Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Cross, Research Fellow, Curtin University

Sign up to the Beating Around the Bush newsletter here, and suggest a plant we should cover at batb@theconversation.edu.au.

On a warm evening in early 1802, Robert Brown sat aboard the HMS Investigator describing several plant specimens collected that day. Brown was the botanist on Captain Matthew Flinders’ expedition, and they had been anchored in King George Sound for nearly a month documenting the remarkable flora of the area.

He keenly awaited the return of their gardener, Peter Good, who had left earlier in search of a curious “pitcher plant” discovered the previous morning by botanical artist Ferdinand Bauer and landscape artist William Westall.

Read more: Death traps: how carnivorous plants catch their prey

Unbeknownst to him, in minutes he would be gazing upon a uniquely wondrous plant: Cephalotus follicularis, the Albany pitcher plant.

Named after the southwestern Australian port city around which it occurs, the Albany pitcher plant stands out as an oddity even by the standards of carnivorous plants. The species is instantly recognisable, as it produces distinctive insect-trapping pitcher leaves that sit on the ground almost expectantly waiting for prey.

The toothed mouth and overarching lid of these pitchers look superficially similar to those of the tropical pitcher plants (Nepenthes) and North American pitcher plants (Sarracenia). However, these plants are not related; this similarity is a remarkable example of convergent evolution. The Albany pitcher plant is unique.

C. follicularis is the only species in the genus Cephalotus, which is the only genus within the family Cephalotaceae. Its nearest living relatives are rainforest trees from tropical South America, from which it is separated by some 50 million years. Indeed, it is the only carnivorous plant among the 70,000 species, a quarter of all flowering plants, that make up one of the largest evolutionary plant groups, the rosid clade.

Read more: When Thailand and Australia were closer neighbours, tectonically speaking

The Albany pitcher plant is more closely related to cabbages, roses and pumpkins than it is to other pitcher plants.

The Albany pitcher plant only grows in a very small area of Western Australia, and is thought to be an ancient Gondwanan relict from a period when this region was almost tropical. It grows in nutrient-poor soils of coastal swamps and lowlands, where it survives by luring insects into its traps to be digested in a pool of enzymes at the base of each pitcher. Each pitcher bears a lid to prevent rain from diluting the pool of enzymes, with translucent windows to disorient trapped prey and prevent escape.

Interestingly, one species of insect not only survives inside the fluid of the pitchers, but relies on it for survival. The wingless stilt fly Badisis ambulans lays its eggs in the pitchers, and the larvae develop in the pool of pitcher fluid, feeding on captured prey.

These stilt flies live only in the dense vegetation of the swamps inhabited by the Albany pitcher plant. They look more like an ant than a fly, which is probably a deliberate mimicry of the ant Iridomyrmex conifer, the primary prey of the pitcher plant. It is likely that these three species – plant, fly and ant – have co-evolved together over millions of years.

The Albany pitcher plant was probably widespread in the southwest corner of WA before European settlement, and almost 150 populations have been recorded throughout this region. However, the species has declined dramatically over the past century as extensive land has been cleared throughout the southwest for agriculture and urban development.

The Albany pitcher plant now occurs only as small, isolated populations in remnant habitat patches. It is thought that less than 3,000 hectares of habitat suitable for the species now remains in the greater Albany region. Recent survey efforts suggest that fewer than 20 populations of the Albany pitcher plant still exist, and fewer than 5,000 plants remain.

Despite the perilous state of the Albany pitcher plant, it still has no formal conservation status. Indeed, swamps containing the species have been bulldozed for housing development in the past 12 months. But habitat loss and changes to bushfire frequency and water flow are not the only threats to this amazing species. Current projections of a drying climate in the southwest of Western Australia may see the species pushed towards extinction in the coming decades.

Incredibly, the Albany pitcher plant is also at risk from poaching. The species is prized for its horticultural novelty, and unscrupulous individuals dig up plants from the wild either to grow or sell. At one accessible location where the species was known to grow in abundance, every single plant within reach has been removed. At other sites, entire populations have been dug up.

Read more: The waterwheel plant is a carnivorous, underwater snap-trap

Without improved conservation measures, and tough penalties for removing this incredible species from its natural habitat, the Albany pitcher plant and its complex web of insect relationships face a potentially dire future.

Sign up to Beating Around the Bush, a series that profiles native plants: part gardening column, part dispatches from country, entirely Australian.

– ref. The Albany pitcher plant will straight up eat you (if you’re an ant) – http://theconversation.com/the-albany-pitcher-plant-will-straight-up-eat-you-if-youre-an-ant-120767

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon O’Connor, Associate Professor in American Politics at the United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney

According to much of the early commentary, Robert Mueller’s testimony on Wednesday before two US congressional committees was a disappointment.

Democrats are frustrated the special counsel did not make a clear-cut case for impeaching President Donald Trump. Mueller answered questions in the most minimalist way possible, often suggesting congresspersons simply read his report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Democrats wanted Mueller to testify in the hope the American public would start paying more attention to his findings on how Trump obstructed justice.

It turned out that Mueller’s testimony was more sophistic than animating. But it did again highlight damning things about the president’s behaviour.

During the hearing, Republicans unimaginatively echoed Trump’s claims of a “witch-hunt” and asserted that the Mueller report turned up no evidence of collusion with Russia during the 2016 election or of obstruction of justice.

Like Attorney-General Bob Barr’s disingenuous summary of the Mueller report, these claims by Republicans this week were not true, but they have created a narrative that Trump is innocent. This claim is given ballast by Republicans’ allegations that FBI agents conducting the Mueller investigations were politically biased because some of them had said negative things about Trump in private correspondence or donated money to the Clinton campaign.

Read more: US House of Representatives condemns racist tweets in another heady week under President Donald Trump

If saying highly negative things about Trump behind closed doors disqualified bureaucrats and politicians from doing their job, Washington DC would grind to a halt. However, in public Republicans are sticking with Trump, doing his bidding in the Congress and tying their fortunes to him at least for the foreseeable future.

Democrats may initiate impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives, but the trial ultimately occurs in the Senate, where the Republicans have a 53-47 majority. As a result of these numbers and the need for a two-thirds majority vote to dismiss a president, removing Trump from office via impeachment proceedings is very unlikely.

Republicans are showing no signs of abandoning Trump. It is worth remembering that no president has ever been removed from office by the Senate, although two – Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson – have been impeached by the House of Representatives.

Given these political rather than legal realities, will Democrats continue to push for Trump’s unlikely impeachment? The answer is yes. Although Democratic house leaders led by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the house, are urging caution, the fresh wave of Democratic congresspersons elected in 2018 who rode a strong wave of anti-Trump sentiment in their congressional districts will continue to push hard for impeachment.

However, this divide can be overstated. As Pelosi’s comments following Mueller’s testimony demonstrate, the fact that Republicans control the Senate and are unlikely to convict the president may not factor into future considerations among the house leadership. Pelosi wants a strong case, not an act of political theatre. As she put it:

The stronger our case is, the worse the Senate will look for just letting the president off the hook.

Pelosi knows that the case against Trump continues to build. Democrats are pursuing the president in federal courts for a number of alleged financial improprieties, and the House Judiciary Committee is preparing to enforce a subpoena against Don McGahn – the former White House Counsel allegedly directed by Trump to fire Mueller during his investigation.

In his testimony on Wednesday, Mueller confirmed that Trump pressured McGahn in yet another attempt to obstruct justice. Those who have read the Mueller report would know that there were many such attempts. These include Michael Flynn’s lies to the FBI about his conversations with Russians during the transition, the pressuring and eventual firing of FBI director James Comey, and the attempted cover-up of Don junior’s meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016 to get whatever dirt he could on Hillary Clinton.

The challenge for Democrats, if they go ahead with impeachment in the House of Representatives, is to articulate a clear case about why such drastic action is justified.

In legal terms, the case that Trump obstructed justice is strong, whereas the case for collusion with Russia is weaker.

It is easy to impute guilt by association with Trump and the Russians. First, there are Trump’s business dealings with Trump Soho and the push to have a Trump Moscow hotel. Then there is Paul Manafort’s close associations with Viktor Yanukovych. Finally, there is Steve Bannon’s appreciation of Putin’s support for ultra right-wing populists across Europe.

Read more: Two dozen candidates, one big target: in a crowded Democratic field, who can beat Trump?

However, the Mueller report and his testimony produced no smoking gun. Mueller rightly warned that the Russians have an ongoing campaign to undermine the faith of Americans in democracy. Given the existing levels of frustration and apathy about politics in America, Mueller’s alarm on this issue should be taken seriously. This was one of the few issues that the reluctant witness Mueller became more animated and forceful about.

Many of us are following the vast cast of characters central to the Trump era, the complex details of the Mueller report and Trump’s financial dealings, as well as the congressional hearings into Trump’s behaviour in office.

However, there is a simpler reality to keep in sight. That is that during the Trump presidency, the truth has been more politicised than ever. Increasingly, the truth is presented as a lie and a lie as the truth.

– ref. Mueller testimony does not produce smoking gun, but the issues it raised are far from resolved – http://theconversation.com/mueller-testimony-does-not-produce-smoking-gun-but-the-issues-it-raised-are-far-from-resolved-120781

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

University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Professor Deep Saini and Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan discuss the week in politics including progress the Federal Parliament has made this week, Albanese’s opposition’s new tactics in question time, Scott Morrison’s announcement of his new head of his department, Phil Gaetjens, and the Prime Minister’s views on the public service role.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the opposition’s tactics in question time – and Morrison’s views on the public service – http://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-the-oppositions-tactics-in-question-time-and-morrisons-views-on-the-public-service-121042

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Russ Babcock, Senior Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO

If you think climate change is only gradually affecting our natural systems, think again.

Our research, published yesterday in Frontiers in Marine Science, looked at the large-scale impacts of a series of extreme climate events on coastal marine habitats around Australia.

We found more than 45% of the coastline was already affected by extreme weather events caused by climate change. What’s more, these ecosystems are struggling to recover as extreme events are expected to get worse.

Read more: 40 years ago, scientists predicted climate change. And hey, they were right

There is growing scientific evidence that heatwaves, floods, droughts and cyclones are increasing in frequency and intensity, and that this is caused by climate change.

Life on the coastline

Corals, seagrass, mangroves and kelp are some of the key habitat-forming species of our coastline, as they all support a host of marine invertebrates, fish, sea turtles and marine mammals.

Our team decided to look at the cumulative impacts of recently reported extreme climate events on marine habitats around Australia. We reviewed the period between 2011 and 2017 and found these events have had devastating impacts on key marine habitats.

These include kelp and mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, and coral reefs, some of which have not yet recovered, and may never do so. These findings paint a bleak picture, underscoring the need for urgent action.

During this period, which spanned both El Niño and La Niña conditions, scientists around Australia reported the following events:

2011: The most extreme marine heatwave ever occurred off the west coast of Australia. Temperatures were as much as 2-4℃ above average for extended periods and there was coral bleaching along more than 1,000km of coast and loss of kelp forest along hundreds of kilometres.

Seagrasses in Shark Bay and along the entire east coast of Queensland were also severely affected by extreme flooding and cyclones. The loss of seagrasses in Queensland may have led to a spike in deaths of turtles and dugongs.

2013: Extensive coral bleaching took place along more than 300km of the Pilbara coast of northwestern Australia.

2016: The most extreme coral bleaching ever recorded on the Great Barrier Reef affected more than 1,000km of the northern Great Barrier Reef. Mangrove forests across northern Australia were killed by a combination of drought, heat and abnormally low sea levels along the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria across the Northern Territory and into Western Australia.

2017: An unprecedented second consecutive summer of coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef affects northern Great Barrier Reef again, as well as parts of the reef further to the south.

Heritage areas affected

Many of the impacted areas are globally significant for their size and biodiversity, and because until now they have been relatively undisturbed by climate change. Some of the areas affected are also World Heritage Areas (Great Barrier Reef, Shark Bay, Ningaloo Coast).

The habitats affected are “foundational”: they provide food and shelter to a huge range of species. Many of the animals affected – such as large fish and turtles – support commercial industries such as tourism and fishing, as well as being culturally important to Australians.

Recovery across these impacted habitats has begun, but it’s likely some areas will never return to their previous condition.

We have used ecosystem models to evaluate the likely long-term outcomes from extreme climate events predicted to become more frequent and more intense.

This work suggests that even in places where recovery starts, the average time for full recovery may be around 15 years. Large slow-growing species such as sharks and dugongs could take even longer, up to 60 years.

But extreme climate events are predicted to occur less than 15 years apart. This will result in a step-by-step decline in the condition of these ecosystems, as it leaves too little time between events for full recovery.

This already appears to be happening with the corals of the Great Barrier Reef.

Gradual decline as things get warmer

Damage from extreme climate events occurs on top of more gradual changes driven by increases in average temperature, such as loss of kelp forests on the southeast coasts of Australia due to the spread of sea urchins and tropical grazing fish species.

Ultimately, we need to slow down and stop the heating of our planet due to the release of greenhouse gases. But even with immediate and effective emissions reduction, the planet will remain warmer, and extreme climatic events more prevalent, for decades to come.

Recovery might still be possible, but we need to know more about recovery rates and what factors promote recovery. This information will allow us to give the ecosystems a helping hand through active restoration and rehabilitation efforts.

Read more: More than 28,000 species are officially threatened, with more likely to come

We will need new ways to help ecosystems function and to deliver the services that we all depend on. This will likely include decreasing (or ideally, stopping) direct human impacts, and actively assisting recovery and restoring damaged ecosystems.

Several such programs are active around Australia and internationally, attempting to boost the ability of corals, seagrass, mangroves and kelp to recover.

But they will need to be massively scaled up to be effective in the context of the large scale disturbances seen in this decade.

– ref. Extreme weather caused by climate change has damaged 45% of Australia’s coastal habitat – http://theconversation.com/extreme-weather-caused-by-climate-change-has-damaged-45-of-australias-coastal-habitat-120671

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alessandro Ossola, Research Coordinator Centre for Smart Green Cities, Macquarie University

We need trees in our lives. This past summer, Adelaide experienced the hottest temperature ever recorded in an Australian state capital, hitting 46.6 degrees on January 24. Trees beautify otherwise grey cities and cool our suburbs during heatwaves. But different species have different levels of tolerance of heat, lack of water and other threats posed by climate change.

In a newly published study, we investigated likely climate change impacts on 176 of the most common tree species planted across Australian cities. Our analysis showed more than 70% of these species will experience harsher climatic conditions across Australian cities by 2070. Some of the most commonly planted trees are unlikely to survive these conditions.

So which tree species are best suited to particular places? Which species are more likely to thrive, rather than just survive, under a changing climate? Which of our beloved tree species won’t make it?

Tree species growing in warmer cities are more likely to be affected than those in cooler cities. Some species, such as the golden wattle (Acacia longifolia) or the prickly paperbark (Melaleuca styphelioides), might not make it in northern cities, unless we invest precious resources – such as water – to maintain these civic assets. Other species, such as the native frangipani (Hymenosporum flavum) or the tuckeroo (Cupaniopsis anacardioides), will likely become more suitable for planting in southern cities.

Read more: We’re investing heavily in urban greening, so how are our cities doing?

Why do cities need trees?

Trees are wonderfully effective at improving the microclimate of our cities, which makes tree plantings an effective and efficient way to adapt to climate change. The leaves of trees absorb and dissipate much of the sun’s radiation.

Trees cool air and land by several degrees compared to areas of concrete and asphalt. Swipe the heat map below to see how effectively trees cool down our cities. (Red indicates hotter areas, blue cooler areas.)

Read more: Building cool cities for a hot future

Governments recognise the importance of trees and have developed vital initiatives, such as the national 20 Million Trees program and the 5 Million Trees program in New South Wales. These are important first steps to increase urban tree cover across Australia. But the question arises: are we planting the right tree species?

What does the science say?

Australian cities are blessed with a higher diversity of tree species compared to other cities globally. However, the 30 most commonly planted species make up more than half of Australia’s urban forests.

This poses a great risk for our cities. If we were to lose one or two of these common species, the impact on our urban tree cover would be immense. Consequently, our best insurance is to increase the diversity of our trees.

Our quest to find climate-ready tree species is only just beginning. Supported by Hort Innovation Australia, the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, and the Commonwealth government, our team embarked on a project called Which Plant Where in conjunction with researchers at Western Sydney University. Our mission is to find the best plant species for urban landscapes that will be resilient to climate change.

We work with the nursery industry to provide evidence on species’ resilience to extreme heat and drought by testing plants to their limits in research glasshouses. Our work with plant growers and nurseries will inform them on how to adapt their business, by identifying the new challenges posed by climate change, as well as selecting highly diverse palettes of climate-ready species. We advise landscape architects, designers and urban planners about not only the best planting choices, but also how to increase the biodiversity of our cities.

Read more: For green cities to become mainstream, we need to learn from local success stories and scale up

You can help!

We are committed to do more science in coming years, but you can start making a difference today. Australia’s National Tree Day will be celebrated again this year on Sunday, July 28. It’s a great opportunity to teach our families, communities and businesses about the importance of tree planting and environmental stewardship as key elements of adapting to climate change.

An old Chinese adage says:

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

This weekend is your time. The game is simple – head to your closest plant nursery. Ask your local grower about which tree species are suitable for the local growing conditions and pick one you like. Then, plant a tree in your yard, or join one of the many planting events across Australia.

Teach your kids, family and friends about the difference they can start making today – for their future and our common good – one tree at a time.

– ref. Our cities need more trees, but some commonly planted ones won’t survive climate change – http://theconversation.com/our-cities-need-more-trees-but-some-commonly-planted-ones-wont-survive-climate-change-120493

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Axel Bruns, Professor, Creative Industries, Queensland University of Technology

As a social media platform, Twitter does not have the most glowing reputation. If you just rely on what you hear about it, you might think Twitter is no more than a hotbed for raging politics and viral campaign hashtags. But is that all there is?

The news media’s intense focus on political strife is misleading. In our new research, we studied Twitter from a different angle, and found it has important social functions as well.

This matters. As calls for social media regulation grow, it’s critical we see Twitter and other platforms in all their facets to make sure any possible new legislation affecting the social media platform doesn’t cause collateral damage in other areas.

Read more: Twitter is right to have special rules for Donald Trump – it’s recognising that not all tweets are equal

In our study, we developed the term “phatic sharing” to describe Twitter activity that serves such a social function.

It’s remarkable that the phatic practices from the early days of the platform still persist after more than a decade, and it should give us hope that Twitter and other social media platforms may not be lost entirely to the political partisans and propagandists.

It’s a symptom of the biases in news coverage as well as in much scholarly research that such social practices on the platform are often overlooked, and that we focus instead mainly on high politics.

Twitter in a day

Rather than looking only for the hashtags and accounts we knew about already, our research took a snapshot of all Australian Twitter activity on an ordinary day in 2017, analysing 1.3 million tweets.

This helped us find user practices often overlooked by researchers and journalists, precisely because they don’t seek the limelight and don’t attach to visible hashtags and viral memes.

We found that hashtags like #auspol constitute a minority practice: more than three-quarters of all Australian tweets that day did not contain any hashtag. This means that any research that only focuses on hashtags like #auspol fails to capture the full range of Twitter activity.

The breadth of topics over the course of the day becomes clearer from a network visualisation of interaction patterns among Twitter users, shown above.

Yes, there’s a solid cluster of users talking about domestic and international politics. But similarly, there are many other groups in the network that stay well away from such topics and talk about what’s important to their own lives.

Shooting the breeze

Of the distinct groups of accounts we identified through our network analysis, the most numerous and most active over a day are the phatic sharers – a cluster of accounts using Twitter in a completely different way from the political hashtag warriors.

Read more: The urgent need for media literacy in an age of annihilation

There is no clear thematic focus to what these accounts do. Roughly half their tweets are retweets, contain URLs, or both, and a quarter are original tweets that neither @mention or retweet anyone else. Only about 5% of their tweets are hashtagged.

So, we interpret this group as using Twitter essentially as a place to hang out and shoot the breeze.

They’re not interested in a wider reach for their tweets (otherwise they’d use hashtags). They mainly share personal updates and observations, or they retweet the things they encounter as they hang out on Twitter.

In other words, they’re using Twitter as it was originally intended, not as what it has become in the years since the social media platform launched.

Not just ‘pointless babble’

Some might see such practices as a waste of time. A 2009 report on how people used Twitter at the time described similar activities as “pointless babble”.

Read more: What’s not to like? Instagram’s trial to hide the number of ‘likes’ could save users’ self-esteem

But to dismiss what we see here so glibly would be a mistake. For the users involved, phatic sharing can be important for personal expression and as a tool to maintain social ties.

This means they’re posting updates, sharing links, and retweeting other people’s posts not because they contain breaking news or engage with national and international events, but because this continuous communicative presence on the platform has a social – phatic – function. This is similar to the small talk we might engage in at work, with friends, or at social events.

It doesn’t matter so much what’s said, but that it is said at all. In offline reality, speaking and interacting maintains our place in the social network, rather than becoming just a silent bystander.

The same, it seems, applies on Twitter. For phatic sharers, simply following the tweets of others is not enough.

And that is perhaps the central point here: as a practice, phatic sharing reclaims Twitter as a truly social network, rather than simply as a source of breaking news or a place for public debate between politicians, journalists, and activists.

Read more: Most adults have never heard of TikTok. That’s by design

So next time we’re offended by Donald Trump’s latest Twitter outbursts, or frustrated by the predictably partisan battles in domestic political tweeting, why not just unfollow those accounts and find some more interesting people to connect with?

You’ll need to look beyond the trending hashtags (and in fact, beyond hashtags altogether) to find them, though.

– ref. Twitter isn’t just for political hashtag warriors. Many still use the social network to just hang out – http://theconversation.com/twitter-isnt-just-for-political-hashtag-warriors-many-still-use-the-social-network-to-just-hang-out-120505

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pamela Laird, Senior Respiratory Physiotherapsit & Researcher, Telethon Kids Institute

As respiratory clinicians, we have been conducting outreach clinics to the Kimberley, in northern Western Australia, for about ten years, treating children with bronchiectasis, a chronic lung disease in which the breathing tubes in the lungs are damaged.

If left untreated, bronchiectasis can eat away at the lungs and cause devastating long-term effects.

Our research, published today in the journal Respirology, shows how Aboriginal health providers, visiting clinicians, and Aboriginal families can work together to detect illness that may lead to bronchiectasis as symptoms first appear, using local language, stories, and resources.

These resources, including an animated video, highlight that chronic wet cough, in the absence of any other symptom or sign, can be the earliest and often only warning sign of lung disease.

Why early detection is key

A persistent, low-grade wet cough is often a sign of mucus in the airway that has become infected. Over time, this mucus begins to destroy the lung tissue.

Limiting the extent of lung damage is predicated on timely recognition and management of the chronic wet cough. Treatment may include antibiotics and chest physiotherapy.

If left untreated, the disease can progress and result in a lot of coughing, feeling breathless, losing sleep, feeling worried and helpless, and, eventually, early death.

In Australia, lung infections are the most common reason Aboriginal children are hospitalised. Young Aboriginal children in WA are up to 13 times more likely to be admitted for lung infections than non-Aboriginal children.

More than a quarter of young Aboriginal children admitted with lung infections will go on to develop potentially life-shortening chronic lung disease.

Lung disease is a major contributor to the gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and other Australians. Indigenous Australians hospitalised with bronchiectasis die, on average, 24 years earlier than non-Indigenous Australians with the condition.

Read more: How Australians Die: cause #4 – chronic lower respiratory diseases

Understanding the delay

Each quarter, Perth Children’s Hospital sends a multidisciplinary team to see about 30 children, mostly Aboriginal, who have been referred for specialist care by doctors from across the vast Kimberley region.

We have witnessed the consequences of lung disease being diagnosed too late. We once treated an adolescent Aboriginal boy with end-stage bronchiectasis. He was so sick that he was unable to walk or lie flat. His lung function was less than 25%, well below the threshold for lung transplantation.

This boy was dying from an illness that could have been halted or reversed had someone treated him effectively before his disease had progressed this far. A note in his medical record stated: “Lost to the system.”

Read more: Words from Arnhem land: Aboriginal health messages need to be made with us rather than for us

In our clinics, we noticed a high prevalence of Aboriginal children with lung disease who were seen too late, when preventable lung damage was already permanent.

We found we were not always eliciting accurate histories from families. Specifically, when we asked engaged parents if their children had a wet cough, the parents would say “no” when, in fact, the children did have a wet cough.

Accurate medical history taking is crucial to providing good medical care, as is the provision of culturally appropriate care. But we realised a barrier was preventing us from communicating effectively with families, and preventing those families seeking timely medical care for their children.

From mucus to goonbee

We addressed the issues through partnerships with Aboriginal families, researchers, Aboriginal health providers, and government. We identified the barriers and enablers for both families and clinicians to recognise and manage early lung disease and stop it progressing to serious life-limiting illness.

We interviewed 77 Aboriginal families and clinicians in the Kimberley, and discovered that families had never heard that a daily wet cough for more than four weeks could indicate serious infection.

Coughing was so prevalent among Aboriginal children that symptoms were being normalised.

When families were given culturally appropriate health information, they sought medical help. Parents also gave an accurate history about the presence of wet cough once they better understood the topic.

Culturally appropriate information included use of local language terms – such as goonbee for mucus in Yawuru language – and use of stories or images that families could relate to.

Clinicians can liken the lungs to an upside-down tree, for instance, where the tree trunk is the windpipe, the branches are the breathing tubes, and the leaves are the air sacs where oxygen is transferred to the blood.

We also developed culturally relevant educational resources for clinicians and families, including an animated film and an information flip chart.

Through collaboration, mutual respect, and knowledge translation in our clinics, we are now witnessing little lungs growing stronger, Aboriginal families empowered with knowledge and advocating for their children, and clinicians skilled to provide culturally informed care to children. These observations are being supported by research soon to be published.

By engaging and working together, we will find sustainable solutions to kick chronic wet cough and help prevent Aboriginal children with sick lungs from flying beneath the radar.

Read more: ‘Have you been feeling your spirit was sad?’ Culture is key when assessing Indigenous Australians’ mental health

– ref. A wet cough for four weeks means it’s time to get it checked out – http://theconversation.com/a-wet-cough-for-four-weeks-means-its-time-to-get-it-checked-out-118828

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gerhard Hambusch, Senior Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney

On July 1, the banking industry got yet another code of conduct – its fifth since 1993 – and although it is voluntary, all of the retail banks have signed up.

In the promotional video, Australian Banking Association chairman Shayne Elliott describes it as “a step”, acknowledging that there is a lot of work to do.

In and of itself it won’t restore trust, but it will absolutely help. It’s about the industry saying: hey this is what we stand for, this is how we are going to live our lives, this is how we are going to interact with you, but it’s importantly about holding us to account.

It’s an admission that the previous codes haven’t been worth that much.

The 1993 edition promised customers a quick and fair dispute-resolution mechanism, outside the drawn-out and often costly court system.

However a subsequent revision in 2003 allowed banks to opt out, and steered some disputes back into the courts.

It also created a Code Compliance Monitoring Committee, appointed and funded by subscribing banks and the Australian Banking Association, which over time investigated fewer and fewer breaches of the code.

Read more: Bank codes of conduct: add bars to the window dressing and make them legally binding

It got to the point where in 2017-18 the committee said that five banks reported zero breaches of the code’s credit and dispute resolution obligations, and six banks reported zero breaches of their debt collection obligations.

This was despite a growing body of evidence of breaches assembled for the banking royal commission.

Everything old…

The Code Compliance Monitoring Committee has been rebadged as the Banking Code Compliance Committee. It will have the power to publicly name banks that breach the code, report serious and systemic ongoing issues to Australian Securities and Investments Commission, and require banks to rectify or take corrective action for serious breaches of the code.

Separately, in November 2018 a new body known as the Australian Financial Complaints Authority replaced the opaque and bank-funded private company known as the Financial Ombudsman Service Limited, which had been limited to providing compensation of A$309,000.

In some cases the new body can offer unlimited compensation.

It has its hands full. In its first six months it has received 35,000 complaints, some dating back up to ten years. About 12,000 of them relate to banks. In May it received more than 600 enquiries per day.

…is new again

For banking customers the new code offers:

• lists of direct debits and recurring payments, making it easier to switch banks

• notice of transaction fees before they occur

• extra care when providing banking services to the vulnerable

• better protections including a cooling-off period for guarantors, and

• notice to guarantors of changes to the borrower’s circumstances.

For credit card customers, banks will:

• remind customers when a credit card introductory offer is about to end

• cease unsolicited offers to increase credit limits, and

• let customers reduce their credit limits or close their card accounts online.

Small businesses are covered for the first time. The code offers:

• simplified loan contracts with fewer conditions for total loans under A$3 million (the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman wanted a threshold of A$5 million)

• longer notice periods for when loan conditions change, and

• greater transparency when using valuers and insolvency practitioners.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission will monitor what happens with small business and publish its findings every six months. It has no broader role in administering the code. Only complaints that are deemed severe will be be referred to it for investigation and prosecution.

More than window dressing?

Small business will have to stay on their toes. Only some of the more than 100 institutions that provide services to them have signed up to the code. None of the online-only lenders has signed up.

Will this, the fifth iteration of the of the code, move beyond what at times has seemed cynical window-dressing?

Trust is built on demonstrated behaviours. Not only will the banks need to stick to their new code, but any breaches will need to be addressed in a timely and substantive manner.

– ref. The new banking code looks impressive, but what will it achieve? – http://theconversation.com/the-new-banking-code-looks-impressive-but-what-will-it-achieve-120582

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Honorary Principal Fellow, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, University of Melbourne

In this series, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages.

Ten images of a woman screaming with theatrical rage, pasted onto board, decorated with glitter paint. The faces she makes are almost comic, but there is an intensity to them. The title, Pat’s Anger, says it all.

In 1992, the year of her first exhibition, Australian artist Pat Larter wanted her husband, the artist Richard Larter, to understand how his unconscious selfishness made her feel.

She asked her son, Nicholas, to make multiple digital close-up photographs of her face as she lay on the carpet, and arranged the subsequent prints to show to Richard with the comment: “This is how you make me feel.” It was about this time that Richard’s diaries stopped referring to “my house” and changed to “our house”.

Images of Pat dominate Richard Larter’s figurative work. Deborah Hart, now Head of Australian Art at the National Gallery, once described her as “one of the most painted, drawn, photographed and filmed artist-partners in the entire history of art”.

In 1971, Richard’s Pop-influenced paintings of Pat’s body in various guises led the art historian Bernard Smith to describe him as “probably the most original talent to emerge in Australia in recent years”. Even though Richard regularly spoke of Pat’s importance, Smith did not notice her.

It took many years for Pat to be recognised both as a major influence on her husband’s work and as an artist in her own right.

Pat met Richard when she was 15, on her first day of work as an office junior. She was from a poor London family; he was the discontented son of a politically conservative, artistically aware family. He introduced her to cinema, she introduced him to theatrics and burlesque humour.

In 1962, with three children in tow, the Larters emigrated to Australia. Richard had unsuccessfully tried to exhibit his art in London, but here he came to the attention of Frank Watters and Geoffrey Legge, who were interested in new artists for their recently opened Watters Gallery in Sydney.

The Larters bought a house at Luddenham in the hinterland south-west of Sydney. Two more children were born. While Richard painted after finishing his day job, Pat entertained the children with dress-ups, tap dancing and performances as “the world’s worst ballerina”. These continued after they bought a television, but stopped when Richard commandeered the living room so he could make larger paintings.

She had always posed nude for him, but now he began to incorporate elements of her costume in his paintings. She appeared as a stripper, a risqué schoolgirl, a naughty maid. Sometimes he painted her full-frontal – challenging viewers to comment on her exposure.

In 1969 they began to make experimental films, initially on a super-eight camera. Stills from these, showing Pat in various poses, were incorporated into the subject matter for Richard’s paintings.

Although Pat initiated many of the performances, the (male) critics and curators who admired the result gave credit to Richard Larter alone. This was not unusual for the time.

She was nobody’s Pat

In 1974 Richard was appointed visiting artist at the Elam School of Art in Auckland. Pat participated in his lectures here, which evolved into performances.

The head of sculpture at Elam at the time, Jim Allen, attracted many international visitors. In 1974 one of these was Terry Reid, a visiting Canadian artist who initiated the international mail art event for Auckland.

International Mail Art had its origins in postcards exchanged by Dada artists in the 1920s. It had grown into a significant movement of creative anarchy where artists, many of them from countries under political oppression, would exchange postcards. The recipients would sometimes add to them before forwarding the cards on. By the 1970s, dominant figures in the movement would stage thematic mail art events.

In Auckland, artists were invited to send works of precisely one inch in size. Pat’s entry was called “Barely an Inch Dared”. Reid said of her work:

[it was] perfect … She had actually made prints from her body and each was a perfect inch … an inch of elbow, or clitoris or whatever and so … No part of the body became more important or more special than any other part which I thought was a really nice thing to do.

When the Larters returned to Luddenham, Pat began to send and receive mail art in an ever-growing practice. She enjoyed exploring and ridiculing sexual politics, inventing the feminist mail art term, “Femail Art”.

She used children’s stamp sets to make punning slogans: “Oh Pun Legs”, “Mamaries”, “Self Exposure”. When a Brazilian artist assumed her explicit works were an invitation for mutual masturbation, she incorporated his offer into her reply, stencilling, “She’s nobody’s Pat”.

Pat was also involved in a mailart show protesting French nuclear tests in the Pacific, the promotional poster for which shows her screaming face, encouraging artists from around the world to protest against nuclear power.

She also continued to make films. Most were with Richard, but Men (1975) is a solo effort where the viewer is taken from the sign on a toilet block to linger over bronzed bodies on a beach. She described this as giving men “the Playboy treatment”, where the final contrast was between a muscle-bound man’s torso and a classical marble statue.

This challenge of the nature of gaze influenced her sexualised political performances in the anarchic Mahouly-Utzon Performance Troupe. Most dramatic of all was Tailored Maids, a critique of female circumcision where she sat behind a sheet, using shadow play so that as the implements of destruction – including secateurs – approached her body, she threw pieces of raw meat into the audience.

An artist in her own right

In 1982 the Larters sold the property at Luddenham and moved to the centre of Yass township. The departure is recorded in a mail art postcard showing Pat’s celebratory performance. Tellingly, the National Gallery of Australia’s catalogue credits this work as being solely by Richard Larter.

In 1989, on a visit to Canberra, Pat saw an exhibition of work by Aboriginal women from Utopia in the Northern Territory. She was fascinated both by their art and the fact that they painted with the work flat on the ground. By this time Pat had ceased to model for Richard. Her knees especially were too painful for any more posing.

Inspired by the Utopia artists she began a series of abstract paintings as visual reactions to music, placing the boards flat on the kitchen table. She did not want to use Richard’s colours, but instead bought craft paints and glitter from the local craft shop. In 1992 she held her first exhibition at Legge Gallery.

Both Pat and Richard were enthusiasts for the newly available Super Scan laser printer, which enabled giant colour photographs. Pat’s subjects were men, photographed in a Sydney brothel, posing as beefcake, confronting the viewer, enhanced with glitter paint. Her work was included, along with that of her husband, in the 1996 Adelaide Biennial at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Read more: How our art museums finally opened their eyes to Australian women artists

Later that year, a persistent pain in her back, along with her aching legs, led her to seek a specialist’s opinion in Canberra. By the time a diagnosis of lymphoma was made, she only had weeks to live. Pat Larter died on October 14 1996.

Following her death, her family and friends, especially Richard, were concerned that she be remembered as an artist in her own right. He gave the Pat Larter archive to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 1999 Steven Miller, the Head Research Librarian, curated the first exhibition of Pat’s mail art and Larter films. The Legge and Watters galleries continued to exhibit her work, and gradually her paintings have entered public collections.

In 2006 Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre organised a touring exhibition Larter Family Values, honouring both Pat and Richard Larter. More recently a new generation of feminist artists have come to appreciate the radical nature of her art, which still challenges (some) of today’s viewers.

– ref. Hidden women of history: Pat Larter, pioneering ‘femail’ artist who gave men the Playboy treatment – http://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-pat-larter-pioneering-femail-artist-who-gave-men-the-playboy-treatment-119804

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

Scott Morrison is a command-and-control kind of guy, as he sought to show this week.

He told his backbench to keep their opinions in line or internal, appointed a man he’s personally close to as his new head of the Prime Minister’s department, and put the public service in its place.

But he also discovered that, even when an election win gives you great authority, that only operates up to a point, at least with your frisky parliamentarians.

It is not that the post-election Coalition party room is trying to undermine Morrison, as the right wing did with Malcolm Turnbull. It’s that some are intent on venting their opinions, to make a splash or perhaps, in some cases, because they think they should be higher up the ladder.

After all, they might ask, doesn’t the Liberal party (when convenient) boast that its MPs are on a long rein? Isn’t its mantra freedom of speech? And where is it written that the meek shall inherit advancement?

Liberal backbenchers at the moment are especially focused on superannuation, with a number speaking out against the legislated future rise in the superannuation guarantee, despite the government sticking by it, at least at the moment.

In his maiden speech on Wednesday, new NSW Liberal senator Andrew Bragg went a lot further. “I would change direction. Super should be made voluntary for Australians earning under $50,000,” he said, even suggesting that maybe it should be voluntary for everyone.

For his trouble Bragg, well known for his forthrightness, was publicly slapped down by Finance Minister Mathias Cormann. Asked if he agreed with Bragg, Cormann said in the Senate: “The answer is no. And I’ve told him that privately. […]And now publicly.”

Read more: View from The Hill: Morrison cracks the whip

More generally, the voices coming from the backbench about the guarantee might be regarded as something of a canary-in-the-mine ahead of the government’s proposed review of retirement income.

Bragg wasn’t the only Liberal backbencher to be given short shrift. When Craig Kelly, perennially vociferous, suggested looking at including the family home in the pension assets test, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg instantly shut down that thought bubble.

It is not clear what, if anything, the government might put out of bounds for the retirement income inquiry.

The planned review follows a recommendation from the Productivity Commission which called for “an independent public inquiry into the role of compulsory superannuation in the broader retirement incomes system”. The PC said this should happen before the rise in the guarantee, which now stands at 9.5%. From mid 2021 it starts to phase up to 12% in 2025.

The review could open a Pandora’s box. Asked on Thursday about its scope, Morrison hedged, indeed sounding less than enthusiastic about the whole exercise: “Reviews look at all sorts of things, but they are reports of reviews, not of the government”.

That’s true, but their recommendations can cause a lot of trouble to a government.

Retirement income is one of the most sensitive policy areas – a point underlined by the Coalition’s 2016 election experience with superannuation changes and the political cost to Labor of what its opponents successfully dubbed its “retirement tax”.

If, depending on the terms of reference, the review urged abandoning the superannuation guarantee rise (already previously delayed by the Coalition), and the government decided to go down that path, this could set up a clash on retirement income at the next election.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Centre Alliance’s Stirling Griff on Newstart

While the latest chapter of the superannuation debate is just heating, the much simpler argument about Newstart continues to boil. Newstart’s paucity has been acknowledged by business leaders, John Howard and Barnaby Joyce, among many others. This week Western Australian Liberal senator Dean Smith added his voice.

On Thursday the Senate referred to a committee the adequacy of Newstart and related payments, with a report to come early next year. Notably, the reference was supported by Centre Alliance, One Nation and Jacqui Lambie.

Having just legislated $158 billion in tax cuts, even ministers are embarrassed about Newstart; they hate being asked whether they could live on $40 a day. But welfare payments are well down the scale of this government’s priorities, and it will not contemplate a boost that would eat into the projected surplus.

Nevertheless, the pressure won’t abate and it will be hard for the government to avoid doing something by the time the next budget comes around.

Senator Stirling Griff, from Centre Alliance, which holds crucial votes for the Coalition’s legislation in the Senate, says his party is willing to use its muscle in its negotiations to try to force the government to act, even if an increase is modest.

Read more: Morrison brings his own man in to head the Prime Minister’s department

Morrison’s naming this week of a new head for his department did not come as a surprise. Prime ministers these days like to have their own man in this job (no woman has headed the department), and Morrison has a long association with Phil Gaetjens, who moves from treasury. The election result was its own miracle for Gaetjens, who would have been sacked if Labor had won.

What was more notable was the message Morrison sent to the bureaucracy. Essentially, it is one that downplays the public service’s role as a generator of policy ideas and sees it primarily as implementer and deliverer.

Asked about its advisory role, he said: “It is the job of the public service to advise you of the challenges that may present to a government in implementing its agenda. That is the advisory role of the public service. […] But the government sets policy. The Government is the one that goes to the people and sets out an agenda”.

There was a rather different emphasis in the farewell message from outgoing secretary Martin Parkinson, who encouraged his department’s staff “to have a view, be curious, understand what is happening at the forefront of policy and policy-related research, engage widely with stakeholders from all parts of the community, and be resolutely committed to advocating for truly evidence-based policy.”

In describing his view towards the public service Morrison, who loves a good slogan, has produced a new one, “Respect and expect”. A few bureaucrats might be thinking there’s more “expect” than “respect” in the PM’s attitude.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Morrison finds some cats defy herding – http://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-morrison-finds-some-cats-defy-herding-120984

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael J. I. Brown, Associate professor in astronomy, Monash University

A 100-metre-wide asteroid passed just 70,000km from Earth on Thursday, Australian time. It was discovered by the Brazilian SONEAR survey just days ago, and its presence was announced mere hours before it zoomed past our planet. The lack of warning shows how quickly potentially dangerous asteroids can sneak up on us.

Read more: Why dangerous asteroids heading to Earth are so hard to detect

The asteroid, reassuringly designated 2019 OK, is not a threat to Earth right now. However, 2019 OK and other near-Earth asteroids do pose a genuine risk. The Tunguska explosion in 1908 and the Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013 were equivalent to large nuclear explosions, and under the wrong circumstances a meteor impact could devastate a city.

Searching for danger

Astronomers are well aware of the risks posed by asteroids hitting Earth. Meteor craters can be found around the globe, and some relatively fresh examples include Wolfe Creek in northern Australia and the imaginatively named Meteor Crater in Arizona. A huge asteroid impact 65 million years ago near Chicxulub in modern-day Mexico initiated the fall of the dinosaurs.

Consequently, astronomers across the globe have devoted considerable effort to determining the level of threat posed by near-Earth asteroids, and to identifying individual asteroids that could pose a significant threat. Asteroid surveys include Pan-STARRS, ATLAS, SONEAR (which spotted 2019 OK), and the Catalina Sky Survey.

Asteroids are typically so far from Earth that they resemble stars, rather than the craggy rocks they are. However, because asteroids travel around the Solar System, they move relative to the distant stars. Thus astronomers can discover asteroids by taking sequences of images and looking for objects that move from image to image.

Using this approach to survey large swathes of sky, astronomers have discovered thousands of near-Earth asteroids, including more than 2,000 during 2017 alone.

And yet, some asteroids still manage to sneak up on us. Why?

Astronomers are good at discovering asteroids that are visible at night, but less good at spotting asteroids during the daytime. Asteroids also are fainter the further they get from Earth.

At closest approach and with dark skies, 2019 OK would have been visible with a pair of binoculars as point of light drifting slowly across the sky. But three days before that it was 1,000 times fainter, and thus harder to spot. What’s more, for the past month it has been relatively close to the Sun in the sky, so it has only been visible around twilight.

Read more: How to find a meteorite that’s fallen to Earth

2019 OK was finally tracked down by the SONEAR survey on Wednesday, and soon after that it was independently detected by the ASAS-SN telescope network. Both of these surveys use relatively small telescopes with sensitive cameras to search large areas of sky, rather than using large telescopes to study small patches of sky.

Close calls

Before its discovery as a near-Earth asteroid, 2019 OK was imaged by other telescopes, but its significance wasn’t recognised. But these earlier images did help astronomers nail down the asteroid’s orbit.

2019 OK has a very elliptical orbit, taking it from the asteroid belt beyond Mars to within the orbits of both Earth and Venus. As each orbit takes 2.7 years, it isn’t always going to pass as close to Earth as it did this time. It will make close approaches in the future, but hopefully not quite this close.

Other near-Earth asteroids are also on track to make close approaches to our planet. The 400m-wide Apophis will pass roughly 30,000km from Earth on Friday April 13, 2029, which will only come as bad news if you’re particularly superstitious.

Both 2019 OK and Apophis are far larger than the Chelyabinsk meteor, which was just 20m across. The risk of them hitting Earth may be small, but they would be devastating if they did.

Avoiding Armageddon

If we find an asteroid on an actual collision course with Earth, is there anything we can do? With just a day or week’s notice we would be in real trouble, but with more notice there are options.

We are already sending spacecraft to near-Earth asteroids, with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx currently visiting Bennu and Japan’s Hayabusa2 currently visiting Ryugu.

However, these are missions of discovery rather than destruction. Indeed, destroying a near-Earth asteroid may be counterproductive, potentially creating multiple destructive asteroids.

So how can we stop catastrophe? The solution may be to give dangerous asteroids a gentle nudge rather than a vicious kick. If an asteroid’s velocity can be changed by just 1km per hour, over years that adds up to thousands of kilometres’ difference in position. Given that the pale blue dot of Earth is just 12,750km across, a small nudge to a big rock may be enough to avoid annihilation.

– ref. An asteroid just buzzed past Earth, and we barely noticed in time – http://theconversation.com/an-asteroid-just-buzzed-past-earth-and-we-barely-noticed-in-time-120972

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By G. Gregory Haff, Professor of Strength and Conditioning, Edith Cowan University

The world swimming championships currently taking place in South Korea have been attracting global attention not so much for the performances in the pool as the protests over alleged doping taking place on the podium.

The target of these protests has been the Chinese swimmer Sun Yang. After Sun won his fourth straight world title in the 400-metre freestyle, his arch-rival, Australian Mack Horton, refused to take the podium to receive his silver medal.

Days later, Britain’s Duncan Scott, who finished third to Sun in the 200-metre freestyle event, also snubbed Sun by refusing to take part in the medal winners’ group photo and shake the Chinese swimmer’s hand.

The protests have again shed light on the problems with the system set up to prevent doping in elite sport.

Many have heaped praise on Horton and Scott for protesting the alleged misdeeds of a suspected drug cheat. But it’s important to look at the facts surrounding Sun’s case before vilifying him in such a public way.

The facts of the case

It is true that Sun has a dubious history when it comes to drug testing. In 2014, he served a three-month suspension after testing positive for the banned stimulant trimetazidine, which he said was used to treat a heart condition.

More recently, one of Sun’s security guards used a hammer to smash a vial of his blood last year to prevent a doping test on the sample. While this action would certainly raise suspicions, digging deeper into the facts of the case reveals there is much more to the story.

Read more: Why is doping wrong anyway?

To make sense of the controversy, one must understand the anti-doping system and the athletes’ rights within the system. Central to an effective anti-doping program is a standard set of procedures designed to protect all athletes from malicious or inappropriate testing processes.

Sun’s sample was collected by three doping control officers, but only one of them had the appropriate accreditation to carry out the test. Acknowledging this fact, a doping tribunal with FINA (the International Swimming Federation) concluded earlier this year that

the blood that was initially collected (and subsequently destroyed) was not collected with proper authorisation and thus was not properly a ‘sample’.

As a result, the tribunal concluded that the sample collection was “invalid and void”.

In addition, one of the doping control officers breached athlete confidentiality by taking photos and videos of Sun during the collection process. This is an important procedural breach. In accordance with World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) procedures, an athlete is guaranteed anonymity until a sanction for a doping violation is handed down.

Read more: Testimony vs testing: anti-doping is an imperfect science

There was also only one male doping control assistant to collect a urine sample, another violation of procedures outline by WADA. The tribunal noted:

Such facts, once established, are a compelling justification for the athlete to refuse to have any further personal and sensitive contact with the DCA [doping control assistant].

Ultimately, the FINA doping tribunal determined that the appropriate procedures for collecting Sun’s samples were not followed, clearing the way for him to compete at the world championships.

A flawed system, but also fair

This isn’t to say that Sun is without fault. There are procedures that athletes must follow to contest a flawed or faulty sample collection – and smashing a vial of blood is clearly not an appropriate response.

While the world swimming governing body accepted the doping tribunal’s findings, WADA has appealed the finding to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). If the CAS verifies the procedural problems with the sample collection, it is very likely that Sun will be exonerated.

Sun’s case highlights the flaws in the anti-droping regime, but it’s also important to remember that the WADA Code and urine and blood sample procedures are designed to ensure all athletes are treated fairly within a standardised process.

Read more: The science of doping and how cheating athletes pass drug tests

This system is designed not only to protect the sport from drug cheats, but also to protect athletes from being falsely accused.

Being called a “doping cheat” is one of the worst accusations an athlete can face. So, while Sun is not blameless, his accusers should consider the possibility that it is the anti-doping system that is actually at fault in this case.

Richard Ings, the former Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) chief, came to Sun’s defence for this reason. Describing himself as “no fan of Sun Yang”, he nonetheless said

I do believe that athletes are treading a very treacherous path if they are making allegations against other individuals that they cannot substantiate.

No matter the sport, be it swimming or any other, the fight against doping will always exist. But only once the doping control process has determined that an athlete has violated the rules can we safely label him or her a “drug cheat”.

– ref. Snubbing Chinese swimmer Sun Yang ignores the flaws in the anti-doping system – http://theconversation.com/snubbing-chinese-swimmer-sun-yang-ignores-the-flaws-in-the-anti-doping-system-120895

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vincent Ho, Senior Lecturer and clinical academic gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University

Two people in Victoria and New South Wales have died after eating smoked salmon contaminated with listeria, health authorities report. Both were over 70 and had underlying health conditions.

Health authorities are also investigating a non-fatal Queensland case.

Although Australia’s chief medical officer has not confirmed smoked salmon is behind these three cases, he says this is the “likely source”.

So what is listeriosis, who’s at risk and what can we do to prevent getting sick?

Read more: Food safety: are the sniff test, the five-second rule and rare burgers safe?

What is listeria?

Listeriosis is caused by eating food contaminated with a bacterium called Listeria monocytogenes. It’s an uncommon illness but can be deadly if it causes septicaemia (blood poisoning) or meningitis (inflammation of the membranes around the brain).

The elderly are particularly susceptible to listeriosis, as are pregnant women and their fetuses, and those with weakened immune systems.

Past outbreaks have been linked with rockmelon, raw milk, soft cheeses, salads, unwashed raw vegetables, cold diced chicken, pre-cut fruit and fruit salad.

Read more: What is listeria and how does it spread in rockmelons?

How does it spread?

Listeria is found widely in soil, water and vegetation, and can be carried by pets and wild animals. Listeria contamination of food can occur in restaurants and home kitchens, where the bacterium can be found, and spread, in areas where food is handled.

Contamination levels of raw fish, including salmon, tend to be low. Contamination can occur at any point along the food production chain. It can occur at the food processing stage, for instance in machines used in salting, skinning and slicing fish.

Listeria has also been found in smoked fish products. It is not possible to produce cold-smoked fish that is consistently free from listeria. This is because cold smoking does not involve cooking the fish by heat during the smoking process in order to produce the characteristic delicate texture. In contrast, hot smoking, which is carried out a higher temperature but leaves a less moist and firm texture, kills off listeria.

Manufacturers of cold-smoked fish try to ensure levels of listeria are low. They do this by obtaining product from producers that have a history of non-contaminated fish, freezing, restricting shelf-life time or by using preservatives.

But Listeria monocytogenes is quite a hardy bacterium. It can survive at refrigerated temperatures; viable listeria has been found in vacuum-packed smoked salmon at 4℃.

Listeria also has mechanisms to survive acidic environments such as the stomach, and to grow in oxygen-free environments. Temperatures of 74℃ or greater are needed to kill it.

What are the symptoms?

Eating foods that contain listeria won’t necessarily make you sick. It can survive in the body, moving between cells (human phagocytes) for a long time. This is, in part, why there can be a long “incubation period” between ingestion and onset of illness. This can be as long as 70 days but is usually around three weeks.

Symptoms include fever, muscle aches and gastrointestinal problems such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.

In severe cases, symptoms can include collapse and shock, particularly if there is septicaemia. If the infection has spread to the central nervous system, more worrying symptoms will occur, such as headache, stiff neck, confusion, seizures and the person may go into a coma. In such cases, the fatality rate is as high as 30%.

Read more: Health Check: what to eat and avoid during pregnancy

In pregnant women, the bacteria are thought to cross the lining of maternal blood vessels and then enter the fetal circulation of the placenta. Infection during pregnancy can lead to miscarriage, stillbirth and newborn infections.

Treatment for confirmed infections involves antibiotics and supportive measures such as intravenous fluids for dehydration.

When infection does occur in pregnancy, the early use of antibiotics can often prevent infection of the fetus or newborn.

But even with very prompt treatment, infections can be deadly in high-risk groups.

Why are some groups at higher risk?

Pregnant women are a special group known to be at higher risk for listeriosis. The underlying mechanisms for why pregnant women are susceptible to listeriosis are not well understood but it’s thought an altered immune system is involved.

People with weakened immune systems, such as those on cancer treatment or medications that suppress the immune system, are more susceptible to developing listeriosis because their bodies are less able to fight off the bug.

Newborn babies are also extremely vulnerable as their immune systems have not yet matured, as are the elderly, whose immune systems are declining.

How can you prevent listeriosis?

Remain vigilant for alerts from health regulatory authorities such as Food Standards Australia New Zealand and state public health authorities.

Not everyone needs to stay clear of smoked salmon products but those in a higher risk group should. And once a specific product has been identified as a source of a food-borne illness outbreak such as listeria, then throw it away.

Here are some practical things you can do to prevent the spread of listeria:

• thoroughly cook raw food from animal sources, such as beef, lamb, pork and poultry
• wash raw vegetables and fruit thoroughly before eating
• use separate cutting boards for raw meat and foods that are ready to eat
• wash your hands with soapy water before and after preparing food
• wash knives and cutting boards after handling uncooked foods
• wash your hands after handling animals.

Read more: Do we really have to wash fruit and vegetables?

If you are at greater risk for listeriosis, consider avoiding:

• raw and uncooked smoked seafood such as smoked salmon
• pre-cut melons such as rockmelon or watermelon
• pre-packed cold salads including coleslaw and fresh fruit salad
• pre-cooked cold chicken, cold delicatessen meats, pâté
• unpasteurised milk or milk products, soft cheeses (such as brie, camembert, ricotta or blue-vein)
• sprouted seeds
• raw mushrooms.

– ref. What is listeria and how does it spread in smoked salmon? – http://theconversation.com/what-is-listeria-and-how-does-it-spread-in-smoked-salmon-120967

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mathew Leonardi, Gynaecologist and PhD candidate, Nepean Clinical School, University of Sydney

Headlines over the past week have given false hope to the roughly 8–10% of women of reproductive age with endometriosis:

Endometriosis is an inflammatory disease where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus (called the endometrium) is found outside the uterus, causing pelvic pain and/or infertility.

We don’t know what causes endometriosis and, while surgery and medical management can help many women manage their symptoms, the condition negatively impacts women’s lives in almost every area, from work to intimate relationships.

Read more: Considering surgery for endometriosis? Here’s what you need to know

The new paper comes from a UK team studying the mechanisms behind pain in endometriosis, mostly in mice artificially induced to have endometriosis.

They found mice with endometriosis had higher levels of a type of white blood cell (called a macrophage) than healthy mice. This led to increased production of a growth hormone known as insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-1.

When the levels of macrophages and IGF-1 were lowered, the mice behaved in ways that implied they had less pain.

While this was a very well-designed study and these insights might help us get closer to understanding why the pain in endometriosis seems to persist despite medical or surgical treatment, the researchers haven’t found the cause of the disease, let alone a cure.

How was the research conducted?

There were three main parts to the study: one in live mice, one looking at how mice cells responded in a lab environment, and a component that focused on human women.

Mice experiments

The researchers performed two experiments on two groups of mice: one group had endometriosis, the other didn’t.

The first experiments compared levels of macrophages – a specific type of white blood cell involved in the immune system – in mice with and without endometriosis, then monitored mice behaviours that reflect pain.

The researchers then attempted to reduce the level of macrophages and IGF-1 release in some of the mice with endometriosis. They wanted to assess whether pain levels would be reduced or return to the same levels as the mice without endometriosis.

The second experiment identified that the hormone IGF-1, produced by macrophages, is higher in mice with endometrosis.

The researchers exposed half of the mice with endometriosis to a drug that would block IGF-1 and again assessed their pain-related behaviour.

Lab studies of mice cells

Another two aspects of the study took place in mice cells.

One looked at the changes in markers of inflammation in the brain and spine of mice with and without endometriosis.

The second looked at nerve growth and sensitivity to pain in the presence of IGF-1.

Testing the theory in women

The researchers attempted to demonstrate that IGF-1 was higher in endometriosis tissue and the peritoneal (abdominal cavity) fluid of women with endometriosis compared to women without.

To do this, they recruited women with chronic pelvic pain who were undergoing laparoscopy (a procedure where a camera and surgical tools are used via small cuts in the abdomen) for diagnosis and treatment of endometriosis.

What were the results?

The researchers found mice with endometriosis had higher concentrations of macrophages than those without endometriosis. These macrophages had increased production of IGF-1.

In women with endometriosis, the researchers detected macrophages that produced IGF-1 within endometriosis tissue specifically.

Women with endometriosis also had a greater concentration of IGF-1 in their peritoneal (abdominal cavity) fluid than women without endometriosis. Their pain scores increased as their IGF-1 levels increased.

When the researchers tried to reduce the concentration of macrophages in mice, the animals seemed to exhibit fewer pain-related behaviours. But not all behaviours changed with the reduction of macrophages.

Similarly, when mice were given a drug that prevented IGF-1 from having its normal effect, mice seemed to experience less pain.

The effect of reducing macrophages in mice also seemed to have a positive effect on reducing inflammatory markers at the level of the brain and spine.

What does it all mean?

The researchers found evidence that IGF-1 was higher in both women and mice with endometriosis, and this rise was due to increased production by macrophages, which are associated with endometriosis.

These increased levels of IGF-1 seem to contribute to the pain experienced by mice with endometriosis. This is likely to occur because IGF-1 encourages nerve development, which makes that tissue more sensitive to pain.

It’s important to remember that mice are not just small, furry humans, so we need further studies to determine if these high levels of IGF-1 have the same contribution to pain in humans as in mice, and if reducing them has the same effect on pain that was observed in the mice experiments.

We also need to keep in mind that these mice had endometriosis for a relatively short time compared to the many years that women with endometriosis have the disease. There may be other changes occurring over the longer term that can’t be explored in these mice models.

The study gets us one step closer to understanding why endometriosis causes pain and offers a cautiously optimistic hope for future therapies to treat women experiencing endometriosis-related pain.

But it does not explain the cause (or causes) of endometriosis, which remains evasive.

– Mathew Leonardi, Mike Armour and George Condous. Cecilia Ng, Clinical Trials Network Manager of the National Endometriosis Clinical and Scientific Trials (NECST) at Jean Hailes for Women’s Health, also contributed to this article.

Blind peer review

This Research Check is a good summary and interpretation of the research paper on the association between IGF-1-related pain and endometriosis.

This study is published by a respected research team and they are careful not to overstate their findings. By contrast, the newspaper article in The Sun is a major misrepresentation of the study and one that would unnecessarily raise hope of an imminent cure for endometriosis in the minds of the many women suffering from this disease.

Endometriosis is a complex disorder that has both genetic and environmental risk factors. It is unlikely that any single issue will be found that is solely responsible. This is reflected in the several different approaches to treatment that are currently in use. – Peter Rogers

Research Checks interrogate newly published studies and how they’re reported in the media. The analysis is undertaken by one or more academics not involved with the study, and reviewed by another, to make sure it’s accurate.

– ref. Research Check: have scientists found the cause of endometriosis? – http://theconversation.com/research-check-have-scientists-found-the-cause-of-endometriosis-120665

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gavin Moodie, Adjunct professor, RMIT University

Reports of research misconduct have been prominent recently and probably reflect wider problems of relying on dated integrity protections.

The recent reports are from Retraction Watch, which is a blog that reports on the withdrawal of articles by academic journals. The site’s database reports that journals have withdrawn a total of 247 papers with an Australian author going back to the 1980s.

This compares with 324 papers withdrawn with Canadian authors, 582 from the UK and 24 from New Zealand. Australian retractions are 0.01% of all retractions reported on the site, a fraction of Australia’s 4% share of all research publications.

Read more: Science isn’t broken, but we can do better: here’s how

Australian retractions have fallen from around 25 a year when Retraction Watch was launched in 2010 to an average of 11 in each of 2018 and 2017. This is in line with all retractions falling from 5,108 in 2010 to an average of 660 in the last two years.

Scratching the surface

But this is not a good indication of trends in research cheating. Probably only a modest proportion of all flawed publications are identified and retracted. There can be a delay of several years before research problems are found, reported and verified.

Common reasons for retracting articles include duplicating results, errors in results or analysis, and plagiarism. Other reasons include falsification or fabrication of data, research misconduct and unreliable research.

But not all retractions are for nefarious reasons. One publisher retracted a paper because it had through misunderstanding published the wrong version of the paper on its website. It promptly published the right version once its mistake had been noticed.

Research misconduct is a long-standing problem. The Piltdown Man hoax in which the hoaxer claimed to have discovered the “missing link” between apes and humans was perpetrated back in 1912.

And research misconduct can have serious consequences. Opposition to vaccination is bolstered by a fraudulent paper claiming a link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and autism and bowel disease, which was published in 1998.

It is hard to argue for evidence-based policy and practice if there are serious doubts about the quality of the evidence. Even where there is no cheating, confidence in all research is undermined by the replication crisis in which researchers can’t repeat earlier findings.

Misconduct undermines science

Reports of research misconduct strengthen the denial of science and undermine the argument for taking concerted action to manage climate change and other problems.

Reports of research misconduct are coinciding with reports of student academic misconduct, mostly plagiarism and contract cheating where a student pays another to complete their assessment.

The stresses on researcher and student malefactors are probably similar. They are the pressures to succeed in an increasing competitive environment. As societies become more unequal there are much higher rewards for apparent success and bigger penalties for failure.

Academic misconduct also likely reflects the contemporary conditions of universities, which are increasingly expected to be businesslike in managing their greatly increased resources.

Much higher student-to-staff ratios make it much harder to develop the close and supportive relations between teachers and students that discourage cheating.

Tackling the problem

Universities are responding by increasing their regulation and oversight of academic activities. They are using software to detect cheating, but this is not a full solution.

The Australian government established the Australian Research Integrity Committee in 2011, but it has limitations. It reviews institutions’ responses to allegations of research misconduct, which in turn integrate institutions’ academic integrity policies, employees’ contracts and institutions’ disciplinary policies and enterprise agreements.

The fundamental problem is that the traditional systems for ensuring researcher and student integrity are based on the trust that is built from personal interactions within a much smaller system. They are also based on the volunteerism of the less formal traditional scholarly community for refereeing grant applications and journal submissions.

More systematic and rigorous processes will probably be needed as higher education transitions to universal access and wholesale research. As processes are formalised the costs of refereeing submissions may no longer be hidden in experts’ voluntary contributions to their community of scholars. They are likely to be professionalised, and costed and paid for explicitly.

Read more: Dependent and vulnerable: the experiences of academics on casual and insecure contracts

Academics’ relations with most undergraduate students and with most researchers will become more formal. Sadly, academics will likely have to trust less their students and other researchers. Even collaborating researchers have been caught by the failures of co-authors in the parts of the research and writing they were responsible for.

Conversely, much of what students and researchers have done on trust will have to be checked by new systems introduced by institutions, research granting bodies and publishers. Most students and researchers will experience far more bureaucracy.

The failures of academic integrity of students and researchers may be only a fraction of all work by scholars. But they so corrode trust in academic qualifications and publications that stringent measures will be needed to protect academic integrity. Hopefully those measures will be more preventive than punitive.

– ref. Fudged research results erode people’s trust in experts – http://theconversation.com/fudged-research-results-erode-peoples-trust-in-experts-120881

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

Scott Morrison has appointed his one-time chief of staff Phil Gaetjens to head the prime minister’s department. He replaces Martin Parkinson, who finds himself out of a top public service job for the second time under the Coalition government.

Gaetjens has most recently been secretary of the Treasury, a position to which he was appointed when Morrison was treasurer.

Morrison told a news conference: “Following the election, the secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet and I have agreed that it is an opportune time for new leadership of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet”.

Parkinson, a highly respected career public servant, was sacked as Treasury secretary by the Abbott government, and brought back to the public service as head of the prime minister’s department by Malcolm Turnbull. His current contract ran until early 2021.

He said in a statement to departmental staff on Thursday: “This timing works for me personally and allows the PM to make a transition to a secretary who will be able to support him through the full parliamentary term”.

He was quoted in Thursday’s The Australian as saying, “Absolutely I would not want anyone to think there was anything about my relationship with the Prime Minister that was leading me to leave”.

Although prime ministerial sources dispute that Parkinson was displaced, it had been rumoured since the election that Morrison wanted a change at the top of his department.

Gaetjens’ public service career appeared doomed only months ago when a Labor government seemed likely. Then-shadow treasurer Chris Bowen had criticised his appointment as political and made it clear he would be removed under a Shorten government.

The new head of Treasury will be Steven Kennedy, who is now secretary of the infrastructure department.

Earlier Kennedy was a deputy secretary in the prime minister’s department. In that position, he was in charge of innovation and transformation, as well as leading work on cities, regulatory reform, public data and digital innovation. He also served in the office of Julia Gillard when she was prime minister, seconded as the director of cabinet and government business and senior economic adviser.

Morrison pointed out both Gaetjens – who was also Peter Costello’s chief of staff – and Kennedy had had experience in the political realm, noting that while Gaetjens had worked on the Coalition side Kennedy had worked on the Labor side.

The PM was ready for a question suggesting the choice of Gaetjens would be seen as politicisation of the public service, reeling off appointments Labor had made of people who had worked in the political arena.

Morrison left the way open for further shake ups at the top of the service. “I will always reserve that right to make further changes where I believe they are necessary. I think these are the ones that are necessary right now”. There will be an acting secretary in the Infrastructure department for the time being.

Morrison is Minister for the Public Service and has strong ideas on how it should operate. At his news conference he once again stressed the emphasis he is placing on its responsibility for efficient implementation.

He summed up his attitude: “When it comes to the public service, my view is to respect and expect”.

Asked about the service’s role in giving advice, he said, “It is the job of the public service to advise you of the challenges that may present to a government in implementing its agenda. That is the advisory role of the public service. […] But the government sets policy. The government is the one that goes to the people and sets out an agenda, as we have”.

Parkinson in his statement to his departmental staff told them: “I want to continue to encourage you to have a view, be curious, understand what is happening at the forefront of policy and policy-related research, engage widely with stakeholders from all parts of the community, and be resolutely committed to advocating for truly evidence-based policy”.

– ref. Morrison brings his own man in to head the Prime Minister’s department – http://theconversation.com/morrison-brings-his-own-man-in-to-head-the-prime-ministers-department-120973

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ann Morrison, Honorary Associate Professor, School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, University of Southern Queensland

As I watched my hunting dog standing off the lead and lined up with all the other Kleiner Münsterländers, awaiting her turn to swim out and bring back the dead duck (an important training item) thrown into the deep water, I felt a sense of pride.

It dawned on me that people may not always be the best teachers for dogs. Her desire to fit in was evident as she echoed the behaviour of the dogs around her. Unfortunately, that echoing had also become evident on daily walks with a crew of less well-trained dogs.

Let me be clear: I am not a hunter. While living in Denmark, under advice from locals and looking for a dog that was smart and a little challenging, I stumbled upon the Kleiner Münsterländer breed, originally bred in Münster in western Germany as a medium-sized hunting and family dog.

Read more: Is your dog happy? Ten common misconceptions about dog behaviour

They are smart and fast, and the one I ended up with, Clara, was described as “hard-headed” and a natural leader. But that somewhat euphemistic description left me completely unprepared for the challenges ahead.

This dog was not like the loyal, steadfast, obedient Labradors I knew. This one was wilful, always looking to take the reins, always challenging me to think up new ways to interact, new games to play, new things to learn, new ways to do things. For example, I gave her a reward so she would drop the rubbish she had picked up. Her response was then to deliberately retrieve more rubbish to get more rewards.

Meanwhile, my research involved designing a set of vibrating and tactile vests that people could wear to help them relax, and that inactive people could use to become energised. The vests were part of a larger European Union-funded project, CultAR, involving various technologies designed to help tourists to navigate around cultural sites in Padua, Italy. As such the vests signalled when and which way to turn, and when to stop on arrival.

I wondered whether similar research could be used to help dogs who were ageing, deaf or blind to continue exercising, but still be safe. Or even my dog, who understood Danish commands but not English ones when we were about to move to an English-speaking country. We set up a series of experiments to see whether dogs would easily receive and process commands if they were presented as vibrations, rather than as verbal commands.

We tried testing “vibrotactile” commands on dogs, but the already trained ones has little use for yet another system of commands, and my dog was too sensitive to bear the vibrating sensations.

Tough training

The Kleiner Münsterländer hunters were far tougher when training their dogs than I wanted to be with mine. At the extreme end, they used archaic methods such as shock collars or isolating their dogs in cold rooms. In dog training, as in parenting, I believe punitive measures to enforce obedience should give way to more modern ideas about ensuring well-being and creating a bond of affection and enjoyment with the handler, owner or trainer.

In addition, as a researcher, I was just as interested in what my dog could teach me. She was undeniably smart and I could learn a lot from her navigation skills alone. So I began looking at how to incorporate her intelligence into her learning and training program in a way that would enrich both of our qualities of life.

We tried a socialisation school. With it came a whole new set of leads, commands and ceremonies. Clara adjusted, although I could see she loved to be with her own breed. Kleiner Münsterländers are all a variation of each other; they become slightly mesmerised in each other’s company.

At a family Christmas in New Zealand, I bumped into Mark Vette, who trains animals for film and television, has worked with the celebrated animal behaviour researcher Marc Bekoff and even ran a program to teach rescue dogs to drive – yes, really. I was inspired to find other ways.

We moved to Australia in early 2017, and there was a lot to adjust to. Summers were far hotter than Denmark; indoors in winter was much colder. There was new language, new smells, different dogs to meet, and different landscapes to explore – no more dog parks in forests!

Again, too, our training involved a new set of leads, commands and ceremonies. This time we were in a pack with leaders (both canine and human) where the dogs (and the main trainer) were perceived as alphas, or leaders (wolves). Some methods involved negative reinforcement: giving the dogs an unpleasant experience to prevent them repeating that behaviour.

By now we had tried three different methods of dog training, each with their own failings. For example, my dog would be bored easily with repetitive acts, or we did activities that were not particularly useful or relevant in our daily lives, or she simply complied out of fear, but this was not the relationship I wanted to foster. Something began to dawn on me: the failings were ours, not the dogs’.

We might get frustrated with our dogs for not following our commands, but we are just as likely to let them down by getting distracted or being inconsistent in our reactions to particular behaviours. The dog is only trying to make sense of what we communicate, so if we give them mixed messages – perhaps by only responding to their barks if we’re not in the middle of something else more pressing – then confusion and stress ensue.

Read more: Are you walking your dog enough?

If consistency is the key, and the failure to be consistent is ours, what can we do to be more consistent and help our animals to live a stress-free life? Perhaps it is us who need a wearable vibrating device to remind us to stay on cue.

A small buzz on the wrist could “train” us to be more vigilant and attentive to our dogs, in situations where they are trying desperately to tell us something. (“There’s someone coming towards the house – I’d better keep warning my owner, more loudly this time, as I don’t think she’s heard me yet…”)

Wearables could also help alert us to the small but telltale signs of stress in our dogs: ears pinned back, hard focus of eyes, stiffening of body, and so on.

We already have a plethora of devices to help stave off boredom and loneliness for animals who are left at home alone for long hours. Maybe there’s a market for devices that ease our dogs’ stress when we’re hanging out with them too.

– ref. Training my dog taught me that it’s people who really need training – http://theconversation.com/training-my-dog-taught-me-that-its-people-who-really-need-training-99443

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne

Coverage of the Christchurch terrorism by Australia’s television channels raised “serious questions” about whether they had breached the television codes of practice, according to the broadcasting regulator, the Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA).

However, it has declined to make specific findings that the codes were in fact breached.

Instead, it proposes to discuss with the television industry whether the codes are adequately framed to deal with the kind of material generated by the atrocity, especially the footage from the terrorist’s bodycam.

Read more: Why news outlets should think twice about republishing the New Zealand mosque shooter’s livestream

The ACMA launched its inquiry into the coverage in the immediate aftermath of the March 15 attacks, reviewing 200 hours of coverage spanning March 15, 16 and 17.

It found that no material had been broadcast explicitly showing a person being shot, injured or killed.

However, footage had been shown of

• a person being shot at

• a victim who had already been shot

• the scene inside the Al Noor mosque, where most of the victims were killed.

The report is open to the interpretation that the threshold for violence acceptable for broadcast in these circumstances is footage that does not show someone actually being shot.

That is likely to be a central point of discussion between the ACMA and the television industry in the discussions that the report says will now take place.

The most relevant clause in the existing Free TV Australia code of practice says a broadcaster cannot show material that is likely to seriously distress or seriously offend a substantial number of viewers unless there is a public interest in doing so.

Of course there was a very strong public interest case here. However, ethically speaking, a test of necessity is also required: how much and what level of violence is it necessary to show in order to convey to the audience a comprehensive account of what has happened?

The various Australian television channels answered this question differently.

Sky News, Seven and Nine all showed footage of someone being shot at.

Ten showed footage of gunfire more generally.

All four – Seven, Nine, Ten and Sky – used moving footage from the terrorist’s bodycam.

The ABC was the most cautious. It used stills from the bodycam.

SBS showed largely unedited footage from overseas in which the smoke from the gunfire was the only thing obscuring the view of people who had been shot.

A further issue that caused the ACMA concern was what it called the high degree of repetition of certain high-impact depictions within a short space of time. It stated that “excessive and gratuitous repetition may not be proportionate to the public interest and may have the effect of heightening distress or offence to the audience”.

These high-impact depictions included actions that killed a person, strongly implied that a person would be killed, or a person who had just been killed.

The ACMA also questioned whether the broadcasting of the bodycam footage from inside the Al Noor mosque, some of which included the sound of injured people, could be “properly justified”.

In this context, it suggests that in reviewing its code of practice, the television industry take account of the provisions of the new laws against the online streaming of abhorrent violent material, passed by federal parliament in the immediate aftermath of the Christchurch terrorism.

The ACMA drew an important distinction between footage from inside the mosque taken from the terrorist’s bodycam and the footage from a survivor that was also shown.

The distinction was that while the bodycam footage was propaganda, the survivor’s footage was not seeking to glorify the violence but to show the horror being experienced by the victims.

The overall effect is of a report that is nuanced but very tame.

It takes a particularly narrow reading of the relevant clause in the code of practice to avoid saying it was breached.

A breach of the code should be based on a broad reading because the codes are designed to provide broad guidance to journalists making big decisions in a hurry. They are not designed to be parsed for legal niceties, but too often this is exactly what the ACMA does.

Read more: Christchurch attacks provide a new ethics lesson for professional media

At the very least, the stations should be told that the mistakes identified in the report — even if they are called “questions” – will attract a penalty if repeated in the future.

Of course this was a difficult story to cover and mistakes were made.

But the ACMA is wrong to say that it was uniquely difficult.

The genuinely unique feature of it was the use of the bodycam by the terrorist to propagandise his atrocity.

There have been many propaganda videos made by terrorists, although not from a bodycam.

When a British soldier, Lee Rigby, was run over and stabbed to death in London in 2013, there was a long propaganda video showing one of the assassins holding a bloodied knife and making a propagandising speech.

To minimise the propaganda effect, many channels cut off most of the sound and did a voice-over. Many also pixillated the bloodied knife.

And there have been many cases where footage has been taken from inside a scene of carnage, notably the Paris Bataclan dance hall terror attack in 2015.

– ref. Media watchdog’s report into Christchurch shootings goes soft on showing violent footage – http://theconversation.com/media-watchdogs-report-into-christchurch-shootings-goes-soft-on-showing-violent-footage-120577

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Hansen, Chief of Staff, The Conversation

If you’re anything like me, celebrity smiles and Colgate ads make you feel guilty about your regular consumption of coffee, red wine, tea, and all the other fun things we’re told will stain our teeth.

And the solution seems so easy – a box of whitening strips from the supermarket shelf tells us so. But does whitening teeth also remove some of what keeps them healthy? And might they be more easily stained afterwards?

We asked five experts if whitening is bad for teeth.

Five out of five experts said no…

But they all had a pretty big caveat. It’s safe provided it’s done by a dentist. So for this you’re looking at upwards of a few hundred dollars, rather than just a trip to the supermarket.

Here are their detailed responses:

If you have a “yes or no” health question you’d like posed to Five Experts, email your suggestion to: alexandra.hansen@theconversation.edu.au

Disclosures: Alexander is a Federal Councillor for the Australian Dental Association Inc. and occasionally works clinically within private dental practice. Kelly is employed by CQUniversity to teach in the Bachelor of Oral Health program. Under the supervision of registered dental professionals, students deliver professional tooth whitening procedures at the university clinic. Madhan is a NHMRC Sidney Sax Research Fellow in Public Health and Health Services at the University of Sydney and Kings College London. He is a full time oral health researcher, and is not currently involved in any clinical practice. Rebecca works in paediatric practice that does not offer whitening procedures.

– ref. We asked five experts: is whitening bad for teeth? – http://theconversation.com/we-asked-five-experts-is-whitening-bad-for-teeth-120828

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Henley, Research Fellow in Climate and Water Resources, University of Melbourne

New reconstructions of Earth’s temperature over the past 2,000 years, published today in Nature Geoscience, highlight the astonishing rate of the recent widespread warming of our planet.

We also now have a clearer picture of decade-to-decade temperature variations, and what drove those fluctuations before the industrial revolution took hold.

Contrary to previous theories that pre-industrial temperature changes in the last 2,000 years were due to variations in the Sun, our research found volcanoes were largely responsible. However, these effects are now dwarfed by modern, human-driven climate change.

Read more: 40 years ago, scientists predicted climate change. And hey, they were right

Reading the tree rings

Without networks of thermometers, ocean buoys and satellites to record temperature, we need other methods to reconstruct past climates. Luckily, nature has written the answers down for us. We just have to learn how to read them.

Corals, ice cores, tree rings, lake sediments, and ocean sediment cores provide a wealth of information about past conditions – this is called “proxy” data – and can be brought together to tell us about the global climate in the past.

Teams of scientists around the world have spent many thousands of hours of field and laboratory work to collect and analyse samples, and ultimately publish and make available their data so other scientists can undertake further analysis.

Previously, our team, along with many other proxy experts, meticulously analysed and collated temperature-sensitive proxy data covering the last 2,000 years from around the world, creating the largest database of temperature-sensitive proxy data yet assembled. We then made all of the data publicly available in one place.

Astonishing consistency between reconstruction methods

With this unique dataset in hand, our team set about reconstructing past global temperature.

We scientists are notoriously sceptical of our own analysis. But what makes us more confident about our findings is when different methods applied to the same data yield the same result.

In this paper we applied seven different methods to reconstruct global temperature from our proxy network. We were astounded to find that the methods all gave remarkably similar results for multidecadal fluctuations – a very precise result considering the breadth of the methods used.

This gave us the confidence to delve further into what drove global temperature fluctuations on decadal timescales before the industrial revolution really took hold.

What happened before human-induced climate change?

Our study produces the clearest picture yet of Earth’s average temperature over the past two millennia. We also found that climate models performed very well in comparison, and they succeed in capturing the amount of natural variability in the climate system – the natural ups and downs in temperature from year-to-year and decade-to-decade.

Using climate models and reconstructions of external climate forcing, such as from volcanic eruptions and solar variability, we deduced that before the industrial revolution, global temperature fluctuations from decade to decade in the past 2,000 years were mainly controlled by aerosol forcing from major volcanic eruptions, not variations in the Sun’s output. Volcanic aerosols have a temporary cooling effect on the global climate. Following these temporary cooling periods our reconstructions show there is an increased probability of a temporary warming period due to the recovery from volcanic cooling.

Recent warming is far beyond natural variability

There are, of course, natural changes in Earth’s temperature from decade to decade, from century to century, and also on much longer timescales. With our new reconstructions were also able to quantify the rate of warming and cooling over the past 2,000 years. Comparing our reconstructions to recent worldwide instrumental data, we found that at no time in the last 2,000 years has the rate of warming been so high.

In statistical terms, rates of warming during all 51-year periods from the 1950s onwards exceed the 99th percentile of reconstructed pre-industrial 51 yr trends. If we look at timescales longer than 20 years, the probability that the largest warming trend occurred after 1850 greatly exceeds the values expected from chance alone. And, for trend lengths over 50 years, that probability swiftly approaches 100%. So what do all these stats mean? The strength of the recent warming is extraordinary. It is yet more evidence of human-induced warming of the planet.

But hasn’t there been natural climate change in the past?

Our understanding of past temperature variations of the Earth contributes to understanding such fundamental things as how life evolved, where our species came from, how our planet works and, now that humans have fundamentally altered it, how modern climate change will unfold.

We know that over millions of years, the movement of tectonic plates and interactions between the solid earth, the atmosphere and the ocean, have a slow effect on global temperature. On shorter (but still very long) timescales of tens to hundreds of thousands of years, our planet’s climate is gradually influenced by small variations in the geometry of the Earth and the Sun, for example, small wobbles and variations in the Earth’s tilt and orbit.

From the Last Glacial Maximum, about 26,000 years ago, when huge ice sheets covered large parts of the Northern Hemisphere landmass, Earth transitioned to a 12,000-year warm period, called the Holocene.

Read more: Two centuries of continuous volcanic eruption may have triggered the end of the ice age

This was a time of relative stability in global temperature, apart from the temporary cooling effect of the odd volcano. With the development of human agriculture, our prosperity and population grew. Before the industrial revolution, Earth had not seen carbon dioxide concentrations above current levels for at least 2 million years.

Following the industrial revolution, warming commenced due to human activity. With a clearer picture of temperature variations over the past two millennia we now have a better understanding of the extraordinary nature of recent warming.

It is up to all of us to decide whether this is the kind of experiment we want to run on our planet.

I would like to gratefully acknowledge the leader of this study, Raphael Neukom, and my fellow co-authors from the PAGES 2k Consortium. We also owe the teams of proxy experts much gratitude. It is their generous contribution to science and to human knowledge that has allowed for this, and other palaeoclimate compilation and synthesis studies.

– ref. 2,000 years of records show it’s getting hotter, faster – http://theconversation.com/2-000-years-of-records-show-its-getting-hotter-faster-120882

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Springer, Professor of Human Geography, University of Newcastle

At first glance, heavy metal music and academia seem like odd bedfellows. The former is often looked on with a sense of derision for its assumed lack of refinement; the latter is seen as sophisticated.

Not long after I posted a callout for applications for a PhD scholarship to examine various aspects of social geography – including homelessness, veganism and heavy metal – news about the latter went viral.

Music publication Tone Deaf ran the headline:

You can now get a PhD in heavy metal thanks to an Australian uni

Similar headlines appeared in well-known publications around the world, including SBS, NME, Newsweek and Kerrang.

I never anticipated this level of interest in a simple call for PhD applicants. But in retrospect it is somewhat unsurprising. For most, the idea of academia and heavy metal coming together under a single roof represents a paradox; it’s a misplaced assumption built on ingrained ideas about these two particular cultural forms.

Academia is often seen as an expression of high culture. Heavy metal is frequently misunderstood, typically considered lowbrow, even feared.

But for heavy metal fans the idea of a PhD scholarship focusing on their favourite genre of music suddenly made academia more accessible. People often question the relevance of academic inquiry to their own lives, considering it opaque and distant.

This opportunity reveals how scholarly work can be rooted in everyday experience.

It’s not rubbish

Many academics, including geographers, study a range of cultural forms, including literature, poetry, film, art and various forms of music. Some contend studying heavy metal is “bullshit”, but there isn’t much difference to what I have proposed for this scholarship and what many human geographers are interested in.

Human geography is the branch of geography that studies the organisation of human cultures, social practices, economies and political systems across space (hence the geography). This includes the interconnections of human activities with the physical environment.

Read more: Why I offer a university course on Beyonce – one of the world’s most powerful people

Some cultural forms that are now revered for their influence and eloquence began their lives under the same shadow of ridicule that heavy metal often receives. Shakespeare wrote for the masses and was considered rubbish in his day.

What is interesting is how so-called low culture can be transformed into high culture over space and time, and, equally so, how that transformation often does not occur.

What initiates or prevents such changes in our aesthetic understanding? These are ideal questions for social scientists to consider.

The level of misunderstanding of what my call for PhD students involves reflects a general lack of knowledge of the workings of academia. A PhD program is not a course of study. It is a higher degree achieved through independent and original research.

While it might make for a quirky story to envision me as a more advanced version of Jack Black in the School of Rock, you can’t rock your way to a PhD in heavy metal.

The degree is actually in geography and the successful applicant will already have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree with honours in human geography or a closely aligned field.

I anticipate it will be an enjoyable project to work on, but any doctoral program is a rigorous process involving many years of dedicated study.

Why study heavy metal?

The amount of interest in the PhD scholarship I am offering, in part, provides an answer to why we should study heavy metal. People are genuinely interested in heavy metal as a particular cultural form.

It is a global phenomenon, representing a major social and cultural trend for the past five decades – one that has diffused to every corner of the globe.

While the bulk of heavy metal bands originated in the northern hemisphere, particularly in northern Europe and the United States, we have witnessed the innovative melding of heavy metal into local cultures in places as diverse as Indonesia, Lebanon, Botswana and Mongolia.

Read more: Explainer: the politics of heavy metal

Although remote from the geographical heart of heavy metal culture, Australia has developed its own unique and passionate approach. This interest has resulted in a number of high-profile bands such as Psycroptic, Mortification, Thy Art Is Murder and Deströyer 666 coming out of some of the major cities.

And we’ve also seen a surprising amalgamation of heavy metal culture and Indigenous traditions in remote locations like Wadeye in the Northern Territory.

It is precisely the widespread geographical diffusion of heavy metal in the face of ongoing misunderstanding that makes it worthy of academic inquiry. My proposed area of study is not alone. The distinctiveness of Australian heavy metal in terms of its experimental nature has meant it has already begun to attract serious academic attention.

There have been a number of exciting developments in recent years, including the University of Helsinki offering a summer school program on Heavy Metal Music in Contemporary History and Society, and the International Society for Metal Music Studies organising a number of conferences that have drawn participants from universities all around the world.

These events have been about bringing people with shared interests together, which is the single most important implication of heavy metal’s lasting legacy: the ability to connect people.

– ref. Thrash not trash ?: why heavy metal is a valid and vital PhD subject – http://theconversation.com/thrash-not-trash-why-heavy-metal-is-a-valid-and-vital-phd-subject-120096

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Burton, Professor of Urban Management and Planning & Director, Cities Research Institute, Griffith University

Australia has no enduring tradition of having a national urban policy, unlike the UK, from where we sometimes import policies. The Commonwealth government has a long history of intervening in cities, from addressing housing shortages to funding urban infrastructure, but has shied away from a formal national settlement strategy.

Sometimes the Commonwealth claims to have no constitutional case for involvement in city planning. Yet we’re comfortable with spatial planning at the local, metropolitan and regional scale, so planning at the national level makes sense too.

We also seem comfortable with the federal government doing investment deals with individual cities and regions – so-called City Deals. Why not use this fiscal clout to drive a more systematic program of reform? Reform priorities include how our metropolitan areas are governed and how they finance much-needed investment in infrastructure.

Read more: Spills and City Deals: what Turnbull’s urban policy has achieved, and where we go from here

To date, nine City Deals have been announced. These cover Townsville, Launceston, Western Sydney, Darwin, Hobart, Geelong, Adelaide, Perth and Southeast Queensland. Could this seemingly ad hoc collection of City Deals become part of a more coherent and effective national settlement strategy? And are we up to the enduring challenge of translating these plans and strategies into action?

Are we alone in this?

In the UK, urban policy was for many years based on the principle of “bending main programs” to focus on areas judged most in need of government assistance. This was sometimes used to justify having little or no new money allocated to urban policy initiatives. However, it also reflected the reality that the main spending programs of national government are often altogether bigger with much more fiscal clout on the ground.

We also need to recognise that there is more to growth and development than investing in hard infrastructure like roads and railways. Schools, hospitals, parks and cultural facilities play a vital role in creating liveable communities at any spatial scale.

When these facilities lag behind the rapid construction of homes, our towns and cities are poorer places to live in. Nor are they places of resilience where we are better able to cope with the environmental changes and technological disruptions of the 21st century.

Why a national strategy?

The UN Sustainable Development Goals, and in particular SDG 11, recognise that having a national urban policy is an important foundation for achieving sustainable urban development. But in Australia we have not established long-term federal funding agreements for the sustainable development of major cities. Nor are there incentives to reform how we govern and deliver public services and infrastructure at the metropolitan scale.

A strategy of establishing metropolitan governance and financial reforms would assist Australian cities to compete and be successful in a 21st-century, globally connected world. At the same time, it would still enable decisions to be based on local preferences and capabilities. This reform could be the central feature of a national approach to partnership with cities.

This national cities partnership could provide a much better framework in which individual City Deals become more effective. An agreement could include national performance outcomes and help drive reforms to metropolitan governance and financing. It could also provide a platform for a national settlement strategy that finally gets to grips with where our growing population might live and live well.

By focusing on the metropolitan scale, we will also be better placed to answer difficult questions like “who should serve as Australia’s metropolitan leaders?” and “who represents metropolitan communities and works with them to make hard decisions about their future?”.

Read more: All the signs point to our big cities’ need for democratic, metro-scale governance

Currently, we have States and their agencies working at the metropolitan level. We have local governments that, understandably, focus on their local issues. Only occasionally do local councils build cooperative structures at a regional or metropolitan scale. Local government amalgamation is not a solution to this issue, as there remains an important role for local as well as metropolitan-scale institutions.

What would a national cities partnership look like?

Australia has five metropolitan areas with populations over 1 million people. When regional cities with populations over 100,000 are also considered, there are 17 major cities and metropolitan areas that could join in developing a national cities partnership agreement.

Read more: Cities policy goes regional

The core principles for this partnership could be:

• collaboration between different levels of government at scales that make economic sense and are socially meaningful – e.g. metropolitan regions for big cities, and perhaps major regional cities and their hinterlands in rural and regional areas

• reforms to allow for the emergence of city and metropolitan leaders, who can talk on behalf of major urban communities and work with stakeholders such as business and non-government actors

• working hard to engage the public as well as peak bodies in thinking about the future of their region

• translating plans into action, through ongoing community support and concerted and coherent Commonwealth investment programs.

Commonwealth needs to take the lead

Disengagement at this time by the Commonwealth government would be disastrous, so we wish Minister Alan Tudge well in keeping cities on the government’s policy agenda.

A business-as-usual approach to federal intervention may not make things worse, but it won’t set up the reforms Australian cities need to thrive and grow sustainably.

A strategy to establish a national-city partnership agreement offers a way forward. It would provide a framework to make City Deals more effective. The partnership could enable the emergence of a new breed of metropolitan and city leaders to help elevate public dialogue about the future of our cities and drive financial reforms that would allow them to deliver and be responsible to their communities.

All of this should appeal to those in government who want to see policy evolve and develop and our cities grow into more prosperous, liveable and resilient places.

This article draws on separate presentations made by the authors at the 2019 National Congress of the Planning Institute of Australia.

– ref. A patchwork of City Deals or a national settlement strategy: what’s best for our growing cities? – http://theconversation.com/a-patchwork-of-city-deals-or-a-national-settlement-strategy-whats-best-for-our-growing-cities-117839

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben McCann, Associate Professor of French Studies, University of Adelaide

Ridley Scott and James Cameron did it, and George Lucas never stops. Directors ceaselessly return to their work to tweak, tinker, chop and change.

Extended Cut, Definitive Version, Special Edition: the list goes on.

Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, Francis Ford Coppola’s supposedly definitive version of his 1979 epic Vietnam war film, will be released in Australia today. But are these new versions just an excuse for obsessive tinkering and self-indulgence?

The director’s cut refers to a version of the film that remains closest to the director’s original vision, rather than the theatrical version officially released by the studio. In an era of DVD and streaming services, these alternative cuts are becoming increasingly attractive to studio boss, director and movie lover alike.

These “new” films, often only fractionally altered, throw the commerce versus art equation that has underpinned Hollywood for more than a century into sharp relief. The studio gets another chance to market a beloved film, the fans can endlessly debate the differences between the old and new version, while the director can once more return to the editing studio, elusively seeking perfection. In that sense, everyone wins.

With director’s cuts, the romantic myth of the brilliant (usually male) director battling against numbers-obsessed Hollywood is also reinforced.

Read more: Apocalypse Now turns 40: rediscovering the genesis of a film classic

The good and the bad

Director’s cuts often seek to rectify an injustice. Studio executives will often demand last-minute edits or reshoots if test screenings go badly. Directors who bitterly complained about how studios altered their vision can now go back and showcase the film as it was meant to be seen.

For example, director David Ayer recently acknowledged his original cut of the dark superhero film Suicide Squad was radically different to the studio-sanctioned release. The studio requested significant reshoots to lighten the tone and inject more comedy – but the “Ayer cut” only can be accessed on DVD and Blu-ray.

Other director’s cuts improve on the original version by bolstering visual scope, narrative continuity and emotional engagement. For example, the 17 minutes of deleted footage from James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), since restored to the 1990 Special Edition, are a masterclass in building tension and deepening character.

Ridley Scott’s endless reworking of the science-fiction/neo-noir Blade Runner remains the gold standard. First released in 1982, Scott oversaw a new version ten years on, and then the so-called Final Cut in 2007 (re-released on Blu-ray in 2017). He removed the ponderous voice-over from Deckard (Harrison Ford), axed the happy ending and inserted opaque dream sequences that continue to nourish the film’s philosophical ambiguities.

But some directors just do not know when to stop. To coincide with the 20 year anniversary of Star Wars in 1997, George Lucas created a digitally remastered Special Edition (spruced up versions of The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) followed a few weeks later). Lucas stuffed the trilogy with reinstated scenes, polished up degraded images and sound and reaped extraordinary success (US$472 million at the global box office was mightily impressive for a trilogy nearly two decades old).

There was only one problem – the Special Editions were castigated by fans. Many resented the retrofitted visuals and jarring CGI enhancements; for others, the most egregious alteration – having bounty hunter Greedo now shoot Han Solo first in a Mos Eisley cantina – compromised Han’s character arc from rogue to hero across the trilogy.

Lucas’s incessant meddling (he returned to the trilogy again in 2004 and 2011) has been seen as a way of perpetually monetising the much-beloved originals. All along, his response to such criticism has been consistent – he was waiting for technology to catch up to his original vision.

As for Coppola, he has been here before. In 2001, he presented Apocalypse Now: Redux to ecstatic reviews during the Cannes Film Festival. Nearly an hour of footage cut from the 1979 version was reinserted, including the famously woozy “French plantation” scene. This new version was hailed as extraordinary – “redux” means “a work of art presented in a new way”.

But Coppola clearly was not done. Apocalypse Now: Final Cut premiered in New York back in April, 19 minutes shorter than Redux. In Final Cut, Coppola has finessed the colour balance and sound design, no doubt hoping to add to the film’s hallucinogenic qualities.

Despite the important contributions of writer John Milius, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and sound designer and editor Walter Murch, this latest version reinforces the romantic idea of the director as the sole auteur.

Coppola’s fingerprints are all over Final Cut. Here is a powerful director who, like Spielberg, Lucas and Scott, has been given endless opportunities to refine his vision. This tells us a lot about Hollywood’s commodification of the auteur and the ongoing importance of the director’s name in selling a product.

“A work of art is never completed, only abandoned”, noted the French poet Paul Valéry. Apocalypse Now: Final Cut is the latest exhibit to suggest films are never really finished – the artistic process is endlessly reworkable.

– ref. From Star Wars to Apocalypse Now, director’s cuts are all the rage. But do they make the films any better? – http://theconversation.com/from-star-wars-to-apocalypse-now-directors-cuts-are-all-the-rage-but-do-they-make-the-films-any-better-120755

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Donna Lee Brien, Professor, Creative Industries, CQUniversity Australia

Legendary Australian food writer Margaret Fulton has died aged 94. At the news of her death, many are noting her long career and her influence on cookery and eating habits in Australia. With a professional life spanning well over 60 years, she successfully managed that career and her image in the media over this long period, providing a role model for generations of Australian food writers.

With 1.5 million copies of her eponymous cookbook sold, Fulton achieved significant public recognition for her work. In 1983, she was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia. In 1997, she was inducted into the World Food Media Awards Hall of Fame and named as one of the National Trust’s original 100 Living Australian National Treasures.

Even more than that, though, she was trusted. Margaret Fulton, indeed, built her career on the provision of sound, trustworthy cookery advice. And she knew it.

In 1980, reflecting on her career, she recognised that her brand was built on reliability rather than novelty or extravagance, stating: “I believe my reputation is built on the fact that people can rely on me. Unlike other cookery people, I believe I’m doing the right thing by not being flamboyant. I know that’s the success of my business.”

According to her memoir, she originally dreamt of being a showgirl, but Fulton began her career during the Second World War on a public stage of a different kind – as a cookery demonstrator with the Australian Gas Light Company.

She gained valuable experience in retail – selling pressure cookers, and running the kitchen and homewares section of David Jones – before joining then-popular Woman magazine as a food writer in 1954.

At this time, she was also completing a professional cookery course at the East Sydney Technical College. Largely based on classical French cookery, she learnt recipes and techniques which stood her in good stead throughout her later career.

In 1955, Fulton joined the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, managing a number of food accounts and, when television broadcasting started in 1956, began working on television commercials for such major food brands as Kelloggs and Kraft.

Fulton learnt much from this advertising experience. Although she was to appear in major television campaigns for ingredients and appliances, and publicise named products in cookbooks such as The Margaret Fulton Crock-pot Cookbook (1976), she was able to maintain her credibility.

In 1960, Margaret Fulton commenced a 20 year association with Woman’s Day as first a writer, and then its cookery editor. It was in this role that she was especially influential in exposing her readers to both new trends in ingredients and food preparation, as well as to reliable methods of reproducing traditional dishes. Fulton was able to translate and popularise the dishes of post-war and other migrants to Australia, featuring Italian, Greek, Yugoslavian and other cuisines in her food pages.

Her life’s work

The Margaret Fulton Cookbook was published in 1968. Unexpectedly selling out its then record first print run of 100,000 copies, it went to a second printing the next year, and many more after that. This book features step-by-step illustrated guides to not only how to cook the so-called “Continental” and “Oriental” dishes that have now become our nightly fare, but also how to eat them. There were, for instance, photographs of how to twirl spaghetti on a fork and illustrations of how use chopsticks.

In the late 1970s, Fulton joined New Idea magazine as its cookery writer. At this time, while writing and promoting realistic and reliable recipes, techniques and products, she was also consolidating her own reputation in appearances in television commercials.

This mixture of reliability and creativity took her far from the food pages of women’s magazines. In 1980, for example, Fulton acted as the culinary consultant for Ansett Airlines, designing then-revolutionary snack boxes of sandwiches and fresh fruit for short flights.

By late 1982, a feature article in the Weekend Australian judged her to have had “more impact on the Australian kitchen than anything or person since the refrigerator”. Just a few months later, in 1983, Margaret Fulton’s Encyclopedia of Food and Cookery was published, cementing her place as the arbiter of Australian domestic cooking. When, over 20 years later, a revised and updated version of this volume was released in 2005, Fulton referred to it as her “life’s work”.

It was not until 1999, at the height of the personal memoir’s popularity, that Fulton published her memoir, I Sang for My Supper: Memories of a Food Writer. This was a brave act, for as well as cataloguing her achievements, this text revealed her to have met many professional, personal and financial challenges.

Long after reaching the age at which many others would have retired, her writing continued to be in demand. In 2001, Fulton co-authored Cooking for Dummies with Barbara Beckett. This book was published at the peak of the high profile series’ success.

Fulton had a long history of assisting the causes she believed in, including grassroots organisations. In 2003, she launched the second edition of a non-genetically modified ingredients True Food Guide for Greenpeace.

But it is her cookery writing that so many will not only remember, but continue to reach for. This writing truly came from her heart and although the purpose of her recipes was largely practical and educational, the results were intended to delight and nurture. On the first page of The Margaret Fulton Cookbook, she wrote, “I have always believed that good food and good cooking are part of all that is best in life, all that is warm, friendly and rewarding”.

– ref. Vale Margaret Fulton: a role model for generations of Australian food writers – http://theconversation.com/vale-margaret-fulton-a-role-model-for-generations-of-australian-food-writers-120897

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary-Anne Kate, Adjunct Associate Lecturer, University of New England

Dissociative disorders are often said to be rare. But our soon-to-be published analysis of international studies suggest they affect 10-11% of the population at some point in their lives. This makes them nearly as common as mood disorders (such as clinical depression).

So what are dissociative disorders, why is diagnosis controversial and how can people be treated?

Read more: Mood and personality disorders are often misconceived: here’s what you need to know

What is dissociation?

Dissociation occurs when a person experiences being disconnected from themselves, including their memories, feelings, actions, thoughts, body and even their identity.

People with dissociative disorders have one or more of the following symptoms:

• amnesia and other memory problems
• a sense of detachment or disconnection from their self, familiar people or surroundings
• an inner struggle about their sense of self and identity
• acting like a different person (identity alteration).

For some people, symptoms can last days or weeks, but for others they can persist for months, years, or a lifetime.

Dissociation allows the person to compartmentalise and disconnect from aspects of traumatic and challenging experiences that could otherwise overwhelm their capacity to cope.

A person whose spouse has died may become emotionally numb, allowing them to focus on arranging the funeral; a man who has separated from his wife and lost his job soon afterwards may become so disconnected from his identity that he no longer recognises himself in the mirror and feels his life is happening to someone else; and a young woman who is sexually assaulted may remember her attacker moving too quickly towards her, recalls being safely back in her family home, but cannot remember the assault.

Read more: How childhood trauma changes our hormones, and thus our mental health, into adulthood

If the traumatic and overwhelming experiences happen repeatedly over a long period of time, the person’s personality may become fragmented. The traumatised part of the personality that contains the emotions, thoughts, sensations and experiences relating to the trauma becomes separated from the part of the personality that is trying to get on with daily life.

This allows young children to be with frightening and abusive caregivers they can neither fight nor flee from as they are dependent on them.

Read more: Dissociative identity disorder exists and is the result of childhood trauma

The person may have no (or only some) conscious awareness of the compartmentalised memories, thoughts, feelings and experiences.

These may, however, intrude into the person’s awareness. For example, the person may be aware of thoughts, feelings and internal voices that don’t “belong” to them, or may speak or act in ways that are completely out of character.

The most extreme form of structural dissociation is dissociative identity disorder, once known as multiple personality disorder. This is where the person has at least two separate personalities that exist independently of one another and that emerge at different times.

These personality differences are not just psychological. Neuroimaging confirms structural differences in the brains of people with dissociative identity disorder.

A controversial diagnosis

There are two competing theories about what causes dissociation: trauma and fantasy.

With the trauma model, dissociative symptoms arise from physical, sexual and emotional abuse; neglect, particularly in childhood; attachment problems if a child fears the caregiver or the caregiver is not adequately attuned to the child’s emotional or safety needs; and other severe stress or trauma, such as experiencing or witnessing domestic violence.

This trauma model is reflected in the World Health Organisation and American Psychiatric Association past and present diagnostic criteria.

Read more: A soldier and a sex worker walk into a therapist’s office. Who’s more likely to have PTSD?

However, the fantasy model is based on the idea that dissociative disorders are not “real”. Instead, they are the delusion of people who are troubled (and often traumatised), suggestible, fantasy-prone and sleep-deprived.

Fantasy model theorist Joel Paris describes dissociative disorders as a North American “fad” that has nearly died out.

Read more: ‘Going it alone’ adds to tertiary students’ high mental health risk

Yet my analysis of 98 studies found rates are not declining. In fact, I found dissociation is an international phenomenon far more common in countries that are comparatively unsafe. This is supported by other research which finds dissociation more common in people that have experienced trauma, such as refugees.

All up, the evidence indicates dissociative disorders are real (not imagined) and caused by trauma (not fantasy).

Dissociative disorders are under-diagnosed and misdiagnosed

Even though there are accurate ways of diagnosing dissociative disorders, most people will never be diagnosed. This is due to the lack of health professional education and training about dissociation, the symptoms being less obvious to observers, and scepticism that the disorder even exists.

The person also may not realise they have dissociative symptoms. Even if they do, they may not reveal them due to fear or embarrassment, or may find them difficult to put into words.

At least three-quarters of people with a dissociative disorder will also have one or more other mental disorders. They may be diagnosed with and treated for other mental health difficulties, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, sleep disorders, borderline personality disorder, or psychosis. They may also be treated for addictions, self-harm, and/or suicidal thoughts (2% of those diagnosed complete suicide).

They may also be misdiagnosed with schizophrenia because hearing voices is common to both.

But their dissociative disorder usually remains undiagnosed. However, treatment for other mental health issues is not likely to be effective unless the underlying dissociation is addressed.

How to treat? What does the evidence say works?

The mental health and quality of life of people with a dissociative disorder improves significantly with psychotherapy (a type of talk therapy) that recognises the impact of trauma is physiological (affecting the brain and body) as well as psychological.

In therapy consistent with international treatment guidelines, people can learn skills to cope with unbearable emotions, thoughts and physical sensations. Once people are stable and have constructive coping strategies, therapists can then help people process traumatic and dissociated memories. Dissociative, post-traumatic, and depressive symptoms improve. And hospitalisations, self-harm, drug use, and physical pain declines.

There is no medication that specifically treats dissociation.

Where to get help

Dissociative disorders are one of the most common, yet most unrecognised, mental disorders. Symptoms are often debilitating, but significant improvements are possible if the dissociation is diagnosed and treated correctly.

If you are concerned, you can speak to your GP and ask for a referral to a therapist knowledgeable about trauma and dissociation. A list of therapists with this expertise in Australia is available from the Blue Knot Foundation and worldwide from the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation.

If this article has raised issues for you, or you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Blue Knot Helpline on 1300 657 380.

– ref. Dissociative disorders are nearly as common as depression. So why haven’t we heard about them? – http://theconversation.com/dissociative-disorders-are-nearly-as-common-as-depression-so-why-havent-we-heard-about-them-116731

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Asanka Gunasekara, Lecturer in Management, Swinburne University of Technology

In a multicultural country like Australia, it’s easy for migrants to keep their heritage culture alive. But our recent research that surveyed more than 300 migrants found those who adapt to Australian society, called “Australian acculturation”, have greater personal well-being than those who don’t.

Personal well-being refers to a person’s quality of life, measured at two levels. The first: how satisfied they are with their life overall. And the second: how satisfied they are with specific life domains, such as achievements, relationships, health, safety, community connectedness and security.

Read more: How do we measure well-being?

We looked at the relationships between time in the host country, acculturation and personal well-being among non-Western skilled migrants in Australia. We found that migrants who reported having a higher personal well-being also had:

• acculturated more to the Australian culture than to their heritage culture

• higher English language competency and

• an Australian identity

And we found that more time spent in Australia doesn’t necessarily lead to more personal well-being if skilled migrants don’t adapt to Australian culture.

Social connectedness

We measured personal well-being using the Australian Unity Personal Well-being Index (PWI), which measures the level of a person’s satisfaction using a points system from 0 to 100.

The average PWI of the Australian general population ranges from 74.2 to 76.8 out of 100, whereas the average PWI of our skilled migrant sample is higher, at 77.27.

Given the present study involved skilled migrants, it’s possible that their higher education, skills and salaries may have contributed to higher levels of personal well-being, compared to the Australian population as a whole.

Read more: Migrants are healthier than the average Australian, so they can’t be a burden on the health system

Skilled migrants recorded the lowest score for the “community connectedness” domain, along with the rest of the Australian population. Community connectedness refers to the number and strength of connections a person has with others in their community.

Community connectedness may be lower because:

• skilled migrants maintain close contact with ethnic and extended families

• there are few opportunities for them to be involved in the wider Australian community or

• they feel excluded from the wider community.

Biculturalism

Rather than acculturation, some skilled migrants will maintain their own culture, and add layers of cultural practices from their host country. For them, “biculturalism” – or being able to switch between host and heritage cultures – is more realistic.

Read more: Settling migrants in regional areas will need more than a visa to succeed

For example, an Indian family who moved to Melbourne will keep their culture alive through food, language and friendship circles, but might also go to the footy and support an AFL team.

Full acculturation, on the other hand, is when migrants abandon their heritage cultural practices and values when they adapt to the host culture.

For a first generation non-Western migrant, adapting to the Australian culture is even harder. Research has shown that acculturation into a Western country is unlikely for these people.

This is for a number of reasons, such as pride in their heritage culture, maintaining strong connections with relatives and friends, and the societies they move to allow them to maintain heritage cultural practices through multicultural policies.

Poor Australian acculturation can lead to social isolation

Most people migrate when they’re young, so they’re able to contribute to the socioeconomic well-being of the host country by bringing in much needed skills, knowledge, technology and investment to Australia.

But in any case, migrants grow old in a culture that’s not heritage to them, so Australian acculturation is important to help combat social isolation in their old age.

In fact, a 2015 study found older people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are at a greater risk of depression than Anglo-Australians.

So if our skilled migrant sample, with the average age of 38, are low-scoring in the “community connectedness” domain, they could fall into a social isolation trap as they age.

Read more: How cities help immigrants feel at home: 4 charts

Australia should make ageing in a new culture a more comfortable experience, and organisations – such as Australian Multicultural Community Services and Australian Multicultural Foundation – and the government should take more responsibility for their Australian acculturation, and encourage social participation.

– ref. Migrants who adapt to Australian culture say they’re happier than those who don’t – http://theconversation.com/migrants-who-adapt-to-australian-culture-say-theyre-happier-than-those-who-dont-117264

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Leibold, Associate Professor of Politics and Asian Studies, La Trobe University

As China grows more powerful and influential, our New Superpower series looks at what this means for the world – how China maintains its power, how it wields its power and how its power might be threatened. Read the rest of the series here.

In China’s far western region of Xinjiang, Chinese Communist Party officials are persecuting one of the worst human rights abuses of our time, what I labelled an act of cultural genocide in last week’s ABC Four Corners report.

Pressure is mounting on the Australian government to go beyond statements of concern and challenge China over its treatment of the Uyghur minority, particularly those Australian citizens and permanent residents being held in the vast network of “re-education camps” in Xinjiang.

Two Australian Uyghur men are meeting federal politicians in Canberra today to push for the government’s assistance in helping family members trapped in China.

Australia was one of 22 countries to sign a recent letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressing concern about the “arbitrary detention” of Uyghurs, but otherwise, its response has been muted.

In recent days, the Chinese government has defended its actions with a dubious propaganda report claiming that Uyghurs were historically forced to become Muslims and have been an integral part of China for thousands of years.

China repeatedly makes false and anachronistic claims like this about the ancient unity of the “Chinese people,” which includes ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs. Its aim is to project modern notions of sovereignty, nationhood and fixed borders back through history.

In reality, the 11 million or so Uyghurs are an indigenous Turkic-speaking people who have inhabited what they call “East Turkestan” for over a millennium. Along with the Tibetans, the Uyghurs have born the brunt of China’s settler colonial project, which seeks to assert its control over remote regions that are closer to Moscow and Tehran than Beijing.

Since March 2017, the Chinese government has interned over a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in massive, prison-like camps (including possibly 17 Australian residents), where they are subjected to coercive ideological remoulding.

Detainees are forced to denounce their religion, forbidden to speak their language, and taught how to adopt the norms of China’s Han ethnic majority, while praising President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party for salvation.

In their own words, party officials are “washing brains” and “cleansing hearts” in order to “cure” those bewitched by extremist thoughts. In Xinjiang today, non-Han thoughts and behaviour are pathologised as deviant and thus in need of urgent transformation.

What is genocide?

A litany of words and phrases have been used to describe this process. The Chinese government calls the camps free “vocational education and training centres” where Uyghurs willingly learn Chinese language and employment skills in order to assist with their “rehabilitation and reintegration”.

Scholars, journalists and rights defenders have spoken about cultural and religious “persecution” in Xinjiang, arguing the party-state’s policies amount to mass ethnic cleansing, cultural re-engineering, forced assimilation, brainwashing, or even ethnocide.

In August 2018, Gay McDougall, the vice chair of UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, referred to Xinjiang as a “no-rights zone”.

Yet, I believe the scale, sophistication and intent of China’s policies in Xinjiang merits a stronger description.

Read more: The world has a hard time trusting China. But does it really care?

The term genocide was coined by lawyer Rafael Lemkin in 1944 in reaction to Nazi Germany’s coordinated strategy to annihilate the Jews, gypsies and other non-Aryan peoples. Four years later, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, with Australia one of the first counties to ratify it. The People’s Republic of China ratified it in 1983.

The convention defines genocide as

acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group

It also obligates signatories to punish those who engage in genocidal acts through a “competent” domestic or international penal tribunal.

Whether genocide includes only physical acts or can extend to attacks on cultural heritage has elicited intense debate, but for Lemkin, the term includes

drastic methods aimed at the rapid and complete disappearance of the culture, moral and religious life of a group of human beings.

Genocide also requires specific intent. In the words of political scientists Kenneth J. Campbell, genocide is a

premeditated, calculated, systematic, malicious crime authorised by the state’s political leaders.

This is exactly what Communist Party officials did when they authorised and then legalised the mass internment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in “concentrated transformation-through-education centres,” ripping more than 10% of the population away from their communities so they could be deliberately re-programmed.

Various methods for erasing culture

Yet, facts arguably matter more than words when it comes to China’s policies in Xinjiang.

We now have ample evidence (including internal party documents) of the deliberate efforts to destroy Uyghur culture and identity. Everyday actions like avoiding pork, speaking Uyghur, wearing a headscarf or praying quietly are now labelled “manifestations of religious extremism,” or what party officials call “malignant tumors” requiring urgent excising in a radical form of cultural surgery.

In the city of Kashgar, for example, a party document highlights the need to sever the lineages, roots and cultural connections of Uyghurs in order to eliminate the fountainhead of potential extremism.

German researcher Adrian Zenz has uncovered evidence of the party’s efforts to separate Uyghur children from their parents in state institutions, where they can be assimilated and indoctrinated by officials. In these institutions, cultural, religious, and linguistic knowledge is intentionally ruptured.

Read more: Explainer: who are the Uyghurs and why is the Chinese government detaining them?

In some parts of Xinjiang, mosques and shrines are being bulldozed, while others are transformed into empty sites guarded by facial recognition cameras and imams on the party payroll.

In the name of strengthening “bilingual education”, Chinese is now the language of instruction across Xinjiang, from preschool to university. The use of Uyghur language, script, signs and pictures prohibited. Speaking Uyghur is now considered unpatriotic and can get one sent off for re-education.

Perhaps most disturbing, inter-ethnic marriages are being actively promoted to slowly breed out Uyghurness, with cash and other material inducements offered to Han men who take a Uyghur bride.

One can find numerous videos and messages promoting Han-Uyghur inter-marriage on Chinese social media, asserting Xinjiang is now safe and home to many beautiful and eligible Uyghur women who would appreciate a doting Han husband.

Finally, the Chinese government has intensified its family planning regime in Xinjiang to slow the growth of the Uyghur population and eliminate what party officials call “low quality births”.

Beginning in 2017, the region adopted a uniform two children policy that nullified preferential rules allowing rural Uyghur women to have additional births. In the past, Uyghur women were given 3,000 RMB (roughtly A$620) to forgo a third birth and agree to some sort of “long-term contraceptive measure.”

The Communist Party’s calculated war on Uyghur identity is quite literally tearing families and communities apart, while the rich tradition of diversity and tolerance in China is left in tatters.

The resilient nature of culture and memory means that attempts at genocide, thankfully, are rarely successful. Yet the pain they inflict is real.

– ref. Despite China’s defences, its treatment of the Uyghurs should be called what it is: cultural genocide – http://theconversation.com/despite-chinas-defences-its-treatment-of-the-uyghurs-should-be-called-what-it-is-cultural-genocide-120654

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renee Knake, RMIT Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation; Professor of Law at the University of Houston, RMIT University

In this series, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages.

When Grata Flos Matilda Greig walked into her first law school class at the University of Melbourne in 1897, it was illegal for women to become lawyers. But though the legal system did not even recognise her as a person, she won the right to practice and helped thousands of other women access justice. In defying the law, Greig literally changed its face.

That she did so is a story worthy of history books. And how she achieved this offers key insights for women a century later as they navigate leadership roles in the legal profession and beyond.

Flos, as she was known, grew up in a household full of possibilities unlimited by gender boundaries. Born in Scotland, as a nine-year-old she spent three months sailing to Australia with her family to settle in Melbourne in 1889. Her father founded a textile manufacturing company. Both parents believed that Flos and her siblings – four sisters and three brothers – should be university educated at a time when women rarely were.

She grew up firm in the knowledge that women could thrive in professional life, and witnessed that reality unfold as older sisters Janet and Jean trained to become doctors. Another sister, Clara, would go on to found a tutoring school for university students. The fourth sister, Stella, followed Flos to study law.

Women could not vote or hold legislative office, let alone be lawyers, when 16-year-old Flos began to study law. Yet she did not let this deter her. As she approached graduation she focused on, “the many obstacles in the path of my full success. I resolved to remove them”.

Other feminine aspirants, she noted, had previously wished to enter the profession, “but the impediments in the way were so great, that they concluded, after consideration, it was not worthwhile”.

Flos felt otherwise. She declared, even in 1903 when women were largely excluded from public life: “Women are men’s equals in every way and they are quite competent to hold their own in all spheres of life.”

‘The Flos Greig Enabling Bill’

Six years after entering the University of Melbourne, Flos witnessed the Victorian Legislative Assembly’s passing of the Women’s Disabilities Removal Bill, also known as the Flos Greig Enabling Bill. Suddenly, women could enter the practice of law. How had she made this happen?

While childhood had provided Flos with role models from both sexes, she did have to rely upon a series of men to navigate her entry into the exclusively male club of the legal profession. Her male classmates had initially questioned the capabilities of a woman lawyer and resisted her presence, but she soon persuaded them otherwise.

Not only did Flos graduate second in her class, but the men took a vote to declare – affirmatively – that women should be allowed to practice law. Their support undoubtedly fuelled her ambitions.

Next, Flos turned to one of her lecturers, John Mackey, who happened to also be a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly. Together they worked with other supporters to craft the legislative change. Mackey argued that by passing the law, Parliament could ease the concerns of women who believed they could not get justice from a legislative body made up only of men.

Still, Flos needed to complete a period of supervised training known as “articling” before she could be sworn into the bar. No Australian woman had ever engaged in the “articles of clerkship” before. A Melbourne commercial law solicitor Frank Cornwall employed her, and she was officially admitted to the practice of law on August 1, 1905.

At her swearing-in ceremony, Chief Justice John Madden described Flos as “the graceful incoming of a revolution”. He also expressed some scepticism about her future success:

Women are more sympathetic than judicial, more emotional than logical. In the legal profession knowledge of the world is almost if not quite as essential as knowledge of the law, and knowledge of the world, women, even if they possess it, would lie loth to assert.

Flos would prove him wrong about her knowledge of the world, both in law and in her other passion, travel.

‘What did I wear? Don’t ask me!’

At the ceremony, her name was the third called – in alphabetical order – before what was reportedly an “unusually large gathering of lawyers, laymen, and ladies … seldom seen in halls of justice”. Attendees noticed smiles that “flickered over the faces of the judges as they entered the crowded chamber” at the sight of Flos among her “somberly-clad male” counterparts.

News accounts focused more on the physical attributes of the first lady lawyer than her qualifications. When questioned by a reporter about her clothing choice for the occasion, Flos blushed, “What did I wear? Don’t ask me!” But then confessed, “Well, if you insist! I wore grey, with a greenish tinted hat, trimmed with violets!”

Another news reporter critiqued the flower-adorned hat as “a most unlegal costume”. As if there was any basis for making such an assessment – until that moment the nation had never seen the “costume” of a female lawyer. The media’s fixation with female lawyers’ appearance endures more than a century later.

Flos soon established a solo practice in Melbourne focusing on women and children. Among other endeavours, she represented the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in lobbying to establish the Children’s Court of Victoria.

Media fascination with Flos’s attire did not diminish once admitted to practice. She delivered a speech in 1905 to the third annual National Congress of Women of Victoria on a paper she wrote titled, “Some Points of the Law Relating to Women and Children”.

The reporter noted that Flos “treated her subject in a masterly manner, and gave an immense amount of useful and, at times, startling information”. But Flos’s “stylish, yet simple, gown of grey voile, with cream lace vest” was equally newsworthy as were “her pretty black hat and white gloves”. The fashion choices of other (male) speakers went unmentioned.

Flos also helped open the legal profession to other women. She founded The Catalysts’ Society in 1910. Two years later it became the prestigious Lyceum Club in Melbourne, devoted to advancing the careers of women and offering networking opportunities.

After the launch of the Women’s Law Society of Victoria in 1914, Flos was elected its first president. She cared deeply about the right of all women to vote, arguing in a 1905 debate that if “politics were not fit” for women, “the sooner they were made so the better.” (In 1908 Victorian women won the right the vote.)

Law was not Flos’s only pursuit. She travelled extensively. Two decades after graduating from law school, she took a lengthy trip through Asia, spending time in Singapore, China, Bali, Java, Malaysia and two weeks in the Burma jungle. She stayed in local homes and on her return, spoke to audiences about the experience, delighting them with tales of “leopards, tigers, wild pigs, peacocks, … and wild jungle fowl”. She lectured publicly and on radio stations about the geography, religion and race.

The end of her career took Flos to Wangaratta in Northern Victoria. She practised at a law firm headed by Paul McSwiney, and was known to explore the countryside in a “Baby Austin” tourer. She remained an activist, supporting higher education for women and the Douglas Credit Party, a political party that aimed to remedy the economic hardships of the 1930s depression.

Flos died in 1958. While she did not live to see other female firsts, such as the appointment of the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria in 2003, Flos’ capacity to envision women as equals under the law places her among the profession’s greatest innovators.

Renee Newman Knake’s book Shortlisted: Women, Diversity, the Supreme Court & Beyond will be published by New York University Press in 2020.

– ref. Hidden women of history: Flos Greig, Australia’s first female lawyer and early innovator – http://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-flos-greig-australias-first-female-lawyer-and-early-innovator-119990

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

After a bruising election outcome, GetUp is regrouping around a batch of issues – with press freedom the big ticket item. The activist group’s national director Paul Oosting, who has been in Canberra for the parliamentary week, says this is “deeply, deeply important to our members right now. It’s absolutely the number one issue that they care about”.

We’re absolutely in this campaign for the long haul. How we protect press freedoms, as of today – [it] isn’t entirely clear how we get there from a parliamentary and political point of view, but we’ve absolutely got to find a way because press freedom is central to our democracy.

Post-election, GetUp has faced strong critics, most recently the Liberal member for the South Australian seat of Boothby, Nicole Flint, who has accused it and unions of “creating an environment where abuse, harassment, intimidation, shouting people down and even stalking became the new normal”.

Oosting says these claims “aren’t true” – they are “very much self-serving from the Coalition in an attempt to to muddy our brand”.

He admits GetUp made some mistakes – in a “calling script” in one electorate, and a wrong “tone” in some advertising, notably depicting a Tony Abbott figure refusing to help a drowning person.

In terms of our internal processes and how we think more broadly around those things[…][we]absolutely will carry those lessons through to future campaigns.

But in Boothby, Oosting says, “Nicole Flint doesn’t really have a high profile. So our campaign wasn’t centred on her, it was centred on issues like climate change”.

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– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Paul Oosting responds to GetUp’s critics – http://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-paul-oosting-responds-to-getups-critics-120886

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruce Mountain, Director, Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Victoria University

Last week the body that governs Australia’s energy market released a draft proposal to introduce a demand response mechanism to the wholesale electricity market.

It argues the proposal will unearth some electricity users’ “latent flexibility” to prices in the extremely volatile wholesale market, and that this will potentially promote more efficient use of electricity, more secure power systems, and lower prices.

The move comes after nearly two decades of sustained campaigning, which prompts the question: why doesn’t such a useful-sounding mechanism already exist?

Read more: Managing demand can save two power stations’ worth of energy at peak times

It’s a good question. If this demand-response mechanism does what it is claimed to do, it could be a significant development for the electricity markets in southern and eastern Australia. But the actual proposal is eye-wateringly complex and there is reason to be circumspect.

What is proposed and how does it work?

The Australian Energy Market Commission’s determination is that new market participants, to be known as “Demand Response Service Providers” (DRSPs), will be allowed to offer hypothetical demand reductions into the wholesale market at prices they determine. If the price they offer for such reductions is less than the price at which the market clears, the DRSPs will be paid the market price, as if they were a generator, for these hypothetical reductions.

One obvious difficulty here is the fact that the reductions are hypothetical. They are the difference between the customers’ demand if they did not respond to an enticement to reduce demand – the “baseline” – and their actual demand. Customers (and DRSPs) have an incentive to overstate the baseline, as this increases the volume of the reductions they offer and, if accepted, get paid for.

DRSPs profit from the demand reductions they sell, and so they have an incentive to seek out customers who are willing to reduce demand relative to the baseline.

Retailers that sell electricity to DRSPs’ customers will buy (from the wholesale market) the actual volume of electricity consumed and also the hypothetical demand reduction, and pay the wholesale price for both. The retailer charges the customer for the actual demand and charges the DRSR for the demand reduction at a regulated price equal to the 12-month average wholesale price.

Read more: Baffled by baseload? Dumbfounded by dispatchables? Here’s a glossary of the energy debate

This will typically leave the retailer out of pocket by an amount equal to the difference between the average wholesale price at which they have “bought” the demand reductions, and the 12-month average wholesale price (which will almost certainly be lower, because demand reductions will occur when wholesale prices are higher than average).

Retailers will seek to recover the shortfall from the DRSRs’ customers or, more likely, from all their customers. To the extent that they are unable to recover the shortfall, retailers are likely to try to offload those of their customers that are paid to reduce demand.

This is a simplified description of the arrangement. The complexity of the actual data and money flows between customers, DRSPs, retailers, the energy market operator, network service providers and regulators is enough to provoke a nose-bleed from the most seasoned corporate lawyers.

By now, I am sure you are wondering why all the bother with baselines and hypothetical reductions. Why not simply pay customers for actual load reductions? The answer, in short, is that the pool of possible directly contracted customers is small.

If demand response is to be extended to thousands of customers – as this proposal seeks to do – setting baselines and hence hypothetical demand reductions, with all their unwelcome consequences, is unavoidable.

Will it work?

I am not sure. It is certainly punishingly complex. The energy market operator and regulator will have their hands full ensuring that baselines are not set at a level that prints money for DRSRs and their customers, at the expense of retailers and other electricity users. If the market operator and regulator achieve this without imposing undue cost and administrative burden, this demand-response proposal has promise.

Read more: South Australia’s experience contradicts Coalition emissions scare campaign

It will be fascinating to see whether DRSRs can indeed flush out the “latent flexibility” in a manner that is advantageous to themselves, the latently flexible, and the rest of us. Like many others, I will be watching with interest.

– ref. New demand-response energy rules sound good, but the devil is in the (hugely complicated) details – http://theconversation.com/new-demand-response-energy-rules-sound-good-but-the-devil-is-in-the-hugely-complicated-details-120676