Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Newton, Professor of Exercise Medicine, Edith Cowan University

Exercise training while wearing a weighted vest is undergoing somewhat of a renaissance. Social media posts and trainers are promoting them as a potential strategy for improving fitness and health.

Exercising with additional weight attached to the body is nothing new. This idea has been used with soldiers for many centuries if not millennia – think long hikes with a heavy pack.

The modern weighted vest comes in a range of designs that are more comfortable and can be adjusted in terms of the weight added. But could one be helpful for you?

What the research says

One of the earliest research studies, reported in 1993, followed 36 older people wearing weighted vests during a weekly exercise class and at home over a 20-week period. Wear was associated with improvements in bone health, pain and physical function.

Since then, dozens of papers have evaluated the exercise effects of wearing a weighted vest, reporting a range of benefits.

Not surprisingly, exercise with a weighted vest increases physiological stress – or how hard the body has to work – as shown by increased oxygen uptake, heart rate, carbohydrate utilisation and energy expenditure.

Adding weight equal to 10% of body weight is effective. But it doesn’t appear the body works significantly harder when wearing 5% extra weight compared to body weight alone.

Does more load mean greater injury risk?

A small 2021 study suggested additional weights don’t alter the biomechanics of walking or running. These are important considerations for lower-limb injury risk.

The safety considerations of exercising with weighted vests have also been reported in a biomechanical study of treadmill running with added weight of 1% to 10% of body weight.

While physiological demand (indicated by heart rate) was higher with additional weight and the muscular forces greater, running motion was not negatively affected.

To date no research studies have reported increased injuries due to wearing weighted vests for recreational exercise. However a 2018 clinical study on weight loss in people with obesity found back pain in 25% of those wearing such vests. Whether this can be translated to recreational use in people who don’t have obesity is difficult to say. As always, if pain or discomfort is experienced then you should reduce the weight or stop vest training.

Better for weight loss or bone health?

While wearing a weighted vest increases the energy expenditure of aerobic and resistance exercise, research to show it leads to greater fat loss or retaining muscle mass is somewhat inconclusive.

One older study investigated treadmill walking for 30 minutes, three times a week in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis. The researchers found greater fat loss and muscle gain in the participants who wore a weighted vest (at 4–8% body weight). But subsequent research in obese older adults could not show greater fat loss in participants who wore weighted vests for an average of 6.7 hours per day.

There has been considerable interest in the use of weighted vests to improve bone health in older people. One 2003 study reported significant improvements in bone density in a group of older women over 32 weeks of weighted vest walking and strength training compared to a sedentary control group.

But a 2012 study found no difference in bone metabolism between groups of postmenopausal women with osteoporosis walking on a treadmill with or without a weighted vest.

Making progress

As with any exercise, there is a risk of injury if it is not done correctly. But the risk of weighted vest training appears low and can be managed with appropriate exercise progression and technique.

If you are new to training, then the priority should be to simply start exercising and not complicate it with wearing a weighted vest. The use of body weight alone will be sufficient to get you on the path to considerable gains in fitness.

Once you have a good foundation of strength, aerobic fitness and resilience for muscles, joints and bones, using a weighted vest could provide greater loading intensity as well as variation.

It is important to start with a lighter weight (such as 5% bodyweight) and build to no more than 10% body weight for ground impact exercises such as running, jogging or walking.

For resistance training such as squats, push-ups or chin-ups, progression can be achieved by increasing loads and adjusting the number of repetitions for each set to around 10 to 15. So, heavier loads but fewer repetitions, then building up to increase the load over time.

While weighted vests can be used for resistance training, it is probably easier and more convenient to use barbells, dumbbells, kettle bells or weighted bags.

The bottom line

Weighted vest training is just one tool in an absolute plethora of equipment, techniques and systems. Yes, walking or jogging with around 10% extra body weight increases energy expenditure and intensity. But training for a little bit longer or at a higher intensity can achieve similar results.

There may be benefits for bone health in wearing a weighted vest during ground-based exercise such as walking or jogging. But similar or greater stimulus to bone growth can be achieved by resistance training or even the introduction of impact training such as hopping, skipping or bounding.

Exercising with a weighted vest likely won’t increase your injury risk. But it must be approached intelligently considering fitness level, existing and previous injuries, and appropriate progression for intensity and repetition.

Rob Newton 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. Should I get a weighted vest to boost my fitness? And how heavy should it be? – https://theconversation.com/should-i-get-a-weighted-vest-to-boost-my-fitness-and-how-heavy-should-it-be-243462

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rupert Sutherland, Professor of tectonics and geophysics, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Continents and oceans have scientific definitions that underpin international law. The idea of dividing the world into geographical zones is ancient. Sovereignty and influence over natural resources is at the heart of most global divisions.

A peaceful transition away from fossil fuels will require new global agreements on how to manage mineral resources in the deep ocean as well as those associated with continents. Technology and modern global politics are creating new challenges.

Scientific, cultural and legal definitions of continental and oceanic regions continue to evolve. During the past decade, we surveyed, sampled and defined the hidden continent of Zealandia.

Intense global media coverage of our work revealed deep-seated arguments about how we define continents and govern the ocean.

This is understandable, given knowledge about the Earth’s tectonic plates was formed during a period when we also discovered fossil fuel reserves offshore from continental shelves.

Most technologies developed last century depend on fossil fuels. Together with fishing interests, this drove a political desire to define nations’ sovereignty over submarine continental extensions.

But the transition to renewable energy is now pushing in a new direction. Critical minerals such as nickel, copper, cobalt and rare earth elements will become more sought after than oil in the coming decades.

These can all be found in large quantities in the deep ocean, far from continental shelves. Offshore reserves may be much larger than those found onshore. But there is currently no agreed framework for sovereignty over the deep ocean.

As the ocean covers 70% of our planet, we need a workable agreement on its custodianship.

Difference between continental and oceanic crust

The surface of Earth is broken into large rigid plates that diverge at mid-ocean ridges and converge at ocean trenches or mountain ranges. The interior of Earth, the mantle, is solid rock. But it is hot enough to creep slowly at a few centimetres per year, allowing plates to move.

The scientific theory of plate tectonics became widely accepted during the 1960s.

A plate is about 100 kilometres thick and has a “crust” embedded in the top, created by melting and other chemical reactions. New oceanic crust is formed at mid-ocean ridges by melting the mantle, leading to a uniform crustal thickness.

These oceanic plates are consumed back into the mantle at subduction zones, where we find deep ocean trenches and volcanoes, such as along the Pacific Ring of Fire. The oldest oceanic plates on Earth date back about 200 million years.

In contrast, the crust of continents lies under shallow oceans and land. It is highly variable in composition and age. Some can be nearly as old as the solar system itself, about 4.6 billion years.

Continental crust is generally higher in silica, which makes it less dense. This low density makes continents too buoyant to be pulled back into the mantle and they remain floating near the surface. If a continent is caught in a convergent zone between plates, then the crust can become very thick, pushing up mountain ranges such as the Himalayan belt.

Definition of a continent

Physical boundaries such as rivers, oceans or mountain ranges have long served as geographical borders.

Physical science and human culture are intertwined in most historical attempts to subdivide Earth. About 2,000 years ago, building on earlier ideas, Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder subdivided the world into Europe, Asia and Africa.

The word “continent” comes from the Latin terra continens, which means continuous land. From the 1500s to 1700s, European explorers mapped the world and defined continents of North America, South America and Australia.

The existence of Antarctica was confirmed during the 1800s. The last continent to be discovered was Zealandia, because it is 94% under water. Zealandia was surveyed during the 1900s but was not officially confirmed as a continent until 2017.

The marine realm was lawless for most of history. However, after the second world war, many countries claimed rights over fish and mineral resources in the ocean. This led to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which came into force during the 1960s.

UNCLOS was renegotiated to reflect scientific and technological advances, and the latest version came into force in 1994. It has been ratified by 170 states, but this does not include the US.

Of particular significance is the UNCLOS Convention on the Continental Shelf, and Article 76, which defines legal criteria for how a “continental shelf” is defined, based on scientific concepts and measurable physical criteria. It allows sovereignty of nations to be extended to near the base of the continental slope.

The modern scientific definition of a continent has four criteria:

• Elevation (water depth)

• geology of the crust

• geophysical properties of the crust

• and geometry (continuity, seabed slope).

According to this definition, Earth has seven continents: Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Australia and Zealandia.

Europe amalgamated with Asia more than 200 million years ago, and India was added to Eurasia about 50 million years ago.

Mining the deep sea

Deep-sea exploration and mining technology now make it possible to harvest mineral deposits from the seafloor.

The International Seabed Authority (ISA) was formed in 1994 as part of UNCLOS to govern exploitation of the deep ocean and regulate environmental concerns.

The ISA aims to finalise a deep-sea “mining code” by July next year.

However, a coalition of 32 countries has called for a moratorium on deep-sea mining in international waters. Global consensus on rules and compliance remains elusive.

Several countries are interested in starting mining operations within their exclusive economic zones and there have been applications for permits to explore deep-sea mining in international waters.

The world needs resources to transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Resources are abundant in the deep ocean, but environmental concerns remain. Good governance is going to be essential for an optimal outcome. We urgently need consensus and agreement on how to proceed.

Rupert Sutherland has received research funding from the New Zealand Government.

– ref. Continental drift: why the need for critical minerals might change the way we define Earth’s zones – https://theconversation.com/continental-drift-why-the-need-for-critical-minerals-might-change-the-way-we-define-earths-zones-229498

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nisa Salim, Senior Lecturer at the School of Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology

The Bureau of Meteorology has warned Australia is facing one of the hottest summers on record. As the weather warms, many of us reach for light-coloured clothes in natural fabrics, such as cotton and linen.

But why are natural fabrics like these so much better at keeping us cool when the weather is hot?

Here’s what the science says.

Natural fabrics and sweat: a match made in heaven

In hot weather, we sweat. As sweat evaporates, it carries heat away, which helps cool the body down.

In hot weather, then, we want clothes that help take moisture away from the body as efficiently as possible.

Natural fabrics are made using fibres extracted from plant- or animal-based sources such as cotton, linen, hemp, wool and silk.

The primary component of all plant-based fibres is cellulose. Animal-based fibres are made up of proteins such as keratin and silk fibroin.

Cellulose molecules are rich in compounds called hydroxyl groups that attract water and moisture. In scientific terms, they are hydrophilic – they love water.

So, clothing made of cotton and linen is highly hydrophilic. It tends to absorb moisture and disperse it across the fabric, allowing it to evaporate more easily.

This takes the sweat away quickly, making it more comfortable and breathable and allowing us to stay cool in sweltering temperatures.

One downside of the natural fabrics is they wrinkle quickly (some people, of course, like that look).

And on a really hot, sweaty day, natural fabrics can get heavy and wet.

Animal fibres are basically proteins, and their properties vary depending on the source.

Wool has been bio-engineered over millions of years to be comfortable to wear. Wool fibres are hydrophilic on the inside and hydrophobic on the outside, meaning they’re both water resistant and good at wicking moisture away.

On the other hand, silk fabrics are very good at helping regulate temperature; they keep us cool in hot weather and warm in cold weather.

Synthetic fabrics: less wrinkly, more sweaty

Synthetic fabrics, on the other hand, are lighter and tend to wrinkle less.

Common synthetic fabrics (such as polyester, nylon and acrylic) are all made from petroleum-based chemicals.

Most synthetic fibres are made of long chains of hydrogen and carbon atoms and do not contain the hydroxyl groups we discussed earlier.

Such fibres are therefore hydrophobic – they hate water. This means the water can’t spread evenly across the fabric and evaporate easily.

They trap sweat against the skin, making the clothes less breathable and comfortable when the weather is warm and humid.

However, some synthetic fabrics used in certain types of active wear can wick sweat away from body.

And some semi-synthetic fabrics such as rayon or tencel (which are made from wood pulp or cotton with synthetic fibres) are more breathable than other synthetic fabrics such as polyester or nylon.

Fabric weave makes a difference, too

The colour of the clothing is also a contributing factor to keep you cool during summer. Light colours reflect sunlight away from you and help to keep the body cooler.

There is some evidence dark colours absorb the sunlight and associated heat, making the surface of the skin warmer than normal.

Another factor affecting breathability and comfort of clothing is the way the fabrics are woven.

Fabrics that are loosely woven (sometimes known as “open weave”) with thinner materials naturally have more airflow, which helps you keep cool.

For a quick, non-scientific test, hold a fabric up and see how much light passes through it. The more light you can see, the more breathable it likely is.

The way the fabric is treated can play a role, too; such as for softening and wrinkle resistance.

Using a fabric softener when you do a load of laundry usually doesn’t affect fabric breathability; softeners modify the surface of the fabric but don’t change the internal structure or porous nature of the fabrics.

Wrinkle resistance is the ability of the fabric to stay smooth and polished even after washing. Synthetic fabrics are inherently wrinkle resistant. Natural fibres are more prone to wrinkles but can be chemically treated on the fabric surface during manufacturing to make them wrinkle resistant.

Such treatments, however, may form layers on top of the fabric blocking the airflow, leading them to be less breathable.

Nisa Salim is national chair of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI) Carbon Division.

– ref. Do natural fabrics really keep us cooler in summer? Here’s the science – https://theconversation.com/do-natural-fabrics-really-keep-us-cooler-in-summer-heres-the-science-240909

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philippa Martyr, Lecturer, Pharmacology, Women’s Health, School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Western Australia

Cannabis, cocaine and heroin have interesting life stories and long rap sheets. We might know them today as illicit drugs, but each was once legal.

Then things changed. Racism and politics played a part in how we viewed them. We also learned more about their impact on health. Over time, they were declared illegal.

But decades later, these drugs and their derivatives are being used legally, for medical purposes.

Here’s how we ended up outlawing cannabis, cocaine and heroin, and what happened next.

Cannabis, religion and racism

Cannabis plants originated in central Asia, spread to North Africa, and then to the Americas. People grew cannabis for its hemp fibre, used to make ropes and sacks. But it also had other properties. Like many other ancient medical discoveries, it all started with religion.

Cannabis is mentioned in the Hindu texts known as the Vedas (1700-1100 BCE) as a sacred, feel-good plant. Cannabis or bhang is still used ritually in India today during festivals such as Shivratri and Holi.

From the late 1700s, the British in India started taxing cannabis products. They also noticed a high rate of “Indian hemp insanity” – including what we’d now recognise as psychosis – in the colony. By the late 1800s, a British government investigation found only heavy cannabis use seemed to affect people’s mental health.

In the 1880s, cannabis was used therapeutically in the United States to treat tetanus, migraine and “insane delirium”. But not everyone agreed on (or even knew) the best dose. Local producers simply mixed up what they had into a tincture – soaking cannabis leaves and buds in alcohol to extract essential oils – and hoped for the best.

So how did cannabis go from a slightly useless legal drug to a social menace?

Some of it was from genuine health concerns about what was added to people’s food, drink and medicine.

In 1908 in Australia, New South Wales listed cannabis as an ingredient that could “adulterate” food and drink (along with opium, cocaine and chloroform). To sell the product legally, you had to tell the customers it contained cannabis.

Some of it was international politics. Moves to control cannabis use began in 1912 with the world’s first treaty against drug trafficking. The US and Italy both wanted cannabis included, but this didn’t happen until until 1925.

Some of it was racism. The word marihuana is Spanish for cannabis (later Anglicised to marijuana) and the drug became associated with poor migrants. In 1915, El Paso, Texas, on the Mexican border, was the first US municipality to ban the non-medical cannabis trade.

By the late 1930s, cannabis was firmly entrenched as a public menace and
drug laws had been introduced across much of the US, Europe and (less quickly) Australia to prohibit its use. Cannabis was now a “poison” regulated alongside cocaine and opiates.

The 1936 movie Reefer Madness was a high point of cannabis paranoia. Cannabis smoking was also part of other “suspect” new subcultures such as Black jazz, the 1950s Beatnik movement and US service personnel returning from Vietnam.

Today recreational cannabis use is associated with physical and mental harm. In the short term, it impairs your functioning, including your ability to learn, drive and pay attention. In the long term, harms include increasing the risk of psychosis.

But what about cannabis as a medicine? Since the 1980s there has been a change in mood towards experimenting with cannabis as a therapeutic drug. Medicinal cannabis products are those that contain cannabidiol (CBD) or tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Today in Australia and some other countries, these can be prescribed by certain doctors to treat conditions when other medicines do not work.

Medicinal cannabis has been touted as a treatment for some chronic conditions such as cancer pain and multiple sclerosis. But it’s not clear yet whether it’s effective for the range of chronic diseases it’s prescribed for. However, it does seem to improve the quality of life for people with some serious or terminal illnesses who are using other prescription drugs.

Cocaine, tonics and addiction

Several different species of the coca plant grow across Bolivia, Peru and Colombia. For centuries, local people chewed coca leaves or made them into a mildly stimulant tea. Coca and ayahuasca (a plant-based psychedelic) were also possibly used to sedate people before Inca human sacrifice.

In 1860, German scientist Albert Niemann (1834-1861) isolated the alkaloid we now call “cocaine” from coca leaves. Niemann noticed that applying it to the tongue made it feel numb.

But because effective anaesthetics such as ether and nitrous oxide had already been discovered, cocaine was mostly used instead in tonics and patent medicines.

Perhaps the most famous example was Coca-Cola, which contained cocaine when it was launched in 1886. But cocaine was used earlier, in 1860s Italy, in a drink called Vin Mariani – Pope Leo XIII was a fan.

With cocaine-based products easily available, it quickly became a drug of addiction.

Cocaine remained popular in the entertainment industry. Fictional detective Sherlock Holmes injected it, American actor Tallulah Bankhead swore by it, and novelist Agatha Christie used cocaine to kill off some of her characters.

In 1914, cocaine possession was made illegal in the US. After the hippy era of the 1960s and 1970s, cocaine became the “it” drug of the yuppie 1980s. “Crack” cocaine also destroyed mostly Black American urban communities.

Cocaine use is now associated with physical and mental harms. In the short and long term, it can cause problems with your heart and blood pressure and cause organ damage. At its worst, it can kill you. Right now, illegal cocaine production and use is also surging across the globe.

But cocaine was always legal for medical and surgical use, most commonly in the form of cocaine hydrochloride. As well as acting as a painkiller, it’s a vasoconstrictor – it tightens blood vessels and reduces bleeding. So it’s still used in some types of surgery.

Heroin, coughing and overdoses

Opium has been used for pain relief ever since people worked out how to harvest the sap of the opium poppy. By the 19th century, addictive and potentially lethal opium-based products such as laudanum were widely available across the United Kingdom, Europe and the US. Opium addiction was also a real problem.

Because of this, scientists were looking for safe and effective alternatives for pain relief and to help people cure their addictions.

In 1874, English chemist Charles Romley Alder Wright (1844-1894) created diacetylmorphine (also known as diamorphine). Drug firm Bayer thought it might be useful in cough medicines, gave it the brand name Heroin and put it on the market in 1898. It made chest infections worse.

Although diamorphine was created with good intentions, this opiate was highly addictive. Shortly after it came on the market, it became clear that it was every bit as addictive as other opiates. This coincided with international moves to shut down the trade in non-medical opiates due to their devastating effect on China and other Asian countries.

Like cannabis, heroin quickly developed radical chic. The mafia trafficked into the US and it became popular in the Harlem jazz scene, beatniks embraced it and US servicemen came back from Vietnam addicted to it. Heroin also helped kill US singers Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison.

Today, we know heroin use and addiction contributes to a range of physical and mental health problems, as well as death from overdose.

However, heroin-related harm is now being outpaced by powerful synthetic opioids such as oxycodone, fentanyl, and the nitazene group of drugs. In Australia, there were more deaths and hospital admissions from prescription opiate overdoses than from heroin overdoses.

In a nutshell

Not all medicines have a squeaky-clean history. And not all illicit drugs have always been illegal.

Drugs’ legal status and how they’re used are shaped by factors such as politics, racism and social norms of the day, as well as their impact on health.

Philippa Martyr 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. 3 drugs that went from legal, to illegal, then back again – https://theconversation.com/3-drugs-that-went-from-legal-to-illegal-then-back-again-240010

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Ridder, Lecturer in Early Childhood Education, Murdoch University

You’re doing daycare or school drop-off, you’re already late for work, and your child’s lip starts to quiver. A tremble turns into a wail, a wail into heart-rending cries as they clutch at your leg.

Eventually, you have to leave and get to work. You spend the rest of the day feeling absolutely wretched. Sound familiar?

Each child is different and not every child will struggle at drop-off. But if yours does, remember it’s age appropriate for young children to feel strong emotions when transitioning to a new environment, adapting to unfamiliar places, people, expectations and routines. In extreme cases, it develops into separation anxiety disorder, which can impact about 4% of preschoolers and school-age children.

In fact, there’s a lot you can do to make drop-off less stressful for your child. One useful approach is to think about what the NSW Department of Education describes as the four “stages” of transitioning to school or daycare: preparation, transfer, induction and consolidation.

Preparation is key

Before your child starts, try to build relationships with other children in your area. Having even one familiar face at drop-off can comfort your child.

Consider:

• joining local playgroups

• befriending other families at the playground

• connecting on social media with other local families.

Where possible, allow your child to get familiar with school or daycare (also known as an “early learning and development centre”) in advance. See if you can visit several times and play in the playground before your child starts there.

Take a few “drive by” visits in the car, or walk past and chat with your child about what people are doing in school or daycare, and some of the routines of the day.

For children about to start school, prepare lunchboxes and practice opening and eating them at home.

Read picture books about starting daycare or school – such as Maddie’s First Day by Penny Matthews and Liz Anelli – to discuss the key themes together.

Spending unhurried time in the new environment before the “first day” allows children to explore the environment and build relationships with other children and educators while feeling safe and comfortable.

Many daycare centres can facilitate several visits like this. Schools will often have orientation programs, and some will allow community access to facilities like the playground or oval out of school hours.

If you’ve already got a child at school or daycare, try to bring your younger child along when you drop off or pick up their big brother or sister.

Routines can help with a smooth transfer

Establishing a routine during drop-off may help children settle into a new environment. Predictability can help children feel safe and secure.

An example routine might include putting their bag away, reading a book together, playing with playdough, giving a kiss and hug and then leaving. This might mean getting to school or daycare a bit earlier than you’d intended.

Try to keep this routine unhurried and focused on your child.

If drop-off is either too long or too short, children can experience overwhelming emotions. So try not to drop and go abruptly if you can avoid it. Always let your child know when you are leaving, as sneaking off can cause mistrust and anxiety.

Avoid lingering for a long time on one day, and a short time on another day; this can make things less predictable for your child. Leaving, then returning repeatedly can also introduce uncertainty.

Many early learning and development centres use a primary caregiver model, where one educator is responsible for most of the care routines for one child.

Building a strong relationship with this educator means they’re more likely to recognise your child’s small cues, and your child is more likely to be comforted during drop-off.

Talk to school or the early learning centre about bringing in a toy, photograph, or comfort item, which helps children maintain the connection with home.

Support the induction process

Educators and teachers work hard to create a sense of belonging for children in this new environment.

This means building on children’s strengths and establishing relationships so children feel comfortable.

A strength-based approach views children as already being learners as they enter early childhood education, focusing on the knowledge and skills they bring.

So chat to the educators and to your child about what happens at care or at school, so you can congratulate your child on how well they’re doing. Find out more about what they do all day, and encourage them to see daycare or school as “their place”.

Consolidating

The transition process is complex and dynamic. A child who initially transitioned happily may regress, requiring you and the educators to revisit the process.

Many children who appear upset at drop-off will calm down quickly. But a child experiencing prolonged separation anxiety disorder may require specific strategies to transition successfully. Your child’s educator will let you know if this is an issue.

Taking time to build relationships with the teachers and educators will allow you to work together.

Each child is different

Remember every child is an individual, and adapting to a new environment can be different for everyone.

Whether children and families are anxious or excited, transitioning from home to school or daycare means change.

Change, although hard at first, can open the window to new relationships, environments and experiences.

Understanding the process and working to minimise the impact will result in a happy start to early childhood education.

Kylie Ridder 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. Dreading the school or daycare drop-off? How to handle it when your child doesn’t want you to go – https://theconversation.com/dreading-the-school-or-daycare-drop-off-how-to-handle-it-when-your-child-doesnt-want-you-to-go-244283

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gamze Koseoglu, Senior Lecturer, The University of Melbourne

Have you ever kept a brilliant idea to yourself, fearing your boss’s reaction? This hesitation is more common than you might think, especially when working under perfectionist leaders.

Some of the most famous business leaders of the past century were renowned for their perfectionism – but also didn’t shy away from showing anger.

The co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, led groundbreaking innovation at the tech giant, but was infamously prone to becoming bad tempered at times.

Another was Roone Arledge, president of the US news organisation, ABC News, from the late 1970s to the 1990s. He had a profound impact on news and sports programming, and was described by former Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger as both inspiring and demanding. At times, he tore apart projects and had his team rework them through the night.

As a leadership trait, perfectionism can drive teams to meet high standards. Our research has explored an important catch, though. Perfectionist leaders, especially when displaying anger, can undermine creativity and innovation.

Read more:
‘Ebullient leadership’ can lift your workers out of the doldrums and increase productivity

What is perfectionism?

Perfectionism is a personality trait characterised by demands for flawless performance. It’s a common trait across many different kinds of workplaces.

Perfectionism can be self-oriented, where leaders hold themselves to extremely high or impossible standards.

It can also be other-oriented, where they expect the same from those they lead.

It’s easy to see why so many leaders gravitate toward perfectionism. It can inspire employees to produce high-quality work, minimise mistakes and strive for success.

Perfectionist leaders can also increase followers’ engagement with their work and their motivation to learn.

But the trait can also mean setting unrealistically high standards for oneself and others, with little room for error or flexibility.

Creativity matters, too

Meeting high standards isn’t the only thing that matters at work. Creativity – the ability to generate novel and useful ideas – is also critical for organisational success.

Creativity thrives in environments where employees feel psychologically safe, empowered to take risks and make mistakes.

This is where perfectionism falls short. Whether intentional or not, perfectionist leaders often foster fear – both of making mistakes and falling short.

Our research

To explore how leader perfectionism affects creativity, we conducted three studies across different cultural contexts.

The first involved 200 participants from the US who recalled their experiences of perfectionist leaders showing anger.

The second was a controlled lab experiment with 119 participants in the Philippines.

For the third, we surveyed 296 employees and 61 leaders at a Chinese telecommunications company.

The results were consistent across all three. Leaders who were very perfectionist – especially when they expressed anger – made employees feel less safe, which lowered creativity.

Why does this happen?

Think of creativity as a flame. Perfectionism acts like a strong wind, intended to fan it but often blowing it out instead.

When employees feel constant pressure to meet leaders’ perfectionist standards, they stop thinking outside the box.

Instead of embracing bold, creative ideas, they stick to what’s safe. That often means avoiding risk at all costs and focusing on flawless work.

This phenomenon is all about psychological safety, the belief that it’s safe to try new things in the workplace.

Our research found the more a leader set perfectionist standards and shows anger, the less likely their employees were to take risks and come up with ideas.

Lessons for leaders

Setting high standards is valuable, but it’s equally important to foster an environment where employees feel safe to innovate.

This environment can only exist when leaders temper their perfectionism with empathy and understanding. This doesn’t necessarily mean lowering standards — just balancing high expectations with support and compassion.

Organisations can offer training programs to help leaders develop their skills in expressing appropriate emotions – both when setting work standards or when employees fail to meet their expectations.

For example, cognitive-behavioral therapy has been show to be an effective strategy for helping perfectionists regulate their tendency to be overly critical.

Gamze Koseoglu 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. Perfectionist leaders can push their teams to meet high standards – but it can backfire and stifle creativity – https://theconversation.com/perfectionist-leaders-can-push-their-teams-to-meet-high-standards-but-it-can-backfire-and-stifle-creativity-243043

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kerry Brown, Professor of Employment and Industry, School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University

If you’re back in the job market, or looking for your first position after graduating, you’ll need to think about how to ace a job interview.

Getting shortlisted for interview is a significant achievement on its own, given managers routinely consider hundreds of other applicants for each position. But to interview well, you need to be prepared, confident (but not arrogant) and stand out from other applicants.

A good job interview means assuring a prospective employer you can fit into their company, have the skills to do or adapt to the job, and can work well with others.

So, how can you put your best foot forward in a job interview? Here are five tips.

1. Talk about your cultural and organisational fit

Explain how you would be a great fit in the new job.

Establishing your fit doesn’t mean talking up your skills, but convincing the panel you are the right person to join the company.

Make it clear you know what the company does well (more on that later), offer examples of where you’ve worked well in teams before, and explain how you could contribute to the organisation’s mission, goals and achievements.

2. Prepare answers for important questions

They will almost certainly ask: “why should we hire you?”

Variations of this question include: “why are you the best person for this job?” and “why do you want this job?”

You may be asked these kinds of questions right at the start of your interview.

It’s not an invitation to brag about what you have done or exaggerate your claims. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate how you would fit into the company with your skills, track record and personal values.

This is your chance to outline your skills and position yourself as the best person for the job.

But these questions also allow you to give an early indication about whether your working style and personal values align with the organisation’s values.

3. Show your enthusiasm and commitment

It is important to show you are enthusiastic and excited to be part of their organisation.

You are looking to give your employer a sense of your personality and your interest in not just the job but the company.

What is it about this company’s work that interests you? Can you name examples of things they’ve done well in the past? If you got the job, why would you be proud to work there?

4. Do your homework

Demonstrate you have read up on the company and people and be specific about what you can offer as a future employee.

Research the company and the person who is interviewing you. Make it clear you understand the business and its recent output, as well as the person and their preferences.

Don’t simply regurgitate information about the company from their website. Instead, come up with some interesting questions such as how they’ve managed a big change in the industry, or how they are adapting to a new technology.

The company will probably research or “cybervet” you. Ensure your public profile and other accessible information is professional and shows you at your best. Lose the wild party pics.

5. Give ‘I’ answers

“I” answers show how your skills would benefit the company and suit the position. You could talk, for example, about how you’re passionate about helping people, so you did an internship in aged care administration during your business studies and also volunteered at your local aged care home.

Or that you won an award in recognition of your contribution to your industry, and explain what you did that won you this award.

The story of you as a talented and committed job seeker should not only be compelling but have an internal narrative logic. For example:

In my university degree, I undertook training in project management software. As part of my internship, I was responsible for project scheduling, so I developed a very good working knowledge of this software. My experience supports me to effectively use project management software in this new role.

Research has also shown doing an internship gives you a better chance of winning a job.

If you’ve got gaps in your resume, fold them into your narrative about how you have built your experiences, education, skills and capacities. For example,

To gain experience in learning other languages and working in different countries, I travelled extensively for my gap year. I then started my full-time university studies in marketing while working part-time in the retail industry.

A job interview is not just about how well you did in your studies or your previous job but how you can build your skills and capabilities into a sustainable career in your new role. The interviewer is looking for how you can add value to the organisation.

Kerry Brown has received funding from the ARC and other government agencies.

– ref. 5 tips to ace a job interview – including how to prepare for the question they’ll definitely ask – https://theconversation.com/5-tips-to-ace-a-job-interview-including-how-to-prepare-for-the-question-theyll-definitely-ask-244180

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stefan Korber, Senior Lecturer in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

The list of organisations abandoning the option of fully remote work for employees has grown recently, with the likes of Amazon, IBM, JPMorgan and Meta leading the charge back to the office.

These mandates have caused considerable controversy, but they’ve also given attention to a crucial aspect of corporate life: workplace friendships. And, as the new work year looms, reuniting at work has its own special challenges.

Surveys have shown around three in ten employees have a close friend at work. Furthermore, researchers argue these relationships can be as important to our personal and professional lives as a nutritious diet is to physical health.

For individuals, close personal ties with coworkers can increase job satisfaction, provide a stronger sense of belonging, and promote career advancement. For organisations, workplace friendships have been linked to higher innovation, collaboration, profitability, productivity and employee retention.

However, like many relationships, workplace friendships are challenging to navigate. Differing career goals, corporate power dynamics, tight deadlines and job insecurities can create resentment, conflict and disappointments that strain relationships.

So, how can we maintain meaningful friendships with work colleagues over time? Exploring this in previous research, we adopted a rather unconventional approach and took a deep (and sometimes uncomfortable) look at the relational dynamics in our own circles of work friends.

We analysed our own group’s dynamic, as well as others we were involved in, to examine what makes some workplace friendships work better than others. (While limited to insights from a small number of people, “autoethnography” is a recognised research methodology that can produce deeper understanding of emotions and values.)

Camaraderie in the workplace

On the surface, the five of us in the research group didn’t have much in common. We were at different career stages, had diverse roots, different family constellations, and some had even moved to universities on the other side of the world.

Yet we were able to maintain and even strengthen our work friendship and continue to collaborate on joint projects for over ten years. We found workplace friendships rely on a distinct set of foundational elements (building blocks) whose importance ebbs and flows over time.

Sometimes, workplace friendships are strengthened through mutual support in the face of shared challenges. For instance, collaborative work under tight deadlines can create an intense “we’re all in this together” feeling, where everyone chips in and makes personal sacrifices.

Similarly, collective moaning and gossiping about clients, company policies, superiors or coworkers can foster solidarity and deeper bonds.

Shared recollections of meaningful experiences that define relationships play a role. When we indulge in memories of office parties that went out of control, or collectively remember past achievements, feelings of belonging are reinforced.

Deliberating about potential future endeavours – from the next team event to thinking of joint initiatives – can strengthen workplace friendships by fostering a shared sense of direction and common purpose.

When workplace friendships go bad

Paradoxically, while these elements are fundamental to workplace friendships, they can also erode those relationships if one element starts to overshadow the others.

For example, although working together on projects is essential, solely work-related friendships can quickly feel shallow or exploitative. Similarly, if collective moaning and negativity dominate all conversations, workplace friendships can start to feel toxic and emotionally drowning.

Hearing the same anecdotes or jokes over and over again can strain relationships, much like old school friends realising the only thing they talk about is getting drunk together 20 years ago.

Finally, talking about future endeavours can create fractures if plans are consistently cancelled and workplace friends don’t make an effort to put ideas into reality.

This suggests maintaining workplace friendships depends on having good foundations to start with, but also on maintaining a balance between them.

Healthy relationships take work

To return to the healthy diet analogy, just as there is no single “magic bullet” for healthy eating, there is no secret ingredient for workplace friendships. Instead, a balanced mix of ingredients and regular adjustments are needed.

Accomplishing this requires an awareness of the different factors that define workplace friendships, and an understanding of how imbalances can strain relationships. Most importantly, it takes deliberate effort to re-balance work and friendship if things go sour.

Our research calls for managers and individuals to pay closer attention to the dynamics of workplace friendships, and the efforts required to maintain them.

On the one hand, decision-makers can make social connections part of everyday work life, rather than trying to “force” them through occasional team-building events or annual celebrations.

On the other, workplace friends need to be sensitive to the risks posed by routine and habit creeping into those relationships, making us take each other for granted.

Like any relationship, workplace friendships take, well, work. While this might sound obvious, we can probably all do with reminding that honest reflection and personal investment are key to maintaining any healthy relationship.

The author acknowledges his colleagues in this research project: Paul Hibbert and Frank Siedlok (University of St Andrews), Lisa Callagher (University of Auckland) and Ziad Elsahn (Lancaster University).

Stefan Korber 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 you should treat workplace friendships like your diet – aim for balance and variety – https://theconversation.com/why-you-should-treat-workplace-friendships-like-your-diet-aim-for-balance-and-variety-243706

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margaret Maynard, Associate Professor, School of Communication and the Arts, The University of Queensland

Sunglasses, or dark glasses, have always guarded against strong sunlight, but is there more to “shades” than we think?

The pupils of our eyes are delicate and react immediately to strong lights. Protecting them against light – even the brilliance reflected off snow – is important for everyone. Himalayan mountaineers wear goggles for this exact purpose.

Protection is partly the function of sunglasses. But dark or coloured lens glasses have become fashion accessories and personal signature items. Think of the vast and famous collector of sunglasses Elton John, with his pink lensed heart-shaped extravaganzas and many others.

When did this interest in protecting the eyes begin, and at what point did dark glasses become a social statement as well as physical protection?

Ancient traditions

The Roman Emperor Nero is reported as holding polished gemstones to his eyes for sun protection as he watched fighting gladiators.

We know Canadian far north Copper Inuit and Alaskan Yupik wore snow goggles of many kinds made of antlers or whalebone and with tiny horizontal slits. Wearers looked through these and they were protected against the snow’s brilliant light when hunting. At the same time the very narrow eye holes helped them to focus on their prey.

In 12th century China, judges wore sunglasses with smoked quartz lenses to hide their facial expressions – perhaps to retain their dignity or not convey emotions.

Very early eyeglasses were produced in Venice with its longstanding skills in glass making concentrated on the still famous islands of Murano.

In the 18th century, noble Venetian ladies held green coloured glasses in tortoiseshell frames to their eyes, a design similar to a hand-held mirror. These vetri da gondola (glasses for gondola) or da dama (for ladies) were used to protect their eyes and those of their children from sunlight, as gondoliers paddled them through the Venetian canals.

Glasses, celebrity and war

Protection of the eye takes an interesting turn when movie making begins. Film stars’ eyes became strained as artificial studio set lights were very strong. They began to wear tinted glasses outside the studio as their eyes became sore.

As Hollywood began to make celebrities of these stars, they sought out privacy by wearing dark glasses on public occasions as well.

Their looks were crucial to the industry.

One thinks of the aloof Greta Garbo who hid behind her glasses to stop interaction with fans. Audrey Hepburn was another star well known for her Oliver Goldsmith dark glasses. She peered over these in many movies and also wore them as high fashion accessories.

The first anti-glare glasses, originally with green glass blocking U/V rays, were Ray-Bans, patented in 1939 as Aviators for the US Army Air Corps. Their shapes reduced light from any angle. They were taken up by the military and became the signature style of General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of US Forces in the Pacific, stationed in Brisbane during the second world war.

With these glasses, well-tailored khaki uniforms and peaked caps, wearers exuded a vigorous masculine attractiveness – although the outfits were not exactly fashion.

Dark glasses were to become increasingly popular accessories from the late 1920s. They took on new life as essential male and female fashions in the 60s and 70s. Men and women celebrities and style icons like Jacqueline Kennedy wore her huge designer outsize glasses as personal fashion items.

Rich with meaning

There are hundreds of different designs on the market today. Many can be picked up at any chemist.

Dark glasses are everywhere: worn on the street, for driving, on the beach and on the tennis court.

Sunglasses are rich with different meanings. They protect from harsh sunlight and shield wearers from close contact with others. They also allow users to observe others without detection. They are striking accessories loved by celebrities, movie stars and fashionable influencers of all kinds.

For some celebrities, sunglasses have become part of their character.

They project an almost powerful aura for someone like Anna Wintour of Vogue. For Stevie Wonder, who wears sunglasses because he is legally blind, they have come to symbolise his particular personality, his unique ability and his iconic status.

Margaret Maynard 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. Sunglasses reflect more than the light: a brief history of shades, from Ancient Rome to Hollywood – https://theconversation.com/sunglasses-reflect-more-than-the-light-a-brief-history-of-shades-from-ancient-rome-to-hollywood-244399

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milo Gough, Lecturer in History, University of Manchester

Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, is celebrated as a city founded to resettle freed slaves in the 1790s. Over the following century, it became a truly cosmopolitan port city as people from across western Africa and the Americas made it their home.

But Freetown’s British colonial rulers struggled to acclimatise. Many were plagued by deadly fevers that earned West Africa its reputation in Europe as the “white man’s grave”.

By the turn of the 20th century, the intensifying racism of colonialism, coupled with the emergence of the new field of tropical medicine, led to the construction of Hill Station, an experimental, racially segregated settlement built in the mountains four miles south of Freetown.

This was more than simply a public health measure to protect the white colonists. It was an abandonment of Freetown – an exit strategy from a city that was seen by this colonial elite as diseased, overcrowded and dangerous. The writer and journalist Graham Greene was highly critical of these motives in his travelogue, Journey Without Maps (1936):

England had planted this town [Freetown], the tin shacks and the Remembrance Day posters, and had then withdrawn up the hillside to smart bungalows, with wide windows and electric fans and perfect service … They had planted their seedy civilization and then escaped from it as far as they could.

Now, more than a century later, a proposed masterplanned city in Sierra Leone called Sherbro Island City is raising questions about the nature of modern urban developments – questions that resonate with my research in Freetown’s public archives about the story of Hill Station.

The people behind Sherbro Island City, including English actor Idris Elba, are anything but colonial types. And in a country that is almost always portrayed as a place of violence and suffering – epitomised by its civil war in the 1990s and the devastating Ebola outbreak from 2014 to 2016 – the more optimistic headlines generated by Sherbro Island City are welcome. Its plans for an “afro-dynamic eco-city” promise long-term growth for Sierra Leone and the wider region.

But like Hill Station, this development – to be built on Sherbro Island, around 75 miles (120km) south of Freetown – has been planned for a small international elite. It is marketed as being clean and sanitary, with state-of-the-art “smart infrastructure” – in contrast to the perception of Freetown, like many other major African cities, as dirty, chaotic and perpetually malfunctioning.

Abuzz with anticipation

In 2019, I was in Freetown conducting research into the history of the city. On the day my fieldwork was wrapping up, Idris Elba landed for his first visit to his father’s homeland. Freetown had been buzzing with the news of his arrival. Everyone wanted to catch a glimpse of Sierra Leone’s own superstar.

On his week-long trip, Elba was busy. Events and photo opportunities swirled around a ritualistic centre piece: the presentation of citizenship by the country’s president, Julius Maada Bio. Elba was understandably enamoured by Sierra Leone and the welcome he received. Speaking to a BBC correspondent, he proclaimed that “the son of the soil is coming back to fertilise the soil”.

In fact, his plans to “fertilise” Sierra Leone were already in motion before this trip. Elba had set up a company called Sherbro Alliance Partners (SAP) earlier in 2019 with his childhood friend, Siaka Stevens – grandson of Sierra Leone’s dictatorial post-colonial president, also called Siaka Stevens.

That same year, SAP signed a memorandum of understanding with President Bio to build Sherbro Island City, envisaged as a thriving hub of improved infrastructure, tourism, media, healthcare and eco technologies.

The Insights section is committed to high-quality longform journalism. Our editors work with academics from many different backgrounds who are tackling a wide range of societal and scientific challenges.

The project has moved slowly over the past five years, but recently gathered some momentum. Lloyd’s of London and Octopus Energy have been announced as project partners. These corporate tie-ins, alongside Elba’s stardom, have given Sherbro Island City enough clout to garner global media attention.

Many journalists and commentators have praised Elba and Stevens for their capacity to “dream big”. Braima Koroma, director of research and training at the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre in Freetown, told me that “local communities, government officials and potential investors seem to be excited about the vision of creating a modern, eco-friendly urban centre. There’s a palpable sense of anticipation surrounding the promises of job creation, improved infrastructure and increased foreign investment.”

On the other hand, Koroma told me the project’s “focus on luxury and exclusivity” has prompted “worry about the risk of exacerbating socioeconomic inequality” – suggesting the optimism generated by Sherbro Island City and desire for development in Sierra Leone may have obscured questions about the desirability of a hyper-modern city designed to attract a wealthy, globalised elite and provide returns for mobile foreign capital. The majority of Sierra Leoneans, who live on an average of just US$560 (£422) a year, will be economically locked out of this exclusive urban enclave.

A very different built environment

Much of my time in Sierra Leone was spent at the public archive building, which is located within the country’s most historic university, Fourah Bay College. One day, I was on the back of an okada (motorcycle taxi) on the steep mountain road up to the archive when I got a call from Alfred, one of the archivists, reminding me it was closed for a national holiday.

Taking advantage of a day away from dusty colonial-era documents, I redirected the driver up to the neighbourhood of Hill Station, as it is still called today, on the main road into the mountains overlooking Freetown.

At first glance, Hill Station appears an unremarkable neighbourhood of Freetown. Large compounds hide behind breeze block walls, and corrugated-iron houses hang on to the steep sides of the ridge on which Hill Station is perched.

However, a short walk off the main road reveals a very different built environment. Amid the red dirt roads and thriving palm and kapok trees, vast wooden bungalows are hoisted up on top of stilts. In varying states of decay and heavily modified with corrugated-iron extensions, these bungalows are still owned by the government and inhabited by civil servants and their families.

On my stroll through Hill Station, the neighbourhood was very quiet aside from several men finishing off the big job of painting one of the bungalows in pastel green. While only 12 of these colonial homes remain, at its peak Hill Station consisted of about 30 bungalows.

This mountain settlement, its first stage completed in 1904, was connected to Freetown’s city centre by a narrow-gauge railway that operated to suit the hours of the few government officials who lived in Hill Station and commuted into the city each day. After returning in the evening (the last train up was at 6:30pm), British colonial officials drank together and played billiards at the recreational club. At weekends they played tennis, watched by their wives and children.

The bungalows, club and railway were built at great expense – around £86,000, roughly equivalent to £9 million today – to provide a new way of life for this handful of white colonial officials, businessmen and their families who had previously resided in the city. This was a huge project that catered for a tiny white elite – by 1911, only 90 people out of Freetown’s total population of about 40,000 lived in Hill Station.

Investment on this scale was highly unusual in Britain’s African colonies, which were usually run on shoestring budgets. The colonial government rationalised it as a response to the discovery in the late 1890s that Anopheles mosquitoes were the vector of malaria.

But African people were identified as the “reservoir” of the disease and so, according to this logic, white people would be safe from disease if they spent the night – when mosquitoes were feeding – away from them. This understanding of disease prevention is characteristic of a period that saw a hardening of the racial hierarchy in British West Africa around monolithic categories of whiteness and blackness.

Escaping their ‘seedy civilisation’

To colonial officials and medical experts, the settlement of Hill Station was associated with whiteness, health and modernity. Its opposite was the city of Freetown, associated with blackness, dirt and disease. The hard binary of white-black and mountain-coast forged by the construction of Hill Station was new. But it was built on older ideas of disease transmission, race and landscape.

While I walked among the bungalows of Hill Station, a breeze blew across the ridge providing me with some relief from the hot and humid stillness that characterised Freetown’s city centre. More than a century ago, this breeze was highly prized by colonial medical officers as ventilation was thought to circulate “healthy” air.

The Hill Station bungalows were designed to harness the breeze. All four sides were lined with windows that could be opened to encourage the movement of air. But contrary to the aim of preventing the spread of malaria, the windows were not equipped with mosquito screens, as officials thought screens would prevent air flow.

Concrete foundations held iron stilts that raised the bungalows more than two metres from the ground. This functioned to distance occupants from the dangerous miasmas that were thought to emanate from the ground.

The idea that “bad air” was the cause of health problems remained central to the medical geography of empire even after the discovery of new tropical medicines. Freetown, perceived as insanitary and overpopulated, was understood as a hotbed of enervating miasmas that left white colonial officials vulnerable to contracting deadly fevers.

From the ridge, I looked down to the west over Lumley Beach, south towards the mountains of the Freetown peninsula, and east over the city centre. Freetown sprawled over the undulating terrain, pushing up tightly against the Atlantic coastline. From this same location, colonial officials would have surveyed the territory and perhaps felt secure in their place at the top of the colonial hierarchy.

In the 1890s, the governor of colonial Sierra Leone, Frederick Cardew, justified the construction of Hill Station because of the “exhilarating and bracing” sensory experience of walking along this ridgeline. He marvelled at a view that “could hardly be surpassed in any part of the world in range and beauty”.

Even after Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961, Hill Station has remained a site of state power. Adjacent to the old bungalows is the president’s official residence and the various high commissions of old imperial nations, all hidden behind high walls and barbed wire.

But earlier this year, several senior civil servants and their families were evicted from their Hill Station bungalows after the government of Sierra Leone granted Turkey and Saudi Arabia plots of land to build new embassies. Their bungalows are now slated for demolition.

The destruction of Freetown’s colonial-era built environment, including the once ubiquitous 19th-century Krio bode ose (board houses), has been a consistent feature of Freetown’s postcolonial period. Many locals, looking resolutely towards a better tomorrow, do not mourn the loss of the material aftermaths of colonialism. Yet the unchecked churn of urban development can also mean some important lessons from history are forgotten.

Sierra Leone’s ‘afro-dynamic ecocity’

The foundational idea of architects Foster + Partners for Sherbro Island City is to make it “afro-dynamic” – as encapsulated by its leaf motif, loosely inspired by the shape of Sherbro island. According to the marketing material, this leaf shows the way in which the city is both “connected to Africa” and “rooted in community”.

Having been a slave boat harbour in the 18th century, Sherbro island would go on to become an important colonial port. However, by the latter half of the 20th century, it was a remote and overlooked part of post-colonial Sierra Leone. The new architectural vision for Sherbro Island City doesn’t reference this history – but within the shiny publicity material, there are some echoes of Hill Station’s relationship with Freetown.

Back in October 1902, the Public Works Department erected signs in the vicinity of the proposed site, with one reading: “Warning. Any person found squatting, erecting huts, or planting on this and adjacent lands from this date will be PROSECUTED and EJECTED.”

While Sherbro Island City will also be built on land used by existing communities, SAP claims the new city will benefit the island’s population of around 40,000 people. But Bankolay Theodore Turay, a Sierra Leonean scholar based at the Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, is sceptical. He explained to me that he is “not aware of any compensation process that has taken place for communities that will be dispossessed of their land, and those that will be relocated from the community”.

Sherbro Island City will exist on a separate legal footing from the rest of the nation as a special economic zone, and promises huge tax incentives to investors. It appears that it will be a private city, even if not in name, managed by business people and shaped by the interests of foreign capital.

The architects’ images conform to an aesthetic of globalised modernity. Where the bungalows of Hill Station were constructed from imported prefabricated materials that conformed to a pan-imperial style, CGI renderings of Sherbro Island City imagine a hyper-modern city of glass and steel that appears to have little to do with its locale.

Foster + Partners says it has “not engaged in any detailed designs at this stage, which will be shaped by input from several stakeholders including local communities”. It adds that all of the designs “are rooted in sustainability and a respect for the communities we design for”.

Turay told me that, regardless of SAP’s claims that the city will have minimal environmental impact, “construction work does not come without environmental issues, without changing the special dynamics of the community” in an area with an “ecological footprint that is very, very low”.

In an interview in 2023, SAP’s co-founder Stevens described how the idea for the new city first germinated while he was on holiday at a luxury beach resort in Dubai. He recalled thinking: “I wish I could make my country like this one day.”

It looks like Sherbro Island City will, like Hill Station, be a city for the elite. Fosters + Partners’ preview book describes five “character profiles” of potential residents of, and visitors to, the city. These are a tourist family from Europe, two renowned health professionals and young parents, a South African digital nomad living between Dubai and Singapore, a recent Harvard graduate, and a successful actor and DJ.

These profiles suggest the city will be for diverse people from all over the world, but with one condition: they must be well-off.

Africa’s masterplanned cities

Sherbro Island City is not the first masterplanned city for Africa in the 21st century. Over the past 20 years, similar plans for new cities have cropped up throughout the continent.

Perhaps the most notable is Eko Atlantic City in Nigeria. First announced in 2003, the Eko Atlantic project has radically altered the geography of Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos. Built on 6.5 million square miles of reclaimed land, it protrudes into the Atlantic Ocean from what was Bar Beach. Its first few skeletal tower blocks have changed the skyline of downtown Lagos.

Other projects on the continent have been less successful. Kenya’s Konza Technopolis, conceived in 2009, is still a work-in-progress street grid 50 miles outside the capital, Nairobi. Meanwhile, Ghana’s Hope City project got no further than computer-generated images of glowing towers before being cancelled.

And then there is Senegal’s Akon City, the brainchild of Senegalese-American rapper Akon. Six years after it was announced with great fanfare, Akon City is little more than a half-built welcome centre. Some parallels to the Sherbro Island City project are evident: both are backed by global superstars, and both promise to transform the fortunes of small and often overlooked west African nations.

Turay said his first reaction to the Sherbro Island City plans was: “Is this is going to be another Akon city?” Such city-scale projects require vast amounts of capital and organisation, and many flounder facing this harsh reality.

However, not all of these projects are mirages. As South African professor of urban planning Vanessa Watson has described, cities in Africa have become the latest frontier for speculative real estate investment. This trend sped up hugely after the global financial crisis of 2007–08 as, since then, interest rates have generally been very low and capital has sought out riskier investments with potentially higher yields.

The rise of a foreign capital-led, speculative real estate market in African cities has been widely celebrated. Many urban residents across the continent see visions for modernity and new concrete structures as evidence of development, investment, and change for the better.

Comments on Eko Atlantic update videos, for example, show great pride in these ambitious plans from people who will probably never afford to live in the city’s luxury apartments. Similarly, in Sierra Leone, many people appear optimistic about the prospect of a hyper-modern city that promises development in the form of investment, jobs and infrastructure.

However, according to Braima Koroma: “There are also voices of caution. Community members and environmental activists have raised concerns about the potential displacement of residents and the environmental impact of large-scale construction.” He suggests these concerns “underline the importance of ensuring that the development is inclusive, and takes into account the needs and rights of local populations”.

Exit schemes

Beyond Sierra Leone, in countries where city-scale projects have progressed further, concerns about their potential for entrenching inequality have been communicated in different ways. The Nigerian photographer Christopher Obuh’s series of images of Eko Atlantic City, No City for Poor Man, asks viewers to reflect on the unevenness of this speculative urbanism by showing the process of construction that is usually obscured by slick videos, glossy CGI renderings and marketing speak.

In an article about Eko Atlantic, journalist Katie Jane Fernelius argued that this new city is less about developing innovative solutions to the pressing problems of a changing climate, urban overcrowding and a lack of investment, and more a place of elite moneymaking where capital can be made liquid and free-flowing. In her view, Eko Atlantic City is likely to further entrench the highly unequal status quo.

Inequality was vital to the colonial system. European empires depended on the construction of rigid hierarchies, most often around ideas of race. More recently, harsh inequalities have again become a defining feature of the world since the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s.

The speculative urbanism of the 21st century recycles colonial logics in the form of protected compounds, private suburbs and gated communities. These spatial fixes to the challenge of living amid the masses are supported by other fixes to the “problem” of regulation, such as special economic zones, freeports and tax havens.

In his 2022 book Adventure Capitalism, Raymond Craib describes libertarian schemes to carve out spaces beyond the regulatory systems of the nation-state, from private islands to seasteads and space colonies. These extreme forms of exit have largely remained imaginary – yet these exit plans are significant in themselves, as they tell us how the wealthy envision the future.

In using his stardom to mobilise investment in Sierra Leone, I’m sure Idris Elba genuinely wants to uplift the homeland of his father. But it feels problematic that many of the most ambitious attempts at urban development in Africa, and across the world, appear to manifest largely through “exit schemes”.

The Conversation has contacted representatives for Idris Elba, Sherbro Alliance Partners and Eko Atlantic, offering them the opportunity to comment on issues raised in this article. By the time of publication, we had not received a response from any of these parties.

For you, more from our Insights series:

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• The overshoot myth: you can’t keep burning fossil fuels and expect scientists of the future to get us back to 1.5°C
  

• How the world’s first open-source digital map of mass graves could help bring justice to victims in Ukraine and other war zones

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Milo Gough has received funding from the AHRC through CHASE DTP.

– ref. From a colonial hill town to Idris Elba’s island masterplan, what can two Sierra Leone developments a century apart tell us about urban elitism? – https://theconversation.com/from-a-colonial-hill-town-to-idris-elbas-island-masterplan-what-can-two-sierra-leone-developments-a-century-apart-tell-us-about-urban-elitism-233714

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ary Hoffmann, Professor, School of BioSciences and Bio21 Institute, The University of Melbourne

The common fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), more correctly called the vinegar fly, is a frequent visitor to ripe fruit in households around the world, where it often deposits eggs on rotting flesh without being noticed. We have probably all consumed different body parts of fruit flies – without any known ill effects.

But the fruit fly is much more than an annoying house guest.

In fact, Drosophila melanogaster has been one of the most important species for science for more than a century.

Were it not for these flies, some of the most significant scientific discoveries might never have been made.

The origin of the fruit fly

The species has its origins in the woodlands of south-central Africa, where it relied heavily on the marula fruit. This fruit was – and remains – part of the human diet in this region too, leading to fruit flies developing an association with human communities and settlements.

In time, this association would lead to fruit flies first spreading throughout Africa, then into Asia, Europe and – within the past few centuries – North and Central America and Australia.

It is important to distinguish Drosophila melanogaster and its close relatives from the larger and more colourful “true” fruit flies, several of which are found in Australia.

Also called tephritid flies, these attack fruit well before it rots. Millions of dollars have been spent (ultimately unsuccessfully) trying to keep them out of parts of Victoria and South Australia.

Drosophila flies do become hugely abundant in some places, with clouds emerging from heaps of rotting fruit in wineries, stone fruit orchards and banana plantations during harvest. However, these cases are unusual and the fly is rarely considered a pest species.

Inherently suited to science

While most non-pest insects receive little scientific attention, the fruit fly is an exception.

Some of the properties which make fruit flies such a popular research organism are inherent. They are small, easy to feed, have a very quick life cycle and can produce hundreds of offspring.

However, the findings of today’s Drosophila melanogaster researchers also owe a great deal to decades of genetic tool development.

These allow us to create almost any genetic variant we wish. For example, we can modify the sequence of a vinegar fly gene so that the protein it encodes becomes fluorescent. We can even take genes from other organisms and study their effects in fruit flies.

Combined, these factors help explain why the fruit fly has played a major role in four fields of research in particular.

1. Understanding genes

The fruit fly has a long history of use in genetics research and teaching.

It was in Drosophila melanogaster that genes were found to be bundled up in chromosomes, through crosses between red-eyed and mutant white-eyed flies. While this research was conducted more than a century ago, such crosses remain a powerful way of illustrating the principles of inheritance.

The fruit fly also remains a powerhouse for biological discovery. Its genome was sequenced in the 1990s. This was done in part as a trial run for assembly of the human genome, but also to allow for comparisons of genes across animals.

Many vinegar fly genes show clear relationships to specific human genes, including around 65% of genes associated with human diseases. This allows research into processes from embryonic development and disease progression to learning and ageing to be conducted in the vinegar fly.

2. Understanding tissue damage

Animals vary greatly in their capacity to regenerate damaged structures. For example, if you cut certain flatworms in half, both sections can regenerate the rest of the body.

While fascinating, these do not provide a good model for the more modest – but still crucial – human capacity for wound healing. Fruit flies, which like humans are composed of numerous complex tissues, have been crucial in mapping the molecular interactions involved in allowing cells to migrate and stitch together to repair tissue damage.

Perhaps surprisingly given their short lifespan (no more than a few months even under optimal conditions), fruit flies are also a favourite model for cancer research.

They offer alternatives to traditional cell-culture-based methods for evaluating the activity of chemotherapeutic drugs, which cannot reflect the complexities of how a tumour interacts with surrounding tissues, and are especially popular in screening for effective combinations of chemotherapeutic treatments.

3. Understanding disease control

Beyond providing tools and biological understanding applicable to medicine and biology, Drosophila melanogaster has contributed directly to disease control.

Specifically, Wolbachia bacteria isolated from this species are being used to suppress the transmission of dengue disease and other human viral diseases transmitted by mosquitoes.

A strain of Wolbachia living inside the tissues of fruit flies and passed from mother to offspring was transferred through microinjection to Aedes mosquitoes.

The Wolbachia bacteria interact with viruses in such a way as to prevent viral build-up in the salivary gland of the mosquitoes.

This work has already prevented many cases of dengue transmission in northern Australia and in many countries overseas.

4. Understanding evolution

Finally, fruit flies provide useful experimental systems for investigating evolution, particularly in the context of threatened species conservation.

This work has established the value of maintaining genetic variation in threatened species to preserve their ability to evolve and counter the effects of disease and climate change. Fruit fly populations in the field are currently being tracked to see if the species is adapting to the warmer and drier conditions we are experiencing.

So this summer, look carefully at your fruit bowl and see if you can spot a small yellow-brown insect flying around it.

Then remember all the ways Drosophila melanogaster has contributed to our well-being. Perhaps admire it rather than reaching for that can of fly spray.

Ary Hoffmann receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Caitlyn Perry receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. ‘One of the most important species for science’: how the humble fruit fly transformed 4 fields of research – https://theconversation.com/one-of-the-most-important-species-for-science-how-the-humble-fruit-fly-transformed-4-fields-of-research-241368

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Ludewig, Professor and Head of the School of Humanities, The University of Western Australia

About 20 minutes’ drive north of Geraldton, on Australia’s west coast, lies a hill named Mount Sommer. The little peak is one of the few relics left behind by the enigmatic nineteenth-century polymath Dr Ferdinand von Sommer, Western Australia’s first government geologist.

In the span of four years, von Sommer made a few friends, several enemies and a handful of surprisingly excellent maps of parts of Western Australia. His origins, life and career have been rather shrouded in mystery – in no small part because of the flood of disparaging invective about him published in local newspapers of the day.

So who was Ferdinand von Sommer? I traced his story through archival records in Europe, Africa and Asia. In the process of documenting von Sommer’s life and activities, I uncovered a multi-talented, self-assured and audacious individual whose talents and achievements have been largely forgotten.

Mathematics, medicine and minerals

Born in the Netherlands circa 1800, von Sommer studied mathematics at the University of Göttingen under the famous Carl Friedrich Gauss. After graduating in 1822, he claimed to have solved some complex problems in mathematics, but Gauss and others found his results confusing and unsatisfactory.

After serving in the Dutch navy and making a living as a writer and journalist, von Sommer worked as a university lecturer in Berlin. In 1838, he trained as a doctor and set out for India as a missionary before spending a year in Cape Town as a doctor.

Back in London in 1841, von Sommer reappeared as a “Prussian naturalist” named Frederic de Sommer. His efforts to sell an apparently sizeable art collection made news in several European papers.

It was at this time that von Sommer became interested in mineralogy and metallurgy. In 1842, he returned to Berlin to lecture in nautical science and the art of mine surveying. He also published several works of fiction, poetry, autobiography and philosophy in this period.

In late 1844 he set out for New Zealand, where he stayed briefly before heading on to South Australia, arriving in Adelaide in September 1845.

Copper and libel in Adelaide

Von Sommer arrived during Australia’s first mineral boom: the “Burra Copper Boom” (1845–51). The fast-growing Burra Burra copper mine in the Clare Valley, 100km north of Adelaide, attracted thousands.

An eyewitness later recalled von Sommer’s arrival:

dignified by a moustache and distinguished by a palpable want of familiarity with the English language, in virtue of which qualifications he was duly installed as assayer, smelter, and superintendent at the Burra Mine.

Von Sommer was a vocal critic of local mining practices, and made few friends. After only a few months he was dismissed as “too costly to retain”.

Von Sommer remained in South Australia, working as a doctor. However, he was widely derided in the local papers.

One described him as “a German, who had been occasionally mixed up in mining speculations, but lately had not followed any fixed calling”. The criticism reached such a pitch that von Sommer even (successfully) sued John Stephens, the editor and proprietor of the South Australian Register, for libel.

Surveying and ‘backbiting’ in Western Australia

Next stop for von Sommer was Perth, working for the Western Australian Mining Company.

Here he received a more welcoming reception, described as “a mineralogist of eminence” who would help the colony’s attempt at “sharing in the mineral wealth of Australia”.

After six months surveying in Western Australia (during which he once again vocally criticised local mining methods, proposing instead a “proper and practical way of mining”), von Sommer was appointed the first government geologist.

Throughout 1847 he travelled around Western Australia, sending several geological survey reports back to Perth.

During this time von Sommer suffered more of what he called “rather stupid backbitings” in local newspapers. One described him as “a mere charlatan”.

When von Sommer finally had enough, shipping out to what is now Jakarta in August 1848, one paper reported that

Dr von Sommer had quitted Western Australia for Batavia after some queer doings in the way of pretended mineral research and discovery.

Now employed by the Dutch government, von Sommer set out to search for copper deposits on Timor and the surrounding islands. Here, after an unknown illness, he died in 1849.

Parts of von Sommer’s Australian legacy are now found in London. He sent several letters to the Geological Society of London, including maps, and a paper tracing a coal field near the head of the Irwin River, as well as several specimens of rocks and shells.

Postscript

I found a strange postscript to von Sommer’s story. In the late 1850s, German-language newspapers reported with great interest the adventures of a man impersonating Ferdinand von Sommer (perhaps his youngest son, born in the early 1840s, who would have had no personal memory of his father).

Police reported “an alleged Doctor of Philosophy, Franz Wilhelm Ferdinand von Sommer, who was unable to prove that he had lawfully obtained the title of Doctor, just as he was unable to prove that he was entitled to hold the title of nobleman”.

He had “swindled a considerable sum of money from his benefactress, the convent mistress of Renoault [and] squandered this money at the Schandau baths and other places of amusement” in the company of a 17-year-old girl with whom he had co-habited in the spa town.

The impostor was “sentenced to three years in prison and a fine of 500 thalers”, but managed to escape when he “was granted leave of absence from prison for some time due to illness […]. Now he has been arrested in Frankfurt am Main after committing new frauds there”.

And with that the name of Ferdinand von Sommer fades from the historical record, waiting to be rediscovered.

Alexandra Ludewig 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. Genius or charlatan? The strange tale of a 19th-century polymath who left a trail of controversy across colonial Australia – https://theconversation.com/genius-or-charlatan-the-strange-tale-of-a-19th-century-polymath-who-left-a-trail-of-controversy-across-colonial-australia-242292

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Konstantine Panegyres, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, researching Greco-Roman antiquity, The University of Melbourne

Imagine a summer holiday at a seaside resort, with days spent sunbathing, reading books, exploring nature and chatting with friends.

Sounds like it could be anywhere in Australia or New Zealand in January, doesn’t it?

This is also how the Roman emperor Julian spent his summers in the 4th
century CE. Towards the end of 357 CE, Julian wrote a letter to his friend Evagrius, telling him how he spent his holidays at his grandmother’s estate as a boy and young man:

Very peaceful it is to lie down there and glance into some book, and then, while resting one’s eyes, it is very agreeable to gaze at the ships and the sea.

When I was still hardly more than a boy I thought that this was the most delightful summer residence, for it has, moreover, excellent springs and a charming bath and garden and trees.

As Julian got older, though, he had less time for summer holidays. Work consumed him. Even when he was on a break, he couldn’t fully relax.

This might sound familiar, too. It seems very little has changed from the days of the ancient Greek and Roman empires when it comes to finding time to unwind – and being on holidays, too.

Finding time for a break

Taking time off was important in ancient Greek and Roman times. Even Greek and Roman slaves were permitted to take a few holidays each year.

Not everyone could enjoy their holidays, however.

In 162 CE, Marcus Aurelius, then emperor of Rome, took four days of holiday at a resort in Alsium, a city on the coast of modern-day Italy.

According to his friend Marcus Cornelius Fronto (c. 95-166 CE), though, the emperor could not stop working. In a letter, Fronto criticises Marcus for continuing to work hard rather than sleeping in, exploring the seaside, rowing on the ocean, bathing and feasting on seafood.

Fronto amusingly says that Marcus, rather than enjoy his holiday, has instead “declared war on play, relaxation, good living, and pleasure”.

Going to the seaside

Relaxing by the coast was one of the things people in ancient Greece and Rome most enjoyed doing in the summer.

The rich built summer residences on the coast, while people of all walks of life flocked to seaside resorts to enjoy the fresh air and cool water.

The orator Libanius (314-393 CE) wrote that the people who really enjoy life the most are those who have the freedom to “drive to their estates, visit other towns, buy land, and visit the seaside”.

Health tourism was also a popular reason why people came to the seaside. Many ancient doctors recommended sea water and air as cures for all kinds of health problems, especially those related to the skin and respiratory system.

For example, the doctor Aretaeus of Cappadocia (c. 150-200 CE) recommended bathing in sea water, wrestling on sand and living by the sea as therapies for those who get frequent headaches.

Travelling abroad

Visiting foreign places was another of the things people in ancient Greece and Rome most enjoyed doing on their summer holidays.

For the Romans, trips to see Greece – and in particular Athens – were especially popular.

The Roman general Germanicus (15 BCE–19 CE) went on a tour of Greece in 18 CE, travelling from Athens eastward to Euboea, Lesbos, the coast of Asia Minor and then to Byzantium and Pontus.

According to the Roman historian Tacitus, Germanicus was motivated by a desire to see famous ancient sites. Like many Romans, he was fascinated by the old stories of the Greek past, so he was “eager to make the acquaintance of those ancient and storied regions”.

Another popular destination for ancient Greeks and Romans was Egypt, which had always been regarded as a land of wonder.

Roman tourists could catch regular boats from Puteoli to the great Egyptian city Alexandria. The trip took anywhere from one to two weeks, stopping along the way in Sicily and Malta.

Once there, the highlights were typically the great Nile River and Pyramids. Tourists marvelled at the immense temples and walls of hieroglyphic writing.

When Germanicus visited Egypt in 19 CE, he was so curious about the meaning of the hieroglyphics that he asked an old Egyptian priest to translate some for him.

In Alexandria, another attraction was the tomb of Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE). His body was stored in honey in a coffin made of glass. Ordinary tourists were not allowed to visit it, but VIPs like Roman emperors were.

Tourists might also have enjoyed the different vibe in Alexandria. According to the Greek orator Dio of Prusa (c. 40-110/120 CE), the atmosphere in the coastal city was relaxed, with plenty of music, chariot racing and good food.

Lazy summer days

We can probably all relate to what the writer Pliny the Younger (61/62-112 BCE) said about his summer break.

Writing on a holiday in Tuscany, he said he can only work “in the lazy way to be expected during a summer holiday”. Working any other way was simply not possible. Many of us will be able to relate to that!

Konstantine Panegyres 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. Summer holidays haven’t changed much since ancient Greece and Rome (except maybe the sand wrestling) – https://theconversation.com/summer-holidays-havent-changed-much-since-ancient-greece-and-rome-except-maybe-the-sand-wrestling-243367

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Francesca Storey, Deputy Director Te Tātai Hauora o Hine – National Centre for Women’s Health Research Aotearoa, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

After committing to a global plan to eliminate cervical cancer, New Zealand is lagging behind Australia and other countries in how it manages this preventable disease.

Each year approximately 175 New Zealanders are diagnosed with cervical cancer and 55 people die from it.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the cause of 95% of cervical cancers and some throat and anal cancers. New Zealand has a very effective vaccine against this cancer. And HPV screening can detect changes on the cervix before cancer occurs.

With vaccination and screening it is now realistic to aim to eliminate cervical cancer in our lifetime – but it requires a strategy and investment.

Global goals

The World Health Organization’s global elimination strategy for cervical cancer rests on three targets:

• 90% of girls fully vaccinated with the HPV vaccine by the age of 15
• 70% of women screened using a high-performance test (for example, HPV testing) by the age of 35 and again by the age of 45
• 90% of women with pre-cancer treated and 90% of women with invasive cancer managed.

But to achieve this in Aotearoa New Zealand, there needs to be a commitment from the government to develop and resource an elimination strategy.

This is not currently happening. And, despite some advances, women continue to die.

The rise in self-testing

HPV self-testing was introduced as part of the national screening programme in September 2023. Testing for the virus provides 60-70% greater protection against developing invasive cervical cancers compared with cervical cytology (the “smear” – involving a speculum examination by a trained provider).

It is such good a test that following a negative result (and no symptoms) another test is not needed for five years.

Switching to HPV-testing has potential to reduce the annual number of cervical cancers by 15%. Women can do the test themselves and, under the new scheme, 80% are choosing self-testing.

There has also been a high uptake from never-screened or under-screened women. This is important because more than 85% of our cervical cancers occurred in those not regularly screened.

Before the introduction of the HPV self-test, just 67.1% of eligible people were up to date with their screening. Over the past year this has increased to 70.8% – reaching the WHO target. However, coverage for Māori remains below – increasing from 56.3% to just 61.9%.

Low vaccination rates

While screening coverage has increased to 70.8% overall, New Zealand’s HPV vaccination coverage is low (45-60%) – nowhere near the 90% target, which Australia is close to.

Australia is set to become the first to achieve elimination, after the government committed A$48.2 million to support their national elimination strategy and its implementation.

HPV vaccination is an essential pillar of cervical cancer prevention.

A recent study found no cases of cervical cancer in a cohort of girls immunised between the age of 12 and 13 (born between 1996 and 1998) in Scotland’s school-based vaccination programme. But there were cases of cervical cancer in the unvaccinated group.

More work needed

Champions, researchers, clinicians and whānau campaigned and contributed to our new (albeit overdue) HPV cervical screening programme. But more action is needed.

This is particularly the case as funding for healthcare is cut back.

To achieve the elimination goals we have committed to, three things need to happen:

1. Free cervical screening (unlike breast and bowel screening, New Zealand’s cervical screening programme not fully-funded).
2. A cervical cancer elimination strategy with dedicated funding.
3. Boosting HPV vaccination uptake.

It’s essential everyone is included to achieve elimination. The WHO global targets – set to address the differential burden of cervical cancer between countries – fail to address the rights of Indigenous peoples to be counted within the elimination targets. Within-country inequities may remain hidden as a country can claim elimination based on data that doesn’t separate different ethnic groups.

Countries, including Aotearoa New Zealand, need to meet elimination targets for all women.

Aotearoa has the tools (HPV self-testing, vaccination and treatment for cell changes) to make elimination for all a reality. But without an equitable strategy or funding to drive progress, the end of cervical cancer for New Zealanders will not be as close or as equitable as it should be.

Bev Lawton receives funding from The Health Research Council of New Zealand and the Ministry of Health. She is a member of the National Cervical Screening Programme Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee and a member of the National Cervical Screening Programme Advisory and Action Group.

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

– ref. The elimination of cervical cancer in NZ is within reach in our lifetime – but not without funding and a plan – https://theconversation.com/the-elimination-of-cervical-cancer-in-nz-is-within-reach-in-our-lifetime-but-not-without-funding-and-a-plan-242690

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Moscova, Adjunct Associate Professor, Anatomy, UNSW Sydney

Throughout recorded history, our hair and nails played an important role in signifying who we are and our social status. You could say, they separate the caveman from businessman.

It was no surprise then that many of us found a new level of appreciation for our hairdressers and nail artists during the COVID lockdowns. Even Taylor Swift reported she cut her own hair during lockdown.

So, what would happen if all this hair and nail grooming got too much for us and we decided to give it all up. Would our hair and nails just keep on growing?

The answer is yes. The hair on our head grows, on average, 1 centimeter per month, while our fingernails grow an average of just over 3 millimetres.

When left unchecked, our hair and nails can grow to impressive lengths. Aliia Nasyrova, known as the Ukrainian Rapunzel, holds the world record for the longest locks on a living woman, which measure an impressive 257.33 cm.

When it comes to record-breaking fingernails, Diana Armstrong from the United States holds that record at 1,306.58 cm.

Most of us, however, get regular haircuts and trim our nails – some with greater frequency than others. So why do some people’s hair and nails grow more quickly?

Remind me, what are they made out of?

Hair and nails are made mostly from keratin. Both grow from matrix cells below the skin and grow through different patterns of cell division.

Nails grow steadily from the matrix cells, which sit under the skin at the base of the nail. These cells divide, pushing the older cells forward. As they grow, the new cells slide along the nail bed – the flat area under the fingernail which looks pink because of its rich blood supply.

A hair also starts growing from the matrix cells, eventually forming the visible part of the hair – the shaft. The hair shaft grows from a root that sits under the skin and is wrapped in a sac known as the hair follicle.

This sac has a nerve supply (which is why it hurts to pull out a hair), oil-producing glands that lubricate the hair and a tiny muscle that makes your hair stand up when it’s cold.

At the follicle’s base is the hair bulb, which contains the all-important hair papilla that supplies blood to the follicle.

Matrix cells near the papilla divide to produce new hair cells, which then harden and form the hair shaft. As the new hair cells are made, the hair is pushed up above the skin and the hair grows.

But the papilla also plays an integral part in regulating hair growth cycles, as it sends signals to the stem cells to move to the base of the follicle and form a hair matrix. Matrix cells then get signals to divide and start a new growth phase.

Unlike nails, our hair grows in cycles

Scientists have identified four phases of hair growth, the:

1. anagen or growth phase, which lasts between two and eight years

2. catagen or transition phase, when growth slows down, lasting around two weeks

3. telogen or resting phase, when there is no growth at all. This usually lasts two to three months

4. exogen or shedding phase, when the hair falls out and is replaced by the new hair growing from the same follicle. This starts the process all over again.

Each follicle goes through this cycle 10–30 times in its lifespan.

If all of our hair follicles grew at the same rate and entered the same phases simultaneously, there would be times when we would all be bald. That doesn’t usually happen: at any given time, only one in ten hairs is in the resting phase.

While we lose about 100–150 hairs daily, the average person has 100,000 hairs on their head, so we barely notice this natural shedding.

So what affects the speed of growth?

Genetics is the most significant factor. While hair growth rates vary between individuals, they tend to be consistent among family members.

Nails are also influenced by genetics, as siblings, especially identical twins, tend to have similar nail growth rates.

But there are also other influences.

Age makes a difference to hair and nail growth, even in healthy people. Younger people generally have faster growth rates because of the slowing metabolism and cell division that comes with ageing.

Hormonal changes can have an impact. Pregnancy often accelerates hair and nail growth rates, while menopause and high levels of the stress hormone cortisol can slow growth rates.

Nutrition also changes hair and nail strength and growth rate. While hair and nails are made mostly of keratin, they also contain water, fats and various minerals. As hair and nails keep growing, these minerals need to be replaced.

That’s why a balanced diet that includes sufficient nutrients to support your hair and nails is essential for maintaining their health.

Nutrient deficiencies may contribute to hair loss and nail breakage by disrupting their growth cycle or weakening their structure. Iron and zinc deficiencies, for example, have both been linked to hair loss and brittle nails.

This may explain why thick hair and strong, well-groomed nails have long been associated with perception of good health and high status.

However, not all perceptions are true.

No, hair and nails don’t grow after death

A persistent myth that may relate to the legends of vampires is that hair and nails continue to grow after we die.

In reality, they only appear to do so. As the body dehydrates after death, the skin shrinks, making hair and nails seem longer.

Morticians are well aware of this phenomenon and some inject tissue filler into the deceased’s fingertips to minimise this effect.

So, it seems that living or dead, there is no escape from the never-ending task of caring for our hair and nails.

Michelle Moscova receives funding from NHMRC, but this funding is not related to the topic of this article.

– ref. Why do some people’s hair and nails grow quicker than mine? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-some-peoples-hair-and-nails-grow-quicker-than-mine-241556

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Myron Zalucki, Professor in Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland

Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) appear to be declining not just in North America but also in Australiasia. Could this be a consequence of global change, including climate change, the intensification of agriculture, and urbanisation?

We need more citizen scientists to monitor what is really going on.

Insect populations, even species that seemed impervious, are in decline globally. Monarch butterflies exemplify the problem. Once a very common species, numbers have declined dramatically in North America, engendering keen public interest in restoring populations.

The monarch butterfly is an iconic species. It is usually the species people recall when drawing a butterfly and observations are shared frequently on the online social network iNaturalist.

This is partly because monarch images are used in advertising, but the butterflies are also a species of choice for school biology classes and television documentaries on animal migration.

Monarchs in the southern hemisphere

The monarch butterfly’s ancestral home in North America is noted for an annual mass migration and spectacular overwintering of adults in fir forests in a few locations in Mexico, at densities of 50 million per hectare, and at multiple sites in Southern California. These sites are monitored to track the decline.

What is not as well known is that this butterfly greatly extended its range, spreading across the Pacific in the mid-1800s to reach Australia and New Zealand by riding on storms that blew in from New Caledonia.

The species is now part of the roadside scene in these countries and was once known as “the wanderer” – reflecting its propensity to fly across the landscape in search of milkweed plants (known as swan plants in New Zealand). In both countries, monarchs lay eggs on introduced milkweed species for their caterpillars to feed and develop. They take up the plant’s toxins as part of their own defence.

Interestingly, in their expanded range in the southern hemisphere, monarchs have adapted their migration patterns to suit local conditions. They have established overwinter sites – places where large numbers of adults congregate on trees throughout winter.

Need for citizen science

In Australia, the late entomologist Courtenay Smithers organised people to report these sites and participate in a mark-recapture programme. Essentially, this involves attaching a small unique identifying tag to the wing, noting the age and condition of the butterfly and the date and location of capture.

If the same individual is then recaptured sometime later and the information shared, it provides valuable data on survival and the distance and direction it moved, and even population size. This volunteer tagging programme enabled many aspects of the monarch’s ecology in Australia to be documented, but it was discontinued a few years ago.

Moths and Butterflies Australasia now hosts the butterfly database and has become an umbrella group for encouraging everyone with a mobile phone to get involved and report and record sightings.

A similar programme is run in New Zealand by the Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand Trust. Monarch overwintering sites and local breeding populations have been documented over the years. Alas, these data sets have been short term and haphazard.

What is intriguing is that populations appear to have declined in Australia and New Zealand, perhaps reflecting climate variability, expanding cities gobbling up local breeding habitats, and the intensification of agriculture.

What we need is reliable long-term data on adult numbers. Hence the call to reinvigorate interest in mark-recapture and reporting. We need the help of people who love the outdoors and love the monarch butterfly to become citizen scientists.

The Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand Trust is asking individuals, groups and schools to tag monarch butterflies late in the autumn when the butterflies head for their overwintering habitat. This is a great project for schools, involving students in real science and addressing an environmental issue.

Each tag has a unique code. A computer system calculates the distance the monarch has flown and the time it took to get there. This information can then be collated with weather data to get a clearer picture of what is happening.

We hope people will spot tagged monarchs in their gardens and record where the butterfly was sighted, together with its tag number.

The author wishes to thank Washington State University entomologist David James and Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand trustee Jacqui Knight for their input, and Australian National University ecologist Michael Braby for comments.

Myron Zalucki 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. Monarch butterflies are in decline in NZ and Australia – they need your help to track where they gather – https://theconversation.com/monarch-butterflies-are-in-decline-in-nz-and-australia-they-need-your-help-to-track-where-they-gather-244384

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Skyllas-Kazacos, Professor Emeritus, School of Chemical Engineering, UNSW Sydney

As more and more solar and wind energy enters Australia’s grid, we will need ways to store it for later.

We can store electricity in several different ways, from pumped hydroelectric systems to large lithium-ion battery systems. We can also use flow batteries. These are a lesser-known cross between a conventional battery and a fuel cell.

Flow batteries can feed energy back to the grid for up to 12 hours – much longer than lithium-ion batteries which only last four to six hours.

I was one of the inventors of one of the main types of flow battery in the 1980s. It has taken decades to bring batteries like these to commercial viability. But they are, finally, arriving in earnest.

This year, the Australian government launched a national battery strategy to expand domestic manufacturing of batteries. This A$500 million strategy will focus on the well-known lithium-ion batteries which power phones and cars. But it will also include flow batteries.

Batteries are becoming more and more important. They can now power cars, houses and even cities. Huge amounts are being spent on commercialising new battery chemistries to electrify transport and make it possible to green the power grid.

To date, most of Australia’s grid-scale batteries use chemistries such as lithium-ion. But as our grid shifts to renewables, we’ll need longer duration storage to eliminate the need for fossil fuel backup generators. That’s a task well suited to flow batteries.

What makes flow batteries different?

Conventional batteries such as lithium-ion batteries store power in their electrodes, commonly a metal.

Flow batteries store power in their liquid electrolytes. Electrolyte solutions are stored in external tanks and pumped through a reactor where chemical reactions take place at inert electrodes to produce energy.

Flow batteries can be altered to suit requirements of a task. You can change how much power you generate (in kilowatts) and how much storage (in kilowatt-hours). If you want more storage, you increase the volume of electrolytes in the tanks.

As you increase storage capacity, the cost per kWh of stored energy decreases dramatically. This is because you only have to add more liquid electrolytes rather than adding entirely new battery packs, as in conventional batteries.

This means flow batteries are currently the cheapest way to store electricity for longer durations (over 8 hours). Unlike lithium-ion batteries, flow batteries can run for tens of thousands of cycles and the electrolyte can last much longer – or even indefinitely. One downside is their weight – these batteries are very heavy and are not portable.

To date, zinc bromine and vanadium redox batteries have undergone the most testing and commercial implementation.

Vanadium flow

In the mid-1980s, my colleagues and I pioneered vanadium redox flow batteries at the University of New South Wales. Vanadium is an unusual metal. It can exist in different states of oxidation in the same solution. That means you can run a battery using just one element, instead of two, as in other chemistries. Doing so lets you avoid cross-contamination and gives the electrolyte solution an indefinite life.

After decades of development, vanadium flow batteries are now being commercially produced by companies in Japan, China and Europe, with several gigawatt hours worth of capacity now installed globally.

China, the world’s largest vanadium producer, has recently approved many large new vanadium flow battery projects. In December, the world’s largest came online in Dalian, China, with 175MW capacity and 700 mWH of storage.

Australia’s first megawatt-scale vanadium flow battery was installed in South Australia in 2023. The project uses grid scale battery storage to store power from a solar farm.

The main challenge to commercialisation has been securing vanadium, which has fluctuated wildly in price and supply due to competing demand from the steel industry.

This is likely to change. Government investment in critical minerals has fast-tracked several new vanadium mines and processing plants. Australia could become a major global vanadium producer in the future. In 2023, Townsville became home to Australia’s first factory producing vanadium electrolyte.

Iron and zinc

Flow batteries can be built from many different chemistries. Two other promising chemistries are iron-iron and zinc bromide.

Iron flow batteries have been under development in the United States since 2011. These cells use iron, salt and water, avoiding the need for vanadium.

In Australia, Queensland-based company ESI Asia Pacific is planning to develop their own iron flow batteries at a new factory in Maryborough once construction is complete in 2026.

While iron is plentiful and cheap, these batteries rely on high purity iron chloride to reduce iron corrosion. This may mean electrolytes cost significantly more than expected. Field testing data is limited to date.

Zinc bromine batteries use a solution of zinc, a metal, and bromine, an element extracted from salt water. The chemistry means each cell has a higher electricity output than other flow batteries, but it comes with a challenge – finding ways to stop the growth of tree-like dendrites inside the cell, which can disrupt energy production or trigger short-circuits.

Battery-powered future?

Creating a larger Australian battery industry will take time and funding. But the demand for batteries will skyrocket globally in coming years, across the electricity and transport sectors.

As we work to electrify road transport, we will see demand for electricity increase as well as demand for the lithium-ion batteries now ubiquitous in electric vehicles.

As a major producer of lithium, Australia could also manufacture lithium batteries too, for domestic use or export. To compete globally, we would need to embrace automation.

Despite different chemistries, flow batteries share many common components which could be made locally and boost energy self-sufficiency. Flow batteries have long required time consuming and expensive manual assembly. But it’s now possible to automate assembly lines, which will cut costs and make Australian-made batteries better able to compete. My colleagues and I are working on this challenge at present.

Within a decade, Australia could become a globally competitive battery maker and exporter of critical minerals. Doing so would help the shift to clean energy, both domestically and around the world.

Maria Skyllas-Kazacos works for UNSW Sydney and consults for/owns shares in mineral company Tivan. She receives funding from various government funded projects including the Trailblazer for Recycling and Clean Energy and the ARC Research Hub for Integrated Energy Storage Solutions, which has the industry partner Northharbour Clean Energy. She no longer owns any patents for vanadium flow battery technology.

– ref. Australia needs better ways of storing renewable electricity for later. That’s where ‘flow batteries’ can help – https://theconversation.com/australia-needs-better-ways-of-storing-renewable-electricity-for-later-thats-where-flow-batteries-can-help-245570

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christine McCarthy, Senior Lecturer in Interior Architecture, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

New Zealand’s first jail was a simple affair, just a symmetrical four-roomed log building, built in 1840 at Okiato in the Bay of Islands, not far from present-day Russell.

But its history – especially the bits that have been forgotten – tells us a lot about how we have framed our colonial past, particularly in relation to architecture.

Typically, New Zealand’s earliest non-Māori buildings were depicted as having a direct lineage with imperial Britain. As one of our earliest architectural histories (written by Christchurch architect Paul Pascoe and published for the 1940 centennial) put it: “Our architecture derived from England.”

But as my recent research has found, this isn’t the whole story. In fact, it obscures another important strand of New Zealand’s early development, which reveals how the evolving colony wanted to see itself.

‘Little more than shacks’

At the time the first jail was built, Okiato was the colony’s administrative capital, close to Kororāreka which Governor William Hobson renamed Russell.

The building consisted of two windowless cells, with a central kitchen and a back room for the jailer. It was located in a yard surrounded by a three-metre-high log wall, and was built by men from the 80th Regiment at a cost of £420.

Architectural historian John Stacpoole (1919–2018) described it as one of a series of buildings that were “little more than shacks”, and on the surface it doesn’t sound terribly special. There was no Victorian grandeur that might be typical of a civic building, and it wasn’t built of brick or stone as English prisons were at the time.

And there was a reason for this. The jail was designed in the Colonial Architect’s office in New South Wales. As such, it was a direct import from Australia’s convict system.

Most New Zealanders probably think of their country at that time as a British colony. But before it became its own distinct colony, Britain extended the boundaries of the colony of New South Wales to include New Zealand.

This arrangement lasted almost a year, but is often forgotten or overlooked. Partly this is because considerable effort was put into distancing New Zealand from the convict “taint” of Australia’s penal colonies.

Australian designs

There is further confusion over the jail’s designer. The architect usually credited is William Mason (1810–97), who was employed by the New South Wales Colonial Architect’s office before arriving in New Zealand.

Mason is better known for buildings such as Government House in Auckland (1856), All Saints Church in North Dunedin (1865) and the Stock Exchange Building in Dunedin (1868, demolished in 1969).

But the Okiato jail design wasn’t one of Mason’s. It was actually a standard plan designed by Ambrose Hallen, also from the Colonial Architect’s office.

Hallen’s time as colonial architect from 1832 to 1835 coincided with a government policy of territorial sprawl in New South Wales, which included building more judicial and penal infrastructure.

The policy required the design of what Australian prison historian James Kerr has called the “basic plan”. This was adapted across state as a watch house, a lockup and a jail for more than half a century.

An example is the Goulburn Plains design, which incorporated a timber weatherboard courthouse straddling the stockade surrounding its log jail. Another version added a room for the jailer behind the kitchen’s fireplace. It was this design Mason had built at Okiato.

How and when history is told

The forgotten influence of the New South Wales Colonial Architect’s office on New Zealand’s earliest prison architecture surely relates in part to the building’s apparently rudimentary nature.

Simple log buildings fit with a pioneering, frontier myth of transience and impermanent architecture. This sits at odds with the sophisticated skills already evident in 1840s Aotearoa, including Māori expertise and the craftsmanship of British and US ship carpenters.

But it may also be to do with how we tell the histories of our colonial architecture. Consistent with Paul Pascoe’s assertion that local architecture “derived from England”, our first jail buildings have perhaps been measured against English prison architecture and found inadequate.

But the jail at Okiato was not a makeshift one-off – a deliberately designed structure that links the young colonies of New South Wales and New Zealand in ways that help us understand our early European history.

Alas, it no longer exists. After ten months, Hobson left Okiato and established a new capital at Tāmaki Makaurau-Auckland. References to the jail suggest it operated until about 1844.

The Okiato jail might not have loomed large in New Zealand’s architectural histories, but the story of its origin is nonetheless a useful one. It’s a healthy reminder that history has a complex relationship with “the truth”, so we need to constantly reexamine it.

Christine 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. Unlocking the past: how NZ’s first jail tells a complex story of colonial identity – https://theconversation.com/unlocking-the-past-how-nzs-first-jail-tells-a-complex-story-of-colonial-identity-244745

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Noor Gillani, Digital Culture Editor

You’re standing at the centre of an expansive art gallery, overwhelmed by what’s in front of you: panel after panel of stupendous works – densely-written labels affixed next to each piece. These labels may offer a window into the artist’s intention, or the social and historical context of the work.

Without any background information, how do you make the most of your visit? Do you turn to the curatorial wisdom in the accompanying text? Or can the art be experienced just as profoundly, if not more so, without any external guidance?

We asked five experts – and their answers suggest art may be witnessed in as many wide and varied ways as it is created.

– ref. Is it important to read the explanatory labels next to artworks? We asked 5 experts – https://theconversation.com/is-it-important-to-read-the-explanatory-labels-next-to-artworks-we-asked-5-experts-243694