Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trevor Ryan, Indigenous Cultural Advisor, Centre for People Place and Planet & School of Education, Edith Cowan University

The beach and foreshore near where Perth’s Swan River meets the sea was recently closed to swimming after a number of bull sharks were seen circling close to the surface.

In 2023, a young woman tragically died after being attacked by a bull shark nearby. In 2021 a man was seriously injured by a bull shark just upstream.

A project also began in 2021 to create new Noongar songs and dances in response to boodjar (Country) and its inhabitants. This included a song and dance for the potentially dangerous bull shark, or kworlak, which swims and lives alongside us in the river.

Bull shark have been travelling largely unseen up and down the river’s murky waters for aeons. Recognition of this informs the relationship between the river and Noongar, the Indigenous people of the region.

Together, we worked on a project to develop novel Noongar dances for bull shark and other entities which otherwise would have no recently known local performance repertoire.

Within many Indigenous cultures, singing and dancing is vital to maintaining reciprocal relationships with local ecosystems. Even watching Indigenous performance can stir vibrations in the body of the viewer. By coming to feel and listen to kworlak, we can come to respect its power and its almost miraculous ability to pass through the foamy waves into and out of the river mouth.

Through Noongar dance, everyone is invited to consider trans-species empathy as a way to restore connections between those who live in Perth, and the nonhuman species that inhabit the region.

The powerful kworlak

Walyalup is the name for Fremantle, Western Australia, resting at the mouth of the Derbal Yerrigan, otherwise known as the Swan River. Trevor Ryan grew up here where freshwater and saltwater mix. He has memories of swimming, fishing and playing with family and friends.

Kworlak travel against the current, past the waves, and up the river into the fresh water to breed in late kambarang (the season of birth, wildflowers and the last cool days before summer).

Heavy late kambarang rainfall, such as Perth saw this year, attracts sharks to feed and reproduce.

Bull shark adjust their osmoregulation, expelling excess water via kidneys and urinary tract. Senior Noongar collaborating on the project speak of kworlak waiting near yandjet, or bulrushes, seeking hidden prey such as crustaceans, tortoise and small fish. This sustains females during pregnancy and birth.

Creating Noongar songs

Across Australia, it is common for Indigenous songs to be attributed to non-human entities rather than being solely the creation of human composers.

Under Western Australia’s Aborigines Act (1905–63), speaking and singing in Noongar was vigorously discouraged, resulting in few old songs being remembered today. There are historically recorded Noongar songs about the sea, but none about sharks.

Given other sea creatures had songs, it is likely Noongar shark songs were once performed.

At Trevor’s suggestion, and after sharing song ideas with senior Noongar speakers, Clint Bracknell – who performs as Maatakitj – drew inspiration at the river to create a song of the kworlak in early 2021.

He began with a melody which he had dreamed before vocalising without words, attempting to figure out what Noongar terms the dreamed vocalisations evoked.

The song goes:

Wardangara kworlak waniny

Seafarer bull-shark sneaking

Ngadird ngadird ngadird wan

Again, again and again it sneaks

Wardangara kworlak waniny ngoornt

Seafarer bull-shark sneaking, lies

Bilya ngaril ngadird wan

Through the ribs of the river, again, it sneaks

Ngadird ngadird ngadird wan

Again, again and again it sneaks

Widi-widiny widi-widiny widi-widiny widi-widiny

Shaking everything up

The kworlak dance, choreographed by Trevor, began with the dancers treading on boodjar itself. It was important for the dancers to feel their vibrations connect to mother earth.

Stamping up and down to the beat of the clap sticks, dancers alluded to kworlak’s osmoregulation by moving their arms horizontally at the waist outwards, while turning to evoke the flow of salt and fresh water moving over, and through, the body.

The shark’s distinctive dorsal fin also featured. Dancers moved their clasped hands above their heads from the middle, left, right and back. The dance concluded with the dancers pushing their arms forward, fingers spread, each hand moving up and down over the other, to represent the biting and grinding motions of bull sharks feeding.

Trevor describes dancing on Country as being like a musician who tunes their guitar to play a song. Bodies are instruments that can be tuned to the landscape, finding the right frequency that vibrates with ancestors and Country.

Most humans today only notice sharks when a tragedy occurs. Regularly singing and dancing the kworlak reminds us of their enduring place in the ecosystem. It teaches us caution and respect.

Through embodying the stories and energy of boodjar, everyone may potentially feel through voice and physical response that they, like other entities, belong on, with, and to Country.

Trevor Ryan’s Master of Arts (Performing Arts) was jointly funded by the Australian Research Council and Edith Cowan University.

Clint Bracknell receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Jonathan W. Marshall received funding from the Australian Research Council to support this project through a scholarship for Trevor Ryan and other expenses.

– ref. How we created new Noongar song and dance for kworlak – the bull sharks of Perth – https://theconversation.com/how-we-created-new-noongar-song-and-dance-for-kworlak-the-bull-sharks-of-perth-268652

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Siems, Professor in Cloud Microphysics, Monash University

If you ever find yourself on Macquarie Island – a narrow, wind-lashed ridge halfway between Tasmania and Antarctica – the first thing you’ll notice is the wildlife. Elephant seals sprawl across dark beaches. King penguins march up mossy slopes. Albatrosses circle over vast, treeless uplands.

But look more closely and the island is changing. Slopes are becoming boggier. Iconic megaherbs such as Pleurophyllum and Stilbocarpa are retreating.

For years, scientists suspected the culprit was increasing rainfall. Our new research, published in Weather and Climate Dynamics, confirms this – and shows the story goes far beyond one remote UNESCO World Heritage site.

A major – but little observed – climate player

The Southern Ocean plays an enormous role in the global climate system.

It absorbs much of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases and a large share of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activity.

Storms in the Southern Ocean also influence weather patterns across Australia, New Zealand and the globe.

Yet it is also one of the least observed places on Earth.

With almost no land masses, only a handful of weather stations, and ubiquitous cloud cover, satellites and simulations struggle to capture what is actually happening there.

That makes Macquarie Island’s climate record from the Bureau of Meteorology and the Australian Antarctic Division exceptionally valuable, providing one of the very few long-term “ground truth” records anywhere in the Southern Ocean.

These high-quality records of the observed daily rainfall and meteorology date back more than 75 years and are commonly used to validate satellite products and numerical simulations.

Rising rainfall

Earlier work has found rainfall at Macquarie Island had risen sharply over recent decades, and ecologists documented waterlogging that harms native vegetation.

But no one has explained how the island’s weather patterns are changing, or directly compared the field observations to our best reconstructions of past weather to assess Southern Ocean climate trends.

To fill this gap, we analysed 45 years (1979–2023) of daily rainfall observations and compared them to a widely used reconstruction of earlier weather, known as the ERA5 reanalysis.

We wanted to understand the meteorology behind the increase in rainfall – that is, whether it was caused by more storms or more intense rainfall during storms. To do this we placed each day in the dataset into one of five synoptic regimes based on pressure, humidity, winds and temperature.

These regimes included low pressure systems, cold-air outbreaks and warm-air advection (the warm air that moves poleward ahead of a cold front).

Storms are producing more rain

Our analysis showed that annual rainfall on Macquarie Island has increased 28% since 1979 – around 260 millimetres per year.

The ERA5 reanalysis, in contrast, shows only an 8% increase — missing most of this change.

The storm track’s gradual move toward Antarctica is well established, and our results show how this larger change is shaping Macquarie Island’s weather today.

Crucially, we found that these changes are not causing the increase in rainfall, as one wet regime (warm air advection) was largely replacing another (low pressure).

Instead, storms now produce more rain when they occur.

Why does this matter beyond one island?

If the rainfall intensification we see at Macquarie Island reflects conditions across the Southern Ocean storm belt – as multiple lines of evidence indicate — the consequences are profound.

A wetter storm track means more fresh water entering the upper ocean. This strengthens the different layers in the oceans and reduces the amount of mixing that occurs. In turn, this alters the strength of ocean currents.

Our estimate suggests that in 2023 this additional precipitation equates to roughly 2,300 gigatonnes of additional freshwater per year across the high-latitude Southern Ocean – an order of magnitude greater than recent Antarctic meltwater contributions. And this difference continues to grow.

More rainfall will also affect the salinity of water on the ocean’s surface, which influences the movement of nutrients and carbon. As a result, this could change the productivity and chemistry of the Southern Ocean – one of the world’s most important carbon sinks – in still-uncertain ways.

This increase in rainfall requires a matching increase in evaporation, which cools the ocean, just like our bodies cool when our sweat evaporates. Over the cloudy Southern Ocean, this evaporation is the primary means of cooling the ocean.

Our analysis indicates the Southern Ocean may be cooling itself by 10–15% more than it did in 1979 – simply through the energy cost of evaporation that fuels the extra rainfall. This evaporation is spread over the broader Southern Ocean.

In effect, the Southern Ocean may be “sweating” more in response to climate change.

The next challenge

Macquarie Island is just one tiny speck of land in Earth’s stormiest ocean.

But its long-term rainfall record suggests the Southern Ocean – the engine room of global heat and carbon uptake – is changing faster and more dramatically than we thought.

The next challenge is to determine how far this signal extends across the storm track, and what it means for the climate system we all depend on.

The authors would like the acknowledge Andrew Prata, Yi Huang, Ariaan Purish and Peter May for their contribution to the research and this article.

Steven Siems receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

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

– ref. Storms in the Southern Ocean are producing more rain – and the consequences could be global – https://theconversation.com/storms-in-the-southern-ocean-are-producing-more-rain-and-the-consequences-could-be-global-270880

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Celeste Rodriguez Louro, Associate Professor, Chair of Linguistics and Director of Language Lab, The University of Western Australia

“I asked it to call one of my sisters, and it then started calling an old boss that I don’t talk to any more.”

—Amy, 25, recalling an awkward experience using a voice-operated device.

Using voice to operate technologies is increasingly convenient in daily life, whether at home or while driving.

More and more phones, televisions, smart speakers, and cars are embedded with automated speech-recognition technologies that transcribe speech into written words. These technologies enable the devices to understand what songs we want to listen to, where we want to drive, and whom we want to message.

For many Indigenous people in Australia, however, voice-operated technologies can be a constant source of frustration, and occasional anger.

Imagine having to change the way you speak just to ask your phone to play music or call a family member. This is the daily reality for many Indigenous people who speak Aboriginal English.

This variety of English is spoken by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia, and is the first and only language used by many Aboriginal children.

Our recent Indigenous-led interviews with Aboriginal English speakers have found that when Indigenous people try to use voice-operated consumer technology products, the technologies often fail for their variety of English. Our results have been presented at the PULiiMA Language and Technology Conference 2025.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander interviewees reported more than just frustration or anger: they said they felt excluded from the benefits of technology. Many explained that the technology only works well for “white people”. As a result, they feel significant pressure to switch to speaking “whitefella way” to use the technology.

Home talk

“I was saying ‘Hey, play Gina Williams Bindi Bindi.’”
– Tina, 49, describing her unsuccessful attempts to play a popular song by an Aboriginal artist.

Voice technologies work well for many people, so these findings might be surprising. However, automated speech recognition technologies are only as good as the data they are trained on, and those training data sets tend to represent mainstream ways of speaking, marginalising non-mainstream varieties of English spoken in Australia.

Like other linguistic varieties, Aboriginal English has its own rules. It also has unique words that are sometimes borrowed from First Languages, including “bindi bindi”, which means butterfly in the Nyungar language spoken in southwest Western Australia.

Aboriginal English is known by many names. One of these is “home talk”, due to it being the preferred language for use at home with family, friends or other mob.

In contrast, Aboriginal English has often been stigmatised by speakers of mainstream English, including in schools, at work and in medical settings. Most Aboriginal English speaking adults are adept at switching the form of English they speak to avoid being misunderstood – or, even worse, corrected – by non-Indigenous people.

Our interviews show these pressures are now extending into the living rooms, kitchens and cars of Indigenous people. To successfully use the technology products that mainstream speakers use effortlessly, they must perform the linguistic labour of switching away from their “home talk” even when at home.

Instead, they must use what interviewees called their “customer service voice” or their “professional white voice” to be able to phone a friend while their hands are occupied with cooking or childcare.

Stressful and exhausting

“I didn’t know how to present myself in a different way, I don’t like to.”
– Lucy, 32, explaining her feelings of frustration when devices don’t understand her.

Previous studies have found that speakers of mainstream English tend to attribute the causes of failures by technology to be bugs within the technology itself. Some of our interviewees instead perceived the failures as their own fault.

When they saw the technology working better for others, they thought “maybe it’s because I have a low IQ” or wondered “am I a real slow learner?”

Pressure on Indigenous people to abandon their natural way of speaking – even when addressing a machine – creates a stressful, exhausting form of linguistic labour.

Technology is advancing at an unprecedented pace. However, the benefits of those advances are not being evenly distributed. Their distribution is reflecting historic and colonial biases that persist in Australian society, including the marginalisation of Indigenous ways of being and speaking.

Interviewees were hopeful that the technology would improve. They spoke of “feeling cool” when the technology understands how they speak, and explained that “you see everyone else using it in the TV and the movies”.

They wanted the technology to understand words such as “dardy”, which means cool and is borrowed from the Nyungar language. They spoke of wanting the technology to understand Aboriginal accents, but also cautioned technologists that not all Aboriginal people sound the same.

Technology developers must work with Indigenous communities to create technologies that respect and understand their varieties of English. The demand for inclusive technology requires developers to address not only the algorithmic flaws but also experiences of racialised exclusion.

Celeste Rodriguez Louro receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Google, including for the research in this article.

Ben Hutchinson is employed by Google.

Glenys Dale Collard receives funding from Google, including for the research in this article.

– ref. ‘We gotta act white’: how voice recognition tech fails for Aboriginal English speakers – https://theconversation.com/we-gotta-act-white-how-voice-recognition-tech-fails-for-aboriginal-english-speakers-270983

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mei-fen Kuo, Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Culture and History, Macquarie University

Recently, a new documentary was screened across Australia about the late Taiwanese Australian professor Chwei-Liang Chiou, who dedicated his life to improving relations between Taiwan and Australia.

At the Brisbane premiere, former federal MP Graham Perrett opened with a line often attributed to the Soviet writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “We know they are lying […] they know we know they are lying […] but they still lie.”

He said the line captured Chiou’s life work. In his classes and writings, Chiou spent considerable time countering false claims about Taiwan’s past and exposing Beijing’s denials of Taiwan’s democratic identity.

Truth and understanding sit at the heart of today’s debate about Taiwan.

And as a new report, which I co-authored for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute makes clear, many Australians do not fully understand what’s at stake if Taiwan’s democracy is someday threatened by China. Indeed, many Australians don’t actually understand Taiwan at all.

A priority or ‘distant’ problem?

As part of our study, we interviewed hundreds of Australians in business, government, universities and community groups to understand how they perceive Taiwan, how they think a Taiwan Strait crisis might affect Australia, and why public understanding of Taiwan remains limited.

We also analysed more than 100 media and public policy documents to see how Taiwan is framed in Australian public life.

The vast majority of our participants agreed on one point: Taiwan is a stable and trustworthy partner. They linked this trust to shared values, such as regional safety, fair trade, social justice and democratic life.

However, people’s views shifted when we asked whether these values should guide Australia’s response if China uses force against Taiwan. Some believed Australia should support Taiwan because it is a fellow democracy. They felt strong democracies in Asia helped maintain stability in the region.

Others did not see it this way. They believed the tensions across the Taiwan Strait were “not Australia’s problem”, and they were less concerned about the future of Taiwan’s democracy.

Some could not imagine Australian troops being drawn into what felt like a distant dispute. Taiwan’s future seemed unrelated to Australia’s own safety.

This viewpoint reflects Beijing’s preferred framing of the situation. It turns the Taiwan issue into a local debate about whether Australia should “step in” in the event of a conflict.

However, it obscures the fact that a crisis in the Taiwan Strait would not be distant – it would affect Australia directly. It would shape our economy, our sea trading routes and the wider environment that supports our democratic life.

Another concern came specifically from our participants of Chinese heritage, with roots in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and elsewhere. Many worried about the social consequences inside Australia if the government were to support Taiwan in a conflict.

Some feared Chinese Australians could face suspicion or hostility, with people making little distinction between communities with very different histories and political views.

Others said Australian society often treats all Chinese Australians as a single “Chinese community”. This view suits Beijing’s political interests, but does not reflect the diversity of the Chinese Australian population.

Why Australians know so little about Taiwan

Our interviews revealed widespread uncertainty about what Taiwan actually is. People asked if it was a country, a province, a democracy or simply a place that makes computer chips. Many did not know how to describe it at all.

China seeks to absorb Taiwan under its “One China” principle, while Taiwan’s 23 million people continue to resist annexation in order to protect their democratic institutions, civil liberties and way of life.

Decades of unclear Australian diplomacy have shaped this confusion. Since recognising the People’s Republic of China in 1972, Australia has maintained unofficial but substantial ties with Taiwan, often expressed in cautious and ambiguous language that obscures Taiwan’s reality as a self-governed democracy.

Public understanding is also filtered through a simplistic view of the great power rivalry between China and the United States, which tends to collapse Taiwan into a geopolitical chess piece.

This confusion affects how Australians view the “One China policy”. This policy acknowledges Beijing’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but does not accept it. It allows Australia to maintain unofficial relations with Taiwan, while not taking a stance on Taiwan’s sovereignty.

Many assume the policy means Beijing can decide Taiwan’s future. It does not. But this misunderstanding causes people to step back from thorny questions about Taiwan’s future at the very moment when deeper knowledge is needed.

Our participants frequently pointed to Australian news coverage of Taiwan as a major source of confusion. Taiwan usually appears only in stories about a possible war with China. Its democratic life, public debates, economic innovation, gender equality and green energy efforts rarely get covered.

One young Taiwanese Australian summarised it well: “My fear isn’t only invasion. It’s that Australians still don’t know Taiwan is already a separate political and economic society.”

This narrow focus hides Taiwan’s importance to Australia. For example, a crisis would disrupt Australia’s access to medical supplies, semiconductors and digital technologies, as well as banking interfaces and major sea routes for energy and food.

What Australia can do

Across our interviews, several priorities emerged:

• to improve public literacy about Taiwan beyond the frame of conflict, emphasising the fact its democracy is distinctive and hard-won

• to avoid treating Chinese Australians as a single group

• to clarify the meaning of the One China policy for the Australian public, and

• to better prepare Australians for the social impacts of a crisis, not only the strategic ones.

Taiwan’s democracy is not a burden for Australia; it is a reminder of the values we say we stand for.

But Australia cannot defend what it does not understand. Our interviews show that gaps in public knowledge about Taiwan are giving room for Beijing’s authoritarian narratives to slip into Australian debates – and go unquestioned.

This article draws on research conducted for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute funded by the Australian Department of Defence (Strategic Policy Grant 2024–25).

– ref. What is Taiwan and why is it important? A new study shows Australians struggle to answer these questions – https://theconversation.com/what-is-taiwan-and-why-is-it-important-a-new-study-shows-australians-struggle-to-answer-these-questions-269809

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathleen de Boer, Clinical Psychologist, Lecturer in Clinical Psychology, Swinburne University of Technology

As the festive season approaches, perhaps you’re thinking of hosting friends and family.

You know at least one person who’ll attend who becomes anxious around food and another with an eating disorder.

So, how to host and make sure everyone feels comfortable and supported?

Perhaps you’ve already hosted someone with food anxiety or an eating disorder without even knowing.

First, some definitions

Food anxiety refers to fear or anxiety in response to eating food. This could relate to certain textures and smells, or fear of choking or vomiting. These fears and anxieties can be intense and are associated with mental health conditions, including avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder.

For others, anxiety about food might be based on fear of the impact food could have on their body shape and size. This kind of food anxiety is closely associated with diagnosable eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.

Eating disorders are among the most rapidly increasing mental health diagnoses in the world, and can be present at any shape or size. These disorders involve negative thoughts about one’s weight, shape and eating. Behaviours people can experience include skipping meals, or feeling like they can’t stop eating.

Eating disorders can have significant impacts on someone’s life, including withdrawing from social circles and hobbies. They’re associated with high mortality rates.

Just because someone experiences some food anxiety, it does not mean they have a mental health diagnosis. It’s also important to consider how this anxiety impacts their life and the level of distress it causes them.

Read more:
What’s the difference between an eating disorder and disordered eating?

Hiding is common

It’s likely you’ve shared a meal with someone who has an eating disorder, who might be in recovery, or has anxiety around food. A lot of the time, you may not be able to tell, and they might try to hide it because of shame or guilt.

Your nephew at last week’s family barbecue might have binge eating disorder. The cousin who you caught up with for dinner might have a fear of choking and only eats soft foods.

You might not have noticed as people tend to be skilled at hiding their food anxiety. Some common strategies include avoiding shared mealtimes, only choosing certain foods, or saying they have already eaten and aren’t hungry.

So, if you’ll likely share a meal with someone with food anxiety or an eating disorder in the future, how can you host compassionately?

Is it worth adjusting the menu?

Unless someone has made specific requests, it is OK to roll on as usual. It can be helpful to invite guests to bring anything that meets their specific needs. Having variety and allowing people to serve themselves may also reduce food anxiety.

The goal of this meal is not to solve someone’s food anxiety, but to create a safe eating environment for all.

What not to say

At mealtimes, it might be common to comment on the amount or type of food someone is eating, or the way they eat it.

This “food talk” might be comments such as, “why are you only eating potatoes?” These comments can draw unwanted attention to someone’s food choices, increasing food anxiety.

Then there are comments on people’s bodies, shapes and sizes. Or sometimes people comment on the need to diet or skip meals after eating.

For example, people might say “that was so much food, you won’t need dinner tonight”.

While some of these comments may not be intended to hurt, these attitudes often perpetuate harmful messages about what we should and should not eat, how much we should eat, and even how we should look.

These comments can even contribute to body dissatisfaction, a key risk factor in developing eating disorders. Negative food and body talk can also contribute to increased anxiety.

Even commenting on your own eating and body can be a problem. For instance saying, “I need to skip dinner to make up for eating all this” might hurt the people you’re sharing a meal with, particularly if they have an eating disorder. This is because it reinforces and normalises food restriction.

A good rule of thumb is to avoid commenting on people’s food and bodies. And that goes for complimenting someone’s body.

Read more:
5 reasons we shouldn’t ‘compliment’ people who lose weight

What to say instead

As a guest or a host, you can contribute to developing a safe culture around food for everyone. This includes replying to unsolicited food or body comments, whether aimed at you or someone else.

Sometimes replying can be tricky for the person with a food anxiety or eating disorder, so you can also speak up even when the comment isn’t directed at you.

You can say:

• Would it be OK if we didn’t chat about my/their food/weight/body at the moment?
• I’m working hard to focus less on my body at the moment. Let’s talk about something else.
• I find it uncomfortable when you mention my/my friend’s weight/body/eating.
• I hear what you’re saying, but let’s steer clear from discussing my/their appearance/weight/eating.

Some of these suggestions might sound awkward, so offer them gently and personalise however you need.

Why this is important

Ultimately, setting boundaries with family and friends helps create more balance and compassion in how we talk about food and bodies. This can challenge some of the outdated and harmful messages that have become normalised.

Sharing mealtimes are important opportunities to connect with loved ones. Let’s make these experiences safe and inclusive.

If this article raised any concerns for you or someone you know, contact the Butterfly Foundation on 1800 33 4673.

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

– ref. How to host a meal if one of your guests has an eating disorder or is anxious around food – https://theconversation.com/how-to-host-a-meal-if-one-of-your-guests-has-an-eating-disorder-or-is-anxious-around-food-267967

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brock A. Hedges, Research Affiliate, University of Adelaide

You might think of Australia’s arid centre as a dry desert landscape devoid of aquatic life. But it’s actually dotted with thousands of rock holes – natural rainwater reservoirs that act as little oases for tiny freshwater animals and plants when they hold water.

They aren’t teeming with fish, but are home to all sorts of weird and wonderful invertebrates, important to both First Nations peoples and desert animals. Predatory damselflies patrol the water in search of prey, while alien-like water fleas and seed shrimp float about feeding on algae.

Often overlooked in favour of more photogenic creatures, invertebrates make up more than 97% of all animal species, and are immensely important to the environment.

Our new research reveals 60 unique species live in Australia’s arid rock holes. We will need more knowledge to protect them in a warming climate.

Overlooked, but extraordinary

Invertebrates are animals without backbones. They include many different and beautiful organisms, such as butterflies, beetles, worms and spiders (though perhaps beauty is in the eye of the beholder!).

These creatures provide many benefits to Australian ecosystems (and people): pollinating plants, recycling nutrients in the soil, and acting as a food source for other animals. Yet despite their significance, invertebrates are usually forgotten in public discussions about climate change.

Freshwater invertebrates in arid Australia are rarely the focus of research, let alone media coverage. This is due to a combination of taxonomic bias, where better-known “charismatic” species are over-represented in scientific studies, and the commonly held misconception that dry deserts are less affected by climate change.

Oases of life

Arid rock-holes are small depressions that have been eroded into rock over time. They completely dry out during certain times of year, making them difficult environments to live in. But when rain fills them up, many animals rely on them for water.

When it is hot, water presence is brief, sometimes for only a few days. But during cooler months, they can remain wet for a few months. Eggs that have been lying dormant in the sediments hatch. Other invertebrates (particularly those with wings) seek them out, sometimes across very long distances. In the past, this variability has made ecological research extremely difficult.

Our new research explored the biodiversity in seven freshwater rock holes in South Australia’s Gawler Ranges. For the first time, we used environmental DNA techniques on water samples from these pools.

Similar to forensic DNA, environmental DNA refers to the traces of DNA left behind by animals in the environment. By sweeping an area for eDNA, we minimise disturbance to species, avoid having to collect the animals themselves, and get a clear snapshot of what is – or was – in an ecosystem. We assume that the capture window for eDNA goes back roughly two weeks.

These samples showed that not only were these isolated rock holes full of invertebrate life, but each individual rock hole had a unique combination of animals in it. These include tiny animals such as seed shrimp, water fleas, water boatman and midge larvae. Due to how dry the surrounding landscape is, these oases are often the only habitats where creatures like these can be seen.

Culturally significant

These arid rock holes are of great cultural significance to several Australian First Nations groups, including the Barngarla, Kokatha and Wirangu peoples. These are the three people and language groups in the Gawler Ranges Aboriginal Corporation, who hold native title in the region and actively manage the rock holes using traditional practices.

As reliable sources of freshwater in otherwise very dry landscapes, these locations provided valuable drinking water and resting places to many cultural groups. Some of the managed rock holes hold up to 500 litres of water, but elsewhere they are even deeper.

Diverse practices were traditionally developed to actively manage rock holes and reliably locate them. Some of these practices — such as regular cleaning and limiting access by animals — are still maintained today.

Threatened by climate change

Last year, Earth reached 1.5°C of warming above pre-industrial levels for the first time. Australia has seen the dramatic consequences of global climate change firsthand: increasingly deadly, costly and devastating bushfires, heatwaves, droughts and floods.

Climate change means less frequent and more unpredictable rainfall for Australia. There has been considerable discussion of what this means for Australia’s rivers, lakes and people. But smaller water sources, including rock holes in Australia’s deserts, don’t get much attention.

Australia is already seeing a shift: winter rainfall is becoming less reliable, and summer storms are more unpredictable. Water dries out quickly in the summer heat, so wildlife adapted to using rock holes will increasingly have to go without.

Drying out?

Climate change threatens the precious diversity supported by rock holes. Less rainfall and higher temperatures in southern and central Australia mean we expect they will fill less, dry more quickly, and might be empty during months when they were historically full.

This compounds the ongoing environmental change throughout arid Australia. Compared with iconic invasive species such as feral horses in Kosciuszko National Park, invasive species in arid Australia are overlooked. These include feral goats, camels and agricultural animal species that affect water quality. Foreign plants can invade freshwater systems.

Deeper understanding

Many gaps in our knowledge remain, despite the clear need to protect these unique invertebrates as their homes get drier. Without a deeper understanding of rock-hole biodiversity, governments and land managers are left without the right information to prevent further species loss.

Studies like this one are an important first step because they establish a baseline on freshwater biodiversity in desert rock holes. With a greater understanding of the unique animals that live in these remote habitats, we will be better equipped to conserve them.

Brock A. Hedges received funding from Nature Foundation, The Ecological Society of Australia and the Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment. Brock A. Hedges currently receives funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

James B. Dorey receives funding from the University of Wollongong.

Perry G. Beasley-Hall receives funding from the Australian Biological Resources Study.

– ref. Meet the weird, wonderful creatures that live in Australia’s desert water holes. They might not be there much longer – https://theconversation.com/meet-the-weird-wonderful-creatures-that-live-in-australias-desert-water-holes-they-might-not-be-there-much-longer-269814

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathleen McGuire, Senior Lecturer in Education (Music), National School of Education, Faculty of Education and Arts, Australian Catholic University

End-of-year school concerts showcase children’s talents and hard work, often filling performers with pride. But for some, the idea of performing live is terrifying.

Performance anxiety, also known as glossophobia or stage fright – can manifest in ways that range from excitement or mild discomfort, such as tummy butterflies, to severe physical reactions such as racing heart, shaking, sweating, nausea, fainting or hyperventilating.

Even seasoned artists, such as Adele and Barbra Streisand, have spoken openly about lifelong struggles with performance anxiety.

Studies suggest up to 75% of children develop performance anxiety. While some children recover quickly from a stressful performance, others may be deeply affected. Negative experiences can lead to long-term impacts, including chronic stress, headaches and a loss of confidence.

The good news is there are effective strategies to prevent and manage stage fright.

My experience with performance anxiety

I’ve had my own experiences of stage fright. As a child, I loved performing and learned to psyche myself up for solos on classical guitar, clarinet, trumpet and singing.

But in my first year at university, moments before a recital, I discovered my print music was not inside my instrument case. Forced to play from memory, my performance unravelled with repeated memory lapses caused by heightened anxiety. Mortified, I changed my degree focus from performance to composition.

As a music educator, I have since seen countless students experience extreme stage fright: a saxophonist fainting on stage, a singer losing her voice, a pianist running from the hall in tears before playing a note.

What helps in the moment?

Anxiety is often driven by fear. In a concert setting, perfectionism can contribute to this feeling, including fear of making mistakes, disappointing others, or fear of failure.

When our brain perceives a threat, working memory (the mental space for storing short-term memory, such as following a set of instructions) is interrupted by the body’s “fight or flight” response. This causes the body to be flooded with hormones, such as adrenaline. This can lead to shaking, sweating and temporary memory loss.

Telling the brain “there is no threat” helps restore memory and focus.

Useful strategies to do this include sipping water, taking deep breaths, or walking slowly to calm the nervous system.

Younger performers often need a teacher or family member to help them recognise when they are overwhelmed and guide them through these steps.

How can we prevent stage fright before it starts?

Research shows music performance anxiety typically emerges around age ten, and perfectionism increases through adolescence.

Positive experiences and self-belief can reduce the likelihood of stage fright.

In a study, students used breathing and silent repetition of the words “bold”, “confident” and “free” to counter negative self-talk, with strong results, outperforming their peers. Judges, in a blind rating, noted the students exhibited significantly superior expression in their playing, dynamic range and timing.

Teachers can also have an influence. Research shows it helps performance anxiety if teachers follow a “positive instruction” model. This includes:

• encouraging a student to use their strengths – for example, curiosity or perseverance

• acknowledging when the student has done something positive and analysing what was good about it

• praising the process, not just the outcome (for example, “I can hear you slowing down there to master that complicated section” as opposed to “good job hitting that high note”).

Cultural aspects may contribute to anxiety. One of my students refused to perform because he feared how his non-Western family might react to his role in a school musical. After discussing his concerns and speaking with his mother – who was very supportive – he performed proudly and was thrilled to see his family in the audience.

How to support first-time performers

Students who have never performed may suffer from fear of the unknown.

Teachers can help here by “gradual release” strategies. This is where teachers gradually support a child’s independence around a skill. The teacher can move between modelling the skill and then guided and independent activities.

This could include a nervous student performing with a buddy, playing in a trio, or sharing the stage with their teacher. Informal experiences – performing for a few peers or playing casually in the schoolyard – can also build confidence.

Another approach is to prerecord a piece on video and then show it during the concert. This can be a stepping stone towards live performance.

Being prepared

Neurodiverse students or students with disability may experience heightened anxiety in high-stress settings, including the fear of being perceived, or being “hyperaware of how they are viewed by others”.

Teachers can reduce potential stress triggers through understanding what students need. Examples might include adjusting lighting, ensuring suitable stage access, and shortening waiting times.

All students benefit from well-prepared concerts with detailed cue sheets and dress rehearsals that closely match the final performance. Additional staff or volunteers backstage help manage noise, provide reassurance and support students through anxious moments.

Why it’s worth the effort

The benefits of performing make the effort worthwhile. Streisand said:

Fear can be a great energiser. Without it, we might not push ourselves to certain heights.

Research shows performance nurtures pride, belonging and confidence, despite anxiety. Other research notes how the arts can improve student learning and school experiences generally. A literature review found school students with access to high-quality arts experiences were more engaged and motivated in their learning, achieved better grades, and were better able to cope with stress.

By taking steps to help kids work through their fears, we can ensure the benefits of performance outweigh their anxiety.

Kathleen McGuire receives funding from the Australian Department of Education: Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP) and Australian Catholic University. She has received funding from state and local governments. She is affiliated with the Australian & New Zealand Association for Research in Music Education (ANZARME), Australian Society for Music Education (ASME), Australian National Choral Association (ANCA), National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), Music Arrangers Guild of Australia (MAGA), and the Australian Performing Rights Association (APRA AMCOS).

– ref. It’s end-of-year concert season. Why do some kids struggle with performance anxiety? – https://theconversation.com/its-end-of-year-concert-season-why-do-some-kids-struggle-with-performance-anxiety-271099

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeannie Marie Paterson, Professor of Law (consumer protections and credit law), The University of Melbourne

It often seems like a great idea at the time. There’s a streaming service, paywalled news site or premium version of an app you want to try, offering a “no strings attached” free trial.

You sign up – with a few easy clicks and your credit card. The trial period passes, and for whatever reason, you decide this product isn’t for you.

But when you try to cancel, you’re forced to navigate confusing web pages, asked whether you’re “really sure about this” an unreasonable number of times, or even told to call a generic customer hotline.

Sound familiar? According to the Consumer Policy Research Centre, three in four Australians with subscriptions have had a negative experience when trying to cancel them.

Making it hard to cancel – commonly called a “subscription trap” – isn’t currently illegal. But now the federal government has announced a plan to ban subscription traps and other hidden fees.

Easy to sign up, tricky to leave

Subscription traps are sometimes referred to as the “Hotel California” problem, referencing the famous 1977 song by US rock band The Eagles.

Echoing that song’s lyrics, while it is often easy to sign up – it can be really hard to leave.

The traps can take many different forms. One example is when consumers sign up for a service quickly and easily online, but can only cancel on the phone (sometimes needing to ring another country).

Delay, delay, delay

Announcing the proposed new laws at a press conference, Assistant Minister for Competition Andrew Leigh also singled out cases where the cancellation takes 28 days to come into effect. Leigh said:

A simple rule for businesses: if you can’t cancel a subscription through the same process that you started the subscription, then perhaps there’s a subscription trap going on.

Another example, known as “confirm shaming”, involves requiring consumers to click through multiple screens before they can cancel.

Typically, each of those screens has a message asking consumers to reconsider, often reiterating the service’s purported benefits and even offering new discounts on the price not previously available.

Why it’s a problem

Individually, all these difficulties may seem trivial. But cumulatively they are problematic.

Consumers are spending time trying to cancel subscriptions for services they don’t use and businesses are making money from services consumers don’t want.

Consumers are also being locked into those services by artificially created friction and techniques that rely on triggering uncertainty or doubt – “do you really want to cancel?”

The proposed new laws will ask the process of cancelling to be straightforward.

What new laws are proposed in Australia?

The proposed ban on subscription traps is part of a broader package of federal law reforms targeting unfair trading.

Consultation on a draft of the new law is set to take place in 2026 (following an earlier consultation in 2024).

The federal government has indicated the law will include a general ban on unfair practices that manipulate consumer decision making, while also targeting specific deceptive practices, such as certain kinds of subscription traps.

It should not apply to the kinds of subscription where there are legitimate reasons for slowing down the cancellation process, for example, where pushing the wrong button might delete all your photos or digital content.

What do other countries do?

Several other jurisdictions already have responses to subscription traps.

Californian law now includes a suite of protections for consumers, including requiring notice:

• of automatic renewal
• at the end of a free charge period before a fee is incurred.

California’s “click to cancel” rules also mean consumers must be able to cancel using the same method of communication they used to subscribe. And businesses must offer consumers information on how to cancel.

In the European Union, rules on unfair commercial practices have led to changes in the previously complicated process required to unsubscribe from Amazon Prime – reducing cancelling a subscription to just two clicks.

In the meantime what should Australians do to manage subscriptions?

Until Australia gets its own unfair business practices law, Australians can protect themselves from being trapped by subscriptions.

But it takes some work, including recording important information at the time you subscribe:

• if there is a free trial, make a note of when that expires and remember to cancel before being charged a fee
• take a screen shot of what you were promised and the price – if what is delivered is different from what was promised you should be able to cancel at any time for a refund
• record contact details for the service provider at the time you sign up.

Above all, persevere in cancelling subscriptions you don’t want. Remember, those pleading messages such as “why cancel?” or “don’t leave us” are designed to manipulate your emotions. So try to ignore them.

Jeannie Marie Paterson has received funding from the Australian Research Council for a project on misleading conduct. She is a member of the research advisory committee of the Consumer Policy Research Centre.

– ref. No more call to cancel: the government wants to crack down on ‘subscription traps’ – https://theconversation.com/no-more-call-to-cancel-the-government-wants-to-crack-down-on-subscription-traps-271096

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark W. Post, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, University of Sydney

If you are fluent in any language other than English, you have probably noticed that some things are impossible to translate exactly.

A Japanese designer marvelling at an object’s shibui (a sort of simple yet timelessly elegant beauty) may feel stymied by English’s lack of a precisely equivalent term.

Danish hygge refers to such a unique flavour of coziness that entire books seem to have been needed to explain it.

Portuguese speakers may struggle to convey their saudade, a mixture of yearning, wistfulness and melancholy. Speakers of Welsh will have an even harder time translating their hiraeth, which can carry a further sense of longing after one’s specifically Celtic culture and traditions.

Imprisoned by language

The words of different languages can divide and package their speakers’ thoughts and experiences differently, and provide support for the theory of “linguistic relativity”.

Also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, this theory derives in part from the American linguist Edward Sapir’s 1929 claim that languages function to “index” their speakers’ “network of cultural patterns”: if Danish speakers experience hygge, then they should have a word to talk about it; if English speakers don’t, then we won’t.

Yet Sapir also went a step further, claiming language users “do not live in the objective world alone […] but are very much at the mercy” of their languages.

This stronger theory of “linguistic determinism” implies English speakers may be imprisoned by our language. In this, we actually cannot experience hygge – or at least, not in the same way that a Danish person might. The missing word implies a missing concept: an empty gap in our world of experience.

Competing theories

Few theories have proven as controversial. Sapir’s student Benjamin Lee Whorf famously claimed in 1940 that the Hopi language’s lack of verb tenses (past, present, future) indicated its speakers have a different “psychic experience” of time and the universe than Western physicists.

This was countered by a later study devoting nearly 400 pages to the language of time in Hopi, which included concepts such as “today”, “January” and – yes – discussions of actions happening in the present, past and future.

Even heard of “50 Inuit words for snow?” Whorf again.

Although the number he actually claimed was closer to seven, this was later said to be both too many and too few. (It depends on how you define a “word”.)

Read more:
Do Inuit languages really have many words for snow? The most interesting finds from our study of 616 languages

More recently, the anthropological linguist Dan Everett claimed the Amazonian Pirahã language lacks “recursion”, or the capacity to put one sentence inside another (“{I trust {you’ll come {to realise that {my theory is better.}}}}”).

If true, this would suggest that Pirahã differs in the exact property that Noam Chomsky has argued to be the principal defining property of any human language.

Once again, Everett’s claims have been argued both to go too far and not far enough. The cycle would appear to be endless, such that two excellent recent books on the topic have adopted almost diametrically opposite perspectives – even down to the opposite wording of their titles!

Language as a comfortable house

There is truth in both perspectives.

At least some aspects of human languages must be identical or nearly so, since they are all used by members of the same human species, with the same sorts of bodies, brains and patterns of communication.

Yet recent increases in understanding of the world’s Indigenous languages have taught us two important additional lessons. First, there is far more diversity among the world’s languages than previously believed. Second, differences are often related to the patterns of culture and environment in which languages are traditionally spoken.

For example, in many Himalayan languages, an expression like “that house” comes in three flavours: “that-house-upward”, “that-house-downward” and “that-house-on-the-same-level” – a reflection of the mountainous area these speakers live in.

When their speakers migrate to lower-elevation regions, the system may shift from “upward/downward” to “upriver/downriver”. If there is no large enough river present then the distinction may disappear.

In Indigenous Aslian languages of peninsular Malaysia, there are large vocabularies referring to finely-distinguished natural odours. This is an index of the richly diverse foraging environment of their speakers.

Studies of small, tightly-knit communities like the Milang of northeastern India have revealed how languages can require speakers to mark their information source: whether a statement is the general knowledge of one’s social group, or is arrived at through a different type of source – such as hearsay, or deduction from evidence.

Speakers of languages with such “evidentiality” systems can learn to speak languages – like English – without them. Yet native language habits turn out to be hard to break. One recent study showed speakers of some languages with evidentiality add words like “reportedly” or “seemingly” into their statements more often than native English speakers.

Human languages may not be a prison their speakers cannot escape from. They may be more like comfortable houses one finds it difficult to leave. Although a word from another language can always be borrowed, its unique cultural meanings may always remain just a little bit out of reach.

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

– ref. Impossible translations: why we struggle to translate words when we don’t experience the concept – https://theconversation.com/impossible-translations-why-we-struggle-to-translate-words-when-we-dont-experience-the-concept-267521