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What actually is populism? And why does it have a bad reputation?

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Octavia Bryant, Doctoral Candidate, National School of Arts, Australian Catholic University

No doubt thanks to Donald Trump, Brexit, and a string of anti-establishment leaders and parties in Europe, Latin America and Asia, everyone seems to be talking about populism.

But populism is nothing new. It’s long accompanied democratic politics, and its activity and success has experienced peaks and troughs. Right now we’re in a bit of a heyday for populism, and this is impacting the nature of politics in general. So it’s important we know what it means and how to recognise it.

Even among academics, populism has been difficult to define. This is partly because it has manifested in different ways during different times. While currently its most well-known cases are right-wing parties, leaders and movements, it can also be left-wing.

There’s academic debate on how to categorise the concept: is it an ideology, a style, a discourse, or a strategy? But across these debates, researchers tend to agree populism has two core principles:

  1. it must claim to speak on behalf of ordinary people

  2. these ordinary people must stand in opposition to an elite establishment which stops them from fulfilling their political preferences.

These two core principles are combined in different ways with different populist parties, leaders and movements. For example, left-wing populists’ conceptions of “the people” and “the elite” generally coalesce around socioeconomic grievances, whereas right-wing populists’ conceptions of those groups generally tend to focus on socio-cultural issues such as immigration.

The ambiguity of the terms “the people” and “the elite” mean the core principles of people-centrism and anti-elitism can be used for very different ends.

Read more: Populism’s problems can be fixed by getting the public better-informed. And that’s actually possible

How can appealing to ordinary people be a bad thing?

Populism gets a bad name for a couple of reasons.

First, because many of the most prominent cases of populism have recently appeared on the radical right, it has often been conflated with authoritarianism and anti-immigration ideas. But these features are more to do with the ideology of the radical right than they are to do with populism itself.

Second, populists are disruptive. They position themselves as outsiders who are radically different and separate from the existing order. So they frequently advocate for a change to the status quo and may champion the need for urgent structural change, whether that is economic or cultural. They often do this by promoting a sense of crisis (whether true or not), and presenting themselves as having the solution to the crisis.

The leader of the Podemos party in Spain, who questioned capitalism in the wake of the Great Recession. Kiko Huesca/AAP

A current example of this process is Trump’s southern border wall, where he’s characterised the issue of illegal crossings on the southern border as a national emergency, despite, for example, more terrorist-related border crossings occurring on the northern, Canadian border and by air.

The fact populists often want to transform the status quo, ostensibly in the name of the people, means they can appear threatening to the democratic norms and societal customs many people value.

And the very construction of “the people” plays a large part in populists being perceived as “bad”, because it ostracises portions of society that don’t fit in with this group.

Read more: Perspectives on migrants distorted by politics of prejudice

What are some examples of populist leaders and policies?

The most famous contemporary example of a populist leader is the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and the renewed interest in populism is partly due to his 2016 electoral success. One way researchers measure populism, and consequently determine whether a leader or party is populist, is through measuring language.

Research has found Trump’s rhetoric during the campaign was highly populist. He targeted political elites, drawing on the core populist feature of anti-elitism and frequently used people-centric language, with a strong use of collective pronouns of “our” and “we”.

He combined this populist language with his radical right ideology, putting forward policies such as “America First” foreign policy, his proposed wall between the US and Mexico, and protectionist and anti-globalisation economic policies.

The combination of populism and such policies allowed him to draw a distinction between “the people” and those outside that group (Muslims, Mexicans), emphasising the superiority of the former.

These policies also allow for the critiquing of the elite establishment’s preference for globalisation, free trade and more liberal immigration policies. His use of the “drain the swamp” slogan – where he’s claiming he’ll rid Washington of elites who are out of touch with regular Americans – also reflects this.

Along with Trump, Brexit has also come to exemplify contemporary populism, because of its European Union-centred anti-elitism and the very nature of the referendum acting as an expression of “the people’s” will.

In South America, populism has been most associated with the left. The late Hugo Chavez, former president of Venezuela, was also highly populist in his rhetoric, and is perhaps the most famous example of a left-wing populist leader.

Chavez’s populism was centred around socioeconomic issues. Even while governing, he positioned himself as an anti-establishment politician, channelling the country’s oil revenues into social programs with the aim of distributing wealth among the Venezuelan people, relieving poverty and promoting food security.

Read more: Venezuela is fast becoming a ‘mafia state’: here’s what you need to know

The current Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and the Bolivian president, Evo Morales are also considered left-wing populist leaders.

But left-wing populism is not just confined to South America. In Europe, contemporary examples of left-wing populist parties include the Spanish Podemos and the Greek Syriza. These parties enjoyed success in the aftermath of the Great Recession. They questioned the legitimacy of unregulated capitalism and advocated structural economic changes to alleviate the consequences of the recession on their people.

It doesn’t look like populism is going anywhere. So it’s important to know how to recognise it, and to understand how its presence can shape our democracies, for better or worse.

– ref. What actually is populism? And why does it have a bad reputation? – http://theconversation.com/what-actually-is-populism-and-why-does-it-have-a-bad-reputation-109874

Whose hearts, livers and lungs are transplanted in China? Origins must be clear in human organ research

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wendy Rogers, Professor in Clinical Ethics, Macquarie University

Scientist He Jiankui’s claimed use of the genetic tool CRISPR to edit the genomes of twin girls led to international condemnation. His actions have focused a spotlight on research ethics – and what the consequences should be when scientists “go rogue”.

The Chinese Academy of Science initially looked into He’s conduct, and a subsequent internal government investigation has allegedly identified multiple violations of state laws. He has now been fired by his university.

Read more: Tension as scientist at centre of CRISPR outrage speaks at genome editing summit

But beyond just this example, what does happen when scientists fail to comply with globally-accepted guidelines for ethical medical research? We examined this issue focusing on published research involving recipients of organ transplants performed in the People’s Republic of China.

International professional standards ban publication of research that:

  1. involves any biological material from executed prisoners
  2. lacks human research ethics committee approval
  3. lacks consent of donors.

But as described in our new paper, we found that research which does not comply with these standards is regularly accepted for publication in international peer-reviewed journals.

Human organ transplants in China

Using a scoping review methodology, we examined 445 studies published in peer reviewed English language journals between January 2000 and April 2017. The papers reported research involving recipients of human organ transplants (limited to hearts, livers or lungs) taking place in China. The data included 85,477 transplants.

We found that 92.5% of the publications failed to state whether or not the transplanted organs were obtained from executed prisoners. Nearly all of them (99%) failed to report whether organ donors gave consent. In contrast, 73% of papers reported approval from an institutional ethics committee for the research reported in the paper.

Widespread ethical concerns over the inability of condemned prisoners to give informed consent for organ donation are exacerbated in the People’s Republic of China. Here, the judicial and police system lacks safeguards against procedural abuses. Faulty convictions are extensively documented and extremely difficult to redress.

In addition, a growing body of credible evidence suggests that organ harvesting is not limited to condemned prisoners, but also includes prisoners of conscience. It is possible therefore — though not verifiable in any particular case — that peer reviewed publications may contain data obtained from prisoners of conscience killed for the purpose of organ acquisition.

Read more: Real Bodies controversy: how Australian museums regulate the display of human remains

Who is responsible for ensuring that data based on research involving organs harvested from non-consenting prisoners is banned from publication? We argue in our paper that reviewers and journal editors have a role to play.

Where do the organs come from?

In 19 papers involving 2,688 organs transplanted prior to 2010, the source of organs was reported as voluntary donors. But as widely known in the transplantation community, there was no volunteer deceased organ donor program in China before a pilot started in 2010. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that organs may have been sourced from prisoners, making claims about volunteer donation unreliable.

The two journals that published the greatest number of Chinese transplant papers identified in our study are Transplantation Proceedings, with 65 of the total 445 papers, and PLOS ONE, with 20. Other journals with papers identified by this study include the American Journal of Transplantation, and Transplantation (the official journal of the peak international body, The Transplantation Society). These journals both have policies that explicitly prohibit the publication of research based on organ transplants from non-consenting and/or prisoner donors.

We argue that, if they are not already doing so, reviewers and medical journals should demand information about the source of organs in Chinese transplant research before these are published for the broader public and scientific communities. If they are demanding such information, the responses to those demands should be published. And if they are not satisfied with the responses, they should refuse to publish the research.

When a paper is published without identifying the source of the transplanted organs, it risks sending the message that ethical standards may be ignored or breached. This undermines the incentive to comply with these standards in the future.

Read more: Here’s what Australia can do to help end the Chinese organ trade

We’re all responsible

Our findings raise important and disturbing questions about ethical oversight on the part of all of those involved in the process of reviewing and publishing transplantation research.

In response, we propose large-scale retractions of the papers identified by our research that are not consistent with international standards regarding organ donation.

We also propose a moratorium on all clinical transplant publications from China pending an international summit. The summit of transplantation community members and other stakeholders could develop appropriate policies and processes for handling future research.

Our hopes for these retractions are, however, not high. As one of us (Rogers) found, securing a retraction can be a prolonged process even where there is evidence of overt falsehood in the paper.

An article retracted due to concerns about the source of organs used for donation. Screen shot captured on Dec 12 2018.

Journals are reluctant to retract articles, and even retracted articles continue to be widely cited.

Nevertheless, there is growing interest in trying to uphold the integrity of published research, as well as initiatives to demand the publication of all clinical trial data. These initiatives offer some hope that breaches such as the ones we discovered will become less common.

As for the authors involved in retracted or ethically non-compliant research, there is little information about the impact on their careers. Being the author on a paper that is retracted may lead to a ban by the journal, trigger an institutional investigation, or have no effect.

Academic misconduct investigations by universities are rarely reported in the public domain. Apart from high profile cases like that of He, the nature and extent of the consequences for researchers who breach ethical standards is largely unknown.

– ref. Whose hearts, livers and lungs are transplanted in China? Origins must be clear in human organ research – http://theconversation.com/whose-hearts-livers-and-lungs-are-transplanted-in-china-origins-must-be-clear-in-human-organ-research-108077

Explainer: the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sandra Morrison, Associate Professor, Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Studies, University of Waikato

The Treaty of Waitangi is New Zealand’s foundation document. On February 6, 1840, the treaty was signed by representatives of the British Crown and Māori chiefs who acted on behalf of their hapū (sub-tribes).

Māori are indigenous to New Zealand, with historical ties and common narratives extending to Polynesia. The signing of the treaty confirmed formal European settlement in New Zealand. But debate and confusion have continued ever since regarding the exact meaning of the treaty text.

Read more: New Zealand’s indigenous reconciliation efforts show having a treaty isn’t enough

Nuance in translation

The debate stems from the fact that the parties involved in its signing, namely the rangatira (chiefs) and New Zealand’s first governor William Hobson on behalf of the British Crown, had different understandings and expectations as to what they had signed and what authority they would exercise.

There are two accepted versions of the Treaty of Waitangi: a Māori text known as Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the English version hereon called the Treaty of Waitangi. Under law both are accepted as the Treaty of Waitangi, but they are significantly different in meaning.

Te Tiriti speaks of the chiefs maintaining their tino rangatiratanga (authority) over their taonga (all that they hold precious, including the Māori language). The chiefs allow the Queen to have kāwanatanga, a nominal and delegated authority so that she can control her people. On the other hand, the treaty in English tells us that the chiefs ceded their sovereignty to the crown while retaining full, exclusive and undisturbed possession over their lands, estates, forests and fisheries.

A matter of interpretation

Given that at the time of the signing, the dominant language was Te Reo Māori and the majority of the discussions would have been conducted orally, the Māori text of Te Tiriti reflects the intentions of the chiefs. It is a critical reference point in informing our understandings, reinforced by the international convention of contra proferentem in relation to treaty making. This rule in contract law states that any clause considered to be ambiguous should be interpreted against the interests of the party that requested the clause to be included.

Claudia Orange, generally considered the most authoritative Pākehā (non-Māori) historian on the treaty, states:

The treaty was presented in a manner calculated to secure Māori agreement. The transfer of power to the Crown was thus played down.

Bear in mind also that the Declaration of Independence, the forerunner to Te Tiriti/Treaty, signed in 1835, had affirmed the authority chiefs already had. This meant they held mana and rangatiratanga (all power and sovereign authority). This system of political authority had been in place for many centuries.

Legal status of the treaty

Fast forward to 2019 and what has been happening in the landscape of treaty jurisdiction. During and after the cumulative impact of introduced legislation and policies which led to systemic colonisation, consistent and unwavering Māori protests at violations of both treaties eventually led to the introduction of the 1975 Treaty of Waitangi Act and its 1985 amendment.

This gave us the Waitangi Tribunal, which allows for a process to hear claims about breaches of the treaty, typically the taking of land and resources from Māori. The tribunal found in 2014 that Maori did not cede their sovereignty in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It also introduced a set of principles which embodied the intention of both treaties in an attempt to mediate the differences in the two versions.

A series of judgements and mandates by the courts and the Waitangi Tribunal also ruled that the Crown has the right to govern (kāwanatanga), subject to the protection of Māori interests (rangatiratanga). This position is not accepted by many Māori who will continue to advocate for the supremacy of rangatiratanga over kāwanatanga.

In his book about the treaty’s place in New Zealand law and constitution, Mathew Palmer notes:

The Waitangi Tribunal developed the core of an interpretation of the meaning of the treaty that could and should be applied in contemporary New Zealand. This was a forward-looking constructive approach to enhancing relationships between the Crown and Māori.

A long-standing education campaign about the Treaty of Waitangi has also helped non-indigenous New Zealanders to appreciate the significance of the treaty relationship.

Treaty settlements

Most discussions on the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi generally include the following:

  • duty to act in good faith, reasonably and/or honourably
  • principle of partnership
  • principle of protection or active protection.

New Zealand’s constitution demands that robust public policy gives expression to the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. This has led to the redesign of Crown agencies which must now be culturally responsive to the aspirations of Māori and actively innovate solutions to reduce the glaring social disparities where Māori are disproportionately represented.

The Waitangi Tribunal has heard and settled 54 treaty claims since 1989, including financial redress of more than NZ$1.5 billion. The first settlement, in respect of the Waitomo Caves, involved the transfer of land and a loan. Settlements since then have included several elements of redress: a formal apology by the crown, financial and cultural redress, the transfer of or the option to purchase significant properties, and restoration of traditional geographical names.

Since the identity of hapū is rooted in their physical and spiritual relationship with the environment over hundreds of years, these forms of cultural redress acknowledge the tribe as the rightful guardians and their deep association with place. The process seeks to restore the sacred relationships compromised by colonisation.

The treaty settlement process has been the catalyst for significant economic growth for iwi (tribe) controlled assets and Māori enterprise. This naturally brings positive development to the New Zealand economy, encouraging iwi and Māori to continue to progress their advancement not only economically but socially, culturally and environmentally.

– ref. Explainer: the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi – http://theconversation.com/explainer-the-significance-of-the-treaty-of-waitangi-110982

Considering using IVF to have a baby? Here’s what you need to know

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Brown, Chief Science Storyteller, South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute

If it’s not you, perhaps it’s someone you know. You don’t look infertile, you don’t feel infertile, but after many months (or years) of trying to start a family, followed by several months of monitoring your cycle in a fertility clinic, it’s time to discuss IVF.

This is a big decision. It will impact your time, your finances, your emotions, your relationships and your dreams of being a parent.

Despite the language of “falling pregnant”, inferring absolute simplicity, infertility is a reality for one in six Australian couples.

Read more: Women’s fertility: does ‘egg timer’ testing work, and what are the other options?

Infertility isn’t picky, but it is ageist!

A woman’s age is the single best predictor of IVF success. This is because a woman is born with all the eggs she will ever have, somewhere between one and four million. Our eggs are slowly tricking out of the ovary in a steady stream, until at menopause there are no eggs left.

Despite the fact that almost 400 eggs will begin to grow each month from puberty to menopause, only one egg will survive each month, bursting out of the ovary at ovulation ready to be fertilised.

Sperm are an equally critical component of both IVF and natural fertility.

Despite the myth that male fertility is not impacted by age, a growing body of evidence shows men’s age – and lifestyle factors such as excess weight, smoking and heavy drinking – affect fertility.

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) has been developed so fertilisation in the lab can still be successful even if only one good quality sperm is available.

Read more: Most men don’t realise age is a factor in their fertility too

What is the process and how will I feel?

IVF artificially increases the number of mature eggs ready for fertilisation. Your treatment very much depends on what your infertility diagnosis is, but for most couples undergoing IVF, the process will look a bit like this.

Step 1: ovarian stimulation

The hormone which makes eggs grow (FSH or follicle stimulating hormone) is given by very tiny, self-given injections just under the skin, in high but tailored doses. This creates a hormone tsunami, giving many eggs a chance to ride this wave.

Women self-administer the hormone injections. vchal/Shutterstock

Using IVF, we can safely increase the number of eggs the woman produces in a cycle without risking of multiple births. We take the eggs out of the body, in a process known as egg harvest or oocyte pickup, or OPU. Leaving the eggs in the body for fertilisation incurs an unacceptable risk of having twins, triplets, or more.

These hormones can have some side effects, which are usually mild, and may include tenderness at the injection site, hot flashes, blurred vision, nausea, headache, irritability and restlessness. Your doctor will outline them, and tell you what to monitor.

Step 2: egg harvest (oocyte pickup)

When the eggs are mature (generally up to 18 mm in size) and your estrogen levels are consistent with the egg numbers and size we need, we plan an egg harvest.

A trigger injection is given to finalise egg growth and development, and approximately 36 hours later, we perform the surgical procedure to collect them, ready to put them together with the sperm for in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

This procedure is more like a blood test than open surgery and in many units this procedure is done with pain relief while the female partner is awake. Other units use a light sedative anaesthetic, while they insert a narrow needle and camera (ultrasound) through the vagina to collect the eggs for IVF.

Step 3: in vitro fertilisation (IVF)

Over the next few hours, the embryologists will wash all the viable eggs and prepare them for fertilisation. They are then placed in a dish with thousands of sperm, which were collected previously and frozen, or collected on the same day from your partner.

ICSI looks something like this. Apl56/Shutterstock

Or, if you’re using intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), the embryologists directly inject one sperm into the cytoplasm of each egg.

Step 4: embryo culture

The day after IVF, the embryologist or nurse will phone you to tell you how many eggs were fertilised.

For the next few days, your embryos will live in a dish, in an oven heated to body temperature. Staff will monitor their growth and development and will eventually pick the right one for transfer back into the womb.

The embryo is gently transferred back into the womb on day five or six, in a process similar to that of a pap test. If you have many healthy embryos at this stage, they can be frozen for use later.

Now you wait

About a week-and-a-half to two weeks after your embryo was transferred, we can test to see if it’s attached to the womb. A simple blood test, or even home pregnancy test, will detect levels of human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG), a sign that you are finally pregnant.

There’s so much waiting when you go through IVF. Rawpixel/Shutterstock

For some, the test will be negative. If they have frozen embryos, they can try again without needing to take more injections and have a surgical procedure.

Others will receive a diagnosis after learning something about their eggs, sperm and embryos, which can help the IVF team adjust the cycle plan and improve the couple’s outcomes in future cycles.

For some, it was the last time they were going to try IVF, or fertilisation didn’t occur, or an embryo transfer could not be done. Disappointment, frustration and grief becomes part of the experience and couples may need support and counselling.

For many, a positive pregnancy test is the outcome. But there is still more waiting; after all, you are still 38 weeks away from delivery. A small number of pregnancies miscarry or are lost so support in early pregnancy and good obstetric care is vital.

How much does it cost?

The cost of IVF is hugely variable, and is dependent on your level of private health cover. The out of pocket costs, even with the highest level of cover may reach A$9,000 for the first cycle. And each test and process will change the price.

Sit down with your specialist and ask “can you talk me through all of the costs associated with this round of treatment?” and have them break it down.

Read more: Women now have clearer statistics on whether IVF is likely to work

How do you find the right clinic?

There is a big difference in the quality of fertility care you can receive across Australia, with some clinics having dramatically higher success rates than others.

But keep in mind some clinics may not show all the data. They may quote the pregnancy rates for “every started IVF cycle” or for “every embryo transfer”, meaning the cycles where there is no embryo to transfer are excluded – thus making the rates look unrealistically good.

Many factors affect a couple’s success rate. Tina Bo

Despite the desire to shop for price, asking the clinic specifically about your chance of taking home a healthy baby in their clinic, and finding a health care provider you feel comfortable with is key.

Read more: Five traps to be aware of when reading success rates on IVF clinic websites

Your personal success may not be equal across two clinics, and you may save yourself money by finding a clinician and clinic with high success rates, and with a specialist who specialises in your condition, whether it’s polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), endometriosis, or something else.

Never be afraid to ask as many questions as you have, and to ask for clarity when you don’t understand. Undertaking IVF is a big step.

– ref. Considering using IVF to have a baby? Here’s what you need to know – http://theconversation.com/considering-using-ivf-to-have-a-baby-heres-what-you-need-to-know-108910

Adapting to secondary school: why the physical environment is important too

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon Hyndman, Senior Lecturer and Course Director of Postgraduate Studies in Education, Charles Sturt University

School is back, so students new to secondary school will be beginning to adapt to their new school environments. This adaption commonly involves suddenly having multiple classes with different teachers and locations, many more students, different peer groups, becoming the youngest again and even managing a timetable.

For most commencing, their biggest concern is finding new friends and feeling a sense of social belonging. Yet, the majority are emotionally and socially settled much quicker and better than expected.

Read more: How much physical activity should teenagers do, and how can they get enough?

Another challenge for students entering secondary schools is the physical environment. This can influence students’ health behaviours. Students spend more time sitting or standing in secondary school, and less time being active because they have reduced access to spaces that support physical activity.

Primary and secondary school environments

Australian research found the change from primary into secondary schooling can make students less active and more sedentary, compared to a primary-secondary combined setting.

In Australian secondary schools, there are often high proportions of seats, lounges, empty spaces and picnic tables. In comparison, primary schools have wide varieties of facilities for students to use, such as climbing frames and surface markings.

Secondary school environments are less conducive to physical activity than primary schools. from www.shutterstock.com

A large review of multiple types of studies revealed links between providing high quality, well maintained facilities in secondary schools and meeting students’ physical activity needs. For example, it was important to be able to access and play soccer on a field, rather than in a confined space.

An outdoor audit of Australian secondary schools found many have low maintenance, litter or graffiti, few coloured markings/murals or vegetable gardens and spaces not suitable for informal games. Other concerns include areas for smoking, poor facilities to get changed in, little bike storage and not enough space.

What do secondary school students need?

In primary school, students develop fundamental skills, like catching or kicking a ball. In secondary school, students seek facilities with more adventure-type focuses (such as climbing walls or rope swings/courses) and advanced opportunities to test their physical skills (such as gymnastics, skating, sporting and fitness facilities).

But funding for these facilities can be limited. Secondary school students have also suggested walking programs and regular community excursions to places such as swimming pools or baseball fields.

Many suggestions from secondary school students for facilities are very different to their existing school places. Some simply hang around canteens and locker bays.

If you ask secondary school students, they want access to more adventurous types of exercise. from www.shutterstock.com

Why is this important?

Students are often presented with more opportunities to sit and stand around in secondary schools than in primary schools. This can have an impact on students’ physical health.

International and national reports point to many increased physical health risks when students enter secondary school. Sedentary behaviour can increase in secondary school. More students exceed daily sedentary behaviour screen time guidelines (just two hours for recreation/entertainment) and use more electronic devices.

Secondary school-aged students are also less likely to meet national physical activity recommendations. It’s recommended they complete at least one hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day (activity that makes you puff or develop a light sweat). The recommendations are important to maintain good health, develop movement habits and prevent lifestyle diseases (such as type two diabetes).

Additionally, there are fewer secondary school-aged students participating in non-organised (such as kicking a soccer ball around with friends) and organised (such as team sports) physical activity and sport after primary school.

Fewer students play team sports in secondary school. from www.shutterstock.com

School physical activity participation typically peaks at the end of primary schooling and declines as people age. The primary to secondary transition is a crucial period for maintaining physical activity as a lifelong healthy habit.

What can we do to support new secondary school students?

  1. Consult students on their interests and needs prior to and during the transition into secondary school. What will engage and challenge them? If facilities or programs are unavailable, various excursions to community recreation facilities can help.

  2. Make the amount and variety of physical activities, and the maintenance and access to physical activity facilities a priority. Activity programs can be promoted both within and outside the curriculum. For example, schools can encourage active transport (travelling to/from school by walking or cycling), organised sport, scheduled classes, active lesson breaks or recess periods and before/after school.

  3. Reduce the amount of sitting time in secondary schools to prevent sedentary behaviour, including in the classroom. Encouraging social interaction does not have to involve sitting down.

  4. During unavoidable and prolonged periods of electronics use, provide short breaks for a few minutes with movement tasks, such as moving to music.

  5. Consider multiple strategies that address mental, social and policy factors within physical environments for students. These could help them connect socially (team/group work, involving family or role modelling), mentally (solving problems and goal setting for motivation), academically (connecting to subject areas and reframing negative attitudes) and spiritually (giving them time to reflect) that can be replicated in the community.

  6. Staff need professional development to learn about, accommodate and deliver holistic health approaches in schools and provide inclusive physical activity and sporting settings.

  7. Provide physical activity opportunities that strengthen muscles and bone, such as with resistance bands and providing ideas for bodyweight exercises. This can develop muscles, fitness, prevent injury and meet additional activity guidelines.

Secondary school environments are complex spaces, so we must consider the physical environment to develop adolescent health during the transition from primary schooling.

Read more: How physical activity in Australian schools can help prevent depression in young people

– ref. Adapting to secondary school: why the physical environment is important too – http://theconversation.com/adapting-to-secondary-school-why-the-physical-environment-is-important-too-110894

Is social housing essential infrastructure? How we think about it does matter

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathleen Flanagan, Research Fellow & Deputy Director, HACRU, University of Tasmania

We know that safe, adequate, affordable and appropriate housing is essential for our health, well-being and social and economic security. However, even as house prices subside from recent record highs, many Australians struggle to obtain the housing they need to be as healthy, well and secure as they could be. An unacceptable number of Australians have no home at all.

How Australian governments meet such housing challenges has changed over time. Decades ago, direct investment in publicly owned housing was the core of their response. In the 1950s, state housing authorities built more than 100,000 dwellings — one in eight of all new homesat the time.

Over time, however, social housing has been recast as a welfare service. Political support has dwindled. Social housing is starved of funds, stigmatised and residualised.

Read more: Australia needs to reboot affordable housing funding, not scrap it

Could changing how we think about social housing serve as a starting point for a renaissance? Policy advocates like the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) argue that social housing is actually a form of essential infrastructure. This is because it supports economic productivity and a range of other non-shelter outcomes.

Our research has examined whether changing how we think about social housing to see it as infrastructure might provide a pathway to increased investment.

What’s the evidence for this approach?

Conceptually, we found a link between social housing and infrastructure: both operate as forms of spatially fixed, durable capital that enable economies and societies to work better. Governments need to be involved in providing infrastructure to realise its full benefits — because of the scale of investment needed and because effects are spread across the community. In the same way, realising all the benefits of social housing requires government involvement.

When we look at history, there is compelling evidence for this. For example, during Australia’s post-war public housing construction boom, governments recognised their investment as necessary to enhance economic productivity, improve public health, and support families to thrive.

Across [Europe], especially in Finland, Austria and Scotland, we see social housing investment today undertaken in support of energy sustainability, economic stability, and social cohesion.

A small-scale project in Horsham, Victoria, is a rare Australian example of social housing investment in support of energy sustainability. Trivess Moore/RMIT University

Read more: Sustainable housing’s expensive, right? Not when you look at the whole equation

However, if social housing is to be considered as infrastructure, then proponents need to be more conversant with the practices and policies that sustain infrastructure investment. This includes developing credible, costed arguments to demonstrate the benefits of social housing relative to its cost. This isn’t easy — much that is relevant to the purpose of social housing and the people who live in it cannot be quantified or monetised.

Public infrastructure and private finance

An even more fundamental challenge arises from prevailing ideas about how infrastructure should be financed and funded.

In infrastructure-speak, “financing” is the provision of money to build and maintain an infrastructure asset, and “funding” is the means of paying the costs of finance. Even as governments pay more attention to infrastructure policy, the prevailing view is that it should be privately financed by institutional investors like banks or super funds. The role of governments, according to this view, should be limited to funding investments where user charges won’t deliver enough return to the investor.

Read more: Making sense of the global infrastructure turn

This prevailing view comes from a deep-seated belief within Australian governments and the wider community that governments are always fiscally constrained and that the mark of a “good” government is a budget surplus.

These are not just surface beliefs — the norms and practices associated with them are embedded in the way bureaucracies and governments prepare and manage their budgets.

When there is not enough government money to go around, even with a rigorous, costed business case establishing beyond doubt the value of investment in social housing, it might not be recognised as high enough priority for any meaningful level of funding to result.

To change this belief, we need to do more than make a case for social housing as infrastructure. We need to make the case for social housing.

A vision for social housing

To make the case, we must confront the politics of housing. The prevailing narratives have benefited powerful interest groups and produced mounting debt and inequality.

Read more: Housing policy is captive to property politics, so don’t expect politicians to tackle affordability

But we can draw on the historical precedents of policies that created public wealth through public investment in rental housing and expanded opportunities for ownership. We need to make the case for government to take a stronger, more direct role in infrastructure investment by embracing its role as a patient investor and a deliberate co-creator and shaper of markets for specified public purposes.

Direct public investment is also the cheapest, most effective way to generate affordable housing supply that meets community needs and delivers vital economic and social benefits.

Engaging with this vision, and what it implies about the role of government in Australia today, offers us the chance to think differently enough about social housing to make not properly investing in it unthinkable.

Read more: Australia needs to triple its social housing by 2036. This is the best way to do it

AHURI is presenting the inaugural Discussion Series event, “Is social housing infrastructure?”, at the State Library Victoria, Melbourne, on Monday, February 11 2019. A second event examining the same research topic will be held in Brisbane in March. More details are available here.

– ref. Is social housing essential infrastructure? How we think about it does matter – http://theconversation.com/is-social-housing-essential-infrastructure-how-we-think-about-it-does-matter-110777

Banking Royal Commission: How Hayne failed remote Australia

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathon Louth, Research Fellow, The Australian Alliance for Social Enterprise, University of South Australia

It’s been an enormous year for the financial services industry.

First there was a Productivity Commission report calling for major changes to superannuation, then a Senate inquiry into financial services targeted at Australians at risk of hardship, and now the final report of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry.

And it’s only February.

Yet all three investigations either missed something big or failed to take it sufficiently seriously.

It’s the plight of Australians in remote Indigenous communities.

As if to inoculate himself against such criticism, Commissioner Kenneth Hayne made it clear in his preface that it would have been impossible to hear every case and that inevitably there would be disappointment.

As a consequence, the (relatively privileged) voices that were heard didn’t properly reflect the hardships, vulnerabilities and lives of those far away from the centres of finance, yet increasingly dependent on them as their lives become ever more financialised.

Automatic teller machines

Take the simplest example: ATM fees.

There is not always an understanding within remote Indigenous communities – whether because of language or financial literacy skills – that ATMs attract a A$2.50 fee every time they are used, including to check balances. This often isn’t the case in cities where ATMS are operated by banks.

But in remote locations with only one or two ATMs, they are usually third-party operations, run for profit. It is not uncommon for people waiting for funds to appear in their accounts to check multiple times, draining the account until they find something there.

The only government access point and only phone and only internet service in Urapunga, Northern Territory. J. Louth

While the main report makes generic reference to ATM fees, it is only in the appendices where the question is touched upon.

The Bankers Association is well aware of it.

It conducted a limited two-year trial of free ATMs that concluded at the end of 2017, and was then extended.

It raises a telling question: if there was a recognisable problem and a recognisable solution, why extend the limited trial instead of making it universal?

It is a question about which the Royal Commission was silent.

Superanuation

And then there is super. The Productivity Commission’s earlier 722-page report on super (widely cited in the royal commission report) only twice makes explicit reference to issues faced by Aboriginal people.

This for a product where preservation age for a male is 60 years, yet the average life expectancy for an Indigenous male in the Northern Territory is 63.6.

While it raised the idea of a lower preservation age or releasing superannuation early for medical and associated expenses, the idea was relegated to the appendices.

Yet superannuation is a vital lifeline in remote communities. One Elder in the Northern Territory community of Wadeye made it clear to me that she uses access to super to get their children out of “town”, onto their country and away from social problems.

While the Productivity Commission does note the need to universalise access to hardship payments, it does not acknowledge that the capped amount of A$10,000 is taxed at up to 22%.

Portion control

To Commissioner Hayne’s credit, he urges consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders about making death benefit nominations reflect kinship ties.

It’s an excellent idea – one that would have carried more weight had he made it a formal recommendation.

His recommendations 4.1 and 4.2 are are as bold as they come, calling for a ban on the hawking of insurance policies and for funeral expense policies to be subject to the same rules as insurance policies.

Final Report, Royal Commission into the Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, Vol. 1.

There’s nothing wrong with these recommendations, but they only deal with a small portion of the range of financial abuses that take place in remote communities or when community members visit larger towns and cities.

They include payday lenders offering multiple loans, telephone companies who sell phones they know have no coverage in remote communities, high-interest credit and motor vehicle insurance contracts, charity collectors who sign up community members for monthly donations (taking advantage of cultural notions of reciprocity), expensive furniture and appliance rentals, rent-to-buy schemes and, now, pay later schemes.

Indeed, while I was conducting an interview with an Elder in Wurrumiyanga in the Tiwi Islands, the Elder asked about the text message he received while we were speaking. It was from a payday lender offering immediate access to funds.

Read more: Banking Royal Commission: no commissions, no exemptions, no fees without permission. Hayne gets the government to do a U-turn

The Senate inquiry is examining some of these exploitative and predatory practices, but the royal commission’s terms of reference appeared to exclude consideration of them.

In the Northern Territory, where 25% of the population identifies as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, they are not so easily excluded.

My research in the NT suggests that financialisation reinforces the systemic disadvantage introduced by white settlement and transmits it across generations.

Any effort to improve financial well-being in remote communities has to take into account the ways in which an imposed economic system has torn at the heart of the one it replaced.

Many of us seem unwilling to accept that an economic world existed prior to European settlement, that (international) trade routes and agriculture were sustained for millennia.

Working through this isn’t simple. It requires spending time with and listening to remote Indigenous communities. Yet as one Elder out past Timber Creek put it:

Government don’t ask, they just tell us. They don’t like to talk to Aboriginal people about what needs to happen, what needs to be done.

This brings us to recommendation 1.8:

Final Report, Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, Vol. 1.

The need to “identify a suitable way for those customers to access and undertake their banking” is vague, but important.

It ought to mean that the financial sector works with communities to develop its cultural competencies. It ought to mean exploring community and cultural literacies and embracing community knowledge.

It ought to mean having financial counsellors – who are Indigenous – trained in and able spending time on communities.

It will need commitment and ongoing funding from both industry and government.

But it’s more of a thought bubble than a worked-through proposal. At best, it’s a start.

The Conversation

– ref. Banking Royal Commission: How Hayne failed remote Australia – http://theconversation.com/banking-royal-commission-how-hayne-failed-remote-australia-111100

How public ineptitude and private enterprise combined to give Venezuela hyperinflation

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Carmody, Academic Specialist, Latin America, University of Melbourne

Imagine going to the store and finding that nothing has a price tag on it. Instead you take it to the cashier and they calculate the price. What you pay could be twice as much, or more, than an hour earlier. That’s if there is even anything left in stock.

This is the economic reality that underpins Venezuela’s current “political crisis” – though in truth that crisis has been going on for years.

The government headed by Nicolás Maduro, who has presided over Venezuela since 2013, declared a state of emergency in 2016. That year the inflation rate hit 800%. Things have since gone from bad to worse.

By 2018 inflation was an estimated 80,000%. It’s difficult to say what the rate is now, but Bloomberg’s Venezuelan Cafe Con Leche Index, based on the price of a cup of coffee, suggests it is now about 380,000%.

About 3 million Venezuelans – a tenth of the population – have fled the country. This is the largest human displacement in Latin American history, driven by shortages of everything including food as well as the Maduro regime’s oppressive treatment of dissent.

Read more: Venezuela is fast becoming a ‘mafia state’: here’s what you need to know

No wonder, then, that Maduro, who has just begun his second term as president, is now under considerable domestic and international pressure to call new elections.

So how did things get so bad? How did inflation become hyperinflation in Venezuela? And how do Venezuelans deal with it?

Venezuelans living in Santiago, Chile, protest against the regime of of Nicolás Maduro on February 2. A huge diaspora of Venezuelans is now spread throughout Latin America. Alberto Valdes/EPA

The cost of goods and the value of currency

What we pay for goods and services reflects not only their cost of production but also of the value of the currency we buy them in. If that currency loses value against the currency the goods are sold in, the price of those goods goes up.

By 2014 the value of Venezuela’s currency, the bolívar, and the prosperity of the Venezuelan economy, was highly dependent on oil exports. More than 90% of the country’s export earnings came from oil.

These export earnings had enabled the government headed by Hugo Chavez from 1999 to 2013 to pay for social programs intended to combat poverty and inequality. From subsidies for those on low incomes to health services, the government’s spending obligations were high.

Then the global price of oil dropped. Foreign demand for the bolívar to buy Venezuelan oil crashed. As the currency’s value fell, the cost of imported goods rose. The Venezuelan economy went into crisis.

The solution of Venezuela’s new president Nicolas Maduro, who succeeded Chavez in March 2013, was to print more money.

The sign in a store in Cucuta, the Colombian-Venezuelan border, reads: ‘We do not accept bolívares, only Pesos. Schenyder Mendoza/EPA

That might seem silly, but it can keep the economy moving while it gets over a hump caused by a short-term price shock.

The Venezuelan crisis, however, just got worse as the oil price continued to fall, compounded by other factors that reduced Venezuelan oil output. International investors began looking elsewhere, driving the value of the bolívar even lower.

Read more: Curious Kids: why don’t poorer countries just print more money?

In these conditions, printing more money simply made the problem worse. It added to the supply of currency, pushing the value down even further. As prices rose, the government printed more money to pay its bills. This cycle is what causes hyperinflation.

Playing the currency market

Circumstances like these quickly make saving money in the local currency nonsensical. To protect themselves, Venezuelans started to convert their savings into a more stable currency, like the US dollar. This lowered the value of the bolívar even further.

The government responded by issuing currency controls. It set a fixed exchange rate, to stop the official value of the bolívar dropping against the US dollar, and made it difficult to actually get permission to exchange bolívares into US dollars. The idea was to stabilise the currency by effectively shutting down all currency transactions.

US dollars were still available on the black market, however. This meant going to any number of operators on the streets of downtown Caracas or asking some friend or to hook you up. As the crisis deepened, more and more Venezuelans looked to switch their bolívares into US dollars.

By mid-2018 the official foreign exchange rate was about 250,000 bolívares to one US dollar. shutterstock

This increasing demand meant the black market price for greenbacks rose, creating a difference between the official exchange rate (set by the government) and the unofficial going rate.

With this came new opportunities. In 2014 reports emerged that groups of middle-aged women were crossing the border to use ATMs in Colombia. They could withdraw funds from their Venezuelan accounts as US dollars at the official rate. They could then cross back into Venezuela and exchange the dollars for bolívares at the unofficial rate, making a tidy profit. Government officials able to exchange bolívares for US dollars within Venezuela had their own version of this practice.

This pushed the price of US dollars up, and that of bolívars down, even more. As the crisis deepened increasing numbers of ordinary Venezuelans began to engage in the unofficial currency market.

Sometimes this took the form of taking subsidised Venezuelan goods like food across the border to sell. This earned the sellers foreign currency, but it also exacerbated shortages of goods within the country, driving prices up even further.

This does not mean Venezuela’s currency crisis is the fault of ordinary Venezuelans. Illegal economic activity is largely a coping mechanism, a bellwether of the actual economy’s ability to provide for people. When a government fails its responsibilities, it should be no surprise that people protect themselves through unofficial currency trading. This is exactly what big international investors do all the time, albeit through more official channels.

A street kid uses now worthless currency to make handicrafts to sell in the streets of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. The currency was changed from the ‘Bolívares Fuertes’ to the ‘Bolívares Soberanos’ in August 2018. Miguel Gutierrez/EPA

Cannot be trusted

By August 2018 the Venezuelan currency was worth so little that it was more prudent to use cash for toilet paper rather than buy toilet paper.

The government tried to get on top of this situation by issuing a currency devaluation. Maduro devalued the bolívar by 95%, the largest currency devaluation in contemporary world history. He also tied the new currency to the price of oil, an economic experiment designed to show the Venezuelan economy had solid foundations.

By bringing the bolívar’s value into line with the reality of what people actually thought it was worth, and showing it was backed by something valuable, oil, Maduro’s government hoped Venezuelans would believe in their own currency and not exchange it for dollars. This would help stabilise the economy overall.

But within weeks of the devaluation it was clear ordinary Venezuelans had not been convinced.

They had no reason to be, given the government was not addressing other issues, such as policies contributing to low productivity across the economy. The government’s increasing authoritarianism, including interfering with the constitution and elections, also signalled it was not to be trusted.

Read more: Is authoritarianism bad for the economy? Ask Venezuela – or Hungary or Turkey

Hyperinflation is a very difficult hole out of which to climb. Very few economies ever experience it, and it’s hard to stop it without massively cutting government spending.

It is easy, then, to see why millions of Venezuelans responded by dealing in the black market or taking their savings, and themselves, out the country altogether.

As the political crisis in the country deepens, Venezuelans will have to continue to seek ways to allow them to survive the storm any way they can.

– ref. How public ineptitude and private enterprise combined to give Venezuela hyperinflation – http://theconversation.com/how-public-ineptitude-and-private-enterprise-combined-to-give-venezuela-hyperinflation-102483

Feminist hero Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been stifled by a new patriarchal construct: the cinema

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alicia Byrnes, PhD Candidate and Sessional Tutor, Screen and Cultural Studies, University of Melbourne

On the morning I went to see Mimi Leder’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic, On the Basis of Sex, Fox News accidentally aired a graphic reporting Ginsburg’s death.

Representatives for the channel immediately apologised for their misstep and withdrew the graphic. (Ginsburg is very much alive at 85, though unwell). Still, there was an irony to the gaffe given Ginsburg’s progressive judgements as a trailblazing US Supreme Court justice have challenged the conservative thinking Fox News promotes.

It is therefore a shame that Leder’s film cedes to a similar sort of false reporting in its softened portrayal of the feminist icon.

On the Basis of Sex focuses on an early segment of Ginsburg’s life, as she begins Harvard Law School as one of nine women in her class, and goes on to fight a sex discrimination case in court.

Read more: Ruth Bader Ginsburg helped shape the modern era of women’s rights – before she went on the Supreme Court

The film’s screenplay is the debut attempt by Daniel Stiepleman, Ginsburg’s nephew. He was taken with this little-known case because it was the sole instance of his aunt (played by Felicity Jones) working professionally alongside her beloved husband, Martin “Marty” Ginsburg (Armie Hammer).

The couple’s professional interests intersected on the case. The plaintiff was a never-married man seeking a tax deduction for expenses required to care for his elderly mother, an endeavour prohibited by law on the basis of sex.

As the film tells it, Marty, a tax attorney, pitched the case to Ruth (or Kiki, a name used endearingly by Marty, by others in condescension) for its inverse demonstration of sex-based discrimination within the legal system. I won’t spoil the outcome for you, but suffice to say Ginsburg has built her reputation overturning these kinds of laws.

The central legal case works effectively from a narrative standpoint, harnessing a number of threads explicative of Ginsburg’s life. She experiences prejudice from the defence counsel (comprised, in part, of her past Harvard Law professors), the judges on the Court of Appeal, and even Mel Wulf of the American Civil Liberties Union (Justin Theroux, with an inexplicable spray tan), who agrees to assist her on the case to give it legitimacy.

On The Basis of Sex focuses on an early period in the life of US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Entertainment One

The case also allows Ginsburg to delineate her stance on social politics, including her seminal contention that gender discrimination should be treated as seriously as racial discrimination. To the film’s credit, it works concertedly to recognise the implications of this point for intersectionality, too.

The case comes at a time when the women’s liberation movement was taking shape (Gloria Steinem is mentioned more than once), capturing Ginsburg’s teenage daughter, Jane (Cailee Spaeny), in its momentum. At its core, the case demonstrates Ginsburg’s admirable relationship with Marty, their unwavering support for one another in all things personal and professional. That this case is so all encompassing is perhaps the film’s fundamental problem.

Armie Hammer and Felicity Jones in On the Basis of Sex. Entertainment One

In a recent New Yorker interview, Stiepleman reflected on his aunt’s penchant for silences:

… you talk to her and there’s always a long silence. It took me a while to figure out that that was how she communicated.

On the Basis of Sex could learn something from Ginsburg’s expressive practice, for broad strokes and exposition are its modus operandi. Stiepleman’s script is almost didactic in how it illustrates Ginsburg’s trials (we are constantly reminded that the case is “unwinnable”), resisting the kind of subtlety typical of systemic social discrimination.

Leder’s method of storytelling is similarly heavy-handed, often resorting to cinematic clichés that produce exchanges that seem inauthentic. It is disappointing, for instance, to see Ginsburg’s relationship with Jane reduced to a series of arguments so typical of onscreen mothers and daughters.

Ginsburg’s relationship with Marty feels similarly synthetic at times. I couldn’t help but wonder what the real Ginsburg would make of the stuffy sex scene that occurs between Jones and Hammer some ten minutes in.

On The Basis of Sex resorts to heavy-handed storytelling. Entertainment One

In the rigorous documentary about Ginsburg released late last year, RBG, those close to the Justice repeatedly comment on her staunchness. Echoing Stiepleman’s characterisation of his aunt, Ginsburg’s college friends and colleagues recall her distaste for small talk, and Jane remembers her mother’s “exigent” approach to parenting children.

These accounts were present in my mind as I watched On the Basis of Sex, for Ginsburg’s depiction here seems comparatively flat. Stiepleman was reticent to turn his aunt “into a superhero”, but Jones portrays Ginsburg with a doe-eyed earnestness that runs counter to her well-observed stoicism and strategic implementation of silence. It is as if Jones’s Ginsberg needs permission to action her opinions.

In sum, it seems that Ginsburg has been stifled by yet another patriarchal construct: the cinema. Perhaps the filmmakers feared that the “Notorious RBG” would be too much for cinemagoers, and so made her less assured, more triumphant.

Indeed, the film’s penultimate scene before the Court of Appeal reminded me less of archival Ginsburg footage than the denouement of Legally Blonde. Ginsburg deserves a biopic that reflects her poised approach to resisting a kind of prejudice that was so toxic and ingrained, people needed to be reminded that it was there.

On the Basis of Sex opens in Australian cinemas on February 7.

– ref. Feminist hero Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been stifled by a new patriarchal construct: the cinema – http://theconversation.com/feminist-hero-ruth-bader-ginsburg-has-been-stifled-by-a-new-patriarchal-construct-the-cinema-109956

Why bank shares are climbing despite the royal commission

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Humphery-Jenner, Associate Professor of Finance, UNSW

The Banking Royal Commission landed after the stock exchange closed for business on Monday. It recommended additional controls on banks and financial services providers, and excoriated one.

But the banks’ share prices jumped on Tuesday, by much more than the rest of the market. Even the National Australia Bank, whose chairman and chiefs came in for stinging criticism, did better than the market, although not as well as the rest of the big four.

The shares of the best-performing bank, Westpac, jumped by 7% on a day when the total share market index climbed 2%.

Also surprisingly, it happened on the day leading up to the report’s release. Westpac’s shares jumped 1.8% when the market climbed 0.5%.

Bank Returns.

On the face of it, it’s hard to understand. But there are clues in the report itself and in the government’s response to it.

1. The recommendations weren’t as damaging as feared

The report was a pleasant surprise to shareholders who were expecting worse. They might even improve the financial performance of banks.

It was feared the report might recommend a separation of banking businesses from financial advice businesses. Instead it went for the status quo, noting that breaking up the big banks would be costly and disruptive.

It encouraged regulators to be more stringent and take banks to court, but in practice that needn’t change much. Courts often encourage settlements, which is partly why the Australian Securities and Investments Commission seeks enforceable undertakings.

Settlements are cheap, which is good for the banks, and they have teeth, which is good for ASIC, as indicated recently when a unit of the Commonwealth Bank breached an undertaking and was banned from charging fees until further notice.

Read more: Hayne’s failure to tackle bank structure means that in a decade or so another treasurer will have to call another royal commission

ASIC appears circumspect about a proposed increase in litigation, worrying that if it happens at all it might cost it cases and the prospect of obtaining compensation for victims.

And many recommendations only tangentially affect banks.

For example, the report recommends an end to commissions for mortgage brokers, which will lower some bank costs (they won’t need to pay the commissions) and increase others (they might need to employ more of their own staff to do what brokers did), probably having little effect either way.

2. The government’s response has been measured

There was a fear the government would use the report to engage in kneejerk political point-scoring, promising excessive regulation and interference in the financial service industry with little regard for the consequences.

Instead it has done no more than say it will act on the the report’s recommendations. It has made clear that it won’t hurt banks for political purposes. It has remained cognisant of the need to avoid making customers collateral damage if regulatory changes caused a credit squeeze.

3. And some recommendations will actually help

The banks have already done much of what’s been asked, meaning it has already been incorporated into their share prices.

The extent varies between banks. For example, Macquarie restructured advisor fees before the final report came out. Other banks have not.

In some cases the report sets out standards that bankers ought to be following anyway, and would have been better off if they had been. They relate to conflicts of interest, corporate governance, and internal controls.

While shareholders might benefit in the short term from bankers’ misdeeds, they don’t help them in the long term. Improving governance and internal controls could in fact ultimately help shareholders.

The royal commission could have been much worse for banks. Some of it might actually be good.

The Conversation

– ref. Why bank shares are climbing despite the royal commission – http://theconversation.com/why-bank-shares-are-climbing-despite-the-royal-commission-111175

Politics with Michelle Grattan: Michael McCormack on banks and the bush, and the election battle

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

Deputy prime minister and Nationals leader Michael McCormack says the banking royal commission report contained a good outcome for farmers.

McCormack praised Nationals backbenchers Llew O’Brien, George Christensen and John “Wacka” Williams for their role in pushing for the commission, saying he was “really pleased” about major changes recommended in relation to agricultural loans.

Acknowledging the big challenges ahead for the Nationals at the election, he told The Conversation he is “not going to write Cowper off yet” – a Nationals seat under siege from Rob Oakeshott, who was an independent for the seat of Lyne from 2008-2013.

With Williams retiring, McCormack says prospects for the NSW Nationals in the Senate are “difficult” and “it is yet to be decided” if the Nationals will run their own ticket in that state.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Michael McCormack on banks and the bush, and the election battle – http://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-michael-mccormack-on-banks-and-the-bush-and-the-election-battle-111192

Venezuela under siege – some class reflections from Max Lane

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Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. –

Pro self-proclaimed “interim president” Guaido “Trumpeters” at a rally in Caracas. Image: TeleSUR
By Max Lane

IT IS necessary to understand that the conflict in Venezuela manifests a war between classes, not between factions of the one class, as in elections in “normal” bourgeois democracies.. The victor will not be inclined to give the other side a chance to come back into power “at the next election”.

We cannot expect the Chavistas to play by “normal” bourgeois electoral rules while the other side tries coups, economic sabotage, actively supports a foreign state’s economic sanctions, takes tens of millions from a hostile foreign state, attempts presidential assassination, and kills pro govt activists, while also owning all the private media.

Some expect the so-called liberal democratic rules of the game to be applied – but by one side only.

And what will be the result if the Venezuelan Bolivarian movement plays to lose and is defeated. Just remember two names: Pinochet and Suharto.

All out class war for a state based one class or the other has usually been resolved militarily, through a revolutionary war (Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba) or counter-revolutionary violence (Indonesia, Chile). Uniquely, in the case of Venezuela, neither war nor a counter-revolution has yet occurred, even 20 years on.

My guess is that the Chavistas are constrained to show restraint towards the capitalist class, avoiding escalation to a military confrontation, because of one main factor: the threat of military destruction.

Libya showed that the US was willing to see a country go to hell as long as oil could still flow. The US is now threatening military intervention – but to militarise a class war in Venezuela will run the risk of it spreading beyond national borders.

Economic constraints
Besides this constraint, the Venezuealan Bolivarians have been constrained by the objective limits of a 3rd world economy – and a 3rd world economy under siege and with no Soviet Union to protect or aid it, only valiant and principled little Cuba.

When Chavez became President in 1998, the GDP had already fallen back to 1963 levels. Corruption, including in the oil sector, was endemic. Immediately on Chavez’s election US and local capitalist economic sabotage began.

Underpinning this is the reality of a 3rd world economy in an imperialist world economy. The achievements of the Chavez government in improving economic conditions in these circumstances between 1998 and when oil prices started to fall in 2013 was extremely impressive.

Declining oil prices in a country 90 percent dependent on oil for foreign exchange hit the economy hard, all worsened by ongoing economic sabotage from within and without. From August 2017, the sabotage became even more savage with intensified US economic sanctions.

The Chavista government, like the governments of all 3rd world countries, most of whom are still pro-capitalist, did not have the financial capacity (capital) or access to technology (monopolised by imperialist countries) to embark on any significant program of diversified industrialisation.

This has not occurred anywhere by a medium sized poor country, let alone by an anti-capitalist government under siege, still consolidating itself.

Active support
The 2018 presidential elections showed the current government had the active support of 6 million Venezuelans, mostly from among the poor. The demonstrations over the last few days shows that this 6 million will still struggle, struggle to win more to their side.

More elections may figure in the evolution of this struggle, but we should all note that any such new election processes, should they occur, will be part of a struggle where one side, since the beginning, from at least 2002, has resorted to coups, economic sabotage, political collaboration with a hostile foreign power (much deeper than anything D. Trump may have been involved in), among other “non rules of the game” practices.

Only recognise the Maduro government!

Demand the end of economic sanctions against the Venezuealan people and state!

No to any US military intervention!
This article was first published on Café Pacific.

The shocking use of ‘jiggers’ in horse racing

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul McGreevy, Professor of Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare Science, University of Sydney

Trainer Darren Weir will not contest three charges for alleged possession of electronic devices used to give shocks to horses, according to a statement released by Racing Victoria earlier today.

The statement says assistant trainer Jarrod McLean will contest a charge for allegedly possessing a similar electric shocking device.

The charges against both are to be heard on a date to be fixed by the Racing Appeals and Disciplinary Board.

Read more: Why horse-racing in Australia needs a social licence to operate

They stem from January raids at Victorian properties when Victoria Police seized four electric devices, known as “jiggers”.

But this latest issue highlights inconsistencies in our attitudes to the use of aversive devices on animals in general.

Racing Victoria’s chief executive Giles Thompson said today the incident was a “bruising for the reputation of the industry”.

One of Australia’s most respected equine veterinary surgeons said previously that such “cruel, medieval measures” threatened the future of Victorian racing. Meanwhile trainers were said to be outraged at allegations that every trainer would have a jigger in their stable.

We agree that any violence towards animals can never be condoned.

That said, whipping is still allowed in Australian thoroughbred racing, despite a recent poll showing three-quarters of those quizzed were against its use.

Training horses to respond to unusual cues

Jiggers refer to illegal battery-powered shock devices. They were commonly used in Australian horse racing until the quality of stewards’ surveillance improved with the introduction of video recording.

Nowadays, those inclined to apply them must rely on illegal training prior to a race. This involves classical (Pavlovian) conditioning designed to ensure that a horse anticipates the delivery of a shock following some kind of stimulus that can be applied during a race.

Most anecdotal accounts describe jiggers as being applied to the horse’s neck. The horse feels the pressure of the device before it discharges its electric shock, a pressure similar to that of the butt of a jockey’s whip.

This is critical, because the jockey must be able to apply a similar cue in the same anatomical area of a horse on race day. Through classical conditioning, the pressure cue means that the horse will anticipate a shock when it feels the butt of the whip during the race.

Additional associative learning is involved when an item of equipment that the horse wears is linked to the application of the shocks.

For example, if blinkers are fitted whenever jigger conditioning is carried out, when the horse races with the blinkers (a change that must be approved by the stewards and declared to punters), it associates the equipment with the shocks it received in training.

In learning theory, stimuli like the blinkers are known as occasion setters, ones that increase the strength of a conditioned reaction.

Races are recorded so that stewards can spot tell-tale signs of rule-breaking such as the butt of the whip being pressed against a horse’s neck. That said, filming from just one side of the course is almost universal, so that up to 50% of the jockeys’ interactions with their horses may go unrecorded.

Electricity in animal training

Jiggers are just one of a number of what are called electric pulse training aids (EPTAs) – devices that apply an electric current to the skin of an animal.

The number of these devices used in Australia is not known. They are illegal in South Australia and the ACT, whereas in New South Wales they are permitted for containment of dogs by invisible boundaries.

The UK’s Companion Animal Welfare Council (CAWC) produced a report on these devices in 2012 in which it said:

It has been suggested that there are currently around 350,000 EPTAs in the UK, although the number in active use is unknown.

The report concluded there were “sound animal welfare-based arguments both for and against the use of EPTAs in theory”, but there was also a substantial lack of relevant research to inform the conclusions of those from either side of the debate.

A subsequent study published in 2014 found dogs that had been shocked with remote-controlled devices were more tense, yawned more often, and engaged in less environmental interaction than dogs trained without shocks.

The devices are to be banned in England with steps already taken to ban them in Wales and Scotland.

No research to date has compared the effects of EPTAs with other aversive devices – for example, the use of choke chains that are a far more common instrument of abuse in dogs.

The CAWC report identified an inconsistency in attitudes towards the use of shock, in that electric fences to contain livestock are generally accepted.

It’s worth noting that Australia is leading the world in the development of GPS-triggered electric shock collars to contain cattle on broadacre properties.

What about the whip?

The aversiveness of jiggers relative to strikes from padded whips will depend on the voltage discharged, not to mention the wetness (and therefore conductivity) of the haircoat of a horse.

Read more: Poll says most people support a ban on whips in Australian horse racing

So there is no such thing as a standard jigger zap, just as there is no such thing as a standard whip strike. And while there are some limits on the number of whip strikes that can be inflicted on a horse during a race, there are none for whipping at home in training.

It may one day be shown that random events of violent force from whips on tired horses are worse than random shocks to fresh horses during track work.

The industry may then regret the current outcry on jiggers, unless it has by then accepted that the whipping of tired horses is just as bad for the image of racing.

– ref. The shocking use of ‘jiggers’ in horse racing – http://theconversation.com/the-shocking-use-of-jiggers-in-horse-racing-111176

A life well lived paves way to encourage Pasifika women in communication

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Geraldine Lopdell’s family was looking for a fitting way to celebrate a “life well lived” when they decided to set up one of AUT’s newest awards.

During life, Geraldine had been an excellent teacher and artist, a supportive and generous friend and a captivating storyteller with an adventurous spirit.

Her early years were spent in Tonga and Samoa where her family travelled for her father’s work, and she had a firm belief that more women’s stories and views – particularly those of Pasifika women – needed to be told and heard.

The Geraldine Lopdell Award for Diversity in Communication will encourage Pasifika women to tell their stories. The first prize will be given in April 2019, nearly one year after Geraldine’s passing. It will be set at $1,200, and is anticipated to be offered annually for an initial term of ten years.

Deciding a memorial award to support something she cared about would be a fitting way to celebrate her life, Geraldine’s partner Colin and her two daughters Alex and Anne had approached their family friend, AUT’s Professor David Robie and have since been working with the AUT Foundation to establish the award.

Professor Robie, who heads up AUT’s Pacific Media Centre – Te Amokura, suggested a prize be established alongside the existing Storyboard Award for Diversity Reporting. It was decided the Pacific Media Centre, with its focus on telling ignored and ‘untold’ stories, and amplifying Pasifika women’s voices, was a natural fit for an award to celebrate this special woman’s legacy.

The family believe that Geraldine would have been honoured to have this award established in her name as she would have wanted to value the contributions and perspectives of Pasifika women.

Future generations
As Colin says: “The award is about recognising the life of an extraordinary and wonderful woman by encouraging an extraordinary and wonderful woman at the start of her career. She would have liked her legacy to support the next generation.

“It’s not just about making a financial difference to the recipient, although clearly we hope that it will help. It is about saying to them that we acknowledge your hard work, we recognise your achievements, you are doing brilliantly, keep going!”

Setting an award up is fairly straightforward, Alex says: “and you can direct it in a way to match up with the social changes that you want to encourage and see. It’s something that can benefit future generations and depending how you set it up, it can go on in perpetuity.’

Alex and Colin say they would love to see more awards of this type, “because you don’t have to have a huge amount of money to do something small and positive. We’d love to see other people think in this space and unleash that potential.”

Stand by for news of the first recipient of the Geraldine Lopdell Memorial Award for Excellence in Communication – and undoubtedly, a few great stories from the recipient.
 
The Geraldine Lopdell Award for Diversity in Communication – criteria and background

AUT Foundation

More information

Report by Pacific Media Centre

Queensland’s floods are so huge the only way to track them is from space

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Linlin Ge, Professor, UNSW

Many parts of Queensland have been declared disaster zones and thousands of residents evacuated due to a 1-in-100-year flood. Townsville is at the epicentre of the “unprecedented” monsoonal downpour that brought more than a year’s worth of rain in just a few days, and the emergency is far from over with yet more torrential rain expected.

Such monumental disruption calls for emergency work to safeguard crucial infrastructure such as bridges, dams, motorways, railways, power substations, power lines and telecommunications cables. In turn, that requires accurate, timely mapping of flood waters.

For the first time in Australia, our research team has been monitoring the floods closely using a new technique involving European satellites, which allows us to “see” beneath the cloud cover and map developments on the ground.

Read more: Floods don’t occur randomly, so why do we still plan as if they do?

Given that the flooding currently covers a 700km stretch of coast from Cairns to Mackay, it would take days to piece together the big picture of the flood using airborne mapping. What’s more, conventional optical imaging satellites are easily “blinded” by cloud cover.

But a radar satellite can fly over the entire state in a matter of seconds, and an accurate and comprehensive flood map can be produced in less than an hour.

Eyes above the skies

Our new method uses an imaging technology called “synthetic aperture radar” (SAR), which can observe the ground day or night, through cloud cover or smoke. By combining and comparing SAR images, we can determine the progress of an unfolding disaster such as a flood.

In simple terms, if an area is not flooded on the first image but is inundated on the second image, the resulting discrepancy between the two images can help to reveal the flood’s extent and identify the advancing flood front.

To automate this process and make it more accurate, we use two pairs of images: a “pre-event pair” taken before the flood, and a “co-event pair” made up of one image before the flood, and another later image during the flooding.

The European satellites have been operated strategically to collect images globally once every 12 days, making it possible for us to test this new technique in Townsville as soon as flooding occurs.

To monitor the current floods in Townsville, we took the pre-event images on January 6 and January 18, 2019. The co-event pair was collected on January 18 and January 30. These sets of images were then used to generate the accurate and detailed flood map shown below.

The image comparisons can all be done algorithmically, without a human having to scrutinise the images themselves. Then we can just look out for image pairs with significant discrepancies, and then concentrate our attention on those.

Satellite flood mapping along the Queensland coast, compiled using images from the European radar satellite Sentinel-1A. European Space Agency/Smart Spatial Technology Development Laborator (SSTD), UNSW, Author provided

Read more: Planning for a rainy day: there’s still lots to learn about Australia’s flood patterns

Our technique potentially avoids the need to monitor floods from airborne reconnaissance planes – a dangerous or even impossible task amid heavy rains, strong wind, thick cloud and lightning.

This timely flood intelligence from satellites can be used to switch off critical infrastructure such as power substations before flood water reaches them.

– ref. Queensland’s floods are so huge the only way to track them is from space – http://theconversation.com/queenslands-floods-are-so-huge-the-only-way-to-track-them-is-from-space-111083

The Syrian war is not over, it’s just on a new trajectory: here’s what you need to know

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mehmet Ozalp, Associate Professor in Islamic Studies, Director of The Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation and Executive Member of Public and Contextual Theology, Charles Sturt University

December 2018 marked a significant shift in the Syrian conflict. The end-of-year events put the country on a new trajectory, one in which President Bashar al-Assad looks towards consolidating his power and Islamic State (IS) sees a chance to perpetuate its existence.

Turkey’s role

Kick-starting the development was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s announcement he would start a military operation east of the Euphrates River – an area controlled by the US supported and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

The US and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces control the area to the east of the Euphrates River. Wikimedia Commons

Throughout the eight-year conflict, Assad and his main backer, Russia, have not militarily engaged with the Kurds. Assad and Russia didn’t see the Kurds as terrorists or insurgents, but as protectors of their territory against IS and other jihadist forces.

But Turkey sees the Kurdish zone as an existential threat. Turkey has legitimate fears: if the Kurdish region in Syria becomes independent, it can unite with the Kurdish region in northern Iraq and eventually claim the largely Kurdish southeast of Turkey.

Turkey’s intended military operation east of the Euphrates is yet to eventuate. But the announcement was a bold move, made more real by the large military build-up on the Turkish-Syrian border. It put pressure on the US administration and US President Donald Trump to make a call on Syria: either stand firm against Turkey and further stretch already tense relations, or pull out of Syria to abrogate responsibility.

Trump chose the second option. He swiftly declared the US would pull out from Syria altogether – and sell Patriot surface-to-air missiles to Turkey to prevent its attempt to purchase the Russian S-400 missile defence system.

The removal of US troops came with a Trump-style announcement on Twitter: “After historic victories against ISIS, it’s time to bring our great young people home!”

US policy

Since April 2018, Trump had made clear his desire to leave Syria. Ten days after declaring his intention, an episode of chemical attacks forced Trump’s hand into staying in Syria and retaliating. This time, though, either the pressure from Turkey worked or Trump saw it as a perfect time to execute his intent to leave.

Under the Obama administration, US foreign policy with regards to Syria was to remain there until IS was destroyed completely, Iran and its associated entities removed and a political solution achieved in line with the UN-led Geneva peace talks. Trump claimed the first goal was complete and saw it as sufficient grounds to pull out.

Read more: Further strikes on Syria unlikely – but Trump is always the wild card

Then, on December 21 2018, Trump announced Defence Secretary James Mattis would retire at the end of February 2019. The Washington Post reported Mattis vehemently objected to, and clashed with Trump over, the Syrian withdrawal. In his resignation letter, Mattis wrote: “you have the right to have a Secretary of Defence whose views are better aligned with yours”.

Differences have marked US policy on Syria since the beginning of the conflict in 2011. Trump further added to the confusion, and his erratic decision-making also demonstrates his frustration with his own administration.

Russia’s game

The global fear, of course, is that the US withdrawal will leave Russia as the region’s military and political kingpin, with Iran and Turkey as its partners.

Read more: Stakes are high as Turkey, Russia and the US tussle over the future of Syria

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has publicly stated that Russia respects Turkey’s national interests in Syria. He added Turkey was willing to compromise and work together to improve the situation and fight against terrorism. Turkey appears to have accepted Russian objectives in Syria in return for Russia’s green light to do what Turkey deems best for its national interests in the Kurdish region.

One Russian objective is to ensure Assad remains Syria’s president. Russia may allow Turkey to host limited operations in the Kurdish region, not only to hold a compromise with Turkey, but also to eventually pressure Kurdish forces into cooperating with Russia and accepting the Assad regime.

Russia is playing out a careful strategy – pleasing Turkey, but not at the expense of Assad’s sovereignty in Syria. Erdogan was a staunch adversary of Assad in the early years of the conflict. Russia counts on Erdogan’s recognition of Assad to influence other Sunni majority states to cross over to the Russian-Assad camp.

Russia’s strategy is to please Turkey, but only to the extent that it doesn’t threaten Assad’s hold on power in Syria. from shutterstock.com

The Turkish foreign minister has said Turkey may consider working with Assad if Syria holds democratic elections. Of course, Assad will only agree to elections if he is assured of a win.

The United Arab Emirates announced a reopening of its embassy in Damascus, which was followed by Bahrain stating it had never cut its diplomatic ties with the Syrian administration. Although Saudi Arabia denied it, there are media reports that the Saudi foreign ministry is establishing diplomatic ties with the Syrian administration.

These are indications the main players in the region are preparing to recognise and work with the Assad government.

An important step in Turkey’s recognition of Assad came in a meeting on January 23 between Putin and Erdogan. Putin reminded Erdogan of the 1998 Adana Pact between Turkey and Syria. The pact began a period of previously unprecedented bilateral links between Turkey and Syria until 2011, when the current conflict flared.

Erdogan acknowledged the 1998 pact was still in operation, meaning Turkey and the Assad administration could work together against terrorism.

Trump may also see no problem with the eventuality. There was no mention of Assad when he claimed victory in Syria, indicating he does not care whether Assad remains in power or not.

Islamic State

The overarching concern is that the US pulling out of Syria would bring back IS. The group has lost large territories and the major cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. The last town under IS control, Hajin, fell to coalition forces in December 2018. Despite these wins, it’s too soon to claim the end for IS.

Trump has a solution to this too: outsourcing. In a Tweet on December 24, he announced Turkish President Erdogan will “eradicate whatever is left of ISIS in Syria”. This is highly unlikely as Turkey’s main concern is the Kurdish region in northern Syria where IS is not likely to pose any threat.

Given Russia and Assad will be the main forces in Syria, their policies will determine the future of IS.

Assad would not want IS to jeopardise his own government. At the same time, Assad’s claim for legitimacy throughout the civil war was his fight against terrorism, embodied by IS. If IS were to exist in some shape and form, it would benefit Assad in the crucial years of consolidating his power. This may lead to Assad appearing to crack down on IS while not entirely eradicating them.

Read more: James Mattis: what defence secretary’s resignation means for Syria, Afghanistan and NATO, as Trump leans in to Putin

IS will also try hard to survive. It still has a large number of seasoned commanders and fighters who can unleash guerrilla warfare. IS also has operatives peppered throughout Syria to launch suicide bombing attacks in Syrian cities, similar to what they have been doing in Iraq.

Israel, meanwhile, has been quietly hitting Iranian targets in Syria since May 2018. Israeli air strikes intensified in January 2019 and occurred in broad daylight. In acknowledging the strikes, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s “permanent policy” was to strike at the Iranian entrenchment in Syria.

We could see more altercations between Israel and Iran in 2019, now that the US has abandoned the objective of countering Iran’s presence in Syria.

The Syrian conflict is not over. It’s just on a new trajectory. The US withdrawal is sure to leave a power vacuum, which will quickly be filled by other regional powers like Turkey, Iran and Israel under the watchful eye of Russia.

– ref. The Syrian war is not over, it’s just on a new trajectory: here’s what you need to know – http://theconversation.com/the-syrian-war-is-not-over-its-just-on-a-new-trajectory-heres-what-you-need-to-know-110292

Jokowi plays it tough, accusing Prabowo of ‘outbursts of lies’

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Presidential candidates Joko “Jokowi” Widodo (left) and Ma’ruf Amin make statements during the first candidate debate on January 18. Image: Dhoni Setiawan/Jakarta Post

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo appears to have gone on the offensive against his challenger in the upcoming presidential election Prabowo Subianto as the second presidential debate draws nearer, reports The Jakarta Post.

Over the weekend, Jokowi made strong remarks slamming his rival in his speeches, ranging from criticising Prabowo’s statement that Indonesia could become extinct to accusing the rival camp of using foreign consultants to prepare themselves for the election.

The incumbent also defended Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati against Prabowo’s statement that described her as a “debt-printing minister” in relation to swelling government debt, as Widodo implied that the former military general did not understand macroeconomic issues.

READ MORE: Facebook, Twitter try to safeguard Indonesian elections

“I can only convey [the facts] as they are. How can I stay silent and continue to remain patient? I will not,” President Widodo said in Jakarta on Sunday, “I can [play rough] once in a while.”

The statement came two weeks before the second election debate, in which Jokowi and Prabowo are expected to trade blows on issues surrounding food, energy, natural resources, the environment and infrastructure, reports The Jakarta Post.

-Partners-

During his 2019 presidential campaign event in Semarang, Central Java, President Widodo said the most important thing was that he conveyed facts and data in his statements.

“What’s important is [we] don’t produce outbursts of lies […] and hoaxes,” he said on Sunday, in an apparent jab at Prabowo supporters who have been implicated in spreading misinformation.

Hate speech
Last week, musician Ahmad Dhani was sentenced to imprisonment for hate speech and violating the Information and Electronic Transactions (ITE) Law.

Dhani was found guilty for hate speech in connection with a tweet he posted that incited people to attack supporters of former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama.

Fellow opposition activist Ratna Sarumpaet, a former member of the Prabowo-Sandiaga campaign team, is currently in police custody awaiting trial for violation of the same law, after falsely claiming that she had been assaulted by three unknown assailants last September.

She later admitted that the bruises on her face were the result of cosmetic surgery.

President Widodo’s recent remarks, however, are not the first time that the incumbent has taken the offensive against political attacks that have targeted his administration over the last four years.

In the past few months, the incumbent fumed over accusations that he was affiliated to the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), a rumor which started during his 2014 presidential election campaign.

He has also refuted allegations that he is a foreign puppet, pointing out that Indonesia had officially become the majority owner of PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI) with 51.23 percent of ownership during his tenure.

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Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Our ‘bee-eye camera’ helps us support bees, grow food and protect the environment

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Dyer, Associate Professor, RMIT University

Walking through our gardens in Australia, we may not realise that buzzing around us is one of our greatest natural resources. Bees are responsible for pollinating about a third of food for human consumption, and data on crop production suggests that bees contribute more than US$235 billion to the global economy each year.

By pollinating native and non-native plants, including many ornamental species, honeybees and Australian native bees also play an essential role in creating healthy communities – from urban parks to backyard gardens.

Despite their importance to human and environmental health, it is amazing how little we know how about our hard working insect friends actually see the world.

By learning how bees see and make decisions, it’s possible to improve our understanding of how best to work with bees to manage our essential resources.

Insects in the city: a honeybee forages in the heart of Sydney. Adrian Dyer/RMIT University

Read more: Bees get stressed at work too (and it might be causing colony collapse)

How bee vision differs from human vision

A new documentary on ABC TV, The Great Australian Bee Challenge, is teaching everyday Australians all about bees. In it, we conducted an experiment to demonstrate how bees use their amazing eyes to find complex shapes in flowers, or even human faces.

Humans use the lens in our eye to focus light onto our retina, resulting in a sharp image. By contrast, insects like bees use a compound eye that is made up of many light-guiding tubes called ommatidia.

The top of each ommatidia is called a facet. In each of a bees’ two compound eyes, there are about 5000 different ommatidia, each funnelling part of the scene towards specialised sensors to enable visual perception by the bee brain.

How we see fine detail with our eyes, and how a bee eye camera views the same information at a distance of about 15cm. Sue Williams and Adrian Dyer/RMIT University

Since each ommatidia carries limited information about a scene due to the physics of light, the resulting composite image is relatively “grainy” compared to human vision. The problem of reduced visual sharpness poses a challenge for bees trying to find flowers at a distance.

To help draw bees’ attention, flowers that are pollinated by bees have typically evolved to send very strong colour signals. We may find them beautiful, but flowers haven’t evolved for our eyes. In fact, the strongest signals appeal to a bee’s ability to perceive mixtures of ultraviolet, blue and green light.

Yellow flower (Gelsemium sempervirens) as it appears to our eye, as taken through a UV sensitive camera, and how it likely appears to a bee. Sue Williams and Adrian Dyer/RMIT University

Read more: Bees can learn the difference between European and Australian Indigenous art styles in a single afternoon

Building a bee eye camera

Despite all of our research, it can still be hard to imagine how a bee sees.

So to help people (including ourselves) visualise what the world looks like to a bee, we built a special, bio-inspired “bee-eye” camera that mimics the optical principles of the bee compound eye by using about 5000 drinking straws. Each straw views just one part of a scene, but the array of straws allows all parts of the scene to be projected onto a piece of tracing paper.

How a bee eye camera works by only passing the constructive rays of light to form an image. Sue Williams and Adrian Dyer/RMIT University

The resulting image can then be captured using a digital camera. This project can be constructed by school age children, and easily be assembled multiple times to enable insights into how bees see our world.

Because bees can be trained to learn visual targets, we know that our device does a good job of mimicking a bees visual acuity.

Student projects can explore the interesting nexus between science, photography and art to show how bees see different things, like carrots – which are an important part of our diet and which require bees for the efficient production of seeds.

Clip from “The Great Australian Bee Challenge, Episode 2.

Read more: A bee economist explains honey bees’ vital role in growing tasty almonds

Understanding bee vision helps us protect bees

Bees need flowers to live, and we need bees to pollinate our crops. Understanding bee vision can help us better support our buzzy friends and the critical pollination services they provide.

In nature, it appears that flowers often bloom in communities, using combined cues like colour and scent to help important pollinators find the area with the best resources.

Having lots of flowers blooming together attracts pollinators in much the same way that boxing day sales attract consumers to a shopping centre. Shops are better together, even though they are in competition – the same may be true for flowers!

This suggests that there is unlikely to be one flower that is “best” for bees. The solution for better supporting bees is to incorporate as many flowers as possible – both native and non native – in the environment. Basically: if you plant it, they will come.

We are only starting to understand how bees see and perceive our shared world – including art styles – and the more we know, the better we can protect and encourage our essential insect partners.

Looking at the fruits and vegetables of bee pollination; a bee camera eye view of carrots. Sue Williams and Adrian Dyer/RMIT University

– ref. Our ‘bee-eye camera’ helps us support bees, grow food and protect the environment – http://theconversation.com/our-bee-eye-camera-helps-us-support-bees-grow-food-and-protect-the-environment-110022

Cladding fires expose gaps in building material safety checks. Here’s a solution

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Argus, Lecturer, Marketing & Design Thinking, RMIT University

A fire at the Neo 200 apartment building in Spencer Street, Melbourne, on Monday highlighted the risk to human safety from flammable cladding and other non-conforming building products. Building quality and safety are compromised when there is no transparency about the products used.

Our experimental research project suggests a solution that uses sensor technology and artificial intelligence. Finding such a solution to ensure unsafe and substandard products are detected and prevented from being used in buildings is critical, given the scale of the problem in Australia.

In 2014, a similar cladding fire spread across multiple levels of the Lacrosse Tower in Melbourne’s Docklands. This led to an initial audit by the Victorian Building Authority.

In 2017, after 72 people died in the Grenfell cladding fire in London, the Victorian Cladding Taskforce conducted another audit. It found at least 1,400 buildings contained cladding that was non-conforming to Australian standards and/or non-compliant with government safety regulations. Its interim report concluded:

The Victorian Cladding Taskforce has found systems failures have led to major safety risks and widespread non-compliant use of combustible cladding in the building industry across the state.

Read more: Grenfell: a year on, here’s what we know went wrong

How could this happen?

The taskforce noted 12 reasons for non-compliant use of cladding. From a systems perspective, these can be categorised as:

  1. incentive to substitute products driven by cost
  2. no reliable means of independently verifying product certification
  3. product labelling cannot be verified to detect fraudulent or misleading information
  4. products cannot reliably be verified as being the same as those approved (and used)
  5. on-site inspections are unreliable or do not take place.

Essentially, the taskforce identified a problem with the system of verifying products’ conformance to standards and compliance with government regulation.

Substandard products can be found across a range of materials used in the building sector. These include steel, copper, electrical products, glass, aluminium and engineered wood. For example, the Senate inquiry into non-conforming products found:

The ACCC [Australian Competition and Consumer Commission] advised that electrical retailers and wholesalers have recalled Infinity and Olsent-branded electrical cables, warning that ‘physical contact with the recalled cables could dislodge the insulation and lead to electric shock or fires’.

The taskforce estimated over 22,000 homes were affected. It estimated the cost of the recall and replacement at A$80 million.

Read more: Reach for the sky: why safety must rule as tall buildings aim higher

So how can technology help?

A QR code can tell you about this bottle of Chianti and, by matching against supply chain data, can be used to verify that the wine is genuine. Andrea Pavanello, Milano/WIkimedia, CC BY-SA

Similar problems have existed in other industries. In the wine export industry, sensor technology has been used to detect fraudulent products in our biggest market, China. This involves scanning QR codes on bottle labels to identify the manufacturer, the batch and other product details that authenticate wine products.

Scanning technology, involving complex data-matching across different data platforms, is used daily – when we use credit cards, for example. The building industry has embraced some excellent systems to collect data of importance such as building information modelling (BIM). However, BIM does not verify authenticity of products.

In the the case of flammable cladding, data verification to solve the use of non-conforming products is housed across a number of authorities, manufacturers and industry associations. Collaboration is needed to design a system to solve the problem. The data should be collected and stored in a manner that enables secure access by a digital verification system.

What features does the system need to have?

Our research focus has been on designing a system based on criteria informed by industry innovators and stakeholders. The system must be able to:

  1. collect and match product data in real time
  2. verify non-conforming and non-compliant products in real time
  3. maintain integrity of labelling
  4. store data securely so all stakeholders can verify the status of the building, including architects, builders, site managers, inspectors, owners, investors, insurers and financiers
  5. trace data (and composition) throughout the product life-cycle, to predict maintenance, recovery and repurposing.

The system we suggest uses two elements, sensor technology and artificial intelligence, to do all this.

Technology to solve the problem of tracking and validating building product safety is being developed.

How does the system work?

A mobile app that can scan QR codes or “building material passports” is being developed in Europe. The label will hold relevant compliance data of the assembled product and its component parts. This includes building code compliance, and relevant assessments and certifications.

The product’s QR code can be scanned at any time along the supply chain and throughout the life of the building. This then enables its status to be verified via data matching.

Linking to a platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) solves the problem of ensuring compliance with government regulation. CSIRO Data 61 has developed an AI software tool that enables regulation to be coded using AI algorithms to accurately determine compliance. We are working with Data 61 to test Australian regulation and ensure transparency for all.

The solution is designed to plug into existing technology solutions, such as BIM and Matrack, to trace the movement of products along the supply chain and throughout the building’s life-cycle.

– ref. Cladding fires expose gaps in building material safety checks. Here’s a solution – http://theconversation.com/cladding-fires-expose-gaps-in-building-material-safety-checks-heres-a-solution-111073

Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Result puts autism front and centre

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Sutherland, Doctor of Creative Arts; Writer and researcher, Western Sydney University

Review: The Rosie Result by Graeme Simsion

Genetics Professor Don Tillman is having flashbacks. He’s remembering the time he spent in the principal’s office as a kid in Shepparton, Victoria. The time he spent learning to ride his sister’s bike, much later than was socially acceptable. The time he spent “regarding the majority of the human race as another species”.

The Rosie Result by Graeme Simsion (2019). Text Publishing

Only now, Don is reliving it all with his 11-year old son Hudson. They are on “similar trajectories” and Don is terrified that Hudson might end up socially isolated, clinically depressed and unable to find a partner until the age of 40, like his father.

Author Graeme Simsion admits autism is a word he “skirted around” in his international bestsellers, The Rosie Project and The Rosie Effect. The character of Don displayed traits commonly associated with Asperger’s, such as the ability to be highly focused and difficulty with social skills, but autism was not an explicit focus of the first two books. In the third and final instalment, The Rosie Result, Simsion tackles the topic head on.

The Rosie Result essentially takes up where the last book left off. Don and Rosie have relocated to Melbourne and are coming to grips with the fact that Hudson is struggling at school. Hudson, however, cannot see the problem, nor how learning how to play football will make school any more enjoyable.

Don and his partner Rosie suspect their son Hudson is autistic, but they are cautious about seeking a diagnosis. A devoted father, Don sets about being the “World’s Best Problem-Solver” and goes out of his way to help Hudson fit in, or “conform to neurotypical norms of behaviour”.

Don notices that Hudson is “resisting being classified as intrinsically deficient – even if only in a small number of domains”, and while he and Rosie respect this, they want to ensure that Hudson is not “ill-prepared”. As Don’s fashion designer friend Carl remarks: “In the end you’ve got to be yourself, but it helps to know how other people are going to see you”.

A lot has changed in autism circles since The Rosie Project was published in 2013, with a dramatic increase in awareness about the topic. This, of course, is largely thanks to cultural representations of autism such as Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and characters like Don Tillman.

Read more: Friday essay: moving autism on TV beyond the genius stereotype

The Rosie Project (2013) is the first book in the ‘Rosie’ series by Graeme Simsion. Text Publishing

Along with a shift in social perceptions since readers first met Tillman, there have been changes to diagnostic criteria. Asperger’s, for example, no longer has its own diagnostic category, but falls under the umbrella of autism. Another development is the move toward the idea of “neurodiversity”, or the view that neurological differences have always existed and are part of human evolution.

Simsion takes all of this on board in The Rosie Result, while still maintaining the comedic flavour of the first two books. It is an ambitious task: writing a light and engaging novel while incorporating a serious topic in an inclusive manner. But Simsion pulls it off, maintaining a strong sense of characterisation and narrative, all the while encouraging readers to question their own values.

Not afraid to get political, Simsion raises topics such as the inflexibility of the school system, misunderstandings and stereotypes, bullying, medication, vaccination, and the pros and cons of having a label.

Myth busting

Throughout the book, Simsion uses a technique of italicising phrases to debunk common misconceptions. For example: “Hudson laughed briefly. Autistic people often do not get jokes”.

At first I found this a little clunky and questioned whether it was necessary, but it might be helpful for those less familiar with autism. It also demonstrates that the checklist Don is running through in his head is not a clear-cut or definitive way of defining autism.

I was pleased to see “empathy” deconstructed in the book, as the word is often misconstrued when it comes to autism. Don remarks:

I had observed that neurotypicals criticised autistic people for lacking empathy — towards them — but seldom made any effort to improve their own empathy toward autistic people.

Simsion covers a lot of terrain in this new instalment, including the importance of community and the gender divide in parenting. Rosie’s load as a working mother is front and centre, as she juggles family life and a demanding research job with a sexist boss. While some plot developments are a tad far-fetched, such as Don getting into a fight with another father who is a professional kickboxer, the reader is rewarded for suspending their imagination, for this is fiction after all.

As in the first two books, Don’s first-person written voice can at times be irritatingly wooden. But it does allow the reader to see the world from his literal and logical perspective, and learn, in the words of character Eugenie, that a “lack of coolness can be pretty cool”.

Simsion effectively draws on character dialogue (The Rosie Project began as a screenplay) and metaphor throughout. For example, when Don is lecturing a class on race, which later becomes very controversial, he could easily be alluding to the complexity of autism, stating “we’re not dealing with categories but a spectrum – in fact multiple spectra”.

Does the book address everything there is to say about autism? No, of course not. But it certainly unpacks a few myths and demonstrates that humans are complex beings. As Don’s friend Dave reminds us: “There’s no solution to that sort of thing. I mean, people stuff. Anyway, you solve one thing, another comes along.”

The key, it seems, is keeping the conversation going.

– ref. Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Result puts autism front and centre – http://theconversation.com/graeme-simsions-the-rosie-result-puts-autism-front-and-centre-110032

Five warning signs of overdiagnosis

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Barratt, Professor of Public Health, University of Sydney

We’ve had it drummed into us over decades that early detection is key to treating diseases early, before they have a chance to turn into something really nasty.

But we’ve since learnt the flip-side of this is overdiagnosis, where people are diagnosed with diseases that won’t harm them. Overdiagnosis is often followed by overtreatment, where procedures or other therapies are offered that won’t benefit the patient and may cause harm.

The chance discovery of a small thyroid cancer in someone’s neck, for instance, is likely to result in a total thyroidectomy (removal) and lifelong thyroid hormone replacement. But this cancer is very unlikely to have caused harm had it been left alone. And studies have found dramatic increases in thyroid cancer worldwide, without changes in death rates.

Read more: Is it time to remove the cancer label from low-risk conditions?

Overdiagnosis may also begin with a new, more sensitive test. Such tests can expand the number of people who are classified as “diseased” and send them down a path of additional invasive tests such as biopsies, as well as surgery and medication.

After the introduction of a new test for pulmonary embolism, for instance, more people were diagnosed with these lung blood clots and started on blood thinning drugs. Some suffered complications such as gut and brain haemorrhages. And despite more people being diagnosed and treated for pulmonary embolism, there was no impact on how many people died from them.

But overdiagnosis is difficult to detect. It can take years for the data to be collected to prove there’s a problem with the new way of diagnosing a disease, based on the new test, compared to the old way.

To speed up the detection process, we have collated a list of five markers to indicate overdiagnosis may be occurring. The markers, published today in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, can help researchers, health authorities, clinicians and even patients determine whether new tests are candidates for overdiangosis. Here they are as a set of questions:

  1. is there potential for more diagnoses with the new test?
  2. are more people actually being diagnosed by the new test?
  3. do the additional people diagnosed have milder or harmless forms of the disease?
  4. are more people being treated?
  5. might the harms of being treated outweigh the benefits?

Read more: Less is the new more: choosing medical tests and treatments wisely

A better way to detect heart disease? Not quite

When we applied these questions to a new blood test for acute heart disease – highly sensitive cardiac troponin (HS-cTn) – we found we answered yes to most of them.

This new test was evaluated in a large trial in Scotland. The trial found that among patients presenting to hospital with a possible heart attack, the new test (HS-cTn) led to more people being told they had suffered injury to their heart muscle.

New tests aren’t generally subject to the same standards of proof of benefit as medications. Ronald Rampsch/Shutterstock

It also led to more people being given additional tests, such as coronary angiogram (a type of X-ray), and prescribed anti-platelet (blood-thinning) and other drugs to prevent heart disease. The risks of coronary angiogram are rare but include heart attack, stroke, arrhythmia, infection and bleeding. A major side effect of anti-platelet medication is bleeding.

Surprisingly, the new test didn’t mean fewer people died of a heart attack over the following year as was expected, despite the additional people being treated. That possibility, or other more long-term benefits, weren’t ruled out by the trial though, so we were unable to answer the last question with confidence.

The new test, HS-cTn, was introduced into Australia in 2010 and is now widely used in Australia, Europe, and the United States. But we still don’t know whether using it improves patients’ lives.

We can’t say for sure whether overdiagnosis is occurring as a result of this new test, but there are enough red flags to identify that it could be a problem. We need to evaluate the new test further.

More scrutiny of new tests needed

While we used the example of HS-cTn, the same reservations and uncertainties apply to the introduction of many new tests.

New tests aren’t generally subject to the same standards of proof of benefit as medications, before being allowed (and often promoted) on the market. It’s time to change the rules.

Read more: Five commonly over-diagnosed conditions and what we can do about them

Potential harms, as well as benefits, need to be considered before new tests are used in routine clinical practice. At a minimum, processes should be set up to collect and monitor the data needed to answer the five questions.

Regulators should only allow the provisional use of the test in the years immediately after it becomes available; for a limited time period, for instance, or in research contexts.

Further funding would be dependent on proof the test is overall beneficial rather than harmful for patients once both benefits and harms are established.

Without these safeguards, the introduction of new tests will continue to put patients at risk of harm from the very tests and treatments they expect will help them.

– ref. Five warning signs of overdiagnosis – http://theconversation.com/five-warning-signs-of-overdiagnosis-110895

Australians accept government surveillance, for now

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Bunn, Senior Lecturer, Curtin Law School, Curtin University

Australians tend to accept government surveillance, particularly if they think it necessary or trust the government, according to a recent study.

But they’re only lukewarm about it. So if such surveillance continues to increase, people might reach a turning point and adopt some basic measures to “hide” themselves.

Read more: As surveillance gets smart, hackers get smarter

Australians are subject to ever-increasing levels of government surveillance. It is generally justified as necessary to protect us from criminal or terrorist activities.

Under certain circumstances, various intelligence agencies, as well as federal and state police, can request access to your telephone and internet records. This can reveal information about your location and who you talked to, emailed or messaged.

Proposed legislation would allow the Department of Home Affairs to share photographs and other identifying information “between government agencies and, in some cases, private organisations”. Not only can this information be shared for reasons of national security, it can also be used for general law enforcement, and even road safety.

Read more: Metadata and the law: what your smartphone really says about you

The government recently passed the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018, which allows government agencies greater access to encrypted messages, like those sent over WhatsApp.

Technology companies and civil society groups say they are concerned and can’t believe these increased powers.

But what about the public? Although Australians have generally accepted the collection of telecommunications metadata or driver licence photos, little is known about the factors that influence their acceptance of government surveillance.

Mild acceptance

Our research aimed to address this by surveying 100 Australian residents about their views on government surveillance. Just more than half (52) said they accept government surveillance.

The overall strength of acceptance tells a similar story. On a scale from 1 (strongly reject) to 5 (strongly accept) the average response was 3.1. This shows respondents are on the fence, but leaning slightly towards acceptance.

Two main factors influenced acceptance of surveillance.

1. Is surveillance needed?

The most influential factor was if they thought the surveillance necessary.

This has practical implications as lawmakers capitalise on people’s emotional responses to tragic events to justify new legislation, particularly around the time these events occur. For instance, in the six years after 9/11, the Howard government pushed through a new anti-terror statute every 6.7 weeks on average.

More recently, Australia’s attorney-general mentioned the recent terrorist attack in Melbourne to garner support for the new encryption laws:

The need for the powers in this bill has become more urgent in the light of the recent fatal terrorist attack in Melbourne and the subsequent disruption of alleged planning for a mass casualty attack by three individuals last month – also, sadly, in Melbourne. Individuals in both of these cases are known to have used encrypted communications.

2. Do I trust the government?

People’s overall trust in the government also strongly determined their acceptance of surveillance. This is interesting given trust in the Australian government is generally relatively low.

People might be more influenced by their general view of the government than their views of specific policies and practices. If so, events that diminish that trust may also threaten the acceptance of surveillance policies. This is something for politicians to consider before calling for the next leadership spill.

Read more: What could a My Health Record data breach look like?

As expected, the research also showed, that on average, people didn’t particularly trust the government to manage data. The large number of people choosing to opt out of My Health Record tells us people are concerned about how their information is managed.

Yet, surprisingly, there was no link between people’s level of trust in the way the government manages data and their acceptance of surveillance.

Perhaps people feel they have nothing to hide, or believe the broader benefits of surveillance outweigh the risks.

Cause for concern

Given the vast amounts of information gathered through surveillance, it might seem reasonable to assume that individuals will never be scrutinised unless they raise suspicion (one hopes, reasonably).

However, improvement in data-processing capabilities means this is not necessarily true. For example, artificial intelligence can analyse CCTV video footage without human input.

And when face recognition is used to identify suspects, there are often multiple records of images of people who are a close match to the suspect. This can result in a high error rate, posing a risk that innocent people are accused of criminality and wrongdoing.

Read more: Close up: the government’s facial recognition plan could reveal more than just your identity

But perhaps more worrying is the threat of repurposing — when information collected for one purpose is used for another. For example, concerns that insurance companies could access and use information from My Health Record led to the government amending legislation to prevent this.

But, unlike My Health Record data, surveillance data collection is indiscriminate and has no “opt out”. Consider the two years’ worth of communications metadata currently stored for the entire nation, which is accessible to many agencies without a warrant. It’s not certain how this data might be reused in the future.

What next?

The Law Council of Australia says:

It is unacceptable to assume the majority of Australians, who are not criminals and have the expectation to be kept safe by the state, are willing to succumb to heightened surveillance.

However, our findings suggest, at least for now, Australians generally accept government surveillance, albeit relatively weakly. This means that if surveillance continues to increase, people may try to “hide” themselves.

This might be by using virtual private networks (VPNs), privacy protection sufficient to prevent the government from collecting your online metadata.

Read more: Explainer: what is a virtual private network (VPN)?

– ref. Australians accept government surveillance, for now – http://theconversation.com/australians-accept-government-surveillance-for-now-110789

Influential doctors aren’t disclosing their drug company ties

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ray Moynihan, Senior Research Fellow, Bond University

In September, the New York Times revealed that one of the world’s top cancer specialists had quietly received millions of dollars from drug and other companies. And what’s more, he’d failed to disclose the payments in many of his high-profile medical journal articles.

A few months before that, a study found that many experts who write medical textbooks received company payments, but again, their readers didn’t know about it.

Today our Australian study of the doctors who write influential clinical guidelines has uncovered a similar problem. At least one in five of them have had a financial relationship with a drug company that was not disclosed in the guidelines.

This is a huge concern because guidelines can have big impacts on the sort of care you receive from a doctor, and on which drugs they prescribe. And receiving benefits like free lunches or consulting fees from companies may cause bias.

Only last month a massive research investigation in the United States found a link between marketing payments to doctors, and local deaths from opioids.

Read more: Drug companies are buying doctors – for as little as a $16 meal

Narrowing the search

Our research team from Bond and Sydney universities also included officials from the National Health and Medical Research Council, which is currently trying to improve the quality of Australian guidelines for doctors.

The team identified a random sample of guidelines, drawn from a comprehensive set, which covered ten major disease areas, including heart disease and mental health.

We then looked at what was disclosed in each guideline about any relationships between guideline authors and drug companies. If an author did not have any information, we searched through all the articles that author had published in the scientific literature in the previous five years.

We were specifically looking to see if a guideline author had any links with a drug company which sold products in the disease area that the author’s guideline covered.

What we found

The study, published today in BMJ Open, found at least one in five of all guideline writers had a potentially relevant tie to a drug company, which was not disclosed in the guideline. And two-thirds of all the guidelines had at least one author with a tie that wasn’t disclosed.

We also found this lack of transparency may be worse in certain disease areas, including diabetes and heart disease.

This raises very serious questions about hidden bias and the trustworthiness of these guidelines – which have such an impact on how our doctors make decisions.

Clinical guidelines can have big impacts on the sort of care you receive from a doctor, and on which drugs they prescribe. New_World/Shutterstock

As part of the analysis we compared guidelines which had been funded and developed by governments, as opposed to say specialist groups or medical foundations.

We found guidelines funded and developed by state, federal or territory governments had much lower rates of authors not disclosing their drug company links.

Other similar studies have looked at guidelines like this, but to our knowledge today’s is the biggest and broadest, and the first ever in Australia.

More transparency and greater independence

Despite what you might hear, drug company wining and dining of doctors and other health professionals like pharmacists and nurses, is not a thing a past. There are perhaps 25,000 events or more every year in Australia where drug companies provide free hospitality.

At the same time many senior specialists, like the ones who write guidelines, continue to receive all manner of company benefits as consultants, speakers or sponsored researchers.

Read more: Who’s paying for lunch? Here’s exactly how drug companies wine and dine our doctors

But there is widespread concern about these links, and a growing push for much greater transparency in medicine. The United States has the Sunshine Act, which forces disclosure of all company payments to all doctors.

Australia’s rules have changed since the time our study covers, and some payments to individual doctors are now routinely disclosed. But our rules have huge loopholes and are much weaker than the Sunshine Act, a reform that is well overdue in Australia.

While disclosure and transparency are needed, they don’t solve the problem of bias that flows from close financial relationships between doctors and drug companies.

For such influential things as guidelines – which can impact the care of millions of people – it may be best to have writers totally free of ties to industry. And this is exactly what a new policy from Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council is recommending.

The new policy, launched just a few months ago, is very clear in its preference:

It is strongly encouraged that your guideline development group will be composed of members with no financial or other links to relevant industry groups.

Let’s wait and see who is listening.

– ref. Influential doctors aren’t disclosing their drug company ties – http://theconversation.com/influential-doctors-arent-disclosing-their-drug-company-ties-110888

Beyond Opal: a 10-point plan to fix the residential building industry

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Hanmer, Adjunct Lecturer in Architecture, Univeristy of NSW, UNSW

The failure of the Opal Tower building in Sydney has highlighted the poor quality of speculatively built multi-unit housing in Australia. The tower’s 392 apartments were evacuated on Christmas Eve when residents heard loud cracks and defects were found. So far, the only reaction from government has been a knee-jerk promise to crack down on shonky building certifiers (that’s you Matt Kean, minister for innovation and better regulation in New South Wales). Unfortunately, there is no evidence this will make any difference.

Read more: There are lessons to be drawn from the cracks that appeared in Sydney’s Opal Tower, but they extend beyond building certification

An Opal Tower apartment with ceiling and flooring removed and propping equipment installed. AAP/Supplied

Planning policies embraced by the NSW and Victorian governments mean a greater percentage of new housing is being constructed in tall multi-unit developments than ever before, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne.

Between 50% and 80% of multi-unit buildings have defects serious enough to be the subject of strata committee involvement. Possibly close to 100% have significant defects at completion. Most of the problems are waterproofing issues (which may not be evident for years), malfunctioning services or a lack of proper compliance with fire codes and standards.

We can only fix this problem by changing the culture of the residential building industry.

Read more: The big lesson from Opal Tower is that badly built apartments aren’t only an issue for residents

Ten steps governments can take

We don’t need another royal commission. Governments could implement all of the suggestions below using their existing powers.

1) Increase density by permitting more subdivisions on existing housing blocks rather than building tall buildings.

Two Torrens title townhouses can be built on a normal single-house quarter-acre block. Low-scale buildings will still suffer from defects, but are less problematic to build, inspect and repair than tall buildings and use simpler technology.

2) In the short term, provide occupation certificates to new residential buildings taller than three storeys only if they comply with an enhanced protocol of regulations and oversight.

State government would implement this, with a focus on waterproofing and fire performance.

A suitable code, standards and protocols could be developed in a few weeks. The necessary people to provide independent oversight could be drawn from qualified architects, builders and engineers who are able to pass a probing exam. They would be independent of the design and construction team. The government would fix their fees.

3) Develop a program to enhance the standards for residential building standards in the National Construction Code (NCC).

The current NCC codes for Class 2 buildings (home units) favour innovation and cost reduction over consumer protection. This is the wrong way around for housing. Section F, which covers health and amenity (including waterproofing), is weak and must be strengthened.

4) A voluntary quality scheme to star-rate all apartments, similar to ANCAP (Australasia New Car Assessment Program), might work with industry support.

The minimum standard permissible would comply with the enhanced standards. The NSW Building and Construction Council promoted a scheme in the 1990s but failed due to lack of government support. It was a good idea then, and it is still a good idea now.

5) If the industry won’t support a voluntary scheme, government should introduce a coercive qualified practitioner (QP) scheme.

This would be a permanent version of the short-term scheme. If a building goes bad, the QP could lose the right to practise as a QP as well as being liable to the owners.

6) Revitalise trade training and certification to ensure all trade workers are properly trained and certified.

Many trades on building sites have no training and are not licensed. The requirement to read directions and document work against procedures means everyone on site must be functionally literate. The goal should be to have 30% of people working on site at Certificate 4 level by 2025. 100% of building workers should be literate by 2025. This should be a national requirement, checked by inspectors.

7) All leading hands for any trade should be educated up to Certificate 4 level.

This should be independently verified to cut out shonky training providers. Leading hands in all trades should be licensed and responsible for the work they do.

8) Enhance licensing of builders and subcontractors to ensure people in charge on site are educated beyond Certificate 4.

All people occupying construction roles with management responsibility should have valid qualifications in architecture, structural engineering or building.

9) Consider additional laws on contract provisions to reduce the economic power disparity between developers, head contractors and subcontractors.

Unfair commercial pressures are at the heart of much bad building. We should do more to cushion the smaller players from the larger ones.

10) And, while we are at it, we should ensure a value-capture process accompanies the development of tall residential buildings so the cost of upgrading social infrastructure is recovered.

High-density, high-rise buildings massively increase loads on socially owned infrastructure, such as schools, libraries, hospitals, parks and sporting facilities. The developers of tall buildings should be made to contribute adequately to the economic cost of enhancing these provisions, which can involve solutions that are unusually expensive, such as high-rise schools.

Read more: Explainer: what is ‘value capture’ and what does it mean for cities?

– ref. Beyond Opal: a 10-point plan to fix the residential building industry – http://theconversation.com/beyond-opal-a-10-point-plan-to-fix-the-residential-building-industry-110975

Hayne’s failure to tackle bank structure means that in a decade or so another treasurer will have to call another royal commission

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Linden, Sessional Lecturer, PhD (Management) Candidate, School of Management, RMIT University

Every 10 to 15 years it’s the same.

Ever since financial deregulation in the 1980s we’ve had a finance industry scandal followed by an inquiry, a quick fix, and a declaration that it shouldn’t happen again.

In the early 1990s there were royal commissions into the A$1.7 billion Tri-continental/ State Bank Victoria collapse, the A$3.1 billion State Bank of South Australia collapse and the WA Inc collapse which explored the interrelated activities at Rothwells bank, the A$1.8 billion collapse of Bond Corporation and the A$1.2 billion siphoned from Bell Resources.

A decade later in 2003 Justice Owen reported on the A$5.3 billion collapse of Australia’s largest insurer HIH.

And now, bang on schedule, we have Kenneth Hayne delivering the final report of a royal commission into systemic misconduct in banking, superannuation and financial services industry to a government that voted 26 times against holding it.

There are two particularly striking things about the 10-15 year cycle.

One is the rhythm of public inquiries followed by reports, then (sometimes) trials, then books, then almost everyone forgetting (except for those personally scarred) only for problems to resurface later.

The other is that the times between have been punctuated by government-commissioned banking and financial system reviews: the 1991 Campbell Inauiry, the 1996 Wallis Inquiry, the 2010 Cooper superannuation review and the 2012 Murray Review . Each either missed or downplayed the links between poor governance, industry structure, systemic misconduct and prudential risk.

Has Kenneth got the frequency right this time?

Commissioner Kenneth Hayne’s 1000-page final report hasn’t gone far enough to end this cycle.

While his referral of 24 misdeeds for possible criminal and civil prosecution will help in righting past wrongs and perhaps focus the minds of directors and executives, the impact will be generational rather than permanent.

Read more: Compensation scheme to follow Hayne’s indictment of financial sector

The flurry of prosecutions and actions will again reveal problems with the law – gaps in coverage, inadequate penalties and cases the law won’t allow to stand up.

Taken together the recommendations are a patchwork of measures that if implemented will over time be eaten away – and at some point will be dismantled – because the rationale for their adoption will be forgotten.

Even before they are implemented they will have to run the gauntlet of a massive subterranean lobbying effort from industry to water them down, something Hayne indicated he expected.

The deepest flaw lies unaddressed…

Even though Hayne emphasises the link between systemic misconduct, governance, structure and prudential (system-wide) risk, something that Treasury, the RBA and Australia’s three business regulator amigos, APRA, ASIC and the ACCC, have long rejected, he makes no concrete suggestions to tackle it.

As we have written previously, research tells us big systemically important shareholder-focused universal for-profit banks that cross-sell products are more profitable than smaller banks in the good times but are more prone to misconduct and to failure in the worse times.

Australia’s big four fit the bill – they’re big, they have been vertically integrated one-stop shops, they are very, very profitable and they are very focused on shareholder returns.

While the banks, apart from Westpac, have divested themselves of wealth management and insurance arms for now there is nothing stopping them reacquiring them in the future.

This means we are once again 10 or 15 years away from systemic misconduct resurfacing as big banks seek to become more profitable.

…and putting the onus on directors won’t much help

While heads might roll in yet another round of internal investigations to fix bank culture, it is wise to remember that as Adele Ferguson observed ANZ’s internal investigation of the Opes Prime collapse left the bigger governance lessons “unlearned”.

Directors and senior executives of failed companies continue to live charmed lives.

The directors of Babcock and Brown were cheered as they left the building, while friends and family of the disgraced One.Tel director Jodee Rich have resurfaced at Hayne and other public inquiries.

Some of the One.Tel directors have had long corporate careers. The former chair at of the collapsed Allco Finance Group Bob Mansfield went on to review the ABC.

As Adam Schwab bluntly put it, “corporate Australia is nothing if not forgiving”.

It’ll chase horses rather than close doors

Hayne is persisting with a chasing bolting horses approach to misconduct that relies on detection and enforcement.

We have argued this approach is just not as a effective as other alternatives such as two-tier boards and employee directors which have a better track record of keeping stable doors closed and horses tethered.

Read more: Banking Royal Commission: no commissions, no exemptions, no fees without permission. Hayne gets the government to do a U-turn

Without them we could very easily have another crisis and another royal commission in 15 to 15 years time.

Ireland has taken a been prepared to change corporate structures. After the meltdown of its financial system triggered by the end of a “classic vanilla property boom” its parliament legislated to appoint public interest directors to the boards of its failed banks.

These changes were designed to ensure banks directors put the public interest first, ahead of shareholders interests and even customers interests.

It’s beyond time we did it here.

Hayne’s main recommendations:

  • Mortgage brokers required to act in the best interests of the borrower
  • Mortgage brokers to charge borrowers rather than lenders
  • Insurance providers required to “take reasonable care”
  • Funeral insurance to be subject to financial service laws
  • Cap on insurance sales commissions for car dealers
  • Reduced cap on life insurance commissions
  • Cold call selling of financial products banned
  • Ongoing fee arrangements to be reapproved annually
  • “Grandfathering” of fee arrangements to stop
  • Banks to no longer charge dishonour fees on basic accounts
  • Banks to no longer provide overdrafts on basic accounts without consent
  • National scheme for mediation of farm debt
  • Industry-funded compensation scheme of last resort
  • Super fund trustees not to be employees of super fund owner
  • Australians to be defaulted into only one super fund, once
  • ASIC to use court action as the “starting point” for considering how to take action
  • External body to oversee APRA and ASIC

– ref. Hayne’s failure to tackle bank structure means that in a decade or so another treasurer will have to call another royal commission – http://theconversation.com/haynes-failure-to-tackle-bank-structure-means-that-in-a-decade-or-so-another-treasurer-will-have-to-call-another-royal-commission-110437

Banking Royal Commission: the real problem is how we value executives and workers

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kym Sheehan, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Sydney

Justice Hayne says in almost every case of appalling misconduct examined by his commission, what happened was “driven not only by the relevant entity’s pursuit of profit, but also by individuals’ pursuit of gain”.

He is fingering greed: personal greed.

One of his suggested solutions is to change corporate culture, something one bank board chairman said in evidence would take 10 years.

Banning some, but not all, sales commissions will help.

But a big failing in the report is its inability to come to grips with the importance of setting remuneration targets and measuring performance.

Put simply, rating performance is a big part of the problem. And we have to rate performance.

We reward the end rather than the means

The way performance is rated and rewarded communicates clearly what the institution wants, but does not necessarily set any limits on how it is achieved.

Being recognised for customer service hasn’t been a big part of those wants. They have usually been usually more directly connected with profit.

For chief executives and their direct reports, that’s underlying group profit, which removes one-off items such as expenses to upgrade computers or pay redundancies or pay regulator fines. Some executives can earn more than 200% of their fixed pay as an extra short term incentive.

Read more: Banking Royal Commission: no commissions, no exemptions, no fees without permission. Hayne gets the government to do a U-turn

If an executive earned fixed pay of A$2 million per year, the opportunity to earn an extra $4 million as a bonus provides a strong incentive to “perform”. Performance will also seep into decisions about the rate of base pay for next year.

This group profit growth target is then divided up between business divisions or units and sub targets identified. This process continues right down to frontline staff, who might get only 5-10% of their base salary as a bonus.

A particular definition of group profit

At this level the employment terms might explicitly link next year’s base salary with this year’s performance rating. Getting a good rating not only determines this year’s bonus, but also next year’s rate of pay.

Commissioner Hayne recommends changes to how the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority supervises remuneration practices and extend the existing Bank Accountability Regime (BEAR) to other institutions such as insurers and superannuation funds.

He stops short of recommending new laws prescribing how financial institutions reward their staff, seeing that as a matter of culture and something where “no one size fits all”.

If we must reward profit, we could do it differently

But if financial institutions don’t expressly consider how good (profit) performance is achieved – whether it is by treating customers poorly, being less than frank with the regulator, cutting corners to achieve sales – nothing much will change and customers will continue to feel bitter and hurt, and the community will remain distrustful.

The sad truth is that left to their own devices, our financial institutions are likely to continue to set targets that value financial results over the right results for customers.

Read more: Confiscate their super. If it works for sports stars, it could work for bankers

Acting in the customers’ interests needn’t be at the expense of profit, but it might well be at the expense of as much profit.

A better approach might be to ask financial institutions to take into account the one-off costs of fixing up the messes identified by the royal commission when measuring profit. And then to look beyond profit while also considering all customer outcomes, not merely net promoter scores of sentiment.

Hayne’s main recommendations:

  • Mortgage brokers required to act in the best interests of the borrower
  • Mortgage brokers to charge borrowers rather than lenders
  • Insurance providers required to “take reasonable care”
  • Funeral insurance to be subject to financial service laws
  • Cap on insurance sales commissions for car dealers
  • Reduced cap on life insurance commissions
  • Cold call selling of financial products banned
  • Ongoing fee arrangements to be reapproved annually
  • “Grandfathering” of fee arrangements to stop
  • Banks to no longer charge dishonour fees on basic accounts
  • Banks to no longer provide overdrafts on basic accounts without consent
  • National scheme for mediation of farm debt
  • Industry-funded compensation scheme of last resort
  • Super fund trustees not to be employees of super fund owner
  • Australians to be defaulted into only one super fund, once
  • ASIC to use court action as the “starting point” for considering how to take action
  • External body to oversee APRA and ASIC

– ref. Banking Royal Commission: the real problem is how we value executives and workers – http://theconversation.com/banking-royal-commission-the-real-problem-is-how-we-value-executives-and-workers-111094

We discovered a warped and twisted disc of young, massive stars at the edge of our Milky Way

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Associate Dean (Global Engagement) and Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University

From a great distance, our Milky Way would look like a thin disc of stars that rotates once every few hundred million years around its central region. Hundreds of billions of stars provide the gravitational glue to hold it all together.

But the pull of gravity is much weaker in the galaxy’s far outer disc. Out there, the hydrogen clouds that make up most of the Milky Way’s gas disc are no longer confined to a thin plane. Instead, they give the disc an S-like, warped appearance.

Although the Milky Way’s warped hydrogen gas layer had been known for decades, in research published today in Nature Astronomy, we discovered that a disc of young, massive stars there is warped too, and in a progressively twisted spiral pattern.

Read more: From pancakes to soccer balls, new study shows how galaxies change shape as they age

We were able to determine this twisted appearance after having developed the first accurate three-dimensional picture of the Milky Way’s stellar disc out to its far outer regions.

Mapping the Milky Way

Trying to determine the real shape of our galaxy is like standing in a Sydney garden and attempting to determine the shape of Australia. The Milky Way is all around us, so to determine its shape, we would need to map the distributions of stars in all directions.

While that is not particularly difficult in directions above and below the stellar disc plane, it becomes much harder along the Milky Way’s plane.

Other than stars and hydrogen gas clouds in the Milky Way’s plane, our view is obscured by huge quantities of dust. The material astronomers call dust is made up of carbon particles. It is not too different from the soot that builds up in your home if, for example, you have an open fire.

Large quantities of dust obscure our view of what lies beyond, but dust also makes light look redder. This is because the size of those carbon particles is close to the wavelength of blue light. Therefore, blue light can be absorbed quite easily by the dust while red light passes through without too much trouble.

But it’s not just the presence of dust that makes mapping our Milky Way galaxy troublesome. It is notoriously difficult to determine distances from the Sun to parts of the Milky Way’s outer disc without having a clear idea of what that disc actually looks like.

Pulsating stars

One of the researchers in my international team – Xiaodian Chen of the National Astronomical Observatories (Chinese Academy of Sciences) in Beijing – compiled a new catalogue of well-behaved variable stars known as classical Cepheids. These stars vary in brightness over a period of time.

These stars are among the best mileposts in astronomy: they can be used to determine very accurate distances with uncertainties of only 3-5%. This is pretty much as good as it gets in astronomy, allowing us to obtain the most accurate map of the outer Milky Way available to date.

Our new catalogue was based on observations made with NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), a space telescope fitted with long-wavelength (infrared) glasses, ideal to look through any dust in the Milky Way’s disc.

The Cepheids mapped range from the Milky Way’s centre to its outer regions with most on the near side of the centre of our galaxy because of observational limitations.

Classical Cepheids are young stars that are some 4 to 20 times as massive as our Sun, and up to 100,000 times as bright. Such high stellar masses imply that these stars live fast and die young, burning through the hydrogen fuel in their stellar interiors very quickly, sometimes in only a few million years.

Cepheids show day- to month-long pulsations, which can be observed quite easily as changes in their brightness. Combined with a Cepheid’s observed average brightness, the period of its pulsation cycle can be used to obtain an accurate distance.

We all warp together

Somewhat to our surprise, we found that our collection of 1,339 Cepheid stars and the Milky Way’s gas disc follow each other closely. Until our recent study, it had not been possible to tie the distribution of young stars in the Milky Way’s outer disc so well to the flaring and warped disc made up of hydrogen gas clouds.

3D distribution of the classical Cepheid variable stars in the Milky Way’s warped disc (red and blue points) centred on the location of the Sun (shown as a large orange symbol). The units kpc are kiloparsecs (1 kpc = about 3,262 light years) along the image’s three axes are used by astronomers to indicate distances on galaxy-wide scales. Richard de Grijs (Macquarie University), Author provided

But perhaps more importantly, we discovered that the stellar disc is warped in a progressively twisted spiral pattern.

Many spiral galaxies are warped to varying extents, such as the galaxy ESO 510-G13 (pictured top) in the southern constellation Hydra, roughly 150 million light-years from Earth. However, only a dozen other galaxies were known to also show similarly twisted patterns in their outer discs.

Read more: Curious Kids: Where are all the other galaxies hidden?

Combining our results with these earlier observations, we concluded that the Milky Way’s warped and twisted spiral pattern is likely caused by forced torques from the galaxy’s massive inner disc. The rotating inner disc is, in essence, dragging the outer disc along, but since the outer disc’s rotation is lagging the resulting structure is a spiral pattern.

This new map provides a crucial update for studies of our galaxy’s stellar motions and the origins of the Milky Way’s disc. This is particularly interesting given the wealth of information we anticipate to receive from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite mission.

Gaia aims to eventually map our Milky Way in unprecedented detail, based on the most accurate distance determinations to the galaxy’s brightest stars ever obtained.

– ref. We discovered a warped and twisted disc of young, massive stars at the edge of our Milky Way – http://theconversation.com/we-discovered-a-warped-and-twisted-disc-of-young-massive-stars-at-the-edge-of-our-milky-way-110985

There’s insufficient evidence your sunscreen harms coral reefs

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Terry Hughes, Distinguished Professor, James Cook University

In the face of persistent heatwaves, Australians are reaching for the sunscreen. But you might have heard some mixed messages about its harm to the environment – specifically to coral reefs.

In July 2018, Hawaii passed a law to prohibit the future sale of sunscreens containing benzophene-3 and octinoxate, claiming these two chemicals increase coral bleaching, and have significant harmful impacts on Hawaii’s marine environment.

Read more: Marine heatwaves are getting hotter, lasting longer and doing more damage

In October 2018, the Republic of Palau followed suit, and banned “reef-toxic” sunscreens. Like most reefs throughout the tropics and subtropics, coral reefs in Hawaii and Palau have already severely bleached multiple times during recent, unusually hot summers, causing extensive loss of corals.

Key West, in Florida, may be the latest area to follow this trend, with a proposed ban to be voted on in early February.

However, medical and skin cancer specialists have warned of the public health risks of a ban on widely used sunscreens, describing the prohibition as risky and unjustified, in part because the few studies that have addressed the environmental impacts of sunscreens experimentally “are not representative of real world conditions”.

For example, the way in which coral tissues were exposed to sunscreen in experiments does not mimic the dispersal and dilution of pollutants from a tourist’s skin (and other sources) into reef waters and onto corals growing in the wild.

Experiments that expose corals to sunscreen chemicals typically use far higher concentrations than have ever been measured on an actual reef. A recent review of the amount of benzophne-3 in reef waters found that, typically, concentrations are barely detectable – usually, a few parts per trillion. One much higher report of 1.4 parts per million, in the US Virgin Islands, is based on a single water sample.

The environmental concerns over sunscreens on coral reefs are centred overwhelmingly on just two studies. The first, published in 2008, noted that there was no previous scientific evidence for an impact of sunscreens on coral reefs.

This study exposed small fragments of corals (branch tips) to high levels of benzophenone-3 and other chemicals by incubating them for a few days inside plastic bags. The fragments in the bags quickly became diseased with viruses and bleached. The authors concluded “up to 10% of the world reefs are potentially threatened by sunscreen-induced coral bleaching”.

Bleaching is a stress response by corals, where they turn pale due to a decline in the symbiotic micro-algae that lives inside their tissues. You can make a coral bleach experimentally by torturing it in any number of ways. However, coral bleaching at a global and regional scale is caused by anthropogenic heating, not sunscreen. We know the footprint of bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 1998, 2002, 2016 and 2017 is closely matched to where the water was hottest for longest in each event.

Even the most remote reefs are vulnerable to heat stress. The physiological mechanisms and timescale of thermal bleaching due to global heating is very different from the rapid responses of corals to experimental exposure to high concentrations of sunscreen chemicals.

The second and most-widely cited study of sunscreen toxicity on corals is also laboratory-based. Published in 2016, it focused mainly on the responses of the day-old larvae of one coral species, as well as isolated coral cells. This study did not examine intact coral colonies.

The larvae were placed in 2-3 centilitres of artificial seawater containing a range of concentrations of sunscreen chemicals and a solvent to disperse them. After a few hours, the coral larvae became increasingly pale (bleached) with higher concentrations of oxybenzone.

Read more: Why there’s still hope for our endangered coral reefs

This study also measured the concentration of benzophenone in sea water at six locations in Hawaii. These samples were unreplicated (one per location), and all of them had unmeasureable amounts of sunscreen chemicals. In the US Virgin Islands, the authors found higher concentrations of benzophenone at four out of ten locations, although they did not report results for any blank samples (to control for contamination). The study concluded that oxybenzone threatens the resilience of coral reefs to climate change.

In conclusion, there is actually no direct evidence to demonstrate that bleaching due to global heating is exacerbated by sunscreen pollutants. Similarly, there is no evidence that recovery from thermal bleaching is impaired by sunscreens, or that sunscreens cause coral bleaching in the wild.

– ref. There’s insufficient evidence your sunscreen harms coral reefs – http://theconversation.com/theres-insufficient-evidence-your-sunscreen-harms-coral-reefs-109567

Hidden women of history: Tarpe Mills, 1940s comic writer, and her feisty superhero Miss Fury

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

In this series, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages.

In April 1941, just a few short years after Superman came swooping out of the Manhattan skies, Miss Fury – originally known as Black Fury – became the first major female superhero to go to print. She beat Charles Moulton Marsden’s Wonder Woman to the page by more than six months. More significantly, Miss Fury was the first female superhero to be written and drawn by a woman, Tarpé Mills.

Miss Fury’s creator – whose real name was June – shared much of the gritty ingenuity of her superheroine. Like other female artists of the Golden Age, Mills was obliged to make her name in comics by disguising her gender. As she later told the New York Post, “It would have been a major let-down to the kids if they found out that the author of such virile and awesome characters was a gal.”

Yet, this trailblazing illustrator, squeezed out of the comic world amid a post-WW2 backlash against unconventional images of femininity and a 1950s climate of heightened censorship, has been largely excluded from the pantheon of comic greats – until now.

Comics then and now tend to feature weak-kneed female characters who seem to exist for the sole purpose of being saved by a male hero – or, worse still, are “fridged”, a contemporary comic book colloquialism that refers to the gruesome slaying of an undeveloped female character to deepen the hero’s motivation and propel him on his journey.

But Mills believed there was room in comics for a different kind of female character, one who was able, level-headed and capable, mingling tough-minded complexity with Mills’ own taste for risqué behaviour and haute couture gowns.

Miss Fury toting a gun. Author provided

Where Wonder Woman’s powers are “marvellous” – that is, not real or attainable – Miss Fury and her alter ego Marla Drake use their collective brains, resourcefulness and the odd stiletto heel in the face to bring the villains to justice.

A WW2 plane featuring an image of Miss Fury. http://www.tarpemills.com

And for a time they were wildly successful.

Miss Fury ran a full decade from April 1941 to December 1951, was syndicated in 100 different newspapers at the height of her wartime fame, and sold a million copies an issue in reprints released by Timely (now Marvel) comics.

Fighter pilots painted Miss Fury on the fuselage of bomber planes. Young girls played with paper doll cut outs featuring her extensive high fashion wardrobe.

An anarchic, ‘gender flipped’ universe

Miss Fury’s “origin story” offers its own coolly ironic commentary on the masculine conventions of the comic genre.

One night a girl called Marla Drake finds out that her friend Carol is wearing an identical gown to a masquerade party. So, at the behest of her maid Francine, she dons a skin tight black cat suit that – in an imperial twist, typical of the period – was once worn as a ceremonial robe by a witch doctor in Africa.

On the way to the ball, Marla takes on a gun-toting killer, using her cat claws, stiletto heels, and – hilariously – a puff of powder blown from her makeup compact to disarm the villain. She leaves him trussed up with a hapless and unconscious police detective by the side of the road.

Tarpe Mills with her beloved Persian cat. Author provided

Miss Fury could fly a fighter plane when she had to, jumping out in a parachute dressed in a red satin ball gown and matching shoes. She was also a crack shot.

This was an anarchic, gender flipped, comic book universe in which the protagonist and principle antagonists were women, and in which the supposed tools of patriarchy – high heels, makeup and mermaid bottom ball gowns – were turned against the system. Arch nemesis Erica Von Kampf – a sultry vamp who hides a swastika-branded forehead behind a v-shaped blond fringe – also displayed amazing enterprise in her criminal antics.

Author provided

Invariably the male characters required saving from the crime gangs, the Nazis or merely from themselves. Among the most ingenious panels in the strip were the ones devoted to hapless lovelorn men, endowed with the kind of “thought bubbles” commonly found hovering above the heads of angsty heroines in romance comics.

By contrast, the female characters possessed a gritty ingenuity inspired by Noir as much as by the changed reality of women’s wartime lives. Half way through the series, Marla got a job, and – astonishingly, for a Sunday comic supplement – became a single mother, adopting the son of her arch nemesis, wrestling with snarling dogs and chains to save the toddler from a deadly experiment.

Mills claims to have modelled Miss Fury on herself. She even named Marla’s cat Peri-Purr after her own beloved Persian pet. Born in Brooklyn in 1918, Mills grew up in a house headed by a single widowed mother, who supported the family by working in a beauty parlour. Mills worked her way through New York’s Pratt Institute by working as a model and fashion illustrator.

Censorship

In the end, ironically, it was Miss Fury’s high fashion wardrobe that became a major source of controversy.

In 1947, no less than 37 newspapers declined to run a panel that featured one of Mills’ tough-minded heroines, Era – a South American Nazi-Fighter who became a post-war nightclub entertainer – dressed as Eve, replete with snake and apple, in a spangled, two-piece costume.

This was not the only time the comic strip was censored. Earlier in the decade, Timely comics had refused to run a picture of the villainess Erica resplendent in her bath – surrounded by pink flamingo wallpaper.

Erica in the bath, surrounded by pink flamingo wallpaper. Author provided.

But so many frilly negligées, cat fights, and shower scenes had escaped the censor’s eye. It’s not a leap to speculate that behind the ban lay the post-war backlash against powerful and unconventional women.

In wartime, nations had relied on women to fill the production jobs that men had left behind. Just as “Rosie the Riveter” encouraged women to get to work with the slogan “We Can Do It!”, so too the comparative absence of men opened up room for less conventional images of women in the comics.

A Miss Fury paper doll cut out. Author provided

Once the war was over, women lost their jobs to returning servicemen. Comic creators were no longer encouraged to show women as independent or decisive. Politicians and psychologists attributed juvenile delinquency to the rise of unconventional comic book heroines and by 1954 the Comics Code Authority was policing the representation of women in comics, in line with increasingly conservative ideologies. In the 1950s, female action comics gave way to romance ones, featuring heroines who once again placed men at the centre of their existence.

Miss Fury was dropped from circulation in December 1951, and despite a handful of attempted comebacks, Mills and her anarchic creation slipped from public view.

Mills continued to work as a commercial illustrator on the fringes of a booming advertising industry. In 1971, she turned a hand to romance comics, penning a seven-page story that was published by Marvel, but it wasn’t her forte. In 1979, she began work on a graphic novel Albino Jo, which remains unfinished.

Despite her chronic asthma, Mills – like the reckless Noir heroine she so resembled – chain-smoked to the bitter end. She died of emphysema on December 12, 1988, and is buried in New Jersey under the simple inscription, “Creator of Miss Fury”.

This year Mills’ work will be belatedly recognised. As a recipient of the 2019 Eisner Award, she will finally take her place in the Comics Hall of Fame, alongside the male creators of the Golden Age who have too long dominated the history of the genre. Hopefully this will bring her comic creation the kind of notoriety, readership and big screen adventures she thoroughly deserves.

– ref. Hidden women of history: Tarpe Mills, 1940s comic writer, and her feisty superhero Miss Fury – http://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-tarpe-mills-1940s-comic-writer-and-her-feisty-superhero-miss-fury-110179

Murray-Darling report shows public authorities must take climate change risk seriously

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arjuna Dibley, Graduate Fellow, Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford University

The tragic recent events on the Darling River, and the political and policy furore around them, have again highlighted the severe financial and environmental consequences of mismanaging climate risks. The Murray-Darling Royal Commission demonstrates how closely boards of public sector corporate bodies can be scrutinised for their management of these risks.

Public authorities must follow private companies and factor climate risk into their board decision-making. Royal Commissioner Brett Walker has delivered a damning indictment of the Murray Darling Basin Authority’s management of climate-related risks. His report argues that the authority’s senior management and board were “negligent” and fell short of acting with “reasonable care, skill and diligence”. For its part, the authority “rejects the assertion” that it “acted improperly or unlawfully in any way”.

The Royal Commission has also drawn attention to the potentially significant legal and reputational consequences for directors and organisations whose climate risk management is deemed to have fallen short of a rising bar.

Read more: Damning royal commission report leaves no doubt that we all lose if the Murray-Darling Basin Plan fails

It’s the public sector’s turn

Until recently, scrutiny of how effectively large and influential organisations are responding to climate risks has focused mostly on the private sector.

In Australia it is widely acknowledged among legal experts that private company directors’ duty of “due care and diligence” requires them to consider foreseeable climate risks that intersect with the interests of the company. Indeed, Australia’s companies regulator, ASIC, has called for directors to take a “probative and proactive” approach to these risks.

The recent focus on management of the Murray-Darling Basin again highlights the crucial role public sector corporations (or “public authorities” as we call them) also play in our overall responses to climate change – and the consequences when things go wrong.

Australia’s economy, once dominated by publicly owned enterprises, was reshaped by waves of privatisations in the late 20th century. However, hundreds of public authorities continue to play an important role in our economy. They build and maintain infrastructure, generate energy, oversee superannuation portfolios, provide insurance and manage water resources, among many other activities.

This means that, like their counterparts in the private sector, many face risks associated with climate change. Take Melbourne Water, for instance, a statutory water corporation established to manage the city’s water supply. It will have to contend with increasingly hot summers and reduced rainfall (a physical risk), and also with the risk that government policy in the future might impose stricter conditions on how water is used (a transition risk).

What duties do public authorities owe?

Our new research from the Centre for Policy Development, shows that, at the Commonwealth and Victorian level (and likely in other Australian jurisdictions), the main laws governing officials in public authorities are likely to create similar obligations to those imposed on private company directors.

For instance, a 2013 federal act requires public authority board members to carry out their duties with the degree of “due care and diligence” that a reasonable person would exercise if they were a Commonwealth official in that board position.

The concept of a “reasonable person” is crucial. There is ever-increasing certainty about the human contribution to climate change. New tools and models have been created to measure the impact of climate change on the economy. Climate risks are therefore reasonably foreseeable if you are acting carefully and diligently, and thus public authority directors should consider these risks.

The obligations of public authority directors may, in some cases, go beyond what is required of private company directors. The same act mentioned above requires Commonwealth officials to promote best practice in the way they carry out their duties. While there is still wide divergence in how private companies manage climate change, best practice in leading corporations is moving towards more systematic analysis and disclosure of these risks. Accordingly, a “best practice” obligation places an even higher onus on public sector directors to manage climate risk.

The specific legislation that governs certain public authorities may introduce different and more onerous requirements. For instance, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s governing legislation, the Water Act 2007, imposes a number of additional conditions on the authority. This includes the extent to which the minister can influence board decision-making.

Nonetheless, our laws set out a widely applicable standard for public authority directors.

Approaches to better manage public authority climate risks

While some public authorities are already carefully considering how physical and transition climate risks affect their work, our research suggests that standards vary widely.

As with the private sector, a combination of clear expectations for better climate risk management, greater scrutiny and more investment in climate-related capabilities and risk-management frameworks can all play a role in raising the bar. Our research highlights four steps that governments should consider:

  • creating a whole-of-government toolkit and implementation strategy for training and supporting directors to account for climate-risk in decision-making

  • using existing public authority accountability mechanisms – such as the public sector commissioner or auditor general’s office – to more closely scrutinise the management of climate-related financial risks

  • issuing formal ministerial statements of expectations to clarify how public authorities and their directors should manage climate-related risks and policy priorities

  • making legislative or regulatory changes to ensure consistent consideration, management and disclosure of climate risk by public sector decision-makers.

Read more: Company directors can be held legally liable for ignoring the risks from climate change

Measures such as these would set clear expectations for more consistent, sophisticated responses to climate risks by public authorities. However, even without any changes, it should be clear that public authority directors have legal duties to consider climate risks – and that these duties must be taken seriously even when doing so is complicated, controversial or politically sensitive.

– ref. Murray-Darling report shows public authorities must take climate change risk seriously – http://theconversation.com/murray-darling-report-shows-public-authorities-must-take-climate-change-risk-seriously-110990

Compensation scheme to follow Hayne’s indictment of financial sector

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

The Morrison government has promised to establish a compensation scheme of last resort – paid for by the financial services industry – as it seeks to avoid the outcome of the banking royal commission becoming a damaging election issue for it.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, releasing Commissioner Kenneth Hayne’s three-volume report which excoriates the financial sector, said the government would be “tacking action” on all 76 recommendations.

The commissioner has made 24 referrals to the regulatory authorities over entities’ conduct in specific instances. All the major banks have been referred except Westpac. AMP, Suncorp, Allianz and Youi are among entities that have been referred.

Commisioner Hayne has made no criminal conduct referrals – he was dealing with entities rather than individuals. But this does not preclude criminal prosecutions as a result of the investigations.

In an indictment of years of bad behaviour which has left many customers devastated, Hayne says “there can be no doubt that the primary responsibility for misconduct in the financial services industry lies with the entities concerned and those who managed and controlled those entities”.

“Rewarding misconduct is wrong. Yet incentive, bonus and commission schemes throughout the financial services industry have measured sales and profit, but not compliance with the law and proper standards,” the commissioner says.

“Entities and individuals acted in the ways they did because they could.

“Entities set the terms on which they would deal, consumers often had little detailed knowledge or understanding of the transaction and consumers had next to no power to negotiate the terms.”

Hayne says that “too often, financial services entities that broke the law werenot properly held to account.

“The Australian community expects, and is entitled to expect, that if an entity breaks the law and causes damage to customers, it will compensate those affected customers. But the community also expects that financial services entities that break the law will be held to account.”

The commissioner stresses that “where possible, conflicts of interest and conflicts between duty and interest should be removed” in financial services.

Hayne says that because it was the financial entities, their boards and senior executives, who bore primary responsibility for what had happened, attention must be given to their culture, governance and renumeration practices.

Changes to the law were “necessary protections for consumers against misconduct, to provide adequate redress and to redress asymmetries of power and information between entities and consumers”.

The commission’s multiple recommendations propose:

…simplifying the law so that its intent is met;

…removing where possible conflicts of interest;

…improving the effectiveness of the regulators, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC);

…driving cultural change in institutions and increasing their accountability;

…increasing protection for consumers from “misconduct or conduct that falls below community standards and expectations”, and providing for remediation.

The government has provided point-by-point responses to the recommendations.

The commission had seven rounds of public hearings with about 130 witnesses, and reviewed more than 10,000 public submissions. It dealt with banking, financial advice, superannuation and insurance.

While there have been claims that the fallout from the commission could risk a further tightening of credit for small business in particular, Hayne has been careful in his report to minimise that danger.

But he makes it clear that there should be no excuse for avoiding needed action. “Some entities used the undoubted need for care in recommending change as a basis for saying that there should be no change. The ‘Caution’ sign was read as if it said ‘Do Not Enter’.”

The commissioner has some sharp words for the NAB in his report, saying that “having heard from both the CEO Mr Thorburn, and the Chair, Dr Henry, I am not as confident as I would wish to be that the lessons of the past have been learned.

“More particularly, I was not persuaded that NAB is willing to accept the necessary responsibility for deciding, for itself, what is the right thing to do, and then having its staff act accordingly. I thought it telling that Dr Henry seemed unwilling to accept any criticism of how the board had dealt with some issues.

“I thought it telling that Mr Thorburn treated all issues of fees for no service as nothing more than carelessness combined with system deficiencies … Overall, my fear – that there may be a wide gap between the public face NAB seeks to show and what it does in practice – remains.”

Among his specific recommendations Hayne says that grandfathering provisions for conflicted remuneration “should be repealed as soon as is reasonably practicable”. The government has said it will do this from January 2021.

Hayne proposes a new oversight authority that would monitor APRA and ASIC.

He lashes ASIC for not cracking down on fees for no service.

“Until this commission was established, ASIC and the relevant entities approached the fees for no service conduct as if it called, at most, for the entity to repay what it had taken, together with some compensation for the client not having had the use of the money.

“That is, the conduct was treated as if it was no more than a series of inadvertent slips brought about by some want of care in record keeping.”

In relation to the sale of products the commission recommends the removal of the exclusion of funeral expenses policies from the definition of “financial product”. It should be put “beyond doubt that the consumer protection provisions of the ASIC act apply to funeral expenses policies.”

On superannuation the commission says that “hawking” of superannuation products should be prohibited, and that a person should have only one default account.

In a statement Scott Morrison and Frydenberg said that in outlining its response to the commission “the government’s principal focus is on restoring trust in our financial system and delivering better consumer outcomes, while maintaining the flow of credit and continuing to promote competition.”

They said the government would expand the remit of Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) so it could award compensation for successful claims going back a decade.

– ref. Compensation scheme to follow Hayne’s indictment of financial sector – http://theconversation.com/compensation-scheme-to-follow-haynes-indictment-of-financial-sector-110981

New study confirms what scientists already know: basic research is under-valued

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Isobel Ronai, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of Sydney

In our fast-paced modern world there is an expectation that scientific breakthroughs occur quickly and efficiently.

We are bombarded with headlines hyping new findings: Scientists “find cure for cancer which will be available within A YEAR”.

Many scientists know how unrealistic such claims are.

My new study provides data confirming that ground-breaking research takes time, and that the basic research underpinning it is typically overlooked or under-valued.

Read more: Funding basic research plays the long game for future payoffs

During my undergraduate degree I was fascinated to learn that cutting-edge molecular biology techniques – those used for manipulating proteins, DNA and other molecules – come from nature. In this paper I analysed the development of eight important molecular techniques, and showed they all were developed from basic biological research.

My case studies include the relatively new molecular technology known as CRISPR-Cas (now known as a precise DNA cutting tool, but which comes from biologists discovering how bacteria build immunity to viruses), and older technologies like DNA sequencing (developed thanks to biologists discovering how DNA copies itself).

Scientific breakthroughs do not happen overnight

I identified that the major breakthroughs in molecular technology take on average a quarter of a century from basic biological research to the practical payoff. This time frame is a lot longer than any election cycle or the funding period for a research project.

The long lead time before the payoff means it is difficult to calculate the exact benefit of funding basic biological research. But basic research has a major impact.

Read more: Funding basic research plays the long game for future payoffs

A loose estimate suggests that the return on investment of funding basic research is between 20-60% per year! In Australia, every $1 invested into our National Health and Medical Research Council returns $3.20 in health and economic benefits.

Scientific glory is not bestowed upon basic research

I found the basic research that led to the development of new and important molecular technologies is not well recognised by the scientific community.

Basic research findings are not favoured by the science publication model. When you compare scientific articles describing basic research to applied research, the former is less likely to be published in high-profile journals or to be highly cited.

This is an important point, because scientific articles are key to career progression in science. Scientists who dedicate their careers to basic research make vital contributions to science but find it harder to obtain funding and have fewer career advancement opportunities.

Read more: Predicting who will publish or perish as career academics

Molecular technologies transform the world, and that is why the eight case studies have all eventually been linked with the awarding of Nobel Prizes (or are expected to be, in the case of CRISPR-Cas).

However, I found that the researchers who conduct basic research are less likely to be awarded the Nobel Prize or the relevant patents for the development of these molecular biology techniques.

We need to ensure the contributions of basic research scientists are recognised.

Read more: Science can be beautiful, but please don’t call it basic

Basic research made the modern world feasible

If basic biological research had never been pursued by scientists, then today’s world would be a very different and scarier place.

For instance, most of our current advances in human health would never have occurred. Consider the following examples:

  • detection of pathogens causing infectious diseases (eg Zika virus) using PCR (a technique that copies DNA)
  • medical therapies using RNA interference (a technique that lowers accumulation of damaging proteins in a nerve disorder)
  • identification of genetic diseases (eg cystic fibrosis) using DNA sequencing
  • editing the genome (including cancer therapies) using CRISPR-Cas.

Molecular technologies arising from basic biological research play a critical role in diagnosis and treatment of diseases.

These molecular technologies are also powerful research tools that are critical for the progress of further biomedical research, such as modelling complex human diseases and understanding the effect of diabetes on blood vessels.

Further, these molecular technologies have enabled many other aspects of our modern world: they are crucial for agriculture, have led to entirely new industries and also created numerous jobs.

Basic research has major impacts on society, is worthy of investment, but is chronically underfunded.

Funders need to be like angel investors

It’s important that funding bodies have a realistic understanding of the time frame for basic research. Some appear to be investing in research only when it has a good prospect of being useful – in the sense that it will provide quick returns.

Scientists are also increasingly pressured to obtain funding from non-government sources such as industry.

Read more: With federal funding for science on the decline, what’s the role of a profit motive in research?

We need a new investment approach from government funding agencies. The best strategy for high-risk ventures, such as basic research, is to provide stable funding to a wide variety of projects to diversify the risk. If we cast a wider net, we ensure we will always catch one of these “big fish”.

Funders can think of themselves as angel investors who are investing in a portfolio of start-up businesses (another type of venture that is high risk but also high reward).

The expectation of government funding agencies needs to be that most investments in basic research will not provide a return on investment. Data suggests that for start-up businesses, the failure rate is as high as 60%.

A few projects will return what was invested into them. But some research projects will be priceless scientific breakthroughs – these are known to occur with some regularity. Our modern world is built upon them.

If funding agencies are not consistently funding today’s basic research projects, then the revolutionary technologies of tomorrow will never be developed.

– ref. New study confirms what scientists already know: basic research is under-valued – http://theconversation.com/new-study-confirms-what-scientists-already-know-basic-research-is-under-valued-110778

Research shows most online consumer contracts are incomprehensible, but still legally binding

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samuel Becher, Associate Professor of Business Law, Victoria University of Wellington

Most of us will have entered into consumer contracts with large companies and ticked a box to confirm we understand the terms and conditions – without bothering to read the fine print.

We accept standard form contracts when using social media, booking flights, opening a bank account, subscribing to a gym or renting a car. In all these cases, companies offer pre-drafted standardised agreements that are not negotiable.

At the same time, consumers are legally assumed to read the terms and conditions of their contracts. Because of this “duty to read”, consumers are held responsible for the written terms of their agreements, regardless of whether they read them or not.

While consumers have the legal burden to read their contracts, companies do not have a general duty to offer readable ones. As our research shows, most of them are incomprehensible.

Read more: If small print ‘terms and conditions’ require a PhD to read, should they be legally binding?

Checking readability

We have studied popular online consumer contracts and examined the readability of the 500 most popular sign-in-wrap contracts in the United States.

These contracts, now used routinely by popular companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Uber and Airbnb, assume that the user agrees to the website’s terms and conditions by signing up. During the sign-up process, the website provides a hyperlink to its terms and conditions. But the consumer is not required to actually access the terms.

Many scholars argue that consumers do not read their contracts. Nonetheless, courts enforce these contracts based on the assumption that consumers had an opportunity to read them. In other words, according to this reasoning, consumers freely choose to ignore these contracts.

To examine this legal argument, we applied two well-established linguistic tools to check if consumers can actually read sign-in-wrap contracts. We used the Flesch Reading Ease and the Flesch-Kincaid tests. Both tests are based on two factors: the average sentence length and the average number of syllables per word.

Consumer contracts as dense as academic papers

We found that according to these criteria, the contracts examined in our sample are very hard to read. In fact, they are written at the same level as academic articles. Reading these agreements requires, on average, more than 14 years of education. This result is troubling, given the recommended reading level for consumer materials is eighth grade.

Our study shows consumers cannot be expected to read their contracts. A contract is based on mutual assent, but consumers cannot truly assent to something they cannot read.

Read more: Comic contracts and other ways to make the law understandable

We hope such findings will encourage policymakers to revisit their approach to consumer contracts. For starters, legislatures should require companies to better communicate their terms. Beyond that, we should also detail systematic and objective criteria as to what is readable.

At the same time, courts should not assume consumers can read their contracts. Judges should hence be more willing to excuse consumers from unreadable agreements.

Where to from here

Linguistic tests may serve as a good starting point. But such tools should be used only as a perquisite legal standard for examining readability. Companies might deliberately generate good readability scores but that does not necessarily mean the text is actually easy to understand.

The purpose of plain language requirements is not to increase readability per se. Rather, it is to improve the chances that users will be able to understand these agreements, shop among them, and make informed decisions.

Making contracts readable does not rest other concerns, such as the incorporation of unfair terms. Policymakers need to take further steps to level the consumer-business playing field. Currently, the law neglects to impose on companies a clear and operational duty to draft readable contracts. Without a clear incentive, companies will continue to use unreadable texts as their contracts.

This research is a joint project, co-authored with Dr Uri Benoliel at the College of Law and Business in Ramat Gan, Israel.

– ref. Research shows most online consumer contracts are incomprehensible, but still legally binding – http://theconversation.com/research-shows-most-online-consumer-contracts-are-incomprehensible-but-still-legally-binding-110793

Curious Kids: why do we need soap?

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary-Louise McLaws, Professor of Epidemiology Healthcare Infection and Infectious Diseases Control, UNSW

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 need soap? – Claire, age 4.

Thank you, Claire, for your question.

Soap is fun; it feels nice and slippery, you can blow bubbles with it and it often smells lovely. But it also keeps you healthy because it makes it easy for us to remove germs.

Germs are very very small, so small they are invisible to our eyes. We have many germs on our hands all the time. They like to live in the invisible layer of oil on our hands, and they particularly like to hide in skin creases and under your nails. There are many thousands and thousands of germs on your hands right now.

Read more: Curious Kids: why do spiders have hairy legs?

There are good and bad germs. Good germs live on your skin to keep it healthy. Bad germs – what scientists call “pathogens” – can make us sick.

We don’t know if bad germs are on our hands because you can’t see them. The best and easiest way to remove bad germs is washing them away with soap.

It’s a good idea to wash your hands after you go to the toilet, after you blow your nose, before you help prepare food and before you eat. Otherwise, when you touch your mouth, nose or eyes you might accidentally get a bad germ from your hands into your body – where it can make you very sick.

If you’re not a nurse or a doctor you don’t need to “kill” all the germs on your hands. You just need to wash the germs away. Soap is amazingly good at doing this.

Make sure you wash every nook and cranny of your hands. Flickr/World Bank, CC BY

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

Soap gets foamy when we rub it with water between our hands. Foam makes it easy to move soap all around your hands and fingers. While we move soap around, it lifts up invisible oil that holds germs onto your hand. Under the running water we can easily wash off the soap, and all the invisible oil and germs along with it.

If you just use water without soap, the germs will stay on your hands. That’s because water alone can’t lift off the invisible oil where the germs are hiding, often tucked away in tiny creases in the skin on your hands.

We need to rub our hands together with soap and water long enough for the soap to do its job. We need to allow enough time for the soap to make foam, lift the oil holding onto the germs, and rinse them all away.

How long is long enough? Try singing the Happy Birthday song as you rub the soap and water between your hands. Flickr/Lucille Pine, CC BY

How long is long enough? Try singing the Happy Birthday song as you rub the soap and water between your hands, especially rubbing the soap and water over your fingers and fingernails where germs love to live. If you get through the whole song, you are giving the soap long enough to do its important job.

Don’t forget to rub your hands on a clean towel to remove any bad germs that could have been left on your hands.

When we wash our hands with soap and water, the soap lifts up both the bad and good germs and the water washes them away.

But don’t worry – all the good germs that keep your skin healthy will grow back very fast.

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 need soap? – http://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-do-we-need-soap-109083

Online trolling: Once funny, but now the term meaning is far more sinister

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By Dr Evita March

It seems like internet trolling happens everywhere online these days – and it’s showing no signs of slowing down.

The British press and Kensington Palace officials have called for an end to the merciless online trolling of Duchesses Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle, which reportedly includes racist and sexist content, and even threats.

But what exactly is internet trolling? How do trolls “behave”? Do they intend to harm, or amuse?

READ MORE: How ermpathy can make or break a troll

To find out how people define trolling, we conducted a survey with 379 participants. The results suggest there is a difference in the way the media, the research community and the general public understand trolling.

If we want to reduce abusive online behaviour, let’s start by getting the definition right.

-Partners-

Which of these cases is trolling?
Consider the comments that appear in the image below:

Without providing any definitions, we asked if this was an example of internet trolling. Of participants, 44 percent said yes, 41 percent said no and 15 percent were unsure.

Now consider this next image:

Of participants, 69 percent said this was an example of internet trolling, 16 percent said no, and 15 percent were unsure.

These two images depict very different online behaviour. The first image depicts mischievous and comical behaviour, where the author perhaps intended to amuse the audience. The second image depicts malicious and antisocial behaviour, where the author may have intended to cause harm.

There was more consensus among participants that the second image depicted trolling. That aligns with a more common definition of internet trolling as destructive and disruptive online behaviour that causes harm to others.

But this definition has only really evolved in more recent years. Previously, internet trolling was defined very differently.

A shifting definition
In 2002, one of the earliest definitions of internet “trolling” described the behaviour as:

luring others online (commonly on discussion forums) into pointless and time-consuming activities.

Trolling often started with a message that was intentionally incorrect, but not overly controversial. By contrast, internet “flaming” described online behaviour with hostile intentions, characterised by profanity, obscenity, and insults that inflict harm to a person or an organisation.

So, modern day definitions of internet trolling seem more consistent with the definition of flaming, rather than the initial definition of trolling.

To highlight this intention to amuse compared to the intention to harm, communication researcher Jonathan Bishop suggested we differentiate between “kudos trolling” to describe trolling for mutual enjoyment and entertainment, and “flame trolling” to describe trolling that is abusive and not intended to be humorous.

How people in our study defined trolling
In our study, which has been accepted to be published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, we recruited 379 participants (60 percent women) to answer an online, anonymous questionnaire where they provided short answer responses to the following questions:

  • how do you define internet trolling?
  • what kind of behaviours constitute internet trolling?

Here are some examples of how participants responded:

  • Where an individual online verbally attacks another individual with intention of offending the other (female, 27)
  • People saying intentionally provocative things on social media with the intent of attacking / causing discomfort or offence (female, 26)
  • Teasing, bullying, joking or making fun of something, someone or a group (male, 29)
  • Deliberately commenting on a post to elicit a desired response, or to purely gratify oneself by emotionally manipulating another (male, 35)

Based on participant responses, we suggest that internet trolling is now more commonly seen as an intentional, malicious online behaviour, rather than a harmless activity for mutual enjoyment.

A word cloud representing how survey participants described trolling behaviours. Image: The Conversation

Researchers use ‘trolling’ as a catch-all
Clearly there are discrepancies in the definition of internet trolling, and this is a problem.

Research does not differentiate between kudos trolling and flame trolling. Some members of the public might still view trolling as a kudos behaviour. For example, one participant in our study said:

Depends which definition you mean. The common definition now, especially as used by the media and within academia, is essentially just a synonym to “asshole”. The better, and classic, definition is someone who speaks from outside the shared paradigm of a community in order to disrupt presuppositions and try to trigger critical thought and awareness (male, 41)

Not only does the definition of trolling differ from researcher to researcher, but there can also be discrepancy between the researcher and the public.

As a term, internet trolling has significantly deviated from its early, 2002 definition and become a catch-all for all antisocial online behaviours. The lack of a uniform definition of internet trolling leaves all research on trolling open to validity concerns, which could leave the behaviour remaining largely unchecked.

We need to agree on the terminology
We propose replacing the catch-all term of trolling with “cyberabuse”.

Cyberbullying, cyberhate and cyberaggression are all different online behaviours with different definitions, but they are often referred to uniformly as “trolling”.

It is time to move away from the term trolling to describe these serious instances of cyberabuse. While it may have been empowering for the public to picture these internet “trolls” as ugly creatures living under the bridge, this imagery may have begun to downplay the seriousness of their online behaviour.

Continuing to use the term trolling, a term that initially described a behaviour that was not intended to harm, could have serious consequences for managing and preventing the behaviour.

Dr Evita March is a senior lecturer in psychology at the Federation University in Australia. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence.

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Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The humble spade flower moonlights as the ‘love shrub’

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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Smithies, PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland

Sign up to Beating Around the Bush, a series that profiles native plants: part gardening column, part dispatches from country, entirely Australian.

If you are observant enough in the Australian bush, you may be able to spot the spade flower, a member of the violet family. Spade flowers grow under the semi-shade of open eucalypt forest, among other little green herbaceous plants.

This often-overlooked member of Australian flora hides some interesting secrets, including a rare chemical that may hold the key to turning regular plants into medicinal cures.

Read more: The art of healing: five medicinal plants used by Aboriginal Australians

The common name spade flower refers to the flower’s shape, which is dominated by the spade-shaped labellum. Its botanical name, Hybanthus enneaspermus, is equally descriptive. The generic name Hybanthus means “humpbacked flower”, referring to the posture of the flowers. Meanwhile, the specific name enneaspermus means “nine-seeded”, because upon maturity each tiny 5mm fruit splits into three sections bearing three seeds each.

The Conversation

A hidden talent

Violets are familiar objects, from the showy native Viola banksii or the scent of European sweet violets. What is not common knowledge is that members of the Violaceae family produce some very curious molecules called peptides.

People – and many other organisms – use peptides as signals that enable communication between cells and tissues. An example of a peptide messenger from humans with an important function is oxytocin, also known as the “love hormone”. Oxytocin regulates social bonding and other key aspects of our biology and sociality. In contrast, plants sometimes use peptides for a different purpose, as toxins to protect themselves from insects and other pests.

But unlike most peptides, those produced by Violaceae are circular instead of linear. Because of this circular shape, they are highly stable in conditions that would degrade other peptides. This special class of peptides are called “cyclotides” and are only found in relatively few plant species. This is why we have been searching all across northern Australia, from the Kimberley region in Western Australia to the Queensland coast, for samples of native Australian Violaceae.

The first cyclotide to grab the attention of scientists comes from an African plant called kalata-kalata, traditionally used in teas to hasten childbirth. In 2013, it was shown that a specific cyclotide from kalata-kalata acts on smooth muscle to cause contraction of muscle tissue.

Kalata-kalata, or Oldenlandia affinis, is used in a traditional medicinal tea. It’s efficacy comes from the cyclotides it produces. KalataB1/Wikipedia

But easing childbirth might not be the only effect cyclotides have. Initial experiments with spade flower extracts demonstrate a significant effect on the mating behaviour of rats. Rats treated with peptide-laden extracts from spade flower exhibit, uh, increased copulation frequency.

In us humans, the receptors that detect peptides control libido, sleep, and other aspects of our biology. These observations leave spade flower cyclotides as prime suspects underpinning this amorous bioactivity, and could be the basis for coining yet another name for this plant: the “love shrub”.

Despite this intriguing effect, until further scientific investigation validates these initial aphrodisiac findings and their basis, it is probably wise to steer clear of ingesting these plants.

Spade flower is indigenous to Australia, but the native range extends through southern Asia, India, and into Africa. Despite the wide range of the species, the plant is usually distributed in a here-and-there fashion. In our experience this sparse distribution has meant finding no sign of them along the roughly 600km Gibb River Road at the end of the wet season, and just a single observation from a roadside south of Gladstone. This scarcity tests the resolve of many skillful plant spotters, ourselves included.

Spade flower buds are delicate and graceful. Author provided

You’re most likely to find spade flowers in semi-shaded environments north of the Queensland-New South Wales border, along the east coast, and across the Top End. It grows along roadsides or near waterways, but it is difficult to spot because its narrow leaves tend to blend into the mix of herbs growing alongside it.

Look for the lilac spade-shaped flowers among the understory herbs during the warmer and wetter months, but do this before midday when the flowers wilt away from view.

There are other Hybanthus species in Australia, however the genus appears to be polyphyletic (meaning they are grouped together but don’t share a single common ancestor) so the genus is not truly representative of a single taxonomic group per se. Other Hybanthus species look similar to spade flower, namely H. monopetalus, which grows multiple purple-blue flowers on a single stem instead of single lilac-coloured flowers.

In habitats between Brisbane and Sydney spade flower is scarce, however a similar and arguably showier species called H. stellarioides occurs. H. stellarioides is somewhat more delicate, but what really sets it apart are the bright royal orange flowers it produces in summer and autumn.

Spade flowers next to their flashier orange cousin, H. stellarioides. Author provided

In many other aspects these two species look so similar that for some time H. stellarioides was considered a subspecies of the spade flower, however it is now clear they are genetically distinct.

As part of Professor David Craik’s research group at The University of Queensland, we have sequenced the expressed genes of spade flower shoots and roots to uncover how these clever plants make cyclotides. These data helped explain spade flower’s cyclotide amino acid sequences.

Armed with this information, the scientific community can now make stable designer peptides as potential pharmaceuticals. The Craik group is working on making modified cyclotides that can treat cancer and other diseases, and then reintroducing those genes into edible plants – turning a regular tomato plant into a medicinal plant for example. Learning how the spade flower makes cyclotides has already helped us to make some new cyclotides in other plant seeds.

Read more: The mysterious Pilostyles is a plant within a plant

Finally, this work facilitates the isolation of individual “love shrub” cyclotides to test their effects. Watch this space and the herbs underfoot. The humble and shy spade flower may have more surprises yet!

Sign up to Beating Around the Bush, a series that profiles native plants: part gardening column, part dispatches from country, entirely Australian.

– ref. The humble spade flower moonlights as the ‘love shrub’ – http://theconversation.com/the-humble-spade-flower-moonlights-as-the-love-shrub-110973

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