Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Potts, Professor of Economics, RMIT University

Bitcoin continues to trade close to its all-time high reached this month. Its price is now around US $34,000 — up about 77% over the past month and 305% over the past year.

First launched in 2009 as a digital currency, Bitcoin was for a while used as digital money on the fringes of the economy.

It has since become mainstream. Today, it’s used almost exclusively as a kind of “digital gold”. That is to say, a scarce digital asset.

In response to the risk of economic collapse due to COVID, governments around the world have flooded global markets with money created by central banks, in order to boost spending and help save the economy.

But increasing the supply of money erodes its value and leads people to look for inflation-resistant assets to hold. In this climate, Bitcoin has become a hedge against looming inflation and poor returns on other types of assets.

What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, has a current circulating supply of 18,590,300 bitcoins and a maximum supply of 21,000,000.

This limit is hard-coded into the Bitcoin protocol and can’t be changed. It creates artificial scarcity, which ensures the digital money increases in value over time.

Whereas government-issued currencies such as the Australian dollar can have their supply increased at will by central banks, Bitcoin has a fixed supply that can’t be inflated by political decisions.

Read more: Curious Kids: why don’t poorer countries just print more money?

Bitcoin is predominantly traded on online cryptocurrency exchanges, but can also be sent, received and stored in “digital wallets” on specific hardware or smartphone applications.

But perhaps the most groundbreaking aspect of the Bitcoin network is that it draws on the work of cryptographers and computer scientists to exist as a blockchain-based digital currency.

A public blockchain is an “immutable” database, which means the record of transaction history can’t be changed.

A functional and decentralised digital currency

Bitcoin is “decentralised”. In other words, it functions via a dispersed peer-to-peer network, rather than through a central authority such as a central bank.

And it does this through the participation of Bitcoin “miners”. This is anyone who chooses to run software to validate Bitcoin transactions on the blockchain. Typically, these people are actively engaged with cryptocurrency.

They are rewarded with bitcoins, more of which are created every ten minutes. But the reward paid to miners halves every four years.

This gradual reduction was encoded into the network by creator Satoshi Nakamoto, who designed it this way to mimic the process of extracting actual gold — easier at first, but harder with time.

Bitocoin miners today earn 6.25 bitcoins for every block mined, down from 50 bitcoins in the early years. This creates an incentive to get involved early, as scarcity increases with time.

Because of this, the price is expected to rise to meet demand. But because future scarcity is known in advance (predictable at four-year intervals), the halving events tend to already be priced in.

Therefore, massive surges and falls in price typically reflect changing demand conditions, such as a growing number of new institutional investors. More and more public companies are now investing in bitcoin.

But what function does Bitcoin provide for society that has people so invested?

Read more: Bitcoin halving Q&A: what it’s all about and what it means for the cryptocurrency

Why does Bitcoin matter?

There are a few possible explanations as to why Bitcoin is now deemed significant by so many people.

• It’s a “safe” asset

In the face of global uncertainty, buying bitcoins is a way for people to diversify their assets. Its market value can be compared to that of another go-to asset that shines in times of trouble: gold.

Amid the turmoil of a global pandemic, an unconventional US presidential handover and geopolitical power shifts the world over, it’s possible more people view gold and Bitcoin as better alternatives to dollars.

• It ties into privacy-oriented ideologies

Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency in general) is not politically and ideologically neutral. It was born of the internet era, one plagued with grave concerns for privacy.

Bitcoin’s intellectual and ideological origins are in the “cypherpunk” movement of the 1990s and early 2000s.

Records of online forums show it was advocated for as an anonymous digital currency that allowed people to interact online without being tracked by governments or corporations, offering an alternative for anyone who distrusts the Federal central banking system.

Perhaps the overt rise of digital surveillance in response to the COVID pandemic has further stoked fears about online privacy and security — again piquing the public’s interest in Bitcoin’s potential.

Why is Bitcoin booming?

Bitcoin’s recent boom in value comes down to a combination of three factors: ideology, social sentiment and hope.

But although these are variable factors, this doesn’t discredit the significance of the digital economy, interest in the technology as it matures and the influence of institutional investors in cryptocurrency, including Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is in an upward market trend, also known as “bull market” territory.

It was designed to increase in value over time through the rules Nakamoto wrote into its software code — which Bitcoin’s most outspoken advocates, known as “maximalists”, vehemently defend.

Imagining new futures

From a larger frame of reference, decentralised cryptocurrencies allow new ways to coordinate without the need for a central arbiter.

And decentralised blockchain-based networks don’t just enable digital money. Similar to ordinary smartphone apps, software developers around the world are building decentralised applications (DApps) on top of Bitcoin and other blockchain protocols.

They have introduced other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum, which are also open platforms for the public.

Other DApps include decentralised financial (DeFi) tools for prediction markets, cryptocurrency borrowing and lending, investing and crowd-funding.

Nakamoto’s audacious experiment in digital currency is working as intended. And what really deserves attention now is what this means for our digital, physical and social futures.

Read more: Bitcoin’s rebound: 3 reasons this bubble may not burst

– ref. Why is Bitcoin’s price at an all-time high? And how is its value determined? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-bitcoins-price-at-an-all-time-high-and-how-is-its-value-determined-152616

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hart, Member of the Emeritus Faculty, Australian National University

This week, the US Congress will put the finishing touches to the chaotic, protracted 2020 US presidential election.

A joint session of the House and Senate will assemble at 1pm on January 6 (5am AEDT/7am NZDT on January 7) as the votes cast by the 538-member Electoral College following the November election are opened, counted and certified. The president of the Senate (who also happens to be Vice President Mike Pence) will then finally declare the winner.

Usually, this process generates very little public attention because it is essentially just a formal ratification of an outcome the American public has known for almost two months.

But this year will be different because a small group of President Donald Trump’s surrogates in the House and Senate have indicated they will challenge the certification and votes of the electors in what will be a futile attempt to delay the announcement of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

According to a statement by the senators leading the effort,

Congress should immediately appoint an Electoral Commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states.

Once completed, individual states would evaluate the commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed.

The move by this small group of Republican lawmakers is almost sure to fail since the Democratic majority in the House will reject the challenges, and a fair number of Republicans have said they would vote against them, too.

At most, this last-ditch attempt to overturn the election result, based on Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud, will only delay the inevitable. This could take anywhere from a few hours to a day or so, depending on how many separate challenges are made.

How the process will play out

The procedure for dealing with these challenges is based on the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

This is how the drama will unfold. When Pence announces the electoral vote tally from each state, he will call for any objections. According to federal law, the objection must be made in writing and

shall state clearly and concisely, and without argument, the ground thereof, and shall be signed by at least one senator and one member of the House of Representatives.

When an objection is announced, the two houses of Congress will retire immediately and, in separate sessions, debate the objection for a maximum of two hours with no member speaking for more than five minutes or more than once. A vote on the objection is then taken.

Under the law, Congress can only reject electoral votes that have not been “regularly given”, but both the House and Senate must agree to do so. Congress doesn’t have the power to replace a state’s electors.

Read more: How is the American President elected?

The challenges are expected to come against Biden victories in as many as five so-called “battleground” states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The Republican rebels leading the charge against the election result know the numbers are not in their favour. As the senators note in their statement,

We are not naïve. We fully expect most if not all Democrats, and perhaps more than a few Republicans, to vote otherwise.

And despite Trump’s tweet declaring the “vice president has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors”, the reality is, Pence doesn’t. A federal judge rejected a lawsuit last week seeking to pressure Pence to do just that.

The damage that has been done

The motivations behind the Republican challengers are not entirely clear, though some believe they are thinking only of their own political futures, including a potential run for the 2024 presidential nomination.

However, what is clear is this will be the final legal attempt to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election — since there is still no substantial evidence of fraud, corruption, rigged voting machines or any other misconduct that Trump and his surrogates have alleged.

Read more: Even if Biden has a likely win, leading a deeply divided nation will be difficult

It may take some time, but the 306 electoral votes won by Biden on election day will eventually be deemed to be “regular” — to use the official term. And Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be sworn into office at noon on January 20, regardless of whether Trump continues to object.

But the cost of these actions will be immense. The cumulative effect of over 50 misguided court cases at the state and federal level, the failed attempts to persuade Republican-controlled state legislatures to overturn their states’ electoral votes, and the latest effort to pressure the secretary of state of Georgia to conjure up 11,780 more votes for Trump, have damaged the electoral process and American democracy itself.

Moreover, the willingness of Republican lawmakers in Congress to continue to back Trump’s ineffectual efforts to overturn the results of an election — without any evidence of wrongdoing or hopes of succeeding — only compounds the damage further.

It is, as Republican Senator Ben Sasse said in opposing the electoral vote challenge by his own colleagues,

designed to disenfranchise millions of Americans simply because they voted for someone in a different party.

– ref. Trump’s last stand: how the dramatic endgame for the 2020 US election will play out in Congress – https://theconversation.com/trumps-last-stand-how-the-dramatic-endgame-for-the-2020-us-election-will-play-out-in-congress-152678

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Porch, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Earth Science, Deakin University

Environmental scientists see flora, fauna and phenomena the rest of us rarely do. In this series, we’ve invited them to share their unique photos from the field.

Which animals are quintessentially Australian? Koalas and kangaroos, emus, tiger snakes and green tree frogs, echidnas and eastern rosellas, perhaps. And let’s not forget common wombats.

Inevitably, most lists will be biased to the more conspicuous mammals and birds, hold fewer reptiles and frogs, and likely lack invertebrates — animals without a backbone or bony skeleton — altogether.

I’m an invertophile, fascinated by our rich terrestrial invertebrate fauna, so my list will be different. I’m enchanted by stunning dragon springtails, by cryptic little Tasmanitachoides beetles, and by the poorly known allothyrid mites, among thousands of others.

Australia’s terrestrial invertebrate multitude contains several hundred thousand uniquely Australian organisms. Most remain poorly known.

To preserve our biodiversity, we first must ask: “which species live where?”. For our invertebrates, we are a long way from knowing even this.

The Black Summer toll

Last year, a team of scientists estimated that the Australian 2019-2020 bushfires killed, injured or displaced three billion animals. That was a lot. But it was also a woefully inadequate estimate, because it only accounted for mammals, reptiles, birds and frogs.

Hidden from view, many trillions more invertebrates burned or were displaced by the fires. And yes, invertebrates are animals too.

Admittedly, it’s hard to come to terms with invertebrates because they’re often hard to find and difficult to identify. Most species are inconspicuous, even if they belong to incredibly abundant groups, such as mites and springtails, which can occur in numbers exceeding 10,000 per square metre.

Most invertebrates are poorly known because there are so many species and so few people working on them. In fact, it’s likely only a quarter to one-third of Australia’s terrestrial invertebrate fauna is formally described (have a recognised scientific name).

One of the problems invertebrates have, in terms of attracting attention, is that many are not easily seen with the naked eye.

Macrophotography can magnify these wonders for a view into a world most of us are completely unfamiliar with. Even then, it often will be hard to know what we see. Everyone will recognise a kangaroo, but who can identify an allothyrid mite?

The photo below shows an undescribed species of mite from the family Allothyridae, from Mount Donna Buang in Victoria. The mite family Allothyridae has three described Australian species, and dozens more awaiting description.

This collage shows a selection of mites found in the forests of southeastern Australia. It’s likely many of the species shown here are unknown to science.

A deeply ancient lineage

Animal ecologists, most of whom work on vertebrates, often joke that I “study the ‘food’, haha…”. They think they’re funny, but this reflects a deep seated bias — one extending from scientists to the wider public. This limits the development of a comprehensive understanding of biodiversity that has flow-on effects for conservation more broadly.

It’s true: invertebrates are food for larger animals. But their vital role in maintaining Australia’s ecosystems doesn’t end there.

Every species has an evolutionary history, a particular habitat, a set of behaviours reflecting that history, and a role to play in the ecosystem. And many terrestrial invertebrates belong to especially ancient lineages that record the deep history of Australia’s past.

The moss bug family Peloridiidae, for example, dates back more than 150 million years. For context, the kangaroo family (Macropodidae) is likely 15-25 million years old.

Their history is reflected in the breakup of the ancient supercontinent, Gondwana. In fact, Australian species of moss bugs are more closely related to South American species than to those from nearby New Zealand.

This is a common pattern in terrestrial invertebrate groups. It reflects how the New Zealand plate separated from the remainder of Gondwana about 80 million years ago, while the Australian plate remained connected to South America via Antarctica.

Similar stories can be told from across the invertebrate spectrum. The photo below shows a few examples of these relics from Gondwana.

Their fascinating evolution

Overprinting this deep history are the changes that occurred in Australia, especially the drying of the continent since the middle Miocene, about 12-16 million years ago.

This continent-wide drying fragmented wet forests that covered much of the continent, resulting in the restriction of many invertebrate groups to pockets of wetter habitat, especially along the Great Dividing Range and in southwestern Australia.

Read more: Trapdoor spider species that stay local put themselves at risk

A consequence of this was the evolution in isolation of many “short-range endemic” species.

A short-range endemic species means their geographic distribution is less than 10,000 square kilometres. A short-range endemic mammal you might be familiar with is Leadbeater’s possum, restricted to the wet forests of the Victorian Central Highlands.

But short-range endemism is much more common in invertebrates than other organisms. This is because many invertebrates are poor dispersers: they don’t move between habitat patches easily. They may also maintain viable populations in small areas of suitable habitat, and are frequently adapted to very specific habitats.

Take Tropidotrechus, pictured below, a genus of beetles mostly restricted to the same region as Leadbeater’s possum. They, however, divide the landscape at a much finer scale because they’re restricted to deep leaf litter in cool, wet, forest gullies.

As Australia dried, populations of Tropidotrechus became isolated in small patches of upland habitat, evolving into at least seven species across the ranges to the east of Melbourne.

Discoveries waiting to happen

The trouble with knowing so little about Australia’s extraordinary number of tiny, often locally unique invertebrates, is that we then massively underestimate how many of them are under threat, or have been badly hit by events like the 2019-2020 fires.

If we wish to conserve biodiversity widely, rather than only the larger charismatic wildlife, then enhancing our knowledge of our short-range species should be a high priority.

We’ve only just scratched the surface of Australia’s wonderful invertebrate fauna, so there are enough discoveries for everyone.

You can join iNaturalist, a citizen science initiative that lets you upload images and identify your discoveries. Perhaps you’ll discover something new — and a scientist just might name it after you.

Read more: Want to teach kids about nature? Insects can help

– ref. Photos from the field: zooming in on Australia’s hidden world of exquisite mites, snails and beetles – https://theconversation.com/photos-from-the-field-zooming-in-on-australias-hidden-world-of-exquisite-mites-snails-and-beetles-147576

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Laird, Honorary Principal Fellow, University of Wollongong

Road-user charges on electric vehicles based on distance driven were announced in November 2020 by the governments of South Australia and Victoria, while New South Wales ministers have differing views. These charges are justified on several grounds, including the costs of road use and congestion.

Critics argue the new charges will deter uptake of these more environmentally-friendly vehicles. But Australian governments could learn from examples overseas, including New Zealand, where incentives for buyers of electric vehicles more than offset the impacts of road user charges.

Read more: Think taxing electric vehicle use is a backward step? Here’s why it’s an important policy advance

Road use creates huge costs

One reason for introducing a distance-based charge for electric vehicles is that owners of petrol cars pay fuel excise, currently 42.3 cents per litre. With average fuel use of about 10.8 litres per 100km for Australian cars, drivers pay excise of about 4.6 cents per kilometre for road use. This is much higher than Victoria’s proposed distance charge of 2.5 cents per kilometre for electric vehicles.

The average passenger car in Australia was driven about 11,100km in the year to June 2020 (the pre-COVID average was about 13,000km). This means the federal government collected about A$557 in fuel excise per car.

Although the excise is not specifically dedicated to funding roads, the Australian government is a generous funder of road construction and maintenance. All up, Australia’s three levels of government spent A$28.5 billion on roads in 2018-19. It is reasonable to expect electric vehicle drivers to make some contribution to the roads they use.

The main argument against the new charges is that Australia’s uptake of electric vehicles has been slow and governments should be promoting a shift away from fossil fuels. However, the main disincentive is the cost of buying a new electric car, on par with a luxury car.

Governments could overcome this issue by reducing taxes on electric vehicle purchases and/or providing a subsidy for these purchases, as New Zealand has done since 2016 (with an exemption from distance charges until 2021).

Read more: Transport is letting Australia down in the race to cut emissions

Congested roads demand action

Infrastructure Australia found the economic cost of road congestion in the six largest capitals and their satellite cities was about A$19 billion in 2016. If infrastructure did not keep up with demand, this was likely to increase to A$39 billion a year by 2031.

However, the evidence from Australia and overseas is clear: building more roads does not overcome congestion. The phenomenon of induced demand means new roads simply fill up with more cars making more trips.

Read more: Climate explained: does building and expanding motorways really reduce congestion and emissions?

The emergence on our roads of electric vehicles that don’t generate fuel excise revenue has led to growing calls for road-user charges on these vehicles, including from Infrastructure Partnerships Australia in 2019 and RMIT researchers in November 2020.

COVID-19 has driven a shift to car use. Before recent outbreaks reduced travel, road traffic in Australian cities was as much as 25% above pre-pandemic volumes.

Read more: Cars rule as coronavirus shakes up travel trends in our cities

Policy remedies are proven

The proven remedy for road congestion is a combination of better public transport and road congestion charging. This can be a charge to enter a specific area (cordon) or a charge per kilometre. It can be varied by time of day.

In NSW, a ministerial inquiry into sustainable transport proposed such charges back in 2004. A large proportion of submissions in response to a 2002 federal AusLink green paper favoured congestion pricing. Many Conversation articles have also advocated this policy.

In a forward-looking strategy, now open for public consultation, Infrastructure Victoria proposes a review in the next two years of the Melbourne congestion levy on parking, congestion pricing for all new metropolitan freeways and, in the next five years, a trial of full-scale congestion pricing in inner Melbourne.

Singapore has used congestion pricing since 1975 and automated electronic road pricing since 1998.

London, after some controversy, implemented a cordon scheme in 2003. The benefits include reduced traffic, noise and air pollution along with improved public transport. The scheme has been modified over the years and access is now free for electric vehicles and certain hybrids and small cars.

Read more: London congestion charge: what worked, what didn’t, what next

Other large cities with congestion pricing include Stockholm and Milan. New York is expected to follow in 2022. A congestion tax is also being considered for Auckland.

Road freight is on the rise too

I discussed road-user charges for heavy trucks in a 2017 Conversation article. At that time in Australia, hidden subsidies for heavy truck use in the form of unrecovered road system costs, along with related external costs of road crashes, pollution, emissions, noise and road congestion, totalled about A$3 billion a year. I now estimate this shortfall to be about A$4 billion.

Read more: Trucks are destroying our roads and not picking up the repair cost

Australia should introduce mass distance pricing as has been used in New Zealand since 1978 and increasingly in Europe. Instead it relies on annual registration fees and a discounted heavy vehicle fuel excise of 25.8 cents per litre. These charges have essentially been frozen for five years.

Proposals for a modest 2.5% increase in the heavy vehicle fuel charge were shelved after COVID-19 hit. They are now under review again.

One in three submissions to a federal inquiry into developing a National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy highlighted the need for road pricing. The final 2019 strategy all but ignored this issue, despite a projected near-doubling of road freight by 2040.

Failure to reform road pricing coupled with ongoing relaxation of mass and dimension limits for heavy trucks is a recipe for ever more “loads on roads” at the expense of rail freight and coastal shipping.

In 2002, the then Treasury secretary, Ken Henry, said of the projected increases in city traffic and interstate road freight: “Not dealing with these issues now amounts to passing a very challenging set of problems to future generations.”

In 2010, the Henry Tax Review made several road-pricing recommendations. These included that Australian governments “should accelerate the development of mass-distance-location pricing for heavy vehicles”.

The review also recommended governments analyse the network-wide benefits and costs of introducing variable congestion pricing on tolled roads and consider extending it across heavily congested parts of the road network.

Road pricing reform is now long overdue. And it should include electric vehicles.

– ref. Distance-based road charges will improve traffic — and if done right won’t slow Australia’s switch to electric cars – https://theconversation.com/distance-based-road-charges-will-improve-traffic-and-if-done-right-wont-slow-australias-switch-to-electric-cars-150290

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter A. Heslin, Professor of Management and Scientia Education Fellow, UNSW

For most of us, 2020 was an exhausting year. The COVID-19 pandemic heralded draining physical health concerns, social isolation, job dislocation, uncertainty about the future and related mental health issues.

Although some of us have enjoyed changes such as less commuting, for many the pandemic added extra punch to the main source of stress – engaging in or searching for work.

Here’s what theory and research tells us about how to feel more rested and alive in 2021.

Recovery activity v experience

Recovery is the process of reversing the adverse impacts of stress. Leading recovery researchers Sabine Sonnentag and Charlotte Fritz have highlighted the important distinction between recovery activities (what you do during leisure time) and recovery experiences (what you need to experience during and after those activities to truly recover).

Recovery activities can be passive (such as watching TV, lying on a beach, reading, internet browsing or listening to music) or active (walking, running, playing sport, dancing, swimming, hobbies, spiritual practice, developing a skill, creating something, learning a language and so on).

How well these activities reduce your stress depends on the extent to which they provide you with five types of recovery experiences:

• psychological detachment: fully disconnecting during non-work time from work-related tasks or even thinking about work issues

• relaxation: being free of tension and anxiety

• mastery: challenging situations that provide a sense of progress and achievement (such as being in learning mode to develop a new skill)

• control: deciding yourself about what to do and when and how to do it

• enjoyment: the state or process of deriving pleasure from seeing, hearing or doing something.

Of these, psychological detachment is the most potent, according to a 2017 meta-analysis of 54 psychological studies involving more than 26,000 participants.

Benefits of mentally disengaging from work include reduced fatigue and enhanced well-being. On the other hand, inadequate psychological detachment leads to negative thoughts about work, exhaustion, physical discomfort, and negative emotions both at bedtime and during the next morning.

Here are five tips, drawn from the research, to feel more rested and alive.

1. Follow the evidence

There are mixed findings regarding the recovery value of passive, low-effort activities such as watching TV or reading a novel.

More promising are social activities, avoiding work-related smartphone use after work, as well as engaging in “receptive” leisure activities (such as attending a concert, game or cultural event) and “creative” leisure activities (designing and making something or expressing yourself in a creative way).

Spending time in “green” environments (parks, bushland, hills) is restorative, particularly when these are natural rather than urban settings. “Blue” environments (the coast, rivers, lakes) are also highly restorative.

Even short lunchtime walks and relaxation exercises lead to feeling more recovered during the afternoon.

Two of the surest ways to recover are to engage in physical exercise and get plenty of quality sleep.

2. Assess your ‘boundary management style’

Your boundary management style is the extent to which you integrate or separate your work and life beyond work. Work-life researcher Ellen Kossek has created a survey (it takes about five minutes) to help assess your style and provide suggestions for improvement.

The following table developed by Kossek shows physical, mental and social strategies to manage boundaries and separate your work and life beyond work.

3. Cultivate your identity beyond work

Many of us define ourselves in terms of our profession (“I’m an engineer”), employer (“I work at …”) and perhaps our performance (“I’m a top performer”).

We may also have many other identities related to, for instance, (“I’m a parent”), religion (“I’m a Catholic”), interests (“I’m a guitarist”), activities (“I’m a jogger”) or learning aspirations (“I’m learning Portuguese”).

Dan Caprar and Ben Walker suggest two useful ways to prevent being overly invested in work identity.

First, reorganise your physical space to reduce visual reminders of your work-related identities (e.g. your laptop, professional books, performance awards) and replace them with reminders of your other identities.

Second, do some “identity work” and “identity play”, reflecting on the identities you cherish and experimenting with potential new identities.

Read more: Here’s why you’re checking work emails on holidays (and how to stop)

4. Make time for better recovery experiences

Document what you do when not working. Ask yourself how much these activities enable you to truly experience psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, control and enjoyment.

Then experiment with alternative activities that might provide richer recovery experiences. This will typically require less time on things such as news media (especially pandemic updates and doomscrolling), TV, social media, online shopping or video games, gambling, pornography, alcohol or illicit drugs to recover.

You will make it easier to give up activities with minimal recovery value if you supplant them with more rejuvenating alternatives you enjoy.

Read more: Three ways to achieve your New Year’s resolutions by building ‘goal infrastructure’

5. Form new habits

Habits are behaviours we automatically repeat in certain situations. Often we fail to develop better habits by being too ambitious. The “tiny habits” approach suggests thinking smaller, with “ABC recipes” that identify:

• anchor moments, when you will enact your intended behaviour

• behaviours you will undertake during those moments

• celebration to create a positive feeling that helps this behaviour become a habit.

Examples of applying this approach are:

• After I eat lunch, I will walk for at least ten minutes (ideally somewhere green). I will celebrate by enjoying what I see along the way.

• After I finish work, I will engage in 45 minutes of exercise before dinner. I will celebrate by raising my arms in a V shape and saying “Victory!”

• After 8.30pm I will not look at email or think about work. I will celebrate by reminding myself I deserve to switch off.

Perhaps the most essential ingredient for building better recovery habits is to steer away from feeling burdened by ideas about what you “should” do to recover. Enjoy the process of experimenting with different recovery activities that, given all your work and life commitments, seem most promising, viable and fun.

– ref. Exhausted by 2020? Here are 5 steps to recover and feel more rested throughout 2021 – https://theconversation.com/exhausted-by-2020-here-are-5-steps-to-recover-and-feel-more-rested-throughout-2021-152608

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bruno David, Professor, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Monash University

New collaborative work at an Aboriginal cave in eastern Victoria, published today, shows the stark difference between contemporary archaeological research and that conducted in the 1970s.

In 1971, Cloggs Cave was rediscovered near the town of Buchan in East Gippsland, Victoria. By the end of 1972, archaeological excavations had been completed in the cave and adjacent rock shelter. The findings — extinct giant kangaroo remains (megafauna), Aboriginal stone tools dating back to the last Ice Age and buried fireplaces — made national news at the time.

Cloggs Cave belongs to the Krauatungalung clan of the GunaiKurnai nation. However in the 1970s, neither state and federal agencies, nor most of Australian society, acknowledged Traditional Owners’ rights to authorise and oversee research into their cultural places.

Of habitats and diets

Five decades ago, archaeological research and radiocarbon dating were in their infancy. Researchers were racing to find the oldest Aboriginal sites across Australia. Non-Indigenous archaeologists determined what research questions to ask and controlled how the research was conducted and interpreted. Findings often focused on how Aboriginal people had responded to their environments and what they ate.

The first stories written about Cloggs Cave in the mid-1970s described it as an Ice Age refuge from which local plant and animal resources were exploited.

According to these early interpretations, people had left the cave to inhabit the rock shelter outside as the climate warmed, around 10,000 years ago.

GunaiKurnai-led research, 50 years later

The GunaiKurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation revisited Cloggs Cave in the years leading up to 2019. It found sediments were eroding from the walls of the largest 1970s excavation pit. Although the pit had been shored up, the extra support was removed in the 1990s.

GunaiKurnai cultural heritage workers sought to use new technologies to revisit the original findings. Importantly, this research would now include GunaiKurnai cultural knowledge passed down from generation to generation.

Researchers from Monash University, the Université Savoie Mont Blanc (France) and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage were invited to be project partners.

In 2019, the cave was mapped in detail using a 3D Light Detection and Ranging scanner and a drone. New excavations of sections of the floor were conducted, and the chronology of people and megafauna in the cave was investigated using radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence dating techniques.

The investigations yielded fascinating insights about how the Old People inhabited the cave thousands of years ago. In a small alcove at the back lay a stone arrangement, including a layer of crushed minerals. Most of the stalactites on the ceiling had been intentionally broken. Uranium-series dating of parts of the regrown stalactites revealed these mineral deposits were first broken by Aboriginal people more than 23,000 years ago.

Towards the cave’s entrance, the new excavations uncovered a buried standing stone surrounded by fires lit 2,000–1,600 years ago and hundreds of thousands of animal bones. The animals’ deaths were natural — so Aboriginal people had not come to the cave to eat or cook food.

GunaiKurnai worldviews

Since the 1970s, Australian society has changed with an increased recognition of Aboriginal cultures, knowledges, and land rights. It is now possible for the Traditional Owners to finally have a say in the story of Cloggs Cave, and in GunaiKurnai history.

The contrast in the stories from the two archaeological projects, 50 years apart, could not be starker.

According to GunaiKurnai Traditional Owners — and Aboriginal perspectives recorded in the mid-19th century — caves are spiritually important. In 1875, Aboriginal men Turnmile and Bunjil Bottle showed Alfred W. Howitt the “Den of Nargun” in Gippsland. Howitt wrote that this rock shelter was home to “a mysterious creature which they believe haunts these mountains where they were living in caves and holes”.

Read more: Recovered Aboriginal songs offer clues to 19th century mystery of the shipwrecked ‘white woman’

Stories told early last century by residents at Lake Tyers Mission (now known as the Lake Tyers Aboriginal Trust) described fearful beings called nargun, who lived in caves.

Caves were also frequented by magical practitioners called mulla-mullung. They trained and practised their magic, using crystals and other stones, and ground powders such as ash.

This information was not considered by archaeologists in the 1970s as it did not fit their (mainly secular) interpretations in terms of habitat and diet. What was missing was a deep understanding that the rich social, cultural, and ritual lives of Aboriginal people could fundamentally shape the archaeological record. They did not simply respond to their environments.

A new picture of Cloggs Cave now emerges. The cave was not just a refuge from a cold environment, but a theatre of culturally rich, social and magical activities dating back millenia. It was avoided by people for day-to-day living, and probably used by GunaiKurnai mulla-mullung.

What was located during the 2019 research had been there all along, but was not noticed by previous researchers.

This is partly because new techniques give us a better window into the past activities of Aboriginal people at the cave. These new ways of seeing are matched with new ways of listening and researching — transforming how we tell archaeological histories.

The authors are just five of the 19 authors of the journal article. We thank the GunaiKurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation, Joanna Fresløv, Martin and Vicky Hanman of Buchan, and the nine Australian and international universities who collaborated on this project.

– ref. Magic, culture and stalactites: how Aboriginal perspectives are transforming archaeological histories – https://theconversation.com/magic-culture-and-stalactites-how-aboriginal-perspectives-are-transforming-archaeological-histories-151756

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Greste, Professor of Journalism and Communications, The University of Queensland

When UK District Judge Vanessa Baraitser declared she was rejecting the US request to extradite Julian Assange, his partner Stella Moris wept with relief. In an emotional speech outside the court, Moris described the ruling as “the first step towards justice”, and called on President Donald Trump to halt further extradition efforts.

According to Baraitser’s ruling, Assange could not be extradited because he was depressed and at risk of committing suicide. Assange’s lawyers are planning to apply for bail, while lawyers for the US government say they are going to appeal.

Although he is by no means a free man, this crucial round goes to the Australian WikiLeaks founder.

But on every other point of law, the judge found in favour of the US. She rejected claims that Assange’s case was politically motivated, that he would not get a fair trial and that it was an assault on press freedom.

So, is this a victory for Assange and his supporters, or a blow to those who believe this case to be about protecting press freedom? A close reading of the verdict and its implications suggest it is both.

There is little doubt that Assange’s human rights have been abused. He has been held in appalling conditions in London’s Belmarsh prison, and the judge concluded his mental health is in a dangerous state.

Trump has also poisoned the political environment in the US in a way that would surely test the American judicial system’s ability to deliver a verdict in his case free of political influence.

Read more: Julian Assange on Google, surveillance and predatory capitalism

To be clear, I applaud much of WikiLeaks’ extraordinary work in exposing evidence of US war crimes. The shocking Collateral Murder video showing a US Apache helicopter gunning down a dozen unarmed civilians, for example, was one of the most important leaks in recent history.

But in the past, I have argued Assange did not apply ethical journalistic practices and standards to his work more broadly, and therefore cannot claim press freedom as a defence.

Soon after he published unredacted US diplomatic cables in 2011, a wide range of news organisations distanced themselves from WikiLeaks for that reason.

Implications for press freedom

But this is where nuance is important. Baraitser’s judgement also has clear implications for press freedom that must concern anyone who believes in the oversight role journalists play in a democracy.

In rejecting the notion the case threatens press freedom, Baraitser was ignoring the way it exposes journalists and their sources who seek to hold governments to account.

The Obama administration was notoriously aggressive in attacking press freedom by using the Espionage Act. But even it baulked at prosecuting Assange because of what it came to think of as “The New York Times Problem”.

Read more: Assange’s new indictment: Espionage and the First Amendment

As former Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller told The Washington Post in 2013,

The problem the department has always had in investigating Julian Assange is there is no way to prosecute him for publishing information without the same theory being applied to journalists.

And if you are not going to prosecute journalists for publishing classified information, which the department is not, then there is no way to prosecute Assange.

This may sound like splitting hairs, but it is a crucial distinction.

Journalists have a responsibility to uphold ethical principles, particularly if they are going to maintain public confidence in their watchdog role. However, we must also push back when press freedom is threatened either directly or indirectly.

At Assange’s extradition hearing, Trevor Timm, the executive director of the US-based Freedom of the Press Foundation, said

every single expert witness has some sort of fear that a prosecution of Assange will lead to the prosecution of many other reporters.

This would specifically include the large number of reporters whose work might sometimes include secret documents. In other words, Timm said, US prosecutors seek a precedent that would “criminalise every reporter who received a secret document whether they asked for it or not”.

It is hard to overstate the significance of that problem. History tells us that governments will always try to hide their misdemeanours. One of journalism’s most important roles is to uncover them. It is how we hold governments to account in a democracy, but it also means there will always be a necessary tension between the press and the powerful.

Read more: Journalism’s Assange problem

While I believe that anyone who claims “press freedom” as a right also has responsibilities, I also believe we must push back against anything that threatens the media’s oversight role.

Baraitser’s ruling did not set any legal precedent in that regard, and for that we should heave a sigh of relief. But she also missed a critically important opportunity to recognise what Assange’s prosecution means for press freedom — and its importance to all who live in a democracy.

– ref. Julian Assange’s extradition victory offers cold comfort for press freedom – https://theconversation.com/julian-assanges-extradition-victory-offers-cold-comfort-for-press-freedom-152676

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nematullah Bizhan, Lecturer in Public Policy at the Development Policy Centre, Australian National University, & Senior Research Associate with the Global Economic Governance Program, Oxford University, Australian National University

Peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban are set to resume today in Doha, at a time of heightened violence in Afghanistan and uncertainty about the prospects for an end to four decades of crushing conflict.

The agreement the US signed with the Taliban last February to start the peace process marked a breakthrough. The US pledged to significantly reduce its troop numbers in the country, while the Taliban promised to negotiate a settlement and permanent ceasefire with the Afghan government and disassociate itself from al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Since the peace talks began in September, however, there has been little progress. The two sides have only agreed to the rules and procedures for future talks, while no discussion on a ceasefire has taken place.

In fact, violence surged in Afghanistan while the talks were underway. The number of civilian and security force deaths last year remained very high.

So, as round two is set to begin, what are the main obstacles to peace and how they can be addressed?

What the parties have agreed to so far

The conflicting views of the Afghan government and Taliban have been a major sticking point in the talks so far.

The Afghan government envisions a pluralistic society in Afghanistan, where people elect the head of the state and the state guarantees equal rights to citizens and protects minorities.

For the Taliban, identity and legitimacy are based on a theocratic and totalitarian form of governance. Under their rule in the 1990s, women were banned from work and education.

The government is referred to as the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, while the Taliban call themselves the Islamic Emirate. Both parties wanted their names to be included in the rules of procedures for the talks, as these names represent their core values.

In addition, the Afghan government refused to accept the US-Taliban deal as the basis for negotiations because it was not a party to the agreement.

It also rejected the Taliban demand to rely exclusively on the Hanafi sect of Islam to resolve any differences in the interpretation of Islamic law. Instead, the government recognises a role for both the Hanafi and Shiite sects.

Read more: Exchanging killers for peace in Afghanistan is wrong — and could have lasting consequences

To reach a compromise, references to both the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Islamic Emirate were excluded from the rules of procedures for the talks.

The two sides also agreed that any conflicts on the interpretation of Islamic law would be resolved by a joint committee of the negotiation teams.

And the US-Taliban agreement would remain a pillar of the negotiations, in addition to three other principles: the wishes of the Afghan people, the commitment of the two parties, and the UN’s goal for a durable peace.

The major issues yet to be discussed

The next round of peace talks should be lengthy and complex. It is expected to address some fundamental issues, including an agreement on a comprehensive ceasefire, the form of state that Afghanistan should have and a transitional governing arrangement for a post-peace deal.

One major obstacle is the differing priorities of the Afghan government and Taliban.

For example, the government sees an immediate and comprehensive ceasefire as a main priority, while the Taliban does not. The Taliban believes it can gain more by violence than in talks and, if it agrees to a ceasefire, it will be difficult to retain its leverage.

Pessimism is also growing about the prospects for peace because of the continuing high levels of violence and targeted assassinations in Afghanistan. Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO security general, recently warned there is no guarantee of success for Afghan peace.

The first step in the next round of talks is for the parties to set a clear agenda and focus on an acceptable outcome. The two sides should agree to an immediate and comprehensive ceasefire as a minimal condition for the talks to continue until a peace deal is agreed.

The rules of procedures for the talks specify the demand of the Afghan people for durable peace, as well as the commitment of the two Afghan negotiating parties to a durable peace. These ideals should remain a focal point for the talks.

Read more: Lasting peace in Afghanistan now relies on the Taliban standing by its word. This has many Afghans concerned

But what matters most for Afghan citizens is the type of peace deal that comes out of the negotiations. Many citizens worry a compromise with the Taliban will endanger the gains achieved since 2001, including women’s rights, the protection of minorities and freedom of expression.

As such, a referendum is needed on any peace deal to let Afghan citizens have the final say.

The Afghan peace process is fragile, but its failure may lead to more conflict and misery for the country. It is an opportunity, and if it progresses well, it can pave a path to durable peace.

– ref. For the Afghan peace talks to succeed, a ceasefire is the next — and perhaps toughest — step forward – https://theconversation.com/for-the-afghan-peace-talks-to-succeed-a-ceasefire-is-the-next-and-perhaps-toughest-step-forward-152610

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Haskell-Dowland, Associate Dean (Computing and Security), Edith Cowan University

With the festive season having come to a close, consumers the world over will be playing with a variety of new tech toys.

In recent years, the most popular gadgets sold on Amazon have included a variety of smartphones, wearable tech, tablets, laptops and digital assistants such as Amazon’s Echo Dot.

And it’s likely our gifting habits over Christmas reflected this. But any device connected to the internet (including almost all of the above) exposes our personal data to a host of threats.

Few of us stop to consider how our new devices may impact our digital footprint, or whether they could build new channels between ourselves and cyber criminals.

With this in mind, here are some simple tips to help you lock down your digital footprint this year.

Use more sophisticated credentials

First, when it comes to setting up a new device and/or account, you should always use a unique password — every single time.

While this task may sound painful, it’s made much easier by password managers. Should your password for a particular account be stolen, at least the others will remain secure.

It’s also worth checking the Have I Been Pwned? website, which can reveal whether your online credentials have already been leaked.

Read more: A computer can guess more than 100,000,000,000 passwords per second. Still think yours is secure?

And even if you’re using more sophisticated biometric-based approaches on a device (such as face or fingerprint login), you can still leave yourself exposed by having a weak password that can allow hackers to bypass the biometric.

Also, if you ever have to enter a credit card number or other financial details to set up an account, you may want to remove them through the service provider’s site or app.

Some services require ongoing payments, but deleting stored payment details where they are no longer needed will help protect your finances. Most services will provide an option to do this, although others may require you to get in touch directly.

You don’t always have to be transparent online

We constantly provide our personal information online in exchange for access to accounts and services.

Often this includes date of birth (to validate your age), postcode (to offer regionally locked services) or details such as your mother’s maiden name (to help restrict unauthorised access to your account).

Consider having a fake identity. That way, if your details are stolen, your real data will be safe.

You may want to set up a sacrificial email account, or even a temporary address (also called a “burner email”) to sign onto services that are likely to spam you in the future.

Apple device users may want to explore the “Sign in with Apple” feature. This restricts the amount of personal data shared with a service is being used.

It can also hide the user’s actual email address when registering — instead creating a site-specific alias that can later be blocked if necessary.

Read more: Your personal data is the currency of the digital age

What happens to our old devices?

When new gadgets enter our lives, the old ones are often passed on to friends and family, sold to strangers, traded in, or simply recycled.

But before we discard our old devices into this growing technology mountain, we should make sure they’re clear of our data. Otherwise, selling an old phone may also mean inadvertently selling your private information.

Many modern devices, particularly smartphones and tablets, have a factory reset option that removes all user data.

For devices without a distinct wipe or reset option, you can consult with the user manual or manufacturer’s website (which will often have a copy of the user manual). If in doubt, there’s plenty of online advice on how to reset devices.

You may need to remove or unlink the old device from your online identities, such as your Apple ID.

It may also be necessary to delete cloud-based accounts — such as Dropbox or Google Drive — set up specifically for that device. And don’t forget about data stored on devices being returned to the seller (perhaps after Boxing Day sales).

A 2019 UK study examining second-hand phones on eBay found only 52% had been properly wiped or reset.

Moreover, 19% contained some form of personal information, ranging from active social media logins to bank account details.

Parental responsibility

Children (especially those in primary school) who use devices should be educated on safe internet practices and cyber safety.

While younger people are becoming increasingly tech-savvy with time, they don’t necessarily know the risks associated with using internet-connected technologies.

It’s important for parents to first learn about appropriate safeguards, and then remind their children of them regularly.

Don’t panic

The good news is you don’t need special cyber security training for each new tech purchase. The lessons above are transferable, so the key is simply to remember to use them.

There are plenty of sources for further learning, including UK Cyber Aware, the Get Safe Online initiative, and the Australian eSafety Commissioner’s website.

To quote from the film The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “don’t panic”. Just think carefully about how you use (or get rid of) your devices from now on.

– ref. The Christmas gifts that keep giving (your data away) — and how to prevent this – https://theconversation.com/the-christmas-gifts-that-keep-giving-your-data-away-and-how-to-prevent-this-152242

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Starling, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Sydney

How do we know when animals who don’t have tails are happy? — Goldie Rose, aged 5.

Great question Goldie! Animals use their tails for steering, holding, balancing and swimming, but they also use them as a way to talk to each other. A dog wagging its tail is one example, and we usually read a waggy tail as a sign that a dog is happy.

But that’s not the only way dogs can show they’re happy, and there are lots of animals that don’t have tails or don’t use them to talk to each other.

So how can we tell if an animal is happy without a wagging tail?

Different animals have different ways of showing they’re happy, so it helps to know about the animal you’re interested in.

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

For example, cats purr when they’re happy (although some cats also purr when they are in pain). Guinea pigs whistle when they are excited and purr when they are content. Rabbits twitch their noses when they are content and they also can make a purring sound by grinding their teeth. This usually means they are happy, but like cats, sometimes they do it loudly when they are in pain.

Ferrets chirp when they are happy and excited, horses will point their ears towards you and have a relaxed mouth, and parrots sing, whistle or make a grinding, purring sound with their beak when they are content.

So, there are a lot of different ways animals can show they are happy, but sometimes they do the same thing when they are in pain. How confusing!

Often we can get a good idea if they are happy or unhappy by looking at how they are behaving in general.

A cat that purrs because it’s happy may also be winding her body around your legs, or relaxed in your lap, have her tail high in the air, or roll over on her back. All this shows she is trusting and interested.

Read more: Don’t let them out: 15 ways to keep your indoor cat happy

Likewise, a rabbit grinding its teeth while relaxing will also likely be stretching its body out as well. You can tell how relaxed a rabbit is by how stretched out it is while resting. If a rabbit is in pain, it tends to hunch up and squeeze its eyes half shut like it is wincing. Animals that are relaxed and not tense are usually happy and content.

We can also get an idea of how happy an animal is by what they do. Play is one of the most reliable ways to tell if an animal is happy, as only happy animals play. Happy, playful animals will jump into the air, pounce, kick their feet up while they run, and generally be more energetic than they need to be.

Read more: 10 things we do that puzzle and scare horses

Lastly, we can see what animals like to do by what they choose to come back to over and over again. If your animal chooses to lie in the sun or look for tasty treats or dig holes, then you know when they are doing that, they are probably happy.

So, to know when an animal is happy, we need to look at more than what one body part is doing, and we might need to watch them to get to know them.

To be a good friend for our animals, we should give them the freedom to choose their own activities, and that will show us what they like. Happy animal-watching!

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au

– ref. Curious Kids: how can we tell if an animal is happy without a wagging tail? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-can-we-tell-if-an-animal-is-happy-without-a-wagging-tail-150374

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra

Spotify offered the promise that, in the age of digital downloads, all artists would get paid for their music, and some would get paid a lot.

Lorde and Billie Eilish showed what was possible.

Lorde was just 16 when, in 2012, she uploaded her debut EP to SoundCloud. A few months later, Sean Parker (of Napster and Facebook fame) put her first single — “Royals” — on his popular Spotify Hipster International playlist. The song has sold more than 10 million copies.

Eilish’s rags-to-riches story is a little murkier. But the approved narrative begins in 2015, when the 13-year-old uploaded “Ocean Eyes” (a song written by her older brother) to SoundCloud. She was “discovered”. Spotify enthusiastically promoted “Ocean Eyes” on its Today’s Top Hits playlist. She is now the youngest artist with a billion streams to her name, and Spotify’s most-streamed female artist for the past two years

The new hit squad

Streaming now accounts for more than half of recorded music revenue. Spotify has about a third of the subscribers paying for music streaming. Playlists overtook albums as the preferred way of listening to sequences of songs about five years ago.

Appearing on a prominent Spotify playlist is therefore a big deal.

Economists Luis Aguiar and Joel Waldfogel calculated (in 2018) that a song appearing on Today’s Top Hits was worth about 20 million extra streams and US$116,000 to US$163,000 in royalty payments. That was when Today’s Top Hits had about 18.5 million subscribers. It now has more than 26 million.

With so much power, what will Spotify do next?

The answer, apparently, is to run a pay-to-play “experiment”, dropping Spotify’s “crystal clear” commitment in 2018 that “no one can pay to be added to one of Spotify’s editorial playlists”. But now there’s this:

In this new experiment, artists and labels can identify music that’s a priority for them, and our system will add that signal to the algorithm that determines personalised listening sessions.

The catch is musicians must accept a lower payment — a “promotional recording royalty rate” — on any song streamed as a result.

The prisoner’s dilemma

Spotify presents music uploaders with a conundrum known to economists as the “prisoner’s dilemma” — a classic paradox of game theory.

This is where an article typically references the 2001 biopic “A Beautiful Mind”, about mathematical genius John Nash, who won a Nobel economics prize for his contributions to game theory. In the movie Nash (played by Russell Crowe) talks about the prisoner’s dilemma in the context of chatting up women.

Read more: The legacy of John Nash and his equilibrium theory

One formulation of the prisoner’s dilemma involves two individuals arrested together for possessing stolen items. A conviction for possession carries a six-month jail term. The police suspect the pair might have stolen the items. Burglary carries a five-year sentence. Wthout evidence, however, to secure a burglary conviction needs one or both prisoners confessing and implicating the other.

The prisoners are separated. Each is offered a deal: immunity from prosecution on any charge if they confess and that confession leads to the other’s conviction on both charges.

Each prisoner understands they are better off collectively to both stay silent. But neither can be sure the other will.

• if both stay silent, both get six months for possession

• if only one confesses, they go free while the other gets five years

• if both confess, both get five years.

The most predictable outcome is that both decide to confess. This is the celebrated “Nash equilibrium”, in which both players, neither wanting to be the sucker, make uncooperative decisions leading to the worse outcome for both.

The musician’s dilemma

The musician’s dilemma is that the best cooperative outcome is all artists refusing Spotify’s offer. No one gains, but no one loses either.

But who’s going to organise that, given the understandable fear of repercussions for going against Spotify?

Best placed to resist are Spotify’s superstars — the likes of Eilish, Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, Drake and Bad Bunny, with billions of streams between them. They have diversified marketing and revenue sources, and are cash cows Spotify doesn’t want to lose.

The most likely outcome is many or most musicians accepting lower song payments from Spotify, putting the squeeze on struggling musicians who refuse while making little difference to the prominence super streamers get from Spotify’s algorithms.

Read more: John Nash and his contribution to Game Theory and Economics

Looking beyond Spotify

Spotify’s deal has no attraction for Melbourne guitarist Sheldon King. He has decided to quit Spotify.

Originally from the UK and an accomplished live performer, the classically trained guitarist split his time in 2020 between session work, teaching and writing and recording. He released his album Navigating by the Stars in November on BandCamp.

“I am removing most of my music from Spotify,” King says. He cites all the small costs of getting songs onto streaming sites — paying a distribution service such as Tunecore, for example. “They don’t seem like much, but they can add up. With Spotify’s already laughably small royalty per stream, it’s easy to spend more money than you make.”

Read more: Music collectors seek out rare albums not available on streaming

Power imbalance

After the most difficult year for many working musicians in memory, Spotify’s new strategy has been compared, imperfectly, to the days of radio stations and presenters seeking bribes from record companies to play their songs.

There’s a key difference. Now Spotify is the most influential radio programmer on Earth, deciding the new songs millions of listeners hear in any minute.

And instead of a handful of record companies, every aspiring musician is now able to record and upload a song. Spotify gets about 40,000 new uploads a day.

Spotify says it paid more than US$3.5 billion to rights holders in the first nine months of 2019. But surveys of musicians suggest very few can make a living from streaming. A British survey has found eight in 10 musicians earned less than £200 (A$355) a year from streaming, with 90% saying streaming accounted for less than 5% of their earnings.

Read more: Even famous musicians struggle to make a living from streaming – here’s how to change that

Music streaming has created a market power imbalance between corporate leviathans such as Spotify, Apple, Amazon and Tencent and the millions of individual performing artists. It is a challenge to shift the balance of power a bit towards the artists, without losing the benefits to the listening public of access to a wider range of music with far greater convenience than ever imaginable before.

– ref. Stream weavers: the musicians’ dilemma in Spotify’s pay-to-play plan – https://theconversation.com/stream-weavers-the-musicians-dilemma-in-spotifys-pay-to-play-plan-151479

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

If the National Gallery of Victoria’s 2017 Triennial broke attendance records with more than 1.2 million visitors, it is nothing short of a miracle the 2020 Triennial is taking place at all.

To bring together more than 100 artists, designers and collectives from more than 30 countries, featuring 86 projects, in the era of COVID, was always going to be a tall ask. It has happened and it has a huge “wow” factor with a mixture of major household names as well as completely unexpected, quirky discoveries.

The Triennial 2020 is built around four broad themes with porous borders: Illumination, Reflection, Conservation and Speculation. Even after wading through the voluminous catalogue — more like a piece of bulky furniture than a read-in-bed book — the themes are more like general conceptual props than clear categories.

The concern is with the ability for art to challenge assumptions about the status quo, alert us to impending disasters, suggest alternatives, dazzle us with unexpected inventions and inspire us with wondrous creations of undreamt of beauty.

A world guided by AI

The one work that had the greatest impact on me was by the young Turkish artist Refik Anadol, now based in Los Angeles. Titled Quantum memories, 2020, it is presented on a huge 10 by 10 metre LED display screen encountered as you enter the NGV building in St Kilda Road.

Commissioned by the gallery, it is a collaborative work between the artist and Google. Employing a dataset drawn from more than 200 million images linked to nature, Anadol uses a Google quantum computer (described as 1000 times more powerful than a conventional supercomputer) combined with machine learning algorithms enabled by AI.

Read more: Why are scientists so excited about a recently claimed quantum computing milestone?

The image processing algorithms ingest millions of photographs and generate new images with related statistical properties. We are exposed to images of fantastic, ever-changing landscapes that never existed — somewhat uncanny, as if remembering something not previously experienced but somehow convincing and real.

Enthralling, completely seductive and endlessly changing, this work brought to mind the words of the Sufi mystic Rumi, “Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

Anadol presents us the world “in another form” guided by artificial intelligence (AI). Unlike a video installation presented on a loop, every moment is a state of flux, constantly reinventing itself and creating new images.

Moving from the high tech to the low tech, we encounter Porky Hefer’s Plastocene – Marine Mutants, 2020, from a disposable world. Hefer, based in Cape Town, South Africa, creates through his Southern Guild fabricators a series of handmade, large-scale environments consisting of imaginary sea creatures from a dystopian future he terms “Plastocene”.

They include a huge, octopus-like creature made from hand-felted cigarette butts. In Hefer’s worldview, the end of the Anthropocene era will be marked by a new species that will transmutate and absorb plastic bags, straws, coffee cups and other pollutants.

Although humans, as we know them, will struggle to survive in this polluted environment, these mutants will flourish.

Read more: How the term ‘Anthropocene’ jumped from geoscience to hashtags – before most of us knew what it meant

A selfie magnet

If Anadol and Hefer are relatively unknown to Australian audiences, Jeff Koons is one of the most high-profile and iconic contemporary American artists. His Venus, 2016-20, is a two-and-a-half metre, mirror-polished, stainless steel sculpture with colour coating that adds to the Baroque exuberance of the piece.

The source image is a relatively obscure 34-centimetre painted, porcelain figurine of the same name by Wilhelm Christian Meyer from 1769.

Koons has taken liberties with his model to heighten the latent eroticism of the forms. As he observes:

Venus represents the combination of understanding the needs of society and of something greater than self, while at the same time the desire for procreation and the continuation of the species. It involves the seductiveness of all the senses — the joys, pleasures and pains of life itself.

This acquisition will certainly become a selfie magnet for the NGV.

Radiating in its space

Another high profile participant in the Triennial is Korean artist Lee Ufan, who employs the Zen Buddhist practice of painting as a form of meditation revealing energy and realisation. His Dialogue, 2017, a major new acquisition for the gallery, is a sublime piece that seems to radiate in its space.

The artist recently observed: “What is light and what is darkness? I do not like the definition that sees existence in terms of light and nothingness in terms of darkness. There is darkness in all forms of light, and light penetrates all kinds of darkness. A concept of light or darkness considered in isolation cannot be valid.”

A meditative, hypnotic painting, it seems to vibrate in space and is in contrast to the loud, bombastic and attention grabbing forms populating the Triennial, which occupies all levels of the gallery building.

It is always difficult to summarise an exhibition like this one, conceived as a series of immersive spaces with superb moments such as the blue paintings and sculptures of Dhambit Mununggurr, the dialogue with the NGV collection by the Fallen Fruit or painting with neon light by the Welsh conceptual artist Cerith Wyn Evans.

The NGV Triennial is being held at a time when the success of exhibitions can no longer be measured by attendance numbers, but it seems to be hitting the right spot.

Victoria’s premier, Daniel Andrews, is allocating a record $1.46 billion for the building of a new NGV Contemporary and another $20 million is promised by the Ian Potter Foundation. The future looks bright for subsequent triennials.

Triennial 2020 is at the National Gallery of Victoria until 18 April 2021.

– ref. Enthralling, dystopian, sublime: NGV Triennial has a huge ‘wow’ factor – https://theconversation.com/enthralling-dystopian-sublime-ngv-triennial-has-a-huge-wow-factor-152607

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clive Williams, Campus visitor, ANU Centre for Military and Security Law, Australian National University

Tensions are running high in the Middle East in the waning days of the Trump administration.

Over the weekend, Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, claimed Israeli agents were planning to attack US forces in Iraq to provide US President Donald Trump with a pretext for striking Iran.

Just ahead of the one-year anniversary of the US assassination of Iran’s charismatic General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards also warned his country would respond forcefully to any provocations.

Today, we have no problem, concern or apprehension toward encountering any powers. We will give our final words to our enemies on the battlefield.

Israeli military leaders are likewise preparing for potential Iranian retaliation over the November assassination of senior Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — an act Tehran blames on the Jewish state.

Both the US and Israel have reportedly deployed submarines to the Persian Gulf in recent days, while the US has flown nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to the region in a show of force.

And in another worrying sign, the acting US defence secretary, Christopher Miller, announced over the weekend the US would not withdraw the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its strike group from the Middle East — a swift reversal from the Pentagon’s earlier decision to send the ship home.

Israel’s priorities under a new US administration

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would like nothing more than action by Iran that would draw in US forces before Trump leaves office this month and President-elect Joe Biden takes over. It would not only give him the opportunity to become a tough wartime leader, but also help to distract the media from his corruption charges.

Any American military response against Iran would also make it much more difficult for Biden to establish a working relationship with Iran and potentially resurrect the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

It’s likely in any case the Biden administration will have less interest in getting much involved in the Middle East — this is not high on the list of priorities for the incoming administration. However, a restoration of the Iranian nuclear agreement in return for the lifting of US sanctions would be welcomed by Washington’s European allies.

Read more: Joe Biden’s approach to the Middle East will be very different from Trump’s, especially on Iran

This suggests Israel could be left to run its own agenda in the Middle East during the Biden administration.

Israel sees Iran as its major ongoing security threat because of its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestinian militants in Gaza.

One of Israel’s key strategic policies is also to prevent Iran from ever becoming a nuclear weapon state. Israel is the only nuclear weapon power in the Middle East and is determined to keep it that way.

While Iran claims its nuclear program is only intended for peaceful purposes, Tehran probably believes realistically (like North Korea) that its national security can only be safeguarded by possession of a nuclear weapon.

In recent days, Tehran announced it would begin enriching uranium to 20% as quickly as possible, exceeding the limits agreed to in the 2015 nuclear deal.

This is a significant step and could prompt an Israeli strike on Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear facility. Jerusalem contemplated doing so nearly a decade ago when Iran previously began enriching uranium to 20%.

How the Iran nuclear deal fell apart

Iran’s nuclear program began in the 1950s, ironically with US assistance as part of the “Atoms for Peace” program. Western cooperation continued until the 1979 Iranian Revolution toppled the pro-Western shah of Iran. International nuclear cooperation with Iran was then suspended, but the Iranian program resumed in the 1980s.

After years of negotiations, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed in 2015 by Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany (known as the P5+1), together with the European Union.

The JCPOA tightly restricted Iran’s nuclear activities in return for the lifting of sanctions. However, this breakthrough soon fell apart with Trump’s election.

Read more: Iran’s nuclear program breaches limits for uranium enrichment: 4 key questions answered

In April 2018, Netanyahu revealed Iranian nuclear program documents obtained by Mossad, claiming Iran had been maintaining a covert weapons program. The following month, Trump announced the US withdrawal from the JCPOA and a re-imposition of American sanctions.

Iran initially said it would continue to abide by the nuclear deal, but after the Soleimani assassination last January, Tehran abandoned its commitments, including any restrictions on uranium enrichment.

Israel’s history of preventive strikes

Israel, meanwhile, has long sought to disrupt its adversaries’ nuclear programs through its “preventative strike” policy, also known as the “Begin Doctrine”.

In 1981, Israeli aircraft struck and destroyed Iraq’s atomic reactor at Osirak, believing it was being constructed for nuclear weapons purposes. And in 2007, Israeli aircraft struck the al-Kibar nuclear facility in Syria for the same reason.

Starting in 2007, Mossad also apparently conducted an assassination program to impede Iranian nuclear research. Between January 2010 and January 2012, Mossad is believed to have organised the assassinations of four nuclear scientists in Iran. Another scientist was wounded in an attempted killing.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the killings.

Iran is suspected to have responded to the assassinations with an unsuccessful bomb attack against Israeli diplomats in Bangkok in February 2012. The three Iranians convicted for that attack were the ones recently exchanged for the release of Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert from an Iranian prison.

The Mossad assassination program was reportedly suspended under pressure from the Obama administration to facilitate the Iran nuclear deal. But there seems little doubt the assassination of Fakhrizadeh was organised by Mossad as part of its ongoing efforts to undermine the Iranian nuclear program.

Fakhrizadeh is believed to have been the driving force behind covert elements of Iran’s nuclear program for many decades.

The timing of his killing was perfect from an Israeli perspective. It put the Iranian regime under domestic pressure to retaliate. If it did, however, it risked a military strike by the truculent outgoing Trump administration.

It’s fortunate Moore-Gilbert was whisked out of Iran just before the killing, as there’s little likelihood Iran would have released a prisoner accused of spying for Israel (even if such charges were baseless) after such a blatant assassination had taken place in Iran.

Read more: Kylie Moore-Gilbert has been released. But will a prisoner swap with Australia encourage more hostage-taking by Iran?

What’s likely to happen next?

Where does all this leave us now? Much will depend on Iran’s response to what it sees (with some justification) as Israeli and US provocation.

The best outcome would be for no obvious Iranian retaliation or military action despite strong domestic pressure for the leadership to act forcefully. This would leave the door open for Biden to resume the nuclear deal, with US sanctions lifted under strict safeguards to ensure Iran is not able to maintain a covert weapons program.

– ref. Are the US and Iran headed for a military showdown before Trump leaves office? – https://theconversation.com/are-the-us-and-iran-headed-for-a-military-showdown-before-trump-leaves-office-152606

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Laufer, Associate Professor, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

In Australia, New Zealand and around the world, COVID has turned luxury and semi-luxury hotels into quarantine facilities.

Among the four and five-star hotels reported as having been used for temporary detention are Sydney’s Intercontinental, Marriott, Hyatt Regency, Sheraton Grand, Sofitel Wentworth and Novotel Darling Harbour; Auckland’s Rydges, Crowne Plaza, Grand Millennium, Four Points by Sheraton and Ramada; and Melbourne’s Stamford Plaza, Mercure, Park Royal and Rydges on Swanston.

Each has had a valuable brand name.

Governments prefer four and five-star hotels to small ones because they are large (200 rooms or more) and easier to run as quarantine facilities.

It’s hard to blame the big international hotels for taking part. Without income from international tourists, they’ve needed the money.

But by taking the money and becoming known as places where people are locked up, at times cross-infected, and fed food ranging from “nice” to “atrocious”, they run the risk of destroying brands that took decades to build.

‘Associative interference’

It would happen through a process known as associative interference, where it becomes difficult to focus on old and relevant information about something because new and less-relevant information gets attached to it and gets in the way.

A recent memory of something much less glamorous can contaminate a lifetime of memories associating a brand or an experience with luxury.

This can happen both at the general level (hotels are no longer a place I am particularly keen to spend time in, even five-star ones) and at a specific level (this particular brand that I always associated with quality I now associate with something less savoury).

In New Zealand the names of hotels designated as COVID-19 facilities are announced in press conferences, published on an official website and reported in the media.

In Australia, it’s more hit and miss. Word spreads about the hotels being used, especially when things go wrong, even though some seem reluctant to confirm their status.

How damaging could it be?

Brands such as Intercontinental, Sheraton, Hyatt, Rydges and Ramada might be tempted to take comfort from the experience of Corona, the brand of beer.

It ended the year with its sales intact, despite initial concerns. But its only association with coronavirus was a name.

Hotels have been linked to COVID and detention in real life.

Some have been likened to prisons.

Read more: Another day, another hotel quarantine fail. So what can Australia learn from other countries?

One way for COVID hotels to lessen the COVID taint would be to flood people’s memories with something else – their original positioning as places of luxury.

A massive advertising and public relations campaign reinforcing the earlier themes of opulence and quality might, in time, overwhelm the association with quarantine and restore the image the brands once had.

If all else fails, change the name

If the new taint still sticks, there’s an alternative. It’s to abandon the name.

It’s a manoeuvre with an impressive history.

After years of trying to live down Britain’s worst nuclear disaster, the Windscale power plant and reprocessing facility changed its name to Sellafield in 1981.

The tobacco giant Philip Morris became Altria Group in 2003, and this year Adani Mining became Bravus Mining in a victory of sorts for opponents of its Queensland coal mine. Australia’s much-criticised Newstart unemployment benefit became JobSeeker.

A new name with no lineage might be better than a familiar one that calls forth memories of 2020.

– ref. After COVID we may never think about hotels in the same way again – https://theconversation.com/after-covid-we-may-never-think-about-hotels-in-the-same-way-again-151373

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Laurenceson, Director and Professor, Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI), University of Technology Sydney

Great power competition in the Asia-Pacific region has been building for years. But COVID-19 has turbo-charged the shifts taking place and China is finishing 2020 in a significantly stronger position compared with the US than when the year started.

Meanwhile, Canberra’s relations with Beijing continue to deteriorate and there’s little reason to be optimistic that a sudden, positive turnaround will be seen in 2021.

As competition rather than cooperation has become the dominant frame through which both Beijing and Washington view their bilateral relationship, each is increasingly sensitive to evidence that other countries in the Asia-Pacific region are supporting their opponent.

The fundamental driver of China’s hostility towards Australia in 2020 stems from its assessment that Australia’s leaders have reneged on earlier commitments to never direct the country’s security alliance with the US against China.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has appealed for Australia and other middle and smaller powers to be granted “greater latitude” in how they manoeuvre between the US and China in the future.

But the University of Sydney’s James Curran cautions against unrealistic expectations:

Great powers simply don’t dole out strategic space to others.

China’s power on an upwards trajectory

At the end of 2019, China’s GDP stood at US$14.3 trillion. This was two-thirds that of the US GDP of $21.3 trillion.

The fallout from COVID-19 has accelerated the trend in China’s favour. The International Monetary Fund’s latest growth forecasts suggest China’s economy will jump from two-thirds to three-quarters the size of the US by the end of 2021.

And when cost differences are accounted for and the two economies are measured in terms of their respective purchasing power, China’s GDP is actually already 10% larger than the US.

According to the Lowy Institute’s “Asia Power Index”, which tracks power in the economic, military, diplomatic and cultural domains, the US still comes out on top, but its lead over China has been cut in half since 2018. This mainly reflected losses by the US rather than gains by China.

And even before COVID-19 hit, a survey of business, media and civil society leaders in Southeast Asia showed that Beijing was considered vastly more influential than Washington in the region, though this increasing power was viewed with apprehension.

Nearly half said they had little to no confidence in the US as a strategic partner or provider of regional security.

And when asked if the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) was forced to align itself with either the US or China, a majority in seven of the 10 ASEAN member countries chose China.

The past year has also delivered dividends for China’s leaders domestically, with most citizens giving them high marks for their handling of the public health crisis, despite some initial anger of the government’s early attempts to cover up the severity of the pandemic.

This reinforces already high levels of overall trust in the central government.

The contrast with the US in this regard is stark. In May, a cross-country survey revealed that 95% of Chinese respondents had trust in their government, compared with just 48% in the US.

Read more: US-China relations were already heated. Then coronavirus threw fuel on the flames

Yet, China’s leaders still seem insecure

All of these “wins” would naturally provide impetus for China’s international behaviour to become more confident and assertive.

But President Xi Jinping’s worldview is another factor. In September, Xi exhorted Communist Party cadres to “maintain a fighting spirit and strengthen their ability to struggle”. The word “struggle” appeared more than another 50 times in the same speech.

The Lowy Institute’s Richard McGregor says this reflects Xi’s view that China is in an

existential struggle against an implacable enemy dead-set on destroying China.

China’s diplomats had already been primed to embrace a “fighting spirit” in a speech delivered by Foreign Minister Wang Yi last November.

Read more: What’s behind China’s bullying of Australia? It sees a soft target — and an essential one

All of this has meant that rather than projecting a self-assured poise, China’s international behaviour has frequently veered in the direction of bullying fuelled by insecurity.

Australia has been on the front lines of this treatment — dialogue on the leader and ministerial level has been refused, exports have been targeted and propaganda campaigns have been deployed.

Beijing’s intransigence has predictably led to the strengthening of coalitions like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (comprised of the US, Australia, Japan and India), as well as deeper conversations among Japan, India and Australia about how to build greater resilience into supply chains that are currently heavily exposed to China.

Greater use of carrots than sticks

There is some evidence China is beginning to recognise its over-the-top behaviour is counterproductive, at least towards some countries, and make greater use of carrots rather than sticks.

Its “vaccine diplomacy” in Southeast Asia is a case in point.

Read more: China wants to be a friend to the Pacific, but so far, it has failed to match Australia’s COVID-19 response

COVID-19 has hit Indonesia particularly hard, hit with more than 600,000 total cases so far. But just last week, Jakarta received 1.2 million doses of a vaccine manufactured by a Chinese pharmaceutical company, Sinovac.

China is touting this effort a “Health Silk Road”, with pledges to provide billions in aid and loans to mostly developing countries to help them recover from the pandemic.

Australia won’t have much latitude with a stronger China

In the case of Australia, however, China is unlikely to put the stick down any time soon.

As Dirk van der Klay, a research fellow at ANU, explains, painting a stark contrast between Southeast Asia and Australia serves the purpose of reminding the region of the benefits of staying in Beijing’s good books — as well as the costs of crossing it.

While countries like the US, Britain and France have at least offered Australia some rhetorical support in its China predicament, Australia’s most significant Southeast Asian neighbours have been notably quiet.

With China’s relative power set to grow further in 2021, Canberra might feel even more uncomfortable. But as former senior Singaporean diplomat, Bilahari Kausikan, remarked in October, Australia is “not in a unique position” as “almost everybody” in the region faces the same challenge of managing relations with China and the US to maximise their economic and security interests.

Australia’s unfortunate distinction is that because its relations with China have already sunk to such depths, it has less ability to negotiate a path between the two great powers.

Elevating partnerships with countries like Japan, India and Indonesia offers one way forward, but alongside this needs to be a pragmatic strategy for getting the China relationship at least back on an even keel.

Tokyo, New Delhi and Jakarta have all had serious challenges with Beijing, but their relations never fell to the depths of the current China-Australia tensions. These countries might offer some useful advice here, too.

Read more: Timeline of a broken relationship: how China and Australia went from chilly to barely speaking

– ref. China enters 2021 a stronger, more influential power — and Australia may feel the squeeze even more – https://theconversation.com/china-enters-2021-a-stronger-more-influential-power-and-australia-may-feel-the-squeeze-even-more-150943

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elke Hacker, Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology

Despite decades of public health campaigns, skin cancer remains a major threat to health in Australia, with more cases diagnosed each year than all other cancers combined.

Skin cancer rates remain high and sunburn is all too common in Australia.

Our research looks at how best to inform people about the hazards of ultraviolet (UV) radiation, including by evaluating and testing shade, as well as the development of wearable UV indicators including stickers and wristbands. While this technology can help to improve people’s sun protection habits, we continue to come up against some common myths about sunburn.

As we’re in the middle of summer, it seems a good time to debunk some of these.

Myth 1: “You can’t get burnt in the shade”

Effective shade can provide protection from the Sun’s UV rays, but we can still get burnt in the shade.

Shade materials with holes or gaps can allow penetration by UV radiation.

The same rule applies for tree shade, with denser foliage and wider canopies providing better protection than trees with sparse foliage and dappled sunlight.

Similarly, solid roof structures with wide overhangs and little sky view provide greater UV radiation protection than smaller structures.

Reflected UV radiation is another factor that means you’re not always safe in the shade. The Sun’s rays reflect from light-coloured surfaces and can bounce back under shade.

Light surfaces, such as concrete, light-coloured paint or metallic surfaces, reflect more than dark ones. Sand can reflect as much as 25% of UV radiation. This means if you’re sitting under a beach umbrella, UV radiation can still damage your skin, even though you feel like you’re covered in the shade.

Myth 2: “You’re safe from the sun when in water”

Up to 40% of total UV radiation hits the body even half a metre below the surface of the water, according to SunSmart.

Ordinarily, you would have to dive at least 2.5m inshore and 4.5m in offshore coastal waters to avoid harmful UV radiation. This is because offshore waters tend to be clearer, so UV can penetrate further, whereas inshore waters tend to have sediment and nutrients that can cause a rapid decline in UV.

When swimming, you may not notice when your skin is burning due to the cooling effect of water. Reflective surfaces around water environments can also amplify UV, such as concrete or other hard surfaces around a swimming pool.

The importance of adequate sun protection when participating in water-based activities is highlighted by the rate of sunburn in Queenslanders, with 45% of children sunburnt in the previous 12 months and 69% of these sunburns acquired during a water-based activity.

Myth 3: “Exercise makes my skin red hot, not the sun”

You might often hear people say, when they return from exercise, that they’re red only because they’ve been running. While this does occur, redness from exercise usually dissipates quickly — so if you’re still red in the 24 hours after exercise, it’s sunburn.

When you exercise, your body temperature increases and your body’s natural mechanism is to cool down by carrying blood towards the skin’s surface, causing one to sweat and cool off.

Sweat washes sunscreen away and towelling down wipes off sunscreen.

Regular reapplication of a water-resistant sunscreen is vital. Work-out tan lines are signs of skin damage. Each time our skin gets damaged we greatly increase our risk for skin cancer.

Myth 4: “That’s not sunburn, it’s windburn”

Windburn can make your skin red, but in Australia, windburn is pretty rare. It’s more likely to occur in instances like skiing, by very windy, cold and dry conditions, with dense mountain clouds and minimal or no sunlight. In Australia, it’s much more likely to be sunburn.

What’s more, high winds can actually increase the likelihood of getting sunburn. Wind dries out and weakens the outer layer of skin. Wind force can make these dead skin cells fall off.

When you apply sunscreen, it coats this outer layer of skin. As wind brushes these skin cells away your sunscreen goes with it, leaving unprotected skin to be burnt by the sun.

Using sun-protective clothing and reapplying sunscreen are the best ways to avoid skin damage when it’s windy.

Myth 5: “You can’t get burnt in the car through a window”

Often, glass used in car side windows is untinted. It reduces UV radiation but doesn’t completely block transmission.

This means you can still get skin damage if you spend a long time in the car next to an untinted side window. Tinted windows can help reduce the amount of UV that hits your skin, and the rule of thumb is that the darker the tint, the more it protects — it’s worth noting, though, that legally you can’t tint your whole front window in Australia, which is obviously the biggest window in the car.

More commonly, however, people are sunburnt in cars when they have the side windows down and are exposed to a short period of high levels of UV radiation.

Simple solutions are the five sun-safe measures — slip, slop, slap, seek, slide:

• slip on a long-sleeved shirt. If you’re in water, this might include a rashie or wetsuit.

• slop on an SPF 30 or higher sunscreen, and reapply at least every two hours, or sooner after swimming or sweating

• slap on a broad-brimmed hat

• seek shade

• slide on sunnies.

– ref. I can’t get sunburnt through glass, shade or in water, right? 5 common sunburn myths busted – https://theconversation.com/i-cant-get-sunburnt-through-glass-shade-or-in-water-right-5-common-sunburn-myths-busted-150640

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gavin JD Smith, Associate Professor in Sociology, Australian National University

Sun, sea … snakes: all three are synonymous with the Australian summer, but only the first two are broadly welcomed. And of all Australia’s snake species, brown snakes are among the most feared.

To some degree, this is understandable. Brown snakes are alert, nervy and lightning-fast over short distances. When threatened, they put on a spectacular (and intimidating) defensive display, lifting the front half of their body vertically, ready to strike.

They are also fairly common, and well adapted to suburban life – especially the eastern brown species. And of course, certain species have a highly toxic venom designed to immobilise the mammals they prey on.

Besides my work as a sociologist, I’m also a professional snake catcher and handle scores of venomous snakes during the warmer months. I don’t expect people to love snakes, but I believe greater knowledge about them will help with their being respected more as keystone ecological creatures.

Not just wicked serpents

Around two Australians die each year from snake bites, and the brown snake family causes the most human – and likely pet – fatalities. But compare that figure with the annual road toll (1,188 deaths in 2019) or the 77 people killed by horses and cows in Australia between 2008 and 2017. You can see why many herpetologists – or snake experts – feel our fear of snakes is somewhat misplaced.

Where does this fear come from, then? It partly arises from the representation of snakes throughout human history as menacing. The fact snakes are cold-blooded, with an unblinking stare, means humans have often depicted them as callous and cold-hearted. Examples include the serpent who corrupts Eve in the Book of Genesis, and monstrous mythological characters such as Medusa.

Partly because of these and other depictions, snakes are often considered something to be feared. When they slither into our manicured back yards, they are seen as a “problem” that has transgressed our sanitised domestic lives. And this fear is often transferred down the generations.

Read more: Does Australia really have the deadliest snakes? We debunk 6 common myths

In my snake-catching work, I have extricated snakes from backyards and homes, a shopping centre, parks and school classrooms. I’ve even removed snakes from a woman’s boot, under a soccer team’s kit bag and inside a weapons bunker! About 85% of the snakes I work with on callouts are eastern browns.

Many callers wanting a snake removed experience intense emotions, from shock and hostility to awe and reverence. Most want the snake taken as far away from their property as possible.

After catching a snake, I release it into a suitable non-residential environment. I always wonder what happens to it next. The threats snakes face are numerous. They can be harmed or killed by humans, pets, feral animals or predators. They are also threatened by habitat loss, climate events and contaminated prey items.

I release each with the departing words: “Good luck fella, stay safe, stay out of trouble.”

Tracking snake movements

Eastern brown snakes are timid and reluctant to strike unless provoked. They are generally solitary animals except during breeding periods. They perform a crucial ecological role by eating vermin such as mice and rats, controlling the numbers of other native species and providing a food source for various animals.

Information on how brown snakes move through and use urban space is limited. We urgently need more understanding of their daily habits, especially as urban development encroaches on their natural habitat, increasing the chances of conflict with humans or pets. More insight is also needed on whether it’s damaging to relocate hundreds of snakes each year.

A study in Canberra funded by the Ginninderry Conservation Trust aims to answer these issues. A team of researchers, including myself, will track the movements of 12 eastern brown snakes in the urban environment. We will do this using telemetry – tracking technologies fitted to the snakes. Some devices will be implanted into the snake under the skin, and others attached externally above the tail.

Read more: I’ve always wondered: who would win in a fight between the Black Mamba and the Inland Taipan?

We will examine:

• movements of adult male and female eastern browns

• how far they travel

• the times of day and temperatures when they are active

• where they go dormant in the cooler months

• the refuges they use to navigate the hostile environment they live in.

Our team will also explore the effects of catching a snake and releasing it into new habitat within a designated range (5km in the ACT, and 20km in NSW). We will examine how the snake responds to the stress of being captured and moved, the risks it might confront in an unfamiliar landscape, and whether it survives. We will also explore the implications for other snakes in the release habitat and the genetic consequences of interbreeding between geographically distinct populations.

Knowledge breeds greater tolerance

We anticipate the study’s findings will help educate the public about how snakes operate in suburbia. It will also inform translocation policies and conservation efforts.

We also hope to show how eastern browns are vital – not superfluous or undesirable – parts of thriving ecosystems. The better we understand snakes, the less we might fear them. This may also mean we are less disposed to relocating or harming them.

– ref. ‘Good luck fella, stay safe’: a snake catcher explains why our fear of brown snakes is misplaced – https://theconversation.com/good-luck-fella-stay-safe-a-snake-catcher-explains-why-our-fear-of-brown-snakes-is-misplaced-150783

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Gannaway, Lecturer, University of Melbourne

This article is part of three-part series on summer reads for young people after a very unique year.

US teenager Trayvon Martin was shot dead in 2012 by a neighbourhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman who was later acquitted of the murder. This saw the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. The racist social and political issues in the US saw the deaths and violence on Black bodies brought front and centre through acts of protest.

The arguments against the alleged police brutality in the US were easily translatable to the Australian context.

The Black Lives Matters movement was renewed following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in May this year. And together with US counterparts, tens of thousands of Australians marched across our cities to draw attention to racial profiling, police brutality and the more than 400 Indigenous people who have died in police custody since a royal commission into the problem was held in 1991.

The global movement brought unprecedented sales of books about race and anti-racism. This turn toward texts is indicative of the role they play in helping us make sense of major social issues.

Angie Thomas, author of the 2017 bestseller “The Hate U Give”, has spoken about the role of literature in igniting awareness, resistance and change.

I think books […] play a huge role in opening people’s eyes and they’re a form of activism in their own right, in the fact that they do empower people and show others the lives of people who may not be like themselves.

Research has long shown a link between the books we read and our development of empathy. But more recent research has highlighted it is important we don’t see books as immediate fixes to complex social issues, especially when we import these books from other locations and times.

Our reading must be accompanied by close attention to the ways racism and prejudice unfold in our own location.

Read more: 5 Australian books that can help young people understand their place in the world

Coming to understand the impact and complexity of racism in this way is referred to as “racial literacy”. Here are five books that can help young people build racial literacy around the varied forms of racism and discrimination.

by Nic Stone

Dear Martin explores issues of race through the eyes of conscientious 17 year old, Justyce McAllister.

Built around the central question, “What would Martin (Luther King) do?”, this novel brings to light the litany of decisions and ethical conundrums thrust into Justyce’s lap daily, as he navigates a world affected by racism and prejudice.

by Ibi Zobai and Yusuf Salaam

In 1989, five young men were falsely accused of the assault and murder of a jogger in New York’s Central Park. Now documented in Ava Duvernay’s Neflix miniseries When They See Us, the Five were exonerated 12 years later.

But the story stands as a haunting reminder of the inequalities experienced by Black men and the life-altering consequences this can wreak on innocent lives.

One of these young men, Yusuf Salaam, collaborates with award-winning author and prison reform activist Ibi Zobai, to craft a story that examines these themes through a narrative of a wrongfully incarcerated young man navigating his teenage years in prison.

edited by Anita Heiss

This anthology of 50 chapters provides an opportunity to deeply listen and understand the lived experiences of Indigenous Australians and the ways racism takes all manner of overt, subtle and systemic forms.

Particularly noteworthy are the chapters by Ambelin Kwaymullina and Celeste Liddle, in which the authors describe both the nature of racism experienced by them from the schoolyard, and the broader historical context on which this racism is based.

by Brittney Morris

This novel centres on 17-year-old Kiera, a talented young developer who creates a multiplayer role-playing game. The game is a “mecca of black excellence” and an escape from the racism often experienced by those “game-playing while black”.

When an offline murder is traced back to the game, Kiera grapples with the complexity of both the implications of her creation and the conversations it triggers.

Slay weaves social commentary into the dialogue between characters from all walks of life, covering everything from cultural appropriation, to whether racism can ever be “reversed”.

by Ambelin Kwaymullina

Many books here centre around the kind of racial stereotyping and violence that put the Black Lives Matter movement on the map. But understanding racism in the Australian context also involves examining colonialism and the racist underpinnings of our history.

Living on Stolen Land centres Indigenous sovereignty in the conversation about race. Using prose verses such as those titled “Bias” and “Listening”, it leads readers through examining unconscious beliefs and moving toward being a genuine ally of Indigenous people.

Author and educator Layla F Saad has suggested when we read texts about social issues like racism, we read for transformation, not merely information.

A range of texts have been developed to support families in having these transformative discussions together. Maxine Beneba Clarkes’ “When We Say Black Lives Matter”, for instance, is a beautifully illustrated picture book that focuses on the strength and resilience of black children and communities. While texts like Our Home our Heartbeat by Adam Briggs centres on key Indigenous figures to be celebrated.

Read more: Teen summer reads: 5 novels to help cope with adversity and alienation

– ref. Teen summer reads: 5 books to help young people understand racism – https://theconversation.com/teen-summer-reads-5-books-to-help-young-people-understand-racism-150072

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lucy Montgomery, Program Lead, Innovation in Knowledge Communication, Curtin University

For all its faults, 2020 appears to have locked in momentum for the open access movement. But it is time to ask whether providing free access to published research is enough – and whether equitable access to not just reading but also making knowledge should be the global goal.

In Australia the first challenge is to overcome the apathy about open access issues. The term “open access” has been too easy to ignore. Many consider it a low priority compared to achievements in research, obtaining grant funding, or university rankings glory.

But if you have a child with a rare disease and want access to the latest research on that condition, you get it. If you want to see new solutions to climate change identified and implemented, you get it. If you have ever searched for information and run into a paywall requiring you to pay more than your wallet holds to read a single journal article that you might not even find useful, you will get it. And if you are watching dire international headlines and want to see a rapid solution to the pandemic, you will probably get it.

Many publishing houses temporarily threw open their paywall doors during the year. Suddenly, there was free access to research papers and data for scholars researching pandemic-related issues, and also for students seeking to pursue their studies online across a range of disciplines.

Read more: Science publishing has opened up during the coronavirus pandemic. It won’t be easy to keep it that way

In October 2020, UNESCO made the case for open access to enhance research and information on COIVD-19. It also joined the World Health Organisation and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in calling for open science to be implemented at all stages of the scientific process by all member states.

There is clearly an appetite for freely available information. Since it was established earlier this year, the CORD-19 website has built up a repository of more than 280,000 articles related to COVID-19. These have attracted tens of millions of views.

Europe has led the way

Europe was already ahead of the curve on open access and 2020 has accelerated the change. Plan S is an initiative for open access launched in Europe in 2018. It requires all projects funded by the European Commission and the European Research Council to be published open access.

Read more: All publicly funded research could soon be free for you, the taxpayer, to read

A 2018 report commissioned by the European Commission found the cost to Europeans of not having access to FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) research data was €10 billion ($A16.1 billion) a year.

In 2019, open access publications accounted for 63% of publications in the UK, 61% in Sweden and 54% in France, compared to 43% of Australian publications.

Australia is lagging behind

Australia’s flagship Australian Research Council has required all research outputs to be open access since 2013. But researchers can choose not to publish open access if legal or contractual obligations require otherwise. This caveat has led to a relatively low rate of open access in Australia.

Read more: Universities spend millions on accessing results of publicly funded research

The Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) and the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group (AOASG) have long carried the torch for open access in Australia. But, without levers to drive change, they have struggled to change entrenched publishing practices of Australian academics.

Our Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) project has examined open access across the world. We have analysed open access performance of individuals, individual institutions, groups of universities and nations in recent decades. The COKI Open Access Dashboard offers a glimpse into a subset of this international data, providing insights into national open access performance.

This analysis shows a steady global shift towards open access publications.

For example, in November 2020, Springer Nature announced it would allow authors to publish open access in Nature and associated journals at a price of up to €9,500 (A$15,300) per paper from January 2021. This was a signal change for the publishing industry. One of the world’s most prestigious journals is overturning decades of closed-access tradition to throw open the doors, and committing to increasing its open access publications over time.

At the moment, the pricing of this model enables only a select group to publish open access. The publication cost is equivalent to the value of some Australian research grants. Pricing is expected to become more affordable over time.

Read more: Increasing open access publications serves publishers’ commercial interests

It’s not just about access to facts

This international trend is a positive step for fans of freely available facts. However, we should not lose sight of other potentially larger issues at play in relation to open knowledge – that is, a level playing field for access to both published research and participation in research production.

Put another way, we need to pursue not only equity among knowledge takers but also among knowledge makers if we are to enable the world’s best thinkers to collaborate on the planet’s signature challenges.

All of this is good news for people who love to access information – but the bigger overall question for the higher education sector is about the conventions, traditions and trends that determine who gets to be considered for a job in a lab or a library or a lecture theatre. There is much more to be done to make our universities open for all – a future of equity in knowledge making as well as taking.

– ref. 2020 locked in shift to open access publishing, but Australia is lagging – https://theconversation.com/2020-locked-in-shift-to-open-access-publishing-but-australia-is-lagging-150284

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christina Ergler, Senior Lecturer, University of Otago

In an age of climate crisis, unaffordable housing and increasing disparities of wealth, the livability and functionality of our cities are more important than ever. And yet, important voices are missing from urban planning debates — the voices of those who will one day inherit those cities.

According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UNICEF child-friendly cities initiative, children of any age or ability have the right to use, create, transform and develop their urban environments.

Despite this, the commonly held view is that preschool children lack the competency to reflect on environments beyond their playgrounds or kindergartens. Young, pre-literate children are denied meaningful participation in city design.

But our work — the Dunedin preschooler study — shows we need to include the voices of these intuitive city planners who think holistically about what a city needs to function well and be safe, healthy and fun.

Considerate and thoughtful planners

The project involved 27 children aged between two and five from three kindergartens in Dunedin. The children engaged in a variety of exercises, including mapping their ideal city using picture tiles, and group discussions with researchers.

The children also took us around their neighbourhoods to provide firsthand insights into what they liked and didn’t like about their local area. A very clear picture soon emerged: young children were considerate and future-oriented planners.

The mapping exercise showed children thought about their own needs but also those of other city dwellers and family members. They expected cities to have at least the basic amenities of a child-friendly city.

Read more: How to teach saving and spending to kids as young as 3 years old

The children wanted health services and facilities that stimulate mind and body, such as libraries, natural environments and gathering places — 78% of children listed playgrounds as important.

While 66% included a supermarket in their design, 59% included a hospital, 48% a fire engine and 41% a coffee shop — as one child observed, their grandma and grandad would use it.

Safety and fun for all

Children also viewed a safe city as important, with 56% placing police cars on their map to symbolise being protected from burglars, “naughty” and drunken people and speeding drivers. They regarded lampposts, pedestrian crossings and traffic lights as essential safety infrastructure.

On neighbourhood walks the children frequently pointed out aesthetically pleasing places — areas with colourful flowers or playful spaces with kōwhai seeds that can be turned into pretend helicopters.

Read more: World Children’s Day: Young people deserve to be heard during COVID-19

The children also warned us about toadstools, prickly bushes, glass on footpaths or other rubbish they were concerned could hurt animals. One child revealed she “hated the pile of rubbish […] because it can go into the water and kill all the animals when they eat”.

By including the often overlooked needs of non-human things, such as sea creatures and plants, the children demonstrated an awareness of the links between environmental protection, conservation and livability.

Cities as happy places

The children not only created child-friendly cities, but care-full ones that work for all people, animals and plants. Their model cities were safe, socially and physically connected, with destinations, services and amenities available which people of all ages and abilities could get to safely.

More importantly perhaps, they created cities with physical and social elements designed to make people happy.

In creating these worlds for our research, the children showed deep, inclusive and emotional connections. We saw they cared for their local environment and felt a responsibility to all living and non-living things.

Read more: How gardening at school can tackle child obesity

But children’s voices are still just a whisper in urban and policy debates. This is a shame, because how young people are treated by their city inevitably influences their life chances. Their well-being as young children has obvious implications for being and feeling well later in life.

Our research identifies the need for communities, planners and urban policymakers to ensure young children can participate and help make the most of their cities in a safe, inclusive way.

The challenge for all of us is to develop the right tools for integrating young children’s views, experiences and suggestions. We can then move towards designing more intuitive, care-full cities — ones we would all benefit from living in.

– ref. Young children are intuitive urban planners — we would all benefit from living in their ‘care-full’ cities – https://theconversation.com/young-children-are-intuitive-urban-planners-we-would-all-benefit-from-living-in-their-care-full-cities-151365

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

Aotearoa New Zealand likes to think it punches above its weight internationally, but there is one area where we are conspicuously falling behind — the number of sites recognised by the UNESCO World Heritage Convention.

Globally, there are 1,121 recognised World Heritage Sites, both cultural and natural. Each has had to satisfy at least one of ten possible selection criteria, adjudicated by the World Heritage Committee, meaning it possesses “outstanding universal value”.

With each such listing comes global recognition, cultural pride and economic rewards. But despite Aotearoa New Zealand’s rich and celebrated natural and cultural wonders, we have contributed only three to the international list: Te Wahipounamu in the South Island, Tongariro National Park in the North Island, and New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic islands.

While there is a good tentative list of potential submissions, we believe it is now out of date and the country needs to go further. Mostly, we need to be thinking in much broader terms about the reasons we value our heritage.

Valuing our early human history

First, some context. It’s a given that people are amazed when they see the best of humanity’s Neolithic sites, such as Stonehenge in England or Newgrange in Ireland. We are mesmerised by the ancient rock art of Australia, Africa and Europe. As cultural sites, they meet one or various world heritage selection criteria:

• they are masterpieces of human creative genius

• they exhibit an important interchange of human values in landscape design or type of landscape that illustrates a significant stage in human history

• they bear a unique or exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition that is living or has disappeared

• they are an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land use or sea use, representative of human interaction with the environment.

There is no doubt the existing World Heritage Sites fulfil these criteria — but we believe a number of sites in New Zealand would too, and be of outstanding universal value to all humanity.

Read more: The forgotten environmental crisis: how 20th century settler writers foreshadowed the Anthropocene

In particular, those areas where humans first touched these lands and left some mark or record of their presence deserve world heritage status. For example, sites such as Te Pokohiwi (Wairau Bar) and Moturua Island, as well as some of the early sites of Māori rock art, potentially meet the criteria.

A Pacific-wide campaign

To pursue this would require a lot of expert analysis (traditional and academic), as well as consent to ensure the proper engagement and involvement of local communities.

But if that happens, such sites could form the basis of a national nomination. In turn, this could be built into a Pacific-wide nomination recognising the astonishing feats of those early Polynesian navigators.

Read more: We’ve developed a framework to help World Heritage Sites manage invasive species

The Pacific covers roughly 30% of the Earth’s surface. It is the biggest and deepest of the planet’s ocean basins. Using an extraordinary understanding of ocean patterns, air currents and astronomy, Indigenous peoples successfully navigated this vast body of water in ways that could not be replicated for nearly 500 years.

Their remarkable exploration spread humanity throughout the Pacific. Aotearoa New Zealand became the last landmass on the planet to be inhabited. It also cemented a Māori world view and cosmology as a crucial source of identity, interconnectedness and custom.

Not easy, but possible

We would argue Aotearoa New Zealand fulfils both sides of the World Heritage site equation: the idea and practice of one of humanity’s most spectacular achievements, and the physical locations where the feet of those early navigators first trod.

The country should now be focusing its efforts on building the case for recognising the unique human achievements contained within the heritage of this land. We do not pretend such a nomination would be easy, but we do think it is possible.

Nor are we saying this should push the other heritage we value to one side. Rather, this would add to it, helping us think more deeply about what we value and why. Such a project would promote traditional knowledge and intercultural dialogue, pride and understanding at local, national and global levels.

Most of all, it would be the right thing to do.

– ref. Why Aotearoa New Zealand’s early Polynesian settlement should be recognised with World Heritage Site status – https://theconversation.com/why-aotearoa-new-zealands-early-polynesian-settlement-should-be-recognised-with-world-heritage-site-status-149981

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Wallace, Associate Professor, 50/50 By 2030 Foundation, Faculty of Business Government & Law, University of Canberra

Australian Cabinet papers from 2000, released today, reflect a relatively quiescent Australia where Islamic militancy and offshore detention were barely glimpses on the horizon, and climate science denialism was not a factor in cabinet considerations at all.

It was the year before the “year that changed everything”: 2001, when Al-Qaeda attacked the United States on September 11, and the Howard government created its “Pacific Solution” asylum-seeker deterrent. They would both become prisms through which Australian politics would be refracted for many years to come.

In contrast, in 2000, John Howard (prime minister 1996-2007) later mused, “we had no conception of the challenges which would engulf the world in the next few years”.

The government’s concerns half-way through its second term, with a 14-seat majority, were overwhelmingly domestic. The approach to global issues mostly prioritised local implications over international obligations.

Minchin throws a stick in the wheel of an ETS

On climate change, the papers reveal a working consensus among cabinet ministers, with one exception, that an emissions trading scheme (ETS) was not only a possible but a likely route by which Australia would eventually fulfil its international environmental obligations.

The market-based nature and sectoral neutrality of an ETS made it the quality choice, cabinet submissions and departmental co-ordination comments make clear. The papers show early work being done on an ETS within the government.

Industry and Resources Minister Nick Minchin stood out against the ETS consensus. Advocating a massive expansion of the gas industry, Minchin pushed for compensation for carbon-intensive industries so large and across so many sectors that it would have massively blunted an ETS’s impact. This drew sharp adverse comments from across the key departments.

Treasurer Peter Costello and his department supported expansion of the gas industry, but drew the line at Minchin’s proposed emasculation of a future ETS. Costello would unsuccessfully bring an ETS proposal to cabinet three years later, in 2003. Howard announced one in the lead-up the 2007 election.

So the 2000 papers contain foundational documents at the heart of this policy arc. They show Minchin as central in swerving cabinet from its consensus ETS support in 2000, to hostility by the time he helped install Tony Abbott as Liberal opposition leader in 2009.

Read more: Bushfires won’t change climate policy overnight. But Morrison can shift the Coalition without losing face

The GST takes flight

Costello’s implementation of the goods and services tax (GST) was the centre of heavy cabinet deliberations ahead of its implementation on July 1 2000.

It was the culmination of a textbook exercise in conceiving, publicly advocating for and then successfully implementing a major, complex public policy – an object lesson for governments today.

It begs the question whether, had the Coalition won the 2007 election, an ETS might now be an unremarked-upon aspect of public finance in Australia too, just like the once controversial GST.

Rural and regional Australia was a major focus, with cabinet submissions generally including rural impact statements.

Howard benefited from a congenial relationship with the National Party leader and deputy prime minister, John Anderson.

Anderson was the best-educated Nationals leader since Earle Page. He was aligned with the National Farmers Federation (NFF) push for market-oriented policy over the old Country Party “deal-making” policy style, to which the Nationals later reverted.

Howard could count on Anderson’s support in cabinet. In exchange, Anderson ran a massive infrastructure program bringing concrete benefits to the bush and regions and kept its voters welded to the Coalition.

Read more: Cabinet papers 1998-99: how the GST became unstoppable

On many issues, little has changed in 20 years

Women are barely mentioned in the papers and were almost non-existent in Howard government decision-making. There was only one woman in the 17 strong cabinet: the family and community services minister, Senator Jocelyn Newman.

In the outer ministry, the aged care minister, Bronwyn Bishop, came under pressure when it emerged residents at Riverside Home in Melbourne were being subjected to kerosene baths, with lethal consequences. Problems in other aged care homes quickly emerged.

Bishop’s cabinet submission in the wake of the crisis trumpeted the government’s Aged Care Act 1997 as “the basis for a sound and sustainable aged care system” and “the most significant change for the industry in its history”.

There was no need to restore nursing ratios, she argued. A “return to ratios would return the industry to detailed input regulation and reduce its efficiency” the submission, which cabinet backed, said.

Indigenous Australians are little mentioned other than in relation to workforce disadvantage and the Northern Territory’s move to mandatory detention for minors.

Cabinet supported only a fraction of the assistance requested by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs Minister John Herron to address deep and worsening Indigenous unemployment.

The government decided not to override the NT government’s mandatory detention move. Instead, it asked Attorney-General Daryl Williams to write to his NT counterpart about its concerns. A week later, cabinet was outraged when it found a United Nations committee investigating potential human rights breaches in Australia against Indigenous citizens, without consultation.

What the 2000 cabinet papers reveal concerning the growing issue of unauthorised boat arrivals in Australia, and in particular the “deterrent” approach Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Minister Philip Ruddock recommended, and cabinet adopted, is historically significant.

They show a government under increasing pressure and moving quickly down a particular path. Departmental comments show this rang increasingly loud alarm bells in the major departments, even as they broadly supported the “deterrent” approach.

There are, and likely always will be, different opinions about the deterrent strategy, and public discussion usually turns on the binary question of whether it was right or wrong.

The 2000 papers are important, not least because they open up critical additional questions, even for its supporters, about whether this strategy could have been implemented differently and better.

Anglosphere politics had begun to make a particular kind of shift to the right, and the Howard government was in the vanguard. It was still relatively early days in that shift, as the fact the government had a cabinet position that included “multicultural affairs” in its title attests.

To put this shift into international context, media mogul Rupert Murdoch would not appoint Roger Ailes CEO of his Fox News channel in the United States until the following year.

Australia’s insurgency of explicitly nativist politics was marked by the arrival in Canberra in 1996 of One Nation’s Pauline Hanson as the member for Oxley. Internationally, this wave may have peaked in the election of another nativist redhead, US President Donald Trump, 20 years later.

The fierce conduct of the “history wars” in Australia from the 1990s, the prominent role of conservative think tanks in it, and the early challenge and ongoing political consequences of unauthorised boat arrivals in Australia – which has only relatively recently emerged as an issue in Europe – make Australia an early example of a phenomenon that shifted mainstream conservative politics to a distinctly different place from that occupied before.

In 2000, elements of it were evident but not yet fully activated. The following year, from September 11, they would be supercharged.

Read more: Pauline Hanson built a political career on white victimhood and brought far-right rhetoric to the mainstream

Chris Wallace is the official historian for the 2000-2001 cabinet papers release from the National Archives of Australia. You can read her full essay on the 2000 papers here.

– ref. Cabinet papers 2000: the Coalition before climate denialism, but on the path to offshore detention – https://theconversation.com/cabinet-papers-2000-the-coalition-before-climate-denialism-but-on-the-path-to-offshore-detention-151576

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Swann, Associate Professor in Psychology, Southern Cross University

It’s that time of year when many of us are setting goals for the year ahead. The most common New Year’s resolution – set by 59% of us – is to exercise more.

But our research suggests the way we typically set goals in exercise often doesn’t work. So, what should we do instead?

Our research interviewing elite athletes suggests one possibility is to set open goals instead.

Read more: Can trying to meet specific exercise goals put us off being active altogether?

Specific goals can actually put us off

Generally we’re advised to set specific, or SMART, goals (where SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound). Aiming to walk 10,000 steps per day is a common example.

This advice is typically based on goal-setting theory from the 1990s. However, that theory has now evolved, with research now suggesting specific goals in some cases can actually put us off.

One problem is specific goals are all-or-nothing: you either achieve the goal or you fail.

That’s why you might feel you’ve failed after “only” recording 9,000 steps when your goal was 10,000. In reality, 9,000 steps might actually be an achievement (especially on a busy day) — but because you didn’t reach your specific target, it can feel disappointing.

When you stop making progress towards your goal, or start to feel like you’re failing, it’s easy to give up — just like many of us do with New Year’s resolutions.

Used incorrectly, specific goals even cause unethical behaviour (like using devices to artificially increase our step counts and benefit from lower insurance premiums!).

One alternative is to set what’s known as an open goal.

What are open goals?

Open goals are non-specific and exploratory, often phrased as aiming to “see how well I can do”. For example, professional golfers in one study described performing at their best when aiming to “see how many under par I can get”.

When colleagues and I interviewed elite athletes about exceptional performances, a Mount Everest climber described how:

I was just thinking, ‘Oh I’ll just see how it goes and take it as it comes.’ I climbed higher and higher and the climb had got more and more engrossing and difficult and all-encompassing really […] until I discovered that I’d climbed like 40 metres without consciously knowing what I was doing.

Open goals don’t just work for elite athletes – they work well in exercise too. One study found insufficiently active people performed better (in this study that meant they walked further) when pursuing open goals than they did with SMART goals.

The fitness industry is already starting to use open goals. For example, the Les Mills fitness brand now recommends open goals (“to see how active you can be”), and the Apple Watch now incorporates open goals as a workout option.

Psychological benefits of open goals

Open goals aren’t just good for performance — they’re also much more psychologically beneficial than SMART goals.

Indeed, the elite athletes who first reported open goals described how they were an important part of experiencing flow – the enjoyable, rewarding state when everything just seems to click into place and we perform well without even needing to think about it.

Follow-up studies found open goals – compared to SMART goals — make walking more enjoyable, make people more confident and make them feel they performed better. That boosts motivation and suggests open goals can help people stick with exercise routines longer.

One participant said open goals “took away the trauma of failing”.

Why do open goals work differently to SMART goals?

There’s another important difference between open and SMART goals. When you set a SMART goal, you’re identifying something in the future you want to achieve (“I want to be able to walk 10,000 steps every day”).

So pursuing SMART goals is about reducing the gap between where you are now and where you want to get to – you’re always lagging behind where you want to be. That can make it feel like your progress is slow, and slow progress doesn’t feel good.

When you set an open goal, your focus is on your starting point. If your goal is to “see how many steps I can reach today”, then as your step count rises, it will feel like you’re making progress. You may start to think, “Oh, I’m already on 2,000 steps… Now it’s 3,000 steps… Let’s see how many I can get to.”

Rather than comparing against where you should be, you’re constantly building on your starting point.

That makes the process much more positive – and the more positive we feel during exercise, the more we’ll want to do it again and again.

To set your own open goals, think first about what you want to improve (for example “being more active”). Then identify what you want to measure, such as your daily average step count.

Phrase your goal in an open-ended, exploratory way: “I want to see how high I can get my average daily step count by the end of the year.”

And then get started! With an open goal, you’re more likely to see progress, enjoy the experience, and stick with it until you’re ready to set — and achieve — more specific goals.

– ref. Want to exercise more? Try setting an open goal for your New Year’s resolution – https://theconversation.com/want-to-exercise-more-try-setting-an-open-goal-for-your-new-years-resolution-149172

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Lee, Research assistant, The University of Queensland

So you’re one of the 21% of Australians who got sunburnt last weekend.

While we should be avoiding sunburn, it’s sometimes easier said than done in the Australian sun.

What can you do once you realise you’re turning into a temporary lobster?

First, the bad news

Once you’re sunburnt, you can’t undo the damage to your DNA and skin structures, and you can’t speed up skin healing. You can only treat the symptoms.

Sunburn is a radiation burn caused by too much exposure to ultraviolet (UV) rays, causing extensive damage to the DNA in your skin. When your skin’s DNA monitoring and repair system judges there’s too much damage to fix, it flags the cells for destruction and calls in the immune system to finish the job.

The immune cells and extra fluid squeezing into the skin cause the swelling, redness, heat and pain we know as sunburn. Blisters develop when whole sheets of cells die and lift away, and fluid fills in the space below. Later, dry peeling results when large sheets of dead cells peel off to make way for fresh ones.

Read more: Explainer: what happens to your skin when you get sunburnt?

However, while your skin does its thing, you can manage the symptoms and make yourself more comfortable.

Step 1: Prevent further damage and assess your burn

First, get out of the sun until the redness and pain have subsided, even if this takes several days. The full effects of a sunburn can take up to three days to develop, and further UV exposure will only compound the damage.

Next, assess whether to seek medical help. Severe cases can involve second-degree burns, which disrupt the lower layer of skin, the dermis, and stop the skin from regulating fluid loss effectively. If you have a second-degree burn across a large area of you body, complications can include electrolyte imbalances due to large amounts of fluid loss, or shock, also due to extreme fluid loss. Secondary infections are also possible since the upper layer of skin is no longer acting as a tough barrier to germs. You should definitely see a doctor if you:

• have large areas of blistered skin, especially on the face

• have severe swelling

• can’t manage the pain with over-the-counter painkillers

• experience fevers, chills, nausea, dizziness or confusion.

Blistered sunburn in children needs immediate attention from your GP.

Step 2: Ease the suffering

As with a thermal burn, water is your friend. Drink plenty to correct any dehydration from being in the sun too long and replenish the fluid being drawn into your skin. Cool baths, showers or damp cloths ease the sensation of heat and can be used as often as you like throughout the day. Avoid putting ice on a sunburn, as this can make matters worse by causing intense vasoconstriction, where blood vessels narrow sharply and cut off local blood supply to already damaged skin.

Moisturising lotions can also help soothe by keeping moisture in, but avoid skin-numbing creams unless prescribed by your doctor. Any water-based moisturiser should do, including aloe vera gel.

Despite its popularity as a home remedy, there’s surprisingly little research on aloe vera for sunburn specifically. There’s promising data for its use in wound healing, but many studies investigated aloe extracts taken orally, rather than gel on the skin. In any case, a commercial aloe vera gel won’t do you any harm if you find it soothing. However, gel straight from the plant in your garden comes with a risk of soil-borne infections in skin that’s already damaged (warning: gruesome pictures in that link).

Over-the-counter painkillers like ibuprofen or paracetamol can take the sting out of your sunburn and help you rest more comfortably. If your skin is very itchy, try an antihistamine. US guidelines also often suggest low-dose (0.5-1%) hydrocortisone cream; there’s not much evidence for its effectiveness, but it also won’t hurt you to try it for a few days.

If you have blisters, try not to pop them as that exposes the damaged skin underneath to infection; cover them up with a wound dressing if you’re tempted.

While none of these remedies will fix the damage in the way antibiotics fix an infection, they will make you more comfortable while your skin gets on with healing itself.

Read more: Monday’s medical myth: we’re not getting enough sun

Step 3: Make a plan

While you’re stuck inside, pinpoint how you got burnt and how you might prevent it next time. Most sunburn happens when you did not expect to be outdoors for long, or when you thought sunburn was unlikely because the weather was cool, windy or cloudy. UV radiation is still present in these conditions, but you don’t have the benefit of feeling hot to remind you to get out of the sun.

Here are a few familiar scenarios:

• got burnt when you unexpectedly had to park 10 minutes’ walk away? Apply sunscreen as part of your daily routine whenever the UV index will be 3 or over. This will protect you from these sneaky sunburns and also from sub-sunburn levels of UV damage. Don’t worry — there’s no evidence wearing sunscreen every day will make you vitamin D deficient or cause a toxic build-up of chemicals in your body

• arrived at the cricket and realised you left your hat or sunscreen at home? Many venues offer free sunscreen, so ask at the check-in or the health and safety officer

• coming in from the beach, garden or bike ride just a bit too late? Sunscreen won’t protect you all day, so make sun-protective clothes part of your regular attire — a rashie, long-sleeved shirt, or UV-protective armguards and leggings

• got to the park BBQ when all the shady spots were taken? Arrange your next outing to avoid the most UV-intense middle of the day. The SunSmart app or Bureau of Meteorology weather report will tell you the UV forecast and when you need sun protection

• forgot to reapply sunscreen? Set an alarm on your phone next time to remind you.

The more you practise this kind of thinking, the easier it will become.

– ref. How to treat sunburn pain, according to skin experts – https://theconversation.com/how-to-treat-sunburn-pain-according-to-skin-experts-150070

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Norman Day, Lecturer in Architecture, Practice and Design, Swinburne University of Technology

Throughout the world architects are designing green buildings, whether it’s in their sustainable construction, environmentally friendly operation or actually green by style.

It’s broadly titled biophilia, connecting people with nature, and it can lead to some creative and innovative designs.

But now we are finding that literally greening the world — by covering building walls and roofs with vegetation — can also come with some unexpected problems.

Read more: Greening our grey cities: here’s how green roofs and walls can flourish in Australia

A bug’s high life

In the Chinese city of Chengdu, a vast green experimental housing estate of 826 apartments was constructed where people can live in a vertical forest with every open space and balcony containing live vegetation.

Trouble is they must share the plants with a scourge of mosquitoes and other bugs. Most apartments in the Qiyi City Forest Gardens development were sold by April 2020, but six months later only a handful of families had reportedly moved in.

The towers were built in 2018 and plants were provided to reduce noise and clean up pollution. But the plants thrived, while sales moved slowly, and no one was clipping the greenery to keep it in control.

Read more: Unbuilding cities as high-rises reach their use-by date

Now mostly empty balconies have cascading branches of plants overtaking space, blocking windows.

It might not help that Chengdu and its population of 16.3 million people are located in Sichuan, central China, which is humid and semi-tropical, a perfect environment for fast-breeding mossies.

But a slow uptake, with tenants slow to move in, made the problem worse as the plants subsumed their buildings.

Some vertical vegetation living success

Other green projects across the globe have avoided this particular problem, so far.

Milan’s Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) was designed by Stefano Boeri and botanist Laura Gatti.

They reportedly spent long hours selecting suitable vegetation, a variety of 800 trees, 5,000 shrubs and 15,000 plants, which would suit their location and the Milanese climate.

Read more: Australian cities are lagging behind in greening up their buildings

Their plan was to improve air quality in the city via the green facades, and residents have embraced the concept, which appears to be where Qiyi City Forest has gone wrong.

In Chengdu, maintenance and care of the plantings is almost non-existent, so no truly symbiotic relationship between accommodation and human occupier has formed as part of biophilic living. As is nature’s way, the non-human occupiers (the bugs) are winning.

Gardens need a gardener

US landscape architect Daryl Beyers, from the New York Botanical Garden, says the Chengdu setup didn’t work partly as a result of bad design.

In Chengdu’s humid climate and clammy monsoons, stagnant water collects in planters which are not properly drained, and mosquitoes breed in these.

Beyers adds:

They [the developers] didn’t think about the maintenance […] You can’t have a garden without a gardener.

They were touting it as a manicured garden outside on your deck. If it’s manicured, someone has to do the manicuring.

The idea of fully manicured vegetation on balconies only works if the plants are cared for regularly. Apparently, gardeners attend Qiyi City just four times a year to maintain the plants, but they require weekly care.

Sydney’s green space on the up

One Central Park apartments in Sydney, by French architect Jean Nouvel, takes on a green mantle with plants covering most of its walls and balconies.

French botanist Patrick Blanc selected the plants on the building for their capacity for healthy growth and suitability to the Sydney habitat.

By using acacias (wattles) and poa (grasses) on upper levels and goodenia (hop bush) and viola (native violet) lower down, the vegetation is attuned to its place and growing successfully.

More than 1,100 square metres of walls support many species of plants, most of them native to Sydney. They are at home with the local climate and seasons. The plants can withstand hot, dry and windy Australian summers and have survived since 2014.

How to green your buildings

Green buildings are necessary for the environment. We need to redress the loss of our natural resources and their benefits, and green buildings can do that by adopting appropriate design, energy efficiencies, renewable materials and green technologies.

Read more: A third of our waste comes from buildings. This one’s designed for reuse and cuts emissions by 88%

Central Park’s success could be emulated at Chengdu, by tracing back the original design intent and adopting a workable maintenance and management plan.

The lessons from both projects indicate that proper planning and appropriate selection of vegetation, which is then fed and watered by applicable technology, will yield a proficient green building.

People feel comfort living with nature, and a vertical garden gives those in high-rise towers a chance to share that comfort. But with the benefits come responsibilities.

The clue here is that a faithfully biophilic building must be appropriate for use. That means appropriate in terms of the place, natural resources, local climate and the people who must manage and occupy the natural surroundings.

– ref. Green buildings can bring fresh air to design, but they can also bring pests – https://theconversation.com/green-buildings-can-bring-fresh-air-to-design-but-they-can-also-bring-pests-147838