Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary-Anne Williams, Michael J Crouch Chair in Innovation, School of Management and Governance, UNSW Sydney

I have worked in AI for more than three decades, including with pioneers such as John McCarthy, who coined the term “artificial intelligence” in 1955.

In the past few years, scientific breakthroughs have produced AI tools that promise unprecedented advances in medicine, science, business and education.

At the same time, leading AI companies have the stated goal to create superintelligence: not merely smarter tools, but AI systems that significantly outperform all humans on essentially all cognitive tasks.

Superintelligence isn’t just hype. It’s a strategic goal determined by a privileged few, and backed by hundreds of billions of dollars in investment, business incentives, frontier AI technology, and some of the world’s best researchers.

What was once science fiction has become a concrete engineering goal for the coming decade. In response, I and hundreds of other scientists, global leaders and public figures have put our names to a public statement calling for superintelligence research to stop.

What the statement says

The new statement, released today by the AI safety nonprofit Future of Life Institute, is not a call for a temporary pause, as we saw in 2023. It is a short, unequivocal call for a global ban:

We call for a prohibition on the development of superintelligence, not lifted before there is broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and strong public buy-in.

The list of signatories represents a remarkably broad coalition, bridging divides that few other issues can. The “godfathers” of modern AI are present, such as Yoshua Bengio and Geoff Hinton. So are leading safety researchers such as UC Berkeley’s Stuart Russell.

But the concern has broken free of academic circles. The list includes tech and business leaders such as Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak and Virgin’s Richard Branson. It includes high-level political and military figures from both sides of US politics, such as former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen. It also includes prominent media figures such as Glenn Beck and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, together with artists such as Will.I.am and respected historians such as Yuval Noah Harari.

Why superintelligence poses a unique challenge

Human intelligence has reshaped the planet in profound ways. We have rerouted rivers to generate electricity and irrigate farmland, transforming entire ecosystems. We have webbed the globe with financial markets, supply chains, air traffic systems: enormous feats of coordination that depend on our ability to reason, predict, plan, innovate and build technology.

Superintelligence could extend this trajectory, but with a crucial difference. People will no longer be in control.

The danger is not so much a machine that wants to destroy us, but one that pursues its goals with superhuman competence and indifference to our needs.

Imagine a superintelligent agent tasked with ending climate change. It might logically decide to eliminate the species that’s producing greenhouse gases.

Instruct it to maximise human happiness, and it might find a way to trap every human brain in a perpetual dopamine loop. Or, in Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom’s famous example, a superintelligence tasked with producing as many paperclips as possible might try to convert all of Earth’s matter, including us, into raw material for its factories.

The issue is not malice but mismatch: a system that understands its instructions too literally, with the power to act cleverly and swiftly.

History shows what can go wrong when our systems grow beyond our capacity to predict, contain or control them.

The 2008 financial crisis began with financial instruments so intricate that even their creators could not foresee how they would interact until the entire system collapsed. Cane toads introduced in Australia to fight pests have instead devastated native species. The COVID pandemic exposed how global travel networks can turn local outbreaks into worldwide crises.

Now we stand on the verge of creating something far more complex: a mind that can rewrite its own code, redesign and achieve its goals, and out-think every human combined.

A history of inadequate governance

For years, efforts to manage AI have focused on risks such as algorithmic bias, data privacy, and the impact of automation on jobs.

These are important issues. But they fail to address the systemic risks of creating superintelligent autonomous agents. The focus has been on applications, not the ultimate stated goal of AI companies to create superintelligence.

The new statement on superintelligence aims to start a global conversation not just on specific AI tools, but on the very destination AI developers are steering us toward.

The goal of AI should be about creating powerful tools to serve humanity. This does not mean autonomous superintelligent agents that can operate beyond human control without aligning with human well-being.

We can have a future of AI-powered medical breakthroughs, scientific discovery, and personalised education. None of these require us to build an uncontrollable superintelligence that could unilaterally decide the fate of humanity.

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

– ref. AI heavyweights call for end to ‘superintelligence’ research – https://theconversation.com/ai-heavyweights-call-for-end-to-superintelligence-research-267961

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mike Archer, Professor, Earth and Sustainability Science Research Centre, UNSW Sydney

Tens of thousands of years ago, Australia was still home to enigmatic megafauna – large land animals such as giant marsupial wombats, flightless birds, and short-faced giant kangaroos known as sthenurines.

Then they gradually went extinct. What killed them?

There has long been vigorous debate about whether Australia’s First Peoples were responsible for the extinction of Australia’s megafaunal animals, or whether the primary cause was climate change.

In other places, such as the Americas, Aotearoa New Zealand and Madagascar, humans have been linked to such extinctions. This led some researchers to presume humans may also have hunted megafauna to extinction in Australia.

However, hard evidence for this has been hard to find. With new methods, we have re-examined fossil bones that seemingly supported this idea in the 1970s, and have arrived at a new conclusion. Our results are published today in Royal Society Open Science.

A long-standing debate

Humans appear to have first entered Australia during the late Pleistocene epoch perhaps 65,000 years ago. At the same time, Australia was also experiencing a fluctuating climate.

So, when much of the local megafauna went extinct tens of thousands of years ago, which factor was responsible? Debate rages on over whether it was human activity or climate change, or perhaps something else entirely.

Australia doesn’t have any “kill sites” or other incontrovertible hard evidence that people were killing and butchering the local megafauna. This is in contrast to sites found in North America, such as Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump World Heritage Site in Canada where people hunted vast numbers of buffalo.

So, in Australia, researchers have focused on individual fossils instead. Over time, most of the scant evidence for human involvement in megafaunal extinction has been discounted. Only a few notable finds remain.

The first is a single incisor from a giant marsupial, Diprotodon optatum. The tooth was found in Spring Creek, Victoria, with a series of small cuts suggested to have been made by humans. Reappraisal now suggests tiger quolls may have been to blame.

A piece of a juvenile diprotodon bone, from the Warratyi Shelter in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia, has also been put forward as evidence for killing and butchering. However, a 2016 study argues the marks on the bone can’t be ascribed to human activity.

Burnt eggshell fragments found at several sites in Australia have been attributed to people predating on the giant Genyornis newtoni bird, although others argue the shell fragments were from a much smaller bird.

Finally, a cut bone from an extinct sthenurine kangaroo from Mammoth Cave in southwestern Western Australia has been suggested as evidence of human butchering. One of us, Mike Archer, co-authored that study in 1980.

Revisiting the past

With technologies not available in the 1970s, we sought to investigate the same bone from Mammoth Cave in more detail. Close analysis of the surface supported the original conclusion that the cut was indeed caused by human activity, not by animals or falling rocks.

But a micro-CT scan revealed a surprise.

Internally, the bone has seven deep cracks running the length of the shaft. These happened due to taphonomic desiccation, a drying-out process that happens long after the animal has died.

Investigating the site of the cut, we found a separate transverse crack precisely in the base of the cut area. This had almost certainly been caused by pressure from the cutting process.

Importantly, the crack was truncated at both ends where it intersected the longer cracks. This means the bone would have already been desiccated when the cut was made.

In short, the bone was not from a fresh carcass when it was cut. In all probability, it was already a fossil.

Fossil gifts

This poses an even more intriguing question. Did the First Peoples who inflicted this cut collect this bone because it was an interesting fossil, rather than a source of nutrients?

The idea led us to analyse an artefact containing a fossil that had been gifted by First Nations people. In the 1960s, local First Peoples in the Kimberley region of northern Western Australia gifted the late anthropologist Kim Akerman a “charm” containing the tooth of a giant extinct marsupial, Zygomaturus trilobus. He was also given an emu feather parcel with teeth which turned out to be from an extinct sthenurine kangaroo, Procoptodon browneorum.

These animals are only known from fossil deposits in southern Australia, far from where these items were gifted. When we analysed the elemental composition of the Z. trilobus tooth, we found it likely came from Mammoth Cave, 2,000 kilometres to the south.

Collectors, not hunters

First Nations people in Australia have long collected and traded various kinds of fossils like trilobites, ammonites and mammal jaws.

This interest in fossils may be the best explanation for the cut in the desiccated bone found in Mammoth Cave, and the fact that fossil teeth from thousands of kilometres away ended up in the Kimberley.

It may also explain the Diprotodon optatum bone found in the Warratyi Shelter deposit in the Flinders Ranges. There’s a conspicuous mass of skeletal remains of this megafaunal species exposed and available for collection on the surface of Lake Callabonna, a relatively short distance from the shelter.

Gerard Krefft and Ludwig Glauert are often cited as the first “Australian” palaeontologists. We would argue that First Nations peoples beat them to the punch, likely by many thousands of years.

There is currently no hard evidence that extinct megafaunal animals in Australia were butchered by First Peoples in Australia. That’s not to say it didn’t happen. However, despite many investigations, we still have no proof that it did.

Helen Ryan works for the WA Musem.

Julien Louys receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Kenny Travouillon works for the Western Australian Museum.

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

– ref. Hunters or collectors? New evidence challenges claim Australia’s First Peoples sent large animals extinct – https://theconversation.com/hunters-or-collectors-new-evidence-challenges-claim-australias-first-peoples-sent-large-animals-extinct-267116

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

The Liberals’ ability to find things to fight about among themselves has no bounds. Now they are squabbling over Kevin Rudd.

On Tuesday, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley suggested Rudd shouldn’t continue as Australia’s ambassador to Washington after Donald Trump’s put down of him at the White House during the president’s meeting with Anthony Albanese.

“I don’t believe he should stay in that role. And to see the prime minister actually laughing at his own ambassador in the room when the president made a joke, I think it’s untenable,” she told Sky News.

Various opposition members, inevitably asked to comment, backed Ley, with or without conviction.

But on Wednesday, Victorian Liberal senator Jane Hume flatly disagreed with her leader. “There is no doubt that the president made a bit of a goose of Kevin Rudd, and perhaps so he should, for those ill-advised, ill-considered tweets that he made,” Hume said on Sky.

“I think, though, that the call for Kevin Rudd to resign or stand down, the call for his position to be untenable now, is probably a little bit churlish.”

Since being relegated by Ley to the backbench Hume, who spends a lot of time on Sky, feels free to be “off message”.

Occasionally it’s more a matter of being off key.

Recently an attempt at humour went badly awry. Asked, after Nationals Leader David Littleproud said he’d welcome any Liberal defectors, whether she might jump parties, Hume joked, “I’d have to speak a lot slower and talk about the regions more often down in cocky’s corner”.

“To be honest, I am too fond of good coffee and free markets to join the National Party.”

Oops. Talk about reinforcing stereotypes about (now endangered) latte-drinking city Liberals!

In the Rudd instance, Hume is right – but unhelpful to Ley.

In the last term, Ley was criticised for going over the top from time to time. Towards the end of the term she reined herself in (or was reined in). As leader, she has been mainly measured.

But she tries to keep herself perpetually in the news cycle, and that can be a trap. Rushing out with her call for Rudd to go showed bad judgement, a desire for a quick headline.

It was a moment just to be gracious over what had been a good result for the government from the Albanese-Trump meeting, and to dismiss the Rudd moment with a well-turned
quip.

Questioned at a Wednesday news conference about Hume’s remarks, Ley said she welcomed “comments from my talented backbench”, but avoided repeating her Tuesday call for Rudd to be moved on.

The Rudd incident has brought out many of the former prime minister’s critics in force, in what is a total over-reaction.

Yes, it was an embarrassment, but mainly for Rudd. There is no convincing evidence Rudd is a negative for Australia, despite his litany of past derogatory comments about Trump. As the president said, he’ll never be a fan of the ambassador – but he probably won’t give Rudd much of a thought in the future.

Rudd worked tremendously hard in the run up to the Albanese-Trump meeting and contributed to its success. (He drove a lot of people mad, in Canberra and no doubt in the US, along the way with his hyperactivity, but that’s Rudd.)

There is no case for Rudd to be replaced. He just needs to make sure he keeps his (undoubted) fury at his Tuesday humiliation strictly to himself. In the past he has been his own worst enemy, leaving an expletive-laden trail of public and private outbursts. Remember, Kevin, even the embassy walls have ears.

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

– ref. View from The Hill: Liberals are now squabbling among themselves over Kevin Rudd – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-liberals-are-now-squabbling-among-themselves-over-kevin-rudd-267825

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Simpson, Visiting Scholar at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University; Senior Lecturer, International Studies, University of South Australia

Sanae Takaichi has made history by becoming Japan’s first female prime minister. However, this was hardly a win for feminist or progressive politics.

Takaichi is a right-wing ultraconservative whose policy positions derive from traditionalist perspectives on the role of women, Japanese history and society more broadly.

She has the same anti-immigrant positions as conservatives and right-wing populists the world over, defending “national identity and traditional values”, while emphasising the importance of strong economic growth.

Far from solving Japan’s economic problems, however, policies that restrict immigration tend to cause labour shortages and inflation.

Japan is the canary in the coalmine for many developed countries suffering a
demographic crisis due to falling birth rates. Japan’s population has declined for 16 consecutive years.

Unless Takaichi adopts a more pragmatic approach on immigration, her tenure could be one of economic stasis and relative decline.

How did Takaichi become prime minister?

Takaichi was elected leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party earlier this month. Her rise to prime minister was delayed, however, when the LDP’s junior partner, the Komeito party, withdrew from the governing coalition over the LDP’s handling of a political funding scandal.

The LDP has minorities in both the upper and lower houses of Japan’s Diet, or parliament, and requires coalition partners to govern.

After extensive negotiations that will require compromises from all sides, the right-wing Japan Innovation Party, known as Ishin, agreed to support Takaichi and her LDP-led government.

However, the new coalition is still two seats short of a majority in the lower house and will require additional parliamentary support. This means Takaichi’s minority government will be more precarious and constrained than previous governments.

Japan’s demographic crisis

Japan’s population peaked at around 128 million in 2008 and has steadily declined ever since. It’s around 124 million today.

Last year, the fertility rate (the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime) fell to a record low of 1.15.

Under current projections, Japan’s population is expected to fall to 87 million by 2070 and 63 million by 2100, when only half the population will be of working age.

The issue is therefore not simply one of a declining population, but also an ageing population, with rising pension and medical costs. Many professions in Japan, such as teachers, doctors and caregivers, are already facing acute labour shortages.

Immigration as a political lightning rod

While previous governments have acknowledged the declining population is a significant problem, they have done little to address the issue. Various initiatives have brought foreign residents or workers into the country, but there has been a reluctance under LDP governments to introduce programs with the scale and commitment – in terms of integrating immigrants into Japanese society – to make a significant difference.

This means these programs have had only modest success. Japan’s number of foreign-born residents reached a record high of 3.6 million this year, representing around 3% of the population. But this is far lower than many other developed economies.

This increased foreign population has resulted in a record number of “foreign” babies being born in Japan, with Chinese, Filipino and Brazilian mothers topping the list. This has somewhat offset the
declining figures for newborns from Japanese parents.

Japan’s tourism industry is also booming, with almost 37 million visitors coming last year.

Taken together, this increasing number of foreigners in Japan has resulted in the rise of anti-immigrant parties and policies, including the far-right Sanseito party. This, in turn, prompted the LDP to move further to the right to avoid losing votes to Sanseito and other populist parties.

This partly explains why Takaichi’s nationalist rhetoric has resonated with the ageing conservative LDP base.

Takaichi advocates for foreign workers in specified fields where the country has labour shortages, albeit under strict criteria (such as Japanese language ability, training and oversight). And she opposes the mass settlement of immigrants, or the large-scale granting of political rights to foreign residents.

While her policies have so far been short on detail, she has framed foreigners as a danger to national cohesion that needs to be strictly controlled.

Pro-natalist policies pushed instead

Across the world, older populations tend to be more susceptible to anti-immigrant scare campaigns from right-wing conservative media and politicians.

Japan is no exception. Politicians such as Takaichi, therefore, see electoral benefits in colouring immigration and foreigners as a threat to social harmony or cultural heritage.

Unfortunately, as a result, ageing countries like Japan that are most in need of immigration are often the most resistant to it.

Instead, many right-wing conservatives in these countries promote pro-natalist policies – encouraging women from the dominant racial or ethnic group to have more babies – as a solution that boosts populations and maintains cultural and racial homogeneity.

Hungary is one such example. The right-wing nationalist government of Viktor Orban has provided generous financial benefits to parents at a cost of around 5% of Hungary’s GDP. Though Hungary’s birth rate was above the European average in 2023, it has fallen since then.

Conservatives are pushing Japan to take a similar pro-natalist approach rather than rely on increased immigration.

With Takaichi as prime minister, Japan is unlikely to see an improvement in women’s independence and status in society, a significant rise in birth rates, or increased immigration. Japan’s demographic crisis is therefore set to continue, and probably worsen, in the foreseeable future.

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

– ref. Japan’s economy needs foreign workers, not the nationalist approach pushed by its new leader – https://theconversation.com/japans-economy-needs-foreign-workers-not-the-nationalist-approach-pushed-by-its-new-leader-267417

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Manning, Lecturer in Dietetics and Human Nutrition, La Trobe University

For a while, the “hot girls have stomach problems” trend on social media has been a way for women to destigmatise irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

By sharing content about bloating, farting, diarrhoea and constipation, users normalise talking about some of the condition’s unpleasant symptoms.

But why does IBS affect women more than men?

Studies show women are twice as likely as men to have this condition and symptoms are most common among those aged 18 to 39.

The reasons are complex, but sex hormones seem to play an important role. Here’s what we know.

What is irritable bowel syndrome?

IBS is more than just stomach pain – it’s a complex disorder affecting messages sent by the nerve network known as the gut-brain axis.

IBS is considered a syndrome because it is characterised by a collection of symptoms, rather than a structural abnormality in the gut or a particular disease.

People with this condition experience unpredictable and uncomfortable bowel motions such as diarrhoea and constipation. Other symptoms can include pelvic pain, headaches and fatigue and significantly affect quality of life.

There is also significant overlap between IBS and depression and anxiety.

The definitive reason people develop IBS remains unclear. But we do know messaging between the brain and gut is thrown off track.

In both men and women, everyday factors – including stress, exercise, diet, socialising and thought patterns, such as the anxiety someone may develop about symptoms – can speed up or slow down the messages sent via the gut-brain axis.

The result is heightened reactivity: the gut becomes very sensitive to food, stress and anxiety, leading to unpredictable bowel motions.

The role of hormones

Differences in men and women’s IBS symptoms – and how bad they are – may be due to differences in hormones.

Men have more testosterone than women, and this hormone is thought to help protect against developing IBS.

But for women, fluctuations in oestrogen and progesterone – which they have more of – can worsen symptoms.

These hormones influence how quickly food moves through the gut, speeding up or slowing down the number of times the gut contracts, leading to pain and other symptoms like constipation and diarrhoea.

Women are more likely to have worse symptoms during their reproductive years. Symptoms are also often worse during a women’s period, which is when oestrogen and progesterone decrease.

There is also emerging evidence about the overlap between IBS and conditions such as endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome.

Recent studies suggest people with endometriosis are three times more likely to have IBS, while those with polycystic ovary syndrome are twice as likely to have it.

These conditions seem to be connected by hormone fluctuations and pain, although we don’t know what causes what. Factors such as mild inflammation from an overactive immune system, a weak gut lining, unbalanced gut bacteria and sensitive nerves in the gut may explain why these conditions happen together.

Women are also more likely to seek support for IBS than men, which may explain why we have better reporting on their diagnosis and the overlap of other conditions that affect women.

Managing IBS

There is no cure for IBS. But the syndrome can be managed with lifestyle changes and medication.

Evidence suggests reducing gut irritants in your diet can reduce discomfort. These include caffeine, spicy food, alcohol, fizzy drinks and high-fat food.

For some people with ongoing symptoms, a dietitian may prescribe restricting and then reintroducing certain food groups known as fermentable carbohydrates, or FODMAPs.

FODMAPs are found in common foods such as dairy products (lactose), grain and cereals (fructans) and certain fruits such as apples, watermelon and stone fruit (polyols).

The purpose of this diet is to first relieve symptoms and then systematically identify irritants, so that if they’re reintroduced it’s at a level that the gut can tolerate.

Read more:
The FODMAP diet is everywhere, but researchers warn it’s not for weight loss

For some people, cognitive behavioural therapy also helps. This talk therapy – which focuses on reframing unhelpful thinking and behaviour – is used to get messages between the gut-brain axis back on track. For example, by reducing emotional stress (the “fight or flight” response), improving how your brain interprets pain, and addressing negative thoughts about symptoms, such as shame and anxiety.

Others may benefit from hypnotherapy, which helps reduce gut sensitivity and promotes deep relaxation. This teaches the body to respond more calmly to stress, which helps to regulate the gut-brain messaging system.

Doctors can also recommend medications that act on receptors in the gut and regulate the speed of digestion which can reduce diarrhoea and constipation.

Otherwise, low-dose antidepressants (prescribed at a much lower dose than what would be used to treat clinical depression) can help to reduce sensitivity to pain in the gut.

So, can social media help?

People living with IBS often feel their condition isn’t taken seriously.

Research shows they face dismissive attitudes – including from doctors – which suggest the symptoms are just in their head, and are more likely to experience shame about their condition.

For some women, sharing experiences online can help them shed the shame and find out more about IBS. But social media communities, and influencers trying to sell products, can also encourage women to try expensive strategies that don’t have evidence to back them.

Given the complexity of IBS, individual, tailored care is key.

Your symptoms are not just a “vibe”. If you’re concerned, you should speak to a trained health-care professional, such as a GP, psychologist or dietitian, who can help you find the right treatment for you.

Lauren Manning has received an internal ECR grant from La Trobe University to explore the role of treatment expectations in IBS.

– ref. ‘Hot girl’ stomach problems? Yes, IBS affects women more than men – here’s why – https://theconversation.com/hot-girl-stomach-problems-yes-ibs-affects-women-more-than-men-heres-why-264693

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Violet Chae, PhD Candidate, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne

Imagine you’re at the grocery store, standing before a selection of snacks. Seemingly without thinking, you skip over the rice crackers to pick out a bag of chips.

These types of choices are called dietary decisions. It’s how we consider many different aspects of a food – including tastiness, healthiness and price – in order to decide what to buy and what to eat.

It’s not well understood how our brains use all these different bits of information when making food choices. When does information about each aspect of the food become available to our brains to consider? That’s what we set out to investigate.

In our new paper published in the journal Appetite, we show how, just hundreds of milliseconds after we have seen a food, many different attributes are reflected in brain activity. This happens extremely fast, long before a person can consciously decide whether or not to buy or eat the food.

Peering inside the brain

Naturally, how fast our brains process the different aspects of foods will affect our dietary decisions.

For example, studies have reported that we may process how tasty we find a food more quickly than how healthy it is. This quirk can bias our choices toward foods that taste better over those that are healthier. Junk foods – tasty but not necessarily good for us – have an edge here.

To investigate how quickly we process different aspects of foods, we used electroencephalography, a method that allows us to record electrical brain activity with millisecond precision.

We recorded people’s brain activity while showing them images of various foods, such as snack items, meats, fruits and sweets. We also asked people to rate each food on many different aspects, such as healthiness, tastiness, calorie content, familiarity, and how much they would like to eat the food.

We then used machine learning techniques to compare patterns of brain activity (how different the brain responses were to different food items) with the patterns of ratings (how differently those foods were rated).

This allowed us to test whether foods that had the largest differences in ratings also had the largest differences in brain activity. In other words – was information about food attributes actually reflected in people’s brain activity?

As it turned out, it was.

Information about different aspects of foods, such as healthiness, calorie content and familiarity, were reflected in the brain activity as early as 200 milliseconds after the food image was presented on the screen.

These rapid brain responses occurred before people could be consciously aware of the food they were seeing. Other aspects of foods, such as tastiness and willingness to eat the food, were reflected in the brain activity slightly later.

Choosing before choosing

These findings suggest that various aspects of foods may grab our attention early and help guide our dietary decisions. The brain assesses many different aspects of foods automatically and with similar timing, shaping our food choices before we’re even aware of them.

Surprisingly, we found that the healthiness of foods was represented in the brain activity earlier than tastiness. While this contradicted some previous findings, our machine learning techniques may have been more sensitive to detect subtle patterns of brain activity associated with each attribute.

There were also similarities in the way people judged different aspects of a food. For example, foods that were less familiar were also rated as being less tasty.

From these patterns of similarity, we identified two key food dimensions that may be particularly important when our brains evaluate foods. The first one is the “processed” dimension: how natural or processed a food is. The second is the “appetising” dimension, which taps into how tasty and familiar we find a food.

Both were reflected in patterns of brain activity very rapidly, about 200ms after seeing a food item.

There’s more than the eye can see

Our findings are most relevant to situations where we only rely on the visual features of foods, such as when ordering groceries or meals online, or using a picture menu at a restaurant. They shed light on how people make snap judgements at the supermarket or on food delivery apps.

Our brain imaging approach can also be used to test if certain strategies, such as deliberately focusing on the healthiness of foods, might change how foods are rapidly appraised and help us improve our choices.

While we used food images in this study, other senses are also important for dietary decisions. Smelling a mango or hearing the sizzle of a frying burger patty are likely processed quickly by the brain as well.

The next step will be to look into these other sensory features of foods, to see how the brain processes not just images of food, but the real deal when placed in front of us.

Violet Chae was supported by a Research Training Program Scholarship while conducting this research.

Daniel Feuerriegel receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Tijl Grootswagers receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Our brains evaluate food within milliseconds, long before we’ve decided to eat it – https://theconversation.com/our-brains-evaluate-food-within-milliseconds-long-before-weve-decided-to-eat-it-267551

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy McKenry, Professor of Music, Australian Catholic University

In 1844, Berlin was struck by a cultural fever critics labelled Lisztomania.

The German poet Heinrich Heine coined the term after witnessing the almost delirious reception that greeted Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt in concert halls across Europe.

One widely circulated drawing from the 1840s crystallises the image. Women swoon or faint, others hurl flowers toward the stage. Men also appear to be struck by the pianist’s magnetic presence (or perhaps by the women’s reaction to it).

These caricatured depictions, when paired with antagonistic reviews from contemporary critics, may still shape our cultural memory of Liszt.

He is often depicted not simply as a musician but as the first modern celebrity to unleash mass hysteria.

What happened at Liszt’s concerts?

We know a great deal about Liszt’s hundreds of concerts during the 1830s and ‘40s, thanks to reviews, critiques, lithographs and Liszt’s own letters from the time.

His programs combined works by the great composers with his own inventive reworkings of pieces familiar to audiences. Virtuoso showpieces also demonstrated his command of the piano.

Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata or Pathétique Sonata might appear alongside Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, performed in Liszt’s highly expressive style.

Schubert was represented through songs such as Erlkönig and Ave Maria, reworked for piano alone.

Liszt also turned to the most popular operatic works of his time. His Réminiscences de Norma (Bellini) and Réminiscences de Don Juan (Mozart) transformed familiar melodies into large-scale fantasies. These demanded both virtuosity and lyrical sensitivity.

In these works, Liszt created symphonic structures on the piano. He wove multiple themes into coherent musical dramas far more than simple medleys of well-known tunes.

Liszt often closed his concerts with the crowd-pleaser Grand Galop Chromatique. This encore demonstrated his showmanship and awareness of audience expectations.

As critic Paul Scudo wrote in 1850:

He is the sovereign master of his piano; he knows all its resources; he makes it speak, moan, cry, and roar under fingers of steel, which distil nervous fluid like Volta’s battery distils electrical fluid.

His audience’s response, it would seem, regularly spilled beyond the conventions of polite concert etiquette and social decorum.

Artist and showman

In a series of 1835 essays titled On the Situation of Artists, Liszt presents musicians such as himself as “tone artists”, condemned to be misunderstood. Nevertheless, they have a profound obligation to “reveal, exalt and deify all the tendencies of human consciousness”.

At the same time, a letter to the novelist George Sand reveals Liszt was acutely aware of the practicalities of concerts and the trappings of celebrity.

He jokes that Sand would be surprised to see his name in capital letters on a Paris concert bill. Liszt admits to the audacity of charging five francs for tickets instead of three, basks in glowing reviews, and notes the presence of aristocrats and high society in his audience.

He even describes his stage draped with flowers, and hints at the female attention following one performance, albeit directed toward his partner in a duet.

This letter shows an artist who is self-aware, sometimes amused, and sometimes ambivalent about the spectacle attached to his art.

Yes, Liszt engaged with his celebrity identity, but clearly also felt a measure of distance from it. He was aware the serious side of his art risked being overshadowed by the gossip-column version.

Much of the music criticism of the time functioned in exactly this way. It was little more than the work of gossip writers, many disgusted by the intensity of audience reactions to Liszt’s performances.

Gossip, poison pens, and the making of Lisztomania

Not everyone shared the enthusiasm of Liszt’s audiences. Some critics attacked both his playing and the adulation it provoked.

In 1842, a writer using the pseudonym Beta described the combined effect of Liszt’s performance and the public’s response, writing that:

the effect of his bizarre, substance-less, idea-less, sensually exciting, contrast-ridden, fragmented playing, and the diseased enthusiasm over it, is a depressing sign of the stupidity, the insensitivity, and the aesthetic emptiness of the public.

Similarly, poet Heinrich Heine suggested Liszt’s performance style was deliberately “stage managed” and designed to provoke audience mania:

For example, when he played a thunderstorm on the fortepiano, we saw the lightning bolts flicker over his face, his limbs shook as if in a gale, and his long tresses seemed to drip, as it were, from the downpour that was represented.

These and other accounts fed the mythology of Lisztomania, portraying women in his audience as irrational and hysterical.

The term mania carried a medicalised, pathologising tone, framing enthusiasm for Liszt as a form of cultural sickness.

Lithographs, caricatures, and anecdotal reports amplified these narratives, showing swooning figures, flowers hurled on stage, and crowds behaving in ways that exceeded polite social convention.

Yet these accounts are not entirely trustworthy; they were shaped by prejudice, moralising assumptions, and a desire to sensationalise.

Liszt’s concerts, therefore, existed at a fascinating intersection: extraordinary artistry and virtuosity, coupled with the theatre of audience reception, all filtered through a lens of gossip, exaggeration and gendered panic.

In this sense, the phenomenon of Lisztomania foreshadows the dynamics of modern celebrity. (It was also the subject of what one critic described as “the most embarrassing historical film ever made”.)

Just as performers like the Beatles, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift provoke intense public devotion while simultaneously facing slander and sensational reporting, Liszt’s fame was inseparable from both admiration and the poison pen of his critics.

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

– ref. Lisztomania: why did women go gaga for 19th century pianist Franz Liszt? – https://theconversation.com/lisztomania-why-did-women-go-gaga-for-19th-century-pianist-franz-liszt-264889

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caroline Spry, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Department of Archaeology and History, La Trobe University

Boomerangs are an iconic symbol of Australia. Known internationally for their unique curved shape and ability to return when thrown, they are an example of the remarkable engineering skills of Australia’s First Peoples.

In new research, we have for the first time combined Traditional cultural knowledge with Western scientific analysis of a wangim (boomerang) from a reported burial located on the outskirts of Melbourne, on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country, southeastern Australia.

Throwing sticks with a legacy

Throwing sticks that are either straight or curved are ingenious instruments, and can be found on several continents. The oldest returning boomerangs were made in Australia at least 10,000 years ago.

Australian boomerangs come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The classic symmetrical boomerang is designed to return in a u-shape when thrown. Returning boomerangs were used traditionally for hunting birds, and for sport and play.

Less widely known are non-symmetrical boomerangs, which do not return when thrown. Non-returning boomerangs were used traditionally during hunting, fighting, digging and ceremony – for example as clapping sticks.

Discovery of a unique boomerang

In 2021, a local resident repatriated a non-returning wangim (boomerang) to Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation, the Traditional Custodians of a large swathe of greater Melbourne and beyond. The resident recalled how they found the wangim eroding out of what they interpreted to be an Aboriginal burial mound when playing in the bush at Yarra Junction during the late twentieth century.

The resident cared for the wangim over several decades, before reconnecting it with the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people. Unfortunately, the original location of the reported burial has since been developed.

Traditional cultural knowledge

Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Elder Bob Mullins makes traditional stone and wooden items, including shields, axes and boomerangs. When Elder Bob inspected the wangim, he made a series of observations about how it was probably made.

First, a liwik (ancestor) probably collected a piece of wood with a natural bend in it. Elder Bob collects wood for boomerangs from the roots of trees near rivers and creeks.

Second, the liwik would have fashioned the rough shape of the boomerang. For dry wood (as opposed to green wood), the liwik probably soaked it in water to make it more malleable. Wet wood was usually dried out by slowly moving it backwards and forwards over a campfire to create and set the desired shape.

Third, the liwik would have used a series of metal tools to refine the boomerang. This suggests the wangim was made some time following colonisation, after the early to mid-nineteenth century. However, Elder Bob notes that the wangim has a rougher finish. He would have sanded the wangim as a final step to create a smoother finish.

Residues and wear patterns

Investigation of the wangim using a microscope revealed clues about how it was made and used. The wangim contains residues, or traces of materials with which it came into contact. It also bears wear patterns – physical alterations to its surfaces and edges from contact with other materials.

The wear patterns indicate grip marks by a right-handed liwik. They also reveal impact traces from when the wangim was thrown and came into contact with other (hard) items. Blood on the wangim highlights its role during hunting. Charcoal and fire marks may have resulted from using the boomerang to stoke a campfire, or from boomerang repair activities.

Significance

The Yarra Junction wangim is unusual in terms of its size and shape compared with other examples held in Museums Victoria collections. It has a wider elbow (curved section), and rounder but less elongated extremities, among other differences.

The wangim was clearly an item of great personal attachment, as evidenced by its continued repair and use, and burial with its owner.

For Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Elders Aunty Di Kerr, Bob Mullins, Ron Jones and Allan Wandin, the wangim is significant as a tangible link to their liwik. Wooden items that belonged to liwik have a limited lifespan compared to other artefacts made of stone, shell and bone. Repatriated items also provide a connection to a cultural landscape that may have been developed or destroyed since colonisation.

Information shared by Elder Bob attests to the continuation of boomerang traditions by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. Boomerangs were, and continue to be, an important part of First Peoples’ history and identity.

The authors wish to acknowledge all Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Elders, community and staff, Clint Cooper, the Ancestral Remains Unit at First Peoples-State Relations, Museums Victoria, John Duggan and the following co-authors of the original study published in Australian Archaeology: Luc Bordes, Richard Fullagar, Zara Lasky-Davison, Wendy Morrison, Lauren Modra, Lauren Gribble, Maria Daikos, Anna Alcorn and Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation.

Caroline Spry undertakes research work for La Trobe University.

Allan Wandin works for Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation.

Bob Mullins works for Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation.

Diane Kerr works for Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation.

Elspeth Hayes undertakes research work for the University of Melbourne.

Ron Jones works for Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation.

– ref. How forensic analysis and traditional knowledge reveal the story of a unique boomerang – https://theconversation.com/how-forensic-analysis-and-traditional-knowledge-reveal-the-story-of-a-unique-boomerang-265876

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Klimenko, Director, Centre for Multiscale Energy Systems, The University of Queensland

This month, Rio Tinto announced plans to bring forward the closure of Gladstone Power Station to 2029, six years ahead of schedule. The move was welcomed by environmental groups, as Gladstone is Queensland’s oldest and largest coal-fired station. It has struggled to compete with emerging renewable generation in recent years and outages have become more frequent.

The large 1.6 gigawatt plant feeds much of its power to the nearby Boyne aluminium smelter, which uses roughly the same amount of power as all of residential Sydney or twice the demand of residential Brisbane.

To fill the gap, Rio Tinto has secured about 3GW of renewable power capacity. That may seem impressive, but the variability of renewables means the actual power produced will be roughly a quarter of this.

More renewables can be built, but the smelter won’t be able to run safely until there’s enough energy storage available to ensure it can keep running overnight and through rainy or low-wind periods. Any interruption can cause irreparable damage to the smelter.

Closing the plant in four years’ time is unrealistic. Far better to begin a staged phase-out, where new thermal energy storage is built on the coal plant site while new energy capacity comes online.

This might appeal to the current Queensland government, which last week released its energy road map. The plan dials back renewable ambition, puts a question mark over pumped hydro, supports more gas plants and opens the door to keeping ageing coal plants open longer.

Energy storage and grid stability are essential

Australia’s aluminium industry is built on natural advantages, such as bauxite ore resources and moderately priced power.

Even if all existing grid-scale batteries and those coming online by 2029 were devoted just to the Boyne smelter, their combined capacity would be still be far below what would be required to carry the smelter through a single day and night. Batteries make most commercial sense over short periods where prices are high, but they do not solve the problem of long-duration storage.

Pumped-hydro schemes can offer energy storage at scale. If the 2GW Borumba pumped-hydro project was built by 2029 and largely dedicated to the smelter, it could, in principle, fill the gap left by Gladstone.

But this is unlikely. The government is reviewing Borumba. If the project proceeds, it will be needed to support Queensland’s broader energy transition and to recover its substantial capital cost. Large smelters tend to buy power with direct contracts substantially below the average market price. Construction is likely to extend out at least to 2033.

Coal power stations don’t just produce power. Their large spinning turbines and rotors create synchronous inertia – a key way the grid is kept stable. Retiring Gladstone would also mean removing a large source of synchronous inertia. If this is done too fast, planned replacements such as synchronous condensers wouldn’t be in place. This would risk grid stability.

We face a paradox of transition. Coal generation has to wind down to avert the worst of climate change. But it has to be done carefully so the lights stay on and industries can run without interruption. Storage and grid-stabilising measures will be essential.

What should be done? To ensure reliability for the Boyne smelter, authorities must complement renewables with a range of energy storage options.

A thermal solution?

A realistic option is to phase down Gladstone Power Station rather than switching it off at a set date. To do this, one option is to supplement coal-fired generation with thermal energy storage.

This type of storage relies on storing heat in molten salts or other materials. The heat can be turned into electricity later. The technology is well established – the world’s largest thermal battery, Dubai’s Noor Energy 1, stores almost 6 gigawatt-hours of energy.

Coal stations don’t work well alongside the variability of renewables, as it takes time for coal plants to start up and shut down. This is where thermal storage could help.

When renewable output was high, the coal plant would continue operating. But instead of directing steam to spin turbines to produce electricity, it would burn coal to heat molten salts. The heat could then be converted to electricity when power prices are high and solar stops producing, such as during evening peaks and overnight.

This would decouple the coal station from fluctuating grid demand. It would also reduce coal use and pollution while improving the economics of the coal plant.

During periods of excess renewable production, Gladstone could become a heat battery. It could store excess power in molten salts at low or even negative cost and sell it back to the grid when prices rise.

Other measures could be added, such as installing solar-thermal arrays to heat up the molten salts, meaning still less need for coal. Over time, Gladstone’s role could evolve to spend more time as an energy store and less as a coal-fired generator.

Eventually, the generation units could stop burning coal routinely but keep their capacity to use coal during an emergency.

A true transition isn’t off or on

There’s an appeal to simply switching off a large coal plant and ending a big source of emissions. But for large stations tied to smelters, it’s not that easy.

Adding new features to an ageing coal station may seem like a kludge. But transitions are messy. It would make sense to use this asset cleverly, keeping the useful elements and phasing out the part we don’t want: burning coal.

Storing energy as heat isn’t as efficient as storing power in batteries. But efficiency isn’t the only thing that matters. The system also needs to work during the transition.

Thermal storage plants have lifespans of more than 30 years, even when used daily. Workers could use their skills at the new facilities. If there was an energy emergency or lengthy dip in renewable production, the old coal warhorse could be fired up as a backup generator.

Adding thermal storage to Gladstone could help the entire state grid make the shift from coal and gas to renewables and storage.

A.Y. Klimenko receives funding from Australian Research Council and Queensland State Government to study energy storage options (e.g. hydrogen, CAES) for energy transition in Australia. The specific storage scheme proposed in the present article is novel and has not been funded from any source, industry or government.

– ref. Switching off the huge Gladstone coal station in 2029 will cause problems. It needs a longer, smarter phase-out – https://theconversation.com/switching-off-the-huge-gladstone-coal-station-in-2029-will-cause-problems-it-needs-a-longer-smarter-phase-out-267326

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Smith, Associate Professor in American Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

On November 5 the US Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments about the legality of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. As important as the tariff issue is, the stakes are much higher than that.

Trump has been claiming vast powers, at the expense of other branches of government, on the grounds of various “emergencies”. He has used these claims to justify sending troops to US cities and deporting non-citizens without due process under a law dating from 1798.

Trump imposed sweeping global tariffs under the auspices of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977. Most legal experts agree, and so far three lower courts have ruled, that this act gives him no such power.

This case now presents an important test of the Supreme Court’s willingness to impose limits on Trump’s emergency powers.

The powers Trump is claiming

The US Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to set tariffs. Since the 1930s, Congress has passed a series of laws granting presidents the authority to adjust existing tariffs and deploy them to protect industries that are crucial to US national security.

The tariffs Trump has imposed this year go beyond the powers any previous president has had.

Some of Trump’s tariffs on goods in specific sectors such as steel and aluminium are authorised under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act because of their importance to military industries.

But to justify blanket tariff rates on entire countries, regardless of the goods involved, Trump has turned to the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA).

This allows the president to block economic transactions and freeze assets after declaring an emergency. These actions usually target hostile powers or individuals. An emergency is an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US, originating “in whole or substantial part outside the United States”.

Trump originally claimed tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China were necessary to force those countries stop the traffic in fentanyl, which causes more than 70,000 overdose deaths in the US every year. Yet less than 1% of the fentanyl that enters the US comes from Canada.

For the “liberation day” tariffs affecting every other country in the world, Trump declared the annual US trade deficit in goods constituted “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States”.

This trade deficit has been running since 1976, and it widened during Trump’s first administration.

The court case

The Trump administration is being sued by a group of small businesses that have been hurt by the 2025 tariffs, and which claim Trump had no right to impose them. They are supported by a bipartisan group of legal scholars.

Two federal courts and the US Court of International Trade have so far ruled IEEPA does not give the president the power to set tariffs.

The IEEPA was an amendment to the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act, which the then president Richard Nixon used to impose 10% import tariffs during a trade crisis in 1971. The Trump administration has argued that because those tariffs were upheld by courts, Trump’s are also valid.

But the IEEPA, passed in 1977 following post-Watergate reforms of emergency powers, was intended to limit executive power, not expand it.

In the words of a report from the House Committee on International Relations that underpinned the reforms, “emergencies are by their nature rare and brief, and are not to be equated with normal ongoing problems”.

What will the Supreme Court do?

The weakness of the administration’s legal arguments is reflected in Trump’s public statements about why the Supreme Court must uphold his tariffs. These statements increasingly read like blackmail notes. He has said striking down the tariffs would “literally destroy the United States of America”.

As well as bringing in billions of dollars in revenue, Trump claims five of the eight wars he has supposedly ended were thanks to tariff leverage, and “if they took away tariffs, then they’ve taken away our national security”.

Striking down tariffs could be economically disruptive. It would weaken US leverage in trade negotiations, and raise the possibility of large tariff refunds.

These threats may persuade conservative Supreme Court justices who already take an expansive view of executive power, and who have so far enabled Trump’s accumulation of it.

However, the one area where Supreme Court conservatives might be willing to limit Trump’s powers is where they interfere with economic orthodoxy.

In a ruling allowing Trump to fire commissioners of some small, independent agencies, the court also appeared to protect members of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, because of its “distinct historical tradition”.

The Supreme Court has since temporarily blocked Trump’s attempt to fire one of the Federal Reserve governors, Lisa Cook. The judges may also decide that allowing a president to impose unlimited new taxes is a step too far.

Even if the Supreme Court does strike down the IEEPA tariffs, Trump is unlikely to abandon tariffs as a policy tool. They are a core part of his identity.

The administration has already vowed that if it loses in the Supreme Court, it will find other ways to impose tariffs under different laws that “have the same effect”.

The significance of the Supreme Court’s decision may not be about the tariffs themselves, but about whether it recognises any limit to presidential power.

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

– ref. A Supreme Court showdown looms for Trump’s tariffs. Will it limit presidential power? – https://theconversation.com/a-supreme-court-showdown-looms-for-trumps-tariffs-will-it-limit-presidential-power-267630

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

Australia’s history is distinct and much contested, stretching from its First Nations origins, to the impacts of colonialism and the birth of a multicultural nation.

Former Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s new book, “Australia: A History”, argues Australia is not perfect, but still has “a history to be proud of”.

Abbott joins us to talk about his take on Australia’s past, as well as his views of the Coalition’s current woes and how it should forge a path ahead.

On why he wanted to write this book, Abbott says he thinks Australia has “an overwhelmingly positive story” to tell.

I think these days, there’s too much focus on the downside, whether it’s Indigenous dispossession, whether it’s the White Australia Policy, there is this sense of original sin, if you like, hanging over our country. I don’t think it’s justified.

Yes, there were obvious problems for Indigenous people, given the clash of the ancient and the modern. But even at the very beginning, there were good intentions on the part of the early colonial governors. The good intentions didn’t always work out well, particularly on the frontier. But in the end, I think we have to accept that it was inevitable that Australia would be settled, and that British settlement, on balance, has been overwhelmingly a good thing for every Australian, including eventually even Aboriginal Australia.

On immigration, Abbott agrees it’s been “central” to the Australian story, but says he prefers cultural assimilation to multiculturalism.

Generally speaking, all of our immigrants – from 1788 to this very day – have come to Australia to join us, not to change us. I’m not a big fan of the policy of multiculturalism, and I do think that one difference between the post-war immigration and contemporary immigration is that the post-war migrants were expected by officialdom to integrate immediately and ultimately to assimilate.

I think that migrants, almost to a man and a woman, from the beginning to this day, have very much wanted to become Australian as quickly as possible. But official policy in more recent times has, I think, sometimes encouraged people in a degree of, if you like, separateness.

On what advice he would give to the Liberal Party, Abbott urges his party colleagues not to compromise on policy.

We should have campaigned [at the election] more strongly for our nuclear policy, and we should have campaigned more strongly against Labor’s wealth tax. But our job now – as I said back in 2009 and I think it’s a pretty good template for oppositions – the job of an effective opposition is not to make weak compromises with a bad government, but to be strong and clear and effective alternative.

[…] Successful conservative political movements are not highly ideological. They identify practical problems and come up with sensible ways of dealing with them.

On whether the Coalition is likely to split, given present fractures, Abbott says “I’m a coalitionist”.

The Liberal Party does best when it is in a strong and effective coalition with the National Party. And likewise, the National Party best helps regional Australia when they’re in a strong and effective coalition with the Liberal Party. I don’t think it’s an absolutely terrible thing if, on occasions, the National Party takes the lead. It was, in fact, the National Party that initially decided to oppose the Voice [referendum].

[…] So were the National Party, for argument’s sake, to reject the net zero straight-jacket, I don’t think that would be a Coalition-buster. But I would expect that the Liberal Party, at some point in time, would come to the same position.

On former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce’s decision to distance himself from the Nationals and ongoing speculation that Joyce will join Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party, Abbott urges him to reconsider.

Barnaby is a great bloke. He’s one of Australia’s most effective retail politicians. I can understand his frustration at the present time. I hope that he reconsiders his decision to not stand again in New England. I hope he continues his campaign inside the National Party to get his party, and ultimately the Coalition, putting forward the best and the strongest policy position.

[…] I don’t want to see a proliferation of protest parties. And while I have considerable respect for Pauline Hanson – who I think in recent times has been certainly the most constructive of the crossbenchers as far as the Coalition is concerned – I think that people should vote for the mainstream party that best reflects their values.

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Tony Abbott on Australia’s past and the opposition’s future – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-tony-abbott-on-australias-past-and-the-oppositions-future-267962

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Ramsay, Emeritus Professor, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

Australian universities enrol more than 1.4 million students per year and employ more than 130,000 staff. They receive substantial public funding – about A$22 billion each year.

They have also demonstrated substantial governance failings – or problems with the way they are run. As Education Minister Jason Clare has noted:

If you don’t think there are challenges in university governance, you’ve been living under a rock.

Two recent reports aim to tackle the problems with university governance. What did they find? And will this fix the issues?

What’s wrong with university governance?

One review is an interim report from a Labor-chaired Senate inquiry into university governance, handed down last month. The other is a federal government-comissioned “expert council” report, chaired by Melinda Cilento, who is also head of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia. This was released on Saturday.

Both reports highlight serious concerns with the way Australian universities are run. The issues include:

• widespread underpayment of staff

• poor student experiences in some universities

• allegations of staff being bullied

• a lack of transparency around university decision-making

• excessive use of consultants

• concerns about excessive salaries for vice-chancellors.

Both reports also identify a gap between universities’ perceptions of the quality of their governance and the experiences described by staff and students.

How can university governance be improved?

While the two reports identify similar problems, they differ in their approach to reform.

The Senate report makes a series of recommendations it believes should be compulsory for all universities.

These include publicly disclosing details of spending on consultants, having a minimum proportion of members with public administration and higher education expertise on governing bodies, and requiring meaningful consultation with staff and students around major changes.

In contrast, the expert council proposes a series of principles universities should adopt. If they don’t, they need to explain why. Essentially, this makes them voluntary.

The principles include that the governing body of a university should:

• have an effective, transparent process for appointing the vice-chancellor

• undertake appropriate checks before appointing a vice-chancellor or senior manager

• have a written policy on conflicts of interest

• ensure there are policies for important risks to be appropriately managed and regulatory obligations to be met.

The university should also:

• operate lawfully, ethically and in a manner that’s consistent with its public purpose

• structure its workforce and pay fairly and responsibly.

Will voluntary principles be effective?

At the weekend, Clare announced the government will require universities to report on their compliance with the principles every year. They will report to the tertiary education regulator on an “if not, why not” basis.

But will this be enough? It is difficult to understand why at least some of the principles, such as those listed above, are not mandatory. As the expert council noted in its report, universities did not always engage adequately with its review process.

[…] many of the submissions received from universities failed to engage proactively and genuinely in addressing areas of weakness [or] in identifying scope for improvement in governance practices and outcomes.

In a further development, the federal government will also ask the remuneration tribunal to help set a framework for vice-chancellors’ pay. In line with the Senate report, the government will require university councils to publish:

• outcomes of meetings and decisions taken

• consultancy spending, its purpose, value and justification

• vice-chancellors’ external roles

• annual remuneration reports in line with requirements for public companies

• information about the membership of university councils, including members with public and higher education sector experience.

Disclosure of this type of information can better inform stakeholders’ understanding of universities. It can also improve university decision-making by subjecting decisions to greater scrutiny.

But we also need to see an improved culture within universities. This means the views of staff, students and other key stakeholders are welcomed and valued, and transparency and accountability are viewed as priorities.

This is important for rebuilding trust. As the expert council observed, it is

hard not to conclude that a lack of transparency and openness has played a key role in the observed erosion of trust within and towards universities.

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

– ref. There are new plans to fix how universities will run. But will they work? – https://theconversation.com/there-are-new-plans-to-fix-how-universities-will-run-but-will-they-work-267859

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alice Gorman, Associate Professor in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University

The mysterious object was on fire and lying in the middle of a remote dirt road in Western Australia’s Pilbara region when mine workers stumbled upon it.

Shortly after the enigmatic item was found on October 18, Western Australia police announced that initial assessments indicated it was made of carbon fibre and “consistent with previously identified space debris”.

The object appears to have come from a Chinese Jielong-3 rocket – possibly the one launched in September which deployed 12 satellites in low Earth orbit.

The object’s suspected identity was corroborated by expert debris watchers, who noted the orbital path of the rocket’s fourth stage passed over Western Australia at a time consistent with the debris’ discovery.

The Australian Space Agency told The Conversation the debris is “likely a propellant tank or pressure vessel from a space launch vehicle” and that it will conduct further technical analysis to confirm its origin.

Regardless, the object’s fall to Earth highlights the growing problem of space junk – and how humanity is dealing with it.

Crash landing from space

The area surrounding Earth is becoming increasingly crowded. It’s home to more than 10,000 active satellites, and possibly up to 40,000 pieces of space junk bigger than 10 centimetres. By the end of this decade, roughly 70,000 satellites could be in low Earth orbit, at altitudes below 2,000 kilometres.

Space junk refers to any piece of human-made material in space that doesn’t have a purpose. This includes dead satellites and rocket stages discarded after they’ve delivered satellites to orbit.

Space junk disposal generally relies on the debris being pulled back into the atmosphere and burning up through friction and heat.

The most problematic class of space debris is spent rocket stages. A paper presented at the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney earlier this month listed the 50 most concerning pieces of space junk in low Earth orbit – 88% of which are rocket bodies.

However, space junk is being created at a higher rate than it is re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. And now we know burning metals create harmful particulates of alumina and soot, which impact the ozone layer we rely on to filter out ultraviolet radiation.

Sometimes fuel tanks and pressure vessels reach the ground mostly intact instead of being completely incinerated. The metal alloys used to make them have a higher melting point than other spacecraft material, and they are often insulated with carbon fibre strips.

Space agencies, defence organisations and amateur debris watchers are constantly tracking the orbit – and re-entry – of space junk. This is a complex task – in part because these objects are hurtling around Earth at speeds of up to 28,000 kilometres per hour.

Controlled versus uncontrolled re-entries

The atmospheric re-entry of most space junk is uncontrolled.

Once the spacecraft runs out of fuel or batteries to power its thrusters, its orbit starts to drift. If the debris is large enough, like an old satellite or rocket body, where and when it re-enters can usually be predicted. Most of the time this is over the sea or in areas with low populations – just because this is most of the planet.

But not always. For example, in April 2022, parts of a Chinese third stage rocket crashed to Earth near a house in the Indian village of Ladori in the Maharashtra region, startling the residents who were preparing a meal at the time.

One strategy to reduce space junk is known as passivation. Passivation involves depleting all fuel and batteries so the spacecraft doesn’t spontaneously explode, creating more debris. This leaves no fuel or communications for a controlled re-entry.

A controlled re-entry involves guiding the spacecraft to a location with a low risk of harm to people, property or the environment.

One such region is the so-called “space cemetery” – a point in the Pacific Ocean roughly 2,700 kilometres from any landmass. There are about 300 spacecraft on the sea bed there, and this is where the International Space Station will be brought down at the end of the decade.

Finding the owner

The first stage of the investigation into the suspected space debris found in Western Australia will be determining who owns it.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty says the state that authorised a rocket or satellite launch is liable for any damage it causes on Earth – even if a private company actually conducted the launch.

If the object does turn out to be from a Chinese rocket, the next step will be contacting China about its return or disposal. They may choose to leave it with Australia, as India did with a rocket fuel tank which washed up on a beach in Western Australia in 2023.

It appears the rocket body didn’t cause any harm so the negotiations won’t involve liability or insurance claims. The debris landed in a landscape already heavily impacted by mining activities so it is unlikely a claim for environmental harm can be made.

Better end-of-life planning is needed

End-of-life planning is critical for future space debris management in low Earth orbit, as there is currently no capacity to actively remove debris from that region.

The standard used to be that no spacecraft should remain in orbit after 25 years beyond the end of its mission life. Now, the expected standard for low Earth orbit is five years.

Technologies are being developed to service and refuel satellites on orbit to extend the time they can remain active in space. New materials, such as wood, are being trialled to reduce pollution of the upper atmosphere.

The European Space Agency is promoting the Zero Debris Charter which invites signatories to commit to becoming debris-neutral – that is, creating no new debris with each mission – by 2030.

In the short term, we can expect to see an increase in the amount of debris crashing down to Earth. But there is hope international collaboration and new technologies will lead to more sustainable use of space, ensuring future generations have equal access to it.

Alice Gorman is a Fellow of the Outer Space Institute.

– ref. How does a flaming piece of space junk end up on Earth? A space archaeologist explains – https://theconversation.com/how-does-a-flaming-piece-of-space-junk-end-up-on-earth-a-space-archaeologist-explains-267856

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vincent Ho, Associate Professor and Clinical Academic Gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University

New guidelines on what to eat and drink if you have chronic (long-term) constipation have been making news in recent days.

Much of the media coverage of the British Dietetic Association’s guidelines has focused on advice to eat kiwifruit every day.

Meanwhile, other recommendations have not received so much attention. One, in particular, marks a shift in managing chronic constipation. The guidelines don’t advise a high-fibre diet.

Here’s what the guidelines say help (and don’t help) to relieve chronic constipation.

What did the guidelines look at?

Researchers examined 75 clinical trials to come up with recommendations for food, drink and supplements for chronic constipation in adults.

The quality of the clinical trials varied and so they had to come up with a consensus on the quality of the trial data.

Given that constipation means different things to different people, they used a very broad definition for constipation. This encompassed what patients perceived to be constipation as well as definitions of constipation used in clinical trials. Chronic constipation is generally when someone passes few, hard stools over a period of at least three months.

The researchers produced 59 recommendations. However, the researchers said most of the recommendations were based on poor-quality evidence.

Why kiwifruit? How many a day?

The researchers recommended eating two to three kiwifruit a day for at least four weeks to improve constipation. Whether it’s green kiwifruit or gold kiwifruit the evidence clearly shows they can help.

But how? There are several reasons.

Fibre in kiwifruit swells a lot when mixed with water, more so than apple fibre. This swelling helps make stools more bulky, easing their way through the gut.

Eating the whole fruit including the skin provides more fibre than just eating the flesh but eating the kiwifruit without the skin is perfectly fine.

Green kiwifruit contains an enzyme called actinidin that helps the body digest protein in the stomach and the small intestine. This may help with constipation by making food proteins softer and easier to pass through the gut.

Kiwifruit contain a type of crystal called raphides. These are believed to increase mucus production in the gut, lubricating it and helping passage of the stool.

Eating kiwifruit may also result in reduced species of methane producing bacteria, which have been linked to constipation.

Mineral water and magnesium

The researchers reported on the benefits of drinking mineral water. They suggested drinking 0.5–1.5 litres a day (roughly two to six cups) of mineral water for two to six weeks.

Why? Mineral water often contains magnesium, which acts as a laxative. Indeed, magnesium oxide is often used as a dietary supplement for chronic constipation.

The guidelines confirmed magnesium oxide can help soften the stool and increase stool frequency. The researchers recommended taking 0.5–1.5g a day for at least four weeks.

But this may not be appropriate for everyone. For instance people with kidney disease need to be careful. Magnesium supplements may also interact with other medications.

Read more:
Should I take a magnesium supplement? Will it help me sleep or prevent muscle cramps?

Rye bread

The researchers cited studies showing rye bread relieves constipation more than white bread or common laxatives.

They recommended six to eight slices a day of rye bread for at least three weeks.

But this just isn’t realistic for a lot of people. And as rye contains gluten, this would not be appropriate for people with coeliac disease.

A high-fibre diet may not be needed after all

There was one key surprise in the guidelines.

The researchers said there was a lack of strong evidence for generic high-fibre diets for constipation, when people eat at least 25g of fibre a day.

Here’s the rationale. The researchers could only find one randomised controlled trial – the gold standard for testing interventions, such as a change in diet – where a high-fibre diet (25–30g/day) was compared with a low-fibre diet (15–20g/day).

This trial showed no benefit for the high-fibre diet in improving constipation. People on the low-fibre diet farted less and were less bloated than people on the high-fibre diet.

This does not mean fibre doesn’t help constipation. There is good evidence for supplementing your diet with more fibre to help chronic constipation.

But rather than focusing on a high-fibre diet for constipation, the guidelines instead recommend taking at least 10g a day of a fibre supplement, such as psyllium.

A high-fibre diet is usually a key part of national dietary guidelines. For example the Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends some adults have a dietary fibre intake of at least 28g a day. There are certainly health benefits such as lowered cholesterol and blood sugar levels from eating a high-fibre diet.

But we now know it’s not needed to relieve chronic constipation.

What can we take away from the guidelines?

These guidelines provide more personalised, evidence-based dietary advice tailored to patient symptoms than previous guidelines.

Kiwifruit are considered a safe and effective treatment for chronic constipation. Mineral water, magnesium supplements and rye bread can help too.

But it would be worth discussing magnesium supplements with a health professional, especially if there are concerns about kidney disease or you take other medications.

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

– ref. Eat kiwifruit for constipation, new guidelines say. But ditch the high-fibre diet – https://theconversation.com/eat-kiwifruit-for-constipation-new-guidelines-say-but-ditch-the-high-fibre-diet-267617

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

By all the usual diplomatic measures, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s meeting with US President Donald Trump was a great success.

“Success” in a meeting with Trump is to avoid the ritual humiliation the president sometimes likes to inflict on his interlocutors. In that sense, Albanese and his team pulled off an impressive diplomatic feat.

While there was one awkward moment with Australia’s ambassador to the United States, former prime minister Kevin Rudd, on the scale of Trumpian possibilities, that was relatively minor.

Much of the media coverage has noted the laughter and ripples of relief that spread through the room as the moment was handled deftly by everyone involved.

There is much relief, too, that Albanese appears to have “confirmed” the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal will go ahead, despite the as-yet-unreleased Trump administration review of the agreement.

Albanese went into the White House meeting under considerable pressure to extract some kind of guarantee about the delivery of the Virginia-class submarines to Australia from the volatile president.

Albanese seems to have met those expectations: Trump waved away concerns about the United States’ commitment to deal, overriding the more cautious language of his secretary of the navy with a clear assurance to Albanese and the press pack: “Oh no, they’re getting them”.

Albanese also signed, in bold Trumpian Sharpie style, a critical minerals deal with the US president. This is being taken as reassurance the United States remains committed to its alliance with Australia – an alliance that, like the critical minerals deal, is framed largely as a question of “security”.

As is common with the Trump administration, however, much of the detail is unclear or a problem for the future.

The deal envisioned “unlocking” up to US$5 billion (A$7.7 billion) in private investment. There are already rumblings about what the Australian government will give away in the deal, and just what “slashing red tape” on project approvals might mean.

Trump’s words on AUKUS might be hollow

Symbolically, the meeting was a success. In substance, it revealed that the fundamentals of the relationship have not changed.

While much of the focus has been on Trump’s moment with Rudd and the ambassador’s future in the role, the exchange revealed a great deal more. Trump didn’t appear to remember who Rudd is, let alone the former prime minister’s previous criticisms.

While Rudd’s position matters a great deal to the Australian media, it is not of great concern to a president who has yet to confirm a counterpart to Rudd in Australia. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, appointed by the Biden administration, has not yet been replaced.

And while many reports suggest Trump has “confirmed” AUKUS, there is nothing to suggest this is either true or even possible.

Trump dismissed Navy Secretary John Phelan’s attempts to put some parameters around the deal after Phelan said “ambiguities” remain. Trump may well dismiss these ambiguities, but it is the navy that is handling much of the detail and the implementation of the deal itself.

And Trump may well make grand promises, but the legislation enabling the deal gives him a perfectly legitimate way to renege on the handover of the submarines, if doing so would undermine US capabilities or is deemed inconsistent with American interests. Nothing Trump promises changes that fundamental reality.

Is a full embrace of Trump wise?

That the media continues to treat Trump’s words with such credulity flies in the face of the evidence we have about a president who routinely changes his mind or reverses course. For a few hours in the White House, that reality was largely suspended.

Australia’s security alliance has generally been placed “above” domestic politics, transcending prime ministers and presidents and enjoying bipartisan support.

But as Albanese has hinted, drawing arbitrary lines between domestic affairs and foreign policy is, like the meeting with Trump itself, an exercise of symbolism over substance.

Albanese noted that Australia and the United States “have stood side by side for freedom and democracy”. Trump heaped praise on Australia, noting how much he likes the current prime minister. Albanese quipped he might use a clip of Trump saying that in his next election campaign, saying “I’ll use that in my 2028 ads!”.

It was an off-hand comment. But it may also reveal the blurring of boundaries between the domestic and the international: poll after poll suggests Australian voters are increasingly concerned about what the Trump administration is doing, both at home and abroad.

It is far from clear that a “warm, constructive” relationship with Trump would be well regarded by Labor’s base.

As Albanese met with Trump in the White House, demolition works had begun on the East Wing, in preparation for Trump’s new US$250 million (A$383 million) ballroom. The symbolism of that is troubling, to say the least, for a president who has mused about staying in power beyond his constitutional limits and is busy sending “Trump 2028” hats to his political enemies. He’s now demolishing part of the “people’s house” for his own vanities.

Perhaps it’s a good thing he likes Albanese. He may be around for a while yet.

Emma Shortis is director of International and Security Affairs at The Australia Institute, an independent think tank.

– ref. Can Albanese claim ‘success’ with Trump? Beyond the banter, the vague commitments should be viewed with scepticism – https://theconversation.com/can-albanese-claim-success-with-trump-beyond-the-banter-the-vague-commitments-should-be-viewed-with-scepticism-267434

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Will Visconti, Teacher and Researcher, Art History, University of Sydney

While Taylor Swift has been breaking records with the release of her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, a more compelling heir to the showgirl tradition offers audiences a glimpse into the world behind the feathers and frills.

Directed by Kate Champion, Meow Meow’s The Red Shoes is her latest interpretation of a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, following The Little Match Girl (2012) and The Little Mermaid (2016). Here she asks what happens with the passage of time to women who are, in Meow Meow’s words, “wrong, forgotten, gone astray”.

For the opening number, Meow Meow has to be dragged into the spotlight in dishevelled undergarments. She is propped up until she can rouse herself.

She soon dons a dress and matching feathered headdress. In true showgirl style, Meow Meow has multiple costume changes (designed by Dann Barber). Or, rather, there are additions and subtractions, with outfits layered as her quest for the perfect red shoes continues and then reaches its tragic conclusion.

Vegas-style plumed headgear is complemented by moments of kleptomania as bags or scarves are taken from audience members. It’s a necessary redistribution of wealth, she reasons, as she loads herself up with items that catch her eye.

Dancing the red shoes

In Hans Christian Andersen’s original 1845 story, an orphan named Karen is adopted and given a pair of red shoes which she refuses to replace with a more sombre pair to wear to church. She is then cursed to never stop dancing. Her feet continue to dance even after their amputation, until Karen is redeemed through death and contrition.

Meow Meow’s interpretation of Karen (though she says the name matters little) is of someone pushed by necessity and seeking respite from hardship, but who is punished all the same.

Just as Meow Meow has questioned the need for the Little Mermaid to give up her voice or the Little Match Girl to be left in the cold while others celebrate, she launches her critique of double standards and unjust punishment at Andersen himself in a comically rapid-fire barrage of questions.

The show’s meaning and its accoutrements are sometimes the object of fun, as Meow Meow clambers over a pile of debris in the corner of the stage including odd shoes, an old fridge and late-night online impulse purchases, musing aloud whether it’s “too early” in the show to be too profound.

She melds ballet and kickline steps in her choreography, all while balancing on one solitary shoe. Initially she wears a boot similar to those worn by the Moulin Rouge dance troupe today, in her nod to “the cans and the can-cans”, later changing it for one stiletto heel and one ballet slipper.

Not just for pleasure

Joining Meow Meow in various guises, Kanen Breen is by turns the embodiment of Meow’s ideas (if “a bit sketchy”), a faun to embody bacchanalian joy, or Hans Christian Andersen himself.

He provides a resounding and accomplished tenor voice as accompaniment alongside the trio of musicians (Mark Jones, Dan Witton and Jethro Woodward). Towards the end of the show, the musicians wear tutus under coat-tails in homage to the “delirious burlesque” of a 1900 Moulin Rouge revue or to a chorus of balletic swans.

Meow Meow’s The Red Shoes dances back and forth over different centuries and styles, reinforcing her reputation as a thoroughly postmodern diva.

Meow Meow is always aware of the lineage of which she is a part. She recalls other women who have preceded her. References range from Byzantium and Empress Theodora’s pearl-strewn act to Anna Pavlova and the ballet sylph.

Meow also acknowledges the cancan’s transgressive power as an act of agency by the working-class women who made it famous, and evokes a young Marlene Dietrich perched on a piano while auditioning for The Blue Angel.

Over the stage hangs a Danish saying, used as the motto of the Royal Danish Theatre, Ei blot til lyst, meaning “Not just for pleasure”. This saying is a reminder of the deeper function of the arts: a remedy and rebellion against a world awash with ignorance, conflict and the increased reliance on artificial intelligence at the cost of human connection.

All of these issues, part of the inescapable “noise of the world”, are skewered in both original songs and poignant renditions of material by Fiona Apple and Paul Anka, among others.

While no firm answers are provided for any of the multifarious themes addressed – indeed, how can one solve the ills of the world in a 75-minute show? – The Red Shoes cleaves to the aims of cabaret, defined by Meow Meow as “rigorous and instructive theatre”, and the civic duty of the artiste to resuscitate the art of catharsis.

This way, Meow Meow and her co-conspirators onstage are able to help the audience to “cathart” for themselves.

Meow Meow’s The Red Shoes is at Belvoir, Sydney, until November 9.

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

– ref. Meow Meow’s The Red Shoes takes us beyond the showgirl’s feathers and frills – https://theconversation.com/meow-meows-the-red-shoes-takes-us-beyond-the-showgirls-feathers-and-frills-267546

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jongkil Jay Jeong, Senior Fellow, School of Computing and Information System, The University of Melbourne

The world’s largest cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), has experienced a major outage that has impacted thousands of organisations, including banks, financial software platforms such as Xero, and social media platforms such as Snapchat.

The outage began at roughly 6pm AEDT on Monday. It was caused by a malfunction at one of AWS’ data centres located in Northern Virginia in the United States. AWS says it has fixed the underlying issue but some internet users are still reporting service disruptions.

This incident highlights the vulnerabilities of relying so much on cloud computing – or “the cloud” as it’s often called. But there are ways to mitigate some of the risks.

Renting IT infrastructure

Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of diverse IT resources such as computing power, database storage, and applications over the internet. In simple terms, it’s renting (not owning) your own IT infrastructure.

Cloud computing came into prevalence with the dot com boom in the late 1990s, wherein digital tech companies started to deliver software over the internet. As companies such as Amazon matured in their own ability to offer what’s known as “software as a service” over the web, they started to offer others the ability to rent their virtual servers for a cost as well.

This was a lucrative value proposition. Cloud computing enables a pay-as-you-go model similar to a utility bill, rather than the huge upfront investment required to purchase, operate and manage your own data centre.

As a result, the latest statistics suggest more than 94% of all enterprises use cloud-based services in some form.

A market dominated by three companies

The global cloud market is dominated by three companies. AWS holds the largest share (roughly 30%). It’s followed by Microsoft Azure (about 20%) and Google Cloud Platform (about 13%).

All three service providers have had recent outages, significantly impacting digital service platforms. For example, in 2024, an issue with third-party software severely impacted Microsoft Azure, causing extensive operational failures for businesses globally.

Google Cloud Platform also experienced a major outage this year due to an internal misconfiguration.

Profound risks

The heavy reliance of the global internet on just a few major providers — AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud — creates profound risks for both businesses and everyday users.

First, this concentration forms a single point of failure. As seen in the latest AWS event, a simple configuration error in one central system can trigger a domino effect that instantly paralyses vast segments of the internet.

Second, these providers often impose vendor lock-in. Companies find it prohibitively difficult and expensive to switch platforms due to complex data architectures and excessively high fees charged for moving large volumes of data out of the cloud (data egress costs). This effectively traps customers, leaving them hostage to a single vendor’s terms.

Finally, the dominance of US-based cloud service providers introduces geopolitical and regulatory risks. Data stored in these massive systems is subject to US laws and government demands, which can complicate compliance with international data sovereignty regulations such as Australia’s Privacy Act.

Furthermore, these companies hold the power to censor or restrict access to services, giving them control over how firms operate.

The current best practice to mitigate these risks is to adopt a multi-cloud approach that enables you to decentralise. This involves running critical applications across multiple vendors to eliminate the single point of failure.

This approach can be complemented by what’s known as “edge computing”, wherein data storage and processing is moved away from large, central data centres, toward smaller, distributed nodes (such as local servers) that firms can control directly.

The combination of edge computing and a multi-cloud approach enhances resilience, improves speed, and helps companies meet strict data regulatory requirements while avoiding dependence on any single entity.

As the old saying goes, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.

Jongkil Jay Jeong received prior funding from the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia.

– ref. An Amazon outage has rattled the internet. A computer scientist explains why the ‘cloud’ needs to change – https://theconversation.com/an-amazon-outage-has-rattled-the-internet-a-computer-scientist-explains-why-the-cloud-needs-to-change-267954

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chelsea Mobbs, Lecturer in Physiotherapy, University of Southern Queensland

Physiotherapy isn’t just for adults recovering from injuries. Physiotherapists can help babies and children, too – including babies with, or at high risk of, cerebral palsy.

Research has shown physiotherapy improves their physical and cognitive outcomes.

Cerebral palsy is complex

Cerebral palsy is a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition. It can affect the way you move and function.

It is caused by injury or a difference in development of the fetal or infant brain.

Each person with cerebral palsy experiences it in their own unique way.

This includes:

• the parts of their body affected
• how their body moves (for example, whether they have stiffness, involuntary movements or trouble with coordination)
• and how their motor impairments, or other issues, affect the way they move around, communicate and play.

The causes of cerebral palsy can be complex. It’s often due to a range of factors, including genetic and birth-related issues.

Early detection can mean early intervention

Until recently, many medical professionals adopted a “wait-and-see” approach.

However, we now have evidence-based tools to help identify babies most at risk of cerebral palsy – even those as young as three months.

After five months, if a baby shows movement difficulties (for example, using one side of their body more than the other or not being able to sit independently after nine months), an MRI and other tests can help your doctor understand more.

Early detection of cerebral palsy provides an opportunity for early intervention.

Some researchers talk about the seven “e-words” of physiotherapy intervention for babies with celebral palsy: earlier, engagement, exploration, enriched environments, experiences, everyday and exercise.

Earlier intervention

Where intervention previously often started only around 19 months, now intervention can begin much earlier.

Some babies start physiotherapy as young as three months old once identified as being “high risk” for a diagnosis of cerebral palsy. Premature babies may begin physiotherapy while still in hospital.

Unfortunately, however, not all families have easy access to early intervention treatments. Much depends on where you live.

NDIS support is technically available but it can often take families months to be accepted for funding.

Engagement is key

Engagement refers to when babies deliberately participate in an activity or interact with others. This might be as simple as encouraging infants to look at and focus on a toy the baby finds interesting, or to move their body towards their caregiver’s face.

Research shows when infants are engaged in play, it helps make connections about how to move their body.

Physiotherapists can help parents learn how to engage with and play with their babies, even when babies are very young.

Exploration builds moving, playing and thinking skills

Exploration is how babies learn about and interact with the world.

Physiotherapists can help infants to explore movement, whether this is supporting them to reach for a toy or crawl down a hallway.

Babies and children with cerebral palsy can find it harder than their peers to explore their environments. Research has shown supporting infants and young children to explore their environment, including with mini power wheelchairs, can improve their long-term mobility, social skills and independence.

Enriched environments help challenge babies

Infants love to interact with spaces that are not too difficult to navigate, but also not too easy.

Physiotherapists and families can come up with ideas together about how to modify the environment in the home to help a baby with cerebral palsy successfully play and explore.

This could, for instance, include adjusting the height of toys on a baby play gym to challenge babies to successfully reach and grasp toys above them.

Experiences help babies learn to play, move and communicate

Every infant learns in their own way from doing, seeing, and feeling. These experiences shape the neural pathways in our brains throughout our life, but particularly in the first few years. Our brains’ ability to adapt to experiences is called neuroplasticity.

Physiotherapists can help families harness this neuroplasticity by identifying meaningful experiences that help their baby learn to move, play and explore.

Babies with cerebral palsy benefit from a combination of repeating motivating experiences (such as repeatedly rolling for a toy of interest) and practising new skills in a variety of environments (such as rolling on different surfaces or towards a variety of toys).

Everyday intervention

Physiotherapists work with families to find ways to support their infant’s development in everyday life. This will look different for every family.

Some prefer more structured ideas for activities; they might want to know how many times and how long they could help their baby sit using specific handling techniques.

Others prefer ideas on how to integrate therapy ideas into their everyday life by, for instance, picking their baby up via their side to help develop their head control.

Exercise – for all ages

Exercise helps with everything from heart and gastrointestinal health to bone health.

Infants with movement difficulties are at risk of more sedentary time. This increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and obesity. The Australian government recommends at least three hours of physical activity per day (including no more than one hour at a time of inactivity or restraint) for children aged between zero and five.

However, it can be really difficult for young children with cerebral palsy to meet these recommendations.

Physiotherapy can help. This might include:

• helping a baby play in physically challenging positions (such as tummy time) for longer periods each time
• supervised rough and tumble play with siblings
• encouraging babies to explore different and more challenging environments.

If you have concerns about your baby’s movement, talk to your GP or child health nurse.

Chelsea Mobbs is a university physiotherapy lecturer at UniSQ and co-owns a private paediatric allied health practice. She has previously received grant funding for her PhD research from the Australian government (Research Training Program), Children’s Hospital Foundation and Queensland Health. Chelsea would like to acknowledge Professor Alicia Spittle (University of Melbourne) for her review of early drafts for this article.

– ref. Physio at 3 months old – or even earlier – can really help babies with cerebral palsy – https://theconversation.com/physio-at-3-months-old-or-even-earlier-can-really-help-babies-with-cerebral-palsy-265666

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dylan Hicks, Lecturer & Movement Scientist / PhD Sports Biomechanics, Flinders University

A common saying in sport is: “Father Time is undefeated”.

This reflects the belief that age catches up with every athlete, no matter their level of performance.

Physiological, biomechanical and neuromuscular aspects of performance such as force production peak in an athlete’s twenties and then slowly decline with age.

In sports such as basketball, elite levels of speed, power, endurance and decision-making are essential. Even the smallest decline can severely affect performance.

Yet, 40-year-old National Basketball Association (NBA) legend LeBron James is defying this logic.

How?

How James is creating history

On Wednesday, the new NBA season begins.

James will miss the early weeks of the season after being diagnosed with sciatica.

When he does return to the court, he will become the first player in NBA history to take the court for a 23rd season.

Despite turning 41 in December, he continues to dominate his younger counterparts at both ends of the floor with his trademark blend of power, poise and basketball IQ.

Remarkably, in last year’s NBA Playoffs, James remained among the league’s best. He ranked tenth in the league in points (25.4), rebounds (9.0) and assists (5.6), fourth in minutes played (40.8) and third in steals (2.0).

It was a stunning achievement at his age in one of the world’s premier athletic competitions.

However, there are signs he is slowing down.

Even the best slow down

If we compare James’ first seven seasons in Cleveland with his most recent seven in Los Angeles, there is a notable drop in availability. On average, he played around 20 fewer regular-season games per year (about 78 games per season in Cleveland compared to 58 per season at the Lakers).

James remains one the league’s most productive players, but there’s no denying he’ll continue to slow down.

Age-related neuromuscular decline in muscle strength is primarily related to changes in muscle structure, with peak concentric strength typically occurring between 25 and 35.

Research suggests around 90% of the decline in muscle strength is due to muscle atrophy — a gradual reduction in muscle tissue, which particularly affects type II (fast-twitch) muscle fibres.

These changes have a direct impact on the basketball-specific actions James is known for, such as scoring in transition (sprinting) and first step quickness (agility).

Interestingly, muscle power (critical in rapidly producing force in short periods) declines at a faster rate than maximum strength.

This may be the reason we now see fewer high-flying dunks from James compared to early in his career.

Over a ten-year period, James’ average speed on offence and defence has declined by 4.9% and 5.6% respectively. This suggests age-related changes have influenced his on-court behaviour, a pattern also observed in research on ageing NBA athletes.

Getting smarter is the key

Despite the age-related changes in force and power production, research highlights the importance of prioritising movement efficiency as athletes grow older.

In other words, athletes need to be smarter in the way they move as their bodies slow down.

Biomechanically, this is evident in James placing more emphasis on his post-game (receiving the ball near the basket), where he can exploit body position, leverage and technique, rather than relying on raw power to score.

Similarly, James’ increased reliance on 3-point attempts across his career (a 47% increase between 2003-2024) reflects an adaptation that reduces biomechanical demands while maintaining offensive impact.

However, neuromuscular and biomechanical changes are only two pieces of the puzzle: ageing also affects athletes’ endurance and their ability to recover between games.

The workload and recovery battle

When it comes to endurance, one key factor is maximal oxygen uptake (VO2), which declines with age.

This decrease limits oxygen delivery to working muscles, reducing an athlete’s ability to recover between repeated, high-intensity efforts.

Further, it has been reported blood oxygen-carrying capacity starts to decline at age 30. This means older players may experience slower recovery between games if workloads are not managed.

James has maintained high productivity thanks to his reported investment of millions per season in body maintenance.

James’ recovery methods include ice baths, hyperbaric chambers, cryotherapy and massage, along with consistent strength training, structured nutrition and afternoon naps.

Lessons to be learned

James’ 23rd season in the NBA will likely be his last. His career will highlight how the inevitable effects of ageing on high performance sport can be managed and delayed with a scientific approach to workload and recovery.

Just as James has adapted his training regime and playing style to align with his ageing body, everyday people of the same age can use these principles in their lives.

Regular strength training to delay muscle tissue loss, using conditioning methods such as interval training, hill sprints or pool sessions to reduce the impact on lower limb joints, and incorporating mobility work to preserve range of motion can all help sustain performance and independence as we age.

As basketball enthusiasts prepare for James’ proposed farewell tour, the scientific community can appreciate the outer limits of human athletic performance.

While none of us has the athletic gifts of James, we can all live a strong and healthy life as we age.

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

– ref. LeBron James will be the first NBA player to reach 23 seasons. How is he still one of the best? – https://theconversation.com/lebron-james-will-be-the-first-nba-player-to-reach-23-seasons-how-is-he-still-one-of-the-best-265754

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Thompson, Associate Professor in Media and Communication, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

The decision by the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) to formally consider a complaint about something Sean Plunket said on The Platform has now spun well beyond the complaint itself.

At the centre of the controversy is not so much the question of whether it was racist for Plunket to refer to Māori tikanga as “mumbo jumbo”, but whether the Broadcasting Act affords the authority jurisdiction over online content providers like The Platform.

Plunket insisted he would not be “censored” by “corrupt or incompetent […] Orwellian bureaucrats”, and rejected the claim that The Platform could be considered a broadcaster under the act.

Various sympathisers offered their support. NZ First leader Winston Peters accused the BSA of acting “like some Soviet-era Stasi”. Kiwiblog’s David Farrer accused the BSA of a “secret power-grab” and called for its abolition.

And ACT MP Todd Stephenson called it “a textbook example of a public agency trying to rewrite its own job description […] dismissing freedom of choice, and disregarding the boundaries of its democratic mandate”.

The criticism hinged on how the 1989 Broadcasting Act defines broadcasting. Now outdated, this is what makes the BSA’s manoeuvre unprecedented and therefore so contentious.

The act defines broadcasting as “any transmission of programmes, whether or not encrypted, by radio waves or other means of telecommunication for reception by the public by means of broadcasting receiving apparatus”. But it excludes on-demand services and public performances.

Thus far, this has limited the BSA’s jurisdiction to radio, free-to-air TV, pay-TV, and online content that has also been broadcast (including some material on Sky’s Neon).

The Platform’s provision of live online audio streaming (plus video for subscribers), much in the style of a radio broadcast, seems to be the pretext under which the BSA considers it potentially within its jurisdiction.

The Platform as test case

Efforts to overhaul the legislation go back two decades. But successive governments have failed to implement more than incremental amendments.

The BSA itself undertook a consultation with broadcasters in 2019 to explore how to respond to online content, then published its response in 2020.

More recently, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage consulted on a range of media reforms, including a proposal for modernising professional media regulation. In theory, this could extend the BSA’s oversight to some online media. As the BSA has explained:

Our published policy since 2020 has been that, if we receive a relevant complaint and there’s no other applicable standards body or regulator, and if the complaint raises issues of public interest or a risk of harm, we may accept the complaint and engage with the parties using our established processes.

Rightly or wrongly, the BSA’s “draft interlocutory decision”, issued to The Platform for comment, follows from this policy.

So, has the BSA decided to unilaterally rewrite the Broadcasting Act? Or is it trying to fulfil its legitimate remit by interpreting the purpose of the act in the modern digital context?

By advancing its claim to hear the complaint about The Platform, the BSA may be seeking to set a legal precedent that will establish its jurisdiction over broadcasting-like online services.

Or, if it is denied that, it might still increase pressure on the government to expedite its proposed revisions of the act.

The Platform’s displeasure at becoming a test case is perhaps understandable. But calling for the abolition of the BSA is surely misconstruing what is really at stake.

Holding media power accountable

The BSA is not a censor. In fact, suppressing or deleting illegal material falls under the purview of the Classification Office. The broadcasting standards regime is actually intended to uphold freedom of expression within a framework of standards to minimise harms.

As the BSA confirms, only 7% of complaints over the past three years were upheld, and very few have merited a fine or other sanction (the maximum fine is NZ$5,000, not $100,000 as Plunket has suggested).

Consider the standards covered in the Broadcasting Code: offensive and disturbing content, children’s interests, promotion of illegal or antisocial behaviour, discrimination and degradation, balance, accuracy, privacy and fairness.

Far from being the tools of a Stalinesque state, these are the principles upon which a functional media system in a democracy is premised. In fact, the BSA standards are developed and reviewed in consultation with industry and the public.

The specific codes evolve over time in response to changing audience attitudes (for example, tolerance for strong language), media practices and technologies.

The BSA standards are therefore not randomly imposed by an “Orwellian” bureaucracy. They reflect professional industry practices, community values and the public interest.

Regulatory measures that uphold fundamental standards such as balance, accuracy and fairness do not undermine democracy and freedom of expression, but underpin it. One might disagree with the BSA’s decisions, but such standards should not be discarded lightly.

Those who decry any and all media regulation as an affront to personal liberty and free speech need to consider the alternative – a commercial free-for-all in which the powerful interests which control media platforms can employ them to disseminate propaganda, disinformation or hate speech with impunity.

The BSA may not be perfect, but the principle that media operators should be held accountable – not to government, but to the public interest – is sound.

Peter Thompson is a founding board member of the Better Public Media trust. He has previously undertaken commissioned research for the Broadcasting Standards Authority, the Ministry for Culture & Heritage, NZ On Air, the Department of Internal Affairs, the Canadian Department of Heritage and SPADA. He has also been a guest commentator on The Platform.

– ref. ‘Soviet-era Stasi’ or defender of media freedoms? The battle for the Broadcasting Standards Authority – https://theconversation.com/soviet-era-stasi-or-defender-of-media-freedoms-the-battle-for-the-broadcasting-standards-authority-267732

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

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s first face-to-face meeting with US President Donald Trump has landed a major deal on critical minerals and secured a positive response from the president on the future of AUKUS.

In the White House meeting, Trump also avoided public pressure on Albanese over Australia’s defence spending and referred to the prime minister’s election success.

There was one embarrassment, however, when Trump was asked about Ambassador Kevin Rudd’s past disparagement of him. The president replied, “Did an ambassador say something bad? Don’t tell me. Where is he? Is he still working for you?”

Trump did not appear to realise Rudd was in the room. Albanese pointed him out.

“You said [something] bad?” Trump asked Rudd. “I don’t like you either, and probably never will.”

Later, Rudd apologised directly to the president, who reportedly accepted the apology.

Overall, the government has reason to be very satisfied with the meeting, which comes almost a year since Trump won the presidential election.

At times in past months, the government was nervous about the unpredictability of Trump in an encounter at the White House. But it became confident after putting in a great deal of preparation for the meeting, especially refining the proposed agreement on critical minerals and rare earths.

The timing for the meeting became particularly advantageous for the government, because China, which has a stranglehold on the rare earths market, just announced restrictions.

Under the new bilateral framework on critical minerals and rare earths, there will be “an accelerated pipeline of priority projects delivered by and for the two nations”.

Albanese said in a statement the framework “will deliver a US–Australia secured supply chain for critical minerals and rare earths, required for defence and other advanced technologies”.

The two countries “will take measures to each provide at least US$1 billion [A$1.53 billion] in investments towards an US$8.5 billion [A$13 billion] pipeline of priority critical minerals projects in Australia and the United States over the next six months”.

Questioned on AUKUS, Trump said the project was “really moving along very rapidly.”

The Pentagon is currently reviewing AUKUS.

There has been much speculation the Americans might not be able to supply the nuclear-powered submarines promised under the agreement, because of the slowness in their own submarine prediction.

Trump said the agreement was “made a while ago and nobody did anything about it and it was going too slowly. We do actually have a lot of submarines. We have the best submarines in the world, anywhere in the world, and we’re building a few more, currently under construction. We have it all set with Anthony [Albanese]”

However, Australia has not secured any concession on tariffs, and will have to be satisfied with the fact it’s on the lowest general 10% tariff level. “Australia pays very low tariffs. Very, very low tariffs. In fact, Australia pays among the lowest tariffs,” Trump said.

Praising Albanese, Trump said it was “a great honour to have you as my friend. It’s a great honour to have you in the United States of America.”

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

– ref. Albanese’s first meeting with Trump goes well, apart from clip over the ear for Kevin Rudd – https://theconversation.com/albaneses-first-meeting-with-trump-goes-well-apart-from-clip-over-the-ear-for-kevin-rudd-267951

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jean-Nicolas Bordeleau, Research Fellow, Jeff Bleich Centre for Democracy and Disruptive Technologies, Flinders University

In Australia, where turning up to vote is mandatory, deliberately spoiling your ballot is one of the only legal ways to protest or opt out.

This practice of “intentional informal voting” is an increasingly significant issue. The number of informal ballots in federal elections has more than doubled in the past few decades, rising from 2.5% in 1977 to 5.6% in 2025.

These “wasted” votes aren’t just a side note. They can have real consequences. Our analysis shows in nearly two-thirds of Australian federal elections since 1987, the number of informal ballots was greater than the margin of victory.

This means the outcome technically could have been different in eight of the past 13 federal elections if those votes had been cast formally.

A common assumption, supported by some previous research, is that younger voters are the main culprits, spoiling their ballots as an act of youthful protest. But is it really that simple?

Our new research challenges this stereotype. Using an original large survey of more than 25,000 voters in Victoria, we found a more nuanced story.

While young voters tend to intentionally cast informal votes in higher proportions than older voters, it’s not their age that directly predicts whether they will spoil their ballot, but rather their grievances towards democracy.

Dissatisfied with democracy

Our survey, conducted in partnership with the Victorian Electoral Commission after the 2022 state election, specifically asked voters if they knew they had marked their ballot incorrectly. This allowed us to focus on deliberate, intentional acts of informality.

When we crunched the numbers, we found only a very small and statistically insignificant relationship between age and the likelihood of casting an informal vote on purpose. In other words, age alone does not explain intentional informal voting and, therefore, young voters are not voting informally because they are young.

Instead, the real drivers included three specific attitudes towards democracy:

1. low interest in politics

2. dissatisfaction with how democracy is working

3. dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates.

What we see here is a clear example of democratic disconnect among young voters. This is caused by either a lack of interest in politics generally or particular grievances about the way their democracy is representing them.

In fact, our analysis revealed the link between age and informal voting is fully explained by these three factors. Younger voters are marginally more likely than other voters to spoil their ballots, but it is not because of their youth or immaturity.

Rather, it’s because they’re more likely to be uninterested in politics, dissatisfied with the democratic process and unhappy with the candidates on offer.

This is a trend which is particularly salient among young people. We don’t see similar grievances or disaffection among older age groups.

What can be done?

These findings have important policy implications. If we want to reduce the rate of informal voting and improve the health of Australian democracy, simply blaming young people is not the answer. The focus must shift to addressing the underlying causes of democratic disconnect.

Our research points to several potential solutions. Boosting political literacy, particularly by enhancing civics education, could help mitigate feelings of disenchantment and low levels of interest among youth.

Read more:
Civics education is at an all-time low in Australia. Mapping our ‘civic journeys’ may help

There are some current major initiatives around the country in this space that have potential. These include the now annual South Australian Active Citizenship Convention. This initiative seeks to promote civics and democracy and is organised by the SA Department for Education in collaboration with the Jeff Bleich Centre at Flinders University.

Fostering genuine participation is another important piece of the puzzle. We need to give citizens a greater stake in the system.

Mechanisms like citizen assemblies and participatory budgeting have been shown to empower citizens and enhance their sense of political efficacy.

These initiatives bring citizens directly to the table. Deliberative assemblies, for instance, bring together groups of citizens to learn about, discuss and make recommendations on specific policies.

Tailoring these initiatives in ways to promote active participation by young voters could go a long way in creating a sense of belonging and also a sense of agency among youth.

Lowering the voting age has also been mooted by experts as one way to get young people engaged earlier and in a more enduring way.

Finally, demanding more from parties and candidates will also improve the connection between young voters and the democratic process. Political parties must do more to offer policies tailored to the needs and interests of a young electorate.

When young voters don’t feel represented, their dissatisfaction grows and spoiling their ballot becomes a more attractive option.

Ultimately, requiring people to vote does not necessarily guarantee all citizens will be engaged. For those who feel alienated or unrepresented, spoiling their ballot is a rational act of protest.

To reduce this, we must stop pointing the finger at a specific generation. Instead, we need to start building a more responsive and inclusive political system that earns the trust of all Australians.

Jean-Nicolas Bordeleau is a Research Fellow at the Jeff Bleich Centre for Democracy and Disruptive Technologies, which has received funding from the South Australian Department of Education.

Katharina Kretschmer is a PhD candidate and research assistant whose employment is funded through an Australian Research Council Linkage Project. She does not receive funding directly.

Lisa Hill receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is the DIrector of the Democracy, Security, Trust and Integrity Program, Stretton Institute, the Research Chair of the Centre for Public Integrity, and the South Australian convenor of the Electoral Regulation Research Network.

Rodrigo Praino receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Government Department of Defence, Smartsat CRC, and Defence Innovation Partnership. He is the Director of the Jeff Bleich Centre for Democracy and Disruptive Technologies, which has received funding from the South Australian Department for Education.

– ref. Why are young people more likely to cast informal votes? It’s not because they’re immature – https://theconversation.com/why-are-young-people-more-likely-to-cast-informal-votes-its-not-because-theyre-immature-266788

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Esmé Louise James, Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Melbourne

Kim Kardashian’s clothing brand, Skims, has been no stranger to a controversial campaign. Over the past few years, Skims has repeatedly made headlines for releasing divisive products such as the nipple bra and hip-enhancing shorts.

Its latest release is no exception. Last week, the brand announced the release of an A$70 faux hair micro thong, available in twelve different colour and hair texture variations. The product has rightly been identified as a merkin – a pubic wig, or hairpiece for the pubic area.

While this controversial thong has been released as part of a 1970s-themed campaign, the history of the merkin dates much further back.

Venereal disease

The merkin is believed to have originated in the Early Modern period in Europe. The Oxford Companion to the Body dates its debut to 1450, though its exact origin remains contested.

What is known for certain, however, is the function of this curious piece of clothing. By the end of the 15th century, a major syphilis epidemic had swept Europe. The initial outbreak became known as the “Great Pox”. It led to widespread death and disfigurement, before becoming less virulent in later centuries.

As historian Jon Arrizabalaga and colleagues explain:

In some cases, the lips, nose or eyes were eaten away, or on others the whole of the sexual organs.

Pubic wigs became a practical way to conceal signs of the disease around the genital area. As well as hiding syphilitic sores, merkins could help to mask the scent of rotting flesh by adding a lavender-scented powder to the material.

It has been estimated that by the 18th century, one in five Londoners suffered from syphilitic infection. Admission records of London’s hospitals and workhouse infirmaries show syphilis was particularly rife among young, impoverished and mostly unmarried women, who used commercial sex to support themselves.

With no effective cure for the disease found until the beginning of the 20th century, it is hardly surprising merkins were used to conceal undesirable symptoms.

Pubic lice

Pubic wigs also proved useful for preventing the spread of pubic lice. England and France were battling rampant infestations of lice well into the 17th century. Shaving one’s pubic hair was, understandably, a proven method to prevent infestation.

However, this hairless appearance carried a negative stigma, as it was associated with the presence of disease and prolific engagement with vice.

Pubic wigs offered a solution to this perverse beauty paradox of the time, allowing women to appear unshaven (thus, healthy and clean) while being shaven to prevent infestation and spread of lice. The wigs could be boiled or even baked after use to assure sterilisation.

Appearances in literature

Although cultural awareness clearly predates it, the first recorded use of the term “merkin” comes from John Taylor’s Observations and Travel, published in 1617. It features among a satirical list of exotic and indulgent imports – such as “apes, monkeys, merkins, marmosets” – suggesting it was already recognised as a risqué commodity associated with vanity and excess.

The merkin continued to appear across a wide range of literature from the 17th century, particularly in bawdy pieces of work, such as the following 1661 poem:

He laid her on the ground,
His Spirits fell a ferking,
Her Zeal was in a sound,
He edified her Merkin.

Its use is most commonly associated with sex workers, though it is plausible wealthy individuals would also have adorned themselves with merkins to preserve the appearance of beauty and health.

Powdered wigs were adopted by nobility in the 18th century to conceal hair loss and deformities that resulted from syphilis, so it is not a stretch to imagine merkins would have been adopted as well.

By 1786, the term “merkin” had entered the formal lexicon, defined in Francis Grose’s A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue as “counterfeit hair for women’s privy parts”.

Merkins today

As public health improved and societal attitudes towards hygiene changed, merkins largely fell out of fashion.

By the late 19th century, they had mostly faded into obscurity and survived only as a quirky historical footnote. One example is the well-known faux-Victorian photograph of a supposed merkin salesman peddling his display case of pubic wigs, which is circulating as though it were a genuine 19th century image.

While the Skims micro thong may appear to be a cheeky novelty, the merkin itself boasts a centuries-long history – evolving from a practical accessory to a provocative fashion statement today.

The Skims line of “full bush” thongs were quickly sold out soon after they were announced. While the company hasn’t made the intention behind the product clear, its virality has certainly sparked a broader conversation about body hair politics.

In many ways, even these cultural conversations mirror those from centuries prior. The merkin’s very existence is proof that women’s body hair has, for hundreds of years, doubled as a potent symbol of health, sexuality, fashion and autonomy.

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

– ref. Skims has put merkins back on the fashion map. Here’s a brief (and hairy) history of the pubic wig – https://theconversation.com/skims-has-put-merkins-back-on-the-fashion-map-heres-a-brief-and-hairy-history-of-the-pubic-wig-267740