Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vitomir Kovanovic, Senior Lecturer in Learning Analytics, University of South Australia

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot has given us a glimpse into the future of teaching and learning alongside artificial intelligence.

Educators immediately pointed out the chatbot’s ability to generate meaningful responses to questions from assessments and exams. And it’s often not possible to attribute these responses to a particular source – making it difficult to detect plagiarism.

Concerns didn’t go unnoticed. Shortly after ChatGPT’s release, OpenAI announced it was developing a “digital watermark” to embed into the chatbot’s responses. This kind of watermark is embedded as a digital signal that can identify the content as being AI-generated, and which (in theory) should be difficult to remove.

But as experts have pointed it, people will likely find workarounds. And it won’t be long before other AI models just as capable as ChatGPT pop up. What will this mean for our educational spaces?

It’s safe to say we can expect some challenging years ahead.

Read more:
The ChatGPT chatbot is blowing people away with its writing skills. An expert explains why it’s so impressive

But first, what is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is powered by GPT3, a large language model (LLM) trained on an enormous amount of text data — about 500 billion words to be precise. Large language models work by predicting the next most-likely word when given a list of input words (usually phrased as a question).

The model is trained using many billions of parameters that can represent the complexity of the world. By inputting real-world data, the algorithm readjusts its parameters until it can produce human-like responses to a range of questions. For example:

How many eggs can fit into a grain of rice?

It is not possible for eggs to fit into a grain of rice, as a grain of rice is much smaller in size than an egg. A grain of rice is a small, round seed that is typically less than a millimetre in diameter, whereas an egg is a much larger object that typically measures several centimetres in length and width […]

Although it’s not foolproof, ChatGPT’s capabilities both shock and inspire. It can write songs, programming code, and simulate entire job interview sessions. It even passed the Amazon Web Services Certified Cloud Practitioner exam, which typically takes 2-6 months to prepare for.

Perhaps what’s most alarming is the technology is still in its early stages. The millions of users exploring ChatGPT’s uses are simultaneously providing more data for OpenAI to improve the chatbot.

The next version of the model, GPT4, will have about 100 trillion parameters – about 500 times more than GPT3. This is approaching the number of neural connections in the human brain.

Read more:
Everyone’s having a field day with ChatGPT – but nobody knows how it actually works

How will AI affect education?

The power of AI systems is placing a huge question mark over our education and assessment practices.

Assessment in schools and universities is mostly based on students providing some product of their learning to be marked, often an essay or written assignment. With AI models, these “products” can be produced to a higher standard, in less time and with very little effort from a student.

In other words, the product a student provides may no longer provide genuine evidence of their achievement of the course outcomes.

And it’s not just a problem for written assessments. A study published in February showed OpenAI’s GPT3 language model significantly outperformed most students in introductory programming courses. According to the authors, this raises “an emergent existential threat to the teaching and learning of introductory programming”.

The model can also generate screenplays and theatre scripts, while AI image generators such as DALL-E can produce high-quality art.

Read more:
AI art is everywhere right now. Even experts don’t know what it will mean

How should we respond?

Moving forward, we’ll need to think of ways AI can be used to support teaching and learning, rather than disrupt it. Here are three ways to do this.

1. Integrate AI into classrooms and lecture halls

History has shown time and again that educational institutions can adapt to new technologies. In the 1970s the rise of portable calculators had maths educators concerned about the future of their subject – but it’s safe to say maths survived.

Just as Wikipedia and Google didn’t spell the end of assessments, neither will AI.
In fact, new technologes lead to novel and innovative ways of doing work. The same will apply to learning and teaching with AI.

Rather than being a tool to prohibit, AI models should be meaningfully integrated into teaching and learning.

2. Judge students on critical thought

One thing an AI model can’t emulate is the process of learning, and the mental aerobics this involves.

The design of assessments could shift from assessing just the final product, to assessing the entire process that led a student to it. The focus is then placed squarely on a student’s critical thinking, creativity and problem-solving skills.

Students could freely use AI to complete the task and still be marked on their own merit.

3. Assess things that matter

Instead of switching to in-class examination to prohibit the use of AI (which some may be tempted to do), educators can design assessments that focus on what students need to know to be successful in the future. AI, it seems, will be one of these things.

AI models will increasingly have uses across sectors as the technology is scaled up. If students will use AI in their future workplaces, why not test them on it now?

The dawn of AI

Vladimir Lenin, leader of Russia’s 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, supposedly said:

There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.

This statement has come to roost in the field of artificial intelligence. AI is forcing us to rethink education. But if we embrace it, it could empower students and teachers.

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

– ref. The dawn of AI has come, and its implications for education couldn’t be more significant – https://theconversation.com/the-dawn-of-ai-has-come-and-its-implications-for-education-couldnt-be-more-significant-196383

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Crowe, Professor of Law, Bond University

Federal Labor Senator Nita Green has recently moved to establish a Senate inquiry into sexual consent laws.

These are the laws that describe how sexual consent is defined for rape and sexual assault offences. In Australia, these definitions differ across the states and territories, which causes inconsistencies and confusion, as well as complexities in sexual consent education.

The varying definitions create a situation where victims are protected differently depending on what jurisdiction they live in. This makes it challenging to send clear and unambiguous messages about what the law requires in sexual encounters.

One focus of the inquiry would be to look at whether there are benefits to aligning, or harmonising, the definitions across Australia.

The Senate inquiry has the backing of Greens Senator Larissa Waters and follows earlier calls by Grace Tame for sexual consent laws to be made uniform across the country.

This area of law has been under the spotlight following recent legal changes in NSW, the ACT and Victoria. Each has taken law reform steps towards an affirmative consent standard, which means consent is understood as ongoing communication.

Each person must say or do something to indicate consent and check that the other is willing to proceed. Tasmania was the first state to move towards affirmative consent in 2004.

The current push to harmonise sexual consent law is important and timely. It would help support educational efforts around sexual consent and reduce confusion about the law. It has the potential to clarify the standard of ongoing communication expected before and during sex – a crucial component of affirmative consent models.

The recent legal reforms in NSW, the ACT and Victoria, along with announcements or enquiries in Queensland and WA, mean the time is right to address this issue on a national level.

Risks and challenges

Nonetheless, the push to harmonise sexual consent laws faces significant risks and challenges.

We recently conducted the first comprehensive academic study of the prospects for success in this area, which is due to be published in mid-2023.

One risk is what we term the “levelling-down” problem. This occurs when jurisdictions that are progressive and reformist adopt legal principles favoured by less reformist ones to achieve common standards. Harmonisation to the lowest common denominator risks slowing needed reforms.

In the case of sexual consent laws, it seems unlikely that Tasmania, NSW, the ACT and Victoria, having endorsed affirmative consent, would roll back those reforms to attain uniformity. This suggests harmonisation should aim at some form of affirmative consent standard.

However, although these jurisdictions have moved towards affirmative consent, their laws differ in their details. For example, they apply different tests for whether a defendant has a reasonable but mistaken belief in consent, which provides an excuse for rape charges.

Deep-seated differences also exist between common law and code-based criminal law jurisdictions. These differences would need to be overcome to produce a common model.

There are other reasons why legal harmonisation may not be easy. Criminal law reform – and sexual offence law in particular – tends to engage strong advocacy coalitions.

These advocacy groups, on all sides of the issue, often have entrenched positions that are difficult to change. Some engage in public advocacy and media work, while others rely on informal networks and lobby behind the scenes.

The difficulty of satisfying all these groups creates a challenging political dynamic. It gives legislators an incentive to preserve the status quo.

It’s particularly difficult for criminal law reforms to succeed without the support of legal professional bodies, but these groups tend to be conservative on such issues.

For example, the strong opposition of the Queensland Law Society and Bar Association to consent law reforms in that state arguably explains the past reluctance of the state government to drive legal changes in this area.

The history of criminal law harmonisation in Australia also sounds a note of caution. For example, the campaign for a Model Criminal Code in the mid 1990s – which aimed to craft a common criminal code for all Australian jurisdictions – fell well short of its aims.

Persistence will be needed

History suggests harmonisation won’t occur unless done in a politically strategic way that aims to build a broad consensus for reform – while also being willing to push past the objections of groups that actively work to preserve the status quo.

The harmonisation effort must be accompanied by prolonged attention, political will and sufficient resources if it’s to overcome jurisdictional differences, historical inertia and entrenched views of advocacy coalitions within the criminal law arena.

Jonathan Crowe is Director of Research at Rape and Sexual Assault Research and Advocacy.

Guzyal Hill 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. It’s time we aligned sexual consent laws across Australia – but this faces formidable challenges – https://theconversation.com/its-time-we-aligned-sexual-consent-laws-across-australia-but-this-faces-formidable-challenges-196115

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rona Macniven, Research Fellow, UNSW Sydney

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, being physically active has been a part of culture for many thousands of years, through traditional active lifestyles.

These activities are still relevant today. Having a spiritual connection to Country, or caring for Country, provides opportunities for physical activity. This is essential for health and wellbeing.

Physical activity guidelines recommend children do at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity every day. This means activity that makes their heart beat faster and might include teams sports like football or netball as well as cycling, swimming, or active play.

First Nations children tend to be more active than non-Indigenous children. Around half of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children do at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day, compared with one-third of non-Indigenous children.

But evidence from international studies and our previous research shows physical activity levels tend to drop during teenage years for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous children, leading to lower levels in adulthood. So it’s important to provide children with opportunities to be active as they get older.

Read more:
Sport and physical activity play important roles for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, but there are barriers to participation

Helping kids grow up strong

The longitudinal study of Indigenous children, Footprints in Time, aims to help Indigenous children “grow up strong”. The study collects annual data from around 1,700 Indigenous children, who were 0-5 years at the start of the study in 2008, in urban, rural and remote areas of Australia.

Most of the data are collected through a survey competed by the child’s parent, usually their biological mother. Early on, parents were asked culturally relevant questions about their social and emotional wellbeing, their child’s engagement with culture and community, screen time and family circumstances such as employment and source of income.

Parents’ postcode was also used to calculate the socioeconomic status of where they lived and how remote it was.

In 2016, parents were asked whether their child (who was then aged 8-13 years) did at least 60 minutes each day of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Half the children met the physical activity guidelines.

Out latest study

In our most recent study, we looked at what was happening in the children’s lives aged 0-5 and whether this was linked to their physical activity at age 8-13.

In assessing parental wellbeing when the children were aged 0-5, parents were asked about a range of factors, including their level of connection with their family and community, loneliness, having interests, and feelings of anger and worry.

We found that when the parent (who was usually the birth mother) had high levels of wellbeing when the child was aged under five, their child was more likely to do at at least 60 minutes each day of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity at age 8-13. This was regardless of family employment status, income or the socioeconomic or geographical area they lived in.

So higher parent wellbeing during the early years was linked to higher physical activity of their child eight years later.

Read more:
Kids’ screen time rose by 50% during the pandemic. 3 tips for the whole family to bring it back down

Children were more likely to meet the physical activity guidelines at age 8-13 if they hadn’t played electronic games as a family between age 0-5 years. Again, this was regardless of the family’s employment status, income, or their socioeconomic or geographical area. But the study didn’t ask about the amount of time spent playing electronic games.

Boosting parents’ welling pays dividends for kids

Finding ways to promote parent wellbeing and reduce levels of family screen time during the early years is important for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s future physical activity levels.

There may be stronger benefits from family cultural engagement, particularly in cultural practices that involve physical activity such as hunting and fishing.

A number of programs are already doing this across Australia. But they need careful evaluation, including hearing about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s experiences of them. First Nations families should also be included in the design and implementation of future programs.

While our study didn’t examine the drivers of wellbeing among parents, it’s clear we need to find ways to improve parent wellbeing, which could impact physical activity levels among children in early adolescence.

Read more:
Are sports programs closing the gap in Indigenous communities? The evidence is limited

Rona Macniven receives funding from the Heart Foundation (Post-Doctoral Fellowship 105211)

John Evans has previously received funding from the ARC.

– ref. First Nations kids are more active when their parents are happy and supported – https://theconversation.com/first-nations-kids-are-more-active-when-their-parents-are-happy-and-supported-192167

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

James Cameron’s Avatar 2: The Way of Water, is released worldwide today. It’s the long-awaited sequel to Avatar (2009), also directed by Cameron, and has cost an enormous amount of money to make.

Some sources list the budget at around $350 million dollars, meaning it will need to make upwards of $2 billion at the worldwide box office just to break even.

But do we actually need this sequel? Do people remember the original Avatar? Aside from the 3D glasses and 10-foot tall aliens, what was memorable about it? Is Avatar in fact not a blockbuster, but a forgotbuster?

When it comes to describing a certain type of film, the word blockbuster dates back nearly 80 years. It was first used in the 1940s in film trade magazines such as Variety and Motion Picture Herald. It was in the 1970s – with the release of Jaws (1975) and Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) – that the concept of the blockbuster became commonplace.

Ever since, the term has been used to described a certain type of (usually) Hollywood film – full of CGI and special effects, with a fast-paced and action-packed narrative, full of memorable heroes, villains and one-liners, and financially lucrative at the box office.

Blockbusters are not just highly mediatised, extraordinarily successful films on their own merits, but they also become part of the cultural conversation for years to come. Modern-day equivalents include the likes of Avengers: Endgame (2019), The Matrix (1999), Top Gun: Maverick (2022), and The Dark Knight (2008).

Read more:
Avatar: The Way of the Water review – tired climate clichés distract from Cameron’s vision

What is a forgotbuster?

The term “forgotbuster” was first coined by US film critic Nathan Rabin in 2013 to describe those movies that were among the top 25 grossing films the year of their release, but have receded culturally.

In other words, forgotbusters attracted huge numbers of audiences at the time, but have failed to endure. Rabin’s first example was Monster-In Law (2005), a now largely forgotten comedy vehicle for Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez. Rabin’s subjective list would also include the likes of Hannibal (2001), Disclosure (1994) and What Women Want (2000). By far his most controversial choice was Avatar.

On its release in December 2009, Avatar quickly became a staggering financial success. Unadjusted for inflation, it remains to this day the most successful film ever made in terms of box office receipts. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards (winning three) and briefly brought 3D technology to the mainstream. It was lauded for its exquisite world-building and the IMAX grandiosity of its special effects.

Some fans even admitted to experiencing depression after seeing the film as they realised the alien world Pandora where most of the film takes place was not real. Several billion dollars later, James Cameron announced he was not going to make just one sequel, but potentially four.

The critic Roger Ebert described the film as “an Event, one of those films you feel you must see to keep up with the conversation”. But do people still talk fondly or nostalgically about Avatar in the way they do, say, Lord of the Rings (2001-2003), Star Wars, or James Cameron’s other era-defining films like Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) and Titanic (1997)?

Why hasn’t Avatar seeped into our cultural consciousnesses the way other films have? Rubin’s answer was unequivocal – he criticised the film’s “weaknesses and instant datedness”, focusing particularly on the poor acting.

What makes Avatar a forgotbuster?

I think there are three other reasons Avatar might be regarded as a forgotbuster.

Firstly, Avatar encouraged film studios to subsequently hike ticket prices based on a “3D premium”. Paying $15 for a regular ticket suddenly became $20 for Avatar and the dozens of movies that followed in the period from late 2009 to mid-2012.

Films were often retrofitted for 3D as studios sought to capitalise on Avatar’s success. This resulted in many sub-standard films being released that offered this supposed 3D experience – and cast Avatar as the film responsible for this surge in bad 3D.

Secondly, beyond its technological advances and impressive visual feats, what else do we remember from Avatar? What was the name of the lead character? Or the planet he landed on? Or the tribe he spent time with?

Avatar’s frozen-in-time memorability stems in large part from its status as an “event”. People went to the cinema multiple times, with family, then friends, then again alone, each time slipping on the 3D glasses and watching in awe at the immersive visual spectacle.

Unlike Cameron’s other classic films, full of indelible figures like Ripley in Aliens (1986) or Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator (1984), Avatar lacks memorable characters or iconic lines.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Avatar is not like other contemporary blockbusters. It is not a sequel, or part of a connected cinematic universe (yet), or based on an existing property. It is not full of star names. It trades heavily on ecological, pro-environmental, and anti-military themes.

Because Avatar isn’t a brand like Harry Potter, Star Wars or DC Comics, it lacks the cultural stickiness those franchises rely on to stay relevant in our saturated media landscape. Avatar burned brightly, and then was forgotten.

Avatar’s cultural footprint was temporary. What will happen to Avatar 2? Will it endure?

Despite the mixed reviews, the early indications are Cameron’s sequel will be a roaring commercial success, and will presumably gross in excess of $2 billion at the global box office. Avatar 3 is due in December 2024, and two more sequels have been greenlit.

Perhaps this extended Avatar universe will ultimately help both the sequels and the original re-enter popular culture and remind us of Cameron’s impressive skill at blending action, special effects, and the narrative beats that define the contemporary blockbuster.

Ben McCann 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. Can you name a single character from Avatar? What is a ‘forgotbuster’ and is Avatar one of them? – https://theconversation.com/can-you-name-a-single-character-from-avatar-what-is-a-forgotbuster-and-is-avatar-one-of-them-192005

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Meredith-Jones, Senior Research Fellow, University of Otago

Breaking a bone in childhood is not just a rite of passage. It could be a warning sign of future fracture risk and osteoporosis.

A history of prior fracture is one of the strongest predictors of future fractures, yet current guidelines used to determine osteoporosis risk ignore childhood fractures.

We investigated the history of fractures in a group of middle-aged people who are part of the Dunedin Study, a comprehensive longitudinal project that has continued for five decades.

We found people who broke a bone more than once in their childhood had more than double the odds of breaking a bone as an adult. In women, this also resulted in lower bone density at the hip at age 45.

The people in our study are young for investigating fracture risk and osteoporosis, but if lifestyle changes to improve bone density can be implemented earlier in life, it may have the greatest impact on lifelong bone health and the reduction of osteoporosis risk.

Childhood fractures predict osteoporosis risk

About one in two children break a bone during childhood, with almost a quarter of boys and 15% of girls suffering multiple fractures. But we don’t currently fully understand why some children repeatedly break bones or whether this will predict adult bone health.

There are several reasons why children fracture a bone. Previous research has shown that kids who fracture tend to live in poorer households, have high levels of vigorous exercise, are overweight or have a high body mass index, vitamin D insufficiency, low calcium intakes and may experience physical abuse.

Children who fracture repeatedly may also have especially fragile skeletons, they may be “accident-prone”, or their bone fractures may occur during sport or physical activity. But an important question is whether kids who break bones have temporary reductions in bone strength during rapid growth, or if these bone weaknesses continue into adulthood.

Read more:
Teens who hit puberty later could face bone health issues later in life, studies suggest

The people we studied are all part of the unique Dunedin Study, which tracked the development of a thousand babies born in Ōtepoti Dunedin between April 1972 and March 1973. Study members have been assessed repeatedly every few years since, on a wide range of topics including risk-taking behaviours, sport participation, physical abuse, child and adult deprivation, among others.

They’ve also repeatedly undergone face-to-face interviews asking about injuries, including fractures since they were children. This means we can compare their medical fracture history in middle age with their own recollections from childhood.

Importantly, because the Dunedin Study also collects comprehensive information about other factors that may explain why some children suffered repeated fractures, we could include these aspects in our analyses.

Read more:
Vaccine resistance has its roots in negative childhood experiences, a major study finds

What we found

Both boys and girls who suffered more than one fracture as a child were more than twice as likely to fracture as an adult. Also, those who were fracture-free in childhood tended to stay so in adulthood.

Among females, childhood fractures were associated with lower bone mineral density at the hip later in life, but this was not the case among males.

Many other studies have sought to determine whether children who sustain a single fracture during childhood have skeletal fragility that persists into adulthood. Our study is the first to demonstrate an increased risk of adult fracture in both males and females who repeatedly fracture in childhood.

Exactly why this is the case is not clear though. The persistent risk was not associated with other behavioural factors, such as risky behaviour, demographics, obesity, childhood abuse or sports participation.

Why this matters

Although we don’t know the exact mechanisms for this increased risk of fracture in adulthood, the results could be used to raise awareness for those most at risk. Parents of children who repeatedly fracture in childhood should be informed about various ways to prevent persistent skeletal fragility with age.

Behavioural changes such as increased weight-bearing activity, optimal intake of calcium and vitamin D and increased protein and dairy consumption are all beneficial interventions that can be initiated early and maintained throughout the lifespan.

Osteoporosis tends to affect adults after middle age. We hope to continue investigating the relationship between childhood fractures and adult bone health in this very special population of people as they age, to find out whether these links persist after menopause in women or affect lifelong risk in men.

Kim Meredith-Jones 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. Breaking bones in childhood more than doubles the odds of it happening again as an adult, study finds – https://theconversation.com/breaking-bones-in-childhood-more-than-doubles-the-odds-of-it-happening-again-as-an-adult-study-finds-195008

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Dickinson, Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW Sydney

There has been a lot of debate recently about the quality, safety and cost of National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) services. Some of it relates to the types of providers people purchase services from.

Some NDIS service providers are registered with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. To be registered, service providers must undertake compliance and auditing processes, which can be time-consuming and expensive. Some providers choose not to do this.

All NDIS participants can purchase supports from registered providers, but some (those who are self-managed or plan-managed, rather than NDIS-managed) can also buy services from providers who are unregistered. Around two-fifths of NDIS spending goes to unregistered providers. Unregistered providers tend to be smaller operators than registered providers, and more numerous. For NDIS participants who are plan-managed, only 10% of their providers are registered but they represent 60% of payments.

We interviewed 30 NDIS participants and plan nominees who use unregistered providers, to find out why they do so. What is different about their experiences with this type of provider? And what do they see as some of the benefits of using unregistered providers?

Read more:
The budget sounded warnings of an NDIS ‘blow out’ – but also set aside funds to curb costs and boost productivity

The types of services used

We recruited interviewees of different ages and genders from around Australia via social media with the help of disability advocates and community organisations.

Interview participants purchased four main types of services or supports from unregistered providers (also called non-registered providers). Each comes with its own considerations for risk, quality and safety.

1. Consumables

Purchasing basic pieces of access equipment, medical supplies and assistive technologies from unregistered providers often represented significant cost savings and reduced delays, with no difference in the quality.

2. Household services

Participants did not experience discrimination or an elevated sense of risk in the delivery of non-disability household services such as cleaning or gardening services delivered by unregistered providers. They liked the option of being able to use local and small businesses and said this helped them feel more connected to the community. There were often cost savings and improved service quality.

3. Allied health and other therapies

While many allied health providers and therapists such as occupational therapists, physiotherapists and psychologists are not NDIS-registered, these providers typically hold registration or accreditation with appropriate professional bodies. Interviewees generally felt NDIS registration would not provide greater safety or quality.

4. Support workers

Unregistered support workers can be employed as sole contractors (such as via online platforms), through a provider who is unregistered, or through direct employment. This category of supports is arguably the most controversial in discussions about registration given some of these supports involve personal care often delivered in domestic contexts.

Some groups have expressed concern unregistered support workers might increase risk for participants and workers as they are less closely regulated. The argument has been made this might increase potential for abuse and exploitation of both participants and workers, although some recent and shocking cases of abuse have involved registered providers.

But for many of our participants, using unregistered support workers equated to more flexible shift times, increased choice of workers, greater consistency with workers, and the ability to set worker wages. They said it meant they could move away from “agency rule book” limitations, and they felt more empowered within the support interaction.

Several participants told us they’d had negative experiences with support workers from registered agencies. They spoke of high staff turnover and “just anyone” being sent for shifts. They described feeling safer and better supported when they chose their own support workers through unregistered pathways.

Read more:
Everyone is talking about the NDIS – we spoke to participants and asked them how to fix it

Unregistered providers are sometimes the only option

Some NDIS participants find it not only desirable to purchase services from unregistered providers, but essential.

Interviewees described push factors (reasons they preferred to avoid registered providers) and pull factors (reasons they preferred or required the services of unregistered providers).

Push factors included negative experiences with or perceptions of registered providers. These often related to services they had received in the “bad old days” of pre-NDIS block-funded services, where they had little or no choice in service provision and coordinators acted as gatekeepers. Interviewees described bad behaviour by some registered providers, incompatible “deficit” culture (where people with disability are framed around what they can’t do, not what they can), invasive scrutiny of their lives, inflexibility, “price gouging”, and distrust of large organisations.

Pull factors included perceptions of better, more person-centred service, flexibility, innovation, choice, empowerment, social inclusion, and improved cost-effectiveness associated with using unregistered providers. Contrary to public perception, many of the participants we spoke to said using unregistered providers allowed them to be more cost-savvy with purchases.

But some interviewees reported having to do work to support some unregistered workers with things such as getting an ABN, invoicing, insurance, and tax and superannuation obligations.

‘Thin markets’

“Thin markets” also contribute to these decisions. A lack of providers, long waiting lists, or a lack of registered providers with the required expertise meant interviewees often had no choice but to use unregistered providers.

The supply of support workers has also been affected by COVID and related policy responses, as well as some people are leaving disability care to work in aged care. Using unregistered support workers helps increase the pool of available staff.

Upset at the thought of losing unregistered services

The participants we interviewed had concerns about what would happen if they were only allowed to use registered providers.

Nearly everyone mentioned inconvenience or hassle, but there were far stronger reactions too. “It would be absolutely devastating,” a participant we’ll call Davina* said.

“I’d lose everything,” said Harriet, while Kim said she would “be extremely upset”. Gabrielle predicted “it would be chaos”. Yasmin said the thought make her “feel sick in my stomach” and Owen got “anxious just thinking about it”.

Choice and control

Ultimately, the ability to use unregistered providers is about exercising choice and control through the NDIS. In light of this, we’ve set out the implications and some possible ways to preserve two kinds of providers in the disability service market. This affords NDIS participants the “dignity of risk” in choosing freely between registered and unregistered providers.

Our findings indicate both clients and providers may need support to navigate the unregistered provider space. We suggest helping NDIS participants and providers to understand their options, legal rights and obligations.

For NDIS participants this would mean they get a clear sense of what they should expect in terms of quality and safe services and how to speak out if they feel something is wrong. This would be of benefit not just in using unregistered providers, but also registered providers. For providers and workers, building capacity would give them a better sense of their responsibilities and the processes for delivering effective services, and help guard against exploitation.

Indeed, capacity development of NDIS participants is likely to have positive implications far beyond the unregistered provider space. It would work towards continuous improvements and benefits across the entire scheme.

Names have been changed to protect participants’ privacy.

Helen Dickinson receives funding from ARC, NHMRC and CYDA

Raelene West receives funding from UNSW

Sophie Yates 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. Unregistered NDIS providers are in the firing line – but lots of participants have good reasons for using them – https://theconversation.com/unregistered-ndis-providers-are-in-the-firing-line-but-lots-of-participants-have-good-reasons-for-using-them-196375

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cheng Cheng, Research Officer, School of Engineering, Australian National University

Renewable energy’s share of Australia’s main electricity grid has more than doubled from 16% to 35% in five years, and the federal government wants this figure to reach 82% by 2030.

Nearly all new power plants in Australia are solar and wind because these are the cheapest sources of electricity. Some of the extra solar capacity will be on rooftops. However, most solar and wind farms will necessarily be in regional areas. So where are the best sites?

Our report, released today, set out to answer this question. We developed so-called “heat maps” that identify which sites across Australia are – and are not – suitable for wind and solar projects.

The maps highlight the importance of being close to existing or planned high-voltage transmission lines. We hope our findings will empower communities, landholders, local councils when negotiating with renewable energy developers.

What makes a site suitable?

So what makes a site suitable for a renewable energy project? It depends on:

• solar and wind resources – wind in particular can vary greatly from place to place, such as a windy ridge top versus a still valley bottom

• access to high-voltage transmission – the transformers, towers and cables that carry generated electricity to the cities

• social, cultural and environmental constraints – urban areas, national parks and remnant native forest are unsuitable

• aspect (ideally north-facing for solar) and slope (not too steep)

• willing hosts – landholders host solar and wind farms and transmission lines in return for large annual payments

• social licence – local community support in response to the economic activity and jobs that flow from constructing and maintaining solar and wind farms

• government incentives or disincentives

• access to roads, skilled workers and local electrical loads.

The two important siting factors that most often vary greatly from place to place within a region are access to the transmission network and to wind resources.

Access to transmission is the largest constraint. Typical power lines cross dozens to hundreds of properties and require complex negotiations with many people.

In contrast, solar and wind farms generally fit on one or a few properties. That usually makes an access agreement much easier to negotiate.

Read more:
What is the electricity transmission system, and why does it need fixing?

A closer look at the heat maps

Our high-resolution heat maps identify the solar and wind potential of all prospective areas close to existing or approved high-power transmission.

Pixels in the map are red if a location scores well. Yellow and blue pixels indicate less preferred locations. Green pixels are unsuitable land such as conservation reserves, urban regions and native forests.

The pixels are 1km by 1km for solar and 250m by 250m for wind, because the wind resource varies more rapidly with location.

Users can zoom and pan with ease. Clicking on a pixel obtains an indicative relative cost of generating solar or wind electricity (in A$/MWh) for that location. It includes the cost of energy from a solar or wind farm plus the cost of a low-voltage powerline to the nearest existing or planned high-voltage transmission lines.

Read more:
Renewables need land – and lots of it. That poses tricky questions for regional Australia

It doesn’t include costs for environmental and geotechnical approvals, road upgrades, substations, payments to host farmers, risk and others. These costs vary greatly with the scale of the project. To include these costs, heat-map users can select high, medium or low-range costs.

All existing and planned transmission lines with voltage of 275kV or above are included. These include anticipated or actionable projects discussed in the Australian Energy Market Operator’s 2022 Integrated System Plan. We added two scenarios for 220kV lines in Tasmania in order to include the Battery of the Nation hydropower project.

We modelled 12 scenarios: six each for solar and wind. The scenarios cover high, medium and low-cost assumptions, with overhead or underground low-voltage powerline connection to the transmission network. Going underground increases the cost by six times.

Landholders might be able to negotiate a substantial annual access fee for overhead powerlines to the transmission network, to allow developers to avoid the costs of going underground. Hybrid overhead-underground powerlines might sometimes be an attractive compromise.

Solar and wind generation within each pixel is assigned to one of five cost classes: A, B, C, D and E. The lower-cost A, B and C classes are strongly preferred.

For each local government area in Australia, we estimated potential solar and wind capacities for the five different cost classes. The renewable resource that can be used will depend on local transmission line capacity and local loads. We can provide detailed information to local councils.

Read more:
Up to 90% of electricity from solar and wind the cheapest option by 2030: CSIRO analysis

There’s no shortage of suitable sites

Class A, B and C sites are all close to existing and planned high-voltage transmission. This consideration outranks excellence of local solar and wind resources. Landholders in Class A/B/C regions can negotiate attractive terms to host solar and wind farms and powerline connections to transmission networks.

A particularly attractive region for solar and wind farms in NSW is the Goulburn-Lithgow district. It’s well served by transmission and has good wind and solar resources.

In Victoria, the Yallourn district is attractive because of good wind potential and strong existing transmission into Melbourne, plus there’s a need to replace local coal industry jobs. There’s also extensive wind potential west of Melbourne, good solar potential in the state’s north and extensive offshore wind resources in Bass Strait.

South Australia has excellent wind and solar potential to the east of St Vincent and Spencer gulfs.

Queensland’s best wind and solar sites follow the coastal transmission lines north from Brisbane.

Good wind and solar sites in Western Australia follow the transmission lines north and south of Perth.

Tasmania has extensive wind resources along the north coast, on King and Flinders islands and in Bass Strait. Their development depends on the Marinus Link being constructed across Bass Strait.

Read more:
There’s a huge surge in solar production under way – and Australia could show the world how to use it

Who’ll benefit from these maps?

Solar and wind farm developers have extensive information and experience in evaluating locations. This creates a large imbalance in knowledge when they negotiate with landholders, communities and governments.

By empowering local councils and landholders to identify suitable sites, our heat maps will help reduce this imbalance.

Developers might benefit, too, if the maps reduce the complexity and time involved in gaining legal access and community acceptance.

Local governments can also use these maps to identify potential zones for multiple solar and wind farms. These renewable energy zones, which are recognised by the states, could help attract developers, boosting local economic activity.

The authors gratefully acknowledge funding support for this research from CWP Renewables and Innovation Connections.

Cheng Cheng receives funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, Innovation Connections, and several private companies.

Andrew Blakers receives funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, Innovation Connections and several private companies

Anna Nadolny receives funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

– ref. Australia needs much more solar and wind power, but where are the best sites? We mapped them all – https://theconversation.com/australia-needs-much-more-solar-and-wind-power-but-where-are-the-best-sites-we-mapped-them-all-196033

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philipp Bayer, Adjunct Research Fellow, UWA Oceans Institute, The University of Western Australia

You’ve seen the art AI image generators can create, and you may have played with natural language AI chatbots. You’ve benefited from artificial intelligence tools recommending you music and suggesting your next streaming show.

But AI can do much more. Humans are excellent at spotting patterns. It’s why we see faces on Mars or in the clouds. But in some areas, AI is even better. Give one of these tools a million photographs and ask it to spot telltale signs – and it can. AI can enable research at scales previously impossible.

We’ve used AI’s exceptional pattern recognition to trawl through satellite images and map the tonnes of plastic pollution threatening our seas – in real time. Already, this technique has found more than 4,000 unreported informal dumps next to rivers. This is useful, given just ten rivers contribute nearly all the plastic entering our oceans.

This is just the start. So far, AI has shown promise in our projects mapping seagrass meadows from space and finding unknown reefs likely to harbour heat-resilient coral. Soon, we hope we’ll be able to put AI on the job to find out exactly what fish live where – without ever seeing them.

Is AI really a gamechanger for science?

Yes. Think of the vast volumes of data scientists have gathered in recent decades. Until now, trawling through the data has been painstaking and at times tedious. That’s because while detecting patterns is something humans do well, we’re slower.

AI mines large data sets, which can be anything from photos to numbers. You train it so it knows what you’re looking for. Then the software tool gets to work, detecting patterns – and importantly, offering up predictions about how these patterns arise.

Read more:
How shoring up drones with artificial intelligence helps surf lifesavers spot sharks at the beach

These methods are especially powerful for messy and complex biological data. For example, the AI tool AlphaFold has totally revolutionised the slow process of understanding how proteins fold themselves into origami-like shapes inside cells. Previously, it might have taken months or years to figure out a single protein structure. This year, AlphaFold announced predicted structures for 200 million proteins.

What can AI offer ecology?

We’ve found AI useful at finding unknown reefs with corals primed to survive despite warming waters. That’s vital, given the oceans have taken up almost all of the heat trapped by the trillion tonnes of greenhouse gases we’ve put in the atmosphere.

And we’ve found AI can usefully identify specific environmental conditions under which reefs will survive as the oceans heat up. Our research suggests hundreds of reefs among the thousands in the Great Barrier Reef may be home to corals which have higher heat tolerance than normal. Now we know this, we can protect these reefs – and turn to them for potential use to restore dying reefs elsewhere.

This idea of “super reefs” isn’t new. Other researchers have focused on protecting 50 coral reefs globally in the hope of safeguarding these ecosystems against the expected mass coral death as water temperatures rise. What we have added was the discovery that AI can help find these heat-resilient corals. Without AI, it would have been like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Spotting plastic waste from space would have been almost impossible before AI image detection programs became available. How does it work? Essentially, photos taken by European Space Agency satellites are scanned by AI to spot hidden plastic dumps. Then we refine it over time, to see if these sites are getting bigger – and if they’re close to rivers or lakes, which could carry plastics into the seas and add to the millions of tonnes of turtle-choking, fish-killing plastics already swilling around.

The goal is to find the sites at highest risk of adding to ocean plastics. Once we know this, enforcement agencies in each of the 112 countries we’ve mapped can respond to the most urgent problems first. So far we’ve found more than 4,000 sites, with around one in five within 200 metres of a waterway. When we looked at Indonesia in detail, we found double the number of publicly listed dump sites.

AI is also proving itself as a labour-saver. One part of science often hidden to the general public is the sheer number of manual, repetitive tasks. For instance, if you want to figure out why some baby coral polyps survive heat or more acid water while others die, you have to measure colour, growth and survival rates over time. We’ve found AI can do this work, precisely and fast.

Of course, AI is not magic. It is a tool, and all tools have pitfalls. One problem is placing too much trust in AI outputs, believing them true because the algorithm has seen more data than we have. But this is dangerous, as the confidently wrong answers given by the new ChatGPT AI demonstrate.

Ecology isn’t free from biases either. That means we have to carefully evaluate the data we use to train the AI. Plus, we have to remain vigilant and manually evaluate AI predictions to figure out if they fit with our reality. AI is a valuable assistant for ecologists – not a replacement.

What’s next?

Imagine having autonomous floating or underwater drones sampling seawater, with AI neural networks looking for fish DNA. It sounds like sci-fi, but it’s now entirely possible. Drone technology has matured. AI tools have arrived. And we no longer need to catch fish to know what lives in the seas. All you need are tiny traces of environmental DNA marine species leave behind in water. Similarly, we could track coral reef ecosystem health in near real time.

This will let us take the pulse of these ecosystems at a time when our oceans are under unprecedented pressure from industrial fishing, marine heatwaves and acidification from climate change, and plastic pollution. The more we know, the better we can respond.

Read more:
AI can tackle the climate emergency – if developed responsibly

Philipp Bayer receives funding from Minderoo Foundation. He is affiliated with Minderoo Foundation.

Ahmed Elagali receives funding from Minderoo Foundation. He is affiliated with Minderoo Foundation

Julie Robidart receives funding from the Minderoo Foundation. She is affiliated with the Minderoo Foundation.

Kate Marie Quigley receives funding from the Minderoo Foundation. She is affiliated with the Minderoo Foundation.

– ref. Spotting plastic waste from space and counting the fish in the seas: here’s how AI can help protect the oceans – https://theconversation.com/spotting-plastic-waste-from-space-and-counting-the-fish-in-the-seas-heres-how-ai-can-help-protect-the-oceans-196222

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ama Samarasinghe, Lecturer, RMIT University

The findings about advisers in the landmark 2019 financial services royal commission couldn’t have been more stark.

Time after time financial advisers were found to have:

• lacked skill and judgement

• proposed actions that benefited the adviser

• been unwilling to find out whether poor advice had been given

• been unwilling to take timely steps to put bad advice right.

The result was a series of radical, but long-awaited changes in the industry, ranging from mandating a bachelor’s degree to enforcing ongoing professional development to introducing a legally-enforceable code of ethics.

Around 10,000 of the industry’s 25,000 advisers left, most retail banks offloaded their advice arms, and the median annual fee for ongoing advice climbed 40% from A$2,510 to $3,529.

‘Best interests’ or ‘good advice’?

In response, ahead of this year’s election the then financial services minister Jane Hume commissioned a quality of advice review, which is due to hand its final report to the new financial services minister Stephen Jones on Friday.

Ahead of its final report the review has published 12 draft proposals intended to make advice more affordable and accessible.

One of them would replace the present requirement for advisers to give advice that is in their clients “best interests” with advice that is merely “good advice”.

If that is what the review recommends, and if the recommendation is adopted, while stand-alone financial planners would still be required to provide advice that was in their client’s best interests (because of their code of ethics) banks, super funds and other providers would be able to give a lesser standard of advice.

The core justification is reducing “regulatory complexity and burden while improving the quality of advice”.

While it would certainly aid in reducing the compliance burden, and would make advice more accessible, it isn’t obvious that it would improve the quality of advice.

Poorly defined

The best interests duty requires advisers to put the client’s interests first, to make sure the advice is right for each particular client, and to warn the client if the advice is based on insufficient information.

“Good advice” is defined simply as advice “reasonably expected to benefit clients”. Unless better defined, it will be a definition that leaves a lot to interpretation.

Read more:
Adviser ‘reforms’ will undermine a royal commission recommendation

What banks and super funds believe they “reasonably expect” to be best for their customers, might not necessarily align with what’s best for their customers.

While removing red tape is important, removing regulations that require advisers to act in their clients’ best interests might not be in their clients’ best interests.

On Friday Stephen Jones will have to begin to consider whether “good advice” is good enough. It’s not a decision he should take lightly.

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

– ref. Why would you dump a requirement for financial advisers to give advice that’s in their client’s best interests? – https://theconversation.com/why-would-you-dump-a-requirement-for-financial-advisers-to-give-advice-thats-in-their-clients-best-interests-193719

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Piers Kelly, Linguistic anthropologist, University of New England

At this very moment, the words you are reading are entering your mind at the speed of thought. Below your awareness, strings of letters are retrieving words and meanings as effortlessly as oxygen absorbed into the bloodstream.

This efficiency is the result of careful refinements over time. The simple letters of the Roman alphabet are the successors to much more elaborate scripts like Egyptian hieroglyphics. As picture-based signs passed through new generations of users and into new languages, they apparently became more abstract, more compact, and fewer in number.

How then, do we make sense of the extraordinary Chinese writing system with its thousands of complex characters?

Read more:
If you speak Mandarin, your brain is different

Simplifying symbols

Over time, letters adapt to become simpler to write and easier to read. Cultural transmission theorists refer to this process as “compression” and it seems to kick in as soon as people start using a script and teaching it to others.

A delightful Pictionary-based experiment shows just how this might unfold in practice. A player who is asked to draw a computer monitor will sketch a detailed picture so the guesser has the best chance of success. But when those same two players are given the exact same clue again and again, the “monitor” might be reduced to a few rectangles and then a simple wavy line. As soon as a simpler convention is established it makes sense to cut corners.

But while English readers are only contending with 26 letters, readers of Chinese manage to process over 4,000 core characters, some made up of dozens of strokes.

The sign 麤 (cū, “to be rough with someone”), for example, is evidently much more complex than the alphabetic letter “o”. If Chinese writing is subject to similar pressures, why didn’t this sign simplify?

Our newly published research grapples with this very problem. We found the Chinese script has evolved towards greater visual complexity over the course of its 3,600 year history.

The traditional view

As early as the 1600s, European scholars began to compare archaeological inscriptions across different sites and historical periods.

They noticed signs that started out as pictures tended to become simpler and more abstract over time.

Some of these scholars assumed the Chinese writing system had been trudging along a similar evolutionary path. Just as a hieroglyphic representation of a fish 𓆟 may have simplified into the letter D, and an ox’s head 𓃾 simplified into the letter A, Chinese characters are thought to have condensed from pictures of things to simpler sets of strokes.

Chinese philosophers of the Han Dynasty hypothesised their writing system originated at the hands of Fuxi (伏羲), China’s mythical first emperor, who invented characters inspired by the forms of birds, animals and elemental forces.

Later rulers were said to have simplified Fuxi’s pictures. Instead of representing the full outlines of the creatures, they began to trace only their tracks and movements. Tradition holds that a Qin dynasty emperor ordered his minister to simplify the script even further by reducing the total number of strokes in each character.

For over 350 years, scholars across the world have reproduced charts of Chinese characters that depict a straightforward sequence from stylised pictures towards abstract signs.

Even contemporary sources make the claim that Chinese has been steadily simplifying across its history. But our research suggests the opposite is true: Chinese writing has become increasingly complex.

How Chinese writing is different

The earliest surviving traces of Chinese writing are found scratched on turtle shells and ox bones used in divination rituals during the Shang Dynasty (c.1600 BC–c.1045 BC).

Since that time, the script has continued to evolve through several distinct historical phases that can be dated with accuracy.

We wanted to know how intricate Chinese character writing was over time. We used a computational method to trace the perimeters of each letter. The longer the perimeter, the more complex the drawing.

We used this method to measure more than 750,000 images of Chinese characters across five historical phases, from 1600 BC to the present day. The historical trajectories of many of these characters can be visualised here. Far from simplifying or staying the same, on average Chinese characters have become more complex with time.

Even when the mainland Chinese government engineered and enforced a simpler version of the script in 1956 this still left complexity above the level observed for 1600 BC.

Possible explanations

There is a kind of trade-off between the need for simplicity and the need to distinguish between each sign.

Unlike most other writing systems, the number of Chinese characters has increased dramatically over the millennia.

While alphabets pair letters with a limited set of individual sounds that recur and recombine, Chinese characters represent individual words or word-components together with information about sound values. This means that new characters can be created and added to an ever-expanding set.

As the set of Chinese characters became larger and larger over the centuries, writers found it necessary to add extra bells and whistles to increase the contrast and tell each character apart. A reader of Chinese text can absorb the words with ease because of innumerable tweaks that keep the system at just the right level of complexity.

The results shed new light on the history of the Chinese script. But they also provide important insights into the dynamics of human communication.

In order to work most efficiently, our symbolic systems require a careful balance between simplicity and distinctiveness.

Read more:
Un-doing the tián (field): Mandarin language and the shift away from Chinese agrarian culture

This research was conducted with Simon Jerome Han as lead author. Piers Kelly receives funding from an ARC DECRA Fellowship.

Charles Kemp’s work on this project was supported by an ARC Future Fellowship ( FT190100200).

James Winters 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. Most assume writing systems get simpler. But 3,600 years of Chinese writing show it’s getting increasingly complex – https://theconversation.com/most-assume-writing-systems-get-simpler-but-3-600-years-of-chinese-writing-show-its-getting-increasingly-complex-194732

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ioana Ramia, Lecturer, UNSW Sydney

There are many ways to teach school students. But research shows only some will significantly improve learning.

While most teachers want to use evidence-based practices, they face many challenges that can limit their ability to use them in their classrooms. These include time pressures, access to resources, and unsupportive school cultures.

In our new study we asked teachers how much they use education research evidence when teaching students.

We found that most teachers surveyed said they were using evidence-based practices most of the time, but they are not using all the strategies that make those practices effective. This can have serious impacts on student learning.

What types of evidence are we talking about?

Our study looked at four teaching approaches that have been shown by academic research to help students learn:

1. Formative assessment – gathering information about student learning and adapting teaching to meet learning needs.

2. Explicit instruction – setting clear learning goals, then fully explaining and effectively demonstrating how students can achieve them.

3. Mastery learning – breaking up learning, so students must master a certain task before moving on to the next one.

4. Classroom management – establishing clear routines and rules, and modelling appropriate behaviour.

Our survey

In 2021, we surveyed more than 900 teachers from across each state and territory for an Australian Education Research Organisation (AER0) study. This included teachers from government, Catholic and independent schools and from primary and high schools.

We asked how much teachers use various types of evidence to inform how they teach students. We also analysed Australian data from international education surveys, including the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) as well as the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).

Our findings

The vast majority of teachers we surveyed said they used methods backed by research in their classrooms. Specifically, when it comes to formative assessment methods:

• 73% of teachers said they assess students’ understanding of the content they are teaching and make adjustments accordingly

• 67% of teachers said they design lessons based on data they have gathered
  regarding students’ prior knowledge and experience.

An even greater proportion of those we surveyed said they were using explicit instruction methods:

• 91% of teachers said they interact with students as they work, providing immediate elaboration and explanations as needed

• 78% of teachers said they clearly outline what students will learn and how they know they have learned it.

When it came to teaching using mastery learning:

• 85% of Australian teachers set goals at the beginning of a lesson, according to the 2018 TALIS survey

• 95% of teachers explained what they expected students to learn, also according to the TALIS survey.

High proportions of those we surveyed also reported using classroom management methods:

• 90% of teachers we surveyed said they modelled appropriate behaviours, such as not raising their voice and following the rules.

• 76% of teachers and leaders explicitly said they teach rules and routines for how to participate effectively in class.

These results show most Australian teachers are using evidence-backed methods to teach in their classrooms. This is reassuring news overall, but also shows significant proportions of those surveyed are not drawing on approaches we know help students learn.

What do students say?

We also found teachers report using evidence-based practices more than students report experiencing them. For example, according to PISA, only 31% of year 10 students in Australia report teachers frequently provide individual help when a student has difficulties understanding a topic or task.

Another 2019 study of five Australian schools also found feedback from teachers is often not clear to students.

Meanwhile, almost three-quarters (71%) of respondents to the PIRLS Year 4 student survey agree “a lot” that their teacher tells them how to do better when they make a mistake.

Read more:
Personalised learning is billed as the ‘future’ of schooling: what is it and could it work?

Do teachers help each other?

Our survey also suggests teachers do not get enough support and training to access research-based approaches. For example, only 64% of teachers we surveyed said they had regular access to coaching to help them use evidence. We also found:

• 66% said their school system (government, Catholic or independent) provided easily accessible information, resources, training or other support to help them use evidence

• 45% “agreed” or “strongly agreed” they will encourage colleagues to stop doing something if evidence from academic research shows it doesn’t work.

What needs to happen now?

A key way to improve this situation is to provide more time and support (such as professional learning and access to resources) to help and train teachers and school leaders use evidence.

We also need to encourage school cultures where teachers discuss evidence, so they can learn from each other.

This tells us that we need to build supportive school environments where teachers feel confident and capable to support each other to not just use evidence but also stop doing things that aren’t working.

Read more:
If Australia wants to improve school outcomes, we need to define what ‘equity’ really means

More resources

The point of using research evidence to inform teaching is to improve outcomes for students. This should be the priority across schools and in resources from education departments and in research, curriculum guidance and education policies.

AERO has free resources for teachers and school leaders about using evidence. Other state governments, such as New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia and the Northern Territory also have resources.

The Monash Q Project is a research project investigating how research evidence is used in schools, and how to support educators to better use that evidence in their practice.

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. We asked 900 Australian teachers if evidence informs how they teach – and found most use it, but there are key gaps – https://theconversation.com/we-asked-900-australian-teachers-if-evidence-informs-how-they-teach-and-found-most-use-it-but-there-are-key-gaps-196117

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Sydney

The Constitutional Expert Group, appointed to advise on the proposed Voice to Parliament referendum, has concluded that the “draft amendment is constitutionally sound” and does not amount to a “veto” power or provide anyone with “special rights”.

How does this fit into the current debate?

What is the composition and role of this expert group?

In the lead-up to its proposed referendum on an Indigenous Voice, the Commonwealth government appointed three bodies to advise it. The first is the Referendum Working Group. It is comprised of Indigenous leaders from across the country, including Marcia Langton, Tom Calma, Pat Anderson, Jackie Huggins, Ken Wyatt and Galarrwuy Yunupingu. It is co-chaired by Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney and Special Envoy Patrick Dodson.

There is also a second broader group, the Referendum Engagement Group, which includes representatives from land councils, local government and community organisations to advise on how to build community understanding and awareness of the referendum.

Finally, the third smaller group is the Constitutional Expert Group. It is comprised of Greg Craven, Megan Davis, Kenneth Hayne, Noel Pearson, Cheryl Saunders, George Williams, Asmi Wood and me. Its role is to answer legal and constitutional questions raised by the Referendum Working Group. It is chaired by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.

What advice has the Constitutional Expert Group given?

The Constitutional Expert Group has had three meetings, and has provided advice to the working group on a number of specific questions.

At its meeting on December 13, the working group released a communique, to which it attached a brief summary from the Constitutional Expert Group of the conclusions it reached about the first round of questions sent to it from the Working Group.

Additional questions have been asked and further advice will be given by the Constitutional Expert Group in the future.

Read more:
The government will not send out Yes and No case pamphlets ahead of the Voice to Parliament referendum. Does this matter?

What did the advice say?

The first point made by the expert group was that while there were different policy and process approaches that could be followed, the draft amendment proposed by the prime minister was constitutionally sound and provided a strong basis on which to conduct further consultation. That proposed amendment is as follows:

1. There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
2. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to Parliament and the Executive Government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
3. The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to the composition, functions, powers and procedures of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

No veto power

The expert group unanimously agreed this form of an amendment would not result in the Voice having a veto power over the actions of parliament or the executive government. The power and function of the Voice is to make representations. It cannot dictate, demand or veto.

What use the parliament or the executive government makes of those representations is a matter for it, as is appropriate in a system of representative and responsible government.

The aim is to ensure those institutions are better informed when they make decisions and exercise their powers on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. There is no intention to create a body that would have any overriding power.

Read more:
Changing the Australian Constitution is not easy. But we need to stop thinking it’s impossible

No special rights

The expert group was also unanimously of the view that the proposed amendment would not confer “special rights” on anyone. It would instead establish a body that could make representations to parliament and the executive.

Anyone and any organisation can also make representations to parliament and the executive. This often happens when parliamentary committees examine bills, or governments consult stakeholders on proposed policy changes, or when bodies (such as business organisations, unions, industry groups, community groups and charities) lobby the government.

The constitutionally implied freedom of political communication ensures individuals and groups within Australia remain free to make representations to parliament and the government on political matters. The expert panel noted the establishment of the Voice would not “change or take away any right, power or privilege of anyone who is not Indigenous”.

The proposed constitutional amendment does not confer special rights upon people to participate in, or choose the membership of, the Voice. It leaves for parliament the power to decide the composition of the Voice.

A new chapter in the Constitution

The Constitutional Expert Group agreed the placement of this proposed amendment should be in its own separate chapter of the Constitution. There were different views about where it should be placed, but it was agreed it should be somewhere after the first three chapters, which deal with the parliament, the executive government and the courts.

Functions of the Voice

The proposed amendment states the Voice “may make representations to Parliament and the Executive Government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples”. This is its primary function. But it also permits parliament to “make laws with respect to the composition, functions, powers and procedures” of the Voice.

Further advice

The Constitutional Expert Group will continue to provide advice to the working group, at its request, as issues arise. This advice will feed into the public debate as we proceed towards the proposed referendum.

Anne Twomey has received funding from the ARC and occasionally does consultancy work for governments, Parliaments and intergovernmental bodies. She is a member of the Constitutional Expert Group advising the Referendum Working Group.

– ref. An Indigenous Voice to Parliament will not give ‘special rights’ or create a veto – https://theconversation.com/an-indigenous-voice-to-parliament-will-not-give-special-rights-or-create-a-veto-196574

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Marshall, Professor in Vaccinology, University of Adelaide

Parents and doctors alike fear meningococcal infection, which has been in the news again. Doctors never want to miss a diagnosis, as early treatment with antibiotics may be life-saving. Parents fear the disease because up to 10% of children who become infected die from the disease and its complications.

Another 40% of children will have ongoing disability from one or more complications. These include deafness, blindness, skin scarring, or surgical amputation of limbs that may be required to save the child’s life in some situations.

In other cases, children will initially be acutely unwell but then recover within a few days of starting antibiotics. Many, though, will have ongoing fatigue, forgetfulness and difficulty concentrating. For most, it’s a life-changing illness.

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What causes it and who most at risk?

Meningococcal disease is caused by the meningococcus bacteria, also known as Neisseria meningitidis. The bacterial infection causes meningitis (infection of the lining around the brain) and/or sepsis (blood poisoning).

The highest risk of disease is in children under four years, and adolescents and young adults aged 15-24.

Aboriginal infants and young people are at higher risk of meningococcal disease than non-Indigenous children.

What are the symptoms?

Young infants who become unwell with this infection usually develop symptoms such as a fever, irritability, vomiting and poor feeding.

Young people who develop the infection may complain of a headache, neck stiffness, fever, vomiting or feeling generally tired and unwell with “flu-like” symptoms.

Unfortunately, these symptoms are fairly general and occur with many other infections, making this disease hard to diagnose. This may result in delayed diagnosis and treatment.

A more unusual symptom children or young people may experience is feeling they have cold hands and feet.

The classic dark red-purple rash associated with the infection is often a later sign of the disease. Ideally, antibiotic treatment should be started before the rash appears, to combat the infection as early as possible.

À lire aussi :
Explainer: what’s meningococcal meningitis and what are the signs?

How does it spread?

The meningococcus bacteria usually enter the bloodstream through the throat.

The bacteria live quite happily in the throat of around 10% of the population, without causing any symptoms. Young people in particular have a higher chance of having the bacteria in their throat and passing it to each other through air droplets from coughing or through kissing.

N. meningitidis is often referred to as an “accidental pathogen” because it prefers to live at the back of the throat, with no intent to cause meningitis or sepsis. It can invade the lining of the throat during a throat infection, which disrupts the barrier in the throat and allows the bacteria to enter the bloodstream.

It may also be more likely to invade the bloodstream and multiply if the person has a problem with their immune system.

Once in the bloodstream, the bacteria multiply very quickly and the body reacts with a very robust immune response, which unfortunately can contribute to some of the complications.

The bacteria primarily damage the walls of the blood vessels in the body and the blood vessels become leaky. This results in bleeding into the skin, which causes a rash, and lack of blood supply to the limbs, resulting in breakdown of the tissues in the limb. Sometimes this requires surgical amputation of the limb or multiple limbs to save the child’s life.

What are the different types of meningococcal disease?

There are 13 different types of meningococcus, however almost all disease in humans is caused by six groups: A, B, C, W, Y and X.

Group W is associated with a higher risk of dying from the infection (around 10-15%), whereas with group B there is a lower risk of dying (around 5-10%).

In Australia, group B causes the highest number, however there are significant differences between different states. Most cases in temperate climates occur in winter and early spring. Viral infections, in particular influenza, increase the risk of meningococcal infection.

How can you protect against it?

The best way to protect against meningococcal disease is through vaccination.

From 2003 to 2013 in Australia, there was a decrease in meningococcal disease cases, following the introduction of the free meningococcal C vaccine onto the National Immunisation Program for children aged 12 months.

A free, combined meningococcal ACWY vaccine is now available on the National Immunisation Program for all children at 12 months of age (this replaced the meningococcal C vaccine) and for adolescents aged 14-16 years through a school-based program from April 2019.

À lire aussi :
Health Check: which vaccinations should I get as an adult?

A meningococcal B vaccine has been more difficult to produce and requires a different vaccine manufacturing approach. Two meningococcal B vaccines are available and licensed in Australia.

One of these meningococcal B vaccines is now provided on the National Immunisation Program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander infants due to their higher risk of meningococcal B than non-Indigenous infants.

In South Australia, where historically most cases have been caused by group B, the meningococcal B vaccine is provided free through a state-funded program for infants from six weeks of age and for Year 10 students through the school immunisation program.

This followed a large study I led in South Australia of 35,000 senior school students across SA. It showed the meningococcal B vaccine was highly effective in preventing meningococcal B disease but not in reducing the number of young people carrying the disease-causing bacteria in their throat. So the vaccine needs to be given to age groups at highest risk of disease rather than expecting a herd immunity effect by reducing the number of young people carrying the disease causing bacteria in their throats.

In other states, the meningococcal B vaccine can be purchased for around A$120-$140 per dose and is provided through a script from a GP.

Helen Marshall receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. Her institution receives funding from GSK, Sanofi-Pasteur and Pfizer for clinical vaccine trials of which Helen Marshall is an investigator. The herd immunity study in South Australia was sponsored by The University of Adelaide and funded by GSK.

– ref. What is meningococcal disease? What symptoms should I look out for? And how can I prevent it? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-meningococcal-disease-what-symptoms-should-i-look-out-for-and-how-can-i-prevent-it-196393

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenna Crowe-Riddell, Postdoctoral Researcher in Neuroecology, La Trobe University

Snakes have clitorises – and we have given a full anatomical description of them for the first time.

In research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, we describe the size and shape of the snake clitoris (or hemiclitores) across nine species.

We also closely studied the cellular makeup of the clitoris in Australian death adders, finding it to be composed of erectile tissue and bundles of nerves.

The discovery of what appears to be a functional clitoris offers a new perspective on snake courtship and mating.

Read more:
The sex life aquatic: how moving from land to water led to the surprisingly touchy courtship of sea snakes

Finding the snake clitoris

As part of her PhD research, our student Megan Folwell at the University of Adelaide had been dissecting snake specimens in museums. She came across a heart-shaped structure in the female tail, nestled between two scent glands, that she thought was the clitoris (or the hemiclitores, as it is called in snakes) and showed me.

I wasn’t sure what we were looking at, so we got in touch with Patricia Brennan at Mount Holyoke College in the US, who is an expert in how genitals have evolved in vertebrates.

On closer inspection, we found it was a structure full of red blood cells and nerve tissue, as we would expect for erectile tissue. This suggests it is indeed the clitoris, and may swell and become stimulated during mating.

We went on to examine nine different species of snakes representing the major branches of snake evolution. All had a clitoris, though their sizes and shapes varied.

Why didn’t we know about this already?

Across all species, researchers have given female genitalia a lot less attention compared to its male counterpart.

What’s more, it’s hard to get a good look at snake genitalia. It’s all internal to the snake’s tail, for the most part, though the snake penis (or hemipenes) inflates for mating.

There has been quite a bit of research into the snake penis, but the snake clitoris has been missed.

While there are earlier reports, most actually referred to lizards, or mistakenly described the penis or scent glands, or featured only vague descriptions without anatomical references. Studies of species in which intersex individuals are relatively common heightened this confusion.

However, we have shown that the snake clitoris, although it shares its developmental origins with the penis, is very different from the penis – and our detailed anatomical description should help prevent this kind of confusion occurring in future.

A crucial piece of anatomy

In other species, we know the clitoris has important functions in reproduction.

Read more:
All female mammals have a clitoris – we’re starting to work out what that means for their sex lives

Perhaps because many scientists assumed female snakes had no clitoris, and hence no capacity for arousal, it has generally been assumed that mating in snakes is largely a matter of males coercing females.

But a crucial piece of anatomy was missing from this conversation. Our discovery suggests female arousal – and something more like seduction – may play a role.

We still have a lot to learn. It may turn out that variation in the clitoris between species will be correlated with courtship and mating behaviours, and help us understand how females choose mates.

Jenna Crowe-Riddell 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. Snakes have clitorises – https://theconversation.com/snakes-have-clitorises-196553

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Woodcock, Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney

The 2022 FIFA World Cup has certainly attracted plenty of negative press, with scandal from bidding process through to the tournament itself. Yet out of this negativity, one positive storyline has arisen.

With victories over two recent European champions – Spain and Portugal – Morocco have become the first African nation to reach the last four of the World Cup.

Read more:
FIFA’s mirage of unity: why the World Cup is a vessel for political protest

Mapping a path to the final

Could the location of the tournament itself partially explain the Moroccans’ surprise progress? When an Asian side – South Korea in 2002 – similarly broke the duopoly of Europe and the Americas, it was on home soil.

An African squad would have made it to the semifinals 12 years ago in the first World Cup to be hosted on that continent, if not for one of the most infamously unsporting acts in the game’s history, at the hands (literally) of Uruguay’s Luis Suarez.

Now the World Cup is played in the Arab world for the first time and, perhaps not coincidentally, we are seeing a nation from the region reach unprecedented heights.

Geography could matter more than we think

In 21 previous tournaments, only three teams have lifted the trophy without being either hosts or a prior champion. One of those – West Germany in 1954 – did so in a neighbouring country.

Before 2010, no European nation had won the tournament outside Europe and only one non-European nation had won on the continent.

This trend is also seen in continental competitions. The European Championships’ two biggest shocks were Denmark’s 1992 success after initially failing to qualify, and the 2004 championship of rank outsiders Greece. The Danes’ victory came in another Scandinavian nation, and the Greek success was in another Mediterranean country.

Of course, none of this is directly causal. The Moroccans have certainly not reached this lofty stage because the tournament is in a fellow Arab country. As a low-scoring, complex team game, football is one of the hardest sports to predict and every little advantage, even as small as being in a comparable climate, could tip the balance of a game one way or another.

Parallels with other nations

When looking at historical data, the clearest predictor of which sides may be primed to perform better than ever before is their latitude relative to the tournament host. For example, Paraguay’s best run was in South Africa in 2010, at similar latitude, rather than in geographically closer South American nations further south.

Of the 39 nations to reach the tournament at least six times, 23 of those have never bettered their performance at the tournament closest to their home latitude. Almost three-quarters of sides’ best tournaments involved travel less than 10 degrees either north or south.

With Doha less than nine degrees north of the Moroccan capital Rabat, only three other competing nations lie closer to the latitude of Qatar. Two of those have enjoyed historic wins during the earlier group stage of the tournament: Tunisia defeated the reigning champions, and Saudi Arabia took down one of this year’s finalists.

The “world” game?

Even with its huge global appeal, football has been historically slanted towards Europe and the Americas, which may have stifled progress of the game in other regions.

Despite its numerous ongoing flaws, the administration has come a long way since the absurd situation in 1958 when the one place designated for a team from the Asian and African regions was taken by Wales.

Read more:
Morocco at the World Cup: 6 driving forces behind a history-making win

Morocco’s fairytale run should certainly be seen as a huge positive for the game in North Africa, in particular. There do remain numerous “blind spots” in where tournaments have been held.

Rio de Janeiro, where the 1950 and 2010 finals were held, lies within one degree of the Tropic of Capricorn. Amazingly, if you travel north from there, you will only find one World Cup final venue (Mexico City) south of Doha.

Around 40% of the world’s population live between the tropics. This proportion is only increasing, but the game remains dominated by nations outside this region.

It could be argued that the countries most impacted by this geographic bias are African. Nations such as Cameroon and Nigeria have frequently qualified for the World Cup in recent decades, but have never played in a tournament within a 20-degree latitude from home. This would never be the case for a European side.

There was set to be a tournament in a more equatorial region in 1986. When Colombia backed out of hosting less than a year prior, few would have believed that four decades later, the game would still not have revisited this part of the globe.

A sporting chance

Criticisms of the process and politics underlying the 2022 World Cup cannot be overlooked, but the decision to broaden the geographic footprint of host nations can at least be seen as a positive step towards a more reasonable distribution of sporting advantage.

No on-field results will (nor should) lessen the valid criticisms surrounding this tournament, but it would be a shame for the historic achievement for African football to be overlooked.

We can’t definitively know how much of a role geographic proximity played in the Moroccan story, but the case for breaking European and American hegemony over the game is surely established beyond doubt.

Read more:
World Cup 2022: crunching 150 years of big data to predict the winner

Stephen Woodcock 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. Morocco are the first-ever African semifinalists of the World Cup. Here’s what geographical data tell us about this result – https://theconversation.com/morocco-are-the-first-ever-african-semifinalists-of-the-world-cup-heres-what-geographical-data-tell-us-about-this-result-196484

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Zylstra, Adjunct Associate Professor at Curtin University, Research Associate at University of New South Wales, Curtin University

For four years, naturalist Allison Dixon regularly walked from dusk until dawn at the Warrungup Spring bush reserve south of Perth, carefully documenting every western ringtail possum she saw.

The possum – or ngwayir in the language of Traditional Owners – is critically endangered. The species is found only in a small area of southwest Australia, including the population of 22 individuals Dixon was monitoring.

She knew each possum by name. Their voices and physical features were as familiar to her as human faces.

In 2018, a prescribed burn by local authorities was conducted in the Warrungup Spring reserve. Despite burning slowly as planned, it killed 17 of the 22 possums Dixon was monitoring.

I document this incident in a new paper and explore how a carefully controlled fuel reduction burn could cause such catastrophic loss. We must move on from bad fire science to prevent similar tragedies.

The fire-intensity equation

Prescribed burning occurs when authorities intentionally set fire to a particular area of the landscape under defined conditions. The burns are often used to reduce so-called “fuel loads” – fine biomass such as twigs, leaf litter and bark.

As the idea goes, the greater the weight of the fuel load, the more flammable the forest. This theory can be traced back to American fire researcher George Marsden Byram.

In 1959, Byram published an equation beautiful in its simplicity: a fire’s heat output (or intensity) was equal to the amount of energy stored in the fuel, multiplied by the amount of fuel, and multiplied again by the speed the fire spreads and consumes it.

This theory would shape a central tenet of Australian fire management: that prescribed burns are necessary to reduce fuel loads, to make subsequent bushfires less intense.

The influence of Byram’s fire-intensity theory can be seen in an official fire management guide used to inform the burning of ngwayir habitat. The document suggests the animals can survive low-intensity fire – and on the day of the burn that killed 17 ngwayir, weather conditions were conducive to such a fire.

But after years of work in fire management, I’ve come to see Byram’s theory – and the management practices flowing from it – as simplistic. In 2016, my colleagues and I published a new way of modelling fire behaviour. In my latest paper, I applied this model to the Warrungup Spring fire.

Read more:
New modelling on bushfires shows how they really burn through an area

The prescribed burn at Warrungup Spring involved igniting patches of balga grasstrees and their surrounds. I investigated what happened to the air around a hollow in a tree where ngwayir were known to live. A balga grasstree burned during the fire was located under the hollow.

According to Byram’s theory, the fire would have been classed as low-intensity because it did not spread horizontally. But this thinking does not account for the vertical spread of heat and flames.

As depicted in the image below, the supposedly low-intensity fire would have heated the air above it to more than 500℃. This would burn the respiratory tracts of possums inside the hollow in just a few minutes.

Byram’s fire-intensity equation might be valuable as a theoretical construct. But using it to inform real-world fire management can be catastrophic.

As my latest paper describes, Allison Dixon searched for the western ringtail possums the evening after the fire, and each subsequent evening for two weeks.

In some cases, Dixon found the bodies. In others, the presence of flies in high nest hollows indicated the ngwayir inside had perished.

Dixon visited surrounding properties and structures in case the possums had fled the fire ground, but no survivors were identified. She also continued weekly monitoring of their habitat. In the end, 17 of the 22 critically endangered possums were presumed dead.

But the problem runs even deeper

Most fuel load lies in the litter layer on the ground. But we’ve known for decades that burning it away germinates dense understorey regrowth. In fact, WA government records show bushfires are most likely where prescribed burns have occurred, where that regrowth is most dense.

In November this year, a prescribed burn was conducted in the Walpole Wilderness, in dense regrowth stimulated by a previous prescribed burn.

The fire was reportedly meant to protect quokka habitat. But it escaped containment lines and burnt 25,000 hectares – 10,000 more than originally planned, and at a higher-than-intended severity.

One peer-reviewed study appears to show less fire in areas where prescribed burning has been undertaken. But research by my colleagues and I has challenged this study.

The authors of the study in question compared the amount of wildfire in each six-year period with the amount of prescribed fire in the same period. But this method meant that for some of that period, reduced fire frequency was attributed to prescribed burns that had not yet occurred.

Cooperating with nature

Australia has the world’s worst record for mammal extinction – and we know fire is one of the main culprits. Yet prescribed burning relies on outdated or even disproved theories and assumptions about fire.

Bad fire science is killing our threatened species, but alternatives are available.
These approaches reinforce, rather than disrupt, natural ecological controls on forest fire. They include traditional Indigenous fire knowledge, and modern techniques to minimise the extent of dense regrowth in the landscape.

By cooperating with nature to minimise fire risk, we can protect species that have persisted through aeons.

Read more:
Coming of age: research shows old forests are 3 times less flammable than those just burned

Philip Zylstra received funding for this study from the NSW Environmental Trust, Curtin University and the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.

– ref. Bad fire science can kill our threatened species. It’s time to cooperate with nature – https://theconversation.com/bad-fire-science-can-kill-our-threatened-species-its-time-to-cooperate-with-nature-196363

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Paul Murphy, Lecturer in Digital Media, CQUniversity Australia

The Lensa photo and video editing app has shot into social media prominence in recent weeks, after adding a feature that lets you generate stunning digital portraits of yourself in contemporary art styles. It does that for just a small fee and the effort of uploading 10 to 20 different photographs of yourself.

2022 has been the year text-to-media AI technology left the labs and started colonising our visual culture, and Lensa may be the slickest commercial application of that technology to date.

It has lit a fire among social media influencers looking to stand out – and a different kind of fire among the art community. Australian artist Kim Leutwyler told the Guardian she recognised the styles of particular artists – including her own style – in Lensa’s portraits.

Since Midjourney, OpenAI’s Dall-E and the CompVis group’s Stable Diffusion burst onto the scene earlier this year, the ease with which individual artists’ styles can be emulated has sounded warning bells. Artists feel their intellectual property – and perhaps a bit of their soul – has been compromised. But has it?

Well, not as far as existing copyright law sees it.

If it’s not direct theft, what is it?

Text-to-media AI is inherently very complicated, but it is possible for us non-computer-scientists to understand conceptually.

To really grasp the positives and negatives of Lensa, it’s worth taking a couple of steps back to understand how artists’ individual styles can find their way into, and out of, the black boxes that power systems like Lensa.

Lensa is essentially a streamlined and customised front-end for the freely available Stable Diffusion deep learning model. It’s so named because it uses a system called latent diffusion to power its creative output.

The word “latent” is key here. In data science a latent variable is a quality that can’t be measured directly, but can be be inferred from things that can be measured.

When Stable Diffusion was being built, machine-learning algorithms were fed a large number of image-text pairs, and they taught themselves billions of different ways these images and captions could be connected.

This formed a complex knowledge base, none of which is directly intelligible to humans. We might see “modernism” or “thick ink” in its outputs, but Stable Diffusion sees a universe of numbers and connections. And all of this derives from complex mathematics involving the numbers generated from the original image-text pairs.

Because the system ingested both descriptions and image data, it lets us plot a course through the enormous sea of possible outputs by typing in meaningful prompts.

Take the image below as an example. The text prompt included the terms “digital art” and “artstation” – a site that’s home to many contemporary digital artists. During its training, Stable Diffusion learnt to associate these words with certain qualities it identified in the various artworks it was trained on. The result is an image that would fit well on ArtStation.

What makes Lensa stand out?

So if Stable Diffusion is a text-to-image system where we navigate through different possibilities, then Lensa seems quite different since it takes in images, not words. That’s because one of Lensa’s biggest innovations is streamlining the process of textual inversion.

Lensa takes user-supplied photos and injects them into Stable Diffusion’s existing knowledge base, teaching the system how to “capture” the user’s features so it can then stylise them. While this can be done in the regular Stable Diffusion, it’s far from a streamlined process.

Although you can’t push the images on Lensa in any particular desired direction, the trade-off is a wide variety of options that are almost always impressive. These images borrow ideas from other artists’ work, but do not contain any actual snippets of their works.

The Australian Arts Law Centre makes it clear that while individual artworks are subject to copyright, the stylistic elements and ideas behind them are not.

Similarly, the Dave Grossman Designs Inc. v Bortin case in the US established that copyright law does not apply to an art style.

What about the artists?

Nonetheless, the fact that art styles and techniques are now transferable in this way is immensely disruptive and extremely upsetting for artists. As technologies like Lensa becomes more mainstream and artists feel increasingly ripped-off, there may be pressure for legislation to adapt to it.

For artists who work on small-scale jobs, such as creating digital illustrations for influencers or other web enterprises, the future looks challenging.

However, while it is easy to make an artwork that looks good using AI, it’s still difficult to create a very specific work, with a specific subject and context. So regardless of how apps like Lensa shake up the way art is made, the personality of the artist remains an important context for their work.

It may be that artists themselves will need to borrow a page from the influencer’s handbook and invest more effort in publicising themselves.

It’s early days, and it’s going to be a tumultuous decade for producers and consumers of art. But one thing is for sure: the genie is out of the bottle.

Read more:
AI can produce prize-winning art, but it still can’t compete with human creativity

Brendan Paul Murphy 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. No, the Lensa AI app technically isn’t stealing artists’ work – but it will majorly shake up the art world – https://theconversation.com/no-the-lensa-ai-app-technically-isnt-stealing-artists-work-but-it-will-majorly-shake-up-the-art-world-196480

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

At the November 26 Victorian election, Labor won 15 of the 40 upper house seats (down three since 2018), the Coalition 14 (up three), the Greens four (up three), Legalise Cannabis two (up two), the Liberal Democrats one (down one), Animal Justice one (steady), the Shooters one (steady), Labour DLP one (up one) and One Nation one (up one).

Derryn Hinch’s Justice (three seats in 2018), Sustainable Australia (one), Transport Matters (one) and Fiona Patten’s Reason (one) lost all their seats.

I had an article on the likely upper house result on December 1. The Liberal Democrats instead of the Liberals won the final seat in Southeastern Metro region, and the Greens instead of Legalise Cannabis won the final seat in Western Victoria.

Read more:
Labor, Greens and Legalise Cannabis likely to have combined majority in Victorian upper house

The upper house uses the group voting ticket (GVT) system, which allows small parties to unfairly pass larger parties on 100% preference flows from above the line votes. In the federal Senate system, voters are told to number at least six boxes above the line, and preferences are directed by voters.

The table below gives the actual results and what I believe the results would have been using the Senate’s system. LC = Legalise Cannabis in the table. Others are the DLP (former Labor MP Adem Somyurek) in Northern Metro, the Liberal Democrats in Southeaster Metro, the Shooters in Eastern Victoria, and Animal Justice and One Nation in Northern Victoria.

I will analyse each region’s result by the Senate system. With five members to be elected per region, a quota is one-sixth of the vote or 16.7%.

In Northeastern Metro, Labor won 2.02 quotas, the Liberals 1.82, the Greens 0.62 and Labour DLP 0.31. The Liberals and Greens would win the last two seats for an identical result.

In Northern Metro, Labor won 2.00 quotas, the Liberals 1.13, the Greens 1.12, the DLP 0.29, the Victorian Socialists 0.28 and Fiona Patten 0.22. This would be a race between the Socialists and the DLP in the Senate system, and Somyurek may not have won.

In Southeastern Metro, Labor won 2.36 quotas, the Liberals 1.61, the Greens 0.40, Legalise Cannabis 0.32 and the Liberal Democrats 0.22. The Liberals would win a second seat, with the final seat between Labor and the Greens. The Greens would likely attract more left-wing preferences to win this seat. The Greens and the Liberals would replace Legalise Cannabis and the Liberal Democrats.

In Southern Metro, the Liberals won 2.17 quotas, Labor 1.78, the Greens 0.92 and Legalise Cannabis 0.17. Labor and the Greens would win the final two seat for an identical result.

In Western Metro, Labor won 2.22 quotas, the Liberals 1.47, the Greens 0.48, the DLP 0.31 and Legalise Cannabis 0.26. As prominent parties, the Liberals and Greens would likely win the last two seats, with the Greens replacing Legalise Cannabis.

In Eastern Victoria, the Coalition won 2.18 quotas, Labor 1.59, the Greens 0.48, Legalise Cannabis 0.25 and the DLP 0.23. With the right vote for the last seat split between many parties, Labor and the Greens would have a strong chance of both winning the fourth and fifth seats. The Greens would replace a Shooter who won by preference spiral from 0.18 quotas.

In Northern Victoria, the Coalition won 2.10 quotas, Labor 1.73, the Greens 0.42, the Shooters 0.31 and Legalise Cannabis 0.29. The Greens would not have a large enough lead over the Shooters and would probably lose, especially with Labor drawing left votes. Labor and the Shooters would replace One Nation and Animal Justice.

In Western Victoria, Labor won 2.13 quotas, the Coalition 1.62, the Greens 0.52 and Legalise Cannabis 0.30. The Greens and Coalition would win the final two seats for an identical result.

If we want a proportional upper house, we should have a statewide electorate

According to ABC election analyst Antony Green, overall vote shares for the upper house were 33.0% Labor (down 6.2% since the 2018 election), 29.4% Coalition (steady), 10.3% Greens (up 1.1%), 4.1% Legalise Cannabis (new), 3.5% DLP (up 1.4%), 2.6% Liberal Democrats (up 0.2%), 2.1% One Nation (new), 2.0% Shooters (down 1.0%) and 2.0% Family First (new).

The actual results are more proportionate than the results produced by applying the Senate system. Labor won the two party preferred by about 55-45 in the lower house, and left-wing parties (Labor, the Greens, Legalise Cannabis and Animal Justice) have 22 of 40 seats (55% of seats). Left-wing parties swapped preferences with each other, and this helped them to win these seats.

Using the Senate system, Labor and the Greens would have 23 of the 40 seats, and a further seat would go to the left if the Victorian Socialists defeated the DLP for the last seat in Northern Metro.

If the Senate system were applied, there would be no seats for Legalise Cannabis despite a 4.1% statewide vote share, and only two seats for parties other than Labor, the Coalition and Greens; these parties combined won 27.3% of votes.

The smaller parties’ problems are due to the high quota of 16.7% in each region. Getting half a quota on primary votes needs 8.3%; this is required for a good chance of election under the Senate system.

If we want a genuinely proportional upper house, it would be best to scrap the eight regions that each return five members, and just use a single statewide electorate for the upper house.

Unfortunately, Labor embedded the eight five-member electorates in the state constitution after its landslide 2002 victory ended Coalition dominance of the upper house. That means a referendum would be required to switch to a statewide electorate.

Another aspect of the Senate system that assists the left is that the non-Coalition right is very splintered, while the non-Labor left is far more concentrated with the Greens. If GVT were axed but the eight five-member regions retained, parties of the non-Coalition right would need to merge to be competitive.

Lower house: Labor wins 56 of 88 seats

Labor won 56 of the 88 Victorian lower house seats (up one since the 2018 election), the Coalition 27 (steady), the Greens four (up one) and independents zero (down three). The election in one seat (Narracan) was deferred owing to a candidate’s death. The Coalition is likely to win this seat, which would give them 28 seats (up one).

Statewide vote shares were 37.0% Labor (down 5.8% since the 2018 election), 34.4% Coalition (down 0.8%), 11.5% Greens (up 0.8%), 5.4% independents (down 0.6%), 3.1% Family First (new) and 2.5% Animal Justice (up 0.7%). Others including independents and non-Greens minor parties were 17.1% (up 5.8%).

The ABC’s estimated two party vote was 55.0-45.0 to Labor, a 2.6% swing to the Coalition. The exclusion of Narracan biases these two party and primary vote shares slightly towards left-wing parties.

Labor won the three closest seats, defeating the Liberals by a 50.2-49.8 margin in Bass and a 50.4-49.6 margin in Pakenham. In Northcote, Labor defeated the Greens by a 50.2-49.8 margin.

The Nationals defeated sitting independents in Mildura and Shepparton, while the Morwell independent retired. Teal independents only made the final two after preferences in one seat: Mornington, which the Liberals held by a 50.7-49.3 margin, The Liberals held Benambra 50.9-49.1 against an independent challenger.

With a 2.6% statewide swing to the Coalition, they would have been expected to gain seats from Labor, but Labor increased its seats by one on the 2018 landslide. There were several double digit swings to the Liberals, with Greenvale (a 15% swing) the highest swing in a Labor vs Coalition seat.

The Liberals’ problem was that these swings were wasted, with Labor still holding Greenvale by a 57-43 margin. Other double digit swings to the Liberals were wasted in Labor safe seats like Thomastown, Yan Yean, St Albans, Mill Park and Kororoit. Meanwhile, Labor had smaller swings in its favour in four seats that were enough to gain them.

While the Greens only made one gain (Richmond), they had double digit swings in their favour against Labor in Brunswick, Footscray, Pascoe Vale, Richmond and Preston, but could only manage a 1.5% swing in their closest pre-election target (Northcote).

Labor now holds four seats by close margins against the Greens: Northcote (a 0.2% margin), Pascoe Vale (2.0%), Preston (2.1%) and Footscray (4.2%). Margins here subtract 50% from the winning party’s two candidate percentage.

Adrian Beaumont 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. Final Victorian election results: how would upper house look using the Senate system? – https://theconversation.com/final-victorian-election-results-how-would-upper-house-look-using-the-senate-system-196291

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathan Garland, Lecturer in Applied Mathematics and Physics, Griffith University

For the first time, scientists in the US have confirmed a fusion energy experiment achieved net gain. This means releasing more energy than it takes to initiate, demonstrating the physical basis for producing fusion energy in a controlled way.

This historic feat took place at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, using the National Ignition Facility experiment after decades of planning and research.

The milestone used a process called inertial confinement fusion. It involves bombarding a tiny gold cylinder containing a pellet of hydrogen fuel – about the size of a pencil eraser – with the world’s most powerful laser system comprised of 192 laser beams. This produces hot plasma and X-rays that trigger an implosion, compressing the fuel pellet and kicking off a fusion reaction that unleashes energy.

The team at LLNL reports they delivered “2.05 megajoules of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy output”.

To quickly review, the goal of fusion energy is exactly that – to heat up and compress fuel particles so they undergo fusion: merging together to create a heavier atomic particle, unleashing energy in the process.

Fusion is what powers stars like our Sun, but it can only occur under specific conditions. Atoms must be subjected to immense heat and pressure to overcome tremendous physical forces and fuse. It is the opposite of nuclear fission used in current nuclear power plants.

The lofty end goal for harnessing fusion for power production is to generate vast amounts of clean, sustainable electricity.

Read more:
A new twist on fusion power could help bring limitless clean energy

What is ‘net gain’ and why is it a big deal?

Today’s announcement is akin to other historic milestones such as the four-minute mile, or the Wright brothers’ first controlled, sustained flight of a powered aircraft. People had run races before, or experienced temporary flight through gliders, but these milestones had been thought of as impossible pipe dreams. They were eventually made reality through long-term effort – and it feels like this is one of those historic moments for fusion science.

A net gain result in a fusion experiment essentially means producing more energy through fusion reactions than the amount of energy put into the system to start said reaction.

This is usually measured as a Q factor, which is the ratio of energy out to energy in. For decades, the holy grail in fusion science has been achieving Q > 1.

A Q factor of more than 1 means you got out more energy than what you put into the fuel. This is generally known as “scientific breakeven”. The result announced today translates to a Q factor of about 1.5.

The complication around measuring your experiment in this way is that it does not account for energy inefficiencies in how you power the laser from the electricity grid, or how you may generate electricity from the energetic particles created from the fusion reactions. Just like current electricity generation methods, no process is 100% efficient and we lose bits of energy along the way.

When you account for these effects, you then start to talk about an “engineering breakeven”.

Practically, most people seem to think higher Q factors of 10, 100 or even 1,000 might be needed to achieve a viable product for electricity generation from fusion. This is what the fusion community will be striving towards with future efforts.

Read more:
How far has nuclear fusion power come? We could be at a turning point for the technology

How does this result compare to other fusion experiments?

The most popular global approach for confining fusion reactions is not with lasers – as done at LLNL – but with magnetic fields. This method is called magnetic confinement fusion. In the process, the fuel is heated up to kick out electrons from the atoms to create a plasma of electrons and positively charged nuclei. These nuclei are then fused together.

Since the plasma in these fusion devices is hotter than the core of our Sun, strong magnetic fields are used to control the shape and direction of the plasma so it doesn’t damage the walls of the machine.

Magnetic confinement devices have repeatedly reached plasma temperatures of over 100 million degrees Celsius, but to date, net gain has not been reached in such a device. There are plans afoot to hopefully achieve this with the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) under construction in France.

ITER is the world’s biggest science experiment and has been designed to reach a Q factor of 10, producing 500 megawatts of fusion power from 50 megawatts of injected power.

Where to from here?

For now, this result means a lot more to the scientific community than it probably does for folks waiting for a new commercial electricity alternative. We’ll need to be a bit more patient for those prospects.

Whether using lasers or magnetic confinement, fusion scientists around the world need to continue along their path if we’re going to achieve commercially viable fusion power production. As we continue on this journey we’ll likely see continued development of the technologies needed and keep climbing up the ladder towards higher values of Q.

In the short term, this result will likely lead to more concrete plans and funding from government and private industry towards inertial confinement fusion experiments, and hopefully other fusion concepts as well.

For example, following today’s LLNL announcement the US has committed over US$600 million towards the inertial fusion program to build upon this result. This is in addition to their commitment to a “Bold Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy” outlined earlier in 2022.

The achievement is a watershed moment, showing the public, governments, and investors that despite this being an incredibly difficult science and engineering problem to solve, we are making real progress.

It took many years and a great deal of work to launch the first commercial airline flight after the Wright brothers first took to the skies. In much the same way, there is a path ahead for commercial fusion, but we have to put the resources and effort in to get there.

Nathan Garland receives funding from Griffith University. He has previously received funding from the US Department of Energy through its funding of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

– ref. A major ‘fusion breakthrough’ was just officially announced in the US. But what does it actually mean? – https://theconversation.com/a-major-fusion-breakthrough-was-just-officially-announced-in-the-us-but-what-does-it-actually-mean-196474

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Sharman, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of the Sunshine Coast

We all lie to our kids. Some lies – telling them their artwork is wonderful, or that Wiggles band-aids are infused with anaesthetic – benefit the child. Others are just a bit of fun.

Take the Tiktok trend of telling your kids this weird little gnome is a picture of them as a baby:

Or cutting off bits of their hair and pretending it was a naughty elf-on-a-shelf.

Playing tricks on our kids can be a bit of fun for them as well as us, but there are a few golden rules to make sure everyone enjoys the prank.

First, do kids ‘get’ pranks?

From a cognitive point of view, a prank firstly involves an attempt to implant a false belief in the mind of another. For example, I’m about to safely sit on a chair. Then it involves a surprising upending of that belief to reveal a different and typically silly scenario: as I sit, I realise a whoopee cushion has been put on my chair.

Implanting a false belief, or lying, requires a well-developed “theory of mind”. Theory of mind is the ability to understand other people have a different mental state and perspective to your own. You understand the other person is not expecting to sit on a whoopee cushion, and you believe the fart sound it makes will cause a funny surprise to them and those around them.

Children’s brains are undergoing an extraordinary metamorphosis as they grow, with some predictable stages along the way.

Most kids develop a recognisable theory of mind around ages three to four. Parents may notice their child suddenly realises they need to actually communicate their needs (as opposed to chucking tantrums because they’re angry you’re not responding to what they want). This frustration helps to push along the development of theory of mind, language and other social communication skills.

Around four to five years, kids may start to tell lies themselves (albeit badly) and experiment with tricks or pranks of their own as they take their newly formed theory of mind for a spin. So kids over the age of four or five should be able to understand a prank, if you’ve witnessed this change in their theory of mind capacity.

Prior to about the age of 12 when their frontal lobe kicks in, children lack the capacity for critical reasoning.

They are yet to be able to analyse multiple options, assess credibility or reliability and make a reasoned decision. This leaves them quite gullible, relying almost completely on what their parents or trusted carers tell them. So between four and 12, kids are ripe to be pranked and may even pull a few of their own.

Can pranks damage trust? Or might they teach something?

A good prank requires a well-developed theory of mind and a thorough understanding of the mind in which you intend to implant the false belief. You have to know precisely what is required to ensure this specific person will fall for your trick, and how to mask your true intentions every step of the way. You also need to be confident they will respond positively.

In this context, pranking done well can be a sophisticated social interaction and you can both equally get a laugh out of it. It can assist with development of theory of mind and humour and even improve the bond between like-minded people.

Most children don’t bear grudges once Santa and the tooth-fairy are outed. As their brains and understanding grow, so does their empathy and ability to see multiple intentions.

By the time children are around 12, the age of reason will be upon them and they will slowly lose interest in supernatural stories and pretend play, as their understanding of reality improves.

Their mature theory of mind makes it easier to realise their parents were trying to make their life a little bit more fun and magical as a child, and most will go on to do the same for their own kids.

So if pranks are done with humour in mind, most children will be able to see this intention and won’t have feelings of mistrust towards their parents. In other words, they’re probably not going to think “they lied about the whoopee cushion, what else are they lying about?”

Things to bear in mind when pranking kids

1. Know the prankee well. You need to be sure they will find your particular prank funny, and understand their developmental stage and associated interests. It’s worth noting autism typically involves an impaired or atypical theory of mind, meaning people with autism may struggle with this form of humour. Rather than finding it funny they may feel hurt and confused they were lied to

2. be mindful of the power imbalance. “Punching down,” or playing a prank that makes the prankee look foolish or causes them embarrassment might not be taken well. And it might look distasteful to onlookers. Choose a prank you know you will both find funny, or that makes you the butt of the joke as well as the child.

Pranking can spectacularly backfire, especially if the intention is to humiliate the prankee. Many downright nasty and malicious tricks that have no other purpose are sometimes excused as a prank. If this happens, ask the pranker a simple question: “what about this was funny to me? Break it down and explain it to me”.

Should you accidentally cause someone hurt by a poorly targeted prank, it may be wise to hone another social skill: a genuine apology.

Rachael Sharman 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. Is it OK to prank your kids? Do they get it? And where’s the line? – https://theconversation.com/is-it-ok-to-prank-your-kids-do-they-get-it-and-wheres-the-line-195932

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marguerite Johnson, Professor of Classics, University of Newcastle

The 2022 word of the year from the folks at the Oxford English Dictionary is “goblin mode”. Voted by the public and coming in at 93%, “goblin mode” – a phrase, rather than a word, to be precise – expresses a state of being or mindset.

The official definition is:

a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.

“Goblin mode” expresses a response to the anxieties of the pandemic and the challenges of the return to so-called “normality”. It is also about challenging the essentially unattainable ideals expressed on social media. Think: grocery shopping in your pyjamas; talking on your phone while on the toilet; bingeing an entire television series while eating takeaway.

But what about the goblin whose name has been taken in vain? What have goblins ever done to deserve being linked to such anti-social, self-indulgent human behaviour?

And what is a goblin, anyway?

Read more:
Friday essay: why grown-ups still need fairy tales

Hostile creatures known to travel in little gangs

According to the famous English folklorist, Katharine Mary Briggs (1898-1980), goblins are evil and ill-intentioned spirits. Small and ugly in appearance, they are embedded in the rich folklore of the United Kingdom, in particular.

Like all members of the very broad category of “fey”, or the beings of the preternatural world, including fairies, elves, and pixies, goblins are renowned for being tricksy. In other words, they are best avoided.

Different regions in Britain have different goblin types. In Cornwall, for example, the Spriggan tends to inhabit cairns and barrows.

Hostile creatures known to travel in little gangs, Spriggans love guarding special objects as befitting a locale rich in stories of pirates, smugglers and buried treasure.

Also in Cornwall are the Knockers or Buccas. This type of goblin works in the tin mines and lives in nearby caverns, springs, or wells. Cornish folklore presents differing accounts of the Knockers, including stories ranging from their indifference towards their human counterparts to their instigation of mining accidents, rockslides and cave-ins.

What about hobgoblins, then?

Under the category of “hobgoblin” we have nicer goblins that are helpful rather than harmful to humans. Known to be more domesticated than other goblins, hobgoblins tend to find a house, move in, and stay put.

Their presence is often made known in mysterious, unsettling sounds and physical pranks, similar to the actions of poltergeists. Like all fey folk, hobgoblins are most troublesome when they are irritated or provoked.

Perhaps the most famous hobgoblin is Puck from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He is introduced by a fairy who addresses him in Act 2, Scene 1:

Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call’d Robin Goodfellow: are you not he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;⁠
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck:⁠
Are you not he?

Here Shakespeare captures the folkloric essence of the British hobgoblin. Puck is described as a prankster and trickster, as a spirit fond of frightening innocent maidens, turning milk sour, and misleading humans walking at night. Yet he is also depicted as helping humans at work and sometimes bringing them good luck.

Read more:
Eight things you need to know about poltergeists – just in time for Halloween

A complex figure

These varied representations of the British folkloric goblin speak to their embodiment of pure ambivalence. Some are inherently hostile and malevolent, others are unpredictable – both harmful and helpful, and some have good intentions unless antagonised.

In this sense, the goblin is a complex figure, both frightening and yet also intriguing. As such, they may be considered to symbolise the human “shadow self”.

According to Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Carl Jung (1875-1961), the shadow is that part of every human psyche that we strive to keep hidden and repressed.

It may be interpreted as our anti-social self, our lazy, unfriendly, indulgent, hostile, and hurtful self. In this particular manifestation of our shadow self, we may embrace the goblin in its worst form, including its grotesque appearance (remember the dark pandemic days when hair remained unwashed, uncombed, and generally unkempt; and clothes were recycled over days if not weeks?).

But Jung also saw hope in the shadow. It represents our wildness and our enjoyment of intense, wilful self-expression, and our creativity. It is the part of us that stands up to injustice and offence. It can lead us to joyful mischief and laughter. It reminds us that non-conformity is sometimes liberating.

Read more:
Harking back: the ancient pagan festivities in our Christmas rituals

Marguerite Johnson 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. What is a goblin? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-goblin-196135

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Toby Walsh, Professor of AI at UNSW, Research Group Leader, UNSW Sydney

ChatGPT is the latest and most impressive artificially intelligent chatbot yet. It was released two weeks ago, and in just five days hit a million users. It’s being used so much that its servers have reached capacity several times.

OpenAI, the company that developed it, is already being discussed as a potential Google slayer. Why look up something on a search engine when ChatGPT can write a whole paragraph explaining the answer? (There’s even a Chrome extension that lets you do both, side by side.)

But what if we never know the secret sauce behind ChatGPT’s capabilities?

The chatbot takes advantage of a number of technical advances published in open scientific literature in the past couple of decades. But any innovations unique to it are secret. OpenAI could well be trying to build a technical and business moat to keep others out.

What it can (and can’t do)

ChatGPT is very capable. Want a haiku on chatbots? Sure.

Chatbots, oh so wise

Endlessly processing

Answers from the void.

How about a joke about chatbots? No problem.

Why did the chatbot cross the road?

To get to the other side – of your screen!

ChatGPT can do many other tricks. It can write computer code to a user’s specification, draft business letters or rental contracts, compose homework essays and even pass university exams.

Just as important is what ChatGPT can’t do. For instance, it struggles to distinguish between truth and falsehood. It is also often a persuasive liar.

What is the fastest marine mammal?

The fastest marine mammal is the sailfish.

The sailfish is not a mammal.

You are correct, the sailfish is not a mammal. I apologize for the mistake. The fastest marine mammal is the peregrine falcon.

ChatGPT is a bit like autocomplete on your phone. Your phone is trained on a dictionary of words so it completes words. ChatGPT is trained on pretty much all of the web, and can therefore complete whole sentences – or even whole paragraphs.

However, it doesn’t understand what it’s saying, just what words are most likely to come next.

Open only by name

In the past, advances in AI have been accompanied by peer-reviewed literature.

In 2018, for example, when the Google Brain team developed the BERT neural network on which most natural language processing systems are now based (and we suspect ChatGPT is too), the methods were published in peer-reviewed scientific papers and the code was open-sourced.

And in 2021, DeepMind’s AlphaFold 2, a protein-folding software, was Science’s Breakthrough of the Year. The software and its results were open-sourced so scientists everywhere could use them to advance biology and medicine.

Following the release of ChatGPT, we have only a short blog post describing how it works. There has been no hint of an accompanying scientific publication, or that the code will be open-sourced.

To understand why ChatGPT could be kept secret, you have to understand a little about the company behind it.

OpenAI is perhaps one of the oddest companies to emerge from Silicon Valley. It was set up as a non-profit in 2015 to promote and develop “friendly” AI in a way that “benefits humanity as a whole”. Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and other leading tech figures pledged US$1 billion towards its goals.

Their thinking was we couldn’t trust for-profit companies to develop increasingly capable AI that aligned with humanity’s prosperity. AI therefore needed to be developed by a non-profit and, as the name suggested, in an open way.

In 2019 OpenAI transitioned into a capped for-profit company (with investors limited to a maximum return of 100 times their investment) and took a US$1 billion investment from Microsoft so it could scale and compete with the tech giants.

It seems money got in the way of OpenAI’s initial plans for openness.

Profiting from users

On top of this, OpenAI appears to be using feedback from users to filter out the fake answers ChatGPT hallucinates.

According to its blog, OpenAI initially used reinforcement learning in ChatGPT to downrank fake and/or problematic answers using a costly hand-constructed training set.

But ChatGPT now seems to be being tuned by its more than a million users. I imagine this sort of human feedback would be prohibitively expensive to acquire in any other way.

We are now facing the prospect of a significant advance in AI using methods that are not described in the scientific literature and with datasets restricted to a company that appears to be open only in name.

Where next?

In the past decade, AI’s rapid advance has been in large part due to openness by academics and businesses alike. All the major AI tools we have are open-sourced.

But in the race to develop more capable AI, that may be ending. If openness in AI dwindles, we may see advances in this field slow down as a result. We may also see new monopolies develop.

And if history is anything to go by, we know a lack of transparency is a trigger for bad behaviour in tech spaces. So while we go on to laud (or critique) ChatGPT, we shouldn’t overlook the circumstances in which it has come to us.

Unless we’re careful, the very thing that seems to mark the golden age of AI may in fact mark its end.

Read more:
The ChatGPT chatbot is blowing people away with its writing skills. An expert explains why it’s so impressive

Toby Walsh receives funding from the Australian Research Council via a Laureate Fellowship on Trustworthy AI.

– ref. Everyone’s having a field day with ChatGPT – but nobody knows how it actually works – https://theconversation.com/everyones-having-a-field-day-with-chatgpt-but-nobody-knows-how-it-actually-works-196378

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Sharman, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of the Sunshine Coast

There’s an annual underground phenomena happening right now around Australia: couples who have decided to separate, but are putting on a happy face to perform their final Christmas as an intact family. January is known by family court lawyers as “divorce month” for this very reason.

Compared to 2020, last year saw an increase of nearly 14% in divorces granted in Australia. Nearly half of those couples had children aged under 18 years.

Some of this increase is put down to changes in court processing times. But some of it is also likely due to enforced time together in lockdown making relationship difficulties worse (COVID divorces).

These numbers are further expanded by same-sex couples who were granted the right to marry in 2017, and who are now also starting to trickle through the divorce system.

Separation has important impacts on kids. There are a higher number of mental health problems observed in children from one-parent, step or blended families compared to those living in their original family.

There is also a well-established link between high levels of post-separation parental conflict and childhood maladjustment.

Studies suggest the relationship between the parents post-separation strongly influences the development of childhood problems. With hostile, disengaged or unconstructive conflict behaviours particularly associated with maladaptive childhood behaviours.

So what can parents do to best prepare their kids and avoid falling into the same old interpersonal conflicts that have led them to separate in the first place?

1. Tell them together

First of all, tell your kids what is happening as a united front. Sit them down in a quiet time with no distractions (TV, devices) where they will have plenty of time to process the information and ask questions (not as you’re about to rush off to an appointment).

Read more:
How will my divorce affect my kids?

2. Keep the adult arguments out of it

Keep your personal/adult arguments off the table. Even if there has been infidelity, addiction, strong feelings of betrayal or blame, that is not your children’s burden.

One exception may be if you have older teenage kids who may have figured out on their own what has been going on. In which case honesty is the best policy – if they are older, smarter and have it half-figured out, prepare yourself for an uncomfortable grilling.

3. Prepare for a range of reactions

Just as some children are blindsided by the news of their parents’ impending separation, some parents are equally shocked at the reaction of their children.

They may seem rather ambivalent, or become immediately distressed and even angry. They may side with one parent from the outset or beg you both to work it out. It’s near impossible to predict how children will respond in these scenarios.

Keep to the high ground, reassure them none of this is their fault and that they are loved and cared for. Don’t be tempted to “defend” yourself or bag the other parent in what may be an emotional and tense moment.

4. Focus on the practical

Most kids – from youngsters to teens – will want to know how this is going to affect them. Where will they live, go to school, can they still play footy? Make sure you and your partner have at least some idea of a negotiated parenting plan going in.

Mediation via Relationships Australia can help with this aspect for those who are struggling to reach agreement.

Read more:
What type of relationship should I have with my co-parent now we’re divorced?

5. Let others know

It’s probably a good idea to alert your close and trusted family members before you tell the kids. They can help provide support for upset children, and a friendly ear to your own difficulties. Your parents/siblings and even aunts/uncles may know you and your kids individually well enough to tailor useful supports as well.

If you have a good relationship with your child’s school let their teachers know what is happening – they can be on the lookout for any obvious adjustment difficulties and refer kids to school-based supports if necessary.

6. Talk about it

Remember this won’t be a one-and-done discussion. Children are likely to come back to you with more questions and requests as your new lives take shape.

It’s also worth remembering that as they get older, children may “re-process” the events differently, with their new, improved, older brain. Questions that didn’t occur to them at four years of age may suddenly crop up at 14 years (“Why did you leave?” “Did you try counselling?”).

7. Stick to it

It’s best to strive for a new relationship together as amicable co-parents. Negative talk about the other parent is effectively criticising 50% of your child’s DNA – they won’t thank you for it in the long run.

Disagreements about parenting plans, and things like where to spend Christmas are likely to arise. Have a plan in place to keep difficult discussions out of earshot of youngsters and don’t be afraid to use a mediator if you hit a roadblock.

Read more:
How to co-parent after divorce

Couples don’t go into a romantic partnership expecting it to dissolve, but roughly a third of Australian marriages will end in divorce and nearly half of those un-couplings will involve minor children.

While you may have moved on from each other, your capacity to co-parent well will have a huge influence on how your child adjusts to their new family structure. Buffering them from unnecessary harm is a worthy priority from the get-go.

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

– ref. Are you and your partner thinking of separating? Here’s how to protect the kids’ mental health – https://theconversation.com/are-you-and-your-partner-thinking-of-separating-heres-how-to-protect-the-kids-mental-health-194912

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zsofia Korosy, Postdoctoral Fellow in Law, UNSW Sydney

At the crucial COP15 nature summit in Canada, almost 200 countries are reckoning with the world’s extraordinary loss of the variety of life. Climate change, mining, urban development and more are threatening Earth’s biodiversity to an extent never before witnessed in human history.

The conference will see countries negotiate a global 2030 plan, called the Global Biodiversity Framework, to set worldwide targets for a range of issues, from establishing national parks to habitat destruction. The framework will hopefully be delivered by next Monday (19 December).

But so far, the draft text is lacking a fundamental element: adequate inclusion of language and perspectives from Indigenous peoples and local communities. Without Indigenous and local community leadership, any biodiversity targets will remain out of reach.

Despite comprising less than 5% of the global population, Indigenous peoples protect an estimated 80% of global biodiversity. Yet, the capacity of Indigenous peoples and local communities to continue to exercise this stewardship is being actively eroded across the world. Issues of power and inclusion in the current draft framework must therefore be resolved.

Indigenous and local community leadership is critical

Indigenous land management delivers better outcomes for biodiversity – the fabric of life on Earth.

Indigenous peoples influence management of more than a quarter of land on Earth. Indigenous lands account for at least 40% of global protected lands. And an estimated 80% of global biodiversity is on lands owned, occupied or used by Indigenous peoples.

Read more:
Indigenous lands have less deforestation than state-managed protected areas in most of tropics

A 2019 study involving Australia, Brazil and Canada found total numbers of birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles were highest on lands managed or co-managed by Indigenous communities.

Another study last year looked at tropical forests in Africa, central and South America and the Asia Pacific region. It found deforestation rates on Indigenous lands were between 17 and 26% lower on average, compared to unprotected tropical forests worldwide.

Yet, maintaining and expanding Indigenous forms of land management is threatened by other interests, such as mining, transport, energy production and distribution, and commodity production.

The former Bolsonaro administration’s attacks on Indigenous rights in Brazil is a clear example. There, the combination of human rights violations and unsustainable extraction led to murders, cultural erosion, and degradation of forest ecosystems.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific Islands, climate change reduces the capacity of local people to care for their ecosystems and threatens their livelihoods. For example, warming waters due to climate change will alter the breeding patterns and habitats of many coastal fish species.

Indigenous and local knowledge is key to ensuring the resilience of marine ecosystems in the Pacific in the face of global environmental change.

Resolving issues of power and inclusion

The Global Biodiversity Framework is important because, if concluded, it will set more than 20 worldwide targets for biodiversity.

One key target being negotiated is to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030, commonly referred to as the 30×30 Initiative.

Another addresses inclusion and participation, particularly as it relates to Indigenous peoples and local communities. This target exists thanks to efforts of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity.

Read more:
Avoiding climate breakdown depends on protecting Earth’s biodiversity — can the COP15 summit deliver?

But considerable disagreement still surrounds the language of targets such as these.

In negotiated text, square brackets are placed around words on which countries do not yet agree. Much of the current text of the framework remains in brackets.

As we enter the final week of negotiations, the extent of remaining disagreement is deeply concerning. There is a risk that, even if the framework is concluded, it will include, at best, heavily watered down targets.

Indigenous representatives have raised significant concerns about the lack of language and perspectives of Indigenous peoples and local communities in the framework’s draft text.

The International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity highlights issues with the negotiation process as well as the text itself.

For example, the 30×30 Initiative aims to use area-based conservation measures, such as protected areas or parks. Many Indigenous people are concerned about how this target could affect their rights.

Indigenous people worldwide have experienced exclusion from their ancestral homes, often in the name of “conservation” or under the guise of “wilderness”. The rationale is that it’s necessary to remove people and their practices to protect land and seascapes rich with diverse life.

For example, in South East Asia the traditional farming method of swidden cultivation has been banned or disincentivised as part of larger conservation programs, despite evidence that the practice supports livelihoods and ecosystem health.

Such exclusion of Indigenous people ignores their important roles over millenia securing and maintaining biodiversity over lands and seas for thousands of years.

The negotiation process makes it difficult for key voices to be heard. Large Ocean Island States of the Pacific – such as Fiji, Kiribati and Cook Islands – often have to negotiate as a bloc to ensure their voices and concerns are heard amid competing changes to framework text.

This is even more difficult for Indigenous peoples. During negotiations, countries speak first on which text they’d like amended. This ordering process means Indigenous peoples have two options.

One, they can work with countries to negotiate on their behalf. Or two, they have to wait until all countries have had their turn to speak.

Waiting for other countries to speak can take a long time, often leading well into the night before Indigenous peoples and observers can speak and texts are accepted (if there is agreement).

There are positive signs

Encouragingly, Indigenous participation and influence in global environmental agreements has increased over time.

There are also positive signs from the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People – an intergovernmental group of more than 100 countries. This coalition has increasingly shifted its position to acknowledge the people who help conserve nature as the negotiations have progressed.

Read more:
‘Revolutionary change’ needed to stop unprecedented global extinction crisis

But Indigenous representation at these forums, including voting for preferred text, remains vital. And Indigenous people’s rights must be reflected in the way targets are set. Different types of Indigenous conservation areas around the world must be recognised and, importantly, properly funded and resourced.

Also crucial is for all Pacific nations, including Australia and New Zealand, to ratify the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing, which deals with the respect for and protection of Indigenous knowledge.

Unless rapid and transformative change occurs across societies and economies, we risk losing much of the variety of life. Indigenous leadership is fundamental to stop this from happening.

Zsofia Korosy receives funding from the Sustainable Development Reform Hub at UNSW for a project on Power and Inclusion in Biodiversity Governance.

Anthony Burke is a Principal of the Planet Politics Institute.

Daniel Robinson receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a Discovery Project called Indigenous Knowledge Futures, and previously received funding from the EU and GIZ for a project called ABS Initiative for implementing the Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity in the Pacific.

Katie Moon received funding from the Sustainable Development Reform Hub at UNSW for a project on Power and Inclusion in Biodiversity Governance.

Margaret Raven receives funding from: Australian Research Council. National Health and Medical Research Council.

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

– ref. Without Indigenous leadership, attempts to stop the tide of destruction against nature will fail – https://theconversation.com/without-indigenous-leadership-attempts-to-stop-the-tide-of-destruction-against-nature-will-fail-196208

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jay Rutovitz, Research Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

To get Australia’s grid 82% powered by renewables by 2030 is a huge increase. At present, the electricity powering eastern and southern states is around 33% renewable.

To get there means a lot of work. Over the next seven years, it would be equivalent to installing dozens of large wind turbines every month, and tens of thousands of solar panels every day.

And work needs workers. To make this happen, our modelling shows 15,000 more workers are needed by 2025 – less than three years away. That’s amid a skills shortage, an infrastructure boom and unemployment rates at the lowest level in decades.

So how to do it? We need to train more skilled workers and give them more security. Renewable projects have tended to operate on boom-bust cycles when it comes to jobs. But to get where we need to be, we need to shift to a long-term boom mentality. We’re going to need people doing these jobs for decades to come.

How big is this issue?

Big. Getting to 82% renewables and fast means we need to greatly scale up the electricity sector workforce in generation, storage and transmission line construction.

We estimate the current workforce is around 41,000, including 12,000 working in coal and gas power stations or supplying those power stations with fuel. This is only an estimate, as updated figures won’t be available until the federal government delivers its promised energy employment report.

Read more:
Wind turbines off the coast could help Australia become an energy superpower, research finds

Australia’s energy market operator, AEMO, publishes regularly updated pathways to a clean-energy future. Now we have federal backing for accelerated timelines, the most likely outcome is the so-called “step change scenario”. This scenario envisages nine times more wind and solar by 2050, to boost capacity to 141 gigawatts, and four times more rooftop solar.

Under this scenario, 15,000 more workers must be ready and able to build and operate renewables and storage, or build transmission lines, by 2025.

The problem is, these workers don’t exist at present. Many existing skilled workers are already paid well by major infrastructure projects, such as metro rail projects in Melbourne and Sydney and regional projects such as inland rail. What’s more, unemployment rates are the lowest in decades, and peak demand for labour to build wind and solar projects is set to outstrip the entire current workforce in some regional areas where the renewable projects will be concentrated.

To add to the challenge, skilled workers tend to live in major population centres – but clean energy projects are virtually all in the regions. So the clean energy sector must compete with big infrastructure projects in the cities, which pay more and don’t involve travel. You can see the challenge. If we don’t get this right, the clean energy transition just won’t happen.

The common answer to workforce shortages is to train more workers. But here, too, there are challenges. Our skilled training sector has long been in the doldrums, with demand spread thin across far-flung regions and policy uncertainty leaving many gaps in capacity.

15,000 new skilled workers are just the start

We modelled the workforce needed to achieve three of the AEMO scenarios: the step change, the hydrogen superpower and the slow change. We also modelled an offshore wind scenario, using AEMO’s modified step change “sensitivity” which takes into account Victoria’s ambitious target for offshore wind.

Under the step change scenario, we found the demand for skilled jobs will increase 37,000 from 2023 and peak at 81,000 in 2049.

But if Australia becomes a major exporter of renewable energy in the form of green hydrogen or green ammonia, as backers like iron ore billionaire Twiggy Forrest are hoping, that’s a different story. It would require up to twice the workers of the step-change scenario in the 2030s, and up to triple in the 2040s.

That’s a staggering peak demand of 237,000 jobs, with an average demand of 110,000. To get there, we would need 34,000 extra workers within three years.

Where will the jobs be? New South Wales will be the leading state in most scenarios, with a demand for over 20,000 skilled workers annually until 2050 under the step-change scenario. Across NSW, Queensland and Victoria, the job split by technologies is very similar in this scenario: 37% of jobs in solar, 27–30% for wind, and 17–22% in batteries. The pattern is similar in the offshore wind and slow-change scenarios.

What about the hydrogen superpower scenario? This would change things dramatically. Here, the highest demand for renewable jobs would be in Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania. Compared to the step-change scenario, Queensland would add over 100,000 jobs, while jobs in South Australia would more than treble and Tasmania quadruple from 2,200 to 9,400. Relatively modest growth is projected for NSW and Victoria – 4,000 new jobs in both states compared to the step change.

We can’t just leave it to the market

Coordinated action is needed to plan and implement skills, training and workforce development. Here, state and territory governments can build on the recent creation of Renewable Energy Zones – essentially, renewable rich areas where transmission lines exist or will be built – to boost collaboration between industry and government on training strategies and programs.

Workforce planning should be brought into overall energy system planning, to help reduce the employment boom-bust cycle. Most electricity planning favours “just in time” construction, where infrastructure is built as it is needed. That means demand for labour is volatile. The NSW government has created an electricity infrastructure jobs advocate and created EnergyCo to co-ordinate the development of the renewable energy zones and maximise local benefits.

Given current shortages of workers, it’s vital governments take action now. Acting early would help future-proof our clean energy workforce and maximise benefits for regional areas. Even better, we could help boost numbers of workers from under-represented groups such as women and First Nations communities.

Read more:
How can Aboriginal communities be part of the NSW renewable energy transition?

Jay Rutovitz received funding for this work from the RACE for 2030 CRC, the Government of NSW, and the Government of Victoria. The Australian Energy Market Operator was a partner in the work.

Chris Briggs received funding for this research from the RACE for 2030 CRC, the Government of NSW, and the Government of Victoria. The Australian Energy Market Operator was a partner in the work.

Rusty Langdon received funding for this research from the RACE for 2030 CRC, the Government of NSW, and the Government of Victoria. The Australian Energy Market Operator was a partner in the work.

– ref. To clean up Australia’s power grid, we’re going to need many thousands more skilled workers – and fast – https://theconversation.com/to-clean-up-australias-power-grid-were-going-to-need-many-thousands-more-skilled-workers-and-fast-195906

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Hume, Lecturer In Theatre (Voice), Victorian College of the Arts, The University of Melbourne

Have you ever thought about your pronunciation of the word “no”? If you say it out loud now, can you sense the movement of your tongue and lips as you form the “o” sound? You may notice there’s a lot to the pronunciation of the word in an Australian accent.

Clips of Australians saying this short, two-letter word have been trending on TikTok over the last year, with listeners fascinated by its pronunciation.

Speakers from outside Australia are also having a go at pronouncing the word themselves. Interestingly, when they write it out, they spell the word “naur”.

So, what is it people are hearing in the Aussie “no”, and why do they think there is an “r” sound at the end?

Read more:
Oi! We’re not lazy yarners, so let’s kill the cringe and love our Aussie accent(s)

What sorts of sounds make up speech?

To be able to understand what is happening in an Australian pronunciation of the word, we need to first have a look at some of the elements of speech. Words are made up of vowels and consonants, and vowels themselves can be long or short.

Try saying out loud these words with long vowels: keep, dawn, far, soon and curl. Now these words with short vowels: cat, bed, hut, kid, nod and put.

Short and long vowels are all examples of monophthongs, vowels that have one single vowel element from start to finish.

Another category of vowels is diphthongs. These are vowels that have two distinct elements in one syllable. Words such as loud, prize, bay and void all contain diphthongs.

If we focus on the word “void”, try mouthing this word slowly as you say it out loud, and you may be able to sense your lips starting rounded in the shape of “aw” and then spreading to the shape of “ee”. Even though there are two distinct shapes within the vowel, the entire sound comprises one syllable, so it is called a diphthong.

Read more:
The Aussie accent is drink-related? That’s just a hangover from our cultural cringe

Okay, so what about the word ‘no’?

What can happen in the word “no” is that the vowel becomes a triphthong – meaning there are three distinct elements to the vowel sound within one syllable.

While some Australian speakers would pronounce “no” as a diphthong, starting on “oh” as in dog and ending on “oo” as in put, others begin with an unstressed “a” (the sound at the end of the word “sofa”), then move to the “oh” and then “oo”.

Triphthongs are far less common, we don’t hear them often, which could be why the sound stands out to listeners.

You might be wondering how a speaker comes to pronounce “no” as a triphthong, when other words with the same vowel (such as boat, cone, loaf and oak) are pronounced as diphthongs. This could occur because the word “no” is an example of what linguists call an open syllable, meaning it has no consonant at its close. This allows the speaker to lengthen the vowel and draw it out – a feature we love in different Australian accents!

In actor-training, we view vowels and consonants as having two different roles in language: vowels are the emotional components of words, and consonants are the intellect. In a word like “no”, a lot of emotion and feeling can be conveyed in the vowel, allowing a variety of meaning to come through in its pronunciation.

Just think of how many meanings the word “no” can have, from a polite “No” to an emphatic “No!”, to an unsure or contemplative “Noooo”. You would say the word in hundreds of different ways every week. Using intonation, modulation and emphasis, the word is given meaning depending on how you say it.

But where does the ‘r’ come in?

To return to the spelling that has taken off on TikTok – why do people think they hear an “r” at the end of an Australian pronunciation?

It could be that the listener is linking the sound to ones they have in their own accent. Another possibility is that when an Australian speaker holds the final part of the triphthong (the short “oo” as in “put”), their tongue may be moving closer to the roof of their mouth, beginning to sound like an “r”. However, they wouldn’t be going there consciously, and it may not feel anything like an “r” to them!

It’s important to note there are many varieties of Australian accents and not every speaker would pronounce “no” in the ways discussed here. Social media has created new platforms for sharing the voices of everyday speakers, not just those trained for media, stage, or screen. We’re now hearing different accent varieties that otherwise may not be heard by a global audience.

Read more:
Curious Kids: Why do Aussies have a different accent to Canadians, Americans, British people and New Zealanders?

Amy Hume 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. Naur, yeah: Australia, you’re performing linguistic magic when you pronounce the two-letter word ‘no’. Here’s why – https://theconversation.com/naur-yeah-australia-youre-performing-linguistic-magic-when-you-pronounce-the-two-letter-word-no-heres-why-194519

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

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

In this podcast Michelle and politics + society editor Amanda Dunn review the year, which is finishing with the surprise recall of federal parliament to pass the Albanese government’s legislation to contain power price increases. They also canvass what’s coming up in 2023, when the government will be grappling with the cost of living crisis, the May budget, and the Voice referendum.

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

– ref. Word from The Hill: 2022 retrospective, and a look at 2023 – https://theconversation.com/word-from-the-hill-2022-retrospective-and-a-look-at-2023-196493