Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marina Reeves, Professor, The University of Queensland

Every year, more than 20,000 Australians – mostly women – are diagnosed with breast cancer. If you’re one of them or know someone who is, the great news is that 92 out of every 100 women will survive for five years or more after their diagnosis.

But women are often surprised by the life-altering side effects from their cancer treatment that can continue for years after, such as pain and fatigue. And many live with the dread of their cancer returning, even after they pass the celebrated five-year survival mark.

So, what can you do to improve your chances of living a longer, healthier life after a breast cancer diagnosis?

1. Stay physically active

Move more and sit less. Ideally, this includes gradually progressing towards and then maintaining about 150 minutes (two and a half hours) of planned, regular exercise a week. This involves a mix of aerobic exercise (such as walking) and resistance exercises (that target specific muscle groups), done at a moderate or high enough intensity to make you huff and puff a bit.

Observational studies show associations between exercise and living longer and prevention of cancer recurrence. And there’s some preliminary evidence from clinical trials to support this too.

Women with breast cancer who exercise and are more active, have better quality of life, strength and fitness, and fewer and less severe side effects during active treatment.

2. Eat a high quality diet

Women with better diets – that include a high intake of vegetables, fruit, legumes, nuts, whole grains and fish – have been shown to live longer after a breast cancer diagnosis than those who have a diet high in refined or processed foods and red meat.

This is due mainly to the benefit of a good diet on reducing the risks of other health conditions, such as heart disease, rather than having a direct effect on the risk of dying from breast cancer.

Many women, particularly older women or those with early stage breast cancer, are actually at higher risk of dying from heart disease than their breast cancer. A high quality diet can help maintain a healthy body weight and heart health.

There has been growing interest in specific diets (such as ketogenic or low-carbohydrate diets) and fasting during cancer treatment. But the most recent guidelines state there’s no evidence yet to say these are of significant benefit.

More research is being done following findings from a 2020 study, which suggested a “fasting mimicking diet” (low calorie, low protein) on the days prior to and of chemotherapy, produced a better response to treatment. However, compliance with the diet was difficult – only one in five women in the study were able to stick to the fasting diet for all their chemotherapy treatments.

3. Maintain a healthy weight

Excess body weight has also been linked to poorer survival after breast cancer diagnosis. But so far there haven’t been any clinical trials to show the opposite: that weight loss following a breast cancer diagnosis can improve survival. Trials are underway to answer this question.

Weight gain is common following breast cancer treatment. The causes for this are complex and carrying extra weight can make some of the side effects of treatment worse. Our recent study of women following breast cancer treatment, found that when they are supported to lose a modest amount of weight (5% of their body weight), they improved their physical quality of life and reduced their pain levels. They also reduced their risk of heart disease and diabetes.

Read more:
Cancer in the under 50s is rising, globally – why?

Besides these well-established tips, a small body of research suggests two more behaviours, related to our body clock, can impact health after a breast cancer diagnosis.

4. Get good sleep

Disrupted sleep – common among women with breast cancer – can remain for years after your treatment has ended.

Women with breast cancer who regularly struggle to fall or stay asleep at night – compared those who rarely or never – are at greater risk of dying from any cause.

And it’s not just about how well, but also how long you sleep. Sleeping longer than nine hours per night – compared to seven to eight hours – is associated with a 48% increased risk of breast cancer returning. But, studies are yet to tease apart the possible reasons for this. Is increased risk of cancer recurrence a result of sleeping longer or is sleeping longer a consequence of progressing or recurrent disease?

5. Be mindful of when you eat

Preliminary research suggests when you eat matters. Delaying the time between the last meal of the day (dinner or supper) and first meal of the next (breakfast) may help reduce the chances of breast cancer returning.

When women reported fasting overnight for fewer than 13 hours – compared to 13 or more hours – after a breast cancer diagnosis, it was linked to a 36% increased risk of breast cancer coming back. But the study’s authors note randomised trials are needed to test whether increasing the amount of time fasting at night can reduce the risk of disease.

Read more:
Olivia Newton-John gave a voice to those with cancer and shifted the focus to the life of survivors

Small steps to big changes

The World Cancer Research Fund has developed a list of recommendations to reduce cancer risk and reduce the risk of cancer coming back. But our research has found most women aren’t meeting these recommendations after their breast cancer diagnosis. Changing habits after breast cancer can also be harder, mainly due to fatigue and stress.

Starting exercise after treatment can be intimidating and even frightening. It’s a good idea to start small, for example: aim to increase exercise by 10 to 15 minutes each week. Having an exercise buddy really helps and there are lots of exercise programs for people who’ve had breast cancer.

Common questions about exercising after a breast cancer diagnosis include how to avoid the swelling and discomfort of lymphoedema, which develops in about 20% of breast cancer
survivors who have had lymph nodes removed. People also worry about exercise and wig discomfort or irritation from radiation. Specific advice is available.

Similar to exercise goals, rather than striving for a perfect diet, you can aim to eat more vegetables each week.

Sleep can be challenging if you’ve been worrying about a cancer diagnosis or treatment but tips for getting the recommended seven to nine hours sleep each night include exercising earlier in the day, avoiding snacks before bed and good sleep hygiene.

Marina Reeves receives funding from Medical Research Future Fund and World Cancer Research Fund. Marina Reeves has previously received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Caroline Terranova previously received funding from the University of Queensland Research Scholarships.

Kelly D’cunha receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.

Sandra Hayes receives funding from Cancer Council Queensland, Medical Research Future Fund, and Cancer Australia.

– ref. After breast cancer: 5 changes you can make to stay healthy – https://theconversation.com/after-breast-cancer-5-changes-you-can-make-to-stay-healthy-190970

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Beth Rounsefell, Casual Academic, The University of Queensland

Many parents worry about the waste created by disposable nappies.

But while baby nappy waste is well known, there’s a hidden waste stream that our research has found is actually a bigger issue. More adult incontinence products go to landfill than baby nappies in Australia.

Adult incontinence is often underreported and undertreated. The social stigma and lack of access to affordable health support may stop people seeking treatment and instead rely on incontinence products.

As Australia’s population ages, this issue will grow. By 2030, we predict adult incontinence waste will be four to ten times greater than baby nappies. We’ll need to get much better at dealing with the waste issues associated with these products.

Adult incontinence is common and long-lasting

The reason these products will soon outstrip baby nappies is because infants usually only need nappies for a couple of years. By contrast, adult incontinence can stay with you for a lot longer – and it can emerge in many different ways.

How common is adult incontinence? It varies widely. The risk of urinary incontinence increases with age, and women experience higher levels of incontinence compared to men across all age groups. Women over 60 experience the biggest issues, with an estimated 30% to 63% of women over 65 living with some degree of urinary incontinence.

It’s common for people to manage their incontinence with single-use absorbent hygiene products, an umbrella term for incontinence products for both babies and adults.

Like baby nappies, adult incontinence products are usually made from a combination of natural fibres, plastics, glues and synthetic absorbent materials.

What happens to these products after use varies around the world, and can range from illegal dumping, to landfill, composting or burning in a waste-to-energy plant.

In Australia, both infant and adult products typically end up in landfill. The problem is, when you deposit organic waste in landfill, it gives off biogas (a mix of methane and carbon dioxide) and leachate, a polluted liquid that can leak through the lining at the bottom of landfills.

Some landfills in Australia are equipped with collection systems for leachate and biogas – but not all. Biogas emissions and leachate leaks can still occur even if there are collection systems in place.

Food and garden waste are the main source of biogas and organic contaminants in leachate. While councils look to remove food and garden waste from landfills, our ageing population will contribute more incontinence product waste to them.

Read more:
Why we need to talk about incontinence

Could we divert adult incontinence products from landfill?

Right now, we estimate about half of all adult incontinence products used in Australia end up in landfills without biogas collection.

The European Union has moved to ban disposal of untreated organic waste – including these products – to landfill. Because adult incontinence products usually contain plastics, the EU requires them to be incinerated where possible rather than biodegraded. Australia has no such laws for this waste.

Could biodegradable incontinence products tackle the waste issue? Only if there are systems in place to manage the waste and recover the resources.

A recycling pathway for biodegradable incontinence products could include anaerobic digestion – systems that harness bacteria to take our waste and make useful products such as renewable natural gas and biofertiliser. This waste stream could also be composted, if the temperature rises high enough to kill off any pathogens and recover the resources.

Problem solving

This is only part of the solution. Tackling the stigma around incontinence and ensuring access to affordable treatment options could cut the waste stream.

Encouraging manufacturers to use biodegradable materials for both adult and baby incontinence products could enable resource recovery, provided policies, systems and infrastructure are put in place to divert and process the waste. And while this is happening, it’s important these improved incontinence products are accessible and affordable to people who need them.

The reason disposable baby nappies and adult incontinence products have come to dominate the market is simple: they’re convenient, despite the environmental impact. This is especially true for the quality of life for our ageing population.

As our population gets older, we’ll need to rethink this. Let’s bring the issue into the open and talk about it. And let’s find alternative solutions that give people dignity and a better quality of life – while minimising landfill waste and the impact on our environment.

Read more:
Urinary incontinence can be a problem for women of all ages, but there is a cure

Beth Rounsefell is a Casual Academic at The University of Queensland, and currently works for EDL.

Emma Thompson-Brewster and Kate O’Brien do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Right now, more adult incontinence products than baby nappies go to landfill. By 2030, it could be ten times higher – https://theconversation.com/right-now-more-adult-incontinence-products-than-baby-nappies-go-to-landfill-by-2030-it-could-be-ten-times-higher-191585

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Vardon, Associate Professor at the Fenner School, Australian National University

Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ federal budget next week will for the first time include a section on wellbeing, which aims to measure how well Australians are doing in life.

The wellbeing budget will, among other things, assess the state of our natural places using a set of environmental indicators. But what indicators? And what environmental information should be used?

Getting meaningful environmental measures into the wellbeing budget won’t be easy. And tokenism won’t do.

We need a system providing comprehensive, regular and up-to-date information that can genuinely inform environmental and economic decisions.

An information ‘grab bag’

Australia has, for too long, relied on the five-yearly State of the Environment reports for updates on how our environment is faring, using a grab-bag of information. As the latest report noted:

Australia currently lacks a framework that delivers holistic environmental management to integrate our disconnected legislative and institutional national, state and territory systems, and break down existing barriers to stimulate new models and partnerships for innovative environmental management and financing.

In other words, we cannot get our environmental act together. Our responses to problems are often piecemeal and ineffective. We do not even have the information we need to fix them.

We’re yet to see what environmental information is included in next week’s wellbeing budget.

The Nine newspapers on Wednesday reported that no indicators have been agreed upon as yet, but the budget papers will contain a chapter on methods used in other jurisdictions, such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s long-running wellbeing framework.

Given the dearth of good information, the government must resist the temptation to rely on partial, uninformative or misleading environmental statistics.

These might include the number of listed threatened species (which would be larger if the environment department had been better-resourced) or the extent of the network of protected areas (which is large but significantly under-represents many ecosystems).

There’s no problem starting with what we have. But we must get to what we need.

We could draw inspiration from the giant information and policy apparatus in the public service that helps us track economic progress, and use a United Nations framework called the System of Environmental Economic Accounting (sometimes shortened to SEEA).

Read more:
‘Environmental accounting’ could revolutionise nature conservation, but Australia has squandered its potential

The giant information and policy apparatus

Every day, thousands of public servants work to gauge what the economy is doing and figure out what it means for industry, the government and the public.

Gross domestic product is measured, reported and debated. The Australian Bureau of Statistics releases it to a set schedule, without needing ministerial approval. Good or bad, the data comes out.

Officials from treasury, the finance department and the Reserve Bank pore over the figures. Their analyses and advice are sent to the treasurer, prime minister and cabinet.

If growth is too strong, the Reserve Bank might increase interest rates. If the economy is weak, the government might stimulate it with infrastructure spending.

Compare this to what we have for the environment.

A five-yearly State of the Environment report. In between reports, environmental problems are identified by scientists, environment groups and concerned citizens. Environmental laws are largely reactive. The agencies tasked with responding have limited funding and information.

The result? We consume the environment salami, one slice at a time, without knowing how much is left.

One example is the box-gum grassy woodlands once common across much of southeast Australia. These woodlands were protected under Australia’s most significant environmental law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.

A recovery plan was prepared. But there’s no evidence the plan was delivered and the ecosystem is still no better off.

In his 2020 review of the EPBC Act, Professor Graeme Samuel recommended an overhaul, saying

National Environmental Standards should be immediately developed and implemented to provide clear rules and improved decision-making.

Recognising this couldn’t happen without a system of comprehensive environmental information, Samuel recommended building one including national environmental-economic accounts.

These should be tabled annually in parliament alongside traditional budget reporting.

Samuel’s approach strongly resembles the way governments manage the economy: use regular information to adjust policy settings to stay on trajectory towards desired outcomes.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has hinted she is inclined to follow Samuel, describing his review as “thorough”.

So if environmental management is going to emulate economic management and be informed by the accounts Samuel envisioned, then just what are they?

What is environmental-economic accounting and what’s the UN-backed system?

Environmental-economic accounting is an information system blueprint.

SEEA-based accounts are ready-made to provide information for environmental decision-making, just as the national accounts inform economic decision-making.

This UN-backed system was only completed in 2021, so real-world examples remain few. But one Victorian study shows the potential.

The accounts in the study showed the economic benefit of harvesting Central Highlands native forests for timber were far outweighed by the economic benefit of maintaining the forests for carbon storage and water supply. In other words, the forest is more valuable if you just leave it alone.

Ceasing harvesting would also bring major biodiversity gains. An assessment of all regional forest agreement areas in Victoria gave similar results.

On paper, Australia’s governments in 2018 endorsed the SEEA and adopted a national strategy to implement it.

In practice however, these governments are yet to produce the vision or political will to build a such a system that will actually inform environmental decisions.

Overseas, change is underway. The US, previously a laggard, now has an ambitious strategy to build environmental-economic accounts into their national information system.

An urgent need

Establishing a comprehensive set of environmental-economic accounts is the first step in delivering integrated environmental and economic management.

The United Nation’s System of Environmental-Economic Accounting offers a way forward. Graeme Samuel recommended it. Now government must deliver it. But it will take time and it won’t be cheap.

Early signs are positive but can Plibersek and Chalmers stay the course? Our future depends on it.

Read more:
You probably missed the latest national environmental-economic accounts – but why?

Michael Vardon receives funding from a variety of organisations for the development and application of environmental-economic accounting.

Peter Burnett 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. Our environmental responses are often piecemeal and ineffective. Next week’s wellbeing budget is a chance to act – https://theconversation.com/our-environmental-responses-are-often-piecemeal-and-ineffective-next-weeks-wellbeing-budget-is-a-chance-to-act-188366

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nic Rawlence, Senior Lecturer in Ancient DNA, University of Otago

The impact of deer on Aotearoa New Zealand’s natural environment is never far from the headlines. Most recently, the Southland Conservation Board highlighted the damage the introduced species was doing to native forest on Rakiura Stewart Island.

And despite the government including NZ$30 million for deer and goat control in this year’s budget, the situation remains critical, with considerable disagreement about the best solutions.

The Department of Conservation (DOC) is key to managing deer numbers, but has been strongly criticised by the CEO of the independent Forest & Bird organisation over the climate implications of its wild game animal management framework:

When DOC publishes plans that talk about ‘improving the quality of game animals’ it’s clear they’ve lost their way. Deer, pigs and goats are wrecking native habitats and their stored carbon from the ground up.

On the other side, some hunters and anti-1080 pesticide activists are vehemently opposed to large-scale deer culling.

And central to some of their arguments has been the idea that deer are actually ecological surrogates for extinct moa – large herbivores that control plant growth and keep forests “open”.

But this outdated and false argument ignores the latest evolutionary and ecological research, and misrepresents the current state of scientific evidence. Scientists have made significant progress and now know far more than they did even ten years ago.

Are deer doing what moa did?

Deer were introduced to New Zealand from the mid-19th century as a way to make hunting for food accessible for all. Not long after that, however, conservationists became increasingly concerned about the damage the species caused.

Hunters then became worried deer were going to be controlled or eradicated, and came up with the ecological surrogate theory to justify additional releases. Some have even illegally introduced deer into areas where they had previously been eradicated or where only one species existed.

Moa had a population density of two to ten individuals per square kilometre (of about 0.5 to 2.5 million moa), broadly similar to deer (three to 15 individuals per km²). But this doesn’t mean the two had similar impacts simply because they were or are herbivores.

Read more:
How did ancient moa survive the ice age – and what can they teach us about modern climate change?

The latest evidence shows unequivocally deer are nothing like moa, with completely different ecological impacts.

Moa were more ecologically friendly and unique – the product of 58 million years of evolution. While the ancestors of moa arrived in New Zealand just after the extinction of the dinosaurs, molecular dating suggests the latest evolutionary radiation of moa dates to the past six to seven million years. The nine moa species were ecologically segregated and in tune with their environment due to millions of years of co-evolution with plants.

Deer are not. They eat bare the forest “understorey” (plants beneath the canopy growing on or near the forest floor), including the insulating layer of leaf litter. Deer can eat to near extinction the plants moa browsed, which now only survive in inaccessible areas.

Deer and climate change

Deer browsing pressure also contributes to climate change through CO₂ emissions from trees they kill, which release carbon as they rot, and by preventing forest regeneration that locks in carbon.

Moa had uniquely shaped beaks for cutting, minimising inter-species competition. Deer have teeth and a prehensile tongue to twist and pull plants into the mouth.

The moa digestive system was basic, whereas deer are ruminants and can extract energy from non-palatable foods like bark. Moa had a significantly more diverse diet than deer, including plants that evolved anti-browsing defences that discouraged browsing by moa. Not enough evolutionary time has elasped for New Zealand plants to evolve defences against deer browsing.

Read more:
Nation-building or nature-destroying? Why it’s time NZ faced up to the environmental damage of its colonial past

This indicates that prehistoric forest understories were more diverse and lush – not the open, sparse ones with little regeneration that deer create.

Moa played a role in the dispersal of brightly coloured fungi and the spread of native forest. Deer disperse exotic fungi that help spread wildling pines. Native fungi don’t survive passage through the deer gut.

Moa dissipated their weight through two large feet with splayed toes. Deer trample the forest floor through four small hoofed feet.

Deer have no natural predators, whereas moa had Haast’s eagle and Eyles’ harrier.

Moa bred slowly, whereas deer are boom and bust species. Female red deer reach sexual maturity at two years. Moa took up to nine years to reach adult body size, and probably longer for sexual maturity.

Solving the deer problem

Despite the misinformation, deer are pests causing irreversible damage to remaining ecosystems. But there is not yet the social licence for deer to be included in the Predator Free 2050 plan, which aims to eradicate rats, mustelids and possums.

We need to reframe the ecological damage deer are doing to taonga species and the food web those plants are part of. (This includes the danger of farmed deer escaping.)

If eradication isn’t palatable, consideration must be given to a compromise solution of confining deer to areas of least conservation concern, with drastically reduced populations.

Where those areas are, and whether hunters might pay to shoot deer there (with revenues going back into conservation), could be part of that discussion.

Read more:
NZ is home to species found nowhere else but biodiversity losses match global crisis

Alternatively, deer carcasses from hunting could be left to rot, returning nutrients to the soil, despite arguments this is a waste of food. Forests are already struggling with climate resilience, not helped by the human-induced decline and extinction of seabirds that once brought nutrients in from the sea.

And the use of deer repellents in 1080 drops to control pests needs to be revisited. The pesticide can be highly effective, with up to 90% of local deer populations eradicated in some areas.

Above all, we need to ask what native forests require to be healthy and remain carbon sinks, and how this is monitored. Deer control or eradication policy needs to be timely, evidence-based and not shrouded in misinformation.

Nic Rawlence receives funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand.

– ref. Despite the myth, deer are not an ecological substitute for moa and should be part of NZ’s predator-free plan – https://theconversation.com/despite-the-myth-deer-are-not-an-ecological-substitute-for-moa-and-should-be-part-of-nzs-predator-free-plan-187840

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Hamilton, Visiting Fellow, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Economics is confusing at the best of times. But, at the moment, it’s downright counter-intuitive.

Inflation is at its highest in decades, and we’re feeling the pain of the lower real wages that brings. Meanwhile, unemployment is its lowest in half a century, with virtually anyone who wants a job able to get one.

Interest rates are climbing sharply. Home prices are sliding, yet rents are taking off. The United Kingdom is on the brink of financial crisis. Talk of a global recession is everywhere.

Even if you don’t much mind what’s happening (you mightn’t be much affected or you might in fact be benefiting in some way), you’re likely finding it hard to come to grips with it all. Certainly, our policymakers are.

It began with the pandemic

The first thing to understand about what’s happening is that it can’t be divorced from the pandemic.

Two years ago, early in the pandemic, Australia went into recession for the first time in 30 years.

And what an unusual recession it was. It was sharp, but rather than following the collapse of a speculative bubble or a downturn in the business cycle, it followed years of perfectly sustainable, if weak, economic performance.

It’s worth recalling a few things. Australia handled the public health side of the pandemic better than most. That meant that, although sharp, the collapse in economic activity was less severe than decision makers anticipated.

Even though generally still employed, Australians were much less able to spend. International travel, dining out, and going out had to be put on hold.

At the same time, Australia put in place one of the largest fiscal and monetary support programs in the world. Interest rates were set to zero and the Reserve Bank used unconventional tools to flood financial markets with money.

JobKeeper and the cash-flow boost for businesses, along with the JobSeeker supplement (and loosened eligibility conditions), cash transfers for government benefit recipients, and A$38 billion in superannuation withdrawals constituted the largest fiscal stimulus in Australian history.

Support that couldn’t be spent

Households and businesses were awash with cash during the pandemic – but with not many places to spend it. Much of that spending was simply delayed.

Without the benefit of hindsight, this shouldn’t be viewed as a mistake. As Australia’s leading monetary economist, Professor Bruce Preston of the University of Melbourne, put it, we took out prudent insurance.

It had been 100 years since the last pandemic of this scale, and it was impossible to tell just how bad things would get. It was safer to do too much than too little.

But just as insurance comes with a premium, so too does too much stimulus. Once the economy reopened, too much money chasing too few goods and services would only end in one way: higher prices.

This has been exacerbated by supply chain constraints, some simply the result of switching the global economy off and on and others resulting from the effect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on global commodity prices.

Then the floodgates opened

The trouble with high inflation is that we can’t count on it solving itself. It is true that higher prices cut real wages, choking off spending and helping dampen prices. But it is also true that they can feed higher inflation expectations, which do the opposite.

If people expect high inflation they’re more likely to bring forward purchases simply because they expect prices to rise. And workers demand higher wages, and businesses higher prices, in anticipation of the higher prices they will themselves face in future.

In this way, inflation can become self-reinforcing and thus harder to arrest. That’s why monetary (interest rate) policy and fiscal (government tax and spending) policy have been rapidly tightened across the world – to ensure a temporary episode of high inflation doesn’t become entrenched.

It looks as if this has already occurred in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe. It’s not yet clear whether it will happen in
Australia.

The loose monetary policy across the world through the 1970s provides a lesson for what not to do in a situation like this. It took a decade, well into the 1980s, to get inflation under control.

Nothing is worse for real wages and living standards than high inflation. Ask those living in Argentina and Turkey where purchasing power is sinking.

Ideally, policymakers would have seen inflation pressures building and begun to tighten settings sooner and more gradually. The later the reaction, the sharper it has to be – and the more damaging the economic consequences.

Australia’s Reserve Bank was slow off the mark, months behind the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and a month behind the US Federal Reserve. It’s hard not to see that as complacent.

Read more:
The RBA has got a lot right, but there’s still a case for an inquiry

And Australia’s federal government continued to hold its foot on the gas long after the bank started to hit the brakes – with massive additional stimulus irresponsibly committed to by both sides of politics during the May election.

And we’ve seen no action yet from our new government on inflation. It is hard to tell what it is waiting for – perhaps next week’s budget.

Its messaging isn’t helping. The treasurer’s constant references to a “dangerous” global economy is irresponsible at a time of fragility – he needs to remember he is the treasurer now – his words can have a real effect on outcomes.

And the Reserve Bank’s traditionally poor communication hasn’t gotten any better. It pivoted at this month’s board meeting, halving the rate of increase in interest rates, but failed to clearly explain the reasoning in its accompanying statement.

Recession or not, it’ll be a bad couple of years

The word “recession” is unhelpfully binary. Economists don’t even agree on its definition. In an unusual situation like a pandemic, or post-pandemic, its meaning is even emptier.

One thing we do know is that global economic growth, including growth in Australia, will be far slower over the coming two years than we expected mere months ago.

We overestimated the global economy’s ability to smoothly rebound from the pandemic. And we didn’t anticipate Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Read more:
Global recession is increasingly likely. Here’s how Australia could escape

Australia can be expected to fare better than most countries. It is less exposed to the energy price shocks than Europe and the United Kingdom, and to some degree, being a big energy exporter, benefits from high prices.

But there is a lot of uncertainty about China – Australia’s biggest export customer. A sharp downturn there, precipitated by something like a real estate collapse, would pose a serious risk to the Australian economy.

It’s important to note that the problems we are facing are likely to be temporary.

While nobody has a crystal ball, it seems reasonable to expect a return to something resembling normal, with our old rate of economic growth resuming within a couple of years.

Before you know it, we’ll be consumed once more by debates about how to rekindle what was weak growth, weak wages growth, and weak productivity growth – our economic preoccupations before the pandemic struck.

Steven Hamilton 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. Global recession looks likely. Even if Australia escapes it, we are in for a bad couple of years – https://theconversation.com/global-recession-looks-likely-even-if-australia-escapes-it-we-are-in-for-a-bad-couple-of-years-192572

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wendy Hargreaves, Senior Learning Advisor, University of Southern Queensland

We are two female jazz singers, jazz researchers and lovers of jazz. And we have discovered jazz gave us another shared experience – sexism.

We’d both experienced garden variety sexism. Wendy was asked by a male school principal if her recent marriage meant she would resign from teaching to start a family. Melissa received passionate advice from a male audience member to swap her comfortable outfit with a “glamorous dress” when she sang jazz.

But as university music students, neither of us imagined something as innocent as a key signature in a textbook might be a symptom of gender discrimination.

A key tells musicians which set of notes a song uses. In singing, a key affects whether the notes will be sung in the low, middle or high part of the voice.

But when we looked at what keys the “bibles” of jazz standards used, we found a hidden form of sexism.

The Real books

This unusual story begins in 1975 at the Berklee College of Music in the United States. Two music students, tired of reading shoddy, error-filled song sheets, created The Real Book to accurately notate jazz songs. Sold illegally to avoid copyright fees, it was a phenomenal success.

After years in surreptitious worldwide circulation, publisher Hal Leonard transformed The Real Book into a legal edition. In 1988, Sher Music joined the act and produced The New Real Book. Despite similar titles, Sher’s book was unrelated but mimicked the idea of clearly notating jazz songs.

Together the two books cornered the market.

The real books remain the bibles of jazz musicians everywhere because they contain hundreds of songs called standards.

Standards are common jazz songs jazz musicians are expected to know. Knowing them is your ticket to participating in jazz ensembles, and so universities use these books to train students.

However, few educators realise one decision in 1975 about notating standards cemented a practice excluding women.

Jazz is valued as a “conversational” style of music where musicians express personal ideas and real stories. “Authentic” jazz singing is associated with the lower voice we use when speaking.

The human voice is a biological musical instrument coming in a variety of sizes, with the male larynx (or voice box) generally larger than the female. This means men generally sing (and talk) in lower pitches, and keys that sit in the middle of the male voice are usually too low for women to sing.

When our Berklee students and Sher Music notated songs, they chose keys used by jazz musicians. And during that era, male instrumentalists and male singers dominated the jazz community.

So, when the real books were being developed, the editors didn’t choose keys that suited female voices.

Read more:
Women in jazz still face many barriers to success – new research

What’s in a key?

Our research examined the recordings of 16 renowned female jazz vocalists, including Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan.

We sampled 20 songs from The Real Book and 20 songs from The New Real Book and compared the keys in the books with the keys of the female recordings.

Less than 5% of 248 recordings fully matched the printed key.

If women sing songs straight from The Real Book or The New Real Book, they are likely to be singing too low for their voices. And if they shift the male key up one octave, it will be too high.

Consequently, female jazz vocal students are disadvantaged. If they comply with the keys of the iconic texts, they won’t sound as “authentically jazz” as male students. The male voice will produce the conversational tone we have come to expect from jazz; the female voice will be too low or too high for this conversational style.

The female professional singers we studied transposed the standards to keys that suited a jazz style. But this skill takes time for students to learn. Transposing requires understanding music theory and having confidence to advocate for your needs as a singer.

Experienced jazz singers inevitably acquire these skills, but what about novice female singers?

For many young female singers, their introduction to jazz is coloured by keys ill-suited to their voices. Place them in a band where the instrumentalists are predominantly male with little understanding of voice production, and it is an uncomfortable situation for aspiring singers.

Fortunately, technology has advanced to a point where many standards are available on phones and can be transposed instantly. But this won’t happen until music teachers and jazz musicians understand and respect female singers by using the appropriate keys.

So, can a key signature be sexist? Yes, it can when it’s presented as the only choice of key for female students learning jazz standards.

It’s time to update our jazz bibles with sources including keys used by Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, and acknowledge sexism has been hiding in the strangest place.

Read more:
Male artists dominate galleries. Our research explored if it’s because ‘women don’t paint very well’ – or just discrimination

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

– ref. We studied the ‘bibles’ of jazz standards – and found sexism lurking in the strangest place – https://theconversation.com/we-studied-the-bibles-of-jazz-standards-and-found-sexism-lurking-in-the-strangest-place-189553

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wendy Stone, Professor of Housing & Social Policy, Centre for Urban Transitions, Swinburne University of Technology

Private rental housing provides homes, often long-term homes, for one in four Australian households. People can experience various forms of discrimination when seeking, living in or leaving a rental property, and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples it’s another one of many barriers they face. Our new research presents their views about what needs to change in Victoria’s private rental sector.

Discrimination in the private rental market disproportionately affects households that include Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander people. Of these households, 34.2% (120,245 households) rented privately at the time of the 2021 census. This is related to other housing issues they experience, including lower rates of home ownership.

For the report launched today by the Victorian government, we investigated the systemic barriers Aboriginal Victorians face in the private rental market. We heard about many problems, but also possible solutions.

Read more:
Racism is still an everyday experience for non-white Australians. Where is the plan to stop this?

A colonial context

The private rental sector is a product of, and fixed within, our colonial past. It reflects a capitalist agenda of economic priorities, which treats housing as a financial investment. Thus, it is disconnected from the inherent cultural connections of Aboriginal peoples.

This disconnection emerges from a broad lack of understanding and awareness of Aboriginal culture and its role in society today. For Aboriginal Victorians, we found the need and desire to feel culturally safe in seeking private rental housing is at odds with the nature of the sector.

How was the research done?

The research stemmed from the recommendations of the Victorian Aboriginal Housing and Homelessness Framework, Mana-na woorn-tyeen maar-takoort. It is part of longer-term Victorian government consultation with Aboriginal peoples across the state.

Indigenous research methodologies informed the research – in particular, the use of yarning with Aboriginal participants. Research yarning privileges their story-telling and perspectives. Their experiences and perspectives informed the research.

We analysed findings and stories using the structure of the “Renter’s Journey”. It breaks down the renting process into eight stages: values and goals; need arises; searching; applying; securing; moving in; living; change.

We looked at each stage to identify both barriers and opportunities for change. Using a housing aspirations approach, we explored policy priorities shared by study participants.

Our research used four main methods:

1. reviews of existing evidence and approaches

2. yarning circles with 26 representatives of Aboriginal housing-related organisations across Victoria

3. yarns with 12 professionals who do work related to private rental housing and Aboriginal tenancies

4. yarns with 19 Aboriginal Victorians with lived experience of the sector.

What did the research find?

For Aboriginal Victorians, barriers arise at every stage of the Renter’s Journey, due to prejudice, discrimination and structural disadvantage. A homelessness and community housing services officer told us:

You get the occasional overt comment, but it’s predominantly a hidden, quite insidious perspective that they have against renting to Aboriginal people. So, yeah, it’s difficult.

Barriers are highest at the point of rental access. In some cases, real estate agencies were reported to have asked prospective tenants about their Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander status. These tenants saw this as inherently discriminatory and unnecessary. As another housing professional said:

You shouldn’t be faced with the choice of ‘am I or aren’t I an Aboriginal person’ when I’m making an application for private rent.

The entire process came with anxiety. A tenant told us:

If you actually talk to a lot of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, they’ll tell you […] it’s an anxiety, it’s this thing of an overwhelming feeling that comes when they know that the only option they have is to go into private rental, because there’s nothing else available. They’re sick of couch-surfing, they’re sick of living in overcrowding, so they become overwhelmed just by the before, thinking about what the process is going to be. Am I going to be facing this? Is this going to be a challenge? Is this going to be a barrier? Am I going to have enough for this? Or am I going to have enough for the bond? […] Is the real estate [agent] and the owner going to accept an application from an Aboriginal person?

Support workers and professionals we spoke with identified discriminatory practices. These intersected with other barriers such as discrimination on the basis of low income, having lived in social housing, being a single parent, or having pets.

Read more:
Why public housing is stigmatised and how we can fix it

Another tenant told us:

I’ve applied for many places […] I was in a private rental for two years and, yeah, I applied for over a hundred rental properties, and all was not approved. Because of my income, because I’m on Centrelink, because I didn’t have previous rental history with a real estate; just those certain barriers, yeah. My income was a major factor as well.

Our report documents how systemic barriers lead to poor or unsafe housing outcomes, ongoing affordability issues and homelessness.

Read more:
We identified who’s most at risk of homelessness and where they are. Now we must act, before it’s too late

What are the possible solutions?

We asked participants what could be done to reduce barriers. Many suggested increased collaboration between Aboriginal-controlled organisations, government services and real estate agencies. This would help overcome the cultural disconnect between Aboriginal renters and the system.

Increasing rental assistance payments to reduce poverty was seen as essential.

Specific solutions also included:

• making processes more transparent by, for example, giving tenants access to residential tenancy databases to help counter discrimination in shortlisting applications

• cultural training for the real estate industry

• more mentoring and support for prospective and current renters

• Aboriginal-owned-and-managed private rental agencies, an idea that participants welcomed.

Initiatives such as Aboriginal Private Rental Access Programs (APRAP) and related support are a promising bridge to better housing for Aboriginal Victorians.

Our report provides cause for concern, but also optimism. Government and industry responses to this research can open the way to more connected, positive pathways.

It is highly likely the discriminatory barriers we found in Victoria are Australia-wide. Private rental can only form a significant and positive part of Aboriginal people’s housing futures where doors are open and access to housing is culturally safe and assured.

Wendy Stone receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Housing for the Aged Action Group / The Wicking Trust, Kids Under Cover and has previously received funding from Homes Victoria. This article is based on research funded by the Victorian Consumer Policy Research Centre / Office of the Commissioner for Residential Tenancies, Victorian Government.

Andrew Peters has previously received funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, and is a current board member of Oonah Health & Community Services Aboriginal Corporation in Victoria, from where some of the research participants were recruited. This article is based on research funded by the Victorian Consumer Policy Research Centre / Office of the Commissioner for Residential Tenancies, Victorian Government.

Piret Veeroja receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Housing for the Aged Action Group, Kids Under Cover and has previously received funding from Homes Victoria. This article is based on research funded by the Victorian Consumer Policy Research Centre / Office of the Commissioner for Residential Tenancies, Victorian Government.

Zoe Goodall receives funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, has previously received funding from Homes Victoria, and is in receipt of an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. This article is based on research funded by the Victorian Consumer Policy Research Centre / Office of the Commissioner for Residential Tenancies, Victorian Government.

– ref. Think private renting is hard? First Nations people can be excluded from the start – https://theconversation.com/think-private-renting-is-hard-first-nations-people-can-be-excluded-from-the-start-192392

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Andrew, Professor, University of Sydney Business School, University of Sydney

The Optus data breach, which has affected close to 10 million Australians, has sparked calls for changes to Australia’s privacy laws, placing limits on what and for how long organisations can hold our personal data.

Equally important is to strengthen obligations for organisations to publicly disclose data breaches. Optus made a public announcement about its breach, but was not legally required to do so.

Read more:
A class action against Optus could easily be Australia’s biggest: here’s what is involved

In fact, beyond the aggregated data produced by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, the public is not made aware of the vast majority of data breaches that occur in Australia every year.

Australia has had a “Notifiable Data Breaches” scheme since February 2018 that requires all organisation to notify affected individuals as well as the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner in the case a breach of personal information likely to result in serious harm.

However, no notification is required if the organisation takes remedial action to prevent harm. Most importantly, public disclosure is never required.

This gives a lot of discretion to organisations. They can make their own assessment about the risks and decide not to disclose a breach at all.

Companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) are also obliged to disclose any data breach expected to have a “material economic impact” on a company’s share price. But it is notoriously difficult to measure material economic impact. So these announcements are not a reliable source of information for the public.

Notified data breaches

While the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme is a step in the right direction, it’s impossible to know if the disclosures made reflect the scale and scope of data breaches.

The most recent Notifiable Data Breaches Report, covering the six months from July to December 2021, lists 464 notifications (up 6% from the previous period).

Of these, 256 (55%) were attributed to malicious or criminal attacks, and 190 (41%) to human error, such as emailing personal information to the wrong recipient, publishing information by accident, or losing data storage devices or paperwork. Another 18 (4%) were attributed to system errors.

The sectors that reported the most breaches were the health care service (83 notifications); finance (56); and legal, accounting and management services (51).

About 70% of all incidents reportedly affected fewer than 100 people. But one event affected at least a million people. Despite the scale, the public has not been provided details of these events, or the identities of the organisations responsible.

Regardless of the scale or reason, all data breaches have an impact on people and organisations. Despite this, we rarely learn about anything other than the most spectacular and most criminal of these events.

Without mandatory disclosure, there is insufficient public accountability.

How should minimum disclosure work?

A minimum disclosure framework should include information about the type of data breached, the sensitivity of the data, the cause and size of the breach, and the risk-mitigation strategies the organisation has adopted.

The framework should require both a standardised public announcement when any significant data breach occurs, as well as a mandatory annual public report of data breaches. Reports and announcement should be published on the company’s website (just like an annual report) and filed with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Read more:
Optus says it needed to keep identity data for six years. But did it really?

This would ensure public access to a coherent historical record of breach-related events and organisational responses. The disclosures would allow community groups, regulators and interested parties to analyse breaches of our data and act accordingly.

At its simplest, a mandatory disclosure framework encourages annual disclosures that are comparable and publicly available. At the very least it creates opportunities for scrutiny and discussion.

Jane Andrew received funding from the Australian Research Council to study organisational data breach disclosure practices.

Max Baker received funding from the Australian Research Council.

Monique Sheehan 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. After the Optus data breach, Australia needs mandatory disclosure laws – https://theconversation.com/after-the-optus-data-breach-australia-needs-mandatory-disclosure-laws-192612

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elisabeth Vogel, Postdoctoral research fellow, UNSW Sydney

Some of Victoria’s most important agricultural regions are among the areas worst hit by severe floods inundating the state this week.

This may lead to food shortages and higher supermarket prices for milk, fruit, vegetables and other farm products. Indeed, about 20% of Victoria’s milk is produced in flood-affected regions, and millions of litres now may be lost.

For farmers, the floods will certainly be devastating. Over the last five years, Australian farm businesses have faced a relentless string of extreme events, from drought to unprecedented bushfires.

Now, floods are destroying crops, drowning livestock or damaging equipment and infrastructure. Indirect impacts also flow from road closures and electricity outages that can severely interrupt farm operations, damaging products and harming animal welfare.

Farmers face a multitude of challenges in future. Climate change is projected to lead to more frequent severe floods, as well as other climate extremes such as heatwaves and drought. How do farmers adapt to these changes and how can governments support them?

How floods damage farms

Some of the areas hardest-hit by current flooding are in northern Victoria, including Shepparton, Rochester and Echuca – some of Victoria’s most important growing regions.

The damage floods inflict on farms can last long after the water has receded. Farm activities may be interrupted by water-logged soils for days or weeks. Fertile topsoil also can be lost due to water erosion, potentially leading to long-term yield declines.

Livestock can also be harmed. For example, the 2019 flood in Queensland killed hundreds of thousands of cows. Surviving, flood-affected livestock can suffer long-term health conditions, including parasites and bacterial infections, and this has big implications for animal welfare and farm productivity.

The indirect impacts of flooding on farm businesses can be equally harmful. For example, when roads are blocked, agricultural products cannot be transported to processing facilities or retailers.

Power outages also mean many Victorian farmers cannot milk their cows, or must dispose of milk that cannot be transported to processing sites in time. This may lead to large losses for producers and higher supermarket prices for consumers.

Farms and climate change

Floods are just the beginning. Farmers face a range of climate extremes, which are becoming more frequent and severe with time. Over recent decades, global warming has shifted Australia’s climate towards higher temperatures and lower winter rainfall, posing significant challenges for farmers.

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, winter rainfall in the southeast of Australia has declined by 12% since the late 1990s, and 16% since 1970 in the southwest of Australia. Combined with streamflow declines across southern Australia, this has reduced soil moisture and the amount of water available for irrigation.

In fact, changes in climate between 2001 and 2020 (relative to 1950 to 2000) have reduced annual average farm profits by an estimated 23%, according to modelling by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES). The most severe impacts have been seen in south-western and south-eastern Australia.

Even more challenging have been the observed changes in climate variability and extremes, such as increases in the risk of bushfires or severe flooding. These are less predictable and more difficult to adapt to than relatively gradual changes.

One of the biggest challenges for agricultural businesses and the Australian community are increasing risks of compounding climate extremes. These involve multiple climate hazards happening at the same time, in the same location or in connected regions – or multiple climate extremes happening in short succession.

Such compounding events can overwhelm the capacity for farmers, emergency services and the broader community to cope.

The extremes of the last five years are a clear example. Severe drought in 2017-2019 was followed by the devastating bushfires in 2019-2020, before three consecutive flooding years due to La Niña.

The drought, for instance, caused wheat production in 2018-2019 to drop to its lowest level since 2008 (down by 16% compared to the previous financial year), and rice and cotton production were down by 90% and 56%.

Climate change is projected to further increase the severity and frequency of many types of climate extremes, depending on global greenhouse gas emissions. Australia will be particularly affected, as hotter temperatures and less rainfall will make parts of Australia more arid.

It’s important to note that such extremes poses significant threats to the mental health of farmers and rural communities.

Research this year, for example, investigated drought and mental health in Australia’s rural communities. It found that each year on average, 1.8% of suicides among rural working-age men could be attributed to drought. Under the driest future climate change scenario, this will increase to 3.3%.

What can farmers do to adapt?

Australian farmers are experienced in managing climate variability and extremes, and continuously adapt to changes by modifying current farm management practices to reduce risks. These strategies include:

• adjusting planting and harvest dates
• modifying their use of irrigation, such as by upgrading irrigation equipment to more efficient systems
• using minimum tillage practices (soil turnover) to reduce soil erosion and increase water retention
• adjusted livestock management, such as providing shade and cooling for livestock during heatwaves
• optimising the application of fertilisers.

Farmers also adapt by diversifying their farms. For example, they might transition from purely cropping to mixed crop-livestock farming.

Another important way farmers can adapt to extremes is by using forecasting information. Farmers make use of a wide range of weather and commodity price forecasts to prepare for the season ahead. This includes the Bureau of Meteorology’s seasonal climate and water outlooks, ABARES’ agricultural outlook and forecasting information provided by state departments and agricultural consultancies.

New climate information services that are more specific to the needs of agricultural managers have become available. Still, more research is needed to further improve and tailor forecasts, to help farmers make better decisions and manage the risks of climate extremes.

Government support is also crucial to help Australian farmers adapt to climate change. Another important area where governments can provide valuable support is by funding research and development into adapting agricultural production and supply chains.

Read more:
Floods in Victoria are uncommon. Here’s why they’re happening now – and how they compare to the past

A good example is the Future Drought Fund, which supports research and innovation to enhance drought preparedness in the agricultural sector.

But ultimately, the most important way to cope with future climate change is by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Until we reach net-zero emissions globally, the planet will continue to warm and climate extremes will become more likely and more severe in many regions.

Elisabeth Vogel 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. Farm floods will hit food supplies and drive up prices. Farmers need help to adapt as weather extremes worsen – https://theconversation.com/farm-floods-will-hit-food-supplies-and-drive-up-prices-farmers-need-help-to-adapt-as-weather-extremes-worsen-192731

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Madeleine Hale, PhD Candidate in Free Speech, Democracy and Social Media, Deakin University

Recently, when scrolling through TikTok – purely for research purposes of course – we paused on a video “spilling the tea” (that means sharing the goss) on the hottest new social media app, BeReal.

As social media researchers and teachers of Gen Z university students, we try to stay current with the latest trends. BeReal is a refreshing change from curated feeds – however, as with most new social media platforms, free speech issues may lurk just around the corner.

A collection of mundane photos

Self-described as “not another social network” by French founders Alexis Barreyat and Kévin Perreau, BeReal is the anti-Instagram version of Snapchat, where users are encouraged to be “real” and “authentic”.

Once a day, BeReal users receive a notification with a strict deadline of two minutes in which to post an unfiltered photo of themselves, in all their pyjama-clad, Netflix-watching glory. Or engaging in whatever activity that makes up most of our days – studying, working, running errands, making dinner.

The end result is a feed of mundane photos of friends (or strangers found through the Discovery feature) that is equal parts liberating and comforting. It reminds us most people’s lives are just as ordinary as our own, and a refreshing change from the highly curated social feeds we usually see.

As a fledgling app still in its honeymoon phase, with little scrutiny to date, BeReal is yet to see significant public scandals. For now, the app may just be a fun way for young people to connect.

Read more:
Social network BeReal shares unfiltered and unedited moments from our lives – will it last?

But, as researchers examining the interplay between social media and free speech, we can imagine free speech issues on the horizon for BeReal, whose vague terms of use give the company a high degree of discretion over content moderation.

We’ve seen this before on platforms like Facebook, which has been accused of censorship by deleting Black Lives Matter protest content and the iconic “Napalm Girl” photo.

Free speech tensions in this area are fraught. While social media companies are often accused of unwarranted censorship, they also face significant pressure to limit harmful content like hate speech on their platforms.

Just days ago, TikTok, Twitter and Instagram rushed to remove anti-Semitic content shared by Ye (formerly known as Kanye West). Now the rapper has pledged to buy so-called “free speech” app Parler as a reaction against his deplatforming.

Read more:
Parler: what you need to know about the ‘free speech’ Twitter alternative

Meanwhile, the proposed banning of TikTok in the US due to data security concerns has been met with claims of free speech violations from critics, such as free speech organisation Article 19.

Terms of use with little guidance

For the more recent BeReal, free speech may become an issue if it attracts more nefarious uses. So far, the app’s terms of use encourage users to report “illicit or inappropriate” content while shirking liability as a mere “hosting company” rather than an actual publisher of content.

The terms also require users not to post any “content of a sexual and/or child pornographic nature, [or material] calling for hatred, terrorism, violence in general or against a group of people in particular, inciting others to endanger themselves or provoking suicide”.

While this is in line with content policies on other social media platforms, problems potentially remain for free speech.

Firstly, BeReal’s terms provide little guidance on what constitutes this undesired content, leaving the platform with a high degree of discretion as to what content can be censored.

Secondly, although BeReal reserves the right to “remove or temporarily or permanently suspend access” to violating content, it is not clear whether users will receive warnings prior to content removal, what breaches will trigger which disciplinary actions, and whether there are any avenues of appeal available to users.

Censorship would be easy

Imagine, for example, that a BeReal user with many followers posts an image of police using unreasonable force to arrest a person at a protest. BeReal might delete the content for depicting violence. Yet images such as these can often constitute speech.

Free speech laws usually only prevent censorship by governments rather than companies – some academics have called this into question amidst the unprecedented power of social media companies to censor speech online.

With this in mind, we should be concerned material on BeReal could be removed without explanation, warning, transparency or avenue for appeal.

Consumers should be concerned about the sweeping discretion social media companies like BeReal have over so much of our speech. In addition to independent oversight, greater regulation and a code of conduct, we should demand clearer avenues of appeal and greater transparency regarding content moderation decisions from all social media platforms.

BeReal is currently not much more than a gallery of the mundane, and as such, these may not be pressing issues. Especially if the app is a passing fad, which it may well prove to be.

But with all eyes on Meta, TikTok and Twitter, smaller companies can fly under the radar. We always need to be ready to protect speech in the next potential “marketplace of ideas”.

Read more:
Why the business model of social media giants like Facebook is incompatible with human rights

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

– ref. Millions of users are flocking to the BeReal app – but it may pose free speech issues – https://theconversation.com/millions-of-users-are-flocking-to-the-bereal-app-but-it-may-pose-free-speech-issues-192629

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Kang, Associate Professor, University of Sydney

Anal sex means different things to different people. A broad definition is: a sexual practice involving an object (such as a penis, finger, dildo or other sex toy) going into a person’s anus.

If you’re someone who’s interested, curious or super keen to try anal sex but are wondering whether you should have any special prep, here are a few facts and tips.

Pleasure or pain?

The skin and tissues in the genital and anal region are highly sensitive – they are packed with nerve endings that respond to touch. So touching or licking this part of the body can be very pleasurable. But like any sexual activity, the experience of pleasure is highly variable – one person’s pleasure can be someone else’s pain. What feels great once, can be very different next time.

How we experience, and enjoy or not enjoy, any sexual encounter depends on our mood, attraction, interest in sex in that moment, tiredness, relationships, the context in which sex is occurring, and many other factors.

Read more:
‘I always get horny … am I not normal?’: teenage girls often feel shame about pleasure. Sex education needs to address this

Who’s doing it?

Anal sex between a person with a penis and a person with a vagina seems to be on the rise in Australia. In the last national survey about sex and relationships, 24.9% of men and 19.3% of women said they had had heterosexual anal intercourse (which was defined as a penis going into the anus).

This was a significant increase compared to the national survey ten years prior (20.0% of men and 15.1% of women). These findings mirrored surveys from other countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom.

These trends may be due to increased experimentation, seeing heterosexual anal sex depicted in pornography, and more “liberal attitudes” to sexuality. It’s also possible people are just more comfortable answering “yes” to the question on surveys.

Some doctors in the UK have said there should be more medical discussion around this sexual practice, particularly with women.

Read more:
Like Grand Designs but naughty: Netflix’s How To Build A Sex Room brings kink and sex positivity into the mainstream

The low down – slow down

The anus is a very different piece of equipment compared to the vagina. It’s at the end of the anal canal, which is the 3–4cm canal between the rectum and the anus. The rectum is the final part of the large intestine.

The anal canal has two muscle sphincters, which are ring-shaped muscles. The external or outer sphincter is at the anus and is the one that you consciously relax when opening your bowels. In contrast, the vagina is a muscular, elastic tube but its opening is not controlled by a sphincter in the same way as the anus.

So, compared to the vagina, putting an object into the anal canal can take more time, as the receiving person will need to consciously relax their outer anal sphincter. It can be very helpful to start having anal sex with a fingertip, then a whole finger, and then two or three before even trying to put a penis inside.

Using a sex toy such as a small butt plug can also be a good introduction to anal sex, as they can help you get used to having a small object inside your anal canal, before moving onto bigger things.

No lube, no play

While the vagina has an inbuilt mechanism for self-lubrication when blood flows into the pelvis (aka “getting aroused”), the anal canal and rectum don’t.

Lubricant should be on your checklist of essentials before anal sex. The skin around the anus and the lining of the anal canal and rectum can be damaged with microtears and abrasions if there isn’t sufficient lubrication between the object being inserted and these delicate tissues.

Read more:
‘Is it normal to get sore down there after sex?’

Do I need to do any other prep?

A common question or worry people have about anal sex is whether the object going into the anus will end up soiled.

The rectum is the final resting place for faeces before it goes out into the world, and once your rectum is full, you get signals from your brain to empty it. As long as you don’t have those signals, or if you’ve just emptied your bowels, there won’t be a huge amount of soiling, if any, after anal sex. Some people want to “clean out” their anal canal by using enemas or douches before anal sex. This is not necessary, since an empty rectum should be sufficient.

However, there will be invisible or small amounts of faecal matter – so hygiene after anal sex is common sense. For this reason, a golden rule of sexual play is that you don’t put an object into the anus followed by the vagina. Introducing faecal bacteria into the vagina increases the likelihood of a urinary tract infection (cystitis).

Other health considerations

Some sexual practices have higher risks of transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV, and receptive anal sex (anus receiving a penis) carries the highest risk. This is because the microabrasions that can occur allow viruses and bacteria in semen to more easily enter tissues and the blood stream.

Using condoms is a highly effective way to prevent transmission. If you want to have anal sex (or vaginal sex) with a casual or new partner particularly, then having condoms and lube on hand is a no-brainer.

A recent article in the British Medical Journal drew attention to non-STI health problems that can occur with anal sex. These can include anal pain, faecal incontinence (losing control of bowels) and anal fissures. Anal fissures are small tears at the anus which can extend up towards the inner sphincter if they become more severe. They can bleed and cause pain.

So, should you do it?

Anal sex between people of any gender has been around for as long as every other sexual practice. It’s completely fine to be interested in trying it, and it’s also completely fine to feel the opposite way.

Good communication between partners before, during and after sex – about what you each want, what you’re enjoying and not enjoying, and how you feel afterwards, make for a healthier sex life. The additional things to consider with anal sex are a part of caring for yourself and your partner.

Read more:
Friday essay: shifting identities – performing sexual selves on social media

Melissa Kang 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. Anal sex attitudes have changed for hetero partners – what to know before you try it – https://theconversation.com/anal-sex-attitudes-have-changed-for-hetero-partners-what-to-know-before-you-try-it-190066

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Vice-chancellor’s fellow, La Trobe University

The Albanese Labor government’s decision to reverse its predecessor’s recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has elicited a predictable reaction from Israel and its supporters in Australia.

Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid condemned what he described as a “hasty response” to indications in the Australian media Canberra was about to shift ground on recognition of West Jerusalem.

Guardian Australia had noted a change on the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade website.

In Australia, Colin Rubenstein, spokesman for the Australia Israel Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), called the reversal a “pointless own goal”.

This decision by the government is not only deeply disappointing, [it] risks denting Australia’s credibility with some of our closest allies.

Is this true?

The short answer is that it is unlikely Australia’s “credibility” will be harmed by a decision that reinstates what has been, until recently, a status quo policy under successive Labor and Coalition governments.

Rather, the decision announced by Foreign Minister Penny Wong will likely reinforce Canberra’s reputation as a middle power seeking to navigate its way in the shifting sands of Middle East politics.

Importantly, Australia’s neighbours in the region, including principally Indonesia, have welcomed the decision.

The simple fact is Australia has now realigned itself with all its friends and allies, with the exception of the United States, in its decision to again recognise Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital.

Under US President Donald Trump, Washington had diverted from the policy of his predecessors and recognised West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017. The following year, the US embassy was moved there.

The Morrison government then followed the US lead, without moving the Australian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This was a half, or three-quarter, step towards all-out recognition.

Read more:
Morrison’s decision to recognise West Jerusalem the latest bad move in a mess of his own making

Circumstances surrounding Canberra’s precipitate decision in 2018 to recognise west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital are relevant.

That decision coincided with the lead-up to a knife-edge by-election in the Sydney seat of Wentworth, where there is a significant Jewish population. The byelection was called to fill a casual vacancy caused by the resignation from parliament of former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull.

As it turned out, the Morrison government’s decision to overturn what had been settled Australian policy did not yield the desired result. The independent Kerryn Phelps won the seat.

In all of this, history is important.

In the years since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, successive Australian governments, Coalition and Labor, had adhered to a policy of not recognising West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. This decision was made pending final status negotiations on the future of the city.

Until the 1967 six-day war, following Israel’s war of independence in 1948, Jerusalem was a divided city between its west, which is the seat of the Israeli government, and east, then under the control of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

That ended with Israel’s smashing victory over the Arabs in 1967. Israel occupied east Jerusalem, the West Bank, Syria’s Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip until then under Egyptian mandate, and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

In six days, Israel had turned the map of the Middle East upside down.

This was followed by the 1973 Yom Kippur war, in which Egypt sought to wrest back the Sinai from its Israeli occupiers. After making initial inroads along the Suez Canal, Egypt was on the verge of a heavy defeat when America brokered a ceasefire and laid the ground for what became the Camp David Accords of 1978.

This ushered in a cold peace between Israel and Egypt, with Israel withdrawing from virtually all of the Sinai.

In the years since Camp David, repeated attempted by successive American administrations to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians under a two-state formula have failed, even as Israel has continued to settle territory seized in 1967.

Read more:
Moving the Australian embassy to Jerusalem makes sense: here’s why

This is the background to Wong’s announcement that Australia had “reaffirmed’’ its

longstanding position that Jerusalem is a final status issue that should be resolved in any peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian people.

There was a sting in the tail to Wong’s announcement.

I regret that Mr Morrison’s decision to play politics resulted in Australia’s shifting position, and the distress these shifts have caused to many people in the Australian community who care deeply about this issue.

Labor’s own political interests are not absent from this statement. The government holds a swag of seats in western Sydney and north and west of Melbourne where the issue of Palestine is among voter concerns.

Much has been made of the messy way in which the Wong announcement was made. Due to diligent reporting by Guardian Australia, Labor’s pending shift was revealed.

Wong was then put in a position of first denying there had been a change without a cabinet decision, and then making her announcement. This clumsiness should not have happened on such an important policy shift, given the domestic political sensitivities involved.

All of this brings into focus Labor’s guiding policy on the Israel-Palestine dispute.

At its 2018 National Conference and reaffirmed at its 2021 conference, its policy states that a Labor government:

supports the recognition and right of Israel and Palestine to exist as two states within secure and recognised borders

calls on the next Labor government to recognise Palestine as a state

expects that this issue will be an important priority for the next Labor government.

This does not mean Labor will be in any rush to recognise Palestine as a state separate from a full-blown peace process in which a two-state solution becomes a reality. Since there is little chance of that happening in the foreseeable future, Labor’s national conference policy will remain “on the books” as a potential irritant to Israel’s supporters in Australia, but no more than that for the time being.

Tony Walker is a member of The Conversation’s board.

– ref. Australia’s reversal on recognising Jerusalem as Israeli capital is simply a return to status quo – https://theconversation.com/australias-reversal-on-recognising-jerusalem-as-israeli-capital-is-simply-a-return-to-status-quo-192772

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Wilson, Professor of Public Health, University of Otago

The New Zealand parliament is currently considering a new smokefree law to implement key components of the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan.

This plan includes the removal of nicotine from tobacco and a reduction of the number of tobacco retail outlets to ensure a smokefree generation.

Some submissions to the select committee considering the legislation, notably from the tobacco industry, oppose key measures, claiming they would fuel illicit trade in tobacco.

However, findings from our recently published study suggest the level of tobacco smuggling in New Zealand is relatively low. It remained so even after a steep rise in the tobacco excise tax and the introduction of plain packs – both measures the tobacco industry also claimed would increase illicit trade.

For the study, we collected littered tobacco packaging around New Zealand between May 2021 and April 2022. Usually these studies risk over-estimating tobacco smuggling as it is difficult to distinguish whether foreign packs are illicit or brought in legally by visitors.

But we were able to conduct a “natural experiment” during a period when littered foreign packs were very likely to be smuggled because no international tourists and relatively few New Zealand travellers arrived while COVID border restrictions were in place.

Read more:
New Zealand is introducing law to create a smokefree generation. Here are 6 reasons to support this policy

Of 1,590 littered packs and pouches, 36 were foreign (2.3%). Most foreign packs were from China (1.6% of all packs) and South Korea (0.6%), and were found mainly in Auckland and Wellington. When adjusted by population distribution, the estimated national prevalence of foreign packs was 5.4%.

There may also be some use and trade in homegrown tobacco but we suspect this is likely to be modest given its typically rough and unpalatable nature (due to the lack of processing and lack of additives).

Little change over time

The observed level of foreign packs was similar to earlier pack collection studies in New Zealand: 3.2% in 2008/2009 and 5.8% in 2012/2013.

This suggests the size of the illicit market in Aotearoa changed little over a period when tobacco excise tax increased very substantially and plain packaging was introduced.

The New Zealand findings also contrast with a 2010 global estimate for illicit trade in high-income countries of 9.8%. They are also much lower than claims by the tobacco industry.

Will denicotinisation make a difference?

Greatly reduced nicotine levels are a key measure in the proposed smokefree legislation to make cigarettes and other tobacco products non-addictive. This should markedly reduce smoking uptake and encourage quitting or reduced consumption, as people who smoke find these cigarettes and tobacco less satisfying.

The law could temporarily increase illicit tobacco use among some people who don’t quit smoking. However, people who smoke are more likely to switch to vaping (widely and legally available in New Zealand) than turn to the illicit market.

Even if the price of illicit tobacco is only half the current legal price, vaping would still typically be a much cheaper way to obtain daily nicotine.

Read more:
Young non-smokers in NZ are taking up vaping more than ever before. Here are 5 reasons why

The evidence from randomised trials and modelling studies for New Zealand suggests denicotinisation will substantially and equitably reduce smoking prevalence.

Combined with other measures in the Smokefree Action Plan, it should result in a greatly reduced demand for tobacco products, shrinking both the legal and illicit markets.

Tobacco smuggling in context

It is worth considering how society and governments respond to other illicit markets such as the sale of stolen goods, illegal firearms and illicit drugs.

Governments generally don’t abandon control measures like gun registers and sales restrictions or laws that make dealing in stolen goods or hard drugs illegal. Rather, they typically implement measures such as border controls and enforcement directed at dealers to minimise these illicit markets.

Given the potentially dramatic health benefits of smokefree measures such as denicotinisation, opposition on the grounds of illicit trade from the highly conflicted tobacco industry makes a very weak case for abandoning smokefree policies.

A much more logical approach is to strengthen efforts to prevent illicit trade and implement robust monitoring and evaluation of intended (reduced smoking uptake, increased quitting) and possible unintended (increase in illicit tobacco market) outcomes of smokefree policies. That way we can refine policies as necessary.

Read more:
New Zealand’s ‘tobacco endgame’ law will be a world first for health – here’s what the modelling shows us

New Zealand is well-placed to control smuggling

Due to its relative geographical isolation and strong border controls, New Zealand is particularly well-placed to minimise illicit markets.

A recent international study of 160 countries ranked New Zealand the world’s first, equal with Sweden, for controlling tobacco smuggling.

To prevent any potential increase in illicit trade, shipping containers from China and South Korea could be screened at higher levels, with “drug dogs” trained to detect tobacco.

Exaggerated and discredited tobacco industry concerns about illicit trade should not mean key public health measures are abandoned. The appropriate response is to introduce additional enforcement efforts and enhanced monitoring with the full implementation of the Smokefree Aotearoa Action Plan.

Richard Edwards receives funding from government and health NGO funders such as the Health Research Council of New Zealand, the US National Institute of Health and the Cancer Society of New Zealand.

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

– ref. Smoke and mirrors: why claims that NZ’s smokefree policy could fuel an illicit tobacco trade don’t stack up – https://theconversation.com/smoke-and-mirrors-why-claims-that-nzs-smokefree-policy-could-fuel-an-illicit-tobacco-trade-dont-stack-up-191753

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susannah Tye, Group Leader, Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland

Stress is part and parcel of modern life. When we’re on the verge of a new challenge or a significant event, we can experience stress mixed with excitement and a sense of challenge. This form of “good” stress, or eustress, is important for growth, development, and achievement.

However, prolonged stress and overwhelming or traumatic events can negatively impact our health. These forms of “bad” stress – or distress – can make us sick, depressed, anxious and over the long term, increase our risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, dementia and even cancer.

Distress can also affect our ability to fully recover from COVID. Ongoing symptoms for a month or more is referred to as long COVID. Those affected can experience fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath, loss of taste and smell, difficulty sleeping, anxiety and/or depression. For some, these symptoms can last for many months or even years, making it impossible to return to pre-COVID life.

In a Harvard University study published last month, people suffering psychological distress in the lead up to their COVID infection had a greater chance of experiencing long COVID. The researchers found those with two types of distress (depression, probable anxiety, perceived stress, worry about COVID, and loneliness) had an almost 50% greater risk of long COVID than other participants.

So how might distress impact the body’s ability to fight infection?

Read more:
When does COVID become long COVID? And what’s happening in the body when symptoms persist? Here’s what we’ve learnt so far

First, we need to look at inflammation

Inflammation is the body’s way of responding to an infection or injury.

When the immune system encounters a virus, for example, it launches an attack to neutralise infected cells and store a memory of that virus so it can respond faster and more effectively the next time.

Many things can cause inflammation, including bacteria and viruses, injuries, toxins and chronic stress.

The body has many different responses to inflammation, including redness, heat, swelling and pain. Some inflammatory responses can occur silently within the body, without any of these typical symptoms. At other times, inflammation can mobilise energy resources to cause exhaustion and fever.

During inflammation, immune cells release substances known as inflammatory mediators. These chemical messengers cause small blood vessels to become wider (dilate), allowing more blood to reach injured or infected tissue to help with the healing process.

This process can also irritate nerves and cause pain signals to be sent to the brain.

What does distress have to do with inflammation?

In the short term, stress causes the release of hormones that suppress inflammation, ensuring the body has enough energy resources available to respond an immediate threat.

However, when experienced over an extended period of time, stress itself can cause low grade “silent” inflammation. Chronic distress and related mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression, are all associated with elevated levels of inflammatory mediators. In fact, the repeated exposure to mild, unpredictable stress is enough to elicit an inflammatory response.

Pre-clinical (lab-based) studies have shown chronic mild stress can cause depression-like behaviour by promoting inflammation, including activating immune cells in the brain (microglia). When anti-inflammatories were given during the mild stress exposure they prevented depression-like behaviour. However if given after the event, the anti-inflammatories were ineffective.

When inflammation is ongoing, such as with extended periods of distress, the immune system changes the way it responds by reprogramming the immune cells. Effectively, it switches to “low surveillance mode”. In this way, it remains active throughout the body, but downgrades its responsiveness to new threats.

Because of this, the response may be slower and less effective. Consequently, the process of recovery can take longer. For a virus like COVID, it’s possible that prior exposure to distress may similarly impair the body’s ability to fight the infection and increase the risk of long COVID.

Read more:
Stress less – it might protect you from Covid

How might distress affect recovery from COVID?

There is still much to learn about how COVID infection affects the body and how psychological factors can impact clinical outcomes in the short and long term.

COVID has far-reaching effects across multiple body systems, affecting the lungs and heart to the greatest degree, and increasing the risk of blood clotting and stroke.

Because the virus resides within human cells, an immune system switched to “low surveillance mode” as a result of psychological distress may miss early opportunities to destroy infected tissues. The virus can then gain an advantage over the defence (immune) system.

Conversely, distress can suppress the early response, tipping the balance in favour of the invader.

So what can we do about it?

Vaccines work by helping to train the immune system to find the target sooner, giving the immune system the advantage.

Behavioural interventions that improve the ability to cope with stress decrease inflammation and may help to enhance the immune response to COVID.

It’s also important to be aware that exposure to COVID increases the risk of depression, anxiety or other mental health conditions. Knowledge of this two-directional link is the first critical step to improving clinical outcomes.

A lifestyle medicine approach that helps to reduce levels of distress and address mental health symptoms has important downstream benefits for physical health. This is likely to not only be the result of direct effects on the immune system itself, but also through related improvements in health behaviours such as diet, exercise and/or sleep.

Further research is needed to better understand the impact of distress on the immune system, mental health and COVID outcomes, and to highlight ways to intervene to prevent long COVID and support recovery.

Read more:
New cases of severe long COVID appear to be dropping – and vaccination is probably key

Susannah Tye receives funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, Mayo Clinic, Brain Behavior Foundation, TEVA Pharmaceuticals, Deakin University, and The University of Queensland.

– ref. Being stressed out before you get COVID increases your chances of long COVID. Here’s why – https://theconversation.com/being-stressed-out-before-you-get-covid-increases-your-chances-of-long-covid-heres-why-190649

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

In fewer than 250 years, the ravages of colonisation have eroded the evolutionary splendour forged in this continent’s relative isolation. Australia has suffered a horrific demise of arguably the world’s most remarkable mammal assemblage, around 87% of which is found nowhere else.

Being an Australian native mammal is perilous. Thirty-eight native mammal species have been driven to extinction since colonisation and possibly seven subspecies. These include:

• Yirratji (northern pig-footed bandicoot)
• Parroo (white-footed rabbit-rat)
• Kuluwarri (central hare-wallaby)
• Yallara (lesser bilby)
• Tjooyalpi (lesser stick-nest rat)
• Tjawalpa (crescent nailtail wallaby)
• Yoontoo (short-tailed hopping-mouse)
• Walilya (desert bandicoot)
• toolache wallaby
• thylacine

This makes us the world leader of mammal species extinctions in recent centuries. But this is far from just an historical tragedy.

A further 52 mammal species are classified as either critically endangered or endangered, such as the southern bent-wing bat, which was recently crowned the 2022 Australian Mammal of the Year. Fifty-eight mammal species are classed as vulnerable.

Read more:
‘The sad reality is many don’t survive’: how floods affect wildlife, and how you can help them

Many once-abundant species, some spread over large expanses of Australia, have greatly diminished and the distributions of their populations have become disjointed. Such mammals include the Mala (rufous hare-wallaby), Yaminon (northern hairy-nosed wombat), Woylie (brush-tailed bettong) and the Numbat.

This means their populations are more susceptible to being wiped out by chance events and changes – such as fires, floods, disease, invasive predators – and genetic issues. The ongoing existence of many species depends greatly upon predator-free fenced sanctuaries and offshore islands.

Without substantial and rapid change, Australia’s list of extinct mammal species is almost certain to grow. So what exactly has gone so horribly wrong? What can and should be done to prevent further casualties and turn things around?

Up to two mammal species gone per decade

Australia’s post-colonisation mammal extinctions may have begun as early as the 1840s, when it’s believed the Noompa and Payi (large-eared and Darling Downs hopping mice, respectively) and the Liverpool Plains striped bandicoot went extinct.

Many extinct species were ground dwellers, and within the so-called “critical weight range” of between 35 grams and 5.5 kilograms. This means they’re especially vulnerable to predation by cats and foxes.

Small macropods (such as bettongs, potoroos and hare wallabies) and rodents have suffered most extinctions – 13 species each, nearly 70% of all Australia’s mammal extinctions.

Eight bilby and bandicoot species and three bats species are also extinct, making up 21% and 8% of extinctions, respectively.

The most recent fatalities are thought to be the Christmas Island pipistrelle and Bramble Cay melomys, the last known record for both species was 2009. The Bramble Cay melomys is perhaps the first mammal species driven to extinction by climate change.

Overall, research estimates that since 1788, about one to two land-based mammal species have been driven to extinction each decade.

When mammals re-emerge

It’s hard to be certain about the timing of extinction events and, in some cases, even if they’re actually extinct.

For example, Ngilkat (Gilbert’s potoroo), the mountain pygmy possum, Antina (the central rock rat), and Leadbeater’s possum were once thought extinct, but were eventually rediscovered. Such species are often called Lazarus species.

Our confidence in determining whether a species is extinct largely depends on how extensively and for how long we’ve searched for evidence of their persistence or absence.

Read more:
Meet the Lazarus creatures – six species we thought were extinct, but aren’t

Modern approaches to wildlife survey such as camera traps, audio recorders, conservation dogs and environmental DNA, make the task of searching much easier than it once was.

But sadly, ongoing examination and analysis of museum specimens also means that we’re still discovering species not known to Western science and that tragically are already extinct.

What’s driving their demise?

Following colonisation, Australia’s landscapes have suffered extensive, severe, sustained and often compounding blows. These include:

• widespread habitat modification and destruction
• the introduction of invasive predators, such as feral cats, red foxes) and herbivores (European rabbits, feral horses, goats, deer, water buffalo, donkeys)
• toxic “prey” (cane toads)
• intense livestock grazing
• changed fire patterns associated with the forced displacement of First Nations peoples and cultural practices
• climate change
• hunting
• disease.

And importantly, the ongoing persecution of Australia’s largest land-based predator: the dingo. In some circumstances, dingoes may help reduce the activity and abundance of large herbivores and invasive predators. But in others, they may threaten native species with small and restricted distributions.

Read more:
1.7 million foxes, 300 million native animals killed every year: now we know the damage foxes wreak

Through widespread land clearing, urbanisation, livestock grazing and fire, some habitats have been obliterated and others dramatically altered and reduced, often resulting in less diverse and more open vegetation. Such simplified habitats can be fertile hunting grounds for red foxes and feral cats to find and kill native mammals.

To make matters worse, European rabbits compete with native mammals for food and space. Their grazing reduces vegetation and cover, endangering many native plant species in the process. And they are prey to cats and foxes, sustaining their populations.

While cats and foxes, fire, and habitat modification and destruction are often cited as key threats to native mammals, it’s important to recognise how these threats and others may interact. They must be managed together accordingly.

For instance, reducing both overgrazing and preventing frequent, large and intense fires may help maintain vegetation cover and complexity. In turn, this will make it harder for invasive predators to hunt native prey.

Read more:
Don’t underestimate rabbits: these powerful pests threaten more native wildlife than cats or foxes

What must change?

Above all else, we genuinely need to care about what’s transpiring, and to act swiftly and substantially to prevent further damage.

As a mammalogist of some 30 years, the continuing demise of Australia’s mammals is gut-wrenching and infuriating. We have the expertise and solutions at hand, but the frequent warnings and calls for change continue to be met with mediocre responses. At other times, a seemingly apathetic shrug of shoulders.

So many species are now gone, probably forever, but so many more are hurtling down the extinction highway because of sheer and utter neglect.

Encouragingly, when we care for and invest in species, we can turn things around. Increasing numbers of Numbats, Yaminon and eastern-barred bandicoots provide three celebrated examples.

Improving the prognosis for mammals is eminently achievable but conditional on political will. Broadly speaking, we must:

• minimise or remove their key threats
• align policies (such as energy sources, resource use, and biodiversity conservation)
• strengthen and enforce environmental laws
• listen to, learn from and work with First Nations peoples as part of healing Country
• invest what’s actually required – billions, not breadcrumbs.

The recently announced Threatened Species Action plan sets an ambitious objective of preventing new extinctions. Of the 110 species considered a “priority” to save, 21 are mammals. The plan, however, is not fit for purpose and is highly unlikely to succeed.

Read more:
Labor’s plan to save threatened species is an improvement – but it’s still well short of what we need

Political commitments appear wafer thin when the same politicians continue to approve the destruction of the homes critically endangered species depend upon. What’s more, greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets are far below what climate scientists say are essential and extremely urgent.

There’s simply no time for platitudes and further dithering. Australia’s remaining mammals deserve far better, they deserve secure futures.

Euan G. Ritchie is the Chair of the Media and Communications Working Group of the Ecological Society of Australia, Deputy Convenor (Communication and Outreach) for the Deakin Science and Society Network, and a member of the Australian Mammal Society.

– ref. ‘Gut-wrenching and infuriating’: why Australia is the world leader in mammal extinctions, and what to do about it – https://theconversation.com/gut-wrenching-and-infuriating-why-australia-is-the-world-leader-in-mammal-extinctions-and-what-to-do-about-it-192173

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cass Lynch, Postdoctoral research fellow, Curtin University

The Hopetoun Community Resource Centre is a hive of activity this sunny morning in mid-September. It is the height of the Ravensthorpe Wildflower Show, an event that attracts thousands of visitors to small agricultural towns on Western Australia’s south coast each year.

Hopetoun sits on the doorstep of the Fitzgerald River National Park, an ecological wonder and one of 35 crucial Global Biodiversity Hotspots.

The park is also a region of great cultural significance to the traditional custodians of the land, the south coast Noongar people.

This morning’s festival patrons are about to see a cultural presentation 20 years in the making. A songline that has been on a journey away from Country, to the northern hemisphere and back, to be sung in public once again by its people.

I’m a Noongar woman and a member of the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories organisation. The songlines criss-crossing Noongar Country connect us to our ancestors and the powerful knowledges that make us who we are.

These cultural stories are impossible to adequately render in the written word alone. The tones of human voices singing and the thrum and cadence of Country are vital parts of a songline’s impact and perseverance.

Here today the Wirlomin community is sharing the text, song and location of a story nearly lost to us.

Read more:
Google Earth is an illusion: how I am using art to explore the problematic nature of western maps and the myth of ‘terra nullius’

Dwoort Baal Kaat

The Songline is Dwoort Baal Kaat, a tale of hunting dogs who transform into seals, which was told by Noongar man George Nelly to American linguist Gerhardt Laves in 1931.

The story follows a Wirlomin ancestor who takes his dogs and his brother’s dogs out hunting for tucker. This hunter thinks he’ll have lots of luck with so much help, but every time the dogs take down a kwoor (wallaby), kwoka (quokka) or wetj (emu) by the time he catches up there is none left for him. He’s so hungry he sets fire to the dogs, who run away to escape him, fleeing down into the ocean.

The brother who lent his dogs is further down the coast, and he hears his dogs barking. He looks around then out toward the ocean and sees them swimming towards him. When the dogs emerge from the sea they have smooth glossy bodies, tiny ears and stumpy legs. He says “Dwoort Baal Kaat” (“Dog His Head”), then rolls the words together to say “dwoortbaalkaat”: “seal”.

In 1931, Laves recorded south coast Noongar people speaking the Noongar language. He took these field notes back to the United States where they sat unpublished in his lifetime.

In 1985, the Laves estate returned the language documents to Australia. In 2002 the notes were given over to the descendants of those original Noongar speakers, the Wirlomin Noongar community. In 2006, the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories organisation was formed to oversee the consolidation and enhancement of this and other archival material.

Noongar author Kim Scott and others developed the Laves language material in collaborative family workshops, where family members gathered around with pens and butcher paper to activate the stories together.

In 2013, Dwoort Baal Kaat was published in English and Noongar. But this was just the first step. The book didn’t reveal any of the songline locations nor the music associated with them.

Now, on this September morning, Scott narrates the story in front of a multimedia presentation, the public debut of a digital songlines map, following the hunter and the dogs moving across the national park.

Returned to Country

In recent years, workshops have cross-referenced the Laves material with surviving songs and stories.

Up on stage, and as Wirlomin community members move up from the audience to join him, Scott reads the last line of Dwoort Baal Kaat:

Yey, maam dwoort baalap boya nyininy kalyakoorl
Now, man dog they rock sitting/being forever

A photo of a rock formation at East Mount Barren appears on the screen. It is the head and shoulders of a giant, looking down at smaller stone figures: the brother who has turned his head to see his dogs, transformed into seals.

The Wirlomin mob on stage burst into the old song of the dogs leaping through the flames, igniting and fusing story, place, song and people in a way that hasn’t happened for a long time.

This region is infamous for massacre and overclearing. But cultural heritage has still been passed down via oral storytelling from the Elders. Now, the combination of the oral history and the return of Laves’ material means this song can once again be sung on Country.

After the presentation, wildflower show guests and VIPs catch a bus with the Wirlomin mob to the carpark at East Mount Barren. The mob conduct a smoking ceremony and everyone stands in a circle of beach sand and smoke.

Looking up at the head and the seals, the Wirlomin hosts have led their audience to a place where culture, community and landscape intersect to offer a deeper sense of identity and belonging.

The singing of this songline today is just a glimpse of what the appropriate revitalisation and consolidation of Noongar culture can contribute to the wider communities of the southwest.

Read more:
‘Singing up Country’: reawakening the Black Duck Songline, across 300km in Australia’s southeast

Cass Lynch is a postdoctoral research fellow at Curtin University. She is a Wirlomin Noongar woman and a member of the Wirlomin Noongar Language and Stories organisation.

– ref. 20 years in the making: witnessing the _Dwoort Baal Kaat_ songline’s incredible return to Noongar Country – https://theconversation.com/20-years-in-the-making-witnessing-the-dwoort-baal-kaat-songlines-incredible-return-to-noongar-country-191863

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

As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation’s politics team.

In this podcast, Michelle and politics + society editor Amanda Dunn canvass next week’s budget, delivered in grim times for many households and set to slash Coalition programs, making room to implement the Albanese government’s priorities.

On Tuesday the government announced a review of the NDIS, with minister Bill Shorten revealing that between the March budget and now, its projected cost over the next four years has blown out by $8.8 billion. This would bring the scheme’s annual cost to about $50 billion by 2025-26.

The comprehensive review will be led by Bruce Bonyhady, an architect of the scheme, and former senior federal public servant Lisa Paul. It will examine the NDIS’s design, operation and sustainability, as well as how to make it more supportive and responsive for those it assists.

Meanwhile, media reporting this week has exposed rorting and waste in Medicare, although the extent of the problem is disputed, including by the government.

Amanda and Michelle also discuss the new ten-year national plan to address violence against women and children, with its aspiration of ending this violence in one generation.

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

– ref. Word from The Hill: Major review of NDIS, as government reveals multi-billion dollar cost blowout – https://theconversation.com/word-from-the-hill-major-review-of-ndis-as-government-reveals-multi-billion-dollar-cost-blowout-192744

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yu Tao, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies, The University of Western Australia

The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, currently underway in Beijing, is China’s most significant political event in half a decade.

Like the pre-election leaders’ debates in Western democracies, the party congress, held once every five years, provides valuable opportunities for us to learn more about the country’s political leaders and their policies.

It’s unlikely any heated political debate will occur during the congress, as most political arrangements are made behind the scenes beforehand. However, the general secretary’s report to the party congress often sets the tone of what China’s leadership will prioritise in the coming years.

Over the weekend, President Xi Jinping delivered a speech to the congress. In over 104 minutes, Xi summarised the “great achievements” of his first decade as China’s top leader and coined the phrase “Chinese-style modernisation”. He laid out his vision for China for the next five years and beyond, signalling how the country will engage with the world.

Continuity is key

Five years ago, Xi’s report to the previous party congress indicated China would become a more assertive shaper of international orders.

Many foreign policy narratives in this year’s report are similar or identical to those in his 2017 report. This includes key phrases such as “upholding world peace”, “promoting common development”, and “working to build a community with a shared future for humankind”.

The continuity in Xi’s narratives indicates China is unlikely to embrace rapid foreign policy changes in the foreseeable future. Keeping the existing foreign policy narratives may also be a deliberate choice. After all, Xi is widely expected to secure a historic third term as China’s top leader, so his policies will likely stay.

According to Xi, China will “remain firm in pursuing an independent foreign policy of peace”. Xi also pledges “China will never seek hegemony or engage in expansion”.

However, Xi stresses that China won’t compromise on issues over Taiwan. Following the established party line on Taiwan, Xi reiterated in his report that “resolving the Taiwan issue is the Chinese people’s own business, and it up to the Chinese people to decide”.

Xi voiced the support for “a peaceful reunification” with “the greatest sincerity and utmost effort”. But he also said China will “never promise to renounce use of force”.

Read more:
Why Taiwan remains calm in the face of unprecedented military pressure from China

It would be naive to assume the lack of new keywords in Xi’s foreign policy narratives means China will return to being a “quiet achiever” in the international arena. On the contrary, given China’s mighty economic, military, and technological capacities, the country has already become an essential shaper of international orders, whether its diplomats act as “wolf warriors” or keep a low profile.

Though not directly confrontational, Xi’s report signals China does not adhere to the “rules-based international order” advocated by the United States and its Western allies. Instead, according to Xi, China will “promote the democratisation of international relations”.

Ambiguity

One of the few noticeable new foreign policy phrases in Xi’s report is that China will “decide its position and policy on issues based on their own merits”.

China’s foreign minister and ministry spokespersons have frequently used this phrase to justify the country’s position of refraining from condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

Including this phrase in Xi’s report indicates China is likely to keep its ambiguous position on the war in Ukraine. It won’t follow the West in cutting ties with Russia, nor will it explicitly support Russia’s military operations.

Introducing this new phrase also gives China’s foreign policymakers more space to manoeuvre in complicated issues in the future.

National security an essential focus

According to a Reuters count based on the not-yet-published full written report, which is much longer than Xi’s speech, the terms “security” and “safety” appear 89 times.

Compared with Xi’s report five years ago, the frequency of these two words increased by over 60%.

A whole chapter of Xi’s report is devoted to national security. The report calls for “a holistic approach to national security”, which involves coordinating China’s “external and internal security”.

His report also indicates China will not only look after its own security, but also work on “common security”, primarily through the “Global Security Initiative” raised by Xi in April 2022. This initiative, though still lacking in details, stresses that any state shouldn’t pursue its own security in the expanse of other states’ security.

It will likely become China’s new foreign policy framework to take on the US’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, which China believes “aims to contain China and attempts to make Asia-Pacific countries ‘pawns’ of US hegemony”.

Xi’s report also explicitly states China will protect the “legitimate rights and interests” of its “overseas citizens and legal persons”. Linking this with the report’s emphasis on securing China’s industrial chains and supply chains, it’s expected China will make more efforts to extend its protection over state-owned and private entities beyond its physical borders.

Read more:
US takes a renewed interest in the Pacific – and China’s role in it

Engaging via ‘development’

As the country was hit hard by COVID in mid-2020, many observers speculated China would gradually cut its economic ties with the external market and seek to be economically self-reliant.

Xi’s report, however, reiterates that China will keep its door open. Echoing Xi’s report, Zhao Chenxin, deputy director of China’s macroeconomic management agency the National Development and Reform Commission, clarified that China isn’t seeking to become a self-sufficient economy.

According to Xi’s report, China also intends to “create new opportunities for the world with its own development”. As China’s development-driven international engagement continues, the Belt-and-Road Initiative is likely to remain a significant policy platform for China’s foreign relations.

Read more:
Why is there so much furore over China’s Belt and Road Initiative?

Yu Tao 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. How will China interact with the world over the next 5 years? Xi’s new speech holds clues – https://theconversation.com/how-will-china-interact-with-the-world-over-the-next-5-years-xis-new-speech-holds-clues-192594

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Simpson, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Macquarie University

How low does a casino operator in Australia have to go before it loses its gaming licence?

That question is still hanging after the punishment meted out this week to the operator of The Star Sydney casino – found to be “not suitable to be concerned in or associated with the management and operation of a casino in NSW”.

A four-month inquiry into the casino found Star Entertainment’s management “rotten to the core” and documented, in a report of more than 900 pages, a litany of failings from flouting anti-money-laundering laws to deliberately misleading regulators.

Read more:
Now Sydney has two casinos run by companies unfit to hold a gaming licence

On Monday, NSW’s new Independent Casino Commission, having given the company two weeks to “show cause” why it should not lose its casino licence, suspended that licence, appointed an emergency manager to run the casino for at least 90 days, and imposed a A$100 million fine.

This is the maximum fine possible under laws introduced in August, and $20 million more than what Victoria’s regulator fined Crown Resorts in May.

The head of the Independent Casino Commission, Philip Crawford, said it was “no longer in the public interest that the Star should remain in control of that licence”.

This is progress of a kind from the new casino regulator, established this year to replace the former Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority in light of that agency’s regulatory failings.

But it raises obvious questions about the upshot of all the other casino inquiries – in NSW, Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland – that have found Star Entertainment and Crown Resorts unfit or unsuitable to hold casino licences.

Yet not one casino has had to close its doors.

Saving jobs, and revenue

So what does a casino have to actually do to lose its licence?

Looking at the case of The Star Sydney, it’s apparently not enough to allow more than A$900 million to pass through the casino in contravention of anti-money-laundering rules. Or to fabricate receipts to hide this. Neither is allowing a Macau-based junket operator with known links to criminal enterprise to run a high-roller room.

Crawford defended not going further than suspending the casino licence, because Star Entertainment had “demonstrated genuine contrition” and to preserve the livelihoods of the casino’s employees:

A big issue for us, to be frank, in this environment is that there is probably about 10,000 employees of the Star casino, and a lot of them rely on the income to pay their mortgages and raise their kids.

This is, in part, recognition that culpability lies at the level of senior management, not croupiers, waiters and cleaners.

Even so, such a rationale also suggests regulators are in danger of being trapped by a culture of considering operators “too big to fail”.

Too big to fail?

The Star Sydney employs an estimated 8,000 people at its site in Pyrmont.

Crown Resorts has 11,500 people working at its Southbank premises in Melbourne and 6,000 at its Burswood site in Perth – making it the largest single-site private employer in Victoria and Western Australia.

Read more:
‘Illegal, dishonest, unethical and exploitative’ – but Crown Resorts keeps its Melbourne casino licence

By comparison, Australia’s biggest employer, Woolworths, employs 190,000 people across more than 1,000 Australian and New Zealand sites. The ABC employs about 5,000 staff.

Raking in gaming revenue

But perhaps even more important than the jobs are the revenues that casinos deliver to state and territory governments.

Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that, in 2020-21, states and territories collected A$7 billion in gambling taxes. More than half – nearly A$4 billion – came from casinos and gambling machines.

The NSW government collected A$2.7 billion – 7.3% of its total revenue. The Victorian government collected A$1.6 billion – 5.4% of total revenue. Again, the vast majority came from gambling machines.

The government most reliant on gambling revenue was the Northern Territory – with nearly 15% of its taxation income from gambling.

Casinos are not only big business for private investors. They have become key to the sustainability of state and territory finances. That no casino has been forced to shut its doors is emblematic of this problematic and increasing financial reliance.

It’s one thing to hold public inquiries and make adverse findings against casino operators. But, as with banks, the apparent reticience to revoke gaming licences signals that money, in the words of Cyndi Lauper, changes everything.

Alex Simpson 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. Star Sydney suspension: how do casino operators found so unfit get to keep their licences? – https://theconversation.com/star-sydney-suspension-how-do-casino-operators-found-so-unfit-get-to-keep-their-licences-192608

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mandy Hagstrom, Senior Lecturer, Exercise Physiology. Director of Teaching and Education, School of Health Sciences, UNSW., UNSW Sydney

So you want to lift weights but aren’t sure where to start. You scroll through your Instagram feed looking for guidance – but all you see are fitness influencers touting the idea you either lift big or don’t bother.

That’s a bit intimidating and disheartening, right? But as with most things exercise and health, its not really that simple.

I’m an exercise scientist (and former Commonwealth powerlifting medallist and national Olympic weightlifting champion) who researches resistance training, also known as lifting weights. Research suggests lifting smaller weights and doing more repetitions (or, in gym parlance, “reps”) can have a role to play – but it all depends on your goals.

In short: if your goal is to build serious strength and bone density, lifting heavy is an efficient way to do it. But if you can’t lift heavy or it’s not your thing, please don’t think lifting lighter weights is a complete waste of time.

Read more:
This finals season, a brief ‘priming’ workout could boost performance on the sports field and beyond

Hang on: what do we mean by ‘heavy’ or ‘light’?

What’s heavy for one person may be a piece of cake for another.

In resistance training, the load or “heaviness” of a weight is often expressed as a percentage of a “one repetition maximum” (frequently shortened to “1RM”).

A one repetition maximum is the heaviest load you are able to successfully lift once.

Around 80% of your one repetition maximum is often defined as “high intensity” or heavy lifting.

Around 40% or less of your one repetition maximum is often defined as “low intensity”.

In other words, lifting 80% of your one repetition maximum would allow you to do about eight reps.

The more reps we do, the less accurate the relationship.

But some estimates predict you could do approximately 20 reps at 60% of your one repetition maximum (of course, it varies depending on the person).

It’s worth remembering not everyone can lift heavy, perhaps due to age, injury or just being new to the gym. And perhaps while you are unable to lift heavy now, it doesn’t mean that will always be the case.

But the key thing is this: if you’re going to train at a lower intensity, say 40% of your one repetition maximum, you’ll need to do a lot of reps to have a positive benefit.

The benefits of lifting heavy

Lifting loads ranging from 40% to 80% of your one repetition maximum has been shown to elicit improvements in muscle mass (hypertrophy). However, research also shows lifting at higher loads is needed to maximise improvements in muscular strength.

High intensity exercise is probably the most effective type of exercise for maintaining and improving bone health. Research has shown the best approach for bone health is to combine high intensity resistance and impact training.

Lifting lighter? Here’s what you need to know

Research has shown participation in high rep, low intensity BodyPump™ classes may offset age-related reductions in lumbar spine bone mineral density.

If you choose to lift lighter weights, you’ll need to do more reps to get the same benefits lifting heavy would yield.

Research also shows if you’re lifting lighter, muscular failure is likely required to elicit muscle growth. In other words, you likely need to lift all the way until exhaustion.

Lifting heavy may get you the same benefit without needing to go all the way to exhaustion.

What about burning energy?

On average, a one hour low intensity/high rep style resistance training session may burn about 300 calories. A heavy session with longer rest periods equates to roughly the same calorie burn as a higher rep session with less rest.

There may be also be sex differences in the way in which older men and older women respond to resistance training. For example, older men may benefit from higher intensity programs, whereas older women may actually benefit from higher volume programs (more repetitions).

It’s worth noting low load training is hard. It’s actually really uncomfortable to do low load/high rep training to failure, or close to it (remember: “training to failure” means getting to a point where you actually cannot do any more lifts). It requires a significant degree of motivation and willingness to tolerate discomfort.

Doing low load training without serious effort is unlikely to result in significant improvements in muscle growth and strength. So if you choose this style, make sure you are ready to put in the effort.

Benefits of light weights include the fact they are portable, meaning you can workout in a pleasant environment such as the beach, the park or while on holidays. They don’t cost as much and are easy to store. For many, they are also not as intimidating.

For some, these benefits will make it easier to stick to a regular exercise routine. For others, these benefits may not outweigh some of the aforementioned advantages of more traditional heavy weight training.

It depends on your goal

The moral of the story? It does matter what you do, and how you do it. But, probably not as much as you think.

If an influencer or fellow gym-goer is saying their way is the only way, question it with a healthy scepticism.

They are not you, they do not have your exact goals or limitations, and there’s likely more than one way for you to achieve the outcome you’re after.

Read more:
75 Hard: what you need to know before taking on this viral fitness challenge

Mandy Hagstrom 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. Lift heavy or smaller weights with high reps? It all depends on your goal – https://theconversation.com/lift-heavy-or-smaller-weights-with-high-reps-it-all-depends-on-your-goal-190902

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

Jim Chalmers is a wily operator. Ahead of delivering his first budget next Tuesday, he has given himself room to do the things a treasurer needs to do.

For a while, his predecessor Josh Frydenberg denied himself that room. In his first budget as treasurer under Scott Morrison ahead of the 2019 election, Frydenberg promised to get the budget “back in the black”.

That 2019 budget forecast increasing surpluses as far as the eye could see (which was ten years, the limit of the graphs presented in the budget papers). The Liberal Party began selling “back in the black” celebratory mugs at A$35 each.

The trick was that from then on, government spending would grow more slowly than the rest of the economy. As a proportion of GDP, it would slide from around 25% to 23.6% by 2029-30.

For that to happen, all sorts of government programs would have to become and stay less ambitious for ten years. But instead of details, Frydenberg’s department gave us gobbledegook – such as that lower payment projections had been

driven by lower than expected payments across a range of programs in the
forward estimates flowing through to the medium term.

It made substantial extra spending near-impossible.

The 2019 budget assumed the cost of National Disability Insurance Scheme couldn’t blow out (it has), governments couldn’t spend much more in response to aged care and disability royal commissions (they’ll have to), or pay aged care workers the big pay rises the Fair Work Commission is about to award, and so on.

COVID changed everything – except the tax cap

Just about every fairly foreseeable crisis couldn’t be responded to, if the assumptions in the 2019 budget were to be believed.

Not even by raising more tax. A separate “tax cap” set out in the budget said the government would never collect more than an arbitrarily chosen 23.9% of GDP.

Frydenberg tied his own hands in a way a treasurer who wanted to take charge of the nation’s finances would not have.

Until COVID. Within a year, Frydenberg junked the “back in the black” pledge and spent big, because he had to.

But he kept in place the bizarre 23.9% tax cap. The Liberal Party campaigned on it in the election, challenging Chalmers to adopt it.

No tax cap – but what comes next?

But here’s how much Chalmers really wanted the job of treasurer. In an election in which Labor repeatedly presented itself as a small target, Chalmers said “no” to the tax cap, over and over again.

Asked on ABC’s 7.30 last month whether next week’s and future budgets would be bound by the tax cap written into Frydenberg’s final budget, he said the cap had been more or less “plucked out of the air”.

And I had the courage, if I can say that, to say that before the election as well as during the election campaign.

His task was to fit the budget to the conditions Australia faced: rising inflation, falling real wages, rising interest rates, and looming recessions worldwide.

The amount he would have to spend, and the amount he would have to raise, would be the result of those deliberations.

Read more:
Election tip: 23.9% is a meaningless figure, ignore the tax-to-GDP ratio

And it would be the result of things beyond any government’s control. Unexpectedly, the Coalition almost breached its tax cap in its final year in office because of a flood of revenue flowing from higher commodity prices and a greater than expected number of Australians in jobs. It took in 23.4% of GDP.

What would it have done if it had breached the cap? Given the money back?

Growing demands on the budget

The demands on future budgets will be enormous. Not only paying for the National Disability Insurance Scheme and aged care, but also Medicare, hospitals, defence, education, rent assistance, boosting the scandalously low rate of JobSeeker, and dealing with increasingly frequent floods and climate change.

Australians expect these challenges to be taken seriously.

Labor’s actual election promises aren’t that expensive. The parliamentary budget office found a net impact of $6.9 billion over four years.

In Tuesday’s budget, Chalmers will find much of the money for those promises by cancelling decisions made in Frydenberg’s March budget. An upside of having budgets in both March and October this year is that a lot of the money committed in March hasn’t yet been spent.

How do we pay for what we need most?

But beyond that, Chalmers says he is up for a serious conversation about how we pay for the services we need and have a right to expect.

A former head of the prime minister’s department, Michael Keating, wants an expert committee (“not a royal commission made up of lawyers”) to prepare a bottom-up estimate of the extra revenue we will need to guarantee the essential services we are likely to need.

After the committee has developed the estimate, Keating wants a second inquiry to work out how best to raise it.

Read more:
Memo to Labor: you need more tax, working out how much more is urgent

Economist Ross Garnaut told September’s jobs summit that as a share of GDP, total federal, state and local government tax revenue was 5.7 percentage points below the developed country average.

On one calculation, that means Australia could raise an extra A$140 billion a year and still be taxed at developed country rates. It needn’t all come from income tax. Most developed countries have much bigger goods and services taxes than we do, and many have windfall profits taxes, and effective taxes on energy exporters.

And it needn’t all be raised now. There’s no point in taxing more for the sake of taxing more. But we are likely to need to raise more in future, to help fix the kinds of problems we’re likely to face in the future.

That’s the overdue conversation we have to have, starting next Tuesday.

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

– ref. Australia needs an honest conversation about tax and budgets – and Jim Chalmers is ready to talk – https://theconversation.com/australia-needs-an-honest-conversation-about-tax-and-budgets-and-jim-chalmers-is-ready-to-talk-192603

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cristobal Sierra, Research associate, Swinburne University of Technology

When it rains, it pours. And when it pours – like it has this year – we get potholes. While minor potholes are an inconvenience, major potholes can destroy car wheels and cause crashes, as dozens of motorists discovered last week on the Hume Freeway.

Three very rainy years along Australia’s east coast mean potholes are growing in number. In southeast Queensland, thousands of kilometres of potholed roads were awaiting repairs months after floods in the region. In inland New South Wales, road crews have repaired more than 135,000 potholes since February.

Potholes may even factor in next month’s Victorian election. Labor has promised urgent repairs while the Liberals have pledged A$1 billion per year over ten years towards roads maintenance.

Potholes repairs tend to happen long after the damage first appeared. This is especially true in rural areas where councils must maintain vast road networks on a very limited budget. The growing problem has already forced some councils to cut capital works programs to shore up their roads. That’s where our new research may help.

By using drones or cameras on cars, we can capture the state of an areas’s roads to build a digital model. We can then run a machine learning program on it to accurately predict which potholes are likely to widen into a wheel-destroying pit.

This could lead to safer roads and save ratepayers and motorists serious amounts of money. Cost benefit analysis suggests it could cut monitoring costs by around 40%.

Leer más:
‘Digital twins’ can help monitor infrastructure and save us billions

Why are potholes in the news right now?

Potholes are making news because they’re suddenly everywhere. As we endure our third year of La Nina, we’ve had unprecedented rains and floods in many parts of Australia.

A pothole typically forms when rain lands on asphalt and flows to lower points on the road. Vehicle tyres force the water deep into small cracks and crevices. Over time, this pressure breaks off small bits of the asphalt. A small pothole can quickly get wider and deeper as more traffic goes over it.

Potholes can form in other ways, such as when water infiltrates the base of the road and creates cavities underneath the asphalt. After enough cars run over the spot, the asphalt breaks.

Usually, roads authorities find out about potholes through complaints from the public or when workers drive around looking for them. Potholes are also dealt with by periodic repaving.

But right now, many councils are finding it hard to keep up with all the potholes that need fixing.

If enough time passes, a small pothole can become a giant and expensive problem. As a result, in practice, much pothole repair is reactive – and a headache for councils.

Leer más:
Potholes: how engineers are working to fill in the gaps

Why would a digital model of our roads help?

Digital twin technology is becoming increasingly popular as a way to monitor everything from supply chains to apartments to warehouses. The goal is usually to save money.

Once you build a detailed digital model of real world assets, you can run the model forward in time to see where the stress points are – and where you need to intervene early. Once the model is built, you would need to update it once or twice a year.

Let’s say you have a network of country roads in outback Queensland. You send up drones, which take thousands of high-resolution images of the roadways. Then you stitch these images together to make a 3D model. Once you have that, you can train a machine learning program on these images to spot telltale issues.

How do you make the model? In my research, I used two drones to create a 3D model of 250 metres of Turner Street in Port Melbourne, which is often damaged due to high numbers of trucks. The best method of getting quality photos turned out to be manual, rather than relying on the drone’s automatic systems. Once I had enough photos, I converted them into a digital twin and trained a machine learning tool to flag potholes worth repairing.

Not all potholes are created equal. Some will stay the same size for years, while unusually deep or wide potholes will worsen quickly. Once the program is taught what to look for, it can find the worst offenders and flag them for speedy repair

A roadworker with 20 years under their belt will usually have a sense for which potholes are going to get worse. Our research captures that knowledge and turns it into a widely available tool.

So how accurate was AI in learning to flag potholes likely to deteriorate? Around 85% accurate, which is acceptable.

In my cost benefit analysis, I found this method would be around 40% cheaper than the traditional method where one person drives, and another takes notes. It would require similar investment of time, but the job can be done by one person instead of two. What are the drawbacks? The largest for councils is likely to be storing the large volumes of data generated while ensuring it’s both secure and accessible.

When people hear phrases such as drones, machine learning and digital twins, they can mentally file it under “interesting but too much work”. That’s a great shame. Using these tools is much easier now than it used to be – and industries from medical science to car manufacturing are taking them up.

This year’s floods and torrential rains offers councils and other road authorities an excellent opportunity to look at what’s now possible.

Leer más:
What are digital twins? A pair of computer modeling experts explain

Dr Cristobal Sierra receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Ambarish Kulkarni received funding for this project from the Australian Research Council and EON Reality.

– ref. Suddenly dodging potholes after all this rain? Here’s how drones could help with repairs – https://theconversation.com/suddenly-dodging-potholes-after-all-this-rain-heres-how-drones-could-help-with-repairs-191077

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sumudu Mallawaarachchi, PhD Candidate, School of Psychology, Deakin University

From learning numbers to learning how to brush your teeth, it seems there’s a kids’ app for everything.

Recent US statistics indicate more than half of toddlers and three-quarters of preschoolers regularly access mobile apps. So it’s no surprise there has been an explosion of options within the app market to keep kids engaged.

These apps certainly offer some fun interactive experiences, not to mention good educational content in many cases. They’re also very good at keeping young minds engaged. So what’s the catch?

You just read it: they are very good at keeping young minds engaged – so much that kids can struggle to put their devices down. If you’ve ever wondered why it’s so hard to tear your child from their device, read on.

What is persuasive design?

Although there are national recommendations to help guide parents through the minefield of kids’ screen time, there is a hugely under-acknowledged piece of this puzzle – and that’s the way the technology itself is designed.

Persuasive design refers to strategies that grab and hold our attention. It’s something both kids and adults experience (usually unknowingly) while scrolling through social media or fighting the urge to play another round of Candy Crush.

If persuasive design can influence the screen-use behaviours of adults – who have supposedly developed regulatory skills and self-control – then toddlers and kids don’t stand a chance. This aspect of the screen-time debate is rarely scrutinised with the seriousness it deserves.

To find out just how persuasive kids’ apps can be, we applied a well-established model of persuasive design to 132 of the most popular early childhood apps downloaded by Australian families via the Android and iOS app stores. We found three main ways persuasive design features keep kids coming back.

1. Motivation

A key concept in persuasive design is to tap into kids’ emotions to ensure they stay motivated to engage with the app. This is done by:

• offering pleasure through rewards. Kids are still developing their ability to delay gratification. They’re more likely to seek an immediate reward of lower value than wait for a reward of higher value. In the context of apps, they’re likely to be motivated by instant rewards that bring happiness or excitement. The apps we tested offered many more instant rewards (such as sparkles, cheers, fireworks, virtual toys and stickers) than delayed rewards.

• provoking empathy. Just as adults seek positive feedback through “likes” on social media, kids love receiving social feedback from characters they admire (think Hello Kitty, or Bluey). Kids often attribute human feelings and intentions to fictional characters and can form emotional ties with them. While this can help foster a positive learning experience, it can also be exploited for commercial purposes. For instance, character empathy is at play when Hello Kitty looks sadly at a shiny locked box of food that can only be opened in the paid version of the app.

2. Ability

No one wants to play a game that’s too difficult to win. Ability features provide kids with continuous instructions to reduce the likelihood of disengagement.

One way to increase a child’s sense of mastery is repetition. Many early childhood apps include rote learning, such as making the same cookie over and over with the Cookie Monster. By including tasks that are quick to learn and repeating them, app designers are likely trying to tap into childrens’ growing sense of autonomy by helping them “win” on their own.

So what’s the problem with that? While repetition is great for learning (especially for developing minds), the removal of any requirement for help from a parent can encourage more solitary use of apps. It can also make it harder for parents to engage in social play with their child.

3. Prompts

Commercial prompts were the most common trigger we found in early childhood apps, especially free apps. They have one main purpose: to bring in revenue.

Prompts include pop-up advertisements, offers to double or triple rewards in exchange for watching an ad, or prompting the user to make in-app purchases. While adults might be able to see prompts for what they are, kids are much less likely to understand the underlying commercial intent.

So what can be done?

There’s no doubt some of these features in moderation help maintain a basic level of app engagement. But our research makes it clear a lot of persuasive design features simply exist to serve business models.

We need to have more conversations about ethical design that doesn’t capitalise on children’s developmental vulnerabilities. This includes holding app developers accountable.

The early-childhood app market is vast. Parents often won’t have enough information on how to navigate it, nor enough time to assess each app before downloading it for their child. However, there are a few ways parents can get an upper hand:

• talk to your child after they’ve played with an app. Ask questions like “what did you learn?”, or “what did you enjoy the most?”.

• play the app with your child and decide if it’s worth keeping. Are they getting smothered by rewards? Are there many distracting prompts? Is it too repetitive to be genuinely educational?

• look for the “teacher-approved” indicator (on Play Store) when considering an app, or check reviews from trusted sources such as Children and Media Australia and Common Sense Media before downloading.

Ideally your child should be leading the play, actively problem-solving, and should be able to end their time on an app relatively easily.

Read more:
‘Screen time’ for kids is an outdated concept, so let’s ditch it and focus on quality instead

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

– ref. 3 ways app developers keep kids glued to the screen – and what to do about it – https://theconversation.com/3-ways-app-developers-keep-kids-glued-to-the-screen-and-what-to-do-about-it-191672

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Westaway, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Archaeology, School of Social Science, The University of Queensland

For most of Australia’s human past sea levels were lower than they are today. Australia’s mainland was connected to Papua New Guinea and Tasmania as part of a larger landmass called “Sahul”.

During the Ice Ages Sahul was home to a unique range of megafauna, which included giant marsupials, birds and reptiles. The extinction of megafauna in Sahul remains one of the most contested debates in Australian science.

Now, our new paper published in Archaeology in Oceania provides compelling evidence megafauna may have coexisted with people in the region longer than previously thought – and as recently as about 25,000 years ago.

Our research extends the likely period of overlap between megafauna and people to about 40,000 years. It brings new evidence against the theory that people in Sahul drove the megafauna extinction.

An enduring scientific debate

Like other regions during the ice ages (a period known as the Pleistocene) Sahul contained the enigmatic megafauna. The term “megafauna” as it’s used in Australia is generally applied to ancient animals that weighed more than about 45kg.

There is disagreement on how Sahul’s megafauna went extinct. Since 1831 – when eminent anatomist Sir Richard Owen received megafauna fossils from Wellington Cave in New South Wales, and a decade later from the Darling Downs in Queensland – there has been speculation about how Sahul’s megafauna went extinct.

Owen argued humans were responsible. Others, such as Prussian scientist Ludwig Leichhardt, favoured environmental change as the cause, proposing megafauna extinction in the Darling Downs occurred as a result of the draining of swamps due to tectonic uplift.

Today the debate continues along similar lines. Some researchers argue Aboriginal people were responsible for driving all megafauna extinct by 42,000 years ago.

Read more:
Humans coexisted with three-tonne marsupials and lizards as long as cars in ancient Australia

Decades of work in Sahul

The most direct approach to understanding what happened to the megafauna involves excavating sites containing their remains, and applying a range of techniques to understand how these sites (and their surroundings) have changed through time. Revisiting old sites with new techniques helps us gather as much data as possible.

The most significant research into understanding megafauna extinction in northernmost Sahul was conducted in the 1970s by archaeologist Mary-Jane Mountain at the Nombe rockshelter in the Papuan Highlands.

Mountain’s careful excavation of a site known to have been inhabited by people in the late Pleistocene also uncovered megafauna fossils.

While the fossils themselves couldn’t be dated, the dating of charcoal samples, non-megafauna animal bones and snail shells from adjacent deposits revealed megafauna existed in the area as recently as 19,000 years ago.

However, a paper published in 2001 argued archaeological sites weren’t ideal for testing megafauna extinctions as they lacked near-complete animal fossils that had been moved by people.

Nombe was removed from the list, along with the original dates for megafauna surviving as recently as 19,000 to 25,000 years ago.

In 2016, another important paper was published reassessing these dates. This research used a more modern carbon-dating approach called accelerated mass spectrometry (AMS) dating.

This method can date much smaller charcoal particles, and once more led researchers to dates that supported the original estimates revealed through Mountain’s work.

Redating Nombe

For our new paper, we decided to further test these estimates using uranium-series (U-series) dating of megafauna fossils. The U-series dating technique has been refined over several decades. It allowed us to directly date megafauna fossils from the Papuan Highlands for the first time.

Our research suggests the fossils date to between 22,000 and 27,000 years ago – which is very close to Mountain’s original estimates and the more recent accelerated mass spectrometry dates.

The U-series dating provides minimum age estimates, which means the fossils could be older. But since our estimates are supported by previous accelerated mass spectrometry dating, collectively the data provide a compelling case for the existence of megafauna in Sahul as recently as 25,000 years ago.

This contradicts the persisting theory these animals were extinct by 42,000 years ago.

Our research also extends the period of overlap between megafauna and people. If the earliest dates for people in Sahul go back 65,000 years, this implies some 40,000 years of overlap.

Read more:
Aboriginal Australians co-existed with the megafauna for at least 17,000 years

Adding to this, recent work at the Willandra Lakes in NSW and the Seton Rockshelter at Kangaroo Island also estimates Sahul’s megafauna were alive some 30,000 years ago.

Was there another ancient human?

Some argued the arrival of people to Sahul drove significant environmental change, to the point that megafauna could no longer survive.

But our analysis of pollen at Nombe reveals high-altitude forests (called montane forests) persisted from at least 26,000 years ago to the end of the Pleistocene 10,000 years ago. The archaeological evidence shows people weren’t that active in the area during this time – which suggests it’s unlikely they drove the megafauna extinction.

Rather, we raise the possibility megafauna may have coexisted with hominins (a group including us, Homo sapiens, and our close ancestors) for much longer than previously thought.

Geneticists have found the mysterious ancient humans called Denisovans were likely present in the Papuan Highlands before Homo sapiens arrived. So they may have been familiar with megafauna further back than 65,000 years ago.

But this idea needs to be further investigated. We don’t have Denisovan fossils from Papua New Guinea. We only have genetic data in modern Highland populations to study.

More field work will help us understand not only how megafauna went extinct across Sahul, but how they interacted with their surroundings, and how their collapse may have shaped today’s environments.

Read more:
Giant marsupials once migrated across an Australian Ice Age landscape

Michael Westaway receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. New dates suggest Oceania’s megafauna lived until 25,000 years ago, implying coexistence with people for 40,000 years – https://theconversation.com/new-dates-suggest-oceanias-megafauna-lived-until-25-000-years-ago-implying-coexistence-with-people-for-40-000-years-191857

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Smith, Associate Professor in American Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

Midterm elections in the United States elect the House of Representatives, a third of the Senate, and thousands of state legislative and executive offices. For all their magnitude and importance, these elections attract far less attention than presidential elections and have much lower turnout.

But the November 8 2022 midterms, taking place in one of the most closely divided Congresses in history, could have far-reaching consequences.

What could happen in the elections?

Democrats currently hold the House of Representatives by a margin of just 10 seats out of 435. This is the narrowest House majority since 1955. They have no majority at all in the Senate, which is split 50-50, relying on the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.

This makes it historically unlikely that the Democrats will hold on to the House. Since the Civil War, the president’s party has lost seats at every midterm election except for 1934 (the Great Depression), 1998 (Bill Clinton’s impeachment) and 2002 (the first election after the September 11 terrorist attacks). Republicans only need to gain five seats to take the House. This outcome is widely expected but far from certain, and Democrats can take some comfort from some encouraging results in special elections earlier in the year.

The Senate could be more favourable to Democrats, despite Republicans needing just one seat to flip it. Because only a third of Senate seats are contested at each election, one party often needs to defend far more of its seats than the other. This year Republicans are defending 20 seats compared to the Democrats’ 14, and a lot of these races are extremely close.

Under these circumstances, some forecasts slightly favour Democrats to retain control of the Senate. But given the tightness of key races, it could well come down to contingencies that are hard to predict.

Read more:
US Democrats’ gains stall six weeks before midterm elections; UK Labour seizes huge lead after budget

What are the main issues for voters?

Each party wants voters to focus on different sets of issues. For Republicans, the job is straightforward. Voters often treat midterm elections as a referendum on the president, even though the president is not on the ballot. While Biden’s approval ratings have recovered somewhat this year, they are still in the low 40s, a historically bad sign for the president’s party.

Inflation has dominated economic news for the last year and now there is talk of a recession. Republicans have harnessed increasing disquiet over crime, asylum seekers at the southern border and pandemic school closures. With such advantageous conditions for Republicans, commentators as recently as June were predicting a “red wave” election that would wipe out Democrats in both houses.

But developments over the American summer shifted the focus away from these problems. In June, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, the almost 50-year-old ruling protecting abortion rights across the United States. Republican legislators in some states quickly enacted new laws restricting or banning abortion, while Democrats initiated legislation in other states to protect rights that many had taken for granted.

There was little doubt that politically, the abortion issue helped Democrats as Republicans staked out increasingly extreme positions. A ballot initiative in Kansas, usually seen as a reliably “red” state, saw 59% of the population vote to keep the state’s constitutional protection for abortion.

The Supreme Court’s decision reflected the conservative super-majority installed by former President Donald Trump, and brightened the spotlight Democrats were already shining on the former president. The House Select Committee’s hearings into the January 6 riots, which are continuing, had a peak of just over 20 million TV viewers in June. They were presented with graphic and moving evidence of Trump’s culpability in the violence.

In August, an NBC News poll found 21% of Americans rated “threats to democracy” as the most important issue in the midterm elections, compared to 16% saying cost of living issues and 14% saying jobs and the economy.

It is hard to maintain the kind of attention these issues got over the summer. More recent polling suggests that economic issues have once again become the central focus of attention, which will hurt Democrats. Republican candidates have quietly toned down their opposition to abortion and removed endorsements from Trump from their campaign websites.

The impact of midterm elections

Biden has found it hard enough to advance a legislative agenda even with unified Democratic control of Congress. If Democrats lose either house, it will make almost any further major legislation essentially impossible because of the veto power of both houses and the president.

If Republicans win the House of Representatives, they will quickly put an end to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 riot. As Democrats move to subpoena Trump himself as part of that investigation, Republicans are planning retaliatory investigations and subpoenas. Kevin McCarthy, the likely speaker of a Republican controlled House, has already threatened that the House would investigate Attorney-General Merrick Garland over the August FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence. Numerous Republicans have said they should impeach Biden. The president will also be concerned that a majority Republican House might reduce military aid to Ukraine.

If Republicans win the Senate, Biden will face a lot of problems making appointments that need to be confirmed by the Senate. In particular, he will probably lose any chance of making another appointment to the Supreme Court. The last time a Republican-majority Senate confirmed a Democratic President’s Supreme Court nominee was in 1895.

But the most significant consequences could be for the next presidential election in 2024. Trump has continued to claim that the 2020 election was fraudulently “stolen” from him, and hundreds of Republican candidates across the 2022 midterms have echoed these claims. This was how many of them secured Trump’s endorsement, and their nominations. Some of these candidates are seeking statewide positions that could give them immense influence over the 2024 elections, especially the offices of governor and secretary of state, which have ultimate responsibility for certifying election results in most states.

Read more:
The January 6 hearings have been spectacular TV, but will they have any consequences for Trump?

Much to Trump’s chagrin, no governor or secretary of state refused to certify the 2020 election results, despite the pressure he applied to them. But this year’s Republican candidates in key swing states include Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano, who attended Trump’s January 6 rally and supported efforts to overturn the state’s election results in 2020, Arizona’s Kari Lake, who has said she would not have certified her state’s 2020 result, and Nevada’s Jim Marchant, who plans to lead a coalition of “America first secretary of state candidates” to get Trump elected in 2024.

Even state legislative races in the 2022 midterms could have huge implications for the 2024 elections. The Supreme Court will soon hear a case that could dramatically expand the power of state legislatures in elections. It could remove the ability of state courts to review electoral boundaries and electoral rules set by legislatures, even if those conflict with state constitutions. Republicans currently have unified legislative control over states that account for 307 out of 538 electoral college votes, a number which could expand or shrink this election.

These mid-terms show that no election in America is a discrete contest. State elections shape national elections. The institutional power that this year’s elections confer has major consequences for future elections. Although neither Biden nor Trump are on the ballot this year, they will be in voters’ minds as they go to the polls.

David Smith 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 United States is gearing up for midterm elections. What are they and what’s at stake? – https://theconversation.com/the-united-states-is-gearing-up-for-midterm-elections-what-are-they-and-whats-at-stake-190661

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, Accredited Practising Dietitian, University of South Australia

So your child has just announced they’ve gone vegetarian, on top of already being a picky eater. What now?

Generally, a well balanced vegetarian diet is low in saturated fat and rich in the vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants and fibre.

Here are some evidence-based tips to ensure your growing child gets the nutrients they need, and how to help broaden their tastes.

What kind of vegetarian are they?

A vegetarian diet usually excludes all animal products except for dairy (milk, cheese, yoghurt) and eggs. However, there can be variations.

You might start by asking your child what’s in and what’s out according to their new diet. Will they still eat eggs, dairy, seafood or chicken? Don’t assume – your child’s interpretation of “vegetarian” may be slightly different to yours.

Read more:
Ultra-processed foods: it’s not just their low nutritional value that’s a concern

Careful planning required

Meat provides some critical nutrients, so some careful planning will be required. Children are still growing and need more nutrients (relative to their bodyweight) than adults, even though they may consume less food overall.

Let’s start with protein. In children aged 4-8yrs, the estimated average requirement (sometimes shortened to EAR) is 0.73 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day.

Boys aged between 9 and 13 years need about 0.78g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight, while boys aged between 14 and 18 years need about 0.76g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day.

Girls need about 0.61g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight between the age of 9 and 13 years and 0.62g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight between the ages of 14 and 18 years.

By contrast, men need about 0.68g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight and women need about 0.60g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight.

There are still many good sources of protein for vegetarians. Each of these contain about 10g of protein:

• two small eggs

• 30g cheese

• 250ml dairy milk

• three-quarters of a cup of lentils

• 120g tofu

• 60g nuts

• 300ml soy milk.

Meat is a good source of iron and zinc, so careful planning is needed to ensure vegetarians don’t miss out on these. Iron is of particular concern for menstruating girls, while zinc is of particular concern for boys for sexual maturation.

To maximise the intake of iron and zinc, try to ensure your child is eating wholegrain foods over refined grains. For example 100g of a multigrain bread roll contains 4.7mg of iron and 1.7mg of zinc. By contrast, 100g of a white bread roll contains 1.26mg of iron and 0.82mg of zinc.

Lentils, beans, nuts and fortified cereals like Weet-Bix are good sources of iron and zinc.

Read more:
How to get the nutrients you need without eating as much red meat

Ask your child why they’ve gone vegetarian

It is important to explore your child’s reason for going vegetarian; it may allow for some compromises.

For example, if animal welfare is the top concern, see if your child might agree to a compromise whereby only one (large) animal is butchered and frozen, to be consumed as required. The rationale here is that only one animal has been killed rather than many if you buy meat from smaller animals weekly at the butcher or supermarket.

If your child is concerned about environmental impact and emissions, see if the whole family could cut back on meat so more emissions are saved and your child still consumes some meat occasionally.

Beef and lamb in particular are big contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, so swapping to fish and chicken may be another strategy. You can replace meat with beans, lentils and nuts. As well as containing protein, these are also high in fibre and anti-oxidants.

Or, you might consider getting backyard chickens so food scraps are used rather than going to land fill, which will further reduce emissions and provide the family with eggs (a good source of protein).

Reducing consumption of some processed and ultra-processed foods is another way to reduce environmental impact; the production, processing and transport of these foods requires a lot of energy. Cutting back on processed foods is also a healthier choice for the whole family.

If the reason is taste preferences, keep trialling various meats and different cuts. Your child’s tastes will fluctuate with time. You might try new cooking techniques, different flavours, or new herbs and spices.

Get the kids involved

Involving your child in grocery purchasing, recipe selection and cooking may help broaden their tastes and ensure they’re hitting the right food groups.

Depending on their age, you may also encourage your child to research evidence-backed and reliable websites to find ideal replacement foods.

The Australian Guide to Healthy Eating has good information on food groups and non-meat protein sources such as beans, lentils, nuts and tofu.

For more detailed information, try the Australian Food Composition Database (formerly known as NUTTAB), an Australian government site that outlines nutrient levels in food. The National Health and Medical Research Council website may also be helpful.

Other tips for picky eaters?

There are some good, research based strategies to help with picky eating.

You might need to offer your child new and unfamiliar foods many times before they try it. Don’t pressure them to eat it, but do make sure it appears on the plate again in future.

Model eating new or unfamiliar foods yourself and make sure your family’s diet is balanced.

However, a vegetarian diet with too much processed and ultra-processed foods is still going to be unhealthy.

If you are still concerned about your child’s eating, consult an accredited practising dietitian for personalised advice.

Evangeline Mantzioris is affiliated with Alliance for Research in Nutrition, Exercise and Activity (ARENA) at the University of South Australia. Evangeline Mantzioris has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, and has been appointed to the National Health and Medical Research Council Dietary Guideline Expert Committee.

– ref. My kid has gone vegetarian. What do I need to know (especially if they’re a picky eater)? – https://theconversation.com/my-kid-has-gone-vegetarian-what-do-i-need-to-know-especially-if-theyre-a-picky-eater-190439

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ewan Short, PhD Candidate, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of Melbourne

Heavy rain and floods have once again hit towns and suburbs across eastern Australia. Some areas have been devastated, while others have been spared the worst. While climate drivers like La Niña make extreme wet weather more likely, what explains when and where the storm clouds deliver a deluge?

Extreme weather, such as the heavy rainfall battering eastern Australia, is like military conflict. In war, the enemy’s behaviour depends on the decisions of many actors: from generals and lieutenants down to individual soldiers. Similarly, heavy rainfall is the culmination of diverse physical processes, from the planetary scale down to the microscopic.

A strategic defence requires anticipating how the enemy will behave across this hierarchy. To continue with the military analogy, this is how we can explain the weather offensive of the past week.

The generals command the offensive

Processes on a yearly or planetary scale, such as La Niña and the Southern Annular Mode, are like generals. Over the preceding years and months, these two generals hatched a plot of warmer-than-usual waters and more-easterly-than-normal winds around northern and eastern Australia.

La Niña promotes easterly winds by strengthening the Pacific equatorial oceanic and atmospheric circulations. The Southern Annular Mode moves the belt of high- and low-pressure systems you see on the evening news further south, reducing their obstruction of the easterly winds.

Stronger easterlies help humid air over the Pacific advance into the eastern states and feed storm clouds: a cunning plan.

Read more:
La Niña, 3 years in a row: a climate scientist on what flood-weary Australians can expect this summer

3 lieutenants in action during floods

Daily and state-scale processes, such as the pressure patterns mentioned above, are like lieutenants. These lieutenants decide the particular day, and states, to attack. At least three lieutenants have been in action during the current flooding.

The first was a high south-west of New Zealand. Air wants to move from high to low pressure but is confounded by Earth’s rotation. Southern hemispheric winds thus travel anticlockwise around highs and clockwise around lows.

The New Zealand high reinforced the general’s stronger easterly winds, directing humid air toward Victoria and New South Wales.

The second lieutenant was an undulation in the upper-level winds over Victoria. Through complex physics, this undulation promoted upward motion over the south-eastern states, supporting the development of storm clouds.

The third lieutenant was a low in the Great Australian Bight. This low dragged cold Antarctic air clockwise around itself, forming a cold front. This cold front triggered the storm clouds as it advanced through Victoria.

These three lieutenants, supported by the strategy of their generals, together conspired to inflict the heavy rainfall on October 13 in the south-eastern states. Tactically devious.

Read more:
Floods in Victoria are uncommon. Here’s why they’re happening now – and how they compare to the past

Soldiers attack each suburb and town

Hourly and suburb-scale processes, such as storm clouds, are like the individual soldiers: they decide the particular suburb to attack. A storm cloud features an intense updraft usually about 2km wide.

These updrafts are largely powered by the condensation of water vapour onto dust particles – a microscopic process. Witnessing a growing storm cloud is like watching an explosion, except the energy source is condensation, not combustion.

A soldier’s behaviour typically reflects the designs of their lieutenants, but they are not robots. In a firefight, they make their own decisions and can organise of their own volition.

Soldiers may march single file through a city, successively attacking the same building as they pass. Or they may march many abreast, attacking more buildings but with reduced firepower. Squadrons of storm clouds make analogous choices.

Read more:
On our wettest days, stormclouds can dump 30 trillion litres of water across Australia

So how can we predict these events?

Because the enemy organises across large, medium and small scales, so must we.
To help with this, the Australia Bureau of Meteorology uses a computer simulation called the Unified Model. It’s akin to the physics engines in computer games such as Halo.

The simulation is “unified” because it uses the same basic infrastructure to predict the atmosphere’s behaviour at all scales, from generals down to soldiers.

Using the Unified Model we can predict lietenants’ behaviour – the high- and low-pressure patterns – extremely well five to seven days out. It took nearly a century of global scientific effort to build this capability.

Anticipating the schemes of generals – processes such as La Niña – is much harder. The bureau generates La Niña predictions by running the Unified Model many times and counting how often La Niña persists and how often it decays to estimate its most likely behaviour. Current simulations suggest La Niña will likely decline over spring and conclude early in 2023.

It is similarly difficult to predict the behaviour of individual soldiers – the individual storm clouds. Eventually, we hope to be able at least to predict how these clouds organise – whether they will march single file or abreast.

The bureau pursues this goal by running complex Unified Model simulations, which explicitly simulate the movement of individual storm clouds over each capital city. These complex simulations are run inside a simpler, global Unified Model simulation – a bit like the film Inception (a dream within a dream).

It will take decades, if not centuries, before we can seamlessly anticipate the behaviour of the generals and soldiers of the weather as well as we do for the lieutenants. Developing this capability requires sustained support for diverse scientists across many specialities.

While the threats are significant, we now have a deep grasp of the behaviour of lieutenants and are making promising progress with generals and soldiers. Coupled with the success of the unified approach, there are grounds for optimism.

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

– ref. ‘A cunning plan’: how La Niña unleashes squadrons of storm clouds to wreak havoc in your local area – https://theconversation.com/a-cunning-plan-how-la-nina-unleashes-squadrons-of-storm-clouds-to-wreak-havoc-in-your-local-area-192500

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University

One key change to universities under the Morrison government was the Job-ready Graduates program. Starting in 2021, this significantly increased student fees for humanities degrees, slashed them for nursing and teaching, and moved many other courses up and down.

University enrolment figures suggest it has not achieved its goal: to steer students into certain fields of study and away from others.

So, a new system of student fees is likely to be part of Labor’s promised Universities Accord, which aims to reset the relationship between the federal government and university sector.

Its terms of reference will be announced next month.

Ideas about setting student fees

Australia has had several student fee systems before. In a new paper, I look at the five different rationales used for setting HECS, later called student contributions, since 1989. These include: public benefits, increasing resources per student place, incentivising course choices, private benefits and course costs.

In the past month, two new reports have also looked at possible student contribution systems, adding to or varying those used previously.

In its October report on improving education outcomes, the Productivity Commission set out two main options.

In the first, courses with greater expected private financial benefits (or future income) would get lower public subsidies and require higher student contributions. Courses with the potential to earn low, medium and high incomes would have correspondingly low, medium and high student contributions.

In a second option, government subsidies would be a flat dollar amount or percentage of course teaching costs. Either way, students in courses with high teaching costs would pay the most, as student contributions make up the difference between the public subsidy and the course cost.

A new report from the Innovative Research Universities lobby group also suggests different options. Under one, most students would pay a flat student contribution rate, with public subsidies making up the difference between the flat rate and course costs.

For a budget-neutral transition from Job-ready Graduates, the flat rate would be about A$10,000 a year. The report says that this would offer “simplicity and predictability”.

These ideas have a history

It is important to remember these ideas have histories, with lessons today’s policymakers should not forget.

In 1997 the Howard government replaced the original flat HECS rate (where all students paid the same fee, regardless of their course) with three different HECS rates. Cabinet documents from the time show support for a “course costs” approach, so students in more expensive courses paid more.

Read more:
Governments are making nursing degrees cheaper or ‘free’ – these plans are not going to help attract more students

However, the Howard government also recognised what my paper calls the “nurses and lawyers problem”. Nursing costs more to teach than law, so under a course costs student contribution policy, nursing students would pay more than law students. That is a hard idea to sell.

Introducing a “private benefits” rationale solved this problem. On average lawyers earn more than nurses, and since 1997 law students have always paid higher student contributions than nursing students.

Despite the nurses and lawyers problem, the idea that course costs could be used to set student contributions has persisted. It led to two detailed government-commissioned reports in the 2010s, and is being suggested again now by the Productivity Commission.

Politics, income and policy

The education ministers who received those 2010s reports – Chris Evans from Labor and Simon Birmingham from the Liberals – did not implement their cost-sharing ideas. Student contribution levels are political as well as policy decisions, which need to be explained to the parliament, voters and students.

Read more:
The inequity of Job-ready Graduates for students must be brought to a quick end. Here’s how

Any rigid course cost model that ignores the politics of student contributions for areas like nursing and teaching isn’t politically viable. Public opinion will not support students training for these careers paying more for their education than law and business students.

The private financial benefits approach fits with Australia’s tax and social support system, under which we increase charges and reduce benefits with income.
But we also have to be careful about just relying on potential earnings to set course fees. On average, law graduates earn a lot, but a top commercial law barrister and a legal aid lawyer have very different incomes.

A flat-price student contribution would avoid some anomalies of the course cost and private benefit systems. But the transition back would be politically difficult – nursing and teaching student contributions would increase significantly unless overall public funding increased.

Real-life consequences

Although student contributions have little effect on course choices, my paper argues they do have practical consequences policymakers should take into account.

The doubling of humanities student contributions under the Job-ready Graduates scheme, combined with the relatively low incomes of humanities graduates, means their HELP student loan repayment times will be longer, with an increased proportion never fully repaying their debt.

While the HELP repayment system lets graduates repay over decades if necessary, this is to assist people with low or irregular incomes, not to penalise people for their course choices. Under the current student contribution system, two graduates on the same income could have significantly different repayment times.

Repayment delays are bad for the government too. Repaying the $74 billion in outstanding HELP more quickly would reduce the government’s interest bill and the risk of debt never being repaid.

To combat these issues, we need to consider how much graduates can potentially earn when setting university fees.

What does this mean for universities?

Student contributions affect universities as well as students. As the Productivity Commission points out, universities need to pay their bills now and must pay attention to revenue per student.

For universities, the key financial figure is the total funding rate. This is the public subsidy plus the student contribution. But each university has a cap on public funding. Once they reach it, additional students are funded on student contributions only.

For classroom-based courses such as arts or business, adding more students to subjects already being taught usually does not cost much. A low student contribution could cover it. But for courses with clinical components such as nursing, which requires expensive equipment and close supervision, the costs of more students are higher.

We know clinical training costs, combined with very low student contributions for nursing, are an obstacle to increasing enrolments despite high demand.

So, for universities’ purposes, we cannot forget what courses actually cost to run when setting student contributions.

Pragmatic student fees

Some student contribution systems, such as incentives to steer students into particular courses, should be ruled out. But when looking at university fees, the new federal government can adopt more than one rationale, pragmatically reflecting a mix of policy and political goals.

An enduring student contribution system will ensure that most graduates can repay their HELP debt in a reasonable amount of time, that students in nursing and teaching courses don’t pay more than other students, and that universities have the right incentives to meet student demand.

Andrew Norton was on an expert panel advising then education minister Simon Birmingham on higher education funding in 2016 and 2017.

– ref. University fees are poised to change – a new system needs to consider how much courses cost and what graduates can earn – https://theconversation.com/university-fees-are-poised-to-change-a-new-system-needs-to-consider-how-much-courses-cost-and-what-graduates-can-earn-192023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ray Cas, Professor emeritus, Monash University

In the blockbuster fantasy series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, one of the principal antagonists, the wicked Adar, diverted a river into the labyrinth of tunnels under a dormant Mount Doom to trigger an explosive volcanic eruption. This transformed the surrounding landscape into the bleak lands of Mordor – setting up the blighted kingdom of the orcs that features heavily in the Lord of the Rings movies.

The dramatic, and devastating scheme has led to many viewers wondering whether there’s any real science behind this fantasy terraforming plot. Can explosive volcanic eruptions actually be “engineered”?

What exactly is a volcanic eruption?

Volcanoes erupt molten rock, called magma, at temperatures between 700 and 1,300℃. Volcanic eruptions can be effusive, forming lava flows, or explosive, ejecting large fragments of magma and rock, fine ash and volcanic gas into the atmosphere. Mount Doom – or Orodruin – in The Rings of Power, is depicted as spectacularly doing the latter.

Some explosive eruptions are caused by high abundances of volcanic gases in magma. Others, called hydrovolcanic explosive eruptions occur when magma comes in contact with external water – such as groundwater, oceans, lakes, rivers, and glaciers or ice sheets – and superheats it to steam.

The heat energy of the magma is transformed into explosive mechanical energy in the steam as it expands in a process called thermal detonation.

Read more:
Volcanoes, plague, famine and endless winter: Welcome to 536, what historians and scientists believe was the ‘worst year to be alive’

Can a volcano create Mordor?

Many hydrovolcanic explosive eruptions have been witnessed, such as the 1963-1964 Surtsey volcanoin Iceland, the fatal 2019 eruption of Whakaari White Island volcano, New Zealand, and the 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in Tonga.

Experimental simulations of this have been undertaken at the laboratory scale, using small volumes of remelted lava and similar materials.

The theory of hydrovolcanic explosions is based on our understanding of how water acts as a coolant fluid in nuclear and other power stations. In nuclear reactors the radioactive fuel, often uranium, generates heat as it undergoes radioactive decay in the core of the reactor.

This core is surrounded by a water reservoir which is heated by the fuel and converted to steam that drives turbines, generating electricity. If the core overheats, because the coolant water has escaped (potentially due to damage to the containment reservoir), the residual water may become superheated and explode. This happened during the 1986 Chernobyl power station disaster in Ukraine, and the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan.

To generate maximum explosive intensity during such a fuel-coolant interaction, the ratio of water to fuel (or magma) has to be just right. Research into nuclear explosions indicates the optimum ratio of water to fuel is in the range of 2 to 5, whereas in volcanology it is about 0.1 to 0.3.

If there is too little or too much water, steam is generated but explosions are local and small, and the magma will cool, fracture and solidify.

So, could we really make our own Mordor?

Triggering a hydrovolcanic explosive eruption is not easy. Getting enough water into the magma reservoir of dormant or active volcanoes many kilometres beneath Earth’s surface is impossible because there are no Mount Doom-like tunnels, just highly compressed dense rock.

Volcanoes with an active lava lake in the crater won’t have a river feeding into them because the craters will be perched at the elevated summit of the volcano. And even pouring water onto a lava lake surface would produce a lot of steam, but not necessarily strong explosive eruptions because the water will cause a cooled solid crust to form on the lava surface.

The only substantial hydrovolcanic explosive eruptions have occurred where significant volumes of magma have erupted rapidly up through a body of water such as groundwater, a lake or ocean, and vigorously mixed with it triggering explosive interaction (e.g. Surtsey, Iceland; Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, Tonga).

To trigger such a hydrovolcanic explosion, we would need to move a large amount of magma from a reservoir deep within Earth’s crust to the surface, by propagating a huge network of fractures many kilometres deep. This is nigh impossible at the scale required, even using nuclear explosions. So, unfortunately, The Rings of Power’s proposition is just a fantasy.

Read more:
Curious Kids: Why do volcanoes erupt?

What would happen to Earth if we did engineer a volcanic eruption?

Even if we could engineer a volcanic eruption, we probably wouldn’t want to. Global climate is affected by the volcanic gases and fine ash released into the stratosphere during large scale volcanic eruptions.

The gases can form sulphuric acid droplets, creating a haze that reflects incoming solar radiation, causing global atmospheric cooling. In addition, huge volumes of fine ash suspended in the stratosphere would also reflect solar radiation back to space.

Moderate size historical eruptions have had only a minor impact on global temperature. Only huge, explosive super-eruptions could potentially cause global atmospheric cooling for many years, triggering a major global cooling event.

There are huge problems with such human-made (or orc-made) geoengineering proposals to try to control climate. First as outlined above, it is physically impossible to trigger eruptions of large volumes of magma. Even if we could, we couldn’t control the amount of cooling caused by a super-eruption. Do we really want continental ice sheets engulfing Europe, Asia, North America, and the consequent flood of cold climate refugees?

The global blanketing of the landscape by fine ash would cause crop failure, famine and poisoning of water reservoirs. The fine ash would also infiltrate machinery, including power plants, causing them to fail.

What we would be left with could be similar to Mordor in terms of habitability and horror – not suitable for Middle-earth or Earth.

Ray Cas receives funding from Monash University.

– ref. One does not simply detonate a volcano into Mordor: a scientist explains the problems with that Rings of Power episode – https://theconversation.com/one-does-not-simply-detonate-a-volcano-into-mordor-a-scientist-explains-the-problems-with-that-rings-of-power-episode-192328

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Penny Van Bergen, Professor in Educational Psychology, University of Wollongong

What are your core memories from childhood? Can you lock in a core memory by choice? What do your core memories say about you?

The notion of “core memories” has become well known in popular culture. First seen in the 2015 movie Inside Out, core memories are thought to be your five or so most important memories. The idea is that some specific events are so important, experiencing them instantly shapes your personality, behaviours and sense of self.

Thousands of TikTok users have made “core memory” posts about salient memories (often from childhood), with more than 880 million views worldwide. Typically these posts have a strong element of nostalgia and focus on small moments: watching Saturday morning cartoons, holding hands with a schoolyard crush, or splashing through the rain.

So, do core memories actually exist? While we do use memories to construct a sense of self, and these memories support our psychological wellbeing, memory science suggests the notion of a “core memory” is faulty in five key ways.

1: We don’t have just five core memories

Autobiographical memories (memories about our selves and our lives) are kept in our long-term memory. This is an enormous memory store with no known limits on size or capacity.

For this reason, we are not limited to just five (or 50) important life memories. And different memories might be relevant to us in different contexts, meaning we might bring to mind a different set of self-defining memories on different occasions.

Read more:
We’re capable of infinite memory, but where in the brain is it stored, and what parts help retrieve it?

2: Core memories don’t drive our personality

While our memory is critically important to us, individual memories do not drive our personality.

Psychologists and cognitive scientists often talk about autobiographical memory as having (at least) three key functions.
According to the self function, we know who we are because of our past experiences. According to the social function, telling memory stories helps us to socialise and bond with others. Finally, according to the directive function, our memories help us learn lessons from the past and solve problems into the future.

Read more:
Explainer: what is memory?

Some salient memories may be particularly important for our identity. For example, winning the state volleyball championship may be critical for how we view ourselves as an athlete. Underlying personality traits, however, are relatively stable.

3: Our childhood memories are not always our strongest

Contrary to popular media portrayals, our most salient autobiographical memories are not always from our childhoods. Indeed, we tend to have relatively poor memories from our early years. Although our earliest memories often date from three or four years of age, the number of events we remember remains low across the primary school years.

In contrast, most of our salient and important memories tend to cluster in our early adulthood. This phenomenon is known as a “reminiscence bump”.

One explanation for this finding is that our earliest childhood memories are often mundane. What interested us as a child may not be as interesting as an adult, and vice versa. Instead, our most formative experiences happen in late adolescence and early adulthood as our sense of self stabilises.

Of course, we do often develop nostalgia for our earlier lives: a bittersweet longing for the past. The core memory trend likely picks up on this nostalgia.

4: We can’t predict what will become a core memory

Across social media, “new core memory” has become shorthand for highlighting an exciting new experience as soon as it occurs. These experiences include snowfights, hugs, holidays, and more.

Although we do remember emotional events more easily than neutral events, we don’t get to choose our memories. This means it isn’t possible to predict what events we will recall later and what we will forget – our memories can take us by surprise!

The events that become important to us over the long term might be ones that seemed entirely ordinary at the time, and different memories may come to have different meaning at different stages of our lives.

Even for highly salient events, we are likely to forget many of the details we thought important at the time.

5: Core memories are no more accurate than others

Core memories are sometimes portrayed as literal snapshots of the past, like pressing play on a camcorder and watching the event unfold.

Similar arguments have previously been made about so-called “flashbulb memories”. These are the highly vivid memories that form when learning about dramatic events for the first time (such as the September 11 attacks or the death of Princess Diana).

In reality, every memory we have is prone to change, forgetting, and errors in minor details – even when it refers to an important event.

Read more:
‘Remember when we…?’ Why sharing memories is soul food

This capacity for error is because of the way memory works. When we encode a memory, we typically recall the broad gist of the event and some detail.

When we retrieve the event, we reconstruct it. This means piecing back together the gist and the fragments of detail as best we can, and filling in the gaps for any detail we might have forgotten.

Every time we recall the event, we have the potential to change details, introduce new emotion and reinterpret an event’s meaning. Consider the joyful memory one might have after becoming engaged to a beloved partner. If that relationship were to fail, the reconstructive memory process allows new negative emotions to be introduced into the memory itself.

What core memories get right

While “core memory” is a made-up term, the core memory trend is helpful in showing how valuable our memories are.

Memory allows us a window to our former lives: rich with emotion and tied to identity. By reminiscing about our experiences with others, we also share parts of ourselves.

Penny Van Bergen has received funding from the Australian Research Council.

Celia Harris received funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Are ‘core memories’ real? The science behind 5 common myths – https://theconversation.com/are-core-memories-real-the-science-behind-5-common-myths-191942