Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

Australia’s policy performance on COVID-19 in 2020 was world-leading in terms of both public health and economics. Sadly, our vaccine roll-out strategy has been anything but.

I’ve spent plenty of time highlighting this in recent months. But perhaps the most instructive thing to do is compare and contrast Australia’s back-of-the-pack performance with Israel’s – which is truly world-class.

Israel has shown a sense of urgency with its vaccine strategy and roll-out.

The country has gone from having a large infection rate – including from highly contagious variants of COVID-19 – to having herd immunity within its reach. This, in turn, has allowed it to open up the economy with all the benefits that flow from that.

Australia has a lot to learn.

Israel’s roll-out

Just a few months ago, in mid-January, Israel had the highest per capita COVID-19 infection rate in the world.

Now, as the following chart shows, the number of infections is less than a quarter the level recorded on January 17.

This is clearly due to Israel’s vaccination program, which began on December 19, 2020 – just ten days after the first Pfizer doses arrived in the country.

Israel was well ahead of most countries in signing a purchase agreement for Moderna’s high-efficacy mRNA vaccine in June 2020. Later in 2020 it made more deals with Pfizer (which also produces a very high-efficacy vaccine) and AstraZeneca.

About 57% of Israel’s population of 9 million have now received at least one dose of the vaccine. More than 48% are fully vaccinated. Life is getting back to normal. People are going to concerts and congregating in coffee shops.

How are we doing here in Australia?

We’re at 0.72% of the population having received even one dose. Only some senior politicians and perhaps the odd aged-care resident being used for a photo-op have received the two doses.

Factor in Israel’s success

So how did Israel do this?

First, Israel has a well-run universal health-care system. But so does Australia.

Second, Israel is a geographically small country. That helps with transporting and storing vaccines – particularly those requiring being kept a very cold temperatures (between -80ºC and -60ºC for the Pfizer vaccine).

Australia, by contrast, is a geographically huge country. However, we do have a highly concentrated urban population, with the five largest metropolitan cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide) accounting for 64% of Australia’s total population (about 16 million of the total population of 25.5 million).

Third, Israel’s approach emphasises being fast rather than sticking strictly to a priority order of who gets the vaccine first. Family members of high-priority people thus have often been able to get vaccinated at the same time. Australia’s approach, by contrast, is less urgent and more concerned with rules.

Finally, Israel has the political will. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made vaccination a top priority. Sure, he’s also facing serious corruption charges, so maybe this is all motivated by trying to stay out of prison. But who cares? He’s getting the job done.

The ‘green passport’

Israel has also introduced a “green passport” – a phone app that certifies the owner has been fully immunised or is presumed immune as a result of having previously had COVID-19.

The “green pass” (as it has become known) permits holders – and only holders – access to gyms, swimming pools, cultural events, weddings and other gatherings.

The Israeli government has been explicit about, and made no apology for the fact it is using both carrots and sticks to return life, and the economy, to normal.

Australia’s path forward

It’s not too late for Australia to repair our vaccine strategy, though we will never make up for the months lost.

It’s time for the federal government to get serious about the roll-out. No senior politician or health bureaucrat should ever again say “this is not a race” or “we’re not in a hurry”. It is a race. We should be in a hurry.

Every day we are sluggish about the roll-out is another day before the economy can open up properly. It is another day where there could be a hotel-quarantine outbreak – now with more contagious and likely deadlier COVID-19 variants –– potentially leading to further lockdowns and undermining people’s ability to travel or socialise normally.

The roll-out is a race. We need to run. Any government that doesn’t get that will pay a serious price at the ballot box.

– ref. Vital Signs: Israel shows how to do vaccinations right. It’s a race, and we’re behind – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-israel-shows-how-to-do-vaccinations-right-its-a-race-and-were-behind-157242

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Koh, Honorary Associate, Faculty of Business, School of Management, University of Technology Sydney

It almost reads like a John Grisham novel.

Self-employed woman contracts cancer. Claims under her income-protection insurance policy. Insurer cancels the policy after investigation reveals omission of unrelated health condition (depression) on her original application. She is accused of acting in bad faith and threatened with having to repay the money (A$24,000) already received. Her story comes to national attention. A dramatic court battle ensues. Justice is finally served.

Last week just such a narrative concluded in the Federal Court, when chief justice James Allsop found TAL Life, one of Australia’s biggest life insurers, had breached its duty to act with “utmost good faith” by cancelling a sick woman’s income-protection policy through the questionable practice of “retrospective underwriting”.

The Federal Court case was initiated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission in December 2019. This followed evidence from the banking royal commission in 2018 showing the lengths TAL went to in seeking to void insurance policies.

Justice Allsop ruled TAL’s actions – including not informing the claimant she was under investigation, reaching a wrong conclusion, failing to give her a chance to respond, and threatening to pursue her for money – lacked “decency and fairness”.

However, he did not agree with the corporate regulator that TAL’s actions amounted to false or misleading conduct. Guilt on that charge would have meant a fine.

The ruling carries no financial penalty, apart from TAL having to keep its end of the contract. The judgment is nonetheless significant. It puts insurance companies on notice about the use of retrospective underwriting, scrutinising insurance applications only when a claim is made, and covertly trawling through applicants’ medical and financial records to find any excuse to void the policy.

What is underwriting

Let’s briefly recap what insurance underwriting means.

It is the process of assessing an applicant’s risk and pricing a life insurance policy (which includes a policy such as income protection) accordingly.

If you have, for example, a history of hypertension, you have a higher risk of stroke. This is something an underwriter wants to know, to accurately assess your actuarial risk. They may increase the premium you pay, or exclude from the policy claims for strokes, or decline cover altogether.

Insurance application forms typically require you to declare “yes” or “no” to a list of the most common medical conditions or circumstances, with an open-ended question about other “relevant” conditions.

Usually the underwriting process is straightforward. Insurers accept declarations in good faith, and approve applications (and collect the premiums) as quickly as possible.

Retrospective underwriting

But that changes when you make a claim.

Then insurers are unwilling to accept anything in good faith. They typically require you to authorise access to your financial and medical records, including records you may not have seen – such as your doctor’s notes.

A doctor might note observations about a patient seeming depressed. It’s not an explicit diagnosis. But an insurer may retrospectively consider this undisclosed evidence of “depression”.

Finding “relevant” information not declared in the original application gives the insurer an excuse to “retrospectively underwrite” the policy – determining what policy it would have offered (if at all) had that information been known.

Retrospective underwriting usually favours insurers as it is done with the knowledge of an existing claim. The federal Insurance Contracts Act allows insurers, under certain conditions, to cancel policies within three years of inception due to relevant non-disclosures or misrepresentations in applications.

Read more: Very risky business: the pros and cons of insurance companies embracing artificial intelligence

TAL at the royal commission

Appearing before the banking royal commission in September 2018, TAL senior executive Loraine van Eeden agreed the company’s approach had lacked empathy. She acknowledged it was wrong to not tell the claimant she was being investigated, and wrong to not give her a chance to respond to the reason for the retrospective underwriting.

TAL had approved the woman’s income protection insurance in October 2013, asking detailed medical questions, including those of mental health. In mid-December she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She lodged her policy claim on January 3 2014.

TAL accepted the claim on 7 January and made monthly payments until May. In June it cancelled the policy, on the basis her medical records revealed undisclosed mental health issues it said would have changed the initial underwriting. Perhaps, one suspects, not offer cover. TAL did not suggest she was dishonest.

Practical implications

In our experiences it is not unusual for insurers to use a claims process to retrospectively underwrite. Often claimants only become aware of this when they’re told there is information giving the insurer the right to cancel the policy.

Under the life insurance industry’s voluntary Code of Practice, insurers are meant to explain why they’re requesting information relevant to a claim.

The corporate regulator and consumer advocates have long held concerns the three-year window to cancel policies encourages insurers to go on “fishing expeditions”.

No more spying

Since January 1 the rules giving insurers three years to cancel a policy have been tightened – one of the 27 of 76 recommendations from the banking royal commission the federal government has implemented.

Insurers now may only “avoid a contract of life insurance on the basis of non-disclosure or misrepresentation if it can show that it would not have entered into a contract on any terms”.

Read more: Ideology triumphs over evidence: Morrison government drops the ball on banking reform

The Federal Court ruling puts life insurers on further notice. It clarifies what the “duty of utmost good faith” required by the Insurance Contracts Act means.

They don’t need to behave dishonestly to breach that duty. Not meeting community expectations of decency and fairness is enough. That doesn’t leave much room for lesser signs of excessive suspicion, let alone “deep-dive” operations to dig for dirt. That’s all but been declared illegal.

– ref. Federal Court rules insurance companies have to behave decently. That’s a big deal – https://theconversation.com/federal-court-rules-insurance-companies-have-to-behave-decently-thats-a-big-deal-157057

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ryan Hoy, Respiratory Physician. Senior Research Fellow. Monash Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, Monash University

In 2012 my wife and I renovated our house — a two-storey extension with a brand new kitchen. Inspired by various renovation-themed TV shows and magazines, we chose a sleek stone island bench as the focal point for the kitchen.

I knew the benchtop material was some form of stone. You could choose almost any colour and it cost a lot less than marble. But I didn’t know much else and I didn’t ask any questions. As a respiratory physician who has diagnosed numerous workers with silicosis over the past four years, I regret my ignorance.

Like many Australians who have renovated or built homes since the early 2000s, the material we chose was artificial stone (also known as engineered or reconstituted stone, or quartz).

In 2015, after the first Australian stone benchtop industry worker was reported to have severe silicosis, I was astonished to discover artificial stone contains up to 95% crystalline silica.

Inhalation of crystalline silica dust is one of the best-known causes of lung disease, including silicosis and lung cancer. The adverse health effects of silica exposure were established while there was still debate about the harm of cigarettes and asbestos. But Australians’ affinity for artificial stone benchtops has seen silicosis make a major comeback in recent years.

New research in Victoria shows the extent of silicosis among workers in the stone benchtop industry.

Read more: Explainer: what is silicosis and why is this old lung disease making a comeback?

What is silicosis?

Silicosis is a preventable disease characterised by scarring on the lungs, called pulmonary fibrosis.

Over time, inhalation of tiny silica dust particles triggers an inflammatory response that causes small growths called nodules to build up on the lungs. These nodules can grow and cluster together, causing the lungs to become stiffer and impeding the transfer of oxygen into the blood.

In the early stages of the disease, a person may be well. Symptoms of silicosis can include a cough, breathlessness and tiredness. Generally, the more widespread the disease becomes in the lungs, the more trouble a person will have with breathing.

There’s not currently a cure. In severe cases, a lung transplant may be the only option, and the disease can be fatal.

Brisbane researchers, however, recently demonstrated early but promising results from a trial in which they washed silica out of a small number of silicosis patients’ lungs.

The road to reform

Tradesmen in the stone benchtop industry cut slabs of stone to size and use hand-held power saws and grinders to form holes for sinks and stove tops. This generates crystalline silica dust from the stone which may be released into the air.

Using water in this process can suppress the generation of dust significantly, but until recently dry processing of artificial stone has been ubiquitous in the industry. Almost 70% of workers with silicosis in Victoria indicated they spent more than half their time at work in an environment where dry processing was occurring.

Stone benchtop workers suffering silicosis have called out poor work conditions over recent years, including being made to perform dry cutting with inadequate protections such as effective ventilation and appropriate respirators.

Queensland was the first state to ban dry cutting in 2018. Victoria followed in 2019, and New South Wales in 2020.

It’s too early to assess whether these changes have affected the prevalence of silicosis, but hopefully they will make a difference.

Our research

Around the time the Victorian government introduced the ban, it launched an enforcement blitz in high-risk workplaces, while WorkSafe Victoria implemented a free screening program for the estimated 1,400 workers in the stone benchtop industry across the state.

The Monash Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health recently released a report detailing the findings from the first year of the screening program. Some 18% of initial 324 workers who completed the assessments were diagnosed with silicosis.

We’ve seen similar results in Queensland, where as of February 2021 the government had screened 1,053 stonemasons exposed to crystalline silica dust from artificial stone. Some 223 (or 21%) were diagnosed with silicosis, including 32 with the most severe form, called progressive massive fibrosis.

The Monash report indicates workers in Victoria are diagnosed with silicosis at an average age of just 41. The average time spent working in the stone benchtop industry when diagnosed was 14 years, and the shortest was just three years, reflecting an extremely high level of silica dust exposure.

We published some earlier results of this research project in Occupational and Environmental Medicine late last year. But this latest data hasn’t yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, meaning it hasn’t been subject to the same level of scrutiny as other published research.

A broader problem

Failure to protect workers from silica exposure goes well beyond the stone benchtop industry.

Around 3.7% of Australian workers are estimated to be highly exposed to silica at work, and we see workers in other industries, such as quarry work, with silicosis too.

Some 59% of Earth’s crust is silica, so in certain workplaces such as mines and quarries, eliminating silica is not feasible.

In these circumstances, exposure must be identified and tightly controlled with measures to prevent dust generation, isolation of workers from the dust, and effective ventilation. If silica cannot be eliminated from a workplace, constant vigilance and evaluation of control strategies are essential.

Read more: Engineered stone benchtops are killing our tradies. Here’s why a ban’s the only answer

But when it comes to the choice of material for your kitchen benchtop, it’s hard to argue elimination of high-silica artificial stone isn’t feasible. There are many other materials suitable for benchtops that contain little or no silica, such as wood, laminate, steel or marble.

Compared with other countries, Australian consumers have developed a particular fondness for artificial stone, which accounts for 45% of the benchtop market here, but just 14% in the United States.

Workers’ lung health may seem like a strange thing to contemplate when designing a kitchen. But increased awareness of this issue is crucial to drive change.

– ref. Renovating your kitchen? Help Australia’s tradies avoid silicosis by not choosing artificial stone – https://theconversation.com/renovating-your-kitchen-help-australias-tradies-avoid-silicosis-by-not-choosing-artificial-stone-156208

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angela McCabe, Lecturer, Management, La Trobe University

Australia has long been seen as failing to fully capitalise on its ground-breaking research. A consultation paper on university research commercialisation is the latest federal government effort to increase the impact of research. Its focus is on creating incentives for industry-university collaboration to translate and commercialise research.

Any government scheme resulting from these consultations might boost the number of such collaborations. Yet our research suggests many of these projects are unlikely to reach their full potential unless academics and their research partners working in industry strengthen their collaborative relationships.

Read more: Who cares about university research? The answer depends on its impacts

Our recently published investigation of the Australian Research Council Linkage scheme found these productive relationships do not occur organically. The academic side must work to ensure industry practitioners fully contribute their expertise.

What did the study find?

In our study, a number of projects were marked by ostensibly healthy relationships. Relations between practitioners and academics were harmonious. Yet practitioners engaged on a very narrow range of aspects only.

Practitioners saw their role as merely facilitating and supporting academics. They were not fully engaged. These projects were denied the full benefits of practitioners’ expertise complementing academic expertise.

Therefore, apparently harmonious collaborations were ultimately compromised.

As one academic explained:

_“[It is] really about saying everyone brings different things […] to the table and to the development of a research project.”

A corresponding practitioner emphatically acknowledged this point.

Effective industry-university partnerships require close collaboration. This means both sides engage fully in an open and contestable forum. Only then can they get the full benefits of partners with complementary perspectives and knowledge bases working together.

Building better relationships must be a priority

To improve collaborations academics need to enable practitioners to be fully engaged.

We identified a number of enabling practices for academics to adopt. Practitioners can then become equal partners in research projects. Decision-making becomes more open, contested and productive.

The consultation paper identifies social, cultural and economic barriers to industry-university partnerships. In announcing the University Research Commercialisation Scheme, federal Education Minister Alan Tudge called for “new ideas on how we can increase collaboration between business and universities and put our research at the heart of our economic recovery”.

Read more: Boosting commercialisation of research poses a big challenge for universities

Our findings suggest a number of solutions.

Where partnerships are more than simple research-translation exercises with fairly straightforward, unilateral transfers of know-how from academia to industry, we need to pay close attention to the relationship between the partners. In particular, academics need to become more adept at working with practitioners to capitalise fully on their distinct yet complementary types of knowledge.

This requires instilling in academics greater awareness of relationship dynamics and their effects on research outcomes. The skills needed to initiate and sustain close collaboration between research partners must be fostered.

Read more: Poor research-industry collaboration: time for blame or economic reality at work?

3 steps to improve partnerships

Universities may want to familiarise academics with the ways they can enable practitioners as co-researchers. The enabling practices our research uncovered are a useful starting point.

1. Develop practitioners’ research capabilities

Beyond imparting particular skills, research training and “on the job” research exposure build practitioners’ awareness of the research process. This helps them to see how they can contribute more to the project.

2. Increase practitioners’ project responsibilities

Project responsibility gives practitioners a greater voice in project decisions and legitimises their role in the research. Joint responsibility signals their involvement in decision-making is valid and legitimate.

3. Embed practitioners in the team to broaden perspectives

Fully socialising and integrating practitioners in the research team enables them to see themselves as equal partners who can engage in and benefit the project.

Several academics underscored the importance of forging close bonds among team members. For instance, to help practitioners appreciate their own value, one academic encouraged conversations among collaborating practitioners.

“The technician might not have the imagination that the artist does and similarly the curators might not know what the town planner requires […] So one of the things we do is to roll them together so that one [practitioner] partner speaks to the next and learns from the other.”

As they got to appreciate one another’s diverse and unique knowledge, practitioners were more prepared to engage fully.

Read more: Ten rules for successful research collaboration

These practices enable projects to harness the value of partners’ different perspectives.

Any future scheme designed for greater research impact ought to combine incentives to establish industry-university collaborations with a focus on strengthening these relationships.

Submissions on the University Research Commercialisation Scheme close on April 9.

– ref. How to get the most out of research when universities and industry team up – https://theconversation.com/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-research-when-universities-and-industry-team-up-156590

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gareth Wearne, Lecturer in Biblical Studies, School of Theology, Australian Catholic University

On Tuesday news broke of the discovery of fresh fragments of a nearly 2,000-year-old scroll in Israel. The fragments were said to come from the evocatively named Cave of Horror, near the western shore of the Dead Sea.

The finds were announced with attention-grabbing headlines that these were new fragments of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls and some of our earliest evidence for the biblical books of Zechariah and Nahum.

But more than just remnants of ancient text, the discovery reflects the troubled history of the Dead Sea Scrolls and tells human stories of revolution, a desperate search for safety and archaeological ingenuity.

Read more: Dead Sea Scrolls: how we accidentally discovered missing text – in Manchester

People of the scroll

Information is still coming out, but unusually for ancient discoveries of this kind, we know something about the people who hid the scroll.

The Cave of Horror is one of a series of eight caves in the canyon of Naḥal Ḥever, which were used as places of refuge during a Jewish revolt against Rome (132–135 CE)in the time of the emperor Hadrian. The revolt was led by Simon bar Kochba (or Simon bar Kosebah, as he is also known in ancient sources), who was thought by his followers to be the Messiah.

The cave has been known to archaeologists since 1953, but it wasn’t until 1961 that it was excavated by a team led by the Israeli archaeologist, Yonahan Aharoni. The new fragments were found as part of a larger project to search for new manuscripts, which is being conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

The cave is remote and difficult to access, which is doubtless why it was used as a hiding place. Aharoni describes the entrance as being 80 meters below the edge of the canyon with a drop of hundreds of meters below it. The team who first explored the cave in 1955 had to use a 100-meter-long rope ladder to reach the opening.

The nickname Cave of Horror was given to the cave because of a large number of skeletons, including children’s skeletons, that were found inside. Together with the skeletons were personal documents, a fragmentary copy of a prayer written in Hebrew, and the scroll to which these fragments belong, which was hidden at the back of the cave.

Remains of a Roman camp at the top of the cliff suggests the refugees sheltering there died as a result of a Roman siege. The occupants were determined not to surrender. There were no signs of wounds on the skeletons, suggesting the occupants died as a result of hunger and thirst, or possibly smoke inhalation from a fire in the centre of the cave.

They buried their most prized possessions, including the scroll from which these fragments come, to keep them safe.

Our oldest biblical texts

The photographs and reports released by the IAA indicate the fragments contain our earliest copy of Zechariah 8:16–17 and one of our earliest copies of Nahum 1:5–6. The fragments appear to be missing pieces of a scroll already known to scholars — the Greek Minor Prophets scroll from Naḥal Ḥever, or 8ḤevXIIgr to give it its official designation.

As the name suggests, the scroll is a copy of the Greek translation of the biblical minor prophets, containing portions of the books of Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Zechariah. The “minor prophets” or “the twelve” customarily describes the books spanning from Hosea to Malachi in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament.

Among other things, the minor prophets include the story of Jonah being swallowed by a “great fish”.

Read more: The Dead Sea Scrolls are a priceless link to the Bible’s past

Don’t say His name

The ancient Hebrew scriptures were first translated into Greek for the benefit of Greek-speaking Jews who had begun to lose contact with their Hebrew roots. Ancient sources, such as the letter of Aristeas, indicate the work of translating the scriptures into Greek probably began in Egypt, some time around 200 years before Christ.

A fascinating feature of the Greek Minor Prophets scroll is the fact the name of God is written in Hebrew, not Greek. This practice stems back to the prohibition in Exodus 20:7 against “taking God’s name in vain”.

The Dead Sea Scrolls attest several practices for avoiding accidentally pronouncing the divine name while reading aloud. These include substituting dots in place of the letters and the use of an archaic form of the Hebrew alphabet.

This custom is the basis for the modern practice of writing Lord in capital letters in modern editions of the Bible.

Beating the looters

Shortly after the discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 it became apparent the rare ancient manuscripts had financial value. This led to a race between archaeologists and local Bedouin to discover more scroll fragments.

Consequently, it can be difficult to verify the archaeological provenance of many of the Dead Sea Scrolls remnants.

More recently, fake scrolls have found their way into at least one modern museum collection. A new manuscript discovery with secure archaeological provenance, like the one announced last week, is immensely important.

Perhaps most excitingly, these new fragments leave open the tantalising possibility there are more scrolls out there, waiting to be found.

Read more: Fake scrolls at the Museum of the Bible

– ref. Cave of Horror: fresh fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls echo dramatic human stories – https://theconversation.com/cave-of-horror-fresh-fragments-of-the-dead-sea-scrolls-echo-dramatic-human-stories-157423

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathryn Henne, Professor and Director, School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australian National University

Yesterday, New South Wales Police Commissioner Mick Fuller suggested technology should be part of the solution to growing concerns around sexual assault. He encouraged serious discussion about using a digital app to record positive sexual consent.

In our research, we have studied a wide range of mobile applications and artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots used in attempts to counter sexual violence over the past decade. We found these apps have many limitations and unexpected consequences.

How apps are being used to address sexual abuse

Apps aimed at responding to sexual harassment and assault have circulated for at least a decade. With support from government initiatives, such as the Obama administration’s 2011 Apps Against Abuse challenge, and global organisations, such as UN Women, they have been implemented in corporate environments, universities and mental health services.

These apps are not limited to documenting consent. Many are designed to offer emergency assistance, information and a means for survivors of sexual violence to report and build evidence against perpetrators. Proponents often frame these technologies as empowering tools that support women through the accessible and anonymous processing of data.

In the case of the proposed consent app, critics have noted that efforts to time-stamp consent fail to recognise consent can always be withdrawn. In addition, a person may consent out of pressure, fear of repercussions or intoxication.

If a person does indicate consent at some point but circumstances change, the record could be used to discredit their claims.

How digital apps fail to address sexual violence

The use of apps will not address many longstanding problems with common responses to sexual violence. Research indicates safety apps often reinforce rape myths, such as the idea that sexual assault is most often perpetrated by strangers. In reality, the vast majority of rapes are committed by people the victims already know.

Usually marketed to women, these apps collect data from users through surveillance using persistent cookies and geolocational tracking. Even “anonymised” data can often be identifiable.

Digital tools can also enable violence. Abusive partners can use them for cyberstalking, giving them constant access to victims. Apps designed to encourage survivors to report violence raise similar concerns, because they fail to address the power imbalances that lead to authorities discrediting survivors’ accounts of violence.

Apps don’t change the bigger picture

The introduction of an app does not itself change the wider landscape in which sexual violence cases are handled.

The high-profile sex abuse scandal involving Larry Nassar, a former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor convicted of a range of sex offences after being accused by more than 350 young women and girls, led to reforms that included the SafeSport app.

This resulted in 1,800 reports of sexual misconduct or abuse within a year of the app’s introduction. However, a lack of funding meant the reports could not be properly investigated, undermining organisational promises to enforce sanctions for sexual misconduct.

Read more: Anti-rape devices may have their uses, but they don’t address the ultimate problem

Poor implementation and cost-saving measures compromise users’ safety. In Canada and the United States, the hospitality industry is rolling out smart panic buttons to 1.2 million hotel and casino staff. This is a response to widespread sexual violence: a union survey found 58% of employees had been sexually harassed by a guest and 65% of casino workers experienced unwanted touching.

Employers are now required by law to provide panic buttons, but they are turning to cheap and inferior devices, raising security concerns. Legislation does not prevent them using these devices to monitor the movements of their employees.

Who owns the data?

Even if implemented as intended, apps raise questions about data protection. They collect vast amounts of sensitive data, which is stored on digital databases and cloud servers that are vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Read more: The ugly truth: tech companies are tracking and misusing our data, and there’s little we can do

The data may be owned by private companies who can sell it on to other organisations, allowing authorities to circumvent privacy laws. Last month, it was revealed US Immigration and Customs Enforcement purchased access to the Reuters CLEAR database containing information about 400 million people whose data they could not legally collect on their own.

In short, apps don’t protect victims or their data.

Why we need to take this ‘bad idea’ seriously

Fuller, the NSW police commissioner, admitted his recommendation might be a bad idea. His idea was built on the premise that the important issue to address is making sure consent is clearly communicated. It misunderstands the nature of sexual violence, which is grounded in unequal power relations.

In practice, a consent app would be unlikely to protect victims. Research shows data collected through new forms of investigation often result in evidence that is used against victims’ wishes.

There are other reasons why the consent app is a bad idea. It perpetuates misguided assumptions about technology’s ability to “fix” societal harms. Consent, violence and accountability are not data problems. These complex issues require strong cultural and structural responses, not simply quantifiable and time-stamped data.

– ref. Apps against sexual violence have been tried before. They don’t work – https://theconversation.com/apps-against-sexual-violence-have-been-tried-before-they-dont-work-157415

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Annette Greenhow, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Bond University

The AFL season kicked off this week with the defending champion Richmond Tigers taking on Carlton in front of nearly 50,000 fans at the Melbourne Cricket Ground — apparently the largest sport crowd in Australia since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the lead-up to the new season, however, the focus has not solely been on the footy. Much attention is also being paid to the darker side of the sport: concerns over concussions and the safety of its players.

Last month, the Guardian published a report saying the AFL is considering creating a $2 billion concussion trust fund to support past, present and players.

Then, the coroner’s report into the death of AFL legend Danny Frawley found chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease, had been “a potential contributor” to the depression he had suffered.

The coroner recommended the AFL “actively encourage” players to donate their brains to the Australian Sports Brain Bank for scientific research to

improve the safety of future generations of footballers and others engaged in contact sports.

Last week, the AFL said it wanted to be involved in the investigation into the suicide of 38-year-old former player Shane Tuck, who had also suffered mental health problems. One of the brain bank researchers said Tuck had “the worst case” of CTE he had ever seen.

All of this comes months after former AFL player Shaun Smith was awarded a $1.4 million insurance payout for the “total and permanent disablement” he suffered as a result of concussions — the first of its kind in Australia.

With the AFL placing such attention on this issue, it’s important to also consider what these developments mean for other levels of the sport, especially schoolchildren.

Should my child be signing up to join the footy team?

This was the exact question I asked myself when I first started researching the dangers of concussions in professional sport in 2010.

I assumed that at the school level, our kids would be entering a sports system that was optimally safe and acknowledged the risks of contact sport. But this wasn’t necessarily the case. There was no real understanding of who was responsible for making the system safe.

Read more: Concussions and kids: know the signs

We’ve known for years that the dangers of mismanaging concussions are not just an elite-level footy concern that stops at the boundary lines of the MCG. This should, in fact, be regarded as a prominent public health issue.

Given this, who should ultimately take the lead on this at the school and junior level — the government (the guardians of the public’s health) or the AFL (the guardians of the sport)? The answer is a mixture of both.

A prominent public health issue

Unlike some countries, Australian governments have traditionally adopted a “hands off” approach when it comes to the legal regulation of sport-related concussions.

The federal government has taken some steps toward framing this as a public health concern in recent years by developing a Concussion in Sport Australia information website. It provides guidance for athletes, parents, coaches and teachers on everything from the early signs of a concussion to the long-term consequences.

Some state and territory governments have partnered with professional groups to develop their own concussion in sport protocols and education workshops for community sport programs.

These are all positive steps in the right direction, but the approach remains patchy and inconsistent across the country.

Recognising the wider social context, I put out an urgent call in 2018 for a collective and nationally coordinated response.

My proposal aimed to bring together state governments, sporting codes and medical and other experts to work with Sport Australia on designing a national concussion framework. What we needed was a consistent approach across sports to reduce and manage the risks associated with concussion in sport — all guided by research.

The idea didn’t make much headway with governments. There is still more work to be done.

How laws in other countries are helping

While the data are patchy, experts agree that sport-related concussions among children are very common, and the effects of concussions in children are different from those in adults. Experts also agree that children and adolescents should be subject to more conservative and careful concussion management.

The United States is far ahead in this effort. Youth sport concussion laws are now in place in states across the country that focus on mitigating the risk of mismanaging concussions and preventing serious complications.

The laws generally focus on three central principles) — education, immediate removal from play and medical clearance before return. While far from perfect in terms of regulatory process, these laws have gone a long way to heighten awareness of the dangers of concussion.

There has been success on this front in the Canadian province of Ontario.

A government mandate was issued in 2014 requiring schools to develop a concussion protocol as part of the curricula. Then, in 2018, a new law was passed that required all sport organisations to establish a concussion code of conduct and removal from sport and return-to-play protocols for children under 18.

Australia does not have similar laws. The Australia Institute of Sport has issued a position statement that reads:

Children should not return to contact/collision activities before 14 days from complete resolution of all concussion symptoms.

But what is clearly needed are stronger laws or collaborative governance mechanisms to ensure our kids are entering an optimally safe sports system.

Read more: Can headband sensors reduce underreported concussions in kids?

What has the AFL done?

The AFL does not have the same legislative mandate as government, but it wields significant influence as the guardian of the sport.

According to the AFL, concussion has been on its radar for over 25 years, but most of this has been focused on the elite level of the sport.

The AFL Community Club website does provide guidelines on managing concussions for community football, which includes a sport concussion assessment tool for children aged five to 12.

Read more: Is the National Rugby League legally liable for the long-term impacts of concussions?

However, some of the AFL’s affiliate networks across the country have outdated or hard-to-find information on concussion safety on their websites. Given the prominence of the issue, this inconsistency is something the AFL needs to urgently address.

In December, the AFL advertised for a new “concussion lead” to coordinate its strategy on head trauma and concussion responses, which signifies just how serious this issue has become.

Undoubtedly, the AFL has had a lot on its plate navigating the COVID-related disruptions to the sport, but the time is right to adopt a wider lens in developing an effective concussion strategy to keep our kids safe.

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

– ref. Concussion risks aren’t limited to the AFL. We need urgent action to make sure our kids are safe, too – https://theconversation.com/concussion-risks-arent-limited-to-the-afl-we-need-urgent-action-to-make-sure-our-kids-are-safe-too-155638

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan W. Marshall, Postgraduate Research Coordinator, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University

Review: Galup, by Ian Wilkes and Poppy van Oorde-Grainger, Perth Festival with Same Drum and Performing Lines.

Galup is a “theatricalised” walking tour created by Ian Wilkes and Poppy van Oorde-Grainger. The artists’ aim is truth-telling, to restore memories of the First Australians and their early contact with white settlers beside Lake Monger, Perth.

Tales of hunting, of spear throwing, of Noongar warrior Yagan, and of visitors from distant Aboriginal lands have been told before, but are not well known.

The Noongar name for the lake is Galup, or place of the fires. It was used as a campsite, with ready food and fresh water. Today it is a popular reserve.

At the core of Wilkes’ one-man guided tour is the 1833 meeting between local Noongar (including Yagan) and two Aboriginal men — Gyallipert and Manyat — who had undertaken an epic journey by tall ship from the southern coast to visit their northern peers.

Yagan attended the meeting, despite the fact he’d recently been declared an Imperial outlaw for his defence of Noongar sovereignty. Not long afterwards, he was murdered by white shepherds further up the Swan River.

Yagan’s death is an especially grotesque colonial incident. His head was souvenired for display in the United Kingdom. His remains were repatriated in 1997. Wilkes was one of those who welcomed Yagan back to Noongar boodja (land) through dance.

Read more: Part escape room, part choose-your-own adventure, the whodunit Whistleblower has the audience at its heart

A rarely told massacre

One story about Lake Galup is rarely told. It is about the massacre that began when mounted troopers rode into a Noongar camp and opened fire. Those who could ran to the lake and hid, slipping away at night. The closing sequence of Galup features Noongar elder Doolann Leisha Eatts telling this story by the campfire.

The Lake Monger massacre is not listed on the Newcastle University Colonial Frontier Massacre map, though two comparable attacks have been recorded that were launched to demonstrate colonial military superiority and as reprisals for killing sheep.

Galup is restricted to 15 spectators per night, giving it an intimate social ambience that begins convivially. Wilkes tells us we are moving into a dual time. The artists are explicit in their goal for this as an activist work; they hope to erect a memorial in the future. One must not therefore get lost in the past. One must hold these experiences in the present.

Wilkes introduces one of the many characters he plays, both white and Black, as the son of a white settler and a Noongar woman. The settler hid the woman from pursuers at his hut, and came to love her — or so the son hopes.

Wilkes takes on these and other roles with a light grace. He gently alters his bearing and intonation — these are not the deep alterations of “method actors” like Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman and company. Gestures lie upon the body, rather than transforming it. The boundary between Wilkes playing various characters or being an anonymous guide are therefore fluid.

Wilkes delivers much of his speech in Noongar. Spectators may not retain the utterances themselves, but Wilkes makes the performance an act of affective gifting. Understandings are shared even if the precise grammar is not unpacked.

Read more: ‘Articulation of women’s rage’: Slow Burn, Together and its haunting of women dancers

Give and take

Gyallipert and Manyat reportedly attended a dinner where the civil commissioner’s wife played piano for them. They were said to have reciprocated with song and dance.

Wilkes teaches those on the tour a Noongar song of walking. Later we come across a piano, and like Gyallipert and Manyat, Wilkes teaches us dances including that of the rainbow serpent (waugul) whose snaking journeys above and below the ground produced Lake Galup and its underground water sources.

Read more: Black Drop Effect review: infusing the present moment with layers of the past

We try our hand at spear throwing, and Wilkes elects me to play Gyallipert. It is, for me as a wadjela or white man, an embarrassing honour to be dressed in his gorgeous kangaroo skin cloak. Unlike Gyallipert, I have no cloak or weapons to gift back.

Snippets of language and history are offered throughout, sometimes with audience participation. We receive biscuit rations as the Noongar did. Now, as then, the portions are meagre.

Wilkes mourns on behalf of his ancestors, “What are we Noongar to do, now all our birdiya, all our leaders, are dead?”

Yet, there is grace here. The dominant characteristic of the performance is one of openness. There is space to ponder. Listening to the dual narrative of survival and dispossession, I was struck by how encroached-upon the reserve is today. At one point Wilkes moves through a pair of poplar trees. Unlike the thin line of gums earlier on the trail, these trees are signs of colonial conquest.

Where we throw spears, I notice barely perceptible marks where someone has illegally driven a vehicle. Lake Galup is hemmed in by neat suburban housing. It is far from “wild”, though its waters still sustain game.

Read more: ‘Where are you really from?’ The harsh realities of Afro-Aussie life are brought to stage in Black Brass

Beginning a full accounting

Survival and resistance in these circumstances is fraught. Social conditions and the high value placed by nearby householders on neatly maintained lawns — irrigated by underground water we steal from the waugal below — work against the development of an improved relationship with Noongar boodja and its peoples.

The episodic structure of Galup renders it a thoughtful if uneven experience. The massacre story does not develop out of preceding action, and it is a jarring conclusion for a work that doesn’t seem to be aiming for tragedy.

A full accounting of the histories of contact between First Nations people and white settlers, of singing together at the piano, of dancing, as well as violence and murder, has yet to become central to our national memory. Galup and works like it may change this.

Galup is part of the Perth Festival, running until March 20.

– ref. Galup theatrical walking tour recalls the dancing and violence of the colonial encounter – https://theconversation.com/galup-theatrical-walking-tour-recalls-the-dancing-and-violence-of-the-colonial-encounter-155120

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gosia Mikolajczak, Research fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne

In her departing speech this week, federal Liberal politician Nicolle Flint slammed the sexist abuse and harassment she endured in the lead-up to the 2019 election. Together with Brittany Higgins’ rape claim and other female political staffers’ stories of gendered violence and harassment, she has exposed the toxic workplace culture in Australia’s parliament and political life.

While the disturbing experiences of women working in federal parliament received much media attention and roused tens of thousands of Australians to action in the March4Justice rallies, we know little about the workplace culture in other political jurisdictions.

Our latest research into the experiences of Victorian local government councillors sheds light on this question at the grassroots level. And it paints a similarly horrific picture of gender abuse and harassment.

While local government generally garners less media attention, and exercises less political power than other tiers of government, it is an important sphere for female political participation. It is also a critical entry point for women starting a political career.

As a record number of women were elected at the October 2020 Victorian council elections – bringing representation to 43.8% (273 women) – one could be forgiven for thinking their workplace culture is less toxic for female politicians.

Read more: Women are (rightly) angry. Now they need a plan

Our research finds this assumption to be fanciful.

Our first survey of 728 local government candidates found women with previous council experience reported more frequent negative experiences on the job than men. About one in four women (23%) compared to only 3% of men had “very often” experienced negative behaviours that affected them personally. Amazingly, some of these women, despite their experiences of abuse, were still prepared to run again for council.

What is unknown is how many councillors decided not to recontest the election because of gender-related abuse. In partnership with the Victorian Local Governance Association (VLGA,) we are investigating this question as part of a four-year Australian Research Council-funded project.

What we do know from our elected councillors’ responses is that women were more likely than men to identify other councillors as being behind these negative workplace experiences. They reported being met with hostile attitudes, sexist comments and bullying by male counterparts.

Women councillors said these negative experiences had taken an emotional and mental toll on them. This in turn was made worse by their observation – much like their federal counterparts – that internal complaints processes do not deal adequately with abusers.

In our follow-up survey after the election (in December 2020) of 235 (out of 623) newly elected Victorian councillors (110 men and 125 women), just under half of the surveyed elected women (44%, compared to 23% of men) reported experiencing repeated condescending behaviours during the campaign.

Half the female councillors (49%, compared to 35% of men) reported receiving e-mails, text messages or social media posts with offensive content at least “a couple of times” during their term. More than a third (38%, compared to 10% of men) reported someone making demeaning, rude or derogatory remarks about their gender during the election.

Derogatory comments included:

• questioning their ability to perform in the role of councillor
• comments on a pregnancy or their motherhood status
• their age
• appearance
• explicit, sexual references.

A range of people, including other candidates, constituents and local journalists, made the comments.

The findings highlight a terrible start for many women in their roles as elected public representatives. Our further studies will seek to understand if these experiences are linked to female attrition in politics.

Early signs suggest a connection. For example, one female councillor described how such hostility discouraged her from participating in politics. She said:

This is probably the biggest challenge I face – having to deal with the bullying and harassment, which is pretty constant and felt particularly extreme this time under lockdown. I think it also puts off other women from running.

Read more: Could the Morrison government’s response to sexual assault claims cost it the next election?

A damning Victoria auditor-general report late last year found more than a quarter of local government workers experienced sexual harassment on the job. Sadly, our research finds gender abuse is also prevalent for elected women in local government. As one female councillor told us:

People say, ‘it goes with the territory’, ‘you have to have a thick skin’, ‘rise above it’ […] really? Why is behaviour that would see someone disciplined or fired in any other workplace excused in politics?

Our research suggests the prominence of gender-based adverse experiences for women interested in representing their communities is having a “chilling effect” on women running for council. This has serious consequences for achieving gender parity in local government.

Until this problem is addressed, the Victorian government’s commendable target of achieving equal representation in local government by 2025 is unlikely to be met.

– ref. Sexism, harassment, bullying: just like federal MPs, women standing for local government cop it all – https://theconversation.com/sexism-harassment-bullying-just-like-federal-mps-women-standing-for-local-government-cop-it-all-157396

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Heynen, Program Coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland

Australia’s nearest neighbour, Papua New Guinea, is battling an unfolding COVID crisis. The Morrison government is urgently deploying 8,000 vaccine doses to the nation’s health workers – but poor electricity access means there are serious questions over PNG’s broader vaccine roll-out.

Vaccine supplies must be stored at cold or ultra-cold temperatures along the supply chain. Importantly, when the vaccines reach hospitals and medical centres in PNG, stable electricity will be needed to power refrigerators to store the doses before they’re administered to patients.

Currently only about 13% of Papua New Guinea’s eight million people have reliable access to electricity. This is not an isolated problem. In 2019, about 770 million people globally lived in “energy poverty”, without access to electricity – and the problem has grown worse due to COVID.

Australia is working to provide one million doses for wider distribution in PNG. But the pandemic only truly ends when the vaccines are rolled out globally. Countries and communities without electricity access present a major barrier to this goal.

Energy poverty matters

Australia enjoys a relatively reliable electricity network, even in remote parts of the country. There are also systems in place to keep vaccines cold in the event of a power outage, such as backup power.

But around the world, even in our Pacific neighbourhood, energy poverty is widespread and persistent. And COVID-19 has created a vicious circle for these nations. The pandemic has forced governments to shift priorities, leading to less funding for electricity infrastructure. In some countries, progress in electricity access has reversed for the first time in many years.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) says this reversal is being worst felt in Sub-Saharan Africa.

There, 580 million people lack access to electricity – three quarters of the world’s total. The IEA estimates this number grew by 6% in 2020.

It cites Uganda, where public subsidies for an electricity access program have been put on hold, and South Africa where funds to expand rural electrification were redirected to health and welfare programs.

PNG wants 70% of the country connected to electricity by 2030. This will require large scale investment in new generation capacity, and transmission and distribution lines to connect people to the grid. But the nation has long suffered economic instability, and the pandemic has only added to this.

Making matters worse, the true extent and trajectory of COVID-19 may be uncertain in nations suffering energy poverty. For example, there is growing evidence of under-testing in Africa and under-reporting of cases and deaths in PNG.

Read more: ‘A dam has been breached’: a COVID crisis on our doorstep shows how little we pay attention to PNG

Vaccine refrigeration is key

As experts have noted, efforts to end the pandemic have largely focused on developing, testing and manufacturing an effective vaccine. Less attention has been paid to distributing it rapidly at scale.

There are exceptions. The Lancet has identified local deployment as one of four key dimensions for an effective global vaccination roll-out.

More than 390 million vaccine doses have already been administered, mostly in high- and middle-income countries with effective financial and planning resources.

But in countries where electricity access is poor, refrigeration of vaccines during transport and storage may prove very difficult. Some countries may not be able to vaccinate large parts of their population.

The Pfizer vaccine must be frozen at around -70℃. The AstraZeneca vaccine must be kept at between 2℃ and 8℃.

Ultra-cold supply chains were established for the deployment of the Ebola vaccine in Africa in 2013–14. However, the scale required for COVID is enormous, and would be prohibitively expensive.

As reported in the Lancet, as of 2018, 74 of 194 member states of the World Health Organisation had no adult vaccination program for any disease. Fewer than 11% of countries in Africa and South Asia reported having such a program. This was thought to be partly due to a lack of systems for storage and delivery.

Alarmingly, a recent study suggested more than 85 less-developed countries will not have widespread access to COVID vaccines until 2023.

Many are relying on the World Health Organisation’s COVAX initiative, which aims to secure six billion doses of vaccine for less developed countries. Similarly, the Quad regional grouping – Australia, the US, Japan, and India – recently pledged to boost vaccine production and distribution for Asian and Pacific island countries.

But without access to reliable electricity, the roll-out of these vaccines will be hampered. This is particularly an issue in countries with remote and dispersed populations. There, keeping the vaccine cold over the “last mile” of distribution and storage may prove impossible.

Read more: How mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna work, why they’re a breakthrough and why they need to be kept so cold

Energy access is key to ending the pandemic

Communities experiencing energy poverty, such as in PNG, face other setbacks when it comes to managing the pandemic. Those populations are more likely to use solid fuels, such as wood, for cooking. This leads to indoor air pollution which can cause severe respiratory illnesses and more severe COVID-19 symptoms.

Without electricity access, such communities are unlikely to provide appropriate COVID-19 health responses, leading to a higher burden of disease.

In PNG, an “Electrification Partnership”, of which Australia is a key partner, appears on track. For instance, at a virtual summit at the height of the pandemic last August, Australia committed to financing a large-scale solar plant in Morobe Province. It would be one of the largest solar plants in the Pacific.

But as immunisation emerges as the world’s primary weapon to combat COVID-19, much more work is needed to improve electricity access to those who desperately need it. Indeed, ending the global pandemic may demand it.

Read more: A catastrophe looms with PNG’s COVID crisis. Australia needs to respond urgently

– ref. Australia is sending 8,000 vaccine doses to PNG – but without reliable electricity, how will they be kept cold? – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-sending-8-000-vaccine-doses-to-png-but-without-reliable-electricity-how-will-they-be-kept-cold-156798

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

Australia’s policy performance on COVID-19 in 2020 was world-leading in terms of both public health and economics. Sadly, our vaccine roll-out strategy has been anything but.

I’ve spent plenty of time highlighting this in recent months. But perhaps the most instructive thing to do is compare and contrast Australia’s back-of-the-pack performance with Israel’s – which is truly world-class.

Israel has shown a sense of urgency with its vaccine strategy and roll-out.

The country has gone from having a large infection rate – including from highly contagious variants of COVID-19 – to having herd immunity within its reach. This, in turn, has allowed it to open up the economy with all the benefits that flow from that.

Australia has a lot to learn.

Israel’s roll-out

Just a few months ago, in mid-January, Israel had the highest per capita COVID-19 infection rate in the world.

Now, as the following chart shows, the number of infections is less than a quarter the level recorded on January 17.

This is clearly due to Israel’s vaccination program, which began on December 19, 2020 – just ten days after the first Pfizer doses arrived in the country.

Israel was well ahead of most countries in signing a purchase agreement for Moderna’s high-efficacy mRNA vaccine in June 2020. Later in 2020 it made more deals with Pfizer (which also produces a very high-efficacy vaccine) and AstraZeneca.

About 57% of Israel’s population of 9 million have now received at least one dose of the vaccine. More than 48% are fully vaccinated. Life is getting back to normal. People are going to concerts and congregating in coffee shops.

How are we doing here in Australia?

We’re at 0.72% of the population having received even one dose. Only some senior politicians and perhaps the odd aged-care resident being used for a photo-op have received the two doses.

Factor in Israel’s success

So how did Israel do this?

First, Israel has a well-run universal health-care system. But so does Australia.

Second, Israel is a geographically small country. That helps with transporting and storing vaccines – particularly those requiring being kept a very cold temperatures (between -80ºC and -60ºC for the Pfizer vaccine).

Australia, by contrast, is a geographically huge country. However, we do have a highly concentrated urban population, with the five largest metropolitan cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide) accounting for 64% of Australia’s total population (about 16 million of the total population of 25.5 million).

Third, Israel’s approach emphasises being fast rather than sticking strictly to a priority order of who gets the vaccine first. Family members of high-priority people thus have often been able to get vaccinated at the same time. Australia’s approach, by contrast, is less urgent and more concerned with rules.

Finally, Israel has the political will. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made vaccination a top priority. Sure, he’s also facing serious corruption charges, so maybe this is all motivated by trying to stay out of prison. But who cares? He’s getting the job done.

The ‘green passport’

Israel has also introduced a “green passport” – a phone app that certifies the owner has been fully immunised or is presumed immune as a result of having previously had COVID-19.

The “green pass” (as it has become known) permits holders – and only holders – access to gyms, swimming pools, cultural events, weddings and other gatherings.

The Israeli government has been explicit about, and made no apology for the fact it is using both carrots and sticks to return life, and the economy, to normal.

Australia’s path forward

It’s not too late for Australia to repair our vaccine strategy, though we will never make up for the months lost.

It’s time for the federal government to get serious about the roll-out. No senior politician or health bureaucrat should ever again say “this is not a race” or “we’re not in a hurry”. It is a race. We should be in a hurry.

Every day we are sluggish about the roll-out is another day before the economy can open up properly. It is another day where there could be a hotel-quarantine outbreak – now with more contagious and likely deadlier COVID-19 variants –– potentially leading to further lockdowns and undermining people’s ability to travel or socialise normally.

The roll-out is a race. We need to run. Any government that doesn’t get that will pay a serious price at the ballot box.

– ref. Israel shows how to do vaccinations right. It’s a race, and we’re behind – https://theconversation.com/israel-shows-how-to-do-vaccinations-right-its-a-race-and-were-behind-157242

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen G Bosi, Senior Lecturer in Physics, University of New England

How does the freezer work? — Leon, aged 4

Hi Leon,

That’s a great question! But freezers are a bit tricky to explain, so we’ll need to talk about a few other things first.

Everything you can touch and feel (like air, water, rocks and mice) is made of tiny balls called atoms. When atoms join up into small groups moving around together, they are called molecules. Atoms and molecules are too small to see without very powerful microscopes.

Solids, liquids and gases

Most things come in three phases: solid, liquid or gas. Think of ice, water and steam. If a gas is not too hot, we can also call it vapour. (There are other phases too, but let’s ignore them for today.)

In solids (like ice), atoms or molecules are tightly stuck together and can barely move. They are usually lined up in neat rows called crystals. In liquids (like water) atoms or molecules are loosely stuck close together, but can move around. In a gas (like steam), atoms or molecules are far apart and free to float away from each other.

Most gases, including air, are made of small molecules. Some gases (like the helium inside floating party balloons) are made of single atoms moving around on their own.

If I heat up a solid, the atoms or molecules start to bounce a little bit, but they still stay stuck in their neat rows. Now, if I add an extra burst of heat, the solid turns into liquid. This means the atoms and molecules bounce around so hard they start to move around, breaking up those neat rows. Although the atoms can now flow around, they still stay very close together. This is what’s happening if you put an ice block in a bowl and watch it slowly melt into water.

To turn a liquid into a gas (or vapour), the atoms and molecules must break away completely from their neighbours. This takes another extra burst of heat to give the atoms and molecules a kick to rip them away from their sticky neighbours and float away. (Scientists call this extra burst of heat latent heat.)

This is what happens when you put water into a kettle, turn on the heat, and watch the steam floating out of the spout.

These atoms or molecules carry that extra burst of heat away with them when they float away. This is why your face feels cooler if the wind turns your sweat into vapour and floats away from your face.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why can some cups go in the microwave and some not?

OK. Now let’s try it backwards. If you take enough heat out of a vapour (like steam), it will turn back into a liquid (like water). Whenever this happens, the vapour brings the extra burst of heat back into the liquid.

Now, finally, I can explain how your freezer works.

How the freezer works… at last!

Hidden inside the walls of your freezer is a curly metal tube called a cooling pipe. It is full of a special liquid that evaporates easily.

The cooling pipe is connected to a pump that sucks in vapour from the cooling pipe. The sucking makes more liquid turn to vapour, and when that happens it takes some heat out of the freezer. Just like sweat floating away cools your face down, this vapour floating away makes the inside of the freezer cool down.

Next, the pump takes vapour from the cooling pipe and squeezes it into another curly pipe on the outside of the back of the fridge. When the pump squeezes the vapour, it pushes the molecules closer together so they start to stick together and turn into a liquid again.

When the gas turns back into a liquid, it gives off the latent heat energy it took from the freezer. So the pipe on the back of the fridge gets warm, and the heat escapes into the air in your kitchen.

Read more: Curious Kids: how does heat travel through space if space is a vacuum?

In other words, the pump moves heat from inside your freezer and lets it go into your kitchen, making the freezer colder and your kitchen warmer. If you feel the back and sides of your fridge, they should feel a bit warm. That’s the heat that used to be inside your freezer!

After releasing its heat energy, the liquid leaks through a little skinny pipe back into the cooling pipe where it started. Then the sucking from the pump turns it into gas again, and the whole cycle repeats over and over. And that’s what keeps your freezer cold.

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

– ref. Curious Kids: how do freezers work? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-do-freezers-work-144566

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karyn Healy, Researcher, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute

Around 15% of Australian school students experience bullying in a school year. Being bullied increases the risk for ongoing depression and anxiety.

All Australian states have policies to address school bullying. And many schools also run educational programs aimed at preventing bullying.

Efforts to reduce bullying are commendable. However, schools need to be aware of the possibility some bullying programs may inadvertently harm victims. One example is the “buddy bench”, where students who have few friends or are bullied can come to sit and be supported by peers.

While the idea is nice in theory, it could have some very negative effects.

How do programs affect victims?

School programs to reduce bullying are often based on theory. Very few of the programs offered to Australian schools have been scientifically evaluated for effectiveness.

International research shows bullying prevention programs can reduce victimisation at school level by up to 16%. But programs that reduce whole-school bullying may still lead to worse outcomes for individual victims.

Read more: Not every school’s anti-bullying program works – some may actually make bullying worse

KiVa is a Finnish program used in many countries. Like many Australian programs, KiVa provides teachers with lessons and activities to teach students how to relate to each other, including how to help if they notice bullying. There is also training for teachers and newsletters for parents.

KiVa has been found to reduce bullying at the school level in primary schools. But a Dutch study compared schools that had adopted KiVa with schools that worked off their usual bullying policies (the control group). Researchers found schools with the program in place did reduce bullying overall. But the kids in those schools who remained bullied, or became new victims of bullying, were more depressed and had lower self-esteem compared to bullying victims in the control schools.

Researchers theorised that if fewer students were bullied, those who remained bullied were more visible to peers, leading to rejection. This same theory suggests elements in school programs that make a student’s victim status more visible to peers can also lead to increased stigmatisation.

Buddy benches

Many schools in Australia have installed buddy benches, or friendship benches. These playground benches are intended to provide a safe place in the playground where a student can go when bullied or when they have no one to play with.

The idea is that other children or teachers will notice the student on the bench and offer assistance. Despite the positive intent, there is no evidence this approach works, and there are many things that could go wrong.

The colourful bench will effectively highlight those students who have problems getting on with peers. Students will notice who is at the bench most often, and who is left waiting the longest. They will notice which students require teachers’ help due to lack of peer interest.

Read more: ‘I don’t want to be teased’ – why bullied children are reluctant to seek help from teachers

Increased visibility of these students’ difficulties could damage their peer status and make them less attractive for real friendships, which would serve to protect them from bullying.

The bench could also signal vulnerability to a broader group of students who bully but had not previously noticed these kids, such as if they didn’t share classes.

There are other problems, such as if children come to the aid of someone sitting at the bench to impress teachers or because they have been told to. This is not necessarily the same as help that comes through genuine care and friendship.

One program that taught children to intervene in bullying was shown to increase the self-esteem of the helpers. But experiments from social psychology show that help that benefits helpers can undermine the self-esteem of recipients who cannot return the favour (for instance due to low social status).

So, what should schools do?

Examples of Australian programs that have been scientifically evaluated include Friendly Schools, Friendly Classrooms and Positive Behaviour for Learning. Both involve creating clear expectations of behaviour throughout the school, teaching and encouraging positive behaviour, and improving supervision and addressing of incidents.

Both of these programs have been found to reduce bullying at school level in primary schools. But we still don’t know the impact on students who remain victims after the programs have been implemented. Even when using programs that reduce bullying at school level, it is important to monitor outcomes for victims. Schools should follow up carefully with individual cases of bullying until they have been successfully resolved.

Read more: ‘I wish you were murdered’: some students don’t know the difference between bullying and banter

The main purpose of anti-bullying initiatives is to protect the most vulnerable students. When offered a new idea to address bullying, schools should consider how it will affect the social standing of the students who are bullied the most.

– ref. ‘Got no friends? Sit on the buddy bench.’ Untested anti-bullying programs may be missing the mark – https://theconversation.com/got-no-friends-sit-on-the-buddy-bench-untested-anti-bullying-programs-may-be-missing-the-mark-156391

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Helen Rowe, PhD Candidate, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

Over the past year, many of us have enjoyed outdoor dining in spaces that would otherwise have been car parks or part of the road. These spaces are one example of the temporary projects that popped up to help cities in Australia and around the world adapt to COVID. These quickly installed projects have met our changing needs for space for walking, cycling, public space and, of course, dining to help businesses to stay afloat.

While these temporary projects were driven by the necessity for short-term fixes, we can draw deeper lessons from these experiences. They have been, intentionally or not, a large-scale experience with experimentation in cities, and short-and long-term impacts should flow. In the short term, some of these experiments can be become permanent. In the long term, wider-scale urban experiments can become a permanent feature of how we shape cities.

Experiments can help us navigate change in cities. They can also make us braver by allowing us to test out ideas that might fail or that not everyone seems to like. If the past year has made us more comfortable and confident with experimenting, all the better to help our cities meet the challenges ahead.

Read more: 4 ways our streets can rescue restaurants, bars and cafes after coronavirus

Opening our eyes to new possibilities

At their simplest, of course, experiments test things. The projects that popped up during COVID have helped meet our short-term needs (well, we hoped they would be short-term) for different ways to live and get around, like pop-up bike lanes.

In making these short-term changes, we tried something new and perhaps we’ve found we like the results.

During COVID, I meandered down Lygon Street, Carlton, full of new al fresco dining areas making the street feel even more European. Along the Victorian coast, I sipped coffee in Skiplets. It could always be this nice, I thought.

These projects are already sparking debate about the future use of streets and bringing the trade-offs into focus. One example is the trade-off between parking revenue and outdoor dining.

What more can we gain from ‘tactical ubanism’?

Well before COVID, cities started using temporary projects to test changes. From New York to Yarraville, cities used experiments to test out risky ideas and balance competing street uses. This is often referred to as tactical urbanism .

Read more: We can’t let coronavirus kill our cities. Here’s how we can save urban life

Benefits gleaned from these experiences show we have much to gain from more experimenting beyond COVID. City experiments get things moving and let us figure out if an idea is a good one.

In the aptly titled book Street Fight, former New York City transport commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan describes turning the tangled intersection at Times Square into a pedestrian plaza. It began as a temporary experiment. A lower-cost, temporary version meant getting the project on the ground right away, rather than spending years convincing everyone to build it permanently. The added advantage was collecting data during the trial to prove it actually worked.

Overcoming suspicion of change

Experiments help navigate change, which we don’t always like. Based on my own research, street experiments help cities work with, not against, some people’s tendency to dislike change.

People’s hackles can go up in response to change. They prefer to stick with what’s familiar over something new. This is the type of status quo bias Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman discusses in Thinking Fast and Slow.

A temporary experiment can help disarm this response. As one of my interviewees put it:

“If change is worrisome, then it’s not that big a deal if we can come back to where we are today.”

Through experimenting, people allow themselves to try it. Often they also get to see their fears aren’t realised.

Read more: Don’t forget the footpath – it’s vital public space

Experiments let us tweak projects to get them right. In 2008, Copenhagen rolled out a bold experiment on Nørrebrogade, providing wider bike lanes and bus-only sections painted with huge red dots. Experimenting, they found, helped them have a better conversation with the community. They were able to tweak the design in response to community feedback and evaluation.

Read more: A time to embrace the edge spaces that make our neighbourhoods tick

Experiments also do the imagining for us. My current research (as yet unpublished) looks at ways city transport planners try to effect change.

One barrier to change planners discussed is that people often struggle to imagine how things could be different. Without this, they tend to happy to stick with the status quo. Experiments show us how streets can be different.

Read more: People love parklets, and businesses can help make them happen

What stands in the way of more street experiments?

My research suggests many city planners are striving to find new and better ways to explore change and help cities adapt to challenges. Many are starting to experiment with temporary projects, but it’s not always easy.

A number of transport planners I’ve talked with say doing temporary projects can be hard. That’s not because they are difficult to build but because the rules about what can be done on streets are set up for building things permanently. This can be a barrier to temporary experimenting.

However, after delivering many temporary projects during the pandemic, cities should now be well placed to embed processes that make street experiments easier.

Given COVID is just one of the many looming challenges facing our cities, being braver and adaptable is going to be more important that ever. Experimenting can help pave the way.

The impact of temporary projects is the focus of the MPavilion event, Is Temporary the New Permanent?, on March 22.

– ref. Is temporary the new permanent? COVID street experiments open our eyes to creating better cities – https://theconversation.com/is-temporary-the-new-permanent-covid-street-experiments-open-our-eyes-to-creating-better-cities-156591

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Jane Connory, Lecturer in Communication Design, Swinburne University of Technology

I analysed 100 magazine advertisements for menstrual products published between 1920 and 2020 to see how they have contributed to feelings of shame and secrecy around women’s periods. I found the period taboo has been promoted by advertisers in Australian woman’s magazines for much of the past 100 years.

Periods are a healthy sign your body’s reproductive system is ready to procreate. Yet “pad ads” from 1920 until the 1940’s played on the idea that period products were a treatment for a medical problem. Rather than a natural occurrence, menstruation was framed as an illness.

For decades, ads also shied away from depicting blood or even mentioning menstruation. Indeed, among the ads I looked at, it wasn’t until 1974 that the word “period” was actually used. Menstruation was variously described as “nature’s handicap” (for instance, in a 1932 pad ad) and the source of “accidents”.

Read more: Explainer: why do women menstruate?

A brief history

Johnson & Johnson filed the first patent for a “sanitary napkin” in Australia on December 11, 1929. The application, now catalogued online, contains a simple drawing of cardboard fibres wrapped in crepe paper and gauze.

Before this time, Australian women often used home-made solutions such as reusable rags and throwaway bandages. If they could afford to, they bought local, mass produced brands such as Kleinert, Southall’s and Denyer Brothers, which sold “dainty wears”, “protective necessities”, “surgical appliances” and “hygienic towels”.

The first Australian patents for tampons appeared as early as 1908; the next in 1925. Fourteen patents for tampons were listed between 1940 to 1950. The first appearance of a tampon ad I came across, for Meds, was published shortly after.

Brands like Meds gave the impression their names were short for “medical” or “medicine”. Some packaging adopted symbols such as the cross used to denote hospitals and, of course, the Red Cross.

During the second world war, Australia had to tighten its belt to support the war effort. Brands like Johnston & Johnston concentrated their resources on producing surgical supplies for the armed forces, leaving pads in short supply. One of their ads was apologetic in tone: “We trust you will bear with us, should you … find that your chemist or store has no stocks of … Modess Sanitary Napkins.”

Johnston & Johnston were clear most of their 800 strong workforce was “filling the demands of the Australian Forces” — thus positioning the general well-being of many women as inferior to the war effort. By going without these basic necessities, women were sacrificing for the war. To speak up and demand otherwise would have been seen as unsupportive of the brave men on the front lines.

After the war, certain ads continued to use nurses and scientists to promote menstrual products: from a Meds tampon ad in a 1953 edition of the Australian Women’s Mirror to a Carefree tampon ad in the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1982.

Fortifying the taboo

By censoring images of period blood, pad ads established it as taboo — an embarrassing and “unhygienic” problem. Instead of red, there was a lot of blue in these ads until the 1970s: from the fashions worn by models to ocean waves used as backdrops.

Read more: The ongoing taboo of menstruation in Australia

Even as recently as the 1980’s, scientific diagrams showing how to insert tampons were blue. A Sure & Natural ad from 1983 compared the inefficient absorbency of a conventional pad with the quick dispersion of liquid in a “Maxishield” using royal blue liquids. Further graphics demonstrating layers of absorbency in pads used blue arrows and blue ink to demonstrate their effectiveness.

White also commonly featured in pad ads — a colour symbolising purity and an idealised feminine state for women. In 1973, a brand called Dr White’s appeared. Its ads featured young women dressed in white bikinis, white pant suits, white lingerie or white dresses.

Academic Ira Torresi has described the “moral imperative of cleanliness” historically required of women — an imperative reflected in the persistent use of the colour white in these ads. Periods were often viewed as dirty, thus the description of pads and tampons as “sanitary”.

Private spaces like bedrooms and bathrooms featured heavily in pad ads, indicating a need to keep periods out of the public eye.

High fashion drove many campaigns — reinforcing the need for women to constantly be on show. Women in these ads were depicted in low paid careers that typically involved caring — teacher (1944), secretary (1980), air hostess (1983) or mother (1994). Ironically the names of many brands (Carefree, Stayfree) promoted notions of freedom.

Even during the 1970 and 1980’s, sexist and over sexualised images of young women were used to sell period products. One Tampax ad featured a prepubescent girl in a barely there bikini top more appropriate for an adult.

Research has shown such sexualisation and objectification causes society to view women as “less capable and less intelligent”. Rather than empowering women, this image and others I found, set unrealistic expectations as to how a menstruating girl should look and feel.

Read more: Sexualised girls are seen as less intelligent and less worthy of help than their peers

Modelling secrecy

Ads in my survey also propagated the idea periods should be talked about in secret — and mostly woman to woman. Teenagers gossiping in private spaces were pictured in ads from 1939 to 1995.

In 2019, however, the Victorian Woman’s Trust published a book drawing on intensive research, which found women want to be more open about their periods. It showed that talking about periods publicly could help end taboos around menstruation, encouraging informed conversations in schools and workplaces.

If women were pictured with men in any of the pad ads I examined, secrecy was pertinent to the image. Men in social settings were always shown to be happily oblivious to menstruating women, as were boys in school settings.

One ad promotes a brand called Whisper — a clear nod to secretive behaviour.

Headlines such as “She must remain a mystery” and “What are you going to say?” also urged mothers to frame discussions around menstruation as private and secretive.

Ads for Kleinet’s, Modess and Kotex from the 1920’s to 1940’s were even accompanied by coupons enabling mothers to send away for booklets containing advice for dealing with this “source of embarrassment”.

“Discrete” and “plain” packaging was often designed to hide the actual function of period products, enhancing the idea they needed to be kept secret. Similarly, floral motifs are still used on packaging, symbolising anything from new beginnings and fresh fragrances to love and femininity. Again, an idealised view of womanhood masks the realities.

More enlightened times

Pad ads have undoubtedly improved over time. A Lunette menstrual cup ad from Girlfriend magazine in 2020, uses the word vagina boldly in the headline. There is no shame associated with touching the product — it is held aloft by fingers sporting dark, red nail polish.

Read more: Does anyone have a pad? TV is finally dismantling the period taboo

Similarly a 2019 Cottons ad, also from Girlfriend magazine, features the headline: “Be a natural period pro in no time…” The person in the ad is somewhat androgynous-looking, perhaps as a nod to the diversity of people who experience periods.

However, advertising spaces have changed as magazine circulation has shrunk. Consumer attention is shifting away from glossy pages towards influencers on social media and pop up ads on the internet.

These platforms are now perfectly placed to reject old ideas of secrecy and shame associated with periods, speaking in more honest tones.

Dr Jane Connory has curated an exhibition of pad ads from Australian women’s magazines called Sanitary Secrets. It can be viewed at the BSIDE Gallery (Level 1, 121 Brunswick St, Fitzroy) from Saturday March 27 – Sunday April 5, during Melbourne’s Design Week.

– ref. Friday essay: I looked at 100 ads for menstrual products spanning 100 years — shame and secrecy prevailed – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-i-looked-at-100-ads-for-menstrual-products-spanning-100-years-shame-and-secrecy-prevailed-152685

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

Despite hopes it might be otherwise, the new round of the gender wars has become as rugged and nasty as their cousins, the culture and history wars.

Triggered by two separate rape allegations, and culminating in Monday’s national march, there’s little doubt the roar from so many Australian women will have an impact. The form and extent of that impact, however, is the as-yet-unanswerable question.

The politicians do know things will change, reluctant as some might be to accept it.

Suddenly, bad behaviour can’t be swept under the carpet.

On Wednesday there was a telling example of the contrast between “then” and “now”.

Tasmanian Greens leader Cassy O’Connor, speaking at 6pm, told the state parliament that in 2019 Andrew Hudgson, a staffer of the then premier, Will Hodgman, had called her a “meth-head c***”. Her media adviser had heard the profanity, and a formal complaint was made to Hodgman’s office.

Hodgman subsequently informed O’Connor an investigation had found the claim was “not substantiated”.

Hudgson later became media adviser to federal Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar. After O’Connor’s speech, Hudgson was instantly turfed out of his job. It didn’t require any inquiry.

A spokesperson for Sukkar said: “The government was unaware of any allegations raised about the alleged behaviour of the staff member during their previous employment. After several historical allegations surfaced, the staff member has ceased employment with the office.”

You could drive the proverbial large truck through this defence.

Hudgson had been in a high-profile state political office; moreover, the story had been reported (though his name not used) in the local Mercury newspaper.

The federal Coalition has a “star chamber” process to vet prospective staff. How could the “star chamber” not properly check someone’s past? How could it be “unaware of any allegations”?

So what’s changed? It’s not so much knowledge about the staffer – which was available if those scrutinising appointments wanted to ask – as the politics around his employment.

From now on, any staffers (or parliamentarians) with skeletons in their cupboards should be very fearful. They face a high risk of being called out under parliamentary privilege.

Even before the march, the stoking of the gender wars after Brittany Higgins’ claim she was raped in a minister’s office had the positive result of forcing the Morrison government to set up an inquiry, by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins, into the parliament house workplace.

But we’ve also seen the issues about the treatment of women become increasingly partisanised.

As Labor has tried to exploit the crisis around Attorney-General Christian Porter, accused of raping a girl when he was 17 (which he strenuously denies), Scott Morrison has pointed back at the opposition.

There was plenty to mine – not just the police investigation into a historical rape allegation against Bill Shorten (which resulted in no charges), but a Facebook group where former and current Labor staffers have posted a litany of graphic complaints of misconduct.

Read more: Shorten outs himself as Labor figure in rape investigation

South Australian Liberal MP Nicolle Flint became a lightning rod as the partisanship escalated.

Flint, who is on the right of the party, was the object of particularly horrific harassment (stalking, trolling, defacement of her electorate office) before the 2019 election, which she has previously highlighted. She recently announced she would not run again.

On Tuesday she returned to her experiences, in a parliamentary speech that laid into Anthony Albanese and Labor women.

Channelling Julia Gillard’s famous misogyny speech against Tony Abbott, Flint declared: “I say to the leader of the opposition: I will not be lectured by you. I will not be lectured by your side of politics about the treatment of women in this place.”

She accused senior Labor women of failing to support her when she was under attack.

Morrison went out of his way at a news conference the following day to take a question on Flint, describing her as “incredibly brave”. The prime minister drove home a political jibe. “I just am amazed [that] the Labor Party and the unions and GetUp just stood by and let that happen. They were aware. They saw it. They were happy to be advantaged by it.”

On Thursday Flint told parliament she’d had a barrage of online abuse in response to her speech.

As Morrison struggles on this new political front, his minister for women, Marise Payne, isn’t providing much visible help.

Having the women’s portfolio lumped with Payne’s foreign ministry responsibilities is a bad mix to start with. She doesn’t have enough time or energy to devote to it.

Moreover, Payne hates having to do media appearances, usually finding ways of avoiding them.

In the current climate, Morrison needs her to be crafting effective policy responses, as well as being a convincing voice out in the public marketplace.

Payne, a Liberal moderate who years ago was not so reticent publicly, is said to have strong views on the issues. She should be in Morrison’s ear about substance and language (his, that is). She made a major mistake in not insisting she go out to Monday’s demonstration.

Liberal backbencher Russell Broadbent, a moderate from Victoria, on Thursday came up with suggestions for a way forward. They were modest but they were constructive.

Broadbent told parliament he’d written to Morrison saying he should do two things immediately.

“The first is to convene a national gathering of women that represent women’s peak organisations and every local government area to recommend to parliament the pathway to real and lasting change in our homes, our workplaces, and on the streets,” Broadbent said.

He’s also asked Morrison “to introduce a gender impact statement for all cabinet submissions, new policies and legislation”.

Broadbent said that, as a parliamentarian and a man, he acknowledged “the disregard for women that has led to this fork in our road”.

“Women will drive this change. I hope more men will join them. Politicians need to be quiet, listen and learn. Actions, not words, count.”

But defining and achieving that action promises to be a controversial, tough and often divisive process.

Read more: View from The Hill: Christian Porter finds a target, and so does Brittany Higgins

– ref. Grattan on Friday: The gender wars become yet another partisan battlefield – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-the-gender-wars-become-yet-another-partisan-battlefield-157435

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

On Monday, women across the nation marched, demanding justice, safety and equality. But the government’s response was lacklustre, with Scott Morrisona and the Minister for Women Marise Payne refusing to go outside to the crowd.

Morrison later chose his words badly when he said: “Not far from here, such marches, even now are being met with bullets, but not here in this country”.

Independent MP Zali Steggall described Morrison’s comments as “incredibly sad” and “just stunning”.

A former lawyer and olympian, Steggall is currently championing two private member’s bills – a proposal for a national climate change framework, and an amendment to the sex discrimination act which would allow judges, MPs, and statutory appointees to be prosecuted for sexual harassment.

Steggall is disappointed in the government’s response to the strong push for women’s rights. “I’ve been quite baffled to understand the Prime Minister’s response to this situation and the [rape] allegations.”

And she doesn’t believe Payne has been much better. “I’ve been absolutely, really disappointed with the minister for women’s response.”

She is somewhat more encouraged by the government’s changing attitude towards climate change, noting Morrison’s language has changed “dramatically” in the last 12 months. But simply saying he wants to get to net zero “as soon as possible” is not good enough, she says.

“That’s not the certainty that business and the private sector are looking for. They are looking for it to be legislated, and with a clear pathway.”

Additional audio

A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Zali Steggall on Monday’s march and Scott Morrison’s response – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-zali-steggall-on-mondays-march-and-scott-morrisons-response-157427

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Director, Health Program, Grattan Institute

The Australian government’s offer of half-price airfares to encourage domestic tourism highlights another item of unfinished COVID policy business: when will Australia’s international borders be reopened?

The border questions, such as when to remove exit controls and lift hotel quarantine for arrivals, have profound implications for the economy.

Border closures have been key to Australia escaping the worst ravages of the pandemic and successfully pursuing an elimination strategy on COVID-19.

Widespread vaccinations will eventually enable Australia to reopen its borders. The question is when.

The federal government should be explicit about what proportion of the population it judges will need to be vaccinated to warrant border reopening. Australians could then measure progress towards that goal.

The vaccination program is off to a slow start

Australia’s vaccine program has been much-trumpeted, but troubled. Key elements of a successful mass vaccination program have not been in place including:

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt’s announcement today of more than 100 new vaccination clinics is a step in the right direction, but it alone isn’t enough to fix the botched rollout.

No deadlines for the rollout have yet been met, and the target end date appears to have already slipped, from October 2021 to January 2022.

Read more: Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout is well behind schedule — but don’t panic

The rollout for the first groups (phase 1A), including quarantine and front-line health workers and aged-care residents, has proceeded slowly.

So far, it appears that low vaccination rates are not primarily due to problems of overseas supply as only a fraction of the doses that have arrived from overseas have been used.

The second stage of the rollout (phase 1B) started badly, with a botched booking system leading to GPs being overwhelmed by callers but with practices having no idea when they would get vaccines nor how many.

The vaccination rollout involved what Greg Hunt described as “one of the largest logistical exercises in Australia’s history”. Unfortunately, it hasn’t gone smoothly so far, with inadequate notice, messed-up deliveries and cancellations.

Australia will be less reliant on international supplies from March 22, when domestically produced vaccines will begin rolling off the CSL production line.

What’s the target?

Once the teething problems are fixed, the federal government should tell us what proportion of the population will need to be fully vaccinated before it reopens the external borders.

Once borders are reopened and hotel quarantine is no longer universally required, the risk of COVID infection will increase. Australians’ principal protection against that risk will be through vaccine-derived herd immunity. Assuming the vaccine protects against transmission, fewer people will get infected because there will be fewer unprotected people.

The level of vaccination required to achieve herd immunity is affected by how infectious the virus is, and this is changing with new variants. But it’s estimated we’ll need to vaccinate between 65% and 90% of the whole population. If the necessary figure proves to be at the high end of that range, Australia may never achieve herd immunity, given the extent of vaccine hesitancy and the reality that the Pfizer vaccine has only been approved for people aged 16 and over and AstraZeneca for people 18 and over.

According to various surveys, somewhere between 15% and 30% are hesitant about getting the vaccine, with possibly up to 20% potentially refusing the vaccine.

But it’s not a new phenomenon and there are ways to increase vaccine uptake. For example, if uptake isn’t reaching the necessary levels, airlines or governments could mandate proof of vaccination for air travel. Or, as proposed in the United States, governments could relax restrictions on masks or gatherings for vaccinated people. In that context, the government could consider restricting its half-price airlines package to people who have been vaccinated.

The threshold for herd immunity is a scientific question, and the answer may not be known for many months. But the important question remains: given what we know about the virus today, what level of vaccination means the risks to people and the economy of opening borders is commensurate with the benefits?

This is a question for national cabinet, or if consensus cannot be achieved there, for the federal government. The government has constitutional power over quarantine. Federal responsibilities also include international trade, including tourism and international students, and the fate of Australians stranded overseas.

And if we achieve herd immunity?

Once the threshold of herd immunity is achieved, states can abandon their trigger-happy use of lockdowns, and rely more on traditional public health approaches to infection control. These include ensuring their testing, tracing and isolation systems are up to scratch. Each state should learn from the best aspects of other states’ systems.

The federal government is in charge of vaccinating the general community, but it should invite the states to assist so they contribute more to the national vaccination effort. The states could help overcome the backlog, speed up the vaccination rate and help establish mass vaccination centres.

Reopening the external borders will be a key step along the path back to something approaching normality. The federal government should specify the criteria for reopening, to give Australians some certainty about what their travel future will look like.

– ref. As Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout splutters, we need transparency about when international borders might reopen – https://theconversation.com/as-australias-covid-vaccine-rollout-splutters-we-need-transparency-about-when-international-borders-might-reopen-157399

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julia Erhart, Senior Lecturer, Department of Screen and Media, Flinders University, Flinders University

This year, with the nomination of both Chloé Zhao and Emerald Fennell in the Academy Awards’ Best Director category — and their films in Best Picture — it seems at last the Oscars powerbrokers have learned to count, putting more than one woman in the category for the first time. Women have been nominated for awards in the past, but it’s been lonely at the top.

When Lina Wertmuller was nominated for Seven Beauties in 1977, her co-nominees were all male; fast forward to Kathryn Bigelow 33 years later when she became the first and only woman to win Best Director, and the same rules applied. Women, it seems, take up such space in the cultural psyche, perhaps two can’t fit. This affects the field in two ways.

On the one hand, as we’ve seen with Bigelow and the Oscars, and Jane Campion as the only woman ever to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes (in 1993 for The Piano), being the singular nominee of your gender, makes these women “exceptional” and “iconoclastic”. They are mould smashers and rule breakers whose talent appears to strike out of nowhere and is singularly responsible for their individual success.

While there is no disputing the “talent” part, the blinding light generated by Bigelow or Campion on these occasions hides the tall barriers women face in the resource-intensive world of commercial filmmaking. When viewed as singular successes, Campion and Bigelow are subjects of excellence and objects of isolation.

Now two women have received Oscars nods for directing in the award’s 93rd year, and it’s noteworthy — both in terms of behind-the-scenes factors and the films they’ve created: Nomadland and Promising Young Woman.

Read more: The lowdown on Lina Wertmüller – the rule-breaking, nonagenarian female director finally awarded an Oscar

Changing the rules

Several factors have been credited for diversification of the Oscars and other award events this year, including subtle shifts in membership and eligibility criteria to unfold over the next few years and the holding off of some larger budget productions due to pandemic cinema closures.

The contribution of big streamers like Netflix is also a matter of debate. The needle-moving role of each of these factors may not be known for a little while; after all, some changes aren’t due to bear fruit until 2025 or later.

Regardless of the cause, there is no doubt this year the door has opened to more nominations for women and people of colour across all categories in all major ceremonies (the BAFTAs, Golden Globes, and Oscars).

A number of things unite the female-helmed Best Picture and Best Director nominees this year: both Nomandland and Promising Young Woman centre their stories around a female protagonist; both are low-budget, independent films, with flashes of innovation in cinematic style.

Both are about the dashing of dreams, due (in Nomadland) to the economic collapse experienced by itinerant workers in Trump’s America, or (in Promising Young Woman) to the scourge of sexual violence against women and the persistently unfair rules that privilege young male professionals over their female counterparts.

Read more: This award-winning Lesotho film also has social justice at heart

Films that speak to their times

Along with a third female-directed film many believe should have been nominated — Kitty Green’s remarkable The Assistant — all these movies are uncannily topical. Green’s film depicts, in micro-detail, the demoralising experiences of a young female entertainment industry worker under a boss seemingly based on sexual predator Harvey Weinstein.

The Amazon warehouse work that Nomadland protagonist Fern must resort to anticipates the unionising struggles of real-life Amazon workers in current-day Alabama.

The sexual assault at the centre of Fennell’s movie, that takes place at a medical school party, could just as easily have come to pass among students at esteemed Australian schools and universities or, indeed, in the corridors of political and industrial power.

Meticulously depicting disenfranchisement and gendered violence from the inside, these female-led films make a pitch for group solidarity. In Nomadland, the occasional visits Fern enjoys with fellow nomads bring welcome, though temporary, solace.

In Promising Young Woman, Carrie’s difficulty with processing the rape and subsequent death of her best friend Nina, the eponymous woman of the film’s title, are compounded by the fact Carrie is isolated and, audiences are repeatedly told, “has no friends”.

The film’s opening shots of masses of men’s bodies (gyrating on the dance floor) contrast sharply with the subsequent framing of Carrie on her own and vulnerable. In the logic of this movie, boys go out in groups and girls do not. This is considered a bad thing, whether you’re a student in med school or law school or, perhaps until now, a film director.

There is no doubt Promising Young Woman contains a message for men. In the post-#MeToo era, phrases like “educate your sons” remind us that women’s safety is men’s responsibility and has nothing to do with women’s dress or behaviour. But the film has further insight to offer: women are stronger when we’re together. This year’s Oscars will give women at the top of their filmmaking game their first chance to live that message.

Read more: ‘Rape-revenge’ films are changing: they now focus on the women, instead of their dads

– ref. How the Oscars finally made it less lonely for women at the top of their game – https://theconversation.com/how-the-oscars-finally-made-it-less-lonely-for-women-at-the-top-of-their-game-157240

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tanya M. Smith, Professor in the Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution & Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University

Lead is a powerful toxin. It can affect almost every organ and system in the body, and babies are extremely vulnerable to its harmful effects. Infants’ brains grow rapidly during the first year of life, and even low levels of lead exposure have been associated with brain development deficits.

It’s also more common than you might think. Many popular baby foods and infant formulas available in the US were recently found to contain elevated levels of lead and other heavy metals.

Few studies have examined Australian-sourced infant formulas and foods, and those that have show lead levels are generally low. However, more than half of the products sold in Australia are imported — so international problems are still a concern.

Lead leaves traces in growing teeth. In a new study published in BioEssays, we used a very sensitive technique called laser-ablation mapping to analyse the teeth of young macaque monkeys. We found traces of lead from both commercial infant formula and the milk of their own mothers. This provided clues of events that happened years, or even decades, earlier.

Read more: How safe is your baby food?

The stories teeth tell

The development of teeth records each day of our childhoods, including birth, as well as the chemistry of the food and water we consume. Public health specialists in Australia and the US have worked out how to measure infants’ metal intake using the concentrations of different elements and growth lines in teeth.

Our team honed this analytical model through a 2013 study of human, monkey, and Neanderthal nursing histories. We tracked changes in the trace element barium, which is stored in bones and teeth, and concentrated in calcium-rich milk. While barium is toxic in large amounts or certain compounds, small amounts in milk and foods like Brazil nuts do not seem to be particularly harmful.

Read more: Got milk? Our breastfeeding habits are older than you think

In our new study we were able to show a precise correspondence between the onset of suckling and elevated lead levels, which disappeared when the macaque infants stopped consuming Enfamil formula or mothers’ milk. Captive monkey mothers may be exposed to lead from water pipes or old paint, as lead was once a widely used paint additive that has a pleasant sweet taste.

How barium and lead get into teeth

Milk is an important source of calcium for infant growth, but it may also contain other less helpful ingredients. Barium and lead are known as bone-seeking elements: when abundant they can transfer to the bloodstream and substitute for calcium in the hard mineral that strengthens our growing bones and teeth.

We’ve also discovered that when young monkeys become very sick, they may tap their skeletal stores of calcium to maintain metabolic balance, also inadvertently releasing lead and barium from bones back into the bloodstream and ultimately locking them into growing teeth. This form of elemental recycling means that we can also explore health histories after individuals stop nursing.

The origin of lead found in humans’ teeth is more difficult to pin down than it is for captive monkeys. Likely factors range from environmental pollution and drinking water to soils used to grow food. Public health crises such as the water contamination in Flint, Michigan in 2014–2015 are currently under investigation to better understand the timing and degree of lead exposure in children from that region.

Our new study also revealed wild primates can be exposed to lead in their natural environments. We found lead bands in the teeth of baboons that grew up in Ethiopia and orangutans from Borneo and Sumatra. While human industrial activity may explain some of these cases, we recently uncovered lead intake in Neanderthal children roughly 250,000 years ago.

In that instance the lead was likely derived from geological deposits in southeast France, a region that has since been commercially mined. The two Neanderthals likely ate or drank something contaminated with lead, although we couldn’t rule out the possibility they may have inhaled lead released into the air through combustion during the winter and early spring.

Read more: What teeth can tell about the lives and environments of ancient humans and Neanderthals

Studies of nonhuman primates and ancient hominins help us to better understand our own physiology, including the sensitive recording systems inside our own bodies. They point to complex environmental problems as well as the dangers of the natural world.

Our study adds to the evidence that lead exposure is common around the world. To safeguard our health, we need better regulation of food, water, and air quality.

– ref. Teeth contain detailed records of lead contamination in humans and other primates – https://theconversation.com/teeth-contain-detailed-records-of-lead-contamination-in-humans-and-other-primates-156121

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Former Ambassador and Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland

Until this week, it did not occur to most Australians to ask themselves how our nearest neighbours in Papua New Guinea were faring with coronavirus.

Our minds and screens have been full with what is happening at home and in countries like the United States and United Kingdom. In this and other ways, the current crisis on our doorstep highlights some perennial themes in the relationship between Australia and PNG.

Even for those who were paying attention, the apparently sudden spike in cases has come as a surprise. It had been difficult since the start of the pandemic to work out the real extent of COVID’s spread in PNG, given low testing rates and the inaccessibility of so much of the country.

But antibody analysis and testing of resource industry workforces employed by Australian and other international companies suggested that while the virus was present throughout the country, Papua New Guineans didn’t seem to be dying in the way that people in other countries were.

The apparently low rates of serious illness and death seemed to reflect the fact that three-quarters of the population is under the age of 35, and average life expectancy is only 64. Just a small proportion of the country’s inhabitants seemed to be in the main risk category — very elderly people.

But now it’s like a dam has been breached. Health facilities are close to being overwhelmed in Port Moresby, medical staff are being struck down and 50% of one batch of PNG swabs tested in Brisbane last week were positive.

Read more: A catastrophe looms with PNG’s COVID crisis. Australia needs to respond urgently

Australians working in PNG

The crisis brings to mind a paradox in the Australia-PNG relationship. Despite our “blind spot” when it comes to our northern neighbour, there are thousands of Australians who have very strong PNG connections.

About 20,000 Australians call PNG home. They are heavily engaged in work there as teachers, miners, diplomats, aid workers and government advisers.

These people have known for some time how the pandemic has aggravated existing challenges in the country. It has strained the country’s fragile health system, put a squeeze on people’s incomes and encouraged a growing debt problem.

Read more: Destitution on Australia’s hardening border with PNG – and the need for a better aid strategy

Many Australians, too, have been working on COVID’s front line there.

While the rest of us have been hunkered down safely behind closed borders, Australian women and men working in the resource industry have continued to come and go – doing quarantine at both ends, spending longer periods away from home and family.

They are managers and technical specialists, and they have been working with their PNG colleagues to implement world-class testing and treatment protocols in their mines and LNG production sites. This has helped keep thousands employed and some revenue flowing to the cash-strapped nation.

The better companies have also been working “outside the gate” to help local authorities manage the impact of the pandemic on their communities and combat widespread misinformation about the disease and vaccinations that will come.

The tough new restrictions on travel between Australia and PNG are undoubtedly a prudent move, but this has left many Australian resource industry workers and others feeling stranded.

Resource companies operating in PNG, from Newcrest to Oilsearch, need to brief the Australian health authorities on the stringent protocols they are enacting for their workers when they are in PNG. These arrangements, they argue, make their employees a safer bet to travel for work than Australian citizens coming home from many other parts of the world.

Helping PNG is in both our interests

In the past week, mainstream Australian media have finally found a reason to draw broader national attention to what is happening next door.

Self-interest is an important motivator of public attention, and there is now legitimate concern about the disease spreading across the Torres Strait into northern Australia.

We don’t know how bad the problem is in PNG’s western province, less than four kilometres from Queensland’s northernmost islands. But we do know that several positive cases had led the Ok Tedi mine there to cease charter flights to Cairns well before the Australian government suspended travel from PNG yesterday.

We’ve seen a range of official responses from the Australian authorities over the past few days.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced the vulnerable Torres Strait communities are being prioritised for vaccinations. Canberra has moved to bring forward its vaccination support to PNG, contributing 8,000 doses immediately to protect frontline workers and asking the European Union to divert one million of its AstraZeneca order to PNG.

Some will criticise all this as a knee-jerk response. But to be fair, it builds on a substantial existing program of Australian COVID-related support to PNG.

Read more: China’s push into PNG has been surprisingly slow and ineffective. Why has Beijing found the going so tough?

And I know from my own time representing Australia as the high commissioner in PNG that the pace of assistance is often determined by the host government. PNG is a sovereign country, and they need to request help.

There are also those who will accuse Australia of acting purely in its own self-interest. Any such commentary reflects another basic and longstanding misunderstanding of how Australian and PNG interests intersect.

Our neighbour’s stability and prosperity is in our interests. Surely, there can be no better example of this than the current crisis: what is good for PNG is also good for Australia.

A better reflection of the self-interest at play is how most of us, in the general public, have only just realised there’s a problem.

– ref. ‘A dam has been breached’: a COVID crisis on our doorstep shows how little we pay attention to PNG – https://theconversation.com/a-dam-has-been-breached-a-covid-crisis-on-our-doorstep-shows-how-little-we-pay-attention-to-png-157323

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catriona Bradshaw, Professor, Head of Research Translation and Head of the Genital Mycoplasma and Microbiota Group, Monash University

Mycoplasma genitalium (MG) is a sexually transmitted infection (STI) with many of the hallmarks of its better-known counterpart, chlamydia.

You can have MG without knowing it, or have symptoms; it can affect men and women, and it can be treated with antibiotics.

However, unlike chlamydia, we only have a limited number of antibiotics to treat it, due to a quirk in its cellular structure and the growing threat of antibiotic resistance. The antibiotics we need to use with resistant MG can also, uncommonly, have serious side-effects.

Here’s what you need to know about this common STI.

What is it? How do I get it? How common is it?

MG can affect both men and women, and is passed from person to person via their body fluids when they have sex. That can be via penile-vaginal sex or via penile-anal sex. Transmission via oral sex isn’t thought to be a big factor.

Several studies tell us MG is common, perhaps as common as chlamydia.

UK and US data show 1-2% of the adult population have it (making it about as common as chlamydia), and it is as common in men as in women.

In research yet to be published, when we tested women who walked through the door of our sexual health service in Melbourne, 6% had MG, which was as common as chlamydia (7%) in women in the same study. Of women with MG, roughly the same number had symptoms compared to no symptoms. When we tested gay men without symptoms who attended our service, 10% had MG.

However, we’re not entirely sure how many people are infected with MG throughout Australia. That’s because Australia has yet to set up a formal surveillance network (we’re in the middle of setting that up at the moment). MG is also not a notifiable disease yet. That means doctors or laboratories don’t have to tell health authorities when they have a case.

How do I know if I have it?

If you do have symptoms, these can resemble those of chlamydia. So the best thing is to go to your GP or sexual health clinic for a checkup, as the treatments are different.

If you’re a man with symptoms, they can vary from mild to moderate and include:

• mild irritation, an itch, or a burning sensation when urinating

• a penile discharge, which may be clear or more like pus.

For women, symptoms may include:

For men or women who have anal sex, symptoms may include:

• an itch or pain inside the anus, anal discharge and sometimes anal bleeding.

Your doctor will take a urine sample for men and a vaginal swab for women. For men or women who have anal sex, they will take a rectal swab, or you will be instructed how to take it yourself. Samples will then be sent for laboratory testing.

How is it treated?

Once diagnosed, you’ll be treated with a course of oral antibiotics for about two weeks. Unfortunately, you may need several courses to cure the infection due to increasing antibiotic resistance. And some of these antibiotics can have side-effects. Occasional, but serious, side-effects include an abnormal heart rhythm, rupture of tendons and nerve damage.

Read more: Health Check: I’m taking antibiotics – when will they start working?

What happens if I leave it untreated?

If the infection is left untreated in women, it can cause similar complications to chlamydia. Some women go on to develop pelvic inflammatory disease, although less commonly than with chlamydia. Pelvic inflammatory disease could, in turn, lead to infertility. If you’re pregnant, it can, uncommonly, lead to premature birth or miscarriage.

If left untreated in men there are no apparent complications but the main risk is men can infect new partners and reinfect treated partners. And for gay men, there’s some data to suggest a link between MG and HIV, although further studies are needed.

Read more: How to make your next sexual health check less, erm … awkward

Can I still be tested even if I don’t have symptoms?

Current guidelines both in Australia and internationally recommend testing people with symptoms, or sexual contacts of known cases. They don’t recommend doctors screen people without symptoms.

When you screen, you have to be confident you have access to highly effective treatments, the treatments do not cause more harm than the condition itself and you have a good understanding of how often the condition progresses to cause complications.

For MG that balance is against screening currently. That’s because there are often no symptoms and we don’t yet fully understand how often the infection progresses to cause harm, although it seems to do so less often than chlamydia. The microorganism has also rapidly become so resistant to antibiotics we are having to use stronger and stronger ones, and multiple courses, to cure. This contrasts to chlamydia, which is easy to cure.

Not only do many antibiotics have side-effects, they affect the bacteria in people’s gut. These bacteria are important to keep us healthy, and if we bombard them with antibiotics it can affect our health and also lead to antibiotic resistance in a whole range of other bacteria, not just MG.

Read more: We know _why_ bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, but _how_ does this actually happen?

– ref. What is Mycoplasma genitalium, the common STI you’ve probably never heard of – https://theconversation.com/what-is-mycoplasma-genitalium-the-common-sti-youve-probably-never-heard-of-157318

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Megan Munsie, Deputy Director – Centre for Stem Cell Systems and Head of Engagements, Ethics & Policy Program, Stem Cells Australia, The University of Melbourne

Researchers have successfully grown model versions of early human embryos by “reprogramming” cells from human skin. The breakthrough potentially opens up new ways to study the earliest phases of human development, learn more about developmental disorders, infertility and genetic diseases, and perhaps even improve the success of IVF treatment.

In a study published in Nature today, a team led by our colleague Jose Polo discovered that when skin cells are treated in a particular way, 3D structures similar to early human embryos form. A US-Chinese research group led by Jun Wu also reported a similar feat, creating structures that resemble a very early stage of the embryo called a “blastocyst”.

While this is an exciting scientific advance, it will also be vital to consider the ethics behind this and other emerging approaches to modelling human development.

Growing ‘human organs’ in a dish

Over the past 50 years, research has revealed a lot about how the different organs of our bodies are formed, and what happens at a cellular level during disease and illness.

Many of these insights came from recent breakthroughs in stem cell research, in which scientists can effectively create 3D models, or miniature organs from human tissue, that resemble the structure and function of particular organs in the body.

These structures, known as organoids, have been used to understand how kidneys form, learn what happens to the developing brain during a Zika infection, and to test an array of therapies to find the best ways to halt the progression of bowel or pancreatic cancers.

These advances rely on the innate ability of stem cells to organise themselves into characteristic anatomical and functional features when given the right conditions. Researchers can use stem cells taken from a patient’s own tissue to create 3D models of the organ from which those cells were taken. Many, but not all, organs have their own specific stem cells.

Other approaches use a more basic type of stem cell, called “pluripotent stem cells”, obtained from human embryos or created in the lab from a skin or blood cell through a process called reprogramming. This approach means researchers can create stem cells then coax them to mimic how a particular organ forms. While these 3D structures are often referred to as mini-organs, they usually only replicate certain aspects of the organ’s architecture and function.

Exploring the developmental ‘black box’

While stem cells can reveal much about how organs form, research so far has provided little insight into the complex interplay between the developing embryo and the lining of the womb required to establish and maintain a pregnancy.

This period, covering the first few weeks after implantation, is sometimes referred to as the “black box” of development, as it is extremely difficult to access reproductive material at this early stage.

What’s more, even in countries that allow research on donated IVF embryos, studies are usually limited to just the first 14 days after fertilisation, and alternative animal models are of little value in revealing the unique process of human embryo implantation.

Read more: Destroying research embryos within 14 days limits chance of medical breakthroughs

With miscarriages affecting 1 in 6 pregnancies, and high rates of infertility due to failure of embryos to implant, we need better ways to understand and address these devastating outcomes.

Creating 3D models could provide answers

Human pluripotent stem cells have been used to create structures that replicate specific aspects of development, but not the entire embryo, at and immediately after implantation.

The new discoveries reported today offer another way to explore development around the time of implantation. Unlike animal studies, in which the 3D model embryo is compiled by assembling cells from pre-established stem cell lines, this approach relied on adapting the technology used to create induced pluripotent stem cells.

In the approach taken by Polo’s group, skin cells from adult donors were first treated to “reprogram” them over several weeks, effectively resetting their development back to an earlier, less specialised state.

The researchers then grew these cells in 3D clusters for six days, after which some of them formed structures very similar to “blastocysts” — the final stage of embryonic development before implantation. These lab-grown structures are dubbed “iBlastoids”.

The second group cultured human pluripotent stem cell lines – both embryonic stem cell lines and those created through reprogramming – in a slightly different two-step process to encourage 3D clusters to form. They called their structures “blastoids”.

While iBlastoids and blastoids both seem to be structurally and functionally similar to real blastocysts, it is not yet clear exactly how closely they resemble true embryos formed by a sperm and an egg. While the models were shown to share gene patterns and respond in culture in ways characteristic of actual embryos, researchers also saw significant anomalies, such as unsynchronised growth and cells that are not usually present in an embryo.

Ethical issues

It can be hard to decide where we should draw the ethical line between using stem cells to grow “model embryos”, and research on real human embryos created by IVF.

Some people may see no ethical distinction between these two processes at all. Others might support the creation of models but only for specific types of research, such as to understand the origins of infertility or genetic disease. Those people may draw the line at attempts to use these models to test gene-editing techniques to correct genetic diseases rather than simply study them.

When considering these ethical issues, we need to address three important questions:

• what are the likely benefits?

• can the scientific goals be met by other means?

• what is the appropriate oversight process?

While 3D models are not human embryos, existing national laws around the creation and use of IVF embryos may provide useful guidance and oversight. Many countries have specialised review committees to provide independent advice to researchers and ensure ethical transparency.

Above all, we need to approach this issue carefully. The science is complex, and likely to trigger many of the same concerns raised 25 years ago by breakthroughs in cloning technology. One thing seems clear, just as it was back then: this new technology should only be used for laboratory research. Any attempt to use it to establish pregnancies in humans or animals must be strictly prohibited.

Read more: Dolly the Sheep and the human cloning debate – twenty years later

The International Society for Stem Cell Research will soon release a new set of guidelines that are likely to provide more explicit recommendations for research in human embryo modelling. As it has done in the past for other ethically charged issues, this global approach is essential. There is too much at stake to ignore the complexities.

– ref. Researchers have grown ‘human embryos’ from skin cells. What does that mean, and is it ethical? – https://theconversation.com/researchers-have-grown-human-embryos-from-skin-cells-what-does-that-mean-and-is-it-ethical-157228

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

You don’t hear much about snapback these days. Back in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, snapback was what passed for the Morrison government’s vision of where it wanted the country to land after a massive government stimulus had done its work. JobKeeper, JobSeeker and all of the other measures would be quietly retired once normality returned.

As marketing – and this is a government that takes marketing rather seriously – snapback had its problems. There’s something rather violent about the image. If something doesn’t snap back, it might just snap off. People who lose their temper just snap.

Snapback is an image of reaction and reversion: it implies a return to some former state. Modern governments like to imagine they are “moving forward”, as Julia Gillard said 24 times in five minutes while announcing the 2010 election.

As snapback wandered off into the sunset, we began to hear about comeback. This one apparently came from professional marketers, so voters can be pleased as punch their tax dollars have been hard at work.

Comeback relies on sporting analogy. Comeback is what Carlton used to do in the good old days, when it came from 44 points behind to win the 1970 AFL grand final against Collingwood. Comeback is what Scott Morrison did in the 2019 election. Comeback is about getting behind but coming out in front.

Snapback was defensive politics. There was a subtext: we might be spending billions of dollars, paying people to stay home, doubling the unemployment benefit and leaving a massive debt for future generations to pay back. And we are practising the kind of profligacy we normally attribute to the Labor Party and the Greens. But never mind. Once it’s over, Superman will become Clark Kent again, and the Incredible Hulk will revert to Bruce Banner.

The spirit of the Morrison government, in so far as it can be discerned beyond its incessant marketing and its quagmire of scandal, is better captured by snapback than comeback. This is a government that has resisted every opportunity offered by the greatest crisis faced by an Australian government since the second world war to break the policy gridlock of a generation.

The forgiving would point to its success in helping to steer Australia through the pandemic. To expect policy innovation in such an environment of crisis is to ask too much. The government has had difficulties of quite sufficient scale and complexity to keep it fully busy. There will be time for policy adventures later, when we are safely vaccinated and feeling more secure.

There is a long list of stalled policy challenges that would fit this narrative.

The running on China policy is being left to sinophobic and shouty backbenchers rather than being subjected to the disciplines of a government process concerned with the national interest.

Religious freedom – deemed so urgent and significant just a year or so ago that one might have imagined that Australia’s pagans were already marinating the nation’s Christians for a hungry lion’s dinner – is barely heard of these days.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Pandemic kills Indigenous referendum, delivers likely mortal blow to religious discrimination legislation

Morrison abandoned his supposedly essential union-busting integrity bill back in the days when he saw some political capital to be gained by getting all chummy with the ACTU.

Climate change policy is as big a mess now as it was when Morrison was holidaying in Hawaii during last summer’s bushfires.

A proper anti-corruption watchdog – never regarded as urgent or desirable by Canberra’s politicians and mandarins – seems as distant as ever.

The piquancy of the recent exposures of the abusive nature of Parliament House for women is increased by the fact the government did almost nothing to respond to the recommendations of a report on sexual harassment in the workplace delivered by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner early in the pandemic.

Crises sometimes do strangle policy. The outbreak of the first world war led to the suspension of the British Liberal government’s implementation of home rule for Ireland. The outbreak of the second world war in Australia killed off the efforts of the government of the day to set up a system of contributory social insurance. In each case, a crisis came that allowed a government to drop a policy that was difficult and divisive.

The technique is familiar enough in the Morrison government. Its religious freedom draft bill pleased neither opponents nor supporters of such legislation and seemed likely to unleash a world of troubles for the government. The pandemic meant it could be put on hold.

The draft bill for an anti-corruption watchdog is widely regarded by experts as likely to create a body better designed to cover up than to expose corruption. It, too, is on hold.

The need to shift rapidly to renewable energy is on hold while gas industry representatives are brought into the heart of government.

It’s a cliché to call a crisis an opportunity, but that doesn’t meant it’s untrue. Government ministers are fond of elevating their own sense of importance and self-worth by comparing their predicament to that of governments that faced crises in the past. They are particularly attached to war rhetoric and analogy because so many of them fancy themselves as their country’s Winston Churchill – a kind of occupational hazard of the modern male politician who will fight them on the beaches and landing grounds as soon as he’s finished building the girls a cubby-house.

But there’s another problem with the wartime analogy. Australian governments in the two world wars, whatever their political complexion, understood that they needed to articulate a national vision. They saw in crisis and emergency an opportunity for policy creativity and breakthrough, even for something of a paradigm shift.

By way of contrast, it’s hard to recall a government less able than Morrison’s to articulate a national vision, one less cultured and less interested in changing anything unless it’s another of those workplace relations bills that this time – we promise – will unleash the animal spirits of Australian capitalism.

It’s hard to escape the suspicion that Morrison and his government have become captives of the manner in which they achieved their last election victory. Their approach might even help them to win another.

But there are already signs that there is a price to be paid – not just by citizens, but by those who claim the privilege of governing them – for leaving to the future everything too confronting to grapple with in the present.

– ref. From ‘snapback’ to ‘comeback’: policy gridlock as Morrison government puts slogans over substance – https://theconversation.com/from-snapback-to-comeback-policy-gridlock-as-morrison-government-puts-slogans-over-substance-157049

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sheena G. Sullivan, Epidemiologist, WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza

While the future of the pandemic remains uncertain, we’ll probably have to live with COVID-19 for some time.

We face a range of possible scenarios. At the most optimistic end of the spectrum, new vaccines will protect against all current and future variants of concern. At the other extreme, we’ll see the frequent emergence and spread of new variants, against which existing vaccines will have limited effect.

It’s likely we’ll land somewhere in the middle.

Notably, although new variants do threaten the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, decades of experience updating influenza vaccines can inform our global response.

Evolving variants

We’re still learning about how new viral variants affect vaccine effectiveness.

The B.1.1.7 variant, which emerged in the United Kingdom in late 2020, is more infectious and deadlier than the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). Fortunately, though, preliminary data indicates COVID vaccines still work well against it (although this research hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed).

Meanwhile, a study published yesterday found the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is ineffective against mild or moderate COVID-19 caused by the B.1.351 variant. This study was done in South Africa, where this variant emerged and is currently dominant.

Results of clinical trials of the Novavax and Johnson & Johnson vaccines indicated about 60% overall effectiveness in South Africa, according to the vaccine manufacturers. This is lower than the 70-90% reported in the United States and the UK.

Read more: Why do we need booster shots, and could we mix and match different COVID vaccines?

Notwithstanding differences in each country’s health systems and health status of their populations, which may explain some of the differences, this is a concerning trend.

Reassuringly, Johnson & Johnson reported 85% effectiveness against severe disease, regardless of country or variant. This suggests while some existing vaccines may not entirely prevent infection and mild illness caused by certain variants, they may still protect from severe illness and reduce the load on hospitals.

But if new variants continue to emerge, COVID vaccines may need to be reformulated regularly.

Several manufacturers have announced they’re already working on boosters designed to be more effective against the B.1.351 variant, which has now been detected in 48 countries.

Understanding the global spread of new variants

To develop updated vaccines that best respond to new variants, we need to understand the spread of the variants around the world. This is a big challenge.

To know which variant a person is infected with we need to sequence the viral genome (the genetic material of the virus), which can be expensive and time-consuming. While global access to diagnostic tests is improving, huge disparities in access to sequencing technology remain.

These disparities are reflected in information we have about currently circulating variants. Another variant of concern, P.1, shares some of the key mutations present in the B.1.351 variant. So it may present similar problems with vaccine effectiveness, although clinical trial data are lacking.

The P.1 variant was first identified in Tokyo in travellers from Brazil in January 2021. However, we now understand it’s been circulating in Brazil since early December 2020.

Around the world there have only been about 700 shared P.1 sequences, compared with more than 150,000 sequences of the B.1.1.7 variant. There are certainly far more than 700 cases of P.1, but resource constraints mean we’re not getting the full picture of how different variants are spreading.

Read more: What’s the difference between mutations, variants and strains? A guide to COVID terminology

Further, while sequencing capacity has been massively scaled up during the pandemic, it cannot determine whether a mutation will change how the SARS-CoV-2 virus interacts with our immune system. This requires more lab work, called “antigenic characterisation”, with limited global capacity to undertake this specialised testing.

Patchy understanding of the nature and spread of new variants may lead manufacturers to focus on modifying their vaccines towards better-known variants, which at the moment are those found in more developed countries. These vaccines may be less effective in developing countries where less well-understood variants may predominate.

So we need ongoing, coordinated and global sharing of sequencing information and virus samples to track virus evolution and vaccine effectiveness.

Lessons from influenza surveillance

We’ve encountered similar challenges in the development of influenza vaccines, which are updated annually to ensure they remain effective against new strains.

Existing ‘flu surveillance has already been adapted to some degree for COVID. The Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data, an online platform set up in 2008, has become the main tool used to share SARS-CoV-2 sequences.

In the case of influenza, we’ve seen a coordinated global response. The Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, established in 1952, includes more than 140 laboratories across 114 countries. These labs share information on influenza viruses with five WHO Collaborating Centres, including genomic sequences, antigenic characterisation, and epidemiological data.

The WHO collaborating centres are then responsible for conducting further analysis to guide vaccine composition, inform regular global updates on circulating strains, and provide training and support to national laboratories.

Twice a year, WHO makes recommendations on vaccine composition for the following influenza season. These recommendations are not binding, but national regulatory agencies and manufacturers have consistently used them to develop ‘flu vaccines for more than 40 years.

A similar approach may prove useful for COVID-19. So far, manufacturers have made decisions about COVID-19 vaccine composition in consultation with national regulatory agencies. Developing a global framework to identify variants that warrant a vaccine update will allow manufacturers to focus on the technical aspects of vaccine development.

In turn, this will facilitate more rapid rollout of vaccines — and importantly, vaccines that are effective against variants circulating around the world, rather than only those affecting developed countries.

Some positives

Despite these challenges, current COVID-19 vaccines appear to provide strong protection against moderate to severe illness caused by most variants, and are likely to provide at least reasonable protection against others.

Also, SARS-CoV-2 mutates more slowly than influenza, meaning vaccines may need to be updated less frequently.

And finally, it will be easier and faster to modify new mRNA and vectored SARS-CoV-2 vaccines than traditional influenza vaccines.

Read more: Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout is well behind schedule — but don’t panic

– ref. Flu vaccines are updated every year. We can learn from this process as we respond to COVID variants – https://theconversation.com/flu-vaccines-are-updated-every-year-we-can-learn-from-this-process-as-we-respond-to-covid-variants-156580

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicolás Younes Cárdenas, Postdoctoral research fellow, James Cook University

Australia is home to around 2% of the world’s mangrove forests and is the fifth most mangrove-forested country on Earth. Mangroves play a crucial role in the ecosystem thanks to the dizzying array of plants, animals and birds they feed, house and protect.

Mangrove forests help protect coastal communities from cyclones and storms by absorbing the brunt of a storm’s energy. They help our fight against climate change by storing vast amounts of carbon that would otherwise be released as greenhouse gases.

In other words, mangroves are some of our most precious ecosystems. Despite their importance, there is much we don’t know about these complex wetland forests. For example, when does their growing season start? And, how long does it last?

Usually, answering these types of questions requires frequent data collection in the field, but that can be costly and time-consuming. An alternative is to use satellite images. In the future, this will allow us to track the impacts of climate change on mangroves and other forests.

What is phenology?

Our research used satellite images to study the life cycles of mangrove forests in the Northern Territory, Queensland, and New South Wales. We compared the satellite images with field data collected in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, and found a surprising degree of variation in mangrove life cycles.

We’re using the phrase life cycle, but the scientific term is “phenology”. Phenology is the study of periodic events in the life cycles of plants and animals. For example, some plants flower and fruit during the spring and summer, and some lose their leaves in autumn and winter.

Phenology is important because when plants are growing, they absorb carbon from the atmosphere and store it in their leaves, trunks, roots, and in the soil. As phenology is often affected by environmental conditions, studying phenology helps us understand how climate change is affecting Australian ecosystems such as mangrove forests.

So how can we learn a lot in a short amount of time about mangrove phenology? That’s where satellite imagery comes in.

How we use satellites to study mangrove phenology

Satellites are an excellent tool to study changes in forest health, area, and phenology. Some satellites have been taking images of Earth for decades, giving us the chance to look back at the state of mangrove forests from 30 years ago or more.

You can think of satellite images much like the photo gallery in your smartphone: you can see many of your family members in a single image, and you can see how everyone grows and “blooms” over time. In the case of mangroves, we can see different regions and species in a single satellite image, and we can use past images to study the life cycles of mangrove forests.

For example, satellite images depicted below, which use data from the Australian government’s National Maps website, show how mangroves forests have changed in the Kimberley region of Western Australia between 1990 and 2019. You can see how the mangrove forest has reduced in some areas, but expanded in others. Overall, this mangrove forest seems to be doing pretty well thanks in large part to the fact this area has a reasonably small human population.

Our study of satellite images of mangrove forests in the Northern Territory, Queensland, and New South Wales – and how they compared with data collected on the ground – found not all mangroves have the same life cycles.

For instance, many mangrove species grow new leaves only once per year, while other species grow new leaves twice a year. These subtle, but important differences will allow us to track the impacts of climate change on mangroves and other forests.

How climate change affects mangrove phenology

Climate change is changing the phenology of many forests, causing them to flower and fruit earlier than expected.

Science cannot yet tell us exactly how mangrove phenology will be affected by climate change but the results could be catastrophic. If mangroves flower or fruit earlier than expected, pollinators such as bats, bees and birds may starve or move to a different forests. Without pollinators, mangroves may not reproduce and can die.

The next step in our research is to figure out how climate change is affecting the life cycles of mangroves. To do this, we will use satellite images of mangroves across Australia and factor in data on temperature and rainfall.

We think rising temperatures are causing longer periods of leaf growth, a theory we plan to test by studying data from now with satellite images from the 80s and 90s.

Satellite monitoring can’t do it all

Satellites can tell us a lot about how a mangrove forest is faring. For example, satellite images captured a dieback event (depicted below, using data from the Australian government’s National Maps website) that happened between 2015 and 2016, when around 7,400 hectares of mangroves died in the Gulf of Carpentaria due to drought and unusually high air and sea temperatures.

But satellite monitoring is not enough on its own and cannot capture the detail you can get on the ground. For example, satellites cannot capture the flowering or fruiting of mangroves because flowers are often too small and fruits are often camouflaged. Also, satellites cannot capture what happens under the canopy.

It is also important to recognise the work of researchers on the ground. Ground data allows us to validate or confirm the information we see in satellite images. When we noted some mangrove forests were growing leaves twice per year, we validated this observation with field data, and confirmed with experts in mangrove ecosystems. Field data is crucial to understand the life cycles of ecosystems worldwide and how forests are responding to changes in the climate.

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gwilym Croucher, Senior Lecturer, Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne

Australian universities, for better or worse, have embraced international rankings, especially those published each year such as the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, Academic Ranking of World Universities 2020 (the Shanghai Ranking) and the QS World University Rankings released this month. But there are now signs the influence of rankings on Australian higher education is on the wane.

Critics have argued rankings have been a distraction for universities and distort the decisions they make. It is not hard to understand where this comes from. There is certainly evidence that Australian universities have invested and changed what they do in response to rankings. Getting a better rank has been reflected in some universities’ strategic plans.

Read more: New global ranking system shows Australian universities are ahead of the pack

Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge recently indicated he believes universities should shift their focus from chasing rankings. That’s a change from only a few years ago when the then federal treasurer, Joe Hockey, favoured this as a goal while delivering the budget.

Recently retired ACU vice-chancellor Greg Craven also suggested last month universities should stop pursuing ranking positions.

What drove the pursuit of rankings?

At times the pursuit of rankings success is portrayed as vanity — everybody wants to be recognised as achieving — but this is a superficial explanation. Rather, the enthusiastic rankings chase comes about because a high position in the league tables is seen to attract international students.

Australia has been an attractive destination for a significant proportion of all students who leave their home countries each year to study higher education overseas.

At the recent peak — probably somewhere between 2015 and 2019 — Australia had nearly 7% of the world’s overseas students. By some estimates Australia was in line to be second after the US. Not bad for a nation of 25 million people.

Success in the international market created a “virtuous circle”. High rankings brought in students, who were willing to pay fees, which in turn funded university operations and especially research, which brought higher rankings. So the cycle went.

Read more: $7.6 billion and 11% of researchers: our estimate of how much Australian university research stands to lose by 2024

When the circle is broken

This cycle has fallen victim to the global pandemic. Closed borders mean international students have little prospect in the near future of setting foot in Australia. They have been asked to accept online courses as a temporary substitute, but it is unclear if demand can remain strong with borders shut.

If international students go elsewhere, the attractiveness of pursuing a high ranking diminishes.

Read more: 2021 is the year Australia’s international student crisis really bites

Tudge has a point when he says:

“[T]he focus on international rankings has led to a relentless drive for international students to fund the larger research volumes that are required to drive up the rankings.”

But this is only part of the story. Even if universities dismiss rankings, it will not change the fact that the “virtuous circle” has changed how Australia funds its university system.

Rankings have been a means not an end. They helped attract international students whose fees cross-subsidised research but also all the other activities, including — yes — some of the full cost of educating domestic students. Australian universities have a structural funding problem.

Which is perhaps one reason why Tudge argues:

“COVID presents us with an opportunity to reassess the impact our universities can have, and to refocus on the main purpose of public universities: to educate Australians and produce knowledge that contributes to our country and humanity.”

Identifying the problem is one thing, finding workable solutions is another. It is a worthy aspiration that the minister wants “academics to become entrepreneurs, taking their ideas from the lab to the market”, especially when they are “properly rewarded for their breakthroughs and their engagement with business”.

What is not clear is if this can be more than an aspiration and if it can help address the structural change in the revenue base for Australia’s universities; one that has allowed them to do a lot of things, including supporting academics to be entrepreneurs.

Read more: As universities face losing 1 in 10 staff, COVID-driven cuts create 4 key risks

An ‘unranked’ future

The question now is what is Australia to do next if the virtuous circle is not remade?

Australia needs to be careful in its answer to this challenge. Universities will probably need to be more modest affairs.

We need a public conversation about how they downsize. Universities have become too reliant on casual labour, which now accounts for about a quarter of the academic workforce (in full-time equivalent terms). This imbalance is having real consequences for the future academic workforce with implications for the quality of education.

Read more: COVID hit casual academics hard. Here are 5 ways to produce a better deal for unis and staff

Universities are going to be more reliant on public funds than in recent decades. This means greater public trust in universities needs to be built quickly.

If universities continue to be a low priority for the public at the ballot box, they might be further victim of political expediency. Governments might be tempted to focus on other pressing issues and hope the international students return and the issue resolves itself.

Australian universities may have now passed “peak ranking”. That forces us to contend with the reason rankings were so popular in the first place.

– ref. Australian universities may be at a turning point in the rankings chase. So what next? – https://theconversation.com/australian-universities-may-be-at-a-turning-point-in-the-rankings-chase-so-what-next-156282

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Koh, Honorary Associate, Faculty of Business, School of Management, University of Technology Sydney

It almost reads like a John Grisham novel.

Self-employed woman contracts cancer. Claims under her income-protection insurance policy. Insurer cancels the policy after investigation reveals omission of unrelated health condition (depression) on her original application. She is accused of acting in bad faith and threatened with having to repay the money (A$24,000) already received. Her story comes to national attention. A dramatic court battle ensues. Justice is finally served.

Last week just such a narrative concluded in the Federal Court, when chief justice James Allsop found TAL Life, one of Australia’s biggest life insurers, had breached its duty to act with “utmost good faith” by cancelling a sick woman’s income-protection policy through the questionable practice of “retrospective underwriting”.

The Federal Court case was initiated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission in December 2019. This followed evidence from the banking royal commission in 2018 showing the lengths TAL went to in seeking to void insurance policies.

Justice Allsop ruled TAL’s actions – including not informing the claimant she was under investigation, reaching a wrong conclusion, failing to give her a chance to respond, and threatening to pursue her for money – lacked “decency and fairness”.

However, he did not agree with the corporate regulator that TAL’s actions amounted to false or misleading conduct. Guilt on that charge would have meant a fine.

The ruling carries no financial penalty, apart from TAL having to keep its end of the contract. The judgment is nonetheless significant. It puts insurance companies on notice about the use of retrospective underwriting, scrutinising insurance applications only when a claim is made, and covertly trawling through applicants’ medical and financial records to find any excuse to void the policy.

What is underwriting

Let’s briefly recap what insurance underwriting means.

It is the process of assessing an applicant’s risk and pricing a life insurance policy (which includes a policy such as income protection) accordingly.

If you have, for example, a history of hypertension, you have a higher risk of stroke. This is something an underwriter wants to know, to accurately assess your actuarial risk. They may increase the premium you pay, or exclude from the policy claims for strokes, or decline cover altogether.

Insurance application forms typically require you to declare “yes” or “no” to a list of the most common medical conditions or circumstances, with an open-ended question about other “relevant” conditions.

Usually the underwriting process is straightforward. Insurers accept declarations in good faith, and approve applications (and collect the premiums) as quickly as possible.

Retrospective underwriting

But that changes when you make a claim.

Then insurers are unwilling to accept anything in good faith. They typically require you to authorise access to your financial and medical records, including records you may not have seen – such as your doctor’s notes.

A doctor might note observations about a patient seeming depressed. It’s not an explicit diagnosis. But an insurer may retrospectively consider this undisclosed evidence of “depression”.

Finding “relevant” information not declared in the original application gives the insurer an excuse to “retrospectively underwrite” the policy – determining what policy it would have offered (if at all) had that information been known.

Retrospective underwriting usually favours insurers as it is done with the knowledge of an existing claim. The federal Insurance Contracts Act allows insurers, under certain conditions, to cancel policies within three years of inception due to relevant non-disclosures or misrepresentations in applications.

Read more: Very risky business: the pros and cons of insurance companies embracing artificial intelligence

TAL at the royal commission

Appearing before the banking royal commission in September 2018, TAL senior executive Loraine van Eeden agreed the company’s approach had lacked empathy. She acknowledged it was wrong to not tell the claimant she was being investigated, and wrong to not give her a chance to respond to the reason for the retrospective underwriting.

TAL had approved the woman’s income protection insurance in October 2013, asking detailed medical questions, including those of mental health. In mid-December she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She lodged her policy claim on January 3 2014.

TAL accepted the claim on 7 January and made monthly payments until May. In June it cancelled the policy, on the basis her medical records revealed undisclosed mental health issues it said would have changed the initial underwriting. Perhaps, one suspects, not offer cover. TAL did not suggest she was dishonest.

Practical implications

In our experiences it is not unusual for insurers to use a claims process to retrospectively underwrite. Often claimants only become aware of this when they’re told there is information giving the insurer the right to cancel the policy.

Under the life insurance industry’s voluntary Code of Practice, insurers are meant to explain why they’re requesting information relevant to a claim.

The corporate regulator and consumer advocates have long held concerns the three-year window to cancel policies encourages insurers to go on “fishing expeditions”.

No more spying

Since January 1 the rules giving insurers three years to cancel a policy have been tightened – one of the 27 of 76 recommendations from the banking royal commission the federal government has implemented.

Insurers now may only “avoid a contract of life insurance on the basis of non-disclosure or misrepresentation if it can show that it would not have entered into a contract on any terms”.

Read more: Ideology triumphs over evidence: Morrison government drops the ball on banking reform

The Federal Court ruling puts life insurers on further notice. It clarifies what the “duty of utmost good faith” required by the Insurance Contracts Act means.

They don’t need to behave dishonestly to breach that duty. Not meeting community expectations of decency and fairness is enough. That doesn’t leave much room for lesser signs of excessive suspicion, let alone “deep-dive” operations to dig for dirt. That’s all but been declared illegal.

– ref. Federal Court rules insurance companies must behave decently. That’s a big deal – https://theconversation.com/federal-court-rules-insurance-companies-must-behave-decently-thats-a-big-deal-157057

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christine Braid, Professional Learning and Development Facilitator in Literacy Education, Massey University

The recently reported decline in student performance in international tests for literacy, science and maths confirmed a view in some quarters that New Zealand’s curriculum is in need of an overhaul.

Notably, the New Zealand Principals’ Federation called for increased leadership and direction from the Ministry of Education. Federation president Perry Rush said:

We need more clarity when it comes to the knowledge that teachers and principals use when they’re engaged in teaching and learning, so that’s about what is in the curriculum.

This is a complex debate, but one area where greater direction might help is the teaching of the seemingly basic but vital skills of handwriting and spelling.

Children require time to develop the necessary capability in these complex foundation skills. Without them, they will struggle with the higher-order skills of constructing paragraphs and composing texts.

But teaching handwriting and spelling is often marginalised. Many schools question the value of spending time on the formal teaching of these skills. Compared with other areas of literacy, teachers have struggled to find direction.

The importance of handwriting

It is common these days to hear handwriting will soon be unnecessary; digital technology is rendering it redundant and most people rarely put pen to paper anymore.

But handwriting is still used for many everyday tasks, as well as in most test and exam situations. More importantly, studies show the brain activates differently when writing by hand than when writing on a keyboard.

The importance of this brain activity is seen in the way learning correct letter formation is involved in embedding letter knowledge. Teachers notice older children who struggle with writing composition often also have a problem with handwriting.

Read more: Test or invest? NZ’s sliding international student assessment rankings are all about choices

Efficient letter formation affects the amount and quality of writing output. One study of beginning writers reported up to 30% of the difference in writing achievement was attributed to capability in handwriting and spelling.

Mastering handwriting involves learning various techniques and needs focus over a number of years. However, it can be difficult for teachers to justify a place for teaching letter formation in the busy school day.

Spelling is the basis of writing

The teaching of spelling has been undervalued, too. Teachers have been guided to help children work out spelling rules but the complex code of English spellings needs explicit teaching.

As with handwriting, spelling may seem unimportant in an age of digital spellcheckers. But spelling ability reflects what children know about words, including word meanings. Children I speak to report that difficulty with spelling puts them off wanting to write at all.

This is a real problem. The easier it is to put words on a page, the more it frees the writer to compose ideas into sentences and paragraphs.

Read more: In an age of digital disinformation, dropping level 1 media studies in NZ high schools is a big mistake

It is easy to undervalue the foundation skills of handwriting and spelling — they can seem less important than producing a complete written composition. The focus of assessment is on the written “product” rather than progress in the foundation skills.

But mastering those skills is big and important work for beginning readers and writers. Any decline in their ability could be a canary in the education coal mine.

Teachers and learners deserve better

There are, however, some hopeful signs. A more explicit approach to teaching spelling, in part derived from strategies for helping with literacy difficulties, is gaining ground.

New early reading books that follow a clear sequence of word patterns are due to arrive in schools at the end of March. These resources have been eagerly awaited by schools keen to make a difference to their students’ learning.

Read more: Young New Zealanders are turning off reading in record numbers – we need a new approach to teaching literacy

At the same time, teacher training will need to include the tools required for such systematic teaching. As one New Zealand study has shown, teacher knowledge about important literacy concepts has generally been lacking.

The fact there is a lack of consistent training for teachers in such an important area should be cause for real concern. While many schools are making important teaching and system changes to ensure success for all their learners, they cannot do it alone.

Guidelines for teacher training, school curriculums and professional development need to be clear and consistent. We can liken this to a GPS system, but for teaching. Good directions in education are vital to ensure all children arrive at the right destination at the right time.

Learners and teachers deserve nothing less. They need much more.

– ref. Has a gap in old-school handwriting and spelling tuition contributed to NZ’s declining literacy scores? – https://theconversation.com/has-a-gap-in-old-school-handwriting-and-spelling-tuition-contributed-to-nzs-declining-literacy-scores-155371

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

ASIO is changing the language it uses to describe violent threats, because it says the current labels are “no longer fit for purpose.”

This means terms including “left”, “right”, and “Islamic extremism” will be avoided.

Announcing the update in his annual threat assessment, the security organisation’s head, Mike Burgess, said it would now employ two categories: “religiously motivated violent extremism”and “ideologically motivated violent extremism”.

Burgess said the terms in use now did not “adequately describe the phenomena we’re seeing”.

It was unhelpful to categorise the many violent groups of various political ideologies as simply “extreme left wing” and “extreme right wing”.

“ASIO does not investigate people solely because of their political views, so labels like ‘left’ and ‘right’ often distract from the real nature of the threat,” Burgess said.

“While the views advocated by many extremist groups are appalling, as a security service, ASIO’s focus is on the threat of violence.

“In the same way, we don’t investigate people because of their religious views – again, it’s violence that is relevant to our powers – but that’s not always clear when we use the term ‘Islamic extremism’.”

He said some Muslim groups understandably saw the term as “damaging and misrepresentative of Islam”, and stigmatising them “by encouraging stereotyping and stoking division”.

Language was needed that matched the evolving threat environment and could accommodate groups outside traditional categories.

An increasing number of individuals and groups didn’t fit on a left-right spectrum, Burgess said. Rather, “they’re motivated by a fear of societal collapse or a specific social or economic grievance or conspiracy.”

He instanced the violent misogynists who followed “incel” (involuntary celibate) ideology.

Burgess said many of Australia’s Five Eyes partners had updated their language.

But he inserted the qualification that the new labels were umbrella terms and in certain cases ASIO might “need to call out a specific threat that sits beneath them”.

Burgess said ideological extremists “are now more reactive to world events, such as COVID, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the recent American Presidential election”.

COVID had reinforced extremist beliefs about the collapse of society and race war.

“As a consequence, we are seeing extremists seeking to acquire weapons for self-defence, as well as stockpiling ammunition and provisions.”

Australia faced threats from both religiously motivated violent extremists and “a growing assortment of individuals with ideological grievances”.

Burgess said that last year he had called out “so-called right-wing extremism”.

“Since then, ideological extremism investigations have grown from around one-third of our priority counter-terrorism caseload, to around 40%. This reflects a growing international trend, as well as our decision to dedicate more resources to the emerging domestic threat.

“The face of the threat is also evolving, and this poses challenges as we seek to identify and monitor it.

“People often think we’re talking about skinheads with swastika tattoos and jackboots roaming the backstreets like extras from Romper Stomper, but it’s no longer that obvious.

“Today’s ideological extremist is more likely to be motivated by a social or economic grievance than national socialism. More often than not, they are young, well-educated, articulate, and middle class – and not easily identified.

“The average age of these investigative subjects is 25, and I’m particularly concerned by the number of 15 and 16 year olds who are being radicalised. They are overwhelmingly male.”

He said “compared with other forms of extremism”, ideological extremism “is more widely dispersed across the country, including in regional and rural areas”.

“ASIO anticipates that the threat from this form of extremism will not diminish any time soon – and may well grow.”

Burgess noted that in his first threat assessment, delivered last year, he had warned adversaries that ASIO would hunt those conducting espionage or foreign interference against Australia.

It had made good on this promise. “We have dealt with multiple attempts – from multiple countries – to steal Australia’s secrets and undermine its sovereignty.”

Last year ASIO investigated a “nest of spies, from a foreign intelligence service, that was operating in Australia.

“The spies developed targeted relationships with current and former politicians, a foreign embassy and a state police service.

“They monitored their country’s diaspora community.

“They tried to obtain classified information about Australia’s trade relationships.

“They asked a public servant to provide information on security protocols at a major airport.

“They successfully cultivated and recruited an Australian Government security clearance holder who had access to sensitive details of defence technology.”

ASIO confronted the spies “and quietly and professionally removed them front Australia”.

He said the foreign intelligence service in question was not from a country in Australia’s region.

Burgess warned that as we came out of the pandemic crisis, “some of our adversaries are seeking to undermine and exploit Australia’s recovery. We have already seen extremists trying to stoke social divisions, and foreign intelligence services wanting intelligence about Australia’s key export, technology and research industries.”

– ref. ASIO to avoid ‘left’, ‘right’ and ‘Islamic’ in an overhaul of its descriptions of extremism – https://theconversation.com/asio-to-avoid-left-right-and-islamic-in-an-overhaul-of-its-descriptions-of-extremism-157345

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kerith Duncanson, Senior Research Fellow, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle

The trend towards vegetarian and vegan diets means more people are looking for meat-free protein alternatives.

Enter seitan (pronounced say-tan), the latest food trend that’s going viral online.

Seitan can be made by washing the starch off flour, so what you are left with is mainly gluten. Wheat gluten has been used as a substitute for meat in Asian countries for centuries, particularly among Buddhists who prefer not to eat meat. George Ohsawa, Japanese advocate for the “macrobiotic” diet, coined the term seitan for wheat gluten in the early 1960s.

Seitan’s versatility and “meatiness”, combined with the need for tasty, vegan protein options have contributed to its huge increase in popularity world-wide in recent years.

It’s high in protein and iron

As well as being flavoursome and reminiscent of meat, seitan is relatively high in protein and non-haem iron compared to other vegetarian protein foods.

One serving around the size of the palm of your hand contains about 75 grams of protein, enough for most adults for a day. Gram for gram, that’s about three times as much protein as beef or lamb.

With about 5 milligrams of iron per 100 grams, seitan has as much iron as kangaroo meat or beef. But as for other plant-based foods, the non-haem iron in seitan is not as readily absorbed as the haem iron in meats.

A small serve of seitan (100 grams) contains about 14 grams of carbs, which is about the same as one slice of bread.

Seitan doesn’t contain any soy, unlike tofu or tempeh. So it’s a good option for people with a soy allergy.

You can make it at home

You can make seitan just from flour and water, but it does take about an hour from start to finished product.

To prepare seitan, combine flour with a little salt and water to form a soft dough. Then keep kneading the dough under cold running water (to remove the starch) until it becomes a very stiff and stretchy dough.

If you’re in a hurry, you can cheat by mixing commercially available “vital wheat gluten” with water.

Either way, once you’ve got the gluten dough, flavour it with spices or sauces and then pan fry or boil it.

You can serve it as a steak substitute, sliced and stir-fried, “pulled” like pork, or crumbed and made into a vegan schnitzel. Seitan meals have been known to be mistaken as meat by some fairly serious carnivores!

It might be worth taste testing ready-made seitan from a shop to check whether you like it before making it yourself, but this often contains added salt as a preservative. Make sure the sodium content is under 400 milligrams per 100 grams. It’s a good idea to limit your sodium intake, and the Heart Foundation recommends no more than 2,000 milligrams per day.

So what’s the downside?

Well, it’s definitely not suitable for people diagnosed with coeliac disease or with a known adverse reaction to the gluten proteins in wheat.

Read more: Why do people decide to go gluten- or wheat-free?

If that’s you, then tofu and legumes are suitable meat substitutes. Another sustainable, gluten-free option is Quorn, a protein-rich food made by fungi.

If you get a bloated tummy or gut pain after eating bread or pasta, but definitely don’t have coeliac disease, it would be interesting to know whether you tolerate seitan. If you do, it could be you don’t tolerate the carbohydrate part of wheat, but can tolerate gluten. A research team at the University of Newcastle, of which I am a part, is investigating whether people who report gut pain after eating wheat are sensitive to the gluten or to the fermentable carbohydrates (FODMAPs) in wheat.

For everyone else who wants to decrease or avoid meat, seitan is versatile and one of the closest in texture and flavour to meat of any vegetarian protein options — so break out the mixing bowls and get kneading.

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

– ref. What is seitan? The vegan protein alternative going viral online – https://theconversation.com/what-is-seitan-the-vegan-protein-alternative-going-viral-online-157231