Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Huw Griffiths, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Sydney

Review: Julius Caesar directed by Kip Williams, Sydney Theatre Company

The Roman emperor Julius Caesar has been killed in the capitol, and the conspirators pause to reflect for a moment. Cassius, the main instigator of the assassination, wonders if this tale will be told again in the centuries to come.

“How many ages hence,” he asks, “Shall this lofty scene be acted over / In states unborn and accents yet unknown?”

And Brutus, Caesar’s one-time friend responds, “How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport?”

In other words, will theatres of the future put on shows about this world-changing event?

Kip Williams’ Julius Caesar (for the STC’s wonderfully refurbished Wharf 1 stage) takes this question from Shakespeare’s play and makes it the beating heart of the production.

It is not just that this 21st century Julius Caesar advertises the contemporary relevance of the story. We are also asked to consider just how political stories are told, re-told, and told again.

Modern tyranny and Julius Caesar

When Shakespeare wrote this play in 1599, the ageing Queen Elizabeth I was still on the throne after 41 years. Her reign had descended from an early promise of greater freedom and rational government.

“I would not open windows into men’s souls”, she is believed to have saidin an early speech to parliament, indicating a departure from her predecessors who had not held back from persecuting those who did not share their beliefs.

Modern historians have referred to Elizabeth’s early reign as a “monarchical republic”, a cautious blend of consultative government and royal prerogative. But, by the end of the century, the country had descended into a darkly tyrannous period of violence, factionalism and mutual suspicion.

For Shakespeare, the question of whether or not Caesar has become a tyrant is really a question about his own country’s increasingly dangerous politics. As Elizabeth’s death draws near, Shakespeare considers the tolerance of his countrymen for more autocratic forms of government. In 2021, those questions are being asked again.

‘The evil that men do lives after them’

The set-piece of Williams’ production – and the high-point of Shakespeare’s play – is a speech: Antony’s speech on the death of his friend, Caesar.

Brutus has tried to address the Roman people and explain the conspirators’ actions through reference to noble motives and truth-telling. Anthony knows that truth holds no sway over the public and that emotion will work every time.

For this production, Williams has brilliantly adapted the famous speech into a searing indictment of 20th and 21st century political charlatanism. During the course of the speech, Geraldine Hakewill playing Antony transforms from grieving friend into modern political demagogue.

Putting on her standard-issue white power suit and her Christian Louboutin shoes – like a cross between Julie Bishop and Goebbels – Hakewill’s superb performance of reveals the awful terror that lies at the heart of post-truth, political manipulation.

That Shakespeare turns the fortunes of his play’s characters – and of Rome and the world – on the reception of just one speech is a brilliant piece of writing.

Williams is not shy of a similar focus on the power of words to close debate down as well as open it up. But, if Shakespeare’s London was already at some remove from Rome, then we are now several steps further along the road of political degradation in this production.

Read more:
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The consequences of failed politics

Shakespeare wants us to think that Brutus holds on to his nobility in the midst of the mayhem that he helps to unleash. But, to the viewer watching the play in 2021, the conspirators never seem to find a real justification for their actions and the descent into chaos happens at speed.

Ewen Leslie’s Cassius is bitter and damaged, whilst Zahra Newman’s Brutus is less a remnant of past nobility than a naive fool who never had a secure grip on his own motivations.

The three actors play all of the roles in the play, with Williams’ smart use of video fleshing out the narrative. Video also plays an integral part in our consideration of the way that political motivations distorted by the media.

Perhaps not as spectacularly innovative as in last year’s Dorian Gray, Williams’s use of video in this show is nonetheless completely in tune with the production’s focus on failed political discourse.

But that’s not to say that the physical space of Wharf 1’s new theatre in the round isn’t also put to good use. The three actors bring a manic energy to this dynamic new stage, motoring an already lean (in Shakespeare’s terms) script towards its frightening conclusion at a breakneck speed. Command of the dialogue from all three performers is superb: clear, direct, and artfully controlled.

With its clear-eyed look at the consequences of failed politics, this production of Julius Caesar is both an appropriate, and an extraordinarily well-executed inaugural show for the STC’s new stage.

Huw Griffiths 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. Sydney Theatre Company’s Julius Caesar is a clear-eyed look at the consequences of failed politics – https://theconversation.com/sydney-theatre-companys-julius-caesar-is-a-clear-eyed-look-at-the-consequences-of-failed-politics-172038

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Madi Day, Lecturer, Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University

Thousands took to streets across Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane on Saturday November 20 to protest COVID-19 lockdown measures and vaccine mandates.

The rallies occurred after weeks of protests in Melbourne against the Public Health and Wellbeing (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021. The Monday prior, protesters hung an inflatable effigy of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews on a gallows assembled in Melbourne’s CBD.

Moments like these connect anti-vax movements to far right and white supremacist extremist groups and conspiracy communities in Europe and white settler nations around the world including Australia, Canada, USA and New Zealand.

Resistance to vaccinations in Australia is due to a range of mitigating factors. Vaccine hesitancy and resistance to pandemic legislation among minority communities including Indigenous and culturally and linguistically diverse communities, is due to institutional distrust caused by centuries of colonial medical and legislative violence. This could be the reason why some members of these communities are taking part in protests.

White supremacist and right-wing groups are capitalising on vaccine hesitancy to distribute conservative ideologies to new audiences via protests and social media. Among these are complex narratives about resisting a “New World Order”, which supposedly threatens a bygone Australian way of life.

Many involved in these movements probably do not realise they are aligning with people whose values and ideas are steeped in white supremacy.

Read more:
Why the Victorian protests should concern us all

White supremacism and a ‘New World Order’

Many groups have united under the banner of COVID denial and vaccine resistance. A common narrative shared on social media is that COVID, lockdown measures and vaccinations are part of a plan to implement a global totalitarian regime.

In September this year, a comment by New South Wales Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant went viral among COVID deniers and conspiracy theorists, including those involved in QANON. Chant responded to a question about how contact-tracing would work after lockdown by saying “We will be looking at what contact-tracing looks like in the new world order”.

Conspiracists in anti-vax circles have been using the term “New World Order” to refer to the theory that a secret group of powerful elites are planning global domination. Despite Chant’s intentions, mention of the term provoked a frenzy on social media and caused Google searches to skyrocket.

New World Order theory has racist and anti-semitic inferences. It comes from speculative and philosophical literature from Europeans and white settlers in the United States who have promoted paranoid myths about Jewish people’s involvement in the banking system. It has ties to fascism, racism and white libertarianism, and Satanic Panic since the second world war. It also has ties to Nazi occultism.

Essentially, resisting the “New World Order” is less about addressing existing systems of power including capitalism and colonialism that oppress and marginalise groups of people all over the world. It’s more about a battle between a perceived good and evil.

These ideas also have a long history in Christian literature including the New Testament. White Christian extremists, including the Klu Klux Klan, refer to themselves as knights engaged in a holy war to defend their liberties from racial and religious others whom they have historically oppressed.

Read more:
Getting vaccinated is the act of love needed right now to support the survival of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples during the pandemic

Far right conservatism and conspiracy theories

Anti-vax movements have proven especially appealing to white women and groups of men who feel disadvantaged by rapid changes in Western society, which have destabilised their economic and social standing.

Many anti-vaxxers believe they are resisting evil globalist forces who want to corrupt them and their children by means of tracking devices, microchips and other insidious technology allegedly hidden in COVID-19 vaccines.

Protestors carry signs inferring their sperm is untainted by the vaccine, and unvaccinated users on Tiktok refer to themselves as “purebloods”. These sentiments echo white race anxieties popularised during the Aboriginal Protectionist and White Australia Policy Era, which continue to influence Australian immigration policy and Indigenous Affairs to this day.

Conservative family values are apparent in anti-vax movements. For example, protestors in Sydney on Saturday recycled “You Can Say No” posters originally used against the ballot for marriage equality in Australia in 2017.

Far-right politicians and organisations have capitalised on rapid change and experiences of economic crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic to promote ideologies about protecting traditional family values and Western culture.

Political proponents of the anti-vax movement, such as Clive Palmer and Craig Kelly, are also anti-immigration and climate deniers. The current party line for the United Australia Party is “Make Australia Great”, mimicking Trump’s former campaign.

Kelly and Palmer are capitalising on anti-vax sentiments to gain visibility at protests and on social media. Mainstream right-wing politicians have also participated in rallies including former chief of staff to Tony Abbott as prime minister, Peta Credlin.

Who wins?

Known members of pro-fascist, white supremacist and neo-Nazi organisations, including Proud Boys and Lads Society, have been present at anti-vax rallies. These organisations have also been involved in organising and security for speakers.

Researchers have observed members of white supremacist and far right groups recruiting and grooming vaccine hesitant people via Facebook and encrypted messaging groups like Telegram. Anti-vaxxers have also systematically targeted Black and Indigenous communities with misinformation and propaganda.

Outbreaks of COVID-19 have already had devastating impacts in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Community leaders and organisations are battling the spread of misinformation in Aboriginal remote communities including myths spread by Christian groups that claim COVID-19 is a white man’s virus. Spreading anti-vaccination propaganda among Indigenous communities has severe and life threatening consequences.

It might seem like anti-vaxxers and far-right extremist groups are minorities in Australia. However, far-right poltical parties who spread vaccine misinformation are gaining followers.

The United Australia Party is now Australia’s biggest political party with 70,000 members. They provided signs for protests on Saturday that read “Freedom, Freedom, Freedom”.

The United Australia Party has been actively distributing misformation about COVID-19 and the controversial drug ivermectin.

It remains to be seen how the growing influence of the far right will effect upcoming elections and our futures. We need to think carefully about the ideas and movements we are invested in now, and who they are actually benefiting.

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

– ref. White supremacist and far right ideology underpin anti-vax movements – https://theconversation.com/white-supremacist-and-far-right-ideology-underpin-anti-vax-movements-172289

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bernadette McCabe, Professor and Principal Scientist, University of Southern Queensland

Using organic waste to make energy – think sewage, animal and crop residues, and leftover wood – has finally been put under the spotlight with last week’s release of Australia’s first Bioenergy Roadmap.

Bioenergy is a versatile form of renewable energy which produces heat, electricity, transport fuels, chemicals, and by-products like organic fertiliser. It’s a promising way to bring Australia’s emissions down, while re-purposing waste that would otherwise go to landfill.

The roadmap predicts that by the 2030s, the sector could boost Australia’s annual GDP by around A$10 billion, create 26,200 jobs, reduce emissions by about 9%, divert an extra 6% of waste from landfill, and enhance fuel security.

Still, bioenergy is complex and poorly understood. We were part of the roadmap review reference group, and believe it has a bright future, as the key to successful bioenergy projects is to match the right fuel source with the right technology.

Bioenergy state of play in Australia

Federal Energy Minister Angus Taylor commissioned the Australian Renewable Energy Agency to develop the roadmap and, on Friday, announced $33.5 million in funding to implement it. This is on top of more than $118 million already provided by the federal government to help fund bioenergy projects.

This funding has been a long time coming, as the sector has struggled to get the same attention from policymakers as other forms of renewable energy such as solar, wind and hydro.

In 2020, bioenergy represented only 5% of Australia’s renewable electricity generation, putting Australia at the bottom quartile of OECD countries when it comes to bioenergy as a share of total energy supply. And yet, bioenergy is responsible for nearly 50% of Australia’s current renewable energy consumption.

But the sector has started gaining traction. In 2018, Australia had 222 operating bioenergy plants and an additional 55 projects under construction or at the feasibility stage.

Read more:
Bioenergy: Australia’s forgotten renewable energy source (so far)

One example is a new project in Logan City Council in Queensland. Each year, Logan City produces 34,000 tonnes of biosolids (treated sewage sludge).

A technology called gasification is significantly reducing the need to dispose of these biosolids, and will save about $500,000 in operating costs. Research is also underway to see how the by-product of this treatment can be sold as a soil conditioner for agriculture.

So why is it good for the environment?

Using biomass as an energy source instead of fossil fuels can reduce carbon emissions and improve air quality. Bioenergy can be emissions-neutral, especially when wastes are used as a fuel source. This is because:

• it captures methane when organic waste breaks down. This methane would otherwise have been released to the atmosphere

• it’s used in place of fossil fuels, displacing those CO₂ emissions.

For example, the recent biomethane trial at Sydney Waters Malabar plant captures methane from sewage sludge, to replace fossil natural gas in the gas network.

What’s more, a strong bioenergy industry can help support Australian farmers looking for the benefits of running a carbon-neutral operation, and boost economic growth in regional areas.

Read more:
Not just hot air: turning Sydney’s wastewater into green gas could be a climate boon

Bioenergy can also have negative impacts if not developed properly. As we’ve seen in international projects, the biggest concern is inappropriate changes to land use to supply biomass. This could, for example, lead to greater deforestation in order to supply wood.

However, bioenergy technologies are neither good nor bad per se. Avoiding unintended risks depends on appropriate governance. A good example is the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification Scheme, which aims to ensure bioenergy companies are transparent and uphold ethical values.

Critics have recently voiced their concern about the federal government’s claim that bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, also known as BECCS, will cut emissions by 15% by 2050.

The International Energy Agency has identified BECCS as a technology with the potential to be truly carbon negative, which means it can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while producing energy for consumption.

But the Bioenergy Roadmap did not focus on BECCS. Instead, it gave an expansive overview of all bioenergy technologies in the short to medium term, outlining where bioenergy can complement other low emissions technologies, and create opportunities for industry and governments to drive commercial growth.

A snapshot of the roadmap

The roadmap was developed following extensive consultation with industry, researchers and the public. It identified major opportunities for Australia in four key areas.

First, in hard-to-abate sectors. This includes generating renewable heat for the manufacturing industry, fuel for sustainable aviation, and renewable gas (biomethane) to displace fossil natural gas in the grid. For example, sustainable aviation biofuels are the only low-emissions alternatives to traditional, high-emitting jet fuel, that are available in the short to medium term.

Read more:
Jet fuel from sugarcane? It’s not a flight of fancy

Second, to complement other markets. In road transport, for example, biofuels can offer other low-emissions alternatives such as hydrogen and electric vehicles, and, in particular, can replace diesel in long-haul transport. In the grid, bioelectricity generation can support greater penetration of renewable energy such as solar and wind.

Third, in developing our understanding of our vast bioenergy resources across agriculture, forestry, and organic waste. We need further research and innovation to turn Australia’s theoretical bioenergy resource potential – which is massive in every state – into a reality.

And finally, increasing collaboration between industry, state and federal governments. For example, developing industry guidelines and standards can help produce reliable results. This in turn helps commercialise mature technologies that are new to Australia.

Read more:
How biomethane can help turn gas into a renewable energy source

Bernadette McCabe receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Rural R & D for Profit program, the Fight Food Waste CRC and the Queensland Government. She is Australia’s National Team Leader for the International Energy Agency Task 37 Energy from Biogas since 2014. Bernadette was a Director on the Board of Bioenergy Australia (2017-2019) and is a current member of this organisation.

Since 2016, Ian O’Hara has been appointed by the Queensland Government as the Queensland Biofutures Industry Envoy to assist in supporting the growth of the Biofutures industry sector in Queensland. His research receives funding from several sources including the Australian Research Council, the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, Meat and Livestock Australia, Sugar Research Australia and partners. He has and continues to receive research funding from ARENA for bioenergy related projects. He was previously a director of Bioenergy Australia (2017-2019), and is on the International Advisory Council of the Global Bioeconomy Summit and a Senior Editor of EFB Bioeconomy Journal.

– ref. At long last, Australia has a bioenergy roadmap – and its findings are startling – https://theconversation.com/at-long-last-australia-has-a-bioenergy-roadmap-and-its-findings-are-startling-172235

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Baron, Associate professor, Australian Catholic University

Many people think that mathematics is a human invention. To this way of thinking, mathematics is like a language: it may describe real things in the world, but it doesn’t “exist” outside the minds of the people who use it.

But the Pythagorean school of thought in ancient Greece held a different view. Its proponents believed reality is fundamentally mathematical.

More than 2,000 years later, philosophers and physicists are starting to take this idea seriously.

As I argue in a new paper, mathematics is an essential component of nature that gives structure to the physical world.

Honeybees and hexagons

Bees in hives produce hexagonal honeycomb. Why?

According to the “honeycomb conjecture” in mathematics, hexagons are the most efficient shape for tiling the plane. If you want to fully cover a surface using tiles of a uniform shape and size, while keeping the total length of the perimeter to a minimum, hexagons are the shape to use.

Charles Darwin reasoned that bees have evolved to use this shape because it produces the largest cells to store honey for the smallest input of energy to produce wax.

The honeycomb conjecture was first proposed in ancient times, but was only proved in 1999 by mathematician Thomas Hales.

Cicadas and prime numbers

Here’s another example. There are two subspecies of North American periodical cicadas that live most of their lives in the ground. Then, every 13 or 17 years (depending on the subspecies), the cicadas emerge in great swarms for a period of around two weeks.

Why is it 13 and 17 years? Why not 12 and 14? Or 16 and 18?

One explanation appeals to the fact that 13 and 17 are prime numbers.

Imagine the cicadas have a range of predators that also spend most of their lives in the ground. The cicadas need to come out of the ground when their predators are lying dormant.

Suppose there are predators with life cycles of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 years. What is the best way to avoid them all?

Well, compare a 13-year life cycle and a 12-year life cycle. When a cicada with a 12-year life cycle comes out of the ground, the 2-year, 3-year and 4-year predators will also be out of the ground, because 2, 3 and 4 all divide evenly into 12.

When a cicada with a 13-year life cycle comes out of the ground, none of its predators will be out of the ground, because none of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 divides evenly into 13. The same is true for 17.

It seems these cicadas have evolved to exploit basic facts about numbers.

Creation or discovery?

Once we start looking, it is easy to find other examples. From the shape of soap films, to gear design in engines, to the location and size of the gaps in the rings of Saturn, mathematics is everywhere.

Read more:
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If mathematics explains so many things we see around us, then it is unlikely that mathematics is something we’ve created. The alternative is that mathematical facts are discovered: not just by humans, but by insects, soap bubbles, combustion engines and planets.

What did Plato think?

But if we are discovering something, what is it?

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato had an answer. He thought mathematics describes objects that really exist.

For Plato, these objects included numbers and geometric shapes. Today, we might add more complicated mathematical objects such as groups, categories, functions, fields and rings to the list.

Plato also maintained that mathematical objects exist outside of space and time. But such a view only deepens the mystery of how mathematics explains anything.

Explanation involves showing how one thing in the world depends on another. If mathematical objects exist in a realm apart from the world we live in, they don’t seem capable of relating to anything physical.

Enter Pythagoreanism

The ancient Pythagoreans agreed with Plato that mathematics describes a world of objects. But, unlike Plato, they didn’t think mathematical objects exist beyond space and time.

Instead, they believed physical reality is made of mathematical objects in the same way matter is made of atoms.

If reality is made of mathematical objects, it’s easy to see how mathematics might play a role in explaining the world around us.

In the past decade, two physicists have mounted significant defences of the Pythagorean position: Swedish-US cosmologist Max Tegmark and Australian physicist-philosopher Jane McDonnell.

Tegmark argues reality just is one big mathematical object. If that seems weird, think about the idea that reality is a simulation. A simulation is a computer program, which is a kind of mathematical object.

McDonnell’s view is more radical. She thinks reality is made of mathematical objects and minds. Mathematics is how the Universe, which is conscious, comes to know itself.

I defend a different view: the world has two parts, mathematics and matter. Mathematics gives matter its form, and matter gives mathematics its substance.

Mathematical objects provide a structural framework for the physical world.

The future of mathematics

It makes sense that Pythagoreanism is being rediscovered in physics.

In the past century physics has become more and more mathematical, turning to seemingly abstract fields of inquiry such as group theory and differential geometry in an effort to explain the physical world.

Read more:
Curious Kids: how was maths discovered? Who made up the numbers and rules?

As the boundary between physics and mathematics blurs, it becomes harder to say which parts of the world are physical and which are mathematical.

But it is strange that Pythagoreanism has been neglected by philosophers for so long.

I believe that is about to change. The time has arrived for a Pythagorean revolution, one that promises to radically alter our understanding of reality.

Sam Baron receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Pythagoras’ revenge: humans didn’t invent mathematics, it’s what the world is made of – https://theconversation.com/pythagoras-revenge-humans-didnt-invent-mathematics-its-what-the-world-is-made-of-172034

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Divya Mehta, Principal Research Fellow and Team Leader, Queensland University of Technology

Stress affects up to 90% of people, and we know it harms our mental and physical well-being.

Stress can impact the activity and function of our genes. It does this via “epigenetic” changes, which turn on and off certain genes, though it doesn’t change the DNA code.

But why do some people respond worse to stress, while others seem to cope under pressure?

Previous research has identified having strong social support and a sense of belonging are robust indicators of physical and mental health.

Social support means having a network you can turn to in times of need. This can come from natural sources such as family, friends, partners, pets, co-workers and community groups. Or from formal sources such as mental health specialists.

My new study, published today in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, shows for the first time that these positive effects are also observed on human genes.

Having supportive social structures buffers and even reverses some of the harmful effects of stress on our genes and health, via the process of epigenetics.

The findings suggest the DNA we are born with is not necessarily our destiny.

Read more:
How chronic stress changes the brain – and what you can do to reverse the damage

What is epigenetics?

Our genes and our environment contribute to our health.

We inherit our DNA code from our parents, and this doesn’t change during our life. Genetics is the study of how the DNA code acts as a risk or protective factor for a particular trait or disease.

Epigenetics is an additional layer of instructions on top of DNA that determines how they affect the body. This layer can chemically modify the DNA, without changing DNA code.

The term epigenetics is derived from the Greek word “epi” which means “over, on top of”.

Read more:
Explainer: what is epigenetics?

This extra layer of information lies on top of the genes and surrounding DNA. It acts like a switch, turning genes on or off, which can also impact our health.

Epigenetic changes occur throughout our lives due to different environmental factors such as stress, exercise, diet, alcohol, and drugs.

For instance, chronic stress can impact our genes via epigenetic changes that in turn can increase the rate of mental health disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety.

New technologies now allow researchers to collect a biological sample from a person (such as blood or saliva) and measure epigenetics to better understand how our genes respond to different environments.

Measuring epigenetics at different times allows us to gain insight into which genes are altered because of a particular environment.

Read more:
Extreme stress in childhood is toxic to your DNA

What did we study?

My study investigated both positive and negative factors that drive a person’s response to stress and how this changes the epigenetic profiles of genes.

Certain groups of people are more likely to face stress as a part of their routine work, such as emergency responders, medical workers and police officers.

So, my research team and I recruited 40 Australian first year paramedical students at two points in time – before and after exposure to a potentially stressful event. The students provided saliva samples for DNA and filled out questionnaires detailing their lifestyle and health at both points in time.

We investigated epigenetic changes before and after exposure to stress, to better understand:

• how epigenetics of genes was altered after exposure to stress

• which different social and psychological factors caused the epigenetic changes.

We found stress influenced epigenetics and this in turn led to increased rates of distress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms among participants.

However, students who reported high levels of perceived social support showed lesser levels of stress-related health outcomes.

Students with a strong sense of belonging to a group, organisation, or community dealt much better with stress and had reduced negative health outcomes following exposure to stress.

Both these groups of students showed fewer epigenetic changes in genes that were altered as a result of stress.

COVID has made us more isolated

The COVID pandemic has created heavy psychological and emotional burdens for people due to uncertainty, altered routines and financial pressures.

In Australia, the rates of anxiety, depression and suicide have soared since the start of the pandemic. One in five Australians have reported high levels of psychological distress.

The pandemic has also made us more isolated, and our relationships more remote, having a profound impact on social connections and belonging.

My study highlights how family and community support, and a sense of belonging, influence our genes and act as a protective factor against the effects of stress.

In such unprecedented and stressful times, it’s vital we build and maintain strong social structures that contribute to good physical and mental well-being.

Divya Mehta receives funding from the Australian Government National Health and Medical Research Council.

– ref. Stress is a health hazard. But a supportive circle of friends can help undo the damaging effects on your DNA – https://theconversation.com/stress-is-a-health-hazard-but-a-supportive-circle-of-friends-can-help-undo-the-damaging-effects-on-your-dna-171607

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

At the last Victorian state election in November 2018, Labor won 18 of the 40 upper house seats, the Coalition 11, the Greens just one and all Others ten. Labor came to an agreement with the Greens’ Samantha Ratnam, Reason’s Fiona Patten and Animal Justice’s Andy Meddick to pass its controversial pandemic legislation.

This agreement appeared to have the support of 21 of the 40 upper house members (MLCs), enough for a majority. But last week, former Labor MLC Adem Somyurek, who has been accused of branch stacking and subsequently expelled by Labor, said he would vote against the legislation. As in the federal Senate, a tied vote in the Victorian upper house is lost.

Labor wants to pass this legislation before their current emergency authority expires on December 16. The last sitting of the Victorian parliament for this year occurs from November 30 to December 2. Labor needs one more crossbencher to join them to make up for Somyurek’s defection, but will probably need to make significant concessions on its legislation to get that vote.

It didn’t have to be this way. The upper house has eight regions that each elect five members, so a quota is one-sixth of the vote or 16.7%. Group ticket voting (GTV), in which parties choose what happens to preferences of their voters who cast a “1” vote above the line, was still used in 2018, even though it was scrapped in 2016 for the federal Senate and by 2018 for the SA upper house.

Under the federal Senate system, voters choose what happens to their preferences by putting at least six numbers above the line, although a “1” only will be accepted as a formal vote. In the NSW, SA and now WA upper houses, there are no instructions to number at least six boxes, and a “1” only vote will expire within the party it is cast for.

If the federal Senate system had been in place for the Victorian 2018 election, my calculations say Labor would have won 19 of the 40 upper house seats, the Coalition 14, the Greens four and all Others three. That would have given Labor and the Greens 23 seats combined, enough to easily cope with one defector.

Read more:
Victorian upper house greatly distorted by group voting tickets; federal Labor still dominant in Newspoll

This is Victorian Labor’s own fault. They have been in power since November 2014, but have made no attempt to fix the shambolic and anti-democratic upper house system.

Will this experience push them into attempting to reform the upper house by the next state election in November 2022? The Coalition may cooperate, as they lost three seats they would otherwise have won in 2018.

Victorian Labor appears to detest the Greens, likely due to Greens’ threats to Labor in inner Melbourne lower house seats. On this basis, they would have been pleased that the Greens won just one upper house seat at the last election, and Labor didn’t have to rely on them to pass legislation.

Victoria is the last Australian jurisdiction that still uses GTV for its elections. I wrote about WA Labor’s electoral reforms in September, and they passed parliament last week owing to Labor’s big majorities in both chambers following the March WA state election.

Newspoll and Morgan both 58-42 to Victorian Labor

A Victorian state Newspoll, conducted November 11-17 from a sample of 1,030, gave Labor a 58-42 lead (about 57.6-42.4 to Labor in 2018 after accounting for no Liberal candidate in Richmond). Primary votes were 44% Labor (42.9% at election), 36% Coalition (35.2%), 11% Greens (10.7%) and 9% for all Others (11.2%).

56% were satisfied with Premier Daniel Andrews’ performance, and 42% were dissatisfied; his net +14 rating is down 15 points from a September premiers’ Newspoll. Opposition Leader Matthew Guy was at -8 net approval and Andrews led Guy as better premier by 54-33.

On Andrews’ handling of COVID, 21% said he’s done consistently well, 39% that he’s done most things well, but he could have done some things better, 20% that he’s done some things well, but many things poorly and 19% said consistently poor. That gave a total 60-39 good rating.

A Morgan SMS poll, conducted November 10 from a sample of 1,357, also gave Labor a 58-42 lead, a 0.5% gain for the Coalition since November 2020. Primary votes were 43% Labor (down 2%), 31% Coalition (down 3.5%), 11% Greens (steady) and 15% for all Others (up 5.5%).

A breakdown of the Others vote had 6.5% for independents (6.1% in 2018), 3% for Clive Palmer’s UAP and 2% for Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party. In a forced choice, Andrews had a 60.5-39.5 approval rating, down from 71-29 last November.

These polls both gave Labor big leads a year from next November’s election. As analyst Kevin Bonham said, the Victorian Coalition’s best hope is that federal Labor wins the federal election in early 2022, creating a drag for state Labor.

Poll of Victorian state seat of Kew has it winnable for Labor

On November 7, Liberal MP Tim Smith, who represents the Victorian state seat of Kew, announced he would resign from politics at the next election, after he crashed his car while drink driving a week before.

A Redbridge poll of Kew was conducted November 4-7 from a sample of 920. The fieldwork dates were at the most damaging for the Liberals, between Smith’s crash and his resignation announcement. The poll gave the Liberals 39%, Labor 31%, the Greens 12% and all Others 18%.

ABC election analyst Antony Green has a post-redistribution Victorian pendulum. Labor starts with 57 lower house seats to 26 for the Coalition, a two-seat gain for Labor from the 2018 results. Nine Liberal-held seats are on a 1% or less margin, with Kew at 4.5%.

If Labor’s leads in current Victorian polling were to be reflected next November, it could be very ugly for the Coalition.

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

– ref. Victorian Labor’s pandemic bill would pass easily if electoral reforms were enacted before 2018 election; Labor way ahead in polls – https://theconversation.com/victorian-labors-pandemic-bill-would-pass-easily-if-electoral-reforms-were-enacted-before-2018-election-labor-way-ahead-in-polls-172241

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Scarlett Howard, Postdoctoral research fellow, Deakin University

We’ve all watched a honeybee fly past us and land on a nearby flower. But how does she know what she’s looking for?

And when she leaves the hive for the first time, how does she even know what a flower looks like?

Our paper, published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, set out to discover whether bees have an innate “flower template” in their minds, which allows them to know exactly what they are looking for even if they’ve never seen a flower before.

Read more:
One, then some: how to count like a bee

A story of partnership

Plants and pollinators need each other to survive and prosper. Many plants require animals to transport pollen between flowers so the plants can reproduce. Meanwhile, pollinators rely on plants for nutrition (such as pollen and nectar) and nesting resources (such as leaves and resin).

As such, flowering plants and pollinators have been in partnership for millions of years. This relationship often results in flowers having evolved certain signals such as colours, shapes and patterns that are more attractive to bees.

At the same time, bees’ reliance on flower resources such as nectar and pollen has led them to be effective learners of flower signals. They must be able to tell which flowers in their environment will provide a reward and which will not. If they didn’t know the difference, they would waste time searching for nectar in the wrong flowers.

Our findings show bees can quickly and effectively learn to discriminate between flowers of slightly different shapes – a bit like how humans can expertly tell faces apart.

The amazing brains of honeybees

Honeybee brains are tiny. They weigh less than a milligram and contain just 960,000 neurons (compared to 86 billion in human brains). But despite this, they demonstrate exceptional learning abilities.

Their learning extends to many cognitively challenging tasks, including maze navigation, size discrimination, counting, quantity discrimination and even simple math!

Read more:
Bees join an elite group of species that understands the concept of zero as a number

So we know bees can learn all sorts of flower-related information, but we wanted to discover how they find flowers on their first foraging trip outside the hive. We also investigated whether experienced foragers developed a bias in their foraging strategies and flower preferences.

To test this, we prompted two groups of bees to discriminate between sets of flower images. One group was raised in a hive inside a greenhouse with no flowers, and had therefore never been exposed to flowers. We put a colour mark on these bees at birth, so we could track them once they emerged from the hive to forage two weeks later.

The second group consisted of experienced foragers which had encountered many flowers in their lives.

We trained both groups to discriminate between images of two flowers found in nature, using a reward of sugar water for choosing the correct option when directed. We also trained both groups to discriminate between the same flowers with the petals separated and randomly scrambled.

How well and how quickly the bees learnt to discriminate between the images of whole flowers, versus how long they took to discriminate between the scrambled petals, would tell us which information they preferred to learn.

Both the flower-naïve and experienced foragers learnt to discriminate between the images of whole flowers better, and more quickly, than the scrambled petals. However, the flower-naïve honeybees appeared to have less bias as they also learnt to discriminate between the scrambled information, while the experienced foragers could not.

The results reveal flower-naïve bees have an innate flower template that aids them with learning new flowers and discriminating between them. At the same time, experienced foragers become biased towards certain flower shapes as they gain foraging experience.

Overall, bees use an innate flower template to first find flowers, and also draw on their past knowledge as they become more experienced.

Innate recognition in other animals

While our findings on honeybees are remarkable, they do tie into similar capabilities in other species.

Different species have evolved brains which tune into important stimuli. For example, humans and other primates can detect, process, recognise and discriminate between the faces of other members of their species. Research has shown even human infants can detect and recognise other people’s faces very well.

Our preference for faces, and ability to recognise them, has probably evolved due to the importance of needing to discriminate between friends, enemies and strangers. This is akin to the bees needing to process images of whole flower shapes better than scrambled petal images – due to the importance of recognising flower shape for survival.

Similarly, social paper wasps evaluate their relationship with hive-mates based on the different facial markings of friends and foes. Just like bees, they do this using a combination of innate mechanisms and lived experience.

Scarlett Howard receives funding from the Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship, and the Fyssen Foundation. She is affiliated with Pint of Science Australia.

Adrian Dyer receives funding from The Australian Research Council.

– ref. Just like how humans recognise faces, bees are born with an innate ability to find and remember flowers – https://theconversation.com/just-like-how-humans-recognise-faces-bees-are-born-with-an-innate-ability-to-find-and-remember-flowers-172222

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thea van de Mortel, Professor, Nursing and Deputy Head (Learning & Teaching), School of Nursing and Midwifery, Griffith University

You can now buy rapid antigen tests in supermarkets and pharmacies to test yourself at home for COVID-19 in about 15 minutes.

You’ll get your results much sooner than standard PCR tests, which most of us will be familiar with.

Here’s how to make the most of these rapid antigen tests, and to increase your chance of a meaningful result.

Read more:
Rapid antigen tests have long been used overseas to detect COVID. Here’s what Australia can learn

Remind me, what’s a rapid antigen test?

A rapid antigen test detects proteins from SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in a sample. You can collect the sample yourself at home using a nasal swab or saliva.

The test most of us will be familiar with, the polymerase chain reaction or PCR test, is different. It detects genetic material from the virus. PCR samples are collected by trained health workers, and are processed in the lab by trained technicians.

Rapid antigen tests can be done anywhere by any reasonably competent person. You can get a result in about 15 minutes, depending on the test, versus hours to days for a PCR result.

However, rapid antigen tests are not as reliable as PCR tests. You are more likely to get false negatives (the test indicates you don’t have COVID-19 when you do), or false positives (the test indicates you have it when you don’t).

However, the accuracy of rapid antigen tests improve if you do them when you have symptoms or within seven days of a potential exposure.

Read more:
What’s the difference between a PCR and antigen COVID-19 test? A molecular biologist explains

Why use one?

Rapid antigen tests are useful if you want to quickly check whether you have COVID-19. For instance, you might have a family gathering coming up, with lots of vulnerable, elderly relatives attending, and want to keep them safe.

You might also use a rapid antigen test if you have COVID-19 symptoms and can’t immediately get a PCR test.

Read more:
Home rapid antigen testing is on its way. But we need to make sure everyone has access

Which test to use?

Rapid antigen tests for sale in Australia need to have been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), and its website lists tests approved for use at home.

Broadly, they fall into two groups. They test:

• nasal secretions, from a nasal swab, or

• saliva, from spitting into a tube or swabbing inside the mouth.

The TGA describes each approved test as having “acceptable sensitivity”, “high sensitivity” or “very high sensitivity”.

Ones with “very high sensitivity” are more likely to detect an actual SARS-CoV-2 infection and use nasal swabs.

Read more:
Goodbye, brain scrapers. COVID-19 tests now use gentler nose swabs

How do you perform the test?

Tests come with instructions (and a QR code linking to a video). You must follow the instructions to the letter to get an accurate result.

Depending on the test type, you will collect a sample of nasal secretions or saliva, which you place into a chemical solution.

You then place that chemical solution containing your sample onto an
indicator device – a bit like a pregnancy test. This shows a positive result via a detectable colour change.

7 tips to get an accurate result

These tips come from analysing instructions on the TGA website about how to use approved rapid antigen tests. Here’s what to consider:

1. check the expiry date. Don’t use a test that has expired

2. some tests need to be at room temperature for 30 minutes before use. So plan ahead

3. if you are using a nasal swab, blow your nose before collecting the sample. If using a saliva test, don’t eat or drink 10 minutes before collecting the sample

4. avoid contaminating the sample. Regardless of which test you use, instructions can ask you to clean a flat surface; wash or sanitise and dry your hands; and lay out the test items. Never, ever touch the business end of the swab (the soft end that goes in your nose) as you will contaminate it

5. follow the instructions on sample collection to the letter. For example, with a nasal swab you will be asked to insert the swab 2cm, rotate the swab five times, and do this in both nostrils. Once you have collected the sample it goes into the chemical solution

6. place a set number of drops of the solution on the indicator device. Don’t add extra “for good luck”

7. read the results at the exact time recommended. For example, the instructions may ask you to read the result no earlier than 15 minutes after adding the solution and no later than 20 minutes. After 20 minutes the result may no longer be accurate.

What do the coloured lines mean?

There are two coloured lines to look for. One is a C (the control). This tells you if the test is working properly. The other is a T (test) or Ag (antigen). And it’s the combination of these that gives the result:

• if the C coloured line fails to show, the test is invalid. The test kit may have expired, or you didn’t take the test correctly

• if the C coloured line shows and the T (or Ag) line does not, your result is negative (you’re unlikely to have COVID-19)

• if both the C and T (or Ag) lines show up, your result is positive (you’re likely to have COVID-19).

What next?

If you get a negative result and don’t have symptoms, congratulations! If you have a negative result but have symptoms, take a PCR test to be sure. Avoid contact with others in the meantime.

If you get a positive result, follow up as soon as possible with a PCR test to confirm and self-isolate in the meantime.

Thea van de Mortel teaches into the Graduate Infection Prevention and Control program at Griffith University.

– ref. Taking your first rapid antigen test? 7 tips for an accurate result – https://theconversation.com/taking-your-first-rapid-antigen-test-7-tips-for-an-accurate-result-171742

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kalervo Gulson, Professor and ARC Future Fellow, Education & Social Work, Education Futures Studio, University of Sydney

Algorithms are becoming commonplace. They can determine employment prospects, financial security and more. The use of algorithms can be controversial – for example, robodebt, as the Australian government’s flawed online welfare compliance system came to be known.

Algorithms are increasingly being used to make decisions that have a lasting impact on our current and future lives.

Some of the greatest impacts of algorithmic decision-making are in education. If you have anything to do with an Australian school or a university, at some stage an algorithm will make a decision that matters for you.

So what sort of decisions might involve algorithms? Some decisions will involve the next question for school students to answer on a test, such as the online provision of NAPLAN. Some algorithms support human decision-making in universities, such as identifying students at risk of failing a subject. Others take the human out of the loop, like some forms of online exam supervision.

Read more:
Unis are using artificial intelligence to keep students sitting exams honest. But this creates its own problems

How do algorithms work?

Despite their pervasive impacts on our lives, it is often difficult to understand how algorithms work, why they have been designed, and why they are used. As algorithms become a key part of decision-making in education – and many other aspects of our lives – people need to know two things:

1. how algorithms work

2. the kinds of trade-offs that are made in decision-making using algorithms.

In research to explore these two issues, we developed an algorithm game using participatory methodologies to involve diverse stakeholders in the research. The process becomes a form of collective experimentation to encourage new perspectives and insights into an issue.

Our algorithm game is based on the UK exam controversy in 2020. During COVID-19 lockdowns, an algorithm was used to determine grades for students wishing to attend university. The algorithm predicted grades for some students that were far lower than expected. In the face of protests, the algorithm was eventually scrapped.

Read more:
Scotland’s exam result crisis: assessment and social justice in a time of COVID-19

Our interdisciplinary team co-designed the UK exam algorithm game over a series of two workshops and multiple meetings this year. Our workshops included students, data scientists, ethicists and social scientists. Such interdisciplinary perspectives are vital to understand the range of social, ethical and technical implications of algorithms in education.

Algorithms make trade-offs, so transparency is needed

The UK example highlights key issues with using algorithms in society, including issues of transparency and bias in data. These issues matter everywhere, including Australia.

We designed the algorithm game to help people develop the tools to have more of a say in shaping the world algorithms are creating. Algorithm “games” invite people to play with and learn about the parameters of how an algorithm operates. Examples include games that show people how algorithms are used in criminal sentencing, or can help to predict fire risk in buildings

There is a growing public awareness that algorithms, especially those used in forms of artificial intelligence, need to be understood as raising issues of fairness. But while everyone may have a vernacular understanding of what is fair or unfair, when algorithms are used numerous trade-offs are involved.

Read more:
From robodebt to racism: what can go wrong when governments let algorithms make the decisions

In our algorithm game, we take people through a series of problems where the solution to a fairness problem simply introduces a new one. For example, the UK algorithm did not work very well for predicting the grades of students in schools where smaller numbers of students took certain subjects. This was unfair for these students.

The solution meant the algorithm was not used for these often very privileged schools. These students then received grades predicted by their teachers. But these grades were mostly higher than the algorithm-generated grades received by students in larger schools, which were more often government comprehensive schools. So this meant the decision was fair for students in small schools, unfair for those in larger schools who had grades allocated by the algorithm.

What we try to show in our game that it is not possible to have a perfect outcome. And that neither humans or algorithms will make a set of choices that are fair for everyone. This means we have to make decisions about which values matter when we use algorithms.

Public must have a say to balance the power of EdTech

While our algorithm game focuses on the use of an algorithm developed by a government, algorithms in education are commonly introduced as part of educational technology. The EdTech industry is expanding rapidly in Australia. Companies are seeking to dominate all stages of education: enrolment, learning design, learning experience and lifelong learning.

Alongside these developments, COVID-19 has accelerated the use of algorithmic decision-making in education and beyond.

Read more:
Artificial intelligence holds great potential for both students and teachers – but only if used wisely

While these innovations open up amazing possibilities, algorithms also bring with them a set of challenges we must face as a society. Examples like the UK exam algorithm expose us to how such algorithms work and the kinds of decisions that have to be made when designing them. We are then forced to answer deep questions of which values we will choose to prioritise and what roadmap for research we take forward.

Our choices will shape our future and the future of generations to come.

The following people were also involved in the research underpinning the algorithm game. From the Gradient Institute for responsible AI, Simon O’Callaghan, Alistair Reid and Tiberio Caetano. And from the Tech for Social Good group, Vincent Zhang.

Kalervo Gulson receives funding from the Australian Research Council that supported this research.

Claire Benn, Kirsty Kitto, Simon Knight, and Teresa Swist 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. Algorithms can decide your marks, your work prospects and your financial security. How do you know they’re fair? – https://theconversation.com/algorithms-can-decide-your-marks-your-work-prospects-and-your-financial-security-how-do-you-know-theyre-fair-171590

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Salman Shooshtarian, Research Fellow, RMIT University

It cost A$49 million to add 12.5 kilometres of extra lanes to Western Australia’s Kwinana Highway, south of Perth’s CBD. That’s not unusual. On average, building a single lane of road costs about about A$5 million per kilometre.

What is unusual about this stretch of extra freeway is not the money but the materials beneath the bitumen: two stabilising layers comprised of 25,000 tonnes of crushed recycled concrete, about 90% of which came from the demolition of Subiaco Oval (once Perth’s premier football ground).

Recycling building and construction materials remains the exception to the rule in Australia. The National Waste Policy agreed to by federal, state and territory governments has a target of 80% resource recovery by 2030. It’s currently about 40%.

Of the 74 million tonnes of waste generated in Australia in 2020, masonry materials comprised about 22.9 million tonnes. Plastics, by comparison, comprised about 2.5 million tonnes. Of the 61.5 million tonnes of “core waste” managed by the waste and resource recovery sector, 44% (27 million tonnes) came from the construction and demolition sector, compared with 20% (12.6 million tonnes) from households and local government activities.

Most of this waste – concrete, brick, steel, timber, asphalt and plasterboard or cement sheeting – could be reused or recycled. It ends up in landfill due to simple economics. It’s cheaper to buy new materials and throw them away rather than reuse and recycle.

Changing this equation and moving to a circular economy, in which materials are reused and recycled rather than discarded in landfill, is a key goal to reduce the impact of building and construction on the environment, including its contribution to climate change.

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

The economics of ‘externalities’

The fact it is more “economic” to throw materials away than reuse them is what economists call a market failure, driven by the problem of “externalities”. That is, the social and environmental costs of producing, consuming and throwing away materials is not reflected in the prices charged. Those costs are instead externalised – borne by others.

In such cases there is a legitimate – and necessary – role for governments to intervene and correct the market failure. For an externality such as carbon emissions (imposing costs on future generations) the market-based solution favoured by most economists is a carbon price.

Read more:
COP26: cities create over 70% of energy-related emissions. Here’s what must change

For construction material waste, governments have a few more policy levers to help create a viable market for more recycling.

Using procurement policies

One way to make recycling more attractive to businesses would be to increase the cost of sending waste materials to landfill. But this would likely have unintended consequences, such as illegal dumping.

The more obvious and effective approach is to help create more demand for recycled materials through government procurement, adopting policies that require suppliers to, for example, use a minimum amount of recycled materials.

With enough demand, recyclers will invest in further waste recovery, reducing the costs. Lower costs in turn create the possibility of greater demand, creating a virtuous circle that leads to a circular economy.

Australia’s federal, state and territory governments all have sustainable procurement policies. The federal Sustainable Procurement Guide states the Australian government “is committed to transforming Australia’s waste into a resource, where most goods and services can be continually used, reused, recycled and reprocessed as part of a circular economy”.

But these policies lack some basic elements.

Three key market-making reforms

Our research suggests three important reforms could make a big difference to waste market operations. This is based on interviewing 27 stakeholders from the private sector and government about how to improve sustainable procurement.

First, government waste policies that set aspirational goals are not supported by procurement policies setting mandatory minimum recycled content targets. All contractors on government-funded construction projects should be required to use a percentage of recycled waste materials.

Second, the nature of salvaging construction materials means quality can vary significantly. Cement recycled from a demolition site, for example, could contain contaminants that reduce its durability.

Read more:
Australia needs construction waste recycling plants — but locals first need to be won over

Governments can help the market through regularly auditing the quality of recycler’s processes, to increase buyer confidence and motivate suppliers to invest in production technologies.

Third, in some states (such as Western Australia) the testing regimes for recycled construction products are more complex than that what applies to raw materials.
More reasonable specifications would reduce compliance costs and thereby the cost of using recycled materials.

Salman Shooshtarian receives funding from Australia Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre

Savindi Caldera receives relevant funding from Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre, Australia.

Tayyab Maqsood receives funding from Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre.

t.ryley@griffith.edu.au receives funding from SBEnrc (Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre) associated with this article.

– ref. How to make roads with recycled waste, and pave the way to a circular economy – https://theconversation.com/how-to-make-roads-with-recycled-waste-and-pave-the-way-to-a-circular-economy-164997

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Josh Roose, Senior Research Fellow, Deakin University

Over the weekend, tens of thousands of people gathered in Melbourne to protest vaccine mandates and the Victorian government’s proposed pandemic bill.

While the latest protests were relatively peaceful, they have followed a week of similar gatherings whose language and symbolism were at times violent. The protesters are a mix of groups, but the movement is riddled with far-right and alt-right extremists who, with their growing reach through social media and in the context of developments in the United States and Europe, pose one of the more significant challenges to Australian democracy in recent memory.

Read more:
‘It’s almost like grooming’: how anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and the far-right came together over COVID

Who are the protesters?

This is not an easy question to answer because it is a complex gathering of groups.
Some are simply responding to what they see as over-reach by the state on its pandemic bill or its vaccine mandates.

However, as we’ve seen with the anti-lockdown protests during the course of the pandemic, this is a movement grounded in anger and resentment. These are people who feel a deep sense of powerlessness and frustration: they may have lost their jobs, been cut off from family and friends, and they may be deeply suspicious of, if not outright hostile to, the vaccines. To them, these protests might be empowering at a time when they feel completely disempowered and forgotten.

But there is no doubt that, at the heart of the protests – their ideological roots, so to speak – are extremism and conspiracy theories. An analysis of their online activity and forums, as well as the imagery and language of the protests themselves, offers plenty of evidence of this.

Central to it is a deep distrust of science, a strong belief in conspiracies, including the notion of “big pharma” driving public policy, and a new world order of evil “liberal elites” who abuse children and rule over global affairs.
QAnon is probably the best-known group associated with that thinking. There is also an embedded spiritual framing, patriotism and most alarmingly, anti-semitism that intersects with these far-right narratives.

One of the most important features of all this is the nuance with which it is carried out. It is a movement reliant on symbolism, hand signals, and single-word slogans such as “qui?” (French for “who?”) to get the message across.

This is all cloaked in patriotic symbology, with the Australian flag highly visible at the marches and patriotic folk songs sung over loudspeakers.

There are certainly far-right extremists at the Melbourne rallies. So why Melbourne? It may be, to a large extent, because Victoria in general, and Melbourne in particular, have borne the harshest of the lockdowns during the two years of the pandemic. But these groups are around the country, and are watching what is happening in Victoria in the hope of feeding off it.

What do they want?

Again, this is hard to know, exactly, and there will be diverse views within the protest groups. Some want simple actions: the end of vaccine mandates or the destruction of the pandemic bill. These are, of course, legitimate democratic aims whether others agree with them or not. For some, the protest is the point, offering them a sense of solidarity and belonging.

However for others, including the numerous members of far right groups pictured at the protests, steering the protests toward more extreme language, actions and recruiting from among those attending are key aims. They are often supported by so-called “citizen journalists” who are themselves closely aligned with far-right ideologies.

Direct from the US

These protests are deeply connected to what is happening in the US, the roots of which stretch back to far-right groups gaining momentum in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007-08. They were then further encouraged by the Trump campaign and presidency. Through social media, their ideas and symbolism have been transported to Australia.

Even a cursory glance at encrypted messaging apps reveals many of those involved in planning and coordinating the Melbourne protests draw direct inspiration from events in the United States, including the January 6 Capitol insurrection.

Politicians and commentators have expressed outrage at the parading of a noose at the Victorian parliament last week, yet this was drawn directly from events on January 6, when protesters threatened to hang the US vice-president as a traitor.

Violent language at the Victorian protests, such as threats to kill Premier Dan Andrews, borrow heavily from far-right American literature and rhetoric, which suggests “traitors” will soon meet their end.

Read more:
Why QAnon is attracting so many followers in Australia — and how it can be countered

What might happen now?

It’s hard to say whether this movement is growing: it’s certainly gaining momentum through these protests, and gaining a potential base of recruitment.

But the question is how many people at these protests would still go if they knew who they were marching alongside?

Certainly, counter-terrorism police will be looking closely at all this activity, especially threats of violence against politicians and others. They will also be interested in attempts by far-right groups to recruit new members.

We now find ourselves in a highly polarised political landscape driven by two years of severe lockdown, and the politicisation of the pandemic. On the one hand, government disaster management approaches need to better account for the ways that governance in a time of crisis plays into the hands of violent extremists.

There are also important political solutions. As unlikely as it seems at this point, what we really need is a bipartisan political approach that addresses legitimate concerns while shutting down extremist and violent activity. The two have become so entangled, it is by no means an easy task, but it is an essential one.

The protests should have a sobering effect on leaders of good sense who care about democracy. As we head into a federal election year in 2022, we are seeing the pre-conditions for fringe politicians with extremist views to be elected and hold the balance of power in parliament, by doing or saying whatever it takes to hold that power.

In that respect, if developments in the United States are any measure, Australian democracy is facing one of the greatest threats it has ever known. Those of good faith need to ensure they reaffirm the fundamental values of citizenship, democracy and peace, while allowing open debate on issues of contention and concern.

Josh Roose receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DP200102013) for a Discovery Project titled: ‘Far Right in Australia: Intellectuals, Masculinity and Citizenship’. Josh is a member of the Addressing Violent Extremism and Radicalisation to Terrorism Research Network (AVERT) Executive. He is a member of the Australian Labor Party.

– ref. Why the Victorian protests should concern us all – https://theconversation.com/why-the-victorian-protests-should-concern-us-all-172140

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Surinder S. Jodhka, Professor of Sociology, School of Social Sciences., Jawaharlal Nehru University

Days short of the first anniversary of the farmers’ protests, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a televised address the government had decided to repeal the three new farm laws. The prime minister also said a committee would be formed to address the farmers concerns. The committee would be made up of farmers’ representatives and agriculture policy experts.

The announcement was made on the day of an important Sikh festival that marks the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev, the first of the ten Sikh gurus. Farm leaders welcomed the move, but said the protests won’t end immediately. They say they will wait until the laws are formally repealed in the Indian parliament, and all their demands are met.

Read more:
Why Indian farmers are so angry about the Modi government’s agricultural reforms

Remind me again, what were the farmers protesting?

Farmers in India have been protesting three new laws they fear will fundamentally alter their ways of farming.

The laws, passed by the Indian parliament in September 2020, would open the agricultural sector to active commercial engagement by big corporates. Corporates could purchase, store, and even decide on what crops would be produced. Hence, farmers fear the new laws will trap them into contract farming arrangements with corporate buyers.

Once the laws were passed in September 2020, farmers across India began to protest. In November 2020, a large contingent arrived at the borders of the national capital demanding a complete withdrawal of these laws and introduction of concrete provisions for secure incomes from agriculture through a state-supported system of price security.

The protestors were not allowed to enter the city. So they sat, occupying some of the main national highways connecting the capital city to the rest of the country.

Two of these sites, at the Singhu and Tikri borders, are spread over tens of kilometres along the highway, with nearly 5,000-10,000 farmers staying at each site at any time.

They have braved the vagaries of weather, a raging COVID-19 pandemic, and a hostile bureaucratic machinery and police force.

Nearly 700 among them have died in the course of these protests. In October, four farmers were killed when a group of protestors was hit by a convoy of vehicles in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Four farmers and a local journalist were killed, and three others died in the mayhem that followed. The prime accused in the case is the son of a junior minister in the federal government.

Read more:
Women take lead roles in India’s farmers’ protest

India’s agriculture crisis, and the genesis of farmer unrest

Two-thirds of India continues to live in rural areas. A large proportion remains dependent on agriculture, partially or solely. However, household incomes from agriculture have been steadily declining.

The average size of land holdings have been shrinking over the years, with nearly 80% of them now less than two hectares. This growing stress has been visible in the form of steadily rising cases of farmers’ suicides, mostly because of their growing indebtedness.

The farmers’ desperation manifested itself in an unprecedented set of mobilisations, as we’ve witnessed in the last year.

Read more:
India’s farmers are right to protest against agricultural reforms

How a hostile government was brought to its knees

The federal government had been largely hostile towards the protestors. But despite this, the protests have had significant political impact, especially in the states of Punjab and Haryana.

In Punjab, it’s now almost impossible for politicians of the federal-ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to step out of their homes to address political meetings or organise events. In Haryana, too, though the BJP is also in power at the state level, the situation is similar.

The chief minister of the state has been compelled to call off public meetings because protesting farmers won’t allow his helicopter to land at the site of the meeting.

The federal government had perhaps expected that the farmers would run out of steam. Since January 2021, farmers had had no formal negotiations with the government. But the movement had been gaining momentum. Besides the sit-ins, they have been holding protest meetings, maha-panchayats, across the country, attracting massive support.

Read more:
India farmers’ protests: internet shutdown highlights Modi’s record of stifling digital dissent

They have been particularly effective in the northern states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, as well as others.

Two of these are politically significant states – Uttar Pradesh and Punjab – that are set to go to the polls early next year. Given the damage these protests could have on the ruling party in the forthcoming elections the federal government appears to have decided to repeal the laws.

The farmers’ determination has been rewarded. Besides putting agriculture back on the national agenda, showing their strength as a political block, they have also managed to build new solidarities across castes and communities.

For the first time, women’s participation in agriculture, and in protest movements has been acknowledged.

This has perhaps been the longest protest movement of its kind in the recent history of India, perhaps, even globally. The protests, and its outcome, have become a source of inspiration for a wide range of political actors that wish to see democracy survive and thrive in India.

Their perseverance and grit has shown it is possible to mobilise and sustain political opposition against a powerful establishment.

Surinder S. Jodhka 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. 1 year and 700 lives lost, but Indian protestors have succeeded in repealing anti-farming laws – https://theconversation.com/1-year-and-700-lives-lost-but-indian-protestors-have-succeeded-in-repealing-anti-farming-laws-172230

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Surinder S. Jodhka, Professor of Sociology, School of Social Sciences., Jawaharlal Nehru University

Days short of the first anniversary of the farmers’ protests, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a televised address the government had decided to repeal the three new farm laws. The prime minister also said a committee would be formed to address the farmers concerns. The committee would be made up of farmers’ representatives and agriculture policy experts.

The announcement was made on the day of an important Sikh festival that marks the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev, the first of the ten Sikh gurus. Farm leaders welcomed the move, but said the protests won’t end immediately. They say they will wait until the laws are formally repealed in the Indian parliament, and all their demands are met.

Read more:
Why Indian farmers are so angry about the Modi government’s agricultural reforms

Remind me again, what were the farmers protesting?

Farmers in India have been protesting three new laws they fear will fundamentally alter their ways of farming.

The laws, passed by the Indian parliament in September 2020, would open the agricultural sector to active commercial engagement by big corporates. Corporates could purchase, store, and even decide on what crops would be produced. Hence, farmers fear the new laws will trap them into contract farming arrangements with corporate buyers.

Once the laws were passed in September 2020, farmers across India began to protest. In November 2020, a large contingent arrived at the borders of the national capital demanding a complete withdrawal of these laws and introduction of concrete provisions for secure incomes from agriculture through a state-supported system of price security.

The protestors were not allowed to enter the city. So they sat, occupying some of the main national highways connecting the capital city to the rest of the country.

Two of these sites, at the Singhu and Tikri borders, are spread over tens of kilometres along the highway, with nearly 5,000-10,000 farmers staying at each site at any time.

They have braved the vagaries of weather, a raging COVID-19 pandemic, and a hostile bureaucratic machinery and police force.

Nearly 700 among them have died in the course of these protests. In October, four farmers were killed when a group of protestors was hit by a convoy of vehicles in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Four farmers and a local journalist were killed, and three others died in the mayhem that followed. The prime accused in the case is the son of a junior minister in the federal government.

Read more:
Women take lead roles in India’s farmers’ protest

India’s agriculture crisis, and the genesis of farmer unrest

Two-thirds of India continues to live in rural areas. A large proportion remains dependent on agriculture, partially or solely. However, household incomes from agriculture have been steadily declining.

The average size of land holdings have been shrinking over the years, with nearly 80% of them now less than two hectares. This growing stress has been visible in the form of steadily rising cases of farmers’ suicides, mostly because of their growing indebtedness.

The farmers’ desperation manifested itself in an unprecedented set of mobilisations, as we’ve witnessed in the last year.

Read more:
India’s farmers are right to protest against agricultural reforms

How a hostile government was brought to its knees

The federal government had been largely hostile towards the protestors. But despite this, the protests have had significant political impact, especially in the states of Punjab and Haryana.

In Punjab, it’s now almost impossible for politicians of the federal-ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to step out of their homes to address political meetings or organise events. In Haryana, too, though the BJP is also in power at the state level, the situation is similar.

The chief minister of the state has been compelled to call off public meetings because protesting farmers won’t allow his helicopter to land at the site of the meeting.

The federal government had perhaps expected that the farmers would run out of steam. Since January 2021, farmers had had no formal negotiations with the government. But the movement had been gaining momentum. Besides the sit-ins, they have been holding protest meetings, maha-panchayats, across the country, attracting massive support.

Read more:
India farmers’ protests: internet shutdown highlights Modi’s record of stifling digital dissent

They have been particularly effective in the northern states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, as well as others.

Two of these are politically significant states – Uttar Pradesh and Punjab – that are set to go to the polls early next year. Given the damage these protests could have on the ruling party in the forthcoming elections the federal government appears to have decided to repeal the laws.

The farmers’ determination has been rewarded. Besides putting agriculture back on the national agenda, showing their strength as a political block, they have also managed to build new solidarities across castes and communities.

For the first time, women’s participation in agriculture, and in protest movements has been acknowledged.

This has perhaps been the longest protest movement of its kind in the recent history of India, perhaps, even globally. The protests, and its outcome, have become a source of inspiration for a wide range of political actors that wish to see democracy survive and thrive in India.

Their perseverance and grit has shown it is possible to mobilise and sustain political opposition against a powerful establishment.

Surinder S. Jodhka 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. 1 year and 700 lives lost, but the Indian protestors have succeeded in repealing anti-farming laws – https://theconversation.com/1-year-and-700-lives-lost-but-the-indian-protestors-have-succeeded-in-repealing-anti-farming-laws-172230

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dana M Bergstrom, Principal Research Scientist, University of Wollongong

We tend to think Antarctica is isolated and far away – biologically speaking, this is true. But the continent is busier than you probably imagine, with many national programs and tourist operators crisscrossing the globe to get there.

And each vessel, each cargo item, and each person could be harbouring non-native species, hitchhiking their way south. This threat to Antarctica’s fragile ecosystem is what our new evaluation, released today, grapples with.

We mapped the last five years of planes and ships visiting the continent, illuminating for the first time the extent of travel across the hemispheres and the potential source locations for non-native species, as the map below shows. We found that, luckily, while some have breached Antarctica, they generally have yet to get a stranglehold, leaving the continent still relatively pristine.

But Antarctica is getting busier, with new research stations, rebuilding and more tourism activities planned. Our challenge is to keep it pristine under this growing human activity and climate change threat.

Life evolved in isolation

Biodiversity-wise, much of the planet is mixed up. The scientific term is homogenisation, where species, such as weeds, pests and diseases, from one place are transported elsewhere and establish. This means they begin to reproduce and influence the ecosystem, often to the detriment of the locals.

Most life in Antarctica is jammed onto tiny coastal ice-free fringes, and this is where most research stations, ships and people are.

Read more:
Do assessments of fish stock sustainability work for consumers?

This includes unique animals (think Adélie penguins, Weddell seals and snow petrels), mosses and lichens that harbour tiny invertebrates (such as mites, waterbears and springtails), and an array of microbes such as cyanobacteria. The adjacent coast and ocean team with life, too.

The more we learn about them, the more outstanding life at the end of the planetary spectrum becomes. Just this week, new scientific discoveries identified that some Antarctic bacteria live on air, and make their own water using hydrogen as fuel.

When the Southern Ocean was formed some 30 million years ago, natural barriers were created with the rest of the world. This includes the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the strongest ocean current on the planet, and its associated strong westerly surface winds, icy air and ocean temperatures.

This means life in Antarctica evolved in isolation, with flora and fauna that commonly exist nowhere else and can cope with frigid conditions. But the simplicity of Antarctica’s food webs can often mean there are gaps in the ecosystem that other species from around the world can fill.

Read more:
Explainer: how the Antarctic Circumpolar Current helps keep Antarctica frozen

In May 2014, for example, routine biosecurity surveillance detected non-native springtails (tiny insect-like invertebrates) in a hydroponic facility at an Australian Antarctic station.

This station, an ice-free oasis, previously lacked these interlopers, and they had the potential to alter the local fragile ecosystem permanently. Thankfully, a rapid and effective response successfully eradicated them.

Pressures from climate change are exacerbating the challenges of human activity on Antarctica, as climate change is bringing milder conditions to these wildlife-rich areas, both on land and sea.

As glaciers melt, new areas are exposed, which allows non-Antarctic species greater opportunity to establish and possibly outcompete locals for resources, such as nutrients and precious, ice-free space.

So far, we’ve been lucky

Our past research focused on non-native propagules – things that propagate like microbes, viruses, seeds, spores, insects and pregnant rats – and how they entrain themselves into Antarctica.

They can be easily caught on people’s clothing and equipment, in fresh food, cargo and machinery. In fact, research from the last decade found that visitors who hadn’t cleaned their clothing and equipment carried on average nine seeds each.

But few non-native species have established in Antarctica, despite their best efforts.

To date, only 11 non-native invertebrate species – including springtails, mites, a midge and an earthworm – have established across a range of locations in the warmer parts of Antarctica, including Signy Island and the Antarctic Peninsula. In the marine realm, some non-native species have been seen but it’s thought none have survived and established.

Microbes are another matter. Each visitor to Antarctica carries millions of microbial passengers, and many of these microbes are left behind. Around most research stations, human gut microbes from sewage have mingled with native microbes, including exchanging antibiotic resistance genes.

Read more:
COVID has reached Antarctica. Scientists are extremely concerned for its wildlife

Last year, for example, a rare harmful bacteria, pathogenic to both humans and birds, was detected in guano (poo) from both Adélie and gentoo penguin colonies at sites with high rates of human visitors. COVID-19 also made its way to Antarctica last December.

Both these cases risk so-called “reverse zoonosis”, where humans spread disease to local wildlife.

What do we do about it?

Three factors have helped maintain Antarctica’s near-pristine status: the physical isolation, cold conditions and co-operation between nations through the Antarctic Treaty. The Treaty is underpinned by the Environmental Protocol, which aims to prevent and respond to threats and pressures to the continent.

There is unanimous commitment from Antarctic Treaty nations towards preventing the establishment of non-native species. This includes adopting a science-based, non-native species manual, which provides guidance on how to prevent, monitor, and respond to introductions of non-native species.

Read more:
‘Existential threat to our survival’: see the 19 Australian ecosystems already collapsing

But time is of the essence. We must better prepare for the inevitable arrival of more non-native species to prevent them from establishing, as we continue to break the barriers protecting Antarctica. One approach is to tailor the newly developed 3As approach to environmental management: Awareness of values, Anticipation of the pressures, Action to stem the pressures.

This means ramping up monitoring, taking note of predictions of what non-native species could sneak through biosecurity and establish under new conditions, and putting in place pre-determined response plans to act quickly when they do.

Dana Bergstrom works for the Australian Antarctic Division and is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Wollongong. Her research and fieldwork in Antarctica was supported by the Australian Antarctic Division.

Shavawn Donoghue receives funding from Australian Antarctic Program.

– ref. Invasive species are threatening Antarctica’s fragile ecosystems as human activity grows and the world warms – https://theconversation.com/invasive-species-are-threatening-antarcticas-fragile-ecosystems-as-human-activity-grows-and-the-world-warms-172058

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

University of Canberra Professional Fellow Michelle Grattan and University of Canberra Associate Professor Caroline Fisher discuss the week in politics.

This week they discuss Liberal Andrew Bragg’s move to open a Senate investigation into the ABC’s complaints process, while there is already an ABC independent inquiry in progress. Bragg has faced a backlash from ABC chair Ita Buttrose, who has accused the government of interference and attempting to intimidate the broadcaster.

They also canvass recently announced policies from both major parties. The government has released its policy for developing and expanding critical technologies, while Labor has promised $2.4 billion to fix the NBN network.

The government was expected to produce its federal integrity commission legislation in parliament’s final sitting fortnight of 2021, which starts next week. But whether that will happen is now unclear. The government is giving priority to its religious discrimination bill.

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. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the Senate’s ABC inquiry, policy announcements, and federal integrity commission – https://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-the-senates-abc-inquiry-policy-announcements-and-federal-integrity-commission-172223

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rajib Dasgupta, Chairperson, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, Jawaharlal Nehru University

COVID continues to slow down in India. The festival season, which includes Durga Puja and Diwali where large groups of Indians gather, did not lead to a surge in cases. Epidemiological modellers had earlier predicted a third wave peaking during October and November.

Daily new cases have dropped from a peak of more than 400,000 per day in May 2021 to currently below 10,000 cases a day.

And while antibody tests might give us a clue as to why, we can’t get complacent about vaccination rates.

Read more:
Why couldn’t India’s health system cope during the second wave? Years of bad health policies

Signals from recent antibody tests

In India, “serosurveys” have been regularly conducted since the pandemic began. This is where blood is tested from large numbers of people to check for the presence of COVID antibodies – the things our bodies make after being infected with COVID or receiving a COVID vaccine.

The fourth national survey in July reported 67.6% of people across India had COVID antibodies present, providing them with a level of immunity against the virus. At that time 24.8% of people were immunised with a single dose of vaccine and 13% were fully vaccinated. This means a large proportion of those with antibodies had actually been infected with COVID.

Delhi reported 97% of people were positive for antibodies in October, including 80% of children. Some 95.3% of those immunised with the Indian version of the Astrazeneca vaccine Covishield had developed antibodies, as did 93% of those who received India’s own vaccine Covaxin.

Read more:
After early success, India’s daily COVID infections have surpassed the US and Brazil. Why?

The state of Haryana’s serosurvey in October found antibodies in 76.3% of adults, upwards of 70% among children, and negligible difference between urban and rural populations.

Kerala had the lowest sero-prevalence of 44.4% in the fourth national serosurvey in July, but in October it had risen to 82.6% among the general population and 85.3% among residents of urban slums.

What does this mean for a “third wave” in India?

A third wave in India is an unlikely scenario with these high levels of antibodies, and vaccination levels continuing to rise.

It’s now recognised those who becoming naturally infected with COVID and recover before vaccination develop better immunity than those who only have antibodies from vaccination. This is referred to as “hybrid immunity” – those with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection mount unusually potent immune responses to the COVID vaccines.

The Centers for Disease Control in the US notes that both the fully vaccinated individuals and previously infected groups have a low risk of subsequent infection for at least 6 months.

Read more:
India’s vaccine rollout is ignoring the many inequities in its society

Results of the most recent national serosurvey in India reflect the seroprevalence during the third week of June 2021; the Delta-led second wave had bottomed out at that time. Though about 30% of the population remained susceptible, subsequent serosurveys and an absence of any post-festival surge confirm continuing high levels of protection.

“Patchwork vaccination” areas, where there are pockets of low coverage of vaccination among areas with high levels of coverage, run the risk of small outbreaks, but are unlikely to be large enough to be of any major epidemiological concern.

With high seropositivity among adults, many of the new cases can now be expected among children, particularly with the reopening of educational institutions. But high levels of immunisation among teachers (upwards of 90%) and the emerging evidence that reopening schools has not been associated with significant increases in community transmission, are reassuring.

The WHO’s chief scientist said in late August that India seems to be “entering some stage of endemicity”. Endemic refers to the constant presence or usual prevalence of a disease in a population within a geographic area, where disease spread and rates are predictable.

Could a new variant, such as the Delta Plus subvariant first detected in India in April 2021 threaten the current relative stability? While it has been said it might be about 10–15% more transmissible than the Delta variant, the evidence from Europe suggests it has not yet been able to establish any dominance over Delta.

Is vaccination on track?

Of India’s 1.4 billion people, 26.9% are fully vaccinated and 54.9% have received at least one dose so far. But 35 million fewer women have been vaccinated compared to men and independent analyses show tribal and rural districts continue to lag.

Read more:
Charging Indians for COVID vaccines is bad, letting vaccine producers charge what they like is unconscionable

There are two current targets: achieving 90% coverage of the first dose by the end of November and timely administration of the second dose. While the first is likely to be achieved, there are widespread reports of complacency regarding the second dose. A campaign is underway to encourage people to complete the schedule.

Delivering the billion plus doses has convincingly demonstrated vaccine confidence. But convincing people to take a vaccine when for many it seems like the risk has passed is a difficult task. Prior infection-induced immunity protects against reinfection but this acquired immunity wanes over time. Hence the recommendation for COVID vaccination for all eligible persons, including those who have been previously infected.

Districts with relatively low vaccine coverage require greater outreach efforts to reduce prevailing inequities. India’s immunisation program has demonstrated its strengths in polio eradication and measles-rubella elimination campaigns. We need to borrow some of those techniques to ensure all Indians are protected against COVID.

Rajib Dasgupta is currently the co-Investigator of two projects funded by the UK Research and Innovation Global Challenges Research Fund and another project funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

– ref. Why are COVID cases in India decreasing, despite the low double vaccination rate? – https://theconversation.com/why-are-covid-cases-in-india-decreasing-despite-the-low-double-vaccination-rate-171736

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Baron, Lecturer, Charles Sturt University

For many of us it feels like there’s no going back – at least not full-time. We’ve had working from home foisted upon us. We’ve worked through it. We don’t want to give it all up.

Yes, there are employers who want everyone back into the office. Google, for example, plans to end its global voluntary work-from-home policy on January 10. But other employers are happy to let staff continue to work remotely. Australian software company Atlassian, for one, is insisting only that its employees come into the workplace four times a year.

Read more:
How many days a week in the office are enough? You shouldn’t need to ask

Studies and surveys are consistently clear: most of us don’t believe our productivity has been harmed, and those who do are offset by those who think they are more productive. Crucially, many managers feel the same way.

The real sticking point in working from home is not the “work” part. It’s the loss of the fun parts of a workplace – the informal networking and socialising that’s good for the individual as well as the group.

Experiments in online socialising

Managers have had their reasons for being averse to remote working. Quite apart from worries about individual productivity, many studies have shown how proximity promotes communication. For example, when Harvard organisational researchers Ethan Bernstein and Ben Waber examined a major US retailer occupying a campus with more than a dozen buildings, they found just 10% of all communications took place between employees whose desks were more than 500 metres apart.

Over the past 18 months there have been many experiments with using technology to replicate this communication. I’ve been part of one as a university academic, moving all my teaching online, and another as an organisational consultant, helping a small enterprise make the shift to remote operations.

My client, a small private TAFE college, has 11 permanent staff as well as casuals. In May 2020 the college asked me to help it move all business processes – teaching, office communications, support services and more – online. This had to be done on a shoestring given the financial impact of the pandemic. In this work we agreed it was fundamental to address the need for socialising.

This presented some challenges, particularly for a small organisation.

The value of ‘casual collisions’

Work-based socialising occurs in two broad ways.

First are “organised” social activities, such as sharing a morning tea, getting lunch, or having drinks on Friday night. To some extent these aspects are the easiest to simulate, using conferencing apps. For my client, this included activities such as virtual drinks and online games.

More difficult to replicate are what organisational expert Jessica Methot and her fellow researchers call “casual collisions”. As they wrote in the Harvard Business Review in March:

The tidbits we learn about our colleagues – for instance, that they play guitar or love dogs – build rapport and deepen trust. Research even suggests that chance encounters and spontaneous conversations with our coworkers can spark collaboration, improving our creativity, innovation, and performance.

One of the best-known examples of designing a workplace for chance encounters is the headquarters of Pixar Animation Studios, which Steve Jobs oversaw during his exile from Apple. The building has a central atrium with bathrooms only on the ground floor, the idea being to create more opportunities for people to run into one another.

Yet the research by Methot and her colleagues also shows small talk can be both uplifting and distracting. This makes attempts to use software to replicate this informal, unstructured socialising even trickier.

Building an online networking space

In seeking to provide staff with an online substitute for casual collisions and chats in the lunch room, we chose an “enterprise social networking service” called Yammer. There are alternatives, each with their own strengths, but Yammer has the advantage of functionality similar to Facebook. The idea was to provide staff with an intuitive tool to communicate, and then leave it to them to use it as they liked.

It’s a work in progress. We’ve learnt some things along the way. One complaint was we didn’t provide enough initial training on how to use Yammer’s main options, which meant some staff took time to appreciate its use.

Read more:
After a year of Zoom meetings, we’ll need to rebuild trust through eye contact

But most feedback has been positive. Despite the unplanned (and therefore chaotic) nature of the move, surveys indicate most staff think communication has actually improved. We appear to have avoided distance destroying dialogue and breeding distrust, as reported in other workplaces.

Can technology ever fully replace the serendipitous exchanges of a physical workplace? I doubt it. But done well it may provide enough of a facsimile to ensure there’s no downside to staff continuing to work a few days a week from home.

Michael Baron 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. Chance encounters in the workplace help build trust – so how do you replicate that online? – https://theconversation.com/chance-encounters-in-the-workplace-help-build-trust-so-how-do-you-replicate-that-online-169927

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Sali Bache, Strategic Advisor in International Policy and Oceans , ClimateWorks Australia

Climate change is commonly discussed as though it’s a uniquely atmospheric phenomena. But the crisis is deeply entwined with the ocean, and this has largely been neglected in international climate talks.

The latest international climate negotiations made some progress by, for the first time, anchoring oceans permanently into the multilateral climate change regime. But the Glasgow Climate Pact is still leagues from where it needs to be to adequately reflect the importance of oceans to our climate system.

Most countries have targets for land-based emissions – but there are no such targets for oceans. Yet the ocean plays a vital role in helping balance the conditions humans and most other species need to survive, while also offering a substantial part of the solution to stop the planet warming over the crucial limit of 1.5℃ this century.

So how can oceans help us tackle the climate crisis? And what progress has been made in international negotiations?

The ocean’s incredible potential

Since industrialisation, the ocean has absorbed 93% of human-generated heat and one-third of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂). The consequences of this are profound, including the thermal expansion of water (the key cause of sea level rise), ocean acidification, deoxygenation (oxygen loss), and forcing marine life to redistribute to other places.

Alarmingly, this may one day lead the ocean to reverse its role as a carbon sink and release CO₂ back into the atmosphere, as its absorption ability declines.

Equally important is ocean-based climate mitigation, which could provide more than 20% of the emissions reductions needed for the 1.5℃ goal.

Crucially, we must see changes to maritime industries. The shipping industry alone has a similar carbon footprint to Germany – if shipping were a country it would be the world’s sixth-largest emitter. Although high on the International Maritime Organisation’s agenda, the decarbonisation of shipping still lacks adequate targets or processes.

Oceans can also provide climate-safe, sustainable food choices. Current food systems, such as emissions-intensive agriculture, fishing, and processed foods are responsible for one-third of global emissions. Considerable environmental (and health) benefits can be gained by shifting our diets to sustainable “blue foods”.

Read more:
To reach net zero, we must decarbonise shipping. But two big problems are getting in the way

These include seafoods sourced from fisheries with sustainable management practices, such as avoiding overfishing and reducing carbon emissions. Markets and technologies should also be geared towards the large-scale production and consumption of aquatic plants such as seagrasses.

There’s also a wealth of opportunity in “blue carbon” – capturing CO₂ in the atmosphere by conserving and restoring marine ecosystems such as mangroves, seagrasses and salt marshes. However, the success of nature-based solutions depends on a healthy ocean ecosystem. For example, there are emerging concerns around the impact of plastic pollution on plankton’s ability to absorb CO₂.

But perhaps the greatest impact would come from adopting offshore renewable energy. This has the potential to offer one-tenth of the emissions reductions we need to reach the 1.5℃ goal. The International Energy Agency has estimated offshore wind could power the world 18 times over its current consumption rate.

Climate talks are making slow progress

For more than a decade, the inclusion of oceans in climate talks has been piecemeal and inconsistent. Where they have been part of negotiations, including at COP26, talk has focused on the potential for coastal areas to adapt to climate change impacts such as sea-level rise, as first raised in international fora in 1989 by small island states.

The final COP26 agreement, known as the Glasgow Climate Pact, made slight progress.

The pact recognised the importance of ensuring the ocean ecosystem’s integrity. It established the “the Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue” as an annual process to strengthen ocean-based action. And it invited UNFCCC bodies to consider how to “integrate and strengthen ocean-based action into existing mandates and workplans” and report back.

While these are positive measures, at this stage they don’t require action by parties. Therefore, they’re only a theoretical inclusion, not action-oriented.

We still lack national targets and clear, mandatory international requirements for countries to consider sinks, sources and activities beyond the shoreline in their climate planning and reporting.

Where COP26 did progress was its focus on whether ocean impacts and mitigation will finally be brought into the mainstream climate agenda. For the first time in five years, a new “Because the Ocean” declaration was released, which calls for the systematic inclusion of the oceans in the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement process.

What do we do now?

What’s now needed is a list of mandated requirements that ensure countries report on and take responsibility for climate impacts within their maritime territories.

But as COP26 president Alok Sharma said of the summit as a whole, it was a “fragile win”. We still lack any reference to consistency with existing mechanisms, such as the law of the sea convention or how funding will be allocated specifically to oceans.

As such, the actual impact of COP26 on the inclusion of oceans in climate action remains uncertain. It will depend on how the UNFCCC bodies respond to these directives, and their success in extending obligations to state parties.

Responding to the climate crisis means we need to stop pretending the ocean and atmosphere are separate. We must start including ocean action as a routine part of climate action.

Read more:
After COP26, the hard work begins on making climate promises real: 5 things to watch in 2022

This story is part of The Conversation’s coverage on COP26, the Glasgow climate conference, by experts from around the world.

Amid a rising tide of climate news and stories, The Conversation is here to clear the air and make sure you get information you can trust. More.

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

– ref. The ocean is essential to tackling climate change. So why has it been neglected in global climate talks? – https://theconversation.com/the-ocean-is-essential-to-tackling-climate-change-so-why-has-it-been-neglected-in-global-climate-talks-171309

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ryan Storr, Research fellow, Swinburne University of Technology

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) this week released a much anticipated policy document aimed at making the Olympics more inclusive for transgender athletes and athletes with sex variations.

The new framework builds on more than two years of consultation with diverse athletes, advocates, and stakeholders.

The devil will be in the detail and implementation, of course. But this fresh approach, which places human rights at the centre, could herald a new era of gender-inclusive sports participation and governance.

Read more:
World Rugby’s proposed ban on trans athletes is wrong. History shows inclusion is possible

Why this new framework – and why now?

One of the most prominent gender equity and human rights issues of recent years has been the inclusion of gender-minoritised people – those whose bodies and/or gender expression and identity do not neatly align with normative notions of the female/male binary.

This issue affects sport globally from grassroots to elite levels. Stakeholders have long called for change.

We work with sports organisations and athletes grappling with the question of inclusion in women’s sport.

Our own research has highlighted that many sports organisations develop policies with little to no knowledge of the complexity of the issue – and often without engaging the athletes affected.

The new IOC framework follows a long and much-critiqued history of efforts to define the boundaries of the female athlete category, dating back to the “nude parades” of the 1960s.

In the past, the goal has been to find a “biological basis of womanhood” and relied on incomplete and controversial scientific evidence.

Today, however, there is wider recognition of the fact science alone cannot provide a straightforward answer to such as socially and biologically complex question.

An alternative approach, reflected in the IOC’s new framework, is to build policy around the concept of human rights.

What do the new guidelines say?

The new framework recognise human rights as a fundamental responsibility of sports governing bodies.

It explicitly takes the approach athletes shouldn’t be excluded solely on the basis of their transgender identity or sex variations. It aims to ensure everyone can practice sport safely and free from harassment, irrespective of their gender or sex-linked traits.

Importantly, the framework attempts to move sports governing bodies away from relying on testosterone as a one-size-fits-all measure of eligibility.

In its place, it emphasises ten key principles to guide the policy development process:

• prevention of harm

• non-discrimination

• fairness

• no presumption of advantage

• evidence-based approaches to regulation

• the primacy of health and bodily autonomy

• a stakeholder-centered approach to rule development

• the right to privacy

• periodic review of eligibility regulations.

The relationship between testosterone and performance is so complex, sports governing bodies cannot realistically expect to rely on testosterone measures when defining eligibility.

There is just as much diversity among the bodies and performances of trans women and women with sex variations as we see among cisgender and normatively-bodied women athletes.

The IOC’s spokespeople were pragmatic: let’s take one step at a time, have faith in the ten principles, and see where they take us.

In this way, the new framework (and its underlying philosophy) moves us well beyond contentious testosterone thresholds introduced in 2015 and the 2003 Stockholm consensus, which required athletes to have affirmation surgeries and “anatomical changes”.

In fact, the IOC now recognises the “severe harm” and systemic discrimination caused by such eligibility criteria and policies.

This includes the disproportionate burdens and harms that have been wrought upon women of colour from Global South nations in sports like track and field.

The question now is: how will other sports governing bodies, most notably the International Federations (IFs) that govern each Olympic sport, be brought on side?

The IOC now calls for IFs to take

a principled approach to develop their criteria that are applicable to their sport.

An important and welcome move

This framework represents a step forward for gender-inclusive sport but there’s more work ahead. It doesn’t mention non-binary athletes at all, meaning it still frames elite sports participation within a strict gender binary.

It’s promising to see a shift away from a paradigm focused on particular scientific and medical approaches regulating exclusion of certain groups. The move toward a contemporary vision of gender-inclusive sport is promising.

This new approach is a positive move for gender equitable sport; both trans women and women with sex variations will be valuable allies in the fight to make sport safe and inclusive for all women.

Hopefully, it will help make grassroots a more welcome space for trans and gender diverse people. These groups report alarming levels of poor mental health and suicidal ideation and have a right to opportunities to improve wellbeing through sport.

Sport has a unique opportunity to advance progress and health outcomes for marginalised communities.

This move may offer hope to young people of diverse genders and sex that they too can strive to achieve greatness in a sport they love.

Independent researcher Payoshni Mitra contributed to this article.

Read more:
Why the way we talk about Olympian Laurel Hubbard has real consequences for all transgender people

Ryan Storr works for/consults to Proud2Play. He is affiliated with Proud2Play.

Sheree Bekker is an invited speaker at the International Olympic Committee World Conference on the Prevention of Injury and Illness in Sport, Monaco, 25-27 November 2021.

Madeleine Pape 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 win for transgender athletes and athletes with sex variations: the Olympics shifts away from testosterone tests and toward human rights – https://theconversation.com/a-win-for-transgender-athletes-and-athletes-with-sex-variations-the-olympics-shifts-away-from-testosterone-tests-and-toward-human-rights-172045

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marie Yap, Associate Professor, Psychology, Monash University

Headlines about the impact of the pandemic on youth mental health have left many parents worried about their children and unsure what they can do to help.

Now, as restrictions are eased – and school, home and social lives return to something resembling normal – young people are having to make significant adjustments as they face new pressures.

Parents need clear, evidence-based, practical strategies to support their teen’s mental health. But this can be hard to find.

Read more:
Treating a child’s mental illness sometimes means getting the whole family involved

To fill this gap, our yet-to-be-published study asked 35 international experts (researchers, health professionals and parent advocates) what parents can do to support their teenager’s mental health during the pandemic.

Here are their nine key tips:

1. Parents, look after yourselves

While parents’ natural instincts are to be concerned about their children (and possibly ageing parents), looking after your own needs will put you in a better position to support those you care about.

2. Keep the conversation open

Constantly changing local regulations and restrictions, and rules around reopening, can make teens more anxious.

Help your teen feel more in control by providing them with clear, up-to-date and age-appropriate information about the pandemic and restrictions when the situation changes.

Teenagers are likely to seek answers from their peers, online, and from social media. Help your teen get information from reliable and credible sources, such as government websites or the World Health Organization.

Talking about the pandemic and easing of restrictions can help them understand and cope with what they’re hearing.

3. Support teens to follow the local rules and restrictions

Be a good role model by following the local regulations and restrictions yourself.

Model flexibility and problem-solving by showing your teen how you adjust your daily life in response to changing regulations and restrictions.

4. Accept your teen’s emotions

It’s normal for teens to feel a wide range of strong emotions at different points during the pandemic: angry, scared, sad, frustrated, grief, worried, bored, confused, isolated, concerned.

You can help your teen cope with these by:

Asking and listening. Ask how they’re feeling and coping, especially as the situation changes. When they open up, focus on listening – what they need most is empathy, compassion and comfort.

Showing them how you do it. Teens look to their parents to see how to respond and how worried they should be. Try to set a good example by appearing as calm as you can, and using healthy coping strategies yourself.

Being patient, perhaps more than usual.

Being reassuring but realistic. Despite negative news they may be hearing, teens need their parents’ reassurance their family will get through the pandemic together and things will improve over time. But be careful not to make unrealistic promises.

Monitoring. Keep an eye on your teen’s stress levels – look for changes in their behaviour, health and how they’re thinking and feeling. Encourage them to do things that have helped them cope with stressful times in the past.

5. Help your teen work out what they can and can’t control

Encourage them to focus on what they can control. For example, young people can control their own COVID-safe behaviours (such as wearing masks and following local restrictions), but need to accept they can’t control the behaviour of others.

Model helpful ways of dealing with uncertainty by showing them how you accept what is outside your control and focus your effort on things you can control.

Show appreciation for their efforts to adjust to pandemic challenges, big or small.

6. Provide support as needed

The ongoing uncertainties during the pandemic can affect teens many months after local restrictions have eased.

So be prepared to provide ongoing emotional support as needed, rather than assume all will be well because life is “back to normal”.

Read more:
3 in 4 people with a mental illness develop symptoms before age 25. We need a stronger focus on prevention

7. Establish routines

Routines help teens feel more organised, in control, safe and secure and less stressed – this can help protect their mental health.

Ensure your teen’s routine includes set times for homework, meals and snacks, physical activity, free time for fun and relaxation, and time for socialising.

Regular sleep routines are also important. This means having a regular bed time and wake time, and minimising the use of electronic devices before bed. Review and adjust this routine with your teen as needed, such as when local restrictions change.

8. Adjust your expectations

With the changes and uncertainty caused by the pandemic, you may need to adjust some expectations of your teenager and of yourself. Focus on emotional and physical well-being rather than perfection or high productivity.

Try to practice self-compassion and forgiveness towards your teen and yourself if either of you don’t meet your expectations.

9. Look for silver linings

Try to convey a sense of confidence to your teen that things will improve over time. Encourage any optimism or hope your teen shows.

Showing compassion, empathy and kindness to others can also benefit your teen. It can help them gain perspective, give a sense of achievement and pride, and give opportunities for social interaction. Encourage your teen to take up opportunities to help others when they can.

When to get help

Seek professional mental health support if your teen has major difficulties adjusting to challenges of the pandemic or reopening, or you are struggling with your own mental health.

Some signs you or your teen might need professional support include changes in mood or behaviour that impact school, work or relationships, withdrawal from friends or family, intense distress, and problems that don’t seem to be improving with time.

Remember, by seeking support for yourself when needed, you are also setting a good example for your teen.

For more helpful tips, see the Parenting Strategies website. Parents across Australia can also access the evidence-based Partners in Parenting online program for free.

Read more:
Anorexia spiked during the pandemic, as adolescents felt the impact of COVID restrictions

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

Marie Yap receives funding from the Department of Health, National Health and Medical Research Council, and Suicide Prevention Australia. She is a member of the Parenting and Family Research Alliance, Treasurer for the Alliance for the Prevention of Mental Disorders, Deputy Editor of Mental Health & Prevention, and co-chair of the Scientific Committee and member of the Steering Committee of Growing Minds Australia.

Anthony Jorm receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. He is a member of the Board of Mental Health First Aid International, Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of Prevention United, Editor-in-Chief of Mental Health & Prevention and a member of the Association for Psychological Science.

Mairead Cardamone-Breen receives funding from the the National Health and Medical Research Council.

– ref. 9 ways to support your teen’s mental health as restrictions ease – https://theconversation.com/9-ways-to-support-your-teens-mental-health-as-restrictions-ease-172048

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Blair Williams, Research Fellow, Global Institute for Women’s Leadership (GIWL), Australian National University

The Women’s Leadership Institute Australia (WLIA) recently released its 2021 Women for Media Report, which I co-authored with academic and journalist Jenna Price.

We analysed just over 60,000 print and online news articles published in May 2021. We also interviewed leading figures in news organisations. We found that, despite the presence of more women in journalism, men’s voices continue to dominate the media landscape.

This is visible, for example, in the much greater frequency with which men’s words appear in print as quoted testimony. Of the quotes cited in the articles we analysed, 69% were attributed to men compared to 31% from women.

Men also provided the bulk of the quotes within each category of coverage, from 54% in arts and entertainment to 84% in sports. In politics, women provided only 30% of the quotes cited.

The story isn’t much better when it comes to the authorship of opinion pieces. Of the 1,800 opinion pieces analysed, women penned only 35%. This ranged from a low of 11% in the NT Times to a high of 54% in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Men once again dominated in every category, from 59% in law to 82% in disasters. The only category in which women were the majority was arts and entertainment, at 51%. Areas of national importance and influence, such as politics, business, science and law, were largely framed by the opinions of men.

The lack of women’s voices in these pages normalises a masculine perspective and implies that what women have to say is less legitimate and important.

Read more:
I studied 31 Australian political biographies published in the past decade — only 4 were about women

Women’s opinions are not heard

Opinion pieces remain a key cultural symbol of power and influence, providing a space for columnists, academics, experts and political actors to influence public debate and shape policy. Yet women remain largely unheard in this space.

Numerous editors we interviewed noted that women just aren’t submitting as many op-ed pitches. Jennifer Campbell, opinion editor for The Australian, said over 80% of pitches she receives are from men:

I get a lot of emails from MPs, senior executives, think tanks, academics. These groups are male-dominated […] That [proportion] makes it challenging to get a [gender balance].

Likewise, Canberra Times opinion editor Andrew Thorpe disclosed:

Of the 130 pitches we received in May, just 23 were from women […] and sadly May was actually a pretty good month on that front.

This is not a problem isolated to Australia. Similar findings have been published in the UK and US.

So, why are women less likely to submit a pitch? Perhaps it’s because, as Catherine Orenstein, founder of the Op-Ed Project, suggests, women

discount themselves and their knowledge. If you think about it, what it means is that there’s a disconnect between what we know and our sense that it actually matters.

Or perhaps women are fearful of the backlash and online abuse they might receive.

Many women might also feel more self-doubt, while men may be more inclined toward confidence and may even overestimate their intelligence. As Gay Alcorn, editor of The Age, told us:

Men, mostly, put themselves forward more as ‘experts’ or assume they have something worthwhile to say in an opinion piece. Not all women by any means, but some women can lack that kind of confidence, and women in the public eye are also trolled far more often than men, and that makes women wary.

Or maybe women just don’t have as much disposable time. The OECD How’s Life 2020 report found that, when combining paid and unpaid labour, men tend to enjoy more leisure time than women. Women also disproportionately have to deal with the additional “mental load” of organising and planning needed to manage daily life.

So, women might just have too much stuff already on their plates to sit down and write an oped.

Read more:
Now for some better news: 9 Australians fighting for gender equality and making a difference

Journalists need to actively seek women experts

But where are all the women experts? Are they less visible because they’re reluctant to speak with journalists?

Price knows this problem all too well, noting she has struggled to find women experts to interview throughout her career, but has never had the same problem with men. In the launch of the report, she disclosed: “In 40 years of reporting I don’t think I’ve ever had a man say, ‘I don’t want to talk to you, it’s too scary’.”

We interviewed Kathryn Shine, a senior lecturer of journalism, about her research exploring women academic experts and the media. Shine found that her participants were nearly all willing to be interviewed by journalists and understood the benefits of sharing their research with a broader community.

However, many factors continued to act as deterrents for these women experts: lack of confidence, time constraints, reluctance to appear on camera, and a lack of understanding of how news media operate.

These problems aren’t the fault of women – there are larger institutional factors at play. One opinion editor pointed to the “structural incentives pushing you to get the pages sorted quickly and move on”, which leads to an over-reliance on the mostly male pitches in their inbox.

The Sydney Morning Herald topped our list with the most opinion pieces penned by women because its editors consciously chose to change. Opinion editor Julie Lewis told us having gender targets is key, and the masthead has been actively encouraging women. So, news organisations need to follow this example and do more.

When it comes to experts, Shine argues journalists must be proactive in seeking out and promoting diverse voices. She offers the following tips:

1. be clear and upfront about how much time this will take

2. give people as much notice as you can and negotiate a time where possible

3. ask them before the interview to think about the points that really matter to them

4. recognise that no-one owes you their time (except for politicians)

5. explain that you think their research or expertise is relevant and give a reason why

6. be interested in what they want to talk about, not just your specific focus

7. give courteous feedback at the end of the interview – was it what you were looking for?

We desperately need a range of women’s voices in Australian news media, both as experts and opinion writers. With it, the media cannot truly reflect and represent the views and experiences of our society.

Blair 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. In Australian media, women’s voices are still not heard – https://theconversation.com/in-australian-media-womens-voices-are-still-not-heard-172060

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ruth Purcell, PhD Graduate Researcher, The University of Melbourne

Science has made impressive gains in the art of producing animal products minus the animal. Now this emerging field of cellular agriculture is taking on its biggest challenge yet: breastmilk.

Breastmilk is a complex substance, and breastfeeding is even more complicated. We are a long way from recreating it in its entirety.

It’s one thing to produce a chicken nugget or even a whole-cut steak via cellular agriculture, but providing a developing child with every nutrient they need for the first year of life is another.

But cell-cultured breastmilk could soon help non-breastfeeding parents who want a better option than existing formulas based on cows’ milk.

How to make breastmilk

Breastmilk cultivation has many similarities with the production of cultured meat. The basic steps are as follows.

First you need some of the milk-producing cells that line the breast ducts. These “mammary epithelial cells” can be cultured from donated milk.

Then you grow the cells in flasks with nutrients, allowing them to multiply.

Once you have enough cells to behave like healthy breast tissue, you transfer them to a bioreactor (a larger vessel of nutrients) with a similar structure to the mammary duct.

Next, you add a hormone called prolactin to the bioreactor. This gives the cells the green light for milk secretion on one side while absorbing nutrients on the other.

Finally, you perform quality control and safety screening.

Eventually, further supplements naturally found in breastmilk could be added, such as beneficial antibodies and bacteria or even immune cells and stem cells.

‘Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food’

Breastmilk sets the brain, immune system and metabolism on a lifelong course of improved cognitive function, and reduced infection and chronic disease. For babies who are premature or sick, the value of breastmilk is particularly pronounced.

Breastmilk comprises an optimal balance of water, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and micronutrients, along with a mix of maternal immune cells, stem cells, antibodies, and healthy bacteria that seed the child’s gut microbiome.

Read more:
Breastfeeding is tough: new research shows how to make it more manageable

Breastmilk also changes over time to meet the changing needs of the developing child. It may even directly help with infections. When pathogens from the baby’s upper respiratory tract enter the mammary duct, the mother can mount an immune response and feed targeted immune cells and antibodies back to the child.

The many downsides of current breastmilk alternatives

For a wide variety of reasons, breastfeeding is not an option for many new parents. According to the latest available report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (covering the 2017-18 financial year), only 29% of 6-month-olds were exclusively breastfed but more than half (53%) had not been introduced to solids.

This suggests around a quarter of babies are being fed formula. Infant formula is perfectly acceptable from a nutritional standpoint, but it can’t replicate the intricacies of the real thing.

Read more:
If you’re feeding with formula, here’s what you can do to promote your baby’s healthy growth

Most infant formula is made from cows’ milk, which is optimal for a calf rather than a human baby, and lacks the more nuanced health-promoting factors such as the mother’s antibodies and beneficial bacteria.

Additionally, recent calculations show that feeding babies formula generates more carbon emissions than breastfeeding. This accounts for the 500 additional calories a breastfeeding mother should eat, even when the mother was eating animal-based foods.

Donated milk is another alternative to breastfeeding, but it is hard to come by and milk banks prioritise preterm and sick babies. During the 2020-21 financial year, Australian Red Cross Lifeblood recorded 2,320 litres of breastmilk donated to more than 1,000 vulnerable babies.

There are also online breastmilk markets on the likes of Facebook and Craigslist. These are unregulated, are potential sources of infectious diseases, and leave desperate parents vulnerable to exploitation.

Startups galore

While no cell-cultured breastmilk is yet commercially available, several companies are working on it. Some of those closest to releasing a product include US-based BIOMILQ, Israeli BioMilk, and US-Singaporean TurtleTree Labs.

In Australia, stem cell scientist and entrepreneur Luis Malaver-Ortega has founded a company called Me& Food Tech to produce breastmilk using novel cell-based technologies.

When will these products be available? It’s hard to say exactly.

There are appreciable hurdles in both fundamental research and regulation to overcome before cell-cultured breastmilk companies can manufacture at scale. But private investment in the industry is growing rapidly, as is interest among university-based researchers.

The authors would like to thank Luis Malaver-Ortega for his assistance with this article.

Ruth Purcell is a consultant for Nourish Ingredients, a company producing animal-free lipids for alternative proteins, and Cellular Agriculture Australia, a nonprofit working to advance agricultural products such as meat, eggs, milk, and leather without using livestock.

Bianca Le is the founder and executive director of Cellular Agriculture Australia, a nonprofit working to advance agricultural products such as meat, eggs, milk, and leather without using livestock.

– ref. Cell-cultured breastmilk: scientists want to give formula-fed babies another option – https://theconversation.com/cell-cultured-breastmilk-scientists-want-to-give-formula-fed-babies-another-option-171301

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stewart Riddle, Associate Professor, School of Education, University of Southern Queensland

Most Australian students who took part in the last OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) said they would have invested more effort if the test had counted towards their school marks.

This is a finding from a recent report issued by the Australian Council for Education Research. The data came from a questionnaire students filled out at the end of the two-hour PISA test in 2018. They were asked to rate how much effort they would have invested if they knew their results would count towards their school marks.

Some 73% of students indicated they would have put in more effort had that been the case.

While 56% of Australian students claimed to put in “high effort” in the PISA tests, this would have increased to 91% if the results were included in their school results.

We spend a lot of time focusing on debates about curriculum (what is being taught to students) and pedagogy (how it is being taught). Data from standardised tests such as PISA and NAPLAN are often used as evidence of declining standards, falling outcomes and failing teachers.

But the above results show yet again that schooling is more complex than politicians like to advocate. Methods to lift standards such as going “back to the basics” – as the then education minister, Dan Tehan, vowed to do after the last PISA results came out – or encouraging the “best and brightest” to become teachers – a goal of the current education minister, Alan Tudge – are too simplistic for the real world.

What is PISA?

Every three years, PISA tests how 15-year-old students in dozens of countries apply reading, science, maths and other skills to real-life problems.

PISA generates much attention from policymakers and the media. It is often used as a proxy for making judgements about the quality of teaching and learning in Australian schools.

Read more:
PISA doesn’t define education quality, and knee-jerk policy proposals won’t fix whatever is broken

But there are important questions regarding what exactly the PISA tests measure and how useful the results are for informing policymaking and education debates.

Is it knowledge or effort?

The ACER report showed levels of effort in PISA were higher for female students, those attending metropolitan schools, non-Indigenous students and students from backgrounds of relatively high socioeconomic advantage.

But, when averaged out, nearly half of Australian students who sat the 2018 PISA test admitted they did not try their best.

These results are comparable with the OECD average of 68% of students claiming they tried less on the PISA tests than they would if it counted towards their school grades. In contrast, students in the highest-performing education systems of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang (China) reported very high levels of effort. There could be several reasons why the same theory may be less applicable to these Chinese systems, such as them having a more strongly competitive academic culture.

Read more:
The PISA world education test results are about to drop. Is Australia getting worse?

Educational psychologists in Australia have long studied the links between motivation, self-efficacy (students’ beliefs they can perform at the level they need to) and academic achievement.

For example, expectancy–value theory, to put it simply, suggests the lower the perceived value or usefulness of a task, the less motivated one potentially is to put in much effort.

Perhaps one of the unintended side effects of assuring participating students that PISA is a low-stakes task — it does not count towards their school grades — is the potential for downward pressure on performance.

The year 9 slump

Another potential reason for the lack of motivation in students taking the PISA test is the well-documented slump in engagement and motivation during the middle years of schooling.

NAPLAN data have consistently shown a pronounced drop in performance from year 7 to year 9, when students are 14–15 years old. For example, 9.1% of year 7 students didn’t meet the national minimum standard in the 2013 NAPLAN writing task. Two years later in the NAPLAN 2015 writing task, nearly twice as many (17.7%) year 9 students didn’t meet the minimum standard.

At the higher end of performance, the proportion of students above the national minimal standard dropped from 72.2% in 2013 to 59% in 2015.

The pattern is persistent. The results from the year 9 NAPLAN writing task in 2019 clearly demonstrate a dramatic drop in performance. The percentage of students in year 9 meeting or exceeding the national minimum standard was 82.9%, compared to 95% of the same student cohort in the 2013 year 3 writing task.

Research has shown the middle years of schooling is a challenging time for many students. Their bodies and minds are changing rapidly, the demands of high school and their social lives become more complex, and the level of disengagement and disaffection with school rapidly escalates.

Read more:
The missing middle: puberty is a critical time at school, so why aren’t we investing in it more?

What does this mean for school policy?

Instead of policies such as going back to basics, student motivation and engagement must be part of the education policy landscape.

This means paying closer attention to the lives, knowledges, experiences, hopes, fears, challenges and opportunities facing young people.

Educators and policymakers must consider complex factors of social, economic and educational disadvantage and advantage to meet the Mparntwe Declaration goals of educational excellence and equity. This includes the interplay of socioeconomics, location, culture and community, school resourcing and access for all young people to housing, health, economic and social stability, and quality schooling.

Stewart Riddle 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. Yes, Australia’s PISA test results may be slipping, but new findings show most students didn’t try very hard – https://theconversation.com/yes-australias-pisa-test-results-may-be-slipping-but-new-findings-show-most-students-didnt-try-very-hard-172050

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Juliette Overland, Associate Professor, Corporate Law, University of Sydney Business School, University of Sydney

Insider trading is something that only happens in companies listed on the stock exchange, right?

It could be happening in Australian superannuation funds.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission suspects so.

It has examined the behaviour of 23 members of the trustee boards of Australian super funds (both retail and industry) during the early days of the pandemic.

Super funds hold assets which are only revalued on its books from time to time, sometimes monthly, sometimes quarterly.

When asset values were falling sharply last year, it meant super fund trustees had early access to information about valuation decisions and the ability to influence those decisions.

Using information ‘for personal gain’

ASIC wanted to find out whether some trustees were “using this information for personal gain” by switching their own personal super investment options based on their knowledge of the timing of the revaluations yet to be announced.

It says the conduct it uncovered “fell below ASIC’s expectations”.

The investigation follows an inquiry by the parliament’s economics committee that found executives at AustralianSuper, NGS Super, Rest, First State, Hostplus and Intrust Super had switched their own personal super out of options exposed to revaluations at the start of the pandemic.

À lire aussi :
Insider trading has become more subtle

It’s behaviour that seems to have a lot in common with insider trading, in which insiders use inside information for their own benefit at the expense of other investors.

But while insider trading in relation to financial products is illegal, the definition of financial products used in the Australian legislation excludes superannuation products that are not provided by a “public offer entity”.

Not caught by the law

This means that the laws do not apply to some industry super funds, but might apply to others that are open to all members of the public regardless of the industry they work in.

As well, “trading” in financial products is held to only occur where a person applies for, acquires, or disposes of those products, or enters into an agreement to do so.

This means that insider trading laws might apply when a person first joins a public superannuation fund, but not when they switch their investment options within a fund.

À lire aussi :
Insider trading is greedy, not glamorous, and it hurts us all

ASIC has conceded this result in its announcement, saying the activity it has detected might not be caught by the insider trading prohibition, but is “similar to insider trading and may contravene other provisions of the law”.

When insider trading laws were last amended two decades ago under the 2002 Financial Services Reform Act, the financial products to which the laws applied were expanded to include “functionally similar” products – but not to all super funds.

At the time super funds held less than A$500 billion.

They now hold more than $3 trillion, which is much more than the entire Australian economy turns over in a year, and constitute for most Australians their biggest financial investment outside the family home.

The restriction, especially the distinction between some kinds of industry funds and others, no longer makes sense.

The Australian Law Reform Commission is currently undertaking an inquiry into financial services regulation, which includes the provisions of the Corporations Act prohibiting insider trading.

We invest more in super than in shares

It would be timely to amend insider trading laws so that they catch the switching of superannuation investment options within funds and eliminate the distinction between different types of funds.

Australians invest more money in super than in the Australian share market.

There is no obvious reason why it shouldn’t be as well regulated.

Juliette Overland ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. Australia’s insider trading laws might not apply to super – here’s why they should – https://theconversation.com/australias-insider-trading-laws-might-not-apply-to-super-heres-why-they-should-171112

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tanya Hill, Honorary Fellow of the University of Melbourne and Senior Curator (Astronomy), Museums Victoria

As the full Moon rises tonight, it won’t be as lovely and bright as usual – but it will be fascinating. Across most of Australia, the Moon will be partially shrouded in Earth’s shadow, undergoing a partial lunar eclipse as it rises.

A lunar eclipse happens roughly every six months somewhere on Earth. For most of the year, the Moon’s orbit takes it above or below Earth’s shadow, but during an eclipse the full Moon travels through it.

If the entire Moon travels through the shadow, it is a total lunar eclipse. Tonight’s eclipse won’t quite make it to totality, and instead will be a very deep partial eclipse.

The fact tonight’s event occurs at moonrise for viewers in Australia means this will be a different experience to what is typically seen when watching a lunar eclipse.

The Moon will be very low in the sky for much of the eclipse, meaning you’ll need an unobstructed view towards the east-northeastern horizon, perhaps with the aid of an elevated viewing position. In the opposite part of the sky, the Sun will be setting and Venus, Saturn and Jupiter will be visible.

The Sun sets a few minutes after the Moon rises, so for the first half-hour or so the eclipsed Moon, low on the horizon, will be battling the bright twilight sky.

As the Moon climbs higher and the sky darkens, we will have a lovely view of the final phase of the eclipse. We can watch the Moon emerge from Earth’s shadow and return to its full brightness.

What to see and when?

As the eclipse occurs at moonrise for viewers in Australia, your location (latitude and longitude) will determine when you will see the Moon appear above the horizon. It’s a little uncertain exactly how much we’ll be able to make of the eclipse against the twilight sky but it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

Although the Moon won’t become fully immersed in the Earth’s shadow, it does get really close. At the moment of maximum eclipse, 97.4% of the Moon’s diameter will be in shadow, while just a sliver will remain in sunlight.

Because it’s almost (but not quite) a total eclipse, this will be the longest partial eclipse of the 21st century, lasting three hours and 28 minutes.

In Brisbane, Sydney and Canberra, the Moon will rise before the eclipse reaches its maximum. Brisbane will have the best view of all the capital cities, as the sky will have darkened and the Moon will be fairly high by the time of maximum eclipse.

Sydney and Canberra will also see the maximum eclipse but against a twilight sky.

For the other Australian capitals, the maximum eclipse occurs when the Moon is still below the horizon. Those places will only see the Moon as it begins emerging from the shadow.

New Zealand is in a better position to see the eclipse than Australia. Viewers on the North Island will see the entire event, while for the South Island the Moon rises about half an hour after the eclipse begins. The eclipse maximum will occur at 10:03pm NZDT, so it may even be possible to see a slight red tinge to the Moon against the dark sky.

Read more:
Explainer: what is a lunar eclipse?

Unfortunately, Perth will miss out, as the Moon will rise ten minutes after the eclipse ends. But in northern Western Australia the Moon rises roughly an hour earlier, so the final stages of the eclipse will be visible there.

Moon illusion

Watching a full Moon rising is always special because of the optical illusion that makes the Moon appear much larger when it’s near the horizon.

Of course, the Moon doesn’t really change size at all – you can prove this by making an “OK” sign with your thumb and forefinger and viewing the Moon through the hole, or simply by using your thumb to cover the Moon. Measure the Moon at the horizon and then later in the evening when it’s higher, and its size doesn’t change.

This illusion is a trick our minds play on us, most likely because we instinctively think the Moon is further away when it is on the horizon. When we see a bird flying, for example, it is closest to us when directly overhead, and gets further away as it flies towards the horizon.

But the Moon is much further away than a bird, so its distance from us doesn’t vary depending on its position in the sky (although its distance varies slightly month to month, that’s not relevant to this effect). Yet our brains treat it as though the Moon’s distance does change, meaning when we see the (normal-sized) Moon near the horizon we assume it’s much further away, and counter-intuitively interpret it as being much bigger.

A simple way to explain this trick is using the Ponzo illusion, where objects at a distance appear larger, even though the two Moons in the image below are actually the same size.

Here’s hoping the weather holds out this evening, so we can enjoy this rather interesting lunar eclipse.

Read more:
Medieval Christians saw the lunar eclipse as a sign from God — but they also understood the science

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

– ref. Tonight’s ‘eclipse moonrise’ will put on a special twilight show for most of Australia – https://theconversation.com/tonights-eclipse-moonrise-will-put-on-a-special-twilight-show-for-most-of-australia-172061

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Louise Richardson-Self, Lecturer in Philosophy & Gender Studies, University of Tasmania

The debate about religious discrimination in Australia is back.

Attorney-General Michaelia Cash is planning to bring the latest version of the bill to parliament in the last two sitting weeks of the year, beginning next week.

We are yet to see the most current draft, but the bill seeks to prohibit discrimination “on the ground of religious belief or activity in key areas of public life”, including employment and education.

Once again, religious groups and LGBT+ advocates are raising what look to be competing concerns about the legislation’s impact on their rights and freedoms.

It is notable that the federal bill is ostensibly about religious discrimination, but in public discourse we discuss “religious freedom”. This confusion isn’t helped by their labelling on the attorney-general’s department website as “the religious freedom bills”.

Why the conflation between these terms?

What is at stake with the new bill very much depends on how discrimination is conceptualised – to be free from it, or to exercise it – and by whom it is claimed.

Context is important

This conflation between discrimination and freedom in the contemporary Australian context has been about ten years in the making. In 2011, there was a shift from religious freedom being about the right to be free from discrimination because of one’s religion, to being about the “right” to discriminate against others in the name of one’s religion.

Read more:
New research shows religious discrimination is on the rise around the world, including in Australia

Context is crucial here. Around this time, the campaign for marriage equality began to gain increasing traction in public debate. For example, this was the year GetUp’s “It’s Time” video in favour of same-sex marriage went viral, with more than two million views in five days.

It was also the year that the Australian Human Rights Commission released its first report on LGBT+ discrimination, finding

significant gaps in the legal protection from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and sex and/or gender identity at the state and territory level and almost no protections at the federal level.

A backlash after the postal vote

But as the rights of LGBT+ people gained more prominence, so too did fears religious freedoms would be harmed. While legislation for marriage equality in 2017 was a huge milestone for the LGBT+ community, there was a backlash among some religious groups.

Following the postal vote, then-treasurer Scott Morrison said:

There are almost five million Australians who voted no in this [postal] survey who are now coming to terms with the fact that they are in the minority. That did not used to be the case […] They have concerns that their broader views and beliefs are […] therefore under threat.

To appease opponents of same-sex marriage, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull set up a Religious Freedom Review. The review, headed up by Liberal MP Philip Ruddock, “did not accept the argument, put by some, that religious freedom is in imminent peril”. But it nevertheless recommended new legislative protections:

to render it unlawful to discriminate on the basis of a person’s ‘religious belief or activity’, including on the basis that a person does not hold any religious belief.

The Morrison government took a religious discrimination bill to the 2019 federal election and regards it as a key election commitment.

A (very) heated debate over the bill

The federal government has been consulting with the community and experts, but it has been a rocky road – with criticism from almost all interested parties (saying the bill either went too far or not far enough).

The bill has already been through multiple iterations. Indeed, it was initially supposed to be passed before the May 2019 federal election and an attempt to introduce it to parliament at the end of 2019 failed, amid pressure from some religious leaders to strengthen protections for Australians of faith.

For example, some conservative Christian groups want to be able to maintain the “right to discriminate” based on their beliefs. For example, the Presbyterian Church of Queensland is concerned with

whether Christian institutions such as schools can [still] assert a traditional view that God made people male and female, gender not being fluid, but corresponding with their biological sex.

Other Christian groups, such as the Christian Medical and Dental Fellowship, want to be able to continue gay conversion therapies.

[Religious texts] promote the stability of gender identity in accordance with chromosomal directive and would encourage psychological support for the confused […].

A ‘Folau clause’

Meanwhile, religious groups continue to raise “freedom of speech” concerns – in part, linked to the treatment of Israel Folau. In 2019, Folau lost his contract with Rugby Australia for social media posts about LGBT+ people. An undisclosed settlement was reached later that year.

Legal academic Patrick Emerton highlights the ongoing conflict this incident raised:

No doubt Folau’s views are sincerely held, and his adherence to his conception of the good is deep and genuine. But the lives of gay and lesbian people are lived sincerely and genuinely also.

At this point, it is important to emphasise Christians and the LGBT+ community are not locked in a zero-sum human rights game.

There was explicit Christian community support for marriage equality, for instance. And, of course, some LGBT+ people are religious.

What’s more, the Ruddock panel found “limited evidence that the fears of religious groups expressed during that [marriage equality] debate had come to pass in Australia”.

What happens now?

Where does this leave the debate as it heads towards the floor of parliament?

Read more:
The Coalition’s approach to religious discrimination risks being an inconclusive, wasteful exercise

It is possible for a tightly-worded bill to protect against religious discrimination and maintain the hard-won rights of LGBT+ Australians. As the Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural Council notes, they support legislation which prevents discrimination against Australians “on the basis of faith and religion, or for not holding those beliefs”, with this caution:

Any new law should be a simple anti-discrimination bill without conferring the numerous special privileges and rights that the current proposed legislation provides for.

Such legislation could ensure religious Australians – including members of minority religions – have avenues of protection if they are targets of discrimination.

Ultimately, we need to ask whether the bill is about stopping discrimination, or maintaining privilege to act beyond ordinary standards of accountability.

Louise Richardson-Self receives funding from the Australian Research Council to investigate Religious Freedom, LGBT+ Employees, and the Right to Discriminate (DP200100395).

Elenie Poulos has received funding from the Australian Research Council to investigate Religious Freedom, LGBT+ Employees, and the Right to Discriminate and is an ordained minister of the Uniting Church in Australia.

Sharri Lembryk receives funding from the Australian Research Council to provide research assistance on the project Religious Freedom, LGBT+ Employees, and the Right to Discriminate (DP200100395), and is on an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship through the University of NSW.

– ref. The debate about religious discrimination is back, so why do we keep hearing about religious ‘freedom’? – https://theconversation.com/the-debate-about-religious-discrimination-is-back-so-why-do-we-keep-hearing-about-religious-freedom-169643

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Martin, Professor of Medicine, University of Newcastle

Several COVID drugs are in the pipeline for 2022, some you can potentially take at home, others for use in hospital.

It’s taken almost two years of the pandemic to get here.

However, as we argue in our paper, with more and larger collaborations, and focusing on repurposing the right drugs, we could have developed effective COVID drugs at scale, earlier.

Here’s what we can do better for the next pandemic.

Read more:
Pfizer’s pill is the latest COVID treatment to show promise. Here are some more

First, some good news

One recent study found a commonly prescribed drug for depression, fluvoxamine, given to people diagnosed with COVID-19 reduced their chance of symptoms deteriorating, needing to go to hospital, and dying.

There are four powerful features of this study. It was based on:

• an existing human drug: drugs designed for another purpose can have extra therapeutic benefits. We also didn’t have to design a drug from scratch and knew a lot about tolerated doses, side-effects and drug interactions, over many years of people taking it

• earlier observation and data: the drug was chosen based on prior data showing people taking the same or similar drugs for depression did better with COVID-19 infection

• a large population: the study included enough people to give meaningful results

• an international collaboration: it is unclear why were there not many, thorough, studies of this type implemented at the very start of the pandemic. Collaboration helps with quicker recruitment and broader input into trial design.

However, this example is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to finding COVID drugs. And during the pandemic, we’ve had several mis-steps.

Read more:
Why an antidepressant could be used to treat COVID-19

We missed an early opportunity

We can treat COVID with one of two broad strategies. One is to target or immobilise the virus itself. The other is to “treat the host”. This involves treating the body’s overwhelming response to the virus and the cause of most death and disease. Fluvoxamine mentioned above is an example of the latter.

However, we didn’t see any major strategy to “treat the host” in the early part of the pandemic, except with the decades-old corticosteroid drugs dexamethasone and budesonide.

Focusing more on “treating the host” would have bought us time to produce vaccines and antiviral drugs, which typically take longer to develop.

“Treating the host” is hardly radical. We’ve been doing this with existing medicines for infectious diseases for years.

In fact, we knew early on that we respond to COVID-19 in much the same way to being infected with other viral infections that can overwhelm the body, such as influenza and Ebola.

That’s not the only mis-step.

We backed a few wrong horses

It’s inevitable some existing drugs trialled initially for COVID-19 would fall by the wayside and never be used clinically. But we backed some of the wrong drugs, at the wrong doses. According to basic research and clinical knowledge of how drugs work in the body, this should have been obvious from the start.

Over a century after doctors unsuccessfully tried to treat the Spanish flu with quinine and its derivatives, history was repeating itself. We were asking if the related drug hydroxychloroquine could be used to treat COVID-19.

Researchers around the world conducted multiple trials with hydroxychloroquine, even after some others reported a lack of efficacy.

In the first year of the pandemic, hydroxychloroquine was tested in about 250 studies involving nearly 89,000 people, despite evidence it does not help.

If we are to repurpose existing drugs, this needs to be based on our experience of that drug in humans with COVID-19, such as in the fluvoxamine example. Alternatively, the drug needs to fit with what we know about how the virus causes disease and how the infection develops in humans.

If we are to repurpose drugs identified solely on cell-based laboratory studies, this must also be based on what we know about how the human body handles the drug and how the drug works in the body. We also need the relevant quality mathematical models to get the dose right for the early phase human studies.

Using such basic approaches to drug development, which we’ve known about for years, we could have foreseen that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine would prove to be ineffective – before larger scale human trials were ever allowed to be conducted.

Read more:
Ivermectin shows us how hard it is to use old drugs for COVID. Here’s how to do better next time

We also backed too many small trials

During the pandemic, there have been an estimated 2,800 clinical trials for COVID drugs with fewer than 300 reported.

In one database of COVID-19 trials, 40% said researchers were enrolling fewer than 100 patients, a sample size generally too small to be useful.

For us to get a better idea if a COVID drug is safe and effective, we need larger, collaborative trials.

For example, the RECOVERY trial
enrolled about 45,000 people at 180 sites to test a range of potential COVID therapies. It showed the repurposed drug dexamethasone reduced death rates, changing standard practice.

Read more:
Dexamethasone: the cheap, old and boring drug that’s a potential coronavirus treatment

How could we do better next time?

We need to start thinking about ways of developing drugs for the early part of the next pandemic, considering what we’ve learned from this one.

This is essential if we are to have a range of safe, effective, cheap and available therapies for treating the host, to buy time to develop vaccines and antivirals.

We now know from global experiences the importance of rational choice of drugs for testing. We also know the importance of large clinical trials that come from major, international collaborations.

We also need to co-ordinate research efforts nationally, rather than compete for research dollars with other groups. Doing research in a pandemic is not like doing research in non-pandemic times. So this means countries such as Australia need to have their own centre for pandemic preparedness or centre for disease control to co-ordinate research and funding priorities.

Read more:
Coronavirus pandemic shows it’s time for an Australian Centre for Disease Control – in Darwin

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

– ref. We can expect more COVID drugs next year. But we’ve wasted so much time getting here – https://theconversation.com/we-can-expect-more-covid-drugs-next-year-but-weve-wasted-so-much-time-getting-here-171605

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karen Scott, Professor in Law, University of Canterbury

The COP26 summit may come to be regarded as a failure or an important milestone, but it certainly failed to address the “other” climate change problem: ocean acidification.

With the exception of rising sea levels, climate change impacts on the oceans have been treated as a peripheral matter at global climate change negotiations. This marginalisation of the oceans largely continued at COP26.

But states, including New Zealand and Australia, nevertheless have an obligation to prevent and mitigate excess carbon dioxide (CO₂) from entering the ocean.

Almost four decades ago, 168 states signed up to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Under this treaty, they must address CO₂ in the oceans consistent with (but distinct from) their obligations under the climate regime.

Ocean acidification (OA) is caused by excess CO₂ in seawater. Atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ have now reached 414ppm (from about 280ppm in 1750) and the oceans are a major sink, having absorbed nearly half of all anthropogenic emissions since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution some two centuries ago.

But rising levels of CO₂ in the oceans change the acidity of seawater, measured as pH. Ocean acidity has remained remarkably stable for more than 800,000 years, but has increased by about 30% in the last 200 years.

This has negative consequences for shell-forming organisms and coral reefs such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Recent research suggests it may also affect the larvae of fish, including commercially important species such as yellow fin tuna.

Read more:
The outlook for coral reefs remains grim unless we cut emissions fast — new research

Climate agreements and the oceans

The climate regime comprises the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 1997 Kyoto Protocol and 2015 Paris Agreement.

It addresses CO₂ emissions, the primary cause of ocean acidification, but states have significant discretion over what action they take, and there is no explicit requirement to address CO₂ separately from other greenhouse gases.

Although the Paris Agreement sets a target of limiting average global warming to well below 2℃ above pre-industrial levels (and aims to keep it at 1.5℃), it does not set a target for limiting ocean pH change.

However, the Glasgow Climate Pact has, for the first time, explicitly set a target in respect of CO₂ emissions. It calls for a 45% cut relative to 2010 levels by 2030 and net zero by mid-century. This is a positive development in the context of addressing ocean acidification.

Read more:
COP26: Scotland’s coral reefs are on the line at Glasgow climate change summit

What the law of the sea says

Under part XII of UNCLOS, which has been accepted by all states as part of customary international law, states must take all measures necessary to “prevent, reduce and control” marine pollution from any source. States also have a general obligation to protect and preserve the marine environment.

Carbon dioxide can be classed as pollution under UNCLOS, and therefore states have an obligation to avoid or control it. UNCLOS requires states to prevent pollution from land-based sources and from the atmosphere.

Article 212 is particularly relevant to CO₂ pollution. It requires states to:

… adopt laws and regulations to prevent, reduce and control pollution of the marine environment from or through the atmosphere arising from their territory or vessels under their control.

However, this is a due diligence obligation: it relates to conduct (effort) rather than result. Article 212 does not specify what states must do to meet their obligation, but stipulates they should take into account internationally agreed rules and standards.

International standards

Apart from emissions from vessels, there is no agreement on what these internationally agreed rules and standards are.

It can be argued the climate regime constitutes these standards, and if states comply with their commitments under the Paris Agreement they have met their obligations under Article 212 of UNCLOS. Supporters of this position assert it is unreasonable to expect states to go beyond their commitments under climate agreements, particularly when UNCLOS provides no additional guidance.

On the other hand, if it can be shown that commitments under the Paris Agreement are clearly insufficient to “prevent, reduce and control” ocean acidification, it would be anachronistic to say compliance with those standards constitutes “due diligence” under UNCLOS.

I argue the latter — the due diligence obligation under Article 212 of UNCLOS is not met by compliance with climate regime commitments, except where those commitments expressly relate to ocean acidification or CO₂ reductions. This conclusion is arguably supported by the UN’s 2015 adoption of the Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life in the Oceans.

One of the goal’s targets calls for states to explicitly address ocean acidification. This recognises that commitments under the Paris Agreement do not adequately address the issue.

COP26 confirmed the climate regime is the main forum for addressing the consequences of climate change. But it is not the only game in town or the only legally relevant regime.

UNCLOS requires states to protect the oceans. These obligations must be expressly considered and incorporated into commitments made by states, including New Zealand and Australia, in international climate agreements and their actions to implement these at the domestic level.

COP27, to be held in Egypt next year, provides the next opportunity to address ocean acidification and to support a more integrated approach under both the climate change regime and the law of the seas.

Karen Scott 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. COP26 failed to address ocean acidification, but the law of the seas means states must protect the world’s oceans – https://theconversation.com/cop26-failed-to-address-ocean-acidification-but-the-law-of-the-seas-means-states-must-protect-the-worlds-oceans-171949

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robin Smit, Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney

Hydrogen has been touted as the fuel of the future, and the technology features prominently in the Morrison government’s plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

Earlier this month the government unveiled its “future fuels” strategy to reduce emissions in the transport sector, committing A$250 million for battery electric vehicles and hydrogen infrastructure. And in September, it pledged almost A$500 million towards the Clean Hydrogen Industrial Hubs Program.

Decarbonising transport is crucial in the fight to limit global warming to 1.5℃ this century. We estimate the sector contributes about 20% of global emissions – like burning two Olympic-size swimming pools filled with fossil fuels per minute, every minute of the year.

But as independent researchers in transport emissions and energy, we believe the focus on hydrogen in road transport is misplaced.

Projections show if all nations’ 2030 emissions reductions targets are met, the planet will be on track to heat by a catastrophic 2.4℃. In this pressing need to rapidly reduce global emissions before 2030, developing hydrogen for low-emissions road transport won’t happen fast enough, and it doesn’t pose a viable alternative to electric vehicles.

Hydrogen in a nutshell

Hydrogen is already an important part of the global economy, including for the production of fertilisers and in oil refining. The federal government has identified hydrogen as a priority low emissions technology to develop further, with a focus on hydrogen refuelling infrastructure for major freight routes and passenger road corridors.

Almost all hydrogen today is produced using fossil fuels (natural gas and coal), and this accounts for about 2% of global emissions. Hydrogen is clean and climate friendly only if it’s produced from renewable sources of energy, such as solar, wind and hydro. This process uses electrolysis to convert water into hydrogen, and is aptly called “green hydrogen”.

For more than 20 years, proponents of hydrogen have been promising a future of clean energy. But while the pace of new green hydrogen projects is accelerating, most are still at an early stage of development. Just 14 major projects worldwide started construction in 2020, while 34 are at a study or memorandum of understanding stage.

Developing hydrogen technology is, indeed, important outside of the road transport sector, with promising options such as green steel which will reduce emissions and bring new Australian jobs.

Read more:
Australia’s clean hydrogen revolution is a path to prosperity – but it must be powered by renewable energy

But we’re not betting on hydrogen for road transport

Global sales data for cars and light commercial vehicles, along with statements from corporate leaders, suggest many vehicle manufacturers don’t seriously consider hydrogen a viable and lucrative transport fuel.

The Honda Clarity hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, for example, ceased production in August 2021 to “trim underperforming models from its line-up”. Some manufacturers are even lobbying for a faster transition to electric cars.

Hydrogen may play a larger role in the long-haul truck market, as its stated benefits include a long drive range and short refuelling times, which are important for this sector.

But hydrogen competes with a dynamic and fast-moving electric truck market, which shows significant and continuous annual improvements in battery energy density, and prices. What’s more, truck makers – such as Daimler, MAN, Renault, Scania and Volvo – have indicated they see an all-electric future.

The often-stated benefits of hydrogen dissipate when compared with alternative electric truck technology. This includes battery swapping, which allows for short refuelling times, and the development of e-highways (roads that automatically recharge vehicles when they drive along it).

Read more:
Time to get real: amid the hydrogen hype, let’s talk about what will actually work

While it’s true these systems are still being tested in, for instance, Europe and the US, they have a promising outlook. For example, in July the UK government announced £2 million (A$3.66 million) to design overhead charging cables that would power electric lorries on a motorway.

Likewise, the battery swapping network in China already dwarfs the hydrogen refuelling network, although the system is still in its infancy.

Low energy efficiency

An overlooked but fundamental issue with using hydrogen in transport is its low energy efficiency. Hydrogen is not an energy source, it is an energy carrier. This means it needs to be generated, compressed or liquefied, transported and converted back into useful energy – and each step of the process incurs a substantial energy loss.

In fact, hydrogen vehicles and vehicles that run on petrol or diesel have a similarly low energy performance: just 15-30% of the available energy in the fuels is used for actual driving. Compare this to battery electric vehicles, which use 70-90% of the available energy.

In other words, the amount of renewable energy required for a green hydrogen vehicle to drive one kilometre is the same as what’s required for three electric vehicles to drive the same distance.

This is a very important issue. The more energy required for transport, the more renewable energy needs to be generated, and the higher the cost and more difficult it becomes to decarbonise the economy rapidly and at scale.

There are three other, perhaps less well known, issues with hydrogen we believe should be seriously considered.

First, the potential for significant leakage of hydrogen during production, transport and use. Hydrogen is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and any loss of hydrogen reduces the overall energy efficiency.

Second, hydrogen emissions from leakage may add to local and regional air pollution, and may even deplete the ozone layer in the stratosphere, but further research is needed in this space.

And finally, hydrogen needs clean fresh water, and lots of it. A single hydrogen fuel cell car requires about 9 litres of clean, demineralized water for every 100km driven. For a large truck, this would be over 50 litres per kilometre.

If sea water and desalination plants were used to produce the water, another energy loss would be added to the production process, penalising overall energy efficiency even further.

Focus on electric vehicles

Decarbonising road transport needs to be rapid, deployed at scale, and requires a holistic strategy that promotes shifts in everyday travel behaviour. Betting on the future large-scale availability of hydrogen for this sector won’t see this happen fast enough. It also risks locking in fossil-fuel dependency, and its additional greenhouse gas emissions, if upscaling clean hydrogen falls short of expectations.

We need to minimise energy demand and improve energy efficiency in transport as much as possible and as fast as possible. The available evidence suggests battery electric vehicles are the only feasible technology that can achieve this in the near future.

For a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, we should electrify transport where we can, and use other options like green hydrogen where we genuinely can’t, such as long-range shipping and aviation. And depending on how truck electrification efforts develop, hydrogen may still have a role in long-haul trucking, but it will use a lot of extra renewable energy.

A logical first step is to convert the current global production of fossil-fuel based hydrogen to green hydrogen. But the focus must be on rolling out electric vehicles across Australia and, indeed, the world.

Read more:
The embarrassingly easy, tax-free way for Australia to cut the cost of electric cars

The authors are grateful for the discussions with and contributions made by Professor Eckard Helmers (University of Applied Sciences Trier, Germany) and Dr Paul Walker (University of Technology Sydney).

Robin Smit is the founder of and a director at Transport Energy/Emission Research (TER).

Hussein Dia receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the iMOVE Cooperative Research Centre, Level Crossing Removal Authority, City of Boroondara, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Transport for New South Wales, EmissionsIQ Pty Ltd, and Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications.

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

– ref. We must rapidly decarbonise road transport – but hydrogen’s not the answer – https://theconversation.com/we-must-rapidly-decarbonise-road-transport-but-hydrogens-not-the-answer-166830

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Ross, Lecturer, Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of the Sunshine Coast

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority released a proposed revision of the foundation to year 10 national curriculum for public consultation in April. Since then, the draft national curriculum — the final version of which will be released in 2022 – has caused much controversy. Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge has perhaps been its fiercest critic.

In September 2021, Tudge wrote an opinion piece in The Australian newspaper, saying he will not support the draft in its current form. He noted the revised curriculum, which was meant to simplify the previous one, was “a ridiculously long and unwieldy document”.

The biggest problem, though, was in the draft history curriculum. It gave the impression nothing bad happened before 1788 and almost nothing good has happened since. It downplayed our Western heritage […] It almost erased Christianity from our past, despite it being the single most important influence on our modern development […]

Read more:
10 things every politician should know about history

These comments caused a stir among many historians, who have argued for the importance of critical skills in history. They also stressed being critical is not the same as “hating” Australia. Other controversial topics have included changes in maths content, which some experts have deemed “shallow and faddish”.

So, with all the controversy, some may wonder why we need a national curriculum at all.

The curriculum is like a map

Imagine the Australian Curriculum is a map — a broad picture of all the learning a teacher covers in each year of education for each particular subject. Using the map, teachers charter a course for each unit to ensure the territory is covered across the year and then plan the route they will take with their students.

When using a map to travel a particular route to your destination, you may take a detour along the way. It’s the same when travelling using the curriculum. A student may ask an interesting question, and that might take the class in a different direction for a bit. But that just adds to the journey.

A history of the curriculum

Since Federation in 1901, Australian states and territories have maintained constitutional responsibility for education and have had autonomy for their education agendas. But in 1963 the Commonwealth began funding school education, which came with a desire for more national collaboration.

Read more:
Proposed new curriculum acknowledges First Nations’ view of British ‘invasion’ and a multicultural Australia

Since that time, successive Australian politicians and governments have aspired to develop and implement a national curriculum. Their objective was to reduce duplication and enhance consistency across the nation’s various curricula.

The Australian Curriculum we have now is the fourth iteration of a national curriculum, but the first to be effectively implemented. Previous attempts at implementation were met with a range of barriers related to the states’ constitutional responsibility and desire for curriculum autonomy, as well as a lack of clear rationale, purpose and process for curriculum change.

So, the momentum fizzled out. That is, until Kevin Rudd’s 2007 election promise of an education revolution garnered the political support to develop the Australian Curriculum.

The first draft was published by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority in 2010.

What about the states’ curricula?

While the responsibility for developing the curriculum shifted federally, the states retained the autonomy to implement the curriculum. This is because each state and territory has its own senior assessment and tertiary entrance system. Although there have been attempts at an Australian Certificate of Education to mark the end of compulsory schooling, the proposal has never gathered momentum.

The curriculum authority now has the remit to develop the curriculum and the states the responsibility to implement it.

Teachers in Queensland, Tasmania, South Australia, the Northern Territory and the ACT, use the Australian Curriculum as written by the national curriculum authority.

Teachers get the curriculum directly from the website. For these teachers, the Australian Curriculum is like Google Maps. It tells them what to teach.

This is why what is written in the curriculum is of utmost importance. The curriculum authorities in these states and territories exist to support implementation, providing advice on how much of the curriculum teachers are required to implement.

Read more:
A ‘crowded curriculum’? Sure, it may be complex, but so is the world kids must engage with

But Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia, use an intermediary document (or syllabus) in place of the Australian Curriculum. These interpretations, written by their curriculum authorities, repackage the Australian Curriculum. In NSW, for instance, the syllabuses package the content in stages. These each represent two years of schooling (stage 2 is for years 3 and 4, for example).

Occasionally these state packages contain a bit more or less content compared to the Australian Curriculum. For example, the Victorian Curriculum for The Arts has Visual Communication Design as an additional content area.

Adding further complexity, some states have not yet updated some subjects (such as languages in Western Australia or the creative arts in NSW) to align with the Australian Curriculum.

Despite these differences, there is still a great degree of alignment in curricula across the states and territories. Prior to the Australian Curriculum some of this was more coincidental than coordinated.

So, why is the curriculum controversial?

Many things influence the curriculum’s development, including the power struggles between federal and state governments and their sometimes differing political ideologies.

The curriculum also needs to be responsive to the needs of today’s students, while preparing them for their future. It must prepare them for jobs that don’t currently exist, with skills we can only imagine, while also ensuring they can navigate the transitions from childhood into adolescence and beyond.

Education Professor Kerry J Kennedy has written curriculum debates are not just an academic argy-bargy over what should or should not be included, but also reflect a “nation’s soul”. It is an insight into what we value. Hence the many heated debates about what is “important” for young people to learn become value laden.

But with a clear rationale we can build the map for Australian teachers to plan their students’ learning journey.

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Teaching a ‘hatred’ of Australia? No, minister, here’s why a democracy has critical curriculum content

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

– ref. Why do Australian states need a national curriculum, and do teachers even use it? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-australian-states-need-a-national-curriculum-and-do-teachers-even-use-it-171745