features of well designed rights-of-nature frameworks lies in defining who is ultimately liable, and what for.

Global case studies

The design of rights-of-nature frameworks varies widely in geography, legal status, guardianship and who holds liability.

We investigated 14 global rights-of-nature examples and categorised them by types of guardianship. For example, in 2008, Ecuador enshrined rights of nature in its constitution because of decades of pressure from large mining companies.

This represents a type of public guardianship where every citizen has the right to take legal action on behalf of nature.

In New Zealand on the other hand, the former national park Te Urewera was granted legal personhood with Tūhoe trustees as appointed guardians.

A legal person is defined as an entity which has the capacity to enter into contracts, incur debts, sue and be sued in its own right, and to be accountable for illegal activities. We define rights-of-nature cases with appointed guardians as “environmental legal personhoods”.

Read more:
Rights for nature: How granting a river ‘personhood’ could help protect it

We then compared these cases to explore why they emerged and how they are designed. Who advocated on behalf of the environment? What was the exploiting activity putting pressure on the ecosystem? What is the liability status of the guardians?

We found that, overwhelmingly, Indigenous people and local communities acted as advocates. For example, the Whanganui River in New Zealand was granted legal personhood in 2017 as a result of hundreds of years of resistance by Indigenous Māori to aggressive colonisation.

Since 1848, the Crown has introduced a steamer service, cleared forest from river banks, extracted sand and gravel, and diverted water into a power scheme. This led to ongoing conflict with Whanganui iwi who raised concerns about the river’s health and the desire to preserve the resource for future generations.

Response to sustained economic pressure

On the other side of the world, the Mar Menor lagoon in Spain was declared a legal person in 2022 due to strong local community advocacy against pollution from agriculture, mining and sewage.

The evidence from our research points to a fundamental divide between local communities and external economic interests. The rights-of-nature movement has come as a response to sustained pressure from economic (urban, agricultural and industrial) activity. The features of design, however, vary significantly.

For example, the Victorian state government in Australia established the Victorian Environmental Water Holder, an independent statutory body under the state’s Water Act 1989, as a legal person. It manages water entitlements to improve the health of rivers and wetlands. The entity acts indirectly on behalf of the ecosystems, which is not precisely the same as creating legal rights for rivers themselves.

The Whanganui River, on the other hand, was itself declared a legal person. Its appointed guardians have the legal status of a charitable entity. This group includes representatives of Whanganui iwi and the government, supported by members of councils, locals, and recreational and commercial users.

Liability matters

The recent overturning of two rights-of-nature decisions in particular puts the spot light on the importance of liability.

In the US, farming operations challenged the Lake Erie Bill of Rights in 2020, which granted Lake Erie the right to “exist, flourish and naturally evolve”. Farmers argued the bill was too vague and would expose them to liability from fertiliser runoff.

In India, the Ganges and Yamuna rivers were granted living-person status, where injury to rivers was to be treated equally to injury to human beings. The decision was challenged on the grounds of uncertainty about who the custodians are and who would be liable to pay damage to the families of those who drowned in the rivers.

Both these were legally overturned, meaning these natural entities no longer have rights of nature. This suggests attention to legally defining who is liability for what may be an important building block for the movement to protect biodiversity in the future.

Our recommendation is that future rights-of-nature frameworks need to have well-defined legal rights and include appointed guardians, established as separate legal entities with limited liability, as well as the support of representatives from interest groups.

This research was carried out in collaboration with my colleagues Claire Armstrong and Margrethe Aanesen in Norway.

Viktoria Kahui 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. Granting legal ‘personhood’ to nature is a growing movement – can it stem biodiversity loss? – https://theconversation.com/granting-legal-personhood-to-nature-is-a-growing-movement-can-it-stem-biodiversity-loss-227336

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Colin Bednall, Associate Professor in Management, Swinburne University of Technology

Finding the best person to fill a position can be tough, from drafting a job ad to producing a shortlist of top interview candidates.

Employers typically consider information from several sources, including the applicant’s work history, social media presence, responses to interview questions and sometimes, psychometric testing results.

It’s also common for hiring managers to check an applicant’s references by chatting to the candidate’s nominated referees or reading over their letters of recommendations.

Reference checks tend to be the final hurdle; a sort of background check for the candidate’s job history and credentials.

Nearly every employer does reference checks, but research suggests there are important limitations worth keeping in mind.

Inconsistency can be a problem

A reliable selection method produces a consistent measure of candidate suitability. In other words, reliability enables an apples-to-apples comparison of each candidate.

But early research into reference checks found referees tend to give substantially different ratings to the same candidates.

This inconsistency is problematic because it is unclear if a favourable report reflects genuine suitability or the candidate was fortunate enough to nominate a lenient referee.

Part of the problem is employers often do not take a structured approach to obtaining information from referees.

For instance, if asked overly general or vague questions about the candidate, each referee may focus on different aspects of past job performance or omit negative information.

Research suggests using a standardised set of questions can produce more reliable outcomes. This provides a stronger basis for making a meaningful comparison between candidates.

Unfortunately, even using a standardised assessment, referees still tend to disagree on their ratings.

This disagreement may still be worthwhile, as it can reveal important contextual differences in the candidate’s performance. For instance, one referee may have observed a candidate leading a team, while another may have only seen their project work.

However, employers still need to make sense of these different perspectives.

A reference is a poor indicator of future performance

A valid selection method is job-specific and provides useful information about how a candidate will actually perform in the role.

Reference checks are a relatively easy hurdle for candidates to overcome because referees are typically self-selected, and most job seekers can find at least one colleague who is willing to speak positively about them.

Read more:
Employers should use skill-based hiring to find hidden talent and address labour challenges

As well, a candidate’s performance in a previous position may not always be relevant for the job they are applying for.

For these reasons, reference checks show only a small correlation with employee performance in their new job.

But because of their limited ability to predict performance, employers should not rely solely on reference checks.

A mix of checks the best approach

A recent systematic review of employee selection methods suggests structured interviews, work samples, and pre-employment assessments can provide useful insights into how employees will perform.

Pre-hiring assessments can reveal information about a person’s job knowledge, cognitive ability, integrity, personality, and emotional intelligence where appropriate. They are especially useful for screening numerous applicants, such as for graduate recruitment programs.

Ultimately, the job selection process should be tailored to the role requirements. For instance, if a role requires strong writing skills, this could be assessed through work samples or pre-hiring assessments.

Some candidates could be disadvantaged

A fair selection method is one that is unbiased and avoids giving weight to irrelevant information. It does not disadvantage people because of characteristics such as gender identity, age, or cultural background.

From this perspective, reference checks have several potential problems.

One is that candidates may not have access to referees of similar credibility.

For instance, a person from a high socioeconomic background is more likely to have access to senior leaders or experienced professionals in relevant fields who are willing to provide positive reports.

Reference checks may perpetuate existing inequalities.

In most cases, referees will want to provide positive reports. If the referee is a close colleague of the job applicant, they may be concerned that negative reports will be traced back to them and affect their ongoing relationship.

And employers may be motivated to offer under-performers a glowing review to get rid of them.

Read more:
6 questions you should be ready to answer to smash that job interview

Most references are difficult to verify, so referees are unlikely to suffer damage to their reputation if they talk up an average candidate, especially if the referee is outside the employer’s professional network.

Research suggests letters of recommendation can actually disadvantage female candidates by planting doubts about their suitability.

For instance, letters about female candidates more frequently contain negativity (such as, “does not have much teaching experience”), faint praise (“needs minimal supervision”) and hedging (“has the potential to become a strong performer”).

These types of statements can lead employers to evaluate female candidates more harshly.

However, when a structured questionnaire is used, this bias does not emerge.

A flawed but worthwhile tool

While reference checks remain common, their limitations are clear. They can be unreliable, offer only moderate validity in predicting performance at best and raise fairness concerns.

However, reference checks shouldn’t be discarded. By implementing structured questioning and adopting other well-established employee selection methods, references can still be included as a final step in a robust hiring process.

Timothy Colin Bednall 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. Will checking character references really help you find the best candidate for a job? – https://theconversation.com/will-checking-character-references-really-help-you-find-the-best-candidate-for-a-job-227360

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julien Cooper, Honorary Lecturer, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University

The hyper-arid desert of Eastern Sudan, the Atbai Desert, seems like an unlikely place to find evidence of ancient cattle herders. But in this dry environment, my new research has found rock art over 4,000 years old that depicts cattle.

In 2018 and 2019, I led a team of archaeologists on the Atbai Survey Project. We discovered 16 new rock art sites east of the Sudanese city of Wadi Halfa, in one of the most desolate parts of the Sahara. This area receives almost no yearly rainfall.

Almost all of these rock art sites had one feature in common: the depiction of cattle, either as a lone cow or part of a larger herd.

On face value, this is a puzzling creature to find carved on desert rock walls. Cattle need plenty of water and acres of pasture, and would quickly perish today in such a sand-choked environment.

In modern Sudan, cattle only occur about 600 kilometres to the south, where the northernmost latitudes of the African monsoon create ephemeral summer grasslands suitable for cattle herding.

The theme of cattle in ancient rock art is one of most important pieces of evidence establishing a bygone age of the “green Sahara”.

The ‘green Sahara’

Archaeological and climatic fieldwork across the entire Sahara, from Morocco to Sudan and everywhere in between, has illustrated a comprehensive picture of a region that used to be much wetter.

Climate scientists, archaeologists and geologists call this the “African humid period”. It was a time of increased summer monsoon rainfall across the continent, which began about 15,000 years ago and ended roughly 5,000 years ago.

This “green Sahara” is a vital period in human history. In North Africa, this was when agriculture began and livestock were domesticated.

In this small “wet gap”, around 8,000–7,000 years ago, local nomads adopted cattle and other livestock such as sheep and goats from their neighbours to the north in Egypt and the Middle East.

Read more:
The Sahara Desert used to be a green savannah – new research explains why

A close human-animal connection

When the prehistoric artists painted cattle on their rock canvasses in what is now Sudan, the desert was a grassy savannah. It was brimming with pools, rivers, swamps and waterholes and typical African game such as elephants, rhinos and cheetah – very different to the deserts of today.

Cattle were not just a source of meat and milk. Close inspection of the rock art and in the archaeological record reveals these animals were modified by their owners. Horns were deformed, skin decorated and artificial folds fashioned on their neck, so-called “pendants”.

Cattle were even buried alongside humans in massive cemeteries, signalling an intimate link between person, animal and group identity.

The perils of climate change

At the end of the “humid period”, around 3000 BCE, things began to worsen rapidly. Lakes and rivers dried up and sands swallowed dead pastures. Scientists debate how rapidly conditions worsened, and this seems to have differed greatly across specific subregions.

Local human populations had a choice – leave the desert or adapt to their new dry norms. For those that left the Sahara for wetter parts, the best refuge was the Nile. It is no accident that this rough period also eventuated in the rise of urban agricultural civilisations in Egypt and Sudan.

Some of the deserts, such as the Atbai Desert around Wadi Halfa where the rock art was discovered, became almost depopulated. Not even the hardiest of livestock could survive in such regions. For those who remained, cattle were abandoned for hardier sheep and goats (the camel would not be domesticated in North Africa for another 2,000–3,000 years).

This abandonment would have major ramifications on all aspects of human life: diet and lack of milk, migratory patterns of herding families and, for nomads so connected to their cattle, their very identity and ideology.

New phases of history

Archaeologists, who spend so much time on the ancient artefacts of the past, often forget our ancestors had emotions. They lived, loved and suffered just like we do. Abandoning an animal that was very much a core part of their identity, and with whom they shared an emotional connection, cannot have been easy for their emotions and sense of place in the world.

For those communities that migrated and lived on the Nile, cattle continued to be a symbol of identity and importance. At the ancient capital of Sudan, Kerma, community leaders were buried in elaborate graves girded by cattle skulls. One burial even had 4,899 skulls.

Today in South Sudan and much of the Horn of Africa, similar practices regarding cattle and their cultural prominence endure to the present. Here, just as in ancient Sahara, cattle are decorated, branded and have an important place in funeral traditions, with cattle skulls marking graves and cattle consumed in feasts.

As we move into a new phase of human history subject to rapid climate oscillations and environmental degradation, we need to ponder just how we will adapt beyond questions of economy and subsistence.

One of the most basic common denominators of culture is our relationship to our shared landscape. Environmental change, whether we like it or not, will force us to create new identities, symbols and meanings.

Read more:
Innovations on the Nile over millennia offer lessons in engineering sustainable futures

Julien Cooper receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Macquarie University.

– ref. New rock art discoveries in Eastern Sudan tell a tale of ancient cattle, the ‘green Sahara’ and climate catastrophe – https://theconversation.com/new-rock-art-discoveries-in-eastern-sudan-tell-a-tale-of-ancient-cattle-the-green-sahara-and-climate-catastrophe-228281

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

In the free-for-all between the Australian government and Big Tech boss Elon Musk this week, the government had to be on a winner.

Most people would have little sympathy with Musk’s vociferous opposition to being told to take down from X (previously Twitter) the video of the stabbing of bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel at a Sydney Assyrian church.

Admittedly the matter isn’t clear cut, and the bishop himself has now said he wasn’t opposed to the video being on the platform, citing freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

But in this case public interest in removing (partially – it can still be found) the depiction of a violent alleged crime trumps arguments about censorship.

The alleged attack, over which a 16-year-old boy has been charged, fell within the definition of a terrorist act. The video’s suppression is justified to try to reduce the risk of further violence – the stabbing had been followed by a riot – including copycat attacks.

This point was reinforced when this week counter terrorism police raided Sydney houses and arrested minors with alleged connections to the boy. Five were later charged with terrorism-related offences. Police had been keeping watch on the youths but decided they “posed an unacceptable risk to the people of NSW, and our current purely investigative strategies could not adequately ensure public safety”.

The fight between Musk and the government is in court. But in the court of public opinion, Anthony Albanese’s rejection of the up-yours attitude of the man he labels an arrogant egotistical billionaire is likely to resonate with many Australians.

This isn’t just, or even mainly, because of the video incident. It’s that so many people are increasingly alarmed about the harm social media is doing. For all its pluses, its destructive aspects are becoming more and more threatening, and frustration at the (often ugly) muscle of the tech companies is growing.

Leave aside the way these platforms have debased political debate, with many users losing all inhibitions as they lash out, not to mention trolling and the like.

Go to the issue of domestic violence, which Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus described the other day as an “epidemic”. It has multiple roots, but there’s little doubt appalling material on parts of the internet is a contributor.

Some parents despair about how addiction to social media can capture their children as strongly as addiction to hard drugs. Young kids access degrading porn. Susceptible teens have their mental health destabilised. Parents are told to monitor their children’s use of social media, but that often proves impossible.

Tech companies see themselves as free markets for communications. But dysfunctional markets require regulation, or effective self-regulation.

Ways to do this may not be easy or obvious. But you get the impression Big Tech is on notice and the pressure will only become greater. Big Tech needs to win a social licence, something it often fails to comprehend.

Another battle the Albanese government has been waging is over the decision of Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) to stop paying for news content harvested from other sites.

The former government, under Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, struck a deal for platforms to pay for content they obtained from other media, the proceeds of which went back into journalism. With the deal expiring, Meta has walked away from the arrangement, and Facebook has just closed its news tab in Australia although it still has news in its feed. It says this is part of its general step back from news. The implied threat is to stop carrying news in Australia – a course Meta has followed in Canada.

The money involved is peanuts, while the implications for an Australian community where so many young people access their news through these platforms, rather than in the legacy media (TV, newspapers, radio), are significant.

On yet another front, this week the chief of ASIO Mike Burgess and the Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw appeared jointly at the National Press Club with a plea for more cooperation from the tech companies, especially in dealing with the challenges the expansions of end-to-end encryption poses for intelligence gathering and law enforcement.

Burgess said he wasn’t asking the government for more powers. “I am asking the tech companies to do more. I’m asking them to give effect to our existing powers and to uphold existing laws.

“Without their help in very limited and strictly controlled circumstances, encryption is unaccountable. In effect, unaccountable encryption is like building a safe room for terrorists and spies, a secure place where they can plot and plan.”

Kershaw said: “Some of our children and other vulnerable people are being bewitched online by a cauldron of extremist poison on the open and dark web.

“That’s one serious problem. The other is that the very nature of social media allows that extremist poison to spray across the globe almost instantaneously.

“We can look at it another way. Social media companies are refusing to snuff out the social combustion on their platforms. Instead of putting out the embers that start on their platforms, their indifference and defiance is pouring accelerant on the flames.”

Opposition communications spokesman David Coleman is urging a minimum age (say 16), with age verification, for access to social media. While this would see pushback from young people and difficulties in enforcement, Coleman points to legal obligations related to age in both the United Kingdom and Florida. He concedes no online regulation is perfect but argues it would be far better than the current situation.

Coleman says the eSafety Commissioner recommended a trial of “age assurance” technology, which could include social media in its scope. “The fact that kids are seeing this horrendous, violent material on social media is just completely unacceptable. We wouldn’t accept it if it was TV. We wouldn’t accept it if it was movies, we wouldn’t let ten-year-olds access this sort of material. And yet on social media, it happens every single day,” he said on radio this week.

The debate over social media has brought back into the frame the government’s proposed legislation to crack down on “misinformation” and “disinformation”. An exposure draft it earlier released has been on the backburner, with more consultations after a broad backlash on freedome-of-speech grounds.

The government hopes the fuelling of concern about social media by recent events will help muster support for whatever new version of this legislation it produces. But while there is overlap, the misinformation/disinformation debate should be treated separately. It involves core free speech issues, and the balance of risks is different from the harms caused by the worst aspects of social media. It is dangerous territory and should be approached very warily.

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: Social media companies can’t be immune from the need for a social licence – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-social-media-companies-cant-be-immune-from-the-need-for-a-social-licence-228619

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra

Australia’s inflation rate has fallen for the fifth successive quarter, and it’s now less than half of what it was back in late 2022.

The annual rate peaked at 7.8% in the December quarter of 2022 and is now just 3.6%, in the March quarter figures released on Wednesday, leaving it within spitting distance of the Reserve Bank’s 2–3% target.

But it’s too early for mortgage holders to celebrate.

On Wednesday Westpac noted the pace of improvement was slowing and pushed out its forecast of when the Reserve Bank would begin cutting rates from September this year to November.

The monthly measure of annual inflation also released on Wednesday rose marginally from 3.4% in February to 3.5% in March.

While some may see this as suggesting that the “last mile” of bringing inflation to heel might be difficult, not too much should be read into it.

The monthly series is
experimental and volatile. As the chart shows, it has twice given a false impression that inflation was rising again over the past year.

Australia is in good company. While inflation has fallen throughout the developed world since late 2022, in recent months the improvements have slowed.

In the US, inflation is edging up.

US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell says it might take “longer than expected” for them to be sure inflation has fallen low enough to begin cutting rates.

Other banks might cut rates first. The head of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde said she was “data-dependent, not Fed-dependent”.

In Australia, as in much of the rest of the world, inflation in the price of goods has come down faster than inflation in the price of services.

But the figures released on Wednesday show inflation in the price of services continuing to fall, although more slowly over the March quarter.

Rents climbed a further 2.1% in the quarter, to be up 7.8% over the year.

The measure reported is out-of-pocket rents, net of rental assistance. The Bureau of Statistics said had it not been for the increases in rent assistance announced in last year’s May budget, it would have recorded an increase in rents of 9.5%

In a report released with the consumer price index, the Bureau noted that renters’ experiences were not uniform and that many received rent reductions during COVID.

One in five city renters continued to pay less rent than before the pandemic.

Price falls for electricity (due to government rebates) and clothing in the March quarter helped lower annual inflation.

But sharp rises in the prices of insurance (a response to natural disasters) as well as education and pharmaceuticals made the task harder.

There might have also been a Taylor Swift effect. Prices for restaurant meals, urban transport, domestic accommodation and “other recreational and cultural services” rose more strongly in Sydney and Melbourne, where she played concerts in February, than in Brisbane and Perth where she did not.

What will it mean for student debt?

While interest is not charged on the debt accumulated by students as part of their student loans, the amount owed increases every June in line with the March quarter consumer price index.

The formula is complicated, although easy to calculate.

Today’s figures produce an increase of 4.7499517% – a figure slightly closer to 4.7% than 4.8%, meaning it rounds down to 4.7%.

However, one interpretation of the rules suggests it might be rounded up, to 4.8%.

Regardless, the increase due in June will be substantial, on top of an already outsized increase of 7.1% in June last year.

There’s a chance the increase won’t be either of these figures. The government promised an announcement about the scheme before the May budget.

The Reserve Bank will update its inflation and other economic forecasts on May 7, one week before the May budget. Treasurer Jim Chalmers will hand down the budget on Tuesday May 14.

John Hawkins was formerly a senior economic analyst and forecaster in the Reserve Bank and Australian Treasury.

– ref. Inflation is slowly falling while student debt is climbing: 6 graphs that explain the CPI – https://theconversation.com/inflation-is-slowly-falling-while-student-debt-is-climbing-6-graphs-that-explain-the-cpi-228368

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meighen McCrae, Associate Professor of Strategic & Defence Studies, Australian National University

While the AUKUS alliance is new, the Australian-American partnership is not. As Australians reflect on the sacrifices of their soldiers on ANZAC Day, it’s worth remembering the first time Australian and American troops joined forces in battle – in northern France, in the final year of the first world war.

Australia fought as part of the British Empire in the early 20th century. This meant that when Britain declared war in 1914 against the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman empire), Australia immediately went to war on the side of the Allies (the British, French, Russian and Japanese empires, with Italy and the United States joining later).

The US didn’t fully commit to the Allied cause until April 1917. Once it did, it focused on building up its industrial war machine and recruiting troops to be sent to Europe. By July 1918, there were around a million American soldiers in France, with more arriving every day.

As I describe in my book, Coalition Strategy and the End of the First World War, from the Allied perspective, the war still very much hung in the balance. They knew the Germans were a formidable enemy, as the launch of the German Spring Offensives in March 1918 had shown.

The Allies had some battle successes beginning in June 1918 that slowly built their confidence. One of the important engagements would become known as the Battle of Hamel in northern France. This was when the Australian overall commander, Lieutenant General John Monash, spearheaded the first Australian-American attack in history. Monash organised the offensive for July 4, American Independence Day.

A quick victory, with limited casualties

Ahead of the battle, American forces moved into Australian lines. As Australian Lieutenant Edgar Rule described:

Twelve were put in each platoon, and believe me they were some men. This was the first time that they had been in the line, and they were dead keen; and apart from that it bucked our lads up wonderfully. All the novelty of the war had long since vanished for our boys … everyone was smiling or laughing.

The Yanks were out for information and our boys were very willing teachers, and it speaks well for the future to see one set so eager to learn and the other so willing to teach.

Despite Monash’s best intentions, however, the American supreme commander, General John “Black Jack” Pershing, was not pleased. Americans supporting Australia in a defensive role was one thing. Attacking, however, would involve higher casualty rates and reduce the strength of the US forces at a time when Pershing wanted to have his own sector of the battlefield, rather than have his troops fed into other armies.

As a result, Pershing went so far as to withdraw six of his companies from the attack and then threatened to withdraw the remaining four. This treatment was not reserved for Monash. Many of the Allied commanders found Pershing difficult to work with – and Monash was no exception.

At 3:10am on July 4, 1918, Australian infantry, including four companies of the American 33rd Division, attacked the Germans in the town of Hamel. They moved forward under the protection of a “creeping barrage” (a slow-moving curtain of artillery fire that protects advancing troops and pins down enemy forces) and with the support of both aircraft and tanks.

Both the Australian Flying Corps and British Royal Air Force were used to prepare for and conduct the attack. This was the first major war in which armies used aircraft in large numbers. And the Battle of Hamel was the first time aircraft were used to parachute supplies to troops on the ground.

Within 93 minutes, the battle was over – and it was a success. The Australian-American forces had achieved their objective of gaining important ground – in this case, guarding the vital rail centre of Amiens – while limiting the loss of life. Casualties were comparatively low for the war, with around 800 killed.

An excerpt from the citation of an Australian Victoria Cross recipient, Private Henry Dalziel, illustrates how tough the battle was:

He twice went over open ground under heavy enemy artillery and machine-gun fire to secure ammunition, and though suffering from considerable loss of blood, he filled magazines and served his gun until severely wounded through the head.

His magnificent bravery and devotion to duty was an inspiring example to all his comrades, and his dash and unselfish courage at a most critical time undoubtedly saved many lives.

Dalziel survived the war and went on to be a songwriter.

Read more:
Poetry, parties and ‘strong Australian tea’. The surprising story of how Anzac Day has been marked in the US for over 100 years

A rapid end of the war

Apart from demonstrating extraordinary courage, the Battle of Hamel is a case study of meticulous planning, excellent staff work and coordination of infantry, artillery, tanks and aircraft.

Indeed, the battle helped vindicate ideas about short, sharp attacks from mutually supporting Allied armies (which the Allied generalissimo, Ferdinand Foch referred to as “punching and kicking” the German lines), as well as the combined use of infantry, creeping barrage, tanks and aircraft. It had taken several years of battle experience to reach this point.

These ideas culminated five weeks later with the unprecedented Allied success of the nearby Battle of Amiens, which saw all available Australian spearhead the attack. It was Australia’s biggest victory of the war to that point.

The Australians also fought in the Battle of Mont Saint-Quentin in late August before again joining forces with the Americans and other Allied forces to smash through the Hindenburg Line in September.

By this point, it finally looked as though the tide had turned. The Allies began to envision an end to the conflict in late 1918 rather than in 1919, as they were planning for, Indeed, in less than two months, the fighting was over and the Allies were victorious.

For Australia, the end of the war could not come soon enough. The Hindenburg Line was the last offensive for them, as hard fighting over the previous two years had savagely reduced their troop numbers.

However, this was just the beginning of a long military partnership between the US and Australia, forged in shared battle experience and a growing trust, which has now lasted for more than a hundred years.

Meighen McCrae 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. ‘It bucked our lads up wonderfully’: the lightning-quick battle that marked the birth of the US-Australia military alliance – https://theconversation.com/it-bucked-our-lads-up-wonderfully-the-lightning-quick-battle-that-marked-the-birth-of-the-us-australia-military-alliance-228382

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Magdalena M.E. Bunbury, Postdoctoral Researcher, James Cook University

How do we understand past societies? For centuries, our main sources of information have been pottery sherds, burial sites and ancient texts.

But the study of ancient DNA is changing what we know about the human past, and what we can know. In a new study, we analysed the genetics of hundreds of people who lived in the Carpathian Basin in southeastern central Europe more than 1,000 years ago, revealing detailed family trees, pictures of a complex society, and stories of change over centuries.

Who were the Avars?

The Avars were a nomadic people originating from eastern central Asia. From the 6th to the 9th century CE, they wielded power over much of eastern central Europe.

The Avars are renowned among archaeologists for their distinctive belt garnitures, but their broader legacy has been overshadowed by predecessors such as the Huns. Nevertheless, Avar burial sites provide invaluable insights into their customs and way of life. To date, archaeologists have excavated more than 100,000 Avar graves.

Now, through the lens of “archaeogenetics”, we can delve even deeper into the intricate web of relationships among individuals who lived more than a millennium ago.

Kinship patterns, social practices and population dynamics

Much of what we know about Avar society comes from descriptions written by their enemies, such as the Byzantines and the Franks, so this work represents a significant leap forward in our understanding.

We combined ancient DNA data with archaeological, anthropological and historical context. As a result, we have been able to reconstruct extensive pedigrees, shedding light on kinship patterns, social practices and population dynamics of this enigmatic period.

We sampled all available human remains from four fully excavated Avar-era cemeteries, including those at Rákóczifalva and Hajdúnánás in what is now Hungary. This resulted in a meticulous analysis of 424 individuals.

Around 300 of these individuals had close relatives buried in the same cemetery. This allowed us to reconstruct multiple extensive pedigrees spanning up to nine generations and 250 years.

Communities were organised around main fathers’ lines

Our research uncovered a sophisticated social framework. Our results suggest Avar society ran on a strict system of descent through the father’s line (patrilineal descent).

Following marriage, men typically remained within their paternal community, preserving the lineage continuity. In contrast, women played a crucial role in fostering social ties by marrying outside their family’s community. This practice, called female exogamy, underscores the pivotal contribution of women in maintaining social cohesion.

Additionally, our study identified instances where closely related male individuals, such as siblings or a father and son, had offspring with the same female partner. Such couplings are called “levirate unions”.

Read more:
In a Stone Age cemetery, DNA reveals a treasured ‘founding father’ and a legacy of prosperity for his sons

Despite these practices, we found no evidence of pairings between genetically related people. This suggests Avar societies meticulously preserved an ancestral memory.

These findings align with historical and anthropological evidence from societies of the Eurasian steppe.

Our study also revealed a transition in the main line of descent within Rákóczifalva, when one pedigree took over from another. This occurred together with archaeological and dietary shifts likely linked to political changes in the region.

The transition, though significant, cannot be detected from higher-level genetic studies. Our results show an apparent genetic continuity can mask the replacement of entire communities. This insight may have far-reaching implications for future archaeological and genetic research.

Future direction of research

Our study, carried out with researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany and at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, is part of a larger project called HistoGenes funded by the European Research Council.

This project shows we can use ancient DNA to examine entire communities, rather than just individuals. We think there is a lot more we can learn.

Now we aim to deepen our understanding of ancestral Avar society by expanding our research over a wider geographical area within the Avar realm. This broader scope will allow us to investigate the origins of the women who married into the communities we have studied. We hope it will also illuminate the connections between communities in greater detail.

Additionally, we plan to study evidence of pathogens and disease among the individuals in this research, to understand more about their health and lives.

Read more:
Ancient DNA reveals children with Down syndrome in past societies. What can their burials tell us about their lives?

Another avenue of research is improving the dating of Avar sites. We are currently analysing multiple radiocarbon dates from individual burials to reveal a more precise timeline of Avar society. This detailed chronology will help us pinpoint significant cultural changes and interactions with neighbouring societies.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions to this work of Zsófia Rácz, Tivadar Vida, Johannes Krause and Zuzana Hofmanová.

Magdalena M.E. Bunbury receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) (project number CE170100015). She currently carries out a cadetship at the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre, a non-profit organisation in Cairns. Previously, she received funding from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) (project number D0850554) and the Erasmus scheme of the European Union.

Guido Alberto Gnecchi-Ruscone receives funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 856453.

– ref. Ancient nomads you’ve probably never heard of disappeared from Europe 1,000 years ago. Now, DNA analysis reveals how they lived – https://theconversation.com/ancient-nomads-youve-probably-never-heard-of-disappeared-from-europe-1-000-years-ago-now-dna-analysis-reveals-how-they-lived-228602