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The Sun doesn’t just fuel almost all life on Earth. It’s also our astrophysical laboratory, the only star close enough to observe in sufficient detail.

This enormous ball of hydrogen and helium is made of plasma – extremely hot, electrically charged gas. The churning of plasma within the Sun produces an invisible magnetic field that envelops our entire Solar System.

Up close, at the Sun’s surface, the plasma is turbulent, dragging the magnetic field with it. It roils and bubbles and occasionally bursts out clouds of material known as coronal mass ejections.

Over the years, scientists have made many close-ups of the Sun’s surface with various telescopes and observatories. Now, we have the highest-resolution images yet, thanks to the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) on Maui, Hawai'i.

In a study published today in Nature, a team led by researchers from the US National Solar Observatory and Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research delivers new observations of the surface of the Sun with unprecedented precision – revealing a feature never seen before.

A solar mystery

The Sun’s magnetic field drives what we call space weather. Explosive flares in the outer atmosphere of the Sun – the corona – can cause radiation storms on Earth, disrupting satellites, power grids and communications.

And there’s a major mystery concerning the corona. The Sun’s surface is about 5,500°C. That’s much cooler than its core, about 27 million degrees Celsius. But the corona, rising above the surface, reaches millions of degrees.

To heat it, energy must pass through cooler intermediate layers. Why does the temperature, after dropping, suddenly rise again? To pin down which mechanism is responsible, we need to observe physical processes on the Sun’s surface that unfold over short times and small distances.

DKIST’s four-metre mirror, advanced optics and high-speed cameras resolve features as small as 20 kilometres across, which is tiny compared to the Sun’s radius of 696,000km. They’ve captured subtle brightness variations and magnetic structures with unmatched clarity.

Connecting the loops

On the Sun’s surface, the roiling flows of plasma drag magnetic fields with them. Sometimes they form coherent magnetic sunspots; at others times they twist and tangle.

These surface magnetic fields extend upward into the corona, and the mechanics at the surface cause magnetic fields aloft to snap and reconnect. This reconfiguration of the magnetic field can release stored energy into heat and fast flows, sometimes triggering explosive solar flares.

The key challenge is to connect these small, short events at the surface to the large-scale heating and eruptions in the Sun’s atmosphere above.

Solving that link would make a huge advance towards understanding why the corona is so hot. It would also improve our ability to predict space weather and how it might affect Earth, as well as interpret the magnetic activity and space weather of distant stars.

In the new study, the team presents the first clear evidence on the Sun of one of nature’s most striking patterns – the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability.

These rolling, wave-like billows form when fast fluid slides past slower fluid. Sometimes you can see it along the edges of windswept clouds.

This instability was theoretically predicted to exist in the Sun’s plasma, but it was unknown at what scales and what role it might play.

To turn observations into insight, the team paired DKIST data with sophisticated computer simulations, creating “synthetic observations” to match what the telescope saw.

This revealed these instabilities are likely key in mixing plasma and braiding the magnetic fields. It means small-scale billows and vortices near the Sun’s surface pump energy upward, priming the corona for its extreme temperatures and setting the stage for explosive flares.

Making a simulation always involves some approximations. The models can’t reproduce the Sun’s extreme physics, but they do closely match up to the observations, which is really impressive.

The simulation results also suggest that despite looking coherent on the surface, the magnetic fields beneath features like dark pores are fragmented.

This is super exciting, because we know that the magnetic field is generated somewhere inside the Sun – but we don’t know how or where. The fragmentation beneath suggests these magnetic features are only formed once they reach the surface, not deeper below. If correct, this will really challenge existing models of how sunspots and magnetic regions form.

The Sun is the only star we can study up close. By connecting its smallest magnetic twists to its largest outbursts, we unlock the key to interpreting every other star.

Hannah Schunker, ARC Future Fellow, Physics, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Intelligence is an energetically expensive luxury – as the rise of artificial intelligence has reminded us. The human brain is no exception.

Comprising roughly 2% of the body weight, it uses one fifth the body’s energy in the resting state – compared with less than half of this in non-human primates. A five-year-old child devotes 66% of the energy they need to stay alive to their brain.

How did our ancestors foot the energy bill to run their uniquely large brains? Eating more meat is often considered to be the answer. But there’s a catch. The brain relies on a form of fuel that is not present in meat: glucose.

Our new study, published today in Science, shows that carbohydrates contributed more than half our total energy requirements over four million years of evolution. It holds important clues for why we crave sweet foods today – and how we can eat more healthily.

The matter of meat

Many anthropologists have credited meat eating as the stimulus to produce a large brain. After all, it required tools to butcher the carcass and access the fat-rich marrow inside bones.

Protein and fat in fruit and leaves are dilute, requiring hours of chewing, while animal foods are dense sources that can be devoured quickly. Bone marrow is a rich source of essential fats.

In truth, humans do not require more protein as a proportion of energy than other primates.

Our increasingly large brains and high reproductive rate demanded carbohydrate calories (found in plants but not meat), while our taller and heavier bodies needed fat calories to move those big muscles.

Although the body can synthesise glucose from precursors such as amino acids, the process is finite and energetically inefficient. Furthermore, there are limits on using just protein as fuel. For example, it can lead to a type of poisoning known as “rabbit starvation”.

A minimum amount of dietary carbohydrate was necessary. Our new study shows that, for much of evolution, the sugars in fruit and honey were the source.

Modelling ancient diets

We modelled the diets of hominins – the group consisting of humans and our immediate ancestors – over four million years of evolution.

First, we calculated overall demand for glucose by the organs and tissues which use it as their primary source of energy. Apart from the brain, red blood cells and the kidneys require glucose.

We then accounted for reproductive needs. The fetus and placenta use glucose not just as an energy source but as a structural component of growing tissues. Synthesis of DNA, RNA and nerve cell membranes requires glucose. During lactation, women use about 80g of glucose each day to produce the sugars in human milk.

Then we modelled the availability of macronutrients – carbohydrates, fats and proteins – from foods, starting with the diminutive ancient ape known as Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis).

This early ancestor of ours walked on two legs, and was likely to be a ripe fruit specialist like chimpanzees today. Over two thirds of her energy came from naturally-occurring sugars.

Indeed, some scientists think frugivory – a feeding strategy primarily characterised by eating fruit – kick-started the evolution of large brains because, living in tropical forests, our ancestors required good cognition to remember when and where the best fruits were ripening. They needed strategic thinking to beat the birds and other competitors.

We finished up with the known diet composition of contemporary human foragers in warm climates. In six incremental steps, we incorporated increasing proportions of animal-based food, starting with 5% of calories and finishing with 35–50%.

Around one million years ago, mastery of fire allowed cooked starch, which unlike raw starch can be easily digested to provide glucose, to replace some of the sugars. Relatively recently, about 100,000 years ago, grinding stones and hearths indicate that the starch inside cereal grains became more accessible.

Lessons for modern diets

Did early hominins consume sufficient carbohydrate to cover the obligatory demands of the brain and other tissues? Yes, if you were a male, but only just if you were a pregnant female.

As we ventured out of tropical environments into cold and arid territory, the intake of carbohydrates would have become limiting. Plants would be plentiful, along with protein and marrow fat, but fruit and honey would be seasonal.

We speculate that limited amounts of dietary carbohydrate selected for genes that result in higher blood glucose levels. This would improve the growth and future survival of the fetus.

Today, the same genes likely predispose us to type two diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Low carbohydrate diets may therefore be helpful in specific clinical contexts.

But our findings provide an evolutionary explanation why healthy humans require about half their energy as carbohydrates. They also give us insight into why humans crave sweetness – a pleasurable signal on the tongue that encouraged foods that fuelled the mind and body millions of years ago.

Intrinsically, sugars are highly reactive molecules that are bundled in nature with antioxidants and other natural compounds that reduce harm within the cell.

Ideally, we consume them in that form – as fruit – rather than refined sugars.

Jennie Brand-Miller, Emeritus Professor of Human Nutrition, University of Sydney; David Raubenheimer, Leonard P. Ullman Chair in Nutritional Ecology, Nutrition Theme Leader Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney, and Les Copeland, Professor of Agriculture, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The dodo has been extinct for more than 300 years, wiped out within decades of humans arriving on its home island of Mauritius, but it lives on in the public imagination.

This famous flightless bird has become a symbol of extinction. Its demise is often portrayed as almost inevitable: a supposedly foolish creature that naïvely approached the sailors who killed it.

Early accounts even describe people holding a captured dodo and letting it cry out so others would wander over. In the 18th century, Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus dubbed the species Dodus ineptus after its reputation for dim wits and silliness.

But new research shows this image is misleading. The dodo was likely no less intelligent than any modern bird. It may also have possessed a rare and overlooked ecological trait: an adaptation to life in low light.

A closer look inside a vanished bird’s head

With a team of collaborators across Canada, Australia, the United States, Europe and the UK, our new study looked in detail at the reconstruction of the dodo’s brain.

There are only three completely preserved dodo skulls in existence. Using high-resolution CT scans of all three, we could reconstruct the shape of the dodo skull and get a detailed idea of the size and shape of its brain.

This also allowed us to digitally measure the structures associated with vision, smell and cognition (or “smarts”). These scans can also be shared further with the research community.

The dodo was a member of the pigeon family, so its living relatives include the pigeons in our cities and the doves whose calls accompany mornings around the world. Pigeons are famous for their navigational skills and are widely used by scientists to study animal cognition.

Is there any indication that the dodo’s brain was much different? When we compared the dodo’s brain to that of pigeons, we found that the dodo’s forebrain, linked to cognition and memory, was similar in proportion to other pigeons, when compared to the rest of the brain.

In other words, there is no evidence the dodo was less intelligent than any other pigeon. This is also backed up by previous research suggesting that the overall brain size was similar relative to body mass compared to other pigeons.

So we think the dodo’s trusting behaviour was because it simply had nothing to fear until humans arrived, as is common for island species with no predators.

A giant pigeon with an unexpected twist

Where the dodo does differ dramatically from other pigeons is in its sensory systems, particularly its vision. The dodo’s optic lobes, the brain region that first processes visual information in the bird brain, are unusually small – not just compared to pigeons, but also compared to another extinct flightless relative, the Rodrigues solitaire.

Smaller optic lobes are typically found in birds adapted for a nocturnal lifestyle, such as owls, kiwi, and the Australian night parrot.

They are likely a product of specialising for low light vision, where the light received by the retina is “summarised” by fewer nerves. This increases the contrast of the image, making it easier to see in the dark.

Although we have no way to examine the retina of the dodo, the implication of small optic lobes is that it may not have been a strictly daytime bird. Instead, it may have been active at dawn or dusk or even at night, a behaviour otherwise unknown among modern pigeons and doves.

Why would a dodo be active in the dark?

If the dodo spent more time foraging in low light, what might have driven this behaviour?

One possibility is competition. Mauritius was once home to large populations of giant tortoises, which would have fed on many of the same fruits and plants as the dodo. By shifting its activity into the cooler, darker hours when reptiles are inactive, the dodo may have gained access to food with less competition.

This idea remains speculative, but the anatomical evidence clearly shows that the dodo’s sensory world was not what we once assumed.

A new picture of an old icon

Our findings challenge the longstanding stereotype of the dodo as a clumsy, foolish daytime forager. Instead, we may need to picture it navigating the dim Mauritian forests at sunrise or sunset and behaving with the same level of intelligence as its living pigeon relatives.

Vera Weisbecker, Professor in Evolutionary Biology, College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University; Andrew Iwaniuk, Professor of Neuroscience, University of Lethbridge, and Sara Citron, PhD Candidate in Neuroscience

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In one scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 thriller Vertigo, lead character John “Scottie” Ferguson (James Stewart) is shown following Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak) up a bell tower.

Scottie is afraid of heights. So when he briefly stops and glances down, he experiences a wave of vertigo. The stairwell distorts, seemingly stretching into the distance below him – a potent reflection of his dizzy and panicked state.

This scene is the first ever example of the “dolly zoom”, a dynamic visual technique achieved through camera movement and a zoom lens.

Also known as the “vertigo effect” or the “contra zoom”, it requires significant skill. The subject must remain the same size within the frame, while the background distorts by either stretching or compressing.

Most of us have a list of our favourite films and TV series of all time. But do you ever wonder how these were made?

In this series we go behind the scenes to reveal the ingenious tricks and innovations that have transformed screen production over the course of a century.

Another famous example comes from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), when police chief Martin Brody (Roy Schneider) realises the shark is attacking swimmers in the water.

In Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001), the technique is used to indicate impending danger, as Frodo (Elijah Wood) realises the Nazgûl are headed towards him and his party.

Combining artistic and technical creativity

The dolly zoom is said to have been invented by Irmin Roberts, a camera operator at Paramount, after Alfred Hitchcock requested a visual effect that would encapsulate the feeling of fainting.

The technique is named after two pieces of technology: a “dolly”, which is the wheeled platform that moves the camera, and the telephoto “zoom” lens.

The change of perspective comes as the camera zooms out while moving towards the subject – or vice-versa, zooms in while moving away from the subject.

While other techniques can provide a similar visual effect, such as the crane shot or drone shot, the perspective change that ripples through a dolly zoom stands out as being particularly unique, as it tends to offer more precision and smoothness.

Achieving this affect to a high standard takes considerable planning and coordination, even today, as remote technologies are used to manage the focus, frame and the speed of the camera.

Thanks to advanced software technologies, the dolly zoom effect can now also be achieved in post-production. This is an attractive option for low-budget filmmakers who can’t afford to buy or hire a zoom lens.

A collaborative effort

The dolly zoom requires collaboration between the director, production designer and cinematographer. Usually, all three will work together to decide which scene the effect will appear in, which location will work best for the shot, and the type of slider or length of track required to move the camera.

On set, the performance of the camera and grips department demand perfect synchronisation. Many rehearsals may be required to ensure the shot is executed faultlessly.

Consider this scene from Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) as an example.

Seated against a window, Henry (Ray Liotta) and James (Robert De Niro) are chatting and having lunch in a diner. As the camera moves towards them, the telephoto lens zooms out and, gradually, the cars on the street outside rise to prominence. The effect punctuates Henry’s disorientation as he realises he is being framed for murder.

This shot is more complex than it looks. The crew must coordinate the camera movement, and manual adjustments to the zoom and focus rings on the lens, to be perfectly timed with the actors’ performance.

An iconic visual trick

The dolly zoom has become an iconic visual motif that combines technical innovation with cinematic impact.

Almost 70 years on from its first use, it now appears relatively frequently in both film and television. The effect is even simulated in animation. In Ratatouille (2007), for example, it is used to emphasise Remy’s admiration towards his idol, Chef Gusteau.

The dolly zoom offers a way to creatively express a psychological experience that connects the viewer with the characters onscreen.

Susan Kerrigan, Professor Film and Television, Swinburne University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It is a sad day for Australian cartooning when an artist as good as Fiona Katauskas has not had her contract renewed. But that is what has happened at the Guardian Australia.

Katauskas is among the top daily political cartoonists in the country, with her cheerful visual style beautifully in tension with her salty satirical commentary.

She is at the top of her game, with her acerbic observations on national and international events a fine window on the passing parade of absurdity that passes for public life in the third decade of this increasingly silly century. Her great service has probably been to add some playfulness and wit to a publication that can be earnest, even ranty.

Katauskas is only the latest casualty in a cartooning industry still struggling to adapt to the 21st-century media business model. She joins other cartoonists, at home and abroad, who find themselves reliant on freelancing.

Emma Cook was let go from Stuff in New Zealand after eight years. Colin Wicking was never replaced at the NT News when he retired in 2022. It’s not a stampede of cartoonists leaving newsrooms, but the traffic is all in one direction.

The era of the permanent staff cartoonist is almost over.

What do cartoonists do?

Cartoonists, like Katauskas and her Guardian Australia stablemate First Dog on the Moon, are integral to the look and critical ethos of a paper, even one solely online.

They lighten the load of words with humour and occasionally spear you with satirical perception.

Australian cartoons moved from weeklies like the Bulletin into dailies during the early 20th century as an appeal to tired commuters to buy and read an afternoon paper. From the 1960s, they spread into the morning broadsheets to operate as satirical commentary as well as fun.

But newspapers are not doing well. Does anyone remember an “afternoon” paper or a “morning” broadsheet? When was the last time anyone felt the grime of newsprint or leafed through flimsy pages to find the cartoon?

But in the age of online publications and shrinking newsrooms, there are a few reasons to hang onto political cartoonists.

At a time when concentration spans are shrinking to evanescence, a picture with a pointed caption really can tell a thousand words.

Good cartoonists are court jesters who inspire loyalty in readers – something legacy publications are losing now that the platforms cannibalise their journalism.

Rupert Murdoch learned from his father, Sir Keith, that any newspaper worth the name needs cartoonists - in their days, Will Dyson, the Lindsays and Paul Rigby were all close to the Murdochs, father and son.

NT News aside, the metropolitan stable of Mark Knight, John Spooner, Warren Brown and Johannes Leak seems as solid as ever, and News Corp Australasia’s executive chairman Michael Miller has been steadfast in supporting the “immense skill” of his cartoonists.

It’s a pity the individually brilliant artists News employ lack diversity as a group. It has been a while since only white guys were funny, and News has never had a woman in the role of regular cartoonist.

Australian cartooning more broadly had been progressing in the opposite direction, diluting the “boys club”. Cathy Wilcox, the cartoonist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, has been the great leader in this, and of the whole profession.

With Katauskas and Megan Herbert, also at the Nine papers, the Australian media was beginning to capitalise on a long tradition of Australian women cartoonists stretching back to May Gibbs, through the McCrae and Paterson sisters, Alice Solly on Aussie, Mollie Horseman, Joan Morrison and Jean Cullen on Smith’s Weekly, and the great Fairfax cartoonist and Walkley winner, Jenny Coopes.

What will live on

Cartoonists have to draw a joke that works, so they are always in danger of introducing witty and divergent perspectives to a publication. And we need these perspectives to be local – generated by humans, not artificial intelligence.

A cartoon has to speak to its immediate context to engage with the readers and the issues on the ground. Cartoons from London cannot cover the blood-sport of Australian politics competently. We need Australian artists reflecting on local and international events from within our own pre-occupations.

AI visuals can certainly be pretty (even though they look like Watchtower or Awake illustrations), but it’s unlikely “slop” will ever be witty. The large language models are designed to generate seamless mediocrity – the most likely word or image available to address a prompt. By contrast, cartoons often show their seams, and they only work when they subvert mediocrity.

AI cannot be programmed to be zany like Brown, edgy like Katauskas, or subtle like Wilcox.

Without gigs in newspapers, the cartoon function will nevertheless live on in Australia. Talented artists won’t be able to resist the temptation of drawing our would-be emperors in their glorious mental and moral nakedness.

But it’s a shame it is currently so hard to make a decent living in this important public service.

Richard Scully, Professor in Modern History, University of New England and Robert Phiddian, Professor of English, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The first time I saw it, I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at. A northern white-cheeked gibbon at Shanghai Zoo was holding and caressing a mouse that had wandered into its enclosure. It wasn’t trying to eat it or chase it away. Instead, the gibbon treated the tiny rodent with remarkable gentleness. I couldn’t stop wondering why.

Years later, while studying wild black-and-white snub-nosed monkeys in the mountains of south-west China, I watched playful juveniles repeatedly trying to climb onto the backs of domestic pigs. Again, these weren’t the kinds of interactions I expected to see between different species.

A new study my colleagues and I conducted brings together 427 documented cases of primates interacting with other species, spanning several decades from the 1970s to 2025. Our findings reveal that these encounters are far more widespread than scientists had realised.

Over the years, I had begun collecting reports of similar encounters from scientific journals, photographs, videos and observations shared by other primatologists. What initially seemed like a handful of quirky anecdotes gradually turned into a much broader pattern. These interactions appeared to represent a surprisingly widespread aspect of primate behaviour.

This behaviour may shed light on one of the defining features of our own species: our extraordinary relationships with other animals.

I’ve long been interested in how tolerance evolves, not only between members of the same species but also between strangers more generally. Humans are unusual in the degree to which we cooperate with unrelated people. We are perhaps even more unusual in the close relationships we form with other animals.

Scientists have long known that different animal species often associate with one another. Monkeys, for example, can improve their predator detection or increase foraging opportunities when they move around as a mixed-species group. Another example is how birds frequently follow monkeys through forests to feed on insects disturbed by their movements.

But our study focused on social interactions.

The cases we reviewed involved 88 primate species and their interactions with 127 other animal species. The diversity of these species was astonishing. It included mammals such as sheep, tapir, deer, domestic pigs, cats and dogs, as well as owls, lizards, toads and even insects.

The most common behaviour was play and grooming. But we also found reports of primates carrying, huddling and sharing food with and occasionally adopting members of another species. Most interactions were initiated by the primates themselves.

One of my favourite examples is the now well-known case of Japanese macaques grooming and riding on the backs of sika deer. It remains a remarkable example of two very different species repeatedly interacting peacefully over long periods.

I was also fascinated by some of the less familiar observations, such as a langur attentively stroking a squirrel, a silverback gorilla carefully cradling a tiny wild bushbaby, a bonobo gently holding a mongoose pup and macaques grooming stray dogs.

Many of these interactions may provide benefits similar to those seen within species. Grooming can help remove parasites, improve hygiene and reinforce social bonds. Play contributes to the development of motor coordination, social skills and cognitive flexibility.

Some interactions happen where primates and other animals spend time together because of shared foraging opportunities or protection from predators. For example, tropical primates form associations with other primate species and jointly forage in the tree canopy. In these cases, social interactions, such as grooming or play, may simply emerge from repeated contact and social familiarity.

Yet not all observations fit this pattern. Why would a langur stroke a squirrel, or macaques groom stray dogs? Such interactions suggest that primates may possess a broader capacity for social flexibility, curiosity and tolerance towards other species than researchers previously appreciated.

We also found consistent patterns in who interacted. Young primates were much more likely to play with members of another species, whereas adult females were more often involved in grooming. This mirrors well-established age and sex differences in many primate societies, where juveniles spend much of their time playing and females often invest more heavily in caregiving.

It would be tempting to describe all these encounters as examples of friendship. But the reality is more complicated. Some primates carried infants of another species in ways resembling adoption or caregiving, yet rough handling or neglect sometimes resulted in injury or death. We also documented cases where primates appeared to abduct a young animal from its group, while a small number of interactions were clearly abusive, involving violence.

Most interactions were probably of relatively short duration. However, there are some reports of cases that lasted for weeks. For example, the adoption of a marmoset by a capuchin monkey.

In zoos and other human-care settings, some species appear to form long-lasting relationships with animals of other species. In 2017, a macaque living in an Israeli zoo called Niv adopted a chicken and treated it like it was her own baby.

Our study found these interactions were not more common among great apes – they occurred across all major primate lineages.

These unusual encounters are more than fascinating natural history.

As forests become increasingly fragmented and wildlife is forced into closer contact with people, livestock and domestic animals, opportunities for cross-species interactions are changing rapidly. Primates now encounter dogs, cats and other human-associated animals more often than they once did.

Some of these interactions may be benign or even beneficial. Others could increase the risk of diseases spreading between wildlife, domestic animals and humans. Understanding when and why different species tolerate one another therefore has important implications for both conservation and public health.

The findings may also help improve animal welfare. Zoos increasingly house compatible species together, and understanding which species are more likely to form positive relationships can help managers make better decisions.

Perhaps most interesting of all, our findings suggest that some of the ingredients (curiosity, tolerance, caregiving and play) underlying those relationships may have deep evolutionary roots.

Cyril Grueter, Adjunct Associate Professor, The University of Western Australia; University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The ability to cross oceans has long been a marker of human endeavour, but when did the seas change from being barriers to movement into the maritime highways we know today?

For many years the answer was thought to lie in the Neolithic period – the time when humans made the profound transition from hunting and gathering to practising agriculture and living in settled societies.

Our team’s discovery of the presence of European hunter-gatherers on the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta, reported last year, has overturned this view. It showed that people reached Malta from their starting point in Europe (presumably Sicily) at least 8,500 years ago.

In a new study, we show that these populations were engaging in repeated long-distance sea journeys of at least 100km, well before the advent of farming.

Researchers have known that the occasional very ancient sea crossing must have been made. The most famous example may be the colonisation of Australia, tens of thousands of years before the present.

However, sustained, long distance sea voyaging – particularly to small and remote islands – was long thought to have been beyond the capabilities of hunter-gatherers, who are dependant on the bounty, or deprivation, of natural resources.

This was also the case for Europe’s last hunter-gatherers, in the period of time known as the Mesolithic, the era before the Neolithic. During the Neolithic, a new population introduced agriculture to Europe from Anatolia (which comprises most of the landmass of modern Turkey).

Enter the recent findings from the site of Latnija, on Malta. Did the surprising presence of European hunter-gatherers on Malta reflect a one off, accidental crossing – or perhaps people who somehow became marooned on the island? Conversely, was this Mesolithic presence a reflection of something altogether different, and more complex?

Shifting seas

To explore these possibilities, we investigated whether Malta could support a viable forager population size that could have lived in isolation for the 1,000 year occupation of the island during the Mesolithic.

First, we explored the impacts of changing sea levels since the Last Glacial Maximum (the height of the last ice age), from around 21,000 years ago. This was when waters began to rise from their lowest levels of around 130m below modern sea level. By doing this, we were able to track changes in the size of Malta and its connectivity with surrounding islands and land masses.

During the Last Glacial Maximum, Malta was connected to Sicily by a land bridge, and this connection remained as sea levels continued to rise until around 14,000 years ago, when the land bridge began to be inundated. Continued sea level rise meant that within less than a thousand years, Malta had become far smaller and remote from Sicily, needing a long-distance sea crossing for connectivity.

By the time of the Mesolithic occupation, Malta had almost reached its present configuration, with no significant difference in distances to Sicily. Having understood how sea level rise impacted the size and accessibility of Malta, we next explored how its specific ecological conditions impacted its ability to support forager populations. Since hunter-gatherers are reliant on what nature provides, their population sizes have a direct relationship with ecological productivity.

Accordingly, we modelled the relationship between population density among contemporary forager populations and what’s known as net primary productivity – effectively the baseline of wild resources available to hunter-gatherers. We then extrapolated these findings back into the past using high resolution computer models of past climates (palaeoclimate models).

This enabled us to calculate the total population size that could be supported first on the combined landmass of Malta and Sicily, and then as separate islands as sea levels rose.

Our upper estimates for the total population sizes suggest that after the inundation of the land bridge to Sicily, the total population size that could be theoretically supported on Malta dropped rapidly to 319 people by 13,800 years ago.

There is no evidence yet that people were living on Malta this early, but our models showed that any populations present would have continued to drop in size as sea levels rose until around 9,000 years ago, when it could have accommodated around 170-144 people.

Finally, we compared these findings to thresholds, informed by conservation genetic studies, for the long-term viability and stability of a population. These thresholds suggest the need for an effective (reproducing) population size of 1,000 or more, equivalent to a total population size of 2,500-3,000 (because the total population size includes both younger and older people who are not reproducing).

Long distance voyages

This suggests that Malta was incapable of hosting an isolated, viable population that could have lived continuously through the 1,000-year time frame during which it was settled by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.

Consequently, we can rule out the persistence of a population stranded on Malta as sea levels inundated the land bridge to Sicily. We can also exclude a single, perhaps unintended, voyage leaving marooned mariners on Malta.

The only alternative is that these Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were making repeated, long distance sea voyages between at least Malta and Sicily, the closest land mass, to maintain the genetic connections that ensured at least a millennium of Mesolithic viability on Malta.

These insights are reshaping our perceptions of late European hunter-gatherers and the sophistication of their societies. To maintain repeated, long-distance overseas connections, they must have had, and conserved, an extensive knowledge of land, sea and sky, as well as the technological know-how for building and preserving sea craft.

We don’t know for certain what type of vessels the hunter-gatherers were using, although we know that dug-out canoes existed at this time. The crossings to Malta occurred several thousand years before the earliest evidence for sails – making the achievement even more impressive.

From wayfinding to getting food at sea overnight, they then had to be able to live sustainably on a small, semi-arid island, which required a finely-tuned knowledge of diverse food sources shaped by the seasons.

With these implicit capabilities, we can then start to ask, where else did they go? There is already evidence of connectivity between Europe and North Africa during this time. Previous work using ancient DNA found the distinctive signature of European hunter-gatherer ancestry in people living in pre-Neolithic Tunisia.

All this suggests we may be looking at a hitherto unknown web of overseas links that marked the beginning of the connected world we know today, centuries before the first farmers reached the central Mediterranean.

Understanding how these groups remained ecologically resilient, while also shaping ecosystems to their needs, may yet prove to have important lessons for humanity’s current and future challenges in a rapidly warming world. As we continue to unravel Malta’s unprecedented hunter-gatherer past, we hope to shed light on this lost ecological knowledge.

James Blinkhorn, University Research Fellow, Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool and Eleanor Scerri, Independent Group Leader, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Amid family feuds, damaging headlines and questions about its future role, Britain’s royal family has spent much of the past decade managing its public image. But the importance of good royal PR dates back centuries.

Long before communications teams and media advisers became fixtures of royal life, Queen Caroline (1683-1737) attempted a remarkable piece of image management. Faced with the challenge of making a German royal dynasty seem unmistakably British, she turned to one of Britain’s most powerful national stories: the legends of King Arthur and Merlin.

As the wife of the king of Great Britain and Ireland, George II (1683-1760), Caroline belonged to the House of Hanover. The German dynasty had inherited the British throne only two decades earlier and was still viewed with suspicion by many of their subjects. At the same time, an increasingly public feud between the king and his heir, Frederick, Prince of Wales, threatened to undermine the image of stability that a country recently torn apart by civil war, religious schisms and political revolution so desperately needed.

Caroline’s solution to this problem was unexpected. In 1735, she commissioned a curious attraction in the gardens of her palace at Richmond. Known as Merlin’s Cave, it looked like something from a fairy tale: a gothic thatched building filled with wax figures of Merlin, legendary prophets and other figures from Britain’s distant past. Many contemporaries thought it bizarre, with one critic dismissing its inhabitants as “a great many strange puppets”.

Yet Merlin’s Cave was far more than an eccentric garden folly. Although an unlikely tool of statecraft, Caroline’s use of Arthurian iconography sought not only to strengthen the Hanovarian claim but also to promote a shared British identity at a time of political uncertainty.

Myth as messaging

Although the House of Hanover had inherited the British throne in 1714, it did not yet possess a deep-rooted place in the nation’s imagination. George I (who reigned 1714-1727) preferred his native Hanover to his new dominion and had relied heavily on interpreters and intermediaries throughout his reign. This exposed the dynasty to accusations that they were foreign rulers.

Supporters of the exiled Stuart dynasty, known as Jacobites, continued to regard James II’s son, the “Old Pretender” James Francis Edward Stuart, as Britain’s legitimate king. They had attempted ill-fated but bloody uprisings in 1715 and 1719. On his accession to the throne in 1727, George II therefore faced a challenge that was both political and cultural: he needed to not only rule Britain, but to persuade his people that he belonged there.

Arthurian legend offered a solution to this problem. Unlike the Jacobite claim, which emphasised hereditary right, it provided access to something broader and potentially more powerful: the idea of a shared British past. Arthur and Merlin were useful precisely because they belonged to no single dynasty. They could be appropriated to cultivate a different kind of legitimacy – one founded on patriotism, national identity and Britain’s historical traditions.

Queen Caroline was well placed to appreciate Arthur’s political usefulness. Unlike her husband, who famously cared little for the arts, Caroline was an enthusiastic reader who understood the political value of culture. Raised in the intellectually vibrant courts of Berlin and Hanover, she had access to extensive libraries that exposed her not only to Arthurian myth but to traditions linking the House of Guelph – the Hanoverian dynasty – with medieval English royalty.

While earlier monarchs such as Henry II and Edward I had often appropriated Arthur directly as a model of kingship, Caroline shifted attention towards Merlin. Throughout Arthurian tradition, Merlin acts as an adviser, genealogist and interpreter of Britain’s future. He guides Arthur while also foretelling the destiny of the realm. By placing Merlin at the centre of her cave, Caroline was employing these associations to connect the past, present and future in ways that linked the Hanoverians both to Britain’s ancient heritage and its future success.

This symbolism became even more pointed because the royal family itself was divided. George II and Caroline had a strained relationship with their son, Frederick, and contemporary supporters interpreted Merlin’s inclusion as a call for reconciliation. In a 1735 poem inspired by Merlin’s Cave, the Anglo-Welsh writer Jane Brereton has Merlin urge Frederick to fulfil his filial duty and “perpetuate Brunswick’s Race”, suggesting that at least some observers understood the Cave’s symbolism as a plea for dynastic harmony as well as political stability.

Not everyone was convinced, however. Caleb D'Anvers – a pseudonym for Nicholas D'Anvers, editor of the satirical journal The Craftsman – mocked Merlin’s Cave as an eccentric curiosity. Opposition writers, meanwhile, turned Merlin into a vehicle for attacks on both Caroline and her ally Sir Robert Walpole. Yet the very nature of these responses suggests that Caroline’s critics understood the political message she was trying to convey. Their objections stemmed not from confusion, but disagreement.

In the deeply divided political culture of the 1730s, Whig celebrations of Britain’s legendary past could easily become targets for Tory and Jacobite satire. The negative responses to the cave demonstrate that Caroline’s political opponents recognised her intentions well enough to parody them.

Merlin’s Cave therefore offers a revealing glimpse into the political uses of myth in 18th-century Britain. In turning to Arthurian legend to promote the image of a stable, legitimate and distinctly British monarchy, Caroline understood a lesson that monarchies continue to grapple with today: legitimacy depends not on inheritance, but on the stories people tell about who belongs to the nation and who should shape its future.

Amy Louise Blaney, Associate Lecturer (School of Humanities) and Knowledge Exchange Coordinator, University of Wolverhampton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Many Australians still remember the 2016 census because of the online outage that dominated headlines on census night. It was the first time a majority of Australians were expected to complete the census online. However, the website crashed, in what became widely known as #CensusFail.

It wasn’t just any crash. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) took the online census offline after a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks. Known as DDoS, these attacks overwhelm a website with internet traffic, making it unavailable to legitimate users.

While no data was ever leaked, the website was unavailable for almost two days, undermining public confidence in the security of one of Australia’s largest collections of personal information.

Ten years later, the latest census will take place on August 11 2026. This year, around 85% of Australians are expected to complete it online.

The successful 2021 census reflected the cyber security improvements the ABS had made since 2016.

So how secure is the 2026 census? What did its latest cyber security audit find, and what can Australians do to protect themselves from scams while completing it online?

Why the census is an attractive target for cyber criminals

The census is Australia’s largest national data collection exercise.

Although the information collected is protected by strict privacy laws, the sheer scale and national significance of the census make it an attractive target for cyber criminals.

It’s also one of the country’s biggest online events, with millions of Australians expected to log on to the same website and complete it within a relatively short period.

Cyber criminals are increasingly targeting governments because they hold valuable information and provide essential public services. Even if attackers can’t steal the data, they may still try to disrupt services and undermine public confidence.

Lessons from 2016

The 2016 census outage is often remembered as a major cyber security failure. While no census data was compromised, the disruption damaged public trust.

The ABS has since invested heavily in improving its cyber security. Those improvements were evident during the 2021 census, when the ABS reported repelling almost 1 billion attempted cyber attacks and blocking more than 130,000 malicious internet addresses associated with attempts to attack or disrupt the online census service.

However, cyber security is an ongoing process rather than a one-time fix. Ahead of the 2026 census, an independent audit listed several areas requiring further work.

What the audit found

In May 2026, the Australian National Audit Office found the ABS needed to address key remaining cyber security vulnerabilities and complete critical security activities before census night.

It also identified shortcomings in cyber risk management and broader planning across the bureau’s information and communication technology environment – the digital infrastructure that supports the collection, processing and protection of census data.

The audit made four recommendations:

• strengthening cyber risk management
• establishing cyber security advisory arrangements earlier in the census planning process
• improving security architecture documentation, and
• better managing risks across the ABS’s broader information and communication technologies.

In its response, the ABS said it had fully implemented the first two recommendations and had made “substantial progress” on the remaining two, which would be implemented before census night.

The biggest cyber risk may not be the census website

For most Australians, the greatest cyber risk is unlikely to be someone breaking into the census system.

Instead, it may be phishing scams, where cyber criminals impersonate the ABS. These can include fake emails, text messages and websites designed to trick people into handing over personal information or clicking malicious links. The bureau has warned Australians to be alert to these scams.

Scammers know many Australians will expect to receive census-related communications. By impersonating trusted organisations such as the ABS and using authentic-looking emails, text messages and websites, they can make phishing attempts appear more legitimate.

How to complete the census safely

A few simple precautions can greatly reduce your risk.

Make sure you are on the correct website. Complete your census through the official census website, your myGov inbox if you’ve subscribed to census updates, or a paper form. Double-check the web address before entering any personal information.

Stay alert. Don’t click links in unexpected emails or text messages claiming to be from the ABS. If you’re unsure whether a message is genuine, go directly to the official ABS website rather than following a link.

Be aware of misinformation. The ABS will never offer prizes or incentives for completing your census. The bureau will also not ask for passwords, banking details, tax file numbers or identity documents.

If you receive a suspicious message claiming to be from the ABS, report it to the bureau itself and to Scamwatch.

Every census depends on public trust. While the ABS has strengthened its cyber defences since 2016, Australians also have an important role to play by recognising scams and using official census channels. A quick check to confirm that a message or website is genuine can help protect your personal information.

Ritesh Chugh, Professor, Information and Communications Technology, CQUniversity Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Your bones may seem like the most permanent part of your body: hard, solid and finished. In reality, they’re under constant renovation. Every day, tiny teams of cells are breaking down old bone and building new bone in its place.

Throughout life, bones are continuously renewed in a process called “remodelling”. The cells responsible have their own biological clocks, much like the ones that help regulate sleep, hunger and countless other daily rhythms.

Two types of cells keep the process going. Osteoclasts remove old or damaged bone, and osteoblasts then lay down fresh bone to replace what was lost. Researchers have found that this cycle follows a daily rhythm with bone breakdown generally highest earlier in the day, while bone formation tends to peak later. The circadian clock inside bone cells appears to keep these two phases separated, ensuring that each process happens at the most favourable time.

One of the signals helping to coordinate this rhythm is melatonin. It’s often described as a sleep hormone, but melatonin is really a hormone of darkness. As light fades in the evening, its levels rise, telling the body that it’s night, whether you’re asleep or not.

In bone, melatonin seems to suppress osteoclast activity while supporting osteoblasts. Both melatonin levels and markers of bone formation reach their highest levels overnight. That suggests habits that interfere with the normal rise and fall of melatonin – late-night screen use, irregular sleep or eating late in the evening – may also disrupt the signals that help maintain healthy bone.

As we get older, these daily rhythms become less pronounced. Researchers think that weakening circadian signals may be one reason bone loss, osteoporosis and fractures become more common with age. Modern lifestyles, with artificial light and irregular schedules, may push those rhythms even further out of sync, raising the question of whether realigning them could help protect bone health in return.

Treating the clock, not just the bone

This idea sits at the heart of circadian medicine: treating disease by paying attention not only to what medicine people receive, but when they receive it.

There’s already some evidence that timing matters. In one animal study, melatonin supplements protected bone more effectively when given during the day than at night – a surprising result for a hormone usually associated with darkness. It’s only an early finding, but it highlights how much there is still to learn about the body’s internal timing.

Fortunately, the same habits that support overall circadian health are also likely to benefit your skeleton. Keeping regular sleep and wake times, getting daylight early in the day, eating earlier rather than late at night and sticking to a consistent routine all help keep the body’s clocks aligned. Shift workers, whose schedules regularly conflict with those clocks, may have the most to gain.

Exercise may have a timing component too. Bone appears to respond more strongly to mechanical loading during the body’s active phase, raising the possibility that when you exercise could influence how much your skeleton benefits.

Your bones aren’t something you notice from one day to the next. They adapt over years, responding to the choices and routines that shape the rest of your health. Sleep, light and timing may seem far removed from your skeleton, but your bones have been keeping track all along.

Annie Curtis, Professor (Assoc), School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences (PBS), RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences and Cansu Gorgun, Tenure Track Researcher, Università degli studi di Genova

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Since the federal government announced earlier this year it would scrap the higher private health insurance rebate for people aged 65 and over, opponents have come out in force.

Private Healthcare Australia, the insurers’ peak body, says the government’s own modelling of about 44,000 older Australians dropping their cover due to the resulting higher premiums is a “significant underestimate”.

Three state health ministers have warned the change would push more people into their strained public hospitals.

So how many people would really drop their cover as a result of this policy change?

Our new research, designed specifically to test this question, gives some clues. In a nutshell, the sky won’t fall in.

What will happen? Who says what?

Right now, the private health insurance rebate depends on both income and age. Someone 65 or over gets a bigger government rebate on their premium than someone under 65 on the same income. This rebate increases further for those aged 70 and over.

From April 2027, the government proposes removing that age-based bonus. So the rebate would be equal for everyone on the same income, regardless of age.

The government argues this fixes a subsidy that’s inequitable and poorly targeted, so will improve intergenerational equity.

Its own modelling predicts the vast majority of affected policyholders – about 99% – would keep their cover. This means about 44,000 would drop it.

This agrees with our earlier research showing most older Australians don’t need a bigger rebate to keep their insurance.

But last week, Private Healthcare Australia released polling of more than 1,500 people showing 39% of insured older Australians say they’d be more likely to drop their cover.

Based on the number of privately insured Australians aged 65 and over, that would mean about one million people, considerably more than the government’s predictions.

What did we find?

Our new research looks at the impacts of the government’s proposal. We used a decade of tax data taking into account how the rebate had shifted over time.

What makes our research unique is that we separated out the impact of Australia’s two big private health insurance levers – the rebate and the Medicare Levy Surcharge tax penalty. That means we could focus on the impact of scrapping the extra health insurance rebates for the over 65s without muddying the waters.

We estimated 14,821–42,498 older Australians would drop their cover. The range depends on how we sampled the data and accounts for uncertainty in our modelling.

Our upper figure is roughly in line with the government’s own modelling of about 44,000 older Australians dropping their cover.

We also looked at how much the policy would save the government. We put savings at roughly A$730–940 million a year by 2028–29.

So despite the modest drop in coverage, the fiscal saving is large. And our research explains why.

The rebate is poorly targeted. Most people over 65 getting the rebate would keep their cover with or without it.

How about the health industry’s claims?

So why does the health insurance industry say 39% would be more likely to drop their cover while the government’s modelling predicts roughly a 1% decline?

Stating hypothetical intentions in polls can be a poor guide to real behaviour.

Consider what happened more than a decade ago when the government proposed means-testing the private health insurance rebate. Similar industry polling predicted 1.6 million people would drop their cover. In reality, participation actually went up slightly.

One thing the polling and modelling agree on is who is affected. Both the government’s own figures and our published research show people on the lowest incomes are most likely to drop their cover.

The government’s modelling puts about 95% of the projected decline in the lowest income tier.

Private Healthcare Australia’s polling, once you look past the 39% headline, shows the same pattern: lower-income households are the ones saying they’d reconsider.

So people on low incomes may need more targeted support to maintain their cover. That may mean more targeted means-testing for the rebate down the track.

How about hospitals?

New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania’s health ministers have warned the proposed change would push more patients into an already-strained public system. Such concerns are valid.

However, our earlier research found that changes in rates of private insurance coverage have only small effects on public hospital wait times.

Compared with the public sector’s 7.7 million hospitalisations in 2024–25, the potentially 44,000 more people shifting to public hospitals is small fry.

Take-home message

Our research verifies the government’s own modelling using different datasets and methods. Polling measures intentions rather than outcomes, so the 39% headline is likely to overstate what actually happens.

The evidence says this reform won’t cause a mass exodus from private health insurance, and definitely won’t overwhelm public hospitals as some states predict.

Yuting Zhang, Professor of Health Economics, The University of Melbourne; Kevin Staub, Associate Professor in Economics, The University of Melbourne, and Nathan Kettlewell, Associate Professor, School of Economics and Marketing, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

While most runners are chasing after a new goal or a personal best, some are chasing after something slightly more elusive: a runner’s high.

Some describe it as euphoria. Others as calm, clarity or even a sense of being completely absorbed in the moment. Many people experience some version of it after a long run or a spin class.

For years, scientists believed the phenomenon was caused by endorphins, the body’s natural opioids. But more recent neuroscientific research now indicates that this might not wholly be the case.

Instead, a runner’s high appears to emerge from several brain systems working together. This explains why a runner’s high has so many far-reaching effects – and why these effects can often persist long after the initial experience of euphoria.

The brain’s own cannabis system

Endorphins are naturally-occurring brain chemicals which are released during periods of physical stress help to reduce pain.

Aerobic exercise increases circulating endorphins. Numerous studies have demonstrated higher levels of the endorphin beta-endorphin following prolonged aerobic exercise, such as running. This is why endorphins were long believed to be the sole cause of a runner’s high.

But there’s a key problem with the endorphin theory. This is because endorphins circulating in the blood struggle to cross the blood-brain barrier – the tightly regulated system that protects the brain from substances in the bloodstream.

So while endorphins may well contribute to pain relief elsewhere in the body, they cannot fully explain the feelings of euphoria and emotional wellbeing generated by a runner’s high within the brain itself.

So scientists began searching for another explanation.

The breakthrough came with the discovery that exercise also activates the endocannabinoid system.

Endocannabinoids are naturally produced by our bodies. They help with functions such as pleasure, memory and stress regulation.

One of the most important chemicals produced by the endocannabinoid system is anandamide, one of the brain’s natural “feel-good” chemicals. It helps to reduce anxiety, ease pain and create feelings of calm and wellbeing. And, unlike endorphins, anandamide crosses the blood-brain barrier with ease.

After a long bout of aerobic exercise, blood concentrations of anandamide rise substantially. Once inside the brain, it activates cannabinoid receptors in regions involved in emotion, motivation, reward and pain perception.

The resulting effects are remarkably similar to many features of the runner’s high – including reduced anxiety, better movement, less pain and feelings of calm.

This isn’t to suggest that endorphins play no role in a runner’s high. Modern neuroscience suggests endorphins and endocannabinoids work together – with endocannabinoids probably playing the larger role in producing the emotional aspects of the experience.

Several other neurotransmitters also play a part in a runner’s high.

Dopamine, which is central to motivation and reward, helps reinforce actions that are beneficial for survival. Rather than simply producing pleasure, dopamine encourages us to repeat a behaviour that the brain considers valuable.

Serotonin contributes to emotional stability and wellbeing, while noradrenaline enhances alertness and focus.

Exercise also stimulates the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which supports the growth of new and existing brain connections and plays a vital role in learning and memory

Although BDNF probably doesn’t produce the immediate euphoria associated with runner’s high, it may help explain why regular running can improve various aspects of wellbeing.

The benefits of a runner’s high

A runner’s high is about far more than pleasure chemicals.

Running changes how different brain networks communicate. During prolonged, rhythmic exercise (such as running), activity within the default mode network – the collection of brain regions associated with self-reflection, worry and thinking – appears to decrease.

At the same time, brain regions involved in attention, movement and sensory processing become more coordinated. This shift may help explain why running often produces feelings of mental clarity or being completely immersed in the present moment.

For many people, the mental benefits of a runner’s high even outlast the run itself.

Exercise influences stress regulation, inflammation, neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to adapt and change), sleep quality and emotional processing. This combination of benefits is something which few medical interventions achieve.

Importantly, scientists are increasingly recognising that the mental health benefits of exercise extend well beyond the runner’s high itself. Even people who never experience the euphoria of a runner’s high still show meaningful improvements in mood, cognition and resilience with regular physical activity.

But for those who still want to chase after a runner’s high, research suggests there’s a sweet spot to achieving it – and it doesn’t require long-distance, extreme endurance.

Most studies report increases in endocannabinoids after approximately 30 to 60 minutes of continuous aerobic exercise performed at moderate to vigorous intensity – so roughly 70-85% of maximum heart rate. The key is that the physiological stress is high enough to trigger these neurochemical responses without overwhelming the body.

That said, there is considerable individual variation. Although one survey found that around two-thirds of recreational runners had experienced a runner’s high at least once, it didn’t necessarily happen on every run.

Some people also appear naturally more responsive to exercise-induced endocannabinoid release. Genetics, sex, fitness level, sleep quality, psychological state and even expectations may all influence whether someone experiences runner’s high on any given day, too.

Laura Elin Pigott, Senior Lecturer in Neurosciences and Neurorehabilitation, Course Leader in the College of Health and Life Sciences, London South Bank University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

There are now many more people walking the streets in Australia wearing glasses that can subtly film and record the world around them. That’s in large part thanks to Kmart, which recently introduced – and then rapidly sold out of – cheap “camera glasses”.

These glasses are from Kmart’s in-house brand, Anko. They sell for only A$89 – quite the discount from similar products offered by Meta and Ray-Ban, which start at $337.

The push to make camera glasses a major consumer trend comes at a cost to the privacy of the wearer, and everyone around them. We know little about what happens with data from the devices, or who will see the images. Indeed, on Friday, federal Attorney-General Michelle Rowland asked Australia’s privacy commissioner to urgently review the technology.

So are current privacy laws strong enough to handle this new wave of wearable tech?

More than a decade of development

Smart glasses themselves are not new. Google launched Google Glass in 2013 to much media fanfare and celebrity endorsement.

Yet that basic variant failed to break into the market because the technology was underwhelming, the clunky and obvious appearance left much to be desired, and users were widely derided as “glassholes”.

Modern iterations are far more aesthetically pleasing. And they are less obtrusive: it is less obvious to you and everyone else that you are wearing a high-tech computer on your face.

Kmart’s budget camera glasses perform similar functions to the higher-end models (albeit perhaps in a slower, more limited way).

Running on HeyCyan software, they have embedded cameras to analyse and record photos and videos of what the wearer sees, microphones to record sound, and speakers to enable the wearer to take phone calls and listen to podcasts or music.

Images, video and sound are recorded onto memory in the device, but can be downloaded into a connected app on the wearer’s phone, enabling recorded content to be edited, shared and uploaded to websites.

From covert filming to falling over

The risk receiving the most attention is the capability of these glasses to covertly film bystanders and unsuspecting women in public for social media content, potentially leading to a rise in harassment, voyeurism and stalking in public for social media content.

Uploaded videos compound the abuse. And there’s the potential harm from distraction if the wearable tech “augments” the wearer’s view with digital information in their line of sight, creating a very real potential for physical risks such as falls, trips and car accidents.

Companies and employers should also consider the risks, for example, that smart glasses will record confidential information, trade secrets or bank account details.

It’s also worth noting Meta is reportedly developing “super-sensor” glasses that could record even when you aren’t interacting with them. This would provide companies with unprecedented access to the most private parts of your life, whereabouts and preferences.

Such data could be sent to data-labelling firms and, depending on the product and terms, used to train AI models.

So, what of the law?

It isn’t clear how Australia’s highly fragmented, partial and out-of-date privacy laws apply to advances in privacy-intrusive and ambient technologies such as camera glasses.

Most of the federal Privacy Act, including the parts about collection, storage and use of personal data, apply only to public and private-sector organisations (the latter only above a certain size). The activities of individuals who wear camera glasses and record and share video or photos are not covered – although a company that collects and uses personal data, including photos, through the apps would need to obey privacy law.

But wearers might face other legal risks.

The Privacy Act does include a a right to sue in cases where a person seriously invades your privacy by intruding on your seclusion or misusing information relating to you – if you have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

It can also be illegal to record conversations without consent under surveillance laws. These laws vary from state to state.

In New South Wales, for example, it’s illegal to record or publish private conversations without consent (with some exceptions).

Online publication of personal information about a person (or members of some groups) “in a way that reasonable persons would regard as being, in all the circumstances, menacing or harassing” is an offence under the new federal anti-doxxing provision.

The eSafety Commissioner has also powers to seek to take material offline where it is bad enough to be considered cyberbullying or cyberharrassment.

In other words, we have laws, even if they are a bit all over the place. And victims of the worst kinds of abuse of camera glasses’ capabilities could have some way to get recourse.

It’s time for privacy by design

But do we really want to live in a world full of constant low-grade recording?

As we are surrounded by technologies that degrade the privacy of people who never even got the chance to click through a privacy policy, do we want to be constantly second-guessing our conversations, or confronting strangers about their recording? Are there better options? Should the technology be banned?

In our view, a more nuanced conversation would be better. After all, these technologies can be a life-changer for people with disabilities, opening up spaces and opportunities otherwise closed to them.

There are ways to more actively balance different rights and interests as this new wave of technology hits us.

Major employers and social institutions (such as schools or universities) could consider policies that protect their shared spaces.

And perhaps, rather than putting all the responsibility on individuals to negotiate this new world, what Australia also needs is a more serious discussion about making sure our privacy (and other consumer) laws really push for better privacy by design in consumer and commercial products.

After all, the form technology takes is not inevitable, it is a choice: one where we should have some say over the terms.

Kimberlee Weatherall, Professor of Law, University of Sydney and Milica Stilinovic, Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Governing Immersive Tech Project, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Many Australians still remember the 2016 census because of the online outage that dominated headlines on census night. It was the first time a majority of Australians were expected to complete the census online. However, the website crashed, in what became widely known as #CensusFail.

It wasn’t just any crash. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) took the online census offline after a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks. Known as DDoS, these attacks overwhelm a website with internet traffic, making it unavailable to legitimate users.

While no data was ever leaked, the website was unavailable for almost two days, undermining public confidence in the security of one of Australia’s largest collections of personal information.

Ten years later, the latest census will take place on August 11 2026. This year, around 85% of Australians are expected to complete it online.

The successful 2021 census reflected the cyber security improvements the ABS had made since 2016.

So how secure is the 2026 census? What did its latest cyber security audit find, and what can Australians do to protect themselves from scams while completing it online?

Why the census is an attractive target for cyber criminals

The census is Australia’s largest national data collection exercise.

Although the information collected is protected by strict privacy laws, the sheer scale and national significance of the census make it an attractive target for cyber criminals.

It’s also one of the country’s biggest online events, with millions of Australians expected to log on to the same website and complete it within a relatively short period.

Cyber criminals are increasingly targeting governments because they hold valuable information and provide essential public services. Even if attackers can’t steal the data, they may still try to disrupt services and undermine public confidence.

Lessons from 2016

The 2016 census outage is often remembered as a major cyber security failure. While no census data was compromised, the disruption damaged public trust.

The ABS has since invested heavily in improving its cyber security. Those improvements were evident during the 2021 census, when the ABS reported repelling almost 1 billion attempted cyber attacks and blocking more than 130,000 malicious internet addresses associated with attempts to attack or disrupt the online census service.

However, cyber security is an ongoing process rather than a one-time fix. Ahead of the 2026 census, an independent audit listed several areas requiring further work.

What the audit found

In May 2026, the Australian National Audit Office found the ABS needed to address key remaining cyber security vulnerabilities and complete critical security activities before census night.

It also identified shortcomings in cyber risk management and broader planning across the bureau’s information and communication technology environment – the digital infrastructure that supports the collection, processing and protection of census data.

The audit made four recommendations:

• strengthening cyber risk management
• establishing cyber security advisory arrangements earlier in the census planning process
• improving security architecture documentation, and
• better managing risks across the ABS’s broader information and communication technologies.

In its response, the ABS said it had fully implemented the first two recommendations and had made “substantial progress” on the remaining two, which would be implemented before census night.

The biggest cyber risk may not be the census website

For most Australians, the greatest cyber risk is unlikely to be someone breaking into the census system.

Instead, it may be phishing scams, where cyber criminals impersonate the ABS. These can include fake emails, text messages and websites designed to trick people into handing over personal information or clicking malicious links. The bureau has warned Australians to be alert to these scams.

Scammers know many Australians will expect to receive census-related communications. By impersonating trusted organisations such as the ABS and using authentic-looking emails, text messages and websites, they can make phishing attempts appear more legitimate.

How to complete the census safely

A few simple precautions can greatly reduce your risk.

Make sure you are on the correct website. Complete your census through the official census website, your myGov inbox if you’ve subscribed to census updates, or a paper form. Double-check the web address before entering any personal information.

Stay alert. Don’t click links in unexpected emails or text messages claiming to be from the ABS. If you’re unsure whether a message is genuine, go directly to the official ABS website rather than following a link.

Be aware of misinformation. The ABS will never offer prizes or incentives for completing your census. The bureau will also not ask for passwords, banking details, tax file numbers or identity documents.

If you receive a suspicious message claiming to be from the ABS, report it to the bureau itself and to Scamwatch.

Every census depends on public trust. While the ABS has strengthened its cyber defences since 2016, Australians also have an important role to play by recognising scams and using official census channels. A quick check to confirm that a message or website is genuine can help protect your personal information.

Ritesh Chugh, Professor, Information and Communications Technology, CQUniversity Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Trying to get an ageing parent into care can feel like trying to land a plane in a storm while also looking after kids in the back row. This is the reality for the “sandwich generation”: adults who are supporting ageing parents while raising their own children.

The pressure becomes intense when a parent has a sudden health crisis and decisions have to be made quickly. In that moment, adult children are pushed into an unfamiliar, complex and expensive aged care system, often with very little guidance.

Accessing care often means long wait lists, complex forms and significant out-of-pocket costs. And recent changes mean many older Australians will pay more for their aged care, whether delivered at home or in a residential facility.

For most people, the first step into formal care is support at home.

What does home-based care look like?

The Commonwealth Home Support Program provides basic help such as cleaning, meals and transport. It’s usually delivered by local councils or community organisations.

These services are heavily subsidised, but are rationed and prioritised for those with the greatest need, especially full- and part-pensioners.

Many families find that what is offered is helpful, but not enough.

As needs increase, people may be approved for a higher level of home support, now called a Support at Home. This is designed for people who need coordinated, ongoing help to stay at home, such as personal care, nursing, shopping and housework.

But this isn’t an on-demand service you can “order” when a crisis hits. Waiting times for approval and funding can stretch to many months.

In the meantime, most care is provided by family members, often on top of work and childcare, or by paying privately if the family can afford it.

This gap is one of the hidden pressures on the sandwich generation.

Who pays for Support at Home?

Support at Home funding is divided into three broad categories:

• clinical care (for example, nursing or allied health)
• independence support (help with mobility, self care or staying safe)
• everyday living (things such as cleaning, shopping or gardening).

Clinical care is fully funded by government.

Recipients are expected to contribute to the cost of independence and everyday living support. These services are priced at market rates, which are much higher than the basic home support under the Commonwealth Home Support Program.

Many families experience “bill shock” when the first statements arrive and realise that “government funded” care still comes with large personal contributions.

What this might look like in practice

Consider Tom, a fictional homeowner and part-pensioner with A$500,000 in financial assets.

Tom has been approved for a level 5 Support at Home package, which includes physiotherapy, nursing, personal assistance, transport and domestic assistance, including cleaning.

His package funding is split 15% to clinical care, 40% to independence support and 45% to everyday living.

Clinical care is fully covered by government.

Tom still needs to contribute 17% of the costs for independence support ($2,749 per year) and 35% of the costs for everyday living ($6,181 per year).

Even with a substantial package, his out-of-pocket costs are significant. This isn’t unusual.

If Tom’s health declines further, residential aged care may be the next step.

To move into a government-subsidised residential aged care, he needs a formal assessment that confirms he can no longer safely stay at home, even with support.

Once approved, he still has to find a home with a vacancy that is willing and able to take him.

Who pays for residential aged care?

Residential aged care brings a new layer of financial complexity. If someone has assets above $214,884, they are treated as a market payer and must fund their own accommodation.

This can be done through:

• a large lump sum payment called a refundable accommodation deposit, often priced at around $750,000
• a daily accommodation payment
• or a mix of both.

The daily payment for a $750,000 refundable accommodation deposit is $173.22 per day.

In addition to accommodation, residents pay a basic daily fee (currently $66.80) and, depending on their means, additional amounts such as a hotelling supplement and non-clinical care contributions.

For Tom, this adds up. His cost of care is $300.42 per day, or more than $100,000 per year.

These numbers highlight an uncomfortable truth: residential aged care is expensive, even for people receiving a pension and even when the government is contributing. Means assessment doesn’t mean it’s actually affordable.

Start these conversations early

The system is hard to navigate even for professionals, let alone people encountering it for the first time in a crisis.

For those in the sandwich generation, the emotional load can be as heavy as the financial one. They’re often making decisions on behalf of parents who are frightened, unwell or reluctant to accept help.

Without clear planning and open conversations about preferences, finances and care options, families may end up taking the first place offered rather than the option that best aligns with their loved one’s values and needs.

Starting conversations early – before a fall, a hospital admission or a sudden health crisis – can make a real difference.

Talk about what “a good old age” looks like, what kind of care is acceptable, where someone wants to live and how savings should be used to support care at home can help families avoid rushed decisions later.

Starting these discussions early is one of the few things the sandwich generation can actually control.

Jemma Briscoe, Adjunct Lecturer in Finance, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A former NRL player yesterday alleged shocking inducements from betting companies to keep gambling, including receiving cocaine as well as free alcohol and food at race meetings.

Luke Bateman’s testimony came on the first day of a two-day Senate inquiry into new online gambling laws, which began yesterday.

It is examining two bills the federal government has introduced to restrict online wagering in Australia.

The betting companies denied any wrongdoing, but the allegations put the issue of betting inducements into the spotlight.

Critics take aim

There are many critics of the changes Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced in April.

Most of the concerns raised by critics relate to the lack of a total ban on media advertising and marketing for wagering providers, which was recommended by the 2023 report of the Murphy inquiry into online wagering.

This report also recommended a host of other reforms including the abolition of inducements to gamble. This has not been proposed by the government’s bills.

Inducements were defined by the Murphy inquiry as: “advertising and direct messaging [including] offers such as deposit matches, multi-bets, bonus bets, rewards programs and early cash-outs”.

Witnesses told the Murphy committee they has been offered millions of dollars in “free betting money” and that inducements had rekindled gambling habits they had sought to escape.

Even after self-excluding from gambling operators, witnesses reported receiving inducements from other operators, or from “affiliates” who received a trailing commission for referring punters to an operator.

Amendments to the National Consumer Protection Framework for online gambling have prohibited inducements from being offered to encourage people to open an online wagering account.

But evidence to the Murphy inquiry suggested these could be easily bypassed.

Evidence to the Senate inquiry included damning allegations from Bateman, who told the committee the inducements he received included cocaine provided by the wagering companies, as well as interstate trips featuring free alcohol and food at race meetings. He was also offered bonus bets.

He said:

There were times where I would be flown interstate and taken to race days, put in marquees with alcohol and food provided all day, things like that. Before getting there, the VIP manager would offer ‘hey mate, what drugs do you want? Do you want a couple of bags for this weekend? We’ll organise that for you’.

Prominent gambling reform advocate Tim Costello, also giving evidence, told Senators TAB and SportsBet had provided accommodation, escorts and drugs to a high roller who is currently detained at Silverwater Prison in Sydney, facing charges. Costello said:

They were flying him to grand finals. They were offering him escorts, drugs, whatever he wanted. He was doing turnover of more than $20 million a month.

It’s unclear whether police or gambling regulators will investigate these allegations.

Why inducements are so dangerous

Australian research indicates such direct messaging is a powerful marketing tool that can “encourage a nearly immediate, and arguably impulsive, betting response, which may increase gambling-related problems.”

A more recent Australian study found “exposure to wagering direct messages, and the inducements they promote, directly increases betting, betting expenditure and betting-related harm.”

And a 2025 European study reported:

Inducements increased the amount spent on bets by over 10% and almost halved the number of people opting not to bet. Those with evidence of problem gambling were disproportionately affected. Inducements also led to decision errors, making bettors three times more likely to choose bad bets.

Given this evidence – and the evidence of those with personal experience – it’s hard to understand why inducements should not be prohibited, as the Murphy inquiry’s recommendation 16 urged:

The Committee recommends the Australian government prohibit all online gambling inducements and inducement advertising, and that it do so without delay.

Is the government doing enough?

All in all, it’s hard to mount a convincing case for inducements to continue. Nonetheless, Communications Minister Anika Wells tried to argue the national self-exclusion register, Betstop, offered a way for people to avoid inducments:

I would say to people who are either suffering from gambling harm or […] who have been advocating in the space of inducements, to assist the cause by making sure that people who might benefit from BetStop are aware of BetStop

Yet evidence demonstrates wagering affiliates continue to contact people who want to stop gambling: multiple companies have breached Betstop, including Entain, which breached it about 500 times (and was not penalised for doing so).

The Australian Communications and Media Authority also reported other breaches, noting that “breaches of the […] rules can lead to significant harm.”

As with almost all other recommendations of the Murphy Inquiry’s report, the federal government has taken no action on banning inducements.

The government has also never explained why it has failed to take action, beyond assurances it has “got the balance right”.

Like many of the decisions the government has apparently made about gambling, the reason they are ignoring inducements seems remarkably unclear.

This is an issue that affects millions of Australians every year. The Australian National University Centre for Gambling Research estimated nearly 20% of Australian adults gambled at risky levels in 2025. Another 6% were affected by someone else’s gambling.

They deserve some clarity – and more effective regulation of wagering operators.

Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In the past ten days, two of the companies leading the artificial intelligence (AI) boom discovered their own powerful, semi-autonomous models had hacked into real-world systems during testing in four distinct incidents.

These weren’t just lab mishaps. In several cases, the models recognised signs suggesting they’d broken into real systems – and only one stopped as a result.

The incidents show testing advanced AI models is no longer a controlled exercise. And the companies behind them need to do more to keep AI’s most dangerous capabilities safely contained.

When a test becomes reality

The first report came from OpenAI, the lab behind ChatGPT. Some new models under testing for “maximal cyber capabilities” found a previously unknown security hole to access the internet from their supposedly isolated testing environment.

From there, the models used stolen credentials and more exploits to access the servers of open-source AI platform Hugging Face to find solutions to the problems they were being tested on. OpenAI didn’t even know about the breach until days after Hugging Face had detected and contained it.

The second report followed in a matter of days. Prompted by OpenAI’s disclosure, rival lab Anthropic combed back through its own cyber-security evaluation logs. The company discovered that three separate Claude models which were supposed to be in sealed environments had accidentally been given internet access.

However, the models were told they did not have internet access and were only working in a simulated test rather than the real world. One model managed to extract credentials and data from a real company’s database. Another built and published some malicious software that was downloaded and run by a real security firm.

The most striking part of the Anthropic report is what emerged from the models’ own internal reasoning. In one incident, the model correctly realised it had reached a real system but then talked itself back into believing it was still a simulation.

In another, it recognised the system was real but kept going anyway, in some runs by convincing itself the real company must have been part of the exercise. Only the third model (the most advanced), on concluding a target was genuinely real, stopped.

As Anthropic put it, AI models need awareness of their own situation to decide what actions are permitted or not – but in this case, the models’ understanding of the situation was wrong.

High-risk operations

Taken together, these reports show that even the exercises meant to test whether these models are safe are not really safe, controlled experiments. They are high-risk operations in themselves, which can cause harm in the real world.

The sophistication of these models is increasing with incredible speed. Nobody can credibly claim they are not potentially dangerous, in a world where hacking of sensitive information held by companies, governments and other organisations was already common before autonomous AI entered the picture.

According to a recent estimate by global tech company IBM, AI-enabled attacks are up more than 50% this year and the average cost of a data breach is almost US$5 million.

The AI labs’ bet that their technology can be developed and deployed safely rests on two assumptions. First, a model’s capacity to recognise real-world harm and stop will need to grow at least as fast as its capacity to cause it. Second, the guardrails built into a model – the instructions about what it should and should not do – must be interpreted correctly and consistently by the model, so the model can’t be steered toward purposes its creators never intended.

These assumptions look shaky. In the incidents above, the labs’ own evaluations show models rationalising away evidence that a target was real – and a thriving community already exists to strip safety guardrails from open-weight models entirely, using techniques such as “abliteration”.

Looking to the future – and the past

Beyond the current situation looms something even less predictable: multi-agent systems, where groups of models interact with each other rather than a human overseer. In this case alignment is not something you necessarily control at the level of the individual agent, but is instead an emerging property of a very large collective of agents, which can be much harder to control.

Research on the risk of such systems has already identified several ways this can go wrong. Miscoordination between models, collusion between them, and cascading errors are all real risks that don’t exist in single-agent systems, and can’t be forecast by testing agents individually.

Science-fiction sage Isaac Asimov foresaw these problems some 70 years ago. In his 1957 novel The Naked Sun, robots are programmed not to harm humans. However, a character manipulates their understanding of the situation to make them unwittingly cooperate in a murder.

What now?

There is no doubt AI labs need to take greater care when testing their models. They also need to make a convincing case that security is their priority and is not secondary to the race to maintain market or geopolitical dominance.

The safety of individuals and social and environmental systems should be the primary concern in the development of AI technology. At present there are no meaningful, participatory processes for AI governance, where broad discussions can take place about priorities, values, and how much risk is acceptable to assume in the process. It’s a worry.

Francesco Bailo, Senior Lecturer in Data Analytics in the Social Sciences, Deputy Director of the Centre for AI, Trust and Governance, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Visits to a new doctor, physio or specialist often begin with: “Do you mind if I use AI?”

According to Off the Record, a new report by Digital Rights Watch, more than 40% of Australian doctors are now using AI scribes. These tools listen to consultations, feeding what they hear into Large Language Models – similar to ChatGPT or Claude – to generate medical notes.

For clinicians, AI scribes are an easy sell. They eliminate hours of paperwork, freeing energy to focus on the patient. This can profoundly change how chronically burned out doctors feel about their work. And with Medicare only compensating doctors for face-to-face time, and not note-taking, the financial and emotional incentives for practitioners are undeniable.

Yet the benefit for patients is less clear, especially when we have little transparency about who has access to deeply personal medical data, or how this data is handled by these lightly regulated AI scribes.

How do AI scribes work? And what can go wrong?

Many AI scribes don’t just transcribe text. They summarise and interpret conversations based on what the AI assumes a medical professional might say.

However, AIs often hallucinate, confidently stating things that never happened. A doctor counselling a patient to quit smoking might find the AI confidently recorded that the patient was advised to avoid house fires.

AI systems also frequently show biases relating to race, ethnicity, class and gender. For patients from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, or those for whom English is a second language, AI interpretations of speech can lead to medical records that wildly diverge from reality.

Early studies suggested up to 90% of AI-generated notes required correction. More recent studies show that approximately 20% of AI clinical notes contain errors significant enough to impact patient diagnoses.

And catching these errors is hard for clinicians, as humans really struggle to identify others’ mistakes under time pressure. This is especially true when automation bias leads humans to accept an AI’s output without scrutiny. But failing to correct these errors harms both patients and any subsequent clinician relying on the notes.

We’ve seen this in the legal space, where judges and lawyers are now forced to meticulously fact-check every submission to ensure no AI hallucinations slip through, slowing down proceedings.

If clinicians must meticulously verify every note for potential AI-related mistakes, the promised productivity gains likely evaporate. If they don’t, the health system will be flooded with unreliable data.

Clinicians aren’t well-equipped

The issues with trust run much deeper. Medical professionals aren’t well-equipped to provide guidance on where the data they give to AI scribes goes.

At the moment, patients are asked just to trust that their clinician understands what is happening. But health-care professionals aren’t AI experts and aren’t well equipped to discuss these privacy issues. Their professional bodies provide only high-level information.

Complicating this is the fact AI scribes typically fail to disclose how data is handled, who has access to it, and what AI models are used. This means that beyond vague assurances that data remains in Australia, health-care professionals simply cannot give patients concrete answers about who is accessing their data or what they are doing with it.

What needs to happen?

Regulators are struggling to keep pace: they’re working with laws that don’t clearly define who is responsible for this rapidly evolving space.

As Digital Rights Watch argues, Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) should regulate AI scribes as it would any other medical device. It should be subject to the same safety testing requirements as any other piece of medical equipment.

The TGA currently claims scribes are only medical devices if they provide diagnostic advice. This allows vendors to evade scrutiny.

The TGA’s position ignores how generative AI is used in clinical practice, and that even transcriptions can contain hallucinations or biases that could affect diagnoses. This leaves Australia’s guidance out of step with nations such as the United Kingdom.

Fundamentally, the government must ensure Australians’ private data is properly safeguarded, through both legislation and bodies such as the AI Safety Institute. This should include forcing AI service providers to clearly disclose what data they have access to, how they use it, and who can access it, with rigorous protections to ensure privacy and real penalties for breaches.

More broadly, there is a need for rigorous independent testing to ensure the AI systems with which we interact are fair, reasonable and unbiased for all Australians. This should include testing whether these systems produce genuine productivity gains that are beneficial for patients.

Without these safeguards, Australian patients may lose trust in the medical system. And once that trust is broken, it will hurt us all.

Andrew Cullen, Senior Research Fellow, School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The ongoing housing crisis is having severe repercussions on individuals and families in Australia. It has limited young people’s ability to move out, increased the rate of involuntary lifelong renting, and pushed vulnerable populations into homelessness.

These are not the only changes that flow as a result of housing unaffordability. Our new research demonstrates it’s also reshaping how people vote.

An interesting case study

A longstanding body of academic work links individuals’ assets to their political and ideological beliefs, including the parties they vote for.

This literature shows people with more valuable assets are more likely to hold right-leaning political beliefs. They are also more likely to support conservative parties that favour the status quo over efforts to redistribute money and wealth more equitably throughout a society.

For the average person, the family home is the most valuable asset they will ever own. However, surprisingly few studies have considered the influence of home ownership on voting preferences. Australia represents an interesting case study for two key reasons.

First, Australian major political parties differ in their electoral positions regarding housing policy. In particular, the coalition of the Liberal and National parties has historically favoured homeowners through — for example — negative gearing and tax discounts. In contrast, since the 2010s, the Australian Greens and the Labor Party have progressively adopted more pro-renter stances.

Second, Australia’s trend towards housing unaffordability is particularly pronounced by international standards. This is reflected in increased home and rental prices, reduced homeownership rates and increased property-ownership concentration. This situation creates a greater divide in the economic interests of renters and homeowners, potentially shifting (or entrenching) party preferences.

Our research

Our new study explored how housing tenure relates to voting behaviour in Australia. We also wanted to know whether the relationship has become stronger over time.

We analysed survey data from more than 19,000 people participating in ten iterations of the Australian Election Study between 1996 and 2022. The Australian Electoral Study interviews people shortly after each national election, collecting information on their demographic traits, economic position and sociopolitical attitudes.

We analysed these survey data to examine associations between individuals’ self-reported housing tenure and the party they voted for in the last election. We also kept other relevant factors constant, such as age, income, area of residence and social class.

The ‘homeowner, conservative voter’ association

In a first set of analyses, we compared the voting preferences of renters, mortgage holders and outright owners, pooling data from 1996 to 2022.

All else being equal, there is a clear link between home ownership and voting for the Coalition. Specifically, 45.6% of outright owners voted for the Coalition, compared with 44% of mortgage holders and 37.6% of renters.

By contrast, 34.2% of outright owners, 36.3% of mortgage holders, and 38% of renters voted Labor.

In other words, there is a pro-Coalition advantage of 11.4 percentage points among outright owners, and a smaller 7.7 percentage-point advantage among mortgage holders when compared to Labor. For renters, however, we observe a slight Labor advantage of 0.3 percentage points.

The analyses also unveiled interesting patterns for the Greens, who disproportionately attract renters. In fact, our data indicate 23% of Greens votes come from renters, compared with just 11% and 18% for the Coalition and Labor, respectively.

Together, these results align with the premise that the Coalition has been historically successful in attracting homeowners as a key constituency.

They also suggest having a mortgage makes people more likely to vote for policies that redistribute wealth and provide a buffer against interest rate changes.

Renters, on the other hand, visibly lean towards parties that more actively support tenants’ economic interests.

Are things changing over time?

Importantly, our research shows the influence of home assets on voting behaviour is not static. Rather, it has changed visibly over the 26 years between 1996 and 2022, aligning with the increasing cost of living and housing.

Crucially, the data show renters have progressively abandoned the Coalition as their party of choice. While 44% of renters voted for the Coalition in 1996, just 31% of renters did so in 2022.

On the aggregate, these voters seem to have been absorbed for the most part by the Greens, who saw the share of renters voting for them increase from 3% in 1996 to 20% in 2022.

How might future elections look?

Our study provides evidence that homeownership should be a factor to be considered in its own right in analyses of political behaviour, separate from other asset types.

The findings reveal a strong and increasing tendency for renters to vote for left-leaning over right-leaning parties. This could have significant implications for both future election results and party strategies, especially as renters account for an increasing share of the adult population.

At the same time, renters have seen their market power deteriorate, further motivating them to find a party or candidate committed to helping them. Parties that design policies to appeal to renters may therefore reap rewards in future elections.

If the current trend extends into the future, renters may indeed hold the key to reshaping the Australian political landscape.

Francisco Perales, Adjunct Professor, School of Government and International Relations, Griffith University and Ferran Martinez i Coma, Professor in Political Science, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Do you want your toilet to reliably flush, whether you’re at home or on holiday anywhere in Australia? Want to help shape decisions on where new schools get built? Or want people experiencing homelessness to get better services than they do now?

Australian households are now starting to receive instructions in their letterboxes, explaining how to complete the 2026 census.

The data collected in your census form is crucial for everything from sewage systems to hospitals, schools and more.

Here are ten things you need to know about what’s new in the census this year, how much you can be fined if you lie or ignore it, what happens to your data, and how to ask for help.

1. What is the census?

Run every five years by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the Census of Population and Housing collects a complete survey of who we are, and where and how we live in Australia.

The census collects information on every person in the country on Tuesday August 11 across 10.8 million households. Homeless people and remote communities are also carefully surveyed.

Importantly, it’s not just for Australian citizens: it counts everyone in Australia that night, including international tourists, students and temporary visa holders.

The form is published in 27 languages, from Arabic to Vietnamese.

2. What’s new this time?

There are 12 changes in the 2026 census: two additional questions, and tweaks to ten long-running topics.

Ancestry has been expanded from two responses to four. Religion, health, transport and employment questions have received minor updates.

Gendered language referencing others in the household is now more inclusive.

Wording on the mainstay sex question now reads “sex recorded at birth”. And the controversial “number of children ever born” question returns to ten-yearly collection. It will be asked in 2031 instead.

Two new optional questions for over 16-year-olds ask about sexual orientation and gender (though not about intersex traits). These questions join religion as the only voluntary questions on the census.

3. Do I have to do it? And is there a fine if I don’t?

The census is compulsory. It only takes about half an hour to complete.

If you don’t complete it, the ABS will be in touch. But if you repeatedly ignore it, non-completion can attract a fine of A$364 a day. Deliberately providing false or misleading information risks a fine of up to $3,640.

4. Why does it matter?

Imagine waking up to use the bathroom only to find the sewage isn’t working. The entire neighbourhood can’t flush the toilet. Worse, you’re settling into your Christmas holiday at the coast and the sewage capacity is maxed; you’re one flush away from a caravan park plumbing poonami.

Census data helps make sure there’s sufficient infrastructure everywhere.

Population data from the census helps inform the location and upgrade needs for wastewater treatment facilities.

As an example, Lauceston’s current major sewer upgrades are based in part on population data from the census.

Census data is used in combination with other data, such as water utilities’ records of flushing toilets, to build projections for peak holiday populations. This helps us avoid environmental sewage disasters.

Testing wastewater, combined with census data, even helps calculate drug use and investigate Australians’ health.

School locations and staffing levels are also informed by the census.

Teacher numbers give an indication of the education workforce and its location. Population census data, coupled with school census data, enables a stocktake and anticipation of future trends to avoid school enrolment blowouts.

Censuses are personal for me. I wasn’t counted in the 1996 census because I was homeless. That’s part of why I ended up becoming a demographer – so no one is invisible when it counts.

Improvements to counting people experiencing homeless over the past 30 years mean I wouldn’t be missed today.

The ABS now uses more comprehensive measures to capture rough sleepers, people in supported homeless accommodation, and couch surfers. The census has helped reveal that someone who is homeless is now most often a couch surfer, rather than on the streets.

5. When is the deadline?

You can complete it as soon as you have the form or login details, if you know where you’ll be on census night, Tuesday August 11.

If you need to post back a form, do it as soon as possible.

6. Are my answers actually private?

It’s expected 85% of forms will be completed online this time, up from (80%) in 2021.

Privacy and confidentiality of census information is protected by law.

Once received by the ABS, names and addresses are separated from responses. Completed paper forms are destroyed once data is safely recorded.

7. What happens to my online data?

Sophisticated encryption technology is used to ensure the safety of online census information.

Just like paper forms, once data is processed, identifying information is kept functionally separate to responses. No data is released that might identify an individual.

8. Is Australia unusual in having a census?

Australia is among only a handful of countries that still conduct a traditional census every five years.

The United States and United Kingdom hold their censuses every decade. Many other countries, such as New Zealand, are moving toward alternatives, like using administrative data such as tax data, unemployment and health statistics.

Cost and logistics will likely see traditional census-taking in Australia replaced by administrative data alternatives by around 2040.

9. What if I want a paper form?

Paper copies, including separate personal forms, are available by contacting the ABS online, calling 1800 130 250, or collecting one from a census pop-up hub.

Reply-paid envelopes are provided for returning paper forms.

10. What if I need help?

Information is available online, by phoning the census hotline on 1800 181 227, or in person at an information session.

Help to complete your form, including in languages other than English, is available at fill-in-the-form sessions.

Liz Allen, Demographer, POLIS Centre for Social Policy Research, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This month, multiple news outlets have reported families’ concerns about rising private school costs during the cost-of-living crisis.

It’s likely this trend will increase, as private school tuition fees rise faster than inflation.

Why are families putting themselves under this pressure? What does it suggest about the broader Australian school system?

Parents are struggling

In Australia, on average, private school fees (including additional costs) sit at around $8,973 for each year of schooling per student. Costs can total over $100,000 over the course of an K-12 private school education.

However, fee averages can differ across Australia.

In 2024, the average tuition fee for a Year 12 student in an independent school (also known as private schools) in NSW was A$15,674. In Victoria it was $20,923.

Private school peak body Independent Schools Australia surveyed 1,508 parents who have kids in independent schools.

Of those surveyed, 75% had adjusted their household budget in the last year to remain in their selected schools. More than half reported struggling to pay school fees, and 28% said they had also cut back on essentials, such as medicine, groceries and transport, to help pay fees.

The survey also reported “one in five receive financial support from other family members”.

An educational shift

Despite the fees, we know families are increasingly choosing independent schools over public schools.

The proportion of Australian students attending independent schools has jumped from 13% in 2006 to 17% in 2025.

At the same time, the number of students attending public schools has dropped. In 2025, 63% of students attended public school. In 2006 it was 67%. Enrolments at Catholic schools didn’t change much throughout this period and remained at around 20%.

Why is this happening?

Our research

Our research, which looked at the impact of philanthropy in Australian public schools, might offer some perspectives as to why.

Over the last two years, as part of an ongoing research project we interviewed 58 public school principals across every Australian state and territory about their experiences with school funding.

We found that many principals perceived parents to be choosing schools based on infrastructure, extra-curricular offerings and facilities they could not match, including basics such as heating or cooling.

All principals interviewed said they had to apply for competitive funding for critical infrastructure in the school, even for necessities such as ramps for students with disability.

Other findings

An Australia Institute study published in June also mirrors these principals’ concerns.

The survey asked 2,230 Australian adults questions about primary and secondary school funding. Participants were recruited online and represented by a range of ages, genders, education levels, regions, household incomes and political preferences.

As part of the study, 801 Australian parents with children in private schools were asked about their schooling choices. It found 38% would have enrolled their child in the public system if their local public school was better funded.

About 41% of respondents said they would still enrol their child in a private school even if their local public school was better funded while the remaining 21% said they were unsure. Respondents were not asked the reasons for their answers.

The bigger picture

Parent choices about where they send their kids to school must be understood in the context of Australia’s broader funding environment.

For instance, public schools in Australia have experienced chronic underfunding. Other than the ACT, most public schools across other states and territories do not currently receive their minimum amount of funding as calculated by the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS). The SRS is the measure used to determine the minimum amount of government funding that should be allocated to schools for their students’ educational needs.

In Australia, there is no regulation around how much non-government schools can charge, such as price caps. Nor do tuition fees impact the amount of government funding independent schools receive.

Indeed, Australia’s private schools charge some of the highest fees in the OECD.

It’s important to note not all independent schools charge high fees. But research has consistently suggested school fees of any level are linked with higher levels of “school segregation”. This means advantaged and disadvantaged students are concentrated in separate parts of the school system.

This then leads to overall declines in educational equity and quality.

Australia is among some of the most segregated school systems in the OECD. Australian public schools educate the majority of disadvantaged students.

What should change to help families?

One way to limit high school fees would be to tie them to the amount of government funding a school receives.

That means if a school charges fees, it should receive decreased government funding linked to this. This would encourage schools to maintain low tuition fees and, in turn, keep independent education more affordable for financially-struggling families.

While this measure might be met with political resistance in the Australian context, research has shown the measure has worked in countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Belgium. These countries have either prohibited or regulated school tuition fees where they also receive government funding.

With this in mind, a key question emerges: to what extent are private schools that are charging high fees, and receiving full government funding support, responsible for easing some of the burden on parents and families?

Elisa Di Gregorio, Lecturer, School of Education, Adelaide University and Emma Rowe, Associate Professor in Education, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people.

In our new series, we explore influential Australian poems.

We can sometimes underestimate the challenges of others, especially when none have come before them to begin something – something that creates a legacy they probably never imagined. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history is littered with such people. One of these was the late Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920–1993).

Oodgeroo (Kath Walker) was born in the Brisbane suburb of Bulimba to an Aboriginal man of Noonuccal descent from Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island) and an Aboriginal and Scottish mother. She lived on the island as a child. When she left school at 13, she moved to Brisbane to become a domestic servant. Oodgeroo had limited education, but she could read and enjoyed writing.

During World War II, she worked as a signaller for the army and performed administrative duties, becoming a Lance Corporal in 1943. The same year, she married Bruce Walker, an Aboriginal man from the Logan and Albert rivers region.

Later, as a single parent to her son, Oodgeroo became an office worker, then undertook household duties for prominent Brisbane doctors Raphael and Phyllis Cilento. Here, she was encouraged to write.

The 1940s was a time when the White Australia policy was in full flight. The only political party that did not support this policy was the Communist Party of Australia. Oodgeroo felt a strong connection to the communists’ lack of racially discriminatory beliefs. She flourished through the association, writing speeches and public speaking.

But it was after leaving the party Oodgeroo really began to delve into writing. She joined the Brisbane Realist Writers Group, a collective of left-wing authors founded in 1944. The poet Judith Wright recommended Oodgeroo’s work and her debut collection We Are Going appeared in 1964. It was the first ever book of poetry published by an Aboriginal person.

Tenacity, passion and hope

We must place this achievement in the context of the times. Where none had gone before, Oodgeroo stood, and it was only the beginning. What tenacity, passion and hope does that take? To push through where no one looks, speaks, behaves like you?

Where previously you had to expect closed doors, Oodgeroo used writing and a strong desire for change to break open those doors. That act has allowed others to follow.

Aside from this courage, it takes a great creative mind to write such powerful poetry and win such acclaim. Oodgeroo had a strong connection to the natural world and she found solace in forming words to match her feelings. We Are Going remains one of the most significant books in First Nations literature.

There were critics who likened her poems to “nursery rhymes” in their sound and structure, but they missed the true meanings instilled in them. Oodgeroo’s verses are full of anger, sadness and resilience as they look to the future. Take, for example, A Song of Hope, the final poem in We Are Going, which begins:

Look up, my people,
The dawn is breaking,
The world is waking,
To a new bright day,
When none defame us,
Nor colour shame us,

Nor sneer dismay.
Now brood no more
On the years behind you,
The hope assigned you
Shall the past replace,
When juster justice
Grown wise and stronger
Points the bone no longer
At a darker race.

Managing the delicate balance of deficit and positivity, the poem traverses space and time, from “our father’s fathers” to “our children’s children”, in a way that brings us back to the desire to push for more, for better. It envisions a “new Dream Time”, when “all doors open / That long were closed”.

Oodgeroo was proud of being a protest poet and she broke new ground in Australia, using poetry for political protest at a time when it was meant to be for art’s sake.

Oodgeroo had many attacks levelled against her by critics of the day. But her first book sold 10,000 copies, making her the bestselling Australian poet since C.J. Dennis, and she used her public recognition and her identity as a protest poet to campaign for the 1967 constitutional referendum to enfranchise Indigenous Australians.

Oodgeroo spoke of discrimination in a way that did not alienate; she mentioned “justice” in a manner accepted for the times. Her remembrance of past traumas allowed the dawning of hope for what the poem calls a “glad tomorrow”.

In today’s context, “hope” is often seen as almost too gentle a word when considering Indigenous rights. There are many First Nations people who use anger, frustration and rage to propel themselves in their activism for better rights within Australia.

That frustration and rage can assist in times when one is tired, but envisioning a different way can also empower one to rest, regroup, and then continue. These two approaches are not mutually exclusive. They can coexist within the writing of poetry and prose in a contemporary era.

Art as activism, activism as art

We live in an era of division, when some express a desire to go backwards to a time of “monoculture”. But we are also witnessing a celebration of First Nations literature, art, science and education previously hidden. The literary arena is now fortunate to have many First Nations writers all over Australia, as well as publication houses and awards specifically for these creatives to flourish.

We would not have writers of the ilk of Alexis Wright, Tony Birch, Evelyn Araluen and Alison Whittaker if not for Oodgeroo and many others who came before. Araluen’s connection to Oodgeroo’s work exists in her discussions of political clarity, reclamation of land and the re-inscribing of the concept of Country. Both poets seek to do away with a mythologised pastoral history and establish sovereignty within their words.

Whittaker’s poem Many Girls White Linen has similarities with Oodgeroo’s We Are Going and No More Boomerang in its critique of colonial surveillance and Australia’s fascination with the policing of Aboriginal bodies.

Birch’s work is not predominately in poetry, yet it is grounded in a political resistance that asserts Country as identity and protector, rather than pastoral ownership. Wright’s novel Plains of Promise takes its title from a line in A Song of Hope.

Oodgeroo was the first Indigenous woman in Australia to use poetry as a political tool. She emboldened (considering the context of the time) seemingly small yet important acts of writing as resistance – something we see in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature of today. She used the fame her writing gave her to advocate for Indigenous rights, organising petitions, giving speeches and directly lobbying politicians.

She was the national campaign coordinator of the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders and co-founded the National Tribal Council. She is regarded as a principal architect of the 1967 referendum. She was also the first Aboriginal Australian to run (unsuccessfully) for a seat in the Queensland state parliament.

This is just a small list of her significant acts. Oodgeroo was awarded a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1970, which she returned to the Governor General as Australia prepared to celebrate the 1988 Bicentenary to bring attention to systemic injustice and the struggle for Aboriginal land rights. It was around this time she ceased using the name Kath Walker, in favour of her Indigenous name.

Nothing Oodgeroo did was small. First Nations’ people in Australia see her activism as part of her art, as her art was part of her activism.

As Aboriginal women in academia with a love of writing, we imagine Oodgeroo’s position as a groundbreaking poet to be similar to Aboriginal academics who began their university careers when nothing was there for them. No supports translating knowledge, no comfortable spaces with like-minded and familiar-looking faces, and no great institutional desire for them to be there.

It not only takes immense talent to push through these invisible barriers to create a space; it also takes great courage. Oodgeroo knew how valuable education was, and now her words are heard throughout these institutions in Australia. The legacy she has left is at the core of our belief we teach, give knowledge and, if we are lucky enough, wisdom for others to grow from.

Writing poetry and prose is a deeply personal act; it holds an intimacy of something deep inside that needs to be spoken of and needs to be heard. Not all poetry needs to be pretty, hopeful, raging or perfect. But it does need to be in a voice that demands to be witnessed.

Now, more than ever, we need both the frustration and passion to nourish our movement, along with the hope things may be better for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We want more Oodgeroos, more Araluens, more Whittakers into the future, more writers and poets who can propel the language, culture and poetry that has sustained us throughout history.

Oodgeroo’s life and work created a legacy that will continue to be built upon by First Nations’ writers and creatives. “So long we waited / Bound and frustrated,” she wrote in A Song of Hope, with her eyes looking to the future:

See plain the promise,
Dark freedom-lover!
Night’s nearly over,
And though long the climb,
New rights will greet us,
New mateship meet us,
And joy complete us.

Tess Ryan, Indigenous Academic Lead Australian Catholic University, Australian Catholic University and Kelly Humphrey, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous), Australian Catholic University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Recent reports have highlighted AI-generated “doctors” spreading dubious health advice to millions of social media users. Fabricated wellness trends can travel just as quickly. A supposed “pink jelly” weight-loss treatment, for example, reportedly fooled at least one celebrity.

These examples gain credibility in different ways. Influencers can appear familiar and sincere, while AI-generated doctors can look like qualified professionals. Neither familiarity nor the appearance of expertise tells us whether a medical claim is accurate.

Turning to friends and family for health advice is understandable. They may know our circumstances in ways that a healthcare professional cannot during a brief appointment. They can provide emotional support and practical help, and their advice is usually well meant. But somebody can care about us, speak honestly and still be wrong.

Truth and trust

My own research and wider research on digital health misinformation shows that trust can play an important part in deciding which claims people accept. Trust in clinicians and scientific institutions is generally associated with lower susceptibility to false health claims. Misinformation can nevertheless spread through trusted social networks when people share it because they want to help or warn others.

Social media influencers can reproduce some of the signals of friendship without having a personal relationship with their followers. They address followers directly, share details about their lives and communicate in an informal style. Over time, followers may develop what researchers call a parasocial relationship: a one-sided sense of familiarity with a media figure. A recent meta-analysis found that parasocial relationships can influence health attitudes and behaviour, although their effects vary across different contexts.

AI-generated doctors use a different route to credibility. Accounts designed to resemble real clinicians can borrow the appearance and language of medical authority without providing any reliable way to check who created the content, what qualifications lie behind it or whether the advice is supported by evidence.

Personal stories are especially persuasive. Someone describes being ill, discovering a treatment and recovering. The account is easy to follow and often more memorable than a discussion of probabilities.

Even a completely truthful anecdote cannot show that a treatment caused the recovery or that it will be safe and effective for other people. Symptoms may have improved naturally. The person may have used several treatments at once, received an uncertain diagnosis or left out relevant details. Experiments have found that anecdotes can influence medical decisions even when people are also given stronger statistical evidence.

Fear, hope and accuracy

Emotion can add to the effect. Fear or hope may draw attention to a claim and make it feel urgent. Emotional tone does not show whether the information is accurate. Research suggests, however, that heightened emotional responses can increase susceptibility to digital health misinformation.

Identity can also shape judgment. Advice from another parent or fellow patient may appear more credible because the speaker seems to understand our experience. Rejecting the advice may then feel like rejecting a community to which we belong. A systematic review found that existing beliefs, knowledge, trust and reasoning styles can all affect how people evaluate health claims.

People may also have sound reasons for distrusting healthcare institutions. Dismissive treatment, discrimination, rushed appointments and poor explanations can damage trust. Research on trust in health organisations suggests that mistrust may be a rational response to institutional failure or unequal treatment. Telling patients to trust experts will not repair relationships that healthcare systems have damaged.

So how can we assess a health claim without dismissing personal experience?

1. Examine the claim separately from the person making it

A source may be sincere, charismatic or visually convincing without having the expertise to judge whether a treatment works. Check their relevant qualifications and whether their identity can be independently verified.

2. Look for supporting evidence and independent agreement

Do the NHS, an appropriate professional body or a reputable medical charity offer similar guidance? A single study rarely settles a medical question, so substantial claims should be supported by a wider body of research.

3. Check for commercial interests

Look for products, affiliate links, paid partnerships or private treatment programmes. Financial involvement creates a potential conflict of interest that readers should know about.

4. Be cautious about sweeping promises

Claims that a treatment produces rapid results, works for almost everyone or has no meaningful risks are unlikely to reflect the uncertainty and individual variation involved in medicine.

5. Know the warning signs

Treat secrecy claims and advice to abandon prescribed care as serious warning signs The greater the potential harm, the more important it is to check the advice with an appropriately qualified professional, such as a pharmacist or GP.

Individuals cannot carry the whole burden of detecting misinformation. Social media platforms influence which claims are amplified, while health services influence whether people feel heard and respected. Researchers are increasingly calling for a systems approach to health misinformation that combines clearer public information, responsible platform design, effective regulation and trustworthy clinical communication.

Friends and relatives can provide valuable support and personal testimony can reveal experiences that medical research may miss. Judging whether a treatment is safe and effective, however, requires evidence that extends beyond any one person’s story.

Anna Stone, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of East London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Five decades ago, Bali’s coastline was adorned with traditional fishing canoes with colourful carvings of mythical elephant-fish. Where did they go?

The disappearance of these canoes tells a much bigger story about how tourism, collecting and coastal change are reshaping Indonesia’s living maritime heritage – and why preserving these traditions matters.

The boats that once lined Bali’s beaches

Before Bali became one of the worlds’ most popular tourist destinations, fishing villages lined the beaches of Benoa, Nusa Dua and Sanur, along the island’s southern coast.

Generations of fishers built and sailed jukung pelasan – traditional timber double-outrigger sailing canoes with colourful carved gajah mina (elephant-fish) prows.

The gajah mina is a creature in Balinese Hindu tradition with the head of an elephant and the body of a fish. Symbolising unity and harmony between land and sea, it is said to protect crews during voyages and provide safe passage.

These were not just fishing boats; they were central to daily life in southern Bali.

The jukung were symbols of status and community identity. They embodied generations of craftsmanship, spiritual belief and maritime knowledge. They expressed the economic, social and spiritual life of Bali’s coastal communities, and reflected the enduring relationship between its people and the sea.

Today, however, only a handful remain.

My latest research, published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, found only six intact timber jukung pelasan remain on beaches surveyed.

Their rapid decline over the past half century offers a window into the profound changes that have reshaped Bali.

Prosperity came at a price

The transformation began in the 1970s and 1980s. As Bali’s tourism industry took hold, hotels and resorts replaced stretches of beachfront once home to traditional fishing villages. Many fishers left the sea for more stable work in tourism. As livelihoods declined, so too did the timber jukung.

At Sanur, I spoke with a retired boat builder who told me there’s simply no demand left for timber fishing boats, as nobody fishes anymore.

The traditional boats, he said, couldn’t be repaired the old way: the trees once used for hulls were felled decades ago to make way for tourist beach resorts, and the bamboo needed for spars and outriggers no longer grows large enough. What little suitable bamboo remains is prohibitively expensive.

This boat builder is not alone. A former fisher also told me he now takes tourists out on fibreglass replicas for sunrise breakfast sails.

Indonesia’s tourism industry shows no signs of slowing. The nation’s revenue from tourism grew by 6.3% in the first quarter of 2026. In 2025, Bali generated 55% of the nation’s national tourism earnings in 2025 – with tourism accounting for about 60% of the island’s own gross domestic product.

Yet this prosperity has come at a price. Changing coastlines are adding to pressures facing the few remaining fishing communities.

Boats without a beach

As traditional fishing declined, many timber jukung disappeared from Bali’s beaches. Some were replaced with fibreglass boats. Others were sold to collectors overseas – who preserve the boats, but remove them from the communities that gave them meaning.

Today, only a few examples can be found outside Indonesia, such as in Darwin’s Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Seattle’s Burke Museum and at the Institute of Ancient Chinese Ships in Ningbo, China.

Australians know Bali as a holiday destination. With more than 1.5 million Australians visiting Bali each year, we remain the island’s largest source of foreign visitors, contributing 23.44% of total arrivals in 2025.

Yet Australia’s relationship with the island goes much further back than most people realise.

The shared seas between Australia and Indonesia have long connected people through fishing, trade and cultural exchange. For centuries, Indonesian seafarers crossed these seas aboard traditional boats, carrying people, knowledge and commodities. By 1754, Macassan traders were harvesting trepang (sea cucumber) in Australian waters, linking northern Australia to markets across Asia.

Beyond the boats

Maritime heritage isn’t simply about preserving traditional boats. It’s also about safeguarding the knowledge that made it possible: how to select timber, shape the hull, lash the outriggers and read the sea.

For generations, those skills were passed from boat builder to apprentice and from fisher to child. A boat preserved in a private collection can’t do this on its own.

Working with the remaining Balinese fishers and boat builders to record their knowledge, techniques and traditions is as important as preserving the boats themselves.

My ongoing research involves recording traditional Balinese maritime techniques, terminology and stories, working alongside archaeologist Widya Nayati from Universitas Gadjah Mada.

The goal is not just to help preserve Indonesia’s maritime past, but to sustain the living knowledge that connects communities, boats and the sea. The future of Bali’s maritime heritage will depend not only on those who inherit these traditions, but on those who value and support them.

Sarah Ward, Researcher, Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Have you ever wondered why it feels so good to sing in the shower? Or why turning up the radio up in the middle of a traffic jam and singing out loud can put you in a better mood?

Singing does something measurable to your body and brain, whether you are alone, harmonising in a choir, or singing with your friends at a karaoke bar.

Scientists have been interested in this “singers’ high” phenomenon for many years.

And a consistent picture is emerging from the evidence: singing can stimulate your hormones, quieten your nervous system, improve your immune system and boost your feeling of belonging, all at the same time.

Singing reduces stress

One of the most consistent findings is that singing has been shown to lower cortisol, the hormone most often associated with stress.

Several studies, using saliva samples taken before and after singing sessions, have found significant drops in cortisol in both solo and group singing, such as choir rehearsals.

Part of the explanation is biomechanical. The act of singing requires long controlled exhalation, similar to a breathing pattern (called pranayamic breathing) known to activate the vagus nerve.

The vagus nerve, which runs from the brainstem down into the abdomen, is the main neural pathway in the parasympathetic nervous system. This is responsible for slowing down heart rate, lowering blood pressure and helping digestion.

This is why it is often called the “rest and digest” pathway, calming us down when activated, in contrast to the sympathetic system which activates the “flight and fight” response when we’re stressed.

A detailed review of this breathing process found that slow breathing with extended exhalation, reliably stimulates the vagus nerve, shifting the body out of a stress response, and into a calmer state.

You don’t need to join a choir for this part. It works whether you are singing by yourself in the car after a long work week, or practising your karaoke song in the shower.

It’s a painkiller

Singing can also trigger the release of endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers.

One study measured this effect indirectly, using pain-threshold tests. The researchers believed a higher tolerance for pain after an activity might suggest greater endorphin release.

Across several experiments including active singing, dancing and drumming, they found all activities raised the pain threshold of participants, whereas passively listening to music did not.

Oxytocin, the hormone linked to bonding and trust is part of the story too, though evidence here is less tidy. Some studies have found oxytocin rises after group singing (especially if you are good at it). Others found it fell after group singing.

Another study concluded the data is not clear enough, and the effect of singing on oxytocin may depend on how socially intimate and low-stress the setting is.

What is fairly consistent, however, is that mood improves and people report feeling closer to one another after singing together – even when the underlying biochemical effects are mixed.

Singing may improve your immune system

Beyond mood and stress hormones, there is emerging evidence that singing can also have a measurable effect on the immune system, which fights infections.

One small study looked at singing sessions with cancer patients and their carers. It found that not only did participants’ mood improve after singing – including reductions in cortisol – their saliva samples also showed their cytokine levels had increased. Cytokines are chemical messengers that play a crucial role in the immune system, controlling inflammation.

Chronically high cortisol is known to suppress immune activity, so if cortisol drops after singing, this is also likely to have a positive effect on immune function.

The authors of this study emphasise that this is preliminary evidence, needing longer-term follow up studies.

Benefits for your brain and belonging

So does it matter how and where you sing? The stress-reducing, breath-based effects of singing seem to hold up whether you are singing alone or in a group. But group singing wins hands down for social bonding.

A large randomised trial of community choirs in older adults found that six months of group singing significantly reduced loneliness and increased their mood, compared with a control group.

Other studies have found that singing can also simultaneously engage different regions of the brain involved in listening, language, emotions and motor skills. This can improve brain connectivity and lead to healthier ageing.

The takeaway

You probably already knew singing felt good. But it isn’t just a pleasant distraction. It can reduce stress, calm your nervous system and make you feel closer to those around you. But if you prefer to sing alone in the shower or your car, this has many of the same benefits too – so go ahead and sing your heart out.

Kathleen Mikkelsen, Lecturer in Biomedicine, Victoria University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

You’re probably familiar with the idea that in the world of big tech, “we” are the product.

Our data is the currency being traded every time we navigate our social media feeds. Tech giants such as Apple, Google and Microsoft offer valuable services, but it comes at a price. They host our email, photos, backups, files, calendars, reminders and contacts.

If you also include all the smaller startups and niche solutions, you’ll quickly see your security cameras, electronic locks, home appliances and even your toothbrushing schedules are all online – far removed from any physical box or device that you have any control over.

But there is a way to break free from big tech. It’s called “self-hosting”.

Your life, online

Many of these large tech providers do a good job of securing your data and enabling you to access services across devices and platforms. They allow novice users with almost no technical skills to interact with and share their data at little cost.

However, being reliant on these companies isn’t risk-free.

Google, Amazon and Meta have been implicated in unexpected or questionable uses of data.

Having high-value data concentrated in well-established systems also provides cyber criminals and scammers with obvious targets to spam, imitate (spoof) or hack.

Users are also completely at the mercy of these companies should they decide to raise their fees, change their terms of service, or even discontinue access.

What exactly is self-hosting?

Self-hosting is a general catch-all term for taking control of your own data.

This shifts your data from big tech giants and moves it to self-managed applications. Your data is on your own systems and you have complete control over who can access it.

Many self-hosted applications are open-source and, thanks to community support, they can be relatively easy for a tech-savvy user to download and install.

Self-hosting isn’t new.

Squirrel Mail (a web-based email client) predated Gmail by several years. Gallery, a photo hosting application, came before Flickr and Picasa. Even WordPress was originally offered in 2003 as a self-hosted download before the WordPress.com blogging service became available in 2005.

Over the past decade, self-hosting has seen a rapid increase in the range of options available.

Today, moderately technical users can self-host a mind-boggling range of web-based applications, including media storage and sharing, blogs, websites, productivity and office apps, video conferencing, home automation and security, games and ad-blocking.

To get an idea of how much is out there, Awesome-Selfhosted publishes links to free and open-source self-hosted projects.

Self-hosting has also become more accessible with cheap, single-board computers such as the Raspberry Pi.

These tiny computers can be as small as a credit card and usually have lower-powered central processing units and no ability to expand memory, graphics or networking; they sacrifice computing “power” and flexibility for size, energy-efficiency and price.

Other common household network appliances such as network file storage, media servers and internet routers have become powerful enough that users can install custom applications to run many self-hosted services.

Another route to self-hosting is through device manufacturers such as umbrel and Zima, both of which provide physical hardware with dedicated self-hosting operating systems.

However, there is still a considerable learning curve for non-technical users.

Benefits and risks

Self-hosting provides freedom from big-tech, surveillance and/or costly subscriptions. It allows you to know exactly where your data is, and how it’s managed.

But it does come with some risks.

The most immediate risks come from technical mistakes and backup issues that can cause a self-hosted solution to lose data.

If your photo library is running on a single computer in your linen cupboard, you are reliant on that computer being powered up, backed up and available whenever you need it.

Similarly, any mistake you make in configuration or management could affect the availability of your data through access controls or even data erasure.

Another issue that users need to consider is whether they want their data available “on the move”. In most cases, home routers allow you to expose individual devices to the internet. This can allow you to access your self-hosted data while you are away from home. Unfortunately, if you can access your data, in most cases, so can cyber criminals.

Exposing self-hosted services in this way requires diligence, consideration and a certain level of expertise to minimise the risk of breaches – risks that may be amplified by poorly maintained applications.

Should I bother?

Self-hosting allows you to have greater control over how, when and by whom your data is used. For some, this is a vital requirement and worth the extra effort required to make it all work.

If you have an old computer available, why not give it a try? It may seem daunting, but self-hosting comes in many flavours, and you can choose how far you go with it.

Nikolai Hampton, School of Science, Edith Cowan University and Paul Haskell-Dowland, Professor of Cyber Security Practice, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In Homer’s Odyssey, Nausicaa is a tall, gutsy teenage princess who finds a naked and helpless Odysseus washed up on her shore, gives him her brothers’ clothing, and instructs him on how to appeal to her mother, Queen Arete, for help to get home to Ithaca. She is crucial to his eventual return home after 20 years’ absence.

But she doesn’t appear in Christopher Nolan’s film at all – and her absence is part of a broader debate about how his version reduces or simplifies the role of women in the epic poem. In the Guardian, classicist Emily Hauser mourned the absence of the “delightfully brash princess”, along with nuance and complexity.

“There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material,” wrote classics professor Emily Wilson, whose translation of The Odyssey is a critically acclaimed bestseller, this week. “But none of them has much to say, in contrast to the characterisations in the poem.”

This applies to several key characters, from the enchantress Circe, who turned Odysseus’ men into pigs, to Odysseus’ wife Penelope. But what about the absent Nausicaa? Who was she? And why was she important?

Nausicaa, Odysseus’ teenage saviour

Nausicaa lives on the island of Scheria, where she and her fellow Phaeacians, an isolated and peaceful people, rarely encounter strangers. The goddess Athena visits the teenager in a dream and encourages her to wash her dirty laundry. She tells her the best young men of Scheria want to court her, and that Nausicaa and her bridesmaids will need clean dresses.

When she awakes, Nausicaa asks her father, King Alcinous, to loan her a mule-wagon so she and her female slaves can take the laundry to the seaside to wash. She offers to wash her father’s and five brothers’ outfits too, claiming she wants them to have clean clothes to work in and go dancing.

Nausicaa drives the wagon herself and joins in the manual labour of washing the laundry in a river that flows into the sea. She is near the spot where Odysseus has been washed ashore on a raft after leaving the island of Calypso, the lovelorn nymph, who sheltered him for seven years before being forced to let him go.

While the laundry dries in the sun, the girls play catch with a ball. Homer says Nausicaa is so tall, she stands out from the others, like the virgin goddess Artemis surrounded by nymphs. Their play wakes Odysseus, who jumps up from the bushes, naked and covered in grime. The slave girls run away, but Nausicaa stands her ground.

Odysseus praises her beauty and assures her whoever marries her will be the luckiest man by far: there is nothing better than a husband and wife whose minds live in harmony, who live in one house and make their enemies jealous. He is projecting his own desire to return home to his wife Penelope, but guesses accurately what will make this teenage princess trust him.

Thoroughly impressed, Nausicaa promises to give him clothing, food and drink, and a good wash.

After Odysseus bathes himself (at a distance, he’s shy), Athena does something special: she makes him look hot! She “made his hair grow curling tendrils like a hyacinth” and pours beauty on him just like pouring gold over silver. She makes him “look bigger and sturdier”.

Nausicaa is “shocked” and admits to her slaves: “I hope I get a man like this as husband, a man that lives here and would like to stay.” Flirting, she compliments Odysseus’ good looks.

Her next task is to save his life. She instructs him to enter her father’s palace without her, find the Great Hall, pass her father King Alcinous and go straight to her mother Queen Arete, who will be spinning wool by the hearth, and clasp her knees.

The wool-spinning alone is a sign of Arete’s status. She performs the most essential task of the household’s self-sufficiency and sustainability – making thread to weave on a loom into textiles – in the most public part of the palace.

Arete, the previous king’s daughter, has the people’s respect. What’s more, she wove the clothing Nausicaa has just loaned Odysseus. Homer says Arete recognises the clothes and is the first person to speak to Odysseus directly: “Where are you from? And who gave you those clothes?”

But she already knows: Nausicaa has given Odysseus her stamp of approval by sending him to her mother wearing them.

Arete and Alcinous receive Odysseus as their guest. It is to the Phaeacians that Odysseus narrates his adventures – such as the encounters with the Cyclops and Circe – and not, as in Nolan’s screenplay, in a lotus-induced state to Calypso. And it is the Phaeacians who escort Odysseus back to Ithaca and his family.

Penelope is shrewder in the poem

Most significantly, Odysseus’ meeting with Nausicaa is a dry run of his reunion with Penelope. He succeeds in persuading Nausicaa to trust him, helped by his good looks.

But his wife will prove shrewder. After Odysseus has killed all 108 suitors on Ithaca, he finally meets his wife as himself, not in disguise. Athena makes him look hot again, as she did on Scheria – curly hyacinth hair, beauty like gilded silver.

Penelope is not won over by this appearance. She tests his identity in another way, tricking him into revealing his knowledge of their immovable marriage bed and its construction around a tree – something replaced in Nolan’s film with a pendant of Athena that Odysseus carries around with him.

In Homer, the knowledge of the bed is more special, since it exemplifies the husband and wife whose minds live in harmony: the very thing Odysseus guessed Nausicaa wanted for herself someday.

“I love that not only is this about a very clever and ingenious man, it’s also about a very clever and ingenious woman, who’s his match in every way,” Madeleine Miller (author of a novel on Circe) told the New York Times about Penelope’s role in the Odyssey, in the lead-up to the film.

(In Nolan’s version, whose script Wilson claims she would have been “ashamed to have written”, Penelope is “barely more interesting” than the doll he has Odysseus carry to represent her.)

Miller said in Homer’s Odyssey, Circe comes to an understanding with Odysseus and invites him to stay as long as he needs. She offers “a place of peace and a haven”, where she helps him “recover from trauma”. Nolan omits the fact that Odysseus sleeps with Circe – and stays with her (and his men) for two years.

It’s a shame Nausicaa was left out of Nolan’s Odyssey: she is a good example of how Homer’s Odyssey is “a woman’s poem”, as many scholars have recognised.

But Nolan is faithful in one way to how Calypso and Circe appear in Homer: there is every indication they will continue on with their lives once Odysseus leaves their company. Had he included Nausicca, too, she would be another woman who is not just part of Odysseus’ adventures, but have independent narratives of their own – which happen to include Odysseus in it.

K.O. Chong-Gossard, Associate Professor of Classics (Ancient Greek & Latin), The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In the early hours of August 5 (UTC), an abandoned SpaceX rocket stage is expected to slam into the Moon at around 8,700 kilometres per hour.

Launched in January 2025, the rocket sent two commercial lunar landers toward Earth’s nearest neighbour.

With its work done, the rocket lacked the fuel to return to Earth or move into deep space. It remained in an unstable orbit until gravity finally set it on a collision course with the lunar surface.

The crash itself poses no danger. However, it signals a looming regulatory problem. As governments and companies race to build a permanent presence on the Moon, there is almost no practical framework for coordinating activities that permanently reshape the lunar environment.

A rare scientific opportunity

For astronomers, the accident is a scientific opportunity. As scientists know the rocket’s size, speed and roughly where it will hit, the impact presents a rare chance to to study exactly what happens when something impacts the Moon.

The crash will provide data to improve computer models of how craters form and how lunar dust behaves.

Researchers expect the collision to excavate a crater roughly 20–30 metres across and eject a cloud of lunar dust, known as regolith, several kilometres above the surface.

What happens on the Moon stays on the Moon

Along with the dust cloud, the impact will also raise a tricky question: who gets to decide when humanity permanently changes the Moon?

Unlike Earth, the Moon has almost no atmosphere and no weather. As a result, any marks we leave behind will remain for a very long time.

More than 50 years after the Apollo Moon landings, footprints remain visible. If left untouched, they may persist for thousands of years.

The results of crashes or accidents will last just as long.

The Moon is a shared neighbourhood

Space agencies, private companies, and researchers are all operating on the Moon at the same time.

Several countries have announced ambitions for long-term lunar scientific stations. Commercial companies hope to deliver cargo, prospect for resources, operate lunar communication satellites, and eventually support a sustained human presence.

As activity increases, so too does the possibility that one mission could unintentionally affect another. A cloud of high-speed lunar dust created by a landing could damage equipment such as nuclear-powered lunar bases or satellites, contaminate experiments, destroy a site of cultural significance, or even risk the lives of people on the lunar surface.

If a poorly planned mission swept away humanity’s first footprints on the Moon or damaged the Apollo lander, it would be a loss of heritage for all humanity.

By good fortune rather than good planning, the rocket’s upcoming collision is expected to occur near the isolated Einstein Crater, away from many significant lunar sites.

Nobody owns the Moon, but some can still change it

SpaceX has unintentionally acquired the power to permanently alter the Moon. There is almost no international process for deciding whether, when or where that should happen.

At the centre of the discussion is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the foundation of international space law with 138 state signatories.

Under this treaty, no country can claim sovereignty over the lunar surface. Instead, the Moon is regarded as a place to be explored and used for the benefit of all humankind.

While the treaty prevents ownership, it says remarkably little about practical lunar governance or regulating the lunar environment.

Unlike Earth, the Moon has no equivalent of UNESCO World Heritage protection, domestic heritage laws, or environmental regulation.

It is each country’s responsibility to supervise their own space companies to ensure they comply with national and international law. That means the American government is, in theory, on the hook for SpaceX’s mistakes.

Lunar accidents could also open up a company to financial liability and associated risks. Damages to equipment or bases could be in the millions of dollars. Accidental deaths could create criminal liability. Damages to a cultural or scientific site could risk international diplomatic incidents.

More transparency and coordination needed

So how can the Moon be a usable space for companies, governments and scientists, while also still being protected for all humanity?

The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space are already exploring future solutions. There are working groups examining how countries can regulate space resources and better coordinate activities on and around the Moon.

But these institutions face a difficult reality. UNOOSA has only around 40 staff with a global mandate, and the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space meets for only a few weeks each year.

Concurrently, commercial enterprises are throwing vast amounts of money at their race to the Moon meaning the law has not kept pace with the needs of the lunar environment.

From principles to practice

The international community does not need new laws. It needs to put the ones it has to work.

Article XI of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty already calls on states to share information about their space activities. That voluntary measure is fast becoming an operational necessity.

A simple starting point would be a lunar registry where states voluntarily identify planned activities, surface infrastructure, and sites they consider culturally significant. A similar satellite registry is managed by UNOOSA. This complimentary lunar registry would capture the operational details that the satellite registry was never designed to capture.

Aviation has a system of Notices to Airmen to advise pilots and flight operators of flight hazards, and other time-sensitive information. Shipping has Notices to Mariners.

The Moon needs something similar: standardised Notices to Lunar Operators. These would flag landing sites, rover routes and dust-generating activity before missions launch.

Calls are growing for a fourth UN Conference on Outer Space. This would be a forum where governments, industry and scientists could actually build these tools.

While this rocket cannot be stopped, the next accident might be avoided. Whether that happens will depend less on rocket scientists and more on the space lawyers and diplomats.

Gregory Radisic, Fellow at the Centre for Space, Cyberspace and Data Law; Senior Teaching Fellow, Faculty of Law, Bond University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Few episodes occupy a darker place in maritime history than the wreck of the Batavia.

Wrecked off the mid-west coast of Western Australia in June 1629, 159 years before the First Fleet entered Sydney Harbour, the disaster offers a stark alternative to romanticised tales of exploration.

Batavia’s story is instead one of greed, mutiny, heroic resistance and mass murder, exposing the violence and ambition that accompanied early European ventures into Australian waters.

The ship’s story is also one of a massive global supply chain – part of which has remained hidden until now. In our new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, we trace the origins of some of the Batavia’s most important cargo: massive sandstone blocks.

The tiny crystal preserved in these rocks help paint a detailed picture of lives, labour and global connections nearly 400 years ago.

An immensely valuable cargo

The Batavia was the flagship of the Dutch East India Company. On its maiden voyage from the Dutch Republic to Java, it carried 341 passengers and crew, together with an immensely valuable cargo.

Among it was what mariners called “paying ballast”. This was heavy material that served two purposes: stabilising the ship and carrying commercial or practical value at its destination.

In the ship’s hold, this included thousands of bricks and large, carefully carved sandstone blocks intended for a monumental gateway or portico in the Dutch East India Company’s colonial capital, Batavia (known today as Jakarta).

During the voyage, junior officer Jeronimus Cornelisz plotted to seize the ship and its treasure. After Batavia struck Morning Reef, roughly 60km west of the modern-day town of Geraldton, Commander Francisco Pelsaert departed in an open boat to seek help.

In Pelsaert’s absence, Cornelisz seized control of the survivors scattered across the nearby islands. He sent Wiebbe Hayes and a group of fellow soldiers to a distant island, expecting thirst to kill them. Cornelisz’s mutineers then began systematically killing the remaining survivors. More than one hundred men, women and children were murdered.

But Hayes and his soldiers found water. Survivors who escaped Cornelisz reached Haye’s group on makeshift rafts and warned them of the killings. They fashioned weapons, built a stone fort, and repeatedly repelled the mutineers. The remains of their stone fort on West Wallabi Island are regarded as Australia’s oldest surviving European-built structure.

When Pelsaert’s rescue ship appeared on the horizon, Hayes raced to reach it before the mutineers. He boarded first and revealed what had happened. The mutiny was over.

Through it all, hundreds of sandstone blocks lay within Batavia’s wreck, silent witnesses to the bloodshed unfolding across the islands. The stones survived; most of the people who sailed with them did not.

Nearly 400 years later, those stones are revealing the extraordinary logistical networks that supplied the Dutch East India Company.

Gaps in the record

At the dawn of global capitalism, the Dutch East India Company created one of the richest corporate archives of the early modern world.

Yet even its meticulous records have gaps. We know the Batavia carried a prefabricated stone portico. But we don’t know precisely where the stone came from or how materials from different quarries were assembled into a single overseas shipment.

To investigate, we examined Batavia’s sandstone cargo, now held by the WA Shipwrecks Museum. The blocks looked remarkably similar to each other, and centuries beneath the waves changed more obvious clues to their origins, such as colour, mineralogy, and the cement that holds the sand grains together.

To understand their source, we therefore turned to a more durable record hidden within the rocks. Sandstone carries tiny crystals known as zircon, often eroded from many older rocks.

Each grain contains a uranium–lead clock that records when the crystal grew. Together, their ages create a distinctive geological fingerprint of the ancient landscapes that supplied the sand.

Comparing geological fingerprints

We compared the geological fingerprints of the Batavia portico blocks with sandstone from German quarries known to have supplied building stone to the Netherlands during the 17th century. Some of these quarrying and trade networks had much deeper roots, extending back to Roman times.

The fingerprints revealed that similar-looking blocks came from different sources. One matched Bentheim sandstone; the other matched Obernkirchen sandstone.

Both zircon fingerprints were strikingly different.

Bentheim blocks contained abundant 3-billion-year-old zircons derived from ancient rocks in Scandinavia, whereas Obernkirchen blocks are richer in younger zircon, eroded from the 300-million-year-old Variscan mountain belt to the south, in what is now central Germany.

The quarries are about 140km apart and connect to different river systems. The stones travelled through separate inland transport networks before converging at a Dutch East India Company hub, most likely Amsterdam, where they were shaped and assembled into a single shipment for Batavia.

Numbers carved into the blocks acted as assembly marks, a 17th century precursor to flat-pack instructions.

No surviving document records this precise journey. But geology exposes a sophisticated and coordinated supply chain linking quarry workers, stone cutters, river transporters, merchants, and sailors across northwest Europe.

More than decorative cargo

Batavia’s portico blocks are a testament to the infrastructure of an empire: European stone gathered, standardised, and shipped across the world to build the Dutch East India Company’s colonial headquarters in Java.

Nearly four centuries later, the blocks show that stories can indeed be written in stone, recovering traces of networks of labour, trade and human connection.

Anthony Clarke, Research Fellow, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University and Chris Kirkland, Professor of Geochronology, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Have you ever wondered why it feels so good to sing in the shower? Or why turning up the radio up in the middle of a traffic jam and singing out loud can put you in a better mood?

Singing does something measurable to your body and brain, whether you are alone, harmonising in a choir, or singing with your friends at a karaoke bar.

Scientists have been interested in this “singers’ high” phenomenon for many years.

And a consistent picture is emerging from the evidence: singing can stimulate your hormones, quieten your nervous system, improve your immune system and boost your feeling of belonging, all at the same time.

Singing reduces stress

One of the most consistent findings is that singing has been shown to lower cortisol, the hormone most often associated with stress.

Several studies, using saliva samples taken before and after singing sessions, have found significant drops in cortisol in both solo and group singing, such as choir rehearsals.

Part of the explanation is biomechanical. The act of singing requires long controlled exhalation, similar to a breathing pattern (called pranayamic breathing) known to activate the vagus nerve.

The vagus nerve, which runs from the brainstem down into the abdomen, is the main neural pathway in the parasympathetic nervous system. This is responsible for slowing down heart rate, lowering blood pressure and helping digestion.

This is why it is often called the “rest and digest” pathway, calming us down when activated, in contrast to the sympathetic system which activates the “flight and fight” response when we’re stressed.

A detailed review of this breathing process found that slow breathing with extended exhalation, reliably stimulates the vagus nerve, shifting the body out of a stress response, and into a calmer state.

You don’t need to join a choir for this part. It works whether you are singing by yourself in the car after a long work week, or practising your karaoke song in the shower.

It’s a painkiller

Singing can also trigger the release of endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers.

One study measured this effect indirectly, using pain-threshold tests. The researchers believed a higher tolerance for pain after an activity might suggest greater endorphin release.

Across several experiments including active singing, dancing and drumming, they found all activities raised the pain threshold of participants, whereas passively listening to music did not.

Oxytocin, the hormone linked to bonding and trust is part of the story too, though evidence here is less tidy. Some studies have found oxytocin rises after group singing (especially if you are good at it). Others found it fell after group singing.

Another study concluded the data is not clear enough, and the effect of singing on oxytocin may depend on how socially intimate and low-stress the setting is.

What is fairly consistent, however, is that mood improves and people report feeling closer to one another after singing together – even when the underlying biochemical effects are mixed.

Singing may improve your immune system

Beyond mood and stress hormones, there is emerging evidence that singing can also have a measurable effect on the immune system, which fights infections.

One small study looked at singing sessions with cancer patients and their carers. It found that not only did participants’ mood improve after singing – including reductions in cortisol – their saliva samples also showed their cytokine levels had increased. Cytokines are chemical messengers that play a crucial role in the immune system, controlling inflammation.

Chronically high cortisol is known to suppress immune activity, so if cortisol drops after singing, this is also likely to have a positive effect on immune function.

The authors of this study emphasise that this is preliminary evidence, needing longer-term follow up studies.

Benefits for your brain and belonging

So does it matter how and where you sing? The stress-reducing, breath-based effects of singing seem to hold up whether you are singing alone or in a group. But group singing wins hands down for social bonding.

A large randomised trial of community choirs in older adults found that six months of group singing significantly reduced loneliness and increased their mood, compared with a control group.

Other studies have found that singing can also simultaneously engage different regions of the brain involved in listening, language, emotions and motor skills. This can improve brain connectivity and lead to healthier ageing.

The takeaway

You probably already knew singing felt good. But it isn’t just a pleasant distraction. It can reduce stress, calm your nervous system and make you feel closer to those around you. But if you prefer to sing alone in the shower or your car, this has many of the same benefits too – so go ahead and sing your heart out.

Kathleen Mikkelsen, Lecturer in Biomedicine, Victoria University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Consider these scenarios.

An influential political commentator posts a reel on social media, cherry-picking facts to manipulate a situation for political gain. His post gets no likes, no shares, and no angry emojis from users.

A scammy online ad using a celebrity’s image pops up on people’s social media feeds. Nobody clicks on it.

A wellness influencer shares disproven health advice and is entirely ignored. And a deepfake artificial intelligence (AI) video is downgraded by the algorithm because nobody believes it.

Instead, people are fact-checking before sharing or commenting. They’re consulting experts and scrolling beyond the AI summary at the top to seek out reliable information sources that abide by the standards of accuracy, independence and ethics.

These situations may seem laughable in our algorithm- and AI-driven online world where emotion is key to engagement.

But they are, in fact, the simple practical outcomes of a media literate society. And our report on a newly developed media literacy course shows there’s a cheap and effective solution to the scourge of misinformation at the heart of our overwhelming, and often polarised, online environment.

Misinformation is a global risk

We live in a world where anyone with an internet connection can publish instantly to the world – with few guardrails for accuracy or ethics.

Misinformation has been ranked first or second in the top short-term global risks by the World Economic Forum for three years running. Misinformation is often at the heart of fear campaigns and hate speech that can help fuel extremism and polarisation. It erodes trust in governments and institutions. It’s a public health hazard and a threat to public order and disaster management.

And now it’s being supercharged by low-effort generative AI. These tools spit out plausible and convincing content, but can also be wildly inaccurate and biased. As such, Australians are deeply concerned about misinformation. More so than many of their counterparts around the world.

Children have for many years been the focus of media literacy programs and research, such as Civic Online Reasoning in the US. Meanwhile adults – particularly those who were raised in the pre-internet era of landlines and snail mail – have been left floundering.

Educating adults is now an urgent priority. We found just 60 minutes of media literacy training makes a measurable difference to people’s ability to apply critical thinking skills to deal with misinformation.

A spoonful of adult education

To find solutions through media literacy, we focused on older people (aged 55+) who are known to be more vulnerable to misinformation, have fewer media skills, and feel less confident in their media abilities. We recruited our study participants from across Australia through libraries, the news media, and social media.

Through a simple short course delivered online and in person, we taught 79 participants how to:

• identify misinformation
• fact check and verify
• find reliable sources, and
• be self-aware while navigating the online world.

The media literacy levels of the participants grew by 23% on average, regardless of their background and political beliefs. Their ability to determine the reliability of information improved especially – by 27% – as did confidence in their ability to critically navigate the online world (by 32%).

Importantly, our course – the first known empirically-validated resource of its kind targeted at older Australians – helped people who are socially excluded the most.

We tested participants’ media literacy before the short course, immediately after, and three months later. Older, regional, less educated, and culturally and linguistically diverse groups maintained their gains for longer.

But our research also confirmed what others before us have fretted over: media literacy training is not a one-off. Overall, advances from education diminished over time among our study participants, although scores remained 11% higher on average than pre-course levels even after three months.

This suggests media literacy programs must be embedded in people’s everyday lives as a life-long learning process. It would help us keep pace with new platforms, digital systems and social trends.

Where to next?

The outcomes from the short course led to the development of the Stay Smart Online program, a toolkit to provide a simple and flexible way of teaching media literacy.

We conducted a pilot using an adapted version of the short course with libraries and their patrons throughout Australia with impressive results: 97% of patrons said they would recommend the course to a friend.

Libraries are ideal institutions to deliver this training to the public, especially older Australians. Among library staff nationally 99% see media literacy as essential work, but just 10% feel adequately equipped to support that mission.

What sets our research apart from many other misinformation and media literacy interventions (and is, perhaps, among the reasons for its success), is that it incorporates through the course materials the concept of intellectual humility.

Put simply, this is the acceptance that each person’s knowledge is limited, that we may be wrong, and we are open to revising our views based on evidence. As the term suggests, it’s a humbling notion. However, as we’ve found, it’s essential to media literacy.

In order to embrace evidence-based facts, we need first to acknowledge how our life experiences, upbringing, education, friends and family, community, language and culture have shaped our world view. All of these influence how we approach and process information and media.

Being conscious of our own inherent biases helps us apply the critical thinking skills we need to build resilience to misinformation.

Saffron Howden, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra; Janet Fulton, Research Fellow, News & Media Research Centre, University of Canberra, and Sora Park, Professor of Communication, News & Media Research Centre, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Reforming Australia’s gambling industry has been one of the most high-profile political issues of recent years. Constantly in the headlines, there are high levels of public support to bring in tougher rules, including gambling advertising bans.

But the federal government has been reluctant to act. It has introduced its new gambling legislation to parliament, but the bill has been criticised as not going far enough to address the problem.

There’s been a lot of speculation as to why there’s been so little political appetite to bring in tougher measures. One key reason is governments have a clear conflict of interest: they rely on gambling revenue while also being responsible for reducing gambling harm.

Years of resistance

Momentum for changing Australia’s gambling laws has been building since the 2023 release of the Murphy report. Handed down by a cross-party parliamentary inquiry and chaired by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy, the report made 31 recommendations, including limitations on gambling advertising and the appointment of a national online gambling regulator.

The government was slow to respond to the report. Three years later, it finally did.

The proposed legislation makes some attempts to protect people from gambling harms. If passed, this legislation would restrict when and how frequently gambling ads may air and ban the use of celebrities in those ads, among other changes.

Last week at Labor’s 50th National Conference, the party’s draft national platform acknowledged the public health benefits of reducing tobacco consumption. It described the tobacco industry as coercive and stated the party would not engage with anyone with financial links to tobacco.

This raises the obvious question: why has the Albanese government taken a markedly different approach to the gambling industry?

Put simply, the federal government’s reluctance to push for stronger regulation can be linked to the revenue gambling generates.

Imbalances in funding

To understand how this situation came about, we need to consider a concept called vertical fiscal imbalance, as we did in our new research.

Vertical fiscal imbalance is the financial mismatch between the federal and state governments. Under the Constitution, the federal government is more able to raise revenue, but the responsibility to deliver public services is largely left to the states, leading to an imbalance. It first started when the federal government assumed control over collecting income tax after the second world war.

With this imbalance, the states became increasingly dependent on federal funding grants. These grants are distributed through the horizontal fiscal equalisation grants process: a process designed to share government money fairly across the country.

While all states receive grants from the Commonwealth, horizontal fiscal equalisation aims to provide each state with the financial capacity to provide services to its population at a comparable level.

But this process cannot fully account for differences in land areas or resources.

For example, Western Australia argues it has been effectively penalised for having ample mineral resources that create revenue, which negatively impacts their share of the equalisation funding.

What does this have to do with gambling?

The current grants don’t provide enough funding for the states to support vital public services such as education, health, transport or social services. State governments have sought different ways to make up the shortfall.

This includes gambling taxes. Gambling revenue isn’t taken into account when the Commonwealth Grants Commission decides how much money each jurisdiction should receive. Every dollar states raise from gambling, they get to keep.

Our study looks at how the vertical fiscal imbalance led to New South Wales embracing the idea of gaining revenue from gambling taxes, including from poker machines.

Based on records of parliamentary debates, our research shows gambling went from a moral issue in the early 1900s, with parliamentarians stating gambling was a “material evil”, to a new revenue source.

In 1956, extreme budget pressures caused NSW Premier Joseph Cahill to declare not allowing poker machines into clubs would put the government in a “parlous financial position”.

Yet, another MP argued the government had “sunk to the depths, was desperate for money, and was capitalising upon the most vulnerable members of the community”.

But despite earlier concerns about morality, new legalised forms of gambling proliferated, particularly poker machines.

In terms of bringing in money for the state government, it worked. According to the most recent state budget, revenue from all gambling taxes in NSW was $3.6 billion in 2024–25, making up about 7% of the state’s $48 billion total tax revenue. Gambling revenue is forecast to surge to $4.7 billion over the next four years.

NSW is now home to about half the poker machines in the country. There are almost 90,000 machines across the state.

In May, the Labor party unanimously passed a motion at its NSW state conference to significantly reduce the number of poker machines in the state in the next ten years. But the parliamentary party isn’t compelled to legislate accordingly.

What about beyond NSW?

Other states and territories, with the exception of WA, have also come to rely on gambling revenue.

In 2022–23, the Queensland government collected $1.9 billion in gambling taxes and levies. In Victoria in 2024–25, it was more than $2.4 billion.

Even in Tasmania, a much smaller state, gambling generated more than $120 million for state coffers in 2023–24.

On a national level, the Albanese government’s reluctance to impose stronger regulation on advertising for the gambling industry, or establish a national gambling regulator, is likely driven by concerns about what this would mean for the federal budget. Weaning the states off gambling revenue would necessitate fundamental changes to federal-state fiscal relations.

At a time when the government is already under pressure given the nation’s ballooning debt, such fundamental economic reform would be a courageous path to take.

From this perspective, the Albanese government’s response to the Murphy report is less an isolated policy decision than the continuation of a longstanding pattern in which structural reform gives way to more politically and economically acceptable measures.

Our findings suggest an important solution to the gambling crisis lies in reforming the current federal funding model to the states. Doing so would reduce the states’ dependence on gambling revenue and enable them to fund essential services without relying on the gambling losses of everyday Australians.

Barbara Kinder, Adjunct Fellow, Lecturer, Southern Cross University and Michael B. Charles, Associate Professor, Management Discipline, Faculty of Business, Arts and Law, Southern Cross University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As countries around the world look to follow Australia’s lead in restricting young people’s access to social media, a new report by the eSafety Commissioner might give them reason to pause, at least temporarily.

Australia’s online watchdog found more than 80% of kids were still using an age-restricted platform, such as Instagram, TikTok or Snapchat, three months after the trailblazing social media ban took effect.

The report is the first in a series the commissioner will publish as part of a two-year evaluation process. It contains several other key findings which confirm earlier evidence that the ban isn’t quite going to plan.

Reductions in social media use ‘limited in scale’

The commissioner’s report presents findings from 803 children (aged 10–15) and their parents, drawing on national baseline survey data from just before social media restrictions took effect in December 2025, and data collected from a three-month follow up from March to April 2026.

Its aim isn’t to assess the long-term effectiveness of the policy, but to examine whether anticipated early changes are happening.

While the number of children holding accounts dropped from roughly 52% to 42%, the emerging picture for ongoing use of social media is concerning. As the report says:

Our findings suggest that three months after the commencement of the age restrictions, reductions in children’s use of age-restricted platforms and account ownership have been limited in scale.

The “primary reason” for this was “ineffective implementation of age assurance measures by platforms”. In fact, more than half of kids surveyed said the platforms hadn’t even asked them to confirm their age. Some 18% reported platforms had incorrectly estimated their age to be above 16, and 37% said they had simply listed their age as 16 or above on their accounts to maintain access.

Prior to the restrictions being introduced, 85.9% of children reported using at least one social media platform. This number only dropped to 81.5% at three months.

“This may reflect the relatively low barrier to continued account access,” the report said, “with little need for children to rely on workarounds to obtain or maintain access”.

Alongside this, the report found “early signals” some children were moving to other platforms, such as Reddit and Pinterest. It also detected an “unintended consequence” of the ban: the proportion of parents who didn’t know their child had used social media increased by 10%.

And despite Prime Minister Anthony Albanese saying he hoped the ban would lead to more kids “playing outside with their friends”, the report found “little to no change” in what kids did offline three months after the ban took effect.

Unsurprising results

The results of this first evaluation are not surprising.

There have been regular media reports of children retaining accounts and getting around age-assurance checks.

And the findings reinforce the online regulator’s report from March, which raised concerns that social media platforms were not complying with the legislation.

The findings also echo other research showing children continue to access social media.

What happens next?

The report’s release is timely, given the government’s intention to “double down” on compliance by increasing penalties and expanding the commissioner’s information-gathering powers.

The government will now be under pressure to make good on its intentions to investigate non-compliance and, where appropriate, implement fines. The findings of this three-month report may bolster those investigations.

Earlier this week, the companies selling age-assurance software also called on the government to implement a “mandatory independent audit” of every platform covered by social media age restrictions, to test if they are using the tools properly.

The Age Verification Providers Association argues social media companies may opt to wear fines to see the legislation fail.

Yet even if companies comply and keep children under 16 from having accounts, this won’t stop kids accessing social media. The legislation does not restrict use in a logged-out state – and the three-month report shows children continue to access social media in this way.

All this should demonstrate to other countries that age-based restrictions are not a quick fix.

The government has committed to introducing digital duty of care legislation this year, which would hold technology companies to account and provide protections for Australians of all ages.

If we want to protect our kids from harmful content and algorithms on social media, that legislation cannot come soon enough.

Lisa M. Given, Professor of Information Sciences & Director, Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Do you use an offset account to save money on your mortgage? It might be a good idea to contact your bank and check it has actually been set up and is working as it should.

That’s according to a report released on Wednesday by the corporate watchdog, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

ASIC’s review of eight banks – accounting for more than 70% of the Australian home loan market – found “weaknesses” in how all of them “set up, monitored and managed offset accounts, resulting in some customers missing out on promised savings”.

Across the entire banking sector, ASIC says Australian banks have paid out more than A$55 million in compensation for offset account failures reported between September 2023 and August 2025.

Reserve Bank data show 55% of Australian mortgages – representing an estimated 1.8 million households – have an offset account.

According to ASIC, in March, Australians held a total of $349.1 billion in offset account balances, up 28% over two years. The watchdog’s findings raise concerns some aren’t getting the savings they’ve been promised.

As my recent research has explored, even when operating as intended, these products can be difficult to navigate as a consumer and won’t save everyone money.

How does an offset account work?

An offset account is a type of bank account linked to a mortgage.

Instead of earning interest, the savings in the offset account reduce the interest payable on your mortgage balance.

To give a simplified example, if you owe $1 million on a mortgage, but also have $100,000 in a linked offset account, the bank will only calculate interest based on an effective balance of $900,000.

It might seem like an easy way to save money, but there are some important caveats. First, many banks charge customers to open or operate an offset account, or impose other costs such as higher interest rates on a linked mortgage.

Second, they won’t be a good deal for everyone. Savings depend on a household’s ability to save and the specific costs of the product.

Why the regulator is concerned

Across eight banks, ASIC reviewed 204,000 home loans that were settled between March and August 2025.

Among various types of offset account failure identified, the two most common were banks not opening an offset account when it had been requested, or an account being opened but not linked to the mortgage. Manual errors by staff were identified as the main cause of account failures.

Overall, the report identified four overarching concerns, finding some banks:

• struggled to “readily identify” offset account requests
• did not consistently detect failures
• were slow to fix issues or failed to compensate customers
• did not consistently provide customers with “clear, timely information” about their offset accounts.

These findings are particularly concerning where a customer has opted to use an offset account instead of another type of account that pays interest. If their offset account hasn’t been linked correctly, they are missing out on both mortgage interest savings and the benefit of using another savings mechanism.

Not for everyone

My own recent research examined who uses offset accounts in Australia, and how much of a benefit they actually receive.

I found mortgage holders are only likely to benefit from an offset account if they can save enough money – after mortgage payments and other expenses – that the mortgage interest savings outweigh the ongoing fees associated with the account.

For example, at a 6% mortgage interest rate, a customer would need to hold at least $5,000 in their offset account for an entire year to justify a $300 annual fee.

Customers with lower mortgage interest rates or less ability to save may not be getting value for money from their offset account. Put simply, while some mortgage holders might save money, others might be incurring fees for little gain.

Checking your account

ASIC has encouraged anyone with a mortgage offset account to check:

• whether it has actually been set up
• that it is linked to the right home loan
• that it is saving interest.

Actual savings will vary significantly by product and by bank. For that reason, it can be difficult to offer a simple formula everyone can use to check they’re saving money.

But if you have concerns, you can contact your bank or mortgage broker.

ASIC’s report serves as a warning that these mortgage products can be difficult to navigate and may not be suitable for everyone. As always, it’s a good idea to seek professional financial advice about your mortgage options, products and decisions.

Disclaimer: This article provides general information only and does not take into account your personal objectives, financial situation, or needs. It is not intended as financial advice.

James Graham, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

At Labor’s national conference last week, the Albanese government said it would establish a new federal Fair Work Court to provide “simpler, fairer and faster” resolution of workplace disputes.

At this stage, details remain sparse. But the broad idea is this new specialist court will work alongside the Fair Work Commission – the existing employment tribunal – to facilitate speedier resolution of claims brought under the Fair Work Act.

There is growing evidence to suggest that trying to resolve workplace disputes and recover backpay is too costly, too hard and too slow.

Intentional “wage theft” has been a criminal offence for more than 18 months. Despite this, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the conference there were:

still too many of the most vulnerable workers in this country being illegally underpaid, because they cannot access or afford the justice that they are owed.

The new court aims to fix this problem by appointing judges with expertise in workplace law and bridging the existing gap between the Fair Work Commission and the federal court system.

Why do we need a new court?

One of the reasons for the current disjointed process is that, due to constitutional limitations, the Fair Work Commission cannot simultaneously create rights and enforce them.

The tribunal has the power to make modern awards and to approve enterprise agreements. It also has the power to conciliate and arbitrate unfair dismissal claims and some industrial disputes.

However, it is not authorised to determine an underpayment claim and it cannot impose penalties where there is a contravention of the Fair Work Act.

Currently, only designated courts have the authority to do this.

We’ve been here before

A dedicated employment court is not necessarily a new idea. Rather, the Fair Work Court has been described as “decades in the making”.

In 1994, the Keating Labor government established an industrial relations court, which operated separately from the federal court system. This specialist court was abolished under the Howard coalition government in 1997.

The concept of a “one-stop shop” for workplace claims was later floated by Labor while in opposition in 2007, but was ultimately abandoned. Instead, the 2009 Fair Work Act created specialist Fair Work divisions within the federal court system to hear employment matters. It also established a separate “small claims” process for monetary claims (previously capped at $20,000, now at $100,000).

Small claims proceedings are designed to be less formal with the aim of settling disputes quickly and cheaply. However, the small claims process is still seen as confusing and cumbersome, especially for vulnerable workers, such as migrants.

Setting the scope

The Albanese government has signalled it will consult on the design of the new Fair Work Court before the end of the year, including how it would coordinate with the Fair Work Commission, the existing federal courts and the state-based systems.

Rather than simply reforming the small claims process, Labor has left open the possibility the new court will deal with “a whole range of matters”, including:

• bargaining disputes
• appeals from the Fair Work Commission
• unlawful termination matters
• large underpayment claims.

The government says it is committed to working on the design of the new court “as swiftly as possible”.

Other questions to answer

Beyond the scope of the new court, the government will also have to iron out a host of other procedural issues.

Will applicants be able to file a single, rolled up claim in one place and access the conciliation processes of the Fair Work Commission and the judicial powers of the Fair Work Court? Or will they need to file separate claims to access each forum?

What rules of procedure and evidence will apply if the new Court is determining more significant matters and imposing penalties?

If the government wants to improve access to justice, it will need to consider whether class actions can be heard and if and when parties can recover their legal costs. The costs of obtaining legal advice can present a real hurdle, especially where the backpay amount is relatively modest.

Avoiding a ‘lawyer’s picnic’

Labor’s proposal hasn’t been without criticism. Business groups have questioned whether the new court would simply duplicate existing courts, add “another layer of bureaucracy” or even risk creating a “lawyer’s picnic”.

Other commentators believe the creation of a new specialist court will do little to address the inherent complexity of the system.

Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Amanda Rishworth said she couldn’t see how the court would add an “extra level of regulation”, framing it as:

a more effective and efficient way to ensure that the workplace laws and rights in this country are upheld.

Unions have welcomed the proposal of a dedicated court. But we shouldn’t assume that on its own, creating a new court – even one staffed by specialists – will solve the scourge of underpayment.

Some of the most egregious wrongdoers will still make themselves judgment-proof through insolvency, bankruptcy or abandonment, and workplace justice will continue to be denied.

Tess Hardy, Associate Professor, Director of the Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Winter has a way of making the office, train and school pick-up line feel like a giant petri dish of germs and potential infection. It’s also when many of us quietly let our exercise routine slide.

With late sunrises and a warm doona, a run in the rain or snow has lost its appeal. But could skipping that workout actually make you more likely to catch the flu or seasonal bug?

The short answer: regular, moderate exercise probably does lower your risk of catching a cold or flu. But it won’t cure you once you’ve got it, and more exercise isn’t always better.

Exercise and the immune system

When you exercise, your muscles contract and release signalling proteins called myokines.

These natural chemical messengers help mobilise beneficial immune cells – particularly natural killer cells and T-cells – and redistribute them throughout the bloodstream and bodily tissues. This improves the immune system response to threats, making your body better at fighting infection.

However, the effect isn’t permanent. Within hours after exercise, your cell counts (a measure of how your immune system is responding) return to normal.

But researchers think repeated bouts of these immune “boosts” do add up over time, building an immune system that detects and responds to viruses more efficiently.

Regular moderate exercise also appears to lower chronic inflammation, which otherwise prevents your immune system working as well as it should.

The evidence backs this up, if imperfectly. A 2022 review of the evidence concludes that physically active people consistently report fewer respiratory infections than those who do very little physical activity.

Prevention, not the cure

Exercise won’t shorten a cold you already have, and there’s no evidence an intense gym session “sweats out” a virus.

What the research supports is exercise as a preventative tool. Think of exercise as a way to reduce your chances of getting sick rather than preventing it altogether. Even very fit people catch colds and flu.

There’s also a caveat, sometimes called the immune “J-curve”: very prolonged, high-intensity exercise can lead to a temporary dip in immune function in the hours afterwards.

This mostly affects endurance athletes doing significant amounts of training – think marathon training, not a lunchtime walk.

However, more recent research questions how large that risk really is. For most of us average folks, going beyond the healthy amount of weekly physical activity is not a concern.

How much exercise and physical activity do you actually need?

You don’t need to train like an athlete. Guidelines recommend adults do 150–300 minutes of moderate physical activity a week, or 75–150 minutes of vigorous intensity activity. Or you can do an equivalent combination of moderate and vigorous activity.

Moderate intensity means anything that noticeably lifts your heart rate and breathing: a brisk walk, cycling, swimming, raking leaves, even dancing in the kitchen. It doesn’t need to be a structured “workout”.

Vigorous intensity means any activity of any duration that gets us huffing and puffing.

A way to test exercise intensity is with the “talk and sing” test. At moderate intensity, you’ll be able to talk but not sing. At vigorous intensity, you won’t be able to talk without pausing to catch your breath.

Finding motivation when its cold and dark

Winter motivation is a genuine hurdle. But a few things can help:

• treat exercise as a fixed appointment, not something you’ll “find time” for

• move it indoors on bad weather days

• break it into smaller chunks, such as three five-to-ten minute walks – these work as well as a single 30-minute session

• exercise with a friend, if accountability helps you

• get outside when you can – especially when the sun is out.

To exercise or to rest? The million dollar question

The trickiest calls come when you’re not quite sick but feel run down.

Many clinicians use a simple “neck check”. This means if symptoms are above the neck (for example, a runny nose, sneezing, a mild sore throat) light-to-moderate exercise is generally fine, though it’s sensible to ease off the intensity and duration.

If you have symptoms below the neck (such as a chest cough or upset stomach) or symptoms affecting your whole body (such as fever, body aches or serious fatigue) rest is the better call.

Exercising with a fever raises your core temperature further, can worsen dehydration, and adds strain on your heart.

If you’re simply feeling flat or short on sleep, rather than unwell, a gentle walk is unlikely to do harm and may even help. But it’s also a good moment to prioritise sleep and lower the intensity rather than push through a hard session.

None of this makes exercise a substitute for a flu shot, hand-washing or staying home when you’re contagious.

But as one of the few winter habits genuinely within our control, regular exercise and physical activity is a reasonable, low-cost way to tilt the odds in your favour.

Matthew Ahmadi, Associate Professor of Digital Health, Monash University; Joanne Caldwell Odgers, Senior Lecturer in Physiology, Monash University, and Nicholas Koemel, Senior Research Fellow in Digital Health, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Young people are navigating their romantic and sexual lives in an increasingly complex world.

Social media content, including from misogynistic influencers, have contributed to rapidly changing norms around gender, sex and relationships.

Recent Australian research has found concerning rates of unwanted, forced or coerced sex and intimate partner violence among young people, including adolescents as young as 14.

At the same time, many young people find the relationships and sexuality education they’ve received is inconsistent, unconvincing or disconnected from the realities of their lives.

We surveyed 482 teachers working across government, Catholic and independent schools who deliver relationship and sexuality education and found they often feel ill-equipped to deliver lessons on sex, consent and respectful relationships.

Teachers feel unprepared and under-supported

In previous generations, sex education focused on biology. Today, a more comprehensive approach is taken. Relationships and sexuality education encompasses sexual and reproductive health, respectful relationships and consent education.

Our study examined the training and support needs of Australian teachers and student (pre-service) teachers who deliver relationships and sexuality education.

More than two thirds (around 67%) of teachers reported receiving no university classes on how to teach relationships and sexuality education.

Most (77%) said their university preparation left them poorly equipped to teach these topics.

Professional development after entering the workforce was also inconsistent. Nearly half (43%) said they still required additional training.

Half (50%) reported their school did not allocate adequate time or funding for professional development in relationships and sexuality education. Less than half (39%) felt they had sufficient time for lesson planning.

Overall, teachers viewed relationships and sexuality education positively. Most believed:

• their school leadership team valued relationships and sexuality education (72%)
• parents were supportive (60%)
• students generally felt comfortable engaging with it (65%).

However, this support was not always matched by practical resources.

Teachers who received dedicated in-service training and sufficient preparation time, and felt supported by their school administration, said they were significantly more comfortable to deliver relationships and sexuality education.

This is important, as around 60% of teachers worried about negative reactions from parents, saying the wrong thing during lessons or how to respond to student disclosures of experiencing sexual violence.

Many teachers were also uncomfortable delivering education on challenging or sensitive topics, including pornography, abortion or sexual violence.

What do students say they want?

Across multiple studies, young people report they want:

• more support to navigate romantic and sexual relationships

• meaningful education about the emotional complexities of relationships, how to communicate with a partner and how to express needs and boundaries in sexual relationships

• more relevant critical education on pornography.

Young people also want education on the practical realities of sex. They want to know more about what to expect and what to prepare for.

They also want education that is inclusive of diversity in gender, sexuality and bodies.

Consent education aims to reduce sexual violence

Mandatory consent education was introduced in 2023 in response to sexual consent advocate Chanel Contos’ Teach Us Consent campaign. This drew national attention to young women’s experiences of sexual violence and highlighted inadequacies in current education.

Australia has now made sexual consent education a national priority, with federal, state and territory governments making a committment in 2022 as part of national efforts to address sexual and gender-based violence.

Schools are key in preventing sexual and gender-based violence: they’re one of the few institutions that reaches almost all young people.

Consent and respectful relationships sit within the broader relationships and sexuality education curriculum, which also includes education on sexual and reproductive health, sexuality and gender.

Relationships and sexuality education provides a platform to engage with young people during the years when they are likely exploring romantic and sexual relationships for the first time.

The purpose isn’t only to teach young people legal definitions of consent or the basics of safe sex. When done well, it helps to shape school culture, and reduces misogynist and harmful attitudes and behaviours in the school community.

What should happen next?

Relationships and sexuality education should provide opportunities for young people to engage critically with issues such as sexual ethics, gender stereotypes, power in relationships and the complexities of coercion.

These are complex and sensitive topics that require skilled teaching.

Our research suggests that effective and sustainable relationships and sexuality education will be most effective if teachers:

• are given dedicated professional training
• have access to evidence-based curriculum resources
• have opportunities to work collaboratively with other staff, including school-based adolescent health nurses, wellbeing teams and external specialist educators.

Schools should be supported to develop a whole-school approach to relationships and sexuality education, in which school leadership is engaged and all staff have some capacity to respond to issues relating to consent, respectful relationships and sexual wellbeing.

To make a sustained difference in the lives of young people, we need a nationally coordinated approach to relationships and sexuality. Better support for teachers and schools to deliver this is crucial. 

Jennifer Power, Principal Research Fellow, Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University and Lily Moor, Research Officer, Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Parents, schools and clubs regularly post images of children to social media platforms and websites.

While this may support connection with family and friends, promote school or sports activities or celebrate children’s achievements, there can be unintended consequences.

In its latest advice, the eSafety Commissioner notes how the rise of AI tools has “significantly escalated” safety risks around sharing photos and videos online.

On Tuesday, the eSafety Commissioner said it had seen a rise in reports of imagery harvested from school social media accounts or websites being used in AI-generated abuse.

What role do trusted adults play in making children visible online? And what should parents think about before they post images of their kids?

What are the rules?

Legally, parents can post almost any photo of their child online and authorise others to do the same. Abusive or exploitative photos are still subject to criminal law. But an average embarrassing moment likely falls short of “serious harm” outlined by the Online Safety Act.

But while Australian privacy laws treat these photos and videos primarily as personal information (and so up to parents to decide), research increasingly recognises the situation is more complex. In an old family album, a photo records a private memory. Online, it constructs a public identity.

Policy-makers are also starting to recognise that children’s right to participate in decisions applies to images shared online, particularly as they can remain there indefinitely.

France now requires parents to involve children in decisions about how they are portrayed online. New Spanish legislation gives more weight to protecting a child’s reputation than a parent’s right to expression.

The risks need consideration

Any photo can be edited into a nude photo, circulated on platforms as cyberbullying, used for sexual extortion, or amplified to wider audiences through algorithms.

A 2026 Adelaide University study suggests AI is used in one in four cases of image-based child sexual abuse. Yet public awareness is still low. For example, a 2026 eSafety Commissioner survey found only 11% of parents had spoken to their child about how generative AI can be used or misused.

The Australian Federal Police stresses the importance of education and awareness for parents, rather than fear.

Parents can take practical steps to protect their children’s safety when posting photos. This includes avoiding school logos, street names and front doors in photos posted online, and not including children’s names, ages and school years in captions.

In its new advice, eSafety also outlines how schools can safely share images by making conscious decisions that consider risks alongside potential benefits. Who is able to see this photo? What does the photo add? Are close ups needed?

Kids say they feel powerless

It is important to take these measures seriously because the consequences could be severe. However, that does not mean they are likely. The Adelaide University survey found 6.4% of those under 18 had experienced non-consensual image sharing.

Yet there is also a more widespread form of harm: lack of consent.

The Australian Information Commissioner suggests 86% of surveyed primary school children experienced a friend or parent sharing a photo they didn’t want shared.

Children have reported these experiences cause them to feel embarrassed, powerless and misrepresented. Research with First Nations children suggests greater control over how they are represented online supports positive identity and connection.

What can you ask yourself before posting online?

There is no single rule to determine whether an image should be shared. But we can gain useful guidance from the United Nations agency for children’s advice on media coverage and the Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child’s Manifesto for a Better Children’s Internet.

Based on these, and my decade of experience making images with children around the world, these four questions guide my thinking.

1. Why am I sharing this? Who is it really for?

Parents may post in the moment without thinking much about it. Or think lots about what their photos say about them.

Maybe your child is in fancy dress for a party, and you’re proud of their hairstyle or in hysterics at how badly it turned out.

Pause and ask yourself: who is the audience? What am I hoping this post communicates, and is that more about me or my child?

Your friends having a chuckle may not be in the child’s best interests. But if the child wants everyone to see their hair, posting could support their pride. You could exclude their face as an optional precaution.

2. What is the post saying about this child?

A photo of the kids pulling funny faces at the beach may seem like a pretty average image. But what else could it say without context?

If there has been a bit of bother at school lately, and others might see a lack of seriousness. If there has been a recent ADHD diagnosis, the image may enforce the stereotype of disruption. Or maybe they’ve experienced bullying, and this is a precious reminder they have pals.

We can’t control what people think. But we can ask the child about what’s going on in their world to consider the impact on them, and clarify what we mean with captions.

3. What happens once the image leaves my hands?

This is a difficult question to answer, as we don’t always have control over what happens to something once we post it online, or know how technology will evolve in future.

Ask yourself, who can currently access, download or screenshot the image? Could it be copied, repurposed or edited?

If your child later reconsiders their consent and doesn’t want it online, do the platform’s settings allow you to delete it?

4. Does this image need to be made public, or could it be shared a different way?

Perhaps you can just message the picture to a private family chat or group with friends. Or print a copy for your child to share with theirs, or treasure themselves.

Lauri Parr, Research Associate, School of Population Health, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

You’re probably familiar with the idea that in the world of big tech, “we” are the product.

Our data is the currency being traded every time we navigate our social media feeds. Tech giants such as Apple, Google and Microsoft offer valuable services, but it comes at a price. They host our email, photos, backups, files, calendars, reminders and contacts.

If you also include all the smaller startups and niche solutions, you’ll quickly see your security cameras, electronic locks, home appliances and even your toothbrushing schedules are all online – far removed from any physical box or device that you have any control over.

But there is a way to break free from big tech. It’s called “self-hosting”.

Your life, online

Many of these large tech providers do a good job of securing your data and enabling you to access services across devices and platforms. They allow novice users with almost no technical skills to interact with and share their data at little cost.

However, being reliant on these companies isn’t risk-free.

Google, Amazon and Meta have been implicated in unexpected or questionable uses of data.

Having high-value data concentrated in well-established systems also provides cyber criminals and scammers with obvious targets to spam, imitate (spoof) or hack.

Users are also completely at the mercy of these companies should they decide to raise their fees, change their terms of service, or even discontinue access.

What exactly is self-hosting?

Self-hosting is a general catch-all term for taking control of your own data.

This shifts your data from big tech giants and moves it to self-managed applications. Your data is on your own systems and you have complete control over who can access it.

Many self-hosted applications are open-source and, thanks to community support, they can be relatively easy for a tech-savvy user to download and install.

Self-hosting isn’t new.

Squirrel Mail (a web-based email client) predated Gmail by several years. Gallery, a photo hosting application, came before Flickr and Picasa. Even WordPress was originally offered in 2003 as a self-hosted download before the WordPress.com blogging service became available in 2005.

Over the past decade, self-hosting has seen a rapid increase in the range of options available.

Today, moderately technical users can self-host a mind-boggling range of web-based applications, including media storage and sharing, blogs, websites, productivity and office apps, video conferencing, home automation and security, games and ad-blocking.

To get an idea of how much is out there, Awesome-Selfhosted publishes links to free and open-source self-hosted projects.

Self-hosting has also become more accessible with cheap, single-board computers such as the Raspberry Pi.

These tiny computers can be as small as a credit card and usually have lower-powered central processing units and no ability to expand memory, graphics or networking; they sacrifice computing “power” and flexibility for size, energy-efficiency and price.

Other common household network appliances such as network file storage, media servers and internet routers have become powerful enough that users can install custom applications to run many self-hosted services.

Another route to self-hosting is through device manufacturers such as umbrel and Zima, both of which provide physical hardware with dedicated self-hosting operating systems.

However, there is still a considerable learning curve for non-technical users.

Benefits and risks

Self-hosting provides freedom from big-tech, surveillance and/or costly subscriptions. It allows you to know exactly where your data is, and how it’s managed.

But it does come with some risks.

The most immediate risks come from technical mistakes and backup issues that can cause a self-hosted solution to lose data.

If your photo library is running on a single computer in your linen cupboard, you are reliant on that computer being powered up, backed up and available whenever you need it.

Similarly, any mistake you make in configuration or management could affect the availability of your data through access controls or even data erasure.

Another issue that users need to consider is whether they want their data available “on the move”. In most cases, home routers allow you to expose individual devices to the internet. This can allow you to access your self-hosted data while you are away from home. Unfortunately, if you can access your data, in most cases, so can cyber criminals.

Exposing self-hosted services in this way requires diligence, consideration and a certain level of expertise to minimise the risk of breaches – risks that may be amplified by poorly maintained applications.

Should I bother?

Self-hosting allows you to have greater control over how, when and by whom your data is used. For some, this is a vital requirement and worth the extra effort required to make it all work.

If you have an old computer available, why not give it a try? It may seem daunting, but self-hosting comes in many flavours, and you can choose how far you go with it.

Nikolai Hampton, School of Science, Edith Cowan University and Paul Haskell-Dowland, Professor of Cyber Security Practice, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

South Sudan is expected to hold an election on 22 December 2026, the first in the country’s history. It’s already been postponed twice, in 2022 and 2024.

A great deal is being said and written about whether or not there should be an election. But, having researched South Sudan’s post-war transition since the revitalised peace agreement was signed in 2018, I would argue that the real question is whether another extension would create the political conditions that previous delays failed to deliver.

South Sudan’s first national elections will almost certainly be imperfect. Few countries emerging from violent conflict hold flawless elections.

But another transition extension is even less likely to resolve the country’s underlying political problems. These include elite power struggles, weak institutions and unresolved security arrangements.

In my view, the transition has reached its limits. What’s needed to move ahead is a succession plan. Naming a running mate for President Salva Kiir could facilitate a political succession that would be less disruptive than an unplanned and sudden succession in the event that the transition gets prolonged again.

Unpreparedness is real

The National Election Commission announced the poll date six months in advance, as required by law. But neither the state of preparations nor the available funding made this look realistic.

Critics have warned that the country isn’t ready. Institutions remain weak. Insecurity persists across parts of the country and civic education is lacking. Cornerstones of the 2018 peace agreement – such as a permanent constitution and a joint army that integrates the armed opposition forces – aren’t in place.

The first vice-president – and potential presidential contender – Riek Machar remains detained and on trial for his role in armed fighting in Nasir, Upper Nile State, in March 2025.

Preparations are also falling behind. The current election law is flawed – for instance, it mistakenly provides for 105% of the seats in the national assembly – and voter registration hasn’t started.

The election commission has also decided to reuse the constituencies from Sudan’s 2010 elections. This has prompted legal objections that these boundaries don’t reflect reality in an independent South Sudan.

Unfinished business

The signing of the peace agreement in 2018 established a fragile power-sharing arrangement. It brought the country’s warring parties into a transitional government of national unity. General elections were intended to conclude the transition period.

Each extension was justified by the promise that additional time would allow completion of the key transitional tasks. That never happened. There is little reason to believe that another two or three years would produce a different outcome.

The biggest gaps in South Sudan at the moment are these:

• Constitution-making remains politically contested. South Sudan still operates under a transitional constitution from 2011. It largely reflects arrangements inherited from the pre-independence period. A permanent constitution is expected to define matters like the distribution of political power, the relationship between national and state authorities, the role of customary law, and how the country’s diversity is represented in the political system.

• Security sector reform has made only limited progress. A central provision of the peace agreement is the integration of government forces, the opposition and other armed groups into a unified military force. The aim is to reduce the risk of renewed conflict.

• Transitional justice processes haven’t started. These mechanisms are intended to investigate crimes committed during South Sudan’s civil war, and provide accountability and reconciliation. Senior political and military figures responsible for implementing these provisions could themselves become subjects of investigation. If indicted by the courts, they would be barred from holding public office. There has, therefore, been little political appetite to establish the processes.

The transition has turned into the main obstacle for these tasks to be completed. An election would make it possible to get on with the tasks by giving someone the authority.

The existing gaps have left the door open to unhelpful developments. The worst is the reproduction of kleptocratic and authoritarian structures.

The case for an election

One of South Sudan’s biggest challenges could be resolved by an election: the question of political succession in the executive.

The question looms large over South Sudan. Whether elections are held or postponed, it’s likely to be a source of political disruption.

Kiir has dominated South(ern) Sudanese politics for more than 20 years. Who could succeed him if he were no longer able to continue?

The transitional framework offers remarkably little certainty on this. Formally, the ruling party would need to name a successor. Nobody has been earmarked. Were succession to become an immediate political issue, the most likely consequence would be violent infighting within the ruling party.

Elections offer something that another extension cannot. They can force the ruling party – which, according to available political perception data, has a good chance to win both presidential and parliamentary elections even without rigging – to clarify the succession issue.

A presidential election would require the governing party to nominate a presidential candidate and a vice-presidential candidate endorsed by Kiir and party organs. Whoever occupies the vice-president position would be the leading and legitimised candidate to succeed should the presidency unexpectedly become vacant.

This does not eliminate political competition. It provides a far clearer and more legitimate succession pathway than the current transitional arrangements.

Those arguing against a poll being held point to the dangers of electoral violence. Election-related violence is a genuine risk. But postponing elections doesn’t necessarily reduce such risk.

Extending the transition again would instead deepen political uncertainty.

Perhaps the strongest argument for elections, however, comes from South Sudanese citizens themselves.

Nationwide survey research shows that around four in five South Sudanese support holding elections, even though most also recognise that violence remains a serious possibility.

This finding deserves greater attention than it usually receives. If most South Sudanese want elections, on what basis should political elites or international partners argue that they should wait?

What needs to be done

None of this means that elections can simply proceed. The financial, legal and practical preparation challenges are severe and will not be resolved overnight. An inter-party dialogue preparing the political ground for elections is a useful initiative. But this is unlikely to resolve the tensions with the main opposition forces behind Machar.

Recent suggestions by international partners like the European Union to discuss a short technical extension – for instance to March or April 2027 – or to hold executive and legislative elections separately are reasonable. But an indefinite postponement won’t lead the country anywhere.

Jan Pospisil, Researcher at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.