Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Soanes, Postdoctoral fellow, University of Melbourne

The phrase “urban jungle” gets thrown around a lot, but we don’t usually think of cities as places where rare or threatened species live.

Our research, published today in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, shows some of Australia’s most endangered plants and animals live entirely within cities and towns.

Stuck in the city with you

Australia is home to 39 urban-restricted threatened species, from giant gum trees, to ornate orchids, wonderful wattles, and even a tortoise. Many of these species are critically endangered, right on the brink of extinction. And cities are our last chance to preserve them within their natural range.

Credit: Elia Purtle

Urban environments offer a golden opportunity to preserve species under threat and engage people with nature. But that means we might need to think a little differently about how and where we do conservation, embrace the weird and wonderful spaces that these species call home, and involve urban communities in the process.

Roads to the left of them, houses to the right

When you picture city animals you might think of pigeons, sparrows or rats that like to hang out with humans, or the flying foxes and parrots that are attracted to our flowering gardens.

But that’s not the case here. The threatened species identified in our research didn’t choose the city life, the city life chose them. They’re living where they’ve always lived. As urban areas expand, it just so happens that we now live there too.

The first hurdle that springs to mind when it comes to keeping nature in cities is space: there’s not a lot of it, and it’s quickly disappearing. For example, the magnificent Caley’s Grevillea has lost more than 85% of its habitat in Sydney to urban growth, and many of its remaining haunts are earmarked for future development. Around half of the urban-restricted species on our list are in the same predicament.

It’s especially tough to protect land for conservation in urban environments, where development potential means high competition for valuable land. So when protected land is a luxury that few species can afford, we need to work out other ways to look after species in the city.

Caley’s grevillea has lost 85% of its habitat as Sydney has expanded. Isaac Mammott

Not living where you’d expect

Precious endangered species aren’t all tucked away in national parks and conservation reserves. These little battlers are more often found hiding in plain sight, amid the urban hustle and bustle.

Our research found them living along railway lines and roadsides, sewerage treatment plants and cemeteries, schools, airports, and even a hospital garden. While these aren’t the typical places you’d expect to find threatened species, they’re fantastic opportunities for conservation.

The spiked rice flower is a great example. Its largest population is on a golf course in New South Wales, where local managers work to enhance its habitat between the greens, and raise awareness among residents and local golfers. These kinds of good partnerships between local landowners and conservation can find “win-win” situations that benefit people and nature.

Read more: Just ten MPs represent more than 600 threatened species in their electorates

A series of unfortunate events

It’s no secret that living in the ‘burbs can be risky: a fact best illustrated in the cautionary tale of a roadside population of the endangered Angus’s onion orchid. Construction workers once unwittingly dumped ten tonnes of sand over the patch in the late 1980s, then quickly attempted to fix the problem using a bulldozer and a high-pressure hose. Later, a portaloo was plonked on top of it.

Examples like this show just how important it is for policy makers, land managers and the community to know that these species are there in the first place, and are aware that even scrappy-looking habitats can be important to their survival. Otherwise, species are just one stroke of bad luck away from extinction.

People power

It’s common to think if you want to conserve nature, you need to get as far away from people as you can. After all, we can be a dangerous lot (just ask Angus’s onion orchid). But we also have extraordinary potential to create positive change – and it’s much easier for us to do this if we only have to travel as far as our backyard or a local park.

Many urban-restricted species get support by their local communities. Examples from our research showed communities across Melbourne raising thousands of dollars in conservation crowdfunding, dedicating countless volunteer hours to caring for local habitats, and even setting up neighbourhood watches to combat vandals. This shows a huge opportunity for urban residents to be on the conservation frontline.

Our research focused on 39 species that are restricted to Australian cities and towns today. But that’s not where the opportunity for urban conservation ends.

There are about another 370 threatened species that share their range with urban areas across Australia, as well as countless “common” native species that call cities home. And as cities continue to expand, many other threatened species stand to become urban dwellers. It’s clear that if we only focus conservation efforts in areas far from humans, species like these will be lost forever.

– ref. The 39 endangered species in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and other Australian cities – http://theconversation.com/the-39-endangered-species-in-melbourne-sydney-adelaide-and-other-australian-cities-114741

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Quodling, Doctoral researcher investigating governance of social media platforms, Queensland University of Technology

After years of rejecting calls for increased regulatory oversight of Facebook, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has now called for more cooperation with government in dealing with problems posed by internet platforms and emergent internet technologies.

But the social media giant needs to do more than just talk about a solution. What we’re waiting for now are some clear indications that Zuckerberg will take a role in making change real.

It’s important that Facebook, an online platform with more than two billion users, navigates the complexities of platform governance by engaging users, governments and civil society groups in that process.

Read more: Anxieties over livestreams can help us design better Facebook and YouTube content moderation

Zuckerberg’s article followed criticism regarding how the social media platform is used by some for political interference, or to spread harmful material, such as the footage from the alleged gunman who live-streamed his attack on two New Zealand mosques.

In an opinion piece in the Washington Post over the weekend (and available on his Facebook page), Zuckerberg wrote:

Every day, we make decisions about what speech is harmful, what constitutes political advertising, and how to prevent sophisticated cyberattacks.

But he says companies alone should not be the ones to set up rules on what is acceptable.

I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators. By updating the rules for the Internet, we can preserve what’s best about it — the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things — while also protecting society from broader harms.

Four steps for change

Zuckerberg argues that four areas warrant deeper cooperation:

• harmful content
• election integrity
• privacy
• data portability.

To tackle harmful content, he suggests the creation of an independent body to review Facebook’s content moderation decisions. He also wants the formation of a set of standardised rules for harmful content.

For election integrity, he bemoans the inconsistency and inadequacy of existing laws for electoral advertising and media.

As for privacy, he points to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation as a useful starting point.

Finally, and perhaps most surprisingly given Facebook’s history, Zuckerberg argues legislation should establish and protect data portability rights. This would empower users with access to their data, and give them the ability to choose to take that data to other platforms.

Zuckerberg wrote:

I believe Facebook has a responsibility to help address these issues, and I’m looking forward to discussing them with lawmakers around the world. We’ve built advanced systems for finding harmful content, stopping election interference and making ads more transparent.

But people shouldn’t have to rely on individual companies addressing these issues by themselves. We should have a broader debate about what we want as a society and how regulation can help. These four areas are important, but, of course, there’s more to discuss.

While there’s certainly more to say about each of the issues that Zuckerberg has highlighted, for now, let’s consider the prospect of increased cooperation, and the pursuit of better online governance.

Worth seeking, even if it’s difficult

It’s welcome to see a new enthusiasm from Zuckerberg regarding engagement with government.

His opinion article demonstrates some optimism for unification and standardisation for governance and policing of issues like harmful content and privacy.

This is likely because a global unification of standards poses a significantly lower cost to Facebook for conforming to a standardised regulatory approach, rather than dealing with a patchwork of regulatory frameworks from dozens of countries and regulatory agencies.

That said, we should hope Zuckerberg stays true to this commitment to increased cooperation, even in the absence of international agreement or standardisation.

Whether it is convenient to Facebook or not, it has a duty to its users to operate responsibly. That responsibility should not be abrogated just because international regulatory compliance is difficult.

While Zuckerberg has discussed the notion of greater cooperation with governments and regulatory agencies, it’s important this cooperation doesn’t stop at the offices of government and regulatory bodies.

Governments may be the arbiters of what is legal in a country or territory, but the legislative demands that are made of Facebook and other internet platforms may not necessarily be just or fair to the people affected by those laws.

As an example, I suspect neither Facebook nor its developers particularly want their platform to be used as a tool for the oppression of LGBTQIA+ people in countries where homosexuality is criminalised.

I’ve noted previously that the responsibilities to balance free expression with socio-cultural norms, personal desires, and local regulatory regimes is a particularly complex task. Unfortunately for Facebook, deeper cooperation with government will not make this any easier.

We must consider: when should we expect Facebook to follow the law? And when could we expect Facebook to defy what it considers unjust laws?

As a balance to the demands of government, Facebook should also look to engage with civil society organisations like as the Electronic Frontiers Foundation or the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as academic researchers to weigh the requests of government against appropriate criticism and discourse.

Time to ‘update the rules’

Zuckerberg’s key argument here is that the current rules governing the internet have allowed a generation of entrepreneurs to “build services that changed the world”.

Read more: Becoming more like WhatsApp won’t solve Facebook’s woes – here’s why

This, he writes, has created a lot of value in people’s lives, but now it’s time for reform:

It’s time to update these rules to define clear responsibilities for people, companies and governments going forward.“

It’s equally important that we hold Facebook’s feet to the fires of responsibility, reform, and regulation — to ensure that these latest commitments are more than just hot air.

– ref. Zuckerberg’s ‘new rules’ for the internet must move from words to actions – http://theconversation.com/zuckerbergs-new-rules-for-the-internet-must-move-from-words-to-actions-114593

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Thorpe, Professor in Sociology of Sport and Physical Culture, University of Waikato

Sport may seem trivial in times of tragedy. But research shows its power during recovery from a traumatic experience.

We draw on international research in spaces of conflict and following disaster to explain the benefits of engaging in physical activity after traumatic events.

As Muslim communities around the world and many New Zealanders are grieving and trying to make meaning of the horrific events in Christchurch, we look at how informal sport and recreation can help process complex emotions.

Read more: Pushing casual sport to the margins threatens cities’ social cohesion

Sport for peace building

In 2001, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan founded the Office on Sport for Development and Peace (SDP), advocating sport as having “an almost unmatched role to play in promoting understanding, healing wounds, mobilising support for social causes, and breaking down barriers”.

Since then, the SDP movement has continued to proliferate with organisations using sport and physical activity to help improve the health and well-being of individuals and communities around the world. Of the 1,000-plus organisations currently working under the SDP umbrella, many are focused in sites of war and conflict with the aim of peace building.

Parkour helps young people in conflict zones overcome the stress and despair of their everyday lives. Skateistan, CC BY-SA

There is growing interest in the potential of sports programmes as psycho-social interventions following natural disaster, and in the lives of refugee and migrant communities. SDP organisations such as Football 4 Peace, Right to Play, Hoops 4 Hope, Peace Players International, and Capoeira4Refugees have made valuable contributions to the quality of many people’s lives in contexts of war, conflict and poverty.

The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs is in the process of strengthening the global framework for leveraging sport for development and peace, and it is exploring how sport may be implemented towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Sports in trauma recovery: lessons from Christchurch

In 2016, one of us (Holly Thorpe) began a three-year comparative study, focusing on young people’s engagement with non-competitive action sports in regions of political instability and ongoing conflict. The research included interviews with nearly 100 young people using informal sports and recreation to help improve their own and others’ lives in challenging contexts.

Case studies focused on Skateistan, a non-governmental skateboarding and educational school for disadvantaged children in Afghanistan, Cambodia and South Africa, and a grassroots parkour group in Gaza. Parkour is a sport that involves moving rapidly through an area, typically an urban landscape, negotiating obstacles by running, jumping and climbing.

Two other cases explored the significance of action sports for youth living in communities devastated by natural disaster, such as New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Christchurch following the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes.

Sporting activities will seem insignificant during the immediate emergency response phase. But in the weeks and months following a natural disaster, as communities begin the slow process of rebuilding their lives, recreational sports can play a valuable role. They help people cope and re-establish networks or make new social connections.

The 2011 earthquake in Christchurch killed 185 people and injured many more. It damaged or destroyed almost 200,000 homes, as well as vital infrastructure and sporting facilities. As Emma, a passionate surfer, explained:

Once we got most of the chores done, we started to realise that something huge was missing from our lives.

Finding new rhythms and routines

For skateboarders, the city centre’s “red zoning” meant the loss of a favourite urban playground. Climbers lost access not only to their indoor climbing facility, but also to hundreds of climbing routes, while mountain bikers lost hundreds of trails in the area. Extensive damage to major sewer lines forced the Christchurch City Council to release untreated wastewater into rivers, closing local beaches for nine months and disrupting the daily routines of local surfers and other beach users.

Cultural geographer Tim Edensor writes that individuals often minimise the effects of a major disruption by trying to “restore familiar spaces, routines and timings”. Building on this work and using French sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s notion of “rhythmanalysis, the earthquakes can be described as an “arrhythmic experience”, disrupting all sense of normalcy.

For some Christchurch residents, sporting participation helped restore rhythms and escape (if only temporarily) from the stresses of daily life. Participant Caitlin described the importance of her relationships within the climbing community.

Once I got back into it, I found in climbing a way to carry on, move forward.

Informal sports such as parkour can help people living in conflict zones to cope with frustrations and fear, and build resilience. Gaza Parkour, CC BY-SA

Sports in conflict zones: lessons from Gaza

In our research on informal sports in Gaza, we found some youth adopted unique strategies to overcome the stress and despair of their everyday lives. We revealed how youth (particularly, young men) in Gaza developed their own unique parkour group, despite various social, economic, physical and psychological obstacles. The following comments from Mohammed Al Jakhbeer, cofounder of Parkour Gaza, are revealing:

When I was young, I could not imagine that anything would dominate our consciousness more than our isolation or the occupation. All of Gaza was a series of obstacles, closures and checkpoints. Today, all and any obstacles are my point of departure. With free running, I overcome.

The team advocates the socio-psychological benefits of their everyday parkour experiences, including its value for their resilience with frustrations and fears of living in the Khan Younes refugee camp. The late Gazan psychologist Eyad Al Sarraj said:

Many young people in Gaza are angry because they have very few opportunities and are locked in. An art and sports form such as free-running gives them an important method to express their desire for freedom and allows them to overcome the barriers that society and politics have imposed on them. It literally sets them free.“

Parkour at the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza. Mohammed Salem, CC BY-SA

Action sports for development

In contrast to competitive sports, informal sports like parkour, skateboarding and surfing offer participants an opportunity to gain a sense of achievement without having to physically beat an opponent. The non-competitive, creative and play-based nature of such activities is particularly important in contexts of conflict where war and violence is an ever-present part of children and youth’s lives and memories.

Informal activities also offer opportunities for unique social dynamics. Research shows that, when well facilitated, the sharing of social spaces with people of different backgrounds, ages, sexes and ability levels, can offer a valuable space for learning about inclusion, diversity and respecting difference.

For Muslim communities in New Zealand and around the world, participating in sport in public spaces may be associated with a heightened sense of risk and fear. For those seeking to help, we might consider how to create public and sporting spaces that offer safe and accessible “therapeutic landscapes” over the coming months, years and beyond.

– ref. The importance of sports in recovery from trauma:
lessons from and for Christchurch – http://theconversation.com/the-importance-of-sports-in-recovery-from-trauma-lessons-from-and-for-christchurch-114368

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Merkel, Lecturer in Software Engineering, Monash University

In the wake of the Christchurch attack, the Australian government has announced its intention to create new criminal offences relating to the livestreaming of violence on social media platforms.

The Criminal Code Amendment (Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material) Bill will create two new crimes:

It will be a criminal offence for social media platforms not to remove abhorrent violent material expeditiously. This will be punishable by 3 years’ imprisonment or fines that can reach up to 10% of the platform’s annual turnover.

Platforms anywhere in the world must notify the Australian Federal Police if they become aware their service is streaming abhorrent violent conduct that is happening in Australia. A failure to do this will be punishable by fines of up to A$168,000 for an individual or A$840,000 for a corporation.

The government is reportedly seeking to pass the legislation in the current sitting week of Parliament. This could be the last of the current parliament before an election is called. Labor, or some group of crossbenchers, will need to vote with the government if the legislation is to pass. But the draft bill was only made available to the Labor Party last night.

This is not the first time that legislation relating to the intersection of technology and law enforcement has been raced through parliament to the consternation of parts of the technology industry, and other groups. Ongoing concerns around the Access and Assistance bill demonstrate the risks of such rushed legislation.

Read more: China bans streaming video as it struggles to keep up with live content

Major social networks already moderate violence

The government has defined “abhorrent violent material” as:

[…] material produced by a perpetrator, and which plays or livestreams the very worst types of offences. It will capture the playing or streaming of terrorism, murder, attempted murder, torture, rape and kidnapping on social media.

The major social media platforms already devote considerable resources to content moderation. They are often criticised for their moderation policies, and the inconsistent application of those policies. But content fitting the government’s definition is already clearly prohibited by Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat.

Social media companies rely on a combination of technology, and thousands of people employed as content moderators to remove graphic content. Moderators (usually contractors, often on low wages) are routinely called on to remove a torrent of abhorrent material, including footage of murders and other violent crimes.

Read more: We need to talk about the mental health of content moderators

Technology is helpful, but not a solution

Technologies developed to assist with content moderation are less advanced than one might hope – particularly for videos. Facebook’s own moderation tools are mostly proprietary. But we can get an idea of the state of the commercial art from Microsoft’s Content Moderator API.

The Content Moderator API is an online service designed to be integrated by programmers into consumer-facing communication systems. Microsoft’s tools can automatically recognise “racy or adult content”. They can also identify images similar to ones in a list. This kind of technology is used by Facebook, in cooperation with the office of the eSafety Comissioner, to help track and block image-based abuse – commonly but erroneously described as “revenge porn”.

The Content Moderator API cannot automatically classify an image, let alone a video, as “abhorrent violent content”. Nor can it automatically identify videos similar to another video.

Technology that could match videos is under development. For example, Microsoft is currently trialling a matching system specifically for video-based child exploitation material.

As well as developing new technologies themselves, the tech giants are enthusiastic adopters of methods and ideas devised by academic researchers. But they are some distance from being able to automatically identify re-uploads of videos that violate their terms of service, particularly when uploaders modify the video to evade moderators. The ability to automatically flag these videos as they are uploaded or streamed is even more challenging.

Important questions, few answers so far

Evaluating the government’s proposed legislative amendments is difficult given that details are scant. I’m a technologist, not a legal academic, but the scope and application of the legislation is currently unclear. Before any legislation is passed, a number of questions need to be addressed – too many to list here, but for instance:

Does the requirement to remove “abhorrent violent material” apply only to material created or uploaded by Australians? Does it only apply to events occurring within Australia? Or could foreign social media companies be liable for massive fines if videos created in a foreign country, and uploaded by a foreigner, were viewed within Australia?

Would attempts to render such material inaccessible from within Australia suffice (even though workarounds are easy)? Or would removal from access anywhere in the world be required? Would Australians be comfortable with a foreign law that required Australian websites to delete content displayed to Australians based on the decisions of a foreign government?

Read more: Anxieties over livestreams can help us design better Facebook and YouTube content moderation

Complex legislation needs time

The proposed legislation does nothing to address the broader issues surrounding promotion of the violent white supremacist ideology that apparently motivated the Christchurch attacker. While that does not necessarily mean it’s a bad idea, it would seem very far from a full governmental response to the monstrous crime an Australian citizen allegedly committed.

It may well be that the scope and definitional issues are dealt with appropriately in the text of the legislation. But considering the government seems set on passing the bill in the next few days, it’s unlikely lawmakers will have the time to carefully consider the complexities involved.

While the desire to prevent further circulation of perpetrator-generated footage of terrorist attacks is noble, taking effective action is not straightforward. Yet again, the federal government’s inclination seems to be to legislate first and discuss later.

– ref. Livestreaming terror is abhorrent – but is more rushed legislation the answer? – http://theconversation.com/livestreaming-terror-is-abhorrent-but-is-more-rushed-legislation-the-answer-114620

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna Mendelssohn, Honorary Associate Professor, Art & Design: UNSW Australia. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW

The National is an ambitious name for any exhibition of contemporary Australian art. In this case it is justified by the inclusion of artists from every state and territory. The bald statistics of the media release note that over 60% of the 70 artists are women, and over one third are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders.

Their biographies reveal a broad range of age, geographic and cultural backgrounds showing modern, multicultural Australia at work. It is the result of a very conscious curatorial decision to show what is new, and what concerns artists at the end of the second decade of the 21st century.

In both size and subtext, this differs from the two other regular surveys of contemporary Australian art – the National Gallery of Victoria’s Melbourne Now and the Art Gallery of South Australia’s Adelaide Biennial. Despite spreading over two generously sized venues, Melbourne Now has always projected a decidedly local focus – it may include artists from other locations and even other countries – but the city is the hero. Adelaide’s Biennial has always been constrained by the relatively small size of the Art Gallery of SA.

Sally M. Nangala Mulda, Town Camp Anywhere 2018–19 Acrylic on canvas, acrylic on paper, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Tangentyere Artists, Mparntwe (Alice Springs) © the artist and Tangentyere Artists Photo: AGNSW, Mim Stirling

The National casually stretches between three reasonably large locations – Carriageworks, Museum of Contemporary Art and Art Gallery of New South Wales, but in its scope it draws the whole country into its extended embrace.

Each venue has a slightly different flavour. The old industrial space of Carriageworks is the place for the over the top performance by Pope Alice (aka Luke Roberts and entourage) as well as Mark Shorter’s (literally) dark performance piece, Song for von Guérard. At the MCA, curators Anna Davis and Clothilde Bullen explored what they call the “third space”, an overlapping between cultures and gender to produce a greater visual diversity.

Mark Shorter, Song for von Guerard, at Carriageworks. Zan Wimberley

In her catalogue essay, AGNSW curator Isobel Parker Philip likens The National to a black box flight recorder that captures the moment even as the plane falls to its doom. She sees our present time as being “a moment steeped in uncertainty and precariousness”.

Rather than seeing exhibitions of contemporary art as an ever recording black box, it’s probably more appropriate to see them as a time capsule – where the contents are laid out for inspection to show the future what we were.

All three venues have works that explore the nature of history and recovering memories that were either willingly or unwillingly repressed. At the entrance of Carrriageworks, Sam Cranstoun’s ironic Utopia sign is a visual quotation of Ken Done’s triumphalist Australia sign, which welcomed visitors to Brisbane’s World Expo 1988. That year-long celebration marked the end of the repressive Bjelke-Petersen era and the launching of modern Queensland.

On occasion, Utopia is partly obscured by Tom Mùller’s Ghost Line, which steams a foggy reminder of the steam trains that once called the current site of Carriageworks their home.

Tom Muller, Ghost Line, The National, Carriageworks. Zan Wimberley

Inside, Cherine Fahd’s Akrókryhos recovers family photographs recording the funeral of her grandfather, who died young. The works at Carriageworks are more abrasive than those at the AGNSW. There, the first works visitors see are Andrew Hazewinkel’s 12 Figures after Niccolò, where antique heads reveal themselves to be masks, failing to conceal underlying collective anxiety.

Read more: Friday essay: images of mourning and the power of acknowledging grief

Andrew Hazewinkel, Part 1, The Emissaries: Keepers of Our Stories from The Ongoing Remains, (3 parts) 2019. Powdered pigment, gypsum cement, mild steel, 20 sculptures: bust 46 x 21x 22 cm, base 122 x 38 x 33 cm, individual figure, 168 x 38 x 33 cm; installation dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist and Reading Room, Melbourne © the artist. Photo: AGNSW, Mim Stirling

Other works are quieter as they give a slow reveal of distress. Peta Clancy’s giant photographic Undercurrents only gradually reveals itself to be the echo of an old massacre at Dja Dja Wurrung country. This large, understated work is installed adjacent to Sally M. Nangala Mulda’s bleakly humorous paintings of Town Camp Anywhere. It gives a certain continuity to the legacy of displacement.

At the MCA, the late Mumu Mike Williams’ giant painting, Kamantaku Tjukurpa wiya (The Government doesn’t have Tjukurpa), gives an uncompromising critique of the legacy of colonisation and the connection of the Anangu people to country. The canvas it is painted on is government issue mail bags. It maps the water holes where people still remember how they were given flour – laced with arsenic.

Installation view of the National at MCA featuring Mike Williams’ Kamantaku Tjukurpa wiya (The Government doesn’t have Tjukurpa). Jacquie Manning

It is partnered in the exhibition with Abdul Rahman-Abdullah’s exquisite ode to memories of childhood, Pretty Beach. Here sculptures of stingrays and suspended crystals evoke a seascape loved by a dead relative, and so honour him. Mourning can be a complex emotion. Hannah Brontë’s Heala screens her video onto the floor of a luminous, orange-draped room. She draws the viewer into her world, as “Orange is the first colour that you see in the womb. Light from outside through your eyelids.”

Hannah Bronte’s Heala at the National, MCA. Jacquie Manning

Women move, float and sing their way through pregnancy and loss to the rhythm of the most enticing rap, its beat quoting the beat of the artist’s own heart.

Not all new artists are young. Daisy Japulija, Sonia Kurarra, Tjigila Nada Rawlins & Ms Uhl collectively paint a vision of the colours and rhythms of country caught in light – all painted on perspex panels. It comes as a surprise to find that the artists are all residents of the Guwardi Ngadu aged residential care facility. Nothing is as it seems.

The Nation is on Art Gallery of New South Wales until 21 July 2019, and at Carriageworks and the MCA until 23 June 2019.

– ref. The National is a time capsule of new Australian art in uncertain times – http://theconversation.com/the-national-is-a-time-capsule-of-new-australian-art-in-uncertain-times-114589

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sidney Bloch, Emeritus Professor in Psychiatry, University of Melbourne

Al Jazeera’s explosive investigation, “How to Sell a Massacre”, exposed the One Nation party’s attempts to weaken Australia’s gun laws with pro-gun PR training and donations from the National Rifle Association.

The party joins a growing group of our politicians who have recently behaved unethically.

Already in the first weeks of 2019, a senator attended a rally of far-right extremists using A$3,000 of tax payer money; another accepted the gift of a family holiday from a travel agent with political connections; and the prime minister flew to Christmas Island at a cost of A$60,000 for a PR-laced 20 minute press conference.

Read more: Can a senator be expelled from the federal parliament for offensive statements?

Given this dismal record, unethical conduct will likely feature again in the months ahead, and in myriad forms. It’s no wonder Australians are disillusioned with the standard of politics.

It’s time all nine of Australia’s parliaments join thousands of professional organisations and devise a common code of ethics for their members.

Past attempts to ‘clean house’ have sadly failed

Initiatives over more than half a century to manage unethical conduct in the political realm have proved ineffectual. John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull made paltry efforts – knee jerk reactions essentially – to rein in the shabby behaviour of their own ministers, asserting only a prime minister could determine the offender’s fate. Such judgements would surely lead to arbitrary rulings and bias.

Where independent commissions against corruption have been established, defining their goals and procedures has proved problematic. With corruption and conflict of interest as their principal points of focus, a plethora of other forms of misconduct have been given short shrift.

One would imagine the threat of an enforced, humiliating resignation; the possible end of a parliamentary career; and heartbreaking effects on the offender’s family would deter politicians from behaving improperly.

Yet unethical conduct continues.

A model for a code of ethics

There is nothing new in what I am proposing. Indeed, it is rare today to encounter a professional body that has not established a set of ethical principles to guide their members.

So why should politicians, who have the most pivotal jobs in the nation, not follow suit?

One model they can draw from is the code of ethics of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP), with which I have been involved for 30 years.

Read more: Trust in politicians and government is at an all-time low. The next government must work to fix that

In 1990, our members determined a code of ethics could help instil in us a commitment to “cultivate and maintain the highest ethical standards” in our care of patients.

The resulting set of morally informed principles was devised in collaboration with college members, key stakeholders in the mental health field (advocacy organisations like SANE and MIND) and, most relevantly, people with experience of mental illness.

The 11 principles of the current code cover readily recognisable aspects of psychiatric practice, among them respecting patients’ dignity, maintaining confidentiality, providing the best attainable care, obtaining informed consent and never denigrating colleagues.

Most of the ethical challenges politicians face are also readily identifiable, falling under the rubric of always respecting their constituents and never forgetting to place the national interest ahead of their own.

And given politicians across the country grapple with similar ethical dilemmas, we can envisage a single code to serve them all.

How would a code for Australia’s politicians be devised?

Many options present themselves. One possibility that echoes the procedure followed by RANZCP would see the country’s parliamentarians setting up an independent working group charged with the task of devising an ethical code aimed at promoting their moral integrity.

The group could be chaired by an esteemed judge and comprise retired politicians, one from each state and territory and one federal. They would be highly respected for the moral integrity they exhibited during their parliamentary career. A moral philosopher and a legal scholar, both experts in the domain of professional ethics, would consult to the group.

Their initial step would be to invite submissions from all parliamentarians, past and present, relevant stakeholders and the community at large.

Read more: Alternative facts do exist: beliefs, lies and politics

Copies of an advanced draft would be distributed to all current parliamentarians, requesting feedback, substantive and stylistic.

Taking the feedback into account, representatives of each parliament would unite to review the penultimate version and submit any final suggestions.

And like RANZCP and may other organisations, it would be revised every five years. It would bear in mind new developments in ethics, relevant societal changes and how the code improved politicians’ conduct during the preceding five years.

A common criticism of codes of ethics is their lack of teeth. While the RANZCP much prefers to use its code to promote ethical behaviour and moral integrity, serious consequences for any transgressions prevail, including the radical step of expulsion from the college.

Steps would be taken to remind politicians, the very people who have had a hand in devising the code, that its principles apply directly to them and warrant their continued attention. Any ethical misconduct would be dealt with by the offender’s parliament following an agreed procedure.

On a positive note, ethical conduct would be highlighted at every opportunity.

This would include ethics workshops for newly elected MPs; an annual ethics conference for all MPs with participation from moral philosophers and international parliamentarians; and ensuring the national code is readily available online and in all nine parliaments.

Nothing to lose

I may be regarded as naive in proposing a code of ethics for all the nation’s parliamentarians.

Read more: Malcolm Fraser’s political manifesto would make good reading for the Morrison government

However, given its widespread acceptance by thousands of professional organisations universally, establishing a code for politicians devised by politicians is worth a shot. There is nothing to lose except the funds allocated to the process should it flounder.

Given so many politicians have breached moral principles over the years, at times placing our fragile democracy at risk, we need to act vigorously and without delay. Australians deserve politicians of integrity who they can trust and respect unreservedly.

– ref. Many professions have codes of ethics – so why not politics? – http://theconversation.com/many-professions-have-codes-of-ethics-so-why-not-politics-113731

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Xu Chen, PhD candidate; sessional academic, Queensland University of Technology

If Twitter is the revolutionary version of blogging, TikTok might be the revolutionary version of YouTube. Both Twitter and TikTok encourage their users to post shorter, more fragmented content than their precursors.

TikTok, owned by the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, is the international version of China’s short video sharing app, Douyin.

This is TikTok.

Presently the app is considered one of the most valuable start-ups on the planet.

TikTok is not the first Chinese social media platform to go international, although it is likely the first to gain traction with non-Chinese users globally. WeChat and other Chinese social media platforms that have gone global have, in fact, been predominately used by international Chinese citizens.

Read more: Thinking of taking up WeChat? Here’s what you need to know

But TikTok is not yet a complete success story. The video-sharing platform may have broken into some non-Chinese markets, but it still has a lot to learn when it comes to outside regulations and culture.

And this is true for Chinese apps generally – they face obstacles refining their global strategies, particularly in navigating China’s notorious internet censorship.

Chinese social media is already going global

Some scholars attribute the success of Chinese social media to the censorship and isolation of China’s internet. This is because China’s Great Firewall prevents foreign social media from entering the Chinese market.

Nevertheless, many China-based social media platforms, such as Weibo, WeChat, You Ku, Blued and Douyin, are seeking to expand into the global market.

WeChat, for instance, tried (and failed) to expand into the non-Chinese overseas market, even hiring soccer star Lionel Messi to front their advertising campaign.

Unlike the global strategies of its peers, ByteDance has never merged Chinese and international digital realms. Instead, it created a separate app, TikTok, specifically for going abroad.

TikTok and Douyin. Screenshot of the author’s phone

In fact, ByteDance spent A$1.42 billion to purchase Musical.ly, to target the teenage market in the US. On August 2, 2018, ByteDance merged Musical.ly into TikTok, an exceptional boost for TikTok’s success.

TikTok is trying to remove its Chinese roots

Douyin and TikTok are branded as the same product, but they each have distinct characteristics depending on their marketing target. This is wise for ByteDance’s global ambition, given Chinese internet culture doesn’t always translate in a global context.

Interfaces of TikTok (left) vs Douyin (right) Author provided (screenshot of app interfaces)

For instance, TikTok, unlike Douyin, has a set of westernised stickers and effects on its interface, as you can see in the picture above.

Still, some prevailing Chinese traits appear in TikTok that emerged from Douyin, such as a meibai (美白, literally meaning “beautify whitening”) camera tool.

A preview photo of TikTok from an Australian app store. Author provided, Author provided

But the pursuit of white skin isn’t a social motivator in most western countries, and technological constraints like this are easily noticed.

Despite ByteDance’s efforts to minimise Chinese culture in its international app, it is still difficult for TikTok to fully understand western culture.

And this is especially true of other Chinese social media platforms, which don’t really endeavour to incorporate global cultures at all. For instance, WeChat’s mobile payment service, WeChat Pay, only allows Chinese citizens with a Chinese bank account to set up an account.

Global app with Chinese regulations

In April 2018, Chinese internet regulators accused ByteDance, of spreading “unwholesome” content through Douyin.

This includes child users who are making money by live streaming or posting advertising videos on Douyin. And to gain more Douyin followers, some children, for instance, have been reported as recording suggestive gestures or dances.

ByteDance’s chief executive Zhang Yiming responded by saying the company would increase its content moderation team from 6,000 staff members to 10,000. But ByteDance refused to disclose how many of these 10,000 moderators would work for TikTok, and whether the content standards for American users are the same as those for Chinese users.

Read more: China bans streaming video as it struggles to keep up with live content

Chief executive of Common Sense Media James P Steyer said children on TikTok are “significantly too young for it”.

It’s not that the content on TikTok isn’t okay for your 15-year-old. It’s what happens to your six or seven-year-old.

Last month, TikTok was penalised A$8 million by the US Federal Trade Commission due to its violation of Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

ByteDance’s low-level attention to underage users on Douyin and TikTok shows the lack of structural mechanisms in place for protecting children in China. And there are possibilities for more unforeseen circumstances due to nontransparent regulation of social media within China.

While TikTok agreed to pay the largest ever penalty in a children’s privacy case in the US, there is still much for it to learn and adapt in the global market.

– ref. TikTok is popular, but Chinese apps still have a lot to learn about global markets – http://theconversation.com/tiktok-is-popular-but-chinese-apps-still-have-a-lot-to-learn-about-global-markets-113039

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicky Ison, Research Associate, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

The federal Labor Party this week released the details of its keenly awaited climate policy package.

With a commitment to cutting climate pollution by 45% on 2005 levels by 2030, compared with the Coalition’s 26-28% target, there was never a doubt that Labor’s policy agenda was going to be more ambitious than the government’s.

Read more: Shorten’s climate policy would hit more big polluters harder and set electric car target

But what exactly does it include, how does it stack up against the scientific imperatives, and what’s missing?

By offering a broad platform, Labor has moved away from a single economy-wide policy solution to climate change, such as a carbon price or emissions trading scheme. Instead, it has opted for a sector-by-sector approach.

This is smart politics and policy. By developing a climate plan for each major sector – industry, electricity, transport, and agriculture and land – it is possible to modernise each sector in a bespoke way, thus driving more innovation and job creation while also cutting carbon pollution.

Emily Nunell/Michael Hopkin/The Conversation

Industry

Labor has taken the politically safe option of expanding the Coalition’s “safeguard mechanism” to lower industrial greenhouse emissions. Under this scheme, big emitters are required to keep their emissions below a prescribed “baseline” level, or to buy offsets if they exceed it.

Labor has lowered the threshold for the scheme, meaning it will now cover all businesses that emit more than 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year (the cutoff is currently 100,000 tonnes). From there, all of these companies will have to lower their emissions by 45% by 2030 on 2005 levels.

Some details are still to be determined, including the precise trajectories of emissions reductions, the use of offsets (which while welcomed by industry, is considered by many people to be highly problematic), and the treatment of emissions-intensive, trade-exposed industries such as aluminium and cement. As with all complex policies, the devil will be in the detail.

Labor’s policy also includes a “Strategic Industries Reserve Fund”, which would support non-commercial technical innovations to help energy-intensive industries reduce their pollution. The world has already seen significant technical advances, from electrification of gas furnaces, to new cement blends.

But few have been developed, trialled or adopted by Australian industry, and they are not yet as cheap as deploying renewables or energy-efficiency solutions in the electricity sector. The new fund would therefore potentially help drive down emissions in the longer term by opening up access to technologies that are not yet cost-competitive.

Electricity

Labor announced its electricity policy in November 2018, and nothing has changed since. It primarily includes a commitment to adopting the Coalition’s now-abandoned National Energy Guarantee and providing an extra A$10 billion to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Other commitments include plans for energy efficiency, hydrogen power, support for community energy, and establishment of a Just Transition Authority. These are worthwhile next steps, but much more needs to be done to replace Australia’s ageing coal-fired power stations with clean, renewable energy.

Read more: Labor’s policy can smooth the energy transition, but much more will be needed to tackle emissions

Transport

Labor’s transport plans offer a clear chance to deliver economic benefits alongside emissions reductions. It has pledged to introduce vehicle emissions standards equivalent to those in the United States (which are not as strict as those in the European Union).

Australia is the only OECD country that does not have vehicle emissions standards, leaving manufacturers free to dump old, gas-guzzling models on the Australian market. Labor calculates that this costs Australian households an extra A$500 per year in fuel costs, compared with other countries.

Alongside this is also a 50% target for electric vehicles (EVs), requirements for new EV charging infrastructure, and tax breaks for businesses that buy EVs. These are sensible first steps towards driving down transport emissions, which are rising rapidly. Indeed, they are the very least a government should be doing, which makes the fact that after six years in government the Coalition won’t have a plan for electric vehicles until mid-2020 very concerning.

Read more: Labor’s plan for transport emissions is long on ambition but short on details

Agriculture and land

Agriculture is the most difficult of all sectors in which to reduce emissions; it is therefore unsurprising that the lightest-touch policy approach is in this sector. Federal Labor will want to take advantage of all the departmental support it can to properly tackle this tough nut.

What it has done is commit to two main policies: strengthening the Carbon Farming Initiative, and ensuring that Queensland’s land clearing laws are applied across the country. The land clearing laws particularly will help reverse the current widespread land clearing occurring in New South Wales, in response to the state government weakening these laws. And comes in stark contrast to the federal government’s proposal to pay farmers not to chop down trees.

Carbon accounting

The final prong in Labor’s climate strategy is to rule out any creative accounting tricks. The Coalition government is proposing to use carryover Kyoto credits that are a result of the Howard government negotiating a “good deal” for Australia in 1997. Labor has ruled out using these loopholes as part of meeting Australia’s international commitments and has also promised to do more to help our Pacific neighbours. This support may be little help, however, if Labor doesn’t strengthen its support for holding global warming to 1.5℃.

What’s left out?

This package is a solid, technocratic basis for tackling Australia’s rising greenhouse emissions. Unfortunately, there remain some glaring omissions.

The biggest omission is the lack of a plan to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Fossil fuels, particularly the mining and export of coal are Australia’s biggest contribution to climate change. Yet the ALP’s policy contains only two mentions of coal, nothing on coal exports, and no mention of gas. Labor is evidently still sitting on the fence on the future of the controversial Adani coalmine, and on the question of fossil fuel subsidies more generally.

While it might be politically convenient to let the Coalition tear itself apart over coal, the scientific reality is that to have a hope of limiting warming to 1.5℃, Australia needs to rapidly move away from coal both domestically and for exports. This is not something Labor will be able to ignore for long.

There was also no mention of the need to adapt to existing climate change. Given the recent tribulations of Townsville, the Murray-Darling Basin, and drought-stricken farmers, this should surely be a crucial point of emphasis.

Read more: Townsville floods show cities that don’t adapt to risks face disaster

The policy is also missing the human face of climate change. Labor is choosing to frame climate as an economic and environmental issue. It is both of those things, but it is also a social justice issue. Indeed, those most affected by climate change are some of Australia’s (and the world’s) most disadvantaged people. For instance, the Aboriginal community of Borroloola in the Northern Territory, who are currently fighting fracking on their land, were recently evacuated due to Cyclone Trevor.

Yesterday’s policy announcement was a missed opportunity to put Australians’ health and well-being at the centre of the climate crisis and redress historical injustices by actively supporting Aboriginal and other vulnerable communities like Borroloola to benefit from climate action.

The lack of focus on health is doubly puzzling, given that Labor already announced a Climate and Health Strategy in late 2017, and could easily have drawn attention to it here.

While there is no doubt that Labor is far ahead of the Coalition on climate change, this package is far from what the science (and schoolchildren!) are telling us is needed.

As bushfires, floods, droughts and protests are all set to continue, don’t expect this issue to go away after the federal election.

– ref. Labor’s climate policy: a decent menu, but missing the main course – http://theconversation.com/labors-climate-policy-a-decent-menu-but-missing-the-main-course-114606

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Tait, Lecturer in Information Management, RMIT University

A recent article about a new approach to a school library sparked vigorous discussion on social media. Many worried the school had completely abolished traditional library services. The article describes how a Melbourne school changed its library to a technology-focused centre staffed by “change adopters” who host discussions with students and encourage creative thinking.

The school’s principal was forced to defend the library’s restructure. She wrote that its traditional purpose hadn’t been lost.

The College Library has been transformed into a Learning Centre that continues to offer all library services to students and staff, including a significant collection of fiction and non-fiction books, journals, newspapers, magazines and other print resources, as well as online access to other libraries.

This school’s approach isn’t unique. Many schools have reconfigured their library spaces to embrace a model of integrating library services – where traditional library resources are combined with technology. Some have installed new technologies in so-called “maker spaces”. These are where students can be creative, often using technologies such as 3D printers and recording suites.

The purpose of today’s libraries isn’t only to maintain the traditional roles of promoting reading, developing information literacy and providing access to a collection of books and other resources. Today’s school libraries are fundamental to broader digital literacy, information provision and developing critical evaluation of information.

Read more: Technology hasn’t killed public libraries – it’s inspired them to transform and stay relevant

The importance of the library

School libraries improve student achievement. A synthesis of international studies demonstrates that having a library leads to successful curriculum outcomes, including information literacy and positive attitudes to learning. It also improves academic achievement through higher test or exam scores.

A detailed study of 30 teacher librarians in Australia showed they also play a key role in supporting students with special educational needs. They do this by identifying readers and students at risk and working with them to improve both educational and social outcomes.

Teacher librarians have dual educational and librarianship qualifications. This means they have knowledge of pedagogy and curriculum combined with library and information management skills.

Today’s students need guidance in interpreting online information. from shutterstock.com

Libraries and library staff have consistently responded to the changing needs of society. And library professionals have been at the forefront of embracing technology: from establishing the first computer labs in schools in the 1980s through to working with students and teachers to use new technologies such as 3D printing, robotics, gaming and recording suites in learning and creativity.

Read more: Technology and learning in the classroom: six tips to get the balance right

Libraries and technology

There is a lack of understanding of what librarians can do for a school community and a belief children don’t need help with learning how to use technology. Information can be inaccessible, and misunderstood, without proper instruction, guidance and support. This is especially true for students from disadvantaged backgrounds who don’t have good access to the internet at home, or those with learning differences.

As the evidence base for what makes an effective library grows, it’s becoming recognised that

the 21st century school library professional is a digital leader, an innovator, a creator, a promoter, a resource and research specialist, a curriculum adviser, and much more.

Teacher librarians educate children in the core skills of searching and evaluating information. They also support and empower students in areas such as digital citizenship. This enables children to fully participate and engage with the complex digital landscape.

As Chelsea Quake, a teacher librarian at a Melbourne public school, told us:

Students leave school reading fake news, turning to Instagram for answers to their health questions, and falling flat on their first university paper, because they never truly learnt how to research.

Skills such as information and digital literacy are core requirements for civic participation. Young people have tremendous opportunities to leverage the power of technologies to ensure their voices are heard about issues that will affect them and their children in the future. And they need new and evolved library services to help them get there.

Read more: Friday essay: why libraries can and must change

– ref. Don’t worry, a school library with fewer books and more technology is good for today’s students – http://theconversation.com/dont-worry-a-school-library-with-fewer-books-and-more-technology-is-good-for-todays-students-114356

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Parr, Professor and Demographer, Macquarie University

The Morrison government’s new population plan will have little effect on Australian population growth. Appropriately, it looks to reduce the concentration of this growth in our biggest cities and to raise the benefit-to-cost ratio of population change more broadly.

Australia’s population is growing at five times the average rate for more developed countries. That’s mainly because of its net (immigration minus emigration) migration rate. For 2010-15 Australia’s net migration rate was the second highest (after Saudi Arabia) in the world for a country with over 10 million population.

Net overseas migration to Australia 1948-2017 (break in line is because of a change in the measurement series). ABS, Historical Population Statistics

Read more: Settling migrants in regional areas will need more than a visa to succeed

Net overseas migration, currently 240,100 a year, is high compared to historical levels. It is four times the 58,000 “replacement” rate needed to keep our population above the current 25.3 million, assuming the current fertility rate and life expectancy stay the same.

The major elements of net overseas migration are:

• permanent migrants granted visas under the Migration Program (skilled and family combined) and the Humanitarian Program

• temporary migrants who stay in Australia for at least 12 months in a 16-month period, mainly students, working holidaymakers and other work-related temporary visa holders

• New Zealand and returning Australian citizens

• (minus) permanent and temporary emigrants.

The reduction in the Migration Program ceiling to 160,000 is small relative to the previous 190,000 ceiling. And it’s a tiny cut relative to the 162,417 places actually filled for 2017-18. This reduction may affect the number who stay in Australia on temporary visas (or without any current visa), and will have flow-on effects on births, deaths and emigration.

Bottom line, the reduced ceiling won’t change population growth much.

Adding to pluses, reducing minuses

Well-targeted increases in immigration can raise labour force participation and productivity, slow population ageing and increase per person taxation revenue. This is partly because of the young, working-age profile of new immigrants.

For the same reason, higher immigration, and hence population growth, increases peak-hour transport use in total and per head.

Population growth also adds to need for all sorts of goods and services, including housing, education and water. Larger city size is associated with higher congestion time delay and cost. Other growth-related issues include public transport crowding, increased housing density, house price inflation, concerns about housing quality, school place shortages, and loss of farmland and native biodiversity.

Read more: City planning suffers growth pains of Australia’s population boom

A “best” choice of location to house increased population based on one criterion sometimes can be a “worst” based on another. For example, locating new housing in CBD areas near to opportunities for work, shopping and other activities may be “best” for reducing car use, but “worst” in terms of locally available, affordable sites for new schools with spacious, ground-level playgrounds.

Good population policy should look for “win-win” solutions that take away the minuses of population growth and add to its pluses.

Easing the big city squeeze

In 2018, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane combined accounted for 51% of Australia’s population, 67% of population growth and 72% of net overseas migration. ABS mid-range projections show Sydney’s population reaching 9.7 million in 2066, Melbourne’s 10.2 million and Brisbane’s 4.8 million. These are challenging prospects.

Read more: Migrants want to live in the big cities, just like the rest of us

Responding to a large majority view, the government’s plan aims to reduce city population growth, congestion and other pressures. It intends to fill job vacancies in regional Australia by settling immigrants there and developing transport and other infrastructure.

The proportion of people in the 55-69 age range is much higher outside the capital cities and in Hobart and Adelaide than in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. This means Baby Boomer retirements can be expected to result in higher percentages leaving the workforce outside the four largest cities, and a related need to recruit migrant (and Australian resident) replacements for these retiring workers.

ABS, 2016 Census

The government’s proposed measures include:

• 23,000 Migration Program places for regional migration schemes
• extension of Temporary Graduate Visas for former international students at regional university campuses
• 4,720 scholarships attached to study at regional campuses.

The definition of “regional” is broad. It extends from sparsely populated inland areas to the Sunshine Coast (2017-18 growth rate 2.58%), the NSW Central Coast, Geelong and all of Adelaide. Current international student locations suggest Adelaide will at first gain the most from the changes for “regional” international students.

Children, a pointless answer

Places in the skilled migration program include spouses and children, as well as primary applicants. The population plan proposes to allocate extra skilled migration points to applicants without dependants.

This change should reduce the immediate effect of the cut to the Migration Program on labour supply (and travel to work), and additions to (currently large) school age groups. Down the track, this will reduce new entrants to the labour market and could add to births in Australia, as immigrants who were childless when they arrived have children later in life.

Fertility and mortality receive only passing mention in the population plan. In retrospect, fluctuations in the fertility rate have been artefacts of changes to the ages of childbirth. There is no clear evidence of substantial and sustained increase to lifetime family size for Australia.

Read more: Australians want more children than they have, so are we in the midst of a demographic crisis?

There is no need to increase fertility to prevent Australia’s population falling. Even if our fertility rate were to halve our population would remain above 25 million, as long as net migration and life expectancy did not fall.

Research needed to better match migration with needs

Welcome recognition of the need for research and consultation to inform policy is apparent from the government’s proposed Centre for Population to “pursue opportunities to improve data and research on population and facilitate collaboration on population planning across Commonwealth, State, Territory and Local governments”.

A majority of migrants work in the mostly professional occupations that skilled migration is designed to supplement. However, a substantial minority work in less-skilled occupations that have never been eligible occupations for visas, or else are unemployed.

Achieving a better match between migrant employment outcomes and national employment priorities is desirable. This requires improvements to data availability.

ABS, 2016 Census

Other key areas the Centre for Population might study include:

• improvement of population and transport use forecasting
• harmonising change to skilled migration numbers with change to domestic graduate numbers
• retention and employment of immigrants in regional areas
• settlement experiences in regional Australia of new movers from overseas and from Australia’s cities
• prospects for change to the significant gender imbalance of most occupations into which skilled migrants are recruited, and the implications for Australia’s future need for immigration.

– ref. Government’s population plan is more about maximising ‘win-wins’ than cutting numbers – http://theconversation.com/governments-population-plan-is-more-about-maximising-win-wins-than-cutting-numbers-114190

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Scott, Professor of Politics and Policy, Deakin University

In Denmark, you might walk in the door and call out for your “skat” or your “treasure” as a greeting to your family.

This is common according to Denmark’s Ambassador to Australia, who launched the Nordic Policy Centre last month, a partnership between the Canberra-based Australia Institute and Deakin University.

What is more unusual about the word “skat” is that it can also mean “tax” (in Danish and similarly in Swedish). If such a positive connotation in the word for tax is surprising, then the Ambassador’s claim that he pays his taxes “gladly” would be downright shocking to many Australians.

And Nordic citizens and companies certainly do pay taxes. The main Nordic nations make up four of the top six OECD countries in terms of taxes as a portion of the economy, with Norway at 53.8%, Finland at 52.1%, Denmark 51.6%, and Sweden at 50.2% (see Table 30 here).

By contrast, Australia is a low-tax country, with tax and other revenue at just 35.3% of GDP in 2018. This is below the OECD average of 37.1% and sits in the bottom six of 33 OECD nations.

High taxes do the Nordics no harm

At the same time, Nordic nations often top lists of economic indicators. They make up four of the top twelve on the Global Competitiveness Index published by the World Economic Forum.

Including Iceland, they are five of the top 16 countries by GDP per capita. Unlike the tax havens and oil states on that list, they are also among the most equal in terms of income distribution – five in the top nine by one of the most widely used measures, while Australia languishes at number 20 (see xls here).

Yet Australians are more used to being told “no country ever built a strong economy by clobbering itself with tax after tax after tax”.

A better understanding of what makes the Nordic economies so strong is probably in order for Australia.

The first paper from the Nordic Policy Centre focuses on the substantial differences between the structure of taxes in Australia and the Nordic nations.

Income taxes are much higher in Denmark than Australia, and goods and services taxes are significantly higher in all four main Nordic nations. In the early 1990s, the four main Nordic nations were among the first in the world to introduce carbon taxes. Australia repealed its carbon tax after just two years in 2014.

Companies pay on behalf of their workers

As retirement income shapes up as an election issue in Australia, it’s worth considering that we are one of few members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in which corporations are not required to pay social security contributions.

By contrast, in Norway, the Social Security Contribution component of taxation paid by employers amounts to more than 6% of GDP, in Sweden it is 7%, and in Finland it is nearly 9% – compared with zero in Australia.

Some of these employer payments are hypothecated – notionally set aside for particular uses. For example, employers in Sweden contribute:

• Ålderspensionsavgiften, an old-age pension fee of 10.21% of gross salary

• Efterlevandepensionsavgift, a loss of spouse or parent insurance fee of 0.7% of gross salary

• Sjukförsäkringsavgift, a sick leave insurance fee of 4.35% of gross salary

• Arbetsmarkadsavgift, an unemployment insurance fee of 2.64% of gross salary.

Similarly, in Denmark, all employers contribute to a labour market supplementary pension fund, an unemployment benefits fund, and an insurance fund which protects workers against bankruptcy.

We could do it too

If Australian companies paid social security contributions on a similar scale, they would pay at least A$100 billion more tax each year than they currently do. This would double the A$89.1 billion company tax they are estimated to pay this financial year.

Nordic companies get value for these payments. Publicly funded labour market programs provide well-matched job seekers when, and where, companies need them. And their workers are healthy, highly skilled and motivated.

Which brings us from tax and treasure to other Nordic policies like paid parental leave (which can be for as long as 16 months in Sweden), skills training, and income support for the sick and unemployed.

Australia can learn from all of them.

While Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland combined have a similar population to Australia and other similarities, in many policy areas they have taken very different approaches.

The Nordic Policy Centre, The Australia Institute and Deakin University look forward to exploring these topics and welcome the enormous support received already from the Nordic and Australian diplomatic and academic communities.

Rod Campbell of The Australia Institute assisted with the preparation of this piece.

– ref. Tax: in Denmark it is a term of affection – http://theconversation.com/tax-in-denmark-it-is-a-term-of-affection-114180

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gery Karantzas, Associate professor in Social Psychology / Relationship Science, Deakin University

Despite its obvious appeal, the Nine Network’s reality TV show Married at First Sight is based on a false premise. This “social experiment” is built on the notion that individuals looking for love are matched by experts, increasing the probability of a lasting and satisfying union.

However, it is entirely apparent that the show all but guarantees relationship failure. From the first five seasons, it seems that only one couple has stayed together.

Many would say this is due to the way the program is produced, with the emphasis on heightened drama and ensuring high ratings. But the real science of relationships can provide very specific reasons as to why contestants experience relationship breakdown and report personal distress.

Research from the past 30 years suggests two of the most important factors in determining relationship success are stress and people’s level of relationship commitment. Based on these two variables alone, we can predict that very few of Married at First Sight’s couples would last.

The strain of stress

Over six seasons, it has become clear that the Australian show places a premium on creating “drama” and situations of heightened stress.

For instance, when asked earlier this year how they would “top” the scandals of the previous season, one of its experts John Aiken told Today: “We will top it … Boundaries will be crossed. There will be temptation.” The strain associated with such an environment can only increase the likelihood that relationships will fail. The science tells us so.

Across many relationship studies – conducted in the laboratory as well by tracking couples over time – we find that the more stress couples are exposed to, the more likely it is they will experience relationship problems, reductions in satisfaction, and even, relationship dissolution.

This is because stress taxes our physical and psychological resources, making it harder to regulate emotions, engage in effective problem solving, and put the needs of our partners first.

In times of stress, we require comfort, support and reassurance – but if our partners are also stressed, then we are unlikely to receive this response. This only heightens distress and dissatisfaction.

Numerous studies have found that when people are put in situations of high stress or conflict, they are more likely to criticise and blame their partner, and even express contempt towards them.

Read more: The science of romance – can we predict a breakup?

Importantly, these tendencies are more likely to occur when people already have particular personal vulnerabilities. These can include (but are not limited to): a greater sensitivity to fear and rejection, a history of past negative relationship experiences, or a history of mental health issues.

All this raises the question of to what extent personal vulnerabilities are taken into account when Married at First Sight contestants are screened. And what duty of care is provided to ensure the wellbeing of contestants?

Season six contestant Lauren Huntriss has been critical of the selection of contestants with preexisting mental health conditions, explaining she and her designated partner both suffered from anxiety. (The production company Endemol Shine Australia rejected her version of events, saying she had ongoing access to support and had not responded to their attempts to contact her). In February, the company told Media Watch there was “a dedicated show psychologist and support team available to every participant throughout the entire production, broadcast and beyond”.

A lack of commitment

Relationship commitment is defined as holding a desire and intent to continue with a relationship well into the future. Popular models of commitment suggest people are more likely to be committed if they invest time and effort into the relationship, are highly satisfied with it, and if the the quality of viable alternatives (i.e., other potential partners) is low.

Participants are unlikely to be high in commitment at the outset of the Married at First Sight experiment. Firstly, they have yet to invest time and effort in the union (they might be invested in the “idea” of it, but no time and effort has been invested prior to the commitment ceremony).

Secondly, they have no sense of relationship satisfaction, not having spent any time with the partner. And if a given couple is exposed to stress early on, this is likely to sabotage any future satisfaction.

Thirdly, the quality of viable alternative partners is high. In recent seasons, the show has portrayed situations that make other partners very accessible, such as the introduction of “intruder” couples.

So if relationship science already tells us that stress and a lack of commitment (alongside personal vulnerabilities) can produce a “perfect storm”, why do the show’s makers actively work to create these conditions – while selling a story of the search for true love?

These kinds of “social experiments” are not the sorts that real science is based on, and no research ethics committee would ever provide approval for such an experiment to go ahead.

– ref. Married at First Sight – a ‘social experiment’ all but guaranteeing relationship failure – http://theconversation.com/married-at-first-sight-a-social-experiment-all-but-guaranteeing-relationship-failure-114070

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Mortimore, Lecturer, Griffith Business School, Griffith University

In the run-up to May’s federal election, the federal Labor party has unveiled an ambitious plan to reduce Australia’s transport emissions.

The key targets are to have electric vehicles make up 50% of new car sales by 2030 and to introduce regulatory fuel emissions standards.

As Australia currently lacks federal policies to reduce or reverse petrol emissions, these goals are laudable. But it’s unclear how Labor will actually achieve them, especially if they remain reluctant to impose costs and tariffs on high-emitting cars – one of the most successful international strategies.

Read more: Shorten’s climate policy would hit more big polluters harder and set electric car target

Labor’s proposal

The transport sector is the nation’s second-fastest growing source of carbon dioxide emissions, which continue to rise and offset the emissions reductions in the electricity sector.

As part of Labor’s sweeping plan to tackle climate change, Bill Shorten announced targets of:

• 50% of new car sales to be electric vehicles by 2030
• 50% of the government fleet to be electric by 2025
• phase in vehicle emission standards of 105 grams of CO₂ per km for light vehicles,
• growing private electric fleets by allowing business an upfront tax deduction of 20% depreciation for private fleet electric vehicles valued at more than A$20,000.

These goals are all necessary steps to help Labor meet the ultimate economy-wide target of reducing CO₂ emissions by 45% on 2005 levels by 2030.

The Conversation

A long way to go

Australia is a global standout in its failure to regulate emissions standards; we are the only OECD country with no minimum fuel standard. More than 80% of the global vehicle market has adopted fuel standards.

The 2017 average emissions from new passenger and light commercial vehicles was 181.7g/km, a reduction of just 0.3% from the previous year. Australians only bought 2,424 electric vehicles in 2017, 0.2% of new cars sold.

Introducing these new regulations quickly is a priority because it takes years for them to actually work their way through the market to the new vehicle fleet.

Contrast Australia’s position with the European Union, which introduced fuel emission standards in 2009: their average for passenger vehicles is 118g/km, 45% less than Australia’s. This average will reduce further to 95g/km by 2021.

Read more: Australia has stalled on car efficiency

Expect pushback on average emission standards

Shorten announced that Labor will consult on the timeline on phasing in standards of 105g/km for light vehicles, that is consistent with the Climate Change Authority’s advice to put this standard in place by 2025. This would bring Australia into line with the United States.

Reaching this ambitious target requires around 42% reduction from 2017 level of 181.7g/km, or a 76.7g/km reduction in the average emissions intensity from light vehicles from 2020 to 2025. These goals would require firm regulation, which is very likely to see significant political push-back.

In 2017 industry groups protested vociferously when a Ministerial Forum proposed to phase in the same regulatory emission standard from 2020, arguing that Australia is different to Europe and the US and similar rules won’t work here. It was claimed that penalties imposed on any supplier or manufacturer for not meeting the standard was like a “carbon tax” that would be passed onto the consumer.

What works

We can look to the rest of the world for lessons on what works when it comes to reducing transport emissions. The reality is it does come down to price, which governments can influence through a mix of financial carrots and sticks.

Take the example of Norway, where purely electric cars make up 31.2% of new vehicles sold in 2018. If hybrids are included, sales increase to 49.1% of the market.

Read more: Australians will not buy electric cars without better incentives

The government’s target is for all new cars sold by 2025 to be zero emission cars, without any loss in revenue. To meet this goal, the Norwegian government offers exemptions from 25% VAT, stamp duty and the annual road tax.

Norway has also created non-financial incentives for plug-in electric vehicles (including plug-in hybrids) including access to bus lanes, free use of toll roads and ferries and free municipal parking.

On the other hand, petrol vehicles face higher stamp duties and import taxes based on a combination of weight, CO₂ and NOx emissions, and 25% VAT.

When all of these incentives are added up – plus stringent CO₂ emission standards –Norway removed the price difference between electric and hybrid cars and traditional petrol vehicles and stopped the “dumping” of low-priced high-emitting vehicles on their market.

It’s this price difference that ultimately decides what consumers will buy. Australia’s bestselling new car in 2016-17, the Toyota Corolla, has a Redbook Guide price of A$23,490, while the lowest-emitting car of a similar size, the BMW i3 REX, came in at A$74,100. The Corolla emits an average of 149g of CO₂ per km, compared with the BMX’s 13g.

Read more: Sustainable shopping: with the right tools, you can find an eco-friendly car

Labor is already certain to face strong resistance from industry groups, and this uphill battle will be complicated by the fact that stamp duty and annual registration are regulated by state and territory governments.

If Labor wants to change Australia’s deeply entrenched market of high-emitting vehicles, they’ve got an awfully long road ahead.

– ref. Labor’s plan for transport emissions is long on ambition but short on details – http://theconversation.com/labors-plan-for-transport-emissions-is-long-on-ambition-but-short-on-details-114592

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ihsan Yilmaz, Research Professor and Chair in Islamic Studies and Intercultural Dialogue, Deakin University

Votes are still being counted in local elections that took place across Turkey on Sunday, but so far it appears that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s party has lost key cities and towns. That includes the Turkish capital Ankara, which has been run by Islamist mayors for the last 25 years.

When Erdoğan won Turkey’s presidential election in June last year, he effectively became an autocrat with few checks and balances. Since then, parliament has lost its significance and Erdoğan can now rule by decree. Although these elections were not free and fair (there were allegations of vote rigging), they are seen by some as a referendum on Erdoğan’s rule.

Given the economic problems in Turkey and the decreasing electoral support for his AK Party (AKP), Erdoğan transformed the local elections into a question of national security. He hoped to distract voters from focusing on the economic problems, corruption and inefficiency Turkey is currently facing by resorting to moral panic and a politics of fear.

The election results suggest that his strategy did not work.

Read more: Erdoğan seeks to expand Turkey’s influence in the Middle East through diplomacy – and force

Turkey’s opposing alliances

On February 27, a month before the vote, Erdoğan posted a tweet with a banner image explaining how he viewed these local elections. The caption read:

Today, two alliances are faced in Turkey.

On one side is the the Republican Alliance, which is formed by Erdoğan’s own AK Party and the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). On the opposing side is the National Alliance, which is formed by the Republic Party (CHP), the Good Party (IYI), and Felicity Party (SP), who came together to counter Erdoğan and the MHP.

In his tweet, Erdoğan chose to substitute the word millet, which translates to “national”, with zillet, which translates to “mortification”. This gives another meaning to the opposition alliance, implying that it works on behalf of Turkey’s enemies and terrorists. In the banner image, the Republican Alliance is depicted with the crescent of the Turkish flag in order to give the impression that only Erdogan’s alliance is truly representative of the Turkish nation.

Under normal circumstances this would be strange enough, but Erdoğan saw it necessary to claim in the tweet that the Republican Alliance was established in the streets on July 15 by those who rose up against the coup attempt. The banner image goes on to claim that his own alliance advocates right and truth, stands with the oppressed against the oppressor, will not be influenced by financial interests, and is entirely about service to the people.

The so-called “Mortification Alliance” is represented in the banner image as a product of secret negotiations and political engineering. It makes references to Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the outlawed PKK, and Fethullah Gulen, Erdoğan’s foe. It suggests that the National Alliance is controlled by terrorists and aims to carry these terrorist groups into local bureaucracies.

Read more: How Turkey and Saudi Arabia became frenemies – and why the Khashoggi case could change that

Erdoğan was selling national security

After reading this tweet, it’s hard to believe that these were only municipal elections, not parliamentary or presidential elections. But the situation in Turkey has been deteriorating fast.

The economy is in free fall, corruption and inefficiency reigns, and hate crimes, organised crime and petty crime have skyrocketed. Erdoğan and the AK Party hoped to distract voters from these daily problems, preoccupying them instead with security concerns.

By focusing on terrorism and national security, Erdoğan suggested these elections were a matter of existential survival for the Turkish nation – a tried and true tactic among politicians. Throughout the electoral campaign, AK Party politicians argued that the fall of AKP’s municipal governments would mean the fall of Turkey, Jerusalem, Islam and so on.

For example, Erdogan repeatedly showed the video footage of the New Zealand terrorist attack in the election rallies that were televised live and claimed that he and Turkey were also targets. This was in line with the AKP’s rhetoric since the Gezi events of mid-2013 that Turkey was under the attack of the Crusader West and Jews.

Read more: A turbulent future may be in store for US-Turkish relations

Voters didn’t buy it

Elections have been neither free nor fair in Turkey for some time, and the AK Party controls 95% of media coverage. In spite of this disadvantage, opposition candidates were able to defeat AK Party candidates in several cities and towns.

The main opposition party, The Republican People’s Party (CHP), increased its votes from 26.6% in 2014 to 30%. More importantly, it was able to win municipal governments of important cities such as Ankara and likely also Istanbul that were previously held by the AK Party. Now the CHP controls cities that generate more than 60% of Turkey’s GDP.

This suggests that Turkey’s voters were unimpressed by the AK Party’s national security framing, Islamist victimhood narrative and anti-Westernist conspiracy theories. Instead, they preferred to vote on bread and butter issues.

This is good news for politics in Turkey. We can now hope that one day, Turkish politicians will be accountable for their performance rather than hiding behind fabricated moral panic and imaginary security issues.

– ref. Erdogan tried to make local Turkish elections about national security, but it didn’t work – http://theconversation.com/erdogan-tried-to-make-local-turkish-elections-about-national-security-but-it-didnt-work-114302

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lesley McCowan, Professor, Obstetrics & Gynecology, University of Auckland

A New Zealand-led international study published today provides the strongest evidence yet that women can more than halve their risk of stillbirth by going to sleep on either side during the last three months of pregnancy.

This mega study (known as individual participant data meta-analysis) has also confirmed the risk of stillbirth associated with sleeping on the back applies to all pregnant women in the last trimester of pregnancy.

Read more: More than 20,000 stillbirths worldwide are avoidable

Risk factors

In New Zealand, stillbirth is defined as the loss of a baby after 20 weeks of pregnancy. An estimated 2.64 million babies die before birth globally each year, and around 300 babies are stillborn in Aotearoa New Zealand each year. About one in every 500 women in New Zealand will experience the tragedy of a late stillbirth and lose their baby during or after 28 weeks of pregnancy.

We have analysed all available data worldwide from five previous studies, including our earlier research, the 2011 Auckland Stillbirth Study, which first identified a link between mothers’ sleeping position and stillbirth risk. The main finding in the mega study, which included information from 851 bereaved mothers and 2,257 women with ongoing pregnancies, was that going to sleep lying on the back (supine) from 28 weeks of pregnancy increased the risk of stillbirth 2.6 times.

This heightened risk occurred regardless of the other known risk factors for stillbirth. However, the risk is additive, meaning that going to sleep on the back adds to other stillbirth risk factors, for example, a baby who is growing poorly in the womb.

Existing common risk factors for late stillbirth are not easily modifiable. They include advanced maternal age (over 40), obesity, continued cigarette smoking and an unborn baby that is growing poorly, especially if the poor growth is not recognised before birth. Women also have a higher risk during their first pregnancy, or if they have already had three or more babies. Women of Pacific and South Asian ethnicity also have an elevated risk of late stillbirth, compared with European women.

If modifiable risk factors can be identified, some of these baby deaths could be prevented. Importantly, our mega study has shown that if every pregnant woman went to sleep lying on her side after 28 weeks of pregnancy, approximately 6% of late stillbirths could be prevented. This could save the lives of about 153,000 babies each year worldwide.

Reduced blood flow

The relationship between the mother going to sleep lying on her back and stillbirth is biologically plausible. A supine position in late pregnancy is associated with reduced blood flow to the womb. Hence, women in labour and women having a caesarean section are routinely tilted onto their side to improve blood supply to the baby.

Recent research carried out at the University of Auckland has provided sophisticated evidence about how the mothers’ position influences blood flow. Results obtained using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) demonstrate the major vessel in the mother’s abdomen, the inferior vena cava, being compressed by the pregnant womb when she is lying on her back. This reduces flow through this vessel by 80%.

The MRI images show the inferior vena cava (IVC) in blue and the aorta in red. In the left image, the mother is lying on her left side, while in the right image, she is on her back. provided, CC BY-SA

Although the mother’s circulation responds by increasing the flow through other veins, this does not fully compensate. The mother’s aorta, the main artery which carries oxygen-rich blood from her heart, is also partly compressed when the mother lies on her back. This decreases blood flow to the pregnant uterus, placenta and baby.

We speculate that while healthy unborn babies can compensate for the reduced blood supply, babies that are unwell or vulnerable for some other reason may not cope. For example, our mega study showed that the risk of stillbirth after 28 weeks of pregnancy is increased approximately 16 times if a mother goes to sleep lying on her back and also is pregnant with a very small baby.

What to do

New Zealand research has shown that pregnant women can change their sleeping position. In a recent survey conducted in pregnant women from south Auckland, a community that has a high rate of stillbirth, more than 80% of women surveyed stated that they could change the position they went to sleep in with little difficulty if it was best for their baby.

Our advice to pregnant women from 28 weeks of pregnancy is to settle to sleep on their side to reduce the risk of stillbirth, and to start every sleep, including day-time naps, on the side. It does not matter which side. It is common to wake up on the back, but we recommend that if this happens, women should simply roll back on to either side.

– ref. Mega study confirms pregnant women can reduce risk of stillbirth by sleeping on their side – http://theconversation.com/mega-study-confirms-pregnant-women-can-reduce-risk-of-stillbirth-by-sleeping-on-their-side-114601

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bin Li, Lecturer, University of Newcastle

On March 27, India announced it had successfully conducted an anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test, called “Mission Shakti”. After the United States, Russia and China, India is now the fourth country in the world to have demonstrated this capability.

The destroyed satellite was one of India’s own. But the test has caused concerns about the space debris generated, which potentially threatens the operation of functional satellites.

There are also political and legal implications. The test’s success may be a plus for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is now trying to win his second term in the upcoming election.

Read more: India’s WhatsApp election: political parties risk undermining democracy with technology

But the test can be viewed as a loss for global security, as nations and regulatory bodies struggle to maintain a view of space as a neutral and conflict-free arena in the face of escalating technological capabilities.

According to the official press release, India destroyed its own satellite by using technology known as “kinetic kill”. This particular technology is usually termed as “hit-to-kill”.

A kinetic kill missile is not equipped with an explosive warhead. Simply put, what India did was to launch the missile, hit the target satellite and destroy it with energy purely generated by the high speed of the missile interceptor. This technology is only one of many with ASAT capabilities, and is the one used by China in its 2007 ASAT test.

Power and strength

Since the first satellite was launched in 1957 (the Soviet Union’s Sputnik), space has become – and will continue to be – a frontier where big powers enhance their presence by launching and operating their own satellites.

There are currently 1,957 satellites orbiting Earth. They provide crucial economic, civil and scientific benefits to the world, from generating income to a wide range of services such as navigation, communication, weather forecasts and disaster relief.

The tricky thing about satellites is that they can also be used for military and national security purposes, while still serving the civil end: one good example is GPS.

So it’s not surprising big powers are keen to develop their ASAT capabilities. The name of India’s test, Shakti, means “power, strength, capability” in Hindi.

Danger of space debris

A direct consequence of ASAT is that it creates space debris when the original satellite breaks apart. Space debris consists of pieces of non-functional spacecraft, and can vary in size from tiny paint flecks to an entire “dead” satellite. Space debris orbits from hundreds to thousands of kilometres above Earth.

The presence of space debris increases the likelihood of operational satellites being damaged.

Although India downplayed the potential for danger by arguing that its test was conducted in the lower atmosphere, this perhaps did not take into account the creation of pieces smaller than 5-10 cm in diameter.

In addition, given the potential self-sustaining nature of space debris, it’s possible the amount of space debris caused by India’s ASAT will actually increase due to the collision.

Aside from the quantity, the speed of space debris is another worrying factor. Space junk can travel at up to 10km per second in lower Earth orbit (where India intercepted its satellite), so even very small particles pose a realistic threat to space missions such as human spaceflight and robotic refuelling missions.

Regulatory catch-up

As we’re seeing clearly now in social media, when technology moves fast the law can struggle to keep up, and this leads to regulatory absence. This is also true of international space law.

Five fundamental global space treaties were created 35-52 years ago:

• Outer Space Treaty (1967) – governs the activities of the states in exploration and use of outer space
• Rescue Agreement (1968) – relates to the rescue and return of astronauts, and return of launched objects
• Liability Convention (1972) – governs damage caused by space objects
• Registration Convention (1967) – relates to registration of objects in space
• Moon Agreement (1984) – governs the activities of states on the Moon and other celestial bodies.

Read more: I’ve Always Wondered: could someone take ownership of a planet or a moon?

These were written when there were only a handful of spacefaring nations, and space technologies were not as sophisticated as they are now.

Although these treaties are binding legal documents, they leave many of today’s issues unregulated. For example, in terms of military space activities, the Outer Space Treaty only prohibits the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in space, not conventional weapons (including ballistic missiles, like the one used by India in Mission Shakti).

In addition, the treaty endorses that outer space shall be used exclusively for peaceful purposes. However, the issue is how to interpret the term “peaceful purposes”. India claimed, after its ASAT test:

we have always maintained that space must be used only for peaceful purposes.

When terms such as “peaceful” seem to be open to interpretation, it’s time to update laws and regulations that govern how we use space.

New approaches, soft laws

Several international efforts aim to address the issues posed by new scenarios in space, including the development of military space technologies.

For example, McGill University in Canada has led the MILAMOS project, with the hope of clarifying the fundamental rules applicable to the military use of outer space.

Read more: We’re drafting a legal guide to war in space. Hopefully we’ll never need to use it

A similar initiative, the Woomera Manual, has been undertaken by Adelaide Law School here in Australia.

Though commendable, both projects will lead to publications of “soft laws”, which will have no legally binding force on governments.

The UN needs to work much harder to attend to space security issues – the Disarmament Commission and Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space can be encouraged to collaborate on the issues regarding space weapons.

It is in everyone’s best interests to keep space safe and peaceful.

– ref. India destroys its own satellite with a test missile, still says space is for peace – http://theconversation.com/india-destroys-its-own-satellite-with-a-test-missile-still-says-space-is-for-peace-114441

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angela Spence, Senior Lecturer in Exercise Physiology (BSc, PhD), Curtin University

You have your runners on, your FitBit is charged, but now what?

When you exercise, your heart and breathing rates increase, delivering greater quantities of oxygen from the lungs to the blood, then to exercising muscles.

Determining an optimal heart rate for exercise depends on your exercise goal, age, and current fitness level.

Read more: What should my heart rate be and what affects it?

Heart rate and exercise intensity share a direct, linear relationship: the more intense the exercise, the higher the heart rate.

When you exercise at the highest possible intensity, your heart will reach maximal heart rate (HRmax), the fastest rate it is capable of beating.

But exercising at a maximal heart rate (HRmax) for every exercise session will not produce efficient fitness results. These high intensities can rarely be sustained, negating the potential benefit of the exercise.

Exercise makes your heart more efficient

Typical resting heart rate can vary quite substantially between people and even within an individual. Around 60-80 beats per minute (BPM) for adults is common.

Heart rate can be easily be measured with devices like FitBits and Apple Watches, although they have their limitations. Andres Urena/Unsplash

Improving your aerobic fitness reduces your resting heart rate, as the heart becomes more efficient with each beat. An athlete’s resting heart rate, for instance, is typically around 40 BPM.

In fact, evidence suggests that long-term exercise training increases the size of the heart, specifically the left ventricle, a phenomenon known as “Athlete’s Heart”. A bigger heart means more blood can be pumped with each beat, and fewer beats per minute are required to maintain blood flow around the body. This is a beneficial physiological adaptation allowing athletes to exercise at higher intensities for longer.

How to calculate your maximal heart rate

There is substantial variation in HRmax. The only true method of determining HRmax is to conduct a maximal exercise test. But HRmax can be estimated using formulas based on age.

Read more: Measuring up: this year, aim for fitness over fat loss for long-term success

The authors of a 2001 study proposed the following revised equation for estimating maximal heart rate:

HRMax = 208 – (0.7 x Age)

This means a 45-year-old would have a predicted HRmax of 177 BPM.

Indeed, our genetics can influence actual maximal heart rates from their predicted value. However, HRmax is not a major determinant of exercise or athletic performance. Far more important is our physiological efficiency.

When assessing heart rate, it’s also important to take into account the effects of emotions such as excitement or fear, stimulants like caffeine, and circulating hormones like adrenaline, all of which can increase heart rate.

Is exercising at maximal heart rates unsafe?

In short, the answer is no. For most adults, the risk of not doing enough exercise is far greater than that of doing excessive endurance exercise.

The health benefits of regular exercise are well established, although emerging evidence suggests excessive exercise may not provide extra cardiovascular health benefits.

Likewise, there’s a higher chance a sedentary person will experience an acute cardiac event, like a heart attack, during exercise when they’re unaccustomed to high-intensity exercise, or they have a pre-existing heart condition. The maximal risk is 0.3 to 2.7 events per 10,000 person-hours.

Read more: Health Check: in terms of exercise, is walking enough?

With a third of Australians not meeting the WHO recommended guidelines of accumulating 150 minutes of exercise per week, encouraging regular physical activity continues to be a pervasive public health message.

In terms of assessing risk, an exercise pre-screening assessment with an ESSA-qualified exercise specialist will be able to assess and mitigate the risk of exercise participation.

Exercise intensity: what happens when we go ‘all out’

Exercising at your maximal heart rate is not necessary to achieve cardiovascular health benefits. Unsplash

Muscle cells require two key ingredients to function: fuel (glucose) and oxygen.

Muscles rely heavily on blood vessels to deliver the necessary nutrients and oxygen around the body, and also to remove by-products such as carbon dioxide.

The more muscles used in exercise, the more blood is distributed towards the active tissues.

When the intensity of the exercise is particularly high, the muscles start to produce another by-product called lactate.

Cells can also use lactate as a fuel although if production rate exceeds metabolism, lactate starts to accumulate and can interfere with cellular function.

The point at which this by-product starts to accumulate is termed the “lactate threshold”.

Any exercise intensity that can be comfortably sustained is usually below this threshold, and will have an accompanying heart rate. As it is much easier to measure heart rate than lactate production, heart rate can be used as a surrogate measure of exercise intensity.

What is the best exercise for heart rate?

While interval-style exercise training is a popular choice for people who are time-poor, the intermittent nature of the exercise means heart rate will fluctuate, providing not much more benefit than traditional steady-state exercise.

Read more: Health Check: high-intensity micro workouts vs traditional regimes

From a scientific perspective, athletes typically use heart-rate ranges to train at specific intensities during aerobic exercise, like cycling or long-distance running.

Exercising at certain intensities are known to elicit adaptive responses from the body, for example, exercising at or below the lactate threshold.

These intensities are called training zones and are expressed relative to HRmax. For instance, a light aerobic training session would be prescribed below 75% HRmax, while training at threshold (around 95% HRmax) will induce physiological change.

Overall, some exercise is better than no exercise for your cardiovascular health. Accumulating 150 minutes of exercise per week is the minimum requirement for health benefit. Exercising at your maximal heart rate is not necessary to achieve these benefits. Athletes can use training zones, relative to HRmax, to achieve optimal adaptation and enhance endurance performance.

– ref. Health Check: what should our maximum heart rate be during exercise? – http://theconversation.com/health-check-what-should-our-maximum-heart-rate-be-during-exercise-107963

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hongzhi Gao, Associate professor, Victoria University of Wellington

The ever-escalating tensions in trade relations between the US and China have caught the nerve of politicians, businesses and the public. This conflict is challenging the traditional approach to trade disputes, which usually involves one of the disputing countries taking the case to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for arbitration or adjudication.

International institutions, including the WTO and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have warned that the consequences of the conflict could include growing economic nationalism, rising protectionism and a downturn in global growth.

This will have flow-on effects for other countries such as Australia and New Zealand.

Read more: Huawei or the highway? The rising costs of New Zealand’s relationship with China

A new framework

Both countries have developed close political ties with the US while fostering strong economic ties with China. As China is a top trading partner for Australia and New Zealand, the impact of the US-China trade war on their exports could be significant.

Read more: What’s worse than the US-China trade war? A grand peace bargain

Although the dollar value of any effect of the trade war is difficult to gauge, a qualitative analysis is important so that policymakers, investors and businesses can develop an informed view of this live event.

To analyse the impact of the trade war on the exports of third-party countries, we have developed a new framework.

The first factor to consider is whether an original demand for products from a disputing country has been redirected to a third-party country. For example, China’s demand for Brazil’s soybeans has sky-rocketed over the past year, with 5.07 million tonnes imported from Brazil in November 2018, up more than 80% from a year ago. It is predicted that members of the European Union, Mexico, Japan and Canada, among other countries, may capture about US$70 billion of US-China bilateral trade affected by the trade war.

The second factor is whether an original supply from one disputing country to another has been redirected to a third-party country. It has been reported that soybean exports from the US to the European Union have increased by 133% from July through mid-September 2018, compared with the same period in 2017.

European Union consumers and downstream businesses of the soybean industry, such as producers of animal feed and biofuels, have enjoyed the benefits of a lower price of soybeans as a result of the additional supply from the US.

Changing international supply chains

The third factor is whether the trade tension has disrupted the global supply chain of an industry (e.g. smartphones) that is important to the third-party country. The levies imposed by the US government on imports from China are said to destabilise international supply chains inside and outside of China that companies have invested in over years. Countries such as Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam are catching up with China in terms of manufacturing expertise and capacities. Companies from already industrialised economies such as Taiwan and South Korea are considering revamping their home country’s competitive advantages.

Uncertainty in the price and supply of intermediary goods from these countries into the third-party country’s supply chain are critical for determining the spillover effect on the third country.

The last factor is whether the focal industry in the third-party country has developed a proactive response to the risk from the trade war. A proactive response would mean that companies in the focal industry in the third-party country have started to adjust strategic investment in research and development, sourcing, and manufacturing in or outside the US or China.

Risks and opportunities

The trade war will create risks and opportunities to third-party countries such as Australia and New Zealand. Filling the supply and demand gaps caused by higher tariffs on both sides of the trade war is an opportunity for a third-party country. But this requires flexibility in production and export capabilities in companies and industries.

As the trade spat continues, it remains a balancing act for the third-party country dangling between two political and economic powers. We have already seen the tensions between the US and China spill to this region in the context of the US ban on Huawei and its persuasion of Australia and New Zealand to follow suit.

Companies such as Air New Zealand and Sanford have been reported to face challenges on “operational” matters when the country’s political relationship with China is in question.

– ref. How to get ready as the US-China trade war spills over to other countries – http://theconversation.com/how-to-get-ready-as-the-us-china-trade-war-spills-over-to-other-countries-114361

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Broomhall, Professor of History, University of Western Australia

On the 500th anniversary of his death, this series brings together scholars from different disciplines to re-examine the work, legacy and myth of Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo’s notebooks are filled with illustrations of nature, both plants and animals, their interactions with humans and in local ecosystems. Did his deep engagement with the natural world make him an environmentalist ahead of his time?

Leonardo was a child of the Tuscan countryside, raised in the tiny village of Anchiano, although he spent most of his adult life at the courts of dukes, kings and princes.

Some of his work for these patrons involved planning interventions into nature, most often managing waterways, but his sketches suggest his attention roamed further than the projects he was commissioned to undertake.

He spent time with friends in a villa outside of Milan observing the country nearby and sketching plans for gardens there, and ended his life on a little country estate that was then on the outskirts of Amboise in France.

One of his first biographers, Giorgio Vasari, tells us that Leonardo

delighted much in horses and also in all other animals, and often when passing by the places where they sold birds he would take them out of their cages, and paying the price that was asked for them, would let them fly away into the air, restoring to them their lost liberty.

Leonardo da Vinci, Study sheet with cats, dragon and other animals, c. 1513. Wikiart.org

Leonardo was also reportedly a vegetarian. This supposition comes from the explorer Andrea Corsali’s description of the non-meat-eating Gujarati people (from modern India) as like “our Leonardo da Vinci”.

The many notebooks and loose sheets Leonardo filled with jottings and illustrations across his lifetime reveal his close observation of nature — from cats and crabs to flowers and copses of trees – and the spirit of enquiry from which he drew many lessons.

One jotting simply states: “Ask the wife of Biagio Crivelli how the capon nurtures and hatches the eggs of the hen”.

His understandings of the habits of animals informed a series of fables and proverbs bearing witness to various emotional traits he attributed to them: gratitude, rage, cruelty and generosity among them. He suggested, for instance, that “we see the most striking example of humility” in the lamb.

Star of Bethlehem, Ornithogalum umbellatum Wikiart.org

The random cruelty of nature

But Leonardo was also struck by the violence of natural processes. Nature appears to have been “rather a cruel stepmother”, he wrote. “Why did nature not ordain that one animal should not live by the death of another?”

He reflected on the random cruelty of nature in a series of riddles, created across his notebooks. For instance, in the entry on walnut trees, he writes in emotional terms of the violence wrought upon these trees as humans enjoyed their seeds: “beaten, and their offspring taken and flayed or peeled, and their bones broken or crushed.”

Leonardo da Vinci, Studies of crabs, c. late 15th century. Wikiart.org

Still, Leonardo does not seem to have been particularly concerned about the role of humans in enacting violence against other species. His own quest for knowledge and artistic creativity demanded it.

Vasari tells a story of the young Leonardo seeking to depict a frightening creature on a shield he had “brought for this purpose to his room, which no one entered but himself, lizards, grasshoppers, serpents, butterflies, locusts, bats, and other strange animals of the kind …” “The smell in the room of these dead animals was very bad, though Leonardo did not feel it from the love he bore to art.”

Vasari talks of how Leonardo “suffered much in doing it” – but not as much as the other species whose lives were sacrificed for his art.

In other tales, Vasari tells us how Leonardo, while he was working for Giuliano de’ Medici in Rome, discovered an unusual lizard and promptly

made some wings of the scales of other lizards and fastened them on its back with a mixture of quicksilver, so that they trembled when it walked; and having made for it eyes, horns, and a beard, he tamed it and kept it in a box.

For Vasari, these stories show Leonardo’s “marvelous and divine” mind, but they could also be interpreted as showing the instrumental way in which Leonardo thought about nature, as a resource to expand human knowledge and control the environment.

Leonardo da Vinci, Birch copse, c. 1500. Wikiart.org

Leonardo’s nature

His contemporaries clearly thought there was something different about Leonardo and his interest in nature. Does this make him a kind of pre-modern environmentalist?

Western environmentalism (and before it, preservationism) is often understood to have become possible when nature had been subdued by technology. With urbanisation and development of a middle class, more people could feel sentimental about nature.

Although he was raised in the countryside, Leonardo spent most of his everyday adult life in major European towns in the company of princes and kings. He was no longer concerned directly with the need to cut down wood for warmth or kill animals for food. We could say, then, that he could afford to be more sentimental about nature.

Leonardo da Vinci, Natural disaster, c. 1517. Wikiart.org

Certainly his exquisite drawings suggest a particular depth of feeling, attunement and sensitivity to the natural world. And yet it seems that preservation of nature was not on Leonardo’s mind.

He had not witnessed the speed and scale of devastation of the natural world wrought by humanity with the onset of industrialisation. Instead, he understood destruction as part of the cycle of nature. If, as he wrote, nature “seeks to lose its life, desiring only continual reproduction”, there was nothing to be protected, for annihilation and creation went hand in hand.

– ref. Leonardo da Vinci revisited: was he an environmentalist ahead of his time? – http://theconversation.com/leonardo-da-vinci-revisited-was-he-an-environmentalist-ahead-of-his-time-112404

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sajeda Tuli, Fulbright Scholar, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra

Migration is getting increasing attention in Australia, with the Morrison government recently putting the focus on settling migrants in regional areas to ease pressure on the capital cities. Newly released statistics show 79% of Australian population growth was in the capital cities in 2017-18. The population of these cities grew by 307,800, a 1.9% increase.

This was nearly twice the growth rate of non-capital-city areas, which gained only 83,200 people – although many regional areas would welcome more people to revitalise struggling towns.

The chart below shows growth in capital city populations from international and internal migration, as well as natural increase (births minus deaths).

BREAKDOWN OF CAPITAL CITY POPULATION GROWTH 2017-18

ABS, 3218.0 – Regional Population Growth, Australia, 2017-18, CC BY

Many towns would welcome migrants because they are agents of development, contributing to economic growth and prosperity. According to the International Organisation for Migration, if current trends continue, there could be 405 million international migrants globally by 2050 in the world.

Like other OECD countries, Australia uses skilled migration to overcome skill shortages and sustain economic growth. The proportion of skilled migrants in the immigration intake more than doubled from 29.1% in 1993-1994 to 68% in 2005-2006.

The latest data continue a longer-term trend of migrants settling in our biggest cities. They are attracted by demand for their skills and the economic opportunities the cities offer.

Australia received 1,379,055 international migrants between 2011-2016, of whom nearly 50% were high-skilled or semi-skilled. The chart below shows 85.52% of them settled in the greater capital cities, which also attracted many internal migrants from elsewhere in Australia. Greater Sydney and Greater Melbourne, the nation’s top two global cities, received more than 50% of migrants.

Only 14.1% of international migrants settled outside the capital cities. Outside these cities, internal people movement was greater than international.

MIGRANT DISTRIBUTION IN CAPITAL CITIES AND REST OF AUSTRALIA 2011-16

Author provided

Read more: Settling migrants in regional areas will need more than a visa to succeed

Why is growth concentrated in a handful of cities?

Migrants are just following the same trend as the non-migrant population in Australia. Australia is a highly urbanised country and most people live in or near its major cities.

At the time of the last census in 2016, two-thirds of the population lived in the capital cities, which is where 66% of employment was located. Outside those metropolitan areas, some big regional cities such as Newcastle, Wollongong and Geelong also have a significant share of employment.

The chart below shows the concentration of knowledge industry workers in Greater Melbourne. They are concentrated in the inner Melbourne area. Most major Australian cities follow the same trend.

DISTRIBUTION OF KNOWLEDGE INDUSTRY WORKERS IN MELBOURNE

Created by author from ABS Census 2016 data

According to the 2016 Census, the majority of skilled migrants, 63%, are settling in the greater capital cities. They are simply following the employment.

The big cities offer diverse opportunities, similar jobs to advance their careers and a lifestyle for them and their families. These are the main reasons the big cities are the main destinations of these large numbers of skilled migrants.

Asian-born migrants dominate current migration intakes. In the past, migrants were mostly from Europe and the UK. Migrants are reshaping Australia and we are becoming truly multicultural.

Read more: How Australian cities are adapting to the Asian Century

In addition, migration is significantly reducing the rate of population ageing in Australia. According to the 2016 Census, more than 85% of migrants are of working age, compared to 65% of existing Australian residents.

In future, Australia will face significant skills shortages, which means skilled migration will be important for Australia’s economic development. Since most knowledge jobs are concentrated in the major cities, skilled migrants will continue to concentrate there too.

Therefore, migration and skilled migrants are important for Australian cities at present and will be into the future. They are contributing to demographic balance, meeting skills shortages and enhancing economic prosperity.

Read more: The government is right – immigration helps us rather than harms us

Why is regional Australia failing to attract migrants?

Although the government has policies in place to meet skill shortages in regional Australia, lack of employment choice and diversity are still a problem in these areas. Therefore, a qualified migrant doctor or engineer will likely go where they might have more opportunities after they finish any mandatory period of living in a regional or designated area.

Migrants, especially international migrants, follow the jobs. Internal migrants are more likely to follow family and lifestyle. These drivers need to be understood if we hope to shift settlement patterns.

If regional Australia is to be made more attractive to migrants, we need to diversify employment opportunities, improve amenity, services and infrastructure, and most importantly ensure migration policies focus on the nature and needs of the regional economy. This requires research to identify which regional cities have capacity to grow. Migrants along with the rest of Australia will follow the opportunities and lifestyle there.

Read more: Forcing immigrants to work in regional areas will not boost regional economies in the long run

– ref. Migrants want to live in the big cities, just like the rest of us – http://theconversation.com/migrants-want-to-live-in-the-big-cities-just-like-the-rest-of-us-113911

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wanning Sun, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Technology Sydney

There are currently about 1.2 million people of Chinese origin in Australia. Approximtely half of them were born in China and speak Mandarin in the home. For those who have come from a one-party state where electoral voting is a foreign concept, figuring out which party to vote for is part of the process of learning how to be citizens in a democratic society.

Recent state elections show that the widespread adoption of the social media platform WeChat by Chinese-Australians has led to a much higher level of political participation. We’ve also seen that this community is as divided politically as English-speaking Australians.

But whose information and opinions do Mandarin-speaking voters trust? And who is more likely to influence how they vote?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has his own WeChat account now, but the reach of Mandarin-speaking candidates like Gladys Liu is far wider. Stefan Postles/AAP

These are among the first set of questions we posed in a longitudinal study of the role played by Chinese-language digital media in the political, economic and cultural lives of Mandarin-speaking migrants in Australia.

Since the beginning of the year, we have been closely following a number of WeChat groups based in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth, in addition to a couple national groups. We also conducted a large survey of Mandarin-speaking social media users on Survey Monkey last month.

Read more: Chinese social media platform WeChat could be a key battleground in the federal election

We asked the participants who are citizens (and thus able to vote) to identify their main sources of information about state and federal elections. We then combined our ethnographic and survey results to present the following key findings:

1. Less politically engaged voters rely on friends

We found that an important source of information and influence in the Mandarin-speaking community comes from postings on WeChat’s “Moments” feature, which is similar to Facebook’s timeline except the information shared on Moments can only be accessed by a person’s friends and acquaintances, not by others.

Around 26% of citizens surveyed said that postings by friends on Moments was one of their primary sources of information on political news. These people tended not to invest much time in deciding how to vote. They trusted the opinions of friends more than the media, politicians and public commentators. People in this group were also often less educated, less proficient in English or less engaged in politics.

On the days leading up to the recent NSW election, we frequently saw postings such as:

Have to vote in the state election this weekend. Any ideas who to vote for?

Replies included:

Best stick with Liberal. They’re better at managing the economy.

2. WeChat groups are a growing source of influence

Most WeChat users are members of several WeChat groups, which are self-formed, private messaging communities that can include up to 500 members. In our survey, around 22% of participants cited information shared in WeChat groups as another important source of electoral information.

Unlike friends on Moments, members of a particular group may be unknown to each other. Groups can based on special interests (parenting, gardening, cooking), place of origin (the Shanghai Migrant Association), or current place of residence (Chisholm in Melbourne). In the period leading up to elections, the topic of discussion in many of these groups tends to pivot towards the pros and cons of the major political parties.

WeChat groups with a more explicit political agenda are usually created and administered by candidates of Chinese heritage, or by friends and supporters of these candidates. Although the partisan nature of some groups is clear, they usually include some members from across the political spectrum. Debates in these groups often becomes very heated, sometimes quite combative.

Read more: Thinking of taking up WeChat? Here’s what you need to know

3. Gatekeepers mediate news from English-language sources

As many as 50% of Chinese-Australian voters we surveyed also named mainstream English-language media as a source of information and opinion on politics. But our ethnography suggests that this information is only consumed after it has been processed, curated and framed within a particular editorial stance by bilingual gatekeepers within the Chinese-speaking community.

For example, an active member in a Perth-based WeChat group made three posts in quick succession a couple of weeks ago. The first, in Chinese, said:

The Sydney Morning Herald reported eight years ago on Scott Morrison’s proposal to use anti-Muslim sentiment to win votes – a claim that Morrison did not deny at that time.

His second post was a link to News.com.au journalist Malcolm Farr’s recent story about Morrison accusing TV presenter Waleed Aly of lying over this issue. The third post quoted a few key paragraphs from Farr’s story.

From the first post, it’s clear the WeChat group member is not a fan of Morrison’s. And this frames the news in a certain way for other members of the group.

4. Chinese-speaking candidates are more relatable to voters

Politicians like Morrison and Bill Shorten may have their own WeChat accounts now, but they are not as influential as candidates of Chinese heritage. About 23% of voters in our survey said WeChat messages from Mandarin-speaking political candidates were their primary source of information about elections. Mainstream politicians scored only 13%.

Chisholm Liberal candidate Gladys Liu’s WeChat account illustrates this finding. Her site lists a series of stories – no doubt put together by her supporters – detailing how Liu helped individual members of the Chinese community in need.

These feel-good stories were also widely circulated by Liberal supporters on WeChat. Liu is very active in WeChat groups, and often takes time to respond to messages that challenge her on particular issues.

Liberal candidate for Chisholm Gladys Liu’s WeChat account. Screenshot

5. The emergence of new opinion leaders

Chinese-language print magazines and newspapers have long been key influencers of community sentiment, but this status is increasingly under threat.

Similarly, traditional community organisations are no longer as influential as they once may have been. These organisations were mostly established by migrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Cantonese-speaking areas of China before the arrival of large numbers of Mandarin speakers from China in the last couple of decades. They also predated the emergence of social media platforms such as WeChat.

New opinion leaders tend to come from within the ranks of individual WeChat users. Many are able to marshal large followings on their WeChat subscription accounts. They tend to be bilingual (Mandarin and English) and have a constant presence in WeChat group discussion. Their opinions or analyses are informed by their own understanding of Australian party politics.

These opinion leaders often emerge organically through interactions with other WeChat users and their influence usually rises and falls unpredictably.

Read more: How Australia’s Mandarin speakers get their news

These findings should provide food for thought for Australian politicians wishing to reach out to Chinese communities.

WeChat has shown a promising capacity to facilitate civic engagement and promote democratic dialogue among Chinese-speaking migrants. But the government and non-Chinese-speaking politicians need to do their homework to figure how to use this platform effectively and make an impact on voters whose trust, at times, has been hard to win over.

– ref. Who do Chinese-Australian voters trust for their political news on WeChat? – http://theconversation.com/who-do-chinese-australian-voters-trust-for-their-political-news-on-wechat-113927

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Meyer, Lecturer of Human Anatomy, University of Western Australia

Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

Why do we have fingernails and toenails? – Jake (age 9) and Ben (age 7), Melbourne.

The reason we have fingernails and toenails is not to pick our noses or to scratch our siblings.

The short answer is we have evolved to have nails because they help us pick things up (like food), pick things off (like bugs), and hold tightly onto things.

Early humans who had these type of nails (instead of claws) tended to live long enough to have babies and pass on the fingernails gene to their kids. So over time, the number of human ancestors with nails grew and the number with claws shrunk. That’s how evolution works.

But the story goes back further than that.

Flat nails are better than claws for grasping. Shutterstock

Our primate ancestors and cousins

Humans are members of the primate family. The primates are the most intelligent group of mammals (mammals are animals who do not lay eggs). Primates have evolved to have nails.

That’s why you see primates like apes and monkeys also have nails on all their fingers and toes, as well as our closest primate “cousins”: gibbons, bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans.

While humans don’t usually use our toes these days to pick things up, our primate cousins do. So our toenails are a hangover from a time in our evolutionary past where we often used our feet to pick stuff up and pick stuff off.

All these primates – including us – evolved from a common ancestor that had claws.

Here you can see a chimpanzee’s fingernails and toenails. Nils Rinaldi, CC BY-SA

Nails vs claws

So why did we evolve to have nails instead of claws? The answer is that nails let us do a lot of important things that you can’t do with claws.

Compare your nails to those of a dog or cat. Your nails are wide, flat and shield-shaped. They are also on the back of the tip of your fingers and toes.

A dog or cat has claws that are thin, curved and pointed. They wrap around the end of their “fingers” and “toes”.

Claws are great for scratching but would get in the way if you had to hold a tool or pick up something tiny. Shuttertock

By having nails, you can pick up tiny things like small LEGO bricks off the ground, pick off stickers, or pick a bug off you easily. You can make and use tools. Can a cat do that with its claws? No! In fact, having super-long, clawlike nails can make it really hard to do a lot of things humans need to do – like eating, washing and holding things.

Without nails, it would be much harder to pick up small things. Shutterstock

On the other hand, claws are useful for some things that cats and dogs often need to do.

By having claws, your cat can quickly run up a tree (even if it doesn’t have many lower branches) to catch a bird. Plus your dog can dig up your backyard in one afternoon (to find food, for example).

Primates also climb trees but we mostly do it by grasping onto branches, and long claws get in the way when you’re grasping. Nails provide a rigid backing to primates’ fingertips to improve grasping. We dig too, of course, but we use tools for that. You don’t have the same needs as a dog or a cat, so you don’t have the same type of nails or claws.

Each type of animal has evolved to have the type of finger-covering (either claws or nails) that best suits its needs.

Read more: Curious Kids: how do tongues taste food?

What if we didn’t have nails?

Imagine for a moment that humans didn’t have nails. First, a lot of nail salons would go out of business, and we couldn’t enjoy painting our nails lots of different colours.

But more importantly, having a lump of soft skin at the end of our fingers would make it harder to hold things and control our grip on them. The ends of our fingers and toes have changed to match our changed lives.

So next time you’re at the zoo, look at the hands of gibbons, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, and you’ll see they have nails just like yours. Think about all the amazing things we primates can do with nails.

Orangutan nails are not that different to ours. Shutterstock

Read more: Curious Kids: is everything really made of molecules?

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

CC BY-ND

Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. We won’t be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

– ref. Curious Kids: why do we have fingernails and toenails? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-do-we-have-fingernails-and-toenails-110989

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlin Curtis, Research fellow, Centre for Policy Futures (Genomics), The University of Queensland

Have you ever wondered who you are or where you come from?

I think it’s a fundamental human desire to want to know this.

One way we’re seeing this curiosity play out is in the rise of the at-home DNA ancestry business. You’ve probably seen the ads for tests like 23andme and Ancestry DNA: you spit in a tube, and then receive a report breaking you down into neat little slices in a pie chart telling you that you’re, say, 30% German and 70% English. As a population geneticist, I find this fascinating.

But how does our collective interest in ancestry testing interact with our ideas and conversations about race?

Read more: A DNA test says you’ve got Indigenous Australian ancestry. Now what?

‘No borders within us’

Earlier this year, a Mexican airline, Aeromexico, ran a tongue-in-cheek ad campaign, called “DNA Discounts” with the slogan “there are no borders within us”. For the ad campaign they gathered a group of North Americans who were willing to take a DNA test and get their results on camera. This group contained some members with, let’s just say, a somewhat negative view of Mexico.

Do you want to go to Mexico?

In the ad, the airline offered rewards to these people based on their DNA results, in the form of a discounted airline ticket to Mexico. The size of the discount depended on the amount of Mexican ancestry. If their test showed 15% Mexican ancestry, that meant a 15% discount.

The footage of people getting their results on camera is pretty funny, and some of them seemed somewhat surprised, and maybe even upset about their reported ancestry. More than half of those tested appeared to have Mexican ancestry, even though they weren’t aware of it.

The slogan “there are no borders within us” has an element of political commentary related to Donald Trump’s border wall. But the ad also teaches us two important things.

It shows how DNA testing can challenge not just our ideas of race and identity, but our notion of being. Your genetic ancestry might be completely different from your cultural identity. Just ask the folks in the ad.

Beyond this, it also highlights how mainstream this kind of science has become, and how much DNA ancestry testing has entered into pop culture.

Read more: Five things to consider before ordering an online DNA test

Recent, dark past

I think we humans have always been interested in our ancestry, but it hasn’t always been a healthy interest – sometimes it’s been much darker and more sinister. And we don’t even have to look too far into the past to see that.

The eugenics movement was part science and part social engineering, and based on the idea that certain things – such as being poor, lazy, “feeble-minded” or criminal – were actually traits that were inherited in families. These traits were often linked to certain ancestries or racial groups using biased methodology.

Eugenics was the idea that humanity could engineer a better future for itself by identifying and regulating these groups using science and technology.

Read more: Boyer Lectures: the new eugenics is the same as the old, just in fancier clothes

In the United States in the early 20th century, eugenics became a recognised academic discipline at many prestigious universities – even Harvard. By 1928, almost 400 colleges and universities in America were teaching it.

In 1910 the Eugenics Record Office was set up to collect ancestry data, literally door to door. It then used this data to support racist agendas and influence things like the 1924 Immigration Act to curb immigration of southeastern Europeans, and ban most Asians and Arabs altogether.

Although we may think of eugenics as something linked with Nazi Germany in World War II, Hitler based some of his early ideas about eugenics on these academic programs in the US. There was a fear of “pollution” of the purebred genetic lineage, and that the “inferior” races would contaminate the “superior” race. Many Nazi defendants at the Nuremberg trials claimed there wasn’t much difference between the Nazi eugenics program and the ones in the US.

Racism with flawed science

The events of that time are still relevant now. More than seven decades have passed and we’re seeing the rise of far-right groups and ideologies – the world of Trump, and the return of restrictive immigration policies.

We’re seeing a mainstreaming of ideas about race that we rejected not long ago. We’re once again seeing the science of genetics being misappropriated to support racist agendas.

Read more: Dramatic advances in forensics expose the need for genetic data legislation

Late last year, the New York Times reported on a trend among white supremacists to drink milk. Most people of northern European ancestry have a version of a certain gene, called a lactase gene, that means they can fully digest milk as adults. This is due to a genetic mutation several thousand years ago, around the time of the first cattle herders in Europe.

The article described how people from the far right have taken this scientific result and run with it – producing bizarre YouTube videos in which people chug milk from 2-litre containers, swigging it and throwing it around in celebration of their supposed “genetic superiority” – and urging people who cannot digest milk to “go back”. Comedian Stephen Colbert even picked up on this story (in his words: “lactose is their only form of tolerance”).

The white supremacists took this bit of science and twisted it to suit their needs. But what they have ignored is research showing that a similar version of this gene evolved among cattle breeders in East Africa too.

DNA does not define culture

It’s not just popular culture: DNA ancestry has also entered political culture.

The right-wing Australian nationalist One Nation recently called for DNA ancestry tests as a requirement to prove Aboriginal identity to access “benefits”. I don’t want to give this dangerous idea any more oxygen, and as a geneticist I can tell you it won’t work.

Cultural identity is much more than simply what is in our DNA. Aboriginal communities are the ones who determine who is and who is not Indigenous. I think this episode highlights a worrying trend for genetic tests to be seen as the ultimate decider of race and identity in public debates.

Read more: Why DNA tests for Indigenous heritage mean different things in Australia and the US

So how does the marketing of the DNA companies themselves influence our thinking about ancestry?

These ancestry companies use the language of science in their marketing, and present their results as being highly scientific – which people interpret as meaning accurate and factual. The process of estimating ancestry from DNA is scientific, but people may not realise it can also be a bit of a blurry process, and actually more of an estimate.

When you look at your slice in the pie chart and it says 16% German, it is not a fact that you are 16% German. It’s an estimate, or an educated guess, of your ancestry based on statistical inference.

I think representation of our ancestries in pie charts is not helping our conversations.

Twins got different results

Recently, two identical twins put five DNA ancestry companies to the test, and this provides a really interesting look at how this process works.

The raw data for each twin was more than 99% identical, which shows that the way the companies produce the raw data is indeed quite accurate.

The shocking thing was that the companies provided each twin with noticeably different ancestry estimates.

From one company, the first twin got 25% Eastern European, and the second got 28%. Just to be clear, this shouldn’t happen with identical twins because they have the same DNA.

Read more: Genetic ancestry tests don’t change your identity, but you might

Even more surprising, one company said the twins were 27-29% Italian, but another said they were 19-20% Greek. A lot of this difference would be based on the size of the databases that the companies use as references and who is in the databases, and – very importantly – who has been left out of the databases. These factors would be different between the different companies, and change through time.

So the results you get now could be different to the results you might get in, say, six months when the databases are updated.

Estimating our ancestry is hard, and the main reason it is hard is because our ancestry is much more mixed up than some people might have thought. It’s not really so clear-cut as a pie chart might suggest. The statistics are blurry because our populations are blurry.

The bigger picture that’s emerging from DNA ancestry testing is that we’ve underestimated the extent of mixing between ancestral groups throughout human history.

Looking at the pie chart might give you the impression that there are discrete borders within you and boundaries between your different ancestries, but as Aeromexico so eloquently put it, “there are no borders within us”.

This article is an edited version of a story presented on ABC’s Ockham’s Razor and delivered at the World Science Festival, Brisbane in March 2019.

– ref. How DNA ancestry testing can change our ideas of who we are – http://theconversation.com/how-dna-ancestry-testing-can-change-our-ideas-of-who-we-are-114428

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rodney Tiffen, Emeritus Professor, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

“Kick this mob out” shouted the front page of The Daily Telegraph on the day that Tony Abbott triumphed in the 2013 federal election. Restraint and modesty have never been the hallmarks of tabloid newspapers. Sometimes they celebrate what they claim is their impact – most famously when the London Sun proclaimed “It’s The Sun wot won it” after the 1992 Conservative victory.

But it is a long time since any tabloid newspaper could plausibly claim such a role because their reach has shrunk so markedly. In 1972, the biggest-selling newspaper in Australia was The Sun News Pictorial in Melbourne, with a daily circulation of 648,000. Its stablemate, the Melbourne Herald, was the biggest-selling afternoon newspaper with 498,000.

Read more: Christchurch attacks provide a new ethics lesson for professional media

By 2018, the print circulation of the merged Herald Sun was around 303,000, still the largest in the country. However, in 1972, Melbourne’s population was 2.6 million and by 2018 it was 4.9 million. The Sun’s circulation in 1972 was around one-quarter of Melbourne’s population. In 2018, the Herald Sun’s was about one-14th.

Sure, business models changed, but so did the tabloids’ temper

This is a stunning story of commercial decline and failure. Of course, over the past two decades, all major media have had their business models challenged by the digital revolution. But the decline of newspapers in relation to population had already been going on for several decades, partly because the first source of news for most people had become radio and television. My guess is that tabloid newspapers are the least likely of all legacy media to thrive in the digital age.

Beyond the changing technologies, where tabloid newspapers are on the wrong side of history, at least part of the reason for their decline is the changes in their own product. Viewed over decades, we can see how these papers, and especially those owned by Rupert Murdoch, have been on an editorial trajectory that is self-defeating and has added to their decline. Compare the Herald Sun of 2019 with the Melbourne Sun of the early 1970s.

One of Australia’s most distinguished journalists, Adrian Deamer, the first successful editor of The Australian until Murdoch fired him in 1971, later a senior legal adviser to Fairfax newspapers, had once been an editorial executive at The Sun. In the 1980s, he told me:

The Sun was extremely competent in its coverage of news. It was short and sharp, limited background. The Sun was then a serious tabloid, not like the Sydney afternoon newspapers. Its news covered the same things as The Age but sharper. It had a very wide, comprehensive coverage of the news, although it didn’t disregard trivia. It knew Melbourne better than any other paper knew its city. It presented Melbourne to Melbourne. It was very close to its readers. A remarkable association.

Tabloid newspapers are much less close to their readers now. One indicator suggesting this is how human interest news has changed. My research showed that in The Sun/Herald-Sun and Daily Telegraph, human interest stories covering “ordinary people” comprised 10% of all stories in 1956 but only 3% by 2006. Entertainment-related and celebrity stories had grown from 3% to 12% in the same period.

Perhaps there were changes in public demand, but equally it was much cheaper to feed off the spin of the entertainment industry than invest in the reporters necessary to engage with community news.

The columnist as outrage machine

Perhaps the clearest sign of change is in the papers’ major columnists. For more than a decade, The Sun’s columnist was Keith Dunstan. His “A Place in the Sun” was marked by warmth and humour, eloquence and lightness of touch.

Today their major columnist is Andrew Bolt. Bolt is the highest-profile person to have been convicted of breaching Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act in an error-filled article full of bile against his Aboriginal targets.

Recently, Paul Barry on Media Watch called out some of Bolt’s Islamophobia

And if our politicians will not speak frankly and protect us from Islam, watch out for a civil war. A frightened public will not put up with this for much longer, and will defend themselves. (15-7-2016)

On March 25 this year, ten days after the massacre, his headline was:

Christchurch: Do the Greens have blood on their hands?

The default setting for Bolt and his fellow columnists is outrage. There is rarely consideration, let alone appreciation, of contrasting views. Rather there is dismissal of climate “warmists”, political correctness, the left and so forth. Waging culture war is their core business.

The London Sun famously boasted of its electoral clout in 1992. Wikicommons

Today’s tabloids are the result of a long editorial trajectory. Murdoch’s London Sun is often blamed for many of the sins of modern tabloids. It had the page three girl, was irresponsible in much of its reporting, and full of marketing gimmicks. But that paper for most of the 1970s, under Larry Lamb, had a refreshing cheekiness and humour. After another decade under Kelvin Mackenzie, the humour was gone. Its politics and its view of the world were consistently nasty.

Perhaps there was a marketing logic to this. Its main competitor in circulation, the Daily Mail, set out on a similar course denigrating racial minorities, calling for more punitive approaches to crime, and denouncing those it disagreed with.

Paul Dacre’s last memorable front page before he ended his 26-year reign as editor was about the Supreme Court judges who ruled that the executive government had to get parliamentary approval for Brexit. The story screamed:

GuerillaWire

You’re either with us or against us

Polarisation runs through the way tabloids frame the news – between triumph and disaster; heroes and villains; common sense and absurdity. These papers offer their readers certainty and simplicity rather than ambiguity and complexity; they give them the opportunity to vent their anger at the modern world.

We should not romanticise the old Herald and Weekly Times newspapers. Their editorial outlook was rooted in a smug conservatism. Their international coverage was simplistic and stereotyped. They were unresponsive to emerging issues on the political agenda – including feminism, multiculturalism, environmentalism and consumerism. They were indifferent to many of the injustices in society.

But there was a tolerance and occasionally a generosity of spirit that is markedly lacking in their successors. Moreover, they believed in honest reporting. This in addition to their large audiences which gave them a political relevance today’s tabloids lack.

Probably the most important journalist in the Canberra press gallery during the Whitlam government was Laurie Oakes, working for the Melbourne Sun. It is impossible to imagine any Murdoch tabloid reporter having that centrality today.

Read more: How the right-wing media have given a megaphone to reactionary forces in the Liberal Party

Bill Shorten, unlike his predecessors Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, has recently been reported as deciding not to have dinner with Rupert Murdoch in New York to pay homage. This is a sound political judgment. Very few swinging voters are reading the Murdoch tabloids.

The papers are so set in their anti-Labor ways that there is little prospect of meaningful change in their news coverage. Moreover, the anti-Labor diet has been so constant that if the readers have not yet been persuaded to go against Labor it is hard to imagine what future coverage will make them do so.

Much of their coverage of the coming campaign can be anticipated. There will be unflattering photoshops of Labor or Green politicians. Each day will bring either a triumph for the government or starkly presented disasters and scandals for Labor and the Greens. But shrillness should not be mistaken for relevance.

For a long time, the tabloids have given up trying to engage with the range of views in a pluralistic and dynamic society. Instead they have practised ghetto journalism, catering to an aged, monocultural, alienated constituency.

Commercially, this is the equivalent of a political party knowing it is bound for defeat trying to save the furniture. Politically, it means their coverage is full of sound and fury, but signifying almost nothing of electoral relevance.

– ref. From irreverence to irrelevance: the rise and fall of the bad-tempered tabloids – http://theconversation.com/from-irreverence-to-irrelevance-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-bad-tempered-tabloids-113656

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caroline de Costa, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, James Cook University

Over the past thirteen years, many Australian women have used the drug mifepristone (RU486) to bring about a medical abortion.

Rather than undergoing a surgical abortion in a clinic or hospital operating theatre, a medical abortion is induced by taking drugs prescribed by a doctor.

But while mifepristone has been available in Australia since 2006, only some women, in some parts of the country, are able to access it. As I argue today in the Medical Journal of Australia, this needs to change.

Read more: Where Australian states are up to in decriminalising abortion

Chequered history in Australia

Mifepristone was developed in France in the 1980s and was soon being used for medical abortion in many parts of the world. Not, however, in Australia, where two male politicians did a deal that gave no consideration to women’s health needs.

In 1996 the anti-abortion Senator Brian Harradine, who held the balance of power in the Howard government, persuaded John Howard to pass legislation banning mifepristone in Australia, in return for his supporting Howard’s Telstra-privatisation bill.

Australian women were deprived of mifepristone for ten years, until a vigorous cross-country campaign resulted in the parliament’s overturning of the Harradine legislation in 2006.

But this didn’t mean the drug immediately became widely available. The political controversy made pharmaceutical companies reluctant to manufacture or market it.

Doctors, including myself, began personal applications to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) to import and use the drug in Australia – a lengthy and complicated process.

But by 2012, more than 80 doctors across Australia were prescribing the drug, and two large Australian studies covering more than 13,000 women showed it was safe and effective.

In 2012, the TGA finally gave mifepristone a full license and in 2013 it was placed in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which means the government subsidises the cost of the drug.

Read more: Arrival of RU486 in Australia a great leap forward for women

Still no drug company would take on distribution, so rights were given to Marie Stopes International Australia (MSIA). Marie Stopes has for many years provided women’s health care but this was a new role.

The TGA required Marie Stopes to develop an online three- to four-hour instruction module for doctors, who must complete this and register to prescribe mifepristone.

Pharmacies must also register to dispense the drug. But many have declined to do so.

GPs can manage medical terminations

No other drug has this kind of special status, which is unnecessary. Doctors study pharmacology and drug prescription in medical school, and use this knowledge every day in clinical practice.

Singling-out mifepristone, as well as continuing to stigmatise abortions and the women who seek them, has also dissuaded doctors, especially general practitioners, from registering and using the drug.

GPs are the doctors most appropriately placed to manage early medical abortion (to nine weeks of pregnancy) for women requesting it. But just 1,500 of Australia’s 35,000 GPs have so far registered.

Read more: One in six Australian women in their 30s have had an abortion – and we’re starting to understand why

Over the past seven years a vast amount of data has been accumulated from the experience of nearly 200,000 Australian women, showing the drug is safe and effective, and importantly, very acceptable to the women using it.

It’s time to take mifepristone out of its cage and put it on pharmacy shelves with every other drug.

Services over the phone

Early medical abortion also lends itself to the practice of tele-medicine —phone and video consultations. This increases access for women living in rural or remote areas, who have difficulty travelling to larger centres for surgical abortion or accessing pharmacies.

Four years ago gynaecologist Paul Hyland established the Tabbot Foundation to provide early abortion care via telephone consultations and postage of the drugs to such women. His team has successfully managed around 6,000 early medical abortions this way. The complication rates have been low and are comparable with services where consultations are face-to-face.

Other doctors have followed in various parts of the country and in all places tele-medicine services have been well-received.

But the Tabbot Foundation is closing down. This is likely to result in large unmet need among women in rural and remote areas.

What next?

Recently the Australian Labor Party announced that if elected, it would tie federal funding for public hospitals to the provision of abortion services in the public sector.

This was welcome news, and interestingly did not result in the polarised public debate that surrounded the overturning of the Harradine legislation thirteen years ago.

Around 80% of Australians now support a woman’s right to choose abortion. While abortion is not yet part of mainstream medical practice, it is clearly moving that way, as state laws change and society comes to appreciate that safe, accessible abortion is an important part of women’s reproductive health care.

Mifepristone must be removed from its special status so doctors and women everywhere who wish to access it for medical abortion, directly or by tele-medicine, can do so easily. Mifepristone must become a drug like any other in our pharmacies.

Read more: Some women feel grief after an abortion, but there’s no evidence of serious mental health issues

– ref. It’s time to lift the restrictions on medical abortion in Australia – http://theconversation.com/its-time-to-lift-the-restrictions-on-medical-abortion-in-australia-114364

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tess Moriarty, Phd candidate, University of Newcastle

This month corals in Lord Howe Island Marine Park began showing signs of bleaching. The 145,000 hectare marine park contains the most southerly coral reef in the world, in one of the most isolated ecosystems on the planet.

Following early reports of bleaching in the area, researchers from three Australian universities and two government agencies have worked together throughout March to investigate and document the bleaching.

Sustained heat stress has seen 90% of some reefs bleached, although other parts of the marine park have escaped largely unscathed.

Bleaching is uneven

Lord Howe Island was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1982. It is the coral reef closest to a pole, and contains many species found nowhere else in the world.

Coral bleaching observed at Lord Howe in March 2019. Author provided

Two of us (Tess Moriarty and Rosie Steinberg) have surveyed reefs across Lord Howe Island Marine Park to determine the extent of bleaching in the populations of hard coral, soft coral, and anemones. This research found severe bleaching on the inshore lagoon reefs, where up to 95% of corals are showing signs of extensive bleaching.

However, bleaching is highly variable across Lord Howe Island. Some areas within the Lord Howe Island lagoon coral reef are not showing signs of bleaching and have remained healthy and vibrant throughout the summer. There are also corals on the outer reef and at deeper reef sites that have remained healthy, with minimal or no bleaching.

One surveyed reef location in Lord Howe Island Marine Park is severely impacted, with more than 90% of corals bleached; at the next most affected reef site roughly 50% of corals are bleached, and the remaining sites are less than 30% bleached. At least three sites have less than 5% bleached corals.

Healthy coral photographed at Lord Howe marine park in March 2019. Author provided

Over the past week heat stress has continued in this area, and return visits to these sites revealed that the coral condition has worsened. There is evidence that some corals are now dying on the most severely affected reefs.

Forecasts for the coming week indicate that water temperatures are likely to cool below the bleaching threshold, which will hopefully provide timely relief for corals in this valuable reef ecosystem. In the coming days, weeks and months we will continue to monitor the affected reefs and determine the impact of this event to the reef system, and investigate coral recovery.

What’s causing the bleaching?

The bleaching was caused by high seawater temperature from a persistent summer marine heatwave off southeastern Australia. Temperature in January was a full degree Celsius warmer than usual, and from the end of January to mid-February temperatures remained above the local bleaching threshold.

Sustained heat stressed the Lord Howe Island reefs, and put them at risk. They had a temporary reprieve with cooler temperatures in late February, but by March another increase put the ocean temperature well above safe levels. This is now the third recorded bleaching event to have occurred on this remote reef system.

Satellite monitoring of sea-surface temperature (SST) revealed three periods in excess of the Bleaching Threshold during which heat stress accumulated (measured as Degree Heating Weeks, DHW). Since January 2019, SST (purple) exceeded expected monthly average values (blue +) by as much as 2°C. The grey line and envelope indicate the predicted range of SST in the near future. Source: NOAA Coral Reef Watch

However, this heatwave has not equally affected the whole reef system. In parts of the lagoon areas the water can be cooler, due to factors like ocean currents and fresh groundwater intrusion, protecting some areas from bleaching. Some coral varieties are also more heat-resistant, and a particular reef that has been exposed to high temperatures in the past may better cope with the current conditions. For a complex variety of reasons, the bleaching is unevenly affecting the whole marine park.

Coral bleaching is the greatest threat to the sustainability of coral reefs worldwide and is now clearly one of the greatest challenges we face in responding to the impact of global climate change. UNESCO World Heritage regions, such as the Lord Howe Island Group, require urgent action to address the cause and impact of a changing climate, coupled with continued management to ensure these systems remain intact for future generations.

The authors thank ProDive Lord Howe Island and Lord Howe Island Environmental Tours for assistance during fieldwork.

– ref. Bleaching has struck the southernmost coral reef in the world – http://theconversation.com/bleaching-has-struck-the-southernmost-coral-reef-in-the-world-114433

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clarke Jones, Research Fellow, Research School of Psychology, Australian National University

In the wake of the Christchurch terrorist attack, former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair told a global education forum extremism should be treated as a global problem like climate change. He said:

there should be an international agreement to put teaching against extremism into education systems around the world.

Following terrorist attacks, it’s understandable politicians want to come up with quick, tangible measures to prevent other incidents and to tackle the problem at what is seen to be its core. There is merit in Blair saying challenging prejudice “needs to begin at an early age” (in schools). But we must also be cautious when promoting kneejerk responses to complex issues, particularly when it involves the welfare and future of children.

Governments have been reaching into schools to try to nip violent extremism in the bud for some time. The Obama administration announced a Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program in 2014. This aimed to deter US residents from joining violent extremist groups by bringing community and religious leaders together with law enforcement, health professionals, teachers, and social service employees.

This program has since come under scrutiny for focusing on, and stigmatising, the Muslim community. When we consider that the proportion of fatalities from terrorist attacks committed by nationalist groups, including the one in Christchurch, is increasing, and deaths from attacks by Islamic militants are in decline, there is clearly potential for these programs to be misdirected.

Programs like these have also been introduced without adequate evidence for their effectiveness. Delivering a program that hasn’t been properly evaluated could make the underlying issues worse. It could ultimately increase youth vulnerabilities (rather than resilience) to radicalisation, and other antisocial behaviours.

‘Spot a radical’ in school

Schools often become an easy focal point. The rationale for a CVE program is getting onto the threat before it starts, or capturing it if it has already begun to grow. Often this has meant CVE school programs mainly teach staff how to “spot a radical” and report them to government and remedial channels.

But identifying the key components for preventing and addressing radicalisation towards violent extremism in schools remains under-researched. It’s fraught with negative consequences – such as further marginalising and stigmatising vulnerable students – if not delivered cautiously and sensitively.

The UK government, for instance, has faced significant difficulties when connecting CVE initiatives to schools. In 2016, the UK teachers’ union backed a motion to reject the government’s counter-radicalisation strategy, Prevent. This obliged teachers to refer to police pupils they suspected of engaging in some sort of terrorist activity or radical behaviour. The union claimed Prevent targeted Muslim students.

Data certainly supports such concerns. Between 2007 and 2010, 67% of referrals under the program were Muslims. Between 2012 and 2013, that figure was 57.4%.

Read more: We need to stop conflating Islam with terrorism

One study argued such programs undermine the dignity of many Muslim children, which has a significant effect on the “mental health and emotional well-being of Muslim children and young people and their families”.

The toolkit given to teachers under the Prevent strategy was said to contain poorly constructed definitions of “extremism” and “radicalisation”. These then shaped and informed equally problematic CVE practices that appeared to be directed at Muslim students.

The toolkit was therefore seen as extending the UK’s monitoring capabilities into classrooms, which can inhibit Muslim children’s ability to become active and equal members of society.

This can contribute to a young Muslim person’s sense of isolation, marginalisation and alienation, as well as potentially reinforcing and perpetuating racism and Islamophobia in schools.

What about Australia?

The Australian government has largely modelled its CVE strategies on the UK’s, even though there has been no empirical evidence to support their effectiveness. This has translated to several school programs that focus specifically on CVE.

The NSW program, for example, is conducted online and was designed primarily to educate teachers about violent extremism. It encourages teachers to promote awareness of CVE and develop family and school environments that promote resilience among youth.

It also encourages parents to be cyber-aware, to encourage open and honest communication at home, and to model positive behaviour.

Another program runs in Western Australian schools, where teachers and support staff are trained to identify changes in the behaviour of all at-risk students, assess potential concerns, and provide appropriate support when needed. If a concern is raised about a student, the level of risk is assessed and follow-up action is provided.

A few years ago, the federal government sent out toolkits to the nation’s schools. This enables teachers and other frontline workers to identify students who might be at risk of radicalisation and intervene as early as possible. Follow-up training courses have been provided to teachers to educate them about radicalisation and risk factors in students.

Outside these specific program, there is little public information about how many students have been identified as at-risk or reported to police and government agencies. Most of the work is being conducted under government confidentiality.

There is also little data available to evaluate these initiatives. But I know first-hand of cases in which students have been falsely reported to police. One particular case significantly affected the student’s school grades, resulting in him missing out on a university placement, as well as creating issues around his identity and sense of belonging.

I will not speculate on what would have happened if there hadn’t been a supportive family and community network around him.

Read more: Want a safer world for your children? Teach them about diverse religions and worldviews

It is paramount that any program developed to protect young people from radicalisation does not contribute to the underlying issues that make young people vulnerable to it. Research shows school connectedness and belonging, and student-teacher relationships are critical aspects of a school environment that impact on the well-being of its students. It is crucial the development of CVE programs does not disrupt the relationships schools and teachers have with students and families.

CVE and national security have very little place in schools. If any new programs are to be introduced, they must be sensitive to these relationships and be very cautious not to damage individual, family or community connectedness with schools.

– ref. If we want students to feel safe at school, we can’t encourage teachers to spot potential extremists – http://theconversation.com/if-we-want-students-to-feel-safe-at-school-we-cant-encourage-teachers-to-spot-potential-extremists-114431

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John van Kooy, Research Associate & PhD Candidate, Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre, Monash University

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced two new regional visas as part of a national population plan. The Skilled Employer Sponsored and Skilled Work regional visas require workers to live outside major cities for three years before they can apply for permanent residency. Morrison said the new visas would benefit communities “looking for more people to come and settle in their districts, to fill jobs, inject more life into their towns, and shore up the important education and health services for the future”.

However, newly released statistics on regional population growth in Australia in 2017-18 show current growth is heavily concentrated in the capitals. People clearly prefer to settle in these cities. So how can migration to the less favoured regional centres be made to work?

POPULATION GROWTH ACROSS AUSTRALIA, 2017-18

Population change by SA2 (a community that interacts together socially and economically) across Australia in 2017-18. ABS, CC BY

Research by the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre and Welcoming Cities has examined the benefits and risks of regional migrant settlement. We identify five key factors — four essential and one desirable — that will make regional settlement successful.

Read more: Forcing immigrants to work in regional areas will not boost regional economies in the long run

Five elements of success

First, coordination and planning must be inclusive and driven by local communities. These are more than just buzzwords. Local employers, service providers and community groups are best placed to determine realistic settlement options together.

Local councils, in particular, are a crucial channel for information and community perspectives. Planning should carefully consider social and economic conditions so migrants and existing residents can develop clear expectations.

State and federal authorities may be called upon to provide a package of supportive policies, such as funding for relocation programs. However, in the absence of a whole-of-government regional settlement strategy, local stakeholders still need to lead the process.

Second, sustained employment is vital. It “speeds up” migrants’ integration into Australian society and makes long-term settlement viable. The celebrated “win-win scenario” in regional areas demands stable employment. The example of the Nhill poultry business in western Victoria shows some destinations can be a good fit for migrants and refugees from rural-agricultural backgrounds.

Karen-Burmese refugees helped revitalise the previously shrinking town of Nhill.

However, regional labour markets can be quite “thin”. The number and variety of jobs on offer are often limited.

Short-term visa schemes can help plug gaps in local labour markets. But migrants may not stay if they find themselves in jobs that don’t match their skills and experience.

Third, public housing, transport and services form crucial infrastructure to support migrant settlement. Regional towns vary significantly in their levels of access and affordability. Communities like Mingoola have taken the creative step of renovating abandoned farmhouses to accommodate refugee families.

Resettling African refugees saved Mingoola’s school from closure and breathed new life into the small town.

Read more: When a country’s towns and villages face extinction

But, in addition to housing, new migrants may require access to specialised service providers, like skilled health workers. Regional towns already grappling with social challenges can face a “double disadvantage” when migrants increase demand on existing services.

Here again, consultation and thorough needs analysis are required. Local government and community associations have central roles to play in this.

Fourth is a culture of welcome in regional communities. Building and sustaining such a culture is perhaps the most challenging element of success. The early stages of planning need to develop an understanding of local attitudes towards migrants, as well as perceptions about different cultures and ethnicities.

Some communities may benefit from induction and resources to develop long-term acceptance of cultural change. The City of Greater Bendigo – a recognised Refugee Welcome Zone — has attracted migrants by promoting its approach to cultural diversity and inclusion.

A culture of welcome can reduce the cultural distance between migrants and local residents, and reduce the risk of isolation for migrants. This not only bolsters the longer-term viability of migrant relocation, but can also lead to the social, cultural and economic revitalisation of the broader community.

As custodians of all settlement destinations in Australia, the leadership of First Nations people in welcoming work is also critical in negotiating matters of cultural exchange and understanding.

A final, desirable element of regional settlement is the presence of multicultural organisations and ethnic communities. Established migrant communities can act as “anchors” for new arrivals. They provide experience, advice and familiarity with local settlement processes and opportunities.

In contrast, the absence of culturally and linguistically diverse groups in regional towns can be a “unique source of acculturation stress”, especially for young migrants.

Read more: Australia’s regional migration: a selective success story

Moving forward with regional migration

Migration has the potential to breath new life into regional economies. It can add cultural richness and diversity to regional communities. At the same time, regional migration can ease the pressure on capital city infrastructure and services.

In reality, however, few regional destinations optimally combine all key success factors. Potential benefits of migration can be offset by existing inequalities, narrow employment pathways and gaps in social infrastructure. Limited understanding of cultural diversity also acts as a barrier to the inclusion of new migrant communities.

These risks can compromise the sustainability of regional settlement before it has begun.

Our research recommends that regional councils and local partners consider their readiness to grow a culture of welcome, build intercultural connections, and inform uptake of regional visa opportunities. Early planning that considers both the challenges and the opportunities for migrant settlement is critical to ensure a sustainable win-win outcome.

Aleem Ali, the national manager of Welcoming Cities and CEO of Welcome to Australia, is a co-author of this article.

– ref. Settling migrants in regional areas will need more than a visa to succeed – http://theconversation.com/settling-migrants-in-regional-areas-will-need-more-than-a-visa-to-succeed-114196

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Wood, Program Director, Budget Policy and Institutional Reform, Grattan Institute

The tens of thousands of young people who were protesting at the school climate strike two weeks ago know that they are being left a stinking great environmental mess to clean up.

But I suspect that many are yet to appreciate that this is not the only mess they’ll be left with.

Australia’s tax and welfare system is built around an implicit generational bargain. Working-age Australians, as a group, are net contributors to the budget – they pay more in taxes than they receive in either benefits or spending. These contributions support older Australians who take a lot more out in spending and pension payments than they contribute in taxes.

Today’s working-age Australians expect the generation after them to support them in the same way as they age. But this longstanding bargain is under threat.

A bargain betrayed

The number of working-age Australians for every person aged 65 and over fell from 7.4 in the mid-1970s to 4.4 in 2015, and is projected to fall to just 3.2 in 2055.

This could be seen as just bad luck for today’s young people. There are swings and roundabouts we all have to live with.

But what’s less easy to accept is a series of policy decisions that have substantially increased the size of the transfers workers will have to make to older people – expanding their good fortune at the expense of the generations who come out of them.

Let me tell you how.

Budgets have been tilting the scales

First, future pension costs have climbed as a result of deliberate policy decisions to boost the rate and eligibility for the pension. As a share of average weekly earnings it has climbed from 30% to 37% over the past two decades.

The ever-widening gap between the rate of the pension and Newstart, and the increasing ease with which retirees can get at least some pension, speaks to the political perception that there are deserving and undeserving welfare recipients, “lifters” and “leaners,” in the words used by Treasurer Joe Hockey in the 2014 budget.

Newstart recipients now live on A$40 a day compared to A$65 for full-rate pensioners.

Second, health spending is climbing. Commonwealth health spending has been climbing by 3% a year over and above inflation for the past decade.

State health spending has climbed 3.7% a year.

The increase has been particularly stark for those in their 70s and 80s – with average health spend per person increasing by over A$4,000 in just twelve years.

Read more: Tough choices: how to rein in Australia’s rising health bill

Most Australians support increased health and pensions spending. They might not, or might not support it as much, if they realised where it was coming from.

A series of tax policy decisions over the past two decades – tax-free superannuation income in retirement, refundable franking credits and special tax offsets for seniors – have meant we now ask older Australians to contribute a lot less than we once did.

Incomes for households over 65 have more than doubled over the past 25 years, substantially faster growth than for households under 55.

But households over 65 pay virtually no more income tax than people that age did 25 years ago. Indeed, the share of older households paying any tax has fallen from 27% in the mid 1990s to 17% today.

And that has contributed to a tax system where someone’s date of birth is almost as important as someone’s income in determining their tax contribution.

Read more: Why every generation feels entitled

An older household earning A$100,000 a year pays on average less than half the total tax of a working-age household earning the same amount. Considered another way, an older household on A$100,000 pays about the same tax as a working-age household on A$50,000.

And these calculations exclude dividend imputation franking credit refunds that largely benefit older Australians. There is simply no policy justification for this degree of age segregation in the system.

We are facing intergenerational theft

One argument that is sometimes advanced to defend age-based tax breaks is that older Australians have “paid their taxes”. But in a generational sense, this argument does not hold water. Younger households today are underwriting the standard of living of older households to a much greater extent than in the past.

People born in the late 1940s, at the beginning of the baby boom generation, reached their peak contribution to the tax system in their early forties – and at that point they were contributing an average of A$3,200 a year to support older generations in retirement. An average 40-year-old today, born at the tail end of Generation X, is paying an inflation-adjusted A$7,300 a year.

That is more than they are contributing to their own retirement through compulsory superannuation.

Under current policy settings, the child of today’s 40-year-old will need to pay around A$11,400 a year by the time he or she reaches 40 just to sustain the current levels of benefits in retirement.

And ever-bigger budget deficits

In an economy that is growing, it can be sustainable for each generation to take out more than it put in, knowing it will be easier for the next one to put money in, but the sheer size of this growth in payments far exceeds that capacity.

That’s why the treasury produces an Intergenerational Report every five years to remind us how ugly business-as-usual looks.

Without policy changes, budget deficits are set to grow ever bigger (even after what will probably be the temporary return to surplus promised in Tuesday’s budget) and net debt will expand to uncomfortable levels.

The unwanted fiscal inheritance will fall on the generation of Australians that have seen its incomes and wealth stagnate – the generation that has missed the property boom and is entering the workforce during a period of flatlining real wages.

So what would a budget that seriously tackles these issues look like?

We could still put things right

First, it would wind back some of the tax concessions for older Australians who can afford to make a contribution. It is simply no longer sustainable for comfortably off older Australians to opt out of taxes for two or three decades they are in retirement. The obvious place to start would be a tax on superannuation earnings, and winding back the seniors and pensioners tax offset.

The politics isn’t easy. The reaction to Labor’s franking credit policy gives a sense of what governments face when trying to wind back these transfers. The public hearings for the inquiry into the franking credits policy sometimes looked more like the frontline in a generational war than a staid government inquiry.

Read more: Words that matter. What’s a franking credit? What’s dividend imputation? And what’s ‘retiree tax’?

Here the contrast with the climate strike is difficult to ignore: while older Australians picket for their franking credits, young people are protesting for their very future.

Second, there would be no decisions that further undermine the structural position of the budget. If there is one lesson to take from the past two decades it is that commodity windfalls come and go. We should not lock in higher recurrent spending, or offer another round of tax cuts, every time revenues surprise on the upside. Nor should we pile uneconomic infrastructure investments off budget. To do so is to further weaken the generational bargain.

What if Tuesday’s budget was a start?

Ahead of tomorrow’s budget I should say that I hope I’m wrong.

I hope this government will use this budget and its election commitments to address our long-term challenges. I hope we can discuss generational fairness without it descending into generational warfare.

I hope none of us would want our legacy to be mortgaging our children’s environment and their economic future.

Danielle Wood presented a longer version of this article as part of the Women In Economics federal budget perspectives event at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday March 27, 2019. Watch the discussion here.

– ref. Expect a budget that breaks the intergenerational bargain, like the one before it, and before that – http://theconversation.com/expect-a-budget-that-breaks-the-intergenerational-bargain-like-the-one-before-it-and-before-that-114508

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Broomhall, Professor of History, University of Western Australia

On the 500th anniversary of his death, this series brings together scholars from different disciplines to re-examine the work, legacy and myth of Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo da Vinci was fascinated by the human body. His disdain for painters who did not bother to learn anatomy was barely concealed in his criticisms of those who “draw their nude figures looking like wood, devoid of grace; so that you would think you were looking at a sack of walnuts rather than the human form”.

Leonardo da Vinci, Anatomical studies of the shoulder, c 1510. Wikiart.org

His bodies envisioned something very different – living mechanics – combining ideas that he explored across many fields of investigation, including animal and human dissections.

In doing so, he anticipated many questions that now preoccupy modern scientists, from the mechanics of the human body to the possibility of a mechanical body for humans.

Leonardo was born the illegitimate son of a notary and a peasant woman. He did not attend a university and had a rather haphazard and informal education. His knowledge of the human body was self-taught and largely experiential.

Leonardo’s notebooks are filled with an explosion of ideas, in treatises, sketches and jottings. One note mentioned the following:

Have Avicenna’s work on useful inventions translated; spectacles with the case, steel and fork and…., charcoal, boards, and paper, and chalk and white, and wax;…. …. for glass, a saw for bones with fine teeth, a chisel, inkstand …….. three herbs, and Agnolo Benedetto. Get a skull, nut,— mustard.

In this jumble of thoughts, we see Leonardo’s interest in the body, one he would explore through dissection. Perhaps his most famous dissection was that of a man who claimed to be over 100 years old, at the Santa Maria Nuova hospital in Florence in 1506.

Leonardo had chatted to this man on the night he passed away: “And this old man told me, a few hours before his death, that he was over a hundred years old and he was conscious of no bodily failure, apart from weakness.” After he had died, Leonardo proceeded to probe the man’s corpse.

Anatomical mechanics

Leonardo’s anatomical drawings show exploded and multiple views, unusual for his time but similar to modern mechanical drawings and descriptive geometry.

Superficial anatomy of the shoulder and neck, recto, c. 1510, Royal Collections, RCIN 919003, Google Art Project. Wikimedia Commons

As he wrote: “If you wish thoroughly to know the parts of man, anatomically, you – or your eye – require to see it from different aspects, considering it from below and from above and from its sides, turning it about and seeking the origin of each member.”

Leonardo was thinking outside the box. His approach connects anatomy to engineering.

His interest in machinery linked to his fascination with motion. His drawings vividly illustrate how components of machines, animals and humans are designed to move, and how motion and forces are transferred from one component to another.

Strong analogies are formed between mechanical and biological parts, such as the role of ropes and cords, and sinews and tendons.

Leonardo da Vinci, Anatomy of a Bear’s Foot, c. 1488-90. Wikiart.org

Leonardo was fascinated by the change of form over time, whether in the processes of nature or the gradual disintegration of the human body. He found the 100 year-old man’s artery, for instance: “to be dry, shrunk and withered.”

Alongside this autopsy, he recorded another dissection: “of a child two years old, in which I found everything the opposite that of the old man”.

A re-construction of Leonardo’s mechanical knight. Photography by Erik Möller, Wikimedia Commons.

Leonardo also had a lifelong interest in depicting decrepitude and the grotesque in human form. In his work, we see the contrast between robust mechanical forms and ageing bodies.

With his designs for various forms of automata – machines that operate alone by following predetermined instructions for movement – some of which witnesses suggest he brought to life, Leonardo moves from the human body, which is subject to weakness and ageing, to the wholly mechanical body.

The mechanical knight, for example, that he sketched in the Forster notebooks appears to have been designed from clockwork and geared mechanisms. It could move its arms, hands and legs, and turn its head.

Leonardo’s interest in automata in a human form and replicating human bodily movement foreshadow ideas present in modern robotics.

Through Leonardo’s exploration of the human body, we see his fascination with engineering, motion, anatomy and ageing, topics that still preoccupy us scientifically today.

– ref. Leonardo da Vinci revisited: how a 15th century artist dissected the human machine – http://theconversation.com/leonardo-da-vinci-revisited-how-a-15th-century-artist-dissected-the-human-machine-112399