Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Parry, Senior Lecturer in Sport Management, University of Winchester

Rising Australian cricket star Will Pucovski has recently taken the surprising step of asking not to be considered for selection for the national men’s team ahead of the First Test against Pakistan, which starts on Thursday. Pucovski cited a need to focus on his mental well-being.

For a player to turn down potential selection for the national team may at first glance be surprising, or even scandalous. But Pucovski is one of a recent trio of professional Australian cricketers to take a break from playing to boost their mental well-being, alongside Glenn Maxwell and Nic Maddinson.

Read more: Myles Garrett, Don Cherry and the changing nature of the sports boys club

Internationally, other high profile male athletes have spoken out about problems with mental health, including English Premier League footballer, Danny Rose, Wales rugby player, Dafydd James, and NBA basketball player, DeMar DeRozan.

Negative stereotypes associated with mental health issues were once a matter of shame and embarrassment, only to be discussed quietly in fear of being branded as “weak”. This is particularly true for traditionally “manly” sportsmen who have come under fire in the past for opening up.

But as the contemporary definition of masculinity becomes less rigid, more athletes are able to speak out about their mental health issues while, at the same time, paving the way for their fans to say it’s okay to not be okay.

Opening up wasn’t always well-received

For elite athletes, training and performance demands can lead to high psychological stress. This is on top of facing media and public scrutiny, threats of sudden and enduring injuries, and retirement. Despite these pressures, elite athletes don’t often seek help for, or even recognise, poor mental health.

Read more: ‘Australian’ enough to be a hero?

In fact, a raft of ex-England cricketers (Marcus Trescothick, Mike Yardy, Jonathan Trott and Steve Harmison), have written about experiencing mental health issues in their autobiographies. In all cases, their off-field battles halted their international careers, but their struggles were poorly understood at the time.

When Mike Yardy left the 2011 World Cup, one outspoken pundit proclaimed:

he must have been reading my comments about his bowling. That must have upset him because it’s obviously too much for him at this level.

One of Jonathan Trott’s critics said he felt “conned” by the player reporting a “stress-related illness” when he left an Ashes series. He suggested Trott “did a runner. He did not fight and got on a plane and went home”.

Steve Harmison never openly disclosed mental health problems until the end of his career, due to his belief that if fans and “… people in the England set-up knew how bad it was I’d never play for my country again”. His struggles were written off as “homesickness”.

When Marcus Trescothick returned home in the middle of a tour in 2006, he battled with how to report this, eventually saying:

Having picked up a virus and also some personal issues to resolve, I decided to return home.

He was hounded by the press, who were eager to uncover the real reason.

Today, mental health is more readily accepted in the wider community to be an illness, making it easier for male athletes to disclose mental ill health as a reason for not being fit to play.

For Will Pucovski, the response from the media and the public has, for the most part, been to applaud his bravery at speaking out, demonstrating care and understanding of his situation.

Cricket Australia general manager of national teams Ben Oliver said everyone in the “Australian cricket family” support’s Pucovski’s decision.

And Virat Kohli, the Indian cricket captain, and one of the most prominent and influential players in the sport, described the moves as “remarkable” and having “set the right example”.

Sport and masculinity

Historically, men were taught that being “masculine” meant to revere violence and stoicism and to hyper-sexualise women, in an attempt to distance themselves from associations of weakness and homosexuality.

Sport has been a key avenue for developing and displaying masculinity from early childhood; for developing “real men”.

Australia, in particular, has a history of celebrating “manly” sporting displays and sports such as rugby league and Australian rules football are valued, in part, because they are tough, physical games.

Read more: Rugby league may finally have reached its tipping point on player behaviour and violence

Athletes are often labelled heroes and role models because they uphold national archetypes and images of a “typical” person. In Australia, they are prime examples of the typical masculine “matey” hero, and true Australians.

But in recent years, the definition of masculinity has softened to become more inclusive. Behaviours like talking about feelings, recognising mental well-being and playing more active roles in family life (particularly around childbirth) are now more acceptable than they used to in our recent past.

This means it has become easier for male athletes to admit when they’re not okay. And their position as role models in turn triggers more discussion, including among sports fans, who are often a hard to reach group when it comes to mental health awareness.

If athletes, as masculine heroes, can admit to experiencing poor mental health, then so too can those that look up to them. Cricket Australia’s Ben Oliver said:

By Will bravely taking this position, he will undoubtedly inspire others facing similar challenges to speak up and take positive steps towards improving their mental well-being.

Read more: Sporting dads: male athletes need family-friendly policies too

Rather than honouring athletes who endure both physical and mental pain in silence, it’s time to recognise that those who can admit they’re struggling and seek help are the real heroes and real men.

If this article has raised issues for you or you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

– ref. Big men do cry: cricketers are leading the charge for inclusive masculinity – http://theconversation.com/big-men-do-cry-cricketers-are-leading-the-charge-for-inclusive-masculinity-127108

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

Labor frontbencher Chris Bowen, who has previously been shadow treasurer and before that treasurer, wants the study of economics made “more sexy” to attract more students, especially women, to study it.

And he thinks young people’s concerns about climate change might be a way to encourage them into a discipline which has seen falling numbers.

In his Warren Hogan memorial lecture, Bowen highlights the rise of business courses and the decline of those in economics. The lecture, to be delivered on Wednesday night, has been released beforehand.

The number studying economics in their HSC or equivalent qualification has gone from about 40,000 in 1993, to about 11,000 today, Bowen points out.

Since the early 1990s, which is when the subject of business studies was added to the curriculum the study of economics in high schools has collapsed by 70% across Australia, and 75% here in NSW.

Economics is now taught in just one third of government schools and half of non-government schools.

And while the number of university undergraduates studying economics at university has remained static at around 10,000 over this time, this is of course against the background of a big increase in the numbers of university students in total, meaning economics has shrunk has a proportion of university study generally.

In fact between 2001 and 2016, the number of economics undergraduates fell slightly, while the numbers undertaking banking and finance, management and commerce and business studies degrees grew strongly.

Bowen says that in the decade to 2016, the number of Australian universities offering economic degrees fell from 21 to 17.

Read more: Women are dropping out of economics, which means men are running our economy

Meanwhile the gender gap in economics students has been rising.

In the early 1990s when I was a young economics student at school, the breakdown of males and females in the economics classrooms of Australia was 50-50. … The ratio of boys to girls is now two to one. That’s worse than we do in the STEM subjects.

While saying he has nothing against business studies, Bowen says he is “concerned that the nation will lose out, our society will lose out, if fewer young people are trained in the fundamentals of good economic decision making and more and more are trained in the more commercial skills sets of banking and business studies”.

Bowen says young people are passionate about big issues, notably climate change and inequality.

They want solutions. And if we want solutions that are effective, enduring and efficient, only economics can supply them.

A rigorous economic training can equip young people to challenge the issues of their age. And explaining the value of economic training to young people in dealing with things like climate change and inequality might just make it a more attractive option for study.

Passion to tackle climate change might be one selling point for young people and the study of economics.

Bowen says the government should add climate change to the list of National Health Priority Areas.

Current areas are cancer control, cardiovascular health, injury prevention, mental health, diabetes mellitus, arthritis and musculoskeletal conditions, obesity and dementia. The government recently proposed the addition of medicines safety.

Bowen says severe climate change, of the type the world is on track for, threatens health. Adding climate change to the priority list would raise awareness of the health challenge it presents “and set out a road map for dealing with it”.

– ref. Make the study of economics “more sexy”: Chris Bowen – http://theconversation.com/make-the-study-of-economics-more-sexy-chris-bowen-127360

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Cook, Lecturer, Computer and Security Science,Edith Cowan University, Edith Cowan University

Fake videos and doctored photographs, often based on events such as the Moon landing and supposed UFO appearances, have been the subject of fascination for decades.

Such imagery is often deep fake content, called so because it uses deep learning associated with neural networks and digital image processing.

Last week, Twitter revealed plans to introduce a new policy governing deep fake videos on its platform.

The company proposed it would warn users about deep fake content by flagging tweets with “synthetic or manipulated media”. Twitter says media may be removed in cases where it could lead to serious harm, but has stopped short of enforcing a strict removal stance. Users have until November 27 to provide feedback.

In adopting this warning-only approach towards deep fakes, the social media giant has shown poor judgement.

Why deep fakes are dangerous

With advances in computer science, deep fakes are becoming an increasingly powerful tool to deceive people using social media.

Deep fake clips of celebrities and politicians are realistic enough to trick users into making financial, political and personal decisions based on the fake testimony of others.

Whether it’s a David Koch erectile dysfunction cream scam, an announcement by Donald Trump that AIDs has been eradicated, or a fake interview with Andrew Forrest leading to a finance scam, deep fakes present a serious risk to our ability to trust what we view online.

Read more: People who spread deepfakes think their lies reveal a deeper truth

Social media companies have so far taken a sloppy approach to this threat. They have even promoted the use of photo algorithms letting users experiment with animated face masks, and provided tutorials on how to use editing programs.

Deep fake production is the professional version of this practice. At its worst, it can even threaten democracy.

Twitter’s latest draft policy on deep fakes sets a dangerous precedent. It allows social media platforms to handball away their responsibility to protect customers from manipulated videos and imagery.

Twitter should be just as accountable as television

It’s time social media giants such as Twitter started seeing themselves as the 21st century version of free-to-air television. With TV, there are clear guidelines about what cannot be broadcast.

Since 1992, Australians have been protected by the 1992 Broadcasting Services Act, ensuring what is shows in “fair and accurate coverage”. The act protects viewers in regards to the origin and authenticity of television content.

The same principles should apply to social media. Americans now spend more time on social media than they do watching television, and Australia isn’t far behind.

By suggesting they only need to flag tweets with deep fake content, Twitter’s proposed policy downplays the seriousness of the threat.

Sending the wrong message

Twitter’s draft policy is dangerous on two fronts.

Firstly, it suggests the company is somehow doing its part in protecting its users. In reality, Twitter’s decision is akin to watching a child struggle to swim in heavy surf, while nearby authorities wave a sign saying: “some waves may be hard to judge” – instead of actually helping.

Read more: Lies, ‘fake news’ and cover-ups: how has it come to this in Western democracies?

Senior citizens and inexperienced social media users are particularly vulnerable to deep fakes. This is because they’re predisposed to trust online content that looks authentic.

The second reason Twitter’s proposition is dangerous is because social media trolls and sock puppet armies enjoy surprising online audiences. Sock puppets are specialists in deceiving users into believing they’re a single fake person (or multiple fake perople) by means of false posts and online identities.

Basically, content that has been signposted as deep fake will be exploited by people wanting to amplify its spread. It’s unrealistic to suppose this won’t happen.

If Twitter flags posts that are fake, yet leaves them up, the likely outcome will be a popularity surge in this content. As per social media algorithms, this means a greater number of fake videos and images will be “promoted” rather than retracted.

Twitter has an opportunity to take a leadership role in preventing the spread of deep fake content, by identifying and removing deep fakes from its platform. All major social media platforms have the responsibility to present a unified approach to the prevention and removal of manipulated and fake imagery.

The circulation of a Nancy Pelosi deep fake video earlier this year revealed social media’s inconsistency in the handling of deceitful imagery. YouTube removed the clip from its platform, Facebook flagged it as false, and Twitter let it remain.

Read more: AI can now create fake porn, making revenge porn even more complicated

Twitter is in the business of helping users repost links and content as many times as possible. It creates profit by generating repeated referrals, commentary, and the acceptance of its content through promoted trends.

If deep fakes aren’t removed from Twitter, their growth will be exponential.

A looming threat

Early versions of such spurious content were relatively easy to spot. People in the first deep fake clips appeared unrealistic. Their eyes would’t blink and their facial gestures wouldn’t sync with the words being spoken.

There are also examples of harmless image manipulation. These include web apps on Snapchat and Facebook that let users alter their photos (usually selfies) to add backgrounds, or resemble characters such as cute animals.

However, this new generation of altered imagery is often hard to distinguish from reality. And as criminals and pranksters improve their production of deep fakes, the other side of this double-edged sword could swing at any time.

– ref. Instead of showing leadership, Twitter pays lip service to the dangers of deep fakes – http://theconversation.com/instead-of-showing-leadership-twitter-pays-lip-service-to-the-dangers-of-deep-fakes-127027

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evelyn Parr, Research Fellow in Exercise Metabolism and Nutrition, Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research, Australian Catholic University

As an aesthetic society, we often demonise body fat and stigmatise people with lots of it. There’s often an assumption that people carrying excess weight don’t exercise and must be unhealthy.

But that’s not true: you can be fat and fit. In fact, as we age, low levels of fitness can be more harmful to our health than high amounts of fat.

Read more: Interactive body map: physical inactivity and the risks to your health

For those considering starting exercise, try looking beyond weight loss for motivation. No matter how much you weigh, there are always benefits to exercise.

Exercise actually does a pretty poor job of getting us to expend enough excess energy to lose weight. This is partly due to a compensatory effect of our appetite, which increases after we exercise.

Exercise changes our body composition – how much fat we have as a ratio to how much lean (muscle) tissue we have – but this doesn’t always cause big changes on the scales.

Here are just five ways exercise improves our health, no matter how much we weigh.

1. Better cardiorespiratory fitness

Cardiorespiratory fitness is a measure of how far and hard you can run without needing to stop, or how many stairs you can climb without being out of breath. Running for longer, or climbing more stairs, means you have a higher absolute cardiorespiratory fitness which cannot be improved with weight loss alone.

Having a high body mass index (BMI) may reduce the absolute intensity you can exercise but it doesn’t mean it is less effective.

You may be able to jog between every third lamppost, for example, but not run consistently for 1 km. While it may seem the periodic jogging is not as impressive, it’s all relative to your baseline and any exercise is better than none.

If you’re carrying a lot of excess weight, you might prefer non-weight bearing exercise such as swimming or cycling indoors to minimise stress on your joints – but this will depend on you and what you like doing. After all, you’re more likely to continue exercising if you enjoy it.

If you’re thinking “but I hate running/swimming/cycling/dancing and I’d rather lift weights”, then lift weights! Although lifting weights doesn’t have the same effects as cardio training, the benefits are still as important for mobility, joint function and maintaining muscle mass as we age.

Read more: Don’t have time to exercise? Here’s a regimen everyone can squeeze in

2. Lowered risk of heart disease and stroke

Exercise reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke, even in those with a chronic disease such as diabetes, irrespective of body fatness.

Regular exercise helps lower blood pressure, improves delivery of blood throughout the body, and reduces inflammation, even in those with a high body mass index.

3. Reducing the ‘bad’ fat

Exercise improves our body’s ability to use energy. We store large amounts of energy as fat, which is quite hard to break down, as it costs a lot of oxygen compared to “cheaper” fuels for the body to use like glucose.

But when we exercise regularly, we increase our body’s ability to use fat as a fuel source as well as requiring more energy at rest.

This doesn’t necessarily mean more exercise equals more fat loss, but it does mean more fat turnover, and typically less fat stored in and around the organs (the “bad” visceral fat).

Read more: Belly fat is the most dangerous, but losing it from anywhere helps

4. Mental health benefits

Research has consistently shown that people who exercise (regardless of body size and shape) have better mental health and lower levels of stress, depression and emotional problems.

It does this via blood flow to the brain, increased release of endorphins that make us feel happy, and by helping to moderate the brain’s response to stress.

Often, the hardest part is getting started with exercise or going to perform the exercise, but once you are moving the mental health benefits begin.

5. Preventing weight gain

While exercise may not help us lose a lot of weight on the scales, it’s a good way to keep weight off and prevent weight regain.

Regular exercise continues to encourage the body to use stored fuels and remodel tissues (such as muscle) to grow healthier and stronger.

But preventing weight regain is tough. People who have lost weight may need greater amounts of exercise to counteract the physiological drive to return to the heavier body weight.

Read more: Genes, joules or gut bugs: which one is most to blame when it comes to weight gain?

If you need some extra help getting started or finding a routine that suits you, talk to your GP or consider seeing an accredited exercise physiologist.

– ref. If weight loss is your only goal for exercise, it’s time to rethink your priorities – http://theconversation.com/if-weight-loss-is-your-only-goal-for-exercise-its-time-to-rethink-your-priorities-120083

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Renwick, Professor, Physical Geography (climate science), Victoria University of Wellington

Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz

I saw an article claiming that “king tides” will increase in frequency as sea level rises. I am sceptical. What is the physics behind such a claim and how is it related to climate change? My understanding is that a king tide is a purely tidal effect, related to Moon, Sun and Earth axis tilt, and is quite different from a storm surge.

This is a good question, and you are right about the tides themselves. The twice-daily tides are caused by the gravitational forces of the Moon and the Sun, and the rotation of the Earth, none of which is changing.

A “king” tide occurs around the time when the Moon is at its closest to the Earth and Earth is at its closest to the Sun, and the combined gravitational effects are strongest. They are the highest of the high tides we experience.

But the article you refer to was not really talking about king tides. It was discussing coastal inundation events.

Read more: King tides and rising seas are predictable, and we’re not doing enough about it

When tides, storms and sea levels combine

During a king tide, houses and roads close to the coast can be flooded. The article referred to the effects of coastal flooding generally, using “king tide” as a shorthand expression. We know that king tides are not increasing in frequency, but we also know that coastal flooding and coastal erosion events are happening more frequently.

As sea levels rise, it becomes easier for ocean waves to penetrate on to the shore. The biggest problem arises when storms combine with a high tide, and ride on top of higher sea levels.

The low air pressure near the centre of a storm pulls up the sea surface below. Then, onshore winds can pile water up against the coast, allowing waves to run further inshore. Add a high or king tide and the waves can come yet further inshore. Add a bit of sea level rise and the waves penetrate even further.

The background sea level rise has been only 20cm around New Zealand’s coasts so far, but even that makes a noticeable difference. An apparently small rise in overall sea level allows waves generated by a storm to come on shore much more easily. Coastal engineers use the rule of thumb that every 10cm of sea level rise increases the frequency of a given coastal flood by a factor of three.

This means that 10cm of sea level rise will turn a one-in-100-year coastal flood into a one-in-33-year event. With another 10cm of sea level rise, it becomes a one-in-11-year event, and so on.

Retreating from the coast

The occurrence rates change so quickly because in most places, beaches are fairly flat. A 10cm rise in sea levels might translate to 30 or 40 metres of inland movement of the high tide line, depending on the slope of the beach. So when the tide is high and the waves are rolling in, the sea can come inland tens of metres further than it used to, unless something like a coastal cliff or a sea wall blocks its way.

The worry is that beaches are likely to remain fairly flat, so anything within 40 metres of the current high tide mark is likely to be eroded away as storms occur and we experience another 10cm of sea level rise. If a road or a house is on an erodible coast (such as a line of sand dunes), it is not the height above sea level that matters but the distance from the high tide mark.

Another 30cm of sea level rise is already “baked in”, guaranteed over the next 40 years, regardless of what happens with greenhouse gas emissions and action on climate change. By the end of the century, at least another 20cm on top of that is virtually certain.

Read more: Our shameful legacy: just 15 years’ worth of emissions will raise sea level in 2300

The 30cm rise multiplies the chances of coastal flooding by a factor of around 27 (3x3x3) and 50cm by the end of the century increases coastal flooding frequency by a factor of around 250. That would make the one-in-100-year coastal flood likely every few months, and roads, properties and all kinds of built infrastructure within 200 metres of the current coastline would be vulnerable to inundation and damage.

These are round numbers, and local changes depend on coastal shape and composition, but they give the sense of how quickly things can change. Already, key roads in Auckland (such as Tamaki Drive) are inundated when storms combine with high tides. Such events are set to become much more common as sea levels continue to rise, to the point where they will become part of the background state of the coastal zone.

To ensure cities such as Auckland (and others around the world) are resilient to such challenges, we’ll need to retreat from the coast where possible (move dwellings and roads inland) and to build coastal defences where that makes sense. The coast is coming inland, and we need to move with it.

– ref. Climate explained: why coastal floods are becoming more frequent as seas rise – http://theconversation.com/climate-explained-why-coastal-floods-are-becoming-more-frequent-as-seas-rise-127202

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Larissa McLean Davies, Associate Professor Language and Literacy Education, University of Melbourne

In recent weeks, Australian universities’ commitment to teaching Australian literature has come under scrutiny. This came amid revelations Sydney University has withdrawn funding from its Chair of Australian Literature – the nation’s first.

Later news of the possible closure of UWA Publishing compounded anxiety about the future of Australian literary studies. An article in The Australian newspaper noted there is no local university in which an undergraduate student can specialise in Australian literature.

Read more: The open access shift at UWA Publishing is an experiment doomed to fail

The concern goes beyond tertiary studies. We conducted a project exploring secondary school teachers’ engagement with Australian texts. We found Australian books are not consistently taught in classrooms and, when they are, they more often than not marginalise female, refugee and Indigenous authors.

The demographic of Australian classrooms has changed significantly in the past fifty years. But the texts studied in English have remained remarkably stable.

In our multi-cultural society, where compulsory schooling is intended to help develop critically informed and empathetic citizens, this situation requires serious attention.

Why teachers don’t teach Aussie books

Studying English and literature in settler societies was historically intended to support students to value “Englishness”. As a result, Australian literature, if it was acknowledged at all, was systematically marginalised and maligned in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

In the 1940s – in a precursor to what we now call the “cultural cringe” – an English professor famously renounced Australian literature. He said that, in the absence of appropriate books by Australians, he would lecture on DH Lawrence’s novel, Kangaroo.

Read more: ‘Australia has no culture’: changing the mindset of the cringe

Australia’s first national curriculum, in 2008, attempted to respond to this enduring imperial literary legacy. It mandated teaching Australian literature, placing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature at the heart of this commitment.

Most states and territories have mandated text lists for school senior years, which generally include titles by Indigenous authors. But recent research in Victoria has shown school uptake of these texts is limited.

Our research shows teachers are often reluctant to select books by Australian authors. Reasons for this include a limited knowledge of diverse Australian texts, often due to a lack of exposure to Australian literature at school and university.*

There are fewer teaching resources for Australian literature too and teachers are concerned about inaccurately representing the stories of Indigenous Australians.

Some teachers we spoke to also raised questions about the quality of Australian literature, as compared with more established canonical texts. One teacher said:

While I appreciate that it is important to have Australian literature in the curriculum […] I find that Australian texts are often very similar and this limits the number of themes and ideas the students are exposed to over the course of their education.

We also conducted a national survey of more than 700 English teachers, asking them what books they taught in class. The following top 15 texts were most referenced:

This should not be seen as a definitive list of texts most used in Australian classrooms. But it does offer insight into the relative status of Australian literature in the curriculum.

Most works on this list are written in the past, by male British or American writers. Most of these have formed part of the school literary canon for generations. There are only two texts by women, Hinton and Lee, and no texts by Australian women, migrant Australians or Aboriginal writers.

Read more: Diversity, the Stella Count and the whiteness of Australian publishing

The only texts by Australians cited here are Marsden’s 1990s dystopian invasion series and Silvey’s 2009 coming of age novel.

How do we change it?

Our research showed teachers need more time, knowledge, resources and confidence to include more Australian literature in the classroom. This is not surprising given teachers we surveyed and interviewed often completed both secondary and tertiary studies in English without significant experiences of Australian literature.

In response, colleagues and I have partnered with the Stella Prize (a literary award for Australian women writers) to develop the teacher-researchers project.

Teachers select a text from the Stella long-list. They then work intensively with the project team – which includes teacher-educators and Australian literary studies experts – and university archives or other cultural collections, to develop resources to teach their chosen texts that can be shared.

Texts in this pilot project have included Heat and Light by Ellen Van Neervan, Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman and The Hate Race by Maxine Beneba Clarke.

This project will expand the literary knowledge and experiences of teachers, students and school communities involved. But a concerted, bipartisan and enduring commitment to resourcing scholarship and teaching of Australian writing across universities and schools is imperative.

If we are to ensure all students experience Australian stories from the past and the present, Australian writing, in all its rich diversity, must be a central part of a literary education.

– ref. Old white men dominate school English booklists. It’s time more Australian schools taught Australian books – http://theconversation.com/old-white-men-dominate-school-english-booklists-its-time-more-australian-schools-taught-australian-books-127110

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Maund, PhD Candidate, School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle

The impacts of the bushfires that are overwhelming emergency services in New South Wales and Queensland suggest houses are being built in areas where the risks are high. We rely heavily on emergency services to protect people and property, but strategic land-use planning can improve resilience and so help reduce the risk in the first place. This would mean giving more weight to considering bushfire hazards at the earliest stages of planning housing supply.

The outstanding dedication of emergency agencies such as the NSW Rural Fire Service and Queensland Fire and Emergency Service is obvious in their efforts to save lives and properties despite the increasing intensity of fires. However, strategic land-use planning could help reduce the risks by being more responsive to such changes in hazards.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: When the firies call him out on climate change, Scott Morrison should listen

Comprehensive management of bushfire risk should include a strategic planning focus on reducing the pressures on emergency services and communities. We may have to rethink land-use planning approaches that prove inadequate to deal with the increasing intensity and unpredictability of natural hazards.

Strategic planning policies and practices provide the opportunity to be more attentive to changes in bushfire hazards in particular. Planning decisions that fail to do this may leave communities exposed and heavily reliant on emergency services during a disaster.

Planning to build resilience

The Australian government has identified land-use planning as a key step in managing natural hazards. In 2011, the Council of Australian Governments declared:

Locating new or expanding existing settlements and infrastructure in areas exposed to unreasonable risk is irresponsible.

The increasing intensity of hazards associated with climate change makes strategic planning even more relevant. Land-use planners could help greatly with building resilience by placing natural hazards at the top of their assessment criteria.

Read more: Drought and climate change were the kindling, and now the east coast is ablaze

Coordinating land-use planning reforms is itself a challenge. Planning in Australia involves many policies, institutions, professions and decision-makers. Policies and processes differ depending on the state or territory.

Furthermore, planners must reconcile the demand for residential land from population growth and the need to protect the environment. Deciding where to locate housing is often fraught with complexity, so the process needs expert early input from relevant scientific communities and emergency services.

Anticipate risk to reduce it

Land-use planning offers an opportunity in the earliest phase of development to manage the combined pressures of population growth, urban expansion, increasing density and risks of natural hazards.

When rezoning land for residential development, many issues have to be considered. These include environmental sustainability, demand for housing and the location of existing buildings and infrastructure, as well as natural hazards. It’s a complex and intricate process, but clearly the strategic planning stage is the first opportunity to minimise exposure to bushfire risk.

Existing policy and processes may defer the detailed review of bushfire risk and other natural hazards to development stages after land has been rezoned. There’s a case for policy to increase the importance attached to bushfire hazards at this early stage.

Ultimately, strategic planners aim to locate settlements away from risk of natural hazards. However, bushfires continue to have disastrous impacts on people and properties. Ongoing demand for housing may add pressure to build in areas exposed to risk.

Settlements are pushing into undeveloped areas that are more likely to be exposed to bushfire risk. The role of strategic land-use planning then becomes even more critical. The devastation we have seen this month shows why this risk must be given the highest priority in land-use planning, particularly when zoning land as residential.

Read more: Natural hazard risk: is it just going to get worse or can we do something about it?

Key steps to reform planning

The increasing intensity of bushfires points to a need to rethink planning processes and mitigation strategies to reduce exposure to such hazards before they arise. This will help ease the burden on emergency services of managing a disaster when it happens. We can’t ignore the opportunities to minimise the risks at the early stages of land-use planning. Key steps include:

• a policy review to mandate natural hazards, including bushfire risk, as one of the highest priorities in policy, with an objective framework for making land-use decisions
• mandatory consultation with relevant science disciplines to model natural hazard risks when land is considered for rezoning
• involve emergency services in the strategic planning phase to help minimise future risk.

– ref. Putting homes in high-risk areas is asking too much of firefighters – http://theconversation.com/putting-homes-in-high-risk-areas-is-asking-too-much-of-firefighters-127126

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andreas Cebulla, Senior Research Fellow, South Australian Centre for Economic Studies, University of Adelaide

In the past decade a 30-year trend to earlier retirement has been reversed. In OECD countries the average age at which people retire has risen by about one to two years. In Australia the average age has risen from 64 to 65.6 for men, and from 61.8 to 64.2 for women.

For the Australian government, though, this isn’t enough.

In a speech last night, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg called Australia’s ageing population an “economic time bomb”.

Over the next four decades the number of Australians working and paying income tax for every person over the age of 65 would fall from 4.5 to 2.7, he said. The proportion of people over 65 in the workforce would therefore have to grow substantially.

The government needs people to keep working and paying income tax to offset spending on age pensions, health care and the like.

Its most obvious policy stick is to raise the eligibility age for the pension, which is now 66 but will be 67 in 2023. Raising it further, however, is something the government has rejected as not on the cards. Instead Frydenberg is talking about more training for older workers to keep their skills relevant.

Read more: How we could make the retirement system more sustainable

But my research with Mikkel Barslund, Jürgen Bauknecht, Nathan Hudson-Sharp, Lucy Stokes and David Wilkinson suggests this is a very small and unappealing carrot.

Our findings suggest there’s a limit to retirement ages rising organically. Because there comes a point where work, especially full-time work, just isn’t something most people want to – or indeed can – do.

The reason has to do with getting tired at and through work, how that tiredness affects partners and families, and the limit to which workplaces have shown themselves capable of accommodating the needs and preferences of older workers.

This is something that can only be addressed by dramatically reconfiguring work options.

The limits of job satisfaction

These conclusions are based on two studies into the experiences of older workers.

These studies have been based on data gleaned from two large European surveys, the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the European Social Survey (ESS). SHARE is a database of information on the health, socio-economic status and family networks of about 140,000 individuals aged 50 or older in 28 countries. ESS measures the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour of people in more than 30 nations. The demographics of these surveys means the results are relevant to the Australian population.

The first study used data from SHARE to model the link between the step into retirement, job satisfaction and the factors that shape job satisfaction.

The results found people happy in their jobs retired later than those who were less satisfied with their job and its working conditions.

That’s perhaps not a surprising finding. But what is interesting is that our modelling showed that, if every mature age workers’ job satisfaction was raised to its highest level, the effect on retirement would still be small.

It would add, on average, about three months to current retirement ages.

The effect was stronger for women and those with tertiary qualifications. If working conditions made them more satisfied with their job, they would spend an extra 9 to 12 months in work before retiring.

Read more: Keeping mature-age workers on the job

Job satisfaction is only part of the story, though. The second study, using data from ESS, highlights the obstacle of increasing tiredness to longer working lives. This is so because tiredness after work can adversely affect relationships with partners and families.

Interestingly, the significant factor in the perceptions of partner or family is not the number of hours worked but ability to determine a daily work schedule.

Those with greater influence over their working day were much less likely to find their partner or family “fed up” with their working beyond the time they could have retired. This greater control did not eliminate tiredness, but it appeared to help non-retirees better balance work with home life.

Tangible measures

Our studies do point to a few tangible things that can be done do to make working in later life more bearable.

Improved job satisfaction could come from reducing time pressures, minimising physically demanding work, better pay, skill development opportunities and more autonomy. In particular, greater flexibility over working hours would help.

These are things, of course, that might improve job satisfaction for any worker, regardless of age. But they are within the control of the employer, not the government.

So perhaps what Josh Frydenberg and the federal government now need to talk about is not just a narrow focus on education or training to help older Australians remain in the workforce for longer, but how to encourage better working environments for everyone, regardless of age, gender or occupation.

– ref. There’s a yawning gap in the plan to keep older Australians working – http://theconversation.com/theres-a-yawning-gap-in-the-plan-to-keep-older-australians-working-119013

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gay Hawkins, Professor, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

Most of us will never see a platypus or a lyrebird in the wild, but it’s likely we’ve encountered them on television.

Our new research looks at the vital role early ABC television played in making Australian animals accessible to audiences.

In the early years of ABC TV, there was very little locally produced animal content. When animals were on the small screen, they were usually imported from the BBC.

Foremost among the imports was David Attenborough’s Zoo Quest (1954–1964), following the young naturalist’s exploits in Guyana, Borneo and Paraguay collecting live animals for London Zoo.

Zoo Quest was formative in the development of natural history television. It launched Attenborough’s career and established many of the cultural conventions of the format: the authoritative and intrepid male narrator venturing to exotic places in search of animals being their wild selves.

For Attenborough, the thrill of showing animals in their natural states gave the show “the spice of unpredictability”.

From the farm to the bush

The initial strategy for local animal content by ABC TV was to use familiar radio techniques – panel talks and natural sounds – and just add pictures.

Junior Farmer Competition, for instance, was a successful radio show. When it moved to television in 1958, live cattle, sheep and poultry were brought into the studio and competitors were asked to handle them before the cameras.

This show was a remarkable experiment in visualising a radio format – but it didn’t last. The logistics of wrangling livestock in a TV studio proved too difficult.

During the 1960s, the ABC began screening locally made wildlife shows. Wild animals were no longer somewhere else, in Africa or South America: they were all around us.

Wildlife Australia (1962-1964) was written by ornithologist and radio broadcaster, Graham Pizzey and produced with the CSIRO. The series took viewers into unique Australian environments, and explored the native wildlife in these habitats.

Other shows offered variations on this theme of an emerging environmental nationalism. Around the Bush (1964) starred naturalist and educator Vincent Serventy out in the field; Wild Life Paradise: Australian Fauna (1967), was filmed at the Sir Colin Mackenzie Sanctuary (later Healesville Sanctuary) and offered content about what made Australian animals unique.

As recurring references to Australia in these titles suggest, these shows were determinedly national. They often represented animals as living in “the bush” or “the environment”.

This early reference to “the environment” framed it as a zone where nature and culture interacted – usually with bad outcomes for nature. As early as 1962, audiences were invited to look at animals as both fascinating and vulnerable.

Animals and their habitats were framed as in need of public attention and concern in order to limit human intrusion and impact.

Read more: Hidden women of history: Kathleen McArthur, the wildflower woman who took on Joh Bjelke-Petersen

While nature conservation movements had been around since the post WWII period, they often focused on preservation of scenic sites for human pleasure. This early environmentalism gave conservation a more political edge. It valued nature in its own right and questioned development at all costs.

Dancing Orpheus

Probably the most groundbreaking early natural history show made by the ABC was Dancing Orpheus (1962).

Celebrated for its visual and technical prowess in capturing the secretive superb lyrebird, the most powerful scene showed a cock bird performing its elaborate courting display. The narration by John West offered scientific explanation, but the focus was on the extraordinary aesthetics of this pure natural expression.

Read more: Let me see you shake your tailfeathers: why lyrebirds really can dance

Dancing Orpheus was celebrated not just because it captured a rare and beautiful lyrebird performance, but because it also showed the emerging power of television to make remarkable Australian animals visible to audiences.

Dancing Orpheus was one of the catalysts for the development of natural history television at the ABC, which really took off with the watershed series Bush Quest with Robin Hill (1970).

Bush Quest featured the artist and naturalist Hill observing and sketching the wildlife of central and coastal Victoria. It established a new audience for Australian wildlife, breaking with earlier presentations of the remote bush or outback.

Bush Quest cultivated a new environmental ethos in viewers increasingly aware of nature’s fragility.

An ongoing legacy

The ABC’s Natural History Unit was created in 1973. This small unit produced a suite of top rating programs that publicised a huge variety of Australian animals, way beyond the usual kangaroos and koalas.

Its watershed moment was the internationally acclaimed series Nature of Australia (1988). Nature of Australia offered audiences an experience of national identification and pride based on our remarkable natural – rather than cultural or military – history. It put nature at the heart of definitions of national uniqueness.

Early natural history television on the ABC showed audiences animals and places they didn’t even know existed, and explained natural processes in ways that were accessible and engaging. It also showed audiences how vulnerable these animals and habitats were to human actions and intervention.

Natural history television on the ABC didn’t just make animals entertaining: it implicated audiences in their lives and survival, a significant factor in building environmental awareness.

– ref. Natural history on TV: how the ABC took Australian animals to the people – http://theconversation.com/natural-history-on-tv-how-the-abc-took-australian-animals-to-the-people-125221

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

The government is responding to increasing concern about the faltering economy by bringing forward A$3.8 billion of infrastructure investment into the next four years, including $1.8 billion for the current and next financial years.

Scott Morrison will outline the infrastructure move in a speech to the Business Council of Australia on Wednesday night, while insisting the government is not panicking about Australia’s economic conditions.

The government’s action follows increasing calls for some stimulus, with concern the tax cuts have not flowed through strongly enough to spending.

The just-released minutes of the last Reserve Bank meeting show the bank seriously considered another rate cut at its November meeting but held off, partly because it thought that might not have the desired effect. Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe has previously urged more spending on infrastructure.

Morrison is making appearances in various states to publicise the government’s infrastructure plans.

The infrastructure bring-forward over the coming 18 months is $1.27 billion plus $510 million in extra funding. Over the forward estimates, the bring-forward is $2.72 billion plus $1.06 billion in additional funding.

The government’s latest action means since the election it will have injected an extra $9.5 billion into the economy for 2019-20 and 2020-21. This comprises $7.2 billion in tax relief, $1.8 billion in infrastructure bring-forwards and additional projects, and $550 million in drought assistance to communities.

In his BCA speech, draft extracts of which have been released, Morrison is expected to say that “a panicked reaction to contemporary challenges would amount to a serious misdiagnosis of our economic situation”.

“A responsible and sensible government does not run the country as if it is constantly at DEFCON1 the whole time, whether on the economy or any other issue. It deals with issues practically and soberly.”

Read more: If you want to boost the economy, big infrastructure projects won’t cut it: new Treasury boss

He will say that notwithstanding the headwinds, including the drought which has cut farm production, the economy has continued to grow, and is forecast to “gradually pick up from here” with jobs growth remaining solid.

“Against this backdrop, it would be reckless to discard the disciplined policy framework that has steered us through many difficult periods, most recently and most significantly the end of the mining investment boom, which posed an even greater threat to our economy than the GFC.”

The projected return to surplus this financial year would be a “significant achievement”.

Lauding the government’s legislated tax relief, Morrison will say. “Our response to the economic challenges our nation faces has been a structural investment in Australian aspiration, backed by responsible economic management.”

Read more: Why we’ve the weakest economy since the global financial crisis, with few clear ways out

Morrison’s infrastructure bring-forwards follow his post election approach to the states asking for projects that could be accelerated.

As a result of this process we have been able to bring forward $3.8 billion of investment into the next four years, including $1.8 billion to be spent this year and next year alone.

This will support the economy in two ways – by accelerating construction activity and supporting jobs in the near term and by reaping longer run productivity gains sooner.

Every state and territory will benefit, with significant transport projects to be accelerated in all jurisdictions – all within the context of our $100 billion ten-year infrastructure investment plan.

This bring forward of investment is in addition to the new infrastructure commitments we have made in drought-affected rural communities since the election.

In his address Morrison is also expected to announce the first stages of the government’s latest deregulation agenda, aimed at enabling business investment projects to begin faster.

– ref. Government to inject economic stimulus by accelerating infrastructure spend – http://theconversation.com/government-to-inject-economic-stimulus-by-accelerating-infrastructure-spend-127358

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

The government has overhauled its much-criticised robo-debt scheme which has seen many welfare recipients asked to repay money they do not owe.

A Tuesday email to staff in the Human Services department’s customer compliance division said “additional proof” would now be required when using income averaging to identify overpayment and raise a debt.

“This means the department will no longer raise a debt where the only information we are relying on is our own averaging of ATO [Australian Taxation Office] income data,” the email said.

“In the past we have asked people to explain discrepancies to us. In the future, even if someone does not respond to these requests, we will seek more information to help us determine if there is a debt.”

There will also be a freeze on some existing debts while they are re-examined.

The email said the department would focus on those where the person had not replied to requests for clarification.

Read more: Robo-debt is only one way government stigmatises claimants. There’s only so much a class action can do

An assessment would then be made about whether further information was available to clarify what debt there was.

The Minister for Government Services Stuart Robert played down the changes and did not apologise for past errors under the system.

“The government makes no apologies for fulfilling our legal obligation to collect debts with income from clients and of course, with wider debt collection.”

He said the present income averaging system would continue to be used in assessing debt. The key “refinement” would be the addition of “proof points”.

Robert said he had asked for the review of the “small” cohort “who have a debt raised solely on the basis of income averaging so we can commence discussions with them and seek further points of proof”.

People did not need to contact the department – it would contact them.

A robo-debt class action lawsuit is investigating whether the more than 400,000 debt notices issued since mid 2016 were lawful. The claim is that “averaging” an individual’s fortnightly earnings based on a “simplistic application of an imperfect computer algorithm”, does not appear to be lawful.

Read more: Danger! Election 2016 delivered us Robodebt. Promises can have consequences

Opposition spokesman Bill Shorten said for years the government claimed there was “nothing wrong with its revenue raising monster.”

“But now under immense pressure from Labor and with a looming class action [Robert] has hit the emergency brakes on this scheme.

“They’re junking the reverse onus of proof where victims have to prove they don’t owe the debts. That means robo-debt is being taken to the wreckers yard.

“Other changes signify the regime going forward will not be robo-debt as we know it.”

But Shorten said questions remained, particularly what happened to those who had been wrongly assessed and to the money wrongly collected.

– ref. Government makes changes to error-prone robo-debt collection – http://theconversation.com/government-makes-changes-to-error-prone-robo-debt-collection-127324

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

The government has overhauled its much-criticised robo-debt scheme which has seen many welfare recipients asked to repay money they do not owe.

A Tuesday email to staff in the Human Services department’s customer compliance division said “additional proof” would now be required when using income averaging to identify overpayment and raise a debt.

“This means the department will no longer raise a debt where the only information we are relying on is our own averaging of ATO [Australian Taxation Office] income data,” the email said.

“In the past we have asked people to explain discrepancies to us. In the future, even if someone does not respond to these requests, we will seek more information to help us determine if there is a debt.”

There will also be a freeze on some existing debts while they are re-examined.

The email said the department would focus on those where the person had not replied to requests for clarification.

Read more: Robo-debt is only one way government stigmatises claimants. There’s only so much a class action can do

An assessment would then be made about whether further information was available to clarify what debt there was.

The Minister for Government Services Stuart Robert played down the changes and did not apologise for past errors under the system.

“The government makes no apologies for fulfilling our legal obligation to collect debts with income from clients and of course, with wider debt collection.”

He said the present income averaging system would continue to be used in assessing debt. The key “refinement” would be the addition of “proof points”.

Robert said he had asked for the review of the “small” cohort “who have a debt raised solely on the basis of income averaging so we can commence discussions with them and seek further points of proof”.

People did not need to contact the department – it would contact them.

A robo-debt class action lawsuit is investigating whether the more than 400,000 debt notices issued since mid 2016 were lawful. The claim is that “averaging” an individual’s fortnightly earnings based on a “simplistic application of an imperfect computer algorithm”, does not appear to be lawful.

Read more: Danger! Election 2016 delivered us Robodebt. Promises can have consequences

Opposition spokesman Bill Shorten said for years the government claimed there was “nothing wrong with its revenue raising monster.”

“But now under immense pressure from Labor and with a looming class action [Robert] has hit the emergency brakes on this scheme.

“They’re junking the reverse onus of proof where victims have to prove they don’t owe the debts. That means robo-debt is being taken to the wreckers yard.

“Other changes signify the regime going forward will not be robo-debt as we know it.”

But Shorten said questions remained, particularly what happened to those who had been wrongly assessed and to the money wrongly collected.

– ref. Government announces changes to error-prone robo-debt collection – http://theconversation.com/government-announces-changes-to-error-prone-robo-debt-collection-127324

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

Every summer in Australia, bushfires, cyclones and floods threaten lives and properties. Preparing for these emergencies includes creating an emergency kit that contains everything you and your baby will need if essential services are disrupted or you need to evacuate.

Infants are particularly vulnerable in emergencies. Without access to appropriate food and fluid they can become seriously ill within hours, particularly in hot weather.

Read more: Hospitals feel the heat too from extreme weather and its health impacts

Families can be isolated without power or water in their homes for long periods. They can be stranded in their cars while evacuating for hours or even days. And because government planning for infants is lacking, even when you reach an evacuation centre, you may have to wait to access infant feeding supplies.

But parents can find it difficult to pack the necessary supplies for their babies. We are so used to having reliable power and water that it’s hard to imagine what it’s like not to have them.

During the 2011 Queensland flooding and cyclone Yasi disasters, for example, one-quarter of families evacuated were unable to pack adequate infant feeding supplies.

This difficulty is compounded by the fact that, apart from Queensland, state and territory governments do not provide detailed guidance for parents on what to pack for babies in emergency kits. Some emergency organisations offer more advice on what to pack for pets than for babies.

Gathering supplies at the last minute can be dangerous as it can delay leaving.

So, what do parents and caregivers need in their kit?

Emergency kits should have everything you need to look after your baby for at least three days without having any access to electricity or water.

Breastfed babies

If your baby is less than six months old and fully breastfed, you will need nappies, wipes, and some extra water to keep hydrated.

Some mothers worry they won’t be able to breastfeed during an emergency. Babies are often unsettled in emergencies but stress doesn’t impact milk production.

However, it can slow the release of milk. If this happens, keep offering the breast, look at your baby, think about how much you love them; this will release hormones that make the milk flow and help you and your baby to feel more relaxed. Frequent breastfeeding increases the amount of milk a baby takes from the breast.

Expressed breastmilk-fed babies

If you feed your baby expressed breastmilk, you need to learn how to hand express, as it may not be possible to wash pump parts.

You will also need drinking water for yourself, detergent, around 400ml of water per feed for washing hands, disposable plastic cups or single-use bottles and teats for feeding the baby, as well as nappies and nappy wipes.

Formula-fed babies

If you are are formula feeding, we suggest the following as a minimum:

• an unopened tin of infant formula
• enough bottles and teats to have one for every feed (thoroughly washed, sterilised and completely dry before sealing in a ziplock bag)
• small bottles of still drinking water (not mineral or carbonated water) for reconstitution
• large containers or bottles for washing hands and the preparation area (about 500ml per time)
• detergent for washing hands and the preparation area
• paper towels for drying hands and the preparation area
• nappies and nappy wipes.

All of these supplies can be stored in a large plastic tub with a flat lid that you can turn upside down and use as a clean preparation surface.

When using the kit, it’s important to only make up the infant formula when it is going to be fed to the baby and to throw out any leftover formula within an hour of starting the feed.

Babies aged over six months

If your baby has started solids, include enough canned baby foods and disposable spoons in your kit to feed your baby for three days.

Other things to consider

If you are formula feeding and it’s possible you’re going to be isolated at home without power for more than a few days, you may need to store resources such as a gas stove and a large quantity of water to enable washing.

Emergencies often occur during heat waves and general advice includes drinking plenty of water to prevent dehydration. This advice doesn’t apply to babies under six months of age. Young babies can be made very ill if given water alone. Instead, offer your baby more frequent breast or formula feeds.

If you’re wondering whether to stop breastfeeding, consider delaying this decision until after the summer emergency season has passed, as it’s much easier to breastfeed than to formula feed in emergency conditions.

– ref. Evacuating with a baby? Here’s what to put in your emergency kit – http://theconversation.com/evacuating-with-a-baby-heres-what-to-put-in-your-emergency-kit-127026

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cameron Allen, Researcher, UNSW

Despite 28 years of uninterrupted economic growth, future generations of Australians face being worse off due to increasing household debt, cost-of-living pressures, rising wealth inequality, climate change impacts and environmental degradation.

But our new research finds a fairer, greener and more prosperous Australia is possible – so long as political leaders don’t focus just on economic growth.

Evaluating Australia’s progress by 2030

We modelled four development scenarios for Australia through to 2030:

• “Growth at all Costs”, emphasising economic growth
• “Green Economy”, emphasising environmental outcomes
• “Inclusive Growth”, emphasising social equality
• “Sustainability Transition”, balancing economic, social and environmental outcomes.

Each scenario involved different policy and investment settings, particularly around tax and subsidies, government expenditure and private investment.

We then evaluated each scenario against the Sustainable Development Goals, an internationally recognised set of targets and indicators that measure national progress in 17 major areas. These include economic growth, poverty, inequality, education, health, clean water and clean energy.

Goals, targets and indicators

Each goal involves multiple targets and indicators. Goal 8, for example, is “Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all”. This involves 10 targets including per capita economic growth, decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation, and protecting labour rights. Each target comes with at least one indicator (for example, the growth rate of real GDP per capita, material consumption per GDP, and the rate of occupational injuries).

In all, the 17 goals cover 169 targets. Because Australia has not adopted SDG targets, we chose 52 of those (with about 100 indicators) then modelled Australia’s progress in 2030 using our four scenarios.

Read more: Australia falls further in rankings on progress towards UN Sustainable Development Goals

The graph below shows each scenario’s score (with 0% meaning no progress, 100% target achieved) on each of the 17 goals. We also calculated an average score for each scenario across all goals to aid comparison.

Growth alone is not the answer

Our model projects a business-as-usual approach will achieve progress of about 40% across all goals and targets. The “Growth at all Costs’ scenario scored only slightly better: 42%.

Economic growth – defined as an increase in a nation’s production of goods and services – is generally measured by the annual change in real gross domestic product (GDP).

Our “Growth at all Costs” scenario involves accelerating economic growth through higher population growth and lower taxes. Net migration is modelled as being 350,000 a year by 2030, with the population reaching just over 30 million. The government’s tax revenue as a proportion of GDP is 10% less than now as a result of lower tax rates.

Read more: If you think less immigration will solve Australia’s problems, you’re wrong; but neither will more

Government spending is about 15% less (as a percentage of GDP), with cuts particularly to health, education and social security, but more spending on transport infrastructure. There are no new measures to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, land degradation or other environmental concerns.

In our modelling this scenario increases GDP growth to about 2.6% a year, with low unemployment and declining government debt. But it comes at the expense of income inequality and the environment.

Even on the one goal it might be expected to do relatively well – Goal 8 – this scenario performs quite poorly. That’s because the goal measures per capita GDP growth, not just the total GDP growth most politicians talk about, along with a range of social and environmental indicators.

The following graphs show how the four scenarios compare on real GDP (i.e. adjusted for inflation), per capita GDP, income inequality and greenhouse gas emissions.

Sustainability transition

With an overall score of 70%, the “Sustainability Transition” scenario is the clear winner.

This scenario modelled slower population growth and higher taxes on consumption, income and profits and trade. With net migration of 100,000 a year by 2030, the population reaches about 28 million. Tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is about 8.5% higher than now. This funds more spending on health, education and social security, as well as the equivalent to 1% of GDP on the sustainability of transport, water, energy, agriculture and energy systems.

The overall result is economic growth of about 2.1% a year, with government debt 10% higher than our business-as-usual projection.

But per capita GDP is higher. Unemployment and income inequality are lower. Fewer people live in relative poverty, and life expectancy is higher. Energy, water and resource consumption is down. So are greenhouse gas emissions. There is more forested land. This delivers a more prosperous, fairer and greener nation in 2030.

Read more: Australia has the wealth to ensure a sustainable future, but too many people are being left behind

Possible futures

These results run contrary to the “growth and jobs” narrative that dominates political debate in Australia. Both sides of politics emphasise economic growth as the key to prosperity. But this narrative is clearly flawed when we look at a broader set of issues.

The Sustainable Development Goals seek to capture all of these issues in a coherent way. Our study explores four plausible futures, and there are many other possible combinations that could be explored with worse or better results.

What is clear is that business as usual certainly won’t ensure Australia has a more prosperous, fairer and environmentally sustainable society.

– ref. We modelled 4 scenarios for Australia’s future. Economic growth alone can’t deliver the goods – http://theconversation.com/we-modelled-4-scenarios-for-australias-future-economic-growth-alone-cant-deliver-the-goods-126823

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caroline Wake, Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance, UNSW

Australia invests heavily in its major festivals: A$5 million in state government funding for Sydney Festival, $7 million for Perth, and $9 million for Adelaide.

Funding for festivals has remained relatively constant over the past five years, even as other arts funding has been slashed. Adelaide Festival will even receive an additional $1.25 million a year for the next three years while the rest of the local sector will face cuts.

So what should festivals do in such circumstances: focus on bringing the world to us – or make us reflect on ourselves?

Major Australian arts festivals have always balanced the local and the global. Festivals can offer local artists the opportunity to create works of scale and reach wider audiences. On the other hand, festivals are also a chance to bring new and challenging work from overseas.

Three of Australia’s major multi-arts festivals take place in the first three months of the year, and their 2020 programs offer an interesting insight into how artistic leaders are making festivals in the face of shrinking budgets for the rest of the sector.

Sydney, 8–26 January

Wesley Enoch started at Sydney Festival in 2017 armed with passion and vision.

The first Aboriginal artistic director of the festival, his tenure has been characterised by a strong focus on First Nations artists. Sydney Festival overlaps with Australia Day, and Enoch programmed The Vigil on January 25 2019: an invitation to gather at Barangaroo and reflect on “the day before it all changed.” He is repeating this programming in 2020.

2020 also includes three world premiere theatre works by Indigenous artists, and major visual art exhibitions including Fiona Foley and Vernon Ah Kee. Enoch has championed Patricia Cornelius, started a disability programming initiative, and the festival claims to be “the largest single commissioner of Australian work.”

Enoch’s programming feels driven by a conviction that festivals have the power to rehearse new stories, resurrect lost classics, and re-imagine the future.

Perth, 7 February – 1 March

During her four years at the helm of the Perth Festival from 2016-19, Wendy Martin cultivated a profound sense of place, giving local audiences and artists space to reflect on what it means to live and create in the city.

Her festivals opened with large, inclusive public events. She commissioned work from Perth artists, culminating in seven world premieres this year. She invited international artists to collaborate with local companies and work with local communities. She foregrounded artists with disabilities.

2020 will be Iain Grandage’s first festival, and he is following Martin’s lead. The first week of the festival will be dedicated exclusively to Aboriginal work, including a large-scale Shakespearean production and a suite of children’s songs, both devised and performed in Noongar language.

It is too early to say what will define Grandage’s term in Perth, but if 2020 is anything to go by he is going to continue to focus on the local and celebrate what it means to be from WA.

Adelaide, 28 February – 15 March

Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy debuted in Adelaide in 2017. In contrast to Enoch and Martin’s emphasis on local people and place, Armfield and Healy have defaulted to prioritising works of scale from overseas.

If there is a guiding concept to their four festivals, it is the classic. Their international imports have focused on proven successes from Europe, with a preference for male auteurs (Barrie Kosky, Thomas Ostermeier, Romeo Castelluci) directing canonical operas and plays .

In 2020, while Sydney and Perth are staging major new theatre works, the only Australian theatre in Adelaide will be William Zappa’s 2017 adaption of The Illiad; and a Belvoir/State Theatre Company of South Australia production of American playwright Clare Barron’s Dance Nation.

The 2020 program has no Indigenous-led opera, theatre, dance, or visual art – surprising given Armfield’s strong track record of nurturing Aboriginal artists at Belvoir.

Each of Armfield and Healy’s festivals have broken box office records. But ticket sales are not the only measure of a festival’s value and bigger is not always better.

Read more: Beyond bulldust, benchmarks and numbers: what matters in Australian culture

Would it matter if box office dipped, if local artists and audiences gained? The number of tickets sold doesn’t speak to the number of new stories told, old languages learned (Enoch has programmed free classes of the Sydney language), or traditions invented.

Adelaide Festival looks increasingly out of step with other major Australian festivals. Whereas Perth and Sydney are firmly anchored in place, Adelaide Festival could be happening anywhere in the world.

What is a festival for?

When the broader arts sector has been starved of funding but is also hungry for change – eager to become more equitable and diverse – I think festivals take on additional visibility and responsibility.

Perth and Sydney have recognised this by commissioning diverse local artists working in diverse forms. These festivals are engaging with their place in contemporary culture by supporting local artistic communities, and reflecting stories of their cities back to their audiences.

Meanwhile, Adelaide has continued down a well worn path. One could say they are being conservative but my read is the reverse – their refusal to move with the times is almost radical.

Sydney and Perth festivals have shown us artistic leadership that wants to reckon with the past; Adelaide’s leadership want to retreat to it.

– ref. Australia’s major summer arts festivals: reckoning with the past or retreating into it? – http://theconversation.com/australias-major-summer-arts-festivals-reckoning-with-the-past-or-retreating-into-it-126829

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Colin Klein, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Australian National University

Why do people believe conspiracy theories? Is it because of who they are, what they’ve encountered, or a combination of both?

The answer is important. Belief in conspiracy theories helps fuel climate change denial, anti-vaccination stances, racism, and distrust of the media and science.

In a paper published today, we shed light on the online world of conspiracy theorists, by studying a large set of user comments.

Our key findings are that people who eventually engage with conspiracy forums differ from those who don’t in both where and what they post. The patterns of difference suggest they actively seek out sympathetic communities, rather than passively stumbling into problematic beliefs.

Read more: A short history of vaccine objection, vaccine cults and conspiracy theories

We looked at eight years of comments posted on the popular website Reddit, a platform hosting millions of individual forums called subreddits.

Our aim was to find out the main differences between users who post in r/conspiracy (a subreddit dedicated to conspiracy theories) and other Reddit users.

Using a technique called sentiment analysis we examined what users said, and where they said it, during the months before their first post in r/conspiracy.

We compared these posts to those of other users who started posting on Reddit at the same time, and in the same subreddits, but without going on to post in r/conspiracy.

We then constructed a network of the subreddits through which r/conspiracy posters travelled. In doing so, we were able to discover how and why they reached their destination.

Seeking the like-minded

Our research suggests there is evidence for the “self-selection” of conspiracy theorists. This means users appear to be seeking communities of people who share their views.

Users followed clear pathways to eventually reach r/conspiracy.

For example, these users were over-represented in subreddits focused on politics, drugs and internet culture, and engaged with such topics more often than their matched pairs.

We were also surprised by the diversity of pathways taken to get to r/conspiracy. The users were not as concentrated on one side of the political spectrum as people might expect. Nor did we find more anxiety in their posts, compared with other users.

Our previous research also indicated online conspiracy theorists are more diverse and ordinary than most people assume.

Where do the beliefs come from?

To dig deeper, we examined the interactions between where and what r/conspiracy users posted.

In political subreddits, the language used by them and their matched pairs was quite similar. However, in Reddit’s very popular general-purpose subreddits, the linguistic differences between the two groups were striking.

So far, psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers have struggled to find anything distinct about conspiracy believers or their environments.

Social media can play a role in spreading conspiracy theories, but it mostly entrenches beliefs among those who already have them. Thus it can be challenging to measure and understand how conspiracy beliefs arise.

Read more: The internet fuels conspiracy theories – but not in the way you might imagine

Traditional survey and interview approaches don’t always give reliable responses. This is because conspiracy theorists often frame their life in narratives of conversation and awakening, which can obscure the more complex origins of their beliefs.

Furthermore, as philosopher David Coady pointed out, some conspiracy theories turn out to be true. Insiders do sometimes uncover evidence of malfeasance and cover-ups, as recent debates over the need for whistleblower protections in Australia reflect.

Echo chambers worsen the problem

Research about online radicalisation from philosophy has focused on the passive effects of technologies such as recommended algorithms and their role in creating online echo chambers.

Our research instead suggests individuals seem to have a more active role in finding like-minded communities, before their interactions in such communities reinforce their beliefs.

These “person-situation interactions” are clearly important and under-theorised.

As the psychologist David C. Funder puts it:

Individuals do not just passively find themselves in the situations of their lives; they often actively seek and choose them. Thus, while a certain kind of bar may tend to generate a situation that creates fights around closing time, only a certain kind of person will choose to go to that kind of bar in the first place.

We suspect a similar process leads users to conspiracy forums.

A complex web of interactions

Our data indicates that conspiracy beliefs, like most beliefs, are not adopted in a vacuum. They are actively mulled over, discussed, and sought out by agents in a social (and increasingly online) world.

And when forums like 8chan and Stormfront are pushed offline, users often look for other ways to communicate.

These complex interactions are growing in number, and technology can amplify their effects.

YouTube radicalisation, for example, is likely driven by interactions between algorithms and self-selected communities.

When it comes to conspiracy beliefs, more work needs to be done to understand the interplay between a person’s social environment and their information seeking behaviour.

And this becomes even more pressing as we learn more about the risks that come with conspiracy theorising.

Read more: Why conspiracy theories aren’t harmless fun

– ref. Don’t (just) blame echo chambers. Conspiracy theorists actively seek out their online communities – http://theconversation.com/dont-just-blame-echo-chambers-conspiracy-theorists-actively-seek-out-their-online-communities-127119

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Tattersall, Postdoc in Urban Geography and Research Lead at Sydney Policy Lab. Host of ChangeMakers Podcast., University of Sydney

While thousands of Hong Kongers have protested “like water” for the past six months – flowing through the city with seemingly spontaneous movements – the past week has seen a shift in strategy. Last week, students escalated their actions yet again by occupying most of Hong Kong’s universities.

The last remaining occupation at Polytechnic University remains under siege by the police force. Police say surrender is the only option for the students and have threatened to use live ammunition if they are attacked.

Why universities are sanctified spaces

The siege comes off the back of months of ratcheting police violence in response to the protests, including the use of live rounds, water cannons and nearly 6,000 canisters of tear gas.

The protesters, meanwhile, have remained mobile and flexible, which has allowed them to keep going for so long. This adherence to being “like water” has helped overcome the limitations that demonstrators faced in previous protests.

The government, for example, was able to wait out the 79-day Umbrella Movement in 2014, banking that protesters would eventually find the daily grind of occupying city streets too difficult.

The Tiananmen Square occupation in 1989, likewise, was vulnerable to a Chinese military crackdown because the protesters were congregated in a central place.

Read more: ‘We fear Hong Kong will become just another Chinese city’: an interview with Martin Lee, grandfather of democracy

The current university occupations in Hong Kong – and the shift away from “being water” – happened not out of choice but necessity.

Universities are sanctified spaces in Hong Kong. As education providers, they are symbols of freedom and are formally protected under Hong Kong law. In a city of limited democracy, the law deems universities to be private property, meaning there is a protocol preventing police from entering campuses unless it’s an emergency.

When several police officers were found inside the University of Hong Kong in July, for example, the police issued an apology .

Read more: Hong Kong: police legitimacy draining away amid spiral of rage and retaliation

Hong Kong’s universities also represent what the protesters are fighting for. They are a space for democracy-building, and it’s no secret that many students have used the protection of campuses to organise. Some dormitories have become spaces for storing medical supplies and equipment to respond to police violence.

Then, last week, these safe spaces were threatened when police officers began moving on several campuses across the city to make arrests. The subsequent student occupations arose as a defensive posture to protect universities – and everything they represent – from state intervention.

Students have been actively supported by academic and administrative staff, who have closed campuses in an attempt to de-escalate the situation, acted as mediators with police and criticised the government for its “ineffective” response to the protests.

But unlike the fluid occupations of Hong Kong streets, shopping malls and the airport of previous months, the students found themselves fixed inside the universities. The police soon sensed an advantage, and at Polytechnic University they formed barricades around the campus.

Using arrest as a form of intimidation

The siege has had a military quality. For the first time, police deployed a LRAD sound device, a controversial weapon previously used in the Iraq war.

The students, meanwhile, have retaliated with petrol bombs and bows and arrows. When some have tried to flee, they have been bombed with tear gas and pushed back onto campus.

Read more: Hong Kong is one of the most unequal cities in the world. So why aren’t the protesters angry at the rich and powerful?

As of today, the university is still blockaded with more than 100 students believed to be inside. There have been multiple police invasions and retreats. New flanks of protesters have surrounded the police cordon. Older residents are forming human chains to get medical supplies to the site.

Police have threatened that every person left inside the university will be arrested. Protesters have been told they will be charged with rioting, which carries a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail.

Mass arrest has been used in an attempt to force protesters to back down for a while now. Hong Kong police reported this week the total number of arrests for the duration of the protests is so far 4,491 (more than 750 of them children).

Everyone arrested is subject to at least 48 hours detention. Some have been held in a controversial, remote detention facility, where detainees have alleged abuse in custody.

One explanation for all the arrests is that police are trying to remove key leaders from the front lines. Academics also see it as a form of intimidation.

As Ray Yep Kin-man, a City University political scientist, has noted:

In the past two months, some arrests were made even without strong evidence. I think police are adopting the strategy of arresting people to deter others from taking part in the protests.

Beyond arrest, the students have reason to be concerned. Many occupiers have written letters to their loved ones, fearing they will die. Democracy supporters and religious leaders are pleading for them to be released safely. They fear some protesters may refuse to leave, choosing instead to make a last stand.

The Hong Kong government’s approach is to try to deescalate the protests through fear. But the university siege, the now-overturned ban on wearing masks and the threats of live ammunition all show that Hong Kong’s protesters will not back down based on threats or violence.

Only meaningful changes to how the police work and how the government operates will end this battle for Hong Kong.

– ref. University under siege: a dangerous new phase for the Hong Kong protests – http://theconversation.com/university-under-siege-a-dangerous-new-phase-for-the-hong-kong-protests-127228

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, University of Tasmania

Last week’s catastrophic fires on Australia’s east coast – and warnings of more soon to come – will become all too common as climate change gathers pace. And as the challenges of modern hazard reduction become clear, there is much to learn from the ancient Aboriginal practice of burning country.

Indigenous people learnt to use fire skillfully and to their advantage, including to moderate bushfires. Most of the fires were small and set at dry times of the year, resulting in a fine-scale mosaic of different vegetation types and fuel ages. This made intense bushfires uncommon and made plant and animal foods more abundant.

Read more: A surprising answer to a hot question: controlled burns often fail to slow a bushfire

Contemporary fire managers also attempt to lower bushfire risk by reducing fuel loads through hazard reduction burning. To minimise costs, this is often achieved by dropping incendiaries from aircraft.

Concern is growing that such methods exacerbate biodiversity declines and often do not prevent a subsequent bushfire. As climate change makes bushfires more ferocious and extreme, now is the time to better understand how our First Peoples used fire.

A slow, ancient craft

Traditional Aboriginal fire practices are based on local knowledge and spiritual connection to country.

Before white settlement, Aboriginal people were a constant presence in the landscape, and traditionally burnt country by walking the land. This meant they could control the timing and spread of fire, as well as its ecological effects.

By contrast, most modern fire programs are far less flexible and responsive. They usually take place on weekdays in specific seasons and weather conditions. Many fires are ignited from the air – especially those in remote areas where vast areas of burning is desired. This technique results in bigger, more intense fires than those conducted by Aboriginal people.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: When the firies call him out on climate change, Scott Morrison should listen

Contemporary fire managers do reduce fuel in small areas, through ground crews working on foot. These crews often work in specific weather windows such as fog, and at cooler times of day such as the evening, to keep fires controlled and protect sensitive areas.

This method is reminiscent of Aboriginal fire practice and leads to smaller, less intense fires than aerial ignition. But it also differs from traditional techniques. Modern ground crews use “drip torches” – hand-held devices filled with fuel – and burn in a box pattern. By contrast, Indigenous people use a slower technique such as dragging a smouldering stick through the bush, and burn in spiral or strip patterns to achieve a mosaic effect.

Taking lessons from the past

Aboriginal fire practice across Australia was severely disrupted by European invasion. The practice is being reinvigorated through initiatives such as the Firesticks Alliance, an Indigenous-led network involving training, on-ground works and scientific monitoring to better understand the ecological effects of cultural burning.

But there is a huge opportunity to further develop traditional fire management alongside western science. Our project on a farm in Tasmania offers a good example. Since 2017, University of Tasmania scientists have worked with a farmer and the Aboriginal community to reintroduce Indigenous burning to native grasslands (see video below).

This project began as straightforward research into fire management in an endangered eucalypt woodland community. It took a novel turn when the landowner asked that the Tasmanian Aboriginal community be involved. We then employed Aboriginal rangers to burn experimental plots.

Importantly, this research does not take the old-school anthropological approach of solely studying Aboriginal burning practices. Instead, it is a true collaboration where all parties learn from each other.

As a consequence, the project design changed in the course of the experiment. For example its original “efficient” approach involved burning predetermined units of a set size. But in the second year, Aboriginal rangers selected the areas burnt, resulting in a patchy and varied burning pattern.

Read more: Bushfires can make kids scared and anxious: here are 5 steps to help them cope

The project is still being monitored and results are not finalised. However it has already achieved an important goal: stronger cross-cultural partnerships.

Such initiatives should not be rushed. Genuine engagement of the Aboriginal community requires time, allowing trust to build between groups that don’t have a long history of working together.

The project took place on private property, at the request of a landowner who took responsibility for approvals and compliance. Such small-scale projects are excellent for building skills and allowing Aboriginal people to reconnect with country. Upscaling such projects to public lands such as national parks requires more complex negotiation and agreement, but this will be easier if a record of successful smaller programs exists.

Looking to the future

There are profound cultural differences between traditional and modern fire management, stemming from different understanding of belonging, place, history, values and metaphysics.

The growing fire crisis means it’s vital western science and Aboriginal knowledge are brought together to make communities as fire-safe as possible.

This includes a sustainable funding model for Indigenous-led fire management programs, as well as cross-cultural training for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous fire managers to better work together.

– ref. Our land is burning, and western science does not have all the answers – http://theconversation.com/our-land-is-burning-and-western-science-does-not-have-all-the-answers-100331

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rochelle Einboden, Lecturer, The Susan Wakil School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Sydney

In Victoria, 35 young people aged 12-17 years ended their lives by suicide between 2007 and 2019 – all were entangled in the child protection system. This was the focus of a new report, “Lost, not forgotten”, released last week from the Victorian Commissioner for Children and Young People, which described how these children “experienced multiple and recurring forms of abuse”.

In their short lives, they were reported to child protection 229 times. For most of these children, including six who identified as Aboriginal, reporting began when they were three years old. Some 90% of these reports were ignored – closed at intake or investigation.

Read more: When mothers are killed by their partners, children often become ‘forgotten’ victims. It’s time they were given a voice

Sometimes families were offered community-based support through a voluntary program (called ChildFIRST). But according to the report, what the program offered was “inadequate to meet the complexity of issues identified” by families and, in many cases, ChildFIRST reported them back to child protection.

The commissioner describes this as a “referral roundabout”. While the report looked at Victoria only, these issues are nation-wide. And this isn’t just happening in Australia – a 2014 report in Canada showed a similar problem.

How is it possible child protection in two different jurisdictions have made the same mistakes?

My research shows these are not mistakes. The inaction these kids experience is a systematic ignoring, set up by the child protection model. And that’s why the commissioner’s recommendation to increase resources won’t fix it.

An outdated, reactive system

Child protection relies on community members and professionals (teachers, nurses) to identify and report safety issues for individual children.

While this may offer some benefit to some children, The World Health Organisation identifies how such case-by-case approaches have come “at the expense of efforts to prevent maltreatment occurring in the first place”.

Individualised approaches ignore the magnitude of the problem of child neglect and abuse, and fail to address the underlying causes and contributing factors.

By prioritising case-by-case reporting, investigation and substantiation, the system is resource-intensive and set up to only address the worst cases.

Read more: ‘Silent victims’: royal commission recommends better protections for child victims of family violence

This approach was developed in the USA after Dr Henry Kempe’s landmark 1962 paper, The Battered-Child Syndrome. He and his colleagues used X-rays to visualise broken bones at different stages of healing in children to substantiate their abuse.

Within a decade, the investigation-substantiation model of child protection began in the USA, Canada and later in Australia, supported by the promise medical imaging could help substantiate child neglect and abuse.

But there are three faulty assumptions underpinning this model, which is still used in today’s child protection systems. These are that child neglect and abuse:

• is rare and can be addressed one child at a time

• if you look carefully enough you can see it

• it can be addressed by identifying perpetrators and holding them accountable within the justice system.

Child protection is an outdated, reactive system. We, as a society and as researchers, now understand child neglect and abuse is a common, pervasive social problem.

We also agree neglect, emotional abuse, and exposure to domestic violence are also abuse and can be as harmful to children and young people as physical and sexual abuse. And we have learned visualising physical signs of abuse is complicated, often illusive and usually only possible in the most extreme cases, which are relatively rare.

Young families need more support

Individualised interventions set a severity threshold to justify child protection intervention. This means when a child’s situation is not good, but not yet bad enough, little is done until the violence escalates.

What’s more, justifying intervention is considered necessary because the home is a private domain, under the control of the head of the household.

In many of these cases, the situation for the child’s parents isn’t good either, but this is understood to be their own responsibility. When young parents live in poverty and struggle to provide basic needs for their family, the dominant view is they haven’t worked hard enough, or they’ve made bad life choices.

Yet, children from birth to five years old endure a disproportionate amount of poverty compared with any other age group. Young families consistently struggle with the lack of affordable childcare, social isolation, precarious employment and housing instability.

Most child neglect and abuse isn’t a just matter of poor parenting, it’s a matter of having poor parents.

Overhauling the system

Violence is connected with poor social position and power. Similar to how we’re beginning to understand domestic violence, the roots of child neglect and abuse can be traced to inequities such as socioeconomic disadvantage and “invisible” social and cultural norms that marginalise children and their mothers.

Read more: Nothing to see here? The abuse and neglect of children in care is a century-old story in Australia

Addressing this means shifting tax structures and access to quality nationally funded childcare. It also includes disrupting dominant social beliefs that position children and their mothers with little power.

This includes, for instance, the pervasive belief that the family home is a man’s property, and he should hold power over and privacy within it. This belief underpins the practices of removing children if they are being abused, or encouraging mothers to leave.

Resisting this belief allows us to consider removing the perpetrator of abuse from the home instead of the child or mother.

Read more: Why children in institutional care may be worse off now than they were in the 19th century

A revision of child protection is overdue. Including a system oriented to prevention of child neglect and abuse from a social perspective needs creativity, vision and, importantly, the input of children, their mothers and other professionals who play a substantive role in supporting children’s wellbeing.

We need to start by respecting children as equals within society. We need to recognise and publicly name the hierarchical social structures that decrease the power of women and children.

And we need to develop an infrastructure of support for parents that ensures resources to support families’ basic needs, addresses the exploitation of reproductive labour and the isolation of women and children in the privacy of the home.

– ref. The problem with child protection isn’t the money, it’s the system itself – http://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-child-protection-isnt-the-money-its-the-system-itself-127111

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Haslam, Professor of Psychology and ARC Laureate Fellow, The University of Queensland

The ABC’s Australia Talks project aims to stimulate a conversation on a broad sweep of topics — from job security and sexual habits to national pride and personal finances.

The project is based on the results of a representative survey of more than 50,000 Australians.

One question the ABC’s promotional material focused on was “Are you lonely?” And when ABC chair Ita Buttrose was asked what she thought was the most surprising and disturbing feature of the whole exercise, she singled out the data on loneliness.

So, does loneliness deserve this billing? Is it really as important an issue as climate change, the economy, or education? We believe it is, and importantly, results from the Australia Talks survey help explain why.

Read more: 1 in 3 young adults is lonely – and it affects their mental health

Loneliness kills

First, loneliness is a killer. An influential meta-analysis, which collated and analysed the results of nearly 150 studies, underlines the impact on health of loneliness, or more specifically, lack of social integration and social support.

It found loneliness increases the risk of death more than such things as poor diet, obesity, alcohol consumption, and lack of exercise, and that it is as harmful as heavy smoking.

Read more: Dogs really can chase away loneliness

People don’t know loneliness kills

Second, most people generally don’t know loneliness kills. Indeed, some of our own research found when people in the United Kingdom and United States were asked to rank how important they thought various factors were for health, social integration and social support were at the bottom of their lists.

Yet, in a forthcoming paper, we found the quality of social connections is around four times more important as a predictor of retirees’ physical and mental health than the state of their finances.

But when was the last time you saw an advert on TV telling you to get your social life in order (rather than your pension plan) before you stop working? When was the last time a health campaign or your family doctor warned you of the dangers of loneliness?

Read more: ‘I really have thought this can’t go on’: loneliness looms for rising numbers of older private renters

Our ignorance about the health consequences of loneliness is a reflection of the fact that loneliness is not part of our everyday conversations around health.

Hopefully, the Australia Talks project will change that. In the process, its findings also give us plenty of things to talk about.

Who’s feeling lonely?

The most striking finding from the Australia Talks national survey is simply how pervasive loneliness is in Australia today. Indeed, only half (54%) of participants reported “rarely” or “never” feeling lonely.

The survey also finds loneliness is a particular challenge for certain sections of the community. Of these, four stand out.

1. Young people

Among people aged 18-24, only a third (32%) “rarely” or “never” feel lonely. More than a quarter (30%) said they felt lonely “frequently” or “always”.

This compares sharply with the situation for older people, over two-thirds of whom (71%) “rarely” or “never” feel lonely. The fact that our image of a lonely person is typically someone of advanced years suggests we need to update our data (and our thinking).

Read more: Social media: is it really to blame for young people being lonelier than any other age group?

2. Inner-city dwellers

The second group for whom loneliness emerges as a particular problem are people living in inner cities.

Compared to people who live in rural areas, those in inner metropolitan areas are less likely to say that they “never” feel lonely (15% vs 20%), but much more likely to say that they “occasionally”, “frequently”, or “always” do (50% vs 42%).

Again, this runs counter to much of the discourse around loneliness, which often focuses on the plight of those who are physical remote from others.

But this speaks to the psychological reality of loneliness. As we note in our recent book The New Psychology of Health, people’s health and well-being is very much linked to the strength of their connection to, and identification with, groups and communities of various forms.

Read more: Many people feel lonely in the city, but perhaps ‘third places’ can help with that

3. One Nation voters

Interestingly, a third group that reports disproportionately high levels of loneliness is One Nation voters. Nearly one in ten (9%) of Pauline Hanson’s followers report being lonely “always” compared to around 2% for followers of each of the other parties.

We believe feeling disconnected from the world and its institutions often drives people to find solace in marginal political movements. This indeed, is the developmental trajectory of multiple forms of extremism.

Read more: The far-right’s creeping influence on Australian politics

4. People on low incomes

Perhaps the most stark finding concerns the fourth predictor of loneliness: poverty. While 21% of people who earn less than A$600 a week feel lonely “frequently” or “always”, the comparable figure for people who earn more than A$3,000 a week is less than half that (10%).

This speaks to the more general (but often neglected) fact that around the world poverty is one of the biggest predictors of poor health, especially depression and other mental illnesses.

It also speaks to our observation that if you are fortunate enough to have a lot of money when you retire, then one of the key things this allows you to do is to maintain and build social connections.

Read more: How we could make the retirement system more sustainable

What can we do about loneliness?

So, there is a lot here for us to talk about when it comes to loneliness. This discussion also needs to ask what we are going to do to address a social cancer every bit as alarming as cancer itself.

For us, a large part of the answer lies in efforts to rebuild group-based social connections that are eroded by the tyrannies of modern life.

This is a world where all types of community — families, neighbourhoods, churches, political parties, trade unions and even stable work groups — are constantly under threat. So let’s get talking.

Read more: Designing cities to counter loneliness? Let’s explore the possibilities

– ref. Loneliness is a social cancer, every bit as alarming as cancer itself – http://theconversation.com/loneliness-is-a-social-cancer-every-bit-as-alarming-as-cancer-itself-126741

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pep Canadell, Chief research scientist, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere; and Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, CSIRO

Nitrous oxide (N₂O) (more commonly known as laughing gas) is a powerful contributor to global warming. It is 265 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide and depletes our ozone layer.

Human-driven N₂O emissions have been growing unabated for many decades, but we may have been seriously underestimating by just how much. In a paper published today in Nature Climate Change, we found global emissions are higher and growing faster than are being reported.

Read more: Nitrogen pollution: the forgotten element of climate change

Although clearly bad news for the fight against climate change, some countries are showing progress towards reducing N₂O emissions, without sacrificing the incredible crop yields allowed by nitrogen fertilisers. Those countries offer insights for the rest of the world.

The Green Revolution

There are a number of natural and human sources of N₂O emissions, which have remained relatively steady for millennia. However, in the early 20th century the Haber-Bosch process was developed, allowing industry to chemically synthesise molecular nitrogen from the atmosphere to create nitrogen fertiliser.

This advancement kick-started the Green Revolution, one of the greatest and fastest human revolutions of our time. Crop yields across the world have increased many times over due to the use of nitrogen fertilisers and other improved farming practices.

Read more: The next ‘green revolution’ should focus on hunger – not profit

But when soil is exposed to abundant nitrogen in its active form (as in fertilizer), microbial reactions take place that release N₂O emissions. The unrestricted use in nitrogen fertilisers, therefore, created a huge uptick in emissions.

N₂O is the third-most-important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and methane. As well as trapping heat, it depletes ozone in the stratosphere, contributing to the ozone hole. Once released into the atmosphere, N₂O remains active for more than 100 years.

Tracking emissions from above

Conventional analysis of N₂O emissions from human activities are estimated from various indirect sources. This include country-by-country reporting, global nitrogen fertiliser production, the areal extent of nitrogen-fixing crops and the use of manure fertilisers.

Our study instead used actual atmospheric concentrations of N₂O from dozens of monitoring stations all over the world. We then used atmospheric modelling that explains how air masses move across and between continents to infer the expected emissions of specific regions.

We found global N₂O emissions have increased over the past two decades and the fastest growth has been since 2009. China and Brazil are two countries that stand out. This is associated with a spectacular increase in the use of nitrogen fertilisers and the expansion of nitrogen-fixing crops such as soybean.

We also found the emissions reported for those two countries, based on a methodology developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are significantly lower than those inferred from N₂O levels in the atmosphere over those regions.

This mismatch seems to arise from the fact that emissions in those regions are proportionally higher than the use of nitrogen fertilizers and manure. This is a departure from the linear relationship used to report emissions by most countries.

There appears to be a level of nitrogen past which plants can no longer effectively use it. Once that threshold is passed in croplands, N₂O emissions grow exponentially.

Reversing the trends

Reducing N₂O emissions from agriculture will be very challenging, given the expected global growth in population, food demand and biomass-based products including energy.

However, all future emission scenarios consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement require N₂O emissions to stop growing and, in most cases, to decline – between 10% and 30% by mid-century.

Interestingly, emissions from the USA and Europe have not grown for over two decades, yet crop yields across these regions increased or remained steady. Both regions have created strong regulations largely to prevent excess accumulation of nitrogen in soils and into waterways.

These areas and other studies have demonstrated the success of more sustainable farming in reducing emissions while increasing crop yields and farm-level economic gains.

A whole toolbox of options is available to increase nitrogen use efficiency and reduce N₂O emissions: precision applications of nitrogen in space and time, the use of N-fixing crops in rotations, reduced tillage or no-tillage, prevention of waterlogging, and the use of nitrification inhibitors.

Read more: A new way to curb nitrogen pollution: Regulate fertilizer producers, not just farmers

Regulatory frameworks have shown win-win outcomes in a number of countries. With intelligent adaptions to different nations’ and regions’ needs, they can also work elsewhere.

– ref. Nitrogen fertilisers are incredibly efficient, but they make climate change a lot worse – http://theconversation.com/nitrogen-fertilisers-are-incredibly-efficient-but-they-make-climate-change-a-lot-worse-127103

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hilary Hollingsworth, Principal Research Fellow, Australian Council for Educational Research

Australian teachers are in the thick of producing end-of-year reports. In many schools, the report writing process begins several weeks – or even months – before reports are eventually released.

This process has significant costs, including time spent away from teaching.

For the past three years, the Australian Council for Educational Research has been investigating how effective parents, teachers and students consider report cards to be, and whether alternative designs might provide better information about student learning. We have analysed student reports and consulted students, parents, teachers and school leaders from several states.

The final report of our Communicating Student Learning Progress project, out today, shows parents and teachers are dissatisfied with aspects of the way report cards communicate student achievement. For example, parents and teachers generally agree grades, such as the most commonly used A-E, don’t sufficiently show student progress.

Grades are poor indicators of progress

The Australian Education Regulation 2013 specifies schools must produce reports that give an accurate and objective assessment of the student’s progress and achievement, including an assessment of the student’s achievement:

• against any available national standards
• relative to the performance of the student’s peers
• reported as A, B, C, D or E (or on an equivalent five-point scale) for each subject studied.

Our analysis showed that, with few exceptions, Australian schools tend only to report achievement using A-E grades (or similar). Students’ learning progress is less-commonly communicated.

Read more: If you want your child to bring home better grades, stop yelling and try this

Many parents said they wanted information from teachers clearly indicating their child’s growth. Several said they would like to receive “a report that shows growth from the last report” or a report that “includes a line graph of a student’s progress over the year”.

Parents also wanted to better understand the significance of grades in relation to each other and to state or national standards. They wanted to know how grades compare across different classes, teachers, subjects and schools.

One parent said: “I don’t understand the A-E scale”.

Another asked

What does “Outstanding”, “High”, “Sound”, “Basic”, “Limited” actually mean? Is “Outstanding” best in the class, or operating 12 months ahead of expected level?

Teachers also told us they were concerned about the inconsistency of standards for grades. One teacher said that at her school

[…] grades are calculated on the cohort average: a 60% can be a C in one subject/test but a 70% could be a D in another.

Grades alone can also mask progress and be demotivating for students. A student who receives a D each report might conclude they are making no progress at all. But they may actually have made more progress than a highly able student who continually receives an A but is not being stretched.

One teacher we spoke with said:

A to E doesn’t focus on growth, and students can sit on a D or E for years and their report doesn’t demonstrate their growth or communicate their effort.

The timing is off

Australia’s education legislation mandates reports must also be “readily understandable” and received by parents and carers “at least twice a year”.

The majority of teacher comments we analysed generally avoided jargon and communicated in plain language. But parents and students told us they also appreciated comments that were personalised and explained both what a student has, and (crucially) has not yet, been able to demonstrate.

They indicated they wanted comments to outline specific steps the student and parent should take to assist the student to progress. An example of this from a report we analysed is shown below.

Sarah demonstrated her clear understanding of how to structure an essay through the use of paragraphs, topic and linking sentences, and an introduction and conclusion. She wrote a meaningful and informative essay with strong relevant arguments […] A future goal for Sarah is to include more complex sentences, adding variance in sentence length to better engage the reader.

The timing of reports was an issue for parents too. Those who only received twice-yearly formal reports said they wanted more frequent information about their child’s learning.

Information in half-yearly reports is often outdated and can no longer be acted on, in most cases.

Teachers frequently mentioned that the rush at the end of each semester to finalise assessments and begin writing reports is often out-of-step with the rhythms of their own curriculum and assessment cycles.

One teacher said

We should not assess the students all at the same time – it’s stressful for students. Different subjects have different assessment blocks and could report when they have information to report on.

Students also expressed feeling overwhelmed at these peak periods of assessment.

How can we do it better?

Formal reporting can have significant costs. We asked one principal to calculate the costs associated with report writing at his primary school, which has 14 classes and 345 students. He estimated the total cost per semester, in 2019, was just over A$99,000.

His estimation included actual costs, as well as opportunity costs such as time spent by teachers writing reports before and after school, during lunch breaks, on weekends, and on holidays.

Schools are more often using online student and learning management systems to serve a range of functions. Teachers can use these systems to continuously report on student achievement throughout the school year. This provides parents and carers with information closer to each point of assessment, and often at little extra expense.

Read more: How to talk to your child about their school report

A significant number of teachers we surveyed suggested continuous reporting adds to their workload. But most teachers emphatically agreed continuous reporting is more useful to parents and students than semester reports.

Online continuous reporting has the potential trade-off of a reduced workload at the end of each semester, as semester reports can be generated automatically.

As more and more schools adopt continuous reporting, and place greater emphasis on assessing and reporting learning growth, semester reports as we know them will either become redundant or will need to change.

Our research suggests all forms of communication (semester reports, continuous reporting, parent-teacher interviews, student-led conferences, portfolios) should work together, as a system, to communicate a coherent picture of a child’s achievement and progress.

– ref. Report cards’ report card: showing potential, but with room for improvement – http://theconversation.com/report-cards-report-card-showing-potential-but-with-room-for-improvement-126925

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yixia (Sarah) Zhang, Associate Professor of Engineering, Western Sydney University

Concrete is the most widely used man-made material, commonly used in buildings, roads, bridges and industrial plants. But producing the Portland cement needed to make concrete accounts for 5-8% of all global greenhouse emissions. There is a more environmentally friendly cement known as MOC (magnesium oxychloride cement), but its poor water resistance has limited its use – until now. We have developed a water-resistant MOC, a “green” cement that could go a long way to cutting the construction industry’s emissions and making it more sustainable.

Producing a tonne of conventional cement in Australia emits about 0.82 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂). Because most of the CO₂ is released as a result of the chemical reaction that produces cement, emissions aren’t easily reduced. In contrast, MOC is a different form of cement that is carbon-neutral.

Read more: Buildings produce 25% of Australia’s emissions. What will it take to make them ‘green’ – and who’ll pay?

What exactly is MOC?

MOC is produced by mixing two main ingredients, magnesium oxide (MgO) powder and a concentrated solution of magnesium chloride (MgCl₂). These are byproducts from magnesium mining.

Many countries, including China and Australia, have plenty of magnesite resources, as well as seawater, from which both MgO and MgCl₂ could be obtained.

Furthermore, MgO can absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere. This makes MOC a truly green, carbon-neutral cement.

Read more: Greening the concrete jungle: how to make environmentally friendly cement

MOC also has many superior material properties compared to conventional cement.

Compressive strength (capacity to resist compression) is the most important material property for cementitious construction materials such as cement. MOC has a much higher compressive strength than conventional cement and this impressive strength can be achieved very fast. The fast setting of MOC and early strength gain are very advantageous for construction.

Although MOC has plenty of merits, it has until now had poor water resistance. Prolonged contact with water or moisture severely degrades its strength. This critical weakness has restricted its use to indoor applications such as floor tiles, decoration panels, sound and thermal insulation boards.

How was water-resistance developed?

A team of researchers, led by Yixia (Sarah) Zhang, has been working to develop a water-resistant MOC since 2017 (when she was at UNSW Canberra).

To improve water resistance, the team added industrial byproducts such as fly ash and silica fume to the MOC, as well as chemical additives.

Fly ash is a byproduct from the coal industry – there’s plenty of it in Australia. Adding fly ash significantly improved the water resistance of MOC. Flexural strength (capacity to resist bending) was fully retained after soaking in water for 28 days.

To further retain the compressive strength under water attack, the team added silica fume. Silica fume is a byproduct from producing silicon metal or ferrosilicon alloys. When fly ash and silica fume were combined with MOC paste (15% of each additive), full compressive strength was retained in water for 28 days.

Both the fly ash and silica fume have a similar effect of filling the pore structure in MOC, making the cement denser. The reactions with the MOC matrix form a gel-like phase, which contributes to water repellence. The extremely fine particles, large surface area and high reactive silica (SiO₂) content of silica fume make it an effective binding substance known as a pozzolan. This helps give the concrete high strength and durability.

Read more: We have the blueprint for liveable, low-carbon cities. We just need to use it

Although the MOC developed so far had excellent resistance to water at room temperature, it weakened fast when soaked in warm water. The team worked to overcome this by using inorganic and organic chemical additives. Adding phosphoric acid and soluble phosphates greatly improved warm water resistance.

Over three years, the team has made a breakthrough in developing MOC as a green cement. The strength of concrete is rated using megapascals (MPa). The MOC achieved a compressive strength of 110 MPa and flexural strength of 17 MPa. These values are a few times greater than those of conventional cement.

The MOC can fully retain these strengths after being soaked in water for 28 days at room temperatures. Even in hot water (60˚C), the MOC can retain up to 90% of its compressive and flexural strength after 28 days. The values remain as high as 100 MPa and 15 MPa respectively – still much greater than for conventional cement.

Will MOC replace conventional cement?

So could MOC replace conventional cement some day? It seems very promising. More research is needed to demonstrate the practicability of uses of this green and high-performance cement in, for example, concrete.

When concrete is the main structural component, steel reinforcement has to be used. Corrosion of steel in MOC is a critical issue and a big hurdle to jump. The research team has already started to work on this issue.

If this problem can be solved, MOC can be a game-changer for the construction industry.

Read more: The problem with reinforced concrete

– ref. Green cement a step closer to being a game-changer for construction emissions – http://theconversation.com/green-cement-a-step-closer-to-being-a-game-changer-for-construction-emissions-126033

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. (attributed to Danish physicist Niels Bohr)

The difficulty of making predictions has long been known, but the rise of the internet means that it is getting harder to hide the gaps between predictions and reality.

Perhaps the most significant example of repeated failed projections has been the International Energy Agency’s projections of the importance of renewable power – the proportion of electricity generated by solar and wind and other renewable sources other than hydro.

Beginning in 1994, when generation from these sources was negligible, the Agency has produced estimates of the future share of renewables every two years.

Read more: Getting projections right: predicting future climate

Every two years, with striking regularity, the previous estimates have been exceeded (hugely) and the new set has been revised upwards. But never by enough. Each time the upward revision has been inadequate.

This graph, prepared by Paul Mainwood from IEA reports, illustrates the point:

Projections versus reality

The dashed lines represent successive projections from 1994 to 2016.

The solid red line represents the actual growth of non-hydro renewables as a share of total electricity generation.

What can be seen is that eleven times in a row the projected growth in renewables was far too low and had to be upgraded. Eleven times in a row the upgrades weren’t big enough.

As a joke (indicated by the green line) Mainwood “corrected” the 2016 projection for the typical under-projection:

Projections plus “corrected” 2016 projection

Projections often understate change

Another striking example relates to religious belief. In 2015 the Pew Research Institute released a report suggesting a gradual decline in Christianity in the United States.

The headline finding for the US:

Christians will decline from more than three-quarters (75%) of the population in 2010 to two-thirds (66%) in 2050.

Yet only four years later in 2019, Pew released another report with this headline finding about the US:

In 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade.

Thus, a decline expected to take forty years had taken place inside ten.

Moreover, Christian affiliation is highest in the older age cohorts, very few members of which will be around in 2050. Looking at the younger cohort born after 1981, only 49% claim a Christian affiliation, a proportion that has declined by 16 percentage points in a decade. Unless that trend is rapidly reversed, or later cohorts experience a religious revival, Christians will be a minority well before 2050.

They enable modellers to escape responsiblity

Faced with outcomes of this kind, modellers often defend themselves by drawing a distinction between “predictions” and “projections”.

A prediction (Latin for “foretelling”) is a claim about what is most likely to happen in the future. By contrast, a projection (“casting forward”) is a model output derived by extrapolating past trends, holding some parameters constant and allowing others to vary.

The International Energy Agency projections were characterised by the assumption that the costs of renewable energy would change only slowly, rather than continuing the extraordinary decline that began in the 1970s.

Read more: A radical idea to get a high-renewable electric grid: Build way more solar and wind than needed

In the case of the Pew projections, the crucial parameter is conversion rates – the frequency with which people brought up with one religion (including “no religion”) change to another. The Pew projections were based on the assumption conversion rates will remain unchanged.

It is the opposite of the widely-held but controversial “secularisation hypothesis” which states that modernisation leads to increased conversions to “no religion”.

Predictions force them to take responsiblity

Projections are useful in the development of models. All models are based on past experience and have to assume that in some respects the future will be like the past. By examining the projections generated under particular assumptions about which variables and parameters will remain constant, it is possible to understand how models works and make modelling choices.

But projections of this kind are of no use in informing people not familiar with the material. They mislead casual readers of the Australia’s budget.

The budget uses both predictions and projections.

For the two years following each budget the Commonwealth uses “forecasts” which it is prepared to stand by, then for the next two it presents mechanical “projections”:

When asked to defend (for example) its wage growth number of 3½%, the treasury points out that it is a mechanical projection rather than a forecast, a distinction lost on all but the most enthusiastic of budget devotees.

In practice it is impossible to separate the two.

Even though both the International Energy Association and Pew describe their estimates as “projections” they are almost invariably treated as predictions.

Read more: Vital Signs: dismal wages growth makes a joke of budget forecasts

Since any statement about the future will be treated as a prediction, the only serious option for modellers prepared to be truthful with the public is to bite the bullet and make predictions.

It means working hard to make the best possible estimate of the future paths of all model parameters, and using judgement to take account of everything else.

It’s what those of us looking to experts for guidance deserve.

– ref. Please, no more projections. What we need are predictions, and they’re harder – http://theconversation.com/please-no-more-projections-what-we-need-are-predictions-and-theyre-harder-126734

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Smith, Professor of Archaeology, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University

The Stuart Highway in the Northern Territory is dotted with around 300 termite mounds, dressed as people. They are reminiscent of giant, ochre coloured “snowmen” in their distinctly human forms of decoration.

These tall, colourful mounds variously sport scarves, caps, singlets, shirts, sunhats, bras, hard hats and even a beer can. They start just below Darwin, near the Noonamah Hotel, and occur all the way down to Kulgara, just north of the South Australian border. This covers around 1,800 kilometres.

The snowmen are an irreverent, larrikin, Northern Territorian phenomenon. But who created them? And what can they teach us about fundamental human behaviours?

Termite mounds occur naturally. They are made of clay, soil, sand and other natural materials, bound together with the saliva of termites. They occur globally and can reach as high as five metres.

In the NT, the first snowmen appeared during the 1970s. More quickly followed. They appear on both public and private land, lining major highways and rural roads and extending into national parks.

Over the years, many people have made these snowmen. Some were made by roadworkers, staying at roadside camps along the highway, with limited access to towns and entertainment but plenty of work clothing. Some were made by the owners of rural and remote properties. Some were made by fisherman traversing to remote fishing locations. Some may have been decorated by tourists.

The manager of the Royal Flying Doctor Service Tourist Facility, Samantha Bennett, is a Territorian born and bred. She says of the mounds:

Sometimes the clothing is changed according to festive calenders. They don’t do Halloween, but they definitely do Christmas and Australia Day. They dress them up with flags and high viz clothing, which is cool because you can see them from a distance. Sometimes, they are used to help with directions. They mark the location of a driveway in a remote area or turnoffs to secret fishing spots.

Social markers

The snowmen are actually snow people – men, women and children. Some are arranged in family groups. Gender is marked by clothing. Economic status can be discerned through the use of silk scarves, resort wear or hard hats.

The NT has the highest rate of beer drinking in Australia. Not that long ago, it had the highest rate of alcohol consumption in the world. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, beer cans are held by some snowmen.

The wider NT cultural landscape

The snowmen are part of a wider cultural landscape in the NT. If you go to the Coburg Peninsula and lose one of your thongs, you put the remaining thong on the thong tree: a tree covered top to bottom with old rubber thongs.

Then there is the “fence of shame” on Andreas Avenue at Dundee Beach, west of Darwin. This is where you put your fishing rod if you have broken it during your trip.

There is material evidence that the snowman tradition has some longevity. In some cases, the clothing is in a dilapidated state. In others, the termites have renewed their building efforts on top of the clothes.

Aboriginal traditions and termite mounds

It is unlikely that the snowmen were created by Aboriginal people. As Barunga resident Isaac Pamakal explains: “Aboriginal people don’t do that, because that might make people sick.”

Termite mounds are woven into NT Aboriginal belief systems. In some areas, there is a belief that anyone who knocks over a mound will get diarrhoea. Indeed, powerful Indigenous people have been known to put someone’s clothes onto a termite mound in order to make that person sick. The intended victim would be identified by the sweat on their clothing (which contains their DNA). (This link between sweat and DNA is an example of Indigenous science, which is increasingly being drawn on.)

However, termite mounds are mostly known, in the NT and around the world, for their medicinal properties. They contain high proportions of kaolin, used for the treatment of gastric-disorders in both traditional and modern pharmacologies.

Francoise Foti has conducted research in two NT Aboriginal communities, Nauiyu Nambiyu (Daly River) and Elliott. She records people consuming small quantities of termite mounds to deal with gastric disorders or after eating certain foods like yams, turtle or goannas. Similarly, termite mound material is sometimes eaten during pregnancy or lactation as it contains iron and calcium.

A global phenomenon

The urge to humanise inanimate objects is a global phenomenon – through both time and space. For thousands of years, humans have had a penchant for making animals and things look like people.

This is most clearly shown in a style of rock art known as therianthropes, which depicts beings that have both human and animal characteristics. It also manifests in depictions of mermaids, centaurs and other mythical creatures.

So while they are special, the snowmen of the NT are not unique. They are simply another example of a human need to reinvent the world in our own image.

– ref. What the termite mound ‘snowmen’ of the NT can tell us about human nature – http://theconversation.com/what-the-termite-mound-snowmen-of-the-nt-can-tell-us-about-human-nature-122038

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Clarke, Associate Professor, National Security College, Australian National University

This past weekend, The New York Times’ China correspondents, Chris Buckley and Austin Ramzy, published an expose of over 400 internal Chinese government documents relating to Beijing’s mass detentions of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in the far-western region of Xinjiang.

This trove of documents includes 96 internal speeches by Chinese President and Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping, as well as hundreds of speeches and directives by other CCP officials on the strategies of surveillance and control implemented in the region.

The documents confirm previous analyses by researchers on key aspects of the Chinese government’s so-called “reeducation” system for Uighurs. They also reveal new details on both the timing and rationale for the mass detentions and the extent of opposition within the CCP to this approach.

Most importantly, however, the documents confirm Xi’s high level of personal involvement in driving the campaign of repression in Xinjiang.

What the documents confirm

A number of Xi’s internal speeches confirm previous assessments of the reasons behind the implementation of the government’s mass detention and “reeducation” policies.

It’s clear from the documents that fears of potential connections between violence in Xinjiang and Islamic extremism in neighbouring Afghanistan and the battlefields of Iraq and Syria played a key role in Xi’s call for a “people’s war on terrorism”.

Read more: I researched Uighur society in China for 8 years and watched how technology opened new opportunities – then became a trap

In one speech, for instance, Xi remarks that with the American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, “terrorist organisations” would be “positioned on the frontiers of Afghanistan and Pakistan” while

East Turkestan terrorists who have received real-war training in Syria and Afghanistan could at any time launch terrorist attacks in Xinjiang.

In this context, a number of high-profile terrorist attacks that have occurred in China in recent years, including a train station attack in Kunming and a bombing at a marketplace in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, appear to have confirmed such fears.

As Xi asserted during a visit to a counterterrorism police unit in Urumqi the same month as the marketplace attack, the party must “unleash” the “tools of dictatorship” and “show absolutely no mercy” in its eradication of “extremists”.

The documents also demonstrate that the CCP’s recent tendency to frame both “extremists” and religious believers more broadly through the language of biological contagion or drug addiction comes from the top.

Xi himself states that those “infected” by “extremism” would require “a period of painful, interventionary treatment”, lest they have

their consciences destroyed, lose their humanity and murder without blinking an eye.

This language of paternalistic state intervention is not mere rhetoric, but concretely guides policy on the ground.

Read more: Despite China’s denials, its treatment of the Uyghurs should be called what it is: cultural genocide

This is evident in one document prepared to assist local officials in the city of Turpan respond to queries by Uighur children of relatives sent to “reeducation” camps.

If officials are asked why those sent to the detention centres cannot return home, for example, they should answer by noting the party would be “irresponsible” to

let a member of your family go home before their illness was cured.

Rather, children should be grateful to the state for the detention of their family members and should

treasure this chance for free education that the party and government has provided to thoroughly eradicate erroneous thinking, and also learn Chinese and job skills.

The Turpan document also confirms the link between “reeducation” and forced labour. It notes family members undergoing “reeducation” can

find a satisfying job in one of the businesses that we’ve brought in or established.

As American researcher Darren Byler has detailed, detainees are often compelled to work as low-skilled labour in factories either directly connected to re-education centres or, upon their “release”, in nearby industrial parks where Chinese companies have been incentivised to relocate.

Key revelations in the reporting

There are several major revelations associated with the documents, as well. Most significant of all, according to the Times, is the fact the documents were leaked

by a member of the Chinese political establishment who requested anonymity and expressed hope that their disclosure would prevent party leaders, including Mr. Xi, from escaping culpability for the mass detentions.

Beyond such a (presumably) high-placed official, the leaked documents and reporting also reveal a greater level of dissent and uncertainty within lower levels of the party than previously understood.

Internal party documents note 12,000 investigations in 2017 alone into party members in Xinjiang for “violations” in the “fight against separatism and extremism”.

The case of CCP official Wang Yongzhi, detailed by Buckley and Ramzy, is indicative here.

According to a “confession”, the local party chief in Yarkand in the far south of Xinjiang initially followed central policy directives by zealously building “two sprawling new detention facilities, including one as big as 50 basketball courts” and “doubling spending on outlays such as checkpoints and surveillance”.

However, fearing mass detentions would negatively impact on economic development goals and social cohesion – key benchmarks for achieving promotion within the party – Wang “broke the rules” and released thousands of detainees.

For this, he was removed from his post in 2017 and in an internal party report six months later was openly castigated for his “brazen defiance” of the “central leadership’s strategy for Xinjiang”.

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

Wang’s case demonstrates the existence of competing incentives at the local level in the implementation of centrally dictated policy.

His “brazen defiance” was not a principled stand against mass detentions but rather a pragmatic consideration of the potentially negative effects on his career should detentions undermine broader policy goals.

In this regard, it feels like a fairly typical experience of a low-level official in any authoritarian or totalitarian regime around the world.

It is this mundane quality that gives at least a kernel of hope the naked self-interest of party officials may play a part in pressuring the leadership to eventually reverse course on its Uighur detention policies.

However, given the stark and cold-blooded language revealed in the documents, this may prove to be a forlorn one.

– ref. Leaked documents on Uighur detention camps in China – an expert explains the key revelations – http://theconversation.com/leaked-documents-on-uighur-detention-camps-in-china-an-expert-explains-the-key-revelations-127221

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Clarke, Associate Professor, National Security College, Australian National University

This past weekend, The New York Times’ China correspondents, Chris Buckley and Austin Ramzy, published an expose of over 400 internal Chinese government documents relating to Beijing’s mass detentions of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in the far-western region of Xinjiang.

This trove of documents includes 96 internal speeches by Chinese President and Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping, as well as hundreds of speeches and directives by other CCP officials on the strategies of surveillance and control implemented in the region.

The documents confirm previous analyses by researchers on key aspects of the Chinese government’s so-called “reeducation” system for Uighurs. They also reveal new details on both the timing and rationale for the mass detentions and the extent of opposition within the CCP to this approach.

Most importantly, however, the documents confirm Xi’s high level of personal involvement in driving the campaign of repression in Xinjiang.

What the documents confirm

A number of Xi’s internal speeches confirm previous assessments of the reasons behind the implementation of the government’s mass detention and “reeducation” policies.

It’s clear from the documents that fears of potential connections between violence in Xinjiang and Islamic extremism in neighbouring Afghanistan and the battlefields of Iraq and Syria played a key role in Xi’s call for a “people’s war on terrorism”.

Read more: I researched Uighur society in China for 8 years and watched how technology opened new opportunities – then became a trap

In one speech, for instance, Xi remarks that with the American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, “terrorist organisations” would be “positioned on the frontiers of Afghanistan and Pakistan” while

East Turkestan terrorists who have received real-war training in Syria and Afghanistan could at any time launch terrorist attacks in Xinjiang.

In this context, a number of high-profile terrorist attacks that have occurred in China in recent years, including a train station attack in Kunming and a bombing at a marketplace in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, appear to have confirmed such fears.

As Xi asserted during a visit to a counterterrorism police unit in Urumqi the same month as the marketplace attack, the party must “unleash” the “tools of dictatorship” and “show absolutely no mercy” in its eradication of “extremists”.

The documents also demonstrate that the CCP’s recent tendency to frame both “extremists” and religious believers more broadly through the language of biological contagion or drug addiction comes from the top.

Xi himself states that those “infected” by “extremism” would require “a period of painful, interventionary treatment”, lest they have

their consciences destroyed, lose their humanity and murder without blinking an eye.

This language of paternalistic state intervention is not mere rhetoric, but concretely guides policy on the ground.

Read more: Despite China’s denials, its treatment of the Uyghurs should be called what it is: cultural genocide

This is evident in one document prepared to assist local officials in the city of Turpan respond to queries by Uighur children of relatives sent to “reeducation” camps.

If officials are asked why those sent to the detention centres cannot return home, for example, they should answer by noting the party would be “irresponsible” to

let a member of your family go home before their illness was cured.

Rather, children should be grateful to the state for the detention of their family members and should

treasure this chance for free education that the party and government has provided to thoroughly eradicate erroneous thinking, and also learn Chinese and job skills.

The Turpan document also confirms the link between “reeducation” and forced labour. It notes family members undergoing “reeducation” can

find a satisfying job in one of the businesses that we’ve brought in or established.

As American researcher Darren Byler has detailed, detainees are often compelled to work as low-skilled labour in factories either directly connected to re-education centres or, upon their “release”, in nearby industrial parks where Chinese companies have been incentivised to relocate.

Key revelations in the reporting

There are several major revelations associated with the documents, as well. Most significant of all, according to the Times, is the fact the documents were leaked

by a member of the Chinese political establishment who requested anonymity and expressed hope that their disclosure would prevent party leaders, including Mr. Xi, from escaping culpability for the mass detentions.

Beyond such a (presumably) high-placed official, the leaked documents and reporting also reveal a greater level of dissent and uncertainty within lower levels of the party than previously understood.

Internal party documents note 12,000 investigations in 2017 alone into party members in Xinjiang for “violations” in the “fight against separatism and extremism”.

The case of CCP official Wang Yongzhi, detailed by Buckley and Ramzy, is indicative here.

According to a “confession”, the local party chief in Yarkand in the far south of Xinjiang initially followed central policy directives by zealously building “two sprawling new detention facilities, including one as big as 50 basketball courts” and “doubling spending on outlays such as checkpoints and surveillance”.

However, fearing mass detentions would negatively impact on economic development goals and social cohesion – key benchmarks for achieving promotion within the party – Wang “broke the rules” and released thousands of detainees.

For this, he was removed from his post in 2017 and in an internal party report six months later was openly castigated for his “brazen defiance” of the “central leadership’s strategy for Xinjiang”.

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

Wang’s case demonstrates the existence of competing incentives at the local level in the implementation of centrally dictated policy.

His “brazen defiance” was not a principled stand against mass detentions but rather a pragmatic consideration of the potentially negative effects on his career should detentions undermine broader policy goals.

In this regard, it feels like a fairly typical experience of a low-level official in any authoritarian or totalitarian regime around the world.

It is this mundane quality that gives at least a kernel of hope the naked self-interest of party officials may play a part in pressuring the leadership to eventually reverse course on its Uighur detention policies.

However, given the stark and cold-blooded language revealed in the documents, this may prove to be a forlorn one.

– ref. Leaked documents on China detention camps – a Uighur expert explains the key revelations – http://theconversation.com/leaked-documents-on-china-detention-camps-a-uighur-expert-explains-the-key-revelations-127221

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janet Stanley, Associate professor/Principal Research Fellow, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne

It’s hard to comprehend why someone would deliberately light a bushfire. Yet this behaviour regularly occurs in Australia and other countries. We would go a long way to preventing bushfires if we better understood this troubling phenomenon.

Experts estimate about 85% of bushfires are caused by humans. A person may accidentally or carelessly start a fire, such as leaving a campfire unattended or using machinery which creates sparks. Or a person could maliciously light a fire.

This criminal behaviour is not widely recognised or understood by the public, fire authorities or researchers. This means opportunities to prevent bushfires are generally being missed and resources devoted to tackling the cause are far from commensurate with the devastating consequences.

Profile of an arsonist

Research has shown about 8% of officially recorded vegetation fires were attributed to malicious lighting, and another 22% as suspicious. However, about 40% of officially recorded vegetation fires did not have an assigned cause. When unassigned bushfires were investigated by fire investigators, the majority were found to be maliciously lit.

But official fires are just the tip of the iceberg: the actual number of bushfires in Australia is thought to be about five times that recorded. Virtually none of these unrecorded fires are investigated.

Young men comprise the largest group of people who maliciously light fires. These youth are usually troubled, likely to have absent fathers and little home supervision. They are likely to have experienced child abuse and neglect and associated with an antisocial peer group. Lighting fires may give a feeling of excitement, defiance and power, or it may be an expression of displaced anger. Some offenders have an intellectual disability.

Read more: A surprising answer to a hot question: controlled burns often fail to slow a bushfire

Offenders may make no attempt to extinguish the fire, and give little consideration to the consequences. Some may have no feelings of remorse or fear of punishment. Others may never have intended to create such wide devastation.

Older males who light malicious fires also have a history of social and educational disadvantage, poor family functioning in childhood, low self-esteem, and often a pathological interest in fire. However the older the person gets, the less likely they are to light fires.

So why don’t we talk about arson?

During last week’s east-coast bushfire crisis, a handful of news reports covered people lighting fires. They include a teenager who allegedly lit a Queensland bushfire that razed 14 homes, and a man charged with starting a Sydney fire by letting off fireworks.

Media attention on a fire’s cause is generally scant and the public rarely hears much beyond initial charges being laid. This is in stark contrast to blanket news coverage of the consequences of bushfires.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: When the firies call him out on climate change, Scott Morrison should listen

A staggeringly low apprehension and conviction rate for offenders – less than 1% – is a further barrier to public awareness of the problem. Conviction rarely leads to a substantial punishment.

Fire brigades in most states offer a limited education course for some children who light fires, usually led by volunteers. But there are few targeted treatment programs for those who light bushfires.

Rethinking the bushfire problem

Rather than tackling the cause of the problem, the major response to bushfire in Australia is mitigation. This largely involves one blunt approach: hazard reduction burns to reduce bushfire fuel loads. This is an increasingly difficult task as climate change makes weather conditions more unsuitable for controlled burns.

This business-as-usual approach has not halted the upward trajectory of bushfire ignitions.

Read more: 12 simple ways you can reduce bushfire risk to older homes

A much greater focus on prevention would require a significant rethinking of the bushfire problem. This would include collaboration between government, business, non-government organisations, communities and others.

Victoria’s Gippsland Arson Prevention Program provides a promising model. Through public education, media engagement and other means, it informs communities on how to help prevent arson. The committee includes Victoria Police, government and fire authorities and local power generators.

In one example of an on-the-ground response, local authorities organised the removal of dumped cars, which are commonly seen by bored and troubled youth as an invitation to start a fire.

Arson prevention also includes addressing long-term problems such as youth disadvantage and unemployment, especially in rural-urban fringe areas where most human-lit fires occur.

Shorter-term approaches include providing support and treatment to at-risk youth, and situational crime prevention such as good lighting and cameras in places vulnerable to fire lighting.

We must open up a society-wide discussion of bushfire prevention, which includes listening to local communities about what they value and what can be done about the problem. As climate change worsens – and bushfires along with it – a radical rethink is required.

– ref. Humans light 85% of bushfires, and we do virtually nothing to stop it – http://theconversation.com/humans-light-85-of-bushfires-and-we-do-virtually-nothing-to-stop-it-126941

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

Former prime minister Paul Keating has launched a scathing attack on the Australian media for its coverage of China, denouncing “the nominally pious belchings of ‘do-gooder’ journalists” who live on leaks from security agencies.

Keating told Australian newspaper’s strategic forum on Monday: “The Australian media has been recreant in its duty to the public in failing to present a balanced picture of the rise, legitimacy and importance of China”.

Instead it preferred “to traffic in side plays dressed up with cosmetics of sedition and risk”.

His attack comes amid debate about China’s refusal of visas to two members of federal parliament, Andrew Hastie and senator James Paterson, who have been strong critics of the Beijing’s regime.

Current relations between the Chinese and Australian governments have been strained for some time, with a range of tension points, including the issue of Chinese interference in Australian politics and universities and the government’s response.

In his speech Keating once again had in his sights what he sees as the sway of security agencies in foreign policy especially on China, a point he made forcefully before the election.

“What passes for the foreign policy of Australia lacks any sense of strategic realism,” he said. “The whispered word ‘communism’ of old, is now being replaced with the word ‘China’.

“The reason we have ministries and cabinets is that a greater and collective wisdom can be brought to bear on complex topics – and particularly on movements of tectonic importance.

“This process is not working in Australia, ” he said.

“The subtleties of foreign policy and the elasticity of diplomacy are being supplanted by the phobias of a group of national security agencies which are now effectively running the foreign policy of the country.

“And the media has been up to its ears in it.”

Read more: New research shows Chinese migrants don’t always side with China and are happy to promote Australia

He targeted particularly The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age for their China coverage.

“Drops to journalists by the [security] agencies about another ‘seditious’ publication in a particular university or the hijinks of another Chinese entrepreneur is passed off as the evil bearing of the Chinese State.”

He said he did not know how Scott Morrison or the government permitted this state of affairs.

Keating said big states were “rude and nasty,” and referenced instances of American behaviour. “But that does not mean we can afford not to deal with them – whether it be the United States or China”.

“It is the national interest and its long run trajectory which should guide our hand and not the nominally pious belchings of ‘do-gooder’ journalists who themselves live on leaks of agencies unfit to divine a national pathway.

“Organisations which lack comprehension as to magnitude or moment or the subtleties and demands of a dynamic international landscape.”

Keating said it was in Asia’s interests, including Australia’s interests, that the US remain engaged in the region.

“Closer US political and commercial links with the countries of the region should help establish a web of self-reinforcing, cooperative ties which over time, should assuage Chinese concerns that a structure is being built with the express purpose of Chinese strategic containment.

“Indeed, such a cooperative structure should encourage China to participate in the region rather than seek to dominate it.

“We want a region which gives China the space to participate but not dominate.

“Australia, for its part, should be actively involved in the development of such structures, while being wary of being caught up in a policy by the United States, should the United States come to the conclusion, that the rise of China is broadly incompatible with its strategic interests.”

Read more: Chinese-Australia relations may not be ‘toxic’, but they do need to keep warming up

Keating said President Trump had no instinct for a military skirmish with China – which was good news – but he would not be setting a new international model.

“At the moment the current model is in serious decline. Global institutions are crumbling. Look at the WTO. The global system is under stress.

“And regional institutions are being marginalised into the bargain. For instance, the President did not attend the recent East Asia Summit. He did not even direct his Secretary of State to attend,” he said.

“On the broader point, whether the United States can assume it retains strategic guarantor status in East Asia is open to debate.

“What is not debatable is that we need the US as the balancing and conciliating power in the region.”

Keating said after this presidency the US would not return to being the state it was, regardless of whether the next president was Republican or a Democrat.

Not only was the US withdrawing from Asian arrangements – it was doing the same in Europe.

Australia would be left in the “deep blue sea” dealing with the great powers of the US and China over the next 30 years.

Unfortunately debate in Australia about China had degenerated, with two propositions contributing to this, Keating said. One was the unstated assumption that somehow China’s rise was illegitimate; the other was China was not a democracy. He dismissed the accuracy of the first and the relevance of the second.

China would be – was now – the predominant economic power in Asia.

Read more: Outgoing ASIO head hopes for greater public preparedness to defend Australian sovereignty

“That position will not be usurped by a non-Asian power, either economic or military.

“How does Australia respond to this?

“Is it to help divine and construct a set of arrangements which engages China but which also prevents China from dominating the region?

“Or do we seek to insulate or remove ourselves from this enormous shift in world economic power, by allowing our singular focus on the United States and our alliance with it to mark out our international personality?”

– ref. Paul Keating attacks media for ‘pious belchings’ over China – http://theconversation.com/paul-keating-attacks-media-for-pious-belchings-over-china-127222

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

A parasite is an organism that lives in or on an organism of another species.

Three main classes of parasites can cause disease in humans: protozoa, helminths, and ectoparasites. Protozoa and helminths largely affect the gut, while ectoparasites include lice and mites that can attach to or burrow into the skin, staying there for long periods of time.

The majority of protozoa and helminths tend to be non-pathogenic (meaning they don’t cause disease) or result in very mild illness. Some, however, can cause severe disease in humans.

Read more: Health check: the low-down on ‘worms’ and how to get rid of them

Faecal-oral transmission, where parasites found in the stool of one person end up being swallowed by another person, is the most common mode of transmission of parasitic protozoa and helminths.

The initial symptoms tend to be gastrointestinal symptoms like diarrhoea. When parasites invade the red blood cells or organs, the consequences can become more serious.

Protozoa

Protozoa are tiny single-celled organisms that multiply inside the human body.

The protozoa giardia, for example, has a classic two-stage life cycle. In the first stage, called trophozoite, the parasite swims around and consumes nutrients from the small bowel. In the second stage it develops into a non-moving cyst.

Cysts excreted in faeces can contaminate the water supply, and ingesting contaminated food or water results in transmission. Close human to human contact and unsanitary living conditions can promote transmission.

Symptoms of giardia can include severe or chronic diarrhoea, abdominal cramps, fatigue, weakness and weight loss.

Other important protozoa are the plasmodium species. Plasmodium develop in mosquitoes, and infected mosquitoes transmit the parasite to humans by biting them. Plasmodium destroys red blood cells which impacts organ function and causes a disease in humans known as malaria.

Malaria causes the most deaths of all parasitic diseases. In 2017 it was estimated malaria resulted in 435,000 deaths globally, most of them young children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Read more: How our red blood cells keep evolving to fight malaria

Helminths

Helminths, often called worms, are large multicellular organisms usually visible to the naked eye in their adult stages. As a general rule, helminths cannot multiply inside the human body.

One major group of helminths are flatworms. Flatworms literally have flattened soft bodies. Their digestive cavity has only one opening for both the ingestion and removal of food. It’s thought 80% of flatworms are parasitic.

Tapeworms are one type of flatworm. The most common human tapeworm in Australia is the dwarf tapeworm. The prevalence of dwarf tapeworm in isolated communities in northwest Australia is estimated to be around 55%.

Infestation in humans comes from ingesting dwarf tapeworm eggs. Transmission from person to person occurs via the faecal-oral route. As with other parasites, the major risk factors are poor sanitation and shared living quarters. Symptoms include diarrhoea, abdominal pain, weight loss and weakness.

Another major group of helminths are nematodes, commonly known as roundworms. Nematodes are the most numerous multicellular animals on earth and can be found in almost every environment. Unlike flatworms, they do have a digestive system that extends from the mouth to the anus.

More than 50% of the world’s population are thought to be affected at one point during their life by at least one of six main classes of nematodes.

The eggs or larvae of these nematodes usually develop in soil before being transmitted to the human host. For this reason these nematodes are often called soil-transmitted helminths. A good example are hookworms which infest humans by penetrating the skin from contaminated soil. So wearing appropriate footwear is an important way to prevent hookworm transmission.

Read more: A parasite attack on Darwin’s finches means they’re losing their lovesong

The pinworm Enterobius vermicularis has a different life cycle to the other nematodes. Pinworm larvae develop in eggs on the skin near the anus or under the fingernails.

Pinworm, also known as threadworm, is the most common helminth parasite in Australia. Itching around the anus is a major symptom of pinworm. Pinworms are easily passed from one person to another and it’s common for entire families to be infested.

Ectoparasites

The term ectoparasites generally refers to organisms such as ticks, fleas, lice and mites that can attach or burrow into the skin and remain there for long periods of time.

Scabies, for example, a contagious skin disease marked by itching and small raised red spots, is caused by the human itch mite. Scabies usually is spread by direct, prolonged, skin-to-skin contact.

Head lice are small, wingless insects that live and breed in human hair and feed by sucking blood from the scalp.

Prevention and treatment

Some parasites can lie dormant for extended periods of time. This can make the diagnosis of parasitic infestation challenging as there may be no symptoms, or symptoms can be vague and non-specific.

The good news is we have very good medications to treat many different kinds of parasites once they’ve been diagnosed. These medications do have side effects but on the whole are very effective.

Read more: Six human parasites you definitely don’t want to host

Treatment of parasites should be accompanied by preventative strategies such as improving sanitation and ensuring the availability of appropriate clothing and footwear in affected areas.

The World Health Organisation has recommended periodic medical treatment (deworming) to all at-risk people living in endemic areas, but widespread implementation remains challenging.

– ref. What are parasites and how do they make us sick? – http://theconversation.com/what-are-parasites-and-how-do-they-make-us-sick-121489

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Lilburn, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Melbourne

You’re driving down an unfamiliar street on a clear spring evening. You’ve been invited to a friend of a friend’s party, at a house you’ve never been to before.

Tracking the street numbers, you see you’re getting close, so you (almost automatically) turn the radio down. Finally, with all that music out of the way, you might actually be able to see the house.

Why is it that Cardi B must be silenced so you can better see the address of your party? For that matter, why do we have a convention to read silently when in a library?

One response might be: “When we need to concentrate a little more, like when we’re looking for a house in the dark, we often try to get rid of distractions so we can focus.”

Read more: Curious Kids: is it OK to listen to music while studying?

This answer is intuitively appealing. It’s also exactly the kind of answer cognitive psychologists try to avoid.

The words concentrate, distractions, and focus all point towards something (attention) that is left undefined. Rather than detailing its properties and how it works, we just assume people intuitively know what it means.

This is a little circular, like a dictionary using a word in its own definition.

Hashtag nofilter

When you have a problem that seems inseparable from intuition, one way to get a handle on it is to a use a metaphor.

One of the most important metaphors for attention was provided by psychologist Donald Broadbent in 1958: attention acts like a filter. In his metaphor, all sensory information – everything we see, hear, feel on our skin, and so on – is retained in the mind for a very short period simply as physical sensation (a colour in a location, a tone in the left ear).

But when it comes to bringing meaning to that sensory information, Broadbent argued, we have limited capacity. So attention is the filter that determines which parts of the torrent of incoming sensation are processed.

It might seem like this broad description of a filter doesn’t buy us much in terms of explanation. Yet, sadly for Broadbent, he gave just enough detail to be proven incorrect.

A year after the publication of Broadbent’s book, the psychologist Neville Moray found that when people are listening to two simultaneous streams of speech and asked to concentrate on just one of them, many can still detect their own name if it pops up in the other stream.

Read more: What does our attention span mean?

This suggests that even when you’re not paying attention, some sensory information is still processed and given meaning (that a mass of sounds is our name). What does that tell us about how this central bottleneck of attention might act?

Radar love

One answer comes from a remarkable 1998 study by Anne-Marie Bonnel and Ervin Hafter. It builds upon one of the most successful theories in all psychology, signal detection theory, which describes how people make decisions based on ambiguous sensory information, rather like how a radar might detect a plane.

One of the basic problems of radar detection is to work out whether it is more likely that what is being detected is a signal (an enemy plane) or just random noise. This problem is the same for human perception.

Although apparently a metaphor like Broadbent’s filter, signal detection theory can be evaluated mathematically. The mathematics of human identification, it turns out, largely match those of radar operation.

A perfect circle

Bonnel and Hafter recognised that if people have a finite amount of attention to divide between vision and hearing, you could expect to see a particular pattern in certain experiments.

Imagine attention as an arrow of a fixed length that can swing back and forth between sight and hearing. When it’s pointing entirely towards sight, there’s no room for any focus on hearing (and vice versa). But if a little attention is taken up by hearing, that means there is less directed towards sight. If you graph this relationship, the tip of the arrow will draw a neat circle as it swings from one to the other.

Sure enough, the data from their experiments did indeed form a circle, but only in a certain case. When people were asked simply to detect whether a stimulus was present, there was no trade-off (paying more attention to vision did not change hearing performance and vice versa). It was only when people were asked to identify the specific stimulus that this circle appeared.

Read more: Health Check: can people actually multitask?

This suggests that while do we indeed have a limited capacity to process information, this is only the case when we’re processing the information for meaning, rather than being aware of its presence.

Our own research suggests this pattern indicates some deeper constraint at the heart of the way we perceive the world.

The circle represents a fundamental limit on processing. We can never leave that circle, all we can do is move forwards or backwards along it by choosing to focus our attention.

When our visual task becomes difficult – like finding a house number in the dark rather than simply scanning the road – we move along that circle to optimise the signal from our visual system. In many cases, we can only do that by turning down the input to our auditory system, by literally turning down the radio. Sorry, Cardi B.

– ref. Turn down for what? Why you turn down the radio when you’re trying to park your car – http://theconversation.com/turn-down-for-what-why-you-turn-down-the-radio-when-youre-trying-to-park-your-car-126263

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Stokes, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Deakin University

“To be dead,” wrote the 20th century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, “is to be a prey for the living.” Even Sartre, though, would have struggled to imagine casting James Dean in a movie 64 years after the actor’s death.

The curious announcement that Dean, who died in a car crash in 1955 having made just three films, will star in a movie adaptation of Gareth Crocker’s Vietnam War novel Finding Jack, has been met with outrage.

It would be a remarkable CGI achievement for any studio to resurrect an actor who has been dead since the Eisenhower administration.

True, the Star Wars movie Rogue One featured the late Peter Cushing “reprising” his role as Grand Moff Tarkin. But the new role given to Dean would reportedly be far larger and more complex. Cushing, at least, had already played Tarkin while he was alive.

In Finding Jack, “James Dean” will supposedly be starring in a film based on a novel written 80 years after he was born, set near the end of a war that started after he died. He will reportedly be reanimated via “full body” CGI using actual footage and photos; another actor will voice him.

The reaction to this goes beyond mere scepticism, however. Nor is it simply the now-familiar post-truth anxiety about no longer being able to tell what’s real and what isn’t. The rise of “deepfakes” presents a much greater threat on that front than bringing dead actors back to life.

What’s at work here is another pervasive challenge of the online era: how we should live with the digital dead.

People die online every day. Social media is increasingly full of electric corpses; at some point the dead will outnumber the living on platforms like Facebook. This already poses a range of ethical and practical problems. Some of these are the subject of a NSW Law Reform Commission inquiry into how we should deal with the digital assets of the dead and incapacitated.

Reanimation

These issues only get thornier once you add in the prospect of reanimation.

For most of this decade, digital immortality was confined to press releases and fiction. A string of start-ups promised breathlessly to let you cheat death via AI-driven avatars, only to disappear when it became clear their taglines were better than their products. (The Twitter app LivesOn’s “When your heart stops beating, you’ll keep tweeting” was undeniably clever).

“Be Right Back,” a 2013 episode of the TV series Black Mirror, imagined a young woman who signs up for a service that brings her dead partner back to life using his social media footprint: first as a chat bot, then as a phone-based voice simulator, and finally as a lifelike automaton. It was brilliant, bleak television, but thankfully, it wasn’t real.

Then in late 2015, 34-year-old Roman Mazurenko died in an accident in Moscow. As a tribute, his best friend, fellow tech entrepreneur Eugenia Kuyda, built the texts Mazurenko had sent her into a chat bot.

You can download Roman Mazurenko right now, wherever you get your apps, and talk to a dead man. Internet immortality might not be here yet, not quite, but it’s unsettlingly close.

Between remembrance and exploitation

Sadly, it’s not an immortality we could look forward to. When we fear death, one thing we particularly dread is the end of first-person experience.

Think of the experience you’re having reading this article. Someone else could be reading exactly the same words at the same time. But their experience will lack whatever it is that makes this your experience. That’s what scares us: if you die, that quality, what it’s like to be you, won’t exist anymore. And there is, to mangle a famous line from Thomas Nagel, nothing it is like to be a bot.

But what about living on for other people? The Mazurenko bot is clearly a work of mourning, and a work of love. Remembering the dead, wrote Kierkegaard, is the freest and most unselfish work of love, for the dead can neither force us to remember them nor reward us for doing so. But memory is fragile and attention is fickle.

It seems reasonable that we might use our new toys to help the dead linger in the lifeworld, to escape oblivion a little longer. The danger, as the philosopher Adam Buben has put it, is that memorialisation could slip into replacement.

An interactive avatar of the dead might simply become a stopgap, something you use to fill part of the hole the dead leave in our lives. That risks turning the dead into yet another resource for the living. The line between remembrance and exploitation is surprisingly porous.

That is what’s ultimately troubling about resurrecting James Dean. To watch a James Dean movie is to encounter, in some palpable way, the concrete person. Something of the face-to-face encounter survives the mediation of lens, celluloid and screen.

To make a new James Dean movie is something else. It’s to use the visual remains of Dean as a workable resource instead of letting him be who he is. Worse, it suggests that James Dean can be replaced, just as algorithm-driven avatars might come to replace, rather than simply commemorate, the dead.

We’ll know in time whether Finding Jack can live up to its likely premature hype. Even if it doesn’t, the need to think about how we protect the dead from our digital predations isn’t going away.

– ref. Chat bots, James Dean … can the digital dead rest in peace? – http://theconversation.com/chat-bots-james-dean-can-the-digital-dead-rest-in-peace-127211

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tomas Trescak, Senior Lecturer in Intelligent Systems, Western Sydney University

Just a few years ago, virtual reality (VR) was being showered with very real money. The industry raised an estimated US$900 million in venture capital in 2016, but by 2018 that figure had plummeted to US$280 million.

Oculus – the Facebook-owned company behind one of the most popular VR headsets on the market – planned to deliver 1 billion headsets to consumers, but as of last year had sold barely 300,000.

Investments in VR entertainment venues all over the world, VR cinematic experiences, and specialised VR studios such as Google Spotlight and CCP Games have either significantly downsized, closed down or morphed into new ventures. What is happening?

Read more: What you see is not always what you get: how virtual reality can manipulate our minds

Recent articles in Fortune and The Verge have voiced disdain with VR technology. Common complaints include expensive, clunky or uncomfortable hardware, and unimaginative or repetitive content. Sceptics have compared VR experiences to the 3D television fad of the early 2010s.

As a VR researcher and developer, I understand the scepticism. Yet I believe in this technology, and I know there are “killer apps” and solutions waiting to be discovered.

Last week, Western Sydney University hosted a global symposium on VR software and technology, at which academics and industry partners from around the world discussed possible ways forward for VR and augmented reality. Among the speakers were Aleissia Laidacker, director of Developer Experience at Magic Leap; University of South Australia computing professor Mark Billingurst; and Tomasz Bednarz, director of UNSW’s Expanded Perception and Interaction Centre.

Virtual reality, literal headache

One problem discussed at the symposium is the fact that VR experiences often cause health-related issues including headaches, eye strain, dizziness, and nausea. Developers can partially deal with these issues at the hardware level by delivering balanced experiences with high refresh and frame rates.

But many developers are ignoring usability guidelines in the pursuit of exciting content. Gaming industry guidelines used by Epic, Oculus, Marvel, and Intel recommend that games completely avoid any use of induced motion, acceleration or “fake motion”, which are often the main cause of discomfort and motion sickness.

Yet the vast majority of available VR experiences feature some kind of induced motion, either in the form of animation or by basing the experience on user movement and exploration of the virtual environment.

I have met many first-time VR users who generally enjoyed the experience, but also reported “feeling wrong” – similar to enjoying the clarity of sound in noise-cancelling headphones but also having a “strange sensation” in their ears.

Killing creativity

Queasiness is not the only turnoff. Another problem is that despite the near-limitless potential of VR, many current offerings are sorely lacking in imagination.

The prevailing trend is to create VR versions of existing content such as games, videos or advertisements, in the hope of delivering extra impact. This does not work, in much the same way that radio play would make terrible television.

A famous cautionary tale comes from Second Life, the virtual world launched in 2003 which failed spectacularly to live up to its billing. Real-world businesses such as Toyota and BMW opened branches in Second Life, allowing users to test-drive badly programmed versions of their virtual cars. They lasted mere months.

Why would we prefer a humdrum virtual experience to a real one? No one needs a virtual Toyota. We need to give users good reasons to leave their reality behind and immerse themselves in a new one.

Read more: Why virtual reality cannot match the real thing

There have been some notable successes. Beat Saber, made by Czech indie developers, is the one of the few games that have explored the true potential of VR – and is the only VR game to have grossed more than US$20 million.

The VR Vaccine Project helps to take the sting out of childhood needles, by combining a real-world vaccination with a superhero story in the virtual world, in which the child is presented with a magical shield at the crucial moment.

I really hope VR is on its way to becoming more mainstream, more exciting, and less underwhelming. But we scientists can only present new technological solutions, to help make VR a more comfortable and enjoyable experience. Ultimately it is down to VR developers to learn from existing success stories and start delivering those “killer apps”. The possibilities are limited only by imagination.

– ref. The main problem with virtual reality? It’s almost as humdrum as real life – http://theconversation.com/the-main-problem-with-virtual-reality-its-almost-as-humdrum-as-real-life-126761

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rowena Maguire, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Institute for Future Environments, Queensland University of Technology

Over the past two weeks, bushfires have raged across New South Wales and Queensland. While the narrative appears focused on potential causes and political point-scoring, what’s lost in this discussion is the role of post-disaster recovery, and specifically how it relates to gender.

Disasters have gendered impacts. Generally, disasters disproportionately affect women and girls, with women and children 14 times more likely to die in a natural disaster on a global scale.

In the Australian bushfire context, research shows women are more likely than men to want to evacuate, and men are more likely than women to want to remain and “fight the fire”. This means men are three times more likely to die in bushfires compared with women.

Read more: Mr Morrison, I lost my home to bushfire. Your thoughts and prayers are not enough

But the gendered impacts of bushfires also affect the aftermath. There’s a growing awareness in Australia among researchers and those working in women’s support services that natural disasters amplify conditions leading to incidents of domestic violence.

Yet climate, disaster and environmental law and policy is “gender blind” – they don’t mention or recognise gender as an issue.

Gender violence after disasters

People struggle to cope long after a disaster has settled from significant levels of family disruption, including displacement, social isolation, psychological trauma and financial despair.

The current bushfires have destroyed many houses and led to widespread trauma, which means longer term repercussions, such as the financial ramifications of loss of property and halted economic activity, will build.

These impacts carry with them an emotional toll that can place pressure on household dynamics and bring families to breaking point. If history tells us anything, this will include an increase in gender-based violence.

Following Hurricane Katrina, a study found a 98% increase in violence against women as measured from before and after the disaster.

Read more: Forceful and dominant: men with sexist ideas of masculinity are more likely to abuse women

A study conducted following the 2004 Whakatane flood in New Zealand found police callouts doubled and the workload for domestic violence agencies tripled in the aftermath of the flood.

Similarly, the Women’s Health Goulburn North East organisation (a specialist women’s health service) reported in the wake of the Black Saturday Bushfires in Victoria in 2009 an increase in the incidence of domestic violence against women during post-disaster recovery.

What’s more, women already living in an abuse relationship may experience greater severity post-disaster, because they may be separated from support systems like family and friends that offered some protection. These women may be forced to rely on the perpetrator for survival, or access to services.

Addressing gender in climate law

Climate law remains largely gender blind in Australia. In 2017, following years of lobbying, women’s groups were successful in getting the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to adopt “gender action plans”.

These plans promote two key concepts: gender balance and gender responsive policy.

Gender balance is defined as being achieved when there are approximately equal numbers of men and women participating in international environmental negotiations.

Gender responsive policy requires governments to identity, understand and implement initiatives aimed at addressing gender gaps in the environmental sector.

Read more: ‘Natural disasters’ and people on the margins – the hidden story

The creation of these UN gender action plans means governments, including the Australian government, should start identifying and responding to the gendered impacts of climate change. But the Australian government has yet to bring these recommendations to its climate policies.

Australia doesn’t adopt UN recommendations

The key organising international text on disaster management is the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, a 15-year non-binding UN agreement, which requires countries to apply a gender sensitive approach in preparing and responding to disasters.

But Australian disaster policies don’t do this. For example, Queensland’s State Disaster Management Plan is effective in terms of physically responding to a disaster, but the policy remains gender blind. It does not adequately consider the effects of sudden or slow onset disasters at the household level.

Read more: Natural disasters are affecting some of Australia’s most disadvantaged communities

Not only does the Australian government need to adopt a gender sensitive approach in disaster policy and planning, but also it should better fund groups at the front line responding to gendered violence following a disaster.

This includes groups providing legal support like Womens Legal Services and Legal Aid and should extend to groups providing accomodation, counselling and other support for women impacted by gender violence.

The National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line – 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for any Australian who has experienced, or is at risk of, family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault.

– ref. Domestic violence will spike in the bushfire aftermath, and governments can no longer ignore it – http://theconversation.com/domestic-violence-will-spike-in-the-bushfire-aftermath-and-governments-can-no-longer-ignore-it-127018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Davis, Chair of Women’s Health, Monash University

At menopause, a woman’s ovaries lose their reproductive function. Eggs are no longer released and the production of the hormones oestrogen and progesterone falls. It’s the lowered levels of oestrogen after menopause that gives rise to troublesome postmenopausal symptoms.

Most women experience menopause between the ages of 45 and 55. It’s a natural event, but for many women it has significant health consequences.

The fortunate few have minimal symptoms, but at least three-quarters of women will have some symptoms. One-third of all menopausal women are moderately to severely affected.

Read more: What is perimenopause and how does it affect women’s health in midlife?

Typical symptoms include hot flushes, night sweats, anxiety, low mood, disturbed sleep, joint pain and vaginal dryness. These symptoms can be debilitating.

The fall in oestrogen also leads to bone loss and an increased risk of fragility fractures. And women going through menopause have increased central abdominal fat, even without an increase in weight. This contributes to a heightened risk of diabetes and heart disease.

An absence of symptoms doesn’t mean bone loss and other metabolic changes aren’t occurring, as these develop silently.

Menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) – which used to be known as hormone replacement therapy, or HRT – is the most effective treatment we have for menopausal symptoms. Yet many women and health-care providers remain confused about the benefits and risks of MHT.

What is menopausal hormone therapy?

MHT replenishes oestrogen supplies in the body to treat the symptoms of menopause. Taking oestrogen causes thickening of the lining of the uterus, so progestogen (which acts like progesterone) is added to MHT to stop this.

This is important because a thickened uterus lining may undergo cellular changes that have the potential to develop into uterine cancer. For a woman who has had a hysterectomy (surgery where the uterus is removed) MHT will be oestrogen-only.

Oestrogen is usually taken in tablet form, but can be applied as a skin patch or skin gel, or as a vaginal pessary. Progesterone is taken as a capsule. There are a range of single formulations and combinations, so the dose and formulation of MHT should be tailored to each woman’s health profile and personal preferences.

Read more: A shift in social attitudes can make menopause a positive experience

Women shouldn’t take MHT if they have a malignancy sensitive to oestrogen, like breast cancer, or have undiagnosed vaginal bleeding.

Unless there’s a specific reason they can’t, it’s especially important women with early menopause take MHT to optimise their health. This is true regardless of how severe their symptoms are.

Menopause before age 45 is classified as early menopause. Prematurely menopausal women are at significantly greater risk of osteoporosis and fracture, heart disease and premature death.

For women going through menopause at the usual time, the choice may be less clear-cut.

Importantly, MHT cannot be seen in one dimension; that is, as only having one benefit or one risk. To make an informed choice, it’s essential to evaluate the total effects of MHT, including how it influences the risk of premature death, heart disease, fracture, other cancers, and of course, well-being and quality of life.

Balancing the risks and the benefits

Clinical trials have found specific formulations of oral oestrogen with progesterone result in a small increase in breast cancer risk. One study reported roughly a 1.25-fold increase in risk. This is equivalent to about four extra cases of breast cancer per 1,000 women per year in women who were taking this specific MHT formulation before and during the study period.

However, this risk estimate may be incorrect as the women in this study who had never used MHT prior to starting the study had no increased breast cancer risk compared with the placebo group. So some degree of uncertainty as to the risk remains.

There was no increase in risk for oestrogen-only therapy, and whether these risks apply to non-oral therapies is not yet known.

These risks should be balanced with the benefits. Women who take MHT gain less abdominal fat and are less likely to develop diabetes. MHT prevents bone loss and therefore the risk of fragility fracture, an effect that continues after treatment is stopped. Oestrogen alone is associated with reduced heart disease risk, while oestrogen plus progestogen also lowers the risk of colon and uterine cancer.

Read more: Chemical messengers: how hormones change through menopause

The most comprehensive summary of the safety of MHT is from the Women’s Health Initiative study in which 27,347 participants were randomised to receive MHT or a placebo for five to seven years. The researchers followed up to see if death rates differed between women who had taken MHT compared with the placebo.

After 18 years, cancer mortality and death overall from any cause did not differ between the groups, irrespective of whether the MHT was oral oestrogen-only or oral oestrogen plus progestogen.

So if we add symptom relief to the equation, the benefits of MHT will outweigh the potential risks for most symptomatic women who start MHT within ten years of menopause (the time frame measured in this study).

Some women using MHT will continue on the treatment for five or ten years to manage their symptoms. More than 40% of women aged 60 to 65 still have hot flushes and night sweats, and one in seven of these women describe their symptoms as “severe”.

The length of time a woman uses MHT for will depend on her symptom severity and individual needs, which should be re-evaluated alongside her risk profile every year with a health professional.

The alternatives aren’t evidence-based

Claims over-the-counter or internet-purchased nutritional supplements or herbal tablets will “balance your hormones” and relieve symptoms cannot be substantiated.

Studies have consistently failed to show meaningful benefits of nutritional supplements or herbal tablets over placebo for hot flushes. And these treatments do not prevent bone loss or protect against heart disease.

Further, unproven therapies can also have side effects. Women considering herbal or naturopathic remedies should have a face-to-face consultation with a qualified therapist (as opposed to internet-based communication) to ensure their full symptom and health profile, as well as medication use, are documented to minimise adverse effects.

Read more: Don’t count on freezing ovarian tissue to delay menopause or stop your biological clock

For more information about treatment options visit the Australasian Menopause Society website and view the International Menopause Society YouTube videos.

– ref. Making sense of menopausal hormone therapy means understanding the benefits as well as the risks – http://theconversation.com/making-sense-of-menopausal-hormone-therapy-means-understanding-the-benefits-as-well-as-the-risks-124084

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Noble, Education Policy Fellow, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University

The transition from preschool to school is a big deal for many children and parents. Over the next few weeks, many preschoolers will take part in a transition program, designed by their teachers, to prepare them for school.

They’ll meet their foundation teachers, spend some time in a classroom and hopefully make some new friends.

These children’s education has so far focused on play-based learning. This means they’ve learnt through exploring and playing, supported by skilled early childhood educators.

But they’re about to enter a world of formal learning. Although play-based learning does happen in schools, there tends to be a stronger focus on instruction.

The current system isn’t working for many students. One-quarter of children who start school aren’t developmentally ready for this transition and levels of mental ill-health among children are concerning.

Read more: More children are starting school depressed and anxious – without help, it will only get worse

Many educators and researchers argue more play in the early years of school could better support children’s transition and learning. Parents think so too. In a recent survey, 93% of parents acknowledge the benefits of play and 72% said the first years of school should focus more on play-based learning.

If we’re genuinely committed to improving outcomes for all children – and we know play benefits learning – we need to better integrate play-based learning into schools’ formal learning structures.

How do we learn through play?

Increasing play-based learning in schools means changing how we think about playing. When many of us think about play, we probably think of free play, which is unstructured and directed by children, usually without adult involvement.

Play-based learning, though, is more usefully conceived as a spectrum, with free play at one end and teacher-guided, playful learning at the other. In between are a variety of methods either entirely based on play, or incorporating elements of it.

Read more: Preschool benefits all children, but not all children get it. Here’s what the government can do about that

For example, a skilled educator can help children discover new ideas when they play with water. The educator might encourage children to playfully experiment with water tubs and toys in a way that allows them to develop their own hypotheses about how water behaves in certain situations and why.

The educator could work with the children to test their hypotheses, questioning and talking to them about what they observe during their play.

Play-based learning in the early years of school can significantly improve kids’ language and social connections. Research shows the impact of play-based learning extends into other areas of development too.

High-quality play-based learning can:

Quality depends on warm and responsive relationships with skilled educators and an environment that facilitates exploration and learning. It also involves a developmentally appropriate learning program.

The skills children learn through play equip them to engage with formal, academic learning. When children start to develop and harness these skills, research shows they’re better able to cope with the demands of formal learning and thrive later on in school.

And when more than 70% of children don’t get the recommended amount of physical activity, play is even more essential.

Read more: Let them play! Kids need freedom from play restrictions to develop

Many researchers and educators believe less play – inside and outside the classroom – may be contributing to rising levels of anxiety, depression, and challenges related to attention and self-control. For children experiencing high levels of stress or other forms of disadvantage, play can be a vital antidote.

The links between disadvantage, poor health, changing lifestyles, and inequality are, of course, complex. But there is good evidence to suggest how we approach education in the early years – particularly in relation to play – is an important part of how we address these challenges.

Australia’s school system downplays play

The Australian Early Years Learning Framework guides educational programs for children aged 0-5. It complements the Australian Curriculum, which guides learning throughout primary and secondary school.

While complementary, the frameworks take quite different approaches to play. Play is a fundamental component of the Early Years Learning Framework. In contrast, the curriculum’s focus on academic performance has extended formal learning to the early years of school and even preschool, despite the fact play-based learning is far more appropriate at these ages.

There are a few policy options that can support more play-based learning in the early years and ensure it is integrated into education in the middle years of childhood and beyond. These options include:

Read more: Which families delay sending their child to school, and why? We crunched the numbers

Increasing school starting ages by law would involve governments and parents meeting the significant cost of an extra year of early education and care. Research shows most parents want less break time at school, and schools are already finding it difficult to adequately cover the curriculum in the time they have.

While some policy options are likely to gain more traction than others, there is strong support for increasing play-based learning in schools. This will require teachers, governments and families to all be on the same page about the benefits of play for children’s learning.

– ref. Children learn through play – it shouldn’t stop at preschool – http://theconversation.com/children-learn-through-play-it-shouldnt-stop-at-preschool-126921