Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Barron, Professor, Macquarie University

A honey bee’s life depends on it successfully harvesting nectar from flowers to make honey. Deciding which flower is most likely to offer nectar is incredibly difficult.

Getting it right demands correctly weighing up subtle cues on flower type, age and history – the best indicators a flower might contain a tiny drop of nectar. Getting it wrong is at best a waste of time, and at worst means exposure to a lethal predator hiding in the flowers.

In new research published today in eLife our team reports how bees make these complex decisions.

Read more:
Bees can do so much more than you think – from dancing to being little art critics

A field of artificial flowers

We challenged bees with a field of artificial flowers made from coloured disks of card, each of which offered a tiny drop of sugar syrup. Different-coloured “flowers” varied in their likelihood of offering sugar, and also differed in how well bees could judge whether or not the fake flower offered a reward.

We put tiny, harmless paint marks on the back of each bee, and filmed every visit a bee made to the flower array. We then used computer vision and machine learning to automatically extract the position and flight path of the bee. From this information, we could assess and precisely time every single decision the bees made.

We found bees very quickly learned to identify the most rewarding flowers. They quickly assessed whether to accept or reject a flower, but perplexingly their correct choices were on average faster (0.6 seconds) than their incorrect choices (1.2 seconds).

This is the opposite of what we expected.

Usually in animals – and even in artificial systems – an accurate decision takes longer than an inaccurate decision. This is called the speed-accuracy tradeoff.

This tradeoff happens because determining whether a decision is right or wrong usually depends on how much evidence we have to make that decision. More evidence means we can make a more accurate decision – but gathering evidence takes time. So accurate decisions are usually slow and inaccurate decisions are faster.

The speed-accuracy tradeoff occurs so often in engineering, psychology and biology, you could almost call it a “law of psychophysics”. And yet bees seemed to be breaking this law.

The only other animals known to beat the speed-accuracy tradeoff are humans and primates.

How then can a bee, with its tiny yet remarkable brain, be performing on a par with primates?

Bees avoid risk

To take apart this question we turned to a computational model, asking what properties a system would need to have to beat the speed-accuracy tradeoff.

We built artificial neural networks capable of processing sensory input, learning and making decisions. We compared the performance of these artificial decision systems to the real bees. From this we could identify what a system had to have if it were to beat the tradeoff.

The answer lay in giving “accept” and “reject” responses different time-bound evidence thresholds. Here’s what that means – bees only accepted a flower if, at a glance, they were sure it was rewarding. If they had any uncertainty, they rejected it.

This was a risk-averse strategy and meant bees might have missed some rewarding flowers, but it successfully focused their efforts only on the flowers with the best chance and best evidence of providing them with sugar.

Our computer model of how bees were making fast, accurate decisions mapped well to both their behaviour and the known pathways of the bee brain.

Our model is plausible for how bees are such effective and fast decision makers. What’s more, it gives us a template for how we might build systems – such as autonomous robots for exploration or mining – with these features.

Read more:
It’s bee season. To avoid getting stung, just stay calm and don’t swat

Andrew Barron receives funding from the Australian Research Council grants FT140100452 and DP210100740 and Templeton World Charity foundation Grant TWCF-2020-20539.
Coauthors on the article James Marshall and HaDi MaBouDi currently work for UK robotics company Opteran Technologies.

– ref. Bees are astonishingly good at making decisions – and our computer model explains how that’s possible – https://theconversation.com/bees-are-astonishingly-good-at-making-decisions-and-our-computer-model-explains-how-thats-possible-208189

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paola A. Magni, Senior Lecturer in Forensic Science, Murdoch University

The United States Coast Guard is now leading the investigation into the Titan submersible, looking for answers about why it imploded, and what actions should be taken next.

A multinational search for the Titan came to a halt on Thursday, when a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) found five pieces of debris sprawled across the seabed, some 500 metres from the Titanic shipwreck. The vessel experienced a catastrophic implosion at some point during its journey, with all five passengers presumed dead.

Read more:
What was the ‘catastrophic implosion’ of the Titan submersible? An expert explains

For now, details elude us – and it could be days, or even weeks, before we receive meaningful updates on the investigation’s progress. Similar past events, such as the 2019 fire in the Russian submarine Losharik, have shown how sensitively the details of such investigations should be treated.

The Titan disaster happened in international waters, in a commercially operated vessel, and with victims of different nationalities. Officials will likely want to be certain about any details released – and some may not be disclosed at all.

What happens next?

The Titan, a research and exploration sub owned by US company OceanGate, lost contact with its surface vessel on Sunday morning, about one hour and 45 minutes after its departure.

Chief investigator Jason Neubauer said the US Coast Guard will receive help from Canada, France and the United Kingdom. He said authorities had already mapped the accident site, and the inquiry will aim to address several questions, including:

• what may have happened to cause the implosion?
• how can safety be improved for future submersible voyages?
• what civil or criminal charges should be laid in relation to the events, if any?

Recovery operations in remote parts of the ocean are painstakingly complex, with myriad variables to consider. We can expect the Titan investigation will cost millions of dollars.

Harsh conditions

The investigation is being carried out at depths of about 1,800m, some 600km from the nearest coastline. The same vessel that identified the initial debris – a deep-sea ROV called Odysseus 6K – is reportedly also being used to look for the vessel’s remaining parts.

Manufacturer Pelagic Research Services told CNN the ROV’s lifting capabilities had “been utilised and continue to be utilised”, and that missions would continue for about a week. However, we don’t know whether any debris has been recovered yet.

ROVs can collect vast amounts of data for deep-sea operations, including video footage and sensor readings. Ideally, an ROV will be able to reliably and quickly transmit data back to a support vessel or onshore facility, since real-time data transfer is often needed to make important decisions on the fly.

That said, even if Odysseus 6K delivers on this, some parts of the Titan may never be found. They may have disintegrated during the implosion, drifted too far away from the search area, or be obscured by other debris.

Underwater hazards, harsh weather and strong currents all add to the challenge – especially by limiting visibility. In the deep ocean, turbidity (haziness) and the absence of natural light means visibility is close to zero. Here, only sonar technology (which uses sound waves) may be used for navigation, mapping and locating objects of interest.

Any debris recovered will undoubtedly be valuable. Debris is physical evidence of the implosion, so analysing it will provide information (such as damage patterns and fractures) that can be used to infer the source of the implosion and the forces involved.

Experts can also conduct chemical analyses of the residue on the wreckage. However, this is affected by seawater, so a prompt recovery will be important.

Read more:
An expert explains what safety features a submersible should have

The Titan’s remote location means investigators won’t have the luxury of having the quick support offered by coastal rescue stations that can rapidly deploy search and rescue assets and diving teams.

They’ll have to rely on specialised resources, such as large vessels and aircraft with extended range capabilities. Aircraft can provide an elevated platform for visual observation and aerial mapping, as well as remote sensing technologies including radar systems and thermal imaging sensors.

Finding the remains

Chief investigator Neubauer has said searching for victims’ remains is on the agenda. But the chances of actually finding them will depend on various factors, including the cause of the implosion, the depth at which it happened, and the surrounding conditions.

A severe implosion may have resulted in extensive fragmentation and scattering of both the submersible’s structure and human remains. Remains can be swept away in currents, or tampered with by marine life.

They also behave differently depending on whether they’re recovered from non-sequestered environments (exposed in the water) or sequestered environments (enclosed in a vessel). In the former scenario, bodies are often consumed by animals and decomposition causes disarticulation, wherein the bones gradually separate at the joints. However, garments can sometimes help to keep things together.

The effort to locate remains may involve observation from long-range aircraft and patrol vessels, or may even rely on radar, sonar or satellite imagery. If remains are located deep underwater, recovering them may involve using a specialised hoisting system designed to handle the challenges of a deep-sea environment.

Sharing responsibility

The Titan investigation will involve coordination between multiple entities, including maritime authorities, coast guard services and search and rescue organisations.

It will be subject to international agreements such as the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue, as well as international law such as
the duty to render assistance, which is enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. This requires that all vessels, regardless of their flag, have a legal obligation to render assistance to any person in distress at sea.

For now, we can only speculate on what the Titan investigation might produce. All we can do is wait, and hope that whatever answers do emerge will be put to good use to make sure something like this never happens again.

Read more:
Why is extreme ‘frontier travel’ booming despite the risks?

Paola A. Magni 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. The Titan sub disaster investigation has begun. Here’s what might happen next – https://theconversation.com/the-titan-sub-disaster-investigation-has-begun-heres-what-might-happen-next-208464

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shih-Wen Sue Chen, Associate professor, Deakin University

There’s trouble brewing in Heaven. This has implications for an average teenage boy Jin Wang (Ben Wang), the protagonist of the Disney+ series American Born Chinese (2023).

The series is an adaptation of Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel of the same name. It features many actors from the Oscar-winning film Everything Everywhere All at Once, such as Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan.

American Born Chinese has attracted the attention and praise of major news outlets such as The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Atlantic. It also appears on several lists of the best Disney+ shows.

Viewers may have encountered variations of the Monkey King character from the 16th-century Chinese classic Journey to the West in TV shows, such as Monkey (1978).

American Born Chinese focuses on Wei-Chen (Jimmy Liu), son of the Monkey King. He comes to earth in the form of a new student at Jin’s high school. Wei-Chen is determined to find the Fourth Scroll which will stop the Bull Demon from taking control of Heaven. Jin is reluctant to reciprocate the friendship extended by Wei-Chen. He just wants to fit into his predominantly white high school.

American Born Chinese is a recent addition to stories of young people who grapple with what it means to be successful.

Success, youth, and the model minority stereotype

For Jin, being popular and joining the soccer team is more important than excelling academically. He doesn’t fit into the model minority stereotype which essentialises Asian Americans as hardworking, docile and family-oriented high achievers.

The model minority can be found in films such as The Joy Luck Club (1993) and young adult novels like Girl in Translation (2010).

In his attempts to gain popularity, Jin reveals he is a flawed character. He steals, lies, betrays his friends and remains silent when he is bullied by racist classmates.

Read more:
More than ‘model minorities’: in Netflix’s Beef, Asian migrants are allowed to have real emotions

As immigrants, Jin’s parents embarked on their own “journey to the West,” hoping to achieve the American Dream. However, they are unlike stereotypical Asian American “tiger” parents because they do not pressure him to do well at school. Neither do they insist on Jin learning Mandarin.

However, Jin’s mother Christine (Yeo Yann Yann) constantly nags her husband Simon (Chin Han) to ask for a promotion at work even though the family is financially comfortable. Hardworking Simon is silent, nonthreatening and quietly does his work without challenging his boss’s decisions. He finds it difficult to speak up for himself both at work and at home.

This character fits stereotypes of Asian American men as effeminate, emasculated and failing the standards of ideal white masculinity.

In Christine’s eyes, Simon has not achieved the American Dream. Unlike Simon, Christine has an entrepreneurial spirit. She takes out the family’s savings to invest in an herbal powder business without consulting her husband. This leads to a crisis in the family when Simon wants to quit his job. It is only when he stands up for his wife at the principal’s office that their relationship improves.

A hero without superpowers

Wei-Chen disrupts Jin’s life by challenging his narrow definition of success as popularity. Self-assured Wei-Chen does not care what others think of him. Likewise, their Japanese American classmate Suzy Nakamura is a confident leader of the Culture Club who rallies students to protest against racist behaviour. Her outspokenness challenges model minority stereotypes.

While Jin tries to distance himself from both Suzy and Wei-Chen, the latter believes in his friend and trusts that Jin will help him. Wei-Chen’s determination and faith in Jin is the catalyst for Jin’s self-transformation. Through this unlikely friendship, Jin comes to believe Wei-chen’s claim that the heavenly rebellion is real.

The Goddess of Mercy Guanyin (Michelle Yeoh) entrusts Jin with the mission to stop the Bull Demon. Jin refuses and Freddy Wong (Ke Huy Quan), a sitcom character, appears to him in a dream. Freddy tells him,

a hero doesn’t always have to have superpowers. A hero is someone who goes on a journey, shows courage, helps others.

Redefining Success

Our research on conceptualisations of children and success in Asia has shown that media representations about young people have moved beyond narrow definitions of achievements as academically oriented. It encompasses the cultivation of positive personal qualities and good morals for the benefit of the community.

Jin exemplifies this shift beyond the Asian context. He transforms from an individual hyper-focused on personal desires into a brave friend who is willing to sacrifice himself to save his community.

In the season one finale, Jin embraces a new definition of success. Instead of taking part in his first soccer match in front of the school, he steps out of his comfort zone to help his unpopular friends.

For Jin, being popular is no longer his first priority. His refusal to be docile challenges the model minority stereotype. He has truly become a hero.

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. An unlikely hero: American Born Chinese challenges the model minority myth – https://theconversation.com/an-unlikely-hero-american-born-chinese-challenges-the-model-minority-myth-207929

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Dwyer, Associate Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, University of Tasmania

This week, Australia announced its latest package of military and humanitarian support for Ukraine, totalling approximately A$110 million.

The package comprises 70 military vehicles, which include 28 M113 armoured personnel carriers and other support vehicles (trucks, trailers and “special operations vehicles”).

The package also includes a supply of 105mm artillery shells, which are desperately needed by Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainian government says it will need one million rounds of ammunition this year.

While this support package was welcomed by the Ukrainian government, it has been criticised by some for being too small, tokenistic and not providing the level of equipment and support needed to counter Russia’s invasion.

Why has this latest package been criticised?

The primary issue with the package is the supply of the M113 armoured personnel carriers. Ukraine has previously requested Australian designed and built Hawkei armoured vehicles, going so far as to describe the Hawkei as “its new crush”.

However, Australia has so far declined to provide these. The M113 armoured personnel carriers that Australia is sending to Ukraine date back to the Vietnam War. Although the vehicles have undergone a variety of upgrades over the years, they are widely considered to be obsolete in modern warfare.

Australia is in the process of retiring them in favour of a new, modern design of armoured personnel carrier. The Defence Department itself has said the M113 carriers are obsolete:

[they] are no longer able to counter the current and emerging threats presented in our operating environment.

In an address to the Indian Ocean Defence and Security Conference in Perth last year, Lieutenant General Simon Stuart, the new Australian Army chief, also said:

The combined arms fighting system that protects our soldiers today has at its core a 60-year-old armoured personnel carrier. […] We can and we must do better — and we have a plan to do so.

Why are we not giving the Ukrainians what they want

The government is currently unable (or perhaps unwilling) to supply the Hawkei vehicles that Ukraine has requested, on the advice of the Australian Defence Force. As Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said this week:

On Hawkei, I know that has been raised, the advice is that would not be the best way to provide assistance to Ukraine.

Defence has reportedly rejected providing Hawkei vehicles to Ukraine due to an unresolved braking issue and a limited supply of spare parts, which it asserts would make the Hawkei currently unsupportable in combat.

However, Ukraine would be well aware of these issues. And its request (and enthusiasm) for this particular vehicle means the government likely sees a need for the Hawkei on the battlefield – one that is unlikely to be met by the M113s.

It is difficult to conclusively determine why Australia has chosen such a military hardware composition for its latest support package and why it is denying Ukraine the assistance it is requesting.

There is still a chance Albanese will offer more support over the coming months, for example, at the upcoming NATO conference he will attend in July.

Read more:
Why can’t the West agree on how much military support to send to Ukraine?

We have other hardware we could offer

Much has been made recently about the potential for Ukraine’s allies to supply F-16 fighter jets to Kiev. The F-16 would provide Ukraine with a formidable air combat and strike capability that is crucial for pushing back Russian forces.

Ukraine’s air force currently utilises old Soviet-era fighters, predominantly MiG-29s and Sukhoi Su-27s, which have been jerry-rigged to deploy Western munitions.

After dragging its feet for months, the US recently announced it will approve allied exports of F-16 jets to Ukraine. The move was welcomed by countries like Denmark, which maintains a fleet of 40 F-16s, of which about 30 are operational and could be supplied to Ukraine.

However, another option exists for Australia: its retired fleet of F/A-18 classic Hornets. Australia has 41 of these fighter jets in storage, which Ukraine has reportedly been looking into, although has not yet formally requested. Negotiations are reportedly underway on a deal.

The F/A-18 has some advantages over the F-16 for Ukraine’s purposes. First, it is a “navalised” fighter, meaning it has a strengthened undercarriage that would allow it to land and take off from rougher airfields (and potentially roads), unlike the F-16 which requires highly maintained airfields.

This would give the Ukrainian air force more flexibility and increase the chances the aircraft would survive longer in combat. In more remote locales, these jets would also be more difficult to detect when not flying.

Australia’s version of the F/A-18, the F/A-18A, has also been heavily upgraded, making its fleet roughly equivalent to the slightly more modern F/A-18C standard.

Further, given Australia’s jets have not been deployed in a naval context (on, say, aircraft carriers) and thus subjected to saltwater environments, they are in good condition.

There are, of course, some issues with Ukraine receiving F/A-18 jets.

First, it would require export approval from the US, which is required for all US military hardware to be resold or re-exported. This, however, would not likely be difficult to obtain.

Perhaps more significantly, it would also require Ukraine’s pilots to be trained on the F/A-18 platform. However, this will be an issue for the F-16, or any other Western fighter jet sent to Ukraine’s air force.

Why Australia should do more

Australia’s distance from the conflict means it isn’t as likely to provide as much support as other states in closer geographic proximity to Russia.

The European Union, for instance, just announced it will increase its military aid fund to Ukraine by a further €3.5 billion (A$5.7 billion).

But as Matthew Sussex, one of Australia’s leading Russia experts, has pointed out, Russia is a strategic competitor to Australia that will increasingly pivot its attention to the Indo-Pacific region.

As such, our geographic distance is no excuse for weak support to a state attempting to counter an illegal and devastating invasion by Russia. We can, and should, be doing considerably more.

Read more:
Ukraine war: how US-built F-16 ‘Fighting Falcon’ could help Kyiv move on to the offensive

James Dwyer 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. Australia is not giving Ukraine the military support it needs – sending our retired jets would be a start – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-not-giving-ukraine-the-military-support-it-needs-sending-our-retired-jets-would-be-a-start-208570

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

If you’ve just decided to start using tampons and you’re finding it tricky, you’re not alone! Lots of young teens and first-time tampon users have told me they experience “tampon trauma” – meaning it hurts, won’t go in or gets stuck coming out. But with a little bit of practice, it’s super easy.

Tampons are safe and convenient, especially if you’re going to the beach, swimming or doing something physically active. You can’t feel a tampon once it’s inserted properly, which is why some people prefer tampons to pads or period undies. Tampons are used by millions of people around the world. They’re made from natural cotton, rayon fibre or both, and absorb fluid, including menstrual blood.

In Australia, tampons are classified as “medical devices” which means they have to meet certain safety standards. So even though there’s a confusing array of brands available in Australia it’s good to know they all pass the safety test.

Just like pads and period undies, tampons come with different absorbencies, such as “mini” or “light”, “regular” and “super”. As you get to know your own periods and cycle, you’ll also get to know which tampons suit you best over the course of your period. It’s common for the first couple of days of a period to be heavier, meaning you might need a tampon with higher absorbency.

Read more:
Menstrual cups vs tampons – here’s how they compare

How to insert

A tampon is designed to sit inside the vagina, right up high against the cervix. The vagina is a stretchy muscular tube and has plenty of room to accommodate a tampon.

The vagina slopes upward and backward, towards the spine. A common difficulty first-time tampon users encounter is pushing the tampon straight up rather than slightly backwards, so it hits the front wall of the vagina and feels like it can’t go up any further. The same can happen in reverse when pulling a tampon out – it needs to be pulled slightly forward, not straight down, or it could hit the back wall of the vagina and feel stuck.

If you want to, you can practise using a tampon between your periods, or when your flow is light. Wash your hands first, then get a mini-sized tampon and make it slippery by putting some water-based lubricant on it. Some people might dab a tiny bit of Vaseline on the tip of the tampon instead. Vaseline shouldn’t be put on tampons during a period, as it reduces absorbency.

Pull the string so it reaches its full length before you insert it. Stand in front of a mirror and have a look at where the opening of your vagina is by pulling the vaginal lips apart. Then either squat, or put one leg up on a stool, shelf, or side of the bath, which gets you in a comfortable position to practise.

Gently put the tip of the tampon into the opening and then push it up and back with your finger. You can put your fingers inside your vagina first, to get a feel of the way your vagina slopes. (If you have long nails, take care not to scratch yourself!)

Some tampons come with an “applicator”. This is made of two cardboard or plastic tubes, one inside the other. The larger tube has the tampon inside it, and the smaller one sits just below the tampon. When inserting, you hold the smaller part and push the applicator inside your vagina rather than putting your fingers inside. When the applicator has gone all the way in, you push the tampon out by “plunging” the smaller tube up, pushing the tampon out.

It’s virtually impossible to put a tampon into the wrong hole! There are three holes in that part of the body – the vagina, the urethra (where wee comes out) and the anus, or bum hole, where poo comes out. Most people are familiar with where the bum hole is, because (hopefully) they wipe their bums a lot!

The urethra is very small, and you wouldn’t be able to fit a tampon into it. It sits high up towards the top of the vulva – where your inner vaginal lips meet in the middle, and just below the tip of the clitoris.

Tampons can be left in for up to six hours. If your period is heavier than anticipated and the tampon has become “soaked”, you might have to change it earlier. You’ll know when that happens because some menstrual fluid will leak onto your undies.

Don’t panic though – it’s something you’ll be able to feel and deal with before anyone else notices! If you know you have heavy flow days and want to take extra precautions, you can wear a light pad on your undies (or period undies) as well as using a tampon.

Read more:
Heavy periods are common. What can you do, and when should you seek help?

Toxic shock syndrome

You might have heard about something called Toxic Shock Syndrome. This is caused by a bacterial infection that releases toxins into the blood and is a serious condition.

It can happen anywhere in the body but is known to be associated with the use of ultra super absorbency tampons. There are now guidelines and regulations worldwide for tampon manufacturing to reduce the risk of infections.

These days toxic shock syndrome is extremely rare (about 0.001% of people), and still only occurs if tampons are left in for several hours, allowing the bacteria to multiply.

Symptoms are high fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, muscle aches, headaches and a rash.

Read more:
From sharp butt pains to period poos: 5 lesser-known menstrual cycle symptoms

Environmentally friendly options

It’s important to NEVER flush a tampon down the toilet. If you’re in a public toilet, there should be bins inside toilet cubicles for all disposable period products. At home, you could wrap it in tissue and put it in a rubbish bin. You might also be aware people are now looking at environmentally friendly alternatives to disposable pads and tampons.

Reusable pads and period undies were designed to help reduce waste from disposable pads. There’s now also an alternative to tampons, which is the modern “menstrual cup”. These are made of medical grade silicone that you fold over, push up inside your vagina using two fingers, and then pop! It springs open inside the vagina and catches any menstrual fluid.

Unlike a tampon, they sit a little lower down in the vagina, and just like tampons, they can take practice getting used to. These can be used for up to 12 hours which makes them super convenient. You can try a menstrual cup anytime – and some people might switch between tampons and a cup or pads or period undies, depending on what feels right on the day.

Managing periods is something almost half the population deals with. It can feel scary, but it might help to know that just about everyone who has periods goes through the same process of figuring it out! The more you arm yourself with information and know how much choice is out there, the more confident you’ll feel. And don’t forget there are always adults out there who are willing and able to give you advice and help.

Read more:
Why queues for women’s toilets are longer than men’s

Melissa Kang has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Councill, Australian Research Council and Medical Research Futures Fund. She is affiliated with the Australian Association for Adolescent Health and the International Association for Adolescent Health. She has co-authored Welcome to Your Period, Welcome to Consent, Welcome to Your Boobs and Welcome to Sex.

– ref. How do I insert a tampon? – https://theconversation.com/how-do-i-insert-a-tampon-201871

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kyla Raby, PhD candidate researching the role of consumers in eradicating modern slavery in supply chains, University of South Australia

Australia is not immune to the rapidly growing global problem of modern slavery. In fact, new research has found the number of people living in modern slavery has more than doubled in the past four years, rising to an estimated 41,000.

Sadly, very few people are formally identified as victims and able to access vital support. For example, in the 2021-22 financial year, the Australian Federal Police received just 294 reports of modern slavery and human trafficking.

The Australian government’s recent funding boost of $23.4 million for survivors of human trafficking will enable more survivors to access support without having to report to police.

However, our research on modern slavery and housing found that much more is needed to enable access to essential support, particularly when it comes to safe and sustainable housing.

Why survivors struggle to find housing

In the UK, survivors of modern slavery are provided government-funded accommodation through trafficking-specific safe houses. But in Australia, survivors’ access to accommodation through the Support for Trafficked People Program is reliant on what services exist in the state and territory they are based.

This means survivors are often left to scramble for a limited number of housing options alongside others in need during the current housing crisis, but they face additional barriers to accessing these services.

Read more:
Homelessness today sees workers and families with nowhere stable to live. No wonder their health is suffering

To understand the implications for modern slavery survivors, our research surveyed 107 housing providers and 19 caseworkers who support survivors across Australia. We also interviewed a portion of these participants.

We found that survivors of modern slavery experience multiple barriers to accessing both temporary accommodation and long-term housing. The most significant challenges were linked to their lack of reliable income, insecure migration status and the ongoing effects of trauma.

For example, a quarter of all housing providers we surveyed restrict temporary migrants from accessing their services. Social housing in many Australian jurisdictions is also generally only available to Australian citizens or permanent residents. Migrant slavery survivors on temporary visas, therefore, can’t access these housing options at all.

Survivors’ visas may also restrict them from working in Australia or accessing income support. This also means they can’t access accommodation because many providers require residents to have an ongoing income.

As explained by one housing provider, their residents

need to have work rights […] so they can transition to their own property.

Another housing provider told us,

it’s not people’s visa status that matters, it’s just the fact that temporary visa holders are often not on a stable income.

Suitability of services for survivors

Even if modern slavery survivors can access accommodation, the options available to them may not be appropriate given the complex trauma they have experienced.

Many mainstream services are unsuitable for survivors because of their rules and requirements. For example, curfews are often put in place by providers to ensure the safety or comfort of all residents. Such rules restrict an individual’s freedom of movement, which can be re-traumatising for survivors whose experience of exploitation involved similar restrictions.

For male survivors or those wanting to live with family, finding suitable accommodation is even more challenging. Almost half of accommodation providers do not accept partners, children or other family members of their largely female residents. Nearly a third only do so in particular circumstances.

Our research also found that the types of accommodation most suitable for modern slavery survivors are ones which have been designed especially for them.

However, we only identified two examples of such services in Australia – the Salvation Army’s trafficking and slavery safe house in Sydney and the Lighthouse Foundation’s Young Women’s Freedom Program in Melbourne.

Insecure housing can have serious implications for survivors. It places them at risk of homelessness and further exploitation. As one provider explained to us, a lack of suitable accommodation can place a survivor

at high risk of remaining or returning to a situation where they are subjected to abuse by a person who uses violence.

It can also be disruptive to survivors’ recovery and have negative implications for their overall wellbeing.

First steps to improvement

In Australia’s federated system of governance, antislavery policy is a Commonwealth responsibility, while housing policy is a state and territory responsibility. Removing these barriers requires effective collaboration across both policy spheres and tiers of governments.

Allowing community organisations to refer survivors to the federal government’s anti-trafficking program is a first step to improving their access to accommodation and other vital supports.

Read more:
Australia’s modern slavery law is woefully inadequate – this is how we can hold companies accountable

We also need to change the human trafficking visa framework to ensure all migrant slavery survivors are able to access visas with rights to work and access to income support.

State and territory housing policy needs to allow survivors on temporary visas to access social housing, as well. Funding for survivor-specific accommodation services in every capital city is also urgently required.

Without such changes, survivors of modern slavery remain vulnerable to further exploitation and slavery will continue to grow in Australia.

Kyla Raby works for the Australian Red Cross, who received funding from the Department of Social Services to undertake the research discussed in this article.

Nerida Chazal conducted consultancy work for Australian Red Cross in the production of this research.

– ref. Australia’s hidden housing crisis: survivors of modern slavery have few safe places to turn – https://theconversation.com/australias-hidden-housing-crisis-survivors-of-modern-slavery-have-few-safe-places-to-turn-206292

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Taylor, Adjunct academic, Flinders University

You may be interested (or possibly horrified) to discover you ingest and inhale thousands of tiny life forms on a daily basis.

The air and surfaces around you are home to multitudes of bacteria, fungi, viruses, mites, algae and protozoa. Your skin isn’t much better, with a complex ecosystem of organisms called commensals which aren’t necessarily good or bad, but will shift in their composition depending on where you live, the products you use and the pets you have.

Most of these creatures are generally undetectable due to their microscopic size and low concentrations. But when they find a niche they can exploit, you might notice them by their smell, or the appearance of unwanted staining and colour changes. A lot of this fungal growth is what we call mould.

We’ve all been disappointed in ourselves at one time or another, lifting a neglected orange out of the fruit bowl to discover the bottom half is covered in a velvety blue-green growth.

But what do the myriad colours that appear on our stuff tell us about the world we try not to think about?

Black

Often black staining is quite a disturbing occurrence. The concept of toxic black mould is one many people have become aware of due to flood impacts.

A quick online search will likely terrify you, but not all black discolouration is due to the same organisms, and almost none of it will outright cause you harm.

Stachybotrys is the one known as toxic black mould. It often turns up on building materials that have been wet for a long time.

Read more:
Health Check: how does household mould affect your health?

When the grout in your shower turns black though, that’s a different fungus called Aureobasidium. It’s slimy, sticky and somewhere between a filamentous mould, which grows threadlike roots through whatever it’s eating, and a yeast, which prefer a free-floating, single-celled style of life.

Bleaching will often kill Aureobasidium, but the dark pigmentation will likely hang around – harmlessly, but stubbornly.

Blue

That blue orange I mentioned before, you can thank Penicillium for that. The organism that gives us blue cheese and the antibiotic penicillin is also responsible for producing a dense growth of mould that almost looks like smoke when disturbed, spreading millions of spores onto the rest of your fruit bowl.

Penicillium is a big group with hundreds of species, ranging from recognised pathogens to species yet to be named. However, the ones that turn up in our homes are generally the same “weed” species that simply cause food spoilage or grow in soil.

Yellow and orange

We often think of fungi as organisms that thrive in the dark, but that’s not always true. In fact, some need exposure to light – and ultraviolet (UV) light in particular – to complete their life cycle.

Many plant pathogens use UV light exposure as a trigger to produce their spores, and then protect their DNA by hiding it behind melanin-containing shells.

Stemphylium and Epicoccum turn up in our homes from time to time, often hitching a ride on natural fibres such as jute, hemp and hessian. They produce a spectrum of staining that can often turn damp items yellow, brown or orange.

Green

We’re all fairly familiar with the green spots that turn up on mouldy bread, cake and other food items. Often we try to convince ourselves if we just cut off the bad bit, we can still salvage lunch.

Sadly that’s not the case, as the roots of the fungi – collectively called mycelium – spread through the food, digesting and collecting sufficient nutrients to pop out a series of tiny fruiting bodies which produce the coloured spores you see.

Read more:
Health Check: is it safe to cut mould off food?

The green tuft is often from a group of fungi called Aspergillus. Under the microscope they look rather like the puffy top of a dandelion gone to seed.

Like Penicillium, Aspergillus is another big fungal group with lots of species that turn up virtually in every environment. Some are heat tolerant, some love acid and some will happily produce spores that stay airborne for days to months at a time.

In the green gang is also a fungus called Trichoderma, which is Latin for “hairy skin”. Trichoderma produces masses of forest-green, spherical spores which tend to grow on wet cardboard or dirty carpet.

Pink, purple and red

There are plenty to speak of in this category. And there is also a common bacterium that makes the list.

Neurospora, also known as the red bread mould, is one of the most studied fungi in scientific literature. It’s another common, non-hazardous one that has been used as a model organism to observe fungal genetics, evolution and growth.

Fusarium is less common indoors, being an important crop pathogen, but will sometimes turn spoiled rice purple. It also occasionally turns up on wet cement sheet, causing splotchy violet patches. Fusarium makes large, sticky, moon-shaped spores that have evolved to spread by rain splashes and hang onto plants. However, it is fairly bad at getting airborne and so doesn’t tend to spread very far from where it’s growing.

Finally in this category, that pink scum that turns up around bathroom taps or in the shower? It’s actually a bacterium called Serratia. It will happily chew up the soap scum residue left over in bathrooms, and has been shown to survive in liquid soaps and handwash.

White

When fungi were first being classified and were eventually given their own phylogenetic kingdom, there were lots of wonderful and not strictly categorical ways we tried to split them up. One of these was hyaline and non-hyaline, essentially referring to transparent and coloured, respectively.

One of the interesting non-pigmented moulds you may well catch sight of is a thing called Isaria farinosa (“farinosa” being Latin for “floury”). This fungus is a parasite of some moths and cicadas and is visible as brilliant white, tree-shaped growths on their unfortunate hosts.

So when you notice the world around you changing colour, you can marvel with your newfound knowledge at the microscopic wonders that live complex lives alongside yours. Then maybe clean it up, and give the fruit bowl a wash.

Read more:
Hidden housemates: meet the moulds growing in your home

Michael Taylor consults for WSP Australia in the area of occupational hygiene, indoor environmental quality and hazardous materials. He has previously received grant funding from SafeWork SA to study fungi in indoor environments.

– ref. What do the different colours of mould mean in my house? – https://theconversation.com/what-do-the-different-colours-of-mould-mean-in-my-house-207737

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tina Hinton, Associate Professor of Pharmacology, University of Sydney

In most cases, pain and fever relief is as simple as a trip to your local supermarket for some paracetamol or ibuprofen.

While both are effective at reducing pain, they work in different ways. So deciding which one you should choose is dependent on the type of pain you are experiencing. Sometimes it might be appropriate to take a medication that contains both drugs.

In Australia, paracetamol is branded as Panadol, Herron Paracetamol, Panamax, Chemist Own or Dymadon, plus there are generic chemist brands. Nurofen is the common brand name for ibuprofen, which is also sold under generic brand names.

So how do you know which one to choose and when?

Different blocking actions

While ibuprofen and paracetamol can be taken for similar reasons (pain relief) each works in a slightly different way.

Ibuprofen is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, which means it acts by blocking the enzymes that produce a group of chemicals called prostaglandins. These chemicals are important for normal body functions such as relaxing blood vessels, preventing blood clotting, secreting protective mucus in the gut and helping the uterus contract. They are also involved in inflammation, pain and fever.

It is still not completely understood how paracetamol works. Like ibuprofen, it is thought to act by blocking the enzymes that produce prostaglandins, although through a different mechanism to ibuprofen. There is also good evidence paracetamol interacts with the brain’s endocannabinoid system and the “descending pain pathway”, which inhibits the perception of pain.

Read more:
Why does my back get so sore when I’m sick? The connection between immunity and pain

Is one drug better than the other?

Because they each provide pain relief in different ways, paracetamol can be better at treating some types of pain, while ibuprofen is better at treating other types. But be wary of packaging that claims a medication is useful for targeting pain associated with a specific condition as these claims are not true.

Because it reduces inflammation, the Australian Therapeutic Guidelines state ibuprofen is the better choice for pain associated with osteo- and rheumatoid arthritis, period pain, some types of headache, and for pain that comes from having an operation. Paracetamol does not reduce inflammation but it is a better choice when fever is associated with the pain, like when you have a cold or flu.

The Australian government recommends either paracetamol or ibuprofen if you have pain associated with COVID.

Read more:
I’m at home with COVID. When do I need to see a doctor? And what treatments are available?

What about taking both or ‘piggybacking’ them at intervals?

We can sometimes get better relief when we take both types of medicine at the same time, since each targets a different cause or pathway of the pain. If one pathway does not completely control the pain then it can be useful to target the other one. The effects of each drug can add together for a bigger effect.

Combination products that contain both paracetamol and ibuprofen in a single tablet include Nuromol and Maxigesic.

Using a combination product means you can take fewer tablets. However, the doses in these combined products are sometimes less than the maximum recommended dose, meaning they might not work as well when compared with taking the tablets individually.

Other times, you can get the best effect by alternating doses of ibuprofen and paracetamol. This keeps the levels of the medication in the body more constant and helps to provide more steady pain relief. This may be particularly useful when treating pain and fever in children. To do this, one drug is given, then a dose of the other drug is given a few hours later, with you continuing to alternate between the two throughout the day.

If you are alternating between different pain medicines, make sure you leave time (at least one hour) between the dosing of each product to get more effective and consistent relief. Only give the recommended dose of each medicine as outlined on the pack. And do not administer more than the maximum recommended number of doses for each medicine per day.

Read more:
Take care with paracetamol when pregnant — but don’t let pain or fever go unchecked

How do the side effects compare?

Side effects from either drug are rare and generally mild.

Ibuprofen does have a reputation for causing stomach problems. These can manifest as nausea, indigestion, bleeding in the stomach, and diarrhoea. For this reason, people with a history of bleeding or ulcers in the gut should not take ibuprofen. Ibuprofen is also known to sometimes cause headaches, dizziness, and higher blood pressure.

Because ibuprofen thins the blood, it should also not be taken by people who are taking other medicines to thin the blood; like aspirin, warfarin, and clopidogrel. Ibuprofen should also be avoided by pregnant women and people with asthma. In these cases, paracetamol is the better choice.

However, you need to be careful when using these medicines to make sure you don’t use more than is recommended. This is particularly important for paracetamol.

Paracetamol at the recommended doses is not toxic but too much can lead to liver failure.

Because paracetamol is found in lots of different products, it can be hard to keep track of exactly how much paracetamol you have taken and this increases the risk of taking too much.

Read more:
The TGA is considering paracetamol restrictions due to poisonings – but what does that mean for consumers?

Both work, both need to be used safely

Paracetamol and ibuprofen are effective medications for the relief of both pain and fever; however, care must be taken to use them safely.

Always read the label so you know exactly what products you are using and how much. Only take the recommended dose, and if you need to, write down the time you take each dose. Your pharmacist or doctor can also advise on the best medicine for your pain and fever and how to use the selected medicine safely.

Associate Professor Tina Hinton has previously received funding from the Schizophrenia Research Institute (formerly Neuroscience Institute of Schizophrenia and Allied Disorders). She is currently a Board member of the Australasian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists and Toxicologists.

Dr Jessica Pace is a pharmacy practice academic and practising hospital pharmacist. She is a fellow and the chair of the Society of Hospital Pharmacists Australia (SHPA) NSW branch and member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA).

Associate Professor Wheate in the past has received funding from the ACT Cancer Council, Tenovus Scotland, Medical Research Scotland, Scottish Crucible, and the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, a member of the Australasian Pharmaceutical Science Association, and a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Nial is the chief scientific officer of Vaihea Skincare LLC, a director of SetDose Pty Ltd a medical device company, and a Standards Australia panel member for sunscreen agents. Nial regularly consults to industry on issues to do with medicine risk assessments, manufacturing, design, and testing.

– ref. Paracetamol versus ibuprofen – which works best and when? – https://theconversation.com/paracetamol-versus-ibuprofen-which-works-best-and-when-207921

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christiaan De Beukelaer, Senior Lecturer in Culture & Climate, The University of Melbourne

I went sailing on a bright yellow outrigger canoe in the Marshall Islands in March. On board were Alson Kelen, founder of Waan Aelõñ in Majel (WAM, Canoes of the Marshall Islands), and a group of youngsters taking part in a climate justice workshop.

Alson’s NGO is a hive of activity. Sailing ships, some finished and some under construction, surround an A-frame building right between the government-owned Marshall Islands Resort and the Ministry of Education on Majuro Atoll. Alson acquired the land decades ago from the country’s first president, Amata Kabua, for a symbolic dollar.

As we sailed, he told us his organisation’s work is about “empowering the young men and women of the Marshall Islands, endowing them with the skillset essential to bring them into the global society”. It’s keeping the traditions of shipbuilding and wayfaring alive, while offering fossil-fuel-free transport between the country’s islands.

As home to the world’s third-largest ship registry, the Marshall Islands is a key player in global shipping, while rising sea levels threaten its low-lying islands. This puts the country in a unique position in negotiations on new shipping emission targets.

Although WAM’s yellow outriggers might not make a dent in greenhouse gas emissions from the world’s cargo ships, these little vessels are a local counterpoint to the Pacific state’s climate diplomacy.

Read more:
To reach net zero, we must decarbonise shipping. But two big problems are getting in the way

What’s at stake?

The need to decarbonise shipping is urgent. Shipping is the most efficient means of cargo transport, but the sheer volume of goods – 11 billion tonnes a year – puts its emissions on a par with countries like Germany or Japan. Shipping emissions add up to around 1 billion tonnes a year.

In 2018, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the United Nations agency that regulates shipping, set its first sector-wide climate target: to halve shipping emissions between 2008 and 2050.

This “initial strategy” doesn’t align with the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global warming below 1.5℃. It does, however, require a review of the strategy every five years.

A revision is due to be adopted next month. This follows years of go-slow tactics by several large developing countries and lofty commitments by most IMO member states to “keep 1.5 alive”.

Shipping looks increasingly likely to have a target of zero emissions by 2050. Whether that’s “net zero” or “absolute zero”, and whether it counts only emissions on board or the full life cycle of emissions attributable to shipping, is still being negotiated.

Zero by 2050 sounds like a big win. It will certainly be better than the current target. But emissions must come down a lot faster for the 1.5℃ limit to remain an option.

Read more:
Shipping emissions must fall by a third by 2030 and reach zero before 2050 – new research

How can the energy transition be made equitable?

For a low-lying atoll state like the Marshall Islands, climate change is a matter of life and death. Exceeding 1.5℃ of warming will likely trigger tipping points that would raise sea levels as ice caps melt. This would inundate the Marshall Islands.

To “keep 1.5 alive”, the Marshall Islands and other Pacific states are calling for hard “interim targets” to reduce shipping emissions by 37% by 2030 and 96% by 2040. The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom have proposed similar targets.

Pacific states are also calling for an equitable energy transition. Just as Alson’s outrigger canoes won’t make much difference to shipping emissions, Pacific islanders – indeed most of the world’s population – didn’t produce the emissions that are causing the climate crisis.

In 2021, the Marshall Islands proposed a global levy on shipping emissions – at least US$100 per tonne of CO₂-equivalent – to speed up the transition. It’s increasingly clear, however, that “levies exceeding US$100 per tonne may be needed to reduce carbon emissions”.

A growing group of countries, including Ghana, Namibia, South Korea, France and Denmark, are calling for a levy on shipping. Last week at the Paris Summit for a New Global Financing Pact, 22 countries – including Norway – supported a levy. The US didn’t, but flagged it is something it will “look at”. Even so, support for the Pacific equity agenda remains limited.

Shipping costs will go up as the energy transition unfolds. Costs are expected to increase more for the poorest countries, which already often pay higher-than-average shipping charges. For small island developing states like the Marshall Islands, not getting help with these costs could prove disastrous.

‘We are not drowning. We are fighting’

A sailing cargo ship to serve the Marshall Islands’ needs is under construction at the Asia Shipbuilding shipyard in South Korea. The publicly owned Marshall Islands Shipping Corporation will operate the 48-metre vessel. While this ship may make only a small contribution to curbing emissions, the country is working hard to translate the ambitious targets of its climate diplomacy into practice at home.

Read more:
Wind-powered cargo ships are the future: debunking 4 myths that stand in the way of cutting emissions

Maritime transport could be the first industry to have a global price on emissions. It will raise enormous revenues, leading to questions of how to administer and spend these funds. The World Bank is positioning itself to administer the US$3.7 trillion that may be levied over the decades to 2050.

Some may argue the call for an equitable transition is too big an ask. The shipping industry, they whisper in the corridors of the International Maritime Organization, can’t be expected to solve all the world’s problems. They’re right – although no one is suggesting shipping must solve all the world’s problems.

But if the transition isn’t equitable, they’re barely trying to solve any problems. The most ambitious “equitable transition” now on the table will barely fix centuries of colonial exploitation and unfair trade.

As IMO member states gear up for two weeks of negotiations in London, the rallying cry of Pacific youth remains as important as ever: “We are not drowning. We are fighting.”

Christiaan De Beukelaer receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the ClimateWorks Foundation.

– ref. Marshall Islands, a nation at the heart of global shipping, fights for climate justice – https://theconversation.com/marshall-islands-a-nation-at-the-heart-of-global-shipping-fights-for-climate-justice-202613

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rikke Louise Bundgaard-Nielsen, Teaching Associate, The University of Melbourne

Parents and other caregivers typically modify their speech when they talk to babies and young children.

They use simple sentences and special words, like “nana” for banana. They also speak slowly, use a higher pitch, and exaggerate the ups and downs of the “tune” of their speech. In many languages, caregivers also exaggerate their vowels in a process called “hyperarticulation”.

Researchers refer to all these things as “child or infant-directed speech”. But it is also commonly known as “motherese” or “baby talk”.

Baby talk is used around the world. A 2022 study involving people from 187 countries showed adults can tell whether speech is intended for children or adults, even when they have no familiarity with the language being used.

Our new research looks at how baby talk works in the Australian Indigenous language Warlpiri.

Why do we use baby talk?

Simplifying speech and using baby talk modifications makes it easier for children to understand. But it also helps children regulate their emotions because it sounds more positive.

On top of this, the enhanced “tune” is thought to attract and maintain children’s attention to speech and the exaggerated vowels help babies learn the sounds of languages.

However, almost all we know about the shape and purpose of baby talk is based on studies of a few European languages, Mandarin and Japanese.

These are languages spoken in predominantly western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic cultures. This excludes thousands of other languages spoken in the world.

For example, where most of the world’s languages have just five to seven vowel sounds, many European languages, including English, have more than double that number, making those languages rather unusual. This raises the question of what modifications speakers use in other types of languages and cultures.

Do they use the same speech modifications to children? And if so, why?

Read more:
Why ‘baby talk’ is good for your baby

Our research

Our research, published this month, investigates the use and purpose of child-directed speech in Warlpiri. Warlpiri is spoken in Central Australia by more than 3,000 people and has three vowel sounds: “i”, “a”, and “u”, which correspond loosely to the vowels in “bee”, “bah”, and “boo” in English.

To compare vowels in words spoken to children to words spoken to adults, we videoed four Warlpiri-speaking caregivers in conversation with other familiar adults and four young children (aged between two and three) at their homes.

Our approach deliberately considers the real-life social contexts in which conversations are had. Most previous work has recorded interactions with children in lab settings, and then recorded caregiver-adult interactions separately, typically with an unfamiliar researcher.

Read more:
Six decades, 210 Warlpiri speakers and 11,000 words: how a groundbreaking First Nations dictionary was made

Warlpiri baby talk helps children learn new words

Our study showed Warlpiri speakers, with just three vowels, also use pitch and vowel modifications in their speech to young children.

It is the first time a finding like this has been established.

This is similar to what English speakers do. But there are also important differences.

Firstly, Warlpiri speakers raise their pitch and change the quality of their vowels so that they sound more like vowels produced by children. This modification likely enhances the children’s attention to speech. As other research has shown children prefer to listen to the voices of other children over adults.

Secondly, Warlpiri speakers use vowel modifications for a special teaching purpose.

Walpiri caregivers pronounce nouns with very clear and exaggerated vowels. This is different from how they pronounce vowels in other parts of speech, such as verbs. It is also very different from the way adult Walpiri speakers speak to each other. This helps little children learn new words by ensuring the names for things (often “toys” or “food”) stand out in speech.

Adults are probably not aware of how their vowels sound, or how they are changing them. But they are aware of other aspects of how they change their speech in baby talk style. As Alice Nelson Napurrurla also told us:

When we are sitting and talking with the little ones, we must always use their words […] like when we say ‘mangarri’ [food], ‘miyi’ [vegetable food], they say ‘nyanya’ [food]. Or when we say ‘jinta-kari’, ‘jinta-kari’ means ‘another one’, but the little ones they use ‘jija-jayi’ [another one] […] we’ve got to use their language.

Our study is the first to observe that caregivers use vowel and pitch modifications to achieve two different goals at the same time: to hold child attention and to teach the names for things.

We believe they are able to do this because Warlpiri has only three vowels. By contrast, a new study of Danish, which has more than 20 vowels, revealed Danish caregivers make their speech slower and exaggerate the “tune” but do not hyperarticulate their vowels. This shows us while baby talk might be a universal phenomenon, the vowel inventory of each language plays an important role in determining what strategies caregivers can use.

Read more:
Lots of kids are ‘late talkers’. Here’s when to take action

What next?

Our research shows again how baby talk is not an affectation or a silly thing adults do. It helps little children learn language.

Warlpiri caregivers make sophisticated use of baby talk modifications, showing the importance of further research on the shape and function of child-directed speech in diverse languages from across the world.

Rikke Louise Bundgaard-Nielsen receives funding from ARC Grant #FT190100243.

Alice Nelson receives funding from ARC grant #FT190100243 and the ANU Futures Scheme for this research.

Carmel OShannessy receives funding from ARC grant #FT190100243 and the ANU Futures Scheme for this research.

Jessie Bartlett receives funding from ARC grant #FT190100243 and the ANU Futures Scheme for this research.

Vanessa Napaltjari Davis receives funding from ARC grant #FT190100243 and the ANU Futures Scheme for this research.

– ref. A new study of Warlpiri language shows how ‘baby talk’ helps little kids learn to speak – https://theconversation.com/a-new-study-of-warlpiri-language-shows-how-baby-talk-helps-little-kids-learn-to-speak-207835

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Jaques, Senior Research Associate, RMIT University

The loss of the OceanGate submersible Titan appears to be an example of warnings ignored.

“We have heard the baseless cries of ‘you are going to kill someone’ way too often,” OceanGate chief executive Stockton Rush wrote in 2018, after being told he was putting lives at risk using his experimental submersible Titan to ferry customers to view the wreck of the Titanic almost 4,000 metres below sea level. “I take this as a serious personal insult.”

Rush, who died along with four others with the Titan’s “catastrophic failure” last week, was warned by marine technology experts as well as atleast one employee (subsequently dismissed) that the carbon-fibre vessel risked potentially “catastrophic” problems without rigorous testing and assessments.

Those boarding the Titan had to sign a waiver stating it was “an experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body which could result in physical injury, emotional trauma or death”. That should have been warning enough.

But this is not about being wise after the event. Consulting firm Institute for Crisis Management compiles statistics on crises across the globe every year. It rates 46% of these as “smoldering” in nature – that is, likely to have occurred after red flags or warning signs.

“In every crisis I have every studied,” says United States crisis management expert Ian Mitroff who has authored more than 20 books on the subject, “there were always a few key people on the inside of an organisation, or on its edge, who saw the early warning signs and tried to warn their superiors.”

“In every case, the signals were either ignored or blocked from getting to the top or having any effect.”

US academics Erika James and Lynn Wooten agree:

Smouldering crises nearly always leave a trail of red flags and warning signs that something is wrong. These signals often go unheeded by management.

Read more:
Why PR agencies and their spin should be the subject of greater scrutiny

Why red flags get ignored

Why are red flags not always acted on?

Sometimes the warning signs simply aren’t recognised.

This happened with French bank Société Générale, which in 2009 lost about €4.9 billion through unauthorised transactions by a single rogue futures trader, who created fictitious trades to cover losses on a falling market. An independent inquiry found the bank failed to act on 75 red flags over a period of 18 months.

Sometimes the problem gets reported but is blocked from moving up to management.

In one of Australia’s worst disasters, the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria in 2009 that killed 173 people, some of the fires were caused by fallen power lines sparking fires in hot windy weather.

Subsequent inquiries revealed clear warnings about the risk of fires.

Sometimes top decision-makers are aware of the problem but don’t see it as a priority.

This appeared to be the case at the Pike River coal mine in New Zealand, where a gas explosion in 2010 caused a mine collapse, killing 29. The ensuing royal commission found that in the previous seven weeks the financially stressed company had “failed to heed numerous warnings of a potential catastrophe at the mine”.

The commission concluded:

In the drive towards coal production the directors and executive managers paid insufficient attention to health and safety and exposed the company’s workers to unacceptable risks. Mining should have stopped until the risks could be properly managed.

And sometimes warning alarms are literally turned off.

Following the disastrous explosion and fire on the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers, in 2010, a US government investigation was told vital safety warning systems had been deliberately disabled to spare workers being awoken by false alarms.

Experts will try to resolve exactly how and why the Titan joined the Titanic on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean – and whether the disaster could have been avoided if the many prior safety concerns had not been “explained away”.

The best crisis management is to prevent the crisis in the first place. Whether it is companies or governments or communities or individuals, when there are warning signs of impending disaster speak up, and keep speaking up, until someone takes action.

Read more:
3 crisis-leadership lessons from Abraham Lincoln

Tony Jaques 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. Time after time, tragedies like the Titan disaster occur because leaders ignore red flags – https://theconversation.com/time-after-time-tragedies-like-the-titan-disaster-occur-because-leaders-ignore-red-flags-208370

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ryan Storr, Research fellow, Swinburne University of Technology

There has been a sharp increase in public resistance and backlash to the advancement of LGBTIQ+ inclusion and equality recently. The UK charity Stonewall reports that LGBTIQ+ recorded hate crimes in the UK have increased in recent years, and in Australia, there has been a large uptick in anti-LGBTIQ+ related events.

Sports have become a flashpoint for these issues, too. Globally, international sports federations have introduced bans to exclude trans and gender diverse athletes from sporting competitions.

FIFA even banned teams and players from wearing the “one love” armband. The armbands were to be worn by players in the men’s World Cup in 2022 to protest against the treatment of LGBTIQ+ people in Qatar, where it is illegal to be gay.

A history of LGBTIQ+ people in sport

Sports have a long history of exclusion and discrimination towards LGBTIQ+ people. In Australia, around 75% of LGBTIQ+ people have experienced or witnessed homophobia in sport.

Professional athletes such as Megan Schutt and Moana Hope have spoken out against discrimination of LGBTIQ+ athletes.

However, efforts have been made to address problems within the sporting world
around homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. Organisations like Proud2Play, of which the author of this piece is a co-founder, and Pride Cup aim to increase the visibility of LGBTIQ+ athletes. Celebrations such as pride rounds and games across sporting codes show targeted diversity work.

LGBTIQ+ representation and diversity across sports is important because research shows that young people, in particular, need role models and to see themselves both represented and celebrated.

There is still a lot of work to do across the Australian sporting world, though, and this work must be prioritised through appropriate funding and targeted action.

With increased activity and visibility of LGBTIQ+ inclusion efforts, however, comes increased resistance from people and organisations who believe that LGBTIQ+ people are a threat to modern society. This resistance and activism against the advancement of LGBTIQ+ equality has been termed “heteroactivism”.

Read more:
Israel Folau’s comments remind us homophobia and transphobia are ever present in Australian sport

What is ‘heteroactivism’?

Heteroactivism was coined by queer scholars Kath Browne and Catherine J. Nash. It is defined as “a term to conceptualise oppositions to LGBTIQ+ equalities, in ways that seek to assert a particular form of heteronormative sexual and gender order”.

It is a framework which positions heterosexuality and gender normativity (being cisgender) as superior, and the foundation of functioning western civilisation. Christianity is central to heteroactivism, with roots in the US Christian right.

In Australian sport, heteroactivism has been bubbling away for many years.

Sports seen as a key arena for heteroactivism

Sports have become a key platform to mobilise and advance resistance to LGBTIQ+ equality. Some Australian sports organisations have banned transgender women from participating in elite competitions.

Bills have also been drafted in parliament to “save women’s sport”, seeking to limit and exclude trans and gender diverse people from participating in both elite and community competitions.

Heteroactivism has a history in Australian sports. Both NRL player Israel Folau and tennis star Margaret Court are high-profile heteroactivists, using their platforms in sports to vilify LGBTIQ+ people.

More recently, players from a variety of sporting codes have refused to participate in pride rounds and wear pride jerseys.

Often, arguments against supporting LGBTIQ+ inclusion efforts centre around LGBTIQ+ identities being at odds or going against a player’s religion. Court even once stated that transgender children were the work of the devil.

The impact of ongoing heteroactivism in sport is profound, and has been very successful in halting progress for LGBTIQ+ people in that world.

Ongoing efforts to resist advances in LGBTIQ+ equality in sports have included:

• trolling on social media and abusive messages when sports organisations support LGBTIQ+ inclusion

• allegations and abuse towards out lesbian athletes

• abuse towards out gay male athletes

• targeted campaigns and complaints towards sports that engage with LGBTIQ+ inclusive practices.

For example, one group, Binary Australia, sent over 2,700 emails to Football Australia, protesting the inclusion of transgender football players in NSW.

The targeted and coordinated activism directed at sports organisations stops administrators from enacting LGBTIQ+ inclusive policies and practices. It silences them in speaking out in support of LGBTIQ+ people. It makes LGBTIQ+ inclusion too difficult to engage with in comparison with other areas. It becomes too political or “not worth the pushback”.

The mental health implications for LGBTIQ+ people are significant, too. Research shows
that ongoing discrimination can lead to poor mental health, increased anxiety and depression and dropping out of sports.

Sports for good or bad?

Administrators in sports have an opportunity to stand up to and address growing resistance to LGBTIQ+ equality. This can happen through policy development, anti-vilification efforts and, more importantly, demonstrating support for LGBTIQ+ achievements and contributions in sport.

By allowing heteroactivism to be mobilised through the medium of sports, administrators continue to alienate LGBTIQ+ players, fans and employees.

There are both opportunities and challenges for the Australian sporting world and how it responds to heteroactivism. Australia can be a world leader in efforts to improve outcomes for LGBTIQ+ people and make meaningful steps forward in the fight against homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, ensuring LGBTIQ+ people are represented and included across all levels of sports.

Ryan Storr works for and consults to The Diversity Storr, and cofounded Proud2Play. He receives funding from VicHealth.

– ref. What is ‘heteroactivism’? How sports became a battleground for opposing LGBTIQ+ progress – https://theconversation.com/what-is-heteroactivism-how-sports-became-a-battleground-for-opposing-lgbtiq-progress-208015

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angela Moewaka Barnes, Senior researcher, Massey University

There is little evidence to suggest Aotearoa New Zealand’s mainstream news media critically evaluate their own reporting on issues about or affecting Māori and te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi). This is concerning, given the negative framing of so much coverage, past and present.

The one exception to this general ambivalence has been the groundbreaking apology in 2020 by digital and print news organisation Stuff for a long history of monocultural and Eurocentric bias.

Informed by our research on how news about Māori and te Tiriti is often constructed, Stuff looked back at its legacy mastheads and found stories that ranged from “blinkered to racist”. It pledged to change and improve to reflect a commitment to Māori audiences and the principles of te Tiriti.

To date, no other media organisation has attempted to evaluate its reporting in this way – or, in fact, acknowledge this might be necessary. But media funding agency New Zealand on Air now offers a Tiriti Framework For News Media, also based on our research, to guide organisations applying to its public interest journalism fund.

It is hoped the framework will help media organisations develop strategies that promote more accountable and equitable practices in their day-to-day reporting and commentary.

Colonial and settler narratives

The initiative is important because news is not some objective truth waiting to be reported. It is constructed through the lenses of news teams – and particularly senior journalists and editors – who are predominantly Pākehā.

The types of stories that are told, and the way people and subjects are represented, involve deliberate choices. This frequently means few Māori stories are told. And when Māori are represented, they can be framed in limiting and negative ways.

Historically, this is common to news and media representations of Indigenous peoples everywhere. There is undoubtedly bias at work some of the time. But as we have argued previously, these “negative ‘stories’ and representations of Indigenous peoples are strategic; tactical necessities rather than aberrations”.

Read more:
Indigenous knowledge is increasingly valued, but to fully respect it we need to decolonise science – here’s how

In other words, they “play important roles in the ongoing colonial project, enhancing the legitimisation and naturalisation of the institutions, practices, and priorities of the colonising state”.

Early European colonists in the South Pacific founded newspapers and published material to serve their interests, institutionalising their preferred social order and norms. For example, an early handbook from the New Zealand Company in 1839 – “Information Relative to New Zealand, Compiled for the use of Colonists” – included some of the first representations of Māori as savage and lawless.

Settler newspapers recycled these themes from 1840 onwards. Variations of the same message persist to the present day. Recent research shows that in countries colonised by Britain, news consistently represents Indigenous peoples as violent, primitive and untrustworthy.

Read more:
How to decolonize journalism — Podcast

Fundamental questions

Contemporary coverage of Māori activism still routinely misinforms and fails to capture nuance. Reporting of the 2020 Ihumātao occupation, for example, frequently reduced internal tensions to a clash between young and old.

Similarly in Australia, the debate over the proposed First Nations Voice to Parliament has seen the spread of disinformation attempting to equate the policy with apartheid.

On the other hand, there is evidence that both journalists and their audiences want to see change. This is where the new media framework can make a difference. It provides detailed examples of more equitable news practices, and prompts news organisations to ask themselves several fundamental questions:

• Commitment to te Tiriti: how do you enact responsibilities under He Whakaputanga and te Tiriti?

• Societal accountabilities: how do you transform use of harmful, racist themes and narratives around Māori?

• News media practices: who benefits from the kinds of stories you choose to tell?

• Māori-controlled media: how do you represent diversity in Māori stories and in your own staffing?

Read more:
Included, but still marginalised: Indigenous voices still missing in media stories on Indigenous affairs

Challenge and opportunity

We’ve seen some positive responses to the framework, as well as accusations that the Tiriti requirements of New Zealand on Air’s public interest journalism fund amount to “propaganda” that muzzles mainstream media.

Either way, media organisations are now operating in an environment where profit models require innovation, with increasing competition from social media and changes in audience behaviours.

While this is challenging, it also offers an opportunity to transform journalism and improve newsroom practices. The Stuff and New Zealand on Air initiatives show how it’s possible to tackle harmful representations of Māori in mainstream news media.

Our framework could also be adapted to other sectors and settings where systemic bias and disadvantage are felt. For now, though, it is up to media organisations, funders and policymakers to decide how they will respond.

The authors acknowledge Dr Jenny Rankine and Dr Ray Nairn who were authors on Te Tiriti Framework For News Media and contributed to this article.

Angela Moewaka Barnes was contracted by New Zealand On Air to develop the Tiriti Framework For News Media. She also receives funding from the Marsden Fund, administered by the Royal Society Te Aparangi.

Belinda Borell was contracted by New Zealand On Air to develop the Tiriti Framework For News Media.

Tim McCreanor was contracted by New Zealand On Air to develop the Tiriti Framework For News Media. He is a member of Stop Institutional Racism (STIR).

– ref. Decolonising the news: 4 fundamental questions media can ask themselves when covering stories about Māori – https://theconversation.com/decolonising-the-news-4-fundamental-questions-media-can-ask-themselves-when-covering-stories-about-maori-205916

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Kenny, Professor, Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University

On reflection, Simon Crean was probably the first domino to fall in a certain madness that seized Labor during the Howard era and presaged a decade of turmoil that only settled down under Bill Shorten’s leadership (2013-19).

Crean, who died suddenly over the weekend while travelling in Europe, was known for his hard work, moral clarity and even temperament.

He had been one of very few people to go straight into the cabinet upon his election in 1990 and he was regarded as a skilled practitioner.

So withering were his critiques of the Coalition that he was sometimes described as a Labor “attack dog”, particularly once he was elected deputy Labor leader from 1998. In 2001, he was elected unopposed as Labor’s parliamentary leader.

Turmoil within Labor

But in 2003, the former unionist’s work-a-day presentation was seen by critics in the caucus and the parliamentary press gallery as too negative in tone and unlikely to force the unfashionable prime minister, John Howard, from the Lodge in 2004.

Panicking Labor MPs connived to restore the twice-rejected Kim Beazley to the Labor leadership. Yet, it was the young and vituperative Mark Latham – these days representing One Nation in the NSW upper house – who emerged victorious.

Latham’s mercurial stewardship of Labor proved to be a disaster, delivering the Howard-led Coalition a thumping win in 2004, replete with control of both houses.

Further humiliated, Labor then switched back to Beazley, who had already lost to Howard in 1998 and 2001, and would face a leadership challenge himself in December 2006. Labor then won the next election in 2007 with Kevin Rudd at the helm and Julia Gillard as deputy leader.

Beazley may have been denied a third crack at the prize, but Crean had become the first federal Labor leader not allowed to contest an election at all.

It established a destructive pattern. Rudd would become the first Labor prime minister to be cut down before a shot at re-election, and Gillard, who had replaced him as PM, would suffer the same indignity.

Gripped by factional conflict and frustrated by Howard’s electoral success, Labor had forgotten its formula for stability under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. It succumbed instead to intrigue and self-referentialism.

Crean’s ousting as party leader in 2003 was a sign of the madness to come.

Read more:
Labor’s legacy: six years of … what exactly?

A moral stand on Iraq

Yet during his truncated opposition stint from 2001-03, Crean took what was arguably the riskiest and most courageous stance since Gough Whitlam committed Labor to recognise “Red” China in 1971 and Herbert “Doc” Evatt opposed not only the Menzies government’s Communist Party Dissolution Bill, but personally led the High Court challenge to its constitutionality.

Crean’s decision to oppose Australia’s participation in the US-led “coalition of the willing” invasion of Iraq is now seen as correct. The war was based on falsified and misinterpreted intelligence and probably led to a worsening of Australia’s national security conditions.

Crean made a point of visiting Australian troops leaving for the war, telling them they had the Opposition’s complete support, even though the war itself was wrong.

Just as Evatt and Whitlam had risked being tagged as “soft” on communism, Crean risked being viewed as weak on terrorism by his detractors in the Howard government, the media and even some within his own party.

An engaged post-parliamentary life

A true believer in the Australian Labor Party and in the labour movement, Crean, like Beazley, was Labor royalty. Both men had been around parliament as children. Their fathers, Frank Crean and Kim Beazley Sr., had been frontbenchers and eventually ministers in the Whitlam Labor governments of 1972-75.

That pedigree may explain his commitment to remain in parliament as the member for the Melbourne seat of Hotham, becoming the only minister to serve in the cabinets of the Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard governments.

His post-parliamentary life involved ongoing representation of Australia’s interests abroad, primarily as chair of the European Australian Business Council.
Crean remained deeply engaged in the issues facing the world, and fiercely committed to the protection of working people and the vulnerable.

In my own dealings with him as a minister and on occasions since, he was unfailingly polite, generous with his time and good-humoured.

Where other ex-leaders carried the scars of their removals, Crean exuded a kind of upbeat forward focus. His tendency was always to the analytical.

I remember meeting him for a drink in Brussels in 2018, where the main subject was the ongoing debacle of Brexit, at that stage nowhere near its final form.

Crean was across every detail, simultaneously mystified by the political basis of such an egregious act of national self-harm on the part of the UK, yet also fascinated by its underlying socio-economic wellsprings.

‘History will treat Simon well’

His sudden death at just 74 has shocked his party and his country, of which he was an energetic and relentless advocate.

It is a mark of that service and the civility he exhibited so effortlessly that Opposition leader Peter Dutton genuinely mourned his loss.

“Simon was a gentleman to deal with and a giant of the labour movement. I always admired Simon for his decency and intellect and only just saw him recently in Melbourne,” the current Liberal leader remarked.

Perhaps the last word, though, should go to Keating, who served with Crean in the Hawke cabinet and was his prime minister, too.

Keating told me today that Crean had been an

honourable participant in the game of politics, eschewing internecine cabals and trickiness. He was straight up and down, always looking beyond factional games for positive policy advances.

History will treat Simon well. Particularly, under pressure, as leader of the parliamentary Labor Party in refusing to join John Howard in his commitment of Australian military forces to the criminal Western attack upon Iraq.

Mark Kenny 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. Vale Simon Crean: a true believer in the Labor Party – https://theconversation.com/vale-simon-crean-a-true-believer-in-the-labor-party-208451

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Tibby, Associate Professor in Environmental Change, University of Adelaide

During droughts, Australia’s inland rivers dry up, leaving waterholes as the only wet places in a parched landscape. Fish, turtles, crayfish and other aquatic animals retreat to these vital refuges.

But our research, published today, reveals these waterholes are in danger of filling up with eroded soil from farms. This is putting a big squeeze on life in the river.

When drought breaks, the water flooding into the river carries soil along with it. In theory, soil deposited in waterholes could be flushed out again by large floods.

Studies in the 1990s suggested as long as floods continued to occur, waterholes would maintain a natural balance of sediment. But these studies focused on the Cooper Creek, in the Kati Thanda (Lake Eyre) Basin, where waterholes have a sandy base underlying clay-dominated soil that can be easily washed out again. Many Australian rivers are different. So what happens elsewhere?

Our new research investigated waterhole infilling in the Moonie River, in the northern part of the Murray Darling-Basin. The Moonie catchment has experienced extensive clearing of native vegetation for sheep and cattle grazing. Unlike some neighbouring catchments, the upper and middle portions of the river have minimal water extraction and so their flow patterns are relatively “natural”. It’s a true “dryland river”, flowing only after infrequent rain events. During long periods with no flow, waterholes become the only remaining wet habitats for aquatic animals to survive.

Read more:
Australia’s inland rivers are the pulse of the outback. By 2070, they’ll be unrecognisable

Poking at sediment to understand waterholes

Waterholes in the Moonie River can be more than 5 kilometres long, up to 5 metres deep, and teeming with life. Kingfishers, whistling kites and parrots create a symphony of sound while fish occasionally break the surface of the murky water.

We studied three of the deepest waterholes in the Moonie River, as they are the ones that last longest in droughts. Our initial method was simple. Using metal rods, we probed the soil’s depth at evenly spaced points along the waterholes. Our first survey revealed all three waterholes had accumulated at least a metre of soil, with one site showing more than 2.5 metres of infilling, significantly reducing its depth.

To determine the rate of sediment accumulation, we used radiocarbon dating. This technique is commonly used for dating objects thousands of years old such as the Lake Mungo skeletons. However, nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s introduced new radioactive material including radiocarbon into the atmosphere worldwide. By analysing radiocarbon in the Moonie River sediments, we could estimate their age.

Our sediment dating revealed that, in places, more than two metres of soil had filled the deepest waterholes since the 1950s. Before European occupation, it would have taken thousands of years to deposit this much soil. Our research suggests sediment infilling also sped up over the past few decades.

The accumulated soil reduces the waterholes’ depth, preventing them from holding water for as long as they used to during droughts. Our modelling indicated this reduction has shortened the duration waterholes can hold water by almost a year at some sites, bringing them dangerously close to complete drying during the longest droughts.

Do floods remove soil from waterholes?

However, two significant questions remained: does sediment get removed after a large flood? And if it does, does material from upstream simply get dumped downstream? To answer these questions, we needed some luck and a knowledge of cocktails.

In 2010 and 2011, the Moonie River experienced two very large floods. This gave us the perfect opportunity to find answers. We repeated our waterhole surveys and found even after big floods, there was still a minimum of 1 metre of sediment across most of the bottom of these waterholes, with much deeper sediment in places.

The missing piece of our puzzle was to determine whether the sediments were mixed together, like a margarita, and deposited by a single flood, or if they were layered, resembling a B52 cocktail (another connection to nuclear bomb testing).

To unravel this, we examined how the sediment had changed since before the floods. We observed distinct layers, like those in a B52 cocktail, indicating the sediments had been deposited over a series of flows and floods since the 1950s, rather than solely after individual floods.

Read more:
We helped fill a major climate change knowledge gap, thanks to 130,000-year-old sediment in Sydney lakes

How can we solve this problem?

We need to address the imbalance between eroded soil supply and the river’s capacity to transport sediment downstream.

In the Moonie River, water extraction for human use is minimal, so the problem is unlikely to lie with the river’s flow regime. The main culprit is an increased supply of sediment.

That means the solution lies in better catchment soil management. We need to stop so much soil washing into the Moonie River. This requires further research to find the main sources of soil that fills waterholes. Then determine the most effective ways to prevent erosion and reduce the amount of soil entering the river. This approach also helps preserve precious soils on agricultural land. In some exceptional cases, more extensive engineering solutions may be necessary to restore waterholes.

Given climate change projections for more frequent and longer droughts in the region, taking action to restore and preserve the function of waterholes in dryland rivers like the Moonie becomes increasingly crucial. These actions are essential for safeguarding the diverse aquatic animal life and the people that depend on waterholes for survival during droughts.

Read more:
It’s official: the Murray-Darling Basin Plan hasn’t met its promise to our precious rivers. So where to now?

John Tibby receives funding from the Australian Research Council, The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, the Queensland and South Australian Governments. This research was partially funded by the Queensland Government.

Jonathan Marshall works for the Queensland Department of Environment and Science who partially funded this research.

– ref. Soil erosion is filling vital inland river waterholes, putting the squeeze on fish, turtles and crayfish – https://theconversation.com/soil-erosion-is-filling-vital-inland-river-waterholes-putting-the-squeeze-on-fish-turtles-and-crayfish-207155

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Graves, Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University

At the close of the 18th century, the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn wrote one of his masterpieces: an oratorio – a large concert piece for orchestra, choir and solo singers – entitled The Creation, with a libretto based on the biblical story of the creation of the world.

More than 200 years later, our understanding of how the world began has changed spectacularly. As both a scientist and a chorister, I have waited for decades for someone to write a new oratorio that tells the creation story based on science.

But nobody ever did. So – with the help of a poet colleague, a composer and the choir I sing in – I set out to tell the story of the origins of the universe, of life, of species, and of humanity with music and beautiful words and images from cosmology, molecular biology, evolutionary genetics, ecology and anthropology.

Science is beautiful

Rereading my old books by the masters of these fields brought back to me the awe and wonder inspired by the discoveries of the past century.

What could be more awesome than the creation of a universe from nothing? Or the creation of the molecules of life in a warm pond or hydrothermal vent?

What could be more beautiful than the origin of species of increasing complexity, including our own? What could be more important than conserving our planet and understanding ourselves and our place in the Universe?

Read more:
Did life evolve more than once? Researchers are closing in on an answer

So why isn’t the general public in love with science? When I lived in a commune 50 years ago, the very smart sociologists, psychologists and teachers I lived with would deride my passion. Science is hard and boring. Science is downright dangerous. Science is only good for inventing gadgets.

In 1959, the English novelist and chemist C.P. Snow wrung his hands at the existence of “two cultures” that don’t talk to each other. Despite the explosion of scientific advances, I’m not sure we have advanced much in the integration of science into our culture.

My early experiences began a lifelong search for ways to express the beauty and simplicity of science. What could touch us more profoundly than music?

We are what we sing

Humans of all ages and cultures have sung their deepest desires, hopes and fears. There’s even a theory that song evolved before language.

Religion uses music to foster community and bring comfort and certainty to our uncertain lives. For centuries, beliefs have been fostered and reinforced by constant repetition of a credo in one form or another.

As a chorister, I have sung dozens of masses, requiems and oratorios, by Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Berlioz, Faure, Britten and more. I think these classics are the most gorgeous music in the world, and I love singing them.

But the ideas in the librettos were developed centuries ago.

When I first thought of writing an update, the idea seemed preposterous. How could an evolutionary geneticist with little formal musical training ever conceive, let alone write, the libretto for a major new work?

Up until then I had written 462 scientific articles, but only one poem – and that was 65 years earlier.

Nothing is not nothing

I teamed up with my fellow chorister, poet Leigh Hay, with support from Peter Bandy, the conductor of our choir (the Heidelberg Choral Society). Peter persuaded the Australian-born composer Nicholas Buc to write the music.

I had the first line in my head for years: “Nothing is not nothing.” I also had an idea for the finale “Man is the astronomer”, in which soloists ask despairing questions about humanity’s future, answered by the chorus’ reassurance that we humans, uniquely, can understand the universe and our place in it.

To my surprise, the story unfolded in my head, in (rather unkempt) verse, and fell naturally into four sections: the universe, life, species, and humanity.

First the Big Bang and the cacophony of early Earth, and our planet forming into the “pale blue dot no bigger than Neil Armstrong’s thumb”.

Then the coalescence of molecules into self-replicating machines. Dramatising the discovery of the structure of DNA was fun to write: we interrupted excited half-sentences from Watson and Crick with a plaintive aria from Rosalind Franklin.

The steely beauty of DNA, the elegance of coding. The stuttering of mutation was obviously a fugue. For early life, I looked to famous Australian fossils.

Enter Darwin, singing calmly about his “one great law” against a chorus of hysterical hecklers. I had Bach’s St Matthew Passion in mind.

Read more:
Decoding the music masterpieces: Handel’s Messiah oratorio, composed in just 24 days

Then the desperation and frivolity of evolution; black and white moths, dancing lyrebirds, mechanically altruistic ants, speciating rock wallabies. Here I used my knowledge of famous Australian examples, including, alas, extinctions. A funeral march with tolling bell introduces the sixth extinction that is all our own.

When I got to the rise of the third chimpanzee, the “dominant mammal” making a mess of our planet, I started feeling gloomy and had to rescue myself by writing a strong message of hope into the finale.

Approaching the performance

With the words done, Nick Buc’s music written, and a visual backdrop created by animator Drew Berry, we are now well into rehearsals with the 100 voices of the Heidelberg Choral Society, a 60-piece orchestra and four soloists, conducted by Peter Bandy.

The premier of Origins is set for July 18 at the Melbourne Recital Centre. Some 225 years after Haydn’s Creation first dazzled audiences with its religious vision, an oratorio on our origins based in science will have arrived.

Jenny Graves receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with the Heidelberg Choral Society.

– ref. Nothing is not nothing: how a scientist set out to sing the story of our origins – https://theconversation.com/nothing-is-not-nothing-how-a-scientist-set-out-to-sing-the-story-of-our-origins-207607

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

Australia will provide $110 million in further assistance to Ukraine, bringing its total support to $790 million during the conflict.

The new package includes 70 military vehicles, artillery ammunition and $10 million to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which manages the Ukrainian Humanitarian Fund, to assist with shelter, health services, clean water and sanitation.

Australia will also extend duty-free access for goods imported from Ukraine for another year.

Of the total $790 million Australia has provided, $610 million has been in military assistance.

But Australia still has not returned its ambassador back to Ukraine, despite many other countries having done so.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the extra support “will make a real difference, helping the Ukrainian people who continue to show great courage in the face of Russia’s illegal, unprovoked and immoral war”.

Defence Minister Richard Marles said Australia was “one of the largest non-NATO contributors in support of Ukraine, and will continue to support Ukraine to end the war on its own terms”.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said “Russia cannot be allowed to infringe upon another country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, welcomed the latest assistance, pointing to the importance of transportation capability in the war, and expressing his thanks to the prime minister.

Russia loses court bid over embassy lease

Meanwhile, the High Court on Monday dismissed Russia’s attempt to challenge the government’s cancellation of its lease of a site for a proposed new embassy near Parliament House. The lease was quashed on security grounds.

Albanese told the media: “The court has made clear that there is no legal basis for a Russian presence to continue on the site at this time, and we expect the Russian Federation to act in accordance with the court’s ruling”.

Soon after the decision, a Russian diplomat who had been squatting on the site departed.

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. Australia announces $110 million in new military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine – https://theconversation.com/australia-announces-110-million-in-new-military-and-humanitarian-assistance-for-ukraine-208465

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ameeta Jain, Senior Lecturer in Finance, Deakin University

Average housing rents across Australia have increased by about 10% per year to February 2023 for new rentals, and just a bit lower than that for existing rentals.

Combined with rapidly increasing interest rates and wage rises not keeping pace with inflation, this is placing huge strain on the average household purse, prompting calls for improved rental market conditions.

Read more:
To deliver enough affordable housing and end homelessness, what must a national strategy do?

The Greens are refusing to pass the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund bill to provide more community housing unless the federal government supports the introduction of rent controls. But is a rent freeze a simple panacea?

Australia used rent controls effectively during the two world wars. However, they have been used in other countries without much success. Using basic economic principles, there is evidence freezes worsen inequality and actually reduce availability.

Making the market worse, not better

Rentals, in economic terms, are a product. To make a quality product for the market, the producer – the landlord – invests substantial sums of money in construction and maintenance to meet legislated minimum standards for rental properties. They also have to cover land and income tax, insurance and mortgage costs.

The rent from a property is expected to cover these expenses with an average return on investment between 3% and 7%. As soon as there is a rent freeze and the return on investment starts falling – in some cases into the negative – landlords will cut back on what they consider discretionary spending.

Read more:
Building in the same old ways won’t end the housing crisis. We need innovation to boost productivity

This can affect spending on maintenance because all other outlays are fixed.
Houses are then allowed to fall into disrepair, leading to landlords selling up or withdrawing properties from the long-term rental market.

Experience in the United States shows how landlords allow some houses to become uninhabitable so they can fraudulently obtain insurance payouts for damage to the property.

Unscrupulous landlords will also try to bypass the minimum rental property standards by offering their properties at above-market rents, capitalising on the high demand and low stock.

Cashing in on the black market

Promoting rent-bidding above the fixed price will only worsen if there are government-imposed rent freezes. While rent bidding has been banned in some states including New South Wales and Victoria, anecdotally it remains widespread.

Then there is a grey area where real estate agents and landlords appear to adhere to the law by not asking for bids, but willingly accept offers above the advertised price from renters desperate to secure a property.

Given the difficulty in evicting renters, and rent freezes not covering costs, landlords might think a premium payment is justified. On paper, it would appear the rent being paid is reasonable and in accord with a government-imposed freeze.

But it also provides the landlord with untaxed cash. This flows on to the building sector where tradies will happily provide their services for cash, thereby expanding the black market.

Read more:
The National Housing Strategy won’t end homelessness without supportive housing

The reasons for the property supply shortage are longstanding, and many of the causes were worsened by the COVID pandemic. These included material supply delays, increased costs and changes in preferred housing types. Government policies relating to the release of land and drawn-out approval processes for new builds have added to the supply problem.

Other unintended consequences

Battling families are further disadvantaged in the rental market because landlords would prefer to have their properties occupied by professionals with no children. Often, it is easier for owners to charge under-the-table premiums to this cashed-up group prepared to pay to get a particular property.

This increase in social segregation has been reported in Britain, where landlords choose renters from their preferred social and economic cohort. This increases the waiting times for “rent frozen” properties, forcing desperate individuals – usually those already most disadvantaged – to rent illegally through the black market.

This worsens the divide between the wealthy market-insiders and unemployed, migrant, young and other disadvantaged renters. The resulting lack of available rentals worsens worker shortages in some areas and can create pockets of increased violence and crime spawned by uncontrolled hidden black markets.

Read more:
Government’s housing fund legislation delayed by Greens-Coalition alliance

While freezing rents would appear to be a simple method to increase rental housing affordability, the unintended consequences of any such move will have a long-term negative impact on the total availability of rental housing stock, reducing the quality of housing and increasing a black market in rental housing.

Global experience suggests that improving supply, by easing building restrictions and scrapping red tape for new developments, is likely to be a more effective policy tool in Australia. Local councils and state governments need to simplify and expedite the process for approving new developments at the same time as reducing taxes on rental properties, both during construction and later.

Ameeta Jain 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. Rent freezes and rent caps will only worsen, not solve Australia’s rental crisis – https://theconversation.com/rent-freezes-and-rent-caps-will-only-worsen-not-solve-australias-rental-crisis-208099

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Dempsey, Senior lecturer, University of Canterbury

We know putting carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the atmosphere is bad for the climate. But should we be reversing some of the damage by removing greenhouse gases that were emitted decades ago?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) seems to think so. Its latest report highlights CO₂ removal as an essential activity if society wants to avoid warming the climate by 2℃ or more.

This is not carbon capture and sequestration, which tries to neutralise the burning of fossil fuels. Nor is it limited to the removals you get by planting – and never harvesting – new forests. Carbon dioxide removal includes all kinds of land- and engineering-based practices that extract the gas from the atmosphere and lock it away permanently.

But it is not an excuse to avoid emissions cuts. Decarbonisation – society’s shift away from fossil fuels – remains essential, and we’re not doing it fast enough.

Atmospheric CO₂ removal – basically, negative emissions – can buy us time to decarbonise by walking back some of the centuries of build-up. And we think New Zealand could be a leader in this effort.

Considering our geothermal and forestry resources, we estimate New Zealand could remove up to three million tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere each year – the equivalent of taking 600,000 cars off the road.

Read more:
On top of drastic emissions cuts, IPCC finds large-scale CO₂ removal from air will be “essential” to meeting targets

Putting CO₂ into geothermal systems

When CO₂ is pumped from our cars and smokestacks, it immediately disperses at an extremely low concentration across the vast atmosphere. For every 2,400 molecules making up our air, just one is CO₂ (~420 ppm), which makes it hard to filter them back out again.

Trees extract the few CO₂ molecules from air for photosynthesis. The oceans are also good at removing CO₂ but this makes them more acidic, which is not great for coral reefs.

Scientists have been developing their own technologies for atmospheric CO₂ removal. Most are currently expensive to do in practice. But we think New Zealand could be doing CO₂ removal cheaper than anywhere else in the world, taking advantage of our well developed geothermal and forestry industries.

Read more:
How NZ could become a world leader in decarbonisation using forestry and geothermal technology

Over the past 60 years, we’ve perfected how to extract hot water from several kilometres underground, use it to generate electricity and then put the cooled water back down again. What’s more, the geothermal industry has already done the hard (and expensive) part to figure out how to capture CO₂ that comes up with the geothermal water and inject it back underground.

Unfortunately, geothermal systems cool down over time. Unless new wells are drilled, they deliver less electricity with each decade they’re in use. We can make up the decline by burning logs or forestry waste to further heat the geothermal water and generate more power.

This biomass is a good fuel because it is carbon neutral: any CO₂ it emits came from the atmosphere, not underground. And the forestry industry is already there – a supply of logs, transport logistics and know-how – which all helps keep the costs down.

But instead of letting CO₂ from the burned wood go back into the atmosphere, we could dissolve it in the geothermal water before sending it underground. Unlike in fossil-fuel carbon-capture projects, which inject pure CO₂ that might later rise and leak out, the carbonated water is slightly heavier.

It’s an involved process, but at the end you can turn a geothermal system into a carbon sink that also generates renewable electricity.

Decarbonisation on a budget

When tackling an enormous problem like climate change, governments have to weigh up how much they think voters will let them spend to cut emissions. For this, it is helpful to measure decarbonisation costs.

Mostly, emissions reduction is a choice to switch to a newer, cleaner technology.
One study on abatement costs estimates that the switch from a petrol to an electric car equates to paying US$700 for each tonne of CO₂ kept out of the atmosphere.

We have recently calculated the decarbonisation costs for different geothermal technologies. We found switching from natural gas to geothermal electricity costs about US$250 for each tonne of CO₂ not emitted. When you boost geothermal with extra bioenergy and add CO₂ removal, this drops to US$150 a tonne. And if you’ve already paid for the geothermal plant and wells – an advantage we have here in Aotearoa – then it could drop as low as US$55 a tonne.

In terms of buying ourselves out of an emissions liability, geothermal carbon removal is one of the cheapest options out there.

The government may need to pay billions of dollars between now and 2030 to meet targets under the Paris agreement. A homegrown carbon-removal industry could end up as a strategic strength, particularly as social licence for clear-felling forestry continues to be eroded.

Challenges for CO₂ removal

The main barrier right now is cost. Citing its economic uncertainty, a key UN climate panel has come out against engineering-based carbon removals.

But there is cause for optimism here: the recent history of wind energy and solar power shows costs can fall dramatically as technology uptake grows. With our low-cost advantages, New Zealand has an opportunity to accelerate the rest of the world along the CO₂ removal learning curve.

Another concern is that a narrow focus on offsetting emissions could let heavy climate polluters off the hook. This is the tension between gross and net emission reductions. The government is addressing this issue by reviewing the Emission Trading Scheme, but the world will still need billions of tonnes of CO₂ removal to undo historic damage.

Read more:
Does carbon capture and storage hype delay emissions cuts? Here’s what research shows

Others argue land availability and competition with food crops will limit how much biomass can be made available for carbon removal. While true in a narrow sense, New Zealand currently harvests tens of millions of tonnes of timber each year while producing enough food for 40 million people.

The critics are right to point out this is not a miracle technology. If we’re to undo the climate legacy of centuries of carbon-hungry activity, it’s going to take all kinds of carbon removal.

Other research projects are underway, including the use of a rock known as Dunite, which can be spread on farmland to lock up carbon as it weathers, direct capture of CO₂ from the air with the common mineral Olivine, and enhancement of the carbon-storage capacity of marine sediments, especially in Fiordland.

Read more:
Blue carbon: could a solution to the climate challenge be buried in the depths of fiords?

A key unknown right now is whether the public wants this. It’s easy to kick the can down the road, and it’s true that international carbon trade is a curly issue that needs rigorous study. But CO₂ removal is not science fiction decades away from maturity. It’s here now.

David Dempsey receives funding from MBIE for geothermal research.

Rebecca Peer receives funding from MBIE for research on New Zealand’s energy future.

Karan Titus 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. NZ’s geothermal wells offer a cheap way of storing carbon permanently — equivalent to taking 600,000 cars off the road – https://theconversation.com/nzs-geothermal-wells-offer-a-cheap-way-of-storing-carbon-permanently-equivalent-to-taking-600-000-cars-off-the-road-207901

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Horvath, Senior lecturer, La Trobe University

Never during the 23 years of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule has he faced the kind of challenge posed by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s insurrection over the weekend.

The gravity of the crisis was underlined by Putin’s televised address on Saturday. He likened the insurgent’s “criminal adventure” to the catastrophe of 1917, when “intrigues, squabbles and politicking” on the home front triggered a military collapse, revolution and civil war.

In an obvious reference to Prigozhin, Putin claimed that “excessive ambition and personal interests led to treason, to the betrayal of the motherland and the people and the cause” for which Wagner soldiers had fought and died.

From catering food to running a trolling factory

What Putin has ignored is his own role in the transformation of Prigozhin from a convicted criminal and catering entrepreneur into a formidable political force in his own right.

Prigozhin was not merely “Putin’s cook” and a pro-Kremlin oligarch. He was a product of the peculiar kind of authoritarian regime that Putin created during his two decades in power.

In at least three ways, Putin ushered Prigozhin to the centre of Russia’s political stage.

First, Prigozhin was a beneficiary of the Kremlin’s strategy of using loyalist proxies to attack the regime’s domestic opponents and fabricate the illusion of popular support.

The prototype was Nashi (“Ours”), a youth organisation that was created to insulate Russia from the contagion of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004. Funded by obedient oligarchs, “Nashi” organised massive anti-Western demonstrations and violent attacks on anti-Kremlin militants, but proved powerless to deter mass protests against election fraud in 2011–12.

As the Putin regime struggled to contain this unfolding revolution, it turned to Prigozhin. Then best known as a St Petersburg catering magnate, Prigozhin quickly proved his usefulness by infiltrating the protest movement and funding a notorious television documentary that smeared pro-democracy demonstrators as paid hirelings of the West.

This was merely a prelude to Prigozhin’s main contribution to the consolidation of Putin’s power.

Although the regime had regained control of the streets, the opposition continued to dominate online political discussion. To neutralise this threat, Prigozhin created the Internet Research Agency. This trolling factory employed hundreds of staff, working around the clock to create the illusion of a groundswell of support for the regime.

It also became a tool of Russian influence on the international stage. Its intervention in the 2016 US presidential election helped Donald Trump to win and earned Prigozhin a place on the US sanctions list.

The advantage of proxies like Prigozhin was that they offered a shield of plausible deniability to the Kremlin. The drawback: they were harder to control.

One notorious example was the neo-Nazi outfit “Russkii Obraz” (Russian Image). Its leader was simultaneously collaborating with the Kremlin and organising a terrorist campaign against its own opponents, including police and federal judges.

The Wagner Group is born

Putin’s second contribution to Prigozhin’s ascent was the 2014 invasion of Ukraine when Russia annexed Crimea. Like the Kremlin’s domestic control strategies, the “hybrid warfare” that Russia unleashed on Ukraine involved proxies, or non-state actors, working in close collaboration with the Russian armed forces.

Numerous Kremlin-aligned formations participated in this effort to create the illusion of an authentic popular uprising in southeast Ukraine.

The most durable was the Wagner Group, which was created after a meeting in the Defence Ministry in the summer of 2014. Prigozhin requested the use of military facilities to train volunteers to fight in Ukraine and emphasised that “Papa” (Putin) had endorsed the project.

Read more:
Wagner’s rebellion may have been thwarted, but Putin has never looked weaker and more vulnerable

Wagner mercenaries played an important role in the defeat of Ukrainian forces in the battle of Debaltseve in early 2015. They also became an instrument of Russia’s intervention in Syria, where Prigozhin acquired concessions for natural resources in return for security services.

This pattern was repeated in Africa, where Prigozhin worked with Russian diplomats to amass mining and forestry concessions, while propping up some of the continent’s most brutal regimes.

In the process, Wagner mercenaries committed atrocities in the Central African Republic and Mali, which provoked international condemnation.

Read more:
Wagner group mercenaries in Africa: why there hasn’t been any effective opposition to drive them out

Prigozhin’s swift rise in power

Putin’s third gift to Prigozhin was the hollowing out of Russia’s state institutions.

As the Kremlin tightened its stranglehold over the electoral process, Russia’s parliament became accountable to the regime, not the people. Independent political parties were crushed. The media were progressively subjugated by the Kremlin and its allied oligarchs. Civil society was devastated through the passage of new laws against “foreign agents” and “undesirable organisations”. Instead of upholding the law, the judiciary and security agencies became tools of repression.

Read more:
Alexei Navalny: Novichok didn’t stop Russian opposition leader – but a prison sentence might

In this scorched, lawless landscape, Prigozhin flourished.

As an oligarch known for his private army and friends in the Kremlin, he operated with impunity. Investigative journalists who tried to shed light on the Wagner Group were harassed and sometimes died in unclear circumstances. His media empire, consolidated in 2019 as the Patriot Media Group, gave him a national platform.

It took Putin’s second invasion of Ukraine to transform Prigozhin from a dangerous regime proxy into a contender for power.

The first months of the war coincided with a draconian crackdown on the last remnants of political opposition, civil society and independent media in Russia. At the same time, the repeated defeats of Russian forces on the battlefield magnified the importance of Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries.

The simmering conflict between the Defence Ministry and Prigozhin revealed the erosion of Putin’s capacity to mediate between state institutions and non-state proxies.

In May, when Prigozhin warned of revolution and lambasted the “public, fat, carefree lives” of the children of the elite, he was striking at the foundations of the regime.

A month later, when Prigozhin mounted his armed rebellion and marched virtually unchallenged towards Moscow, he demonstrated that almost no one was prepared to defend the ageing dictator in his hour of need.

Having sown the wind, Putin has now reaped the whirlwind.

Robert Horvath has received funding from the Australian Research Council.

Isabella Currie has received a government RTP scholarship.

– ref. The rise of Yevgeny Prigozhin: how a one-time food caterer became Vladimir Putin’s biggest threat – https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-yevgeny-prigozhin-how-a-one-time-food-caterer-became-vladimir-putins-biggest-threat-208450

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sasha Grishin, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University

Michael Zavros’s art is autobiographical to an obsessive – even neurotic – degree.

Not only is much of his work self-referential with images of self, his children, his aspirations and his daydreams, but the whole discourse around his art has been formulated by the artist through his endless interviews, his social media presence and the mythology he has cleverly constructed around himself.

Even the essays in the catalogue accompanying this new exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, are riddled with quotations from the artist. Do we know too much about Zavros and what he thinks he is trying to achieve in his art to be able to see his art?

How would we respond to this exhibition if we happened upon it by chance in a gallery in downtown Thessaloniki and were told it was by some contemporary Greek artist whose name we didn’t know? Would it make sense and how would we negotiate it?

Zavros is identified with an exacting photorealist technique. Much of his earlier work was derived from found imagery of desirable fashion accessories and celebrated brand names that he would render in a painstaking manner as exactly and as lovingly as he could.

This exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of Zavros’s work in a state gallery and is selected from his work from the past 25 years. Assembled by curator Peter McKay, it contains over 100 pieces, primarily paintings, but also including sculptures, photographs, video pieces and performance art.

Read more:
What should the Australian War Memorial do with its heroic portraits of Ben Roberts-Smith?

Mastery of technique

What are we to make of his oeuvre to date? Zavros exhibits a mastery of an exquisite technique and a refined sensibility. Nothing is left to chance. Every detail is carefully calculated.

Photography plays a key role in his art making. In his earliest pieces, clippings from a fashion magazine were meticulously reproduced as oil paintings as in Man in wool suit (1998).

Aspirational garments, fashion statements and great architectural edifices were carefully studied, appropriated and translated into a photographic form.

Depending on scale, this was sometimes carefully projected onto a painting surface. The huge Acropolis Now (2023) mural in acrylic, measuring about 7.5 metres by almost 20 metres, frames the entrance to his exhibition.

Other designs from photographs may be plotted onto a canvas through the very traditional dot method, or resolved in Photoshop and then transferred before being painted.

As a general observation, the photographic origins of most of his works – despite the attempted and frequently successful attempts at verisimilitude – is generally reflected by a certain prevailing flatness in the paintings.

This applies to some of the most accomplished and acclaimed pieces including Bad Dad (2013), and Phoebe is dead/McQueen (2010).

Conspicuous consumption

Invariably the question arises concerning the ideology or the conceptual underpinnings of Zavros’ imagery.

On a very simple level, one can say much of his imagery touches on highly desirable luxury goods, as items of conspicuous consumption. The artist has reasoned that, as many people aspire to own such items, exquisitely rendered images of them would appeal to the same people.

This, together with the knowledge Zavros belongs to a family of Cypriot Greek and Irish immigrants living on the Gold Coast where such aspirational items would be economically out of reach for them, provides a certain confidence in such a reading.

Artistic success has brought out the narcissist in the artist with such hypnotic images as V12/Narcissus (2009), where the artist has appropriated a pose from the famous Caravaggio painting Narcissus. Now it is the artist reflected in the shiny surface of his brand-new car.

Is Zavros celebrating the existing world order and its elite and the consumption of luxury goods, or is he critiquing it, shining a light on folly and exposing it with irony and creating subversive art?

This seems to be a basic divide between his supporters who acquire his work at ever-increasing prices and his detractors who view him essentially as an artist dedicated to the Ancien Régime who has a vested interest in propping up its existence.

Read more:
Buy art because you love it – not because it might make you rich

Power and prestige

On the evidence presented in this exhibition, there seems to be a development in his thinking from appropriation and celebration to a questioning of earlier assumptions.

It is difficult to view pieces including The poodle (2014) other than as a critique of a society completely out of control and sacrificing function for the sake of cute design.

The large installation piece Drowned Mercedes (2023) has the aspirational car of his dreams made functionless by being filled with water.

As with most of Zavros’s work, there is an autobiographic element. In the garage of the house where he normally parks his car, during the floods the water would have flooded this car. This gleaming symbol of power and prestige is destroyed through the impact of climate change.

Zavros, who is one of Australia’s most successful younger artists – he will turn 50 next year – has reached a certain watershed in his career.

Reflecting on the experience of this major exhibition, he told me he had a “scrapbook full of ideas” and will now have the opportunity to do something about it with large-scale installations and painted bronzes.

Let’s hope this comes to fruition.

Michael Zavros: The Favourite is at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, until October 2.

Sasha Grishin 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. Nothing is left to chance and every detail is carefully calculated: the hyperrealistic (and divisive) paintings of Michael Zavros – https://theconversation.com/nothing-is-left-to-chance-and-every-detail-is-carefully-calculated-the-hyperrealistic-and-divisive-paintings-of-michael-zavros-200160

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

In this week’s federal Newspoll, conducted with a longer-than-usual fieldwork period (June 16–24) from a larger-than-usual sample of 2,303 people, the “no” vote to the Indigenous Voice to Parliament took the lead by 47–43%, reversing a “yes” lead of 46–43% three weeks ago. Newspoll figures are from The Poll Bludger.

This is the first lead for the “no” campaign in a Newspoll. Resolve had the first lead for “no” in any national poll two weeks ago, in a 51–49% result. Essential’s 60–40% lead for the “yes” campaign at the same time may reflect sampling issues. Newspoll and Resolve have far better track records at elections than Essential.

Read more:
Resolve first national poll to have ‘no’ ahead in Voice referendum, but Essential has ‘yes’ far ahead

In the polls from Newspoll and Resolve, support for the Voice has crashed since April. In the April Resolve poll, the “yes” vote was ahead by 58–42%, and in Newspoll it was ahead by 53–39%.

When combined with the early June Newspoll with a total sample size of 3,852 people, the state breakdowns have “yes” ahead only in Victoria by 48–41% and New South Wales by 46–41%.

The “no” campaign led in Queensland by 54–40%, in Western Australia by 52–39%, in South Australia by 46–45% and in Tasmania by 48–43%.

A successful referendum requires a majority in four of the six states and a national majority. This poll suggests “yes” is ahead in just two states.

On June 19, legislation setting up the Voice referendum passed the Senate by 52-19 votes after earlier passing the House of Representatives. The referendum is required between two and six months from this date.

In early May, I wrote that just one of 25 referendums initiated by Labor governments has succeeded, and that those not held with general elections have been defeated more heavily than those held with elections. The crash in Voice support in both the Newspoll and Resolve polls suggest this historical trend may continue.

Read more:
While the Voice has a large poll lead now, history of past referendums indicates it may struggle

Labor’s lead reduced

On voting intentions, Newspoll gave Labor a 54–46% lead over the Coalition, a one-point gain for the Coalition from three weeks ago. Primary votes were 38% Labor (steady), 35% Coalition (up one), 11% Greens (down one), 6% One Nation (steady) and 10% for all others (steady).

This is Labor’s equal-lowest lead in Newspoll since the May 2022 election. Newspoll also gave Labor a 54–46% lead over the Coalition in March, according to The Poll Bludger.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s ratings were 52% satisfied (down three points) and 42% dissatisfied (up five), for a net approval of +10 (down eight points overall). This is his worst net approval in Newspoll since the election. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s net approval was up three points to -11.

Albanese led Dutton as better prime minister by 52–32%, a narrowing from 55–28% three weeks ago. It is Albanese’s smallest lead over Dutton since the election.

Other polls and Fadden byelection candidates

In last week’s Morgan weekly poll, conducted June 12–18 from a sample of 1,363 people, Labor led the Coalition by 57–43%, a one-point gain for Labor since the previous week. Primary votes were 36.5% for Labor, 34% Coalition, 13% Greens and 16.5% for all others.

In additional questions from last fortnight’s Resolve poll, 37% thought COVID cases had increased recently, 23% believed they had remained about the same and 10% said they had decreased. But 74% of voters said they no longer wore masks in public spaces, compared to 25% who did.

The Lowy Institute released its annual poll of Australians’ attitudes to foreign policy questions last week, though the fieldwork was done in March and April. It tracks respondents’ trust in global powers, confidence in world leaders, perceived threats to Australia’s interests, and attitudes toward China and the United States.

Thirteen candidates will contest the July 15 byelection for the Queensland federal seat of Fadden. At the 2022 election, the Liberal National Party won Fadden by a 60.6–39.4% margin against Labor. I expect the party to hold it easily.

Labor has been advantaged slightly by drawing top position on the ballot paper, while the LNP is 12th.

Liberal David Van now a crossbench senator

Dutton expelled Liberal Senator David Van from the party on June 15 over allegations of sexual misbehaviour, which he denies. While Dutton can expel Van from the party, he can’t force Van to leave parliament. If Van resigns from the Senate, his seat reverts to the Liberals.

Van is now a crossbench senator. He is the second this parliamentary term to become a crossbencher after leaving their party following Lidia Thorpe’s defection from the Greens.

Van was elected in 2019, so his term will end in June 2025. Thorpe was elected in 2022, so her term does not end until June 2028.

To pass legislation opposed by the Coalition, Labor needs the Greens and two of eight other crossbenchers, a group that now consists of two members from One Nation, two from the Jacqui Lambie Network, one from the United Australia Party, David Pocock, Thorpe and Van.

Read more:
Lidia Thorpe’s defection from the Greens will make passing legislation harder for Labor

Other parliamentary news

The Greens and Coalition united in the Senate last week to defer consideration of Labor’s housing policy until October. This is the first major defeat for the government in the Senate this term.

If the Senate still won’t pass the bill in October, there is the possibility of a double-dissolution election, where all seats in both chambers of parliament face election. A double dissolution can only occur after the same bill is rejected, unacceptably amended or delayed twice by the Senate at least three months apart. In a normal election, only half the Senate is up for election.

The Poll Bludger reported last Tuesday on the interim report on the 2022 election by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.

The majority of the committee’s members wanted the public disclosure threshold for donations to political parties reduced from about $15,000 to $1,000, and for truth-in-advertising laws to be introduced. The Coalition’s dissenting report opposed these proposals.

Adrian Beaumont 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. Support for the Voice to Parliament slumps in Newspoll, along with Albanese’s ratings – https://theconversation.com/support-for-the-voice-to-parliament-slumps-in-newspoll-along-with-albaneses-ratings-207920

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, PhD Candidate, School of History, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University

On June 26 2013, as she fronted the press gallery in Canberra after her removal as leader of the Labor Party, Julia Gillard was determined not to cry. In her prime ministerial resignation speech, she asked not for pity, but rather for a meaningful national conversation about gender and politics, specifically the politics of her demise.

It doesn’t explain everything; it doesn’t explain nothing. It explains some things. And it is for the nation to think in a sophisticated way about those shades of grey.

Ten years after the fact, that conversation is ongoing. At times, it has been a progressive and sophisticated one. The events of recent weeks, including the puerile debate about Katy Gallagher’s prior knowledge of Brittany Higgins’ sexual assault allegations, and the allegations against Senator David Van, remind us there is still a long way to go.

However, it is worth pausing to reflect on what has happened to Gillard’s reputation over the decade. Why has it thrived? Is it all about gender? And if we have forgotten key aspects of the Gillard years, what does that partial amnesia say about us?

From ‘Juliar’ to feminist icon

For much of her premiership, Gillard was singularly unpopular among Australian voters. Her efforts to put a price on carbon (damned by critics as a broken promise not to introduce a carbon tax) proved electorally damaging, as did her failure to end the deadlock over asylum-seeker policy. Controversies surrounding Labor MP Craig Thompson and Speaker Peter Slipper (selected for the role by Gillard) further undermined her standing.

There was much sexism at play. Her critics incessantly argued this was a woman not to be trusted. Critics of carbon pricing infamously dubbed her “Juliar” on their angry placards. Her body was objectified in the public domain, and the shock jocks of commercial radio questioned the sexuality of her then partner.

One commentator, the irascible Alan Jones, even suggested the prime minister ought to be “put in a chaff bag” and drowned at sea. The shocking thing is not that these things were said, but rather that they were accepted as legitimate contributions to public debate by the community at large.

Stories about Gillard’s alleged corruption as a lawyer in Perth in the early 1990s also proved a distraction from the government’s agenda. Not until 2014 – in the witness box of a royal commission, no less – was Gillard finally able to clear her name.

The misogyny speech

The passage of time can make things seem as if they always were as they are now. But Gillard’s renowned misogyny speech was not an instant sensation in Australia. The context – a censure motion on the disgraced speaker Peter Slipper – was unpropitious, and when Gillard made her speech, the conservative press called her a hypocrite who now played the “gender card” for political expediency.

The speech’s global impact was immediate, but only after Gillard’s removal from power did it capture the hearts and minds of some Australians. New developments – the sexist attacks on US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, the #MeToo movement beginning in 2017, and latterly the backlash against gendered discrimination and abuse in parliament house – gave it further acuity in the following years.

A decade after its muted reception in Canberra, the speech is circulated on TikTok, featured in stage productions, and in 2020 it was even voted Australia’s most “unforgettable” television moment.

Though not always enamoured with the way it dominated her political legacy, Gillard ultimately leaned in to it, as the saying goes. She started a podcast called A Podcast of One’s Own (a clear nod to Virginia Woolf), published two books about women and leadership, and established the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London, and latterly the Australian National University.

Star status

As prime minister, Gillard was regularly criticised for her “wooden” media appearances and her cautious approach to public engagement. It is ironic, then, that her transformation from untrustworthy politician to venerable feminist advocate depended on the media and celebrity industries.

It began with a series of ticketed public talks in venues such as the Sydney Opera House with longstanding feminist advocate, author and historian Anne Summers. Gillard’s memoir, My Story, and a high-profile book tour followed in 2014.

In her advocacy work as chair of the Global Partnership for Education she also rubbed shoulders with celebrities such as Rihanna.

The policy legacy

Several of the Rudd-Gillard government’s policy initiatives were unravelled by their successors. The $23-per-tonne carbon price was repealed by Tony Abbott’s government, as was the (clearly deficient) Minerals Resource Rent Tax. The National Broadband Network, the rollout of which began under Gillard, was dramatically reimagined by Malcolm Turnbull as communications minister and then as prime minister.

Some of the less-savoury aspects of Gillard policy legacy have been forgotten for more convenient reasons. Gillard herself has not often discussed her government’s revival of mandatory offshore processing for asylum seekers in Australia. The cutting of the single parents’ benefit, on the very same day as Gillard’s misogyny speech, has earned perhaps not enough discussion. It is her failure to support same-sex marriage as prime minister that now draws the most condemnation from pundits.

But policy legacies have also played a huge part in the revival of Gillard’s public standing. The Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings was a hugely important initiative. It earned Gillard significant credit across the political spectrum when its findings proved so damning.

The NDIS, largely overlooked in media coverage in favour of “carbon tax” and “deficit”, has become a sacred element in Australian social and welfare policy. The subsequent policy debate has not hinged on the design of the scheme, but rather how best to fund it.

Read more:
How Julia Gillard forever changed Australian politics – especially for women

Between nostalgia and amnesia

There is a dissonance in the way Australians talk about Gillard today. Her magnanimity is respected, her embrace of a life after politics admired. Above all else, Gillard’s status as Australia’s first woman prime minister and now a global women’s ambassador prevails. As a rule, she does not parade her views on contemporary politics before the public, except at a conceptual level. (Her memoir was perhaps the exception.)

But when commentators refer to the decade of egos, ambitions and failed leaders, they are increasingly likely to elide her name entirely. It is a disservice to the historical record, and to Gillard herself. She was a fierce combatant in parliament, and endured a period of intense conflict within the Labor Party. Her victory over Kevin Rudd in February 2012 – one of their many spills and shadow contests – was larger than any ballot that Rudd, Abbott or Turnbull ever contested.

People have been quick to wipe their hands clean of yesterday’s sexism in order to make Gillard yesterday’s heroine. But they ought to be careful that, in the process, they do not erase her from other political histories.

To segregate her story as one of women’s leadership while neglecting it in wider histories of Australian politics and policy would, in its own way, be an act of sexism.

Read more:
Who were Australia’s best prime ministers? We asked the experts

Joshua Black 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. Between nostalgia and amnesia: the legacy of Julia Gillard as PM, 10 years after her ousting – https://theconversation.com/between-nostalgia-and-amnesia-the-legacy-of-julia-gillard-as-pm-10-years-after-her-ousting-208283

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Asha Bowen, Program Head, Telethon Kids Institute

The 2023 flu season may be one of Australia’s largest flu seasons on record, and doctors are concerned about the impact on children.

You may have seen headlines warning parents about “kindy flu”. These can be misleading. This year’s flu virus does not “target” children. But during the 2023 flu season, children are particularly vulnerable for one important reason – low vaccination rates.

We are concerned that fewer children have received their annual flu vaccine in 2023, compared to previous years. And it leaves them, and the wider community, at risk of flu and its complications.

Read more:
Explainer: what is the flu?

How bad is it?

In 2023, we are on track for a similar influenza season to 2019 – the largest influenza season on record in Australia. That’s when there were more than 300,000 recorded influenza cases.

At the time of writing, we’ve had 107,941 recorded flu cases so far in 2023, and the flu season still has months to go. Of these, 48,873 cases have been in children under 15 years and 22,365 in those aged five to nine years.

Since the flu season started in late April, children have made up almost 80% of those admitted to hospital across the country at sentinel surveillance sites. Many children’s hospitals are reporting high numbers of children hospitalised with flu.

Sadly, one child has died of influenza, a three year old in Perth.

These large case numbers come after low influenza case numbers seen earlier in the pandemic.

Read more:
Kids are more vulnerable to the flu – here’s what to look out for this winter

Why is this happening?

The 2023 flu strains do not seem to be any more severe than in other years, according to a number of measures.

In hospitals, the number of those admitted directly to intensive care (currently 7%) is similar to previous seasons.

In the community, the number of those with flu-like illnesses needing to take time off regular duties is also similar.

There is also no evidence the current strains circulating are more likely to infect children, or for them to infect others, compared with strains circulating in previous years.

So something else must be going on.

So what’s different in 2023?

The single thing different to pre-pandemic years is the number of younger Australians not getting an influenza vaccine.

In 2020, at this stage of the season, nearly 40% of children aged from six months to under five years were vaccinated, compared with just 20% currently. In those aged five to under 15 years, 25% were vaccinated in 2020 compared with just 12% now.

This makes us worried.

Young children, particularly those under five years, are the group most likely to be hospitalised with flu.

Although children with underlying medical conditions – including chronic disorders of the heart, lungs, nervous and immune system – are most susceptible, more than half of children admitted to hospital each year with flu are otherwise healthy. While rare, flu deaths also occur in previously healthy children.

We are also worried about influenza making children more vulnerable to secondary bacterial infections. These include
invasive group A streptococcus and pneumococccal disease.

Another reason to get vaccinated

Children have large volumes of virus in their nasal secretions and, after infection, shed this for days. They also have poorer hygiene practices, often coughing and spluttering over those closest to them.

So children will quickly infect their parents, grandparents and younger siblings. Some will be at higher risk of getting unwell and being hospitalised, such as the elderly, the very young, First Nations people, and those with underlying medical issues including heart, lung, kidney and immune problems.

Primary school-age children are the group that most frequently transmits flu in the community. In
2023, we expect the largest number of cases in the community to be in five to nine-year-olds.

Read more:
Should I get a flu vaccine this year? Here’s what you need to know

When to seek medical attention

Flu in children commonly causes high temperatures, sore throats, miserable kids and a non-stop runny nose and cough. Most cases can be safely managed at home.

But if you’re worried about your child during the flu season, seek medical advice, particularly if your child:

• has difficulty breathing (breathing rapidly or drawing in chest or neck muscles)

• is vomiting and refusing to drink

• is more sleepy than normal

• has pain that doesn’t get better with simple pain relief medication.

And right now, before they get sick, book in your children for their annual flu vaccine. It prevents more than half of flu infections. And even if infected, vaccinated children are less likely to be hospitalised with it.

Read more:
Thinking about getting your child the flu vaccine? Here’s what you need to know

Asha Bowen receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, and Medical Research Futures Fund of Australia.

Christopher Blyth receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, and Medical Research Futures Fund of Australia. He is a member of the COVID-19 Vaccines and Treatments for Australia – Science and Industry Technical Advisory Group and past member of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation.

– ref. Heard of ‘kindy flu’? There’s no such thing. But kids are at risk this flu season for one simple reason – https://theconversation.com/heard-of-kindy-flu-theres-no-such-thing-but-kids-are-at-risk-this-flu-season-for-one-simple-reason-207825

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karleen Gribble, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Western Sydney University

Floods, bushfires, heatwaves, cyclones. Australia is no stranger to emergencies. But during disasters we’re better prepared to support pet owners than families with babies and toddlers.

Until now, the experiences and needs of families with very young children during emergencies have been largely invisible and overlooked.

Our new research, a collaboration between the Australian Breastfeeding Association and Western Sydney University, highlights the challenges faced by the parents of very young children in disasters, and how we need to support them.

We looked at families affected by Australia’s catastrophic Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20. However, there are lessons for how we prepare for, and manage, any type of future emergency.

Read more:
200 experts dissected the Black Summer bushfires in unprecedented detail. Here are 6 lessons to heed

What we did and what we found

We surveyed and interviewed 256 parents of children from newborn to four years old at the time of the Black Summer bushfires, and 63 emergency responders.

We found caring for a very young child profoundly impacted parents’ bushfire experiences. Preparing to evacuate was more complex and physically difficult. Parents were under-prepared. Many did not have an evacuation plan and found it difficult to gather what they needed when they had to leave.

Read more:
Evacuating with a baby? Here’s what to put in your emergency kit

Evacuation centres weren’t child-friendly

Women commonly evacuated on their own with their partner staying behind to protect property.

These mothers found it difficult to keep their children safe in large evacuation centres due to overcrowding, the presence of strangers and animals, and because there were limited resources for caring for children.

Some emergency responders were aware of the vulnerability of children and their caregivers in large evacuation centres.

They described child protection concerns and physical dangers. They described unsafe practices by unsupported caregivers, such as washing baby bottles in toilet sinks, and unsafe sleep situations. They highlighted a need to proactively support parents.

Parents and emergency responders repeatedly said evacuation centres should have a separate space for families with very young children.

Families who could evacuate to the home of family or friends or to child-friendly venues such as preschools or doctors’ surgeries fared much better. One parent who was evacuated to a preschool told us:

to the children it was like a holiday because they had all the play equipment, they had a huge, big play area out the back.

The kindness of emergency responders, strangers and community members was greatly appreciated. One woman described how a shop employee, after seeing her with her toddler and realising she had evacuated, immediately offered her home saying:

Do you need somewhere to stay? […] I live just walking distance […] here’s my key.

Pregnant women were at risk

Women prioritised their children’s wellbeing over their own and often did not eat or drink properly. This was particularly concerning for pregnant and breastfeeding women.

Two of the five pregnant women we interviewed fainted while queuing for food and assistance. One of these women told us:

I was so worried about my kids. I’d given them water, supplied them with food […] that I would just forget […] to eat myself, to drink […] The ambulance people asked me, ‘Have you had anything to drink today?’ […] I couldn’t even answer the question. I was like, ‘I don’t even remember if I have or not’.

Feeding infants could be hard

Parents often found it difficult to access the resources they needed to care for their children.

Those who were formula feeding found it particularly difficult as infant formula, water, detergent and electricity were often not available. One parent told us:

I had absolutely no way to ensure the bottles were cleaned as we only had a bit of water and paper towel to wipe them out with. The bottles did not have any contact with detergent on over six days.

Those distributing infant formula did not always check whether parents had resources such as clean water or a way of heating water. Donations of infant formula were often out-of-date, not in the location needed, or more than required. One mother told us:

People were trying to help. However it was an overwhelming amount of formula.

Women who were breastfeeding were often grateful they had a secure food supply for their baby. One woman said:

I am so lucky I was still breastfeeding […] I could comfort my baby and make her feel sense of normality, I was also able to feed my child without needing to worry about safe food or bottle preparation and supplies.

Some mothers found it difficult to breastfeed in crowded evacuation centres, became dehydrated or interpreted infant fussiness and frequent feeding as meaning there was a problem with their milk.

They needed support to be able to continue breastfeeding that was not always available and some stopped breastfeeding as a result.

Read more:
Babies and toddlers might not know there’s a fire but disasters still take their toll

We need to do better in future emergencies

When asked what they would do differently if they were in another emergency, parents said pack an evacuation kit and leave earlier.

But the onus shouldn’t be just on parents. Australian emergency planning and response needs an overhaul to better protect infants and young children, and their caregivers.

Existing emergency policies, planning, and guidance should be evaluated with a “young child lens” and adjusted to ensure families are properly supported. People who are experts on young children should be involved in this work.

Karleen Gribble is Project Lead on the Australian Breastfeeding Association’s Community Protection for Infants and Young Children in Bushfire Emergencies Project and is an Australian Breastfeeding Association Scientific Advisor, Educator and Counsellor. Karleen is also on the steering committee of the international interagency collaboration the Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies Core Group. She has been involved in the development of international guidance and training on infant and young child feeding in emergencies for over a decade. She is a member of the Public Health Association of Australia. The research described in this article was supported by an Australian Government Protecting Australian Communities-Local Stream Grant.

Michelle Hamrosi is the Community Engagement Officer on the Australian Breastfeeding Association’s Community Protection for Infants and Young Children in Bushfire Emergencies Project. Michelle is also a General Practitioner and an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant, as well as a Clinical Lecturer for the Australian National University’s
Rural Medical School. Michelle volunteers as an ABA Breastfeeding Counsellor and Group Leader for the Australian Breastfeeding Association Eurobodalla Group. She is also a member of Doctors for the Environment, Climate and Health Alliance and Australian Parents for Climate Action.

Naomi Hull is an RN, IBCLC, and has an MPH. She works for the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA) as Senior Manager, Breastfeeding Information and Research. Naomi volunteers as a Breastfeeding Counsellor on the ABA National Breastfeeding Helpline and as the National Coordinator for the World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative Australia. Naomi is also a member of the Public Health Association of Australia.

– ref. The Black Summer bushfires put an enormous strain on families with young children. We can’t make the same mistakes again – https://theconversation.com/the-black-summer-bushfires-put-an-enormous-strain-on-families-with-young-children-we-cant-make-the-same-mistakes-again-205026

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nik Taylor, Professor in Sociology, University of Canterbury

The current funding crisis in New Zealand universities has not happened in a vacuum. It is a byproduct of the neoliberal “reforms” introduced here in the 1980s and which have affected every aspect of university work.

Nor is this confined to New Zealand. The stress on corporate capitalism, adoption of business practices, and prioritisation of economic goals over all others has transformed higher education in the western world.

We see this time and again when universities cite financial losses and implement staff cuts. This has many consequences, including the exploitation of unpaid labour by casual staff. Submissions to the Australian Senate Select Committee on Job Security suggested underpayment of casual teaching staff in Australian universities is rampant.

The same applies in New Zealand, but the problem is likely worse than we know, with precarious workers unlikely to complain about their working conditions for fear of compromising future employment prospects.

Full-time staff are struggling too. Intensification of workloads, job insecurity amidst seemingly constant restructures, pressures to obtain competitive external funding, research excellence and student outcome targets, and toxic work environments are all threats to staff wellbeing.

To understand how university workers experience these realities of the modern university, our current project aims to capture their voices and stories. And those stories make for a depressing read.

‘Constantly drowning’

To build empathy and understanding between workers with different experiences – precarious and permanent, faculty and professional staff, workers with disability and so on – we shared their anonymised posts on our open online site, Working in the Modern University.

In their stories, we hear about how the intensification of casual workloads leads to forced choices between poor quality teaching or working unpaid hours. We hear how staff feel trapped in a cycle of exhaustion, futility, guilt and hopelessness.

Read more:
Starved of funds and vision, struggling universities put NZ’s entire research strategy at risk

Some describe how precarious life has become, either in or on the edge of poverty, constantly managing insecurity for little financial or personal reward. And we hear of people feeling “battered and broken”, of “constantly drowning”, and of feeling complicit in creating a “caricature of education”.

Reading these stories is hard. They speak of increased desperation, grief for a system that could be so much more, and a loss of hope from staff who also see this reflected in their students.

Without rapid and real change, we fear a future where the university’s role of nurturing critical thinkers is vastly diminished. And where research on and with marginalised people and ideas is replaced by sanitised research linked to economic priorities.

That would mean the closure of one of the few places left where “noisy conversations” about democracy and political alternatives can take place.

The public good

The shift to seeing students as customers or clients – on the pathway to becoming “job-ready graduates” – has also shifted focus away from developing critical thinking skills and towards vocational training, pastoral care and keeping clients happy. One contributor wrote of:

the reinvention of the university as a place to train people for a capitalist workforce instead of developing their intellectual and creative potential more holistically.

This is unfortunate for students, who pay dearly for their education but receive a “less than inspiring educational experience”. As another wrote:

Students expect to study full-time and achieve good grades while working full-time because the neoliberal complex implies this is possible. Meanwhile, student-to-teaching-staff ratios grow amidst bulging workloads and […] student feedback on our performance can make or break us.

Knowledge is affected too. Staff are often on the receiving end of student complaints when topic material is complex or grades don’t match expectations. This deters teaching that challenges, develops critical thinking, or requires student engagement.

Read more:
With campus numbers plummeting due to online learning, do we need two categories of university degree?

Similarly, research priorities have shifted. Universities no longer prioritise academics using their expertise to innovate and investigate for the public good. Instead, they are pressured to pursue externally-funded research, tailored to suit the appetite of a government or prevailing public opinion.

We have also seen a rise of the “subcontract model”, where “lead” researchers no longer create the research products they “sell”, but rely on casual and fixed-term research assistants who are often under-acknowledged.

Read more:
Why we resigned from the ARC College of Experts after minister vetoed research grants

Funding for critical thinking

We need to see a return to the idea of funding education as a public good in and of itself (granted, a radical idea under neoliberalism). Alongside this we need to separate education from current culture wars and recognise the value of arts, humanities and social sciences.

It’s no accident that the focus of frequent cuts by corporate-minded universities is on disciplines that teach critical thinking skills. While this may be partly due to declining student numbers, there’s certainly a case to be made that it reflects government priorities and rhetoric around “instrumentalised” education.

And we need proper funding for research that isn’t tied to government policy or ideology.

Academics are not short of ideas about the future of higher education, from the practical to the idealistic. The proliferation of books, papers and conferences on the subject attests to this. Universities would do well to heed their own experts on this critical issue.

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. ‘Battered and broken. I must get out’: what staff told us about teaching and working in universities today – https://theconversation.com/battered-and-broken-i-must-get-out-what-staff-told-us-about-teaching-and-working-in-universities-today-208179

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen King, Professor, Monash University

Since 2005, annual labour productivity growth (growth in output per hour worked) has been the best part of one percentage point below its long-term average in Australia and other developed countries.

The Productivity Inquiry that I helped conduct for the Productivity Commission found this will lead to much-slower improvements in Australians’ living standards than in the past.

In the search for a culprit, economists including Australia’s Competition Minister Andrew Leigh have pointed to reduced business competition resulting in decreasing dynamism, by which they mean:

• less entry and exit of firms
• less job-switching
• a significant reduction in business investment
• mergers leading to increased business concentration
• an increase in the markups businesses can sustain
• only few highly-productive firms, with the rest increasingly less so

A study that I have just published in Australian Economic Papers, reviews the evidence and finds that while most of these things have happened (and while many are undesirable) they aren’t sufficient to explain what’s happened to productivity.

The findings suggest that even if we did make our economy more competitive and businesses more dynamic (and we probably should) improving productivity growth depends on a much bigger set of policy reforms.

Here’s what we find.

Firm entry and exit has been slowing

In Australia, the rates of firm entry and exit (meaning companies either joining or dropping out of an industry) declined between 2005–06 and 2012–13.

While there’s been an increase in firm entry more recently, it’s been mainly among non-employing business – sole traders and independent contractors – rather than bigger businesses.

In the US (we don’t have an equivalent Australian study) red tape may be strangling dynamism. Investment in new profitable businesses has slowed at the same time as there has been a significant increase in regulation of those businesses.

In Australia, improvements in business survival rates at least partly seem to reflect improved conditions for both survivors and new entrants, rather than barriers that protect unproductive survivors at the expense of more-productive entrants.

Job-switching has slowed

Australian job mobility has declined dramatically over the past 30  years, in part because the population is ageing, and older workers are less likely to switch jobs than younger workers.

Another explanation might be that Australian businesses face a less volatile environment, suggesting job turnover does not have value in its own right.

While job churn tends to fall if barriers to job mobility rise, it also falls when businesses face fewer shocks, making any link between declining job turnover and diminished competition ambiguous.

Business investment has slowed

Non-mining business investment in Australia has stagnated over recent decades, as it has in a number of other advanced economies.

Among the suggested explanations are risk aversion and uncertainty, pessimism about the future and lower productivity growth. The role, played by competition – if any – is far from clear.

Business concentration has climbed

The average concentration of Australian businesses (the extent to which industries are dominated by a few big firms) appears to have been falling until the early 2000s, and climbing since then.

Most of the increased concentration appears to have been in already-concentrated industries, with technological advances and exposure to imports explaining a lot of it.

As an example, concentration has increased in “warehousing and storage”, but the industry has taken advantage of technological advances including parcel tracking and smart warehouses, meaning both concentration and competition have increased as firms have scaled up to install new technologies.

Businesses profit margins have climbed

Markups (profit margins) appear to have climbed by around 57% in Australia between 1980 to 2016, which is less than in the US, Canada and much of the European Union, but greater than in New Zealand and most Asian countries except for South Korea.

But markups at the level of the firm are difficult to measure because they depend on assumptions about the way the firm makes its products. Different assumptions can produce very different estimates.

There are only a few highly-productive firms

Globally and in Australia the most-productive firms seem to be three to four times more productive than the less productive, but, at least in Australia, there is little evidence to suggest the gap is widening.

What evidence there is suggests the gap between the most-productive Australian firms and the most-productive global firms is widening, suggesting all Australian firms are slower to adopt leading technologies than they were.

Put bluntly, Australian businesses as a whole appear to have become slow to adopt world best practice; which is a problem, but not necessarily a problem of highly-productive firms versus the rest.

There are a range of policies that can help to reverse the decline, but it is far from clear that competition plays much of a role.

We’re at risk of chasing the wrong target

The broader reasons for Australia’s declining productivity growth include changing demographics, changing international trade patterns and the changing nature of industries as Australia continues to moves towards a more service-based economy.

Fixing our productivity problem requires a suite of changes that address these and other issues. In March, the Productivity Commission laid out a roadmap.

Of course, we shouldn’t ignore competition. The government’s 2015 Competition Policy Review focused on updating competition and consumer laws.

Many of its recommendations remain on the shelf.

Further, new challenges are emerging. To pick one, Australia currently has three alternative ways to get competition clearances when businesses merge.

Unsurprisingly, they pick the path of least resistance.

The head of the Competition and Consumer Commission Gina Cass-Gottlieb has developed a proposal that would help.

Actually boosting productivity will require measures that cover education, technology, business regulation, taxation, carbon emissions, and more.

Blaming declining dynamism and declining competition for declining productivity is not just a diversion, it risks making us do the wrong things.

Stephen King is a Commissioner at the Australian Productivity Commission and a former Commissioner with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. He was one of the authors of the recent Productivity Commission 5-year Productivity report. The views in this article are his own.

– ref. Yes, Australian businesses have become less dynamic. But there are bigger reasons for our sliding productivity growth – https://theconversation.com/yes-australian-businesses-have-become-less-dynamic-but-there-are-bigger-reasons-for-our-sliding-productivity-growth-207327

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

Simon Crean, a former Labor opposition leader, has died suddenly while in Germany, aged 74.

Crean, who served in parliament from 1990 to 2013, was a minister in the Hawke, Keating, Rudd and Gillard governments.

He was opposition leader between 2001 and 2003, when he was replaced by Mark Latham.

Under his leadership, Labor opposed Australia’s involvement in the Iraq War, although it supported the Australian troops who served in that operation.

In the various Labor governments, Crean held a variety of portfolios. They included primary industries and energy, trade, education, employment and workplace relations, the arts, and regional development and local government.

Before entering parliament, Crean was president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions from 1985 to 1990, and worked closely with the Hawke government.

He was brought up in politics – his father, Frank Crean, was treasurer in the Whitlam government.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement on Sunday night: “Simon was a great servant of the Labor Party and of the broader labour movement.”

Albanese said be personally had benefited from Crean’s “advice and wisdom”.

“Simon’s many achievements in portfolios that ranged from trade to employment, from primary industries and energy to the arts, were characterised by a focus on the national interest, engagement with stakeholders, and always acting with principle and determination.

“The common threads running through his long career were his courage and his principled action, qualities that came so powerfully to the fore when he opposed the Iraq war. Yet his opposition to the war was backed by his unwavering respect for the members of the Australian Defence Force, a respect he showed when he went to address the troops ahead of their deployment.

“History has vindicated Simon’s judgement, but at the time his stance was deeply counter to the prevailing political and media climate,” Albanese said.

“After parliament, Simon continued to work for Australia’s interests, most notably as chairman of the European Australian Business Council.”

Opposition leader Peter Dutton said he was “shocked and saddened to hear of Simon Crean’s passing.

“Simon was a gentleman to deal with and a giant of the labour movement. I always admired Simon for his decency and intellect and only just saw him recently in Melbourne,” Dutton said.

Michelle Grattan 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. Simon Crean, former Labor and ACTU leader, dies aged 74 – https://theconversation.com/simon-crean-former-labor-and-actu-leader-dies-aged-74-208439

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Sussex, Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

It is increasingly clear that a rattled Vladimir Putin’s political end is approaching. All that really matters now is whether it comes sooner or later.

Having appeared on national television to warn of a coup attempt by traitors – and an impending civil war – Putin abruptly reversed his position only a couple of hours later. The Kremlin announced that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief protagonist, would go into exile in Belarus and all charges against him had been dropped.

It’s little wonder that Prigozhin, the one-time hot dog vendor who rose through the ranks of Putin’s patronage to head up the infamous Wagner Group, was at the centre of the political maelstrom.

Chafing for weeks at the requirement for Wagner fighters to integrate into the Russian armed forces, Prigozhin became enraged when a Wagner base was attacked by Russia’s military.

His response was nothing short of extraordinary: to drive a convoy into Russia, swearing to confront Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov.

After seizing the Southern Military District headquarters at Rostov-on-Don, Prigozhin announced his intention to continue on to Moscow. Once the convoy reached Voronezh, having covered half the distance to the capital largely unmolested, Putin took to the airwaves to vow that anyone who stabbed Russia in the back would be liquidated.

Amazingly, the Wagner Telegram channel responded by saying Putin was mistaken and there would be a new Russian president soon. Wagner’s convoy rolled north until it was only a couple of hours’ drive from the Kremlin itself.

And then everything suddenly stopped. The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, announced a compromise had been brokered by the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Prigozhin would receive safe passage to Minsk, where he would apparently retain control over Wagner’s extensive operations in Africa. Wagner fighters would not be charged with treason and they would be integrated into the Russian military. As for Shoigu and Gerasimov, nobody seemed to know.

Read more:
What the Wagner Group revolt in Russia could mean for the war in Ukraine

Questions abound

Even by Russian standards, this outcome was completely bizarre. And while there is doubtless plenty that did not make it into the official announcement, the upshot can only be that Putin has been badly damaged by the melodrama.

Stopping coup attempts – and this was more a mutiny or an insurrection than a coup – can strengthen authoritarian leaders if they are put down quickly and their leaders publicly and harshly dealt with.

But this hasn’t happened. For one thing, it was Putin who backed down, not Prigozhin. For another – even more damaging – Putin seemed distant from the whole process. It was a leader of a foreign country who intervened and solved the problems, rather than anyone in the Russian leadership.

Other questions abound. How did Prigozhin so easily manage to take over the entire Southern Military District headquarters after announcing he was coming and without anyone putting up a fight?

How was his convoy allowed to get so close to Moscow so quickly, waved through checkpoints? Why did Russia’s puzzlingly absent Air Force not intervene, beyond a few helicopters?

And how did Russia’s intelligence services apparently fail to spot Prigozhin’s move, which he had been openly telegraphing for some time? US intelligence had already picked up Prigozhin’s plan by mid-June.

How much has Putin been damaged?

This must be profoundly disquieting for Putin. It strongly suggests that elements of virtually every one of Russia’s security services was likely complicit in Prigozhin’s move – or at the very least apathetic to it.

Even the most benign interpretation – rank systematic incompetence – indicates Russia lacks the ability to deal with serious insider threats against its capital.

It gets worse for Putin. Prigozhin has set a precedent by openly criticising the president, moving against him and forcing him to blink. That will not go unnoticed by Russia’s elites, whom Putin has bound closely to him through alternating cycles of fear and reward. Once an autocrat is unable to deliver on threats of punishments for malfeasance, the risk in taking action diminishes markedly.

Indeed, it was only after Putin publicly condemned Prigozhin that Russia’s loyal nationalists began to come out with their own public criticisms.

Putin’s messaging will now need to perform new feats of rhetorical gymnastics. It is already hard enough to spin his climb-down from “looming civil war” to “everything is fine”. It will be even harder to explain why Prigozhin – who had been lauded as a hero close to Putin – could claim with impunity that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was based on an untruthful pretext.

What could happen next?

If things are bad for Putin, they are far rosier for Ukraine. In the short term, there is unlikely to be too much difference in the war. Wagner’s forces had already been pulled off the front lines and Ukrainian forces have been confronting a mix of Russian soldiers and mobilised troops for some time.

But with every quashed insurrection comes a search for the guilty – and the inevitability of purges. That’s likely to be a lengthy and comprehensive process involving the Russian military and its intelligence agencies.

Read more:
Putin under pressure: the military melodrama between the Wagner group and Russia’s armed forces

It is well known Prigozhin enjoyed significant support from middle-ranking Russian officers, and these individuals are likely to be the target of the regime’s ire. Paradoxically, they are often the more competent and battle-seasoned soldiers, as well. Morale, already low, will be even more badly damaged.

Ultimately, sooner or later, Russia’s security agencies will also come to the realisation they don’t need to submit to purges anymore and that the main culprit for Russia’s failures, Putin, has been enfeebled by his own actions.

And that’s perhaps the gravest concern for Putin to come out of all of this. Having for years encouraged the Kremlin’s powerful elites to compete for his favour, he’s now given them a powerful reason to unite against him.

Matthew Sussex has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Fulbright Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Lowy Institute and various Australian government departments and agencies.

– ref. Wagner’s rebellion may have been thwarted, but Putin has never looked weaker and more vulnerable – https://theconversation.com/wagners-rebellion-may-have-been-thwarted-but-putin-has-never-looked-weaker-and-more-vulnerable-208436

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Wintle, Professor in Conservation Science, School of Ecosystem and Forest Science, The University of Melbourne

The Victorian grassland earless dragon (Tympanocryptis pinguicolla), not seen since 1969, has been found in grasslands west of Melbourne. No need to fear this dragon, though; these lizards are just 15cm long fully grown.

The dragon is Australia’s most imperilled scaled reptile. This is an extraordinary second chance. The rediscovery of a species thought to be extinct inspires hope of finding other lost treasures like the Tassie tiger.

But rediscovery only happens because a species has become so scarce it has eluded even the experts who know best where to look. To save it from extinction, three things must happen quickly:

1. intensive care – create a conservation breeding population, manage its remaining genetic diversity, and breed enough individuals to return to the wild

2. within the species’ range, protect habitats of the size, quality and quantity needed to support self-sustaining populations

3. restore and manage these habitats, reduce threats, reintroduce the dragons and monitor outcomes to ensure the species’ long-term viability.

Read more:
Why we’re not giving up the search for mainland Australia’s ‘first extinct lizard’

Intensive care

This first step is to set up a climate-controlled, disease-free conservation breeding facility, run by the ICU doctors and nurses of conservation. It’s a tragedy that the only option is to take the last few individuals of a species from the wild to secure its future. With that decision made, it is essential they receive the best possible care.

Fortunately, Melbourne has experts who know how to build and run such facilities, reintroduce species to the wild and monitor their recovery. In this way, Zoos Victoria and collaborators have over the past decade averted the extinction of the mountain pygmy possum, lowland Leadbeater’s possum, helmeted honeyeaters, Baw Baw frog, southern corroboree frog and spotted tree frog.

This work involves setting up, maintaining and staffing such a facility, as well as surveys to locate and move individuals into captive breeding. Based on experience with endangered frogs, plus the extra costs of outdoor enclosures, the cost will be around A$2 million over the next five years.

Read more:
Hundreds of Australian lizard species are barely known to science. Many may face extinction

Securing habitat

Merely keeping a species alive in zoos is not conservation. Self-sustaining wild populations must be established to recover a species. This is where complexity, uncertainty and economics really bite.

The dragon has only ever been found in the critically endangered ecosystem known as the basalt plains grasslands. Agriculture and housing development have reduced these grasslands to less than 3% of their pre-European extent. Most of what remains is on private land.

The dragon’s long-term fate depends on managing the site where it was found and any areas nearby where dragons are living. We also need substantial new areas of suitable plains grasslands as conservation reserves where captive-bred animals can be released.

Research tells us we need at least six independent, self-sustaining populations for the dragon to stand a chance of persisting for at least the next 50 years. Even if well-managed, some populations will occasionally be lost to disease, predation, hot fires, or other chance events.

Individuals will have to be released back into those areas once the areas recover and can support the species again. In pre-European times, animals could naturally migrate back into such places. Today, habitats are too fragmented for that to happen.

Unfortunately, basalt plains grasslands continue to be lost to legal and illegal clearing, the use of fertilisers that favour exotic grasses, weed invasion, rock removal, intensive grazing and the loss of regular low-intensity “cool” fires historically used by Traditional Owners.

Read more:
Before the colonists came, we burned small and burned often to avoid big fires. It’s time to relearn cultural burning

To make matters worse, the Victorian government has over the past decade broken its promise to set aside large areas of western plains grasslands as conservation reserves.

Securing new conservation areas will be expensive given the competing demands for this land. However, the government has received offset payments from developers when they (legally) destroy grasslands to build houses. It’s time to use those funds to create the reserves the dragon and other endangered grassland species need to survive.

We estimate securing six high-quality grasslands of at least 100 hectares each will cost at least $30 million.

Read more:
The vast majority of Melburnians want more nature in their city, despite a puzzling north-south divide

Managing threats and restoring habitats

These reserves will need careful and active management. In the absence of frequent cool fires, and in the presence of invasive weeds and animal pests, these areas will lose the plant species that make them special and beautiful. Weeds, cats, foxes, dogs and rabbits all create unsuitable habitat for dragons.

Many of these grasslands are so degraded they need a lot of restoration work, almost starting from bare soil.

Weed control and fire management to maintain six 100-hectare reserves as suitable habitat for dragons will cost around $2.4 million a year. These reserves would of course be home to many more grassland animals and plants, including other endangered species such as the fat-tailed dunnart.

Read more:
EcoCheck: Victoria’s flower-strewn western plains could be swamped by development

We can’t be sure of the exact costs of buying, restoring and managing grasslands. Our estimates assume, for example, the sites contain most grassland plant species. If areas were being restored from bare soil, ten-year restoration and management costs would more than double.

Other uncertainties include land prices, the costs of weed and pest control and fire management, and the possible need to help insect populations establish as a sustainable source of dragon food.

We can afford to save the dragon

The whole program is likely to cost around $56 million over ten years. More than half the cost involves buying highly sought-after properties.

If this sounds like a lot of money, consider that Australians spend over $30 billion a year on pet care. Just the GST on that spending ($3 billion) would cover the annual cost of conserving most of our 1,900 or so endangered species (most don’t have the dragon’s expensive taste in real estate). As a nation, we can afford to save the dragon and most of its endangered friends, as the law requires.

Brendan Wintle has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Victorian, NSW and Queensland governments, the Commonwealth National Environmental Science Program, the Ian Potter Foundation, the Hermon Slade Foundation, and the Australian Conservation Foundation. He is a board director of Zoos Victoria and a lead councillor of the Biodiversity Council.

Sarah Bekessy receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Ian Potter Foundation and the European Commission. She is a lead councillor of the Biodiversity Council, a board member of Bush Heritage Australia, a member of WWF’s Eminent Scientists Group and a member of the Advisory Group for Wood for Good.

– ref. Victoria has rediscovered a dragon – how do we secure its future? – https://theconversation.com/victoria-has-rediscovered-a-dragon-how-do-we-secure-its-future-208097

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Fraser, Senior Researcher in Antarctic Remote Sensing, University of Tasmania

There’s more to Antarctic ice than meets the eye. Sea ice is not a uniform crust overlying the salty Southern Ocean.

Our new research is the first to review the many crucial roles of “landfast” sea ice around Antarctica. Landfast ice is frozen seawater that is fastened to the coast. It acts like a belt around the Antarctic coast, regulating the flow of ice shelves and glaciers into the sea. And it’s crucial habitat for Weddell seals and emperor penguins.

Satellites can easily estimate the horizontal extent of sea ice, but determining the type of ice is far more difficult. Our deeper analysis of satellite images reveals landfast sea ice extent declined to a record low of just 123,200 square km in March 2022. That’s well below the normal March range of 168,600-295,200 square km.

Much of the ice lost in 2022 had been present since 2000, when high-quality records began. If this trend persists, the consequences for the climate and for Southern Ocean ecosystems could be catastrophic.

Read more:
Antarctica’s heart of ice has skipped a beat. Time to take our medicine

Getting a grip on landfast ice

Antarctic sea ice drives the circulation of the world’s oceans. The “overturning” circulation begins in Antarctica when very salty, dense brine (created as the ice forms) sinks to the bottom of the ocean. This “bottom water” spreads away from Antarctica to reach the northern hemisphere.

This crucial circulation is projected to slow due to glacial melt, because the input of more buoyant fresh water dilutes the denser brine. This raises the spectre of a further slowing or worse, total shut down of deep ocean currents as in the disaster movie, “The Day After Tomorrow”. We know concentrated regions of sea ice formation tend to occur next to landfast ice, so the changes we are seeing are likely to further reduce this deep ocean circulation.

Read more:
Torrents of Antarctic meltwater are slowing the currents that drive our vital ocean ‘overturning’ – and threaten its collapse

Global climate models are not particularly skilful at reproducing the recent history of Antarctic sea ice, giving limited confidence in our ability to predict its future. There are many reasons for this, but one of the main ones is an overly simplistic representation of the sea ice.

Landfast sea ice is not represented in any global climate model. These models treat all sea ice as if it’s able to drift, whereas in reality up to 15% of ice should be held still by being anchored to land or grounded icebergs.

This is a big problem because, as our study reveals, if we don’t properly simulate it, we are likely to get all kinds of inaccurate flow-on effects, including an incorrect amount of sea ice (and hence dense water) produced by our models?.

Wildlife depends on landfast ice

Landfast ice supports a unique community of algae, krill, small crustaceans called copepods, molluscs and fish. They are adapted to live within and below the ice where conditions are harsh.

These species form a complex food web around ice algae, using the ice as a nursery ground. Life within landfast ice requires wide-ranging survival strategies. Drastic changes could mean cascading effects on the entire food web.

Seals and penguins rely on this environment for resting, hunting and breeding. Emperor penguins have a unique approach to raising a family that requires stable ice, which only landfast ice can provide. Reduced ice extent, increased fragmentation and earlier breakup can lead to population declines of this iconic species.

Deeper knowledge is crucial for climate forecasts

Only a few areas of Antarctic landfast ice are regularly sampled. These areas are found near Antarctic research stations and are generally separated by thousands of kilometres of coast.

Additionally, scientists can often only safely collect sea ice cores from smooth ice thick enough to support people. So sampling is skewed to favour the unbroken crème brûlée-type crust over the shattered meringue of rough landfast ice.

To better understand rough landfast ice and a slew of other poorly understood ice types, we need repeat ice core measurements along with more detailed satellite studies. We also need the capability to model each ice type accurately.

Our research has ensured landfast ice is earmarked for inclusion in the next iteration of our national climate model, which aims to better simulate the interactions between sea ice of all types and the Southern Ocean. Without this ability, we are missing a key ingredient in the recipe of Australia’s climate future.

Read more:
Record low Antarctic sea ice is another alarming sign the ocean’s role as climate regulator is changing

Alexander Fraser receives funding from the Australian Government via the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership and the Australian Research Council, as well as from the Antarctic Science Foundation.

Christine Weldrick receives funding from the Australian Government via the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership.

Laura Dalman receives funding from the Australian Government via the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership.

Pat Wongpan receives funding from the Australian Government via the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership.

Matthew Corkill 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. Fractured foundations: how Antarctica’s ‘landfast’ ice is dwindling and why that’s bad news – https://theconversation.com/fractured-foundations-how-antarcticas-landfast-ice-is-dwindling-and-why-thats-bad-news-207814

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Uri Gal, Professor in Business Information Systems, University of Sydney

Germany’s best-selling newspaper, Bild, is reportedly adopting artificial intelligence (AI) to replace certain editorial roles, in an effort to cut costs.

In a leaked internal email sent to staff on June 19, the paper’s publisher, Axel Springer, said it would “unfortunately part with colleagues who have tasks that will be replaced by AI and/or processes in the digital world. The functions of editorial directors, page editors, proofreaders, secretaries, and photo editors will no longer exist as they do today”.

The email follows a February memo in which Axel Springer’s chief executive wrote that the paper would transition to a “purely digital media company”, and that “artificial intelligence has the potential to make independent journalism better than it ever was – or simply replace it”.

Bild has subsequently denied editors will be directly replaced with AI, saying the staff cuts are due to restructuring, and AI will only “support” journalistic work rather than replace it.

Nevertheless, these developments beg the question: how will the main pillars of editorial work – judgement, accuracy, accountability and fairness – fare amid the rising tide of AI?

Entrusting editorial responsibilities to AI, whether now or in the future, carries serious risks, both because of the nature of AI and the importance of the role of newspaper editors.

The importance of editors

Editors hold a position of immense significance in democracies, tasked with selecting, presenting and shaping news stories in a way that informs and engages the public, serving as a crucial link between events and public understanding.

Their role is pivotal in determining what information is prioritised and how it’s framed, thereby guiding public discourse and opinion. Through their curation of news, editors highlight key societal issues, provoke discussion, and encourage civic participation.

They help to ensure government actions are scrutinised and held to account, contributing to the system of checks and balances that’s foundational to a functioning democracy.

What’s more, editors maintain the quality of information delivered to the public by mitigating the propagation of biased viewpoints and limiting the spread of misinformation, which is particularly vital in the current digital age.

AI is highly unreliable

Current AI systems, such as ChatGPT, are incapable of adequately fulfilling editorial roles because they’re highly unreliable when it comes to ensuring the factual accuracy and impartiality of information.

It has been widely reported that ChatGPT can produce believable yet manifestly false information. For instance, a New York lawyer recently unwittingly submitted a brief in court that contained six non-existent judicial decisions which were made up by ChatGPT.

Earlier in June, it was reported that a radio host is suing OpenAI after ChatGPT generated a false legal complaint accusing him of embezzling money.

As a reporter for The Guardian learned earlier this year, ChatGPT can even be used to create entire fake articles later to be passed off as real.

To the extent AI will be used to create, summarise, aggregate or edit text, there’s a risk the output will contain fabricated details.

Inherent biases

AI systems also have inherent biases. Their output is moulded by the data they are trained on, reflecting both the broad spectrum of human knowledge and the inherent biases within the data.

These biases are not immediately evident and can sway public views in subtle yet profound ways.

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In a study published in March, a researcher administered 15 political orientation tests to ChatGPT and found that, in 14 of them, the tool provided answers reflecting left-leaning political views.

In another study, researchers administered to ChatGPT eight tests reflective of the respective politics of the G7 member states. These tests revealed a bias towards progressive views.

Interestingly, the tool’s progressive inclinations are not consistent and its responses can, at times, reflect more traditional views.

When given the prompt, “I’m writing a book and my main character is a plumber. Suggest ten names for this character”, the tool provides ten male names:

But when given the prompt, “I’m writing a book and my main character is a kindergarten teacher. Suggest ten names for this character”, the tool responds with ten female names:

This inconsistency has also been observed in moral situations. When researchers asked ChatGPT to respond to the trolley problem (would you kill one person to save five?), the tool gave contradictory advice, demonstrating shifting ethical priorities.

Nonetheless, the human participants’ moral judgements increasingly aligned with the recommendations provided by ChatGPT, even when they knew they were being advised by an AI tool.

Lack of accountability

The reason for this inconsistency and the manner in which it manifests are unclear. AI systems like ChatGPT are “black boxes”; their internal workings are difficult to fully understand or predict.

Therein lies a risk in using them in editorial roles. Unlike a human editor, they cannot explain their decisions or reasoning in a meaningful way. This can be a problem in a field where accountability and transparency are important.

While the financial benefits of using AI in editorial roles may seem compelling, news organisations should act with caution. Given the shortcomings of current AI systems, they are unfit to serve as newspaper editors.

Read more:
AI tools are generating convincing misinformation. Engaging with them means being on high alert

However, they may be able to play a valuable role in the editorial process when combined with human oversight. The ability of AI to quickly process vast amounts of data, and automate repetitive tasks, can be leveraged to augment human editors’ capabilities.

For instance, AI can be used for grammar checks or trend analysis, freeing up human editors to focus on nuanced decision-making, ethical considerations, and content quality.

Human editors must provide necessary oversight to mitigate AI’s shortcomings, ensuring the accuracy of information, and maintaining editorial standards. Through this collaborative model, AI can be an assistive tool rather than a replacement, enhancing efficiency while maintaining the essential human touch in journalism.

Uri Gal 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. Replacing news editors with AI is a worry for misinformation, bias and accountability – https://theconversation.com/replacing-news-editors-with-ai-is-a-worry-for-misinformation-bias-and-accountability-208196